Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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Articles
View: Indians Need to Market the Yagna Model as Japan Markets Ikigai
Nowadays, everyone is talking about Ikigai, the Japanese way of living that involves finding your life’s purpose…What is often overlooked, however, is the larger context of this model…
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Articles
How Debates Are Increasingly Becoming a Duel
Debates are increasingly becoming a duel, so much so that if you align with one idea, the opposition can argue that you are a racist, a bigot, or that you are committing a hate crime. In other words, those debating enter the arena convinced the other is wrong…
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Articles
This & That, Both & Neither: Cracking the Origins of the Mystifying Indian Headshake
Some of the earliest documented myths come from Mesopotamia, the Fertile Crescent where the earliest farming communities built cities around temples. These stories spoke of gods who wanted to enjoy luxury without labour, so they created humans out of clay. That is why humans toil, serving the gods, fearful of their wrath that causes flood…
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Articles
From Yakshas to Nagas — the Mainstreaming of Local Deities
Yakshas are magical creatures in Indian mythology much like dwarves of European lore, linked to gems and gold. They appear as corpulent deformed beings, wearing elaborate jewellery, on Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu shrines…
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Articles
The Significance of Rebirth
Modern people tend to be contemptuous of tradition and feel they are more rational than their predecessors. But if we accept rebirth as a concept, we need to understand what purpose this narrative tool serves. Rebirth brings forth three interesting ideas not found in cultures that believe in a single life…
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Articles
The Reality of Impermanence
Ancient Vedic ritual halls were set aflame to remind everyone that nothing is permanent. Buddha said the same thing. So did the Tirthankaras. Even today Hindu rituals involve building images of gods using perishable materials like straw, clay and flowers. After a few days of worship, the images are thrown in the river. A reminder…
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Articles
Uniting India with Itihasa-Purana
In India, the phrase ‘itihasa-puranaʼ has been used for 2,500 years to refer to transmitted memories. Many assume that this is an ancient division between history and mythology. However, the split between history and mythology happened only in the 19th century with the use of the scientific method to unravel the past…
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Articles
Secularising Ramayana and Mahabharata
When we study Buddhist and Jain lore, we realise many stories there are quite similar to stories found in Ramayana and Mahabharata…
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Articles
What Do We Really Know About Shankaracharya?
Comic books and popular mainstream films have created the impression that we know a lot about Adi Shankaracharya. But we know very little…
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Articles
Was Brihaspati the Patron Of the Charvaka Materialists?
How do we prevent our sense-organs from leading us astray? That was the concern of the spiritualists. For materialists, the spiritualists were people seeking power by controlling others. …
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Articles
Kingdom Is Responsibility, Not Property
Dharmic Leadership (is) different from Conventional Leadership. Dharmic Leadership is not prescriptive. It is introspective…
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Articles
No Leather In Temples, But Silk?
Recently, at a temple, a monk wearing ochre-saffron, to advertise his ‘celibacy’, yelled at a girl for wearing a leather belt and entering the temple. Somehow, he had given himself the authority of purity. It struck me how this arrogant gatekeeper of culture, rather than appreciating the girl’s devotion, was busy drawing attention to himself,…
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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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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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Articles
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”…