A different approach to dealing with Hindu huckster claims about the myth of 'Golden Vedic Past'

There seems to be almost a conviction among the Hindu middle classes and the intelligentsia that their ancient scriptures like the:

• Vedas 
• Upanishads
• Puranas
• Bhagavad Gita

not only have high spiritual and moral content, but advanced scientific knowledge and theories of  many physical and medical sciences. 

With the fact that these texts are now publicly available and almost completely translated into multiple languages, commented, explained and annotated by historians and indologists, and that from such extensive contemporary research and analysis, it is very difficult and almost impossible  to support or justify the idea or opinion that these texts contain anything grand or have  ideas or truths that cannot be understood or need very special abilities or  insight to comprehend them. 

They also don't seem to have any unique moral or practical truths or opinions that do not exist in other cultures and texts, or which cannot be derived by the exercise of our normal faculties, reason, experience or judgement. 

That being the case it is sometimes a puzzle and an annoyance why scores among the Hindu intelligentsia in India and abroad still priggishly hold onto fanciful and fantastical ideas about the high knowledge content and scientific nature of their ancient texts. 

They typically seem to accept the stock intellectual ploy/trick  of  Hindu spiritual apologists that Sanskrit being a highly complex, compact, concise and heavily context dependent language, cannot be subjected to literal interpretation and that a Vedic text cannot be interpreted or understood  without a commentary by a well-versed and anointed Guru (expert) or acharya (theologian). Another ploy of distraction and obfuscation is to contend that non-Indian historians dealing with Vedic antiquity ( like British, German, Austrian and American indologists) do not have a  proper and complete sense of the cultural context of these texts and are liable/prone to misinterpretation of the content of the verses of such scriptures. 

As laughable, ironic and unfair such charges are, we have to still deal with them as we have an odd  situation of the foreigners doing the signal service of translating such texts from Sanskrit, since no Indian was gracious enough to do this. But for this favor being done by the Mughals, Persians and Anglo-Saxons, we would never have  really known the mostly pedestrian content of these Vedic texts and would have been taken for a ride by the shrewd and crooked spiritualist swamis, acharyas and sankaracharyas of Hindu orthodox establishment.

An example of why these charges are unconvincing is that even the Sanskrit commentaries of Adi Sankara and other theologians have also been translated and annotated and today's translations of Hindu acharyas are not substantively different from the translations of the foreign indologists. Understandably the interpretations differ because the Hindu spiritualist swamis heavily spin their commentaries to serve their revisionist demands. 

Anyway those really seeking to know or understand scriptures need only the translations, not the commentaries with their ultra-heavy religious and spiritualist spin and distortions.  

Then when these two apologetic tricks or red herrings don't work or cut ice with critics, doubters or skeptics, Hindu apologists will unleash the other trick up their sleeve, which is to contend that the verses were not just written or composed but encoded or wrapped in hidden meaning, to decipher which, knowledge of ancient number or math or other coding systems are needed. 

It does not seem to be occurring  to these ignorant and blind apologists that some of the number or math systems referred by them seem to have been developed much long after the texts on which these systems are supposedly based, were written or composed.

While other skeptical forums have tried to tackle this kind of false and dishonest revisionism from Hindu orthodoxy by a contextual analysis of  these texts and placing them on a reasonable historical timeline of the discoveries of  science and medicine to rule out the possibility of these ancient texts containing any useful scientific or other knowledge content. 

On the other hand, I have tried to subject these fanciful and grand claims to the 'proof of the pudding' tests. I have attempted this as part of my responses to Hindu apologist rants about great science and technology in the Vedas and Puranas in this earlier post. 

The approach is to question the claimants and challenge them  to produce strong and credible evidence of use of such advanced science and technology from Vedas and Puranas in the societies and kingdoms of the Indian ancient and middle ages.

I reproduce below an exchange with a Hindu neo-conservative while countering the revisionist spin on the ancient scriptures. 

His initial comment is here:

You need to know the numeric methods of ancient times like Bhoota Sankhya and Katapayadi number systems to understand the astrophysics that existed in the cryptic verses of the Vedic times.
Here is a link to an 'expert' who gave a lecture on these at the IIT. This should make you give some respect to our ancients

To which I responded thus:

Before even looking at the Youtube link provided by you, I knew it would be from the Hindu conservative and revivalist NGK or N Gopalakrishnan.

So I was hardly surprised to find the lecture from this disgrace of a 'scientist' and purveyor of lies and distortions about Ancient Hinduism. The revisionist nonsense of NGK has been debunked and refuted apart from others by this article Hall of Shame: On a Hindutva Apologist’s Recent Lectures at IIT Madras

Read this and enjoy your discomfiture and agony with my best compliments. For every revisionist ploy you Hindu conservatives can throw at skeptics, we can respond in full and equal measure.

Good Luck with your Bhoota Sankhya and Katapayadi number systems!!! Would you like to add mumbo-jumbo and gumbo-dumbo number systems to your astrophysics lingo babble??!
Looks like you people need some education about astrophysics itself!
 
I have less problems with the state of Ancient Indians or the Vedics. But I have a definite problem with the way desperate conservatives like you and more are window-dressing works of the ancients. 

It seemed that this rattled him a bit and he tried this emotional and aggrieved response below

"By the way, I don't think any of us are right wing activists here. Maybe I do not know everything about it, but what turns me off is the lack of humility you display when you seem to profess that all that is ancient  is wrong - as if you know. Before you try to educate others, please educate yourself." 

In this reply below I have tried a variant of the 'Proof of the Pudding' test to challenge some of the fallacies of revisionist ploys of the Hindu neo-conservatives:

You don't have to be a right-wing activist to hold incredulous beliefs about ancient India and Hinduism. But you are most likely to be considered a Hindu nationalist and bigot.

My sarcastic dig of mumbo-jumbo is not to deny the existence of ancient ethnic number systems. But using them to claim that Vedas have astrophysics theories and formulations in them is a ridiculous stretch of jingoistic imagination and revisionism. 
This is like the Bible code or Kabalah system which also claims that many discoveries and prophecies are mathematically encoded in their verses.

The time to discover or uncover the astrophysics in the Vedas/Samhitas and use for them scientific progress was in 1000 BCE to 1200 CE, not in the 21st Century when the developed world is way ahead of us. But during that time span Indian civilization kept on declining till we ultimately were colonized by Mughals and then British.

If science and technology was really encoded in the Vedas of 1500 BCE or earlier, why was it not used to make rockets, missiles or even electronics in the Indian Early and Middle Ages. What happened to the advanced engineering of the Vedas and Shastras when Adi Sankara toured the length and breadth of India by foot.

Where were the flying chariots and the Pushpaka Vimana of the Puranas and Epics, when Adi Sankara so badly needed them to spread the poison of his Vedanta gospel all over India??!!!.

I may have made this point elsewhere. We can make whatever claims we like about the advanced nature of ancient Indian civilization, but it needs to be credible and there should be evidence and that too of a strong smoking gun type  to support it.

We should be able to dig out remains of advanced artifacts that point to use of sophisticated technologies in those times. 

All that we have been able to fish out are 

• pottery
• coins, 
• toys, 
• metals, 
• parchments and 
• carvings. 

  
That will not suffice as an attestation of our ancient technological advancement.

When you are not sure about the state of existence in ancient India, how can you easily buy into these kinds of huckster claims about our 'ultra-golden' past. 
 
My humility or lack of it is of really little consequence. Hindu false pride is badly in need of re-examination and introspection. The problem is not so much my lack of humility but that people like you are very easily offended when many of your pet misguided notions are scrutinized and mocked at.