The calendar, dedicated to the newly-founded Centre of Excellence in Indian Knowledge System on the IIT Kharagpur campus, attempts to preach cultural triumphalism by claiming that the Aryan race was indigenous to India.
An aerial view of Hun-Xianbi culture burials. Both horses and warriors can be identified. Photo: Zainolla Samashev
The ancient Greek, Roman, Persian and Chinese empires all left multiple accounts of the customs and practices of the feared horse warriors that came from the interior lands of Eurasia.
They were the Scythians, whose horse-riding exploits became the stuff of legends.
Still, despite this important evidence from external sources, little is known about Scythian history.
They did not have a written language.
Indeed, scientists are still uncertain about the language or languages they spoke, where they came from, and the extent to which the various cultures that spread across such a huge area were related.
M. WASEEM RAJA
Fiction and
History
Sometimes, imagination
to any retro of historical past appears more convincing and substantive than
the real textual facts, if those relayed into visual domains. It is often
argued that films based on history or historical drama series are out of the
control of historians, as text cannot be an exact match for the visuals
created. Resurrecting an elapsed saga from the past is more demanding when the
reliable sources are scanty. Therefore, the task of turning text or facts into
visual graphics necessitates dexterity, and hence it brings thoughtful
challenges. Films show that academics do not own the past, preferably those who