The Discover India Podcast by Professor Pankaj Jain: Bhārat Darśan

Percy Jackson returns Nov 20. Here's where Zeus got his name.A Greek sailor, a Roman farmer and a Vedic priest all looked up and called out the same word: Zeu pater, Jupiter, द्यौष्पितः · Dyauṣ pitaḥ. Sky-father. Nobody borrowed it from anybody. All three languages inherited it from one older ancestor, and the form that survived in all three is the one you use to call out to someone.Read the pinned comment for the sources and the finer points.Which other god’s name do you think has a cousin in another language? Guess below.Discover India: Decoded · Bhārat Darśan · @ProfPankajJain#Zeus #Jupiter #PercyJackson #Sanskrit #GreekMythology #Etymology #Rigveda #ShortsProf. Pankaj Jain | Professor and Chair of Philosophy; Director, The India Centre, FLAME UniversityViews expressed are the presenter's own.

कजरा मोहब्बत वाला · Kajra Mohabbat Wala, from Kismat (1968, O.P. Nayyar), sits on Raag Vṛndāvanī Sāraṅg (वृन्दावनी सारंग). Shri Manoj Govindraj sings the raag first, then the song, so you can hear the raag appear.Vṛndāvanī Sāraṅg is traditionally linked with Krishna’s Vrindavan. It drops ga and dha completely, and it uses both forms of ni.This is one of eight ragas in our film “The Ragas Behind Bollywood’s Greatest Songs,” on the Discover India: Bhārat Darśan YouTube channel. The clip comes from Episode 12 of the 2020–22 “Raag in Popular Music” webinar series with Shri Manoj Govindraj, which runs to 63 episodes.Did you guess it before the reveal?Discover India: Bhārat Darśan · Prof Pankaj JainProf. Pankaj Jain | Professor and Chair of Philosophy; Director, The India Centre, FLAME UniversityViews expressed are the presenter’s own.

Every raga carries a mood, and Bollywood used all of them.Vol. 1 picked the best-loved episodes, and Vol. 2 followed the ragas through the day. Vol. 3 groups them by mood (rasa and bhāva): eight ragas and eight feelings. It starts with stillness, moves through devotion, grief and longing, then the rains, spring and romance, and ends with vigor.In this episode:Bhoopali (stillness): "Jaaun Tore Charan Kamal Par Vaari" (Sur Sangam)Malkauns (devotion): "Man Tadpat Hari Darshan Ko Aaj" (Baiju Bawra)Shivranjani (grief): "Jaane Kahan Gaye Woh Din" (Mera Naam Joker)Jogiya (longing): "Keh Do Koi Na Kare Yahan Pyaar" (Goonj Uthi Shehnai)Miyan Malhar (the rains): "Bole Re Papihara" (Guddi)Basant Bahar (spring): "Ketaki Gulab Juhi Champak Ban Phoole" (Basant Bahar)Des (romance): "Aapko Pyaar Chhupane Ki Buri Aadat Hai" (Neela Aakash)Adana (vigor): "Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje" (Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje)For each raga you hear what it is and the mood it carries, then hear it sung, then hear the film song built on it.The segments come from our 2020–22 "Raag in Popular Music" webinar series: 63 full episodes, each on one raga and the songs built on it.With Prof. Pankaj Jain, scholar of Indian religions, Jain studies and Indology; Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Director, The India Centre, FLAME University, and tabla/sitar scholar Shri Manoj Govindraj.Where a song is said to be "based on" a raga, its mukhda sits on that raga's phrases. The antara may wander.Vol. 1, Vol. 2 and all 63 full episodes of the Raag series are on this show — scroll the feed to find them.All 63 full episodes of the Raag series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAvLthebN2HCvSMyUDnY1c_ZhgXrLyjqcViews expressed are the presenter's own.

The latest One Piece chapter turned Luffy into something like a giant ape, and Indian fans everywhere said one name: Hanuman. Luffy's strongest named attack is the Bajrang Gun, and Bajrang is one of Hanuman's names.Bajrang comes from Sanskrit वज्राङ्ग · vajrāṅga: vajra, the thunderbolt, plus aṅga, limb or body. The thunderbolt-bodied one.And Hanuman's own name? In the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa, the old bear Jāmbavān tells how the baby Hanuman leapt at the rising sun, thinking it was a fruit, and Indra's vajra struck his jaw. The jaw in Sanskrit is हनु · hanu, so the child was called Hanumān, "the one with the jaw." Its cousins: Greek génus (jaw), Latin gena (cheek), English chin.One weapon, two names. Hanumān is named for the wound. Bajrang is named for what the wound became.Three more things link them. Look at the fathers: Hanuman has two, the vānara chief Kesarī and the wind god Vāyu (hence Kesarīnandana and Pavanaputra). Luffy's one father, Dragon, is both: a rebel chief who rides the storm. Both have a hunger that never ends: in Tulsīdās's Rāmcaritmānas, after he finds Sītā, Hanuman says सुनहु मातु मोहि अतिसय भूखा, "Listen, Mother, I am terribly hungry." And both change form at will, what Sanskrit calls kāmarūpa (kāma, wish + rūpa, form): crossing the sea, Hanuman grows to match the serpent-mother Surasā's widening jaws, then shrinks to the size of a thumb and slips through.China's Monkey King? Born from a stone, with no father at all. Whether he and Hanuman are one family, scholars have argued for a century.A scholar's quick decode. Which parallel did you spot first: the fathers, the hunger or the shape-shifting?Hanuman's other name, decoded: vānara (link in the comments).#OnePiece #OnePiece1198 #Luffy #BajrangGun #Hanuman #Bajrangbali #Ramayana #SunWukong #Sanskrit #Etymology #DiscoverIndia #BharatDarshanProf. Pankaj Jain | Professor and Chair of Philosophy; Director, The India Centre, FLAME UniversityViews expressed are the presenter's own.

A new Ramayana film is now in cinemas worldwide. Before you watch Ramayana: Rise of a Legend, look at the three names at the heart of the story.राम · Rāma comes from the root √ram, to delight: the one people take delight in.सीता · Sītā means a furrow. In the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa, King Janaka finds her in the furrow of a field he is plowing.रावण · Rāvaṇa was born Daśagrīva, the ten-necked one. By the Uttarakāṇḍa's account, he tried to lift Mount Kailāsa, Śiva pressed it down with one toe, and his roar made the three worlds cry out. So Śiva named him Rāvaṇa, from √ru, to roar: the one who makes the worlds cry out.Delight. Earth. A scream. The film takes hours to tell this story. Sanskrit tells it in three names.What does your own name mean, and does it fit you?Prof. Pankaj Jain | Discover India: Decoded / Bhārat DarśanProf. Pankaj Jain | Professor and Chair of Philosophy; Director, The India Centre, FLAME UniversityViews expressed are the presenter's own.

In Jain tradition, the life of every Tīrthaṅkara is marked by five kalyāṇakas, "auspicious events": conception, birth (janma), renunciation (dīkṣā), omniscience (kevala-jñāna) and liberation (nirvāṇa). By tradition, gods and humans celebrate each one.This Diwali, Jains mark the fifth for Mahāvīra, the 24th Tīrthaṅkara. The Kalpa Sūtra records that on the night of his nirvāṇa at Pāvāpurī, the assembled kings lit lamps: since the light of knowledge had gone, they would make a light of material things. This is the traditional Jain account of Diwali's lamps.A note on naming: Śvetāmbara and Digambara communities sometimes name these events differently (cyavana or garbha for the first; dīkṣā or tapa for the third; nirvāṇa or mokṣa for the fifth). Both usages are valid, and this episode does not rank one over the other.Go deeper:▶ Mahāvīra: the full film: https://youtu.be/l7M4Gv7qc-8📰 The Five Kalyanaks (Times of India): https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-blogs/inner-voice/the-five-kalyanaks-how-jainism-marks-the-moments-where-the-sacred-becomes-visible/articleshow/134284686.cmsProf. Pankaj Jain | Discover India: Decoded / Bhārat DarśanProf. Pankaj Jain | Professor and Chair of Philosophy; Director, The India Centre, FLAME UniversityViews expressed are the presenter's own.

Multilingual navigation is an important component of Kutiyattam, a Sanskrit theatre tradition from Kerala. As Sanskrit drama was adapted for the Kerala stage, performance languages came to include, in various contexts, Sanskrit, Prakrit, Malayalam, Manipravalam, Tamil, and mudra. Based on the author’s recent book, Deep Cosmopolitanism: Kutiyattam, Dynamic Tradition, and Globalizing Heritage in Kerala, India, this talk argues that Kutiyattam’s multilingualism constitutes a form of embodied cosmopolitanism, with each language indexing larger-than-local and/or local worlds. It makes a case for Kutiyattam’s embodied cosmopolitanism by exploring how artists today experience performing in multiple languages, while considering how relationships between language and power have changed over time.Bio:Dr. Leah Lowthorp is a cultural anthropologist and folklorist whose work engages art and social change, critical heritage studies, cosmopolitanisms, post-colonial theory, and the online circulation of biopolitical narratives. She has conducted ethnographic research with the Kutiyattam Sanskrit theatre community in Kerala since 2006. This includes completing her arangettam in Nangiarkoothu, the female solo form of Kutiyattam, in 2008. The Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Institute of Indian Studies, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation have funded Dr. Lowthorp's work. She is the author of Deep Cosmopolitanism: Kutiyattam, Dynamic Tradition, and Globalizing Heritage in Kerala, India (Indiana University Press, 2025) and co-editor of South Asian Folklore in Transition: Crafting New Horizons (Routledge, 2019).An Indian Knowledge Systems webinar from The India Centre, FLAME University, hosted by Prof. Pankaj Jain, Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Director, The India Centre.Views expressed are the speakers' own.

In Gore Verbinski's The Ring (2002), a cursed videotape starts a seven-day countdown, and the only way to survive is to pass the curse to someone else.Indian philosophy has an older name for a cycle like that: संसार saṃsāra. The word is not "wheel." It comes from sam, "together, completely," and √sṛ, "to flow, to wander," so saṃsāra is the wandering-on: birth, death and rebirth, carried forward by karma. The wheel came later, as a way of picturing it.The film offers a loophole. The classical traditions offer none, and the way out they describe, mokṣa or nirvāṇa, is understanding rather than a trick. Schools differ on what continues from life to life; this episode describes the broad shared picture.#Halloween #TheRing #Samsara #Karma #Sanskrit #IndianPhilosophyProf. Pankaj Jain | Professor and Chair of Philosophy; Director, The India Centre, FLAME UniversityViews expressed are the presenter's own.

Every raga in Indian classical music traditionally has an hour it belongs to — and Bollywood used all of them. This episode is a day in eight ragas, dawn to midnight, each sung live by tabla and sitar scholar Shri Manoj Govindraj and then heard again in the film song quietly built on it: Ahir Bhairav at first light, Bhairavi in the morning, Yaman at dusk, Darbari after midnight — with Pahadi and Kafi, the two that refuse the clock, in between.Volume 2 of the best of our 63-episode "Raag in Popular Music" series, with Prof. Pankaj Jain.00:00 Cold open00:27 Ahir Bhairav — Dawn (Ep 38)02:59 Bhairavi — Morning (Ep 63)05:13 Dhani — Late morning (Ep 27)07:43 Bhimpalasi — Afternoon (Ep 39)10:17 Pahadi — Any hour (Ep 56)12:48 Kafi — The season raga, Holi (Ep 46)15:08 Yaman Kalyan — Evening (Ep 14)17:38 Darbari — Midnight (Ep 10)19:46 OutroA note on the clock: the hour given for each raga is the traditional one. The time-theory of ragas (samay-siddhānta) is a convention of the Hindustani system, applied differently by different gharanas — and film composers never had to observe it. Where a song is said to be "based on" a raga, its mukhda sits on that raga's phrases; the antara may wander.▶ Volume 1 — The Ragas Behind Bollywood's Greatest Songs: https://youtu.be/EYEviyo7Ves▶ The full 63-episode series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAvLthebN2HCvSMyUDnY1c_ZhgXrLyjqcProf. Pankaj Jain is Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Director of The India Centre at FLAME University, and a scholar of Indian religions, Jain studies and Indology.Which hour's raga is yours? And which raga should Vol. 3 open with?#Raag #HindustaniClassical #Bollywood #IndianClassicalMusic #DiscoverIndiaViews expressed are the presenter's own.

The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000) looks like a golf film. Steven Pressfield, who wrote the novel, has said it is built on the Bhagavad Gītā. Bagger Vance echoes Bhagavān, R. Junuh echoes Arjuna, and the golfer’s “authentic swing” is the Gītā’s svadharma: one’s own path, walked without clinging to the result.Sources: Bhagavad Gītā 2.47, 3.35, 18.47; Steven Pressfield, The Legend of Bagger Vance (1995).📖 My complete English Bhagavad Gītā series, all 18 chapters: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAvLthebN2HDFIKGhHIuoG93SI8jqLxpA🎬 Watch the reel: [YouTube link]https://youtube.com/shorts/Tohy7UBfChQProf. Pankaj Jain | Professor and Chair of Philosophy; Director, The India Centre, FLAME UniversityViews expressed are the presenter's own.