By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist Few animals have shaped Hindu imagination as deeply as the bull and the cow. Shiva’s mount is Nandi, the great humped bull, while…
By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist About a thousand years ago, when Rajasekhar wrote his discourse on poetry, the Kavya Mimansa, Aryavarta stretched from the Himalayas down to the…
By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist In Hindu thought, Vayu, Marut, Vata and Prana represent different ways in which breeze as well as breath were imagined. Vayu is the…
By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist On the outer walls of the Chennakeshava temple in Belur, built by the Hoysala kings in the 12th century, stands a woman holding…
By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist On television, Arjuna is presented as the true hero of the Mahabharata: masculine, entitled, radiant, unmatched with the bow, chosen to receive the…
By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist To understand why Ganesha is worshipped as the remover of obstacles and invoked before every Hindu ceremony, we must understand — and appreciate…
By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist Ask any Indian schoolchild who invented zero and the answer will usually be: India did. This is one of the most common beliefs…
By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist The Rig Veda praises the gods. The priest composes beautiful hymns, asks for cattle, sons, victory, rain. The relationship is simple: human below,…
Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist In Vedic times, graha meant malevolent spirits who hurt mothers and babies. It had nothing to do with planets. The 3,000-year-old Vedic Jyotisha had…
By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist The term Chandala, referring to the “lowest of the low” in Brahmin lore, appears a few times in the Vedic literature itself. It…
By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist Originally Brahmins were simply transmitters of the Veda. Later, as keepers of dharma-shastra, they offered administrative services to kings. From the 10th century…
By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist If you only consume today’s festival talk, you would think India’s calendar is a relay race between Ram and Krishna. That is a…
By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist Kambaramayanam is one of the most celebrated works of Tamil literature. Composed by the poet Kamban around the ninth century in Tamil Nadu,…
Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist The goddess we call Saraswati today begins as Vagdevi, the Goddess of Speech, identified primarily with the Vedic deity Vac. Her earliest stories foreground…
By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik - Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist Over 2,200 years ago, two rulers on opposite ends of Asia confronted a similar problem: how to hold together vast, diverse territories emerging…
By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik - Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist In the Upanishads, the word brahmin is about inner realisation. In Dharma-shastra, the word brahmin is about birth status and purity. The early…
By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik - Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist The historical Buddha is largely an artefact of 19th-century European scholarship rather than a recovered fact, as per scholars like Bernard Faure. He…
By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik - Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist The Ramayana and the Mahabharata reached their final written form around 2000 years ago, exactly when the Dharma-shastra was being coded. There is…
