You may not have heard of Shu-ilishu but he is a man of great significance. He reaches out to us from almost 4,300 years ago, through a small Akkadian cylinder seal now housed at the Louvre Museum in Paris. On the seal, you will find an image of him talking to two men. The inscription describes Shu-ilishu as the interpreter of the Meluhhan language. 'Meluha' was, in all probability, the term used by ancient Mesopotamians for the Indus Valley region, and the presence of an oficial 'interpreter' there indicates just how important the steady flow of good from the Indian sub-continent was. Precious and vibrant lapis lazuli stones, carnelian beads, wood and even dogs would go across via old trade routes and ports like Lothal (in modern-day Gujarat) to Akkad, capital of the Akkadian Empire (03rd millennium BCE) and now in modern-day Iraq. There are also references to a settlement of Meluhhans in the city of Guabba in Sumer, in Mesopotamia. The story of Shi-ilishu and ...
[ Based on an article written by Sagarika Ghose published in The Times of India dated 21st June, 2017 (Wednesday) ]. What's common between democracy and Hindu philosophy? A constant search for answers, a quest for knowledge, a starting assumption that we don't know everything. In a democracy parties compete through their respective perspectives on public welfare, each hoping to convince voters. In Hindu philosophy, the search is as important as the discovery. The seeker sets out to find the truth, encounters many answers, but on the brink of enlightenment is left humbled by the limits of his awareness. Even markets are about a quest for knowledge: prices are determined by supply and demand of the moment and a search for the just price. Yet today India's government believes it has all the answers and is the sole repository of knowledge. Self-doubt does not trouble the Narendra Modi-led dispensation, which firmly believes that it (and only it) knows what's good for ...
After the Battle of Chamkaur in 1704, the Khalsa founder penned 111 verses in Persian that praised God, criticised the Mughal emperor and detailed the battle. "All modes of redressing the wrong having failed, raising of sword is pious and just", writes Guru Gobind Singh, the 10th Guru of Sikhism, in Zafarnama . It is an argument for justice written in the form of a letter to Aurangzeb, the sixth Mughal emperor, after the Battle of Chamkaur in the 18th century. The tenth Guru is predominantly known for founding the Khalsa and instituting the idea of the five articles of the Sikh faith - kesh (hair), kacchera (a specific type of undergarment), kangha (comb), kada (iron bracelet) and kirpan (small sword). But he was also a scholar and poet, well-versed in multiple languages - Sanskrit, Persian, Punjabi, Arabic, Awachi and Braj Bhasha. Although Guru Hargobind Singh, the sixth Guru, was the one who began militarising the Sikh community, Guru Gobind Singh introduced the idea o...
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