LIBERATING INDIAN MIND -47
(we resume the old theme which we left due to pressing questions regarding our understanding of Indian Muslims)

Visitors from the East

New Testament begins with the circumstances leading to the birth of Christ. He is not the son of his father but of the God. Divine lineage to establish innate superiority of extraordinary figures has been a recurring theme in Indian literature right from the time of the Rigveda. Even tribal lores show this propensity. Agarias are the sons of Fire god. Angira is son of fire, Vasishtha and Agastya are sons of twine gods Mitra and Varuna, Manu is the son of Vivaswan, the sons of Dasharath including Ram are born out of a Yajna, the sons of Pandu with extraordinary merit and might are not from the biological father but from the Sun, Yama (Dharmaraj), Indra, Wind god, Ashvins etc. This appears to have cast its impact on Greek mythological figures as well as the birth of Christ himself:

“How the birth of Jesus Christ took place.

“His mother Mary was engaged to Joseph, but before they were married, she found out that he was going to have a baby by the Holy Spirit. Joseph was a man who always did what was right but he did not want to disgrace Mary publicly, so he made plans to break the engagement privately. While he was thinking about this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him In a dream and said, ‘Joseph descendant of David, do not be afraid to take Mary to be your wife for it is by the Holy Spirit that she was conceived. She will have a son and you will name him Jesus – because he will save the people from their sins.”

The ugly side of of this story is that in Christianity physical relationship was deemed to be a sin and it was this sin from which the Christ was spared. That is why I consider this birth to be concocted under the influence of a different culture which placed some merit with celibacy and imagined extraordinary birth of personalities depicted super mundane. Both these elements belong to Indian tradition. The one having a long history and the other given Importance in ascetic tradition, appropriated by Buddhism and Jainism as well.

If our guess is correct, Asia Minor should have been the melting pot of Indian thoughts and western ethos, each trying to overcome the other and in the process undergoing formal modifications without losing the essence. The conflict was not only between oriental and occidental, but also between the new strains and the old relics of the east, covering a long period of more than three thousand years, from 2000 BCE onward. Faint traces of those Impacts could be seen running down even to the present among the Kurds who secretly retained some of the features going back to the Vedic times. Recently such tribes had to suffer persecution at the hands of the Turks and others claiming over lordship of the entire Turkistan. It must not be missed that Kurdis, in that semitic surrounding, is an Indo-Aryan speech deformed beyond recognition. We must have some idea of who the Kurds are and how they have suffered, through some objective source:
“The Kurdish people are a heterogeneous ethnic group whose ethnic background comes from many regions including Iraqi Kurdistan, and parts of Iran, Turkey, and Syria. The Kurdish ethnic group includes many ancient ethnicities that have been absorbed into modern cultures including Iranian, Azerbaijani, Turkic and Arabic cultures. In this sense, the Kurdish culture shares commonalities with many other regional cultures, and celebrates a unique level of cultural equality and tolerance.
“In addition to political repression, the Kurds have also experienced cultural repression. In Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, there were extensive campaigns at forced assimilation. Kurds were forbidden to speak Kurdish in public, they had to change their names to local ethnic names if they wanted a job or to enroll their children in school. Their books, music and clothing were considered contraband and they had to hide them in their homes. If authorities searched their homes and found anything Kurdish, they could be imprisoned, and many were. In recent years, both Iran and Turkey have relaxed their systemic cultural repression, while Iraqi Kurds have achieved autonomy.
“language belongs to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family, and was developed between 4,000 and 2,000 years ago.]
“Kurdish dialects are broken into three main groups: Northern Kurdish, Central Kurdish and Southern Kurdish.
Kurmanji: Northern Kurdish
“Northern Kurdish dialects, the most common of which is called Kurmanji, are spoken all over Kurdistan of Turkey, Syria, and in the Soviet Union, as well as in the extreme northern strips of Iranian and Iraqi Kurdistan (in Iraq it is known as “Behdini”). Kurmanji is spoken by slightly less than 3/4 of all Kurds (estimated at more than 15 million people), an estimated 65% of Kurds.[3] Kurmanji spoken in Turkey is written with the Latin alphabet, while Kurmanji spoken in the former Soviet Union is written with the Cyrillic alphabet.
“Speaking Kurmanji Kurdish in public and private was banned in Turkey from the 1920’s until 1991. It was literally illegal to speak the word “Kurd.” Therefore, there are less resources for learning Kurmanji Kurdish (which is more popular in Turkey) than the other Kurdish languages.
“Sorani: Central Kurdish Language
“The Central Kurdish dialect, called Sorani, is spoken by Kurds in parts of Iraq and Iran. Sorani is written with the Arabic script, and borrows the spelling of many words from Arabic, although the pronunciation differs.
“Sorani, while spoken by less than 1/4 of all Kurds, is the dialect with the most well-developed literary tradition in modern times, since an educational system in Sorani Kurdish was allowed to develop, in Iraq for a time, based on the dialect of Sulaymaniyah. Until recently, the use of Kurmanji was officially banned in all but the Soviet Union.” (The Kurdish Project)

We may guess how deep and pervasive was the impact that suffered countless blows and yet tried to retain its intrinsic merits. The mythic accounts are in some situations more reliable if explained properly. Western biases prompted historians to ignore astronomical/astrological achievements of India. But this biblical episode related to birth of Christ tells us that even west Asian sources admitted astronomical advancement of India. It is for us to probe further whether the visitors could be Buddhist missionaries who thronged that area and created a spiritual climate under which Semitic religion had to be revised resulting into emergence of a modified religion, i.e. Christianity, or not?