RE: Cottage And The Butterfly (WIP)
That came out looking really great! you chose a really great specimen too. Brush footed butterflies are awesome.
About the controversy that you mentioned - one of mother's colleagues was married to a shastri (a scholar of Hindu theology). Now surprisingly enough this shastri dude was a Muslim :-)
I remember having a discussion with him about vedic philosophy. He introduced the idea of consolidation of Hindu Theology during Adi Shankarachraya's time in 2nd century AD to me. These changes came much after the birth of Buddhism and Jainism in India. These new philosophies forced the vedic scholars of that time to consolidate their schools and learning methodologies across the subcontinent.
Weirdly enough after that discussion rather then focusing on the discussion I kind of winded up reading about Buddhism. Yup that and Jainism too.............
This happened when I was around 13-14 years old. I went crazy and read for about a whole year before moving on (probably into comics) Even though I have a pretty good long term memory but I remember very few things..... for the life of me I couldn't remember the theravada and sarvastivada controversy - had to google it to see more about it.
Yeah the Brahmans had to adjust their game plan, the Buddhist took away their main money avenue sacrificing animals for merit ...But eventually the Brahmans won and the Jains and Buddhist fell out of the public's favor as they grew distant and didn't serve the community that took care of them and the Muslim invasions, and several more issues we will go into in our series...However, Northern Indian schools tradition still exists in Asia and Tibet...We found some interesting stuff you can't find online, this is going to be a great series!
That and also the fact that some of the prominent rulers chose Buddhism on a personal level. That must've scared a lot of religious leaders of that time because if that were to become a trend it would have essentially brought the shatriya's out from under the thumb of Brahmins.