Beezone’s Series:
Reconsidering
the
Origins of Western Civilization
“India is the mountain end, the spiral origin, the seat of the world.”*
Introduction
For generations, the origin story of Western Civilization has been narrowly told—from Greece to Rome, from Jerusalem to Europe. But what if this familiar arc, however grand, is not the full story? What if the true roots of Western thought, spiritual insight, and civilizational imagination lie much farther East?
This Beezone series takes up that question—not as a rhetorical flourish, but as a historical and cultural inquiry rooted in primary sources, cross-civilizational testimony, and comparative scholarship. At its heart is a radical yet evidence-based thesis: that the core of what we now call “Western Civilization” originated not in the Mediterranean basin, but in India—in pre-historic and early-historic times.
From the sacred city of Benares (Varanasi) to the Indus Valley, from the Vedas to Egypt’s cultic rites and cosmologies, this series follows a cultural and intellectual transmission long ignored or underestimated by mainstream scholarship. In the words of the 18th-century Tibetan Regent recorded by British envoy Samuel Turner, “both the sciences and the arts had their origin in the holy city of Benares… the source and centre both of learning and religion.”
That view, echoed a century later by Sir Francis Younghusband during the British mission to Lhasa, is not isolated reverence. It reflects a widespread recognition, even among colonial emissaries, that Indian civilization shaped Tibet, Egypt, and the broader Asian spiritual landscape long before the West became aware of its own mythic lineage.
This series builds on such voices and evidence—ranging from the letters of Warren Hastings and George Bogle to the linguistic studies of Joseph Koffi, the mytho-historical analysis of Carl Jung, and the Egyptological parallels noted by Sir William Jones, Max Müller, and Arnold Heeren. Whether in the shared solar deities, the lotus iconography, or the structural echoes between the Vedas and Egyptian rites, the convergences are striking.
We also explore how sacred geographies—like India’s Ganga and Egypt’s Nile—formed not only riverine civilizations but symbolic ecosystems of rebirth, spiritual law, and divine embodiment. The lotus, revered in both cultures, becomes more than a flower: it is a metaphor for the continuity of light and life across vast distances.
Rather than pitting cultures against one another in a contest of primacy, this project reframes history as an interconnected web. We trace Indic influences through the Mitanni treaties invoking Vedic gods, the linguistic drift that birthed Hebrew amid Egyptian and Aramaic contact, and the philosophical echoes from Upanishadic thought into Platonic forms. We also examine the way later redactors—biblical, imperial, and academic—constructed selective narratives that inadvertently concealed these deep interrelations.
This is not about appropriating achievements or discrediting traditions. It is about liberating our civilizational imagination. Acknowledging that Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Israel all drank from deeper Eastern wells invites us into a shared heritage—one not bound by geography or dogma, but by the perennial pursuit of truth, order, and sacred understanding.
It is also about rebalancing the historical lens. For too long, Eurocentric historiography has placed the origin of civilization close to home and distant from the “Orient.” But as these essays show, the orientation itself needs rethinking. India, far from being a passive receiver of ideas, was a radiant origin point—culturally, linguistically, spiritually.
In a time of civilizational fragmentation and global amnesia, revisiting these connections is not merely academic—it is urgent. It reminds us that civilization is not the property of any one people. It is the shared result of journeying, exchange, memory, and myth.
May this Beezone series open a doorway—into the East, yes, but also into the living questions at the heart of human history: Where did we come from? What do we remember? And what deeper story have we yet to tell?—
Greek, Egyptian, Jewish, Christian, and Indian Traditions in Western History
India and the Identity of Europe: The Case of Friedrich Schlegel
India and Western Religious Thought – Greece – Chapter IV – Radhakrishnan