1. Maddy has an introductory post about Charles Dellon, a French Catholic physician who traveled to India in the 17th century. He was captured by the Goan Inquisition and also made interesting observations about Kerala
   

   He is surprised that the Malabar Nair lady does not use perfumes and uses just coconut oil for the hair, not even adorning flowers unlike the women of Surat. He is mystified that North Malabar men eat animals like boar, but never a rabbit. The elephant amazes him, with its intelligence and he testifies to the same with a couple of interesting stories. Some of the aspects of his account especially the guard/escort systems provided by the Nairs, excommunication and outcastes, the Zamorin’s chief lieutenant etc. have been hardly mentioned in such detail by other writers so I will perhaps cover them later in a more factual essay. In fact he mentions that the Nairs of 1670, were sharp shooters carrying both muskets and the ball making molds, firing them with the rifle butt on the cheek, unlike Europeans who kept the butt on the shoulder. They had other arms too like the six foot bow and arrows, scimitars and lances. But then again, according to Dellon, even though courageous, the Nair’s never maintained order while marching, and were not structured or disciplined during combat. He spends a few paragraphs on the Moplah’s and states clearly that a tenth of the proceeds of their piratical endeavors were submitted to the prince of the land.

2. Mughal India blog has an illustrated post explaining how Jai Singh’s observatory in Jaipur worked
   

   The observatories in Delhi and Jaipur consist of a number of masonry instruments grouped together in enclosures, usually referred to as Jantar Mantar. These were to some extent inspired by instruments developed in Samarkand by Ulugh Beg (1394-1449), and doubtless Jai Singh hoped to see continued there further work of that kind. By far the most interesting of them is the large sextant enclosed in a chamber in which the sun’s light is admitted through small holes in a brass sheet. At noon the disk of the sun is projected, as in a pinhole camera, onto the scale of the sextant. Since a scale was inscribed on the sextant it was possible not only to examine the disk of the sun, but to determine in this way the true altitude of the sun on any day.

3. Kathy Lazenbatt, Librarian of the Royal Asiatic Society, recently presented some of the botanical drawings of Sir William Jones and his wife Lady Anna Maria Jones.
   

   The letters of Sir William Jones show that he first developed an interest in botany shortly after arriving in India when he was convalescing after an illness. His doctor had suggested that Jones undertake some gentle activity such as examining plants and lent him a copy of a work by Linnaeus. This soon developed into a pastime which husband and wife could enjoy together, with Sir William examing and describing the plants and Lady Anna Maria illustrating them. Watercolour painting and sketching were considered very suitable leisure activities for English ladies at that time.

4. On 13th of April, 1919, the British empire murdered Indians at Jallianwalla Bagh. Abhinav Agarwal writes about the event and the aftermath.
   

   So, while Gandhiji’s reaction to the massacre “appears to be somewhat mysterious”, “The great poet Rabindranath Tagore relinquished his Knighthood as a measure of protest”, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya “patiently collected the details of the tragic incident”, and the 92 leading questions that he tried to place in the Central Legislative Council were disallowed by the Viceroy. It is a sad commentary on how heroes are treated in this world, that the British government had to intervene to provide immunity to the heroes of these murders. The Government brought out a Bill of Indemnity “for protecting the civil and military officials in the Punjab from consequences of their action.”

We welcome contributions to the carnival, if they satisfy the following rules

1. The entry must be a blog post and not a newspaper article
2. It should have a connection to India
3. The e-mail should have “Carnival” in the subject line, else it will escape my filter.

Please send your nominations by e-mail to varnam.blog @gmail. The next carnival will be up on May 15th.

1. Daljit Nagra is writing a version of Ramayana drawing based on all available English versions. In this post, he writes about a particular version he came across
   

   One of the most striking written versions I came across in my research is the one commissioned by Rana Jagat Singh of Mewar, which has survived since the 17th century. An illustrated manuscript in seven books, Jagat Singh’s Ramayana was commissioned in 1649 and has been separated for over 150 years: five of the books have been in the British Library since 1844 and the other two books have been in Mumbai and Udaipur. Now the British Library has digitised their holdings and all that remains of the work is to be reunited online.
   The Jagat Singh Ramayana is not only packed full of remarkable paintings – images that help us visualise an ancient imagination from the viewpoint of 17th-century Indians – it is also dazzlingly multicultural. Commissioned by a Sikh, this Sanskrit text owes a debt to a Hindu storyteller, and was illustrated by a Muslim. Most of the manuscript has also spent a large part of its life in the west. The internet is the rightful home for such a great text. The Ramayana is one of the greatest stories ever written, visualised or heard. As such it should be available to the world.

2. Since Shiva Rathri was just over, it is a good time to look into the iconography of the Shivalingam at Gudimallam
   

   For starters it is the most controversial of subjects in Hindu Iconography and being very much the amateur i am treading a precarious line here, but then what is so special about this form that has seen its spread across the nook and corner of not only India but deep into South East Asia – in central Vietnam, into Cambodia – and that too as early as the 6th and 7th Centuries ? Cannot believe it… Standing a full 4 feet tall, holding the pride of place among exhibits, the massive stone pillar is an awe inspiring site. On closer scrutiny, it is not any stone pillar but a Shiva linga and this is no Indian Museum – this is at the Museum of Vietnamese History, Hochi Minh city, Vietnam and is a local find. Fu Nan period, 6th C CE.

3. After bringing us the tale of Joao Da Cruz, Maddy has the fascinating story of Koya Pakki, who played a major role in the relation between Cochin, Calicut and the Portuguese.
   

   So we see that the shaming of Cabral and the murder of Aires Correa by the Arabs of Calicut had disastrous effects, and resulted in Vasco da Gama coming again- we studied the massacre of the Meri. Koya Pakki as we saw, survived the attack at Calicut in 1500, moved farther to Cannanore and came back as a friend of Portugal, sometimes also as an emissary of the Zamorin as is stated in some books. In fact it is also likely that he may have just carried a commission of the Zamorin to Lisbon in 1515, though not travelling as a formal emissary of the Zamorin, if I read the story right. It is also clear that it was Koya Pakki who assisted the Portuguese in moving their sights to Cochin and Cannanore, thus isolating Calicut from later Portuguese trade. Finally we saw his involvement in the last scene of the play, supporting the Portuguese flight from the Calicut fort and earning punishment from the Zamorin. So that was Pakki, yet again a small fry in the big story, but the person who was key to many an act.

4. The British Library has two 18th century Mughal maps which show the route from Delhi to Khandahar.  Mughal India blog writes
   

   It is possible, however, that the British Library maps were based on an earlier model since their details complement rather than duplicate the printed account. They include references to the residence of Maharaja Amar Singh who ruled Patiala from 1748 to 1782, and “the late Burhan al-Mulk”, the first Nawab of Oudh, who died in 1739, besides frequent mention of ruined serais (‘travel-lodges’) which were probably destroyed in the disturbances from the mid to late 18th century. Unlike the memoir, both maps extend the route as far as Kandahar.

5. The Virtual Victorian has a post about two members of Indian royalty who went to England, got converted and whom Queen Victoria tried to engage in matrimony.
   

   With both of the young Indians having converted to Christianity, and with any offspring they might then produce most likely to be Christians themselves, Victoria saw it as her mission to join the pair in matrimony – hoping that this might be the start of the spreading of the Christian faith throughout the whole of the India. However, there is a saying that man may plan but God unplans, and even the plans of a Queen may fail when it comes to matters of matchmaking. Whether or not Gowramma was attracted to Duleep (she was known to be an atrocious flirt, even making eyes at the Prince of Wales, and then discovered in an affair with one of her guardian’s stable boys) the handsome young prince was not convinced to wed his fellow Indian.

We welcome contributions to the carnival, if they satisfy the following rules

1. The entry must be a blog post and not a newspaper article
2. It should have a connection to India
3. The e-mail should have “Carnival” in the subject line, else it will escape my filter.

Please send your nominations by e-mail to varnam.blog @gmail. The next carnival will be up on April 15th.

1. Is English a Scandinavian or a West Germanic language? There is a debate going on this topic and it boils down to the question: do languages which are in close contact with each other borrow just words or do they borrow grammar as well.? Sally Thomason mentions an example from India
   

   Probably the most famous case of all is Kupwar, a village in India in the border area between Indic languages in the north and Dravidian languages in the south. Morphosyntactic diffusion has been multidirectional in Kupwar, but the most extensive changes have affected the Kupwar variety of the Indic language Urdu, which has borrowed from the Dravidian language Kannada and from Marathi, the other Indic language spoken in the village. The changes include adoption of an inclusive/exclusive `we’ distinction, subject-verb agreement rules in four different constructions, word order features, and about a dozen other features (details can be found in the 1971 Gumperz & Wilson article). Another striking case was reported by Andrei Malchukov in 2002: the Tungusic language Evenki has borrowed a volitional mood suffix and an entire set of personal endings from the Turkic language Yakut. It’s worth noting that word order is the most frequently borrowed type of syntactic feature — a relevant point because two of Faarlund’s examples of Scandinavian structure in English are word order features.

2. Girolamo Sernigi was responsible for financing many Portuguese voyages to India and also for making Calicut popular in Europe. Maddy has a post about what Sernigi wrote about Calicut
   

   So much for Sernigi’s letters. The full texts of those can be found online, in the first reference. What became of Sernigi? If you recall, the entry of the Florentine associations with the Portuguese broke the Venetian control of the spice trade. In fact most ships had their representatives in the ships that travelled to the Indies. Their notes of the trade and the locales as we saw from the example above provided much insight to the benign culture and conditions in Malabar, to the people of Europe and encouraged their forced entry into Malabar. According to Moacyr Scares Pereira, the first nau to return to Lisbon, Nossa Senhora Anunciada, belonged to D. Alvaro de Braganca and his associates, Italian merchants Bartolomeo Marchioni, Girolamo Sernigi and possibly Antonio Salvago. So had it not been for people like Sernigi, Gama might never have landed in Calicut.

3. Is this the oldest surviving Mughal document? The Mughal Indian blog at the British Library has a farman of Babur dating to 1527 CE
   

   Very few original documents survive from Babur’s reign; S.A.I. Tirmizi (see below) lists only four. This one is particularly interesting. The early date suggests that under Mughal rule a new grant was required to confirm Jalāl al-Dīn in a post which he had probably already held under the Lodhi Sultans of Delhi. The use of the administrative unit parganah, a term fora collection of villages which had been in official use in India from the 14th century, demonstrates the Mughals’ continued use of an existing administrative structure. However, the grant itself is called a suyurghāl, a Mongol term for a hereditary grant. Other new terms used are mutavajjihāt and māl u jihāt, both names of taxes found in documents of the Turkman and Timurid dynasties which ruled much of Iran during the 15th century.

4. The 125th birthday of Srinivasa Ramanujam was on Dec 22, 2012. drisyadrisya writes about the media coverage
   

   And what about the visual and the print media ? I haven’t yet come across anything significant from them either. In fact, perhaps today, this piece got an extensive space in daily mail UK and so far I haven’t seen the Indian media pick it up except for a much shortened version in “Hindu Business Line” Go through the two, and tell me, what major difference do you notice in the treatment of the subject ? True to its ‘tradition’ which is has ever made its name a misnomer the “Hindu” Business Line has completed ignored the Hindu aspect. One might say that the UK mirror was meant for an audience not-so-familiar with Ramanujam, and the HBL being an Indian publication, did not want to repeat the well known ? .. well well well … well known ? Quoting from the mirror “Ramanujan, a devout Hindu, thought these patterns were revealed to him by the goddess Namagiri” . I just wanted to pause at that statement and give it some thought … Could there have been any motive for Ramanujam to lie ? Not one that I can think off .. after all why would one give credit to someone else , even if it be a Goddess.. One potential argument that could stand logic (though not necessarily true unless proven to be so) is from Hardy – “Ramanujan’s religiousness had been romanticised by Westerners and overstated by Indian biographers”

5. A famous legend in Kerala is that of Peumthachan, a master sculptor who kills his talented and capable son due to jealousy. Vijay finds a similar story in Thirumalapuram
   

   The master sculptor who was excavating the north cave had a talented son who would bring his ‘coffee’ from home every day. He would then observe his father work the stone and would go around the hill and replicate the same moves on the stone there. He took care to match the strokes with those of his father’s hammer, so that his father’s hammer strikes would mask his own. He continued in this fashion when one day, the father suddenly stopped mid stroke and heard the sound of the hammer on chisel. He immediately set off to find the source and came across a boy stooped over a stone. But since he was turned away from him, he couldn’t recognize him but seeing the work he realized that someone was copying his design. Enraged he stuck the lad on his head with his hammer and slew him on the spot. Only then he realized that it was his own son but it was too late!

If you have any links for the History Carnival, please leave a comment or send an e-mail to varnam.blog @gmail. The next carnival will be up on Feb 15th.

1. Buddhist Art news writes about the history of Buddhism in Andhra Pradesh
   

   Amaravati is another famous Buddhist site located close to the Krishna River and is believed to date to around the 3rd century BCE. The large mahastupa was originally built by King Ashoka while many other buildings are said to have been constructed over at least four phases. The Amaravati ruins first caught the attention of scholars in the late 19th century and a number of collections of artifacts from Amaravati complex are exhibited in a number of museums around the world. Relic caskets were discovered here during the excavations conducted during the period of 1957-67 at the mahastupa site. It is said that there is evidence to state that a Mahayanic site was later transformed into a Tantric Vajrayana site. The style of sculpture style is in fact referred to as the Amaravati School of Art or Amaravati Sculpture and is well known for its narrative style.

2. A few years back there was an excellent Malayalam movie called Nottam which was based on the life of Kudiyattam performers (See few clips). David Shulman has a long piece in The New York Review of Books about this art form.
   

   Kudiyattam plays, always based on classical Sanskrit texts, many of them composed in Kerala, invariably include a long nirvahanam or “retrospective” in which a character reveals, mostly by the silent language of hand- and eye-gestures, abhinaya, the long process that has brought him or her to the present moment in the play. In the course of performing this retrospective, the solitary actor frequently adopts other personae, always signaling such a transition by a coded move familiar to the spectators—usually by tying or untying the tasseled ends of a long cord that forms part of his elaborate costume of red, white, and black cloth, rich ornament with many reflecting surfaces, and a high headdress. This condensation of many voices in a single actor (called pakarnattam, “exchanging roles”) is a hallmark of the tradition and a clear innovation in relation to what we know of classical Sanskrit drama. Sanskrit verses and prose passages from the original text of the play are recited, or rather sung, always in a peculiar, high-pitched musical style that includes several distinct ragas or recitation modes; but the great bulk of the performance is devoted to the actor’s silent enactment and elaboration of such passages, to the accompaniment of the drums.

3. Kerim Friedman writes about Nicholas Dirks’s Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India
   

   One of Dirks’ most important books is Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India in which he argues that India’s contemporary caste system was largely a colonial invention. This isn’t to say that there wasn’t something called caste before colonialism, just that caste in its present form was shaped by the colonial process. Nor was this shaping of caste purely a top-down matter, but something that happened through a process that heavily involved the Indian people themselves. Both the Brahmins who worked closely with the British to encode the caste system in the new bureaucracy, as well as the ordinary people, many of whom organized politically to ensure that their caste status was listed favorably in the census. While the “invented” nature of caste is still a matter of considerable academic debate, much of the debate is over how extensive and how formalized caste was in pre-colonial India. Most scholars accept Dirks’ argument that caste was profoundly altered as a result of the colonial encounter.

4. Maddy follows the story of Chinese convicts in the Nilgiris and writes about the history of tea
   

   The cinchona bark was the source for quinine and was required in large quantities to deal with the malaria fever which was rampant all over India and many other parts of the world. The cinchona bark was brought to Europe by the Jesuits and was called the Jesuit bark. The demand for the bark soon outgrew the supply. European powers vied with each other to get hold of the seedlings so that it could be planted in their colonies in Africa and Asia. But it was only by the middle of the 19th century that the cinchona seedlings were successfully smuggled out of South America. By 1867, the commercial cultivation of cinchona in the Nilgiris gained popularity. Cinchona was planted in a woody ravine on the slopes of the Doddabetta. Labor was scarce and many of the government and private plantations used convict labor to clear the jungle and to plant cinchona. The convicts were mainly Chinese from the Straits Settlements and some from mainland China. After they served their time, these Chinese men married Tamil women and settled down to live in Naduvattam; making a living out growing vegetables and from dairy farming.

5. In 1888, a rich man named Buchi Babu created the Madras United Cricket Club and that marked the birth of Indian cricket in the city. Sriram writes about Buchi Babu.
   

   Most of the members were boys from poor families. Parents considered cricket a waste of time and very reluctantly allowed the boys to play the game. Orthodoxy was another factor, for cricket did not recognise caste barriers. It was common for players to slink away from home in dhotis and then change to trousers at the venue, for leaving home wearing trousers was a sure sign of going out to play. Opposing teams were invariably from schools and colleges. And it was from them that Buchi Babu selected promising youngsters. He imported shirts, trousers, cricket boots, bats, balls, gloves and other equipment for his players and encouraged them in every way. Over time, the MUC became known for its six perfect pitches, all better than those of the Chepauk-based, English-only Madras Cricket Club (MCC). And it was Buchi Babu’s dream that his MUC would one day be invited to play against the MCC.

6. Airawat, writing in Military History of India, has a brief history of the formation of Himachal Pradesh.
   

   Sardar Patel had supported the cause of Himachal Pradesh and admitted as early as 1948 that “the ultimate objective is to enable this area to attain the position of an autonomous province of India.” On the other hand, Nehru and other Congressmen considered HP to be economically unviable and were pushing for its merger into Punjab…..no doubt with an eye out for the completion of the Bhakra-Nangal project. One of the other arguments made was that HP lacked administrative officers of good calibre since the territory was mostly made up of princely states. But the local leaders as well as princes of Himachal opposed such a merger on cultural and geographical grounds.

With this edition the Carnival completes 5 years with the help of regular contributors like Sandeep V and Feanor. If you have any links for the carnival, please send it to varnam.blog @gmail. The next carnival will be up on Jan 15th.

1. While reading Diana Eck’s India: A Sacred Geography, Sunil Deepak has questions like why our ancient traditions are not taught in schools. He argues that we need to break out of the cultural colonization of the mind

I feel that we have a kind of cultural colonization of our minds, where we pretend that only western linear-rational way of thinking exists, and world needs to be understood exclusively according to this logic. The non-linear and apparently contradictory thinking pervades our cultures, but we pretend that it does not merit acknowledgement or understanding.
We need to break free of this cultural colonization and learn to look at our ancient myths, stories and traditions as living paradigms that influence and shape us even today

2. Why did Asoka write some his edicts in Aramaic? Fëanor investigates

Why Aramaic? Well, that was the main language of communication across the Near East and the erstwhile Persian empire. (Recall it had fallen less than a century earlier.) Rather unchauvinistically, the Achaemenid rules of Iran didn’t impose their own lingo on their subjects. The Greek bit is slightly more comprehensible – there were Greek-speaking peoples dotting the sundry Alexandrias set up by that maniac eponymous conqueror all the way from Greece to the Hindu Kush. According to Carratelli (the translator above) it appears that the Seleucid rulers of the area were in the process of establishing Greek as official bureaucratic language, but because it’s unlikely that Ashoka was propagandising outside his empire, he must have been aiming his bilingual texts for Greeks living within it. (Why is it unlikely?)

3. Judith Weingarten writes about the history of Bamiyan and the various travelers who wrote about their visits.

Visitors of an entirely different kind arrived in Bamiyan in the 19th century, adventurers and spies heading to or from British India. The antiquarian Charles Masson (actually a deserter from the British army) arrived in 1832. An early excavator of Buddhist sites, he also worked surreptitiously for the British as their ‘Agent in Cabul for communicating intelligence of the state of affairs in that quarter on a salary of Rs. 250 per annum.’ It didn’t take long for Afghan authorities to realize — correctly — that English archaeologists was just another way of saying English spies.

4. Indian History and Architecture blog has a post about the Harihareshvara temple and the author goes over various inscriptions found in the town.

No 82, Inscriptions of the Chalukyas of Badami – Language Sanskrit, script Early Kannada – dated Saka 616 (694-95 CE) – The purpose of the record was to register the grant of the village Kirukagamasi in Edevolal-vishaya in Vanavasi-mandala to Ishanasharma of Vatsya-gotra who was the son of Marasharma and grandson of Shrisharma, who had performed the Soma sacrifice. The donee was an adept in Vedas and Vedangas. The grant was given at the request of illustrious Aluvaraja when the king Vinayaditya was in his victorious camp at Karanjapatra in the neighborhood of Hareshpura. Given also were cultivated and uncultivated fields on the west of village Pergamasi. In the connection with the boundaries of these fields are mentioned certain villages, viz., Pulivutu near Sirigodu, Karvasurigola, Perbutu, Algire, Algola, Nittakala, Nerilgire, Kurupakere and Arakatta. The record was written by mahasandhivigrahika Sri-Ramapunyavallabha.

5. Calicut Heritage attended a discussion in Singapore in which the topic was if Zheng He‘s voyages were part of China’s imperialist designs?

In sum, Calicut cannot subscribe to the theory that the Zheng He fleet was out to conquer and colonise. That was not the experience of medieval Calicut, at least. They did nothing to dominate or control the ports or maritime trade routes of either Quilon or Calicut. Perhaps, as in the case of Vasco da Gama ( who thought that the ruler and people of Calicut were Christian because he mistook the temple of Devi in Puthoor for a Church of Mother Mary), the Chinese mistook the polite exchange of gifts by the Calicut ruler for a tacit recognition of Chinese sovereignty! But, proto-colonialism – sorry, we do not share the view point.

The next edition will be the 60th edition of the Carnival which completes 5 years. It should be up on the 15th of December. Please send your nominations to varnam.blog @gmail

1. Sriram writes about the less known deposition of Governor Foxcroft by Sir Edward Winter in 1665
   

   The moral tenor of the Fort was fairly lax with even the chaplain, Simon Smythe being a hard drinker. He was besides married to Winter’s niece. Together, the two hatched a plot and on the pretext of an argument at the Common Table in the Fort, Winter sought the impeachment of Foxcroft. Nothing came of this immediately beyond Winter storming into Foxcroft’s rooms early one morning. Convinced that a coup was at hand, Foxcroft ordered the arrest of Winter. But within 48 hours, Winter had won over the Captain of the Guard and more importantly, the latter’s wife. He was released and bided his time during which interval, the Captain, Lt. Chuseman, burst into Foxcroft’s rooms and in the ensuing duel, at least one Councillor was killed while Foxcroft, his son and another Councillor were wounded. Foxcroft and three others were arrested and Winter took possession of the Fort. That was in September 1665. 

2. Maddy has the fascinating tale of an Indian spy in Turkey following the first World War

This is one of the strangest cases I have come across and perhaps one that is still not solved. On May 24th 1921, this Indian was hanged to death in Ankara, indicted of spying for the British and of a purported assassination attempt on Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Well, as it was to turn out, that was a turning point, and a reason for a total lack of Turkish support for the Indian independence and Khilafat movement in India. Later as it turned out, when the Ali brothers went to Turkey, they could not even get an audience with Mustafa Kemal, perhaps owing to the aborted plans of Saghir. At that point in history, it became a major event in Turkey and the nationalists made a big fuss of it, due to their own issues with Britain. It was a period when Indians in general were not too popular in Ankara as a large number of Punjabi’s and Gurkha’s were involved in the battles at Gallipoli and part of the Allied powers.

3. Baxter Wood has a review of Prof. Vinay Lal’s UCLA course titled Topics in Contemporary Indian History: The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi. This was my opinion after listening to Prof. Lal talk about the dark skinned dasas in another course.

Vinay Lal covers many themes about Gandhi: Women, Religions, the West, the Body and his Mentors. But perhaps the most interesting thematic subject is about fasting. And it is presented in several places throughout the course. Twenty-five years ago Lal wrote a book about fasting. His mother’s critique was that the author of a book about fasting should actually try fasting. So Lal took an oath not to publish until he experienced fasting and, of course, the book has not been, nor will ever be published. You will have to get it here.

Not many entries this time. The next carnival will be up on Nov 15th. Send your nominations as a tweet to @varnam_blog or as a mail to varnam.blog @gmail

1. Sriram writes about Charles Lawson, who ran the powerful newspaper The Madras Mail from 1868 CE

The Madras Mail, founded in 1868, was the true representative of commercial interests. Lawson was close to most of the top-ranking business houses of First Line Beach and after a brief stint in rented offices on Second Line Beach, The Madras Mail moved to the first floor of A D’ Rozario, Auctioneers at 6, First Line Beach. This building, no longer in existence was the southern neighbour of the State Bank building. Lawson took an active interest in the affairs of the Madras Chamber of Commerce of which he was elected Secretary on 24th November 1862. The Chamber had till then not been lucky in the matter of Secretaries with the incumbents leaving to take up Government and other assignments. Lawson was to be Secretary for 30 long years.

2. Maddy writes about the voyage of TSS Maharaja which took Moplahs to Kalapani

The story of the movement of people to Andaman is a sad and cruel one; especially the initial century of its existence, as Andaman was to serve as the English Penal colony for Indians who acted against them. The English had chosen isolation to be a part of incarceration and in early days many a white convict was transported to Australia. As far as the Indians were concerned, the Andaman islands and the Hijli camp (near Kharagpur) were particularly infamous and followed the earlier days when they were sent to Singapore and a few other places like Botany bay in Australia, where they were tasked with clean up as well as hard labor (some even say that ‘klings’ is a derogatory usage for Indians that came from that period due to the sound of the chains that Indian convicts wore). Interestingly, the aspect of isolation was arrived at as people abhorred the prospect of back breaking labor in faraway places from which there was no return (for lifers), especially in the case of Hindu middle class caste conscious political prisoners not used to work or doing things like crossing the black waters or Kala Pani, against the tenets of early religious texts (see my article on ocean crossing taboo).

3. Jayarava has a review of Johannes Bronkhorst’s Greater Magadha (Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 2 South Asia). He seems to rely a lot on Prof. Michael Witzel’s world view, but here are some excerpts

Another plus is that Bronkhorst has made it abundantly clear that Buddhism can no longer be studied in isolation, but is a branch of Indology. Ignorance of archaeology and material culture (the gist of Greg Schopen’s critique of Buddhist studies as a subject) is no longer acceptable. The Late Vedic literature–the Epics, Early Upaniṣads, Brāhmaṇas, Dharmasūtras, Dharmaśastras and even the Gṛhyasūtras–is starting to look more relevant in understanding early Buddhism. Early Buddhism existed in a context and we have been overlooking, or over-simplifying this context for too long. The downside of this is that an already complex subject appears to become an order of magnitude more complex. And this at a time when we are just beginning to make use of the Chinese parallels to the Pāli Nikāyas and discover the influence of Central Asia in transmitting Buddhist to the East. And this also at a time when Buddhist studies is dying out as an academic subject in the UK.

4. Fëanor writes how the 600 years old Asom dynasty came to an end

The biggest threat to Asom came from the Mughals who were rampaging across eastern India at the same time. Unlike the Hindu kingdoms of the rest of the subcontinent which were worn out after centuries of warfare against them, the Ahom were fresh and dominant. Given their organisation as a mobilizer of manpower rather than ownership of land, the Ahom could raise armies at moment’s notice, a capability that surprised the Mughals. During the reign of Jahangir, there were almost annual battles between the two throughout the jungles around the Brahmaputra. The Ahom were expert at guerrilla tactics, demoralising the Mughals who called them ‘black and loathsome in appearance’ and Assam as ‘a land of witches and magic’.

Just 4 posts for this month. More on October 15th. If you have any links for the carnival send it to me at varnam.blog @gmail or as a tweet to @varnam_blog