THE SPREAD OF Sanatana Dharma abroad throughout the centuries reveals an even more brilliant story. Sadly, in the present time, even the most traditional Acharyas and Maṭhādhipatis seem to have forgotten the historical truth that Hindus were accomplished mariners and ran multimillion dollar maritime empires. They were globe-trotters who planted the flag of the cultural triumph of Sanatana Dharma wherever they went. In his seminal scholarly volumes on the “Hindu Colonies of the Far East,” R.C. Majumdar pens these inspiring lines:
"The Indian colonies in the Far East must ever remain as the high-water mark of maritime and colonial enterprise of the ancient Indians…the political conquest of Farther India and the adjacent islands was rapidly followed by a complete cultural conquest. The local people readily assimilated the new civilisation and adopted the religion, art, social manners and customs, alphabet, literature, laws and administrative systems of the conquerors…
"Indian civilisation made a thorough conquest of these lands and a new India was established in that far-off region. The Indian colonists even tried to complete the transformation by importing celebrated place-names of their motherland into their new home, and thus we find new towns and countries called Ayodhya, Kaushambi, Srikshetra, Dvaravati, Mathura, Champa, Kalinga, Kamboja and Gandhara springing up hundreds of miles away from their namesakes…
"So long as the Hindu dynasties were in power the civilisation flourished…But while all these serve as gratifying reminiscences of a glorious past, there is no longer any living connection between India and her forgotten colonial empire. Strange as it may seem, the descendants of men who founded that empire abandoned sea-voyage as something unholy and thus an impassable barrier was created between the Hindus and their brethren of the Far East." (Emphasis added)
Likewise, Dr. Moti Chandra’s pioneering work on trade and trade routes in ancient India is an exhaustive treatise on the commerical prowess of Sanatanis that sustained continuously for more than two millennia. This prowess carried Hindu culture to lands as faraway as Russia, Turkey, Greece and Rome. Acharya Vasudeva Sharan Agarwala, in his learned foreword to the work provides an evocative picture of this prolonged era of Hindu dominance on the global stage.
"In the travellers besides the merchant community were included monks, pilgrims, pedlars, horse traders, acrobats and actors, students and tourists…
"[A] big caravan was crowded with elephants, horses and chariots… and the number of oxen, donkeys, camels and men on foot was so overwhelming that the caravan appeared as the moving ocean of men…
"Indian travellers by land and sea routes, were also the carriers of Indian story literature. Seamen often related miraculous stories of Yakshas, Nagas, demons and spirits and aquatic animals connected with the seas. These stories diverted the people during their travels; such stories were adopted by literature as motifs as well…
"India’s trade and commerce with the Roman empire had reached its zenith, but in this sea-borne trade, the caravan seems to have played a great part." (Emphasis added)
Then we have the significant discovery of an engraving of the picture of Bharata-Mata on a silver dish found in Lampsacos, Turkey. This artifact dates back to the 2nd century CE.
As recently as 1745, the Jvalaji temple was built by the Hindu community residing in Baku, Azerbaijan. It was also highly venerated by the Sikhs. By the end of the 19th century, Zoroastrians regarded Baku as a Tirtha-Kshetra for a straightforward reason: as the name suggests, the Jvalaji deity is Agni. The temple complex houses seventeen inscriptions of which fourteen are in Sanskrit (both Nagari and Devanagari), two in Gurumukhi and one in Persian.
The very first inscription is an invocation of Ganesha, which begins with “śrī gaṇeśāya namaḥ.” It then goes on to describe the glory of the Jvalaji deity, complete with the description of its greatness and miraculous powers. Another inscription contains a rather elaborate Stuti in honour of Shiva.
Perhaps the greatest significance of the Jvala ji temple in Baku is its deep connection with the renowned Shakti-Pitha, the Jwalamukhi temple in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh. Devotees of Jvala ji believe that the Kangra deity is known as the Chhota (smaller) Jvala ji while the one in Baku is known as the Bada (greater) Jvala ji.
Ever since the Jvala ji temple became popular with the Zoroastrians, it was renamed as the Ateshgah of Baku, which literally means, “home of fire.” The Persian compound word Ateshgah is a loan word derived from Sanskrit. Etymologically, Atesh is related to the Sanskrit term, Atharvan while Gah is a corruption of Gruha.
One of the definitive contemporary histories of the Jvala ji temple is written by the Zoroastrian priest Jivanji Jamshedji Modi who travelled extensively in Iran, Azerbaijan, Baku and Russia in 1925. His experiences recorded in My Travels Outside Bombay: Iran, Azerbaijan, Baku, is an enduring work of socio-cultural history. The following longish excerpt from that book is self-explanatory:
“Not just me but any Parsee who is a little familiar with our Hindu brethren's religion, their temples and their customs, after examining this [temple] with its inscriptions, architecture, etc., would conclude that this is not a Parsee Atash Kadeh but is a Hindu Temple whose Brahmins (priests) used to worship fire (Sanskrit: Agni)...This temple was erected to satisfy their religious needs…
“After a few years, the original trade routes and customs changed and the visits of the Hindu traders diminished. And from the original group of the Brahmins, some passed away and a few that were left went back to their original home land. At this place, they showed me a long room and informed me that some 40 years ago, the Russian Czar, Alexander III, visited this place with a desire to witness the Hindu Brahmin Fire ritual. So the local officials gathered a few Brahmins still living here and they performed the fire ritual in this room in front of the Czar.
“I spent two hours inspecting this place. I asked for a tall ladder and with trepidation I climbed to the top of the building and examined the foundation stone which was inscribed in the Nagrik [or Nagari] script ... I also examined the place where they used to cremate bodies of the dead Hindus. And from all these examinations, in addition to what I believed from my various research before visiting this place, I became convinced that this place has nothing to do with Parsees. It is not a Parsee Atash Kadeh but a Hindu Temple… the installation date is mentioned as the Hindu Vikramaajeet calendar year 1866 (equivalent to 1810 A. D.)” (Emphasis added)
Jivanji’s account apart, it is noteworthy that P.V. Kane’s all-seeing eye and perceptive mind found it important enough to include a slice of history of sacred Hindu practices perfomed in the Jvala ji temple in his History of Dharmasastra. He specifically mentions the following verse related to the virtue gained by performing certain Dharmic acts found in one of the inscriptions.
devayajñe vrate tīrthe satpātrabrahmabhojane।
pitṛśrāddhe jaṭīhaste dhana vrajati dharmyatām ||
In Yajnas, vows, pilgrimages, the feeding of Brahmanas at sacred places, giving sacred offerings to ancestors, in the hands of a mendicant, wealth finds its righteousness.
Verses of this sort are found abundantly in hundreds of inscriptions and Dharmasastra texts in Bharata Bhumi. The fact that it was found in Azerbaijan reaffirms the same truth that R.C. Majumdar mentions about how Hindus created a new India wherever they went.
And so we have a continuous timeline of the Hindu cultural conquest from the ancient maritime era up to 18th century Baku — a period when this cultural conquest was a thing of the past.
To be continued
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