"I have travelled the length and breadth of India and i have not seen one person who is a beggar or a thief. Such wealth i have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre, that i do not think we could ever conquer this country unless we break the backbone of this nation, her spiritual and cultural heritage. Therefore, i propose we replace her old and ancient educational system and her culture. If the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than her own, they will lose their self esteem, their native self culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation" Lord Thomas Babbington Macaulay (1800-59).

 

 

Its 1786, Jane Austins eleven years old and the American constitution is one year away. These are days when educated people were truly educated. For people like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams their casual reading was ancient Greek, ancient Latin, French and German. In those days this is what it meant to be a truly educated person.

 

 

In europe, there is radical change. They had been through the dark ages, so called because of the tyranny of the church, and they were now approaching the end of the middle ages, so called because it was in between two ages, the classical Greco-roman civilisation and what was now being called the renaissance. Rene Descartes and Sir Francis Bacon were leading the way and Sir Isaac Newton, with his rational and mathematical view of the universe, was changing everything. Skepticism, the French revolution, the church is the problem. This middle eastern tradition is holding everyone back and we are finally becoming scientific and rational. So this was the renaissance, a breaking away from the shackles of the church, an age of science and rationalism, an unstoppable juggernaut, hurtling into 18th century europe.

 

 

In the same year, Sir William Jones arrives in Calcutta and becomes the govenor of the east India trading company. Hes a scholar, a linguist, and he gives a speech which blows the minds of Christian Europe: " The Sanskrit language, the sacred language of India, whatever  be its antiquity is of a wonderful structure. More perfect than the Greek, more copious than Latin ( Greek and Latin were the foundation of Western education ) and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of grammar, that could have possibly happened by chance. There is no way that sanskrit is so close to Latin and Greek by accident, that is impossible, something else is going on. So strong is the similarity, that no philologer could examine all three, sanskrit, Greek and Latin, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which perhaps no longer exists. There is a similar reason for believing that both the Gothic and the Celtic have the same origin, and the old Persian language may also be added."

 

 

Now in those days, language, race and culture were branches of the same tree. So imagine, for example, if some leader of the local klu klux klan finds that half of his family comes from Africa. In those days racism was entirely respectable, its like nationalism today, no-one thinks it immoral to champion his country, back then it was my family, my community, my country, my race. Hitler of course changed all that.

 

 

One reaction to this speech was it created a new intellectual field throughout europe. a super hot item, known as Hindu-european studies. Their conclusion was that the people of India were somehow part of the same family, which was shocking as they were not white, if they are not white how can they be part of the same family. Ancient history can be very compelling, it ultimately goes back to the garden of eden, and some wondered if this  was a new eden. If reality is coming top down, then finding your roots means finding  the supreme source, returning to your original pristine, unspoilt, divine relationship in some kind of garden of eden. So the europeans suddenly thought "Oh my God what are our roots, how did this happen?"

 

 

In a book called the quest for the origins of Vedic culture, we find this quote: "The extreme indophobic discomfort with the connection of sanskrit to Greek and Latin was exemplified by Scottish philosopher Dougal Stewart, who, without knowing a word of sanskrit, proposed that it was not cognate of Greek, it was Greek, borrowed by the wily Brahmanas. The Brahmanas stole it because non white people could not possibly produce such a sophisticated language. This shows what a violent shock the discovery of sanskrit was to Christian europe. It was disturbing to the prejudices so deeply ingrained in the minds of their educated men. The most absurd arguments for a while found favour. If only they could furnish a loophole by which to escape the unpleasant conclusion that Greek and Latin belonged to the same family as the black inhabitants of India.

 

 

For the British, the pressure to justify their colonial missionary presence in India prompted the denegration of Indian civilisation and the shunning of embarassing cultural and linguistic ties. The whole engine behind the colonial missionary project was they were going around the world to save it, we are saving it for Jesus Christ, we are civilising the world, we are teaching barbarians to live like europeans, God, we are such great people. And then you suddenly discover these people in India who have a highly sophisticated culture which has a family connection with european culture.

 

 

Some people in europe were burnt out with the Christian church.  They saw it as oppressive and holding people back.  They saw ancient India as an antidote, an alternative, we are aryans and somehow we come from this ancient european civilisation. Somehow they are connected to us. Maybe these are our ancestors and not Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not the palestinians, not the middle east, but these people who have produced such sophisticated literatures. So some people considered India as the new eden. Maybe the golden age was in India, maybe that was Gods original revelation. There was also a huge backlash, as most europeans were Christian, they saw this as demoniac, monsterous. Herman Oldenberg, a German Indologist described the ancient Vedic literature as barbaric priests worshipping barbaric Gods.

 

 

Now as all this was going on, as europe progressed in its own intellectual evolution, instead of just decrying Indians and saying they were barbarians, it got down to hardcore scholarly issues. The european scholars made moves to solve this problem. One move was to say, actually this great literature, the Vedas, this sophisticated and elevated language came from us. There was an Aryan invasion, white people, probably from central Asia, the Russian steppes, whatever. They came into India and brought with them the sanskrit language, ect. Then they got sloppy, it was probably the tropical heat, and they intermarried, they did not maintain their racial purity. However, not to worry, this is the second wave, we are coming to rescue our Aryan brothers and finish the job off.

 

 

Arya is mentioned in the Vedas as a cultured person, a noble person. Their first move was to say that Indians are not Aryans, they went to India but they are not Indians. We can save our race, we can save this whole Hindu-european culture by saying they came from outside of India, they simply intermarried. The Indian people simply benefitted, the indigenous people were much darker and ignorant, ect, ect, and all the credit for this amazing civilisation goes to us. So now India could no longer tell its own story. Its history had to fit in with the worldview of the europeans. According to european comparative linguistics, historical linguistics, archeology, philology, no Indian account of their own origins was acceptable unless it accomodated european versions of their own origins. India had lost its right to independently write its own history.

 

 

In India there was tremendous reaction. Wait a minute they said, this is all crazy. First you militarily and politically take us over and now you want to take away our sacred culture. Now you want to trash everything most dear to us and tell us we are not even from India, that white people brought the Vedas into India. And so now there is a growing revolutionary movement against european colonialism. In europe there are different agendas regarding India. The British had taken over India and had their own agenda, the french had their own colonies, such as Pondicherry, and the southern europeans such as the Italians could bask in their own ancient past. It was the Germans who had no colonies, their history was not like Greece and Rome, they had nothing.

 

 

They could see that if you look at English history, they were like mongrels, they had Celts and Welsh and English and people from France. So they are like totally over hybrated, and if you look at southern europeans they are kind of mixed in different ways to. The Germans however, are a group of people with a pure race. Germans believed it was they, the Germanic people, who had brought the Vedas to India, Germanic people were the cradle of civilisation. Even Rome and Greece grew because of us and what we brought to India and which later came back to southern europe. So the Germans began to see themselves as the cradle of civilisation, which is why they became heavily invested in sanskrit studies. They were the main sanskrit scholars of the nineteenth century. So all of these different agendas were simultaneously taking place. Pro church, anti church, German, English, science, everyone had their agendas regarding India, which is quite amusing when you consider this was supposed to be the age of rationalism.

 

 

Now everyone agrees, the oldest scripture is the Rig Veda. The question however, is how old? The europeans say, its not that old so dont start getting excited. They say the Rig Veda was completed about 1000 BC. The Indians say, no, its much older, and this is one of the most hotly debated topics. If the Rig Veda is only 3000 years old, it means the Indians have not been there a long time, their civilisation is not so old, and all these sacred stories are untrue. This is also sour grapes as the europeans are seeing their own sacred history overthrown. Due to science and rationalism, they are now questioning the Bible and Biblical chronology. Here is a quote from Sir William Jones " Either the first chapter of Genesis is true or the whole fabric of our national religion is wrong". Another scholar wrote "Arguements principally found in the assumptions of the Brahmanas, with their extravagent claims of antiquity being substantiated, have a tendency to overturn the Mosaic law of Moses, and with it Christianity".

 

 

Christianity was under seige from science, Darwin, everyone was kicking Christianity, because a whole secular revolution was taking place. Now if the Vedas are that old, the whole of Christianity collapses. According to the Bible, the great flood ended and people began to repopulate planet earth in 2350 BC. So if the Vedas are too old, the story of Noah and the flood is wrong and Christian europe collapses.

 

 

So there were huge stakes invested in proving the Vedas was not that old. So how did they get the dates which the europeans quoted? How did the europeans take away the Vedic antiquity and make it much more recent? As evidence they used a combination of ghost stories, glottochronology and a connection between the name Krsna and the history of iron ore. In other words, the scholars embraced anything, however teneous and unscientific to further their agenda and falsify Vedic antiquity.

 

 

Now there is evidence the Vedas are much older, and one of the most powerful examples, which is scientific, is the mighty Sarasvati river. The Rig Veda gives a very clear geographical description. There is the Hindus river flowing down with a whole series of rivers which are all mentioned in the Rig Veda, in their correct order. All except the Sarasvati, which the Rig Veda describes as this mighty river which was central to Vedic civilisation. The western scholars, of course, had no problem with this, it was simply another example of the mythological nature of the Vedas.

 

 

The problem however, was that eventually they found the Sarasvati. Apparantly the river had dried up and could be traced through satellite photography. They can see clearly what happened. There was a river which was feeding into the Sarasvati, at a certain point, the river was diverted and the Sarasvati was deprived and eventually dried up. All this can be seen by satellite photography, its all very clear, and the dried up river bed is exactly where the Rig Veda said it was. Now the problem for western agendas is that the Sarasvati river, where all the Aryans lived, dried up around 4000 years ago, and according to western scholars the Rig Veda was written 3000 years ago.

 

 

The Sarasvati really was a huge river, and there are many verses in the Rig Veda describing her as a Goddess, a mighty river. According to mainstream science this mighty river was in full force some 5-7000 years ago. So if you have a scripture describing a river that dried up some 4000 years ago and was in full flow 5-7000 years ago, how old does that make the scripture?  5-7000 years perhaps? The date originally given by the Vedas themselves.

 

 

Finally, here is a quote from a specialist in this field "There is general agreement among scholars that all this evidence demonstrates it can be stated with certainty that the present Gaggar Hakra is the remnant of the Rig Vedas Sarasvati, once the lifeline of the Hindus civilisation. Klaus Klostermaier, a mainstream scholar working for the institute for Hindu studies at Oxford says "In most textbooks the beginning of Hinduism is identified with the invasion of India by the Aryans. The same text books however, never mention that the so called Aryan invasion theory is based on pure speculation and theres absolutely no archeological or literary evidence whatsoever".

 

This article came from a lecture given by Hridayananda Das Gosvami. To listen to this lecture in full simply click on this link  http://www.prasadam.co.uk/multimedia/audio/264-the-hindu-european-issue.html  And finally, if you would like to make comment on this article, simply scroll down and click on "submit comment".