Part – II
Ire of gods and sorrow of souls
Section 2: Gods admonish
God Ved
Invited lecture
Most popular and best run society among Indian geologists and earth scientists is Geological Society of India, which published my first paper in 1968. Thirty two years after the event, I was reading an invited paper before the Society in January 2000 to discuss the evolution of rivers of Northwestern India during the last 30,000 years. Sanskrit grammar made an essential contribution in preparing the manuscript of an off the track paper prepared after going through Rigved, selecting relevant mantras and preparing a grammatically constrained translation of scientific relevance. Patanjali enumerates the use of grammar for protection of Veds. I admired the relevance of his suggestion as a student of grammar.
My engagement in connection with the Vedic Rivers included scanning through Rigved for sorting out type descriptions of main rivers of the Vedic past and examine the non-sense theory of the European pundits canvassing that the Vedic period covered merely a past of 3500 years, against my discovery of an undisputable Vedic scratched image of Dyava-Prithivi in Rajasthan dating back to 25000 years (3). They had also propagated that there was a white race called Aryan that migrated to India around 3500 years from Black Sea region, settled in Sindh-Rajasthan and composed the Vedic literature.
The Aryan theory falls flat against the intrinsic definition of Vedic land between Ila (Nile), Bharati (Euphrates) and Sarasvatee (Sutlej) Rivers – spreading between Egypt and India. But more revealing for me were the verses of Rigved elaborating the habitation of Aryans and the date of composition of the hymn.
My grammatically constrained interpretation of verses from Rigved suggested that Aryan population had already settled in the Indus valley by 10,000 years ago when horses were roaming wild and caught, roped and tied for the food requirement of the days ahead. There were more blacks than whites at Catal Hoyuk in Turkey some eight thousand years ago to support my inferences from Rigved (8). Nothing like migration of a white race from west took place when Aryans were settled in India.
I sent the manuscript of much labored paper to Dr. B. P. Radhakrishna for review and suggestions but with no intention of publishing in the journal of the Geological Society. The elderly doyen of geology has brought Geological Society of India from a modest status to its present fame and dignity single handedly; it may be said without exaggeration. But the society is still poor and the bulky paper of mine with numerous colored illustrations was beyond its finances, I had judged. I was to publish it elsewhere and send a copy to the erudite later. The person, then in eighties, had published a book titled ‘Vedic Sarasvati’, edited jointly with S. S. Merh (18).
I sent the manuscript of the paper to Dr. Radhakrishna on September 25, 2000, telling him that there is nothing like Vedic Sarasvati in Northwestern India. There were four rivers of this name in the Vedic past. I also felt like reminding him “the topic of communication between teacher and taught during Vedic period. Vedic teaching commenced with the instruction of the teacher to the taught, “Now hold”. What was to be held then by the student was something different than the episode of holding your copy of Rigved in my hands after you gave it to me for a while. It was the power of mantras passing from the mouth of teacher to the ears of his disciple. Great were my teachers in the past births. Their power of mantras is still intact with me even after thousands of years. My prostrations to Ved-Purush and Vedic teachers, I could complete the work with their grace upon me”.
Primary goal of Vedic teaching was strengthening manojav through mantras, but when the Western scholars read them they went for reconstructing the society and geography of the past. They did not care for a simple aspect of Vedic cult – tradition of grammar was meant for protecting the meaning and understanding of the Veds. Western pundits never acquired traditional grammar for translating Veds. As a result ‘earlier western translations of Veds are hurried, lax, and often, incorrect’ (19). ‘Aim of these translations was not to render a text, conforming strictly to the scientific, cultural and grammatical understanding of the surviving Sanskrit text…’ Vedic Sarasvati of Radhakrishna and Merh was written on the basis of such faulty translations.
There is nothing wrong technically with the publication of Radhakrishna and Merh based on Western translation of Veds, a layman may say. Gods, however, have their own paradigm of judging a person and acting for or against him. God Ved could not exonerate two Brahmins on the title ‘Vedic Sarasvati. They did not read even a hymn of Ved in Sanskrit to write a book like Vedic Sarasvati. They had earned ire from God Brahma and Goddess Sarasvatee on this account, seemingly.
God Ved was driving me to educate the senior editor of ‘Vedic Sarasvati’: how Sarasvatee looks when a qualified person reads through the hymns of Rigved for interpreting the courses of the mammoth and most revered river of India, worshipped later as the goddess protecting intellect and killing the crooks,
A paper titled ‘Vedic River Systems’ (19) was sent to Dr. Radhakrishna, for junking his work titled Vedic Sarasvati years after my manuscript. This is what probably Brahma, custodian of Veds, desired me to do. Why did Brahma take such an action is not known to me. A realization was before me, however, I was picked by the deity to carry out as his medium what he desired to do – publish a bulky paper about ‘Vedic River Systems’ and correspond with a reputed Brahmin to impart him unhappiness on behalf of the custodian god of Veds. I was bonded to Brahma because I was a Vedic erudite once at the banks of River Mahi adjacent to Vadodara.
Gods are community thought-field- regimes. They know their kingdom and men better than humans. I had fought once under the banner of Chamunda in a past life. The goddess felt very much entitled to requisition me in my present life too for her requirement in a battle against a person best known to her. The same applies to God Brahma. In either case a person remains and acts like a medium of his god or goddess. He has to carry out things on the subconscious command of the controlling deity without any decision making powers of his own. I did not know precisely the goals of my masters.