Maitri Upanishad: Who is the Driver?

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Prambanan Hindu temples in Java, Indonesia

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Indonesia is made up of over 17,000 islands of which 7,000 are inhabited. Java is one of the larger islands with several volcanic peaks. These are considered sacred because the volcanic ash makes the land fertile. The mountains collect river water that irrigate the fields. Around Mount Merapi, we find great temples built here between the 8th and 9th century by the local Shailendra and Sanjay kings. They built the Prambanan Hindu temple. We know they are tantric because an aerial view reveals that they are built on radially symmetrical square-shaped mandalas with four doorways.  The Hindu site of Prambanan is designed like a court. There is a central court. The peripheral part is made of hundreds of small temples, arranged in four rows. These tiny temples house minor gods from around the universe, and the countryside, which pay obeisance to the central court. In the central court, we find a temple to Shiva. In this temple are also images of Ganesh, Durga, and Agastya, Shiva’s favour...
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The curious case of controversial historian Audrey Truschke

- Vikram Zutsi A little overfive years ago, Audrey Truschke was on the verge ofreleasing herfirst book, Culture of Encounters, which examined the cultural and literary interactions between Hindus, Jains and their Mughal patrons. It was a topic I wanted to know more about, and I reached out to Truschke for an interview. Like most junior academics just starting out, she was eagerto get her work in front of a wider audience. As far as I know, it was one of her very first interviews.  I forgot all about it until a few years later when I stumbled on an Internet clip of her fulminating about India’s ruling party and its leader Narendra Modi. This was a very different Audrey Truschke from the person Iremembered. In the interim, she had published a controversial book on Aurangzeb that was largely seen as an unconvincing attempt to rationalise the atrocities attributed to him by a number of Indian and Western historians. As a foreigner, one has to be prepared for backlash when one takes a h...
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