An invasion of India from the outside around 1,500 B. C. did not occur. Recent scholarship does not deny that the people in India had relations with other Indo-European people in Asia and Europe. There was a belt stretching from India to the Mediterranean inhabited by a people who spoke related languages, known as the Indo-European languages. Sanskrit is the oldest known language in this family and may appropriately be called as the Mother of Indo-European languages. English is an Indo-European language. Those who seek to foster the unity of India need to emphasize its unity, not its division. In the great cultural and religious history of India, important contributions have come forth from every region in the nation. The vast Ganga-Jamuna plain in the North of India is indeed the ancient heartland of Hinduism. This is the seat of Ayodhya (Bihar), Mathura and Vrindavan (UP), Kurukshetra (Haryana), and Indraprasatha (Delhi). The Great Mahabharata war was fought in the northern plains. The 8th to the 13th century revival in Hinduism originated in the South. Sankaracharya from Kerala laid the foundation of modern day Hinduism. Sankara traveled to many parts of India and established centers of teaching and learning in various parts of the country. Sankara wrote extensive commentaries on Brahma Sutras, Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, which are standard texts for Hindus. Ramanuja fromTamilnad and Madhava from Karnataka initiated the Bhakti movement, which spread to many parts of the country, both North and South. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu from Bengal, Mirabai from Rajasthan, Tulsidas from U.P, Guru Nanak from Punjab, Jnaneshwar from Maharashtra, Jaideva (author of Gita Govinda) from Orissa, have all contributed to Hindu religion. The four Hindu holy places and pilgrimage sites (Tirathas and Dhams) at Badri Nath, Rameshwaram, Puri, and Dwarka are located in four corners of India: north, south, east and west. Every pious Hindu aspires to visit the four Dhams in one’s lifetime. Some people equate Sanskrit with Hindi language and the Devanagri script. According to Swami Dayananda Saraswati, founder of Arsha Vidya Gurukulum in Pennsylvania and a Sanskrit scholar, Sanskrit language originally did not have its own script. It was written in a variety of local scripts. The writing of Sanskrit in the Devanagri script is a later evelopment in history. An Aryan invasion of India from the outside around 1,500 B. C. did not occur. People of North and South India have lived together in peace as two branches of one family since antiquity. People who talk of an Aryan conquest of India parrot the 19th century British viewpoint and do disservice to the cause of unity of India.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Jul 2013 14:47:03 +0000
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