Dunya Ki Pahli Tahzeebein

In the story of the world, the era of Adam marks the moment when man evolved from an animal into a human being. Devotees of science may not believe in Adam. Yet, when these very people describe the faiths and beliefs of ancient nations, we consistently find, in one form or another, the figure of a patriarch. Whether by tasting the fruit of good and evil like Adam, bringing fire from the heavens and teaching humanity the art of agriculture like the Greek hero Prometheus, or discovering the path to heaven like Yama, this figure created such a profound distinction between man and beast that the two could never again be considered the same.

The traditions, Puranas, and mythologies of ancient peoples also recount that humanity had not inhabited the earth for long when a great flood struck, drowning all but a few. In those early times, the blade of human intellect was not yet sharp enough to cleanly sever whatever it touched. Perhaps people wished to use this blade for purposes other than mere dissection; hence, we find religious beliefs, myths, history, and imagination all intricately woven together. Or, imagine it as a garden viewed from such a distance that flowerbeds, colors, and blossoms all blend into one another. To prune and dissect these ancient tales feels almost disrespectful. Instead, one should simply observe, enjoy, and draw lessons from them.

After the world had been churned by the waves and whirlpools of the great flood, the uprooted roots of life began to take hold once more—and in certain places, they took root quite firmly. This occurred in the Nile Valley, in southern Iraq, along the banks of the Indus River in India, and at the mouths of the Yellow River and the Yangtze in China. However, the world's population was not confined solely to these settlements. There were many races that found no permanent home. These were the nomads, wandering the earth as if carrying their homes on their shoulders, grazing their livestock as they moved. Whenever their populations swelled, or their wanderings brought them near large settlements—which they naturally intended to plunder—fierce battles would erupt between them and the settled inhabitants. Ultimately, the nomads would emerge victorious. They would drive out the inhabitants and settle in their place. Then, three or four centuries later, this new settlement would be destroyed by yet another invading group, only to be repopulated by new people.

The ancient centers of civilization were like a few lumps of sugar in a pitcher of water. When the water was stirred, the sugar would dissolve; when it settled, the sugar would sink to the bottom. However, those who stirred the water always brought a little sweetness of their own. The sugar that settled after dissolving was always slightly more than before, and the water in the pitcher grew just a bit sweeter. In this manner, civilization continued to spread. Beyond Iraq, Egypt, and India, new centers of civilization were established along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea—in Palestine, Syria, the island of Crete, the Etruria region of Italy, and in North Africa near the modern-day city of Tunis.

Scholars have not yet determined whether the Egyptian civilization or the Sumerian civilization of southern Iraq is the oldest. Nevertheless, both are believed to be eight to ten thousand years old. Furthermore, the oldest traces of settlements discovered at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro in India are likely just as ancient. The ancient Egyptian cities of Thebes, Memphis, and Heliopolis, Babylon in southern Iraq and Nineveh in the north, as well as the city of Knossos in Crete, were all founded during this era of civilization and thrived for centuries.

Around four and a half millennia ago, a new race—whose original name remains unknown to us, but who called themselves Aryan, meaning pure or noble—emerged from God knows where. They conquered southern Europe, Iraq, Iran, and India. They dismantled parts of the ancient civilizations they encountered, but also assimilated much of them, ultimately painting these cultures in their own hues. The Indian, Iranian, Greek, and Roman Aryans all belonged to the same ancestral family, yet each developed a distinct nature and temperament, leaving behind diverse legacies across the world. The first Aryan empire was established in Iran, stretching from Syria to the Indus River. It was eventually overthrown by Alexander, the famous king of the Greek Aryans, and shortly thereafter, the foundations of the Mauryan Empire were laid in India.

Just as this era was drawing to a close, the star of the Roman Empire began to rise in the West. During this same period, new nomadic tribes emerged from the pastures of Mongolia; in a remarkably short span of time, they devastated and subsequently repopulated India, Iran, Turkey, and Eastern Europe. These are the broad strokes of history from the dawn of time up to the era of Jesus Christ. Now, let us examine this same period from a different perspective and observe the extent of human progress over those six or seven thousand years.

New Stone Age: 8000 BCE

First houses built: 7000 BCE

Beginnings of Sumerian civilization: 6000 BCE

Sumerians began to write; First Egyptian royal dynasty: 5000 BCE

First cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa built; Dawn of Phoenician civilization

First ships built: 3000 BCE

Urban life along the coasts of Iraq, Egypt, India, and the Mediterranean; Alongside Phoenician trade, the alphabet—created by blending Iraqi and Egyptian scripts—began to spread.

Spread of Aryan languages: 2000 BCE

Foundations of Aryan religion and civilization in Iran, India, and Greece; End of Phoenician civilization; Greco-Persian Wars: 500 BCE

Alexander the Great: 320 BCE

What we call civilization essentially means living one's life under the canopy of faith, dharma, law, and knowledge. It means keeping this life vibrant through hard work, illuminating it with noble ambitions, and acquiring—through industry and trade—the things that provide comfort or whose beauty brings joy to the heart. Every nation builds and refines its way of life according to its own nature and sensibilities. Yet, human beings are fundamentally the same everywhere; if we strip away the veil of names and superficial traits, we will find a remarkably similar way of life across the globe. In Egypt, Sumeria, Babylon, ancient India, and Iran, religion presented the same two-sided portrait of hope and fear. It fostered a deep connection with the forces that sustain and nurture life.

Efforts were made to appease and tame those forces that threatened harm and death. However, humanity has never fully comprehended these forces. They are so vast, and they envelop human existence so completely, that the human intellect is left in awe. Man envisions these forces in myriad forms and assigns them countless names. And when he cannot articulate something clearly—because he does not understand it fully—he weaves it into a story. The mythologies of ancient peoples are filled with thousands of such stories, so strikingly similar that they appear to be distinct attempts to express the exact same underlying reality.

Alongside this poetic aspect of religion, we also find faith and law present everywhere right from the beginning. If you examine them, they are not vastly different from modern laws; in fact, in certain respects, they are even better. Religious, moral, and social laws were established by Osiris and several subsequent kings in Egypt, by King Hammurabi in Babylon, by the Prophet Moses for the Jews, and by Minos on the island of Crete.

King Hammurabi’s code of law has been discovered engraved on a stone. The punishments for certain crimes in it, such as theft, appear exceedingly harsh by today's standards. Yet, it also contains provisions that we have not been able to match despite all our progress. For instance, if a robbery occurred in the city, it was the government's responsibility to apprehend the culprit and return the stolen goods, or otherwise compensate the victim from its own treasury. We also observe that women enjoyed significant freedom; their rights were in no way inferior to those of men. They received a share in property and inheritance. They were permitted to engage in business, and they actively did so. Furthermore, reading the histories of Queen Hatshepsut and Queen Tiye of Egypt, as well as Queen Semiramis of Babylon, reveals that women in these lands were considered fully capable of ruling.

Egyptian tales suggest that men were somewhat intimidated by and submissive to their wives. Even if this notion is not entirely accurate, we do know that in Egypt and Babylon, women did not lose their individual identities or become entirely absorbed into their husbands' families after marriage. Instead, their primary familial ties remained with their own parents, and they could easily obtain a divorce.

Moving beyond law, when we examine the daily life and various administrative sectors of that era, it is truly astonishing. In both Egypt and Babylon, the government managed comprehensive irrigation systems. Canals were carved out from rivers to transport water over long distances, and massive reservoirs were constructed to store flood and rainwater. To protect life and property, police forces were stationed in every settlement, while armies guarded the cities. Numerous accounts from Egypt and Babylon have reached us, indicating that the kings themselves held rules and laws in high regard and actively prevented government officials from committing acts of oppression or injustice. Courts were established to adjudicate disputes, and they held sufficient authority to execute their duties effectively.

Just like law and state administration, the foundations of the knowledge we take such pride in today were also laid during this era. The art of writing was invented in Egypt and Babylon. The Babylonians would craft clay tablets and, while they were still wet, inscribe them by pressing a pointed stylus into the surface, after which the tablets were dried. Their script was naturally dictated by the nature of their pen and paper. In Babylon, a system of correspondence was already in place; people would seal these inscribed tablets inside clay envelopes and send them to one another via couriers. However, this method of writing was quite a tedious and lengthy process.

In Egypt, there grew a type of soft-stemmed reed known as papyrus, from the bark of which a form of paper could easily be produced. Initially, the Egyptians would simply draw a picture of the object they wished to mention. Gradually, however, these pictograms evolved into a writing system that allowed a person to express their thoughts quickly and clearly. Building upon the efforts of Babylon and Egypt, a people known as the Phoenicians developed individual letters to represent specific sounds, rather than using symbols for entire words. The Phoenicians were merchants, and alongside their trade, they spread their unique writing system far and wide. With the exception of Chinese and Japanese, almost all the languages in the world eventually adopted these very letters, albeit with altered shapes and minor modifications.

Beyond reading and writing, other fields of knowledge were also mastered during this era. The Babylonians were the first to divide time into years, years into months and weeks, and days into hours, and they were also the inventors of the sundial. They named the stars and constellations, and initiated the practices of calculating auspicious times and reading astrological omens. The Egyptians, on the other hand, invented the calendar. The Great Pyramids stand as enduring proof of the perfection they achieved in mathematics and geometry. The largest of these pyramids is constructed from stones weighing thousands of pounds each, totaling nearly two million blocks in all.

These stones were set together without any mortar, yet with such precision that their joints are barely visible, and they have not shifted a fraction of an inch from their places in thousands of years. The base of this structure is 748 feet square, and it stands 440 feet tall—roughly two hundred feet higher than the Qutub Minar. The people who quarried, carved, and hoisted these massive stones to such heights were certainly no amateurs; gazing upon their monument, we ought not to be too arrogant about our own modern knowledge. It is said that Babylon once boasted a similarly towering and magnificent structure, but the heavens, envious of its height, razed it to the ground.

In societies capable of constructing such monumental edifices, building beautiful cities and houses was mere child's play. Entire cities have been excavated from the earth in Egypt, Iraq, Crete, and within our own Indian subcontinent at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa. From their ruins, we can scarcely imagine the vibrant bustle that ebbs and flows with life and habitation, but we can observe that these cities were no smaller in expanse than modern towns. The houses were built of brick and mortar, standing three to four stories high. The streets were wide, and there were excellent drainage systems for wastewater.

There can be no doubt that the inhabitants of these cities were highly civilized. Within these ruins, we have discovered exquisitely crafted pottery and jewelry. Just as manufactured goods are exported from one country to another today, goods in that era also traveled from one region to another, and the fashions and customs of one place were readily adopted elsewhere. Even without trains and airplanes, the world of that time was neither narrow nor small.

The greatest astonishment, however, comes when we look at the faces of the people of that era preserved in statues and paintings, and a vivid picture of their social gatherings and pastimes is brought to life before us. The people of Iraq, Egypt, and Crete did not merely establish laws and principles of life that sustained their civilizations for centuries, nor did they simply elevate knowledge and art to a level where their achievements continue to leave onlookers in awe.

They had managed to fulfill all the necessities of life so efficiently that they had ample opportunity to adorn their society with various refinements. Their very appearances exuded civility, and they were well-versed in the etiquette of polite society. Their women had mastered every technique used to compensate for any imperfections in their features or figures, and there was certainly no shortage of admirers for this art of adornment. Excursions to rivers and gardens, feasts, and social gatherings were everyday occurrences. Whether it was the patronage of artists, hospitality toward travelers, or charity for the needy, we have yet to devise a method today that they did not already know. The light of civilization shone just as brightly then as it does now.

In the story of the world, the era of Adam marks the moment when man evolved from an animal into a human being. Devotees of science may not believe in Adam. Yet, when these very people describe the faiths and beliefs of ancient nations, we consistently find, in one form or another, the figure of a patriarch. Whether by tasting the fruit of good and evil like Adam, bringing fire from the heavens and teaching humanity the art of agriculture like the Greek hero Prometheus, or discovering the path to heaven like Yama, this figure created such a profound distinction between man and beast that the two could never again be considered the same.

The traditions, Puranas, and mythologies of ancient peoples also recount that humanity had not inhabited the earth for long when a great flood struck, drowning all but a few. In those early times, the blade of human intellect was not yet sharp enough to cleanly sever whatever it touched. Perhaps people wished to use this blade for purposes other than mere dissection; hence, we find religious beliefs, myths, history, and imagination all intricately woven together. Or, imagine it as a garden viewed from such a distance that flowerbeds, colors, and blossoms all blend into one another. To prune and dissect these ancient tales feels almost disrespectful. Instead, one should simply observe, enjoy, and draw lessons from them.

After the world had been churned by the waves and whirlpools of the great flood, the uprooted roots of life began to take hold once more—and in certain places, they took root quite firmly. This occurred in the Nile Valley, in southern Iraq, along the banks of the Indus River in India, and at the mouths of the Yellow River and the Yangtze in China. However, the world's population was not confined solely to these settlements. There were many races that found no permanent home. These were the nomads, wandering the earth as if carrying their homes on their shoulders, grazing their livestock as they moved. Whenever their populations swelled, or their wanderings brought them near large settlements—which they naturally intended to plunder—fierce battles would erupt between them and the settled inhabitants. Ultimately, the nomads would emerge victorious. They would drive out the inhabitants and settle in their place. Then, three or four centuries later, this new settlement would be destroyed by yet another invading group, only to be repopulated by new people.

The ancient centers of civilization were like a few lumps of sugar in a pitcher of water. When the water was stirred, the sugar would dissolve; when it settled, the sugar would sink to the bottom. However, those who stirred the water always brought a little sweetness of their own. The sugar that settled after dissolving was always slightly more than before, and the water in the pitcher grew just a bit sweeter. In this manner, civilization continued to spread. Beyond Iraq, Egypt, and India, new centers of civilization were established along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea—in Palestine, Syria, the island of Crete, the Etruria region of Italy, and in North Africa near the modern-day city of Tunis.

Scholars have not yet determined whether the Egyptian civilization or the Sumerian civilization of southern Iraq is the oldest. Nevertheless, both are believed to be eight to ten thousand years old. Furthermore, the oldest traces of settlements discovered at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro in India are likely just as ancient. The ancient Egyptian cities of Thebes, Memphis, and Heliopolis, Babylon in southern Iraq and Nineveh in the north, as well as the city of Knossos in Crete, were all founded during this era of civilization and thrived for centuries.

Around four and a half millennia ago, a new race—whose original name remains unknown to us, but who called themselves Aryan, meaning pure or noble—emerged from God knows where. They conquered southern Europe, Iraq, Iran, and India. They dismantled parts of the ancient civilizations they encountered, but also assimilated much of them, ultimately painting these cultures in their own hues. The Indian, Iranian, Greek, and Roman Aryans all belonged to the same ancestral family, yet each developed a distinct nature and temperament, leaving behind diverse legacies across the world. The first Aryan empire was established in Iran, stretching from Syria to the Indus River. It was eventually overthrown by Alexander, the famous king of the Greek Aryans, and shortly thereafter, the foundations of the Mauryan Empire were laid in India.

Just as this era was drawing to a close, the star of the Roman Empire began to rise in the West. During this same period, new nomadic tribes emerged from the pastures of Mongolia; in a remarkably short span of time, they devastated and subsequently repopulated India, Iran, Turkey, and Eastern Europe. These are the broad strokes of history from the dawn of time up to the era of Jesus Christ. Now, let us examine this same period from a different perspective and observe the extent of human progress over those six or seven thousand years.

New Stone Age: 8000 BCE

First houses built: 7000 BCE

Beginnings of Sumerian civilization: 6000 BCE

Sumerians began to write; First Egyptian royal dynasty: 5000 BCE

First cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa built; Dawn of Phoenician civilization

First ships built: 3000 BCE

Urban life along the coasts of Iraq, Egypt, India, and the Mediterranean; Alongside Phoenician trade, the alphabet—created by blending Iraqi and Egyptian scripts—began to spread.

Spread of Aryan languages: 2000 BCE

Foundations of Aryan religion and civilization in Iran, India, and Greece; End of Phoenician civilization; Greco-Persian Wars: 500 BCE

Alexander the Great: 320 BCE

What we call civilization essentially means living one's life under the canopy of faith, dharma, law, and knowledge. It means keeping this life vibrant through hard work, illuminating it with noble ambitions, and acquiring—through industry and trade—the things that provide comfort or whose beauty brings joy to the heart. Every nation builds and refines its way of life according to its own nature and sensibilities. Yet, human beings are fundamentally the same everywhere; if we strip away the veil of names and superficial traits, we will find a remarkably similar way of life across the globe. In Egypt, Sumeria, Babylon, ancient India, and Iran, religion presented the same two-sided portrait of hope and fear. It fostered a deep connection with the forces that sustain and nurture life.

Efforts were made to appease and tame those forces that threatened harm and death. However, humanity has never fully comprehended these forces. They are so vast, and they envelop human existence so completely, that the human intellect is left in awe. Man envisions these forces in myriad forms and assigns them countless names. And when he cannot articulate something clearly—because he does not understand it fully—he weaves it into a story. The mythologies of ancient peoples are filled with thousands of such stories, so strikingly similar that they appear to be distinct attempts to express the exact same underlying reality.

Alongside this poetic aspect of religion, we also find faith and law present everywhere right from the beginning. If you examine them, they are not vastly different from modern laws; in fact, in certain respects, they are even better. Religious, moral, and social laws were established by Osiris and several subsequent kings in Egypt, by King Hammurabi in Babylon, by the Prophet Moses for the Jews, and by Minos on the island of Crete.

King Hammurabi’s code of law has been discovered engraved on a stone. The punishments for certain crimes in it, such as theft, appear exceedingly harsh by today's standards. Yet, it also contains provisions that we have not been able to match despite all our progress. For instance, if a robbery occurred in the city, it was the government's responsibility to apprehend the culprit and return the stolen goods, or otherwise compensate the victim from its own treasury. We also observe that women enjoyed significant freedom; their rights were in no way inferior to those of men. They received a share in property and inheritance. They were permitted to engage in business, and they actively did so. Furthermore, reading the histories of Queen Hatshepsut and Queen Tiye of Egypt, as well as Queen Semiramis of Babylon, reveals that women in these lands were considered fully capable of ruling.

Egyptian tales suggest that men were somewhat intimidated by and submissive to their wives. Even if this notion is not entirely accurate, we do know that in Egypt and Babylon, women did not lose their individual identities or become entirely absorbed into their husbands' families after marriage. Instead, their primary familial ties remained with their own parents, and they could easily obtain a divorce.

Moving beyond law, when we examine the daily life and various administrative sectors of that era, it is truly astonishing. In both Egypt and Babylon, the government managed comprehensive irrigation systems. Canals were carved out from rivers to transport water over long distances, and massive reservoirs were constructed to store flood and rainwater. To protect life and property, police forces were stationed in every settlement, while armies guarded the cities. Numerous accounts from Egypt and Babylon have reached us, indicating that the kings themselves held rules and laws in high regard and actively prevented government officials from committing acts of oppression or injustice. Courts were established to adjudicate disputes, and they held sufficient authority to execute their duties effectively.

Just like law and state administration, the foundations of the knowledge we take such pride in today were also laid during this era. The art of writing was invented in Egypt and Babylon. The Babylonians would craft clay tablets and, while they were still wet, inscribe them by pressing a pointed stylus into the surface, after which the tablets were dried. Their script was naturally dictated by the nature of their pen and paper. In Babylon, a system of correspondence was already in place; people would seal these inscribed tablets inside clay envelopes and send them to one another via couriers. However, this method of writing was quite a tedious and lengthy process.

In Egypt, there grew a type of soft-stemmed reed known as papyrus, from the bark of which a form of paper could easily be produced. Initially, the Egyptians would simply draw a picture of the object they wished to mention. Gradually, however, these pictograms evolved into a writing system that allowed a person to express their thoughts quickly and clearly. Building upon the efforts of Babylon and Egypt, a people known as the Phoenicians developed individual letters to represent specific sounds, rather than using symbols for entire words. The Phoenicians were merchants, and alongside their trade, they spread their unique writing system far and wide. With the exception of Chinese and Japanese, almost all the languages in the world eventually adopted these very letters, albeit with altered shapes and minor modifications.

Beyond reading and writing, other fields of knowledge were also mastered during this era. The Babylonians were the first to divide time into years, years into months and weeks, and days into hours, and they were also the inventors of the sundial. They named the stars and constellations, and initiated the practices of calculating auspicious times and reading astrological omens. The Egyptians, on the other hand, invented the calendar. The Great Pyramids stand as enduring proof of the perfection they achieved in mathematics and geometry. The largest of these pyramids is constructed from stones weighing thousands of pounds each, totaling nearly two million blocks in all.

These stones were set together without any mortar, yet with such precision that their joints are barely visible, and they have not shifted a fraction of an inch from their places in thousands of years. The base of this structure is 748 feet square, and it stands 440 feet tall—roughly two hundred feet higher than the Qutub Minar. The people who quarried, carved, and hoisted these massive stones to such heights were certainly no amateurs; gazing upon their monument, we ought not to be too arrogant about our own modern knowledge. It is said that Babylon once boasted a similarly towering and magnificent structure, but the heavens, envious of its height, razed it to the ground.

In societies capable of constructing such monumental edifices, building beautiful cities and houses was mere child's play. Entire cities have been excavated from the earth in Egypt, Iraq, Crete, and within our own Indian subcontinent at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa. From their ruins, we can scarcely imagine the vibrant bustle that ebbs and flows with life and habitation, but we can observe that these cities were no smaller in expanse than modern towns. The houses were built of brick and mortar, standing three to four stories high. The streets were wide, and there were excellent drainage systems for wastewater.

There can be no doubt that the inhabitants of these cities were highly civilized. Within these ruins, we have discovered exquisitely crafted pottery and jewelry. Just as manufactured goods are exported from one country to another today, goods in that era also traveled from one region to another, and the fashions and customs of one place were readily adopted elsewhere. Even without trains and airplanes, the world of that time was neither narrow nor small.

The greatest astonishment, however, comes when we look at the faces of the people of that era preserved in statues and paintings, and a vivid picture of their social gatherings and pastimes is brought to life before us. The people of Iraq, Egypt, and Crete did not merely establish laws and principles of life that sustained their civilizations for centuries, nor did they simply elevate knowledge and art to a level where their achievements continue to leave onlookers in awe.

They had managed to fulfill all the necessities of life so efficiently that they had ample opportunity to adorn their society with various refinements. Their very appearances exuded civility, and they were well-versed in the etiquette of polite society. Their women had mastered every technique used to compensate for any imperfections in their features or figures, and there was certainly no shortage of admirers for this art of adornment. Excursions to rivers and gardens, feasts, and social gatherings were everyday occurrences. Whether it was the patronage of artists, hospitality toward travelers, or charity for the needy, we have yet to devise a method today that they did not already know. The light of civilization shone just as brightly then as it does now.