Saint Ved Vyas relating the Bhagwatam to Shukdeo (3100 B.C.)

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(2) Bhartiya civilization after the destruction of the Mahabharat war, and the Harappan culture.



       The Mahabharat war (3139 BC) had shattered the economy and abolished many localized civilizations of India. There were thousands of kings and millions of people who died in that war. That much loss of population in those days was a big thing, and, as a consequence of the war, big patches of uninhabited land lay stretched across the subcontinent. There were no common roads in those days to join two distant states of India, and thus, the communication between them was bleak. In that situation, the people, living in different locations of India, developed their own culture and their own communicating language which had classical or locally spoken Sanskrit background and the image of original Bhartiya civilization.

Time went on and gradually Brahmi script and Pali language developed in India. Pali language was liberally used to write the tenets of Buddhism. The prime Vedic civilization of Bharatvarsh would have been concentrated in Mathura, Allahabad and Varanasi areas which were always the center of Bhartiya culture and scriptural education.

People living around the Indus valley gradually developed their civilization. It was later on called the Harappan culture or Harappan civilization and was considered to exist around 2700-2500 BC. But it appears that that civilization was totally out of touch with the mainstream of Bhartiya culture, that’s why their linguistic and literary developments remained in a very primitive shape. The inscriptions of Harappan civilization are found on seals and tablets in the form of signs which very much resemble Phoenician and Semitic signs that were developed around 1500 to 1000 BC and which became the prototype for the development of all the writing systems of the western world.

But, on the other hand, we have the historical record, documented in the Bhagwatam itself (Bhag. Ma. 6/94, 95, 96) that in 3072 BC, 2872 BC and 2842 BC, three public programs of the recitation of the Bhagwatam and the discourses on Krishn leelas had happened in which Saints and the devotees participated.

We have thus two entirely different views about the civilization of India in almost the same period of time. To understand this situation I will give you an example: Suppose someone, who has never been to India and has only heard about it becomes curious and desires to see India. He and his younger brother in two helicopters approach India and prepare to land. One person lands near Bhabha Research Center (Bombay), interviews some people and talks to the research scientists of the Center and departs for his homeland. The other person loses the track and ends up landing in a jungle clearing where the tribal natives (called the adivasis) come to see the helicopter which is like a celestial machine for them. The person, baffled with the findings and unable to understand the tribal language, comes back home, disgusted and disappointed, where he finds his brother excitedly talking about all the good things of India. Both brothers tell their stories and both find it hard to believe each other. But both are facts, and both situations simultaneously exist.

Thus, during the period of the Harappan culture, in some areas of the Ganges valley, India did have its advanced civilization and the scholars of Sanskrit language because the discourses on the Bhagwatam were in Sanskrit language; and you should know that India is never bereft of such Sages and Saints who hold the knowledge of all the scriptures in their Divine mind.

When the historians write the history of India, even if they are sincere in their efforts, still they try to patch up the Harappan culture with Vedic culture and, in a worldly manner, they try to determine the advancement of the Sanskrit language which is eternally perfect. Such a notion is absolutely wrong. They think that they are trying to be logical in their historical research, but they forget this fact that one cannot determine the history of Bharatvarsh on meager archaeological findings of coins, toys and pots. Whereas the general history of Bharatvarsh is already written in its scriptures and the Puranas whose texts and the philosophical descriptions are the outcome of the Gracious and benevolent minds of eternal Saints.


    

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The True History and the Religions of India by H.D. Swami Prakashanand Saraswati