Kesari Balakrishna Pillai - Alternative Methods of History

Alternative Methods of History

Pillai has helped to solve many puzzles of ancient history. Though many of his theories were rejected during his times by academic intellectuals, his findings about the connection between the present day inhabitants of India with that of Western Asia is acknowledged by the modern History. Though the first Harappan excavations were done during 1920s, only by the later part of the century, convincing evidences about Aryans migrating to India from Iran and nearby places emerged. However, with his penetrating analyzes, Kesari was able to present this theory decades earlier.

Notable personalities like E.M.S and Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai admitted later that they failed to fully understand Kesari's writing on History when he was alive and acknowledged that they could understand it only decades later. Many other notable personalities thought Kesari was "eccentric" partly because it was too incomprehensible for them to take, and also because he used unconventional methods for understanding history. P. Govinda Pillai commented that Kesari, who otherwise traversed through the blistering spheres of modern thoughts, often aberrated into frivolous anarchism and childishly immature illusions. Academic scholars often failed to take note that, when he actually tried to explore the pre-historical times, there were not enough archaeological evidences unearthed as it is the case today, which could help to throw light on the subject. Some of the modern historians points out today that, though one has to be careful while taking clues from myths, historians can not totally ignore the indications given by the myths and legends.

Pillai emphasized the importance of using alternative methods to understand pre-historic times and pointed out that comparable legends and myths obtaining in the regions concerned are more useful than archaeological, epigraphical, and literary sources.

Pillai said that ‘Yudhishtira' in Hindu mythology is same as Sumerian ‘Udultur' or identifying ‘Prachinabarhis' of the Puranas with ‘Erystheus' of the Greek legend; he is convinced that ‘Cakshusha Manu' is the same as Greek Danaus of Argos and Utnapishtim of Babylon. For him, the “protohistoric Olympiad era can be identified with the Kali or Agasthya era” and “Hercules was the Narasimha incarnation of Vishnu.” If the chronology of all civilisations in the Old World had the same basis, their historical geography, too, rested on the same foundations. So also, in speaking about the “protohistoric” states, the author believes that the ancestors of “the Greeks and the Romans, of the Indians and Persians, of the Chinese and Tibetans, and of the Malays and Polynesians” were the same. Dvaraka was the same as Athens, Kosala was Kish, Mithila was Corinth, and Magadha was Nineveh.