Blog 7

Book: The Da Vinci Code
Pages Read this Week: 37
Pages Read this Semester: 605

Weekly Style: Quotation

“A newly emerging power will take over the existing symbols and degrade them over time in an attempt to erase their meaning.”

This quote was spoken by Robert Langdon while speaking to Bezu Fache during their conversation about the murder of Jacques Sauniere at the crime scene. He was referring to the Pagan symbol of a pentacle and other pagan symbols which have been discarded due to the influence of Christianity’s propaganda against them. And this is not only true for Christianity and Pagan symbols, but for a lot of religions, languages, traditions etc. Everyday, there is at least one language which dies out. Ancient languages like Latin, Greek, Sanskrit have mostly vanished. Religions like Buddhism and Jainism, which once had a good stronghold in Asia, are facing a crisis.
It looks like a law of nature that things become outdated. Things seem to follow a cycle. Empires have emerged and gone away. Nations have been created and destroyed. Sometimes, mostly in the case of religions, one big religion tries to take over many small religions and sects; just like a giant corporation taking over small companies. And this happens in a very planned manner. Actually, my faith, Sikhism is also facing such type of threat from Hinduism. We are trying to survive and fight for our separate identity. This phenomenon happens when a nation tries to rewrite its history by hiding the bad and embarrassing facts of its past. Communism and Socialism as well as Democracy have been victimized in the same manner. So, the quote by Langdon can be related to various scenarios.