The Aryan Problem and the Puranas

[cejka at praha1.ff.cuni.cz]

> 
> else in the world. In the study of the history of the Jews of ancient Israel,
> for example, no one would even dream of trying to reconstruct the history from
> those parts of the Old Testament, such as the Book of Psalms, which do not
> profess to deal with this history, rather than from those parts, such as the
> Chronicles, which do. And yet, in the case of ancient Indian history, the
> scholars unblushingly reject the evidence of the Puranas on the basis of
> "evidence" inferred from the Rigvedic hymns!

I think there is quite a lot of difference. In ancient Near East there may
be really seen a wish to record historical events, while in India not much
really historical tradition arose in the oldest times, therefore historians
resort to side-evidences in the literary monuments considered to be the
oldest ones. And it seems to me so obvious due to the character of LANGUAGE,
that the TODAY's puranas were composed much much more later, does some
linguist disagree?

> even before, the composition of the majority of the hymns of the Rigveda; AND
> THAT THE MOVEMENT OF THESE DYNASTIES TOOK PLACE FROM EAST TO WEST, AND NOT
> VICE VERSA.
I must confess that the above mentioned seems to me not to be a sufficient
evidence for this statement at all. Particularly because the  puranas are
ofcours not so much reliable source.

Moreover it seems illogical to expect tribes migrating FROM A VERY FERTILE
land to the deserts and steppes of the Central Asia and Iran etc. Also why
to move from India in those times at all, as there was still sufficient
space for that comparatively little number of people that may have lived
there.   
	I believe, thinking a bit more about it much more counterargumets
could be added. Specialists, do add more! 

-- 
cejka at praha1.ff.cuni.cz