The Great Russia-India Connection

When I was at university I went on a trip to Russia. At the time it was known as the USSR, the United Soviet Socialist Republic. I tried to learn a few Russian words and found that the word for ‘goodbye’ in Russian was Dos Vidaynya. Viday in Sanskrit also means taking leave. Sanskrit being the mother of Indo-European languages, if you look a bit deeper into any completely foreign language it begins to make sense. Who would have thought that Thames as in river Thames is a Sanskrit origin word. The Celtic people called it Tamesis which was Tamas in Sanskrit meaning dark. In Kenya the rallying cry for a great joint effort is Harambe. It is actually Haar Ambe which was spoken when trying to accomplamish a difficult taksk. Amba is a Hindu Goddess. Though the Swahili language is not of Indo-European origin it has a lot of Sanskrit origin words due to the Hindu presence there. 

The connection between Russia and India is not 5000 years old nor 10,000 years old. It is tens of thousands of years old. The highest mountain in the Urals was called Narada by the local population. Narada is the most famou Hindu Saint who had the power to travel everywhere, including to different planets. On the 10th anniversary of the October 1917 Revolution, geologists decided to mark the event and rename the mountain as Narodnoy – or ‘People’ and that’s what it is now called in all geographic references and on all maps.  

Narada was the guru of young prince Prahalad, whose father was the demon Hirnyakasipu. He hated Prahalad for believing in God. He asked his sister Holika, who had a boon that she would never get burnt, to enter into a fire with child Prahalad. Instead of Prahalad getting burnt, Holika got burnt. This event is celebrated as the festival of Holi by Hindus.  

The Russian festival of Maslenitsa, also known as Butter Week, is the oldest surviving Slavic carnival. It is a seven day festival with a striking similarity to the festival of Holi. On the last day people ask for each other’s forgiveness. Just as Holika was burned in the fire, Lady Maslenitsa in the form of a doll is burned in a bonfire.

According to Professor Alexander Vasilyevich Medvedev, chairman of the religious affairs committee of the Urals region: ”In Russia practically all the scientists accept that the Vedic culture once flourished here, the center being in the Volga river region. The debate among our scientists is if the Aryans came from India or they originated here.” That it wad the Indian’s then known as Aryans who had settled in many parts of the world is now beyond doubt. 

According to Stephen Knapp: “The discovery in 2007 of an ancient Vishnu sculpture dated 7 to 10th Century AD in an excavation in Russia only confirms certain ideas I have always had about the Vedic ancient and glorious land and culture.”

The area in which the sculpture was found is called Staraya Maina. In the Rig Veda, there is a passage that goes, ‘ Itham ascati pasyat syantham, ekam starayath mainaa-kaalam’. This translates into: ‘Staraya Maina is the name of the land of the 45 rivers (on whose banks the noble Rishis conducted the famous Horse Sacrifices), where the sun god descends into one fifty two forty seven.’ While the first line identifies a location, the second line talks about the exact latitude and longitude at which the solar spectrum produces interference lines at one, fifty two, and forty seven.

The extreme precision of the calculations show the advanced science of the Vedic period, and also a thorough knowledge of SI units (it has been conclusively proven that French scientists stole the system from the Indians.) 

The discovery of the sculpture confirms the location in Russia, identified in the Rig Veda as Rus Soviath sapthamahanagaratham (the ancient and holy land of the 722 flying vehicles). The ancient connections between the Russians and the Indians has been unequivocally confirmed. In the Russian orthodox Christianity, worship is conducted very much like in a Hindu temple. 

According to Bulgarian linguist Vladimir Georgiev, geographical names are the most important source for determining how a group of people acquire their ethnicity. This can originate through a process of self-identification or it could be the result of outside identification.

Georgiev says the most stable – or longstanding – names are that of rivers. “But in order to preserve the names it is necessary to maintain the continuity of the population, transmitting these names from generation to generation. Otherwise, new people may come and give it their own name,” he says.

Russian scientist and academician AI Sobolewski provides a list of Russian water bodies with Sanskrit names. In his article, ‘The Names of the Rivers and Lakes of the Russian North’, he gives the names of the following rivers and lakes: 

Vaja (from vaja – strength), Valga (from Valgu – simple), Ira (a refreshing drink), Karak (karaka – water jar), Cala (black), Lala (lal – play), Padma (lotus), Punk (silt), Sagara (ocean), Sarah (sara – juice), Sukhona (suhana – easy) and Harina (goose). Vyasa, Moksha, Kama, Nara and Siva are other river names of Sanskrit origin. Moksva is Russian name for Moscow. Moscow is situated on the banks of Moksva river. Moksa is a sanskrit word meaning liberation. 

The Russian word ending with Gorod, meaning ‘city’, has Sanskrit origin. In ancient times cities were built to serve as forts for protection and defense. The Sanskrit word for Fort is Gadh. In modern Russian the suffix ‘-grad’ and in modern Hindi the suffix ‘-Ghad’ is used to form names of cities like Leningrad (the city of Lenin) or Chandigadh (city of Goddess Chandi).   

When was the last time you had a shot of vodka? Well, next time you have one, remember that this Russian word has its origins in the Vedic Sanskrit word for water – udaka! 

Here are more common words in Russian and Sanskrit :

Some Russian Sanskrit sentences of striking similarity:

According to Rakesh Krishnan Simha:

‘The two languages have two broad similarities. One, Russian is the only European language that shares a strong common grammatical base with Sanskrit. Secondly, both Russian and Sanskrit are pleasing to the ear. The very name ‘Sanskrit’ means carefully constructed, systematically formed, polished and refined. Colonial era linguist William Jones wrote: “Sanskrit language is of a wonder structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin and more exquisitely refined than either.”

The uncanny similarities between Sanskrit and Russian clearly indicate a close kinship between the two nations in the distant past. Russian Indologists were aware of this connection. In 1787 N. I. Novikov translated Charles Wilkins’ rendition of the Bhagavad Gita from English to Russian. 

It is stated that the style of the verse of Russian folk legends and Pushkin’s tales is closer to the rhythm of Sanskrit verse. Professor Smirnov (1892— 1967), the reputed Sanskritologist of the Soviet Union has translated Mahābhārata into Russian in this type of verse. Professor Smirnov had with him a recording of an extract from the Mahābhārata read in Sanskrit originally by Professor Nirmal Chandra Maitra of India to the accompaniment of Indian instruments. After playing the recording of the Sanskrit version, Professor Smirnov read his Russian translation, and the enchanting melody of the rhythm was found to be very much like that of the Sanskrit original as read by Professor Nirmal Chandra Maitra and sounded in unison.

The Russo-India connect does not end here, Adin, Dwa, Tr, i Chitri, Peyas, Sheshtha…goes the Russian count. Eka, Dw, I, Tri, Chatur, Pancha, Shash…is the counting in Sanskrit! Russians were well versed with Indian counting system, as is evident from the fact that Russian chemist and inventor, Dmitry Mendeleev, who gave the world the law of periodicity of elements and the famous Mendeleev Periodic Table in 1856, used the prefixes of Eka, Dvi and Tri in the naming of his predicted eight elements. Noting that there are striking similarities between the periodic table and the introductory Śiva Sūtras in Pānini’s grammar, Prof. Kiparsky said: ”The analogies between the two systems are striking. Just as Pānini found that the phonological patterning of sounds in the language is a function of their articulatory properties, so Mendeleev found that the chemical properties of elements are a function of their atomic weights.”  

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Russia’s great philosopher, novelist and playwright was also influenced by Buddhism and Hinduism. He endorsed the Buddhist concepts of karma and reincarnation. He was familiar with the Vedas and Upanishads as well as the Ramayan and Mahabharat. He was also a commited vegetarian. On the other hand Leo Tolstoy greatly influenced Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi took the idea of non-violent passive resistance from Tolstoy and successfully used it both in South African and India. He also started his Ashram, called Tolstoy Farm, in Johannesburg based on Tolstoy’s ideas. It was from there that the Satyagraha struggle was fought between 1908 and 1914.

Hinduism in present day Russia. 

Srila Prabhupada, the founder of Hare Krishna Society, laid the foundations of the movement in Russia during his visit to Moscow in 1971. At the time, Russia was in the solid grip of communism and militant atheism. Despite that, Srila Prabhpada managed to sow the seeds of Sanatan Dharma. Today tens of thousands of Russians are Hare Krishna devotees. Thousands of Russians travel to the holy city of Vrindavan in India every year. There are many other Hindu groups active on Russia. Temples may open in areas of Russia where there was a big Hindu influence in the distant past! 

Nitin Mehta 

22 September 2020