Tag Archives: history

(How) does history matter?

Friday, April 2, 2010

Sid and I attended a lecture-demonstration yesterday by the Carnatic vocalist T.M. Krishna, titled “The Evolution of Ragas”. I loved it, both for TMK’s virtuosity as a performer and for his erudition and knowledge of the history of South Indian classical music. His talk explored the long history of the performance of classical music in [...]

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Authentic or Apocryphal? Does it even matter?

Sunday, January 3, 2010

In one of the discussions with Swami Tyagananda during the fall semester, we discussed whether the Ramayana & Mahabharata were historically accurate. Did Rama really kill a ten-headed demon Ravana? Did Draupadi really have an infinite sari? Or was it merely a figment of Vyasa’s imagination?
More importantly, are the answers to these [...]

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Alexander the Humbled

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Think back to Ancient India as described by the Greek philosophers Megasthenes and Arrian, summarized by Kevin Carmody on his site.
The fact that these interchanges between Greece and India have been recorded and passed down through history is incredible — even more incredible that the Greek writings show deference to the wisdom of a foreign culture! [...]

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