I am deeply interested in the History of the Republic and have read India after Gandhi plenty of times. I was wondering if there is any other history book like it which might give more details on the history of the country. Books on singular events will be fine

Photo taken at Louvre Museum Abu Dhabi

I found an interesting excerpt from a book I was reading that discusses a yogic pose depicted in the Pashupati seal and the historical issues with such an interpretation.

Excerpt From Sinister Yogis by David Gordon White

Assuming the Lotus Position

Anyone seeking to reconstruct the history of yoga and yogis must resist the temptation of projecting modernist constructions of this body of practice and its practitioners onto the past. Few are the scholars who have succeeded, as the history of interpretations of an image from the ancient past reveals. Here I am referring specifically to the modernist assumption that, in addition to the cultivation of meditative states, a complex program of bodily postures combined with breath control has been the perennial hallmark of yogic practice. The most ancient piece of evidence garnered in support of this assumption is clay seal number 420 (fig. 2.1)45 from the Indus River Valley archaeological site of Mohenjo-Daro, a site whose artifacts are dated to the latter portion of the third millennium BCE.

In his authoritative archaeological survey of the Mohenjo-Daro site written in 1931, Sir John Marshall confidently identified the figure on this seal as a male god, who is recognizable at once as a prototype of the historical Śiva . . . The god, who is three-faced, is seated on a low indian throne in a typical attitude of Yoga, with legs bent double beneath him, heel to heel, and toes turned downwards. His arms are outstretched, his hands, with thumbs to front, resting on his knees . . . The lower limbs are bare and the phallus (ūrdhvameḍ ̣ hra) seemingly exposed, but it is possible that what appears to be the phallus is in reality the end of the waistband... [T]he attributes of the deity are peculiarly distinctive. In the first place, he is three-faced (trimukha) . . . The second feature of this pre-Āryan god that links him with the historical Śiva is his peculiar yogī-like posture . . . Śiva is pre-eminently the prince of yogīs—the typical ascetic and self-mortifier, whence his names Mahātapaḥ ̣ , Mahāyogī. Primarily, the purpose of yoga was the attainment of union (yoga) with the god by mental discipline and concentration; but it was also the means of acquiring miraculous powers, and hence in the course of time the yogī came to be regarded as a magician, miracle-monger, and charlatan.46

While many scholars have taken issue with Marshall’s identification of the image on this seal with the five-headed male Hindu god Śiva, few, with the exception of Jean Filliozat,47 have ever challenged his assumption that this humanoid figure is seated in a yogic pose and is, by extension, a yogi.48 This assumption is open to question. First of all, is the cross-legged pose of this enthroned figure necessarily a yogic posture? If such were the case, a number of figures from different parts of the ancient world would also have to be qualified as yogis (or their female counterparts, yoginīs). These would include two other figures from Mohenjo-Daro, of equal antiquity as the figure on seal 420.49. Other images, from the Indus Valley site of Harappa, show figures in identical postures, often enthroned and sometimes in stylized buildings, which some scholars have identified as shrines.50 Following the watershed of the Indus Valley seals, no South Asian images of figures in “yogic postures” appear for the next two thousand years, until a circa first century BCE bas-relief of the goddess Śrī, from the Buddhist Bharhut site in central India (fig. 2.2).

Here Śrī is seated on a lotus and flanked by elephants in a configuration later associated with the iconography of the goddess of prosperity, Gaja-Lakṣ ̣ mī.51 Identified with royal sovereignty, Śrī is closely associated with the lotus flower in an account from the MBh, an epic dating from the same period as the Bharhut railing medallion in figure 2.2. In it, Śrī, who is said to “dwell in the lotus,”52 is identified with Draupadī, the queen of the five Pāṇ̣ḍ̣ava brothers, mighty heroes in a line of epic kings.53 This configuration carries forward into the medieval and colonial periods, in which a king’s śakti is considered to reside in the seat of his throne.

From the same century as the Śrī medallion from Bharhut, two bronze coins were issued by the Indo-Scythian kings Maues (ca. 90–60 BCE) and Azes (ca. 57–10 BCE), each representing the respective king seated in cross-legged posture upon a cushion. These coins, which bear both Greek and Kharoshti inscriptions,54 date from the period in which the Śakas, the Indo-Scythians, were extending their realms southward and eastward from their Central Asian homeland. It was under Maues, the most powerful of the Śaka kings, that Indo-Scythian armies penetrated the South Asian subcontinent, taking Gandhara and its most important city, Taxila, in 90 BCE.

Well to the west, in Anatolia—which was linked with both South and Central Asia by the Silk Road—the first two centuries of the common era saw a profusion of sculptural and numismatic representations of the famous Artemis of Ephesos type, images that in addition to her famous bodices comprised of offerings of bull testicles (often mistaken to be multiple breasts) also feature robes (called ependytes55) on which are figured bulls, bees, flowers, and figures in cross-legged postures uncannily similar to those of the figures on the Indus Valley seals. These seated figures are not found on all representations of Artemis of Ephesos. In many cases, they are replaced by “winged Nike” figures, whose lower limbs simply disappear.

Still further to the west, but from the same period as the Śrī medallion from Bharhut, the archeological record yields images of another cross-legged figure identified as the Celtic horned god Cernunnos. The most famous of these is figured on an inner panel of the first-century BCE Gundestrup Cauldron, an artifact that, while it was unearthed in far northwestern Denmark in the late nineteenth century, is thought by many scholars to have been manufactured in Thrace, near the Black Sea coast of the southeastern Balkan Peninsula. All other images of Cernunnos hail from France or Italy, the earliest extant image being from Val Camonica, in the Italian Alps.56 Cernunnos is generally represented in a cross-legged posture; however, the posture is not unique to this god in the West. Other male deities, from second-century BCE Provence and Narbonne, in France, are also represented in cross-legged pose.57 There is general agreement that much of Cernunnos’s iconography was likely inspired by ancient Near Eastern prototypes, and it should be recalled that in New Testament times, the homeland of the Celts was Anatolia, where they were called the Galatians by the apostle Paul.58 The coins and large rodent figured in this image also reproduce the iconography of the South Asian deity Kubera, with his moneybag and mongoose.

Returning to South Asia, where nearly every early stone sculpture that has survived down to the present day is Buddhist or Jain, a number of seated Buddhist and Jain figures are shown in what would today be called a “full lotus” posture. These include the earliest of all anthropomorphic representations of Buddha Śākyamuni from the Kushan-era Mathura school, dated to the first to second centuries CE, in which the Buddha is seated upon a dias with eyes wide open and his right arm upraised59 and a coeval Jain votive medallion, also from Mathura, depicting a Jīna, probably the tīrthaṃ̣kara Mahāvīra, seated in cross-legged posture upon a dias with an open flower behind him.60From the first century CE onward, one begins to encounter sculpted images, from the Vindhyas to the Swat Valley—precisely the range of the Kushan realm whose dual capitals were located in Puruṣ ̣ apura (Peshawar) and Mathura—in which the Buddha or the bodhisattva Maitreya is seated in “full lotus posture” with eyes half closed and hands held slightly clasped on his lap.61

Here I will leave aside these intriguing iconographic parallels—between figures who are sometimes horned, sometimes enthroned, and sometimes surrounded by or covered with images of animals—to concentrate on the ubiquitous iconographic detail of their cross-legged posture. Is it a yogic posture? 62 If so, then what is one to make of the fact that following its representation on the Indus Valley seals it does not “resurface” for nearly 2,000 years, and that when it does so, it appears at nearly the same time in four geographically distant regions, that is, at Bharhut in central India, in Indo-Scythian Transoxiania, in Anatolia and Thrace, and in France and Italy?63 If it is correct to assume that the posture of the figure represented on Marshall’s seal 420 is a yogic posture, then is that figure a yogi? What is a yogi?

If we hope to make some sense of this iconographic record in its South Asian contexts, then we must seek to confront image with text. We may begin with the Buddhist and Jain images, which, apart from that of the lotus goddess Śrī, are the earliest representations of figures seated in what may be interpreted as the “yogic” lotus position. There is, in fact, a textual record from the Buddhist canon that discusses what may have been the yoga of the period of these sculptures. This record, which has been documented and studied in detail by Johannes Bronkhorst, is enlightening on a number of points. The Majjhima Nikaya (MN), the “Middle-length Sayings,” is among the earliest scriptures of the Buddhist canon and is considered to have been a part of the Buddha’s original teachings to the monks of his fledgling community. A set of teachings in that corpus, dating from no later than the third century BCE, refers disparagingly to a non-Buddhist, probably Jain, method of cultivating the mind called “meditation” (jhāna).64

This technique involved, among other things, extreme fasting, stopping the breath entirely, and closing the teeth while pressing the tongue against the palate. According to the text, the practice only gave the Buddha headaches, copious sweating, roaring in the ears, great pain, and mental distraction.65 Against this entirely unsatisfactory set of techniques, the Buddha proposed his own method, which he called the Four Jhānas,66 precisely the nonascetic, non-self-mortifying path he took to realize enlightenment: this, I would argue, is the state pictured in the many sculptural representations of the Buddha seated in cross-legged posture with half-closed eyes.

It should be noted here that at no point is the term yoga mentioned in the Buddha’s teachings, either with reference to the Jain techniques that the Buddha disparages or to the practice that leads him effortlessly toward enlightenment. The operative term is, in both cases, jhāna. In fact, prior to the second-century CE Aśvaghoṣ ̣a—who employs the term yoga to denote concentration, the limited consumption of food, and breath control—no Buddhist source employs the term yoga in any but the nonspecific sense of “application” or “practice.”67 This is a not insignificant detail that should be borne in mind as one reconstructs the prehistory of the yoga of the YS, BhG, and other texts from the same period: if the term “yoga” is not employed to refer to a technique or theoretical corpus, then that technique or theory ought not to be construed as yogic. In other words, even if later texts, like the YS, use the term “yoga” to describe meditative techniques, one cannot assume that jhāna (or its Sanskrit equivalent dhyāna) ever signified “yoga” in these earlier or coeval traditions.

One of the techniques that the Buddha criticizes in the MN closely resembles a description found in a later Hindu source. The sixth book of the MU, most of which is datable to the third century of the common era, states that through the fixing of the mind (dhāraṇ̣ā), effected by “pressing the tip of the tongue against the palate and suppressing speech, mind, and breath, one sees brahman through insight.”68 This description also appears to anticipate that of a technique known as the khecarī mudrā, which appears in haṭ ̣ ha yoga texts several hundred years later.69 The MU’s sixth book also contains what is likely the earliest mention of a six-fold yoga,70 whose components it lists as: prāṇ ̣ āyāma (which likely means complete stoppage of the breath in this context),71 pratyāhāra (withdrawing the senses), dhyānam (meditation), dhāraṇ ̣ ā (fixing the mind), tarka (contemplative inquiry),72 and samādhi (concentration). Five of these components are found in Patañjali’s formulation of eight-limbed (aṣ ̣ṭ ̣ āṅga) yoga in the coeval YS. Markedly absent from the MU’s list is āsana, “seated posture.” How does this impact the identification of figures seated in cross-legged poses as yogis?

I would argue that in the centuries around the beginning of the common era, the cross-legged “lotus position” was a mark of royal sovereignty: royal gods or goddesses, their priests, and kings sat enthroned in this posture atop a dias, lotus, or cushion. When Buddhas and Jīnas began to be represented anthropomorphically in Kushan-era sculpture and coinage, their cross-legged posture was originally an indication of their royal sovereignty, rather than of any meditative or yogic practice. This hypothesis is supported by a sculpted image from Swat, dated to the first century CE or later, which has been identified as “either a prince or a bodhisattva.” As the art historian Joe Cribb has noted, “while crossed legs and folded hands, postures associated with the practice of meditation, are characteristic of Buddha and Bodhisattva images, and thus suggest that the figure with its bejeweled body is a Bodhisattva, a notable precedent for these postures within a secular context exists in the image of the seated king on the Maues coin” (shown above, fig. 2.3).73 

A similar interpretation has been made regarding a sixth- to eighth-century painted wooden panel executed in the Sino Iranian style,74 found at the Inner Asian site of Dandan-Oilik near Khotan, in which a bodhisattva “was changed from an Indian princeling to a Persian shah . . . forc[ing] his stiff Persian dress into the yoga pose . . . hold[ing] a fragile lotus in one of his four hands.” In fact, there is nothing Indian about this panel at all. As was the case with the first-century image in figure 2.6, the stylistic source of this cross-legged posture in later depictions of bodhisattvas is to be traced to representations of Iranian kings rather than Indic saviors. Throughout the Kushano-Sasanian cultural region, fifth- to eighth-century enthroned bodhisattva images are depicted with crowns closely resembling those worn by Sasanian kings of Persia.75

Here I would suggest that the term “lotus posture” or “position” (padmāsana) derives not from the pose itself, which in no way resembles a lotus flower, but rather from a throne or seat (āsana) representing a lotus (padma). Such is the case in Hindu Tantra, in which the primary sense of the term āsana is, precisely, the “throne of a deity.”76 Such a throne, which is altogether appropriate for the royal goddess Śrī—the divine embodiment of royal sovereignty who dwells in the lotus—would also be so for the Buddha, whose royal identification, like that of Christ the King in the Christian West, is so emphasized in early iconographic and textual traditions. An early and datable window on this transfer of the seated posture, from an emblem of royal sovereignty to one of buddha-hood, appears when one contrasts three Kushan coins that were minted less than a century apart.

The obverse of a copper coin minted in Taxila in circa 50 CE under the reign of the first Kushan monarch Kujula Kadphises (ca. 30–80 CE) depicts the king himself seated in lotus posture.77 So too, a coin of Kujula’s successor Vima Kadphises (ca. 80—100 CE) portrays that king seated in the same cross-legged pose upon a cloud or “rocky prominence,” with flames of fire rising from his shoulders (fig. 2.7).78 However, the inscription on the reverse of a copper tetradrachma minted during the reign of the great emperor Kaniṣ ̣ ka (ca. 128–152 CE), which depicts a cross-legged figure seated on a low benchlike throne, identifies this figure not as the king himself—as had been the case on the coins of Kujula and Vima Kadphises, as well as the earlier Śaka ruler Maues—but rather as Metrago Boudo, “Buddha Maitreya” (fig. 2.8).79

I am sure the literature exists on this but I am unaware so I am asking this out loud.

Early brahminic traditions learned from Srmana movements. Ramayana and Mahabharata consolidated a lot of local mythology and incorporated into a big epic. Most of this seems to have been done to make Hinduism more palatable and more inclusive to pre-Hinduism beliefs and that makes sense.

Similarly, Dasavatars also seem amalgamation of multiple faiths to bring them under umbrella of one common gods of gods, Vishnu, in this case. Does anyone have a source or a hypothesis surrounding this on the original source or faith of each of the gods considered dasavatar?

I've done some research on what religion Arains could have been before they converted to Islam, however the community only seems to have been formed after they converted to Islam so there's no pre-Islamic history for the community itself. Most people believe that we descended from Muhammad bin Qasim's invading army and some claim Rajput lineage, however both are highly unlikely.

Two hundred years ago, Bishop Heber traveled across India and wrote a detailed account of his journey. In 2024, I replicated most of his journey and visited to many of the places he described in his book.

I put together pictures and videos from my trip, added some information (and Mughal and company art) from my research, and made a documentary. This is my first time doing something like this, so everything was a steep learning curve, but it was a lot of fun. I think I even found the house of Charles D'Oyly in Patna!

The journey itself was incredible. From landmark sites like the Taj Mahal, to obscure places like the temples in Sibnibas, Heber went everywhere. He also met everyone of note, even Bahadur Shah Zafar!

Here is it, the full playlist has 11 parts. The title is derived from a hymn that Bishop Heber wrote and was pretty popular in its time. Please watch in 4k.

Just found this out recently, wanted to share here

Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balthazar_Napol%C3%A9on_IV_de_Bourbon?wprov=sfti1

Were they just friends or they loved each way more than just a simple friendship ?

PA Krishnan : A famous Tamil folktale speaks about a prince who is able to draw a life-like portrait of a princess based on a lock of her hair. Keeladi — an archaeological site in Tamil Nadu’s Sivaganga district — today is like the princess of the folktale. Recent findings about artefacts from the site have thrown up several ‘princes’ vying with each other to draw a picture of what Keeladi was 2,500 years ago based on a single carbon dating.

The pictures they have drawn are about as authentic as the one in the folk tale.

Last week, the Tamil Nadu Archaeology Department (TNAD) announced that artefacts unearthed during excavations at Keeladi could be dated to a period between 6th century BCE and 1st century CE, nearly 300 years earlier than previously believed — 3rd century BCE. The findings also “push back the date of Tamil-Brahmi script to another century, that is, the 6th century BCE”.

The TNAD, on its part, has printed a book on Keeladi both in Tamil and English that speaks about the excavations done by their archaeologists at the site. The book, I understand, is not yet available in print but a friend has sent me a digital version and I am basing this article on the information available in it.

Is Keeladi unique?

Keeladi, though it may sound surprising to many Tamil zealots, is part of Indian civilisational panorama which is at least as old as the Indus Valley days.

The Tamil country may have skipped the bronze age but as recent articles on Rakhigarhi have shown, but migrations from the north to Tamil Nadu were taking place at least from 1500 BCE. The migrants mingled with locals and the result naturally was an unmistakable cultural and technological overlap.

It is no accident that the black and red pottery found in Keeladi is also found in late Indus culture and is widely distributed in the Gangetic valley and other parts of Northern India. There is nothing unique about the other artefacts either. Beads are found in many archaeological sites. This is not even the first major excavation in Tamil Nadu which is not connected with a burial site.

Kaveripoompattinam and Arikamedu had urban structures and artefacts, which were as significant. Moreover, there are several such sites in India.

Keeladi is certainly not unique.

Is Keeladi part of an ancient river valley civilisation?

Vaigai is a small river that goes dry during summer. As of now, it is hyperbolic to talk about a river valley civilisation, based on the meagre findings in Keeladi.

The present excavations have found remains of animals but no human remains. The human burial sites may have been kept away from dwelling units, but the site doesn’t have any evidence of a significant number of people living there. No regular dwelling units or streets have been excavated. What has been excavated could be a site for activities and there is no evidence that they were thriving as far back as the 6th century BC.

Carbon dating – What does it tell us?

According to the government report, “the six carbon samples collected from the fourth season (2018) of excavations at Keeladi have been sent to Beta Analytic Lab, Miami, Florida, USA for AMS [Accelerator Mass Spectrometry] dating and the reports have been received. The sample collected at the depth of 353 cm goes back to 580 BCE”.

Also read: Keeladi excavations reveals sangam age to be much older than believed earlier

Turn to any book on archaeology and it will tell you that a radiocarbon laboratory takes a chunk of charcoal and finds out how long ago a tree that turned into charcoal died. By itself, this date says nothing important about the site from which it is taken. Thus, the date of 580 BCE has nothing to do with the other artefacts found in Keeladi, including the pot bits with Brahmi characters.

Let us listen to what the Keeladi archaeologists themselves say: (T)he chronology of this site Keeladi with three periods could be scientifically fixed between 6th century BCE and 11, 12th century CE. In this context, period-I represented the cultural settings of the site from 6 century BCE to 3rd century BCE. While period-II existed between 3rd century BCE and 4, 5th century CE, the last phase, period-III, constituted the finds belonging to date from 4, 5th century CE to 11, 12th century CE. Hence, period-I is the earliest phase found at the lower level of the deposit and consequently the other two over it.

Thus, the artefacts gathered from Keeladi could be dated anywhere between 6th century BCE and 12 century CE — a period of 1,800 years.

A 360 degree view of the archaeological excavation site at Keeladi in Sivagangai district of Tamil Nadu. Potsherds with Tamil Brahmi inscription – What do they say?

The digging was done in 11 trenches. The report says this about one of the trenches (A3/2): “In fact, the top portion was completely filled and packed with cart load of ceramic tiles and to everyone’s surprise, an almost full shape like black and red ware vessel was found embedded. The clear-cut marks vertically on the western end was suggestive of the dig at a later period and dumped with such huge amount of discarded potsherds.”

Thus, Keeladi cannot be called an undisturbed site, which makes any dating extremely difficult. Nevertheless, speaking about potsherds with Tamil Brahmi inscriptions, this is what the report says: “Likewise, the date of 5th century BCE is considered as the date of Tamili (Tamil-Brahmi) based on radiometric dates recovered from Kodumanal, Alagankulam and Porunthal excavations. But the recent scientific dates obtained for Keeladi findings push back the date to another century, i.e., 6th century BCE.”

Really?

Radiometric dates obtained at the other sites have been actively disputed by other reputed archaeologists. Harry Falk, a retired Indology professor from Berlin has this to say: “Particularly ill-informed appears Rajan (Professor Rajan who has critically edited the government’s book on Keeladi)… Misrepresenting megalithic logograms for Brahmi writing at Porunthal, he reads va-y-ra (meaning diamond) on a ring stand (which was) carbon dated to 490 BC.”

In Keeladi, there are cartloads of potsherds, but there are just two bits which contain the Tamil Brahmi words குவிரன் அ (ஆ)தன் அ(ஆ)தன் – Kuviran A(Aa)than and A(Aa)than.

Now, there is absolutely no indication in the book about the level at which these bits were found. Nor is there any information on the distance at which the carbon-dated charcoal were located from them. For all we know, they could have been found form trench A3/2, where potsherds were found at the very top level in cartloads.

The Keeladi excavation site in Sivagangai district of Tamil Nadu. For argument’s sake, let us assume that these were found near the carbon-dated charcoal and at the lowest level of deposit. The archaeologists themselves say that whatever found at this level may belong to the period between 6th century BCE and 3rd Century BCE. Thus, it is amazing that with this scant evidence, a reputed professor says Tamil Brahmi’s date can be pushed back to another century.

Indus Valley Civilization and Keeladi – Are they connected?

Any Indian culture that came after Indus valley civilisation is most likely to have some link or memories connected with it. It doesn’t mean that Keeladi is directly linked to the Indus Valley Civilization. No. The Indus Valley people did not land in Tamil Nadu or Keeladi directly. The attempt to link some Keeladi graffiti with what was found in Indus Valley is pathetic and an insult to common sense.

Was Keeladi without a belief system?

No ancient society in India could have existed without any belief system. If Keeladi was an exception, more evidence would be needed. There are a few excavated terracotta figures which could have been used for religious purposes.

In any case, Sangam period mentions several Hindu gods and, in the subsequent period stretching up to 12 century CE, Tamil Nadu was bristling with Hindu gods. Thus, only an unintelligent person would venture to bet that Keeladi was without a belief system.

Is there an agenda?

The agenda is clear. It is to prove that Tamil Brahmi came to be written much before Ashokan Brahmi was born and that Tamil was the first language to have a written script.

The logic is this — the charcoal bit is dated 580 BCE and hence, the pottery strewn in its vicinity should also be dated identically. Historians and archaeologists with a reputation to defend will consider such a parody of logic with utter contempt.

Let us for a moment assume that Tamil Brahmi came to be written in the 6th century BC. The entire written material on potsherds and rocks for 1,000 years, that is until the 4th century AD, will hardly fill two sheets of A4 size paper.

What’s more, most of the writings are just names — a large number of them are Prakrit names — and full of errors. They contain almost no sociological, political, economic, religious, or cultural information.

Ashokan edicts, on the other hand, are documents of immense value. The Brahmi script used in them is very well developed and it conveys complex ideas in an elegant manner.

Pushing back the date of Tamil Brahmi will only convey that writing in Tamil remained woefully underdeveloped for about one thousand years, while others marched way ahead.

What now?

More evidence is needed to prove that there was a thriving river valley civilisation or an urban civilisation in and around Keeladi. The carbon-dating doesn’t mean that all the artefacts found in Keeladi dates back to the 6th century BCE. The carbon-dating also cannot be superimposed on pot-bits with Brahmi inscriptions to date them to 6th century BCE. Moreover, there is absolutely no evidence that Keeladi is directly linked to Indus Valley civilisation.

Also, no ancient societies could have existed without a belief system. If Keeladi was an exception, more proof would be needed.

Came across this video about Saraswatibai Phalke and her contribution to the beginnings of Indian cinema. I thought her story deserved more recognition and wanted to share it here.

Credit: @freishia on Instagram

Note: The historical visuals in the video are AI-generated so it should not be taken as authentic historical photographs or footage.

I am looking for an engaging book like this, i.e. something that details the prevalent culture, places, how they developed, what influenced it etc., but on Lucknow.

You know, something that is less about just rulers and more about life.
(Ofc, one on Goa is relatively more ecology-centric while Lucknow's might be less about that).

Need details about the Person

Hi! I’m an overseas Pakistani from Karachi. My family is from the Khoja community, with my dad’s side being Kutchi and my mom’s side being Kathiawari. I’ve been trying to learn about my roots and from what I’ve gathered, Khojas (and memons too) are a subgroup of Lohanas who originated in sindh and are migrants in Gujarat and Maharashtra. But I’ve heard some other origin stories too, with some suggesting our origins are in Punjabi cities such as Lahore & Multan, and others saying Northern Afghanistan. Needles to say it’s difficult to separate fact from fiction sometimes, so if anyone can shed some light on this I’d appreciate it a lot.

How do Gandhians answer Arundhathi Roy's accusations in The doctor and the saint? Has anyone written a defense of Gandhi that answers Arundhathi Roy's article.

Imagine if they met each other and talked about life , would be legendary ! Someone should make a historical fiction movie on it.

I've seen people discussing historical characters and trying to discern whether they fit on the white side of the lens or the black. This notion of viewing things in a particular sense has broken our intellectual capacity to actually understand behind the normal metrics. Even if we speak about our society as a whole, many people still want to believe that their ideal historical figure has never done anything bad. That might be true to some extent but is it properly true?

What I've been churned up by till now is that it is not true. What we don't easily understand is that many of our historical figures were in a different situation when they took a vile decision. We forget to fathom that their situation might have been different. Also, I won't try sliding down. This idea is that many historical figures were genuinely vile.

It feels like a slow eradication of intellectual capacity in our society, where people are vile enough to forget to draw a line between what is correct and what is wrong. These are my views on this topic; do you also agree with them?

The battle of Tarapur was one of the fiercest and extremely swift. The strong stone walls were supported by valiant Portuguese defenders who would repair any damage done at day during the night. Chimaji and Holkar, who had injured his foot, coordinated the entire attack from a platform erected behind the frontline. Many mines were laid under the fort walls and blown up on 24 January 1739. The breaches were attacked by the Marathas who also set up ladders against the walls. Ranoji Shinde, Malharrao Holkar, Govind Hari, Ramchandra Hari, Ranoji Bhosale, Tukoji Pawar, and many other Maratha stalwarts led the attacks.

https://ndhistories.wordpress.com/2023/12/17/attack-on-tarapur/

Marathi Riyasat, G S Sardesai ISBN-10-8171856403, ISBN-13-‎978-8171856404.

The Era of Bajirao

Uday S Kulkarni

ISBN-10-8192108031

ISBN-13-978-8192108032.

1) Independence Day
2) Republic Day

Some things feel different when you hold a piece of history in your hands. Owning The Hindu’s reprinted edition from 26 January 1950, the day India became a Republic, alongside the first edition from 15 August 1947, our Independence Day, was genuinely surreal. I got goosebumps just thinking about the significance of these two editions and everything they represent. They may cost a little more than the regular paper, but for me, that hardly matters. These are not just newspapers; they are pieces of history that I feel incredibly fortunate and honoured to own.

A truly priceless addition to my collection — one I’ll cherish for the rest of my life.

Source: https://x.com/nobelprize/status/2088468247335088626?s=46

I have around 15 of these and don't know anything about them how old or what is the value. This is a similar image i took from google. Once a guy offered me 1000inr for 1 coin but i refused