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History of India
New Light on Ancient
India
The Historical Vision of K.D.
Sethna
Sri
Aurobindo, the seer of modern India, blamed new trails in several worlds
of human enterprise and had followers of signal eminence in many of
them. Some made their mark in more than one sphere of activity. Integral
Yoga and Overhead Poetry are two such areas in which a number of
luminaries have left their mark. No follower of Sri Aurobindo, however,
has not only penetrated these areas but also ventured into territories
such as science and history. Here is where K.D. Sethna, or Amal Kiran as
he was named by his Master, stands distinctly apart. This remarkable
mind has taken virtually all knowledge for its domain and the clear ray
of his piercing insight has probed not only profound issues of
philosophy, such as the question of free-will or the spirituality of the
future, but has investigated Einsteinian physics, detected Shakespeare's
mysterious Dark Lady, Mr. W.H. and the Rival Poet, published 750 pages
of poetry and followed the approach of Sri Aurobindo in plumbing the
riches of European literature and the practice of Integral Yoga.
However, that which is unique is his signal contribution to
historiography. Here I shall not go into his remarkable investigations
into Jewish history to fix the date of the Exodus, or into the question
of the Immaculate Conception which patiently awaits a publisher of
vision and courage. My attempt will be to highlight Amal Kiran's
deep-delving reconstruction of ancient Indian history.
It is Sethna's characteristic that even in this most intellectual
pursuit, the dissection of the vexed questions concerning the Harappa
Culture, his inspiration is drawn from Sri Aurobindo. Repeatedly he
returns to this fountain-head for sustaining his arguments, building
firmly on his faith in the infallibility of the seer-vision of the
Avatar of the Supramental.
An implacable honesty is what places Sethna head-and-shoulders above
scholars setting out to prove a preconceived thesis. Despite having
ready to hand so useful an opinion as Pusalkar's that the Sanskrit
sindhu occurring in Assurbanipal's library refers to Indian cotton and
is the source for the Arabic satin, Greek sindon and Hebrew sadin, which
becomes evidence for trade between Harappa and Mesopotamia and of an
Aryan element in the Harappan Culture, Sethna was not satisfied. It
struck him as peculiar that where the Sanskrit karpasa, cotton, produced
Hebrew and Greek analogues, that same product should be given a
different name in Assyrian, Hebrew and Greek. So he wrote to the world's
foremost Assyriologist, S.N. Kramer1 who informed him that the Akkadian
word was not sindhu at all but sintu, referring to woolen garments and
having no relationship at all with India or the Indus! Kramer also
denied that the Greek sindon and the Hebrew sadin could be equated with
sintu or sindhu. Thus, what had seemed to be a sure linguistic proof of
Aryanism in Harappan Culture was exposed through Sethna's relentless
quest after truth to be a misreading of the Akkadian text by Pusalkar,
although thereby Sethna lost a major support for his thesis. In the
process, he also corrected a major misconception prevailing among our
scholars regarding this word.
When Sethna approached H.D. Sankalia with the first draft of his The
Harappa Culture and the Rigveda, that doyen of Indian archaeologists
pointed out the single weak point in the thesis:2 The lack of any
evidence of Vedic Aryan culture from Sind and Punjab belonging to the
4000-2000 B.C. bracket. That was in 1963. Sethna did not rush into print
ignoring this solitary flaw. He waited patiently for well over a
decade-and-a-half till the necessary archaeological evidence surfaced
from excavations to substantiate his intellectually flawless arguments.
This relentless dedication in the pursuit of truth and the
uncompromising sincerity are features intrinsic to Sri Aurobindo's
Integral Yoga which shine forth so radiantly in Amal Kiran.
In Karpasa in Prehistoric India3 Sethna investigated the use of cotton
in prehistoric India for arriving along a different route with
additional evidence at the same conclusion that he had put forward in
The Problem of Aryan Origins:4 The Rigvedic Culture precedes the
Harappan; the Indus Valley Civilization contains Aryan elements. A
clinching argument is evolved by Sethna from the fact of cotton being
first mentioned in the oldest Sutras. If the Rigvedic Aryans flourished
in the Indus Valley after the cotton-cultivating Harappans, how is it
that all the Vedas, Brahmans, Aranyakas and early Upanishads do not know
karpasa. Cotton is even found at sites deeper inland in Gujarat,
Maharashtra and near Delhi dated c. 1330-1000 B.C. This is very much
after the alleged incursion around 1500 B.C. of Rigvedic Aryans. Such a
continuous absence of the mention of a product argues for dating the
Vedas before the cotton-knowing Harappa Culture. Here he also suggested
that clues to the Indus script might be found in potters' marks found in
pre-Harappan and Aryan sites, proved that Mulukha of Sumerian records is
Harappa and that the Biblical Ophir is Sopara. Each of these warrants
serious follow-up by historians not only of Indian prehistory, but of
Mesopotamian and Jewish history as well.
The second edition of the important work on Aryan Origins5 became
necessary because in 1987 there was a recrudescence from within India
and from Finland of the pernicious Aryan invasion theory which is at the
root of the north-south, Aryan-Dravidian divide that raises its ugly
head time and again in India.
The most important examination in this new edition relates to the
question of the presence of the horse and the spoked wheel in the
Harappa culture. The circle with six radials within seen on several
Harappan seals is not found in Sumerian tablets or Egyptian
hieroglyphics as a sun-symbol (which is what I. Maha-devan et. al. argue
it represents). The damaged seal showing a man standing astraddle on
spoked wheels suggests the presence of a spoked-wheel chariot. Moreover,
S.R. Rao's finding at Lothal of a drawing on a potsherd of a figure
standing on two wheels resembling the paintings of Assyrian charioteers
is a clinching piece of evidence. Even more conclusive is the fact that
the C-14 date for this damaged seal is 1960 B.C., long before the
alleged invasion of Aryan cavalry that supposedly occurred around 1500
B.C.
Sethna shows that Asko Parpola, the Finnish scholar, is wrong6 in
stating that no evidence of horse-bones is available in the Harappa
Culture. At Rana Ghundai's pre-Harappan stratum horse's teeth have been
found much before 2000 B.C. The same Rana Ghundai IIIc Culture exists at
low levels of Harappa and Mohenjodaro. From the opposite angle, no
evidence of the horse has been discovered in the excavations in Punjab
and Haryana in post-Harappan sites - which should have been die case if
the Aryans brought the horse and the Rigveda into India around 1500 B.C.
- while equine bones have been found of that date from both Mohenjodaro
and Harappa. Sethna quotes the 1980 report from G.R. Sharma on
excavations in the valley of the Belan and Son revealing evidence at the
Neolithic sites of the domesticated horse as well as the wild horse
dated between 8080 B.C. and 5540 B.C. at Koldihwa and Mahagara.
Moreover, there is the 1990 report of K.R. Alur identifying horse bones
dated to c. 1800-1500 B.C. in repeated excavation at Hallur in
Karnataka, before the supposed Aryan invasion. Alur has pointed out that
the metacarpals allegedly of the domestic ass found in Mohenjodaro and
Harappa are definitely not of the ass and are possibly of the smaller
size horse. Therefore, the Aryans whom Parpola would like to immigrate
into India around 1600-1400 B.C. cannot possibly have introduced the
horse in the Deccan several centuries before their arrival. Sethna
clinches his point by quoting the ardent invasionist, Mortimer Wheeler
himself: "It is likely enough that camel, horse and ass were in fact all
a familiar feature of the Indus caravans." Thus, lack of representation
of the horse, like that of the camel, on the seals does not rule out
their being in use in the Indus Civilization, particularly when their
bones have been found much before the horse is supposed to have been
introduced by the invading Aryans around 2000 B.C. If the horse is a
conclusive sign of Aryan presence, men the report from Sharma proves
that the Aryan was in India long before even the Harappan Civilization.
Actually, even where picturisation is concerned, Sethna cites7
S.P.
Shukla's account of a terracotta horse-like animal figurine with a
saddle on its back from Balu in the Harappan urban phase.
Sethna could have rested content here. However, with the integrity that
is so typical of him, he raises the question of what evidence there is
of any trace of chariots in Neolithic times where remains of the
domesticated horse have been found? Pointing out that in the Rigveda the
chariot is not invariably horse-drawn, he draws attention to a pot from
Susa showing an ox-drawn chariot similar to the Kulli ware of South
Baluchistan with which trading existed. The Rigveda seems familiar with
Baluchistan, as Parpola notes. Therefore, with the horse already present
much before the Rigvedic time, and this illustration of a chariot, the
probability of horse-drawn chariots becomes acceptable even in
pre-Harappan times.
Sethna also takes on the eminent academician, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya,
and points out the contradictions in his assigning to Indra the role of
the destroyer of the Indus Valley Civilization.8 Archaeologists have
found overwhelming evidence, going back to much before the second
millennium B.C., of heavy flooding of Harappan settlements. In
Mohenjodaro itself there is evidence for at least five such floods, each
lasting for several decades, even up to a century. Evidence has also
been found of considerable rise in the coast-line of the Arabian Sea.
Hence, there is no need at all to posit a horde of invading Aryans for
demolishing imaginary dams where natural forces are found to be
responsible. Chattopadhyaya also fails to notice that whatever weapons
Indra is mentioned as using are described clearly in the same hymns as
being of symbolic nature. Similarly, the material objects demolished are
also symbolic. Firstly, the Rigveda gives mighty forts not only to the
enemies but also to the Aryans, and these forts surpass anything that
has been found in archaeology of that time (ninety-nine or hundred in
number, made of stone or metal). Secondly, if the invasion came from the
north, how is it that instead of the northern Harappan sites it is the
southern Mohenjodaro which shows a noticeable decline in material
prosperity? Moreover, even here there is no settlement at all over its
ruins, which is peculiar if the Aryans destroyed it.
The coup de grace is administered with evidence from the undersea
excavations at Dwaraka, where the submergence has been dated to about
1400 B.C., tallying with what the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa state
regarding this event following Krishna's death. If the Kurukshetra war
took place around this time, surely the period of the Rigveda will have
to be considerably anterior to it and can by no means be around 1500
B.C. as the invasionists would like to have it! Hence, there is no
question of invading Aryans destroying the Harappa Culture a mere
hundred years before the Kurukshetra war. The Rigveda, therefore,
necessarily precedes the Harappa Culture which ended around the middle
of the second millennium B.C. Thus, Sethna shows conclusively that all
available evidence sets the end of the Indus Civilization quite apart
from any violent destruction by Rigvedic Aryans.
In 1988 came another major paper from Asko Parpola on the coming of the
Aryans to India and the cultural-ethnic identity of the Dasas. Parpola
based his hypothesis of Rigvedic Aryan movement from Swat to Punjab
around 1600-1400 B.C. on the Mitanni treaty and the Kikkuli
chariot-horse training manual. However, neither document has the word
"Arya", nor does the recitation of the names of deities conform to the
Rigvedic turn of phrase, as Sethna perceptively notes. Linguistic study
shows that there is a large gap between the Rigvedic epoch and the time
of the Mitanni document whose language is found to be middle-Indie and
not Indo-Iranian or Old Indo-Aryan as supposed initially.
Sethna's eagle eye spots the inner contradiction in Parpola's
hypothesis. Parpola feels that the Harappans spoke proto-Dravidian and
not Indo-European because the horse is absent from the seats and
figurines. Yet, he characterizes the chalcolithic cultures of the Banas
Valley and Malawa (Navdatoli) as Aryan although there too the horse is
conspicuously absent. Further, when Parpola asserts that Pirak horsemen
first brought the horse into use into India he forgets that no
horse-bones have been found at Pirak at all! He also makes the mistake
of equating a possible Aryan presence in Swat with Rigvedic Aryanism in
arguing that there was a horse-knowing culture's incursion from Swat
into India which was a Rigvedic invasion. Sethna shows that while the
brick-built nature of the fire-altars found in Swat equates them with
those in Kalibangan and the Harappa Culture, this sets them apart from
the Rigvedic which is innocent of brick. Use of silver is mentioned by
Parpola as a feature of the Namazga V culture which he claims to be
Aryan and from where Rigvedic Aryanism was brought into India. But,
points out Sethna, the Rigvedic period does not know silver at all. He
shows that Parpola is wrong in his understanding of what black metal,
shywmayas of the Atharvaveda is. It is certainly not iron, but an alloy
of copper and tin, while ayas of the Rigveda is copper. Even in the
later Shatapatha Brahmana, there is no knowledge of iron, lohayas or red
metal being copper, ayas resembling gold being brass. Hence the Rigveda
is considerably anterior to die iron age which Parpola fixes for it in
Pirak c, 1100 B.C.
Parpola next uses the cultivation of rice for the first time in the
Indus Valley as a sign of Rigvedic Aryanism invading India in the
post-Harappan period. However, rice is already present in several
Harappan sites within and outside the Indus Valley, while it is unknown
to both the Rigveda and the Avesta. Therefore, Sethna is quite right in
claiming that the Rigveda precedes the Harappa Culture and definitely
the post-Harappan Pirak phase off. 1800 B.C. Even the PGW type of
pottery, with its traits of rice cultivation, is absent along the route
supposedly taken by immigrating Aryans. The latest excavations
(1976-1982) by J.P. Joshi indicate that PGW culture is an indigenous
development without any break from the local proto-historic culture and
is not associated with invading Aryans from the west.
Sethna marshals powerfully persuasive arguments in favor of the Rigveda
being, for all practical purposes, autochthonous to India, using recent
statements from Colin Renfrew pointing out that nothing in the Veda
hints at any intrusion. The Rigveda repeatedly alludes to ancient seers
of hoary antiquity but never speaks of any immigration nor mentions any
previous habitat. Sethna's incisive intellect fastens upon every
possible objection that might be raised against the great antiquity
proposed for the Rigveda. As a particular verse carries a reference to
camels, he points out that there has to be some evidence of adequate
antiquity of the domesticated camel for his hypothesis to be proven. He
locates such archaeological evidence going back to the third millennium
B.C. To this he adds the negative argument that silver has been known
from 4000 B.C. but is not known to the Rigveda, which, therefore, must
precede this date. Again, the earliest occurrence of cultivated rice is
dated to Neolithic Mahagara and Koldihwa c. 6810-5780 B.C. Sethna
prefers to deduct 240 — this is the solitary ad hoc element in his
otherwise sound argumentation besides the gratuitous identification of Talmena with
tala-mina for proposing the tribe of Minas from Talmena
colonizing Sumeria - and come to 5300 which fits in with his proposition
that the Rigveda would begin c. 5500 B.C. and be ignorant of rice while
knowing the horse well as the Neolithic sites have the horse-bones whose
C-14 dating is 6700 B.C.
The most
important contribution in the midst of all this analysis of
archaeological evidence is Sethna's bringing home to the reader how the
naturalistic interpretations of western scholars fail to hang together
if the Rigveda is studied as a whole and that the only approach which
makes total sense is the mystic or spiritual one shown by Sri Aurobindo
in The Secret of the Veda. The Rigvedic verse is most telling: "He who
knows only the outward sense is one who seeing sees not, hearing hears
not. (10.71.4)" The foes of the Rigvedics arc neither non-Aryans nor, as
Parpola would have it, an earlier band of immigrated Aryans. They are
anti-divine forces opposing the spiritual inspiration sought after by
the "Aryan'", that is, "the striver", the aspirant. The forts arc
symbols of occult centers of resistance to this quest after die "cows",
that is streams of enlightenment flowing from the Sun of Truth and the
Dawn of inner revelation. Sethna presents an excellent explication of
the famous Battle of Ten Kings passage to demolish Parpola's hypothesis
of two waves of Aryans disrupting the Indus Civilization and also shows
how utterly wrong Parpola is in setting in opposition the Asura and the
Deva, for in the Rigveda the Deva does not cease to be the Asura, except
in some very late compositions. Sethna's acute perception points out
basic errors in Parpola's data such as Indra never being referred to as
Asura except in the late Book Ten.
Sethna finds such references existing in Books 1, 4, 6, 7 and 8. He also
disproves Parpola's idea that Varuna entered the Pantheon at a later
date than Indra and is originally foreign to the Rigveda, and demolishes
E.W. Hales's thesis that the Asuras were human lords.
Having proved that the Rigveda is indigenous to India, that there is no
justification for interpreting it as a war between invading Aryans and
autochthonous Dravidians, the former enslaving the latter — a concept
fostered by the foreign scholars which has bred so much bitterness in
south India — Sethna ventures into what can only be described as high
adventure in his radical reconstruction of ancient Indian chronology in
Ancient India in a New Light? To summaries his findings in brief, Sethna
marshals evidence from the Puranas and archaeology to argue that the Sandrocottus of Megasthenes could not have been the Mauryan king, but
was the founder of the Gupta Dynasty. I had pointed out to him after he
had completed the first part of the work that unless the Asokan
epigraphs could be tackled convincingly, his new chronology would break
down. Sethna proceeded to do this also over 300 pages of a closely
argued thesis pushing Asoka back to 950 B.C. and allocating to the Gupta
Empire the period 315 B.C. - A.D. 320.
Sethna's 606 page tome, with a 15 page bibliography and a 23 page index,
is an outstanding instance of ratiocination proceeding inexorably from a
chronological absurdity fastened upon unerringly by the clear ray of his
perception. Pulakesin IPs Aihole inscription of 634 A.D. shows Indian
chronology in vogue fixing 3102 B.C. as the date of the start of the
Kaliyuga, while also referring to the Saka Era of 78 A.D. According to
modern historians, this is the time of the Gupta Empire, when this
system of chronology was made up by the Puranic writers. Now, according
to the Puranas the Guptas come around the last quarter of the 4th
century B.C. If the modern dating of the Guptas is accepted, it means
that the Puranics, face to face with the Gupta kings, placed them in
antiquity six hundred years in the past! It is peculiar that so obvious
an absurdity should have escaped our own historians. Can we help
concluding that we are still unable to rid our minds of the overpowering
influence of the dismissal by western scholars of our own ancient
records: The Puranas? They believe in the historicity of Homer and
excavate Troy, but will not allow that same probability to the Puranas
simply because they speak of a civilized antiquity in a colonized
country when the western man was living in caves, and that is
unacceptable from a subject race. On the grounds of the reductio ad
absurdum of the Puranics placing their contemporary monarchs six
centuries in the past, Sethna proposes that the Guptas referred to in
the Puranas are the descendants of that Chandragupta whom Megastlienes
refers to as Sandrocottus, contemporaneous with Alexander. Consequently,
the Mauryan Chandragupta and his grandson Asoka needs must recede
considerably farther into die past.
The rest of the book is a thrilling venture as Sethna daringly steers
his slender craft through uncharted seas crossing one insuperable
barrier-reef after another to reach a destination in whose existence he
firmly believes. The most important of these is the supposed linking of
the Greeks with Asoka. Sethna's penetrating insight reveals that the
Asokan "yona raja" Amtiyoka of Rock Edict XIII cannot refer to a Greek
king and that the dating of this edict proposed by Bhandarkar is quite
mistaken even on the basis of the current chronology. Next the Asokan
inscription in Greek and Aramaic at Kandahar is analyzed and the
conclusion arrived at that the two inscriptions are not contemporaneous;
that the Greek comes much after the Aramaic and, indeed, explicates it:
That the "Yavanani" script referred to by Panini is this Aramaic script
going back to the pre-9th century B.C. period. The Kandahar II and
Laghlman Aramaic inscriptions are then taken up and proven to be much
before the 3rd century B.C. as theorized at present. Finally, examining
the evidence for the reigns of the Sungas, Kanvas and Satvahanas, Sethna
arrives at 950 B.C. as the date of Asoka's accession.
The next challenge is harmonizing this with the wide-spread variety in
traditions regarding Buddhist chronology (Ceylonese, Chinese, Tibetan,
Arab, Puranic and the Milinda-panha and Rajatamngini). Sethna infallibly
locates a sure guiding light to steer clear of this welter of confusion:
Buddha's death has to be determined in terms of Asoka's accession and
not the other way about. Thus, with the latter being fixed in 950 B.C.,
the nirvana is 218 years before that in 1168 B.C. and the death of
Mahavira would be in 1165 B.C.
The argument of Ceylon being referred to in Asoka's inscriptions is
demolished by Sethna who points out that this identification flouts all
the literary and epigraphic data. "Tarnbapamni" and "Tambapamniya" are
references to the far south in India. Coming to the Asokan monuments, he
shows that the affinities are with Mesopotamia not with Achaemenid art,
and that they carry on in the tradition of the realistic treatment of
the Indus seals, the assembly hall of Mohenjodaro and the high polish of
Harappan jewellery. From the other end of the spectrum, Megasthenes is
analyzed to reveal that the references point to the Bhagavata
Vaishnavite cult practiced by the Gupta Dynasty, certainly not to what
is known of the Mauryas.
As in his work on the Aryan Origins, Sethna corrects major historical
errors here too. One is regarding Fa-Hien who is widely accepted as
having visited India during the reign of Chandragupta II. Sethna bluntly
points out how generations of historians have simply assumed Fleet's
chronology despite the pilgrim's records mentioning no king at all and
the social conditions not tallying with whatever is known of the Gupta
regime. Another such major twisting of chronology which has been
unquestioningly accepted by modern historians is exposed when Sethna
examines Al-beruni's travelogue to show that Fleet misrepresented the
Arab visitor's categorical description of the Gupta Era as celebrating
die end of a dynasty that had come to be hated and not the beginning of
the dynasty! A third misconception is that the earliest Roman dinarius
(whence the Gupta dinam is dated) in India is of the last quarter of the
first century B.C. Sethna shows that the earliest denarii go back to 268
B.C. and it is around 264 B.C. that Ptolemy II sent an emissary from
Egypt to India. Therefore, the reference to dinam in the Gadhwa Stone
inscription of the Gupta Era 88 can certainly be in 277 B.C. A fourth
error corrected is that of identifying the Malawa Era of the Mandasor
Inscription with the Vikrama Era. Sethna shows that all epigraphic
evidence points to the identity of the Malawa Era with the Krita Era,
and that the Vikrama Era has been gratuitously brought in just because
it is convenient for the modern chronology of the Guptas. He shows that
the Kumaragupta referred to here cannot chronologically be the Gupta
monarch even following Fleet's calculations. By bringing in the other
Mandasor inscription of Dattabhatta which refers to Chandra-gupta's son
Govindagupta as alive in the Malawa year 535, Sethna shows that dating
it by the Vikrama Era of 57 B.C. creates an impossible situation. He
fixes the beginning of the Malawa Era at 711 B.C. This leads to two
fascinating discoveries when linked with other Mandasor inscriptions:
that the Malawa ruler Yaso-dharman (Malawa 589, i.e. 122 B.C.) might be
the source of the legend of Vikramaditya; and that Mihirakula whom he
defeated was a Saka and not, as supposed by historians without adequate
evidence, a Huna. Sethna exposes yet another Fleetian conjecture
regarding Skandagupta battling the Hunas by contacting the epigraphist
D.C. Sircar10 and getting the astonishing admission that there is no
such reference in the Junagarh inscription!
Some of the more remarkable findings in this work which need mention
are: Devanampiyatissa of Ceylon dealt not with Asoka but with
Samudragupta; the Kushana Dynasty imitated features of the Guptas on
their coins instead of the other way about as historians argue:
Al-beruni testifies to two Saka Eras, one of 57 B.C. probably
commemorating Yasodharman's victory, and the other of 78 A.D. by
Salivahana who was possibly of the Satavahana Dynasty; the Mehrauli Iron
Pillar inscription is by Sandrocottus-Chandragupta-I whose term for the
invading Greeks is shown to be "Vahlika" (outsiders from Bactria) which
fills in the puzzling gap in Indian records of mention of the incursions
by Alexander and Seleucus. It is the founder of the Guptas and not of
the Mauryan Dynasty who stands firmly identified as Megasthenes's
Sandrocottus.
Sethna provides an extremely valuable Supplement" in which he uses the
revised chronology posited by him for fixing the dates of the Kurukshetra War and the beginning of the Kaliyuga, traditionally dated
to Krishna's death, at 1452/1482 B.C. and 1416/1446 B.C. respectively
working back 8 or 9 generations of preceptors from Ashvalayana, a
contemporary of Buddha, to Parikshit who was enthroned after Krishna's
death. In another discussion,12 Sethna examines the
Arthashastra and
shows it as not having anything in common with Mauryan times as
evidenced from the Asokan inscriptions, and being much closer to the
royal titles and functionaries, use of Sanskrit and of terms like
pmtyanta and Prajjunikas of the Gupta epigraphs and Megasthenes. He
assigns to this work the period close to the pre-Gupta Junagarh
Inscription of Rudradaman I in 479 B.C. A further examination of the
religious date shows that Kautilya's work is in the interval between
Panini and Patanjali, but closer to the former on account of the
reference to the prevalence of worship of the Nasatya and the bracketing
of an evil spirit Krishna with Kamsa recalling the asura Krishna of the
Veda, which indicates a period prior to that of the Vasudeva cult
recorded by Megasthenes. On this basis, the original Arthashastra is
assigned by Sethna to c. 500 B.C., having clearly distinguished Kautilya
the author of the work from Chanakya, the preceptor of the Maurya
monarch. Here, too, Sethna corrects a widely prevalent mistake among our
historians who have blindly followed Jacobi who compared Chanakya to
Bismarck as Chancellor of the Empire. Sethna points out the facts:
Chankya was instrumental in installing the Prime Minister of the Nandas,
Rakshasa, to assume the same post with the Maurya king. Thus, if anyone,
it is Rakshasa who is the Chancellor and not Chanakya.
This short survey cannot do justice to the magnitude of the contribution
K.D. Sethna has made to the basic approach to Indian
Pre-and-Proto-History as well as later historical periods. However, if
it succeeds in giving some idea of how remarkable this effort has been
in illuminating the dark backward and abysm of a critical portion of our
antique time, and motivates those who are interested in our history to
think afresh, untrammeled by preconceptions foisted by western scholars
and their Indian counterparts over the last hundred years, it will be a
consummation devoutly to be wished. That will also be a fitting tribute
to the master-seer who has inspired such a phenomenal deep-delving,
wide-ranging inquiry into the foundations of our past: Sri Aurobindo.
–
Pradip Bhattacharya
August 14, 2005
References
1. Sethna, K.D.: Karpasa in Prehistoric India: a chronological and
cultural clue, Biblia Impex, New Delhi, 1984.
2. Scthna, K.D.: The Problem of Aryan Origins: from an Indian point of
vien\ second enlarged edition, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi, 1992, p. 57.
3. Cf. 1 above.
4. Cf. 2 above, first edition, S & S Enterprises, Calcutta 1980.
5. Cf. 2 above.
6. Ibid., pp. 214-222.
7. Ibid., pp. 419-20.
8. Ibid., pp. 187-93.
9. Sethna, K.D.: Ancient India in a New Light, Aditya Prakashan, New
Delhi, 1989.
10. Ibid., pp. 513.
11. Ibid., pp. 543-5.
12. Ibid., pp. 546-589.
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