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Mongolica: Chingiz Khan and the rest
As we have remarked many times on these pages there was Chingiz Khan and the rest. No ruler ever achieved his kind of conquest before or after him. Hence, whenever I hear of the latest claim regarding...
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Median and pedal triangles and derived fractals: an introductory account
It is rather easily seen that joining the midpoints of the sides of a triangle yields four congruent triangles that in turn are similar to the original triangle (Figure 1). This figure might be used to...
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A note on the cow, the horse and the chariot in the Ṛgveda
yasmai tvaṃ sukṛte jātaveda u lokam agne kṛṇavaḥ syonam | aśvinaṃ sa putriṇaṃ vīravantaṃ gomantaṃ rayiṃ naśate svasti || For whom you will make a pleasant world, O Jātavedas! as he does correct rituals...
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Wisdom from a tag system
The case of the mathematician Emil Post, like that of several others, indicates how the boundary between mania and mathematics can be a thin one. Nevertheless, Post discovered some rather interesting...
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Hofstader and Nārāyaṇa: connections across space and time
The scientist-philosopher Douglas Hofstader presents an interesting single-seeded sequence H in his book ‘Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid’. It is generated by the recurrence relation,...
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The Meru and Nārāyaṇa’s cows: Words and fractals
The fractals described herein are based on and inspired by the work of the mathematicians Rauzy, Mendes-France, Monnerot and Knuth. Some their works, especially the first of them, are dense with...
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The apparition of the Scottish surgeon
On a late summer evening, at the twilight hour, Somakhya accompanied by Lootika met Vidrum outside his home. Vidrum was supposed to show Somakhya something special he had found during a visit to the...
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A note on Cepheid variables: reproducing the study of the period-luminosity laws
In the 13th year of our life, when the skies of our city were still tolerably dark, we observed two stars Persei (Algol) and Cephei from our balcony which faced north on every night they were visible....
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Make your own sky map
We live in the age of photo-realism, be it for maps of the world or of the sky – it is a realism that not long ago was beyond the reach of even our vision. That is why even though … Continue reading →
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Citrabhānu’s cubes
The Hindus unlike their yavana cousins preferred algebra to geometry. Yet on occasions they could indulge in geometric games for demostrating proofs of algebraic relations. We see a bit of this in the...
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A rambling talk on the śaiva mantra tradition
A rambling talk we had given on the śaiva tradition. Talking is easier but less precise than writing. So please be aware of the insufficiency that goes with the domain of any talk while perusing this...
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Some simple maps specifying strange attractors
This note may be read a continuation of: Some reminiscences of our study of chaotic maps-2 While the story of the chaotic 2D attractors began with the simple-looking maps of Henon and Lozi, by the...
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The Satija-Ketoja system
Satija and Ketoja discovered an interesting dynamical system in course of the study of the Schrödinger equation for one electron in a two dimensional periodic lattice on a uniform magnetic field. While...
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A note on tales of fratricide, warfare, cannibalism and incest
The Osman conqueror of Constantinople, Mehmet-II, bothered by the civil wars his predecessors had to fight to take the throne, institutionalized the system of fratricide. In this system, the rival...
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Godhūmo vijayate
As we have noted several times before the Ṛgveda represents a very early stage of the evolution of Indo-Aryan. Its agricultural terms relate to a major puzzle in Indo-European history. There is an...
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The story of the Orissan cycle-vālā
Vidrum had been under considerable pressure. His parents had made it clear that they would auction away his new bike if he was not ranked within the top 5 in his class in the impending mid-semester...
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Triangles, Hexes and Cubes
One philosophical question which we have often ponder about is: Are numbers “real”? One way to approach this question is via figurate numbers, where numbers directly manifest as very tangible geometry....
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The incredible beauty of certain Hamiltonian mappings
In our teens we studied Hamiltonian functions a little bit as part of our attempt to understand classical and quantum physics. A byproduct of it was a superficial interest in the geometry of some of...
View ArticleOf lives of men; of times of men-I
Sharvamanyu and Vidrum arrived at the campus where Somakhya and Lootika were in their final days of college. Sharvamanyu had already been working for several months while Vidrum had just completed the...
View ArticleOf lives of men; of times of men-II
Of lives of men; of times of men-I Vidrum: “When we attended the discussions at the Right Wing Debate club we heard the president Rammandir Mishra repeatedly emphasize that South Asian civilization was...
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