Ancient Indian History

       There is a very interesting Puranic story about it. Once Sita was applying vermilion ( sindoor ) on her forehead, Hanuman asked her why she was doing that. Sita replied that it would ensure the long life of her husband Rama. The next day, Hanuman came to the court of Rama, painted himself with vermilion (sindoor) pasted all over his body. Everybody laughed at him. Rama asked him about it. Hanuman replied that if the vermilion painted on the forehead of mother Sita could increase the life of Rama, painting all over his body might make him immortal. This is the story of his intense love and reverence for his master Rama.        This is the matter of Puran. But there is another aspect which is described in the epic Mahabharata by Vyas. When the army of Sugreev was preparing for battle, the soldiers were applying red paste and the soldiers of Jamvant were applying black paste over their body. गिरिकूटनिभाः के चित्के चिन्महिषसंनिभाः शरदभृप्रतीकाशाः पिष्टहिंगुलकाननाः M

In October 2019, an article was published in  Open magazine by Nanditha Krishna a historian at CPR Institute of Indological Research in Chennai. She claimed that she got knowledge about an ancient clay tablet from Nepal through an  email from her friend. Her friend Jeremy Pine is a terracotta dealer in Hong Kong and brought that tablet from Nepal. Image courtesy: Open magazine         The  thermoluminescene test of this tablet was done by Oxford Authentication on 14th May 2019 and dated the firing of the tablet between 1600 BC- 300BC. Image courtesy: Open magazine          Now we focus some important signs of this tablet:- The hairstyle or headdress that resembles that of Indus valley civilization. Chariot is being pulled by four Horses . The spoked wheels of the chariot. Absence of any Indus language sign The ancient Indian chariots- The chariots were important means of warfare in ancient India. The importance of chariots lay in the

Vedic  period is the period in Indian  subcontinent between end of Indus valley civilization and the beginning of Buddhism and Jainism. This period  falls around between 15 th century BC to 5 th century BC. This period corresponds to bronze-iron age of northern India. Rigveda is the main textual evidence of this period, which was composed around between 15 th to 12 th century BC by Aryans. Archeological evidences of this period are not much and we shall discuss about it later. Yagna: religious act Vedic period Image courtesy: Pinterest The knowledge about this period comes from Rigvedic texts and few archaeological evidences. The Rigveda mainly consists of prayer to gods and Indra was the chief among them. Other deities were Agni, Soma, Ishwara, Ashwin, Varun, Marut etc. We shall discuss later about Rigvedic deities. As we know that there are two hypotheses about origin of Aryans, ‘migration into India’ hypothesis and ‘indigenous Aryans’ hypothe