Geography
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How Hinduism Transformed in the Vedic land
Punjab, watered by the tributaries of the Indus, was the original Vedic land. Yet today, the Veda is more closely associated with the Yamuna-Ganga doab, while Punjab is better known as the fountainhead of Sikhism. The western part of historic…
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How Southeast Asia Adapted Indian Ideas to Local Needs
Across Southeast Asia, from the Mekong Delta (in present-day Vietnam and Cambodia) to Java island of Indonesia, major archaeological sites reveal how Indian ideas travelled not through conquest but through trade, pilgrimage, and court patronage between 500 AD and 1500…
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A Tamil Reimagining of the Ramayana
Kambaramayanam is one of the most celebrated works of Tamil literature. Composed by the poet Kamban around the ninth century in Tamil Nadu, in the time of Chola kings, it is a lyrical retelling of the Ramayana filled with rich…
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Ashoka and the Unifier of China
Over 2200 years ago, two rulers on opposite ends of Asia confronted a similar problem: how to hold together vast, diverse territories emerging from long periods of conflict. Qin Shi Huang in China and Ashoka in India both inherited states…
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How Indian Mythology Maps Emotion to Geography
In Tantrik lore, Shiva sits in the mountains, Chamunda sits in the crematorium. When they make a home, they find joy in Kashi, on the banks of the Ganga.
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Why China and India Are So Different
In China, the question is how to restrain the state without breaking it. In India, the question is how to strengthen the state without letting it trample society.
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Islam in Bengal and Odisha is not the Islam of Gujarat
As per Sanatani lore, Islam came to India, smashing the Somnath temple of Gujarat. They forget to mention that the Jagannath temple of Odisha, attacked over eighteen times, remained resilient and continues to stand tall. Different parts of India responded…
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Shishupalgarh, the Forgotten Capital of Ancient Kalinga
Shishupalgarh, on the edge of modern Bhubaneswar, offers a window into an urban world that flourished 2000 years ago. It belongs to a time when India was connected to the wider world of oceanic trade.
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Forgotten Horses of the Silk and Golden Roads
Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads and William Dalrymple’s The Golden Roadwith strikingly similar book covers (title within circle), share a striking silence. They speak at length of roads, trade, ideas, monks, merchants, and empires, but largely ignore the animal that…
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Comparing Sun Tzu and Kautilya
Sun Tzu, the author of The Art of War, and Kautilya, the author of the Arthashastra. Both wrote for rulers and generals who were constantly at war. Both believed that power was too important to be left to emotion, impulse…
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How Vasudeva Became Vishnu
At Malhar, a small town near Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh, we find an image of a soldier with four arms, holding a conch shell, a wheel and a mace. It has been identified as the earliest image of Vishnu. The inscription on…
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Hindu Temples in Cambodia and Thailand
The recent skirmish between Cambodia and Thailand caught Indian attention not because of Buddhist politics but because the fight was over a Hindu temple perched on the border of two Buddhist nations.
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Kailasa in Cambodia
A few decades before the Chola king Rajaraja I built the Brihadeeswara Temple in Tamil Nadu, around 1000 AD, a Khmer king called Jayavarman IV had begun building a temple to replicate the Kailasa mountain in Cambodia, at Koh Ker,…
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From ‘makhan-chor’ to rebel icon, MP’s recasting of Krishna echoes Gujarat’s warrior tradition
Many Sanatani Hindus do not like the idea of Krishna, the beloved of women. They prefer Krishna, the warrior, admired by men. Krishna allows such interpretations because we are looking at a deity who has evolved over at least 2,000…
