The year was 1290 . A crowd had gathered around a clearing, where broken down pillars marked the presence of an ancient temple, now long gone. A young boy, just 14 years old, leaned against one of those pillars, deep in thought. Then, he began speaking, and the crowd fell silent, listening to his every word. He spoke without any notes, translating the Bhagavat Gita, from Sanskrit, which only the pundits knew, to the language everyone in the village knew and spoke – a variety of Prakrit which developed into the Marathi language. Even as he spoke, one of the men in the audience realized how momentous this event was, and how important this composition would be. He began writing down the words the young boy spoke, and this composition was named by its author and composer, the Bhavartha Deepika – the enlightening meaning (of the Bhagavat Gita). Now, the ancient, holy text, was no longer restricted to the pundits, but accessible to all, understood easily by them, composed as it was, in their...
Of all the temples dedicated to lord Shiva, the twelve Jyotirlingas are said to be the most important. These twelve temples are spread all over the country, and there is even a sloka which names them all. However, as with most things in India , the locations of some of these temples are controversial, with more than one temple claiming to be the original one. For example, there are two temples which claim to be the fifth Jyotirling – the Vaidyanath temple at Parli in Maharashtra , as well as the Baidyanath Dham temple in Jharkhand. However, the most controversial one is surely the eighth one – there are no less than 3 claimants to this temple – one is the temple of Nageshwar at Aundh in Maharashtra, the second is the temple of Nageshwar at Dwaraka, and the third is the temple of Jageshwar in Uttarakhand! The controversy arises from the fact that the temple is described in the scriptures as being located in the ‘Daruka Vanam’. This is translated as ‘Dwaraka’ as some, while other...