I was just walking through some documents I had saved over the years, when it struck me that there has been very little new research work or relook into the history of the hill states. One particular format has been the examination of oral ballads, very few of which seem to be available in popular culture today. However, that was certainly not the case in the British era, when much field work seems to have been done by scholars of Europe on the subject, as they panned across the state of the Lahore kingdom and their adjunct territories. Sirmour was a Small Princely state along the Yamuna river's course While their purpose may have been malevolent in nature, many interesting insights got captured over the course of their work, and replication or improvement on the same seems to be rather scarce, especially in the context of what the European scholars used to call the "Punjab Hill States". One such case was on Sirmour, where very little information can be found in the publi...
Svayambhu Sri Chakra at Sharika Devi in Srinagar (Temples of India) In my previous blog I had talked about the project of Dr Meenakshi Jain on iconoclasm in India, and how the Hindus of India responded to it by protecting the idol. This was a talk I had attended, and afterwards I had a chance to interact with Dr Jain, and had the chance to tell her more about an interesting story I had nearly forgotten. This is the story of the curious case of Sharika Devi. In the state of Jammu and Kashmir, particularly in Kashmir valley, Sharika Devi is a very important goddess in the Kashmir Tantra traditions, particularly of the Vaishnava Tantra, which is an even rarer school. This Devi, the Aadi Devi or Mother Goddess, is often identified by scholars with Tripurasundari or Lalitha Devi. The city of Srinagar, where Sharika Devi's temple, also known as Pradyumna Peetha , is located on Hari Parbat, has an interesting legend to it. Hari Parbat is a corruption of the name ShAri , the name ...