h o m e

i n d i a    o n    p a c i f i c    w a v e s ?

c o n t e n t s

Baffling Links to Ancient India: History is full of misnomers; one such term is the New World, as applied to the Americas. The landing of Columbus in 1492 undoubtedly created a new life on the continents, but it neither created nor discovered a new world. Many centuries ago Asian migrants had come to the western shore in substantial numbers. What if the popular idea that Tibetans and American Indians have much in common in terms of their spiritual culture is largely a result of another historical scenario?

What if Hindus and Hopis, Advantins and Aztecs, Tibetan Monks and Mayans were part of one world culture - a spiritual one?

Baron Alexander von Humbolt an eminent European scholar and anthropologist, was one of the first to postulate the Asiatic origin of the Indian civilizations of the Americas.

Dr. Robert Heine Geldern anthropologist, has written that: "Those who believe the ancient peoples of Asia were incapable of crossing the ocean have completely lost sight of what the literary sources tell us concerning their ships and their navigation. Many of the peoples of Southeastern Asia had adopted Indian Hindu-Buddhist civilizations. The influences of the Hindu-Buddhist culture of southeast Asia in Mexico and particularly, among the Maya, are incredibly strong, and they have already disturbed some Americanists who don't like to see them but cannot deny them." "Ships that could cross the Indian Ocean were able to cross the Pacific too. Moreover, these ships were really larger and probably more sea-worthy than those of Columbus and Magellan." "Ships of size that carried Fahien from India to China (through stormy China water) were certainly capable of proceeding all the way to Mexico and Peru by crossing the Pacific. One thousand years before the birth of Columbus Indian ships were far superior to any made in Europe up to the 18th century."

American born Swami B. V. Tripurari asks, "What mysterious psychological law would have caused Asians, and Americans to both use the umbrella as a sign of royalty, to invent the same games, imagine similar cosmologies, and attribute the same colors to the different directions?"

Introduction
Imprint of Hindu Culture
Ancient Indians called the Other Hemisphere Pataladesa
Similarities
Conclusion
European Conquest and Atrocities

Articles:
1.Maya Civilization of Mexico.
2.Master Builder Uncovers Striking similarities in Indian and Incan/Mayan Sacred Structures


Introduction

Sylvain Levi (1863-1935) French scholar, and Orientalist who wrote on Eastern religion, literature, and history. Levi was appointed a lecturer at the school of higher studies in Paris (1886), he taught Sanskrit at the Sorbonne (1889-94) and wrote his doctoral dissertation, Le Théâtre indien ("The Indian Theatre"). 

In L'Inde et le monde ("India and the World"), he discussed India's role among nations. He writes:

"From Persia to the Chinese Sea, from the icy regions of Siberia to the islands of Java and Borneo, from Oceania to Socotra, India has propagated her beliefs, her tales and her civilization. She has left indelible imprints on one-fourth of the human race in the course of a long succession of centuries."

"She has the right to reclaim in universal history the rank that ignorance has refused her for a long time and to hold her place amongst the great nations summarizing and symbolizing the spirit of Humanity."

(source: Discovery of India - By Jawaharlal Nehru. p. 200 -210). Refer to India once ruled the Americas! – By Gene D Matlock.

Edward Pococke (1604–1691) English Orientalist has asserted that Greek civilization, not accepting its language, is a local variation of an Indian culture taken to Greece by early colonists from India. 

He has also written that the:

"The Peruvians and their ancestors, the Indians, are in this point of view at once seen to be the same people."

(source: India  in Greece - By Edward Pococke  London. 1852  p. 174). 

Colonel James Tod (1782-1835) author has said: 

"It is ridiculous with all the knowledge now in our possession, to suppose that the Hindus always confined themselves within their gigantic barriers, the limits of modern India."

(source: Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan: or the Central and Western Rajput States of India - By James Tod ISBN 8120612892 Volume II p. 218).

Robert Spence Hardy  (1803-1868) says in his book, Eastern Monachism: 

"The ancient edifices of Chichen in Central America bear a striking resemblance to the topes of India."

(source: Hindu Superiority - By Har Bilas Sarda  p. 187).  

Sir William Jones (1746-1794) judge of the Supreme Court at Calcutta and was one who pioneered Sanskrit studies. His admiration for Indian thought and culture was almost limitless. He has remarked:

"Rama is represented as a descendant from the sun, as the husband of Sita, and the son of a princess named Causelya. It is very remarkable that Peruvians, whose Incas boasted of the same descent, styled their greatest festival Rama-Sitva; whence we may take it that South America was peopled by the same race who imported into the farthest of parts of Asia the rites and the fabulous history of Rama."

(source: Asiatic Researches Volume I. p. 426). Refer to chapter on Quotes.

"Those who arrived first on the subcontinent, later to be known as America, were groups of men driven by that mighty current that set out from India towards the East."

(source: India: Mother of Us All - Edited by Chaman Lal - Official History of Mexico p. 90). 

Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767- 1835) Prussian minister of education, a brilliant linguist and the founder of the science of general linguistics. 

A century and half ago an eminent a scholar as Alexander Von Humboldt was convinced of the Asiatic origin of the American Indian high civilization.  

However, when, in the second half of the 19th century, evolutionist (or rather, pseudo-evolutionist) ideas captured the imagination of anthropologists, it seemed no longer necessary to have recourse to the supposition of real contacts in order to explain the similarities between New and Old world civilization. 

These "evolutionist" ideas have long since been abandoned, but, curiously enough, the belief in the independent origin of American Indian civilizations was nevertheless retained. This lack of logic results in a truly paradoxical situation. No archaeologist today would attribute to prehistoric Europeans the independent invention of bronze casting, iron work, the wheel, weaving, pottery, writing and so many other cultural elements derived from the Near East. Thus what is not conceded to the inhabitants of the British Isles is willingly conceded to the American Indians. 

Isn't our credulity being taxed too much when we are asked to believe that a whole series of complicated techniques, like casting by the lost wax method, the extraction of tin from cassiterite, the alloying copper and tin, the coloring of gold by chemical processes, weaving, tie-dying and batik were by a real miracle invented twice, once in the Old World and once in America?

And what mysterious law of psychology would have caused the peoples of America, as well as those of Asia, to invent the parasol and to use it as an emblem of rank and royalty, to invent the same game with rather complicated rules (pachisi in India and Southeast Asia, patolli in Mexico), to imagine similar cosmological systems, and to attribute certain colors to the different directions? After all, the south is not really red, the east not blue, etc, and the idea is singular enough to make us doubt that it was conceived more than once. 

He remarks on the Mexican deity: "It presents some remarkable and apparently not accidental resemblances with the Hindu Ganesh."

(source: Hindu Superiority - By Har Bilas Sarda p. 188). 

Ephraim George Squier (1821-1888) was United States Charge d'affaires to Central America in 1849 and author of Peru; Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas and The Serpent Symbol, and the Worship of the Reciprocal Principles of Nature in America. 

Comparing the temples of India, Java and Mexico, he wrote nearly a hundred years ago:

"a proper examination of these monuments would disclose the fact that in their interior as well as their exterior form and obvious purposes, these buildings (temples in Palanque, Mexico) correspond with great exactness to those of Hindustan..."

Squier further wrote: 

"The Buddhist temples of Southern India, and of the islands of the Indian Archipelago, as described to us by the learned members of the Asiatic Society and the numerous writers on the religious and antiquities of the Hindus, correspond with great exactness in all their essential and in many of their minor features with those of Central America."

(source: The serpent symbol, and the worship of the reciprocal principles of nature in America - By Ephraim George Squier and India: Mother of Us All - Edited by Chaman Lal  p. 91).

Sir Stamford Raffles (1781-1826) the British Governor of Java, and and founder of Singapore as a British colony and author of the book History of Java, expressed a similar view when he wrote: 

"the great temple of Borobudur in Java might readily be mistaken for a Central American temple." 

(source: India: Mother of Us All - Edited by Chaman Lal  p. 91).

Dr Baron Robert Freiherr von Heine Geldern  (1885 - 1968) and Gordon F. Ekholm (1909 - 1987) World's leading anthropologists, have said:

"Ships of size that carried Fa-Hien (399-414 AD) from India to China (through stormy China water) were certainly capable of proceeding all the way to Mexico and Peru by crossing the Pacific. One thousand years before the birth of Columbus Indian ships were far superior to any made in Europe up to the 18th century."

Dr Robert Heine Geldern and Gordon F. Ekholm

"Many of the peoples of Southeastern Asia had adopted Indian Hindu-Buddhist civilizations. And they seem to have continued these voyages to America....The influences of the Hindu-Buddhist culture of Southeast Asia in Mexico, and particularly, among the Maya, are incredibly strong, and they have already disturbed also some Americanists who don't like to see them but cannot deny them." 

Monroe Doctrine' which demands that everything American belongs to America, and must have been wholly invented there. In the Monroe Doctrine, the US pledged to intervene in Central America to protect US interests and keep out foreign influence. The Doctrine has functioned as a declaration of hegemony and a right of unilateral intervention over the nations of the Western Hemisphere.

For more on The Glorious Hindu Legacy: Indic influence in Southeast Asia refer to the chapters under Glimpses XII to Glimpses XIX.  Refer to Who Discovered America? - By Ricardo Palleres.

***

Robert Heine-Geldern and Gordon F. Ekholm have further noted:

"Many of the peoples of Southeastern Asia had adopted Indian Hindu-Buddhist civilizations. And they seem to have continued these voyages to America....The influences of the Hindu-Buddhist culture of Southeast Asia in Mexico, and particularly, among the Maya, are incredibly strong, and they have already disturbed also some Americanists who don't like to see them but cannot deny them." 

"The large number of highly specific correspondence in so many fields preclude any possibility of mere accidental coincidence. Nor would it help us to take refuge in any kind of explanation based on some alleged psychological laws...There is no explanation other that the assumption of cultural relationship. We must bow to the evidence of facts, even though this may mean a completely new start." 

Prichard James Cowles (1786 - 1848) was a physician and ethnologist. His special treatise containing Celtic compared with Sanskrit words appeared in 1831 under the title Eastern Origin of the Celtic nations.

He wrote:

"Aryavarta was the holy land of the Brahmans, the country lying between the Himalayas and Vindhya mountains, which was the ancient abode of the Hindoos...

There the Hindoos had the seat of their early existence five and twenty centuries before the Christian era, and thence they appear gradually to have spread...."

(source: The Natural history of man; comprising inquiries into the modifying influence of - By Prichard James Cowles  p. 164. The Civilizations of Ancient America: The Selected Papers of the XXIXth International Congress of Americanists  - edited Sol Tax 1951).

Professor Fredrick W Putnam (1839 - 1915) Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard to the history of U.S. archaeology between his appointment as professor in 1866 and his death in 1915. Putnam was also active in institutional developments at Chicago , Berkeley , and New York .  

He who held throughout his life a conviction that the Americas received their greatest cultures through Asia. 

He found in the jungles of Honduras a sculpture which greatly resembles Buddha. According to the July, 1901 issue of American Harper's Magazine, it has been proved with evidence that five Buddhist monks had reached Mexico in ancient times, via Alaska.

John Alden Mason (1885 – 1967) author of The Ancient Civilizations of Peru, says that: 

“Transoceanic migrations to America have always been a favorite creed of those with the will to believe, but until quite recently anathema to all reputable American anthropologists.”  

Mrs. Zelia Nuttal (1857 -1933) Archaeologist and ethnologist has said: 

"No country in the world can compare with India for the exposition of the pyramidal cross. the body of the great temple of Bidh Madhu (formerly the boast of the ancient city of Benares...demolished in the 7th century) was constructed in the figure of a colossal cross, with a lofty dome at the center, above which rose a massive structure of a pyramidal form. At the four extremities of the cross there were four other pyramids...A similar building existed at Mathura. By pyramidal towers placed crosswise, the Hindu also displayed the all-pervading sign of the cross. At the famous temple of Chidambaram, on the Coromandel coast, there were seven lofty walls, one within the other, round a central quadrangle, and as many pyramidal gateways in the midst of each side which forms the limbs of a vast cross." 

(source: Zelia Nutall and Peabody Museum Papers  volume II p. 161-162 and Proof Vedic Culture's Global Existence - By Stephen Knapp p. 252 - 253).

B.G. Sidharth (1948 -  ) of the Birla Science Center has remarked:

"It is also interesting to note that the Mayan calendar began with a date around 3112 B.C., very close to the Hindu traditional beginning of the Kali Yuga/Age viz., 3102 B.C. This period in India corresponds to the Indus valley or Harappan civilization which lasted for a few thousand years, at least up to the first millennium B.C., or even later. 

The period around the first millennium B.C. is also the period of the Epic Mahabharata. Marine archaeological researches in the Dwaraka region of Western India put this period near 1500 B.C. In fact the Mahabharata period of India overlapped the Indus valley period. Arjuna one of the heroes of the Mahabharata was a friend of Maya, an expert architect and he had also married a Naga princess, two facts, which, as will be seen now could be of significance. Maya himself is described as an Asura, as contrasted with Devas (literally bright ones), an other fact of significance."

(source: The Astronomical Link between India and the Mayans – By B G Sidharth).

C K Raju (1954 - ) holds a Ph.D. from the Indian Statistical Institute. He taught mathematics for several years before playing a lead role in the C-DAC team which built Param: India ’s first parallel supercomputer. His earlier book ‘Time: Towards a Consistent Theory’ set out a new physics with a tilt in the arrow of time. He has been a Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study and is a Professor of Computer Applications.  

He has observed that:

"Doctrine of Christian Discovery - According to which only Christians could be regarded as discoverers.

The church decreed that ownership of a piece of land must go to the first Christian to spot it. (Hence, the claim that Columbus “discovered” America , or that Vasco da Gama “discovered” India). The people already living on the land did not matter, and the church encouraged their killing on a mass scale, where possible, as actually happened on three continents. 

This doctrine was made into a law by the US supreme court, and that is where the current US law on land-ownership vis-a-vis the “Red Indians” stands."

(source: Newton as Theologian - By C K Raju). Refer to Five Hundred Years of Injustice.  For Hindu Astronomy refer to chapter Hindu Culture 

Ancient Indians knew Atlantic Ocean

Buddhist Jataka stories wrote about large Indian ships carrying seven hundred people. In the Artha Sastra, Kautilya wrote about the Board of Shipping and the Commissioner of Port who supervised sea traffic. The Harivamsa informs that the first geographical survey of the world was performed during the period of Vaivasvata. The towns, villages and demarcation of agricultural land of that time were charted on maps. Brahmanda Purana provides the best and most detailed description of world map drawn on a flat surface using an accurate scale. Padma Purana says that world maps were prepared and maintained in book form and kept with care and safety in chests.

Surya Siddhanta speaks about construction of wooden globe of earth and marking of horizontal circles, equatorial circles and further divisions. Some Puranas say that the map making had great practical value for the administrative, navigational and military purposes. Hence the method of making them would not be explained in general texts accessible to the public and were ever kept secret. Surya Siddhanta says that the art of cartography is the secret of gods. This being the general thinking at those times, yet, there was one group of people who realized that the maps or the secret texts that contained the geographical surveys will not last a very long time. Only cryptology using words and names would last longer than any.

(source: Ancient Indians knew Atlantic Ocean - By Dr. V.Siva Prasad Retired Professor of Engineering. Andhra University, India).

Calendrics and Astronomical computations

The ancient Hindu and Mayan civilizations exhibit other interesting convergences. Hindu records say that a member of a great race which preceded ours, a highly-developed personage known as Asuramaya, learned all the basic cosmic cycles and used his knowledge to determine the durations of the various geological and cyclical periods of human evolution. The chronology and computations of their still used Tamil calendar, say the Brahmans, are based upon the works of Asuramaya and upon carefully maintained collateral zodiacal records. Their most ancient extant work on astronomy, the Surya Siddhanta, says that Asuramaya lived toward the end of the Krita-yuga, a former age that ended approximately 2,165,000 years before the present. This would place Asuramaya at something less than 2.5 million years ago.

The name Asuramaya is a compound of the two Sanskrit words, Asura and Maya. The personage himself is Maya, the prefix Asura signifying that Maya was of the Asuras, a name given to a certain caste or people of the great prehistoric race that preceded our own, or Aryan humanity. The word Asura derives from surya, Sanskrit for the sun. In accordance with the archaic Indian manner of describing the matter, the astronomer named Maya was said to have gained his knowledge from studying the sun. The sun and its encircling planets also occupied the central attention of the Mayan astronomer caste in Central America. 

The early Hindu thinkers visualized the passage of a race from its birth to its close as embracing four distinct phases or yugas, and they said that races overlapped each other in duration. According to their calculations, the world, in other words our present race, entered the fourth of its phases, which they term the Kali yuga or Iron age, in the year 3102 BC. This event coincided with the death of Krishna , whom they describe as an avatara or incarnation of a lofty divine-spiritual being or messiah. His departure from the earth is said to have ushered in new and different conditions affecting our race. Modern students of the ancient Mayan numerical glyphs have found that the dating of major series of events noted on Mayan stelae invariably give such reckonings in terms of the time elapsed since a date known as 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu. They know that for the Maya chroniclers this date represented a commencement point in time-reckoning of such awesome magnitude that it was central to all else in subsequent Maya history; but they don't know what it meant or why it was so important to the latter.

Among other ancient nations only one, the Hindu peoples of the Indian subcontinent, is known to have developed a system of calendrics accounting for such vast periods of time. 

For computing the age of the earth and various geological and other epochs, as well as the age of mankind, the learned Brahman caste still employs a Tamil calendar derived from archaic astronomical data, known as the "Tirukkanda Panchanga" (cf. The Secret Doctrine, 2:49-51). 

Indic Influence is South east Asia: Chandi Sukuh Hindu Temple dedicated to Bhima of Mahabharata in Indonesia strikes a disquieting alien chord with its flat topped step pyramid and its Mayan calendar carvings. 

The religious structures in Java are commonly called Chandis, a term which originally meant a commemorative building.

In general layout, the temple conforms to the plan of most other Hindu temples. There are three precincts, consisting of three concentric terraces. However, where most temples would have a large square shrine, Candi Sukuh has a pyramid reminiscent of Mayan structures from Central America. The Hindus are also the only older people besides the Mayans who are known to have employed the concept of zero in their mathematics.

Refer to chapters on Sacred Angkor and Glimpses XII and Quotes and Seafaring in Ancient India. Refer to Who Discovered America? - By Ricardo Palleres.

***

This calendar contains a calculation of something over three hundred millions of years for the age of the present earth since sedimentation occurred, and a period of somewhat more than eighteen million years since the first appearance of our mankind.

The Hindus are also the only older people besides the Mayans who are known to have employed the concept of zero in their mathematics.

When it comes to human history, however, our scholars hesitate and grow uncertain about man as civilized homo sapiens even as late as 10,000 BC, whereas Hindu savants routinely regard him as at least eighteen million years old -- and if we could read more of the Mayan historical records we might find in them a similar calculation.

The Mayans invented a solar "civil" year of 365 days. We know, however, that they made calendrical emendations and developed a more precise notion of solar time than that embodied in our own calendar. 

(source: Ciphers and Civilizations - By Blair A Moffett - Sunrise magazine, January 1973. Theosophical University Press). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor and Seafaring in Ancient India.

***

Indian Foam on Pacific Waves

D P Singhal, ( ? ) Professor of History at the University of Queensland and author of the book, India and World Civilization has observed:

“The art of shipping and navigation in India and China at the time was sufficiently advanced for oceanic crossings."

"It is asserted that it would have been unlikely for a large number of people to have crossed the vast expanses of the Pacific without well-equipped boats and skilful voyagers. The argument, however, falls upon closer scrutiny. It would not be at all difficult for a large canoe or catamaran (from Tamil kattu "to tie" and maram "wood, tree" is a type of boat or ship consisting of two hulls joined by a frame) to cross from Polynesia to South America even at the present time, and the ancient Asians were skilled and enterprising seafaring men. In ancient times the Indians excelled in shipbuilding and even the English, who were attentive to everything which related to naval architecture, found early Indian models worth copying. The Indian vessels united elegance and utility, and were models of fine workmanship.  

Sir John Malcolm (1769 - 1833) was a Scottish soldier, statesman, and historian entered the service of the East India Company wrote about Indian vessels that they:

“are so admirably adapted to the purpose for which they are required that, not withstanding their superior science, Europeans were unable, during an intercourse with India for two centuries, to suggest or at least to bring into successful practice one improvement.”

(source: India and World Civilization - By D P Singhal   part II p. 76 - 77). Refer to chapter on Seafaring in Ancient India.

***

The first Maya Empire had been founded in Guatemala at about the beginning of the Christian era. Before the fall of Rome the Mayas were charting accurately the synodical revolutions of Venus, and whilst Europe was still lingering in the Dark Ages the Maya civilization had reached a peak of greatness.

It is significant that the zenith of Maya civilization was reached at a time when India had also attained an unparalleled cultural peak during the Gupta period, and Indian cultural intercourse with Southeast Asia, the Gupta period had begun more than a century before the Mayan classical age in 320 and Buddhism and Hinduism had been well known in neighboring countries for centuries. If there was contact between Mayan America and Indianized Southeast Asia, the simultaneous cultural advance would not appear surprising. In marked contrast, this was the darkest period in Europe's history between the sack of Rome and the rise of Charlemagne.

The most important development of the ancient American or Asiomerican culture took place in the south of the United States, in Mexico, in Central America, and in Peru. The early history of Asiomericans is shrouded in mystery and controversy due to the absence of definitive documentary evidence, which was destroyed by the European conquerors in their misguided religious zeal.

However, it appears that after the discovery of introduction of maize into Mexico, Asiomericans no longer had to wander about in search of food. Men in America, as in other parts of the world, settled down to cultivate food and culture, a by-product of agricultural life, inevitably followed.

Of the Asiomerican civilizations, the best known are the Maya, the Toltec, the Aztec, and the Inca. The Mayas were possibly the earliest people to found a civilization there; they moved form the Mexican plateau into Guatemala. They were later pushed out, presumably by the Toltecs, who, in turn were dislodged by the Aztecs.

(For holocaust inflicted against the Indians, please refer to a well written and thought provoking book Conquest of Paradise: : Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy  - Kirkpatrick Sale for more on Spanish greed and their lust for gold).

Justifying Brutal Colonization?

The European conquerors of South and Central America not only destroyed practically all the records and literature of AsioAmerica, but created an utterly distorted image of the American past by taking some of its ugly features out of context and magnifying them out of proportion. 

For instance, human sacrifice practiced by the Aztecs was repeatedly stressed without explaining its extenuating features, and without pointing out that human sacrifice had not been unknown to other peoples, such as in Egypt, Rome and in the Bible. Taking their technique a step further they contrasted this picture with that of their own deeds in Asioamerica in which European misdemeanor, caprice, and criminality were soft-pedaled and civilized and humane behavior emphasized.  

Most people believe that Asioamericans were uncivilized hordes with an occasional freak of knowledge, who had contributed nothing of permanent value to civilization by 1492. Despite a good deal of information to the contrary, there is resistance to accepting a change in this image. Misconceptions multiply fast but die slowly.  

(source: India and World Civilization - By D P Singhal   part II p. 39 – 42).

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Imprint of Hindu Culture

Ambassador Miles Poindexter (1868 - 1946) states in his book, The Ayar-Incas: 

"Aryan words and people came to America by the island chains of Polynesia. The very name of the boat in Mexico is a South Indian (Tamil) word: Catamaran.

(source: The Ayar-Incas - By Miles Poindexter published by Horace Liveright New York volume 1-2. 1930).

Hindu were mighty navigators and pioneers of cultures centuries before Columbus was born. They established their cultural empires in Java, Balim Sumatra, Borneo, Philippines, Cambodia, Champa, Burma, Thailand and ruled there till the fourteenth century.  

(please refer to chapter on Greater India or Suvarnabhumi).

The emigrant races of India took with them, wherever they went, (Southeast Asia or America) their system of measurement of time, their local gods, their customs, including games, dances and ceremonials. The belief in the four Hindu Yugas (epochs), the existence in America of the Hindu Gurukala scheme of education, the Hindu Panchayat System, the bazaar economy, the Soma Yagna (sacrifice), the worship of Indra, Trinity and Hindu gods and others. 

Both the Hindus and Americans used similar items in their worship rituals. They both maintained the concept of four Yuga cycles, or cosmological seasons, extending over thousands of years, and conceived of twelve constellations with reference to the sun as indicated by the Incan sun calendar. 

Royal insignias, systems of government, and practice of religious dance and temple worship all showed remarkable similarities, pointing strongly to the idea that the Americas were strongly influenced by the Aryans. The theory is found in the Vedic literature of India. The ancient Puranas (literally, histories) and the Mahabharata make mention of the Americas as lands rich with gold and silver. Argentina, which means "related to silver", is thought to have been named after Arjuna (of silver hue).

Jean Frederick Waldeck (1766-1875) was a French antiquarian, cartographer, artist and explorer.

He sketched the Maya ruins, and believed that the Maya had developed from Old World stock and saw Hindu influences in the glyph.

(source: The Magnificent Maya – Lost Civilizations – Time Life Books p. 20 – 21 and The Ayar-Incas - By Miles Poindexter published by Horace Liveright New York volume 1-2. 1930). Refer to Who Discovered America? - By Ricardo Palleres.

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Ancient Indians called the Other Hemisphere Pataladesa

Dr. Balaram Chakravarti author of The Indians And The Amerindians has written:

It will be evident from a close study of the texts of Indian Astronomy that Latin America was known to ancient Indians, who called it Pataladesa. The Surya Siddhanta, a textbook of Astronomy, composed before 500 A.D. identifies and describes Pataldesa in very clear and definite terms in the chapter of geography (chapter xii). 

The Surya Siddhanta categorically says that the Devas and Asuras live on the earth. The Devas live in the northern hemisphere while the Asuras live in the Southern hemisphere and have a tradition of enmity against each other. It further says that the ocean which surrounds the poles of the earth has divided the planet into two great continents, viz. the continent of the Devas and the continent of the Asuras. The Brahmanas of India write the epithet Deva-Serman after their names thus describing themselves as the Devas.

When the Sun is in the northern hemisphere eg. in Aries, he appears first to the Devas, and again when the Sun is in the southern hemisphere, he appears first to the Asuras. When the Sun is on the Equator both the Devas and the Asuras find the Sun in the middle and the days and nights are equal. As the Sun proceeds to the northern hemisphere, the Devas experience summer because of the directness and intensity of the solar rays, the Asuras do not get the rays so directly then and its intensity is also less, the sun being in the northern hemisphere. Hence they experience winter during this time. This obviously indicates that Pataldesa was South America.

The Surya Siddhanta explains how the people living on opposite ends of the globe consider themselves, wrongly, as living on the upper and lower part of the globe, though there cannot really be an upper or lower part, of the globe, which moves in vaccuum.

Maya, the author of Surya Siddhanta, also mentions the four great cities situated on the opposite ends of the world, equidistant from one another. 1. Yamakotipura in Bhadrasvavarsa (Indonesia?) in the east, Lanka in Bharatvarsa (India) in the south and 3. Rome in Ketumalavarsa (Europe) in the west and Siddhapura in Kuruvarsa (America?) in the north. 

The celebrated astronomer Bhaskaracarya mentions the time difference between the important cities situated in different parts of the world in his Siddhanta Siromani (Goladhyaya) thus:

"When the sun rises at Lanka, the time as at Yakakotipura to the east of Lanka, will be midday. Below the earth at Siddhapura, it will be twilight then, and at Romakadesa in Europe, the time will be midnight."

Accurate time difference of places around the world found in ancient Sanskrit texts

(image source: The Indians And The Amerindians - By Dr. B. Chakravarti  p. 34-110).

For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor and Seafaring in Ancient India. For Hindu Astronomy refer to chapter Hindu Culture.  Refer to India once ruled the Americas! – By Gene D Matlock

***

From such location of places round the globe and the movement towards the east, it appears that many Indian merchants used to sail frequently and some even settled down in Indonesia and Indochina, who used to relay on to Polynesia and then further on to South or Middle America, may be not a single ship and in a single effort, but after stopovers at the important ports on the other islands-chain of which seems to have existed then and some of which submerged later because of tectonic movements. It seems that some contact with the cities mentioned by Bhaskaracharya might have existed till his time.

Baron Robert Freiherr von Heine Geldern (1885 - 1968) and Gordon F. Ekholm (1909 - 1987) the world's leading anthropologists, have strongly supported the claim that Indian ships went all the way to Mexico and Peru centuries before Columbus. 

In the "Civilizations of Ancient America" they state:

"There appears to be little doubt but that ship building and navigation were sufficiently advanced in southern and eastern Asia at the period in question to have made trans-Pacific voyages possible. In the third century, horses were exported from India to the Malay Peninsula and Indo-China, an indication that there must have been ships of considerable size."

(source: India: Mother of us All - Edited by Chaman Lal  p. 43-44).

Sailor dropping anchor at Angkorwat, Cambodia.

"Those who believe the ancient peoples of Asia were incapable of crossing the ocean have completely lost sight of what the literary sources tell us concerning their ships and their navigation."

Large four-masted ships possessed by the Indians at the time made crossing the Pacific perfectly feasible.

  Amaravati, India was particularly important in the colonization of Southeast Asia, thus making sensible the relation of lotus friezes of second century Amaravati with water-lily friezes of Chichen Itza.

(image source: Transoceanic Contacts Between the Old and New World).

US Government recently adopted the ancient Indian catamaran-making technology to construct fast ships. The ships, built with technology adapted from ancient Tamil methods to make catamarans, can travel over 2,500 kms in less than 48 hours, twice the speed of the regular cargo ships. Refer to chapter on Seafaring in Ancient India.

India was the spark that fired the blaze.

Ancient Indian ocean-going ship arriving at Java, from a frieze of the Borobodur stupa.

For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor and Seafaring in Ancient India. Refer to India once ruled the Americas! – By Gene D Matlock and Who Discovered America? - By Ricardo Palleres.

***

Dr. Robert Heine Geldern anthropologist, has written that:

"Those who believe the ancient peoples of Asia were incapable of crossing the ocean have completely lost sight of what the literary sources tell us concerning their ships and their navigation. Many of the peoples of Southeastern Asia had adopted Indian Hindu-Buddhist civilizations. The influences of the Hindu-Buddhist culture of southeast Asia in Mexico and particularly, among the Maya, are incredibly strong, and they have already disturbed some Americanists who don't like to see them but cannot deny them." "Ships that could cross the Indian Ocean were able to cross the Pacific too. Moreover, these ships were really large. The Periplus of the Erythraean sea mentions the large ships of Southern India which engaged in trade with the countries of the East. A Chinese source of the third century A.D. describes vessels from Southern Asia which were 150 feet in length, and had four masts and were able to carry six to seven hundred men and one thousand metric tons of merchandise when the Buddhist Pilgrim Fahien returned from Sri Lanka to China, in 414 A.D."

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) who spent fifty years doing research on Ancient America, said:

"It is surprising to find, toward the end of the fifteenth century, in a world that we call "New" the ancient institutions, the religious ideas, the forms of edifices which, in Asia appear to belong to the first dawn of civilization." 

Those Indian ships that carried Fahien, the Chinese historian and scholar through stormy China waters could without difficulty proceed all the way to Mexico and other countries. A thousand years before the birth of Columbus Indian ships could carry hundreds of passengers. 

Maya-Hindu connection

Dr. B. N. Narahari Achar is a professor of physics at the University of Memphis. He has recently become interested in the ancient astronomies of India and Mesoamerica.

He has observed:

"The Mayan culture flourished in Mesoamerica during the early Christian era, before being completely wiped out by the Spanish conquest. Astronomy played a significant role in Mayan culture. Venus in particular had a preeminent status. Testimony to this rich tradition is borne out by Mayan temple art and the few available Codices, or sacred books, of the Mayans. Western scholars have attempted to relate the Mayan concepts to those of Greek astronomy. The sidereal Mayan astronomy is more akin to the Hindu system and does not easily fit into the Greek model.  

Chichen Itza. This pyramid was built for astronomical purposes and during the vernal equinox (March 20) and the autumnal equinox (September 21) at about 3 P.M.. the sunlight bathes the western balustrade of the pyramid's main stairway. This causes seven isosceles triangles to form imitating the body of a serpent 37 yards long that creeps downwards until it joins the huge serpent's head carved in stone at the bottom of the stairway.

The Mayan pyramid is similar to the temple-pyramids of Cambodia, and is reminiscent of a prevalent concept in the Hindu-Buddhist world. It expresses the idea of erecting an artificial mountain, like the Indian Mount Sumeru, the Mountain ascending to Heaven.

It is said that Garuda represents the Vedas and the solar deities, and Shesa Naga represents the watery deities. The serpent is of great significance in the Mayan culture also. A supreme example is the serpent of sunlight and shadow seen at Chichén Itzá. Kukulcan appears to be Shesa Naga and Garuda combined into one.

 The temple structure at the top is exactly 1/4th of the base according to Vastu Vedic principles of Mayan. Most interesting is the name of the structure - chilambalam, meaning a sacred space. The Mayans worshiped the very concept of space, specifically a space made according to the modular system. This same idea is found in Hinduism in the sacred room in the center of the Chidambaram Siva Temple in South India, where space or akasha is worshiped-there is no idol. Mayan chilambalam refers to a sacred space, as does Tamil Chidambaram. Yok'hah in Mayan means "on top of truth," similar to yoga in Sanskrit.

(image source: webmaster's own collection of photos taken during a recent visit).

Bakong at Angkorvat - Cambodia. Dedicated to Lord Shiva.

“Astronomically, it (Angkor Wat) has built-in positions for lunar and solar observation. The sun itself was so important to the builders of the temple that solar movement regulates the position of the bas-reliefs. It is not surprising that Angkor Wat integrates astronomy, the calendar, and religion since the priest-architects who constructed the temple conceived of all three as a unity. Astronomy was known as the sacred science."

“Transoceanic migrations to America have always been a favorite creed of those with the will to believe, but until quite recently anathema to all reputable American anthropologists.” - wrote John Alden Mason, author of The Ancient Civilizations of Peru.

The European conquerors of South and Central America not only destroyed practically all the records and literature of Asioamerica, but created an utterly distorted image of the American past by taking some of its ugly features out of context and magnifying them out of proportion.

Human sacrifice practiced by the Aztecs was repeatedly stressed without explaining its extenuating features, and without pointing out that human sacrifice had not been unknown to other peoples, such as in Egypt, Rome and in the Bible. Taking their technique a step further they contrasted this picture with that of their own deeds in Asioamerica in which European misdemeanor, caprice, and criminality were soft-pedaled and civilized and humane behavior emphasized. (Refer to European Conquest and Atrocities).

(image source: webmaster's own collection of photos taken during a recent visit).

Winged human figures whose hands are poised in gestures like Hindu/Buddhist mudras. Winged God from Candi Sukuh at Hindu Temple in Java, Indonesia.

Ek Balam - Built atop the base is Ek Balam’s massive main pyramid, reaching a height of 32 m and sporting a huge jaguar mouth with 360 degree dentition. Below the mouth are stucco skulls, while above and to the right sits an amazingly expressive figure. On the right side stand unusual winged human figures (some call them Maya angels), whose hands are poised in gestures looking for all the world like Hindu/Buddhist mudras. 

Its enough to make you wonder about connections between ancient civilizations ……

(source: Yucatan - By Ray Bartlett and Daniel Schechter - Lonely Planet  p. 202).  

***

Striking similarity is found between certain Mayan and Puranic stories, and their related astronomical interpretation. In the Puranas, Lord Vishnu is represented as resting on the serpent Ananta or Sesa, after having dissolved all creation. The serpent represents the eternity of time (Ananta), and the "remainder" (Sesa) in subtle form, of prakriti, the germ of all that has been and will be. After waking up from the yoganidra, Vishnu rides on the eagle Garuda. Both Garuda and Sesa are shown in association with Vishnu in the temples of India. It is said that Garuda represents the Vedas and the solar deities, and Sesa represents the watery deities. The serpent is of great significance in the Mayan culture also. A supreme example is the serpent of sunlight and shadow seen at Chichén Itzá. At the time of the equinoxes, as the Sun moves from east to west, a pattern of light and shadow appears on the west balustrade of the north stairway of the Castillo at Chichén Itzá. This display resembles a descending snake whose head is the monumental serpent head carved out of stone at the foot of the stairs. The feathered serpent represents the Mayan God Kukulcan, who is associated with rain water and new life, among other things. Kukulcan appears to be Sesa and Garuda combined into one.

The devas and the asuras churned the Milky Ocean in search of amrita. Vishnu assumed the form of a tortoise and dived to the bottom of the cosmic ocean. On his back, the devas and asuras placed the mount Mandara as the churn and used the serpent Vasuki as the rope. From the churned Milky Ocean emerged all planets, poisonous Halahala, many treasures, and finally, amrita. The devas wanted the nectar only for themselves. However, a serpent asura named Rahu, disguised as a deva, was able to get a share of amrita. The Sun and the Moon discovered him. Rahu's head was instantly cut off. However, as he had already ingested amrita, he could not be killed. To this day, the head of Rahu attempts to swallow the Sun and the Moon. Rahu represents the ascending node of the moon's orbit, and swallowing of the Sun and the Moon represent symbolically the occurrence of the eclipses. There is a picture from the Maya Codex Tro-Cortesianus. It shows a tortoise, a central churning rod and a serpent being used as a rope by figures of dark and light shade. The western scholars have found it difficult to interpret this picture, but the similarity of the picture to the churning of the Milky Ocean of the Puranas is remarkable. In the Dresden Codex there are glyphs representing eclipses, depicting the Sun or the Moon as being devoured by a serpent. The similarity to the Hindu representation in which Rahu tries to devour the luminary object is unmistakable."

(source: Maya-Hindu connection - By Dr. B. N. Narahari Achar - hinduismtoday.com).

In 1866, the French architect, Eugene Viollet-le-Duc  (1814 - 1879) also noted striking resemblances between ancient Mexican architectural structures and those of South India.

Ephraim George Squier (1821-1888) was United States Charge d'affaires to Central America in 1849 also noted similarities in both major and minor features of Buddhist temples of South India and Mexico they were round and different colors were used on each of the four quarters. 

Chicchan according to Mayan history is the serpent mind, the mind that is constantly renewed and regenerated, through a process of shedding what no longer serves us. The physical body itself can be seen as an evolutionary skin periodically released, as one life ends and another begins. It is a body fueled ultimately by a form of solar energy the Maya call kultunlilni. Kultunlilni is the vital life force empowering all human growth and development. This crucial life-force is the same as what is known in Hindu cosmology as the serpent power: kundalini. Kundalini is the great evolutionary force making of each body and its occupant, a potentially powerful source of solar wisdom. Important for us to remember, however, is that this primary, very intimate and very powerful source of wisdom is only accessible to the extent that we are able to hear what our bodies, as carriers of its sacred gift, are actually telling us. Inevitably in this process, we turn to those with whom we feel a strong attraction or affinity. "

(source: Aligning With the Spirit of the Maya Calendar End-Date 2012 - By Dwayne Edward Rourke - adishakti.org).

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Similarities

Hindu-Mexican Trinity

Scholars were also greatly impressed by the similarity between the Hindu Trinity - Brahma-Visnu-Shiva and the Mexican Trinity - Ho-Huizilopochtli-Tlaloc as well as the likeness between Indian temples and American pyramids.  

Huizilopochtli and Tlaloc.

The parallels between the Hindu Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva Trinity and the Mexican Ho-Huitzilopochtli-Tlaloc Trinity, and the resemblances between the attributes of certain Hindu deities and those of the Mayan pantheon are impressive. 

***

The parallels between the Hindu Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva Trinity and the Mexican Ho-Huitzilopochtli-Tlaloc Trinity, and the resemblances between the attributes of certain Hindu deities and those of the Mayan pantheon are impressive. 

In the book The Conquest of the Maya by J Leslie Mitchell  explains that the basis of the old Maya empire was not of the work of the ancestors of the present day Maya, but was an import from the same foreigners that built the palaces and temples of the Chams and Khmers in Cambodia, and the temples in Java. He also points out the similarities between the Maya rain-god Chac and the Vedic Indian Indra, and the Maya monkey-god and the Vedic Hanuman. The Vedic origin is further enhanced by the frequency that the elephant motif is found in Maya art, especially the earlier works of the Maya, such as at Copan, although the elephant never existed in the region. 

One reason for these similarities between the Americas and India is that in ancient Vedic times there were two great architects, Visvakarma of the demigods or Aryans, and Maya of the asuras. Surya Siddhanta was revealed to Mayasura by  Sun. The Mayan people, also known as technicians, were no doubt named as such because of being connected with this person named Maya or Mayasura and Maya Danava. They were a part of his clan or tribe. They had fallen away from the Vedic way of life and were sent or escaped to the region of Central America . They also carried with them much of the science of astronomy and navigation for which this Mayasura was known. Mayasura’s knowledge is more fully explained in the classic work of Indian Vedic astronomy known as the Surya Siddhanta for which he is given credit. Many people have wondered from where the Mayan acquired their astronomical knowledge. This would explain how the Mayan people had such a high degree of understanding in astronomy, from which they also developed their calendar. The Mayan calendar was a science they had long developed, carrying it with them from their previous location and civilization.  

Like the Vedic culture, the Maya had a pantheon of demigods, many of which have similiarities to the Vedic deities. Mayan gods like Xiuhtechutli and Xipe Totec have their Vedic counterparts in Indra and Agni. Indra, like Xiuhtechutli, was the rain god and guardian of the Eastern Quadrant, and Agni, similar to Xipe Totec, was the god of sacrificial fire, born in wood and the life force of trees and plants. Then there is the Vedic Ushas, the beautiful goddess of Dawn or Sky, who is similar to the Mayan view of Venus, goddess of Dawn.  

Furthermore, hymn 121 of the book ten in the Rig Veda is very similar to the description of creation as found in the Popul Vuh.

(source: Proof Vedic Culture's Global Existence - By Stephen Knapp p. 246 - 247).

Dr. William Golden Mortimer  wrote in his book The Divine Plant of the Incas 1901  

“There has been frequent comparison by many writers between the Incas and the Hindus because of their similar ceremonies, many of their customs being identical. Like the Hindus, the Incas had the custom of deifying attributes instead of, like the Greeks of making gods of men. Thus the sovereign was the ruler of the four quarters of the globe while Brahma, had four heads, which represents four quarters of the earth.  

Hindu deity Virabhadra and Inca God Viracocha

here has been frequent comparison by many writers between the Incas and the Hindus because of their similar ceremonies, many of their customs being identical.

***

In Quichua the language of the Incas, there are many words resembling Sanskrit – as Inti – the sun, while Indra is the Hindu god of the heavens. Raymi was the great Incan festival in honor of the sun, and Rama was the child of the sun in India . Sita was the wife of Rama in Hindu mythology while Situ is one of the Incan festivals.  

Sun Worship in both cultures

***

Martand Sun temple, Kashmir - Dedicated to Lord Surya (Sun).

Konark Sun temple - Orissa, India. Dedicated to Lord Surya (Sun) 

Sun temple of Modhera, Gujarat, India. - Dedicated to Lord Surya (Sun). 

Korichancha sun temple in Cuzco, Inca heartland of Peru.

No people of the ancient world believed the "Sun" to be "God". That belongs in the "disinformation file". 

In point of fact, every Ancient culture and nation on Earth have all used the Sun as the most logically appropriate symbol to represent the Glory of the unseen Creator of the heavens.

(image source: webmaster's own collection of photos taken during a recent visit to Peru).

***

(source: The Divine Plant of the Incas - By Dr. William Golden Mortimer p. 1 - 58). Refer to Sun Worship.

According to Donald A. Mackenzie writes in his book, Myths of Pre-Columbian America:

"Tezcatlipoca, was like Hindu god Kubera, was a god of the north. The story of Yappan appears to be of Indian origin. The story of the temptation and fall of Yappan is too like that of the temptation and fall of his Indian prototype to be of spontaneous origin in the New World. The conclusion drawn from the evidence of the Yappan myth that Hindu cultural influences reached America is greatly strengthened when we find Acosta informing us that certain Mexican ascetics, who assisted the priests, "dressed in white robes and lived by begging." The wandering Brahmin and Buddhist pilgrims in India similarly begged their food."

Same Aryan name of God: When Cortes invaded the valley of Mexico he found that the Mexicans  - through the chief motive of his great adventure was to destroy their religion and to substitute his own, had the same word for God that he himself had. His own (Spanish) was Dios, from Greek Theos, the Mexican, as Cortes converted it to writing, was Teotl (Devata or Deo in Sanskrit). 

(source: The Ayar-Incas - By Miles Poindexter published by Horace Liveright New York volume 1-2. 1930).

Churning of the Milky Ocean

The Indian myth of the Churning of the Milky Ocean reached America. In Codex Cortes there is a grotesque but recognizable Maya representation of the ocean churning. The tortoise, however, is on the summit of the mountain-pestle instead of being beneath it, and the other form of the serpent god appears above his avatar. Round the mountain-pestle is twisted a snake, called "a rope" by Seler. Two dark gods, like the Indian Asuras, hold one end of the snake-rope while the other end is grasped by the elephant headed god. To the rope is attached a symbol of the sun (Kin).'

(source: Myths of Pre-Columbian America - By Donald A. Mackenzie  p. 191- 229).

The Indian Elephant in American Art

The American writer and explorer, Mr. John L. Stephens, who, accompanied Mr. Catherwood, an accomplished artist, visited the ruins of Maya civilization in Central America in the middle of last century, detected the elephant on a sculptural pillar at Copan, which he referred to as an "idol." A reproduction of one of the ornaments in question should leave no doubt as to the identity of the animal depicted by the ancient American sculptor. It is not only an elephant, but an Indian elephant (Elephas Indicus), a species found in India, Ceylon, Borneo and Sumatra. In India the elephant was tamed during the Vedic period. It was called at first by the Aryo-Indians "the beast having a hand". and ultimately simply Hastin "having a hand". An elephant keeper was called Hastipa. The Maya long nosed god is regarded by those who favor the hypothesis of direct or indirect Indian cultural influence in America as a form of the Indian elephant-headed god, Ganesha. 

The Indian elephant in America. Elephant motif in Mayan sculpture, though elephants are unknown in America.

The Maya "long nosed god" is regarded by those who favor the hypothesis of direct or indirect Indian cultural influence in America as a form of the Indian elephant-headed God Ganesha. 

In the Codex Cortes, the American elephant-headed god, who is decorated with the characteristic Cambodian ear ornament, is shown with a thunderbolt in each hand standing besides a bearded rattlesnake, whose body forms an enclosure full of water.

(image source: Myths of Pre-Columbian America - By Donald A. Mackenzie p. 35 and 245).

***

Anthropology Professor Elliot Smith comments:

"If it has been possible for complicated games (like Pachissi) to make their way to the other side of the Pacific, the much simpler design of an elephant's head could also have been transferred from India or to the Far East to America."

(source: Myths of Pre-Columbian America - By Donald A. Mackenzie  p. 28-35).

Discussing the diffusion of Indian religions to Mexico, a recent scholar, Paul Kirchhoff (1900 - 1972) German anthropologist from the University of Frankfurt, in "The Diffusion of a Great Religious System from India to Mexico" had even suggested that it is not simply a question of miscellaneous influences wandering from one country to the other, but that China, India, Java, and Mexico actually share a common system."

Kirchhoff has sought 

"to demonstrate that a calendaric classification of 28 Hindu gods and their animals into twelve groups, subdivided into four blocks, within each of which we find a sequence of gods and animals representing Creation, Destruction and Renovation, and which can be shown to have existed both in India and Java, must have been carried from the Old World to the New, since in Mexico we find calendaric lists of gods and animals that follow each other without interruption in the same order and with attributes and functions or meanings strikingly similar to those of the 12 Indian and Javanese groups of gods, showing the same four subdivisions."

(source: India and World Civilization - By D P Singhal  part II p. 62 – 63).

Trilokinath, the Hindu ruler of the three worlds, was known to the Mexicans by the name, until the Spanish conquerors mistakenly changed the name into Tloque Nahuaque. 

The God born from Lotus

Brahma, the supreme deity of the Hindus, was "born from a lotus which grew out of the navel of the god Vishnu whilst floating on the primordial waters." The Tibetan repeat "Om Mani Padme Hum" (O, Jewel in the heart of the Lotus, Have mercy on me). The lotus as the emblem of God was sacred in India. The Hindu goddess Maya,  - "the cosmic illusion" the female energy, "mother of gods and men" - is sometimes represented as the sakti. This same "mother of the gods" was carried to America and appeared in the Maya theogony of Yucatan under the same name, - May, - in the same functions she performed in India. In Mexico, Maya was also called "the mother of the gods". Other names for her were "nourisher of the human race" "type of earth mother."

(source: The Ayar-Incas - By Miles Poindexter published by Horace Liveright New York volume 1-2. 1930 p. 133-135).

Narsingha - India

Narsingha - Mexico.

(image source: Myths of Pre-Columbian America - By Donald A. Mackenzie p. 35 and 245).

For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor and Seafaring in Ancient India

***

In a temple in Guatemala is a statue of an incarnation of Vishnu as Kurma, the tortoise. The sculpture is richly detailed and strongly suggests that it might have been wrought by Hindu hands. In Palenque Temple of the Sun in Mexico Surya occupies the place of honor. 

Even Yama, the god of death of Hindu mythology, has found his way to Mexico and Peru, while typically Hindu lotus and chakras motifs adorn the temples. Maya and Aztec architectural styles are remarkably similar to those in India and South east Asia. In both areas the chief structures were pyramid shaped, with serpent balustrades and surmounted 

Sir Edward B. Taylor (1832 - 1917) English anthropologist also found the counterparts of the tortoise myth of India in ancient America. He observed that:

"The striking analogy between the tortoise myth of North America and India is by no means a matter of new observation; it was indeed noticed by Jesuit Father Lafitan nearly a century and half ago."

Three greatest features of the Asiatic stories are found among the North American Indians in their fullest and clearest development..."

(source: Early History of Mankind - By E. B. Taylor).

It is not without reason that the Spanish author Lopez says in his book Le Races Aryans de Peru: 

  "Every page of Peruvian poetry bears the imprint of Ramayana and Mahabharata."

The Brahmananda or Egg of Brahma in India and Chac mool statue:The Egg and Serpent Legend in Mexico. 

This complex Churning of Milky Ocean reached America. In Codex Cortes there is a grotesque but recognizable Maya representation of the ocean churning. The tortoise, is, however, on the summit of the mountain pestle instead of being beneath it, and the other form of the serpent god appears above his avatar. Round the mountain-pestle is twisted a snake. Two dark gods, evidently demonic forms of deities, like the Indian Asuras, hold one end of the snake-rope while the other end is grasped by the elephant god. To the rope is attached a symbol of the sun. (Kin).

(image source: Myths of Pre-Columbian America - By Donald A. Mackenzie  p. 191 - 192).

For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor and Seafaring in Ancient India. Refer to India once ruled the Americas! – By Gene D Matlock

***

The Mexican doctrine of the World's Ages - the universe was destroyed four consecutive times - is reminiscent of the Indian Yugas. Even the reputed colors of these Mythical four ages, white, yellow, red and black are identical with and in the same order as one of the two versions of the Indian Yugas. 

In both myths the duration of the First Age is exactly the same, 4,800 divine years. The Mexican Trinity is associated with this doctrine as in the Hindu Trinity with the Yugas in India. 

Donald Alexander Mackenzie (1873 - 1936) writes in his book, Myths of Pre-Columbian America

"The doctrine of the World's Ages (from Hindu Yugas) was imported into Pre-Columbian America...the Mexican sequence is identical with the Hindus....The essential fact remains that they were derived from a common source...It would be ridiculous to assert that such a strange doctrine was of spontaneous origin in different parts of the Old and New Worlds." According to the Mayan calendar, which is extant, the time record of the mayas began on 6 August 613 B.C. It is an exact date based upon intricated astronomical calculations, and prolonged observations. To work out this kind of elaborate calendar must have taken well over two thousand years of studying stars, and the Asiomericans must have been remarkably shrewd observers." 

Mayan Calendar Corroborates Hindu Prophecy
Golden Age to begin in 2012

In the “Brahma-Vaivarta Purana”, Lord Krishna tells Ganga Devi that a Golden Age will come in the Kali Yuga - one of the four stages of development that the world goes through as part of the cycle of eras, as described in Hindu scriptures. Lord Krishna predicted that this Golden Age will start 5,000 years after the beginning of the Kali Yuga, and will last for 10,000 years.

Mayan Calendar Matches Hindu Calendar

It is interesting that this prediction of the emergence of a new world is prophesied to appear about the same time that the Mayans predicted it to come! The Mayan calendar began with the Fifth Great Cycle in 3114 BC and will end on 21 December 2012 AD.

The Hindu Kali Yuga calendar began on 18 February 3102 B.C. There is only a difference of 12 years between the Hindu's beginning of the Kali Yuga and the Mayan's beginning of the Fifth Great Cycle.

Golden Age Could Begin in 2012

The ancient Hindus mainly used lunar calendars but also used solar calendars. If an average lunar year equals 354.36 days, then this would be about 5270 lunar years from the time when the Kali Yuga started until 21 Dec 2012. This is the same year that the Mayans predict rebirth of our planet. It is also about 5113 solar years of 365.24 days per year, and is day number 1,867,817 into the Kali Yuga. By either solar or lunar years, we are over 5,000 years into the Kali Yuga and it is time for Lord Krishna's prophecy to happen according to the ancient Hindu scriptures. 

Lord Krishna's Golden Age could easily begin in 2012!

Mayan Prophecy Matches Hindu Prophecy

It is amazing that both calendars began at about the same time over 5,000 years ago and both calendars predict a totally new world and/or golden age after about 5,000 years into their calendars! We are definitely on to something with these Mayan and Hindu 2012 predictions.

(source: Golden Age to begin in 2012 - By David Hedges - about.com).

The Tree of Heaven in shadow play figures from Java and so called "cross" from Palenque, Mexico.

(image source: India and World Civilization - By D. P. Singhal  p  58-59).

***

Donald Alexander Mackenzie (1873 - 1936) and other scholars, however, are of definite opinion that the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians were familiar with Indian mythology and cite in support close parallels in details. For instance, the history of the Mayan elephant symbol cannot be traced in the local tradition, whereas it was a prominent religious symbol in India. The African elephant has larger ears. It is the profile of the Indian elephant, its tusk and lower lip, the form of its ear, as well as its turbaned rider with his ankus, which is found in Meso-American models. Whilst the African elephant was of little religious significance, it had been tamed in India and associated with religious practices since the early days.

In Indian, Chinese and Japanese stories the Naga or dragon dwells in a pool beneath a tree. The tree grows on an island in a lake, or in the ocean. A lake island was associated with the American jewel goddess Chalchiuhtlicue. 

Later, two English scholars Channing Arnold and Fredrick J. Tabor Frost, in their The American Egypt, made a detailed examination of the transpacific contacts, reinforcing the view of Buddhist influences on Central America. 

The most recent and by far the most systematic well-reasoned, and effective case has been advanced by the eminent archaeologist, R. Heine-Geldern and Gordon Ekholm, who favor Indian and Southeast Asian cultural influences on ancient America through migration across the Pacific.

Astrology

Baron Alexander Von Humboldt, whilst visiting Mexico, found similarities between Asian and Mexican astrology. He found that the systematic study of ancient American cultures and was convinced of the Asian origin of the American-Indian high civilization. He said:

"if languages supply but feeble evidence of ancient communication between the two worlds, their communication is fully proved by the cosmogonies, the monuments, the hieroglyphical characters and the institutions of the people of America and Asia."

The lotus motif

Makara from Amaravati and makara from Chichen Itza (Heine-Geldern and G.F. Ekholm

(image source: India and World Civilization - By D. P. Singhal  p  58-59).

Metal makara from India.

For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor and Seafaring in Ancient India

***

The Makara motif, a serpent head with upturned snout and with a human face in its mouth, from India, Java, Bali and Sumatra, is comparable to the Mexican Xiuhcoatl, the fire serpent on the Aztec Sun Stone. 

All sorts of architectural elements are common to Mexico, Gautemala, India, Java and Indo-China, the most striking of which are the pyramids with receding stages, faced with cut stone, and with stairways leading to a sanctuary on top, also of stone; in many there are surprising common traits such as serpent columns and banisters, vaulted galleries and corbeled arches, attached columns, stone cut-out lattices, and Atlantean figures, which are typical of Punuc style of Yucatan. The most striking and highly specialized of these traits is the lotus motif interpersed with seated human figures common to Chichen-Itza and Amaravati, southern India. Amaravati is dated about the second century of our era, but it exercised a powerful influence over the Hindu-Buddhist art of Cambodia, Champa, and even modern Bali. It is significant that temple pyramids in Cambodia do not antedate the eighth century, and only become important in the ninth and tenth centuries, a time coinciding with the beginning of the Puncu period of Yucatan according to Heine-Geldern and Ekholm, 1951). 

The buildings of Chichen Itza show certain influences from Southeast Asia; for example, the lotus motif occurs in the Mercado (covered market). The Mercado is strikingly reminiscent of the galleries so typical of the Cambodian architecture that eventually blossomed into the galleries of Angkor Vat. The lotus motif, interspersed with seated human figures, which has a deep symbolic meaning in Hindu and Buddhist mythologies and as such is an integral part of early Indian art, especially of Amaravati, is found at Chichen Itza as a border in the reliefs of the lower room of the Temple of Tigers. The similarity between the art of Amaravati and that of Chichen Itza is particularly noticeable in reclining figures holding on to the rhizome of the lotus.

God on the lion throne from India, and Mayan jaguar throne -Heine-Geldern and G.F. Ekholm

(image source: India and World Civilization - By D. P. Singhal  p  58-59).

***

The Mexican Lion-throne and Lotus-throne remind one of Indian Simhasana and Padmasana. The parasol, a mark of royalty amongst the Mayas, the Aztecs, and the Incas, may be an adaptation of the royal Chatra in us in India and Indianized Asia from the earliest times.

A kind of caste system prevailed amongst the Incas of Peru. Peruvians worshipped an omnipotent and invisible Supreme being, Viracocha, creator and preserver of the world. Imprints of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata have been noticed on the poetry of Peru. The official history of Mexico officially admits that “those who arrived first on the continent later to be known as America were groups of men driven by the mighty current that set out from India”.  

Señor Vincente Lopez, a Spanish gentleman of Montevideo, in 1872 published a work entitled "Les Races Aryennes in Pérou," author of The Aryan Races in Peru writes: 

“Every page of Peruvian poetry bears the imprint of Ramayana and Mahabharata.”

 

The Lotus-motif from Amaravati and lotus-motif from Chichen Itza -By Heine-Geldern and G.F. Ekholm

(image source: India and World Civilization - By D. P. Singhal  p  58-59).

***

In Indian art the lotus rhizome frequently protrudes from the mouths of makaras, sea monsterswith fish-like bodies and elephants-like trunks. At Chichen Itza, stylized figures of fish are found at both ends of the lotus plant, in the same position as the makaras in India.

"Such a combination of highly specific details cannot be accidental. It suggests the existence of some kind of relationship between Maya art and not only Buddhist art in general, but the school of Amaravati of the second century A.D. in particular."

Ancient America was as rich in gods and temples as was India. The Asiomerican term for god, "teo," is close to the Sanskrit 'deva". 

From Borobudur - Suvarnabhumi (top two images)

From America - Gautemala

For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor and Seafaring in Ancient India

***

Use of Zero

The Mayas of Yucatan were the first people besides the Indians to use a zero sign and represent number values by the position of basic symbols. The similarity between the Indian zero and the Mayan zero is indeed striking. So far as the logical principle is concerned, the two are identical, but the expressions of the principle are dissimilar. Again, whilst the Indian system of notation was decimal, as was the European, the Mayan was vigesimal. Consequently, their 100 stood for 400, 1000 stood for 8000, 1234 for 8864. While the place of zero in the respective systems of the Indians and Mayans is different, the underlying principle and method are the same, and the common origin of the Mayan and Indian zeros appears to be undoubted.  Disputes continue amongst scholars in the absence of conclusive evidence. As chronological evidence stands today, the Mayan zero appears to be anterior by several centuries to its Hindu counterpart.

Corn
The Riddle of the Well-traveled Maize 

The familiar maize plant – better known to Americans as corn – has generated spirited scholarly debate that centers on the possibility of ancient, unrecorded sea travel. Botanists know that maize cannot propagate itself; its occurrence must therefore be the result of human agency. They also know that the plant originated in the New World. And yet, researchers have found evidence that is appeared elsewhere well before he known voyages of discovery linked Old World with New.  

Stone images with corn in hand in Hindu temples, India.

"Like corn decays the mortal like corn is he born again." - says the Katha Upanishad  1-I-6.

Eleventh century temples in Southern India, where maize was supposedly unknown at the time, house many stone figures that according to cultural geographers, are offering ears of maize to the Gods.  

(image source: Feats and Wisdom of the Ancients  - Time Life Books  p. 111).

***

Even more intriguing is evidence that maize was well established in Asia long before Columbus's voyages. Eleventh century temples in Southern India, where maize was supposedly unknown at the time, house many stone figures that according to cultural geographers, are offering ears of maize to the Gods.  

(source: Feats and Wisdom of the Ancients  - Time Life Books  p. 111).

Cotton

It is certain that cotton was first used in the Indus Valley. But when South American cotton is studied scholars and scientist are thoroughly baffled. American cotton are tetraploid in chromosome constitution, and their chromosome complement is made up of the one set homologous with the complement of the diploid Asian cottons and one set homologous with the complement of the diploid species of America. After a series of painstaking experiments, experts have agreed that one parent of the American cotton undoubtedly came from Asia: in other words, from the Indus Valley area.

(source: India and World Civilization - By D. P. Singhal  p. 70).

Gene Matlock, author of India Once Ruled the Americas! states:

"The people of India have long known that their ancestors once sailed to and settled in the Americas. They called America 'Patala,' The Underworld,' not because they believed it to be underground, but because the other side of the globe appeared to be straight down." 

The top of Stella B at Copan.

Dr. G. Elliot Smith says: the design is of an Indian elephant with its turbaned mahout, modeled by a sculptor who had never seen the animal but was copying from an imported design. 

(image source: The Ayar-Incas - By Miles Poindexter).

***

Skilled Seafaring Men

The only plausible argument against cultural diffusion from southern Pacific is the distance involved. It is asserted that it would have been unlikely for a large number of people to have crossed the vast expanse of the Pacific without well-equipped boats and skillful voyagers. The argument, however, falls, upon close scrutiny. It would not be at all difficult for a large canoe or Catamaran (from Tamil kattu "to tie" and maram "wood, tree") is a type of boat or ship consisting of two hulls joined by a frame. Catamarans were used by the ancient Tamil Chola dynasty as early as the 5th century AD for moving their fleets to conquer such Southeast Asian regions as Burma, Indonesia and Malaysia) to cross from Polynesia to South America even at the present time, and the ancient Asians were skilled and enterprising seafaring men.

The 500 year old Tamil Bell in New Zealand

Tamils have long been seafarers and traders. It is believed that they reached northern Australia by the 14th century, and there is a suggestion that they may have got as far as New Zealand.

In 1836 the missionary explorer William Colenso found this bell, which had been used by Māori as a cooking vessel for generations. Inscribed on it in Tamil are the words ‘Mohoyideen Buk’s ship’s bell’. The bell is now held at the national museum, Te Papa. Theories abound, but the precise origins of the bell and how it got to New Zealand remain a mystery. The bell produced a lot of interest when it was exhibited, and discussions and theories abounded about its origins. The bell was photographed and copies sent to England and various people in India. Tamils in Southern India immediately recognised the writing on the bell. The bell has been identified as a type of ship's bell. Some of the characters in the inscription are of an archaic form no longer seen in modern Tamil script; thus suggesting that the bell could be about 500 years old.

(source: www.tepapa.govt.nz.  Refer more to chapter on Sacred Angkor part II). 

For more refer to chapters on Suvarnabhumi, Seafaring in Ancient India, and War in Ancient India.  Refer to India once ruled the Americas! – By Gene D Matlock

For more on The Glorious Hindu Legacy: Indic influence in Southeast Asia refer to the chapter under Glimpses XII to Glimpses XIX

(Note: US Government recently adopted the ancient Indian catamaran-making technology to construct fast ships. The ships, built with technology adapted from ancient Tamil methods to make catamarans, can travel over 2,500 kms in less than 48 hours, twice the speed of the regular cargo ships, and carry enough equipment to support about 5,000 soldiers, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday). 

For more refer to chapter on War in Ancient India.

However, Asian ability to cross the seas during this period is undoubted. The art of shipbuilding and navigation in India and China at the time was sufficiently advanced for oceanic crossings. Indian ships operating between Indian and South-east Asian ports were large and well equipped to sail cross the Bay of Bengal. When the Chinese Buddhist scholar, Fa-hsien, returned from India, his ship carried a crew of more than two hundred persons and did not sail along the coasts but directly across the ocean.  Such ships were larger than those Columbus used to negotiate the Atlantic a thousand years later. According to the work of mediaeval times, Yukti Kalpataru, which gives a fund of information about shipbuilding, India built large vessels from 200 B.C. to the close of the sixteenth century. A Chinese chronicler mentions ships of Southern Asia that could carry as many as one thousand persons, and were manned mainly by Malayan crews. They used western winds and currents in the North Pacific to reach California, sailed south along the coast, and then returned to Asia with the help of the trade winds, taking a more southerly route, without however, touching the Polynesian islands. 

(Please refer to chapters on Suvarnabhumi and War in Ancient India).

In ancient times the Indians excelled in shipbuilding and even the English, who were attentive to everything which related to naval architecture, found early Indian models worth copying. The Indian vessels united elegance and utility, and were models of fine workmanship.

Sir John Malcolm wrote :

"Indian vessels "are so admirably adapted to the purpose for which they are required that, not withstanding their superior science, Europeans were unable, during an intercourse with India for two centuries, to suggest or at least to bring into successful practice one improvement. "

It was also known that in the third century a transport of horses, which would require  large ships, reached Malaya and Indo-China.

The ancient sea routes from India to South America following the ocean current.

(image source: The Indians And The Amerindians - By Dr. B. Chakravarti  p. 82).

For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor and Seafaring in Ancient India. Refer to India once ruled the Americas! – By Gene D Matlock

***

Games

Pachisi and Patolli

Games such as the pachisi of India and the Mexican patolli, the valador game, mirror of pyrite, betel and coco-chewing, with lime and tobacco, as well as gourd containers for the lime; shell money; birchbark shelters and canoes; and the identical containers of birchbark with curvilinear scraped design from Siberia; string crosses as prayers from Tibet, India, Assam, Mexico, and Peru; the custom of fishing with poison; shell fishooks; the use of agricultural terraces in Southeast Asia, Peru and Bolivia; and last, but not the least - the cultivation of cotton, practiced since early times in Asia. It has been claimed that even maize, that most typical of American cultivated plants, was in use in Asia before Columbus came to this continent. 

The close relationship between the pachisi game of India and the patolli game of Mexico is illustrated here. 

(image source: Hindu America - By Chaman Lal)

For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor and Seafaring in Ancient India

***

(for interesting book please refer to Hindu America: revealing the story of the romance of the Surya Vanshi Hindus and depicting the imprints of Hindu culture on the two Americas - By Chaman Lal with foreword by Dr. S. Radhakrishnan. 3d ed. (LC History-America-E) 1966).

William MacLeod has called attention to the similarity between the Mexican volador ritual and the Indian rite of hook-swinging. In the volador, the performers usually, although not invariably, hang by their feet, and in India by their shoulders. We have found, however, an old description and illustration of hook-swinging in India in which the voluntary performers are attached by their feet as in the volador.  

Another scholar, Ramon Mena, author of Synthesis of Mexican archaeology for the summer school of the National University, (1924) called the Nahuatl, Zapoteca, and Mayan languages "of Hindu origin." He went to say, "A deep mystery enfolds the tribes that inhabited the state of chiapas in the district named Palenque....their writing, and the anthropological type, as well as their personal adornments...their system and style of construction clearly indicate the remotest antiquity...(they) all speak of India and the Orient."

Still another scholar, Ambassador Miles Poindexter, a former ambassador of the United States to Mexico, in his two-volume 1930s treatise The Ayar-Incas called the Mayan civilization "unquestionably Hindu." He proposed that primitive Aryan words and people came to America by the island chains of Polynesia. The Mexican name for boat is a South Indian Tamil word, Catamaran, and Poindexter gives a long list of words of the Quichua languages and their analogous forms in Sanskrit. Similarities between the hymns of the Inca rulers of Peru and Vedic hymns have been pointed out.  A. L. Krober has also found striking similarities between the structure of Indo-European and the Penutian language of some of the tribes along the northwestern coast of California. Recently, an Indian scholar, B. C. Chhabra,in his Vestiges of Indian Culture in Hawaii  has noticed certain resemblances between the symbols found in the petroglyohs from the Hawaiian Islands and those on the Harappan seals. Some of the symbols in the petroglyphs are described as akin to early Brahmi script.

Indeed, the parallels between the arts and culture of India and those of ancient America are too numerous and close to be attributed to independent growth. A variety of art forms are common to Mexico, India, Java, and Indochina, the most striking of which are the Teocallis, the pyramids, with receding stages, faced with cut stone, and with stairways leading to a stone sanctuary on top. Many share surprisingly common features such as serpent columns and bannisters, vaulted galleries and corbeled arches, attached columns, stone cut-out lattices, and Atlantean figures; these are typical of the Puuc style of Yucatan. Heine-Geldern and Ekholm point out that temple pyramids in Cambodia did not become important until the ninth and tenth centuries, a time coinciding with the beginning of the Puuc period.

Language

Similarity between Quechua and Sanskrit language:

(source: The Ayar-Incas - By Miles Poindexter published by Horace Liveright New York volume 1-2. 1930 p. 211-215).

Other similarities

Professor Raman Mena, Curator of the National Museum of Mexico:

"The (Maya) human types are like those of India. The irreproachable technique of their reliefs, the sumptuous head-dress and ostentatious on high, the system of construction, all speak of India and the Orient." 

Note: The symbol of divinity - the sacred lotus on the scepter and the turban. 

For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor and Seafaring in Ancient India

***

J F Hewitt author of Primitive Traditional History (1907) has observed:

"Hindu merchants brought to Mexico the eighteen months year of the Pandavas and the customs of trade guild and Indian bazaar."

In 1949, two scholars, Gordon Ekholm and Chaman Lal, systematically compared the Mayan, Aztec, Incan, and the North American Indian civilizations with the Hindu-oriented countries of Southeast Asia and with India herself. According to them, the emigrant culutes of India took with them India's system of time measurement, local gods, and customs. Ekholm and Lal found signs of Aryan civilization throughout the Americas in art (lotus flowers with knotted stems and half-dragon/half fish motifs found commonly in paintings and carvings), architecture, calendars, astronomy, religious symbols, and even games such as our Parchessi and Mexican Patilli, which have their origins in India's pachisi.

Similar routines of everyday life of Indians and Asiomericans have also been noted. For instance, betel-chewing with lime and coca-whew and tobacco, as well as the gourd-container for the lime are common to both people. The Peruvian substitute for tobacco, which was used for medicinal purposes, was a shrub, called cuca (coca). The leaves are first dried in the sun and then mixed with a little lime to constitute "a preparation for chewing much like the betel-leaf of the East." Vegetarianism is popular both in India and Mexico. The Indian roti or chappati and the Mexican tortilla, similar in size and shape, are made in the same way. Both people have an unusual respect for corn, and share the custom of offering bits of food, before eating, to God in expression of their gratitude for the meal provided. 

***

Links Proposed Between Ancient India and Central America's Mayans

Hyderabad, INDIA, April 29, 2002: Recent studies suggests a link between Indus Valley and Mayans of Central America. The studies focused on the calendars of the two advanced civilizations. The Indus Valley inhabitants followed a calender based on the movements of Jupiter, and the Mayans followed one based on the Venus. In the Puranas, a secondary Hindu scripture, Jupiter, Brihaspati, was acknowledged to be the leader of the gods, while Venus, Shukra, was the leader of the asuras. The texts further state that the devas and asuras lived on opposite sides of the Earth. Mexico and India are at opposite sides in longitude. The correspondences were pointed out by B. G. Siddarth, director of the B. M. Birla Science Centre in Hyderabad. He also said the Hindu story of the churning of the ocean has been found in carvings in Mexico, as well Mayan representations of a tortoise carrying twelve pillars similar to Indian illustrations. Dr. Ganapati Sthapati of Chennai, a foremost expert on Vastu shatra, the ancient Hindu architecture, has visited the Mayan structures in Central America and found many similarities between the design and construction methods of the Mayans and that of the ancient Hindus.

(source: Deccan Chronicle and Hinduism Today).

Large Symbols Like Peruvian Signs Found on Gujarat Hillside 

Vadodara, Gujarat, India. August 6, 2006: Geologists have discovered a striking archaeological feature on a hillock in the Kutch district of the western Indian state of Gujarat. This feature is shaped like the Roman numeral VI. Each arm of this feature is a trench that is about two meters wide, two meters deep and more than 100 meters long. The feature has evoked the curiosity of archaeologists because such signs have mostly been observed so far in Peru. The team, led by Dr RV Karanth, a former professor of geology at the Maharaja Sayajirao University in Vadodara, Gujarat, has been involved in a palaeoseismological study of the Kutch region for the past 11 years Palaeoseismology involves the study of sediments, landforms and other geological evidence of past earthquakes to unravel their history and determine the nature and occurrence of present-day earthquakes. This feature was discovered at a hillock 3km from the sleepy oasis township of Khavda, which is also known as the gateway to the Rann of Kutch, an extensive salt marsh of western India and southeast Pakistan between the Gulf of Kutch and the Indus river delta.

Dr. Karanth says such trenches have not been noticed elsewhere in the region. Archaeologists, he says, can now pursue further research. Geometric lines and animal shapes etched into the desert plain by people of the Nazca civilisation (AD 1-700) of Peru are well known. "But such signs on hill-slopes have not been reported from Peru," says Dr. Karanth. He says that one of the prominent explanations given for the Peruvian features is that they may have been constructed to make astronomical observations and calculations. "The Tropic of Cancer passes through Kutch. So if this structure is man-made, it is likely that the slope of the hillock was utilized for making certain astronomical calculations in the past," explains the geologist. Interestingly, there are numerous indications to suggest that Harappans were well-versed in astronomy. The straight streets of that time were oriented in the cardinal directions - east, west, north and south. Linkages between ancient Harappan scripts and latter Vedic texts also suggest that Harappan priest-astronomers tracked the progress of various planets and mapped the sky. Dr. Karanth has also discovered ruins of a fort-wall, houses, storage tank and a temple on the hilltop.

(source: Large Symbols Like Peruvian Signs Found on Gujarat Hillside - bbcnews.co.uk).  

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Conclusion

D. A. Mackenzie, in his book Myths of Pre-Columbian America pg 70. says:

"It would be ridiculous to assert that such a strange doctrine was of spontaneous origin in different parts of the Old and New worlds."  

Scholars who insist that pre-Columbian American religion and civilization was of independent origin are obliged to explain why the myths, beliefs, and practices of ancient America assumed such complex features at the very beginning, whilst in Asia they resulted from the fusions and movements of numerous peoples after a period of time much greater than that covered by American civilizations from beginning to the end.

American born, Swami B. V. Tripurari states in his book, Ancient Wisdom for Modern Ignorance -  "Who discovered America" p 27.

Broadly speaking, cultural historians of Asiomerica are divided into two camps, "diffusionists" and "Isolationists". Diffusionists maintained that after this occurred civilized Asiatic people distributed themselves via the Pacific, thereby bringing civilization to the Americas. Isolationists insisted that after the nomadic tribes crossed the Bering Strait, a homogenous race of "Indians of the Americas' was formed, and the American tribes-people went about reinventing all culture, duplicating in two thousand years what originally took about six millenniums in the Old World!

By the same token, no archaeologist today would attribute to prehistory Europeans the independent invention of bronze casting, iron work, the wheel, weaving, pottery, writing, and so many other cultural elements that were derived from the Middle East. 

What then would cause one to insist that what was not possible for the Europeans (duplicating culture independently) was possible for the American Indians??? Especially when at the same time we are taught that the Europeans were of superior stock?

The isolationist must also explain why the American race should have been the last to emerge from an uncivilized state and why, once they emerged, their progress should have been so phenomenally rapid. 

Will Durant, eminent American historian, in his book Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage, described India as the most ancient civilization on earth and he offered many examples of Indian culture throughout the world. He demonstrated that as early as the ninth century B.C. E. Indians were exploring the sea routes, reaching out and extending their cultural influences to Mesopotamia, Arabia, and Egypt.

Although modern-day historians and anthropologists might prefer to accept Egypt or Babylon as the most ancient civilization, due to various archaeological findings, their theories are by no means conclusive. The popular theory in the academic community that the Aryans invaded India has also been disproved. (refer to the chapter on Aryan Invasion Theory). Perhaps it is easier for modern people to accept ancient Egypt and Babylon, whose ancient civilizations have no living representation and thereby pose no threat or challenge to the status quo.

But India is alive and kicking. If we recognize with ancient India as the spiritual giant, we would have to reckon with her modern-day representations. No wonder the Vedic literature and spiritual ideology loomed as the greatest threat to the British Raj in India in their imperialistic conquest of India.

Emilio Estrada, Clifford Evans, and Betty J. Meggers, who have pointed out many striking similarities between Ecuadorian archaeological remains of the early Bahia and early Jama-Coaque cultures with relics of approximately the same period of Japan, India and SoutEast Asia, also support the feasibility of trans-pacific voyage.

The New Zealand pre historian, S. Percy Smith, tries to show in his Hawaiki - the Original home of the Maori that the ancient Polynesian wanderers left India as far back as the fourth century B.C. and were daring mariners who made, more often than not, adventurous voyages with the definite object of new settlements. A people who reached as far east as Easter Island could not have missed the great continent ahead of them.

 
      From America - Gautemala

  Panataran relief - Java           

Refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor.  Refer to India once ruled the Americas! – By Gene D Matlock

***

What was the motive that urged Indians and Asians to undertake long journeys to America?

It was probably gold, which initially attracted Indian adventurers and merchants to Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia was a region broadly referred to by ancient Indians as Suvarnabhumi (Land of Gold) or Suvarnadvipa (the Island of Gold). Arab writer Al Biruni testify that Indians called the whole Southeast region Suwarndib. Hellenistic geographers knew the area as the Golden Chersonese. The Chinese called it Kin-Lin; kin means gold. The mariners were probably looking for gold or were prospecting for precious metals, stones and pearls to cope with the demand in the centers of ancient civilizations.

This view is substantially reinforced by W. J Perry who was the first scholar to point out that the distribution of the pearling beds of the world and why, wherever pearls are found similar complex religious beliefs, myths, beliefs, and practices are also found. It is therefore significant that the mythology of the pre-Columbian American civilizations  "was deeply impregnated by the religious beliefs and practices and habits of life that obtained amongst the treasure-seekers of the Old World. " Equally significant is the fact that the Mayas preferred to settle in that part of Central America which was unhealthy but rich in precious stones and gold. Like Indians Asiomericans accumulated stones and gold and made symbolic ornaments from them. Mexican temples and idols, as in India, were lavishly decorated with gold and precious stones.

That cultural influences reached pre-Columbian America from Asia there can now be very little doubt. The theory of American isolation breaks down completely when these facts are established. 

According to Professor Elliot Smith: 

"Monroe Doctrine' which demands that everything American belongs to America, and must have been wholly invented there."

(source: Myths of Pre-Columbian America - By Donald A. Mackenzie  p.33).

Mons Leon Delbos has noted:

"The influence of the civilization worked out thousands of years ago in India is around and about us every day of our lives. It pervades every corner of the civilized world. Go to America and you find there, as in Europe, the influence of that civilization which come originally from the banks of the Ganges."

(source: Hindu Raj in the World - By Krishan Lal Jain  p.132).

In Conclusion, it may be said, that whatever the motive, transpacific traffic would seem to have gone on regularly for about two thousand years, from about the eighth century B.C. to the twelfth century.

In view of so many parallels in fundamental conceptions and detail, in mythology, ritual, iconography, architecture, religious beliefs, crowns, thrones, plants, together with the evidence of migration, it appears incredible that isolationists should continue to insist on the independent evolution of Asiomerican civilization.

***

Source of Information for this chapter:

1. India and World Civilization - By D. P. Singhal
2. Myths of Pre-Columbian America - By Donald A. Mackenzie
3. Ancient Wisdom for Modern Ignorance - By Swami B. V. Tripurari
4. Hindu America: revealing the story of the romance of the Surya Vanshi Hindus and depicting the imprints of Hindu culture on the two Americas - By Chaman Lal with foreword by Dr. S. Radhakrishnan. 3d ed. (LC History-America-E) 1966).
5.The Ayar-Incas - By Miles Poindexter published by Horace Liveright New York volume 1-2. 1930).
6. The Indians And The Amerindians - By Dr. B. Chakravarti

Refer to Did the Hindus Help Write the Bible and Give the Ancient Mexicans Their Religious Traditions? - By Gene D. Matlock and Is the Hopi Deity Kokopelli an Ancient Hindu God? - By Gene D. Matlock and Ancient Sanskrit Pictograph near Sedona, Arizona? - By Gene Matlock and Atlantis in Mexico - By Gene Matlock.

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European Conquest and Atrocities

Civilizational Graveyards? Modus Operandi of Christianity around the Globe?

Gore Vidal (1925 -   )  well known American writer, the eminent historian, and a public figure for over fifty years, in his Lowell Lecture at Harvard University given April 20, 1996 observed:

“When the white race broke out of Europe 500 years ago,… inspired by a raging sky-god, the whites were able to pretend that their conquests were in order to bring the One God to everyone, particularly those with older and subtler religions. ………

(source: Lowell Lecture at Harvard University given - By Gore Vidal - April 20, 1996).

Refer to chapter on European Imperialism and refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel and Watch The Crescent and the Cross.

Refer to Things They Don't Tell you about Christianity and Victims of Christian Faith and Adam’s Family Jewels - by Tibor Krausz and Christianity’s Criminal History - By Karlheinz Deschner and  Why Nothing has Changed for Victims of Church Torture, or for the Victimizers - By Rev. Kevin D. Annett - Hidden From History: The Canadian Holocaust. 

From Mayan to Australian Aborigines to Nigerian to the Philippines ancient cultures have been destroyed all in the name of The One Jealous God.

1492 – was a landmark year for all natives of the world. It marks the beginning of a systematic war waged against them by Western arms and religious ideology.  It marked to the beginning of their struggle to maintain their tradition, their beliefs and their customs, their ways of seeing against the overwhelming influence of Western culture.  The conquest was accompanied by genocide unparalleled in history. In the century after Columbus over 2/3rds of native population of America died due to disease – perhaps 50 million people.

Christopher Columbus 1451 – May 20, 1506) was a navigator, colonizer and one of the first Europeans to explore the Americas, wrote to the Queen of Spain:  

“Our European civilization will bring light to the natives in the darkness but for ourselves we will obtain gold and with gold we will be able to do what we want.”

(source: The Barbarian West - By Michael Wood). Refer to chapter on European Imperialism and Conversion.

Refer to Victims of Christian Faith and Christianity's Criminal History - By Karlheinz Deschner. Refer to The Inquisition in Goa. Refer to World Conquering Creeds - By Dr. Koenraad Elst - chapter on Glimpses XVI and Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com.  Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn and Refer to A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom - By Andrew Dickinson White - umich.edu. Watch Sex crimes and the Vatican - videogoogle.com.  Refer to Things They Don't Tell you about Christianity. Refer to The Harlot by the Side of the Road  - By Jonathan Kirsch and The X-Rated Bible - by Ben Edward Akerley

Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician and advocate for social reform. In 1950, Russell was made a Nobel Laureate in Literature, "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought".  

He had said:

"The [Catholic] Spaniards in Mexico and Peru used to baptize Indian infants and then immediately dash their brains out; by this means they secured that these infants went to heaven."

(source: crusadewatch.org and Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? - By Bertrand Russell Published 1930).  

"The Spaniards found pleasure in inventing all kinds of odd cruelties ... They built a long gibbet, long enough for the toes to touch the ground to prevent strangling, and hanged thirteen [natives] at a time in honor of Christ Our Saviour and the twelve Apostles... then, straw was wrapped around their torn bodies and they were burned alive." 

                           - David E. Stannard author of American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World

Christian priests or friars burning the 'heathen' Native Americans.

Refer to Mystery of Mayan Crystal skulls

***

Indian Chief Hatuey was a Taino from the island of Hispaniola who was a witness to the atrocities the Spaniards were committing upon his people. The Hispaniola Tainos had received Columbus and his fellow Europeans with open arms, and the Spaniards had brutalized the Indians in return.

The Indian chief Hatuey fled with his people but was captured and burned alive. As they were tying him to the stake a Franciscan friar urged him to take Jesus to his heart so that his soul might go to heaven, rather than descend into hell.

Hatuey replied that 

"if heaven was where the Christians went, he would rather go to hell."

(source: American Holocaust and crusadewatch.org).  

"It is the same ship that brought the Bible which also carried guns and alcohol to Africa ."

                                                  - Michael Baffoe author of Demonizing African Culture in the Name of Christianity  

***

"Santiago" was the battle cry, and the name would often be shouted out by the soldiers in their massacre of the Indians."

The cry "Santiago" became a call for the heavenly power to purge the Earth of all non-Christians infidels, no matter if they were Muslims or Jews in Europe, Hindus or Natives of the Americas. 

(source: The Universal Path to Enlightenment - By Stephen Knapp World Relief Network September 1992 ISBN 0961741023 volume one Two. p. 122).

(Note: 1492 - Began the process of genocide of Native Americans. "The only good Indian is a dead Indian". Today, in spite of 500 years of a genocidal colonization, there is an estimated 40 million Indigenous peoples in the Americas. In Guatemala, the Mayan peoples make up 60.3 percent of the population, and in Bolivia Indians comprise over 70 percent of the total population. Despite this, these Indigenous peoples lack any control over their own lands and comprise the most exploited and oppressed layers of the population; characteristics that are found also in other Indigenous populations in the settler states of the Americas).

In the seventeenth century, Spanish missionaries from Yucatan traveled up New River and established churches in Mayan settlements with the intention of converting and controlling these people.

(source: Christian Conquest - about.com). Refer to Things They Don't Tell you about Christianity and Human sacrifice in the Bible - By Steven Newcomb and Cannibalism at Jamestown, Virginia, USA.

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Cannibalizing Cultures - Pests from Europe 
Religion, money and armed might, the unholy trinity of Neo-Imperialism.

Sesha Samarajiwa ( ? ) from Sri Lanka is interested examining foreign religious agents’ role as Fifth Columnists of neocolonialism/neoimperialism. He has written:

"Evangelists belong to a long line of pests from the West who have come and keep coming like locusts to colonize our souls and cannibalize our cultures.

The latest incursions are merely a continuation of the 500-year-old sorry saga of Asia, Africa and South America , which began with the arrival of the Portuguese and the Spaniards. Some have never recovered from the machinations of their priests and the savagery of their conquistadors. The baton of imperialism has passed from the Europeans to the Americans. That is not to say that the rest of the West has dropped out. They have not. They are very much in the game. It’s just that the Americans are in the lead, the new Romans on the rampage. 

We know well how the Europeans won the West. They won it through mass genocide of the native populations in North and South America . In South America , hundreds and thousands of natives who resisted conversion were garroted. There is a poignant painting depicting such conversions. It shows armored Spanish soldiers garroting native priests, while a Spanish priest holds up a large cross. More terrified natives await their turn. On the side, another Spanish priest feeds stacks of ancient gold-leaf books of the Mayans into a fire. On the face of the Mayan priests, a look of utter sadness mixed with resignation.

In places like India and Sri Lanka , they were no better. They too faced abject horrors. In his book, Christianity's scramble for India, Navaratna Rajaram says that “the Christian Missionary is neither a Christian nor a missionary. In fact, he is a racist and a white supremacist in priestly guise.” Their Buffalo Bills and their Wild Bills, their Custers and their Cortezes, and the long line of predators and priests made sure that the sorry remainder of once-proud nations would remain so, while they ruled the roost in lands drenched with native blood. Many weaker cultures succumbed to the relentless onslaught from the West. They either slaughtered those who resisted or they sowed the seeds of abjection and their eventual self-destruction. Even today, we see the pathetic dregs of once-noble nations staggering around native reservations and barrios in North and South America, in Australia , in Canada , in New Zealand . They have lost their spirit. They have lost their will to live. They seem embarrassed to be alive. They are self-destructing. At best, they are performing monkeys titillating whites with a thirst for the exotic. These are abject peoples, vanishing tribes. Now, not satisfied with ruling their large chunk of raided real estate, they are hell-bent on extending their hegemony over the whole world. They howl in protest when the natives resist. Human misery is happy hunting grounds for these spiritual cartels. They strike when their targets are at their weakest or bomb them to submission to make sure they are at their weakest. Thus softened up, they are susceptible to inducements and brainwashing. They are canny. To ‘convert’ people, you must first make them despise and reject what had sustained their people for millennia. So they vilify their faith or convince them it is a spent force or dark superstition. In so doing, they make us spit on our heritage.

(source: Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing - By Sesha Samarajiwa - Asian Tribune October 9, 2007).  Refer to Cannibalism at Jamestown, Virginia, USA.

***

The Mayans were the earliest people to have found a civilization there, they moved from the Mexican plateau into Gauatemala. They were later pushed out, by the Toltecs, who, in turn, dislodged by the Aztecs.

This was an era that saw the blossoming of a unified Central American civilization. The Toltecs were very prosperous. They were accomplished architects, carpenters and mechanics. The Aztecs also made some striking cultural advances. They developed a lake civilization based on the island in Lake Texcoco, where they built their remarkable city. Mexico-Tenochtitlan, which was surrounded by the colorful Chinampas, or floating gardens. The city was described by Bernal de Diaz, the companion of the Spanish commander Cortes, as a dreamland which inspired the Spanish invaders to lyrical adulation and murderous plunder. Diaz wrote that the Mexicans were like the Romans, and that there was nothing in Spain to match the royal palace of Montezuma.

Hernando Cortes is said to have slaughtered, in less than two hours, six thousand people who had gathered in a temple patio. Destruction of Aztec cities was so complete that almost everything lay in ruins. 

The elite of the Asiomericans were put to death almost to the last man. After his entry into the conquered capital Tenochtitlan, Cortes wrote that "you could not put down your foot without stepping on an Indian corpse." In addition, his soldiery, a few years later in the Inca Empire, driven by lust for gold, melted down irreplaceable works of art by the ton to get the precious metal. Thus, the Aztecs civilization came to violent end.

Mystery of Mayan Crystal skulls - Our scientists cannot explain how these Mayan crystal skulls could have been carved in ancient times without instruments and tools of today". The most amazing thing was that the ancient skull weighing 5.13 kg, 203.4 mm long and 125.4 wide had been made of a whole crystal. This fact contradicted the laws of physics. The research by Hewlett-Packard in 1964 in a special laboratory revealed that the skull had been made long before the first civilizations appeared in that part of America where the skull was found. In addition, rock crystal of such perfect quality could not be found in that area. The rock crystal has a hardness that is slightly lower than that of topaz, corundum, and diamond; it can be cut with diamonds only. It is astonishing, but the ancient Indians managed to cut it somehow, and even made a lower jaw with the joints. Hewlett-Packard experts say that the skull had been made regardless of all laws and rules. They surprisingly said: "The damned thing can't exist at all. Those who had done it had no idea of crystallography or of fiber optics. The people completely ignored the axis of symmetry, which was to prevent the crystal from splitting during processing. To compound the strangeness, HP could find no microscopic scratches on the crystal which would indicate it had been carved with metal instruments. One thing it's important to note is that crystal quartz is the same material used in microchips that can hold billions of bits of information. Given that, imagine the amount of info a whole skull can hold. It is said that all the 13 Crystal Skulls are somehow linked to the “Year Zero” or December 21, 2012, the date at which the Mayan Calendar ends. This grand cycle of evolution will culminate winter solstice, December 21, 2012 AD.

(source:  Mystery of Mayan Crystal skulls).

Burning of Libraries and records:

If the history of pre-Columbian America, is obscure, it is because after the Spanish conquest, the first Bishop of Mexico, Juan de Zumarraga, burned all the records of the Library of Texcoco in Tlateloco market square as "the work of the Devil," and religious fanatics destroyed temples and statues. 

Zumarraga, gloating over his success, wrote to his superiors in 1531 that he alone had five hundred temples razed to the ground and twenty thousand idols destroyed.

Fray Diego de Landa, the second Bishop of Yucatan, following the pattern, reduced the Maya Library in Yucatan to ashes in 1562. Post-Columbus history of America for 300 years was the story of ruthless destruction and fanatics like Bishop Diego da Landa burnt a huge bonfire of valuable documents and nothing but the three codices of 'Chilam Balam' could survive the holocaust....

He wrote Relación de las cosas de Yucatán, A Narrative of the Things of Yucatan in 1566, Therein the states, 

"We found a large number of their books of these letters, and because they did not have anything in which there was not superstition and falsehoods of the devil, we burned them all, which they felt very sorry for and which caused them grief." 

(source: Proof Vedic Culture's Global Existence - By Stephen Knapp p. 259).

Refer to The Aztec Account of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico

Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn

Landa, in his religious zeal, ordered all their idols destroyed and all Mayan books to be burned; he was surprised at the distress this caused the Indians. His orders to destroy all icons and hieroglyphics obliterated the Mayan language forever, helping to undermine and destroy the civilization he so vividly described.

It was Landa that gave the orders for all the Mayans to bring all manuscripts to the public squares in Mani to be burned. All these books contained what would now be priceless information on astronomy, medicine, religion, and philosophy. What Emperor Theodosious of Constantinople did to the library at Alexandria to save Christianity from the Greek and Oriental pagan knowledge deposited there, these priests did in Central America with similar motives but larger success. 

The burning of manuscripts continued for decades. Soldiers were encouraged to ransack palaces, public buildings, and private houses to find manuscripts. Pablo Jose de Arriaga, the head of the Jesuit College in Peru, in almost unparalleled fanaticism, caused the systematic and wholesale destruction of all state archives, customs records, royal and imperial archives, codes of laws, temple archives, and historical records. Less than a score of manuscripts escaped annihilation. These libraries contained records of ancient history, medicine, astronomy, science, religion, and philosophy.

The Spaniards destroyed whatever they could, but they could not, for instance, burn the great Pyramid of the sun and the remains of Teotihuacan, which speak of the splendid bygone civilization. This is one of the great crimes of world cultural history.

No matter how much historians stretch their imagination, it will never be possible to reconstruct a picture of these advanced civilizations which would do them justice, and yet be held historically acceptable.

Beyond Mexico, the ancient Andean or Peruvian civilization also suffered an even worse fate at the hands of the Spainard's than did their neighbors in Central America. The Spanish assault on the Incas, the Spanish avarice of gold, and barbarities perpetrated in the wake of victory, including the inhuman tortures publicly inflicted on the Inca King, Atahuallpa, are illustrations of savagery seldom surpassed in history.

The Story of Betrayal

The Spaniards were mistaken by Asiomericans for their legendary white gods, who were to be made welcome and it they inflicted suffering it was to be accepted as a divine judgment. And by a tragic coincidence, the Spanish conquerors invaded Mexico at about the time, in 1519, as the Aztec priests and tradition had predicted the return of the white gods. The Aztecs even offered the Spanish conquistadores the vestments of Quetzalcoatl and other gods and considered performing human sacrifice to them in case they were fatigued after such a long journey. Through out the Incas Empire, the Spainiards were greeted as Viracocha, the Inca name of the great White God they had been waiting for. It is only when the Asiomericans were completely horrified and disillusioned by the brutalities and merciless killings, that they recognized their mistake.

The realization that the Spainard's were not gods, but popolocas (barbarians), however, came too late.

The European conquerors of South and Central America not only destroyed practically all the records and literature of Asiomerica, but created an utterly distorted images of the American past by taking some of its ugly features out of context and magnifying them out of proportion. For instance, the human sacrifice practiced by the Aztecs was repeatedly stressed without explaining its extenuating features, and without pointing out that human sacrifice had not been unknown to other peoples, such as in Europe and Rome. Taking their technique a step further they contrasted this picture with that of their own deeds in Asiomerica in which European misdemeanor, caprice, and criminality were soft-pedaled and civilized and human behavior emphasized.

Most people believe that Asiomericans were uncivilized hordes with an occasional freak of knowledge, who had contributed nothing of permanent value to civilization by 1492. Despite a good deal of information to the contrary, there is resistance to accepting a change in this image. Misconceptions multiply fast but die slowly.                    

The Mexican Indians and the Incas of Peru were primarily vegetarians. They were of high moral character and hospitable and generous as a habit. They practiced astrology, and mental telepathy was common among them. It was perhaps their peace-loving disposition that, like the Hindus, allowed them to be ruled by Europeans.

The Europeans, through book burning and bayonet, successfully, "converted" them, leaving very little trace of their noble civilization.

Refer to Mel’s Merry Messianic Movie Missionaries:An Analysis of Apocalypto and Other Silver Screen Savagery - crusadewatch.org and Guatemalan official says Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto" derogatory to Mayan people. Also refer to Apocalypto trashes Native character. 

Temerity to sit on Judgment on Non-Christian spiritual systems?

Denouncing cannibals of the New World

***

"I Yahweh will make them eat the flesh of their sons and their daughters, and they will eat one another's flesh in the siege and in the distress with which their enemies and those who seek their life will distress them." – Jeremiah 19.9.

(source: jesusneverexisted.com).

Refer to British aristocracy ‘ate human flesh’ -  THE highest members of European aristocracy took part in cannibalism to find remedies for ailments up until the end of the 18th century, a new book reveals.  European royalty and eminent scholars took pride of place among those who swallowed parts of the human body as medicine, including flesh, blood and bones.

For more than 200 years, even as they denounced cannibals of the New World, Europeans applied, drank, or wore powdered Egyptian mummy, human fat, flesh, bone, blood and brains.

The British aristocracy consumed human flesh, a new book on medicinal cannibalism reveals. The well-off in Britain and Europe swallowed parts of the human body, including its flesh, blood and bones, as medicine until the end of the 18th century.

Even as they denounced the cannibals of the New World, they applied, drank, or wore powdered Egyptian mummies, human fat, flesh, bone, blood, brains and skin. Dr Richard Sugg, a Durham University academic, writes: “James I refused corpse medicine; Charles II made his own; and Charles I was made into corpse medicine. Users included Francis I, Elizabeth I’s surgeon, John Banister, William III, and Queen Mary.

Refer to Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires - By Dr Richard Sugg and Mel’s Merry Messianic Movie Missionaries:An Analysis of Apocalypto and Other Silver Screen Savagery - crusadewatch.org

Refer to Crusaders -The Cannibals of Ma’arra - Radulph of Caen, another chronicler, wrote: "In Ma'arra our troops boiled pagan adults alive in cooking-pots; they impaled children on spits and devoured them grilled."Thus Amin Maalouf, in his book The Crusades through Arab Eyes, points to the words of the Crusader chronicler, Albert of Aix, who wrote: "Not only did our troops not shrink from eating dead Turks and Saracens; they also ate dogs!

Refer to Things They Don't Tell you about Christianity. Refer to Cannibalism and Bloodbath of the Crusades.

***

The Devastation of the Indies – by Bartholome de Las Casas - excerpts

"The Devastation of the Indies is an eyewitness account of the first modern genocide, a story of greed, hypocrisy, and cruelties so grotesque as to rival the worst of our own century. Las Casas writes of men, women and children burned alive “thirteen at a time in memory of Our Redemeer and his twelve apostles.” He describes butcher shops that sold human flesh for dog food (“Give me a quarter of that rascal there,” one customer says, “until I can kill some more of my own”). Slave ship captains navigate “without need of compass or charts,” following instead the trail of floating corpses tossed overboard by the ship before them. Native kings are promised peace, then slaughtered. Whole families hang themselves in despair. Once fertile islands are tuned desert, the wealth of nations plundered, millions killed outright, whole people annihilated. 

The papacy empowered the two crowns (Spanish and Portuguese) to conquer and even enslave pagans “inimical to the name of Christ.”

The Spaniards killed more Indians here in twelve years by the sword, by fire, and enslavement than anywhere in the Indies. ......."

(source: The Devastation of the Indies – by Bartholome de Las Casas). 

For more on destruction of Native Cultures refer to Thanksgiving- a National Day of Mourning and Manifest Destiny). Refer to The Aztec Account of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico. Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn. Refer to Christian persecution against the Hellenes - ethnicoi.org.

***

Pope justifies Genocide

"Jesus Christ" functions as a symbolic cloak for several hidden agendas .

- Robert M Price, author of The God Who Wasn't there.

***

Pope Benedict XVI in a speech to Latin American and Caribbean bishops at the end of a visit to Brazil, the Pope said the Church had not imposed itself on the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

They had welcomed the arrival of European priests at the time of the conquest as they were "silently longing" for Christianity, he said. "Christianity was not imposed by a foreign culture" drew a sharp reaction from the native leaders. 

"Christ was the Savior (America 's natives) silently yearned for," the pope said. Benedict also called the resurgence of pre-Columbian religions "a step backward," offending native peoples as far away as Mexico.

(Note: Perhaps the Pope is not aware of the legacy of Western civilization to the world - Dark Ages, Crusades, The Inquisition, Witch Hunt, Slavery, Colonization of Africa, Asia, America and Australia, Imperialism, World Wars, Holocaust, Bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Conversion and destruction of Native cultures to Christianity, Drugs, School shootings in American schools, Gun violence, Racism, Clergy sex Abuse, Viagra spamming Capitalism, quest for individualism, Iraq war …. ). 

Refer to Mystery of Mayan Crystal skulls and Is a Crisis in White Masculinity Leading to Horrific Gun Crimes Like the Sandy Hook Shootings? and All We Want for Christmas Is...Guns

Millions of tribal Indians are believed to have died as a result of European colonization backed by the Church since Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492, through slaughter, disease or enslavement. They said the Indians had suffered a "process of genocide" since the first European colonizers had arrived. Priests blessed conquistadors as they waged war on the indigenous peoples, although some later defended them and many today are the most vociferous allies of Indians. Many Indians today struggle for survival, stripped of their traditional ways of life and excluded from society.

"It's arrogant and disrespectful to consider our cultural heritage secondary to theirs," said Jecinaldo Satere Mawe, chief coordinator of the Amazon Indian group Coiab.

(source: Brazil 's Indians offended by Pope comments - newsyahoo.com).   Refer to Cannibalism at Jamestown, Virginia, USA.

Refer to The Great Catholic Cover-Up: The pope's entire career has the stench of evil about it - By Christopher Hitchens - slate.com. 

Refer to LA church to pay $600M for clergy abuse - BBC news and Exposing Scandal in the Church: Key Players - by Thomas Pierce - npr.org. Watch Sex crimes and the Vatican - videogoogle.com. Refer to Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis - By Philip Jenkins.

Pope Benedict Argues Catholic Church 'Purified' Indigenous Peoples

During his recent trip to Latin America , Pope Benedict XVI offended millions when he arrogantly suggested that Catholicism had purified indigenous populations, and called the resurgence of indigenous religions a step backward. He also said the native populations were longing for Christianity, and had welcomed the Catholic priests at the time of European conquest. The Pope seems to have selective amnesia when it comes to the Church and its horrendous history of human rights disasters against people of color. Not only is the Pope out of step with the needs and everyday realities of the Third World , he is not speaking their language, and not owning up to the sins of the past.

There are three bulls (edicts, or executive orders, if you will) issued by the Papacy with which we should concern ourselves. The Dum Diversas, issued by Pope Nicholas V in 1452, authorized King Alfonso V of Portugal to reduce any "Saracens (Muslims) and pagans and any other unbelievers" to perpetual slavery, thereby ushering in the West African slave trade.

The Romanus Pontifex, also issued by Pope Nicholas V in 1455, sanctioned the seizure of non-Christian lands, and encouraged the enslavement of non-Christian people in Africa and the Americas . Specifically, it gave the green light to "invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed," all for profit, and in the name of Jesus Christ.

The Inter Caetera, signed by Pope Alexander VI in 1493, states, "... we (the Papacy) command you (Spain) ... to instruct the aforesaid inhabitants and residents and dwellers therein in the Catholic faith, and train them in good morals." This papal law sanctioned and paved the way for European colonization and Catholic missions in the New World .

(source: Pope Benedict Argues Catholic Church 'Purified' Indigenous Peoples - alternet.org).  Refer to Mystery of Mayan Crystal skulls.

Father of Lies: The Pope's Genocidal Revisionism 

Almost no one in the West seems to have noticed the truly perverse and morally obscene remarks made by Pope Benedict in Brazil . But genocide scholar Adam Jones at CounterPunch noticed, and calls out Herr Ratzinger for his remarkable historical revisionism, which paints the genocidal destruction of America 's pre-Columbus cultures as a "purifying" act which gave the natives just what they were "longing" for. In this outburst, the conservative cleric and former Hitler Youth far surpasses revisionists like David Irving in whitewashing mass murder, slavery and military aggression.

Ask Pope Benedict: When Does Genocide Purify? On the last day of his visit, in the city of Aparecida , the Pope "touch[ed] on a sensitive historical episode," in the blandly understated language of an Associated Press dispatch (May 13). In other words, he ripped the bandages off a still-suppurating wound. According to the official text of Benedict's comments on the Vatican website, the Pope declared that "the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean " were "silently longing" to receive Christ as their savior. He was "the unknown God whom their ancestors were seeking, without realizing it ..." Colonization by Spain and Portugal was not a conquest, but rather an "adoption" of the Indians through baptism, making their cultures "fruitful" and "purifying" them. Accordingly, "the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbian cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture."

(Note: The Uru Chipaya people of Bolivia - Its members belong to what is thought to be the oldest surviving culture in the Andes, a tribe that has survived for 4,000 years on the barren plains of the Bolivian interior. But the Uru Chipaya, who outlasted the Inca empire and survived the Spanish conquest, are warning that they now face extinction through climate change and conversion. Refer to The Uru Chipaya people of Bolivia: Conversion to Christianity).

So there we have it. The invasion and conquest of the Americas , which caused the deaths of upwards of 90 percent of the indigenous population, was something the Indians had been pining for all along. They weren't just "asking for it," as sexist cranks depict women as complicit in their own rapes. They were actually "longing" for it, since salvation and "purification" came with it…

Benedict's astounding comments attracted barely a flicker of media attention in the West -- almost all of it on the wire services, and some of it problematic in itself. A May 13 Reuters dispatch noted blithely that, contrary to Benedict's claims, "many Indian groups believe the conquest brought them enslavement and genocide." This is rather like writing that "many Jewish groups believe that the Nazi Holocaust brought Jews enslavement and genocide." The reality exists independently of the belief. As blogger Stentor Danielson points out: "In the real world, it's a basic historical fact that the Indians were enslaved. It's a basic historical fact that entire tribes were wiped out. The reason [that] 'many Indian groups believe' these historical facts is because people like Reuters' craven reporters won't admit when there's a fact behind the claims."  

(source: Father of Lies: The Pope's Genocidal Revisionism - crusadewatch.org). Refer to Mystery of Mayan Crystal skulls.

Holy Disaster

''Arrogant.'' ''Disrespectful.'' ''Poorly advised.'' These harsh words were not aimed at an unpopular president; not this time. They are the criticisms by Indian leaders in Latin America of Pope Benedict XVI, who again made headlines for culturally insensitive and historically inaccurate remarks. In a speech at the Conference of the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopate, the pope characterized pre-contact Indians as ''silently longing'' for Christianity and stated that ''the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbus cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture.''

It may be the most blatantly erroneous statement about the Christian legacy on indigenous cultures ever uttered.

Not only did the pope's comments exhibit an ever-increasing general arrogance that aims to deny the rights of indigenous peoples around the world but, in this rare case, they came straight from the source. Millions of tribal people died as a result of the institution of the 15th century Inter Caetera papal bulls that provided legal justification for European colonization of the Native people of the Americas (including Brazil where Benedict spoke) and Africa .

Then, Indians were slaughtered, enslaved or exposed to deadly diseases. Now, Native survivors of Christian colonization efforts suffer its traumatic generational effects: a diminished ability to relate to and practice traditional life ways, social exclusion and learned sexual abuse. If this does not qualify as an ''imposition'' on the culture of indigenous peoples, what does? They referred to a ''process of genocide,'' which no doubt began with the arrival of European Christian crusaders. It is agreed then that the pope is fully aware of the indigenous position on the lasting legacy of Christianity as a colonizing force. Ignorance is no excuse.

The comments were more an indication that the Church's knowledge of indigenous cultures has not evolved much since the days when Natives were thought by Catholic monarchs to be heathens empty of a guiding spiritual force, in need of enlightenment. It is now time the Vatican , as a religious authority and political nation-state, acknowledges the cost of Christianity on the indigenous people of the world.

(source: Holy Disaster - Pope Alienates Indigenous Peoples - nativeunity.blogspot.com). Refer to Mystery of Mayan Crystal skulls. Refer to Cannibalism and Bloodbath of the Crusades.

Are there times when Pope Benedict XVI should just butt out, when he should just keep his holy mouth shut?

That's what Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and some of his South American neighbors in Ecuador appear to believe after some of the remarks Benedict pronounced publicly during his visit to Brazil last week. The Holy One, looking back fuzzily at the history of a part of the world he doesn't seem to know very well, asserted in a speech to Catholic bishops from around Latin America and the Caribbean who had gathered in São Paulo that the Christian-evangelical movement that took place during the Spanish-Portuguese colonial era of the 16th and 17th centuries, in which masses of missionaries set out to convert the locals to their imported religion, "was not the imposition of a foreign culture" on the native peoples of the conquered region. The pope said that, thanks to the European Catholics' religious-conversion efforts, the native peoples of what is now known as Latin America were given an opportunity to get to know a god who had been "unknown" to their ancestors.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said: 

"As the head of state, I ask His Holiness to offer his apologies to the peoples of our America. I believe this is the correct thing to do. How can he say they [colonial-era conquerors and missionaries] came - when they came with crossbows - to evangelize without any kind of imposition [of their religion in mind]?" Chávez referred to the European conquest of the Americas as "something much more serious than the holocaust that took place during the Second World War, and no one can deny it; not even His Holiness can deny the holocaust of native peoples [that took place] in this land."

In an ironic-sounding statement, CONAIE Federation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Spanish acronym: CONAIE) noted: "Certainly the pope doesn't [sic] know that the representatives of the Catholic Church of those times, with a few honorable exceptions, were accomplices, concealers and beneficiaries of one of the most horrific genocides in [the history of] humanity." The organization was referring to the massacres of millions of native people that were carried out over time by the well-armed Europeans who, centuries ago, conquered and claimed the territories of today's Latin America for their kings "with God" - and the Catholic Church - "on their side."

(source: Refer to Chávez to the pope: Butt out of our politics and get your historical facts straight! - crusadewatch.org).

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Destruction of the Inca Empire: The Conquest of Peru

Lust for gold made the Spanish conquest of Peru one of the bloodiest episodes in the history of empire.  

It was in 1532 that a motley collection of Spanish conquistadors first appeared on the Fringes of the Inca empire, the largest and most powerful empire in South America had ever known. 

In the months to come these 62 horsemen and 106 foot soldiers commanded by a professional soldier named Francisco Pizzaro (1471 - 1541) would march to the heart of Peru and brutally seize control of the Inca throne. Within a decade, a glittering Andean world would be firmly in the grip of the Spaniards, its glories stripped and its people virtually enslaved.  Few historical events have been as dramatic or cruel as the conquest of Peru.

Lack of principles and greed – By the time the Incas realized the ruthlessness of their foes, it was too late.  

Christians on the march  

The early 1600s saw a far-flung campaign against idolatry, spurred on by a revival of native religion in 1565. 

The renewed religious zeal of the Catholic Church led to a push to stamp out native religion once and for all. 

The crusade also produced volumes of valuable dictionaries and accounts that are still being studied by historians today. Priests visited outlying provinces, collecting information on cults and sometimes torturing villagers to reveal the whereabouts of idols and huacas. The colonists flourished. Spain decreed that all trade from South America should pass through Lima , ensuring a massive flow of taxes. Lima , the opulent “City of Kings ,” was crammed with magnificent churches and mansions.  The Diabolical herb? - Coca was condemned by the Catholic Church as a “diabolical herb” until it was realized that the Indians could not survive without it in the brutal mining work that they were compelled to do. 

Meeting between Pizzarro and Atahualpa.

Lust for gold made the Spanish conquest of Peru one of the bloodiest episodes in the history of empire.  

(image source: Peru: Insight Guides).

***

Atahuallpa was the last sovereign emperor of the Tahuantinsuyu, or the Inca Empire. He became emperor upon defeating his older half-brother Huáscar in a civil war sparked by the death of their father, Inca Huayna Capac, from an infectious disease thought to be smallpox. During the Spanish Invasion, the Spaniard Francisco Pizarro crossed his path, captured Atahualpa, and used him to control the Inca empire. Eventually, the Spanish executed Atahualpa by garrote, ending the Inca Empire.

Many decades later.. Tupac Amaru mounted the scaffold with Bishop Agustín de la Corunna. The "multitude of Indians, who completely filled the square, saw that lamentable spectacle [and knew] that their lord and Inca was to die, they deafened the skies, making them reverberate with their cries and wailing." 

As reported by Baltasar de Ocampa and Friar Gabriel de Oviedo, Prior of the Dominicans at Cuzco , both eyewitnesses, the Sapa Inca raised his hand to silence the crowds, and his last words were;

"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta."

"Mother Earth, witness how my enemies shed my blood."

Nearly forty years after the conquest of Peru began with the execution of Atahuallpa, the conquest ended with the execution of his nephew. A roundup of Incan descendants was soon initiated by the Viceroy. Several dozen, including Tupac Amaru's three-year-old son, were banished to Mexico, Chilé, Panama and elsewhere. King Philip overturned some of the banishments.

Francisco de Toledo, Count of Oropesa (1515 - 1584) ruled Peru with a harshness never before known. He wrote a large volume of laws, including:

"Any Indian who makes friendship with an Indian woman who is an infidel, is to receive one hundred lashes, for the first offense..." and "Indians shall no longer use surnames taken from the moon, birds, animals, serpents, or rivers, which they formerly used."

According to Spanish records the 'number of souls under their jurisdiction' fell from about 1.5 million in 1561 to 600,000 in 1796 (including European descendants). Prior to 1561 it is estimated more than 75% of the native population perished due to small pox, measles and influenzas introduced by the Europeans. Famines also took their toll due to the disruptions of economic and social life. In some provinces fully two-thirds of the population was conscripted to work in silver mines, where most perished. By 1800, the population was reduced to one-tenth the aboriginal level, if not far less.  

The Cathedral was built on what once was the palace of Inca Wiracocha , and made in part from stones hauled from the fortress of Sacsayhuman outside the city. 

Pope Benedict XVI said the Church had not imposed itself on the indigenous peoples of the Americas

The Cathedral was built on what once was the palace of Inca Wiracocha , and made in part from stones hauled from the fortress of Sacsayhuman outside the city. 

***

Spanish chronicles recall the European astonishment when they saw Coricancha’s patio filled with life-sized gold and silver statues of llamas, trees, fruits, flowers and even delicately handicrafted butterflies. Legend has it that Atahualpa’s ransom included 20 of Coricancha’s life-sized golden statues of beautiful women. 

(source: Peru: Insight Guides and wikipedia). 

Hari Jagannathan Balasubramanian writes about the intentional assault on local civilizations by Europeans. 

While the predominantly tribal societies of North America had been conquered by European Protestants, the massive empires of the Central and South had been downed by a band of daring conquistadors from Catholic Spain. The Caribbean natives faded in the decades after Columbus’ arrival; Argentina’s natives were exterminated in the eighteenth century. But in Mexico and the Andean nations (Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia) the descendants of the Aztecs, the Mayans, the Incas (and many other indigenous groups) are still there. The conquests were no less devastating, but a forcibly imposed Catholicism had brought Indians into its fold, even as it erased earlier beliefs.

The arrival of the Europeans to America was a Black Swan – an unprecedented event that had a massive impact. No one could have predicted the consequences. Millions of American Indians died, either due to disease or conquest, and the Americas (especially North America) lost their voice and culture. Europe and Asia benefited immensely from the crops and foods domesticated in the Americas (corn, tomatoes, potatoes, chilies to name a few). Europeans found a new place to emigrate to – for them it was a positive Black Swan that unleashed new energies.

In the case of Easter Island, locals and rats were blamed for the decline and Western missionaries and invaders were absolved. Now it turns out that Western missionaries and invaders indeed are to be blamed for eradicating a culture. 

Archaeological evidence supporting a theory of pre-European internal-collapse is thin on the ground. “Rather than a story of self-inflicted deprivation, I agree with the view that substantial blame has to rest with Western contact,” said Dr Croucher. “Visitors brought disease, pests and slavery, resulting in the tragic demise of the local population and culture.” [Easter Island Was Devastated by Western Invaders and Not Internal Conflict]

The missionaries converted the remaining population to Christianity, encouraging them to abandon their traditional beliefs. Even then, several hundred inhabitants were driven off the island to work on sugar plantations in Tahiti. By 1877, a population of just 110 people was recorded.

(source: The Criminals who destroyed Easter Island -  varman.nationalinterest.in). Refer to Cannibalism at Jamestown, Virginia, USA.

Destruction of Spiritual Places

The Coricancha Temple 

The Coricancha temple (meaning literally, "the corral of gold") was dedicated primarily to Viracocha, the creator god, and Inti, the Sun god. The Coricancha also had subsidiary shrines to the Moon, Venus, the Pleiades, and various weather deities. The Coricancha (from the Quechua words Quri Kancha meaning 'Golden Courtyard'), originally named Inti Kancha (' Temple of the Sun') was the most important temple in the Inca Empire, dedicated primarily to Inti, the Sun God. The walls and floors were once covered in 700 sheets of solid gold, and the courtyard was filled with golden statues. Spanish reports tell of its opulence that was 'fabulous beyond belief'. The majority of the gold collected to fill the ransom room for the Inca Atahualpa was collected from Coricancha. The Church of Santo Domingo was built on the site, using the ruined foundations of the temple that was flattened by the Spanish in the 17th century. Major earthquakes have severely damaged the church, but the Inca stone walls, built out of huge, tightly-interlocking blocks of stone, still stand thanks to the sophisticated stone masonry. The Coricancha (sometimes spelled Qoricancha) was the centerpiece of a vast astronomical observatory and calendrical device for precisely calculating precessional movement.

Colonization of the Incas

The Brutal savagery of the Spanish Conquistadores

The Coricancha temple was dedicated primarily to Viracocha, the creator god, and Inti, the Sun god. The stone wall in the foreground was part of the temple structure that was destroyed.

The stone walls and floors were once covered in sheets of solid gold, and the courtyard was filled with golden statues. Spanish reports tell of its opulence that was 'fabulous beyond belief'.  On the Summer Solstice sun light from the opening in one of the rooms illuminates a specific niche in which sits the Inca chief. The rooms were adorned with elaborate gold ceremonial objects including a huge gold sun disk which was considered sacred. The Temple of the Sun was once the most important temple of the Incas. When the Spanish conquered the Inca Empire, they used the fine Inca stonework to form the base of the Church of Santo Domingo . When the Spaniards conquered Cuzco , the Inca capital, they set about stripping the gold from the temples and melting them down. Legend has it that it took three months to cart all of the gold from the Sun Temple .

Just like the Islamic conqueror built mosques on the top of vandalized Hindu temples in India, the Catholics built the Santo Domingo Church on top of Inca temples that they destroyed. 

Justifying Colonization? - Utterly distorted image of the American past by taking some of its ugly features out of context and magnifying them out of proportion. Sacrifice practiced by the Incas was repeatedly stressed without explaining its extenuating features, and without pointing out that human sacrifice had not been unknown to other peoples, such as in Egypt, Rome and in the Bible. Taking their technique a step further they contrasted this picture with that of their own deeds in Asioamerica in which European misdemeanor, caprice, and criminality were soft-pedaled and civilized and humane behavior emphasized.

The process of demonization of Inca culture and faith still continues today......

(image source: Editor's own collection of photos taken during a recent visit).

***

Emanating from the temple were forty lines (some sources say 42) called seques, running arrow-straight for hundreds of miles to significant celestial points on the horizon. Between 328 and 365 huacas or shrines were situated along these ceques. Four of the ceques represented the four intercardinal roads to the four quarters of Tawantinsuyu, others pointed to the equinox and solstice points, and still others to the heliacal rise positions of different stars and constellations highly important to the Inca. The Inca also used the Coricancha in conjunction with standing stones called sucancas positioned on the horizon of nearby mountains for determining the dates of the solstices and equinoxes, as well as monitoring the passage of precessional time. The great temple also incorporates a prominent solar alignment using a nearby peak called Pachatusan as a sightline for the June solstice. The elliptical exterior wall of the temple may have served as a model of the celestial ecliptic.

(source: sacredsites.com and wikipedia).  

The Chinchero Church

When the Spanish conquerors arrived first to these lands; they could not explain themselves how Peruvian "Indians" (ignorant, wild, without any ability of logical reasoning, one more animal species according to conquerors) could have built such a greatness. Their religious fanaticism led them to believe that all that was simply work of demons or malign spirits. 

Parallels to History of India

Destruction of Ancient pagan way of life

Just like the Islamic and Portuguese conqueror built mosques and churches on the top of vandalized Hindu temples, the Spanish built the Chinchero Church on top of Inca ruins. 

Given this bloody history today Catholics continue to piously pray in this church.

(image source: Editor's own collection of photos taken during a recent visit).

***

Chinchero was once the home/temple of one of the last Incan emperors, Yupa Inca, and before Spanish rule, the village was fondly known as El Pueblo Del Arco Iris, or "birthplace of the rainbow."

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Articles:

Maya Civilization of Mexico.
Baffling Links with Ancient India
By Anand Sharma
http://www.indiagov.org/perspec/mar99/maya.htm 

The archaeological remains of ancient Maya civilization of Mexico are lying scattered in the parts of Yucatan, Campeche, Tabasco and eastern half of Chiapas as well as in the territory of Quintana Roo of the republic of Mexico. Covering an area of about 125,000 square miles, its traces are to be found in the western section of Honduras Republic, Peten and adjacent highlands of Guatemala and practically in the whole of Honduras.

Admiral Christopher Columbus mistakenly called the New World inhabitants as Indians. Although he corrected himself subsequently, the natives of Americas continued to be called 'Indians'. During the course of his third journey, Columbus came into contact with 'Maya' people.

Many theories have been advanced by scholars to explain the origins of these American Indians and if there were any links between the ancient civilizations of the Old World and the New World. There are historians who believe that the American civilizations were purely native in origin and also those who maintain the theory of Asians crossing over through Bering Strait via Alaska and reaching the American continent some 12,000 - 15,000 years ago. However, the antiquity of American Indians remains shrouded in the veil of mystery. In spite of a great deal of investigations, explorations and deep study by scholars and innumerable historians during the last many centuries, what we know about pre-Columbus Americas is very little in comparison to what we do not know. 

To quote Glyn Daniel from his book 'The First Civilizations', "within 15 years, between 1519 to 1533, the Western world discovered and brutally destroyed three civilizations - the Aztecs of Mexico, Maya of Yuacatan and Guatemala and Inca of Peru."

The unique elaboration of the Mayan civilization has been a challenge to the imagination of explorers and students of history. The Mayans had attained the highest maturity in art, craft, sculpture and hieroglyphs. Innumerable theories exist about these ancient people. Their magnificent achievements in social, economic, political and religious fields, their calendar and hieroglyphic writings, reasons of the sudden collapse of their classic culture everywhere in Mesoamerica, the reality of 'Kulkulkan Quetzal-Coatl' myth are some of the riddles of Mexican history challenging modern research. The 'Maya' Indians spent thousands of years in building their magnificent monuments and Mayapan, Palenque, Copan, Tikal, Kaminalijuyu and Piedras Negras were the centres where Mayan culture flourished in splendour. How and why these places were deserted in the past is still a mystery. Although modern scientists have achieved significant success in deciphering Maya calendar system, none has been able to decipher their hieroglyphic system of writing.

The possibility of links of these people with Old World civilizations and particularly with ancient India is not acceptable to many historians. However, there are those who hold a different view. 

Eminent scholar-writers like Mackenzie, Hewitt, Tod, Pococke and Mrs. Nuttal have collected plenty of data to show that ancient American civilizations were influenced by Old World civilizations. 

We have to remember that the post-Columbus history of America for 300 years was the story of ruthless destruction and fanatics like Bishop Diego da Landa burnt a huge bonfire of valuable documents and nothing but the three codices of 'Chilam Balam' could survive the holocaust.

There are two specific archaeological discoveries pertaining to 761 AD, about which most Mexican historians are silent, that attract our attention as possible links of Maya civilization to ancient India. The first one is a wall panel (Panel No. 3 of Temple 0-13, at Piedras Negras, Guatemala; reproduced as Plate 69, page 343 of 'The Ancient Maya' by S.G. Morley) belonging to the Later Classic Stage of Mexican history, associated with the peaking of Maya architecture and sculpture. Mexican historians have not given any interpretation of this panel. 

It appears that the scene depicted in the panel relates to the great Indian epic 'Ramayana'. 

It shows a king sitting on the throne and one maidservant with two children standing on the right side of the throne. A guard stands behind the three. On the other side of the king, three important personages are standing whereas the vassal chiefs and important feudatories are sitting in front of the throne. The king on the throne is believed to be Suryavanshi Ram with his three illustrious brothers standing by his side. The two little children are his two sons with a maid and a guard behind them. Amongst the three persons on the right, two are engaged in a discussion whereas the third one, apparently Lakshman, is standing with a bold, brave and confident demeanour which was characteristic of him. The above panel is a beautiful piece of sculpture and an evidence of great Mayan heritage, their artistic taste and superior creative ability and, above all, an archaeological evidence to prove India's link with Mexico in the 8th century at least. The artistic design and postures of the figures carved can be compared to those found at Ajanta and Ellora caves in India. This interpretation, however, remains only a plausible one till the hieroglyphics and frescoes surrounding the wall panel are deciphered.

Another archaeological discovery at the same place i.e. Piedras Negras, Guatemala, is a stone stela (No. 12, Plate No. 18, page 61 of 'The Ancient Maya' by S.G. Morley). A mythological scene has been carved in this stela, depicting the architectural and artistic maturity of the Maya people of the Classic Stage (594 - 889 AD). There is a beautiful image of a deity with eight hands (ashtabhuja). The art style is discernibly Indian as in no other religion of the world deities of this type were worshipped. It may be mentioned that the ruling dynasty of Mexico at the time of the conquest by Spaniards was 'Aztec' or Ashtak (Eight). The evidence in the form of such images leaves little doubt about the presence of Indian culture amongst the ancient Mexicans. The stela pertains to the period of more than eight centuries before Columbus set foot on the soil of the so-called New World.

The place where these pieces have been discovered - Piedras Negras - appears to be a distorted form of 'Priyadarsh Nagraj' in Sanskrit, as has been the case with so many words distorted by European pronunciation. These stone sculptures are adornments of a Mayan temple and depict some popular mythology prevalent amongst the people of the time. Both human sacrifice and idolatry were much in practice amongst Maya people. Morley has given a detailed and vivid account of Maya culture and society in his book 'The Ancient Maya', profusely quoting Bishop Diego de Landa.

Bishop Landa states that Maya people "…had a very great number of idols and temples which were magnificent in their own fashion and besides the community temples, the lords, priests and leading men also had oratories and idols in their houses where they made their prayers and offerings in private". Not only of gods but idols of even animals and insects were prepared by Maya people, who believed in immortality of soul and afterlife. This definitely smacks of an Indian connection.

More serious efforts to connect the ancient American civilizations with those of ancient India have to be made. The Trans-Pacific contacts of the people of south-east Asia with the people of ancient America have been established beyond doubt. It is also a well-proven fact of history that Indians of ancient times were great sea-farers. In pre-Mahabharata era as well as in the subsequent period, the kings of southern India possessed large fleets used for trade with the Arabian and European countries where Indian merchandise was much in demand. India's links with south-east Asia and other far-off islands of the Pacific Ocean are an established fact of history. The conquest of Malaya by Rajendra Chola, the story of Buddhagupta the Great Sailor (Mahanavik), the religious expeditions of Indians to preach the gospel of Buddhism in the distant lands of Cambodia, Annam, Bali, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Japan, Korea, Mongolia and China are proofs of the impact of Indian culture.

A remarkable feature of the Indian culture has been that colonial domination was never identified with economic exploitation. The Buddhist Jatakas (folk tales) narrate many stories relating to maritime adventures and daring sea journeys which establish that such activities were an essential part of Indian life at that time.

The author is a historian settled in Vienna.  For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

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Master Builder Uncovers Striking similarities in Indian and Incan/Mayan Sacred Structures
Hinduism Today - June 1995
http://www.hinduismtoday.com/archives/1995/6/1995-6-01.shtml 

Ancient Architects Employed Analogous Design Doctrines and Masonry Methods

"Sri V. Ganapati Sthapati," read Deva Rajan's fax to our Hawaii editorial office from Machu Picchu high in the rugged Andes Mountains of Peru, South America, "has just measured with tape, compass and a lay-out story pole, two ancient Incan structures at Machu Picchu: a temple and a residence. He has confirmed that the layout of these structures, locations for doors, windows, proportions of width to length, roof styles, degree of slopes for roofs, column sizes, wall thicknesses, etc., all conform completely to the principles and guidelines as prescribed in the Vastu Shastras of India. Residential layouts are identical to those found in Mohenjodaro. The temple layouts are identical to those that he is building today and that can be found all over India."

These startling discoveries came during a March, 1995, visit of the master builder to the ancient Incan and Mayan sites of South and Central America. Ganapati Sthapati is India's foremost traditional temple architect and perhaps the first true expert in sculpture and stone construction to personally examine these ancient buildings. To do so has been his dream since the 1960's.

Sthapati is the architect of the San Marga Iraivan Temple [see page 28] being built at Kauai Aadheenam, Hawaii, home of Hinduism Today. To fulfill this life-long ambition to visit the Mayan and Incan sites, our publisher, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, arranged for California builders and architects Deva Rajan and Thamby Kumaran to accompany Sthapati on a three-week trip through South and Central America. "Like boys on holiday," they described their exciting trek of discovery which began 11,000 feet high in central Peru at the famed Incan site of Machu Picchu which remained hidden until 1911.

It is Sthapati's theory that Mayan, the creator of Indian architecture, originated from the Mayan people of Central America. In Indian history, Mayan appears several times, most significantly as the author of Mayamatam, "Concept of Mayan" which is a Vastu Shastra, a text on art, architecture and town planning. The traditional date for this work is 8,000bce. Mayan appears in the Ramayana (2000bce) and again in the Mahabharata (1400bce)-in the latter he designs a magnificent palace for the Pandava brothers. Mayan is also mentioned in Silappathikaram, an ancient Tamil scripture, and is author of Surya Siddhanta, one of the most ancient Hindu treatises on astronomy.

The fundamental principle of Mayan's architecture and town planning is the "module." Buildings and towns are to be laid out according to certain multiples of a standard unit. Floor plans, door locations and sizes, wall heights and roofs, all are determined by the modular plan. More specifically, Mayan advocated the use of an eight-by-eight square, for a total of 64 units, which is known as the Vastu Purusha Mandala. The on-site inspection by Sthapati was to determine if the Incan and Mayan structures did follow a modular plan and reflect the Vastu Purusha Mandala. He also intended to examine the stone working technology-his particular field of expertise.

Sthapati was born in 1927 into a family whose ancestors, members of the aboriginal tribe of Viswakarmas, built the great temple at Tanjore in the 10th century ce at the request of Raja Raja Chola. He learned the craft from his father, Sri M. Vaiydyanatha Sthapati and his uncle, Sri M. Sellakkannu Sthapati. He spent 27 years as head of the Government College of Architecture and Sculpture in Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu, and is responsible for India's significant resurgence in the ancient art of stone carving. After his retirement in 1988, he continued building temples and founded the Vastu Vedic Research Foundation to explore the ancient origins of the temple craftsmen. He is responsible for the construction of dozens of temples in India, plus others in Chicago, Washington D.C., Kentucky, Boston, Baltimore, San Francisco, and Hawaii in the USA as well as in the UK, Singapore, Fiji, Malaysia, Mauritius and the Seychelles.

Machu Picchu

The moment Sthapati approached an ancient Incan residential building at Machu Picchu on March 15th, he pointed at the wall and said, "That is a thickness of one kishku hasta"-33 inches, a standard measure in South India first promulgated by Mayan. He proceeded to measure the buildings in detail and discovered each was indeed built on a module-based plan [see photos and drawings to right], following the system of Mayan's eight-by-eight squares. The module method was followed within small fractions of an inch, according to Thamby Kumaran, who was taking the measurements. The buildings were oriented toward certain points of the compass, also a principle of Mayan, rather than randomly placed. Also the lengths of buildings were never more than twice their width, as Mayan stipulated.

From Machu Picchu the three adventurers traveled to Saqsayhuman, an Incan site dated from 400 bce to 1400 ce. Here are the famous stone walls made of rocks weighing up to 160 tons and fitted together so expertly that a knife blade cannot be put in any joint. "Nobody knows how these stones were put in place," offered their guide when they first arrived on the site. Sthapati politely differed, and pointed out the insets chiseled into the base of many stones, as well as small knobs left on their faces. "These are for the use of levers, the exact same system we continue to use in India to move large stones. Thirty to forty men can move these very large rocks with this method," he explained to the guide's astonishment.

He could see other details of the stone working were identical to what is practiced in India, such as the method of quarrying stones by splitting off slabs [photo page 14]. So too was the jointing and fitting of stones, the use of lime mortar, leveling with a plumb line and triangle, and the corbeling for the roofs. Corbeling is the method by which stones are drawn in layer by layer until they meet or nearly meet to allow a roof slab to be placed on top. Sthapati considers the similarity of this technology to that used in India to be very significant. The use of the horizontal lintel and the absence of the arch are additional noteworthy points of correspondence between the two traditions.

Land of the Mayans

From the high Andes the threesome flew to Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. They and forty-five thousand other Mayan aficionados arrived at Chichén Itzá in time for the summer equinox on March 21st. At the moment of sunset on the equinox, a shadow is cast by the steps of the Pyramid of the Castle [photo right and on page one, where the shadow can be seen] upon the side of the staircase to the top. The shadow creates the image of a serpent's body which joins a stone carving of a serpent's head at the bottom of the stair case. It is a stunning demonstration of Mayan astronomical and architectural precision.

Archeologists, tourists and New Agers all gathered for the event, each with their own agenda. Since the publication of The Mayan Factor-A Path Beyond Technology by José Arguëlles, the Mayans and their advanced calendar, astronomy, philosophy and architecture have enjoyed a wide following in the West. Sthapati too has found much of interest in Arguëlles' book.

Standard academia archeologists consider the New Age interest as bordering on superstition and refuse to even talk to anyone partial to Mayan mysticism. A recent book, Copan and Tikal, the Secrets of Two Cities, by Honduran author Ricardo Agurcia Fasquelle and archaeologist Juan Antonio Valdes of Guatemala, claim that the Mayan pyramids were actually castles for the wealthy and that what were once thought to be monuments to the Gods were in fact tributes to the dynasties of various kings. Not likely.

Native Mayan teachers such as Hunbatz Men, whom Sthapati met while in the Yucatan, are taking advantage of the interest to spark a revival of the original Mayan religion among the Mayans themselves. Since their brutal conquest and forced conversion to Catholicism by the Spaniards in the 16th century, Mayans have lived an oppressed and impoverished existence.

Amidst the crowds, Sthapati, Deva and Thamby again unsheathed their tape measures and closely examined the Pyramid of the Castle [see diagram right]. It too conformed to the Vastu Vedic principles of Mayan. The temple structure at the top was exactly 1/4th of the base. And the stepped pyramid design derived from a three-dimensional extension of the basic eight-by-eight grid system. The temple room at the top was also modular in design, with the wall thickness determining the size of doorways, location of columns, thickness of columns and the width and length of the structure.

Most interesting was the name of this structure-chilambalam, meaning a sacred space. It is Sthapati's theory that the Mayans worshiped the very concept of space, specifically a space made according to the modular system. This same idea is found in Hinduism in the sacred room in the center of the Chidambaram Siva Temple in South India, where space or akasha is worshiped-there is no idol. Chidambaram, Sthapati finds suspiciously like chilambalam, means "hall of consciousness." The concept of sacred space is at the center of the mystical shilpi tradition of India 

The richly decorated Mayan buildings provided a feast for a sculptor's eye. There is a very common feature called a "mask" by the archeologists, but known to the Mayans as "Big Nose." A nearly identical face is a common feature of Hindu iconography, seen, for example, at the top of the arch placed behind a deity. "It is the very same thing in India," chuckled Sthapati, "we call it `Maha Nyasa'-Big Nose!" Several other details of the sculptures were similar or identical to India, such as the earrings, ear plugs, teeth, head dresses, even buckles around the waist. There are bas reliefs of priests sitting in lotus posture meditating.

From Chichén Itzá, they traveled on to Uxmal where they observed the snake and "bindu" designs on the wall faces [picture right]. They were astounded by the thousands of pyramids at Tikal and Uxacturn in Guatemala, all laid out to conform to a grid pattern and oriented in astronomically significant directions.

As in Mayan buildings, Indians have been using lime mortar for all of their stone and brick buildings. This can been seen in the monumental creations in Mahabalipuram and also in the stone temples of Tanjor and Gangai Konda Choleasuram in Tamil Nadu. The outer surfaces were plastered, embellishments worked out in lime mortar, then painted. This method was strongest among the Mayas at Tikal and Uaxactún, where all of the structures once had a plaster coating painted with many colors.

What is the Connection?

Sri Ganapati Sthapati postulates, after deep thought from his journey to the land of the Mayans and a lifetime study of South Indian architecture, that Mayan, the divine architect of Indian tradition, came from Central America. Ancient Tamil literature speaks of lands to the south of India 30,000 years ago, at the time of the first Tamil Sangam. According to scientists 160 million years ago India did lie physically close to Africa, South and Central America, but has since moved away as a result of continental drift. At that date, it would have been dinosaurs and not Mayans who wandered from the Americas to India, but perhaps the time frame for the continental drift is not correct. Architecture aside, there are significant similarities between Hinduism and the native religions of both Africa and the Americas.

There are other explanations. The simplest is boats. In 1970 the Norwegian Thor Hyerdal sailed a reed boat from Africa to the Americas in 57 days using no modern equipment. The boat, Ra II, was built for him by the Aymaro Indians of Lake Titicaca, Peru, neighbors of the ancient Incans. The double-hulled catamarans of India are also capable of long sea voyages. Historians discount contact between ancient people, but many cultures, such as the ancient Hawaiians, had remarkable sea-faring skills.

Perhaps the coincidences of stone working are just that, coincidence -a favorite "explanation" of archeologists. Stone workers will discover the same techniques naturally, without need for outside help, they say, and can point to historical incidents of simultaneous discovery. But this explanation hardly accounts for the similarities in motifs and modular design.

Another explanation is mystical-that Mayan, who is a divine being in Indian histories, appeared to both peoples. He could have conveyed the knowledge through visions and dreams.

Sri Ganapati Sthapati is vigorously continuing his research and is open to suggestions from Hinduism Today readers. Any information you may have on the similarities of the two cultures may be shared with him by writing to:

Vastu Vedic Research Foundation, Plot A-1, H.I.G. Colony, 1st Main Road (New Beach Road), Thiruvalluvar Nagar, Thiruvanmiyur, Madras 600 041, India.

Sidebar: The Vastu Vedic Tradition
Text: V. Ganapati Sthapati spoke eloquently during our interviews of the deep mysticism of his tradition. Here is an excerpt from his paper, "Synthesis of Science and Spirituality in the Vastu Vedic Tradition of Art and Architecture."

The Vastu Shilpa tradition of Indian origin has made a scientific approach to the problems of spirit and spiritual realization. This scientific tradition of Va-stu perceives Shakti [energy] as all-pervasive and as the casual substance for all the manifestations of visual and aural phenomena in the universe. They have named their Shakti as Paravastu in Sanskrit and the universal objects as Vastu. The word Paravastu means the quintessence or the ultimate substance. This phenomenon of Vastu and Va-stu can be equated to gold turned into gold ornaments, the shilpi acting as the agent for the transformation. Further, this Vastu is recognized by the Vastu tradition as one dwelling in the inner space of individual beings as well as in the outside space, the universal being. The science says that it is space, because of its self-propelled vibration, that turns into forms-the vibration force acting as the working agency. To do this is its unquestionable nature. This agency is designated as Absolute Time, emerging out of space. This is analogous to the vibration of the instrument of the vina developing into sound space. Here, sound space turns into sound form, and this when set to rhythmic vibration turns into musical form.

There is also another space responsible for the sound space. It is called luminous space. This pervades the entire universe (cosmos). This is the ultimate space wherein lie the Absolute Time and Absolute Energy. This is filled with luminous substance (Vastu) consisting of Paramanus, the minute particles of space. This luminous space is supersensitive, capable of becoming conscious of itself and vibrating into objects that it becomes conscious of. This action is its intrinsic nature and responsible for the forms that occur in the inner space of individuals as well as in the outer space of the universe. The experience of this form, in terms of space, is Spiritual Vision. This phenomenon is nothing but abstract science held by the Vastu tradition.

The Vastu tradition designates the inner being as Shilpi and the inner manifest subtle form as Shilpa, and as such the whole inner and outer universes are filled with shilpas. The gross visual forms are projected outside from the inside, by the inner being. This is the transformation of the subtle inner form into the gross visual, through the fingers exactly in tune with the subtle in terms of time and space. That "the sculptor becomes the sculpture and the poet becomes the poem" is therefore a powerful Vaignanic statement of the Vastu Vedins, and it is of pure advaitic tone. The projected visual form has the touch of a lyric, depending upon the individual inner culture.

Sidebar: The Linguistic Similarities
Text: Chacla in Mayan refers to force centers of the body similar to the chakras of Hinduism. K'ultanlilni in Mayan refers to the power of God within man which is controlled by the breath, similar in meaning to kundalini. Mayan chilambalam refers to a sacred space, as does Tamil Chidambaram. Yok'hah in Mayan means "on top of truth," similar to yoga in Sanskrit.

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For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

First Hindu-Maya cultural dialogue in Guatemala 

The Mayans of Guatemala - representative of the Maya civilization that flourished during the first millennium AD in Central America - believe their ancestors came to this part of the globe 20,000 years ago from the East.

One of the most dominant ethnic groups, Kekichi Maya, has always had special attraction for India in the past as their forefathers have told them that the "Naga tribes of Nagaland" were one of the four original branches of the Maya civilization.

It is for these reasons and the similarities between the Aryan and Mayan civilizations, the people of Guatemala for long have been trying to establish contact with Indians and have a cultural dialogue.

The first such dialogue formally gets going at Maya Village, Lake Atitlan in Guatemala on May 29. Lake Atitlan is famous for its natural beauty and colourful Mayan villages. A 16-member delegation of intellectuals, academicians and scholars from six countries - mainly people of Indian origin - left Houston in Texas for the Guatemala City on May 27 to participate in the two day conference on "Hindu -Maya Cultural Similarities". The conference is organized by the Council of Elders of the Sacred Mayas, Guatemala in collaboration with the International Centre for Cultural Studies, a non-profit organization based in the US.

The Council of Elders is an umbrella organization of all the 23 different Maya groups in Guatemala and is responsible for controlling the tribal life of the people. "The conference would look at similarities in these cultures and traditions, besides conducting workshops on ceremonies of these traditions," Yashwant Pathak, global coordinator of International Centre for Cultural Studies.

Giving details of the conference, Pathak said on May 29 the Hindu delegation comprising of members from countries like India, the US, Britain, Trinidad and Guyana would be given a traditional Mayan welcome followed by lecture on the culture and tradition of their civilization.

"On the second day, we would present our papers, besides show them how a traditional Hindu welcome is with tilak  and aarti. Later in the afternoon, we would also conduct a Vedic Yagna. We are taking all the necessary things with us for the conference," Pathak said.

Before the conclusion of the two-day conference, members of the two delegations would tie "Rakhi" to each other. "This would represent the permanent brotherhood between the two ancient civilizations of the world and also that we would protect tradition and culture of each other," Pathak said. The Hindu-delegation is also scheduled to meet the Noble peace prize winner, Rigoberta Menchu, a Mayan Indian. In 1992, she won the prize in recognition of her work for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation based on respect for rights of indigenous people.  

After the conference, the Hindu delegation would proceed on a five day tour of the Guatemala Mayan attractions, he said. Pathak said the Hindu and the Maya traditions and cultures are one of the ancient in the world. "There are many similarities in these two great traditions. While, they date back thousands of years; they believe in One God with manifestations in different forms. Both believe in philosophy for human being in totality and total humanity," he said.

(source: First Hindu-Maya cultural dialogue in Guatemala  - By Lalit Jha - hindustantimes.com May 27 2005).  

The repeating cycles of creation and destruction are like the Hindu yugas.

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Did You Know?

Chess originated in India

Sir William Jones wrote that chess had been known to Indians in antiquity as Caturanga, meaning the four wings of the army, which are described in the Amarakosa as elephants, horses, chariots, and infantry. One of the early Sanskrit texts, the Bhavishya Purana, contains a tale of a prince who lost all his possessions in a game of chess played with dice. Chess must indeed go deep into early Indian history, because it was associated with astronomical symbolism though out its growth.

According to H. J. R. Murray, who published his monumental study  A History of Chess 
(Benjamin Prublisher. December 1985 ASIN 0936317019) in 1913, chess descended from an earlier Indian game called Astapada, played on a board containing  8 x 8 cells.

Chaturnaga was taken to Persia in the sixth century during the reign of Anushirvan (531-579) where it came to be known as Chatrang, whcih according to the Arabic phonetic system became Shatranj.
The earliest reference to chess in Persia is found in the Karnamak-i-Artakh Shatr-i-Papakan, written about 600. In the tenth century, the poet Firdusi related a traditional story in his epic poem, Shahnama of how chess came to Persia through an envoy of the King of Hind (India).

For more on Chess please refer to chapter on Hindu Culture and War in Ancient India). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

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Updated -  October 28, 2008