A week back I read a 2 newspaper articles claiming the discovery of a vinAyakI image in TN. 1 showed no image while I wasn't sure the other image was what was discovered. Below confirms it. That image was small& partial by confirms it. Indeed, it would be first depiction of the
goddess mahAnAsA, a yoginI, or hastipishAchI (vinAyakI), the shakti of vinAyaka who in the early phase of the gANapatya tradition was shown with an elephant head. A convention preserved in Nepal (to a degree) & the Japanese cult of the god. manasataramgini.wordpress.com/2005/04/30/a-j…
While the 1500
years is a generic date on stylistic grounds we can assign the steles to the pallava apex period so could be at least 1400-1300 yrs old. We shall make the case for that below: 1. The waist band & the form resembles several pallava steles that have been recovered from pallava apex
2.The second stele in the group (left) is similar with respect to the form of the stele, headgear & lotus seat with a stele depicting a 4 armed deity identified as skanda (right) from Villupuram about 85 km away.
3. The same headgear and style of hold the conch/arms is seen in a pallavan durgA from the Vallam caves.
The 3rd deity has been identified with lakulIsha. While he seem to holds a club he is not ithyphallic suggesting that it is unlikely to be lakulIsha (confirmed by another published image with white powder). Instead, I'd propose that he's not shaiva at all but the saMkarShaNa.
Hence, I propose that the 2nd stele depicts aniruddha. The conch supports a vaiShNava affinity. The 2nd arm seems to sport a sword that is seen in an early south Indian depiction of aniruddha on the 1 of the most important image of the history of H religion: the Kondamotu stele
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Archaeologist Wakankar discovered this sketch of the saMkarShaNa-vAsudeva-ekAnaMshA triad in a cave at Tikla on the mathurA-ujjayini route. He thought it was a king& queen with an attendant holding an umbrella. Neumayer's sketch of figures& inscription below. However, the
halAyudha, gadA, chakra indicate the deities. The inscription above looks like: 𑀤𑀩𑀼𑀓𑁂𑀦𑀁 𑀓𑀭𑀺𑀢𑀁 𑀑𑀟𑀸𑀦𑀓𑀺𑀢𑀁 : dabukenaM karitaM oDAnakitaM from a zoomed in image. May be it means "drawing made by dabuka" The proper instrumental would be dabukena but the dot's there
The vAsudeva reminds 1 of the depiction at pArthasArathI in chennai. The form of the brAhmI is clearly close to the Heliodorus vaiShNava inscription bracketed by middle mauryan and later kShathrapa brAhmI. So late maurya/shu~Nga era most likely. What exactly is ekAnaMshA holding?
If we are talking of level of Euler etc that doesn't happen even in the US/Germany with apparently higher mean IQ & resources than India. A part of it is the expanding frontier of science. The edge of science today is at a large radius& it may not be easy to recognize anything at
that edge without a lot of effort. For example, people with modest mathematical capacity& some effort can at least understand some of the discoveries of Gauss or Ramanujan to get a feel for why they were genii. Closer to our times 2 Jewish intellectual are mentioned as being at
that level: Witten, a mathematical physicist & Grothendieck the mathematician. Most commoners cannot grasp the rarified heights at which they operate. With Kepler or Newton we get an immediate feel for palpable problems like planetary motion. With Witten we don't even know if all
It seems the relationship between दुष्ट-सोरः & the chIna-s has soured. The emperor's edict describing him as what he really is was released. Irrespective of where 1 stands vis-a-vis the chIna-s, they are spot on regarding this & as they have been regarding some other issues. He
has clearly struck back & we have to see how the chIna-s handle his assault. This is case where enemy's enemy is not friend -- he is as much or more the enemy of H too. It is also important for multiple reasons: 1. This shows that he has assets to potentially strike even behind
well-fortified walls of Peking. 2. It gives a taste of the various tactics he can deploy, including against H. Every1 knows how he caused the prAchya-paNa-saMbhrama. So far he has focused on the toolkit but he could expand operations as his urgency to overthrow the lATapati rises
While I too would've preferred an akhaNDa-bhArata, I think fretting the presence of the idol itself is nonsensical. In the core shruti there are no recommendations for the images for any of the deities. Yet the lay H today would worship old deities like rudra or viShNu in images
Similarly, the shruti recommends that all Indo-Aryans take the name of bhArata in their fire ritual. Moreover in the specific ritual of the clan they worship 3 goddesses sarasvatI, iLA, bhAratI. IMO, this bhAratI is none other the goddess of the land of the Arya-s. Its extent &
location has been changing over the ages. It might change again or vanish if the H lose the war their enemies are waging on them. But its existence is not in doubt. Hence, making some personification of that deity in a material medium is something keeping with the rest of the
The death of the CDS definitely seems puzzling. If it was an accident it is surprising for lesser nations ensure better transport safety for their leadership. If it was a deliberate foreign attack then it speaks for v.poor military intelligence, which is again surprising at this
level. That leaves out activation of a deeply lodged internal agent, aka a Herpes zoster like ``sleeper cell''. However, there might have been indications of some threat that the national leadership was aware of. They may have even misread it. The reason to consider this is the
craven retreat of the Lāṭapati in the confrontation with the sora-backed tool-kitties. One way to look at it is they had some intelligence of a bigger attack and decide to tactically retreat on that front as the resources might be needed for the bigger one. Now coming to the
In real life the average person does not interact with a lot of people at the same time. Those one interacts with closely are either relatives or friends who usually have gone through a period of real-life acclimatization. Of course, there are love and friendships at first sight
(the old H would think you are seeing someone you already knew in a past birth).There are lots of subtle cues -- appearance, body language, odors etc -- that play a role in the formation of linkages. These are absent on SM like this. People usually come to know each other through
their writings -- which they may find resonant or irksome. However, it gives an illusion of being close -- like seeing actors repeatedly in a TV serial and developing some sense of connection to them. Thus, many interact as though they would with real life friends. But many of