Aryan and Non-aryan ...

[dom]

There have been several lively exchanges about this topic recently,
and it seems to me that there are two quite distinct matters of interest
here.

First, the topic itself.  It is relatively easy to acquire some secure
knowledge about the early history of India, even if some of this knowledge
is necessarily conjectural.  People have mentioned sources such as Parpola
and Renfrew.  I would add Allchin and Allchin's "The Birth of Indian
Civilization" (recently reissued by Penguin India), and their successor
to this book, "The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan".  There
are many other books, including many by Indian authors (if anyone cares
about the nationality of their authors).  I consider that Thomas Burrow's
book "The Sanskrit Language" (Faber) is still a marvellously interesting and
comprehensive survey of the very early history of Sanskrit.  Other
works on the early history of Sanskrit by Renou, Bloch, etc. are 
also excellent.  The archaeological publications of Deccan College etc. are 
very important too, of course.  There is no Great Dispute about early Indian
history.  Several generations of very dedicated and meticulous historical 
linguists, archaeologists, physical anthopologists, and others have revealed 
a fascinating and surprisingly coherent and well articulated picture of 
early Indian 
culture and history.  Of course there are boundary cases, where sources
become exiguous, and we grasp at straws.  But this is the same for the early
history of any culture, if you follow it back far enough.  

When I was an undergraduate Sanskritist twenty years ago we were 
already being taught that the coming
of the Vedic people to India was separated from the fall of the Indus 
cities by a period of at least some hundreds of years, if not more.
Anyone who still thinks of Max Mueller as an authority on any Indological 
topic is sadly out of date.  (It's like thinking that London is still
covered by smog and full of workhouses, as Dickens described.)

Secondly, there is the sociology of knowledge involved in the debate about
these matters.  Some people seem able to ignore the edifice of knowledge
created by establishment scholarship, and  feel that the works of Frawley,
Kak (and presumably earlier authors like Tilak) and other similar books
are providing a new basis for the understanding of early India.  Implicit
in such a decision is a conspiracy theory about traditional scholarship,
which often seems to express itself in terms of a critique of imagined
orientalism or scholarly colonialism.  To the academic historian,
the Frawley/Kak material is to Indian history what von Dainiken's 
Chariots of the Gods is to world history: a cruel joke at best, or a 
monument of idiocy at worst.

Underlying this divide is the question about authority and belief.  Few
of us can take the time to evaluate for ourselves from first principles 
*all* the issues we need to know about.  So how do we decide what to believe?

It is hardest when an author whose work we trust and admire comes out
with something dramatically different from what we would expect.  Quite
often this takes the form of a scholar established in one field
making dramatic claims about another, quite different, field.  I think
of Fritjof Capra (Tao of Physics), or David Bohm (Wholeness...).  But
Ernst Schroedinger seems to have managed it all right (What is Life?).

Then there is the group of scholars like Martin Bernal (Black Athena),
Gordon Wasson (Soma: divine...), Julian Jaynes (The Origin ...), and others
who produce magnificent and very plausible theories which explain 
so much, and are so tempting, but at the same time so outrageous as to
forbid belief.  They attempt to change too much too quickly, and lose
credibility.  On the other hand, sometimes a great change is required and
correct.  The discovery of the Indus civilization, not so long ago (the
cities were excavated properly only from 1920 onwards), is an example of
an event that completely overturned most thinking about the early history 
of India.

What I find wholly unacceptable is the "anything goes, everything is
relative" view expressed by J. B. Sharma.  He and I have swapped views
on this before, and I don't want to bore everyone here by regurgitating
the discussion.  I believe that there is such a thing as extremely high
probability regarding certain ideas and beliefs (in a Popperian sense).

I do also think that to a large extent we end up believing 
what we have been taught by our 
teachers, professors, and other authorities (our "aaptas"), and 
that implies that we belong to a tradition.  And the differences between
traditions are not normally susceptible to resolution by reason alone.

So, sadly, the Frawley/Kak followers will probably never understand
how lunatic their ideas appear to university scholars, 
and university scholars may never realize how conspiratorial 
their ideas appear to Frawley/Kak adherents.

Or am I too pessimistic?  Is there really a faculty of reason, a buddhi,
which can help us to distinguish true from false, as the swan separates
milk from water?  And in such a way that we all end up with the same result?

Dominik