[world-vedic] VEDIC ARABIA II

[Guest guest]

By Srimati Aditi Chaturvedi

Vedic Past of Pre-Islamic Arabia -

Part 2

In 570 AD, the year of Muhammad's birth,

Arabia was a thriving,

rich and varied Vedic culture. Although monotheism in the forms

of Christianity and Judaism were known to the people of

Arvasthan,

they were undeterred in their uncompromising faith to the religion

of their ancestors: Hinduism . Every household had an idol of

a Hindu god or goddess. There were hundreds of sacred groves,

places of pilgrimage, and temples which were sanctuaries

containing

images of the entire range of Vedic gods. The temples in addition

to being the religious focus of the Arabs, were also the cultural

centres of learning. It was the temples that were the venues

of literary and poetry competitions, of glorious festivals.

The virtues most highly prized by people of Arvasthan

were bravery in battle, patience in misfortune, loyalty to one's

tribe, and generosity to the needy and the poor. They proudly

upheld the value of tolerance in matters of religious practice

and belief. The respect they showed towards other people's

religions

was fully in keeping with their Vedic spiritual tradition.

The status of women was that of pride and equal respect. How

could it be otherwise with a people whose chief deity was the

goddess Durga (Alla). Women married men of their choice

and were financially independent. They were entrepeneurs,

artisans,

poets and even warriors! Later on Muhammad would marry Khadija,

who was not only a wealthy merchant but also in the position

to choose her own husband. This clearly demonstrates the level

of freedom women enjoyed in Vedic Arabia. Hind, who was the wife

of Muhammad's chief enemy Abu Sufyan, herself participated in

the battlefield.

Hind opposed Muhammad tooth and nail. She followed her husband

to the battlefield and when Abu Sufyan surrendered Mecca to

Muhammad

without a fight she caught hold of him in the marketplace and

cried:

"KILL this fat greasy bladder of lard! What a

rotten

protector of the people"

When Muhammad tried to baptise her & asked her not to

commit adultery , She spat out the bitter words:

"A free woman does not commit

adultery!"

How proud this woman was of the rights and privileges that

her Vedic society had invested to her!

It was Islam that extinguished the light of knowledge in Vedic

Arabia. It is ironic that the man who brought about such darkness

himself belonged to the Qurayshi Tribe of Mecca. The Qurayshi

were particularly devoted to Allah (Durga) and the famous Shivling

of the Kaaba Temple. The fact that the Shivling remains to this

day in the Kaaba is solely due to the fact that it happened to

be the Qurayshi tribe's faceless Family Deity. As I mentioned

before Muhammad's name itself came from Mahadeva, which is another

cognate for Lord Shiva. Muhammad's own uncle, Umar-Bin-E-Hassham

was a staunch Hindu and fervent devotee of Lord Shiva. He was

a renowned poet and wrote many verses in praise of Shiva. One

of these has survived on page 235 of Sair-Ul-Okul

and reads as follows:

Kafavomal fikra min ulumin Tab asayru

Kaluwan amataul Hawa was Tajakhru

We Tajakhayroba udan Kalalwade-E Liboawa

Walukayanay jatally, hay Yauma Tab asayru

Wa Abalolha ajabu armeeman MAHADEVA

Manojail ilamuddin minhum wa sayattaru

Wa Sahabi Kay-yam feema-Kamil MINDAY Yauman

Wa Yakulum no latabahan foeennak Tawjjaru

Massayaray akhalakan hasanan Kullahum

Najumum aja- at Summa gabul HINDU

which translates as:

The man who may spend his life in sin

and irreligion or waste it in lechery and wrath

If at least he relent and return to

righteousness can he be saved?

If but once he worship Mahadeva with a pure

heart, he will attain the ultimate in spirituality.

Oh Lord Shiva exchange my entire life for but

a day's sojourn in India where one attains salvation.

But one pilgrimage there secures for one all

merit and company of the truly great.

Muhammad's uncle was one of the resident priests of the Shiv

temple known as "Kaaba". This sacred sanctum was

decorated

in an extremely rich and beautiful fashion. The Kaaba was

astronomically

oriented to face the winds. The minor axis of the rectangular

base of the Kaaba was solistically aligned towards summer sunrise

and winter sunset. It contained 360 statues of Vedic deities

and was a shrine primarily associated with sun worship. The temple

was an architectural representation of an interlocking set of

theories covering virtually all creation and comprehending

chemistry,

physics, cosmology, meteorology and medicine. Each wall or corner

of the Kaaba was associated with a specific region of the world.

Thus this glorious Hindu temple was made to symbolically represent

a microcosm of the universe. The Arabs would face east when

praying.

This representation of a microcosm demonstrated by the eight

directional structure was derived from the Tantric pattern (Refer

to Figure 1) of Hinduism. Right at the centre of the Kaaba was

the octogonal pedestal of Bramha the creator. Today this very

pedestal is called Maqam-E-Ibrahim by the Muslims.

Figure 1.

A tantric pattern which defines the structure of

Kaaba

However, more significant was the fact that the Kaaba was

an extremely rich and ornate temple. On its walls hung innumerable

gold plaques commemorating the winners of the annual poetry

competition

known as the Okaj fair. There were gold, silver and

precious

gems everywhere. It is no wonder that Muhammad armed with his

facade of a new brand of religion set out to capture the immense

wealth of the Vedic shrine of Mecca. After plundering the riches

of the Kaaba, the wealth enabled him to systematically destroy

all traces of the religion that threatened him so directly. It

is an indisputable fact that money will make any low criminal

devoutly religious in a hurry.

Despite the fact that Muhammad had to destroy all traces of

Hinduism in order to make his "new religion" work,

he knew that in order to fool people convincingly he would have

to borrow from the Vedic culture that surrounded him. Being

illiterate

he picked out rituals and symbols that he didn't understand and

distorted and falsified them for his own ends. Here is a list

of these distortions:

Muhammad destroyed all 360 idols, but even he could not

summon

the courage to completely obliterate the Shivling in the Kaaba.

He entered the temple and kissed the black stone. The Shivling

was so sacred that the man who so detested idol- worship ended

up kissing the largest idol in the Kaaba. Later his followers

in a fit of piety broke the Shivling and then out of remorse

repatched it together again. Today it lies broken at seven

places

and held together by a silver band studded with silver nails,

bearing the name "Sangey Aswad" which came from the

Sanskrit Ashwet meaning non-white or black stone.

He jumbled up the Sanskrit words Nama and Yaja

(which meant "bowing and worshipping" respectively)

into a combination word Namaz and used that to describe

his prescribed method of prayer.

Because the Vedic custom was to pray facing the East, in

his hatred for all things Hindu, he directed his followers to

pray facing only the west.

The method of circling around a shrine seven times in a

clockwise

direction is an ancient Vedic custom. Muhammad with his lack

of originality decided that the 7 ritual perambulations should

be retained but again in his hatred of all things Vedic decided

the direction of the perambulations should be anti-clockwise.

With his phobia of all things Vedic, Muhammad knew that the

greatest reminder and threat to his forced brand of religion

were the beautiful Vedic idols of Arabic temples. Thus he

destroyed

every idol he could find and made idol worship the greatest

crime

for a Muslim. Such a man could never have comprehended how an

abstract concept can be conveyed through a symbolic

representation

in the form of an image. Thus he made all image representation

a sin as well.

Vedic religion is known for its ancient oral tradition. It

is well known that the Vedic culture emphasized oral debate and

expression far more than the written word. In adition the oral

recitation of Vedic scriptures was always done in a lyrical

fashion,

utilizing music and thus reaching a height of expression. In

fear of this musical tradition Muhammad decided to forbid Music.

All Arabic copies of the Koran have the mysterious figure

786 imprinted on them . No Arabic scholar has been able to

determine

the choice of this particular number as divine. It is an

established

fact that Muhammad was illiterate therefore it is obvious that

he would not be able to differentiate numbers from letters. This

"magical" number is none other than the Vedic holy

letter "OM" written in Sanskrit (Refer to figure 2).

Anyone who knows Sanskrit can try reading the symbol for

"OM"

backwards in the Arabic way and magically the numbers 786 will

appear! Muslims in their ignorance simply do not realise that

this special number is nothing more than the holiest of Vedic

symbols misread.

Figure 2.

Read from right to left this figure

of OM represents the numbers 786

There are many such instances where the symbols and rituals

of Vedic culture were completely distorted and falsified by

Muhammad

in his bid to "create" his brand new religion. However

in his haste to deceive and because of his ignorance and

illiteracy,

thousands of Vedic symbols still remain. Although they have been

distorted beyond imagination, they still remain as solemn

reminders

of Arabia's glorious Vedic past. They can never be supressed.

In fact the rise of Islam put a full stop to all the previous

knowledge of Arabia. The imperialistic message of Islam diverted

all energies into raiding, looting and destruction. The incentive

to learn and preserve the Vedic wisdom that had thrived in Arabia

for so many centuries, was wiped out by the brutal pressure of

Islam. Making easy money through loot and massacre was far more

appealing than upholding the tenets of ancient knowledge. Gone

were the schools, teachers, libraries, poets, artists,

philosophers

and scholars that had littered the Vedic landscape of Arabia

like stars. Everyone had to become a raider if not from choice

then for the sake of surviving the absolute intolerance of

dissenters,

that Islam preached. Thus was the light of learning extinguished

in Arabia. All that remained was the Koran, the Kalma and the

murderous hatred of anything Non-Muslim.

In my next article I will explore how the Arabs fought to

keep the integrity and pride of their Vedic culture alive in

the face of the violent, unjust and murderous destruction caused

by the followers of Islam.

Note: Works of P.N. Oak,

Sita Ram Goel, Arun Shourie, Jay Dubashi, Harsh Narain and Ram

Swarup have been used to compose this article.