Journal articles on the topic 'Water deities'

Of over 1000 images of birds found in sanctuaries, approximately 300 may be interpreted as water birds: they are found in sanctuaries of female rather than male deities. The cult and ritual reasons for bird offerings and representation are discussed.

Water was the main factor in choosing where to build settlements. Large civilizations - Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman, settled around the Mediterranean Sea and developed thanks to the waters of rivers and seas. The power of water was embodied by the Greeks in Gods and small deities, such as: Poseidon, Aphrodite, Naiades and others. The heyday of large ancient cities during the Roman period is associated with the construction of bridges and aqueducts. Water was assigned a significant role in the culture of local traditions. Residents of ancient cities have built many technical structures designed for water supply, irrigation of fields, sewerage and simply in honor of the worship of gods, patrons of water.

AbstractWater in many different forms and contexts is of central significance in Southeast Asia, and these differences are reflected in the vast range of spirits and deities. Despite wide variation, the most obvious distinction is between spirits associated with fresh and salt water. Those linked to water associated with fertility are typically regarded as female and sympathetic to human requests for assistance. By contrast, the spirits who inhabit turbulent river waters and patrol the shorelines may be male, female, or only vaguely gendered. Although they can be capricious and sometimes cruel, they are nonetheless amenable to individual or communal supplication. The same ambiguity is exemplified by the sea spirits, who extend rewards to those they favour but inflict harsh punishments when their anger is aroused. Yet regardless of their nature or the place with which they were associated, the ‘power base’ of indigenous spirits was always locally concentrated. The limitations in their reach help explain the appeal of cosmologies that extended across a much larger area, and even across the entire globe. The accompanying conceptualization of new and benevolent beings is especially evident in the maritime environment. Here human activity is male-dominated, and the male divinities and saints associated with supra-local belief systems might appear to be the natural guardians of mariners. Even so, culturally entrenched ideas of connections between water and maternal care facilitated the adoption of female deities as protectors of ocean-going voyagers.

Local and indigenous populations the world over ascribe deeply and explicitly spiritual attributes to water. Springs, wells, and rivers are the homes of deities, have divine healing powers, and enhance processes of spiritual transformation. These attributes are rarely expressed in global declarations related to sustainable water management and are found only implicitly in a handful of international water treaties. This paper uses a multi-scalar lens to identify areas of disconnect between community-specific intrinsic and spiritual dimensions of water, regional management institutions or international agreements, and global conventions. The scale-based structure of the article highlights the systems-based connections, and disconnections, from global to local-scopes of dimensions of water enshrined in different institutions.

This paper stems from a curiosity about relationships between water, depositions, life, death and sacrifice. It probes into how traditional binaries such as nature/culture, human/animal, alive/dead and language/reality were addressed in Irish medieval place lore, using critical posthumanist theory to explore ways in which agential powers were not merely ascribed to the environment, but also observed and acknowledged by people in the past. It also considers how the agentialities of both artefacts and waters could have affected and made their way into human storytelling. In so doing, the paper presents a contribution from archaeology to the emerging field of environmental humanities, offering research that could entice us to sharpen our environmental sensibilities and respond to environmental change. Depositions of things and bodies in wet contexts are often understood as sacrifices made to deities located in the otherworld. However, there is plentiful evidence in archaeology and in medieval place-lore to suggest that waters were observed as being alive, as immanent beings, as more-than-human persons who could have received these depositions as gifts. This study explores how depositions would have added to and reconfigured such water-personhood in locally and regionally-situated ways, and how they may also have worked as apparatuses for paying close attention to the water environment.

Shugendo, which prospered during Japan’s Middle Ages, valued ascetic practices and fused mountain worship with Taoism, Shinto, Buddhism, Animism, astronomy, and medicine. However, since it was transmitted via oral tradition from one generation to the next, limited evidence can be found. Therefore, this essay analyzes 3D imaging data of stone reliefs found at Mt. Hiko, located in the Kyushu region of Japan, to discern whether the carvings depict certain deities and how the Sanskrit characters found in the moon circles represent Shugendo thinking. In addition, it examines how the influence of Shugendo art spread throughout the Kyushu region, Kiyomizu (Kagoshima Prefecture), and Aoki (Kumamoto Prefecture) as well as reassesses its cultural significance. With regard to the former, the results show that a relief of a seated Amitabha was engraved between two other deities: the Mahaasthaamapraapta and Avalokiteśvara. Concerning the latter, the findings reveal that these were the locations of Amitabha worship by the esoteric Tendai sect, which revered “the water” (rivers) and represented an association among Mt. Hiko, Kumano, and Aoki.

Abstract This article utilises interviews I completed with Hindu Bengali women in Kolkata, India, concerning their practices of domestic shrine care and worship. I illustrate how the loving relationship women build between themselves and their domestic deities—a relationship women describe as the marker of bhakti—is fomented through their daily caretaking of deities such as Gopāl, the toddler form of Kṛṣṇa found in many Kolkatan home shrines. While male Brahmin priests oversee pūjā in Kolkata’s Hindu temples, it is often the mothers, daughters, and daughters-in-laws that are responsible for the care and daily worship of the domestic shrine, where such work is deemed ‘a woman’s duty’ and is assimilated within the domestic responsibilities that Bengali women traditionally undertake. Household shrine care and worship varies but generally consists of acts that one might show to a beloved family member such as feeding and offering water; cleansing, dressing and adorning; gift-giving; decorating a comfortable living space; and waking and putting to sleep. Bengali women explained to me their authority over the domestic shrine by citing their maternal capacity to love to suggested that they were more apt and skilled than men to care for the physically vulnerable deities at home. When noting this, they often mentioned the needs of the child-god Gopāl and their feelings of maternal love and devotion that his presence evokes within them through his depiction as a chubby toddler, crawling on his hands and knees with one hand that is extended outwards; much like a child asking to hold the hand of his parent. This article examines how both the familial necessity of caretaking demanded by the home deity and the imagining of the deity as physically vulnerable promote the development of this bhakti relationship between the female devotee and deity within the contemporary Bengali home.

This paper focuses on the mythology of Yamī and her twin-brother Yama (the first humans according to Indo-Iranian mythology), their non-human origin and some aspects of Yamī’s behaviour which presumably betray a number of features of a female half-deity. The relationships between Yamī and Yama are the central topic of the dialogue hymn Rgveda 10.10, where Yamī attempts to seduce her twin to incest in order to produce offspring and thus continue the human race. This offer is refused by Yama, who refers to the inappropriateness of incest. Although Yamī and Yama are humans according to the Vedic tradition, their origin from two half-deities – a Gandharva father and an Apsara mother – remains inexplicable: how could a couple of non-human beings (half-deities or demons) give birth to humans? Obviously, the mythological status of the twins should be reconsidered. I argue that at least one of them, Yamī, retains immortality and some other features of the non-human (semi-divine) nature. On the basis of the analysis of the Yama and Yamī hymn and some related Vedic texts, I argue that this assumption may account for certain peculiarities of Yamī’s behaviour – particularly her hypersexuality (which can be qualified as demonic type of behaviour), as opposed to the much more constrained, human type of conduct displayed by Yama. Given the notoriously lustful character of the Gandharvas, an origin from this semi-divine creature may account for Yamī’s hypersexuality. Although the word gandharvá- does not have Indo-European etymology, we can find possible Indo-European parallels. In particular, the Gandharvas are comparable with the Centaurs, which cannot be etymologically related but possibly originate in the same non-Indo-European source. There are some reasons to assume that both words are borrowed from the Kassite language and mythology, which, in turn, may have been related to the language and culture of the Proto-North-Caucasians. Although we do not find exact equivalents of Yamī outside of the Indo-Iranian pantheon, indirect parallels can be found in other Indo-European traditions. The Apsaras (water nymphs) can be compared to a variety of water deities (nymphs) in Greek mythology, such as the Naiads, or to the Slavic rusalki.

While the water management systems of Minoan Crete are legendary, water management on the Greek mainland in the Mycenaean period also shows a high degree of technological sophistication. Projects considered in this paper include the draining of the Kopais Lake, generally agreed to be one of the greatest engineering achievements of early antiquity; the cistern at Mycenae with its corbelled access tunnel cut deep into the bedrock of the citadel; the twin springs at Tiryns, with their underground passageways approached through the massive ‘cyclopean’ walls; and the North Fountain on the Mycenaean Acropolis of Athens. These Mycenaean systems are compared with the remarkable underground water supply system at Troy uncovered by the recent excavations led by Manfred Korfmann, a structure which may date to the beginning of the 3rd millennium and which appears to be invoked among the deities of Wilusa (Troy) in the early-13th century treaty between Muwattalli II of Hatti and Alaksandu of Wilusa (and which may be a precursor of the famous Persian qanats).

Images on Late Preclassic (300 B.C.–A.D. 250) monuments from Izapa, Chiapas, Mexico, featuring canoe scenes, maize deities, and water gods, have long been interpreted as representing mythic passages. While significant, such interpretations neglect other aspects of the scenes, including environmental and socioeconomic concerns that revolve around rain, subsistence, and water transport. By contextualizing these images and linking them to recent archaeological investigations that illuminate aspects of the Late Preclassic economy of Izapa, I argue that the scenes strategically situated economic activities— maize agriculture, the trade and transport of goods in canoes, even salt production—within a mythic framework. The images constitute an artistic program that entwined mythic tales, industries of salt production, and traditions of water navigation and that phrased them as part of a system of social order during a period of incipient state formation.

AbstractAn unusual copper-alloy fragment was recovered during excavations at Vindolanda in 2008. It has been identified as part of a calendar or water clock. A very similar fragment was found near Hambledon in Hampshire in 2017. Further investigation of the Vindolanda and Hambledon fragments and of similar objects from Frankfurt, Salzburg and Grand reveals that the Vindolanda and Hambledon fragments were once attached to clepsydrae to form time-keeping devices that are unattested in ancient sources, but that might be called ‘calendrical clepsydrae’.1 The links between similar artefacts and deities associated with water and healing are explored and evidence for a shrine located near sulphur springs in the Allen Valley is also discussed. The Vindolanda calendrical clepsydra is placed within this social and religious context.

This article is a description and analysis of the twelve-day renovation ritual or kumbha¯bhiseka (‘water-pot bathing ritual’) celebrated in the Mi¯na¯ksi¯ Temple in the south Indian city of Madurai in 1995. After briefly discussing the historical background, the article describes the priests' division of labour at the kumbha¯bhiseka, the preliminary rituals—including the transfer of the deities' power from their images into water-pots—and the most crucial rituals: the series of ya¯gapu¯ja¯ (‘sacrifice-worship’) rituals, which mainly consisted of fire-sacrifices to enhance the power in the water-pots, and the culmination of the entire event, when the pots were emptied over the Temple's towers and images, so that the power flowed back in. The article concludes that despite its extreme elaborateness, the kumbha¯bhiseka's symbolic logic and purpose, especially as displayed in the spectacular destruction of the fire-sacrifices and then the final water-pouring, are unusually transparent compared to many other temple rituals.

Water-driven music technology has been one of the primary sources of human leisure from prehistoric times up until the present. Water powered, along with air pressure organs, have been used throughout history. One of them was an organ of fountains located inside a formal garden. Throughout ancient mythology, several different gods have been linked to music in many civilizations, in particular, Minoa, Mehrgarh, and Gandhara. Water deities were usually significant amid civilizations located next to a sea or an ocean, or even a great river like the Indus River in Pakistan, the Nile River in the Middle East or the Ganga River in India. These fountains performed a wide range of songs from Classical to contemporary Arabic, and even included other worldly music. The study of water-driven music technology demonstrates the diachronic evolution and the revelation that ancient people had impressive knowledge of the engineering needed for water exploitation and manipulation. This revelation is still both fascinating and intriguing for today’s water engineers. This paper also shows the relationship between water in nature and music, and furthermore, how nature has inspired composers throughout history. This research shows the sustainability of different kinds of water-driven musical instruments, not only through their use in past centuries, but their relevance in music therapy and other purposes of today. This study is useful for researchers in the fields of history, music, engineering and sustainable development.

Ancient Tamils feared natural disasters such as floods, wildfires and landslides and began to worship land, water, fire, air and sky to protect themselves. As an extension of this, the Five elements in nature are worshiped as deities named Varna Bhagavan, Vayu Bhagavan, Surya Bhagavan and Bhumadevi. Later, the ancient tamils, who knew that the world operated through the Five elements in nature. They began to refer the Five elements in nature as a metaphor for gift, mercy, valor, patience, and so on. In the Sangam literature the songs are recorded according to the imagination. The ancient people know the scientific messages from the atom to the universe.

Here Gellius, also the target of poems 74, 80, 89, 90, 91 and 116, is accused of incest with his mother, sister, and aunt. This accusation is coupled with the only extended mythological reference to be found in the group of short Catullan epigrams 69–116:2 not even Tethys or Oceanus can wash out Gellius' crimes. This notion that large bodies of water are unable to wash away the stain of crime is of course a topos going back to Greek tragedy, but the individual naming of the two sea-deities seems to make a point—a literary point which is relevant to the invective of the poem.

In August 2010 the Himalayan Region of Ladakh, Northwest India, experienced severe flash-flooding and mudslides, causing widespread death and destruction. The causes cited were climate change, karmic retribution, and the wrath of an agentive sentient landscape. Ladakhis construct, order and maintain the physical and moral universe through religious engagement with this landscape. The Buddhist monastic incumbents—the traditional mediators between the human world and the sentient landscape—explain supernatural retribution as the result of karmic demerit that requires ritual intervention. Social, economic, and material transformations have distorted the proper order, generating a physically and morally unfamiliar landscape. As a result, the mountain deities that act as guardians and protectors of the land below are confused and angry, sending destructive water to show their displeasure. Thus, the locally-contextualized response demonstrates the agency of the mountain gods in establishing a moral universe whereby water can give life and destroy it.

Research in the northeastern Peten region at Holmul and nearest minor centers shows a complex history of public ritual activity from the Middle Preclassic onward. Patterns of public architecture, monumental sculpture, iconography, caches, and burials at sites such as Holmul and Cival document early development of the ideology of Maya kingship. Late Preclassic monumental sculptures adorning large pyramid temples provide immediate and elaborate metaphors for the ancestral patrons of emerging dynasts. Middle Preclassic architecture and caches are encoded with the ideological program of the earliest ruling institutions, incorporating themes of cosmological order; sun, water, and maize deities; the agricultural cycle; and ancestor veneration. All of these early remains are found in the sacred space of the first “E-group” plazas.

Abstract. Key elements of sacred landscapes of the Nile Delta were lakes, canals and artificial basins connected to temples, which were built on elevated terrain. In the case of temples of goddesses of an ambivalent, even dangerous, nature, i.e. lioness goddesses and all female deities who could appear as such, the purpose of sacred lakes and canals exceeded their function as a water resource for basic practical and religious needs. Their pleasing coolness was believed to calm the goddess' fiery nature, and during important religious festivals, the barques of the goddesses were rowed on those waters. As archaeological evidence was very rare in the past, the study of those sacred waters was mainly confined to textual sources. Recently applied geoarchaeological methods, however, have changed this situation dramatically: they allow in-depth investigations and reconstructions of these deltaic sacred landscapes. Exploring these newly available data, the paper presented here focuses on the sites of Buto, Sais and Bubastis, by investigating the characteristics of their sacred lakes, canals and marshes with respect to their hydrogeographical and geomorphological context and to their role in ancient Egyptian religion and mythology as well.

The undertaken research replenishes the pool of knowledge about folklore texts and the functions of spellonyms as signs saturated with national and cultural meanings. The study establishes and compares linguistic and cultural characteristics of spellonyms in the onomasticon of Australian and Nanaian aetiological tales. The authors proposed a typology of spellonyms which includes 5 thematic groups: nominations of deities of different nature; nominations of celestial bodies transformed from representatives of the tribe; nominations of objects of worship and magical rituals; nominations of magical natural phenomena; nominations of magical creatures. The results of the research demonstrate a significant prevalence in the number of deity nominations among Australian spellonyms, while the majority of Nanaian spellonyms refer to magical artefacts. The research has also proved the utmost significance of the water element in the folk worldview of Australian Aborigines and the equivalent importance of the water, land and air elements in the Nanai folk worldview. The obvious preference in both folklore traditions is given to nominations of native origin transcribed into the language of translation. The structural types of spellonyms vary from group to group, with the majority of monolexemic nominations.

The phrase λεπτὸν καί τι μελιχρὸν ἔπος in Hedylus 5 Gow–Page has been read as engaging with Callimachean esthetic language, though its precise significance has been debated. This paper argues that Hedylus’ engagement with Callimachean esthetic imagery and language is best understood by juxtaposing Hedylus 4 and 5 Gow–Page. The structure of the former, on a gold rhyton dedicated to Arsinoe Zephyritis, pointedly treats two Egyptian deities—one miniature, the other colossal—in language evocative of poetic composition, and does so in a way that effaces the bright oppositions between large and small in the prologue to Callimachus’ Aetia. At the same time, the poem identifies sounds made by wine with sounds made by water, and thus sheds light on Hedylus’ treatment of wine as a source of poetic inspiration in both epigrams. Far from being a rebuttal of Callimachean values, these poems appropriate and adapt his esthetic imagery and language to the genre of epigram.

Using the Bashkir epics “Akbuzatˮ and “Zayatulyk and Khyukhyluˮ, the article examines the mythical image of the water damosel – khaukhylu, which has significant artistic and aesthetic functions. This image takes a special place in the mythology of all peoples and in ancient sacred beliefs. Due to the fact that after the adoption of Christianity / Islam among the peoples, all the once sacred, pagan deities – the keepers of rivers and lakes, mountains and natural boundaries, forests and fields, as well as the ones connected with home, were endowed with a negative characteristic and began to be represented as an evil spirit. Such a fate was waiting for, for example, the traditional hero Baba Yaga – Yashchura, raised to the rank of a positive character, deified by the canon of the ancient Slavs, she was the keeper of the clan, its traditions and customs. Accordingly, after the adoption of Christianity, Yashchura took on that negative, pernicious character known to us from Slavic folk tales and folkloric accounts. As E.V. Pomerantsev correctly states, in the artistic and aesthetic sense in mythological legends and folkloric accounts there are always similar motives of “sudden meetingˮ, “sinking into the underwater kingdomˮ, “awards of the water kingˮ, “... the marriage of a hero in the underwater kingdomˮ, etc. In the Bashkir epic monuments observed in the article, these motives are strictly traced and successfully actualized.

Information about the mysterious supernatural water creature “xullyukun” is summarized in the article. It is emphasized that it takes its place in the pantheon of deities among the Yakuts (Sakha) — one of the indigenous peoples in the North-East of the Russian Federation. It is noted that Russian and foreign travelers, political exiles, and research scientists wrote about the traditions, life and religion of the Yakuts (Sakha) at different times. The descriptions of the beliefs of the Yakuts (Sakha) are given, in which there are references to the water creatures “xullyukuns”. The author has reviewed the literature where the “xullyukuns” are mentioned. The version proposed by scientists is analyzed, that “xullyukun” is a blending of the ancient spirit-master of water and an evil demon, which became possible due to the fact that this image correlated with the idea of the migration of aquatic animals from water to land and back. The author of the article is critical of such judgments. The data collected by the author of the article during numerous expeditions to the north-east of Yakutia, where the old image of the creature of the pre-Christian period has been preserved, is presented. On the basis of research, the author comes to the conclusion that the image of “xullyukun” is incomparable with the devil. It has been proved that “xullyukun”, according to ancient beliefs, is a creature — the arbiter of human destinies, and the new image is associated with Christmas divination, where the influence of Christianity is seen. The author of the article shares the original sources. Information collected in the field during conversations with informants is introduced into scientific circulation.

Many conventional features of world tree motifs in the ancient Near East—including stalked palmettes, aureoles of water lily palmettes connected by pliant stems, floral rosettes, winged disks and bud-and-blossom motifs—trace largely from Egyptian practices in lotus symbolism around 2500 BCE, more than a millennium before they appear, migrate and dominate plant symbolism across the Fertile Crescent from 1500 BCE to 200 CE. Several of these motifs were associated singularly or collectively with the Egyptian sema-taui and ankh signs to symbolize the eternal recurrence and everlasting lives of Nilotic lotus deities and deceased pharaohs. The widespread use of lotus imagery in iconographic records on both sides of the Red Sea indicates strong currents of cultural diffusion between Nilotic and Mesopotamian civilizations, as does the use of lotus flowers in religious rituals and the practice of kingship, evidence for which is supported by iconographic, cuneiform and biblical records. This perspective provides new insights into sacral tree symbolism and its role in mythic legacies of Egypt and the Middle East before and during the advent of Christianity. Closer scholarly scrutiny is still needed to fully comprehend the underlying meaning of immortalizing plants in the mythic traditions of Egypt, the Levant and Mesopotamia.

Purpose These texts form part of a quartet, the purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the destruction of our planet by presenting the elements as deities of nature: in Agitation the god is earth, in Burning the boy-god is fire, and in Mater Lachrymosa the mother-goddess is air (the first poem’s persona is the goddess of water/rain. Titled Heat, it is published in Volume 29 Issue 5 of AAAJ). The inspiration for these poems was Mervyn King’s statement that “Effective integrated reporting requires careful collection and co-ordination of different types of data for analysis by multi-disciplinary teams”. (King III, 2009) and his thought-provoking advocacy of the idea that “the board should provide effective leadership based on an ethical foundation” (King III, 2009). Design/methodology/approach These poems are written in free verse (which mimics the nuances and cadences of spoken English). Findings Frequent media coverage of global warming, corporate social responsibility policies, integrated reporting and dwindling resources have become fashionable clichés. We need to empower the message. CSR and the integrated report have no value if they become tick-the-box exercises. Originality/value Poetry is not generally associated with accountancy, finance, environmental law or geography so these texts are unusual in their genre and approach. The underlying concept is the interconnectedness of the themes and looking at issues with new eyes.

The article studies lexical and phraseological units nominating holidays and ceremonies in Russian dialects, which are spoken on the territory of the Republic of Mordovia. The specificity of nominative processes associated with the naming of a fact that is significant from linguistic and cultural point of view, is determined. The research is carried out on the material taken from the Dictionary of Russian dialects on the territory of the Republic of Mordovia. It has been found that in Russian dialects, the names of religious holidays, which are dedicated to the most revered saints, or the holidays related to a certain time of the year, are actively used. The surviving holidays reproduce elements of the most ancient customs associated with the worship of human deities, the cult of vegetation, water and fire, which magical powers were attributed to. The names of rituals represent a special layer in the dialect corpus. The most illustrative represented are the funeral rite and the rite of baptism. All these rituals are of great importance in the life of the people, since they symbolize a change in the status of a person, his transition from one state to another. The nominations of different phases of wedding ceremony are noted to be most numerous, while funeral and baptizing rites are less representative. The study showed that the names of holidays and rituals in Russian folk dialects reflect cultural and historical traditions, beliefs, customs of representatives of a territorially closed society. They perform peculiar means of representing the ethnic and cultural consciousness of the people.

Kavu" or the holy Sarpa Kavu (meaning Sacred Grove of the Serpent) is a typically small traditional grove of trees seen in the Kerala state of South India. These pristine groves usually have representations of several Naga Devatas (serpent gods), which were worshipped by the joint families or big houses (taravads). This was part of Nagaradhana (snake worship) which was prevalent among Keralites during past centuries. The kayos' represent the locally deep-rooted tradition of worshipping plants, animals and local deities. They are mostly concentrated in Kerala's entire region especially in the North Malabar region. The kavus; however, are facing threats byway of changes in values as well as socio-economic pressures, despite the weight of traditional beliefs and rituals associated with them. Large scale conversion of land, decline of traditional agrarian values, socio­economic factors, population pressure and shortage of land have already made a dent on the rich ecosystem of 'kavus'. A large number of 'sarpa kavus', that were protected and maintained by upper caste communities, disappeared, due to the disintegration of families that protected them. In some cases, this led to their renovation and conversion into temples. There are reports stating that the 'kavus' suffered large scale degradation in the state due to high percentage of settler migration. These rich ecological repositories that also function as traditional water-harvesting system are not being given due importance. Most of the 'kavus' are located near agricultural lands; this indicates their role in an agrarian society. Most of the 'kavus' have perennial water resources rich in organic matter that enhance fertility of agriculture lands. Community protection alone can save the ' kavus'. Only through solid initiatives, it's possible to create awareness about 'kavus' ecological value among the communities (stakeholders); traditionally protecting the 'kavus' and the public. Sanctity of the 'kavus' may have been sustained by beliefs. No less important is their protection by highlighting their ecological importance.

In the early periods of human history, environment strongly determined the lives and activities of the people. They were very much close to forest and natural resources as we find in historical documents. Ancient Indian texts like Arthasastra, Sathapatha Bhramanas, Vedas, Manusmrti, Brhat-Samhita, Ramayana, Mahabharata, Rajtarangini reflected the concepts of forest ecology and conservation in a sustainable manner. In the Indus valley civilization, several characteristics of the city planning and social structure showed environmental awareness. The presence of leaves, wild animals like peacocks and one-horned deer, tigers, elephants, bulls in the seals and the mud pots can indicate the pattern of biodiversity in those areas. Reduction of forests in that area was due to use of huge amount of timber-wood for burning bricks. So rainfall reduced and soil erosion caused deposition of silt in the Indus River which had choked off Mohenjodaro from the sea, causing a rise in the water table that must have been a prime factor in the destruction of Mohenjodaro. The sacred groves (Tapovana) of India were rich in biodiversity and ecological wealth, which was also mentioned in many ancient Indian documents like Abhigyan Shakuntalam written by Kalidasa. They are small packets of forests dedicated to local deities. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna compares the world to a single banyan tree with unlimited branches in which all the species of animals, humans and demigods wander, which reflects the concept of community ecology. The trees like Banyan and Peepal were often referred in historical background (widely protected in Asia and Africa) are keystone resources. In modern age, there are many policies developing in many countries for forest and biodiversity conservation, but they are all directly or indirectly influenced by the traditional knowledge developed in the ancient India.

Cow is cited as Aditi (Mother of all Gods) in Ancient Hindi texts. In Artharaveda, Cow is said as adobe of 33Cr Hindu deities. Cow Urine (CU); the liquid metabolic excretion of Cow, is treated as sacred and pious in India. CU has diversified uses. It is used in raw and refined forms. Research reveals that CU distillate (CUD) is even more effective in therapeutic applications. CUD; Gomutra Ark or Kamdhenu Ark, was used since ancient times in Indian, Chinese and Egyptian civilizations. CU is also used in Myanmaar, Nepal, Nigeria and Zimbabwe as curator [1,2]. Variants of CU are also sold in departmental stores in America, Britain, Canada, Germany and India. Several Cow Urine Concoctions (CUC) serve as curative agents against deadly ailments. Being easily available, having long shelf life and economically cheaper; Gomutra variants are now becoming alternative medicines against innumerable diseases [3-6]. Biochemical composition of CU makes it perfect supplement against various disorders. CU of milking Cow contains 95% Water, 2.5% Urea and 2.5% Enzymes, Hormones, Minerals and Salts. pH of fresh CU ranges from 7.27 to 8.74. CU from a healthy Cow is pale yellow colored. Traces of Gold are found in CU of Gir Cows. Gold ions are generated when blood vessels of Cow hump comes in contact with sunrays. On an average about 18 Lit/Day of CU can be collected from an Indian Cow. Branded CUD can be easily obtained @ of Rs 250/500 ml in India. Advances on Gomutra are so prominent that America granted US Patent No: 6410059 and No: 6896907 for the medicinal ability of CU, especially as Anticancer, Antifungal, Antibiotic and Bioenhancer agent [16]. Present text is an overview of applications of Gomutra, particularly therapeutic applications.

In the article, the contemporary human being’s search for values is primarily linked to the folkloristic reflection of Lithuanian cultural landscape. Following the framework of hermeneutics and based on the folkloristic symbolism of landscape in Lithuanian folklore (mainly in the oldest layer of folk songs), the manifestations of a long-lasting solidarity between community and nature are discussed. The focus has been placed on the small community – the family and its immediate relationship with the surrounding nature. In the introductory part of the article, the notion of ritualism is discussed which is based on the universally acknowledged concept of the rites of passage (les rites de passage). Within the context of this concept, the depiction of the public events of family life (the rituals of marriage and death) constituted a solid premise for the investigation of the so-called common places (loci communes) in Lithuanian folk poetry, which in this regard are usually represented by landscape-related narrative segments and symbolism. Folkloristic interpretations of the prominent elements of Lithuanian landscape (trees, water, stones) have been selected for the investigation. The introduction also reveals the importance of a family over an individual in the exploration of a human being’s relationship with the surrounding nature. The first part of the article ‘The Reflections of Anthropomorphic Reception of Trees’ asserts that in the folk songs marked by archaic stylistics, the poetic narrative of trees contains abundant mythopoetic allusions to the constant identification of a human being (usually, a family member) with a tree, as well as other metamorphoses and motifs which attest their mutual dependence. This poetic tradition influences the poetry created by individual authors to this day. The article briefly introduces the meaning of a tree in the world of ancient Lithuanian beliefs and customs and notices the major changes in the purpose of the image of a tree in the late tradition of romances. The second part of the article analyses the long-term trajectories of mythopoetic depiction of water and stones in folklore. It is well known that any traditional culture has accumulated a wide range of meanings which pertain to different forms of water and connote rebirth, renewal, as well as fertility and life. Therefore when the article emphasizes the tropes of being near water, drowning in watery depths, which through the lens of myth and ritual embody the act of love (marriage) in Lithuanian singing folklore, it should be noted that this variation of meaning found in Lithuanian folklore constitutes an organic part of the whole of international aquatic symbolism. The mythicised story of a live stone as reflected in folklore could be partially associated with the folkloristic reception of trees and water. Animation of a stone is revealed through the attribution of the qualities of a live being to a stone (in the legends, they move, communicate with each other, live in families). Contrarily, the lifelessness (immobile state) of a stone is mythicised in cases where people who deviate from moral laws are turned into stones. The mythologem of a stone as the landmark signifying the boundary between this and the other world, as well as the association of stones with sacrality and sacred places visited by deities, is widespread. It is ascertained that the narrative of the sacrality of stones did not cease in the period of Christianity.Therefore, the landscape approach applied in this study provided a possibility to observe how, in folklore, the meanings of different components of landscape organically combine into a cohesive union which operates on the principles of synergy. A conclusion may be drawn that folklore unequivocally asserts the idea of a continuous coexistence of a human being and nature and exalts the perception of nature as an essential spiritual value.

Аннотация: В статье впервые анализируются цветообозначения в мифологическом дискурсе алтайцев. На материале фольклорных текстов — мифов, легенд, сказаний, шаманских текстов — выявлены характерные для мифов базовые традиционные цветообозначения. Цветообозначения рассматриваются как образные признаки мифологических концептов, в семантике которых лежат древние архетипы, возникшие в языке в результате ассоциативно-метафорического переноса. The paper first considers the specifics of color designations in the Altai mythological discourse. The factual material of the research was published and unpublished folklore texts, in particular, myths, legends, tales, shamanistic campaigns in the Altai language. The color code is important in the conceptualization of the mythological picture of Altaians. The national-cultural specificity of color designations in the mythological discourse is due to their compatibility with concepts-nominations, designating various objects and phenomena of the invisible world. Color designations can be the first component of naming the various names of supernatural beings, deities, spirits, or their clothes. The basic colors revealed in the traditional mythological picture of Altaians — ak “white”, kara “black”, kyzyl “red”, sary “yellow”, kÿreң “brown”, kök “blue” and jazhyl “green” — in the conceptualization of mythological, mythical images, objects of the unreal (invisible) world on the basis of their deepest archetypal signs that arose as a result of associative-metaphorical transfer. In combination with mythological concepts related to the Upper World, white is a sign of divine purity, holiness, blue is a sign of heaven, green is a sign of greenery and lighted sky, red and yellow are a sign of the shining sun. In combination with the mythological images of the Lower World, black as the antipode of white symbolizes darkness, death, red symbolizes blood, hellish hell, yellow means withering, disease, evil, blue means cold, ice, water, green — dim light in darkness. When mythological archetypes were refracted into the system of folk ethics, the transformation of the signs “light — dark” into the signs “good — evil” occurred. In addition to the color code, the zoomorphic code of the Altai culture is used in the conceptualization and structuring of the mythological other world, in the modeling of its geographical landscape and the conceptualization of the world.

We characterize the expression pattern of aquaporin-6 in the mouse inner ear by RT-PCR and immunohistochemistry. Our data show that in the inner ear aquaporin-6 is expressed, in both vestibular and acoustic sensory epithelia, by the supporting cells directly contacting hair cells. In particular, in the Organ of Corti, expression was strongest in Deiters' cells, which provide both a mechanical link between outer hair cells (OHCs) and the Organ of Corti, and an entry point for ion recycle pathways. Since aquaporin-6 is permeable to both water and anions, these results suggest its possible involvement in regulating OHC motility, directly through modulation of water and chloride flow or by changing mechanical compliance in Deiters' cells. In further support of this role, treating mice with salicylates, which impair OHC electromotility, dramatically reduced aquaporin-6 expression in the inner ear epithelia but not in control tissues, suggesting a role for this protein in modulating OHCs' responses.

This article discusses the changing spirit world of maritime communities in Southeast Asia by differentiating ‘oceans’ from ‘seas’ and by linking historical evidence to modern anthropological studies. Since the lives of seagoing peoples are fraught with unpredictability, propitiation of local sea spirits was a traditional means of ensuring good fortune and protection. As long-distance voyages expanded in the early modern period, the global reach of the world religions, extending beyond familiar seas into the more extensive ocean environment, held out particular appeal. Not only were the gods, deities and saints attached to larger religious systems themselves ocean travellers; in contrast to the unpredictability of indigenous spirits, they were always amenable to requests for help, even when the suppliant was far from home waters. At the same time, as world religions were incorporated into indigenous cosmologies, maritime peoples gained greater agency in negotiating relationships with the local spirits that still wield power in Southeast Asian seas.

The present publication is a translation of Nishikawa Joken’s (1648 – 1724) treatise Nihon Suido Ko:(“Thoughts on Waters and Lands of Japan”), with commentaries and a preface. The treatise was composed approximately in 1700 and published in Kyoto in the beginning of the 18th century. Nishikawa based his work on traditional East-Asian system of knowledge as well as on the European geographical data. This eclectic combination produced an original work, which one can hardly attribute as a reproduction of Western science, neither as Japanese traditional thought. The aim of the author was to describe the position of Japan within the world and to explain why this position was unique and advantageous. Although attempts to reconsider Japan’s inferior to China position were not uncommon during the Tokugawa age, Nishikawa’s originality lies in his way of argumentation. He uses the rhetoric of geographic determinism. It is due to a specific location and consequently the advantageous interaction of elements and branches that Japan is the home for luminous deities. The good nature and the devotedness to the right rituals of the Japanese people are also the product of the beneficial geomantic characteristics. The other topics the author considers are the attempt to confound the bias that Japan is small in size, the underneath meaning and the etymology of different names of Japan, the general structure of the world. Nihon Suido Ko: is a valuable source on the early development of Japanese national self-identification as well as on the history of Japanese geographic thought.

To assess the effects of diet (roughage vs. concentrate) on energy utilization and protein metabolism, growing Holstein steers were given equal daily intakes of digestible energy from one of three diets: hay alone (diet 1; 12% protein), 85% concentrate and 15% hay (diet 2; 16% protein), and 85% concentrate and 15% hay (diet 3; 12% protein). The ratio of protein to digestible energy was the same in diets 1 and 2. At 100, 200, 300, 400, and 500 kg liveweight, estimates were obtained of digestibility and metabolizability of the diets, of weight of gastrointestinal digesta, of body composition based on the volume of distribution of tritiated water, of the concentration of a number of constituents in blood and of VFA in rumen fluid, of fractional degradation rate of skeletal muscle protein based on the urinary excretion of NT-methyl histidine, of the concentration of ammonia in rumen fluid and bacterial urease associated with the reticulo-rumenal epithelium, and of the concentration of total protein, and of the myofibrillar and sarcoplasmic protein fractions, in skeletal muscle. As a proportion of the weight of the empty body, water and protein were higher and fat was lower in steers on diet 1 than in those on diets 2 and 3. Empty liveweight gain in the steers on the concentrate diets (diets 2 and 3) was 35% greater than in steers on the hay diet (diet 1), and steers on concentrate required only 73% as much metabolizable energy per unit empty liveweight gain and 57% as much energy per unit energy gain as steers on hay. Daily gains of fat and energy were greater in the steers on concentrate than in those on hay and most of the extra gain of the steers on concentrate was attributable to gain of fat. Steers on concentrate had lower levels of triglyceride and higher levels of insulin and glucose in blood, and higher levels of propionate and lower levels of acetate in rumen fluid, than did steers on hay. There were no diet effects on the composition of skeletal muscle nor on the fractional degradation rate of muscle protein. Nitrogen metabolism in the rumen, and associated effects on blood urea and urinary nitrogen excretion, were the same in steers on diets 1 and 2 but different for steers on diet 3. However, fecal nitrogen output was the same for steers on diets 2 and 3 but much higher in steers on diet 1. These results are consistent with the view that the higher rate of gain of fat in steers on concentrate, as compared with those on hay, was not due to effects on the availability of protein for productive purposes or on protein metabolism in skeletal muscle, but was more likely to have been due either to lower rates of protein turnover in other tissues, such as those of the gastrointestinal tract, thus sparing energy for fat synthesis, or to a less efficient utilization of the energy available for fat synthesis. The latter possibility appears to be compatible with the finding of higher levels of circulating insulin in steers on the concentrate diets. Key words: Growth, efficiency, body composition, cattle

English : Seven names of Rudra are also mentioned in the Atharvaveda, which appear to be the principal names of Shiva in the later Shaiva sects. These seven names are - bhava, sharava, pashupati, avid, rudra, mahadev, ishaan. Although it is common that all these Namdhari deities are depicted as different deities. Bhava and Shiva are said to be the deity ruling over animals and humans. No human or deity can escape from their arrows. He is invited to kill Yatu Dhanu (demon) and other evil spirits. The body has been called the arrowhead and Bhava has been called the king. A desire has also been expressed to take the deadly poisons of his arrows to another place. The omnipresence of Rudra has also been shown, while he has been described as eminent in fire, in waters, in herbs and other plants, and is said to have created all creatures. It is also known that the same mantra was used for Rudra in Atharvasiras Upanishad and Sweteshvatara Upanishad. It has also been said to be the Bhootpati and Pashupati of Bhava and Sharva. Five types of animals ie cows, blacks, humans and sheep and azas are mentioned under the authority of Pashupati. Rudra is also depicted as Dikpal. Ugra is said to be the lord of the four directions and the sky, earth and space. A Sukta prayed that Rudra should not spread diseases, poisons and heavenly fire. Bhava is called Ish and Rajan. It is said in one place that Bhava, Sharva and Rudra who is Pashupati are always (Sadasiva) welfare. It has also been said that the Gods made the Bhava with arrows the protector of the vratas and the lord of the east direction. Made the body the lord of the south direction. Made Rudra the lord of the earth. Made Mahadev the lord of the divine world. Made Ishan into space. Hindi : अथर्ववेद में रूद्र के सात नामों का भी उल्लेख किया गया है, जो उत्तरकालीन शैव सम्प्रदायों में शिव के प्रधान नामों के रूप में आते हैं। ये सात नाम हैं - भव, शर्व, पशुपति, उग्र, रूद्र, महादेव, ईशान। यद्यिपि यह सम्य है कि इन सभी नामधारी देवताओं को विभिन्न देवताओं के रूप में चित्रित कियाग गया है। भव और शर्व को पशुओं और मानवों पर शासन करने वाला देवता बताया गया है। उनके बाणों से देवता अथवा कोई भी मनुष्य नहीं बच सकता है। उन्हें यातु धानु (राक्षस) तथा अन्य बुरी आत्माओं को मारने के लिए आमन्त्रित किया गया है। शर्व को बाण चलाने वाला कहा गया है और भव को राजा कहा गया है। इस बात की भी इच्छा प्रकट की गई है कि वे अपने बाणों के घातक विषों को दूसरे स्थान पर ले जाएँ।67 रूद्र ने इन देवताओं को आत्मसात् कर लिया तथापि रूद्र के यही आठ देवरूप पौराणिक शिवके आठ रूपों में समा सकते हैं। रूद्र की सर्वव्यापकता को भी दिखाया गया है, जबकि उसे अग्नि में, जलों में, जड़ी-बूटियों तथा अन्य पौधों में प्रतिष्ट बताया गया है और कहा है कि सभी जीवों को इन्होंने ही बनाया है। यह भी द्रष्टव्य है कि यही मन्त्र अथर्वसिरस उपनिषद और श्वेताश्वेतर उपनिषद् में रूद्र के लिए प्रयुक्त हुआ। भव और शर्व का भूतपति और पशुपति भी कहा गया है। पाँच प्रकार के पशुओं अर्थात् गायों, अश्वों, मनुष्यों और भेड़ों तथा अजों को पशुपति के अधिकार में बताया गया है। रूद्र को दिक्पाल के रूप में भी चित्रित किया गया है। उग्र को चारों दिशाओं तथा आकाश, पृथ्वी एवं अंतरिक्ष का स्वामी बताया गया है। एक सूक्त में प्रार्थना की गई है कि रूद्र व्याधियों, विषों और स्वर्गीय अग्नि को न फैलाए। भव को ईश तथा राजन कहा गया है। एक स्थान में कहा गया है कि भव, शर्व और रूद्र जो पशुपति है, सदैव (सदाशिव) कल्याणकारी हैं। यह भी कहा गया है कि देवताओं ने बाण चलाने वाले भव को व्रात्यों का रक्षक बनाया और पूर्व दिशा का स्वामी बनाया। शर्व को दक्षिण दिशा का स्वामी बनाया। रूद्र को पृथ्वी लोक का स्वामी बनाया। महादेव को दिव्यलोक का स्वामी बनाया। ईशान को अन्तरिक्ष बनाया।

ResumenSe presenta en este artí­culo un análisis de El Tají­n, dios principal de los totonacos contemporáneos, en su relación con otras deidades del panteón mesoamericano. Se revisa su relación con Tláloc, dios del agua y la lluvia, y con Quetzalcóatl, dios del viento, así­ como la versión dual de estos dos dioses; se revisa así­ mismo su relación con el dios Huracán, de larga tradición circuncaribe, y con su versión mesoamericana en Tezcatlipoca: ”El espejo humeante”, análoga a El Tají­n: ”El poderoso humo”. Se emplean en la discusión datos arqueológicos, iconográficos, lingüí­sticos y etnográficos. Este es solo un breve ensayo de un problema poco abordado y que aún requiere mayor trabajo de investigación e interpretación.Palabras clave: El Tají­n, deidades mesoamericanas, Tláloc, Quetzalcóatl, Tezcatlipoca.AbstractIn this work, I present an analysis of El Tají­n -The main deity of the contemporary Totonac people - and it´s relation with other deities of Mesoamerican pantheon. I revise it´s relation to two gods: Tláloc, the god of the water and rain; and Quetzalcóatl, good of the wind. As well as the dual version of these two deities. It´s relation with the god Huracán, of long circum-caribean tradition, is also revised, and with it´s Mesoamerican version: Tezcatlipoca, ”El espejo humeante” (”The smoky mirror”), analogous to Tají­n, ”El poderoso humo” (The powerful smoke). In this discussion, I make use of archeological, iconographic, linguistic and ethnographic dat. This is just a brief essay on a little-addressed problem, which requires more research and interpretation work.Keywords: El Tají­n, Mesoamerican deities, Tláloc, Quetzalcóatl, Tezcatlipoca. [1] Licenciado en Antropologí­a Social por la Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Iztapalapa. Maestro en Ciencias en Agroecosistemas Tropicales por el Colegio de Posgraduados. Doctor en Estudios Mesoamericanos por la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Investigador del Centro Veracruz del Instituto Nacional de Antropologí­a e Historia.

That he marks the fall of every sparrow was duly considered by Brother Clothren as he keyed the designation "Denumerable" into the blank spaces following the prompt CARDINALITY? blinking in pale violet on his workscope. A fitting designation, he thought for the paternal man-god of an insignificant water planet-- a god beset on one hand by the most ordinary of human emotions and on the other serving as the crux of impenetrable mysteries. By any measure though, this Yahweh was a small figure indeed compared to deities of higher cardinality such as the ineffably beautiful Aleph Three god of the aboreals of Ka'a Ntg whose very name can only be approximated by a metaphorical conjunction of the galactagrams for "starwheel", "phoenix", and "beyond all attributes". For countless millennia the graceful metallocrete arch of Brother Clothren's Order of Remembrance has lifted its motto in archaic Fa'an into the dazzling night sky of Kletha. Etched on crystal lithium, its sinuous script reads, "Choose as gods might choose, those few things to be honored with perpetual remembrance." The surprising proof of Meinong's Conjecture in ages past had established the existence of non-intersecting realms of deities as irrefutable fact - deities wrought into existence solely by the collective belief and adoration of the worshipful races. Although Brother Clothrens's ancient order originally strove to record the detailed history of each such race, such aspirations proved too daunting owing to their unexpected large numbers. As a result, an early Abbot -- the stately Haa'tan - reluctantly issued a Standing Order limiting historical accounts to the quintessence of each race -- namely, a detailed account of its gods. In this, the Abbott was surely right, thought Brother Clothren recalling one of Haa'tan's more popular quotes, "Tell me about your gods and I will reveal the inmost secrets of your heart". Nevertheless, even Brother Clothren in his chosen vocation of Archeotheist, sometimes murmured at preserving such a minuscule part of the vast and glorious history of vanished races while consigning the large measure of their past to certain oblivion. Nevertheless, like other members of his ancient Order, each night the meek and obedient Brother Clothren dreamed the eventless white dream of the pure. For the account of the Terrene god a final page still remained. Brother Clothren continued keying in text, "...that such a simple contingency could spell the demise of a deity of his cardinality was not only inconceivable to his devotees but also beyond the ken of the very deity who would himself succumb as its victim..." Brother Clothren paused for a moment contemplating the deep mystery of divine existences then continued,. . ."On April 7, 1984 (by local solar reckoning) in Estill Fork, Alabama, a solitary sparrow alighted erratically on a redbud tree in Otis Farnborough's side yard. Underneath, a strutting rooster in vivid metallic hues imperiously herded three clucking hens scratching for grubs. The sparrow had flown south from Tennessee into the mountain fastness of the upper Paint Rock Valley in North Alabama where it had contracted aviomycosis and was terminally ill. There on Otis Farnborough's redbud tree its long journey ended as its eyes glazed over, its body spasmed, and then, releasing its grip, the dead bird toppled headlong into a clutch of startled hens. At that precise moment, the ceaseless purview of the ever-watchful Yahweh was exceeded and he became zero in all his parts signifying his total extinction."

In ancient literature and religion, Hercules—in common with many other deities—is frequently associated with particular trees or types of tree. There are tales connecting him with the wild olive, laurel and oak, but his most prominent and frequent arboreal link is with the poplar (populus Alcidae gratissima, ‘the poplar is most delightful to Hercules’, Verg. Ecl. 7.61), an association mentioned twice in the Hercules-heavy first half of Aeneid Book 8 (276, 286). The festival of Hercules celebrated by Evander and his people takes place just outside the city within a ‘great grove’ (Aen. 8.103–4) of unspecified species, in an area surrounded by less defined expanses of trees. Trees crowd the banks of the Tiber, leaning out for wonder as Aeneas’ fleet passes by (Aen. 8.91–2) and soon uariisque teguntur | arboribus, uiridisque secant placido aequore siluas (‘[the Trojans] are covered by different trees and cut their way through green woods on the calm water’, Aen. 8.95–6); looking up through the sacrificial smoke on the altars, Pallas and his friends are initially frightened ut celsas uidere rates atque inter opacum | adlabi nemus (‘as they saw the tall ships glide towards them through the dark grove’, Aen. 8.107–8). When Evander later shows Aeneas around, the emphasis on trees recurs, with the huge grove destined to become Romulus’ Asylum (Aen. 8.342), and the bramble- and god-haunted woods of the Capitol (Aen. 8.347–54). Later, Aeneas and his men camp in a vast grove of Silvanus, as Venus approaches to bring her son his new shield (Aen. 8.597–607).

<em>Environment is all persistent. It is the region of our existence. It envelops us. Since, we know that Nature, mother of human beings, has blessed us with a beautiful environment and as per environmental determinism, environment decides human lifestyle. There is a reciprocal relationship between the mankind and the environment. Environment fulfills our all needs but due to our greed, we harm it in many ways. In the name of so called development human has indulged himself in various activities like deforestation, air pollution, soil pollution, water pollution, global warming etc. which is leading towards environmental weakening. If we want to save ourselves, we must be sensitive towards environment. We can find various ways to respect our environment in Sanskrit literature. The Rigveda venerates deities like Mitra, Varuna, Indra, Maruts and Aditya, that are responsible for maintaining the requisite balance in the functioning of all entities of nature whether the mountains, lakes, heaven and earth, the forests or the waters. Yajurveda, which is one of the most valuable literature of sanskrit has been seen as great advocate of environmental protection. The meaning of Yajurveda describes a dynamic thing which travels in sky. Yajurveda advocates a great respect towards every component of environment.‘Om dayoh shanti rantriksham shantih, prithvi shanti raapah shantiroshdhayah shantih. Vanaspatayah shantirvishwe devah shanti brahm shantih, sarvam shantih shantirev shantih sa ma shantiredhi. Om shantih shantih shantih.’¹ means “May peace radiate there in the whole sky as well as in the vast ethereal space everywhere. May peace reign all over this earth, in water and in all herbs, trees and creepers. May peace flow over the whole universe. May peace bein the supreme being brahman. And may there always exist in all peace and peace alone. Aum peace, peace, and peace to us and all begins. The sages of the Atharva Veda chanted ‘what of thee I dig out, let that quickly grow over, let me not hit thy vital, or thy heart.’ This means that one can take from the earth and atmosphere only so much as one puts back to them. In present days, this is considered one of the most important principles of sustainable development. The purity and quality of water has been highlighted in the Atharva Veda. It is mentioned that pure water cures many ailments and it acts as preventer of the diseases which are not yet contracted. Atharva Veda also speaks about the protection of wildlife and domestic cattle. The cattle were meant to adorn the ceremony but not for sacrifice.”²When we take bath we worship river and respect this source of water as "Gange cha Yamune chaiva,Saraswathi, Godhaavari, "Taambraparni "Narmathe,Zindhu,Kaveri Jalesmin Zannithim Kuru." In our Vedas every component of environment has been described as valuable and precious things for our existence. It also draws our attention on the philosophy of sustainable development.</em>

Jashore, a renowned district of Bangladesh whose has own ancient tradition and heritage which is surrounded by the various rivers, forests and various folk religious communities who lead their life like the heart of rivers. The Bhairav, the Chitra, the Begobati, the Kaputakhya, the Icchamati, the Mukteswaree, the Nabagonga, the Kumar, the Harihar, the Kobadak, the Mathabhanga, the Afra Khal, the Khatki, the Fatki, and the Bhadra are the ancient rivers of Jashore. The rivers have changed their own speed and path by the rules of eternal geonatural world and in these ways, watery, salty and sweet areas people follow the extraordinary style of religious beliefs which focus on the rivers and religious beliefs which focus on the rivers and religious paramount where the deities and entities of the people make up a resourceful religious culture. Like rivers and religions have changed their own facets and beliefs. The World religions are divided into two divisions. They are: (a) State recognized religions and (b) Folk religions. There is a good number of discrimination between state-recognized religions and Folk religions. The state-recognized religions are in two sections. They are: (a) Abrahamic religions and (b) Indian religions. Folk religions are community-based religions that may be national and international. Here will be shown about state-recognized were their women in what is how. The reviewer attempts to examine between state-recognized religions and folk religions where both of two, how to treat to the women.

A la vista de como se han producido la mayoría de los hallazgos analizados y según se desprende de las fuentes escritas, diríamos que en la península ibérica y sobre todo en la parte Occidental se realizaron en la Antigüedad ofrendas monetales a divinidades de las aguas y fundamentalmente, por las referencias que tenemos, a las divinidades de las fuentes termales. Únicamente nos queda la duda de si la fuente de Peña Cutral en Retortillo (Reinosa, Santander) es termal o no, pues si no lo fuese sería el único hallazgo dentro de una fuente no termal. Se podría entender, con ciertos reparos en algún caso, que también se hicieron arrojándolas al curso de los ríos, depositándolas en la orilla y lanzándolas a las charcas o pantanos. Por otro lado, las monedas que se han encontrado en las fuentes, en contraposición con las recogidas en los ríos, suelen estar en muy mala conservación, hasta el punto de que muchas se desintegran en las manos al estar muy atacadas por los ácidos. A juzgar por algunos de los hallazgos, se podría creer que las ofrendas más valiosas se procuró depositarlas en lugares seguros o resguardados, como es el caso de la Hermida, de la Fuente de El Sarso, del Balneario de Fortuna y podríamos recordar también el hallazgo del conocido depósito de Oñate. De acuerdo con la cronología de las monedas y según sus resultados estadísticos, la costumbre o rito de depositar o arrojar «stips» a las aguas, principalmente termales, se practicó en la península Ibérica más intensamente entre los siglos i a. C. al ii d. C. Este período coincide con el momento que más estuvo en boga el uso de las aguas termales, a juzgar por lo que se trató el tema en las fuentes escritas. Al mismo tiempo que se percibe esta moda en la vida diaria, pues Suetonio nos dice que Augusto, a pesar de que por su naturaleza enfermiza no abusaba de los baños, sin embargo, cuando necesitaba templar los nervios tomaba baños de mar o las aguas termales de Albula ^'. De Nerón nos dice que cuando reconstruyó su casa en Roma después del incendio, la famosa domus áurea, hizo llegar a las salas de baño agua de mar y de Albula *"*. Por las aras recogidas en las fuentes termales, sabemos que las divinidades que más se sintieron favorecidas con estas ofrendas monetales fueron las Ninfas y las aguas que más beneficios causaron o por las que se sintieron más agradecidos los visitantes fueron las de aguas sulfuradas- cálcicas, es decir, las que se recomiendan principalmente para los problemas de dermatosis herpética, neurosis y catarros crónicos de las vías respiratorias ^^ sin que ésto signifique que hubiese alguna relación entre las cualidades de las aguas y las divinidades a quienes se dedicaron las aras. Finalmente, conviene señalar que son éstas las únicas conclusiones a las que nos atrevemos a llegar partiendo de las informaciones que tenemos. No obstante, deseamos que en un futuro se produzcan más hallazgos en lugares tan particulares como los señalados, fuentes, ríos y lagos, que nos permitan confirmar o desmentir con más precisión nuestras hipótesis. Para que ésto suceda animo desde aquí a los arqueólogos para que busquen este tipo de yacimientos y tengan en cuenta sus ofrendas, tratándolas con cuidado por su mal estado, y no tardando en darlas a conocer como tales.This paper deals with the finding of thirty one cases of possible monetary offerings to the divinities in the waters of the Spanish península. The largest number of cases involve springs, which make up 74.19 % of the total, of which 78.26 % are hyperthermal springs with temperatures ranging between 15 and 70 C. Most of these springs are to be found ín the West of Spaín. They are mainly connected with the Nymphis, except in the North West, where they are offered up to Apollini, to judge from the devotional alters which can be sean. It would appear, from the coins collected, that the custom of throwing stipes to the deities of the springs was mostly practiced between the 1st century B.C. and the 2nd century A. D., although a slight increase can be seen towards the middie of the 4th century A. D. The thermal springs which benefitted nnost from the profits of these offerings were those with suifuric-caicic waters.

Our culture abhors the world.Yet Quicksand is swallowing the duellists; the river is threatening the fighter: earth, waters and climate, the mute world, the voiceless things once placed as a decor surrounding the usual spectacles, all those things that never interested anyone, from now on thrust themselves brutally and without warning into our schemes and manoeuvres (Michel Serres, The Natural Contract, p 3). When Michel Serres describes culture's abhorrence of the world in the opening pages of The Natural Contract he draws our attention to the sidelining of nature in histories and theories that have sought to describe Western culture. As Serres argues, cultural histories are quite often built on the debates and struggles of humanity, which are largely held apart from their natural surroundings, as if on a stage, "purified of things" (3). But, as he is at pains to point out, human activity and conflict always take place within a natural milieu, a space of quicksand, swelling rivers, shifting earth, and atmospheric turbulence. Recently, via the potential for vast environmental change, what was once thought of as a staid “nature” has reasserted itself within culture. In this paper I explore how Serres’s positioning of nature can be understood amid new communication systems, which, via the apparent dematerialization of messages, seems to have further removed culture from nature. From here, I focus on a set of artworks that work against this division, reformulating the connection between information, a topic usually considered in relation to media and anthropic communication (and something about which Serres too has a great deal to say), and nature, an entity commonly considered beyond human contrivance. In particular, I explore how information visualisation and sonification has been used to give a new sense of materiality to the atmosphere, repotentialising the air as a natural and informational entity. The Natural Contract argues for the legal legitimacy of nature, a natural contract similar in standing to Rousseau’s social contract. Serres’ss book explores the history and notion of a “legal person”, arguing for a linking of the scientific view of the world and the legal visions of social life, where inert objects and living beings are considered within the same legal framework. As such The Natural Contract does not deal with ecology per-se, but instead focuses on an argument for the inclusion of nature within law (Serres, “A Return” 131). In a drastic reconfiguring of the subject/object relationship, Serres explains how the space that once existed as a backdrop for human endeavour now seems to thrust itself directly into history. "They (natural events) burst in on our culture, which had never formed anything but a local, vague, and cosmetic idea of them: nature" (Serres, The Natural Contract 3). In this movement, nature does not simply take on the role of a new object to be included within a world still dominated by human subjects. Instead, human beings are understood as intertwined with a global system of turbulence that is both manipulated by them and manipulates them. Taking my lead from Serres’s book, in this paper I begin to explore the disconnections and reconnections that have been established between information and the natural environment. While I acknowledge that there is nothing natural about the term “nature” (Harman 251), I use the term to designate an environment constituted by the systematic processes of the collection of entities that are neither human beings nor human crafted artefacts. As the formation of cultural systems becomes demarcated from these natural objects, the scene is set for the development of culturally mediated concepts such as “nature” and “wilderness,” as entities untouched and unspoilt by cultural process (Morton). On one side of the divide the complex of communication systems is situated, on the other is situated “nature”. The restructuring of information flows due to developments in electronic communication has ostensibly removed messages from the medium of nature. Media is now considered within its own ecology (see Fuller; Strate) quite separate from nature, except when it is developed as media content (see Cubitt; Murray; Heumann). A separation between the structures of media ecologies and the structures of natural ecologies has emerged over the history of electronic communication. For instance, since the synoptic media theory of McLuhan it has been generally acknowledged that the shift from script to print, from stone to parchment, and from the printing press to more recent developments such as the radio, telephone, television, and Web2.0, have fundamentally altered the structure and effects of human relationships. However, these developments – “the extensions of man” (McLuhan)— also changed the relationship between society and nature. Changes in communications technology have allowed people to remain dispersed, as ideas, in the form of electric currents or pulses of light travel vast distances and in diverse directions, with communication no longer requiring human movement across geographic space. Technologies such as the telegraph and the radio, with their ability to seemingly dematerialize the media of messages, reformulated the concept of communication into a “quasi-physical connection” across the obstacles of time and space (Clarke, “Communication” 132). Prior to this, the natural world itself was the medium through which information was passed. Rather than messages transmitted via wires, communication was associated with the transport of messages through the world via human movement, with the materiality of the medium measured in the time it took to cover geographic space. The flow of messages followed trade flows (Briggs and Burke 20). Messages moved along trails, on rail, over bridges, down canals, and along shipping channels, arriving at their destination as information. More recently however, information, due to its instantaneous distribution and multiplication across space, seems to have no need for nature as a medium. Nature has become merely a topic for information, as media content, rather than as something that takes part within the information system itself. The above example illustrates a separation between information exchange and the natural environment brought about by a set of technological developments. As Serres points out, the word “media” is etymologically related to the word “milieu”. Hence, a theory of media should be always related to an understanding of the environment (Crocker). But humans no longer need to physically move through the natural world to communicate, ideas can move freely from region to region, from air-conditioned room to air-conditioned room, relatively unimpeded by natural forces or geographic distance. For a long time now, information exchange has not necessitated human movement through the natural environment and this has consequences for how the formation of culture and its location in (or dislocation from) the natural world is viewed. A number of artists have begun questioning the separation between media and nature, particularly concerning the materiality of air, and using information to provide new points of contact between media and the atmosphere (for a discussion of the history of ecoart see Wallen). In Eclipse (2009) (fig. 1) for instance, an internet based work undertaken by the collective EcoArtTech, environmental sensing technology and online media is used experimentally to visualize air pollution. EcoArtTech is made up of the artist duo Cary Peppermint and Leila Nadir and since 2005 they have been inquiring into the relationship between digital technology and the natural environment, particularly regarding concepts such as “wilderness”. In Eclipse, EcoArtTech garner photographs of American national parks from social media and photo sharing sites. Air quality data gathered from the nearest capital city is then inputted into an algorithm that visibly distorts the image based on the levels of particle pollution detected in the atmosphere. The photographs that circulate on photo sharing sites such as Flickr—photographs that are usually rather banal in their adherence to a history of wilderness photography—are augmented by the environmental pollution circulating in nearby capital cities. Figure 1: EcoArtTech, Eclipse (detail of screenshot), 2009 (Internet-based work available at:http://turbulence.org/Works/eclipse/) The digital is often associated with the clean transmission of information, as packets of data move from a server, over fibre optic cables, to be unpacked and re-presented on a computer's screen. Likewise, the photographs displayed in Eclipse are quite often of an unspoilt nature, containing no errors in their exposure or focus (most probably because these wilderness photographs were taken with digital cameras). As the photographs are overlaid with information garnered from air quality levels, the “unspoilt” photograph is directly related to pollution in the natural environment. In Eclipse the background noise of “wilderness,” the pollution in the air, is reframed as foreground. “We breathe background noise…Background noise is the ground of our perception, absolutely uninterrupted, it is our perennial sustenance, the element of the software of all our logic” (Serres, Genesis 7). Noise is activated in Eclipse in a similar way to Serres’s description, as an indication of the wider milieu in which communication takes place (Crocker). Noise links the photograph and its transmission not only to the medium of the internet and the glitches that arise as information is circulated, but also to the air in the originally photographed location. In addition to noise, there are parallels between the original photographs of nature gleaned from photo sharing sites and Serres’s concept of a history that somehow stands itself apart from the effects of ongoing environmental processes. By compartmentalising the natural and cultural worlds, both the historiography that Serres argues against and the wilderness photograph produces a concept of nature that is somehow outside, behind, or above human activities and the associated matter of noise. Eclipse, by altering photographs using real-time data, puts the still image into contact with the processes and informational outputs of nature. Air quality sensors detect pollution in the atmosphere and code these atmospheric processes into computer readable information. The photograph is no longer static but is now open to continual recreation and degeneration, dependent on the coded value of the atmosphere in a given location. A similar materiality is given to air in a public work undertaken by Preemptive Media, titled Areas Immediate Reading (AIR) (fig. 2). In this project, Preemptive Media, made up of Beatriz da Costa, Jamie Schulte and Brooke Singer, equip participants with instruments for measuring air quality as they walked around New York City. The devices monitor the carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx) or ground level ozone (O3) levels that are being breathed in by the carrier. As Michael Dieter has pointed out in his reading of the work, the application of sensing technology by Preemptive Media is in distinct contrast to the conventional application of air quality monitoring, which usually takes the form of extremely high resolution located devices spread over great distances. These larger air monitoring networks tend to present the value garnered from a large expanse of the atmosphere that covers individual cities or states. The AIR project, in contrast, by using small mobile sensors, attempts to put people in informational contact with the air that they are breathing in their local and immediate time and place, and allows them to monitor the small parcels of atmosphere that surround other users in other locations (Dieter). It thus presents many small and mobile spheres of atmosphere, inhabited by individuals as they move through the city. In AIR we see the experimental application of an already developed technology in order to put people on the street in contact with the atmospheres that they are moving through. It gives a new informational form to the “vast but invisible ocean of air that surrounds us and permeates us” (Ihde 3), which in this case is given voice by a technological apparatus that converts the air into information. The atmosphere as information becomes less of a vague background and more of a measurable entity that ingresses into the lives and movements of human users. The air is conditioned by information; the turbulent and noisy atmosphere has been converted via technology into readable information (Connor 186-88). Figure 2: Preemptive Media, Areas Immediate Reading (AIR) (close up of device), 2011 Throughout his career Serres has developed a philosophy of information and communication that may help us to reframe the relationship between the natural and cultural worlds (see Brown). Conventionally, the natural world is understood as made up of energy and matter, with exchanges of energy and the flows of biomass through food webs binding ecosystems together (DeLanda 120-1). However, the tendencies and structures of natural systems, like cultural systems, are also dependent on the communication of information. It is here that Serres provides us with a way to view natural and cultural systems as connected by a flow of energy and information. He points out that in the wake of Claude Shannon’s famous Mathematical Theory of Communication it has been possible to consider the relationship between information and thermodynamics, at least in Shannon’s explanation of noise as entropy (Serres, Hermes74). For Serres, an ecosystem can be conceptualised as an informational and energetic system: “it receives, stores, exchanges, and gives off both energy and information in all forms, from the light of the sun to the flow of matter which passes through it (food, oxygen, heat, signals)” (Serres, Hermes 74). Just as we are related to the natural world based on flows of energy— as sunlight is converted into energy by plants, which we in turn convert into food— we are also bound together by flows of information. The task is to find new ways to sense this information, to actualise the information, and imagine nature as more than a welter of data and the air as more than background. If we think of information in broad ranging terms as “coded values of the output of a process” (Losee 254), then we see that information and the environment—as a setting that is produced by continual and energetic processes—are in constant contact. After all, humans sense information from the environment all the time; we constantly decode the coded values of environmental processes transmitted via the atmosphere. I smell a flower, I hear bird songs, and I see the red glow of a sunset. The process of the singing bird is coded as vibrations of air particles that knock against my ear drum. The flower is coded as molecules in the atmosphere enter my nose and bind to cilia. The red glow is coded as wavelengths from the sun are dispersed in the Earth’s atmosphere and arrive at my eye. Information, of course, does not actually exist as information until some observing system constructs it (Clarke, “Information” 157-159). This observing system as we see the sunset, hear the birds, or smell the flower involves the atmosphere as a medium, along with our sense organs and cognitive and non-cognitive processes. The molecules in the atmosphere exist independently of our sense of them, but they do not actualise as information until they are operationalised by the observational system. Prior to this, information can be thought of as noise circulating within the atmosphere. Heinz Von Foester, one of the key figures of cybernetics, states “The environment contains no information. The environment is as it is” (Von Foester in Clarke, “Information” 157). Information, in this model, actualises only when something in the world causes a change to the observational system, as a difference that makes a difference (Bateson 448-466). Air expelled from a bird’s lungs and out its beak causes air molecules to vibrate, introducing difference into the atmosphere, which is then picked up by my ear and registered as sound, informing me that a bird is nearby. One bird song is picked up as information amid the swirling noise of nature and a difference in the air makes a difference to the observational system. It may be useful to think of the purpose of information as to control action and that this is necessary “whenever the people concerned, controllers as well as controlled, belong to an organised social group whose collective purpose is to survive and prosper” (Scarrott 262). Information in this sense operates the organisation of groups. Using this definition rooted in cybernetics, we see that information allows groups, which are dependent on certain control structures based on the sending and receiving of messages through media, to thrive and defines the boundaries of these groups. We see this in a flock of birds, for instance, which forms based on the information that one bird garners from the movements of the other birds in proximity. Extrapolating from this, if we are to live included in an ecological system capable of survival, the transmission of information is vital. But the form of the information is also important. To communicate, for example, one entity first needs to recognise that the other is speaking and differentiate this information from the noise in the air. Following Clarke and Von Foester, an observing system needs to be operational. An art project that gives aesthetic form to environmental processes in this vein—and one that is particularly concerned with the co-agentive relation between humans and nature—is Reiko Goto and Tim Collin’s Plein Air (2010) (fig. 3), an element in their ongoing Eden 3 project. In this work a technological apparatus is wired to a tree. This apparatus, which references the box easels most famously used by the Impressionists to paint ‘en plein air’, uses sensing technology to detect the tree’s responses to the varying CO2 levels in the atmosphere. An algorithm then translates this into real time piano compositions. The tree’s biological processes are coded into the voice of a piano and sensed by listeners as aesthetic information. What is at stake in this work is a new understanding of atmospheres as a site for the exchange of information, and an attempt to resituate the interdependence of human and non-human entities within an experimental aesthetic system. As we breathe out carbon dioxide—both through our physiological process of breathing and our cultural processes of polluting—trees breath it in. By translating these biological processes into a musical form, Collins and Gotto’s work signals a movement from a process of atmospheric exchange to a digital process of sensing and coding, the output of which is then transmitted through the atmosphere as sound. It must be mentioned that within this movement from atmospheric gas to atmospheric music we are not listening to the tree alone. We are listening to a much more complex polyphony involving the components of the digital sensing technology, the tree, the gases in the atmosphere, and the biological (breathing) and cultural processes (cars, factories and coal fired power stations) that produce these gases. Figure 3: Reiko Goto and Tim Collins, Plein Air, 2010 As both Don Ihde and Steven Connor have pointed out, the air that we breathe is not neutral. It is, on the contrary, given its significance in technology, sound, and voice. Taking this further, we might understand sensing technology as conditioning the air with information. This type of air conditioning—as information alters the condition of air—occurs as technology picks up, detects, and makes sensible phenomena in the atmosphere. While communication media such as the telegraph and other electronic information distribution systems may have distanced information from nature, the sensing technology experimentally applied by EcoArtTech, Preeemptive Media, and Goto and Collins, may remind us of the materiality of air. These technologies allow us to connect to the atmosphere; they reformulate it, converting it to information, giving new form to the coded processes in nature.AcknowledgmentAll images reproduced with the kind permission of the artists. References Bateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972. Briggs, Asa, and Peter Burke. A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet. Maden: Polity Press, 2009. 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