TRUE WORLD HISTORY

DATING OF RAMAYANA

At many places in the Ramayana the description of 4 teeth elephants are found . It is ancestor of present day elephants 2 million years ago.

RAMAYANA is found and played in many countries since ancient times- Indian subcontinent, Indo-china, China, Japan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Tibet, Iran, Korea, South America,

MANY ancient cities of the world in France, Arabia, Italy, U.K. , etc are named after Ramayan's places and names

The story of KING RICHARDS of England resembles the story of RAMACHANDRA.

NASA Images Discover Ancient Bridge between India and Sri Lanka

(Courtesy : NASA Digital Image Collection)

http://www.meta-religion.com/Archaeology/Asia/bridge_between_india.htm

Space images taken by NASA reveal a mysterious ancient bridge in the Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka. The recently discovered bridge currently named as Adam's Bridge is made of chain of shoals, c.18 mi (30 km) long. The bridge's unique curvature and composition by age reveals that it is man made. The legends as well as Archeological studies reveal that the first signs of human inhabitants in Sri Lanka date back to the a primitive age, about 1,750,000 years ago and the bridge4s age is also almost equivalent.

This information is a crucial aspect for an insight into the mysterious legend called Ramayana, which was supposed to have taken place in treta yuga (more than 1,700,000 years ago).

In this epic, there is a mentioning about a bridge, which was built between Rameshwaram (India) and Srilankan coast under the supervision of a dynamic and invincible figure called Rama who is supposed to be the incarnation of the supreme.

This information may not be of much importance to the archeologists who are interested in exploring the origins of man, but it is sure to open the spiritual gates of the people of the world to have come to know an ancient history linked to the Indian mythology.

More Images:

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HISTORY OF SRILANKA- Rama, Ravana & Sita: Road to Ramayana

By Sirancee Gunawardene, Prof. of History , Colombo

There are many places in Sri Lanka associated with the Indian epic poem Ramayana. The Ramayana was written in Sanskrit about 2000 years before the commencement of dynastic history of Sri Lanka which is calculated with the coming of Vijaya in 544 BC. It tells us of places far back in history in pre- Vijayan times.

The emotionally charged legend of Rama and Sita, the much loved Indian Princess and her abduction by Ravana, the Rakshasa king of Lanka, is well known. When Ravana abducted Sita it led to a war, which somewhat resembled the Trojan-Greek war, which was fought over Helen of Troy. It is said that in this pre-Vijayan period King Ravana ruled over the indigenous people of Sri Lanka, the Naga and Yakshas.

It is also noteworthy that 200 million years ago, geologically Sri Lanka was linked with India, Madagascar, Australia and Antarctica, in a land mass known as Gondwana.

The earth's surface before seismic earthquakes, ocean currents, winds and drifts changed the land forms into different countries, was one land mass. During the geological changes, sections of the land mass were propelled in different directions and formed continents and countries. South India drifted northward and the Himalayan mountains emerged from the sea with the gigantic up thrust. Sri Lanka separated into a land mass known as Lanka Dvipa (Island of Lanka), and part of the land submerged into the sea. According to the Ramayana epic this took place because of the misdeeds of Ravana, but this seismic happening is confirmed by modern science.

The stretch of coast on the North West, North and South of Mannar could easily be reached from India, as is quite evident today. The Palk Strait and Gulf of Mannar and the buried city of Kundiramalai were used from pre-Vijaya times by nomadic bands of people. This is probably the route taken by Hanuman who rescued Sita, after Ravana had crossed over to India and disrupted the idyllic romance of Rama and Sita in a sylvan forest glade in the Himalayas. It is also the tip of Mannar referred to as Adam's Bridge, the causeway which consisted of the coral reefs and shifting sand dunes which Rama used to bring his huge army. He is said to have stopped at the shrine dedicated to Shiva or Iswara before going to battle. When the causeway which Hanuman undertook to finish in a month was being built, it is said thousand of squirrels came to help him. They rolled on the sandy ground and shook off the sand on the bridge and effectively filled the crevices and gaps in the causeway. Rama in appreciation stroked them and conferred the dark stripes on their body.

Down the southern coast coming on to Galle is another interesting place associated with the Rama and Sita legend. It is a mountain called Rhumassala Kanda. From the top of this mountain you get a panoramic view of the Galle harbour and its environs. On a clear day you could even see Adam's Peak, Sri Pada.

Rhumassala Kanda seems strangely out of place when you look at the rest of the landscape. According to legend when Lakshman, the brother of Rama was injured in battle, Rama is said to have sent his faithful emissary Hanuman to the Himalayan Mountain to get a medicinal herb to cure him. Hanuman however forgot the name of the herb and so tore off a huge chunk of the Himalayan Mountain which was well known for medicinal herbs. The chunk of mountain terrain he later dropped and this is reported to be Rhumassala Kanda. Rhumassala Kanda has a wide variety of medicinal plants.

Ravana, the Rakshasa king who reigned in Sri Lanka had his capital in Ravana Kotte, which can be identifed as part of the Southern Bases on the south eastern coast. Here, he is said to have had a strange fortress with battlements where he held the beautiful Sita prisoner. She remained here unbending and upright. Now waves cover this area, but a part of the fortress could be seen form time to time.

Later, Ravana took Sita from Ravana Kotte for greater security to the smallest plateau of Nuwara Eliya and to a locality known as Asoka Aramaya a pleasure garden which had beautiful scenery and dense of forest surrounding it. Asoka trees flowered there. Sita Eliya on the outskirts of Nuwara Eliya is associated with Sita. Hanuman also came here looking for Sita.

When Rama's army was approaching, Ravana again moved Sita to a dense forested area. In Uva, at the base of a mountain crag 4500 feet above sea level is the Ravana Ella cave. Ella is 7 miles from Bandarawela and is a beautiful place to visit. At the base of a precipitous ravine is the Ella gap which you can see if you go to the Ella Rest House. This is the famous cave where Ravana hid Sita. There is thick jungle here and wild and unspoiled mountain wilderness.

The picturesque Ravana Ella falls is a little distance away. It is one of the wildest looking water falls. The water falls in torrents down the Ella gorge and cascades down a forest glade. Sita is said to have roamed around in captivity in this area and bathed in a pool within a rock by the swirling waters of the Ravana Falls.

Ravana's place is said to have been at Maligawa Tenna, near Welimada. It is now a paddy field but ancient stone work, brick and granite slabs have been found here.

The epic battle would have taken place in upper Uva on the mountain side. This area throbs with the majesty of the wilderness and some point to dents on the boulders where Rama's firearms struck.

The place where Rama stopped before leaving Sri Lanka with Sita is a temple on a dune known as Ganakamadhana Hill, where there was a gold lingam said to have been donated by him.

These are interesting places to visit when conditions are more peaceful.
(Sunday Times)

The first signs of human inhabitants in Sri Lanka date back to the Stone Age, about 1.750.000 million years ago. These people are said to have come from the South of India and reached the Island through a land bridge connecting the Indian subcontinent to Sri Lanka named Adam's Bridge. This is related so in the epic Hindu book of Ramayana.

Rama's Bridge, chain of shoals, c.18 mi (30 km) long, in the Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka. At high tide it is covered by c. 4 ft (1.2 m) of water. A steamer ferry links Rameswaram, India, with Mannar, Sri Lanka. According to Hindu legend, the bridge was built to transport Rama, hero of the Ramayana, to the island to rescue his wife Sita from the demon king Ravana.

(COURTESY- BRITISH MUSEUM London)

Quoting from Brahamgupta's Brahamsiddhanta, Alberuni wrote:

"Several circumstances, however, compel us to attribute globular shape to both the earth and the heaven, viz. the fact that the stars rise and set in different places at different times, so that, e.g. a man in Yamakoti observes one identical start rising above the western horizon, whilst a man in Rum at the same time observes it rising above the eastern horizon. Another argument to the same effect is this, that a man on Meru observes one identical star above the horizon in the zenith of Lanka, the country of demons, whilst a man in Lanka at the same time observes it above his head. Besides all astronomical observations are not correct unless we assume the globular shape of heaven and earth. Therefore we must declare that heaven is a globe, and the observation of these characteristics of the world would not be correct unless in reality it were a globe. Now it is evident that all other theories about the world are futile."

RAMA AND ATLANTIS-

please visit-

http://www.atlantisforschung.de/content/theorien/indien/rama_vs_atlantis.htm

RAMAYANA IN SOUTH-EAST ASIA-

http://www.ias.berkeley.edu/orias/SEARama/imagelibrary.htm

Ramayana Fresco, Wat Phra Kaew, Bangkok -

There is city of Ayodhya in Thailand, an ancient painting of Thiland of rama ravana war-

The Problem of Mapping and Dating Ramayana-

On seeing the names like this Yavana, Shaka etc. some hold the view that Ramayana was written more later to Greek's invasion on India. Max Muller in his 'What Can India Teach Us?' says: 'If I call the invasion which is generally called the invasion of the Shakas, or the Scythians, or the Indo-Scythians, or Turushkas, the Turanian invasion... who took possession of India, from about first century BC to the third century BC...' and again classifying Sanskrit literature he says 'we divide the whole of the Sanskrit literature into there two periods, one anterior to the great Turanian invasion, the other posterior to it, we may call the former period as ancient and natural, that of the later modern and artificial...' thus Ramayana belonged to the modern and artificial literary period and Veda-s to ancient, according to him. According to Indians the Turushkas are not the Scythians but Turkish and the Yavanas, the clearly the Greek. Michelson in his 'Linguistic Archaisms of the Ramayana...'adds another phase called Epical period. Thus, there are three, Vedic, Epical, and the rest of it is modern and artificial, At the same time Max Muller says: 'That at the time of Solomon, there was a channel of communication open between India and Syria and Palestine is established beyond doubt, I believe, by certain Sanskrit words which occur in the Bible such as ivory, apes, peacock, and sandalwood, which, taken together, could not have been exported from any country but India...' So Solomon, Bible, Turanian invasion, Ramayana... all occasioned at one time, i.e., around 0 BC. So many professors so many researchers have not said a date agreeable to Indians as well as to the world.

(Sita in Ashok Vatika - JAPAN )

At one place, it is said that there was a rapport among these places India-Syria-Palestine and even up to Egypt, but at other place, the Indian thought, that the Indian had Greeks and Greeks had Indians, is dismissed. What prevents to agree that both hold up mirror to almost the same culture, though diverse in its practise, right from the belief of Greeks, viz., 'the sense of many gods are there near at hand' to various gods, to their names, to the epical literature, and also to myths and legends and dramas etc, is unknown. But when it comes to dating and mapping 'the earliest date known for certain in Indian history is the invasion of Alexander in 326 BC...' and 'The chronology has been built up form the identification of Sandracrottus of Greek writers with Chandragupta Maurya... yet it is said 'In the seventh century BC India was divided into sixteen Mahajanapada-s...' as per "An Historical Atlas of Indian Peninsula", Oxford. Peculiarly those sixteen Janapada-s did not contain the names of Yavana, Shaka provinces in atlases.

(ancient painting- Rama broke the bow of Shiva- Indonasia)

'The Greeks, evidently descended from tribes who had come westwards from the early home of Indo-Europeans in South-Central-Asia, first settled in the land which we know as Greece about 2000 B.C....' according to The Encyclopaedia of Myths and Legends of All Nations, Kaye & Ward Ltd., London. Their history about Ion, the king of Helice, and his war with Elsenians, the confederacy of Lonia in Asia Minor etc., speaks about their origin and shuffling, i.e., from east to west and again from west to east. It is they who have adopted Vedic Rain-god Mitra as their Mithras and many a temple was built all over Europe. Even Goddess Lakshmi has Her counterpart in Greece 'Pallas Athene' known as early as 2 B.C., and the comedies of Strattis, like Fragmenta Comic of Greece has Indian fables as early as 400 B.C. Hence, if these Theories of Borrowing are negated with the Theories of Commonality, it would suffice to say that Ramayana is antecedent to the settlement of Greeks in Greece itself.

Without lingering on these carbon-testing on the verses of Ramayana that contain Yavana and Shaka named provinces, if the astronomical data available in Ramayana itself is believed, it throws some light on dating. If anybody would care to see the book Vastav Ramayan, by Dr.P.V.Vartak, in Marathi, Vedvidnyana Mandal, Pune, and a web site is available about this, Astronomical Dating of the Ramayana where another approach can be seen, which just does not revolve around one or two names of places. It is said there; 'Therefore, Ramayana 'must have' occurred 9600 years ago, which is 7600 B.C approximately...' which again is disputable because this is goining against the Yuga and Kalpa Theory of Puraana-s, as Ramayana is said to be the legend of Treta Yuga.

(ancient painting- Rama and Samudra - Cambodia)

The provinces Shuurasena, Bharata, Kuru are the downlands of Himalayas. The Kaambhoja is the province northwest to India, where the Russia touches India, as mapped by 'An Historical Atlas of the Indian Peninsula' of Oxford University. Then the Yavana and Shaka should be around there, prior to their migration to the presently known Greece, because Greeks originated from so called 'South-Central-Asia' as called by the historians, and perhaps the historians might be hesitating to call it as 'Himalayan region of India'. They were originally called Ionians, a corrupt or generic name from Indian naming of Yavana or Javana. The word Æoni can be cleaved as a+yoni; [ayogya+] yonim+gata 'unbefitting, uterus, obtained birth...' 'one who is born to an unbefitting mother... say, a bastard...' That is what Œdepus Rex proved later. The ethics of these Yavana and Shaka cultures are clearly explained in Karna-Shalya samvaada 'the debate of Karna and Shalya...' in Karna parva, Maha Bharata.

The Shakas are again the nomadic tribes inhibiting Central Asia, and they are the Scythes of Greeks and the Indo-Scythians of Ptolemy, inhibited in the Hindu Kush Range of Himalayas. Both of these are categorised under Mleccha people by Ramayana because their ethics do not conform to the Vedic stipulations of living, even though they lived together.

'The Varadas - The Bengali recension has Daradas instead. They are said to be Dards whose name is still retained in modern Durdstan along the course of the Indus, above the Himalayas, just before it descends to India...' Griffith, Ancient Geography.

(ancient painting- FALL OF RAVANA- SriLanka)

It may be noticed that Ramayana did not refute any other religion, or sects, or the divergent philosophies of Hinduism itself, but it agreed that Mleccha-s are there and there is no bother from them. Ramayana's gods are purely Vedic, unlike the later time, rather modern or artificial literary period's poetry of Kalidasa et al, and their puranic deities like Kali, Uma, and Kumara etc. The literary style of Ramayana is mostly un-Paninian. It has the episodes like Rama-Jaabaali samvaada, where Sage Jaabaali is a nihilist. When this epic could accommodate information about nihilists' preaching nihilism to Rama, it can as well afford a few lines of information about other philosophies, religions, if they were to be there. But then the present day's Unity in Diversity is not apparent and thus it can be assigned to a post-Vedic period, where Veda-s themselves are not written by some good old sages with white beards, sitting under banyan trees, at any one particular time.

Because the ancient history of Greeks came to light firstly, thereby India history is chronicled, and the epic Ramayana is known subsequently, relegating the history of Ramayana later to the Greek's invasion on India, may not be appropriate. History has its own black-ages.