2021
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What the Chinese Saw In India
Published on 25th July, 2021, in Mid-day. Chinese scholars realised the Buddhism they were receiving was in diluted or corrupted form. So, many monks travelled to India by land and sea routes to get the original documents. They translated them…
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Shutting Up a Vampire
Published on A vampire in Indian folktales is known as a vetala. It is unable to cross the river Vaitarni and go to the land of the ancestors. So it lives in the crematorium, inside a corpse, using its tongue…
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Prophets In Islam
Published on 18th July, 2021, in Mid-day. In Islamic lore, Islam is as old as creation. Allah, which is Arabic for ‘the’ God, created 1,24,000 prophets (paigambar), who encouraged all humans to follow the path prescribed by God. Of these,…
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What Was Hinduism Like Before Temples?
Published on 16th July, 2021, in Times of India. Harappan seals indicate that its residents worshipped trees, and holy men who lived in forests. There are were no temples in Harappan cities. The oldest of the Vedic scriptures, the Rig…
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Metaphor Of Three Goddesses
Published on 11th July, 2021, in Mid-day. Hindu mythology uses metaphor of human relationships to explain concepts. This can be confusing as metaphors are rarely consistent. This confounds those who see mythology as history and insist on reading stories literally.…
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Origins of Nepotism
Published on 9th July, 2021, in Economic Times These days, business families are including their daughters in the family businesses. Yet on careful observation, one notices that the son is given responsibility for “outside” jobs such as production and sales,…
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Lustful Women of the Jataka
Published on 4th July, 2021, in Mid-day. We rarely talk about it, mainly because they have been kept out of popular translations, but in the Jataka collection, which retells stories from Buddha’s past lives, there is the firm belief that…
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Why Is Being a Chandala Not Aspirational?
Published on 2nd July, 2021, in The Times of India. Chandala, in traditional Indian literature, refers to a person who works in the crematorium, disposing of dead bodies. He collects corpses from the village, and keeps the village clean. Despite…
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Ancestor Worship In the Vedas
Published on 27th June, 2021, in Mid-day. The Vedic people worshipped celestial beings known as devas. They also worshipped their ancestors known as pitras. The worship of these two sets of divinities complements each other. People worship the devas during…
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‘Thali’, ‘handi’, ‘paniki’
‘Thali’, ‘handi’, ‘paniki’: Unique Inventions of the Indian Kitchen by Women Who Remain Nameless Published on 26th June, 2021, in Economic Times. An Indian kitchen is a sacred place. Many people do not take footwear into the kitchen. They insist…
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Snake In the Termite Hill
Published on 20th June, 2021, in Mid-day. One of the most sacred images in India is the snake emerging from a termite hill. Termite hills are remarkable natural constructions. They provide ventilation and protection from flooding and predators for the…
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How the Temple Became the Hub For an Economy
Published on 19th June, 2021, in The Times of India. Vedic gods resided in the sky. They were unbound by geography. Temple gods are firmly bound by geography. Jagannath is firmly linked to Odisha, Tirupati to Andhra Pradesh, Nathdvara to…
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Kabir, Kabir: The life and work of the early modern poet-philosopher
As the right wing tries to claim Kabir for itself, while other conservatives disown him and yet others portray him as a secular idol beyond religion, the poet has never been so misunderstood. Coming from the Nirgun bhakti tradition, the…
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Last of the Vedic Texts
Published on 13th June, 2021, in Mid-day. In the Mimansa school that became popular 2,000 years ago, the Rig Veda was considered ‘apaurusheya’ (not of human origin) and ‘ekavakya’ (a single sentence), with no breaks between words and no punctuations.…
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Of Weight and Value
Of Weight And Value: The human mind has power to create value and also strip value. Published on 11th June, 2021, in Economic Times. One of the most peculiar things about the Harappan civilization is its obsession with weights and…