Source: News Report
BANGALORE, INDIA, December 2, 2002: The discovery of long-forgotten underwater settlements off the coast of Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu, by American marine archaeologists has pushed the antiquity of civilization in South India back by a few millennia and showed a link with Vedic civilization. This finding was voiced here on Monday by the noted American scholar in the Vedas and Hinduism, Dr. David Frawley. He was speaking along with Navarathna Rajaram, engineer and historian, who deciphered the Harappan seals. Dr. Frawley said fishermen along the Mahabalipuram coast had been mentioning the existence of temples and other structures beneath the Bay of Bengal and they had now been corroborated by underwater videography. He stressed the southern links of the civilization of ancient India, and said that the Vedic civilization was older than those of Mesopotamia and other regions held to be the most ancient by Western scholars by at least 4,000 years. Dr. Frawley argued that the Vedic civilization had maritime connections like most other civilizations. Rejecting the Aryan-Dravidian divide theory still adhered to by a section of historians, he quoted from the Rig Veda to point out that its most prominent sage, Vasistha, was the younger brother of Agasthya, the most prominent sage of South India. The Aryans and the Dravidians were the same people, Frawley asserts. The linguistic diversity of India was not surprising as it was a country of continental proportions. In a joint statement, the two scholars said that though the people of India were living at a time of exciting discoveries, they were concerned that there appeared to be some political pressure to deny students the benefit of those findings. An example was the discovery of the Vedic river, Saraswathi, which was one of the major triumphs of 20th century archaeology. It was an exciting story of satellite photography and archaeology working together to shed light on the Vedic tradition. “Our children should take pride in such discoveries. Yet we are told that vested interests in some States are directing teachers and textbook writers not to mention the Saraswati river.” It was a throwback to the 16th century when Galileo was told by the Church not to teach the solar system. Such anti-intellectual attitudes should have no place in education, they said.