VIETNAM, November 30, 2017 (Nhan Dan): An exhibition displaying over 300 ancient Oc Eo artefacts opened at the National Museum of Vietnamese History in Ho Chi Minh city on November 29 and is scheduled to run until March 3, 2018. Flourishing between the first and seventh century, Phu Nam Kingdom covered a large area of the southern plain and hosted the Oc Eo culture in An Giang Province. After remaining forgotten and buried for thousands of years, traces of Oc Eo culture were finally discovered in An Giang.
In 1944, French archaeologist Louis Malleret carried out excavations at the site, along with his colleagues from the French School of the Far East. They discovered objects offering proof of a flourishing civilisation and well-developed trade with other areas in Southeast Asia. The civilisation produced many handicrafts, including ceramics, as well as had the ability to refine copper, iron and tin, along with creating silver and gold jewelry. Also unearthed were statues and reliefs of Buddha and of Hindu Gods such as Ganesh and Vishnu, which illustrate the ancient religious traditions of the southern region.
CAMBODIA, December 12, 2017 (Le Point, translated from French): A set of Angkor gold jewelry was returned to Cambodia on Saturday with a procession through Phnom Penh held for the occasion, decades after their looting from a famous temple of the ancient city. The 10-piece collection, consisting of a crown, earrings, bracelets and chest ornaments, was stolen from the Angkor Wat Temple in Cambodia during the 1970s civil war and reappeared in an online catalog by a London art dealer in 2016. These objects probably date from the Khmer Empire, a once powerful dynasty that extended over much of Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and modern-day Laos between the ninth and fifteenth centuries. Once the objects were found in Britain, Cambodia lobbied for their return. Specialists spent more than a year inspecting them to ensure their authenticity.
Jonathan Tucker, the London-based Asian art dealer, agreed in April to return the jewelry, which now have to be evaluated by experts in Cambodia. The pieces will join a multitude of other stolen antiquities stolen returned back home in recent years. Many of these were on display in Western museums or offered by art dealers. Last year, an American museum sent to Cambodia a sandstone sculpture of the 10th century Hindu God Rama, which was missing its head, arms and feet. It had been stolen in the 1970s. In 2015, a statue of the Hindu God Hanuman, which had been looted in the same temple as Rama’s, was returned by the Cleveland Museum of Art.
INDIA, December 5, 2017 (Economic Times): After shaking up the FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) sector, yoga guru Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurved is headed to the infrastructure sector. It plans to diversify into solar power equipment manufacturing, a burgeoning sector that is largely dependent on Chinese imports. ”Getting into solar is in line with the swadeshi movement. With solar, each household in India can have power supply, and we are here to make that happen,” Acharya Balkrishna, managing director of Patanjali Ayurved, said in an interview to Mint. Patanjali plans to invest around US$15.5 million in solar equipment manufacturing and its factory in Greater Noida is expected to be fully operational within the next couple of months.
There is no greater mystery than that we keep seeking reality though, in fact, we are reality. We think that there is something hiding reality and that this must be destroyed before reality is gained. How ridiculous! A day will dawn when you will laugh at all your past efforts. That which will be on the day you laugh is also here and now.
— Sri Ramana Maharishi (1879-1950), South Indian mystic
