Ankit > Ankit's Quotes

“A particularly elaborate version of such an aswamedha is commemorated in the heart of Varanasi (Benares), otherwise the City of Lord Shiva and the holiest place of pilgrimage in northern India. Legend has it that Shiva, while temporarily dispossessed of his beloved city, hit on the idea of regaining it by imposing on its incumbent king a quite impossible ritual challenge, namely the performance of ten simultaneous horse-sacrifices. The chances of all ten passing off without mishap could be safely discounted and thus the king, disgraced in the eyes of both gods and men, would be obliged to relinquish the city. So Lord Shiva reasoned and, just to make sure, he also arranged for Lord Brahma, a stickler for the niceties of ceremonial performance, to referee the challenge. Shiva failed, however, to take account of King Divodasa’s quite exceptional piety and punctiliousness. All ten aswamedha were faultlessly performed. The king thereby gained untold merit and favour; Brahma was so impressed that he decided to stay on in the city; and Shiva slunk away to fume and fret and dream up ever more ambitious schemes to recover his capital. Thus to this day, when approaching the celebrated river-front at Varanasi, pilgrims and tourists alike get their first glimpse of the Ganga and of the steep ghats (terracing) which front it from ‘Dashashwamedh’ ghat, the place of ‘the ten horse-sacrifices’. And the merit of this extraordinary feat, it is said, continues to attend all who here bathe in the sacred river.”
― John Keay, India: A History

“Like metals, myths too get recycled. Reworked and so richly embellished as to be almost unrecognisable, stories which may once have reflected genuine historical events are liable to be re-used by later generations in a totally different context and for purposes quite other than that for which they were originally intended. This is not the case with the corpus of Vedic literature; the form and content of its sacrificial formulae were, as has been noted, too ritually crucial to be tampered with. Less sacred compositions, like the two great Sanskrit epics, were a different matter.”
― John Keay, India: A History

“some of the Vedic jana, like the Yadavas, are thought to have been of dasa origin. Hence too the clearly -dasa names of Su-dasa, a Bharata chief who scored a notable victory over ten rival ‘kings’, and Divo-dasa of the ten horse-sacrifices at Varanasi.”
― John Keay, India: A History

“Both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana survive in several versions, the earliest of which are at least five hundred years later than the Vedas. Yet their core narratives seem to relate to events from a period prior to all but the Rig Veda.”
― John Keay, India: A History

“This northerly route of east–west transit and trade, extending from the Panjab and the upper Indus to Bihar and the lower Ganga, now became as much the main axis of Aryanisation as it would subsequently of Buddhist proselytisation and even Magadhan imperialism. It was known as the Uttarapatha, the Northern Route, as distinct from the Daksinapatha (whence the term ‘Deccan’) or Southern Route.”
― John Keay, India: A History

“Initially those at the western end in the Panjab and the Doab tended to look down on those on the eastern frontier in Bihar and Bengal; the latter were mleccha, uncouth in their arya speech and negligent in their sacrificial observance. By mid-first millennium BC it would be the other way round. As the eastern settlements grew into a network of thriving proto-states, many laid claim to exalted pedigrees and, assuming the mantle of Aryanised orthodoxy, would be happy to disparage their Panjabi cousins as vratya or ‘degenerate’.”
― John Keay, India: A History

“As al-Biruni (Alberuni), the great Islamic scholar of the eleventh century, would put it, ‘the Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no king like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs.’ He thought they should travel more and mix with other nations; ‘their antecedents were not as narrow-minded as the present generation,’ he added.8 While clearly disparaging eleventh-century attitudes, al-Biruni thus appears to confirm the impression given by earlier Muslim writers that in the eighth and ninth centuries India was considered anything but backward. Its scientific and mathematical discoveries, though buried amidst semantic dross and seldom released for practical application, were readily appreciated by Muslim scientists and then rapidly appropriated by them. Al-Biruni was a case in point: his scientific celebrity in the Arab world would owe much to his mastery of Sanskrit and access to Indian scholarship.”
― John Keay, India: A History

“In fact Sind’s governors had already had a foretaste of what lay ahead. Muhammad ibn Qasim may have pushed east towards Kanauj, Junaid certainly tried his luck in western India, and later governors may have followed suit. Their experiences, in so far as they can be inferred from the scanty evidence, would not be encouraging. Al-Biladuri claims conquests for Junaid which extended to Broach in Gujarat and to Ujjain in Malwa. From a copper plate found at Nausari, south of Broach, it would appear that the Arabs had crossed Saurashtra and so must have squeezed through, or round, the Rann of Kutch. This was the incursion which put paid to the Maitrakas of Vallabhi, they of the dazzling toenails whose enemies’ rutting elephants had had their temples cleft. It was also the incursion which was finally halted by, amongst others, a vassal branch of the Chalukya dynasty. The date is thought to have been c736. Ujjain and Malwa look to have been the target of a separate and probably subsequent offensive by way of Rajasthan.7 It too was defeated, in this instance by a rising clan of considerable later importance known as the Gurjaras. Clearly, when the subcontinent first faced the challenge of Islam, it was neither so irredeemably supine nor so hopelessly divided as British historians in the nineteenth century would suppose.”
― John Keay, India: A History

“In contemporary Indian sources these first marauding disciples of Islam are occasionally identified as Yavanas (Greeks),Turuskas (Turks) or Tajikas (Tajiks or Persians), but more usually as mlecchas. The latter term meant what it always had: foreigners who could not talk properly, outcastes with no place in Indian society and, above all, inferiors with no respect for dharma.”
― John Keay, India: A History

“Unlike Alexander’s Greeks, Muslim invaders were well aware of India’s immensity, and mightily excited by its resources. As well as exotic produce like spices, peacocks, pearls, diamonds, ivory and ebony, the ‘Hindu country’ was renowned for its skilled manufactures and its bustling commerce. India’s economy was probably one of the most sophisticated in the world. Guilds regulated production and provided credit; the roads were safe, ports and markets carefully supervised, and tariffs low. Moreover capital was both plentiful and conspicuous. Since at least Roman times the subcontinent seems to have enjoyed a favourable balance of payments. Gold and silver had been accumulating long before the ‘golden Guptas’, and they continued to do so. Figures in the Mamallapuram sculptures and the Ajanta frescoes are as strung about with jewellery as those in the Sanchi and Amaravati reliefs. Divine images of solid gold are well attested and royal temples were rapidly becoming royal treasuries as successful dynasts endowed them with the fruits of their conquests. The devout Muslim, although ostensibly bent on converting the infidel, would find his zeal handsomely rewarded.”
― John Keay, India: A History

“Politically, according to Muslim observers, India comprised many kingdoms, each with a formidable army that included elephants and cavalry as well as infantry. According to a Baghdad adage quoted by al-Biruni, the Turks were famous for their horses, Kandahar (for some reason) for its elephants, and India for its armies.”
― John Keay, India: A History

“In bidding for popular support and competing with other cults as a parallel religion, the sangha had been losing ground throughout India since the time of the Guptas. Populist devotional cults emanating from south India (the so-called bhakti movement) were pre-empting Buddhism’s traditional appeal as a refuge from brahman authority and caste prejudice. At the same time a reform movement started by Sankara (788–820), a brahman from Kerala, was reclaiming for a distilled essence of Vedic philosophy (vedanta) the high moral and doctrinal ground previously enjoyed by the Noble Eightfold Path. As a result Buddhism was already largely confined to the peripheral regions of Sind, Kashmir, Nepal, and of course the Pala heartland in eastern India.”
― John Keay, India: A History

“The real difference between us and chimpanzees is the mythical glue that binds together large numbers of individuals, families and groups. This glue has made us the masters of creation.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“The Stone Age should more accurately be called the Wood Age, because most of the tools used by ancient hunter-gatherers were made of wood.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Trekkers visiting the Siberian tundra, the deserts of central Australia and the Amazonian rainforest believe that they have entered pristine landscapes, virtually untouched by human hands. But that’s an illusion. The foragers were there before us and they brought about dramatic changes even in the densest jungles and the most desolate wildernesses.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“The wandering bands of storytelling Sapiens were the most important and most destructive force the animal kingdom had ever produced.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“The journey of the first humans to Australia is one of the most important events in history, at least as important as Columbus’ journey to America or the Apollo 11 expedition to the moon.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“The settlers of Australia, or more accurately, its conquerors, didn’t just adapt. They transformed the Australian ecosystem beyond recognition.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Within a few thousand years, virtually all of these giants vanished. Of the twenty-four Australian animal species weighing fifty kilograms or more, twenty-three became extinct.2 A large number of smaller species also disappeared.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Mammoths had flourished for millions of years over most of the northern hemisphere, but as Homo sapiens spread – first over Eurasia and then over North America – the mammoths retreated. By 10,000 years ago there was not a single mammoth to be found in the world, except on a few remote Arctic islands, most conspicuously Wrangel. The mammoths of Wrangel continued to prosper for a few more millennia, then suddenly disappeared about 4,000 years ago, just when the first humans reached the island.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“the historical record makes Homo sapiens look like an ecological serial killer.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Eucalyptus trees were rare in Australia 45,000 years ago. But the arrival of Homo sapiens inaugurated a golden age for the species. Since eucalyptuses regenerate after fire particularly well, they spread far and wide while other trees disappeared.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“The truth is, a habit must be established before it can be improved. If you can’t learn the basic skill of showing up, then you have little hope of mastering the finer details. Instead of trying to engineer a perfect habit from the start, do the easy thing on a more consistent basis. You have to standardize before you can optimize.”
― James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

“We rarely think about change this way because everyone is consumed by the end goal. But one push-up is better than not exercising. One minute of guitar practice is better than none at all. One minute of reading is better than never picking up a book. It’s better to do less than you hoped than to do nothing at all.”
― James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

“The East India Company created, for the first time in Indian history, the landless peasant, deprived of his traditional source of sustenance.”
― Shashi Tharoor, An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

“Taxation and the general conditions of life under the East India Company were so unpleasant and onerous that, as I have mentioned earlier, as many as could fled their traditional homes for refuge in domains beyond the Company’s remit, whereas the migration of Indian peasants from the ‘native states’ to British India was unheard of through most of the nineteenth century.”
― Shashi Tharoor, An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

“William Digby calculated that ‘the ryots in the Districts outside the permanent settlement get only one half as much to eat in the year as their grandfathers did, and only one-third as much as their great-grandfathers did. Yet, in spite of such facts, the land tax is exacted with the greatest stringency and must be paid to the Government in coin before the crops are garnered!”
― Shashi Tharoor, An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

“Agricultural taxes amounted at a minimum to half the gross produce and often more, leaving the cultivator less food than he needed to support himself and his family; British estimates conceded that taxation was two or three times higher than it had ever been under non-British rule, and unarguably higher than in any other country in the world.”
― Shashi Tharoor, An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

“Half of India’s revenues went out of India, mainly to England. Indian taxes paid not only for the British Indian Army in India, which was ostensibly maintaining India’s security, but also for a wide variety of foreign colonial expeditions in furtherance of the greater glory of the British empire, from Burma to Mesopotamia. In 1922, for instance, 64 per cent of the total revenue of the Government of India was devoted to paying for British Indian troops despatched abroad. No other army in the world, as Durant observed at the time, consumed so large a proportion of public revenues.”
― Shashi Tharoor, An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

“The extensive and detailed calculations of William Digby, the British writer, pointed to the diminishing prosperity of the Indian people and the systematic expropriation of India’s wealth by Britain—including the telling fact that the salary of the Secretary of State for India in 1901, paid for by Indian taxes, was equivalent to the average annual income of 90,000 Indians.”
― Shashi Tharoor, An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India