The Indian History Carnival, published on the 15th of every month, is a collection of posts related to Indian history and archaeology.
- Where do Nairs come from? Maddy does a literature survey and “To summarize, the Nayars have been considered a derivative of local people with invading Aryans, have been wandering Scythins who settled down, the Nagas and so on. No one theory holds forte, though from all the above, the Scythian link seems to be the near fetched one”
- In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Paul Beckett wondered why Indians were not contributing to charity like Americans. He also used the derogatory term “Hindu rate of growth” to which Sarvesh Tiwari responds, “Here we shall share some random thoughts from the historical perspectives on Hindu outlook to economy and charity, and try showing how, there is continuity even today, although latent, of the same outlook prevailing among the more traditional Hindu shreShThins of our age.”
- The effort to set up a Sanskrit University in Karnataka is facing considerable opposition. Sandeep B says, “Sanskrit is what gives identity to the Indian civilisation as we know it. From Valmiki to Kalidas, every major Sanskrit literary work spoke of this identity in its own way.”
- History and Mythology, a blog about Amar Chitra Katha, has a post about Chandragupta II: “He is almost certainly the King Chandra eulogized in the Sanskrit inscription on iron pillar in the Quwat al-Islam mosque in New Delhi’s Qutub Minar campus, which dates back to 4th century.”
- “Located near the city of Jogjakarta on the island of Java, it’s a stunning remnant of the days when the Dharmic religions were politically ascendant in the islands. It was commissioned and built between 800 and 900 CE by the local monarchs so that devotees need not travel all the way to India for spiritual pilgrimage.” Usha Alexander writes about the Borobudur stupa.
- “In 1193 CE, Nalanda was put to a brutal and decisive end by Bakhtiyar Khilji, a Turkish Muslim invader on his way to conquer Bengal. He looted and burned the monastery, and beheaded or burned alive perhaps thousands of monks,” writes Namit Arora on his post on Nalanda.
- Feanor has translated Afanasii Nikitin’s fifteenth century memoirs of his travel to India. Nikitin was a merchant from the Mongol areas of Russia. He had heard that horses were in demand in India and spent few years in Deccan.
- Hari, based on Vaasanthi’s Cut-outs, Caste and Cine Stars, looks at the life of MG Ramachandran (1917-1987), “one of the most important figures of Tamil politics, who, with help from other prominent leaders of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), including the crafty script writer Karunanidhi, seamlessly moved between cinema and politics as if the two were one.”
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 Sep 15th.
See Also: Previous Carnivals
