In recent years, more and more people are talking about the three oldest centers of culture, where writing arose. One of them, apparently, is Chinese, the other two, connected with each other, are in the zone of contacts between Indo-European and non-Indo-European tribes. The northern branch here includes "lines and cuts" and protoklinis. And to the south? Here some of the tracks are hidden by the seas. And the secrets are countless.
For example, individual characters of the mysterious writing of the proto-Indian civilization of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa and the writing of Kohau-rongo-rongo from Easter Island are extremely similar. Accident? Or the trail of the ancient sailors who sailed from India to Polynesia?
Meanwhile, the great traveler Thor Heyerdahl dedicated his book "The Maldives Mystery" to the ancient unexplored cultures of the islands adjacent to the Indian subcontinent. Their most tangible traces have survived on the island of Lanka.
Nowadays there are mainly two peoples living in Sri Lanka - Sinhalese and Tamils. The ancient totem of the first is a lion, the second is a cobra and a tiger. Today, Indo-European Sinhalese are Buddhists, and non-Indo-European Tamils are Hindus. It is believed that the Sinhalese first came to the island, about 2,500 years ago. And before that, undersized Vedda hunters lived in the forests, and in some places they live. But they had no cities. Meanwhile, in Lanka there are huge buildings of the pre-Singala era.
According to legend, they were built by two ancient peoples - nagas, that is, snakes, and yakhas, or demons. It is clear that we are not really talking about snakes and demons as such. But who about? The kingdom of the Nagas, according to legend, was located on the Kelani River, near the present city of Colombo, as well as in the north of the island. It seems that we are talking about a tribe related to the Tamils. But it is especially interesting to look for traces of the kingdom of demons - yakhas.
It is believed that the legendary leader of the Sinhalese first trampled on the ports of the Gulf of Cambay, and then, around 525 BC, with the help of the sorceress Kuvanna, who came over to his side, destroyed the capital of the Yakhas, Lanka. But its ruins have not been found so far. As for the sorceress, the leader allegedly later killed her himself, and then married a Tamil woman from the south of India. However, even before the sorceress, the Sinhalese leader was married. But while sailing to Lanka, a storm scattered the ships, and the first wife mistakenly ended up in the Maldives, where she founded a local dynasty.
The Yakkh people, according to the same legends, worshiped the god of wealth Kubera. Russian author K. Olegin identifies the location of the Yakkh capital with the impregnable rock of Sigiriya, at the base of which is the famous Cobra Cave. Its “mirror wall” has colorful frescoes depicting dancing snake-like women with elongated ears, into whose lobes are inserted discs.
The frescoes are not less than 2,200 years old - this is already the Sinhalese period. But the Arittha fortress, 40 kilometers southeast of the ancient Sinhalese capital of Anuradhapura, is recognized by historians as an older structure. What did the mythical yakhas do? The walls of the fortress consist of stone blocks of very impressive dimensions, carefully fitted to each other. Also known are equally ancient hydraulic structures - tunnels with even more massive stone blocks.
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Here one involuntarily recalls the equally mysterious fortresses of pre-Columbian America and is no longer so surprised by the similarity of signs on Easter Island and in the Indus River valley. After all, the god Kubera was known to the proto-Indians. Is it not from these civilizations that the thread stretches to Lanka? Recall that the largest port cities of these non-Indo-European tribes now rest under the waters of the Gulf of Cambay. It was from here, seven thousand years ago, that goods went to the Indus Valley, to Lanka, and to the Persian Gulf region. But the ancient inhabitants of Lanka differed from the inhabitants of their supposed metropolis by their special art in hydraulic engineering. They even knew how to regulate the level of artificial lakes. Frescoes with dancing goddesses have also survived, whose poses are also characteristic of statuettes left over from the Indus Valley civilizations. True, there was no building stone near those cities; bricks were used. So it was the ancient Sri Lankans who mastered the laying of huge stone blocks.
Thor Heyerdahl also compared the mysterious Yakh civilization with the cities of the Indus Valley, mentioning the ritual of lengthening the earlobes, also known to us from the statues of the "long-eared" on Easter Island and from the customs of the Incas. He writes that this custom, long before its appearance on the Pacific shores, was with sailors from the port of Lothal in the Bay of Cambay.
In the 11th century, the Arab author Abu Reyhan Biruni attributed Lanka to one of the four most important sacred centers of the world, considering it a symbol of the south. Why, in the myths of the Sinhalese, did the yakhs become demons? Perhaps because of their worship of wealth, meat-eating, and initial rejection of Buddhism.
In a word, the history of Sri Lanka in an era that is more than 2,500 years away from us is very mysterious. In 1993, the author of this article had a chance to examine a woman who possessed the ability to retroscopy - this is the scientific name for clairvoyance, turned to the past. She gave interesting information just about the customs of one of the tribes who lived on the island during this little-studied period. The most useful was a small dictionary of the then language, for example, the name of the ritual dagger - "vuko".
The language of the tribe, according to this informant, was still Indo-European. In this case, we are probably talking about people who appeared in Lanka shortly before the Sinhalese, and not at all about the mysterious Yakhas. These ancient builders of fortresses and dams seem to have a Dravidian language, as did the dialects of southern India and the ancient civilizations of the Indus Valley and ports on the shores of the Gulf of Cambay. In addition, even mentally healthy clairvoyants can rarely accurately date the pictures they see. And in this case, the general reliability of the historical background, say, the description of rituals, is not enough. The question is painfully complicated.
As for the inscriptions from Easter Island, it seems that experts in the languages of the Dravidian group could help their decoders. A hint is provided by the history of Tamils living on the Indian coast just "opposite" Sri Lanka. After all, it was they who in their time invented the catamaran. Even this word itself is from their language and means "logs tied together." The Indians living in Singapore and Malaysia are mostly Tamils. But all this does not mean at all that the Tamils themselves got to Easter Island. After all, other tribes could well adopt from them not only the ability to build catamarans along with the word itself, but also borrow letters from them or their neighbors.
Experienced sailor Heyerdahl was surprised by the possible route from Lanka to the east due to the prevailing headwinds. But he assumed that from the Maldives in ancient times they could travel west to South Africa and even to South America. However, we do not know what sails were used at that time. So the route to the east of Lanka, in our opinion, is quite probable. After all, the road could be phased, when the goal is achieved not in one voyage.
Experienced sailor Heyerdahl was surprised by the possible route from Lanka to the east due to the prevailing headwinds.
Here is one example of a borrowing by the Polynesians of a custom and a word characteristic of Sri Lanka. Rice cooked in coconut milk is called "kiri-bat" in Lanka. It is offered to the goddess Pattini, revered here. And in Polynesia there is the state of Kiribati, which is spread over numerous islands. So there was a trail of ancient sailors who mastered catamarans …
Sergey Krivenkov
