Did some event in your life make you become so religious? Was the process of becoming religious sudden or gradual?
Did you get called a “fundy” (or the equivalent, whatever that might be) by less-religious people? Did they make any other negative comments about your level of observance?
What made you become an atheist?
How big a role do castes play outside of India? Is it inappropriate to ask a person what caste they belong too? I have many friends and co-workers that have moved from India to the US. Do they know what caste each other belongs to and is their behavior influenced by it?
I apologize if this is too big a hijack from your OP. I hopped on the SDMB today to open a thread with these questions and there was your thread…
Not very often, unless they happen to come from the same part of India. I have Indian co-workers but I don’t know where they are from in India; knowing their caste is pretty much out of the question. And it wouldn’t make any difference anyway. It is pretty much the same case with most Indians living and working here. There are obviously going to be exceptions, but for the most part castes aren’t an issue in the workplace.
Depends on the person you are talking to. If you know him/her well then it won’t be an issue. But some Americans can a bit condescending about the caste system and while you may be asking just out of curiosity, the other person might take it the wrong way depending on past experiences of having had to explain the caste system to someone else. So if you know the person well and there’s no risk of misunderstanding, go ahead and ask - I don’t think it’ll be an issue…after all we believe in fighting ignorance 
Why do pictures and statues of Shiva, G’nesh, et. al. have more than 2 arms?
Please, everyone, Ganesha is not spelled G’nesh. Unless you’re Messianic Hindus.
And it should ideally be spelled Ganesh, Ram, Mahabharat, Ramayan, etc. I would like to go back a hundred years and punch the guy who started adding ‘a’ at the end of every Indian word in the face. It’s too late now though sigh
Re Spelling
I’m stunned. With so many traditions, philosophies, etc there is just one correct spelling? I always assumed it was identical to the spellings in Judaism- depending on what tradition you’re following, what the default language of the region is, and what sages you’re following, you end up with a bunch of different spellings and/or pronunciations.
Sorry, but Rama, Mahabharata etc. are valid translations/pronunciations in languages which are not derived from Sanskrit.
How does that make any sense when the original texts are in Sanskrit?
Haweyejo, would you punch ancient Sanskrit panditas like Panini, Valmiki, or Kalidasa? Because they were the the sort who used the final -a. You see, it’s part of the Sanskrit language. You display the fighting spirit of a Kshatriya, but you would need to beat up a lot of ancient Hindus… Actually, the Kshatriyas in ancient Indian drama spoke proper Sanskrit like the Brahmins, being upper caste. If you want to be a fighter like them, you would need to use Sanskrit. The lower castes spoke the vernacular which you seem to be advocating, but they were the servants of the Sanskrit speakers.
I think of the final -a as a detachable feature. For Sanskrit, leave it on; for Hindi, take it off.
Other way around, isn’t it? Those are the Sanskrit pronunciations. To convert them into Hindi pronunciation, simply drop the final -a.
I took classes in Sanskrit. I have Sanskrit grammars on my bookshelf. Please don’t make me get them out and use them…
Once I was standing in line at a Whole Foods store and the young Indian woman in front of me had her whole shirt printed with lines of Sanskrit poetry by Kalidasa, a facsimile of a manuscript. I just stood there reading her shirt, not wanting to be rude staring at a stranger’s torso, but amazed at the coincidence that I had just been reading the Encarta article on Kalidasa that same day. What are the chances of that happening? Her mom noticed me reading and invited me to read out loud, and then we had a nice conversation about Sanskrit literature there in the store.
Yes. Folks, Sanskrit is not some obscure spoken dialect in the jungle. Sanskrit is a major literary tradition. Its written form is fixed and the rules for writing it are long established and well known by scholars. The precise transliteration of the Devanagari alphabet into Roman is likewise well established and used by scholars internationally. If anyone writes on Sanskrit subjects in English, they’re expected by other scholars to use the recognized standard transliteration. Anyone who fails to do so would not be taken seriously by the scholarly community.
As for the name of the elephant-headed god, for example, you could say Ganesha in Sanskrit, or you could say the Hindi equivalent Ganesh. Either way is acceptable depending on context. I just thought that replacing one of the vowels with an apostrophe looked funny, like the way the Messianic Jews write Y’shua, which is a nonstandard transliteration for Hebrew. How would you like it if someone wrote your name h’wkeyejo? Sorry for the hijack, An’'m’ka…
First, I completely forgot that Sankrit used the -a extensively. So, it is in fact Hindi which dropped the -a to suit the language. So, this discussion is moot. Thanks to hawkeyejo for correcting me.
However, it is very common for words to adapt when they travel across languages. I don’t see why you are surprised.
I love it when things like that happen.
I never meant to imply it was. AFAIK, The Vedas predate the Torah and are the oldest known sacred texts to still have adherents. I had simply thought that while the original Sanskrit spelling for a word is clear and agreed upon by all parties, different traditions etc may use different transliterations and pronunciations. EG While Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews use the same Hebrew spelling for for the word sabbath, one group says ‘shuh-BAHT’ and the other says ‘SHAH-biss’.
I was the one who started using the apostrophe. I meant no offense or disrespect whatsoever.
:smack: Sorry, I meant. Thanks for Johanna for correcting me.