6-BOOK REVIEW:                     THE LAST WORD ON RAMAYANA:

VENTAKESTWARA RAO NARLA (2004) [257P] VISALANDHRA PUBLISHING HOUSE
BOOK REVIEW: BY KAVNEET SINGH      
                                                                                             Part-4
Chapter 17 - How much of Ramayana is True?
_More than seventy five percent of Ramayana is plain myth…..The main basis of he rest of_ _the twenty five percent story are intrigues and deceitful schemes to secure the throne, a_ _factor which is common to all royal families…Rama did not cross the Vindhya mountain_ _region…Ravana might have been a king of the Gond clan or some other Advasi_ _(aboriginal) sect….The present Sri_ _Lanka is not the Lanka of Ravana…..[Page142]_
The historical validity of most of the Hindu texts is negligible. The main reasons being that none of them were authored by a single verifiable individual instead many people have continued to add whatever pleased them and reshaped pretty much everything from its original state. Therefore literature based evidence continues to elude us and doubts persist as no concrete conclusions can be ever reached. The Brahmin-Aryan interpolators have co-opted so many aboriginal stories into all their main religious texts that the kernelhas got lost in the plagiarizing pious frauds committed on their own (created) texts.
Chapter 18 – What is Janasthana? Where was Lanka?
_Greek authors, more than two and two and a half thousand years ago have called Ceylon_ _as “Tamraparni” and not Lanka…….Even during the reign of Ashoka, people knew only_ _of “Tamraparni” and not Lanka…..The great Indian Geographer of the 6th_ _century A.D.,_ _Varahamitra has said Lanka and Ceylon are not one and the same and they are two_ _separate islands….Etymologists are of the view that the word Lanka was borrowed by_ _Sanskrit from Telugu…..[Page 177]_Nowhere in the Mahabharata or the Ramayana is the town of Rameshwaran mentioned since that is the closest to Sri Lanka if one wanted to cross it with a flying leap. Again ‘Sal trees’ are mentioned (46th Sundrakanda) in the Ramayana, which only grow north of the Vindhya mountain range and are not found in Southern India. Other rivers and mountain ranges abound south of the Vindhya range which if carefully scrutinized, none of them have ever been mentioned in the Ramayana. It simply is impossible to fly from the Indo-Gangetic plain to Lanka being over 1,500 miles, unless of course Rama used Ravana’s special flying chariot; albeit he could not have as Ravana was his enemy!
Chapter 19 – Who were the Rakshasas?
_Konds wear masks to disguise themselves as cruel animals, because they want to appear_ _fearful and ferocious. That is why Ramayana describes Rakshasas as ugly looking_ _beings…[Page197]_Most of the historians are of the opinion that starting from the southern part of the Vindhya mountain range the people’s skin color was pretty dark which is the current part of Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, and northern Andhra Pradesh. The aboriginal tribes especially the Gonds, being forest dwellers, used fearful masks for various reasons. Most aboriginal tribes and the Dravidians of central and southern India do have varying degrees of Negroid features including their hair. Furthermore since the brutal caste system was in place, the northern Brahmin-Aryans detested the dark skinned people and by referring to them rakshasas (monsters) were able to dehumanize them permanently. Most important places of worship by the Gonds had been called “Lakka”. Anthropologists living among them have concluded that Lakka was changed to Lanka in the Ramayana.
Chapter 20 – Who were the Rishis?
_They feared that if new people discovered new things, their own prestige would be lost,_ _that their own importance_ _and status would be_ _reduced and so banned the very_ _question,_ _“why”?.......We meet Rishis such as Angirasa, Agastya, Brigu, Bhardwaja, Vasista and Viswamitra both in Vedas and Vedic literature as well as in the epics and the history of_ _ancient time…..[Pages 200-201]_The same Brahmins again and again injected themselves into the vedic stories as ‘rishis’ and sages. According to the vedic stories most of the ‘rishis’ were born out wed-locks, affairs, one-nights stands between gods (men) and apsaras (female angels) and much,much more! According to Prof. Kunhan Raja a Hindu Brahmin from Kerala of royal lineage with doctorates from Madras and Oxford says, “the truth is, people of the Vedic- age ate and drank in plenty. They were consuming non-vegetarian food and alcoholic drinks; they were eating even the beef of cows.”…. “Rishis drank without any limit. Somrasa especially gave them “noiseless excitement”. _Dr.Kunhan Raja clarified, “if anyone asks me-what is the essence of the vedic culture? I_ _would say, it was to live happily in this beautiful world.”……[Page 206]_
The Rig Veda philosophy is essentially one aimed at obtaining wealth, health, long life. To gain strength and power, to kill all Dasus (dark skinned enemies) and traders, to deprive them, by appropriating their wealth. The ‘rishis’ were in the words of Devi Prasad Chattopadhya….“_there was not another acquisitive capitalist to equal him (rishi-_ _brahmin) in avarice.”_
Chapter 21 – Rama’s Role in the Intrigues of Rishis
_Lanka had not known the Chaaturvarna (the four fold caste system), traders, exchange of_ _goods, prostitutes. Though Ramayana describes Ravana’s capital as a city, there_ _is_ _evidence enough in Ramayana itself to say that it was only some sort of an abode of one_ _of the forest dwelling sects……the conflict between the food gathering socio-economic_ _order and the food producing socio economic order….[Pages 227-228]_ Since Rama was orthodox to the extent that he considered the rishis/sages as his prime masters, his collusion with them was complete.
All orders good or bad, noble or stupid had to be followed through as far as Rama was concerned, therefore his role in the rishis intrigues was unabashedly biased towards them. Seetha unequivocally took Rama to task by asking why he was killing those people who had done him no harm at all. To all her pleas Rama’s only answer was that he was ready to lay down his life for the rishis at the expense of losing her but he will not fail to fulfill the rishis (evil) wishes. It is very clear that Rama had no sense of personal ethical discrimination but rather a blind subservient follower of the rigid retrograde caste system and all its banalities.
Chapter 22 - Weapons in Ramayana
_But for some such superiority in the weapons it would not have been possible for Rama_ _and Lakshmana to defeat the original forest inhabitants of dankdakaranya thought he_ _latter were numerically stronger. Whenever and wherever the smaller group has_ _conquered the bigger group they have done so either due to superior weapons or_ _superior war techniques or due to confluence of both……[Page 236]_Firstly, even Rama like Krishna was unethical in the war against Ravana. The number of enemies have been inflated to such an extent that the total population of the world much later in time was less than the numbers stipulated in the Ramayana. Indians even today are very boastful and bombastic in nature and at the drop of a hat will inflate figures to win any argument. Use of the bow versus swords and maces is a tell tale sign of the differences in the two opposing cultures at loggerheads in the epic. Based on the Ramayana, Ravana’s armies used maces, clubs and swords but there is no mention of the bow. On the other hand Rama and his cohorts are deft users of the long bow. Practically speaking Rama may have killed fourteen people and not 14,000 as referenced in the 30th Sarga-Aranyakanda. Primitive forest dwellers were still not advanced enough to step up to the ‘bow’ and being ‘ethical’ could not fathom the cunning enemy, Rama.