The Jews and the Vedas (2 replies)

Quote
Subhash Kak
This article is to try to make sense of a puzzling statement of Aristotle (384-322 BCE) that links Jews with India. This statement is recalled in a fragment by Aristotle’s pupil Clearchus who traveled widely and whose inscription on a tomb of a friend is preserved in the Afghan city of Ai-Khanoum.

The Jewish scholar Flavius Josephus (37 – 100 CE) quotes from Clearchus’s fragment in his Contra Apionem [Against Apion], which has Aristotle say: “Jews are derived from the Indian philosophers; they are named by the Indians Calami, and by the Syrians Judaei, and took their name from the country they inhabit, which is called Judea.” (Book I:22) [1]

...The interaction between India and the West during the first millennium BCE is well known as in the mention in Old Testament of trade for ivory, apes and peacocks (1 Kings 10:22). There was thriving bilateral trade between India and Rome both through the overland caravan route and the southern sea route. By the time of Augustus 120 ships set sail every year from Myos Hormos to India. Pliny complains in Historia Naturae 12.41.84, “India, China and the Arabian Peninsula take one hundred million sesterces from our empire per annum at a conservative estimate: that is what our luxuries and women cost us.”

...India and the West had rich interaction in the second millennium BCE also. This was the time of the Mitanni of Syria, who worshiped Vedic gods. The Mitanni ruled northern Mesopotamia (including Syria) for about 300 years, starting 1600 BCE, out of their capital of Vasukhani. In a treaty between the Hittites and the Mitanni, Indic deities Mitra, Varuṇa, Indra, and Nāsatya (Aśvins) are invoked. Their chief festival was the celebration of viṣuva (solstice) very much like in India. It is not only the kings who had Sanskrit names; a large number of other Sanskrit names have also been unearthed in the records from the area.

...It is most interesting that the Mitannis were connected by marriage across several generations to the Egyptian 18th dynasty to which Pharaoh Akhenaten (ruled 1352-1336 BCE according to the mainstream view) belonged. Akhenaten’s second wife was Tadukhipa (“khipa” from the Sanskrit “kṣipā,” night) and she became famous as the queen Kiya (short for Khipa). His first wife was the beautiful Nefertiti, whose bust is available in a museum in Berlin.

Akhenaten (“glory of the Aten”) changed his name to honour Aten (“One god” represented as the solar disk) in his sixth year of rule. Many see Akhenaten as the originator of monotheism by his banishment of all deities except for his chosen one. He has been seen as a precursor to the Old Testament prophets, and thus to the Abrahamic religions. Some Biblical scholars see his Hymn to Aten as the original Psalm 104 of the Old Testament [3].

‘Amehotep IV’ (Akhenaten), found in N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna, part VI, ‘The Egypt Exploration Fund’ (London, 1908).
The other possibility is that Akhenaten’s worship of Aten is derived from the Vedic system through the three generations of queens in his family that were from the Mitanni. There are parallels between his hymn and the Sūrya hymns of the Ṛgveda. For example, in both the Sun has absolute power over the lives of animals and men and it provides natural bounties while also residing in the heart of the poet. Note also that Agni is praised as Yahvah in the Ṛgveda 21 times, and Yahweh is the name of the highest divinity in the Old Testament.

...If the Vedic element was important, as is perhaps reflected in the mysticism of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the cult of the dead and resurrection remained the most important element of the Egyptian religion. This cult continues to form the cornerstone of the three Abrahamic faiths.

The Vedic presence via the Mitanni in Egypt and the Near East occurs several centuries before the exodus of the Jews. This presence is sure to have left its mark in various customs, traditions, and beliefs. It may be that this encounter explains uncanny similarities in mythology and ritual, such as circumambulation around a rock, the use of a rosary of 108 beads, (or the idea of 33 gods in pre-Abrahamic traditions). These practices are easily understandable within the Vedic system, whereas they are remembered as commandments to be believed without understanding in the Western faiths. [4]

Sigmund Freud in his essay, Moses and Monotheism (1937) proposes that Moses was an Egyptian linked to the court of Akhenaten. In defence of this proposal he argued that the Hebrew word for “Lord,” “Adonai,” becomes “Aten” when the letters are written in Egyptian. [5]

The memory of India’s interaction with Egypt persisted within the Indo-Iranian world. The Iranian scholar Al-Biruni (973-1048), speaking of chariots of war in his book Tarikh Al-Hind, mentions the Greek claim that they were the first to use them and insists they are wrong because the chariots were already invented by Aphrodisios the Hindu, when he ruled over Egypt, about 900 years after the deluge. [6]

If the Vedic element was important, as is perhaps reflected in the mysticism of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the cult of the dead and resurrection remained the most important element of the Egyptian religion. This cult continues to form the cornerstone of the three Abrahamic faiths.