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India's
Cultural Unity
The name
Bharatvarsha has a deep historical significance, symbolizing, a fundamental
unity. This name together with the sense of unity imparted by it "was
ever present before the mind of the theologians, political philosophers and
poets who spoke of the thousand Yojanas (Leagues) of land that stretches from
the Himalayas to the sea as the proper domain of a single universal
emperor".
Although
the Raj claimed the credit for India’s political unification, the
sub-continent had a geo-political unity that dated back 2000 years before the
British conquest to the Hindu-Buddhist Mauryan empire. The Maurya
emperors had united most of the sub-continent under their rule between the
fourth and second centuries BC; and their imperial ideal was echoed from the
fourth to sixth centuries AD by a later Hindu dynasty the Guptas.
(source: Indian
Tales of the Raj - By Zareer Masani p.
7).
According to Jawaharlal
Nehru: "Right from
the beginning, culturally India has been one, because she had the same
background, the same traditions, the same religions, the same heroes and
heroines, the same old tales, the same learned language (Sanskrit), the village
panchayats, the same ideology, and polity. To the average Indian the whole of
India was a kind of punya-bhumi
- a holy land - while
the rest of the world was largely peopled by mlechchhas and barbarians.
 Sankaracharya
chose the four corners of India for his maths,
or the headquarters of his order of sanyasins, shows how he regarded India as a
cultural unit. And the great success which met his campaign all over the country
in a very short time also shows how intellectual and cultural currents traveled
rapidly from one end of the country to another."
(source: Glimpses
of World History - By Jawaharlal Nehru
p. 129).
Dr. Radhakrishnan: "In spite of the divisions, there is an inner cohesion among the Hindu society
from the Himalayas to the Cape Comorin."
(source: The
Hindu View of Life - By Sir. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
p. 73-77).
Girilal Jain,
late editor of Times of India: " It is about time we recognize that we are
not a nation in the European sense of the term, that is, we are not a fragment
of a civilization claiming to be a nation on the basis of accidents of history
which is what every major European nation is. We are a people primarily
by virtue of the continuity and coherence of our civilization which has survived
all shocks. And though inevitably weakened as a result of foreign invasions,
conquests and rule for almost a whole millennium, it is once again ready to
resume its march."
(source: Hindu
Phenomenon - By Girilal Jain
p. 21).
For more refer to Vedic
Roots of Early Tamil Culture - By Michel Danino.
Aryan-Dravidian
Kinship
M. Vaitialingam has
observed:
"The Indus-Valley civilization is now accepted as the
earliest civilization found on the Indian
soil. It was an urban civilization, no doubt. We are not sure of the creators of
this civilization. Some say it was the “Dravidians.” But “Aryans” and
“Dravidians” are concepts comparatively very modern which were created by
philologists of the 19th century. The Indus Valley people had nothing
to do with them. What is more surprising that the Gods of the Indus Valley
people are also the Gods of the Vedas and are Gods of the Hindu religion
worshipped to this day a fact which has compelled the writers of ‘An
Advanced History of India’ (Dr. Majumdar, Dr. Raychaudhari and Dr.
Datta) to say “We must therefore hold that there is an organic relationship
between the Indus-Valley and the Hinduism of today.
Shiva, one of the chief deities of the Indus Valley people
has an important place in the Vedic patheon, and ‘not a minor place’ in the
Vedas as the learned authors hold. In the heart of Yajur Veda, which is one of
the three important Vedas, and which occupied a middle place among them, we find
a collection of mantras called ‘Satarudriya or Sri Rudram which is the life
center of the Vedas, and the holy ‘Pachaksharam’ of the Saiva religion is in
the very heart and center of Sri Rudram.
According to modern theorists, the Tamils are supposed to be
the descendants of the “Dravidians” of the Indus-Valley. But the ancient
literature of the Tamils, the Sangam Literature, does
not mention the name Shiva even once; whereas in Sri Rudram the word
Shiva and the feminine form Sivaa, are mentioned several times. Yet
Shiva is called a “Dravidian God!
 Indra
occupies a prominent place in Rig Veda. He is invoked alone in about ¼ of the
hymns of the Rig Veda, far more than are addressed to any other deity. He
is considered by Western Indologists as the national hero of the Vedic
“Aryans”. This Aryan hero was also the God of the ancient Tamils
– the “Dravidians.” Temples were built in ancient times in Tamilnadu for
worshipping Indra. Grand festivals were celebrated by the Tamil kings in honor
of Indra, the “the national hero of the Aryans.’ Indra was so much cherished
by the Tamil people, that priority of worship was given to him in the great Epic
Silappadikaram’ – the epic of the Anklet. Besides, references to Indra
worship are found in Tholkapiam (600 BCE) Purananuru, Paripadal Aingurunuru and
Pattupaddu, all belonging to the Sangam period. Certainly Seran Senguttuvan, his
brother Illango Adikal, and, above all, the great Sangam Poets were not naïve
as to accept Indra the lord of the Aryans who were the enemies of the Dravidians
as their God, How can historians reconcile these contradictory views?
What did the Dravidians do after
they were defeated and driven out?
The
Western historians would have us believe that - All those who escaped the
destruction migrated southwards, crossed the central mountain ranges, entered
the Deccan plateau, settled down there and started building temples for Indra,
the national hero of their inveterate enemy, the ‘Aryans’, and began to
honor him with grand festivals, all as a reward, for driving them out of their
habitat. So naïve are they! "
(source: Perennial Hindu Culture and
The Twin Myths – By M. Vaitialingam The Thirumaka Press. 1980 p. 22-37).
The AIT theory requires that
the early Rigvedic peoples had no worthwhile knowledge of the ocean or of
maritime trade. It reduces them to a nomadic land-based people who had never
even seen the sea. But there is a major problem confronting this theory. The
Rig Veda alone has more than 150
references to samudra, the common Sanskrit term for ocean, weaving it
into its cosmology and the functions of almost every main God that it has.
Witzel tries to explain away this problem by arguing that practically all the
occurrences of the word samudra in the Rigveda refer to something other
than a real terrestrial ocean. In other words he redefines samudra as
something other than the sea. Witzel’s theory also requires ignoring the
Sarasvati river, clearly referred to in the Rigveda as a major, exalted river.
The Sarasvati was the main river of Harappan civilization and mainly dried up
around 1900 BCE, contributing significantly to the civilization’s end. Witzel
has to do considerable theatrics to ignore the numerous references to Sarasvati
in the Rigveda and in other Vedic texts as the oldest and most sacred river of
the Vedic people, in order to ‘prove’ his theory that the Aryans arrived
from Central Asia a long time after the collapse of the Harappan civilization.
(source: Witzel's
Vanising Ocean - by David Frawley). Watch
Scientific
verification of Vedic knowledge
***
South Indian traditions make no mention of any
confrontation with supposed Aryans, followed by a migration from North to
South.
Quite the contrary, ancient Tamil tradition
traces its origins to a submerged island or continent, Kumari
Kandam, situated to the south of India. The Tamil epics Shilappadikaram
and Manimekhalai provide glorious
descriptions of the legendary city and port of Puhar, which the second text says
was swallowed by the sea. As in the case of Dwaraka, (please refer to chapter on
Dwaraka), initial
findings at and off Poompuhar, at the mouth
of the Cauvery, show that there may well be a historical basis to this legend:
apart from several structures excavated near the shore, such as brick walls,
water reservoirs, even a wharf (all dated 200-300 B.C.), a few years ago a
structure tantalizingly described as a "U-shaped stone structure" was
found five kilometers offshore, at a depth of twenty-three meters; it is about
forty meters long and twenty wide, and fishermen traditionally believed that a
submerged temple existed at that exact spot. If the structure is confirmed to be
man-made (and not a natural formation), its great depth would certainly push
back the antiquity of Puhar. Only more systematic explorations along Tamil
Nadu's coast, especially at Poompuhar, Mahabalipuram, and around Kanyakumari
(where fishermen have long reported submerged structures too) can throw more
light on the lost cities, and on the traditions of Kumari
Kandam, which some have sought to identify with the mythical Lemuria.
Not only that, the descriptions of Puhar in the
two Epics are replete with temples and gods. The Shilappadikaram, the older of
two (c. first or second century BC), relates the beautiful and tragic story of
Kannagi and Kovalan; it opens with invocations to Chandra, Surya, and Indra, all
of them Vedic Gods, and frequently mentions Shiva, Subrahmanya,
Vishnu and Krishna.
 Then
we have the tradition that regards Agastya, the
great Vedic Rishi, as the originator of the Tamil language. He is
said to have written a Tamil grammar, Agattiyam,
to have presided over the first two Sangams, and is even now honored in many
temples of Tamil Nadu and worshipped in many homes. One of his traditional names
is "Tamil muni." The Shilappadikaram
refers to him as "the great sage of the Pondiya hill," and a hill is
still today named after him at the southernmost tip of the Western Ghats. The
legend of the birth of Tamil is both delightful and rich in meaning. Aeons ago,
people from the south flocked to the North, not in a Dravidian invasion,
mercifully, but to attend the wedding of Lord Shiva and Uma on Mount Kailash;
such was the multitude that there was fears the earth might tilt over. Appeals
were made to Lord Shiva, who, ever compassionate, asked Rishi Agastya to go
south: though he was of small stature, his spiritual power was such that his
very presence would be enough to restore the earth's balance. Agastya agreed to
go with his wife Lopamudra, but asked Lord Shiva to instruct him first in the
mysteries of the language of the South. Shiva, placing Agastya to his left and
Panini, another Rishi, to his right, seized a drum and started beating it with
his two hands. From the sounds that flowed from the right, Panini gave shape to
Sanskrit, while Agastya turned the sounds from the left to Tamil. We have a good
example of how tradition could conceal ancient knowledge: is this legend not
telling us that Tamil and Sanskrit flow from the same source?
The earliest extant Sangam
text, the Tamil grammar Tolkappiyam, is
"said to have been modeled on the Sanskrit grammar of the Aindra
school," according to historian K. A. Nilakanta
Shastri. Its text, says N. Raghunathan,
shows that "the great literature of Sanskrit and the work of its
grammarians and rhetoricians were well known and provided stimulus to creative
writers in Tamil."
In historical accounts, we find Chola and Chera
kings proudly claiming descent from Lord Rama or from Kings of the Lunar dynasty
- in other words, an " Aryan" descent. We are told that the greatest
Chola king, Karikala, was a patron of both
the Vedic religion and Tamil literature, while Pandya king Nedunjelyun
performed many Vedic sacrifices. The first named Chera king, Udiyanjeral, is
said to have sumptuously fed the armies of both sides during the Bharata
War at Kurukshetra. An inscription records that a Pandya king led the
elephant force in the Great War on behalf of the Pandavas, and that early
Pandyas translated the Mahabharata into Tamil.
Thus, we may certainly speak of a distinct Tamil
culture, a distinct Malayalam culture, just as we can speak of a distinct
Gujarati or Bengali culture. But distinctiveness is not separateness. Each rich
regional cultures of India are just various branches of a single tree having its
own individuality, yet without being "separate": they cannot live
apart from the tree, and without them the tree would be seriously
endangered.
(source: The Invasion That Never Was
-
By Michel Danino and Sujata
Nahar). For more refer to Vedic
Roots of Early Tamil Culture - By Michel Danino.
The
Racial Question in India
“The term race is a mental product, a concept having no
objective existence, apart from man’s mind. Only individuals are real.” Said
Topinard.
 A
great Tamil Sangam poet sang centuries ago “All the world is one and all
mankind is kin; good and evil are of one’s own making and not caused by
others”. A fact which politicians may refuse to concede.
“Americans are not a race, nor are Frenchmen, nor Germans;
nor ipso facto is any other national group. Muslims and Jews are no more races
than are Roman Catholics and Protestants…nor are people who live in Iceland or
Britain or India or who speak English or any other language (whether Tamil or
Sinhalese) or who are culturally Turkish or Chinese and the like, thereby
describable as races.”
An Englishman traveling in the U.S.A. finds that he is
commonly recognized as English and the American in Europe is also recognized as
such but that does not mean that there is an ‘English race’ or an
‘American race.’
A Tamil from South India or Sri Lanka traveling in North
India may be easily recognize as a Tamil, in spite of the fact that the Tamil
speaking group has a cultural and religious tradition common to all the
linguistic groups in India. This does not mean that there is a ‘Tamil race’
or a ‘Dravidian race.’
The ‘Dravidian race’ is an utter
swindle of pseudo-scientific cloak for political and economic exploitation.
“A racial type is but an artificial concept, though long
continued geographical isolation does tend to produce a general uniformity of
appearance’.
Fredrich Muller put it more bluntly when he declared
“Race is an empty phrase, an utter swindle.”
(source: Illusion of National
Character – By Hamilton Fyfe.
Thinkers Library. Page 47).
For more refer to Vedic
Roots of Early Tamil Culture - By Michel Danino.
Before the arrival of the British, there was no racial
problem in India. The fundamental unity of India is emphasized by the name
Bharata-Varsha or land of Bharata given to the whole country in the Epics and
the Puranas, and the designation of Bharati Santati or the descendents of
Bharata applied to the whole people. Vishnu Purana
II-3-1 says:
“The country that lies north of
the ocean and south of the snowy mountains is called Bharata; there dwell
descendents of Bharata.”
Bishop Caldwell named the languages of the south as
Dravidian. That Tamil or some old form of it was spoken throughout India is
evident from Valmiki Ramayana where we find Sita conversing with Hanuman in a
language different from Sanskrit, the language of the twice-born
(Brahmin) in which Ravana spoke; and Sri Rama and his brother were
conversing freely with Sugreeva and Vali. But the most surprising fact is that,
according to Valmiki, Hanuman was a great Vedic scholar, well-versed in
Vyakarana and in Sama Veda, an opinion expressed by Sri Rama also. These facts
evidently show that throughout India, there were people who could freely speak
both Sanskrit and Tamil, and that Vedas were studied throughout India by all
communities from the remote past.
(source: Perennial Hindu Culture and
The Twin Myths – By M. Vaitialingam The Thirumaka Press. 1980 p.
58-67).
Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the
film The
God Awful Truth.
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