Aleppo

Aleppo, textile suq market (via Wikipedia)
Aleppo, textile suq market (via Wikipedia)

Fire swept through the old central souk, or marketplace, of Aleppo, Syria, on Saturday, damaging a vast and well-preserved labyrinth of medieval storehouses, shops, schools and ornate courtyards as fierce clashes between security forces and insurgents vowing to carry out a “decisive battle” for the city continued.[Fire Sweeps Through 17th-Century Souk of Aleppo, City’s Soul]

The battle for Aleppo is not going very well. Guardian’s Ghaith Abdul-Ahad had a documentary on this in which he visited the rebel frontlines and found them disorganized. In an interview with NPR he said

“There is chaos, there is no military planning, there is no organization,” he says. “Most of the skirmishes happen like a game of cat and mouse: The tank is the cat. When the tank moves down street, the rebels disperse, run away, try to ambush the tank, they go from a corner to a corner. Meantime, there is shelling [and] mortars raining on them.”[Journalist Examines Chaotic Fighting In Syria]

In one of the history courses I am doing, there is a mention of Aleppo in the section on overland commerce and the Ottoman expansion in the fifteenth century. By this time Vasco da Gama had reached Calicut and Columbus had led the way for the exploitation of the Americas. But that did not halt the overland caravan trading completely; the land routes that linked the Europe to India and China were still active. One of the cities that thrived along this route was Aleppo because it was at a prime location: at the end of the caravan route from India and Baghdad. It was bigger than Damascus and Homs and by the 16th century, one of the most important commercial centers in the region.
Now a huge fire has destroyed those souks

The souks of Aleppo, a maze of vaulted passageways with shops that sell everything from foods to fabrics, perfumes, spices and artisan souvenirs, are a tactical prize for the combatants. They lie beneath the city’s towering citadel where activists say regime troops and snipers have taken up positions.
Aleppo’a souks are not the only Syrian cultural treasures to have fallen victim to the violence following the country’s uprising and the crackdown by the Assad regime.
Some of the country’s most significant sites, including centuries-old fortresses, have been caught in the crossfire in battles between regime forces and rebels. Others have been turned into military bases. In Homs, where up to 7,000 are estimated to have died, historic mosques and souk areas have also been smashed and artefacts stolen.[Medieval Aleppo souks destroyed by fire as battle rages in Syria]

Reference

  1. Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of the World: From 1000 CE to the Present (Third Edition) (Vol. 2) by Robert Tignor et al

Mrs. Yeshua

(via Wikipedia)
(via Wikipedia)

Recently Karen King of Harvard Divinity School made public a a fourth century papyrus which contains the phrase, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife …’ ” followed by “she will be able to be my disciple.” This has triggered a debate on if this means Jesus was really married, on if the papyrus is fake and what not.
The provenance of the papyrus is mysterious. It came from an anonymous collector who acquired it in the 60s from Communist East Germany. The fragment itself is quite small

The fragment is some four centimeters tall and eight centimeters wide. Its rough edges suggest that it had been cut out of a larger manuscript; some dealers, keener on profit than preservation, will dice up texts for maximum return. The presence of writing on both sides convinced the scholars that it was part of a codex—or book—rather than a scroll. [The Inside Story of a Controversial New Text About Jesus]

There is one argument which goes that this is a fake because the writing seem to be similar to the ones in The Gospel of Thomas, a Gnostic gospel discovered in Nag Hammadi. There is also another argument that even though the papyrus itself could be old, the ink may not be. Harvard University journal itself says that the research is unverified.
That said, the appearance of the papyrus has produced lots of back and forth which gives us a glimpse of the Jesus movement in the early periods. For example, the wife of Jesus theory is not something new, but something which has existed in other texts as well.

But let’s keep in mind that we actually already have a text that mentions Jesus’ wife. It is the Gospel of Philip. We already know that there were some early Christians, in particular the Valentinian Gnostics, who taught that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ consort or wife. They wrote about it in the Gospel of Philip.

The new gospel fragment supports this Valentinian picture. If it turns out to be an authentic gospel fragment from antiquity, it likely came from a page of yet another Valentinian gospel that contained sayings of Jesus. Valentinian Christians were very prolific and they preserved an entire sayings tradition of counter-memories that supported their creative metaphysical outlook and Gnostic spirituality [Did Jesus have a wife?]

Smithsonian has a long backstory of the papyrus. From that:

Though King makes no claims for the value of the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” as, well, a marriage certificate, she says it “puts into greater question the assumption that Jesus wasn’t married, which has equally no evidence,” she told me. It casts doubt “on the whole Catholic claim of a celibate priesthood based on Jesus’ celibacy. They always say, ‘This is the tradition, this is the tradition.’ Now we see that this alternative tradition has been silenced.”
“What this shows,” she continued, “is that there were early Christians for whom that was simply not the case, who could understand indeed that sexual union in marriage could be an imitation of God’s creativity and generativity and it could be spiritually proper and appropriate.”
In her paper, King speculates that the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” may have been tossed on the garbage heap not because the papyrus was worn or damaged, but “because the ideas it contained flowed so strongly against the ascetic currents of the tides in which Christian practices and understandings of marriage and sexual intercourse were surging.”[The Inside Story of a Controversial New Text About Jesus]

(Credits: Image via Wikipedia)

The Nataraja of Netherlands

Apparently, the largest bronze Nataraja from the Chola dynasty does not live in India, but in Netherlands. Recently they x-rayed the statue and found something interesting

Research recently revealed that the Rijksmuseum’s monumental bronze statue of Shiva was cast in solid bronze. The thousand year-old temple statue was X-rayed, along with the lorry transporting it, in the most powerful X-ray tunnel for containers of the Rotterdam customs authority. It is the first research of its kind on a museological masterpiece.
The statue was created ca. 1100 in South India. Each temple had its own set of bronze statues which were carried through the city during major temple festivals. This gives the statues their name: utsavamurti, which is Sanskrit for ‘festival images’. Chola bronzes were considered masterpieces of Indian bronze casting.
Anna Ślączka, curator of South Asian Art, comments, ‘We had expected that the statue itself would prove to be solid, but it was a complete surprise to discover that the aureole and the demon under Shiva’s feet are also solid.’ [Dancing Shiva X-rayed (via Michel Danino]

To see the full image, click on the downward pointing white arrow on the Nataraja on the sidebar.

Indian History Carnival – 57: Madras Mail, Kalapani, Greater Magadha, Asom Dynasty

Cellular Jail, Andaman

  1. Sriram writes about Charles Lawson, who ran the powerful newspaper The Madras Mail from 1868 CE
  2. 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.

  3. Maddy writes about the voyage of TSS Maharaja which took Moplahs to Kalapani
  4. 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).

  5. 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
  6. 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.

  7. Fëanor writes how the 600 years old Asom dynasty came to an end
  8. 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

Indian History Carnival – 56: The 19th century

  1. The Royal Asiatic Society Blog has few images depicting the nine avatars of Vishnu which are from 19th century Rajasthan.
  2. What is the connection between Swati Tirunal, Irvivarman Thampi, Sugandhavalli ,Vadivelu, Bharatnatyam, and Mohinitattam? In a fascinating post Maddy explains
  3. The work carried out by the quartet on Bharata Natyam encouraged the young king Swati Tirunal, who now wanted Vadivelu to work on the extant but unpopular form of Mohiniattam in Kerala. Together they crafted a revival and able support was provided by two more people, Uncle Iravivarman Thampi and a lovely dusky toned dancer. I will not get into the details of Swati Tirunal and his life, but suffices to say that here was a well educated and willing student, waiting for new teachers and new ideas. The dancers knew how to convert the ideas into movements. The king however was a man in a hurry, probably he knew he had only some more years left in his life and so he wanted to experience it all, the role of a ruler, the beauty of dance and the woman’s sensuous role in it as well as the woman herself, fighting the infighting in the large royal family and keeping the colonial rulers and administrators at bay. Was there time for love in his life?

  4. Did a tsunami hit Calicut in 1847? CHF investigates
  5. Further south the waves damaged the mouth of the Kotta (Moorad, Vatakara) river and destroyed the Palliyad dam and the cultivation above it over two miles from the mouth of the river. The floods from inland breached the new work on the Conolly canal at Calicut. At Parappanangadi and Tanur private persons suffered much loss from the sudden rise of the sea. The tsunami altered the topography permanently in Chavakkad, where, Logan records, the sea forced a new and deep opening into the Chavakkad backwater and broke with much strength on the Ennamakkal dam…. The description leaves no room to doubt that it was indeed a tsunami . Considering the lack of proper communication those days, it is likely that the damage – particularly in terms of loss of lives and destruction of property – was much more widespread but was not properly documented.

  6. Parag Tope’s Operation Red Lotus has a section which describes why English East India Company should be considered as a drug cartel due to the fact that they cultivated and exported opium from India to China. Another good book which goes into the details of this trade is Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh. Ptak Science Books has a post which shows some images from the 29 July 1882 issue of the Scientific American which shows the magnitude of this business.
  7. They are iconic images of a devastating trade and were frequently reproduced over many decades–mostly not for the “devastating” part of what I just wrote, but more for the industrial/business appreciation end, as was the case with this article in SciAmerican. The British interest in the trade stretched back two cneturies earlier, and of course the use of opium bends far back into Neolithic times. Sherill’s scenes are all from the opium receiving/production/distribution center in Patna, India, which claimed to produce some 13,000,000 pounds of opium juice annually, shipping the stuff out to Bengal and then on to China.

  8. In the June 2010 issue of Pragati, I wrote about the ice trade between United States and India. In this post, Sriram writes about the ice factories of Chennai.
  9. The Madras Ice Company was floated in 1865, with CA Ainslie of Binny, John Charles Loch of Parry and the legendary lawyer John Bruce Norton as its Directors. Despite its high profile origin it was a non-starter. By the 1870s, the Royal Navy showed that ice could be made using what was called the steam process. The International Ice Company was established in Madras in 1874. Nothing much is known about it, beyond the fact that it killed the American import.

The carnival is expected to be on schedule from September onwards. Also there is a possibility that blogging might resume once again after a break of few months. The next carnival will be up on Sept 15th. Send your nominations to varnam.blog @gmail. Thanks to Sandeep V and Feanor.

Indian History Carnival – 55: Rebirth, Zamorin, Alasinga Perumal, Midday lunch, Will Durant

  1. After writing about the how the notion of Kamma changed over time, Jayarava writes about the concept of rebirth
  2. Contrarily those who seek to deny that rebirth was part of the original teaching don’t have a leg to stand on. Rebirth is prominent in the older hagiographical accounts like the Ariyapariyesanā Sutta, and in the older parts of the Sutta Nipāta. Rebirth is quite obviously an important part of Buddhism in the earliest records we have. The idea that rebirth is somehow in the background, or was added later, is insupportable based on current evidence. That rebirth no longer seems plausible is an entirely different proposition. And one that creates a dilemma that I have no wish to underplay. We have yet to really work out the implications of this news, though it is the news. Understanding that our doctrines have always been quite changeable and responsive to social change, seems to me to be an important factor in loosening our grip on traditional doctrines with a view to letting them go. Everything changes. Resisting changes causes suffering. The only way forward for Buddhism is, well, forward

  3. Where do you think the Zamorin’s palace was and how do you think it looked like? Maddy draws an image based on notes from various visitors
  4. And with all that background, let us summarize how the palace would have looked.
    The palace grounds were enclosed by low walls with wooden inlays, there were perhaps some moats around the walls (I doubt it), that the walls had four gates and were well guarded. The palace was in the middle and the courtyard housed other buildings such as the women’s quarters, the main meeting halls etc. the roads within were lined with tress, ponds and so on, and some of the buildings were multistoried with tiled roofs. There were bathing ponds within the palace and outside, the Manachira tank provided water supply to the large numbers of people employed. The manachira grounds hosted competitions and bazaars often. Close by was the Tali temple, the mint and the stables.

  5. One person who worked behind the scenes in sending Swami Vivekananda to USA was  M.C.Alasinga Perumal. Karthik Bhat has that story
  6. A thought then struck Alasinga that Swami Vivekananda could be sent to Chicago as the Hindu representative. On this idea being put forth before him, Swami Vivekananda readily agreed, having earlier been requested by various dignitaries such as the Maharaja of Mysore and the Raja of Ramnad to travel to the West and propagate the ideals of Hinduism. Soon, preparations started in full earnest for the travel of Swami Vivekananda to the West. A subscription committee was formed under the leadership of Alasinga to raise funds, which did not always come easily. Alasinga even had to resort to door to door begging at times to raise the money. Soon, a princely sum of Rs.500 was collected. However, this sum was redistributed as Swami Vivekananda had second thoughts about his participation in the Parliament, as he took as a bad omen the fact that the Raja of Ramnad had failed to pay up the money promised by him for the purpose. Alasinga was disheartened that his efforts had gone waste. 

  7. Sriram writes about the person who pioneered the mid day lunch scheme in schools in Madras
  8. Among his first observations was that several of the poor children of the George Town area did not come to school. He also observed that among those who attended, several remained hungry during the lunch break, as the parents could not afford to send any food. Perhaps taking a leaf from the Chennapuri Annadana Samajam, which had begun sending cooked food to schools, he decided that the Hindu Theological would have its own kitchen. He seeded it with his savings and later aggressively canvassed for support from the parents of well-to-do students. The Deenabandhu Sangam was formed shortly thereafter which took on the task of providing the noon meal and also clothes to indigent students.

  9. L K Advani’s blog mentions Will Durant’s A Case for India in which he wrote against the British. Advani quotes Durant’s following lines
  10. “The final element in the real caste system of India is the social treatment of the Hindus by the British. The latter may be genial Englishmen when they arrive, gentlemen famous as lovers of fair play; but they are soon turned, by the example of their leaders and the poison of irresponsible power, into the most arrogant and over-bearing bureaucracy on earth. “Nothing can be more striking,” said a report to Parliament, in 1830, “than the scorn with which the people have been practically treated at the hands of even those who were actuated by the most benevolent motives”. Sunderland reports that the British treat the Hindus as strangers and foreigners in India, in a manner “quite as unsympathetic, harsh and abusive as was ever seen among the Georgia and Louisiana planters in the old days of American slavery”.

Sorry for the delay. The next issue will be out on Independence Day. Thanks to Sandeep V and Feanor for their contributions.

Indian History Carnival: 54 – Saraswati, Ghaggar-Hakra, Kamma, Scotland, Chennai Port

  1. The decline of the Indus-Saraswati civilization (terminology used by ASI) is the major news this month and what triggered it is a paper by  Liviu Giosan, a geologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. NYTimes blog writes
  2. Wild, untamed rivers once slashed through the heart of the Indus plains. They were so unpredictable and dangerous that no city could take root on their banks. As the centuries passed, however, the monsoons became less frequent and the floods less intense, creating stable conditions for agriculture and settlement.
    Sprawling across what is now Pakistan, northwestern India and eastern Afghanistan, the Indus civilization encompassed more than 625,000 square miles, rivaling ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in its accomplishments. In its bustling hubs, there was indoor plumbing, gridded streets and a rich intellectual life.
    Unlike the Egyptians and Mesopotamians, who used irrigation systems to support crops, the Harappans relied on a gentle, dependable cycle of monsoons that fed local rivers and keyed seasonal floods.
    As time passed, the monsoons continued to weaken until the rivers no longer flooded, and the crops failed. The surplus agriculture was longer there to support traders, artists, craftsmen and scholars . The Harappans’ distinct writing system, which still has not been deciphered, fell into disuse.

  3. On the same topic, Suvrat Kher has a post in which he writes
  4. Paleobotanical and sedimentological criteria had always indicated that increasing aridification and reduction in monsoon strength better explained the drying of the Ghaggar around 3900 B.P. Despite all this, the Sutlej or the Yamuna changing course at around 3900 B.P became the favored explanation for the drying of the Ghaggar. This scenario of a once large Ghaggar neatly fitted the description in the Rig Veda of a mighty Saraswati, a holy river that just like the Ganges was thought to have its source in the high glacial Himalayas. I suspect that the glacial river theory had more emotional appeal and gained acceptance among some geologists.
    The strong assertions by geologists that the diversion of glacial rivers from the Ghaggar coincided with the decline of the Harappan civilization was used by archaeologists like Prof. B.B. Lal to place the composers of the Rig Veda on the plains of the Punjab before the Ghaggar dried up, apparently bolstering the theory that the Harappan people and the Vedic people were one and the same. A geological narrative constructed without rigorous evidence has been promoted to support a theory of cultural evolution in northwest India.
    Unfortunately, this glacial past of the Saraswati timed to the demise of the Harappan civilization is now enshrined in textbooks written by senior geologists like K.S. Valdiya. They should now be revised or at the very least these geologists need to admit that their theory has been seriously challenged. If geologists working on this problem still want to stick to the theory of a glacial Saraswati, they will need to come up with a more convincing data driven rebuttal to the work of Clift et.al. and Giosan et. al.

  5. How did the Buddhist idea of Kamma change over time? Jayarava illustrates it with several examples
  6. There is no single unified Theory of Karma in Buddhism, either synchronically (in our time) or diachronically (across time). Instead there are multiple theories, and very many exegetes explaining the “Truth” of karma. Some of these ‘truths’ are mutually exclusive. Sectarians tend not to be conversant with the details of the different theories, since sectarian teachers present their version of karma as the Truth. Those who are conversant with a range of karma theories find them difficult to reconcile. ‘Actions have consequences’ is what it boils down to, but its hard to see this as a great revelation from the Buddha since everyone knows this platitude already. The how and when of actions having consequences are Buddhism’s specific contribution to moral theory, but unfortunately Buddhists themselves disagree on precisely these points.

  7. In 1705 Scotland joined the British union to create Great Britain and there was someone from Malabar who was in the thick of the events that led to it. Maddy has that fascinating tale
  8. The witnesses Francisco and Ferdinando when produced before the court were termed Negros or blacks, not considered real Christians and their names as stated were not considered real. They were for these reasons not considered equivalent to ten pound Scots. Nevertheless, their depositions were the basis for later judgment, Ferdinando’s being the clinching eyewitness testimony augmented by supporting evidence by the others. It appears that he provided his testimony either in Malayalam. Imagine the irony, the destiny of Scotland was decided by a few words in Malayalam!! The translations in court were provided by George Yeaman.

  9. Sriram has details on how Chennai got its port
  10. The Port scheme gained a major source of support with the establishment of the Madras Chamber of Commerce in 1836. The merchants of the city were convinced that if it was to transform from being Kipiling’s “tired withered beldame”, Madras needed a proper harbour and therefore began championing the cause. The Chamber, which had most of its members on First Line Beach, roped in the Madras Trades Association, which comprised the retail giants of Mount Road. In 1857, a Committee in which the Chamber was represented submitted to the East India Company a report that stated “that an iron screw pile pier was not only feasible but simple of construction and was the most suitable structure for spanning the Madras surf”. The Government that replaced the Company post Mutiny accepted this proposal which was estimated to cost Rs 95,000. A year later this was revised to Rs 103,000 and on 17th September 1859, the first pile was screwed down by Sir Charles Trevelyan, the then Governor, assisted by the Commander-in-Chief and Henry Nelson, Chairman of the Chamber.

That’s it for June. The next carnival will be up on July 15th. Please send nominations to @varnam_blog or varnam dot blog at gmail.

Earlier date for Malayalam

By around 800 CE, the language used in Kerala was a local variation of Tamil. The language known as Malayalam did not exist. Ilango Adigal (who wrote Silappatikaram) and Kulasekhara Alwar (responsible for devotional literature) were Malayalis, but wrote in Tamil. By around the 9th century CE, Malayalam evolved into a separate language under the heavy influence of Saṃskṛtam. As it became a new language — the youngest among the Dravidian languages — it discarded the earlier script and started using the script used for writing Saṃskṛtam.
But some data from Edakkal caves is changing our understanding of the evolution of Malayalam language. It seems the language started evolving much earlier than the “brahminical period”.

Eminent epigraphist Iravatham Mahadevan contends that Edakal-5 provides important evidence that the common people of Kerala were already expressing themselves in Malayalam at about the end of the 4th century c.e.
The inscription (Edakal-5) is engraved just below and to the left of a tall, imposing anthropomorphic figure, which is part of the much earlier prehistoric engravings covering the rock walls of the cave (Picture 1). It appears that Edakal-5 is a label inscription engraved by a casual visitor to the cave recording his impression of the anthropomorphic figure he saw there.
The language of Edakal-5 is Malayalam. This becomes clear from the first word i (this), which is a pronoun in Malayalam standing for someone or something nearer the speaker. In Tamil, i has the same meaning, but does not occur as an independent word unlike in Malayalam. That the language of the inscription is indeed Malayalam is made clear by the second word pazhama which corresponds to pazhamai in Tamil, meaning “that which is ancient or old”. The text in Malayalam and its nearest rendering in Tamil are juxtaposed below to bring out the distinction.
i pazhama (Malayalam)
idu pazhamai (Tamil)
‘this (is) ancient’ (translation)
The most important result from the revised reading is that Edakal-5 is by far the earliest inscription in Malayalam and the only one in Brahmi. It may be assigned to late 4th or early 5th century c.e. on palaeographic evidence discussed below. The next earliest inscriptions in Malayalam occur much later from about the beginning of the 9th century c.e. and are in the Vatteluttu script.
Edakal-5 provides important evidence that the common people of Kerala were already expressing themselves in Malayalam at about the end of the 4th century c.e. However, Tamil was also retained by the elite as the literary idiom in which great works like Silappadikaram were composed. Eventually, of course, the people’s language prevailed in the region and Malayalam became the medium of communication for all purposes from about the beginning of the Kollam Era (early 9th century c.e.).[The earliest inscription in Malayalam (via Nikhil Narayanan)]

But then this is just one data point and one cannot generalize anything about what was happening in Kerala just from this.

HNS Book Updates: Bring Up the Bodies, The First Crusade


The Historical Novel Society monthly mail collects book reviews from various newspapers making it easy for people like me to decide what to read and what to avoid. The past few months, I did not find anything interesting. But this month there are two books which I want to read.
The first one is Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up The Bodies which is a sequel to her Booker prize winning Wolf Hall. I am not a big fan of English royalty and the palace politics, but the only reason the book looks interesting is the period — 16th century — when Europeans where on a looting spree around the world. NPR had an interview with her and most of the reviews are positive.

Historical fiction has many pitfalls, multiple characters and plausible underwear being only two of them. How should people talk? Sixteenth-century diction would be intolerable, but so would modern slang; Mantel opts for standard English, with the occasional dirty joke, and for present-tense narration much of the time, which keeps us right there with Cromwell as his plots and Mantel’s unfold. How much detail – clothes, furnishings, appliances – to supply without clogging up the page and slowing down the story? Enough to allow the reader to picture the scene, with lush fabrics and textures highlighted, as they were at the time. Mantel generally answers the same kinds of question that interest readers in court reports of murder trials or coverage of royal weddings. What was the dress like? How did she look? Who really went to bed with whom? Mantel sometimes overshares, but literary invention does not fail her: she’s as deft and verbally adroit as ever. [Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel – review]

The second book is non-fiction about the First Crusade. Washington Post has the review of Peter Frankopan’s  The First Crusade: The Call From the East

But the West possessed fighting men and modern technology — chiefly the knight mounted on an armored war horse — and there might lie salvation, of a sort. By eliding the interests of Constantinople with the promise of liberating Jerusalem, Alexios presented himself as a champion of Christendom. He wrote to Urban, who, faced with a rival pope and widespread clerical discord, quickly grasped that a noble cause in a distant land would bolster his wobbly perch on the throne of St. Peter. To increase the Crusade’s attractiveness, the savvy pontiff emphasized not only the spiritual rewards of participation, but also the virtual guarantee of a place in heaven for those who lost their lives. The leaders of the Crusade soon included Robert, Duke of Normandy (one of William the Conqueror’s sons); Count Raymond of Toulouse; Godfrey of Bouillon; and the soon-to-be-famous Bohemond, whose family controlled the Norman kingdom of Sicily. They and their carefully recruited armies, consisting of reliable fighting men, would meet at Constantinople in 1096 and 1097.In the meantime, the unexpected occurred. From 1095 to ’96, a charismatic preacher, Peter the Hermit, gathered a following of his own and, without papal authorization, unleashed what is now known as the People’s Crusade. Whipped to a frenzy, this ragtag and chaotic mob moved across Europe, preaching anti-Semitism, murdering Jewish populations and devastating the countryside in its hunger for food and supplies. Somehow, a remnant of these marauding zealots made their way to Asia Minor, where they brutally overran a small castle near Nicaea — and were in their turn crushed by vengeful Turkish forces. Ironically, many of these fanatical Christians quickly converted to Islam to save their miserable lives.[‘The First Crusade: The Call From the East,’ by Peter Frankopan]