Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
-
Articles
From five to ten directions
The concept of 10 diggapalas reached its final form about a thousand years ago when grand Hindu temples of stone started being built across India. But the thought can be traced to the Gangetic plains where Vedic yagna was being performed 3,000 years ago…
-
Articles
Who is a Hindu? Life, death and afterlife
Rebirth and liberation are the twin fates that await the Hindu dead, but there are temporary sojourns to heaven and hell as well…
-
Articles
Who is a Hindu? Diversity unites, homogeneity divides
Unlike Westerners, Hindus have been comfortable seeing unity in diversity for thousands of years…
-
Articles
Evolution of the Devil
From the 16th century onwards, the Devil appeared as a goat-like creature. Those who opposed God were called Devil-worshippers… The Hindu idea of hell also evolved over time…
-
Articles
Epics about Women
In the Tamil epics, we see three kinds of women: the woman who has relationships with many men, the woman who has a relationship with one man, and the woman who has relationships with no man…
-
Articles
Using Puranas for politics
Politics may change but there is always a political enemy, and so the Puranas lend themselves to serve as communication and even propaganda tools to whip up popular sentiment…
-
Articles
Were Hindus always casteist?
Note: the word caste is a European word for clan that is used for the Indian system of jati. The word jati, in turn, is confused with the Vedic system of varna…
-
Articles
Who is a guru?
Different people in different contexts use the word guru differently to refer to different kinds of people…
-
Articles
Does Hinduism have anything to say about mind, perception and cognition?
The word “spirituality”, which is about self-discovery leans towards the former, and the word “religion”, which is about social engineering leans towards the latter…
-
Articles
Is there such a thing as Hindu Halloween?
In Hinduism, there is no exact equivalent of Halloween, but there are many rituals performed that recognises the proximity of ghosts and seeks to keep them away…
-
Articles
Who is a Hindu? Karma, caste and free will.
Is Hinduism fatalistic? The answer depends on the context…
-
Articles
Why do Hindus light lamps?
The lamp was lit primarily by homemakers and is very different from the fire in the yagna shala lit by brahmins, which, in turn, is very different from the campfire (dhuni) of sanyasis…
-
Articles
Bali underfoot
From a mythological point of view, the story is very complex, containing layers and layers of thought, spread over 3,000 years……
-
Articles
Lakshmi means finance, not Finance Minister
When the Vice President recently referred to Lakshmi as Finance Minister, he revealed a popular misunderstanding of Hindu mythology…
