My review of the book:

'Culture: A new world history' by
Martin Puchner
476 pages:17 chapters.

I read the audio version of this book and liked it a lot.
Author deals with issues of culture and without defining it,he in 17 chapters has tried to convey the essence and peculiarities of culture and how they transmit from one group of people to the other,one nation to other,from ancient to modern and strangely enough this transmission often takes place between the most unlikely strands of people who stand so apart in space and time.

Some cardinal principles about culture are as follows:

It is never a pure,no culture can avoid blending,it is syncretic in nature and survives in diversity.

It can never be confined like a pond,it flows like a river always.

To me, it is like a fragrance,a fragrance which wafts and is impossible to be curbed

It can also be compared to water, which is so light that it always takes the shape of the receptacle it is poured in and gets transmuted easily.

Take Buddhism for instance, though the source of Buddhism is one but the one which is practiced in India defers with what is practiced in China,and what is practiced in Japan differs from both.So when culture gets transmitted to an alien place,and takes
its roots,then it evolves, and prosper
according to an overall proclivity,taste, and genius of its milieu.

One setback for culture lies in its disruption in transmission.Natural calamities,sure shot possiblity of damage and loss of manuscripts and texts out of ill keeping or vulnerability of fibrous substances on which ancient texts were written are a great setback.Ignorance,prejudices barbarism and savagery also bring dustruptions in its transmissions, but it is a unique feature of the culture, that it starts flowing again when these obstructions get removed.

In seventeen chapters, the author has given innumerable instances where culture has flown unhibitingly from one strand of people to the other, enriching both.

In a chapter on the bust of Nefertiti, the author finds a connectivity between the monotheism of Judaism n the religion that Nefertiti propagated.

Chapter on Ferozshah Tughlaq(1368CE) and Asoka deals with the chance findings of huge pillar of Asoka(268 bc) by Tughlaq in the forests of foot hills of Himalayas and a captivating account on its arduous journey on the carriage of 400 wheels driven by by 200 men to Delhi and its erection near Jama maszid. This done,Sultan was over eager to decipher the script of the pillar but the deciphering of script had to wait for another 600 yrs or so till it was deciphered by an english indologist n greek scholar James Princep in 1830.The deciphering of script and findings on Asoka preachings on pillars,rocks,stupas took the world by storm.Later as many more monuments were discovered and Asoka came to be known as a buddhist and one of the most righteous king of his era.Vedic india never used stone as a masonry,but these pillars,arches, of stone denote the influence of greek and Persian culture on these monuments.The script got to be known as ' brahmi'and was found to be closer to greek language.

On an chapters of spread of Buddhism to China n later to Japan,author gives an account of buddhist monk from China, Huyen Tsang, who in 678 CE reached India facing great hardships.It took 16 yrs to him to reach here.He and his predecessors like Kumarjiva n Fayaan carried buddhism's massages,manuscripts,scrolls and and artifacts to China and established the buddhism there.Though his ordeals were immense but no less immense were ordeal of monk of Japan named Anin who crossed the sea clandestingly from Japan to reach China to learn basics of Buddhism.He remained hidden in a monastry in China for 7 yrs n ultimately suceeded in getting hoards of manuscripus,artifacts and even 'Lotus sutra' of Mahayan to the Japan.From Japan,buddhism spreaded to all other nations of far east.So the source of buddhism was India alone but the each nation understood,and practised it in a manner that suited its most.

In another very interseting chapter,we find the presence of 9ft idol of ivory of Godess Laxmi in the archaelogical digging of ash of Pompei and not only this idol,archaelogists of 19th century were able to establish a clear influence of greek culture over the romans.Here greeks were vanquised in wars by the romans, still, the victors emulated the art,n culture of vanquished.The Virgil,the most famous poet of Rome wrote 'Aneid' on the lines of Homer's Odyssey.In 79CE when volcano erupted in Pompeii,Rome was having an hectic trade with India,where India was exporting spices, condiments,medicines,gems,jwellery,and idols to Rome while Rome could offer only a hard currency to India..

Baghdad, in the time of Caliph Al Mamoon (son of Harun Al Rashid), was the most exciting place ( intellectually speaking) on the earth. Being situated on silk route,it had the best of the all.From China it got paper, from India, astronomy, arithmetic, decimal system, from greeks,their eucleadean geometry,n philosophy.Caliph was found of Aristotle n he made all efforts to collect as much literature on philosophy from Greece as possible and got it translated and preserved it for posterity in his libraries of Akexandria and Baghdad.Incidently, by that time, the old pagan Greece turned towards Christianity under the tutelage of Byzanthian kings,who hated pagan culture and greek thoughts. In this way, how astonishingly one emergent culture gave a breath of fresh life to the dying one.

Christianity,finally got eastsblished in Rome by 378 CE or so.Before,it could spread its wing all over the Europe,one of the earliest converts to christianity was a black Ethopia.In 400 CE king Ezna of Askumite dynasty became Christian.This happened because Ethopia had a long linkage with Jerusalem.It is said Queen Sheeba of Ethopia n King Solomon of Jerusalem were bethroted and had an offspring too.This offspring in his back journey from Jerusalem to Ethopia also brought tablets of ten commandments of Moses(raiders of arc) with him clandestinely.So the link was live from the begining and when the new religion was formed by the disciples of Jesus who was a jew himself,it found an easy acceptance in Ethopia.Later in 20th century ,black Jamaicans n even black panthers established their lineage with Ethiopian Christians.

There is an intersting chapter on Mexican Aztecs n marauding armies of Spain.Aztec civilization is as old and prosperous as Egyptian,Sumerian n Hadappa's.In 15th century aztecs were having most prosperous city culture,with lakes,floating cities,canals causeways and plenty of gold and silver arifacts.Spanish armies destroyed,burnt the aztec's town completely,spreaded smallpox among its populace, and ruined looted all their cultural treasures and artifacts of gold and silver.Later, one Aztec monk when he visited Pope's library at later stage, found some stolen assets of his ancestors and gradually revived its culture n refurbished it out from the brink.

There are some more fascinating stuff here.Want to know the link between the indepndence of Haitee and abolishing of slavery there in as early as in 1804 only and its link with French and Anerican revolution,then read this book.
Want to know a link between the wave paintings of the 19th century of Japan and the Avant-guard movement of the west, then read it.

Want to know how George Eliot(author of Middlemarch) and Soyenka (a Nigerain noble laureate in literature) cleared the concepts of culture and history. Eliot believed in understanding history through scientific evidence, philology, and archelogy. History of common men and women was more important to her than the rise and fall of big dynasties.Soyenka vehemently opposed the hierarchy of cultures.No culture is greater or inferior to the other.Are Chinese porcelain better than African masks?he considered this debate worthless.Every culture evolves out of local conditions,and particular situation its milieu finds itself in.

Confirming the earlier conjecture,blending of cultures nourishes the humanity as good as the science does.As benefit of discovery of fire or an invention of wheel did not confine to immidiate beneficiaries but to an entire humanity,similarly,thoughts of Socrates, Plato,Upnishads,LaoTse,Buddha, paintings of Leonardo da Vinchi, and Pyramids belong to entire humanity,and only fools and stupids may think that they only own it,while the greater fools are those who reject them simply for not being of their own.

The last chapter deals with what future holds m for culture? How to preserve it for eternity against all odds of climatic change, nulear holucast,wars,savagery, ignorance and so on.Use of web/ cloud/ net storage are also subject to change in formats n languges.Oral storing among dedicated has its own problem.
Ultimate solution lies in cultivating youngs.Like a planting of seedling ,if a seed of love for culture is sown in youngs at early stage then there is no need to fear about its collapse and disappearance.

Generation who worship STEM(science,technology,engineering,mathmetics)culture of our times needs to be aware that too much of technology and too less of culture brings bigots, makes minds barren, nations inept and bereft of happiness and esteem.Culture is akin to salt,its quantity is not important but absence makes the life worthless.
A book is not pedantic but easy to read and is quite persuasive.A must read for all specially youngsters to save them from intolerance and tribalization.

aneeel49@yahoo.com
saxenaanil072@ gmail.com

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