Harsh86_Patel, on 19 October 2012 - 06:55 AM, said:
You asked a question and yourself provided the answer.Greeks could have known India through travellers/greek scholars employed by Persians,we can also not deny that there could have been contact between the two culture even centuries before Aristotle and hence the myths of Heracles (hari coolesh?) and dionysis (Shiva like deity?)travelling to the East,the Seuz canal not being silted could have provided the access route for seafarers from IVC to the Agean and vica versa,there is geological evidence to suggest that the seuz canal was not silted up in the past.
The Greeks in the employ of the Persians were not travelers or scholars, they were mercenaries. While we can say with certainty that the early Persian rulers dominated and interacted with Indic peoples in the Hindu-Kush, my previous statements about some Greek mercenaries going as far as the Hindu Kush was just that—my own statement, not a statement of historical fact. I was only speculating, in other words. I'm not sure how much veracity my statement would have, anyway. Greek mercenaries in the employ of Persia were not common until the end of the fifth century BCE, anyway.
This was following the Peloponnesian War when lots of Greek soldiers were free for hire (see Xenophon and the
Anabasis, for example). By this point in time, however, Persian dominion in the eastern territories was already slipping. By the time of Alexander the Great, Persia had long lost its hold on the Hindu Kush, so it's considerably unlikely that Greeks had ventured that far to the east in several generations, if at all.
I again must emphasize "India" in the Greek mind. It was not the modern country of the subcontinent but the Hindu Kush. Heredotus' own map makes that abundantly clear. Note that he shows an ocean expanding endlessly to the east of the Indus Valley region, where we now know the subcontinent to be. Herodotus lived in the fifth century BCE and travelled more extensively than most people of that time. If you can't see the map for what it shows, I suppose I will only be caused to keep reminding you of it.
Harsh86_Patel, on 19 October 2012 - 07:52 AM, said:
Monotheism was born in India where a superlative consciousness called brhman is considered God,the pantheon and various other Gods in Hinduism are manifestations of 'Brhman'(not to be confused with Brahmin),the rest of the so called monotheistic religions only choose one amongst the pantheon as the supreme. Yahweh,Allah (moon god/hubal) had contempories and were elevated by respective populations as Supreme so these religions are not in the strictest sense monotheistic but rather theosupremacist in nature.Though they worship one God but these belief was reached by considering 'A' God to be supreme and worthy of worship.
The entire Vedic culture cannot be dated with any certainty as far back as Tutankhamun's time. At most it is speculated to have perhaps begun to form around the thirteenth century BCE, around a century after Tut's time. What exactly the beginnings of the Vedic culture expressed in thought or belief cannot be known to any realistic degree because it was not put to writing until the fourth century BCE.
I'd wager that most of us who study ancient Egypt no longer believe that Tut was the son of Akhenaten, but he was certainly at least of a direct collateral branch. That being said, the religion of Atenism which Akhenaten fostered as the state religion did, by all appearances, become a monotheistic faith by late in his reign. This is evidenced in the later artwork of his reign, which shows no other deities but the Aten, as well as in texts like the Great Hymn to the Aten which describes the deity as the "sole god."
No respected and vetted scholar of historical or religious studies of whom I'm aware would date Hinduism to a time prior to Akhenaten (fourteenth century BCE).
The case with the cult of Yahweh can perhaps be argued to a greater extent. If you're trying to argue that Judaism did not become truly monotheistic, you're quite obviously mistaken. Such a statement would be nonsensical, but I'm not sure if I'm reading your comments correctly. However,
when Judaism became truly monotheistic is the question. By all appearances this probably happened as early as the sixth century BCE, in the post-exilic period, when Cyrus the Great freed the Jews from captivity in Babylon. Jewish interaction with the Persian elite religion of Zoroastrianism perhaps had much to do with the Judaic transformation from henotheism to monotheism. We cannot state this for a fact but the later developments of Judaism (later meaning last centuries BCE) seem to indicate the possibility. It's not as though the Temple priests were going to credit Zoroastrianism with this transition, but the Old Testament certainly bears a lot of praise for Cyrus the Great.
Editing to add: Considering that the topic of this thread is Tutankhamun and the birth of monotheism, the course the discussion is now taking is, in my opinion, back on track. I see no problem with what we're discussing now.
Edited by kmt_sesh, 20 October 2012 - 05:04 AM.
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