i was watching a program on discovery channel - its was about the JADE stone. what caught my atten was they were showing the jade traders in downtown hongkong - how they were negotiating prices for the uncut stones. they covered their hands with a piece of cloth and apparently pulled/scratched the fingers of the other - to negotiate the price.......a perfect copy of our cow trading. anybody knows how the price is discussed this way - we can compare with the jade signals.
thanks venkat - remember seeing a large shiva lingam in bangalore recently - maragatha lingam..
meanwhile, does anyone know how the cow bargaining happens. couple of interestings stuff i saw in below meet - one was some wooden polynesean dolls - they were very similar to our marapaachi dolls. the other one is a yantaram - gola yantra....read more below
Last friday the singapore national libary organised a talk as below:
Interaction by John N. Miksic
Though i could only attend half of the talk, was interested by his below note:
Mr Miksic said that there was an ancient inscription which is visible even from ships transiting the mallaca straits - its in sanskrit and loosely translates as - here lies the footsteps of the bodistavva who has with him the gola yantra. he also said that he could not mention what this gola yanta was.
i did somes searching and come across the photos below
It is interesting that the Sanskrit astronomical text entitled Surya- siddhdnta mentions a mercury engine used to provide rotary motion for a gola-yantra, a mechanical model of the planetary system.'8 This suggests that at least one kind of mercury engine was used to produce rotary power. The text also says that the design for the mercury en- gine is to be kept secret