Thursday, March 29, 2007

Indian music

There is a parable attributed to the Buddha: A group of blind men are led to an elephant, each to a different part of the animal's body, and asked to describe what they feel. One feels the head; the next the ears; another, a tusk; the next, a foot; another, the tail, and so on. Each is told that the part to which he has access is the elephant, and so each man insists that he knows what an elephant is, when he can't see the entire animal.

So it goes with Indian music: Hearing any one of the dozens upon dozens of styles of popular, classical or folk music from India won't give you a full picture of Indian music. Each genre has its own history, evolution and performance style, and the music you hear in, for example, the temple dance tradition of the far eastern state of Orissa doesn't sound much at all like what you might hear a Rajasthani brass band play for a wedding in the northwest. Similarly, even the two main branches of classical music, Hindustani (North Indian) and Carnatic (South Indian) music are distinctly different entities, though both at their core are built on the twin principles of raga/ragam (melody) and tala/talam (rhythm).

And of course those descriptions don't even begin to broach the impact that filmi (movie) music has as the day-to-day soundtrack for well over a billion lives, the subcontinent's immensely rich and diverse folk music traditions.

When many European and North American world music fans think of Indian music, however, their thoughts most likely turn immediately to the work of artists like Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan and their students, who have done so much to popularize the sounds of India in the West. However, these artists' main tradition is only one current's worth of music—in fact, Shankar and Khan come from the same gharana (school) of playing, and learned from the same teacher. To this day, it's far easier in North America to find recordings and attend concerts of Hindustani classical music in mainstream outlets and venues than it is for any other Indian style, unless you venture into local "ethnic" community haunts. That is slowly changing, however. Indian music is so rich and diverse that once you are drawn in and get acclimated, you find endless pleasure...

Monday, March 26, 2007

New dinosaur species found in India

A new species of dinosaur is announced by Indian and American scientists: a 30-foot (9-meter), horned carnivore that hunted other dinosaurs 65 million years ago. A reconstruction of the dinosaur's skull (see photo ) may shed light on how the continents drifted into their present positions and what might have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.
When paleontologists Paul Sereno and Jeff Wilson arrived in India in 2001 to study a mixed collection of dinosaur bones gathered by Indian scientists 18 years earlier, they found the bones spread out on an office floor. Sifting through the collection, they separated out the bones of a theropod, or meat-eating dinosaur. When they found the center part of a skull, they recognized a horn resembling those of dinosaurs found in Madagascar. Their search continued, yielding a left hip, then a right hip, then a sacrum. Sereno and Wilson consulted detailed, hand-drawn maps drafted by their Indian counterparts and discovered the bones had been buried next to each other, as if they had been connected.
"There was a Eureka! moment when we realized we had a partial skeleton of an undiscovered species," said Sereno, a paleontology professor at the University of Chicago and a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence.


65-Million-Year-Old Bones :

The bones were collected in 1983 by Suresh Srivastava of the Geological Survey of India (GSI) and Ashok Sahni, a paleontologist at Punjab University, during a search for dinosaur eggs and nests. Srivastava drew a detailed map to document the position of the fossil bones as they lay in the field. The scientists then stored the 65-million-year-old bones at a GSI office, where they stayed until Sereno and Wilson arrived. Working with Indian experts, Wilson and Sereno reconstructed the skull of the new species, a stocky, 30-foot-long (9-meter-long) carnivore named Rajasaurus narmadensis, which means "regal dinosaur from the Narmada," the river region in western India where the bones were found. The project was supported in part by the National Geographic Society.
"We knew of fragments and bones [in India]," said Sereno, who has discovered new dinosaur species on five continents. "But this skull reconstruction offers the first glimpse into the lost world of the Indian dinosaur."
"We know that there were carnivorous and herbivorous dinosaurs in India through individual bones, but we really don't know just how they looked because no two bones can be reliably said to belong to one individual," said Wilson, who is of the University of Michigan. "Rajasaurus is important because it represents a partial skeleton and preserves many details that clue us into its evolutionary relationships."
The reconstructed skull is missing some parts, but it has the most important pieces: the jaws and the brain case. Between 25 and 30 feet (7.6 and 9 meters) long, the Rajasaurus was heavy and strong, and walked on two legs.
"There are several anatomical details that make Rajasaurus a new species," said Wilson. "Perhaps the most striking is the horn it bears on its head. The horn was probably rather subtle. It may have been low and rounded."


A Carnivorous Family :

The carnivorous Rajasaurus, which lived in the Cretaceous Period at the end of the dinosaur age, preyed on long-necked titanosaur sauropods, herbivorous dinosaurs that also roamed the Narmada region. Bones from both dinosaurs were found together.
Indian paleontologists recently found coprolites (fossilized dung) that provide additional clues to the diet of those titanosaurs.
"Large theropod eggs have also been described by our group from the area where the skeleton of Rajasaurus has been recovered, but it's difficult to relate the theropod eggs specifically to Rajasaurus," said Sahni.
The scientists believe the Rajasaurus is related to a family of large carnivorous dinosaurs, most of which had horns, that roamed the southern hemisphere land masses of present Madagascar, Africa, and South America.
"People don't realize dinosaurs are the only large-bodied animal that lived, evolved, and died at a time when all continents were united," said Sereno.

The Continental Drift :
The Rajasaurus was likely like its contemporary, Tyrannosaurus rex—one of the last species to live before a catastrophe occurred some 65 million years ago. What exactly caused the death of the dinosaurs is a matter of great debate. But the burial site of the bones found in India could provide a clue.
"The sediments in which these dinosaurs were found are closely associated with one of the biggest volcanic activities recorded in the last 500 million years on planet Earth," said Sahni.
As much as a third of India's land mass is covered with lava. That makes it particularly difficult to find dinosaur bones. The task is made even more difficult because India is so heavily populated.
"The best place for a paleontologist to work is an empty desert," said Sereno.
Dinosaur discoveries could also help researchers improve their relatively scant knowledge of how India separated from Africa, Madagascar, Australia, and Antarctica and later impacted Asia to form the Himalaya.
"The details of the timing and route of India's northward migration are not well resolved," said Wilson. "Dinosaurs are good organisms to study the effects of continental drift because they cover continent-scale distances. That is, they seem to record connections between continents fairly well."
The new species will be described in the August issue of the Contributions of the Museum of Paleontology of the University of Michigan. Casts of the dinosaur's skull will be donated by the team to Punjab University and the Geological Survey of India.



Source: The National Geographic channel

Monday, March 12, 2007

About The Author....& a bit of page.

Sprawling Greens
Unfeathered Sky Aloft
Cool Air, Fresh
Gliding Rivoulet's Craft...


Well,Friends,this is what I tend to comment about this pager,which reflects the owners' closeness and splendid urge towards nature,and its creations.

I wish her good luck in life.
God Bless.







-Himadri

For the pictures on the right

The photographs on the right column are from my Mysore visit, covering places from Mysore city, Chamundi hills (one of the eight most sacred hills of South India), and Srirangapattanam (the erstwhile capital of Tippu Sultan).

All the pictures under the title "FRUITS OF EFFORTS" are taken at the Infosys Campus, Hootagalli, Mysore. I went to see this campus with two of my friends, Harshit and Mousumi, who work at the Infosys as senior software engineers (you cannot visit any Infosys campus for sightseeing unless you've someone with an Employee ID accompanying you!). No doubt, Infosys is famous for its "architectural wonders" the world over and this campus is regarded as the best in Asia for any software company.

"GRANDEUR" shows the Mysore palace situated in the heart of the city, built by the Wodeyar rulers of the Mysore state. Known as "Amba Vilas", it is one of the largest palaces in India. The original palace built of wood, got burnt down in 1897 and was rebuilt for the twenty fourth Wodeyar Raja in 1912.Its main dome (visible among the side ones) is gold plated.

I met "INNOCENCE" at the Chamundeshwari Devi temple, while waiting in the queue for darshan. :)

"INNOCENCE 2" is the one who took us everywhere at Srirangapattinam. :)

"INDEPENDENCE" was captured at the Infosys campus at Mysore, "FRESHNESS" at Tippu's summer palace and "BEAUTY" at Tippu's tomb at Srirangapattinam.

We also visited the Kaveri sangam at Ganjam, where "LOKPAAVANI KAVERI" was shot.

While "ON THE WAY TO SRIRANGAPATTINAM", I saw many beautiful landscapes with coconut and banana trees and paddy fields; this is one of them that I shot from the bus.