William Durant, describing the Etruscans’ past, says that, they ‘are among the irritating obscurities of history’. They ruled Rome for a hundred years, but their footprints in history find them not as a distinct group of people, whose geographical identity is yet to be visited by scholarly world in fairness of facts.
Etruscans are, according to historians, founders of Italian civilization, and history knows present Italy through Etruscans only. It is said that there are ‘8000 inscriptions’ on them, but only a few of them have been deciphered, and today academic scholarship is yet to know them fully whose connection with Roman civilization holds the mysterious key.
Scholars are of the view that Etruscans had come from the Asia Minor; but their Asiatic origin is shrouded in absence of a clear meaning of the term ‘Asia Minor’.
They are again seen as an outgrowth of the Villanovan culture. This term ‘Villanoban’ is very nicely treated in Pali literature where it is called Velluvana(different from Beluva), and Indian puranic tradition knows it as Bilva-vana, It was a celebrated pilgrimage centre of ancient world, and near it was the ‘Hell’ which has gone into Buddhist literature as well as into other ancient texts in a good way. Even Chinese pilgrim Hiouen Tsiang during his visit to this place in 7th A.D. found this ‘Hell’ still alive in memory of the local people.
William Durant again writes that ‘We do not know where they(Etruscans) landed; but we know that they founded, conquered, and developed many cities’. While identifying their geographical settlements, names of Tarquinii, Arretium, Perusia, and Veii, are mentioned which collectively give an idea of the geographical situation of these people in the region of the Tyrrhene Sea. The Greeks called Etruscans as Tyrrbeni or Tyrseni; and Romans know then as Tusci.
The description which helps to locate the Etruscans through various names of places of the region expands and explores the totality of the Greek settlements in one way or the other. Tyrrbeni stands for the ‘Triveni’, meeting point of three rivers; and Tusci again sees a place near it called Takka which lies in between ancient Rome and Tribeni; What Etruscan means is the seat of worship of deity Herat near Atalia on the bank of the river Koa and it is neighbourly to Caesarea on the right and Vellubana, or Beluvana on the right. This Triveni is the meeting point of the three rivers: Saraswati(Kapila), river Oxus and the river Askini at Antarakula or Anatolia of the Greeks; Chinese pilgrims know it as An-to-lo. Its historical identity is very wide as it identifies the House of Cadmus of the Greeks and also Olympus. This identifies the Erdkarte des or Udaka country of Eratosthenes.
Names of Atalia, Etruscan, Tuscany, and Etrusia are different place-names, and they should not be seen as one and the same place; they are neighbourly to each other in the vicinity of Rome, which is again different from Rome’s royal seat of administration at Caesarea.
Taranquinii marks the ancient Thebes, or the seat of Vessantara Jataka at Taranquin, or Tarantara of Pali texts, in the Oxian or the Auxian region near Herat. The problem before historians arose when Alexander’s visiting Rome could not be ascertained from his Indian invasion accounts which is veiled in the term Eschate means Saketa or the ‘end of the world’. While Arretium marks Herat, Perusia and Veii respectively identify places Purushpur and Bhoii(also Verahi, identified with Verahi temple).
Greeks knew Italians as inhabitants of the region to the south of the Po; meaning of this ‘Po’ could not be deciphered as a result of which ancient world could not know the meaning of ‘Bo’ which Chinese pilgrims identify both the terms with Pei-to, or the Bodhi Tree, same as Tree of Wisdom. This Tree was then in the Jeta-vana of Vaisalai. Hellenic Graeci is a wonderful place that identifies Go(means ‘cow’)-karna, Go-sringa, Go-mantaka, and Go-mati from which the term ‘Graii’, or ‘Cow’ has been derived(means Gaii).
The descendants of the terramari-coli are also seen as inhabitants in the region to the north of the Valley of Po; this term ‘terramari’ refers to ‘tamala’ region and ‘coli’ as usual identifies the royal seat of the Koliyans, or as same as Chaldeans, or the Chhadeyyas, which identifies the bird ‘cuckoo’ and is associated with the House of Noah. All places are situated very close to each other; there is no problem in identifying them as each and every descriptive village has gone into pages of most of the ancient literature. If one village is identified correctly, the other follows it very swiftly.
Spread of ‘Villanovan’ culture from Bologna sees ‘Bologna’, name of a place that specialises itself with preparation of a rice-drink called ‘kanji’. There are villages in the name of Bolor, and Bali. And this poses some difficulty in reaching at a correct place, but this disappears the moment the village next to it is reached.
The region was the seat of Yoginis, or the Women Followers of Divinity who were a part of the ‘Divinity; itself. To treat them as prostitutes is wrong; they were in the close vicinity of the deity Herat’s place of worship. Seats of worship of the Twelve Great Gods are nearby to this place; they also mark along with them the Eight Great Chaityas of sixth century B.C., and later these seats were converted to Deva Temples. These seats of worships stand in a queue and are linked to the Life of the Buddhas. God Tinia, thus, represents the Zinia, or the Jinas or Zion. There is a village near by known as Tiruan, and it identifies the seat of Daughter of Zion. Seat of Worship of Rumkuni or Rimkini(mark name of Roxana, another wife of Alexander which he received from Oxian country) is also near to the seat of worship deity Herat. Aeneas went to Underworld to meet his father’s spirit at this place.
Lombardy people were the ‘Long Ear’ or the ‘Lambakanas’ of the ancient world; from this name is also derived the term ‘Lampatas’ means ‘persons who run after women’. Their settlements were on the banks of the Po near Apennine, or the Purana villages near city of Bucephalus. Ramagna is same as Rama-grama and this royal seat of the Koliyans also identifies the Alexander’s city of Sangala.
Most importantly, Rome is identified with the Temple of Juno, also known as Chaitya, from which the name of Cetiya or Cete has been derived. This is another name for ‘Chariot’. Cretans and Thebans were neighbourly to each other on the banks of the river Indus.
Vergil was a native of Sisupala near which is Uttara, Chaitya of Rome. Poclais, Perusia and Bucephalus on the left bank of the river Indus. Ravenna island is at a little distance. That is the reason why Vergil sings, ‘Here is eternal spring’. And even summer in months not his own. Twice in the year the cattle breed, twice the trees serve us with fruit; twice in a year the rose bloomed at Paestrum; and in the north lay many a fertile plain like a Mantua’s ; feeding the white swans with the grassy streams’.
The conception of Mediterranean as identifying the region of the classic world is fatally wrong. This is a late development where scholars who could not know the meaning of the junction of the seas took its geographical situation to identify the ‘three seas’ which alone can be visualised through Ptolemy’s peripheral map of the ‘inhabited world’ which he presents in an egg-shaped or oval shaped manner.
While Tuscan stands for Toshali, Etruscan identifies Uttara near Rome and Kesuria or Caesarea. Italus who became king of Oenotria, was a native of Antarakula; though we have places in the name of Olikana, and Athantara near it. Italus’s connection with, and as King of Sicels, marks either Sisupala or Saketa, as both stand neighbourly to each other near Uttara. If it is identified with Sakala, from where Aeneas came to Rome, then it is not that far from this place.