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GemsOfINDOLOGY

@GemsOfINDOLOGY

Mar 3

1️⃣ A 10,000 BCE cave painting just cracked open India's migration mystery

Bhimbetka artists drew a two-horned rhino. The species never lived in central India.

But before we decode ancestral memory, let's talk about colonial amnesia.

Before 1800, approximately 20,000 rhinos roamed Bengal and Assam.

By 1908? Barely 200. 🦏💰

#Decolonisation

2️⃣ British trophy hunting didn't just reduce numbers. It systematically erased a species from entire geographies.

Major-General Richard Carnac killed 30 rhinos in a single year near Purnea, Bihar, 1780s. Sport, they called it. Extinction engineering, more accurately.

Each horn fetched £100-150 in Victorian markets. Aphrodisiac myth met colonial greed.

3️⃣ The Bhimbetka paintings now make perfect sense.

Austroasiatic peoples migrated from Southeast Asia through Indonesia-Thailand-Myanmar around 10,000 years ago—the exact route Sumatran rhinos took. They carried ancestral memory of two-horned creatures, painted them centuries later at Bhimbetka.

January 2024: Tamil Nadu excavations at Molapalayam unearth 3,600-year-old rhino bones. First direct evidence of Indian one-horned rhinos in deep South.

Read 8 tweets

GemsOfINDOLOGY

@GemsOfINDOLOGY

Feb 22

1/ Aryan Migration Theory has a math problem.

Not political. Not ideological. Mathematical.

If sophisticated Indo-Europeans brought decimal systems to India around 1500 BCE, show me their source culture's mathematics. 🔢

I'll wait.

2/ Reconstructed Proto-Indo-European:

Counting to 100 ✓
Basic addition/multiplication ✓
Systematic large numbers ✗
Decimal place value ✗
Zero as concept ✗
Cosmological calculations ✗

Pontic-Caspian steppe, 4000-2500 BCE.
No mathematical texts. No astronomical observatories.

3/ Compare what supposedly migrated TO India:

Greek: imported Egyptian geometry, Babylonian astronomy
Latin: borrowed Greek mathematics wholesale
German: million (Latin), Milliarde (French)
Slavic: миллион (million) - borrowed

Every Indo-European branch borrowed large number terms.

Read 10 tweets

GemsOfINDOLOGY

@GemsOfINDOLOGY

Feb 17

THREAD 4
WHEN LAW REPLACED CUSTOM
(surnames, forms, the myth of timeless patriarchy)

1️⃣
This is where the break happens.

Not in ancient India.
Not in temples.
Not in epics.

But in files, registers, and forms.

2️⃣
Pre-modern India ran on custom.

Identity was local.
Lineage could be maternal.
Marriage could be flexible.

The system worked because society did not need every child tied to a named father.

3️⃣
Colonial administration could not function like that.

The state needed:
Land titles.
Tax rolls.
Census categories.
Inheritance clarity.

Custom was messy.
Plurality was inefficient.

So lineage had to be fixed.

Read 8 tweets

GemsOfINDOLOGY

@GemsOfINDOLOGY

Feb 15

ASI calls it a "graceful threshold of history."

October 1502: 400 pilgrims locked in a ship and burned alive at sea by the man this arch honors.

This is what government curation looks like when it erases inconvenient details.

Thread on what ASI forgot to mention. 🧵

#GemsofASI MNI500

Vasco da Gama's second voyage, October 1502:

Intercepted the pilgrim ship Miri near Madayi. 400+ passengers. 50 women and children.

Looted it. Locked them inside. Set it ablaze.

Eyewitnesses Thomé Lopes and Gaspar Correia documented mothers holding babies through portholes.

*ps pic AI generated
2/

Francisco da Gama built this arch in 1600 during his viceroyalty (1597-1600).

Historical record by then:

• 300 temples demolished in Bardez (1567)
• Goa Inquisition active (1560-1812, 16,000+ documented trials)
• Dec 4, 1567 decree: Hindu marriages, sacred threads, cremations banned

3/

Read 6 tweets

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.

Read 7 tweets

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.

Read 7 tweets

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