History as a Colonial Tool
“For Western historians anything that is pre-Christian has to have been heathen, barbaric, godless or pagan, and traced back to Greek or Rome. Thus, their religious loyalties stunt their intellectual horizons."
- Stephen Knapp, author of Proof of Vedic Culture's Global Existence p. 272.
Since the nineteenth century, Bharat's ancient history from Vedic times and the true content of the Veda have both been distorted by a blinkered and unsympathetic scholarship. British rulers, European scholars and missionaries combined in a campaign to disparage the roots of Indian civilization, and used the wholly groundless Aryan Invasion theory to sow seeds of division in the Indian society - "divide and rule," but also "divide and convert." The same fallacies continue to be promoted today. Unfortunately, many of the wounds the Aryan invasion theory inflicted on Indian society are still painfully open today, nurtured as they have been by missionaries, Marxist historians and politicians, who together have made sure that divisions between castes have been sharpening rather than subsiding - for the simple reason that without such divisions they would all be out of business. Today, it is necessary to examines the birth of the Aryan myth, and the misuses it has bred; it then gives a fresh look at the invasion theory in the light of recent scientific evidence, and shows how it now stands overwhelmingly disproved. (source: The Invasion That Never Was - By Michel Danino and Sujata Nahar p. 26).
The first point to note is that the idea of the Aryans as foreigners who invaded India and destroyed the existing Harappan Civilization is a modern European invention; it receives no support whatsoever from Indian records - literary or archaeological. The same is true of the notion of the Aryans as a race; it finds no support in Indian literature or tradition. The word 'Arya' in Sanskrit means noble and never a race. In fact, the authoritative Sanskrit lexicon (c. 450 AD), the famous Amarakosa gives the following definition:mahakula kulinarya sabhya sajjana sadhavahAn Arya is one who hails from a noble family, of gentle behavior and demeanor, good-natured and of righteous conduct
And the great epic Ramayana has a singularly eloquent expression describing Rama as:
arya sarva samascaiva sadaiva priyadarsanahArya, who worked for the equality of all and was dear to everyone.
The Rigveda also uses the word Arya something like thirty six times, but never to mean a race. The nearest to a definition that one can find in theRigveda is probably:
praja arya jyotiragrah ... (Children of Arya are led by light)RV, VII. 33.17
The word 'light' should be taken in the spiritual sense to mean enlightenment. The word Arya, according to those who originated the term, is to be used to describe those people who observed a code of conduct; people were Aryans or non-Aryans depending on whether or not they followed this code. This is made entirely clear in the Manudharma Shastra or theManusmriti (X.43-45):
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Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (1880 – 1936) was a German historian and philosopher whose interests also included mathematics, science, and art. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West on p. 13 in which he puts forth a cyclical theory of the rise and decline of civilizations.
Spengler observed this about Eurocentrism:
“The Western European area is regarded as a fixed pole, a unique patch chosen on the surface of the sphere for no better reason, it seems, than because we live on it – and great histories of millennial duration and mighty faraway Cultures are made to revolve around this pole in all modesty. It is a quaintly conceived system of sun and planets. We select a single bit of ground as the natural center of the historical system, and make it the central sun. From it all the events of history receive their real light; from it their importance is judged in perspective.”
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“The West tried its best to persuade India that its philosophy is absurd, its art puerile, its poetry uninspired, its religion grotesque and its ethics barbarous”.
(source: The Decline of the West - By Oswald Spengler p. 13 and Contending paradigms of Indian history: Did India lack historical agency? - By Shivaji Singh).
Refer to The Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple - By Ishwar Sharan and Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America - By Krishnan Ramaswamy, Antonio de Nicolas and Aditi Banerjee
The colonial era of Indian history was an era of historical myth-making. Innumerable myths were created and propagated to falsify history with a view to change Indian psyche and denationalize Indian identity.
(source: India's Rebirth - Sri Aurobindo p. 110-111).
The term 'aryan' has never been used in a racial sense anywhere in the vast compendium of Hindu literature. In the whole of the Rig Veda the word arya occurs no more than four times. It stands for whatever is regarded as eminent and ennobling. The term was used in a racial sense for the first time by Western historians who cooked up the theory of an Aryan invasion of India around 1500 B.C. They also popularized in a racial sense, the term Dravidian which had earlier had only a linguistic connotation.
(source: Story of Islamic Imperialism in India - By Sita Ram Goel Voice of India ISBN : 81-85990-23-9 p. 8).
It is not a wise or correct view that the Hindus had no historical sense. When they excelled in many difficult sciences and arts, it cannot be that they were deficient in the comparatively crude and primitive art of keeping chronicles, in which much lesser peoples have excelled.
"If we consider the political changes and convulsions which have happened in Hinduism since Mahmud's invasion and the intolerant bigotry of many of his successors, we shall be able to account for the paucity of its national works on history, without being driven to the conclusion, that the Hindus were ignorant of an art which was cultivated in other countries from almost the earliest ages. Is it to be imagined that a nation so highly civilized as the Hindus, amongst whom the exact sciences flourished in perfection, by whom the fine arts, architecture, sculpture, poetry and music were not only cultivated but taught and defined by the nicest and most elaborate rules, were totally unacquainted with the simple art of recording the events of their history, the chapters of their princes and the acts of their reigns?"
Though it is often said glibly that India has never had any historical instinct and that she has never kept any record of her achievements, such a view is incorrect.
The fact seems to be that the so-called Dravidians and the so-called Aryans were indigenous people in India and that the theory of their immigration and incursion into India is a figment of occidental scholarship.
In Tamil words Dravida is said to be the name of the Southern portion of India from Tiruvenkatam (Tirupati) to Kumari (Cape Comorin). The ancient Tamil works speak of a flood which destroyed the land south of the Kumari. The term Pancha Dravidas include the Tamils, the Telegus, the Karnatahas, the Maharastrians, and the Gurjaras, just as the term Pancha Gowdas include the people of the north of the Vindhyas. Thus the term Dravidas relates to a tract of land and not to a race.
The theory of the Aryan immigration into India from somewhere has been so often repeated by the western savants that it has become an article of faith even with the Indian scholars! But the Vedas refer to the Himalayas as the Uttara Giri i.e. the northern border and and contain no hints of an Aryan immigration into India from abroad.
(source: Indian Culture and the Modern Age - By Dewan Bahadur K. S. Ramaswami Sastri Annamalai University. 1956 p. 46-51).
Several eminent personalities including Swami Vivekanand, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore and Shri Aurobindo firmly believed that Aryans were homegrown, born and brought up in India. Many chose to dismiss those views simply as irrational, inspirational or ultra-nationalistic. Yet, the archeological finds being uncovered presently, year after year, supported by continuing historical & scholarly research seem to prove that Swami Vivekanand, Rabindranath Tagore and Shri Aurobindo, and many learned personalities were correct to raise pointed questions against the Aryan Invasion Theory.
The British, in presenting the Aryan Invasion Theory offered no proof. They did not need to. Hundreds of Indian historians rushed forward to earn their doctorates, promotions, patronage and government-aided jobs and positions for supporting the British theory of Aryan Invasion of India. Their Proof? Largely quoting those very hundreds of articles and books –and asking - how could so many learned books and serious articles by countless British and Indian historians be wrong!
Some did murmur that the British-created Myth was aimed at proving to the Indians that they have always been ruled by foreigners, being incapable of ruling themselves and that it was always the foreign invader, like the Aryans (and in later times, other foreigners and finally, the British), who brought progress and enlightenment – and therefore never must Indians aspire for self-rule unless the intention is to bring back darkness, decadence and ruin on themselves.
(source: Return of the Aryans - By Bhagwan S Gidwani - Book reviewed by Prof. Jagjit Mirchand).Refer to chapters on First Indologists and European Imperialism.
In the 18th century, India was regarded as the origin of civilization, by thinkers like Voltaire and Schlegel.
" I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, - astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc." " It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganges to learn geometry...But he would certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the reputation of the Brahmins' science not been long established in Europe..."
Friedrich von Schlegel (1772-1829) German philosopher, critic, and writer, declared in 1803:
"Everything without exception is of Indian origin.." "whether directly or indirectly, all nations are originally nothing but Indian colonies."
Refer to Voltaire, Lettres sur l'origine des sciences et sur celle des peuples de l'Asia (first published Paris, 1777), letter of 15 December 1775. and Voltaire, Fragments historiques sur l'linde, p. 444 - 445.
Refer to Out of India Theory - wikipedia.org and refer to chapter on Survarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor
Count Magnus Fredrik Ferdinand Bjornstjerna (1779-1847) author of Die Theogonie, Philosophie und Kosmogonie der Hindus says:
"It is there in (Aryavarta) we must seek not only for the cradle of the Brahmin religion but for the cradle of the high civilization of the Hindus, which gradually extended itself in the west to Ethiopia, to Egypt, to Phoenicia; in the East to Siam, to China and Japan; in the South to Ceylon, to Java and to Sumatra; in the North to Persia, to Chaldea, and to Colchis, whence it came to Greece and to Rome and at length to the distant abode of the Hyperboreons."
Five years later, Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804) aide-de-camp to George Washington and first secretary of the Treasury, epitomized this attitude in these words:
"When we read in the valuable production of those great Oriental scholars...those of a Jones, a Wilkings, a Colebrooke, or a Halhed - we uniformly discover in the Hindus a nation, whose polished manners are the result of a mild disposition and an extensive benevolence."
Frederick Eden Pargiter (1852-1927) in his well-known work Ancient Indian Historical Tradition says that the Aryan civilization is the civilization of the Aila or Lunar race which lived in Ilavrita in mid-Himalayas: that the Vedic culture reflects a blend of both Aryan and Dravidian and that the Aryan civilization did not come from beyond; and that it spread to Afghanistan and Persia and further west from India.
(source: Indian Culture and the Modern Age - By Dewan Bahadur K. S. Ramaswami Sastri Annamalai University. 1956 p.39).
Benfey's fame rests on his Pantschantantra, Fuenf Buecher indischer Fabeln, Maerchen und Erzaehlungen. ("Pancatantra, five books of Indian fables, fairy tales and stories), 1859. In the Introduction he showed that many Oriental and Occidental fairy tales are of Indian origin. He traced their route to the West: they were firs translated into Pahlevi, then into Arabic to be later rendered into Greek, Persian, Hebrew, Latin and German.
According to Benfey, the Pancatantra is a nitishastra, a book on statesmanship for kings and ministers. He concludes the introduction by saying "my research in the field of fables, fairy stories and tales of Orient and Occident have convinced me that not few fables, but a large number of fairy tales and stories, was spread from India all over the world."
(source: German Indologists: Biographies of Scholars in Indian Studies writing in German - By Valentine Stache-Rosen p.32 - 33).
Historian Thomas R. Trautmann explains, its proponents hoped that "the study of Sanskrit and Indian antiquities would bring a second renaissance to the West, as the study of Greek learning had been the foundation of the first Renaissance."
The French scholar Maurice Olender agrees: "Hebrew, whose centrality had been challenged for some time, finally gave way to Sanskrit," and, for a time, Sanskrit texts "with an air of eternity about them came to supplant the Bible." Well, almost.
Doctrine of Christian Discovery
C K Raju (1954 - ) holds a Ph.D. from the Indian Statistical Institute. He taught mathematics for several years before playing a lead role in the C-DAC team which built Param: India
He has observed that:
"According to which only Christians could be regarded as discoverers.
The church decreed that ownership of a piece of land must go to the first Christian to spot it. (Hence, the claim that Columbus “discovered”America , or that Vasco da Gama “discovered” India ). The people already living on the land did not matter, and the church encouraged their killing on a mass scale, where possible, as actually happened on three continents.
This doctrine was made into a law by the US
(source: Newton as Theologian - By C K Raju). Refer to Five Hundred Years of Injustice and Evangelical Intrusions - By Sandhya Jain Rupa Publications.
Note: The Doctrine of Discovery provided that by law and divine intention European Christian countries gained power and legal rights over indigenous non-Christian peoples immediately upon their “discovery” by Europeans. Various European monarchs and their legal systems developed this principle to benefit their own countries. Refer toNative America, Discovered and Conquered: Thomas Jefferson, Lewis & Clark, and Manifest Destiny - By Robert Miller
However, this generous estimate of Indian civilization and its possible contribution to the West started changing as Britain's hold over India grew more firm and widespread. While most 18th century European travelers to India described her as "flourishing," less than a century later she had sunk into depths of dismal misery. The Mahabharatahas this pregnant image: "If spent ceaselessly even the Himalayas would be exhausted." The British were anxious to clothe their greed in lofty ideals" the "white man's burden" of civilizing (and, naturally, Christianizing) less enlightened races, the "divinely ordained mission" of bringing to India the glory of Europe's commercial and industrial civilization, and so forth.
As Thomas R. Trautmann American historian, puts it:
"Evangelical influence drove British policy down a path that tended to minimize and denigrate the accomplishments of Indian civilization and to position itself as the negation of the (earlier) British Indomania" that was nourished by belief in Indian wisdom."
(Refer to What Every "Ugly American" Must Know about the "Civilized British - www.larouchepac.com)
That is how the short-lived "Indomania" gave way to what the French scholar Raymond Schwab called "British Indophobia." Sadly, but mistakenly, most of Europe's Sanskrit scholars were now certain that these translations would "carry their own condemnation." The British could even less accept that they owed their language and civilization to a benighted India - that would have been dealing a blow to the very foundation of Europe's mission in India, and particularly to the British Empire now at the height of its glory. Thus, the Rig-Veda was seen as "rather Indo-European than Hindu, and representing the condition of the Aryans before their final settlement in India."
Never mind that all this was mere conjecture, that the Rig-Veda itself made it clear that the wars between Aryans and Dasyus, were battles between powers of light and darkness, that the word "Arya" was plainly used in the Veda to describe not a racial group, but a quality of being and a culture, a dedication to the truth and readiness to fight for it - all this was simply brushed aside, and whole edifice was promptly erected on these non-existent foundations.
This theory was used to cut down the Indian's pride in his past and nation - since India was no longer the source of Indian civilization - and make him all the more willing to accept the white man's rule: now that the Hindus were shown to be descendants of former invaders who belonged to the same "Aryan race" as the Europeans' ancestors, it was easier to legitimize Britain's conquest of India as merely as one more "Aryan wave" which, this time would bring true light to the subcontinent. John Wilson, a leading Christian missionary of the time, declared in all seriousness in 1858, and naturally this happy family reunion had now brought India into contact "with the most enlightened and philanthropic nation in the world."
Lord Derby, then Secretary of State for India, declared that the scholars who had discovered and proved the close relationship between Sanskrit and English, had rendered more valuable service to the (colonial) Government of India than many a regiment."
Sir William Wilson Hunter 1840-1900) He was educated at Glasgow University (B.A. s86o), Paris and Bonn, acquiring a knowledge of Sanscrit, and passing first in the final examination for the Indian Civil Service in 1862. Author of A Brief History of the Indian Peoples and editor of Imperial Gazetteer of India.wrote in 1868:
"The aboriginals would be a good target group for conversion to Christianity. They have yet to start on the path of progress. It remains for us to decide whether the path is to lead them to Hinduism, or the purer faith and civilization which we represent."
Thomas R Trautmann author of Aryans and British India (1997) and The Aryan Debate in India, points out that the racial theory of Indian civilization is the product of the late 19th century, when the relations between whites and other ethnic groups in the Anglo-Saxon world were being reconfigured with ideological support from a spate of racial essentialism.
Trautmann concludes: “That the racial theory of Indian civilization still lingers is a miracle of faith. Is it not time we did away with it.” (215).
(source: The Quest for the Origin of Vedic Culture - By Edwin F Bryant p. 51 – 62).
Eurocentrism is becoming identified with ignorance and oppression
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