Rudra: A Brief Journey through Early Śaiva Thought
[contextly_sidebar id=”bgsTWOzHyBVG1fiSJGPMk6nwzNh6gzBg”]There is a persistent motif of the deva Rudra (Śiva) being originally refused ritual offerings of the yajña to which the other deva-s were entitled. More...
Despoiled Gaṅgā as a Metaphor for Loss of Hindu Discernment
With the river Sarasvati going dry the plains watered by the Gaṅgā became the focus of civilization in India. This civilizational phenomenon is philologically mirrored in Hindu tradition with the Gaṅgā and More...
Pāṇini, Xuanzang, and Tolkāppiyaṉ: Some legends and history
Pāṇini stands at the pinnacle of Hindu intellectual achievement. His sūtra-pāṭha may be considered a monument in the same league as the invention of the śūṇya-based numeral system for which the Hindus More...
The Pantheon of the Indian Saura Tradition
The Indian Saura-mata (or the Hindu sect of the Sun) is an amalgam of two distinct layers [ 1]: 1) The endogenous layer of solar deities going back to the Veda and 2) The neo-morphic layer of Iranic origin which More...
The Realm of Indra
Indra is the Indo-Aryan version of the preeminent deity of the ancestral Indo-European pantheon. In the Vedic texts, we see remnants of what might have been an ancient tripartition of this deity, as manifest on More...
Historical Hindu Responses to Abrahamism
The Hindu encounter with Abrahamism began with the initial expansions of the second (Christ cult) and third (Mohammedanism) versions. Hindus were among the early victims of the second Abrahamism in the holy war More...
Southwest monsoons in Sanskrit kāvya
The lifeline of Bhārata, the southwest monsoon wind, was not surprisingly an object of attention of the Hindu poets, in the long Sanskrit kavya tradition over the ages. One example presented by the anthologist More...
Abrahamic ideology inspires extraterritorial loyalty
The Mongol empire founded by Chingiz Khan and furthered by his sons and grandsons was remarkable in practicing religious freedom as a state policy. The early Khans did not enforce their ancestral Altaic religion More...
Exploring the history of Hindu festivals: the ancient strands of Holākā
In Hindu tradition there is a clear demarcation of at least three distinct classes of ritual observances: 1) The most conservative of these are the śrauta rituals that deviate little from their Vedic prototype More...
Possible parallels in a meteorological tradition from India and South America
Research by Orlove, Cane and Chiang on the native weather forecasters in the mountains of Peru and Bolivia has brought to light an interesting tidbit of traditional knowledge [1]. The traditional crop of these regions More...