| Arise Arjuna Hinduism And The Modern World |
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| Books By David Frawley |
| THE ARYAN-DRAVIDIAN DIVIDE | |
The Racial Interpretation of the Vedas European Vedic interpreters used the racial idea to explain the Vedas. The Vedas speak of a battle between light and darkness, between the Sun God and his manifestations and the demons of darkness. This was turned into a war between light-skinned Aryans and dark-skinned Dravidians. Such scholars did not bother to examine the fact that most religions and mythologies including those of the Ancient American Indians, Egyptians, Greeks and Persians have such an idea of a battle between the forces of light and darkness (which is the symbolic conflict between truth and falsehood), but we do not interpret their statements racially. In short, Europeans projected racism into the history of India, and accused the Hindus of the very racism that they them-selves were using to dominate the Hindus. European scholars pointed out that caste in India was originally defined by color, which is how they translated the Sanskrit them varna, the basis of caste. In vedic thought Brahmins are said to be white, Kshatriyas (warriors) red, Vaishyas (merchants) yellow, the Shudras (servants) black. Hence the Brahmins were deemed to have been originally the white Aryans and the Dravidians the dark Shudras, whom the Aryans enslaved.However, the colors of the different classes refers only to the gunas or qualities of each class, which represent different energetic types of human being. White is the color of purity (sattva guna), dark that of impurity (tamoguna), red the color of action (rajoguna), and yellow the color of trade ( also rajoguna). To turn this into races is simplistic and incorrect. Where is the red race and where is the red race and where is the yellow race in India? And when have the Kshatriyas been a red race and the Vaishyas a yellow race?
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