Geography, Peoples and Geodynamics of India in Puranas and Epics: A Geologist’s Interpretations

Written by a geologist who read the texts of the Puranas and the Epics in conjunction with a mass of studies on geological history of the larger Indian continent and his own extensive field work in different parts of the country, this illustrated book endeavours to demonstrate that the narratives by scholarly sages embodied in these ancient Sanskrit works do not represent figments of poetic imagination, but provide – if shorn of metaphors, idiomatic phrases and allegories – the revealing facts and invaluable information on the geography and geomorphological layout, the ethnicity of the people who lived in different parts of the country, the flora and fauna that peopled the land of Bharatvarsha, and the drastic geodynamic events and climatic changes that overtook the land particularly in the last 12,000 years of the Holocene Epoch – called the Chaturyuga in the Puranas and Epics. The scholars of the Puranas and Epics time were quite knowledgeable about the origin, evolution and progression of life, including the coming of man, the interior of the earth, the dynamics of crustal upheavals, the occurrence, mining and metallurgy of minerals, the tapping of natural gas, reclaiming land from seas, and building bridges across even a sea. The relevant original Sanskrit text given in the Devanagari script is accompanied by the author’s interpretation, rigorously tested on the anvil of incontrovertible evidence adduced from scientific studies on geological phenomena, human genetic markers, climate changes and backed up by tell-tale photographs.