Deccan Plateau

This is perhaps the most interesting claim that I can make tonight, but not the most interesting material.

So let me just make the claim and then get into some really cool material about Dravidian masters and the masters of the Deccan who saw themselves as being avaidika, as outside the Vedic fold and representing a tradition which you might actually understand better if you put it alongside Jainism and Buddhism.

Buddhism and Jainism evolved in the subcontinent They're like as much a sect as any of the Hindu sects are.

But they're heterodox.

So I want to say before I go further, like the lecture that we gave on Friday morning, I think is important.

And this talk that we're having now somewhat follows on the heels of that one.

So that lecture was called, I think, Early Kapalakas and Tantrikas of the Deccan and South India, I think.

i think the lecture is called are we aghoris that's something worth looking at because the word aghori is also strangely anachronistic it's a very modern word it's just now being used but the early shaivas whether they were kalamukhas or mahapashupatins who have a lot in common with the yogins and of course they formed the biggest monasteries they wouldn't consider themselves aghoris that's a weird thing to say then the kapalikas they didn't use the word aghori either they were kapalikas maybe they were Atimargans or Mahavratins or something like that, but they wouldn't say Aghori.

In the absence of detailed and authentic account, the conduct of Vidalpant appears to be improperly meek, and extremely impracticable.

Did he try to find out his old guru, or failing him, some other pundit at Benares, or even in the Deccan, who would point to some favorable text on the point? We do not know.

Footnote.

See the Mitakshara commentary on Yananavalkya Shmriti, part 3, verse 280, for the penance prescribed for the sannyasin who wants to become a householder.

End of section 2 Read by Sandra, 2022.

In those days, Maharashtra was ruled by the Yadav kings of Teogiri, better known by the subsequent name Daulatabad.

The tide of Muslim conquest that had deluged the northern part of India was soon, 1294 AD, to reach Deccan and to shatter the already waning power of the Yadav kings.

Twenty-one years, 1273, before the invasion of Allahuddin Ramdeo Rao, The then king of Dioghuri had headed a strong movement in the Deccan to rebuild the dilapidated temple of Vithoba at Pandarpur.

A man of almost impossible gifts, a military genius and a political visionary who had understood something that the Mughals had not.

That the mountains and the coast of the Deccan could be made into weapons if you understood them deeply enough.

Shivaji had spent his life turning geography into strategy.

He had built forts on hilltops that seemed to grow from the rock itself.

His work has been deeply influential for my own studies of Indian art history, temples, and architecture.

And we're so pleased George is going to be offering a new course for us here at Yogic Studies entitled The Sacred Architecture of the Deccan.

So George, a warm welcome to Yogic Studies.

How are you doing today? Welcome.

So that's how it sort of, slightly accidentally, I would say.

So as an architecture student, you kind of fell into India through the back door.

Well, you know, Australia didn't have history, didn't have exotic landscapes the way, let's say, Orissa, the Deccan, Cambodia, you know, these were such fascinating places.

And so I came to London, And I had to do something called a PhD.

So he also knew my of my grandfather.

I think he told me that one of the times that Mu'athanawee came to Hyderabad, Dakkan, India, was for my grandfather's nikah.

Yeah, interesting, I didn't know, like Mawlana Ibrahim told me.

So we did have that scholarship in the family.

There was the Madras famine.

There was the Deccan famine.

What years were these?

Uh-

So under Mughal rule, we had terrible famines.

But for the Indian left, that doesn't delegitimize the Mughals.

Why is that? So Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal, right? The Taj Mahal, when it's built, there's a massive famine going on in the Deccan.

He spends a cr- a crore is what, 10 million rupees, which was a astronomical sum in those days, for the building of his wife's tomb.

The Mughals were an Islamic dynasty that succeeded the Delhi Sultanate, established some 350 years earlier, when Muhammad of Ghor defeated the northern Indian kingdoms, cementing the Islamic presence in the Indian subcontinent.

While the Mughals were masters of most of northern India, remnant sultanates still ruled over most central areas of the subcontinent, most notably the Deccan region.

Despite being Islamic, these dynasties were mutually antagonistic towards each other.

As the Mughals consolidated their power in the north and slowly advanced into the Deccan region, local Hindus from the western Hilly Plateau tried to use the internal divisions between Islamic elements in order to assert themselves.

They were the Marathas.

This video is brought to you by GEOLOGY, a personalized skin care for men that is based on the benefits you want to see in those upper regions.

Numerous subjugated peoples rebelled against the central authority, while the exhausted army and depleted treasury were further strained due to internal Mughal factionalism, fratricidal bouts, and a continuous cycle of succession wars and conflicts.

During these internal conflicts between powerful Mughal nobles, the Marathas occasionally intervened in favor of one faction against another, even providing occasional military assistance.

Mm-hmm.

Indian Deccan Plateau has a completely red sand area where it is grown, but now it has also started growing in Rajasthan and different parts of Maharashtra.

These are different states of India, but on a very large scale, it grows in Deccan Plateau.

And before, people didn't really think of it as having any commercial value.

It was used, um, to make fences around farms to protect crops, but now it's changing farmers' lives.