Land of the Seven Rivers Quotes

“Geography is not just about the physical terrain, but also about the meaning that we attribute to it. Thus, the Saraswati flows, invisibly, at Allahabad.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“The first thing that should be clear from the outset is that there are no ‘pure’ races.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“As you light up the Heavens and the Earth, O Radiant Sun, So light up my Mind’.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“Indian goods and merchants so dominated the trade that the Arabs spoke of Basra as ‘belonging to al-Hind’.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“Roman writer Pliny (23–79 AD) wrote: ‘Not a year passed in which India did not take fifty million sesterces away from Rome.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“the ancient Persians also talk of an original ‘Aryan’ homeland and even name the river Helmand in Afghanistan after the Saraswati (i.e. Harahvaiti).”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“Around 65–70,000 years ago, a very small number, perhaps a single band, crossed over from Africa into the southern Arabian peninsula. 11 It is amazing that despite all their superficial differences, all non-Africans are descendants of this tiny group of wanderers.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“Ghalib’s poetry may be very good from a literary perspective but it is mostly a lament for a world that was collapsing around him. It contains no vision of the future. In”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“Like India, China turned inward and slipped into centuries of decline. Technological superiority could not save China from the closing of the mind. For a while, it seemed that the Indian Ocean would revert to the Arabs but that was not to be.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“The great number of the inhabitants of that place were Brahmans … and they were all slain. There were a great number of books there; and when all these books came under the observation of the Mussalmans they summoned a number of Hindus that they might give them information respecting the import of these books; but the whole of the Hindus had been killed … 13”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“It is not usually remembered that after his great victory at Plassey, Robert Clive did not offer thanksgiving at a church but at a Durga Puja organized by Nabakrishna Deb in Kolkata.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“Nonetheless, it is clear that the Rig Veda belongs to the Bronze Age as it does not mention iron.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“Numerous sites have been found outside the core area, including some as far east as Uttar Pradesh and as far west as Sutkagen-dor on the Makran coast of Baluchistan, not far from Iran. There is even a site in Central Asia called Shortughai along the Amu Darya, close to the Afghan-Tajik border. Thus, the geographical spread, the number of sites and implied population of the Harappan civilization dwarfs that of contemporary Egypt, China or Mesopotamia. What the Harappans lack in grand buildings, they make up for in the sheer scale of their civilizational reach and in the extraordinary municipal sophistication of their cities.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“In other words, after thousands of years of mixing, Indians are most closely related to each other and it is pointless splitting hair over who is more Aryan and who is more Dravidian. The story of Manu, the Indian Noah, sums up the genetic findings surprisingly well. He was said to have been the king of the Dravidians prior to the flood but is repeatedly mentioned in the Vedic tradition as an ancestor!”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“It is obvious that this ratio was considered special for a very long time. So when the seventeenth-century Mughal emperor Aurangzeb wanted to praise his vassal Maharaja Jai Singh, he called him ‘Sawai’ (meaning that he was worth a quarter more than any other man).”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“The Buddha was born in Kapilavastu (on the Indo–Nepal border) but he attained enlightenment at Bodh Gaya, just south of the old Magadhan capital of Rajgir. However, he did not deliver his first sermon in Bodh Gaya, the nearby towns and villages or even in the royal capital of Rajgir. Instead, he headed west to Varanasi (also called Kashi). Why did he go all the way to Varanasi to spread his message?
According to historian Vidula Jayaswal, this was a natural choice since Varanasi was an important place for the exchange of both goods and ideas because it stood at the crossroads between the Uttara Path and a highway that came down from the Himalayas and then continued south as the Dakshina Path. In some ways, this remains true to this day as the east–west National Highway 2 meets the north–south National Highway 7 at Varanasi”

Excerpt From: Sanjeev Sanyal. “Land of the Seven Rivers A Brief History of India's Geography”. Apple Books.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of the Seven Rivers: A Brief History of India's Geography

“The geography of the Ramayana is oriented along a North–South axis while the Mahabharata is generally oriented on an East–West axis. This is not a total coincidence for they are aligned to two major trade routes. ”

Excerpt From: Sanjeev Sanyal. “Land of the Seven Rivers A Brief History of India's Geography”. Apple Books.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of the Seven Rivers: A Brief History of India's Geography

“Interestingly, the lion plays an important role in the Mahavamsa, a Pali epic, that is the foundation myth of the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka. According to the Mahavamsa, the Sinhalese people are the descendants of Prince Vijaya and his followers who sailed down to Sri Lanka in the sixth century BC from what is now Orissa and West Bengal. The story tells us that Prince Vijaya was the son of a lion and a human princess, which is why the majority population of Sri Lanka call themselves the Sinhala—or the lion people—and the country’s national flag features a stylized lion holding a sword. Equally significant is the fact that the Tamil rebels of northern Sri Lanka chose to call themselves the ‘Tigers’. The ancient rivalry between the two big cats remains embedded in cultural memory even as the animals themselves face extinction.

Excerpt From: Sanjeev Sanyal. “Land of the Seven Rivers A Brief History of India's Geography”. Apple Books.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of the Seven Rivers: A Brief History of India's Geography

“The fleet swung so far west that they landed on the Brazil coast and claimed it for Portugal. Note that only a small part of Brazil actually fell within the Portuguese sphere”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“many Indian animals came into the subcontinent from the east.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“When Americans raise their flag at the 9/11 sites, they reaffirm the resilience of their nation state. When Indians dance at the site of the 26/11 massacre, they celebrate the triumph of their civilization. The”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“is amusing that, after independence, over-fed politicians feigning poverty in their white kurta-pyjamas would come to occupy the spacious bungalows meant for the ‘fat white’. A”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

“At one point, the drainage of gold became so serious that Roman Emperor Vespasian was forced to discourage the import of Indian luxury goods and ban the export of gold to India.”
― Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography