Karl Marx on Early Indian Economy

In his "Das Kapital", Marx was highly critical of Capitalism as practiced in Western societies. However, he wrote quite approvingly of early Indian economy.

In Volume 1, Book 1, Part IV, Chapter XIV entitled "Division of Labour & Manufacture" he writes about early Indian communities, whose practices continued to the present (Marx's) day, where land was possessed in common for use in agriculture & handicrafts. The chief part of the products is destined for the direct use of the community itself & does not take the form of a commodity. It is the surplus alone that becomes a commodity. The land is tilled in common, & the produce divided among the members. At the same time, spinning & weaving are carried on in each family as subsidiary industries.

Apart from the agricultural & handicrafts workers, the others are the village chief who is the judge, police & tax-gatherer in one, the book keeper who keeps the accounts of the tiilage, another who prosecutes the criminals, the boundaryman who guards the boundaries, the water overseer who distributes water from the tanks, the Brahmin who conducts the religious services, the school master who teaches the children, a smith, a carpenter, potter, washerman & the silversmith.

The rules of the guilds limit the number of apprentices & journeymen that a single master could employ, preventing him from becoming a capitalist.

Mahler's "Symphony of a Thousand" & Bengali Shyama Sangeet

In part 2 of the Symphony, Mahler sets the ending of Goethe's "Faust" to music. The main characters in the poem are Faust, his muse Gretchen (similar to Beatrice in Dante's "The Divine Comedy") & Mephistopheles.

In her only utterance, Mary (mother of Christ) invites Gretchen to ascend to higher spheres. The soul of Faust will be drawn upwards with her. The chorus urge them on:

"Look up to the redeeming gaze

All penitent tender souls

Virgin, Mother, Queen.

Goddess, be ever merciful."

The combined choruses ("Chorus Mysticus") enter pianissimo (softly) singing:

"All transitory things

Are nothing but Allegory;

The unattainable

Is now achieved;

The inexpressible

Is accomplished;

The Eternal Feminine

Draws us upward."

The spirit of the above lyrics are strikingly similar to that of Shyama Sangeet, a genre of Bengali devotional music, devoted exclusively to the Divine Mother. Shyama Sangeet got a boost by Sri Ramakrishna, who was frequently singing them. The major composer was Ramprasad & the most popular singer was Pannalal Bhattacharya.

So pervasive is the influence of Shyama Sangeet in Bengal, that even an agnostic like Satyajit Ray composed one in the style of Ramprasad for use in his film "Devi".

Aerofoil Section & Sitar Javari

An aerofoil section uses Bernoulli's Principle to generate lift by creating a difference in air pressure between the top & bottom surfaces of the aerofoil due to the curved surface (camber). Newton's third law of motion also acts as a complementary explanation for the lift generation.

The Angle of Attack is the acute angle between the chord line of an aerofoil & the vector representing the incoming airflow. Increasing the angle increases the lift, but beyond 15° to 20°, there will be an aerodynamic stall.

As crucial as the angle of attack mentioned above, is the angle at which the sitar string leaves the bridge. This, known as "Javari", defines the sound produced by the sitar. The front of the bridge is meticulously filed to a rounded shape (in fact, parabolic as defined by the equation X=Y squared), just like the rounded front edge of the aerofoil section adapted for the wings of an aircraft.

As the rounded front of the aerofoil section is important for developing optimum lift for the aircraft, so is the parabolic rounding of the bridge (javari) to an accuracy of a tenth of a milimeter, crucial for the typical sound of the sitar.