The naked Gangaur

The naked Gangaur

Vishnu, World Order and the Naked Gangaur we all share in the Old World inclusive Europe although with different names. Analysing the Indus symbolism helps us understand our culture easier since we have symbols in common and also loans from India

Indus culture, Harappa, Mohenjo Daro, Rigveda, animal round, pictorial script, Indus Script, World Order, Vishnu, Tree of Life, Rahu, Ketu, Gangaur, Parvati, Siva, marriage, fertility, Hesiodos, Lait, Astarte, Aphrodite, Black Stone.

| Indus 1 | Moon year | To Underworld | Indus symbols | sitemap | home |

High seas ship with the steersman high at left from Mohenjo Daro

In Rigveda there is 33 mentioning of ships. We can conclude that many gods were in the heavens and they sailed on the heavenly ocean were the stars were fishes. Gods like Sun, Thunderstorm, Fire, Rain, River used ships in heavens as well as on earth since their real incarnation was on earth. In one poem the goddess Earth (Aditi) comes in a boat on goddess Sarasvati River and the reciters steps on board. We see similar symbolism in Sumer, Egypt and Scandinavia and other places.

India seems far away from Europe still today. Euro-centric scientists have for long defined the agenda of "archaeology" and as a rule they underestimate the Indian culture as source to our own. The more we learn the more we see that Indus is the third big culture since 6000 years. India is the big "people producer" in same class as China. That does not happen over night. India of today is still manifold of cultures since there has been tolerance most of the time. New religions join the manifold without much fuss … with some exceptions of course.

The mighty India is for us chaos of cultures. To that come the early script culture that naturally is good, but also chaos in the end. There has never been a consistent culture. It is only a mix and to that come the time deep with folk memory in texts like Rigveda that origin from 3rd millennium BC like the Sumerian and some of the Egyptian folk memory.

Only a few fragments tell that their Ritual Age began around 4200 BC at the same time as in Egypt end Mesopotamia. In Rigveda there is some fragment telling about "the dog", Canis Major as stars of season. India has some dolmens we can compare to the European dolmens from early fourth millennium BC. But like in Egypt and Sumer most of the dynastic or cultural symbolism begin around 3100 BC with the main symbols Oxen and Scorpio

Places like Harappa and Mohenjo Daro furnish us with most of the material for our analysis regarding the time from 2600 BC onward. We get the reminder that city cultures do not live for ever and it seems that the city cultures just vanished … the enigma is that the script was saved. Let us hope they find more places so we can see the development between disappearing of these places and the Hinduism

It is much the same even in Mesopotamia and Egypt that we do not know how many city cultures has disappeared along the rivers and in the deltas through the ages. In India even the ocean might have taken some cities at the shores. Still the finds from the Indus cities give us glimpses of the culture of those days. It is time consuming to analyse and se the rest of the iceberg so to speak.

The Indus Script is still only fragmentarily interpreted. When I began my studies "ages ago" they told about around 150 different symbols from 1200 seals. Now they have found more than 450 symbols on more than 3000 seals and tablets and new digging give more every year.

Once we start to interpret we can use some assumptions build on what we know from other related cultures. We can also ask what was natural in rural and city life at the time. Culture is a function of population, the environment and available technology. To get near the Rigveda texts could be of help but only fragmentarily since the roots of Indus culture lies in pre-vedic times, i.e. even before 2600 BC. Behind the texts of Hinduism written after 1000 BC are many generations of Brahmins and also cultural mix and influence.

Fragments and interpretation shows that they surely was part of the "world wide" ritual adjustment around 3100 BC when Oxen and maybe Aldebaran became fix-stars of spring equinox. But even Capella in Aurigae seems to have been important since it was a female star representing the heavenly waters. Opposite stars used particular in the moon symbolism were the asterism of Scorpio. In Egypt that continued at least in major temples until the adjustment 1159 BC. As ever we have to be open for future discoveries and especially in India it would bring more light.

The more I look at the Indus symbolism and compare with Sumer and Egypt it seems that there is a phase shift around 2300 BC. Before that the animals dominate as gods/ idols as we see for instance on the Bull harp from Sumer where the Bull play the Bull harp accompanied by a goat and the Lion and another animal serve with food.

That pictures how "in the beginning" the animals were part of family even in cities and palaces. It was better to use animals as examples than people were, since gods do not always do as people wishes. The great hero Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu are partly animals and maybe that was because they were idols also for cowboys since the myth tells that they tamed the Bull.

Especially in the seals of the Akkadians beginning with Sargon shows humanised gods. The Animal Round became partly symbolised with human gods with the quadrupled bullhorn crown. In Indus symbolism we find several humanised symbol with attribute. For instance we see a sticky figure with bullhorns. That should be Indra, thunderstorm since they tell he was a bull. Another has the fire symbol as head and that should be Agni of course. During Bronze Age the priest-kings were replaced with kings claiming they were god begotten. Late the Roman Augustus claimed that he and his parents were god begotten

… only in Egypt they kept their odd gods to the end of empire. Naturally there are some exceptions such as Isis we see as the Goddess already in predynastic times followed by the "asvins". In general all gods have their (pairs) followers symbolising helping aspects.

In the time span of 5000 years the starry sky is of course the same but the positions of the stars relative to sun and moon orbit changes. Another change with urbanisation is that people and Brahmins got interested in planets and astrology. The old connection to rural life and natural fertility was broken since they were of no use for citizens and nobility. The leadership became half gods so that we can say they fly between rural people and the gods. The main theme became "human relations" in the cities.

In Europe we normally have too many categories and that count for the heavenly objects too. We speak about sun and moon as special objects and even the planets are in another category than the stars. Naturally that is rubbish. For the Indians they were originally all one category of heavenly objects they symbolised with "fishes in the heavenly ocean". 

The animal round and the year are in linear motion over a year. Other planets than sun and moon are irregular compared with on year. Only a minor part of the population knew about the planets. The Brahmins and nobility got their niche telling about these and making them the heavenly objects deities. Only the chosen could tell the wishes of gods.

Naturally people must offer to the gods and contribute food and supplies. I suppose that the gods got only the steam from the Chinese boiler, while the officials tasted the food. At that stage religion become politics and people were still legs but equality with their god-begotten leaders vanished. Asko Parpola has shown that the names of the time show they were servants of the gods or in other way connected to the gods. We can expect that only nobility used seals at that time.

Loss of pictorial scripts look like a change of culture. In Sumer the step to cuneiform was not so abrupt and the change of rule used the same pictorial script in official seal. However it was never too intelligible. In Egypt they used the so-called hieroglyphs in official relief even when they changed to use the demotic. The early Egyptian script was made so the people could catch the clue from the ideograms. The reason was surely that the symbolism was selling the leadership.

In India it looks as if the Indus Script vanished, but part of this mystery is surely that we do not have enough continuous evidence from especially second millennium BC. Ordinary people stick to their traditions for thousand years if it suits like the ground groves in Sweden made during thousand years. Even culture with ruler continues the tradition by the gamblers' rule "Do not leave winning system".

Rigveda is an example how they made cultural writing long before the Hinduism. Writing down things is always like "killing normal evolution" …as we see it today in some religions that use the same holly script in our technical society as 3000 years ago. A national epos conserves one version of the legend and you are not allowed to question that. That feeds naturally conflicts between dogmatism and those wanting "to follow time" and get the truth..

It is not my intention to solve the enigma of Indus Script. Together with my files about Snake River Script I comment around 80 symbols. That is less than a fifth of known symbols at this time. In India I search for their ritual and world order connected to ritual astronomy in the same way as in other cultures including Scandinavia. I want to see if there are loans from India in our Scandinavian culture and naturally also interchange between southern cultures. A special feature in Indus Script as such is that it looks like an isolated culture around 2000 BC … I think it depends on lack of knowledge at this stage.

…..

World Order of Indus on one two-sided tablet

On this tablet we see the core of the World Order. We have to see the squared model of the sun year including the six-spoked wheel representing the moon year. The situation at the left image is the same as we find as Senenmuts calendar in Egypt. On that we see Horus = Time spearing Oxen, which means spring equinox. The asterism Oxen lies under Aurigae and Aldebaran is the brightest star. In Egypt it was favourite in spite of precession until 1159 BC in the dominating temples.

Instead of opposite Scorpio we see the Gharial = crocodile as we see also in Egypt. But in Egypt it is the small one that replaces the old one of the running year. They symbolised time as the crocodile that eat the moons. We see similar symbolism in several places as for instance in Siberia.

The "sitting" is probably what we know as Vishnu, World Order with four faces in the cardinal directions. It is more understandable if we use proper names telling about the real meaning of the symbols. He contends the animal and the vegetative life by his headgear that surely symbolise the Tree of Life symbol for the growers.

It is often hard to distinguish between tamed Oxen and the wild bull Taurus. Taurus was symbol of strength and capacity of defence. That is why the Pharaoh was called the Bull. On the Narmer palette we see the Bull in front of a tray in the same composition as on some Indus seal. On the same palette wee see on the top four Oxen head with humanlike faces, that symbolises world order and cardinal directions.

The other side of the tablet shows the essentials of the moon year. The wheel symbolises the month in Indus 2 x 6 months in pairs. The wheels seem to be the circumpolar stars, i.e. above the horizon all the time. The Water goddess holds two dog-like animals we normally se at both end of Watergate known as the Big Dog, Canis Major and the former Sagittarius as dog … or in Egypt Anubis / Crocodile.

This is the original division of the moon year between Ketu and Rahu, which were the "falling node" respectively the "rising node" of the moon. Rahu is at Ramadan and we see the Dog in Scandinavian symbolism at that place of the ritual year. In the "Frogs song" from Rigveda we learn that original Ramadan was celebrated after midsummer and before the rain period when the frogs began to sing.

Later became head and tail of the Dragon these cardinal points. The Elephant is Ganessa nowadays and it is also used for the "rising node" and is surely Leo. In many zodiacs they use the symbol "rising node" b for Leo /Lion. The "falling node" is the same symbol up and down. We also see that minor part of the settlements used a year division at the solstices. In time and place we meet several systems of deciding especially the moon year. … In calendar stick from medieval times we see on some marks for the falling node at 19th August and the rising node at 21st of September

Some see a hare in the moon and the origin could be from when spring equinox was in Hare around 4000 BC. While others like the Brahmins see the dog Rahu in the moon as they say. When the astronauts were on the moon the Brahmins joked and said, "Now Rahu has got fleas"

Sarsvati / Gangaur / Parvati the heavenly rain

The heavenly Watergate has many names depending on culture and folk memory. Italians and the Danes have the same Via Lacta and Milkway while in Swedish it is just Wintergate that does not say anything but that it is visible especially in the dark season. The other three tell us about a time when people abstracted the rains to the Watergate. Water is naturally the most important thing in life. To star with our own body is more than 70 % water. It is the liquid in which we live and that transport everything from food to excrement.

In Rigveda they tell that Sarasvati was the river goddess with another incarnation in heavens. Probably people at the other big river Sindhu named her Sindhu. Nowadays they call her Gangaur in Rajasthan and she is surely Siva's wife Parvati in other songs. It would be natural for people to tie their songs and myths to their own surroundings.

Anyhow it gives us a glimpse of the time before 2000 BC and that the idols were in the sky as well as in nature around them. Soma was the water and when they sing about it is the elixir of gods. However gods do not drink or eat too much so there is left for the "legs = the people. There are many long songs in Rigveda to Indra and Agni. We are indoctrinated to see them as humanlike idols that fix the most for mankind.

But if we use the real meaning of the words Indra was "thunderstorm with a thunderbolt" and Agni was the "fire" and nothing else … the mystery disappear from the myths when we that, naturally. Another thing is that the three seasons of Indus were celebrated with fire offer besides the special ritual. As always the spring ritual was the most important.

The real meaning shows us that in their way our ancestors analysed the essentials in life. They gave name to things and happening so they could discuss about them and plan their life. In some parts of the world it rains heavily as for instance in the monsoon areas it rains for weeks. We would call it sky fall. That is why they created the name Dragon and put it on the top of the starry sky.

The Chinese builders of today leave space between the skyscrapers so that Dragon can fly between the buildings without leaving all moisture to the buildings. It is a matter of language, tradition and poetry if we can and want to understand the reality behind the ancient symbols

Mostly I use descriptive names instead of names from language we do not understand. Some idols are so old that we have no name and must describe. The Naked is one of our oldest idols and in France we find a couple reliefs as for instance in the Madeleine cave and the other "Lady with a moon horn" in the cave of Laussel. The latter tells us that she represents the rain and the horn is abundance and fertility also symbolised by the new moon horn. They saw that they could connect growth to the new moon and naturally rain is essential for fertility.

Latest dating tells that the Laussel relief is more than 16000 years old. Last year they found the Cussac cave with some ladies among the animals and they date it preliminary to 22000 to 28000 years old. I hope we soon get pictures from there. The ladies from Madeleine and Laussel look pretty much like mature women of today.

We see that at least in the central part of rising civilisation the Naked Lady was a concept long before the novelty of putting the world order in the night sky that systematises the seasons. Naturally the Lady got a place in centre and several incarnations since water is everywhere. Aurigae become in some places the Naked Lady of Watergate and the New Moon or Soma in India and Sumer was the rain and she had her twin sister in Underworld carrying the water as the womb.

The Engender marry the Naked rain-goddess guarded by Trees of Life in spring and the buck and the bridesmaid are there

Since the ritual is still living we can tell that this is the ritual in the gateway to the new season. It is about the fertility in nature for animal and vegetative life. They symbolise it with the young man called Siva today in India and his consort is Parvati. It does not matter that they have different names in other places and times. They are simply the couple of spring … in my childhood young people drove around in a carriage with the Spring Bride … now there are no horses at the countryside and not any fun.

The Naked with has the new moon as headgear and "Trees of Life" guide her. The guarding trees / lotus stalks are sometime called Asvins = friends and they are growing helpers. Kneeling is the young man and behind him a ram and below seven sisters. Seeing them as the asterisms Auriga, Perseus, Aries, and Pleiades is easy.

A comment to this is that the ram is of the same specie as the Egyptian Khnum and called Markhor goat in India. They tell the stars of Pleiades to be a weather mark as the clouds in the higher spheres affects their visibility up to seasons. They have used them all over the world as fix-stars after ca 2000 BC. The headgears maybe become fashion since we see them in many places and even in Bohuslaen and Austfold Norway. They might have come via Levant or Cyprus.

Even if we do not know their methods we can tell a lot about their fix stars and some ritual too. Rajasthan is in area of the known Indus culture. They are still celebrating a feast 18 days in Mars to April at the new moon after spring equinox and we can associate to a naked goddess. The feast last for eighteen days and it is mostly for the women. Gangaur wife of Siva is the goddess.

The theme is spring, young love, marriage and fertility. It begins with fasting in the first days, and they have pageant with the women in their best dress and clay-idols within the suite. Next day is the day of swing ... oh yeah, I remember those days ... and it can go on for days, with the boys in the bushes I believe.

The rest of the time is song, dance and offer to Gangaur like fruits, flowers, green grass, and beakers with water. At the end they have a pageant with women and idols to the river or lake for a bath ... GANGAUR sounds like "go out" in Scandinavian tongue. We cannot prove it but many words are alike in the old cultures.

We do not know when these ritual began but they are surely older than what we call Indus culture … When we look at the Law Rock at Dal, my province there are naked footprints on top of the Law for the Naked to stand on, i.e. her priestess. From the law rock goes footprints towards the lake and the message is clear on this rock from around 2000 BC.

The Markhor goat from Himalaya has spiral shaped horns. In this case the face is humanlike so we understand that it belongs to the world of idols. A kind of enigma is that the Egyptian Khnum has horns of the same shape. The Markhor has long hair and the wool was much coveted. As always myth and reality mixes as we see in a song from Rigveda about the Naked and the young man

Come near and embrace me closely!
Do not believe that I have few hairs
I am full of hairs like a sheep of the Gandhârîs.

The girl mentions her pubic hairs, because it was forbidden in ancient India to have sexual intercourse with a girl, whose pubic hairs were not yet grown. The erotic frankness of the verse is not surprising in the Veda, where sexual allusions are frequent. It could have inherited this feature from the Indus tradition, where a tablet with sexual motifs and a lot of erotic figurines were found. … text cited from --- Egbert Richter-Ushanas

Our culture has almost left rural life for our virtual reality. We have lost the touch of real life and symbiosis with nature. All kinds of taboo have been developed and not only by religion. The educated class is digging its own grave. Love and natural sexuality is the most important part of life since it is about survival of the specie. If we cannot love ourselves we cannot love our living space-time that is essential for sustainable survival of mankind. We are profiting on the generosity and fertility of nature. This I write from the knowledge of the state of our environment today Thursday, 02 August 2001

The Pleiades became current at spring equinox after 2000-BC and were used for long. They are still the most frequent ancient folk memory about spring in many places of the word. Normally the folklorist spares the legend and is not interested in the calendar symbolism behind. The Pleiades were used for reality

The Greek Hesiodos ca 700 BC wrote his Work and Days and included this poem from the Boeotian peasant's year:

.

When you see the stars of Pleiades, the daughters of Atlas glimpse,

then you shall begin the harvest and plough when they fade.

Forty days and nights they hide away.

Still, when they see them again in the sky in the round of year,

then you shall sharpen your sickle and get ready for harvest.

.

The rise was at sunrise and about 5th to 10th May then in Beotia. It was time for harvesting olives and wine. They were visible the rest of the year and until the beginning of April next year. Then they were invisible for forty days. Between 5th and 11th November their set was just before the sunset the winter began … maybe these thumb rules reached Scandinavian since we see the Beotian plough in our rock carvings.

We have to remark that the fix-stars were valid only approximately at the time. When astronomers talk about fix stars they mean heliacal rising = fixstar in conjunction at sunrise. But the stars are of course visible much of the year and the circumpolar star the entire year. When the Greeks tell about ancient fix-stars we have to be careful and know their relation to precession and time.

Some cities in Sumer had the Naked as the rain and with thunderbolts in her hands.

An eagle is the symbol for the lightening. A helping goddess shows that the water is used to portion out where needed. It is a natural problem in a landscape with only 200-millimetre rain a year.

In front of her is the same symbol as in Egypt called iset-step. Or "she steps down" meaning rain as well as sowing. In Sumer there is also a song about "Inanna steps down". The ziggurats were build with a big step for the gods at the top. People should know that there is a difference between people and gods and that the gods come from above.

We recognise the theme is much alike a mix of the late Scandinavian Ride-Thor and but also a Big Girl in a carriage draught by big cats in Bronze Age and she is mentioned in the Edda. The Hittites had the male thundering idol.

The Naked is seen in the symbolism of Levant about 2000 BC and in seals with Sumerian influence.

Some of them are the same compositions as in Indus with the goddess holding two lotus stems. The Palestinians called her perhaps Astarte. Another name was Lait that associates very much to "milk" and flow. In India the lotus was also a poetic word for the life-giving vulva.

The stems were the Asvins helpers with water and fertiliser. More complex was the Indian poetry that Brahma was born out of a lotus from the navel of Vishnu. Some understand the images others not ... about the same we can read in Egyptian mythology.

Once we are talking about Levant and Cyprus we can mention this cliff Petra tou Romioú.

Aphrodite was born here they tell. Actually there are more beauties. This one is from the seas. Another Aphrodite Ouranos was the heavenly and Maid of Moon We normally see Ouranos as Orion and then this should be Aurigae. On Cyprus we can learn how they mixed a goddess and a myth from several places. There are something Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Hittitian and Phoenician in the Maid of Cyprus.

The most famous temple was in Pafos in the times of the Greeks. The myth was about the naked beauty and her son or boy lower known as Aphrodite and Adonis or Cybele and Attis in Anatolia. Mainly we have two methods in leading ritual. One is the old Egyptian following one star and one idol. The other is to follow a suite.

They made squared temenos = open temples with walls around and of the same kind as the neo-Hittitian in Syria. We have some in Scandinavia and that is partly the idea behind our Nordic harg I believe. On our rocks they left very much for our imagination as we see only bare feet. Yet, who knows what a wonderful girl is looking like? ...

Strong myths like that about Aphrodite becomes easily a beauty to follow ... I have often at least for a while begun to follow a beauty. The Danish king Erik Ejegod died near Pafos in 1103. Maybe the beauty took him ... and it was too much. In one temple they have only a conic Black Stone because her beauty is too much to describe. Then the rest is left for imagination.

The Cypriot used symbolic stones in other temples for instance an oval stone in Ajia Irini. However, there saying a name is difficult because the cult idol was a hermaphrodite. Plato tells about it as the third kind of human. In Greek poetry and philosophy we find some speculation about a couple becoming like each other in the end. Some of us want to be like the beloved and maybe in time.

The idols and myths are naturally analysis of mankind in every aspect. That age began in last millennium BC when mankind left the ritual life and become individuals and discovered the problems about living in cities. From that age the Greeks are our best source. Often it is too dominating making us believe that we can use the model for earlier times.

Footprints of the naked from the Law Rock at Haugsbyn Dal around 2000 BC

We have two big rock carvings from that time that coincidence with the slab cists. The other is the Evenstorp carvings In that Aurigae seems to be the Naked that is followed by seasonal idols. It clearly shows the Animal round and besides that is the Moon Suite so it shows the same ritual year as in South. The mathematics in the moon suite is the same as in Indian tradition with just one days error since the Indians used 366 days year while it is 354 + 11 days in Scandinavian rock carvings.

On the Law Rock Haugsbyn the footprints are on the top of rostrum for the Naked or her "stand in", the priestess a young lady. It is a law in the "Egyptian style" with one season for the growers and another for the cattlers. There is a bit about marriage even between the two professions and that is the "Sumerian style".

Since naked footprints walk to the nearby lake we can also associate to the "Indus style". Like in the Levant the myths of the big cultures got mixed. These two rock carvings shows that even in Scandinavia the Naked was the leading idol at least in the place where we see her naked footprints.