“The Shakta Connection between Kangra Jwalamukhi Temple and Jvalaji in Azerbaijan”, The Dharma Dispatch, October 27, 2025
“WHEN WILL DURANT famously wrote that “most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years,” he was restating an enduring truth about the importance of keeping history afresh in contemporary memory.
This 6000-year time travel takes us back to an India which had evolved a flourishing maritime culture and had left its imprint overseas. David Frawley in his Gods, Sages and Kings, and Michel Danino in his classic, The Lost River: On the Trail of the Sarasvatī, show that the ancient Vedic civilisation was a maritime civilisation. Likewise, Dr. S. Srikanta Sastri (1904-1974), one of the pioneering history scholars marshalled a wealth of evidence that testified to the seafaring element in the Vedic zeitgeist.
This maritime contact of India with the rest of the world was a continuous and positive force for transnational economic and cultural exchanges. It remained unabated till the waves of incessant Islamic invasions disrupted its smooth sailing. It is also, sadly, an understudied area of Indian history, which had been spearheaded in the late 19th century and continued till about 1950. Notable works in the field include Radhakumud Mookerji’s Indian Shipping: A History of Seaborne Trade and Maritime Activity of the Indians from the Earliest Times, R.C. Majumdar’s Classical Accounts of India, Ancient Indian Colonies in the Far East, India and South-East Asia and Moti Chandra’s Trade and Trade Routes in Ancient India. These apart, V. Raghavan and Vasudeva Sharan Agarwala’s scholarly anthologies explore the influence of India’s artistic, musical and theatrical traditions in foreign lands…….”
Read full article at dharmadispatch.in
