FlyingSnake

If proof free speculations are your thing…

Funnily enough I’ve given enough examples and sources already in this thread. I think it’s better than “I know someone who knows” and “it’s expert vetted research”. I’ll stick to my theory about Sanskrit/Prakrit diglossia for now.

In the end we are two lay people arguing about a topic we’re not experts in and speculating how things would have been few millennia ago. It’s fine to have diverse perspectives! I’m not sure which quacks you deal with but I wish you all the best.

आ नो भद्राः क्रतवो यन्तु विश्वतः

This isn’t a black and white case where “proofs” exist. Indian history is notoriously hard to study due to lack of primary sources.

historical changes in Sanskrit used in the Vedas.

This is just one small corpus of Sanskrit linguistic traditions. It hardly gives them expertise over the rest of the traditions spanning few millennia.

Jains, Buddhists and various other Sramana movements were championed by lower varnas and they all used Sanskrit as a liturgical language.

I have already mentioned the widespread presence of edicts, danapatra, inscriptions, secular literature created for wider public which hints that Sanskrit was widely understood and Sanskrit/Prakrit Diglossia is not too far fetched.

Comparing Sanskrit to the status of Latin in 17th CE is bit disingenuous and a sign of presentism.

Sanskrit enjoyed scholarship since 6th BCE and it was prevalent and commonly used for more than a millennia after that.

The various inscriptions found across the subcontinent, and meant for common people are in Sanskrit which disproves this idea that it was not widely used.

With all due respect, are they historians of Sanskrit linguistics or professors of Sanskrit language? That makes a big difference.

Diglossia is very common in Indian culture and it is not far fetched to imagine Indians speaking Sanskrit and Prakrits fluently and switching them based on context.

You can find minor examples of it even today if you look at public announcements, which are done in Sanskrit inspired verbiage.

The majority of surviving Sanskrit literature is actually secular like Poems, Dramas, science and mathematics.

Sanskrit was widely spoken and understood just like Latin or Avestan, in its heyday. Otherwise it wouldn’t be part of the liturgical traditions of Buddhism, Jainism and Nastika traditions.

Why would Sudraka,Vatsayana, Brhathari write in Sanskrit if no one spoke it?

can travel up to 125 kilometers (77 miles) on a single charge

This would be a big hit in European cities. I own VW e-Up! and it's a perfect EU city car. With it's 375KM range, I rarely charge it more than once a month.

Which “entire industries” has ChatGPT upended?

Great article. Hacking old kindles is fun! I encourage everyone to give it a try. The retro feel of eink makes it special for me.

I wrote about my experience in cross compiling zig on an old kindle some time ago.

https://samkhawase.com/blog/zig-kindle-gdb/

Used Vivaldi for years but it kept breaking my workflows and would wipe out my meticulously assembled tab groups. After few such gaffes I switched to Brave. I really wanted Vivaldi to work but can’t let it break workflows.

Adding C++ to the project wasn't unprecedented TBH. The app was blazing and we didn't have any issues with perf in the project. The app failed for a different reason.

PiZero is a pretty solid machine.

I run my micro-homelab on a Pi Zero from 2018. It’s behind Cloudflare tunnels. It runs the apps i need on a DietPi OS within 180MB and it’s uptime is ~8 months.

All good brother, we all are going through interesting times.

You seem to be in the arena and have skin in the game. Would love to read your blog on these topics.

Mughals palace households were mainly speaking Persian language

They actually spoke Chagatai Turkish in the households and Persian was the court language. Urdu developed independently, mostly outside the royal patronage, and much later.

May I ask what kind of study did you do on the Mughals? What stands out the most for you?

Fun fact: They called themselves "Gurkhaniye" and not "Mughals". It was a term mostly popularized by rivals like Marathas (which is also an exonym)

Ignoring your snark, I'm in agreement with what you said. It is indeed a complex topic and I see no John Fairbanks like figure championing the cause.

I have nothing against Mughals, they had a great impact on the subcontinent history esp during 17th century. However the center of gravity was the Indian Ocean Spice trade network which was the South. This is what the Portuguese and various EICs wanted to connect to. We have records of the vast riches of these Deccan cities from these travelers.

few dynasties were comparable to the vastness of Mughals

The Mauryas perhaps ruled a much larger area than Mughals. Khalji, Tughlaqs, Satvahanas, and Marathas also ruled over vast landscapes, but they are not much known outside India.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maratha_Empire#/media/File:Ind...

Text is Lindy. It has withstood the test of time and it's as ubiquitous as SQL or TCP/IP.

Reminds me of this decade old post (and discussion) by Graydon Hoare, "Always bet on text".

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8451271

[2] https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html

True that. There is no interest in objectively studying history in India. It is just a tool to further the agendas of various parties involved.

The unwavering focus on the Mughal empire by the West, is a curious phenomenon. Is it because they built highly visible monuments like the Taj? Mughals didn’t even reach their zenith until 1680s and were vastly reduced by 1730s.

The Deccan Sultanates and Vijayanagara were more relevant to world history in the 16th Century India. The wonders of Bijapur, Golconda and Hampi would put 16th CE Delhi to shame.

I've traveled to Hanoi and absolutely loved the phở there. One perk of living in Berlin is the exceptional Phở we get here. Thanks to the large Vietnamese community we have great phở, Bahn mí (esp at the Dong Xuan center). The phở we get here is top tier too, as confirmed by my Vietnamese friends.

"Actually…" or "But wait!"

You’re absolutely right!

Jokes apart, I did notice GLM doing these back and forth loops.

At this point drawing these Pelicans must be in the training data sets.

I tried GLM5.1 last week after reading about it here. It was slow as molasses for routine tasks and I had to switch back to Claude. It also ran out of 5H credit limit faster than Claude.

Spandau occupies a commanding position on the wide confluence of Spree and Havel river. It is part of the wider river networks and one can easily navigate to Elbe and Danube. The coin might have ended up here via trade.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/aFfBzWNgnMiCvdHf6

“Each agent gets its own identity from a single domain.“ That too on the edge, along with the futuristic CF Dev primitives.

I had the same thought when I read this part. The $6MM investment on Agent Mail is in serious trouble right now.

yay -S llama.cpp

I just installed llama.cpp on CachyOS after reading this article. It’s much faster and better than Ollama.

There is hope. India's Central Rice Research Institute is quite active and is working on some of the problems.

https://icar-crri.in/popular-nrri-varieties/

I meant it as a pipe-dream that people jump into without knowing the hidden asymmetries. Farming of any kind is hard and learning that specific skillset is necessary to succeed.

Honestly the rice varieties in India should be promoted and protected more. The diversity and health benefits of these varieties is immense.

I grew up in similar environment in rural central India and I (half)jokingly say farming was my first real job. We rarely planted rice, but I have vivid memory of helping my father plant the rice saplings in the muddy puddles in my farm.

I am always skeptical of urban people wanting to move back to little villages to do farming. Farming is a back-breaking and a tough job. You are exposed to all the vagaries of nature. The market forces are also not always in your favour. It is another version of "quit-job-and-open-a-coffee-shop" fallacy.