Tommaso Iorco
FROM VEDA TO KALKI
India into the Design of the Earth
The discovery of a ‘traditio perennis’ (sanātana dharma)
in constant and progressive unveiling.
E-BOOK VERSION
From Veda to Kalki is a unique work that offers an evocative overview of the many cultural treasures India can offer to the entire planet, and does so in ways both rigorous and fascinating, resisting not only trivialisation but also excessive punctiliousness. It responds to the age in which we live, lacerated as it is by severe ethnic clashes and attempted pseudo-globalisation, by focusing on finding in every culture those universal values that might be integrated in a new, global imagination. Brushing aside a great many prejudices and commonsensical errors, From Veda to Kalki affords the reader, finally, the breadth of vision required to view accurately the prospect of India. All readers, academic or amateur, will find in these pages many stimuli to genuine reflection and much information of undoubted value.
Italian poet and director, Tommaso Iorco is profoundly familiar with Euro-Asiatic civilisation. He has published eight collections of poems — Amritagni (1996), Alkesti (2001), L’opera della fenice (2003), Dana (2009), Circe (2010), Lila (2012), Versi sberleffi (2015) and Oggi (2017) — and directed many plays on stage, including Una stagione all’inferno (1993), Pangea (1994), Vande Mataram (1997), Magna Mater (2000), Sohamasmi (2012), Śakuntalā (2014) and Anima Mundi (2015). His documentary Kaosmos (1995) was exhibited at the Turin Modern Art Gallery. He has also edited several Italian translations of poetry, with parallel text, including a complete version of the Ṛgveda and a seven-volume complete edition of Sri Aurobindo’s poetic, epic and dramatic œuvre.
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FROM VEDA TO KALKI - EXCERPTSFROM VEDA TO KALKI - REFERENCES
THEY HAVE SAID…
… ABOUT THIS BOOK
“A text that is undoubtedly committed and rich in reflection ideas ... Indeed a remarkable compendium of Indian culture" - Prof. Marilia Albanese (Orientalist at ISMEO in Milan, Italy).
“I recognize care and enthusiasm, the result of a genuine research and of a personal journey" - Prof. Mauro Maggi (Orientalist at the University La Sapienza of Rome, Italy).
“Iorco demonstrates a hermeneutic approach from which a good background of studies can be seen — as in his essay From Veda to Kalki, India into the Design of the Earth” - Prof. Marcello De Martino (Orientalist at the State University of New York, USA, and at the Institute of Asian Studies of Madras, India).
“From Veda to Kalki is an excellent book. Even by touching it, we have a very good vibration." Suprabha Nahar (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Puducherry, India).
“Tommaso’s book is superb!” Maggi Lidchi-Grassi (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Puducherry, India).
… ABOUT INDIA
Sylvia Levi - “India has left indelible imprints on one fourth of the human race in the course of a long succession of centuries. She has the right to reclaim her place amongst the great nations summarizing and symbolizing the spirit of humanity. From Persia to the Chinese sea, from the icy regions of Siberia to Islands of Java and Borneo, India has propagated her beliefs, her tales, and her civilization!”
Mark Twain - "India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great-grandmother of tradition. Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only.”
Will Durant - “India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe’s languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all. It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to the west, such gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all numerals and the decimal system”.
Friedrich Hegel - “India is an essential element in world’s History”.
Albert Einstein - "We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.”
Werner Heisenberg - “After the conversations about Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of Quantum Physics that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense.”
Max Müller - “If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions, I should point to India.”
Romain Rolland - "If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India.”
Henry David Thoreau - “In the great teaching of the Vedas, there is no touch of sectarianism. It is of all ages, climbs, and nationalities and is the royal road for the attainment of the Great Knowledge.”
Arthur Schopenhauer - “Vedas are the most rewarding and the most elevating book which can be possible in the world.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson - “In the great books of India, an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence, which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the questions that exercise us.”
William James - “From the Vedas we learn a practical art of surgery, medicine, music, house building under which mechanized art is included. They are encyclopedia of every aspect of life, culture, religion, science, ethics, law, cosmology and meteorology.”
Peter Johnstone - “Gravitation was known to the Hindus (Indians) before the birth of Newton. The system of blood circulation was discovered by them centuries before Harvey was heard of.”
William Hunter - “The surgery of the ancient Indian physicians was bold and skilful. A special branch of surgery was dedicated to rhinoplasty or operations for improving deformed ears, noses and forming new ones, which European surgeons have now borrowed.”
Lancelot Hogben - “There has been no more revolutionary contribution than the one which the Indians made when they invented ZERO.”
John Woodroffe - “An examination of Indian Vedic doctrines shows that it is in tune with the most advanced scientific and philosophical thought of the West.”
Arnold Toynbee - “It is already becoming clear that a chapter which had a Western beginning will have to have an Indian ending if it is not to end in the self-destruction of the human race. At this supremely dangerous moment in history, the only way of salvation for mankind is the Indian way.”
Maurice Olander - “The old Sanskrit texts with their atmosphere of eternity will, sooner or later, replace the Bible”
James Cousins - “When we read with attention the poetical and the philosophical monuments of the East, especially those of India [...] we discover there so many truths, and truths so profound [...] that we are constrained to bend the knee before the philosophy of the East, and to see in this cradle of the human race the native land of the highest philosophy. [...] The history of Indian philosophy is the abridged history of the philosophy of the world”
Friedrich von Schlegel - “Even the most sublime European philosophy, the idealism of reason as formulated by Greek philosophers, if compared to the luminous strength and the vital vigour of oriental idealism, appears as a feeble Promethean sparkle, unstable and always about to dissolve next to such overwhelming solar light”
Alphonse de Lamartine - “India is the key to everything”
Félicien Challaye - “Such magnificent contribution of India to the evolution of the world, we owe it especially to the great and beloved Sri Aurobindo”