John Keay

“Poetry, like remonstration, could be a form of protest; and since poets were products of the Confucian education system, extravagant military adventures…

— John Keay

“Politically, according to Muslim observers, India comprised many kingdoms, each with a formidable army that included elephants and cavalry as well as…

— John Keay

“Both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana survive in several versions, the earliest of which are at least five hundred years later than…

— John Keay

“This northerly route of east–west transit and trade, extending from the Panjab and the upper Indus to Bihar and the lower Ganga,…

— John Keay

“Like metals, myths too get recycled. Reworked and so richly embellished as to be almost unrecognisable, stories which may once have reflected…

— John Keay

“Initially those at the western end in the Panjab and the Doab tended to look down on those on the eastern frontier…

— John Keay

“In bidding for popular support and competing with other cults as a parallel religion, the sangha had been losing ground throughout India…

— John Keay

“A particularly elaborate version of such an aswamedha is commemorated in the heart of Varanasi (Benares), otherwise the City of Lord Shiva…

— John Keay

“In fact Sind’s governors had already had a foretaste of what lay ahead. Muhammad ibn Qasim may have pushed east towards Kanauj,…

— John Keay

“The Tarim Mummies’ (Tarim being the name of the river that once drained the now waterless Tarim basin of eastern Xinjiang) are…

— John Keay

“some of the Vedic jana, like the Yadavas, are thought to have been of dasa origin. Hence too the clearly -dasa names…

— John Keay

“One of India’s rulers, ‘the Balhara’, was reckoned as being amongst ‘the four great or principal kings of the world’ according to…

— John Keay

“In Vedic society the bard was originally the chief’s charioteer. His function was not necessarily hereditary nor exclusively reserved to a particular…

— John Keay

“In contemporary Indian sources these first marauding disciples of Islam are occasionally identified as Yavanas (Greeks),Turuskas (Turks) or Tajikas (Tajiks or Persians),…

— John Keay

“Unlike Alexander’s Greeks, Muslim invaders were well aware of India’s immensity, and mightily excited by its resources. As well as exotic produce…

— John Keay

“As al-Biruni (Alberuni), the great Islamic scholar of the eleventh century, would put it, ‘the Hindus believe that there is no country…

— John Keay