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.
![](images/mix/assyrianempire.png)
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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