A new paper titled Ethnic India: A genomic view with special reference to peopling and structure (via India Archaeology) reports on some interesting facts. The results are based on statistical analysis of DNA data from a large Indian population.

• There is an underlying unity of female lineages in India indicating that the initial number of female settlers may have been small.
• The studies support the hypothesis that Austro-Asiatic tribals are the earliest inhabitants of India.
• In most cases we speak of immigration to India via the Afghanistan-Pakistan-Indus Valley route, the paper says that the Northeastern corridor also served as a passage to India. It suggests prot-Tibeto-Burman people leaving their homeland in the Yellow River basin and crossing the Himalayas to India.
• The paper also comes up with data supporting the thesis that Dravidian speakers were widespread throughout India and when Indo-European language speaking people entered India and created the caste system, the Dravidian speakers would have retreated southwards.
• Central Asia is supposed to have contributed in a major way to the Indian gene pool. Populations of North India are genetically closer to Central Asia. South Indians share less similarity and Northeast Indians share the least.

The most important immigration to India is that of the so called Aryans who came via the Pakistan-Afghanistan route. There was another wave of immigration via the northeast border though not much is mentioned about it. It has been proved that some people of Mizoram are related to Jews and belong to one of the Lost Tribes and they entered India via Burma. But that was only 300 years back.
Another point is that if South Indias share less similarity with Central Asians then the assertion that Thiyyas came from Kyrgistan may not be true.

Remember the Lake Palace in Udaipur, the place where James Bond met Octopussy. Now if you go there, you will be able to see the palace, but the lake is slowly disappearing.

The people of Udaipur are only now beginning to understand how the lake is more than just a beauty spot. In fact, it is part of a highly sophisticated rainwater catchment system planned in the 16th century. When the then Maharana of Mewar laid out the city as his new capital, he built dams to create Lake Pichola as part of a series of artificial lakes he constructed around the city. They are strategically placed so that if the monsoon fails over one lake, another will catch rainwater from the other side of the watershed that runs near Udaipur, and the lakes are interconnected.

But the state government is now, at last, taking steps in the right direction, say the people of Udaipur. They have started a major programme of reforestation for the denuded hills. Refilling Lake Pichola has been made the top priority, and the authorities have pledged to remove any villagers’ dams that are blocking the flow of water. They have also pledged to stop pumping drinking water out of the lake until it is restored to its former level.

Riding on horseback over the green lake-bed, Mr Joseph, the executive at the Lake Palace, says: “You know, some guests have told me Udaipur doesn’t need its lake. It still has so much to offer.” He points to the wild horses grazing. “You would never see them if the lake was full. They wouldn’t come down from the hills. The palace still has so much to offer.” And he is right. Even as he speaks, a traditional musical troupe is preparing to use the dry lake- bed as a performance area to entertain the guests. [Heat and dust consume India’s City of the Lakes via India Archaeology]

Udaipur was named so in 1572 in the name of Udai Singh who founded the place. From there the house of Mewar defied the might of the Mughal empire and was the base of the Rajputs. Udaipur is also the home of Bagheera, the panther in Jungle Book.

The mythologies are filled with people of superhuman powers. So in Ramayana we have Ravan with 10 heads and Hanuman who could fly from Lanka to the Himalayas. The fact is if such people existed, how come we don’t have 10 headed people now ? A Berkeley Professor has got interested in finding the truth behind all these symbols.

Ten-headed demon king Ravana of the Hindu epic Ramayana actually had one head and the other nine were its reflection on the nine large polished gems that he wore around his neck, an American scholar of Sanskrit has reasoned.

In a lecture in New Delhi titled, “How fast do monkeys fly? How long do demons sleep?” where he read commentaries on Sanskrit epic poetry, Goldman said ancient scholars like Nagoji Bhatta, Govindaraja, Maheshwara Teertha, Satyateertha and Madhava Yogendra tried to “track down the narrative” and explain through “scientific reasoning” the seeming exaggerations in the works. [Hanuman flew at 660 km per hour]

How will gems around the neck reflect the head ? And the “scientific” explanation is not on how monkeys could fly, but on how fast he could fly. I wonder what this professor teaches.

Even though the Taj Mahal was 350 years old many years back, the Govt celebrated it’s 350th anniversary recently. Right now the controversy is, Is the Taj Mahal leaning, like the tower in Pisa.? But there is one report which says it is not.

Talking to The Pioneer on Tuesday, Superintending Archaeologist, ASI Agra, Dr D Dayalan, said that though it is a fact that one of the front minarets of the Taj mahal was indeed ’tilting’ by 8.5 inch outwards, this was either a deliberate structural feature introduced by the architect of the monument or it may have occurred sometime back in history due to a natural calamity like an earthquake.
Dayalan said that this issue was not new, in fact it had been raised by the media a few decades ago as well. Following this, the department had fixed glass strips in the base of the minarets to ensure that if there indeed was a movement in the minarets even by 1mm, the strips would crack, but they haven’t cracked till date.
This indicated that the minarets were not tilting any further and the controversy being raised over the ‘Leaning tower of Taj Mahal’, is completely hypothetical, created by a section of the media bent upon sensationalising the issue. [Baseless babble over ‘leaning’ Taj Mahal]

Manish at Sepia Mutiny has an interesting entry on Fibonacci numbers which in fact should be called Hemecandra numbers.

The Fibonacci series is the set of numbers beginning with 1, 1 where every number is the sum of the previous two numbers. The series begins with 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and so on. They were known in India before Fibonacci as the Hemachandra numbers. And the ratio of any two successive Fibonacci numbers approximates a ratio, ~1.618, called the golden section or golden mean.

It’s long been known that the Fibonacci series turns up freqently in nature. The numbers of petals on a daisy and the dimensions of a section of a spiral nautilus shell are usually Fibonacci numbers. For plants, this is because the fractional part of the golden mean, a constant called phi (0.618), is the rotation fraction (222.5 degrees) which yields the most efficient and scalable packing of circular objects such as seeds, petals and leaves.

But Bhargava points out that the series also shows up in the arts. Sanksrit poetry, tabla compositions and tango, to name a few examples, use the series to find the number of possible combinations of single and double-length beats within a stanza.[Sepia Mutiny: Hemachandra numbers everywhere]

Fibonacci himself wrote that he had studied Indian numbers and did not come up with the number series. Donald Knuth also wrote about this

Before Fibonacci wrote his work, the sequence Fn had already been discussed by Indian scholars, who had long been interested in rhythmic patterns that are formed from one-beat and two-beat notes. The number of such rhythms having n beats altogether is Fn+1; therefore both Gospala (before 1135) and Hemachandra (c. 1150) mentioned the numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, … explicitly.[Who was Fibonacci?]

Sirpur was the happening place about 1300 years ago. It had a Shaivite king Mahashivagupta who entertained Huen Tsang and philosopher Nagarjuna. Mahashivagupta’s mother Vasata built a Laxman temple which is the first temple in India to be built using bricks. This temple was completed in 650 AD and is located on the banks of the river Mahanadi.
Now Archaeologists have unearthed a floor below the the ancient floor pushing the age of the temple back by 150 years, making its time of completion around 500 AD. (Same time as Aryabhata)
Also see our new Indian History Timeline

Theodore Bhaskaran discovered some panels in the Great temple at Tanjavur showing the Buddha.

There are at least two panels featuring the Sakyamuni: one at the base of the second gopuram and the other in the main temple. Here, events are depicted in comic-strip style, using small sequential sculptural panels. This was an artistic convention that can be observed in the temples of the medieval period in Tamil Nadu. You can see similar story-telling miniature sculptures in other temples also. It could be an episode from mythology or depicting a historical event. At the Vaikuntha Perumal temple in Kanchipuram, certain events from Pallava history are told in the manner, while at the Gangaikondacholapuram temple, the story of Bhagiratha is depicted similarly.

The second set of Buddha figures is in the body of the main temple, on the right balustrade of the step leading into the sanctum and on the southern side. There are three sculpture pieces here. The first one shows Buddha seated under a tree, flanked by royalty. The gandharvas are depicted on the upper part of the frieze. The next one shows Buddha standing under a tree, and royalty worshipping him. Behind them are the gandharvas, also in a posture of supplication.The Buddha at Thanjavur

In that article there is mention of Buddhism flourishing in the coastal region during the Chola period and Jainism in the delta region. In Kerala there were many Buddhist temples many of which were later believed to be converted to Hindu Temples. The most famous of them is Ayyappa temple at Sabarimala.

Korea and India had relations from the middle of the first century AD when a princess of Ayodhya travelled to Korea and married there. Here is some more information on the relations between the two countries due to Buddhism.

Many Buddhist monks worked to shape the religion, a major early figure being Marananta, who came to Paekje in the 4th century A.D. However, it is the Samguksagi is not clear on how an Indian monk came to receive a warm welcome from the king. In A.D. 574 three Indian monks came to the peninsula with a Korean monk, Anhong, and initiated the construction of many monasteries and temples.

According to one story, King Ayuk (Muwa), identified with Ashoka Maurya of India, sent iron and gold to Korea to cast the image of the Buddha. Koreans used the metals to construct the monastery. However, the historical records show the Ashokan period was much earlier than the construction of the Hwangnyong Monastery.

After the introduction of Buddhism to Korea, many scholars and monks exhibited great enthusiasm for visiting India to learn more about Buddhism or for pilgrimages to places important to the memory of the Buddha. Some Korean monks set out for India in the early 6th century A.D.

The monk Kyomic was the first to visit India. He studied the Vinaya text, first going to the Samghana Temple of central India where he collected the Sanskrit text of the Mahisasaka Vinaya. Later an Indian monk, Devadatta (Pei-da-duo) ,came to Korea with Kyomic where he translated 72 books of the Vinaya under the patronage of the King Song of Paekje.

From the early 8th century onwards, Korean Buddhists showed a keen interest in India and Indian culture. The cultural bridge between the two countries grew from then onwards, Buddhist monks being credited for nurturing the relationship. Biographies of eminent monks of the Tang Dynasty in China recorded the brief histories of some 56 pilgrims who went to India. Among these was a Korean monk, A

By 1942, there were many Indians in the POW camps of the Germans. These Indians were fighting in the British Army against the Germans. Subhash Chandra Bose visited Germany at that time and organized a Free India Legion army by converting these POWs into soldiers swearing allegience to Hitler. But later Bose abandoned them and moved to Japan. .

Finally, by August 1942, Bose’s recruitment drive got fully into swing. Mass ceremonies were held in which dozens of Indian POWs joined in mass oaths of allegiance to Adolf Hitler. These are the words that were used by men that had formally sworn an oath to the British king: “I swear by God this holy oath that I will obey the leader of the German race and state, Adolf Hitler, as the commander of the German armed forces in the fight for India, whose leader is Subhas Chandra Bose.”

I managed to track down one of Bose’s former recruits, Lieutenant Barwant Singh, who can still remember the Indian revolutionary arriving at his prisoner of war camp. “He was introduced to us as a leader from our country who wanted to talk to us,” he said. “He wanted 500 volunteers who would be trained in Germany and then parachuted into India. Everyone raised their hands. Thousands of us volunteered.” [Hitler’s secret Indian Army. (via World in the times of Sridhar)]

In the first centuries AD, there was both trade and missionary activity by Indians to South-East Asia which resulted in the spread of Indian culture to the Malay Peninsula, Thailand, Vietnam etc. The spread of Indians to Cambodia resulted in the Khemer kingdom, who built the magnificient Hindu temples of Angkor Wat. Now here is a story which connects Korean history to India, more specifically to Ayodhya.

The origin of the historical ties can be traced back to the middle of the first century AD. According to Sam Kuk Yusa, the ancient history of Korea, Queen Huh, wife of legendary King Suro, who founded the Karak Kingdom, was born in Ayodhya.
Queen Huh was a princess of the kingdom. Her father, the king of Ayodhya, on receiving a divine revelation, sent her on a long sea voyage to the Karak kingdom in southern Korea to marry King Suro, states the lines inscribed on the plaque at the monument in Ayodhya. The clan that descended from the Ayodhya princess Huh and South Korean King Suros, today known as Kim-Hae-Kim clan, has a little over six million Huh descendants in the Republic of South Korea.[South Korea’s Ayodhya connection]