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Latest from the journal · Myth-busting Is Sanskrit the mother of all languages? 24 Aug 2026 → From the journal · Research Who was allowed to learn Sanskrit? 24 Aug 2026 → From the journal · Myth-busting When will Kalki come, and what will he look like? 24 Jul 2026 → From the journal · Myth-busting Why is a coconut broken in Hindu ceremonies? 24 Jul 2026 → From the journal · Myth-busting Why is Om chanted at the start and end of prayers and yoga? 24 Jul 2026 → From the journal · Myth-busting Do Aghoris really eat human flesh? 23 Jul 2026 → From the journal · Myth-busting Why is Krishna blue? 23 Jul 2026 → From the journal · Myth-busting What the bindi actually means 10 Jul 2026 → From the journal · Essay Why Hindus touch elders' feet (charan sparsh) 10 Jul 2026 → From the journal · Myth-busting Brahma, Brahman, Brahmin: what's the difference? 4 Jul 2026 → From the journal · Myth-busting Does Hinduism have a Devil or a Satan? 4 Jul 2026 → From the journal · Research Is Ram Setu man-made? What the geology actually says 4 Jul 2026 →
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Essays, commentary and myth-busting.
Myth-busting
Is Sanskrit the mother of all languages?
The claim is traced to one sentence written in Calcutta in 1786, and that sentence says the opposite of what it is quoted for. The idea it is used to support belongs to a different man, in 1808, and comparative linguistics spent the next seventy years dismantling it.24 Aug 2026ResearchWho was allowed to learn Sanskrit?
A Jain logician was expelled for twelve years for wanting the scriptures in Sanskrit. The Buddha made it a punishable offence to put his teaching into the brahminical register. The law books prescribed molten tin for a Shudra who listened to the Veda. And the language crossed Asia to Java anyway.24 Aug 2026Myth-bustingWhen will Kalki come, and what will he look like?
Every generation produces a Kalki, a god-man or an internet prophet who says the tenth avatar has come. The texts say something stranger. By the tradition's own arithmetic he is roughly 427,000 years away, and the vivid Kalki everyone pictures is medieval.24 Jul 2026The reference layer
Browse the whole corpus — Sanskrit terms, source texts, verses, deities, temples and the sacred year.
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