Book Title: Most Ancient Aryan Society
Author(s): Ram Chandra Jain
Publisher: Institute of Bharatalogical Research Sriganganagar Rajasthan
View full book text
________________
( 128 ) Uttarakuru in Aitareya Brānmaņa is quite historical. The ancient geographical traditions; Brāhmaṇical, Bauddha and Jaina; also belong to this period. The historicity of the Uttarakuru region should be accepted beyond doubt.
The Greek hostorians have accepted the existence of the Uttarakuru region as a real countrya. Greek geographer Uttarakuru Ptolemy knows Kashmir as Asmiraja. As regaWith Greeks rds the name Ottorkorrha, applied by Ptolemy to a town and a people and a range of mountains, is traced without difficulty to the Sanskrit-Uttara kuru, viz, Kuru of the North. Ptolemy gave it a place within the domain of real geography. The land of the Hyperboreans is a western repetition of the Uttarakuru”.
The Greek mythology has given the land of the Hyperboreans a semi-mythical character. Midas was a pleasureloving king of Macedonian Bromium. One day the debauched old satyr Sileius was taken before Midas to whom he told the story of the land of the Hyperboreans, a paradise on earth, which was an immense continent lying beyond the ocean stream, altogether separate from the conjoined mass of Europe, Asia or Africa. This land can not be the Atlantic continent, as suggested, because the existence of any such paradise on earth is not known to geology, archaeology or history. To the colonisers, the sweet memories of their original home is always a heavenly joy. Ocean stream may have been the memory of the just dried up Tethys Sea; the continuum of whose certain pools on vast stretches of lands might not have allowed the obliteration of it from human memory. The land of the Hyperboreans refers to the Greekāryan Cradle-land beyond the Caspian Sea.
Another Greek legend, the enchainment of Prometheus by Zeus, reveals the memory of a past adventure. Zeus
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org