#ThakkuraPheru

“In a book full of saints wrapped in legend, Pherū is the man with no legend at all — no miracles, no hagiography, no portrait, no grave — and he is completely recoverable anyway, because he wrote down what he knew how to do. Competence, honestly documented, turns out to be its own immortality.”

“Working knowledge is worth writing down. A Jain mint officer put everything he knew — how to test a coin, grade a gem, price a granary, calculate an exchange rate — into plain Prakrit verse for his son, and accidentally became the most trustworthy witness we have to the economy of medieval India.”