A Grand Narrative Needs Correct Chronology : Reviving the works of Pandit Kota Venkatachalam

link to RMF thread.

 

NOTE: This is a long post, and I sincerely apologize for that. The topic is so vast that it is difficult to summarize. I request your patience and indulgence in reading this completely. The purpose of this extemporaneous message is to introduce the works of Pandit Kota Venkatachalam (my grandfather) and his work in re-constructing Indian chronology from primary sources. Pandit Venkatachalam’s work could potentially become the basis for the development of a Grand Narrative.

 

Introduction

The development of a Grand Narrative for any civilization depends on its true history. The true history, in turn, depends on a correct chronology of events. Knowing that Indian chronology has been tampered with and distortions introduced by European Indologists, the roadmap to developing a Grand Narrative for Bharat is:

1.       Construct and validate the true chronology of events. The requires the removal of distortions introduced, and the re-construction from primary sources

2.       Develop the history of the civilization from the chronology. This would be accomplished by adding the social, economic, cultural and political dimensions to the chronology

3.       Develop a Grand Narrative for the civilization, based on where we came from and who we are

Fortunately, step (1) above has largely been done for us by Pandit Kota Venkatachalam. We can use this as the basis for validation to begin work on step (2) and to ultimately develop our Grand Narrative.

 

Brief Bio of Pandit Kota Venkatachalam

A Sanskrit scholar and historian who combined the knowledge of Geography, Mathematics, Astronomy, Jyotisha Sastra and dedicated many years of his life to the re-construction of Indian chronology from primary sources. He has written over 23 books (described below), each dealing with a specific topic. He has been conferred the titles of “Bhaarata Charitra Bhaskara”, “Vimarsakgresara”, “Paakayaji” for his works. His is other contributions include:

·         “Xandrames, Sandrocottus and Sandrocyptus” – Paper and Speech delivered at the Indian History Conference, Jaipur, Rajputana, 1951

·         Interviewee and Responder to the First Sanskrit Commission, 1956

 

Pandit Venkatachalam took sanyas in 1957 and became the Peethadhipati of the Sri Abhinava Virupaksha Peetham, He was known then, as Jagadguru Sankaracharya Sri Advayananda Sankarabharati Swamy.

Swamy ji attained Siddhi on November 12, 1959 AD, or Kali Saka 5060, Vikari, Karthika Suddha Trayodasi.

 

Summary of Pandit Venkatachalam’s Work and Results

The history of a civilization may be reconstructed from ancient texts, geological evidence, archaeological evidence, coins and inscriptions. Of these, ancient texts are usually considered the primary evidence, whereas the others are considered corroborative evidence.

 

Pandit Chalam exposes the motives of the Indologists who, being staunch Christians, could not accept the Hindu belief that we are in the 28^th Kaliyuga, which meant that the universe was 195 crore years old. They were convinced that, according to the Old Testament, the world was created in six days during October 4004 BC.  Due to this, the European Indologists rejected the Puranas and other ancient texts as fiction, and began to look for European evidence to develop the history of India. William Jones was almost a century before Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, and geology accepting that the earth was a couple of billion years old.

 

Indian history had to fit within the Biblical timeline. So, William Jones, in consultation with Warren Hastings, the then Governor General, began doctoring dates to fit within this timeframe. He rejected everything before the Kaliyuga as fictional. The only event that connected the West with the East was Alexander’s sojourn to the East. Jones had to connect Alexander to some event in India. Jones and others did the following:

·         Discarded Indian texts as fictional and unreliable

·         Relied on vague accounts of foreign travelers (Megasthenes, Fa Hien, Hiuen Tsang)

·         Decided that Xandrames, Sandrocottus and Sandrocyptus, from Megasthenes’ Indika, were referring to, Mahapadmananda, Chandragupta and Bindusara of the Maurya dynasty, even though they were clearly referring to Chandramas (Chandrasri), Chandragupta and Samudragupta of the Gupta dynasty.

·         Doctored coins to falsify history, and used these as confirmatory sources of dates

·         Tampered with some inscriptions (eg, Aihole), while ignoring others

·         Tampered with Kalhana’s Rajatarangini and other books

·         Declared Vikramaditya of Ujjain and Salivahana were fictional characters and removed the dynasty of Agni Vamsa from 101 BC to 1193 AD (~1300 years) to make the timeline fit within the constraints

 

The results of this were:

·         Buddha got pushed from 1887 BC to the 6^th century BC

·         Chandragupta Maurya got pushed from 1534 BC to 327 BC

·         Adi Sankaracharya got pushed from 509 BC to 788 AD

·         The Gupta dynasty got pushed from 327 BC well into AD

·         Vikramaditya of Ujjain, Salivahana and the Agni Vamsa kings were removed from history

 

Pandit Chalam spent significant years re-constructing the true chronology from primary sources while cross-referencing and validating across multiple sources. He corroborated his findings with inscriptions (eg, Aihole, two of Janamejaya’s inscriptions), archaeological evidence.

 

He refuted the Aryan Invasion Theory, and came up with the “Out of India Theory”, suggesting that the Mlechchha kings, particularly the Yavana Kings (kings who had stopped observing Vedic rituals and were ex-communicated. They were driven to the north-western frontier of Bharatvarsha – to what is the present day Afghanistan)  migrated westward to occupy the eastern and southern parts of Greece. This place is now called Iona, a bastardized name for Yavana, This would then explain how knowledge traveled from East to West, as well as the similarities between the Greek and Hindu systems and beliefs. 

The sources consulted by Pandit Venkatachalam for his work are too many to exhaustively name here, but a few examples are the Rig Veda, Surya Siddhanta, the Puranas (Brahmanda, Vishnu, Bhavishya, Bhagavat), Kalhana’s Rajatarangini, Nepal Rajavamsavali and Buddhist writings among many, many others. His hard work now provides us a re-constructed chronology, from which we can develop the history and thereby, the Grand Narrative.

 

Please let me know if you have heard of him and his works, would like more information, or would like to collaborate on future work.