Archeological Proof of Historical Krishna pt1

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Vedic Archeology

Part 1: The Heliodorus Column

Most Vaisnavas refer to Krishna as having appeared 5,000 years ago

and generally credit Vedic civilization and Vaisnavism with great

antiquity. But what hard, empirical proof do we have for this

assertion? Certainly some archeological or other evidence must exist

to confirm or deny these claims. Herein, we shall survey the most

prominent archeological discoveries that clearly demonstrate the

antiquity of Krishna worship and Vaisnavism.

 

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archeology.html

 

First of all, detailed historical evidence of Vedic civilization is

not that easy to come by, since the Vedic culture itself seems to

have not valued the keeping of histories. In his book Traditional

India, O. L. Chavarria-Aguilar writes of Indians: "A more

unhistorical people would be difficult to find." Vedic civilization

believed in recording the eternal and infinite. The ephemeral

details of daily life (so much the concern of contemporary people)

need not be recorded, since they had so little bearing on the

larger, more significant goals of human life. Leisure time was to be

used for self-realization, cultural pursuits, and worship of God–not

rehashing current events or the past. Therefore, practically no

histories, according to the Western concept of history, exist today

about ancient India, because none were written.

 

Into this vacuum of historical data on India's past stepped the

European scholars during the last several hundred years, and it is

interesting to note how they first dealt with what they found.

Religious scholars were especially shocked to observe the remarkable

similarities between the lives and philosophies of Krishna and Jesus

Christ. As a defensive reflex they automatically assumed that

Indians must have come across Christianity in the early centuries

after Christ's ministry and had assimilated much of it into their

own religious tradition. This slant on Vaisnavism was called "the

borrowing theory" and gained many adherents in the West. Concerning

this viewpoint, Hemchandra Raycaudhuri in his book Materials for the

Study of the Early History of the Vaisnava Sect writes, "The

appearance in India of a religion of Bhakti [devotion] was, in the

opinion of several eminent Western scholars, an event of purely

Christian origin. Christianity, according to these scholars,

exercised an influence of greater or less account on the worship and

story of Krishna."

 

In 1762 in Rome, P. Georgi was the first Western scholar to propound

this theory. In his Alphabetum Tibetanum he wrote that "Krishnu" is

only a "corruption of the name of the Saviour; the deeds correspond

wonderfully with the name, though they have been impiously and

cunningly polluted by most wicked imposters." The extreme fanaticism

of Georgi's position was soon repudiated by other Western scholars.

Even pro-Christian researchers admitted that the name Krishna

existed before the birth of Jesus, but they still maintained that

the life of Krishna and the philosophy of Vaisnavism had undergone

major transformations because of Christian influence.

 

In his monograph Uber die Krishnajanmasthami, Albrecht Weber pointed

out the many and striking similarities between the birth stories of

Krishna and Jesus. The following quote from his work notes many of

these similarities:

 

Take, for example the statement of the Vishnu Purana that Nanda, the

foster-father of Krishna, at the time of the latter's birth, went

with his pregnant wife Yasoda to Mathura to pay taxes (cf. Luke II,

4, 5) or the pictorial representation of the birth of Krishna in the

cowstall or shepherd's hut, that corresponds to the manger, and of

the shepherds, shepherdesses, the ox and the ass that stand round

the woman as she sleeps peacefully on her couch without fear of

danger. Then the stories of the persecutions of Kamsa, of the

massacre of the innocents, of the passage across the river

(Christophorus), of the wonderful deeds of the child, of the healing-

virtue of the water in which he was washed, etc., etc. Whether the

accounts given in the Jaimini Bharata of the raising to life by

Krishna of the dead son of Duhsala, of the cure of Kubja, of her

pouring a vessel of ointment over him, of the power of his look to

take away sin, and other subjects of the kind came to India in the

same connection with the birth-day festival may remain an open

question.

 

Weber even contended that the whole Vedic system of avatars, or

incarnations of God, was "borrowed" from the "Incarnation of Jesus

Christ."

 

Dr. F. Lorinser translated the Bhagavad-gita and compared it

scrupulously to the New Testament. He concluded, writes

Raychaudhari, "that the author of the Hindu poem knew and used the

Gospels and Christian Fathers." According to Lorinser, continues

Raychaudhari, the similarities were "not single and obscure, but

numerous and clear …" There was no doubt in Lorinser's mind that the

Bhagavat-gita had been largely "borrowed" from the New Testament.

 

Other Western scholars disputed the borrowing theory. Sir William

Jones' studies found Krishna to be one of the more ancient gods of

India, who Vaisnavas asserted was "distinct from all the Avatars,

who had only [a]…portion of his divinity …" In his fascinating and

provocative work, On the Gods Of Greece, Italy, And India, Sir

William Jones writes that "in the principal Sanskrit dictionary,

compiled about two thousand years ago, Krishna, Vasudeva, Govinda,

and other names of the Shepherd God, are intermixed with epithets of

Narayana, or the Divine Spirit." Following in the direction of Sir

Jones' research, Edward Moore even went so far as to say that the

popular Greek myths had some basis in real life and could be traced

ultimately to India. However, solid proof for either side escaped

their grasp, and the scholars theorized and debated the issue back

and forth. Literary evidence did exist in India to prove that

Vaisnavism predated Christianity, but this evidence was brushed

under the rug and given little credence until a Western literary

source decided the issue once and for all.

 

The most important and earliest non-Indian literary record of

ancient India is found in the book, Indica, written by Megasthenes.

Sometime in the third century BC, Meghastenes journeyed to India.

The King of Taxila had appointed him ambassador to the royal court

at Pataliputra of the great Vaisnava monarch, Chandragupta.

Evidently while there, Megasthenes wrote extensively on what he

heard and saw. Unfortunately, none of Megasthenes' original book

survived the ravages of time. However, through Megasthenes' early

Greek and Roman commentators, like Arrian, Diodorus, and Strabo,

fragments of his original work are available to us today, as well as

Megasthenes' general message. Dr. Hein reports that

Megasthenes "described Mathura as a place of great regional

importance and suggested that it was then, as now, a center of

Krishna worship."

 

Christian Lassen was the first Western scholar to bring Megasthenes

into the debate on the "borrowing theory." He noted that Megasthenes

wrote of Krishna under the pseudonym of Heracles and

that "Heracles", or Krishna, was worshipped as God in the area

through which the Yamuna River flows.

 

A respected Indologist, Richard Garbe, agreed with Lassen's analysis

and called the testimony of Megasthenes indisputable. Soon, scholars

like Alan Dahlquist, who had formerly supported the "borrowing

theory," changed their minds and admitted, in Dahlquist's words,

that Garbe had "exploded Weber's theory once and for all." The life

of Krishna and the religion of Vaisnavism had not been influenced by

Christianity, but had appeared autonomously on Indian soil and was

already well-established by at least the third century BC.

 

With Megasthenes' proof in hand, the credibility of Indian literary

sources became enhanced. The great grammarian and author of the Yoga

Sutras, Patanjali, who lived in the second century BC, wrote that

Krishna had slain the tyrant Kamsa in the far distant past.

Raychaudhari tells us the exact words were "chirahate Kamse' which

means that Kamsa's death occurred at a very remote time." In the

fifth century BC, the greatest Sanskrit grammarian, Panini, mentions

that Vaisnavism "was even in the fifth century BC a religion of

Bhakti," writes Raychaudhari. The Artha-shastra of Kautila, from the

fourth century BC, also refers several times to Krishna, while the

Baudhayana Dharma Sutra of the same century gives twelve different

names for Krishna, including popular ones like Keshava, Govinda, and

Damodara.

 

Since Krishna is mentioned in the pre-Buddhistic Chandogya Upanishad

we must conclude that Krishna lived before Gautama Buddha (563?-?483

BC). The scriptures of the Jains push Krishna's life back farther

still. Raychaudhari writes, "Jaina tradition makes Krishna a

contemporary of Arishtanemi… who is the immediate predecessor of

Parsvanatha…. As Parsvanatha flourished about 817 B.C., Krishna must

have lived long before the closing years of the ninth Century B.C."

Of course, the Srimad Bhagavatam and Mahabharata themselves place

Krishna's life at about 3000 BC. Still, whatever the exact dates of

Krishna's earthly appearance and disappearance, because of the

abundance of evidence of Krishna's antiquity, The Cambridge History

of India definitely states that Krishna worship predates

Christianity by many centuries.

 

Let us now turn our attention to the earliest archeological

discoveries regarding Krishna's antiquity. By far the most important

discovery was made by the indefatigable General Sir Alexander

Cunningham in 1877. During an archeological survey of Beshnagar in

central India, he noted an ornamental column. The shape of the

column caused Cunningham to attribute it erroneously to the period

of the Gupta Dynasty (AD 300-550). Thirty-two years later, however,

a Mr. Lake felt he saw some lettering on the lower part of the

column in an area where pilgrims customarily smeared it with a lead,

vermilion paint. When the thick, red paint was removed, Lake's hunch

was proven correct.

 

Dr. J. H. Marshall, who accompanied Mr. Lake on this investigation,

was thrilled at the find's significance. In the Journal of the Royal

Asiatic Society in 1909, he described his conclusions. Cunningham

had dated the column far too late and

 

could little have dreamt of the value of the record which he just

missed discovering…. A glance at the few letters exposed was all

that was needed to show that the Column was many centuries earlier

than the Gupta era. This was, indeed, a surprise to me, but a far

greater one was in store when the opening lines of the inscription

came to be read.

 

 

 

 

 

The following transliteration and translation of this ancient

Brahmi inscription was published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic

Society (London: JRAS, Pub., 1909, pp. 1053-54.

 

1) Devadevasa Va [sude]vasa Garudadhvajo ayam 2) karito i[a]

Heliodorena bhaga- 3) vatena Diyasa putrena Takhasilakena 4)

Yonadatena agatena maharajasa 5) Amtalikitasa upa[m]ta samkasam-rano

6) Kasiput[r]asa [bh]agabhadrasa tratarasa 7) vasena [chatu]dasena

rajena vadhamanasa

 

"This Garuda-column of Vasudeva (Visnu), the god of gods, was

erected here by Heliodorus, a worshipper of Visnu, the son of Dion,

and an inhabitant of Taxila, who came as Greek ambassador from the

Great King Antialkidas to King Kasiputra Bhagabhadra, the Savior,

then reigning prosperously in the fourteenth year of his kingship."

 

 

 

The column had been erected in BC 113 by Heliodorus, a Greek

ambassador to India. He, like Megasthenes, hailed from Taxila in the

Bactrian region of northwest India, which had been conquered by

Alexander the Great in BC 325. By Heliodorus' time Taxila covered

much of present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Punjab. Taxila's

king, Antialkidas, had sent Heliodorus to the court of King

Bhagabhadra, but while Megasthenes had only written about Krishna

and Vaisnavism, Heliodorus had found them so attractive that he had

adopted the practice of Vaisnavism for his own spiritual advancement!

 

Heliodorus' Column recognized Vasudeva, or Krishna, as the "God of

gods."

 

1) Trini amutapadani‹[su] anuthitani 2) nayamti svaga damo chago

apramado

 

"Three immortal precepts (footsteps)... when practiced lead to

heaven‹self-restraint, charity, consciousness."

 

>From this inscription it is clear Heliodorus was a Vaisnava, a

devotee of Visnu.

 

 

 

 

Raychaudhuri maintains that Heliodorus most probably was already

acquainted with Vaisnavism in Taxila, even before he went to India

proper, since, "It was at that city that Janamejaya heard from

Vaishampayana the famous story of the Kurus and the Pandus [the

Mahabharata]." Furthermore, Raychaudhuri then suggests, "Heliodorus

of Taxila actually heard and utilized the teaching of the great

Epic, " since we know from Panini that the Epic was "well known to

the people of Gandhara [Taxila]" long before the time of the Greek

ambassador.

 

In any case, by BC 113 Heliodorus publicly acknowledged in the most

conspicuous way that he held Vasudeva, or Krishna to be the "Gods of

all gods." He also had written on his column's inscription

that "Three immortal precepts when practiced lead to heaven–self-

restraint, charity, and conscientiousness." These three virtues

appear in the exact same order in the Mahabharata, which makes

Professor Kunja Govinda Swami of Calcutta University conclude that

Heliodorus "was well acquainted with the texts dealing with the

Bhagavat [Vaisnava] religion." Raychaudhuri concurs that "there was

some close connection between the teaching of the Mahabharata and

that of the Besnagar Inscription," proving that Heliodorus was a

knowledgeable devotee of Vaisnavism.

 

The Heliodorus Column also struck down the myth that the Vedic

religion never condoned the conversion of non-Indians to its fold.

While this exclusionary tendency has been manifest here and there in

India (although much less so in Vaisnavism), the Islamic historian,

Abu Raihan Alberuni, maintains that it was not practiced until

sometime after the Muslim incursions into India, which started

around AD 674. Alberuni went to India to study in AD 1017 and

published his findings in his book Indica (not to be confused with

Megasthenes' work of the same title). He concluded that the violent

conflicts and forced conversions of Indians into Muslims made

Indians adopt an exclusionary policy, more out of self-defense than

religious principle. He discovered that, for many centuries prior to

the Muslim invasions, there was no bar to conversions, and the

Heliodorus Column certainly attests to this fact.