Oh, Friedrich… Was hast du bloß gemacht? A Rogue disciple of the German Idealists, hurling the ultimate taunt at the founding fathers of Indian Idealism… Hmmm. How strange that Indian Idealists have never critiqued this new school of thought called Existentialism—even though it was a group of Cittamātravadins, led by Bodhidharma, who undertook the first radical deconstruction of 'religious-morality' in the history of philosophy. And many of the conclusions of that grand experiment seem to reappear in Nietzsche. 'Kill the Buddha!' But for today, we shall judge a book by its cover. No more, no less. 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' For a magnum opus that asks its readers to transcend good and evil, this is the ONE title that should never have been used. And Atharvan Zarathustra—the one man who should never have been elevated to the high honor of being mascot for such an ambitious philosophical project. The fire priest who divided the whole universe into good and evil. But who was he, really, this Zarathustra? We must travel back in time, four thousand years, to the age of the Sapta-Sindhu Civilization. Because the events imagined in Nietzsche’s book actually transpired in ancient India, in the territory remembered as Gandhāra, on the banks of the Rasa river. There dwelt the Atharvans, the infamous clan of fire priests. And among them, one Atharvan of the Spitama family rose to absolute power: the Dakhyuma of Rangha, the priest-king of the Dasyus and the Dāsas, with all temporal and spiritual authority concentrated in a single man. How dangerous! Kshatra and Brahma should always be separated... He turned the old Indo-European religion upside down. He divided everything into good and evil. Even the animal kingdom was not spared. There were animals belonging to the Asura and animals belonging to Angra. Even the gods were torn apart into Devas and Asuras. He even laid down the foundations of monotheism. His changes triggered internecine war between brothers, permanent schism between Indo-Iranians, the Paurava and the Anava, and brought the joint civilization continuum to an end. And so I ask you, Friedrich: you who boldly proclaimed 'the transvaluation of all values is begun'; you who commanded the Germanic mind to transcend good and evil—did you know what you were doing when you chose the Atharvan as your alter-ego? Sag mir, Friedrich....