The Battle for Rama: Case of the Temple at Ayodhya

The sanctity of Ayodhya as the birthplace of Lord Rama, which has been questioned repeatedly by leftist historians, has been vouched for by not just "Hindu religious scriptures" but observers of diverse stripes across time.

From Persian works of the Medieval era to sanads issued by Mughals in the eighteenth century, ‘Muslim’ sources that acknowledge the disputed territory as Ram Janmabhoomi, for instance, have seldom been cited in mainstream discourse.

Meenakshi Jain’s ‘The Battle for Rama’ includes an account of various such sources in history, shining a new light on the city, and also counters popular arguments.

read more here @ Swarajya

Viking Women: Not as Different as You Might Think - Medievalists.net

Heather Day Gilbert talks about her book God's Daughter at Medievalist dot net

My novel, God’s Daughter, tells the story of Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir. I know you Viking-o-philes know exactly who I’m talking about, but I’ll elaborate a bit. She’s the first documented European woman to have a baby on North American shores. She traveled here with her sailor husband, Thorfinn Karlsefni (“Finn” in my novel). She was a Christian. She was wise and beautiful. And she was the ward of Eirik the Red.

I wanted to base my novel as closely as possible on the Icelandic Sagas. Even though the sagas are sparse, you get a really good feel for the Viking women who lived around AD 1000.

I hope my story, told from Gudrid’s point-of-view, shows Viking women in a whole new light. Forget horned helmets and funky braids. Viking women weren’t that different from us. And they’re worth learning more about.

You can read more on Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir here at:
- Murder Is Everywhere
- The Ages of Exploration
- Travelling feminist (Penguin Unearthed)
- Hurstwic
- Discoveries of the Americas
- Wikipedia

Bright Air Black - Modern Medea

In the acknowledgements of his latest novel, David Vann declares: “I’m a neoclassical writer. My novels are all Greek tragedies.” 

Bright Air Black is Vann’s biggest Greek tragedy to date, primarily because it is a retelling of an ancient tale, a retouched portrait of one of mythology’s most enthralling and notorious women, Medea.

Vann’s reimagining is not for the faint-hearted. Some will wonder if he oversteps the mark. Others will question the point of the whole enterprise. Why bother with a book which takes, blends and repurposes episodes from Apollonius of Rhodes’ The Argonautica and Euripides’ Medea when we can read those original works?

The answer becomes clear several pages into Bright Air Black. Vann gives us a fresh slant on an early myth, an up-close and in-depth character study. From the outset, his drama unfolds in prose that is both atmospheric and electrifying.

Maria Callas as Medea

Bookended with blood and providing no catharsis or easy answers, Medea’s story is one of the bleakest of all the Greek tragedies. Vann sums it up succinctly: “Unnatural, all that is human.” But the tale is also one of great power and intensity. Bright Air Black possesses the same potency. Its dark energy shocks us and shakes us, yet it is impossible to pull away.

Read more here at The Weekend Australian, at Text Publishing, and Penguin Australia

India's Rani Of Jhansi Regiment

This is a riveting and meticulously researched account of the Indian National Army’s Rani of Jhansi regiment, the first in recorded military history that comprised only women.

It is not often that a forgotten and glorious chapter of a country’s history is resurrected and presented to its people and the rest of the world, and that too by a foreigner. This is what India now sees with the publication of a riveting and meticulously researched account of the INA’s Rani Jhansi Regiment (RJR) authored by Danish historian Vera Hildebrand.

As the author says, this unit was the first in recorded military history that comprised only women. Admittedly, the Soviet Union’s Red Air Force in World War II had a few squadrons of women pilots, but the support staff included men. In any case, these squadrons were not formally designated as “women’s regiments”. The RJR’s status as the world’s only all-women ground forces fighting contingent remains uncontested.

Read more here at Swarajya Magazine Online and at the Hindustan Times
Read an excerpt here at Kitaab

 

Compediosa Totius Anatomie Delineatio

A censored 16th century anatomy book may provide evidence that taboos slowed the development of knowledge of the female genitals, researchers have said.

The 1559 edition of Thomas Gemini's Compediosa Totius Anatomie Delineatio features a depiction of a semi-dissected female torso, and the book's original owner has cut away a neat triangle of paper on which the vagina would have been drawn.

It will be displayed in an exhibition at St John's College at the University of Cambridge, and curator Shelley Hughes said it may offer clues as to why knowledge of the female anatomy lagged behind that of the human body as a whole.

Read more here at the Belfast Telegraph

Turning Pages: The Case for Books

Alberto Manguel doesn't think the book will die because it is one of a handful of perfect things we have invented. "The codex is everything we want a text to be: portable, interactive, and it contains as much information as we want," he says. "Anything you require, the codex does it."

Manguel – novelist, editor, translator, librarian, essayist and long-time thinker on the subject of books and reading – is moving against the tide. For quite a while, we've been hearing about the death of the old-fashioned paper book, to be replaced by ebooks and other electronic devices.

But there are signs that tide is turning. After years of growth, publishers have recently reported falls in ebook sales. And new research from Murdoch University lecturer Margaret Merga has revealed that children with access to e-reading devices prefer paper books. They like the sensation of picking up a book and "feeling the weight of commitment".

This fits in with the research of two other lecturers, Loughborough University's Simone Natale and Birkbeck, University of London's Andrea Ballatore. In an article for The Conversation, they looked at "the myth of the disappearing book" and why it still persists.

Read article here at the Sydney Morning Herald

Fallen Glory by James Crawford

Here & Now's Meghna Chakrabarti talks to James Crawford about the book:

There is no question that we invest our greatest structures and constructions with personalities. We care about buildings – some- times, perhaps, more than we care about our fellow human beings. We shout with joy when we raise them up; we weep with sorrow when we destroy them. And, of course, we do continue to destroy them – buildings young and old, all over the world.

Even the longest human life barely exceeds a century. How much more epic are the lives of buildings, which can endure for thousands of years? Unlike the people who made them, these structures experience not just one major historical event, but a great accumulation of them, in some cases stretching all the way from the prehistoric era to the present day. In its lifetime, the same building can meet Julius Caesar, Napoleon and Adolf Hitler. What human could claim the same? If we let them, buildings have the potential to be the ultimate raconteurs. These are some of their stories.

Read entire article here @ Here & Now (note: I especially liked his view on GeoCities - former free website hosting site)

Review by Robert Douglas Fairhurst @ The Telegraph
Review by Stuart Kelly @ The Scotsman

Book: The Prince In Splendour

If preparing Christmas dinner in your household seems exhausting, spare a thought for the Royal kitchen of Henry III.

Over Christmas in 1251, he and guests tucked into 830 deer, 200 wild boar, 1,300 hares, 385 pigeons and 115 cranes – and that was just the wild game menu.

Such lavish affairs are recorded by Woodbridge historian Richard Barber in his book, The Prince in Splendour: Court Festivals of Medieval Europe.

As well presented as the events it describes, the 280-page book examines medieval court festivals in all their grandeur.

“One of the things I like about medieval history is that there are very few primary sources of record,” said the author.

Read entire article by Tom Potter @ East Anglian Daily Times

Death and the Afterlife in Byzantium

This interdisciplinary study provides an in-depth analysis and synthesis of hagiography, theological treatises, apocryphal texts and liturgical services, as well as images of the fate of the soul in manuscript and monumental decoration. It also places the imagery of the afterlife, both literary and artistic, within the context of Byzantine culture, spirituality, and soteriology. The book intends to be the definitive study on concepts of the afterlife in Byzantium.

Read more here @ Yale News