Ravi the blogger

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...

In an article titled “India’s Parthian Colony” published in The Iranian on May 14, 2003 , Dr. Samar Abbas wrote that the Pallavas of South India  descended from   the Pahlavas of Iran   and attributed   their persistent conflicts with their neighbours the   Chalukyas to an obscure, far-fetched theory that claimed that the Chalukyas descended from the Seleucids whom the Pahlavas overthrew to capture power in Iran. Though Abbas’   unscientific   paper deserves little more than cursory mention, the theory itself cannot be brushed aside as a fantasy simply because it had also been suggested by the famous South Indian epigraphist and Pallava expert V. Venkayya   who had worked with Hultzsch in deciphering the Mamallapuram inscriptions.   But then, who were the Pahlavas! According to sources that date from the time of the Achaemenids, like the Turks and Mongols who came later, the Pahlavas or Parthians were a tribe of horsemen who inhabited...

Among War tales from Madras, few appear as fascinating as that of Bantwal Surendranath Baliga, the Curator of the Madras Record Office. Born in a nondescript moffusil town, a taluk place located in in the South Canara district - that prized litle appendage which projected almost vertically nothwards to form a junction with Bombay making up Madras' only land border with the western presidency on the 11th of November 1908, Baliga had his early education in South Canara and Madras, before obtaining a masters' degree from the University of London and a doctorate from the same university. Baliga was appointed Probationary Assistant Curator in August 1934 with P. Macqueen,ICS, as his boss and after brief training in London, replaced him in 1935 to become the first Indian curator of the Record Office. Baliga's years were by far the best for Record Office. When the Madras government decided to shift the Record Office to Chittoor fearing Japanese bombardment during the Second Worl...

In May 2015, when India and Bangladesh exchanged their enclaves on both sides of the border, newspapers took the cue and flashed the happenings all over. The idea of small bits of territory of a particular country existing within the frontiers of another country was something novel to many of us. But few among us know that prior to India's independence, many of our princely states were but assortments of enclaves surrounded by British Indian territory. The largest and most famous of these "enclave federations" was Baroda. Baroda was sub-divided into four districts each of which comprised a bunch of enclaves. Likewise many of the princely states thought to be contiguous pieces of land, either comprised a bunch of enclaves or held a few enclave villages within British India far removed from the seat of government. A particularly interesting case was that of Cochin. Though still named after the port-town, the Raja of Cochin  had ceded it in perpetuity to the British. Or to...