David Frawley (or V?madeva ??str? ?????? ????????) is an American Hindu author, publishing on topics such as Hinduism, Yoga and Ayurveda. He is the founder and director of the American Institute for Vedic Studies in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which offers courses on Yoga philosophy, Ayurveda, and Hindu astrology. He is also a professor of Vedic Astrology and Ayurveda at the Hindu University of America at Orlando, Florida. He is a Vaidya (Ayurvedic doctor), and a Jyotishi (astrologer).
In publications such as In Search of the Cradle of Civilization (1995), Frawley has also defended theories of historical revisionism advocating the "Indigenous Aryans" ideology popular in Hindu nationalism.
In 2000, his book How I Became a Hindu, Frawley details his move from a Catholic upbringing to embracing Hinduism. He learned Sanskrit from a Sanskrit grammar book and a copy of the Vedas around 1970.
Frawley founded and is the director of the American Institute for Vedic Studies in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Through his institute, he offers courses on Yoga philosophy, Hindu astrology (jyotisha), and Ayurveda.
"Dr. Frawley has a background in Chinese medicine, in which he received a doctor's degree in 1987. He taught Chinese herbal medicine at the International Institute of Chinese Medicine from 1984-1990."In 1991, under the auspices of the Hindu teacher Avadhuta Shastri, he was named Vamadeva Shastri (?????? ?????????), after the great Vedic rishi Vamadeva."Vamadeva was one of the first Americans to receive Jyotish Kovid title from the Indian Council of Astrological Sciences (ICAS, 1993), the largest Vedic astrology association in the world."
"Vamadeva [Dr. David Frawley's chosen name] sees his role as helping to revive Vedic knowledge in an interdisciplinary approach for the planetary age. He sees himself as a teacher and translator to help empower people to use Vedic systems to enhance their lives and aid in their own Self-realization. He sees Vedic wisdom as a tool for liberation of the spirit, not as a dogma to bind people or to take power over them. Vedic knowledge is a means of communing with the conscious universe and learning to embody it in our own life and perception."
Religion
Frawley says, "[T]rue religion, whether it predominates in the Eastern or Western parts of the world, is not a matter of geography... Why should it be a problem for us if anyone finds spiritual benefit from a teaching that arises outside of their given cultural context?"... Before we think that we are Westerners or Easterners, we should know that we are human beings. "Identity is something that we are going to lose anyway."
Racial theories
In books such as The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India and In Search of the Cradle of Civilization, Frawley criticizes the 19th century racial interpretations of Indian prehistory, such as the theory of a conflict between invading caucasoid Aryans and Dravidians.
"There is no racial evidence", according to Frawley, "of any such Indo-Aryan invasion of India but only of a continuity of the same group of people who traditionally considered themselves to be Aryans."
"[T]here is no such thing scientifically speaking as Aryan and Dravidian races. The so-called Aryans and Dravidian races of India are members of the same Mediterranean branch of the Caucasian race,... The Caucasian race is not simply white but also contains dark skinned types. Skin color and race is another nineteenth century idea that has been recently discarded."
"The Puranas make the Dravidians descendants of the Vedic family of Turvasha, one of the older Vedic peoples...[T]he Puranas regard the Chinese, Persians and other non-Indic peoples to be descendants of Vedic kings. The Vedas see all human beings as descendants of Manu, their legendary first man."
Bryant commented that Frawley's work is more successful in the popular arena, to which it is directed and where its impact "is by no means insignificant", rather than in academic studyand that "(Frawley) is committed to channeling a symbolic spiritual paradigm through a critical empirico rational one".
In a series of exchanges published in The Hindu, Michael Witzel rejects Frawley's linking of Vedic literature with the Harappan civilisation and a claimed lost city in the Gulf of Cambay, as misreading Vedic texts, ignoring or misunderstanding other evidence and motivated by antiquity frenzy. Witzel argues that Frawley's proposed "ecological approach" and "innovative theories" of the history of ancient India amount to propagating currently popular indigenist ideas. ; ; ; ; ; .
Bruce Lincoln attributes autochthonous ideas such as Frawley's to "parochial nationalism", terming them "exercises in scholarship ( = myth + footnotes)", where archaeological data spanning several millennia is selectively invoked, with no textual sources to control the inquiry, in support of the theorists' desired narrative.
