Continued from Evolution of Politics & Society    

Mitochondrial Eve, our most common recent ancestor on the maternal side lived 150,000 to 200,000 years ago in Africa, but she was not the only woman and the corresponding male MRCA lived 120,000 to 150,000 years ago also in Africa and was not the only male. Nor are we all the products of incest as Greek mythology and pharaonic Egyptian custom may suggest. Some millennia later migration occurred out of Africa in multiple tranches, with the last batches being Homo Sapiens. Egypt, Ethiopia, Somalia and Arabia were the earlier transit points and one branch of the final migration proceeded towards India, Southeast Asia, New Guinea and Australia. Some from Southeast Asia went to Taiwan, Philippines and the Pacific islands. Another batch went to the Middle East, Eurasia and across the Bering Strait to the Americas. See recent article in Science of unitary origin of language also in Africa on the basis of maximum variety of phonemes.

Some of these latter migrants established themselves along the shores of the Black Sea, which was a freshwater lake. Approximately 7600 years ago the Mediterranean Sea broke through the Bosporus Valley and the massive flood caused a tsunami which destroyed the villages on the lake shores and killed and displaced the people. (Noah’s Flood by William Ryan & Walter Pitman). Some of these people around Ukraine had domesticated the horse and probably comprised the Kurgan culture (See the work of Marja Giambutas) and “The Horse, The Wheel & Language” by David Anthony. It is concievable that they and their immediate neighbors spoke Proto-Indo-European. Their graves had horses buried with the men. (See works of Colin Renfrew, Cavalli-Sforza and also less sunlight causing white skin and Gobi dust storms causing Oriental epicanthic folds)

Some of these people migrated South and East to that corner of Turkey, Syria and Iraq and carried the story of the Flood with them (see my article - The Flood Story of the Hindus, Hebrews and Sumerians). The myth was modified somewhat differently by the three groups, but the Sumerian and Hindu stories are more or less the same. The Hebrews having learnt the art of exaggeration from the Pharaohs who were masters of the technique, added their own hang-ups by making up just so stories like Rudyard Kipling. They found a rationale for discriminating against Ham (literally means dark) and punished him for eternity by holding him responsible for having seen his father Noah lying naked after the father being drunk, but the son having sinned. Of Course Noah was held blameless by Yahweh, better classified by Linnean method as Tyrannotheos Prepucephilus, because of his obsession of forming covenants in exchange for penile foreskins. The said god who like Obama was into “on the job training” (read The Genesis Of Justice by Alan Dershowitz) had no problem forgiving Cain, condoning the behavior of Lot’s daughters and lauded Joshua’s genocide, murder of Shechemites or Palestinians whether they are Christian or Muslim.

There is a tendency for losers to let lose over time the natural tendency of the confabulating left hemisphere (see Split Brain Studies of Sperry & Gazzaniga) and rewrite history. There is no independent, historical or archeological proof for the Exodus and the story of Moses and the movies like The Ten Commandments, Jodha Akbar and stories about good King David and Akbar’s Hindu Chief Queen are all made up, as are the valor of Prithviraj Chauhan, the national consciousness of Rani of Jhansi in the 1857 mutiny and the love for India of Rana Sangh (who incidentally invited the Moghul Babar to invade India because he couldn’t defeat the ruling Muslim Afghan king by himself, just as the Irish invited the British).

These migrants formed the Hurrian (H&S are interchangeable in Sanskrit; Surya and Syria, Asura & maybe Assyrian, definitely Soma and the Persian Homa) and Mitanni kingdom. The Mitanni signed a treaty with the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose and Amenhotep of the 18th dynasty of the New Kingdom and gave daughters in marriage to the pharaohs. They were defeated by the Hittites and signed a treaty swearing by Varuna and Indra their gods (Varuna maybe the same as the Greek Titan Ouranos after whom is named the planet Uranus). The Mitanni kingdom’s capital, yet undiscovered, was named Vasu-khani (Vasu means rich and khani is mine, thus khanija is born in a mine or mineral in Sanskrit Also Kikkuli the horse trainer wrote a treatise on horses and his words for colors Palit, Babru, Rudra match Pallid, brown and red).  Some Mitanni kings were named Arta-atma and Arta-Shumara. Arta is the Sanskrit equivalent of Rta (See my article The Origins Of Justice) and the defeated Mitannis of the destroyed kingdom migrated south and east to Medea and Iran and a thousand years later the Achemenid kings are Arta-Xerxes 1,2 etc.

In the interim period Zarathushtra (Yellow or old camel Zarata+Ushtra) starts a new religion in which the supreme god is Ah(S)ura Mazda and the Devas or the Suras are the demons, the reverse of Hindu beliefs where the devas are the Suras or gods and the Asuras are demons. Both are step brothers with the same father in Hindu mythology.

The Aryans meaning noble ones not Nazis (Hitler was unwilling to accept any Greek connection with the Egyptians from Africa and Sir William Jones and Max Muller were sold on Sanskrit and the Aryans; hence he borrowed Swastika which comes from Su+Asti+ka literally meaning good+is or good omen).

A or some branches of the Aryans migrated in waves to India refined their language (Sanskrit). The Ashwamedha Yagna required the reigning queen, wife of the king performing the Yagna to publicly simulate intercourse with the dead or dying horse (See “Ka” by Robert Calasso). The Aryans melded with the dying Harappan or Indus Valley civilization accepted their god (depicted in a stone image of a man with priapism wearing a crown with horns and surrounded by sundry animals) and gave him the name Pashupatinath. (Archeology of India & Pakistan) He is similar to the Egyptian god Min. Thus the worship of the Lingum (phallus) and yoni (labia). During this time the more intellectual were composing the Upanishadas and monotheistic Brahman but another group was still carrying out the rituals of Yagnas (fire and animal sacrifices).

There was appeasement of a myriad gods as in the marriage ceremony rituals. So we had the ritual based Vedic Hinduism, the Upanishad based intellectual Hinduism and the Brahma Vishnu, Mahadeva based holy trinity based Hinduism. There were also myriad regional and minor gods and godesses like Hathor, Anubis, Thoth, Sokar etc., in Egypt (all chimeric) and minor local deities as well as worship of cows, snakes and so on. The Aryan nomads wealth was valued in cattle. The cows gave milk and dung was used as fuel, binding agent and flooring, and the bulls were used for ploughing. The Hindus ate meat but beef only on special occasions and festivals because cattle were wealth not to be consumed as routine. It was the influence of Jainism which led many Hindus particularly in Western India to become pure vegetarian. The main tenets of Hinduism were Karma (divine justice) and metempsychosis (reincarnation), later acceptance of avataras or human and animal incarnations of god to cleanse the earth of sins and sinners and worldly renunciation.

As is usual invariably over time whether for egotistic or obsessive reasons or temporal lobe brain malfunction someone new claims to be a prophet with divine vision or experience, offering an improved religion. This may happen because the priests or the powerful are exploiting the masses by extorting money or work or imposing slavery. It happened in Christianity in Marin Luther’s reformation and the English revolt by Henry the Eighth, but succeeded because of the corruption of the papacy and the Catholic Church. It prevailed in those cases because the ordinary people resented the riches, property and tax exemption of the church and even the hounding of the Dominicans (the pun - Domino+Canis or the hounds of god). It can happen as in Iran when the Persians resented the Meccan Arab hegemony and opted for Shiism or Wahab and the Wahabis resented Sufism and the pagan worship of saints creeping into Islam. It happened in India because Mahavira emphasized non-violence and promoted certain masochistic tendencies like plucking each individual hair for Diksha (renunciation) and shunning comfort (sleeping and eating prohibitions). Similarly monks took vows of silence, wore hair shirts and enacted passion plays or walked the Via Dolorosa (stations of the cross) or Shia Muslims performed self-flagellation for Moharram (ashura).

The new prophets hoped to get converts from the old religion adherents so they could not be too revolutionary. That is why Jainism prohibited meat, eating roots and killing animals, but retained reincarnation and karma. It eliminated God but retained the tirthankaras (guides helping to ford the river of life). Buddhism eliminated god, propounded a computerized karma registry, but retained reincarnation. On the same basis Mohammed retained circumcision, forbidding of pork eating and praying in the direction of Jerusalem to entice Jews, but when he failed to convert them and conquered Mecca, he changed the direction of prayers to Mecca and retained the importance of the Kabba (black stone) which was sacred to the Meccans.

It is usually the poor and deprived who are likely to be dissatisfied and convert, so he allowed four wives to every man, increased the inheritance and value of testimony of women from zero to half of those of the males and allowed unlimited plunder of non-Muslims. To entice the poor Christianity made promises to the meek of inheriting the earth. Hinduism used Karma and Reincarnation to prevent the poor and deprived from rebelling by fear of even worse in the next life. Since the only rational Indians, the atheist Charvakas had nothing to offer and were hedonistic and Epicurean, they were defamed and became an extinct group.

In India the oppressive tyranny of the caste system and Brahmin priests led to the bhakti (devotion) path by Surdas, Kabir, Tukaram and  Nanak. The oppression by Hindu rulers made the poor tolerant to foreign conquest as it made no difference to their miserable life. Often the very rich and the untouchables converted to Islam to avoid the Jizya tax or untouchability and to Christianity for advancing in government jobss or charitable food.

Nanak was influenced by the generous support of a Muslim benefactor and had read the story of the Buddha, so he also left his wife and children and went to Mecca with the Sufis in the search for a newer and better god. He copied some of the tenets of Islam like covering the head, taking off the shoes (Mohammed copied from Judaism). It was Guru Gobind Singh whose all four sons had died either in battle or by being buried alive by Aurangzeb and had no children to take up his exalted place (unlike Billy Graham), who decided that henceforth the permanent guru would be the holy book (idea borrowed from the Bible and Koran). He also forbade cutting the hair on the head and face and that too in India where the temperature is above 100 F or 40C nine out of twelve months. Giving him the benefit of the doubt that he was not stupid or a sado-masochist, the best explanation I can come up with is that Sikhism was as much a political movement as it was a religion and he wanted such fanatic commitment from his followers that they would be unable to avoid identification and persecution and be willing to die for their cause and religion like the early Christians under Caligula and Nero.  This is in stark contrast to the Muslims who are allowed to practice “Taqqiya” or evasive lying and denial of faith under extreme adverse circumstances. Interested readers may wish to read my article –The Genesis, Evolution & Extinction of God. 
 
Continued to Evolution of the World