#Sanskritize

[ikuzeminna]

I need your help with a hypothesis!

For context: My linguistics professor and I got into a discussion after a test she did with us, and I was of the opinion that the reason for the results was different from the one she offered, so she encouraged me to test my theory.

What I need

All you need to do is draw a coffee cup (with a handle, not the disposable stuff) and then answer three questions.

I don't need to see the coffee cup. You can draw it wherever you like; on a piece of paper, digitally, in the sand, on a foggy window. Anything works. It does not have to be good. A doodle is fine.

You have to draw the coffee cup before you see the questions. This is very important. If you decide to help me with this, please doodle the coffee cup before you keep reading.

Assuming you have drawn the coffee cup, I now need you to answer these three questions:

On which side did you draw the handle?

Are you right-handed or left-handed?

Do you primarily write using the Latin alphabet or a different one? (please specify which)

More context

Most people will draw the handle on the right side. My professor says it's because most people are right-handed, so they draw the handle in the direction that would be comfortable for them to pick up.

I said drawing it on the right side just felt more comfortable to my hand and argued it's probably because we write a bunch of letters like that. B, b, D, P, p, R all look like a tiny "handle on the right side" and are all a straight line followed by a round one (so "cup first, handle second," like most people draw cups). The Latin alphabet doesn't have letters like that that face the other way, except maybe d, depending on how you write it, so it makes sense to me that people writing mostly Latin letters would go with the handle on the right side.

Which means that I need to know what Asians, Arabs and Greeks do and if the distribution of left and right sides of handles differs from the Latin alphabet group. Cyrillic seems to favor right, too, though it'd be interesting to see if there are differences.

If there are, my theory is right. Doubly so if there is a sizeable increase in a group whose alphabet has letters that benefit the left side choice.

So feel free to spread this to as many people as you like and put the answers in the comments or the tags of a reblog. The more answers I get, the better I can assess whose theory is better.

Thank you for your help!

[giraffecatfish]

Mary Keay

[kanadellama]

cat noir discovering the magic of ball pits

[zarnzarn]

lamb who kills the one who waits when the time comes to decide, furious and betrayed at being asked to lay down their life after everything they'd done, after-

they kill him, and don't stop to see what happens to the body, carried away by their celebrating followers. They rejoice the whole day, of a final victory against evil, riling each other up to the heights of joy and mania until late in the night.

And then Lamb goes to bed and blows out the lamp and the their decision finally sinks in.

what have they done.

they wake the next day trembling from forgotten nightmares, overheating as they make their way through the day's chores, blank-faced and numb. the call to sermon is waved off in face of a headache, as they try not to think about how much of what they preach no longer is relevant.

the week passes in a haze- they unthinkingly leave offerings in the wooden chest until they rot in the summer noon; call out the rituals in Narinder's language and pretend the power isn't fainter than usual, go on a crusade to get their mind off things- except the last is the worst of it all, because the crown's eye is pale pink, pupil fat with power, instead of the crimson cat-eye that Lamb is used to, and there's no getting away from the fact on how silent it is when no one is watching behind it.

how silent it is because no one is there.

yet somehow worse still is-

"hope you feel better soon, leader!" a younger follower says, tucking a camelia into their wool. they know they've been distant lately, avoiding worries left right and centre. "praise the one! he'll make everything alright."

it's like a hammer to the chest, leaving them breathless and stunned, to realise- they never commissioned a statue of Narinder, after all these years. so stubborn in only leaving the crimson eye scratched around the cult grounds as his symbol until he found an artist worthy of Lamb sharing the image of the god of death, that-

no one else except the lamb knew what narinder looked like. they had no idea whose defeat they'd celebrated.

no one but Lamb remembers their god.

..

it gets harder after that.

Lamb isn't sure how many people have left the cult by the time the Mystic Seller's demand comes through, to save what's left of the Bishops from endless purgatory, before their violent shadows disrupted the fabric of the four realms.

They stare, speechless and disbelieving, at the outrageous ask, before it suddenly sinks in that-

The bishops.

The bishops.

They run through the lands once more with eagerness, sword slashing harder each time, ruthless and relentless in their kills. They reconquer Leshy and Heket brutally, curtly setting out the terms when they are diminished back to mortal and forced to stay in the cult. They agree, and agree to keeping their peace as well when Kallamar and Shamura join them, surrounded by a cult that's flourishing once more, waiting eagerly for a familiar stranger. Lamb tells stories around the fire about The One Who Waits, watches the smiles on their followers' faces reappear, the ones who had fled their anger and depression slowly making their way back to the flock, and the cult grows back to its full potential once more.

And then Lamb runs up the stairs when it's all ready and beautiful and welcoming, beams at the Seller as they wait for their instructions.

The Seller frowns. "Yes?"

Lamb tilts their head, rusted bell on their neck tinkling. It had broken the day after Narinder's defeat, the collar finally fluttering to the ground in tatters like a cloth of eighty years should; but Lamb had repaired and maintained and polished it until it wrapped proud around their neck once again. Their heart is beating in their chest, excitement running through their veins. They'd forgotten how it felt to be on the cusp of going to meet the One Who Waits.

"The last bishop still remains," They laugh, joy spreading through them. "I have to go get him too, yes? For the good of the universe and all."

The Mystic Seller... is silent.

"Narinder was not a Bishop," It says finally. Lamb's smile drops. "The Three-Eyed Cat had completed his ascension when he mastered the resurrection ritual. He was a God."

Lamb's heart drops to their stomach, stumbling like they've taken a hit. "What? So what? Can't I bring him back?"

The Mystic Seller tilts their head. "No."

"What do you mean no?" Lamb's nostrils flare, red crown sparking as they take a step closer. "I brought all those others back, why can't I-"

"They were the pillars of the very order of the world-"

"They were fucking MONSTERS!" Lamb shouts. "And what, death isn't?"

"It is," The Seller says, unaffected by the screaming. "But you are the Bishop of Death now. The cycle has begun again."

Lamb feels like they've taken an arrow to the chest. They stumble forward, and then to their knees. "No," they whimper. "There has- has to be some way to bring him back."

The Mystic Seller stares at them. "You were the one to kill him," They point out, and Lamb feels bile rise in their mouth as their breathing gets faster. "Why would you want him back? A thriving cult, an usurped crown, his spells in your hand-"

"Shut up," Lamb hisses.

"-you have all the power you could ever want, little sheep. Your revenge against the murder of your people."

"He wasn't the one to do it!" They shout up at the Seller, despite the hypocrisy- it had been part of their thoughts when they'd raised the axe again and again and again; the resentment of if it wasn't for you-

"No, no, no, no, no," They whimper, holding onto their biceps and shaking. "Narinder."

It is the first time they have said his name in five years. That realization is what makes the tears finally fall.

Their throat is hoarse when they finish, eyes swollen and blood pooled around them, skin already healing back to perfection where they had clawed through. The Mystic Seller stares at them and sways, silent.

"No," The Lamb finally says, and gets up, determined. Walks past the Seller, to the door behind, leading to the Gateway.

They wonder how they never realized. Or maybe they did, and were just lying to themselves that they didn't.

Lamb reaches the crater, with the rusted chains and wooden crucifixes rising out from the fog around it and comes to a halt.

Narinder is exactly where they left him.

Bones only now. Blackened by all the rituals he performed, he'd told them once; perfectly placed, like he had just fallen.

Lamb still has the ointment they made with their first cult sitting in the back of their cupboard, back when they were naive enough to think it would only take months. Ointment spelled to help grow back the fur on his rotting arms, worn to nothing by a thousand years of pulling at the chains and them tightening on him every time he moved in response.

The skull could be anyone's, now.

Two ribs are broken, where Lamb's axe went through. Straight to the heart.

Lamb exhales and shakily kneels to the ground, lowering himself to Narinder's side, careful to not dislodge a single bone out of place, and molds their body around the skeleton in a perverse mockery of a lover's embrace. Violently, abruptly, they want that, so much it burns- Narinder's arms holding the close one last time. It feels unbearable, to have- to have him lowered to meet Lamb at his level, to have him attainable instead of a towering, unreachable, terrible eldritch horror, and for him to be dead.

Oh, Lamb thinks, shaking as tears form in their eyes. Oh, I loved you. I love you.

"Darling," They choke out, tracing one cheekbone. "My baby. My one. My death. Come back, will you?"

Narinder opens his eyes and shoots them an unimpressed look. Lamb sobs, shoulders heaving, gasping as claws embed themselves in their throat- whole, complete, strong, paw soft as a cloud, faint markings on the fur Lamb never knew he had now drenched with blood.

They laugh, smiling through the tears as they push forward into the claws, flesh ripping and tearing as they push their mouth closer to Narinder's.

"I am sorry," They whisper. Narinder growls. "i love you."

"Traitor-"

"Fuck the crown," Lamb breathes back, moving to straddle Narinder to interrupt him, keeping the weight on their own knees to not damage his healing ribs. His claws are still in their throat, tangled in their stitches. "Fuck the power. Fuck the cult. Fuck religion. I only ever wanted you."

Narinder stills, looking up at them with sharp eyes. Lamb laughs around his beloved's fingers. "I only ever want you. What is life without you, Antim?"

Narinder studies them. Lamb waits, bloodied and grinning, patiently waiting, smitten to have those beautiful trifecta eyes upon them once more.

"I promised you," They whisper. "I promised to break you out of here. Let me, my one. My only one, who has waited so long."

Narinder takes a breath, tilting his chin down and then up. His claws twitch in Lamb's vocal chords, drawing them down closer to him.

Lamb whoops in joy and reaches up to toss the crown to the side, fitting their hooves to the last chain wrapped around Narinder's neck, binding him still to the Gateway, and splinters it into a thousand pieces, never to hold anyone ever again.

"Come," The Lamb whispers finally, moving back and gathering their lover up in their arms, still pressing their mouths together. "Let me take you home, Narinder. Mere jaan. Meri mrityu. My one."

Narinder sighs and buries his face in the crook of Lamb's neck as they start to walk away. "Turn back around, idiot. We cannot leave without the damned crown. And I am picking out the wedding decorations."

"Of course, my love," Lamb coos, and leans in again to kiss their greatest mistake.

[erebus0dora]

there's one thing i need to share with IWTV fandom

bc book Armand is originally Andrei, which means nothing in particular (it is 'masculine', end of story), albeit looks like a nod to Andrei Rublev, a painter-who-became-a saint (wiki link if you'd like to know more)

tv show Armand is originally Arun, which is, ok, it's beautiful in Sanskrit

a boy named after the sun, right? RIGHT?

wait for it

practically the same word in Armenian is BLOOD

if it is an Easter egg, it's a brilliant one; if it is a coincidence, it's still amazing

and i am looking at Eric Bogosian rn

i hope the amount of language he can actually understand allows him to know this and privately cackle about this

[canisalbus]

I want you to know that your art is very important to me, and I'm very invested in all of the characters I have seen from you. Also, the discussion about Finnish and other languages having gendered words or not has been the last little push to get me to start learning Finnish which I think is fun.

I'm making this a little compilation post of all the language asks I got. Thank you for sharing, this was genuinely really interesting!

[camilleisdrawing]

The luminous friend(s) of humankind ☀️

[ ID: An Indian-style arch window made of brick frames the scene. Pavitr, wearing his Spider-Verse costume, smiles with his teeth so widely that his eyes are closed. He is carrying a dog with his arm and playing with another dog on its hind legs seeking to lick and hug him. Another dog side-eyes the audience, other dogs are magically floating in the air. There are seven stray dogs in total. Bright sunlight shines behind them all like a halo. The golden Sanskrit Devanāgari script written on the plaque at the bottom of the frame writes: Mitra - Prabhākara - āditya [ मित्र - प्रभाकर - आदित्य -- literally, 'friend - light-maker - son of Aditi, the goddess of the cosmos']. They are the aliases of the Hindu sun god Sūrya who mounts a chariot drawn by seven horses. End ID]

[buried-l0cket]

Id love to see you draw Rem!!!

whoa I can’t believe I haven’t drawn her

[kateblankett]

thinking about how the reason why most angel names end in -el (gabriel, michael, samael etc) is because El means God or messenger of god in Hebrew and how Cas is just Castiel without the god part so Dean by giving Cas that nickname is basically separating Cas from his shitty absent dad and giving him own identity and seeing him as his own person rather than an extension of god/heaven and i’m not saying Dean did this intentionally or that he even knows about the meaning of the suffix but it’s just so so correct and perfect i love them so much help

[asmimir]

I couldn't draw atm bc of school so have yet more old doodles involving some bishop shenanigans- This server is gonna be the death of me hehe

plus, a Nari design, Still have to make a proper one though (and definitely fix where the veil should go lmfao

I headcanonned (however you spell that) that Narinder never liked actually wearing the crown bc it made his head itch, a genius friend suggested a snake scarf- so I'll be going with that

[forgotten-bharat]

About Vedic Scriptures

[upennmanuscripts]

Ms. Indic 3 is an 18th century Horoscope scroll, written in Sanskrit and featuring 29 illustrations of gods, cosmic beings, planets and zodiacal signs. This book is featured in the video loop for THE MOVEMENT OF BOOKS, an exhibit about all the ways that books move. You can watch the whole loop on YouTube!

Ms. Indic 3 🔗:

The Movement of Books Video Loop 🔗:

The Movement of Books exhibit information 🔗:

[achyutapriya]

If you call yourself a Krishna Bhakt but at the same time disrespect the Mahishis (Queens) of Dwarka (this includes questioning the authenticity of their love for him and his love for them in return, comparing their love, putting them down, making abhorrent claims about how their love was not completely pure, claiming how they were jealous of each other and the gopis, making passive aggressive comments against them to even liking and sharing content which promote these kinds of beliefs) in the name of glorifying Kanha's leelas in Braj then it's beyond time for you to touch some grass, read actual scriptures and question your entire existence. *GLORIFICATION CAN BE DONE WITHOUT SHOWING DISRESPECT TO EITHER OF THE TWO GROUPS*

[metamatar]

As the 19th century gave way to the 20th, the caricature of the enemy shifted more decisively from the West to the Muslim. As the desire to homogenise the Hindu community took hold, Hindu Right organisations began engaging with Bengal’s marginalised castes in a way the Left did not even contemplate doing till the late-20th century. The slow incorporation of lower castes within the Hindu fold went hand-in-hand with the steady expulsion of Muslims from the national body.

Organisations like the Bharat Sevashram Sangha and Hindu Mahasabha played a crucial role in both processes, often providing what we can call intellectual justifications for such strategies. If Mukherji propagated demographic fears, the Mahasabha and the Sangha worked on the ideological mission of keeping the Hindu community together. This required preventing restless and assertive lower caste communities from breaking away from the dominance of the upper caste bhadralok.

Founded by Swami Pranabananda in 1917, one of the Sangha’s primary missions was urging Hindus to fortify themselves as an unbreachable, unified community. Such a mission called for an end to caste discrimination and the practice of untouchability. To achieve its ideological ends, Hindu organisations identified tribals and Dalits as their primary target groups. [...] The campaigns, aimed at reorganising the village economy, carried out social work in backward areas. [...]

By 1926, the Sangha ran more than a dozen ashrams in areas of eastern and southern Bengal dominated by marginalised caste communities. The organisation founded Hindu Milan Mandirs, conceptualised on the lines of mosque gatherings, apart from launching Rakshi Dals comprising armed volunteers to defend Hindus against enemies. This movement for the assimilation of Hindus (Hindu Samanvyay Andolan) worked on multiple registers. The Hindu Milan Mandir provided spaces to hold prayers, conduct rituals and festivals, and deliberate on issues related to Hindu society. The young were taught history, the elderly given an education in the Shastras. There were libraries with books on Hinduism and the Hindu way of life. Schools of martial arts training were set up for self-defence.

Through the 1930s and 1940s, both the Mahasabha and the Sangha worked in tandem to fortify the Hindu community as one. Even as the BSS urged upper castes to end untouchability, it also asked lower castes to integrate themselves with the larger Hindu community by giving up their “hatred” of upper castes. These organisations wanted to direct Dalit anger at Muslims, representing them as the primary other and threat to Hindus. The Sangha’s spaces of Hindu congregation, Pranabananda believed, would facilitate organising as a homogenous, non-porous community. They served, or at least attempted to serve, the purpose of subsuming smaller oppositional caste-based identities into a sweeping fold of Hindu identity. Such a ubiquitous Hindu identity, proponents hoped, would steer groups away from caste antagonism and towards building a Hindu Dharma Rashtra. In some ways, the scale and operations of this intricate organisational network resembled the structure of the RSS, founded in 1925. During riots and famines, Hindu Milan Mandir volunteers would rush to the aid of Hindus, collecting monthly subscriptions and food from each member.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

वात्मानं बोध


Awaken to your true nature.

[handweavers]

whenever i find a cool story or character or whatever my immediate thought is "ok but what if this was in tropical asia and everyone was southeast asian"