#Sanskrit academic contest

[townpostin]

BDSL Saraswati Shishu Vidya Mandir Excels in Cluster Quiz

Students win multiple prizes in English, Sanskrit, and Computer categories BDSL Saraswati Shishu Vidya Mandir students demonstrated exceptional performance at the cluster level quiz competition held in Baharagora. GHATSHILA – Students from BDSL Saraswati Shishu Vidya Mandir secured multiple top positions in a cluster level quiz competition held at Baharagora Saraswati Shishu Mandir on Monday. The…

[gotnofucks]

Congruence

Written for @holylulusworld 10k follows challenge!

Pairing: Stephen Strange x Reader, Loki x Reader

Trope: Love Triangle

Summary: Stephen and Loki want you. You are confused. Wong is an angsty person.

Words: 4.5k

Warnings: None? Strong language, I think. Fluff and bad English (not my first language)

A/N: This is my first time writing something like this so please bear with me. Also, I’m a sucker for happy endings so…yeah.

MASTERLIST

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Wong was losing his fucking mind. He was one more broken vase away from cursing in Vedic Sanskrit and spent every hour cursing Thor for sending his miscreant brother to live at the New York Sanctum. He could have gone to Hong Kong, or maybe London where he would have fit right in with that English accent. But no! He had to send him here in New York with Wong and Stephen and you.

You had been living at the sanctum for only two months when Thor literally dropped Loki here. Wong and Stephen had been sitting in the living room when the ceiling cracked open and someone fell from the sky with a resounding THUD. Loki had looked up from the floor with utter contempt in his face at his brother who landed solidly on his feet.

“Hey there, doctor!” Thor bellowed, patting Stephen roughly on the shoulder and gave Wong a bear hug.

The sorcerers had stared at the two Asgardians with absolute shock on their faces until Wong exploded.

“Can you please for fucks sake use the door like a normal person!? Every time you are here you break something! The ceiling for god’s sake! Do you have any idea how much time and effort it takes to repair that?”

Thor looked at the ceiling with no remorse while his brother dusted himself off.

“Can’t you just, you know, reverse time with the stone and fix it?” Thor asked, taking a seat without being offered one.

“What are you doing here? And why, if I may ask, is your brother here?” Stephen asked rolling his eyes. Thor made the occasional stop at the Sanctum from time to time just for the fun of it. Banner bet him 10 bucks it has a lot to do with Wong being recently single, Stephen disagrees and says its because their kitchen is always stocked with Pop Tarts.

“Ah, you can keep my brother” Thor said nonchalantly, stretching his legs out and being comfy in his chair.

“Excuse me? Who the hell do you think you are, trying to treat me like an object?” Loki spat.

Before Thor could retort, Stephen banged his hand on the table. “I have no plans to keep your brother, Odinson. Pray, take him and leave. And while you’re at it, put some money on the table for the ceiling. We may have magic, but we don’t use it to put splintered wood back together.”

“You must keep him doctor, for the good of the nine realms.” Thor said, raising his hands slightly in resignation.

“Have you started another war already?” Wong asked curiously, eyeing the God of Mischief who looked about ready to stab his brother.

“He hasn’t, yet. But I’m leaving Midgard for some time and Valkyrie doesn’t want him around. They will end up killing each other by the end of the week. He’s got magic, you can make use of him here. Hell, make him fix that ceiling.” Thor said.

Loki was seething at having been treated like a naughty child while the adults talked around him. They hadn’t let him utter a word in his defense and he doubted it would matter if they did hear him out. Whatever, he didn’t want to stay with Valkyrie either. Before Thor dragged him here, he’d switched all her alcohol with fruit juice. She would be spitting fire for days and he was safer here. And so, it was decided that Loki would stay at the sanctum until Thor returned. What he would do here remains to be seen. Stephen wasn’t pleased with the situation, but he’d rather Loki stay here than cause some other world ending event that would drag him and other Avengers out to clean up his mess later.

You were in the library when this weird turn of events was happening, so you hadn’t had the chance to meet Loki yet. You were a new recruit at the sanctum, chosen personally by Wong who felt they needed more than just two sorcerers to protect this place. Until then you were under training with both of them and were still getting your feel of this space. You had so far met no one other than your two mentors so you were rightfully surprised to stumble on man wearing green cape and eating your cereal in the kitchen. You stopped in your tracks and looked at him curiously while he did the same, chewing slowly.

“Y/n meet Loki. He’ll be staying with us for some time”, Wong said as ways of introduction. Wong adored you since he saw you in Kamartaj and had you brought here as soon as your preliminary training there was over. You were still very young, only in your 20s, so you brought with yourself a light and life that had previously been lacking in this sacred place. Ever since you came here, the sanctum had flower vases in almost every room and soft music could be heard at odd times. You didn’t take long to adjust to your life in New York and often forced both Stephen and Wong to eat something other than take out. You laughed and smiled and brought with yourself a woman’s touch to this dreary place. Wong wasn’t the only one affected. Stephen, who had initially been very against the idea of another sorcerer in the sanctum warmed up to you quick enough. So warm in fact that Wong could almost call it affection.

“Hi Loki, does your cape float too?” You asked and sat across him, pouring some cereal and milk into your bowl. Loki stopped eating and bent his head a little to the side, curious.

“It doesn’t.” He said at last.

“That sucks, I love flying cloaks. Stephen’s cloak – I call it Levi – loves to take me on rides. If your cape were a sentient too, maybe they could have been friends. Everyone should have friends, even clothes.”

Loki was looking at you with a small, amused smile.

“I can enchant it for a few hours; however, it won’t remain animated forever.” Loki said. He didn’t like talking to strangers, but you were so sweet, so unafraid of him that it pleased him. You had no awkwardness when you spoke, and no note of hatred in your voice, something that didn’t happen often in his conversations with people.

Your eyes brightened and you launched into a discussion about animation enchantments, something that the masters at Kamartaj had steered clear off. They were very adamant about how to use magic, and walking furniture was somewhere they drew the line. Loki’s magic was very different to yours and it fascinated you. This was how Stephen found you, deep in conversation with an amused Loki who looked at you softly. He scowled.

“What’s happening here?”, he asked, coming to stand behind you.

“Did you know it’s possible to morph your body in someone else’s completely? Solid illusions!”, you prattled on.

“Of course, I know, I just don’t use it.” Stephen said and took the seat beside you.

“You never said! You’ll teach me?” Your eyes were bright as you asked this, and it was with great restraint Stephen shook his head and said no. He found it difficult denying you anything and if he ever admitted it to himself, he would say he’s fond of you. Very fond.

Your face fell at his denial.

“You won’t teach me? Why?”

“Some magic is too advanced for you right now. We’ll build it up and maybe someday I’ll teach you, although I’m not fond of it. Some magic is just…silly.”

Loki was looking at your exchange with a small smirk and as you lowered your face in dejection, he leaned forward to rest his elbows on the table and looked straight at you.

“I can teach you.” He said and watched your eyebrows raise before a small smile formed on them. You looked happy until you remembered your mentor sitting beside you and looked at him with a forlorn expression. Stephen’s hands clenched and he resisted the urge to mash Loki’s face in his cereal.

“Like hell you would! I’m her instructor and the only thing you’re doing is staying out of trouble.” Stephen said, one hand leaning over the back of your chair, a gesture not lost on Loki.

“Didn’t Thor say I could be of help here? Well, this is it. I could help teach Y/n and we can compare notes on our magic. Wouldn’t you like that, Y/n?” Loki asked you in a sweet voice and you nodded eagerly, eyes pleading with Stephen to agree. You looked so earnest, so willing to learn, that Stephen couldn’t find it in himself to say no. He wanted to, he wanted to shout that he will teach you all you needed to know and more, that he is someone you can rely on. But he simply said yes.

Throughout this whole conversation, Wong, who was busy cooking hadn’t said a thing but if the stiffness in his shoulders was to go by, he was not a happy man. He knew some shit was about to go down, and lord did he not want to be a part of it.

From that day, what happened in the Sanctum was something Wong could only call an over glorified dick-measuring contest between Stephen and Loki. They did all but whip their tools out and boink each other on the head with it.  

It started from little things like teaching you something new and praising you about it. You loved to have your work being acknowledged and would blush a deep red at being praised. Loki had fumed for hours watching you and Stephen work and you giggling with a red face as Stephen told you what a good job you had done. In retaliation, Loki started teaching you enchantments and when you got them right, he would pat your hand and tell you that you were a good girl. That blush, and the glare he received from Stephen was a treat.

It didn’t stop with academics. The men started vying for your attention in the kitchen, each trying their hardest to win you over with more and more complicated dishes. Wong put his foot down when Loki made a Nutella sandwich that was a foot high and dripped with toasted marshmallows that took hours to scrub off. Stephen had laughed outrageously when Wong scolded Loki, telling him to clean up his mess and if he ever did something like this again, he’ll be using his toothbrush to clean the sanctum. Stephen stopped laughing however when Wong turned to him with a spatula in his hand. “And you! You’re banned from cooking too. I can’t go shopping every day to get you ingredients because you want to make Y/n pastries and pies and stupid Turkish delights three times a day. Out of my kitchen! Now!”

The antics continued, more often than naught resulting in skirmishes between the two men which in turn resulted in a lot of broken vases, furniture, and in some rare events, bones. They fought over who you spent more time with, smiled wider at, and laughed harder at. It drove Wong crazy, an unfortunate bystander to the playground tricks of two boys fighting over a toy. But you were more than a toy, that he could tell.

You weren’t oblivious to what was happening. You were young, not naïve and so you spent your days very amused. You didn’t mind this attention, far from it in fact. Two very handsome and powerful men, for reasons best known to them, were trying their best to impress you. It made you giddy and feel wanted, but also confused because while you weren’t in love with either of them, you didn’t think you’d be able to choose one when the time came for it. Surely, they can’t keep doing this forever and will one day give you the ultimatum to make a choice. You dreaded that day because with each passing day, with each sweet gesture and praise, with each hug lasting a little longer and each eye contact being a little hotter, you were reminded that with choosing one you would lose the other. That didn’t seem like the happy ending you wanted.

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Loki was at his wit’s end and knee deep in books and ancient relics. He had scrounged every storeroom and tome trying to find what he wanted to no avail. His hair was disheveled from running his hands through it too many times and he wished you would braid it like you’d done a couple nights ago. What had begun simply as an amusing prank to show up Stephen Strange ended up being a true gamble in the game of love. He didn’t really expect to start liking you like this. Sure, you were different, and he acknowledged that fact within minutes of meeting you. But he didn’t know that he would seriously start considering his intentions towards you. At most he had hoped he would find a friend in you, but he didn’t just want to be a friend anymore. He wanted you with your tinkling laugh and ability to cast spells far above your level. He wanted to see you defend him against Thor and to tell you stories of Asgard as you took a walk through New Asgard by his side. He wanted you so bad and he’d be damned if that red cloak wearing second rate wizard took you from him.

“What in the world are you doing?” Wong asked as he entered Loki’s room to find it strewn with books and odd ornaments. Loki was sitting on the floor looking quite frustrated, and well, a little pathetic.

“I can’t find it. I’ve searched almost every book and every relic you have here. I can’t find it!” Loki moaned. Wong didn’t know what he was looking for, but he felt a small spark of pity for the god.

“What are you looking for?”

“Aladdin’s lamp”

There was a pregnant pause in the room.

“Excuse me?”

“Aladdin’s lamp. Y/n was talking about how Strange’s cloak – Levi as she calls it – would have loved having the flying carpet as his friend. And I asked her about this carpet, and she told me it belonged to the Genie who came out of Aladdin’s lamp when rubbed. I want that lamp so I can ask this Genie fellow to loan me his carpet”

It was a tough battle between laughing and patting the god on his head like a small child. Wong fought the impulse to do either and sat down on a chair after depositing the books on it on the table. “You won’t find it here”, he told Loki whose head shot up at this.

“Why not? Is it at some other sanctum? London?”

“It’s…nowhere.”, Wong said and raised a hand to stop Loki from interrupting. “Aladdin is a fictional story, so is the lamp and the genie and the carpet. Y/n loves reading about them and watching the movie adaptations. She likes to see how morals have interpreted magic.”

Loki’s mouth dropped open and for a moment he looked about ready to cry for having wasted so many hours searching for something that didn’t exist. Then, he miraculously started laughing.

“Norns! This woman drives me up a wall! She mentions one thing and I just want to do that for her. I’m not even mad at her or myself, just disappointed that I’ll have to search for something else to get her now. What the hell happened to me?”

Wong looked at a man who was very nearly, if not already in love with you. He didn’t like Loki very much, but he didn’t want this man to go through a heart break either. He would have to talk to you, soon.

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Stephen fancied himself a step ahead of Loki because he had known you a little bit longer, but if he was being honest, there wasn’t much to go by. His insecurities had a lot to do with that, for he believed you would prefer Loki, a handsome man over a scarred man like him. But you had never mentioned anything about his slightly trembling hands. You had taken to his life without a hitch and so seamlessly blended into a routine with him, Stephen felt like you had always been a part of his life. He couldn’t remember when you’d started helping him tie his robes, or necktie when the occasion called for it. He couldn’t remember when he’d started eating home cooked meals instead of takeout at the deli Wong preferred. One day he was living without you, and the other you had taken over every aspect of his life and made it ten times as beautiful. He didn’t know if he could go back to living life as he did before you, and he’d be damned if some green-bean god tried to take you away from him.

“I am going to regret asking this but what are you trying to do?”, Wong asked Stephen who was standing in the middle of his meditation room holding his cloak. Well, holding might not be the correct term. Dancing…with his cloak.

“I am teaching Levi how to waltz”, Stephen said and continued to guide the piece of fabric through the leg movements. Wong watched this with morbid fascination before sputtering incredulously.

“Why?”

“Y/n loves to waltz and as I don’t always have enough time to indulge her, I’m teaching my cloak how to do it so it can keep her company. You’ll do that won’t you, Levi?”

To Wong’s utter astonishment the cloak seemed to nod and was almost elegant in his movements. For a good few minutes Wong watched this scene before sighing. Smitten, both of them. Absolutely wrapped around your finger and most definitely on their way to fall in love. Stephen was his best friend and he looked so happy since you got here, it warmed Wong’s heart to finally see Stephen smile and be genuinely happy.

He really really needed to talk to you and ask you whom you planned to be with, if any of them at all. This is exactly the sort of drama Wong hated and he was sure no matter what you said, someone was going to get their heart broken.

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You were going to do it. You were going to do it today and tell them your decision because you couldn’t take it anymore. The hostility between Loki and Stephen was getting on your nerves and you couldn’t spend a minute in one’s company before being interrupted by the other. In the end, you just left them both, hence losing the joy of both their presence. And poor Wong. You could see him trying to summon courage for what you knew was going to be a very uncomfortable talk. The past few months Loki had lived here had been the best and worst months of your life. But now that things were starting to affect not just your friendship but also your academics (because both your instructors ended up attacking each other and spent two days in the sick bay), you needed to make a choice. So, you did what you did best and got to baking.

“It smells like Valhalla here, Y/n”, Loki said as he watched you work.

“Why won’t you let us see what you’re making?” Stephen asked, trying to look around you but you glared at him and he sat down again.

“Will you both for god’s sake ask the important question? Why the hell are we wearing these outfits?” Wong grumbled.

You looked at the three men seated around the table in Harry Potter robes, each holding a handmade wand and pointy hat you’d forced them to wear. They had protested and whined (I’m not a witch for Norn’s sake!) but had given in easier than you thought. You really did have them wrapped around your little finger.

“Could you wait for like two minutes? This needs to be perfect!” You chirped and got back to your tray.

“I’m too old to be doing cosplay”, Wong said with a huff.

“Shut up”

It took you another ten minutes to perfect your stuff, a tray lined with identical muffins with Hogwarts logo and the sorting hat on top. Picking it up you sat it down on the table before the three men and then sat down yourself.

“These are the sorting muffins but with a twist”, you declared. Loki looked on with interest. He’d watched and read all the Harry Potter books and movies at your behest.

“I hate this, and I hate twists. The last time I saw a twist was when this one-”, Wong pointed at Stephen “-annoyed a cosmic being into accepting defeat. I still get nightmares about that”

“Oh, don’t be so dull Wong. These are compatibility muffins. We don’t need sorting, we’re already sorted. You are obviously a Ravenclaw because you’re the librarian, Stephen is of course Gryffindor because Levi is red, similarly Loki is Slytherin because that cape is definitely a Slytherin green. And I am a Hufflepuff because I am the best.” Your speech did not have the jubilant response you expected, and you crossed your arm with a deep disappointed sigh. Stereotypical as your sorting had been you expected something more than blank faces.

“So, what are these muffins for?”, Stephen asked.

“We all take one and see what color filling we find. The person whose house we get, that’s the person we’re most compatible with.” Now you had your expected response. Both Loki and Stephen sat at attention eyeing the muffins critically, trying their hardest to guess which one had the yellow icing in the middle. Beside them Wong groaned and facepalmed. Of all the ways for you to choose a partner, trust you to play a game of luck involving a children’s fantasy book. He was regretting putting that talk off now.

“So, if I get blue…” Loki trailed off

“Yeah, you and Wong can go make out in the corner” You answered. “But of course, Wong must get green too you know, or you’d have to find another Ravenclaw. Consent is important after all”

It was the dumbest shit you had ever come up with. You knew it, everyone else knew it. But if this was how it was supposed to go so be it. Everyone ignored Wong’s complain of ruining a good desert and set out to choose their most perfect muffin. They were all identical to the last crumb, and it took an annoyingly large amount of time for both your suitors to choose their pieces. After they had deliberated and finally chosen their muffins, you casually selected one and motioned for Wong to do the same.

Finally, with muffins in all your hands and eyes full of anticipation and trepidation, you all took a bite.

Stephen’s face broke out in a grin as he showed off his bitten muffin with a yellow center. That smile however turned into a frown as Loki showed a yellow centered muffin too. Wong, feeling utterly stupid showed his red centered muffin and then all eyes turned to you. With a straight face you turned your muffin and-

“Motherfucker!”, Wong cried and with his head in his hands began laughing and crying simultaneously. Loki and Stephen looked stunned, staring open mouthed at the two-colored center of your muffin. Red and green.

“What?” They both said.

“I can’t choose. I just can’t. That’s not who I am.” You said and looked them both straight in the eye, hoping they’ll see reason in what you’re saying. “How do you choose between two people who love so much? You can’t quantify that feeling, you can never tell if its greater for someone or not. Call me a coward or a bitch, I don’t care. This is the truth. I love you Stephen. I love all your music references and stupid movies you make me watch. And I love you Loki, with that English accent and your horrible cooking. I love you both and I am here if you’ll have me. This is what I can offer you, because I sure as hell can’t break either of yours heart.”

You didn’t know what was going to happen. You hadn’t exactly meant to drop the L-word, but well, it was true. You couldn’t break their hearts, so you put the ball in their court and allowed them to break yours instead. It was much better than going through with the pain of choosing one of them, especially when your heart beats simultaneously for two. You braced yourself for rejection, because sharing a person you love is never easy. But if you have to share it with a person you hate, well, its almost impossible.

Loki and Stephen looked at you and then at each other. They seemed to be having some sort of wordless conversation and the longer they remained silent, the more you felt like you’d made a mistake and lost them both. Finally, they nodded at each other and then looked at you.

“I hate this second-rate wizard”

“I hate you too, green puny god”

“But we love you more.”

You blinked once and then again. It took a minute to register what they said but then you were flying and the next second you were in their arms, one man at your front while the other at your back. Sobs whacked your small body as the tension of past few months left you in your lovers’ embrace and you could finally breath easy. You pulled away and looked up with a tear stained face at Loki and Stephen, a watery smile that they reciprocated.

“So, we can finally have sex now after months of violent foreplay”, you remarked making them both laugh and pull you in their arms again. This was it. This was your safe space, your heaven.

Wong was forgotten as the three embraced and he was as baffled as he had ever been. Only you could have pulled off something so crazy. He was so glad he almost joined the group hug himself. No more broken furniture, no more shouting and no more messy kitchens. Life could go back to normal. As soon as he said that thunder rumbled outside and the ceiling cracked, depositing Thor in front of them wearing his armor and red cape.

“What’s happening here?” He boomed, looking around as if he hasn’t just vandalized their home again.

“You’re such a Gryffindor!” You cried, still delirious with joy and hugged Thor who had till now never met you. “I need to shave my whole body!” And saying this you ran away leaving the men staring at your back.

“Who’s that? And what’s a Gryffindor?” Thor asked, sitting at the kitchen table, and stretching his legs. He spotted the muffins and picked one up, taking a huge chunk out. It was blue from within. Both Loki and Stephen turned to look at a red-faced Wong who was cursing in Sanskrit.

“Looks like Banner was right. I owe him 10 bucks”, Stephen laughed.

[aspamscottish]

Six Things Parents Should Think About When Choosing a CBSE School

Students and parents alike are racing to secure spots for their children at the top schools in Ghaziabad as the new school year, 2022-2023, approaches. It is no longer as simple as picking a cupcake to decide on a school. A parent must thoroughly inspect the area where a child will spend the next 14-15 years of their life. Another important consideration is the school's excellent academic programme, although there are others.

Having a beautiful building, playgrounds, air-conditioned classrooms and activity laboratories is not enough for a school. Buildings and facilities are only a tiny part of what it means to learn. Before enrolling your child in one of the CBSE schools in Ghaziabad, you should consider extracurricular activities, outreach to other reputed organisations that may advise youngsters on non-academic activities, annual pricing structure and publishers that supply study material. After all, a degree from a prestigious university guarantees success in the future.

As a result, parents should exercise caution and diligence while selecting a CBSE school, as this decision will affect their children's present and future.

Helping you out, we have compiled a list of schools in Ghaziabad that you may consider for your child's education. If you are looking for the best CBSE school for your child, consider these factors:

Academic Reputation

For a school to be recognised as good, it must have this. If a school is among the top 10 CBSE schools in India in your city, it is defined by its academic record and the honours it has achieved for excellence. Such schools would be keen to enrol your child into their system since they are considered places where the best education is provided.

The curriculum should offer enough possibilities to accommodate the demands of various learning patterns. If you believe that your child has a somewhat different learning style than others, it would be better to seek a school with varied learning patterns in its curriculum.

Academic and Experimental Experience

There is more to the best CBSE schools in India than simply academics. They allow students to participate in various activities, including field trips, which are essential to their development. Choosing a school where a child may learn in multiple methods is necessary.

In addition to focusing on their regular curriculum, these institutions also allow students to study in detail topics of interest. The study of Sanskrit, classical music, other ancient languages and the arts and crafts should be a priority.

State-of-the-Art Amenities

Developing a child's talents depends on the school's infrastructure. A well-regarded CBSE school aims to create a lively learning environment by providing students with the best possible resources. As part of the teaching and learning process, the school should feature a library, an auditorium and well-equipped laboratories. A swimming pool and athletic amenities like tennis or badminton courts should also be included.

Prospects for Long-Term Growth and Development

A reputable CBSE school would offer extracurricular activities and contests to help students grow. Aside from athletics, schools should encourage students to learn about dancing, painting, photography and music. A student council allows kids to participate in various activities and assume leadership responsibilities.

A well-trained faculty and committed support team will ensure that your child has every chance to improve his skill set.

Minimal Fee Structure and Expenses

A well-regarded CBSE school focuses on the education and development of its students while charging low fees. Parents must understand that their child deserves more than what money can buy them. They deserve to become a member of a dynamic educational environment.

For additional benefits, your fees are used to improve the quality of teaching and other educational amenities.

Interdisciplinary Learning Is Valued

Multidisciplinary learning offers several advantages. No rote learning or memorisation is required until Grade 8. This, too, is based on the school. During their first eight years, kids will have plenty of time for extracurricular activities and interests. Their interests will all have an impact on their personality.

So, a good CBSE school should provide students with plenty of opportunities to apply what they learn outside the classroom.

[101percentindia]

To Be ‘Amar’ Is To Be Immortal; Will Amar Chitra Katha Stand The Test Of Our Critical Times?

Remembering ACK, Tinkle comics and Chandamama.

Once upon a time, there was magic hidden between the pages of a comic book. They came under the common branding of Amar Chitra Katha and opened a window to a world most of us didn’t know existed – stories drawn from Indian history, mythology, folk lore and legend. Stories we had perhaps heard about but forgotten under the burden of academic pursuits and the struggles of our day-to-day existence. As illustrated books with thought and speech bubbles for the dialogues exchanged between them, all captured within 31 pages. There were tiny footnotes to explain typically Indian words, rituals, Gods, customs and so on. Each comic made a dent in our hard-saved pocket money – a dent of Rs.2.50 to begin, which was later raised by 0.50 paisa.

One man was responsible for this comic book revolution - Anant Pai. Story has it that he was on an official trip from Mumbai to Delhi in 1967, intrigued by the television set that had entered the capital through Doordarshan. Wanting to have a dekko of what lay behind that box, he watched a television programme through the display window of a shop. He was shocked to discover that in the quiz show, children could give correct answers to questions around Socrates and Winston Churchill, but did not know the name of Rama’s mother!

This chemical engineer orphaned as a young boy, realised that children loved comic book heroes like The Phantom. Leisure reading of children studying in English medium schools was also confined to Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Enid Blyton’s and a few comics like Richie Rich and Tintin.

Phantom made ‘politically correct’ for the Indian reader. Image source: thephantomhead.com

He wanted to bring Indian kids back to their roots and joined India Book House, one of the leading publishers in Bombay that was largely into printing, publishing, distribution and selling of books. Pai had already introduced the Phantom series as the first cartoon strip in The Times of India and wanted to use this form of visual reading to entertain and educate through Indian stories. And so the first Indian comic book was born under the brand name of Amar Chitra Katha. It went on to become one of the most popular and high selling series of Indian comics.

Slowly, sales picked up. ACK classics initially used primary colours - blue, green and yellow but graduated to full colours as it’s popularity began to rise. Pai and his team extended the parameters to bring in regional languages - beginning with translations in Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, and Telugu and further into Bengali, Assamese, Malayalam, Punjabi, Tamil, Urdu and even Sanskrit. It reached beyond its initial target of a middle-class readership to transcend class barriers and reach the upper class children. As ACK reached its 20th birthday in 1986, sales reached a peak of 5 crore copies, and then only two years later, a whopping 7 crores.

Related: Walking BookFairs: A Unique Initiative For Bibliophiles

Frequency also went from one classic every month to to one every fortnight around 1980. This was when IBH also launched its comic magazine Tinkle, that caught the reading fancy of all children at the time. The language used was simple, straightforward, and easy to understand by children not studying in English medium schools.

An entire generation isn’t even aware of this. Image source: amarchitrakatha.com

Amar Chitra Katha opened doors to an alternative visual culture that strived to adhere to its Indian roots. Yet, like all mothers everywhere, I would not allow my daughter to devour the comic books she was slowly getting addicted to. “It will take you away from your studies,” was my boring refrain. Scared of being stopped from reading what she had grown to love, she handed me an issue of Tinkle and asked me to read it. Tinkle was a weekly comic magazine brought out by the same publication – India Book House and the same man. I was bowled over. It was informative, funny, entertaining and carried a message and amusing adventures of the characters. It took me to one story from the ACK series, Ganga and I became a child all over again. I bought my daughter an annual subscription for Tinkle and, separated by a generation, we enjoyed the stories that could be read over and over again.

A position adopted by politicians today? Image source: wishberry.com

Chandamama, another magazine along the same lines, began to create and publish stories adapted from the Indian mythologies such as Ramayana and Mahabharata in 1947, just before Independence. In publication to this day, the magazine and its illustrations are known for its unique storytelling, reminiscent of grandparents' bedtime stories conveyed in print format. This was backed very innovatively with promotional strategies organized by IBH of fancy dress contests, displays in petrol pumps and book stores across every Indian city, launching new titles with press conferences graced by eminent personalities. By 1992, ACK classics were published and sold in 38 Indian and non-Indian languages by which time, Anant Pai had evolved into the children’s icon “Uncle Pai.”

Related: An Afternoon With An Author: Stephen Alter

Not surprisingly, these books started facing a lot of flak from sociologists, cultural historians, comic specialists and so on. This critique is an on-going process of sometimes making mincemeat of the series or questioning its authenticity or pointing out its pro-Hindu, anti-minority and extremely patriarchal bias as far as the representation of women characters go. There has been a lot of research both by Indian and foreign scholars on ACK’s representation of women.

Moot points were, women are conspicuous by their complete absence from the story and the illustrations such as Chandragupta Maurya or many of the Birbal stories. However, there were women protagonists in classics featuring Ganga, Draupadi, Shakuntala, Savitri, Vasavdatta, Mirabai, Padmini, Tarabai, Rani of Jhansi, Uloopi, Chand Bibi, Urvashi, Sukanya and many others. Another noticeable absence was in the Makers of Modern India series of 13 personalities that does not feature a single woman, though India has had many women leaders who should have found place among these makers. Leaders like Indira Gandhi and Sarojini Naidu are not part of this series and Kalpana Chawla was an afterthought. The same absence is noticed in the visibility of Muslim and Sikh leaders.

Rohan Islam, a Bengali literature scholar, in a detailed analysis raises questions about the ACK series that mark out sharp differences between “they” and “we”, “bad” and “good”, “us” and “them”. Islam also draws our attention to the Brahmin-Hindu-Male that takes precedence over Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and of course, women. He states quite assertively that the equations drawn between the Hindu identity and the National identity are quite sharply underlined.

Making History lessons fun. Image source: Amazon.com

Related: A Hospital For The Ageing Typewriter

This leaves us with questions. Why must we always place an entertaining comic series for children with informative stories on our culture, leadership, freedom struggle by contextualising it against the changing history and politics of changing times? Can one deny the historical significance of a classic series that has stood the test of time and space for four long decades? Can we deny ourselves the joy we got going through those stories and wonderful illustrations that took children away from their exams and more serious books? Take away the political, patriarchal and communal biases, which do not appear pronounced while we are reading purely for entertainment and information, and what we have is a harmonious ride into our cultural past.

Uncle Pai is no more. Long live uncle Pai. And with the magic between the yellowed pages of an antique Amar Chitra Katha, we can all live happily ever after. Or, can we?

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are independent views solely of the author(s) expressed in their private capacity and do not in any way represent or reflect the views of 101India.com

By Shoma A. Chatterji Cover photo credit: Amazon.com

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First-time MP from Odisha's Balasore, Pratap Sarangi takes cost as Minister of State in MSME and Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries ministries

http://tinyurl.com/yyf7z9xn New Delhi: For 64-year-old Pratap Sarangi, who as soon as nurtured the need to be a monk and lives an austere life, his arduous work and dedication to individuals seem to have earned him a berth within the new Narendra Modi Authorities. Sarangi took oath on Thursday as a Minister of State. On Friday, he took cost as Minsiter of State within the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises and Minister of State within the Ministry of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries. The BJP chief, who has had a protracted associating with the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh, made his maiden entry to Lok Sabha by successful from Odisha’s Balasore constituency defeating sitting BJD MP and industrialist Rabindra Kumar Jena by 12,956 votes within the current Lok Sabha polls. Pratap Sarangi takes oath as Minister of State. ANI A nationwide government member of BJP, Sarangi was elected to Odisha Meeting twice in 2004 and 2009 from Nilagiri constituency in Balasore district. He had additionally contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Balasore constituency however confronted defeat.Nevertheless, Sarangi’s affiliation with energetic politics and electoral victories has not affected his life-style as he continues to dwell in a mud and bamboo home and rides a bicycle to most locations, even throughout his earlier ballot campaigns. He has devoted his life to social work and uplift of the poor and lives like an ascetic.The primary-time parliamentarian, who’s being fondly referred to as as ‘Odisha’s Modi’, has already created a buzz in social media the place photographs present him in his modest home and bathing on the village effectively.A bachelor, Sarangi is alleged to be spending the main portion of his MLA pension to assist training of poor kids in his space.After graduating from Fakir Mohan Faculty in Balasore, the firebrand chief, who’s fluent in Sanskrit, wished to develop into a monk of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission however the math inspired him to have interaction himself in social work as an alternative.Thereafter, he began serving individuals in and round his village and received related to RSS and VHP.The Balasore MP is credited with opening a lot of faculties for the poor kids within the tribal and distant areas of Mayurbhanj and Balasore districts of the state which have been devoid of academic amenities.Sarangi has additionally functioned because the Odisha unit president of Bajrang Dal and spearheaded a motion for the safety of cows.Within the run as much as the current elections, Sarangi adopted his personal type of campaigning, which was in sharp distinction to that of his rivals who had employed skilled businesses and marketing campaign managers.Sarangi relied on celebration employees and moved round in an autorickshaw. The newly elected lawmaker is agency that his new standing as parliamentarian is not going to change his life-style as he believes in working for the individuals and serving the nation. !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function() {n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)} ; if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,document,'script', 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '259288058299626'); fbq('track', 'PageView'); (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "http://connect.facebook.net/en_GB/all.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.9&appId=1117108234997285"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); window.fbAsyncInit = function () { FB.init({appId: '1117108234997285', version: 2.4, xfbml: true}); // *** here is my code *** if (typeof facebookInit == 'function') { facebookInit(); } }; (function () { var e = document.createElement('script'); e.src = document.location.protocol + '//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js'; e.async = true; document.getElementById('fb-root').appendChild(e); }()); function facebookInit() { console.log('Found FB: Loading comments.'); FB.XFBML.parse(); } Source link

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The Forum, 1908

Page 113: The novel in its modern form is a conception of more unity of form and purpose than anything that the classic world conceived. Yet realism, in its fidelity to evil and good alike, to the little significant trifles as well as the momentous crises, was not an invention of Zola. It was already understood and applied with forceful irony in the ‘Satiroe’ of Petronius. The Beast Story, from its early literary development in the ‘Hitopadeça,’ down through ‘Aesop’ and La Fontaine to Kipling, is in the ‘Jungle Books’ different only in degree, but still essentially te same in kind. Indeed, the whole cycle of Mowgli stories are nearer in spirit to their Sanskrit prototypes than to the work of the great French fabulist. But whatever the type of fiction, whether realistic novel or picaresque romance or simple beast fable, the same general tendency is observable—a natural and logical tendency to keep pace with civilization, to become more careful of the truth, in proportion as the rating public becomes more sophisticated. And this increased respect for the truth on the part of the novelist is not a matter of ethics, but of self-preservation. Page 120: The structure of the story is of the simplest; ;but the style is ever possessed of a certain quaint charm, all the more grateful in these days of strenuous haste, because it is throughout so leisurely. The author seems never so pressed for time that he cannot digress in picaresque fashion, to weave in some extraneous tale, or stand and watch a well-contested fight, a hard-earned race. Indeed, the story is throughout subordinated to the panorama of life all the time unfolding in the background. Fanshawe himself is a not unworthy hero; but what interests you chiefly is the sense you get of having for the time being looked back upon the changing stream of human activity, as it swept along the highways and byways of rural England a century ago. But to be enjoyed, it is a book that must be read at leisure, and when you are in a congenial mood. Page 534: But, writing on the plan, Professor Chandler has turned out a very complete and admirable piece of synthetic work. His research has been so exhaustive that one is a little aghast at realizing the degree in which rascality in one form or another has been the theme of literary production. It is undoubtedly true that general histories of literature are deficient in their consideration of the picaresque output—especially the criminal biographies, the jest and beggar books, the conny-catching pamphlets, the prison tracts and repentances, and even the tramp and burglar literature of the present day. About all of these the author gives an amount of information that would be very difficult to gather elsewhere. ……. The real literature of roguery arose in Spain in the middle of the 16th century with the ‘Life of Lazarillo de Tormes.’ This celebrated character was introduced to the world in 1554, when the ear of Spanish decadence had already begun, and the ideals of chivalry were rapidly being given up. “The disdain for patient labor made room for easy cheating, and the lack of bread more and more enforced it.” The authorship of the epoch-making book is assigned on doubtful grounds to the poet-statesman, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. Lazarillo is the prototype of the true picaro. He is “an anti-hero who makes his way in the world through the service of masters, satirizing their personal faults, as well as their trades and professions.” The picaresque narrative possesses “two poles of interest—one, the rogue and his tricks, the other the manner he pillories.” In its development the literature of roguery lost much of its original character. We soon find the rogue ascending the social scale; he becomes a person of family and a gallant adventurer—a master with a scheming valet of his own to continue the old tradition. For over a century the picaresque narrative had tremendous vogue in Spain. But the vein was finally worked out. Meanwhile the tradition had passed into France and by 1630 had been firmly implanted. Page 535: Le Sage’s masterpiece [Gil Blas, 1715] was the great distributer of picaresque influence and England felt its full effect. We go far back for picaresque origins in England—there is plenty of such material in the early Chronicles, plenty of roguery in Chaucer. Its literature was a powerful factor in forming the primitive drama, for which such legendary rascals as Robin Hood, Robin Goodfellow and Friar Rush were copious sources of supply. But in the creation of the 18th century novel foreign picaresque sources were plentifully drawn upon. The development of the novel, however, was so rapid and expansive that French and Spanish influences quickly disappeared. Daniel Defoe was the first to reject the chief characteristic of the true picaresque type—“the story for the story’s sake—independent of the conditions of actual life.” “The contrast between ‘The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders’ and early picaresque fiction,” says the author, “is remarkable. … Defoe at a blow changed a comic and satirical fiction to one, in a sense, of character. He showed the decline of a soul from innocence to knowledge, temptation and sin, and then its rise by virtue of repentance from distress through honesty to prosperity and calm. … He surpasses Le Sage in adhering to unity of character. … In ‘Moll Flanders,’ and to a less extent in ��Colonel Jacque,’ Defoe has struck the keynote of the modern novel. He has partially subordinated incident to character.” From now on the picaresque element gradually waned. It had been useful, but fiction as a finer art had now no need for it as such. The libertinism of Richardson’s heroes bears no resemblance to the love affairs of the Spanish rogues. Fielding’s characters are never truly picaresque. Tom Jones is a “compromise between the picaro and the hero, intended by his creator to set forth humanity in the average.” Smollett did indeed take the traditional rogue as a model, but he rarely used him with success. Page 536: Sterne never drew a rogue. A new use of picaresque material was disclosed by William Godwin in ‘Things as They are, or the Adventures of Caleb Williams.’ This, as Professor Chandler explains it, is not a novel of intrigue, adventure or manners. “The attack upon social conditions and the study of character are its aims.” The influence of this book extended well into a later age, and served as a model for the reformative novels of Bulwer-Lytton. The picaresque factor in the creation of the modern novel is unquestionably important, for it is one of the main sources of the element of pure entertainment and therefore deserves the consideration here given. But it would seem as if the author has injured the just proportions of his work and risked the weariness of his reader by his academic description of the many rascally characters that stalk through the pages of the great 19th century novelists. The rogue has now quite lost the true picaresque character and his place is of minor account. Scott and his imitators made of him a truly romantic creature, as did George Borrow, that strange mixture of deep religious feeling and sentimental sympathy for rascality. Bulwer-Lytton used him to preach the inconsistencies in our social system. Dickens, “inserting the tradition of Smollett and Egan and profiting by the reformative purpose of Godwin and Bulwer, first combined the two tendencies, studying rogues as individuals and also as social phenomena.” Thackeray burlesqued roguery at first, but later turned to ironical treatment—and even to direct abuse. Page 537: In 1548 William Copland’s translation of ’Til Eulenspiegel’ was published, and this properly started the fashion for jest-books. They were numerous and popular until well into the 17th century, when, owing to their character coming purely impersonal, they ceased to be regarded as fiction. The same period witnessed the appearance of the first attempts to chronicle picaresque manners and speech, a form of literary effort that has developed into the great work of Farmer and Henley, ‘Slang and its Analogies Past and Present’ (1890-96), which “professes to give an historical and comparative account ‘of the heterodox speech of all classes of society for more than three hundred years, with synonyms in English, French, German and Italian.’” ……. A large class of picaresque literature was the result of the social misrule under which England suffered in the early part of the 18th century. The criminal biographies, short and long, and the Newgate and other chronicles of crime, were typical products of the times. The careers of such rascals as Jonathan Wild, Captain Avery, Cartouche, the famous French picaro, and Jack Sheppard, inspired Defoe and others to write of them in a manner that throws a truly romantic glamour upon the sordid details of their lives. Until about 1730 these criminal biographies appeared in pamphlet form, but their popularity waned and they were soon expanded into lengthy biographies, the first of which dealt with the exploits of the famous Bampfylde-Moore Carew. These works have a special interest for the student of literature, for Daniel Defoe applied his great philosophic knowledge of human nature to their low-life realism and so produced the first crude specimens of the English novel.

[afishtrap]

The concept of the ‘medieval’ in South Asia has been a long and contested one. From its origins among colonial administrators to its present-day habitation in educational institutions, the study of the medieval in South Asia has been vexed by issues of chronological uncertainty, obscurantism, communal distortion and heavy model building. Though introduced to India during the colonial encounter, the idea of the medieval, and the periodization upon which it rests, quickly became essential chronological attributes of the nation and the presupposition of its sovereignty.1 Recently, after weathering the storms of anthropological civilizationalism, ethno-history and subalternism, South Asia before colonialism has seen renewed interest. This has in part been connected to innovative work in eighteenth-century history and the related assertion of an ‘early modern’ period for South Asia. But the substantive relations between this epoch and the medieval are anything but clear. We find ourselves in the curious position where medieval South Asia for many historians ends some two hundred years after when for others the early modern is thought to have begun!

Daud Ali. "The idea of the medieval in the writing of South Asian history: contexts, methods and politics." Social History, 2014 Vol. 39, No. 3, 382–407.

To make sense of the myriad dynasties and lineages discovered in the sources, Orientalists, company administrators and historians had divided the past either into civilizational ages, including the concept of the ‘golden age’, or into the apparently more descriptive categories of ‘Hindu’, ‘Muslim’ and ‘British’. Monstuart Elphinstone in his 1841 History of India, following Mill before him, divided India neatly into ‘Hindu’ and ‘Mahometan’ periods, reasoning that India’s ‘sequestered’ ways were for the first time truly disturbed by the coming of Islam to the subcontinent.9 By the early decades of the twentieth century, both colonial and nationalist historians had begun to map the tripartite scheme of ‘ancient’, ‘medieval’ and ‘modern’ on to the latter framework. The rise of nationalist sentiment meant that a number of complex ideological inflections came to bear on this periodization. Among these was a tendency to construct, drawing on earlier Orientalist scholarship, a ‘glorious age’, which acted as an originary moment in historical narratives. While there were differences among writers as to what empire or sub-period should hold this honour (typically the Mauryan or Gupta empires), an inevitable corollary of this idea was an ensuing period of political, economic and cultural decline, deemed as a ‘dark’, ‘ominous’ or, at best, ‘difficult’, period of national history. For many mainstream and right of centre scholars, the Turkish conquests and establishment of the Delhi Sultanate between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, seen in historiography to herald a ‘Muslim’ or ‘medieval’ period, provided a convenient watershed. In his preface to volume five of the twelve-volume avowedly nationalist History and Culture of the Indian People, K. M. Munshi proposed an even earlier date for the commencement of medieval India: ‘AD 1000 was a fateful year for India. In that year, Mahmud of Ghazni first invaded it. That event, in my opinion, divides Ancient from Medieval India.’10 Underlying such epochal ruminations was the growing problem of communal conflict between Hindus and Muslims in British India and the consolidation of a geographical imagination of national territorial integrity for pre-modern India which excluded (problematically) the peoples of Central Asia as ‘foreigners’. The Turkish campaigns in northern India thus became a violation of Indian territorial sovereignty – an ‘invasion’ – and Muslim rule inaugurated a ‘dark’ period from the days of glorious Hindu rule. More secular or inclusive versions of this approach typically attributed medieval decline not to the rise of Muslim power in South Asia, but to the development of a kind of national malaise, which had taken root in India before the Turkish conquests. Describing the situation in India on the eve of the Turkish conquests in his The Discovery of India, Nehru says that ‘there was decline all along the line –intellectual, philosophical, political, in technique and methods of warfare, in knowledge of and contacts with the outside world, and there was a growth of local sentiments and feudal, small-group feelings at the expense of the larger conception of India as a whole’.11

[...]

Empirically, there were, of course, uncomfortable aspects of this periodization, particularly around its edges. The centuries between the decline of the Gupta empire (325–550 CE) and the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate in the thirteenth century, for example – a period of almost 700 years – formed an awkward interim, when the proliferation of numerous royal dynasties throughout the subcontinent could hardly be cast as a period of Hindu glory or ‘national unity’, yet was before the commencement of Sultanate rule – being at once ‘post-ancient’ but ‘pre-medieval’. As early as the 1920s both British and Indian scholars had conceived of a ‘Hindu Medieval India’ to resolve this problem.13 There were geographical problems, as well. The model was seriously biased toward north India, for at the very onset of an apparently Muslim-dominated ‘medieval’ India (or alternatively, at the nadir of ‘Hindu medieval India’) south India seemed to witness its day in the sun, with the powerful Hindu empires of the Cholas, Pandyas, Calukyas and Sangamas. The chronological and regional applicability of the idea of medieval India was thus fairly unstable. Yet even as these qualifications and refinements were accounted for, academic departments were consolidated and established in Indian universities around the broad divisions of ‘ancient’ and ‘medieval’, implicitly understood as Buddhist/Hindu and Muslim, respectively. Nevertheless, research continued in post-Gupta history using Sanskrit and other Indic language sources, conceiving of itself as distinct from the departments of ‘ancient’ history where it was institutionally situated.

[...]

The late 1950s and 1960s, however, saw the rise of social history, as historians turned to new sorts of evidence and new topics of historical research. The legal, documentary and economic aspects of inscriptions, farmans, court chronicles and revenue records were carefully scrutinized for information on state institutions, political structures, revenue systems and agrarian relations, while archaeology and numismatics were used to gauge levels of trade and economic activity. Marxist scholars led the way in this innovation, proposing ‘mode of production’ and ‘social formation’ as analytical models for research.16 Those working on earlier sources elaborated a theory of ‘Indian feudalism’. These scholars argued that the alienation of rights to land revenue from higher to lower levels of political authority, through land grants, a process which began in Gupta times and accelerated afterwards, led to a generally ‘feudalized’ polity.17 Archaeological evidence of the decline of many major Gangetic cities after 300 CE was interpreted as part of a wider economic transformation that involved the ruralization and isolation of the economy to the autonomous village.18 Economic exchange was gradually and substantially demonetized, as coins became scarce, and internal and overseas trade declined. In many ways, Marxists developed a historical model of feudalism which was heavily indebted to particular studies of European history like those of Henri Pirenne and Marc Bloch. One of the notable effects of the turn to social history and the thesis of ‘Indian feudalism’ was to accentuate an already perceived distinction between pre- and post-Gupta India. The idea of an ‘early’ or ‘incipient’ medieval period from the Gupta empire to the Sultanate was slowly gaining ground.

The theory of Indian ‘feudalism’ was widely discussed, debated and refined in historical monographs and journals throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and produced a literature which continued well into the last decade.19 By the late 1970s debates over modes of production, partly driven by the moment of high theory in Marxist social science, climaxed in heated discussions regarding the relevance of ‘feudalism’ to Indian history.20 By the late 1980s, however, some fundamental assumptions of the feudalist model had been undermined on evidentiary grounds. These empirical challenges included a dispute over the interpretation of the land grants and the supposed urban decay and decline in trade and coinage. It was pointed out early on that the numerous land grants which the feudalists took to represent the alienation of state revenues to political subordinates were in fact usually gifts to religious functionaries, and thus did not contribute to a feudalization of political authority, but rather a system of ‘landlordism’.21 The theory of urban decay was seriously complicated by the suggestion that the decline of ancient urban centres was accompanied by the growth of denser networks of rural settlements.22 Whereas the urban centres of ancient India were linked ‘horizontally’ in a thin but geographically dispersed network of regular exchange, those of post-Gupta India seem to have been more rooted in regional context and local exchange networks. Trade did not decline, and new research explored trading organizations and overseas trade.23 This seriously undermined the feudalist notion of a rural world composed of isolated, self-sufficient villages. And finally, economic historians, using methods different from those of numismatists, argued that coinage in post-Gupta India, while not constituting a great variety of types distinguished by issuing authorities, nevertheless increased in numbers, indicating that the volume of exchange in post-Gupta times was comparable to that of other periods in north Indian history.24