A NEW NON-JONESIAN HISTORY OF

THE WORLD
by Ranajit Pal

Original articles for research students

It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble.
It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
- Mark Twain

The Lost Palace of Palibothra and Alexander The Great In A Wider

The Blunder of Sir William Jones
Sir William Jones was an eighteenth
century Jurist and Orientalist whose
founding of the the Asiatic Society of
Bengal in 1784 (with Charles Wilkins) was
a landmark in Oriental studies. Jones, the
chief justice at the Calcutta Supreme
Court, was a prolific linguist and and
studied the ancient Indian Law books in
Sanskrit. His translation of the drama
Shakuntala of
World
The Jonesian bag of lies related to
Palibothra has sullied world history. Even
after more than two millennia, the
spectacle of the party of the Greeks and
Macedonians streaming out of Europe and
risking their lives across continents and
seas to mingle with the exotic peoples of
Africa and Asia appears stupefying.
Alexander was aware of his unique role in
history and had expert writers in his train
to chronicle his mission yet there is little
in his history that is beyond doubt. This is
partly due to the misinformation campaign
launched by his generals and false
Jonesian geography which has misled
historians.

Kalidasa created a worldwide stir and

highlighted the literary heritage of ancient
India. Jones also observed that Sanskrit
was related to classical Greek and Latin
and held that they were linked to Gothic,
Celtic and Persian. He is famous for the
observation that Sandrocottus of the
Greek writers was Chandragupta.
However, Jones' idea that Patna in
eastern India was Pataliputra which was
Megasthenes' Palibothra was in fact a fatal
error that has no archaeological support.
Throwing caution to the wind and ignoring
the basic tenets of archaeology, Martin
Carver and Dilip Chakrabarti coolly affirm
that Jones' idea is proved beyond doubt
by reports of the Chinese travellers. It is
preposterous to consider the Chinese
reports as valid sources for Mauryan
history as they were written nearly a
thousand years later. Like Chakrabarti
or Carver, Jones had no idea that there
was an India within modern Iran. Great
scholars like Sir Aurel Stein and Sir
Charles Eliot were aware that Eastern
Iran was Ancient India.
Appian wrote that the Indian king
Androcottos dwelt near the Indus. If one
ignores Jones' idea, it turns out that
Moeris of Pattala was Chandragupta
Maurya who was being chased by
Alexander through Gedrosia. After the
arduous campaign he rejoiced his 'victory
over the Indians' near Kohnouj.
Incidentally this was near Patali
(28°19'58" La., 57°52'16" Lo.) near Jiroft
which must have been Pataliputra, the
capital of Orontobates/Chandragupta.
Jiroft, or more exactly Djiroft, was
Dvaravati, capital of Kamboja. Nearby
city-names like Kohnouj, Konarak, Multan
etc. show that this was the India of yore.
Patali is an ancient city dating to the
fourth millennium B.C., and excavations
here may yield the remains of the famed
Royal Palace of Palibothra and relics of
Alexander the Great.
Patali near Jiroft was Pataliputra, capital of
Chandragupta/Orontobates
Once Jones' idea is rejected,
Palibothra becomes a city in Karman-
Baluchistan where Alexander came. This is
stated only by Justin and is usually not
taken seriously, yet it calls for a complete
re-assessment of Alexander's history. In
the changed geographical scenario,
Moeris, Orontobates and Sashigupta all
appear to be the names of Chandragupta
Maurya who was initially an ally but later
turned against him. Andragoras,
Mithridates, Orontes, and Diodotus of
Erythrae were also names of Moeris. From
Diodorus' report it turns out that Tiridates
who handed over the Persian treasury at
Persepolis was also Sashigupta. This
shows that Alexander did consider
chicanery to be a valid instrument of war
and diplomacy.
There is a strong likelihood that Ada
II, daughter of Pixodarus, whom
Alexander once wanted to marry, became
Orontobates' wife. Thus Alexander must
have known Orontobates before the
expedition. It is very likely that
Sashigupta joined hands with the generals
to poison the king. Dr. Rani Iyer of
Pullman, USA, suggests that Sashigupta
was the son of the Satrap Mazaeus.
The great Hellenic scholar Sir William
Tarn wrote that Alexander had given a call
for Brotherhood of Man at the Banquet at
Opis but this has been disputed by E.
Badian and others who relied solely on the
Greco-Roman reports and were unaware
that Alexander sat on a throne that was
once adorned by Gomata who was the
same as Gotama Buddha. This adds a new
dimension to his call for amity which is the

Herodotus' report (Herodotus, I, 125)
shows that some of the tribes under Cyrus
were actually Indians,
"The rest of the Persian tribes are the
following: the Panthialaeans, the
Derusiaeans, the Germanians, who are
engaged in husbandry, the Daans, the
Mardians, the Dropicans and the Sagartians
".
The Derusiaeans were related to the
Druhyus and the Panthialaeans are the
Panchalas of a later era. The Sagartians
seem to be descendants of the people of
King Sagara who were linked to Sogar in
the Persian Gulf (Beth Hindoye) area
which was 'India'. The Dropicans echo
Drupada. The Daans remind one of
Gotama Buddha whose name, according
to Al-beruni, was Buddho-dana.
Jones was unaware that many
famous ancient cities in modern India had
older counterparts in south -east Iran
which was once a part of greater India.
Although his work effectively crippled
Indology by banishing great figures like
Chandragupta, Rama and Manu from
Indian history proper, it became very
popular in India as it brought Palibothra
near the Imperial capital Calcutta.
However, a high price had to be paid for
the boon. Chronology became a bane of
Indology. Despite a century of research
and two London conferences the date of
Kanishka still remains indeterminate.
Emboldened by Jones' false idea, R. L.
Basham and R. Thapar of SOAS, London,
have gone so far as to portray the great
Rama as a minor tribal king bloated up by
poetic fancy. Gotama came down to the 5-
4th century BC and Kalidasa, who used to
be dated to the 2nd century BC, has been
labelled as a Gupta age poet. Even the
Bhagavad Gita, ascribed to the 2nd
century B.C. by many scholars including J.
L. Brockington, has been dragged to the
Gupta age.
Jones had a high regard for Indian
culture and his mistake was inadvertent,
but there were others in the colonial
administration who aided a thug, Dr. A.
Führer who moved pillars and other relics
to locate Gotama Buddha's birth-place in
Nepal by producing fake inscriptions. The
central plank of Buddhism.
Regrettably, the Harvard professor
also failed to notice the very significant
fact that the Opis Banquet was was held
in the month of Mitra and probably on the
day of Mitra when the traditional feast of
Mitra is held. It is common knowledge
that an important motto of the Mitraists
was Brotherhood. Alexander's call for
Homonoia was later followed up by Asoka
who was the same as Diodotus-I.
The paucity of direct archaeological
proof of Alexander's expedition has
disturbed many scholars. Great
archaeologists like Sir Mortimer Wheeler
were baffled by the absence of any trace
of the 12 grand altars he had set up to
commemorate his arrival in India.
However, a careful study shows that at
least some of these pillars were re-
inscribed by Ashoka.
Moreover, it can seen that the Indian
sage Calanus (Sphines of Plutarch) was
actually Aspines or Asvaghosa.
Alexander's association with this great
philosopher and playwright invalidates the
imputations of E. Badian and P. Green
that he was some kind of a conquistador.
Again, due to Jones' error it has been
overlooked that the locale of the famous
Sanskrit drama Mudra-rakshasa was not
Patna but the North-west where Alexander
had come. It appears that Chandanadasa
of the drama is a ghost of Alexander. The
respectful treatment of Chandanadasa in
the drama shows that Alexander was very
different from the the villain he has been
painted as by Badian and Green. The fact
that the mother of Darius III courted
death by refusing food after hearing about
Alexander's death and that the Prasiians
treated his altars with great respect shows
that Badian was wrong.
Alexander's call for Homonoia
(Samanvaya in Sanskrit) was echoed by
Moeris' grandson Diodotus-I, and had a
momentous impact on history. The
politician-historian J. G. Droysen wrote
with insight that during the Hellenistic era
Greek and Eastern cultures mingled in the
lands conquered by Alexander to form the
cultural milieu which became the crucible
of Christianity. If almost no words are
commensurate for the description
Diodotus-I/Asoka, the same is true of
Alexander the Great who swept away all,
great Buddhist scholar B. M. Barua
refused to recognize the Chandragupta of
Patna and Vincent Smith strongly
protested against Führer's fraud. Dilip
Chakrabarti, author of a book on the
history of Indian Archaeology, focusses on
some lapses of the colonial era but
refrains from highlighting the atrocious
frauds in Nepalese archaeology.
However, once the heap of Jonesian
and Führerian rubbish, accumulated over
the centuries, is cleared, a renascent
Non-Jonesian Indology emerges that
exposes grave flaws in the mammoth
Encyclopedia Iranica which attempts to
delineate Iranian history using only the
Greco-Roman and Persian documents in
deference to the crucial Sanskrit and Pali
sources. No sane discourse on world
history can ignore the priceless data
contained in the Indian texts. Jones'
blunder and Führer's skullduggery have
seriously distorted world history.
Colonial Indology and the Blunder of
Sir William Jones
Asoka, Diodotus-I and the Hellenistic
Miracle
The chaos in world history caused by
Jones' Palibothra is immeasurable. After
Asoka was hijacked to the dank surrounds
of Patna, it became nearly impossible to
reconstruct his history. Sir Mortimer
Wheeler, one of the finest minds on
ancient India, failed to pinpoint Jones'
mistake, but gave important clues
regarding Asoka. He noted the
unmistakable Achaemenian imprint on his
architecture and wrote that he could have
been a half-Greek. Yet no one could
imagine that this half-Greek was the Indo-
Greek king Diodotus-I, known to all
classics scholars for his matchless coins.
Historians have been deluded by the
figure of thundering Zeus on these coins
which illustrates the vigour of Diodotus'
youth but have failed to comprehend his
multi-faceted personality. Sadly, the
crucial implication of the absence of his
inscriptions and other relics has been
overlooked.
By which name was Asoka known in
as it were. His impact on the civilizations
of both the East and the West is immense.
Ignoring the vast Indian literature and
adopting an overly Europeanist view,
writers like E. Badian and A. B. Bosworth
have failed to grasp why he was called
'Great' even by the Romans, centuries
later. Despite some lapses, Tarn, who had
a better understanding of the East,
appears to be closer to the truth.
Alexander's Dream of a United Nations
Discovery of Alexander's Missing Altar
Alexander's Mission and World Peace
Alexander the Great in a Sanskrit
Drama
Sashigupta and the Poisoning of
Alexander
Alexander’s Relics at Barygaza and His
Crossing of the Ganges
Rostam, Rama and Achaemenian
Origins
Persian history without Rostam, the
greatest hero of the Iranian tradition, is
sadly incomplete. Similarly the Jonesian
vision of Rama being a tribal king bloated
up by poetic fancy, turns Indian history
into a carica-ture. Another gross
miscarriage is that while the gre-atness of
Hammu-rabi is recognized, the true
stature of his contemporary Rim-Sin is
unknown. Scanty data often falsifies
history - that Iran had no Bronze Age
culture was a fond cliché disproved by the
accidental discoveries at Jiroft. Yet a
greater danger is that of misreading of
history due to a false preconceptions.
Even though learned scholars like Sir
Charles Eliot, Arnold Toynbee and
Sukumar Sen held that India and Persia
are deceptive labels, this has been lost on
modern writers. As South-east Iran was
'India' and part of India was under the
Achaemenids, it is natural to expect an
overlap between the Indian and Iranian
traditions. The true Heritage of Persia
the west? From the fact that the Greco-
Roman writers do not refer to Asoka or
Piyadassi, R. Thapar readily assumes that
he was unknown in the West. This is
ridiculous, they must have used a
different name. The most frequent name
in the Edicts is Devanampiya, not Asoka.
As 'Nam' and 'Dat' both mean 'law',
Devanam (piya) is the same as Devadatta
or Diodotus. Thapar is hopelessly wrong,
Asoka (Diodotus) was very well known in
the Greco-Roman world.
Again, the bilingual Kandahar Edict
shows Asoka as the master of Arachosia
while the coins point to Diodotus as the
ruler. In fact Asoka's history matches that
of Diodotus-I line by line. The studies on
the Bactrian Aramaic texts by S. Shaked
miss the finer points of Bactrian history.
Significantly, just as Diodotus has
only coins but no inscriptions, his
contemporary and neighbour Asoka has
only inscriptions but no coins. This clearly
indicates that Asoka and Diodotus
complement each other. H. P. Ray's
satisfaction about Asoka's coins is bizarre.
Asoka never refers to his neighbour
Diodotus because he was Diodotus
himself. It is very likely that the Asokan
Pillar which was brought to Delhi from
Punjab was in fact a re-inscribed altar of
Alexander.
Asoka seems to have died when
Diodotus died. R. Thapar notes that his
Edicts abruptly stopped appearing by
about 245 BC but owing to visions
centered on Patna, fails to notice that this
is exactly the year of Diodotus' death.
Both were fierce warriors in their youth
but later became saviors, sôtêr. Pliny
indicated three Kalingas of which one
must have been near Parthia. Konark in
the Persian Gulf also shows that Asoka's
cannot be grasped without the Heritage of
'India'.
Commonsense dictates that Naqsh-i
Rostam (carvings of Rostam) is a memory
of Rostam but he is placed in the Arsacid
era by all. As this was the traditional
burial place of the Achaemenids, it is
natural to suspect that Rostam could have
been their ancestor. The suspicion is
further reinforced by an unknown pre-
Achaemenid relief found here which was
effaced in the Sasanid era. The very fact
that it was copied from an earlier relief at
Kurangun (~18th cent.
B.C.) hints that the name Naqsh-i Rostam
may be due to this relief. Thus it is very
likely that the horned king is a depiction
of Rostam.
The Achaemenian inscriptions do not
mention Rostam, instead they mention
Arya-Ram-Ana (7th cent. B.C.) whose
name echoes Rama, the greatest hero of
ancient India whose history is strikingly
similar to that of Rostam. Rama's life
story, the Ramayana, is akin to a scripture
for many Indians. J. L. Brockington writes
that it was the greatest Epic of the world
which influenced a large part of humanity
from Indo-Iran to Japan. That Indian
archaeology has failed to
Kalinga war had nothing to with modern
Orissa but is linked to the strifes linked to
Diodotus and the Parni.
It can be seen that Mauryan history
is linked to that of the Arsacids. According
to Strabo (xi,1-12) the Parthians were a
tribe of the Parni or Aparni who belonged
to the larger tribe of the Dahae. The name
Parthian is related to that of Parthava, the
first Iranian region conquered by them.
They are identified with the Pallavas in the
Indian texts but non-classical sources
usually describe them as Arsacids after
the name of their founder Arsaces or
Assak who, according to some classical
authors, was a Bactrian like Diodotus. As
Gotama is said to have been related to the
Nandas, the Mauryas also appears to be
related to the Achaemenians. Sir Mortimer
Wheeler repeatedly stressed the link of
the Asokan pillars with Achaemenid art.
Also the Arsacid claim of descent from the
Achaemenians, which is discounted by
R.N. Frye and others, is in fact true. unearth Rama's relics from UP is because
The name Assak is clearly linked to Rama's India was a wider world that
Asoka and gives a different derivation of extended up to Elam. Jonesian writers like
the name Asoka (or Ashoka) from that R. Thapar and A.L. Basham have held that
based on the Sanskrit 'shoka' or 'grief'. Rama was a minor tribal hero of UP which
The Arsacids were also called Arshakuni is absurd. Contrarily, Sukumar Sen wrote
which shows the clear link with the with rare insight that Rama, also called
Shakas. M. Witzel and H. Falk consider the Rama Margaveya, was from what is now
Shakas to be 'foreigners' in India but as Iran (Margu). Rama of Margu is clearly an
Cynthia Talbot notes, this is improper. The older namesake of Arya-Ram-ana.
Arsacids claimed to be linked to the Kurangun is near the ancient site of
Achaemenids who were also Shakas. This Sih-talu which provides the link with the
is indicated by names such as Indian texts. This must have been Sutala,
Dar(a)shaka in the Indian texts. capital of Vali, a famous figure of the
Gaumata's abode was Sikayavatish which Ramayana. In Sumerian history also Valih
also shows the link with the Sakyas. It is is a great figure. The king and his wife in
likely that Chandragupta was also known the relief can thus be Rama and his wife
by the same name Arsaces or Assak. Sita. Rama was an Ikshaku king which
Ashkh of the Shahnama appears to be corresponds to the term Uksha-man (Bull-
Chandragupta. man) or Achaemenian. Shutruk-Na-
In the Minor Rock Edict I Asoka hhunte is an younger namesake of
describes his dominion as Jambudvipa Shatrughna, Rama's half-brother. Shimut
which is uncritically assumed to be Wartash may be Warad-Sin or Bharata,
modern India. In the version of the edict another brother. The name of Tan
found at Nittur in Tumkur district of Rukurater (~2004 B.C.) echoes Raghu,
Karnataka, Asoka calls himself a ruler of Rama's ancestor, and Dasa Ratha. Lukh-
Pathavi which is Parthia, Diodotus' Ishshan (~2350 B.C.) may have been an
domain. K. P. Jawasawal noted that ancestor of Lakshmana, Rama's brother.
Jambudvipa was a wider territory covering Historians like R. N. Frye are totally
nearly the whole of civilized Asia. The unaware of the crucial significance of
name Jambu or Gambu may be linked to Rama even though Persian history
names like Sisygambis, mother of Darius- resounds with his name.
III. 1) Rama and Vayu are venerated in the
 Asoka calls himself 'Piyadassi laja
magadhe' which is uncritically thought to
allude to Magadh in Bihar. Like early
Kalinga, Vanga (Bengal), early Magadha
was also in the North-West. Magan in
south east Iran was the early Magadha.
The Mauryan homeland is given in some
sources as Pippali (vana) which may be
Babil in Seistan. Babyl(on) in Iraq later
became known as Babil which may be a
transform of Kapilavastu. Names like
Kabul and Vasht echo Kapilavastu which
was the greatest religious centre of the
ancient world. The Mauryas are linked to
the Nandas who in turn are linked to the
Buddhist Sakyas. Babil in Seistan also
may have been the Baveru of the Jatakas.
Asoka is said to have been the founder of
Sanchi which is likely but is not backed by
hard evidence.
It is far more logical to associate
Asoka with Kanganhalli in Karnataka
where his inscribed portraits have been
found. Kanganhalli (Halli = City) echoes
the name of Bandar-e Kangan near
Konarak in the Gulf area which was once
India proper. As the Mudrarakshasa
shows, Moeris, the grandfather of
Diodotus-I was Orontobates and according
to Arrian Orontobates (misspelled
Ocondobates) who fought against
Alexander the Great was from the Gulf
area.
Bandar-e Kangan was near Patali
Bandar-e Kangan was near Konarak
and about 10-days boat journey from
Kanganhalli. Another Bandar-e Kangan
was near Gour (Firuzabad) and Katak in
Iran. Kangan or Gangan may be linked to
the Gangaridae mentioned by the Greeks.
Diodotus' father Bindusara, who can be
identified with Bagadates is linked to
Gauda in some texts which may be Gour
Avesta.
2) Arya-Ram-ana was an early ancestor
of Darius-I.
3) Ram-Behist was an ancestor of the
Sasanids.
4) Ramannuya (PF1855) was close to
Darius-I.
5) Many Sasanian city-names had the
prefix 'Rama'.
6) Shutruk-Na-hhunte echoes
Shatrughna.
The study of the Persepolis tablets has
yielded much information about important
figures like Darius and Parnaka yet crucial
data remains unknown due to improper
prognosis. Even a meticulous scholar like
Hallock failed to note the echo of Rama in
the name Ramanuya. The name of the
Mitannian king Tushratta echoes
Dasharatha, Rama's father. Chedor
La'omer of Genesis 14 corresponds to
Kudur Laghumar of the Babylonian texts
and Raghupati was Rama's name.
Rama's presence in the Indus cities is
unattested although the frequent symbol
of the bow-man in the seals may, in fact,
stand for Rama. Post-Islamic Iran also
ignores him although his name may be
hidden in the many Ram-names like
Ramadan, Ram-allah etc.
Fortunately, the Sumerian texts
provide priceless data about Rama. The
Sumerian king-lists show that Rama was
the same as Ram-Sin of Larsa (~18th
cent. B.C.) who ruled Sumer, Elam, and
the Indus cities. Although Ram-Sin was
deified and his memorial has been found
at Ur, his relics are unknown from Elam,
said to be his homeland. Rim-Sin (also
called Ram-Sin) was the longest ruling
monarch (60 years) of Sumer and his
reign is termed the golden era of Sumer
by the great Assyriologist C. J. Gadd.
Significantly, Ram-Sin is called an Elamite
in the Sumerian texts.
Khotanese literature, which is almost
exclusively Buddhist, describes Rama as a
Buddhist hero. Imagining the Buddhists to
be from Nepal and Rama from Ayodhya in
U. P., the eminent linguist Sir Harold
Bailey discounted the Buddhist claim that
Rama was one of their own. A careful
study, however, shows this suspicion to
be misplaced.
The Buddhist sources trace the
genealogy to the primeval Maha Sammata
in modern Iran or Istakhr (Asthagoura of
Ptolemy?). 'Khwarra' and 'Goura' meant
'bright' or 'shinning'. Bagadates is known
to have been a priest-king from Istakhr.
The Kalinga war had a great effect on
Diodotus and after it he became a
changed man and adopted Buddhism. In
the 13th edict, after declaring that he had
himself found pleasure rather in conquests
by Dhamma than in conquests by the
sword, Diodotus/ Asoka says that he had
already made such conquests in the
realms of the kings of Syria, Egypt,
Macedonia, Epirus, and Kyrene, among
the Cholas and Pandyas in South India, in
Ceylon and among a number of peoples
dwelling in the borders of his empire. This
was a great event in the history of
Hellenistic civilization and led to, as Asoka
saw it, the Kingdom of God.
Everywhere men conform to the instructions
of the King as regards the Dhamma; and
even where the kings emissaries go not,
there when they have heard of the King’s
Dhamma, the folk conform themselves, and
will conform themselves to the duties of the
Dhamma …..
In his celebrated History of Hellenism
J.G. Droysen made the far-reaching
observation that in the Helleni-stic era
Greek and Near Eastern cultures mingled
in the lands conquered by Alexander the
Great to form the cultural matrix from
which Christianity emerged. If Alexander
was the harbinger of this Hellenistic
miracle , Diodotus was its greatest
champion. Tarn wrote that most of the
Bactrian Greeks became Buddhists. This
was due to Alexander and Diodotus-I, due
to whom momentous events took place in
the Orient that altered human destiny.
Much has been written about
Hellenistic culture that fails to recognize
Asoka's determinant role in it. S. M.
Burstein rightly emphasizes the
interaction of Greeks and non-Greeks
during the Hellenistic period in outposts
such as Ptolemaic Egypt and Heraclea on
the Black Sea but other great centres of
Hellenistic culture were Sanchi,
Besanagar, Amaravati and
Nagarjunakonda.
The Hellenistic upsurge ultimately
paved the way for the rise of Christianity
and Islam. J. Z. Smith writes in the
(Maha=great) which agrees with Shem,
father of Elam in the Old Testament. This
shows the basic unity of the Indian,
Elamite and the Judaic traditions. Even if
Rama is relatively unknown, the names of
his half-brothers Shatrughna and Bharata
are radiant ones in Elamite history.
The Buddhists traced their genealogy
to Okkaka, said to be an ancestor of both
the Sakyas and the Kollians. Okkaka is a
transform of Ukshaka which is the same
as Ukshaman or Achaemenian. According
to Buddhaghosa, there were three
dynasties with Okkaka at the head of
each, all of whom were lineal descendants
of the primeval king Maha Sammata or
Great Sammata. This may correspond to
the three wives of Dasharatha. Bardiya
and Cyrus may have been the offsprings
of Bharata (Warad-Sin), brother of Rama.
Toynbee noted that Cyrus (Kurash) may
have been linked to the Indian Kurus. The
Achaemen-ids seem to be linked to
Gotama as his relative Bhaddia is clearly
Bardiya. Gaumata of the famous Behistun
record can be seen to be Gotama and
both Darius-I and Gaumata were known
as Sphendadates. Part of the Rama
Story is submerged in the Rostam Saga.
Like Rama in India, the greatest Iranian
hero was Rostam, immortalized in the
Shahnama, about whose history little is
known. There are traces of the Rama
story in the Rostam saga which may have
been emended by Surena, who defeated
the Romans in the crucial battle at
Carrhae and displaced Rama as the
mightiest Iranian hero. His personal name
is not known but his link with Rama is
written in the name of Ram Sahristan, his
capital in Seistan. Just as in the Rostam-
Sohrab story, Rama's sons fought with
him, unaware that he was their father.
The late Babylonian texts indicate
that another name of Rama was Rostam.
Rostam's early name was Rotastahm
which echoes the names Dasharatha and
Dharma (Durma-Ilani) of Rama's father.
Naqs-i Rostam can also be read as Naqs-i
Rama. Rama may have been the ruler of
the Indus cities, Iran and Iraq. He was
also an ancestor of Gotama Buddha and
the Achaemenian kings. I. M. Diakonoff
and D. McAlpin have pointed to a link of
Elamite with Dravidian but the links
between Elamite and Indian civilization
Encyclopedia Britannica (1979),
Finally, the central religious literature of both
traditions – the Jewish Talmud (an
authoritative compendium of law, lore, and
interpretation), the New Testament, and the
later patristic literature of the Early Church
Fathers – are characteristic Hellenistic
documents both in form and content.
Only misjudgment of historians has
denied Diodotus his rightful place in world
history.
A Coin-Portrait of Asoka or Diodotus-
I
Discovery of Alexander's Missing Altar
Gotama Buddha and the Nepalese
Bluff in World History
Truth, in the ultimate analysis, is at
times stranger than fiction. As Gotama
was abandoned in the wilderness of the
Nepalese Terai by the thug Führer, his life
history went to pieces. He was a prince,
but that he was related to the royal
Achaemenid house of Darius-I, defeats all
imagination. Although fanciful textual
tales abound in the literature, the eminent
Belgian scholar E. Conze writes with
circumspection,
To the modern historian, Buddhism is a
phenomenon which must exasperate him at
every point and we can only say in
extenuation that this religion was not
founded for the benefit of the historians. Not
only is there an almost complete absence of
hard facts about its history in India; not only
is the date, authorship and geographical
provenance of the overwhelming majority of
the documents almost entirely unknown,
......
Vincent Smith was aware of the
heinous forgeries of Führer and rejected
Kapilavastu in Nepal but oblivious of
Führer, the Buddhist scholar E. Lamotte
declared, without sufficient warrant, that
if miracles are sieved out from Buddhist
legend, only a travesty remains. The
American archaeologist D. B. Spooner also
also extend to history. Although Rama is
usually thought to be an Aryan, he was
called Elamite and in Indian art he is
usually painted in Blue, whereas his
brother Lakshmana and wife Sita are
shown as light-skinned.
Ram-Sin of Larsa was the Historical
Rama
Rama and Rostam
Shiva Min(uksha) and Mahakala in
the Seals
The Indus civilization, which should
have been the very starting point in
Indian history, resembles, alas, a butterfly
pinned in a glass case - standing apart
from all later tradition or society. The
principal elements of this highly articulate
culture can be seen through the corridors
of archaeology, the eternal yogi in
meditation, the majestic priest-king in
trefoil-stud-ded robe, the enchanting
dancing girl, the splendid seals, the
magnificent metropolises and so on, but
all the characters are muted and frozen.
Little is known about their political, ethnic,
linguistic, or religious affiliations. From no
civilization of antiquity is there such a
deafening silence.
This is the appalling legacy of Jones.
Once the crucial state of Magadha was
ejected to the distant east, nothing could
be made out of the writing of this largest
civilization of antiquity. Fortunately, after
carefully purging the Jonesian traits,
significant progress can be made towards
the decipherment of the seals.
1. Firstly it has to be realized that Magan in Baluchistan-
Seistan was the
early Magadha.
2. The mature Vedic culture may date from the latter half
of the second
ignored Nepal and wrote in 1915 that
Gotama and Chandragupta were from
Iran. He was branded as an upstart by the
Jonesian lobby and textual hearsay
continued to be paraded as sober history.
About Buddhism in Iran, R. E. Emmerick,
a principal contributor to the Encyclopedia
Iranica, writes,
How far west Buddhism spread in Iran we
do not know. On the basis of archaeology it
seems possible to infer that it never
flourished west of the line joining Balkh to
Qandahar, the so-called Foucher line. The
Russian discovery of a Buddhist stupa at
Gyaur Kala near Bairam ‘Ali more than four
hundred kilometers west of Balkh in the
Merv oasis is hardly sufficient evidence to
induce us to consider that Buddhism was
ever very prominent further west. The
common adage often applied to the spread
of Buddhism to the east is relevant to the
west: one swallow does not make a
summer.
This obtuse assessment ignores
Hsuan Tsang's report that Lang kie (ka)-lo
in Persia had more than 100 monasteries
and more than 6000 brethren. Where did
Mani find the Buddhists? Balkh,suggests
Emmerick, but it may also have been
southeast Iran which was 'India'. A strong
refutation of Emmerick comes from Al-
beruni, the greatest scholar of the world
of his day
In former times, Khurasan, Persis, Irak,
Mosul, the country up to the frontier of Syria,
was Buddhistic, but then Zara-thustra went
forth from Adharbaijan and preached
Magism in Balkh (Baktra). His doctrine came
into favour with king Gushtasp, and his son
Isfendiyad spread the new faith both in East
and West, both by force and by treaties. He
founded fire-temples through his whole
Empire, from the frontiers of China to those
of the Greek Empire. The succeeding kings
made their religion (i.e. Zoroastrianism) the
obligatory state-religion for Persis and Irak.
In conseq-uence the Buddhists were
banished from these countries, and had to
emigrate to the countries east of Balkh.
This crucial data confirms the presence
of Buddhists in Iran in the 6th century BC
beyond any doubt and calls for drastic
reform in Iranian history. A precious clue
is offered by Xerexes. In a trilingual
millennium B.C. but the Indus seals display
unmistakable Vedic traits.
3 The language of the seals seems to be a mixture of
primitive Sanskrit
and Dravidian.
4 The Indus script was read from right to left like early
Brahmi.
5 Lastly Brahmi has to be recognized as an offshoot of
Indus writing.
As scholars like S. N. Kramer and G.
F. Dales have noted, the Indus civilization
did not exist in isolation but was closely
linked to the other contemporary Bronze
Age cultures. Thus important data about
the seals can be gleaned from Sumer. Sir
Max Mallowan wrote that the signs for
god, heaven, star , for water , for
earth , for the heaven and the deep
, had long been painted on the pottery
of Mesopotamia, and Iran and were
invested with magical prophylactic
meaning. Similar signs also appear in the
seals and probably had very similar
connotations.
I. Mahadevan writes that the most
frequently used symbol was with an
incidence of 1395. From the great
importance of the bull-cult in the Indus
cities, it is natural to expect the sign to be
linked to the bull and this exactly turns
out to be the case. The similar looking
Sumerian sign stood for the bull. More
significantly, an almost identical symbol
was used at at Tell Halaf in 3000 B.C. for
the bull (Mallowan, The Dawn of
Civilization, p. 89).
Thus the sign can be read as 'Uksha'
which echoes the English word Ox. This
later became the Brahmi 'Sa' and
perhaps also the Latin U.
inscription, he boasts over his destruction
of the Daivas,
Among these countries (that submitted to
him) was (one) where previously daivas were
worshipped. Then, by the favour of Ahura
Mazda, I destroyed that daiva place, and I
had proclaimed, the daivas shall not be
worshipped. Where previously the daivas
were worshipped, there I worshipped Ahura
Mazda properly with the Law (arta).
The identification of the Daivas is a
serious problem in Persian history. R. N.
Frye does not recognize the true Gaumata
yet writes with clear insight,
It is generally agreed that the daiva
worshippers were not Babylonians or
Egyptians but rather Iranians, or at least
Aryans. One may ask whether the Indians
living within the Achaemenid empire, who
worshipped the old gods, may have been
regarded as daiva worshippers.
Due to the Nepalese smokescreen,
no one follo-wed up Frye's cue. For
syndicated art writers like T. Kawami and
Pratapaditya Pal, Buddhist art is solely
defined by its Indian idiom. Contrarily, Dr.
Spooner wrote that Gotama was from Iran
(part of which was India). Niharranajan
Ray did not hide behind jargon and stated
categorically that Indian Buddhist art was
only Hellenistic Greco-Indian art of a later
phase,
The fact remains therefore that we have no
examples extant of either sculpture or
architecture that can definitely be labelled
chronologically as pre-Mauryan or perhaps
even as pre-Asokan.
Keen observers like M. Rostovtzeff
noted Parthian influence on Buddhist Art
and D. Schlumberger, who succeeded
Foucher, boldly wrote that Greco-Buddhist
art was the Indian descendant of Greco-
Iranian art. Sadly, modern scholars have
neither the taste nor vision for studying
Buddhist art of the 6th century B.C..
Pratapaditya Pal rightly highlights the
glory of the Buddhist art of Alchi but has
no clue regarding its strong Iranian
features. Holding on to a creaky Nepalese
perspective he tries in vain to read the
mind of the Buddha,
in the head-dress of Proto-Shiva or Minuksha
One corollary of Jonesian Indology,
elucidated by R. Thapar and S. Ratnagar,
is that there is no trace of Hinduism in
Indus religion. The absurdity of the
contention is proved not only by the figure
of the ithyphallic Shiva-like Yogi depicted
in some seals but also the inscription in
these seals which are of crucial religious
significance. The clear echoes of the fierce
Rudra in Nimrod of the Old testament
shows that Indian history and religion has
to be perceived from an international
perspective. The Yogi has been recognized
as an early form of Shiva by many
scholars and reminds one of the
procreative power of God (Purusha)
extolled in the RigVeda to be at the origin
of all things. The Yogi is a Lord of beasts
like Shiva Pashupati and is ithyphallic like
Min, the Egyptian God of fertility and
harvest. Min was one of the most ancient
gods of Egypt whose cult dates from the
pre-dynastic period and was linked to
fecundity. He was the Lord of the Eastern
desert which seems to point to his eastern
origin. This is also indicated by his name
Amsu which is similar to the name of
Amsa, a Vedic Solar God said to belong to
the so-called 'Indo-European' period.
Apart from their common ithyphallic
nature, that the Proto-Shiva was also
called Min is evident from the inscription.
The fish-sign can be read as 'Min' as the
word for 'fish' in Sanskrit, Dravidian and
even Sumerian was 'Min' (munnu). Thus
the last two signs can be read with
certainty as Min-uksha.
Urban civilization ended abruptly in
the north and other areas and in the dark
ages that followed, much of the history of

The religion that created Alchi is so far
removed from early Buddhism that if Buddha
Sakyamuni himself were to visit the monastery
today, he would be no less bewildered by its
iconographic complexity than the average
visitor.
T. Kawami ignores that though no
ancient Buddhist text is known from India
or Nepal, 300 Buddhist palm-leaf
manuscripts have been found near Merv
and that Buddhism and Zoroastrianism
were sister religions,
The site, a monastery & stupa, is dated 3-4th
cent. and was remodeled and enlarged
several times, the stupa simply being
encased in a larger "shell" each time. There
was large sculpture as a larger than life clay
head of Buddha was found. Curiously, the
famous "Merv vase" painted with figural
scenes containing zoroastrian elements was
excavated in the Buddhist ruins.
This was suggested by Sir Charles
Eliot. To study Buddhist art of the 6th
century B.C. one has to venture to the
North-west. Fortunately it is in this
periphery of India - in Seistan and
Baluchistan - that Sir Aurel Stein, one of
the greatest antiquarians of all times,
found a very ancient shrine at Kuh-e
Khwaja which he labelled as Buddhist. He
found nothing ancient in Nepal yet, due to
Führer, saw only Bodhisattvas and missed
that this was the birthplace of Gotama
Buddha. This created a sensation but has
been forgotten. Roman Ghirshman, a
noted Iranologist missed the full import of
the glorious era was obliterated. The
name Minuksha is not known in Indian
literature but it may have survived in
Minakshi, the famous fish-eyed Goddess
of Madurai which has quaint echoes. Her
name Minakshi may have been derived
from that of her husband Shiva Minuksha.
Min was known as Amsu and in India
Amsa was a solar-god. This shows the link
of the Dravidian cultures with the Indus
cities. The ancestors of the Pallavas also
seem to have been Harappans.
The link of Shiva with Indus religion
seems to be indicated by the presence of
Mahakala, an allied god. The symbol
depicts a Ziggurat and can be read as
Maha or Mah, name of the Goddess. The
sign stands for a city or citadel and
can be read as Bala or Kala (Kella in
Bengali). D. Diringer writes that in early
Chinese writing the sign
designated a gate or Dvara. The 'Gate'
had a religious (and probably also
juridical) significance and the root Dvara
is the key to names like Maha Anga Dvara
(Mohenjo-daro), Darab, Dvaravati, Djiroft,
Der, Dwaraka, Chanhu Daro, Sutkagen-
Dor and the Persian Gates.
The important text
appears in a total of 27 inscriptions of
which a large number are in the form of
copper tablets from Mohenjo-daro and
seems to be of great ritual significance. It
can be read as Maha Kala Dvara Uksha
which echoes Darius and shows the great
influence of Shiva Mahakala in the Indus
cities. The name strongly resembles
Mekal, the Canaanite God. Mekal was also
an ancient city in Palestine. The name
Mahakal may be linked to the place-name
Makkas mentioned in the Achaemenian
documents with Purash.
The sign before in the proto-shiva
seal may be a compound of and may
have been read as 'Ukshu' or just 'Shu'.
As the Brahmi 'Ma' was written as ,
the three signs preceding may
tentatively be read as Mashmasshu, the
name of an important class of Sumerian
priests. The Mashmasshu may have been
easterners. 'Nin' or 'Min' in Sumerian
Stein's discovery but wrote with unfailing meant 'great' which may echo the name
instinct that the murals of Kuh-e Khwaja of an early god. Were they Indo-Aryans?
are the precursors of Gandhara art, which As the links of the Indus Proto-Shiva
points to the great antiquity of the site. with Mekal and Min shows, Hinduism,
Nearby Dahan-e Gholaman is heedlessly which is a disparate mix of diverse
termed a 'slaves entrance' but to any doctrines, cults, and social traits, holds
discerning observer Gholaman is a clear the key to a meaningful study of world
echo of Gotama. Seistan is not only the religion. Owing to its composite structure,
home of all ancient Iranian tradition this ancient religion has been likened to
including the Shahnama, it is also the locale an armadillo by some scholars but T.
of the Lalitavistara. Kuh-e Khwaja was McEvilley (The Shape of Ancient Thought)
Kapilavastu or Babil. Herzfeld wrote about discusses it from a broader West Asian
Bawer, said to have been founded by the perspective.
legendary Jamshid, which is Babil.
Babil was the holiest religious centre of Shiva Minuksha and Mahakala in the
the ancient world. According to the Tarikh-i
Seistan, Ali, son-in-law of Prophet
Indus Seals
Mohammed, was buried in Seistan. E.
Herzfeld wrote that the Magi went to
Palestine from Kuh-e Khwaja. I. M.
Diakonoff held that the Prophet Zoroaster
was from Seistan. This is also stated by
Gnoli who, unfortunately, is hoodwinked by
Führer. Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, founder
of the venerated Indian shrine of Ajmer
Sharif hailed from Seistan.
The history of Alexander the Great
shows that Kuh-e Khwaja in Seistan was
Alexandria Prophthasia, the abode of
Prophets. Deluded by Führer's misdeeds,
great scholars like Tarn and Herzfeld
missed the clear hint in the name
Alexandria Prophthasia. Herzfeld
mistakenly dated the stepped fire altar at
Kuh-e Khwaja to the first century B.C.
which is accepted by T. Kawami without
circumspection. Y. Yamamoto, on the
other hand, correctly identifies it as the
oldest surviving Zoroastrian altar.

This mural of Kuh-e Khwaja may be the earliest depiction

of Gotama's nativity
 In art Gotama is often shown seated
on a lotus which also reveals his true
origin. Nelumbo nucifer (Nelumbonaceae)
or the Indian lotus is not native to modern
India but to wetlands of northern Iran.
From there it probably spread to Egypt,
India and further east. Persian history
provides crucial information about the
history of Buddhism.
A careful study shows that Gotama
was the same as Gaumata who hangs like
a ghost in Persian history. His tussle with
Darius-I as recorded in stone at Behistun
is one of the greatest stories and scandals
of history yet little is known about the
nature or cause of his revolt. P. Briant's
account of Gomata in the Encyclopedia
Iranica lacks insight but historians like
Toynbee and Olmstead suspected Darius’
veracity and concluded that Gaumata was
not an imposter. Although R. N. Frye fails
to notice the overlap with Indian history,
Gaumata was a namesake of Gotama.
Gut-ama in Sumerian means ‘one whose
mother is a cow’ which agrees with the
meaning of Gau-mata in Sanskrit and old
Persian. Gaumata was an immensely
popular figure. That Darius had lied is also
noted by Chester Starr, Dandamayev and
W. Culican. T. C. Young Jr. a noted expert
on Iran, also saw through the tirades of
Darius-I and came very near recognizing
the true nature of Gaumata who was also
a religious leader. He writes with rare
insight,

Finally, it should be remarked that Darius

hurls the epithet ‘Magian’, ‘priest’, at
Gaumata almost as though this were the
worst possible thing he could say about the
rebel in order to discredit his enemy and to
support his own cause in the eyes of his
followers, if not in those of the populace.

Young suggests with remarkable insight

that Gomata may have preached a new
religion,

He then tells us that, 'As before, so I made

the sanctuaries which Gaumata the Magian
destroyed.’ Clearly Darius and Gaumata had
a difference of opinion about sanctuaries,
and, therefore, we may assume about
religion or, at least, about ritual forms of
religious expression. The details of this
disagreement escapes us. Indeed, we are
not even sure who was the innovator; the
 Achaemenians may have introduced forms of
religion which adherents of an older faith
reacted against under Gaumata’s leadership;
or the Magian could have been attempting to
introduce a new religion which offended the
establishment. What is critical in the present
context is that the story of Darius’ overthrow
of Gaumata probably contains evidence of a
religious as well as dynastic, social/economic
and political struggle.

This new religion propounded by Gomata

is Buddhism which proves beyond any
doubt that Gaumata was the true Gotama.
There are many other references to
Gotama in the Persian and Jewish sources
which have not been recognized. Tattenai
(6th-5th century BC) who was the Persian
governor of the province west of the
Euphrates River (eber nari, "beyond the
river") during the reign of Darius I was
Gotama, whose name was Tathagata. The
Book of Ezra (V: 3,6) states that he led an
investigation into the rebuilding of the
Temple in Jerusalem about 519 B.C. He
sent a report to Darius, who responded
with instructions to allow the work to
proceed. Tattenai is cited in a cuneiform
tablet of 502 B.C. A. Kuhrt of London
University refers to the 'good Iranian name'
of Bagapa the satrap of Babylon during
Darius' reign and even considers the link
with Tattanu but due to Jonesian delusions
is unaware that Tattenai and Bagapa could
be Gotama's names Tathagata and
Bhagava. The Book of Ezra also cites the
names Shether and Boznai which agree
with Gotama's names Shiddhartha and
Buddha. The name Shethar occurs in the
Book of Esther.
It can be seen that Prophet Abraham
was also from the abode of Gotama and
Zoroaster. The startling discoveries of Sir
Leonard Woolley at Ur in Sumer had such a
dazzling effect on scholars that it was not
realized that this could not be Ur Kasdim,
the home of Abraham. W. F. Albright
disagreed with Woolley but no one realized
that Ur of Abraham was Urva, one of the
sixteen good regions of the Avesta.
It is indeed uncanny that the
patently absurd notion of the rise of
Buddhism in Nepal has survived scholarly
scrutiny for nearly a century. Sir Aurel
Stein whose untiring efforts established
the material basis of Buddhism, found
nothing in Nepal. The vanishing of
Buddhism from India may be due to the
fact that after Afghanistan and Seistan
ceased to be parts of 'India', Buddhism
was seen as an extraneous creed. R. G.
Bhandarkar blamed the decline on the rise
of the Mahayana which weakened it from
within. It is significant that Mahayana,
from its very inception, was an essentially
'foreign' doctrine. The Mahayanists were
often hostile to the Bhakti cult and other
forms of Hinduism, yet the generally
tolerant approach of the Buddhists to
other faiths resulted in the assimilation of
Buddhism in a reformed Hinduism. In this
sense Buddhism did not disappear from
India.

Gotama and Zoroaster in a Non-

Jonesian Frame

Terah, Eastern Judaism and

Buddhism
As Judaism is older than Abraham,
many Judaic traits may in fact be
continuations from the religion of his
ancestors. But where was his homeland? A
careful study shows that Abraham was
from Kapil or Babil in Seistan, which was an
abode of Prophets. Herzfeld was skeptical
about the local tradition of Kuh-e Khw-aja
that it was the abode of Ibrahim but this
may be true. His father Terah may have
been Yadus-Tera or Yudhisthira of the Epic
Mahabharata. Yudhisthira's cousin was the
great Yadu(Yadava) hero Krishna who may
have been an Eastern 'Jew'. His son
Yaudheya also appears to be a Yadu. After
the fateful Bharata war Yudhisthira started
a westward journey which may have been
continued by Abraham. The Yadus vanished
from Indian history after the Bharata war
(~1750 B.C.) which appears to be linked to
Abraham's westward journey. The early
Yahdus may have been from the Indus
Cities. The name Jaddua of the high-priest
at the time of the second temple echoes
Jadu. D. P. Mishra noted the uncanny
parallels between the Indian and the Judaic
traditions (Studies In The Proto-History of
India, p. 126).
The biblical authors were only dimly
aware of the socio-political background of
the Patriarchs. E. A. Speiser wrote that the
Patriarchal stories contain traditions and
social data that do not fit in with the later
times in which they were written down.
This can be seen from the confusion
regarding Shinar which is equated with
Sumer without proper warrant. In Gen. x.
10 the beginning of Nimrod's kingdom is
said to have been "Babel, and Erech, and
Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar."
Two points are to be noted here. Firstly
Nimrod (Nim=great) of the Old Testament
is the divine archer Rudra of the RigVeda
which clearly suggests a location in Indo-
Iran. Secondly Babel need not be Babylon
but can be Kapil or Babil in Seistan. Shinar
is clearly the Sineru of the Buddhist texts.
In Gen. xi. 2, Shinar is the site of the tower
of Babel which has to be reconsidered in
view of the great discoveries in the Jiroft
area.
Terah is said to have been an idol-
maker and a pagan but the Indian evidence
shows him as a righteous king
(Dharmaputra). Just as E. Badian ignored
the Pali and Sanskrit texts in Alexander's
history, modern scholars on Judaism like R.
J. Zwi Werblowsky, E. S. Gruen and S.
Shaked disregard the evidence of the
Mahabharata as Judaism, in their view, was
only a product of Egypt and Palestine. On
the other hand, the eminent Sanskritist
Nicholas Sutton notes the clear traits of
monotheism in the religious doctrines of
the Mahabharata which offers insights into
the religion of Terah.
Although a full-fledged meditative
tradition is absent in Rabbinic Judaism and
Krishna's tenets of love appear rather
dissonant in it, a different picture emerges
from the Jewish mystical tradition and
Kabbala. It uses mandalas, such as the
ten sefirot, to help explain reality. It has
even been conjectured that the star of
David originated as a Kabbalistic mandala.
Rather like a Buddhist teacher Maimonides
counsels on seeking internal peace and
personal enlightenment in the Mishneh
Torah.
The central plank of Kabbala is the
startling doctrine of the deity. Sarvepalli
Radhakrishnan writes that many of its
features like the potency assigned to
letters, the use of charms and amulets,
the theory of emanation as opposed to
creation ex nihilio, the doc-trine of the
correspondence between the macrocosm
and microcosm, belief in rebirth and a
definite panth-eistic tendency, are alien to
the spirit of Rabbinic Judaism and akin to
that of the Indian Upanishads and
Tantrism. The roots of Tantrism go back to
the earliest phases of human civilization
and can be seen in 3rd millennium B.C.
Sumer. Werblowsky writes in The Concise
Encyclopedia of Living Faiths (p. 26),

Of course Kabbalah is not the same as Jewish

mysticism, of which it is merely one phase, though the
most important and far-reaching in its effects. In spite
of its name which means '[esoteric] tradition' and in
spite of the Kabbalist's sincere belief that they only
revived the old mystical teachings of Moses and and
earlier sages, there can be no reasonable doubt that
the system as such evolved in the thirteenth century in
Southern France and Spain.

This skepticism is shared by the majority

of Judaic scholars but is very short-
sighted. Werblowsky wonders in vain,

How must one explain the resurgence of myth in the

midst of what is usually considered to be the moral
enemy of mythical religion? By what channels or
mechanisms did mythical and Gnostic symbols
reassert themselves in medieval Jewry? What is the
relation of the old, Oriental Gnosticism and the almost
explosive reappearance of similar ideas ........ For our
present purpose we can ignore these questions .... .

The answer lies in the Eastern Judaism

of Terah. A. Edrei and D. Mendels have
written about the split between the eastern
and Western Diaspora but their Eastern
Jews are only from Babylonia and Russia.
Had they been aware of the crucial import
of the Indian tradition, writers like
Werblowsky and E. S. Gruen would not
have missed the link of the term Kabbala
with Kaivalya of the Jainas and Moksha of
the Hindus. Mani used a similar term
Kephalia.
Significantly, Seistan was the home of
Gotama and also Abraham and Zoroaster.
The common origin of Gotama and
Abraham suggests that Buddhism is linked
with Judaism. Jerusalem, in fact, is less
ancient than Kuh-e Khwaja near ancient
Shahr-e Shokhta which was larger than
contemporary Ur in Sumer. It was called
Uri-Salem in the Amarna letters which
echoes the name Shilavati or Shilahatta of
the birth-place of Joshaphat or Gotama. It
can be recalled that many of the early
Indian texts were translated by learned
Jewish scholars.
It is stunning to realize that this
humanistic Eastern Judaism was the cradle
of Buddhism. Due to the Nepalese forgery it
has been missed by all that Sudda-Yauda-
Saramana cited in numerous Persepolis
tablets was not only an eastern Yahdu but
also the father of Siddhartha who is Sedda-
Saramana of the tablets (Sedda-arta).
Sedda-Saramana is the Sethar of the Book
of Ezra. The conflict between Orthodox
Jews and Eastern religion is evident from
the history of Nebuchadrezzar and the
clashes between Tattenai (Gotama) and the
Palestinian Jews. If Josephus' data that
Alexander the Great had prostrated before
the high priest Jaddua is true, he may have
known about a very different brand of
Judaism.
Daniel Dana

Bindusara Amitrodates or Sedda Saramana and Sudda-Yauda-

Mithradates Saramana
Being the father of the great
Diodotus-I, Bindusara is also of significant As authentic administrative records of
historical importance. Although writers of the ancient world, the clay tablets of
the London school like R. Thapar abandon Persepolis are without any peer in world
Bindusara in the gutter of history, there history. These were written between 509
are saner alternatives. If one rejects the and 494 B.C. and provide precious data
notion of a Mauryan capital at Patna and about Darius' family and others in the
turns instead to Punjab, Afghanistan and administration and shed light on the
beyond, the real Bindusara can be social, religious and economic aspects of
identified within the framework of a Non- Iran, India and Iraq. Yet, owing to a
Jonesian Indology. The great B. M. Barua stilted perspective, crucial data contained
saw no link of Chandragupta with Patna. in them
Bindusara (301 BC – 268 BC) is said
to have been a valiant warrior who greatly
expanded his dominion. He has also been
remembered for his love for Hellenic
culture - a trait which comes as a great
help in the search for the flesh-and-blood
Bindusara. The crucial information comes
from a study of his name Amitrochates
which seems to be an error for Amitradates
or Mitradates.
 remains hidden. Mainly due to Jones'
blunder, though the presence of the
Indians was perceived, the fact that much
of modern Iran was 'India' was missed
and this led to severe flaws in the reading
of the tablets. The all-pervading Indo-
Iranian commonality implies that the Pali
Apart from Goura in the Laghman area of records, which were ignored, are perhaps
Afghanistan there was yet another Gaur in more important than the Sanskrit ones in
what is now Iran (Firuzabad) which was the interpretation of the tablets.
perhaps more important. Archaeologists One notable figure, apparently
have recently found an ancient missing in the tablets, is Zoroaster. This
observatory here (http://iran- can be due to the fact that he may have
daily.com/1384/2520/html/index.htm) which is very died before 509 B.C. or alternatively, he
similar to those at Jaipur and Delhi. may be there in the tablets addressed by
Scholars usually trace the history of Gaur a different name. Though there is great
from the 3rd century AD but it may date uncertainty about his date, Herzfeld wrote
from an earlier epoch. Nearby Istakhr can that he was an adversary of Gaumata.
be Ptolemy’s Astagaura. According to Olmstead he was killed by
Turning now to history it can be seen Danae - she who judges Graves
that Chandragupta was a very powerful
ruler and his dominion was larger than
that of Seleucus with whom he clashed,
but was he an absolute monarch? His
identity with Andragoras seems to suggest
that, at least in the early years, he
acknowledged nominal Seleucid Gotama and Suddodhana in the
suzerainty. This was probably true also in Persepolis tablets
the case of his son Bindusara.
This brings one closer to Bagadates,
the first indigenous Seleucid satrap who
was a contemporary of Bindusara. “Dat” is
usually rendered as ‘Given’ but a better
alternative may be “Law”. Ashoka drops a
valuable clue in one of his Edicts that his
ancestors were also Devanampiyas or
Devadats (Deva = God = Baga).
The Mithraic cross in the standard in the
right

side of the coin of Bagadates reveals that

Bagadates was also Mithradates. As Mithra
in Iran was a god of War, this can also be
read as Amitraghata. Mary Boyce writes
that Baga also meant Mitra. Bindusara is
linked to Gauda in some texts which may
be Gour in the Fars area of modern Iran
which was once a part of greater Indo-
Iran.
In the little polis of Amyzon in north-
west Caria a decree from the time of Philip
Arrhidaeus granted citizenship to a man
named Bagadates and his son Ariaramnes
and on the advice of the oracle at Delphi,
appointed the former as the priest of the
local goddess Artemis.

The Old Testament, a Sourcebook of Hammurabi As Seen From India

History
No sensible account of the ancient
The various problems in the middle-east can be written without
interpretation of Genesis-14 of the Old Hammurabi whose greatness can be
Testament are well known. The eminent gauged from many of his letters and other
biblical scholar S. H. Hooke termed this as relics that have been found by
the ‘erratic block’ in the Pentateuch. A archaeologists.
careful study of the Abraham Saga from a
Non-Jonesian perspective reveals not only
Hammu-rabi but also Rama (Kudur
Laghumar) as key figures of the era.

The location of Kapilavastu in Seistan

throws new light on the origin of
Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Judaism and
Christianity. E. Herzfeld wrote that the
three Magi went from Kuh-e Khwaja.
Abraham's homeland appears to be Ur
Kashdim near Shahr-i Shokhta in Seistan
which was a larger city than contemporary
Ur. This reveals new links between the
Indo-Iranians and Jews. The Yadus of the
early Indian texts appear to be related to
the early Yahdus. The study seems to
indicate that Shinar of the Old Testament
of the Bible was not Sumer but Seistan.
The land of Sineru mentioned in the
However, a judicious study shows that his
law-code was in existence before his reign
and he was just one among several able
contemporaries such as Siwe-Palar-
Khuppak, (whom he addresses as the
father), Rama (Ram-Sin) and Shamshi
Adad. He was not deified like Ram-Sin and
his treatment of his closest ally Zimri-Lim
does not reveal a regard for propriety or
Law. Some of his love letters also reveal a
full-blooded personality.
Buddhist texts may be Seistan. Sineru
may be the same as Shinar. The Buddhist
sources speak of the primeval king Maha
Sammata. This genealogical allusion
agrees with the Old Testament where the
Elamites are described as the offsprings of
'Elam, eldest son of Shem' and shows the
essential unity of the Indians, Elamites
and the Judaic people.
New Reflections on Genesis 14
Dawn of Religions in the Land of
Prophets
Parnaka, Uncle of Darius-I, was
Purnavarman alias Amitrodana,
Uncle of Gotama
In Jonesian Indology the Mauryan king
Purnavarman, cited by Hsuan Tsang, is
only a minor distraction, but there is
more. Śankarâchârya, the famous
exponent of the Advaita Vedanta school of
philosophy, is known worldwide for his
erudition, yet his categorical remark,
“There have been no world emperors
(sārvabhauma) after Purnavarman.”
seems unfathomable. The epithet 'world
emperor' appears perplexing and the
Âchârya excluded great emperors like
Asoka and Chandragupta although he
must have known about them. Did he
consult a lost history written by the
Kashmirian historian Kshemendra (similar
to the Rajatarangini) which is mentioned
by Taranatha?
For more information one has to turn
Although Hammu-rabi's archaeological
imprint is far superior to that of others C.
J. Gadd writes that the materials for his
history 'are scanty in the extreme'. His
Palace remains unknown. The Bible places
him at Babil in Shinar which is usually
thought to be Babylon in Iraq but it may
be in Seistan. The Ramayana links him to
Lanka which may be near Bandar-e-
Lengeh.
Hammu-ravi was The Ravana of
Valmiki
Hundred Names of Chandragupta
Maurya
That no relic of the great
Chandragupta is known from Patna or
anywhere else in the world shows the
bankruptcy of Jonesian Indology. This has,
in fact, turned the great Mauryan into a
mythical figure. D. K. Chakrabarti of
Cambridge University refers to many 2nd
century B.C. texts from Mathura but is
silent on the absence of any inscription of
Chandragupta from Patna or elsewhere. R.
Thapar, another expert on the Mauryas,
also evades the issue. The scenario is so
bleak that F. R. Allchin drops
Chandragupta from his recent book on the
archaeology of South Asia. Allchin
proposes fresh excavations at Patna but
judging from the experience of nearly a
century, this is likely to be an exercise in
futility. In fact barring Ashoka, no relic of
any Maurya or Nanda king is known.
However, a careful analysis reveals
that the two Aramaic inscriptions found at
to the sixth century archives from
Persepolis. It is well known that Darius-I
had conquered part of 'India' but who was
the Satrap in-charge of India? A likely
candidate was Parnaka or Pharnaka, the
treasurer and the highest officer in
Darius-I's government who was also the
king's uncle. Many of the Persepolis
tablets signed by him show that he was a
resident of Arachosia which was called
White India. As his name resembles
Purnavarman it appears nearly certain
that he was the Satrap of India.
However, being the Satrap of India
hardly merits the title 'world-emperor' but
a closer study shows that Parnaka was
also the Satrap of the Pontic region. This
There is great confusion in the literature
regarding one Data-Mithra who was also a
treasurer at Persepolis. Data-Mithra or
Mithradata may be just another name of
Parnaka or Purnavarman.
M. Dandamayev writes that
Sphendadates was a nickname of
Gaumata (quoted by Ctesias) but is totally
unaware of the interwoven Achaemenid
family tree. The learned Al-beruni wrote
that Isfendiyad, son of Gushtasp, drove
away the Buddhists from Iran. Al-beruni's
data shows that Isfendiyad or
Sphendadata was also a name of Darius-
I.
There is another link between the
Achaemenids and the Buddhists - Rama.
Imagining the Buddhists to be from Nepal
and Rama from Ayodhya in U. P., the
eminent linguist Sir Harold Bailey
discounted the Buddhist claim that Rama
was one of their own. A careful study,
however, shows this suspicion to be
misplaced. Incidentally, Darius-I also
claimed to be a descendant of Arya Ram-
ana, probably a descendant of Rama
(Ram-Sin), who was said to be an
'Elamite'. This seems to imply that the
Ikshaku dynasty was linked to the Uksha-
man (Achaemenid) dynasty. Okkaka, an
early ancestor of the Buddhists was
clearly a Uksha-king. Thus Gotama
appears to be linked to the Achaemenids.
As the former were related to the Nandas,
the Mauryas also appears to be related to
the Achemenians. The Arsacid claim of
descent from the Achaemenians is
discounted by R.N. Frye but this is an
oversight. At this stage it is profitable to
Laghman, Afghanistan, which are
attributed to Ashoka, actually belong to
Chandragupta. The inscriptions, which
have been studied by Scholars like H.
Humbach, A. Dupont-Sommer and B.N.
Mukherjee, mention Priyadarshi and, as
such, have been attributed to Ashoka but
this may be unwarranted. On shallow
linguistic grounds, Harry Falk makes the
novel suggestion that the texts belong
neither to Ashoka nor Chandragupta. As
H. C. Raychaudhuri stressed, the epithet
Priyadarshi was used both by Asoka and
Chandragupta. D.C. Sircar also did not
agree that the inscriptions belong to
Asoka. The injunction against the killing of
creatures and fishes in the inscription has
been thought to be a characteristic of
Ashoka but this is unjustified.
Chandragupta is also said to have
embraced Jainism in his later years.
The clinching evidence is that Vakshu
(Tarn, GBI, p.101 ) in the inscriptions is
clearly Oxyartes who was a contemporary
of Chandragupta, not Ashoka.
That no coins of Chandragupta is
known does not concern writers like
Chakrabarti or Thapar. A judicious study
shows that Andragoras was
Chandragupta. The coins of Andragoras
have been dated to the fourth-century BC
by many scholars, and both Plutarch and
Appian use a similar name, Androcottus,
for Chandragupta. Tarn gave the crucial
information that the Sun's quadriga of
Andragoras' coins was also used by
Vakshu or Oxyartes. The Charioteer of the
Sun God is Aruna in Sanskrit and thus the
coin can be seen to belong to Arunadas or
Orontes, another name of Andragoras.
If it is recognized that Bindusara's
name Amitraghata is an error for
Amitradata, Mauryan history takes a very
dramatic turn. It can be inferred that
(A)Mitradata was also a name of his father
Chandragupta who was a world figure like
Alexander the Great with whom his name
turn to a very learned authority.
Apart from the common name
Sphendadata, Gotama's relationship
Darius can also be guessed from the fact
that Mithradata may may have been the
same as Amitrodana, Gotama's uncle.
Comments from leading scholars
is often associated. Like Alexander the
Great, Chandragupta could also have
proclaimed, `Putroham Prthivyah' - 'I am
a son of the earth'.
Mithridates–II who, according to
Diodorus, rose to the throne of Pontus in
337 B.C. (Diod. xvi. 90.) appears to be
Chandragupta. Diodorus assigns him a
reign of thirty-five years(337-302 B.C.),
but it appears certain that he did not hold
uninterrupted possession of the
sovereignty during that period. The
circumstances that led to his absence
from Pontus are not known; indeed no
farther notice of
him is available from the date of his
accession in 337 B.C. until some time
after the death of Alexander (~322 B.C.),
when he is found attending the court and
camp of Antigonus. The date is important
as it is the date of accession of
Chandragupta.
Crucial information comes from a
very ancient Indian source, the Sanskrit
drama Mudrarakshasa. Curiously in many
manuscripts of the drama, Chandragupta
is absent but his role is taken up by
Rantivarma which suggests that it was
another name of the former. As `varma',
like `bates', is a title, Rantivarma can be
seen to be the same as Orontobates.
Diodorus (xix 46, 47) writes that
Orontobates was appointed the satrap of
Media by Antigonus. He soon after
successfully repulsed an attack by some
partisans of Eumenes and Peithon. Arrian
writes that Orontobates was present in
the army of Darius-III in the battle of
Gaugamela. From Diodorus we learn that
Mithridates-III, son of Mithridates-II
succeeded to the throne in 302 B.C. This
is Bindusara Amitrodata. Diodorus writes
that he added largely to the dominions
inherited from his father.
* "Dr. Pal departs largely from the
trodden path (i.e. the Jonesian Indology)
yet presents a cogent, well-documented
 thesis."

Prof. Sukumari Bhattacharji, noted

Indologist and author of "The Indian
Theogony."

* "There is no question of disagreeing

"Your personal knowledge of the terrain
makes your views especially valuable and
I agree that Patna is too far east." (to be
a Palibothra)
with you in any matter"
Mr. I. Mahadevan, noted writer on the
Indus script.

Prof. N. G. L. Hammond, editor of The

Cambridge Ancient History and discoverer of
Vergina.

* "I am both amazed and impressed by

your paper 'An Altar of Alexander Now
Standing near Delhi'. It is very * "It is good to know that scholars are
convincing (though I would like to see making use of them. Too often one feels
counter arguments) and has changed my as if one is working in a vacuum. Good
view of Alexander in India, of Ashoka, luck on your research".
and the Euthydemid dynasty".
Prof. Mark Garrison, Trinity University,
Prof. Thomas McEvilley, Rice an eminent authority on Persepolis Tablets
University, author of
"The Shape of Ancient
Thought".

* "I finally got around to reading more of * "He has performed an incomparable
Dr. R. Pal's musings. They are, alas,
service in rectifying the western bias
quite flakey. Reading his paean to
that has always been preponderant in
Alexander's vision of world peace (yes,
studies of Alexander. No one now should
Alexander the Great - Aleksander
look at Alexander without also going to
Makedonskiy as he is known in modern
Pal and delving further into the Sanskrit
Uzbekistan) gave me a severe case of
sources and their allusions to
giggles. Don't waste bandwidth on him."
Alexander.".
Dr. Trudy Kawami, Arthur M.
Dr. Jan-Mathieu Carbon, Corpus
Sackler Foundation,
Christi College,
a commentator on the art of Kuh-e
Oxford, in Scholia Reviews
Khwaja.

* "I read your article with great
interest. That is the rich nature of
Alexander as a scholarly topic; there is
always more to consider!"
* "I, personally, have been waiting
impatiently to see what you have to say
concerning Jesus Christ and Alexander."
Prof. John Scarborough, University of
 Dr. Janet Grossman, The J. Paul Wisconsin
Getty Museum

* "Your piece in the Sunday Statesman

* "Your theses about Jonesian Indology
certainly look stimulating and
challenging".
Prof. Ian Mabbett, Monash University.
on Ram is most interesting."
Prof. T. C. Young Jr. Royal Ontario
Museum, Toronto, a noted expert on the
history and archaeology of Iran

* "Thank you for your letter and the
enclosure which I have read. I regret to
say that I cannot give you an opinion on
its contents as I am neither a specialist
in linguistics nor in the ancient history of
west Asia. I am sorry therefore that I
cannot be of help to you".
Prof. Romila Thapar, Jawaharlal
Nehru University.
* "Although I do not agree with your
interpretations, I found them interesting
reading. One of the few areas in which
India is supposed to have made
important contributions is religion, and
now you are taking that glory away as
well".
Dr. Pratapaditya Pal, noted Art
commentator.

Related Sites
* Bryn Mawr Classical Review
* Dr. Führer's Astonishing Fraud in
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* 1stmuse * Knowledge * Trirat's blog * History
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* L'Encyclopedie de L'Agora * Amazon
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*Cais-Soas *Utrecht University*
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Dr. Ranajit Pal

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