Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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Articles
The Yugas Came Later
The four yugas of Hindu mythology (Krita, Treta, Dvapara, Kali) are based on the numbers on traditional four-sided dice: four, three, two, one. They refer to the four legs of the bull of dharma…
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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
LGBTQIA+ Tales in Temples
For a long time, gatekeepers of Indian culture insisted that all things queer were Western. Then, people started reading the scriptures and realised, that was not quite the case…
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Articles
From Vasistha through Vyasa to Shuka
Vashishta is amongst the seven celestial sages. He is the last star of the Great Bear Constellation. This star is a binary star. The other part of the pair is Arundhati, his wife. Together they symbolise happy conjugal life – Hindu newlyweds are advised to look at these stars after the wedding to ensure to…
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Articles
Gold Effigy of Sita and a Half-golden Mongoose
For all the violence depicted in the epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata, they carried a profoundly human message for the heart. It is told through the two curious often overlooked moments, one in the Ramayana, featuring a golden effigy of Sita, and one in the Mahabharata with a half-golden mongoose…
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Articles
Dharmic Leader in Modern Times
Western leadership models are military in nature. Command and control. It’s about tracking tasks and achieving targets. Indian leadership models were about people – reminding them that the purpose of life is not to eat, but to feed. To feed is dharma. He who enables feeding is the Dharmic Leader…
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Articles
Maybe Madri Did Not Commit Sati?
How can a body be cremated twice? Is it a reference to the secondary cremation of the leftover bones? …
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Articles
How Ramayana and Mahabharata Spread the Idea of Dharma
The earliest Ramayana retellings do not refer to the Lakshman rekha. The earliest Mahabharata retellings do not refer to Draupadi’s vastra-haran. …
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Articles
History of Amrita Manthan
There are far more Samudra Manthan images found in Southeast Asia than in India, and this remains a huge mystery…
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Articles
The Advice of Vidur
Vidur-niti is a set of about 600 verses, split into eight chapters, found in the Udyoga Parva of the Hindu epic, Mahabharata…
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Articles
The Legend Of Nagarjuna
Say Nagarjuna, and most people will think of a silver screen superstar. …
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Articles
The History of Draupadi’s Vastraharan
When we study the history of the story, we realise that Draupadi’s disrobing and rerobing by Krishna was never part of the earliest layers of the epic…
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Articles
Bhima In Nepal
Bhima is the strongest man of earth as per the great Hindu epic, the Mahabharata…
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Articles
Sons Who Kill Their Fathers
A recurring theme in Greek mythology is of sons killing their fathers…
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Articles
India is Ram’s Mother, Bharat is Ram’s Brother
Unless we accept the story of Indumati, India is effectively a name by which the outsider saw India…
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Articles
Alone As the Rhinoceros’ Horn
We know the one-horned rhino is the state animal of Assam. As per a folk poetry in the Terai region, Vishwakarma created this beast by mixing elephant skin, horse hooves, crocodile eyes, bear brain, lion heart and a bull’s horn…
