Time Travel with Francis Buchanan
The Crucible of Indian Iron & Steel
Our research on traditional iron and steel smelting began when we visited Channarayanadurga in Tumakuru District, Karnataka, many years ago, while retracing Buchanan’s Journey. It was a fascinating exploration locating what could have been the very sites that Buchanan had visited. More significantly, however, it led to a startling “discovery”: the environmental consequences of this activity […]
Two Hundred Years of Solitude
Two Hundred Years of Solitude attempts to capture a small slice of the life of a Goala, Hanumantharayappa. It felt as though life had never really changed since Buchanan had visited Medighesi more than two hundred years ago.
Postcards from Midighesi
On 8th August, 1800, Buchanan had visited Medighesi (Buchanan called it ‘Madigheshy’) and its neighbouring villages to inquire into the activities of cattle breeders or Goala. More than 200 years later, we visited Midighesi to capture Buchanan’s mundane descriptions of landscapes of landscapes and his records of people through photographs. Read more about it in Live History […]
The Eighth Plague: When Locust Swarms Overran Karnataka
In this article, Lingaraj G. Jayaprakash and Sashi Sivramkrishna draw upon Buchanan’s description of the havoc caused by locusts near Mandya in Karnataka, while describing the recent return of locusts across the Indian subcontinent. Read the article published in the Times of India, Bengaluru.
South India’s Old Money
Mark Twain’s ironic quote, “the lack of money is the root of all evil” aptly describes the predicament South India descended into at the turn of the eighteenth century. Drawing upon Buchanan’s Journey and other sources, we trace the fate of the coinage of the erstwhile kingdom of Mysore. Read the article published in the Times of […]
Woods Were Lovely Dark and Deep – Iruliga Memories
During his Journey, not far from Bangalore, Francis Buchanan comes across a forest dwelling community called ‘Cad Chensu’ who also went by the name of ‘Cad Eralliga’ (Iruliga in contemporary records). He writes, “In this hilly tract, there is a race of men called by the other natives Cad Eriligaru; but who call themselves Cad […]
In Search of Mundane History
From landscapes to a thousand year-old lake, from dilapidated structures to medieval history, Buchanan’s Journey has opened our eyes to prosaic remains of the past. And there is so much to discover, even on the rather unadventurous Bangalore-Mysore road; farming instruments and practices, cattle breeds and plant species, the making of steel wire, limestone and […]
Amalgam of geology and history
After reading our recent article on the Journey in which we mentioned Gattipura, an iron smelting site on Buchanan’s route near Magadi, we received a message from Chandrasekhar Math, a geologist, asking whether we would like to visit a similar place, Halaguru … It was an offer we couldn’t refuse … Read the full […]
Tales of the Rupee
Francis Buchanan describes the problem he faced from the multiplicity of coins that he found in Srirangapatna – this was a spark that triggered me to study the history of the rupee. Ultimately, after several years of research Sashi Sivramkrishna published his book, “In Search of Stability: Economics of Money, History of the Rupee” (Manohar […]
