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Harmful
Theory
The Aryan theory has done great harm to the world.
The
Nazis used a mutilated version of this theory to exterminate Jews and sundry
other nationalities in Europe. It also did considerable harm to the Indian
society. It created the mistaken impression
among the western-educated Indians that the North is Aryan and the South,
Dravidian. Some Indians rejected the Hindu religion as an "Aryan"
belief. Since it was implied that the so called upper castes were somehow
"Aryan" (mostly on account of loaded interpretations of certain suktas
in the Rg Veda), it also accentuated the vertical schisms in the society caused
by the caste system.
 A noted Western archaeologist specializing in ancient India,
James
Schaffer of Case
Western University as part of his new article, 'Migration,
Philology and South Asian Archaeology',
soon to appear in Aryan and Non-Aryan in South
Asia: Evidence, Interpretation and History, edited by Bronkhorst and Deshpande,
University of Michigan Press.
The Aryan invasion theory,
as
Schaffer
notes,
arose from a Euro centric view that
was hostile to an Indic basis for Western civilization or peoples.
The discovery
of close affinities between the Indo-European languages in the eighteenth
century required an explanation. By placing the original Aryans in Europe, who
later migrated to India where they got absorbed by the indigenous population, it
took away any need to connect the ancient Europeans with India, which was not
pleasing to the colonial mindset. The theory eventually developed an
anti-Semitic
tone.
It was used to trace Western culture not to the Jews and their Biblical accounts
but to a proposed European homeland dominated by Nordic peoples. Thus the
invasion theory became one of the pillars for Nazi
historians, yet strangely the Communists in India have become strong supporters
of the theory and accuse those who question it of being fascists!.
This
theory is being challenged by two new discoveries, one archaeological and the
other linguistic. Firstly, in the Rig Veda, the Ganges, India's sacred river, is
only mentioned once, but the mythic Saraswati is praised fifty times. For a long
time, the Saraswati river was indeed considered a myth, until the American
satellite Landstat was able to photograph and map the bed of this magnificent
river, which was nearly 14 km wide and took its source in the Himalayas.
Archaeologist Paul-Henri
Francfort,
who studied the Saraswati region at the beginning of the Nineties, found out that
the Saraswati had "disappeared", because around 2200 B.C., an immense
drought reduced the whole region to aridity and famine. "Thus", he
writes, "most inhabitants moved away from the Saraswati to settle on the
banks of the Indus and Sutlej rivers".
(source:
http://www.indian-express.com/ie/daily/19990927/iex27012.html).
A
Delhi-based columnist, Veeresh Malik, who
writes for www.chowk.com
(a website run by Pakistanis based in the US), responded to the Agra summit in
this way:
 “The
simple single solution is that Pakistan should declare itself to be a Vedic
nation. India should declare itself to be another Vedic nation. People can then
go home or to the temple or the mosque to practise whatever religion they want
to consider here is a Nation. It has on one side the Hindukush mountain range.
It has Harrappa, translated as ‘The city protected by Lord Shiva’, which if
anything was the centre of Vedic civilisation..
This
nation was one of the oldest religions and cultures in the world, but thanks to
colonial history books, got stuck with a myth that it was ‘invaded’ by the
Aryans from the Kazakhistan-Uzbekistan region. It used to practise a
religion referred to as ‘Vedic Dharm’, later on given the name ‘Hinduism’
by foreigners. The main prayer of the Vedic Dharm, also known as the Gayatri
Mantra, originated from this region, and was, ‘Aum bhu-bhva svah tat sevitr
varay niyem bargoh de vas ya dhi ma hi diyeo yo na prachodayat’. Or, ‘O
Lord, Thou are the protector of life and of breath, dispeller of miseries and
bestower of happiness. Thou are the creator and the most acceptable
intelligence, possessing eternal qualities. May Thine qualities and Thy
inspiration pass to us.’ Brevity. Surprisingly similar sentiments are found in
the Holy Koran, as in other holy books. It has one of its main cities named
after Bhagwan Ram’s son, Lav, and the main fort there was constructed by the
ancient Hindu Kingdom of Singhapura, by the way. After all, how many Singapores
can we have? But can anybody deny the existence and spread of the Gandhara
Empire, which spread Vedic culture to Central Asia? Nahrankot, Shalkot,
Pushkalavati, were these Sanskrit names with Vedic histories?”
(source: The
Vedic Solution - By Rahan Ansari
- Mid-Day July
19, 2001
"But this
"theory" stood on a wobbly foundation to begin with, because of its
excessively literal and somewhat naive reading of the Rg Veda. And it has been
getting more and more shaky ever since, with each passing year, as more and more
archaeological evidence comes to light; indicating quite clearly that the
"invasion", if any, could not possibly have happened in the way that
earlier generations of historians had "discovered" in and between the
lines of the literature studied by them; or, for that matter in the
"theories" of the Aryan invasion that modern historians have since
been concocting to explain away the differences between the ancient literature
(what little they knew of it), and the "hard" archaeological evidence,
and the "soft" interpretations based on it, that has/have now become
so abundantly available." says Sudhanshu Ranade
(source: The
Hindu Sunday, August 05, 2001).
Racial
theories and pseudo-science continue to be vigorously employed today by the
Vatican and other Western evangelist enterprises in their ongoing campaign to
harvest souls for Christianity. But it is not only in the remote corners of the
Third World where the unexamined "truths" of Max Muller and his
missionary-scholar contemporaries are still used as weapons of propaganda. Aryan
Race Theory is alive and well in the United States.
 Take,
for instance, white supremacist David
Duke, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
(founder, 1974); who in one of his recent books
speaks of the hordes of Aryans pouring into ancient India:
"Aryans, or Indo-Europeans (Caucasians)
created the great Indian, or Hindu civilization. Aryans swept over the Himalayas
to the Indian subcontinent and conquered the aboriginal people. (. . .) The word
Aryan has an etymological origin in the word Arya from Sanskrit, meaning noble.
The word also has been associated with gold, the noble metal, and denoted the
golden-skinned invaders (as compared to the brown-skinned aboriginals) from the
West. (. . .) The conquering race initiated a caste system to preserve their
status and their racial identity. The Hindu word for caste is Varna, which
directly translated into English means color."
Never
mind that Duke is only regurgitating a spurious and discredited interpretation
of history.
The lies of Aryan Race Theory are as useful
for white supremacists today as they were for the Christian missionaries a
century ago in their campaign not only to convert the infidels but also to
justify the colonization of "heathen Hindoostan."
(source: The
Missionary's Swastika: Racism as an Evangelical Weapon -
By
Aravindan Neelakandan.S). Refer to Jesus
Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel
Aryan
Invasion and Caste system
Colonial
Mischief: De-Linking Tribes from the Hindu society by the British Empire
During
the freedom struggle, Mahatma
Gandhi and other nationalist leaders expressed
displeasure at the mischief perpetrated by colonial administrators among
backward and disadvantaged sections, and stoutly affirmed that tribals
constituted an inalienable part of Hindu society.
Balrama seated with snake hood.
bronze. 8th-9th century.
The mighty serpent Sesha, on
whom Lord Vishnu rests during the intervals of creation, is reputedly a form of
the god himself (Sesha-Narayana), though he is also identified as Balarama (Baladeva),
elder brother of Lord Krishna.
Animism
was another disparaging term, coined by the Colonial British in India, used to
denote the worship of spirits and forces of nature as opposed to a ‘true’
(monotheistic) God.
Watch
video - The
Myth of Aryan invasion theory - Part I and Part
II and Part
III and Myth
of Aryan Dravidian Divide and Dwaraka
- A Lost City of Lord Sri Krishna.
Watch
Scientific
verification of Vedic knowledge
***
Colonial
rhetoric not withstanding, tribals have never been
passive recipients of Hindu upper class (what Max Mueller labeled as
Brhamanical) cultural models, but have rather
contributed actively and enormously to the infinite variety of India’s
civilization from its primordial beginnings. The
colonial state insisted that Brahmins, peasants, untouchables and tribals were
separate groups with distinct customs and beliefs, and that Brahmins sought to
subjugate all others to establish their hegemony. Special attempts were made to
delink tribals from the main body of Hindu society through imposition of racial
categories and subterfuges in Census classifications.
Creating
a Division in Hindu Society
Animism - Disparaging terms to denote Nature Worship?
Colonial
anthropologists introduced a division in society by designating or
‘scheduling’ whole groups as tribes. Disregarding centuries-old intimate
ties between caste Hindu and casteless tribal society, they classified the
tribals as ‘Animist’. Animism was another disparaging term, used to denote
the worship of spirits and forces of nature as opposed to a ‘true’
(monotheistic) god.
This
bias persists in Western thought to this day, and rather than being debunked as
a phoney concept, animism is even now described as the belief that natural
phenomenon are endowed with ‘life’ or ‘spirit,’ and as the tendency to
attribute supernatural or spiritual characteristics to plants, geological
features, climatic phenomena and so on.
 Little
wonder then that Mahatma
Gandhi bemoaned: “We were strangers to
this sort of classification – animists, aborigines, etc., but we have learnt
from the English rulers.” When the missionary Dr.
Chesterman queried if this objection applied to the ‘animist’
aboriginal races of the Kond hills, Gandhi insisted, “Yes,
it does apply, because I know that in spite of being described as animists these
tribes have from time immemorial been absorbed in Hinduism. They are, like the
indigenous medicine, of the soil, and their roots lie deep there.”
In
1901, the British government directed census officers to designate the religion
of Adivasis as “animism.” Census
officers found that it was virtually impossible to distinguish between an
animist and a Hindu in practice, as they all worshipped God in many forms.
The result was that a community was listed as “animist” in one census and as
“Hindu” in another.
H
H Risley concluded that it was impossible to
differentiate between Hinduism and Animism as each merged imperceptibly into the
other. Hinduism itself was animism more or less transformed by
philosophy.” E A Gait observed in his 1901
Report on the Lower Provinces of Bengal and their Feudatories: “The
dividing lines between Hinduism and Animism is uncertain. Hinduism does not,
like Christianity and Islam, demand of its votaries the rejection of all other
religious beliefs; and …amongst many of the lower castes of Hindus the real
working religion derives its inspiration, not from the Vedas, but from the
non-Aryan beliefs of the aborigines…”
Tormented
at the near impossibility of such an endeavor, Sedgwick,
Superintendent of the Census of 1921 for Bombay,
asserted: “I have, therefore no hesitation in saying that Animism as a
religion should be entirely abandoned, and that all those hitherto classed as
Animists should be grouped with Hindus at the next census.”
***
The Mahabharata epitomizes the Indian genre of historical
literature, known as Itihasa. It is the country’s most famous history and epic
poem. The German Indologist Hermann Oldenberg
observed: “In the Mahabharata breathe the
united soul of India and the individual souls of her people.” The
Mahabharata itself states that that which is not found here cannot be found
elsewhere, so comprehensive is its treatment of dharma and the philosophy of
life.
A warped notion of India’s
pre-colonial past is the thus a continuing legacy of colonialism. Crispin
Bates states that race rested upon the unshakeable premise that the
modern European, particularly the Briton, was superior to all other races.
Racism is apparently the academic contribution of European biologists, and this
fact may explain the propagation of racial theories as ‘scientific.’
In the 1830’s the American joined the racial debate with the
‘science’ of anthropometry. The physician S G
Morton and theoretician Louis Agassiz
justified slavery by asserting that the human races were created as entirely
separate species. He ranked Whites as the most
intelligent race, American Indians as less intelligent. Hindus as even less
intelligent; and Negroes as the stupidest.
It was from such shoddy myths that the British developed more
sophisticated racial theories about castes and tribes. Caste was also used as an
instrument of social engineering. Some of most difficult tribes were declared
‘criminal’ and subjected to laws such as the notorious Criminal
Tribes Act of 1871.
Colonial anthropologists influenced
by the race theories arising out of their intervention in Africa, sought to
apply similar categories to India as well. Determined to fit a square peg into a
round hole, they arbitrarily labeled large numbers of autochthonous groups as
‘tribes’ and thus created an entirely new social category, even though the
word ‘tribe’ did not have an equivalent in several native Indian languages.
Moving in concert with highly motivated missionaries, the formally religiously
“neutral” officials of the East India Company executed masterly strokes to
delink whole sections of society, such as tribals and Harijans (Dalits), from
Hindu society.
(source: Adi
Deo Arya Devata – By Sandhya Jain
p. 2 - 235). For more refer to Glimpses
XV. For more refer to chapter on European
Imperialism and Conversion
and Nature
Worship. Also refer to Towards
Balkanisation, V: Adivasis - By Varsha Bhosle - rediff.com).
Refer to Jesus
Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel
***
Dr.
Ambedkar stands along with Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda in rejecting the
racial interpretation of the caste system.
But Indian 'secularists', Marxists as well as British colonialists accept the
racial interpretation of the caste system.
It is an irony that the followers of E. V. Ramasamy who call themselves
rationalists often share the dais with
anti-evolutionist Christian and Muslim fundamentalists.
 Indian
historian
Devendra Swarup has
remarked:
"Wilson,
Max Muller and Whitney all tried to trace the origin of the caste system in the
Aryan invasion theory and thus declared the Brahmins as the pure descendents of
the Aryan invaders inventing the caste system for perpetuation of their
supremacy (over the native inhabitants)"
In support of this line,
attempts were made to equate caste with race and classify the entire Indian
population along several racial types by measuring imaginary features of their
skulls and noses. From such pseudo-science, it followed that the lower castes
and the Dravidians, both victims of the Aryan "oppressors," were to be
encouraged to rebel and reject every "Aryan import," beginning of
course with Hinduism - such indeed has been the ideological foundation of Tamil
Nadu's Dravidian movement.
Moreover, Christianity,
shown to be more "egalitarian," was projected as the natural
"liberating" force for those sections of Indian society, among which
mass conversions did take place as a result.
According to columnist Sandhya
Jain:
"The determined
bid by Christian evangelists to take
caste-based discrimination in India to the UN World Conference against Racism (WCAR)
has inspired leftists, liberals and human rights activists into a frenzy of
verbiage and sanctimoniousness. Yet, for all the anti-caste rhetoric we have
been subjected to these past few months, nothing substantial has emerged to
assuage bruised Dalit consciousness and offer a way out of the vicious cycle of
caste-based violence that has undeniably increased in recent times. Hence, while
the run up to Durban has put the international spotlight on the Dalit issue,
there has been no internal soul-searching on the question."
The
Christian demand to include caste as a form of racism aims at overcoming the
resistance of modern educated Dalits to convert to Christianity. Indeed,
the American pediatrician, Michael Bamshad's
recent claim about the European paternity of upper caste Indians and Asian
paternity of the lower castes was a pathetic attempt to provide a 'scientific'
link between race and caste. Since the study was shoddily executed, its
co-authors dissociated themselves from it when challenged by fellow academics.
Its purpose, of course, was to equate caste and racial discrimination, so that
the Indian Government could be compelled under international pressure to extend
the benefits of reservations in education and jobs to Dalit Christians.
(source:
Dalits
through the looking glass - By Sandhya Jain).
Refer to Jesus
Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel
***
The
discredited Aryan invasion theory has again been taken up by Michael Bamshad of
Utah University.
Indian
Caste Groups Have Differing Genetic Relationships to Europeans and Asians -
By Michael Bamshad - May 11, 2001 – A
new study of genetic data shows that the ancestors of Indian men came from
different parts of the world than those of Indian women and produced modern
upper caste Indian populations that are genetically more similar to Europeans
and lower caste populations that are more similar to Asians....
Commenting on this study, author, Dr. N. S. Rajaram says:
"Now, thanks to Bamshad & Co, this
discredited notion as well as the Marxist Class-to-Caste Law has become
scientific! If their theory (based on a sample from Vishakapatnam) has any
validity at all, then Brahmins and Kshatriyas all over India must have some
common physical features indicating their European ancestry. But they do not.
For example, Brahmins and Kshatriyas in Kerala look like Keralites, those from
Assam look like Assamese and those from Kashmir look like Kashmiris. This
diversity goes to show that the Indian population is ancient, having lived in
the same region long enough to have adopted to the environment by natural
selection. What they have in common are certain cultural traits modified by
regional factors like language, dress and food. These are acquired
characteristics that have nothing to do with genetics.
These Utah researchers should perhaps next apply their
methodology to Christians. They can then discover Catholic genes and Protestant
genes. And among Protestants they may further find Anglican genes, Lutheran
genes, Methodist genes, Baptist genes-all the way down to Mormon genes in the
Mormon capital of Salt Lake City, Utah. Their methodology is the kind of
numerology that can be used to prove anything anywhere. In plain English, their
science is just so much hot air."
(source:
Caste
and Science: Hot Air and Cold Fusion - N.S. Rajaram).
***
The
cradle that is India - By Subhash Kak
Ideas
about early Indian history continue to play an important role in political
ideology of contemporary India. On the one side are the Left
and
Dravidian parties, which believe that invading Aryans from the northwest pushed
the Dravidians to south India and India's caste divisions are a consequence of
that encounter. Even the development of Hinduism is seen through this
anthropological lens. This view is essentially that of colonial historians which
was developed over a hundred years ago.
Now, in an important book titled The
Real Eve: Modern Man's Journey out of Africa
(New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, 2003), the prominent Oxford University
scholar Stephen
Oppenheimer has
synthesised the available genetic evidence together with climatology and
archaeology with conclusions which have bearing on the debate about the early
population of India. This work has received great attention in the West, and it
will also interest Indians tremendously.
Much of Oppenheimer's theory is based on recent advances in studies of
mitochondrial DNA, inherited through the mother, and Y chromosomes, inherited by
males from the father. Oppenheimer makes the case that whereas Africa is the
cradle of all mankind; India is the cradle of all non-African peoples. Man left
Africa approximately 90,000 years ago, heading east along the Indian Ocean, and
established settlements in India. It was only during a break in glacial activity
50,000 years ago, when deserts turned into grasslands, that people left India
and headed northwest into the Russian steppes and on into Eastern Europe, as
well as northeast through China and over the now submerged Bering Strait into
the Americas.
Oppenheimer concludes with two extraordinary conclusions: 'First, that the
Europeans' genetic homeland was originally in South Asia in the Pakistan/Gulf
region over 50,000 years ago; and second, that the Europeans' ancestors followed
at least two widely separated routes to arrive, ultimately, in the same cold but
rich garden. The earliest of these routes was the Fertile Crescent. The second
early route from South Asia to Europe may have been up the Indus into Kashmir
and on to Central Asia, where perhaps more than 40,000 years ago hunters first
started bringing down game as large as mammoths.'
This synthesis of genetic evidence makes it possible to understand the divide
between the north and the south Indian languages. It appears that the Dravidian
languages are more ancient, and the Aryan languages evolved in India over
thousands of years before migrations took them to central Asia and westward to
Europe. The proto-Dravidian languages had also, through the ocean route, reached
northeast Asia, explaining the connections between the Dravidian family and the
Korean and the Japanese.
Perhaps
this new understanding will encourage Indian politicians to get away from the
polemics of who the original inhabitants of India are, since that should not
matter one way or the other in the governance of the country. Indian politics
has long been plagued by the Aryan invasion narrative, which was created by
English scholars of the 19th century; it is fitting that another Englishman,
Stephen Oppenheimer, should announce its demise.
(source: The
cradle that is India - By Subhash Kak - rediff.com).
Also refer to www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey/
DNA Exposes
India's Past
Mitochondrial DNA is passed on from one
generation to next through mothers. DNA analysis allows scientists to trace our
ancestry. Recent studies of different people of the world has shown that
humans originated in East
Africa and migrated north to Europe and west to India between 200,000 and 50,000
years ago. The maternal lineages of the present day Indian is unique and
very old. There is some admixture with outsiders, especially along border
regions. But there is very small differences between Indians, whether they
speak Indo-European or Dravidian language and whether they are of tribal origin
or not.
Prof. Richard Villems
of Estonia believes that "the Aryan Invasion theory, in its classical form,
is dead already". This theory has very little archeological,
astronomical, or literary support. The main purpose of
inventing such a theory was to justify British domination of the subcontinent
and create a class of educated (?) Indians who despised every thing 'Indian' and
help the British rule over India. Now it is up to Hindus to weed out
the vast array of myths generated by Aryan Invasion Theory.....
(source: Abstract of an article on "DNA Exposes
India's Past", Hinduism Today, July/August 2001, P. 57).
 Vasishtha Head - Vedic Aryan
Head
In 1990, the Journal of Indo-European Studies carried an article entitled
"Analysis of an Indo-European Vedic head- Fourth Millennium B.C."
The life size head has a hairstyle that the Vedas describe ad being unique
to the family of Vasistha, one of the great seers who composed parts of the
Rig-Veda. The hair is oiled and coiled with a tuft on the right, and their ears are riveted...Carbon -14 tests.. indicate that it was cast around 3,700
B.C.
This questions the Aryan Invasion Theory.
(source: The Empire of the Soul:
Some Journeys into India - By Paul William Roberts pg 306.).
Major
anthropology find reported in India
Scientists
report they have found evidence of the oldest human habitation in India, dating
to 2 million years, on the banks of the Subarnarekha River.
The 30-mile stretch between Ghatshila in the province of Jharkhand and
Mayurbhanj in Orissa has reportedly yielded tools that suggest the site could be
unique in the world, with evidence of human habitation without a break from 2
million years ago to 5,000 B.C.
Anthropologist
S. Chakraborty told the Calcutta Telegraph: "There are no signs of terra
incognito (a break in the continuum) in the Subarnarekha valley, unlike any
other site in India. Some of the heavier tools resemble those found in the East
African stone-age shelters, used by the Australopithecus."
Chakraborty said the uninterrupted habitation could make the site more important
than even the Aldovai Gorge in East Africa, the Somme Valley of France,
Stonehenge in England, the Narmada basin in Madhya Pradesh and the Velamadurai-
Pallavaram rectangle in Tamil Nadu.
(source:
Major
anthropology find reported in India - UPI).
Irish Scholars: Irish and Indian the
Same People ?
By
Gerhard Herm
Bryan Mcmahon, historian, scholar of folklore, teacher, a well known poet and
much else besides, likes to test his favorite theories in
practice and to retail them with all the skill and timing of a seasoned
performer. He told me: Whenever I meet an Indian I take him to one side and hum
the first lines of an Irish folk-song. Then I ask him to continue the melody as
he likes; and, believe it or not, almost every
time he will sing it to the end as if he already knew the song. Isn't that
astonishing?
For me it is an indication that Indians and Irishmen have a common past; that,
as I put it in one of my plays, "We Celts came from the
Mysterious East."
The late Myles Dillon, formerly Prof of Celtic at U of
Dublin cites a whole series of further astonishing parallels between the culture
of the Aryan Indians and the Irish Druids. (Druid from Dru=Oak Wid or
Ved=Wisdom) His main contention is that in both cases there was a distinct class
of scholars; the Brahmins in India, the highest reps in the Varna system; while
in Ireland there were the 'wise men of the oak'. Dillon reckons that the
Brahmins and the Druids should be equated because they carried out their
profession-teaching and study, poetry and law-in a similar way.
There is evidence that this is so.
The principles by which justice was administered were similar, indeed identical
with those in India. There a father with daughters but no sons could order one
of them to take a man of his choice and produce a legal heir. beyond the Hindu
Kush mountains, such a girl was called putrika (she who takes the son's place)
and in old Ireland ban-chomarba (female-heir). But who if not the Continental
Celts can have told the Irish what was going on in the far east? Dillon further
notes similarities: in both cultures there were 8 different forms of marriage,
from arranged marriages, marriage by purchase and love- matches to kidnapping.
In both cultures there was a strict distinction between inherited and earned
property and when contracts were drawn up there was an exact statement as to who
was to provide what guarantees before obtaining what he wanted. In one case it
was the Brahmins and in the other the Druids who administered these principles.
All this, Dillon says, suggests that the Celtic Druids indeed represented the
same tradition as the Hindu Brahmins.... If we continue
to feel our way along the parallels between India and Gaul, sooner or later we
sense that the Druids were also political leaders, just as the Brahmins clearly
stood above generals and warriors.
The Druids, Caesar says, taught that "souls do not disappear but wander
from one body to another'. Lucan in his Pharsalia-a verse epic about the Roman
civil war-addressed them with the words: 'If we understand you aright, death is
only a pause in a long life. 'Maybe he was right; if so, did the belief come
from the Indo-European source that produced the Brahmins and the Druids? Or is
it chance that lands as far apart as India and France produced a belief in
metempsychosis? Does the fact that according to Scythian custom, crests depicted
Eagles, wolves, bears as ancestors reflect the conviction of these people that
the spirit of the dead goes through many life-forms, human and animal, as the
Hindus believe? If so, do the Russian steppe people form a bridge between the
cultures of the Far East and the Far West?...
...Ancient Author Diodorus's own most adventurous suggestion-'they still hold Pythgoras's belief in the
immortality of the soul and
rebirth.'...But since Pythagoras, with his strong
influences from the east, was among the few great Hellinic philosophers who
believed in the possibility of life after death, they could only
conclude that his belief was related to the blond barbarians, (The Celts) or
that they had taken theirs from him.
(source:
The
Celts - By Gerhard Herm).
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