The Following is a Conversation between Bhakti Ananda Goswami and Mark DeFillo, a Vedic Druid Scholar and Spiritualist.
Bhakti Ananda Goswami: One must differentiate between the more Sanskrit-related Hittites and the language of the earlier Hurrians. I know that there has been a focus on identifying the Family of Akhenaten with the Royal Family of the Hurrian Kingdom of Mitanni, but at that time the evidence strongly indicates that there was a Hittite-related Dynasty over-lording the majority Hurrian Population. However, the earlier Hurrian Civilization had a profound influence on the Hittites and other Civilizations in the Region.
My own opinion, since the 1960s, which has been validated by the World’s best experts now, is that Akhenaten was not a religious innovator, but merely revived the most ancient monotheistic Religion of Egypt, that of HERU the Elder and His ‘Brother’ AUSU of Heliopolis (and Memphis). The Trinity of Heliopolis was HERU-AUSU-ATUM, which is most definitely HARI-VASU-ATMAN. Akhenaten (EKAN-ATMA One God / ATMAN) revived this Heliopolitan Cultus of HERU-AUSU-ATUM under the worship of HERU-AUSU’s ATEN / ATUM, Their Holy Spirit or PARAM-ATEN / ATUM / ATON / ATMAN.
Mark DeFillo:The “ch” we use in Greek words (eg, christos) and the “ch” in Sanskrit words represent completely different sounds, and they are not cognate sounds, either. Furthermore, in the case of “Charan”, we’re not talking about a Greek word to begin with, it’s just the way that the Greeks pronounced and spelled the probably-Aramaic name of the place.
Bhakti Ananda Goswami: Regarding the Mesopotamian Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, as well as the Roman Tiber, the Jordan and Nile, as well as all other Sacred Rivers of the ancient NARAYANA-NARAYANI Civilizations, all such shared the same Revelatory Tradition of the Feminine Heavenly Waters Descending from the Foot of the Lord on His Throne in Heaven or in the Holy Mountain. Thus even in the New Testament the Sacred Jordan, the River of Baptism and Absolution from Sin, flows from the foot of the Lord in Heaven. My thesis is not that everyone else on Earth ‘got’ their Vedic-related elements of High Civilization from geographical India or India-related ‘Hinduism’. My Thesis has always been that all of humanity shares a common pre-historic heritage that diffused with every tribe from Humanity’s original homeland wherever that was. Since, according to the Vaishnava Tradition, the entire Earth was once called Bharata, and India was even in memory much bigger than it is today, I do not see any value in the nonsense Hindu Triumphalist Idea of trying to isolate the ancient worship of KRISHNA or VISHNU or ‘Vedic Civilization’ within the physical boundaries of ‘India’. Thus it has been possible for me to actually objectively consider the evidence, because I have not imposed-upon it any ethno-centric Racial or geographical ‘Homeland’-bias restrictions. I have not been blinded by either racist Aryanism or racist Anti-Aryanism, or by Hindu versus Abrahamic or ‘Aryan’ Versus ‘Dravidian’ distortions of history.
To be fair, if we want to see God, we can see Him wherever and whenever Humanity was and is, if we are really unbiased. The indelible imprint of God is on the whole of Humanity, as the ‘Crown of His Creation’. So His Worship does not begin with some later isolated racial or linguistic group either inside-of or outside-of ‘India’! The Worship of the One True God began with the beginning of Humanity, and since we all have the same ultimate beginning, we all have the same ultimate God. Getting ‘back’ to the Primal Revelation of That ADI PURUSHA Original Supreme Personality of Godhead is what can and will re-unite us as one human family again. This is why comparing the testimony of both the Great Religions and the small Indigenous Traditions is so important. These diverse witnesses that are telling us the same things will draw us together if we let them!
Mark DeFillo:Maharaj, thank you for this statement. It’s so important to clarify intent in this way, when dealing with subjects that are argued over from so many different viewpoints, and used in so many different ways.
Bhakti Ananda Goswami: Dear Mark, Thank you for your comments, which are always helpful feedback. I really appreciate your well-studied linguistic remarks, as some contemporary Vaishnava Authors have extensively used what I call P.N. Oak-isms in their writings. These are utterly nonsensical ‘etymologies’ and word-associations that factually are not linguistically related at all. The authors who do this have never properly studied comparative linguistics and demonstrate that do not really understand even basic things like sound-shifting. Still they cheat the masses of un-trained devotee readers with their feigned expertise, publishing so many books and presenting themselves as experts, when they are not.
Then there are the others, who are trained linguists, but who have been trained in the old Racist Aryanist school of Sanskrit study. These have been taught that there is no relationship between any African or Semitic Languages and Sanskrit, or they have learned to think in terms of a Foreign White ‘Aryan’ Race subduing a dark ‘Dravidian’ Race of indigenous Indians. With such racism-distorted views these Sankritists cannot possibly grasp that there are African and Semitic and other words and Names of God that are linguistically related to Sanskrit words and Names of God.
As for myself, I have high spinal post-polio syndrome with throat muscle involvement, and so I cannot even reliably make some important sounds anymore, such as some of the sibilants and the different aspirate sounds and gutturals like those in Hebrew or German. My throat specialists have restricted me to 1/2 hour of speaking a day to preserve my ability to swallow safely. My throat muscles get so exhausted from speaking that I cannot swallow safely, tending to aspirate my food and liquids. My respiratory muscles have also deteriorated more, so I am not getting enough air volume and pressure across my vocal chords to produce my normal voice. I have really wanted to record some European Hymns, Vaisnava Bhajans and American Spirituals from my college degree work, but it has become difficult for me to sing and articulate.
Regarding your comment about the Greek CH above: When vocalizing I used to forget which language mode I was ‘in’ and so sometimes I did things like using the ecclesiastical Latin CH or Sanskrit CH for English CH words derived from the Greek, like Christos or Chimera! When I would catch myself doing this, it was really disconcerting. So I can especially appreciate your Greek CHI comment above Regarding the sound shifting of the aspirates, the soft breathing aspirate H, as in HARI, ‘hardens’ and can shift towards the CH, K and G sounds. The soft breathing H can shift towards the sibilants S, SH and the phonated Z. The soft aspirate H can also yield to an initial vowel sound. The H can also ‘become’ a semi-vowel Y or a J. The Greeks once called Jerusalem Hiero-Solym, the Asylum of Hiero or ‘Priest’ Hiero-phants. Actually the Hierophant as a priest of Helios was related to the Egyptian worship of HERU-AUSU of the most ancient Egyptian Rhodian-related City of Heliopolis.
Over time the Egyptian Duo-Deity HERU-AUSU (HARI-VASU, KRISHNA-BALADEVA, KRISHNA-VISHNU) was also the HELI-OS, HOR-US, KYRIOS and KOUROS of the Greeks and the SOLEUS of the Romans. Most amazingly this is the same Duo-Deity as the ELO-AH, ELI-YAHU, URI-YAHU, ARI-YAHU and ALLAH of the Semites! This is why the Biblical Hebrews, Israelites and Judahites were members of Heliopolitan Religious Asyla Federations from century to century. They all worshiped the same God, as confirmed by countless artifacts, inscriptional evidence and literary evidence. In the Catholic Biblical Books of the Macabbees there are amazing passages regarding the Religious Alliances between the faithful Jews, and the Monotheistic Spartans and Romans. What Romans and Greeks were religiously or even ethnically related to the Jews? How were these Devotees religiously related to the HERU-AUSU / HELIOS worshipers of Egypt and the rest of Africa, and the World? I have looked at all of the evidence available to me to answer these questions.
I have not relied on just comparative linguistics to develop my understanding. Instead I have cross-referenced information from every available source, to develop my understanding of any particular subject. For example, my studies of the relationship between the Hebrews and the Jews and the HELIOS-Worshiping Greek Spartans has scriptural support and other literary evidence in the Greek Founding Legends of Thebes, the Danae-Europa Round of legends, the Spartoi and CADMUS, and in the Bhagavatam stories of PARASURAMA and the destruction of the Yadus.
The following is from the Bible. This Book of the Maccabees is not included in most Protestant Bibles, but it is included in Catholic Bibles.
1 Maccabees 12 (Good News Translation)
20 King Arius of Sparta to Onias the High Priest, greetings. 21 We have found a document about the Spartans and the Jews indicating that we are related and that both of our nations are descended from Abraham. 22 Now that we have discovered this, please send us a report about your situation. 23 In reply, we will send you a letter indicating that we are willing to share our possessions, including cattle and property, if you will do the same. We have given orders to our ambassadors to give you a full report about these matters.
12 When Jonathan saw that things were working out to his advantage, he chose ambassadors and sent them to Rome to confirm and renew friendship with the Romans. 2 He also sent letters with a similar message to Sparta and other places.
Mark DeFillo:I’m writing an article that will explore roots (as well as parallels) of the so-called mainstream linguistics in Vedic knowledge, particularly several of the Vedangas; along with a summary of how linguistics, particularly comparative and etymological linguistics, works, and the basis of it. P.N. Oak… his ideas and explanations are ingenious, but suffer from apparently being wholly unaware of the basis for linguistics. The short-short version is that linguistics is based on hard evidence consisting of thousands of years of literature and inscriptions, in several different language families or sub-families, with which we can see directly how language changes over time, and how languages interact when their speakers have extensive contact with each other. India and Europe both give us mounds of evidence for various languages of the Indo-European family.
The Middle East gives us especially the Semitic language family, ranging from Babylonian, Assyrian, Phoenician, Aramaic, Biblical Hebrew, ancient forms of Arabic up to modern forms of Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic (the demise of which is much exaggerated). And P.N. Oak? For those who don’t know the name, he essentially proposed that the whole world not only used to speak Sanskrit, but still does, only garbling most of the words, and claimed that the whole of linguistics was a hoax. This is not possible, because in order to make such a hoax one would have had to fabricate the evidence, and the evidence is in fact nothing less than the entire literary heritage of every culture that has had written language.
When looking at ancient languages that have similarities in vocabulary, there are several different possible things that may be happening. One is that there are sometimes purely coincidental similarities. Another is that languages may be directly related to each other, like the way the major languages of northern India such as Hindi, Bengali, Panjabi, Gujarati, Marathi etc, along with Singhalese of Sri Lanka. and the language of the world-wandering Romany, aka Gypsies, are all sibling languages that are descended from the Prakrits and ultimately from Sanskrit; and similarly the Romance languages of parts of Europe and some of its former colonies, including French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and a number of smaller, lesser-known examples, are descended from Latin via low-class local dialects in different areas.
Languages that are related to each other are known because they share with each both most of their words, with systematic changes in the sounds of the words, and grammatical systems, again with some kind of systematic variation. (if they didn’t vary at all, they would be the same language.) There are other sets of languages that share many words, but have entirely different grammatical systems. For example, all of the major languages of India share heavily in vocabulary that comes from Sanskrit, but those of the south of India that are called “Dravidian” have a very different grammatical system, and also a large set of words that they share with each other, but not with the languages that are regarded as descended from Sanskrit.
Thus, it is clear, at least to linguists, that the Sanskritic words were borrowed into those Dravidian languages. Borrowing is very common between languages that are in contact with each other. For example, I used the word “via” before, which is a purely Latin word which has been borrowed into the English language. English itself at one period borrowed very heavily from the Norman dialect of the French language, so it has many words that have French origins, such as “language”. The grammatical system of English, and its core vocabulary, however, shows that it is a member of the Germanic family. That is, in addition to the direct evidence we have in the form of literature from before that French influence; as well as historical records of how it all happened.
Another thing that happened particularly in ancient times, which linguists are often likely to dismiss or ignore is deliberate word-play between words in different languages. Some of the points made by Bhakti Ananda Maharaj seem to me that they might be of that nature. There is no doubt about the fact that in ancient times people of different cultures and religions, with the exception of some fanatics, recognized aspects of their own gods and, for those on that philosophical level, conceptions of the Supreme Being.
So, naturally, any relationship or even coincidental similarities between Their Names were significant, and could be elaborated on at length by teachers with the right level of perception, just as Maharaj does now. In practical spiritual terms, it does not really matter if any particular Names from different languages are actually related to each other, as in having the same original word behind them. What does matter is the understanding that they refer to the same Being. In academic terms, one would like to find the most accurate explanation of the connection, whatever if it is, between the words, but the answer does not have any bearing on devotion to the Deity.
For the record, while it seems likely that I and Bhakti Ananda Maharaj might always disagree on some particular details, as far as I have seen in general we share many parts of the same overall perspective and conclusion, namely, the existence in ancient times of a far more-unified culture in spiritual terms, crossing linguistics and ethnic boundaries. As for the points of difference? One of the strengths of Vedic dharma, and Indo-European culture in general, is that it takes for granted that there is diversity of thought, and in fact most of humanity, except when the mental disease of fanaticism has an epidemic outbreak.
Bhakti Ananda Goswami: Just as the early English and German philologists, the comparative linguistics scholars and etymologists really invented what was to become the racialist understanding of Aryanism, they also invented the idea-of and the racialism of the term ‘Dravidian’. I had the opportunity of meet with many Tamil scholars at the academic World Hindu Conference in Sri Lanka in 1982, and their perspective was divided between those who completely rejected the artificial racialism of the Aryan Invasion Theory and the related racist Aryan-Dravidian construct, and those who were still operating from that model and thus were reactionary anti-Aryan ‘Black Racists’.
Factually the Black Muslims from America were there in Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu agitating against the so-called Aryan Vaishnavas and calling Ravana the ‘Demon’ King of the Ramayana the great Hero of the Dravidians! Meanwhile the ‘White ‘Aryan’ Sinhalese Theravadin (an-Atta / No-Atma) Buddhists were committing genocide against the ‘Black’ Tamil ‘Dravidians’ in Sri Lanka.
So the Modern Era horror of the Aryan versus Dravidian warfare of South India and Sri Lanka is related-to this historically recent development of the racialist concepts of Aryan versus Dravidian. Just as Master Race Anglo-Germanic Linguistics has been used to support the Aryan Invasion Theory AIT of Indian High Civilization, it is still being used to divide and alienate the so-called Aryan Hindus from the so-called Dravidian Hindus of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. The fact is that Arya in the ancient Vaishnavism related literary Sources did not mean a single ‘White’ Race!
The Aryans were like any other people who worshiped HARI or HARA, KRISHNA or BALADEVA, VISHNU or SHIVA. It is all about context. If we ‘step back’ and take a more wholistic perspective, we can see all of the other peoples who worshiped the same God, and that they were all Aryans too! Arya (Aryan) was a religious and ‘Noble’ form of reference, not a ‘White Racial’ one! But the Black Racist Reactionaries have taken it as one and so are now condemning the worship of RAMA and KRISHNA as that of White Aryan gods who fought and enslaved their Black Dravidian Ancestors.
Dear Mark, Thank you again for your erudite comments, which I completely agree with. One last point is that linguists have noted that of all ancient literate peoples, the people of India and Egypt were the most fond of word-play and making puns. My observation regarding the Egyptians is that their pictorial puns could be extremely sophisticated with many revelatory meanings contained in one simple pictograph or icon / sacred image.
For example in Sanskrit Kara means both Ray and Hand. SURYA-NARAYANA is KARANA-MALIN ‘Garlanded with Ray-Hands’. Look at HERU-AUSU / HELIOS as ATUM/N (ATUM, ATON, ATEN) of Egypt, He is Garlanded with Ray-Hands! The Radient (RA) Corona / Crown of HELIOS is His Karana-Malin too! When His Rays end in Hands, these Ray-Hands do the creative, sustaining and removing work of all beings / the whole World!
In my Albums you can look at Pure Land Buddhist Murtis of the Universal Form of AVALOKITESHVARA. These 1000 Armed Forms of VISHNU-LOKESHVARA have Ray-Hands and the Deity who is emanating His countless Ray-Hands is called HARI. Yes HARI or HRIH is the Deity, the ADI PURUSHA, BHAGAVAN etc. of Pure Land Buddhism. So in Egypt HR (HERU) or HERU-AUSU has Ray-Hands, in Judea ELI-YAHU has the same Icons with Ray-Hands, in Greece HELIOS has Ray-Hands and a Radiant Crown, and VISHNU and LOKESHVARA both have Ray-Hands. The Pictorial Pun of the HERU-AUSU (HELIOS) Egyptian Rays that terminate in Hands shows what the Sanskrit language tells. Thus Nama describes, Rupa and Form / Rupa reveals Nama / Name.
Mark DeFillo: Had you noticed this interesting possible visual pun crossing several linguistic, ethnic and religious boundaries: There is an Egyptian hieroglyph in the form of a crescent moon, of which the phonetic transliteration is IH? This corresponds closely to the short form of the main Hebrew Divine Name YH as short for YHWH and YHU; and on the visual side, what symbol is posted atop every mosque? A crescent moon. So, someone who knows Egyptian may look at a mosque spire and read it as “Yah”, and by this he or she would be uttering a name of the God of Abraham, which of course is the who the Muslims mean when they refer to the THE God Allah, which is a contraction of al-ilah. As you (Maharaj) no doubt know from your work, the sign of crescent moon or of crescent moon and star long predates Islam. I’ve seen ancient coins, for example, showing “pagan” temples that were crowned with that symbol. Very startling the first time!
Bhakti Ananda Goswami: About YA, YH and ‘L. Before Islam’s AL-ILAH, the much earlier attested ELOAH and ELI-YAHU, ARI-YAHU etc. combined the two Holy Names ‘L/R (R=L) and the YH / VS etc. ‘Being‘ Names together. ILU was the Supreme Father God of the Sumer Region and Era, and OLU was the Supreme Father God of the African Niger Language peoples. If one is not accustomed to comparing the Hebrew or other Semitic Deity Names with the Indo-European Heliopolitan or African Heliopolitan Names of God, then they cannot see that Egyptian HERU-HOR is Semitic ELI-EL and Indic HARI-HAR (VISHNU-SIVA, not as half-female). If one has not studied the scores of compound Divine Theophoric Names in the Bible, and compared these to Greek, Roman, Egyptian and other Deity Names and theophoric personal names, then they have no complete context for understanding who the God of the Jews really was and is.
If one looks at the Biblical forms of the Holy Name YA YAHU or YESHI, which is also the -AH element on the ends of Names and the YO-element at the beginning, it is clear that this Holy Name is really a confounding of the two Names YA, A, AH (Alpha) the Mystical Name of Purusha, and YAHU / VASU / ASU / AUSU / OUSIOS etc. the Being Name of VASU-DEVA or VISHNU (root VAS = VISH). Hebrew YAHU = YESHI, to be, exist, dwell, who is. This is the same Name as VASU DEVA or VISHNU.
So let us test this by asking about the Names YISHMA-EL (ISHMAEL). In this Compound Holy Name YISHMA from YESHI is the same Name as VISHNU. YISHMA-EL means VISHNU is HARA (or HARI). What about VASU as YAHU? Look at the Name TOBA-YAHU. Toba / Tov in Hebrew means good, bright beneficent, and can refer to the planets or Asterim ‘Gods’ / Elohim, as in Mazel Tov! These are exactly the Devas in the Vedic Vaishnava Tradition. So the Hebrew theophoric compound Holy Name TOBA-YAHU is cognate with the Vaishnava Sanskrit VASU-DEVA, with the syllables reversed as TOBA-YAHU (TOBIAS in the Greek).
What evidence do we have that the YH of YAHU may be YS as well? YESHI in Hebrew means the same thing as YAHU. Again the YAHU Holy Name on the end of Hebrew compound Holy Names is always -AS, -OS etc. on the end of related Greek Names. H=S. See HELIOS and SOLEUS, Sanskrit HARIH and SURIH, HAREH and SUREH etc. Thus AUSU in Egyptian is OUSIOS / OSIRIS, -AS, -OS in Greece, and YAHU / YESHI, -AH in the Hebrew Bible, the Form of the Holy Name IAW, IAH etc. identifying the Deity on Jewish Artifacts depicting the Egyptian AUSU, and the later Hermetic Pantheus All-God called IAW etc. also completely identifies the Jewish God ELI-YAHU with HERU-WASU-ATEN and thus HARI-VASU-ATMAN.
Does YA also have Lunar associations? Yes, as a Name-Form of Lord BALADEVA of Jericho. JE / YA.
” My Thesis has always been that all of humanity shares a common pre-historic heritage that diffused with EVERY TRIBE from humanity’s original homeland wherever that was. Since, according to the Vaishnava Tradition, the entire Earth was once called BHARATA, and India was even in memory much bigger than it is today, I do not see ANY value in the nonsense Hindu Triumphalist Idea of trying to isolate the ancient worship of Krishna or Vishnu or ‘Vedic Civilization’ within the physical boundaries of ‘India’. Thus it has been possible for me to actually objectively consider the evidence, because I have not imposed-upon it any ethno-centric Racial or geographical ‘Homeland’-bias restrictions. I have not been blinded by either racist Aryanism or racist Anti-Aryanism, or by Hindu versus Abrahamic or ‘Aryan’ Versus ‘Dravidian’ distortions of history.”
Collected Works Archive of Bhakti Ananda Goswami 
” My Thesis has always been that all of humanity shares a common pre-historic heritage that diffused with EVERY TRIBE from humanity’s original homeland wherever that was. Since, according to the Vaishnava Tradition, the entire Earth was once called BHARATA, and India was even in memory much bigger than it is today, I do not see ANY value in the nonsense Hindu Triumphalist Idea of trying to isolate the ancient worship of Krishna or Vishnu or ‘Vedic Civilization’ within the physical boundaries of ‘India’. Thus it has been possible for me to actually objectively consider the evidence, because I have not imposed-upon it any ethno-centric Racial or geographical ‘Homeland’-bias restrictions. I have not been blinded by either racist Aryanism or racist Anti-Aryanism, or by Hindu versus Abrahamic or ‘Aryan’ Versus ‘Dravidian’ distortions of history.”
Perfect!