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April 10, 2026
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"The Kailash temple at Ellora, a complete sunken Brahmanical temple carved out in the late seventh and eighth centuries A.D. is over 100 feet high, the largest structure in India to survive from ancient times, larger than the Parthenon. This representation of Shiva's mountain home, Mount Kailash in the Himalaya, took more than a century to carve, and three million cubic feet of stone were removed before it was completed. An inscription records the exclamation of the last architect on looking at his work: âWonderful! O How could I ever have done it?â"
"The design of the Kailasa remained, for all time, the perfect model of a Shivalinga, - the temple craftsman's vision of Shiva's wondrous palace in his Himalayan glacier, where in his Yogi's cell the Lord of the Universe, the great magician, controls the cosmic forces by the power of thought; the holy rivers, creating the life in the world below, enshrined in His matted locks; Parvati, His other Self, the Universal Mother, watching by His side."
"A hoIlowed-out space in living rock is a totally dIfferent environment from a building constructed of quarried stone. The human organism responds in each case with a different kind of empathy. Buildings are fashioned in sequence by a series of uniformly repeatable elements, segment by segment. from a foundation upwards to the conjuction of walls and roof; the occupant empathizes with a visible tension between gravity and soaring tensile strength. Entering a great building is to experience an almost imperceptible tensing in the skeletal muscles in response to constructional tension. Caves, on the other hand, are scooped out by a downward plunge of the chisel from ceiling to floor in the direction of gravity; the occupant empathizes with an invisible but sensed resistance, an unrelenting presence in the rock enveloping him; sculpted images and glowing pigments on the skin of the rock well forth from the deeps. To enter an Indian cave sanctuary is to experience a relaxation of physical tension in response to the implacable weight and density of solid rock."
"The Ran is the delta of the Hakra, the lost river of Sind."
"Cutch is composed chiefly of hills, woods, and sandy wilds; and we are utterly ignorant of any particulars, relating to the interior part of it, The mouths of several rivers appear in the map of its coast: and the ancient maps describe the Puddar river, as discharging itself into the gulf of Cutch, through these opeyings. It is possible that the tiver formed by the Caggar, and other streams, may discharge itself by one or more of these openings; unlefs it loses itself in the sands of the desert, which borders on the north of Cutch. ... A MS. map describes the junction of the Sursooty and Caggar rivers: probably this junction is formed above Sursooty town; for Tamerlane had not crofsed the Caggar when at Sur- sooty ; and the Sursooty river lay beyond the Caggar."
"The non-Indo-Aryan nature of the terms and names noted earlier also has to be juxtaposed with the fact that the place-names and river names in northern India are almost all Indo-Aryan. These names are, to my mind, the single most important element in considering the existence of a non-Indo-Aryan substratum position. Unlike people, tribes, material items, flora, and fauna, they cannot relocate or be introduced by trade (although their names can be transferred by immigrants). In other words, it is difficult to exclude the possibility that the foreign personal and material names in the Rgveda were intrusive into a preexisting Indo-Aryan area as opposed to vice versa. This argument of lexical transiency can much less readily be used in the matter of foreign place-names. Place-names tend to be among the most conservative elements in a language. Moreover, it is a widely attested fact that intruders into a geographic region often adopt the names of rivers and places that are current among the peoples that preceded them. Even if some such names are changed by the immigrants, some of the previous names are invariably retained (e.g., the Mississippi river compared with the Hudson, Missouri state compared with New England)."
"The local river names and animal names in the Old Rigveda are purely Indo-Aryan names. This phenomenon is noted even by Witzel with surprise: âA better case for the early linguistic and ethnic history of India can be made by investigating the names of rivers. In Europe, river names were found to reflect the languages spoken before the influx of Indo-European speaking populations. They are thus older than c. 4500-2500 B.C. (depending on the date of the spread of Indo-European languages in various parts of Europe).â (WITZEL 1995a:104-105). But, in sharp contrast, âin northern India rivers in general have early Sanskrit names from the Vedic period, and names derived from the daughter languages of Sanskrit later on.[âŚ] This is especially surprising in the area once occupied by the Indus Civilisation where one would have expected the survival of older names, as has been the case in Europe and the Near East. At the least, one would expect a palimpsest, as found in New England with the name of the state of Massachussetts next to the Charles river, formerly called the Massachussetts river, and such new adaptations as Stony Brook, Muddy Creek, Red River, etc., next to the adaptations of Indian names such as the Mississippi and the Missouriâ. (WITZEL 1995a:105-107). BlaĹžek (in his paper "Hydronymia ášgvedica") shows that out of 29 river-names, 22 have purely Indo-Aryan names, and the rest have suggested Indo-Aryan as well as suggested non-Indo-Aryan alternative etymologies."
"We already dealt with this possibility earlier: âThis may be contrasted with the situation farther east in the Ganga plain, where we do find many Sanskrit-sounding names of rivers and regions which do not have a transparent Sanskrit etymology, for example, kauĹikÄŤ or koĹala, apparently linked to Tibeto-Burmese kosi, âwaterâ, and the name of the river separating KoĹala from Videha. In that case, we also see the ongoing sanskritization: kauĹikÄŤ evolved from kosikÄŤ (attested in Pali), and koĹala from kosala (idem), which Witzel (1999a: 382) considers as necessarily foreign loans because the sequence -os- is ânot allowed in Sanskritâ. But while the phonetic assimilation is caught in the act here, we can see no semantic domestication through folk etymology at work. The name koĹala doesnât mean anything in Sanskrit, and that is a decisive difference with the western hydronyms gomatÄŤ, âthe cow-rich oneâ, or asiknÄŤ, âthe dark oneâ. While the occurrence of some folk-etymological adaptation among the Panjabi river names could in principle be conceded, it is highly unlikely to be the explanation of all thirty-five names. Until proof to the contrary, the evidence of the Northwest-Indian hydronyms favours the absence of a non-IE substratum, hence of the OIT.â (Elst 2005:242)"
"Northern India is the only place where place-names and river-names are Indo-European right from the period of the Rigveda (a text which Max MĂźller refers to as âthe first word spoken by the Aryan manâ) with no traces of any alleged earlier non-Indo-European names."
"And curiously, an astonishing number of names of towns and villages in western Rajasthan (the heart of the Thar Desert) have names ending in the word âsarâ, such as Lunkaransar, with âsarâ meaning âlakeâ (from the Sanskrit word saras). I counted over fifty of them on an ordinary map, and there must be many more. Why should all those places be named after non-existent lakes? An unwary tourist reading a map of western Rajasthan might as well assume that the region is some kind of a Lake District!"
"So many names that at a hasty glance appear utterly unmeaning can be traced back to original Sanskrit forms as to raise a presumption that the remainder, though more effectively disguised, will ultimately be found capable of similar treatment: a strong argument being thus afforded against those scholars who hold that the modern vernacular is impregnated with a very large non-Aryan element."
"The non-Indo-Aryan nature of the terms and names noted earlier also has to be juxtaposed with the fact that the place and river names in northern India are almost all Indo-Aryan. Place and river names are, to my mind, the singlemost important element in considering the existence of a substratum. Unlike people, tribes, material items, flora and fauna, they cannot relocate or be introduced by trade, etc. (although their names can be transferred by immigrants). Place names tend to be among the most conservative elements in a language. Moreover, it is a widely attested fact that intruders into a geographical region often adopt many of the names of rivers and places that are current among the peoples that preexisted them, even if they change the names of others (i.e. the Mississippi river compared to the Hudson, Missouri state compared to New England). With this in mind, it is significant that there are very few non-Indo-Aryan names (and almost none whose etymologies are completely uncontested) for rivers and places in the North of the Indian subcontinent, which is very unusual for migrants intruding into an alien language-speaking area. All the place names in the Rgveda, which are few in number, are Indo-Aryan, or at least sanskritized..."
"Many of die foreign terms for flora and fauna could simply indicate that these items have continually been imported into the subcontinent over the centuries, as continues to be the case today. The exception to this is place-names and river names, but the absence of foreign terms for the topography and hydronomy of the Northwest deprives us of significant evidence that has been used to establish substrata elsewhere."
"In view of the fact that Witzel has provided a list of thirty-seven different Vedic river names, these two or three possible exceptions do not make as strong a case as one might have hoped. All the rest can indeed be derived from Indo- European roots. Morever, other scholars have even assigned Indo-Aryan etymologies to two of these three possible exceptions."
"The lack of foreign place-names in the oldest Indo-Aryan texts, in contrast, is remarkable when compared with the durability of place designations else- where. The same applies to rivers."
"With this in mind, it is significant that there are very few non-Indo-Aryan names for rivers and places in the North of the Indian subcontinent, which is very unusual for migrants intruding into an alien language-speaking area. Of course, it could be legitimately argued that this is due to the Aryans' Sanskritizing the names of places and rivers in the North- west (although this raises the issue of why the local flora and other names were was not likewise Sanskritized)."
"About the temple of Pravarasena, Stein records: A short distance to the S.E. of Bhimasvamin rock and outside AkbarĂs fortress has the Ziart of BahauĂd-Din Sahib, built, undoubtedly with the materials of an ancient temple. The cemetery which surrounds it maintains also many ancient remains in its tombs and walls. To the S.W. corner of this cemetery rises a ruined gateway built of stone blocks of remrkable size and stil of considerable height. This structure is traditionally believed by the Srinagar Pandits to have belonged to the temple of Shiva Praveshvara which Kalhana mentions as the first shrine created by Pravarasena in his new capital."
"Stein tells us: Not far from BahauĂd-Din SahibĂs ziarat, to the S.W., stands the JamiĂa Masjid, the greatest Mosque of Srinagar. Around it numerous ancient remains attest the former existence of Hindu temples. Proceeding still further to the S.W., in the midst of a thickly-built city ... ... quarter, we reach an ancient shrine which has remained in a comparatively fair state of preservation probably owing to its conversion into Ziarat. It is now supposed to mark the resting place of the saint styled Pir Haji Muhammad. It consists of an octagonal cela of which the high basement and the side walls are stil well-preserved. The quadrangular court in which it stands is enclosed by ancient walls and approached by ornamented gateways."
"Verse 460 of Bk. iii Rajat records: The royal couple (Ranaditya) built the temple of Ranarambhasvamin and Ranarambhadeva and a matha for Pashupata (mendicants) on the hill of PradyumanaĂŽ. By Pradyumnamurdhan is meant the Sharikaparvata or Harparvat in Srinagar. The E. slope and foot of the hill is now covered by extensive buildings, including sarais connected with the famous Muhammedan shrines of Muqaddam Sahib and Akhund Mulla Shah. These probably occupy the sites of earlier Hindu structures such as the mathas referred to in the verse."
"The Mahabharata carries a complete picture of this cultural unity in its tĂŽrtha-yĂŁtrĂŁ-parva, which is part of the larger Vana-parva. The Pandavas accompany their Purohita, Dhaumya, on a long pilgrimage to all parts of Bharatavarsha. They pay their homage to many mountains, rivers, samgamas, lakes, tanks, forest groves and other sacred shrines which had become hallowed by association with Gods and Goddesses, rishis and munis, satees and sĂŁdhvees, heroes and heroines. And they feel fulfilled as they never did before or after in their long lives. The same Pandavas made an imperial conquest of the whole country, not once but twice and performed a rĂŁjasĂťya yajĂąa at the end of each triumph. But the Pandava empire is a faint memory of the forgotten past. On the other hand, the sacred spots which the Pandavas visited during their one and only pilgrimage, draw millions of devotees in our own days as they did in the distant past, long before the Pandavas appeared on the scene."
"Limited in the South by the above mentioned Indian Ocean, and on all three other sides by the lofty mountains, the waters of which flow down to it... the inhabitable world extending southwards from Himavant is Bharatvarsha, which is the centre of Jambudvipa. The parts named and ascribed to it are located in Al Hind alone."
"The land created by the gods and stretching from Himalayas to the Indu (i.e.Southern) ocean is called Hindusthan."
"Indians would certainly try to understand the fact that for more than a hundred years in the late fourth, third and early second centuries BC, there was a state which controlled the entire natural geographical domain of south Asia. Not even the British controlled such a large area for such a long period. This fact should in any case be one of the answers to the notion that there have only been divisive tendencies in the political history of India."
"The area extending from the Himalayas in the north to the sea and a thousand yojanas wide from east to west is the area of operation of the King-Emperor."
"In its simplest terms, geography is the description, study, and classification of the earth and its features. While many branches of geography are scientific in perspective and method, what is clear from the study of Hindu India is that its geographical featuresâits rivers, mountains, hills, and coastlandsâno matter how precisely rendered, mapped, or measured, are also charged with stories of gods and heroes. It is a resonant, sacred geography. But it is also a landscape, in that these features are connected, linked to a wider whole."
"The final editing of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata is not dated later than the first centuries AD, and they are fully familiar with the concept and surface of India, as are Kalidasa's Raghuvamsha and the Puranas."
"The sea borders Hindustan on the east, west and south. In the north, the great mountain ranges separate India from Turan, Iran and China."
"Intelligent men of the past have considered Kabul and Qandahar as the twin gates of Hindustan⌠By guarding these two places, Hindustan obtains peace from the alien (raider) and global traffic by these two routes can prosper."
"This vast land... had been a single indivisible whole since times immemorial. Bharatavarsha had been termed by the ancients as the cradle of varnĂŁĹĄrama-dharma, witness to the wheel of the caturyugas, and the kshetra for chakravĂŁrtya, spiritual as well as political. This historical memory and cultural tradition was alive as late as the imperial Guptas. Kalidasa had clothed it in immortal poetry in his far-famed RaghuvamĹĄa."
"The very sound of âIndian sub-continentâ is shocking to the ears of those who have had the privilege of performing or participating in some Hindu saMskĂŁras. The wording of every saMkalpa, starting with JambudvĂŽpe BharatakhaNDe, invokes the opposite vision of a single, though vast and variegated land, inhabited by a people who are proud of being born and having lived in it. The territorial unity and integrity of Bharatavarsha - the land that lies south of the Himalayas, east of Sakadvipa (Seistan), south-east of VĂŁhlĂŽka (Balkh), west of Burma and between the two seas - was never a political contrivance created by the sword of a conqueror. On the contrary, it was meant and manifested by Mother Nature herself as the cradle of an incomparable culture - the culture of SanĂŁtana Dharma."
"The Ramayana, the Puranas and the Dharmashastras paint the same portrait of an ancient land, every spot of which is sacred to some cultural memory or the other. The Jainagama and the Tripitaka speak again and again of sixteen Mahajanapadas, which spanned the spread of Bharatavarsha in the life-time of Bhagvan Mahavira and the Buddha. Even a dry compendium on grammar, the Ashtadhyayi of Panini, provides a near complete count of all the Janapadas in ancient India-Gandhara and Kamboja, Sindhu and Sauvira, Kashmir and Kekaya, Madra and Trigarta, Kuru and Panchala, Kaushala and Kashi, Magadha and Videha, Anga and Vanga, Kirata and Kamarupa, Suhma and Udra, Vatsa and Matsya, Abhira and Avanti, Nishadha and Vidarbha, Dandakaranya and Andhra, Karnataka and Kerala, Chola and Pandya. The epic poetry poured out by Kalidasa, Magha, Bharavi and Sriharsha continues the same tradition of talking endlessly about Bharatavarsha as a single and indivisible geographical entity, as a karmabhĂťmi for Gods and Goddesses, Brahmarshis and Rajarshis, and as higher than heaven for all those who have had the good fortune of being born in it."
"It was this feeling of being at home everywhere in the country which took the Adi Shankaracharya from the southernmost tip to the farthest corners of Bharatavarsha in North and East and West and helped him found (or revive) the four foremost dhĂŁmas at Badrinath, Dvaraka, Rameshvaram and Puri. There is no count of sadhus and sannyasins and house-holders who have travelled ever since on the trail blazed by that great acharya. Six and a half centuries later, Guru Nanak Dev followed in the footsteps of the Pandavas and the Shankaracharya in search of spiritual company."
"The image of the whole of Bharatavarsha being a chakravartikshetra is as old as the oldest Vedic literature. The Itihasa-Purana provide glorious accounts of many chakravartins-Ikshvaku, Puru, Prithu Vainya, Sivi Ausinara, Mandhata, Raghu and so on-who accompanied the aĹĄvamedha horse demanding submission from all kingdoms and republics, big and small, spread all over the country. The rĂŁjasĂťya yajĂąa which was performed at the end of this campaign was more in the nature of a meeting of equals than a durbar held by a despot in order to humble or humiliate subordinate princes and patriarchs. Sri Krishna had demanded death for Jarasandha because the latter had violated this dharmic tradition of empire-building, and kept a hundred kings captive in his castle. The Nandas had won notoriety as an ignoble dynasty because they had also violated the standard code of conduct laid down by the rĂŁjadharma for righteous emperors, destroyed many local dynasties, and reduced other princes to provincial satraps."
"Hindu society as a whole has ceased to remember that Afghanistan rose on the ruins of Gandhara and Kamboja, the two ancient Janapadas of Bharatavarsha which had stood guard on our North-Western gateway for ages untold."
"That land where the black antelope naturally roams, one must know to be fit for the performance of sacrifices; (the tract) different from that (is) the country of the Mlekkhas."
"Another very important feature revealed in Sangam literature is the conception of the unity of the land-mass stretching from the Himalayas in the north to Kanyakumari in the south. In at least two sources, Tamil kings were praised as having had supremacy amidst all the chieftains who reigned in the land between âthe Himalayan abode of Godsâ in the north and Kumari in the south and the lands which have the sea as the frontier. The northern limit of this cultural unity is often referred to as the Himalayas. Ganges in floods, as well as ships travelling on the Ganges, is among the scenes depicted in Sangam literature. Pilgrims from all over India coming to have holy baths at Kanyakumari as well as Rameswaram (Koti) have been mentioned in Sangam literature. Speaking of Himalayas and Kanyakumari in association, is another hallmark of many Sangam poems. Apart from such spiritual-cultural unity of India depicted in Sangam poems, there is at least one poem that refers to the political unity of India. This poem, from Puranannuru, speaks of a time when the whole of India âfrom Kanyakumari to Himalayasâ was ruled as one nation, unifying the diverse geographical zones of âplateaus, mountains, forests and human habitationsâ by kings of the solar dynasty, and identifies Tamil kings as descendants of the solar dynasty."
"I will now, O chastiser of foes, describe to thee that country as I have heard of it. Listen to me, O king, as I speak of what thou hast asked me. Mahendra, Malaya, Sahya, Suktimat, Rakshavat, Vindhya, and Paripatra,--these seven are the Kala-mountains 1 (of Bharatvarsha). Besides these, O king, there are thousands of mountains that are unknown, of hard make, huge, and having excellent valleys. Besides these there are many other smaller mountains inhabited by barbarous tribes. Aryans and Mlecchas, O Kauravya, and many races, O lord, mixed of the two elements, drink the waters of the following rivers, viz., magnificent Ganga, Sindhu, and Saraswati; of Godavari, and Narmada, and the large river called Yamuna... and Mandakini, and Supunya, Sarvasanga, O Bharata, are all mothers of the universe and productive of great merit. Besides these, there are rivers, by hundreds and thousands, that are not known (by names), I have now recounted to thee, O king, all the rivers as far as I remember."
"The whole of Hind, from Peshawar to the shores of the Ocean, and in the other direction from Siwistan to the hills of Chin."
"The land was sacred, but it wasnât political history that made it so. Religious myths touched every part of the land outside colonial Goa. Story within story, fable within fable: that was what people saw and felt in their bones. Those were the myths, about gods and the heroes of the epics, that gave antiquity and wonder to the earth people lived on."
"In the capital city of a Hindu State in Malabar coast, âthere are about four thousand Muslims, who inhabit a suburb of their own inside the jurisdiction of the city. There is fighting between them and the inhabitants of the city oftenâ (p. 185)..."
"According to Amir Khusru âthe Malik represented that on the coast of Maâbar were 500 elephants, larger than those which had been presented to the Sultan from Arangal, and that when he was engaged in the conquest of that place he had thought of possessing himself of them and that now, as the wise determination of the king, he combined the extirpation of the idolaters with this object, he was more than ever rejoiced to enter on this grand enterprise.â Amir Khusru makes it appear that having seen all the country from the hills of Ghazni to the mouths of the Ganges reduced to subjection and having effectively destroyed the prevalence of the âSatanismâ of the Hindus by the destruction of their temples and providing in their stead places for the criers to prayers in mosques, Alau-d-din was consumed with the idea of spreading the light of the Muhammadan religion in the Dekhan and South India. According to the same authority Maâbar was so distant from the city of Delhi âthat a man travelling with all expedition could only reach it after a journey of twelve months,â and there â the arrow of any holy warrior had not yet reached.â Apart from this statement of Amir Khusru, the object of this expedition is made quite clear in what he puts in the mouth of Malik Kafur himself that what he actually coveted were the elephants of better breed, and, what went along with them of course, other items of wealth."
"As a side note, one reference in particular is repeatedly produced from the Puranas as evidence of a large emigration from Gandhara, Afghanistan, to the northern regions. The narrative is situated in the time of Mandhatr, who drove the Druhyu king Angara out of the Punjab. Pargiter ([1922] 1979) notes that the next Druhya king, Gandhara, retired to the Northwest and gave his name to the Gandhara country (which survives to the present day in the name Kandahar in Afghanistan). The last king in the Druhyu lineage is Pracetas, whose hundred sons take shelter in the regions north of Afghanistan 'udicitn disam as'ritah'and become mlecchas. The Puranas make no further reference to the Druhyu dynasty after this.38 The more enthusiastic see this as "evidence of the migration of Indo-Europeans from India to Europe via Central Asia" (Talageri 1993, 367)."
"Ayu went eastwards, the Kuru-PaĂącalas and Kasi-Videha are (his descendants) the Ayavas; (And) Amavasu (went) westwards, the Gandharas, Parsus and Arattas are (his descendants) the Amavasyavas."
"The next Druhyu king GandhÄra retired to the northwest and gave his name to the GandhÄra country."
"[Kennedy also notes the anthropological continuity between the Harappan population and that of the contemporaneous Gandhara (eastern Afghanistan) culture, which in an Aryan invasion scenario should be the Indo-Aryan settlement just prior to the Aryan invasion of India:] âOur multivariate approach does not define the biological identity of an ancient Aryan population, but it does indicate that the Indus Valley and Gandhara peoples shared a number of craniometric, odontometric and discrete traits that point to a high degree of biological affinity.â"
"On this journey thy army destroyed a thousand idol-temples, and thy elephants trampled over more than a hundred strongholds. Thou didst march thy army to Ujjain Malwa trembled and fled from thee."
"Chandiri I stormed in 934 A.H. (1528 A.D.) and, by God's pleasure, took it in a few hours; in it was Rana Sanga's great and trusted man Midni Rao, we made general massacre of the Pagans in it and, as will be narrated, converted what for many years had been a mansion of hostility, into a mansion of Islam."
"Why they had gone so suddenly off the walls seems to have been that they had taken the resolve of those who give up a place as lost; they put all ladies and beauties to death, then, looking themselves to die, came naked out to fight. Our men attacking, each one from his post, drove them from the walls whereupon 2 or 300 of them entered Medini Rao's house and there almost killed one another in this way: -- one having taken stand with a sword, the rest eagerly stretched out the neckblow. Thus went the greater number to hell. By God's grace this renowned fort was captured in 2 or 3 garis (cir. an hour), without drum and standard, with no hard fighting done. A pillar of pagan-heads was ordered set up on a hill north-west of Chanderi. A chronogram of this victory having been found in the words of Fath-i-daru'l-harb (Conquest of a hostile seat), I thus composed them: Was for a while the station Chandiri Pagan-full, the seat of hostile force; By fighting, I vanquished its fort, The date was Fath-i-daru'l-harb."
"Since the days of Khalji and Tughlaq sultans of Delhi, there were large number of Muslims in Malwa, both indigenous and foreign. These numbers went on growing during the rule of the independent Muslim rulers of Malwa, the Ghoris and Khaljis (1401-1562). The pattern of growth of Muslim population in Malwa was similar to that in the other regions. Captives made in campaigns against Kherla, Orissa, and Gagraun, in the first quarter of the fifteenth century, would have added to Muslim numbers. Similarly, when sultan Mahmud led an expedition against the Hara Rajputs in 1454, he put many of them to the sword, âand sent their children into slavery at Mandu.â In 1468 from the ravaged and burning town of Karahra (near Chanderi), 7,000 prisoners were taken."