Hello all,
this is my first post in this forum. my background is Malayalee Christian, but I am not Anti-Hindu. Infact I see myself as a Hindu with Christian influences, the real identity. Many Indian Christians are not aware of how much Hindu tradition they are exposed too their whole life, especially in India, but also abroad. This begins with Thali necklaces and ends with the unconciously done Ramanite education for our children. I hope, I've cleared all doubts about my motivation to write something on this topic. As a Christian Hindu, I love all my Hindu brothers and sister irrespective of caste and division. I'm a software professional from Europe and I was always curious about our past and modern world. I have done much amateurish research on topics like these and i'd like to share it with you. I think many are aware of the wrongdoings of lots of scholars and intellectuals from all societies. Let's correct them here.
I will go firstly through some interesting points, sangom made here, and will comment them according to my best knowledge. I can't guarantee that everything I write is also correct.
How come the oldest rama account is written in sanskrit by valmiki, an apparently sanskrit name rather than in a Tamil or some other dravidian language by someone like Kamban?
It is well known, that Indian kings used intentionally foreign languages for official use. Why? To dominate the administration quite easily. This was part of the strategy to rule Indians, including North Indians. The kings used Prakrit to communicate with the administration, while common people spoke Dravidian languages. Maharashtra and Gujarat spoke Dravidian languages not so much time ago! Infact the status of Marathi being an Indo-Aryan language is currently highly disputed in linguistic scholarship! And even Hindi is being talked about having too many Dravidian elements to classify it as Indo-Aryan. This important information needs to be considered when we talk about a remote past North Dravidian people. It is clear to me, that in the time of Asoka, people in the North still spoke real Dravidian languages. Only gradually they switched to some other form of language, not Sanskrit, but a mixture of Prakrit and Dravidian. Sanskrit was another language which replaced Prakrit as court language across India, at the same time, when native Dravidians began to follow Prakrit.
If brahmins originated in south India and were african+yedda+etc., why did they give all respect to the vedas and other scriptures all written in sanskrit, an alien tongue, and that too from the dim past, till today? Why was it that the brahmins did not think of learning their mother tongue (whether african, yedda, or anything)?
This question is therefore easy to answer. The North Dravidians have learnt new Elite languages during the course of time, due to invasions from Central Asians, who spoke also a series of languages, Avestan, RigVedic language, Greek, Persian, Turkish. As you know, all these languages have influenced mostly the administrative class first and only later, if at all, became the language of common people. The administrative class includes the priests, the Brahmins. We know today, that IVC had a religious society with priests and rituals. It was these priests who have been captured and taught the new language first, a language, which was probably more close to Iranian Avestan, which they Dravidianized into RgVedic language. They were forced to teach different gods and morals, but they retained also the old Dravidian belief systems. There is no doubt, that Sanskrit was a forced language and later a tool to rule the masses by exclusivity. This has also happened, when Islam arrived in India. The administrative class learned Arabi Persian after the North Prakrit speakers (former Dravidians) were conquered. Only centuries later Urdu emerged as a Persianized Prakrit, which eventually will become more Persianized than now.
In the case of M.Bh. most of the place names do not belong to south India, and there is specific reference to the south as well as some areas in the NW. I would like to know how you view this point.
The story about Ayodhya made by jaykay is likely to be correct. The Guptas (empire) have sanctioned modern North Indian Ayodhya as the real place of Rama. This Ayodhya has nothing to do with the real place of Rama. We should seriously think about the real place and I think jaykay is on the right track on this matter. It's dubious, that nothing of Rama had reached Western or Eastern Asia except the places, where Dravidians arrived. We actually had much of the North conquered and our traditions have arrived there in high numbers. A simple example would be the creation of Rangolis in the North. This was an export of a Telugu monarch!
Srilanka's existence was well-known to Ashoka in that he sent his children Mahinda and Sanghamitra, his children, as emissaries to Lanka. Hence, it may not be unacceptable to consider that the existence of a land by name Lanka (lankaa f. in sanskrit means an unchaste woman.) was known even in the north of India from times before Ashoka itself and with some poetic imagination, and news filtering through for generations, valmiki could have imagined an island, a very prosperous city and all that.
Do you actually believe in this story? Sounds more like a fairy tale by A R R Tolkien! Nonsense!
