Out of quarantine and out into the wild volcanic Highlands of Central Java. The 7thC temples of Gedong Songo are strung up the ridge of an eerie volcano, where plumes of sulphurous steam belch out of the ground and mingle with thick cloudbanks scudding up bamboo slopes.
The temples themselves look sometimes Gupta, sometimes Pallava, with a hint of Kashmir- all topped with curving Chinese-style flying eves- a mixture you'd see nowhere in India and yet are contemporary with the earliest Indian stone mandirs in MP and coastal Tamil Nadu.
The guards, all Muslims, all reported regular night time sightings of Hindu queens and their spirit courts.
One told me how a princess had appeared in a dream and directed him to a place where he found a 7thC Sanjaya gold necklace, which he handed in "because stealing treasure brings bad luck on a family." It is now on display in the National Museum in Jakarta.
Candi Gedong Songo on Mount Ugaran. “It is at Gedog Songo rather than Dieng that the model for the Javanese temple was established.”
Gedong Songo means ‘nine buildings’ in Javanese, though many more have been found. These are considered to be the 2nd-oldest extant Javanese temples, contemporary with later Dieng constructions, though dating is more a matter of interpretation than reference to any inscription.
"Each of the Gedong Songo temples is square in plan, with a tiered superstructure of three false storeys which varies from temple to temple in proportion of height to width rather than compositionally"
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Often called Arabic numerals, the modern number system we use today actually originates in India. Whilst in the west they were using Roman numerals, in India they were using numbers 1-9.
Then the great Brahmagupta in the 7th century made one of the most monumental developments in human history. He invented zero in its modern form, allowing any number up to infinity to be expressed with just ten distinct symbols: the nine Indian numbers plus zero. Rules that are still taught in classrooms around the world today. This step was a major advance that had never previously been attempted elsewhere and it was this Indian reincarnation of zero as a number, rather than just as an absence, that transformed it and gave it its power.
Two years after the Holy Roman Empire was established in Western Christendom, another world-shaking empire was rising in the east, more powerful even than that of Charlemagne, and far wealthier🛕
🇰🇭 Born on the Mountain of Lychees in Northern Cambodia, the mighty Khmer empire dominated most of mainland Southeast Asia, stretching as far north as southern China, and outsizing the Byzantine empire at its peak....
⚔️ In 802 a mighty warrior king, Jayavarman II, united the warring clans, made dynastic alliances and conquered his way to supremacy. His descendants would become God Kings…
New @EmpirePodUK
Wu Zetian, The Dragon Empress-
China's Game of Thrones
How did an Indian religion, Buddhism, become the court religion of China? The answer is linked to the violent rise to power of China’s only ever woman Emperor. Raised by pious Buddhist parents, Wu Zetian left a trail of bodies in her wake as she charted a path to absolute power.
From a lowly ranked concubine in the imperial harem of the Tang Emperor Taizong, through becoming the legitimate Empress of his son Gaizong, to seizing sole power on his death, Wu expertly trod the corridors of power, and used Buddhism to legitimise her unprecedented claim to rule.
Whole generations grew up on a whitewashing of the tragic story of the genocide of the indigenous native nations of North America. In our latest double bill @EmpirePodUK shines a light at the dark & tragic history behind the romanticised bullshit of Hollywood westerns
A whole genre of movies is based on a relatively short period of nineteenth-century American history. But what is the real story behind battles between Native Americans and white settlers during westward expansion?
In the aftermath of the Mexican-American War, settlers flooded to the newly acquired territory and before long, violence was commonplace. Images of battles fought on horseback continue to shape our popular understanding, yet have often overshadowed the cultures and lives that were decimated during this period.
Fabulous new @EmpirePodUK episode-
This one is a complete cracker
The second in our Empress series-
Helena, Queen of the World, Mother of Empire and Finder of the One True Cross
with the wonderful @peter_sarris
Born in poverty at a time when the Roman Empire was in danger of cracking up and disintegrating, Helena was set for a life of obscurity as a stable hand, bar maid, and, according to some, a prostitute. Yet, in the most improbable tale she rose through the social hierarchy to be proclaimed Empress, then later canonised, and declared by some as Queen of the World and Mother of Empire.
Not only was she mother and most trusted advisor to the Emperor Constantine, but she played a pivotal role in the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity.
Monoliths exist throughout the length and breadth of the Khasi and Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya, often in groups of three. However, the biggest collection of Megalithic stones can be found in the market village of Nartiang, which is a sort of Himalayan Callanish. These consist of both Menhirs (upright stones, believed to be male) and Dolmens (flat stones in the horizontal position, conceived as female) and known as Moo Kynthai. The elders of the village still sit on the stones on market day once a week, divide revenue due to the village and decide where to spend it.
Villages here still give each other menhirs, though today they usually arrive by truck 🚚 rather than wooden rollers from the quarry.
Today, the stones can have multiple functions: they can be commemorative, or else stand in as monuments marking the spots of ritual sacrifices, cremations, durbars and the sites of battles.