Ravi the blogger

  1st Day at The Hindu Lit for Life 2015. It started with a short introduction and lighting of the ceremonial lamp by Nayanthara Sehgal following which there was a book reading session by Man Booker Prize 2013 winner Eleanor Catton who spoke of her travails and tribulations in writing of the experiences of an adolescent girl. Following Ms. Catton's lively talk, there was a session with Geeta Doctor, writer Nayantara Sehgal who is cousin to Indira Gandhi and Sehgal's biographer Ritu Menon. Sharp and coherent despite her advanced age, 87-year old Ms. Sehgal passionately defended Perumal Murugan's right of expression and spoke of a need for a writer's union. She also vividly reminisced the 1975 Emergency days when she virulently opposed the censorship and dictatorial measures of the Indira Gandhi government. Her talk was extremely frank and sentimental. After Ms. Sehgal's interview, we had a talk by Jonathan Harris on his book "Firangis" which is about the ...

The Pathans 550 B.C.- A.D. 1947 is a magisterial work of anthropology and history by Olaf Caroe (1892-1981) who served as the colonial administrator of North West Frontier Province shortly before India's independence and Partition in 1947. Having served in the Frontier for about three decades, Caroe had immense knowledge of these lands and the people who inhabited them. * According to legend, the Afghans traced their ancestry to one Malik Afghana, a Jew who lived in the Levant. This Malik Afghana supposedly migrated to Afghanistan in 550 BC. So they were among "the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel". During the time of the Prophet, the leader of the Afghans, Qais Abdul Rashid travelled to Arabia where he embraced Islam and returned to convert his people. However, Caroe is dismissive of these legends as chronicles of history. * The Pathan tongue, Pashto is an Indo-Iranian language, halfway, Caroe says, between Persian and Scythian. * Though Pashto is an Indo-Aryan language, the A...

  Indo-European language families are broadly classified into two groups - centum and satem languages. Anatolian, Tocharian, Greek, Italic, Celtic and Germanic belonged to the "centum" group while Indo-Iranian, Baltic and Slavic belong to the "satem" group. Proto-Indo-European, of which Greek is the closest living relative, is believed to have been a "centum" language. So, a process of palatisation of the initial velar *c (pronounced "k") must've taken place in "satem" languages turning it into a *ch and eventually to a sibilant *s. Now, it is possible to observe such changes in languages of non-Indo-European language families, too. The intial *c in Tamil, for example, must've undergone a change in the reverse direction into the Kannada *k, as in *cevi (ear) to "kivi" and *cedalu (termite) to "geddalu". Now, the linguist David Mcalpin who has championed the theory of Elamo-Dravidian family of languages propos...

  Egypt might be the only civilization with a continuous recorded history stretching back to the 4 th millenium BC. And when we come across Egyptologists reeling off third millennium BC dates with ease and with an assured familiarity, it makes us gape with awe. But does this mean that other civilizations did not count for as much as the Egyptians. Until recently, we too might have felt so but of late, discoveries have proved that there are other civilizations that might approach the Egyptians in continuity and they and the Mesapotamians in antiquity and that we had known far less about these old civilizations than the Egyptians only because archaeologists were less interested in them than Ancient Egypt or Mesapotamia. The reason for this neglect lies in our religious affiliations. Over thirty percent of the world’s population is Christian and universities with the best archaeology departments are situated in the Christian world. In fact, archaeology as a discipline originated th...

  ·          The first suggestions to start a museum for Madras were made by the Secretary of the Madras Literary Society in 1843. Since 1828, the Madras Literary Society had been accumulating a collection of geological specimens. In a letter to the Chief Secretary of the Madras government on November 10, 1843, the Secretary of the Madras Literary Society suggested that the government start a museum for economic geology. ·         In a letter to the Chief Secretary of Madras dated December 5, 1843, Major-General W. W. Cullen, the British Resident at Travancore,   also suggested the opening of a central museum at Madras city with branches in all the districts, if possible, at the district collectorates. ·         The next year viz 1844, Henry Chamiers, a member of the Governor’s executive council discussed the two letters and recommended the setting up of a museum...

Edgar Thurston (1855-1935), who was Superintendent of the Madras Government Museum from 1885 to 1908, was also perhaps the most flamboyant of the lot. He was a champion of the science of anthropometry and eyewitness accounts from the period testify that he would invite visitors to the anthropometric section of the museum to have their skulls measured. Today, Thurston is remembered for the monumental seven volume Castes and Tribes of Southern India (1909) that he compiled with the assistance of K. Rangachari. Though science has invalidated many of the anthropomoteric techniques he used, the work is still frequently consulted by scholars for the wealth of information it contains. He also authored a work on the omens and superstitions of southern India. As part of his research work into his Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Thurston took skull measurements of a few individuals from every caste/tribe. Based on these sample measurements, he would calculate cephalic indices (which i...

I thought of writing an article on the Parsi faith and its history. The post's title  Yatha ahu vairyo is derived from from the most sacred Zoroastrian prayer the Ahuna Vairya or Ahunwar which is as important to Zoroastrianism as the shahadah  or declaration of faith to the Muslims, Om mani padme hum to the Buddhists and the Gayatri Manthra to the Hindus. The text of the Ahuna Vairya reads Yatha ahu vairyo, atha rathush ashad chit hacha Vangheush dazdha manangho skhyothnanem angeush mazdai Kshatremcha ahurai a Yim dregubyo dadad vastarem The manthra has been translated with different meanings by different scholars who have till  now not been able to arrive at a common consensus. but the most authoritative interpretation was given by Martin Haug As a heavenly lord is to be chosen So is an earthly master. for the sake of righteousness,  to be a giver of the good thoughts of the actions of life towards Mazda;  and the dominion is for the lord (...

Portrait of Henry Yule from the 1903 edition of The Book of Ser Marco Polo, edited by Henri Cordier The Hobson-Jobson was a dictionary of Indoisms compiled at the end of the 19 th century. It probably anticipated the curry invasion and the social acceptance of strange, foreign accented creoles in the United Kingdom by about a century. Back then, however, scarcely any Indian who wasn’t of the well-bred princely sort or couldn’t speak impeccable English made it to the United Kingdom and the prime carriers of such Indian-infused creole were either   Eurasian   (Anglo-Indian) or Britons who had spent their careers and possibly their lifetimes in the subcontinent   and now sought out a quiet retirement   in a blighty they had not seen for decades.      The authors of the Hobson-Jobson were two very interesting gentlemen – Sir Henry Yule and Arthur Coke Burnell. Yule is well known for his translation of Marco Polo’s travels that became a bestselle...