In the previous part of this essay, I traced the origin of the Mackenzie Manuscripts to Col. Colin Mackenzie discovering his life’s mission after his interactio...
It could be argued that early in the colonial period, there was genuine interest to study India, and the West did produce some rigorous work in the area in the...
There are many references to show that women too were endowed with the spirit of kshaatra. For instance, in the Ramayana, we have the Kaikeyi episode. When Dash...
In the Vedas, alternative words for kshatriya are ‘गोप,’ ‘पशुप,’ ‘शर्धा,’ ‘व्रात,’ etc. The word ‘गो’ has ten meanings of which one of them is ‘earth.’ Other me...
In our tradition, of the lineage of seers, the family that stands out is the Bhrguvamsha (or the Bhargavavamsha). Bhargava was one of the leaders of our country...
Awareness of Kshaatra in Kalidasa Arguably the greatest of poets, Kalidasa, shows clearly in the Raghuvamsha how a kingdom should nurture kshaatra and how it sh...
The Mahabharata was also known as Jaya (victory). By using the word ‘जय,’ Vedavyasa speaks of kshaatra and valor. There, both dharma and adharma are permanent,...
When describing Rama, Valmiki says, “कुलोचितमिति क्षात्रं धर्मं स्वं बहुमन्यते” in the beginning of the Ayodhya Kanda (1.16). Rama opined that kshaatra was the...
The maxims that can be gleaned from the Ramayana and Mahabharata are predominantly destruction of the wicked and protection of the righteous. Investigating into...
In both the Vedas and the Puranas we can see a lineage of seers and kings. Again and again we see a reference to the panchajana in the Vedas; it is a reference...
In the dharmashastras, there are sections exclusively dedicated to raja-dharma that are both specific and elaborate. In the smrtis of Manu, Yajnavalkya, Narada...
In the राजनीति (politics) and युद्धनीति (warfare) sections of the Atharva Veda, there is a prayer – “O deities! Ensure that we don’t have any enemies at all...