Indian or Iranian?

image:http://historicalrama.org/varaha.jpg

It is not only in the conquests and war that we have forfeited our glory to some greedy powerful cunning passerby foreigner but we have been foolish and continue to be even now. How many of us even allot sometime to think about all these?
One of the greatest figures from the “Glorious past” of India is now claimed by yet another one of the contemporary civilizations. The great astrologer scientist, mathematician, poet from the veiled bright past of India - Varahamihira. How many of us know that the seat of the Indian politics, the Parliament houses a mural painting of Varahamihira by the side of that of Aryabhatta?
Varahamihira was one of the greats of the Indian past (505-587). He was born in Ujjain. He belonged to the family that worshipped Surya, the Sun god. The Vedic age scripts say that Sun god worship was also prevalent among the people. The priests who were in charge of the Sun god worship are called the Shakdwipi or Mag Brahmins. Even today we can see that Sun god worship is prevalent in many places in India. Varahamihira was a shakdwipi. He was one of the mainstays in the court of king Vikramaditya of the Gupta dynasty. He wrote an astronomical treatise commenting on the Indian, Roman, Greek, and Egyptian called the Pancha Siddhantika. His contribution to astrology is considered to be the crux of Indian astronomy. His trigonometric contribution and his not so usual treatment of the problem of permutation are noteworthy.
I have listened to an interesting anecdote from the life of Varahamihira and it goes like this: Varahamihira was so great in astrology that he could tell the position of a person by latitude and longitude with just a glance at the person’s horoscope. Thus he was able to predict future events and so he became famous. His fame reached the heavens and when it knocked the door of Brihaspati, the guru of devas and the one of the principle planets of the Navagraha, Brihaspati was pretty much worried because Varahamihira was capable of changing the course of future events.
When this was going on, one day a person went to Varahamihira and gave him a horoscope and asked him to locate Brihaspathi. After the necessary calculations, the horoscope pointed to the location where the person was sitting. Varahamihira re did the calculations but every time it pointed to the same location. Convinced that his calculations were flawless, Varahamihira fell on all fours before the person asking him for his blessings. Now the person, who was Brihaspati in disguise revealed his original form and praised Varahamihira’s dedication and talent and asked him not to change the course of future. Upon such a divine request, Varahamihira put an end to his gimmicks. Such was his greatness.
Now that we know that Varahamihira is an Indian, here comes the glitch. There are some historians who still base their claim on the AIT, that he is Iranian. Iranians were Sun worshippers and so Varahamihira is also an Iranian and hence whatever astrology that is being followed is Iranic and not vedic. At this juncture I would like to stress that by Iran or Iranic or Iranians I point fingers at Iran that was, before the coming of Islam. Ujjain is in India and vikramaditya was one of the greatest rulers of the gupta age.
I had mentioned that the vedic people and the Iranians who formed a part of the group, all lived on the banks of Saraswati and due to unknown reasons, a group of people moved on to Iran. There is no concrete answer for why those people moved, war or natural calamity or was that just another human migration? We know that the Iranians were Sun god worshippers. Since the two groups of people, Iranians and the Indian Aryans co-existed in the same place; it is obvious that they share the same culture. It is not just Indra or Chandra who is being glorified in the Vedas; it is Surya also who is deified throughout. There was a divine lineage of the Sun family, the Ikshvaku clan in which we consider that God himself took birth as Sri Rama.

It is time, we, the citizens of Indian, sharpen our senses and light up the glory that is in dark before another passerby takes away whatever is left.