Hinduism & Alien Knowledge

This was written by Kishore Asthana, and I found it on another network. Published with permission.

The idea behind the following post is not to claim any kind of superiority over other cultures but merely to raise well-deserved awareness of an ancient treasure lying ignored by many. Just wanted to share this with some intelligent minds here.

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I was listening to a discussion in which one of the panelists - an eminent American Buddhist - said something that struck a chord. Someone asked if he thought whether we would ever be able to find alien knowledge, and he said, yes, alien knowledge exists and it can be found in Asia. He explained that much of the knowledge available in ancient Indian texts, including Buddhist ones, is alien to western audiences and even famous western scientists are often unaware of the deep thought that these ancient texts contain.

This is not surprising. In 1835, the British Lord T.B. Macauley said this in the House of Lords, "I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia".

The British ruled India then, and, even now, 75 years after independence, many westerners and, sadly, some Indians, tend to think along the same lines.

However, some amazing stuff is to be found here. For example, not many westerners know that thousands of years back,?ancient Indian rishis could identify the twin star system in Ursa Major. They named it Arundhati-Vasistha.

Mizar is known as Rishi Vashista and Alcor, which forms a double star with Mizar, is known as Arundhati in traditional Indian astronomy.

The pair is deemed to symbolize marriage.?Arundhati and Rishi Vasistha were considered an ideal couple, symbolic of marital fulfillment and loyalty and are invoked in many Hindu marriages even today.

The ancient Indian Panchang, said to have evolved in Indian astronomy, over the last 5000 years, predicts the exact time of lunar and solar eclipses and dates and times of all our festivals, from time immemorial and is even now followed widely in India.

Mahabharata and Ramayana, two major Indian epics give the star positions for the dates of all major events that happened in these epics. These have been dated by modern astronomers and have been found to be internally consistent.

So many other things. The Mahabharata, which happens to be the longest poem (it is 8 times as long as the Iliad and Odyssey combined) refers to stars as large, self-luminous objects that seem small because of their great distance, and that our Sun and Moon cannot be seen if one travels to those distant stars.?

Not many know that our ancient story of Dasavatharam mentions, in terms of the ten avatars of Vishnu, the evolution of life from fish to amphibians, to animals to half-animal/half-human to short, intelligent humanoid, to forest dwelling axe-man to the ideal homo sapien to the wise politician and finally to Buddha. Till the homosapien, Darwin's theory almost exactly parallels this. The tenth avatar, the predicted tKalki, would be the technically adept human of tomorrow.

We have a relatively recent hymn, written in the 16th century, called the Hanuman Chalisa, that has this description of the distance to the sun:

yuga-sahasra-yojana para bhanu

leelyo tahi madhura phala janu

This hymn is a part of an ode to Hanuman and says that Hanuman swallowed the sun, which is 96 million miles away, thinking that it to be a fruit. (yuga = 12000 and yojan is 8 miles. Sahastra is 1000).

There are ancient references to the fact that the earth and other planets orbit the sun.?The size of our solar system is mentioned which is close to the same as we find it to be now.?

The nature of time, reality and consciousness are also dealt with in various texts. Modern science is validating these ideas, one by one. A somewhat facile (in this context), western discovery has been Yoga and the benefits of breathing exercises, such as Pranayam, that have been given western names. At even a shallower level, the Indian turmeric milk, mentioned in the Ayurveda and used for hundreds of years here - I remember my grandmother forcing it on us - is being sold as turmeric latte in the west now.?

The father of plastic surgery, Sushruta who died in?Kashi in 700 BC, is widely acknowledged, even in the west.?

Sometimes, wrong translations have been responsible for misunderstandings. Often the truth is hidden in symbolism that eludes most readers. Sometimes a lot of overgrowth has hidden the deeper truths. At others, the colonial mindset exemplified by Macaulay contributed to this neglect. However, a treasure awaits the curious seeker, Indian or foreign.

While on this subject, let me mention an example of amazing poetic giftedness that most foreigners and even many Indians would perhaps be unaware of. This concerns the most mind-blowing palindromic verses that I have ever come across.

We usually think of words like Madam or Civic as examples of palindromes. At most we may come across a whole sentence such as Go Hang a Salami! I’m a Lasagna Hog! or A man a plan a canal Panama!"

However, in Sanskrit, there are 30 verses,?"Raghava Yadaviyam” , written by Venkatathvari in the 17th century which, if read from front to back, refer to the Ramayanam and, if read from?back to front, refer to the Mahabharatha. Such verses are called Anulom - Viyom.

One example is given below:

??????? ???? ?? ?????? ??????? ???? ???? ?? ?

???? ?????????????? ?????????????? ???? ?
        

“I pay my obeisance to Lord Shri Rama, who with his heart pining for Sita, travelled across the Sahyadri Hills and returned to Ayodhya after killing Ravana and sported with his consort, Sita, in Ayodhya for a long time.”

In reverse:

?????????? ???????? ?????????? ???????? ?

????????????? ???? ?? ?????? ??????? ???? ?

“I bow to Lord Shri Krishna, whose chest is the sporting resort of Shri Lakshmi;who is fit to be contemplated through penance and sacrifice, who fondles Rukmani and his other consorts and who is worshipped by the gopis, and who is decked with jewels radiating splendour.

And the poem goes on for another 29 verses such as this.

I hope that those of my fellow mensans who had the patience to read this post till here would have gained some awareness of what ancient India has to offer. I invite you to learn more for yourself.?