Indian National Trust for Art, Culture and Heritage (Intach) has organized Sankranti festivities on a grand scale at Hindu college of management and Bhavan’s educational institutions in the city on Thursday. Students participated in competitions of Rangavalli and making of Sankranti traditional foods. The campus of Hindu college of management was glittered with colorful rangavallis drawn by the students. The students have also set Bhogi fire to mark the beginning of the festivities. Addressing the students, Intach AP chapter convenor SVS Lakshminarayana said that all the festivals teach lessons about the environment, ecology and also togetherness. “This is biggest opportunity for us to pay gratitude to mother earth. Youth should get actively involved in celebration of festivals,” he suggested. He said that the younger generation should actively take part in the festivities to protect the rich traditions, culture and heritage of the nation. “Indian festivals are unique in nature and also shares rich culture.

Every festival is a different one and part of heritage. We needed to protect the festivals for a variety of reasons as it makes India unique on the global platform,” said SVS Lakshminarayana. He said that festivals are not merely about foods, but about the cultural practices. He said that Sankranthi is celebrated as harvest festival and it is a festival of farmers, farm labourers and also children.

He said that the festival encourages several healthy habits including waking up early to draw Rangavallis and to share food grains with the Basavannas coming with the designed cattle. He said that Sankranti is a big festival to offer gratitude to the cattle which serves the farmers throughout the year. Nagarjuna university professor Dr Ramineni Sivaram Prasad explained various features of Sankranti festival. Principal Dr Ramana presided over the function. Retired Telugu professor Dr Mylavarapu Lalitha, who acted as judge, has picked up best Rangavallis and presented mementos to the winners. Prizes were also distributed to the winners of Pongal competition. Festivities convenor Kalyani, HOD Chakravarthi, Dr K Lalitha, Ch Vaishnavi, A Bajibabu, Ch Vedavathi, Anitha, Abhilash, N Manikantha, Gopi Srinivasa Rao and others participated. Red cross vice-chairman P Ramachandra Raju presided over the festivities held at Bhavan’s educational institutions.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/sankranti-is-festival-of-gratitude-youth-should-involve-in-conservation-of-festivals-intach-convenor-svs-lakshminarayana/articleshow/106738405.cms?from=mdr, January 22, 2024

A team from the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) Cuttack Chapter has stumbled upon the ruins of an ancient maritime lamp post at Telikuda village under Kakatpur block of Puri district. The broken lamp post was seen in a neglected condition over a dune on the bank of Kadua River near its estuarine point. The existence of the lamp post was reported to INTACH’s Cuttack Chapter by a local heritage enthusiast Satyajit Swain, said sources. The remnants on the top of the dune were found when the place was cleared of vegetation for making a temple. An INTACH team led by Deepak Kumar Nayak which also included Anil Dhir, Biswajit Mohanty, and Bikram Nayak had gone to Telikuda to document this historical site. The lamp post was constructed using burnt bricks and stone slabs. The post had collapsed a few decades back and was repaired by locals using cement plaster and bricks. However, the old bricks and stone slabs are still present in the foundation and lower portion of the fallen tower. According to Deepak Nayak, coconvener of INTACH’s Cuttack Chapter, “The finding of this ancient light post can throw light on the maritime history of Odisha. Information gathered from the locals revealed that there was a pillar like abandoned structure on the top of the sand dune since ancient times. The post was nearly 15 ft in height and was known as the ‘Alua Khunti’. A fire would be lit on the platform atop the pillar which used to act as a navigation beacon for the boats that passed through Kadua river on the way to the sea in ancient days. Kadua, a distributary of ancient Prachi River, was in ancient times navigable and had a flourishing maritime activity.” He also said that the accounts of both ‘Prachi Mahatmya’ and ‘Kapila Samhita’ mention River Chitrotpala which flowed on the same path as the present day Kadua. “7th Century CE Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsang possibly went through these waterways to reach the port of ‘Che-li-to-la’ close to Konark,” Nayak added. According to Dhir, this find further establishes the rich maritime activity that was prevalent in the Prachi Valley in ancient days.

https://www.orissapost.com/ancient-maritime-lamp-post-found-in-puri-village/, January 23, 2024

Researchers from IIT Kharagpur, Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Deccan College have found evidence of human settlement that is as old as 800 BCE (Before Christian Era) at Vadnagar in Gujarat. An IIT Kharagpur statement said that the study of deep archaeological excavation at Vadnagar also indicates that the rise and fall of different kingdoms during this long 3,000 years and recurrent invasions of India by central Asian warriors were driven by severe change in climate like rainfall or droughts. The findings have just been published in a paper titled 'Climate, human settlement, and migration in South Asia from Early historic to medieval period: evidence from new archaeological excavation at Vadnagar, Western India' in prestigious Elsevier journal 'Quaternary Science Reviews'. While the excavation was led by ASI, the study was funded by the Directorate of Archaeology & Museums Government of Gujarat that is entrusted with building India's first experiential digital museum (experiential means the process of learning through experience) at Vadnagar. The research at Vadnagar and Indus Valley civilisation has also been supported by funding from Sudha Murthy, former Chairperson, Infosys Foundation. Incidentally, Vadnagar is also the native village of Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India. Vadnagar has been a multi-cultural and multi-religious (Buddhist, Hindu, Jain and Islamic) settlement. "Excavation in its several deep trenches revealed the presence of seven cultural stages (periods) namely, Mauryan, Indo-Greek, Indo-Scythian or Shaka-Kshatrapas, HinduSolankis, Sultanate-Mughal (Islamic) to Gaekwad-British colonial rule and the city is continuing even today. One of the oldest Buddhist monasteries has been discovered during our excavation. "We found characteristic archaeological artefacts, potteries, copper, gold, silver and iron objects and intricately designed bangles. We also found coin moulds of Greek king Appollodatus during the Indo-Greek rule at Vadnagar," said ASI archaeologist Abhijit Ambekar, co-author of the paper who led the excavation from 2016. He claimed that our evidence makes Vadnagar the oldest living city within a single fortification unearthed so far in India. Vadnagar is unique in a sense that such a continuous record of Early historic to medieval archaeology with precise chronology has not been discovered elsewhere in India. "Some of our recent unpublished radiocarbon dates suggest that the settlement could be as old as 1400 BCE contemporary to the very late phase of the post-urban Harappan period. If true then it suggests a cultural continuity in India for the last 5,500 years and the so-called Dark Age may be a myth," lead author of the paper and IIT professor Anindya Sarkar said. "The earliest settlement period in Vadnagar started at least at 800 year BCE i.e. early Iron Age or questionably Late Vedic period and pre-dates both Buddhism and Jainism. This period continues into the Mauryan rule and ends with its fall around 150 year BCE. After the downfall of the Gupta Empire, large-scale de-urbanisation, drying up of water bodies, famines and population contraction across India occurred", said Sarkar. He said during the last 2,200 years of tumultuous time of Indian history there were seven invasions from central Asia to India (including Gujarat), imprints of which can also be found in the successive cultural periods of Vadnagar. "Our isotope data and dates of the cultural periods at Vadnagar suggest that all these invasions happened precisely when the agrarian Indian subcontinent was prosperous with stronger monsoon but the central Asia was extremely dry and uninhabitable with recurrent droughts from where almost all the invasions and migrations happened", added Sarkar.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/spotlight/paranjape-schemes-launches-first-homes-for-differently-abled-in-india/articleshow/106862132.cms?from=mdr, January 26, 2024