Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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Articles
How a ‘Ram Rajya’ Was Established In South
Published on 27th August, 2022, in Times of India. About 700 years ago, on the banks of Tungabhadra, in Karnataka, as per legend, two brothers known as Harihara and Bukka, saw hares turning around and attacking hunting hounds. They realised that land was special – a place of resistance. So they decided to build a…
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Articles
Vishranti, That State of Repose
Published on 21st August, 2022, in Mid-Day. We spent our lives seeking opportunities to nourish our bodies and minds or defending it from threats. We seek food and pleasure and friendship and power and security. We also create things—goods and services and ideas and art. In other words, life is either about inputs or outputs,…
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Articles
When Somnath Temple Was Being Raided, Chola kings Were Reaching Vietnam
Published on 15th August, 2022, in Times of India. As per Brahmin lore, all civilisation in Tamil lands emerged in a mystical past after Agastya brought grammar from the Himalayan regions, along with mountains and rivers which became known as Southern Kailasa and Southern Ganga. But these are clearly later tales, composed less than thousand…
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Articles
Three Global Gifts From Indian Civilisation
Published on 14th August, 2022, in Mid-day. Culture creates ideas. Civilisation shares ideas. Can India be considered the mother of civilisation? What ideas has India given the world? The world today is dominated by ideas that can be traced to Europeans in the 19th century. The Europeans trace their thought to Greek culture, and to…
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Articles
The Elusive Amrita and the Question Of Eternal Life
Published on 11th August, 2022, in The Hindu. The earliest story of the grand churning of the ocean of milk, samudra-manthan, for the nectar of immortality, amrita, is found in the Mahabharata. But strangely there are more images of this mythological episode in Southeast Asian temples than in India. There is no artwork in India…
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Articles
Passionate Devotion for Shiva
Published on 7th August, 2022, in Mid-day. About a thousand years ago, we are told that the Chola king was drawn to a Jain epic called Jivaka Chintamani. It tells the story of a young man’s erotic and valient adventures, who eventually becomes a Jain monk. To prevent local kings from becoming monks, a Tamil…
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Articles
What You Need to Know About Buddhist Capitalism
Published on 6th August, 2022, in Economic Times. We have always been taught that capitalism was invented in Europe. But the capitalism that we see today is the outcome of the Industrial Revolution. Before the Industrial Revolution, capitalism thrived in trading routes controlled by the Arabs. These routes extended from Southeast Asia, right up to…
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Articles
Guardian Yakshis of Jainism
Published on 31st July, 2022, in Mid-day. Jainism is a monastic order. Historically, it emerged 2,500 years ago, with most scriptures written 1,500 years ago. However, as per mythology, Jainism is an eternal religion (sanatan dharma), with 24 Tirthankaras appearing on earth in each of the infinite cycles of time, along with 12 Chakravarthys and…
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Articles
Can Indians Really Decolonise Their Mindset
Published on 31st July, 2022, in Times of India. Of late, politicians, journalists and actors are trying to rewrite Indian history. They argue that freedom fighters aligned to right wing ideology deserve their due. Some even suggest that the freedom fighters we are told to admire gave India a raw deal. The more creative ones…
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Articles
Ending the Fast
Published on 24th July, 2022, in Mid-day. Fasting is a very important spiritual practice. It is about denying the body the pleasure it seeks. It is supposed to earn merit and help us rise up in the karmic ladder. This thesis is an essential part of Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism. And so, in all three…
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Articles
Purva Paksha and the Art of Winning Arguments
Published on 23rd July, 2022, in Economic Times. The New Testament was finalised about 1500 years ago. About the time when Puranas started being composed in India. But what was new about it? The Church said that the old testament was the Jewish Bible. All that was prophesied there had been fulfilled in the body…
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AudiblePodcasts
Krishna 360 degrees
Krishna 360 degrees Written by: Devdutt Pattanaik Narrated by: Devdutt Pattanaik Summary Audible presents Krishna 360 degrees, an Audible Original, written and narrated by Devdutt Pattanaik. Krishna 360 degrees is a deep dive into the story of Krishna. By exploring him as a child, a toddler, a teenager, a cowherd, a statesman, a lover, and…
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Articles
Wisdom of Seeds, Before Sanskrit
Published on 17th July, 2022, in Mid-day. In Indian mythology, two metaphors are used to explain the origin of things and the cause of things. These are womb (yoni, in Sanskrit), and seed (bija). Related to bija is the concept of fruit, or phala. From the yoni comes the phala that contains the bija, which…
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Articles
Did Aryans Migrate Out of India to the West, or to the South?
Published on 16th July, 2022, in Times of India. Three kinds of people love the word Arya even today. The first is the local Hindutva folks who insist ‘Arya’ refers to the best of Hindu civilization. The second is the White Supremacist of the Western world; they prefer the word ‘Aryan’ to Arya, and insist…
