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For about 60 million years during the Eocene epoch, the Indian subcontinent was a huge island. Having broken off from the ancient continent of Gondwanaland, the Indian Tectonic Plate drifted toward Eurasia. During that gradual voyage, the subcontinent saw a blossoming of exceptional wildlife, and when the trove of unique biodiversity finally made contact with bigger Eurasia, the exchange of animals and plants between these areas laid the foundations for countless modern species. "Today, mainland Asia and India have all this unique biodiversity -- but did the mainland Asian biodiversity come from India, or did the Indian biodiversity come from...

The defunct underwater wing of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is set for a revival with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the government keen to establish the scientific veracity of Dwarka, the mythological submerged capital of Lord Krishna's kingdom, and the Rama Setu, a set of limestone shoals believed to date back to the Ramayana... "The National Institute of Oceanography has the expertise. They will be training our fleet of young divers," said Dr RS Fonia, ASI joint director general. The ministry of culture, the nodal ministry for ASI, is also looking at options to bring on board...

Until proven, a myth: Historians CHARU SUDAN KASTURI & SUDESHNA BANERJEE New Delhi/Calcutta, Sept. 12: Ram cannot be considered a historical figure despite references in ancient literature because crucial material evidence to authenticate his existence has not been found, historians have said. “A textual reference necessarily needs to be corroborated by inscriptions engraved in stone or other long-lasting material or by archaeological evidence,” said Nayanjot Lahiri, professor of ancient history at Delhi University. Until such evidence is found, a character or event in texts or literature is considered mythological, historians said. Historians have traced the original texts of the Mahabharata...

Thousands of furious Hindus took to the streets after the Indian Government claimed that the epic that forms the cornerstone of their religious beliefs was a work of fiction. Police used teargas to disperse crowds in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, where protesters accused the Government of blasphemy. The row erupted when the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), an arm of the Culture Ministry, told the country’s highest court that there was no evidence to support the existence of the characters in the Ramayana, a revered ancient text. Nor was there any historical record that Lord Ram, one of...

[Q:] There are periodic reports of Indus script being deciphered. Are there standard methods to test the validity of claimed decipherments? [A:] The best summary and evaluation of the work done so far is Gregory Possehl’s book, The Indus Age: Its writing. I myself have reviewed five claims to decipherment – two based on Sanskrit, two on Tamil and one claiming that the script is merely a collection of numbers. My conclusion is negative – that none of the decipherments has been successful... There is very little interest in the Indus script in the West – there are very few...

DHANUSHKODI, India (Reuters) - For India, it is an almost 150-year dream about to come true -- its "Suez" carving a new channel between the south coast and Sri Lanka, dramatically shortening the sea route for freight and slashing costs. But for environmentalists and fishermen, it is a nightmare in the making, one that it will haunt South Asia for decades. The $560 million Sethusamudram Ship Channel has roused strong emotions among supporters and opponents alike. And the tussle is likely to worsen as digging begins on Saturday. One of India's showcase projects to upgrade its infrastructure to cope with...

The Indian government has withdrawn a controversial report submitted in court earlier this week which questioned the existence of the Hindu god Ram. The report was withdrawn after huge protests by opposition parties. The report was presented to the Supreme Court on Wednesday in connection with a case against a proposed shipping canal project between India and Sri Lanka. Hindu hardliners say the project will destroy what they say is a bridge built by Ram and his army of monkeys. Scientists and archaeologists say the Ram Setu (Lord Ram's bridge) - or Adam's Bridge as it is sometimes called -...

The popularization of scuba diving after World War II had its impact on Sri Lanka, when Sir Arthur Clarke and Mike Wilson (later Swami Siva Kalki) came here after their successful expedition on the Great Barrier Reef. They came here to write on the 'Reefs of Taprobane' (Sri Lanka ). Here they were joined by Jonklass. Although spear-fishing and coral reef exploration were the scuba divers' primary aims, searching for wrecks soon became their past time in a sea strewn with ship wrecks. It was Sir Arthur Clarke's book which first carried colour photographs of off-shore shipwrecks and the ruins...

World Monuments Fund favours garnering public support on this ancient bridge Government can make it a tourist attraction, say experts World Monuments Fund, an international preservation organisation that brings out World Monuments Watch List of endangered sites, has said that the Government of India should be made to realise that it's more valuable to preserve Ram Setu or Adam's Bridge than demolishing it. Marilyn Perry, chairman of the fund, said in an interview on the sidelines of the function to release the list of endangered sites of the world in its New York Madison Avenue office that the Federal Government...

Ram Sethu: Scientific evidence of ancient human activity By S. Kalyanaraman Scientific evidences point to human activity in ancient times on both sides of Ram Sethu as found by Dept. of Earth Sciences and ocean technologists of Bharatam. This area should be declared a protected monument under the Protection of Monuments Act and declared as a World Heritage site by the Government of India and advised to UNESCO. The Geological and geophysical survey of the Sethu-samudram Project clearly reveal that Rama’s bridge appears to be a major Geological feature. The surveys reveal that to the north of Ram Sethu on...

Government on Tuesday said there are no archaeological studies that reveal the existence of a Ram Sethu bridge between India and Sri Lanka. However, a NASA satellite picture has shown the existence of a stretch of land bridge in the Palk Strait between the countries, Minister of Tourism and Culture Ambika Soni said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha today. She informed the house that as there are no archaeological studies to confirm the fact, the government was not planning to take any preservation initiative in this direction.

Hindu groups are launching an international campaign today to halt India?s plans to create a shipping channel by dredging the sea between India and Sri Lanka. They say that the project will destroy an ancient chain of shoals known as Adam?s Bridge, which Hindus believe was built by an army of monkeys to allow Lord Rama to cross to Lanka to rescue his abducted wife. They are also protesting on environmental grounds, arguing that the 30-mile string of limestone shoals, also known as Ram Sethu, protected large parts of India from the 2004 tsunami. ?The bridge is as holy to...

A scheme to make the shallow strait between India and Sri Lanka navigable has upset environmentalists and the port of Colombo. To its supporters, it is a dream project, no less than the “Suez of the east”; to its opponents it is an environmental catastrophe. Either way, plans to dredge a channel in the seabed between India and Sri Lanka will be controversial, and could alter maritime and military operations in the Indian Ocean. The $400m project, called the Sethusamudram Ship Canal, involves digging a 152km, 300m-wide channel through the Palk Strait, a shallow stretch of sea separating the south...

NEW DELHI: After Nasa, it's the turn of Indian experts to declare that there is no evidence linking the mythical Lanka bridge built by Hanuman to the chain of sandbanks captured by the US space agency's cameras across the Palk Strait. Eminent astrophysicist J V Narlikar, when contacted in Pune, said he had seen reports claiming about the mythical bridge, but there was no evidence to suggest that what had been located had links with the bridge mentioned in the Ramayana. "There is no archaeological or literary evidence to support this claim," eminent historian R S Sharma told The Times...

ANCIENT RAMAYANA BRIDGE - A REALISTIC POSSIBILITY

NASA digital images discover ancient "Ramayana" bridge between India, Lanka PTI Washington, October 09 2002 The NASA Shuttle has imaged a mysterious ancient bridge between India and Sri Lanka, as mentioned in the Ramayana. The evidence, say experts matter-of-factly, is in the Digital Image Collection. The recently discovered bridge, currently named as Adam's Bridge and made of a chain of shoals, 30 km long, in the Palk Straits between India and Sri Lanka, reveals a mystery behind it. The bridge's unique curvature and composition by age reveals that it is man-made. Legend as well as Archeological studies reveal that...