The Dravidians
THE first of the great civilizing peoples of the historic period seem to have been the Dravidians. According to the Lugal-ud, a Sumerian text inscribed on clay tablets six thousand years ago: "There were thick ice sheets everywhere . . . then a terrible fire ... melting ice sheets, interminable rain, water covering the Earth, then, little by little, being absorbed." And the Book of Genesis (11:1) says: "Leaving the Orient, these men found a plain in the country of Shinear (Sumeria) and settled there." The present populations, called Dravidian, who, like the Sumerians, spoke agglutinative languages, appeared in India after the last Ice Age toward 9,000 B.C. According to tradition, they came from a continent that had been engulfed by the sea.
As M. R. Sakhare points out in his History and Philosophy of Lingayat Religion, the Dramilas or Dravidians, the Termiloi of Herodotus, belong to a race of the type called Mediterranean. They may have emigrated to India from Lemuria, a continent which extended from Madagascar to Indonesia and which was flooded by the sea. Their civilization spread in India from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas.
Starting from the sixth millennium B.C., during what the Hindu cosmology calls the Age of Doubt-the Dvâparä Yugä, which is the third age of the cycle that regulates the existence of the present humanity from its beginning to its end, the Dravidian civilization developed, reaching its peak in India between the sixth and second millennia B.C.1
It was the Dravidians who built, among others in the Indus Valley, the cities of Mohenjo Daro and Harappa, considerable traces of which have recently been discovered. The influence of the Dravidian civilization was very extensive. It affected the whole Indian continent, but also extended to the "Sumerian cities with which the people of the Indus were definitely in contact."2
The Dravidians were a seafaring nation. Large ports have been discovered on the Peninsula of Kathiawar and in the Gulf of Cambay, north of the present Bombay. Sizable necropolises belonging to a population called the Tortoise People, who were related to the people of the Indus, have been discovered in Oman and Arabia. The Indo-Sumerian influence on the first dynasty in Egypt is evident. The Cretan civilization is closely linked to that of the Indus.
The Sumerian deity called the Lord of the Animals corresponds to the Indian Pashupati (Lord of the Animals). The Sumerian goddess, the Lady of the Mountains, is called Parvati (Lady of the Mountains) in India. Nergal, the Sumerian god of the underworld, and his sister, Ereshkigal, call to mind Yama, the Indian god of the dead and his sister, Yami. The cult of the Bull, the symbol of the horns, and the story of the flood are found in the two cultures, as is the the symbolism of numbers. The mountain of cedars in the Epic of Gilgamesh is the Dâruvanä (the forest of cedars) of Indian myth. The Sumerians were called "Black Faces." The followers of the old religion are, throughout the course of history and still today, called the Kâlâmukhä (Black Faces) in India.
Isidore of Seville (sixth century), looking to very old traditions, mentions in his encyclopedia this migration of Indian populations, which he calls Garamantes and which, via Egypt, may have come to Spain and from there moved as far as to Great Britain.3 According to a theory today supported by Soviet historians, this migration took place in the opposite direction, that is, from the Mediterranean toward India, thus linking it with the myth of Atlantis.
The Dravidian languages, which are agglutinative like Sumerian, formerly spoken in the whole of India, today survive essentially in the south. The main languages are Tamil, Kanara, Telugu, and Malayalam. However, in central and northeastern India as far as Baluchistan on the Iranian border, there remain pockets where Brahui is still spoken. Agglutinative languages similar to the Dravidian languages which have survived in the West are Georgian, Basque, and Peuhl, peripheral traces of an ancient culture surviving on the edge of the Aryan world. The Pelasgi of pre-Hellenic Greece were, in all likelihood, Dravidian.4 Ligurian was a Euskaroid language related to Basque, as probably the Etruscan language was.
Recent studies on blood types have related the pre-Aryan origin of Caucasians, Basques, Sardinians, and Berbers.
Descending neither from Cro-Magnon man nor from the Celts, the populations living on the edge of western Europe and in some Mediterranean centers are therefore of Neolithic origin, their arrival taking place between the departure of the Cro-Magnon men, who set out for the North with their reindeer, and the Celtic invasions of the Bronze Age. . . . These populations . . . live in countries "at the end of the earth," the western extremity of Britain, a fringe of Normandy, Wales, North Scotland, Ireland, Iceland ... [and also] certain Mediterranean regions, isolated or in refuge, like the inhabitants of the mountainous Massif of Sardinia, Corsica, several alpine valleys, the inhabitants of Liguria, some of the Berbers of the Saharan Atlas Mountains, some groups of Tuaregs. . . . the blood of these insular or isolated fringe populations is close to that of the Basques with a high occurrence of type O.5
Strangely, the blood of the American Indians is also type O. Their languages are agglutinative, and their religious symbols and the graphic principles behind their architecture are very similar to those of the Dravidians. They apparently belong to the same human species.
The Aryans
THE invasion of the Aryans, who came from the plains of the Ukraine at the dawn of the second millennium following climatic changes, was an unprecedented material and cultural catastrophe.
At first, the Aryan tribes only settled in the northwest of India. Their penetration into the Ganges Valley took place slowly. The south and the east of the continent remained independent for a long time, and they were able to save their languages, religions, and customs. The Aryans destroyed the cities of the Indus (about 1800), and also Sumeria, Crete, and Mycenae. They spread throughout the west. The Aryan Kassites settled in Babylon toward 1750. The Hyksos entered Egypt at the same time. The Persians, Achaeans, Dorians, Romans, Celts, and Germans were Aryan tribes.
ARYAN LINGUISTIC EXPANSION
Nothing has survived of the original Cretan language. We also know nothing about the Etruscan language, although many Roman nobles were sent to study in the universities of Etruria. The phenomenon of Aryan linguistic expansion continues on implacably today. Texts about the cultures of the peoples colonized by the Europeans survive only in Aryan languages (English, French, German, etc.). Even in India, whose ruling classes send their children to study at Cambridge, some aspects of Hindu thought are known today only through translations into Western languages, which are those of the new conquering Aryans.
By a curious falsification of history, the legend that the origins of civilization are Aryan, or Indo-European, was generally accepted until the discoveries of Egyptian and Cretan worlds, then Sumerian, Hittite, and Babylonian texts, combined to confirm the primacy of the ancient cultures whose languages and traditions India has safeguarded.
THE OCCULT TRADITION
The religion of the Aryans, which was introduced into India and also into Persia and Achaean and Dorian Greece, comes from a patriarchial society of nomads. The worship of the horse replaces that of the bull. The new religion, imposed by the conquerors, disturbed the order of Indian society, making men of Aryan origin a "master race" who considered themselves superior to other humans. Non-Aryans were treated as an inferior race, good for slavery (dâsyu) and deprived of civil rights. Many were driven into the mountainous or outlying regions and to the south of the country.
The Aryan conquerors destroyed cities, massacred populations, and reduced the survivors to slavery without regard for rank or learning. It was not only in Greek antiquity that scholars and philosophers were sold as slaves. The attitude of modern colonialists toward "native" scholars has scarcely evolved in this regard.
Therefore, it was in the classes considered inferior and used for the most lowly tasks that were found, mixed with artisans and farm laborers, the descendants of princes and priests, the holders of knowledge. Little by little, these latter organized themselves in the form of occult societies representing a parallel civ
ilization, kept secret, in which the task of groups of ascetics was to pass on the various aspects of the ancient knowledge. This is not unique to India. Occult societies represent a force all over the world in maintaining the forms of knowledge that originated in the pre-Aryan world. In India, in order to escape persecution, these groups of initiates were often forced to feign madness. This explains some of the strange rules of conduct adopted by the majority of monastic orders, heirs to the ancient knowledge.
The Aryans, while maintaining their racial privileges, gradually absorbed some aspects of the technology and arts of the conquered people, as well as many of the philosophical and theological concepts of the ancient civilization of India. Vedism became imbued with the culture of a world that it was striving to subjugate. Non-Aryan princes and philosophers were raised to the rank of "honorary Aryans" and profoundly influenced the Aryan culture.
The first hymns of the Rig Vedä, which represent the original religion of the Aryans, were in all likelihood composed before their arrival in India. The latest of their sacred books, the Atharvä Vedä, already reflects rites, beliefs, and religious and magical practices that no longer bore any relation to those of the first hymns of the Rig Vedä, The Dravidian influence is also perceptible in the texts describing the great rituals, the Brâhmanä(s); in the philosophy of the Upanishad(s); and in "the tradition of Yogä, which begins with the Indus Valley and continues through the [non-Aryan ascetics called] Yatis of the Rig Vedä and Vrâtyäs of the Atharvä Vedä."6
The teachings of the non-Aryan sage Kapilä (with brown skin), whose influence we see appearing toward the seventh century B.C., had already introduced some of the cosmological theories of the Sâmkhyä into the Aryan world. However, it was always an oral tradition whose extent and complexity we have difficulty in realizing.
Groups of the initiated, forming secret societies, were created everywhere that Aryan religions had been imposed, with the aim of safeguarding the threatened rites and forms of learning. Alchemy, astrology, and the powers of vision and prediction of Yogä were often considered to be diabolical and were persecuted by the official religions. It is thanks to the occult tradition that efforts could be made, in various eras, to salvage the ancient knowledge and cults. Thus, in the period when Lakulishä restored Shaivism we will see Gnosticism and Mithraism appear in the West.
Later, the emperor Hadrian tried to bring together a college of scholars to rediscover the ancient learning. A similar endeavor by Prospero Colonna was at the origin of the Renaissance in the West, whose philosophical and religious bases were destroyed by the savage persecution of the Church, allowing only the most external aspects to survive.7 Despite Christianity, Dionysian practices and rites lasted for a long time in Europe in secret initiatory organizations. Sufi sects in the Middle East have protected an esoteric teaching and still practice ecstatic dances of Dionysian character despite opposition from orthodox Islam.
WRITING
Writing, a phenomenon linked to the Kali Yugä, appeared nearly simultaneously in India, Sumeria, and Egypt around 3300 B.C. The ancient writing of Mohenjo Daro, which has not yet been deciphered, seems to have disappeared after the invasion of the Aryans, who knew nothing of writing and probably considered it to be wizard's spells. Written texts probably survived for a long time in esoteric Dravidian centers, but subsist only in later versions. On the other hand, the tombs of the kings of Egypt have safeguarded precious documents, and it is thanks to a climatic miracle that original Sumerian texts, inscribed on clay tablets, have recently come down to us.
The Aryans, it is said, "loathed writing." (That is why we have no knowledge at all of the Druidic tradition.) Their religious texts and rituals, the Vedä(s), Upanishad(s), and the Brâhmanä(s), were, and still are, handed down with the help of very elaborate mnemonic techniques that assure the continuity of the oral tradition, even through individuals who do not understand their meaning. A text learned from a book is not, even these days, considered fit for ritual. Ancient writings survived in India only in a secret form, in places where dynasties of priests or scholars carried on the tradition of the ancient learning.
A new concept of writing with a commercial purpose appeared among the Phoenicians at the beginning of the first millennium B.C. It was introduced to Cyprus and Carthage in the eighth century, to Malta and Sardinia in the seventh. The Greek alphabet, derived from the Phoenician, was formed in the eighth century and spread among the Etruscan and Latin tribes from the seventh century onward. It was not standardized until the fourth century. Aramaic writing, which was to become Arabic writing, spread in Iran during the sixth century.
It was only in the sixth century B.C., the critical period in the middle of the Kali Yuga, that is, the period of the Buddha, more than a thousand years after the Aryans arrived in India, that Darius, who had annexed the Indus Valley and established a satrapy there, introduced into India a new form of writing, Aramaic, used by merchants, as was money. The ancient Sanskrit alphabets, the Brahmi and the Karoshti, are therefore of Semitic origin. The first inscriptions date from the third century B.C. The Vedic language had evolved, giving birth to various vernacular languages, the Prakrit(s).
Writing allowed the Aryans to fix the religious and philosophical texts until then passed on orally. It was on this basis that great scholars forged an artificial language called Sanskrit, the "refined language," devised to last forever, which, little by little, became the universal language of the culture.
In the fourth century B.C., the grammarian Pânini, summarizing earlier works, established in his famous grammar, the definitive form of Sanskrit, which has not changed since.
Apart from inscriptions and engravings on coins, writing was done on papyrus, palm leaves, parchment, and silk. Paper, which appeared in China at the beginning of our era, only spread to the West in the fourteenth century and in India a little later. The majority of Indian manuscripts are on palm leaves and must be periodically recopied.
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The Religions of the Kali Yugä
Shaivism
SHAIVISM, THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT DRAVIDIans, was always the religion of the people. Its metaphysical, cosmological, and ritual conceptions were preserved by communities of wandering ascetics living on the fringe of the offical society, whom the Aryans scornfully called Yati(s) (wanderers), Vrâtyä(s) (untouchables), or jîvikä(s) (beggars).
The Vâyu Purânä mentions the fact that these wandering Shaiva ascetics "seem to have possessed the humble status of Shudras (people of the seryile caste or even of outcastes who were forbidden to enter towns)."
In practice, the term jîvikä applied to the whole of the non-Aryan population. Communities of jîvikä laymen were to be found in all the great cities of the Ganges basin (and formed a parallel society). They included members of all classes.1
In the fourth century A.D., Amarsimhä, the author of a famous Sanskrit dictionary, still classes among the Shudrä(s) (the low castes) the Devalä or Shaivas, who worship idols, and notes among them the Pâshupatä(s), the Pâñcharâträ(s), and the Tantrikä(s), that is, the population groups who had been able to maintain the old religion, its rites, cosmology, myths, and practices. It is the members of these monastic orders who today still teach the disciplines and eroticomagical rites of Tantrism.
Aryan society practiced a punitive discrimination against them. In South India, even in the fourteenth century, the jîvikä(s), that is, the indigenous people, paid much heavier taxes than the rest of the population (as later on the Muslims imposed upon the Hindus).
The Return of Arihat
THE date 3102 B.C., which marks the beginning of the Kali Yuga, represents a cosmological reality linked with an alteration in influx from the planetary spheres; it is not an arbitrary date. Its influence is felt everywhere in the world. Differences in the estimation of this date derive from varying methods of calculation. In Sumer, it is the time of the flood. The Hebrew calendar preserved by certain sects begins in 3760 B.C., while the American Mayan calendar beg
ins in 3313 B.C. After the events that mark the beginning of each period, a sort of characteristic climate is established, which, for the Kali Yugä, is an atmosphere of tensions, rivalries, conflicts, invasions, wars, and the like. Perverse conceptions, hostile to the tradition of wisdom and the harmony between the species which appeared during the Dvâparä Yugä, began, from the start of the Kali Yugä, to impose themselves with violence. It was at this time that the invasions of the Aryan barbarians, described in the Great War of the Mahâbhâratä, and the imposition of Vedism took place. At the same time, we can see the development of the moralistic and atheistic religion of Jainism.
It is at the midpoint of the Kali Yuga that the conditions are brought about which will lead to the final decline. The fifth century B.C. was then to see the forceful manifestation of the ideologies that would be the cause of humanity's decadence. And, indeed, we are seeing the reappearance, in conformity with the predictions, of the teachings of Arihat, which had caused the fall of the Assurs.
Gosâlä
THREE figures in India were to playa key role in the religious reforms that conditioned all subsequent religions. They are Makkhali Gosâlä (560–484 B.C.), Mahâvîrä (547–467 B.C.), and Gautamä (550–483 B.C.), whom his disciples called the Buddha, the Illumined.2 The characteristic sign of this reversal of values was the Makkhali Gosâlä's attempt to reform the Shaiva tradition.
While the Gods Play Page 2