[world-vedic] Vedic culture and Americas (part 2)

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To read this article with all the nice graphics please visit

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/2178/

 

Contd. from previous post........

 

Other similarities

 

In 1949, two scholars, Gordon Ekholm and Chaman Lal, systematically

compared the Mayan, Aztec, Incan,

and the North American Indian civilizations with the Hindu-oriented

countries of Southeast Asia and with India

herself. According to them, the emigrant culutes of India took with

them India's system of time measurement,

local gods, and customs. Ekholm and Lal found signs of Aryan

civilization throughtout the Americas in art

(lotus flowers with knotted stems and half-dragon/half fish motifs

found commonly in paintings and carvings),

architecture, calendars, astronomy, religious symbols, and even games

such as our Parchessi and

Mexican Patilli, which have their origins in India's pachisi.

 

Both the Hindus and Americans used similar items in their worship

rituals. They both maintained the concept of

four Yuga cycles, or cosmological seasons, extending over thousands of

years, and concived of twelve

constellations with reference to the sun as indicated by the Incan sun

calendar. Royal insignias,

systems of government, and practice of religious dance

and temple worship all

showed remarkable similarities, pointing strongly to the

idea that the Americas

were strongly influenced by the Aryans. The theory is

found in the Vedic literature

of India. The ancient Puranas (literally, histories) and

the Mahabharata make

mention of the Americas as lands rich with gold and

silver. Argentina, which means

"related to silver", is thought to have been named after

Arjuna (of silver hue).

 

Another scholar, Ramon Mena, author of Mexican

Archaelogy, called the Nahuatl,

Zapoteca, and mayan languages" of Hindu origin." He went

to say, "A deep mystery

enfolds the tribes that inhabitated the state of chiapas

in the district named Palenque....their

writing, and the anthropological type, as well as their personal

adornments...their system and style of

construction clearly indicate the remotest antiquity...(they) all speak

of India and the Orient."

 

Still another scholar, Ambassador Miles Poindexter, a former ambassador

of the United States to Mexico,

in his two-volume 1930s treatise The Arya-Incas, called the Mayan

civilization "unquestionably Hindu." He

proposed that primitive Aryan words and people came to America by the

island chains of Polynesia.

The Mexican name for boat is a South Indian Tamil word, Catamaran, and

Poindexter gives a long list of

words of the Quichua languages and their analogous forms in Sanskrit.

Similarities between the hymns of the

Inca rulers of Peru and Vedic hymns have been pointed out. A.L.Krober

has also found striking similarities

between the structure of Indo-European and the Penutian language of

some of the tribes along the

northwestern coast of California. Recently, an Indian scholar,

B.C.Chhabra,in his "Vestiges of Indian Culture

in Hawaii", has noticed certain resemblances between the symbols found

in the petroglyohs from the Hawaiian

Islands and those on the Harappan seals. Some of the symbols in the

petroglyphs are described as akin to

early Brahmi script.

 

Indeed, the parallels between the arts and culture of

India and those of ancient America

are too numerous and close to be attributed to independent growth. A

variety of art forms are common to

Mexico, India, Java, and Indochina, the most striking of which are the

Teocallis, the pyramids, with receding

stages, faced with cut stone, and with stairways leading to a stone

sanctuary on top. Many share surprisingly

common features such as serpent columns and bannisters, vaulted

galleries and corbeled arches, attached

columns, stone cut-out lattices, and Atlantean figures; these are

typical of the Puuc style of Yucatan.

Heine-Geldern and Ekholm point out that emple pyramids in Cambodia did

not become important until the

ninth and tenth centuries, a time coinciding with the beginning of the

Puuc period.

 

The lotus motif

 

 

(fig. Makara from Amaravati and makara from Chichen Itza (Heine-Geldern

and G.F. Ekholm.)

 

The buildings of Chichen Itza show certain influences from Southeast

Asia; for example, the lotus motif occurs

in the Mercado (covered market). The Mercado is strikingly reminiscent

of the galleries so typical of the

Cambodian architecture that eventually blossomed into the galleries of

Angkor Vat. The lotus motif,

interspersed with seated human figures, which has a deep symbolic

meaning in Hindu and Buddhist

mythologies and as such is an integral part of early Indian art,

especially of Amaravati, is found at Chichen Itza

as a border in the reliefs of the lower room of the Temple of Tigers.

The similarity between the art of

Amaravati and that of Chichen Itza is particularly noticeable in

reclining figures holding on to the rhizome of the

lotus.

 

 

 

(fig. God on the lion throne from India, and Mayan jaguar throne

-Heine-Geldern and G.F. Ekholm)

 

The Mexican Lion-throne and Lotus-throne remind one of Indian Simhasana

and Padmasana. The parasol, a

mark of royalty amongst the Mayas, the Aztecs, and the Incas, may be an

adaptation of the royal Chatra in us

in India and Indianized Asia from the earliest times.

 

A kind of caste system prevailed amongst the Incas of Peru. Peruvians

worshipped an omnipotent and invisible

Supreme being, Viracocha, creator and preserver of the world. Imprints

of the Ramayana and the

Mahabharata have been noticed on the poetry of Peru.

 

 

( fig. The Lotus-motif from Amaravati and lotus-motif from Chichen Itza

- Heine-Geldern and G.F.

Ekholm.)

 

In Indian art the lotus rhizome frequently protrudes from the mouths of

makaras, sea monsterswith fish-like

bodies and elephants-like trunks. At Chichen Itza, stylized figures of

fish are found at both ends of the lotus

plant, in the same position as the makaras in India.

"Such a combination of highly specific details cannot be

accidental. It suggests the existence of some kind of

relationship between Maya art and not only Buddhist art in general, but

the school of Amaravati of the second

century A.D. in particular."

 

Ancient America was as rich in gods and temples as was India. The

Asiomerican term for god, "teo," is close

to the Sanskrit 'deva". E.G.Squire noted similarities in both major

and minor features of Buddhist temples of

South India and Mexico they were round and different colors were used

on each of the four quarters. In

 

"It would be ridiculous to assert that such a strange doctrine was of

spontaneous origin in different

parts of the Old and New worlds." says D.A. Mackenzie, in his book

Myths of Pre-Columbian America.

pg 70.

 

Scholars who instist that pre-Columbian American

religion and civilization was of

independent origin are obliged to explain why the myths,

beliefs, and practices of ancient

America assumed such complex features at the very

beginning, whilst in Asia they resulted

from the fusions and movements of numerous peoples after

a period of time much greater

than that covered by American civilizations from

beginning to the end.

 

Swami B.V. Tripurari states in his book, Ancient Wisdom

for Modern Ignorance -

"Who discovered America" pg 27.

 

Broadly speaking, cultural historians of Asiomerica are divided

into two camps, "diffusionists" and

"Isolationists". Diffusionists maintained that after

this occured civilized Asiatic people

distributed themselves via the Pacific, thereby

bringing civilizatiopn to the Americas.

Isolationists insisted that after the nomadic tribes

crossed the Bering Strait, a homogenous

race of "Indians of the Americas' was formed, and the

American tribes-people went

about reinventing all culture, duplicating in two

thousand years what originally took about

six millenniums in the Old World!

 

By the same token, No archaeologist today would

attribute to prehistory Euopeans the

indepedent invention of bronze casting, iron work, the

wheel, weaving, pottery, writing,

and so many other cultureal elements that were derived

from the Middle East. What then

would cause one to insist that what was not possible for the Europeans

(duplicating culture

independently) was possible for the American Indians??? Especially when

at the same time we are taught

that the Europeans were of superior stock?

 

Will Durant, eminent American hisortian, in his book Our Oriental

Heritage, described India as the most

ancient civilization on earth and he offered many examples of Indian

culture throughout the world. He

demonstrated that as early as the ninth century B.C.E. Indians were

exploring the sea routes,

reaching out and extending their cultural influences to Mesopotamia,

Arabia, and Egypt.

 

Although modern-day historians and anthropologists might prefer to

accept Egypt or Babylon as the most

ancient civilization, due to various archaelogical findings, their

theories are by no means conclusive. The

popular theory in the academic community that the Aryans invaded India

has also been disproved. * (refer to

the Aryan Invasion Theory page) Perhaps it is easier for modern people

to accept ancient Egypt and

Babylon, whose ancient civilizations have no living representation and

thereby pose no threat or challenge to

the status quo.

 

But India is alive and kicking. If we recognize with ancient India as

the spiritual giant, we would have to reckon

with her modern-day representations. No wonder the Vedic literature

and spiritual ideology loomed as the

greatest threat to the British Raj in India in their imperialistic

conquest of India.

 

Skilled Seafaring Men:

The only plausible argument against cultural diffusion from southern

Pacific is the distance involved. It is

asserted that it would have been unlikely for a large number of people

to have crossed the vast expanse of the

Pacific without well-equipped boats and skillful voyagers. The

argument, however, falls, upon close scrutiny. It

would not be at all difficult for a large canoe or catarmaran to cross

from Polynesia to South America even at

the present time, and the ancient Asians were skilled and enterprising

seafaring men.

 

However, Asian ability to cross the seas during this period is

undoubted. The art of shipbuilding and navigation

in India and China at the time was sufficently advanced for oceanic

crossings. Indian ships operating between

Indian and South-east Asian ports were large and well equipped to sail

cross the Bay of Bengal. When the

Chinese Buddhist scholar, Fa-hsien, returned from India, his ship

carried a crew of more than two hundred

persons and did not sail along the coasts but directly across the

ocean. Such ships were larger than those

Columbus used to negotiate the Atlantic a thousand years later.

According to the work of mediaeval times,

Yukti Kalpataru, which gives a fund of information about shipbuilding,

India built large vessels from 200 B.C.

to the close of the sixteenth century. A Chinese chronicler mentions

ships of Sourhtern Asia that could carry as

many as one thousand persons, and were manned mainly by Malayan crews.

They used western winds and

currents in the North Pacific to reach California, sailed south along

the coast, and then returned to Asia with

the help of the trade winds, taking a more southerly route, without

however, touching the Polynesian islands.

 

In ancient times the Indians excelled in shipbuilding and even the

English, who were attentive to everything

which related to naval architecture, found early Indian models worth

copying. The Indian vessels united

elegance and utility, and were models of fine workmanship.

Sir John Malcolm wrote :

 

"Indian vessels "are so admirably adapted to the purpose for which they

are required that, not

withstanding their superior science, Europeans were unable, during an

intercourse with India for two

centuries, to suggest or at least to bring into successful practice one

improvement. "

 

It was also known that in the third century a transport of horses,

which would require large ships,

reached Malaya and IndoChina.

Emilio Estrada, Clifford Evans, and Betty J. Meggers, who have pointed

out many striking similarites

between Ecuadorian archaelogical remains of the early Bahia and early

Jama-Coaque cultures with relics of

approximately the same period of Japan, India and Souteast Asia, also

support the feasibility of trans-pacific

voyage.

The New Zealand prehistorian, S.Percy Smith, tries

to show in his Hawaiki - the

Original home of the Maori that the ancient

Polynesian wanderers left India as far

back as the fourth century B.C. and were daring

mariners who made, mor often than

not, adventurous voyages with the definite object of

new settlements. A people who

reached as far east as Easter Island could not have

missed the great continent ahead

of them.

 

What was the motive that urged Indians and Asians to undertake long

journeys to America?

 

It was probably gold, which intially attracted Indian adventurers and

merchants to Southeast Asia.

Southeast Asia was a region broadly referred to by ancient Indians as

Suvarnabhumi (Land of Gold) or

Suvarnadvipa (the Island of Gold). Arab writer Al Biruni testify that

Indians called the whole

Southeast region Suwarndib. Hellenistic geographers knew the area as

the Golden Chersonese. The

Chinese called it Kin-Lin; kin means gold. The mariners were probably

looking for gold or were

prospecting for precious metals, stones and pearls to cope with the

demand in the centres of ancient

civilizations.

This view is substantially reinforced

by W.J.Perry who was

the first scholar to point out that

the distribution of the pearling

beds of the world and why, wherever

pearls are found similar

complex religious beliefs, myths,

beliefs, and practices are also

found. It is therefore significant

that the mythology of the

pre-Columbian American civilizations

"was deeply impregnated

by the religious beliefs and

practices and habits of life that

obtained amongst the treasure-seekers

of the Old World. "

Equally significant is the fact that

the Mayas preferred to settle in

that part of Central America which

was unhealthy but rich in

precious stones and gold. Like

Indians Asiomericans accumulated

stones and gold and amde symbolic

ornaments from them.

Mexican temples and idols, as in

India, were lavishly decorated

with gold and precious stones. *

(refer to how Asiomerican

civilizations were plundered by the Europeans below)

 

In Conclusion, it may be said, that whatever the motive,

transpacific traffic would seem to have gone on

regularly for about two thousand years, from about the eigth century

B.C. to the twelfth century.

 

In view of so many parallels in fundamental conceptions and detail, in

mythology, ritual, iconography,

architecture, religious beliefs, crowns, thrones, plants, together with

the evidence of migration, it

appears incredible that isolationists should continue to insist on the

independent evolution of

Asiomerican civilization.