Kapil

“Then Krishna says, "O Arjuna, you and I have run the cycle of births and deaths many times, but you are not conscious of them all. I am without beginning, birthless, the absolute Lord of all creation. I through my own nature take form. Whenever virtue subsides and wickedness prevails, I come to help mankind. For the salvation of the good, for the destruction of wickedness, for the establishment”
― Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda

“Rama realizes at the very outset that it is attachment itself that he has to transcend. He renounces his conventional ties – to the kingdom and to his family – as he leaves for the forest, understanding, perhaps, that it is attachment which clouds judgement when hard choices have to be made and unpleasant decisions taken.”
― Arshia Sattar, Lost Loves: Exploring Rama's Anguish

“The oral tradition speaks loud and clear, but for visual representations we must wait for the Buddhist era, after the Vedic period.”
― Frits Staal, Discovering the Vedas: Origins, Mantras, Rituals, Insight

“Mes Aynak is a remote site, even by Afghan standards. Bin Laden used the caves at the bottom of the valley to train the men who carried out the 9/11 attacks, and by the time the excavations were in full swing the shadowy Taliban had returned and had begun leaving deadly IEDs along the road, demanding protection money. But the archaeologists carried on regardless because of the importance of the site and the imminent threat to its existence. This was due not to the Taliban themselves but to the Chinese state mining company which had bought the valley from the Afghan government and planned to turn it into the world’s second-largest open-cast copper mine.”
― William Dalrymple, The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World