THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY And yet — in fact you need only draw a single thread at any point you choose out of the fabric of life and the run will make a pathway across the whole, and down that wider pathway each of the other threads will become successively visible, one by one. — Heimito von Doderer, DIE DÂIMONEN 6,000 BCE Settled agriculture was beginning in the valley of the Nile River. From this point until about 3,000 BCE, settled agriculture would be coming into existence as well on the Indian subcontinent. PLANTS 5,000 BCE In about this period date palms were coming to be cultivated in India. HDT WHAT? INDEX INDIA INDIA 3,200 BCE According to a later story, the Mountain of Light “Kohinoor” diamond turned up in approximately this period as a rock of 793 carats, or nearly six troy ounces, in India in the bed of the river Godavery. At the time the rock couldn’t have been very bright or very pretty — but as it was so large it would be a suitable 2 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX INDIA INDIA object for people to play keep-away with. WALDEN: White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light. If they were permanently congealed, and small enough to be clutched, they would, perchance, be carried off by slaves, like precious stones, to adorn the heads of emperors; but being liquid, and ample, and secured to us and our successors forever, we disregard them, and run after the diamond of Kohinoor. They are too pure to have a market value; they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters, are they! We never learned meanness of them. How much fairer than the pool before the farmer’s door, in which his ducks swim! Hither the clean wild ducks come. Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her. The birds with their plumage and their notes are in harmony with the flowers, but what youth or maiden conspires with the wild luxuriant beauty of Nature? She flourishes most alone, far from the towns where they reside. Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth. LAKES OF LIGHT 3,000 BCE Cotton would be coming to be cultivated in India. In the Indus valley of Northern India, there were coming into existence two great civilizations: Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, both with architecture of court-yard houses, and both with modern drainage technology. 2,807 BCE May 10, morning: There has recently been speculation that the “Burkle crater” on the floor of the Indian Ocean at 12,500 feet depth, which is 18 miles in diameter, was produced by an impact on this date. The speculation is that this impact produced a tsunami at least 600 feet high, which carried large amounts of ocean-floor sediments onto the coast of Madagascar, producing four enormous wedge-shaped deposits now referred to as “chevrons.” It is Dr. Bruce Masse of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico who has on the basis of cultural records hypothesized that the impact object was a comet and that its strike date was precisely the morning of May 10th in the year 2,807 BCE. (Dr. Masse does acknowledge that since his evidence for the precise date is merely cultural, and since our oral cultures do not do an excellent job of preserving exactitude, the creation of more lines of inference would be appropriate: “we’re not there yet.”) Because we’re not there yet, Columbia University is just now proposing to send a graduate student to collect megatsunami deposits from around the Indian Ocean: “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3 HDT WHAT? INDEX INDIA INDIA Pinpointing the Causes of Holocene Megatsunami Events in Australia Working under the supervision of Dallas Abbott, Adjunct Research Scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the goal of this project is to study sets of Holocene age chevron dunes, in Australia all of which are inferred to be megatsunami deposits. The project seeks to identify the ejecta from the Burkle crater and/or tsunami deposits in bog of lake cores from around the Indian Ocean. This can be accomplished by looking for intervals of abnormally rapid sediment deposition and coarse sediment deposition within the cores. The Burkle impact tsunami should have emplaced chevron dunes in Madagascar and southern Africa. The student will be a partner in an international consortium for tsunami research involving social and earth scientists in Australia, North America and Russia. To accommodate an academic schedule the project will include library work and lab work. The student will use the library to find data on sediment deposition in lakes and coastal areas around the Indian Ocean. The student will also search for, order, and look at maps of Holocene coastal dune deposits in Madagascar and southeastern Africa. The student will spend one day a week at Lamont looking for impact ejecta in deposits from continental and deep sea cores. SKY EVENT 4 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX INDIA INDIA 2,737 BCE Allegedly, the brewing of tea was discovered by the emperor Shen Nung. [Tea was not the product of a bush, but of a tree that can grow up to 60 feet high. The reason that it is always now considered a bush is that by constant pruning we keep it in bush form, and the reason that we keep it in bush form is for convenience in constant pruning of the new crops of young and tender leaves. This plant is a kind of camellia, named the Camellia sinensis. The Camellia genus itself was so named in honor of a Moravian Jesuit missionary named Kame, one of the great early white plant collectors. All of the 240 species of this Theacea family of plants are native to western China and northern India, but, historically, only in western China was an infusion made of the leaves, as cited in the above legend about the year 2737 BCE. In the earliest times, we know from archaeology, the infusion of the leaves was sometimes salted, sometimes mixed with boiled shallots, and sometimes spiced with dried orangepeel, dates, etc. The Camellia sinensis tree also was growing, unnoticed and unutilized, all over northern India, so it is appropriate that the legend cite a Chinese emperor as its discoverer.] PLANTS 2,600 BCE For about a century, Harappan Civilization (India/Pakistan) would be at its height. 2,500 BCE The Harappan culture in India was coming to its close. 2,300 BCE Coming into existence of civilization in the valley of the Indus River on the Indian subcontinent. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 5 HDT WHAT? INDEX INDIA INDIA 1,500 BCE For about a thousand years, barbarian Aryans speakers of Sanskrit would be emigrating from central Asia to invade the Indian subcontinent, overthrow the Indus valley culture — and eventually compose the ancient religious hymns of the Hindus, called the “Vedas” (meaning understanding). The “Rig-Veda” offers evidence of the long history of tuberculosis, by use of the word “yaksma.” Diseases were seen as a punishment from the gods for sin, and could be relieved by charms, amulets, chants, and invocations. To invoke “Savitar” (meaning stimulator), was to have recourse to the healing power of the sun. The “Yajur-Vedas” use names similar to Consumption and Phthisis: “Consumption is called by this name, since it consumes the humors”; “Phthisis comes from a corruption and confusion of the humors, causing the drying out of the body followed by consumption.” Our chief source of medical information, the “Atharva- Veda,” describes consumption as balasa, and a cough as kasa. The “Yajur-Vedas,” ascribed to Susruta and dating to the period between 1,500 BCE and 400 CE, include the information that “Phthisis comes from a corruption and confusion of the humors (air, bile, phlegm of pituita). Corruption and thickening of the humors can obstruct the passages by which they run and thus cause a drying out of the body followed by consumption.” Malaise, breathlessness, much sputum, vomiting, poor digestion, cough, insomnia, and bad dreams were warning signs of the development of consumption. Disgust for food, fever, pain in the side or shoulder, diarrhoea, dyspnea, cough, hemorrhages, and hoarseness were manifestations of lunar phthisis. The diagnosis was acknowledged to be difficult but where three of the foregoing symptoms (such as fever, hemoptysis, and cough) were encountered, a diagnosis of consumption was to be considered. A consumptive who had a fever would be depressed, nervous, dyspneic, find food distasteful, and have a raucous voice. Milk and spirituous liquors were thought to prevent consumption and were also part of a cure. Many meats and vegetables were recommended, such as monkey meat, domestic cock, female antelope, earthworms, rat, and snake, for “meat juice cures pulmonary phthisis.” Patients were admonished to “build up the blood, avoid grief and anger, and go frequently to physicians.” They were not to fatigue themselves but “mount and be carried on gentle horses makes an exercise which increases the flesh and blood and helps sleep.” Consumptives should move into a goat stable at a high altitude. The author of the Laws of Manu as of 1,300 BCE held that a consumptive was to be considered “untouchable.” 1,122 BCE There has been a claim that the 1st Jews to reach China were arriving via India early during the Zhou dynasty. 876 BCE A symbol for zero was used in an inscription in India, this being the 1st known reference to such a symbol (though the concept itself, who knows, may well have originated rather earlier).