My Science School

The cowrie — or cowry — shell was one of the most successful and universal forms of currency in the world. In West Africa though, the humble shell worked its way into the cultural fiber, taking on a deeper symbolic and ritualistic meaning that has never been entirely lost.

The attractive white shell has all the characteristics required of money: easy to handle and carry around due to its light weight, non-perishable, good for small and large purchases. Its shape makes it instantly recognizable and difficult to forge. The cowries also have very little variation in size and form, which makes them easy to count.

They were often threaded into bracelets or long strings of forty, or packed into pouches to form greater quantities. For large payments, the shells could be tossed into baskets and weighed to determine their value.

• 40 cowries made 1 string,


• 50 strings made 1 head (2,000 cowries total),


• 10 heads made 1 bag (20,000 cowries total).

 

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Taekwondo is popular Korean martial arts that is focused primarily on kicks and punches & strikes. This martial arts is best known for its spectacular kicks (i.e. tornado kick and spinning hook kick). Taekwondo is one of the few martial arts that competes at the Olympics. Taekwondo schools generally provide instruction for basic self-defense, sparring, breaking, joint locks, Korean terminology and some grappling techniques. At most Taekwondo schools, students will also learn either WTF Taekwondo forms or ITF Taekwondo patterns.

Taekwondo consists of the following Korean words; Tae “to strike with the foot”, Kwon “to strike with the hand” and Do “the way”. Therefore, in Korean, Taekwondo means “the way to strike with foot and hand”.

 

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Daulat Khana refers to the imperial complex at Fatehpur Sikri meant for political, economic, financial and administrative affairs of the Mughal Court. The arrangement of the offices in the entire Daulat Khana complex is surprisingly similar to the office of a prime minister in modern times. The term Daulat Khana means ‘Abode of Fortune’. The complex consists of The Pachisi Courtyard, Ankh Micholi or the Royal Treasury (along with the astrologers’ seat), Diwan-i-Khas, Turkish Sultana Palace, Anup Talab, the Diwan Khana-i-Khas and the Khwabgah or the emperor’s royal sleeping chamber.

Pachisi Courtyard is a large paved courtyard resembling the designs in a gigantic chess board. The Pachisi game is played on a black and white chequered board with mohras or chess pieces. Akbar innovated a unique way to enjoy this game with his royal ladies, ministers and other Mughal nobles. He designed the centre of the courtyard in front of the Diwan-i-Am in the form of giant chequered board using black and white marbles. Instead of chess pieces or mohras he used attendants attired in bright dresses to pose as the chess pieces.

 

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The story begins when the blindness of Dhritarashtra, the elder of two princes, causes him to be passed over in favour of his brother Pandu as king on their father’s death. A curse prevents Pandu from fathering children, however, and his wife Kunti asks the gods to father children in Pandu’s name. As a result, the god Dharma fathers Yudhishtira, the Wind fathers Bhima, Indra fathers Arjuna, and the Ashvins (twins) father Nakula and Sahadeva (also twins; born to Pandu’s second wife, Madri). The enmity and jealousy that develops between the cousins forces the Pandavas to leave the kingdom when their father dies. During their exile the five jointly marry Draupadi (who is born out of a sacrificial fire and whom Arjuna wins by shooting an arrow through a row of targets) and meet their cousin Krishna, who remains their friend and companion thereafter. Although the Pandavas return to the kingdom, they are again exiled to the forest, this time for 12 years, when Yudhishthira loses everything in a game of dice with Duryodhana, the eldest of the Kauravas.

The feud culminates in a series of great battles on the field of Kurukshetra (north of Delhi, in Haryana state). All the Kauravas are annihilated, and, on the victorious side, only the five Pandava brothers and Krishna survive. Krishna dies when a hunter, who mistakes him for a deer, shoots him in his one vulnerable spot—his foot—and the five brothers, along with Draupadi and a dog who joins them (Dharma, Yudhisththira’s father, in disguise), set out for Indra’s heaven. One by one they fall on the way, and Yudhisthira alone reaches the gate of heaven. After further tests of his faithfulness and constancy, he is finally reunited with his brothers and Draupadi, as well as with his enemies, the Kauravas, to enjoy perpetual bliss.

 

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HH Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II of Jaipur (1912-1970) and his third Maharani Gayatri Devi were two of the most glamorous international figures in 20th century society. A nine-goal hero on the polo field, the Maharaja was the last and one of the greatest rulers of Jaipur State. The Maharani’s legendary beauty was matched by a mind that saw her successfully stand for the Indian parliament post-Independence.

The Maharaja’s life was high risk with his derring-do on the polo field and his relentless flying. Weeks before his wedding to Gayatri Devi, a vulture flew into the propeller of Jai’s plane over Bombay. The crash killed the pilot instantly and the Maharaja narrowly escaped with his life. Gayatri Devi married the Maharaja in 1940 and lived something of a double life. Behind the Rambagh Palace walls and travelling internationally, she lived and dressed like a Western socialite. In the City Palace she was carried around, veiled, in a palanquin.

Maharani Gayatri Devi describes Jaipur’s adoration for the Maharaja in her memoir: ‘everyone in the city recognised his Bentley and knew that they could stop him on the street or the polo grounds, or at the gates of the palace – anywhere – if they had a complaint or wanted to bring some problem to his attention, or simply wished to ask after the welfare of his family and tell him about their life’.

 

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Playing cards are supposed to have originated in Tang China, but were very popular in India as Krida patram, and later in Mughal times as Ganjifa. Beautiful round cards in materials like Ivory, wood, and silk were made.

Modern Polo was picked up by the British in the 19th century from a game played by Manipuri royalty in North East India. However, it is a 2000-year-old game from Persia, which had spread to India, China and even the Byzantine Empire. The Persian name was Chogan, but it was called Pulu in Manipur, which means wooden ball. It was a favourite of royalty. Qutbuddin Aibak died playing it in Lahore. Akbar invented a flaming ball so that he could play it at night. Variations like Elephant Polo were also popular.

 

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Shaolin Kung Fu was the first institutionalised martial art in China, which influenced others like judo and karate. The story of its origin in the temple of Shaolin is given in various Chinese texts. An Indian monk Bodhidharma, who is supposed to have been a Pallava prince, came to China in the 6th century.

“The Dharma Master was a South Indian of the Western Region. He was the third son of a great Indian king. His ambition lay in the Mahayana path, and so he put aside his white layman’s robe for the black robe of a monk [...] Lamenting the decline of the true teaching in the outlands, he subsequently crossed distant mountains and seas, travelling about propagating the teaching in Han and Wei.”

After many years, he started living in the Shaolin temple, and developed the Chan (from “Dhyan”) school of mediation, which became “Zen” in Japan. In the classical Yoga approach, he believed that physical fitness of the monks was eesential for concentration, and developed exercises like martial arts, as he had been trained as a warrior. One can see the resemblance between Shaolin Kung Fu and surviving Indian Martial arts like Kalaripayattu. He is known as Damo in China, Daruma dolls are very popular in Japan, depicting him with a black curly beard.

 

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Snakes and ladders is based on an ancient Indian morality game. It was called Gyan Chaupar by the Jains, and Moksha Patam by the Hindus. It emphasised the Hindus. It emphasised the effects of virtues, which helped one to ascend a ladder, and vices which sets one back like a snake bite. Reaching the last (100th) square represented the attainment of Moksha. A Buddhist version existed in the Pala times in early Medieval India. It was taken to Victorian England.

The modified game was named Snakes and Ladders and stripped of its moral and religious aspects and the number of ladders and snakes were equalized. In 1943, the game was introduced in the US under the name Chutes and Ladders.

 

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Chaupar, Chausar or Pacheesi was one of the most popular gambling games in India. It was played on a cross shaped fabric, with seven cowrie shells as the dice. A throw with five shells facing upwards would give you the highest score of 25, or Pachees. Beautiful sets of 16 gotis in silver were an integral part of the dowries in many communities. The game is depicted in the 5th Century Ajanta frescos.

This was taken to the west in the 19th century as Parcheesi or Ludo (Latin for “I play”). The shells were replaced by dice, and the fabric by board.

 

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It has been universally acknowledged that the game of chess originated in India. It was played in the Gupta period in sixth century. The form was slightly different. It was called Chaturang, after the four branches of the army – elephants, chariots, cavalry and infantry. It was played by four people, who used dice to move.

It then became popular in Persia as Shatranj, and was then picked up by the Arabs. It became two-handed and lost the dice. The modern game of chess is derived from the Arabic version. There is a board with squares found in the Harappan civilization ruins, which flourished 5000 years ago, it could have been some sort of precursor to chess.

 

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Another trick used to teach you handwriting was this: You joined the small dots forming a block letter and then wrote the block letter on your own. Remember? After you mastered writing in block letter, you were taught cursive writing. This, most probably, was due to the Zaner-Bloser company.

Charles Paxton Zaner, a professional penman, developed a method of handwriting in the late 1800s. Zaner-Bloser is basic and clean, with a print (straight up and down) and cursive (slightly slanted) form. The method is simple to learn, easy to read, quick to write, and has no swirls. It’s designed for young children. It was published as The Zaner Method of Arm Movement Writing in 1904 and became widely used in schools. Most American schools still use the Zaner-Bloser method in some form.

 

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By the 1800s, the ornate round hand scripts were simplified into the Spencerian script in the U.S. Platt Rogers Spencer, an educator wanted children to develop legible handwriting. His handwriting guides became bestsellers in the 1800s, when business schools bought them. The Spencerian script (named after him) is the first truly American handwriting. It does have flourishes, particularly in the loops of capital letters, but it is mostly a simple cursive handwriting with the letters less rounded and more lean. Check out the Coca-Cola and the Ford logo! They are written in Spencerian script.

In the late 1800s, one Austin Palmer developed a handwriting system, even while the typewriters were being used extensively to record messages. His script, called the Palmer method, had fewer flourishes than Spencerian script, even on the capital letters. The little swirls you see in the Coca-Cola/Ford logos were removed. But Palmer eventually lost out, and the cursive handwriting stayed.

 

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By the 1600s, italics were swamping the writing space. French officials said, “enough is enough!” and helped develop the “round hand” style of handwriting. In round hand, the letters were full and rounded. It spread to England and the American colonies. The Declaration of Independence was written in a form of round hand by a professional penman, Timothy Matlack.! Ah, but round hand too is difficult to the 21st century eye. It is beautiful, but ornate, like a drawing.

The Universal Penman illustrates more than just English round hand, but that is by far the dominant style. Its pages demonstrate how this kind of writing can be used in the most ordinary of business documents (though none of them looks the least bit ordinary in these tour-de-force examples). The book includes Bickham’s own invitation to his contributors, and in some cases their replies to him. It also features blackletter and a remarkable kind of blocky but elegant roman caps — John Baskerville’s roman capital letters come closest in contemporary type design — along with a somewhat slimmer style of cursive script, with more elegant blobs on the ends of many of the extending strokes, that harks back to the look of 17th-century handwriting.

 

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The years of 1400 – 1500 were called the period of Italian Renaissance. At this time, there was a revival of interest in all kinds of antique stuff, including ancient manuscripts. And many felt handwriting should be simple to read. Taking elements of Carolingian minuscule, a scribe from Florence, Niccolo Niccoli shaped the italic script. (Italic refers to ancient Italy.) The italic script was more cursive, with letters connected within a word and written slanting to the right. There are no loops, serifs, or flourishes in the handwriting.

As in modern italic fonts, the form of a is distinctive, and f, g, k, and a long thin s are more or less reminiscent of black-letter cursive. For his headings Niccoli preferred Roman capitals “italicized” by a slight inclination to the right.

 

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By the 1100s, more people were reading. So, scribes had to find faster ways to write books. The blackletter style was formed with fewer loops and flourishes. Its lines are big, bold, compact and sharp. The curves are seen only at the end of the word. We cannot read them, but blackletter handwriting had several variations. They lasted for hundreds of years. They were named blackletter in the 1600s, to distinguish them from the lighter typefaces that began to be used.

Blackletter is also known as Gothic script because it resembled the script left by ancient Geramanic tribes. The blackletter style was popular for a long time in Germany. It was adopted as the official typeface of the Nazi party, until it was banned in 1941, during World War II. Examples of the typeface can be seen in Germany, England (Ye Olde Shoppe) and Austria.

 

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