The Indian History Carnival, published on the 15th of every month, is a collection of posts related to Indian history and archaeology.

1. Why are there no Chinese fishing nets in Calicut — the place where Zheng He visited — while Cochin has them? CHF has a theory. Please read the comments for this post as well.

A more plausible explanation has been offered by Deepa Leslie in her article at http://enchantingkerala.org/kerala-articles/chinese-nets.php According to her, it is the Portuguese Casado settlers from Macau who brought this form of fishing into Cochin. She explains further that the names of the various parts of the net currently in use are Portuguese in origin

2. Fëanor writes about 16th century Manipur when texts in Meitei Mayek script were burned to make way for new Sanskrit texts.

After Charai Rongba, his son Gareeb Niwaz fell under the influence of the Chaitanya school of Vaishnavism. He decided to no longer support the Meitei Mayek script, and – fearing that the old texts would undermine his efforts to establish Hinduism among the Manipuris, and quite probably encouraged by his Brahmin adviser Shantidas Adhikari – ordered the burning of documents written in it. Large numbers of histories and texts of the old faith were publicly set aflame. In view of the supposed prestige of the languages of the incoming new faith, Manipuri began to be written in the Bengali script, which along with Sanskrit, assumed greater importance in ritual matters.

3. Inorite has the tale of the kingdom of Vadakkamkur in Kerala

The fate of the dispossessed Rajahs of the Travancore region had always interested me and I could, at best, only find scattered sources that mentioned them in passing. I am still highly intrigued as to what happened to the Kayamkulam Rajah who was perhaps the fiercest and most difficult enemy of Travancore so much so that Marthanda Varma on his death bed instructed his successor that the enmity of the Kayamkulam Rajah was “never to be forgotten”.

4. Between 1840 and 1870, a commodity that was imported to the Presidencies of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay was American Ice. This trade made one man — Frederic Tudor of Boston — a millionaire. Maddy writes about A Frozen Journey and varnam has a post on the The Forgotten American Ice Trade.
5. The Oxford University Blog has an excerpt from the 1888 book The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook which gives practical advice to memsahibs in India.

In regard to other supplies, the difficulty in procuring them depends entirely on your position. The district officials have none, while a mere globe-trotter may starve. It is merely a matter of coercion, for the peasant does not wish to sell, and will not sell, if he thinks it polite to refuse. This fact should never be forgotten by the mistress, for it is easy to understand how fearful a weapon for oppression that appalling necessity of camp life, the tâhseel chuprassi, or tâhseel office orderly, may become…

6. Uber Desi has some photographs of coins used in pre-colonial and colonial India

If you find any posts related to Indian history published in the past one month, please send it to jk AT varnam DOT org or send a tweet to @varnam_blog. The next carnival will be up on May 15th.

The Indian History Carnival, published on the 15th of every month, is a collection of posts related to Indian history and archaeology.

1. Who is an Aryan? Giacomo Benedetti goes through the history of this word

In fact, when the Europeans, in the nineteenth century, began to familiarize with the Sanskrit and Avestan traditions, they were in a colonialist and positivistic frame of mind, they were inclined to see all in terms of biological races, and of the superiority of the white race… Previously, ethnic, social and religious differences were more important, and the East was seen as the origin of civilization and wisdom (also the Christian religion came from Asia), but in the nineteenth century they saw everywhere the supremacy of the white Europeans, and they were induced to think that this was due to a racial, intrinsic superiority. Moreover, they had to justify somehow their dominion.

2. A Greek play written before the second century CE in Egypt was set in Malabar and
   featured an ancient South Indian language – either Tulu or Kannada. Maddy has the story of Charition

And strange isn’t it – we come across the Indian weakness for booze in the Geniza scrolls – dealing with the Bomma slave and now again in these papyri. If only the king of Malpe (Malpinak) or Alupa knew how to handle his liquor, we may choose to think, but then again, he did not, and so we have this precious piece of history. Other interesting facts are the usage of women as personal bodyguards (these days the Libyan dictator Gaddafi has such a set of Amazons guarding him) and the attachment the Yavana Devadasi forms with the moon goddess and her refusal to steal the ornaments or offerings made by her devotees, are interesting aspects of the story.

3. In 1787 Charles Grant, who was the Commercial Resident of Malda, wrote a letter to one Mr. Wilberforce. This letter contained the word “Hindooism” –  the first ever known usage of this word. varnam has a post on Charles Grant.

After taking a position as the Commercial Resident of Malda, Grant took an interest in the moral nature of Indians. He rejected the argument that Hindus were people in whom mild and gentle qualities dominated; he thought that they were morally depraved. He wanted to bring in social and economic reform and the way for that, not surprisingly, was to make people acquainted with the truth of Revelation and free them from the ‘false religion’.

4. If you are interested in learning about the Indian Rebellion of 1857, a few podcasts are available and Anne has a list

In a short a time, three podcast series have started paying attention to the revolt in India in 1857. What began with disconcerted Indian foot-soldiers in the British colonial army – hence the rebellion is also called a mutiny – extended into a broad revolt which eventually even got the Mogul Emperor involved. After the fighting and the massacres neither India nor Britain would be the same

5. Worried about the Chinese military activity in Tibet, the Americans decided to install a surveillance device on the summit of Nanda Devi. Murphys law was involved and Fëanor has that story.

The following year, the Indians returned to the mountain. To their horror, they found that a landslide had hidden the nuclear generator. A missive of masterly understatement found its way to the CIA (‘We may be experiencing a small operational problem with Project Blue Mountain’). The Americans returned in force to attempt to salvage the device.

6. Recently Kim Plofker published a book called Mathematics in India based on books from the Vedic period to the 18th century. Hari has the book on his desk

There is the use of Pythagoras’ famous theorem in the construction of pillars, some centuries before the Greek philosopher is said to have postulated it in fifth century BC; Pāṇini’s rules of Sanskrit grammar and recursion, which “without exaggeration…anticipated the basic ideas of modern computer science”; and Pingala, whose study of Sanskrit verses led to the binary notation and the development of Pascal’s famous triangle, useful in the calculation of binomial coefficients (which, coincidentally, is what I am teaching now); and Madhava of Sangamagramma (circa 14th century), the genius of the Kerala School, who contributed along with others, to “the discoveries of the power series expansions of arctangent, sine, and cosine” (a text on this in Malayalam has survived).

If you find any posts related to Indian history published in the past one month, please send it to jk AT varnam DOT org or send a tweet to @varnam_blog. The next carnival will be up on April 15th.

The Indian History Carnival, published on the 15th of every month, is a collection of posts related to Indian history and archaeology.

1. In February 2009, a conference was held in Los Angeles titled, “The Sindhu-Sarasvati Valley Civilization: A Reappraisal“. This title was the cause of grief in some circles due to the association of Sarasvati with the Harappan civilization. Few of those lectures have been posted in their blog
• Opening Address by Navin Doshi
• Indus Valley Conference Report by Greg Heffernan
• Dholavira Excavation by R S Bhist.
• Time, Space and Structure in Ancient India by Subhash Kak
• The Latest on Sindhu and Sarasvati by Dilip Chakrabarti
• Genetics and The Aryan Debate by Michel Danino
2. Did Islam spread in India through violence? Were Hindu kings more violent than Islamic conquerers? Sandeep takes a look

I hate to disappoint him but this particular morsel of history dates farther back than Ghaznis and Ghoris. As early as CE 664, Abdur Rahman, an Arab invader took Kabul (then part of India). However, it took at least two centuries for Mohammad Bin Qasiman Arab againto successfully occupy parts of Sindh around CE 711-712. Subuktgin and his prodigious son, Mohammad of Ghazni, and then Mohammad Ghori were all Turks. I leave it to the readers intelligence to deduce from this piece of historical evidence that Qasim, Subuktigin, and the two Mohammads were merchants.

3. Based on Prithviraj Vijay, a 12th century account of the Kingdom of Ajmer, Airavat writes about the political and militrary details.

The pages following this eyewitness account are missing but this seems to have occurred in 1178 when Muhammad Ghori invaded Gujarat, sacking Nadol and Kiradu on the way. The manuscript continues, “When these fiends in the shape of men took possession of Nadol, the warriors of Prithviraja took up their bows and the emperor became angry and resolved to lay Ghori’s glory to dust.”

4. While Hampi is a well known destination, Pattadakkal which is about 90 miles is masked by Hampi’s shadow, says Arundhati.

After all, was Pattadakkal not considered so auspicious that Chalukya kings made it a point to be crowned on its soil? Did its literature not include some of the earliest work in the nascent Kannada language? And did not its architecture set the standard for future temple building? Even Vijayanagar for all its confidence could not resist incorporating Chalukya architectural styles.

5. Visiting Mahabalipuram after many decades, Kamini writes about the journey, how this place captured Western imagination and different versions of Arjuna’s penance.

Marco Polo is said to have visited Santhome (now in modern-day Madras) where he was regaled with tales of the lost temples of Mahabalipuram. His descriptions found their way, in part, to the Catalan Atlas of 1375. The Catalan Atlas is one of the most important atlases of the medieval era, and was put together by a Catalan Jew (from Spain) called Abraham Cresques. It shows India in peninsular form, and Mahabalipuram is mentioned there as “Setemelti”, which is assumed to be an erroneous version of “Sette Templi” – or seven temples.

6. Another place which Marco Polo visited was Tanjavur, the Chola capital. Hari was there recently and writes about how Dravidian politics has caused a surge in faith.

Being pious and following certain customs are ways of projecting one’s elevated caste status. This has resulted in a resurgence of local gods and goddesses — Adi Parasakthi for example. And feature stories in Tamil weeklies are often about film stars and prominent personages visiting their villages to worship their family deities.

7. Arby explores the similarities between Roman religion and Hinduism

It is more likely that the over the last three millennia, Hindutva evolved across the Indian subcontinent integrating itself with local beliefs, much like the Roman religion as mentioned earlier. However, without a central point of authority, the evolution has been chaotic and inconsistent. Also, the evolution was slow and time consuming. But in the end, Hindutva is a religion similar in character to the Roman one, with respect to religious belief, though not theology.

f you find any posts related to Indian history published in the past one month, please send it to jk AT varnam DOT org. Please send me links which are similar to the ones posted, in terms of content.The next carnival will be up on Nov 15th.

See Also: Previous Carnivals

The Indian History Carnival, published on the 15th of every month, is a collection of posts related to Indian history and archaeology.

1. Ravi Mundoli summarizes the current debate on the Indus script: “Seems like the lay person can’t do much other than remember that everyone has an axe to grind, and while one needn’t reject everything everyone says out of hand as being motivated by extraneous, non-academic/scientific reasons, it’s good to examine the evidence keeping in mind who is doing the analysis.“
2. Sandeep scanned through the NCERT history books and found appalling distortions. In his post he goes through four examples.
3. Three years back, the Kannada actress Jaimala triggered a major controversy when she said that she had entered the sanctum santorum of Sabarimala. varnam writes aboutMt. Athos in Greece where even female animals are not allowed
4. There have been debates on of if Marco Polo visited China, but now Calicut heritage asks if Marco Polo visited Calicut?
5. Sarvesh K Tiwari’s series
   on Akbar’s U-Turn continues with a look at Sufis. “Their islamization was to however complete soon, and whatever the origins of their real traditions, the later sUfI-s came down to become zealous missionaries of Islam, often displaying no lesser bigotry than the orthodox ulemA”
6. Nick Balmer continues his investigation into the coffee plantations of Mananthavadi: “Henry Baber was not the first person to grow coffee at Mananthavadi. As far as it is possible to tell, that honour belongs to Captain Henry Bevan, who was appointed in April 1825 to command the Wynaud Rangers, a force set up from the recently disbanded Seringapatam local battalion.”
7. Maddy  looks at Sardar K M Panikkar’s contributions – in the Tibet issue, creation of  a naval doctrine — and  his relationship with Nehru and Krishna Menon.

f you find any posts related to Indian history published in the past one month, please send it to jk AT varnam DOT org or use this form. Please send me links which are similar to the ones posted, in terms of content.The next carnival will be up on Aug 15th.

See Also: Previous Carnivals

The Indian History Carnival, published on the 15th of every month, is a collection of posts related to Indian history and archaeology.

1. The June 2009 issue of Pragati is a history special with two editorial perspectives, five short feature essays (including one piece of historical fiction), one book review, and passages from five books written over a spread of two thousand years.
2. Mekhala visited the rock shelters of Bhimbetka and has a report with some wonderful photographs.
3. During 1000 – 1500 CE period, when the maritime networks in the Indian ocean were active, a Sephardic Rabbi named Benjamin set out to travel around the world in 1160s. Except for the Orient and Spice Islands, he visited most lands traveled by Ibn Battuta. Feanor says, “There is a suspicion that this otherwise very dependable author has possibly not travelled beyond Arabia..”
4. Did the 1857 mutiny happen in Chittagong, Dhaka, Jalpaiguri and Tripura also and were those reports supressed? Raj investigates.
5. In August 1863 Maharani Jind Kaur died in England.”It was a peculiar and remarkably quiet end for a woman once the scourge of the British Raj in India. Only 15 years earlier, Jind Kaur, the Maharani of the Punjab, had encouraged the Sikh Empire to wage two disastrous wars against the British which led to the annexation of the Punjab and Jind being torn from her son when he was just
   nine-years-old”, writes Raza Rumi.
6. “Around the time William Logan was writing Malabar Manual (1887), an American scholar, diplomat and lawyer was describing Calicut and its inhabitants to his young readers almost as if he were describing some little known tribe deep in the jungles of the ‘dark continent.” Calicut Heritage analyzes Towle’s  Adventures of Vasco da Gama (1878).
7. “I would not go so far as some who would insist that a Hindu is not the person to ask about Hinduism” wrote Prof. Wendy Doniger. This prompted kupamanduka to examine the biases in Hindu studies.
8. In his post Linguistic Nationalism, Vishal looks at the consequences of imposing a national language in India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

f you find any posts related to Indian history published in the past one month, please send it to jk AT varnam DOT org or use this form. Please send me links which are similar to the ones posted, in terms of content.The next carnival will be up on July 15th.
See Also: Previous Carnivals

The Indian History Carnival, published on the 15th of every month, is a collection of posts related to Indian history and archaeology.

1. After reading Nicolas Ostler’s Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World, Hari writes about Sanskrit.
2. Venetia Ansell has an interview with Prof. Lakshmi Thathachar who was a Professor of Sanskrit at Bangalore University on why the modern world needs Sanskrit.
3. The Michael Wood documentary, The Story of India, which was telecast in six parts on PBS mentioned the connection between bird songs and mantras. varnam asks how old are our mantras?
4. The previous post was based on a paper written by Frits Staal of UC Berkeley. Sandeep analyzes the paper to say, “We clearly see that the “pre-language era” is a shrewd excuse to push Staal’s ill-understood concoction about Mantras.”
5. R S Krishna explains Harappan town planning and techniques on teaching this to children.
6. Chandragupta Maurya’s son Bimbisara once requested Antiochus of Syria to send him figs, Greek wine and a Greek teacher. He got the first two, but a note came back saying that Greek law does not permit the sale of professors. But when Alexander came to Punjab, he took a Jain guru named Calanus back with him. Maddy has that story.
7. How did ancient India deal with crime? Feanor surveys literature to find the answers.
8. In an article about Somnath,Manish Khamesra writes about Mahmud of Ghazni’s attacks on the temple and Sardar Patel.
9. In 1857, the British offended Hindu and Muslim sentiments and paid a price. A similar incident happened on July 10, 1806 and the Indian garrison at Vellore broke in revolt. Even before these two incidents, on April 14, 1721, more than 150 Englishmen were massacred in Kerala by a combined force of Nairs and Muslims. “After all, history teaches us that it teaches us nothing !”, writes Calicut Heritage.
10. Sir Mirza Mohammed Ismail served as the Diwan of Mysore since 1926, of Jaipur since 1941 and of Hyderabad during independence. Murali Ramavarma has his biography. Murali writes, “Sir Mirza was a Shia Muslim by birth but he encouraged Sanskrit learning, and helped the Hindu and Christian institutions too and attended to the needs of the society with an impartial outlook holding the interest of the state above that of the individual.”
11. Maiji who first visited Madras in 1945 writes about the differences she sees now.

If you find any posts related to Indian history published in the past one month, please send it to jk AT varnam DOT org or use this form. Please send me links which are similar to the ones posted, in terms of content.The next carnival will be up on March 15th.
See Also: Previous Carnivals

The Indian History Carnival, published on the 15th of every month, is a collection of posts related to Indian history and archaeology.

1. A while back, at varnam, we looked at the myth of Cheraman Perumal’s conversion to Islam. Now Maddy at Historical Alleys investigates the story of the Perumal and the pickle and writes that, “While the persons and the dates are shrouded in a veil of confusion, the one less disputed fact that remains was that a person of high standing reached Makkah after conversion and shared a jar of ginger pickle with some dignitaries.”
2. Continuing on the same topic, Calicut Heritage wonders if this conversion was part of embracing the religion of trade like the conversion of Parameswara, a Hindu from the Srivijaya dynasty, to Islam in 1400.
3. Bharatpur was in the news due to various political chess games being played there. Murali has a brief history of the place the British called Bhurtpore.
4. In 1780s, William Hodges, a member of James Cook’s expeditions traveled across India. He witnessed sati in Benares and wrote about it. Feanor has an excerpt.
5. Do you want to know how Bangalore was in the 1950s and ’60s? E. R. Ramachandran’s post is great for reading while sitting in the current Bangalore traffic.

If you find any posts related to Indian history published in the past one month, please send it to jk AT varnam DOT org or use this form. Please send me links which are similar to the ones posted, in terms of content.The next carnival will be up on Jan 15th.
See Also: Previous Carnivals