A little off-topic from the previous blog posts, the name Ahura (mentioned here) piqued my interest.I had faint memories of reading a primer on Zarathustra in Amar Chitra Katha comics in which he declares Ahura Mazda to be the One and Only Supreme Being. Dr. Daryoosh Vakhshoori, the founder of Ahura Corp. is listed as being a prominent Iranian-American. Hence the choice of name for his company! It definitely seems rather ironic that he chose a name that might have offended the current powers-that-be in Iran as a memory of the small but by no means extinct Zoroastrian Irani community. A small coincidence that this Iran connection comes within a week of Ruchira's referencing Iran on the blog.
Hindu traditions derived from Indo-Aryan tenets, consider Suras (or Devas) to be beings of light, gods of various kinds, while Asuras ('not Suras') are darker beings, largely with dark instincts and are most commonly portrayed as the embodiments of evil ( for instance demon king Ravana). In Zoroastrianism, the opposite linguistic paradigm holds true - Ahura is the being of light, all powerful and all good, while Daevas are the 'bad guys'. Here's more on the Ahura-Asura/Deva-Daeva dichotomy.
Hi - you got a great archive here. It would probably take me days to go through all posts. Thanks for your comments on my blog. Please come often.
Posted by: Prasad | August 20, 2006 at 04:26 PM
Prasad,
I'm a bit puzzled.I don't think I've ever read your blog. Did you mean to direct your comments to Anna, by any chance?
Posted by: Sujatha | August 20, 2006 at 04:40 PM
Sujatha:
It was directed at me. I left a comment at Prasad's blog.
I think, he just chose the topmost post to leave his comment - like I did at his. Perhaps he didn't notice that the author is "Sujatha" not "Ruchira." Even though we now include guest bloggers' names in parenthesis. :-) Oh well, as long as Prasad likes our blog.
Posted by: Ruchira Paul | August 20, 2006 at 04:49 PM
:) Ok, that was funny. I actually looked around to see if this blog has more than one contributers. Actually, I thought Ruchira was referring to Sujatha's post from somewhere - I didnt have time then to look around, so just posted something on spur. Now, that this has been clarified (like butter, howwzat), I ll take notice of the differences. :)
Posted by: Prasad | August 21, 2006 at 10:19 PM
Prasad:
Accidental Blogger started as a solo blog with just me as its author.
Along the way, a few guest bloggers have come on board. (see the "ABOUT" page).
Since the overwhelming majority of the articles are still posted by me and readers often don't notice when another author has a post up, we decided to include the names of authors other than "Ruchira" in parenthesis in the title. But that isn't working very well either, judging from your confusion. But as you said, it is "clarified" - at least with you!
Posted by: Ruchira Paul | August 21, 2006 at 10:48 PM