I tried to be a Hindu once and still feel affection for India, so when I set out six years ago to learn the history of the world (!) I started with India. Like archeologists, I have barely scratched the surface, but I quickly discovered how screwy history can be.
India would have to be a very ancient civilization, one of the first waves out of Africa set up housekeeping there; settling along the coasts and moving up the rivers, just as we would do. Archeological evidence shows that humans there survived the eruption of the Mt. Toba supervolcano about 70,000 years ago!
Yet the Aryan Invasion Theory said that indigenous Indians weren’t doing much for millennia until some light-skinned folks conquered them. That this is a self-serving hypothesis for Europeans bent on colonizing the savages, (half-devil and half child as Kipling said) is now rather obvious, but it was mainstream history for 100 years. Max Mueller, who proposed the theory based on linguistics, later recanted-but it was too late. The Aryan Invasion fit too neatly with the imperialistic mindset to go away.
India possesses some of the most extensive and beautiful ancient literature on earth. But surely this was imported; the brown people couldn’t have written that stuff. But they did. The Rig Veda was long dated to around 1200 BC-three hundred years after the Aryans supposedly took over. Now the date for the Rig Veda has been pushed back to at least 1900 BC, long before any white folks migrated to (not invaded) India from the Caucasus mountain region.
You see, the Rig Veda mentions the Saraswati River. There is no Saraswati River, so it must be all fables. Except satellite imagery now shows the dry bed of a mighty river that disappeared completely, probably due to seismic shifts in the headwaters, by 1750 BC-right where the Saraswati should be. The ancient towns followed the river bank and, of course, were abandoned gradually as the river dried up. It was nature, not armies of Aryan ubermensch that brought that chapter of civilization to a close.
Furthermore, the Rig Veda contains advanced mathematics and astronomy. In 1962 American mathematician Seiedenberg showed that, “the elements of ancient geometry found in Egypt and Babylonia stem from a ritual system of the kind found in the Shulba Sutras.” Move over Pythagoras, and give credit where due, ye pyramid-builders.
- But enough of this history, how about some inspiring words from the Baghavad Gita? (from 5000-200 BC-they’re still arguing that one)
That which is not, shall never be; that which is, shall never cease to be. To the wise, these truths are self-evident.
The Spirit, which pervades all that we see, is imperishable. Nothing can destroy the Spirit.
The whole world is pervaded by Me, yet My form is not seen. All living things have their being in Me, yet I am not limited by them.
As the mighty wind, though moving everywhere, has no resting place but space, so have all these beings no home but Me.
Welcome Travelers... 