Tracing Potential Hindu Influences in Pre-Columbian Native Indian Cultures of America

Abstract

This paper posits that prior to Columbus, Hinduism might have had some influence on Native Indian cultures. It looks across a range of dimensions—mythological, symbolic, architectural, linguistic, and philosophical—for any connections that might show dimensions of the pre-Columbian cultures that were influenced by Hinduism. To do this, the analysis compares and contrasts a very wide range of sources. Overall, the findings indicate not just the possibility but the probability of some kind of influence from Hinduism on the pre-Columbian cultures of the Americas. Some linguistic analyses indicate that Native Indian languages of America may have been influenced by Sanskrit, leading to speculation about shared root words and similar naming conventions. This paper does not get too bogged down with details of linguistic comparison but focuses instead on what some scholars—mainly those who see diffusion from ancient India to the Americas as a real possibility—consider to be striking similarities between what is found in the philosophical literature of ancient India and what is expressed in Native Indian cultures of America. In the final analysis, the paper highlights the significance of these findings for the comprehension of cultural interactions and marks out some potential directions for future research.