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GemsOfINDOLOGY

@GemsOfINDOLOGY

Feb 10

Thread 3

WHEN WOMEN WERE LINEAGE, NOT DEPENDENTS
(Travancore, matriliny, 1920s)

1️⃣
Here is the part most people don’t expect.

These systems did not vanish in antiquity.
They survived into the 20th century.

This is not rock art.
This is documentation.

2️⃣
In parts of Kerala and Travancore, lineage followed the woman.

Property.
Household identity.
Social continuity.

Children belonged to the mother’s line.
Not the father’s surname.

This was not chaos.
It was a functioning social order.

3️⃣
Relationships were recognised through custom, not sacrament.

Sambandham-type unions existed.
Women could enter and exit relationships.
Sexual exclusivity was not the foundation of legitimacy.

A child did not need a certified father to be socially valid.

That detail matters.

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GemsOfINDOLOGY

@GemsOfINDOLOGY

Feb 7

1️⃣ Every art history course starts in Greece.

But here's what they don't mention: almost every Greek painting from the Classical period is gone. Lost.

Meanwhile, in India, 700 years of continuous wall paintings still exist.

Let's talk about what survives vs what we worship.

2️⃣ Ajanta Caves.

Painting phases dated 2nd century BCE – 5th century CE.

That means: Ajanta begins before Alexander. And continues after Rome adopts Christianity.

This isn't parallel art. This is a continuous painting tradition spanning 700 years.

3️⃣ Where are Greek paintings from 480–323 BCE?

Answer from classical scholarship: almost entirely lost.

What survives:
• Roman wall paintings (1st c. BCE–1st c. CE)
• Literary praise by Pliny the Elder
• Copies, not originals

An origin remembered by texts vs one preserved in pigment.

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GemsOfINDOLOGY

@GemsOfINDOLOGY

Feb 5

1️⃣ The first diamond ever touched by human hands came from Indian soil. Golconda mines, 4th century BCE. We didn't dig for profit. We picked them from riverbeds like pebbles. 💎

Then someone realized they could own what the earth gave freely.

2️⃣ 1600s: Golconda diamonds weighed 23 million carats annually. The world's entire supply. Tavernier documented it. Shah Jahan embedded them in the Peacock Throne.

We controlled brilliance itself.

3️⃣ 1739: Nadir Shah walks into Delhi. Walks out with the Kohinoor and the Peacock Throne. Combined worth? Impossible to calculate. The throne alone held 26,733 gems.

First lesson: What glitters gets taken.

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GemsOfINDOLOGY

@GemsOfINDOLOGY

Jan 30

https://twitter.com/3249523351/status/2017209713713422643

1/ ASI admits stone jars occur across Assam, Laos, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

That admission changes everything. Once you acknowledge geographic spread, local narratives collapse. Interpretation must go regional. 🧵

https://twitter.com/3249523351/status/2017209713713422643

@himantabiswa @ASIGoI @MinOfCultureGoI @tourismgoi @gssjodhpur @UNESCO 2/ ASI records no present-day tribe claims authorship.

That's not ambiguity. That's normal. Mortuary traditions outlast populations, languages, identities by millennia.

Continuity ≠ authorship.

3/ ASI calls them ancestral bone repositories — already placing them in secondary burial systems.

The same function archaeologically proven at the Plain of Jars.

Function aligns across regions. Not coincidence.

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GemsOfINDOLOGY

@GemsOfINDOLOGY

Jan 22

1/10
Meet Bhagirathi — the river that dragged Ganga from Shiva's hair to earth.

Rigveda calls her "the one who flows with the speed of thought."

Today? A trickle dying before Gangotri even starts.

From cosmic torrent to seasonal sewer. Thread 🧵

2/10
Bhagirathi begins at Gaumukh — "cow's mouth" glacier.

1935: 300-meter ice wall, roaring.
2025: Snout retreated 3+ km uphill. Glacier lost 25% volume since the 1960s.

Your Himalayan trek selfie is on her corpse. 📸❄️

3/10
Vedic seers saw her as divine:
नदीं न संनादतीं दमूनसम् (RV 10.75.4)
"The river that roars like a bull in rut."

Now? Summer discharge down 40% since 1990.
Sometimes she doesn't reach Devprayag to become "Ganga."

Literal identity crisis. 🏔️💧

Read 10 tweets

GemsOfINDOLOGY

@GemsOfINDOLOGY

Jan 22

You already know that for over 2,000 years, Indian smiths forged steel so sharp it cut European swords in half. So resilient it became legend across continents.

By 1900, those same smiths were classified as backward. Primitive. Incapable of innovation.

What happened between? 🧠⚔️ You don't know!!

A 5-step manual for erasure. READ On 👇

#decolonisation #UncropTheTruth

1/7

Step 1: Extract the technique

Indian wootz steel arrived in British laboratories in 1795. Samples were analysed, chemical compositions documented, papers published in the Royal Society. The steel was credited to "Eastern origin." The smiths who forged it? Unnamed. Untraced. Irrelevant.

The technique was extracted. The technician was erased.

2/7

Step 2: Disrupt the ecosystem

Wootz steel required specific forests for charcoal, particular ores, seasonal smelting cycles. Colonial forest laws between 1855–1878 criminalized wood collection, turned smelting zones into "reserved land," cut access to raw materials.

The furnaces went cold. Not because knowledge disappeared, but because resources were locked behind permits the smiths couldn't obtain.

3/7

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