Tobacco (rolled in cryptography)

[Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan]

In a message dated 97-09-09 17:56:25 EDT, mahadevasiva at hotmail.com writes:

<< 6. California is named after a lady called Kali, who was a native of the
 town of "Purnea" in Bihar..."kali kee (p/f)urnea" became California in
 its Anglicized form, when this lady first settled in California, she and
 her descendants were harrased by people who lived to the north of
 California,so she called them "ari- gaN"(ari-enemy, gaN-people,
 crowd)...this area where they lived i.e. ariguN is now called "Oregon". >>

The following is an interesting alternative etymology for 'California' as
provided by the late ZankarAcArya of Kanchipuram, Sri Chandrasekarendra
Sarasvathi, given in the Tamil book 'teyvattin kural', volume 1, page.
168-169. (The following is a rough translation.)

"Searching for the sacrificial horse, the Sagaras kept digging and went to
the netherworld. The sea which was formed as a result is called 'sAgara'.
Finally, they saw the horse near the hermitage of maharishi kapila. Thinking
that he had stolen the horse, they attacked him. He burnt them to ashes just
by his look. This is a story in Ramayana. If we assume that USA which is the
antipode of our country is the netherworld, the KapilAraNya (like maturai
changing to marutai) might have changed into  kalipAraNya and then into
California. Near that (California) there are islands called Horse Island and
Ash Island."

In his efforts to show that Hinduism was the original world-wide religion, he
also says the following.

the Egyptian name Rameses [sic] is related to Rama
Aztec is from Astika
Sahara might be from sAgara
Eve is from jIva
Adam is from AtmA

The title of the chapter is 'ulakam paraviya matam' meaning 'the religion
which had spread throughout the world'.

Clearly, as can be seen from his views expressed several times in this
multi-volume work, Sri Chandrasekarendra Sarasvathi was a precursor to the
hindutva ideologists of today.

Regards

S. Palaniappan