Category Social Sciences

The last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah II, also known as Zafar, died in a British prison in Burma in 1862. As the last of the dynastic line that extended back to the sixteenth century, he had in his earlier years presided over a culturally sophisticated court, but as the British East India Company extended its control over more of India, his rule was clearly coming to an end. Then the mutiny of the sepoys against their British officers led to the siege of Delhi, the establishment of direct British colonial rule, and the end of any pretensions of Zafar as emperor. Dalrymple has mined the Persian and Urdu archives to capture the culture of Zafar’s court life — a culture of artists and intellectuals, of Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Dalrymple has little to say about what triggered the mutiny, but he does add greatly to the standard picture of the horrors of the fighting that destroyed a great deal of the city of Delhi.

Zafar’s father, Akbar II, had been imprisoned by the British and he was not his father’s preferred choice as his successor. One of Akbar Shah’s queens, Mumtaz Begum, pressured him to declare her son, Mirza Jahangir, as his successor. However, The East India Company exiled Jahangir after he attacked their resident, in the Red Fort, paving the way for Zafar to assume the throne.

Bahadur Shah Zafar was a noted Urdu poet, having written a number of Urdu ghazals. While some part of his opus was lost or destroyed during the Indian Rebellion of 1857, a large collection did survive, and was compiled into the Kulliyyat-i-Zafar. The court that he maintained was home to several prolific Urdu writers, including Mirza Ghalib, Dagh, Mumin, and Zauq.

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Babar is the great grandson of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan, was the first Mughal emperor in India. He confronted and defeated Lodhi in 1526 at the first battle of Panipat, and so came to establish the Mughal Empire in India. Babar ruled until 1530, and was succeeded by his son Humayun.

The Mughal imperial structure, however, is sometimes dated to 1600, to the rule of Babur’s grandson, Akbar. This imperial structure lasted until 1720, until shortly after the death of the last major emperor, Aurangzeb, during whose reign the empire also achieved its maximum geographical extent. Reduced subsequently, especially during the East India Company rule in India, to the region in and around Old Delhi, the empire was formally dissolved by the British Raj after the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Although the Mughal Empire was created and sustained by military warfare, it did not vigorously suppress the cultures and people it came to rule; rather, it equalized and placated them through new administrative practices, and diverse ruling elites, leading to more efficient, centralised, and standardized rule. The base of the empire’s collective wealth was agricultural taxes, instituted by the third Mughal emperor, Akbar. These taxes, which amounted to well over half the output of a peasant cultivator, were paid in the well-regulated silver currency, and caused peasants and artisans to enter larger markets.

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Birbal, or Raja Birbal, was a Hindu advisor and main commander of army in the court of the Mughal emperor, Akbar. He is mostly known in the Indian subcontinent for the folk tales which focus on his wit. Birbal was appointed by Akbar as a Minister and used to be a Poet and Singer in around 1556–1562. He had a close association with Emperor Akbar and was one of his most important courtiers, part of a group called the navaratnas. In 1586, Birbal led an army to crush unrest in the north-west Indian subcontinent where he was killed along with many troops in an ambush by the rebel tribe. He was the only Hindu to adopt Din-i Ilahi, the religion founded by Akbar.
By the end of Akbar’s reign, local folk tales emerged involving his interactions with Akbar, portraying him as being extremely clever and witty. As the tales gained popularity in India, he became even more of a legendary figure across the Indian subcontinent. These tales involve him outsmarting rival courtiers and sometimes even Akbar, using only his intelligence and cunning, often with giving witty and humorous responses and impressing Akbar.

Birbal was born as Mahesh Das Brahmbhatt in 1528, to a Hindu Brahmin family in Sidhi, Madhya Pradesh, India; in a village called Ghoghra. His father was Ganga Das and mother, Anabha Davito. He was the third son of the family which had a previous association with poetry and literature.

Educated in Hindi, Sanskrit and Persian, Birbal wrote prose, specialised in music and poetry in the Braj language, thus gaining fame. He served at the Rajput court of Raja Ram Chandra of Rewa (Madhya Pradesh), under the name “Brahma Kavi”. Birbal’s economic and social status improved when he married the daughter of a respected and rich family, contrary to the notion that he was on poor economic terms before his appointment at Mughal Emperor Akbar’s imperial court.

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Vishnu Sharma is said to be an Indian scholar and author who is believed to have written the Panchatantra collection of fables. The exact period of the composition of the Panchatantra is uncertain, and estimates vary from 1200 BCE to 300 CE scholars place him in the 3rd century BCE.

Various locations where the text was composed have been proposed but this has been controversial. Some of the proposed locations include Kashmir, Southwestern or South India. The text’s original language was likely Sanskrit. Though the text is now known as Panchatantra, the title found in old manuscript versions varies regionally, and includes names such as Tantrakhyayika, Panchakhyanaka, Panchakhyana and Tantropakhyana. The suffix akhyayika and akhyanaka mean “little story” or “little story book” in Sanskrit.

The text was translated into Pahlavi in 550 CE, which forms the latest limit of the text’s existence. The earliest limit is uncertain. It quotes identical verses from Arthasastra, which is broadly accepted to have been completed by the early centuries of the Common Era. According to Olivelle, “the current scholarly consensus places the Panchatantra around 300 CE, although we should remind ourselves that this is only an educated guess”. The text quotes from older genre of Indian literature, and legends with anthropomorphic animals are found in more ancient texts dated to the early centuries of the 1st millennium BCE such as the chapter 4.1 of the Chandogya Upanishad. According to Gillian Adams, Panchatantra may be a product of the Vedic period, but its age cannot be ascertained with confidence because “the original Sanskrit version has been lost”.

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Patañjali was a sage in India, thought to be the author of a number of Sanskrit works. The greatest of these are the Yoga Sutras, a classical yoga text.

The truth is that nobody really knows much about Patanjali. We don’t even know exactly when the sage lived. Some practitioners believe he lived around the second century BCE and also wrote significant works on Ayurveda (the ancient Indian system of medicine) and Sanskrit grammar, making him something of a Renaissance man. 

But based on their analyses of the language and the teaching of the sutras, modern scholars place Patanjali in the second or third century CE and ascribe the medical essays and grammar to various other “Patanjalis.”

Like many tales about the world’s spiritual heroes, the story of Patanjali’s birth has assumed mythic dimensions. One version relates that in order to teach yoga on earth, he fell from heaven in the form of a little snake, into the upturned plans (a gesture known as anjali) of his virgin mother, Gonika, herself a powerful yogini. He’s regarded as an incarnation of the thousand-headed serpent-king named Remainder (Shesha) or Endless (Ananta), whose coils are said to support the god Vishnu.

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Eagle Is The National Animal of Germany‘s and has been featured on the Coat of Arms for over 800 years. Eagles are known as the rulers of the skies. They symbolize strength, immortality, farsightedness, and courage.

It was chosen because of the Germanic tribes regarded the eagle as a bird of the God, Odin. There are many different kinds of eagles mostly 60 species of eagles are from Eurasia, Nigeria, and Africa. The Germany National Animal Eagle is extremely rapid and It can dive upon their target at speeds of more than 150 miles Per hour.

Eagle is the most popular Bird in Germany. Similarly, it can run in average 150 miles. Ancient people love the Eagle very much and they reflect this in their art. On the other hand, this mighty eagle is considered as National Bird of Germany. The symbolic meaning of eagle is Protection, Freedom, and Action. A German Eagle can go 0.5kg to 7kg (1.1lbs – 15.4lbs). Without Germany, you will find eagle Eurasia, Nigeria, and Africa, Australia, south and North America. Depending on species an eagle can Black, Grey, Brown, White, Yellow in color. Important to realize, that’s why the German’s national animal is the Black Eagle. In other words, it’s the German’s National Bird.

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