ARYANS AND ASUR CONFLICT

26. Aryans and Asur Conflict :

The conflict between Devtas / Aryans and Asurs is mentioned in Veds and Purans to understand again we have to go in history.

The Asurs are none other than Assyrians and Ashur is ancient religious capital of Assyria, located on the west bank of the Tigris River in northern Iraq.

According to Lieutenant Colonel Laurence Austine Waddell :

The Makers of Civilization in Race and History :

Discovery of the Pre-Indian homeland of the "Indo-Aryans" :

On the other hand, I observed, by personally visiting most of the oldest reputed city sites in Gangetic India and studying all the archreological reports of the excavations made of all such sites, and most of them went through all the strata down to the virgin soil, that no trace whatever of any ancient Civilization in Gangetic India has been found which can be dated earlier than about the seventh century B.C. and no inscription before the fourth century B.C. And this still remains the case at the present day.

(1. The Bharats were the descendants of the famous king and emperor Bharata, the tenth Aryan king who is now disclosed in these pages as a historical Sumerian emperor of Mesopotamia, with existing contemporary inscriptions and fixed date. Most of the later Aryankings, princes and nobles claimed descent from him, so that most of the leading Aryan clans claimed to be Bharats and especially those forming this great immigration, which warred amongst themselves for the partition of Gangetic India.)

It thus became evident that the Indo-Aryans with their ready-made Civilization and Vedas and their long lines of kings and dynasties of their pre-Indian period, had entered Gangetic India about the beginning of the seventh century B.C., that is shortly before the Great War of the Bharat Aryans (as the ruling Indo-Aryan princes called themselves as we shall see) for the partition of Gangetic and Southern India and Rajputana, as described in their great Indian epic, the Maha-Bharata. And this epoch was also shortly before the epoch of Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, whose birth in India is placed about 557 B.C., when Indian Civilization burst suddenly into view with its fully-fledged Civilization and Brahmanism and bulky Indian literature and writing, with continuous Indian history down to the present day.

Moreover, the Kurus who formed the leading Aryan tribe in the great war of partition of Gangetic India, preserved the tradition that they were driven forth from their old homeland in Kuru by a "curse".

Then, the clues to the pre-Indian homeland of these Aryan immigrants into Gangetic India obtained by my critical comparative study of their ready-made civilization with its social and political constitutions, laws, religion, and its Vedic literature, led me to Mesopotamia and Asia Minor of the Hittites (the ancient name of which, including Syria, was Kur), with their correspondingly advanced Civilization of the same type.

I then picked up the traditional King-Lists of the Early Aryan kings which are embedded in the Indian epic of "The Ancient Heroes," the Puranas-epics which have hitherto been scornfully rejected by all Vedic scholars as fabulous, merely because they could find no traces of those Early Aryan kings in India, for the good reason as now transpires that most of those kings had never been in India at all.

Comparison of these Pauranic King-Lists with those of the Sumerians, Babylonians and Hittites disclosed that several of the names of the Early Aryan kings were substantially identical with those of the Sumerian and Babylonian kinglists and occupied the same chronological position, and were substantially identical also in the exploits of those kings. And further scrutiny disclosed, as shown below, that all the names and titles of those early kings were identical in both lists, Sumero-Babylonian and Indo-Aryan, from the first king of the First Sumerian Dynasty continuously downwards to the end of the Kassi Dynasty in the late, Babylonian period, not only in the names and titles, but also in their exact chronological order and in the achievements of the leading kings.

This central discovery, therefore, established absolutely it was also found that most of the leading historical Sumerian kings and priest-kings were celebrated in the Vedic psalms of the Hindus as famous kings and priest-kings of the Aryan race, and some of them as authors of Vedic psalms. It was thus disclosed that Mesopotamia of the Sumerian period had been for long a homeland of the Early Aryan ruling race, whose later eastern branch had migrated to Gangetic India as the Indo-Aryans about the beginning of the seventh century B.C.

Further comparison with the king-lists of the Khatti, Hatti or "Hitt-ites" of Asia Minor and Upper Mesopotamia accounted for the Indo-Aryan branch of the Aryans in the interval between the twelfth and seventh centuries B.C. I observed that the names of many of the "Hittite" kings, and more especially those subsequent to the fall and expulsion of the Kassi Dynasty of Babylon, with the end of the Sumerian rule in Babylonia, bore names substantially identical with, and in the same chronological order as, the later pre-Indian kings of the Indo-Aryan lists in the Kuru Dynasty.

Now Kur, literally meaning "Mountain-land" was an old Sumerian name for Asia Minor, and especially its eastern portion, and I have shown that this Kur was also obviously the source of Suria of the Greeks, the "Syria" of the Romans, and that Suria was a name for Cappadocia in the time of Herodotus, and was also used for Central and Eastern Asia Minor by the Seleucid Greeks."

(1. WPOB. 12 f. The name appears to survive in Kurdistan, for S.E. Asia Minor, and in the Giaour title for Mt. Amanus and numerous old Hittite sites in Asia Minor.

2. lb., 12. And see also its use by Alexander's historians. who included in Syria all Upper Mesopotamia west of the Tigris, Arrian, Anabasis, 5,25; 7, 9, etc.

3. lb., 12. 4. lb., 13.)

The leading clans also of the Indo-Aryans who formed "The Great Migration" to Gangetic India are often bracketed together in the Vedas as the Kuru-Panch(-ala), which corresponds as I observed to the Surio-Phoiniki of the Greco-Romans, that is the "Syrio-Phoenicians" and in the Vedas the "Panch(ala)," that is the Aryan Phoenicians, bear also the title of Krivi, which is obviously dialectically derived from thisKur or "Syria."

Besides this, as associating the Indo-Aryan remnant of the Sumerians with the Khatti or "Hitt-ites" it was significant that all the Indo-Aryan princes of the Great Migration and who were of the Bharat line, who shortly after their arrival in Gangetic India fought amongst themselves for the partition of India in the Great War of the Bharats, called themselves and were called Khattiyo, which in the old Indian Pali and in its later Sanskrit form possesses the identical literal meaning of "ruler" or "ruling caste" as the Khatti title of the "Hitt-ites" has in both the Hittite and Sumerian languages.

This Kur Land, or Eastern Asia Minor with Syria, was also significantly in its south-eastern province of Comagene in "Upper Syria" bordering Cappadocia, as shown in these pages, the old homeland of the Aryan Kassi or Kashi or Kashshi Dynasty who ruled Babylonia for over six centuries till about 1200 B.C.

Their old Syrian capital there was presumably at their eponymous city latterly called Gashshia or Kishshia above Carchemish, the Samosta capital of Comagene of the Greeks, with old Hittite remains, at the first bridge over the Euphrates, where Strabo records began the overland caravan road to India.

It was natural that the remnant of the Kassi or Kashi Dynasty with their clansmen should return to their old home on expulsion from Babylonia by the Semites and we find members of this Kashi clan amongst the emigrants to India, the road to which from Asia Minor and Syria ran from their old capital on the Upper Euphrates.

(1. lb., 13 2. WPOB. 8 f.

3. Wi-si-ti-lsh (or -Bir). On ti, cp. Br. 2550 and 9518. And on Ish "hero" Br. 5707; PSL. 134; MD. 19. And it has the alternative value of Bir or Bar (MD. 281. Br. 1724), which discloses the Sumerian origin of the Latin Vir, the Sanskrit Virya, "hero".

4. Vicitra (or Wicitra) Virya. On Virya, "hero," see previous note. The r in Wicitra is presumably the r which the Sanskrit frequently intrudes Cockneywise into the old Pali and Sumerian names.)

Still further, I observed that the last historical king of the Khatti or Hittites, namely, WI-SI-TI-the-Hero with his capita at Carchemish in Upper-Syria, was identical with VICITRA (or "Wicitra)-the-Hero, of the Kuru Line, the father of the First traditional King of Gangetic India (Dhrita-Rashtra) who was the first semi-historical king of Gangetic India and who in his old age was the contemporary of The Great War of tke Bharats (or Khattiyo) for the partition of Gangetic India, at the dawn I of the historical period in Gangetic India.

These significant new historical facts, the details of which are fully given in my forthcoming "Origin of Indian Civllization," conclusively fixed not only the fact of that Great Migration of Aryans of the Kuru line to Gangetic India as the Indo-Aryans, but also showed that it came mainly from Eastern Kur or Asia Minor and Syria of the Hittites, and consisted of the remnants of the Sumerian or Aryan stock left there with accretions from Persia and there was also disclosed the Cause of that Great Migration to Gangetic India, which brought there the official King-Lists and Chronicles of the Early Aryans, and its exact Date.

Cause of "The Great Migration" of Aryan Remnants from Eastern Kur or Asia Minor (and Syria) to Gangetic India and its date :

The immediate cause which led to this Great Migration of the Kurus, as the remnants of the "Sumerians" or Early Aryan stock left in Kur or Eastern Asia Minor, including Syria-Phoenicia and Kurdistan, was obviously the devastating and annihilating war of extermination waged by the notorious Semitic Assyrian king Sargon II against the cluster of old mountain states of Eastern Asia Minor to the north and west of Assyria and Babylonia, from Lake Van in Armenia to Cilicia and Syria-Phoenicia in the west.

It was the last straw after the series of similar ruthless conquests by his predecessers, who brutally butchered their victims, crucifying and flaying them alive and transporting many of the remainder wholesale into captivity, as they did likewise to the Jews.

Sargon II captured the southern Hittite capital Carchemish in 717 B.C. and killed its king Wisiti-the-Hero, the last of the once mighty Hittite kings and reduced Carchemish to a province of his empire under an Assyrian governor. And concurrently the Cimmerians had occupied the greater part of Cappadocia in the north.

Thus, caught between the two jaws of a vice, the Great Migration of the Kurus, with their princes and priests and their families and army of retainers to Gangetic India is disclosed as a great flight of refugees fleeing from Carchemish and Syria-Phoenicia, Kurdistan and Armenia, to escape from the atrocities of the barbarous Assyrian victors, and the probable attack by the Cimmerians on the north.

This now explains for the first time the cryptic reference in the early post-Vedic literature that the Kurus were driven out of their old home of Kuru-Land by a curse and it also explains why the "Asuras" are called "devils" in Indian literature.

But Asia Minor's loss was India's gain and amongst other things it preserved for us from destruction the uniquely complete official King-Lists and Chronicles of the Early Aryan kings.

The apparent line of this great flight of the Kuru-panch(-ala) Khattiyo or "Hittites" through Persia and Seistan-Gandhara across the Indus Valley and border of Rajputana to Gangetic India is traced in my "Origin of Indian Civilization".

The date of the Kings-lists & chronicles of the early Aryans of the Indo-Aryans :

We now gain through the above historical criterions, which fix the date of the Great Migration that brought to India the official King-Lists and Chronicles of the pre-Indian period of the Indo-Aryans, the necessary chronological material for fixing also the date when these King-Lists of the Early Aryans now embedded in the Epic of the Ancient Heroes-the Puranas-were closed.

That date according to the most recent estimates by European Sanskrit scholars, although made in ignorance of the locality of the pre-Indian homeland of the Indo-Aryans and of the date of the migration and of the date of the Great Bharat Wars, is nevertheless remarkably in general agreement with our newly found facts. By finding references to the Puranas as being already in existence and esteemed sacred in the very earliest post-Vedic literature, and by the internal evidence of the Puranas themselves, which divided their king-lists into those of "The Past" (that is the pre-Indian lists with which the old lists closed), and those of "The Future" (that is in the Indian period, beginning with kings immediately after the Great War of the Bharats for the partition of India), they place the "probable" date for the closing of the old list variously at 600 B.C. to 950 B.C.

The latter earlier date is got by including a considerable number of the kings of the Vedic period, which period, however, we shall find ended before this Great Migration.

Now, however, we find by our more precise historical data that these old King-Lists were closed on or about 717 B.C., when the great flight from Kur Land in Eastern Asia Minor with Upper Syria took place eastwards to India through Persia on the tragic death of the ill-fated king Vicitra (Dhrit-Rashtra).

And allowing sixteen years or so for a temporary sojourn in Persia, of which I have found evideuce, the date of arrival in Gangetic India would be about 700 B.C. The leader of that migration into Gangetic India was clearly the son and successor of King Vicitra in the lists, namely "Dhrita-of-the-Empire" (Dhrita-Rashtra), who is now disclosed as the first historical Aryan king of Gangetic India, and significantly he was made in the later Indian mythology the white guardian emperor of the Eastern quarter of the world. By the time of the outbreak of the Great Bharat War amongst his sons and other followers for the partition of India, he was "very old and blind".

(1. PIT. 54. 182.

2. In Pali Dhata-Rattho. In early post-Vedic literature he is the son of Vicitra (cp. MKI. I, 403), but the later Brahman editors of the Puranas make him the son of the widow of Vicitra by a Brahman priest, which is cearly fictitious.

3. WBR. 84. He is white in complexion and king of the Gandharvas, who seem to be a mythic memory of the Gandharas or natives of old Candahar.)

Thus by allowing him forty-six years reign after the death of his father in 717 B.C. (and his father was an elderly man, as he paid tribute to the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III in 738 B.C.) until the epoch of the Great War, this would make the date of that Great Bharat War about 670 B.C., and this date is in general agreement with its estimates from the calculated dates for the semi-historical Indian kings who now begin to appear for the first time in Gangetic India, though the first fixed date in Indian history is not until Candra-Gupta in 321 B.C., who was a contemporary of Alexander the Great.

Moreover, it is clear that the King-Lists of "The Past" Early Aryan kings were already closed before the Great War of the Bharats from the fact that these lists are stated in the Epic of that war (the Maha-Bharata) to have been recited to King Dhrita (or Dhata) on his arrival in Gangetic India along with the enumeration of all the provinces and tribes in (this new land of) India, of which he claimed to be the emperor, which is also confirmed by his title of Rashtra.

Thus the King-Lists and Chronicles of the Early Aryans of "The Past" or pre-Indian period embedded in the Purans were evidently closed about 717 B.C. So we now can pass on to the examination of these King-Lists themselves.

The official character of the Indian Kings-lists & chronicles :

No more eloquent testimony to the sincerity of the Indian belief in the historic genuineness of this genealogical tradition of the ancient kings and heroes of the Aryans could perhaps be desired than the simple opening sentence above quoted in the heading of this chapter, by which the heraldic bard in the Epic introduced his official proclamation of these lists, of which he was presumably the official custodian.

The material had already, in Ancient India, become so venerable as to have acquired a sacred character.

The ancient Indo-Aryans treasured as sacred those memories of the beginnings of their Aryan nation, the names of the famous heroes, from their first Aryan king onwards, who had led the tribes to victory, or who had welded together the divers tribes into a nation and enlarged their liberties.

Ages had not dimmed the shining glory of these names, which were handed down with scrupulous Care in writing, with all the sanctity of a popular cult. This explains why they have been so carefully preserved and why they have so manifestly escaped the Brahman censor, when the Epics Were Sanskritized about the beginning of the Christian era and eularged by the Brahman priests by the introduction of religious dogmatics.

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