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From Aryans to Ayodhya
By Manju Gupta
Dr Dharamchand Vidya-lankar is a multifaceted writer in Hindi. His field of study ranges from literature and culture to history. Till now nearly two dozen books by him have been published on various subjects. His first one was Jaton ka Naya Itihas and the book under review is his second.
The present book is basically an anthropological study of India right since the time of the Vedas. The author begins by trying to establish the period of the Mahabharata war. Both the Puranic and Vedic pundits have placed the Mahabharata war to have taken place about 5,000 years hence. According to them, the period of the war in the Ramayana cannot be said to be more than 4,000-years old. Here the author clarifies that we should not get entangled in the controversy that the birthplace of the Ramayana and that Vedic literature is India'salone. It could have been of West Asia, Iran, Iraq and Turkey, or even Egypt and Syria.
The historicity of Vedic literature can be gauged from the fact that not only the names of people, rulers and saints, but even the names of rivers and states of that period are given. Among the rivers, apart from the region of seven rivers called Sapta-Sindhu, the names of Ganga and Yamuna are cited. It is another matter that Sapta-Sindhu India comprised of Punjab, Sindh and Haryana, or the region spreading from Afghanistan to the seven seas and the Caspian Sea of Russia is considered to be the original home of the Aryans. This includes the widespread territory extending from today'sAfghanistan, Turkey and South Russia to cover Iran, Turkey, Egypt and Iraq.
Before the entry of the Aryans into India, fierce wars took place between the various branches of the Aryans in this Sapta-Sindhu (Hapta Hindu) region. Included in the these Aryan sects are Mitni, Kasiat and Kshatriyas. Even prior to this they had struggled against non-Aryan sects like the Pani-Puniya or Panik-Banik who had been pushed out of Iran and Iraq to Rome (Crete) by the Aryans. Archaeological findings related to Vedic literature are not available anywhere in India. They are found in West Asia, Turkey and Iraq. The region in the middle of Iran and Russia known as Ajbairain was possibly the battle-ground of wars between the devas (gods) and the asuras (demons).
The author has drawn up in brief the reasons for the rule of the Aryans while admitting that no regular record is available of that period, primarily due to the monopoly of the priestly community over education and culture, who wrote history from the view of religion. ?This community was very conscious of the Aryans and the non-Aryans and it was due to this tendency that justice was never given to the non-Aryans who were described by them as Shudra, Das, Dasyu and Vratya as well as demons,? says the author. Another statement made by the author is that the ?Brahmins and the priestly class invariably considered all the people of India as legal and illegal descendants of the Aryans, the original inhabitants of India, though the victorious march and spread of the Aryans from the west to the east was from Iran and Afghanistan to Sindh, Punjab and Kashmir. But the Puranas considered the Aryans as the original inhabitants of Ayodhya and Prayag (Allahabad).?
The author has discussed the relations between the Aryans and the non-Aryans, the varna system, the rights and responsibilities of the Shudras, the status of the non-Aryans and the Shudras in the cultural kingdom of the Aryans, and propounded his theories for justifying his claims.
Here is a book that can be read for getting a new perspective on the history of the Aryans.
(Dinman Prakashan, 3014 Charkhewalan, Delhi-110006.)
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