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Weapons in Ancient India (Bharat)

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Unlike fire-based weapons of current era, in ancient India or Bharat ( भारत ), weapons   were of many kinds. Weapons were called Astra ( अस्त्र ) in Samskrtam. As you may have seen in Ramayana ( रामायण ) and Mahabharata ( महा भारत ), there were various types of astras made of fire ( Agni ), rain ( Varuna ) and wind ( Vayu ). In addition, there were astras made out of venom ( Naga ), intense light ( Surya ), lightening ( Vajra ) and mountains ( Parvata ). Typically, each of these astras was named after a Deity. As an example, fire based astras had Agni or god of fire as the Deity. In addition to these Deity-based astras, trimurtis (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva) had their own more powerful astras . Lord Vishnu’s astra was Narayanaastra . It fires a powerful tirade of millions of deadly missiles simultaneously. The intensity of the shower increases with increase in resistance. The only way of defense towards this missile, was to

Deciphering Indus Script- Professor Rajesh Rao's journey

Professor Rajesh Rao have done extensive research to decipher Indus Script. His research paper was published in IEEE with subject "Probabilistic methods for analyzing sequences are providing new insights into the 4,000-year-old undeciphered script of the Indus civilization". He also rebutted claims of Steve Farmer, Richard Sproat, and Michael Witzel that "the Indus valley civilization was illiterate and that Indus writing was a collection of political or religious symbols". His paper to debunk above thesis from Witzel can be read here . Following is his excellent talk on the research at TED.