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Beyond the Sultan's Court: How Regional Languages Told Their Own History

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India's medieval past wasn't written in just one language — or from just one point of view Painting depicting the court of Muhammad bin Tughluq. Salar Jung Museum, Hyderabad The "Official" Story — and Why It's Not the Whole Story When we study the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526 CE) in textbooks, most of what we read comes from Persian court chronicles — histories written by scholars like Minhaj-i-Siraj and Ziauddin Barani. These were the "insiders": court-employed writers who recorded wars, conquests, and royal decisions from the sultan's point of view. Alongside Persian, Sanskrit was still used by Hindu royal courts for genealogies, land grants, temple records,  literature and the mainstay in Brahmanical rituals  — a tradition of "high" courtly writing stretching hundreds of years back.  But here's the question; what if we only ever heard history from the top? What about the farmer, women, the soldier, the weaver, the devotee singing ...
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A Short History of the Bearded Christ

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  A Short History of the Bearded Christ  Images of Christ and other Gods sold on Bazar street side in India. Courtesy: Alamy If you walk into any bustling market today—whether it’s Police Bazar in Shillong, a street vendor in Dimapur, or a busy intersection in Kathmandu—chances are that you will see a familiar face. He’s looking out from a glossy poster, maybe framed in cheap plastic, right next to other gods of different denominations. He has long, flowing hair, a neat beard, and a gentle, authoritative gaze. It’s Jesus the Christ. And we all instantly recognize him. But here’s the thing: for the first few hundred years of Christianity, no one had any idea what Jesus looked like. In fact, if you showed that poster to a first-century Christian, they wouldn’t recognize him at all. The face we know today didn't fall from the sky; it was built, piece by piece, across empires, centuries, and surprisingly, across completely different religions. Welcome to the story of how the divin...
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