Amazing Facts about India and Indians!

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1. India is the world's largest, oldest, continuous civilization. 2. India never invaded any country in her last 10000 years of history. 3. India is the world's largest democracy. 4. Varanasi, also known as Benares, was called "the ancient city" when Lord Buddha visited it in 500 B.C.E,

and is the oldest, continuously inhabited city in the world today. 5. India invented the Number System. Zero was invented by Aryabhatta. 6. The World's first university was established in Takshashila in 700BC. More than 10,500 students from all

over the world studied more than 60 subjects. The University of Nalanda built in the 4th century BC was one of the greatest achievements of ancient India in the field of education.

7. Sanskrit is the mother of all the European languages. Sanskrit is the most suitable language for computer software - a report in Forbes magazine, July 1987.

8. Ayurveda is the earliest school of medicine known to humans. Charaka, the father of medicine consolidated Ayurveda 2500 years ago. Today Ayurveda is fast regaining its rightful place in our civilization.

9. Although modern images of India often show poverty and lack of development, India was the richest country on earth until the time of British invasion in the early 17th Century. Christopher Columbus was attracted by India's wealth.

10. The art of Navigation was bornin the river Sindhu 6000 years ago. The very word Navigation is derived from the Sanskrit word NAVGATIH. The word navy is also derived from Sanskrit 'Nou'.

11. Bhaskaracharya calculated the time taken by the earth to orbit the sun hundreds of years before the astronomer Smart. Time taken by earth to orbit the sun: (5th century) 365.258756484 days.

12. The value of pi was first calculated by Budhayana, and he explained the concept of what is known as the Pythagorean Theorem. He discovered this in the 6th century long before the European mathematicians.

13. Algebra, trigonometry and calculus came from India. Quadratic equations were by Sridharacharya in the 11th century. The largest numbers the Greeks and the Romans used were 106 whereas Hindus used numbers as big as 10**53(10 to the power of 53) with specific names as early as 5000 BCE during the Vedic period. Even today, the largest used number is Tera 10**12(10 to the power of 12).

14. IEEE has proved what has been a century old suspicion in the world scientific community that the pioneer of wireless communication was Prof. Jagdish Bose and not Marconi.

15. The earliest reservoir and dam for irrigation was built in Saurashtra. 16. According to Saka King Rudradaman I of 150 CE a beautiful lake called Sudarshana was constructed on

the hills of Raivataka during Chandragupta Maurya's time. 17. Chess (Shataranja or AshtaPada) was invented in India. 18. Sushruta is the father of surgery. 2600 years ago he and health scientists of his time conducted

complicated surgeries like cesareans, cataract, artificial limbs, fractures, urinary stones and even plastic surgery and brain surgery. Usage of anesthesia was well known in ancient India. Over 125 surgical equipment were used. Deep knowledge of anatomy, physiology, etiology, embryology, digestion, metabolism, genetics and immunity is also found in many texts.

19. When many cultures were only nomadic forest dwellers over 5000 years ago, Indians established Harappan culture in Sindhu Valley (Indus Valley Civilization).

20. The four religions born in India, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, are followed by 25% of the world's population.

21. The place value system, the decimal system was developed in India in 100 BC. 22. India is one of the few countries in the World, which gained independence without violence. 23. India has the second largest pool of Scientists and Engineers in the World. 24. India is the largest English speaking nation in the world. 25. India is the only country other than US and Japan, to have built a super computer indigenously.

Famous Quotes on India (by non-Indians)

Albert Einstein said: We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no

worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made. Mark Twain said: India is, the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of

history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grand mother of tradition. Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only.

French scholar Romain Rolland said: If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India.

Hu Shih, former Ambassador of China to USA said: India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border.

Facts to make every Indian proud

Q. Who is the co-founder of Sun Microsystems?A. Vinod Khosla

Q. Who is the creator of Pentium chip (needs no introduction as 90% of thetoday's computers run on it)?A. Vinod Dahm

Q. Who is the third richest man on the world?A. According to the latest report on Fortune Magazine, it is Aziz Premji,who is the CEO of Wipro Industries. The Sultan of Brunei is at 6thposition now.

Q. Who is the founder and creator of Hotmail (Hotmail is world's No.1 webbased email program)?A. Sabeer Bhatia

Q. Who is the president of AT & T-Bell Labs (AT & T-Bell Labs is the creatorof program languages such as C, C++, Unix to name a few)?A. Arun Netravalli

Q. Who is the GM of Hewlett Packard?A. Rajiv Gupta

Q. Who is the new MTD (Microsoft Testing Director) of Windows 2000,responsible to iron out all initial problems?A. Sanjay Tejwrika

Q. Who are the Chief Executives of CitiBank, Mckensey & Stanchart?A. Victor Menezes, Rajat Gupta, and Rana Talwar.

We Indians are the wealthiest among all ethnic groups in America, evenfaring better than the whites and the natives.

There are 3.22 millions of Indians in USA (1.5% of population). ,

Websites you might be interested in

1. India-Resource - a web resource for India-related non-profit or non-commercial sites featuring Indian history, it's cultural legacy, news and analysis, and progressive activism.

2. Good News India - of positive action, steely endeavour and quiet triumphs - news that is little known. 3. Department of Tourism - Ministry of Tourism and Culture, India.

Courtesy: Department of Tourism, India.

Indian TemplesIndia is a homeland of many religions. Here the people are classified through a system of castes, which is already described many years ago in the "Vedas". At first the people were categorized based on their occupation which on the later stages came by birth.

When we look into the history of the temples, we find that the first temples were built in clay and timber, then came the cave temples with the stone carvings and heavy stone pillared structures, mandapas with elaborate sculptures, sadas for dancing & wide circumbulating passages with other deities placed around the main deity constitute a temple complex which were based on different style and architecture in the later period..Though there were changes in the style and architecture of the north Indian and south Indian temples, certain basic rules fundamental to Hinduism were followed regarding the position of the garba griha, gopura, directions of the other deities, etc.

India has preserved its rich culture and heritage in its architecture and pilgrim sites.India was seen many dynasties and kings in the past who have left their history in the form of architectural designs, beautiful temples, forts, mosque, churches, palaces and monuments.Usually the temples and monuments have been built in "Dravidian", "Nagara", "Vesara" style of architecture.

Hindus call the sacred places to which they travel as tirthas, and going on a pilgrimage is tirtha-yatra. "Deva" means "God" and "alaya" means "home". So Devalaya means "house of Gods".The pilgrims come to the temples from far and wide with the belief that their wishes would be fulfilled by the God.

Following are a few famous Temples in India:

Chamundi Temple - Mysore

Virupaksha Temple - Hampi

Cave Temples - Badami & Aihole

Channkeshava & Hoysaleshwara temple - Belur & Halebidu

Iskcon Temple - Bangalore

Sri Venkateshwara temple - Tirupathi

Mahabalipuram - Tamil Nadu

Meenakshi Amman Temple - Madurai

Temple of Nine Planets - Tamil Nadu

Konark Sun Temple - Orissa

Puri Jagannath Temple - Puri

Brihadeshwara Temple - Tanjavour

Amarnath Temple - Himalayas

Sabarimala Swamy Ayyappa - Sabarimala

Kollur Mookambika Amman Temple - Kollur

Kasi Viswanath - Varanasi

India Monuments

India has some of the most beautiful and evocative monuments in the world. These monuments of India owe their execution to the imagination of men who dared to extend their ideas to the farthest limits of human thought. As kings and emperors, they were able to translate their ideas into bricks, mortar, marble and stone. These monuments of India range through a span of centuries and the major philosophies of the world.

Many of the great monuments of India had lost in the process of subversion and dependence through India remained for around 300 years from 17th century onwards. With the growth of a strong middle class, new wave for national awakening, and interactions with a world outside the geographical confines of India in the 19th and 20th century helped many Indians to look deep in their past. This awakening helped them taking back from the ruins the symbols from a golden age of India. Many Europeans for that matter also explored and brought back from the rubbles, the lost civilizations, ruined monuments, and lost cultures.

Following are the famous Monuments in India:

Taj Mahal

Qutab Minar

India Gate

Red Fort

Meenakshi Temple

Charminar

History of Indian Languages

About 80 percent of all Indians--nearly 750 million people based on 1995 population estimates--speak one of the Indo-Aryan group of languages. Persian and the languages of Afghanistan are close relatives, belonging, like the Indo-Aryan languages, to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family. Brought into India from the northwest during the second millennium B.C., the Indo-Aryan tongues spread throughout the north, gradually displacing the earlier languages of the area.

Modern linguistic knowledge of this process of assimilation comes through the Sanskrit language employed in the sacred literature known as the Vedas. Over a period of centuries, Indo-Aryan languages came to predominate in the northern and central portions of South Asia.

As Indo-Aryan speakers spread across northern and central India, their languages experienced constant change and development. By about 500 B.C., Prakrits, or "common" forms of speech, were widespread throughout the north. By about the same time, the "sacred," "polished," or "pure" tongue--Sanskrit--used in religious rites had also developed along independent lines, changing significantly from the form used in the Vedas. However, its use in ritual settings encouraged the retention of archaic forms lost in the

Prakrits. Concerns for the purity and correctness of Sanskrit gave rise to an elaborate science of grammar and phonetics and an alphabetical system seen by some scholars as superior to the Roman system. By the fourth century B.C., these trends had culminated in the work of Panini, whose Sanskrit grammar, the Ashtadhyayi (Eight Chapters), set the basic form of Sanskrit for subsequent generations. Panini's work is often compared to Euclid's as an intellectual feat of systematization.

The Prakrits continued to evolve through everyday use. One of these dialects was Pali, which was spoken in the western portion of peninsular India. Pali became the language of Theravada Buddhism; eventually it came to be identified exclusively with religious contexts. By around A.D. 500, the Prakrits had changed further into Apabhramshas, or the "decayed" speech; it is from these dialects that the contemporary Indo-Aryan languages of South Asia developed. The rudiments of modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars were in place by about A.D. 1000 to 1300.

It would be misleading, however, to call Sanskrit a dead language because for many centuries huge numbers of works in all genres and on all subjects continued to be written in Sanskrit. Original works are still written in it, although in much smaller numbers than formerly. Many students still learn Sanskrit as a second or third language, classical music concerts regularly feature Sanskrit vocal compositions, and there are even television programs conducted entirely in Sanskrit.

Around 18 percent of the Indian populace (about 169 million people in 1995) speak Dravidian languages. Most Dravidian speakers reside in South India, where Indo-Aryan influence was less extensive than in the north. Only a few isolated groups of Dravidian speakers, such as the Gonds in Madhya Pradesh and Orissa, and the Kurukhs in Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, remain in the north as representatives of the Dravidian speakers who presumably once dominated much more of South Asia. (The only other significant population of Dravidian speakers are the Brahuis in Pakistan.)

The oldest documented Dravidian Indian language is Tamil, with a substantial body of literature, particularly the Cankam poetry, going back to the first century A.D. Kannada and Telugu developed extensive bodies of literature after the sixth century, while Malayalam split from Tamil as a literary language by the twelfth century. In spite of the profound influence of the Sanskrit language and Sanskritic culture on the Dravidian languages, a strong consciousness of the distinctness of Dravidian languages from Sanskrit remained. All four major Dravidian languages had consciously differentiated styles varying in the amount of Sanskrit they contained. In the twentieth century, as part of an anti-Brahman movement in Tamil Nadu, a strong movement arose to "purify" Tamil of its Sanskrit elements, with mixed success. The other three Dravidian languages were not much affected by this trend.

There are smaller groups, mostly tribal peoples, who speak Sino-Tibetan and Austroasiatic languages. Sino-Tibetan speakers live along the Himalayan fringe from Jammu and Kashmir to eastern Assam. They comprise about 1.3 percent, or 12 million, of India's 1995 population. The Austroasiatic languages, composed of the Munda tongues and others thought to be related to them, are spoken by groups of tribal peoples from West Bengal through Bihar and Orissa and into Madhya Pradesh. These groups make up approximately 0.7 percent (about 6.5 million people) of the population.

Despite the extensive linguistic diversity in India, many scholars treat South Asia as a single linguistic area because the various language families share a number of features not found together outside South Asia. Languages entering South Asia were "Indianized." Scholars cite the presence of retroflex consonants, characteristic structures in verb formations, and a significant amount of vocabulary in Sanskrit with Dravidian or Austroasiatic origin as indications of mutual borrowing, influences, and counterinfluences. Retroflex consonants, for example, which are formed with the tongue curled back to the hard palate, appear to have been incorporated into Sanskrit and other Indo-Aryan languages through the medium of borrowed Dravidian words. 

North India : Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh & Rajasthan.

South India : Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh.

East India : Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand, Tripura,WestBengal,Sikkim, Bihar,Meghalaya,Manipur,Mizoram,Nagaland.

West India : Goa, Gujarat, Maharashtra.

Central India : Madhya Pradesh , Chhattishgarh .

Islands of India : Lakshadweep Islands , Andaman Nicobar Island India.

Union Territory : Puducherry(Pondicherry),Chandigarh,Dadra and Nagar