Friday, December 9, 2022

Pre-historic migration from Northern to Southern hemisphere decoded from the Mahābhārata.

 Mahābhārata contains several small stories or events of the past, some of them appearing strange to comprehend. A common thread through such weird stories pertains to bizarre characters, odd behaviour of saintly people and unnatural or abnormal relationship issues that continue to be remembered till date or picked out selectively from the texts to debase the texts and the characters in those events. We tend to interpret them in our own way, with our own perceptions, while being unaware of the original line of thought supposed to have been delivered through those events.

One such story contains directives on how to interpret seemingly odd descriptions and the characters of the story, which offer remarkable understanding of the story when applied. Amazingly, the decoding of that story on such lines reveal that it was actually talking about migration of people from North to South of the equator in a distant past when the North was reeling under severe shortage of food due to climate change. The fundamental clue on understanding the story rests with the etymology of the proper nouns used in the story – of the Sanskrit names – and connecting them with the characterization of the people and the events in the story.

This story appears in Chapter 94 and Chapter 95 of Book 13 of the Mahābhārata. The translation in English can be read HERE. The central characters are the seven Rishi-s (sages) who govern mankind from their celestial abode in the seven stars of Ursa Major (Sapta rishi Mandala). As per Hindu Thought the rishi-s keep changing in each era following a change in mankind and their way of life. Figure 1 shows the location of the seven rishi-s of the current era. They are Marici, Vasishtha, Angirasa, Atri, Pulastya, Pulaha and Kratu.

Additionally, the name Arundhati also appears. She is the wife of Vasishtha who accompanies him from behind. The stars Alcor and Mizar represent Arundhati and Vasishtha as they were never seen away from each other; more importantly Alcor was never seen overtaking Mizar, in the same way that Arundhati was never known to have gone in front of her husband Vasishtha but towed behind him. For this reason, invoking Arundhati as a symbol of an ideal wife who doesn’t cross the path of her husband is part and parcel of Vedic marriages even today.  

Fig 1: The seven sages of the Saptarishi Mandala for the current period

Interestingly, the same names of the seven sages do not appear in the story under discussion thereby revealing that it was about a previous era when different set of rishi-s governed mankind. Their names as they appear in the story are Atri, Vasishtha, Kashyapa, Bharadwaja, Gautama, Vishwamitra and Jamadagni.

Atri and Vasishtha have remained in the group of that time. Additionally, Arundhati’s name also appears in the story as a devout wife following Vasishtha, thereby indicating the fixed alignment between Alcor and Mizar even in those times.

The story talks about the shift of the seven sages due to famine conditions. The story happened at a time of severe drought when the seven rishi-s, the chaste wife Arundhati, their maid servant, Ganda and her husband Paśusakha were struggling to get food. The first horrendous information of the story appears here where it is said that they decided to cook the dead prince, the son of Śibi’s son whom they received in a sacrifice, to satiate their hunger!

As they began cooking the dead body in a vessel, the dead person’s grandfather, Śibi (Vrishadarbha’a son) appeared there and offered to remove their hunger by giving them cattle. The sages refused to accept the kine and left the place without eating the dead one they were cooking. Seeing them leave, the king got angry and invoked a demoness, he named as Yātudāni, to follow the sages and slay them. But he sounds a caveat that Yātudāni must first ask for their names  and comprehend the meaning of their names; only after understanding the etymology of their names, can she slay them. This odd stipulation comes up as a valuable clue to  decipher the story.

Śibi is a plant growing in Northern latitudes

The story starts with Śibi whose son’s son was cooked by the sages for eating. Śibi is the Sanskrit term for the plant Typha angustifolia,  which grows abundantly in high Northern latitudes such as Siberia and Scandinavia.

Fig 2: Typha augustifolia (Śibi)

It grows where there is water. The entire plant is edible. But a time came when this plant could no longer grow due to climatic changes. The narration about sages preparing to eat the dead son of Śibi’s son shows that times were so bad that people were left with nothing but the dead and dried Śibi plants to eat. I locate the place of this plant in the narration at Altai mountains where Denisovan gene was discovered from a fragment of a bone. Let me justify this in the course of this write-up.

The sages were offered kine which they refused, as they didn't want to subsist on flesh. They started moving in search of food and met a mendicant accompanied with his dog on their way. This man was called as 'Śunasakha' which means 'friend of dog'. In Hindu Thought the dog signifies Yama, the God of death. He is also the God of Dharma who delivers good and bad according to one’s karma. The dog appearing well-fed would literally mean that many people had died and the dogs had scavenged on the dead people. As a personification of Yama, it can be deduced that God Yama appeared robust in having delivered fair judgement. But who was his friend – the Sakha of Śuna? We will decipher it in the course of the story.

The dog and Śunasakha accompanied the sages in their wanderings in finding food. At last, all of them  reached a Lotus-pond. That pond was guarded by Yātudāni, the demoness sent by Śibi, the king. Yātu means wind. Yātudāni denotes a state of heavy winds afflicting people. Coming from drought-struck Śibi’s land, it seems to indicate cold winds blowing from that region that was reeling under lack of sunlight and water. Now that Yātudāni was located in the region of lotus-pond, it could refer to the limit or boundary of the cold and dry winds.

The presence of lotus pond indicates a changed climatic condition where water was available. The lotus planet, like Śibi is completely edible. So, the sages had at last reached a humid  place where food was available. Yātudāni stopped the rishi-s who wanted gather the lotus-stalks from the pond for eating. She demanded that they tell the meaning of their names. One by one the sages started telling the meaning of their names, but Yātudāni could not comprehend any of the names!

The demoness could not understand the meaning of Arundhati, Ganda and Paśusakha too. Arundhati means the one who never obstructs. She expressed that meaning by saying that she always stayed by the side of her husband. Ganda described the meaning as the raised portion of the cheek. By getting associated with  Paśusakha as her husband, it is understood that Ganda refers to ‘raised grass land for grazing’. Paśusakha means ‘friend of cattle’.

All these are connected with a community of householders who depended on simple country life and  cattle wealth. Ganda and Paśusakha joining the sages in Śibi’s land shows that the region was dotted with raised land where cattle could be grown but had to be abandoned due to dry conditions. The sages and others were spared by the demoness as she could not understand the etymological meaning of their names and she was subsequently killed by Śunasakha (friend of dog). This is indicative of cessation of adverse wind patterns that afflicted people all the way from Śibi’s land.

The sages collected the lotus stalks for eating, but these stalks were stolen by Śunasakha. Ultimately it turned out that Śunasakha was Vāsava (Indra, the lord of people) who guides and protects people. He followed the entourage of sages to help them avoid un-agreeable foods and reach a place conducive for living. His stature as Indra, the ruler of mankind, has made him appear robust and well-fed. The deity of Dharma (Yama) was his constant friend and therefore he was Śunasakha. The story ends with the departure of Indra and the seven sages to their respective celestial abodes. People had started their routine life in the new place dotted with lotus ponds.

Migration from Śibi to lotus regions

The derivations from this narration are that two plants mark the two locations of human settlements. The two plants namely Śibi (Typha angustifolia) and lotus are complete foods. Even in times of starvation, people had managed to subsist on these two plants. Lotus is consumed in places like China and Thailand but it grows well in Vietnam. All parts of the plant are entirely consumed by the Vietnamese.

Fig 3: Lotus lakes in Vietnam

Source: https://vietnamtrips.com/vietnamese-lotus-flower

Lotus is indigenous to the Tropics in and around  Sundaland. Taking this as a cue, I am locating the region of Typha angustifolia to the north of China because that makes an easy route for people to have migrated northward or southward during times of distress. The northern most location for Typha angustifolia in this stretch is Altai Mountains! The lotus growing Vietnam formed the southern location of migration

Fig 4: The North and South limits of the migration

Since there is evidence of Denisovan genes found in Altai (Here) connected with Australian aborigines (Here)  and also of Papuans and Pacific islanders (Here) it is possible to deduce that a former migration had occurred in this corridor - from Australia to Sundaland to China to Altai.

The narration in Mahābhārata is about a southward migration through the same corridor when North became inhospitable and South was warm and wet. This could have happened during Glacial Maximum and Minimum periods, with migrants finally settling down in regions around Sundaland. The old memory transmitted through generations in the form of a simple story can be picked out by means of the clue given in that story itself – that etymology plays a great role in unlocking the secrets hidden in those stories.

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