Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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Articles
How Shankara Became a Mythic Hero
The Shankara legend is less about history and more about imagination – how India turned a philosopher into a divine hero, a world conqueror, and a unifier of its sacred geography…
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Articles
History In the Age of Historical Fiction
A true historian has no heroes. He tells us that Mahmud of Ghazni and Rajendra Chola were both ambitious kings, raiders, rulers, and products of their time. That is not judgment, but a reminder that humans everywhere act out of similar motives: power, faith, greed, or glory. But historical fiction has its place, too. It…
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Articles
Kubera, the Refugee From Lanka
When the Constitution of India was first published, over 75 years ago, it included many artworks. Amongst them was one showing Kubera, Ravana’s brother and the king of wealth and yakshas (nature spirits), fleeing from Lanka. It is often mistaken for Hanuman burning Lanka, but there are no flames of a burning city or a…
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Articles
Who are the power-broking landlord monks of Tamil Nadu?
Sengol is a staff of royal authority. We can call the symbol of justice in the spirit of wordplay, when a symbol of monarchy is made the symbol of democracy. …
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Articles
How the Gayatri Mantra, composed by men, heard by men, for a male deity, became embodied as a goddess
Published on 27th January, 2023, in The Hindu. Mantra is a carefully crafted sound formula that has the power to invoke and anchor divine energy for the benefit of humans: this is what Hindus, Buddhists and Jains believe. Rig Veda is the oldest collection of mantras: 10,000 verses that were brought together like flowers to…
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Articles
Why Some Gods Dance and Some Don’t
Published on 6th November, 2022, in the Times of India. One of the things we take for granted in Hinduism is dancing. Hindu gods dance. Shiva dances his Tandava as Nataraja surrounded by ganas and yoginis. Vishnu dances in the form of Krishna as Natwara on the hood of a serpent, or in the Ras…
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Articles
Tell Me the Story of Chhat Puja
Published on 30th October, 2022, in Mid-day. Many people asked me what is the significance of Chhat puja. They want to know a story, for example, there is a story of Ram’s return to Ayodhya on Diwali, and Lakshmi entering the house on Diwali. So there must be a story associated with Chhat Puja. Yes,…
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Articles
Myth and Memories Before History
Published on 28th August, 2022, in Mid-Day. Vedic literature is full of stories informing us how rishis discovered and used the mantra to solve problems. These stories were called the itihasa, as they are reported by those who witnessed the events, as against puranas, which are simply old stories transmitted, not witnessed. These itihasas are…
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Articles
Purva Paksha and the Art of Winning Arguments
Published on 23rd July, 2022, in Economic Times. The New Testament was finalised about 1500 years ago. About the time when Puranas started being composed in India. But what was new about it? The Church said that the old testament was the Jewish Bible. All that was prophesied there had been fulfilled in the body…
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Articles
Bankura Horse for Dharma Thakur
Published on 24th April, 2022, in Mid-day. Terracotta Bankura horses serve as decoration today. But for many centuries, these were offerings made in rural Bengal to the god Dharma who is formless and all-powerful. Stories about Dharma Thakur were written in the 17th and 18th century, in the Mangal Kavya tradition of Bengal where specific…
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Articles
How Trade Blossomed an Exchange of Ideas Between India and Arabia.
Published on 26th February, 2022, in Times of India. Indians had been trading with Arabs for a long time. About 4000 years ago, trade happened with Harappans by ships that travelled along the sea-coast. Birds were used to identify the direction of the shore if the ship went too far into the sea and lost…
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Articles
Pashupati and the Harappan Seal.
Published on 25th February, 2022, in The Hindu. We have all heard of the Pashupati seal in Harappa. Scholars are clear that it has nothing to do with Shiva, even though it is still labelled as proto-Shiva in popular books. The Pashupati described in the Veda is the guardian of cattle, animals that have been…
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BooksFeatured Books
The Stories We Tell: Mythology to Make Sense of Modern Lives
In The Stories We Tell: Mythology to Make Sense of Modern Lives, renowned mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik presents seventy-two tales from India’s rich treasure of myths and legends to explain life in the twenty-first century. The stories are arranged into a variety of themes, including ‘Apsara’, a reflection on the portrayal of women in ancient texts;…
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Articles
Unfaithful Wives Across Seas
Published on 13th February, 2022, in Mid-day. For nearly 2,000 years, Arab traders used the monsoon winds to travel across the sea to India. Along the Western coasts, in Kerala, Karnataka and Goa, they met people who allowed them to marry their daughters, but did not let them take these wives back home. These were…
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Books
Bengali: How to Become Rich
Translated version of How to Become Rich: 12 Lessons I Learnt from Vedic and Puranic Stories …
