Pyramids in India: Oldest and Largest Pyramid in India

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What is Pyramid?

A pyramid (from Greek: πυραμίς pyramís) is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilateral, or of any polygon shape. As such, a pyramid has at least three outer triangular surfaces (at least four faces including the base). The square pyramid, with a square base and four triangular outer surfaces, is a common version.

A pyramid’s design, with the majority of the weight closer to the ground[3] and with the pyramidion at the apex, means that less material higher up on the pyramid will be pushing down from above. This distribution of weight allowed early civilizations to create stable monumental structures.

Civilizations in many parts of the world have built pyramids. The largest pyramid by volume is the Mesoamerican Great Pyramid of Cholula, in the Mexican state of Puebla. For thousands of years, the largest structures on Earth were pyramids—first the Red Pyramid in the Dashur Necropolis and then the Great Pyramid of Khufu, both in Egypt—the latter is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still remaining.

Pyramid and Ahir / Yadav Connection 1

Ahichhatra

Ahichchhatra or Ahikhet(Sanskrit: अहिच्छत्र, romanized: Ahicchatra) or Ahikshetra (Sanskrit: अहिक्षेत्र, romanized: Ahikṣetra), near the modern Ramnagar village in Aonla tehsil, Bareilly district in Uttar Pradesh, India, was the ancient capital of Northern Panchala, a northern Indian kingdom mentioned in the Mahabharata.

Ahikshetra “Ahir Kshetra” means ” Region of Aheer…

Its history reaches back to late Vedic times, at which time it was capital of the Panchala kingdom. The name is written Ahikshetras as well as Ahi-chhatra, but the local legend of Adi Raja and the Naga, who formed a canopy over his head, when asleep, shows that the later is the correct form. The fort is said to have been built by Adi Raja, an Ahir whose future elevation sovereignty was foretold by Drona, when he found him sleeping under the guardianship of a serpent with expended hood. The fort is also called Adikot.

Coin of the Panchalas of Ahichhatra (75-50 BCE)

Obv Indra seated facing on pedestal, holding bifurcated object.

Rev. Idramitrasa in Brahmi, Panchala symbols.

The last independent ruler of Ahichatra was Achyuta Naga, who was defeated by Samudragupta, after which Panchala was annexed into the Gupta Empire. The coins of Achyuta found from Ahichatra have a wheel of eight spokes on the reverse and the legend Achyu on the obverse. From Wikipedia

Ahichhatra(near Bareilly) was mentioned in Mahabharata as capital of Draupada’s kingdom Panchala.

Excavations in Bareilly have uncovered a giant ancient temple in frm of a large pyramid, 22m in height & there is a Linga on top.

The site is 187 hectares!!

If the brick temple ruin is so massive even after its destuction by invaders, Just imagine how gigantic the temple would have been in its heydays?

The site survived for 3000 years until “iconoclastic tendencies” in 12th century destroyed it.

Archaeology

The site was briefly explored by Sir Alexander Cunningham in 1871, and then excavated by the ASI from 1940 for “about five years”. The excavations found brick fortifications and continuity of occupation from a period before 600 BCE to 1100 CE. During the first excavations in 1940–44, the Painted Gray Ware pottery were found at the earliest level. Ruins of this city could be identified from the remote sensing imagery of IRS (Indian Remote Sensing) satellites. The ruins reveal that the city had a triangular shape. Recent excavations in Ahichchhatra showed it was first inhabited by the middle of the second millennium BC with Ochre Coloured Pottery culture people, followed by Black and Red Ware culture.

Around 1000 BC, it reached at least 40 hectares of area, making it one of the largest Painted Grey Ware culture sites. Evidence of construction of early fortifications were discovered around 1000 BC indicating first urban development. Near Ahichchhatra, 2 km to its west there is a big pond which is said to trace its ancestry to the time of Mahabharata. The pond, located in the village of Jagannathpur is said to have been made by the pandavas at the time of their forest dwelling (vanvas).

In the early Gupta period a section of the city set aside for pottery contained very large firing pits, some 10 or 12 feet deep.

23rd Tirthankara Parshvanatha sculpture excavated from Ahichchhatra, 7th century BCE

Pyramid and Ahir / Yadav Connection 2

According to Letters on Egypt, Edom, and the Holy Land – By Alexander William Crawford Lindsay Crawford (Earl Of) – 1858

It is clear, therefore, from the word of truth, that God, our Author and Disposer, “who hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation”-brought the Philistines, after some great revolution which re- duced them to the mere remnant of a once powerful nation, out of Lower Egypt into the land of Canaan.

While Canaan was peopled by the descendants of the younger, Egypt was so by those of the elder son of Ham, the Misraim. From her great natural advan- tages, she soon rose to civilization, and flourished till a nomadic race, surnamed the Uk-sos, or Royal Shep- herds, (by some, says Manetho, supposed of Arabian origin,) poured down upon the country, subdued the natives, and held the sceptre for two hundred and sixty years, till the natives roused themselves, and, after a long and bloody contest, compelled them to take refuge at Abaris, probably Pelusium, a stronghold on the eastern branch of the Nile, which the first shepherd king had fortified as “the bulwark of Egypt” against the Assyrians, then the dominant power in Asia. After a tedious siege, the Egyptians, in despair of getting rid of them otherwise, allowed them to depart, with their families and cattle, in quest of another settlement, which they did, in the direction of Syria.

It must have been during this usurpation that Abra- ham visited Egypt, for the revolution by which they were expelled had evidently taken place shortly before Joseph’s time, when “every shepherd was” such “an abomination to the Egyptians,” that the pasturing Israel- ites were assigned the district of Goshen, “the best of the land,” rich unoccupied pasture ground, for their re- sidence, that they might dwell there with their flocks and herds apart from the natives; by which providen- tial separation they were preserved as a distinct people. Jacob passed through Goshen, and Joseph met him there, on his road from Canaan to Egypt; the Israelites did not cross the Nile when they quitted Egypt; Goshen, therefore, lay to the east, probably along the eastern bank of the Pelusiac branch of the river. Why was “the best of the land” unoccupied, but because the shepherd owners had just been expelled?

Now, when we read in the Bible that the Philistines came out of Lower Egypt, and were settled in the land of Canaan before the arrival of the Israelites, from whose triumphant exodus (though Manetho ignorantly, and Josephus wilfully, confound them) theirs differed in being so calamitous an expulsion that “a remnant” only survived, though that remnant was numerous enough to subdue the Avir, and occupy their country; and when, naturally inquiring what light Egyptian. history throws on the subject, we find this story of the expulsion of the shepherd kings, in the direction of Canaan, at a period anterior to the arrival of Joseph; is it possible to doubt the identity of the royal shep- herds and the Philistines?-that warlike people, those “foreigners” of the Septuagint, speaking a language distinct from that of the Jews, who, occupying the sea-

coast, between the Nile and Ekron, gave it their own name, Palestina, confined by the prophet Isaiah to their pentapolis, but afterwards extended to the whole land of Israel, Palestine-a word, mark you, not Hebrew, but Sanscrit, and still implying, in that language, “the shepherd’s land!”

If this needed confirmation, we should find it in the testimony borne by the Hindoo records, that a branch of the great Pali, or shepherd race of India, whose sway extended from their far-famed capital, Pali-bothra, to Siam on the east, and the Indus on the west, the in- termediate country bearing the same name Palisthan, or Palestine, afterwards imposed on the land of Canaan -conquered Egypt, and oppressed the Egyptians, in the same manner as the Egyptian records tell us the royal shepherds did. Nor is it less remarkable that while Abaris, or Avaris, the stronghold of the Auritæ or royal shepherds, in the land of Goshen, derives its name from Abhir, (2) the Sanscrit word for a shepherd→→→ Goshena, or Goshayana, in the same language, implies “the abode of shepherds,” and gosha is explained in Sanscrit dictionaries by the phrase Abhirpalli, “a town or village of Abhiras or Pallis.” (23)

And who, then, (to revert to the point from which I set out,) who can the shepherd Philitis, who fed his flocks near Memphis, whose name the popular tradition of the Egyptians, in Herodotus’s time, gave to the pyramids, built by his contemporaries Cheops and Cephrenes, the tyrants who shut up their temples, and forbade the sacrifices, and whose names the people held in such abhorrence that they would not pronounce

  • Bhilata or palita, “a shepherd,” in Sanscrit. It is remarkable that one of the ancient Pali tribes in India was called Rajpalli, or Royal Shepherds.-See Colonel Tod’s Annals of Rajasthan, vol. i̟, P. 119.

them-who and what can he be, but a personification of the shepherd dynasty-the Palis of the Hindoo records, who, after erecting the pyramids, those im- perishable monuments of their glory, after the models they remembered in their native Assyria, reappear in later years, and when fallen from their high estate, as the Philistines,” the remnant of the country of Caph- tor,” ever at enmity with the people of God, and now, like every nation that oppressed them, vanished from our eyes?
I have argued it clumsily, but do you not now agree with me that the pyramids were built by the shepherd kings of Egypt, the ancestors of the Philistines, in the time of Abraham?

And will you not sympathize with me, dear Anne, when I add, that the name of Pali, that once rang as the slogan of victory from the Irawaddy to the Po,- which blazed on the banner that, ages before Rome was thought of, waved as free to the wind on Mount Palatine as on the hills of Meroe and the towers of Palibothra, (what a pyramid of empire!) is now a reproach, a curse, and a hissing, to the wretches on whose outcast heads that crown of glory has descended-Pali, Pelasgi, Pala- tines all extinct-its sole inheritors; dwelling on the hills where erst Palibothra rose-girt round by the Rajpoots, who supplanted their power and called their country by another name–and still worshipping Maha- deva, their ancestral god, who, in the twilight of Egyptian history, led their kinsmen to the conquest of Meroe and the Nile,-robbers, thieves, outcasts, of all the degraded tribes of India, there are none more miserable, one only more despised, than the Bheels, the Palis of Malwah!

World’s Oldest Pyramid Found in India?

World’s Oldest Pyramid Found in India? Evidence of Mahabharata | Praveen Mohan.

Pyramids In India

Numerous giant, granite, temple pyramids were made in South India during the Chola Empire, many of which are still in religious use today. Examples of such pyramid temples include Brihadisvara Temple at Thanjavur, the Brihadisvara Temple at Gangaikonda Cholapuram, and the Airavatesvara Temple at Darasuram. However, the temple pyramid that has the largest area is the Ranganathaswamy Temple in Srirangam, Tamil Nadu.

The Thanjavur temple was built by Raja Raja Chola in the 11th century. The Brihadisvara Temple was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1987; the Temple of Gangaikondacholapuram and the Airavatesvara Temple at Darasuram were added as extensions to the site in 2004.

The granite gopuram (tower) of Brihadeeswarar Temple, 1010 CE.
The pyramidal structure above the sanctum at Brihadisvara Temple.
Pyramid-structure inside Airavatesvara Temple.
Ranganathaswamy Temple gopurams at Srirangam dedicated to Ranganatha, a reclining form of the Hindu deity Maha Vishnu.
Indus Script Deciphered
By M. V. N. Krishna Rao · 1982
The Indus Delta Country
A Memoir, Chiefly on Its Ancient Geography and History
By Malcolm Robert Haig · 1894

Ahichhatra: Journey to the land of my ancestors

Ahichhatra was neither in Punjab nor Kashmir but in the state of Uttar Pradesh, close to the city of Bareilly. It is strange that despite living for many years in New Delhi, which is some 270 kilometres from Ahichhatra.

But let me start from the beginning. In 345 CE, Mayurasharma, also called Mayuravarma, established the Kadamba dynasty in Banavasi, in today’s northern Karnataka. The Kadambas are credited with helping in the emergence of Kannada as a major language because they made it the language of administration. From various inscriptions, we know that Mayurasharma defeated the Traikutas, Abhiras, Sendrakas, Pallavas, Pariyathrakas, Shakasthana, the Maukharis and Punnatas. The Kadambas ruled for 200 years before making way for the Chalukyas.

One of the important things that Mayuravarma is known for is the inviting of learned Vaidika Brahmins from Ahichhatra. He wanted Brahmins who were well-versed in Sanskrit grammar, Vedic Shastras, rituals and other kinds of knowledge useful in administering a kingdom.

Thus, in the fourth century, several groups of families made their way from Ahichhatra in the north to Banavasi in the south (a distance of over 2,000 km) in order to honour the invitation of a king. To one such group consisting of 60 families belonged my ancestors, who were called the Shashtikas or the people of Arvattu Okkalu. They largely married within themselves initially, but later, they must have formed marital ties with others in their adopted land. It is believed that even the famous Guru Madhvacharya belongs to the lineage of learned people who migrated to Karnataka from Ahichhatra.

References

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