Hindustan: open for all licentiousness
Hindustan is a wide place; where there is an open field for all licentiousness, and no one interferes with another's business, so that every one can do just as he pleases.
Hindustan is a wide place; where there is an open field for all licentiousness, and no one interferes with another's business, so that every one can do just as he pleases.
Ecbar Shaugh [Emperor Akbar] … never denyed [his mother] any thing but this, that shee demanded of him, that our Bible might be hanged about an asses necke and beaten about the towne of Agra, for that the Portugals … tyed [the Quran] about the necke of a dogge and beat the same dogge about the towne of Ormuz. But hee denyed her request, saying that, if it were ill in the Portugals to doe so to the Alcoran, being it became not a King to requite ill with ill, for that the contempt of any religion was the contempt of God.
If India is to be really capable of holding its own in future without direct British control from outside I am not sure that it will not need an increasing infusion of stronger Nordic blood, whether by settlement or intermarriage or otherwise. Possibly it has been a real mistake of ours in the past not to encourage Indian princes to marry English wives ... and so breed a more virile type of native ruler.
The name of the gemstone, beryl, probably originates from the Prakrit veruliya and Sanskrit vaidurya- which might be of Dravidian provenance. One theory points its source to the city of Velur (modern Belur, Karnataka). Derivatives such as brilliant and beryllium share these origins.
The 1934 musical, Anything Goes includes the hit Cole Porter song titled, You're the top which includes the following lines of praise:
You're the top, you're Mahatma Gandhi,
You're the top! you're Napoleon brandy …
In the early 90s, the Indian government released specially-raised flesh-eating turtles into the Ganga to eat and clear the river of partly-burned corpses from the Varanasi ghats. The programme failed as poachers captured and wiped out the turtle population (again).
Gondwanaland, the Pangaean supercontinent that existed millions of years ago is named after Gondwana, a region in Central India. Gondwana comes from the Sanskrit goṇḍavana or the forest of the Gonds, a tribe spread across the area.
पोटा (pōṭā) in Sanskrit is a word that represents a masculine woman, or a bearded woman or one with other such masculine features. Alternatively, it can also mean hermaphrodite or simply, a female servant.
There is a village in Kerala named Areacode. Its area code is 0483 (for Malappuram).
India's highest military decoration, the Param Vir Chakra, was designed by Savitri Khanolkar, a lady who was born Eve Yvonne Maday de Maros in Switzerland and was of Hungarian-Russian ancestry. She was married to Major-General Vikram Khanolkar of the Sikh Regiment.
Travelling about 80kms from Darjeeling and to an altitude of 7200 feet gets you to the cool climes of a hill-station named Lava.