Return of the Aryans

By Bhagwan S. Gidwani

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140240535
• ISBN13: 9780140240535
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 944 Pages
• Weight: 2.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.0" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Fabulous Book

Fabulous. It's incredible that author spent 18 years on doing research on Aryans. A must read for anyone interested in ancient indian history. One of my all time favourite book.

Highly reccomended

I came upon this book by chance and I am only halfway through it. But I am too excited by what I've read to wait till it's over. I have a very poor knowledge of the ancient Indian history which I can blame that on 3 things: 1. Maharashtra school board history textbooks 2. Uninspired teaching 3. Lack of enthusiasm on my part to read more But this book has renewed my enthusiaism for finding out more about our hisotry. I like the authors concept of presenting history in form of a story. Sometimes it's difficult to separate fact from fiction (since i dont have much info on the historical facts in the first place), sometimes the author tends to repeat whole statements. However I have really enjoyed reading so far. This is the first time I've read about the basic philisophies of Hinduisim and I'm both proud & humbled. Proud of being an Indian and Hindu, humbled by the wisdom of our ancients. Reading the book is a very rewarding experience. It's not preachy. It offers different views in a very objective fashion. And the author's passion comes across through his words. I highly reccomend this book to anyone curious about Hinduism & /or ancient Indian history. Especially people of my generation who have suffered through memorizing dates from boring history textbooks.

Going against the EuroCentric View

Amazing is one word that I can describe this book with. For Indians, such as myself, I say this book is a MUST read. It installs a sense of pride, on our culture and our deeply rooted values, not only social but religious as well. The Return of the Aryans is infact a fictious story, created by Bhagwan S. Gidwani, however, it speaks everything that sounds and can be absolutely true. Indian historians have widely disputed the eurocentric view of Aryans coming TO India from elsewhere, possibley eastern Europe. Bhagwan S. Gidwani tells in his story, in this book, how Aryans in reality were part of India, how India, one of the first civilizations in this world, made them go out to look for land that was pure and when they did not find one, they realized that their original land, called "Bharat Varsha" (India) was for them the purest of all land. In going outside of India, they left their marks on all the civilizations that came to be in the later era in Europe and other parts of the world. Not only did they leave their mark in terms of culture, values, religion, but also language and the common legends and myths of the nowdays world speaks about all that the Aryans did. It definitely made me proud, to think that I am from the land of these Aryas, who were the noblest of all people, God's People. I think the whole world should read this book and ask themselves, why Indian civilization, Indian history has been left out of the world books of history.. why Indian influence has been left out of the history books. The book, in it's first half tells us the story behind India's common values and roots of the culture and the religion as we see it in now days India. A rich story full of thousands and thousands of characters, the book tells us of Sindu valley civilization, the Ganga civilization, about Afghanistan, Tibet, Dravidians and obviously, the Aryans. This book is time well spent and A Must Read.

"Return of the Aryans": A fantastic epic

I really enjoyed reading this book. Even though it was a fictional novel, the author made it like a real occurence and lead me to believe the new theory about the Aryans, that they were orignally from India and that they left and merged with other cultures, only to return to their homeland to teach their people what they had learned. Being Indian myself, I had a sense of pride after reading this book. Though it was fictional, the reality of it led me to believe in the new Aryan Theory even more strongly. I really enjoyed this book and recommend it highly to anyone interested in the probable history of the Aryans or to anyone who has an interest in India.

Return of the Aryans is a masterpiece

I started reading this book with only a very little idea of what it was about. Being Indian myself i had some knowledge of the ancient Aryan civilization and the supposed history behind their conquest of India. The summary at the back of the book stated that the author presented an alternative to the accepted historical theory. The accepted theory being that the Aryans were a race of nomads whose origins are unknown (Eastern Europe is a frequently given place of origin) and who entered India and conquered the races that were living there at the time. Bhagwan S. Gidwani presents a different theory - saying instead the Aryans were not a race that affected India externally , rather they were from India itself. A large number of people migrated from India around 3000 B.C. for various reasons and they were called Aryans (literally meaning "outcasts" in pre-Sanskrit) , this group of 'Aryans' arbitrarily split up into several sub-groups and travelled to various places including Iran, Eqypt, Sumeria, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and Russia. The Aryans had left India because of cruel treatment and a degradation of the society, but upon reaching these foreign countries - where they had gone to look for a better life - they realized that they were far better off in India than they were in these lands. They encountered all sorts of new races and (to them) primitive civilzations. Being unable to return home , the Aryans faced all kinds of hardship, and many of them stayed in the new lands to help the people there. Most of the Aryans returned to their homeland after many years, bringing with them a plethora of new ideas and experiences from their travels and sufferings abroad. Although this view of history appeared at first to be slightly far-fetched to me, Gidwani has spun the tale remarkably well and with great fluidity. He spent 18 years of his life doing research on this subject and he collected various papers and artifacts from all the over the world in order to re-construct the distant past and this lends the story much more relevance than it would have otherwise. I get the feeling while reading the book that these events are not fiction but that most of them really happenned, and who is to say that they did not? Only the latter half of the book actually deals with the Aryan exodus and subsequent travels. The first half sets up the events leading to the peoples' self-exile and in doing so paints a very beautiful and vivid picture of life in ancient India. We catch a glimpse of a remarkably well-ordered and intelligent civilization that has sadly been left out of the history books because of the lack of historical evidence. I would say that this book is a must-read for anyone interested in India or Indian history, or simply anyone looking for a truly classic piece of fiction.