Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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Articles
How Buddhism Saved Brahminism
The current narrative is ‘Hindus are in danger’ and everyone is pointing towards Bangladesh. But the Hindu of the narrative is expected to be vegetarian, and respect cows and caste. This is a Brahmanical definition of Hinduism. Not even a Vedic one…
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Articles
An Imagined Battle: The Violence of Ashoka and Yudhishthira
The oldest manuscripts of the Mahabharata are dated to a century after Ashokaʼs rule but the story refers to an earlier period, before Kali Yuga, which may be seen as code for a time before the rise of the Buddhist orders and the end of Brahmin patronage following the arrival of foreign kings like Yavanas,…
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Articles
Shiva’s Sexuality and Buddha’s Celibacy
While Buddha had promoted monasticism and celibacy, Shiva’s story celebrated sexuality. Vishnu balanced the two extreme views…
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Articles
Fight, Flight and Freeze Responses Of Faith
When a human being is confronted with a problem, we either flee, freeze or fight. This is a physiological stress response, seen even in animals when confronted with a threat. In humans, our imagination transforms this natural response into expressions of faith. And so, we find that religions around the world offer three kinds of…
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Articles
Tracking the Tale of Padmasambhava from Odisha to Tibet
mages of Padmasambhava are found across Tibet. He appears very Shiva-like, with a trident and a string of human heads, and is linked with powerful female figures said to have come from various parts of Tibet, Nepal, India, and China…
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Articles
When Was the Buddha Born?
In writings, people assume that the Buddha lived about 2,500 years ago. But is that really so? Is that fact or belief?…
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Articles
The Elephant-Headed Buddha
When one travels to Thailand and Japan, one occasionally finds images of Ganesha. Most Indians get very excited as it reveals how Hinduism spread to Southeast Asia and even the Far East. However, on closer examination, one realises the answer is not that simple. These elephant-headed deities worshipped in these countries have nothing to do with Shiva or Parvati. They are…
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Articles
Life Of a Stupa
The Buddhist stupa originated as a very simple idea. After the Buddha was cremated, his bones were collected and placed in caskets, which were then covered with a mound…
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Articles
The Many Lives of the Buddha
There are many versions of the life of the Buddha, with people assuming the Pali version to be original and authentic…
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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
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
Angry Buddhist Gods
Buddhism has had many schools of thought, many ideas which manifest in different kinds of texts and artworks. They reveal that Buddhism has all kinds of forms, not all pacifist…
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Articles
Attack of the Intoxicated Elephant
In India, mada refers to temporin, a tar-like liquid that oozes out of the temples of a bull elephant in a state of ‘musth’ or sexual arousal. Such an elephant is dangerous, unstoppable and violent. It fights and kills rivals, it can even kill non-receptive females, and calms down only after it has mated…
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Articles
Avalokiteshvara, Saviour of the Sea Merchant
From Ajanta Cave 1 in Aurangabad district, Maharashtra, comes the famous mural of a rather delicate-looking Avalokiteshvara Padmapani, a bodhisattva who holds a lotus flower in his hand and tilts his head to the side, as if trying to hear the cries of people in distress…
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Articles
Solitary Buddha
Buddhism has the concept of pacceka-buddha, which is derived from the Sanskrit pratyeka-buddha…