"Chronology of Vedic Civilization" (SB 2.8.28)

TRANSCRIPT:  Srimad-Bhagavatam, Canto 2, Chapter 8, Text 28. “Chronology of Vedic Civilization.” Alachua - 1994 / (530)

[Text 28]

He began to reply to the inquiries of Mahārāja Parīkṣit by saying that the science of the Personality of Godhead was spoken first by the Lord Himself to Brahmā when he was first born. Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is the supplementary Vedic literature and it is just in pursuance of the Vedas.

Purport by Śrīla Prabhupāda: 

Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is the science of the Personality of Godhead. The impersonalist always tries to misrepresent the personal feature of the Lord, not knowing the science of this great knowledge, and Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is in pursuance of the Vedas and scientific knowledge of the Personality of Godhead. To learn this science one should take shelter of the representative of Śrī Śukadeva and follow in the footsteps of Mahārāja Parīkṣit without foolishly attempting to interpret, thereby committing a great offense at the feet of the Lord. The dangerous ways of interpretations by the nondevotee class of men have played havoc in understanding the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, and the careful student should always be alert in this matter if he at all wants to learn the science of Godhead. 

om ajnana-timirandhasya

 jnananjana-salakaya

caksur unmilitam yena

 tasmai sri-gurave namah

sri-caitanya-mano-'bhistam sthapitum yena bhtu-tale

svayam rupah kada mahyam dadati sva-padantikam

Translation again: 

He began to reply to the inquiries of Mahārāja Parīkṣit by saying that the science of the Personality of Godhead was spoken first by the Lord Himself to Brahmā when he was first born. Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is the supplementary Vedic literature and it is just in pursuance of the Vedas.

So we have here a description of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam as the science of the Personality of Godhead. So the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is describing the Supreme Personality of Godhead Kṛṣṇa in relation with his various energies. In particular, it's explaining Kṛṣṇa in relation with the material creation. So this is important because in order to understand Kṛṣṇa we have to understand how Kṛṣṇa is connected with the world that we experience with our ordinary senses. Otherwise everything remains simply on a theoretical platform.

So this is done by the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. Śrīla Prabhupāda points out here that the Bhāgavatam can be misinterpreted. He refers to the… let’s see… where is that? Refers to the impersonalist who always tries to misinterpret the personal feature of the Lord. So various interpretations of the Bhāgavatam, Śrīla Prabhupāda points out, have created havoc.

So there are different categories of misinterpretations of the Bhāgavatam. So, I could just go through different examples to show the situation that we face in actually preaching the message of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam in the world today. Insofar as people know at all about the Vedic literature, generally they are educated to accept different kinds of misinterpretations of the Vedic literature. And so preaching Kṛṣṇa consciousness inevitably involves dealing with those different misinterpretations.

So one approach to the Bhāgavatam is to say that everything contained in it consists of mythology. This is a very common way of looking at things. Earlier this year, I attended a conference in Hyderabad which was held by the Birla Science Center in Hyderabad. This was a symposium on ancient Indian chronology. So it was interesting to see what was happening there.

[4:56]

Various scholars were giving papers on the chronology of the Vedic civilization. The basic viewpoint that they had was that Vedic civilization is much older than scholars generally believe. So the general viewpoint accepted by scholars of universities is that in around 1500 BC or thereabouts, you have what is called the Aryan invasion. So at this point, people speaking the ancestor of the Sanskrit language, something like what they would call Proto-Indo-Iranian, invaded India. And there are different ideas about what they did when they invaded.

One concept is that they found the existing Indus Valley civilization, which was non-Aryan, which was a civilization of people who spoke some language other than Sanskrit. Some say that they were Dravidians. So the idea is that these invading Aryans destroyed that civilization. It was just like the barbarian invasions of Rome with the Goths and Visigoths and Ostrogoths and so forth. So the idea was that these nomadic invaders brought the nucleus of the Vedas with them, and they settled down in India. And by about 1000 BC, they created the Ṛg Veda and other Vedas. And then gradually they wrote other things, Brāhmaṇas and Upaniṣads and so forth. By around 300 BC or so, they were beginning to write the Mahābhārata in different versions. And then gradually they wrote other literatures. And it's not until after the time of Christ that you really get to the Purāṇas, at least most of them.

And as far as the Bhāgavatam is concerned, well, around 1000 AD the Bhāgavatam was written, which means that when Lord Caitanya came along around 1500 AD or thereabouts, roughly, the Bhāgavatam was only 500 years old at that time. So this would be their conception of chronology. Well, these scholars wanted to revise that chronology. They said, first of all, we don't accept this idea of the Aryan invasion. And they were making different presentations concerning that point. In fact, it turns out that there's no evidence at all for the existence of this Aryan invasion.

The argument that is used to establish it is a linguistic one. It's observed that Sanskrit is very similar to languages like Latin and Greek in terms of grammar and the words and the language and so on and so forth. So the thought is, well, if that's true, then those two languages are related. There must have been one group of people who spoke some ancestral language that later became Sanskrit on the one hand, and on the other hand it became Latin and Greek and so on. So then those people had to live somewhere in the world.

Of course, they didn't live in India, that's obvious. So they had to live probably in Europe somewhere. And that means then that the ones who wound up speaking Sanskrit in India had to invade India at some point in history, and that is what you call the Aryan invasion. So this is the reasoning used.

There is no physical evidence, though, that this invasion ever took place. And there's no historical records, no traditions of peoples in which they say, yes, our ancestors were the Aryans and they invaded and so forth. None of that exists. If you look at the Vedas themselves, if you go, say, to the Ṛg Veda, you won't find any indication that the Aryans were living outside of India and they came in as an invading force of some kind. And yet that supposedly took place only 500 years before the Ṛg Veda was composed.

And the people involved with the Ṛg Veda were famous for their memorization techniques. There would be Brahmans who would memorize the Vedas backwards and forwards so that you could pick a verse anywhere, say, in the Ṛg Veda, and ask one of these Brahmins. Now recite backwards. He would just recite everything backwards, starting at that point, then now recite forwards, if he would do that. So it's curious then that these people would have lost track of the fact that there were invaders coming in from some other place, which would have been their real homeland. 

[10:23]

So these kinds of arguments were presented, and it was pretty well accepted by everyone there that there never was an Aryan invasion. This is fictitious. Now, this is significant because today in India, in their history classes, they're taught about this Aryan invasion. But actually, the idea is something that was created by some Indologists back in the 19th century, primarily, starting with William Jones, the famous pioneer Indologist.

So the scholars were also talking about the Sarasvatī River, which is mentioned in Vedas, Vedic literature, and they believe that they have identified the Sarasvatī River. This is quite conjectural still, but it's interesting to see the ideas they were presenting. They were saying that in what is now the Rajasthani desert there are dry river beds indicating that a very large river once flowed there, and they're identifying this with the Sarasvatī.

And they wanted to argue that the, what is called the Indus Valley civilization was in fact Vedic. And they basically wanted to push back the dates to about 10,000 years ago, which is a pretty radical move because according to standard scholarship, civilization in India definitely did not exist 10,000 years ago. Civilization basically arose in the near east, basically in Mesopotamia with the Sumerians and then the Babylonians. And also there was an early century of civilization in China along the Yellow River. But in India it didn't come until this Indus Valley civilization. And then that wasn't in any sense Vedic or Aryan. That was in fact, some say, destroyed by these Aryan invaders. So these scholars wanted to push specifically Aryan or Sanskrit based civilization in India back about 10,000 years. It's quite a radical proposal. 

However, they weren't willing to go back any further than 10,000 years. They felt that that was as far as they could go. In fact, I was sitting in on a discussion group, basically a sort of strategic planning meeting that they were having after the main symposium. And they were saying that for one thing, we think we could get some people to buy this scenario in which the history goes back to 10,000 years, but to go further than that is just not going to be credible. You can't present such a thing. So we'll draw the line at 10,000 years.

So I had the interesting experience not really knowing before I went to the conference what they were proposing. I was presenting a very modest proposal to them to the effect that Vedic civilization must go back at least 50,000 years. And this sort of flew over like the proverbial lead dirigible. It was quite interesting to see different jaws drop down and there was a sort of murmur of outrage. Basically, 50,000 years was considered by these people to be totally out of the question. We could not have such a thing. 

Now you can ask, well, wait a minute. It seems that in the Vedic literature, in the Bhāgavatam and so on, we hear about yuga cycles which last 4,320,000 years. And you have different phases of civilization going throughout the period of yuga cycles. For example, in the Satya-yuga, the people were highly advanced spiritually and they would meditate. This was their process of spiritual advancement and so forth. Dhruva Mahārāja reigned as a king in Satya-yuga for 60,000 years, and so on. Well, this kind of thing is totally rejected by these scholars as sheer mythology. There's simply no truth in it. And they have a very interesting way of interpreting the Vedic literature.

[15:27]  

So I'll give you one example of their interpretations. Of course, we know the story of how Lord Śiva acquired the name Tripurāri. The story is that three flying cities had been constructed by a great demon named Maya Dānava. So this demon has his base in Pātālaloka. And part of the activity of such demons is to occasionally attack the heavenly planets.

Sometimes they even conquer the heavenly planets, and Lord Viṣṇu has to appear as an incarnation and drive them out, as happened in the case of Vāmanadeva. So on this occasion, Maya Dānava created these three flying cities. It’s described that one was golden, one was silver, and the other was made of iron. And these cities were flying about, attacking the habitations of the demigods, aerial bombardment. So it's a sort of Star Wars scenario. So the demigods finally appealed to Lord Śiva, and Lord Śiva wiped out the three cities. There's a whole story about that in the Bhāgavatam. In some other Purāṇas, it was pointed out that Lord Śiva finally shot down all three cities with one arrow. And to do this, of course, they all had to be standing in a straight line.

So he was just waiting. And when they all lined up in a straight line, he shot the arrow, which went through all three flying cities and destroyed them, and thus acquired the name Tripurāri, which means the destroyer of the three cities. So I mention this story because one of the scholars at this conference happened to give his interpretation of that story. And he said, well, this is one of the references to astronomy that you find in this Vedic literature. This is clearly a description of an eclipse of the sun, because after all, the golden city obviously refers to the sun. That symbolizes the sun, and the silver city, that's the moon. Of course, the iron city refers to the earth. Now, when the sun and the moon and the earth line up in a straight line, then you have an eclipse, and that's when Lord Śiva shot the arrow. In fact, it says that they were lined up in the constellation Puṣyā at that time. So that means that this refers to an eclipse of the sun that occurred when the sun and moon were lined up in the constellation Puṣyā.

So he went on to give an hour lecture full of examples like this. Basically, he takes anything that you find in Vedic literature, and he sees that it's obviously a reference to astronomical phenomena like eclipses of the sun and so forth, thus showing that those early Vedic people were really into astronomy. So this was his presentation, which seemed to be quite well received by the scholars there. So this is an example of interpretation of the Bhāgavatam. So the unfortunate problem that you have with this kind of interpretation is that it completely eliminates the actual message of the Bhāgavatam.

So the real purpose of the Bhāgavatam is to explain the universe in relation with Kṛṣṇa. Such interpretations completely destroy the explanation and replace it with something that is in fact totally false. So therefore the whole purpose of the Bhāgavatam is lost. So this is the kind of thing that is going on. So there are many different kinds of interpretations that can be made.

So I wanted to briefly address one aspect of the interpretations of the Bhāgavatam. Basically, this is that one tends to look at things from the perspective of our current way of thinking and then fit what you find in the Bhāgavatam into that framework of thought. And this is a very natural thing to do. However, it tends to lead to problems because basically you are taking things from the Bhāgavatam and fitting them into a framework which is alien to that of the Bhāgavatam, and then you find that they don't fit very well. One example of this relates to the question of the laws of nature and the laws of physics.

[20:18]

So there's the idea that after all, most of what we see follows the… in experience… follows the laws of physics. But occasionally one can have some violations which are carried out by the higher authority of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. For example, when Kṛṣṇa lifts a mountain, that would be a violation of the laws of physics. This is of course, as far as I can tell, quite correct because according to the laws of physics as we know them, you couldn't really lift mountains.

One can think of how an engineer would go about it, but it would have its difficult aspects. However, then there's the question of the laws of nature. If one substitutes laws of nature for laws of physics, is the statement still correct that, well, by the laws of nature one couldn't lift a mountain. So therefore the lifting of, say, Govardhana Hill would be an exception to the laws of nature specifically carried out by Kṛṣṇa using his supreme power? Well, not exactly.

The laws of nature are described in the Bhāgavatam both from a theoretical perspective, for example in the whole discussion of the Sāṅkhya philosophy, and in terms of examples that show up in many different stories. So when it comes to the lifting of mountains, we see that this does fall within the range of the laws of nature. Because there are many different examples where mountains are lifted by personalities in the material world who in fact are conditioned souls with material bodies. There are quite a number of examples of this.

One example is in fact provided by Govardhana Hill himself. Because Kṛṣṇa wasn't the first one to lift Govardhana Hill. I just… there's a story – this is a book on Vrindavan pastimes and so forth – but it briefly has the story there. It's kind of interesting. I'll just mention this briefly. See, in Satya-yuga there was a mountain of the name King Droṇācārya who lived in the east of Bhārata-varṣa in Salmali.

The king had a son named Govardhana. At the time of Govardhana's birth, all the demigods showered flowers. One day a great sage named Pulastya Muni arrived in Salmali and upon seeing the beauty of Govardhana, he requested King Droṇācārya to give Govardhana to him. At this request, King Droṇācārya became very upset and started to cry. He told the Muni that he could not part with Govardhana.

Pulastya became very angry at this and raised his hand to curse Droṇācārya. Just then, Govardhana told the Muni that he would go with him. But wherever the Muni set him down at that place, he would remain. The Muni agreed and left carrying Govardhana in his right hand. When they reached the Braja-maṇḍala, Govardhana became very happy.

The Pulastya Muni put him down and went off to take his evening bath. Upon returning, the Muni found he could not lift Govardhana. He became very angry and cursed Govardhana that very day that he would sink into the ground by the measurement of one mustard seed per. What is it? Per year or per day?

So anyway, that's the story in brief. But so we have Pulastya Muni carrying Govardhana. Now, the story is remarkable in many ways. I can imagine what the scholars of that conference would say about this. Of course, it does create problems. I'm trying to think if this is an eclipse of the sun or the moon. In any case, let's see. We have first of all mountains with names. And kings, apparently. Kings of mountains.

[25:01] 

Well, this is certainly Vedic because there are many mountains with names in Vedic literature. These mountains have children who naturally are also mountains. I guess this makes sense. So this King had a child, a young mountain named Govardhana. This was in Salmali. Now in the Fifth Canto there's a ​​Śālmalīdvīpa. Maybe that's what's referred to. I'm not sure but… so this might be where Droṇācārya and Govardhana were living. So Pulastya Muni is one of the great sages, a son of Lord Brahmā. So he's a great demigod actually. So he was carrying this mountain. The story of putting down the mountain and then the mountain won't move after that, that comes up in a number of cases.

There are various cases where mountains are lifted. Another example would be the Mandara mountain lifted by the demigods for the purpose of churning the ocean of milk. Actually the demigods lifted Mount Mandara up and were flying with it. But this was a rather heavy mountain it seems and it was crushing them down. So Lord Viṣṇu came and placed it on the back of Garuḍa.

[25:06]

Another case would be Rāvaṇa who was trying to lift Mount obstreperous. That's the dwelling place for Śiva. In that case, Lord Śiva forced Mount obstreperous down on the arms of Rāvaṇa and pinned him for quite a long time period thus creating considerable discomfort for Rāvaṇa. However, that didn't cure him of his ways. He continued to act in a somewhat obstreperous fashion.

And so, let's see, there are various examples. So in fact the laws of nature do not agree at all with the laws of physics. Laws of nature as described in the Bhāgavatam involve many phenomena which are physically impossible. For example, there are the mystic siddhis. The illustration of the mystic siddhis would be, for example, Hanumān who in fact flew through the air carrying a mountain. That's one case. We understand that when Hanumān carried the mountain he did this by enlarging himself so that he was proportional in size to the mountain that he was going to carry. So he flew through the air with the mountain on one hand; when he wanted to speak with ordinary people, then of course he could shrink down to an ordinary size. So this is an example of one of the mystic siddhis.

Mahimā-siddhi enables you to expand in size and laghimā-siddhi enables you… no,.. aṇimā-siddhi enables you to shrink down. Then lifting the mountain would be laghimā-siddhi by which you can make things lighter than the lightest, make them extremely light. So these are all within the category of the laws of nature. And the Bhāgavatam is explaining all these things.

So in order for everything to fit together systematically, actually, you have to look at the total picture. If you take some things, say, from the Bhāgavatam and then you mix them with other things taken from, let us say, our customary way of thinking that we're trained up in our regular education, then you'll probably find that they don't fit very well. For example, how is it that Hanumān lifted a mountain, for example? This doesn't make a great deal of sense.

But if you look at everything in context, then you can see how, at the very least, the Vedic literature is internally consistent. Everything fits together well. Hanumān could lift a mountain because, well, he had laghimā-siddhi and mahimā-siddhi at his disposal. So therefore, given those powers, lifting a mountain was a very practical thing to do. But then how did these siddhis work? And in the 11th Canto says something about that. I won't go into that right now. So everything fits together consistently with the Bhāgavatam. And then you can look at how the whole system in the Bhāgavatam relates to the whole system of science, physics, and so forth as people are taught in modern society. And you can see where the points of agreement are and the points of difference.

And then there's a whole program you can carry through, of sorting this all out. This does result in the conclusion that certain things in modern science in fact would have to be wrong if the Bhāgavatam is right. Or certain things in the Bhāgavatam would have to be wrong if science is right. There are places where you don't have compatibility. There are other places where you do have compatibility. So one can go through and sort it all out. So let's see, the class, though, is coming to an end at this point, so I'll stop here. Are there any questions or comments?