“Whoever has entered rooms which used to house volumes, maybe over the course of centuries, is aware of the feeling of holding ancient documents and books, and can imagine the emotion to give a new life to works that a long sleep has laid still for years. Through the bookseller’s search there ...
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Article:
The Man Who Purchased Kashmir
By R.S.Gull
Published in Kashmir Life - June 2015
It was extraordinary for an illiterate man to evolve into a crafty warlord who worked for others to create his own empire. Promoted by Khalsa Durbar, he allied with the East India Company, and eventually rai...
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Essay:
Colonial India - British versus Indian Views of Development
By Bipan Chandra
Two divergent theories of economic development were evolved by the British and Indians during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The two had divergent, rival perceptions of the nature of economic changes...
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Essay:
England's First Non-European Civil Servant
By Jennifer Howes
This portrait is of Raja Ram Roy, the first non-European to be employed within the British Civil Service. When he arrived in Europe in 1831, it was never his intention to work in London. However, circumstances altered the fortun...
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Essay:
The ‘Evolution’ Of Hindu Gods
By Anil Kumar Suri
Swarajya
How did the current Hindu pantheon come to be? Given below is a brief introduction to an essay on the topic by Anil Kumar Suri. Link to full essay is given at the end of the introduction.
How did Hinduism come to have the deitie...
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Article:
How Siva evolved over the years
By Rohini Bakshi
daily O
In truth the divine is unknowable, and to try and find his origins is a reckless task.
In part 1 of this series on Siva we touched upon the presence and development of Rudra as he appears in texts before the beginning of the comm...
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Article:
Why Śiva is the most mysterious of all Hindu gods
By Rohini Bakshi
daily O
A lot of questions remain unanswered about the widely revered deity.
Of all the deities in the Hindu pantheon, by far the most complex and mysterious to me is Śiva. Devotees and scholars alike have attempted to ...
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Essay:
The Pernicious Effects Of The Misinterpreted Greek Synchronism In Ancient Indian History.
By Kosla Vepa PhD
Paper presented at The ICIH 2009, Delhi, India
Read Online:
http://bit.ly/1MEcbLN
It was F E Pargiter, who introduced the notion of a Synchronism in Indian Historiography, in one ...
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Article:
Buddhism: Origin, Spread and Decline
By Pankaj Jain
The Huffington Post
Contemporary Indian Society and Buddhism's origin
A keen observer of the world history may notice a pendulous motion. At one end of the pendulum's swing is the society immersed in crass materialism, Pravritti (lite...
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The Someshwar Mahadev temple stands tall among the temples of India. The construction of the present temple in Junagadh district began in 1947. It is the seventh temple built to commemorate the glory of Lord Somnath who is said to have known as Bhairaveshwa...
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Article:
Nalanda and the pursuit of science
By Amartya Sen
The Hindu - 24 January 2011
‘Nalanda stood for the passion of propagating knowledge, understanding.' Amartya Sen's keynote address at the 98th Indian Science Congress in Chennai on January 4.
The subject of this talk is Nalanda and the ...
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Essay:
The Nalanda debate - Grist to the reactionary mill
The above account mentions the fortress of Bihar as the target of Bakhtiyar’s attack.
By D.N.Jha
Indian Express - 9 July 2014
I was amused to read ‘How History was Made up at Nalanda’ by Arun Shourie who has dished out to readers his ign...
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Essay:
How history was made up at Nalanda
The story behind a Marxist historian’s story of its destruction by ‘Hindu fanatics’.
By Arun Shourie
Indian Express - 28 June 2014
“The mine of learning, honoured Nalanda” — that is how the 16th-17th century Tibetan historian, Taranath, referred to the u...
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An article on RBSI:
A rare kind of book club
By Shrabonti Bagchi
Times of India - 25 July 2015
"...there is a need for us to go to primary sources to know more about historical events and personalities and form an opinion. The intermediation of historians, who always bring their own set of biase...
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Essay:
The Islamization of Yoga in the Amrtakunda Translations
By Professor Carl W. Ernst
Department of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Essay:
Muslim Interpreters of Yoga
By Carl W. Ernst
Read more:
http://bit.ly/1Ls0Qhh
Yoga is perhaps the most successful Indian export in the global marketplace of spirituality. In terms of religious associations, it is most often juxtaposed with the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, though it is...
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