Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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Articles
The Rise of the Indian Goddess
Published on 14th July, 2022, in The Hindu. How old are the goddesses of India? It is extremely difficult to answer this question. Maybe it started in the Stone Age, when man equated the Earth to a goddess or the womb of a woman, or saw goddesses in trees, in rivers. The Baghor stone, with…
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Articles
History of Bharat in Seven Days
Published on 10th July, 2022, in Mid-day. When you compress India’s history to one week, we gain a rather delightful perspective of our past. Indian history from Harappan times till today is approximately 5,000 years, so each day of the week is approximately a period of 700 years. On Sunday, in Northwest India, farming appears.…
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Articles
Your Skills Matter. But Do You?
Published on 9th July, 2022, in Economic Times. The sun has no value on its own. Its value comes from plants who seek sunlight to produce food. Its value comes from animals, but only those who thrive in the day and in summer. The bats do not care. In other words, the value of the…
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Articles
Why Goddess Kali Has Many Faces?
Published on 6th July, 2022, in Times of India. The images of Puranic gods only started appearing on cave and temple walls after the 5th Century AD. We find such images in Odisha, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, and among these are images of fierce goddesses. The most popular of these shows a goddess riding…
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Articles
A Brief History of the Lion-Kings of Andhra
Published on 3rd July, 2022, in Times of India. Everyone knows about the famous Venktateshwara Balaji temple of Tirupati located in Andhra Pradesh. What is less known are the Narasimha temples found in coastal Andhra, flanking the rice-rich deltas of Krishna and Godavari. These temples became popular as the old Vedic form of Hinduism gave…
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Articles
Pre-Macaulay Models of Teaching
Published on 3rd July, 2022, in Mid-day. Today, anyone can go to a school or an institute, where a set of subjects are taught by experts who follow a fixed timetable, an approved curriculum, a standardised method of teaching and evaluation. That was not the case before. In the old Indian model, your caste determined…
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Podcasts
Ask Devdutt – TOI
Mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik explains what our gods and holy texts tell us to do about insults directed at them…
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Articles
Two Gods In Our Brain
Published on 26th June, 2022, in Mid-day. We are familiar with that false idea that the left brain grants us logical thinking and mathematics and the right brain grants us creativity and abstract thinking, and that students of science and commerce have left brain orientation while students of the arts have right brain orientation. In…
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Articles
Economics Of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva That Businessmen Across the World Need to Know
Published on 25th June, 2022, in Economic Times. The Puranas were composed 1500 years ago, between 5th and 10th century AD. What differentiates the Puranas from the Vedas is the value placed on temple worship, pilgrimages and stories to express a philosophy. The chief protagonists are the trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva and their…
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Articles
Shiva from Tibet?
Published on 19th June, 2022, in Mid-day. The idea that Tibet was the homeland of Aryas came from Swami Dayananda Saraswati, who in the late 19th century, founded the famous Arya Samaj. He valued the Vedas as the original source of Hinduism, but saw Puranas including worship of Shiva-linga as a degeneration of Arya-dharma, a…
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Articles
How Hinduism Flourished in Kerala
Published on 18th June, 2022, in Times of India. As per legend, the western coast of India, Kerala especially, came into being when the sea recoiled in horror on receiving Parashuram’s axe soaked with the blood of the many kings he had killed. He had killed them because they had failed to uphold dharma. They…
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Books
Dharm Aur Samlaingikta/धर्म और समलैंगिकता
हमारे देश में एक संस्था है क्वीयर हिन्दू अलायंस, जो समलैंगिकता और हिन्दू धर्म के क्षेत्रों में काम करती है। इस संस्था के अध्यक्ष अंकित भूपतानी ने धर्म और समलैंगिकता को लेकर देवदत्त पटनायक से सैकड़ों सवाल किए हैं, उन्हीं सवालों के सुलझे हुए स्पष्ट जवाब इस पुस्तक में हैं।इस पुस्तक में एक प्रश्न के…
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Articles
Why Did Medieval Indian Cavalries Shun the Parthian Shot In Archery?
Published on 17th June, 2022, in The Hindu. In one retelling of the epic Ramayana, Ram was so righteous that even though he knew Ravana’s weak spot was his navel, he kept shooting arrows at Ravana’s head, in keeping with Kshatriya dharma. Exasperated, Hanuman got his father, the wind god, to send a fierce breeze…
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PodcastsStorytel
Dharmic Leadership with Devdutt Pattanaik
In the jungle, the big eat the small; no one helps anyone. In dharma, the big help the small. But this can only happen when you feel secure. Most rich, powerful, and knowledgeable people are not secure. This is why they continue to consume, combat, and compete, oblivious of other people’s hunger. They fear they…
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Articles
Burning Lanka in Odisha
Published on 12th June, 2022, in Mid-day. Ravana-podi means burning effigies of Ravana. In the Gangetic plains, this happens at the end of autumn Navaratri after the rains on Vijaya Dashami. In Odisha’s Dasapalla, Nayagarh district, the same happens at the end of the spring Navaratri before the rains on Ram Navami. However, in another…