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Aptitude, education, the ape and politics
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...
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The vulture-eared bhadrakAlI
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...
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Meanderings in the vedAnta-nAstika interface
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...
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A page from the chIna-Tibet encounter
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...
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ghR^itaM and khristós: Did the Greeks lose ghee?
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...
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Hindu “butterfly effect” tales
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...
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saMmelana song of the vIra
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;...
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Some more ramblings on the mlechCha-marUnmatta abhisaMdhAnaM
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...
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Some maxims of ve~NkaTAdhvarin
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...
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On feathers, fleas and big stem birds
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...
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An indigo South Asian, hemu’s salt and other interlocutions
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...
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pA~ncharAtrika vaiShNava elements in the astronomy textbook sUrya-siddhanta...
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...
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A laud of indra
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...
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The apocalyptic vision
“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...
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Some inquiries into the shrIlankan past
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...
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sarasvatI the devI and the sarasvatI the nadI
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...
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The broken chain and the chain of knowledge
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...
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kauTilya on knowledge
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,...
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iShmin and the raudra devatA-s
[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...
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niShAda-s and shabara-s of jambudvIpa: What you see is what it is
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...
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