How India Went from Earth-Circle to Earth-Globe (And Back Again)

BY: MAYESVARA DASA

Jul 15, 2021 — IRELAND (SUN) —

In this paper we shall argue that the ancient Vedic conception of the Earth known as Bhu-mandala (literally "Earth-circle") was the original and dominant conception of the Earth that existed in Indian society right up until the nineteenth century, whereafter it was displaced by the Western Earth-globe idea that was introduced en masse via the British colonial system of education/indoctrination. In this paper we intend to show that the seemingly innocuous replacement of the Vedic 'Earth-circle' for the apparently more scientifically based 'Earth-globe', was actually one of the major factors that contributed to the rapid decline of spiritual India into the present cultural milieu of secular scientism, atheism, and impersonalism. Conversely, we assert that the reappearance of the original Vedic Earth-circle concept (not only in India but through-out the world) is part of a spiritual revolution that will radically change our perception of the Earth, as well as our purpose, activity, and destiny upon it.

In the following paper we shall refer at length to a book by Sumathi Ramaswamy called Terrestrial Lessons, The Conquest of the World as Globe which was published in 2017 by the University of Chicago Press. Sumathi Ramaswamy's book is a timely history of the introduction of the globe into India, beginning with Portuguese Jesuits in the sixteenth century and culminating in the British educational system established throughout India in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. For those who argue that the flat-Earth idea is without a historical or spiritual basis, the following research from Sumathi Ramaswamy clearly show that the Puranic flat-Earth concept was the indigenous and prevalent idea in India until relatively recently times.

In Part Two of this paper we shall look at a question that is also discussed in Sumathi Ramaswamy's book, as to whether certain ancient Indian astronomers had conceived of a spherical Earth even before India's encounter with the European powers. Regardless of the arguments for or against this claim, since astronomers like Aryabhata and Brahmagupta could not support the idea of a spherical Earth with reference to the Puranas, their speculations regarding the shape, size, and situation of the Earth were only ostensible, nominal, and peripheral ideas that did not have any impact on mainstream Hindu beliefs. This is not to say that the astronomers lacked influence in other aspects, but it is a fact that up until the nineteenth century, the orthodox Hindu population of India followed the Puranic teachings which describe the Earth to be a gigantic circular plane held by Ananta-sesha. If the Earth-globe concept had been part of ancient Hindu beliefs, we would have found the idea presented by the original Vedic rishis like Srila Vyasadeva, and also discussed by later acharyas like Shankaracharya, Ramanuja, Madhvacharya, and Sri Krishna Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and his contemporary followers; however, this is not the case. We would also find depictions of a spherical Earth in the sacred art, sculpture, and other cultural artifacts of pre-colonial India, but again such instances are not to be found. What we do find are simply fallacious attempts to superimpose the modern Earth-globe concept onto these ancient Vedic artifacts. We have discussed the issue in a previous paper called Does Hinduism subscribe to the Flat-Earth? Links to parts 1-5 of this paper can be found here.

"BACK AGAIN" TO THE FLAT EARTH?

We ask the reader to please bear in mind that by the term "flat-Earth" we do not mean a flattened version of the so-called globe floating in space; we refer rather to the Puranic description of the gigantic circular Earth known as Bhu-mandala. The term 'flat' is not intended to mean a landscape devoid of mountains and valleys, but simply to indicate a landscape that continues along a horizontal plane rather than one that curves around a sphere. As opposed to the modern images of the Earth which show the continents and oceans to be wrapped around the surface of a globe supposedly measuring 24,900 miles in circumference, the Puranas by contrast describe the Earth's landscape to be a continuous horizontal plane with an overall diameter of 500 million yojanas (4 billion miles). The area called Bharata-varsha (the Sanskrit name for our local part of the Earth) is thus not described as an independent planet floating in space (the so-called Earth-globe) but rather as a small part of a much larger circular landscape. Epics such as Srimad Bhagavatam (Bhagavata Purana), Mahabharata and Ramayana provide detailed descriptions and histories of these lands and civilizations. In several papers that can be found at OurVedicUniverse.com we have discussed some of the details of the greater Earth as they are described in these texts.

The title of our paper How India Went from Earth-circle to Earth-Globe (And Back Again) may sound not only presumptuous, but also incendiary to all those Hindus who are schooled in the modern so-called 'scientific' world-view, and who may not appreciate the idea that India's Hindus have resorted back to the much maligned flat-Earth idea. The suggestion that India's Hindus have 'returned' to a flat-Earth belief is first of all startling to the modern ear firstly because modern Indians have little or no idea that until relatively recently (nineteenth century) most Hindus in India believed the Earth was a circular plane held by Ananta-sesha as the Puranas describe. Secondly, the idea that India's Hindus have "returned", "reverted" or "relapsed" (depending on one's point of view) to a flat-Earth concept also seems highly presumptuous simply because there is seemingly no evidence of a revival of this idea in modern India. Most Indians whether they be they Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, or Buddhists, have come to accept (like everyone else in the world) that the Earth is a globe floating in space; indeed it is a commonly accepted belief that the entire Earth has been successfully explored, mapped, and photographed from space, and is therefore decidedly round like a ball, as opposed to being round like a circle.

Be that as it may, as a result of the efforts of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada to promote Krishna conscious throughout the world, India is quietly undergoing a renewed and growing interest in ancient Vedic cosmology. Indeed, in the holy land of Mayapur in West Bengal, India, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) has almost completed the construction of the largest Vedic temple and planetarium in the world. This enormous building known as the Temple of Vedic Planetarium (TOVP) is due for completion in 2022.

The plan to construct the Temple of Vedic Planetarium (TOVP) was first conceived by Srila Prabhupada in 1975 just after he had translated and published the Fifth Canto of the Srimad Bhagavatam (Bhagavata Purana). The Fifth canto of the Srimad Bhagavatam contains an elaborate description of the universe with distances and directions to its various inhabited realms, and it was Srila Prabhupada's intention to present the cosmology of Srimad Bhagavatam at the Temple Of Vedic Planetarium in order to counteract the claims of materialistic science regarding the origin and nature of life and the universe.

Srila Prabhupada inspecting the newly published edition of the Fifth Canto of Srimad Bhagavatam (Johannesburg, October 1975). The millions of visitors that are expected to visit this holy place of pilgrimage at Mayapur will certainly result in an exponential increase of interest in Vedic cosmology not only in India, but also through-out the world. ISKCON's international membership will certainly ensure that Vedic cosmology is promulgated in every country of our known Earth. I say 'known Earth' deliberately because the Srimad Bhagavatam itself, as already mentioned, describes a much larger Earth plane. Though most of ISKCON's members are as conditioned as everyone else by the Earth globe ideology, and have also yet to come to terms with this radical new concept of the Earth, the Srimad Bhagavatam itself unquestionably describes the Earth to be a gigantic circular landscape. Despite attempts by certain members of ISKCON to reconcile or merge the modern Earth globe idea with the original Bhu-mandala concept, all attempts to merge these two irreconcilable world-views have been shown to be fallacious, and contradictory to the original Vedic model. The reader can refer to a number of debates on this issue posted on OurVedicUniverse.com.

With the opening of the Temple of Vedic Planetarium in 2022, members of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness will have to eventually face the fact (as taught by Sukadeva Goswami in the Srimad Bhagavatam), that Sri-Krishna created the Earth not in the form of a globe that is floating in space, but rather in the form of a circular landscape that is held by His expansion known as Ananta-sesha. With regards to the title of our paper, How India went from Flat-Earth to Globe (And Back Again), the expression 'back again' is more of a prediction about the future of Vedic cosmology in India (and the rest of the world) based on events that are now being set in motion. The imminent display of the Bhu-mandala at the Temple of Vedic Planetarium means that the Vedic flat-Earth is certainly 'back again'. The image below shows a depiction of the Earth-circle (Bhu-mandala) with seven concentric islands and oceans as featured in a promotional video by the Temple of Vedic Planetarium. Our own area of the Earth is just one small speck on the cosmic-sized landscape of Bhu-mandala.

Though certain sectors of ISKCON may attempt to ignore, disguise, or obfuscate the fact that Bhu-mandala is a flat-Earth concept, as interest and knowledge of Vedic cosmology gradually increases, the details of the Earth in Srimad Bhagavatam will eventually surface and become apparent. In due course of time, sincere followers of the Vedic culture will come to understand that the globe has no scientific basis, and that images of the Earth from the so-called space agencies are nothing but an elaborate hoax that began with the fake Moon landing in 1969.

MATERIAL V SPIRITUAL WORLD-VIEWS

In the modern world it is generally assumed that 'science' has spectacularly triumphed over the so-called 'primitive' ideas found in ancient Holy books, and thus the reader may question the relevance of bringing up seemingly 'antiquated' cosmological ideas such as those found in the Vedic Puranas (histories). We raise the teachings of the Puranas as it is the spiritual v materialistic world-view that we are particularly concerned with here.

The Puranic description of the shape, size, and situation of the Earth (Bhu-mandala) does not correlate with the size and shape of the modern Earth globe, nor does the description of Bharata-varsha (which is just one part of the massive Bhu-mandala) compare in any way to the conception of the Earth as an independent planet floating in dark space. The difference in Vedic and Western conceptions of the Earth results, of course, in a spectacular clash between the spiritual and material world-views. The empiricists may argue that the Puranic description of Earth as a gigantic circular landscape with seven concentric shaped islands and oceans is all the proof we need to show that the speakers of the Puranas were unscientific, primitive, and imaginary, and that secular science with its telescopes, space-ships, and satellites has gotten the victory over the supposed word of God. But does the absence of a description of an Earth globe in Vedic scripture make the word of 'science' right and the word of God wrong? Not at all! Indeed the question can be turned back on the empiricists—since many scientific experiments demonstrate that the Earth is a stationary, non-rotating, horizontal landscape, are we entitled to continue doubting or dismissing the teachings of the Puranas, or are we obliged to start questioning the so-called science supporting the Earth globe ideology?

Alarming as it may sound to many, the Puranic teaching that the landscape of the Earth forms a horizontal plane can be fully supported by scientific observations (that anyone can personally and easily perform) such as long range photography, laser tests, etc., which demonstrate the surface of the Earth to be a continual horizontal plane with no measurable curvature. Other experiments can further demonstrate that the Earth is stationary and non-rotating. Since it can be empirically demonstrated that the Earth is a stationary, non-rotating, and continuous horizontal plane, the present idea that the Earth is a globular-shaped planet that rotates on its axis whilst orbiting around the Sun can be not only disproved, but as a consequence, all of the deception behind the so-called space travel can be subsequently exposed, and the false construct of reality (the maya) that we live under can be completely shattered. Indeed, the more one looks into it, the more one will find that the fallacious 'scientific' basis upon which the Earth globe ideology is based is now in the process of falling apart. And as this false construct of reality continues to fall apart, one can no longer simply dismiss the Puranas description of other lands and civilizations beyond our known area of the Earth.

Why is the shape of the Earth an issue? The true shape and size of the Earth and it's relation to the rest of the universe is a fundamental topic because of the radically different world-views created by faith in either a material or spiritual science. The cosmology of Srimad Bhagavatam and other Puranas creates faith and devotion to Sri-Krishna, whereas the modern secular cosmology (which is a rejection of Vedic teachings) engenders a secular world-view that inevitably leads to materialism. Faith in Sri-Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and faith in the nature of Sri-Krishna's creation as revealed by the Lord Himself (via the Puranas) are very much connected and dependent as we shall see later. Loss of faith in the Vedic teachings has a natural consequence for one's faith in Sri-Krishna who is the origin and goal of all Vedic knowledge—vedais ca sarvair aham eva vedyo vedanta-krd veda-vid eva caham (Bg 15.15).

Sri Krishna therefore cautions:

"But ignorant and faithless persons who doubt the revealed scriptures do not attain God consciousness; they fall down. For the doubting soul there is happiness neither in this world nor in the next." (Bg 4.40)

Sri-Krishna's warning has implications not only for those atheists who outright reject the Vedic scriptures, but also for those who consider themselves as part of the Vedic culture, yet live within a non-Vedic construct of reality with regards to the nature of the Earth and greater universe. In the Bhagavad-gita, Sri Krishna states that He is the source of all creation:

aham sarvasya prabhavo mattah sarvam pravartate—"I am the source of all spiritual and material worlds. Everything emanates from Me" (Bg 10.8).

The description of the Earth (as Sri-Krishna created it) is given in chapters 16-26 of the Fifth Canto of Srimad Bhagavatam. Since the Earth-globe idea has no basis in the Srimad Bhagavatam or any other Purana, for that reason we consider its appearance in modern India to be a foreign, non-Vedic, un-scientific, untrue, and illusory conception of reality that greatly contributed to the spectacular decline of spiritual India, particularly as the idea began to spread in the nineteenth century and eventually became ingrained in the Indian psyche by the twentieth century. If sanatana-dharma is to be re-established in the world, it is incumbent upon all followers of Sri-Krishna to know, to accept, and to teach others, the shape, size, nature, and purpose of the Earth as Sri-Krishna has created it.

INDIA'S FIRST ENCOUNTERS WITH THE EUROPEAN GLOBE

In a previous set of papers called What Happened to Mother Earth? , we showed that it was not until the twentieth century that the sacred art and sculpture of India (depicting the pastime of Varaha lifting the Earth) began to show the Earth as a globe. Links to parts 1-5 of What Happened to Mother Earth? can be found here.

Prior to this period, the Earth is always depicted as a horizontal landscape, upon which sits an image of Bhu-devi, the personified Earth Goddess—emphasizing, of course, the Vedic belief in the divine, personal, and conscious nature of the Earth itself. The painting below from the late seventeenth century is one of many examples that shows Varaha holding the Earth in the form of a circular landscape with the Goddess of the Earth seated in the center.

We argued that the common depiction of a flat-Earth was consistent with the original Vedic teaching regarding the circular shape of the Earth (Bhu-mandala), and that it's appearance in sacred art and sculpture was an obvious indication that the followers of Vedic culture in India certainly did not think of the Earth as having the shape of a globe. We showed that images of Varaha lifting a globe-shaped Earth only began to appear and circulate in twentieth century India, primarily as a result of a conversion to foreign ideas regarding the shape of the Earth. In today's paper we will substantiate that claim by showing that as late as the nineteenth century, the orthodox brahmanas (the religious teachers of India) were still teaching the Bhu-mandala conception—much to the vexation of the British colonialists who were ruling India at this period, and who were intent on converting the Hindus to the modern 'scientific' world-view.

Sumathi Ramaswamy's book Terrestrial Lessons, The Conquest of the Earth as Globe was a surprising find in our research into the Vedic Earth. Though Sumathi Ramaswamy evidently accepts the modern conception of the Earth-globe, her research provides very important information regarding traditional Hindu beliefs about the shape and size of the Earth that existed right through the nineteenth and even into the twentieth century until such ideas were eventually displaced by the Earth-globe ideology that was systematically propagated through-out India by the British colonialists.

Sumathi Ramaswamy's history of the introduction of the globe into India begins with a brief discussion of the representatives of the Portuguese Empire who entered India in the sixteenth century bringing with them Catholic imagery such as Salvator Mundi (Jesus the saviour of the world) holding an earthly globe in his hand. Sumathi Ramaswamy writes:

"The Jesuit priest scholar in early modern India was an agent not just for the dissemination of Christian theological knowledge and Catholic images, but also of European science, including geographical and cartographic knowledge, itself going through a tremendous period of change under the pressure of the so-called Copernican revolution which these missionaries transmitted in varying ways to the new territories to which they migrated." (Terrestrial Lessons p 20)

Sumathi Ramaswamy notes that the Jesuits would gift the ruling powers with books of geography, globes, etc. What we find important about these exchanges mentioned by Sumathi Ramaswamy is the fact that Indian's were learning about the globe from Europeans, not that Europeans were learning about the globe from Indians. For those who argue that the globe concept was part of ancient Indian culture, we find on the contrary that the earliest records of exchanges between Europeans and Indians show that the globe was a novel concept to the Indian mind, and that the Indian conception of a flat-Earth with seven concentric shaped islands and oceans, and held by the thousand headed serpent Ananta-sesha was an abomination for the Christian Europeans. Sumathi Ramaswamy cites, for example, a letter from a Jesuit priest called Jacome (or Giacomo) Fenico (ca. 1558-1632) who presents several muddled versions of Vedic cosmological teachings, though notably that the Earth is flat:

They infer also that the Earth is not round but flat, as it appears so to the eye. And they are firmly convinced that the earth is supported on top of a bull's horn, and when he grows tired he moves the earth from one horn to another, and from that movement and change arise the earthquakes. O what a lot of errors on reason of a false first principle…A certain Brahmin told me…there exist different opinions [on the fable of the bull supporting the earth]: some say that the earth rests upon the horn of a bull, while others (whose opinion is looked upon as a more probable one) say on the back of the cobra Ananta; and when I asked him, "Well, and upon what does the cobra Ananta support itself?" he answered me, "On the back of a tortoise." And, pray, upon what does the tortoise rest?" He answered, "On top of eight elephants." Well, and those eight elephants?" But then he smiled and told him not to ask him any more, as he did not know how to answer. (Terrestrial Lessons, cited p 21)

[Please note that the references to all of the original documents cited can be found in the footnotes at the back of Sumathi Ramaswamy's book. For convenience we shall only mention the page number on which they are found]. Sumathi Ramaswamy goes on to mention:

"This discussion over rivaling conceptions of the shape of the Earth and its disposition in the universe apparently led to Fenico holding forth to the Zamorin about the sins of Hindu idolatry. As we shall see in the pages that follow, similar exchanges over rivaling "facts" on our planet's form would be reported in conversations between European and native well into the twentieth century in British India." (Terrestrial Lessons, p 21)

In the above exchange we can see that the brahmana (mentioned by Fenico), was presenting the Puranic teachings that 'the Earth is not round but flat', and that it is held by Ananta-sesha and Kurma. Through-out Sumathi Ramaswamy's book, one does not find any report from European missionaries or merchants wherein they state their surprise to find that Indians were in possession of globe-shaped models of the Earth with the continents of the Earth (America, Europe, Australia, etc.) mapped onto it; on the contrary it was the Europeans who presented such models of the Earth to the Indian rulers. Sumathi Ramaswamy's documentation of the later production of globes in India makes it clear that the appearance of such globes was unquestionably the result of European influence. Sumathi Ramaswamy mentions, for example, that at the end of the seventeenth century a globe with a diameter of two foot and inscribed with Tamil language was presented by Jesuits to local ruler in Madurai, mentioning that

"This is quite likely the very first time that a European style terrestrial globe with identifications in any Indian language was produced anywhere in the world." (Terrestrial Lessons, p 22)

Sumathi Ramaswami also mentions other Jesuit encounters with influential leaders like Jai Singh (1688-1743) who took an increasing interest in the Western cosmological system, though without entirely abandoning his ancestral beliefs. Sumathi Ramaswamy asserts that it is likely as a result of exposure to the globes that arrived from Europe that Jai Singh ordered the production of his own wooden terraqueous globe. Sumathi Ramaswamy writes:

"It is arguably the first instance of a locally produced terrestrial globe in the European style, made on the order of a subcontinental ruler, and the earliest known globe with Hindi inscription". (Terrestrial Lessons, p 24)

Sumathi Ramaswamy mentions that 'these early modern accounts left behind in Jesuit letters anticipate later encounters between European and native conceptions regarding the shape of the Earth that further intensified as the terrestrial globe was introduced as a pedagogic object into colonial schoolrooms' (Terrestrial Lessons, p 23) . We personally feel that the Jesuits had a greater role in destroying Vedic teachings than Sumathi Ramaswamy's short history was able to provide, however, since Sumathi Ramaswamy's research focuses on the period of British colonialism from late 1700's through the 1800's, and early 1900's, it is to that period that we shall turn; indeed it was in this period that the British eventually managed to convert the Indians from the Vedic 'Earth-circle' to the Western 'Earth-globe'.

THE MAYA EARTH: HOW SPIRITUAL INDIA WAS CONQUERED BY A GREAT DECEPTION

Our use of the term 'great deception' is not intended to suggest that certain individual British colonialists who propagated the Earth globe ideology in India had the deliberate intention of deceiving anyone with a false idea of the Earth, but rather to argue that the British missionaries and colonialists were themselves victims of a false 'world-view' which they then imposed upon the people of India. The charge that the globe is a 'false' world-view is based not only on a scientific deconstruction of the ideology supporting this idea, but more importantly the charge is based on the authority of the Puranas which describe the shape, size, and situation of the Earth in a very different way.

As documented by Sumathi Ramaswamy, it was a declared strategy of Christian missionaries and British Imperialists to undermine faith in the Hindu religion by first convincing the Indians that modern scientific exploration and observation had proved the Earth to be a globe, and not a gigantic circular plane held by Ananta-sesha as the Puranas teach. By supposedly demonstrating to the Indians that the authors of the Puranas were hopelessly wrong in their understanding of the Earth, the planets, and the greater universe, they hoped to convince the Indians that the Puranas were altogether fictitious and ridiculous, and thus something to be abandoned in favour of the modern so-called scientific world-view. Sumathi Ramaswamy states:

"Any attempt to chart the itineraries of the terrestrial globe in the subcontinent has to contend with and work against the mockery of popular Indic conceptions of Earth by disseminators of European useful knowledge, many of which statements are repeated ad nauseum in the colonial archive to the point of becoming caricatures. Of these the most invoked undoubtedly is a jeer by the English historian and colonial administrator Thomas Barrington Macaulay (1800-1859)—on whom more in chapter 5—who famously dismissed such conceptions as "astronomy which would move laughter in girls at an English boarding school, history abounding with kings thirty feet high, and reigns thirty thousand years long, and geography made of seas of butter and seas of treacle." (Terrestrial Lessons, p 26)

Srila Prabhupada also stated on many occasions that the undermining of faith in the Vedic Scriptures was one of the key aspects of British policy, and also mentions Macaulay's role:

Prabhupada: Yes, propaganda. That is the cause of India's cultural fall-down. These Britishers simply made propaganda that "Whatever you have got in India, this is all allegory, fiction. These shastras are nothing. But now you are learning from us England's work in India, that is your real... You are becoming civilized now. Otherwise, you are in the utopia, and all these shastras, throw it out." Because that was Lord Macauley's policy. Lord Macauley was sent to report how Indians can be governed nicely. So he reported that if you keep the Indians as Indians, you will never be able to govern them, because they are superior. You make propaganda that they are inferior and they will imitate you and then you can... That they did.

Jayatirtha: The Indians would never be able to compete on the Britishers' platform.

Prabhupada: No. Under the British rule, from the childhood they are subjected to the propaganda. We read one book, small book, by M. Ghose. The subject matter was England's work in India. That was a compulsory reading book in the schools. And in that book, it was simply stated that "we are uncivilized, but since the Britishers have come, we are becoming civilized. "This is the subject matter of that book, "England's work in India." So everything Indian... The Jawaharlal is the typical example—everything Indian is bad.
(Morning Walk Conversation, September 28, 1972, Los Angeles)

Again:

Prabhupada: That is perfect. Samsiddhim paramam gatah. That is the highest. Why these people, our own people, in spite of possessing Bhagavad-gita, we are so rascals, we are not taking that?

Dr. Patel: I think the degeneration of this country are from the foreign people, foreign domination.

Prabhupada: Yes. No, it was their propaganda, Macauley's, that "If you keep Indians as Indians, you'll never be able to rule over them." So British policy was to make propaganda so that "everything Indian is bad."

Dr. Patel: I think Max Mueller (indistinct).

Prabhupada: No, it was necessary for them to Anglicize the Indians to rule over them.
(Morning Walk, August 14, 1976, Bombay)

For those who may think Srila Prabhupada was exaggerating the British strategy, the following statements by Christian missionaries operating in nineteenth century India very clearly illustrate this predetermined tactic to undermine faith in the Vedic world-view by presenting Western geography and cosmology as the true, scientific, and rational world-view in contrast to what were dismissed as the nonsense, imaginative ideas of the Puranas. The details of the various personalities and institutions that effected such a dramatic change in India can be found in Sumathi Ramasway's book; we wish only to look at the ideology behind it.

In a tract called "On Missionary Education" (1858), the Christian preacher George Hall sums up the missionary strategy and agenda:

"It is well known that the sacred books of the Hindus are full of the most absurd statements regarding the physical world, and in imparting just and rational views on these subjects, we strike at the very foundation of Hinduism. How can a native youth acquire a knowledge of even the most common facts of Geography and believe the sacred books of his fathers? How can a mind, expanded by knowledge credit the monstrous fables of the Hindu Mythology?" (Terrestrial Lessons, p 68)

Sumathi Ramaswamy also cites from the Reverend James Long (1814-87) who observed:

"The same has been the experience of several other Hindus, for when the false geography and the false history of the Puranas are pointed out, it is but a step to a conviction of the falsity of their religion." (Terrestrial Lessons, p 93)

Again, Sumati Ramaswamy quotes from John Wilson's, An Exposure of the Hindu Religion to Mora Bhatta Dandekara, (Bombay, American Mission Press, 1832):

"The discoveries of science, and the revelations of the Puranas are totally opposed to one another. Let a few examples be taken into consideration. The Earth which is globular, is described in the Puranas as possessed of the shape of a lotus, and as nearly level. From Science it is learned that the Earth is suspended in space according to the will of God; but it is described in some Puranas as resting on the back of a tortoise and in others as resting on the serpent Ananta...It is impossible to enumerate the contradictions of this kind, and the absurd fictions in the Puranas about the egg of Brahma, and other matters of a like nature." (Terrestrial Lessons p. 190)

Sumathi Ramaswamy goes on to say that Wilson was convinced 'that the spread of European science in India would lead to the unseating of Hinduism'. In one letter, Wilson wrote that the state's education policy consciously abstained from the teaching of Christian truth in schools out of fear of interfering with the religious belief of the natives, and yet "they deliberately teach the elements of Geography and Astronomy, which will inevitably prove its destruction." (Terrestrial Lessons, p 190)

Again:

"In the Gangetic valley as in other parts of India, Protestant missionaries, especially of Evangelical persuasion, were at the forefront, their work of spreading the gospel aided and abetted by the dissemination of the truths of Modern Earth. Indeed the journals and letters from the 1820's and 1830's of J.T. Thompson (1790?-1850) are saturated with the conviction that an exposure to Geography led the doubting native to reach for the gospel." (Terrestrial Lessons, p 115)

Given the zeal of Christian missionaries to promote the Western Earth-globe at the expense of the Vedic Earth-circle, it is ironic that the Bible actually describes the circular Earth. In the Book of Isaiah it is said:

"It is He who sits above the circle of the Earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in." (Isaiah 40.22)

For a discussion on the Hebrew word for 'circle' used in this verse, one can refer to this article. There are many other verses in the Bible that describe the flat-Earth concept, and also how the Sun and Moon move above the stationary Earth, (not that the Earth rotates around a stationary Sun as the Copernican system teaches). Ironically, those Christian missionaries who were pushing the globe ideology in an attempt to undermine the Vedic world-view in India were themselves victims of the same secular science which would eventually undermine their own Christian faith back home in Britain. In the end, both Christians in England and Hindus in India fell under the spell of atheistic scientism. We should also note than many Christians and other Westerner intellectuals during this period argued vehemently against the globe ideology; for example, books such as Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe (1881) by Samuel Birley Rowbotham; One Hundred Proofs that the Earth is not a Globe (1885) by William Carpenter; Terra Firma: the Earth Not a Planet, Proved from Scripture, Reason, and Fact (1901) by David Wardlaw Scott; along with many other such publications are evidence that the globe ideology was rejected by many in the West as both unscientific and non-scriptural. Much like the debates on the theory of evolution, debates over the shape and situation of the Earth continue to this day with books such as The Greatest Lie on Earth (2016) by Edward Hendrie reasserting the original Biblical teachings in opposition to the modern globe ideology.

MAPPING THE WORLD?

Before the appearance of television, movies, and special effects, (that enabled sophisticated video presentations of so-called astronauts hovering in space above a globe-shaped Earth), the physical globe (in the form of a mapped sphere mounted on a stand) was the main instrument of propaganda used to convince Indians of the spherical nature of the Earth. The power of the globe as a pedagogical tool is explained by Sumathi Ramaswamy in the following way:

"For centuries before influential photographs such as Earthrise or Blue Marble (December 7,1972) were technologically possible, the mounted terrestrial globe enabled an Apollian vision, allowing the modern subject to observe, twirl around, and have at his disposal the planet that he inhabited but could not otherwise see as a whole. The globe stands in for the unfathomable Earth-as-a-whole, even as it offers a reduced, manageable, and readable model of it." (Terrestrial Lessons, p xviii)

Sumathi Ramaswamy calls the globe "this master object of scientific and pedagogic modernity." The map of the Earth as it appears on the spherical surface of the globe certainly creates an impression in the mind that such is the shape and limit of the Earth, for as one looks round and round its complete circumference there is apparently no more Earth to be seen. [The sophisticated interactive functions of programs such as Google Earth increase the illusion even further].

The classroom globe acts like a magic device by which one can observe the supposed shape and extent of the Earth—its limited spherical surface seemingly refuting any claim that the Earth is a plane that continues into other realms as the Puranas proclaimed. As one spins the globe with a finger, and as one's eyes go 'around' the circumference of the globe, it certainly appears that there is no more land to behold. Other than that which was seen on the surface of the globe, there is evidently no more Earth, and certainly no oceans of milk. Sumathi Ramaswamy writes of a certain C.B. Leupolt who reported to the Christian Missionary Society in 1833 that he dedicated two hours per week to terrestrial lessons in order to combat the ancestral "rubbish" about Earth and its form. The use of the globe to defeat an innocent school-boy's ancestral beliefs is recorded by Leupolt as follows:

"One day, having given the general proofs of the earth being of a spherical form, and having mentioned its magnitude. I asked one of the boys to seek for the sea of honey and milk, and the place where it rested upon the old serpent. He turned the globe round, and looking here and there, said at last, "I can find nothing of either." Others hearing this, burst out into laughter saying, "You cannot find it because it there is no such thing."…upon which the Monitor of the first class, a Brahmin said, Look, Sir! Our shasters tell us great lies." (CMS Proceedings, 1834-5, 58-59, cited by Sumathi Ramaswamy pp 128-129)

The boys reference to 'shasters' refers to the Vedic scriptures and teachers that otherwise declare the Earth to be a circular landscape held by Ananta-sesha. Here we see an example of how the physical globe was used to convince an innocent child that the shastras taught by the brahmanas were a lie. In a modern Indian school, the teachers no longer have to contend with shastric objections to this concept of the Earth as they did in the nineteenth century, but this only goes to show how little understanding or faith is left in the shastras, and to what extent the British were successful in their campaign to undermine Vedic teachings.

The British asserted they had a superior geographical understanding over the Indians based on the fact that European explorers had physically sailed and mapped the 'entire' Earth, whereas the Indian approach was a claim to revelation but without any empiric study to prove it. A Christian missionary called John Murdoch declared in 1885:

"The different modes adopted by Hindus and Europeans in framing systems of geography are well worthy of notice. A Hindu, without any investigation, sat down and wrote that the center of our universe consisted of an immense rock, surrounded by concentric oceans of ghee, milk, and other fluids. To induce men to believe his account, he then presented that it was inspired. Europeans on the other hand, visited countries, measured distances, and after very careful investigation, wrote descriptions of the Earth. Which is the more worthy of credit?" (Cited Terrestrial Lessons p 81)

In this statement we get an idea of what the brahmanas were up against. Though as late as the nineteenth century the brahmanas still conceived of the Earth as comprising seven concentric shaped islands and oceans with Meru in the center, the encounter with the Europeans, especially the British, was indeed challenging simply because there appeared to be no evidence of these ancient lands and oceans, and the British otherwise presented the map of the world wrapped around a globe that apparently showed its entire circumference and extent. An example of the British dismissal of the Puranic flat-Earth concept is expressed in the following account of a book published by the Baptist Mission Press. Sumathi Ramaswamy writes:

"The Calcutta based Baptist Mission Press published in 1836 A Brief Account of the Solar System in English with the Translation into Hindustani. The book was intended to rescue the natives from the Indian system of astrology, as well as to challenge "the ancient books of the Hindus which erroneously say, that the earth on which we live is a plain or flat surface." This is not the case, "for it has long since been fully and completely proved to be round, and an enormous globe." (Cited Terrestrial Lessons, p 119)

The book goes on to say:

"The study of astronomy enlarges the mind, as much as faith in astrology enfeebles it. Astronomy leads the mind up to God, and fills it with sublime conceptions of His power and wisdom. On a due acquaintance with Astronomy depends the perfection of Navigation, Geography, Chronology, Commerce, and Dialling. By the learned and useful calculations of astronomers has the surface of our globe been measured with scientific accuracy; the distances of kingdoms, capes, continents, and cities have been laid down in miles and furlongs; and above all, by the charts or maps, the great ocean is now every where intersected by the lines of science, and has become a well-known highway for our fleets and navies." (Cited Terrestrial Lessons p 120)

Sumathi Ramaswamy comments:

"The reader would have been left in little doubt by the end of the text that the ancestral knowledge with which he came into the classroom could not compete with the terrestrial lessons of such a mathematized spherical world, scored by "the lines of science," and delivered to the Indian student by those remarkable nations of Europe who had with the help of astronomy come to his land to trade and buy raw materials in exchange for which, India received "the treasures of Europe: cloth, lead, metals, telescopes, watches, mathematical instruments, steam engines, machinery of every kind; and above all, the wisdom of the best books, teaching science and virtue, for knowledge in which, the European nations are famed." (Terrestrial Lessons, p 120)

Here we get a sense of the dazzling and overwhelming sophistication of the British presence. How could the brahmanas at the time possibly contend? Sumathi Ramaswamy cites the following extract from the Board of Education Report of 1850 wherein we again find the reports of European exploration pitted against the 'romance' of Puranic revelation:

"In this branch of study (geography) it affords me some degree of gratification to state that the ignorance which has long been prevalent in this country with regard to this subject is now fast giving way, and the Puranic and romantic description of the non-existing oceans and countries and the hyperbolic heights and lengths of mountains and rivers, are now fast making room for a correct knowledge of the earth and what diversifies its surface...It is a lamentable fact that a considerable number may still be found among them who cannot yet bring their consciences to believe that the Earth is not placed on one of the heads of the great serpent, and that there might not yet be discovered, in some parts of it which have not been explored by European navigators oceans of milk and curd. But in spite of all these drawbacks, I have strong reason to believe that true knowledge is surely making its way, though slowly, but steadily." (Terrestrial Lessons, p 173)

In the above statement it is said, 'the Puranic and romantic description of the non-existing oceans and countries and the hyperbolic heights and lengths of mountains and rivers, are now fast making room for a correct knowledge of the earth'. The statement very much encapsulates the difference between the Vedic (spiritual) and secular (materialistic) world-view. The Puranas describe the Earth as a circular landscape with a diameter of 500 million yojanas (4 billion miles). Srila Prabhupada personally accepted the Srimad Bhagavatam's measurements regarding the size of the Earth (see Bhu-mandala Diagram Discussion, July 2, 1977, Vrindavana), along with the fantastic heights of mountains (see SB 5.16.10 purport), and descriptions of the Milk Ocean (see SB 2.7.13 purport). Srila Prabhupada vehemently rejected any suggestion that the subject matter of Srimad Bhagavatam was mythological.

The vast difference between the Vedic and modern measurement of the Earth is not because the Vedic rishis were lacking scientific instruments with which to accurately measure the Earth; the difference is due to the fact that the Vedic rishis were mapping a larger flat-Earth with extraordinary features beyond our present experience. However, by simply ridiculing the vast size of the Vedic Earth as 'pre-scientific', 'imaginative', and 'mythological', the British rulers of India managed to persuade the Indians that such fantastic calculations for the size of the Earth were hyperbole or embellishments to extremely primitive and un-scientific ideas regarding the nature of the Earth.

The brahmanas at the time had little or no empirical argument against the British colonialists and their magical globe device. By presenting the globe and pointing out all the locations on its spherical surface, the colonialists simply mocked the idea that there is more Earth, and that the Earth is held from below by Ananta-sesha. When confronted with a physical globe in which all the places on 'the Earth' appear to be mapped and measured, it was difficult for the brahmanas to argue with those who had supposedly sailed 'around the entire Earth' that there is indeed more Earth as declared in the Puranas. The confusion caused by the globe illusion, however, only works when one falls for the initial idea that the Earth is indeed spherical. From a transcendental perspective, it is not difficult to conceive that devas employ certain forces both physical and mental to keep us contained within a limited area of the Earth plane. In a discussion on the Bhu-mandala in 1977, Srila Prabhupada said that we can travel further than we think, but karma keeps us within a certain parameter like a bull tied to a grinding mill and forced to move in circles around a central point. The blinkers on the bull prevents him from seeing further (see Discussion about Bhu-mandala, July 3, 1977, Vrndavana). From the perspective of Vedic cosmology, the globe acts just like a magic trick, a device of maya (illusion) to contain conditioned souls of Kali-yuga within a limited understanding of physical and spiritual reality.

ALEXANDER DUFF, SRILA PRABHUPADA, AND SCOTTISH CHURCH COLLEGE (CALCUTTA)

Sumathi Ramaswamy also quotes from Alexander Duff (1806-78) who founded the Scottish Church College in Calcutta in 1830. Followers of Srila Prabhupada will be familiar with this name of this institution as it is the name of the college that Srila Prabhupada attended as a young man. The reader of Terrestrial Lessons can get an idea of the hidden agenda behind the schools policy, as well as the level of propaganda to which students such as Abhay Charan de (later Srila Prabhupada) were subjected. Sumathi Ramaswamy writes that

"From the start the schools curriculum was rooted in English (unlike many other mission operations) and aimed very consciously at the sons of the Bengali elite, included courses in geography for both its preparatory and advanced students, premised on Duff's conviction that, "as the Hindoos possess stupendous systems of learning on all subjects—geographies, metaphysics, astronomies, etc., as well as natural theologies—all abounding with the grossest imaginable errors, and yet all claiming the same divine origin, and asserting the same title to infallibility—it follows that the same inculcation and apprehension of any branch of scientific knowledge must tend to shake their confidence in the truth of their own systems generally"'. (Alexander Duff 1840, The English Instructor No.III. Calcutta/Madras: Baptist Mission Press, American Mission Press for the Madras School Book Society, cited Terrestrial Lessons, pp 264-265)

Sumathi Ramaswamy writes,

"In a series titled the English Instructor that he authored and that was used in the institution—and that remained in print well into the 1860's and also circulated in Madras—Duff set out to "shake their confidence" by delivering terrestrial lessons which hooked the Empire of Geography to the Empire of Christ. Thus the English Instructor III included an extended introduction to Modern Earth—using no less than the Puranic stronghold of Benares as the context—reaffirming that our planet was a globe and that "it does not stand upon anything." (Terrestrial Lessons, p 265)

Sumathi Ramaswamy presents an example of Alexander Duff's pride in converting the natives:

"One of his students ("entirely educated" in his institution) who had mastered the lessons regarding Modern earth well enough to have his essay anonymously published in 1849 in The Calcutta Review (also founded by Duff). Titled "Physical Errors of Hinduism," the author offered an indictment of his ancestral religion in a manner that would have done his mentor proud, relentlessly ridiculing in no uncertain terms every feature of the Puranic conception of Earth—its location on the head of a serpent; the distribution of continents and oceans on its (flat) surface, its reasoning for the occurrence of earthquakes and eclipses—not sparing even the Siddhantic system of astronomy which had founded so many European admirers. The essay, however, saves its most pungent comments for the Puranic conceptions of the Earth's shape...In and of itself, the critique is not new at all: it represents half a century of familiar colonial, especially missionary, polemics directed against Puranic thought. What is important though is that it shows how at least one "young native gentleman" having received the terrestrial lessons delivered in a Calcutta mission school, subjected his own ancestral faith to this searing criticism based on his amateur ethnography:

"The sun of knowledge has begun to shine over the night-brooding soil of Hindustan. Light has begun to enter into the minds of her children. Neither the brahmans nor their Shastras are now held particularly sacred. Men have begun to ask for evidence. What is then to become of its defenders–of the Hindu religion itself'.

Duff must have been highly pleased with his protégé, for he personally awarded him a prize "for the best account of the physical errors of Hinduism," noting that these "errors" were elicited "from the lips of learned and intelligent Pandits in Calcutta; and it may be relied upon as a faithful and present accurate account of the present state of science among them." (Terrestrial Lessons, pp 265-266)

Through-out her book Terrestrial Lessons, Sumathi Ramaswamy describes the almost obsessive attempts on the part of the British to indoctrinate the Indian students with the globe ideology. We can imagine also as a student at Scottish Church College, Srila Prabhupada was likewise receiving lessons in the Western system of geography wherein the world is described as a globe that orbits around the Sun. There is an interesting reminiscence by Srila Prabhupada regarding an occasion when his Professor Dr Urquhart tried to convince his fellow students that the Hindu teaching on karma was unfounded. The professors objection was based on the idea that in a court of law one cannot be prosecuted for a crime unless there is a witness, and therefore, the Hindu teaching that the soul suffers in his present life for the misdeeds of his past life, cannot be justified because there is no witness to these misdeeds. Srila Prabhupada recalls the exchange as follows:

Prabhupada: We were at that time college student, Scottish Churches College in Calcutta. So that is Christian college, Scottish Churches. So we had to read Bible also. There was a Bible class from 1:00 to 1:30. So I remember our professor, he was a great philosopher also, Dr. W.S. Urquhart. He was very nice man, very friendly. So he was explaining from Bible. I do not know... The Christians, they do not believe in karma. Is it a fact? They do not believe in karma?

Govinda dasi: They have a verse that "You reap what you sow," which means whatever you do, you receive the reaction of. It's sort of...

Prabhupada: ...Anyway, Dr. Urquhart's argument was that "Who is the witness? I am suffering the reaction of my previous bad or evil activities, but who is the witness?" But at that time we were not so intelligent. We could not answer. But later on, when we were grown up and studied Bhagavad-gita, then here, in the Bhagavad-gita, we saw that upadrasta. The Lord is upadrasta, He is witness.
(Lecture, Seattle, October 9, 1968)

We can imagine that as a student, Srila Prabhupada had many similar encounters wherein Vedic teachings regarding the Earth and other planets were subject to criticism before the so-called superiority of Western teachings. However, unlike in later years when Srila Prabhupada raised a counter argument to Dr Urquhart's rejection of the Vedic understanding of karma, Srila Prabhupada did not raise any counterargument regarding the Britishers rejection of the Vedic conception of the Earth. A possible explanation for as to why Srila Prabhupada did not explicitly teach about the Vedic Earth-circle conception, nor elaborate on the differences with the modern Western idea, is that prior to Srila Prabhupada's translation of the Fifth Canto (which contains the description of the Vedic cosmos) in 1975, and subsequent plan to build a temple of Vedic Planetarium, there appears to have been little or no discussion among the Gaudiya Vaishnavas (Srila Prabhupada's spiritual community) about these differences in cosmological ideas. Certainly Srila Prabhupada's own spiritual master, His Divine Grace Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, did not raise the issue as a point of discussion or debate. Nor do not we find any treatise on the subject in the writings of other great teachers in Srila Prabhupada's spiritual linage such as Bhaktivinoda Thakura, the Six Goswamis, or any of the prominent acharyas in the disciplic succession coming from Sri-Krishna Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.

The Gaudiya Vaishnavas were primarily focused on defeating Mayavadi, and impersonalism, and establishing Sri Krishna as the Supreme Personality of Godhead. They also concentrated on the lila (pastimes) of Radha-Krishna, rather than on topics such as cosmology. Thus the fundamental differences between the Vedic and Western ideas of the Earth does not seem to have become an issue for Srila Prabhupada until post 1975, and specifically as late as 1977 when a few discussions on the Bhu-mandala took place. Though Srila Prabhupada was educated in the Western system of geography, the contradictions between this system and the Vedic system may have not surfaced as an issue or point of contention largely because it does not appear to have been a subject of discussion with either his guru or god-brothers in the Gaudiya Math. Srila Prabhupada's apparent rejection of the 'flat-Earth' conception is more likely the result of having a particular idea of the flat-Earth presented to him by his British professors at Scottish Church College; it should not be taken as as rejection of the Bhu-mandala itself which is unquestionably a flat-Earth design. We have briefly discussed these points in the following papers Why Did Srila Prabhupada Call the Earth a Globe? (Part 1); Why Did Srila Prabhupada Call the Earth a Globe? (Part 2—Conversation with Vedic Astronomer); A Reply to Bhakta Yarek (Understanding Srila Prabhupada's Statements on the Flat-Earth). These papers can be found at ourvedicuniverse.com.

In the above cited conversation, Srila Prabhupada states that as a young student he could not reply to Professor Urquhart because "at that time we were not so intelligent. We could not answer. But later on, when we were grown up and studied Bhagavad-gita, then here, in the Bhagavad-gita, we saw that upadrasta. The Lord is upadrasta, He is witness" (Lecture, Seattle, October 9, 1968). It likewise appears that after Srila Prabhupada's deep absorption in the Fifth Canto of Srimad Bhagavatam, (during the period of translation from Sanskrit into English), that he wished to counter-challenge the Western assumptions regarding the nature of the planets and the universe. Srila Prabhupada, however, delegated the task to his disciples:

"Now our Ph.D.'s must collaborate and study the Fifth Canto to make a model for building the Vedic Planetarium... So now all you Ph.D.'s must carefully study the details of the Fifth Canto and make a working model of the universe. If we can explain the passing seasons, eclipses, phases of the moon, passing of day and night, etc., then it will be very powerful propaganda." (Letter from Srila Prabhupada to Svarupa Damodara dasa, April 27, 1976)

It is our contention that those responsible for presenting 'Vedic cosmology' at the Temple of Vedic Planetarium have not correctly presented the Srimad Bhagavatam's description of the Earth; instead, due to a misguided and ill-considered attempt to reconcile Vedic and Western cosmology, members of ISKCON have simply superimposed the modern Earth-globe idea onto the original Earth-circle model, but in a manner that entirely contradicts the Srimad Bhagavatam's description of the planetary arrangement. Thus although the Srimad Bhagavatam itself teaches that we live on a gigantic circular plane held by Ananta-sehsa, ISKCON continues to teach that we live on an Earth globe floating in space. This contradiction is justified using the bogus idea that we live in a multi-dimensional universe wherein the Earth is taken to be both round and flat simultaneously. The net result, however, is that the modern Earth-globe idea takes precedence, whilst the Srimad Bhagavatam's Earth-circle concept is essentially nullified.

BLIND LEADING THE BLIND

If we were to go into a modern school in India and ask the children about the shape of the Earth, they would unanimously repeat their geography lessons and declare that the Earth is a round. This was not the case in the nineteenth century India. A number of anecdotes from the letters of Christian missionaries inform us that the Vedic flat-Earth idea was the prevailing belief among the ordinary people. For example, Mary Sherwood (1775-1851) a Christian missionary in India wrote:

"The grown gentlemen I had then to teach were not only ignorant as children—but were each furnished with innumerable false notions on these subjects—as, for instance that the world was a vast plain with the Sun on a high Mountain in the center of it." (Terrestrial Lessons p. 99)

Sumathi Ramaswamy also mentions an incident concerning the Reverend Henry W Fox's encounter with a half-cast girl called Mary/ Mahalakshmi who when told about the globular Earth was

"At first very incredulous as to the facts of natural science, and for a time considered Mr Fox's accounts to be mere fables to amuse her...The Earth, she mentioned, was a flat surface, bounded on all sides by interminable oceans." (Terrestrial Lessons, p 319)

Sumathi Ramaswamy also refers to:

"A 1855 essay titled "Saguna and Parvatibai," printed in the Marathi women's magazine Sumitra (published by the SLSS) recounts a conversation between an uneducated mother Parvatibai, and her school-going daughter Saguna, in which the later recounts lessons learned in her geography class (bhugol vidya) from her male teacher (pantaji). The very first lesson, not surprisingly, is about Earth's sphericity, at which point the skeptical Parvatibai retorts:

"Have you seen the fact the Earth is round? She looks flat to all of us. And the other day the old Brahman verses in the Puranas told us that the earth is flat like the leaves of the holy fig tree and that around it are the seven seas. And now these English (men) have turned it into a globe!"

The newly worlded Saguna does not back down in the face of her mothers skepticism, and goes on to enumerate the various "proofs" that she has learned in her bhu-gola vidya class on Earth's sphericity, including the shape of the ship as it approaches land (which the magazine's publishers also helpfully illustrated with a diagram). By the end of the essay lesson, poor Parvatibai is forced to conclude, "If it is so, [Earth] must indeed be round." The customary roles here are flipped as the "enlightened" child becomes the teacher of the mother, whose own inherited wisdom is shamed and cast aside." (Terrestrial Lessons, p 205)

Such anecdotes again inform us how the brahmanas at this time taught the Puranic flat-Earth concept, how the ordinary people accepted it as such, and how teachings about the globular Earth were introduced by a foreign force, namely the British.

In Chapter Five of Terrestrial Lessons, Sumathi Ramaswamy provides a novel analysis of the otherwise unnoticed role of the globe in a film called Aparajito (1956) by director Satyajit Ray. In several scenes we see how young Apu Roy is educated into the global ideology, leading to a youthful rebellion against his father's priestly vocation that propels him on his journey into urban secular modernity. Sumathi Ramaswamy writes,

"As he matures he never does return to his ancestral profession, and in this regard, is the very embodiment of every colonial pedagogue who unleashed geography on the hapless native with a view of unseating the hold of (Hindu) idolatry." (Terrestrial Lessons pp 229)

Sumathi Ramswamy states that the film marks 'a new India dominated by the Nehruvian" enchantment with modern science'. Indeed, in the school rooms of India today the globe has entirely replaced the Puranic conception of the Earth. The students who come out of the modern education system do not have any idea of Bhu-mandala, what to speak of any faith in this conception of the Earth. Like every other school child through-out the world, India's school children are conditioned into believing an idea of the Earth which is actually maya (illusion) from the perspective of the great Vedic rishis such as Srila Vyasadeva whose teachings are meant to educate the people in the difference between reality and illusion.

The globe ideology prevents a student from understanding the vast nature of the Earth-circle, and thus keeps the soul in a limited understanding of both physical and spiritual reality. In this spiritually stunted condition, the soul is conditioned to accept their place in the struggle for existence with little or no priority given to their choice of destination in the next life—what to speak of any attempt at transcending the cycle of birth and death altogether (moksha). As Prahlada Maharaja remarked: na te viduh svartha-gatim hi vishnum—"They do not know that the real interest and the highest goal of life is Vishnu [Krishna]" (SB 7.5.31). The verse in full says:

"Persons who are strongly entrapped by the consciousness of enjoying material life, and who have therefore accepted as their leader or guru a similar blind man attached to external sense objects, cannot understand that the goal of life is to return home, back to Godhead, and engage in the service of Lord Vishnu. As blind men guided by another blind man miss the right path and fall into a ditch, materially attached men led by another materially attached man are bound by the ropes of fruitive labor, which are made of very strong cords, and they continue again and again in materialistic life, suffering the threefold miseries." (SB 7.5.31)

'GLOBAL PANDITS'

The conversion of India from the Puranic 'Earth-circle' (Bhu-mandala) to the Western 'Earth-globe' could not have been possible without the assistance of the brahmanical class whose response to the Western cosmological system fell into a number of categories. Sumathi Ramaswamy writes:

"In colonial discourse, The Brahman scholar or "pandit"—on whom the foreign regime intensely depended for gaining access to all manner of knowledge, especially legal—variously and contrarily appears as a die-hard defender of orthodoxy, as mediator between old and new, as an individual who had to be marginalized, even displaced, in order for the modernizing work of empire to proceed, and as a figure who had to be won over if the project of useful knowledge was to gain traction at all in (Hindu) India." (Terrestrial Lessons, p. 94)

Sumathi Ramaswamy refers to the emergence of this new breed of brahmanas as:

"Cartographic evangelists who were brahmans, men of a caste charged with the business of not merely upholding the ancestral, but also formulating its very tenets. And yet, here they are, seemingly at the forefront of advancing the cause of Modern Earth and the teaching of terrestrial lessons, with rarely a deference of the ancestral knowledges that had apparently ensured their ritual and scholastic domination in the first place." (Terrestrial Lessons, p. 88)

This is a powerful statement from Sumathi Ramaswamy that is also applicable to the current situation in ISKCON, for there are also brahmanas in ISKCON who derive their authority as exponents and defenders of Vedic knowledge, yet who likewise, 'advance the cause of Modern Earth…with rarely a defense of the ancestral knowledge that has ensured their ritual and scholastic domination in the first place'. How many gurus and brahmanas in ISKCON will defend and propagate the Srimad Bhagavatam's description of the Earth as a gigantic Earth circle held by Ananta-sesha? If the Earth is as it is described in Srimad Bhagavatam, then it cannot be a globe floating in space. It thus behooves the spiritual leaders of ISKCON to counter the propaganda of the globe ideology by first following Srila Prabhupada's instruction to correctly apprehend the Srimad Bhagavatam's description of the Earth; secondly, to understand the false scientific basis on which the globe ideology rests; and thirdly, to actively expose the deception and cheating behind this false construct of reality.

Sumathi Ramaswamy presents various examples of the brahmana class who took up 'cartographic evangelism' with a passion; for example, one convert of Mary Sherwood (1775-1851) a Christian missionary in India was Parmanand, "Supremely Blissful', who later changed his name to Anand Masih which means "Joyful in Christ" (p 105). In I833 a Mr William Parish visited Anand's school of thirty students. Parish writes:

"Anand's method of teaching is very simple, but appears to succeed in small degree...The ages of his scholars are from 5 to 18 and 20 years. In giving them some idea of geography, Anand illustrates his lessons by using a small globe which I made for him, and a book of maps with which I have furnished him—this is a most interesting subject to the boys, they look at and examine with open mouths and eyes, the divisions of the surface of the world into land and water, so irregularly depicted, so strange compared with the seven continents, and the seven seas of milk, honey, ghee, etc. which they have heard from their philosophical pandits." (Terrestrial Lessons, p. 106)

Here we get a picture of the clash of cultures as it unfolded over the nineteenth century with some representatives of the brahmana class adopting the new Western ideas whilst others continue to teach the traditional Vedic understanding of the Earth. Though such recent history was almost buried, Sumathi Ramaswamy's research shows that the Puranic conception of the Earth having seven concentric shaped islands and oceans was still being taught in the nineteenth century, and that Anand's presentation of the globe-shaped Earth was certainly greeted as an unusual, foreign, and novel conception for the native mind. If the Earth-globe conception was already part of Hindu thought as some claim, then the marked difference between these two radically competing conceptions of the Earth would not be highlighted as a difference in world-views, as it is clearly shown to be in the above observation of Mr William Parish.

Unfortunately Sumathi Ramaswamy does not quote directly from any publications produced by the brahmana community that are in opposition to the globe idea, and strangely any references to such replies are only mentioned in foot-notes. For example, Sumathi Ramaswamy mentions Subaji Bapu as another example of a brahmana who adopted the Western cosmological system and at one point produced a book that was intended to defeat the traditional Vedic teachings. In a footnote to this episode Sumathi Ramaswamy writes,

"When released in 1836, Subaji Bapu's Marathi work created quite a stir in Poona, the Brahman stronghold of central India, with both Pauraniks committed to a flat-Earth geocentric viewpoint, and followers of the Siddhantas dedicated to a Ptolemic conception eager to fight back, as per Wilkinson's own proud reporting to his superiors in Calcutta. Thus, "one of the shastrees of the Hindoo college is I am told going to publish a reply to it making out the world is flat and shewing that the authorities have been "perverted" and "The chief Astronomer of the Sanskrit College [of Poona] was also apparently preparing a response" (Letter from Wilkinson to Bengal Government, dated June 5, 1836... "The Oojain Pundits contended for the unadulterated Poorans, denying that the Earth was a sphere." (Terrestrial Lessons, p. 338)

Unfortunately, there is no further mention of any of these brahminical replies mentioned by Wilkinson. In another footnote Sumathi Ramawamy mentions:

"That not everyone in colonial Madras capitulated to Modern Earth is also apparent from manuscripts and texts that kept inherited and ancestral notions alive. These included Pukola Vilasam "The Play of the Earth Sphere", possibly composed around 1841 (Vaiyapur Pillai 1933); the Kola Tipkai, "Light on the Sphere" (Caravanaperumal Aiyar and Vicakaperumal Aiyar 1839); Puviyelupatu "Seventy [Verses] on Earth", a celebration of Goddess Earth by a well-known Tamil litterateur (Raghava Iyengar 927), and Antagola Meyporul, "The Truth about the Earth Sphere" (Raghava Iyengar 1933). These texts offer a mixture of Puranic and Siddhantic ideas regarding the shape and disposition of Earth." (Terrestrial Lessons, pp. 324-325)

In another footnote, Sumathi Ramaswamy mentions a local response to a book on world geography by a Christian missionary named WH Pearce. The book was first published in 1819 and was translated into Bengali for propagation through-out Bengal. Sumathi Ramaswamy quotes from Subho Basu as follows:

"Indeed in response to the introduction of Western cartography, a Bengali Brahmin sought to prove the falsity of the new idea of the round shape of referring to Puranic notions of cosmography in Brahmanical traditions. Thus Dwarkanath Vidyaratna wrote that the earth originated from the navel of the creator in the shape of a lotus." (Terrestrial Lessons, p. 376)

I was unable to locate these texts, but undoubtedly there must be many other examples of similar encounters between brahmanas and the foreign British Missionaries and pedagogues regarding the differences between the Vedic and Western conceptions of the Earth. This will hopefully make for an exciting research topic for future historians of the Bhu-mandala. Another area of research is to locate the original maps of the Bhu-mandala that had been prepared by brahmanas. In this regard, Sumathi Ramaswamy mentions a display at the London International Exhibition of 1871 wherein the government of India sought to showcase its achievements in the educational field. Sumathi Ramswamy writes:

"On the other hand it is worth noting that at this same exhibition, alongside makeshift globes that showed the good work of spreading the gospel of Modern Earth were also displayed maps that showed the exact opposite, almost as if reminding the visitors to the exhibition what the project of pedagogical modernity was up against in distant India. These included a "Brahminical Map of the world. As taught at Bikaner, Rajpootana. The mountain Meroo is in the center, surrounded by concentric circles of land and sea. The brahmins supposed that as there is sea at the coasts, there must be alternate circles of land and sea. This map was obtained from the Brahmins with difficulty by Colonel Brooke, Governor-Generals Agent"; a "Coloured Plan of the Universe. According to the Hindoos. By Jugutbundhoo Tarkabageesh, pundit of Sanskrit Tole at Dacca. Price 2s., and a Pooranic Map of India. Showing the geography of India as taught by the Poorans, or later sacred books of the Hindoos." (Terrestrial Lessons, pp 344-45)

Here we are informed of some physical artifacts that clearly differentiate the brahminical depictions of the Earth-circle from the Western depictions of an Earth-globe. From these brief footnotes we get a glimpse of some specific instances wherein brahmanas are clearly defending the Puranic Earth-circle concept against the modern Earth-globe idea.

The question is why the brahmanas such as those mentioned above were arguing for the Vedic flat-Earth conception against the newly introduced Western Earth-globe idea—was it because they were just stupid uneducated natives as the British presented them, or was something else at play? Though the historical propaganda will present the brahmanas as being tribal and sadly ignorant of modern science, the real truth is that they were perhaps the last heroic defenders of the spiritual reality as revealed by Sri-Krishna via the disciplic succession of Brahma, Narada, Vyasa, etc. The brahmanas defended the Earth-circle concept because that is how Bhagavan Sri-Krishna has created the Earth. The brahmanas at the time were at war with the asuric illusions. Unfortunately, by the early twentieth century, the brahmanas along with the rest of the Indian society had been essentially converted to the Western cosmological world-view, most evident in their acceptance of the idea that the Earth is a globe floating in space, along with its place in the so-called solar system.

Out of this historic nineteenth century encounter between Brahmanism and Western 'globalism' we find two main groups of brahmanas in the India of today—on the one hand we find those who claim to be descendants of the brahmana class, yet for the most part have adopted the secular scientific and materialistic world-view of the Western education system; on the other hand we find those who have remained staunch Hindus, yet have paradoxically been converted to the Western Cosmological system. We shall discuss this contradiction in orthodox Hindu thought in the next section below.

The question is why did the brahmanas fall for the globe ideology when the Puranas describe the reality of the Earth (bhu-loka) in a very different way? There are a number of historical reasons why such a conversion occurred, but without going into details, the Srimad Bhagavatam employs a number of analogies in order to show that the understanding of even brahmanas (the keepers of Vedic knowledge) can also become covered-over due to the influence of Kali-yuga. Sukadeva Goswami says:

"During the rainy season the roads, not being cleansed, became covered with grass and debris and were thus difficult to make out. These roads were like religious scriptures that brahmanas no longer study and that thus become corrupted and covered over with the passage of time." (SB 10.20.16)

Sukadeva Goswami warns that as a result of the degenerative effects of Kali-yuga, speculations will arise to corrupt the original Vedic teachings.

"In the evening twilight during the rainy season, the darkness allowed the glowworms but not the stars to shine forth, just as in the age of Kali the predominance of sinful activities allows atheistic doctrines [pashandah] to overshadow the true knowledge of the Vedas [vedah]." (SB 10.20.8)

"When Indra sent forth his rains, the floodwaters broke through the irrigation dikes in the agricultural fields, just as in the Kali-yuga the atheists' false theories [asat-vasaih] break down the boundaries of Vedic injunctions [veda-margah]." (SB 10.20.23)

In the above verses Sukadeva Goswami uses the words asat-vadaih (false theories) and pashandah (atheistic doctrines). That the globe is asat-vadiah and a creation of the pashandis is evident from the fact that the Puranas describe the Earth in an entirely different way. This fact was understood by many brahmanas who defended their Vedic cosmological teachings against the Western understanding; however, as documented by Sumathi Ramaswamy, the emergence of the 'global pandit' was unfortunately one of many factors that eventually imploded the Vedic culture from the inside.

CONTRADICTIONS IN MODERN HINDU THOUGHT

As we have seen above, even as late as the nineteenth century, we find that the brahmana community in India continued to profess faith in the Vedic conception of a circular flat-Earth, and indeed contended against the Western Earth globe idea with 'virulence and boldness', as noted by a certain Christian preacher called Lancelot Wilkinson (see Part 2 of this paper). By the twentieth century, however, the brahmana community appear to have either forgotten or lost faith in their sacred cosmology.

As the world entered the twentieth century, India like every other country saw the advent of the so-called space age, along with spectacular propaganda events such as Moon landing in 1969 which resulted in the entire world becoming firmly convinced that supposed photographs of the Earth floating in space proved once and for all the true shape and situation of the world we live upon. The so-called Moon landing, unfortunately, caused the same stupefaction and delusion to the Indians as it did to the rest of the world. Indians, along with Americans, Europeans and Africans world-wide have been living in this false construct of reality ever since.

As previously asserted, it is our claim that the dramatic rise of atheism in India in the twentieth century, either in its overt form of secular scientism, communism, etc., or in the insidious pseudo-spiritual form of the mayavada doctrine—the idea that matter has no reality, and that everything is an illusion including the idea of a personal God—can be seen as largely attributable to the wholesale destruction of faith in the Vedic cosmology which began in the nineteenth century.

Though the mayavada doctrine had stealthily gained ground in India since the beginning of the present Kali-yuga, it was particularly the introduction of the so-called scientific world-view propagated by the British Imperialists in nineteenth century India that further eroded an already weakened understanding of the spiritual, personal, and conscious nature of both Bhagavan Sri-Krishna and His vast creation. Though neither Mayavadi nor materialistic scientism have entirely broken the Indian people's faith in a personal Deity, they have had an insidious negative effect on their spiritual world-view.

Thus whilst Indians have undoubtedly maintained faith, affection, and devotion for Sri-Krishna, the effects of the Western pedagogy/indoctrination since the nineteenth century have also taken their toll. As the British education system in India began to dismiss the descriptions of the Vedic Earth (Bhu-mandala) as mythological, legendary, imaginative, unscientific, and primitive, this obviously had a corresponding effect on people's faith in the descriptions of Sri-Krishna's avataras who have appeared at certain times in order to save the Earth in question. We now have a situation in India where devout pilgrims will continue to offer namaskar (obeisance) to the Deity of Varaha at the temples, but if informed that Varaha lifted an Earth which is 500 million yojanas in diameter they will most likely revert to the Western indoctrination that this idea is just part of the ancient mythology, and science has now proved that the Earth is a globe. But if Srila Vyasadeva's description of the Earth with seven cosmic-sized islands and oceans is to be regarded as mythological, then what absolute faith can one place in Srila Vyasadeva's narration about the Varaha-avatar rescuing said Earth from the demon Hiranyaksha? Whilst a modern Hindu may regard the narrative as spiritually instructive, the idea that Varaha literally lifted a flat-Earth that is 500 million yojanas in diameter is unfortunately treated as more or less mythological. In this way, the Vedic teachings that describe other lands and civilizations beyond our own local area of the Earth is either glossed over, ignored, or dismissed; resulting in the Hindu population existing in a construct of reality that is actually maya (illusion) from the Vedic point of view. In the Srimad Bhagavatam, Sri-Krishna says to Brahma:

rite 'rtham yat pratiyeta na pratiyeta catmani
tad vidyad atmano mayam yathabhaso yatha tamah

"O Brahma, whatever appears to be of any value, if it is without relation to Me, has no reality. Know it as My illusory energy, that reflection which appears to be in darkness." (SB 2.9.34)

Though modern Hindus may retain a sentimental value for Varaha and other avataras, they are for the most part completely under the secular and atheistic world-view regarding the nature of the Earth and universe. Whilst it is true that brahmanas in their discourse have continued to speak about Bhu-mandala, Jambudvipa, Meru, Rahu, etc, their place and purpose in the Vedic system of knowledge is generally a source of puzzlement. Although Srila Vyasadeva provides the precise direction and vast distances to regions such as Mount Meru, Svetadvipa, Patala, Naraka, etc, the understanding that these are directions and distances to factual locations either upon or below the surface of larger Earth plane has been entirely lost. The Vedic teaching that we live on a massive circular Earth plane has been usurped with the idea that we live on an Earth-globe with a limited circumference, and so places like Jambudvipa, Meru, etc., (that are part of the Vedic Earth) have been erroneously presented as either belonging to some vague nebulous 'other dimensional' place of uncertain existence and location, or else reclassified as areas in and around India, or else simply discarded as mythology. Even those who were charged by Srila Prabhupada to present the Vedic cosmos at the Temple of Vedic Planetarium remain stupefied by the Earth globe ideology. This has resulted in a state of cognitive dissonance whereby members of ISKCON in one instance profess faith in Srimad Bhagavatam's description of the Earth-circle (Bhu-mandala), whilst in another instance continue to present the idea that the Earth is a small globe floating in dark space. In several papers we have pointed out the numerous material and spiritual contradictions in this presentation.

In any case, though followers of sanatana dharma have to one degree or another maintained faith in the avatars of Vishnu, a proper understanding of the Lord's lila on the Earth has been negatively affected due to an improper understanding of the Earth in question. For example, Hindus have come to think that images depicting Varaha lifting a globe rather than a flat-Earth emerged in the 20th century because modern science had eventually proven the Earth to be spherical, and thus Hindus merely adopted their depiction of Varaha lifting the Earth to modern scientific discoveries. However, the Vedic flat-Earth concept was replaced by the globe because the Hindus like everyone else in the world fell for the largely unquestioned 'science' which left everyone thinking they live on a spinning ball flying through space rather than on a stationary, non-rotating horizontal landscape as all ancient cosmologies taught. The depiction of Varaha lifting a globe is not a case of Hindus adopting their Deity to modern scientific ideas, rather it is a case of Hindus neglecting to present Varaha according to shastric injunctions which stipulates that the Earth be presented in her female form as Bhu-devi, and that the landscape of the Earth be presented as shastra describes it. In this case, the Puranas describe the Earth to be a gigantic circular landscape held by Ananta-sesha. Specifically Srimad Bhagavatam states that Varaha lifted the entire Bhu-mandala rupam idam ca saukaram bhu-mandalenatha data dhritena te (SB 3.13.41)

With regards to the Earth and other features of the universe, modern Hindus have been taught to believe the presentation of secular authorities like NASA, rather than Vedic authorities like Srila Vyasadeva. Thus we see that whilst many modern Hindus retain a pious devotion to the avatars of Sri Vishnu, the actual understanding of what is 'real' about the universe is based for the most part upon faith in the world-view according to NASA or ISRO (Indian Space Research Agency), not the world according to Srila Vyasadeva. Hindus have for all practical purposes left the Vedic cosmological paradigm and are now living in a mental construct of what is 'real' based on a presentation that is largely the creation of non-Vedic secular forces with a specific atheistic world-view. This leaves Hindus susceptible to the materialistic world-view which has a particular ethos and set of goals that are radically opposed to the satam gatih (the path of the transcendentalists) explained in Srimad Bhagavatam.

Thus despite Hindus having a cosmology that describes a much greater Earth landscape with all kinds of inhabited realms including Mount Meru (svarga), the terrestrial heavens (bhumi-svarga), the subterranean heavens (bila-svarga), the hells (naraka), as well as transcendental locations such as the abode of Vishnu (Svetadvipa), the extremely limited view of physical and spiritual reality propagated by modern so-called science keeps the majority of people focused on this one life, on this one small so-called Earth-globe, with no real consideration for future consequences or destinations in the next life, what to speak of endeavoring for the samsiddhim paramam gatih explained by Sri-Krishna in Bhagavad-gita:

"After attaining Me, the great souls, who are yogis in devotion, never return to this temporary world, which is full of miseries, because they have attained the highest perfection (samsiddhim paramam gatih). From the highest planet in the material world down to the lowest, all are places of misery wherein repeated birth and death take place. But one who attains to My abode, O son of Kunti, never takes birth again." (Bg 8.15-16)

In the above passage, Sri-Krishna summarizes and concludes the purpose of the Vedic cosmological teachings which is to inform us that there is life all over the universe, that the soul transmigrates to various types of bodies and regions in the universe according to desire and karma, and that one can become free of the cycle of repeated birth and death by attaining to the eternal abode of Krishna.

Despite the popularity of Vedic texts like Mahabharata, Srimad Bhagavatam, and other related books which describe the Earth as a gigantic circular landscape held by Ananta-sesha, the sad fact is that modern Hindus who have been stupefied by the Western propaganda, are now creating books, blogs, videos, etc. trying to prove that the Indians had the Earth-globe idea long before the Europeans. I use the word stupefied not to suggest that Indians are stupid which they are certainly not, but rather in the sense of being under a spell-like illusion that causes stupefaction or an inability to comprehend reality as the great rishis such as Srila Vyasadeva describe it.

In modern India, the Puranic teachings of Srila Vyasadeva (the incarnation of Sri-Krishna and the greatest Vedic authority), have been effectively replaced by the non-Vedic, non-Aryan speculations of Copernicus, Newton, etc. Thus the entire Vedic cosmology which describes the stars and planets rotating around the stationary plane of the great Earth circle has been unceremoniously thrown out in favour of the non-Vedic teaching that the Earth is a small globe orbiting around the Sun. This has enormous consequences on the spiritual life of the people who are following a materialistic culture based on a non-Vedic, secular cosmology.

For example, most people are convinced that the Earth is a globe primarily because they believe that they have seen the Earth globe 'with their own eyes'. Actually 'our own eyes' have only ever seen 'a picture' of the Earth globe presented by a secondary agency. Scientific experiments proving the stationary and horizontal nature of the Earth are certainly death blows to these images which purport to show the Earth as a round globe floating in space, but who is prepared to take the time to investigate alternatives to the mainstream science and government propaganda? Who is prepared to accept the spiritual authority of Srila Vyasadeva over the secular authority of NASA? One such person was Srila Prabhupada, the Founder-Acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

On the basis of the Srimad Bhagavatam's description of the Moon, Srila Prabhupada famously denounced the Moon land of 1969 as a hoax. Srila Prabhupada was perhaps the first person to decry the so-called Moon landing as fake, indeed on the very day when practically the whole of the Western world was glued to the television (tell-lie-vision) and watching with awe as Neil Armstrong announced 'one small step for man one giant leap for mankind', Srila Prabhupada coolly informed a gathering of disciples that the whole thing was fake, and that it was not possible for them to travel to the Moon which is regarded by followers of Vedic culture as the celestial abode of Chandra—a place which can only be reached by the performance of yajna (Vedic rituals).

Right until his departure in 1977, Srila Prabhupada maintained his position that the American government had faked the Moon landing, asserting that people fell for the moon landing hoax because because they did not know how to see through the eyes of shastra (Vedic scripture). In a discussion in 1977, Srila Prabhupada noted that people were eventually waking up to the hoax moon-landing, and that he had stated twenty years earlier (in a book called Easy Journey to Other Planets) that such an event was impossible using mechanical means as the process of travel:

"Just like twenty years ago I said, "This is all nonsense, moon-going." And now they are coming: "Oh, it is hoax." So that is the difference. Twenty years before and "This is all childish waste of money. This rascal will never be able to go to the moon." And now they are coming. That is the difference. I said from common sense. Nakshatranam aham shashi. And we read in the Bhagavatam that to go to the moon planet, one has to execute such yajnas, karma-kanda. We understand from shastra. And how this rascal with a machine will go there? That is a common sense. But they do not believe in the words of the shastra. Rascals, they were bluffed and they believe. Shastra-cakshus. Your eyes should be through the shastra. Yah shastra-vidhim utsrijya vartate kama..., na siddhim avapnoti [Bg. 16.23]. We believe in this. Therefore I said twenty years before. That is the difference. We take the words of shastra, words of Krishna, ultimate. That's all. So we have no difficulty. They do not believe in shastra. They do not believe in Krishna. So they were bluffed. That is the difference. (Room Conversation, July 1, 1977, Vrindavana)

The official photo of Neil Armstrong taking one small step for man, and creating one giant hoax for mankind.

An unofficial photo of Neil Armstrong on 'the Moon' film set being assisted by members of the accompanying film crew. Although the level of deception behind this stupendous presentation is difficult to penetrate, the stupefaction is caused not so much by the the cleverness of the deceivers, but largely due to the sad fact that most people are not so much interested in what is Real and True. The Real and the True are of God, and since most people in the Kali-yuga are extremely materialistic and thus absorbed in illusion (maya) rather than in the satyam param (the Absolute Truth or Supreme Personality of Godhead), maya has reciprocated with the desire to be in illusion by providing a whole maya Earth (the Earth globe). The maya Earth floating in dark space exists as nothing other than an idea. We use the term 'globe ideology' because there is no Earth globe that can be scientifically demonstrated to exist; it exits merely as a mental construct that has been implanted in the mind by the propagandists of the asura world-view. For those who wish to know the actual truth of God's creation, Srimad Bhagavatam has manifested to clear all illusions:

"This Bhagavata Purana is as brilliant as the sun, and it has arisen just after the departure of Lord Krishna to His own abode, accompanied by religion, knowledge, etc. Persons who have lost their vision due to the dense darkness of ignorance in the age of Kali shall get light from this Purana." (SB 1.3.43)

Just as Srila Prabhupada applied Srimad Bhagavatam in order to expose the so-called Moon landing as a colossal hoax, in the same manner we hope to apply Srimad Bhagavatam's description of the Bhu-mandala in order to expose the false construct of reality known as the Earth-globe.

THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE EARTH IN KALI-YUGA

The European claim to have physically explored and mapped the entire world was not one the brahmanas of nineteenth century could easily counteract as they were essentially teachers of transcendental knowledge, not explorers or conquerors of foreign lands. The European claim to superior geographical knowledge does however raise the question of why the brahmanas of India appear to have lost information (maps, etc.) of our local area of the flat-Earth, as well as its relation to the larger Earth plane (Bhu-mandala). We shall state this briefly as follows: the Puranas provide information not only of the colossal Earth plane, but also the history of even relatively recent emperors such as Yudhisthira (see SB 1.12.5) and Pariksit (see SB 1.16.12) who ruled over the gigantic area of Jambudvipa from their capital in India. The Vedic empire thus included all of the areas of our known world, as well as those lands beyond our current perception. It appears that with the advent of Kali-yuga (which began some 5,000 years ago) the various Vedic civilizations through-out our local area of the world were gradually separated from one another, and contact with the greater Earth was entirely curtailed [since Kali-yuga only affects our local area of Bharata-varsha and not the rest of the Earth-circle, our area of Bharata-varsha is placed in a type of quarantine which prevents the negative effects of the Kali age from disturbing the other areas of the Earth-circle].

Although there is much evidence to show that international travel continued to some extent, until the European Age of Discovery or Age of Exploration (fifteenth to eighteenth century), most people in the world remained in their local area, and had very little experience of foreign lands. We must emphasize that the initial Portuguese and Spanish 'discovery' of India, America, and other places in the world (circa 1400s-1500s) was really a rediscovery of lands that all once belonged to the ancient Vedic empire. The great European cultural event at this time known as the Renaissance (literally 'back again' or rebirth) was nothing but a rediscovery of the ancient world of Greece and Rome which is also linked in many ways to the original Vedic culture (that at one point was spread through-out the whole of Asia and Europe, as well as the other continents of the world). Remnants of the ancient Vedic culture can be found in all parts of the world as is evident in Vedic symbols like the swastika that are found in practically every ancient culture, as well as in the commonality of many words and languages derived from Sanskrit, and, of course, in the many common features found in temple architecture and religious beliefs scattered through-out the world. These facts are becoming increasingly evident as discoveries by those involved in the genre of 'forbidden archaeology' continue to break down the false historical narrative.

Putting all of this into a grand spiritual context, the European Age of Discovery, or rather rediscovery, corresponds with the birth of Sri-Krishna Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in 1486 at the holy place of Mayapur in West Bengal India. The appearance of Sri Krishna Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is predicted in many of the Puranas, wherein He is described as 'the golden avatar'. Lord Krishna appears in the supremely beautiful, ecstatic, and merciful form of Sri-Krishna Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in order to deliver the fallen souls of this age (Kali-yuga). In accordance with the yuga-dharma specified for the age of Kali, Sri Krishna Chaitanya Mahaprabhu teaches the congregational chanting of the Holy Names of God: Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare/Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. The biographers of Sri-Krishna Chaitanya Mahaprabhu state that the process of congregational chanting known as the sankirtan-yajna has the potency to reunite not only all the people of our known part of the Earth, but also to unite the entire universal family in love of Godhead; indeed the biography of Sri Krishna Chaitanya Mahaprabhu describes how representatives from various parts of the greater Earth-circle (sapta-dvipera loka) as well as other parts of the universe, came to meet the Lord at Jaganntha Puri in India and to witness His pastime of ecstatic dancing and chanting the Holy Names of God:

"The inhabitants of the seven higher planetary systems — including the demigods, the Gandharvas and the Kinnaras — and the inhabitants of the seven lower planetary systems [Patalaloka], including the demons and serpentine living entities, all visited Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu in the dress of human beings." (CC Antya-lila 9.8)

"Dressed in different ways, people from the seven islands (sapta-dwipa) and nine khandas (nava-khanda) visited Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu." (CC Antya-lila 9.9)

Here it mentions that beings from the seven islands (sapta-dvipe) as well as nagas and asuras from the seven underworlds (sapta-patalera) came to visit Sri-Krishna Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. The Caitanya-caritamrita also mentions that all of these beings became converted to Vaishnavism and took up the chanting of the Holy Names of God (see Caitanya-caritamrita, Antya-lila 2.10-11). From these statements we can understand that the sankirtan movement is already being propagated through-out the greater Earth region.

As more and more people through-out the world share their encounters with UFO's and extra-terrestrials it has become an obvious fact that we are not alone in this universe. The word 'extraterrestrial' is itself interesting to contemplate as it literally means 'more Earth'. 'Extra' means 'more' or 'additional'; and 'terrestrial' means 'Earth'. Though we usually think of extraterrestrials as coming from distant planets, the Puranas teach that there are civilizations not only in the planets, stars, and other lokas above the Earth, but that there are other civilizations both on the surface of the gigantic Earth circle, as well as those existing within its huge depths. Thus encounters with extraterrestrials will likely include encounters with beings both upon and below our known area of the Earth plane.

In 1975, His Divine Grace A.C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the Founder-Acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness instructed his followers to build the Temple of Vedic Planetarium in order to educate the people of the world about the locations of various civilizations through-out the material universe. The most remarkable aspect of this project has been the rediscovery of Vedic teachings regarding the true shape and extent of the Earth we live upon. It is the authors personal conviction that the coming decades will see a full expose of the false narrative that we live on a small globe floating in space. As the chanting of the Holy Names of Sri-Krishna purifies the Earth, the veil of illusion covering the true nature of the Earth will be lifted, and we will once again understand, if not directly experience, the true nature of the heavens and the Earth, as well as the various forms of life that are spread through-out both the Earth and the greater universe.

Beyond questions regarding the nature of the material universe, the ultimate aim of Vedic cosmology is to give us information of how to attain the tad dhama paramam mama (the supreme abode of Krishna) which is eternal and beyond the material world. Sri-Krishna declares:

"Yet there is another nature, which is eternal and is transcendental to this manifested and unmanifested matter. It is supreme and is never annihilated. When all in this world is annihilated, that part remains as it is. That supreme abode is called unmanifested and infallible, and it is the supreme destination. When one goes there, he never comes back. That is My supreme abode." (Bg 8.20-21)

To that end, the coming decades will see the destruction of the current asura system, and the re-establishment of a world-wide Vedic culture based on sanatana-dharma—particularly the establishment of the yuga-dharma (the religion for this age which is sankirtan-yajna or the congregational chanting of the Holy Names of Sri-Krishna). For a discussion on the immediate spiritual future of the Earth we refer the reader to a paper called The Beginning of the End of Satanic Government.

THE GLOBE IDEOLOGY AND MATERIALISM

Sumathi Ramaswamy makes the interesting point that the globe was used not only by Christian missionaries to convert Indians to Christianity, but was also used as an ideological tool in order to reshape Indians into subjects of 'empire' which, of course, had much more 'worldly' goals as its priority:

"The teaching of terrestrial lessons I propose was also such a mask of conquest, enabling "conversion" by another means, if not to Christianity—indeed not all that desirable for many who served officially in British India—but to a planetary consciousness grounded in Earth's sphericity. In making this argument, I also build on the seminal work of Christopher Bayly who suggested that the British colonial pedagogy was "relentlessly matter-of-fact and empirical…deliberately dry and untheoretical, an antidote to romance and imagination." Given this stance, it is not surprising that the colonial pedagogue delighted in showing up "the wild conception of the Poorans by demonstrating the absurdity of the popular beliefs about the centrality of Mount Meru…True geography as much as astronomy was seen as a way of demolishing heathenism by stealth, and the distribution of globes to schools became a significant aspect of the attempt to spread useful knowledge." (Terrestrial Lessons p. 29)

Moreover:

"The important point to underscore is that for much of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, immediately after instruction in the so-called 3Rs—reading, writing, and arithmetic—geography was the one subject to which the child was invariably introduced. Indeed by the middle of the nineteenth century, passing the geography examination was mandatory in employment tests for government clerks, revenue servants, teachers, and sundry other professions in various parts of India. As such, its study was rarely contested—although not infrequently dismissed as "boring" and "tedious" by even its instructors—such was the importance to terrestrial lessons in the elementary schooling of the colonial child. It was the paradigmatic useful knowledge in India and elsewhere in the nineteenth century, indeed "the mother of all sciences." The reason for its importance, as I underscore in this book, is that its lessons worlded the modern subject and put him in his "proper" place. Important enough as the project was in the modern West, in places like British India, it assumed even greater salience as a means for producing "enlightened but colonized" natives who learned to recognize themselves as inhabitants of not just Modern Earth, but also as subjects of the vast empire—colored a conscious pink in their maps, atlases, and globes—that encompassed such a world and their proper place in an emergent new world order centered on Britain. In what follows, therefore, I detail the manner in which an Empire of Geography was rolled out in fits and starts with the help of seemingly humble objects, such as school map, the wall map, and the bound atlas to establish what I call the Dominion of Modern Earth, as British rule advanced to different parts of the vast subcontinent." (Terrestrial Lessons, pp. 34-35)

The conversion of India to the globe was in many many respects the beginning of India's conversion to secular science with its concomitant materialist world-view. The incorporation of huge numbers of Indians into Britain's massive 'global' bureaucracy meant that Hindus for the first time began to identify themselves as servants of the secular state rather than as servants of God.

Considering the above analysis by Sumathi Ramaswamy it is interesting to contemplate how one's idea of the world, and one's relative position upon the world, engenders a sense of subjugation to the perceived ruling power. Since this is the case, those followers of Sri-Krishna who understand that the Earth is of much greater dimensions will certainly not subjugate themselves to the so-called rulers of this tiny area of the Earth, but will instead identify themselves as being under the jurisdiction of Sri-Krishna and his deva representatives such as Indra, Vayu, etc who have their administrative seat on the summit of Mount Meru. According to Vedic cosmology, Mount Meru is the center of universal power, not Washington DC, Moscow, or Beijing. Those devotees who are conscious of the supreme controlling power of Sri-Krishna do not come under the jurisdiction of the satanic governments of Kali-yuga.

THE GREAT AWAKENING

It is our own conviction that the conquest of the globe in India was the momentary victory of scientific materialism at the expense of transcendental revelation. It was Srila Prabhupada's intention to reverse this situation by establishing the Temple of Vedic Planetarium which would once again establish the transcendental world-view of Srimad Bhagavatam. We believe this attempt will be successful, and its success will certainly be assured when the globe ideology is eventually defeated and the fraud of space travel exposed. To this end we encourage the brahmanas of India to look once more at the original Vedic teachings regarding the shape, size, and situation of the Earth, and to apply their great intelligence to deconstructing the Western globe ideology. During the period of British control in India the brahmanas did not have a fair chance to develop arguments against the science supposedly supporting the globe concept. Now a century later the brahmanas have the advantage of being schooled to an equal or even greater degree in the Western system of education, and are therefore in a much better position to turn true science against the materialistic paradigm. An analogy in the Srimad Bhagavatam explains how the brahmanas resume their study of Vedic literature by the call of a great acharya:

"The frogs, who had all along been lying silent, suddenly began croaking when they heard the rumbling of the rain clouds, in the same way that brahmana students, who perform their morning duties in silence begin reciting their lessons when called by their teacher. (SB 10.20.9)

PURPORT

Srila Prabhupada comments, "After the first rainfall, when there is a thundering sound in the clouds, all the frogs begin to croak, like students suddenly engaged in reading their studies. Students are generally supposed to rise early in the morning. They do not usually arise of their own accord, however, but only when there is a bell sounded in the temple or in the cultural institution. By the order of the spiritual master they immediately rise, and after finishing their morning duties they sit down to study the Vedas or chant Vedic mantras. Similarly, everyone is sleeping in the darkness of Kali-yuga, but when there is a great acarya, by his calling only everyone takes to the study of the Vedas to acquire actual knowledge."

Certainly Srila Prabhupada's bold plan to reintroduce Vedic cosmology to the world via the Temple of Vedic Planetarium will result in a renewed study and faith in the Puranic literature.

In Part Two of this paper we shall look at the question of whether astronomical texts such as Surya-Siddhanta contradict the Puranic description of the Earth-circle, and whether ancient Indian astronomers had developed an idea of the spherical Earth before their European counterparts.

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