The Ramayan’s Dasrath
The Ramayana depicts Dasrath
as the father of the hero, Ram. He fell in love with his second wife Kaikeyi when
she tended his wounds after a battle. Kaikeyi was a daughter of the Kaikay king
or Caucasus, like the Mahabharat’s Gandhari was from Gandhar, modern day
Kandahar.
The word Dasrath would
mean a small ruler with just ten chariots. As such, he could not afford a large
bride price, but had offered to make their son his successor. Thus Dasrath’s
agonising dilemma could have been his devotion to his eldest Ram vs. his
promise, rather than the demands of a scheming wife.
Many historians find timing
contradictions. The Aryans came south around 800 BC. That places the Ramayan
much later or locates it in outside peninsular India? Perhaps the reason for no archeological
evidence of the Ramayan locales, as happened in the Mahabharat’s case?
Names of people and
places were often common in different places, as people and their stories shift
base. Spellings and pronunciations
evolve, so different sounds can be etymologically similar. Today of course, the names remain the same like
the new cities that sprang up in America, named after older English or European
ones.
Is it possible for some
of the events of the Ramayan to have occurred elsewhere than Ayodhya on the
banks of River Sarayu? Remember: Ayodhya
was Oudh in Buddha’s days.
Where to look for
Ayodhya and Sarayu? Around Kaikeyi’s home lands?
In present Turkmenistan
and Kirghizstan, there is a River Syr Darya, north of the Pamirs (old time
Meru?). Close by is the capital city,
Andijan, phonetically close to Ayodhya. To its east is Kashi (Kashgar); west is Samarkand
known as Markanda in the Puranas, so
named by the Macedonian Alexander.
Samarkand is one of the oldest inhabited cities in Central Asia, on the
Silk Route between China and Rome.
Other researchers point
to Heray Rud i.e. Herat river. It flows 1,100 kilometers from the Hindu Kush mountains
of Afghanistan to Turkmentistan, where it disappears in the Kara-Kum desert. Rud
means "river" in Persian. The
Ancient Greeks called it Arius and Romans the Tarius.
200 kilometres
(120 mi) upstream from Heart, at the confluence of Herayrud and river Jam
stands the Minaret of Jam, the second tallest ancient minaret in the world at
65 metres (213 ft). The river serves as the border between Afghanistan and
Iran, and between Iran and Turkmenistan,
at different places.
The Rigveda records the Hereyrud as the River Sarayu.[3] It is mentioned as the Horayu in the Avesta. In
2008, archeologists unearthed a Buddhist monastery dasting back to the 1st
century, hand-carved into a bluff of the Hereyrud, offering glimpses of the
monks’ daily lives.
Until the USSR
dissolved, Kyrgystan and Tajikistan supplied water of Amu Darya and Syr Daryu
to Kazakhstan, Turkmentan and Uzbekistan in summers. The swap was for coal, gas
and electricity in winter for the two givers in summer. Would our quarreling river states could work
out such a deal for the benefit of all.
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