Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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Articles
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 forged through conquest. Yet the solutions they offered to the problem of unity could not…
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Articles
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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Articles
What Is India’s Original Name?
India has numerous names, but lacks a single, definitive origin story. This is unsettling for modern nationalism, which favours a clear and singular genesis. The truth, however, is more nuanced and compelling. …
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Articles
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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Articles
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 differently to Islam. …
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Articles
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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Articles
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 made most premodern power possible: the horse…
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Articles
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 or heroism. Both wanted to discipline rulers and professionalise the business of war. …
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Articles
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 the stone has been dated to 200 BC…
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Articles
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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Articles
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, complete with a tank that would replicate the river Ganga. …
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Articles
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 years. …
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Articles
Dravidian Iron for the Aryan Horse
Colonial historians argued the ‘Aryan invasion theory’ that light-skinned chariot-riding people destroyed Harappan cities, conquered India, enslaved local dark-skinned people and created the caste system. To counter this, there was the ‘out of India’ theory popularised by many Brahmins, that Harappa was Vedic, that Aryans were originally Indians who migrated out of India, taking civilization…
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Articles
Dalai Lama: Politics of reincarnation
The Dalai Lama plans to declare where he will be reincarnated in his next life. In other words, where his successor will be born. To the rational mind, this may sound like a bizarre proposition, but it has annoyed the Communist authorities in China…
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Articles
Hindu Temple in China
In the city of Quanzhou in Fujian province of China, there is a Buddhist temple, whose base and pillars are full of Hindu imagery. …
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Articles
The Sindoor Goddesses of India
The oldest image of Durga, dated to the 1st century BC, was found in Nagar near Chittorgarh, Rajasthan. It shows the goddess with two hands, plucking out the tongue of a buffalo. …