Mirror of old mAnasollAsa: jIva, dharma, vij~nAna, itihAsa, krIDA
This is by no means a comprehensive treatment of the text under consideration. Nor does it aim to perform a comparative analysis of other tantra-s and paddhati-s with a similarly synthetic outlook. It gives a broad overview of the text Continue reading
The first reflex of the Mārtāṇḍa myth, viz., the sun as the dead egg, is attested in maṇḍala-10 of the Ṛgveda as part of a famous cosmogonic sūkta (RV 10.72): aṣṭau putrāso aditer ye jātās tanvas pari devāṃ upa prait Continue reading
As we have discussed before, outside the Indo-Iranian and Old Greek worlds, some of the most conservative Indo-European traditions were found among the Baltic peoples. Linguistic and genetic evidence favor a higher-order satemizing clade of Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian. Among the Continue reading
For an introduction, read this. In the mid-eighteen hundreds, even as Hindu civilization was at its lowest point, science in Germania was reaching a high point that would lay the foundations of modern physics. The great Carl Gauss was in Continue reading
Guhyakālī by Nepali artist RP Shreshtha. Prolog In 1994, when we were visiting R1’s house, we saw, for the first time, an actual picture of the deca-zoocephalous Guhyakālī in her father’s devagṛha. We were aware of her mūla-mantra as part Continue reading
asmābhiḥ kalpitaṁ śastraṃ vijayāśā-parāyaṇam tad eva śatravo yuñjanty asmattaḥ sutarām punaḥ The weapon devised by us, devoted to the wish of victory – that very weapon [our] enemies now employ more thoroughly than we do. About seven years Continue reading
In the course of our daily study (pārāyaṇa) of the śruti, we practiced the following ṛk of Vasukarṇa, the son of Vasukra of the clan of the Vasiṣṭha-s: dyāvā-pṛthivī janayann abhi vrata āpa oṣadhīr vanināni yajñiyā । antarikṣaṃ svar ā Continue reading
While far removed from each other in space and time, both the Egyptian and Tibetan Books of the Dead describe a structured journey of consciousness through what seems like a non-ordinary postmortem reality. Notably, the existence of a structure to Continue reading
The year 1991 flashed in our mind along with the letters S, K, G, K, S. Those were the initials of five of six people who had once mattered to us in life but were now memories from a past Continue reading
For the purposes of this note, we take a broad definition of soteriology. While it often implies the final state, we wrap within the term the various notable waystations one might experience. We also include states that are often seen Continue reading
The pervasiveness of didactic animal tales in the Śanti- and Anuśāsana-parvan-s of the Mahābhārata, the Jātaka-s of the Tathāgata, and the Pañcatantra of Viṣṇuśarman suggests that proto-versions of these tales were a prominent feature of Indo-Aryan folkloric narratives. Indeed, we Continue reading
We have often wondered what was in the mind of the great mantravādin Bhāskararāya Makhīndra when he titled his commentary on the Nityāṣoḍaśikārṇava section of the Vāmakeśvara-tantra the Setubandha (building the bridge). Where was the bridge to, and what was Continue reading
The Pleiades (Kṛttikāḥ), probably the visually most dramatic object in the Earthly skies, emerged quite recently in typical astronomical time scales. Multiple independent studies place their origin between 100 and 120 million years ago (Mya). Low-mass stars lose lithium at Continue reading
This is just a brief discursion to note our thoughts on some recent events with the advantage of hindsight and to tentatively look forward in terms of what might ensue. The chief event in the period we are covering was Continue reading
॥ arthaśāstrasya prakīrṇāni nutanāni pariśiṣṭāni ॥ namāmi devadeveśam indraṃ vajradharam prabhum । ādityān rudrān vasūn caiva vande ham aśvinau saha । huve haṃ sajoṣasā indrāṇīṃ sarasvatīṃ rodasīṃ ca sarvābhir gnābhir yutāḥ । staumi uttarasyāṃ diśi rājarājaṃ vaiśravaṇaṃ mahāntam । yamaś ca bhṛgavaś Continue reading
Via an acquaintance, we ran into a middle-aged mleccha woman, who had survived a difficult health situation in her childhood. In premodern times, it might have been a death sentence, but she managed to survive to an age at which Continue reading
In 1935, the fossil hunter Louis Grauvogel began discovering an enormous cache of fossils in the quarries of the Grès à Voltzia of the Vosges in the disputed Lorraine region between France and Germany. One day in May 1939, he Continue reading
Again and again, the question of who is a Hindu comes up on social media. We have encountered some form of it for almost 30 years on the internet, starting from the days of the old mailing lists to this Continue reading
Japanese depiction of Ḍakinī-s in the Ninna-ji Taizō maṇḍala Unlike in the case of the Hindu tantra-s, the traditional classification of the Bauddha tantra-s approximates their evolutionary sequence. Briefly, they are classified into four major groups: the Kriyā, the Caryā, Continue reading
In the long past days of our youth, the entrance exam to junior college often featured a problem in the mathematics paper involving the ages of a father and his son [Footnote 1]. If one interpreted the question correctly, then Continue reading
The cat is a lion when catching a mouse, but it is a mouse when on the battlefield of the leopard -translation into English of a verse of some poet from Islamic Iran Molecular divergence estimates suggest that all the Continue reading
When the Egyptian religion came to an end at the hands of the second Abrahamism around 550 CE (following the closure of the temple of Philae around 537 CE by Justinian I), the tradition was already a hoary one – Continue reading
The results of the senior college admission exams were finally out. For Vidrum, it felt like the Marahaṭṭa-s reaching Delhi after having overcome the 26-year Jihad and many other a threat to their very existence. However, Somakhya poured chill water Continue reading
A depiction’’ of the deity of the Uttarāmnāya manifesting in viyat-pada during the 17-fold meditation yugapad yānti yatra+āśu sāmarasyaṃ viyatpade । nistaraṅge nirābhāse pare saptadaśābhidhe ॥ Simultaneously they [the rays] swiftly attain the state of oneness in the vacuum state, Continue reading
The haṃsa (the divine swan/gander) is identified across Hindu mantra traditions with the breath cycle. While this mantra is vocalized as so.ahaṃ haṃsaḥ । (the haṃsa mantra), it is also identified with the very process of breathing, with the two Continue reading
Rudraśakti While the four core āmnāya-s of the kaula tradition are presented by its texts (e.g., Ciñciṇīmata-sāra-samuccaya) as directional lodges, they also have an evolutionary relationship between themselves (we leave out the late, clearly syncretic ūrdhvāmnāya formulations in this consideration). Continue reading
The attractor in consideration was probably rediscovered by multiple explorers of chaotic maps in the early days of the computational exploration of such objects. We first discovered it in our 14th or 15th year when access to computers was just Continue reading
Of the Sāmavedic schools, the Kauthuma-s follow the śrautasūtra of Lāṭyāyana and the gṛhyasūtra of Gobhila. The Rāṇāyanīya-s follow the śrautasūtra of Drāhyāyaṇa and the gṛhyasūtra of Khādira (also attributed to Drāhyāyaṇa). Their respective śrautasūtra-s are dependent on closely related Continue reading
In earlier accounts, we have detailed how the Mahāmleccha Deep State had engineered the uccāṭana of Vijaya-nāma-vyāpārin. In a dramatic reversal of fate, the Picchilaka made a comeback against all odds to retake the śvetālaya of the Mahāmleccha-s and, barring Continue reading
dhūmaketum bhāṛjīkaṃ vyuṣṭiṣu yajñānām adhvaraśriyam ॥[We elect Agni…] the comet, with smoky radiance, at the break of the dawns, the opulence of the ceremonies of the sacrifice.-A cometary metaphor used by Praskaṇva Kāṇva for Agni in the Ṛgveda. 10th October Continue reading
Proboscideans are mammals with a deep evolutionary history of sociality and high intelligence (not immediately apparent from encephalization alone) that made them potential rivals as well as candidates for domestication by humans. When elephants were first domesticated remains a mystery. Continue reading
While heavily influenced by the Sinitic transmissions, Japan retained its own unique traditions throughout the historical period. While the curtain of history lifts up late in Japan compared to the Middle Kingdom, the Japanese followed the latter’s tradition in terms Continue reading
Word2Vec is a natural language processing technique developed by Mikolov and colleagues that generates word embeddings, i.e., dense vector representations of words in a text, which capture their semantic relationships. It has become central to textual analysis in the past Continue reading
A trail of memories, both victorious and unkind, In the rear-view mirror s gaze, I find. Through the dusty glass, I see my past, A journey in Indian dust marked by shadows cast. Yet in the mirror s chipped frame, I discern, Continue reading
We had originally wished to write a piece or two about the system of thought of the great Renaissance thinker Giordano Bruno, but, as ever, the attempt to be comprehensive came in the way of producing anything substantial that was Continue reading
The Puruṣa-sūkta, or the chant of Puruṣa-Nārāyaṇa, is a late Vedic composition with multiple variants that occupies a focal position in the history of the Indo-Aryan strand of the Indo-European religion. On one side, it features an ancient motif of Continue reading
The ways of the fierce gods are not easy for men to comprehend with their finite lives. A course of five years might seem like nothing in historical time, but the dice rolled by the gods in that window could Continue reading
It was the time Somakhya and Indrasena were by themselves without their companions for that is close to the ultimate test of a man. At that point, they were working on the mysterious three-gene system coding for an Continue reading
It was a Śivarātrī. Vidrum accompanied his friends Somakhya and Lootika to visit the small shrine of Rudra in the cemetery beside his house. It was one of the rare days when the normally deserted cemetery was fairly busy with Continue reading
The core of the material discussed in this note is based on the publications of the Hungarian-Mongolian Joint Expedition studying folk traditions in Mongolia and the masterly work of Igor de Rachewiltz on religion in the Secret History of the Continue reading
While triangle centers (e.g., incenter, centroid circumcenter) are captivating to the amateur and mathematician alike, their serious investigation is a relatively modern pursuit. A major push in their study began with the great Leonhard Euler and was continued by the Continue reading
Lootika had returned from a scientific competition, which had been held in the dreadful city of Mahāvisphoṭaka, like the victorious Roman army after sacking the towns of West Asian counter-religionists. To both celebrate and to educate the class her teacher Continue reading
The below is the barest sketch of a topic that has already been treated in multiple book-length works by learned scholars of the Orient. However, none of these works were entirely familiar with the Hindu side of the tradition leaving Continue reading
The śaiva pattern of worship, which is especially emphasized in the Iśāna-srotas (siddhānta), features the Nirmālya-devatā, Caṇḍeśvara with roots in the older Pāśupata atimārga. This deity receives offerings, such as leaves and flowers, that have been initially offered to Rudra-sadāśiva. Continue reading
Over the past decade, the Black Kalasha people from the Chitral ( Skt. Kṣetra) region of the Islamic state in Northwestern India have been under increasing pressure from the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan and allied marūnmatta-s. The recent successes of the TTP Continue reading
A key feature of most polytheistic religions, typically natural religions, is the importance of a multiplicity of visualizations of deities. This visualization might be solely mental/textual or expressed in different ways in the graphic and plastic arts. The mode of Continue reading
To our knowledge, the Hiraṇyakeśin branch of the Taittirīyaka-s is today only found in pockets in Mahārāṣṭra and the Drāviḍa states. While they follow the Taittirīya-śruti like other Taittirīyaka-s, they additionally have their own unique mantrapāṭha furnished with its own Continue reading
Sir Francis Drake, buccaneer bold and bloody, Sailed the seas in a gold-grabbing spree, With the Golden Hind, he circled the Earth wide – A murdering marauder on the swelling tide. Slaving in West Africa, slaughtering civilian and combatant alike Continue reading
Leonhard Euler s discovery of the zeta function in the course of solving the Basel problem was one of those momentous unifications in mathematics with deep philosophical implications that eventually led to the Riemann hypothesis. By bringing together trigonometry and arithmetic, Continue reading
This is the second of the Charuchitra series: Even if the story narrated were to resemble real-life incidents, all characters in it are fictitious. With the exam behind him, Somakhya relapsed into his usual circadian cycle that was diametrically opposite Continue reading