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This project aims to chart out common ancestors through deliberation upon evidence, common or similar, found in the Vedas, Puranas, Shrutis, Smritis, Upanyas' and Upanishads of the Indian sub-continent, and the Bible, the Tanach / Mirqa and the Quran without bias.
- Discussions must be supported by evidence or quotes.
Preface
The Book of Genesis or B'reshiyth (בְּרֵאשִׁית) is the first book of the Jewish Bible. It describes the creation of the Universe, the solar system and the living beings in the course of six days by God. The Hindu view of Genesis is more detailed and is explained here. In a highly condensed form Hindu genesis is represented by the icon, Padmanabha. It tallies with the experimental conclusions of science. How did our ancients arrive at such startling conclusions? Was it by intuition? We are not in a position to give an answer to it.
Hindu mythology presents quintessential science as imaginative fiction. Behind the seemingly absurd symbols lurk meanings only a twentieth century person can understand and appreciate.
OM Tat Sat, the Hindus say, meaning that OM is the reality. It is the complete description of the four dimensional Universe and the “noise” pervading it. The three limbs of the Devanagari OM stand for the curved three-dimensional space or the material part of the Universe. The crescent represents the time component of the space time continuum. It is a continuum and not a continuity because the relationship between the components is not obvious. The dot is the humming “noise” corresponding to few degrees Kelvin experimentally observed to permeate outer space. It is an energy dimension not yet understood It had been predicted as consequence of the big bang theory of the origin of the Universe but is not dependent upon the theory since it is an independent experimental observation.
Thus OM represents all the observed attributes of the manifest Universe. The three dimensions of space, the time and the humming “noise”. The Universe may be visualized as five dimensional: space-time-energy. (A recent report in the New Scientist, dated 18 December 1999, quoting Raman Sundaram, Physical Review letters Vol 83, p4690, confirms this deduction.)
“The vast Universe” says Krishna in the Gita, (XIV,3) “is my womb. I inseminate the same, whereby all Beings arise.” The Taittiriya Upanishad echoes the sentiment: The Brahman desired ‘May I Procreate the many.’ He performed penance and created everything, every thing whatsoever . Having created them He entered them. Having entered He became” pairs of opposites. Purusha Sukta looks upon creation in more prosaic terms as a Yagna or ritual sacrifice by the Gods.
From out of the five dimensional Being came the four dimensional one or the Space -Time. This was a lower order of Reality represented by Brahma, the four headed Progenitor or the Prajapati. His four heads represent the four dimensions of Space -Time.
Vishnu is still lower in the scale. He is the tribhuvanavapusha, the celestial Being with three worlds as his body. The three worlds are the three dimensions of space or the x, y, z, axes of co-ordinate geometry. He is coloured blue black combining the blueness of the terrestrial sky with the blackness of the outer space. He represents the regal authority of the Divinity with magisterial powers on earth and regulates the evolution of life on earth.
The story of Vamana Avataar is the demonstration of Vishnu’s three dimensionality contrasted to the two dimensionality of the asura regions.
Vishnu lives in the milky ocean which is the star studded milky way. He lies on the coiled five headed snake Anantha literally meaning endless. Endless are the forms of Anantha.
The coiled snake stands for the helical form of the DNA and the protein builder RNA, the two templates of life. Though the molecules have several billion repetitive units they are made up of five organic bases three of which are common to both DNA and RNA and one is exclusive to each. The five heads of Anantha stand for the five bases.
The Padmanabha icon gives the whole picture. Vishnu reclining on the bed formed by the coiled snake Anantha stands for the DNA-RNA template based Life floating in three dimensional space. The lotus rising from his navel is the umbilical connection life on earth has to the Universal reality. The Lotus stands for the three dimensional space which according to Einstein’s ideas is curved like a saddle due to gravity. The Lotus petal is the equivalent of the saddle. The Brahma on the lotus is the anthropomorphic formalization of the ultimate.
The Chaturbhuja (four armed) Vishnu with six limbs and a human form is the fusion of the two dominant forms of life on earth, the vertebrate and the invertebrate. The former are four limbed whist the latter have a multiplicity of limbs. The most common invertebrates, like the ant and the cockroach are six-limbed.
The Ardhanareeswara image is the intermediate stage in evolution from the asexual organism to the sexual bifurcation for rapid dissemination of the evolutionarily desirable mutations.
The Genesis according to the Hindus may be summed up as follows: Life originates in deep Space-Time represented anthropomorphically as the four headed Brahma and develops as the foetus Vishnu representing the three dimensional Space (supported by the DNA-RNA templates shown as the coiled snake Anantha) and the living beings therein. It evolves through the intermediacy of the bisexual Ardhanreeswara into the glorious form of Chaturbhuja Vishnu representing the fusion of the vertebrate and the invertebrate forms of life.
One critic, B. Dixit, had said the picture of creation presented above is “hilarious.” He had said the DNA structure was deduced in the early 1950s and the above comparison is with “faith” based concepts. The answer is simple. The Padmanabha icon has been in vogue since time immemorial. One simply needed to draw attention to the similarity of Hindu icon to the conclusion of science. I see no contradiction in this.
The snake as a genetic compulsion is also found in the Jewish Bible. So in some way not understood by us the ancients had an intuitive idea.
Project Aim
This project aims to trace the origins of the Indo-Aryan people and seek a relation between their well known Ancestors and those of the Semites-Hittites using scriptures, sacred texts and ancient documents of these communities.
Indo-Aryan Influence in Ancient Syria and Egypt
For an Indo-Aryan connection there is Ramses II, the Pharaoh who had peppercorns stuffed into his nose. Though he was dismissed as a rebel and heretic, one Pharaoh who deserves attention is Nefertiti’s husband and Tutankhamen’s father Akhenaten (1353 – 1336 BCE) – the first known monotheist and probably the founder of monotheist intolerance.
Recently BBC Radio 4′s In Our Time (via Anne) had an episode on Akhenaten and one of the issues they discussed was why did Akhenaten, in a polytheistic Egypt, insist on the worship of only the Sun disc Aten? Was that a shift in theological thinking or a political move to divest the powerful priests of Amun of their power?
There is no clear answer for why in the third year of his reign Akhenaten started the construction of the new temple dedicated to his Sun god. In some incomplete inscriptions Akhenaten mentioned that things were bad during the reign of his father and grandfather, but it is not clear what was bad. This is also a bit surprising since the reign of his father — Amenhotep III — was one of those prosperous times in Egyptian history.
But another possibility — one which is rarely mentioned — is that Akhenaten’s father-in-law, one Tusharatta, was a Mittani king in North Syria. His wife Kiya was a Mittani and his mother Tiye was half-Mittani. The Mittanis were a warrior elite who ruled over a Hurrian population. But what’s special about them is that they spoke an Indo-Aryan language.
In a treaty between the Hittites and the Mitanni, Indic deities Mitra, Varun. a, Indra, and Nasatya (Asvins) are invoked. A text by a Mitannian named Kikkuli uses words such as aika (eka, one), tera (tri, three), panza (panca, ¯ve), satta (sapta, seven), na (nava, nine), vartana (vartana, round). Another text has babru (babhru, brown), parita (palita, grey), and pinkara (pingala, red). Their chief festival was the celebration of visuva (solstice) very much like in India. It is not only the kings who had Sanskrit names; a large number of other Sanskrit names have been unearthed in the records from the area.Akhenaten, Surya, and the Rgveda.
But is this language Indo-Iranian, Iranian or Indo-Aryan or to rephrase: did the Mittanis speak the Proto-Indo-European language branch of India.? That matter was settled in 1960 by Paul Thime.
There are several reasons, but to be brief, there are three: 1. the deities Indra,Mitra, Varun.a, and Nasatya are Indian deities and not Iranian ones, because in Iran Varun.a is unknown and Indra and Nasatya appear as demons; 2. the name Vasukhani makes sense in Sanskrit as a “mine of wealth” whereas in Iranian it means “good mine” which is much less likely; 3. satta, or sapta, for seven, rather than the Iranian word hapta, where the initial s’ has been changed to 'h’.
How did this Indo-Aryan speaking population reach Syria and Israel-Palestine in the 14th century B.C.E? There are four possibilities.
- This group split away from the Iranians, colonized the Mittani kingdom and then reached India.
- One group split away from Iranians and moved to India, while another group went to the Near East.
- The Indo-Aryans reached India and then went back to Near East.
- Indo-Aryans, a Vedic speaking tribe from India left for the Near East taking their gods with them.
Among these (1) is not considered as serious possibility while (2) is the most commonly accepted one. Sten Konov argued for (3) while Frederick Eden Pargiter supported (4). According to H. Jacobi (who believed that the Mittanis came from India), since the worship of Vedic deities was happening in 14th century Mittani kingdom, it would have happened in India much earlier. Jamna Das Akhtar and P.E.Dumont thought that the dates were even earlier.
In fact there are many arguments in support of (4). Archaeologists have not found Central Asian, Eastern European or Caucasian culture in the Mittani kingdom. At the time same time they found the peacock motif – something which could have come from India. Based on this Burchard Brentjes argued that Indo-Aryans were settled in the Near East much before 1600 B.C.E.With all the trading relations between various parts of India and the Near East, dating as far back as 4000 BCE with the find of cotton in Dhuwelia and carnelian bead in Mesopotamia in the third millennium BCE, the migration of Indo-Aryans is not a fantasy tale.
- Subhash Kak, Akhenaten, Surya, and the Rg veda,July 17, 2003
- Edwin Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate (Oxford University Press, USA, 2004).
Anthology
- Both, Hindu and Abrahamic, scriptures mention the great flood. The following statement is, even today, not completely understood.
And Joshua said unto all the people, Your fathers dwelt... in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor, and they served other gods.And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan... (Joshua 24:2-3.)
- The first prophet Abraham (Ephraim/Ibrahim) is believed by some to be the same as Brahma. Mahesha is the other part of the Hindu trinity who is also referred to as Ishwara, Isha. The name Mahesh bears striking resemblance to Moshe (Moses/Musa). The Hindu practise of deifying individuals might have brought about the Hindu trinity.
- Since Vishnu was not born of man, he was not actually the earthly father of Brahma and Mahesh. Therefore, he himself was the protector (Tara) of Brahma. In Sanskrit, Tara means "saviour; protector." It is a term generally used with the gods Rudra, Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma. Even The Jewish Bible says that the father (protector) of Abraham was Terah (Genesis 11:26.) The Bible tells us that Abraham and Sarah were half-siblings. (Genesis 12:19-20.). The Hindu holy books also tell us that a blood relationship existed between them. The Puranas relate Sarasvati (Sarah) to Brahma and Vishnu. Most frequently, she is associated with Brahma. Her connection with him dates earlier than to any other God. She is portrayed mostly as his wife and occasionally as his daughter.
Endnote
This project simply aims to chart out common ancestors through deliberation upon evidence, common or similar, found in the Vedas, Puranas, Shrutis, Smritis, Upanyas' and Upanishads of the Indian sub-continent, and the Bible, the Tanach / Mirqa and the Quran without bias.
Discussions must be supported by evidence or quotes.