Kusum Choppra

Poor India! at the mercy of recurring invasions over centuries, say   history textbooks. Our ancestral infighting unable to hold them back, waves of invaders married into already intermarried locals, creating the innumerable castes inflicting us today. Let’s look through another prism. Why did they come here? For riches! Since Time Immemorial, India’s artisans produced luxury items, utility plus beauty. Trade was lucrative for everyone. Hence the invasions. Everyone wanted The Golden Goose. Indian culture left its impact while earning riches. First Israel.   Canaan or Phoenicia was modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel. Also believed to be ancient homeland of Chitpavan Brahmans. Spell it with a ‘K’, it becomes a cognate of Kanana / Kanha.   One of Israel’s largest rivers, Kishon flows in the Jezreel / Yezreel Valley – sounds like our Kishan and Ma Yashoda?    Close by are towns called Kanah and Ramah.   In the Judea province next door are t...

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...

Sad but true: against the archeological evidences of Mahabharatian places, there are no Ramayan ones, except those consecrated after Tulsidas’ Ramayan, centuries later.   Scholars mourn the lack of empirical evidence of Ayodhya, Chitrakoot, Dandakaranya, Lanka, Panchavati, Videha, Kosala; when Buddha was teaching at Savatthi 58 km from Ayodhya, it was called Oudh by pilgrims including Fa Hien and Hieun Tsang. But ... Yes, but there is some ray of hope. Valmiki scholars are excited by recent developments. Valmiki’s 'Kishkinda Kand' Section 40-43 offers detailed directions to the four Vaanar brigades hunting for Sita after her abduction.   Those to the westbound brigade came up for close scrutiny: This route’s ultimate culmination was Mt. Asta ( अस्त ) or Sunset Mountain. What do they cross before Ast? Valmiki described a route due west from the Vindhyas, from a point where “the sindhu falls into the sea” i.e. either where the Narmada entered the Arabian sea or the ...