Part 1 here
Part 2 here
I would like to show one more puranic feature from Olmec culture. The Olmec culture existed in the same regions of Mexico where we see the cultures that are described above. But Olmec seems to be the oldest and the mother of them all. Even the name Olmec was taken from Nahua language. The interesting part of it is that the signs of Olmec culture started around 1500 BC – the same time when the Tamil culture in the Indian Ocean habitat was completely wiped off resulting in a complete shatter of the survivors in all directions – with the Tamil king Pandyan moving over to South India Proper and starting a new life with his capital in Madurai.
The following image from the Olmec shows a child sitting on the lap of a king- like figure and another child crying and its mother trying to pacify it. This is a typical Dhruva story found in Vishnu Purana and Bhagavatha Purana.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Altar_5_from_La_Venta,_left_side_%28Ruben_Charles%29.jpg
Dhruva's step mother and step brother were much favoured by his father Uttanapada. Once when Dhruva was seated on his father's lap, he was dragged out by his step mother and scolded by her, while his step brother climbed on the lap of his father. The above scene looks similar to this.
There is more to the Olmec connection to this Puranic story. In the story of Dhruva, his father was killed by a Yaksha. As the eldest son, Dhruva ascended the throne and waged a war on Yakshas. It was a terrible fight that resulted in heavy loss of life on both sides. Finally Dhruva was advised to buy peace with Yakshas (read here).
The connection to Olmecs is that the Olmec Godly figures resemble Yakshas! These figures look short, stout and with drooping mouths.
The Olmec Were - Jaguar figures match with Yaksha description. Take a look at a Olmec wear-jaguar super natural being.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jaguarbaby.jpg
Another one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Seated_Olmec_Jaguar_from_San_Lorenzo,_Veracruz.jpg
Compare the above figures with the Yaksha figure found at Chandraketugarh at West Bengal and dated at 1st century BCE of the Sunga period.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yaksha_%28Chandraketugarh%29.jpg
Look at the ear ornaments – both leaf type and pot type ornaments (TAlika and PAlika) are worn. The eyes look small and like slits. The mouth is drooping. The stature is short and stout.
The colossal figures of Olmec are in line with colossal figures of Easter Island and at Tula of the later period. The Olmec colossal statue sports ear ornaments of the Vedic society and may even be aYaksha!
Now looking at the images of Olmec people, they too are seen with ear holes.
1200 to 800 BCE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Wrestler_%28Olmec%29_by_DeLange.jpg
The following is commonly found in Olmec culture. A man in squatting position seems like making a prayer for the well being of his child. The child looks sick.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Las_Limas_Monument_1_%28O_Cadena%29.jpg
Another similar looking figurine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Olmec_Figurine_holding_infant_%28Met%29.jpg
Look at the prominent ear holes. The bent knees are typical of prayer to God or an offering in Vedic society. Similar posture can be seen in a plate found in Susa in Iran (below).
This kind of bent knee posture is a common feature in Vedic society in prayers and in offerings. The Olmec man holding a baby must not be construed as offering the baby as a sacrifice. The baby looks sick and the man is praying to God seeking benediction.
The Olmec man seems to be making a prayer to God to save his child by offering the child to God. By this it does not mean that the child is killed as a sacrifice. Instead some commitment is made as an offering. It is a common practice in Tamil society to offer to name the child as "Picchai" – meaning 'alms'. It was also a practice to offer the child to serve God in temples.
The following image of the Olmec man is typical of the temple images in India. The child may have been a still-born or fallen sick of untreatable nature. In such circumstances, people take the child to the temple and make prayers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:La_Venta_Altar_5_%28Ruben_Charles%29.jpg
The presence of votive figure like baby figurines found in Olmec culture is testimony to the practice that is still followed in Hindu society. When a baby is sick the votive offering of the figurine of a baby is done. For sickness in any part of the body, the figurine of that part alone is offered as votive offering. The famous temple of Lord Venkateswara in Andhra Pradesh, India accepts thousands of votive offerings everyday. The Olmec culture also shows small figurines of head or torso or leg or arm and so on. This does not mean that the baby was cut and sacrificed. Even an animal would not kill its own baby. How can we say that for a man?
Such kind of parts of the body embossed on metals are offered to God in the Vedic society even today as a mark of fulfilment of a vow or a prayer when the corresponding body part was the location of a disease.
The following is the figurine of a baby found in large numbers on Olmec culture. At the most they are 35 cm high. The features are not clearly made showing that they were not meant to be artefacts but were mass produced with least skill. The idea was to make it available to the needy who want to offer it as part of the prayer or fulfilment of the prayer. The absence of genitalia in these figurines shows that they could be used for any gender. Usually in votive offerings for babies, the definition is just baby, and not boy baby or girl baby. In elderly people, the gender difference comes when the whole body is affected and the prayer is for the overall well being of the body with a votive offering of male or female figurine as the case may be.
The presence of so many baby figurines and Olmec men with baby in hand match with the presence of Yaksha looking Wear-jaguars.
Yakshas are those which are never satiated and always hungry. (Vishnu Purana 1-5). They come early in the creation of beings and they were located in the Southern seas, according Vishnu Purana. The Sangam Tamil Hero, Skanda, the son of Meenaskhi and Sundaresa of the first Sangam Age had under his control the Yakshas. Mahabharata says that Yaksha Amogha, his attendants and Jambhaka Yakshas were in his army. (Mahabharata 3-230). The famous entity of the Vedic pantheon, Kubera was a Yaksha. His early abode was in Lanka which was later confiscated from him by his step brother Ravana. After that Kubera shifted to the Himalayan region.
Skanda comes before that time, say 12,500 years bp. At that time yaksha beings were in the region of south Indian and South Pacific Ocean, according to Puranic sources. Skanda cult was known for shamanism and an account by Sage Markandeya who conquered death by prayers to Lord Shiva reveals Skanda's control over 18 types of spirits that affect foetus, childbirth and children. In Mahabharata 3-229, (read here) he further says that Yakshas are evil spirits that make the person it haunts to lose reasoning power and become a lunatic. There are astrological indications and remedies for the haunts by such spirits which are given in the book "Prasna Marga". Until recently this idea was in vogue in the Vedic society and people had resorted to propitiations to these spirits.
The Wear – jaguars looking like yakshas and numerous baby votives and prayers of men with baby in hand show that Olmec society had propitiated Yaksha spirits whenever they children fell unconscious or suffered untreatable diseases. The idea of spirits troubling children and subsequent prayers are part of Skanda cult that had its origins in the Tamil Sangam society that began 10,000 years ago in the Indian Ocean habitat.
Skanda had ventured into Lanka (Sura padma samhara), Sundaland (which was called as Hiranyapura in his times but later called as Swarana dweepa ), Australia (Maori ) and Kilimajaro (Krauncha mountain, Africa). The different types of people from Africa to India to Australia to Pacific habitats had been influenced by his cult figure. The Olmec culture starts at 1500 BC by which time the Indian Ocean habitat got dispersed. The Olmec people in all probability were an off shoot of the Tamil culture in submerged Indian Ocean. Or they were the people in one of the parts of the region that Skanda cult was prevalent (from Africa to eastwards). The new life started after the last submergence in the Indian Ocean at 1500 BC, found them setting up their settlements in Mexico with old habits (ear piercing) and worship of yaksha for relief from diseases or haunts for their kids. The ear ornament is an unmistakable proof of the early connection to Vedic habits.
The Tamil roots can be substantiated from the later Mesoamerican accounts on the origin of Olmecs at a place called Tamoanchan. This sounds like Tamizhan! (Tamilan)
An old Nahul poem refers to a land called Tamoanchan and says,
"in a certain era
which no one can reckon
which no one can remember
[where] there was a government for a long time".
Any number of guesses can be made on where this Tamoanchan was. But the Vedic habits of ear piercing, stretching the ears, votive offerings to Yaksha spirit and naga-sounding Nahua point to the direction of Tamil settlements in Sangam age and its Vedic past.
Mr Dale made an illustration of the extent of this common culture based on long ear tradition as follows:
Let me add ancient Indian parts to this map – which is shown in black strokes.
The Indian Ocean region was the location of Vedic culture for long with Varaha, Narasimha and Vamana avatars happening in Hiranyapura (Sundaland) which left a deep imprint in the entire habitat of the Indian and Pacific Ocean. The Vedic culture moved northward to India after the Ice age. The Parashurama, Rama, Balarama, Krishna and Buddha avatars took place in retrievable memory in the Indian sub continent. (Buddha was basically Vedic as was made out from the ear hole, but when his teachings were encapsulated as a cult, they deviated from Vedic roots.). Skanda cult was originally formed in the Tamil habitat in Indian Ocean and developed variously later. The common feature in all these regions is long ears!
- Jayasree
**********
From
http://frontiers-of-anthropology.blogspot.in/2013/11/longears-from-ceylon-to-easter-island.html
Longears from Ceylon to Easter Island
Saturday, November 16, 2013
The stone statues of the ancestors on Easter Island characteristically show a straight narrow nose and thin, sharply defined lips. They have pointed chins that protrude. Their hair is a specially selected red stone called "pucao". The statues depict "Long-ears" and Thor Heyerdahl established a connection between these Long-Ears of Easter Island and the corresponding aristocratic population of the Andes Mountain region in South America which also had elongated earlobes from heavy ear ornaments.
"Long Ears" of Easter Island
Almost all existing descriptions and sculptures of Aditya, Gandharva and Apsara gods and demigods and Daitya demons, and also Buddhist saints, depict them with long-ears, very often with large weighty earrings.
Statues, bas-reliefs and pictures of "long-eared" beings are also often found in India, Indochina, China, Polynesia and Melanesia. The custom of artificially extending the ears has for a long time been practiced by many tribes of South-East Asia. It later became widespread among the inhabitants of Easter Island. Companion of Dutch Admiral Jacob Roggeveen, who discovered Easter Island in 1722, Sergeant Behrens wrote: "Some earlobes hung down to the shoulders, and some wore them as a special decoration with white disks." The same custom existed among the inhabitants of the Marquesas Islands and Melanesia, which lies a few thousand miles from Easter Island. Elongated earlobes were common among the ruling caste of the Incas, being caused by massive gold ornaments hanging off of them which caused a severe stretching the lobe, to which the Spaniards have given the nickname "orehones", meaning "long-eared".This indicates a kinship between the "long-eared" islands of Polynesia, Melanesia and South America and the fair-skinned Indian gods, demi-gods and demons (Adityas, Gandharvas, give, etc.) of India and Southeast Asia,
|
|
| Orejones or Transplanted Tamils in South America |
Jayasree has pointed out the significance of the tradition of wearing heavy weights in the ears and stretching the ear-lobes is a connection between the Cholas of Ceylon and the Egyptian dynasty that included Tutakhamen. There is thus a link that suggests the dynasty came into Egypt from Ceylon probably via Ethiopia and Somaliland (and mingling with the already-established Egyptian aristocracy, who had genetic ties to Western Europe by way of The Megalith builders.) Incidentally , James Churchward envisioned a settlement in Ethiopia coming from the Tamils of Ceylon. There is some genetic evidence that one of the Southern Asiatic lines Out Of Africa had reversed itself and then went back into Africa. This now gives some grounds to back up Churchward's statement.
So we have this trait of earlobe distension as marking connections to the royal family from Ceylon and Southern Asia extending into Egypt and Ethiopia on the one hand to as far away as Peru on the other. This may sound like too large of an area but a single Language family fills in the gap in between, the Malayo-Polynesian. And not only are there Malayo-Polynesian languages in Southern India, the furthest Eastward outpost of the Malayo-Polynesian peoples just happens to be Easter Island.
Posted by Dale Drinnon at 12:06 AM
Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook
Labels: Ceylon, Easter Island, Hemp (Hashish), India, Long-Ears, Malayo-Polynesian Languages, Orejones, Tutankhamen
jayasreeNovember 16, 2013 at 8:14 AM
Dear Mr Dale,
An useful article that gives me more leads on my research. However I differ in the noting "Cholas of Ceylon". Ceylon does not come into the picture of Cholas or any Tamils in the era that we are talking about, say 3500 years BP. Cholan occupation of parts of Ceylon was in 1000 AD. For quite long before that Indian or Tamil people did not occupy Ceylon. The Sinhalas who occupied Ceylon before the start of the Common Era were an offshoot of Bengalis. There is genetic study linking Sinhalese with people of Bengal.
For this topic, I do have info to substantiate that Tamils, Polynesians and Incas shared a common culture. Their influence went as far away to Egypt (18th dynasty) perhaps through marine connections.
regards,
Jayasree
Dale DrinnonNovember 16, 2013 at 9:21 AM
Thank you Jayasree, my use of the term"Cholas of Ceylon" was probably unfortunate. The important part of the construction is doubtless as you have stated in your clarification. Thank you for your comment.
Regards, Dale D.
