Hinduism

Sagan, Carl.  Cosmos.  Random House.  1980.  The book of the 1980 television series by the Cornell astronomer.  Chapter 10, "The Edge of Forever", surveys ideas of the universe's age and origin and singles out Hindu cyclic time for praise.

1. 1a.

   Page 258:  “The Hindu religion is the only one of the world's great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, no doubt by accident, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long, longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang. And there are much longer time scales still.” ↩ ↩

Weber, Max.  The Religion of India:  The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism.  Free Press.  Translated by Hans H. Gerth and Don Martindale.  1958.  The German sociologist's comparative study of Hindu and Buddhist religion and society, written in 1916–1917.  Weber judged the karma doctrine the most consistent of all theodicies and argued that it was fused with the caste order.

1. 2a.

   Page 121:  “Karma doctrine transformed the world into a strictly rational, ethically-determined cosmos; it represents the most consistent theodicy ever produced by history.” ↩ ↩

Haraldsson, Erlendur.  Modern Miracles: An Investigative Report on Psychic Phenomena Associated with Sathya Sai Baba.  Mamaroneck, NY: Hastings House.  1997.  The fullest first-hand investigation of Sai Baba, by an Icelandic psychologist and parapsychologist who visited him repeatedly from the 1970s, tape-recorded interviews with followers, critics and former devotees, and surveyed 29 long-time observers.  First published in 1987 as Miracles Are My Visiting Cards.  The author was sympathetic, and he reports both his failure to obtain controls and the claims that failed his checks.

1. 3a.

   Page 305:  “In science, experimentation is traditionally the ideal way to certainty about the nature of any phenomena. In our research on Sai Baba this approach was closed to us. By that criterion there is no evidence of genuine paranormal phenomena having been produced by Sathya Sai Baba.” ↩ ↩

2. 3b.

   Page 25:  “We wanted to have him participate in controlled experiments. We were, needless to say, well aware of what trained magicians may do by sleight of hand; hence, controlled experiments were essential.” ↩

3. 3c.

   Page 253:  “All four members of the medical staff report that Walter Cowan had been alive when he was admitted to the hospital and had not died while under their treatment.” ↩

4. 3d.

   Page 51:  “By the time our second visit to India was over, Dr Osis and I had observed the ostensible paranormal appearance of objects in Baba's hand about 20 times. None of these events occurred under controlled conditions.” ↩

5. 3e.

   Page 222:  “Whether some of the physical productions, in some periods of Baba's life, may have been produced by sleight of hand, we cannot, of course, ascertain. What we can, however, squarely state is that in spite of a longlasting and painstaking effort, we found no direct evidence of fraud.” ↩

6. 3f.

   Page 257:  “I have found ten witnesses to this phenomenon of light, each of whom I have interviewed separately. They all agreed that these phenomena happened only in the late 1940s and only a few times.” ↩

Keil, H. H. Jürgen, and Jim B. Tucker.  “Children Who Claim to Remember Previous Lives: Cases with Written Records Made before the Previous Personality Was Identified.”  Journal of Scientific Exploration 19(1):91–101.  2005.  A report of a Turkish boy, called KA, whose statements Keil wrote down in 1997 before anyone identified the man he seemed to describe, with a review of three earlier cases of the same kind.  It gives the Division's own count of such cases in its files.

1. 4a.

   Page 97:  “Over 2500 cases of young children with past life claims are now registered in the files of the Division of Personality Studies at the University of Virginia, but only 33 of them involve cases where a previous personality was identified after written records were made of the child’s statements”. ↩ ↩

Pew Research Center.  How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020.  Jun 9, 2025.  A demographic report that estimates the religious makeup of 201 countries and territories in 2010 and 2020 from more than 2,700 censuses and surveys.  Used here for how many Hindus there are and where they live.

1. 5a.

   Page 66:  “The Asia-Pacific region is home to 99% of the global Hindu population, with around 95% of all Hindus living in India.”  The table on the same page gives 1,177,860,000 Hindus in 2020, 14.9% of the world.  Page 91:  “Nearly 95% of the world’s Hindus live in one country: India, where Hindus make up 79% of the nation’s 1.4 billion people.” ↩

Flood, Gavin.  “Introduction:  Establishing the Boundaries.”  The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism, ed. Gavin Flood.  Blackwell.  2003.  The editor's introduction to a standard academic reference work on Hinduism, written by a specialist in Śaiva traditions.  It traces how the words "Hindu" and "Hinduism" arose, sets out the debate over whether they name one religion or many, and describes the texts and practices most Hindu traditions share.

1. 6a.

   Page 2:  “Others argue that while Hinduism does not denote a religion with clearly defined boundaries in a way that we might be able to define Christianity or Islam, it nevertheless denotes a group of traditions united by certain common features, such as shared ritual patterns, a shared revelation, a belief in reincarnation”.  “and a particular form of endogamous social organization or caste.”  “a unified, coherent field of doctrine and practice”.  “a fiction, a colonial construction based on the miscategorization of indigenous cultural forms.”  The omitted words are the Sanskrit terms for reincarnation and liberation, with the word "liberation" between them. ↩ ↩

2. 6b.

   Page 3:  ““Hindu” comes from a Persian word hind, or in Arabic al-hind, for the area of the Indus valley.”  “from the eighth century, when Muslims settled in the Indus valley, Persian authors distinguished between Muslims and the non-Muslim “Hindus,””.  “Towards the end of the eighteenth century “Hindu” or “Hindoo” was adopted by the British to refer to the people of “Hindustan,” the area of northwest South Asia, who were not Muslim, Sikh, Christian, or Jain, and the “ism” was added to “Hindu” in the early nineteenth century.” ↩

3. 6c.

   Page 4:  “We might say, then, that Hinduism contains both uniting and dispersing tendencies that we might, borrowing from Bakhtin, call centripetal and centrifugal forces.” ↩

4. 6d.

   Page 4:  “Much before the nineteenth century, people of South Asia did not consider themselves to belong to a wider, united religious identity, but would rather be members of a tradition and community whose focus was a particular deity or practice.”  Flood goes on to name the worshipper of Viṣṇu, the worshipper of Śiva and the follower of particular Tantras. ↩

5. 6e.

   Page 4:  “there is a great proliferation of decentered traditions, often founded by a charismatic teacher or guru, and communities expressed in vernacular languages that cannot be defined by a central, brahmanical tradition and which are often set against that tradition.” ↩

6. 6f.

   Page 4:  “as symbol and legitimizing reference if not actual text, is central as a constraining influence on later traditions, providing the authority for tradition”.  “Whether accepted or rejected, whether traditions are indifferent to its injunctions, it is seldom ignored as symbol.”  Flood is speaking of the revelation of the Veda. ↩

7. 6g.

   Page 5:  “Speculation about the meaning of the sacrifice developed in texts still regarded as revelation”.  Flood names the Brāhmaṇas and Upaniṣads as these texts. ↩

8. 6h.

   Page 5:  “regarding their own scriptures, the Tantras, as transcending the lower revelation of the other schools”.  Flood is speaking of the Śaiva traditions. ↩

9. 6i.

   Pages 7–8:  “There are two important groups of narrative traditions: the epics”.  “the vast collections of “ancient stories,””.  Flood names the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa as the epics and the Purāṇas as the collections of ancient stories. ↩

10. 6j.

    Page 8:  Flood describes the idea of the incarnations of the supreme deity Viṣṇu as richly elaborated in the Purāṇas. ↩

Thibaut, George.  “The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya, Part I.”  Sacred Books of the East 34.  Clarendon Press.  1890.  The first full English translation of Bādarāyaṇa's Brahmasūtra with Śaṅkara's commentary, the classical statement of Advaita Vedānta.  Sūtras 1.3.28-30 discuss whether the eternity of the Veda survives the dissolution and re-creation of the world.

1. 7a.

   Page 211:  “29. And from this very reason there follows the eternity of the Veda.”  “As the eternity of the Veda is founded on the absence of the remembrance of an agent only”. ↩

2. 7b.

   Section Brahma Sutra 2.1.34, page 358:  “Some beings, viz. the gods and others, he renders eminently happy ; others, as for instance the animals, eminently unhappy ; to some again, as for instance men, he allots an intermediate position.”  Shankara stating the objection he will answer. ↩

3. 7c.

   Section Brahma Sutra 2.1.34, pages 358–359:  “For as Parjanya is the common cause of the production of rice, barley, and other plants, while the difference between the various species is due to the various potentialities lying hidden in the respective seeds, so the Lord is the common cause of the creation of gods, men, &c., while the differences between these classes of beings are due to the different merit belonging to the individual souls.”  Parjanya is the Vedic god of rain. ↩

Jha, Ganganatha.  Shabara-Bhasya, vol. 1 (Adhyayas I-III).  Oriental Institute, Baroda (Gaekwad's Oriental Series 66).  1933.  The standard English translation of Śabara's commentary on Jaimini's Mīmāṃsā Sūtra, the founding text of the school that holds the Veda to be authorless and eternal.  Book 1, chapter 1 sets out the argument from the absence of a remembered author and answers objections drawn from names in the Veda.

1. 8a.

   Page 23:  “If there were a person who created the relation and started its use, he would surely be remembered at the time of using the word.”  Śabara on Mīmāṃsā Sūtra 1.1.5;  "the relation" is the link between a word and what it means. ↩

Gandhi, M. K.  “A Vindication of Caste (Dr. Ambedkar's Indictment, I–II).”  Harijan, 11 and 18 July 1936;  reprinted in Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar:  Writings and Speeches, vol. 1.  1936.  Gandhi's reply in his own weekly to Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste.  He defends hereditary varna as a law of ancestral calling, condemns untouchability, and rejects the Smriti texts Ambedkar quoted as inauthentic.  Pages are those of the 2014 reprint.

1. 9a.

   Page 83:  “The Smritis for instance contain much that can never be accepted as the word of God. Thus, many of the texts that Dr. Ambedkar quotes from the Smritis cannot be accepted as authentic.”  “Nothing can be accepted as the word of God which cannot be tested by reason or be capable of being spiritually experienced.” ↩

Colas, Gérard.  “History of Vaiṣṇava Traditions:  An Esquisse.”  The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism, ed. Gavin Flood.  Blackwell.  2003.  A survey chapter on the history of the Vaishnava traditions in a standard academic reference work on Hinduism.  Cited only for the date of Shankara.

1. 10a.

   Page 240:  “The Advaitin Sankara (eighth century) refers to the adherents of the Pancaratra (pancaratrasiddhantins) in his commentary on Brahmasutra 2, 2, 44.” ↩

Sahgal, Neha et al.  Religion in India:  Tolerance and Segregation.  Pew Research Center.  Jun 29, 2021.  A national face-to-face survey of 29,999 Indian adults in 17 languages, conducted from November 2019 to March 2020, on religious belief, identity, caste and attitudes to other groups.  Its caste questions ask about identity, discrimination, friendship and marriage.

1. 11a.

   Page 8:  “Not only do a majority of Hindus in India (77%) believe in karma, but an identical percentage of Muslims do, too.” ↩

2. 11b.

   Page 30:  “Overall, 64% of Indians say it is very important to stop women in their community from marrying into other castes, and about the same share (62%) say it is very important to stop men in their community from marrying into other castes.”  The chart on the same page gives, for men and women respectively:  Hindus 63% and 64%, Muslims 70% and 74%, Christians 36% and 37%, college graduates 48% and 50%. ↩

Dayananda Saraswati, and Ghasi Ram.  Introduction to the Commentary on the Vedas (Rigvedadi Bhashya Bhumika).  Sarvadeshik Arya Pratinidhi Sabha, Delhi.  1958.  The founder of the Arya Samaj sets out, in question-and-answer form, his doctrine that God revealed the four Vedas at the creation of the world, and computes the years since then from the world ages of the Manu-smṛti.  Written in 1876-77;  Ghasi Ram's English translation first appeared in 1925.

1. 12a.

   Pages 15–16:  “How many years have elapsed since the revelation of the Vedas”.  Dayananda's answer on p. 16 is 1,960,852,976 years, "The same number of years has elapsed since the creation in the present Kalpa."  The translator's footnote on p. 16 gives Lekhram's correction, 1,955,884,976, "according to the Surya Siddhanta". ↩ ↩

2. 12b.

   Page vi:  “Dayanand believed that the Vedas contained the germs of all the Sciences. And to prove this he has quoted by way of illustration Vedic verses in the Introduction which teach the principles of Attraction and Gravitation, of Arithmetic, Algebra and Geometry, of Astronomy, of Ship-building, Aerial-cars, Telegraphy &c.”  From the preface to the English translation. ↩

Wilson, Horace Hayman.  The Vishnu Purana: A System of Hindu Mythology and Tradition, vol. 3.  Trübner.  Edited by Fitzedward Hall.  1866.  The first English translation of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa, one of the main Purāṇic sources for Hindu sacred history.  Book III, chapter 3 tells how a Vyāsa divides the one Veda into four in every Dvāpara age.

1. 13a.

   Page 33:  “divides the Veda, which is (properly, but) one, into many portions.”  “he makes the Veda fourfold, to adapt it to their capacities”. ↩

Clark, Walter Eugene.  The Aryabhatiya of Aryabhata.  University of Chicago Press.  1930.  An annotated translation of Āryabhaṭa's astronomical treatise of AD 499, the earliest datable Indian work to fix its own date by the years elapsed in the Kali age.

1. 14a.

   Page 54:  “When three yugapadas and sixty times sixty years had elapsed (from the beginning of the yuga) then twenty-three years of my life had passed.”  Pages 54–55:  “If Aryabhata began the Kaliyuga at 3102 b.c. as later astronomers did, and if his fourth yugapada began with the beginning of the Kaliyuga, we arrive at the date 499 a.d.”  Āryabhaṭīya 3.10 and Clark's note on it. ↩

Prime Minister's Office, India.  PM addresses Plenary Session of St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.  Jun 2, 2017.  The Indian government's own summary of the Prime Minister's speech at an economic forum in Russia.  It is a summary, not a transcript.

1. 15a.

   “Recalling his initial address, the Prime Minister said that in a very simple way, he spoke of the vision for New India, and about the Vedas written 5000 years ago.” ↩ ↩

Talageri, Shrikant G.  The Rigveda and the Avesta:  The Final Evidence.  Aditya Prakashan.  2009.  The fullest statement of the Out-of-India chronology by its most detailed advocate, an independent Indian writer.  It orders the Rigveda's books by composers, kings and geography, compares their names with the Avesta and the Mitanni records, and in chapter 6 gives absolute dates for the first time in his work.

1. 16a.

   Page 151:  “my (till then) tentative, and intuitive, estimate was that the composition of the earliest hymns of the text must have commenced sometime in the fourth millennium BCE”.  Page 152:  “let me state my final dates (which I will still call a conservative estimate) as of now: Early Period — Books 6, 3, 7, early 1: 3400-2600 BCE. Middle Period — Books 4, 2, middle 1: 2600-2200 BCE. Late Period — Books 5, 8, 9, 10, rest of 1: 2200-1400 BCE.” ↩

Witzel, Michael.  “Vedas and Upaniṣads.”  The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism, ed. Gavin Flood, 68–101.  Blackwell.  2003.  A reference chapter by Harvard's professor of Sanskrit summarising what is known of the Vedic texts, their schools, their transmission and their dates.  It states the mainstream dating in its plainest form and its limits.

1. 17a.

   Page 68:  “The oldest text, the Rgveda, must have been more or less contemporary with the Mitanni texts of northern Syria/Iraq (1450-1350 BCE); these mention certain Vedic gods (Varuna, Mitra, Indra, Nasatya) and some forms of early Sanskrit that slightly predate the Rgveda (mazda for Ved. medha, vasana for Ved. vahana, etc.). However, there still is no absolute dating of any Ved. text. Pertinent parameters include the first use of iron (in a post-Rgvedic text, the Atharvaveda, at ca. 1200/1000 BCE) and the lifetime of the Buddha (at 500 or perhaps rather 400 BCE) who postdates almost all Vedic texts. However, all Vedic texts predate the grammatical commentary of Patanjali (ca. 150 BCE) and his predecessor Panini, who quote most of them.” ↩

2. 17b.

   Pages 68–69:  “The Vedic texts were orally composed and transmitted, without the use of script, in an unbroken line of transmission from teacher to student that was formalized early on. This ensured an impeccable textual transmission superior to the classical texts of other cultures; it is, in fact, something like a tape-recording of ca. 1500—500 BCE.”  “Not just the actual words, but even the long-lost musical (tonal) accent (as in old Greek or in Japanese) has been preserved up to the present.” ↩

Beckman, Gary.  Hittite Diplomatic Texts.  Scholars Press (Writings from the Ancient World 7).  2nd edition.  Edited by Harry A. Hoffner.  1999.  The standard English translation of the Hittite treaties and diplomatic letters, by a leading Hittitologist.  Documents 6A and 6B are the two versions of the treaty between Šuppiluliuma I of Hatti and Šattiwaza of Mitanni.

1. 18a.

   Section no. 6A §14:  “the Mitra-gods, the Varuna-gods, Indra, the Nasatya- gods”.  Section introduction to no. 6:  “Of particular religious and historical interest is the appearance of the Indie deities Mitra, Varuna, Indra, and the Nasatyas among the divine wit- nesses of Mittanni”.  "Indie" is the scan's reading of "Indic";  the line-end hyphens are the scan's. ↩ ↩

Anthony, David W.  The Horse, the Wheel, and Language:  How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World.  Princeton University Press.  2007.  An archaeologist's synthesis of the steppe origin of the Indo-European languages.  It dates the first horse-drawn chariots to the Sintashta culture east of the Urals about 2100-1800 BC and links that culture to the ancestors of the Indo-Iranian speakers.

1. 19a.

   Page 371:  “The most surprising discoveries were the remains of chariots, which radiocarbon dates showed were the oldest chariots known anywhere.”  Page 399:  “Chariot grave at Krivoe Ozero, kurgan 9, grave 1, dated about 2000 BCE”.  “spoked wheel impressions from wheels set into slots in the floor of the grave”.  The second and third quotations are the caption of figure 15.13. ↩ ↩

Witzel, Michael.  “Autochthonous Aryans?  The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts.”  Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies 7(3):1–93.  2001.  A long critique of the Out-of-India thesis by Harvard's professor of Sanskrit, the leading Western authority on the Vedic texts and their schools.  Section 3 sets out the relative and absolute chronology of the Vedic texts with reasons, and later sections answer Talageri, Elst and the astronomical and Sarasvati arguments one by one.  It is a polemic as well as a survey.  Mirror:  Archive.org

1. 20a.

   Page 5:  “does not yet know of iron but only of the hard metal copper/bronze”.  “the RV must be earlier than that.”  Iron, "the 'black metal'" of later Vedic texts, "makes its appearance in S. Asia only by c. 1200 or 1000 BCE" in Witzel's account. ↩

2. 20b.

   Page 5:  “The RV also does not know of large cities such as that of the Indus civilization but only of ruins (armaka, Falk 1981) and of small forts (pur, Rau 1976). Therefore, it must be later than the disintegration of the Indus cities in the Panjab, at c. 1900 BCE”. ↩

Narasimhan, Vagheesh M. et al.  “The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia.”  Science 365(6457):eaat7487.  2019.  The largest ancient-DNA study of the region, reporting genomes from 523 ancient people from Central Asia, Iran and the Swat valley of Pakistan and comparing them with hundreds of modern South Asian groups.  It dates the arrival of steppe ancestry in South Asia and reads it as the likely carrier of the Indo-European languages.  No genome from an Indus city itself is included.  David Reich of Harvard Medical School is one of its corresponding authors.  Mirror:  PMC

1. 21a.

   Section Results, the formation of the ANI:  “we estimate the date of admixture into the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age individuals from the Swat District of northernmost South Asia to be on average 26 generations before the date that they lived, corresponding to a 95% confidence interval of ~1900–1500 BCE.” ↩ ↩

2. 21b.

   Section Results, Steppe ancestry primarily from males:  “there is a notable enrichment in groups that consider themselves to be of traditionally priestly status: 5 of the 6 groups with Z < −4.5 were Brahmins or Bhumihars even though they comprise only 7–11% of the 140 groups analyzed”.  “We caution that this is not a formal test”.  If each group were independent, five or more of six being drawn from 7-11% of the groups has a chance of about 1 in 11,000 to 1 in 100,000 (binomial arithmetic by this article, not the paper's).  The authors warn the groups are not independent. ↩

Kak, Subhash.  Babylonian and Indian Astronomy:  Early Connections.  2003.  A comparison of early Babylonian and Indian astronomy that states Kak's astronomical dates for statements in the Vedic prose texts.

1. 22a.

   Page 3:  “This corresponds to 2950 BC.”  Of the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa's statement that the Pleiades "never swerve from the east". ↩

The declination of Alcyone, the brightest Pleiad, was computed with the IAU 1976 precession formulas (Lieske 1977), which reproduce its J2000 position exactly and are accurate to a few tenths of a degree over 5,000 years;  proper motion is under 0.1° and was ignored.  It crossed the celestial equator about 2916 BC.  The cluster rose within 1° of due east, at latitude 28° N, from about 3095 to 2739 BC;  within 2°, from 3275 to 2562 BC.  In 1000 BC its declination was +10.7°.  A star seen at altitude h stands due east when sin(declination) = sin h × sin(latitude);  judged at 3°, 5° and 10° of altitude, the Pleiades stood due east about 2666, 2500 and 2088 BC.  The script is research/code/pleiades-east.ts beside this article. ↩

Chatterjee, Anirban et al.  “On the existence of a perennial river in the Harappan heartland.”  Scientific Reports 9:17221.  2019.  A provenance study by geochemists of India's Physical Research Laboratory, dating sediments along 300 km of the Ghaggar by radiocarbon and luminescence and tracing their source rocks by argon-argon ages of mica and strontium-neodymium isotopes.  It is the main recent geological support for a Himalayan-fed river in early Harappan times.  Mirror:  PMC

1. 24a.

   Section Abstract:  “We establish that during 80-20 ka and 9-4.5 ka the river was perennial and was receiving sediments from the Higher and Lesser Himalayas. The latter phase can be attributed to the reactivation of the river by the distributaries of the Sutlej. This revived perennial condition of the Ghaggar, which can be correlated with the Saraswati, likely facilitated development of the early Harappan settlements along its banks.”  Section Dynamics of the Harappan settlements:  “However, by the time the civilization matured, the river had already lost its glacial connection.” ↩

Tewari, Rakesh.  “The origins of iron-working in India:  new evidence from the Central Ganga Plain and the Eastern Vindhyas.”  Antiquity 77(297):536–544.  2003.  A report of excavations in Uttar Pradesh that found iron objects and iron-working debris (furnaces, tuyeres, slag) in radiocarbon-dated layers, pushing iron in north India well before 1000 BC.  It asks whether iron working came with immigrants or arose locally.

1. 25a.

   Section Abstract:  “Recent excavations in Uttar Pradesh have turned up iron artefacts, furnaces, tuyeres and slag in layers radiocarbon dated between 1800 and 1000 BC.” ↩

Talageri, Shrikant G.  Rakhigarhi and After.  Sep 19, 2019.  The leading Out-of-India author's reply to the 2019 ancient-DNA papers and to the press coverage of them.

1. 26a.

   “The gratuitous conclusion that the Harappan people were not speaking Indo-European languages, because these languages only entered India with Steppe immigrants after 2000 BCE , cannot be proved by any amount of genetic data and quibbling, and can only be proved by conclusively disproving my case for the composition of the Old Rigveda before 2500 BCE in a core "Aryan" area centered around Haryana and westernmost Uttar Pradesh”. ↩

al-Biruni, and Edward C. Sachau.  Alberuni's India, vol. 1.  Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner.  1910.  The Persian scholar al-Bīrūnī's survey of Hindu religion, science and customs, written about AD 1030 after he learned Sanskrit in the Ghaznavid conquests, in Sachau's translation of 1888.  Chapter 12, on the Veda, is the earliest outside report of how the Veda was transmitted.

1. 27a.

   Pages 125–126:  “They do not allow the Veda to be committed to writing, because it is recited according to certain modulations, and they therefore avoid the use of the pen, since it is liable to cause some error, and may occasion an addition or a defect in the written text.”  Page 126:  “This is the reason why, not long before our time, Vasukra, a native of Kashmir, a famous Brahmin, has of his own account undertaken the task of explaining the Veda and committing it to writing.”  "Of his own account" is as printed, for "of his own accord".  The margin note in the scan, "The Veda transmitted by memory", interrupts the first quotation. ↩

Witzel, Michael, and Qinyuan Wu.  The Two Oldest Veda Manuscripts:  Facsimile Edition of Vājasaneyi Saṃhitā 1–20 (Saṃhitā- and Padapāṭha) from Nepal and Western Tibet (c. 1150 CE).  Harvard University Press (Harvard Oriental Series).  2019.  A facsimile edition of the two oldest known manuscripts of any Veda, a continuous text and a word-by-word text of the White Yajurveda, with a comparison of their accent marks to modern recitation.

1. 28a.

   Section title and publisher's description:  “(c. 1150 CE)”.  “Michael Witzel and Qinyuan Wu present the two oldest known Veda manuscripts, the Vājasaneyi Saṃhitā of the White Yajurveda and its contemporaneous sister text, a Vājasaneyi Padapāṭha, recently found in western Tibet.” ↩

Bloomfield, Maurice, and Franklin Edgerton.  Vedic Variants:  A Study of the Variant Readings in the Repeated Mantras of the Veda, vol. 1, The Verb.  Linguistic Society of America (reprinted New Delhi:  Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1979).  1979 (edition of 1930).  A systematic study, by two American Sanskritists, of every mantra that occurs in more than one Vedic text, built on Bloomfield's Vedic Concordance.  It catalogues how the same verses differ from school to school and asks why.

1. 29a.

   Page 11:  “Of the repeated text-units, again, it is estimated that about one-third show variations. The Vedic Variants are concerned with the variant readings of these repeated mantras, numbering roughly 10,000.”  “As to extent, the variations range all the way from change of a single letter in a single word, to radical rearrangements of the whole text”.  Edgerton's preface, which also gives the Concordance's "some 90,000 entries", "not far from a third" of which occur more than once. ↩

2. 29b.

   Page 19:  “Faults of memory no doubt entered largely into these variations, and so help to account for such instability in the tradition of the Vedic mantras, which was so largely oral”. ↩

The fourteen spans are those listed in Part 2, in human years.  The chance of a hit treats the unknown modern figure as equally likely to fall in any power of ten between 100 million and 100 billion years, and measures what fraction of that range lies within the stated factor of at least one span.  The chance for either of two targets is one minus the square of the chance of missing.  Over the whole range of the scheme, 100 thousand to 1,000 trillion years, the figures are a little lower:  5.5% for one target and 10.8% for two at 5%.  The calculation is in research/code/cycle-menu.ts beside this article. ↩

The elapsed part of the present kalpa, by the count the Sūrya Siddhānta uses:  a twilight of one Kṛta age at the start, 1,728,000 years;  six Manu-reigns each with its twilight, 6 × 308,448,000;  twenty-seven great ages of the seventh Manu, 27 × 4,320,000;  the Kṛta, Tretā and Dvāpara ages of the twenty-eighth, 3,888,000;  and 5,126 years of the Kali age to AD 2025.  The sum is 1,972,949,126 years.  The Sūrya Siddhānta subtracts the 17,064,000 years that creation took, leaving 1,955,885,126;  Burgess's own total to April 1859 is 1,955,884,960.³²  Brahmā's present age is half his life, 155,520,000,000,000 years, plus the elapsed kalpa.  Ratios:  4.54 billion ÷ 1.956 billion = 2.32;  155.52 trillion ÷ 13.8 billion = about 11,270. ↩

Burgess, Ebenezer.  “Translation of the Sûrya-Siddhânta, a Text-Book of Hindu Astronomy; with Notes, and an Appendix.”  Journal of the American Oriental Society 6.  1860.  The standard English translation of the classic Hindu astronomical text.  Its notes compute the text's cycles and test its date against the true positions of the planets.

1. 32a.

   Page 10, footnote:  “in the text itself of Manu (i. 68-71) the duration of the Great Age, called by him Divine Age, is given as twelve thousand years simply, and that it is his commentator who, by asserting these to be divine years, brings Manu's cosmogony to an agreement with that of the Puranas. This is a strong indication that the divine year is an afterthought, and that the period of 4,320,000 years is an expansion of an earlier one of 12,000.” ↩

2. 32b.

   Page 29:  “Total from end of creation to April, 1859, 1,955,884,960”. ↩

Mukunda, H. S. et al.  “A critical study of the work "Vyamanika Shastra".”  Scientific Opinion, 5–12.  1974.  A study by aeronautical and mechanical engineers of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, of the text's origin, its Sanskrit, and the four aircraft it describes.  It finds the text recent and the craft unable to fly.

1. 33a.

   Page 11:  “Any reader by now would have concluded the obvious – that the planes described above are the best poor concoctions, rather than expressions of something real. None of the planes has properties or capabilities of being flown; the geometries are unimaginably horrendous from the point of view of flying; and the principles of propulsion make them resist rather than assist flying.” ↩ ↩

Bharati Krishna Tirtha.  Vedic Mathematics, or Sixteen Simple Mathematical Formulae from the Vedas.  Motilal Banarsidass.  Edited by V. S. Agrawala.  1965.  The book that launched "Vedic Mathematics", published five years after its author's death, with a foreword by its general editor and introductory remarks by his disciple Manjula Trivedi.  It presents sixteen short rules for mental arithmetic as sūtras of the Atharvaveda.

1. 34a.

   Page 7:  “it is not surprising that the Sūtras mentioned herein do not appear in the hitherto known Pariśiṣṭas.”  From the general editor's foreword. ↩

Wujastyk, Dominik et al.  On the Plastic Surgery of the Ears and Nose:  The Nepalese Version of the Suśrutasaṃhitā.  Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing.  2023.  An edition and translation of the ear and nose chapter from the oldest dated manuscript of the Suśruta Saṃhitā, by the team editing the work at the University of Alberta, with a study of the history of the nose operation.

1. 35a.

   Page 1:  “It is dated to 878 ce, making it one of the earliest dated manuscripts known from South Asia.” ↩

Plofker, Kim et al.  “The Bakhshālī Manuscript:  A Response to the Bodleian Library's Radiocarbon Dating.”  History of Science in South Asia 5(1):134–150.  2017.  A reply by five historians of Indian mathematics, including the manuscript's modern editor, Hayashi.  It accepts the radiocarbon values and disputes what was inferred from them.

1. 36a.

   Page 135:  “The date ranges found for these samples are 224–383, 680–779, and 885–993 respectively (all Common Era).” ↩

Colebrooke, Henry Thomas.  Algebra, with Arithmetic and Mensuration, from the Sanscrit of Brahmegupta and Bháscara.  John Murray.  1817.  The first English translation of the mathematical chapters of Brahmagupta and Bhāskara, with a long dissertation on their dates.

1. 37a.

   Page 339:  “The sum of two affirmative quantities is affirmative; of two negative is negative; of an affirmative and a negative is their difference; or, if they be equal, nought. … The product of a negative quantity and an affirmative is negative; of two negative, is positive”. ↩

Morris, Henry M.  The Biblical Basis for Modern Science.  Baker Book House.  1984.  A survey of science claimed to be taught in the Bible, by the founder of the Institute for Creation Research.

1. 38a.

   Page 246:  “The earth is neither resting on pillars nor suspended from some heavenly ceiling. It is maintained in an orbit about the sun by the force of gravity”. ↩

McMillen, S. I.  None of These Diseases.  Fleming H. Revell.  1963.  A popular book by a Christian physician arguing that the laws of Moses anticipate modern medicine.

1. 39a.

   Page 21:  “It was a day picked by the Creator of vitamin K.” ↩

Sarfati, Jonathan.  “Arguments we think creationists should NOT use.”  Creation Ministries International.  Feb 7, 2006.  A young-earth ministry's standing list of arguments it asks its own supporters to drop, with the reason for each.

1. 40a.

   “Not promoted by major creationist organizations, but an hoax in wide circulation, especially on the Internet. Essentially the same story, now widely circulated on the Internet, appeared in the somewhat unreliable 1936 book The Harmony of Science and Scripture by Harry Rimmer.” ↩

Olivelle, Patrick.  Upaniṣads.  Oxford University Press, Oxford World's Classics.  2008.  A modern annotated translation of the early Upanishads by a leading scholar of Indian religious law, first published in 1996.  Its introduction dates the oldest Upanishads, and its rendering of Chandogya 5.10.7 is used beside Hume's.

1. 41a.

   Section Introduction, Chronology:  “The scholarly consensus, well-founded I think, is that the Brhadaranyaka and the Chandogya are the two earliest Upanisads.”  “The two texts as we have them are, in all likelihood, pre-Buddhist; placing them in the seventh to sixth centuries bce may be reasonable, give or take a century or so.” ↩

Hume, Robert Ernest.  The Thirteen Principal Upanishads.  Oxford University Press.  1921.  A complete scholarly English translation of the thirteen principal Upanishads by the professor of the history of religions at Union Theological Seminary, New York, with notes.  Used here for the earliest statements of karma and rebirth, in the Brihadaranyaka and Chandogya Upanishads.

1. 42a.

   Section Chandogya Upanishad 5.10.7, page 233:  “Accordingly, those who are of pleasant conduct here — the prospect is, indeed, that they will enter a pleasant womb, either the womb of a Brahman, or the womb of a Kshatriya, or the womb of a Vaisya. But those who are of stinking conduct here — the prospect is, indeed, that they will enter a stinking womb, either the womb of a dog, or the womb of a swine, or the womb of an outcast (candala).” ↩

Chadha, Monima, and Nick Trakakis.  “Karma and the Problem of Evil:  A Response to Kaufman.”  Philosophy East and West 57(4):533–556.  2007.  A reply by two Australian philosophers of religion who defend the karma theory against Kaufman's six objections.  They grant its advantages over Western theodicies and argue that karma is better understood as an explanation of suffering than as a defence of God.

1. 43a.

   Page 533:  “Whitley R. P. Kaufman (2005) is right to point out that on some points, such as the suffering of children, the occurrence of natural disasters, and the possibility of universal salvation, the karma theory appears, initially at least, much more satisfactory than the attempts made to solve the perennial problem of evil by writers working within the mainstream theistic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (p. 19).” ↩ ↩

Stevenson, Ian.  Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation.  Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.  1987.  The summary book of the University of Virginia psychiatrist who collected thousands of cases of children claiming past-life memories.  Stevenson thought some cases suggested rebirth, which makes his finding that they show no retributive karma more weighty.

1. 44a.

   Page 258:  “The foregoing cases and a few others offer the only hints I have found for the working of a process such as retributive karma. Even these cases, however, provide no evidence for such a process.” ↩ ↩

2. 44b.

   Page 259:  “If these explanations seem insufficient to cover all cases, proponents of retributive karma may suggest that the effects of misconduct need not occur until many lifetimes after the life in which a person showed it. These are irrefutable explanations but also unsupportable ones. I cannot see any way in which to study them empirically.” ↩

Olivelle, Patrick.  The Law Code of Manu.  Oxford University Press, Oxford World's Classics.  2004.  A modern translation of the Manava Dharmashastra, the most influential Hindu law book, by the scholar who prepared its critical edition.  The introduction dates the text, and the translation gives its rules on class, punishment and rebirth.

1. 45a.

   Verse 11.48–53, page 193:  “A man who steals gold gets rotten nails; a man who drinks liquor, black teeth; the murderer of a Brahmin, consumption”.  “In this way, as a result of the remnants of their past deeds, are born individuals despised by good people: the mentally retarded, the mute, the blind, and the deaf, as well as those who are deformed.” ↩

2. 45b.

   Verse 8.413–414, page 153:  “He may, however, make a Śūdra, whether he is bought or not, do slave labour; for the Śūdra was created by the Self-existent One solely to do slave labour for the Brahmin. Even when he is released by his master, a Śūdra is not freed from his slave status; for that is innate in him and who can remove it from him?” ↩

Sharma, Arvind.  “Karma, Rebirth, and the Problem of Evil:  An Interjection in the Debate between Whitley Kaufman and Monima Chadha and Nick Trakakis.”  Philosophy East and West 58(4):572–575.  2008.  A short intervention by a Hindu scholar of comparative religion who answers Kaufman's charge that karma blames the victim, by distinguishing the fact of responsibility from the duty of compassion.

1. 46a.

   Pages 572–573:  “Chronic smoking causes cancer, so the statement that a patient is now suffering from lung cancer as a result of being a chronic smoker is a statement of fact, which does not make medical science a callous science.” ↩

O'Flaherty, Wendy Doniger.  The Rig Veda:  An Anthology.  Penguin Classics.  1981.  A modern translation of 108 Rigveda hymns with headnotes by a leading American scholar of Hindu mythology.  Her headnote to hymn 10.90 explains why scholars count it among the latest hymns.

1. 47a.

   Book 10, verse 90.12, page 31:  “His mouth became the Brahmin; his arms were made into the Warrior, his thighs the People, and from his feet the Servants were born.” ↩

Telang, Kashinath Trimbak.  “The Bhagavadgîtâ, with the Sanatsugâtîya and the Anugîtâ.”  Sacred Books of the East 8.  Clarendon Press.  1882.  A literal prose translation of the Bhagavad Gita by the Indian scholar K. T. Telang, with notes drawn from the classical commentators Shankara and Shridhara.  Telang does not number the verses;  the verse numbers in these notes are the standard ones.

1. 48a.

   Verse 4.13, page 59:  “The fourfold division of castes was created by me according to the apportionment of qualities and duties. But though I am its author, know me to be inexhaustible, and not the author.” ↩

Faxian.  A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms:  Being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-hien of His Travels in India and Ceylon (A.D. 399–414).  Clarendon Press.  Translated by James Legge.  1886.  The travel record of a Chinese Buddhist monk who walked to India and back in the early fifth century, in the translation of the Oxford sinologist James Legge.  His chapter on the customs of the Middle Country describes the Chandalas as a separated, avoided caste.

1. 49a.

   Page 43:  “The only exception is that of the Chandalas. That is the name for those who are (held to be) wicked men, and live apart from others. When they enter the gate of a city or a market-place, they strike a piece of wood to make themselves known, so that men know and avoid them, and do not come into contact with them.” ↩ ↩

Moorjani, Priya et al.  “Genetic evidence for recent population mixture in India.”  American Journal of Human Genetics 93:422–438.  2013.  Genome data from 571 people in 73 Indian groups, used to date when the northern and southern ancestral populations mixed.  The dates assume a single burst of mixing;  the authors read the later lack of mixing as the onset of endogamy.  Mirror:  PMC

1. 50a.

   Section Discussion:  “Our analysis documents major mixture between populations in India that occurred 1,900–4,200 years BP, well after the establishment of agriculture in the subcontinent.”  “shifting from a region where major mixture between groups was common and affected even isolated tribes such as the Palliyar and Bhil to a region in which mixture was rare.” ↩ ↩

Keer, Dhananjay.  Dr. Ambedkar:  Life and Mission.  Bombay:  Popular Prakashan.  3rd edition.  1971.  The standard early biography of Ambedkar, first published in his lifetime in 1954 and drawing on interviews and his papers.  It is admiring, but its account of the Mahad conference and the burning of the Manusmriti is detailed and dated.

1. 51a.

   Pages 98–100:  “left Bombay on the morning of December 24. The next day they got down at noon at Dasgaon, five miles off Mahad.”  “At nine o’clock that night the Manusmriti was placed on a pyre, in a specially dug pit, in front of the pandal, and was ceremoniously burnt at the hands of untouchable hermits!” ↩

2. 51b.

   Page 496:  “that his conversion to Buddhism would take place at Nagpur on the Dassara day, October 14, 1956, between 9 and 11 a.m.”  Page 502:  “He reminded them of his vow taken in 1935 that “even though I am a Hindu born, I will not die a Hindu”. ↩

Biblical Studies Press.  The NET Bible.  2026.  The New English Translation, a modern evangelical translation of the Bible.  Verses are quoted from it throughout.

1. 52a.

   Book John, verse 9:2–3:  “Rabbi, who committed the sin that caused him to be born blind, this man or his parents?”  “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but he was born blind so that the acts of God may be revealed through what happens to him.” ↩

2. 52b.

   Book Leviticus, verse 25:44–46:  “they may become your property. You may give them as an inheritance to your children after you to possess as property. You may enslave them perpetually. However, as for your brothers the Israelites, no man may rule over his brother harshly.” ↩

Augustine.  Contra secundam Iuliani responsionem imperfectum opus (Unfinished Work against Julian).  c. 430.  Augustine's last, unfinished reply to the Pelagian bishop Julian of Eclanum, quoting Julian section by section and answering him.  In book 1 he argues that the misery of infants under a just God proves they inherit Adam's guilt.  The English renderings in this article are its own.

1. 53a.

   Book 1, section 39:  “Miseriam porro in parvulis si nullam esse dicitis, eis misericordiam praebendam negatis; si ullam esse dicitis, malum meritum ostenditis. Neque enim sub Deo iusto miser esse quisquam, nisi mereatur, potest.”  This article's translation:  "If you say there is no misery in infants, you deny that mercy is owed them; if you say there is some, you show that they deserved evil.  For under a just God no one can be miserable unless he deserves it." ↩ ↩

Sathya Sai Baba.  Sathya Sai Speaks, Volume 1: Discourses 1953–1960.  Prasanthi Nilayam: Sri Sathya Sai Books and Publications Trust.  n.d.  The movement's official edition of his early discourses, as transcribed and translated by his followers.  It contains his own dated prediction of his lifespan and his description of his wonders as a "visiting card."

1. 54a.

   Chapter 19:  “You will understand Me only through My work. That is why sometimes in order to reveal who I am, I myself show you my 'visiting card,' something that you call a miracle.”  A discourse at Prasanthi Nilayam on Mahashivaratri, 7 February 1959. ↩ ↩

2. 54b.

   Chapter 31:  “I will be in this mortal human form for 59 years more and I shall certainly achieve the purpose of this avathaar; do not doubt it. I will take My own time to carry out My Plan so far as you are concerned. I cannot hurry because you are hurrying.”  The discourse is dated at Prasanthi Nilayam, 29 September 1960. ↩

Science, Nonscience and the Paranormal.  Bangalore: Bangalore Science Forum.  Edited by H. Narasimhaiah.  1987.  Essays by the physicist and former vice-chancellor of Bangalore University who chaired the 1976 committee, with the committee's three letters to Sai Baba reprinted in full.  It is the chairman's own account and is a partisan source on the committee's side.

1. 55a.

   Page 45:  “conduct the investigation of these phenomena according to well established methods of science under controlled conditions”.  “I am sorry to mention that no reply is received from you.”  The first letter is dated 2 June 1976, the second 16 June 1976. ↩ ↩

2. 55b.

   Page 48:  “We were told that he was inside the premises and we would not be allowed to enter. We returned disappointed.”  The visit of 29 May 1977, which the committee had announced in writing. ↩

Sathya Sai Baba, and R. K. Karanjia.  Interview with R. K. Karanjia of Blitz.  Sep 1976.  A long interview given to the editor of the Bombay weekly Blitz in September 1976, as reproduced by a devotee website.  In it Sai Baba answers the Bangalore University committee's challenge and explains his materializations in his own words.  Mirror:  Archive.org

1. 56a.

   “How can science which is bound to a physical and materialist outlook investigate transcendental phenomena beyond its scope, reach or comprehension? This is a fallacy on the face of it. One belongs to the material and the other to a spiritual plane. Science must confine its inquiry only to things belonging to the human senses, while spiritualism transcends the senses. If you want to understand the nature of spiritual power you can do so only through the path of spirituality and not science.” ↩

Kovoor, Abraham T.  Begone Godmen! Encounters with Spiritual Frauds.  Mumbai: Jaico Publishing House.  seventh impression; first published 1976 edition.  1998.  Essays and correspondence by a Sri Lankan science teacher and rationalist who spent decades exposing claimed miracles and offered a reward for any demonstration under fraud-proof conditions.  It includes his 1973 correspondence testing a published Sai Baba story against the company it named.

1. 57a.

   Chapter 3:  “Neither I nor any members of my staff have ever made the acquaintance of this individual. I am sure that these reports are completely unfounded”.  The reply of Shoji Hattori, president of K. Hattori and Co., the maker of Seiko watches, dated 8 November 1973. ↩

BBC News.  Satya Sai Baba, Indian guru, dies at 84.  Apr 24, 2011.  The BBC's news report of the death, with the cause of death given by his doctors.

1. 58a.

   “One of India's most revered spiritual leaders, Sri Satya Sai Baba, has died in hospital at the age of 84.” ↩

The calculation behind Part 3.  From 23 November 1926 to 24 April 2011 is 30,833 days.  Divided by the length of each kind of year, that gives an age at death of 84.42 solar years (365.24 days), 87.01 lunar years of twelve lunations (354.37 days), 94.04 years of twelve sidereal months (327.86 days) and 95.16 years of the devotee's 324 days.  Ninety-six years of each kind run from the birth date to 22 November 2022, 13 January 2020, 24 January 2013 and 20 January 2012;  the 96th year begins one year-length earlier, which for the 324-day year is 2 March 2011.  For the 1960 promise, 29 September 1960 to 24 April 2011 is 18,469 days:  50.57 solar years, 52.12 lunar years, 56.33 sidereal years and 57.00 of the 324-day years.  Fifty-nine years of each kind from 29 September 1960 end on 29 September 2019, 26 December 2017, 14 September 2013 and 30 January 2013.  For him to be in his 96th year at death, the year must be longer than 30,833 / 96 = 321.18 days and no longer than 30,833 / 95 = 324.56 days.  Over that range 18,469 days is 57.50 to 56.90 years.  The lunar and sidereal month lengths are those given by the Calendar Reform Committee.⁷⁴⁷⁴ ↩

Roney-Dougal, Serena.  “Review of Modern Miracles: Sathya Sai Baba, The Story of a Modern Day Prophet, by Erlendur Haraldsson.”  Journal of Scientific Exploration 28(3):538–543.  2014.  A review by a parapsychologist sympathetic to Haraldsson of the 2013 edition of his book.  It is the source here for Haraldsson's later, more positive conclusion, since the 2013 text itself was not read.

1. 60a.

   Page 538:  “Haraldsson, in his summing-up, clearly considers that the vast majority of the reported materializations for which Sai Baba is most famed are probably genuine.” ↩

Deception and Self-Deception: Investigating Psychics.  Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.  Edited by Richard Wiseman.  1997.  Papers by the British psychologist and amateur conjuror Richard Wiseman, several written with Erlendur Haraldsson and first published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research.  Chapter 6 reports their 1993 sealed-bag test of Swami Premananda.  Chapter 7 analyses the 1992 television footage of Sai Baba and the gold chain, and judges it suspicious but too poor to show fraud.  Chapter 8 reports their attempts to test two other Indian materializers.

1. 61a.

   Chapter 6, page 176:  “During informal sessions, Premananda didn't produce any materializations within the plastic bag, but did produce some vibuti when the bag was not on his hand.”  Page 177:  “During formal testing Premananda didn't produce any phenomena.” ↩

Madras High Court.  Judgment of M. Chockalingam, J., concerning Sri Premananda Trust.  Mar 7, 2003.  A High Court judgment whose recital of facts summarises Swami Premananda's arrest, trial and conviction and the High Court's confirmation of it on appeal.

1. 62a.

   Paragraph 3:  “The Sessions Court, by a judgment dated 20.8.1997, found Premananda/A-1 guilty of rape of 13 girls as well as the murder of Ravi and sentenced him for life imprisonment on both charges, directing the sentences to run consecutively.” ↩

The calculation behind the Jani paragraphs.  If the body's total sodium stays the same, as it must when no urine is passed and nothing is eaten or drunk, then serum sodium varies inversely with the water in the body.  From 12 to 18 November sodium rose from 139.8 to 154.3 mmol/L, so body water fell to 139.8 / 154.3 = 0.906 of its starting value, a loss of about 9.4% in six days.  From 18 to 21 November it fell from 154.3 to 143.5, so body water rose by 154.3 / 143.5 = 1.075, a gain of about 7.5%;  from the 20 November value of 155.9 the gain is 8.6% in one day.  The 20 November values are printed in different units from the others and may come from another laboratory.  Jani's weight is not printed, so the volumes cannot be given exactly;  for scale only, if he held 20 litres of body water, 7.5% is 1.5 litres.  Sweat would remove a little sodium, which makes the reversal harder to explain, not easier.⁷⁵ ↩

Randi, James.  The Faith Healers.  Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.  1989.  A magician's investigation of American faith healers in the 1980s.  His team recorded the radio messages fed to Peter Popoff during his services.  It is the investigator's own account.

1. 64a.

   Page 141:  “Popoff was featured on the NBC-TV "Tonight Show" (popularly known as the "Johnny Carson Show'') in February 1986”.  Page 142:  “I informed Carson that we'd discovered that Popoff had a tiny hearing aid in his left ear, connected to a high-frequency receiver”. ↩

Nolen, William A.  Healing: A Doctor in Search of a Miracle.  New York: Random House.  1974.  A Minnesota surgeon's first-hand investigation of faith healers, including a follow-up of people who claimed cures at a Kathryn Kuhlman service in Minneapolis.  His counts are his own, the follow-up group was self-selected, and his judgment that no one was cured is a physician's, not a controlled study's.

1. 65a.

   Page 81:  “none of the patients who had returned to Minneapolis to reaffirm the cures they had claimed at the miracle service had, in fact, been miraculously cured of anything, by either Kathryn Kuhlman or the Holy Spirit.” ↩

World English Bible.  n.d.  A public-domain modern English translation of the Bible, quoted here for every verse cited.

1. 66a.

   Book Matthew, chapter 12, verse 38–39:  “Then certain of the scribes and Pharisees answered, "Teacher, we want to see a sign from you." But he answered them, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, but no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet.” ↩

Ehrman, Bart D.  Jesus Before the Gospels.  New York: HarperOne.  2016.  A study by a critical New Testament scholar of how memory, oral tradition and invention shaped the stories about Jesus before the Gospels were written.  It is cited here for the distance between the events and the written Gospels.

1. 67a.

   Chapter 2:  “As is widely known, the authors of these books were writing between forty and sixty-five years after the death of Jesus. They were not his personal companions.” ↩ ↩

Origen.  “Against Celsus, Book I.”  Ante-Nicene Fathers 4.  Translated by Frederick Crombie.  c. 248.  Origen's reply to the pagan philosopher Celsus, whose attack on Christianity, The True Word, written around AD 177, survives only in Origen's quotations.  It shows that the charge that Jesus' miracles were conjuring tricks is as old as the earliest pagan criticism.

1. 68a.

   Section 1.68:  “Well, let us believe that these were actually wrought by you. But then he immediately compares them to the tricks of jugglers, who profess to do more wonderful things, and to the feats performed by those who have been taught by Egyptians, who in the middle of the market-place, in return for a few obols, will impart the knowledge of their most venerated arts, and will expel demons from men, and dispel diseases”. ↩

Habermas, Gary R., and Michael R. Licona.  The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus.  Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications.  2004.  A popular defence of the resurrection by two evangelical scholars, built on a short list of facts they say most critical scholars accept, including the early creed in 1 Corinthians 15 and the conversions of Paul and James.

1. 69a.

   Chapter 4:  “The third fact: The church persecutor Paul was suddenly changed”.  “The fourth fact: The skeptic James, brother of Jesus, was suddenly changed”. ↩ ↩

2. 69b.

   Chapter 3, note 25:  “First Corinthians, in which Paul said that he delivered the creed to them (1 Cor. 15:3), was probably written between 53 and 57.” ↩

Borde, Arvind et al.  “Inflationary spacetimes are not past-complete.”  Physical Review Letters 90:151301.  2003.  A short proof that any universe expanding fast enough on average has a boundary in the past, needing no assumption about the kind of matter it contains.

1. 70a.

   Page 1:  “a cosmological model which is inflating – or just expanding sufficiently fast – must be incomplete in null and timelike past directions.” ↩

Shinde, Vasant et al.  “An Ancient Harappan Genome Lacks Ancestry from Steppe Pastoralists or Iranian Farmers.”  Cell 179(3):729–735.  2019.  The first genome published from an Indus civilisation site, from a woman buried at Rakhigarhi in Haryana, by Indian excavators and geneticists working with Reich's laboratory.  It rests on one low-coverage individual and the authors say so.  Niraj Rai and David Reich led the genetic work.  Mirror:  PMC

1. 71a.

   Section STAR Methods:  “We attempted to generate genome-wide data from skeletal remains of 61 ancient individuals from the IVC site of Rakhigarhi. Only a single sample yielded enough authentic ancient DNA for analysis”.  “The resulting dataset contains sequences covering 31,760 SNPs at least once.”  “the main habitation area has 7 radiocarbon dates based on charcoal spanning 2800–2300 BCE”. ↩

Ambedkar, B. R.  “Annihilation of Caste.”  Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar:  Writings and Speeches, vol. 1, comp. Vasant Moon.  New Delhi:  Dr. Ambedkar Foundation.  2014.  The 1936 speech by the Dalit leader and later chief drafter of India's constitution, arguing that caste is rooted in the Hindu scriptures and cannot be abolished while their authority stands.  Pages are those of the government edition of his works, first published in 1979.

1. 72a.

   Pages 75–76:  “you have got to apply the dynamite to the Vedas and the Shastras, which deny any part to reason, to Vedas and Shastras, which deny any part to morality. You must destroy the Religion of the Shrutis and the Smritis. Nothing else will avail.” ↩

Dirks, Nicholas B.  Castes of Mind:  Colonialism and the Making of Modern India.  Princeton University Press.  2001.  A historian's argument that British colonial knowledge and administration turned India's many forms of social identity into a single system called caste.  Dirks limits his claim to caste "as we know it today" and denies that the British invented it.

1. 73a.

   Page 5:  “Rather, I will argue that caste (again, as we know it today) is a modern phenomenon, that it is, specifically, the product of an historical encounter between India and Western colonial rule. By this I do not mean to imply that it was simply invented by the too clever British”.  “In short, colonialism made caste what it is today.” ↩

Calendar Reform Committee, Government of India.  Report of the Calendar Reform Committee.  New Delhi: Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.  1955.  The official report of the committee chaired by the astrophysicist Meghnad Saha that reformed India's national calendar.  It sets out the astronomy of the traditional Indian lunar and lunisolar calendars, including the lunar month, the 27 nakshatras and the intercalary month.

1. 74a.

   Page 174:  “The mean duration of a lunar month consists of 29.530588 days and twelve such lunations amount to 354.36706 days, while the length of a tropical solar year is 365.24220 days.” ↩

2. 74b.

   Page 221:  “There are twenty-seven naksatras”.  Section Recommendations, religious calendar, item 7:  “nakṣatra division of 13° 20' each”.  Page 182:  “the moon takes a little over 27.3 days (sidereal period of the moon), to return to the same star”. ↩

Shah, Sudhir V. et al.  Case Summary: A 76 Years Old Male, Prahladbhai Jani (Chunriwala Mataji).  2003.  The doctors' own summary of the 2003 hospital observation of Prahlad Jani, with dated blood test results.  It was never published in a journal, and it prints no reference ranges for its values.

1. 75a.

   Page 4:  “S. Na+: 139.8 mmol/L”.  12 November.  Blood urea that day was 33.0 mg/dl.  Page 5:  “S. Na+: 154.3 mmol/L”.  18 November.  Page 6:  “Blood Urea: 77 mg%”.  “S. Na+: 155.9 M.Eq/L”.  20 November.  “S. Na+: 143.5 mmol/L”.  21 November. ↩