History of Flying Carpet - Origins

Before we start going to pre-history of India, it should be noted that modern boundaries of most countries were defined in 20th Century or later and there had been a greater variation in their existence, as we traverse back in time. India is no stranger to it and for completeness of the topic at hand, the history would be included for areas near modern India including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Srilanka..

Written records on History of early India is rather limited. There are records of past termed as "Itihaasa" ( history ) but they seemed to be a blend of actual history and mythology. It is very hard to corroborate the evidence with modern scientific tools. But, there are very good analyzing mechanisms which can help us understand.

Even though various sects of Hinduism do not agree on course of creation and aftermath, all of them do agree on the existence of "HrnyaGarbha" and consider it as a start of existence.

On digging deeper ( literally :) ), we learn that, India as we know today started as Neoproterozoic India as part of Gondawana in Mesozoic Era (~180 Million yrs ago). By Cenozoic Era (About 45 Million yrs ago), Indian Plate started moving towards Eurasian Plate and fit itself onto its approximate current location and this movement started the creation of Himalayan mountain range which is growing even now.

Some of the Dinosaur fossil found in India are found in the following areas,

Kota Formation - with fossils from Lower Jurassic period
Lameta Formation - with fossils from Upper Cretaceous period, Rajasaur being significant species found
Maleri Formation - with fossils from Upper Triassic period
Shivalik Fossil Park - with fossils from Pleistocene period

There has been a lesser finds of dinosaur fossils as the archeological society has been active only in last century as well as due to wider land use in plateau to support burdgeoning population.

Homo Erectus arrived in India during Pleistocene Epoch (~2 Million yrs ago) and some migrated to other parts of South Asia. But, these were not the final residents of the subcontinent.

Finally arrived the thinkers!, the Homo Sapiens in about 50,000 to 70,000 BCE. Here starts a colorful story of how a collage of thoughts was created.

As menioned in the previous post, the philosophical history of India starts about 4000 years ago in about 2500-1700 BCE. In the early days of India, it was crimnal to write down literature(but we do have some interesting exceptions). So, most of the knowledge was shared orally. When the old thoughts were written down finally in later years, there had been many influences of later day philosophies and what we have today is a current intrepretation of old thoughts..

This nature of re-defining assumptions based on current problems is very true to modern day theists as well. Sometimes, it just is little weird to find self-proclaimed godmen to explain their yogic techniques with quantum theory and electromagnetic wave theory, to appeal to growing literate mass.

In this series, I would like to include philosophies of all Faiths that had an Indian Flavor added to them on reaching subcontinent shores. i will add them chronologically as they got rooted in Indian hearts.

In the next blog, To understand older philosophies in India, we will travel out of the subcontinent and head towards middle east asia where the first known Hindu literature was drafted.