Book Reviewed: Veda Recitation in Varanasi by Wayne Howard

How did Varanasi become the center of Vedic recitation This book is based on the fieldwork of the author in Varanasi during 1970–71, and he systematically document and analyze the types of Vedic recitation traditions still present in Varanasi at that time. His work is descriptive (who is reciting, how, and where) and analytical (tonal transcription and structure). He emphasizes that the Vedas are not like ordinary printed books but are oral, and melodic. He argues that their full richness is only preserved through oral transmission, not simply via print. This scholarly work is largely intended for professionals and Vedic scholars. He discusses the history of Vedic recitation in Varanasi which emerged early as a major scholastic center by the late Vedic period c. 1000–600 BCE. The priestly communities like Śrauta and Gṛhya were settled in the region, and oral recitation and its preservation, the ṚgVeda, YajurVeda, and Samaveda became a central activity. The Kauśikas, Kāṇvas, and Mādhyandinas were the early Vedic schools of Varanasi. In the early modern period (c. 1500–1800 CE), following the rebuilding of the Vishvanath temple by Maharani Ahilyabai Holkar (1777), Vedic recitation gained renewed patronage, and prominent families of Vedic scholars were established with strong teaching lineages of ṚgVeda (Śākala), Yajurveda (Mādhyandina and Kāṇva), and Sāmaveda (Kauthuma). Vedic recitation was performed along the holy river Ganga on the ghāṭs, temple complexes, and among traditional families. The current lineages of Vedic reciters are traced back over twenty to thirty generations. The book explores multiple Vedas and schools (śākhās) as practiced in Varanasi: ṚgVeda (Śākala), some reciters in Varanasi have large lineages tied to Maharashtrian families; and Yajurveda, especially Mādhyandina Yajurveda is chanted by Brahmins from Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh; Kāṇva Yajurveda lineages tied to Maharashtrian families in Varanasi; Taittirīya Yajurveda, chanted by priestly communities of Tamil Nadu brought to Varanasi; Sāmaveda (Kauthuma) — preserved by priestly families from Gujarat; and Atharvaveda (Śaunaka) was recited by Maharashtrian and Gujarati families in Varanasi. The musical and structural analysis by the author try to demonstrates that North Indian Vedic recitation is not corrupted but are coherent and connected to ancient traditions and he observes that some communities in Varanasi have preserved recitation practices for many generations. He emphasizes that the human voice, memory, and oral mastery are central to Vedic tradition. In essence, Varanasi became a major Vedic center due to the migration of Vedic schools (Śākhās) into Varanasi from both North and Southern parts of India. The uniqueness of RgVeda as oral texts are due to the tonal structures (svara): udātta, anudātta, and svarita, hence the accurate memorization is critical in the Vedic chanting. Veda cannot be understood without hearing it from his guru. There are three foundational recitation modes; Saṁhitā-pāṭha, continuous recitation; Pada-pāṭha, word-by-word; and Krama-pāṭha, pairing of words (A-B, B-C, C-D…) The Presence of Śākala Śākhā is dominantly due to Maharashtrian Brahmin descent in Varanasi. Sāmaveda is the melodic Veda, and the author focuses heavily on its music structure. The Sāman chanting in the Kauthuma school is built with a pūrva-pāṭha (prose prelude), the udgītha (melodic core), and the stobha syllables (ha, oṃ, ā…) In the last chapter, he describes how Sāmaveda pitch contours that differ from the three-tone Vedic svara that includes vowel analysis in Ghana-pāṭha, pitch curves and an argument to support the oral transmissions are accurate. This book is accompanied by the audio cassettes which are important in understanding the discussion in the book. The author emphasizes that the current Vedic traditions in India must respect regional styles rather than force a single “correct” pronunciation. His observation was that the traditional Vedic learning was still thriving in 1970s Varanasi. The social fabric of gurukulas, temple priests, hereditary lineages, and Veda Patashalas have made the Vedic recitation continuous. But no effort is currently made to preserve this great human tradition that lasted nearly four millennia.

Book Reviewed: An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood by Neal Gabler

Jews invented the American dream The Jewish domination of gentiles in the early years of Hollywood is due to the diligent and business savviness of Jewish immigrants. The opportunities were open to everyone, but they used their skills wisely. This is an illustration of making the American dream come true. They began with small businesses, nickelodeons or film distribution and gradually moved into production. They built the studio system that defined Hollywood for decades, creating stars, genres, and the modern movie business model. Most Hollywood’s early movie studios were established between 1910 and 1930. The key figures were Adolph Zukor, founded Paramount Pictures; Carl Laemmle, founded Universal Pictures; William Fox, founded Fox Film Corporation (which later became 20th Century Fox); Louis B. Mayer, co-founded Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM Studios); Samuel Goldwyn, co-founded Goldwyn Pictures, which later merged into MGM; Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack Warner, founded Warner Bros; and Harry Cohn, co-founded Columbia Pictures. They turned a new technology (motion pictures) into a mass entertainment industry; created the glamorous Hollywood image that spread American culture worldwide; and established Los Angeles as the film capital due to its good weather and distance from Edison’s patent enforcement teams on the East Coast. Once F. Scott Fitzgerald whined that Hollywood is "a Jewish holiday, and a gentile’s tragedy." He was wrong! The real tragedy was the challenges Jews faced. Their dominance became a target for vicious anti-Semites-from fire-and-brimstone evangelicals who demanded the movies' liberation from "the hands of the devil." For once the luck was on Jewish side, there were none of the impediments imposed by loftier professions and more firmly entrenched businesses to keep Jews and other undesirables out. Financial barriers were lower too. In fact, one could open a theater for less than four hundred dollars. Additionally, if new immigrant Jews were proscribed from entering the real corridors of gentility and status in America, the movies offered an ingenious option. The rich and pretentious Jews in Hollywood were perhaps the greatest misfortune that ever fell on the Jewish immigrants. Because they became the fountain of anti-Semitism. A Jew bee Americanized only in direct proportion to his becoming de-Judaized. Yearning to become an American required him to renounce everything Jewish about him. That made his whole religion conform to an elite Protestantism. Rabbi Inoye, who conducted Sabbath services for the elites at Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles lamented that immigrant Jews assimilated into American protestant culture without guilt, but for people who had been shaped out of fear and atonement, it was precisely what the Hollywood Jews were required of their God. The book discusses how petty Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures was. He jettisoned Judaism as he jettisoned anything he found disadvantageous. He never went to a synagogue. It was a kind of defiance for him. He exhibited active contempt toward it as if it were something repellent. The history of the movies made by each studio in the early years is quite interesting. Frank Capra, one of the greatest directors of Hollywood had an uneasy working relationship with Columbia pictures. I strongly recommend this book to readers interested in the history of Hollywood and Jewish American history.

Book Reviewed: Trump’s Triumph: America’s Greatest Comeback by Newt Gingrich

MAGA: Trump beats incredible odds in 2024 presidential race This is an excellent review of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and the historic political comeback authored by one of the most experienced politicians, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. This is a fair, balanced and no-nonsense approach to a book that is extremely readable. Donald Trump overcame years of legal battles, impeachment attempts, media opposition, and political marginalization to reclaim the presidency. There were countless lawsuits designed to drain President Trump's assets, time, his business, and potentially put him in jail. There were two assassination attempts-one of which President Trump survived only through providential intervention. The establishment used every deceitful and disgusting tool available to crush and drive him out of public life. They feared him as a mortal threat to their careers and self-identities. Despite all these distractions Donald Trump connected with American people, and won their confidence leading to a landslide victory. The 2024 presidential also saw some of the strangest things for democrats. With just 107 days left in the campaign, Jo Biden was found to be mentally incapable of running for the presidency and the campaign was given to the Vice President Kamala Harris. In the shortest presidential campaign, Harris raised $1.5 billion, about $100 million a week for 15 weeks. But the campaign spent slightly more than that. Harris's team spent twice as much as President Trump's in the closing days of the campaign. It also had the enormous benefit of continuously biased media coverage. Despite all the advantages of the establishment news media, the huge funds pouring in, and the still significant labor union and special interest group machines, Harris lost. She may have been the worst candidate in modern times. The idea that someone who was ideologically out of step with most Americans, and utterly incompetent could win against someone who took endless questions, openly campaigned, earned the support of millions of Americans created a real sense of anxiety for the democrats and the fake news media. Millions of Americans understood that a Harris victory would mean the end of the American system of hard work and merit. The hardest things for the media to come to grips with was the reality that President Donald Trump's appeal to millions of Americans came from issues and policies rather than personality, and party affiliation. Gingrich portrays democrats failing on key issues like inflation, immigration, foreign policy, economy, law, and order, and woke ideology. The final sections of the book discusses as how Trump administration look ahead on issues like affordable living, education, immigration, healthcare, defense, Artificial Intelligence, and space technology. Regarding immigration reforms, author Gingrich supports a path to citizenship for the diligent, motivated, law-abiding Dreamers. This is an important measure to safeguard the intellectual superiority of the American system. The corporations and the higher educational institutions must have the right to select the best candidates to make progress in various fields like science, technology, engineering, agriculture, space technology, and other fields.

Book Reviewed: Becoming Earth: A Journey Through the Hidden Wonders that Bring Our Planet to Life by Ferris Jabr

Earth is a self-organizing system The author is influenced by the Gaia hypothesis; Earth is a self-organizing, co-evolving system in which living and non-living processes are inseparable, and earth itself changes because of life. Microbes help cycle minerals, generating and stabilizing continents, rocks and soil become “living archives.” Forests and oceans regulate rainfall. The author observes that life itself is made and continuously shaped; we are not just on Earth, but we are Earth. Life and the non-living components like rock, water, air have co-evolved for over four billion years making Earth a life-like self-evolving system. Cyanobacteria oxygenated the air, fungi and plants broke down rock to form soil, and marine organisms helped shape continents by precipitating calcium carbonate. The author points out that earth is a co-evolving with a vast network of feedback from rock, air, water, and biological life, the latter originated at around 3.8 billion years ago; they were bacterial prokaryotic microbes, likely anaerobic (no oxygen in atmosphere), and possibly chemoautotrophs that used chemical energy from Earth’s crust rather than sunlight for survival. Earth had five major mass-extinction events (the “Big Five”) over the past 540 million years. One of them is known to be caused by an asteroid impact and the rest are due to volcanic eruptions and rapid climate changes. For the first seven hundred million years in earth’s history, there were no living organisms, no oxygen, and extremely high CO₂ levels that kept earth warm enough to have liquid water. Because the Sun was young, seven hundred-million-year-old, and about 70% as bright as today. Author Ferris Jabr observes, “Yet our living planet has consistently demonstrated an astonishing resilience, an ability to revive itself in the wake of devastating calamities and find new forms of ecological consonance.” He continues, we also destroy part of our ecosystem, “it would be hubris to try and control such an immensely complicated system in its entirety. Instead, we must simultaneously acknowledge our disproportionate influence on the planet and accept the limitations of our abilities.” Then he goes on to say that climate crisis must be addressed by wealthy industrial and postindustrial nations. This is confounding; to start off, the author believes that Earth is a self-organizing and co-evolving system, and then he becomes the “captain planet” preaching the mantra of an environmentalist.

Book Reviewed: Girl Warrior: On Coming of Age by Joy Harjo

A joy to read Harjo This is the inner fury, and a reflection on the challenges of an indigenous American woman who has constantly sought a philosophical and poetical expression to the callousness of European settlers that changed American landscape for the native Americans. She is the daughter of Mvskoke (Creek) Nation located in Oklahoma between Sandia mountains, the Rio Grande River, and in the sunrise and sunset. Her message is simple; believe in your own strength, have courage, and work on life’s challenges with confidence, embrace the warrior power, the divine feminine energy that fuels creation, transformation, and destruction of obstructive forces, and constructing the bridges for inner peace. Her metaphysical thoughts are similar to the primordial Adi Shakti of Hinduism whose influence is woven throughout spiritual practices, rituals, and narratives, reflecting a deep tradition of Shaktism. This parallel of indigenous American religion and Shaktism of Hindu traditions is conspicuous in Harjo’s work. I am fascinated by one of her poems, THE LAST SONG, part of which reads as follows: “It is the only way I know how to breathe An ancient chant that my mother knew came out of a history woven from wet tall grass in her womb and I know no other way than to surround my voice with the summer songs of crickets in this moist south night air.” (From: Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years) The “warrior” here is Indigenous people’s survival. There are fifty-one essays (chapters) in this book of 162 pages, and it is fascinating to read the eloquence of Joy Harjo, it is mirrored in each and every essay. For example, in the essay, Orientation, she describes the Mvskoke belief system about sun, the planet earth, and the environment. The consequences of creating environmental challenges result in climate change, shifting shorelines, and lands disappearing. When people lose indigenous lands, they will also lose their culture. In the essay, Transform, she claims that she writes poetry to illuminate the world and making a path of beauty through uncertainty and chaos. The need for justice compels her to write and create. In one of the earlier poems, she transformed hatred into love. In the essay, Judgment, she meets a group of homeless indigenous men on the street. One of them was her classmate who got into hard times due to addictive alcohol and controlled substances. After a brief conversation about younger days, she gave them money even though she knew that it would be used for their “medications.” She mulled over the encounter, and thought these men were street warriors. They were learning to understand what it means to lose.