00000nam a22000008i 4500 20260915175836.0 260919s2023 ii 00 0 eng d 9788195669608 BL1153.7.A96 2023 DDC294.509542 Namratha Mogaral In the Shadow of Ram / Namratha Mogaral. New Delhi Readworthy Press Corporation 2023. 155 pages This book argues that the inscription found in the now extinct Babri masjid should be named as Visnu-hare instead of Visnu-hari since this title does not refer to any god but to the three Gahadavala rajas who had it made. It also challenges that the Sanskrit phrase janma bhumi means Ram's birth place; instead it suggests that in this language jan means folk rather, referring to Ayodhya as land of folk. The Gahadavala temple there had been renovated from an earlier Chola temple at the spot. It was dedicated to goddess Sri Sundara Amman, the Telugu Jaina goddess of beauty & art and devadasi cult. And the so called Ram foot prints found there belonged to the Gahadavala heir Vallabha. Further it proposes that the Gahadavala kings during the time of the inscription circa lOth century CE had become intermarried for three generations into the Ghaznavid and Suri-Shahi families who ruled Samarkhand and the Sindh provinces and formed an international elite. The Babri masjid dedicated to sambo shankara and a whole series of masjid-temple complexes at Kashi, Mathura, Prabhasa and elsewhere were the outcome of these interfaith marriages. During the time of the Gahadavala heir Vallabha, who took the title Prithviraj Chauhan Karpura and who had married none other than Padmavati the princess of Sri Lanka, the temples must have become extinct due to Bhakti ages' sectarian politics on the Hindu side, as all these temples had been dedicated to devadasi practice. RELIGION / Hinduism bisacsh