Indian History Carnival – 13

The Indian History Carnival, published on the 15th of every month, is a collection of posts related to Indian history and archaeology.

1. While the Aryan Invasion/Migration theory is well known, not many know about  the Out of India theory which says that Aryans are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. Shrikant Talageri, one of the proponents of this theory has a new book Rigveda and the Avesta: Final Evidence and Koenraad Elst has a review.
2. “The history of vegetarianism in India begins not with the Aryans, as is commonly believed by Hindus, but in the aftermath of the introduction of Buddhism and Jainism in the sixth century BCE…The upper castes, who found members of their community deserting the “Hindu” fold for Buddhism or Jainism, increasingly came to adopt vegetarianism.” Kupamanduka tells why this is incorrect
3. Rev Upali Sramom of the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, discusses the Charucharya of the 10th century Kashmiri Sanskritist Kshemendra.
4. After visiting the ruins of the temples in Halebidu, Semantic Overload writes about the construction techniques used by the artisans of the 12th century.
5. varnam has a two part series (1, 2) on the Chinese presence in the  Indian Ocean under the leadership of Zheng He.
6. On the same topic Maddy has a comprehensive history of the Chinese trade in Calicut from how it all started to how it ended.
7. Murali Ramavarma writes about the patronage offered to the Scout movement by the royal families of  Mysore and Travancore.
8. In the 18th century the East India Company started a plantation to grow pepper. It was managed by a Murdoch Brown who resorted to slavery to keep the plantation running. Nick Balmer  writes about the Overseer of the Randattara Plantation.
9. “It is often thought that the adhesive that holds migrants together abroad is their attachment to the motherland, which is not easily lost”, but it took just eighty years, Fëanor says, for the  Gujaratis of Africa to surrender their identity.
10. At the start of the 1857 mutiny, John Nicholson was a capatin in the British Army. But within a span of few months he was Brigadier General John Nicholson. Harkabir explains how that happened.

If you find any posts related to Indian history published in the past one month, please send it to jk AT varnam DOT org or use this form. Please send me links which are similar to the ones posted, in terms of content.The next carnival will be up on Feb 15th.

(Cross posted at varnam)

See Also: Previous Carnivals