Swaveda
Indian history, plainly written.
A short daily post on Indian history — archaeology, genetics, historical linguistics, and the texts. Plus side-by-side translations of public-domain primary works. Plain language; no chest-thumping in either direction.
Plain language
Aimed at any curious reader, not the seminar room. Sanskrit / Pali / Tamil terms get a gloss on first use.
Tradition ≠ evidence
“The Mahabharata describes…” and “the Mahabharata war happened in…” are different sentences, and we don’t silently merge them.
Readers can edit
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The Wear-Marks on the Stone: How Traceology and Experimental Archaeology Decode Ancient Hammerstones
Experimental traceology and micro-wear analysis offer field archaeologists a precise methodology to distinguish modified Paleolithic hammerstones from natural river cobbles in South Asian lithic scatters.
Rohan Bhattacharya · Oct 24, 2026
The Lexicon of Clandestine Airwaves: Translating the Register of Congress Radio
A philological examination of the 1942 Congress Radio transcripts shows how Usha Mehta translated high Gandhian philosophy into urgent, vernacular political prose to evade British colonial censorship.
Meera Iyer · Oct 24, 2026
The Servant’s Pen: How Jawhar Aftabachi’s Memoir Recalibrates Court Elite Biases in Early Mughal Historiography
A study by historian Ali Anooshahr re-evaluates the Tadhkirat al-Vaqi‘at, showing how Humayun’s ewer-bearer offers a non-elite counter-narrative to formal Mughal imperial chronicles.
Devika Menon · Oct 24, 2026
The Scribe’s Alphabet in the Rock: What Edakkal’s Cave Inscriptions Reveal About Early Brahmi Transmission
Recent epigraphic re-evaluations of petroglyphs and Brahmi records in Kerala's Edakkal Caves offer critical evidence on how writing spread through Western Ghats mountain passes into early South India.
Asha Naidu · Oct 24, 2026
The Northern Black Polished Ware Horizon: What Central Asian Ceramic Transitions Reveal About Iron Age Gangetic Trade
Comparative study of Central Asian borderland ceramic typologies and late Iron Age Gangetic stratigraphy clarifies the expansion of Northern Black Polished Ware and early trade networks.
Vikram Joshi · Oct 24, 2026
Recent translations
All texts →Sanskrit
Arthashastra
Chapter 150 · Book 15, Chapter 1: Paragraphical Divisions of This Treatise
Updated Jul 26, 2026
Sanskrit
Arthashastra
Chapter 149 · Book 14, Chapter 4: Remedies against the Injuries of One's Own Army
Updated Jul 26, 2026
Sanskrit
Arthashastra
Chapter 148 · Book 14, Chapter 3: The Application of Medicines and Mantras
Updated Jul 26, 2026
A note on tone
Swaveda is curious, careful, and dry. There’s no civilizational chest-thumping in either direction here — no “Vedic India invented everything,” no “everything came from outside.” If we get something wrong, tell us. We fix it visibly, with a dated note.