MIXED BAG

  BY    PRAGYANSHARMA POLAVARAPU  ·           EXT8-OLD BRITAIN – THE THREE OLD NATIONAL SYSTEMS December 29, 2025   BY   pragyan Sharma polavarapu  In these essays we are interested only about  development of the beautiful and simple modern English  . This is not about the history of English people . We wish to know only how the old archaic English language developed through centuries into modern English . However for  people of  other countries where English is only a medium to read newspapers , novels, journals  etc , it would  be  interesting to know about  the country  which produced English .We may note that even in 9 th century AD ,English language  was still perhaps like a Germanic dialect   with German words and German phrases with only a few English-like words . A beautiful new English was perhaps evolving but it was  9...

  BY P ragyansharma  Polavarapu   (1) How difficult it is to study history of a language. When we read good story or poem in   English or any other language we see and experience the delicate, kind and beautiful feelings passing through the heart of the writer at the moment he was writing it --one year back or even hundred or thousand years back. when we read old English poems/sonnets   of Shakespeare ,Dryden, Milton, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Byron, Lord Tennyson, Mathew Arnold (The Forsaken Merman) etc or old English novels of Sir Walter Scott, Oliver Goldsmith or even   recent versatile Thomas Hardy we feel as if we   hear   their heartbeats of the moments when they were penning those lines. What I write here is for the “foreigner”—the distant South Asian, East Asian, Indian, African, Chinese, South American ,Arab etc—who enjoy reading the hundreds of good English books which contain   beautiful nature descriptions, descriptions of...

BY P ragyansharma  Polavarapu EXT6-OLD ENGLAND,OLD SCOTLAND AND OLD IRELAND December 23, 2025 BY P ragyansharma  Polavarapu  (1) Centuries before  arrival of Anglo-Saxons in Britain   , there lived  all over the British isles  the Celtic people . The Celtic people  ,though entirely different in culture and customs from Anglo-Saxons   ,were   thousands of years ago of same European  ethnic  origin as the  Anglo-Saxons.  But the geographic conditions were such that for thousands of years they lived separately in widely separate geographic regions. History tells that the  Celts lived in   central Europe around  1300 BC  and later spread to other parts of Europe . The people of European  regional culture called “La Tène culture” --( of times when metal iron was not known)--were said to be celtic. The Celtic people  spread into the  British isles from about  500 B...

   BY P ragyansharma  Polavarapu INTRODUCTION The ancient Roman emperors made the new religion of love and sacrifice of Lord Jesus Christ the state  religion of the empire in western Europe  in fourth century AD. Christianity brought cultural uniformity   in entire Roman Empire and it was as if a new light entered the lives of European people. With the direct support of the Roman emperor,  the various kings and nobles magnificent churches , cathedrals and monasteries were built  all over Europe. The  church of the  Roman Empire  became the Roman Catholic church  and it administered the entire  church matters and spiritual matters in all countries of Europe. (This was  the position  before the Protestant Movement of 16 th  century). Many universities were opened teaching both religion and spirituality and  subjects like astronomy, mathematics, geometry,  state craft  etc. After printing pr...