The rising & the setting sun. A young & skillful friend of home, Savitar is a god with golden arms & golden tongue.
Savitar is the harbinger of light. He also parts seasons, as he divides night and day.
Trivia - A major @DCComics character is named after him.
Pushan पूषण्
Another solar deity, Pushan is a god of unions and marriages.
The god of every path and every road, Pushan is a protector of journeys, and protects travellers from perils of the path.
Pushan appears in the morning, and disappears in the lustre of Savitar.
Dhishana धिषाणा
Dhishana is the wish. She gives plants and trees.
Dhishana grants swift riches. A giver of strength and gains, Dhishana also provides Soma (the drink)
Trita त्रित
The rain of the winter, Trita is the giver of bounties and aids agriculture.
Trita lives in the height of the heavens.
Helped by Marut, Trita is adorned by the flashes of lightning, and is preceded by the roars of thunder.
Marut मरुत्
The gust of storm, the fiery wind and the bringer of Trita; Marut lives and traverses in the highest of heavens. He roars like a lion and moves like a serpent.
Marut assists Indra and Trita in their war against Vritra (वृत्र).
The thread is based on the book "Evolution of the Vedic Pantheon" by smt. Akshaya Kumari Devi.
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The Cultural Index of Mahabharata (1951 till now) - An Index of culture and anthropology, geography, and objects mentioned in the Mahabharata
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A long thread on the long term project of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute
In 1951, Dr. S.K. Belvalvalkar, then gen. editor of the Critical Edition, published an outline for the literary & historical epilogue to Mahabharata. It'd deal with topics like features of various versions, linguistic peculiarities, anthropological details (19 aspects in total)
To construct such an epilogue, it was decided to catalogue 6 major heads - 1) Names, 2) Events, 3) Concepts (philosophy, polity, religion etc), 4) Realia (prevalent culture, day-to-day life, food, war, agriculture etc), 5) Geography, 6) divisions of time
“Another key issue in Indology for which the solution appears to have been found in archaeology is the great epic of Mahabharata. The crucial testimony comes from Hastinapur which has been identified as the capital of Kauravas.”
“B.B. Lal (1954/55), a leading Indian archaeologist, carried out explorations of sites mentioned in the Mahabharata, where interestingly enough he found a pottery Gray in colour, bearing designs in black.”
A lake Emperor Chandragupta Maurya constructed > 2300 years ago, and which irrigated Junagadh (Gujarat) region for more than 777 years
(Thread)
The great Emperor, Chandragupta Maurya (324-297 BCE) once ordered his minister Pushyagupta to construct an irrigation lake in the present day Junagadh.
Thus at the foothills of Mount Girnar & the confluence of rivers "Suvarna Sikata" &"Palashini", lake Sudarshan was constructed.
Decades later, Emperor Ashok ordered his Greek governor, Tushaspha to design and construct irrigation canals on the lake Sudarshan.
48 years (1919-1966)
3 generations of scholars
A critical synthesis of 1259 Manuscripts
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12,985 plus pages across 19 volumes
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The making of the Critical Edition of Mahabharata - A long thread
Mahabharata is often deemed the fifth Veda, meaning it is equally venerable as the four Vedas.
The critical edition calls it "an inexhaustible mine for the investigation of religion, mythology, philosophy, law, customs, political and social institutions of the ancient India"
A.K. Ramanujan once said that no Indian reads Mahabharata for the "first time". For many centuries common Indians have grown up with the stories and morals of Mahabharata.
But the variations in recensions of the Mahabharata matched the diversity of India equally maddeningly.