Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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Articles
No Hymns for the Donkey
Published on 21st April, 2023, in The Hindu. In the past 30 years, the donkey population of India has dropped by 90%. It’s sad, considering large donkey fairs have been held annually for centuries in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. We rarely think of donkeys as cultural icons. Yet, they are. The wild…
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Articles
Why Puranas Represent a Wider Indian Ethos Than the Vedas
Published on 5th April, 2023, in Times of India. The Puranas are called the fifth Veda, but they are not quite Vedic. We realise this from a single incident that took place in Maharashtra at the start of the 20th century. During the royal rituals of Shahu Maharaj of Kolhapur, the Brahmin priests chanted Puranic…
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Articles
Forgotten Ballads Of Indian Merchants
Published on 1st April, 2023, in Economic Times. India was famous for trading with Southeast Asia and the Middle East since ancient times. However, Hindu scriptures shunned mercantile economy and focussed on agricultural economy. Value was placed on land tax, not on toll tax. By contrast, Buddhism and Jainism greatly value merchants. This is why…
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Articles
How Jains Described Chanakya and Chandra Gupta Maurya
Published on 18th March, 2023, in Economic Times. As per popular lore, Chanakya was a Brahmin from Taxila who enabled the rise of Chandragupta, the founder of the Mauryan Dynasty, 2300 years ago, at the time of the Greek invasion of India. He is credited with composing the Arthashastra, a book of political economy, as…
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Articles
Pre-history of Aryans They Don’t Tell You
Published on 11th March, 2023, in Times of India. Nationalists on social media argue that the Mahabharata war took place 5,000 years ago, in 3,000 BCE, based on verses from 2,000-year-old manuscripts. They believe that Krishna and Arjuna rode a chariot drawn by horses. These ‘textual’ scholars are mostly upper-caste Hindu men, who ignore hard…
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Articles
Tibetan Ramayana
Published on 12th March, 2023, in Mid-day. In the early 20th century, six incomplete manuscripts containing excerpts of the Ramayana were found in the Mogao caves of Dunhuang, an archaeological site at the eastern end of the Silk Road in Xinjiang province of China. Written in an early Tibetan language, dated to approximately the 8th…
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Articles
Polytheism Enables Mother of Democracy
Published on 4th March, 2023, in Economic Times. Monotheism propagates the idea of one God. This very easily telescopes into the idea of one all-powerful leader of all people, which enables dictatorship. In polytheism, by contrast, there is no all-powerful God, so no all-powerful king. There are many gods who are constantly competing, collaborating and…
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Articles
Why the Location of Shiva’s Pillars Has Become So Controversial
Published on 25th February, 2023, in Times of India. The Assam government’s claim that the Bhimashankar Jyotirlinga is located in the northeastern state has spawned yet another religious flashpoint. This is what happens when mythology is assumed to be history Until recently, most people believed that Bhimashankar Jyotirlinga is located in Maharashtra. But then the…
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Articles
Diverse tombs of the rulers of Turkey, Iran and India show that the Islamic world was not homogeneous
Published on 24th February, 2023, in The Hindu. After the sack of Baghdad in the 13th century, the Islamic world, dominated by Arabs since the 8th century, gave way to the Ottomans in Turkey, the Safavids in Iran, and the Mughals in India. These empires owed their success not to religion, but to gunpowder, a…
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Articles
Veda, Vedanga, Vedanta
Published on 19th February, 2023, in Mid-day. Hinduism can be divided into three major eras. Veda dominated 3,000 years ago, Vedanga dominated 2,000 years ago, and Vedanta became central 1,000 years ago. These are approximations of course, but a good rule-of-thumb to remember Hindu history. The Veda refers to a set of mantras that dominated…
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Articles
Donation of Courtesans
Published on 17th February, 2023, in Economic Times. Chanakya’s Arthashastra talks about appointing a superintendent for the ganika, variously translated as pleasure women, prostitutes or courtesans. This is done in a matter-of-fact way. No morality is attached. Ganikas were valuable sources of pleasure, income and information for the state. These were not prostitutes, who have…
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ArticlesFeatured
The Forgotten Women Who Helped Shape Jainism
Jainism follows the path revealed by 24 sages known as Tirthankara, who appear in every era of the human age. In the Shwetambar school of Jainism, popular in western India, Parsvanatha and Mahavira, the 23rd and 24th Tirthankaras were married before they became monks. But in Digambara tradition, popular in Gangetic plains and South India,…
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Articles
Bandra Mythology
Published on 29th January, 2023, in Mid-day. There was a Marathi film based on caste. The songs were catchy; they set the dance floor on fire. But it was a gut-wrenching romance that ended with honour killing. Despite its dark theme, it was a super hit, so successful that it had to be turned into…
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Articles
How Gods, Demons Formed India’s Mountains, Rivers and Seas
Published on 28th January, 2023, in The Times of India. One of the ways you map India is through the Shakti Pithas. It is said that when the goddess got angry with her father, Daksha, for insulting her husband, Shiva, she jumped into the yagya altar and burned herself to death. Shiva carried the remains…
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Articles
View: Privilege to Saraswati at the cost of Durga & Lakshmi is an old Brahmanical hangover
Published on 21st January, 2023, in Economic Times. In America, the state serves the rich. In China, the rich serve the state. The American politicians get the military to ensure American businesses have access to resources and markets. The Chinese politicians restrain most successful businessmen from gambling away the country’s future in speculative stock market…
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Articles
Discovering Gay Generals in Jarasandha’s Army
Published on 12th January, 2023, in Times of India. In 2018, when the Supreme Court decriminalised homosexuality, Akhil Bharatiya Prachar Pramukh Arun Kumar said, ‘Just like the Supreme Court, we also do not consider this criminal. But we do not support homosexuality, as same-sex marriages and relations are not in sync with nature. Traditionally too,…