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Artwork of A Garland of Forgotten Goddesses, Part 2 of 12

This next line drawing created for A Garland of Forgotten Goddesses portrays the sister goddesses Cāmuṇḍi and Uttanahaḷḷi. The art...

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Artwork of A Garland of Forgotten Goddesses, Part 1 of 12

This is the first of twelve posts where each week I will highlight one of the line drawings created for A Garland of Forgotten God...

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Garuda Linux

I recently learned of a Linux distribution called Garuda Linux, and I thought my readers may like to try it out. I am mostly using...

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New and Future Animal Testing Research on Herbal Antivenoms

My research in Early Tantric Medicine focused on early medieval religious systems designed to counter snakebite envenomation. The ...

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Interview with Vikram Zutshi

In this interview with Vikram Zutshi, I summarize some of the key findings of Early Tantric Medicine....

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Sanskrit Transliteration Keyboard on Unix

I have created an X keyboard layout that serves as a Unix/Linux equivalent to Toshiya Unebe’s “EasyUnicode” keyboard layout. Use I...

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Early Tantric Medicine is Published

I am pleased to announce the publication of my book Early Tantric Medicine by Oxford University Press. It is now available in a US...

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Snake-related News Pieces

A fascinating piece from 1904 on snakes’ reputed power to hypnotize their prey (Courtesy Aaron Ullrey) Nag Pancami controver...

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Support my Tantric Medicine Book Project

I have launched a project page on Kickstarter to help me get my book on the Gāruḍam medical tradition finalized and sent to a publ...

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Podcast on Curing Scorpion Sting with Mantras

Dr. Lakshminaryanan tells the story of being envenomed by a scorpion sting as a child, and the miraculous mantra cure by a village...

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Jain Tantra: The Jvālāmālinīkalpa and Bhairavapadmāvatīkalpa

In the medieval period, the Jains developed their own fascinating traditions of Mantra Śāstra, including useful sources that are c...

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Review of My Dissertation

My doctoral dissertation was recently reviewed by Dr. Dagmar Wujastyk. The review is available at DissertationReviews.org....

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Link about Garuḍa Sacrifice in the Atharvan Tradition

The Manasataramgini blogger occasionally writes posts related to Garuḍa. This one is insightful for including ritual details in ad...

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Biting the snake that bites you

The BBC recently reported that a man in Nepal bit to death the cobra that bit him because he had been told by a snake charmer that...

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क्षिप ॐ स्वाहा on the web

The Vipati mantra became the Gāruḍa mantra par exellence by the tenth century. I discuss its early and elaborate ritual system at ...