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________________ 14. THE CONCEPT OF AVATARS The fallacy of such a history as stated in the Hindu myths is obvious when we realize that even the most ancient Indus Valley Civilization extends only from 3,300 BC. Unless you are one of those who believes that there had been a highly civilized India two million years ago whose remnants even in archeology are destroyed with time, the history as given by the myths will be a fiction of imagination. Scholars like Vamadeva David Frawly and Sri Yukteswar Giri were quick to discern it and is now trying to down grade the traditional yuga to historic lengths "The shorter yuga theory offers better proof of the age of Rama and Krishna and other important historical Indian figures than other dating methods, which make some of these figures out to be millions of years old - too old for the accepted chronology of human history on Earth." (The Astrology of the Seers, Frawley) "the astronomers and astrologers who calculate the almanacs have been guided by wrong annotations of certain Sanskrit scholars (such as Kullu Bhatta) of the dark age of Kali Yuga, and now maintain that the length of Kali Yuga is 432,000 years, of which 4994 have (in 1894 CE) elapsed, leaving 427,006 years still remaining. A dark prospect! And fortunately one not true." (The Holy Science, Yukteswar) Yet we should not forget that Sanskrit itself started only by the mid second century AD, and the Indian Time Metric System came into existence at the earliest by fifth century AD. What we have seen is that there is no mention even of names of avatars in any pre-christian documentation or archealogy. All these names appeared in due course of time after the Christian Era as is represented in the Purana Stories and in the icons that appeared in the temples. We wont be able to see any historic person in the form of avatar - not even Krishna and Rama. That is why the Vaishnavites want to make them long predated to a period when we don't have any history and it will be impossible to provide any positive or negate evidence. The Avatar datings are these days done using intricate astronomic references that are found in the Puranas written as late as the fifteeth century AD. Other than that we don't have any way of finding the historical person of the Avatar and it will remain only as a fiction. Most of these personalities were actually evolved by compiling characters and traits from heroes of our period and presenting it as a unified ideal personality. Evidently none of these persons lived prior to Christian Era - at least we don't have any evidence whatsoever for that. 276
SR No.007303
Book TitleDevelopment of Hinduism
Original Sutra AuthorN/A
AuthorM M Ninan
PublisherM M Ninan
Publication Year
Total Pages582
LanguageEnglish
ClassificationBook_English
File Size45 MB
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