🧵on the Cattar or Cathiar. The Cathiar were Brahmin war bands found throughout Kerala and Tamil Nadu as well as the rest of Southern India, where they were referred to as ghatam/kalam.
The Cathiar would take up arms for their respective kings. However upon defeat of their liege lord, they could be incorporated into the new kingdom. At times, they entered into political disputes, choosing the kings of the Cheras and Pallavas, or even founded kingdoms
in the case of the Kadambas. To join the Cathiar, one had to be proficient in the Vedas and had to be certified by 5 current members that the candidate was proficient in Vaiyakarna, Mimamsa and Purohita.
They were prohibited from bringing arms into gatherings, playing dice within the temple and from keeping concubines within the Matha. In the Kuvalayamala, the Cathiar are described as large men with upturned mustaches and undressed hair.
The Cathiar were also characters in contemporary literature, always depicted armed and engaging in courtly and religious festivals. Even attempting to impress courtesans with their bloody weapons, martial prowess and scholarship.
The headquarters of the respective Cathiar band included a temple, residences for the men and lands farmed by tenants, who passed up parts of their produce and resources to the Cathiar. If the peasants failed to provide the correct amount, the Cathiar had the right
to restrain their property and cultivation.
Did such a practice exist within Northern India as well? Perhaps…the Nagas of the Dasnami Sampradayas, Ramanandis and Dadupanthis operated in very similar ways. Additionally we have evidence of similar activities in Madhya Pradesh. So some form of this institution
Indian civilization has always been more decentralized comparatively than say Chinese civilization, which always had a stronger autocratic element and a philosophical inclination towards unification. The strong aristocratic culture of India, girded on by notions of Indo-European
tripartite societal organization, led to a weakening of central authority even prior to the decentralization and parcellization of power in the Gupta and post Gupta age, when feudalism properly began in India. The endemic warfare and notions of freedom of this rural aristocracy
which itself shifted in composition and identity as new warrior groups carved out fiefdoms for themselves, lasted into the early modern era. Even at the height of the Moghul empire, there was no way to properly impose imperial authority beyond city centers, as the country side
lifestyles from our grandfathers. Even belonging to the leisure class at the time required considerable walking…so life was more physical in general. My grandfathers belonged to such a class. They would walk/ride everywhere and play Kabaddi for fun…most
people who are posting on X do not live a similar lifestyle. For the people of the past, health wasn’t much of a concern because their lifestyle had an in built “tolerance” for unhealthy food…you’d just burn it off.
In India, hero cults mainly focus on local heroes engaging in or repulsing a cattle raid. This is because cattle raiding in pre modern India was the most conspicuous way to become a hero on the local rural level.
A cattle raid brought wealth to your community, but also, more importantly, humiliated your rivals. In India, the title of a “cow protector” was an important title with deep significance that did not just relate to protecting cattle from slaughter, but also from raids.
A man who died, repulsing a cattle raid would often be deified by his local community and worshipped through various rites. These rites could include anything from standard worship rituals to forms of trances, and varied from region to region.
There’s a new controversy on Twitter today about the physiques of Ancient Greek soldiers. My take is that they obviously weren’t unfit, but at the same time they wouldn’t have looked like bodybuilders. They probably had physiques similar to old school athletes.
Most might have looked like these guys from the Harvard Wrestling team from 1938.
So this tweet got a lot of attention and I decided to continue with a series on various traditional Indian training methods for the upper body. This will not cover calisthenics, as most people know about them.
1) Indian clubs. These are fairly famous, even Joe Rogans used one. They are essentially really heavy clubs that are swung. It’s done to make your shoulders stronger. This is similar to the workouts at the Iranian Zoorkhaneh.
🧵on the Kamasutra and classical Indian sex practices.
There are two sides to the debate regarding sex in Indian history. One seeks to present the past as a sexless, prudish society where such actions were robotic. These people will often be shocked at Indian sculpture
and poetry and seek to hide/burn it(example is Gandhi). The other side seems to portray the past as some sort of an orgy which only ended when the Muslims arrived. They point to sculptural evidence, but ofc cannot explain some of the more absurd sculptures.
The Dharma texts allude to an ideal, and it probably was the case for most of the society, of a vibrant sex life within the boundaries of marriage. Leading to love and generation between man and wife.