Indian Heritage - An Inquiry

1. Introduction

Indian Heritage - An Inquiry Given the state of the researches now, none can say the final word about Indian antiquity and the chronology. We can only make certain surmises and those surmises shall be nearer to truth when our study is perfect. Attempts to give testimony without study do not conform to Indian heritage and the effort here is – (1) To stress the need for deeper studies to understand the real facets of Indian heritage. (2) Physics modern or ultramodern or medieval stands for empirical knowledge whose form and substance is ever changing. Any attempt to seek the validity for scriptural wisdom (eternal =sanātanam) by comparing it with or drawing parallels is ridiculous. Indian heritage can be rightly understood and appreciated only through collective efforts. Anyone attempting to give a one-man interpretation to meet his personal bias and heredity shall end up giving descriptions like that of the blinds who attempted to describe the elephant. Agastya could drink all the oceans but even such a great Sage could not have drunk the ocean that the Indian heritage is. None can deny the Vedic borrowing from the Dravidian sources of Harappā as is universally acknowledged. Pūja that describes the Indian worship today is not a word found in the Rgveda. Those who make out everything Vedic as science conveniently forgets the Manusmrti i.e. institutes of the Vedic law giver for safeguarding the Dharma. One of which is quite interesting and Parpola has quoted it as illustration of the unscientific notions that ruled the Vedic mind. Manu had prohibited marriage between an Aryan and a woman 'named after a constellation, a tree or a river or mountain or named after a bird or snake or a salve...'. What does this mean? Can any science be delved out? Bias generates bias, parochialism breeds parochialism, if someone is smart enough to make India 'Aryan' by parochial notions, it is bound to meet with a Dravidian reaction. So let us look forward to in-depth studies devoid of bias.... K. Chandra Hari: [email protected]

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India is a subcontinent ethnically and linguistically diverse in which we seek a cultural unity, an element of life and nature that India bequeathed to all. This element that integrates India's innumerable Janapadas or Indutva is its ability to welcome all and share the 'riches' to benefit mutually, graceful co-existence furthering each other in man's ultimate quest for the purpose of life. When we think of Indian heritage, it is not just the great cultural flow like the Ganges in which we live today and describe as India. It also includes all those smaller tributaries and little streams which contributed during the millenniums of our great civilization. No tribe or race or caste or creed can be arrogant as to claim that they constitute India's heritage. None can afford to distort Indian history and chronology to spread chauvinistic or Nazi notions. Given the long timeline of Indian civilization it is easy to present a partial picture or one side of the multifaceted Indian culture by neglecting the evidences available or by diverting the attention of the people with a propaganda designed for deception by anyone seeking misrepresentation of Indian heritage. Misrepresentation of the Indian heritage is sought today towards political gains. Politics seeks to exploit the emotions of the people not only with economic agenda but also with issues of national or regional pride. We have many examples before us as to how the parochial identities conveyed of caste, creed and religion can be successful strategies for tapping the vote bank in an infant democracy like India. Casteism had many beneficiaries in our democratic India, demigods have their empires in democratic India, priests have successfully maintained their bastion in democratic India – our democracy is yet to grow into a stage where the politicians are incapacitated to exploit the people through ulterior agendas. Misrepresentation of Indian heritage is another symptom of this disease of democracy – dubious campaign is taking place under camouflaging banners like Indian scientific heritage to put the garb of Vedic on Indian antiquity through a distorted presentation of our heritage. Deceptive pseudo-scholastic jargon – mix of Sanskrit verses and modern scientific terms – is being distributed among the new generation having little background of the tradition and K. Chandra Hari: [email protected]

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handicapped by their professional involvement to know about the real findings of researches in the relevant fields. Loopholes available because of the subtle character of India's mix of diverse cultural streams and the millenniums old civilization is getting exploited to present distortions about Indian chronology vis-à-vis cultural history as truths. This is accompanied by pseudo-Hindu indoctrination so that independent rational inquiry of the individual is prevented. Present paper attempts to expose the different faces of the nefarious and parochial efforts of an Institution supposedly based at Trivandrum which attempts to make Indian antiquity Vedic and Brahmnical with its pseudoscientific jargon. Indian heritage dating back to 3rd millennium BC of the Paśupati of Harappā is founded on the secular wisdom of Yoga. It is apt to be described as human heritage in view of the prevalence of different sects which pursued Siddha traditions in the region between the Middle-East and India. It was the barbaric Āryan invasion that shattered the colonies of peace loving people, most of them warrior tribes following the Saiva religion. In the 3rd millennium BC and later till the fall of Harappā, India was inhabited by the Dravidian or Nāga tribes and Austro-asian tribes like Mundas in their peaceful settlements. No evidence of any war effort could be seen in the excavated ruins of the Indus civilization. Indus heritage of humanity based on Yoga was absolutely secular and non-parochial and till the pouncing of nomadic Āryans from the icecold Siberian regions, the colonies were untouched by any kind of chauvinism or politics. Heritage of Yoga found expression in their conduct and not in preaching quite contrary to what we see nowadays. Yoga canons regard as sources of Jnāna, Pratyaksam, Anumānam and Āgama – here Āgama refers to testimony from honest individual. Anyone who gives false testimony is bound to loose his merits and shall reap the sin he has sown by such deeds. Many young people are today getting misled by the falsehood campaign authoritatively presented as from a senior CSIR scientist which needs to be corrected if we are to be in possession of our human heritage – the heritage of Yoga – instead of priestly falsehood.

K. Chandra Hari: [email protected]

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2. Denying Āryan Invasion to render Indian antiquity Brahmnical and Vedic Multiethnic and multi-linguistic character of the Indian society and Indian antiquity is downplayed to cast an exclusive Vedic garb on Indian antiquity. Well researched aspects of India's linguistic diversity, Munda, Dravidian, Indo-Aryan and Indo-European dialects find no mention in the heritage literature to facilitate the denial of Aryan invasion. My aim here is not to advocate any particular theory. I myself have been a believer of Vedic heritage till I understood the fraud played on the so called 'Horse Seal' from Harappā by men who claimed Brahmnical heritage and spiritualist notions. It was an eye opener to me as regards Brahmnical agenda to portray the Indian antiquity as exclusively Vedic. The truth of Indian antiquity vis-a-vis the DravidianĀryan debate may become clear to anyone who is willing to sat down and reflect upon the apparent contradictions in Indian history which may be summarized as given below. My effort is not to give pseudoscientific rhetoric to mesmerize a laymen audience and also I may not be able to explain the things in details due to constraints of time and space. This writing is intended to serve as a reference for people who are proud of their heritage and desirous of knowing the truth. If any concept is unfamiliar additional effort may be made to understand the same.

1. The Āryan Connection The evolution of versification and formation of the Indo-Aryan dialects is well attested by studies on the similarities between Zend Avesta and the Rgveda. Differences between Zend Avesta and Rgveda reflect the contributions of Indian soil on the hymns or the art of language with which the nomadic Āryans crossed the Himālayas. In the course of this discussion we need to arm ourselves with some important questions to make ourselves immune to the one-sided mesmerizing jargon under distribution. (a)

What is the reason for the extra-ordinary similarity of the Iranian text of Zend Avesta with the Rgveda?

K. Chandra Hari: [email protected]

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(b)

How the Vedic Gods came to be extinct in India while Agni and his fraternity could survive somehow with the Iranian Pārsi religion?

(c)

If Vedas were the epitome of all wisdom, then the same applies to Zend Avesta as well. While the cultural tradition in India grew with such additions as the Upanisads and the Darśanas like Yoga why the Iranian Vedas failed to emulate the same development?

(d)

According to established notions of Greek history, some branch of Aryans did invade the Greece as well with their art of language and got assimilated into the original civilization.

(e)

Nomadic Aryans remained nomadic in Europe as Europe lacked any civilization worth the name to enrich the Aryans and so the art of language remained useless there. It is apparent that the original wisdom of the Aryans we see in the Barbaric Europeans who became cultured by their contacts with the Greeks.

2. Origin of the Vedas in India When the nomadic Aryans came on horsebacks to India, there was a thriving civilization founded on various Darśanas, an India that received praise then all over the world for its wisdom. Western frontier was famous for its great University at Taksakaśila, the Nāga kingdom which made the term Nāga or serpent synonymous with wisdom. We can find great Siddhas like Kalanos described by the Greeks even in 325 BC, almost 1500 years after the Aryan onslaught on Taksaśila. India then had a civilization thriving on the spiritual attainments of Siddhas like Kapila and the Nagas whose mention we find later described in the Mahābhārata and Purānas. Because of Brahmnical distortions little information today we are able to have about the various tribes of India in the epic and purānic literature. But the great cultural stream of India that we see today minus the Brahminism we owe to that distant past.

3. Conflict of the Aryans and Nagas

destroyed the Ārya-Ksatriyas 21 times and prevented the advance of the Arya-Brahmins to the South. Aryan onslaught took place over various centuries by streams of invaders and in due course of time the Āryans may have dropped the policy of confrontation and started rechristening Naga Kings as Kshatriyas and priestly families as Brahmins. Resistance may have still continued and many branches of Nāgas migrated south and east as may be noted from the names of cities like many Nagapurams, Ananthapurams, Nagapattanam etc we have towards south. To cite specific examples, the Rāmeśvaram temple in fact is the reinstalled Viśvanātha of Kāśi by the Nāgas who migrated from Ahicchatram. Nāgas and other republican tribes migrated in different phases and so today we are unable to frame a coherent historical picture. But the common factor that we see in the cultural life of India is the contribution of the Nāgas, with custodians of the 64 sciences for which Lord Siva or Nāgarāja is the Ādiguru.

4. Aryan Language in the hands of the Nagas and other republican tribes like Yaudheyas, Arjunas etc It was the assimilation of the Aryans and their lingo with the Nāgas, the hymns that we see in the Vedas of astronomical and darsana content had their origin. Varuna, the Nāga King became a God in the Vedas and his clan became an Rsikulam and in the same way Bhārgava-Rāma was made into a Brahmin warrior in just the same way Keralolpatti got written. Even in this evolution of the Vedas, we can see two distinct stages: (a) Period of Pūrvamīmāmsa or Karmakāndam Ritualistic religion of the fire and ghee brought from ice-cold Siberia with which the priests fooled the rulers and the elite of ascent to heaven – the fallacy of which soon got exposed and was abandoned in due course of time. Jain and Budha doctrines based on Siddha wisdom emerged to save the country.

We can see the success of the Nagas reflected even in the Vedas and later epic and purānic literature. One of the centers of resistance to the Aryans was Bhrgukacham where Varuna had his Nāga Empire on the banks of Revatī (Narmadā) at the West coast. Nāga-Bhārgavas

Original Indian wisdom of the Nagas found expression through Sanskrit and superceded the Vedic sacrificial wisdom as Vedānta – Vedas got

K. Chandra Hari: [email protected]

K. Chandra Hari: [email protected]

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(b) Uttaramīmāmsa or the Upanisads

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buried, as the philosophy of the Upanisads came into being and exhorted the people to take the path of Siddhas. Nāgas who were made into Ksatriyas were the leaders of this tradition as may be understood from the Brhadāranyakopanisad. 5. Evidence for Brahmnical Distortions It is well attested in the tradition that Pāninī, Patanjalī, Piňgalā etc names that we see as the great Preceptors of the Vedic sciences were all Nagas. In later times, when we come to Mahāvīra and Buddha too, we can see that they are portrayed by Brahmnical literature as ĀryaKsatriyas, a clear example of distortion of falsehood under perpetuation. It is recorded in Jain and Buddhist canons that both these Siddhas had married their cousins as per the prevalent practices in martial tribes like Nagas. We can see also the legends created in Kerala, Bhārgava Rama as a Brahmin leader of the priestly settlers who fought with the Nagas, a classic example of distortions. Nāga converts to Brahminism portrayed Bhārgava Rama as a Brahmin to legitimize their new priesthood under the umbrella of his frightening name. 6. Indian Scientific Heritage is the Dravidian Siddha Wisdom Look at the Indian society today. (a) Howthe Brāhmnical Gods got doomed? Indra, Agni... all perished and only hymn today that the senior scientist can sing in praise of a Hindu God is about Ganapati. A hymn that accidentally came to speak of some Gananam pati is taken out to show that there is a reference to Ganapati in the Vedas. (b) If Ganapati is in the Vedas then the whole of Tantrik worship must be there in the Vedas. What is the place then the priestly class gives to Swami Dayananda Sarasvati among the galaxy of Sages?

5th and 6th century AD and also from Kumārasambhavam of Kālidasa. (d) How the Pūja replaced Agnihotram in India? Can the word Pūja be found in the Vedas? What a contradiction that Ganapati is praised in the Vedas but pūja is not mentioned? So the Vedic Gods and mode of worship got extinct in India under the impact of the local religion and spiritual traditions but still some scholars speaking jargon to deny the Aryan invasion? (e) What is the Indian heritage that stood the test of time? Is it the Vedic heritage or the Dravidian Siddha wisdom? If India's scientific heritage is in the Vedas, then we must resurrect the Karmakandham immediately and the idols must be thrown into the sea. How can Purvamimsa, Uttaramimamsa and the Tantrik worship be scientific heritage at the same time and Āryan invasion is false? (f) It is the biggest lie if anyone says that Vedas contain all knowledge. Nothing except for the random collection of hymns and the purpose of the compilation was to fool the Kings who wanted to go to heavens. To have the rituals in such manner as to fool the public and the Kings, the sciences then available with the tribes got compiled and used and thus the Vedāňgas emerged. (g) Vedas entered India only in 1500 BC but India has a heritage extending back by thousands of years. Just because the pre-Vedic wisdom got sanskritized we cannot say that whole of Indian tradition is Vedic. Under such a situation what is the duty of a scholar if his intentions are to represent the Indian heritage in its right perspective? Is it not binding upon him to study the relevant aspects of Indian history to avoid misrepresentation of our multiethnic, multilinguistic heritage in India and abroad?

(c) If India is Āryavarttam of the Vedas in which Indra is the Supreme God, how the Lingam and Yoni came to be worshipped across Kailasam to Kanyakumari? Even in 2nd century AD, Kumāra Kārttikeya was the greatest God of north India and his popularity may be judged from the fact the names of the Gupta emperors of the

(h) Is it whole of India's heritage to have the shodasa samskaras? How much of injustice was perpetrated upon the great majority of Indian population by closing the doors of wisdom and religious practices to them? By taking the name of Valmiki or Vyasa and interpreting them today as of lower castes, can Indian heritage be interpreted as exclusively Vedic?

K. Chandra Hari: [email protected]

K. Chandra Hari: [email protected]

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7. Insult to the Indian Wisdom I am thankful to those who have communicated to me about the erratic course that the IISH has taken. I have spent some time in hearing the discourses that are available on the net and it conveys the picture of a one-man show aimed at entertaining laymen audiences and probably the US market opened up for spiritual entertainment. Audio spiritualism is a fashion and a mix up of graduation level Physics and few Sanskrit verses may go down well with an otherwise 'spiritually starved' populace. As I mentioned in the introductory part Āgama-vāni, the testimony, is knowledge only when it is not distorted. But when we look at the IISH contents, we can see that – (a) No organizational functioning is apparent in the contents of the lectures (b) Collective efforts could have helped in auditing and correcting the substandard materials like articulated erratic explanations. (c) Elderly wisdom could have prevented lopsided functioning. Graduation or pos-tgraduation or a so called Ph.D or some designations mixed with few verses in Sanskrit is not the pinnacle of wisdom with which explanation can be attempted for everything. (d) Childish nonsense is found to be shared with audience when the learned scholar speaks of the Indian concept of God I and II, Symbolism of Gods I, II etc. Iconography of Siva and Ganapathi about which clear tantrik precepts are available are given a complete misrepresentation using the scholar's erroneous perspective. (e) Ancient Indian wisdom and Ultra-modern Physics are entirely different things like 'katal' and 'kataladi'. Any effort to find justifying parallels and ludicrous assertions like ultramodern science has found out the ancient Indian wisdom are nonsense that can be marketed only before a laymen audience. (f) Taking the terminology of IISH, let me ask: Can the Ārsha wisdom be recreated in a US laboratory? K. Chandra Hari: [email protected]

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(g) Can the empirical science be equated with the eternal wisdom of the Vedas just because some similarity is found in the verbal expression? (h) If the Empirical Science of the 20th century can be equated to Sanātana satyams of the scriptures, what will be the fate of the scriptures as the empirical science changes in the 21st century? (i) Learned scholar at some point in his discussion has expressed his notion that the Physics has reached its end. The spirit of empirical inquiry can never end – Physics has no end and that is why the scriptural truths cannot be tested on the touchstone of Physics. (j) Breed of the IISH scholar, had been claiming glory for Vedic wisdom in 19th century using the physics terms of those days. Later they began claiming glory for the scriptural wisdom using the scientific terminology of the early 20th century. Then the Atomic age came and Big Bang – the whole of Vedas stood verified with a different terminology. (k) Now see for example what the scholar says about the 4 faces of Brahma. Poor guy says that the four faces are the four dimensions that constitute space-time. He does not understand how ludicrous is such a claim? What if tomorrow Physics shows the world to be of 11 dimensions? Is there any 11 faced God? Yes, he can quote Rudras as symbolism of Creation forgetting that they are associated with destruction. Physics I think has moved much ahead of the 4dimensions and the senior scientist is unaware of it. At this point of time the empirical science and its 4 dimensions adds more credibility to his scientific heritage and his aim is limited to encashing the jargon that he can sell before an ignorant audience. (l) Nauseating nonsense is spoken about Ganeśa describing him as a deity whose mention is available in the Rgveda and his trunk as a special limb. Why only his trunk is special? Elephant is famous in Sastras for its sex and perhaps that is one reason why it became a symbol of Mūlādhāram. Not because of the spring energy of the trunk or symbol of Nature. Ridiculous chanting of verse can be found interwoven in the account to mesmerize the audience and K. Chandra Hari: [email protected]

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imaginations based on primary Physics constitute his account of the symbolism of Ganapati. About Gita, Darsanas, Tantras, Deities etc phenomenal accounts are available in the works of early Ācharyas. Without caring to read or understand the same, imaginative notions are getting shared as 'ultramodern science' combined with Ārsha wisdom. Motives find ample demonstration in the plagiarist commentaries published in his name without the authorization of any organization by the name of IISH. In some pamphlets Dr. Sambasivan's name is given but I am sure that such publications could not have received his consent. In toto, the one-man show is more an unscientific program in the name of Indian science....

8. Conclusions This discussion is just a beginning. This is just a story line that exposes the fragile foundations of the Brahmnical heritage campaign that Dr. N. Gopalakrishnan is doing. He is playing a game to fool the nonBrahmins and to perpetuate his name through fraudulent works like commentaries on Indian astronomical works in which he has not contributed a single line. If we try to know India through Dr. N. Gopalakrishnan then there cannot be a greater blunder. Knowing India and Indian heritage is an arduous task and the contradictions cited above call for an in-depth study of India's past to understand its history and heritage. As for example, in the context of evolution of the IndoAryan languages the following conclusion from a study of the dialects of Bastar may be noted: "The brightest part of Bastar is the ease with which the integration of speech forms has been accomplished. However, we have failed to study in depth these processes of communication. I believe that the processes now found in Bastar mirror the processes that helped the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages to evolve more or less common over-all syntactic structures. The dominant subject-object-verb and various other common syntactic structures we find in both Indo-Aryan and Dravidian, and to some extent in Munda languages, were all achieved through processes similar to the ones we find in Bastar. There is a lot we need to learn from Bastar"

We know little about India's antiquity even today. It is easy to run around with a distorted campaign aimed at sowing/reaping a hidden agenda. But it is very difficult to fathom the great depths of India's history and to fetch to the surface some pearls of truths. K. Chandra Hari: [email protected] 11

Let's not forget that more than science, the Vedic past had shown a display of barbaric nonsense in India in the form of Smrtis. See the 1000 years after the Ādisankaracharya – despite the so called Advaitam and legends of his realization of ekam sat, most of the Vipras in the country had been showing casteism and discrimination in its ugliest form. No science of the scriptures ever helped any higher caste man to realize that all humans are equal. Even now see the kind of priestly frauds taking place in Kerala the most literate state of India. Prophet of scientific heritage is silent when it comes to such tantri frauds and hereditary claims based on 16 samskaras. We saw the display of 16 scientific samskaras in the one of the holiest of our shrines and so must be vigilant about the false claims. See the contradictions between Sabarimala and Guruvayur where the same Brahmin tradition wields authority. See the kind of 'ābhāsam' mockery that is being made of Jyotihśāstram in the name of Devaprasnam. Science is being made into instruments of fraud to exploit and thrive on the ignorance of Public. Have they not studied the science that Dr. N. Gopalakrishnan is claiming to be there in the Vedas? What must be the duty of a Brahmin who has studied the Rgveda scientifically? Why the senior scientist is unable to pinpoint a discovery that will be made in future by modern science? Rgvedic science can be understood only when modern science brings out something new. Even though Āryabhata had spoken of Earth's rotation 100 years ago, the great Vedic Scholar and mathematician Brahmagupta, the son of Jisnu had asked – "If the earth rotates how can the birds return to the cages in the evening?". Lalla too repeated it after another 100 years. These great men of Brahmnical ancestry were unaware of the great wisdom of ultramodern Physics enshrined in the Vedas? How strange are the notions men create for himself to feel comfortable? 100 years back the science in the Vedas was Chāturvarnyam and Asprsyatā (ayittam) and accosted Sri Nārayana Guru with the question: How dare you install the Siva? That was the science known then. Now with the winds of change Vedās have come to show the apparitions of Māta Amritanandamayi that now all the Vedic Brahmins are at Her feet... Tail piece: Udaranimittam bahukrtaveshā: = Vedic Science K. Chandra Hari: [email protected]

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