r/IndianHistory

These are some later Kushan Indian Coins issued by Vasudeva II, Vasiskha, Kanishka II.....->

Is it collectable and are they seems authentic?

Pazhayarai was an important Chola urban centre even before Thanjavur rose to prominence. The historical settlement was much larger than the villages we see today, with several places around present-day Pazhayarai, Patteeswaram, Muzhaiyur, Sakthimangalam and Darasuram forming part of the wider complex.

It was closely connected with the Chola royal family. Inscriptions associate the area with rulers including Sundara Chola, Uttama Chola, Rajaraja I and Rajendra I. Rajaraja I's sister Kundavai is also associated with Pazhayarai, and inscriptions record her issuing grants and orders from there.

The place had more than just palaces and temples. Historical research describes religious settlements, merchant communities and military establishments within the wider Pazhayarai complex. Nandipuram, for example, had a known merchant settlement, while other parts were associated with military establishments.

Another interesting detail is that Pazhayarai wasn't exclusively a Saivite centre. Evidence points to Vaishnavite and Jain communities as well, and archaeological excavations have even produced Buddhist remains.

The city also went by several names over the centuries, including Nandipuram, Ayiratalli and Mudikonda Cholapuram. The name Ayiratalli is traditionally associated with the idea of a place of a thousand temples.

And then there's the strange part: most of that huge urban landscape is gone. What remains today are villages, temples, inscriptions and scattered archaeological traces.

So whenever I pass through my native, there's always that thought in the back of my mind:

this ordinary-looking place ( it's split as six villages now ) was once part of the political and cultural heartland of the Cholas.

That makes Pazhayarai pretty special to me. And the worst part here is there hasn't been a single asi research done there

So many inaccuracies

Saying CIA wants to make a Christian country in Northeast (his proof is because eastern tribals are christian)

Said Nehru left India, and it was the reason why Vallabhai invaded Hyderabad (actually Nehri remained in India and was the one to order annexation of Hyderabad)

Claims Nepal asked India to annex them, when there's literally no proof, documentation, just a rumour by Pranab Mukharjee, all articles online reiterate it being rumours with no considerable proof

Dude spreads so much misinformation and cancerous comment section, imagine what the youth is learning from. He's almost like Abhijit Chavda 2.0

At first glance, you might assume these are photos of the same archaeological site. They aren't. In reality, they come from two completely different parts of the world, separated by a massive distance. The first image shows megalithic stone jars in Northeast India, specifically Assam and Meghalaya, while the second shows the world-famous Plain of Jars in northern Laos. Different countries, different sites, and a huge geographical gap. And yet, just look at the jars themselves.

They are strikingly similar in design: massive stone vessels carved from single blocks, scattered across high-altitude landscapes and associated with other stone monuments and burial practices. The Indian examples are mostly found in Dima Hasao, Assam, and the East Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya, while the Lao jars are concentrated in the Xieng Khouang and Luang Prabang regions.

This isn't a new observation. As far back as 1929, James Philip Mills and John Henry Hutton documented the Assam jars. In the 1930s, Madeleine Colani was surveying and excavating huge numbers of jars in Laos. After looking into the earlier reports from Assam, Colani suggested that these two traditions might actually be connected, forming part of a wider network stretching from Assam through the Plain of Jars toward central Vietnam. She believed this network was linked to the ancient salt trade. It was an interesting idea at the time, but there simply wasn't enough archaeological evidence to back it up.

A lot has changed since those early days. Recent studies in Meghalaya have confirmed that the Northeast Indian jars were connected with burial practices, with human remains and cremated bones found beneath or around them. The evidence from Laos has also become much stronger. The Plain of Jars is home to thousands of these stone jars, along with stone discs, burial pits and other burial-related features. Dating suggests some of the Lao jars might have been placed there as early as the late second millennium BCE, although the dates vary from site to site.

Now we have a truly remarkable new discovery. In 2026, archaeologists excavated an exceptionally large stone jar at Site 75 on the Xieng Khouang Plateau. Inside, they found the remains of at least 37 people. Radiocarbon dating places the main burial activity between AD 890 and 1160. It appears to have been a secondary burial, where selected skeletal remains were placed inside the jar after an earlier stage of burial treatment.

Even more fascinating were the objects found inside the jar. They included glass beads whose composition points to connections with South Asia, West Asia and Southeast Asia. This shows that the people using the Lao jar landscapes were part of much larger networks of trade and exchange.

None of this proves that the people in Assam and Laos were the same, nor does it prove that a group migrated from India to Laos carrying this tradition with them. It also doesn't confirm Colani's old theory about the salt trade. However, it does make the original question much more interesting.

We are now looking at stone-jar traditions stretching from Northeast India into mainland Southeast Asia, with similarities in how the jars were used for the dead and evidence that these traditions lasted for long periods. We also know that the Lao jar landscape was connected to trading networks reaching as far as South Asia.

So, what are we actually looking at? Is this a case of two distant regions independently developing the same idea? Did a burial custom or idea travel from one region to another? Did people themselves move? Was there a much wider cultural network running through the highlands of Northeast India and Southeast Asia? Or perhaps several different traditions began separately and later came into contact?

That's what I find so fascinating about these two photos. Visually, they look like they belong to the same story. Archaeology hasn't quite proved that they do, but the possibility is definitely worth investigating.

What do you think?

Sources

“Recent research on the stone jars of Northeast India: Evidence from East Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya”
Marco Mitri et al. Archaeological Research in Asia, Volume 31, Article 100393, 2022.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352226722000447

“Dating the megalithic culture of Laos: Radiocarbon, optically stimulated luminescence and U/ Pb zircon results”
Louise Shewan et al. PLOS ONE, Volume 16, Issue 3, e0247167, 2021.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247167

“The death jar: a new mortuary tradition at the Plain of Jars, Lao PDR”
Nicholas Skopal et al. Antiquity, Volume 100, Issue 412, pp. 1050–1067, 2026.
https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2026.10352

“The Plain of Jars of North Laos: Beyond Madeleine Colani”
Rosalia Genovese. PhD thesis, SOAS University of London, 2015.
https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/20397/1/Genovese_3967.pdf

Hampi is INSANE. The level of detailing in each of these monuments and temples was honestly breathtaking.
And the view of the Virupaksha Temple from the Hemakuta Hill while watching the sunset? Something else only.
Would 100% go back in a blink of an eye.

It originally started in the Middle East around the 7th–9th centuries when Arabic replaced Syriac as the spoken language. Syrian Christians kept using the Syriac alphabet to write Arabic texts to preserve their cultural identity and religious manuscripts

(Garshuni Malayalam): When Syriac became the liturgical language of the Nasrani (Saint Thomas Christian) community in Kerala, scribes adapted the East Syriac alphabet (Madnhāyā) to write spoken Malayalam. Because standard Syriac only has 22 letters, it couldn't cover Malayalam's 50+ phonemes. Nasrani scribes added 8–9 characters borrowed directly from older Malayalam/Grantha scripts (like ൿ, ള, റ) alongside diacritics to map every Malayalam sound accurately.

A counterpart to this is the Arabi Malayalam (Malayalam written in Arabic script, used by the Mappila community)or Judeo-Malayalam (written in Hebrew script by Cochin Jews).

Chandel Rajputs ruled central India for a considerable amount of time. They are known for their great architectures and exotic arts. Example: Khajurao temples.

Vidyadhar Chandel of this dynasty was the one who stopped the invasions of Mahmud of Ghazni. He was the only India king to do so.

Not to forget, the Chandels survived the Alaudin Khilji invasions, when whole was ran over by him.

Source: Khajurao by Devangana Desai, pg 40

Copy this whole address for the book:

http://103.203.175.90:81/fdScript/RootOfEBooks/E%20Book%20collection%20-%202024%20-%20E/RARE%20BOOKS/Khajuraho%20-%20Devangana%20Desai.pdf