nile river

[Guest guest]

ive heard for a while now that the nile river was mapped out to its source in one of the puranas, but i read recently that this was in teh vayu purana.

 

can anyoen confirm? does anyone know the specific verses? please help!!

[aqua3 0]

I have not read or heard about Nile being described in puranas. Perhaps some description of some river around Mount Meru could have been there. But one interesting information is that a volcano by name Meru, which is oft mentioned as a mountain in the centre of the universe in Hindu texts and a river by name jumbhoo which is supposed to have originated from Meru, giving the place its name Jumbhoo dweepa, exists in Tanzania and a river by name Jumboo is descending from this volcano.This Meru is on the equator perhaps making it to be at the centre of this world! If by continental drift, this Meru got separated from the present Bharatha varsha, there is every possibility that the river Nile also must have been mentioned (by another name) in texts as somewhere near the legendary Meru. A good piece of work to do research on this subject is to study the Jumbhoo dweepa nirmana patalam of Shanthi parvam of Mahabharatha, wherein Sanjaya describes in many chapters the location and features of all land forms of this world in those days, which he saw through his newly acquired Door drushti. These chapters occur just before the commencement of Bhagavad Gita.

[Guest guest]

your info about the river and volcano in tanzania is VERY interestig. thank you very much for posting. i will definately try to read more about this.

 

as for the nile, te story goes as such (based on the autobiography/memoirs of john speake)....in the 1800s european colonialists were hard pressed to "discover" africa. they wanted to know of all the luxiers the land had to offer. finding the source of the nile was a very important thing and many people were really into it. it was the "in" thing to do.

 

Many people went, including the famed Sir Richard Burton. However, no one, including the africans knew for sure which it was. THe ancient greeks and romans also made attempts but couldnt get past the Sudd, a swampy area in southern sudan. A man named John Hanning Speake was a British military officer stationed in India during the mid-late 1800s and he was approached by a friend who new an indian man who claimed to know the source of the nile from a book called the puranas. Using these sources, it said that the source was at a lake called Amara by the Somagiri.

 

He took this info the crown and was commissioned a trip. He went with Burton and followed it down to Lake Tanganyika. Burton got sick and couldnt continue but he being the experienced superior in the group declared that this was the source. However, SPeake continued and Burton was too sick to follow. He came to a lake which the locals called Amara located near the Mountains of the Moon. the sanskrit of mountains of the moon would be 'somagiri'. the lake identified in the puranas was lake amara. Speake re-named this lake Lake Victoria, which is what we all know it as today.

 

I wanted to get the original ppurana text. I heard recently it was in the Vayu Purana. Anyone have any links to the text??

 

This is not so hard to believe however, since ancient indians have had extensive trade networks with the east coast of africa since around the time of the ancient greeks and romans. The romans around the time of jesus traded heavily with the malabar coast by going down the nile and crossing the arabian sea rather than trading over land. ITs not so hard to beliebve that there were indians in africa at this time and they could truly have been the original discoverers. But we all know how modern scholars talk down of the racists ways of former european scholars and yet still beileve every conviction of history which these racists euro scholars have written. the majority of today's 'academia' is taken directly from the academia of colonial europe. No one seems to think that it should be questioned considering all, if not almost all, was done with eurocentric viewpoints.

[aqua3 0]

The information on Nile that you have given must be certainly taken up for further research in Puranas. Another interesting information was given by Kapil Sibal, the minister for S & T that the south eastern tip of Antartica where an Indian team of scientists is carrying out research has all features of rock morphology in such a way that there is every reason to conclude that this was very much an extension of western ghats in the western sector which is now filled with Arabian ocean. This and other findings such as the one on Nile, Meru, Mayas and even Sumeru in Sumathra are strong indicators that this land mass was one and peopeld by those who followed sanatana dharma. When land forms drifted apart, the culture continued however with modifications with successive generations and sometimes to such an extant, that the original sanatana dharma itself was lost at many palces.

[Guest guest]

i do believe that northern antartcia, western australia, southern india and east africa met at the same spot back when all the continents were one....so its not surprising that under all that ice is an environment very similar to that of africa and/or india