Indian Astronomy | Astronomical Dating of Events | 101

Mathomathis would like to present article on Indian Astronomy | Astronomical Dating of Events | 101 by the author Kosla Vepa Published by Indic Studies Foundation, 948 Happy Valley Rd., Pleasanton, Ca 94566, USA. Their website can be located Indicstudies.us. The studies is also conducted by N.S. Rajaram PhD. Author’s in the volume 1 of thier research start their discussion on a topic called Why are History and the Chronology Important by Kosla Vepa PhD

It is taken as largely axiomatic in the study of the History of the Indic peoples, that the civilization that remains extant has been brought into the area by migrating races such as the Aryans, and in fact some would argue, that such a statement holds also for the so called Dravidians of India. According to such a narrative everything that was worth preserving has been handed down to us over the centuries by migrations, within the last 3 1/2 millennia, into the subcontinent, from somewhere else. It is also true that the history that is taught the children of India today is vastly at variance with the puranic accounts handed down to us over several millennia. It is to state it without any embellishments, a revised history that is completely at odds with the traditional history of India. Even so great an effort as the History and Culture of the Indian people edited by RC Majumdar, the most famous of Indian historians at the time of Independence accepts the basic framework, the steel frame, of the History of India as revised by the British colonialists. Fifty years after independence the narrative has not changed and the banner of the colonial version of history is now borne by the Indian left including the Communists and the large part of the Indian political establishment that espouses the Indian version of a political dogma encompassed in the general rubric of Secularism. It is not our contention that History should never be revised, but it should certainly never be done peremptorily at the behest of an invader, simply because the colonial power deems it to be so. Every change that the colonial power has wrought and most of these as can be seen from the table below was introduced by the erstwhile colonial power should be examined for motive and authenticity.

Table below describes the inconsistencies in the current narrative of Indian history

A substantial percentage of Indians now feel they have a stake in the preservation of this false history and when confronted with the reality of their acquiescence to a false and revised history of their own land by a very recent arrival on the scene, react with irrelevant responses such as “why blame the British” (the issue is not one of blame, and the issue is not about Britain or the British, for after all we are in great admiration of the British for the extraordinary sagacity they displayed in prolonging their imperial rule by every artifice imaginable). We have also dealt with the systematic approach that the British used to remake the weltanschuung of the Indic and to create an international image of the Indic that is much at variance with reality, and the success they achieved in the resulting internalization of these views by the Indic himself in our essay titled The South Asia File. Author’s objective in this seminar is not to recite a litany of grievances against  the Occidental (rhymes with oriental) but to give a philosophical underpinning to the long and steady evolution of the Indic civilization it breadth and what is indeed remarkable its staying power.

The other great civilizations have either altered significantly or been driven extinct. There is very little left of the Greek civilization (although the west fancies itself the successor to the Greco Roman civilization. The ancient Greeks would be considered Pagans by the established churches today, and hardly any of their life style remains. It is also important to remember that most of the Greek savants were natives of Asia Minor and their life style was more akin to that of Persia than that of France or England, neither of which were pretty far along the Civilization curve, in any event, during that period of history.

Importance of Chronology

The Indic civilization is for all intents and purposes the only one, amongst the ancients, surviving virtually intact. The Gayatri mantra and the invoking of Savitur are at least 7000 years old. It already asks for enlightenment and not for bread, because they had mastered agriculture and had no problem with adequate food. People (west of the Urals) wonder what happened to the Indus Valley civilization. Nothing dramatic happened they just moved on and their descendants became the Gujaratis, Maharashtrians and other residents of modern India. It is this unbroken continuity that rankles with the Occidental, because he is all too conscious that his own history is replete with wars (e.g. the hundred year’s war between England and France), extinct civilizations, and destruction. Hence, his obsession to endow India with a similar heritage.

A false chronology leads to false conclusions about who we are as a people in very fundamental ways. For example the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) seeks to bestow on us a heritage which is far removed from the Vedic heritage in very significant ways and constrains our History with a timeline that is totally artificial, ignores our whole puranic history and devalues the unique nature of the culture and ethos of the subcontinent. Even after 150 years when it was first proposed, the postulation of the AIT, remains that a postulate and a hypothesis without any empirical evidence to bolster it. As Dr Rajaram remarks in his customary pithy manner in the foreward.

“For the present, author focuses on the contradictions bedeviling the Vedic and Harappan periods. The contradictions between the various historical theories (and their conclusions) out ancient India and the data they claim to interpret are so wide-ranging and persistent that I can at present do little more than highlight some of their more obvious aspects. One of the points of the present essay is that the entire enterprise of historical writing is fundamentally flawed, and nothing less than a complete overhaul is called for. Further, this overhaul has to be supported by empirical evidence and carried out with due respect to the primary sources from the natural sciences, archaeology and the literature. Mere tinkering with details will not take us out of the present morass.” We who are of Indic heritage realize only too well that a mere claim of antiquity will not gain us the respect of the world. We are fully cognizant that antiquity is not even necessary to achieve dignity and respect, but it is indeed remarkable to see the great lengths that some amongst the occidentals today will go, to deny us the antiquity which we feel is the right one. If indeed the occidental regards antiquity as merely incidental to his heritage or to his weltanschauung, his actions bespeak otherwise. The ferocity with which he argues against our historical heritage is only matched by the tenacity with which he would deny us a place at the table with other major powers, and that is another story unto itself.

Transmittal of Knowledge – Was there theft of Intellectual Property

There is another point to be made about the direction in which knowledge was transmitted. Many have been the individuals from other parts of the world who studied at Indian universities like Nalanda, Takshashila, Vikramshila, and Odantipura till the 12th century. It was a rare instance where they would go back and denigrate the knowledge they had so acquired or the land they acquired it from, and in fact went out of their way to eulogize the education they received at these locations which were studded all along the Gangetic valley, but particularly so in Vihara (Bihar). However all this changed during the 16th century when the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) sent highly educated (for those days) individuals, the number sometimes exceeding 70 or 80 at any given point in time, whose sole purpose was to extract as much information from the people who practiced such skills, like Jyotisa Pandits and engage in intellectual property theft. What defines such activity as theft? If the recipient does not acknowledge the source of his teaching then it is fair to call it theft. The reason for the initial refusal to reveal to the source of their knowledge may have been due to the terror exerted by the Catholic Church during the Inquisition and after, that any knowledge attributed to pagan sources would be punishable by death. In a landmark publication and a sweeping and scholarly coverage of the History of Mathematics, CK Raju, the Indian Polymath has recounted the sequence of events leading up to the sudden spate of discoveries by Mercator, Clavius, Tyco Brahe, Fermat and Pascal. But whatever the reasons for the medieval savants of Europe to not reveal their sources, there is certainly little reason to maintain the charade that the Occident did not derive anything of value from India.

A question that often occurs to most of us, and I am certain we are not unique in this respect, is to ask why the Indic civilization which had reached such lofty levels several millennia ago, has sunk to such depressed levels today. If we come across as placing the responsibility for such a transformation on others such as the British and the Islamic invaders, who marauded the land for over 7 centuries, that certainly is not the intent. The responsibility for being at the current state of affairs clearly lies with all of the people of the subcontinent, but we feel it is an obligation even a duty to seek the causes of this transformation and let the chips fall where they may. Civilization is a precious good, in the words of Will Durant, and its fragile structure and delicate fabric can easily be disturbed leading to extinction of cultures as we have seen repeatedly throughout History. The Indic civilization may have survived one onslaught but may not be sufficiently resilient to future such onslaughts, should they occur. It behooves us therefore to seek to understand the nature of the threat(s) that the civilization faces as she enters a new millennium.

Warnings of History – T Hanuman Chowdary Ph.D

While the modern, largely European concept of nation-states is just about 200 years old (22 principalities of Germany were united by Bismarck in 1871 under Prussia’s leadership to become the German nation state; still leaving out German Austria as a separate state; England is UK only since 1801; Italy is one nation state only for less than 150 years with various city states and provinces united as the modern republic of Italy by the efforts of Garibaldi and Mazzini; USA is a nation state only since 1776), the people of India had always considered themselves as one people, Bharatiyas; in one country Bharat Varsha. The Sanatana Dharma and its culture unite the people. We have been one people, one nation with one land but many kingdoms all owing allegiance to dharma. The same gods, the same temples, the same tirthas, and same mythologies were revered by all the people, all over the land but in their different languages, ways of life, and food and clothing etc.

First, it was the communists of India who said (in the 1940s) that India is not one nation but a conglomeration of nationalities; they said that Muslims (by dint of their religion); people speaking different languages like Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Gujarati, Marathi are all different nationalities, each one entitled to its own sovereign state. This evil formulation to disintegrate the millennial Bharatiya Rashtra came out of the evil application of Joseph Stalin’s theory of nationalities and their right to self-determination. Under Lenin and Stalin, the dictatorship of the communist party created proforma independent republics for the different nationalities like Uzbeks, Tajiks, Georgians, Ukrainians, Armenians, etc. They were in fact vassal states of imperial Russia.

The communists in India were outdone by the evil genius, Mohammed Ali Jinnah and his Muslim League. First, Jinnah and the Muslim League said that Muslims in India are a minority and wanted safeguards to preserve their religion in a democratic India where Hindus would be the overwhelming majority. Gradually, Jinnah and the Muslim League abandoned the concept of minority and safeguards for it in favour of the concept of Muslims as separate nation. This notion was already promoted and broadcast by the communists. In the event, India was partitioned, Congress party and Mahatma Gandhi who swore that India would not be allowed to be divided humiliatingly succumbed to terrorism of the Muslim League unleashed on their Direct Action Day 16th August 1946 and the massive violence unleashed on Hindus from then onwards. The Muslim inhabitants of India who voted and rioted for the partition of India and created the Islamic state of Pakistan from where all Hindus and Sikhs etc had been completely cleansed, are now once again asserting their separate entity and as in the past, the vote-hungry Congress presided by a foreign-born person is taking several steps to confirm the separate Muslim identity and eventually, nationhood.

The Sachar Committee report accepted by the Congress led UPA government will be accelerating the demand of the residue of Muslims in our country for separate nationhood and separate states. 126 districts in the country are earmarked for Muslimfication by the Ministry of Minority Welfare presided over by Abdul Rehman Antulay. In this context, it would be most educative if we read some of the passages from Kulapati K M Munshiji’s short work. Warnings of History (Trends in Modern India) published by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in 1963. “What are the forces which lead to the rise or fall of nations? How do nations rise and fall? That implies another enquiry : What are the factors which go to make a virile nation? When do they run amuck? “These factors, though often derived from geographical compactness or the unity of language, are not necessarily dependent on them. Men living in the same geographical area do not necessarily make a nation. Men speaking the same language or following the same religion do not always make a nation. Switzerland and Canada are multilingual nations. UK and USA, India and Pakistan, though speaking the same language are different nations. “Three such factors are invariably found in virile nations: common memory of achievements, will to unity, and habitual urge to collective action.

“First, the people constituting a nation have a common memory of great heroes and exploits of great adventures and triumphs in the past. Japan, perhaps, represents the finest example of ancient memories, tenaciously preserved. The same could be said of Hindus, but the author wonders whether the same would be said about them two decades hence. “Historic forces often have not given a common memory to communities living in a single country; they often look upon their past from different angles, and, in consequence, cannot form a nation. Hindus looked up to Rana Pratap and Shivaji as their heroes; the Muslims admired Mahamud Ghazni and Aurangazeb; in this antagonistic outlook lay the seed of Pakistan. The common memory, though limited, which we now share in India is that of mutual influence in the past, and of freedom struggled for and won in the present. The British and the French in Canada, and the French, the Germans and the Italians in Switzerland, have short but living memories of common adventures and triumphs sufficiently vital to make them a nation. “The USA has solved the problem in a characteristic way. Every year foreign emigrants pour into the country, fleeing from oppression or seeking wealth. However, due to its educational system, in the third generation if not in the second, their descendants acquire, as if they were their own, the memories of Washington and Abraham Lincoln and of the colossal achievements for which USA stands.

“In India, eleven years have been wasted by a sterile educational policy. (Our education continues to be not only sterile but poisonous as regards India’s true history). Many things could have been done in this interval to give to young men and women a common memory of our struggle. But it was not done. A generation has now grown up which takes freedom for granted but draws no inspiration from the way it was won. “The second factor which plays a great part in the birth and growth of a nation is the will to national unity in a people. Nationalism implies a sustained effort on the part of the people to will themselves into a nation. “But who are the people? In all collective affairs of men, we should remember, it is what Toynbee calls the dominant minority which speaks, creates and leads that counts. The masses are passive, following its lead or submitting to its influence or coercive power. The will to national unity is hard to develop but easy to be dissipated. Generally it is dissipated under certain conditions

Table Below describes The Will to National Unity

• “All nations which have risen to greatness have been characterized by a sense of mission.
• “In Japan we found a deep sense of mission. Its people cannot think of themselves as a lost people; they have faith in their culture and destiny; they have no regrets and no frustration.
• “The dominant minority in USA has also a sense of mission to spread its free way of life throughout the world, to combat totalitarianism and to be in the forefront of material achievements. It is this Pillar of Fire which leads them on and leaves them no rest.
• “This sense of mission we found very highly developed in Germany. In course of three decades the land twice came under the heels of foreign armies and its people were desiccated as never before in history. And yet their sense of destiny never dimmed; they reconstructed their life long before their conquerors could repair the ravages inflicted by victory.