ONE GOD, ONE CREED" -[Part-2] The Indo-Aryans

[lethal_kamikaze]

:salam2:

Previous reference: Part F: http://www.paklinks.com/gs/religion-and-scripture/581736-one-god-one-creed-part-2-the-aryans-our-heritage.html

The Indo-Aryans

We have already noted that the Aryans who migrated to India possessed many religious books. All of them are in Sanskrit which was unintelligible to Arab scholars. So the Muslim scholars had a tough time trying to evaluate the Aryan people. And so they were not quite successful in their attempts. Abu Raihan Al-Biruni was an eminent scholar who came to India from Central Asia, and for thirteen years conducted studies concerning the Indian cultural heritage. For this purpose he even sat at the feet of Brahmin scholars. He has recorded the result of his study in various books, one of which is Book on India where he confesses his failure:

“*Try as I might, gathering as many materials as were available, it has to be admitted that I failed in many attempt to understand completely their conditions.” ****1]
**
Evaluating the cultural parentage of the Indian people is a task that entails much laboriousness. Nonethless, so many Muslim scholars have undertaken to valuate Indians and their religion. One among them was Abdul Kareem Al-Jeeli, a reputed Sufi scholars (1365 A.D.). He writes in his work, Al Insaanul Kaamil.

*“The people of the Brahmin faith believe that everything in the universe is created by the One God; they accept the Unity, or Allah. But they do not accept any divine messenger or prophet. Their position is therefore of the adherents to truth prior to the delegation of a prophet. The Brahmins claim to belong to the lineage of Prophet Abraham a.s. They say the scripture they possess was written by Abraham. But they do not profess that it is of divine origin. The Veda contains philosophical thought and is divided into five parts. Though everyone is permitted to recite four of them, only certain specified persons have the sanction to read the fifth part, which is very profound and contains mysterious theories. It is being popularly held among the Brahmins that reading the fifth part of the Veda will inevitably lead to an acceptance of Islam.” ****2]

**Prophet Abraham a.s. had three wives: (1) **Sarah, **(2) Hagar and (3) Keturah. Issac, the son of Sarah, is the patriarch of Jews. Ishmael, born to Hagar, is the ancestor of the Arabs of Hijaz. Keturah gave birth to seven sons, one of whom was **Midian **or **‘Madyan’ **(Genesis 25:2). The successors of Maidian inhabited the coastal regions of the Gulf of Aqaba. The Qur’an tells us that Prophet Shu’ayb (Jethro), father-in-law of Prophet Moses, was an apostle deputed among the Midians (Quran 7:85). During that time, five dynasties reigned there. One of these was the *Hur dynasty. 3]. That these people worshipped the Aryan gods **Indra, Mitra, Varuna **and **Naasatyas **has been proved by a relic dug out of Boghaz-koi in Asia Minor. Documents of treaties between the **Hurian King muttuaza **and the **Hittite King **Shubbiluiiuma have been discovered there, in which the aforementioned Aryan gods are invoked as holy witnesses. *4] So, it is obvious that the Hurians who formed a dynasty in Midian’s lineage, and the Indo-Aryans were both attached to one and the same religious heritage. In which case the conclusion of Muslim scholars that the Aryan people, like the Midianites, belonged to teh genealogy of Abraham may be taken as well-founded.

But the arguments are not convincing, that the adherents of the Brahmin religion fail to recognize divine emissaries and prophets, and that they do not believe in the Scriptures as being God-given. Mirza Mazhar Jaan-e Jaanaan, a Sufi scholar of the Nakshabandi order, declares that the Indian’s Vedas are certainly revealed from Allah. *5] Devi Prasad Chattopadhyaya, in his Indian Philosophy records that the Maharishis, the Vedic seers, claimed that the Vedas were divine words. He writes:

*"They who habitually alleged [the presence of] divine spirit in everything found divine essence to be the cause of this as well. So the poet (Rishi) himself declared, ’ God has entered me’…When monotheism established itself in Brahmin religion it was believed that the universal God is Himself the author of the Vedas. God does not have a beginning or end. Neither has the Veda. Being divinely created it contains no error. It is perfect truth, perfect holiness and perfect expression. **6].

This was the Brahmin’s conviction. On one occasion, the phrase mantra krita: happened to slip from the mouth of the great sanskrit poet **Kalidasa. **Bhavabhuti, another poet, then knitted his brows diapporvingly’ his view was that Kalidasa should have said **Mantra darisa, **not Mantra krita, since Rishis did not compose the mantras, but only preceived them.

Thus the Brahmins did believe that the Rishis got the Vedas through divine revelation. So Al-Jeeli’s suggestion that the Brahmins did not believe in divine mission seems inaccurate.

Nor is the argument quite sound that Indians did not believe in prophethood. They believe in Avatars, or 'incarnations’. The Indian’s **Avatars **are the same, in objective and principle, as the apostles or ‘prophets’ of the Muslims. The aim of prophethood and that of Avatara is the establishment of ‘Dharma’ *. The Baghwad Gita, said to be written by Baadarayana Krishna, and universally known by the name of Vedavyasa, says *7]:

***"****Lord Sharikrishna advises Arjuna: O Arjuna of Bharata’s rib, Whensoever Dharma (i.e., religious path) wanes and Adharma (i.e., irreligious way) waxes, than do I come. That good people may be preserved and evil people destroyed, age after age I come/manifest [the Dharma].

P.S. to be continued :insh:

[lethal_kamikaze]

Re: ONE GOD, ONE CREED" -[Part-2] The Indo-Aryans

From the Islamic viewpoint, a prophet is neither God nor a part of His being, but God’s spirit flows through him. This divine effulgence is what Indian metaphorically termed divince incarnation. From the verses cited in above post, which say divine spirit emanate age after age with the object of establishing Dharma, there is evidence that Indians had faith in God’s messengers.

Indian believe in **Dasaavatara **or the Ten Incarnations. According to one opinion there are twenty-four Avatars. All the incarnations save the last are over. The last is Kalki who is it believed would appear in Kaliyuga (the Kali Age). The Hindu Puranas have foretold the advent of Kalki Avatar. A prophecy made by Lord Shri Krishna, a prominent one of the bygone ‘incarnations’, an heard by **Shri Shukamuni **and others, in recorded in Kalki Purana and Maha Baghwata. It may be summarised thus:

*He (Kalki) would appear in ‘Sambhala village’ in the year 3685 of Kaliyuga. He would bear the weight of the worlds’ sins. His father’s name would be ‘Vishnuyashas’ and his mother 'Sumati’. He would be born at two naazhikas (one mazhika equals 1/5 hour) past sunrise on Monday the 12t of ‘Narmeesak’ month. His father would pass away even while he is in his mother’s womb. His mother too would die in his infancy. Inside a cave, **Parasurama **would teach him scriptural lore. He would flee to northern mountains and later come back with a sword and take possession of his native place. **8]

Some Muslim scholars have claimed that this prediction relates to teh important phase of the life of Prophet Muhammad and that therefore, the Kalki Avatar, anticipated in Indian Puranas, is none other than the Prophet Muhammad himself. In their view, Vishnuyashas is the Prophet’s father, Abdullah (‘servant of God’); Sumati (‘the meek’) is the Prophet’s mother, Aaminah, and ‘Shambhala village’ is Arabia. Similarly the 12th of Narmeesak month is the 12th of Rabi-ul Awwal; the Prophet was born indeed at dawn on that Monday. That the Prophet was bereaved of his father before his birth and his mother in his infacny supports this identification. ‘Parasurama’ could well refer to the angel Jibreel (Gabriel). In the Prophet’s fortieth year while he was sitting in the Hira cave sunk deep in dedication, Gabriel appeared and read out to him a few verse from the Quran. This must have been the fulfilment of the statement of that Parasurama would teach him scriptural knowledge in a cave. Medina is a mountainous region lying to the north of Mecca. The Prophet, when he fled from the conspiracies of a hostile society, sought refuge there. The people of Medina accorded him whole-hearted support. Eventually he returned with a large army and conquered the city of Mecca; the last part of the prophecy must have been a prediction of these historical occurrences.

The twentieth **Kanda of Atharva Veda **has a verse, ‘Kuntapa’ which contains a statement about one 'Maama’ Rishi; some suggest that this ‘Maama’ might be one Indian form of the proper name Muhammad. Still more apparent is a prophecy in Bhavishya Purana, believed to have been composed by Vedvyasa. This Purana contains predictions of things to come, thus justifying spread the world over, and that then, a foreign acharya, ‘Mahaamada’ by name, would appear with his disciples in pronunciation of **Muhammad. **In Vyasa’s own words: *9]:

“At such a time would appear a ‘melcha acharya’ named Mahaamad with his train of disciples.”

The word ‘mlecha’ means foreigner. Thus the Muni has also indicated that it would not be in India that the acharya appears. In short, the advent of a great acharya is seen to have been anticipated in the Indian religious books. So the argument athat the people of Brahmin faith do not believe in prophets or prophethood is not correct. Only, the technical nomenclature denoting a prophet is different.

**References:

**1- Kitabul Hind, Al Biruni (973-1048 A.D.)

2- Al Insaanul Kaamil (an Arabic book on Sufi Philosophy), Vol.2 P.80.

3- Book of Numbers, (31:7-8): “The warred against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and slew every male. They slew the kings of Midian with the rest of their slain, Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur and Reba, the five kings of Midian”. This goes to prove that the Hur dynasty ruled Midian land at that time.

4- Modern historians call their country ‘Mittany’ or ‘Mitanni’. Dr. A. Ayyappan notes in his Indian Antiquity: “In about 1500 B.C., a people known as the Hurs lived eastward of Anatolia up to Syria… Later a small Hurian empire, Mittany by name, was established. A sect named ‘Hiksos’ (shepherd kings), related to the Hurs, grew very powerful and attacked Egypt”. (PP.103-104). He continues: “The witnesses whose names are entered in a treaty between emperor Shibbiluliuma and the Mittany emperor Mattiuza are the Vedic deities Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Nasatya etc.” (p.107). All these prove that the Hurs, or Midyans, belonged to the Aryan stock. And Midyans, in their turn, were the offspring of Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) by his wife Keturah.

So the Indo-Aryans could well have been among the descendants of Ibrahim (Abraham). In which case, the Brahman faith might at first have been the religion of Abraham.

5- Quoted in the periodical, Islam ur Asr-e-Jadeed (Delhi), Vol.1, No.1, P.43.

6- Indian Philosophy by D.P. Chatopadhyaya (Current Books, Trichur.), P.336

7- Ibid P.336

8- Bhagwad Gita, Chapter 6 vv 7,8.

9- Da’wat, ‘Rahmat-e-Alam’ Special (1962).