Deluge of Atlantis

Deluge of Atlantis
Deluge of Atlantis

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

The Aryans Did Not Do It 4:Velikovsky

What I found from Velikovsky was that the Downfall of Early India is ascribed to Meteorite showers which Velikovsky relates to the entanglement of the planets Mars and Venus in Earth's orbits, That the "Maruts"are related to Mars and were damaging storms of meteorites and there is at least a linguistic basis for saying the "Aryans" were representatives of ARES, the god of war in this instance. Furthermore his interpretation of the Mahabharata is another "War of the gods" (He interprets as a crossover of planetrary orbits) , similar to the Trojan War and probably contemporary with it. (There is a separate tradition that a comet was seen at the downfall of Troy)

I am not advocating a literal interpretation of Velikovsky in this case. What I am doing is suggesting that there is a tradition of Meteorite showers following the apparitions of comets embedded in these myths of ancient times, and that in particular the fall of the Indus valley civilizations is connected to a major meteorite shower also simultaneously occurring in Mesopotamia and the mid-East and recorded in parallel myths there. The dating of this event is controversial but it is instructive to know that the fall of the Indus valley civilization is often stated to be contemporaneous with catastrophic events elsewhere (In this case, often stated to be the time of the explosion of the Thera volcano)

The Maruts in Velikovskian interpretation, as meteorite swarms. This could well be so only with the meteorites following in the trains of comets rather than the more permanent planets like Mercury and Mars. Source for images:


The Terrible Ones

Venus had a tail, considerably shortened since the time it was a comet, but still long enough to

give the impression of a hanging flame, or smoke, or attached hair. When Mars clashed with

Venus, asteroids,1 meteorites, and gases were torn from this trailing part, and began a semiindependent

existence, some following the orbit of Mars, some other paths.

These swarms of meteorites with their gaseous appendages were newborn comets; flying in

bands and taking various shapes, they made an uncanny impression. Those which followed Mars

closely looked like a troop following their leader. They also ran along different orbits, grew

quickly from small to giant size, and terrorized the peoples of the earth. And when, soon after the

impact of Venus and Mars, Mars began to threaten the earth, the new comets, running very close

to the earth, added to the terror, continually recalling the hour of peril.

Ares of Homer, going into battle, is accompanied by never resting horrible creatures, Terror,

Rout, and Discord. Terror and Rout yoke the gleaming horses of Ares, themselves dreadful

beasts, also known by these names; Discord, "sister and comrade of man-slaying Ares, rageth

incessantly; she at the first rears her crest but little, yet thereafter planteth her head in heaven,

while her feet tread on earth."

Similarly, the Babylonians saw the planet Mars-Nergal in the company of demons, and wrote in

their hymns to Nergal: 2 "Great giants, raging demons, with awesome members, run at his right

and at his left." These "raging demons" are pictured also in the Nergal-Eriskigal poem; 3 they

bring pestilence and cause earthquakes.

It appears that the mythological figures of the Furies of the Latins or the Erinyes of the Greeks,

with serpents winding about their heads

1 Between Mars and Jupiter are over a thousand asteroids that have been thought to have once

been a planet. G. A. Atwater queries whether they could have resulted from the encounter

between Mars and Venus.

2 Bollenrucher, Gebete und Hymnen an Nergal, p. 29.

3 Fragments of this poem were found presumably at el-Amarna. It is very likely that the

Ethiopians, who subdued Egypt in the eighth century, occupied Akhet-Aten (Tell-el-Amarna),

and that some parts of the archives may have been deposited by them.



and arms, flashing flame with their eyes, swinging torches around like wheels, grew out of the

same prodigies which moved rapidly, changed their forms hourly, and acted violently. The

Erinyes traveled in a group, like huntresses or like a "pack of savage hounds," 4 but sometimes

they appeared to be split into two groups.5
To these comets, traveling in bands with Mars or Indra, are dedicated many Vedic hymns, indeed

a great part of them. They are called Maruts "shining like snakes," "blazing in their strength,"

"brilliant like fires." •


strong and giver of victory.7

And it is said that their "strength is like the vigor of their father."

Your march, O Maruts, appears brilliant. . . .

We invoke you, the great Maruts,

the constant wanderers. . . .

Like the dawn, they uncover the dark nights

with red rays, the strong ones,

with their brilliant light,

as with a sea of milk. . . .

Streaming down with rushing splendor,

they have assumed their bright and brilliant color.8

Stones were hurled by these comets.

You the powerful, who shine with your spears, shaking even what is unshakable by strength . . .

Hurling the stone in the flight! . . . All beings are afraid of the Maruts.9

May your march be brilliant, O Maruts . . .

Shining like snakes.

May that straightforward shaft of yours, O Maruts,

bounteous givers, be far from us,

and far the stone which you hurl! 10

* J. Geffcken, "Eumenides, Erinyes" in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. J. Hastings,

Vol. V.

* Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, 1. 968; Aeschylus, Eumenides.

* Vedic Hymns (transl. F. Max Miiller, 1891). 7 Ibid., Mandala I, Hymn 171.

* Ibid., Hymn 172. • Ibid., Hymn 85. 10 Ibid., Hymn 172.


Meteorites, when entering the earth's atmosphere, make a frightful din. So did the Maruts:

Even by day the Maruts create darkness. . . . Then from the shouting of the Maruts over the

whole space of the Earth, men reeled forward.11

This darkness and this din were narrated in scriptural and rabbinical sources, in Roman

traditions, and in hymns to Nergal. As the similarity of the description of the "terrible ones" in

the Vedic hymns and in Joel is striking, but has not been noticed, a few more quotations should

follow here.

The comets, just beginning to whirl, looked like revolving torches or writhing snakes; they

assumed the form of spinning wheels, and the celestial phantasmagoria appeared like swift

chariots; changing their forms, the Maruts looked like horses racing along the sky, and then

again like a host of warriors, leaping, climbing, irresistible.

The verses of the second chapter of Joel (2 : 2-11) are given in their order, interspersed with

verses taken from a number of Vedic hymns dedicated to the Maruts.

Joel 2:2 A day of darkness and of gloominess,



years of many generations.

Vedic Hymns Even by day the Maruts create darkness.12 The terrible Marut-host of everyouthful

heroes.13 All beings are afraid of the Maruts: they are men terrible to behold, like


Joel 2:3 A fire devoureth before them;

and behind them a flame burneth. . . . Nothing shall escape them.

" Ibid., Hymn 48. 12 Ibid., Hymn 38. «Ibid., Mandala V, Hymn 53,
i« Ibid., Mandala I, Hymn 85.



Vedic Hymns Like a blast of fire. . . .

Blazing in their strength, brilliant like fires, and impetuous.15

Joel 2 : 4 The appearance of them

is as the appearance of horses: and as horsemen, so shall they run.

Vedic Hymns At their racings, the earth shakes, as if broken,

when on the heavenly path they harness for victory.

They wash their horses like racers in the courses, they hasten with the points of the reed on their

quick steeds.16

Joel 2 : 5 Like the noise of chariots on the tops of mountains


in battle array.

Vedic Hymns They are like headlong charioteers on their ways.

They who are brilliant, of terrible design, powerful, and devourers of foes.

On your chariots charged with lightning . . .

Host of your chariots, terrible Marut host.17


all faces shall gather blackness.

Vedic Hymns At your approach the son of man holds himself down. . . . You have caused men

to tremble, you have caused mountains to tremble.18

Joel 2 : 7 They shall run like mighty men;


shall not break their ranks.

is Ibid., Hymns 39, 172. " Ibid., Hymns 86, 172.

" Ibid., Hymns 172, 19, 36; Mandala V, Hymn 53. J8 Ibid., Mandala I, Hymn 37.


Vedic Hymns Your conquest is violent, splendid, terrible, full and crushing. . . . The terrible

train of untiring Maruts. . . . Full of terrible designs, like giants.19

Joel describes how these warriors, coming with fire and clouds, will run upon the wall, enter in

at the windows, run to and fro in the city, and the sword can do them no harm. In similar terms

the Vedic hymns describe the conquest by this terrible host.

If there is any doubt as to the nature of the "terrible ones," the following words should dissipate


Joel 2 : 10 The earth shall quake before them;



Maruts are often called "shakers of heaven and earth." Vedic Hymns You shake the sky.

The terrible ones . . . even what is firm and unshakable is being shaken.

When they whose march is terrible have caused the rocks to tremble,

or when the manly Maruts have shaken the back of heaven.

Hide the hideous darkness,

make the light which we long for! 20

The earth groaned, the meteorites—the host of the Lord—filled the sky with a battle cry "over

the whole space of the Earth," and "men reeled forward."

These were, in Joel's words, the "wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and

pillars of smoke," when the "sun is turned into darkness, and the moon into blood."

The clouds, the fire, the terrifying din, the darkness in the middle of the day; the fantastic figures

on the sky of speeding chariots, run-'* Ibid., Hymns 168, 64. 20 ibid., Hymns 168, 167, 106,

38, 86.

ning horses, marching warriors; the trembling of the earth, the reeling of the firmament, were

visualized, felt, and feared on the shores of both the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean, for

they were not local disturbances, but displays of cosmic forces in cosmic dimensions. Joel did

not copy from the Vedas nor the Vedas from Joel. In more than this one instance it is possible to

show that peoples, separated even by broad oceans, have described some spectacle in similar

terms. These were pageants, projected against the celestial screen, that, a few hours after they

were seen in India, appeared over Nineveh, Jerusalem, and Athens, shortly thereafter over Rome

and Scandinavia, and a few hours later over the lands of the Mayas and Incas.

The spectators saw in the celestial prodigies either demons, as the Erinyes of the Greeks or the

Furies of the Latins, or gods whom they invoked in prayers, as in the Vedas of the Hindus, or the

executors of the Lord's wrath, as in Joel and Isaiah.

In the Section "Isaiah" we maintained that the army of the Lord was not the Assyrian host, but a

celestial host. Isaiah called the army of the Most High "the terrible ones."


and will hiss unto them from the end of the earth:

and, behold, they shall come with speed swiftly:

None shall be weary nor stumble among them;

none shall slumber nor sleep;

neither shall the girdle of their loins be loosed,

nor the latchet of their shoes be broken:

Whose arrows are sharp, and all their bows bent,

their horses' hoofs shall be counted like flint,

and their wheels like a whirlwind.

Their roaring shall be like a lion . . .

they shall roar like young lions . . .

like the roaring of the sea:

and if one look unto the land,

behold darkness and sorrow;

and the light is darkened in the heavens thereof.21

21 Isaiah 5 : 26 ff.



The mighty roaring, the wheels revolving like a whirlwind, the horses with hoofs of flint, the

light darkened in heaven are once more common features.

Vedic Hymns These strong, manly, strong armed Maruts do not strive among themselves; firm

are the horns, the weapons on your chariot, and on your faces are splendours.22

They who by their own might

seem to have risen above heaven and earth . . .

they are glorious like brilliant heroes,

they shine forth like foe-destroying youths.23

They who are roaring and hasting like winds,

brilliant like the tongues of fire,

powerful like mailed soldiers . . .

who hold together like the spokes of chariot-wheels,

who glance forward like victorious heroes,

who are swift, like the best of horses.24

The dreadful figures scattered a hail of meteorites that bombarded walls with hot gravel and flew

into windows; simultaneously cities were turned into heaps by the leaping ground.

"The multitude of the terrible ones" is "like small dust," their invasion "shall be at an instant

suddenly," says Isaiah.25 The Lord shall send his host "with thunder, and with earthquake, and


wind, they shake the mountains.28

Isaiah (25 : 4) says that "the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall."

Thou [the Lord] shalt bring down the noise of strangers . . . the branch of the terrible ones shall

be brought low.27

22 Mandala VIII, Hymn 20. 23 Mandala X, Hymn 77.

24 Ibid., Hymn 78. 25 isaiah 29 : 5.

26 Vedic Hymns, Mandala V, Hymn 54. 27 Isaiah 25 : 5.



The Maruts are often called "the terrible ones," the same term Isaiah used. "The terrible ones" of

the Vedas were not common storm clouds, nor were the "terrible ones" of Joel and Isaiah human

beings. Certainly only by chance did the similarity of names and pictures in the Vedas and the

Prophets escape the attention of students of religion.

The Maruts are understood here as comets which in great numbers started to whirl in the sky on

short orbits, after the impact of Mars and Venus. They followed and preceded the planet Mars.

The name Mars (genitive, Martis) would be of the same origin as Marut. It is therefore gratifying

to read that the philological relation has already been established.28 It is even more satisfactory

that this philological equation was made without knowledge of the actual relation between the

planet Mars and "the terrible ones."

By comparing Hebrew historical, Chinese astronomical, and Latin ecclesiastical material, we

have established that it was the planet Mars which caused a series of catastrophes in the eighth

and seventh centuries before this era. The Greek epos explained how it happened that Venus

ceased and Mars began to be a threat to the earth. In heavenly battles, Ares or Nergal, both

known as the planet Mars, had an entourage of demoniac figures. The name Mars is derived

from the Indian Marut; Maruts, "the terrible ones," are "the terrible ones" of Isaiah and Joel.

The origin of the Greek name Ares was debated by philologists,29 and reasons against a

common root with the identical Mars were admitted. It seems to me that just as Mars is derived

from Marut, "the terrible ones" of the Vedas, so Ares was formed from the "terrible one" of the

Hebrew, which, as used by Joel and Isaiah, is ariz.

In a no longer extant passage of Pliny there was something said about comets being produced by

planets.30 Also the Soochow Chart

28 "Why should we object to Mars, Martis as a parallel form of Maruts? I do not say the two

words are identical, I only maintain that the root is the same. . . . If there could be any doubt as to

the original identity of Marut and Mars, it is dispelled by the Umbrian name cerfo Martio, which,

as Grassmann (Kuhn's Zeitschrift, XVI, 190, etc.) has shown, corresponds exactly to the

expression sardha-s maruta-s, the host of the Maruts. Such minute coincidences can hardly be

accidental." F. Max Miiller, Vedic Hymns (1891), I, xxv. » Ibid., p. xxvi. so Cf. Pauly-

Wissowa, Real-Encyclopadie, Vol. XI, Col. 1156.


refers to occasions in the past when comets were born from planets, from Mars, Venus, and


Samples from the Planets

In the Vedic hymns the Maruts are implored to "be far from us and far the stone which you hurl."

When comets pass close to the earth, stones occasionally fall; the classic case is that of the

meteorite that fell at Aegospotami when a comet shone in the sky.1 The Hindu book of

Varahasanhita sees in the meteorites portents of devastation by fire and earthquake.2

Since the planets were gods, stones hurled by them or by the comets created in their encounters,

were feared as divine missiles,3 and when they fell and were found, they were worshiped.

The stone of Cronus at Delphi,4 the image of Diana at Ephesus, which, according to Acts (19 :

35), was the image which fell down from Jupiter, the stones of Amon and Seth at Thebes,5 were

meteorites. Also the image of Venus on Cyprus was a stone which fell from the sky.6 The
Palladium of Troy was a stone that fell on the earth "from Pallas Athene" 7 (the planet Venus).

The sacred stone of Tyre, too, was a meteorite related to Astarte, the planet Venus. "Traveling

about the world, she [Astarte] found a star falling from air, or sky, which she taking up,

consecrated on the holy island [Tyre]."8 At Aphaca in Syria a meteorite fell which "was thought

to be Astarte herself," and a temple to Astarte was built there; festivals "were regu-

1 Aristotle Meteorologica i. 7. $

2 Frazer, Aftermath (supplement to The Golden Bough) (1936), p. 312.

Two Greek cities, Bura and Helice, were destroyed by earthquake and tidal wave and swallowed

by the earth and sea in the year —373, when a comet shone in the sky.

3 According to Mohammed, stones that fell on the sinful tribes were inscribed with the names of

those whom they were destined to kill.

* G. A. Wainwright, "The Coming of Iron," Antiquity, X (1936), 6.

8 Wainwright Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, XIX (1933), 49-52.

« Olivier, Meteors, p. 3. 1 Cf. Bancroft, The Native Races, III, 302.

8 R. Cumberland, Sanchoniatho's Phoenician History (1720), p. 36. Lucian says

that Astarte was the fallen star of Sanchoniathon. Ibid., p. 321. See also F. Movers,

Die Phonizier, I, 639.


larly timed to coincide with the appearance of Venus as the Morning or Evening Star." 9

The stone on which the Temple of Solomon was built—Eben Shetiya, or fire stone—is a bolide

that fell in the beginning of the tenth century, in the time of David, when a comet, which bore the

appearance of a man with a sword, was seen in the sky.10 The sacred shield of Numa at Rome,

the ancile of Roman Mars, was a bolide; it fell from the sky n in the beginning of the seventh

century and its origin was connected with Mars.

In the years when the planet Mars had long been pacified, its position was still watched when

meteorites fell. Thus the Chinese wrote in —211: "The planet Mars being in the neighborhood of

Antares, a star fell at Toung-Kiun, and arriving to the ground, it changed to a stone."12 The

people of the place cut a prophecy of evil for the emperor on the stone, and the emperor had it

destroyed. Carving messages to peoples or kings on fallen stones was known before and has

been practiced since.

One of the stones that fell from the sky is still worshiped today—it is the black stone of Kaaba in

Mecca. Now its surface is black from being touched and kissed innumerable times, but under its

cover of dirt it retains its original reddish color. It is the holiest thing in Mecca, built into the wall

of Kaaba, and pilgrims travel thousands of miles to kiss it.



Moslems as the "daughters of the god." 13

The black stone of Kaaba, according to Moslem tradition, fell from

• Frazer, The Golden Bough, V, 258 ff. Cf. the Section "Worship of the Morning Star," note 18.

W» I Chronicles 21; II Samuel 24. See Tractate Yoma 5, 2; cf. Tractate Sota 48b; also Ginzberg,

Legends, V, 15.

11 Olivier, Meteors, p. 3.

12 Abel-Remusat. Catalogue des bolides et des a4roliihes observes a la Chine, p. 7.

13 Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentums, p. 34.

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