Indian History

Guillaume Le Gentil Guillaume Le Gentil was born on 12 September 1725 in France. This french astronomer is credited with discovery of several nebulae and was also elected to Royal Academy of Sciences, Paris.  The lunar crater  Le Gentil  is named after him. Le Gentil was commissioned by the French Academy of Sciences to observe the 1761 transit of Venus in front of the Solar Disk. He was asked to make this observation from Pondicherry, India (Pondicherry was in French possession at that time). This was part of the international collaborative project to measure the distance to the Sun, by observing the transit of Venus at different points on the earth. Hundreds of observer astronauts  were sent to different parts of earth for observing the transit which was expected to take place on 6 June 1761. Le Gentil started on a sea voyage from Paris in March 1760 for Pondicherry, India. By July 1760 he reached Isle de France. Mauritius of today was ...

On 24 August 1608, Captain William Hawkins, anchored his ship Hector, off Surat. He becomes the first commander of East India Company vessel to set foot on Indian soil. He carried with him the letters and presents from King of England James I, for Governor and Kings of Hindustan. William Hawkins was well versed with language Turkish and conversed fluently in that. After anchoring in Surat his first obstacle were Portuguese who were already established and trading with India since 1501 (nearly from 100 years) and obviously did not want any competition from British. Objective of Captain William Hawkins was to seek permission to trade and setup a factory in Surat. For this he was required to obtain permission from the Mughal emperor who was seated in Agra. Hence he started his journey from Surat to Agra which took him nearly 8 months and he reached Agra in April 1609. The visit of William Hawkins to the court of the Great Moghul at Agra was a memorable event in the hist...

If a point of time has to be identified from where the British rule in India started, then it has to be Battle of Plassey. Painting - Battle of Plassey Scene This battle was fought between East India Company and Nawab of Bengal The Battle of Plassey is considered as a starting point of the events that established the era of British dominion and conquest in India. The battle took place on 23rd June 1757 in Plassey on the banks of river hooghly in the state of Bengal (now West Bengal). This was a decisive battle where East India Company stood victorious. East India Company army fought under the leadership of Colonel Robert Clive. On the other side it was Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-Daulah with his army and his generals.  Small number of French Troops also fought along side the Bengali Army against British Army.  Mir Jafar_(left) his Son Mir Miran_(right) Mir Jafar served as the commander of Bengali forces under Siraj-ud-Daulah (Nawab of Benga...

This entire village talks in Sanskrit. From ordinary people, traders, laborers, old and young, men and women - every one - they greet, they communicate, they read and even gossip in Sanskrit. This is every day story of village  Mattur  in Shimoga District of Karnataka state, just 300 KM away from India's Information Technology capital (Bangalore). Sanskrit is an old Indo-Aryan Language. Oldest Sanskrit text can be traced in Rig-Veda. Rig-Veda is written in Vedic-Sanskrit in 1500 BC (aprox). Rig-Veda is the oldest of all the four Vedas. In the ancient times in India, Sanskrit was the language used by learned and priests. All north Indian languages have evolved out of Vedic Sanskrit

Sati is a historical practice, in which a widow sacrifices herself by sitting atop her deceased husband's funeral pyre.This practice is among Hindu communities where a recently widowed woman, either voluntarily or by force, immolates herself on her deceased husband's pyre. Use of force for immolation has been narrated in several accounts where the widow appears to have been drugged either with bhang or opium and was tied to the pyre which would have prevented her from escaping the fire, if she changed her mind or acted on the the natural reflexes. Measures to uproot this practice during Mughal Period Painting depicting Scene of Sati Ritual Sati was regarded as a barbaric practice by the Islamic rulers of the Mughal period In 1582, Akbar issued an order to prevent any use of compulsion in sati. Aurangzeb issued another order in 1663, "in all lands under Mughal control, never again should the officials allow a woman to be burn...