Tag Archives: buddhism

Some further notes on the old Mongol religion-2

O fire mother, whose father is flint, whose mother is pebble, whose meal is yellow feather grass, whose life is an elm tree. An incantation to the Fire Goddess Ghalun-eke; translation from the Mongolian by Yönsiyebü Rinchen This note revisits … Continue reading

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Mongolica: The Tangut empire

In the early 1100s of the CE Rtsa-mi lotsawa Sangs-rgyas grags-pa was in Nālandā, India, to study and transmit the latest that the tāntrika strain of Bauddha-mata had to offer. Within a century both his world and that of his … Continue reading

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Mongolica: Knowledge preservation and generation, Bolad Aqa and the like

We had earlier written an essay on the preservation and production of synthetic knowledge by the Chingizid Mongols. Here we discuss a few additional points in that regard. It is clear that throughout the Chingizid clan there was a certain … Continue reading

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Frustrations and ramblings ensuing from Cretaceous amber

Time and again I have been frustrated by the inability of Hindus to make the most of the riches that are available in their own land or right next to them. One such case is that of Cretaceous amber from … Continue reading

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Braided power: a brief note on the last great steppe power: the Mongol-Manchu system

We first read of matters pertaining to this note with some interest in books which had newly arrived at a library in our old city that we mainly visited for Sanskritic literature. We wished to summarize everything we had learned … Continue reading

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Some thoughts on Shridhar Ketkar and other Hindu responders to Abrahamism in the past two centuries

A version of this article was published originally at India Facts The Hindu encounter with Abrahamism began with the initial expansions of the second (Christ cult) and third (Mohammedanism) versions. Hindus figured among the early victims of the second Abrahamism … Continue reading

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The successors of the kaunteya-s in the national memory of bhArata-s and bhoTa-s and related discursions

As per the mahAbharata, the great war on the kuru field came to a conclusion with the smashing of duryodhana’s thighs by bhIma. While balarAma wanted to kill bhIma for unfairly defeating the kuru prince in the gadAyuddha, kR^iShNa convinced … Continue reading

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A record of the nAstika attack on hi~NgulA

Hindu historical tradition holds that bauddha-s of the sindhu had made common cause with the the Arab marUnmatta-s as they launched invasion after invasion into jambudvIpa. This is not entirely surprising given that the bauddha-s (at least the sthaviravAdin-s) from … Continue reading

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Some further notes on the Mongol religion

The young Mongol scholar Dorje Banzar, published a book in 1846 in Russian at the university of Kazan that brought to light for the first time the old religion of the Mongols to the scholarly world. In the 1960s, M. … Continue reading

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Meanderings in the vedAnta-nAstika interface

One of the central figures of classical advaita vedAnta is the AchArya gauDapAda. Hagiographic tradition holds that gauDacharaNa was the paramaguru of the great advaitAchArya shaMkara bhagavatpAda (and guru of govinda bhagavatpAda). This is confirmed by shaMkara in his concluding … Continue reading

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