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

This Sattu vs Whey is a very interesting debate within the Indian community, primarily because it operates under a few interesting assumptions.

1) Assumption 1: “My grandfather ate/drank this and lived to 98, if I do it I’ll also live to 98.” Yet we have vastly different

https://twitter.com/biharigurl/status/1775393790746063124

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

🧵 on Hero cults in India.

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.

🧵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

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.

https://twitter.com/tpeshwa/status/1520627578402480128

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.

youtube.com/shorts/1HMEXDB…

🧵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.

Saw this chart making the rounds today and decided to give me two cents. The fact is women are selective about who they are with. Funnily enough, in a traditional society, men would be held to an even higher standard than women are holding men to right now. It sounds crazy, but could you imagine a father giving his daughter away to an impotent shithead with no markers of success or virility? So now that we have established that whatever society we live in, selection of some sort will be there, we can attempt to interpret the graph.

🧵on the Alha-khand. The Alha-khand is an epic from the Bundelkhand region of India, but is popular in other regions of Northern India influenced by Rajput culture. The epic is set in the 11th century on the eve of the Turkic conquest. It narrates the tale of 52 battles involving Alha, Udal, and their friends. It begins with the classic tale of Rajput bravado, the abduction of Sanyogita by Prithviraj Chauhan. For the uninitiated, Sanyogita is the daughter of the king Jaichand.