Sanatana Dharma, which means the eternal or universal tradition, is the ancient name for what we today call the Hindu religion. It refers to a dharma, a teaching, law or truth that exists in perpetuity, that is all-encompassing, embracing the full spectrum of human spiritual experience, culminating in the direct realization of the Divine as one’s own true Self.
Through the course of time and human limitations, Hinduism may have taken on various elements which do not reflect this eternal essence of universal truth. However, the power of Sanatana Dharma continues behind the Hindu tradition, particularly in its Yoga and Vedanta spiritual forms, providing it with a depth, breadth and vitality that perhaps no other spiritual tradition on Earth is able to sustain.
One can find in Hinduism all the main religious teachings of the world from nature worship, to theism, to the formless Absolute. One can find practices of devotion, yoga, mantra and meditation in a great plethora of expressions, including the world’s most sophisticated spiritual philosophies of Self-realization. Hinduism is not anchored to any single prophet, book or historical revelation that can tie down the expanse of its vision. It does not subordinate the individual to an outer religious authority, but encourages everyone to discover the Divine within their own awareness.
Indeed, if one were to synthesize all the existing religions of the world, one would end up with a teaching much like Hindu Dharma. Hinduism has the devotional theism of western religions, the karma theory and meditation practices of Buddhism, and the nature worship of native traditions, all unified at a deep philosophical and experiential level into one harmonious fabric. Hinduism appears like the common root from which these various religious expressions have diversified or perhaps, departed.
Global Sanatana Dharma and Hinduism in India
Yet though Hinduism has been its main expression through history, Sanatana Dharma as a universal and eternal tradition cannot be reduced to the forms of Hinduism or to a tradition belonging only to India. Sanatana Dharma has counterparts in other lands and traditions. In fact, one can argue, wherever the higher truth is recognized, that is Sanatana Dharma, regardless of the names, forms or personalities involved.
If we look at the ancient world prior to the predominance of western monotheistic traditions, we find much that resembles Hinduism and Sanatana Dharma, whether among the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Celts, Persians, Chinese or Mayas to name but a few. India is the land in which Sanatana Dharma has taken the deepest root and maintained its best continuity. Hinduism is the religion in which Sanatana Dharma has best survived. But Santana Dharma is relevant to all peoples and must be recognized throughout the world for the planet to achieve its real potential for the unfoldment of consciousness.
One then may ask, “If Hinduism is an expression of Sanatana Dharma, why does it appear to be limited to India like a local ethnic religion, rather than a universal approach?” The first thing to realize in this regard is that a universal approach will always seek to create local forms. For example, a universal approach to diet will encourage people to eat the local food that has the best nutritional content. It will not emphasize the same food items for people in all lands and climates.
Sanatana Dharma will always create a great diversity of local forms, and never aim at uniformity. Uniformity is not a sign if universality, but of artificiality. Dharma is not a set of fixed beliefs or practices but a way of adaptation to the living truth that is always changing in form though one in law and principle. Even in India we see a great deal of local diversity in how Hinduism is presented and expressed in the different parts of the country. This variety that exists within Hinduism is probably greater than the variety found within any other religion. Yet through all of this diversity there remains a clear unity of Hindu thought and culture.
Sanatana Dharma is central to the soul of India as a nation. India’s place in human history is to function as the global guru or spiritual guide rooted in Sanatana Dharma as Sri Aurobindo once eloquently proclaimed. The traditional culture of India is infused with yoga, meditation and experiential spirituality of all types. This means that India cannot flourish as a country without a recognition of Sanatana Dharma and an honoring of its values on all levels of India’s culture.
However, besides its connection to Sanatana Dharma, India has another side, much like many other countries and cultures. There are divisive forces that deny this dharmic cultural unity, whether in the name of political ideologies like Marxism, other religious traditions like Christianity and Islam, or sectarian trends within Hinduism itself. Even in Hindu society, we too frequently see an emphasis on clan, family, and community that overrides any greater national interests or even the greater needs of Hinduism itself. This narrow vision can reduce Hindu Dharma to an Indian tradition only, or it can emphasize one Hindu sect or guru while ignoring the greater background of Sanatana Dharma.
One encounters this problem particularly when non-Indians seek to become Hindus. They are often told that one must be born a Hindu and cannot convert to Hinduism, which is not true historically or Hinduism could have never spread so far as it has. We also see this problem with Hindus who have migrated outside of India. They form their own religious communities, which is admirable, but do not make much of an effort to bring non-Indians into these, even when such individuals may approach them seeking to join Hindu Dharma. This further gives the impression that Hinduism is a religion for a particular ethnic group only, not a universal path. It can turn away westerners who have a genuine receptivity to Sanatana Dharma.
The Revival of Hinduism through Sanatana Dharma
To counter such attempts to limit Hinduism and to bring its teachings out for the benefit of all, we need a revival of Hinduism as Sanatana Dharma, the eternal or universal tradition, for the entire planet. Such a global projection of Sanatana Dharma does not deny the importance of Hinduism as central to India, its culture, its past and its future. But it emphasizes a global and expansive Hinduism, not one that contracts itself according to geographical or ethnic boundaries.
Such a bold assertion of Sanatana Dharma makes Hinduism relevant to all peoples, all religions and all cultures. It removes Hinduism from being restricted to local forms or controlled by the dictates of any particular group. This expansive Sanatana Dharma will naturally honor India and seek a revival of Hinduism in India. But it will do so with a global vision and a linking up with Hindus and dharmic groups worldwide.
There have already been important movements in this in direction. In fact, one can argue that the global spread of Hindu teachings like Yoga, Vedanta and Ayurveda is a sign of Sanatana Dharma arising at a global level. Gurus from India and their teachings have spread to all countries.
Unfortunately, many modern teachers from India have left the greater portion of Hinduism behind in their attempt to gain a broader recognition, to the extent of denying their Hindu roots and not educating their disciples in the greater Hindu tradition, its importance and its values. Instead of honoring the Hindu connection with Sanatana Dharma, they promote an artificial unity of all religions that puts Hindu views and practices in the background or ignores them altogether.
Such teachers state that people can add the spiritual practices of the Hindu tradition, like Yoga and Vedanta, on to any other cultural or religious foundation. They do not encourage people to study and honor the Hindu tradition itself but rather to stay within their own culture’s religious tradition, even if it is anti-Hindu. They do not emphasize Hinduism’s special connection to Sanatana Dharma, but try to make Hindus feel that all other religions are the same as their own and no real differences exist between them.
In this regard, such teachers of universal spirituality are making a mistake in their understanding of dharma. Sanatana Dharma is not just a spiritual path or what is called a Moksha Dharma, a way of liberation. Sanatana Dharma shows a dharmic way for all aspects of life starting with personal life-style practices, to the family, education, business, intellectual culture and even politics (all the spheres of dharma, artha, kama and moksha).
Unfortunately, the teachers who try to universalize the Moksha Dharma of Hinduism and apply it to all religions leave out the other aspects of Dharma, which includes the dharmic foundation for both social and individual life. A new resurgent global Hinduism or Sanatana Dharma will project all aspects of dharma and not be limited to a Moksha Dharma. It is important that we replace this “radical universalism” of all religions being the same, which is a misinterpretation and diminution of Sanatana Dharma, with a global Hindu and dharmic resurgence that affirms Sanatana Dharma as both a spiritual path and a way of life on all levels.
It is not only Yoga and Vedanta that have universal value, so does the foundation of Hindu Dharma on all levels. This includes Hindu rituals, which are a science of interacting with the cosmic forces, Hindu temples and holy places which are conduits for cosmic energy, Vedic sciences like Ayurveda, Vedic astrology and Vastu, Hindu music and dance and other Hindu art forms. These outer aspects of Hindu or dharmic living can be developed and adapted in different cultural contexts but their basic principles are as enduring as the great truth of Vedanta that there is only one Self in all beings.
On this foundation of dharmic living, both in terms of our outer culture and our inner spiritual practices, people from all lands and cultures can embrace Sanatana Dharma. They can find in Hindu thought a model for an authentic dharmic culture and spirituality that addresses their own individual, social and environmental needs, which they can use to restructure their lives as way of Self-realization. In that dharmic approach, all divisive religious identities will disappear into a greater unity of consciousness, not only with other human beings, but with the entire universe.
The Myth of the Aryan Invasion was first written in 1994 in order to summarize important new information on the ancient history of India that refutes commonly held views on the subject inherited from the nineteenth century. It was a condensation of longer material from books of mine like Gods, Sages and Kings, Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization (with N.S. Rajaram) and In Search of the Cradle of Civilization (with Georg Feuerstein and Subhash Kak). The 2001 update reflected my recent book Rigveda and the History of India that pushed the Vedic horizon further into the South India.
The 2005 edition reflects information from a new book that N.S. Rajaram and I have completed for the Swaminarayan movement and their new Delhi temple Akshardham, the largest to come up in the city in perhaps centuries, and its cultural displays. That book (Hidden Horizons: Unearthing 10,000 Years of Indian Culture) takes the origins of the Vedic age further back in time and in the direction of Southeast Asia.
The amount of information available relative to ancient India is now much more extensive than that considered in old textbooks still used in India’s schools and in most schools in the West. Numerous new archaeological finds, including several larger than Harappa, the geology of the Sarasvati River, the natural history of the region, Southeast Asia as the homeland for most human populations prior to the end of the last Ice Age, new views of genetics, new theories of linguistics, archaeo-astronomy, and a greater sensitivity to Vedic texts and their vast spiritual and cultural implications, are only part of the new fabric to be woven in order to really understand ancient India.
Whether one may agree with the details, it is clear that the ancient history of India needs to be totally recast. The history and cultural heritage of India is largely an indigenous development of the same basic peoples that have inhabited the region for over ten thousand years, as they have adapted to their environment and also discovered its spiritual essence in its great mountains, rivers and oceans. It is time to look at the history and culture of India as a whole, organically, and in an integral manner according to its own internal impetus as the primary factor.
Older views of India based on outside migrations, external cultural influences and foreign borrowings as the primary forces are the products of a failure to understand the real soul and spirit of India. In the twenty first century in which the antiquity of cultures all over the world is being extended back centuries, if not thousands of years, there is no need to keep the history of India frozen around speculative events of 1500 BCE that have so far failed to prove themselves. It is time to open the door on India’s great ancient heritage that takes us back to the very dawn of time. This primary message of the book remains the same.
2005 Update More on the Southern Connection: The Findings of Natural History
Southeast Asia and the End of the Ice Age Migrations
Probably the most important development in the study of ancient India over the last five or ten years has been new evidence relative to genetics and natural history. This shows the antiquity of Indian populations in India and a strong connection with Southeast Asia going back to the Ice Age period.
Such information supports the southern connection to the Vedic culture based that I have proposed, starting with the maritime symbolism of the Rig Veda highlighted in my first book on the subject Gods, Sages and Kings (1991). It was an important theme in my Rig Veda and the History of India (2001) and in previous editions of this current volume. These connections have also been addressed in books and articles by Subhash Kak, S. Kalyanaraman, N.S. Rajaram and many others. The more specific scientific data on the importance of Southeast Asia as a possible source of most ancient post-Ice Age cultures can be found in the work of Stephen Oppenheimer as in his books like Eden in the East.
The southern basis for the Vedic culture is based upon two important points of natural history. The first is the geology of the Sarasvati River in the post-Ice Age period. The second is the dominance of South India and Southeast Asia as a major site of human habitation during the Ice Age period, and migration from it in the post-Ice Age era – when the region was flooded – as probably the main impetus for the development of cultures to the north and west extending perhaps as far as Europe.
We have already discussed the first major point of natural history relative to ancient India in the earlier sections of the book. The development of agriculture and urban civilization in ancient India was based upon the geology of the Sarasvati River, which arose as a mighty river towards the later period of the last Ice Age over 10,000 years ago, and lost its perennial flow, owing to the later climate changes and the melting of the main glaciers in the 2200-1500 BCE era. This Vedic-Sarasvati culture, relative to its geology, lasted from around 10,000-2000 BCE, when the Sarasvati was the dominant river in North India. This perennial great Sarasvati defines the main period of the development of Vedic culture, Vedic kingdoms and the late Vedic era, when the Sarasvati began to decline. This is roughly the period from the older Rigvedic Hymns to the later four Vedas, Brahmanas and early Upanishads, though it is likely that the existent texts which we have were not entirely finalized until the end of this period.
The second and related point, which is now assuming more significance, is that this Vedic civilization was based upon an older proto-Vedic culture in the south of India and Southeast Asia prior to the end of the last Ice Age. Prior to the end of the last Ice Age, when sea levels were much lower, the most favorable part of the globe for human habitation was Southeast Asia, which included the region from South India to Indonesia. Indonesia was not a series of islands but was connected to Malaysia as part of a large subcontinent called Sunda Land. This region had the warmest and wettest climate of the Ice Age period and was the main center of human habitation and probably human culture as well. Regions to the north were not only colder but drier, including north India, with little monsoon developing in the summer and little melting of glacial ice from the winter to support much by way of great rivers.
This idea of Sunda Land has points in common with the idea of Kumari Kanda, of South India connecting to a larger continent to the south at a remote ancient period. It is also reflected in the maritime symbolism which pervades the Rig Veda and in the idea of pre-flood or pre-Manu kings and dynasties like that of Prithi Vainya, who is credited with first introducing agriculture to humanity, as well as in the idea of earlier kalpas or world-ages and earlier Manus that we find in the Puranas.
The end of the Ice Age released the waters to flow through the Sarasvati River and inundate the plains of North India, turning the area into an ideal region for habitation and agriculture. We can easily see this geological event in Vedic stories of the great Indra, slaying the dragon Vritra, who lay at the foot of the mountains holding back the waters, releasing the seven rivers to flow into the sea.
The end of the Ice Age caused a migration of peoples from Southeast Asia to the north and west, fleeing the rising waters that put much of the Indonesian area under sea and separated Sri Lanka from India. North India would have been one of the first and most accessible places of migration for those seeking to flee the end of the Ice Age floods, either by sea or by land routes. We see this in Hindu myths of Manu as a flood figure coming from Kerala in South India, as in the Matsya Purana, as well as in the underlying maritime symbolism and ocean worship in the Rig Veda itself.
Older Patterns: India and Southeast Asia and Human Populations
A third important point of natural history is that this movement of populations out of Southeast Asia at the end of the last Ice Age reflects an even older pattern of movements. According to recent science and genetics, modern man arose in Africa about 200,000 years ago and from there spread first into India and Southeast Asia by a coastal migration. According to the geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer, settlements in India appear about 90,000 years ago. From India there were later northeastern and northwestern migrations into Eurasia and the Far East. India has long been a focal point of this movement from Southeast Asia to the Middle East, Central Asia and Europe.
A recent paper in the journal Science reporting on the analysis of the DNA of the Orang Asli, the original inhabitants of Malaysia, confirms this view. According to it a single migration out of Africa took the southern route to India, Southeast Asia and Australasia. At this time Europe was too cold for human habitation. About 50,000 years ago, when deserts turned into grasslands, an “Out of India” migration populated the Near East and Europe, another migration went northeast through China and over the now submerged Bering Strait into the Americas. This agrees with the earliest known modern human sites of the Near East (45,000 years ago) and Europe (40,000 years ago). It is likely that the earliest sites on the coastline that were occupied by the first migrants are now under water, since sea level has risen more than sixty metres since the last Ice Age.
So a movement out of India and Southeast Asia has been occurring for tens of thousands of years. But the movement after the end of the last Ice Age was the most crucial for current human populations. Geneticists like C. Cavalli-Sforza and S. Oppenheimer have noted that settlers in the coastal regions of India were the source (‘inocula’) for the population of India. Some of them later migrated northwards and westward to populate Europe. This is the exact reverse of the various migration-invasion theories (like the Aryan invasion) advanced by linguists and anthropologists who sought to derive Indians and their civilization from Central Asia, Eurasia or even Europe. See for example, Eden in the East by Stephen Oppenheimer (2003), London: Constable. This is discussed in more detail in later chapters.
Hindu View of Time and History
The Hindu idea of earlier Manus (humanities) and earlier kalpas or world-ages, such as we find in Puranic literature, may reflect memories of these earlier phases of mankind prior to what our current culture recognizes as history. This Hindu connection to prehistoric phases of the human species may be responsible for the Hindu idea of an eternal tradition of truth (Sanatana Dharma), and its recognition of cyclic movements of human civilization over many tens of thousands of years, such as we find in Puranic Yuga cycles.
From the standpoint of modern science, this ‘Hindu view of time’ better reflects the movement of natural history that is marked by cycles and cataclysms over long time periods. This is in contrast to western historical models that follow a linear and progressive model of history, culture and religion towards some sort of heaven or utopia, based upon a limited time horizon of about five thousand years that stands apart from nature’s cycles and often tries to oppose them. As we move into a more ecological age and gain a greater respect for natural history, we must reformulate our cultural history accordingly, which will take us more in the direction of this Hindu view of time, humanity and the universe.
Languages and Natural History
Ancient languages, like the populations and cultures, mainly arose as efforts to adapt to the natural environment. Languages were not simply affairs of the last five thousand years but have existed for tens of thousands of years, as long as the species, and have also been strongly impacted by natural history.
We can trace the movement of languages along with this movement of peoples, who would not have been mute. Such early ancient peoples would have kept their languages in tact as best they could because they relied on the spoken language as the main repository of their culture. This would require making ancient language groups, including the Indo-European family, much older, arising eight to ten thousand years ago along with flood changes and migrations. It is even possible that currently recognized language groups reflect languages formed and spoken even longer back in the Ice Age Period.
This movement of peoples out of India and Southeast Asia at the end of the Ice Age can provide the impetus for the spread of Indo-European languages north and west into Europe and Central Asia, regions that in the Ice Age era could only hold very small if any populations, having a climate that resembles Tibet (as a cold dry desert). Or perhaps it began even earlier, in some of the warm interludes that did occur during the latter portions of the Ice Age.
The end of the Ice Age afforded the natural events to create widespread migrations from populated to unpopulated regions. The much later proposed migrations, like those speculated for the Aryans into India around 1500 BCE – which still has yet to be proved to have occurred at all – do not have this natural justification. They are proposed migrations from unpopulated to populated and from uncultured to cultured regions that could not count for so much in terms of cultural changes.
Yet even such shifts of people in the late ancient period appear to be related to climate changes and droughts that began around 2200 BCE, which also led to the drying up of the Sarasvati River in India, but this was another movement out of India or a relocation inside of India from the Sarasvati to the Ganga.
Language Families
India is not only the eastern focus of Indo-European languages; it is also the western focus of Indo-Pacific languages. The Indo-Pacific family covers the languages of the Australian aborigines and the Papuans. The Austro-Asiatic cuts across from India to the Pacific (the Munda in India, the Thai, and the Vietnamese), extending to Madagascar.
Indian languages of both the Sanskritic and Dravidian groups have considerable affinities and connections with Pacific languages. These have not been adequately explored owing to the obsession with PIE (Proto-Indo-European) relative to Europe and Central Asia that has kept scholars from taking Indian languages further south and east. Both Sanskritic and Dravidian languages of India have considerable connections with the Munda and Southeast Asian languages that they have been in physical proximity to, which has been throughout the historical period. These Pacific languages similarly have their connections with Dravidian and Sanskritic languages.
Within India, the connections between the structure and vocabulary of the north and the south Indian languages indicate much internal migration of people and diffusion of culture, linking not only India to the Central Asia, but more importantly, India to the Pacific region and to Southeast Asia.
In addition, it is not only the Indo-European languages that connect India with Central Asia. The Dravidian languages also have connections with the Altaic family of languages that includes the Japanese, Korean, and the Turkic. That is why western scholars have proposed similar Dravidian migrations into India in late ancient times – a kind of Dravidian invasion theory much like the Aryan Invasion idea, sometimes dated even after it, making the Dravidians into post-Aryan migrants into the region – to explain the connection of Dravidian languages in India with those in Central Asia. This was the view of Bishop Caldwell who first brought up the idea of a Dravidian family of languages.
These Aryan and Dravidian invasion models would make the dominant language families of India intruders from the northwest at a late period. Such an idea is contrary to the natural history and the fact that India had stable populations and a cultural continuity throughout the ancient period. A much more likely scenario is that both Dravidian and Sanskritic languages developed in India and their influence spread to the northwest along with the movement of peoples in the Post-Ice Age era. This makes India an important central focus for not only populations, but for many of the languages of the world.
The Indo-European languages and the Dravidian are probably offshoots of such an older Indo-Pacific group of languages. Ancient South India at the time of the end of the Ice Age was probably the home of a proto-Vedic culture and of languages that later gave rise to both Dravidian and Sanskritic groups.
Languages like peoples developed regionally, were occasionally displaced by powerful natural events, and spread also by communication. Languages like populations cannot be defined by the lesser migrations of the late ancient period, by which time most population bases were already defined. They should be related to earlier and more powerful events.
Religion and Culture of Southeast Asia
The Vedic religion of India has much in common with other Indo-European religions from Persia to Ireland in terms of practices, rituals and traditions. These include fire worship, ritual chanting, sacred plants and many other factors, such as has been the subject of many studies East and West.
However, similar connections exist between the Vedic and Southeast Asian religious and cultural traditions. While India and Southeast Asia shared Buddhist and Hindu traditions during the historical period, it is now becoming more likely they did so in the prehistoric era as well. We also need to examine the similarities between Vedic rituals, customs and yoga practices and older traditions of Southeast Asia, which, incidentally, also had fire worship and a cult of sacred plants (Soma).
One of the main mistakes of modern scholarship, relying uncritically on its own preconceptions about culture, is to not even bother to look for such connections. The artificial barriers put up by old theories that Indian civilization came from the West have to be eliminated. Southeast Asia has been regarded by western historians as an even more a cultural backwater than India because they regard it as having borrowed from India what India itself borrowed from the West! These ideas also need to be set aside. Southeast Asia may prove more important as a cradle for human populations and culture than the Middle East.
Many of the earliest agricultural sites have been found in Southeast Asia in the late Ice Age period more than ten thousand years ago. It is also likely that other cultural innovations usually credited to the Middle East may have arisen in this region. These were less likely to survive the course of time owing to sea level changes and the effects of a wet tropical climate, as well as probably building more with wood than stone.
The Hindu view that cycles of time are reflected in cycles of consciousness and civilization also deserves serious consideration. We cannot impose our current historical mindset on previous eras, particularly for eras thousands of years ago, and expect to understand them. Their mentality, culture and usage of language would have been according to the influences of their time and environment.
One of the great limitations of modern linguistics is that it tries to reconstruct ancient languages as if the ancients formed words and thought the way we did. In tracing ancient languages and their movement, we should also strive to be more sensitive as to their nature and symbolism. Similarly, when we use modern theories like Marxism, Freudian psychology or even monotheistic religions to understand the early ancient world, we are imposing alien ideas upon them that cannot reveal their true character.
An Integrated Approach
The tendency of modern scholarship of ancient India has been to make the culture, languages and peoples of the region into outsiders, coming fairly late in the ancient historical period. Such new and more scientific evidence shows that the peoples of India can no longer be made into recent immigrants. This makes it very difficult to superimpose their languages or cultures upon them at a late period as well. All these factors are intimately connected to the natural environment and natural history of the region.
In other words, in order to understand ancient India we must look at the natural history, languages, culture and peoples together. We cannot attribute the languages, peoples or culture of India to groups from outside of India, which India absorbed like a vacuum. Languages, peoples and cultures were already there and in abundance, as India has always been a very fertile ground for human development. Nor can we have these cultures like the Harappan mysteriously disappear or become replaced in the late ancient period, particularly when there is no evidence to support it. There is nothing mysterious about Harappan civilization or it’s arise or it’s fall. It is very Indian much like the later classical cultures of the region in arts, crafts, town planning, agriculture, tools or religious symbolism. We cannot divide it off into another stream which left no trace.
It is better to look at India as it truly is, as a natural geographical, cultural, linguistic, and population zone. We must recognize an indigenous development of civilization in India relative to the factors of natural history and shared environment defined by the geography of the Himalayas to the sea that we find even in ancient texts. This connects India geographically more with Southeast Asia, and in terms of time frame, with movements of people and climate changes at the end of the last Ice Age, not in the 1500 BCE era.
What is most remarkable is that India preserves an ancient literature that with its knowledge of the ocean and the Sarasvati River accurately reflects the natural history. Putting all these factors together is like putting together the pieces of a puzzle. Instead of a puzzle with most pieces missing, as has been the recent western view of ancient India, it restores the picture to its whole.
The idea of India as a cultural patchwork is the result of poor or preliminary scholarship that has been unable to reconstruct the whole, like the blind man who cannot see the elephant as a whole. Once we add in the complete picture as revealed both by the natural history and the literature of the region, what we see instead is India as one of the most important centers not only for human spirituality through its great religions, but also of populations, languages and culture back to the period of prehistory. This is new view of India that will replace the current old worn distortions that are held up more by politics and by inertia than by anything else.
In other words, in order to understand ancient India we must look at the natural history, languages, culture and peoples together. We cannot attribute the languages, peoples or culture of India to groups from outside of India, which India absorbed like a vacuum. Languages, peoples and cultures were already there and in abundance, as India has always been a very fertile ground for human development. Nor can we have these cultures like the Harappan mysteriously disappear or become replaced in the late ancient period, particularly when there is no evidence to support it. There is nothing mysterious about Harappan civilization or it’s arise or it’s fall. It is very Indian much like the later classical cultures of the region in arts, crafts, town planning, agriculture, tools or religious symbolism. We cannot divide it off into another stream which left no trace.
It is better to look at India as it truly is, as a natural geographical, cultural, linguistic, and population zone. We must recognize an indigenous development of civilization in India relative to the factors of natural history and shared environment defined by the geography of the Himalayas to the sea that we find even in ancient texts. This connects India geographically more with Southeast Asia, and in terms of time frame, with movements of people and climate changes at the end of the last Ice Age, not in the 1500 BCE era.
What is most remarkable is that India preserves an ancient literature that with its knowledge of the ocean and the Sarasvati River accurately reflects the natural history. Putting all these factors together is like putting together the pieces of a puzzle. Instead of a puzzle with most pieces missing, as has been the recent western view of ancient India, it restores the picture to its whole.
The idea of India as a cultural patchwork is the result of poor or preliminary scholarship that has been unable to reconstruct the whole, like the blind man who cannot see the elephant as a whole. Once we add in the complete picture as revealed both by the natural history and the literature of the region, what we see instead is India as one of the most important centers not only for human spirituality through its great religions, but also of populations, languages and culture back to the period of prehistory. This is new view of India that will replace the current old worn distortions that are held up more by politics and by inertia than by anything else.
In other words, in order to understand ancient India we must look at the natural history, languages, culture and peoples together. We cannot attribute the languages, peoples or culture of India to groups from outside of India, which India absorbed like a vacuum. Languages, peoples and cultures were already there and in abundance, as India has always been a very fertile ground for human development. Nor can we have these cultures like the Harappan mysteriously disappear or become replaced in the late ancient period, particularly when there is no evidence to support it. There is nothing mysterious about Harappan civilization or it’s arise or it’s fall. It is very Indian much like the later classical cultures of the region in arts, crafts, town planning, agriculture, tools or religious symbolism. We cannot divide it off into another stream which left no trace.
It is better to look at India as it truly is, as a natural geographical, cultural, linguistic, and population zone. We must recognize an indigenous development of civilization in India relative to the factors of natural history and shared environment defined by the geography of the Himalayas to the sea that we find even in ancient texts. This connects India geographically more with Southeast Asia, and in terms of time frame, with movements of people and climate changes at the end of the last Ice Age, not in the 1500 BCE era.
What is most remarkable is that India preserves an ancient literature that with its knowledge of the ocean and the Sarasvati River accurately reflects the natural history. Putting all these factors together is like putting together the pieces of a puzzle. Instead of a puzzle with most pieces missing, as has been the recent western view of ancient India, it restores the picture to its whole.
The idea of India as a cultural patchwork is the result of poor or preliminary scholarship that has been unable to reconstruct the whole, like the blind man who cannot see the elephant as a whole. Once we add in the complete picture as revealed both by the natural history and the literature of the region, what we see instead is India as one of the most important centers not only for human spirituality through its great religions, but also of populations, languages and culture back to the period of prehistory. This is new view of India that will replace the current old worn distortions that are held up more by politics and by inertia than by anything else.
The Hindu Gods and Goddesses, more properly called Devatas or Divine principles, are usually treated by modern scholars in a superficial senses as distinct powers of nature or worse as just various imaginary spirits of the primitive mind.
At a more sophisticated level, for those who have an inner vision and real devotion, they are regarded as aspects, forms or manifestations of God or Ishvara, the Cosmic Lord and Creator, representing his powers, qualities or various ways of imagining him. They are the principles of Bhakti Yoga.
Yet at what may be a yet higher level, the Hindu Gods and Goddesses are forms or aspects of Brahman, the impersonal Godhead behind and beyond the manifest universe. They are powers of Jnana Yoga or the Yoga of knowledge.
How can Gods and Goddesses, which are usually formulated as having personalities, be a manifestation of Impersonal Being, Power and Existence? If we look deeply, we see that their forms and personalities are but symbols of something beyond form and personality. That is why their forms and personalities are extraordinary, supernatural and multifaceted.
Vedic Devatas
Seeing the Devatas as Brahman is perhaps easier to do with the Vedic Gods and Goddesses, rather than the later Hindu and Puranic. This is because the Vedic Devatas are more clearly forces of nature and light, while the Puranic Devatas are more anthropomorphic in form and appearance.
The four main Vedic Devatas are Agni, Vayu or Indra, Surya and Soma. As light forms in nature these are fire, wind, sun and moon. Brahman or the supreme Godhead in the Upanishads is compared to a great fire, of which the worlds and creatures are but the sparks. Brahman is similarly compared to Wind or Vayu, a formless force that when it blows creates and moves everything. Brahman is also like the Sun, the supreme source of light, life and consciousness. It is also like the Moon, granting peace, delight and beauty to all things.
One could argue that the Vedic Devatas are more forms of Brahman than they are forms of Ishvara or God in the personal sense. Yet of these it is mostly Indra, whose name like Ishvara means ‘the Lord’ that is the closed to God. However, Indra is also Brahman as the supreme power of consciousness, knowledge and perception. Indra is the Purusha as the seer and the knower as theAitareya Upanishadproclaims.
Puranic Devatas and Shiva
The Puranic (later Hindu) Devatas, like the great trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, are the three forms of Ishvara, God or Saguna Brahman, Brahman with qualities. The three are the Creator (Brahma), Perserver (Vishnu) and Destroyer (Shiva) or the three aspects of Ishvara relative to the gunas of rajas, Sattva and tamas.
Yet of the three, it is Shiva that is the closest to Brahman. In this regard, Shiva is Nirguna Brahman or pure existence, Vishnu is Ishvara, God or Saguna Brahman, and Brahma is Mahat Tattva or cosmic mind.
Shiva is the personification of the supreme Brahman and also is impersonal. He is the formless, transcendent, pure consciousness, pure existence, and peace – not at all concerned with anything in the realm of time and space, birth and death. He is beyond good and evil and can embrace all suffering as well as all joy. He is unpredictable and paradoxical, and does not conform to the expectations of his devotees. He works to take us beyond any limitation that we would put upon him or upon ourselves. He demands that we surrender our limited mind and ego to the Absolute.
Similarly, of the three great Goddesses and consorts of the three great Gods, Sarasvati of Brahma, Lakshmi of Vishnu and Kali of Shiva, it is Kali that is the closest to Brahman and a personification of it. Kali is Brahman’s supreme power or unlimited Shakti. It is this pure power of existence which as the infinite and eternal exist behind space and time. Kali’s often terrible appearance signifies this transcendence that breaks down all the appearances and limitations that we are attached to. Her garland of skulls shows her ruling over and transcending of suffering, time and death.
Kali is also the calming and silencing of the mind (nirodha in the Yoga Sutra sense, nirvana in the sense of Buddhism and the Gita). She is the prana merged into itself, the ending of death in the ending of birth! She is the breath of Brahman that occurs without wind or any external changes.
Shiva and Kali are, as it were, only vaguely defined personalities. They represent the impersonal in its first manifestation towards personality. They exist before and beyond the manner and rules of personal expression. They break down the personality into the infinite. That is why their forms do not conform to any rules, order or stereotyped patterns. They represent the transcendent, which from the standpoint of the manifest or phenomenal world must be paradoxical, beyond all dualities, cataclysmic and transformational.
Vishnu and Lakshmi represent more the Divine in its orderly manifestation, but they can keep us confined within the manifest world and its highest Sattva guna, if we don’t look beyond their forms. Shiva and Kali take us beyond Sattva guna to pure existence, pure Sat itself. To do this they have to violate (show the limitations) of all the rules of the cosmic order. Even the beautiful personal forms of God are limitations that we must go beyond to reach the supreme Brahman.
Shiva and Kali take us back to Brahman and themselves merge and disappear back into it. They are light and energy as the most primal forces, the peace and power of the infinite.
Conclusion
To see the Devatas (Gods and Goddesses) as forms of Brahman is to really see the Devatas. Each Devata is a doorway on the infinite which is Brahman. Each indicates a path beyond form and personality through reflecting a primal form, power or personality.
The Devata works to take us to Brahman by expanding our personality into the impersonal. They do this through their own personality which is a personification of the infinite. The Devatas work on all levels of existence in order to lead us to that Being which is everywhere.
In that Brahman, the Self, the Devata, God, the Guru and the world, all merge. The waves fall into the sea. The rays return to that one light. That Brahman is present as the Being in everything from the dust to the star. Then we see that each thing becomes a Devata or deity and we understand the Devatas or Divine currents working in the forces of nature, of light, time, space and the yearnings of the human heart
Perhaps nothing is more exotic, dramatic and sensational in India’s Yoga traditions than is the practice of Tantra. No other approach to Yoga has gained such a fascination for the modern mind and its seeking of the bizarre, the entertaining and the enigmatic.
Tantra appears to offer both spiritual and worldly success to a superlative degree. It covers not only internal yogic experiences of chakras, lokas and deities, but also has many important healing practices for body and mind. Most notably, it offers special means of heightening sexual pleasure, making money, gaining recognition and defeating one’s enemies – with Tantric methods available for achieving all human desires. There is in Tantra something for everyone, especially those who may be put off by ascetic or renunciate approaches to the spiritual life such as seem to dominate most of the rest of the Yoga tradition.
Yet behind this allure of Tantra are very deep and profound teachings, including some of the most vibrant currents and detailed practices in the Yoga tradition of the last thousand years or more. Though Tantra has much to offer everyone, we must learn to be discriminating as to what is real versus what is superficial Tantra or one can easily fall into its distortions, which are many and much more visible.
Tantra and Wish-Fulfillment
Even in India, Tantrics are often portrayed as great magicians with special powers to overcome difficulties and fulfill our desires, using gems, mantras, yantras and pujas to get the Gods on our side and remove negative forces and bad karmas that get in the way of our happiness. Such Tantrics may use well-defined systems of knowledge, particularly Vedic astrology but also Yoga and Ayurveda and be quite adept in their practices. But often their claim is more personal, relative to their own special powers or siddhis and connections with deities, gurus or even ghosts that can work for us in mysterious ways that circumvent any outer limitations we may be facing.
Some Tantric gurus are considered to be so powerful that their touch or glance alone can grant whatever we wish. They offer us quick and miraculous means to accomplish what our own efforts, karma and destiny appear to deny us. Naturally, this Tantric guru image can be easily exploited. Such gurus can charge a lot for or demand our personal loyalty and devotion in various ways. Many Indian politicians have routinely employed such Tantrics, hoping to use their powers to win elections and defeat their enemies. This magical form of Tantra makes for entertaining stories and good novels, giving it an additional glamour and grounds for exaggeration.
Even genuine gurus may be looked upon with such a vision as being able to grant our desires, though they may not project any magical Tantric image themselves, so much is the human wish for Divine intervention to make our lives better and to have them conform more with what we would like them to be.
This fascination with Tantra is nothing new in human cultures. Tantra is another version of the same old attraction to magic, the occult and ritual that we find to some degree in all cultures and was very prominent in the ancient world everywhere. Ancient Vedic rituals, much like modern Tantric rituals, can similarly be employed for all the goals of human life from kama or enjoyment, to victory in battle, to moksha or liberation.
Such an effort to bend the cosmic powers to our human wishes occurs even in monotheistic religions. In western religions, prayer has been used in the same way to promote worldly or social well-being, like the Christian evangelicals in America performing prayers and church services for the reelection of George W. Bush.
Looking to God – whether in the formless sense, or in the form of various Gods and Goddesses, or saints and gurus – to fulfill our human desires is one of the first and most common ways of human religious seeking. The undeveloped human ego will naturally first approach God with its own needs, rather than for any real seeking of knowledge or devotion. Tantra provides one of the most elaborate ways of doing this and recognizes its value as a first step in getting people onto the spiritual path. Chanting mantras in order to increase our prosperity or find a good partner or any other such personal goal is part of that approach. There is nothing wrong with such practices, but they don’t represent the higher aspects of Tantra or Yoga.
Kundalini and the Chakras
Other aspects of Tantra have come to the West and can be found in modern India as well, but not without distortions either. The chakras are a common New Age topic, though these are often portrayed quite differently than in classical Yoga. The chakras, which are originally energy centers in the subtle body, are often reduced to a physical formula. They are not looked upon so much as centers of spiritual experience but as places of physical and emotional healing. Such chakra healing is common in many New Age approaches, including various forms of massage, body work, energy work and pranic healing. While these practices may have their health benefits, they do not unfold the deeper aspects of chakra energy in Yoga practice, which require intense sadhana, mantra, pranayama and meditation.
Meanwhile, Kundalini is generally reduced to some form of sexual energy, leading to strange emotional states and experiences. Or it is looked upon as some mere natural force to be used in a technological way. Its true nature as the power of consciousness is often overlooked.
This combination of New Age fantasies from the West and an innate Indian need for the magical Yogi has created much room for illusion and distortion, if not manipulation and deception. It causes us to miss the fact that Tantra in the broader sense is a deep, profound, highly spiritual and very aesthetic way of understanding the conscious universe in which we live. Real Tantra often gets buried under these glittering allures and exaggerated claims.
Broader Aspects of Tantra
Apart from these distortions, we must recognize that Tantra is a complex tradition, with many sides and facets going beyond and even contrary to these popular fantasies. Tantra is interwoven with the spiritual teachings of India and beyond, going back far into ancient history. The popular understanding of Tantra represents only a small part of a vast system of knowledge.
We could compare the state of Tantra with that of Yoga, with which it is related. Like Tantra, the physical side of Yoga is emphasized – the practice of yogic postures or asanas – even though these represent a small part of classical Yoga, whose main concern is meditation. We live in a materialistic and media age in which spiritual traditions are recast or scaled down into a physical and sensationalistic model. This may popularize but it easily diminishes and distorts.
Such a sensate image of Tantra may cause some people to want to reject anything Tantric altogether. Certain spiritual groups East and West like to avoid Tantra for this reason. This is a mistake of another kind because it causes them to overlook the positive aspects of Tantra, its wealth of knowledge and practices about all the subtle aspects of Yoga, the worship of deities and how to harmonize actions in the human realm with the Divine worlds above.
The real question then is how to separate the deeper and higher aspects of Tantra from the outer and superficial views. Tantra is a precise system of knowledge that provides specific results and much inner transformation if employed correctly. The application of mantras, rituals, pranayama and meditation in Tantric teachings is probably the most elaborate and complete in the entire Yoga tradition. Tantra also shows us how to employ such systems as Vedic astrology, Vastu and Ayurveda for deeper levels of protection and healing, as well as to promote a higher awareness.
Tantra, Mantra and Yantra
It is in Tantra that we find the most detailed explication of the power of mantra, with every syllable of the Sanskrit alphabet precisely defined. It is the bija mantras of Tantra, the Shakti mantras like Hrim and Shrim, which are the most powerful of all mantras. Tantra similarly provides the greatest explanation of the use of yantras or geometrical meditation devices that are important tools of concentration and meditation. For example, the worship of Sri Chakra and Sri Yantra, probably the most important and detailed of all the Yoga teachings, is the most important Tantric teaching. The entire universe and the subtle body are present in the Sri Chakra. Its worship integrates the individual with all existence.
Tantra is a good tool for helping people of all traditions reclaim the worship of the Goddess and restore appropriate forms for her worship. As Christianity developed it rejected and condemned the common pagan worship of the Goddess that had long existed in the West. Western Tantra has added many other forms of Goddess worship in Pagan traditions from the Celts to the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians and Babylonians. Yet in these traditions forms of worship, both external and internal, have largely been lost. Hindu Tantra helps restore these methods of worship through its understanding of ritual, meditation and iconography.
Tantra offers such a wealth of images as the Dasha Mahavidya or Ten Wisdom Forms of the Goddess, and the many forms of Kali and Durga. Tantra provides the most detailed information on the visualization of such deities, their forms, ornaments and weapons and how to use them. Tantra contains an important tradition of sacred art, with a deep understanding of symbolism and precise rules of depiction. Tantra preserves the great festivals of the Goddess like Navaratri and Durga Puja. Tantric sacred sites from Kamakhya in Assam to Kamakshi in Tamil Nadu preserve not only a tradition of Goddess worship but a living connection with the Goddess in nature.
Historical Impact of Tantra
Tantra is perhaps the main current in Indian spirituality of the last thousand years or more and helps us understand its entire movement. Most of modern Hinduism and even much of Buddhism and Jainism is Tantric. There is a strong Tantric element to the Sikh Dharma, if one looks deeply. Tibetan Buddhism is largely a Tantric form, taken up from Indian Tantrics in Bengal and Bihar. Such a Buddhism of mantras, mandalas, deities, yoga and meditation is much closer to Hindu Tantric and Vedic disciplines than it is to the older Buddhism of Sri Lanka and Thailand.
Traditional Tantra has a strong ascetic and monastic form, though it has its householder tradition as well. Special Tantric worship of different forms of the Goddess go on in the major Shankaracharya Maths in India, using powerful mantras, yantras and rituals. Shankara himself was not only the most famous Advaitic teacher but also one of the most important Tantric teachers. His great poem to the Goddess, Saundarya Lahiri, remains perhaps the most important Tantric text that is used for Sri Chakra worship.
South Indian Agamic temple worship is Tantric in this broader sense. The entire Shakta tradition or worship of the Goddess in India is Tantric. Most of Shaivism is Tantric. Yet even Tantric elements are there in Vaishnava and other traditions.
Tantric teachings have been important for most of the main gurus of modern India since Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, including Aurobindo, Shivananda, Anandamayi Ma and many others. Ganapati Muni, the chief disciple of Ramana Maharshi, was another great Tantric Yogi. Yet this tradition is even older. The main Yoga gurus over the past thousand years or more have been mainly Nath Yogis, who are Tantric Shaivites, starting with Goraknath and Matsyendra Nath. Such Nath Yogis were the founders of the Hatha Yoga tradition as well as many important approaches to Tantra. Nath Yogis were honored by Shankara, Jnanadeva, Abhinavagupta, and many other great Hindu teachers of the medieval period. Even the teachings of modern Yoga guru, Krishnamacharya, are attributed to tradition stated by one Natha Muni. This means that without understanding real Tantra it is hard to understand Yoga.
In fact, the best way to understand real Tantra is as an expanded form of Raja Yoga. Like the Yoga Sutras and in more detail Tantra teaches asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana and samadhi, but providing many more specific forms and techniques. It gives the details on mantras and methods that are only alluded to in the Sutras.
We can also explain real Tantra as a yogic approach to science and art. In this regard, there is a cross over between Vedic and Tantric sciences in such disciplines as Ayurveda, Jyotish and Vastu. Tantra is the basis of the Rasa Shastra or alchemical side of Ayurveda and much of Ayurveda’s psychological treatments. Tantra uses the rules of Jyotish for determining favorable times for ritual, pujas and so on. Tantric architecture and temple building develops from Vastu. In fact, it is in Tantra, contrary to modern academicians who fail to see the obvious connection, that we find the most detailed applications of Vedic teachings of ritual, mantra, yajna, puja and meditation.
So whether we like it or not, Tantra is and will remain a dominant force not only in Indian but in world spirituality. While we can recognize the place of popular and New Age forms of Tantra as a point of entry into these teachings, it is important to recognize the broader and deeper scope of real Tantra which is more than these and may be quite different from them. Tantra is the practical and energetic application of all the yogic wisdom of life, time, space and energy. If you approach it with the right intention, it can offer you much more than the fulfillment of your desires, it can help you gain the supreme goal of life of realization of the entire universe within your own awareness!
