Indian History Carnival – 14

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