Vedas to Quran (V – Q) Part 3

Messengers All Over: Keep aside Sectarian Outlook

From the beginning till now-Messengers in a continuum

Apparently, the earliest messengers/prophets had appeared in these traditions. It started with the four sages, Agni, Vayu, Aditya and Angira, who transmitted and propagated the unworldly knowledge from the Creator God in the form of the four Vedas. Right after the four great Vedic sages, the various incarnations (major and minor ones of Godhead Vishnu and also the ones of Godhead Shiva) who appeared amongst Sanatana Dharmic Hindus are also the earliest messengers of the Creator God*. Other notable messengers who can be named are Zoraster, Mahavira, Buddha, Guru Nanak, Adi Shankaracharya, Maharshi Dayanand Saraswati, Shri. Shirdi Sai Baba, Maha Avtar Baba and, many others who must have appeared amongst the Greek, Celtic, Chinese, Roman, Egyptian, and such other traditions. The last 25 are Adam, Idris (Enoch), Nuh (Noah), Hud (Heber), Saleh (Methuselah), Lut (Lot), Ibrahim (Abraham), Ismail (Ishmael), Ishaq (Isaac), Yaqub (Jacob), Yusuf (Joseph), Shu’aib (Jethro), Ayyub (Job), Dhulkifl (Ezekiel), Musa (Moses), Harun (Aaron), Dawud (David), Sulayman (Solomon), Ilyas (Elias), Alyssa (Elisha), Yunus (Jonah), Zakariya (Zachariah), Yahya (John the Baptist), Isa (Jesus) and Muhammad.  The names are in keeping with the languages in vogue on different parts/countries.

The above names appear in the books of Semitic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). However, there was no existence of Semitic religions to begin with until the descendants of Abraham – Moses, Jesus and Muhammed appeared, and the three Semitic faiths got established based on these three messengers.

*see separate blogs on avatars and list of messenger avatars

It becomes possible to gain a correct understanding and acceptance only if we keep aside religions and be religiously neutral. Viewed in this perspective freed from the myopic or coloured glass vision of beliefs, it becomes easy to understand that messengers/prophets have appeared on this earth as per the need of the situation at different times and different places for the welfare of humanity. Ultimately, religions got established based on some of these personalities. Though religions should have served as unifiers of humanity, ironically, they ended up playing the role of spoilt sport, creating divisiveness and the cause of much hatred and violence. The question that I would like to ask all those adherents of dogmatic religions is what was the belief system of the people before the establishment of Judaism, Christianity or Islam as these Semitic religions came into vogue only before 3500, 2020 and 1400 years respectively. To what religion did they and their ancestors belong to before 3500 years? They were believers of local polytheistic or pagan religions. For that matter, ancestors of Muhammed including himself, his father and uncle were all polytheistic Hindu believers of a higher echelon until he had the divine vision at Mount Hira and later established Islam and became a Muslim. In short, we need to set aside our dogmatic religious beliefs and bead all messengers together on a common thread. The humanity at large should imbibe the message they conveyed and the values they stood for. We need to empty our cup of all those dogmatic sectarian beliefs and authoritative pronouncements that have been fed to us by the religious leaders in the name of religion. As already mentioned, theology is for unification and not for divisiveness. Genuine faith is one which eulogises the one Supreme Lord or Almighty and His virtues of love, compassion and universal brotherhood.

Messengers and Scriptures

What I would like to emphasise is that irrespective of religions, all the messengers have come with some message for human welfare and these messages are not sectarian in nature or religion-specific. They are for the entire humanity representing one class of creation or, ‘paidaayish’ according to Islamic belief. The manifestation of messages through various messengers comes from different levels of hierarchy* is another point of truth to be understood. Except for the Vedas and the Quran, all other scriptures are of human origin.  The teachings or lives of some messengers form the basis of such scriptures.  Some of the scriptures for that matter got written many years after the departure of the messenger concerned. The very fact that they are of human origin is liable to suffer from errors of omission and commission. They are also subject to modification from time to time.  Unfortunately, there occurred interpolations as well as transcription, translation, transliteration, and transposition errors in scriptures in keeping with the agenda of the religious/political masters of the time.

True but unfortunate (for the seekers of unbiased truth)

Hindu scriptures

It is not difficult to perceive that scriptures have undergone some tampering of kinds.  Such corrupt or tampered parts have a meaning of purpose which misguide or play with the emotions of gullible followers. As far as the Vedas are concerned, there had been no addition, deletion or modification.     However, there has been rampant misrepresentation and, the translators have introduced misguiding meanings. Most of such translations were the handiwork of the colonial rulers of the time or their appointed representatives. They are essentially inadvertent acts of omission as the proficiency in ancient Vedic Sanskrit of those people was very poor and highly questionable. But then, there had also been blatant acts of commission by ascribing purposeful out of context meaning to the Sanskrit words. Many Sanskrit words have multiple meanings, and the taking of a particular one is contextual. By ascribing or choosing wrong meanings, the translators had tried to defame or denigrate the Vedas and give a malefic interpretation. If one looks at it closely, one would realise that the meaning is not only out of context but also wholly absurd, making a mockery of translation. Unfortunately, it is these versions of mistranslation that are in vogue, and most of the people accept what gets dished out in them due to their long-drawn disconnect with the Vedas and poor understanding of Sanskrit. No real Vedic Scholars of that time had produced translated versions of Vedas, and it is this lacuna that had been exploited by the colonial rulers. Apart from distorting the Vedas, they even wanted to downplay or deprive the Indians of the right of being recognised as the most advanced ancient culture by inventing and propagating a fictitious falsehood of Aryan invasion.

Till about 5000 years ago, the monotheistic Vedic culture had prevailed but later from the time of the Mahabharata war, it gradually receded into the background. Creation of many mythological texts known as the Puranas marked this period. It is these Puranas that formed the basis of a polytheistic Hindu faith with multiple Gods, Goddesses and even may community and family deities.  Most of these Puranas are allegorical stories, and they have borrowed the celestial terms, names and events of Vedic description to represent worldly entities and events. Such depictions have given rise to the false notion of ancient Vedas containing stories of kings, rivers, wars etc. This notion is an erroneous and unethical twisting of the Vedic descriptions that have not only misguided, ignorant followers but even given rise to a false understanding of these Puranas and Vedic texts. Puranas are primarily human-made, and the stories and descriptions within them have no semblance of any reality with the Vedic contents.

What are Puranas exactly? They are texts of history, culture and civilisation of Bharat (now known as India) and mythology of the various sects of Hindu religion. What do we find in them? We see in them some description of the origin of the Universe, some moral teachings, history of kings and stories of the God-heads, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiv and their incarnations. Accordingly, each Puran is devoted to a particular deity of different sects like Vaishnavites, Shivites, Shaktivites and related incarnations. Each Puran of each denomination tries to establish supremacy over the other promoting sectarianism. Multiple errors of omission and commission in the form of additions, alterations, and distortions have crept in with time. The upheaval caused due to the break-away formation of Buddhism and Jainism has also contributed to modifications.  Some un-Vedic concepts which are irrational, illogical, unethical, unscientific and inhuman have crept in under the manipulations of the Islamic and Christian rulers.

Since they are purely human-made texts, they have been tinkered with in the recent past and have been subjected to modifications and/or additions by the lying pens of the time essentially to justify their personal beliefs or practices and pass it off as divine dictates. In this respect, apparent contradictions of spurious nature appear in many of these Puranic (mythical mythological) texts regarding the killing of animals, flesh-eating, rituals of specific occasions especially shraddha (ritualistic offerings to deceased parents/relatives) etc. You can go to a separate blog on Shraddha.

As an example, if we take the case of ‘Mahabharata’, there were only about 16000 – 24000 verses originally. The current versions have as many as 100000 poems. The extra verses have crept in over a while, and the staunch believers of this text would try to explain it off as legitimate extensions made by respectful sages.

Many descriptions of Puranas not found in Vedas are narration about multiple Gods and their incarnations. There are unfortunate descriptions about feuds for supremacy between Gods even. Even narrations on idol worship, social discrimination, caste system and many superstitions are all not in keeping with Vedic concepts. One needs to think unbiasedly and rationally to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to say, from the Puranic texts. There is need for discarding the many un-Vedic contents of illogical teachings, preposterous fanciful narrations and unscientific concepts that exist in them.   Serious scrutiny and examination of the tests are needed before they can be rendered entirely truthful spiritual texts for humanity at large.

Semitic scriptures – 1

There are human incursions even in other world scriptures. Sometimes, writing down of scriptures happen either few years (Quran) or many years after (Bible) the exit of the messenger from the worldly stage. In such cases, it is not difficult to imagine the possibility of modifications or misrepresentation of facts e in keeping with the then thinking of the religious leaders and prejudices of the times. Quran was written after the death of Prophet Muhammad. Some Muslims believe that God (Allah) wrote it and then revealed it to Muhammad.  The Quran was neither written by God nor by Muhammad. Allah revealed the wisdom of the Quran to Muhammad, and he spoke it, preached it or recited it.  Those of his followers who were around him at that time memorised it, or some noted it down on whatever was available like palm leaves and stones. So, there was no book form of Quran. It was only after the death of Muhammad in 632 AD that the Quran was compiled from the bits and pieces memorised or written down by those associated with Prophet Muhammad.

According to some, it was the first caliph Abu Bakr who collected all the parts from different people.  These parts were all gathered together and arranged into a book. The scribe Zaid was charged with the job of locating all the details and compiling them into one volume. Yet another view credits the compilation of Quran to the third caliph Uthman (Usman), the same scribe was charged with gathering all the variant versions that still existed, and determining the correct one and burning the rest.

The fact not known to many is that Umar initiated the actual compilation of Quran, the second calif and, the same was revised by Uthman later. Probably, there was no corruption of the Quran marked by additions or deletions. Unfortunately, much of the distorted meanings and misconceptions crept in during the process of translation of the original Quranic revelations. Wrong or distorted meanings crept in while making the revealed verses into complete sentences by application of the unwanted grammar,  It is these translated versions of Persian and Urdu that are in vogue or in circulation in modern times. Amid the translated versions which are in popularity, the original Arabic version has got lost.

Semitic scriptures – 2

Now, coming to Christianity and the Bible, there are again many contradictions and a travesty of truth. To a staunch Christian believer, I am afraid might feel touchy by the above statement. The reason being, they just believe in what is in vogue or, in practice, or made to believe by family and religious heads.  Unfortunately, even the family elders and church leaders also cannot be blamed as that is what they have come to believe. We never try to reach at the truth by going back into history or the past happenings and reason out, so to say by separating the ‘wheat from the chaff’. What is needed is to seek logical conclusions and seek out the truth for self. I, for one, do not believe in following the herd without satisfying my rational and logical sense of mind. We must be good enough to accept that there is ‘something more to it than meets the eye’ in the irrationalities and contradictions found in the scriptures. As a Hindu, (because of birth, and I am a non-religious or an all religion person) I do still question the many contradictions and unacceptable contents existing in the Hindu scriptures. I am sure that they are the handiwork of interested individuals of those times and such human interventions and intrusions not only mislead the gullible staunch believers but also make our scriptures vulnerable to dishonouring comments from others.

Coming back to Christianity, I believe very much in Jesus and his gospel of teaching but not the Bible in vogue. The Bible in vogue is essentially a Pauline scripture, and interestingly, Paul was not one of the original 12 apostles of Jesus. His name was Saul, got changed to Paul and established his credentials by an imaginary vision of Jesus and established canonical Christianity in the name of Jesus. However, most of his teachings in his gospel were contrary to the teachings of Jesus. Jesus was born a Jew and died as a Jew. For that matter, all his apostles also remained Jews but preached the gospel of Jesus.

Interestingly, Paul banished the 12 apostles from the mainstream community and had to preach the Gospel of Jesus in and around Jerusalem. For more details, see “Christianity subverted, enter Pauline Christianity” in “Food for Thought: A Challenge to Conscience” by Dr A. V. Ramachandran; pp. 164 – 174, Published by Shri. Prannath Gyan Peeth, Sarsava, Saharanpur (UP), India. You can also get a brief review of the same in a separate blog on this web site*.

In totality

Keeping aside these discrepancies of human origin in the various scriptures, all the messengers are real, and every one of them has given some vital message or has exemplified quality or qualities worth imbibing and practising. By the inculcation of strong biased sectarian religious identity, humanity has got divided. In this process, considering once own messenger as the greatest, each sectarian identity has tried to disown the previous messenger or even has succumbed to the idea of erasing the message of the last messenger. Looking at recent times, we can see that Christianity tries to overlook the laws of Moses. With the appearance of Prophet Muhammad, Muslims have been attempting to look down on Christianity and Jesus. It is a commonplace to see castigating and belittling (even insulting) writings and remarks by the followers of each religious community over the other. Just go on the internet, and one can see beyond these, followers of one religion hurling flagitious or grievous abuses at other religious followers.

* will be appearing soon

It is a misfortune that these biased dogmatic staunch followers fail to see reason and miss the forest for the trees (miss the wood for the trees). They fail to see the continuity and relatedness of all messengers who appeared at different places at different times for specific purposes.

Take home message

Even now, it is not too late for human beings to grasp the truth of universal brotherhood and realise that all messengers have appeared from hierarchal upper levels in continuum and have brought a wealth of knowledge and information for the humanity at large. We need to respect them and emulate their life and teachings.