Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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Articles
The Shambala Prophecy
In a world that seems to be hurtling from one crisis to another, many people are talking about the Shambala prophecy. This appeared in the early 11th century in a Buddhist Tantric text called the Kalacakratantra. …
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Articles
How Hinduism Transformed in the Vedic land
Punjab, watered by the tributaries of the Indus, was the original Vedic land. Yet today, the Veda is more closely associated with the Yamuna-Ganga doab, while Punjab is better known as the fountainhead of Sikhism. The western part of historic Punjab is now in Pakistan and is overwhelmingly Muslim. The eastern part, in India, is…
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Articles
Ekalavya’s Thumb and Angulimala’s Garland Of Fingers
Ekalavya’s story is that of a low-born forest boy, rejected by the Brahmin teacher Drona, and who then trains alone before a clay idol, masters archery, and surrenders his thumb when Drona discovers that his own prize student Arjuna has acquired an unwanted rival. The student’s thumb-offering is presented as devotion. The violence embedded in…
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Articles
Mahakala in Baghdad
Mughals claimed royal authority very differently, directly from God, almost like Sufi mystics without the Caliph’s intervention. This little detail is often missed. And this shift has to do with Buddhism. Specifically, Tantrik Buddhism of Tibet…
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Articles
How the Bhagavad Gita Invented Sattvic Food
The Vedas gave us Purusha. Tantra and Yoga gave us Prakriti and the gunas. Only the Bhagavad Gita welded these to food and caste, creating the “sattvic” framework popularly invoked today…
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Articles
Did Missionaries Construct the Buddha We Know?
The Buddha had drifted through European writing for centuries before scholarship took hold of him, and the early portraits were wildly varied…
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Articles
Tantra of the Wheel of Time
Compiled in the early eleventh century as Muslim armies pressed into northwest India, the Kalacakratantra — the Wheel of Time Tantra — is one of the clearest cases in religious history of a sacred text designed as a political response to a contemporary threat. …
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Articles
Transformations of the Stupa
In 1898, William Peppé, a British engineer, excavated the Piprahwa stupa near Siddharthnagar in Uttar Pradesh (nine miles from Lumbini, the birthplace of Siddhartha Gautama), and found bone fragments, ashes, and hundreds of gems. The inscription claimed the bones were those of the Buddha himself. …
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Articles
Why lotus remains India’s simplest yet most profound symbol
The lotus today is a symbol of a leading political party in India, but for thousands of years it has been part of Indian myth, ritual, architecture, and craft. At the village level, the lotus thrives as a simple floor drawing made with rice flour. …
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Articles
Increase upon Increase
The Sanskrit term for compound interest is chakra-vriddhi, literally ‘wheelgrowth’ or “increase upon increase”. This word occurs in classical Sanskrit lexicons and legal-economic literature, where it denotes interest that accrues on previously accumulated interest, i.e., compound interest…
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Articles
Is Buddha a historical or a mythological figure?
No one ever talks about the “300 Buddhas” or the many narratives that recount the story of the Buddha. The assumption is that the Buddha is a historical figure, even though every Buddhist scholar knows that the Buddha story we recognise today was constructed by 19th-century Europeans using a variety of texts and arbitrary principles…
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Articles
The Cannibal’s Victim
Kaisika Dwadashi, the 12th day of the waxing moon after Diwali, is celebrated in many Vishnu temples of South India. During this time, people are encouraged to visit the temple and hear the story from Varaha Purana of Nampaduvan, a “low” caste singer who was caught by a cannibalistic demon known as Brahma-Rakshasa…
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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
Abandoned twins: Kripa and Kripi
One day, King Shantanu stumbles upon two abandoned babies on the forest floor: a boy and a girl. He adopts them, names them Kripa and Kripi, and raises them…
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Articles
Why Buddhists Erased a Queen From History
Buddhism is seen today as the religion of social justice. Yet, in ancient and medieval times, the Buddhist monastic discipline spread concepts of misogyny wherever it went…
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Articles
Many Forms of the Buddha
Over time, the Buddha images multiplied in form and scale. They were carved seated, standing, reclining, and even walking. They spread from India to Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, China, and Tibet. Giant Buddhas were cut into cliffs along trade routes, reassuring travellers and marking the way…