VEDISM
Dravidians and Moundases
Why can we assign some stories of ancient India to the period 8000BC to 9000BC without having any real material evidence ? Because, even though the book of the Rig Veda, (considered to be the oldest of Vedic religion,) was written around the Xth century BC, its stories had surely been transmitted orally for a very long time. It is part of Indian tradition, and mentions some unexplained phenomena which until now, had been regarded as legends !
In this "indefinable period", historians feel that India was peopled by men with dark skin : the DRAVIDIANS and the MOUNDASES. The religion of the Hindus is one of the oldest religions in the world; it started long before the emergence of the first known civilizations in Orient and probably before the first scripts which appeared around 3000BC in Egypt and in Mesopotamia.
Dravidians were renown to be a sociable, less aggressive people than the other peoples. Yet, suddenly, around 1700 BC, their civilization nearly disappearred before the Aryan troops invading from the North, which decimated them as cattle. In the same way, Egypt, that for a thousand years had battled only in civil or "border" wars, would also know defeat in 1785 BC, and submit to the yoke of the Hyksos invaders from East of the Caucasus. Fortunately, the Hyksos appeared less ferocious and accepted a religious compromise that lasted two hundred years, between their gods and those of Egypt.
What really happened in the north of Asia to drive south so many warriors and invaders with different complexions of skin, from so many different and distant regions ?...
Around the year 1700BC by tribes of Iranian invaders (and people of fairer skin), who came from Northern India and from beside the Caspian Sea. They were later named ARYAN people.
Arriving in wild unruly hordes, these Aryans first invaded the valley of the Indus and destroyed the cities of HARP and MOHENJO-DARO. After settling on the verdant plains, they gradually spread out and conquered the ancient people of the South West of India, but allowing the conquered peoples to venerate their own gods and rituals.
Their principal divinity was INDRA, the god of war and thunder, whose power was capable of destroying the walls of cities, of burning them down in order to conquer and pillage them… For a long time the behaviour of the gods would reflect that of wicked men with the mentality of Aryan conquerors, materialistic and pitiless! Where did this god originate who could destroy ramparts and whom these these half savage men feared as they feared thunder ?
In India, a thousand years would pass before there was a noticable change in men's thinking. A new kind of spirituality and with it a new way of looking at the gods came due to the teachings of the Brahmans (the priests et monks of India). These men who refused to commit any act of violence, demonstrated by the example of their saintly life, that the gods were not there to kill all living things, but instead to help the weak, and to inspire the human race to live in a new spirit of conciliation and a search for perfection. This new faith found one of its principal tenants in the theory of the reincarnation cycles of the lives of souls, which are sent back to earth until they are judged to be worthy of going up to heaven and becoming immortal, like the gods. From this evolution of spirituality was born successively : Hinduism, Buddhism and Jaïnism, which replaced the Vedic religion.
Gradually India began to turn away from the gory ritualistic sacrifice of animals and human beings to the cruel Vedic gods, replacing this by offering cereals, oils and vegetables. They began to discover another spirituality, which would open for them the way to the gods who would strengthen the image of a perfect, just and merciful god.
