The Demotion of Indra
Iran made him a demon, India made him a subordinate, Buddhism made him a saint, and the reason was cattle.
Ravinder Reddy
Rigorous essays on history, religion, and the human past.
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The Ninth Avatāra
How the Buddha entered Viṣṇu’s list, and why
Zarathustra, in His Own Words
A poet with few cattle, seventeen hymns, and the god who ended up with an empire
Viṣṇu: The Descent of Mercy
His compassion, counted and read across the Bhagavad Gītā, the Viṣṇu Purāṇa, and the Bhāgavata Purāṇa
The God You Could Love
The Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad turned the impersonal Absolute into a personal God, and was the first Upaniṣad to speak of Bhakti.
Neither the Same nor Another
If there is no soul, what gets reborn? Buddhism gave two answers. The second is deeply strange.
The Gods of the Scythians
A people who built no temples and wrote no scripture still left us a full pantheon. Here is every god they had, and where each one actually came from.
Introduction to Viṣṇu
Vaiṣṇavism from the Late Bronze Age to the modern era: a history of Viṣṇu, and of why we keep getting its age wrong.
The Golden Horsemen
The Scythians and Sakas, from the Eurasian steppe to India.
The Two Roads Out of the Arc
One highland crescent seeded both Europe and India, through two different peoples who headed off in opposite directions. Call it the ZAA arc: Zagros, Armenia, Anatolia.