Fwd: The Hindu Vedas and ancient Egypt.htm

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--- Sowmy <csowmy wrote:

> "Sowmy" <csowmy

> <sampathkumar_2000

> The Hindu Vedas and ancient Egypt.htm

> Tue, 3 Jun 2003 12:08:47 +0300

>

> The Hindu Vedas and ancient Egypt.htm

 

>

> Dear Mr. M.K. Sudarshan,

>

> Namaskaaram. I am Sowmyanarayanan, a recent member of the

> Tiruvengadam group. I was at your grihum the last sravanam and feel

fortunate getting the chance to take part in such an august

gathering.

>

> Pls read the above article at yr leisure. This appeared in the

> "Hindu" sometime back. As the author reveals somewhat similar

sentiment as you did in yr posting, about the pyramids on the

, I cannot resist sending> this article to you.

>

> Pardon me for lifting yr email id and sending a message offlist.

>

> Regards,

> Sowmy.

 

 

The Hindu : Vedas and ancient Egypt

 

 

Vedas and ancient Egypt

 

Through the Vedas we can reclaim the spiritual heritage of

the entire ancient world that can help take us beyond the

current materialistic culture and the many problems it

continues to bring us.

 

 

THE VEDAS represent a monumental spiritual literature, by far the

largest, that remains from the ancient world. We could therefore call

the Vedas, `the pyramids of the ancient mind.' The Vedas are the

oldest record of the great dharmic traditions of the

East, with not only the Hindu but also Buddhist, Jain,

Sikh and Zoroastrian traditions part of the same greater

stream of spiritual striving. Apart from the biblical tradition,

this dharmic or Indic tradition is one of the two dominant

streams of world spirituality that has endured throughout

the centuries and remains vital to the present day, as

the global popularity of Yoga, Vedanta and Buddhism

clearly reveals.

If we look at the Vedic tradition, we see that it was

based upon an ancient priestly order that was extensive and

sophisticated, comparable to the priestly orders of ancient Egypt

or Babylonia. This priestly order was concerned not

merely with rituals but also with spirituality, yoga,

philosophy, medicine, astronomy and architecture that

form the basis of the various Upavedas and Vedangas.

 

This spiritual culture of ancient India can easily be

compared with that of ancient Egypt, which was similarly guided

by extensive priestly orders, their sophisticated rituals and

an emphasis of mysticism and magic. As ancient Egypt was

arguably the spiritual centre of the West in the ancient

world, so India can be said to be the spiritual centre of

the ancient East.

The Greek bias

 

One of the main mistakes that western scholars have made

is to approach Vedic civilisation using ancient Greece as their

starting off point. They look at the Vedas like the works of

Homer, reflecting traditions like the Greeks who only

came on the scene during the late ancient period (after

1500 BCE). They view the Vedic people like the ancient

Greeks as mainly a warrior people, on the move, as part

of various proposed Aryan invasions/migrations of the

time. They place Vedic culture in the mould of the type of primitive

tribal Indo-European culture much like what they propose

was at the root of Greek civilisation. The Western date

of 1500 BCE for the Vedas was made to parallel their 1500

BCE date for the early Greeks (though biblical

constraints also entered into the picture).

However, Homer and the oldest Greek literature of the

Iliad and the Odyssey at best resemble Hindu epics like the

Mahabharata that came at the end of the Vedic period (but without

the same depth of Vedantic thought or a dominant guru

figure like Krishna). The Homeric model was of a less

spiritual and more recent culture to which the

materialistic western civilisation could comfortably

trace itself. It did not reflect a mystic, rishi or yogi

culture like that of the Vedas or that of ancient Egypt.

Along with this mistake, western scholars have tried to

use language as the determinative factor for judging

ancient cultures #8212; as if groups that spoke languages belonging

to the same language family must possess a similar or

contemporaneous culture as well. However, we should note

that language families have persisted through various

historical ages and different types of cultures. For

example, we cannot make medieval Russian and ancient

Persian contemporaneous or similar in civilisation because of some

linguistic affinities. On the other hand, cultures of the

same time period have similar civilisations in spite of

language differences. The ancient Romans, for example,

had much in common culturally with the Carthaginians who

had a similar life-style and lived in the same part of

the world, in spite of speaking languages that did not

belong to the same family.

Therefore, we must look at the Vedas according to the

cultural affinities of ancient civilisations, not merely

according to linguistic affinities. As a type of spiritual/priestly

culture, Vedic civilisation resembles more that of earlier

Egypt or Babylonia than that of Greece.

The Greeks, though speaking a language with affinities

with Vedic Sanskrit, represented a later ancient culture

already moving away from the spiritual and hieratic civilisations of

the early ancient world.

 

A reevaluation

 

Western scholars invented the term `henotheism' to describe how any

one of the many Vedic Gods could represent all the Gods (a situation

that prevails among the Puranic Gods as well). We should note that

they used the same term for the ancient Egyptian religion which had a

similar view of multiplicity in unity among its many Gods. The Vedic

and Egyptian Sun Gods follow the same model of henotheism, being both

the One God in essence and many different Gods in function.

 

Many symbols are common to ancient Egypt and India

including the worship of the Sun and Sun kings, the sacred bull, the

hawk or falcon, and the seeking of immortality as the main

goal of life. Indeed the Vedic ritual of the Yajur Veda

reflects a similar spirit to the Egyptian Book of the

Dead. Like the Vedic, the Egyptians not only had a love

of magic and the occult, but with their symbols like the

cobra at the crown of the head, suggest a knowledge of

Yoga as well. Yet such connections have been ignored

because they are cultural rather than linguistic in basis.

 

Egyptian culture endured from before 3000 BCE down to the

early Christian era. Isis and Osiris were worshipped in Rome

as well as in the Old Kingdom of Egypt. Similarly, Vedic deities

need not be limited to the later eras in which they are

still mentioned. Their worship could easily extend back

to the 3000 BCE date that we commonly find in Puranic

texts as marking the beginning of the Kali Yuga.

 

The archaeological record of India is of a monumental

civilisation that persisted from 3000 BCE, if not

earlier, not only into the late ancient era, like Egypt, but with a

modified continuity up to the present day. In India today

we find the same types of rituals and temple worship

still being practised as once occurred in ancient Egypt

and Babylonia. That this type of spiritual ancient

civilisation has survived only in India suggests how deep

seated and original it must have been in the country.

While ancient India did not leave monuments like the

pyramids of Egypt, it did leave extensive urban remains and its

great Vedic literature, its pyramids of the mind. Connecting

the monumental spiritual literature of the Vedas, not

only with the great urban civilisation of ancient India,

but with a similar spiritual civilisational model as

ancient Egypt, will provide us with a better approach to

the Vedas that can help unravel their spiritual secrets.

Through the Vedas we can reclaim the spiritual heritage

of the entire ancient world that can help take us beyond

the current materialistic culture and the many problems it continues

to bring us.

 

DAVID FRAWLEY

 

 

 

 

 

 

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