We can see our country through the Vedas. Brihaspoti has said, “The three Vedas are good for the wicked ones.” Atharvaved and Sanghitaved are two of the Vedas. Brihaspoti spoke of three. Charbak discarded the Vedas altogether, but we can’t understand why. In the first half of the nineteenth century (1809-52) the people of the West delved into them. Max Muller, Langley, Wieg, and Grassman translated the Vedas into English, French, and German. Wilson, Stevenson and Professor Hoag- all Englishman- were famous for their Vedic expositions in India.
What we do in the present is due to our past. Creatures have evolved from serpents, and men from monkeys. What we experience is based on them. We feel proud to see the excavations of Mohenjadaro. the Vedas are also monuments of our past. They too are worth looking at.
In the Vedas we see the spirituality of our country. If we can’t understand them today, we are tempted to twist them to our conceptions. In the first part, chapter 5, of the Vishnupuran, Brahma is described as having four mouths. From his eastern mouth the Rigved was spoken. From the southern one the Yajurved. From the wetern, the Samved, and from the northern, Athavaved.” Manu says in the Manusanghita, part 1, canto 23, “In order to do goodto others God made the Rigved out of fire, out of air came the Yajurved, and out of the Sun came the Samved.” Manu didn’t mention the Atharvaved. Sayon Acharja says that originally there was the Yajurved and that the Rig and Sam were based on it. He also doesn’t mention the Atharvaved. The Atharvaved was probably written later under the influence of different ideas. We believe the Vedas are eternal truth and were spoken by God. There is sentence in English: “God has made man after His own image.” It means that God is the scientist-architect of creation. If He were not a scientist, how could we have got Galileo, Edison, Faraday, Einstein, James Jeans, Jagadish and Prafulla Chandra, etc.? They were all latent in Him. So also the Vedas. They came from Him. They are both ancient and scientific.
Vedas means to know. From it we get knowledge. The knowledge is an eternal knowledge…sent by the Eternal. So far we feel and assume.
The famous Balagangadhar Tilak wrote in his book, The Arctic Home of The Vedas, “The Aryans came from the northernmost Arctic Region. Due to heavy snows they were pushed southward.” He discusses the eternal and superhuman aspect of the Vedas and synthesizes this view with the modern historical approach that the Aryans lived in the Northern Arctic and no one knows from where they had come. According to the traditional Puranic conception the Vedas will come to an end only when the world will come to an end. But viewed histo- rically the Aryans had to leave their Arctic home when the snows came, and their culture vanished there in the snows. According to old ideas the seers realized the Vedas by meditating and bestowed them on the public. So they have lasted so long, it is said. But according to historical evidence the Aryans in their original Arctic home used to sing Vedic verses which they had got from their ancestors and they continued this singing after moving southward. From a comparison of the old and new approaches we may conclude that in any case there was some ancient spiritual culture there, and that it had
gradually developed through the ages. What we read in the Vedas is a history of an ancient spiritual culture.
We can catch a glimpse of that ancient culture in the Vedas, if we look at them with modern historical eyes. The Aryans believed in one God. The Seer-saints were the ideals and idols of that society. They had four assistants: jajaks, adhwarjus, hotas, and udgatas. The Seer-saints worshipped Earth, Fire and Air as aspects of God, but they knew there was only one God, one creation. It is said so in the Rigved (Chs. 2, 3, 5, 10).
In the Vedic Age there was fighting. There was a King named Sudas in the country of Matsa. The eighteenth verse of chapter seven of the Rigved gives nice descriptions of how to rule such a country and its inhabitants, and of spiritual development. In the tenth chapter (verse 133) there is a song :
“Those who fight for country
Are led for sure by God.”
When a war broke out, King Sudas once prayed “O God, you are creator of our rivers and our rice. But now our enemies have come to destroy them. We fear them not. We fear your wrath alone.”
It was not possible for Sudas to maintain his religious practices when fighting with the enemy. So he prayed, “Give us strength, dear God, that we may establish Thee and hold to Thee in victory.” Sudas prayed for the good of his country, its commerce and agriculture : “O God, tell us how we may be permanently prosperous, have permanent wealth and lots of subjects.” Let us quote a similar passage from saint Gritsamad : “O God, give us wealth, good luck, great deeds, sweet words. Let me clear my debts and the debts of my ancestors and see that I enjoy not the property of ano- ther.” (Rigved: 2-21-6; 2-28-9)
We have discussed at length what we mean by religion. If we follow religion, we cannot avoid politics, domestic affairs, society, etc. We shall have to live in the world successfully with all of these. To raise the life in our country we must have co-operation, intelligence, character, wealth, and a scientific outlook. The people of the Vedic Age cultured these things and became renowned. It is up to us to follow them. There are plenty of examples for us in the Rigved.
In his book ‘Chitra’ Rabindranath Tagore asked Urbashy :
“Sitting alone in whose dark room
Did you play in your childhood
with pearl and stone?
The room sparkled in the candlelight
And the waves of the sea were heard.
You slept in whose lap with smiling face
upon the sea’s sand bar ?”
Who was Urbashy? Rabindranath said, “Among beautiful women the most beautiful was Urbashy.” She was a creature of his imagination. If one likes to hear more of her, one may go through religious books. In the Jajurveda Urbashy-Pururba were wood-tree. In the Padma Puran Urbashy was a court dancer of Indra. She was attracted to the beauty of Pururba. She was so attracted that she lost the rhythm of the dance music, where- upon Indra cursed her and she took birth on earth along with the handsome Pururba. In book of
Haribangsha, Narayan is a colossal figure. He gives birth to the beautiful Urbashy.
These stories are beyond our conception; so if we want to understand Urbashy, we shall have to go to other sources.
In the Rigved (chapter 10, verse 95) there are many conversations between Urbashy and Pururba. Their essence is as follows. King Pururba married the beautiful Urbashy instead of having several wives. He was promise-bound to her when he married her on certain condition. But he could not keep his promise and Urbashy left him when she was approaching confinement. She lived with him only four autumns. Urbashy says to the king, “When the child is born, I shall send him to you.” Then the king asks her, “Will he not cry for you?” She consoles Pururba, saying, “No, he won’t. I shall be wishing him well.” Urbashy went off, whereupon King Pururba, to forget the painful separation, threw himself into prayer and religious practice.
Urbashy had made Pururba promise that he would not be naked in anyone’s room but hers. By this promise she tried to control him. There was another promise too. Urbashy had couple of beautiful sheep. Pururba was not to stop her from keeping the sheep in her bedroom. But he could not keep this promise either. Purarba was a king of Gundhar (Afghanistan). Gundhar, then as now, was famous for its sheep. In one verse of the Rigved ( 1-126-7) a lady says to her husband, “Don’t think I am a woman of few hairs. I have as much hair as a sheep of Gundhar. And I am healthy. The women of Gundhar could climb mountains and had an independent nature.
That is why Urbashy could run away from Pururba. Here is a chart of their descendants:
Pururba-Urbashy
| 1. Ayu | 8. Tritshu |
| 2. Nahush | 9. Elin |
| 3. Jujati | 10. Dusmanta |
| 4.Jadu, Puru | 11. Bharat |
| 5. Rodrasha | |
| 6. Anadhristi | |
| 7. Motinar |
We have previously mentioned King Sudas and Saint Gritsamad. King Sudas was a descendant of Pururba, and Gritsamad was also a descendant through another line. From the descendants of Pururba and Urbashy many illustrious brahmins warriors took birth.Through these descendants of theirs Pururba and Urbashy achieved fame. We can’t quite agree with the Yajurved that Urbashy was a wood-tree.
Doctor Schroeder in his book, Prehistoric Antiquities of The Aryan Peoples, sketched the original social organization of the Aryans. It was a vivid picture. and
learned people appreciated his account. The Aryans, he says, were the wanderers of middle Asia. One branch came down to Gundhar, and the history of India was born.
We call King Asoke and Raja Ram Mohan Roy modern reformers. We can also call Manu a reformer- but of ancient times. We are all supposed to be descendants of Manu according to the Vedas. Hence our name, man. Manu was a famous name in the Rigved. One man named Baibashwata took the title of Manu and became a king of his clan. We know him as Baibashwata Manu.
The Upanishads were composed after the Vedic Age. We call the Upanishads Vedanta; for they are like a final chapter to the Vedas. There are many hundreds of Upanishads, and they deal with many subjects and can be classified in many ways. Shankar, Ramanuja, Ballavacharja, and others wrote many notes on Upanishads for our better understanding. Schopenhauer and Dawson of the West were influenced by the Upanishads. Vivekananda, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, and Sri Aurobindo proceeded along a spiritual course laid down in the Upanishads. The Vedas and Upanishads tell many subtle truths.
Alexander, Napoleon, Chandra Gupta, Akbar, etc. commanded many soldiers for the benefit of their countries. To develop the spirit is also a good. But the movement of a spiritual or political leader cannot go very far on famine-stricken people. Spiritual culture is useless without home, society and nation. If we deny these things, we court death. We fail to find any such abnormal amputation of life in the Vedic and Upanishadic Ages. There was an all-around development of home, society, country and religion.
Valmiki composed the Ramayana in the language of his day, but he was influenced by the language of the Vedas. The annotator of Manu, Kalluckvatta, wrote “What is Vedic is Aryan.” The learned men of the West have an idea that the Ramayana is the epic of India just as the Iliad is the epic of Greece. Rabindranath Tagore said, “We claim that Ramachandra was a god man, i. e., both god and man. But in the Ramayana he is presented only as a man. We believe greatly in him in Sita, and in Laksman. We rely more on them than on our contemporaries.” Poets like Homer, Virgil, Milton, Kalidas, etc. composed many poems on the strength of their imagination. But the Ramayan is not like such poems.
Among the many characters in the Ramayana there are some peculiar ones, such as monkeys and man-eating giants. They seem to us absurdities because man cannot establish friendship with monkeys and man-eating giants. They are not, however, necessarily enemies of men. Let us discuss Ravan and Hanuman.
Hanuman of Kiskinda (Mysore) was the minister of King Sugrib. By the order of Sugrib Hanuman met Ramachandra and Laksman and struck up an acquaintance on the mountain of Rishyamukh. Finding Hanuman in his midst, Ramachandra announced to his court, “I was wanting to meet King Sugrib. Now I have his minister. He is strong and a good talker. Be nice to him. He is well versed in the three Vedas; otherwise he
could not have spoken as he has to me. Also he had learnt grammar; his speech was all but flawless and his conversation was easy to understand. Kings usually need men of his type to manage their kingdoms when they are away. Such men are all-round men, expert and saintly. They can accomplish their objectives by sweet words alone.” (Kiskinda Khanda, 3rd Sarga)
When Hanuman went to Lanka and failed to rescue Sita, he said with grief, “Until I get her back, I shall not return to King Sugrib. I will take shelter under a tree. My life is useless if I don’t rescue her. I’ll destroy myself in the fire.” (Sundar Kanda, 1st sarga)
When he found Sita, he said to himself, “If I speak to her correctly-like a Brahmin-, she may take me for Ravan and not talk with me. I must speak in everyday language so that she may not misunderstand me.”
After the rescue of Sita Ramachandra asked Hanuman to meet Bharat before they proceeded to Ajodhya. Hanuman presented himself before Bharat and said with folded hands, “You are anxious for Ram. Don’t be anxious. He is all right. He is in Dandakaranya. He asks how you are. He’ll meet you before long. He has killed Ravan and rescued Sita. He is coming happily along with Laksman and others to see you.” (Judha Kanda, 26th sarga)
Valmiki describes the virtues of Human thus: “He was strong, brilliant, renowned, simple, able, humble, disciplined, manly, sweet, and powerful.” (Judha Kanda, 39th sarga)
Let us discuss Ravan a little. Hanuman told Ravan in Lanka, “You are religious-minded. You have acquired lots of power and wealth. So you should not keep the wife of another with you. It is against religion and harmful. It is not good for an intelligent man like you to do this. So be pleased to let her go. We also will be glad,” (Judha Kanda, 9th sarga)
When Ramachandra first met Ravan on the battlefield, he said, “How powerful this Ravan is! Like the Sun! His body was dazzlingly bright; I could see him well. He is so fortunate! Even gods and demons are not as powerful as he !” (Judha Kanda 59th sarga)
Queen Mandodari wife of Ravan, was stricken with grief at her husband’s death. “You dazzled like a sun, soothed like a moon, and were as beautiful as lotus flower. I am an unlucky woman that I have lost you, she cried.
Ravan’s last rites were performed according to the Vedas. Bibhisan chanted Vedic verses for his dead brother.
When we analyze the character of Hanuman, we see that “He was detached from worldly ends, far-sighted, open-hearted, as cool as a saint, sacrificing, and determinded.” And Ravan was “good-looking, powerful, shrewdly political, adventurous, and tricky.”
According to anthropology the Aryans and the Dravidians were contemporaries. This means that there was a culture prevailing in the country before the Aryans came. The Aryans were an enlightened people. The Dravidians were not so enlightened, but they had maintained a culture of their own. Hanuman and Ravan belonged to the Dravidian Race. Hanuman was a king of the Kopi ( monkey) Dynasty. Ravan was a king of Raksha Dynasty. We cannot prove they were men, but they were. If we recognize them as people in the Ramayana, some wrong ideas concerning them may be corrected, and we may get a clearer idea of our culture of that day.
The Aryans knew how man could best maintain existence and find expansion. They were smart enough to survive many difficulties. They had a goahead spirit. In the Age of the Ramayana spiritual culture was prominent. In the Upanishadic times also spirituality was well advanced. But the seers and saints of those days meditated at home. Bashistha, the guide of Ramachandra; Agastya; Autry; Biswamitra; Jamadagni; etc. had domestic lives. Hindu people think of Ramachandra as an incarnation of God. But Rabindranath Tagore, in commenting on the Ramayana, has written, “The characters of the epic are not simply Gods. They are also men and they gained their reputation as Gods by their merits.’
When Ramachandra was on the mountain Chitrakoot (Kamtapahar in the U. P. ), Bharat went after him to make him return to his kingdom. Ramachandra at that time asked Bharat many questions on the condition of the kingdom and spoke largely of the political and social conditions then existing in the country. He spoke of military, commercial, industrial and other matters. His talk is more enlightening even than the Vedas and Upanishads. The Ramayana Age was a strong and active one, compared with other ages and civilizations.
In the Age of the Ramayana the Sanskrit Language prevailed. But in the Age of the Mahabharat it was different. In the former period the Aryan Civilization had not spread to Southern India, but in the latter it had.
People of the West have taken the Mahabharat also as an Epic. Like the Ramayana the Mahabharat is filled
with many practical details and incidents. Some authors have twisted its stories; otherwise it clearly contains much of historical interest. It has influenced us much in our social, personal and religious life. In the first chapter (Adiparba) of the Mahabharat it is written “Here are 100,000 verses.” But the author Vyasdev composed only 24,000. Learned men are of the opinion that if the story portions of the Mahabharat are discarded, the remainder would total the original 24,000 verses.
In the Ramayana huge number of pages were devo- ted to the Ramachandra-Ravan conflict. The Maha- bharat also deals with war-the conflict between the Kouravs and the Pandavs.
According to the Mahabharat Lord Krishna did his best to prevent war. For this effort he was roundly abused and ridiculed by Durjodhana, the leader of the Kouravs. Lord Krishna found that Durjodhana would not in any case settle dispute without war. When Lord Krishna was willing to effect a truce and treaty with the Kouravs, he went to Hastinapur (Delhi). Then Draupadi, the wife of the Pandavs, said to him, “O Janardan, it is a crime to kill an innocent man, but it is also a crime not to kill a wicked one. This is the opinion of the wise.” Dhritarashtra, the father of Durjodhana, did not approve of the war. He confessed to Sanjoy, “Please don’t blame me wrongly for this war. I was not at all interested in it. I don’t think of the Pandavs as different from my own children. Furthermore, my sons don’t care for me now that I am old and blind. I am an affectionate father; that is why I bear all the mischiefs of my sons.
The stories of battle in the Ramayana and the Mahabharat are such that it seems at times we are not getting history but fancy. Remember, however, that
Ramachandra, Hanuman, Ravan, Bibhishan and others really lived, and the same is true of Sri Krishna, Karna, Durjodhana, etc. in the Mahabharat, One question remains: is there any factual or scientific basis for the weapons described? Dravidian culture was Pre-Aryan. From the excavations at Mohenja-daro we know that much. We find that many Dravidians must have had scientific brains. We know that Aryan Civilization was even greater than Dravidian; so we can surmise how scientific those early Aryan ancestors must have been. It is our opinion that the weapons described in the Ramayana and the Mahabharat were actual weapons scientifically made and used. In historical times we have used so many weapons against rivals. The use of weapons has come down to us from the Epic Age.
We find that in the time of the Mahabharat industry and the arts were well-developed. We find a description of ocean-going vessels in the poem (Adiparba and Udyog parba). During the coronation of Judhisthir the King of Kamboj and Gundhar, Vagadutta of Pragjyotishpur in in Assam, the Shaks of Central Asia, and the people of Lanka (Ceylon) all presented many things. From the presentations we gather that the people were highly civilized and cultured. The Battle of Kurukshetra was scientifically fought. Science and civilization were the glories of the age.
In the Santi Parba of the Mahabharat Bhishma tells Judhisthir how a king should rule over his subjects: “A man cannot get milk by cutting the leg of the cow. If you oppress your subjects and adopt meanness, your country cannot prosper. The man who serves the cow can get milk enough. If the king rules his subjects well, he will be able to enjoy them. The mother gives her breast to her child. If the king protects his country by dint of his sincerity and ability, his countrymen can provide him with ample materials of life. O King, try to heed my words.” Most of the Indian kings have heeded these words.
The demons of the Mahabharat times were also men. In the Mahabharat nothing is said about the Kopi Dynasty of Hanuman. In the Srimad Bhagabat and Puran Brahmabaibarta the character of Lord Krishna is described at length. The description sounds sweet to devotecs. We know that Radha is not only a woman. Her name is also the sound of Brahma. When Lord Krishna came into the world, he came chanting the name ‘Radha’. From the Shanta Scripture we learn that she was the wife of the Shoham Purush. Srimad Bhagavat describes Lord Krishna as a man of flesh and blood-and also as God himself.
We have described many things of Aryan Culture. We only like to add that in the Mahabharat Age the Aryan Culture was predominant but not developed in a collective sense.