Academics From India

"However it might be ... [regarding the original homeland], both those who advocate the theory that the Aryans came from outside India . . . and those who dispute the foreign theory and believe the Aryans to be autochthons are of the same opinion [that Punjab was the abode of the Rgveda" (Sastri and Srinivasat Chari 1971, 2; )"

"Literature is in other countries the bed-rock of history, in India it is often a snare."

"To judge of the past from the present, let us take the English nation in India. It has held India for a longer period than the Greeks did Bactria from the time of Alexander to that of As'oka, but yet it has produced no appreciable effect on the architecture of its neighbours. The Bhutanese and the Sikimites have not yet borrowed a single English moulding. The Nepalese, under the administration of Sir Jung Bahadur, are not a whit behind-hand of As ́oka and his people; Sir Jung went to Europe, which As'oka never did; still there is no change perceptible in Nepalese architecture indicative of a European amalgamation. The Kashmiris and the Afghans have proved equally conservative, and so have the Burmese. But to turn from their neighbours to the people of Hindustan : these have had intimate intercourse with Europeans now for over three hundred years, and enjoyed the blessings of English rule for over a century, and yet they have not produced a single temple built in the Saxon, or any other European style. Thus the conclusion we are called upon to accept is that what has not been accomplished by the intimate intercourse of three centuries, and the absolute sovereignty of a century, in these days of railways, and electric telegraphs, and mass education, was effected by the Greeks two thousand years ago simply by living as distant neighbours for eighty years or so."

"Mitra (1822-91) is famous for his publications on Orissan antiquities (1875, 1880), Bodh Gaya (1878) and a two-volume collection of essays (1881) dealing with different aspects of material life in ancient India. In his Odisha volumes he strongly advocated the independent origin of Indian stone architecture and earned the wrath of James Fergusson, the most established architectural historian of India of that time. In the volume on Bodh Gaya he argued for the existence of true arch in an early context in the Mahabodhi temple, and among his essays on the ancient Indian material life he cited copious data on beef- eating and the practice of spirituous drinking in ancient India."

"The absence of common names in the Indo-European languages for such Asiatic animals as the lion and the tiger and the camel, cannot prove the European origin of the Aryas [Indo-Europeans], for the names of such animals as are peculiar to the East might easily be forgotten by the people [after they had left India] in die West where those animals were not found. Or it is very probable that there may be several synonyms for the same object in the Aryan mother tongue—the one tribe of the Aryas in Asia or India having taken the fancy for one name while the other for another. . . . Professor Giles is an advocate of the European home of the Aryas. He ought to realize that his argument cuts both ways, for the names of European flora and fauna do not exist in the Asiatic Aryan lan- guages either. Really it should not be difficult to understand that the names for trees and animals disappear as the trees and animals themselves disappear."

"Dhar (1930) finds problematic is accounting "for the fact that India which is supposed to be the last home of the Aryan race produces the first or the most ancient record of the Aryas (viz., the Vedas], the like of which is not produced by them in their homes in Europe or in Asia outside India" (55). He discounts the possibility that there might once have been older Indo-European texts in Europe that had become lost, since "the instinct of preservation is as strong among the Aryas outside India as in India, for we have Homer and the Avesta preserved to this day" (57). His solution is that "the greater the distance from the primitive Indian home of the Aryas, quite naturally the later in date was the birth of a new Aryan language and literature" (59)."

"How is it that as the speakers of the language traveled all their way from Europe to Asia and then finally settled in India, they were able to retain in India alone of all countries—their final destination which they must have reached after a course of several centuries—almost exactly the same accent on words which their European forefathers used to possess centu- ries before in their forest-home in Europe or their Asiatic fathers on the table-land of Asia away from India, but which their bretheren in different countries . . . could not preserve. . . . Nor can the Aryans be supposed to have traveled through an ethnic vacuum as they started their journey from Europe or outer-Asia and traveled across thousands of miles of land before they could reach India, and escaped the influence of alien speech habits on their language. . . . (on the contrary, it was] the Aryas in their journeyings in Europe and Asia outside India [who] could not avoid . . . [being] overwhelmingly swamped by foreign people. . . . thus the ethnic disturbances have disturbed the original Aryan [Indo-European] accent in Outer-Asia or Europe. . . . the continuity of the original Aryan accent in ancient India implies the unbroken geographical and ethnic continuity of the Aryan race from the most primitive times in India. . . . Thus the home of the primitive Aryan language can be located round the home of the Vedic speakers who possessed almost exactly the same word or sentence-accent as their Aryan [Indo-European] fathers did. (47-51)5"

"Dhar (1930) went on to argue that "ancient Sanskrit possesses the greatest number of roots and words and the greatest variety of grammatical forms, belonging to the Aryan mother tongue, when compared with all the other Aryan languages in the world" (59)."

"Hindutva is the single Sanskrit word that attempts to capture the instinctive nature of Bharatiya nationalism that Savarkar tried to define analytically and Ambedkar to articulate emotionally. ... Hindutva is nothing less or nothing more than feeling like a Hindu. ... Hindutva is a philosophy that can guide Bharat in this civilizational battle, a battle which she inherited through the misguided policies of our successive governments."

"It is critical to note that in a nation-state the people take their cue from the Constitution whereas in a civilizational state the Constitution flows from the nature of the people. In the latter, the Constitution is an outcome of national identity and not the rationale for it."

"Dharma is as fundamental to our existence as its converse in the physical world, the Second Law of Thermodynamics which governs the progression of things from order to randomness. Like the Second Law there will be many definitions of Dharma."

"The Aryas do not refer to any foreign country as their original home, do not refer to themselves as coming from beyond India, do not name any place in India after the names of places in their original land as conquerors and colonizers always do, but speak of themselves exactly as sons of the soil would do. If they had been foreign invaders, it would have been humanly impossible for all memory of such invasion to have been utterly obliterated from memory in such a short time as represents the differences between the Vedic and Avestan dialects. (79-80)"

"As the historian P. T. Srinivasan Iyengar pertinently noted in 1926, A careful study of the Vedas...reveals the fact that Vedic culture is so redolent of the Indian soil and of the Indian atmosphere that the idea of the non-Indian origin of that culture is absurd."

"One solitary word anasa applied to the Dasyu has been quoted by ... Max Muller . . . among numerous writers, to prove that the Dasyus were a flat nosed people, and that, therefore, by contrast, the Aryas were straight-nosed. Indian commentators have explained this word to mean an-asa, mouthless, devoid of fair speech. . . . to hang such a weight of inference as the invasion and conquest of India by the straight nosed Aryans on the solitary word anasa does certainly seem not a very reasonable procedure. (6) The only other trace of racial reference in the Vedic hymns is the occurrence of two words, one krishna in seven passages and the other asikini in two passages. One of the meanings of these two words is "black," but in all the passages, the words have been interpreted as referring to black demons, black clouds, a demon whose name was Krishna, or the powers of darkness. Hence to take this as evidence to prove that the invading Aryans were fair-complexioned as they referred to their demon foes or perhaps human enemies as black is again to stretch many points in behalf of a preconceived theory. (6-7) The word . . . Arya occurs about 33 times [in the Rgveda]. . . . the word Dasa occurs about 50 times and Dasyu about 70 times. . . . The word Arya occurs 22 times in hymns to Indra and six times in hymns to Agni, and Ddsa 50 times in hymns to Indra and twice in hymns to Agni, and Dasyu 50 times in hymns to Indra and 9 times in hymns to Agni. The constant association of these words with Indra clearly proves that Arya meant a worshipper of Indra (and Agni). . . . The Aryas offered oblations to Indra. . . . The Dasyus or Dasas were those who were opposed to the Indra Agni cult and are explicitly described thus in those passages where human Dasyus are clearly meant. They are avtata without (the Arya) rites, anyavrata of different rites, ayajavdna, non-sacrificers, abrahma without prayers, also not having Brahmana priests, anrichah without Riks, brahmadvisha, haters of prayers to Brahmanas, and anindra without Indra, despisers of Indra. They pour no milky draughts, they heat no cauldron. They give no gifts to the Brahmana. . . . Their worship was but enchantment, sorcery, unlike the sacred law of fire-worship, wiles and magic. In all this we hear but the echo of a war of rite with rite, cult with cult and not one of race with race."

"If, for a while, the ruse of desire is calculable for the uses of discipline soon the repetition of guilt, justification, pseudo-scientific theories, superstition, spurious authorities, and classifications can be seen as the desperate effort to `normalize’ formally the disturbance of a discourse of splitting that violates the rational, enlightened claims of its enunciatory modality."

"There are so many antecedents alongside the usual postcolonial triad of Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, and Gayatri Spivak. Important as they are, we have to remember figures like Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire."

"It was our dream to get Homi Bhabha, said Henry Louis Gates Jr., chairman of the Afro-American studies department, where Mr. Bhabha will begin teaching in the spring. Reaction in the English department, where Mr. Bhabha will be spending the bulk of his time, was just as enthusiastic. He's manifestly one of the most distinguished cultural theorists of the postcolonial and diasporic experience in the world, said Lawrence Buell, the department chairman. Elsewhere, however, news of the appointment, which was first announced a year ago, provoked less jubilation than disbelief. When I heard that, I was dismayed, said Marjorie Perloff, an emeritus professor of English at Stanford University. For Harvard to be thrilled to be hiring Homi Bhabha -- he doesn't have anything to say.... One could finally argue that there is no there there, beyond the neologisms and latinate buzzwords, said Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of media studies at New York University. Most of the time I don't know what he's talking about."

"The ideal of realizing the infinite in the finite, the transcendental in the positive, manifested itself also in the educational system of Hindu India. The graduates trained under the 'domestic system' of the Gurukulas or preceptors' homes were competent enough to found and administer states, undertake industrial and commercial enterprises; they were builders of empires and organizers of business concerns."

"The Hindus no less than the Greeks have shared in the work of constructing scientific concepts and methods in the investigating of physical phenomena, as well as of building up a body of positive knowledge which has been applied to industrial technique; and Hindus scientific ideas and methodology (eg. the inductive method or methods of algebraic analysis) have deeply influenced the course of natural philosophy in Asia - in the East as well as the West - in China and Japan, as well as in the Saracen Empire."

"There will always be a gap between the goals set down and scheme of implementation. Women's groups by now have enough data to know where the policies have gone wrong. The whole question is gathering enough political clout to make a change."

"Our very limited interaction with NGOs active in this field in Tamil Nadu reveal that a large number of abortions take place outside the formal system since very often the state through its family planning outlets tries its own morality on women seeking abortions."

"“There are numerous synchronisms recorded in the Vedic, Puranic and epic literatures which are in consonance with the arrangement of names in the dynastic lists of the Puranas. These facts clearly establish the correctness of the arrangement of names in the Puranic genealogies.”"

"Fortunately the Puranic genealogies from the time of the founder of Buddhism onward can be tested by the evidence supplied by the Buddhist and Jain literature, dramas and inscriptions. (…) the mistakes regarding the names, the order of succession and the regnal years of kings are certainly not many."

"“If the Puranic genealogies from the time of the Buddha onward are almost faultless, the presumption naturally is that the earlier genealogies too are not mere figments of the imagination. (…) In the first place a large number of these names occur in the Vedic literature which is quite independent of the Purāṇas. Secondly, even those names which do not occur in the Vedic literature are so archaic that they could not have been coined by the authors of the present Purāṇas in whose time the style of names had completely changed.”"

"The first chapter of the Vendidad or the handbook of the Parsees enumerates sixteen holy lands created by Ahura Mazda which were later rendered unfit for the residence of man (i.e. the ancestors of the Iranians) on account of different things created by Angra Mainyu, the evil spirit of the Avesta… The first of these lands was of course Airyana Vaejo which was abandoned by the ancestors of the Iranians because of severe winter and snow; of the others, one was Hapta Hindu, i.e. Saptasindhu."

"The fact that Indra is said to have given the possessions of the Anu king to the Tṛtsus in the battle of Paruṣṇī shows that the Anus dwelt on the banks of the Paruṣṇī."

"Not only in grammatical structure and vocabulary, but also in literary form, in certain metres like the TriSTubh and in a way GAyatrI, there is resemblance between the Avesta and the Rgveda. The fact is usually mentioned in good manuals. But there is a peculiarity about these points of resemblance which is not so commonly known: It is the eighth MaNDala which bears the most striking similarity to the Avesta. There and there only (and of course partly in the related first MaNDala) do some common words like uSTra and the strophic structure called pragAtha occur. … Further research in this direction is sure to be fruitful."

"Everybody begins (talking about) India at 1947. I think India is a Civilization. And as a civilizational state, are we saying that we had no norms earlier?” “There’s a dichotomy among Indian scholars – some who believe that the Indian tradition communal and if it is touched, that would make India a sectarian state. But at the same time, we applaud China doing it on its Confucian tradition and bringing a lot of texts on strategic thought."

"When Rajendra Chola completed 1000 years of his rule (in 2014), no one celebrated it. So we are a marginalised history of India.” Indian history is not Mughal history and not and the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. I think we should go beyond that.”“We have been builders of norms when it comes to statecraft, individual freedom, tolerance, peaceful coexistence, and (although) not soft power but sublime power and spiritual universalism,” Pandit further added. “The soil in which you transplant institutions has to be equally fertile and acceptive as the institutions themselves.”"

"The history of modern India tells us a complex, surprising, captivating, and yet unconcluded story of freedom. It is appropriate to express a Tocquevillesque astonishment at this historical phenomenon. If we look from age to age, from the earliest antiquity to the present day, we can agree with Tocqueville that nothing like this has ever happened before. We have not yet seen the end of this unprecedented historical process… For, the eventual shape of the destination of this process might be unclear, but the movement towards a greater expansion of freedom is irreversible."

"The next morning, the Hindu prisoners were divided into four sections and taken to each of the four gates ... There, on the stakes they had carried, the prisoners were impaled, afterwards their wives were killed and tied by their hair to these pales. Little children were massacred on the bosoms of their mothers and their corpses left there. Then, the camp was raised, and they started cutting down the trees of another forest. In the same manner did they treat their later Hindu prisoners. This is shameful conduct such as I have not known any other sovereign guilty of. It is for this that God hastened the death of Ghiyath-eddin (Ghiyazu-d-din)."

"The country we had to traverse was a wood formed of trees and reeds, so overgrown, that nobody could penetrate it. The Sultan ordered every army man, great or small, to carry a hatchet and cut down these obstacles. When the camp had been arranged, he set out on horseback to the forest, accompanied by soldiers. They cut down trees from morning till midday. Then food was served for everybody ; after that they began hewing till evening. Every infidel found in the forest was taken prisoner. They sharpened stakes at both ends and made their captives carry them on their shoulders. Each was accompanied by his wife and children and they were thus led to the camp. It is the custom of these people to surround their camp with a palisade having four gates. They call it catcar round the habitation of the king. Outside the principal boundary, they erected a platform about a half brasse high and lighted a fire on it during the night. Slaves and sentinels spent the night there holding a fagot of very slender reeds in their hands. When infidels approached to attack the camp during the night, they lighted the fagots. The brightness of the flames converted night into day, and the horsemen set out in pursuit of the infidel."

"One day whilst the Kadhi (Kazi) and I were having our food with (Ghiyazu-d-din), the Kazi to his right and I to his left, an infidel was brought before him accompanied by his wife and son aged seven years. The Sultan made a sign with his hand to the executioners to cut off the head of this man ; then he said to them in Arabic : ' and the son and the wife. ' They cut off their heads and I turned my eyes away. When I looked again, I saw their heads lying on the ground."

"While the annual festival in which the god is taken over- night to the banks of the Coleroon river, a little to the south-east of Srirangam — a festival lasting a few hours — was being celebrated, tidings came that an army of the Muhammadans had come in and occupied parts of the Tondamandalam (the two Arcots and Chingleput) and a small body of troops was marching rapidly towards Samaya- varam about five miles from the north bank of the Coleroon. The principal Brahman citizens of the town, who had assembled at the celebration of the festival and who were in charge of the temple, not having got through the festival cast lots in the presence of the idol whether to stay or to go. They got an answer directing them to stay. They stayed over therefore to complete the festival, and in the meanwhile information was brought to them that the flying column of the Muhammadans was dashing past Samaya- varam. They therefore made haste to wind up proceedings, and, sending away the god and the goddess, in a small palanquin under the escort of Lokacharya (Pillai Loka- charya) and a few stout-hearted followers and carriers, the assembled multitude got themselves ready for the attack. They had not to wait long before they were actually attacked, and destroyed in large numbers. From out of this massacre Vedantacharya escaped, with the two little sons of Srutaprakasikacharya, and the single manuscript of his famous commentary on the Sri Bhashya, and betook himself through unfrequented roadways to Satyamangalam on the borders of Mysore. Lokacharya and his companions took their way to the south for safety. Fearing that they would be overtaken if they went along the road, they seemed to have kept more or less close to the road, but avoided the road-way and proceeded slowly through jungles and unfrequented tracts across the state of Pudukotta. .... They therefore made a further detour to the east and getting through a more or less dense forest region, they came to a place called Jyotishkudi (Jyotishmatl- pura), where they lived a few months. During their residence there, information reached them that the bulk of the citizens of Srirangam were massacred, the temple itself sacked and desecrated, and all those citizens that Lokacharya knew and cared for had suffered death. On hearing this distressing account of what happened to his friends and companions he got ill and died. ....When they felt the road ways safe, they carried the image across to Tirupati. The story closes that from Tirupati, the image was taken over to Ginji by Gopana and ultimately got back to Srirangam."

"In the meanwhile, the three men in charge of the idol heard of the advance of the Muhammadans closer to the hill ; fearing for their safety and that of the idol, the chief man tied himself down to the idol and asked the two others gently to let it down the slope of the hill, himself being always on the underside so that the idol may not suffer damage. Having got down safely, the three men lived on there in an isolated glen in the forest at the foot of the hill unfrequented by ordinary people. In the meanwhile, people at Srlrangam thinking it impossible to recover the idol, made and consecrated others, instead of those of both the god and the goddess. In the meanwhile the three men continued to live on doing their daily service to the god in the usual fashion. For a period of fifty-nine and a half years from the date of the sack, of which two years were spent in the palace of the Sultan, the idol of Srlrangam found its shrine in that sequestered glen. In the course of this long stay, the father and the uncle had died and the son had grown up to be an old man of eighty, looking more like a forest man than a civilized one. Feeling that his end was drawing near this one man showed himself to the hill folk about and let them understand how and why he happened to be there. Information of this reached the town by means of these people, and it happened to be the time of Gopana, who was in charge of Narayanapuram (Narayanavaram) near Chandragiri under the newly formed kingdom of Vijayanagar. He carried the idol to his later head-quarters at Ginji where he placed it in the temple called Singavaram even now, in a safe place difficult of approach even from Ginji itself. When Prince Kampana had over-powered the Muhammadan garrisons in the various localities in South India and brought the whole of it under the control of Vijayanagar, Gopana, his chief adviser got the idol re-installed in the temple at Srlrangam in the Saka year, 1293, A.D. 1370-71, in the year Paritapi, month Vaikasi, date 17."

"Ibn Batuta gives some interesting details of Ghiyathu-d-din's doings which throw a lurid light upon the character of Muhammadan rule in the South. While Ibn Batuta accompanied him, when he moved from the camp towards the capital, he happened to fall in with a number of ' idolaters ' with their women and children in clearing a road through the forest. He made them carry a number of stakes sharpened at both ends, and when morning broke he divided these prisoners into four groups, and led one party to each gate of the four entrances to the camp. The stakes that they carried were then driven into the ground at one end and the unfortunate wretches were impaled alive there- on. Their wives and children had their throats cut and were left fastened to the posts. Ibn Batuta exclaims in horror ' it was for this reason that God hastened the death of Ghiyathu-d-din.' It is hardly necessary to add to this blood-curdling story others from Ibn Batuta."

"I was another time with the Sultan Ghiyath-eddin (Ghiyazu- d-din) when a Hindu was brought into his presence. He uttered words I did not understand, and immediately several of his followers drew their daggers. I rose hurriedly, and he said to me ; ' Where are you going ' ? I replied : ' I am going to say my afternoon (4 o'clock) prayers. ' He understood my reason, smiled, and ordered the hands and feet of the idolater to be cut off. On my return I found the unfortunate swimming in his blood."

"Brahmastpuri is Chidambaram- — There are three places that figure in this campaign frequently, ' Bir Dhul,' ' Kandur,' and * Jalkotta.' Any identification of all these, from the nature of their names as given by Amir Khusru, must turn upon the identification of the great temple Brahmastpuri, which Malik Kafur plundered. According to the description given there, it was a temple roofed over with gold, set with gems. It contained both the Linga, emblematic of Siva (Ling Mahadeo), and Vishnu (Deo Narain). These indications give sufficient lead to identify the place with Chidambaram. Chidambaram is popularly known as Kanakasabha or Ponnambalam (golden hall) from Pallava times. That was because the whole of the inner shrine of the temple was roofed over with gold, and that was renewed two or three times under the great Cholas. The later members of this dynasty from Kulottunga I onwards, if not from Kajendra I, were specially devoted to this temple, and seem to have always completed the ceremony of coronation in the capital Gangaikondasola- puram by a visit to this temple. Hence at the time it must have been one of the richest temples in this part of the country. The name Brahmast- puri is apparently the slightly modified Brahmapuri, which is the sacerdotal (agamic) name given to Chidambaram as a whole in Saiva literature. There is one temple dedicated to Siva, which goes by the specific name Brahmapuri, and the name of the deity itself is Brahmapurlsvara, and is known ordinarily as Tirukkalancheri, the northern part of Chidambaram, and this particular temple received a gift of ... gold pieces annually for certain festivals, etc., from Kulottunga III. Hence there is little doubt that the Brahmastpuri of Amir Khusru is Chidambaram."

"Here he heard that in Brahmastpuri there was a golden idol, round which many elephants were stabled.' Malik Kafur started on a night expedition against this place and in the morning seized no less than 250 elephants. He then determined on razing the beautiful temple to the ground — ' you might say that it was the Paradise of Shaddad, which, after being lost, those " hellites " had found, and that it was the golden Lanka of Ram ' — ' in short, it was the holy place of the Hindus, which the Malik dug up from its foundations with the greatest care,' and the heads of the Brahmans and idolaters danced from their necks and fell to the ground at their feet, and blood flowed in torrents. ' The stone idols called Ling Mahadeo, which had been a long time established at that place, up to this time, the kick of the horse of Islam had not attempted to break.' The Musalmans destroyed all the Lings, ' and Deo Narain fell down, and the other gods who had fixed their seats there raised their feet, and jumped so high, that at one leap they reached the fort of Lanka, and in that affright the Lings themselves would have fled had they had any legs to stand on.' Much gold and many valuable jewels fell into the hands of the Musalmans, who returned to the royal canopy, after executing their holy project, on the 13th of Zi-1-ka'da A.H. 710 (A.D. April 1311). They destroyed all the temples at Birdhul, and placed the plunder in the public treasury."

"There is direct evidence to confirm this presumption in a work called Koyiloluhu. This is a work which deals with all the benefactions made to the temple at Srirangam by people from its foundation to almost the eighteenth century. ... This work has a few paragraphs devoted to the sack of Srirangam and the carrying away of the idol of Ranganatha, apparently under Malik Kafur. The account begins that the king of Delhi having conquered Pratapa Rudra, invaded both the Tondamanda- lam and Solamandalam. The invading armies spread along the whole country and made a general sack of temples carrying away the idols as well. In the course of this campaign, they entered Srlrangam as well, by the north gate, which was in the charge of the Arya Bhattas, the Northern Brahmans. The guards, by name Panjukondan, were over-powered, the temple was entered into and all the property was carried away including the idol of the god. There was a woman who had made it her daily habit never to take her food without worshipping the god in the temple. She was a native of Karambanur, otherwise called Uttamar- koil, on the other bank of the Coleroon. As the army was retreating after the sack, she gave up her household and followed the army in the guise of a mendicant having learnt that they were carrying away the idol of Ramapriya as well from Tirunarayanapuram (Melukottai). She reached ultimately the palace at Delhi where these idols were all locked up in a safe chamber. One of the younger princesses of the Sultan's family having been struck with the beauty of the Ranganatha idol, asked permission and obtained the idol to play with. She kept herself in the constant company of the idol. Knowing so much, perhaps feeling that the idol was in safe custody, the woman managed to steal away from the palace and journeyed back to Srirangam to give information of it to the people there."

"According to Amir Khusru ‘the Malik represented that on the coast of Ma’bar 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.” 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 ‘Satanism’ 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 Ma’bar was so distant from the city of Delhi ‘that a man travelling with all expedition could only reach it after a journey of twelve months,’ and there ‘ the arrow of any holy warrior had not yet reached.’ 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."

"It seems likely there were other settlements of these Muhammadans even in the interior of the country. In the course of his description of the campaign of Malik Kafur in the Tamil country, Amir Khusru says ‘ Thither (to Kandur) the Malik pursued the ‘ yellow-faced Bir’, and at Kandur was joined by some Mussalmans who had been subjects of the Hindus, now no longer able to offer them protection. They were half Hindus, and were not strict in their religious observ- ance, but, ‘as they could repeat the Kalima (the Confession of Faith of the Muhammadans), the Malik of Islam spared their lives. Though they were worthy of death, yet as they were Mussalmans, they were pardoned.’’ This shows that at Kandur, which I have identified with Kannanir, near Srirangam, there was a settlement of Muhammadans quite different from the northern Mussalmans, who came along with the invaders."

"Invasion of Dvarasamudra. — On Sunday, the 22nd of Ramzan, Malik Kafur held a council of war. Apparently as a result of a resolution he took with him a select body of cavalry, and appeared before the fort of Dhur Samundar on the fifth of Shawwal ' after a difficult march of twelve days over hills and valleys and thorny forests.' Seeing the destructive character of the invasion, the ruler Vira Ballala III having ascertained the strength of the Muhammadan army sent agents to propose peace, though Vira Pandya had despatched an army to assist him. Malik Kafur is stated to have sent the reply ' that he was sent with the object of converting him to Muhammadanism, or of making him zimmi (one who could enjoy the same political privileges as the Muhammadans on payment of Jiziya) and subject to pay tax, or of slaying him, if neither of these terms were assented to.' The Rai agreed to surrender all his property ' except his sacred thread ' and on Friday the sixth of Shawwal, six elephants were sent accompanied by three plenipotentiaries. The next day some horses followed and on the Sunday following he is himself said to have paid a visit to the Commander-in-Chief and surrendered all his treasures, having spent a whole night in taking them out. Malik Kafur remained twelve days in that city, which, according to Amir Khusru, is four months distant from Delhi, to which he sent the captured elephants."

"The more important among the citizens having deliberated as to what they should do, walled up the north gate of the temple and left the temple vacant burying the goddess idol that escaped capture under a bilva tree (Aegla Marmelos). Sixty of these men placed themselves under the guidance of the woman mendicant and set forward on their journey to Delhi. She put on the former guise and got entry into the palace as before. In the meanwhile those that followed her managed to get audience of the Sultan, and by exhibiting both the music and the dance for which they were famous, as having had to perform daily before the god, they pleased the Sultan so greatly and declined all rewards offered by the Sultan, preferring instead the one idol of Ranganatha, among the many, as the reward. The Sultan ordered that these men might be allowed to take the idol of their choice. Not finding this particular idol in the store-room and knowing as they did that it was with the princess, they reported the matter to the Sultan, who in joke told them that if it was their god they might call him and take him away. They agreed and sang their prayers, which the idol answered by following them. Showing this to the Sultan they obtained his permission and started off with their idol over-night. When morning broke, the princess was disconsolate at the loss of her idol and declined to live if she could not have it. Search for the party proving useless, he placed her under an escort and sent her off for the idol. The Brahmans of Srirangam having had a start, marched along ahead and reached Tirupati safe before they could be overtaken by the princess and her escort. At Tirupati they heard of the arrival of the party of the princess and feeling themselves unsafe, the party broke up and dispersed themselves to avoid observation leaving the idol in charge of three men among them, the father and son, and the son's maternal uncle. The big party having thus disappeared, the escort marched on till they reached Srlrangam. Finding that the northern gate of the temple was walled up and the temple empty, the princess died of a broken heart."

"In the neighbourhood of his territory was an infidel sovereign named Belal Deo (Ballala Deva), who was one of the principal Hindu Kings. His army exceeded hundred thousand men, and he had besides, twenty thousand Mussalmans formed of criminals and slaves. This monarch thought it expedient to go against the Coromandel Coast where the Mussalman army numbered but six thousand soldiers, the half of whom were excellent troops and the remainder were worth absolutely nothing. The Muhammadans fought a battle with him near the town of Cobban (Koppam) ; he routed them, and they retired to Moutrah (Madura) the capital of the country. The infidel sovereign encamped near Cobban (Koppam) which is one of the grandest and strongest places that the Mussalmans possess. He laid siege to it for ten months, and at the end of this time, the garrison had provisions only for fourteen days. Belal Ddo (Ballala Dava) sent a proposal to the besieged to retire with safe-conduct, and to abandon the town to him ; but they replied, ' we must refer this question to our Sultan. ' He then promised them a truce, which was to last for fourteen days, and they wrote to Sultan Ghiyath-eddin (Ghiyazu-d-din) telling him how they weie situated. The prince read their letter to the people the following Friday. The faithful wept and said : ' We will sacrifice our lives to God. If the idolater takes that town, he will next lay siege to us : we prefer to die by the sword.' They then undertook to expose themselves to death, and set out marching the next day, placing their turbans on the neck of their horses, which showed that they were seeking death. The bravest and most courageous of them, 300 in number were posted to the vanguard ; the right wing was under Seif-eddin Behadur (Seifu-d-din Bahadur), the hero, who was a pious and brave lawyer ; and the left wing was under, Almelic Mohamed 1 assilahdar ' (armiger). The Sultan remained in the centre with three thousand men, and the rear-guard was formed by the remaining 3,000 under the command of Assad-eddin Keikhosrew Alfaricy. In this order the Mussalmans set out, at the siesta hour, towards the infidel camp. Their horses were sent out to graze. They fell upon the encampment ; the infidels, imagining the assailants were but robbers, went in disorder to meet them and fought with them. In the midst of all this, the Sultan Ghiyath- eddin arrived, and the Hindus sustained the worst of all defeats. Their king tried to mount his horse although he was eighty years of age. Nasir-eddin (Nasiru-d-din) nephew and successor of the Sultan overtook the old man and wanted to kill him, for he did not know who he was. But one of his slaves said : ' He is the Hindu King. ' He then took him a prisoner to his uncle who treated him with apparent consideration and promised to release him. But when he had extorted from him his wealth, elephants and horses and all his property, he had him killed and flayed ; his skin was stuffed with straw and hung up on the wall of Moutrah (Madura) where I saw it suspended."

"Westerners do not know as yet, that Tamil is a highly developed classical language of Lemurian origin, and has been, and is being still, suppressed by a systematic and coordinated effort by the Sanskritists both in the public and private sectors, ever since the Vedic mendicants migrated to the South, and taking utmost advantage of their superior complexion and the primitive credulity of the ancient Tamil kings, posed themselves as earthly gods (Bhu-suras) and deluded the Tamilians into the belief that their ancestral language or literary dialect was divine or celestial in origin."

"The satyagraha was a triumph of the progressive forces, a spontaneous humanistic upsurge, a great wave of social resurgence and a whirlwind that sounded the final warning to the perverse and obstinate orthodoxy all over India to voluntarily put an end to its age-long repression. . . . Vaikhom was the biggest and longest mass movement ever organized in India for social freedom and members of all communities promptly responded to the appeal . . . to participate in it."

"The sequence ensures that the text on the neolithic tool found in Tamil Nadu is not only in the Indus script but also in the Harappan language. I may add this is the archeological discovery of the century in Tamil Nadu."

"Iravatham Mahadevan, specializing in the Indus script and early Tamil, is an example of a scholar who became co-opted to serve as an academic sepoy for Western manipulations.... In 1970, while he was a Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow, Mahadevan came out with a hypothesis that the Harappan script is ‘a language which resembles South Dravidian (including Telugu) in general and Old Tamil in particular’. This was music to the ears of those fanning the flames of Dravidian separatism. It supplied social and political theories of India’s divided identities by claiming ‘amazingly close parallelisms between the hierarchical structure of proto-Indian and the old Tamil polities’. He theorized that the Mahabharata was a story of class-war between a priestly oligarchy and common people in Harappan civilization – a gift to Indian Marxists looking for class-conflict wherever possible."

"Daya Krishna (1924-2007) had been a member of the Changers’ Club, the debating circle of friends at Delhi University, featuring the later journalist Girilal Jain, economists Ram Swarup and Raj Krishna and historian Sita Ram Goel."