Western scholarship (was Re: Rig Veda, ta'ntra, nUl, and sUtra)

[jacob.baltuch at infoboard.be]

>> There is a
>> proverb in Tamil which translates into, "When you have butter in hand,
>> why go all over looking for clarified butter?"
>
>Very well put.  Unfortunately this is not the way Western scholarship
>has worked.  Better to find the source in the Near East or Europe.

I believe the purpose of looking outside IE and Dravidian is simply
to check this wasn't a usual metaphor. This has nothing to do with
looking for any sources. If you want to explain some convergence of
IA and Dravidian as an influence of the one on the other (or vice versa),
it may be wise to make sure the thing in question couldn't have appeared
independently in both.