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Indiana Jones
"Journey of Radiance"
(Originally TV episode
"Benares,
January 1910")
(0:00-47:30
on the Journey of Radiance
DVD)
Written by Jonathan Hensleigh
Story by George Lucas
Directed by Deepa Mehta
Bookends directed by Carl
Schultz
Original air date: July 3,
1993
|
Little Indy meets a boy believed by
some to be the vessel of the new World Teacher.
Read the "Spring 1910" entry of the
It’s Not the Years, It’s the Mileage Indiana Jones
chronology for a summary of this episode
Notes from the Indiana Jones chronology
This episode takes place in Benares, India in January 1910.
Didja Know?
The title of this episode ("Journey of Radiance") was assigned by me
from the title of the TV movie The Adventures of
Young Indiana Jones: Journey of Radiance, a TV movie
repackaged for the Family Channel from the original
Young Indiana Chronicles
episodes "Benares, January 1910"
and "Peking, March 1910."
Some new introductory and interstitial scenes were
filmed in order to turn this
Young Indiana Chronicles
episode into the second half of
the
Adventures of Young Indiana Jones:
Passion for Life
TV movie. Actor Lloyd Owen, portraying Henry Jones, Sr. had worn
brown contact lenses to cover his own blue eyes in order to
match the eye color of actor Sean Connery (1930-2020)who had
played the character earlier in 1989's Indiana Jones and the
Last Crusade during the first season of the TV series, but
did not during the second season and for the new material shot
in 1996 for Adventures of Young Indiana Jones TV
movies. Hence, we see the senior Jones sometimes with brown
eyes, but more often with blue!
New scenes shot with Little Indy actor Corey Carrier are
also noticeable for his contradictory heights between scenes due
to much the actor had grown!
Notes from the Old Indy bookends of
The
Young Indiana Chronicles
The bookends take place at Mike's Roadhouse Restaurant. This is
a fictitious establishment, but was filmed at the real world Big
Dog Cafe, 1632 Castle Hayne Road, Wilmington, North Carolina.
Old Indy tells the trucker he's talking to at the cafe that when
he went to India as a child of 11, he saw the Taj Mahal and all
the other palaces. However, in January of 1910, he would have
been just 10 years old. Also, the
Taj Mahal
is not actually a palace, but an enormous mausoleum serving as
the tomb of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (1592-1666) and his
favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal (1593-1631).
Old Indy refers to Jiddu Krishnamurti, whom he met in India, as
the most extraordinary person he ever met. That's saying quite a
lot considering all the people Indy has met in the many travels
of his illustrious career!
Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) was a philosopher, speaker, and
writer. Just as depicted in the episode, he was thought by the
Theosophical
Society to be the next vehicle of the spiritual World
Teacher and, as a boy, was adopted and groomed by them to be such.
For a long time, Krishnamurti assumed this was true because
that's how he was taught, but he rejected this status in 1929
and ended his relationship with the Theosophical Society.
Indy says his meeting with
Krishnamurti took place in Benares, a city on the sacred Ganges
River. Benares is generally called
Varanasi now and is the
holiest of the seven sacred cities of Hinduism and Jainism, and
also important in Buddhism and Ravidassia.
Indy says his family had been invited to stay at the Hindu National
College while his father lectured in the area. He is presumably
referring to Central Hindu College, founded in Benares in 1898
by Annie Besant, whom we meet in this episode. It is currently
known as
Central Hindu School.
Notes from
The Lost Journal of Indiana Jones
The Lost Journal of Indiana Jones is a 2008 publication
that
purports to be Indy's journal as seen throughout The
Young Indiana Chronicles
and the big screen Indiana
Jones movies. The publication is also annotated with notes
from a functionary of the
Federal Security
Service (FSB) of the Russian Federation, the successor
agency of the Soviet Union's KGB. The FSB relieved Indy of his
journal in 1957 during the events of Indiana Jones and the
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
The notations imply the journal was released to other
governments by the FSB in the early 21st Century. However, some
bookend segments of The
Young Indiana Chronicles
depict Old Indy still in
possession of the journal in 1992. The discrepancy has never
been resolved.
The boxed set of DVDs of the complete
The
Young Indiana Chronicles
TV series has notations and drawings in the storage slot for
each disk that suggest they are meant to be excerpts from Indy's
journal. Most of these notes and drawings do not appear in the
The Lost Journal of Indiana Jones book. Here is the
slot image for this
episode:
The journal as published skips over this time in Indy's
life. In fact, it goes from September 1909 to June 1912...a
period of almost three
years! Are we to believe that Indy made no journal entries that
entire time? Perhaps the entries were excised by the Russians
for some reason when it was in their possession?
Characters appearing or mentioned in this episode
Indiana Jones
Louise
cafe diner
trucker
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Jiddu
Nityananda
Helen Seymour
Annie Besant
Henry Jones, Sr.
Anna Jones
Hubert Van Hook
Mrs. Van Hook (Hurbert's mother)
Charles Leadbeater
Mr. Mukherjee
Richard McAllen
Krishnamurti's brother, Nityananda (Nitya), seen here, was very
close to him in real life all the way until Nitya's death in
1925 at the age of 27.
The car Miss Seymour picks up Indy in at 5:44 on the DVD is a
1929 Ford Model A
Phaeton.
Not having yet met Annie Besant (1847-1933),
Miss Seymour seems to disapprove of her, saying she's "a
believer in free love and a socialist and an atheist." But, Miss
Seymour is incorrect in that Besant abhorred the concept of free
love and, while she did not believe in a God per se, she did
believe in a higher spiritual world beyond the material realm.
Henry, Sr. claims that Besant was the first woman to
enter London
University. While she was one of the first, she was not
the first.
While espousing Besant's bona fides,
Henry, Sr. says she is a friend of George Bernard Shaw. This is
true. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was an Irish playwright
and political activist.
Henry, Sr. explains to Indy that Theosophists believe in the
commonality of all religions and have an interest in psychic and
supernatural phenomena. Though the supernatural is not evidenced in
this episode, Indy will experience many supernatural events
during his adult career.
Charles Leadbeater (1854-1934) was a Theosophist who
"discovered" the 14-year old
Jiddu Krishnamurti and declared him to be the vessel of the
expected messianic entity to be known as the World Teacher.
When the Jones' and Miss Seymour attend the meeting of the
Theosophist Society,
Leadbeater introduces and thanks for their generous donations to
the Society,
Mr. Mukherjee of
Calcutta and Richard McAllen of
Edinburgh.
Introducing
Jiddu Krishnamurti to the meeting, Leadbeater proclaims, "It
is always a momentous occasion when the spiritual powers send
one of their own to teach us the way. So it was with Sri Krishna
in the fourth century B.C. So it was with Jesus Christ, in the
first century A.D." Krishna ("Sri" is an Indian honorific
denoting prosperity) is the eighth avatar of the god Vishnu in
Hinduism. Jesus Christ was a first-century Jewish preacher who
became the central figure of Christianity, whom later Christians
believe was the son of God and the awaited Messiah (the
Christ) prophesied in the Old Testament.
Leadbeater tells of discovering Krishnamurti on the beach at
Adyar. Adyar is a neighborhood of the city of
Chennai, India on the Adyar River. Leadbeater says he
recorded his clairvoyant investigation of Krishnamurti's past
lives in a book he holds up before the crowd. The book he holds
is seen to be titled The Lives of Krishnamurti. As far as I can
tell, Leadbeater never published a book with this exact title,
but he did publish (with Besant) The Lives of Alcyone,
Alcyone being a name Leadbeater assigned to Krishnamurti as a
spiritual being; however, even then, the book was not published
until 1924. The book's appearance here, in a 1910 setting, may
be intended to suggest that Leadbeater is largely a con man
selling books and speaking appearances, as he was indeed accused
of being during his life.
When
Henry, Sr. introduces Besant to Miss Seymour, he says Miss
Seymour is a member of the
Royal Society
of Literature and the Royal Victorian Order and that many
Oxford scholars
are in her debt as a tutor. For the Royal Victorian Order,
admission can only be granted by the British monarch.
Miss Seymour remarks that Besant discovered Hubert Van Hook in
Chicago before
Leadbeater discovered Krishnamurti at Adyar. As far as I can
tell, Hubert Van Hook is a fictitious character, though Besant
did spend time in Chicago in 1893.
At 23:37 on the DVD, Indy and
Krishnamurti visit a Christian church in Benares. It is St.
Mary's Church of the Church of England.
Krishnamurti tells Indy about the Buddha,
Siddhārtha Gautama. What he tells Indy is accurate for
the legend of Buddha.
Buddha was the Indian spiritual teacher Siddhārtha Gautama whose
teachings began the Buddhist religion.
Krishnamurti asks Indy what he desires most in all the
world and Indy answers that he wants to live forever.
Krishnamurti responds that everybody has to die and how does
that make Indy feel, to which Indy responds, "Sad, I guess,"
and Krishnamurti says, "You see? People want things they
cannot have and that makes them sad and they suffer." He
goes on to say that Buddha realized this and stopped wanting
things he could not have and he was content.
Indy's desire to live forever may be a foreshadowing
of the events of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where
he drinks from the Cup of Christ, which is alleged to grant
immortality.
The ghat
Krishnamurti describes at the Ganges River as a place of
bathing for Hindus to purify themselves is accurate. There
is a ghat, Darbhanga Ghat, along the Ganges in Benares,
which is where this scene was actually shot.
Krishnamurti's comment to Indy that Brahma, Vishnu, and
Shiva are the most important three of the many gods of
Hinduism is more-or-less correct.
When
Miss Seymour goes looking for where Indy has got to with
Krishnamurti, she finds Hubert reading Isaac Newton's
Principia Mathematica. It's full title is Philosophiæ
Naturalis Principia Mathematica, a three-volume work
describing Newton's laws of motion, gravitation, and a
derivation of Kepler's laws of planetary motion.
Krishnamurti's description of Islam and the prophet Muhammad
when he and Indy visit a mosque is accurate. The scene was
shot at Gyanvapi Mosque in Benares.
Indy gives his prized
Ty Cobb baseball
card to his new friend, Krishnamurti. Yet,
the card is seen taped into Indy's journal when copies
of it are released to various governments around the
world in the early 2000s. It's possible Indy
simply obtained another identical card to replace it or
maybe
Krishnamurti
gave it back to him at some point after this episode.
The Ty Cobb card (the so-called "Bat off
shoulder" card) is a real one that was made as a
promotional item for Croft's Cocoa and Candy and Nadja
Caramels.
Memorable Dialog
what does it look like I'm doing?.mp3
psychic and supernatural phenomenon.mp3
the new World Teacher.mp3
don't give him any ideas.mp3
peacefulness and tranquility.mp3
rather dull.mp3
there are many things which cannot be seen through Western
eyes.mp3
I started thinking about apple pie.mp3
God is love.mp3
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