Clik here to view.
Rehabilitating king vidyAdhara and the sense of Hindu identity
The prelude tvam Adau vikramAdityaH sR^iShTo .abhUH svAMshato mayA | mlechCha-rUpAvatIrNAnAm asurANAM prashAntaye || (bhaTTa somadeva in the vetAla pa~nchaviMshati) I generated you vikramAditya as a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The proto-Australoid deep within us
Molecular biology is establishing that there might be an element of truth in the quaint anthropological conjectures of Franz Weidenrich. The Indian subcontinent is of enormous interest in terms of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
yuddha-vyUha-s, mlechCha-s and vaNija-nIti in the last Hindu empire
The narrative of the final stages of premodern bhAratavarSha remains in a rather misleading state, despite these times being much closer to our own. In the modern phase (post-independence) tacit...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Clik here to view.
Pitch of male vocalization
A primate male at his peak with his weaponry The densely peopled lands of bhArata, where resources are limiting and intra-specific competition is intense, one has some of the finest opportunities to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
bhavabhUti’s avifauna and flora
A good kavI of yore is supposed to have been a naturalist. We had earlier given an example of this in the form of vAkpati’s characterization of the kingfisher. Now we shall provide an example from the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Molluscan phylogeny
Long ago in our youth we were observing a trochophore larva of an annelid under our microscope, when we raised our eye from the eyepiece in flash of realization. Right then the morphological continuity...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Some considerations on Indian polity
Along with the failure to restore saMskR^ita, one of the congenital defects of modern India was its failure to reacquire its tradition of political thought. While such visions might have existed in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fragments of West Asian heathen thought: late surviving Hermetica
To be read in conjunction with this. Many moons ago aurvasheyI brought my attention to a curious news item in an Indian paper – in small print it narrated a village conflict involving the deployment of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The moon on the waves
We had a lengthy conversation. She smiled, and said: After all the kApAlikau can recognize each other even without the Chomma. When a strI with tresses flowing like sarasvatI in her descent, stanau...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Some comments on the biology of insulin resistance in jaMbudvIpa
A recent paper by Metspalu et al in AHJG adds additional data to the growing material on the genetics of the Indians. The paper has several issues that are rather unsatisfactory – chief among them is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Squaring of the circle by Srinivasa Ramanujan
Geometric constructions have a special effect on us because they depict visually the Platonic abstractions that often underlie the laws of nature. So in a sense a construction is a mapping of natural...
View ArticleClik here to view.
kautukasaMgha
The train ground to a stop and we stepped out into the cold silence swathed in armor saying “kaMbalvantaM na bAdhate shItaM”. None could recognize us beneath our armor. Since our mind was conditioned...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The shrauta animal sacrifice
The shrauta animal sacrifice is a tradition of great importance in the development of Hindu science because it was here that they first learned their anatomy. This knowledge was to come of good use in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reading the downward turn of the yuga-chakra
A conversation, tinged with sorrow and pleasure at the same time, reminded us of a pickle of chillies that was so artful crafted by ST in her flourish of sUpakalA. But one thing was clear that the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A note on the Tantric state among the chIna-s and recovery of a lost...
In 705 CE, amoghavajra was born in Samarkand to a brAhmaNa teacher from either Prayag or Kashi and his Iranian wife. His father died when he was 10 years old and he moved to the chInadesha with his...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A saiddhAntika adaptation of the vAstupuruSha narrative
We had earlier pointed out that the vAstupuruSha narrative in the smArta vAstu texts ( e.g. as provided by varAhamihira in his bR^ihatsaMhitA) might be derived from an old brAhmaNa-like narrative that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The irony of vAsudeva sArvabhauma
In the declining years of the Hindu world, in the late 1400s and first half of 1500s lived a remarkable thinker vAsudeva sArvabhauma. The intellectual feats of the paraMpara to which he belonged are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Notes on vaiShNava-shaiva sectarian competition in the purANa-s
The appropriation and/or downgrading of each others ancient narratives is a common practice seen among shaiva-s, vaiShNava-s shAkta-s, gANapatya-s and to a lesser extent the kaumAra-s. Many years ago...
View ArticleClik here to view.
On a paramAra warrior queen and some Saracenic structures in lATa
S and other members of aurvasheyI’s family have rich body of legend concerning their tAntrika paraMpara. We have discussed some of this with the intention of mapping it on the historical background...
View Article