Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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Articles
Did the Mughals invent Hindi?
Hindi is often described as a language born in Mughal barracks, as if it were simply the speech of imperial camps. This is an attractive phrase, but it is historically incomplete. The story of Hindi is much older, far wider, and far more layered. …
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Articles
How Metaphors Reveal Ancient India’s Cultural Secrets
Early Indian metaphors emerge from three very different cultural zones: the Vedic northwest, the Tamil south, and the Prakrit-speaking Deccan. Each region had its own climate, flora, fauna, settlement pattern, and historical rhythm. …
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Articles
Was Macaulay Anti-India Or Anti-Brahmin?
The debate around Macaulay, English, and education is not just about colonialism. It is about whether India wants a future shaped by open inquiry or a past shaped by inherited authority…
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Articles
Legacy of Brahmi in Modern Languages
Why is the Ashokan script called the Brahmi script? Was it known so in Mauryan times? We do not know. Early scholars referred to it as “pin-man” script, then “Lat” script (from lathi, or staff, as the Ashokan pillars were known), “Indian Pali” and “Mauryan” scripts. …
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Articles
How Is Knowledge Transmitted?
Knowledge can be transmitted orally or in the form of texts. Hindus preferred the oral form…
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Articles
Consonant-gods and Vowel-goddesses of Many Brahmi Scripts
Hanuman wrote Ram’s name on rocks while building a bridge to Lanka. The Mahabharata was written by Ganesha who used his tusk as his stylus. This gave rise to the community of scribes known as Kayastha in North India and Karanam in South India. To save themselves from Parashuram, many warriors became scribes and turned…
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Articles
Naming the Land Beyond Indus
The word India originates from Sindhu, meaning river. In Persian regions, Sindhu was pronounced as Hindu, while the Greeks referred to it as Indu. …
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Articles
A Starry Network of Arabian Trade
The word monsoon comes from the Arabic word ‘mausam’, meaning season. Incidentally, the word ‘ara’ in Sanskrit means desert…
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Articles
Satan, Santa, Sanat, Sant
Anagrams are fun. They are also thought provoking. Reorganise the letters and the word takes a totally different meaning. Here are three such words: Satan, Santa, and Sanat. …
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Articles
Words of Savarkar
We are so spellbound by the Savarkar-Gandhi rivalry, the Veer-Mahatma competition, the violent/non-violent politics, we ignore the role played by Savarkar in creating new words for a new India, for he was part of the Hindi/Urdu debate, and he wanted Hindu India to have Hindu words…
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Articles
No Harappan Kalidas In Sight
We confuse literacy with wisdom. This is because when subjects like history and archaeology and linguistics were being invented in the 19th century, colonial scholars declared civilisation begins with writing…