“Facts are everybody’s truth. Fiction is nobody’s truth. Myths are somebody’s truth”
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Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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Articles
The Sindoor Goddesses of India
The oldest image of Durga, dated to the 1st century BC, was found in Nagar near Chittorgarh, Rajasthan. It shows the goddess with two hands, plucking out the tongue of a buffalo. …
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Articles
Sanatan Dharma Says Life Is Not a Problem To Be Solved
Sanatan dharma cannot come from one person. It is not bound to history or culture. It is the realisation that nothing is permanent. Seasons change. People die. Plants die. Animals die. Cultures rise and fall. Even death is not permanent. Hence, rebirth is integral to sanatan dharma…
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Articles
Elephants As Symbols Of Wealth and Power In Indian Culture
We cannot imagine India without elephants. Elephants have been a powerful symbol of wealth and power since ancient times. …
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Articles
Historian’s Myth
It is generally assumed that historians are objective and express ideas outside their cultural influence, owing to academic training. However, this is never true. Historians, like all other humans, live in myth. Very few admit it…
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Articles
Buddhism Was Pushed Out, Or Pulled Out?
Emphasising the “pushing out” of Buddhism frames it as a passive victim. Its “pull out” strategy in response to local hostility, and greater opportunities in foreign lands, reminds us that even ideologies can have agency…
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Articles
Caste As the Opposite of Conversion
Every Indian is born into a caste and a religion. But you cannot leave caste. You can only leave religion. This makes the doctrine of caste an antagonist of the doctrine of conversion…
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Books
Escape the Bakasura Trap : Let Contentment Fuel Your Growth
This book re-discovers this path, first revealed by Hanuman in the Mahabharata. Insightful and inspiring, Escape the Bakasura Trap is another classic from one of our great mythologists and thinkers…
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Articles
Sanyasi Sages and Their Wives
Ancient rishis almost always had wives. The Saptarishis (Seven Sages) each had a wife…
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Articles
God As Generator, Organiser, Destroyer
The rishi who told stories of the creator, organiser and destroyer, and designed characters like Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, was an ancient Indian ‘seer’ who could see what others could not…
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Articles
Why Kubera Is Not Ganesha
While plants and animals seek nourishment and security, humans seek more. Our hunger and fear is amplified infinitely by imagination. But food does not take away imagined hunger. If anything, it amplifies imagined hunger. We seek more resources, more power, more knowledge about resources and power…
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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 their swords into styluses. That’s another legend on the origin of scribes. But what script did they write in?…
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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
Diversity and Unity Amongst Castes
The battle over caste identity continues, as it remains a struggle for both access to resources and access to status…
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Articles
Rise of the Brahmi Script
The ancient Indian writing system or the Brahmi is unique in that it is an abugida – which falls between an alphabet (vowels and consonants are separate) and a syllabary (vowels and consonants are merged)…
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Articles
From Sanskritisation to Backwardation
A century ago, many communities wanted to be recognised as Brahmins and Kshatriya. Today, the same groups want to be Other Backward Community (OBC). The old varna model (Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra, Ati-shudra or Pancham) is now replaced by a new categorisation (General, OBC, Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe). …