I have posted articles on the close affinity between Hinduism and Greek Religion.
Krishna and Balarama have been worshiped and there is evidence to state that Hercules was Balarama, elder brother of Krishna.
There is a report by Aristoxenus, a disciple of Aristotle.
English: Bust of Socrates in the Vatican Museum (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
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this Indian met Socrates in Athens and asked him what he studying. Socrates replied that he was studying human life. The Indian at this point laughed and asked him how could he study human life without studying the divine. The quote is as follows
‘Now Aristoxenus the Musician says that this argument comes from the Indians: for a certain man of that nation fell in with Socrates at Athens, and presently asked him, what he was doing in philosophy: and when he said, that he was studying human life, the Indian laughed at him, and said that no one could comprehend things human, if he were ignorant of things divine [Eusebius of Caesarea: Praeparatio Evangelica (Preparation for the Gospel). Tr. E.H. Gifford (1903) — Book 11]
It is not sure if Socrates changed his mind, but his student Plato was influenced. Plato who previously argued that human and divine affairs were the same, started distinguishing between the two. According to Plato there was one kind of study concerning nature, another concerning humans and a third concerning dialectic.
‘But he maintained that we could not take a clear view of human affairs, unless the divine were previously discerned: for just as physicians, when treating any parts of the body, attend first to the state of the whole, so the man who is to take a clear view of things here on earth must first know the nature of the universe; and man, he said, was a part of the world; and good was of two kinds, our own good and that of the whole, and the good of the whole was the more important, because the other was for its sake.[Eusebius of Caesarea: Praeparatio Evangelica (Preparation for the Gospel). Tr. E.H. Gifford (1903) — Book 11]
Citation.
Mcevilley, Thomas C. The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies. 1st ed. Allworth Press, 2001.
Proof is piling up on the spread of Sanatana Dharma spread throughout the world.
I am of the view that a group of people from the South of India left because of a Tsunami.
One,led by Satyavrat Manu , ancestor of Manu, left for Ayodhya to founded the Ikshvaku Dynasty.
The other led by Shiva and Ganesha left through the middle east before settling down in the Arctic, where the Rig Veda was composed.
Then a part of the group left and came back to settle down in the Sarasvati valley through the Khyber Pass.
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Ancient Inscriptions reveal that the Babylonians celebrated an annual Rathayatra Cart Festival over 2,500 years ago. In fact this festival is regarded as one of the earliest recorded such celebrations known to history.
During this 11 day festival “the statues were cleaned and received new dresses. On the next day, the festival reached its climax when all statues were brought out from their rooms and shown to the Babylonian populace. The gods started a tour through the city to the river. Here, they boarded a small fleet, that brought them to the house of the New year. The king himself guided the Supreme God Marduk, (who rests upon a winged serpent Garuda-Ananta). On the last part of the route, the ships were placed on chariots, so that the gods were driven to the house of the New year. This festival was called Akitu by the ancient Babylonians and continued for centuries not only in Babylon but in Palmyra and the temple of Baal was inaugurated on the same date as Akitu. At the beginning of the third century AD , it was still celebRated in Emessa in Syria, to honor the god Elagabal; the Roman emperor Heliogabalus (218-222) even introduced the festival in Italy.”
Research shows that today a very similar festival is celebrated annually in Jagannath Puri, Odisha in Eastern India. It is the annual Jagannath Rathayatra Festival in which hundreds of thousands of people gather to celebrate and honor Lord Jagannath, Subhadra and Baladeva.
This evidence is yet another reminder that it is Hindu India’s living ancient culture and traditions that allow us an accurate window into the past. To Know Vedic India is to Know the Ancient World in all its mystery and wonder.
It is also interesting to note that Krishna’s city of Dwaraka and Babylon both have the same meaning. Dwarka means “gateway to the Supreme” or “city of gates,” and Babylon was called Babilli in early 2nd millennium BC, meaning “Gate of God” or “Gateway of the God.”
Marduk.
Marduk (Sumerian spelling in Akkadian: AMAR.UTU 𒀫𒌓 “solar calf”; perhaps from MERI.DUG; Biblical Hebrew מְרֹדַךְMerodach; GreekΜαρδοχαῖος,[1]Mardochaios) was the Babylonian name of a late-generation god from ancient Mesopotamia and patron deity of the city of Babylon, who, when Babylon became the political center of the Euphrates valley in the time of Hammurabi (18th century BCE), started to slowly rise to the position of the head of the Babylonian pantheon, a position he fully acquired by the second half of the second millennium BCE. In the city of Babylon, he resided in the temple Esagila.
According to The Encyclopedia of Religion, the name Marduk was probably pronounced Marutuk. The etymology of the nameMarduk is conjectured as derived from amar-Utu (“bull calf of the sun god Utu”). The origin of Marduk’s name may reflect an earlier genealogy, or have had cultural ties to the ancient city of Sippar (whose god was Utu, the sun god), dating back to the third millennium BCE.
Lord Subrahmanya,called as Murugan in Tamil Nadu is mentioned in the Vedas as Skanda.
Lord Subrahmanya
Skanda worship was popular during the Vedic Times and Murugan in Tamil.
Murugan’s oldest Temple dating to 300 BC has been found in Tamil Nadu and Murugan worship is spread throughout the world including Malaysia.
Now there is evidence that Murugan was worshipped in Iraq, then called Mesopotamia.
There is tribe Yezdis, which scholars believe to have descended from the Tribe of Murugan.
The God is worshipped in the form of a Peacock, which is the vehicle of Lord Muruga.
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The Yezidis are a very ancient people from Iraq with their calender being 6764 yrs old. About 5000 years ago Yezidis migrated from India to Afganistan, Iran, Iraq and middle east. At that time
they were called children of Melek Taus same as Murugan, a God found in south of India. The religion of Yezidis share much in common with Vedic Hindus. Yezidis believe in reincarnation. Peacock finds a special place, which is worshiped as Melek taus/Murugan. No peacock is found in Iraq or the middle east but is native to India. The language in which the Yezidi holy books are written is Avesta which is thought to be same language of Sanskrit. Lord Rama is also one of the Yezidi Gods. The temple tops of the Yezidis look much like the Hindu temples. The serpent is the totem of Melek Taus/Murugan and symbolizes the Kundalini released.”
Since their founding many thousands of years ago in India, these people have always been known as the Yezidis or Yazidis. According to Eszter Spat in The Yezidis, the name is derived from ez Xwede dam, meaning “I was created by God.” Some Yezidis maintain that it translates as “Followers of the true path.” The term Yezidi or Yazidi is also very close to the Persion/Zoroastrian word Yazdan, meaning “God“, and Yazata, meaning “divine” or “angelic being“.
For this reason scholars have theorized a Persian origin for the Yezidis. Other scholars have associated the name Yazidi with Yazid bin Muawiyah, a Moslem Caliph ofthe early Umayyad Dynasty. According to the current Yezidi belief, however, the Caliph Yazid was a Moslem ruler who eventually became disenchanted with his religion and converted to Yezidism.
Even with all of their ostensible connections to other faiths, the Yezidis have for hundreds of years been under constant attack from Moslems who promulgate the idea that the Yezidi’s principle diety, Tawsy Melek, the “Peacock Angel”, is Satan. Moslems also contend that the Yezidis are not “People of the Book”, i.e., that they don’t have a sacred revealed scripture like the Holy Bible or the Koran at the center of their religion, so they claim justification in their massacre of them.
Or even worse, some Moslems have pronounced the Yezidis as heretics who were once orthodox Moslems – an allegation that puts them in the lowest rung of humanity. Over the course of 700 years, nearly 23 million Yezidi people have been murdered, thus bringing their civilization to the brink of extinction.
The Peacock God Tawsi Melek.
Tawsi Melek, the “Peacock Angel” and “Peacock King,” is the most import deity of the Yezidis. But he is not just the possession of the Yezidis, he belongs to the entire world. The Yezidis believe that they possess the oldest religion on Earth, the primeval faith that features Tawsi Melek, and that all other traditions are related to them through the Peacock Angel. They contend that Tawsi Melek is the true creator and ruler of the universe, and therefore a part of all religious traditions. He does not, however, always manifest within these diverse traditions as a peacock. Tawsi Melek has taken on many other forms throughout time.
The Yezidis do not believe that the Peacock Angel is the Supreme God. The Supreme God created him as an emanation at the beginning of time. He was brought into manifestation in order to give the invisible, transcendental Supreme God a vehicle with which to create and administer the universe. Tawsi Melek is thus a tangible, denser form of the infinite Supreme God. In order to assist Tawsi Melek in this important role, the Supreme Creator also created six other Great Angels, who were, like the Peacock Angel, emanations of the Supreme God and not separate from him. When recounting the creation of all Seven Great Angels, the Yezidis often summarize the emanation process as follows:
Tawsi Melek was the first to emerge from the Light of God in the form of a seven-rayed rainbow, which is a form he still today continues to manifest within to them (usually as a rainbow around the Sun). But the Yezidis also claim that Tawsi Melek and the six Great Angels are collectively the seven colors of the rainbow. Therefore, the six Great Angels were originally part of Tawsi Melek, the primal rainbow emanation, who bifurcated to become the rainbow’s seven colors, which are collectively the Seven Great Angels. Of the seven colors produced from the primal rainbow, Tawsi Melek became associated with the color blue, because this is the color of the sky and the heavens, which is the source of all colors.
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