Subjects
Religions
Audience
Translations
Mythology
Year
Articles
Essays, commentary, thoughts and opinions
on Mythology, life and business
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Articles
The Maleness of Shiva
This leads to questions if Shiva and Shakti are equal halves or is she the inferior half? Are they talking about men and women, or about mind and body?…
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Rishi Pippalada of the Atharva Veda
Atharva Veda is the collection of hymns containing spells for helping, healing and even hurting, composed by the Rishi who was generally excluded from the list of Seven Sages (Sapta Rishi): Atharva, Angirasa and Bhrigu…
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Maritime Culture of Jambu-Dvipa
India’s long coastline experiences monsoon winds that create a highway over the seas, connecting the Middle East (Shveta-dvipa, white island) to Southeast Asia (Suvarna-dvipa, golden island) via India (Jambu-dvipa, land of Indian black plum). …
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Articles
Loss and Recovery of the Vedas
The conch-shell trumpet heralds the shift of time: a great battle that witnesses the end of Dwapara Yuga and the start of Kali yuga. …
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The Yugas Came Later
The four yugas of Hindu mythology (Krita, Treta, Dvapara, Kali) are based on the numbers on traditional four-sided dice: four, three, two, one. They refer to the four legs of the bull of dharma…
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Articles
No Dharma Without Dharma-sankat
Yagna is the primal ritual of the Veda. Mistranslated as sacrifice, it is a ritual of exchange and reciprocity. …
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Articles
From Vedic Soma to Puranic Amrut
Early scholars wondered what this Soma was, leading to rather colourful research. Was it a magical drink?…
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LGBTQIA+ Tales in Temples
For a long time, gatekeepers of Indian culture insisted that all things queer were Western. Then, people started reading the scriptures and realised, that was not quite the case…
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Rise of Hindu Monotheism
Vedic philosophy starts considering the idea of one god. It seems monotheistic. But that is not quite true…
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Bollywood Wives and Brothels
Bollywood encourages housewives to dance in public and courtesans to pine for lovers. This conflation now has made its way to wedding altars…
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Articles
The Mysterious Temple Texts Called Agama
Agamas are essentially manuals that were produced to manage temples. It is mainly, though not exclusively, a South Indian phenomenon, where there were vast temple complexes controlled by the Brahmins…
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Pursuit of Justice in Time
Everybody is seeking to reach the future by erasing the past. But time as a concept is the very opposite of justice…
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Non-Vedic Hinduism
The study of Hinduism reveals much more than the narrow ideas of the Vedic corpus. Yet it was the Veda that was privileged by the British, who were looking for a Hindu “holy book”…
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When Did Krishna Start Playing the Flute?
The earliest clear undisputed image of Krishna playing the flute comes from the 8th century CE, from Mallikarjuna temple, Pattadakal in Karnataka…
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Articles
How Story-telling Became a Vedic Tool
Stories transmitted over generations serve as the glue of a community…
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Agni In Hiding
We find a great number of hymns where there is anxiety about loss of fire…There are many stories where fire runs away. The hungry gods chase him and beg him to return and do his sacrificial duties…
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Articles
Angry Buddhist Gods
Buddhism has had many schools of thought, many ideas which manifest in different kinds of texts and artworks. They reveal that Buddhism has all kinds of forms, not all pacifist…
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Attack of the Intoxicated Elephant
In India, mada refers to temporin, a tar-like liquid that oozes out of the temples of a bull elephant in a state of ‘musth’ or sexual arousal. Such an elephant is dangerous, unstoppable and violent. It fights and kills rivals, it can even kill non-receptive females, and calms down only after it has mated…