ANTIQUITY OF THE VEDIC CIVILIZATION
THE GREAT DELUGE:
Certain things or events, happens, that gets ingrained in the memory of not one person but of the whole race or population and then that information is passed on from one generation to the other thus becoming a legend. One such event was the great flood which got ingrained in the memory of humanity in a large scale as is evident from various legends not only from India but also from different parts of the world. The legend of the flood is one such memory of the humanity that is there in the legends of many tribes and civilizations, present and past, from Celtic in the north to India and also mentioned in the old testament. The mention of the great flood in also there in the Vedas
I call this disaster global because of the geographical distribution of this particular legend. To be present in the legends of so many civilizations and tribes, this disaster must have been on a large scale. So large that people from all parts of the world was affected in a major way, so as to find mention in their legends. Such a massive global disaster did not occur within 4500 years, before present. The myths and legends surrounding the huge, tremendous, catastrophic global flood, seems more to be a fact rather than a fiction. The earliest written record of the flood comes from the Sumerian civilization some 4th to 3rd millennia BC. In the Sumerian city of Nippura ( located some 200 Km south of the city of Baghdad on the bank of the Euphrates river). There an archaeological excavation brought about a clay tablet and from this very clay tablet we come to know about a very pious man named Zisudra. He was appointed by the almighty and thus he was told to built a huge Ship and to save the mankind from the impending disaster. According to the tablet, Gods were angry of the human race and their wrong doings and they came to a conclusion that such a cleansing act should be done. The good and the pious people should be exempted from the trauma of such an act and hence Zisudra was chosen by the gods to save mankind. Zisudra got a vision that such a catastrophic deluge is going to come and that he should make a huge boat and take with him seeds of future civilization, flora, and fauna so that he can oversee the rebirth of eden once again. In the Epic Of Gilgamesh the legend of the flood is no different from the Sumerian legend.
Utnapishtim, the only man to survive the great flood sent by the gods, had lived in the city of Shurrupak, where he served the god Ea. The city and gods grew old, and the goddess Ishtar caused such strife among men that the gods could not sleep for the noise. So Enlil, god of earth, wind, and air, said, “Let us loose the waters on the world, and drown them all.” The gods agreed, but Ea warned Utnpishtim of the impending disaster in a dream and told him to build a boat, and take on board two of every creature. For seven nights the tempest raged, until the entire world was covered in water.
At last, the boat ran aground on the top of Mount Nisir. To check the water level, Utnapishtim set free a dove, then a swallow, then a raven. When the raven did not return, Utnapishtim knew it had found a resting place and the waters were subsiding. In thanks, he lit a fire to make a sacrifice to the gods. Enlil was furious when he smelled the smoke, but wise Ea interceded, and Enlil made Utnapishtim and his wife immortal; they are the ancestors of all humanity.
The legend of the flood is also so very similar among the Greeks. It goes some thing like this—- From his throne in the high Olympos, Zeus looked down on the children of men, and saw that everywhere they followed only their lusts, and cared nothing for right or for law. And ever, as their hearts waxed grosser in their wickedness, they devised for themselves new rites to appease the anger of the gods, till the whole earth was filled with blood. Far away in the hidden glens of the Arcadian hills the sons of Lykaon feasted and spake proud words against the majesty of Zeus, and Zeus himself came down from his throne to see their way and their doings. Then Zeus returned to his home on Olympos, and he gave the word that a flood of waters should be let loose upon the earth, that the sons of man might die for their great wickedness. So the west wind rose in its might, and the dark rain-clouds veiled the whole heaven, for the winds of the north which drive away the mists and vapors were shut up in their prison house. On hill and valley burst the merciless rain, and the rivers, loosened from their courses, rushed over the whole plains and up the mountain-side. From his home on the highlands of Phtia, Deukalion looked forth on the angry sky, and when he saw the waters swelling in the valleys beneath, he called Pyrrha, his wife, and said to her: ‘The time has come of which my father, the wise Prometheus, forewarned me. Make ready, therefore, the ark which I have built, and place in it all that we may need for food while the flood of waters is out upon the earth.’ The Pyrrha hastened to make all things ready, and they waited till the waters rose up to the highlands of Phthia and floated away the ark of Deukalion. The fishes swam amidst the old elm-groves, and twined amongst the gnarled boughs on the oaks, while on the face of the waters were tossed the bodies of men; and Deukalion looked on the dead faces of stalwart warriors, of maidens, and of babes as they rose and fell upon the heavy waves.
The Chaldean flood myth is very near to the Old testament. In this legend even the dimension of the huge boat has been reveled. The myth goes like this—-After the death of Ardates, his xon Xisuthrus reigned eighteen sari. In his time happened a great deluge, the history of which is thus described: The deity Cronos appeared to him in a vision, and warned him that upon the fifteenth day of the month Desius there would be a flood, by which mankind would be destroyed. He therefore enjoined him to write a history of the beginning , procedure, and conclusion of all things and to bury it in the City of the Sun at Sippara: and to build a vessel, and take with him into it his friends and relations, and to convey on board everything necessary to sustain life, together with all the different animals, both birds and quadrupeds, and trust himself fearlessly to the deep. Having asked the deity whither he was to sail, he was answered: ‘To the Gods;’ upon which he offered up a prayer for the good of mankind. He then obeyed the divine admonition, and built a vessel five stadia in length, and two in breadth. Ito this he put everything which he had prepared, and last of all converged into it his wife, his children, and his friends. After the flood had been upon the earth, and was in time abated, Xisuthrus sent out birds from the vessel; which not finding any food, nor any place whereupon they might rest their feet, returned to him again. After an interval of some days, he sent them forth a second time; and they now returned with their feet tinged with mud. He made a trial a third time with these birds; but they returned to him no more: from whence he judged that the surface of the earth had appeared above the waters. He therefore made an opening in the vessel, and upon looking out found that it was stranded upon the side of some mountain; upon which he immediately quitted it with his wife, his daughter and the pilot. Xisuthrus then paid his adoration to the earth, and having constructed an altar, offered sacrifices to the gods.
The very effort to mention all these flood legend in this article has but one motive and that is to impress upon my readers the striking similarities of these legends, though these legends are from different geographical regions. The legend of Noah’s ark in the Old Testament is no different than all the above legends discussed. In India we have two flood legends The first is about a pious king called Manu. This legend appears in satapata Bhramana. HYPERLINK \l “toHYPERLINK \l
Once very long ago a pious king named Manu was washing himself. When he reached into the water jar to wash his hands, he pulled up a small fish.
The fish spoke to him, saying, “If you take care of me and protect me until I am full grown, I will save you from the terrible things to come.” Manu asked the fish, “What do you mean? What terrible things?” The fish told Manu that there would soon be a great flood that would destroy every human being on earth. The fish then instructed Manu to place him in a clay jar for safety, and Manu complied. As the fish grew, Manu kept placing it in a series of larger clay jars until the fish was full grown and could be placed safely in the sea. Soon the fish became ghasha, one of the largest fishes in the world.
The fish instructed Manu to build a large ship, as the flood was now only months away. As the rains began, Manu tied a rope form his ship to the ghasha, which safely guided him as the waters rose. The waters grew so high that the entire earth was covered. As the waters subsided, the ghasha guided Manu to a mountaintop.
The second legend is about a pious man named satyabrata .( The name means one who always speaks the truth). Many ages after the creation of the world, Brahma resolved to destroy it with deluge, on account of the wickedness of the people. There lived at that time a pious man named Satyavrata, and as the lord of the universe loved this pious man, and wished to preserve him from the sea of destruction which was to appear on account of the depravity of the age, he appeared before him in the form of Vishnu and said: in seven days from the present time the worlds will be plunged in an ocean of death, but in the midst of the destroying waves, a large vessel, sent by me for thy use, shall stand before thee. Then shalt thou take all medicinal herbs, all the variety of feeds, and accompanied by seven saints, encircled by pairs of all brute animals, thou shalt fasten it with a large sea-serpent on my horn; for I will be near thee, drawing the vessel, with thee and thy attendants. I will remain on the ocean, O chief of men, until a night of Brahma shall be completely ended. Thou shalt then know my true greatness, rightly named the Supreme Godhead; by my favor, all thy questions shall be answered, and thy mind abundantly instructed.
The factor of commonality, in this legend, from Sumer to India and Europe is baffling. Were, Zisudra, Utnaphistim, Zeus, Xisusthrus ( note the phonetic similarity with that of Zisudra ), Manu, and satyabrata, the same person?? OR are they different people of the same civilization, who managed to save themselves from the great deluge and started a fresh civilization where ever they sighted land and hence the names of the person changed but the story remained the same. Did the flood actually take place? If so what was the scale of this deluge and where did this happen? These are all the question that needs to be probed. The myth of this great flood is not limited to the few mentioned herein in fact there are many, many more. They can be categorized as follows :
• 59 North American Indian flood legends
• 46 Central and South American Indian flood legends
• 31 European flood legends
• 17 Middle Eastern and African flood legends
• 23 Asian flood legends
• 37 Pacific Island and Australian Aboriginal flood legends
All these myths have few things in common: HYPERLINK \
A worldwide flood happened that destroyed both man and animals
There was a vessel, a huge boat, the dimensions also being mentioned in the myth.
An extremely small remnant of people survived
Finally resting on a mountain
Birds being released and not returning
Birds being released and returning with something
I will now try to give my readers some evidences of such a devastating deluge which took place and its possible time frame. The first and very compelling evidence is the very fact that this myth is prevalent in all culture but in spite of the varied geographical presence and varied cultural dogma the similarities are all but same. There was an article in the Sunday times dated 29.9.99 which I have quoted here verbatim for my readers.
“Compelling evidence that there was a Great Flood, as told in the Old Testament story of Noah’s Ark, has been found far below the waters of the Black Sea by an American expedition.
Underwater surveyors, led by Robert Ballard, the renowned oceanographer who found the Titanic and other sunken ships of the 20th century, have discovered an ancient coastline at a depth of 450 ft.
“I am not sure whether it is Noah’s flood or not Noah’s flood, but I do buy that there was a flood,” said David Mindell, one of the surveyors.
The Ballard team was working from a theory about the biblical flood of antiquity propounded by two marine geologists from Columbia University in New York, William Ryan and Walter Pittman, in their new book, Noah’s Flood, reviewed in Scribe No. 71, page 3.
As Dr Ballard explained; “During the last great Ice Age glaciers advanced across the surface of the world. That lowered the sea level 400ft. Then, 12,000 years ago at the end of the Ice Age, the glaciers began to retreat”.
With its lower sea level, the eastern Mediterranean was cut off from the Black Sea so that when the oceans started to rise, the Black Sea did not.
Dr Ballard continued: “Around 7,600 years ago, guess what happens? The Mediterranean breaks through a natural dam at the Bosphorus and catastrophically floods the land surface. People living there are 400ft below sea level and in trouble. They are facing a flood equal to 10,000 Niagara Falls.”
This flood was on a far greater scale than the one described in Genesis, which is said to have lasted for 40 days and 40 nights, covering every living thing on Earth beneath 24ft of water other than Noah, his family and his pairs of animals carried to safety on the ark.
In the new theory, it is believed that each day for two years ten cubic miles of ocean water cut through the widening Bosphorus channel as it flowed into what was then a fresh water lake, raising the level by six inches a day.
The incoming salt water, more dense than the fresh water it displaced, plunged to the bottom of the lake bed, transforming it into a sea where the depths support no life.
This area of inert darkness is known as an abyss that is anoxic, meaning that the trapped water could not circulate and has lost its oxygen, “Such conditions exist nowhere else in the world,” Dr Ballard said.
The theory supposes that in this dead zone wooden ships will be preserved intact, possibly still with their Bronze Age sails, and just waiting for Dr Ballard and his team. The explorers are convinced that there may be many ships on the bottom because the Black Sea served as an important commercial waterway.
Dr Ballard has participated in 120 deep-sea expeditions. He found two Phoenician vessels more than 3,000 years old.
Fredrik Hiebert of the University of Pennsylvania, the team’s chief archaeologist, said the discovery “represents the first concrete evidence for occupation of the Black Sea coast prior to its flooding.”
“This is a major discovery that will begin to rewrite the history of the cultures in this key area between Europe, Asia and the ancient Middle East,” Hiebert said.
The remnants of human habitation were found in more than 300 feet of water about 12 miles off the coast of Turkey.”
According to professor Masse , Among all the flood myths he is interested in the Hindu myth where particularly, the myth describes an alignment of the five bright planets that has happened only once in the last 5,000 years. Thus we do start getting a possible time frame about the great deluge. That’s from 7500BC to 5000BC. In 2004, at a conference of geologists, astronomers, and archaeologists, Masse outlined his evidence for a world-ravaging impact in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Ted Bryant, a geomorphologist at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia, was intrigued and enlisted the help of Dallas Abbott, an assistant professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. In 2005, they formed the Holocene Impact Working Group (referring to the geological period covering the last 11,000 years) to seek out the geological signatures of a mega tsunami. If a 600-foot-high wave ravages a coastline, it should leave a lot of debris behind. In the case of waves generated by asteroid impacts, the debris they leave in their wake is believed to form gigantic, wedge-shaped sandy structures known as chevrons that are sometimes packed with deep-oceanic microfossils dredged up by the tsunami.
When Abbott began searching satellite images on Google Earth, she saw dozens of chevrons along shorelines and inland in Africa and Asia. The shape and size of these chevrons suggest that they might have been formed by waves emanating from the impact of a comet slamming into the deep ocean off Madagascar. The chevrons in Madagascar associated with the crater were filled with melted microfossils from the bottom of the ocean. There is no explanation for their presence other than a cosmic impact, she says. “People are going to have to start taking this theory a lot more seriously. The next step is to perform carbon-14 dating on the fossils to see if they are indeed 5,000 years old. Meanwhile, Bryant contends that chevrons found (pdf) 4 miles inland from the shore of Madagascar were formed by a wave that traveled 25 miles along the coast, moving almost parallel to the shoreline. “Neither erosion nor any other terrestrial process could have caused these formations. The biggest marine landslide ever recorded happened 7,200 years ago off the coast of Norway, and there was a tsunami, but it was a far cry from leaving deposits 200 meters above sea level, Bryant says.
The Great Flood was a very unusual and singular event. Because of the magnitude of the destruction, it would have left an indelible and permanent mark on the minds of any survivors. This story would have been told and retold, passing down from generation to generation. And so it was. What could have caused such an event that etched its remembrance in the population of the world. That event has to be really big. It is now pertinent to mention the work of Plato here at this juncture– Timaeus and Critias. Here plato described about a paradise named Atlantis which suddenly vanished from the face of the earth. He described about an intelligent civilization that lived in this beautiful paradise. Both accounts, Timaeus and Critias, describe:
A pre-flood civilization.
God’s decision to destroy mankind because of his wickedness.
The destruction of civilization by a Great Flood.
The suddenness of the cataclysm.
The extent of the destruction affecting the entire globe.
According to Plato, the island of Atlantis and the distant Mediterranean civilizations were completely destroyed in a single day and night of violent earthquakes and floods. They disappeared into the depths of the sea. And according to Plato, the Great Flood occurred around 11,400 years ago. (The account records the event occurring 9000 years before Plato’s time. Plato’s dialogues were written around 360 BC) This would make the Pre-Flood civilization an Ice Age civilization.
A Global disaster of such proportion can happen only when there is an impact by a comet or an asteroid. An atmospheric impact, commonly referred to as a bolide or airburst, is another type of impact event. The Tunguska impact is an example of a strong bolide event. Another type of impact is an Ice Age glacial impact. Such an impact could produce the effects contained in the Biblical description of the Great Flood.
A comet/asteroid impact on a large glacier mass could cause the following effects:
Release vast quantities of heat.
Produce massive earthquakes.
Produce trapped superheated steam that would exert force to uplift and move a large glacier mass.
Fracture glacial sheets.
Eject water, steam and ice high into the atmosphere.
Release stored potential energy.
Produce a partial glacial ice melt.
Produce an almost immediate rise in sea level.
Produce great rainfall.
Slowly driving the ocean crust deeper.
Slowly raising the continental crust higher.
Produce volcanoes and lava flows.
The impact of a large comet/asteroid (~2 mile diameter) with an Ice Age glacial sheet could produce the following chain of events:
The impactor penetrates through miles of thick ice, like a bullet. Below the surface, the impact releases the energy of a million nuclear bombs. A gas bubble of trapped superheated steam forms. The steam causes a general uplifting of the glacier ice sheet. The ice sheet rises like a steam boiler about to burst. The gas bubble exerts tremendous force on the ice flow. The impact triggers the release of potential energy locked in ice flow allowing million of tons to break loose and begins to move on the frictionless fluid bed toward the oceans. Some of the steam escapes like an erupting geyser or volcano. The glacier sheet fractures, opening up fissions for the steam to escape. Boiling water and steam further lubricate the surface boundary layer of the ice flow. The explosion hurls large masses of ice fragments into the air with great force. Ice and water flowing off the continents cause an immediate rise in sea level in conformance with the Displacement Theory. The released superheated steam falls back to Earth, generating very violent storms. Heavy rain falls for several days and weeks. The atmosphere heats up. Large earthquakes combined with the Earth’s crustal rebound from the movement of large ice sheets exert significant strain on the tectonic plates. The strain is relieved by the eruption of volcanoes, and lava flows throughout the world. Underwater earthquakes expose frozen methane hydrate beds. The heat generated at the impact point and the heat from underwater volcanoes and lava flows elevate the temperature of the ocean bottoms and melt the exposed methane hydrate. The released methane bubbles to the surface, where in time it is ignited by lightning strikes, which further raises atmospheric temperatures. The methane burn releases large quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In the end, the global temperature rises significantly, breaking the back of the Ice Age. This in turn sets the ball rolling and the earth plunges in the cycle of destruction till the earth and its dynamics slows down considerably. Then the climate again stabilizes. The oceans, the sees, the rivers starts their respective restorative actions.
In India also there are strong evidence of this Global disaster. Mahabharat tell about the sunken dwarka. For centuries, local fishermen on the coast of Mahabalipuram in India have believed that a great flood consumed a city over 10,000 years ago in a single day. This story was recorded by British explorer J. Goldingham, who visited the area in 1798. The legend said there were six temples submerged beneath the water, with the seventh temple still standing on the shore. Now author Graham Hancock thinks he’s found them.
“I have long regarded Mahabalipuram, because of its flood myths and fishermen’s sightings as a very likely place in which discoveries of underwater structures could be made, and I proposed that a diving expedition should be undertaken there,” says Hancock.
In April, he made a diving expedition to the area, working with the U.K. Scientific Exploration Society and India’s National Institute of Oceanography. The SES says, “A joint expedition of 25 divers from the Scientific Exploration Society and India’s National Institute of Oceanography led by Monty Halls and accompanied by Graham Hancock, have discovered an extensive area with a series of structures that clearly show man made attributes, at a depth of (16-23 feet) offshore of Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu. The scale of the submerged ruins, covering several square miles and at distances of up to a mile from shore, ranks this as a major marine-archaeological discovery as spectacular as the ruined cities submerged off Alexandria in Egypt.”
The NIO says, “A team of underwater archaeologists from National Institute of Oceanography NIO have successfully unearthed evidence of submerged structures off Mahabalipuram and established first-ever proof of the popular belief that the Shore temple of Mahabalipuram is the remnant of series of total seven of such temples built that have been submerged in succession. The discovery was made during a joint underwater exploration with the Scientific Exploration Society, U.K.”
“Between 17,000 years ago and 7000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age, terrible things happened to the world our ancestors lived in,” Hancock says. “Great ice caps over northern Europe and north America melted down, huge floods ripped across the earth, sea-level rose by more than (325 feet), and about (15 million square miles) of formerly habitable lands were swallowed up by the waves.”
Besides deep diving explorations, ancient submerged structures have also been discovered from space. Space NASA satellite images have revealed a mysterious ancient bridge in the Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka. The bridge has been named Adam’s Bridge and was created from a chain of shoals, about 18 miles long. It’s unique curvature reveals that it’s manmade.
Archeological studies reveal that the first human inhabitants of Sri Lanka came to the island around 1,750,000 years ago and the bridge is about the same age. This is in line with a legend called Ramayana, which dates from more than 1,700,000 years ago. In this epic, a bridge was built between Rameshwaram (India) and the coast of Sri Lanka under the supervision of the god-like Rama. This also gives us some idea about the antiquity of the Vedic civilization. If Ramayana was a reality then Vedic civilization is the pre glacial civilization.
In the end of this article I can only say that The universal human myth may be the first example of disaster reporting.
Bibliography:
In search of the cradle of civilization.—-by, George Feuerstien, Subhash Kak, and David frawley.
Underworld: Graham Hancock
http://personals.galaxyinternet.net/tunga/Flood.htm
http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=2075
www.runtus.org/USERIMAGES/CulturalEvidence.doc
The Sunday Times – 27.9.99
http://www.atheistnation.net/news/?atheist/article,00127
Amlan Roychowdhury
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