Library of Magi 🎃

शिवभारत हे शिवचरित्राचे एक समकालीन आणि अतिशय विश्वसनीय साधन आहे. के. सदाशिव महादेव दिवेकर यांनी इ.स. १९२७ मध्ये त्या ग्रंथाची संहिता मराठी अनुवादासह प्रकाशित केली. शिवभारताच्या पाच जुन्या हस्तलिखित प्रती आतापर्यंत उजेडात आलेल्या आहेत. त्यांपैकी चार तंजावरच्या सरस्वती महाल ग्रंथालयात आहेत. श्री. दिवेकर यांनी प्रकाशित केलेली शिवभारताची संहिता त्यापैकीच एका प्रतीवरून घेतली आहे. परमानंदाने शिवभारत कधी रचले याचा ग्रंथात उल्लेख केलेला नाही. आपण हे काव्य शिवाजीच्या सांगण्यावरून स्थले असल्याचे परमानंद सांगत असल्याने आणि त्याची विश्वासार्हता वारंवार प्रत्ययास आली असल्याने ते शिवाजीचे अधिकृत चरित्र आहे असे समजण्यास हरकत नाही. परमानंदाचे शिवकालीनत्व अनेक पुराव्यांनी सिद्ध आहे. त्यांपैकी एप्रिल) १६६४ मधील संस्कृत पत्रातील त्याच्या उल्लेखाविषयी श्री. दिवेकर यांनी उपोद्घातात लिहिलेच आहे. त्यानंतर उजेडात आलेल्या समकालीन राजस्थानी पत्रावरून परमानंद शिवाजी महाराजांबरोबर आग्र्याला असलेल्या परिवारात होता असे दिसून येते. परमानंद या ग्रंथात फक्त दोनच तारखा देतो. एक शिवजन्माची व दुसरी अफझुलखानवधाची. अन्य साधनांशी ताडून बघता त्या अचूक आहेत असे लक्षात येते. परमानंदाला शिवचरित्राची जवळून माहिती होती आणि या ग्रंथात ती नमूद केल्याचेही आढळून येते. त्याचप्रमाणे या ग्रंथात दिलेल्या प्रामाणिकपणे माहितीस इतर विश्वसनीय साधनांकडूनही दुजोरा मिळतो. एकूणच, शिवभारत हा ग्रंथ शिवचरित्राच्या आणि इतिहासाच्या अभ्यासकांना अत्यंत उपयुक्त आहे.

Lords Of The Deccan: Southern India From The Chalukyas To Cholas by Anirudh Kanisetti

In this brilliant and critically acclaimed debut book, Anirudh Kanisetti brings alive for the lay-reader the early medieval Deccan, from the sixth century CE to the twelfth century CE, in all its splendour and riotous glory. Kanisetti takes us back in time to witness the birth of the Chalukyas, a dynasty that shaped southern India for centuries. In vivid and colourful detail, Kanisetti describes how the mighty empires of medieval India were made: how temple-building and language manipulation were used as political tools; how royals involved themselves in religious struggles between Jains and Buddhists, Shaivas and Vaishnavas; and how awe-inspiring rituals were used to elevate kings over their rivals and subjects. In doing so, he transforms medieval Indian royals, merchants and commoners from obscure figures to complex, vibrant people. Kanisetti takes us into the minds of the powerful rulers of medieval south India – the Chalukyas, Pallavas, Rashtrakutas and Cholas dynasties, and animates them with humanity and depth. This painstakingly researched forgotten history of India will keep you riveted and enthralled. You will never see the history of the subcontinent the same way again.

The great empire of the Cholas was unexpected. It sprouted out of the blue in the Kaveri floodplain around 850 CE. Till then, the region had for centuries been dotted by self-governing village assemblies. From here, the Cholas established a vast empire, the first – and only – time an empire based in coastal South India was the dominant power of the subcontinent: a perch usually occupied by the Deccan or northern India. The Cholas were as creative and imaginative as they were unexpected. They built stupendous temples – the tallest freestanding structures on earth after the pyramids of Egypt. Chola queens popularized new forms of gods and worship, such as the iconic Nataraja and the singing of Tamil poems to deities. And they were spectacularly daring, raiding not just the powerful Deccan and North India but also Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka. For a dynasty that was so influential – and is so loved today – its actual historical achievements were surprisingly forgotten by the late nineteenth century, for they had faded into myth and legend. In this book, the award-winning historian Anirudh Kanisetti brings to life the world of the Cholas. Not just the world of kings and queens attended by generals and ‘service retinue’ women – but the stories of the ‘little people’, whose lives were buffeted by big events. What was life like on board a merchant vessel making its way from the Tamil coast to Southeast Asia and China? What kind of food was served at temples to devotees and to soldiers in times of war? What became of a landless peasant who murdered his brother in a fit of rage? Why did a noble woman commit sati holding a lemon over her head? Based on thousands of inscriptions and hundreds of secondary sources, this deeply researched book is not just a procession of dazzling kings and queens but also a portal that transports us to the peasant settlements of over a thousand years ago. In this book, Kanisetti crucially separates fact from fiction and tells us one of the most extraordinary stories in human history.

The Rigvedic People: 'Invaders'?/'Immigrants'? or Indigenous? – 2015 B.B. Lal For several decades it has been orchestrated that there was an Aryan Invasion of India which destroyed the Harappan Civilization. However, as shown in this book (pp. 10 ff.), there is no evidence whatsoever of any invasion or of the presence of an alien culture at any of the hundreds of Harappan sites. While one is glad to note that the Invasion theory is dead, it is a pity that it is being resurrected in a new avatar, namely that of Immigration , of people from the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex of Central Asia, who, the proponents think, were nomadic Aryans. This book advances cogent arguments to demonstrate that this new theory too is totally wrong (pp. 19 ff.). For all this mess, the dating of the Rigveda to 1,200 BCE by Max Muller is squarely responsible. The combined evidence of hydrology, archaeology and C-14 method of dating shows that the Rigveda is assignable to the 3rd-4th millennium BCE (pp. 118 ff.). The Rigveda (X. 75. 5-6) also tells us that the Vedic people occupied the entire territory from the Indus on the west to the upper reaches of the Ganga-Yamuna on the east. Archaeologically, during the aforesaid period and within the above-noted territory, there existed one and only one civilization, namely the Harappan. Hence, the Harappan Civilization and the Vedas are but two faces of the same coin (pp. 122-23). Further, the evidence from Kunal and Bhirrana (pp. 54-55) establishes that the roots of this civilization go back to the 6th-5th millennia BCE, indicating thereby that the Harappans were the sons of the soil and not aliens. Thus, the Vedic people, who were themselves the Harappans, were Indigenous and neither Invaders nor Immigrants .

Just a thousand years ago, India was dotted with universities across its length and breadth, where international students flocked to gain credentials in advanced education. This illustrated book describes how these multi-disciplinary center of learning existed in several forms such as forest universities, brick-and-mortar universities and temple universities. ; it examines the funding for these citadels of learning and their graduation ceremonies. The process by which India's ancient systems of education helped to fuel a knowledge revolution around the world with its manuscripts, forming the basis for monographs and academic papers, is explained with references. The marauding incursions by Muslim invaders, which disrupted the idyllic world of University learning in India, followed by European colonization, which led to further erosion and degeneration of India's traditional learning systems, have been taken up in some detail. Readers will get a snapshot view of India's education system down the ages from ancient to modern times.

The Educational Heritage of Ancient India : How an Ecosystem of Learning Was Laid to Waste by Sahana Singh

"Quack, conjurer, sex fiend, murderer—Simon Forman has been called all these things, and worse, ever since he was implicated (two years after his death) in the Overbury poisoning scandal that rocked the court of King James. But as Barbara Traister shows in this fascinating book, Forman's own unpublished manuscripts—considered here in their entirety for the first time—paint a quite different picture of the works and days of this notorious astrological physician of London. Although he received no formal medical education, Forman built a thriving practice. His success rankled the College of Physicians of London, who hounded Forman with fines and jail terms for nearly two decades. In addition to detailing case histories of his medical practice—the first such records known from London—as well as his run-ins with the College, Forman's manuscripts cover a wide variety of other matters, from astrology and alchemy to gardening and the theater. His autobiographical writings are among the earliest English examples of their genre and display an abiding passion for reworking his personal history in the best possible light, even though they show little evidence that Forman ever intended to publish them. Fantastic as many of Forman's manuscripts are, it is their more mundane aspects that make them such a priceless record of what daily life was like for ordinary inhabitants of Shakespeare's London. Forman's descriptions of the stench of a privy, the paralyzed limbs of a child, a lost bitch dog with a velvet collar all offer tantalizing glimpses of a world that seems at once very far away and intimately familiar. Anyone who wants to reclaim that world will enjoy this book."

"The Notorious Astrological Physician of London: Works and Days of Simon Forman" by Barbara Howard Traister

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