“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… — John Keay Copy Share Image
“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… — John Keay Copy Share Image
“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… — John Keay Copy Share Image
“A particularly elaborate version of such an aswamedha is commemorated in the heart of Varanasi (Benares), otherwise the City of Lord Shiva and the… — John Keay Copy Share Image
“Politically, according to Muslim observers, India comprised many kingdoms, each with a formidable army that included elephants and cavalry as well as infantry. According… — John Keay Copy Share Image
“In bidding for popular support and competing with other cults as a parallel religion, the sangha had been losing ground throughout India since the… — John Keay Copy Share Image
“The Tarim Mummies’ (Tarim being the name of the river that once drained the now waterless Tarim basin of eastern Xinjiang) are mostly not… — John Keay Copy Share Image
“Both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana survive in several versions, the earliest of which are at least five hundred years later than the Vedas.… — John Keay Copy Share Image
“Poetry, like remonstration, could be a form of protest; and since poets were products of the Confucian education system, extravagant military adventures often came… — John Keay Copy Share Image
“Initially those at the western end in the Panjab and the Doab tended to look down on those on the eastern frontier in Bihar… — John Keay Copy Share Image
“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… — John Keay Copy Share Image
“Like metals, myths too get recycled. Reworked and so richly embellished as to be almost unrecognisable, stories which may once have reflected genuine historical… — John Keay Copy Share Image
“In Vedic society the bard was originally the chief’s charioteer. His function was not necessarily hereditary nor exclusively reserved to a particular social group.” — John Keay Copy Share Image
“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,… — John Keay Copy Share Image
