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Reviewer : David Stollar, BA Atc
Dr N. Kazanas is a noted Greek Sanskritist and the Director of a
Cultural Institute in Athens, Greece. Apart from multifarious
studies in Greek, he has published numerous articles in English in
Indian and Western Journals and has participated in many Conferences
in India and in the West.
In this book are collected ten essays of his, all dealing with
different aspects of Indology and particularly the ancient Vedic
Tradition. The second paper examines exclusively the
religiophilosophical thought of the Indoaryans from the Rgveda
to the Upanishads and shows that, despite some differences in
terminology and emphasis, the main thread remains one and unchanged
– i.e. the full realization that one’s true Self (Atman)
is the same as the Self of the universe (brahman).
The other nine essays revolve round a double axis. One axis is that
the bulk of the hymns of Rgveda
were composed before 3100 BCE and enshrine an old oral tradition
which remained alive well into the 20th century. The Indus-Sarasvati
(or Harappan) culture is but a phase, a material expression, of that
ancient oral culture that is known as Vedic Tradition. The other
axis is that there is no evidence whatever for the mainstream notion
of the Aryan Invasion/Immigration Theory which is a dogmatic
assertion that the Indoaryans entered N-W India c 1700-1500 BCE. On
the contrary, the essays present various types of evidence and argue
that the Indoaryans were settled in their historical habitat since,
at the very latest, c 5000 BCE. The archaeological evidence itself
shows that the material culture, present and developing from the
seventh millennium onward in that wider area, received no intrusion
from another culture of a size that would alter the existing native
one (and turn it into the Indoeuropean culture of the Indoaryans).
The essays utilize all the latest evidence from the fields of
Anthropology Archaeology, Genetics, History and Literature; also
from Comparative Mythology and from Comparative Philology with its
linguistic games.
Mainstream theory on these issues is highly speculative but its
conjectures are presented by scholars of this persuasion as facts
and perpetuated through mechanical repetition. These essays pose a
direct and bold challenge to the mainstream views. How come, for
instance that the
!gveda
knows nothing of ruins (from abandoned Harappan towns), of bricks
(the chief building material of the Indus-Sarasvati Civilization and
of cotton (cultivated and exported by Harappans) but knows of a
mighty river Sarasvati which dried up c2000-1900 BCE?
Some essays examine also the cultures of the Near East and the
civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, always in relation to the
Vedic Tradition. Herein it is argued that, contrary to general
belief, the influence does not run from the Near East to India but
rather the opposite direction. The evidence adduced is quite strong.
This is a book that every serious indologist, whether sanskritist,
comparativist,
archaeologist or historian, ought to consult.
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