varnam

This is one of the 35 extraordinary 6th-century Chinese Buddhist statues that were accidentally unearthed in 1996 by workers leveling a school sports field in Qingzhou, a small city in Shandong Province on China's northeast coast.

Created during a 50-year period straddling the Northern Wei (386 - 534), Eastern Wei (534 - 550) and the Northern Qi (550 - 577) dynasties, the sculptures illustrate dramatic stylistic changes that occurred during that time. The unusual quantity of remaining gilding and vibrant red and green pigments on their surfaces provide a chance for the viewer to experience the impact of brightly decorated sculpture-the norm in ancient China. Many faces are gilded and some retain the remnants of painted mustaches, while the stone mandorlas-or backgrounds of the high relief sculptures-still display vibrant red pigments representing flames of light emanating from the Buddha.

Northern Qi sculptors adopted a different style more akin to the Indian Gupta style. Free-standing figures were modeled wearing light, close-fitting monastic garments revealing the body contours of the wearer. Carved in the round, but with less-detail on the rear, these three-dimensional Northern Qi figures had downcast eyes- encouraging a compassionate exchange between the Buddha and the viewer below. Their low ushnishas furthered the impression that these Buddhas were more "human" and approachable. Iron hooks remaining on some sculptures indicate that independent mandorlas were attached to the statues. [From Indian Archeology Mailing List]

Coming soon on the big screen is the movie Troy, starring Brad Pitt as Achilles and his heel. But was there a Trojan war ?

According to the archaeological and historical findings of the past decade especially, it is now more likely than not that there were several armed conflicts in and around Troy at the end of the Late Bronze Age. At present we do not know whether all or some of these conflicts were distilled in later memory into the "Trojan War" or whether among them there was an especially memorable, single "Trojan War." However, everything currently suggests that Homer should be taken seriously, that his story of a military conflict between Greeks and the inhabitants of Troy is based on a memory of historical events--whatever these may have been. If someone came up to me at the excavation one day and expressed his or her belief that the Trojan War did indeed happen here, my response as an archaeologist working at Troy would be: Why not?

A Buddhist body here has said it will seek a court order for display of relics of Lord Buddha discovered in a cave in Orissa during excavations in 1985. The relics, comprising a fragment of a charred bone and ashes contained in a gilded stone casket, were found during excavations by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) at Lalitgiri in Jajpur district.

The casket found at Lalitgiri has no inscriptions but it closely resembles caskets discovered by Alexander Cunningham from the Maha Stupa at Sanchi in 1961. Though researchers across India had demanded the display of the relics, the ASI reportedly turned down the request for security reasons. "We don't know whether ASI has the relics or not. Since they are sacred, they should be given to us for worship," said Sahu. NewIndianExpress

According to another version I blogged last year, Buddha's bones were discovered in a casket at Vaishaligarh, 35 kilometres from Patna. Then how did they turn up in Orissa ? To add to the mystery, the Chinese are parading what they claim is the finger of Buddha. There was another news item which explained what all bones remained after Buddha's body was burned. There was no finger in that list.

Two years back there was a news about a satellite photo from NASA showing what looked like a bridge between India and Sri Lanka. The buzz was that we had discovered the bridge that Rama had built in the mythology Ramayana. The Hindustan Times had written

The bridge's unique curvature and composition by age reveals that it is man-made. Legend as well as Archeological studies reveal that the first signs of human inhabitants in Sri Lanka date back to the primitive age, about 1,750,000 years ago and the bridge's age is also almost equivalent.

But according to the findings at the Centre for Remote Sensing (CRS) of Bharathidasan University, Tiruchi, the bridge is only 3500 years old

Carbon dating of ancient beaches found west of Uchichipuli in Ramanath puram district put their age at 3,500 years. These were clear examples that the sea had receded from Thiruthurai poondi and Kodiyakarai as well as from Ramanathapuram to the west of Unhchipuli, around 3,500 years ago. The sea may have receded to Pamban only during this period. Because of such divergent littoral currents, there remained a current shadow zone between Dhanushkodi and Talaimannar and hence the sand brought by the currents had been dumped in a linear pattern in the current shadow zone. Corals might have accumulated over these linear sand bodies, later on Ramasamy said. So the land bridge is only the sand, which had begun accumulating in the current shadow zone 3,500 years back, and continues to the present day. Therefore, the age of the Adam’s bridge could only be 3,500 years old, he asserted.

Now floating stones have been discovered in Rameshwaram.

G. Mohan Das, a local historian and caretaker of the stones in the temple, said that these stones could have been the kind used to build the mythological bridge. "The history of these floating stones is that when Lord Rama made a bridge to trek to Lanka to bring back his consort Sita, these are the same stones used. But today's educated people do not agree to it. They believe it is a coral which is in Australia, Chennai, in small islands. We believe there is no difference in these stones. Both the stones do not have air in them. The composition is the same and it has 40 kinds of chemicals," he said.

Bactria, located in Northern Afghanistan between the Hindu Kush mountains and Oxus river, was the eastern province of the Persians before it was conquered by the Greeks. Something that has survived even after the Soviet and Taliban rule is their gold. Now for the first time this ancient gold will be available for the whole world to see.

While other important archaeological sites are plundered or have been ruined by war, the Bactrian gold, discovered by a Soviet team near the northern town of Shiberghan just before the Red Army invasion of 1979, has had a number of narrow escapes, adding to its allure and mystery.

An Afghan official who viewed the Bactrian gold recently in an underground vault in the heavily guarded presidential palace in Kabul described the pieces he saw, including an intricately designed belt and a gold broach, as "priceless". Al Jazeera

In the seventh century, Arab armies invaded Persia. Some Zoroastrians were converted to Islam and some preferred to migrate to India, which they did from the early eighth century. They too came to western India where they already had trading contacts, and established large settlements to the north of Mumbai, such as the one at Sanjan. Their descendants founded a community later known as Parsi, reflecting the land of their origin and their language. Some settled in rural areas but close to centres of trade; others were more active in the trading circuits of the time. [from Early India by Romila Thapar]

Now an archaeological dig at Sanjan is providing more information about the first Parsi settlement in India.

The find at Sanjan's Varoli riverside dig includes six whole skeletons and a few partial ones, coins, pieces of pottery, glass and beads. After being analysed by paleo-anthropologist S.R. Walimbe of Pune's Deccan College, the skeletons? which were found lying with their hands crossed and legs tied together?will be sent to Oxford University for carbon dating and DNA testing to find out if they are of Parsis.

Knowledge of Parsi history is only from the quasi-historical document, the 'Kissei-Sanjan' and from oral tradition. "We know of Parsis living in Sanjan from the 7th century (under the patronage of the Hindu ruler Jadi Rana) to the late 14th century when the place was invaded by a general of Mahmud Tughlak," said historian Homi Dhalla, who is the president of the WZCG.

"But there has been little evidence to indicate when and how they had come and the events they lived through. We are excited because these finds may provide the proof we need." Confirming this, Ms Gokhale said that five of the 32 Indian and Persian coins date back to the seventh and eighth centuries. She has also found allusions to a fire altar?the temple where a flame is kept burning as a symbol of the cycle of life and eternal recurrence?on the sole Sassanian coin, which is from the 7th century.

"A one-foot turquoise-blue ceramic vase and a small china celadon dish have been pieced together. Blue pottery was manufactured at Siraf in Iran and at Basra in Iraq in the 7th and 8th centuries and was in use in many Asian countries until the 11th century, when the preference for blue was possibly replaced by the pale green of celadon pottery. But the remains unearthed at Sanjan reveal a continuity in the usage of blue pottery as well as celadon?which probably means that there was a flourishing trade between Iran, Iraq and South Gujarat," he added. Times of India

The excavations at Adi Badri in Haryana revealed a 300 AD Kushan site. Excavations in Dholavira in Kutch revealed one the world's oldest stadiums and sign boards. These are two sites along the path of the mythical Saraswati river. These excavations would have revealed more about our past, and answered questions like: Were the Harappans the Vedic people ? Some eminent historians had already opposed these excavations as it was seen as an attempt to push the antiquity of Indian Civilization. But now there are indications that "The Saraswati Heritage Project" will be scrapped.

A pet project of the then culture minister Jagmohan, officials now indicate that it would be certainly axed. Yet, those involved with the Rs 4.98-crore project feel if this is done, it would be grossly unfair and a setback to archaeology and academics. "The Saraswati Heritage Project was not part of any saffronisation progr-amme," clarifies R S Bisht, project director and former joint DG of ASI.

Instead, Bisht claims that the project is aimed at "settling the issues of different schools of thought" on the existence of the Saraswati. He says it is entirely based on scientific principles with stress on inter-disciplinary archaeological research in which the help of prestigious institutions like IITs and the Birbal Sahni Institution is being taken.

So far, excavation has already been undertaken in 10 places � Adi Badri, Thanesar, Sandhauli, Bhirrana, Hansi (all in Haryana), Baror, Tarkhanwala Dhera, Chak 86 (all in Rajasthan), Dholavira and Juni Karan in Gujarat. The project's action taken report claims that during the excavation, remains from the pre-Harappan, Harappan and even medieval times have been discovered. Times of India

In the sixth century AD, a new kingdom emerged in mainland South-East Asia. Based in Cambodia, it absorbed the Funan kingdom established by the brahmin Kaundinya and emerged as the Khemer kingdom of Angkor. Their kings chose names ending in -varman like the Pallava kings of Kanchi and constructed one of the largest Hindu temples outside India.

The temples of Angkor, built from 879 - 1191AD, when the Khmer civilization was at the height of its development, represent one of humankind's most astonishing and enduring architectural achievements. From the great citadel of Angkor, the kings of the Khmer empire ruled over a vast domain that reached from what is now southern Vietnam to Yunan, China and from Vietnam westward to the Bay of Bengal. The structures one sees at Angkor today, more than 100 temples in all, are the surviving religious remains of a grand social and administrative metropolis whose other buildings - palaces, public buildings, and houses - were all built of wood and are long since decayed and gone.

The City of Angkor was also magnificient

They learned the metropolitan area extended far beyond Angkor Thom, the 700-year-old walled city that houses Angkor Wat. Angkor was home to about 750,000 people and covered some 1,000 square kilometers (385 square miles) $(O m(Buch larger than any other preindustrial development and similar to the shape and size of modern cities, Fletcher said.

"It's like a Los Angeles. It's not like Hong Kong," he said. "Lots and lots of open space, big gaps around the houses, huge freeways, which are the canals in this case." The city's economy was based on rice, and rice paddies spread along dozens of canals, at least one up to 20 kilometers (12 miles) long. A network of reservoirs, canals, and bridges was created to move people and goods and to ensure there was enough water to grow rice. Angkor engineers even changed the direction that some rivers flowed in what essentially was "a human-built landscape for growing rice," Fletcher said.

The general reason mentioned for the demise of this kingdom is an attack by the Thais in 1431. But now scientists think that the demise happened much before, due to the evils of urban societies, like ecological failure and infrastructure breakdown. They think it is important to study these reasons as it can provide lessons in dealing with problems many urban societies are facing today.

Fletcher, a professor at the University of Sydney, theorizes that population pressures and water woes made it harder to trade and communicate. People began migrating south toward the area around what is now Phnom Penh, where subsequent capitals were set up.

The growing population also forced people to venture into the nearby Kulen hills to cut down trees for fuel and to clear land for growing rice. That would have resulted in rain runoff carrying sediment down into the canal network, Evans said. "Anything that happened to that water management system would have had a great deal of consequence for all of the people," he said. ENN

In another report from Cambodia, India has promised to donate $5.5 million for the restoration of the Ta Prohm temple at the Angkor Wat site.

The Ta Prohm is a magnificent temple-monastery complex built in the South Indian architectural style that once housed nearly 13,000 monks and other attendants. Angkor Wat is the largest temple area in the world..

Ta Prohm has been left by archaeologists in its original jungle-covered state, some of its walls cracked apart by tree roots, making it an exotic subject for photographers and a popular destination for tourists. It was built by one of the greatest Khmer Kings, Jayavarman VII, who also built Angkor Thom as his capital and the Bayon as his state temple where a mix of Buddhist and Hindu deities were worshipped. Big News Network

Srijith has great photographs of Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm

VADODARA: Jains in Khambhat taluka of Anand were overjoyed when around 65 idols temple were unearthed at a construction site in the town. Inscriptions on them suggested that they were over 900 years old. While, the first statue was unearthed on Sunday, many more structures, including idols of Jain deity Ambica Devi, were unearthed on Monday at the site where a mamlatdar office is being built. Senior community members believed excavation might uncover a Jain temple belonging to Tirthtankar Nemnath Swami.

Officials have taken the idols in custody and are awaiting a team of archaeologists. "The structures include that of temple 'Parikar' and 'Gaadi'. The year inscribed on the plaques range from 1001 to 1130 of the Hindu calendar. This puts the structures at over 900 years old. Also, the idol of Ambica Devi is usually found in temples of Nemnath Swa-mi. "Many Jain traders had settled when Khambhat was a major trading hub. Most of the temples were developed in that period. Hence, even rarest of idols like those of sapphire and nilam are found here." Senior community members have urged the government to hand over the place to the community." It is a great matter of faith for us. Times of India

A research team of the Kannada Research Institute of Karnatak University has discovered what could be a 2,000-year-old Buddhist site at Tunnur in Chitapur taluk of Gulbarga district. During the excavation, archaeologists recovered priceless artefacts and terracotta items revealing the influence of Buddhism in the region. According to Dr. Shadaksharaiah, the research team found artefacts dating back to many centuries and most of the sculptural panels found were scattered in a radius of about 1 km. Some of the panels recovered included one depicting Mandoka Jataka story, Dharmachakra, a piece of stupa fence, and two types of memorial stones. In the Mandoka Jataka story panel the figures of a queen, Amatya, pattada horse, and pattada elephant are clearly visible, and the panel is quite similar to the one recovered from Hampi in Bellary district. Research scholars during the course of their work found two distinct memorials. One of them belonged to the king and the royal members and another to the common people. In the former, there are figures of a horse, servants of the royal family, and king and queen seated and holding goblets. Some of the memorials bear labels with inscriptions in Brahmi script and Prakrit language. One of them reads: "Valavasa Papalana Kanhasa." Kanhasa means Krishna. [Sun Network via India India Archaeology]

Afghanistan, the land of confluence of Greek, Persian, Buddhist and Islamic cultures is a goldmine for Archaeologists. Years of war have destroyed many of the symbols of its cultural heritage, but now efforts are on to discover things which are underground.

Afghanistan was a crossroads for the major powers of the ancient and modern world. Cyrus the Great of Persia founded Bagram. Alexander the Great founded a town in his own honor near the edge of the Registan Desert, now called Kandahar. Alexander lived in Bagram (Cyrus' Kapissa) for two years and married Roxanne, a young woman from the area west of modern Mazar-I Sharif. Ghengis Khan would later ravage the country, purposefully destroying the elaborate waterworks which lined the Helmand River. Those waterworks have still not been rebuilt more than a millennium later, but their remains are extant.

Afghanistan's past is part of the world's cultural treasure. This land was the limit of Alexander's Hellenistic empire. These mountains and valleys are where London and Moscow played "the great game" for control of central and south Asia. Here Babur built lavish gardens, splendid shrines and magnificent Islamic schools and mosques, some of which still sparkle in the brilliant sunshine.[Afghan Archaeology on Road to Recovery]

The Buddha did not want people to worship his image and so early representations of him were symbolic like his feet or a tree. But then as his teachings became Buddhism and spread out of India, many forms of art started appearing in various styles.

China's attraction to the outside world went beyond art. I have shown in several studies that Buddhism spread over much of eastern Iran, as demonstrated by archaeology, place names and the imprint it left on Persian literature - idealized beauty was celebrated by the poets of early Islamic Iran, using explicitly Buddhist images and references to Buddhist shrines.

If the evidence of sculpture is anything to go by, it took three centuries for Buddhism to establish itself. The earliest dated Buddha image cast in bronze, now in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, is dated 338 A.D. Bronzes of the fourth century are scarce. Comparative abundance in the fifth century suggests a change in pace. Extraordinary bronzes were being cast by the end of the century, particularly in the northeastern provinces of Shaanxi and Hebei, at the heart of the territory long controlled by the Xianbei, Leidy remarks.

It may one day be possible to plot the route followed by Buddhist iconography first defined in present-day Afghanistan through Tajikistan into Chinese Turkistan up to Dunhuang, the Buddhist cave complex that retains to this day its Sogdian name "Throang(a)," adapted to Chinese pronunciation. This resulted in the first truly great works of Chinese Buddhist sculpture. A standing gilt bronze of the Buddha Shakyamuni from Mancheng in Hebei, dated 475, and a seated Buddha from Togeton, Hohhot, cq by Souren in Inner Mongolia, have smiles of radiant certainty, each with a nuance �?? laughing tolerance in one, soothing conviction that all is illusion in the other. [China's 'Golden Age,' over five crucial centuries]

Some extraordinary Chinese Buddhist statues were created during the time of the Qi dynasties which were in the same style as the Guptas.

Last year this time a 1000 year old ship was discovered in Kerala. This year we have another ship discovered, but this one about 3000 years old in Israel and belongs to the era of King David and Solomon.

The remains, which have been carbon-dated to the ninth century B.C., include a huge stone anchor believed to be the largest ever unearthed. The wreckage is lying under a few inches of sand off the Mediterranean coast in shallow waters, and has yet to be examined extensively.

If the remains are indeed 3,000 years old, it would be the first archaeological artifact ever found from the era of the first kings of Israel, with the possible exception of several huge stones at the base of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Named for Dorus, son of the Greek sea god Poseidon, the hillside city was a major port for both conquerors and traders and is mentioned in the first Book of Kings. At its peak, the port had 200,000 residents.

"In King Solomon's time, this was the major port for the Israelite kingdom," said ancient boat specialist Yaacov Kahanov of Haifa University. "The island here off the coast is still called Taphath, after Solomon's daughter." [Archaeologist hopes 3,000-year-old wood is from ancient ship]

According to oral tradition Jews established trading contacts with Kerala during the time of Solomon. There are other traditions which claim that Jews came to Kerala during the time of King Nebuchadnezar of Babylon in 500 BC, the time of Buddha. But according to Romila Thapar in her book Early India, the Jews came to India in the tenth and eleventh century AD.

The other day I was watching the documentary, In the Footsteps of Alexander and the host Michael Wood walks to Kabul Museum, which is just a building under lock and key. There was one guard with an AK-47 kinda gun and all the artifacts were locked in the basement.

But now the Afghans want to restore their heritage back and they are asking the British to return their 2000 year old Dead Sea Scrolls of Buddhism from the British Library.

The Kharosti Scrolls would be a hugely prestigious centerpiece for the new museum. The 60 fragments of text written in the ancient script Kharosti on birch bark are considered by Buddhist scholars as comparable in historical importance to the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Between the 2nd and 7th centuries AD, Hadda was one of the holiest sites in Buddhism drawing pilgrims from all over India and China. The scrolls are the earliest known Buddhist scripts and were produced by monks in the extraordinary civilisation of Gandhara, a synthesis of Indian and Greek culture spread to Asia by the followers of Alexander the Great.

The civilisation flourished at the time of the Roman Empire in what is now the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. [Afghanistan wants its 'Dead Sea Scrolls of Buddhism' back from UK]

Robert Sarmast claims that Atlantis has been found. It is not the first time that Atlantis has been discovered. It has been discovered before in Brazil, Haiti, Mexico, Atlantic Ocean, Santorini, Portugal etc.

Now people are already contesting Robert Sarmast's claim.

But German physicist Christian Huebscher said he had identified the phenomenon as 100,000 year-old volcanoes that spewed mud.

Huebscher, of the Hamburg Centre for Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, is quoted in Wednesday's edition of the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as saying he and two Dutch colleagues had sailed in a boat to the same area at which Sarmast claimed to have located Atlantis and made their findings.
Sarmast's team claims to have found man-made structures located about one mile (some 1.5 kilometres) below sea level and 50 miles (80 kilometres) off the southeast coast of Cyprus. [German physicist disputes Atlantis discovery claim by American]

Tibet is now synonymous with Buddhism. But till 7th century AD, the religion of Tibet was Bön. This religion which was rooted in Shamanistic practices also has a founder similar to Buddha. His name was Yungdrung Bön and he too left the palace to be a monk. Now archaeological excavations have discovered artifacts from that era.

In Ngari, Southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, archaeologists investigated the ruins of the mysterious "Silver Castle," and discovered fantastic statues of Bon gods, which belonged to a religion prevalent on the roof of the world a millennium ago. The ancient city, known as the "Silver Castle of Qionglong (today's Zhada, Ngari)," was in Tibetan legends the capital of Zhangzhung Kingdom.

It fell into oblivion in the 10th century when the Guge Kingdom was founded and Tibetans converted from the Bon religion to Buddhism. It had been forgotten until archaeologists discovered its ruins in the 1920s. Since the investigation kicked off this June, archaeologists have been reporting amazing finds on the ruins, which lie on the northern bank of the Xiangquan (Langqen Zangbo) River and covers an area of 130,000 square metres.

"Lying before us is a magnificent castle boasting buzzing lives a millennium ago, with well-planned residential areas, ritual and public buildings, defence walls and even secret underground tunnels," said archaeologist Huo Wei from Sichuan University. Porcelain shreds and iron tools were unearthed along with statues of Bon gods. One of them, painted in green and gold, have two faces - one on the front and one on the back. "It's only an investigation. We'll never know what the ground is hiding from us until an excavation begins," said Huo. [Ancient Tibetan city]

The Bactrian Gold which is speculated to be burried by Bactrian nomads in the first century CE was discovered in 1978. It survived the Soviet invasion, the warring mujahadeen factions and the Taliban rule and was found again in 2003. Recently an inventory was conducted and everything was found to be intact.

In ancient times, Bactrian civilization rivaled that of Mesopotamia. It was a fertile agricultural oasis and a thoroughfare on the Silk Road. Iranian, Indian, Central Asian, Chinese, Greek, Roman, and nomadic cultures encountered one another on the plains and in the capital of Balkh, which the Arabs called "the Mother of Towns." Artistic and cultural styles fused. Zoroaster first preached monotheism there and King Kanishka commissioned the first human representations of the Buddha there. The poet known as Rumi wrote verses there, and Marco Polo traversed the city on his path to China.

The region was colonized repeatedly. Alexander the Great came to conquer this easternmost outpost of his empire, the last Persian province to fall, and made it his base; his inheritor later traded it to the Indian Mauryan dynasty for five hundred elephants and a princess. Genghis Khan destroyed it with his horde of ten thousand men in the early thirteenth century. "With one stroke a world which billowed with fertility was laid desolate," the chronicler Juvaini wrote three decades later. And Babur, the founder of the Moguls and a descendent of Genghis Khan, seized the region before he moved on to conquer India.

The treasure may eventually reveal new information about the mysterious span of time between the decline of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom and the rise of the great Kushan Empire. The trove contains many unusual objects. One gold coin resembles no numismatic collection in the world: it depicts a man resting on the Wheel of Dharma, and on the reverse, a lion with a raised paw. Sarianidi hypothesizes that it was minted by the Greco-Bactrian King Agathocles during the interval between Greek and Kushan control.

Another gold coin is stamped with the profile of the Roman emperor Tiberius, minted in Lugdunum in Gaul between 16 and 21 C.E.--the first coin of its kind found in all of Central Asia. Other provocative objects prompt questions about the mingling and syncretism of artistic styles: brooches and figurines depicting Aphrodite show a Kushan interpretation of the goddess's features--small-breasted, round-bellied, and more serious than her Greek counterpart--but she stands with one arm resting on a column, as was the Hellenistic fashion. [ An Ancient Afghan Treasure is Recovered]

While we only have seen pictures of the two Bamiyan Buddhas, archaeologists have been looking for a missing third reclining Buddha. Now they seem to have uncovered the long-missing statue's foot.

Two years ago, a French team led by the Afghan-born archeologist Zemaryali Tarzi of Strasbourg University began excavations for the 985-foot-long reclining statue representing the Buddha in a state of "Mahapari nirvana," or ultimate enlightenment.The dig finally may have yielded something promising. "Professor Tarzi has found a structure which has still to be properly identified but which could be part of the foot of the Sleeping Buddha, maybe the toe," said Masanori Nagaoka, UNESCO's Kabul-based culture consultant. "Alternatively, the structure could be the platform on which the giant statue reclined," he added. [Find stirs Sleeping Buddha talk]

And at the same time the Kiwis are helping to piece back the two statues that were destroyed.

Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code generated lot of controversies regarding the marital status of Jesus. To find more about this ABC News sent a reporter to various places mentioned in the book and interviewed people like Dan Brown, priests, art and historical scholars for the documentary ABC News Presents: Jesus, Mary and DaVinci

The first issue was if Mary Magdalene was a prostitute as popularly known. In this case everyone unanimously agreed that nowhere in the Bible it is mentioned so. There is one tale about a prostitute and immediately following that Mary is mentioned. So it could be be association that Mary was turned into a prostitute. Also to speed things up Pope Gregory gave a sermon in 591 AD in which he said that Mary was a prostitute. The Vatican corrected it later in 1969, 1378 years later.

In the novel it is mentioned that Jesus was married. But in the Bible it is not mentioned that he is married. It is not mentioned that he is unmarried too. The opinion of various people was that his marital status could have been either.

Dan Brown then mentions that he was taking some classes and his teacher showed him Da Vinci's Last Supper. The teacher then asked them to find the cup from which all of them drank and it was then that he noticed that there was no cup. Then it was mentioned that the holy grail was in the painting and it was the person sitting next to Jesus.

But there were some art historians who disagreed with this and said that it was actually male and not Mary. Dan Brown adds that during the time of Da Vinci it was not wise to disagree with the Church and he used his art to convey his belief.

Another point in the novel was that Jesus and Mary had a child who grew up in France. In this documentary they could not find any evidence of this.

While the church accepted certain gospels, some of them were rejected as well. But one of them survived in Egypt and is called the gnostic gospels. In the gnostic gospels, it is mentioned that Jesus kissed Mary and they were very close. Even after resurrection, it was Mary who saw Jesus signifying that she was the favourite.

Finally the documentary concludes that they could not find evidence that Jesus was married and had children. But they found that Mary was much closer to Jesus that is known.

Cultural officials have recently found a linga (phallic symbol) of the Cham ethnic minority people at Van Tuong village, Nghia Dung commune in central Quang Ngai province.

The 35-cm-high linga made from sandstone weighs around 100 kg. It is the second found in Quang Ngai province, providing a link to a cluster of towers of the Cham ethnic minority people in the locality. Archaeologist Dr. Doan Ngoc Khoi said the discovery of linga in Quang Ngai reflects the diversity of the Cham Pa culture of the Cham ethnic minority people in Quang Ngai.

Quang Ngai is home to two ancient citadels, namely Chau Sa at Tinh Chau commune in Son Tinh district and Ban Co at Nghia Phu commune in Tu Nghia district, and around 40 towers of the Cham ethnic minority people scattered around the area that have so far been ruined by the climate. Around 80 years ago in 1924, the French found a linga and a yoni during an excavation in Chanh Lo, Quang Ngai township, and these are now exhibited at the Cham museum in the central city of Da Nang. [New linga found in Quang Ngai province]

There is no picture of the linga and hence we don't know if it was influenced by the Siva Linga worshipped by the Hindus.

Yesterday there was a news on the discovery of a linga in Vietnam in the Cham community. The first religion of Cham was Shaivite Hinduism.

In the midst of modern day Vietnam, some distinct touches of India remain. These are artefacts of the Cham civilisation that flourished in central Vietnam from the 2nd to 15th century AD. Indian influence in Vietnam spread through its linkages with this dynasty.

The Chams became Indianised through commercial links with India - they adopted Hinduism, employed Sanskrit as a sacred language and borrowed heavily from Indian art. The effects of these are evident in the Cham monuments in the Quang Nam province, 700 km from capital Hanoi.

The Chams battled constantly with the Vietnamese in the north of their kingdom and the Khmers (in modern Cambodia) in the west. The Chams threw off Khmer rule in the 12th century but were entirely absorbed by Vietnam in the 17th century. One of the greatest Cham sites, My Son, is considered the equivalent of Angkor Vat, Cambodia, in terms of archaeological importance. It became a religious centre under King Bhadravarman in the late fourth century. Most of the temples were dedicated to Lord Shiva.

The Vietnam war destroyed My Son - the temples and ruins bombed to bits. Today they require extensive restoration work. A proposal for cooperation between India and Vietnam for restoration and conservation of Cham monuments is being considered by the Archaeological Survey of India. The Cham monuments of My Son have been declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco. The greatest collection of the Cham ruins is at the Cham Museum in Danang. [India lives on in ancient Vietnamese ruins]

Did the Romans ever reach China ? This is a new theory which has approval by the communist party as well.

The earliest recorded official contact between China and Rome did not occur until 166AD, when, according to a Chinese account, a Roman envoy arrived in China, possibly sent by Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Remarkably, that was the only contact between the two great powers of which a record survives. The Romans referred to the people of the remote east as the Seres�??the silk people. But that term could have referred to the Central Asian tribes whose trade with the Chinese no doubt included silk�??which the Romans long thought grew on trees. The secret of silk production reached the West only in the sixth century, from the Byzantines.

It may well irritate some of the proud custodians of China's cultural heritage that it was foreigners who first promoted the theory of the Roman settlement. Homer Dubs, a professor of Chinese at Oxford University, raised it in a lecture delivered to the China Society in London in 1955. According to Dubs, the journey to Gansu began in 53BC when Crassus, who together with Julius Caesar and Pompey formed Rome's First Triumvirate, decided to make up for his lack of military glory by going to war with the dreaded Parthians.

Dubs says the Chinese kept the ex-legionaries as frontier guards, installing them in a specially created town called Liqian in what is now Gansu

Crassus's legions were no match for the Parthian archers, nimble horsemen who could loose their arrows off even as they turned. Of the 42,000 Romans who set out, 20,000 were killed and 10,000 were captured in the battle of Carrhae, in modern Turkey; it was one of the most spectacular losses of Roman military history. According to Pliny the Elder, the Roman prisoners were used by the Parthians as guards on their eastern frontier in what is today Turkmenistan. From there, Dubs conjectured, some escaped and joined the Huns as mercenaries. In 36BC, Chinese troops on a punitive venture defeated the Hun ruler Zhizhi in today's Uzbekistan. Among their captives they found 145 Romans. Dubs says the Chinese kept the ex-legionaries as frontier guards, installing them in a specially created town called Liqian in what is now Gansu. [The Romans in China]

Recently many burrial urns were discovered in various parts of Tamil Nadu. While the ones discovered in Palani were about 2000 years old, the ones in Adichanallur date to 800 BC.

The most recent issue of Archaeology Magazine has an article on the Warriors of Paros, a Greek Island in the Aegean Sea. Here too archaeologists found the remains of soldiers in urns.

Soldiers' bones in urns--evidence of a forgotten battle fought around 730 B.C. Did these men perish on their island home of Paros, at the center of the Aegean Sea, or in some distant land? The loss of so many, at least 120 men, was certainly a catastrophe for the community, but their families and compatriots honored them, putting their cremated remains into large vases, two of which were decorated with scenes of mourning and war. Grief-stricken relatives then carried the urns to the cemetery in Paroikia, the island's chief city, and placed them in two monumental tombs. [Warriors of Paros]

While the urns in Adichanallur had beautiful decorations of garlands and necklaces, the ones in Greece depicts war scenes. One vase showed a warrior fighting from a chariot with dead combatants lying next to him. It also shows foot soldiers and cavalry in action. A second vase shows war and mourning with women standing with their hands raised and men giving a salute to the dead.

Professor Zemaryali Tarzi has made it his life's mission to find the third reclining Buddha at Bamiyan. Information about this reclining Buddha comes from the notes of Huen Tsang, who traveled to India as well.

To some, the search is a quixotic one. If the ancient Chinese pilgrim is to be believed, the sleeping Buddha is almost as long as the Eiffel Tower is tall. How could such a monumental structure disappear underground, some ask, and how could it be salvageable if it still exists?

Tarzi has possible answers: The statue could have been deliberately buried centuries ago by devotees to protect it from invading Muslim armies, or it could have been covered after a major earthquake. But more important, his team has begun uncovering at the site clay figures and sophisticated structures that lend support to his grand theory.

Last summer, the dig uncovered a wall that Tarzi is convinced is part of the ancient monastery that housed the huge statue. Excavators have also discovered several dozen sculptures of Buddha heads and other statue fragments, some dating to as far back as the 3rd century -- when Bamian was growing as a Buddhist center. At the very end of the digging season, Tarzi found evidence as well of what he believes may be part of a huge statuary foot.

He is aware of the professional skepticism surrounding his quest -- some have said the reported size of the structure has been misunderstood, while others suggest that the reclining "statue" may have been an outcropping of rock that reminded the religious of a sleeping Buddha -- but he insists the evidence is clear. [Afghan Archaeologist Seeks Sleeping Buddha]

During the weekend, I met Nadia Tarzi, daughter of Zemaryali Tarzi, the archaeologist mentioned in the above story. She has now started the Association for the protection of Afghan Archaeology which aims to raise awareness of Afghan Culture.

I asked her if the only information for this Buddha was from Huen Tsang and she said that's the only one they know. Huen Tsang was very accurate in his descriptions about the standing Buddhas and their dimensions and hence they believe the reclining Buddha should exist as well. For example, here at Varnam we have reported about the findings at Sirpur which was described in the writings of Huen Tsang. But Nadia Tarzi would like to know if there are any other ancient works which mention this Buddha.

Related Links: Along Huen Tsang's path, Buddha's Foot

Lahore, Pakistan, was founded by Loh (Lav), the son of Lord Rama and there is a temple in Lahore fort dedicated to him. After being closed for many years, the dungeons of Lahore fort and the temple are going to be opened for public.

The temple was named after Loh, a Hindu prince, the founder of Lahore and one of the two sons of Rama, the hero of Ramayana. Kush, Rama�??s second son, founded the town of Kasu (present day Kasur). The temple is located near the Alamgiri gate where the old jails of the Fort used to be. In Ziaul Haq�??s regime the temple was completely closed as the dungeons were being used by the police. From 1985 the temple was opened only for visits by the Fort officials or on request. [Lahore Fort dungeons to re-open after more than a century via India Archaeology]

Many ancient civilizations have a flood story in their mythology. There is the story of Noah's Ark in Judeo-Christian countries and Sumerians have the Epic of Gilgamesh. In Hinduism we have the story of Manu.

It is amazing that countries spread so far apart have such similar stories and it does not end there. Another similarity is in the stories of children who were floated in baskets down rivers. Yocheved put her son Moses in a small ark and placed it on the river in which the Pharaoah's daughter bathed. In Mahabharata, Kunti did a similar thing and sent Karna floating down the river.

The book I am reading The Fourteen Dalai Lamas: A Sacred Legacy of Reincarnation has a similar story about King Nyatri Tsanpo, regarded as Tibet's first recorded monarch. King Tsanpo was Indian by birth, descended from a Licchavi king. When he was born, he had many unusual signs in his body and hence his father put him in a casket and sent him river rafting down the Ganges. The child was rescued by a farmer, and later when he came to know his trip down the river, he was overcome with grief and fled to the Himalayas. He arrived at the Yarlung valley in Tibet and later became the King.

Remember the Dead Sea Scrolls , the 2000 year old manuscripts that tell us that everything attributed to Jesus–and Christianity–is borrowed from an extremist Jewish sect that existed in the Qumran region of Palestine on the west shore of the Dead Sea. Now, some manuscripts which are called the Dead Sea Scrolls of Buddhism have been dated to between the first and fifth centuries A.D.

The majority of the manuscripts were found in Bamiyan in Afghanistan and were smuggled out to a collector.

It was in 1996 that the first group of manuscripts was discovered. The finders set off towards Pakistan, and after being chased by the Taliban in the Hindu Kush they managed to cross the Khyber Pass, eventually reaching Islamabad. There the manuscripts passed through dealers before being acquired by London specialist Sam Fogg, who sold the 108 fragments to Mr Schøyen. This was followed by further batches, which were considerably larger and usually included hundreds of folios and the occasional complete manuscript. Altogether around 15 separate consignments of Bamiyan material have been acquired by Mr Schøyen.[Buddhism’s “Dead Sea Scrolls” for sale to Norway]

"Buddhism was originally an oral tradition but little is known about how it developed from spoken word to written word, so the discovery and date confirmation will give us a unique insight into the development of Buddhist literature," he said. The new manuscripts are therefore the missing link in the historical chain.['Dead Sea scrolls' may be missing link in Buddhism]

"The Senior collection dating is of particular importance as this result makes a major contribution to Indian chronology in showing that an early date of 78 AD for a key historical figure, the Kushan emperor Kanishka, is no longer tenable." 'Dead Sea scrolls' may be missing link in Buddhism]

Even though Subhash Kak et al wrote a book asserting that India is the Cradle of Civilization, still Mesopotamia is though to be the one. Now some new discoveries in Iran may change all that.

Archaeological excavations in the lower layers of a cemetery in Jiroft have revealed that its history goes back to the fouth millennium B.C, much before Mesopotamia. Some inscriptions were also found which proves that the writing language of Jiroft was older than that of Mesopotamia.

As the author of a three-volume history of Mesopotamia and a leading Iranian authority on the third millennium BC, Madjidzadeh has long hypothesized that Jiroft is the legendary land of Aratta, a �??lost�?� Bronze Age kingdom of renown. It�??s a quest that he began as a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago, when in 1976 he published an article proposing that Aratta, which reputedly exported its magnificent crafts to Mesopotamia, was located somewhere in southeastern Iran.

According to texts dating from around 2100 BC, Aratta was a gaily decorated capital with a citadel whose battlements were fashioned of green lapis lazuli and its lofty towers of bright red brick. Aratta�??s artistic production was so highly regarded that about 2500 BC the Sumerian king Enmerkar sent a message to the ruler of Aratta requesting that artisans and architects be dispatched to his capital, Uruk, to build a temple to honor Inanna, the goddess of fertility and war.

Yet even if Jiroft turns out not to be Aratta, it is nevertheless a pivotal clue to a better understanding of the era when writing first flourished and traders carried spices and grain, gold, lapis lazuli and ideas from the Nile to the Indus. Although not on a par with the more influential civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Indus Valley, �??Jiroft is obviously a very important archeological complex,�?� says Holly Pittman, an art historian at the University of Pennsylvania who is one of a growing number of non-Iranian scholars who are being allowed into the country.[What was Jiroft]

The Indian influence over South-East Asia expanded a lot during the time of Pallavas between the fifth and seventh centuries and the influence was mainly seen in Cambodia. In Indonesia, Srivijaya, a maritime power and dynasty which controlled the empire stretching from Sumatra to Malaya, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam arose from obscurity in the 8th century. Srivijaya was an Indianised polity, more Buddhist than Brahminical with its capital near Palembang in South Eastern Sumatra.

Rival to the Srivijaya dynasty was the joint kingdoms of Sailendra and Sanjaya based in central Java. It was during their time (after 780 CE) that the temple building activity flourished in the island. These temples were based on the layout and elevation of the Pallavan and Chalukyan temples. An exception to this style of construction is the colossal temple at Borobudur, which apparently started as a Hindu temple and was converted to a Buddhist place of worship.

One of the largest Hindu temples in the region is Prambanan, located in central Java. This temple, which was built around 850 CE during the time of the Sanjaya dynasty is dedicated to the Trimurtis. There are about 200 temples in this complex and the bas-relief of the temple depicts the story of Ramayana. Parts of this temple was damaged in the recent earthquake that hit Indonesia.

Brahma temple, one of the ancient shrines in the Prambanan compound in Klaten, Central Java,has been seriously damaged by the earthquake measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale which struck Yogyakarta city and environs early Saturday morning, a tourism official said.

"In the Prambanan complex, Brahma Temple sustained serious damage in the earthquake," Soeroso, director of archalogical heritages at the Tourism, ArtS and Culture Ministry , said here on Saturday.

Damage was also done to Plaosan Lor and Sejiwan temples but not to serious extent. Sejiwan Temple was actually in the process of being repaired and the quake undid some of the complete repairs. The Brahma Temple must now be rehabilitated totally because its basic structre had been damaged, he said. [Brahma Temple in Prambanan Complex seriously damaged]

It was under Cyrus II (576 or 590 BC �?? July 529 BC), a contemporary of Buddha, that the Iranian Plateau was united for the first time under a single leader. Till then, for about two millennia, Mesopotamia was the lone superpower in the world.

Babylon, one of the civilizations in Mesopotamia, sacked Jerusalem at the start of the 6th century BCE. The last King of Babyblon was Nabonidus, who was more interested in history than politics. (He would have made a great guest blogger here on varnam). Nabonidus had relocated to Arabia and then Cyrus II decided to attack his empire. On hearing the news, Nabonidus came back to Babylon, but it was too late.

The Persians took the city in 539 BCE without any resistance and were greeted by the people are liberators, pretty much the way the neo-cons expected the people of present day Babylon to treat them. Cyrus was benevolent compared to other kings  and freed most of his captives, including Jews. He encouraged them to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple, and even offered to pay for it. In the Book of Ezra, a book of Bible in the Old Testament, Persia or Trans-Euphrates is portrayed as a tolerant place and Cyrus is mentioned about twenty five times, in glorified terms.

Fast forward 2500 years and you have the current ruler of Persia speaking at a conference titled The World Without Zionism calling Israel a "disgraceful blot" to be "wiped off the map "

Reference: Where God Was Born : A Journey by Land to the Roots of Religion by Bruce Feiler

According to the Book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible, Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and  received the Ten Commandments from God. There are sceptics who suggest that Moses never existed as a historical figure and that the Exodus too is mythical. Now in a new documentary titled The Exodus Decoded, filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici suggests that the Exodus did happen, and it happened around 1500 BCE.

Jacobovici set out on his Exodus quest after doing a documentary in the 1990s on a group of people on the Indian-Burma border who claim to be the lost Israelite tribe of Menashe. That film was met with widespread criticism by people Jacobovici branded as "so-called experts." Jacobovici said he himself was skeptical of the tribe's Israelite claims until he researched the subject.

Similarly with the new Exodus documentary, he asserted that with his hefty $3.5 million budget, a lack of preconceptions, and none of the restrictions of conventional archeological wisdom, he was free to reach what he insists are credible conclusions about the Exodus. The 55-year-old director, whose original claim to fame was his first-ever documentary Falasha: Exile of the Black Jews, made two and half decades ago and which focused on Ethiopian Jewry, said his research for the lost tribes film spurred him to question the widely accepted assumptions about what he called "the founding story of Western civilization" - the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt.

Six years later, mixing science, religion and a variety of archeological findings, Jacobovici is convinced that he has seen the light. Most of the archeological findings cited come from Egypt, with others from Greece. He said he researched in six countries, including Israel and the UK.

The 10 plagues that smote the Egyptians, according to the Bible, are explained in the documentary to be the result of a volcanic eruption on a Greek island that occurred 3,500 years ago. [Documentary sets new date for Exodus]

Even though the Harappas had a script it still remains undeciphered. Brāhmī, the script in which the Asokan edicts were written is considered to be one of the earliest known scripts in India. While some Indian authorities maintain that it was derived from the Harappan script [13], the popular notion is that it was derived from a Semitic script like the Imperial Aramaic alphabet. Indo-Greek bi-lingual coins usually had  the name of the King in Greek on one side and in Brāhmī on the other side.

The script used in the earliest inscriptions in Tamil were in Tamil Brahmi or Tamili script and it varied from the Asokan Brahmi. The Brāhmī script, originally was believed to be bought to South India by Buddhist and Jain monks in the post-Asokan period. Tamil Brahmi scripts dating to 3rd century BCE have been found in the caves of Jain monks in Tamil Nadu. Last year, urns containing human skeletons were found in Adichanallur in Tamil Nadu and those urns dating to 500 BCE were found to have Tamil Brāhmī inscriptions which means that the script reached Tamil Nadu during the time of the Buddha. In fact, there has been evidence that the script reached Sri Lanka also around the same time.

Now in an exciting discovery, Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions dating to second century AD have been found in pottery in Thailand.

At the request of the archaeologists, Iravatham Mahadevan, an expert in Tamil Epigraphy, has examined the inscription. He has confirmed that the pottery inscription is in Tamil and written in Tamil-Brahmi characters of about the second century AD. Only three letters have survived on the pottery fragment. They read tu Ra o... , possibly part of the Tamil word turavon meaning `monk.'

The presence of the characteristic letter Ra confirms that the language is Tamil and the script is Tamil-Brahmi. It is possible that the inscription recorded the name of a Buddhist monk who travelled to Thailand from Tamil Nadu. This is the earliest Tamil inscription found so far in South East Asia and attests to the maritime contacts of the Tamils with the Far East even in the early centuries AD.

Prof. Richard Salomon of the University of Washington, U.S., an expert in Indian Epigraphy, has made the following comment on the inscription:

"I am happy to hear that the inscription in question is in fact Tamil-Brahmi, as I had suspected. This is important, among other reasons, because it presents a parallel with the situation with Indian inscriptions in Egypt and the Red Sea area. There we find both Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions and standard-Brahmi insciptions; and we now see the same in Vietnam and South-East Asia. This indicates that the overseas trade between India to both the West and the East involved people from the Tamil country and also other regions." [Tamil-Brahmi inscription on pottery found in Thailand]

During· school days, history was not my favorite topic due to the simple reason that history books were boring. For example, the chapter on Mughal Emperors would read like this:

Akbar ruled India from 1560 to 1605. His full name was Jalaluddin Mohammed Akbar Padshah Ghazi. He built many roads (from 1561-1563), planted trees (1564 -1567) and dug wells for travelers (1570 -1571). Akbar was succeeded by his son Jahangir. He planted trees (1606), dug wells (1609 -1610) and built roads (1611 -1623). Test question: What was Akbar doing in 1567?

When you find history books outside the school book realm, you find that they are mostly written by �??Eminent Historians�?�. According to them, there were Dravidians who were uncivilized and along came the Aryans from somewhere in Central Asia, in their chariots. They inflicted terror and caused the Dravidians to flee to South India, where they lived happily ever after building temples to Khusboo and Nagma.

Now a days no one seriously believes the Aryan Invasion/Migration/Tourist theory, including people doing excavations in the Indus Valley. During the time of the NDA Administration in India, Jagmohan, who was the Culture Minister started the Saraswati Heritage Project. The aim of the project was to excavate the sites along the path of the mythical Saraswati river and learn more about Indian history. The excavations in Adi Badri along the path had revealed a 300 AD Kushan Site and from Dholavira we got the remains of one of the oldest stadiums in the world and some sign boards. This project was immediately tagged as the �??saffronization of Indian history�?� and an attempt to push the antiquity of Indian Civilization. The current Government has scrapped the project.

The Aryan Invasion theory and Saraswati excavations makes you aware that there are many versions of history and lot of politics behind it. At this point you would like to find information for yourself, rather than depend on some biased scholars. You wish you could be an archaeologist like Indiana Jones, running from Kathmandu to Cairo, fighting evil Nazis and snakes and dating beautiful women along the way. Then you realize that you have a day job, a family to feed and your wife may not take kindly to the idea of you dating other women.

Then you turn to the blogosophere for help and guidance and find that there are almost zero to no blogs dealing with the subject. Thus varnam.org started tracking news related to Indian history and archaeology, in an attempt to understand the events more clearly. This made varnam the most boring blog in Indian blogosphere, for which thankfully there is no category in IndiBloggies.

Starting the history section got me in touch with other history buffs who have been wandering aimlessly and the first benefit was the introduction to the wonderful India Archaeology mailing list on Yahoo!. This is a place where people actually know what they are talking about and experts debate endlessly on the similarity between Brahmi and Aramic, the relationship between Lion and Rashtrakuta rulers, and if Steve Farmer is an idiot or not.

A beginner in Indian history is overwhelmed by the amount of literature available. The blog served as a place for people to drop book suggestions and thus I read The Gem in the Lotus by Abraham Eraly, and The Lives of the Jain Elders by Hemacandra (the only book which describes how Chanakya died). Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud by Arun Shourie taught a great deal about the politics of history. A non-boring way to get introduced to history is to read historical fiction and thanks to some other comments, I read the English translation of Kalki�??s wonderful Chola epic Ponniyin Selvan, and also came to know of a genre called speculative alternate history.

Sometimes even professional historians have doubts and I was shocked a few times when such people asked me for help. Fortunately, through the network of historians now available on mailing lists and as commentators on varnam, I was able to redirect their queries to experts in the field. Half the time you don�??t understand the question or the answer, but the blog has provided a venue for collaboration.

More than professional historians, it is amateurs who have found this site useful. Our history crazy blogger Ravages roams around Tamil Nadu on his bike snapping photographs of historical monuments and stones with inscriptions and comes up with questions like, �??What is an Arabic numeral doing in the middle of a 10th century Tamil text �??. Fortunately we were able to get help for him promptly allowing him to continue photographing other landmarks, like the Khushboo temple.

While learning from others, varnam has also produced many wonderful articles on history, as certified by the guy who runs varnam. The site exposed the myth behind Cheraman Perumal�??s conversion to Islam, and took Ayaz Amir to task for suggesting that India had no historical writing till Muslims arrived. Besides this, the site has been keeping track of the archaeology of burial urns in Tamil Nadu , the beginning of farming, the spread of Indus Valley Civilization, Buddhism, various dynasties in Kerala, and the archaeology in Dwaraka, just to mention a few topics. The focus of the site is on ancient Indian history, with emphasis on the time from Buddha to the Mauryas, though we would very much like to know how Subhash Chandra Bose died .

With all these efforts do I know for sure about the truth behind the Aryan theory or what happened to the civilization around Saraswati. No. Through the website I know that I am not alone in this search and that is very reassuring. When people write the history of Indian Blogosphere, they will write

A website named varnam wrote about Indus Valley (2002-2003), temple inscriptions (2002- 2004) and Subhash Bose (2004-2006).

(Written originally for DesiPundit)

The main protagonist of Gore Vidal's novel Creation was Cyrus Spitama, the grandson of Zoroaster. Though the novel was set in the 6th century BCE, current scholarly consensus places Zoroaster's time at 1400 –1000 BCE making him the founder of one of the earliest religions based on revealed scripture. Other dates place him in the time of the Axial age, the time of Vidal's novel. Zoroaster lived in Bactria in present day Afghanistan and his religion was adopted by the Persian emperor Darius, whose empire at that time included modern day Iraq as well.

Now a Zoroastrian temple has been discovered in Kurdistan, Iraq.

Duhok's Director of