Raj Bhat

The Gandhian strategy of mobilising people has been successfully employed internationally by many marginalized communities under the leadership of Martin Luther King in the United States, Nelson Mandela in South Africa, and Aung Saan Sun Kyi in Myanmar. Albert Einstein observed: " Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth ". The present essay presents a brief overview of Gandhian principles and attempts to support minor modifications therein in accordance with the time and space to build a strain-free and peace-loving, democratic, secure, fearless, crime-free society across the continents.

India today is home to three types of widely-used scripts: 1-Brahmi-based Indic scripts; 2-Roman based systems used for writing Khasi, etc.; 3-Arabic and Persian based Nastaliq (Urdu) script. In addition to these, there are unexplored indigenous scripts, community scripts which are not available to wider audiences. Historically speaking, people of the Indus and Harappa civilizations also had an understanding of writing, but those writing systems have not been deciphered so far (See Kak 2007). There are no authentic records of the nature/names of scripts and languages that were taught as subjects or medium/mediums at the renowned educational institutions during the pre-Mauryan [pre-Ashoka] times at the places like Taxila, Sharada, Nalanda and so on. One of the Jataka-s informs/records that the Buddha was supposed to learn as many as sixty-four scripts. According to one theory, Brahmi is descended from the Indus-Saraswati script (See Kak. op.cit.). Brahmi script comes down to us from Ashokan inscriptions and stone engravings from the third century BCE. Kharoshthi, the other script used at that time, which was written from right to left has disappeared. Most of the Buddhist literature written in central Asia at that time used this script. A serious question to ponder is: Do Perso-Arabic and Nastaliq scripts share any structural-phonetic features with Kharashthi? Brahmi-based Indic scripts are written from left to right, the Roman script is also written from left to right. Nastaliq like its source Perso-Arabic is written from right to left. Indic scripts are alpha-syllabries or abugida where a consonant-letter except the anusvara and visarga, have a CV structure, the V in these consonant-letters is an 'a', which is deleted with the help of a diacritic mark called halanta. Deletion of the vowel 'a' in a vowel-sandhi [a-a] situation is denoted by avagraha-an elongated S like sign. The replacement of 'a' from a consonant-letter requires a matra-system in these writing systems. 'a', obviously, does not need a 'matra', all other vowel-letters need a matra. Hence, the writing system is called an alpha-syllabry or abugida. The Brahmi

India, West Asia (Arabia and Persia), East Asia (China and Japan) have given birth to great creative minds whose poetry as well as prose writings have enriched not only the syntax of the respective languages but also the imaginations and creations of future generations of creative minds. Ancient Indian aesthetes sifted through creative works from time to time and propounded theories of aesthetics to account for the creative mind's imagination and originality, the contents and structure of the work as well as the objectives and aims of the work. Standards were set to treat a work of art as a creative piece or otherwise. Creative minds used to be conscious of the standards of creation, and they created a work of art with care. Bharata's theory of Rasa [logos, pathos and ethos], Bhāma's theory of alankāra [Embellishment], Vāman's theory of Rīti [Style], Ānandavarman's theory of dhvani [sound] are the earliest attempts to analyze a creative mind's choice of lexis, use of myths, proverbs, similes, metaphors, personification, images and ornamental language. The present essay attempts to investigate the contribution of ancient Indian, West Asian and East Asian aesthetes to the study of a creative mind's qualities of his/her presentation.

India, West Asia (Arabia and Persia), East Asia (China and Japan) have given birth to great creative minds whose poetry as well as prose writings have enriched not only the syntax of the respective languages but also the imaginations and creations of future generations of creative minds. Ancient Indian aesthetes sifted through creative works from time to time and propounded theories of aesthetics to account for the creative mind's imagination and originality, the contents and structure of the work as well as the objectives and aims of the work. Standards were set to treat a work of art as a creative piece or otherwise. Creative minds used to be conscious of the standards of creation, and they created a work of art with care. Bharata's theory of Rasa [logos, pathos and ethos], Bhāma's theory of alankāra [Embellishment], Vāman's theory of Rīti [Style], Ānandavarman's theory of dhvani [sound] are the earliest attempts to analyze a creative mind's choice of lexis, use of myths, proverbs, similes, metaphors, personification, images and ornamental language. The present essay attempts to investigate the contribution of ancient Indian, West Asian and East Asian aesthetes to the study of a creative mind's qualities of his/her presentation.

Sarala Dasa is the 'adi-kavi' of Odia literature, a creative genius who retold Vyasa's long Sanskrit narrative, Mahabharata {MBh hereafter}, in vernacular Odia of the fifteenth century, when the Odia lexis had not been categorized as formal, informal and semi-formal nor had the stylistic parameters of verse been set up. He Odianized/localised almost the entire 'alien' narrative, names of the characters, references to places to attract the native, non-elite Odia audiences to the itihaasa-purana. Sarala, the poet has used 'quoted material', of the long and meandering story of MBh to report to the listeners at another yuga (page 37). Odisha was ruled by many non-Odia rulers till the fifteenth century and Sanskrit was the language of administration and intellection. Odia language was far from getting any patronage.

Sarala Dāsa is the 'ādi-kavi' of Odia literature, a creative genius who retold Vyāsa's long Sanskrit narrative, Mahābhārata {MBh hereafter}, in vernacular Odia of the fifteenth century, when the Odia lexis had not been categorized as formal, informal and semi-formal nor had the stylistic parameters of verse been set up. He Odianized/localised almost the entire 'alien' narrative, names of the characters, references to places to attract t he native non-elite Odia audiences to the itihāsa-purāna. Sarala, the poet has used 'quoted material', of the long and meandering story of MBh to report to the listeners at another yuga (page 37). Odisha was ruled by non-Odia rulers till the fifteenth century and Sanskrit was the language of administration and intellectual activities. Odia language was far from getting any patronage.

Human-beings attempt to quantify almost everything they come in contact with; however, different things are quantified in different units of measure: time is measured in hours, minutes and seconds whereas the distance between any two places is measured in miles/kilometres; length is measured in meters/ centimeters. Number system, therefore, defines a set of values used to represent a quantity. Number Systems can be traced back to the early civilisations of India, Egypt and Babylon. Some of the familiar number-systems are: Indic, Arabic, Babylonian, Mayan and Roman. The Roman number system uses numerals to represent each number, e.g. the number 5 is represented as V. In contrast, the most commonly used system is the Indic-Arabic system which uses the digits 0 to 9. Decimal number system has base 10 because it uses ten digits from 0 to 9. In decimal number system, the positions successive to the left of the decimal point represent units, tens, hundreds, thousands and so on. [Each number system can be defined by its base (sometimes referred to as the radix). This base value of the number system indicates the number of different values the set has before repeating itself, e.g. Decimal has a base of ten values, hence, the digits 0-9, Octal has a base of 8 values, hence the digits 0-7]. [A numeral system (or system of numeration) is a writing system for expressing numbers; that is, a mathematical notation for representing numbers. The number the numeral represents is called its value].