Gods, Myths, and the Machinery of Society 3
Part 3
It is probably our shortcoming that we want to see everything through the today's perspective and become uncomfortable towards anything which does not suit or follow today's belief. Try not to impose your opinion or prejudice on history and try to understand it according to that era then it is not so difficult to accept. You can believe anything and there is no restriction to it, but the truth is that there is nothing like divine... neither Tanakh nor Quran nor Vedas.
Everything has been written by the people of this planet and it has been written many years after the actual time. The Quran was written only a few years later because paper was available then, but the rest of the texts were written hundreds and thousands of years later. The question is how it was remembered till then.. and the answer is the knowlege was preserved in the form of songs/poems and remembered through singing. In this way, so many huge texts traveled from one person to other, one tradition to the other and reached other mediums and then on paper.
Now if someone says that everything has bren transfered in its original form and in chronological order, then it is just their belief... It is not true at all. There is a limit to human capabilities and there is no one beyond it. Now since we are discussing the history of India, so leaving the rest, let's focus only on the Vedas. When did they come into existence... To answer this question, a believer can link them even to the early stages of human evoluion.
But going through the content in depth we can get a rough idea about when it might have been written. The Rigveda and Samaveda may have been written in the Bronze Age, 3000-2500 BC. This was the time when the organized Indian society was dominated by the Brahmin class and this period has also been defined as the Sat Yuga. Dynasties flourished in Egypt during this period.
After this, Yajurveda was written in 2500-2000 BC... This period is called Treta Yuga and the incident described in Ramayana is said to have occured in this time. In the same time the old kingdom of Egypt and the pre-Minoan period in Greece came to an end and the Sumerian Renaissance began. While the Atharvaveda was composed between 2000 and 1500 BC and the war of the Mahabharata is said to happen during this period, it was called the Dwapar Yuga.
It was during this period that the internalisation between the various castes of India began. The Hyksos and after that other new kingdoms were established in Egypt. The post Minoan period was there in Greece. The Assyrians Asura (worshippers of garudfaced deity) were ruling in Asia Minor, the Babylonian kingdom was under the Assyrians ... Aryans went towards Greece and the foundation of Israel was laid.
Now a thing worthy mentioning here... there was a poet named Malik-us-Sha'ra in the darbaar of Harun al-Rashid who treasured ancient literature that had been removed from Mecca before islam reached there... no matter that was written on any medium like the Treaty of Mitanni. He edited some of those compositions and made a collection named 'Siyarul' which was later published from Beirut Publishing Company, Palestine. On the 118th page of this book, a poem of Labi-Bin-E-Akhtab-Bin-E-Turfa, an Arabic poet from 1700 BC has been quoted, which goes like this...
"Faar aadakal gaaho nazzelaa zikratyn wahal tajalleeyatun 'ainaane sahabee arba 'atu;
Haazahee yunazzelv vasoolo Zikratun minal hindtun yagoolunallaa yaa ahalaal arze 'aalameena kullahum;
Fattabe 'oo Zikratul Veda haqqan maalam yunazzelatun wahowa 'aalum us samawal yujra minallahe tenzuelan Fa 'ainamaa yaa akheeyo muttabe 'au yo basshaveeyo naag atun.
Wa asnaina hymaa bik wa Atar naasaheena ka akhwatun.
Wa asnaata alaa 'oodan wahowa masha avatun."
Doesn't this seem like the scripture of Quran... but it was written way before that when there was no Semitic literature and all divine books will have the same scripture. Here the poet is telling about the four Vedas which were composed in Hind. Now we get to know something from this praise of the Vedas by an Arabic... that this territory was called 'Hind', all the four Vedas had come into existence and Arabs also knew about the people of India and the society here that time.
There used to be intermingling through sea trade also, with major centers further established by David and Solomon in Israel. Other land routes also provided communication between the shifting populations. About two hundred years after Labi, there used to be a kingdom named Mitanni in northern Syria (including parts of Iraq, Turkey and Syria). You can find Sanskrit language and culture there just like India. The names of their kings, feudatories, capitals (Vasukhani) will be found in Sanskrit
Like Indians and Egyptians they used chariots in war, wrote literture on horse training in Sanskrit, and witnessed Vedic gods like Indra, Mitra, Nasatya (Ashwini Kumar) in a treaty with a rival king in 1380 BC. Now please do not get confused by considering Sanskrit as the language of India. Think it as if it was a primitive language which in modern times is called Proto Indo European,
Then a branch further developed towards Persia and Sindh, which was known as Proto Indo-Iranian and from this branch that Sanskrit originated which is known as Vedic Sanskrit. You can distinguish the evidence of this language found in Europe or around the Mediterranean Sea, in Persia, but one thing has to be accepted that Vedas or Vedic deities had come into existence before one and a half thousand BC and were known to the Arabs, Turkish till Syrian.
Avesta was composed in Proto-Indo-Iranian which is in four parts like the Vedas (Semitic also has four books, Taurah, Jabur, Injil, and Quran) and has a lot in common with the Vedas. Veda means Avesta or vice versa. It is certain that both the books have been written by people of the same family. According to linguist Rajendra Prasad, their antiquity can be determined according to the chronology of one word 'L'. That is, after coming in contact with India, the use of 'L' in these texts increased.
The use of 'L' is eight times in the new mandalas as compared to the older mandalas of the Rigveda, while it is seven times more in the Atharvaveda. From this, two things can be deduced that the mandalas after the Rigveda may belong to the period of the Atharvaveda and on this basis Atharvaveda is considered to be the newest. Now, if this theory is applied to Avesta, then there is complete absence of the letter 'L' in it, which gives an idea that it must have been written before the Vedas.
Written by Ashfaq Ahmad
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