Jump to content

Did Ram exist?


Gambit

Recommended Posts

Mythology, it is said, often has its roots in reality. Or, does it? Take the great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, for instance. The tantalising question that crops up time and again is whether the events mentioned in these epics actually happened? Did the characters described in them actually exist? How much of the epics is fiction and how much history? "There are no easy answers to these questions," says historian K M Shrimali. "Historically speaking, I have apprehensions about subscribing to the view that Rama was a historical figure. The scale of the event described as the Mahabharata war and its historicity is also suspect," he says. This view is echoed by R S Sharma, professor emeritus of the department of history at Patna University, who believes, "Although Krishna plays an important role in the Mahabharata, inscriptions and sculptural pieces found in Mathura dating back to 200 BC and 300 AD do not attest to his presence. Because of this, ideas of an epic age based on the Ramayana and Mahabharata have to be discarded." Not everybody, however, agrees. N S Rajaram, author of the book Search for the Historical Krishna, says that we are on fairly firm ground when it comes to the historicity of Krishna and the Mahabharata war. "There is sufficient evidence available now to suggest that Krishna was indeed a historical figure, who lived about 5000 years ago. This evidence is not just literary but also archaeological, geographical as well as astronomical," he claims. According to Rajaram, we now know more about Krishna than about any other ancient figure with the arguable exception of Rama. Even about Rama, there is significant information available to prove that he was a historical personality, claims Pushkar Bhatnagar, author of the book, Dating the era of Lord Ram. According to Bhatnagar, the clues to the authenticity of the Ramayana and its characters have been provided by Valmiki himself. "Valmiki, who wrote the Ramayana, was a contemporary of Rama. While narrating the events of the epic, he has mentioned the position of planets in the sky at several places. Using recent planetary software, it has been possible to verify that these planetary positions actually took place precisely as specified in the Ramayana. Not just a stray event but the entire sequence of the planetary positions as described by Valmiki at various stages of Rama's life can be verified today as having taken place," he says. "This information is significant, since these configurations do not repeat for lakhs of years and cannot be manipulated or imagined so accurately, without the help of sophisticated software. The inference that one can draw is that someone was present there to witness the actual happening of these configurations, which got recorded in the story of Rama," Bhatnagar adds. Literary evidence abounds for the existence of Krishna also, says Rajaram. This is because, he says, ancient authors have taken enormous pains to preserve accounts of Krishna's life, times and philosophy even if they did embellish some details like the presence of Radha, who was probably never a historical figure. Although later literature attributed as many as 16,000 wives to Krishna, there's no evidence to show that he had any other wife, apart from Rukmini. Beginning with the Mahabharata, says Rajaram, there are numerous works belonging to the tradition of itihaas-puraan or religious texts, which when viewed objectively, reveal several other facts about the man, which have to be sifted from later mythological additions to his personality. "If we look beyond the myths accumulated over millennia, we can get a clear picture of who Krishna actually was. e emerges as a human figure a practical philosopher par excellence who moved away from the ritualistic practices of the Vedic religion of his time to the action-oriented Sankhya philosophy, embodied in his philosophy of karma yoga of the Bhagavad Gita, which till date remains his transcendent legacy. Contrary to popular imagination, which portrays him as a romantic hero, the image of Krishna that we get from ancient sources is that of an impeccable statesman. He was an austere and studious man, whose main concerns were political stability and ethical and religious reform," he says. There are a number of non-sectarian, secular works like Panini's grammar and the Chandogya Upanishad which mention Krishna and provide independent support for his historicity, according to Rajaram. Further clinching literary evidence, he adds, is the reference to Krishna as an asura in contemporary Buddhist works like Sutrapitaka and Lalitavistara. The very fact that Buddhists of the time who viewed Krishna's teachings of nishkama karma (detached action) as inimical to their own teachings, emphasising renunciation found it necessary to try to discredit him by referring to him as an asura shows that he was recognised as a historical figure even by them, says Rajaram. Geographical evidence for the epics is also abundant, says Bhatnagar. There still exist many places like Rameshwaram, Kishkindha, Kurukshetra, Hastinapura etc where the visits of Rama and Krishna are part of local folklore, he says. If the epics are indeed true, which period of history can they be placed? "In all probability, the society described in the Mahabharata corresponded to the early Harappan period, before 3000 BC, since this period was a rich one with numerous urban centres, while the society described in the Ramayana was less urbanised and more agrarian. Most scholars today place the Mahabharata war around 3100 BC. The Mahabharata also states that Brihadbala, 32nd in descent from Rama, was killed by Arjuna's son, Abhimanyu in the war. So we may tentatively place Rama 650 to 750 years before the war," says Rajaram. According to Bhatnagar however, a period of at least 2000 years separates the two personalities. "This is because on the basis of astronomical dating, we can now say that Rama lived during the 5th century BC, while Krishna is believed by scholars like Aryabhatta to have belonged to the 3rd century BC." But, why is there not much archaeological evidence that points towards their existence? Because such an effort has not been made in India and systematic excavations have never been carried out, says historian Nandita Krishnan. "Nobody believed that Homer's Iliad was a true story till Troy was discovered after extensive archaeology. Unfortunately, the sites of the Ramayana and Mahabharata have now been built over many times and it may never be possible to excavate extensively either at Ayodhya or Mathura," she adds. Lack of archaeological evidence is no excuse for denying the existence of history, sums up Bhatnagar. "If the buildings of that time over 7000 years ago do not exist today, can we just infer that civilisations and personalities of that time also did not exist?"
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/SUNDAY_SPECIALS/Deep_Focus/True_legends/articleshow/msid-1746526,curpg-2.cms I read this article in TOI's print edition. Very interesting.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Did Ram exist?

Traditionally, Krishna is said to have lived c. 3100 BC. source: http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/index.htm The oldest Hindu scriptures, the Vedas, do not contain a single reference to 'Krishna'. Apparently it was not used as a name at the time that the Vedas were compiled?
As a follow up let me post that Krishna is clearly mentioned in Upanishads. And the epic Mahabharat clearly describes.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Did Ram exist?

Although later literature attributed as many as 16,000 wives to Krishna, there's no evidence to show that he had any other wife, apart from Rukmini.
Krishna's 16000 wives were not physical as many people think.... those were the women, who forego everything and accepted the Lord as their husband in their heart and lived and breathed his name...
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Did Ram exist?

Although later literature attributed as many as 16' date='000 wives to Krishna, there's no evidence to show that he had any other wife, apart from Rukmini. [/quote'] Krishna's 16000 wives were not physical as many people think.... those were the women, who forego everything and accepted the Lord as their husband in their heart and lived and breathed his name...
Satyabhama was another wife of Krishna who was pretty famous. So he had atleast two wives , In my opinion.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Did Ram exist? NASA poured cold water on claims by Hindu news services that the US agency's spaceborne cameras had discovered the remains of the mythical bridge built by Rama across the Palk Strait. "Remote sensing images or photographs from orbit cannot provide direct information about the origin or age of a chain of islands, and certainly cannot determine whether humans were involved in producing any of the patterns seen," said NASA official Mark Hess. NRI websites like Indolink.com and the Vaishnava News Network had run a story earlier this week saying that "space images taken by NASA" had revealed "a mysterious ancient bridge in the Palk Strait." The story gained currency when it was picked up, unquestioningly, by the PTI. NASA said the mysterious bridge was nothing more than a 30 km long, naturally-occuring chain of sandbanks called Adam's bridge. Hess said his agency had been taking pictures of these shoals for years. Its images had never resulted in any scientific discovery in the area. The Internet story further claimed "archaeological studies reveal that the first signs of human inhabitants in Sri Lanka date back to�about 1.75 million years ago" as does the age of the bridge. This, in turn, matched the age when the events of the Ramayana took place. Historian B.D. Chattopadhyay of Jawaharlal Nehru University says the archaeological record says nothing of the sort. There is no evidence of a human presence in the subcontinent, he says, before roughly 250,000 to 300,000 years ago. It is generally believed man's hominid ancestors did not leave their African home until about two million years ago. At least three ship channels have been dug through Adam's Bridge without any evidence of manmade construction. The sandbanks are not at a greater depth, never being more than 3 or 4 feet at high tide. Geologists believe the sandbank did at one time rise above sealevel. Temple records suggest it was submerged by a violent storm as recently as 1480. Communication experts say that false, suspect news finds much greater circulation than normal because of the internet. NASA's Hess said, "The images reproduced on the websites may well be ours, but their interpretation is certainly not ours." Source: Hindustantimes.com

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Did Ram exist?

NASA poured cold water on claims by Hindu news services that the US agency's spaceborne cameras had discovered the remains of the mythical bridge built by Rama across the Palk Strait. "Remote sensing images or photographs from orbit cannot provide direct information about the origin or age of a chain of islands, and certainly cannot determine whether humans were involved in producing any of the patterns seen," said NASA official Mark Hess. NRI websites like Indolink.com and the Vaishnava News Network had run a story earlier this week saying that "space images taken by NASA" had revealed "a mysterious ancient bridge in the Palk Strait." The story gained currency when it was picked up, unquestioningly, by the PTI. NASA said the mysterious bridge was nothing more than a 30 km long, naturally-occuring chain of sandbanks called Adam's bridge. Hess said his agency had been taking pictures of these shoals for years. Its images had never resulted in any scientific discovery in the area. The Internet story further claimed "archaeological studies reveal that the first signs of human inhabitants in Sri Lanka date back to�about 1.75 million years ago" as does the age of the bridge. This, in turn, matched the age when the events of the Ramayana took place. Historian B.D. Chattopadhyay of Jawaharlal Nehru University says the archaeological record says nothing of the sort. There is no evidence of a human presence in the subcontinent, he says, before roughly 250,000 to 300,000 years ago. It is generally believed man's hominid ancestors did not leave their African home until about two million years ago. At least three ship channels have been dug through Adam's Bridge without any evidence of manmade construction. The sandbanks are not at a greater depth, never being more than 3 or 4 feet at high tide. Geologists believe the sandbank did at one time rise above sealevel. Temple records suggest it was submerged by a violent storm as recently as 1480. Communication experts say that false, suspect news finds much greater circulation than normal because of the internet. NASA's Hess said, "The images reproduced on the websites may well be ours, but their interpretation is certainly not ours." Source: Hindustantimes.com
I'm not too sure about that, it may well have been natural but may be more stones were used to make it usable, and the bridge for sure wasn't like the modern ones, it would've been very similar to that kind collection of stones, and yes that area is about 34KM IIRC, so a likely place to cross specially if stones were already there naturally.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Did Ram exist? I think all mythologies have roots in reality. So yes, i think that there was a historical figure who existed in reality on whom Ram/Laxman/Krishna were based on but i think as with all mythologies and stories, the 'charm, allure and powers' are greatly exgaggerated over time and through the course of history. So i don't believe that a real Ram or real Krishna did most of the things attributed to them

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Did Ram exist?

I think all mythologies have roots in reality. So yes' date=' i think that there was a historical figure who existed in reality on whom Ram/Laxman/Krishna were based on but i think as with all mythologies and stories, the 'charm, allure and powers' are greatly exgaggerated over time and through the course of history. So i don't believe that a real Ram or real Krishna did most of the things attributed to them[/quote'] I guess that pretty much holds the same for every religion. Say for instance Jesus, there is not even archeological evidence of his existance prior crucification. There is a theory he didn't even exist as "Son of god" as the Christians called him after the Bible was first written. Even Buddha never claimed he was god or has met god or has any relation to god. Some people simply didn't understand that, they made a religion out of him rather than just follow his teachings and perfect themselves. You can question, poke and do everything but you have to accept some humans are way better than most. Such ones assume more importance than people that merely exist. For every truth there is an exaggeration. Although we can't believe every bits and pieces, it is best to understand the underlying principles and the way they lead their lives. I believe in great humans but refuse to belive in man made religions.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...