History

Goethe on Kalidasa's Shankutala

Wouldst thou the young year's blossoms and the fruits of its decline
And all by which the soul is charmed, enraptured, feasted, fed?
Wouldst thou the earth and heaven itself in one sole name combine?
I name thee, O Śakoontalá! and all at once is said.

The principle of position and the unknown Hindu

When viewed in this light, the achievement of the unknown Hindu who some time in the first centuries of our era discovered the principle of position assumes the proportions of a world-event. Not only did this principle constitute a radical departure in method, but we know now that without it no progress in arithmetic was possible.

Zero and the positional decimal notation

It is [in India] that the ingenious manner of expressing all numbers in ten characters originated, by assigning to them at once an absolute and a local [positional] value. a subtle and important conception, of which the simplicity is such that we can [only] with difficulty, appreciate its merit.

Saffron

The word saffron, a colour often associated with Hinduism, is believed to have its root in the Arabic word, az-za'faran which is itself of unknown origin.

The Sanskrit Crocus

The name crocus, for the flowering plant and source of saffron, is very likely ultimately descended from Sanskrit kunkumam (कुङ्कुमं) by way of 'Semitic', Arabic, and Greek.

Whitman's Gita and the Herald

When the first edition of the American poet, Walt Whitman’s, Leaves of Grass was published in 1855, Ralph Waldo Emerson commented that it read like “a mixture of the Bhagavat Ghita [sic] and the New York Herald”.

100 cow man-price

In Vedic times, if you killed a man, you had to offer 100 cows as restitution.

Beer and the Butcher

Reginald Dyer, the Butcher of Amritsar, of Jallianwala Bagh infamy, was the youngest son of one Edward Dyer, the man often credited with establishing India's first successful brewery at Kasauli in Himachal Pradesh. It would eventually become Mohan Meakin Breweries.

History