Day 7

I am posting one of my older articles. This deals with something that interests me a lot. Hope it does the same to you guys.

In the beginning there was darkness hidden by darkness, all this universe was an unillumined sea (Rig Veda X.129.3)

 

Who were the Aryans? Did they really invade and annihilate the Indus Valley Civilization? How advanced were they? Did civilization really start in the Indian Subcontinent as opposed to the prevailing belief of a Middle Eastern origin? Was Krishna for real or is he just a figment of poetic imagination? Prehistoric India has always intrigued me more than any other partly because I am an Indian and partly because none of the other civilizations offer such diversity, mysticism, and spiritual sublimity. The next few paragraphs won’t answer any of the above posed questions, but will definitely raise a few more…

 

Numerous theories have been proposed with regard to the origin of the Vedic people. Some suggests Aryans entered India last through Greece and Mesopotamia at about 1500 BC (Renfrew, 1989). Another theory is that they came from Arctic regions through Central Asia (Tilak, 1983). According to a more dominant theory among scholars, Aryans were fair skinned nomadic barbarians from north who invaded and eventually brought an end to the dark skinned natives of Indus Valley Civilization. The racial conclusion was derived from the reference in Rig Veda about a war between the light and the darkness. Their language was Sanskrit, a language so sophisticated and refined that they themselves called it Devavani, the language of Gods. It is indeed abstruse how a group of nomadic barbarians could invent a language so spiritually complete and modern in its tongue.

 

According to Rao (1973):

 

…Anthropologists have observed that the present population of Gujarat is composed of more or less the same ethnic groups as are noticed at Lothal in 2000 BC. Similarly, the present population of Punjab is said to be ethnically the same as the population of Harappa and Rupar four thousand years ago. Linguistically, the present day population of Gujarat and Punjab belongs to the Indo-Aryan speaking group. The only inference that can be drawn from the anthropological and linguistic evidences adduced above is that the Harappan population in the Indus Valley and Gujarat in 2000 BC was composed of two or more groups, the more dominant among them having very close ethnic affinities with the present day Indo-Aryan speaking population of India…

  

Frawley (1991) further comments; if the Aryans were a racial type, they were already predominant in India by 2000 BC or they had no real impact upon the physical types of the people living in India during ancient times. Who were these invading Aryans who left no mark on the racial types of India while they changed the language and religion of the subcontinent?

 

The discovery of Dwaraka has only reinforced our belief of the existence of Krishna. The Dwaraka site also relates to the same time that Puranic records appear to date Krishna, about a thousand years before Nanda (~ 400 BC), which is about 1400 BC (Vishnu Purana IV.24.32), the end of Vedic Age.

 

The Western scholars have mostly rejected Vedic Astronomy not only because it comes from Hindus, supposedly unscientific people, but also because it gives dates much earlier than those conventionally ascribed to Vedic Culture. Indians have always followed a ‘Sidereal’ astrology (based on stellar positions). Precision is paramount in this form of astrology which was calculated by the Greeks to be 36”, the Hindus evaluated it (Surya Siddhanta) around 54”, much closer to what is observed today as 50.3” per year. A lot of modern astronomers refute this as a lucky guess on the part of the ancients. If this was a lucky guess, how did the ancient people managed to perform Vedic rituals which used to be primarily based on their calendar?

 

In the words of Frawley (1991):

…The beginning had only one culture- that of the Spirit, and only one language- that of the Truth. This culture was outwardly one of worship and inwardly one of meditation. In time, the apparent advance in civilization led to a spiritual decline, with outer complexity and display substituting for inner feeling and understanding… 

 

Rig Veda not only describes a spiritually advanced civilization but it is written by them too, and therefore, it is imperative to interpret it in the same way. A literal translation fails to capture the information in its entirety which only results in confusion. We have only downgraded Hinduism by classifying it as a religion. Hinduism was always the lifestyle of the ancients; we simply polluted it with our own material pursuits. The Vedic Age arguably spans from the end of Ice Age (Rig Veda X.67.12, III.32.5) to 1400 BC, a long period of time by human standards and it is sad that most of us have rejected it as mere poetic creation of primitive people.

 

We may be an advanced civilization technologically, but we are still far behind in terms of self realization, internal understanding, and spiritual conquests. In the end, I would just like to quote the Rig Veda (VII.52.1):

 

Sons of the infinite, may we be infinite, perfect, oh beings of light, in the Godhead and in humanity. Winning, Divine Lord and Friend, may we win you, becoming, oh Heaven and Earth, may we become you.

 

References:

 

1. Frawley, David. Gods, Sages and Kings. Salt Lake City, Utah: Passage Press, 1991.
2. Rao, S. R.. Lothal and the Indus Civilization. Bombay, India: Asia Publishing House, 1973.
3. The Rig Veda (R. Griffith Trans.). Delhi, India: Motilal Banarsidas, 1976.
4. Renfrew, Colin, “The Origins of Indo-European Languages” Scientific American, October 1989.
5. Tilak, B. G. The Arctic Home in Veda. Poona, India: Tilak Bros.,1983.
6. Surya Siddhanta (Burgess and Whitney trans.). San Diego, Ca: Wizard’s Bookshelf, 1978.
7. The Vishnu Purana (2 volumes, H. H Wilson trans.). Delhi, India: Nag Publishers, 1980.