Selected Works of Navaratna S. Rajaram (Set of 3 Books)

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Search For The Historical Krishna

Profiles in Deception (Ayodhya and the Dead Sea Scrolls)

Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization

This is the fourth edition of the acclaimed work first published nearly twenty years ago. In this significantly expanded edition, the authors summarize the progress to date and set the stage for future research by incorporating recent discoveries in natural history like the Toba explosion 75,000 years ago. This allows them to show Vedic ideas and language to be late Pleistocene and early Holocene evolutionary phenomena that made their way to Europe some 10,000 years ago leaving their imprint on the languages and cultures of Europe. This provides a scientific explanation for the 200 year-old puzzle of why Indian and European languages are related. All these make the present edition the definitive work covering the discoveries of the last three decades and the starting point for all future work in the area following the collapse of the Aryan invasion myth.

Dr. Navaratna Rajaram is a mathematical scientist and linguist who after more than twenty years in the U.S. academia and high technology industry turned his attention to ancient history. He was the first to show connections between Vedic mathematics and Harappan archaeology. Later he teamed up with the Vedic scholar the late Dr. Natwar Jha to give a rational solution to the identity of the Harappan language and script. He pioneered the use of natural history and genetics to ancient civilization, which appears for the first time in this book. He is also a researcher in Vedanta applied to foundations of quantum physics.

Dr. David Frawley (Pandit Vamadeva Shastri) is a Vedic scholar and philosopher with seminal contributions to ancient Indian history and prehistory. He was among the first to show that the Rigveda describes a maritime society and not one of steppe nomads. He also pointed out that the Vedic civilization in India originated in the coastal regions of peninsular India and later moved to the Sarasvati region. He is the author of several books on yoga and Vedic spirituality. He is one of the few Westerners to be recognized as a Vedacharya by the leading spiritual centers in India.

In the twenty years since the appearance of the first edition of Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization (1995, World Heritage Press, Quebec, Canada), the field has changed almost beyond recognition. The Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) is all but dead, and except for a few diehards who have created an Aryan Migration Theory (AMT) to mask the failure of the AIT, the Harappan civilization (Indus Valley Civilization or IVC) is recognized for what it is - a derivative and part of the Vedic civilization in the broadest sense from the Samhitas and Upanishads to the epics and the Puranas. Despite the immense scope of this connection, the Vedic- Harappan relationship can be summarized in just a few words: Harappan archaeology represents the material remains of the culture, civilization and the thoughts found in this vast Vedic literature. Quite appropriately, scholars and institutions including the Indian National Museum now call it the “Indus- Sarasvati” or the “Sarasvati-Sindhu” civilization.

We next take a brief look at the changes as chronicled in the previous three editions and touch on new developments that motivated the present, fourth edition.

To return to our book, the first edition was written at a time when the shadow of the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) hung heavily over the field: it was the ruling paradigm and our book was among the first to question it on both scientific and literary grounds. As we noted in the Preface to the first edition, our goal in the book was “... to offer both an alternative model and an alternative approach to ancient history.” This we did first by examining ancient records and noting that the maritime world described by the Rigveda is incompatible with the lifestyle of the supposedly nomadic ‘Aryans’ of the Eurasian steppe described by the advocates of the AIT or AMT. We noted also that Harappan archaeology is replete with Vedic symbolism suggesting that it was influenced by Vedic thought and religion.

Following up on this Vedic-Harappan connection, the book went on to provide a chronological landmark by comparing the Vedic mathematics of the Sulbasutras with the mathematics of Old Babylonia and the Egyptian Middle Kingdom. This made the Harappan Civilization overlap in time with the Sutra period of the Vedic Age. This naturally placed the Vedas, the Rigveda in particular before the Harappan or the Indus Valley Civilization. This served as a step towards integrating Harappan archaeology and the Vedic literature - a step that was seen as more radical then than it may seem today.

In the second edition we went beyond refutation of old ideas like the Aryan invasion and presented new archaeological findings suggesting the existence of an earlier layer of civilization in Europe before the rise of Egypt and Mesopotamia. We hinted that it might be attributed to the Indo-Europeans whose languages and culture carry the imprint of Indian languages and spiritual ideas. This is firmed up in the present volume on the basis of new data from natural history and population genetics, something that was not available at the time. We give a brief account of this in Supplement 3 but caution we still have a long way to go. As just noted, this constitutes a significant new addition that could well be the starting point for future works.

The third edition published in 2001 represented a more radical departure. To begin with, it was no longer possible to deny the obvious Vedic symbolism contained in Harappan artifacts, even if the validity of the solution to the Harappan language and script proposed by N. Jha and N.S. Rajaram may be disputed. Their critics sought to divert attention from this while focusing on the supposed ‘consensus’ that the Harappans had to be non-Vedic and non-Sanskritic without offering any reasons for the claim. This separation, which was both diachronic and synchronic, owed more to academic inertia and bias than solid evidence.

With the benefit of hindsight one can see that beginning with the first edition, the new light shed on ancient India was the fruit of collaboration between scholars approaching from two quite different perspectives - literary-symbolic and scientific. The symbolism of the Vedas pervades Harappan archaeology including its iconography thereby testifying to their unity. Natwar Jha’s discovery of the Mahabharata describing the icons and their Vedic symbolism bears further testimony to this unity. (Described in Appendix to Chapter 2)

The decade since the publication of the third edition has brought dramatic changes to the field, most notably in the arrival of natural history and population genetics as major factors in the evolution of the ancient world of both people and languages. To begin with, it has settled once and for all the question of any invasion or migration in the late ancient age as postulated in the Aryan Invasion Theory. Further, it has allowed us to make precise the notion of Indo-European people and their language(s). This is found to bear no resemblance to the IE or the PIE postulated by linguists in the past.

This is a major new development and one of the main reasons for bringing out the fourth edition. While several books are likely to be written on this development, it is far too important a subject to ignore even in this book. Hence a brief summary of these findings and their ramification for the topics covered in the book is given in Supplement 3. From all this it may be seen that the present edition is not just a revision, but constitutes a significant rewriting of the previous edition. Significant parts of the previous editions are retained because they contain a critical analysis of highly influential beliefs and methods that have sustained history writing for well over a century. Thus they serve as a critical record of a phase of historical writing that will be useful as a source for future historians.

Though not obvious at the time, the approach of combining the symbolic (or spiritual) and the scientific may be seen as a step towards to a new paradigm that has since been taken up by others. Among these Michel Danino, Kamlesh Kapur, Sanjeev Sanyal and Saroj Bala deserve note while others will doubtless follow. We are heartened to note that all these recognize the Aryan Invasion/Migration to be the false doctrine it is.

Viewed in this light, the present (fourth) edition may be seen as marking the close of one phase of historical research and writing based on colonial and early post-colonial ideas while opening the window to a new phase based on natural history, genetics and associated subjects. The Introduction, the two Appendixes and the Supplements have been added with this transition in mind. The next book on the subject will in all likelihood have to start from here and follow a different course. We give a glimpse of what that new direction might be in the Introduction and the Supplement 3.

Changed landscape

A nineteenth century Indologist like F. Max Muller looking at the historical landscape as it stood twenty years ago would have had little difficulty relating to it, either its substance or its method. But were he to arrive today, a mere twenty years later, he would be lost in the maze of new discoveries that have changed the landscape beyond recognition. Coincidentally perhaps, these two decades happen to be marked by the first edition of Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization and the present fourth edition. As a result, the four editions taken together may be viewed as a chronicle of the field as it has gone through its most eventful two decades - from being a colonial concoction to a scientific enterprise. The present edition has been written against the background of this transformation.

We recognize that many if not most history books still carry the imprint of the colonial legacy - of seeing the Vedas and the Indian civilization as products of language, literature and ideas brought in by a race of invaders known as Aryans, said to be themselves a branch of a people called Indo- Europeans. Those brought up on this ‘history’ are likely to be no less bewildered by what this book has to say than a Max Muller returned from the dead. This Introduction has been prepared to help readers make the transition from the history they are familiar with to the dramatically changed scene and the developments that led to it. We begin with the following summary of the main features of the transformed scene.

1. The Aryan invasion theory (AIT), the crown jewel of colonial Indology and its advocates in the post-colonial era is dead. The same holds for its short-lived successor the Aryan migration theory (AMT) which sought to preserve all the conclusions of the AIT while claiming to disown the word ‘invasion’; this artifice was to get around the fact it is contradicted by evidence from archaeology and other sources.

2. Science has shown that the term Arya as applied to people or languages has no meaning; Aryans exist neither as an ethnic group nor as a language group. The classical Indian definition (and usage) of Arya as honorable or civilized is the only justifiable meaning. In other words it is an attribute that can be used to describe any people based on their beliefs, values and conduct regardless of race or nationality. Specifically they are followers of some version of Arya Dharma.

3. The people of India, no matter by what label we call them - Arya, Dravida, Adivasi or anything - have lived where they are today for at least 50,000 years, moving and mixing extensively within these confines. Because of this long history of genetic admixture, they cannot be distinguished by their genes. The same is true of caste - there is no connection between caste and genes, which means caste is a much later man-made phenomenon overlaid on an existing, evolved people.

This point needs highlighting since there have been several recent attempts to attribute caste to outsiders - in particular to an invading race who enslaved the natives and relegated them to lower castes. This ‘AIT by the backdoor’ was ‘supported’ by misinterpreting DNA data, often incomplete. This is emphatically disproved by DNA (genetic) evidence. All of us Indians regardless of caste or even if outcaste are cut from the same genetic cloth. Caste is a man made classification that has no biological basis. The ancient Indian description of varna based on occupations and duties (varnashrama) - incorrectly equated with the Portuguese word caste - better describes its development and also does not contradict the findings of science (genetics).

4. The same applies to language with a qualification: it is a product of evolution. Language is a regional phenomenon but unrelated to caste or race. (Brahmins and non-Brahmins in Bengal speak Bengali while people living in Tamil Nadu speak Tamil regardless of caste.) More significantly, Indian languages have evolved within India for at least 50,000 years along with its speakers along regional lines. This means, language is also part of human evolution and is governed by evolutionary laws of nature which are not the same as the rules created by modern linguists.

This too needs some emphasis: linguists have constructed proto-languages like PIE (Proto-Indo-European) based on fragments of existing languages beginning with Sanskrit; they have later gone on to claim PIE as the ancestor of other Indo- European languages including Sanskrit. This is fallacious for of at least two reasons. First, the time scales are greatly different. Where linguists allow only a few thousand years, evolution of Indian languages at least has taken tens of thousands of years. Second, the rules for language change used by linguists are based on superficial comparisons of language fragments and not any scientific theory like evolution. Finally, circular logic is employed in both deriving PIE (say from Sanskrit) and later claiming Sanskrit itself to be a branch of the PIE derived from it. This falls under reduction ad absurdum.

5. The evolution of Indo-European languages and their similarity to Indian languages, especially Sanskrit can be explained on the basis of natural history supported by genetics. Simply put, there were two major waves of humans from South Asia, mainly India, separated by 35,000 years. These are the first Indo-Europeans. The first wave was approximately 45,000 years ago, which went on to form ‘founder groups’ in Eurasia and Europe which were then empty of humans. A second wave followed around 10,000 years ago and carried Sanskrit- related Indian languages and technical terms which were planted on the languages that had evolved with the founder groups from the earlier wave 35,000 years ago. This is the best explanation we have for the affinities between Indian and European languages.

6. ‘Founder group’ is a term from population genetics which refers to a group that successfully settles in a new land and flourishes. The Puritan Pilgrim Fathers may be called a founder group, while the Vikings under Lief Ericsson who went to America earlier but became extinct within a short time were not a founder group. Thus the first wave of Indo-Europeans 45,000 ago led to a founder group.

This means linguists and historians who have followed linguists (and philologists) have very greatly underestimated the time spans involved in the origin and distribution of people and languages of the Old World. While they continue to use thousands of years, nature needs tens of thousands of years to do its work. The whole phenomenon is also much more complex than what linguists have created; they cannot be reduced to simplistic explanations based on invasions and migrations involving just a few thousand years.

This brief summary suffices for our purposes here; a more detailed but still non-technical account is given in Supplement 3.

Battle for India

The scenario just described bears little resemblance to what most of us studied in our history courses and to accounts still found in many, perhaps a majority of history books in print today. The next question is - how did this transformation come about within the last two decades, seemingly uprooting beliefs and theories that had held the fort for nearly two centuries? The fact is, the change, while rapid was not overnight. Nor was it all smooth sailing: it had its turns and twists, debates and personality conflicts until we are now at a point where we can say the changes are irreversible. There will have to be revisions as new data and findings make their way, but there can be no going back to narratives of the colonial era.

This transformed scene is reflected also in the personalities and institutions that dot the academic landscape today. Gone are the giants of comparative religion, linguistics and philology like Max Muller, Whitney, Weber (Albrecht), Keith and a host of others from the nineteenth century and later: they rarely find mention by workers today. Their place has been taken up by natural scientists - palaeo-biologists and population geneticists like Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Vikram Kashyap, Stephen Oppenheimer, Premendra Priyadarshi, Lalji Singh, V.R. Rao, Sanghamitra Saho and others. Many of these now work closely with historians.

While archaeologists have taken note of this development, philologists and religious scholars whose disciplines once dominated the field have for the most part chosen to ignore it. Their tribe is represented today by a dwindling clique of academics (and non-academics) both in India and the West. These are the remnants of a once prominent school of thought that is on the way to oblivion. They have kept themselves in the public eye more through political activism - like lobbying against change in the California school curriculum and canceling courses taught by those whose ideology happened unacceptable to them.

The present book began as a work on the Ayodhya dispute. Upon examining the historical record, and the behavior pattern of the participants, we find that there are really two Ayodhya disputes: the first, about the right of possession to the sacred site known as Rarna-Janmabhumi; the second, about the historicity of the temple itself, whether it ever existed at all. The real conflict over Ayodhya is, therefore, over conflicting versions of history-one national and rooted in the soil, the other a mix of alien and imperialist ideologies controlled by an elite seeking to perpetuate itself. This is what the Ayodhya dispute is really about- not any destruction of a dilapidated mosque used by no one. All the hue and cry over the Ayodhya demolition is a diversion-a smokescreen to conceal the real agenda of this interest group. Deception has been its currency.

This book is about deception used as part of ideology and political control. It takes a close look at the systematic use of deception in propagating and maintaining political dominance as serving the cause of ‘high truths'-truths higher than verifiable facts and even opposed to them. The highest of high truths in India and one that is seen as being endangered by the developments at Ayodhya, is Nehruvian Secularism. The dogma of Nehruvian Secularism is a peculiar mix of Marxism, Euro-Colonialism and Islam. All three are imperialisms. The one thing that these three imperialisms have in common-inherited by the Secularists-is hatred of Hinduism. As inheritors of imperial values, the Secularists naturally see India's indigenous Hindu civilization-the source of its nationalism-as the dark force whose entire past history should be blackened beyond redemption and ultimately effaced. The first step is to coin a derogatory term for it - 'Hindu Communalism'. They see India as an impure land plagued by a pluralistic culture that awaits Secularist cleansing.

For this reason, though Ayodhya remains the central theme of the book, its scope has been expanded to cover the role and method of deception itself by examining three cases: the de-Aryanization of the Harappan civilization by colonial-missionary scholars and their Indian surrogates; the Secularist negation at Ayodhya; and the greatest deception of all-the Christian myth and the suppression of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The first of these, the de-Aryanization of Harappa, serves as a prototype in examining the other two; it is also an integral part of the imperialist agenda of distorting and destroying India's history-now taken up by the Secularists.

Recently, there have been some changes in the Indian intellectual scene also. The so- called Secularists are rapidly losing their hold over establishment institutions like the ICHR (Indian Council of Historical Research). Also, the publication of Arun Shourie's book Eminent Historians has dealt a blow to the credibility of many Secularist 'scholars', though the media has not been sufficiently forthright in its condemnation of their unscrupulous activities. The Secularists are unlikely to recover from this twin blow of the collapse of their historical theories and the exposure of their venality and dishonesty as scholars.

Dr. N.S. Rajaram was born in Mysore, India, in September 1943. He holds a B.E. degree in Electrical Engineering from B.M.S. College in Bangalore and Ph. D. in Mathematical Sciences from Indiana University in Bloomington, U.S.A. He is an internationally known researcher in Computer Science. For more than ten years, he was one of America's best-known workers in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. He has been an advisor to several high technology companies in America and Europe. He has also been a consultant to NASA.

Since 1992, .he has been an independent researcher and author working on the history and science of ancient India. His work on Vedic Mathematics, relating it to the history of India. Egypt and Babylon is world- renowned. He is the author of several books on the subject including the highly acclaimed Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization with David Frawley. His most recent work relates to the decipherment of the 5000 year-old Indus script done jointly with the great Vedic scholar Dr. Natwar Jha. His other books are on Secularism, Dead Sea Scrolls, Hinduism, Gandhi, and Rama-Janmabhumi at Ayodhya.

His columns on history, culture and current affairs have appeared in publications worldwide. He is one of the most widely read columnists in the world on India and her civilization. He lives in Oklahoma City, U.S.A. and Bangalore, India.

The present book began as a work on the Ayodhya dispute. My intention at first was to explore the underlying similarities between the Ayodhya deception and the Dead Sea Scrolls deception - the first by the Leftist intellectuals of India, and the second by the authorities of the Catholic Church. Upon examining the historical record, and the behavior pattern of the participants, it began to dawn on me that there are really two Ayodhya disputes: the first, about the right of possession to the sacred site known as Rama-Janmabhumi; the second, about the historicity of the temple itself, whether it ever existed at all.

The first dispute is of course ancient and historical, but the second dispute is of very recent origin. It is part of a much larger conflict over the imposition of a version of history on the people of India by certain interest groups embodying alien imperialistic values. As I describe in the book, it may be seen as the symbol of an ongoing battle between rising nationalism and residual imperialism. It is this second, or what may be called the 'dispute behind the dispute', that I have chosen to focus on in the present volume. I see it essentially as the last phase of India's past under imperialism - a struggle for survival by the agents and beneficiaries of defunct imperialisms. These are the ones operating under the cover of 'secularism'. As far as the right of possession is concerned, the record is clear. For more than four hundred years - from 1528 to 1980 and later-no one questioned the following basic fact: a temple was destroyed in 1528 at a site called Rama-Janmabhumi to make way for a mosque known as the Babri Masjid. Hindus, Muslims, British officials and foreign travelers-all are unanimous on this point. This now stands confirmed by archaeology, especially by new discoveries following the demolition of December 6, 1992. Over the centuries, the site changed hands several times, but the dispute has always been over the right of possession-never the historical fact of the existence of previous temples or their destruction.

It is only in the past twenty years or so that a new 'historical dispute' has been manufactured over. the existence of a temple at the site. This is part of an effort that seeks to erase a thousand years of brutally violent Islamic history and replace it with a sanitized version in conformity with the interests of a select few who came to dominate the national scene. As I see it, the real conflict over Ayodhya is over conflicting versions of history - one national and rooted in the soil, the other a mix of alien and imperialist ideologies controlled by an elite seeking to perpetuate itself. This is what the Ayodhya dispute is really about-not any destruction of a dilapidated mosque used by no 0lle. All the hue and cry over the Ayodhya demolition is a diversion-a smokescreen to conceal the real agenda of this interest group. Deception has been its currency.

More broadly, this book is about deception used as part of ideology and political control. I have called it Profiles in Deception; I could also have called it Fabrication and Negation - for these are the two themes underlying deception on a historic scale that I have tried to highlight. My goal is to take a close look at the systematic use of deception in propagating and maintaining political dominance as serving the cause of 'high truths' - truths higher than verifiable facts and even opposed to them. The highest of high truths in India and one that is seen as being endangered by the developments at Ayodhya, is Nehruvian Secularism.

In any field outside of politics and religion, such a high truth would be called a dogma or superstition and dismissed as absurd. But neither dogmatic religions nor exc1usivist political systems can exist without them. The dogma of Nehruvian Secularism is a peculiar mix of Marxism, Euro-Colonialism and Islam. All three are imperialisms -their values sponsored even after independence by a feudal court; they have now met defeat at the hands of Hinduism. The so-called Secularists are the native residue of these defunct imperialisms. The one thing that these three imperialisms have in common - inherited by the Secularists - is hatred of Hinduism. Speaking of them and their specially crafted language, Sita Ram Goel observes

Krishna, a Yadava prince of the house of Vrishni, occupies a unique place in the hearts and minds of the Hindus. Until some Europeans two hundred years ago launched their study of Indian history and tradition, few Indians had questioned his historicity. But through the application of the Europeans' so-called 'scientific method', Krishna was soon reduced to the status of a myth. Colonial authority and lack of a critical spirit among educated Indians ensured that the work of these men and women of the colonial period without much knowledge of science or Indian sources escaped serious criticism. They are gone but their influence still lingers In the present book, Dr. N.S. Rajaram, a scientist as well as historian, marshals evidence from a wide range of sources ranging from archaeology and astronomy to the newly deciphered Indus seals to show that Krishna was in all probability a historical figure who lived towards the end of the Vedic Age. The result is a tour de force that gives a vivid picture of the life and times of one of the grandest personalities in history. It presents also a new approach to the study of ancient history by combining science and traditional sources.

Dr. Navaratna S. Rajaram is a mathematician, linguist and historian who after a twenty-year career as an academic and industrial researcher in the United States turned his attention to history, in which he has several notable achievements. He is the author of the acclaimed book Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization (with David Frawley), now in its third edition. He collaborated with renowned Vedic scholar Dr. Natwar Jha on the decipherment of the 5000 year old Indus script leading to their joint work The Deciphered Indus Script. In May 1999, Rajaram deciphered the newly discovered sample of what has been called the "world's oldest writing," showing it to be related to the Rigveda. He has also written extensively on Indian history, philosophy and current affairs. He is one of the world's most widely read authors on these subjects.

Krishna, a Yadava prince of the house of Vrishni, occupies a unique place in the hearts and minds of the Hindus. Until Europeans two hundred years ago launched their study of Indian history and tradition, few Indians had questioned his historicity. But through the application of the Europeans' so-called 'scientific method', Krishna was soon reduced to the status of a myth used to support some religious beliefs. Colonial authority and a lack of critical spirit among Western educated Indians ensured that these `scientists', who were mostly missionaries and colonial bureaucrats without an inkling of science, escaped serious criticism. This was the situation through much of the nineteenth century. They are gone but their influence lingers.

A reaction soon set in. Several Indians mastered the critical method of Western scholars and went on to apply it to their own history and tradition, but in a more rigorous fashion and with a surer command of the primary sources. Among the leaders in this reaction - part of what has been called the 'Hindu Renaissance' -was the great Bengali scholar and nationalist Sri Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. In his book Sri Krishna Charitra written more than a century ago, he showed that Krishna was in all probability a historical figure who came towards the end of the Vedic Age.

The present volume builds on the research work of pioneers like Sri Bankima Chandra. Today, a century later, we have a wealth of new data from archaeology, ecology, ancient astronomy, prehistoric mathematics and other fields that were not available to them. We also have tools like powerful computer software that allow us to verify the astronomical statements in ancient texts like the Mahabharata. A major new source is inscriptional data from deciphered seals from the Harappan Civilization. These allow us to discover the Historical Krishna, and obtain a glimpse of the age in which he lived with a degree of confidence not possible a hundred or even fifty years ago.

In a way, Search for the Historical Krishna may be seen as part of a larger search for the origins of Indian Civilization, especially the Vedic Age. Swami Mukhyananda in his Foreword to the book has pointed out the important place of Krishna in Hindu religion and philosophy. At a different level, I see the search for Krishna as creating a path for us to find our way out of our centuries long tamas - darkness -and move into the light of knowledge that contains our past: tamaso ma jyotirgamaya - said the sage of the great Brihadaranyaka Upanishad; it is fortutious indeed that another great Upanishad, the Chandogya, should guide us with a reference to Krishna Devakiputra.

All this is part of the endlessly fascinating personality of Krishna. After nearly two centuries of myth making by alien interests and their Indian surrogates, continuing to the present, science is finally making it possible to open a window on this primeval age of the Vedas. It is entirely proper that science should be our guide, for science after all is 'Veda' - knowledge. And the search for humanity's Vedic origins must begin with the search for Krishna, the greatest sage of the greatest age - the Vedic Age. This is the story of that search.

This search is made possible in part by new discoveries in several areas of archaeology: satellite photography, ancient mathematics, computational astronomy and others having a direct bearing on the history of the ancient world. These yield new perspectives on history and civilization. Above all, these changes reflect the benefits of following a scientific path in the study of our past. What I have presented here may be seen as the result of such an approach applied to problems of great interest to all of us. It is an illustration of what science can do for history and also of how much more remains to be done. At the same time, this scientific search is possible only because our sages have preserved our ancient tradition.

The results of such a scientific approach applied to recent findings about our past go to show that a good deal of history remains embedded in the traditional Indian literature, especially in the epics and the Puranas. No less interestingly, it is beginning to be seen that even the chronology of ancient India based on the so-called Kali Date (3102 BC) for the Mahabharata period is not lacking in scientific support, falling as it does at the beginning of what we now call the Harappan Civilization.

The Kali Age - especially its harbinger, the Mahabharata War - may be seen as marking the end of the spiritual age of the Vedas to be replaced by the material age in which we live. Its origins go back some 5000 years. The Mahabharata War stands at the threshold of this transition. Archaeology now supports this idea of transition from the spiritual to the material at the time of the Mahabharata War; it is a historic divide which saw the rise of the great material civilization of the Harappans, along with those in West Asia and Dynastic Egypt. This is where history begins according to European notions of history. This has been blindly applied to India also.

Veda Vyasa saw otherwise; to his Vedic vision, it marked the fall of humanity from spiritual grace. Yet this is what modern historians have mistakenly called the birth of civilization, though, with their Eurocentric orientation, they have placed it in lands closer to their own - like Sumeria, Egypt and even Greece. But to understand ancient history, we must go to the only people who have retained both the records and the memory of that hoary age. That takes us to India, and to the study of the people who created the great Harappan Civilization of the Indus-Sarasvati.

This leads us to a basic question relating to ancient history, including the life of Krishna: Who were the Harappans? Thanks to science, we now have the answer. They were the western people of the late Vedic Age - the period that saw the creation of the later Vedic literature; this is thanks to the work of Indian and American scholars, notably K.D. Sethna, S.R. Rao, David Frawley, A. Seidenberg, Bhagwan Singh, Shrikant Talageri and a few others. To this illustrious list must now be added name of Natwar Jha, the decipherer of the famous and difficult Indus script - surely the most important breaktrough in the study of Indian history after the discovery of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. It has been my good fortune to have known nearly all them, and collaborate with quite a few - notaly Frawley and Jha. Seidenberg is an unhappy exception. His premature death deprived me of the opportunity.

The result of this effort is a portrait of the life and times of Krishna - obtained by combining science and tradition. To highlight this point, the book also has something to say about this approach to history, to show how science applied to ancient texts can greatly enrich our knowledge of the past in wholly unexpected ways. What we are now witnessing is a dramatic shift in perspective, one that is helping to push back the origins of Indian civilization - eventually all civilization - by several thousand years. And in this search, ancient tradition is proving to be a valuable guide to the past. Science and tradition working together are helping us unlock the secrets of our past.

Historically speaking, in the Hindu religio-philosophic thought, from the early Vedic times - that is, anywhere beyond the Aditi-Punarvasu period of the Vedic Calendar, belonging to about 6000 BC - religion and philosophy have gone hand in hand. This has been established by the great Vedic scholar and savant B.G. Tilak in his epochal work Orion securely based on the Rigveda. These findings are held also by some other Vedic scholars, and, increasingly accepted by several Western scholars as well. These dates and conclusions are receiving further support from recent researches on scientific lines based on archaeology and other factors.

Vedic seers and sages, with deep insight and comprehensive outlook, sought to discover the Ultimate Reality behind all the ever changing variegated phenomenal manifestation called the `universe'; in this their goal was to help human life and activities in the world to be conducted meaningfully in the context of that background Reality which permeates and informs all existence. They arrived at 'That One Supreme Reality' (tad-ekam) through different stages of enquiry, open discussions, and deep inward concentration accompanied by meditation. They designated IT as `Brahman' (The Spiritual Infinite) and decided that IT-Brahman is of the nature of Universal Consiousness (Prajnanam Brahma).

Brahman, though noumenally* trans-personal, and yet on the phenomenal plane gives rise to and informs all entities and beings as their Inner-Self (Pratyag-Atman), endowing them with empirical individuality and functional reality. Hence, for the Vedic seers, the manifested universe was not a mere meaningless, isolated, independently existing material phenomenon of disparate objects and beings, but an interconnected and vibrant living reality assuming all entities and beings, whether appearing phenomenally as inanimate or animate, as non-human, human, or divine- or as material or spiritual.

In religious life, therefore, that 'Supreme Spiritual Infinite (Brahman)' was conceived for the facility of adoration and worship of people at different stages of development, and with varied aptitudes and tastes, in various philosophico-mythical divine forms as a connecting link between the inner Spiritual Reality in Man (Atman or soul) and the Infinite Spiritual Reality (Brahman) behind the universe to enable people to realize their unity or union (Yoga) with that reality- each in their own way. Of course, there were also methods of impersonal approach to realize their identity with the Supreme reality directly. But that was a difficult path that only a few could traverse- like climbing to the top of a steep and high mountain directly. The vast majority seek to realize the Highest Truth by the easy, gradual, zig-zag course.

The Supreme Reality, the source of all phenomenon, being Universal Consciousness, IT can certainly reach out to them according to their approach, as stated in the Gita IV. 11 (ye yatha mam prapadyante tam tathaiva bhajamyaham; mama vartma'anuvartante manushyah partha sarvashah).

Search for the Historical Krishna

Dr. Rajaram has written his Search for the Historical Krishna to counter the views expressed by Western scholars (and their Indian followers) that the Krishna legend is all myth without any historical basis; and that the Mahabharata is not of old origin but only a collection of the writings of different authors at different periods; and the Puranas are are also of the same category -mythological in nature and without any historical value - and are all of very recent origin.

In the light of the above views, first of all, to establish the antiquity of the Vedas and the Mahabharata, Dr. Rajaram has given in a Prologue, as a background to his work on the life of Sri Krishna, the results of recent independent researches as against the prejudiced views of old theories. He has tried to sort out the genuine historical events connected with Sri Krishna, based mostly on the Mahabharata, aided by the works of the ancient dramatist Bhasa, and a few other relevant works where necessary, and given an interesting account establishing that Sri Krishna was a great historical figure who shone on the stage of ancient India, and made his mark in life and left his impress on every aspect of Hindu life and thought. The date of the Mahabharata War and the historicity of Krishna have an important bearing on the chronological formulation of Indian history.

There is originality in the presentation and interpretations of Dr. Rajaram, though there may be some differences of opinion on some points here and there. However, it is hoped that his pioneering effort will be pursued by other scholars to reinforce the line of thought presented by him in this work, which was inspired by the work of the great patriot-scholar Sri Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's Sri Krishna Charitra in Bengali published in 1892.

In his work, Bankim Chandra had adopted a highly critical method of research to unearth the life and activities of the great historical Krishna, who has left a deep and lasting impression on the national mind for scores of centuries. He also critically analyzed the views of Western scholars and showed their hollowness and deliberate attempts at perversion giving up the straightforward meaning and views. Further researches and deeper study of the vast literary records in India in the true spirit may fill up the gaps if any in this work of Dr. Rajaram, and with the help of archaeology, astronomy and other relevant sciences, the chronology and history of ancient India may be firmly established.

This work of Dr. Rajaram deserves to be welcomed by a wide circle of readers interested in Indian history and culture, as a pioneering effort in the context of new researches in these topics.

**Contents and Sample Pages**