Long-established rituals in preexisting cultural groups have been linked to the cultural evolution of group cooperation. We tested the prediction that novel rituals-arbitrary hand and body gestures enacted in a stereotypical and repeated fashion-can inculcate intergroup bias in newly formed groups. In four experiments, participants practiced novel rituals at home for 1 week (Experiments 1, 2, a...

The present study was undertaken to evaluate antioxidant and hypolipidemic activity of Vedic guard, a polyherbal formulation comprising of Terminalia arjuna, Withania sominefera, Bacopa monnierii, Tinosporia cardifolia, Commiphora mukul and many other plant extracts, all of which are classifieds in Ayurveda as Rasaayanas which are reported to promote antioxidant and hypolipidemic activity. Anti...

Joshua Bloom, Iulia Kotenko, Meru Sadhu, Sebastian Treusch, Frank W. Albert, Leonid Kruglyak Department of Human Genetics, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA Lewis Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 Department of ...

Sanskrit is an accented language. The accent is very prominent in Vedic Sanskrit but classical Sanskrit does not make use of it. Accent is a disambiguation device which can help to understand the correct sense of a word. Words in Sanskrit tend to fall in certain grammatical categories like ghañantas, vocatives etc. Words in a category tend to have an accent governed by either a general or a spe...

Three experiments explored the impact of mourning rituals after losses – of loved ones, lovers, and lotteries – on mitigating grief. Participants who were directed to reflect on past rituals or who were assigned to complete novel rituals after experiencing losses reported lower levels of grief. Increased feelings of control after rituals mediated the link between use of rituals and reduced grie...

Three experiments explored the impact of mourning rituals--after losses of loved ones, lovers, and lotteries--on mitigating grief. Participants who were directed to reflect on past rituals or who were assigned to complete novel rituals after experiencing losses reported lower levels of grief. Increased feelings of control after rituals mediated the link between use of rituals and reduced grief ...

Although the earliest texts, such as the hymns of the R. gveda, were composed in verse, the liturgical works (brāhman. a) of the middle vedic period were composed in prose. This practice was continued in the literature of the expert traditions; most ancient works falling within the Vedic Supplements are in prose. Probably because instruction in the expert traditions was carried out orally and t...