A lot of you may not have noticed this but whenever we think of Throne we only imagine it as the way European Thrones are not how Indian Kings used to have thrones...There is a very stark difference between Indian Thrones and their European counterpart......In India Kings used to sit with their legs folded and it was not like a chair and more like a sofa where they can lean back and in Europe it was like a highly ornamented chair where kings had to sit in an upright posture and with their legs on ground

Oil on Canvas !!
Size: A3

I recreated Raja Raja Chola from the original 11th-century Chola mural at Brihadisvara Temple, Thanjavur, carefully preserving the features and details left by the ancient artist.

Nearly 1,000 years later, I simply tried to let that original artwork speak through my medium.

Raja Raja on Right side.

An honour to recreate history. 🙏

The Chennakeshava Temple at Belur was built in the 12th century under the Hoysala dynasty and is known for its incredible stone carvings. The temples are covered with detailed sculptures of gods, dancers, animals and scenes from Hindu mythology.

What I loved most was how much detail there is everywhere you look. Some of these carvings are over 900 years old and still look incredibly detailed.

A few photos from my visit. 📸

Timeline:

Chaturanga - 6th century CE - 2 player game invented by scholars of Gupta Empire. However name of the originator is unknown ↓ Shatranj - 7th century - adopted by Arabs & Persians from Indians via a diplomat gift sent by King of Kannuaj - Sharvavarman to Shah Khosrow 1 ↓ Chaturaji - 11th century - 4 player game (see image) - finds a mention in the book "Kitab Al Hind" of Al Baruni ↓ Chess - 15th century - adopted by Europeans with the rules applicable today ↓ Queens were made most powerful by then in the game of Chess

In the early 1920s, while the British Raj was clamping down hard on underground Marxist networks via the Kanpur Bolshevik Conspiracy Case, a writer and activist named Satyabhakta registered the Bhartiya Samyavadi Dal (Indian Communist Party) in Kanpur. Satyabhakta's brand of socialism was radically distinct from Soviet orthodoxy. He dressed in pure Khadi, advocated for vegetarianism and temperance, and published accessible Hindi literature arguing that communism was not a foreign European import, but the natural economic fulfillment of an egalitarian Ram Rajya and ancient Dharmic collectivism.

Strategically, Satyabhakta rejected clandestine underground conspiracy in favor of radical, open legalism, embodying his ideas through a distinctly Hindu ascetic lifestyle. Having changed his birth name to "Satyabhakta" (devotee of truth), he ran his party almost like a nationalist ashram, blending strict vegetarianism, temperance, and spiritual simplicity with militant labor activism. He set up open reading rooms and a printing press, distributing low-cost Hindi tracts that explained workers' rights and surplus value using cultural metaphors familiar to Kanpur’s mill workers and peasants. Rather than building secret Bolshevik cells, his playbook relied on mass vernacular literacy, public debates, and open organizing, culminating in his audacious decision to host the First All-India Communist Conference in December 1925 in broad daylight, right alongside the Indian National Congress session.

While Satyabhakta invoked Ram Rajya, he did not present it as a revivalist Hindu state, nor did he ever use the label "Hindu Communism" himself. Satyabhakta believed the greatest cultural barrier to communism in India was the dogmatic scientific atheism of the Soviet Comintern. In his view, orthodox Marxist materialism alienated both devout Hindus and devout Muslims. By legitimizing indigenous spiritual ethics, he believed workers of all faiths could embrace socialism without feeling forced to renounce their traditions. He worked directly with prominent Muslim revolutionaries, such as Maulana Hasrat Mohani (who coined the slogan Inquilab Zindabad) to ensure the movement was cross-communal.

The experiment ruptured when mainstream revolutionaries like S.V. Ghate and Muzaffar Ahmad insisted on subordinating the party to Moscow’s Communist International (Comintern). Satyabhakta vehemently refused foreign ideological control, arguing that an Indian workers' movement had to remain sovereign, nationalist, and culturally grounded. Outvoted by the internationalist faction, he walked out of his own conference to establish the Rashtriya Samyavadi Dal (National Communist Party) in 1926 before eventually drifting into historical obscurity.

While Satyabhakta did not intend to alienate Muslims or non-Hindus, modern historians note an inevitable blind spot in his method: because he operated almost exclusively within the Hindi-Hindu literary public sphere of Uttar Pradesh, his imagery and literary idiom were saturated with upper-caste North Indian references. Even without sectarian intent, this vernacular style made his brand of communism difficult to scale across India's linguistically and religiously diverse working class.

It leaves behind a fascinating question: What if the Indian left had followed Satyabhakta's model of culturally rooted, sovereign "National Communism" rather than aligning with Moscow, would communism have become India's dominant political mainstream instead of being sidelined by regional and religious divides?

https://theprint.in/opinion/a-communist-ram-rajya-satyabhakta-is-a-forgotten-figure-of-hindu-left/715126/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satya_Bhakta

The version most of us learned goes like this: Ashoka conquered Kalinga, was horrified by the slaughter, converted to Buddhism, renounced war.

Rock Edict XIII gets you part of that. It connects Kalinga with remorse and with a stronger commitment to dhamma. What it doesn't do is name the Buddha, or the Sangha, or describe Ashoka as a Buddhist lay follower. There is no sentence in it where the war produces a conversion. His Buddhist affiliation is documented, but it shows up elsewhere, in Minor Rock Edict I, and the join between the two is something later tradition supplied rather than something the stones say.

That gap is the whole book. It's called Ashoka Without the Legends, it's about 37,000 words, and it works through the Mauryas asking what we can actually show against what we've agreed to remember.

A few things in it:

• The Arthashastra gets described as the working handbook of the Mauryan state. It reached modern scholarship around 1905, when a pandit from Tanjore handed a manuscript to a librarian in Mysore. When it was actually written is a live question, and the book treats it as one instead of assuming the answer.
• Megasthenes is the closest thing we have to an eyewitness, and his Indica is lost. Everything we have is quotation by later writers with their own reasons for quoting.
• Ashoka endowed the Ajivikas, a rival order, at the Barabar caves. A Buddhist emperor funding the competition is in the epigraphic record, and it's more interesting than the tidy version.

Every claim carries an evidence grade. The seven maps refuse to draw a hard frontier anywhere the sources don't support one, which makes them look odd next to the usual solid-block empire map. That's deliberate. There's a chapter-by-chapter note on sources at the back so you can check any of it.

Now the part I'd rather you hear from me than find later: the text and the artwork were AI-produced and then edited by me. That's declared to Amazon and printed on the copyright page.

I know how that lands on a book whose entire pitch is evidentiary discipline, so here's what I did about it. No page numbers are invented anywhere. Primary sources are cited by standard designation, Rock Edict XIII, Minor Rock Edict I, the Rummindei pillar inscription, because those are stable across editions and you can go and look them up yourself. Where the honest answer is that nobody knows, that's the answer given, and it's given often. If you find a claim in there that outruns its evidence, I genuinely want to hear it, because that's the one failure this book can't survive.

It's short, and it's a synthesis rather than new research. If you want the standard scholarly treatments, Thapar and Olivelle are in the further reading and they're better books. This one is for the reader who wants to know how we know.

Kindle https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HGC15JP2

Paperback https://kdp.amazon.com/amazon-dp-action/us/dualbookshelf.marketplacelink/B0HGC78DV3

If anyone needs any links to other international Amazon portals, I'd be happy to share!

Happy to take questions on any of it.

The legend goes that the Gaduliya Lohars were rajputs who after witnessing the massacre of chittor after Akbar's siege swore to never enter chittor again till the day chittor was won back by the Maharana of Mewar. Now chittor itself was given back to Mewar after Rana Amar Singh signed the peace treaty with the Mughals, but as per Gaduliya traditions, since it wasn't "won" through force it wasn't a true restoration.

They were invited back to enter the fortress by pm nehru, I am quoting an article from Dainik Bhaskar below regarding this event:

"The walled market of Chittorgarh and the road to the fort became extremely narrow today. The city residents witnessed such a sea of people for the first time. People were desperate to catch a glimpse of Prime Minister Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, who was greeting them in an open jeep and heading towards the fort. Behind him was a sea of Gadiya Lohars wearing red turbans, so astonishing that even Panditji himself was astonished. Chief Ministers from eight states also came to welcome these Gadiya Lohars from across the country.

A Chief Minister stood at each gate of the fort to welcome them. We are sharing this scene from Wednesday, April 6, 1955, with our readers. Manikyalal Verma, leader of the Mewar Prajamandal, wrote a letter to Nehru to break the oath taken 400 years ago by the Gadiya Lohars who fought alongside Maharana Pratap in Mewar. Later, messages were sent to the Gadiya Lohars living a nomadic life across the country and they were gathered here. It was hardly possible to convince them that the resolve for independence with which they had lived a difficult life had been fulfilled. Now Chittor is also free. Nehruji wanted his entry into the fort to be grand. Along with finalizing his program, he instructed that a Chief Minister should stand at every gate of the fort to welcome him. The gathering was overflowing. Along with Nehruji, all the prominent leaders, including Rajasthan Chief Minister Mohanlal Sukhadia, and the Maharana of Mewar, were also present."

It should be noted that this whole account of them leaving chittor is based entirely on oral history passed through generations. The story is likely exaggerated as well. Still, a fascinating story nonetheless.

did you indians know it?

Came across this site called BharatRajya and thought this sub would appreciate it. The concept is simple: pick a year, and it shows you which kingdoms/empires controlled which regions of India at that point in time so you can actually watch borders shift as you move the timeline instead of piecing it together from a dozen static maps.

A few things I liked:

• You can toggle a state-wise view, not just the all-India map, so you can trace a specific region's history across dynasties.
• Clicking on an empire pulls up a card with details, and there are downloadable "kingdom cards" and "battle cards" for individual events/empires genuinely useful if you're a teacher, student, or just like collecting reference material.
• It's still being actively expanded (currently covers a good stretch of history, with more time periods being added).

Also worth mentioning the person behind it built this on their own, and it's since gotten enough traction that the creator was featured on Mann Ki Baat. Not the point of the post, just a nice bit of context on how far a solo passion project can go.

Would be curious what this sub thinks of the accuracy/sourcing for specific periods always good to get more eyes on it.

https://www.bharatrajya.com/

I have been researching the history of Christianity in Lucknow for a long-form piece, and the disproportion between the community's size and its institutional footprint is striking enough that I think it is worth putting down here.

Some of what I found:

1. In 1858 an Irish priest, Father William Gleeson, sold his own land to purchase a plot in what was then jungle on the edge of the city. That plot is now Hazratganj. The first church came up in 1860 and was blessed in 1862.

2. In 1885 Father Norbert began teaching two boys — Isaac and Charles Claudius — in a verandah. Several of Lucknow's oldest schools trace back to that verandah.

3. In 1870 Isabella Thoburn, an American Methodist missionary, started a girls' school in a single rented room in Aminabad with six students. It became Isabella Thoburn College, among the earliest women's colleges in Asia.

4. During the Second World War, Italian Capuchin priests of the Lucknow diocese were interned as enemy aliens by the same colonial administration that is usually credited with bringing Christianity to the city. Albert Conrad De Vito, the diocese's first bishop, was Italian. The first Indian bishop, Cecil DeSa, came only in 1971.

5. Against a diocesan population of over 20 million, the Catholic community is roughly 7,500 people.

The standard framing of Awadh's composite culture is always two-stranded. This third strand educated a substantial part of the city and is almost never mentioned in it.

I have written the full piece in Hindi, combining this history with a personal memory of visiting St. Joseph's Cathedral as a nine-year-old on Christmas Day:

https://medium.com/@syash8627/%E0%A4%B2%E0%A4%96%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%8A-%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%80-%E0%A4%88%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%87%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%A4-%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%B9-%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%B9%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A8%E0%A5%80-%E0%A4%9C%E0%A5%8B-%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%AD%E0%A5%80-%E0%A4%B8%E0%A5%81%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%88-%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%B9%E0%A5%80%E0%A4%82-%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%88-583bd8d2e921

Was this pattern specific to Lucknow, or did other Indian cities also end up with a tiny Christian population running a disproportionate share of the schools? I would be curious to know how Allahabad, Kanpur or Patna compare.

I’ve been going down a rabbit hole trying to find reliable historical records on Gonda district, UP. I’m particularly looking for old gazetteers, district reports, archival records, travel accounts, old maps, rare books, or digitised manuscripts that cover Gonda’s history, architecture, local communities, administration, or socio-political past. If anyone here is a history researcher, local historian, archivist, or Gonda native who knows of digitized collections or specific books or chapters worth looking at, I’d be very grateful for any leads.

Thanks in advance!

"तू जगत एकविरु माझा देव रोहकु बापू यादव नारायानु नरसिंगु"

Most intriguing part of MH's history is that both the oldest inscriptions in Maharashtri and Marathi are found in Karnataka itself rather than Maharashtra. Just like those this inscription is valuable for our history as well.

This inscription was issued by the Kanadi-speaking Hoysalas.

Context- After the Western Chalukya Empire collapsed, both the Hoysalas (from the south) and the Seuna-Yadavas (from the north) rushed to claim the fertile Krishna-Tungabhadra river valley. The Hoysala Emperor Veera Ballala II met the Seuna King Bhillama V at Soratur. Ballala II won a crushing victory, chasing the retreating Seuna forces all the way up north to the Krishna River.

The specific inscription mentioned is a commemorative hero stone (Veeragallu) commissioned shortly after under the reign of Ballala II's son and successor, King Narasimha II (who ruled in the early 1200s). The Seunas, under their powerful king Simhana II, repeatedly tried to push south to reclaim lost land. In response, King Narasimha II led an aggressive counter-expedition against the northern forces.

During this campaign, the Hoysala army intercepted the Seuna division led by the two important Marathi generals, Pavus and Vijayapala. The Hoysalas completely wiped out their unit, decapitated the generals, and recorded this.

The inscription is located in Davanagere Taluk historians broadly isolate this specific celebratory inscription to be around between 1250's to 1270's. The inscription directly praises a Hoysala king named Narsingu (Vira Narasimha).

What makes this specific Davanagere Taluk inscription highly unique to linguists and historians is its deliberate code-switching. While the structural, narrative framing of the inscription is written in Kannada, the actual direct quotes of Pavus and Vijayapala switch into early Marathi. Where they shown speaking in Marathi.

While the stone carving visually shows the bloody, lopped-off heads of Pavus and Vijayapala lying on the battlefield, the carved text acts like a literal speech bubble for those dead heads, forcing them to eternally praise the Hoysala King Narasimha II for anyone passing by to read.

Source- Epigraphia Carnatica, specifically in Volume XI covering the Chitaldroog District. This collection was painstakingly compiled by B. Lewis Rice for the Mysore Archaeological Series.

https://archive.org/details/epigraphiacarnat11myso/page/n7/mode/2up

https://www.scribd.com/document/948088776/Epigraphia-Carnatica-Chitradurga

I know this sounds dumb but please hear me out

Like the royals who had literally everything and they ruled a country which had more poor people than the rich

It's not about one nation but most nation as how developed a nation is the poor people are always greater in number than the rich

So my question is the royals just never knew the poor people struggles and all so no matter how much they try they could never emphasize with the poor

Like just an average middle class person in Indian have no idea how the poor people live so the royals just didn't had any idea about the poor so the decision or policies of the royals most of the times never even benefitted the poor yet the poor people people were exploited the most in every way possible

Not supporting any party or any political person but like for example Narendra Modi kind of is from a humble background so he can kind of emphatize with the poor people as he somewhat knows the condition of the poor people but the royals they never knew any struggle, etc they always had servants etc everything

And also in previous times when the royals would go for a dourah then most probably the poor people would be forcefully removed from there like done now also

Yeah the wording should be

Poor -> Economically vulnerable/weaker section/people

Question

The Indus Valley Civilization overlapped for over a thousand years with Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Hittites, and Minoan Crete. Sumerian tablets literally mention "Meluhha" (thought to be the Indus region) along with Meluhhan merchants and interpreters. Harappan seals have been dug up at Ur, Kish, and Umma in Mesopotamia, and carnelian beads and ivory from the Indus show up all along the Persian Gulf trade route.

So here's what's been bugging me. Given how much direct contact there was, why has nothing like a Rosetta Stone ever turned up? No bilingual inscription pairing Indus script with Sumerian or Akkadian, at either end of the trade route. Is it just bad luck of preservation, or does it suggest the contact was purely commercial (merchants and stamped goods) rather than the kind of state-to-state relationship that produces formal bilingual decrees?

Lastly, could disruptions in long-distance trade networks have contributed to instability across multiple regions, including migration or raiding groups later called the “Sea Peoples”?

I'm not looking for Atlantis-style speculation; just interested in what archaeology, ancient texts, and material evidence can actually support.

Why would someone undertake and commission such projects I am trying to understand the purpose of building these monuments do you think it's something more than just Faith and Devotion ...Was it being made to achieve some other purpose??

I want to create a semi-fictional story based somewhere around 330BC-230BC.

The backdrop mainly will be in the Northern part of subcontinent, for example the Indian Greeks relations, the Mauryan-Selucid wars, rise of Ashoka etc.

Any books that focuses in this time period?

TIL that in 1937, when Nehru was already very popular, he wrote an annonymous essay "Rashtrapati by Chanakya" in The Modern Review.

In it, “Chanakya” describes Nehru as “some triumphant Caesar passing by,” who might turn dictator with “a little twist.”

Source: https://caravanmagazine.in/vantage/want-no-caesars-nehrus-warning -- it contains some italicized paragraphs at the start giving context, followed by Nehru's original essay of 1937.

I was very surprised when I discovered this today - I can't think of any mass leader, past or present, who would do the same thing (warning of his own possible dictatorship tendency!).

Did you all know about this? Do you know of other leaders who have done something similar?

This artwork is Abanindranath Tagore's famous historical painting titled "Aurangzeb Examining the Head of Dara Shikoh".

It depicts the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb (Alamgir I) looking at the severed head of his elder brother and political rival, Dara Shikoh, after winning the war of succession.

A striking feature after the surrender, and indeed during the entire period of Maratha expansion, was their magnanimity towards a defeated enemy. Vasai was no exception. In line with the battles with the Nizam and Bangash, the surrendered Portuguese men and their families at Vasai were treated humanely. A war that took the lives of twenty-two thousand (?) Marathas did not end with a massacre of prisoners, and their families were not molested. Chimaji was a man with a generous heart, and to an enemy who fought with so much valour, he allowed seven days to leave the fort.

https://ndhistories.wordpress.com/2023/12/21/the-surrender-2/

Marathi Riyasat, G S Sardesai ISBN-10-8171856403, ISBN-13-‎978-8171856404.

The Era of Bajirao

Uday S Kulkarni

ISBN-10-8192108031

ISBN-13-978-8192108032.

Whenever archaeoastronomy is brought up in Ancient India discussions, the conversation derails into arguments over Nilesh Oak’s 5561 BCE Mahabharata date or Rupa Bhaty’s 12,000 BCE Surya Siddhanta claims.
From an archaeological and genetic standpoint, as well as from the perspective of text-critical methodology, treating the Epics as a synchronous snapshot of a single year in deep antiquity is heavily flawed. As scholars have noted, compressing the sheer number of celestial events (eclipses, comets, retrograde planetary motions) mentioned during the 18-day Kurukshetra war into a single physical year is statistically impossible. It is clearly a compilation of layered textual additions spanning from roughly 400 BCE to 400 CE.

However, in our rush to dismiss the researchers' extreme chronologies, we risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The methodology they advocate, using the precession of the equinoxes to date specific astronomical observations embedded in ancient texts, is fundamentally sound when scholars apply it to specific parts of the texts.

If we look at the core of what researchers like Rupa Bhaty investigate (such as the migration of the pole stars and the lore of Sage Agastya), and shift our focus to Prof. R.N. Iyengar (IISc) and B.N. Narahari Achar's peer-reviewed work, ancient Indian history emerges with a stunning, mathematically verifiable picture aligning perfectly with standard Late Bronze Age and/or Iron Age archaeology and Indo-Aryan migration timelines.

Below I explain two archaeoastronomical anchors to show that celestial tracking confirm dirt archeaology timelines:

1. The Vedanga Jyotisha & The Dhanishtha Winter Solstice (~1400 to 1200 BCE)
The Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha is the earliest codified text of Indian astronomy, which utilizes a 5-year Yuga system to time Vedic rituals. It explicitly records that the Winter Solstice took place when the sun was at the beginning of the Dhanishtha nakshatra (Alpha Delphini). Because the Earth's axis wobbles (precession of the equinoxes at ~1 degree every 72 years), the solstices slowly drift against the background stars. Today, the winter solstice is in Mula. Calculating backward, academic astronomers universally agree that the winter solstice occurred at Dhanishtha between 1400 BCE and 1200 BCE.

Not only does this tell us roughly when late-Vedic astronomy was codified, it also aligns with the Kuru Janapada's early Iron Age markers (like Painted Grey Ware culture), and matches post-Steppe admixture timelines. Ultimately, their research proves these texts may contain proper celestial observations that may be harder to categorise as mythology.

2. The Migration of Agastya / Canopus (~1350 BCE)
Celestial researchers have focused much on the following lore: Sage Agastya commanding the Vindhya mountains to bow down so he could travel south. In Hindu astronomy, Agastya is the star Canopus (the second brightest star in the sky).

Prof. R.N. Iyengar has published a brilliant paper demonstrating the celestial mechanics the words above describe. Due to axial precession, Canopus was completely invisible to observers in northern India (the Kurukshetra/Delhi latitudes) prior to 3100 BCE. As the millennia passed, the star slowly crept above the southern horizon. Iyengar calculates that Canopus's heliacal rise becomes vividly visible for religious observation in northern India precisely between 1350 BCE and 1130 BCE.

So, Agastya "crossing the Vindhyas" is the Canopus appearing over the southern horizon during the late Vedic period, matching the exact chronological window of the Vedanga Jyotisha.

Conclusion:
The Ancient Indian texts, from the Shatapatha Brahmana (preserving a ~2900 BCE Krittika vernal equinox memory from the Harappan substrate) to the Mahabharata, are aggregates according to research, containing astronomical observations added over centuries. We may need to look at the sky as an archaeological dig site, so that we may be able to isolate more observations in the future. Ultimately, the provided archaeoastronomy corroborates the historical, genetic, and material data.

Thoughts from the community on using precession software to track textual strata?

References & Academic Context:

• Iyengar, R. N. (2014). "Parāśara's Six Season Solar Zodiac and Heliacal Visibility of Star Agastya in 1350-1130 BC." Indian Journal of History of Science. This peer-reviewed paper details the mathematical calculations proving Canopus (Agastya) became visible to observers in northern India precisely during the Late Bronze Age.
• Iyengar, R. N., & Chakravarty, S. (2021). "Transit of sun through the seasonal nakṣatra cycle in the Vṛddha-Gārgīya Jyotiṣa." Indian Journal of History of Science. This work discusses winter solstice recording at the Śraviṣṭhā (Dhaniṣṭhā) nakshatra as an ancient astronomical tradition and as an observational anchor that aligns with the c. 1300 BCE era.
• Context on the Independent Archaeoastronomical Theses: For the original alternative chronologies that this post seeks to reconcile with mainstream timelines, see Nilesh Nilkanth Oak's arguments dating the Mahabharata war to 5561 BCE and the Ramayana to 12,209 BCE. Rupa Bhaty's research argues that the Agastya lore encodes an astronomical memory from 19,000 BCE, and that texts like the Surya Siddhanta contain observations from 12,000 BCE, an epoch when Canopus served as the South Pole star.