1. Giacomo Benedetti looks at what ancient DNA can tell us about the Indo-European problem.

We can suppose that the Oxus valley was an ancient seat for the R1a1a people coming from South Asia, and that they spoke an Indo-European language. From Central Asia they should have moved to the Kurgan area in Ukraine, and from there to Central Europe. Another R1a1a people went eastward up to the Tarim Basin (see here) and another to the Andronovo area near Krasnoyarsk in Siberia (see here). But we know that they all had their ultimate origin in western South Asia, and their expansion in Eurasia seems to be dated particularly in the metal age, since all these cultures knew metals.

2. Recently Dr. Koenraad Elst wrote that there is no reason to believe that Patanjali the grammarian was also the author of Yoga Sutras. Sarvesh Tiwari decided to investigate.

Indologists objections revolve around the usual suspects: that there are interpolations, the non-homogeneity of texts, some philosophical concepts are allegedly imported from or influenced by the nAstika doctrines and therefore the resulting dating issues, some concepts that allegedly contradict and therefore could not have come from one person, dissecting the texts to such absurd level that the whole loses the meaning and then at that level showing the minor differences, and so on. But having seen those arguments we are convinced that none of them really stand water and we shall take a raincheck without getting into discussing those. We shall only say that the real issue here is the hankering to somehow give these texts absurdly late dates, besides of course trivializing their authorship, devaluing their worth and integrity, as well as obfuscating their origins and genesis.

3. In 1498, Vasco da Gama reached Calicut and met the Zamorin. Maddy goes through an account of the meeting and offers his commentary. He also displays how various artists rendered this meeting.

Shows the Zamorin with a golden conical crown which is a depiction of a possible Thalapaavu or turban. Did the Zamorin wear a turban for ceremonial occasions? It is doubtful, but may have been keeping up appearances. The people around are obviously half clad (in reality just wearing a dhoti) and look terribly muscular (virtually impossible). As we read in Correa’s and other writings, the possibility of rings around his shin and calves like Romans is pretty doubtful, though he wore a Shringala. The large spittoon is depicted wrongly and the overall ambience thoroughly inappropriate. The room itself looks too high (impossible for a thatched roof dwelling) with ornate curtains and hangings. Note that the Zamorin has no beard.

4. When the Portuguese discovered the path to Calicut, it had repurcussions not just in India, but in Europe as well. CHF writes

Within the next couple of years, economic depression engulfed many of the trade centres of Europe, with firms collapsing and banks failing. The crisis was felt most in Venice which was the largest buyer of Asian spices. The Venetian Senate passed a resolution on 15th January 1506 on the alarming fall in trade as a consequence of the Portuguese arrival in Calicut: Since, as everybody knows, this commerce has now been reduced to the worst possible condition, it is essential to take some action and to provide our citizens with every facility for sailing the seas.

5. Anuraag Sanghi has a review of Arun Shourie’s Eminent Historians

Till 1857, the British followed the Spanish model, and used religious logic, to justify their plunder and massacre in India. The British used religious differences to foist artificial Muslim ‘leaders’ on India – to finally partition India. While Shourie is critical of these Muslim ‘leaders’ (rightly), of Nehru (partly to blame), he is gentle in his criticism of the British role (Chapter 14).

If you find interesting blog posts on India history, please send it to varnam.blog @gmail or to @varnam_blog. The next carnival will be up on Feb 15th.

1. Giacomo Benedetti  writes about an article by a Professor of Law and Philosophy at the University of Illinois which proposes that Western Law and Civilization owes a lot to the culture of Indus Valley.

I have read it, and I find it really rich and stimulating, including philosophy of law, history, linguistics, anthropology, Indo-European studies and also interesting references to the ‘Oriental Renaissance’ of Schwab and the practice of meditation as a part of the Indo-European heritage which should be recovered.

2. Vijay takes a look at a rare bronze statue from Melaikkadambur

This particular image is from Bengal made in the time of the Pala rulers who were contemporaries of the Cholas of Tamilnad. This metal image belongs to 9th – 10th cent. It might have been brought by the Rajaguru of Kulottunga who hailed from Bengal. It is one of the finest and early bronze image of the Pala dynasty but found in Tamilnad. It also establishes a close link between Bengal and Chidambaram in the Chola times.”

3. You may have heard of ragamala in the context of music. But have you heard of ragamala in the context of paintings? peacay has a post with numerous ragamala miniatures.

“In [the ragamala] painting[s] each raga is personified by a colour, mood, a verse describing a story of a hero and heroine (nayaka and nayika), it also elucidates the season and the time of day and night in which a particular raga is to be sung; and finally most paintings also demarcate the specific Hindu deities attached with the raga, like Bhairava or Bhairavi to Shiva, Sri to Devi etc. The paintings depict not just the Ragas, but also their wives, (raginis), their numerous sons (ragaputra) and daughters (ragaputri).

4. Charles Baudelaire, the French romantic poet, owed his creativity to a Malabar girl. Calicut Heritage writes

Born in Paris, Baudelaire grew up as a spoilt and rebellious child resentful of the loss of his father when he was very small and the mother’s second marriage to a young and dapper colonel. The stepfather wanted to discipline the young boy and sent him off to Calcutta in 1841. A shipwreck saw the young Baudelaire landing on the shores of Mauritius, instead of Bengal. There he meets the Girl from Malabar in an account from which it is difficult to sift facts from fiction.

5. Maddy has a post on the Malabarese soldiers who fought along with the Portuguese.

So for a lot of Nairs in the Cochin, teaming up with their better paying Portuguese collaborators was but natural. In history they are termed Malabarese. Many a Moplah also joined these groups. Interestingly as you pore through these musty old history books, you come across many battles fought in Malabar where the Zamorin or the Cochin king had many tens of thousands of Nairs whereas the Portuguese or Dutch had tens to hundreds of white soldiers with guns and a score of armed auxiliaries, but in many of these cases the Portuguese or Dutch win the battle.

6. There was a time when Tamil was considered unsuitable for Carnatic music. Sriram writes how that changed.

It was at this juncture that an announcement appeared in The Hindu dated 28th July 1941 under the caption “Encouragement of Tamil Songs”. The Annamalai University Syndicate had “approved a scheme for the composition of new Tamil songs and the popularisation of old songs”. The announcement stated that “a conference of votaries of music in this part of the country will be held .. in August and all that songs that will be sung there will be in Tamil only.”

7. fortmapper is a new blog which tries to document as many forts as possible. If you want to volunteer and help the author with this effort, please leave a comment on that blog.

With this post, the Indian History Carnival completes three years. The next post will appear on Jan 15, 2011. Please send any nominations via e-mail (varnam.blog @gmail) or Twitter (@varnam_blog)

1. In his post titled The Sun Temple of Konark Or Girish Sahane Gets it Wrong in Detail, Sandeep explains what really happened to the shrine.

One wonders why the priests had to migrate with their God to Puri if say, the Sun temple at Konaraka had been ruined due to say, natural causes. As Hunter records, and Prabhat Mukherjee quotes, it was because Kalaphad had desecrated the shrine. The fact that the temple servitors as late as 1940 (when Mr. Mukherjee’s book was written) testify to that transported idol speaks volumes. As is well-known, Hindu temples or idols once desecrated are treated as mail or impure or defiled and hence unworthy of worship, a tradition that holds true even today.

2. Fëanor writes about horse trading — of animals which walk on four legs — in 15th century India.

The price of the horse multiplied crazily once it arrived in India. Ibn Battuta talks some numbers: the best bahri horse was valued at up to 4000 tanka, as compared to the middling tatari, which cost only about 100 tanka. The top-class bahris were not for war – most were kept as luxury items coveted by the rich; only the tataris were destined to be warhorses

3. Anuraag Sanghi writes about how Indian ship building expertise helped Britain to become a prime military power.

British access to India’s huge ship-building capacity, raw-material sources, technicians, shipwright, gave them a decisive edge – considering that Britain controlled Chittagaon (colonial Chittagong), Surat and Mumbai (colonial Bombay), Chennai (colonial Madras), Northern Sircars (modern Andhra Coast) – all famous Indian ship-building centres. Based on this experience, British further expanded teak sources to include Burma by the middle of 19th century. Just before steel started to take over from teak.

4. In 1943, during the Second World War, the British War Cabinet under Prime Minister Winston Churchill made a decision which resulted in the death of three million Indians. Soutik Biswas writes on the BBC blog about this incident.

Mr Churchill turned down fervent pleas to export food to India citing a shortage of ships – this when shiploads of Australian wheat, for example, would pass by India to be stored for future consumption in Europe. As imports dropped, prices shot up and hoarders made a killing. Mr Churchill also pushed a scorched earth policy – which went by the sinister name of Denial Policy – in coastal Bengal where the colonisers feared the Japanese would land. So authorities removed boats (the lifeline of the region) and the police destroyed and seized rice stocks.

5. In an article published in The Hindu Magazine, Ramachandra Guha made some allegations against an “obscure Belgian priest” who was involved in the Ayodhya movement. The not-so-obscure Belgian priest decided to return the favor.

Guha’s own school could have made that same distinction, e.g. by saying that “it is a pity that Muslims destroyed Hindu temples, but that is no reason for us now to destroy mosques”, or so. Instead, at a time when their power in academe and the media was absolute and unchallenged by any capable Hindu opposition (as demonstrated in M.M. Joshi’s textbook reforms, a horror show of incompetence), it went to their heads and they thought they could get away with denying history. They did indeed get away with their bluff, and may well continue to do so for some more time. However, the prevalent power equation will not last forever, and one day the “secularist” exercise in history denial will be seen for what it was.’

The next edition of Indian History Carnival will be up on Dec 15th. Send your nominations to varnam dot blog @gmail or to @varnam_blog

1. In one of his articles, Harsha of Kashmir, a Hindu Iconoclast? Koenraad Elst writes that whenever the destruction of Hindu temples by Muslims is mentioned, the opponents argue that Hindus have done similar things to Buddhists and Jains – a largely untrue allegation. So when Mr. Salil Tripathi made the same allegation, B Shantanu decided to investigate.

So there we are. I am still missing “three names” (let alone “many” examples) but as I had promised in my comment #17, I did spend several hours reading online materials, archives and asking my readers/acquaintances to find out more. I have drawn a blank.

2. An important event this month was the Rama Janmabhumi verdict. Commenting on this Koenraad Elst explains how the lies of some eminent historians have been exposed.

Today, I feel sorry for the eminent historians. They have identified very publicly with the denial of the Ayodhya evidence. While politically expedient, and while going unchallenged in the academically most consequential forums for twenty years, that position has now been officially declared false. It suddenly dawns on them that they have tied their names to an entreprise unlikely to earn them glory in the long run.

3. Continuing with Ayodhya, at varnam, we had a post which explained why eminent historians are angry with the verdict.

Finally, dismissing the argument by some historians that the structure beneath the mosque could not be a temple because of the discovery of animal bones, “HC was also surprised to note the “zeal” in some of the archaeologists and historians appearing as witnesses on behalf of the Sunni Waqf Board who made statements much beyond reliefs demanded by the Waqf.”

4. In a post about Alberuni, Arundhati writes about his visit to India

Alberuni tries his best to understand other civilizations on their own terms and looks for common ground between his own religion and the religions of India. He is still unable to completely avoid his own frame of reference – for example, the assumption of the concept of One God as being inherently superior (remind me again, exactly why is the worship of one invisible being superior to the worship of more than one invisible being)?

5. Based on the writings of the Huguenot traveller and scribe Jean Chardin, Fëanor writes about the Indian economy of the 17th century.

Gold and silver from the Americas and Europe simply poured into India. Being an agricultural and industrial powerhouse, and to all intents and purposes self-sufficient in food, India was able to export away most of its surpluses. And, with a large population base that was able to work for cheap (and with inflation being next to zero for well-nigh on a couple of centuries), India was able to produce goods so competitively priced that even factoring in the risks of international trade, they still were cheaper than local products in Iran and the Ottoman domains. 

6. In 1774, the French flag was hoisted in the Zamorin’s palace. But why didn’t Calicut become a French colony? Maddy has a very interesting story

Just imagine, if all had gone in the directions that Monsieur Duprat had wished, Calicut would have been a French Colony and instead of eating chicken biriyani at Sagar we would have been ordering Bouillabaisse or Coq au vin or some such strange stuff like frogs legs sautéed in wine in some French restaurant

The next edition of Indian History Carnival will be up on Nov 15th. Send your nominations to varnam dot blog @gmail or as a tweet to varnam_blog

1. Patanjali is credited with the creation of Yoga, but what he wrote was not about Hatha Yoga. So when did Hatha Yoga originate? Koenraad Elst says

I don’t think any other asana postures except those for simply sitting up straight have been recorded before the late-medieval Gheranda Samhita, Hatha Yoga Pradipika and such. In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna calls on Arjuna to “become a yogi”, but he gives no instructions in postures or breathing exercises. Libertines practising the whole range of Kama Sutra postures got more exercise in physical strength and agility than the yogis of their age, who merely sat up straight and forgot about their bodies.

2. In a long post, Anuraag Sanghi writes about the secret of the Indian  socio-political system

Bharat-tantra, the Indic socio-political system, addresses three basic human aspirations. If humans are deprived of these basic ‘wants’, these aspirations, it is cause for war – as per India’s wisdom narrative. These aspirations are ज़र zar (meaning gold), जन jan (meaning people) and ज़मीन jameen (meaning land).
This makes the basis भारत-तंत्र Bharat-tantra different from Western politico-economic systems, that are based on four factors of production (land, labour, capital and enterprise). भारत-तंत्र Bharat-tantra treats these three elements as ‘aspirational’ while Western theory sees these four factors as ‘exploitative’.

3. Recently Wendy Doniger wrote a review of John Smith’s Mahabharata and she did not mention any of the Indian works.Fëanor wonders why.

Aficionados are no doubt aware that there are several single- and multi-volume editions of the Mahabharata published in India alone. At a pinch I can mention Ramesh Menon’s works, and Kamala Subramaniam’s, and Bibek Debroy’s. The abridgements by R. K. Narayan and C. Rajagopalachari are usually the first introductions to this tale. There are also the reimaginings by Pratibha Ray (Yajnaseni) and M. T. Vasudevan Nair (Randaamoozham) (further retold by Prem Panicker in Bhimsen), Shivaji Samant (Mrityunjay) and P. K. Balakrishnan (Ini Nyan Urangatte). This article in the Telegraph describes other efforts by Namita Gokhale, Amruta Patil and Devdutt Pattanaik. And the grand-daddy of them all is the otiose Victorian version by K. M. Ganguli.

4. According to Vijay, Pallava stone sculptures of the Dharamaraja Ratha and Chola Bronzes towards the closing years of Sri Raja Raja Chola are the finest examples of art that he has seen.

The upper tiers of the Dharamaraja Ratha in Mallai, hold in their midst some of the finest specimens of artistic expression, for not being confined to any cannons the unrestrained imagination of the Pallava sculptor ran riot, faultless and matchless in their execution, working within the cramped confines of its upper tiers, the whole structure being a monolith carved out of mother rock top down, with zero scope for error, what these immortal artists did to the hard granite is the very pinnacle of artistic brilliance.

5. In his seminar paper Law and Order in 17th Century Mughal Sindh, Sepoy looks at the resistance movements and disorders under the Shah Jahan regime.

Three main themes emerge from the present scholarship on resistance movements. First, Mughal administrators sought to extract higher and higher revenue payments from peasants who were already unable to bear their tax burdens. Second, the zamindars were engaged in a power struggle with other landholders as well as with the Mughal administrators. Lastly, the peasant uprisings were led by – and often fueled by – the zamindars as pawns in their struggle for autonomy from the central powers. Sindh, in the seventeenth century, provides an excellent venue to examine these themes.

6. Maddy explains how Muthuswamy Dikshitar composed the Nottu Swara Sahitya influenced by Western music and compositions.

So as we saw, the Celtic tunes were to affect Dikshitar prodding him to create a new genre called Nottuswara – ‘Notes Swara’ (nottu being the Tamil slang for notes) based on these British tunes but set to Sanskrit devotional lyrics. You can call them Indi Celtic fusion in today’s terms. Many of these are based on the folk music tradition of the British Isles and are not from the Western classical music traditions. 39 or 40 of such compositions were considered to have been completed by Muthuswamy.

7. Without help from the local kings, could the British have conquered India? Calicut Heritage says

It would appear that the idea of territorial sovereignty was a western concept imported into India by the colonials in the 18th Century. Our rulers – the Mughals as well as smaller rulers like the Zamorin – had viewed the state more as an economic unit which could be controlled to extract revenue for the state.
Ultimately, it looks as if our rulers were too keen to offer portions of their territory on a platter to the colonial powers in return for protection, weapons, money or even a cask of red wine, as in the case of Jehangir!

The next edition of Indian History Carnival will be up on October 15th. Send your nominations to varnam dot blog @gmail or as a tweet to varnam_blog

Here is a collection of posts related to Indian history from the blogosphere.

1. At varnam, we had a book review of Michel Danino’s new book The Lost River on the river Sarasvati.

In The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture (2004), Prof. Edwin Bryant writes that till recently most scholars in the West were unaware that there was an Aryan debate: the issue was considered settled. With exceptions like A Survey of Hinduism (2007) by Klaus K. Klostermaier and An Introduction to Hinduism (1996) by Gavin Flood, very few books mention the debate. But even among those books which mention this debate, Sarasvati, which challenges the normative view, has not got a fair hearing. In Prof. Bryant’s book, Sarasvati gets less than 5 pages; Thomas Trautmann’s The Aryan Debate (2008) has a 50 page abridged version of S.P.Gupta’s article on the Indus-Sarasvati civilization. Thus it is commendable that Danino has expanded on a rarely mentioned topic.

2. In a post titled The Arab conquest of Sind, and the Spanish conquest of Mexico, Hari quotes V S Naipaul on  the Arab conquest of the Hindu-Buddhist Sindh.

The Chachnama shows the Arabs of the seventh century as a people stimulated and enlightened by the discipline of Islam, developing fast, picking up learning and new ways and new weapons (catapults, Greek fire) from the people they conquer, intelligently curious about the people they intend to conquer. The current fundamentalist wish in Pakistan [Naipaul was writing in 1979] to go back to that pure Islamic time has nothing to do with a historical understanding of the Arab expansion. The fundamentalists feel that to be like those early Arabs they need only one tool: the Koran. Islam, which made seventh-century Arabs world conquerors, now clouds the minds of their successors or pretended successors.

3. What was behind the rise of English power in India? How did few English soldiers manage to control India? Disillusioned by the answers provided by Indian historians, Anuraag provides his explanation

The usual answers trotted out are:-
Military superiority (better trained and motivated English soldiers)
Technological superiority (Indians had bows and arrows versus English guns and cannons)
Political unity (united English vs a divided India)
Historical evidence completely contradicts these three constructs during the 1600-1850 period, the phase of English ascent. For real answers we will need to look somewhere else.

4. In the 19th century, there was a rumor that the owners of Irani restaurants in Bombay were adding opium to tea and the British Govt. got involved to sort out the issue. Maddy has that story

By the 1820s a large number of Parsis, Marwaris, Gujarati Banias and Konkani Muslims had moved into the opium trade at Mumbai. Of the 42 foreign firms operating in China at the end of the 1830s, 20 were fully owned by Parsis. This effect was evident in the geographical make up of the city. It was the Parsis, many of them beneficiaries of opium’s huge profits, who developed South Bombay. It was primarily opium that linked Bombay to the international capitalist economy and the western Indian hinterland in the nineteenth century.

5. Following the Chauri Chaura incident in February, 1922, Mahatma Gandhi called off the Non-Cooperation movement. But Gandhiji did not feel the same following the Wagon Tragedy of 1921. Calicut Heritage writes

What history does not tell us is how Gandhiji was suddenly jolted into action after the loss of 23 lives in Chauri Chaura and called off the movement when six months before this event, many more innocent lives had been lost in Malabar on the same Khilafat cause? As Gandhi wrote, explaining his decision to call off the non-cooperation movement, ‘God spoke clearly through Chauri Chaura’. Perhaps, God was less coherent in Malabar! Sir C. Sankaran Nair wrote about Gandhi in his book Gandhi and Anarchy (1922 ) : Mr. Gandhi, to take him at his best is indifferent to facts. Facts must submit to the dictates of his theories.

The next Carnival will be up on September 15th. You can send the nominations by e-mail to varnam dot blog (gmail) or as a tweet to @varnam_blog