Yama or Yamarāja, also called Imra, is a god of death, the south direction and the underworld, belonging to an early stratum of Rigvedic Hindu deities. In Sanskrit, his name can be interpreted to mean “twin”. In the Zend-Avesta of Zoroastrianism, he is called “Yima”. According to the Vishnu Purana, his parents are the sun-god […]
Category: India
Noor Inayat Khan- The Spy Princess
England, ER, France, India, Northern Europe, Rest of the World
Noor Inayat Khan was a mass of contradictions. She was a devout Muslim Sufi who believed in nonviolence and refused to tell a lie and disliked the British because of their involvement in India. Described as a “dreamy” and “sensitive” person who spent time writing children’s stories, poetry and music, Noor was the last person […]
Babur
There was the blood of conquerors in his veins. On his mother’s side, he was descended from the great Genghis Khan. On his father’s side, the man who took on the Mongols and founded his own empire, Timurlane. It made sense that this young man would found an empire of his own. However, he was […]
Ancient Ghost Stories- Eastern Style
We have discussed the similarities of how the afterlife and ghosts are viewed in the Western World in our previous post. There are also similarities that run through how these subjects are addressed in Eastern cultures, however, there are a few twists that mark them out as different. As in the West, the ghosts of […]
Ashoka
The Mauryan dynasty of India united most of the Indian subcontinent with Chandragupta Maurya. His grandson, Ashoka, inherited an empire which stretched from the Hindu Kush mountains to the modern state of Bangladesh in the east. His father was Emperor Bindusara and one of his lower status wives, Subhadrangi. Subhadrangi was only the daughter of […]