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Aptitude, education, the ape and politics

February 17, 2012, 12:11 am
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The yogin experiences, but at the height of his practice there is neither object nor subject in his experience. The kavi experiences, and in the pinnacle of his practice his world is unified under increasingly robust ontologies. When he attains mastery he becomes an AchArya who expounds shAstra-s. Indeed the great indra bestows on few [...]
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The vulture-eared bhadrakAlI

February 19, 2012, 12:38 am
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There are several traditions within the kAlI-kula that associate kAlI with various animals. There is the polytherocephalous guhyakAlI whose upAsana is laid out in the guhyakAlI section of the mahAkAla saMhitA. There is secret vidyA of chAmuNDA as vR^ischikodarI where the fierce and skeletal goddess is worshiped with a scorpion on her belly. But one [...]
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Meanderings in the vedAnta-nAstika interface

March 10, 2012, 11:44 pm
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One of the central figures of classical advaita vedAnta is the AchArya gauDapAda. Hagiographic tradition holds that gauDacharaNa was the paramaguru of the great advaitAchArya shaMkara bhagavatpAda (and guru of govinda bhagavatpAda). This is confirmed by shaMkara in his concluding praise of the guru-s in poetic verse in his commentary on the mANDukya kArika-s (second [...]
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A page from the chIna-Tibet encounter

March 12, 2012, 12:07 am
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A wordy exchange between a chIna general and a Tibetan minister during the height of the great Tibetan-Chinese contest in the Kokonor region in the late 600s of the common era. The chIna-s were always conscious of applying their numerical strength in a military encounter and ready to emphasize it. Translated by English scholar David [...]
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ghR^itaM and khristós: Did the Greeks lose ghee?

March 18, 2012, 12:29 am
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vayaM nAma pra bravAmA ghR^itasyAsmin yaj~ne dhArayAmA namobhiH | upa brahmA shR^iNavach ChasyamAnaM chatuH shR^i~Ngo .avamId gaura etat || RV 4.58.2 Let us proclaim the name of ghee, and hold it up with homage at this ritual. Let the brahman hear the praise we utter. This has emanated the four-horned gaur. Ghee is central to [...]
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Hindu “butterfly effect” tales

March 20, 2012, 12:00 am
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Lorenz is supposed to have said that a flap of a butterfly might end up in a hurricane weeks later. In his retelling of the pa~nchatantra, vasubhAga has several such childish tales (2.13, 2.14 and 2.15). 2.13: Once a group of day geckos lived in a plakSha tree. They had a great territorial conflict in [...]
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saMmelana song of the vIra

March 26, 2012, 10:23 pm
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It was the saMmelana of the holders of the kapAla in the great shmashAna of kollagiri, in quest of mahAnaya. We were reclined in the haze of the pyres; the embrace of our dUtI fanning the inner fires; the fire of the kulayAga leaping to accept the mahAhuti. The songs of the melApaka and the [...]
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Some more ramblings on the mlechCha-marUnmatta abhisaMdhAnaM

April 1, 2012, 11:36 am
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The mlechCha-s outwardly appear to have been at war with the shashidhvaja-s since the first days of the khilI-moha propagated by the adi-marUnmatta. But throughout history several actions of mlechCha-s have ended up strengthening the marUnmatta-s rather than weakening them. This has been more so in the last 150 years than ever before. We first [...]
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Some maxims of ve~NkaTAdhvarin

April 6, 2012, 12:03 am
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Our medieval coethnic, ve~NkaTAdhvarin (1600s of the common era), was a shrauta ritualist, keen observer of humanity, master poet, proponent of vishiShTAdvaita and shrIvaiShNava bigot, all simultaneously rolled in one. In his writings we encounter a brilliant account of the sacred geography of India, which shows that the concept of akhaNDa bhArata was not lost [...]
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On feathers, fleas and big stem birds

April 7, 2012, 11:47 am
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Should the Mesozoic dinosaurs have been depicted with feathers or not? This question seems to have been asked by very few people until the last 15 years. Of course we had Robert Bakker and Gregory Paul presciently do this, but other than, them few people ventured to break the mold of the scaly depictions that [...]
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An indigo South Asian, hemu’s salt and other interlocutions

April 23, 2012, 12:25 am
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For a while Mn has been keeping only Ivy league company – as he would say from one Ivy league school to another, much to the envy of flotsam deshI mortals. Indeed, he made his appearance with an entourage of others in the same league. Many were lost in small talk about admissions, grants, recruitment [...]
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pA~ncharAtrika vaiShNava elements in the astronomy textbook sUrya-siddhanta and other notes

May 2, 2012, 12:08 am
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When it comes to astronomy, more than any other field, the white indologists and their Japanese apers have sought to show Hindus as frauds or idiots (of course, nowadays they cushion it in all manner “sophisticated” jargon, such as “Indo-Moslem scientific collaboration in pre-modern South Asia”, etc) [Footnote 1]. Everything worthwhile in our old astronomy [...]
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A laud of indra

May 24, 2012, 12:02 am
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For the Arya of yore there was nothing more inspiring than indra in his dasyu-smashing manifestation. Indeed, only one who is touched deeply, inspired to heavenly heights and invigorated in ardor upon hearing these R^iks can lay any claim to understanding the spirit of the warlike Arya-s. Fleeting glimpses of this spirit of indra can [...]
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The apocalyptic vision

May 28, 2012, 12:19 am
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“For one her yoni will be the dvAra that leads to the realm of mahAsukha; for the rest it will be the shR^i~Nkhala that will trap them like the pAsha of an AtharvaNa” We: So what is it like? She: A strangely pleasant afternoon despite the mild rain. Whipped up some bhR^ijjika-s and saha-kuTuMba we [...]
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Some inquiries into the shrIlankan past

May 29, 2012, 11:57 pm
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Whereas Hindus on the mainland are reputed to have no historical sense and consquently no history, their cousins on the island are supposed to have a rich historical account in the form of the pAlI mahAvaMsha and the chULavaMsha. These sources have been the bed rock of the current lankan ekIya and reinterpretted by the [...]
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sarasvatI the devI and the sarasvatI the nadI

June 3, 2012, 12:13 pm
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masitãm dûrât frasrûtãm ýâ asti avavaiti masô ýatha vîspå imå âpô ýå zemâ paiti frataciñti ýâ amavaiti fratacaiti hukairyât haca barezanghat aoi zrayô vouru-kashem || The large river, known afar, that is as large as the whole of the waters that run along the earth; that runs powerfully from the height hukairya down to the [...]
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The broken chain and the chain of knowledge

June 16, 2012, 12:32 am
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In the city of shAhjI he lay dead on the litter. His yaj~napAtra-s were being collected to be laid around him. Two rare specialists from the drAviDa and the andhra country had come to take care of his last iShTi. The combined fire from his three fires was taken and he was fed as the [...]
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kauTilya on knowledge

June 23, 2012, 12:09 pm
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The wise viShNugupta, who propelled the mauryan to meteoric heights, while uprooting the tree of the wicked nanda-s and cleansing the taint of the Macedonian barbarians on the land of the bhArata-s, uttered words that remain vivid even after 2300 years. The AchArya’s enumeration of the Hindu system of knowledge goes thus: AnvIkShikI trayI vArtA [...]
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iShmin and the raudra devatA-s

July 2, 2012, 12:05 am
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[disclaimer: I tend to use Indicized spellings in most cases, which do not necessarily capture the Iranian pronunciation exactly. For my own Iranian studies I use the text of the avesta printed in an extended devanAgarI script which tends to capture the Iranian sound values well and also gives a sense of “script familiarity” while [...]
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niShAda-s and shabara-s of jambudvIpa: What you see is what it is

July 8, 2012, 11:52 pm
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The vast land of jambudvIpa is home to many different types of tribal people. They were noted right from the times of the ancient Hindu texts. The R^igveda hardly mentions any of them, but one that is mentioned is kIkaTa. In the later Vedic layers, epics, purAna-s and dharma literature, the mentions of them increase [...]
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