Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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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
Legacy Of Those Denied Success By Heartless Gods
This is a story from Sumerian mythology. Sumer is a region in southern Iraq where the world’s first cities were established around 3500 BC…
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Articles
Tracing Parsis and Their Monotheism
Gods were represented by images back then, and housed in temples. But the Persians chose fire, preferably that which came from the sky as lightning, to represent the formless Ahura Mazda — the benevolent power, one who is not a jealous god, one who does not demand obedience. …
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Articles
How Brahmin Bureaucrats Thrived In Islamic Kingdoms
Hemadri Pandit feared the imminent arrival of Islam in the Deccan region. They had, by his time, already controlled the rich Ganga river plains. To protect the threatened Brahmin culture Hemadpant wrote the “Chatur-varga-chintamani ” (popularly known as Hemadri-shastra) – which lists activities to be performed to live a fulfilled life…