Mysteries surrounding the downfall of Indus Valley Civilizations

Originally posted by Byrd
Oh yes... Pythagoras did go to Egypt.

...but he didn't go to India or anywhere near India.
www.arcytech.org/java/pythagoras/history.html

He did, according to the following sources:

www.wisdomworld.org...
ml
sarvadharma.org...
www.geocities.com...
www.themathlab.com...
www.hinduismtoday.com...

www.anselm.edu...

It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganges to learn geometry...But he would certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the reputation of the Brahmins' science not been long established in Europe

Observing and studying in this way, Pythagoras traveled for many years. Some say he got as far as India and was deeply influenced, for he took up Oriental dress, including a turban. And certain of his mystical ideas, such as number magic and reincarnation, were typical of the Fast.

Some writers think that he did. Others accept that he studied and absorbed in some form the Vedic philosophy of ancient India; certainly it was known in Persia at this time. And there was probably direct contact between India and Greece before the time of Alexander. Vitsaxis G. Vassilis, in his book Plato and the Upanishads, argues that exponents of literature, science, philosophy and religion traveled regularly between the two countries. He points to accounts by Eusebius and Aristoxenes, of the visits of Indian sages to Athens and their meetings with Greek philosophers. And reference to the visit of Indians to Athens is found in the fragment of Aristotle preserved in the writings of Diogenes Laertius who was also one of Pytha-
goras' biographers.

Ludwig von Schröder German philosopher, author of the book Pythagoras und die Inder (Pythagoras and the Indians), published in 1884, he argued that Pythagoras had been influenced by the Samkhya school of thought, the most prominent branch of the Indic philosophy next to Vedanta.

It is most probably true, considering the Greeks and Indians had contacts, and some of Pythagoras's beliefs were influenced by the vedas, such as the belief of reincarnation and the soul relealizing the supreme soul(para brahman) and his teaching vegeterianism. He probably learnt his theorem from there as well as it was well known in India or from Egypt. In fact, I would not be surprised if the Greek theory of atoms was from India either. Again, the idea of atoms was a universal belief in India long before it emerged in Greece.

The fact that a pure sheet of zinc was found in Greece, and considering only Indians were producing zinc at the time, woud show just how much trade of knowledge and materials was going on between Greece and India.

There was a problem with the data.

Originally posted by surfup

"WW 1 and 2 happened less than a century ago, are there any evidence left of the wars?"

I suppose it is the same thing with this too, after these many years those things would have rotten down or stolen.

Surf

Here in Northern Virginia my girlfriend's father uses a metal detector to dig up artifacts from the Civil War.

I happen to have been on numerous Pacific Islands where WW2 took place, and can attest that many of these islands are still today littered with remnants of war.

I find it difficult to believe that Pythagoras went to India and studied there (perhaps because a lot of the links there mention Atlantis and some other things that I don't believe in.)

I also don't see the Indian influence in his philosophy or mathematics since they had radically different approaches. Pythagoras believed that everything was related to mathematics and that formulas defined the world. That isn't Indian (it's very Greek, though.)

The title of "teacher" doesn't make cultural sense, there. Teachers had a lot of influence and when he got back to Greece, the school he founded was heavily into formulas and mathematics. And his philosophy and teachings remain Greek. He does not bring other gods into it, he believes implicitly in the Oracle at Delphi, and he doesn't show other influences of an Eastern culture. If he had been that imbued in Indian culture, he would have brought those influences back.

His teachings and attitudes are, however, consistant with having learned from the Egyptians (scholars now believe they were slightly ahead of the Greeks in the art of mathematics at that time: en.wikipedia.org... )

Another area where this doesn't "jive" is in the area of music. Pythagoras defined the ratio between notes of a scale... in Western music. Eastern music uses a different scale. It is my belief that if he'd been that closely tied with India, that he would have also noted their scale and commented on it.

HOWEVER... I will go check some more, eh? I don't see that it's terribly likely, but let me do more reading.

The Quirky, Engimatic Shifting Historical Data of an 'Aryan Indus' Civilization


With the demise of the theory of an Aryan invasion, scholars have now taken on the idea that the Indus Valley Civilization is aryan in nature and origin. But this quirky idea cannot seem to hold well with the evidence which the archaeological explorations have produced in recent years. On one hand the civilization of the Vedas don’t seem to fit or to use a better word, correlate with the discoveries of the Indus valley excavations. There are several reasons this is so and proponents of an ‘Aryan Indus’ although they may reject the invasion idea, are desperate to paint an ‘Aryan Indus’ which certainly did not exist and are prepared to shift historical data to accommodate its ‘Aryan Indus’. Thus, an ‘Aryan Indus’ would seemingly but impossibly accommodate and comprise of the following:

1) TWO sets of lifestyles, one described as nomadic and steppe like in the Vedas quite in contrast to the settled and urban life of the Harrapans. Here we have the IE or Aryans as you will, riding and warring as all nomads do on the plains of India, whilst the staid citienzry of the Indus are basking in luxurious trade with its neighbors.

2) TWO modes of transport, of which the speed of the horse and chariot used by the nomadic intruders to settle disputes and in sports, whilst in the Indus the rich and contented people travel with the donkey and heavy wooden cart.

3) TWO religions, first we have the Vedic religion dominated by warrior gods and nature gods to a nomadic people always praying for wealth and cattle and animistic in nature. The other religion is the Harrapan religion of the Indus people mostly connected with the animal kingdom and iconic.

4) TWO sets of astronomic literature, the Vedic astronomy having the horse as one of its symbol and which is missing in the Indus one. Then, there is the Harrapan astronomy whose people were well versed in its intracies and very established.

5) TWO languages of which we have the Vedic language well refined and used in ancient India, called Sanskrit. The other is the undecipherable Indus Scripts and its seals, still unbroken and a fascination for linguists. Used by the Indus people for its unparalleled value for its tremendous and burgeoning trading partners.

6) TWO different funerary burial rituals, the Aryans cremated their dead through libations in the hope their loved ones reach the land of the Fathers. The Indus people buried their dead as is evidenced by the cemeteries discovered in their civilization.

7) TWO eminent Indian scholars, Professors Jha and Misra among others have claimed to have deciphered the Indus language and its complicated writings. If this is true and world breaking , how come we don't know what is the true nature of the Indus? All of these concerted attempts, so valiant and persevering seems to come to naught. So I ask, what is it? Vedic or indigenous Indus? One thing is certain though. All these failed attempts are done from the perspective of the Sanskrit language. Wrong, I say. All linguists should know that to decipher a language, there must be a related Rosetta Stone or a related root language. Obviously, the linguists of India are finding out that the Indus Scripts and seals are not related to Sanskrit, thus there is an ominous silence.



This is fantastic , here we have a civilization just emerging from the Stone Age with its brilliance and is credited with ALL of the above, a double of every facet of human life. Is this possible? This quirkiness of an’Aryan Indus’ has western and eastern scholars and historians baffled. To speak of an ‘Aryan Indus’ with such glaring contradictions in its society and lifestyle is probably a minor embarrassment to its proponents, for what can be more embarrassing than to shift historical dates to accommodate a quirky theory? Best of luck to its proponents.


From: Neville Ramdeholl [email protected]

reply to post by Indigo_Child


Where on earth did you get your "facts" from? I mean I too have read Von Daniken and his school of thought. I also remember reading about radioactive skeletons in a book by Charles Berlitz. But I take these things with a pinch of salt as they have not been "verified" independently. Then there is the Hindutva brigade ever ready to believe in phatasmagoric theories that shows up the past of the Indian civilization in glowing terms.

Sure, Indus Civilization is a primordial civilization and ranks up there with other civilizations like the Egyptians, Mesopotamian etc. However, if there was a comparison to be done between these civilizations then I think the Egyptians were far ahead in many other areas than the Indus people. This statement of mine does not belittle the achievements of the Indus people, it merely points out what is so based on what we can observe today. Also, it does not help that the Indus script is yey to be deciphered. If that can come about one fine day then we could be on a road that illuminats this civilization more than what we already know about it.

In the meantime we have to live with little knowledge and all the downstream effects that such limited knowledge leads to. Unfortunate but true.

I find it very difficult to believe that Pythagoras went to ancient India.

Sorry, not digestible.

I am from India. i read a lot on ancient India and the ancient sciences, but there has been no mention of any connection between Pythagoras and India.

As Byrd pointed out..the style of maths between ancient India and Greece and other part of the world is quite different.

Confused with Apollonius i guess. he was neo-Pythagorean.
did travel to india...
the story of his life as its told in the greek texts reminds the story of jesus, by the way...

reply to post by Russi


You are right!

Philostratus devoted two and a half of the eight books of his Life of Apollonius (1.19-3.58) to the description of a journey of his hero to India. According to Philostratus' Life, en route to the Far East, Apollonius reached Hierapolis Bambyce (Manbij) in Syria (not Nineveh, as some scholars believed), where he met Damis, a native of that city who became his lifelong companion. Pythagoras, whom the Neo-Pythagoreans regarded as an exemplary sage, was believed to have travelled to India. Hence such a feat made Apollonius look like a good Pythagorean who spared no pains in his efforts to discover the sources of oriental piety and wisdom. As some details in Philostratus’ account of the Indian adventure seem incompatible with known facts, modern scholars are inclined to dismiss the whole story as a fanciful fabrication, but not all of them rule out the possibility that the Tyanean actually did visit India.[18] On the other hand, there seemed to be independent evidence showing that Apollonius was known in India. In two Sanskrit texts quoted by Sanskritist Vidhushekhara Bhattacharya in 1943[19] he appears as "Apalūnya", in one of them together with Damis (called "Damīśa"). There it is claimed that Apollonius and Damis were Western yogis who held wrong Buddhist views, but later on were converted to the correct Advaita philosophy.[20] Classical philologists believed that these Indian sources derived their information from a Sanskrit translation of Philostratus’ work (which would have been a most uncommon and amazing occurrence), or even considered the possibility that it was really an independent confirmation of the historicity of the journey to India.[21] Only in 1995 were the passages in the Sanskrit texts proven to be interpolations by a modern (late 19th century) forger .[22]

en.wikipedia.org...


The Neo-Pythagoreans might have believed that Pythagoras did travel to India.

But there are no records of Pythagoras but there are of appolonius.

Old Mr. P would have had another problem if he had travelled to India - in what langauge would he have discussed mathematics?

Modern people often overlook the difficiulties of travel in ancient times, one of the barriers was language, Mr. P might have spoken something other than Greek but I'm unsure of that. Very few if anyone in India could speak Greek, and intermediate language would have been needed - and that language would have been???

You can do simple things without a common language but discuss and learn mathemtically theory requires a mastery of the language to understand the nuances of what is being said. As noted above the mathematical system were different and that would have made things even more challenging.

Not ah... getting into the fray of which culture may or may not have supplanted who... but something to concider:


Per the original post...

According to Wikipedia, they lived about 2500 B.C. but suddenly the entire civilization died off.

There are many guesses on this. Most controversial being Aryan invaders theory...

Also from Wiki:

To date, over 1,052 cities and settlements have been found, mainly in the general region of the Ghaggar-Hakra River and its tributaries. Among the settlements were the major urban centers of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, as well as Lothal, Dholavira, Ganeriwala, and Rakhigarhi.

en.wikipedia.org...

The Ghaggar is an intermittent river in India, flowing during the monsoon rains. It originates in the Shivalik Hills of Himachal Pradesh and flows through Punjab and Haryana to Rajasthan; just southwest of Sirsa in Haryana and by the side of talwara jheel in Rajasthan, this seasonal river feeds two irrigation canals that extend into Rajasthan.

The present-day Sarsuti Saraswati River originates in a submontane region (Ambala district) and joins the Ghaggar near Shatrana in Punjab. Near Sadulgarh (Hanumangarh) the Naiwal channel, a dried out channel of the Sutlej, joins the Ghaggar. Near Suratgarh the Ghaggar is then joined by the dried up Drishadvati (Chautang) river.

The wide river bed (paleo-channel) of the Ghaggar river suggest that the river once flowed full of water, and that it formerly continued through the entire region, in the presently dry channel of the Hakra River, possibly emptying into the Rann of Kutch. It supposedly dried up due to the capture of its tributaries by the Indus and Yamuna rivers, and the loss of rainfall in much of its catchment area due to deforestation and overgrazing.[1] This is supposed by some to have happened at the latest in 1900 BCE, but is much earlier

en.wikipedia.org...

* 2500 BC — Sahara becomes fully desiccated. Desiccation had been proceeding from 6000 BCE, as a result of the shift in the West African tropical monsoon belt southwards from the Sahel. Subsequent rates of evaporation in the region led to a drying of the Sahara, as shown by the drop in water levels in Lake Chad. Tehenu of the Sahara attempt to enter into Egypt, and there is evidence of a Nile drought in the pyramid of Unas.
* 2200 BC — Beginning of a severe centennial-scale drought in northern Africa, southwestern Asia and midcontinental North America, which very likely caused the collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt as well as the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia.

en.wikipedia.org...


Just something to keep in mind.






[edit on 29-8-2009 by RoofMonkey]