The saga of the destruction of Lanka by Rama and Hanumant
was the original on which Homer's
Illiad was based. Just as the
Ramayana tells the story of Lanka and the rescue of Shita, the spouse
of Rama kidnapped by the evil Ravana, the
Illiad
recounts the destruction
of Troy and the rescue of the fickle Helen, kidnapped by Paris. Troy, with
its bronzy walls and golden palaces was just one of the many allegories
of Atlantis. In contrast to the small village discovered by Schliemann
in Turkey, the true Troy lay in the Outer Ocean. It was a magnificent capital
and sank into the ocean after its destruction and incending in the great
war with the "Greeks" of an earlier age. The parallels between Troy and
Atlantis are too many to be discarded. And those between Plato's Atlantis
and the Lanka of the Hindus show, in an unequivocal manner, that it is
in the Far Orient and the underseas, and not in the Mediterranean region,
that we must quest for the real Troy and the real Atlantis.
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The
Mahabharata, the other great Hindu
classical saga that completes the
Ramayana, tells of the mighty
empire of Krishna and its destruction in the great war between the Lunars
and the Solars (the Kurus and Pandus). This great war is, like the one
of Lanka or that of Troy, the true archetype on which Plato based his history
of Atlantis. Hastinapura, the capital of the Pandu empire, was the "City
of the Pillars" (Hastina-pura) or, yet, the "City of the Nagas".
These two are epithets associated with the Atlanteans and with the Pillar
of Heaven in the Far East. The
Mahabharata also tells of Dvaraka,
the capital of Krishna, located in an island in the middle of the seas.
Krishna's capital, Dvaraka, sunk underseas when the divine hero died in
the great war, more or less in the way Atlantis went under, according to
Plato.
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Dravidian traditions speak of a vast sunken
continent towards the south-east of India called Rutas. The Dravidas claim
to have moved to India from that continent when it sunk away underseas,
in a great cataclysm. The name of Rutas apparently relates to the Sanskrit
radix
rudh ("red"), and the Dravidian
ruta ("to be red",
"to burn"). These etyms evoke the "Island of Fire" and may be an allusion
to the fabulous "Land of the Reds" that was one of the many mystic names
of Atlantis in the ancient traditions. Indeed, the Dravidas claimed to
have been
Kshatryias ("Warriors"), an Indian caste whose heraldic colour
is the red one.
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The Phoenicians - whose name also means "reds"
in Greek - claimed, like the Dravidas, to have come from an "Island of
Fire" located beyond the Indian Ocean (or Erythraean) overseas. That means
the Indies, indeed located in this "Ocean of the Reds" (Erythraean).
Hence, the Phoenician homeland seems to be originally the same as the Rutas
(or "Island of Fire") of the Dravidas. The Egyptians too called themselves
"Reds" (Rot or
Khem, in their tongue). And they also claimed
to have come from this "Island of Fire" in the Indian (or Erythraean) overseas.
Would all the traditions of these virtuous nations be lying? Or is it that
we interpret their myths erroneously?
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The Celts, like so many nations, claimed to
have come from a land in the overseas which foundered in the seas by virtue
of a terrible cataclysm. This Paradise they called by many names such as
"Isle of Glass" (Ynis Wydr), "Island of the Women", "Avalon", Emhain,
Ys, etc. The legend of the sinking of Ys, in particular, is closely reminescent
of the sinking of Atlantis in the volcanic conflagration reported by Plato.
The Celts also called their sunken land by the name of
Cantref Gwaelod
meaning "Country of the Bottom" according to Jean Markale, the eminent
Celtist. Now, this is precisely the meaning of the name of
Atala,
the sunken Paradise of the Hindus that we commented above. Atala was the
archetype of Plato's Atlantis, whose name (a-tla) also embodies
the same signification in Greek.
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In the
Mabinogion, the Celtic book
of origins, it is stated that the Celts originally came from "the island
of Defrobani, the Country of Summer and land of the Cimmerians". Now, "Defrobani"
can only be the island of Taprobane, as many experts concluded. Taprobane
- that the ancient authors equated with the site of the Terrestrial Paradise
and of the fall of Adam - is no other than the island of Sumatra which
is indeed the site of Atlantis.
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The Cimmerians, who are deemed to have been
the ancestors of the Celts, are the "peoples of the haze" that Homer equates
to the somber region of Hell.
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