Russian president-elect Dmitry Medvedev apparently shares an India link unknown to many. The 42-year-old successor of Vladimir Putin [Images] has a surname which can trace its origin to Sanskrit.

Medvedev is derived from 'medved' the Russian word for bear. For pre-Christian Russians, who were the worshippers of wooden idols of 'Balvan' (almighty god), the use of the word 'ber' was a taboo and so they preferred to call the animal 'Medved'.

While in Russian, 'Medved' would have translated to 'someone having the knowledge of honey', in Sanskrit, the language of Aryans, the word 'Madhu Vedi' has the same meaning.

Experts believe that Arctic Russia [Images] was the home of Indo-European Aryan tribes before they migrated to the South due to advent of the Ice Age.

Outstanding Indian scholar of the Vedas and freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak, in his book 'The Arctic Home in Vedas', has also mentioned about the common roots of the Russians and Indians.

Ever since the rise of Nazi Germany [Images] and the Hitler's [Images] crimes against the Jews during the Second World War, anything Aryan had been a taboo in Communist Russia, and for the first time, President Vladimir Putin had made a timid attempt to mention the Aryan roots of Russia during his visit to India in January 2007.

Addressing eminent Indians at a private gathering in the Russian Embassy in New Delhi, Putin, for the first time, publicly acknowledged that the common roots of Indians and Russian date back to 'days of Zoroaster', as he did not want to evoke the wrath of the powerful Orthodox Church and Jewish lobby by mentioning the word 'Aryan'.