Meru Mountains. Hyperborea and Aryan ancestral homeland

Meru Mountains

Hyperborea and Aryan ancestral homeland

S. V. Zharnikova

Editor Алексей Германович Виноградов

Translator Алексей Германович Виноградов

© S. V. Zharnikova, 2025

© Алексей Германович Виноградов, translation, 2025

ISBN 978-5-0065-5427-6

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S.V. Zharnikova

Collection of scientific papers S.V. Zharnikova’s “Meru Mountains” (Hyperborea and Aryan ancestral homeland) is devoted to the problem of identifying the main centers of the Aryan ancestral homeland – the Meru Mountains (Hara and Kukarya mountains, Riphean and Hyperborean mountains). The works presented in it give an answer to the question of their location. These articles outline the circle of lands of the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans – Hyperboreans; find ancient Aryan cities, rivers, sacred reservoirs.

Russia is a country of eternal changes and completely non-conservative, their country is beyond conservative customs, where historical times live, and do not part with rituals and ideas. The Russians are not a young people, but the old ones – like the Chinese. They are very old, ancient, conservatively preserved all the oldest and do not refuse it. In their language, their superstition, their disposition, etc., one can study the most ancient times. (Victor von Hen. 1870)

Arctic India

Dear readers do not be confused by such a strange phrase – Arctic India. We are not the first to pronounce it. 94 years ago, in 1903, a book was published in Bombay under the even more intriguing title “The Arctic Home in the Vedas”. Its author, an outstanding scientist and public figure B. G. Tilak, who for many years studied the Vedas, Mahabharata, Puranas and Avesta, came to the conclusion that the most ancient ancestral home of the Aryans was somewhere near the Arctic Circle.

And he certainly had reasons for such a statement. It is worth recalling, for example, many hymns of the Rig Veda, where the period of “shimmering twilight”, called the dawn, is mentioned, where it is said about a long, many-day night, that the constellation Seven Rishis (Ursa Major) is always visible high in the sky. Or the words of the “Laws of Manu” that “the Sun separates day and night – human and divine… The gods have day and night (human) year, again divided in two: day – the period of movement of the Sun to the north, night – the period of movement to sub.” But this is a polar day and a polar night! There are other examples of observations of the ancestors of the Aryans for the specific natural phenomena of the Arctic.

So in the “Tale of Galava” by Mahabharata Garuda, telling about the northern ascended country washed by the waters of the Milky Sea, he talks about the constellations that make a complete revolution around the motionless Dhruva (the Polar Star) during one night. The belt of these constellations beyond the horizon is definitely indicated: these are the Seven Rishis (Ursa Major), Arunhati (Cassiopeia constellation), and Swati (Medusa star from the polar constellation Perseus). But all these constellations do not go beyond the horizon and describe a circle that can be traced during one winter night (since there is simply no night here in summer) only in areas not further than 56° N. It is well known that the farther north the geographic position of the observer, the greater the radius of non-stopping stars.

It is in the north, according to Mahabharata, that is the zenith of Vishnupada. But the North Star is at its zenith at the North Pole or in the Subpolar countries.

Interestingly, even in the 11th century Abureyhan Biruni noted that in India they “reverently revere the Big Dipper and the North Pole” and believe that “the Pole is Vishnu, to whom the inhabitants of paradise obey; he also is the time that creates and grows, destroys and destroys.” He was genuinely surprised that the Indians knew stars located north of the Arctic Circle, but did not have an idea about the South Pole. Here, probably, it is necessary to recall the descriptions of the Northern Lights – “Apsars living in the North” and sparkling over the Milk (that is, the White Sea).

You must admit that such vast and most importantly very accurate information, transmitted in sacred texts from generation to generation for many millennia, could be obtained and retained only by people who knew the northern lands well and to whom this knowledge was very dear.

We can only regret that the book of B. G. Tilak was never translated into Russian. Perhaps that is why most Soviet scientists were very skeptical of the theory of the polar ancestral home of the Aryans. They believed that the ancestors of the Aryans, who lived in ancient times along the Black Sea, never visited the more northern regions. And information about the Sub-Polar Region was received from the semi-wild tribes, who probably lived in the North of Europe.

Among those who accepted the ideas of B.G. Tilak was the Russian scientist E. Jelachich, who published in 1910 the book “The Far North as the Homeland of Humanity”. Moreover, perhaps, a remarkable Russian researcher, academician A.

I. Sobolevsky, who believed that the ancient Indo-Iranian language lies at the heart of the geographical names of the Russian North.

And only very recently interest in the polar theory of B. G. Tilak has increased dramatically. More and more scientists of our country share his ideas and find him more and more new confirmations. The author for a long time collected, studied and analyzed the geographical names of the European north of Russia. And today we would like to share some results of this work.

Let’s start with such a seemingly strange circumstance that back in 1605, at the court of the Russian tsars, the lands of Russia on the White Sea coast were called India. It is worth noting that in the 17th century, Russian people knew very well where the Hindustan Peninsula is located, with which there was lively trade, and all the more well knew the coast of the Arctic Ocean. And if at the same time they talked about India in the Subpolar region, then they had good reason for this.

After all, back in the early 16th century, travelers wrote that the population living on the banks of the Dvina River “has their own language, although they speak more Russian”, that “the Pechora River has a city and the Papin fortress… its inhabitants speak different from Russian language, called papini. “By 1691, there was a message about the North Russian city, called the Indiager neighbors, that is, the “Indian city”.

And, finally, at the beginning of the 20th century, in the church books of the city of Kholmogory, located near the confluence of the Northern Dvina in the White Sea, the legend that the first settlers in these parts were Chur and Nal, who lived here in ancient times, was preserved. It was with the times of Kura that folk rumor was connected by flint tools and arrows washed from the banks of the river.

It is believed that in honor of Kura and Nalya two islands are named, on which the ancient Kholmogory were located – Kur Island and Nal Island. According to legend, the descendants of the Kura grew over time into a powerful independent people who owned the whole North, the people whom the neighbors called the White-Eye Miracle for their surprisingly bright eyes. Until the beginning of the 20th century, legends about heroic strength, powerful growth, the ability to fly through the air and talk with each other at a great distance from the descendants of the Kura remained in the people. They also associated the appearance north of Kholmogor of the Pur-Navolok fortress, from which the city of Arkhangelsk subsequently grew.

In Mahabharata, Vishnupada is named after a stream that originates in the Kailash plateau. Scientists were somewhat puzzled by the fact that Kailas is in the south in Hindustan, the epos directly points to the north. Perhaps this contradiction can be explained by the following: at Kholmogor the Pinega River flows into the Dvina. It flows in the red-brown shores, takes its source from a flat hill. And this source is called the Kailash River.

By the way, there are a lot of such interesting geographical names in the European North of Russia. Here are some of them. The highest peak of the Subpolar Urals is called Narada. Next to it stands Mount Manaraga and the river Manaraga flows. Here, in the North, near the Lake Onego, rivers flow – the Ganges, Ganesha, Sivaruchey, Padma, Lakshma and others.

Does not the memory of the rivers of the Mahabharata evoke the names of the rivers and lakes of the Russian North – Alaka, Anga, Jalya, Ida, Ila, Kai, Manasa, Pavana, Palava, Suda, Sura, Sharya, Shona, Khaimovatitsa. And hundreds and thousands of names of rivers, lakes, mountains and villages of the North, which are simply impossible to explain with the help of languages other than Vedic Sanskrit. These are Indega, Idoga, Indomanka, Baidara, Varaka, Varida, Vazha, Varza, Virama, Deviaka, Ira, Karaka, Karna, Kaura, Kapya, Kundola, Kusha, Lala, Mandara, Mera, Maura, Sara, Sagara, Sindosh, Siti, Sarga, Swar, Swaga, Sumerka, Sukhana, Taka, Tara, Tarna, Udora, Una, Ura, Ustra, Harina, Haruta, Kharya, Shambovka, Shidra, Shura and many others.

The descendants of Kura and Nalya, residents of the Russian North, carried through the millennia to the present day the ancient names of their rivers and lands, and this testifies to what their ancestors, the first settlers, spoke in Sanskrit, which was freed from the glacier, the White Sea coast. Is it so? – You ask. Think so. For you, this is information for consideration. You can agree, but maybe offer your ideas and finds.

The author wanted to tell you about the Russian North, its secrets, which are gradually beginning to be revealed. And also about the peoples that turned out to be hidden by a dense veil of time.

On the possible location of the Holy Hara and Meru mountains in Indo-Iranian (Aryan) mythology

The location of the legendary Hara and Meru, the holy northern mountains of the Indo-Iranian (Aryan) epos and myths is one of the many riddles in Eurasian ancient history that has been troubling researchers for over a century and prompting ever more, sometimes totally contradictory, hypotheses. As a rule, they are believed to be the Scythian Ripei or Hyperborei mountains mentioned by the authors of antiquity. Over 80 years ago The Arctic Home in the Vedas,1 by the outstanding Indian political figure, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, launched a series of publications related to this subject in one way or another and continued to this day. The answer has never been found, as obvious from the two most recent publications – a book by G. Bongard-Levin and E.Grantovsky From Scythia to India (1983),2 The Ethnogeography of Scythia by I. Kuklina (1985).3 The two so-called Ripei Mountains locations, which the books propose, are mutually exclusive, though the authors proceed from the same ancient myths, historical sources and data.

Bongard-Levin and Grantovsky, analyzed the Avesta, Rigveda, Mahabharata, the works of Herodotus, Pomponius Mela, Plinius, Ptolemaeos, and the information provided by medieval Arabian travelers, ibn-Faldan, ibn-Batuta, and concluded that the geographical characteristics, repeated without exception in every source, are factual a/id indicate that the Ripei Mountains, Hara and Meru were the Urals, since only they possess nearly all the specific features attributed to the holy northern mountains: high altitude, natural resources, proximity to northern seas, etc.

I. Kuklina, the author of The Ethnogeography of Scythia, disagrees entirely, and argues that “it is apparently necessary to first distinguish the concept of the mythical northern mountains from that of mountains north of Scythia where many rivers began. Both of them were named Ripei. However there is no doubt that only the latter mountains can be localized, whereas the former, connected with the far north and Hyperborei, should be sought for in the myths of Indo-lranian peoples”. 5 Kuklina backs up her conclusions with a large number of comments by ancient authors – Pseudo Hippocrates, Dionisius, Eustaphius, Vergilius, Plinius, Herodotus, etc.6 – about the northern mountains called Ripei. She then cites, from Bongard-Levin and Grantovsky, examples of amazing similarities between Scythian polar concepts and ancient Indian and ancient Iranian “Arctic” tradition.

Kuklina draws the following conclusion: the northern mountains and the entire"Arctic” cycle are merely a myth, a retelling of what was learned from native Siberians. She feels the Ripei Mountains were actually the Tien Shan Mountains, as they are the only latitudinal watershed range in this part of Eurasia, are very high, and are north of India and Iran.

Here it is necessary to single out the following groups of information about the Ripei Mountains, Hara and Meru, identical in the writings of medieval Arab travellers, authors of antiquity, in Scythian and ancient Iranian mythological tradition. This information is also noted by the authors of From Scythia to India and the author of The Ethnogeograpky of Scythia.

1. The Ripei Mountains, Hara and Meru extended from the west to the east, separating north from south;

2. In the north, beyond the Ripei Mountains, Hara and Meru, is the Arctic or Kronian, or Dead or Milk Ocean, or the huge Vourukasha Sea that receives the rivers flowing from these mountains to the north;

3. The Ripei Mountains, Hara and Meru are a divide, as they separate rivers flowing to the south and flowing to the north;

4. From the summits of the Hara, Meru and Ripei Mountains, spring a) the heavenly Gang, b) holy Ratha, c) Rusiya River, d) all of Scythians big rivers except the Ister-Danube;

5. In these northern lands one can always see high in the sky the North Star and the Big Dipper;

6. The day there lasts half a year and the night half a year, and in the winter a cold northeast wind blows, causing much snow;

7. Rivers originating in these mountains have golden beds, and the mountains themselves contain countless riches;

8. The mountains are covered with forests, they abound with animals and birds and are very high and impassable;

9. A land of happiness lies beyond the Ripei Mountains, Hara and Meru.

Kuklina does not believe that the northern mountains were the Urals, and has reason to note essentially insurmountable contradictions: ancient writers indicate unequivocally that the Ripei Mountains extended latitudinally, which is not true of the Ural Mountains; the Ural Mountains are located to the east or northeast of Scythia which was in the Black Sea area, certainly not to the north; the Ural Mountains are not the divide from which Scythian rivers emerged.

It is hard to disagree with this. But while Kuklina finds contradictions in the hypothesis of the authors of From Scythia to India, she also faces practically irreconcilable contradictions. First, although the Tien Shan Mountains extend latitudinally, they are definuely not the divide of rivers flowing into northern and southern seas. True, the source of the great Syrdarya is in these mountains, but it flows into the Aral Sea which can hardly be called Lhe Arctic or Dead Ocean. As for the other rivers in Central Asia (those flowing to the north), none of them takes its waters to the sea, which does not in any way correspond to Indo-Iranian poetic mythical or Scythian tradition. Although the divide of Central Asian and Kashgarian rivers is in the Tien-Shan Mountains, those flowing south do not reach the sea, but are all tributaries of the lone Tarym River that disappears in the Takle-Makan desert, an unlikely place for rivers with golden beds, a six-month day and six-month night. The North Star and Big Dipper are not high in the sky, and many more things are lacking that apply specifically to the northern mountains. Thus, we are confronted with the paradox: the Urals are not the Ripei Mountains of the Scythians or the holy Hara and Meru of the Indo-Aryans, but neither does the Tien-Shan Range tally with the traditional descriptions. The author of The Etknogeography of Scythia believes that the Northern mountains were only a myth: "…there is no doubt about it that the Indo-Iranians did not live in areas near the Polar Circle but obtained realistic information about polar phenomena mixed with legends about the northern mountains and the gods from their northern neighbours.” However, it is highly improbable that different peoples originated a myth with quite concrete geographical characteristics – length, latitudinal orientation, wind direction, long winter, northern lights, etc. – that were not based on reality. This is all the more strange in view of the following circumstances: according to Mahabharata and Rigveda the country of Harivarsha was in the north and was the abode of Rudra-Hara. “The stylite with blond braids”, the “holy sovereign Hari-Narayana, boundless Purusha, radiant eternal Vishnu, the brown bearded Ancestor of all creatures.”

The north was the home of the god of wealth, Kubera, of the “seven Rishi” who were the sons of the creator Brahma. These brothers were revered as seven Prajapati – the “rulers of all creatures”, the forefathers and ancestors embodied in the seven stars of the Big Dipper.14 The north was also the location of the “pure, wonderful, meek, desirable world” where “well-wi jhing people are reborn"15, and in general “the northern part of the world, more beautiful and pure than any other,” and “the day of the gods” is the sun’s route to the north.

It seems Kuklina is far from correct when she asserts that the northern mountains of the Indo-Iranian epos were totally fictitious and that there is no point in looking for them on the map. However, it is also hard to agree with the authors who claim the Hara and Meru Mountains were the Urals; the concept holds too many contradictions.

No doubt it is necessary to look once again at the ancient sources, especially since more and more researchers are convinced that the authors of antiquity must and should be believed. For instance, M.Agbunov, on the basis of paleographic data on changes in the Black Sea coastline, concludes that “the works of ancient authors are, as a rule, a reliable source and merit more attention and trust… it should be stressed that most of the concrete historical and geographical descriptions by ancient authors are absolutely correct.” In this case we can use such an authoritative source as Ptolcmaeo” Geography, especially since it is referred to by the authors of From Scythia to India and the author of The Ethnogeography of Scythia. But because the text, as we saw earlier, can be interpreted in different ways to prove contradictory conceptions, let us look at Ptolemaeos’ map, or rather at that part of Geography (published in Rome in 1490) where a mountain range is shown in the north and called Hyperborei Monies. This was the part in Ptolemaeos’ work that Bongard-Levin and Grantovsky called a mistake, claiming that Ptolemaeos put non-existent mountains in the north.

When we compare the map of the European part of the Soviet Union19 with Ptolemaeos’ map, we can see genuine geographical sites such as the Baltic, Black, Azov and Caspian seas, and the Volga running into the Caspian and called Rha*, the ancient Avesta name. We also see all the more or less significant elevated areas up to the Southern Urals, which are separated by a considerable distance from the Hyperborei Montes that Ptolemaeos marked in the north and that extend latitudinally, and that are the starting point of two sources of the holy river of the ancient Iranians-Rahi. This map indicates that Ptolemaeos, and probably geographers of antiquity long before him, make a distinction between the Hyperborei and the Ripei mountains, and the Urals.

Was Ptolemaeos correct or incorrect, were there such elevations in the north that were the starting point of the Volga** and Kama rivers? The map of the USSR shows objectively that there were such elevations-the Northern Urals (Hills). Located in the northeastern European part of the Soviet Union they extend 1,700 kilometers from west to east, and through the Timan mountain ridge combine into a single system with the Northern Urals.

One of the Soviet Union’s most prominent geomorphologists, Yu. Meshcheryakov, wrote the following in his fundamental study, Relief of the USSR, published in 1972: “The world divide that borders the Arctic Ocean basin is farthest away from the ocean to the south, deep inside Eurasia, the Asian part of the USSR. The maximum distance from the ocean to the divide -3,000—3,500 kilometers – is marked on the meridians of Baikal-Yenisei… Going through the Urals, the dividing line suddenly approaches the coast, and within ike Northern Uvals it is only 600—800 kilometers from the shore”. The author goes on to say that the Northern Uvals are the main divide of northern and southern seas in the Russian plains. While he calls them the “principal orohydrographical anomaly of the Russian plains”, he notes the paradox that “the highest elevations (Middle Russia, Volga region) are in the southern part of the plains, they are not the main dividing lines, yielding the role to the insignificant, relatively small Northern Uvals.” Meshcheryakov also points out that unlike most of the Russian plains’ elevations which are oriented meridianally, “The origin of the inverse morphostructure of the Northern Uvals remains unclear. This elevation does not have a meridianal, but a sublatitudinal direction”.

He writes of a “close, organic tie between’ the undulating deformations of the Urals and Russian plains,” and stresses that "…the Timan mountain ridge starts from the orographical junction of the “Three Rocks” (Konzhakovsky Rock- 1,569 meters, Kosvinsky Rock-1,519 meters and Denezhkin Rock- 1,492 meters). This wide and elevated section of the Urals is on the same latitude as the Northern Uvals and joins them forming a single latitudinal elevated zone”.

The work also notes the same origin of the Northern Uvals, Galichskaya and Gryazovetsko-Danilovskaya elevations, or those latitudinal elevations in the northeastern European part of the Soviet Union that unite into a single bulge the elevations of Karelia, the Northern Uvals and Northern Ural mountains, that is, the part of the range that runs in a north-northeastern direction.

Thus, the Northern Uvals – the main divide of northern and southern rivers, the basins of the White and Caspian seas – are the precise location Ptolemaeos cited for the Hyperborei (or Ripei) Mountains, the source of the holy river-Rha.

However, according to the same Avesta tradition, its source is in the mountains of High Hara – Hara Berezaiti, on the “golden summit of Hukairya”. Of interest in this connection is what Al-Idrisi (12th century) wrote about the Kukaiya Mountains that he places in the far northeast of the oecumene and “that could be connected with the Ripei Mountains noted by ancient geographers, primarily Ptolemaeos”, 26 and the Hukairya Mountains of Avesta. Dwelling on the Kukaiya Mountains, the source of the Rusiya River, Al-Idrisi points out that: “Six big rivers flow into the aforementioned Rusiya River; their sources are in the Kukaiya Mountains. These are big mountains extending from the Black Sea to the edge of the inhabited Earth… They are very big mountains; no one can climb them because of the extremely cold weather and the constant abundance of snow on their peaks.”

If we accept the Ripei (Hyperborei) and Kukaiya mountains as the Northern Uvals, the six rivers are readily found. The Volga (Rusiya) is indeed the drainage point of six rivers that flow from the Uvals – the Kama, Vyatka, Vetluga, Unzha, Kostroma and Sheksna.* Thus, if we regard the Kama as the source of the Volga, as was the case in ancient tradition, then the Volga (Rha) of Ptolemaeos and Avesta, indeed, begins in the Northern Uvals (especially since the actual sources of the Volga are in the Valdai elevation which is included in the southern part of the bulge described). They are also the starting point of the biggest river in the Russian North – the great and deep Northern Dvina which runs into the White Sea and has over a thousand tributaries. One of them, the Emtsa River, does not freeze over in the winter due to the hot springs in its canyon.