Take a good look at the pennants in this post. Where do they come from?
The first, as we have been reminded recently, is the standard of a long-gone monarchy, now resurrected as the banner of counter revolution against an oppressive Islamic theocracy in Iran. The Lion Warrior emblem on that banner mimics the emblem on the second flag of the benign and dharmik Buddhist Sri Lanka.
Both the lions hold a curved sword in the right hand, facing west, the direction from which two of the world’s greatest Arya civilizations have been invaded through recorded history. The sword wielding lion, in both instances, is the symbol of lion-like courage of their warrior-protectors.
Do the similarities end here?
Vexillologists, who analyze the origin of flags, their symbolism, evolution, and political meaning would say, yes, there is little to read between all that flutter. Through all of its recorded histories, the ensign of the Iranian monarchy, and now of its citizen’s valour, is less than 200 years old. It was first adopted by the Qajar dynasty around 1848, and later reintroduced in 1964 by the Pahlavi, of whom the current Reza Shah is scion.
Medieval records trace the symbol as a Safavid emblem, not banner, from the 16th century onward.
The Sri Lankan standard is dated more recently to 1972. However, their sword wielding lion-emblem is ancient, dated way back in history to 500 BCE, the era of Prince Vijaya, the founder of the first Sinhalese kingdom.
Prince Vijaya is reminder of a much-cherished lionheart prince, later God-King, celebrated across the Indian subcontinent even today, Ram, Maryada Purushottam.
Once upon a time, long, long ago, our Ram defeated the Rakshas king Ravan of Lanka after launching an expedition to the island state on Vijaya, the tenth lunar day of the bright fortnight, shukl paksh, of Ashvin, now popularly celebrated as the October Dussehra. At the end of his war, Lanka, says The Ramayan to which Ram belongs, was depopulated.
Ram from our inherited past finds mention in the Zoroastrian Avesta, and by some accounts, has reportedly been authenticated by Iran’s current supreme Ayatollah as one of the 124,000 anbiya - paigambar of Islam who preceded Muhammad on earth. In the Indian pantheon, Ram is the seventh of ten avatars of Narayan, a manifestation of the Vedik trinity of Brahma, Visnhu and Shiv symbolized by the Fire, the Sun and the Moon.
Vijaya is also symbolic of the lion-mounted Indian feminine divinity Durga, slayer of Ashur, presumably also of West Asian provenance. This Vijaya, that is Durga, is also symbolic of the lion-mounted Bactrian (Bakhtiyari) feminine divinity Nana, Mesopotamian Inanna, Iranian Anahita, and the Arabic al~Lat, all of whom are portrayed as lion-mounted in their ancient civilizational iconography.
It should not surprise, then, that Iranian women are now at the forefront of the revolution against their mollahs, their so-called Islamic protectors turned nemesis.
Nobody can say for certain when King Ram walked this earth and took on the Rakshas might of Ravan, which is the central theme of The Ramayan. Some western astro-archaeologists, among them German Indologist Andreas Leitz, date him from the scriptures to around 7000 BCE. This is the period when Indians in the Indus-Saraswati-Ganga river basin took to settled farming.
The Ramayan of Valmiki, on which our acquaintance and familiarization of Ram is grounded, has been conservatively dated to around 500 BCE by the scholars of The Princeton Ramayan, the most exacting and comprehensive English translation of the epic. That places the documentation of Valmiki’s lionheart, Ram and Prince Vijaya of Lanka to the same period.
As things stand, spiritual phenomenologists, mythologists, cultural historians would dismiss the similarity of the Sri Lankan and Iranian lion warrior emblems as a grand coincidence. No umbilical cord binds the Sri Lankans to the Iranians, they may seem to suggest, standing apart, as they do, by more than skin tones, language, documented histories, and lately, religious polarization, as articulated lately through the timeless compassion and endemic violence of their respective histories.
What, then, could be the markers that tie the two nations, separated, as they are, by an ocean?
Extant textual inheritances of the two civilizations have left meaningful signposts for the future. The Avesta, the oldest scripture of the Zoroastrians, says their ancestors migrated from the South; India’s Upanishads insist the path of the ancestors point down under. In the Indo-Aryan universe, Sri Lanka would be that South, right at the bottom of a mean Eurasian meridian.
Anthropologists and geneticist trace a common ancestry of the Indo-Iranians to the Dravidian-Brahui people who lived in an area that is now Baluchistan on the Indo-Iranian frontier, separated by a cultural anachronism named Pakistan.
The Brahui were the first builders of urban settlements in the Oxus-Indus-Saraswati-Yamuna basin, before urbanization shifted to the Ganga valley. Their direct genetic offsprings can now be traced to Oraon and Gonds of the Vidhya-Chhota Nagpur highlands in eastern India.
Geneticists also say that a branch of the Brahui migrated west across ancient Persia along the Makran coast, all the way to the Zagros mountains on the Iranian-Anatolian frontier, home to the mythical winged lion Lamassu in Persian bas-reliefs at Naqsh-e-Rostam. Another branch walked the coast of Konkan, all the way down south to Sri Lanka.
The Ramayan of Valmiki informs us about the Arya Rakshas of Sri Lanka, where Ram, a northerner took his civilizational fight and light to the gates of Ravan. The Avesta lists the Rakshas as a significant Zoroastrian clan alongside the Daitya, both devoted to the supreme Ashur, Ahura Mazda.
Modern Tehran was once the medieval city of Rayy also known in Avesta Persian as Raghae. That name is cognate with both Raghu, of the Iksvaku clan to which Ram belonged, as well as the Rakshas clan of Ravan, both races of Vedik Sanskrit origin.
Raksh in Avesta Persian is also identified with red, the colour of blood spilt in war.
Etymologically, Ahura is derived from the middle Persian word abestag, meaning praise or laudation and ostentation, the mirror opposite of Vaidik humility, and knowledge.
Within the Indian Arya moral framework, the Ashur, Danav, Daitya, and Rakshas are not necessarily evil, rather they are wicked or malefic influences on the idealized Indian society. They are classified as wicked mainly because they tend to oppose the Devas. The Ashur, especially, are defined only in their opposition of the Sur, the Daitya to the Deva. All of them waste much of their time and energy trying to conquer each other’s kingdoms and gain control of the rulership of the worlds. In this world order, the Dev, Daitya and Danav and Ashur not only belong to two divergent genetic streams with common original ancestry, but they also represent opposing political ideologies and civil morality, though their historical and social inheritances appear to be the same. As we progress lower in the hierarchy, the wicked creatures become less ambiguous.
Rakshas, probably originating from Raksh in classical north central Persia, disrupt sacrifices, and therefore, appear to be inimical to the Vedik social order, in which Ravan provokes war on Ram by abducting his wife. Ram wins the battle and rescues Sita, exterminating the Rakshas.
The Upanishads also locate the Rakshas among the five greatest life forms or intelligent beings that once emanated from the supreme void of space, followed by the Ashur (demons), Devata (divinities), Pritu (ancestors), and Gandharv (celestials). The Brhad~aranyaka Upanishad describes them among the panchajanah or five cosmic beings. A closer study of these multiple identities places all of them among the Arya races of the ancient world, likely identified by their places of origin. Their moral and dharmic compass are either in direct conformity or confrontation with India’s Vedik civilizational values and aspirations.
Of these, the Ashur, Daitya and the Rakshas are identified as anti-Vedik or A~vaidik people and likely represent classical West Asian origins as citizens of Mesopotamia, Sumeria, Persia, and the Caspian Sea rimland. All of them find mention in the Avesta, which itself is, perhaps, an ancient Persian variation of a~Veda, among the Zoroastrians opposing the Vaidik Daiva or Devata.
The Upanishads, have it that the Daitya and Deva once queued up before the Creator Divine Brahma, seeking his indulgence. The Daitya asked for material wealth and glory; the Deva sought frugality and wisdom. Both clans and their camp flowers got what they desired.
Ever since the Ashur, Daitya and Rakshas have inherited the Tree of Life, the Devas and their followers, the Tree of Wisdom, now identified with the Bodhi Tree of Buddha’s nirvana.
Rapacious and dangerous, these beings regularly appear in Indian literature and spiritual texts in a hierarchy atop which are placed the Ashur, Daitya, and Danav. The Rakshas, Yaksh and Nag occupy the middle realm.
In Ram’s long walk across continental India, The Ramayan vacates substantial space for malevolent beings, who are usually morally and ethically more ambivalent, and therefore, more interesting.
The Ramayan adds to the unravelling of ancient mindsets, recounting that the Rakshas asked to be made protectors of their realm, hence the word Rakshas from ‘raksham’ or protection, since symbolized by the sword-wielding lion on our banners. Their celestial highland neighbours, aligned to the Deva, demanded food security, symbolized by the never-emptying jar, kalash or yaksham, hence, identified with the semi-divine Yakshas. Dardic people, among them, the Kalash of high Karakoram in modern Gilgit-Afghanistan, and the Kashmiri of high Himalaya, revere the Yaksha divinity as Jakkh; Bengalis keep safe distance from Jokkh/o.
The Tree of Life of the Rakshas has come down to us Indians in an interesting avatar at Gokarna, places in the Ram story, alternately associated with in the Himalayas, as well as verdant patch on the Konkan coast, in Karnataka, where Vedik ascetics are said to have performed fire sacrifices or homa a long time ago.
Gaokerena is Avesta (Persian: Gōkarn) for the white haoma tree, the Persian Tree of Life, the wood from which is used to light the sacrificial fire. Both the words aggregate from the horn or ear of a bull. Gao in both Sanskrit and Avesta means bull, cow, life-force and nourishment, while kerena/karn means both ears and horns, symbolic of growth or essence; their myths, though different, are nevertheless tied to the Ashur-Rakshas imagination.
The Ramayan, alludes to Gokarna, probably in the Himalaya, where the Vedik sage and Ram's ancestor Bhagirath stood in "a circle of five fires" to bring the Ganga down to earth. The Persians perform five major fire rituals, Yasna, the central Iranian fire ritual as the core liturgical sacrifice of Zoroastrianism; haoma, shared with Vedik Soma ritual, also called the Homa; Ātar, where fire is worshipped as divine hypostasis, with offerings of dry wood, incense, and fat (symbolizing nourishment); Āfrīnagān, ritual blessing before fire for the dead and the kings, emphasising order (aša) and continuity between worlds; and Nōg-Rōz or seasonal fire rites of the new year Nowruz, symbolic of renewal and cosmic balance
Kings participated in these rituals as guarantors of order.
Starting with Ravan’s Rakshas horde, the Konkan coast, also centered in Gokarna, has long been home to settlements of Indo-Iranian and West Asian ancestry, right down to the early modern period of world history. Among them the Saka-Scythians, the light-eyed Chitpavan Brahman, the brown-skinned Sankhadvip (probably Egyptian) Brahman, the light-skinned Kodava-Coorgis, and the Tuluva of the later Vijaynagar dynasty, have all settled in this narrow belt over the centuries, as have Yemeni Arabs and Iranians of the Bahmani Shi’i empire of later centuries.
Sri Lanka, in fact, was home to a royal dynasty, probably of Persian origin, whose women were once being shipped to the Umayyad Caliph al-Walīd ibn Abd al-Malik (705-715 CE) in Damascus along coastal India’s western seaboard. That ship was raided by Indian seamen at the mouth of the Indus, and the princesses rescued, provoking the Caliph to send the first Islamic expeditionary force to India.
A millennium before Islam came to dominate West Asia, Ashurbanipal, meaning the king created by the great god Ashur, was a neo-Assyrian king from 668- 627 BCE who ruled over a vast stretch of Iraq, western Iran, Anatolia, Syria, Levant and Egypt. He is likely to have predated, if not inspired, the Avestan Ahura.
The Ramayan portrays two different categories of Rakshas, both menace to the society, culture and civilization of the Vedik people. The first, inhabited peninsular India, were wild and horrendous cannibals. They mostly led isolated existence, as they were cursed to live in the jungles. The other, like the aristocratic Persian elite, lived in the dazzling mansions of Lanka, and shared political norms and dharmik rituals with their north Indian Arya counterparts.
Ravan and most of his gang members belonged to this latter category of prosperous, urbane, and sophisticated people, leading extravagantly ostentatious lifestyles.
The Ramayan leaves behind several markers that identify Ravan’s horde in Lanka either with a Persian precedent or subsequent. They lived in large palaces adorned with ‘a thousand pillars’ that are reminiscent of the Persian hazar-suttan, their palaces were adorned with gold filigree and precious gems, carved vines, woodworks, and exquisite carpets; they maintained luxuriant gardens complete will streams, pools and fountains in the style of later Persian chahar bagh; they enjoyed lavish spreads of meals, including exotic varieties of flesh.
Interestingly, while the Rakshas lived in humid equatorial Lanka, they rode camels, horses and asses, as well as donkey carts, all endemic to Iran and West Asian civilizations; even Ravan’s flying chariot was drawn by asses, reminiscent of the Buraq of Qur’an. Hardly any of these animals are indigenous to modern Sri Lanka.
Two of Ravan’s generals had distinctive Persian names, Mahodara, as in maha Dara or the Great Dara, cognate with history’s first recorded Persian king Darius (Persian: Dara), and Mahaparsva, as in maha Parsva or the Great Persian, as they were referred to in ancient Sanskrit.
Importantly, the Rakshas, like later Zoroastrians, were fire worshippers, and had the first documented fire temple in a scriptural text, where fire was worshipped in a pit, as with Ravan’s son Indrajit’s famous shrine in the forest of Nikhumbila (named after a feminine deity identical to Kali).
Here, he performed oblations to Agni, before launching himself in battle. Indrajit was the only warrior-prince of his time, The Ramayan informs us, who performed all the seven main fire homa.
Civilizationally, the Zoroastrian fire temples have been identified as the earliest surviving temples of mankind; the Vedik fire worship was performed in the open.
The Rakshas, Valmiki informs us, exhibit fierce energy, great valour, and enormous strength. But they are mostly hideous.
Garuda, the divine bird, identifiable with the Avesta Faravahar or Foruhar, warned Ram that the Rakshas were excellent warriors, supremely proud of their strength, but by their very nature, treacherous and untrustworthy fighters. They wore shining golden armour and breastplates. Their generals rode chariots, and their fiercest warriors wielded maces, swords, cudgels, discuss, war hammers, spears, lances, battle axes, and bows and arrows. Others carried slings riding horseback. All these were part of the ancient Persian arsenal.
Hanuman, Ram’s monkey messenger, who read the riot act to Ravan, noticed that Lanka also had Rakshas citizens who were virtuous and performed Vedik rites. Some Rakshas had been consecrated to perform the sacrifices, some wore matted locks of ascetics, some others shaved their head. Some dressed in cowhide, while others moved around in the buff. Some wore garlands, others smeared perfume, while still others wore the finest ornaments. Some carried sacred darbha grass, while others carried the vessel of sacrificial water.
Valmiki counted Ravan among the Arya.
Ravan was addressed as the King of kings, the Shah-n-shah of the Persians. He was handsome and majestic. When Hanuman saw him for the first time, he was overawed by his beauty and power. He was moved to remark that had Ravan not been so unrighteous, he was worthy of ruling over even the gods.
In the far south, beyond the ocean, in the serendipity of its isolation, Lanka was a prosperous and cosmopolitan city, dazzling as a megapolis of astounding wealth, technology and sophistication, a unique contribution of the Rakshas to modern urban civilization that can be best imagined today in the ruined city states of Mohenjodaro and Harappa, way up north on India’s western frontier in the Sindhu-Saraswati-Yamuna basin, and farther west in ancient Persia, Babylon and Sumer.
Sadly, despite these markers, western historians, pursuing Alexander’s dash through Anatolia, Egypt, Levant, Persia, and Transoxiana en route to the Indus, do not pursue the Persians down south to the homeland of their ancestors, where the Rakshas once are said to have resided.
Worse, Indians, glorifying the worship of Ram of Ayodhya, fare no better, intoxicated on commercial television soap opera. They do not explore the magic of Ravan, in The Ramayan of Valmiki, alternately titled by the same author as The Slaying of Paulastya, that is Ravan.
postscript: Now take a second good look at the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Its central emblem is of a straight double-edged sword called the Shamshīr-e rāst-e-do-labé. This pennant was designed by Hamid Nadimi and officially adopted on May 9, 1980, following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, replacing the pre-revolution Lion emblem.
By a strange coincidence, it mimics the central emblem of a double-edged Indian khanda of the Sikh nishan. The Nishan Saheb, as the banner is now called, was first hoisted by Guru Hargobind atop the Akal Sahib in Amritsar in 1606. It was initially called the Akal Dhuja or Satguru ka Nishan.
There is no common civilisational or spiritual mirroring between the Sikh and Shi’i peoples of India and Iran. The emblems just happen to be there, in their respective banner. Do they?
The Sikhs sport the surname of Singh, identifying themselves as lion warriors. They borrowed that title from the Rajput warrior kings of north India, many of whom patronized or followed the Sikh faith of the Gurus, during the Mughal Islamic occupation of India. The Rajput themselves borrowed the lion title from the ancient Malla kings of eastern, central and southern India, who sported the Singh Deo title of Lion God, and from whom the medieval Rajput Singh warrior kings descended. The Mallas, in turn, identified themselves with the Surya Vanshi (Solar Dynasty) Iksvaku clan of Lionheart God King Ram who forced opened the path to the densely forested southern India, and onward across a sea bridge to Lanka, a long, long time ago. His Iksvaku clan is historically documented as ruling a wide patch of central and peninsular India till the early centuries of the Common Era, before the onset of the Islamic invasions and conquest of India, triggered by the rescue of abducted Sri Lankan princesses.
Nobody told you this long story till now. Neither the historians nor the storytellers. The lion-warrior banner, with its long and illustrious history, says it all.
To cut a long story short, you may get to read the full story in my latest work: Revisiting Ram's Rajya. The ink on its final draft has just dried, the manuscript is ready and waiting.
©2021 Shubhrangshu Roy
Makar Sankranti
15 January, 2026
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