Tag: sociology

Natraj, in the Hindu religion, depicts a form of the dancing Lord Shiva and symbolizes Shakti, or life force. It has international significance from the point of view of arts. Carl Sagan drew the metaphor between the cosmic dance of the Nataraj and the modern study of the 'cosmic dance' of subatomic particles.
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world's largest and most respected centers for scientific research. It has a statue of Natraj in its compound. The plaque alongside the statue explains the belief is that Lord Shiva danced the Universe into existence, motivates it, and will eventually extinguish it.

The Vedas are the earliest surviving literature of Indian subcontinent. There are four Vedas: the Rig Veda, the Sama Veda, the Yajur Veda and the Atharva Veda. Of these the Rig Veda is the oldest and was composed about 3500 years ago. All the other Vedas are based upon it and consist to a large degree of various hymns from it. It consists of a thousand such hymns of different seers, each hymn averaging around ten verses. The Rig Veda is also the oldest book in Sanskrit or any Indo-European language.

Agni, the God of Fire, is one of the most prominent of the deities of the Vedas. Fire is central to all Vedic rituals. All the offerings in the Vedic sacrifices are invariably offered to Agni and through him to other gods. Agni is thus the primary recipient of all Vedic sacrifices.

Non-Material Culture refers to abstract or non-physical ideas like belief, thoughts, values, rules, norms, morals, language etc. whereas material culture refers to the physical objects, resources, and spaces that people use to define their culture, like temples, mosques, schools etc.

Bronislaw Malinowski focussed on studying social behaviour and social relations. According to him, Culture is an instrument which enables man to secure his survival. According to him, all the aspects of culture are interconnected and there is nothing loose in the culture.

Culture is the belief, custom, rules, art, norms, knowledge developed by member of all social groups. It includes values as well as materialistic objects. It can be said to be the behaviour of people, their way of life. India is a diverse nation but it has large cultural heritage that common ancestors shared. Our cultural heritage binds us, make us proud of what we are and what we have despite all differences. It is derived from Latin term 'Colere' which means 'till the ground.'

Edward Tylor was the first sociologist who specified that Culture is learned or acquired by human rather than being a biological trait. This is a revolutionary definition.

The total of 22 languages are listed in the Eighth Schedule of our Constitution. These are Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, etc.

Culture is experienced in society. It is the social bond of people together in a society through which culture gets reflected. Both are dependant on each other existence. Culture cannot exist in a vacuum and hence society is the platform for representation of culture.