Free Hinduism: A Short History by Klaus K. Klostermaier Page B

offered on precisely built geometrically constructed altars and to be performed at astronomically exactly established times. It sounds plausible to expect a correlation between the numbers of bricks prescribed for a particular altar and the distances between stars observed whose movement determined the time of the offerings to be made. Subhash Kak has advanced a great deal of fascinating detail in that connection in his essays on the “Astronomy of the Vedic Altar.” He believes that while the Vedic Indians possessed extensive astronomical knowledge which they encoded in the text of the
Ṛgveda
, the code was lost in later times and the Vedic tradition interrupted.
    INDIA, THE CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION?
    Based on the early dating of the
Ṛgveda (c.
4000 B.C.E.), and on the strength of the argument that Vedic astronomy and geometry predates that of the other known ancient civilizations, some scholars, like N. S. Rajaram, Georg Feuerstein, Subhash Kak and David Frawley, have made the daring suggestion that India was the “cradle of civilization.” 16 They link the recently discovered early European civilization (which predates Ancient Sumeria and Ancient Egypt by over a millennium) to waves of populations moving out or driven out from north-west India. Later migrations, caused either by climatic changes or by military events, would have brought the Hittites to Western Asia, the Iranians to Afghanistan and Iran, and many others to other parts of Eurasia. Such a scenario would require a complete rewriting of Ancient World History -especially if we add the claims, apparently substantiated by some material evidence, that Vedic Indians had established trade links with Central America and Eastern Africa before 2500 B.C.E. NO wonder that the “New Chronology” arouses not only scholarly controversy but emotional excitement as well. Much more hard evidence will be required to fully establish it, and many claims may have to be withdrawn. But there is no doubt that the “old chronology” has been discredited and that much surprise is in store for students not only of Ancient India, but of the Ancient World as a whole.
    A CROWN WITNESS FOR THE NEW CHRONOLOGY?
    A beautifully sculpted bronze head found near Delhi, named “Vasiṣtha’s Head” 17 by a collector, was dated through radio-carbon testing to around 3700 B.C.E. – the time when, according to Hicks and Anderson, the Battle of the Ten Kings took place (Vasiṣtha is mentioned in the
Ṛgveda
as the advisor to King Sudās). A further factor speaking for the “Vedic” character of the Indus civilization is the occurrence of (Vedic) altars in many sites. Fairly important also is the absence of a memory of a migration from outside India in all of ancient Indian literature: the Veda, the Brāhmaṇas, the Epics and the Purāṇas. Granting that the Vedic Saṃhitās were ritual manuals rather than historic records, further progress in revising Ancient Indian history could be expected from a study of
Itihāsa-Purāṇa
, rather than from an analysis of the
Ṛgveda
. In combination with the evaluation of the ever-growing amount of artifacts from the region and a comparison with the findings of the students of early European history, a reinterpretation of the Epics and the older Purāṇas should bring about a more adequate understanding of Vedic India and the history of civilization in South Asia than is available at present.
    NOTES
    1.
       One of the prominent Indian scholars who quite early rejected the Āryan invasion theory was Aurobindo Ghose. In
    The Secret of the Veda
    , written between 1914 and 1916, he points out that the text of the Veda has no reference to any such invasion.
    2.
       Abbé Dubois,
    Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies
    , third ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906 (reprint 1959).
    3.
       In 1767 James Parsons had published a long work entitled
    The Remains ofjaphet, being historical enquiries into the affinity and origins of the European