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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 28th 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 6th 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.

A small but significant contribution towards changing the discourse


This post is reproduced from this thread in Rajiv Malhotra's forum posted by Infinity Foundation India (IFI). Please visit the forum to follow the developments in this thread and thank these two independent Swadeshi Indology (SI) scholars for their contribution.

Dear Listfolk,

two scholars from the SI movement have managed to effect a small but significant change in the official narrative of Indian history as was found in a link on the National Portal of India. They used provisions of the RTI (Right to Information) and the Public Grievances mechanism, to engage with ICHR, PMO, MHRD and NIC for about 6 months to get the change effected.

Their achievement can be tracked through the below note. We hope that more scholars from the SI movement will be able to make meaningful interventions in the coming years on very many issues that pertain to the discourse on India.

Many thanks to Manogna and Megh for their efforts.

A note from them is appended below:

The "History" link in the section "Know India" on the National Portal of India, a link on India's Ministry of External Affairs website, which receives about 30,000 views* each month (*Statshow estimates as on 2017 May 20), until April this year contained the following information in its narrative about India's history: 
In the section “The Indus Valley Civilization”:
"Among various causes ascribed to the decay of Indus Valley Civilization are the invasion by the Aryans, the recurrent floods and other natural causes like earthquake, etc."
In the section “Vedic Civilization”:
"The Vedic civilization is the earliest civilization in the history of ancient India associated with the coming of Aryans. It is named after the Vedas, the early literature of the Hindu people. The Vedic Civilization flourished along the river Saraswati, in a region that now consists of the modern Indian states of Haryana and Punjab. Vedic is synonymous with Aryans and Hinduism, which is another name for religious and spiritual thought that has evolved from the Vedas. The largely accepted view is that a section of Aryans reached the frontiers of the Indian subcontinent around 2000 BC and first settled in Punjab and it is here, in this land, where the hymns of Rigveda were composed. The Aryans lived in tribes and spoke Sanskrit, which belonged to the Indo-European group of languages. Gradually, the Aryans intermingled with the local people and a historic synthesis was worked out between the Aryan tribes and the original inhabitants. This synthesis broadly came to be known as Hinduism. The Ramayana and Mahabharata were the two great epics of this period."
In the section “Indian Freedom Struggle (1857-1947)”: 
"In ancient times, people from all over the world were keen to come to India. The Aryans came from Central Europe and settled down in India."
One way to see more clearly, the implications of statements above, might be to read them again after re-ordering some of them, as follows:     

1. The Vedic civilization is the earliest civilization in the history of ancient India associated with the coming of Aryans.
2. The Aryans came from Central Europe and settled down in India.
3. The largely accepted view is that a section of Aryans reached the frontiers of the Indian subcontinent around 2000 BC and first settled in Punjab and it is here, in this land, where the hymns of Rigveda were composed.
4. Vedic is synonymous with Aryans and Hinduism, which is another name for religious and spiritual thought that has evolved from the Vedas.
5. The Aryans lived in tribes and spoke Sanskrit, which belonged to the Indo-European group of languages.
6. Gradually, the Aryans intermingled with the local people and a historic synthesis was worked out between the Aryan tribes and the original inhabitants. This synthesis broadly came to be known as Hinduism.
7. Among various causes ascribed to the decay of Indus Valley Civilization are the invasion by the Aryans, the recurrent floods and other natural causes like earthquake, etc.

One way to summarize the above could be:

Vedic Civilization is associated with the arrival of some Central Europeans (Aryans) who spoke an Indo-European language Sanskrit, invaded Indian subcontinent around 2000 BC, contributed in ending the so-called Indus Valley civilization and during their stay composed the Rig Veda and "worked out" Hinduism while they "intermingled" with "the original inhabitants".

What should be evident to any objective reader is how (unsubstantiated hypotheses such as) Aryan Invasion and (Proto-) Indo-European have been used to ascribe (atleast in part and covertly, at the very least) origins of Vedas, Sanskrit and Hinduism to Central Europe when, till date, no absolutely conclusive evidence proves either of these, what may be not unreasonably called "motivated", hypotheses. [For some recent treatments of "Aryan" and "Indo-European", see Chavda A.L. (2017), Aryan Invasion Myth: How 21st Century Science Debunks 19th Century IndologyKazanas, Nicholas (2017), Fallacies of Proto-Indo-EuropeanSastry, Manogna and Kalyanasundaram, Megh (2017), Purva Paksa of Sheldon Pollock's Use of ChronologyDanino, Michel (2016), A series of lectures on the Aryan issue - PART 01 and The Aryan Issue (2016); Malhotra, Rajiv (2011), Breaking India, p. 15-35 “Inventing the Aryan Race”]. 

Through an engagement that spanned about 6 months [see timeline below] with the Indian Council of Historical Research, the Indian Prime Minister's Office, India’s Ministry of Human Resource Development &  National Informatics Centre, using common public mechanisms - RTI (Right to Information) [No. 3-259/2016- ICHR/RTI] & Public Grievances [PMOPG/E/2017/0123386, MINIT/E/2017/01091] - the narrative of Indian History on the National Portal of India was corrected, in 2017 May, with removal of "Aryan", "Indo-European" and "Central Europe" (See column "What is the change effected" in Table below for a detailed log of all changes). Summary of the relevant questions in the original RTI petition mapped to changes implemented (with Before/After details) followed by a timeline of key events are included below:

Summary of Questions in RTI, Status of Change effected, Statement/s Before & After Change & Actual change effected

Screen Shot 2017-06-13 at 10.36.17
Screen Shot 2017-06-13 at 10.36.33

Screenshots (Before/After)

Before:

Screenshot- Before-2

After:

Screen Shot 2017-06-13 at 09.00.45

Before:

Screenshot- Before-4

After:
 
Screen Shot 2017-06-13 at 09.01.30

Before:
 
Screenshot- Before-3

After:
 
Screen Shot 2017-06-13 at 09.02.12

Timeline:
 
2017 Jan 04: RTI: 3-259/2016-ICHR/RTI to ICHR, with questions pertaining to content on KnowIndia website, in line with the mission statement of ICHR 
2017 Feb 07: Response letter (snail-mail) from ICHR signed by Deputy Director/CPIO (Dated Feb 7)
2017 Feb 20: Face-to-Face meeting at ICHR, Delhi with CPIO, First Appellate Officer (Member Secretary) to get clarifications on response letter from CPIO 2017
2017 Mar 03: Grievance PMOPG/E/2017/0123386 registered
2017 Mar 15: Forwarded from PMO to Director ICR in Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) which was then forwarded to Member Secretary, ICHR 
2017 Mar 21: Second Letter from ICHR, this time signed by Member Secretary (Dated Mar 21) with copy to Director ICR
2017 Mar 28: Face-to-Face meeting with ICHR Chairman
2017 Mar 30: PMOPG/E/2017/0123386 disposed with reference to Mar 21 letter from Member Secretary
2017 Apr 03: Mail sent to ICHR Chairman escalating disposal and requesting clarifications. Grievance MINIT/E/2017/01091 registered     
2017 Apr 07: Telephonic conversation with NIC official to whom MINIT/E/2017/01091was forwarded
2017 Apr 09: Grievance MINIT/E/2017/01091 also disposed. Email to NIC in-charge seeking clarifications to actions requested in disposal     
2017 Apr 10: Reminder mail to ICHR Chairman along with additional evidence
2017 Apr 21: Interdepartmental engagement - NIC & ICHR - email sent from NIC to ICHR
2017 May 02: Status update mail from NIC Grievance Cell to Megh with Apr 21 inter-departmental communication included as attachment
2017 May 07: Changes w.r.t. to Questions 2, 4-8 noticed; mail sent requesting change w.r.t. Question 3
2017 May 11: Changes w.r.t. Question 3 noticed




Thank you.


Regards,

Team IFI