Q: Black Draupadi?

[Dominique.Thillaud]

At 12:09 +0200 21/08/97, Pratap Kumar wrote, refering to my post:
>> 	Hence I suppose nor Draupadi, nor Helen, beeing historical or
>> ethnical characters, but that's just my opinion.
>
>
>This is great stuff.  I have been waiting for someone to say this. I
>think a lot of Indian materials could be understood through  comparative
>mythology and this might be problematic to those who tend to argue that
>there is nothing unique about the Indian materials. But that is not the
>point, but what is important to recognize is that many of the characters
>of epics and other texts of the Indian traditions have parallels
>elsewhere, and this could have happened in the
>course of a long interaction between cultures.
>Thus it is true for most ordinary people reading
>Indian epic texts to consider them as historical
>persons, but scholarly treatment of these texts
>need to bear in mind all the critical issues
>involved in such assumption and therefore should
>indulge in serious compartive studies.  For
>instance, there are many structural relations
>between many creation stories present in both
>Indian texts as well as western texts such as
>Biblical, Babylonian and other mythologies.

	Yes, I agree. I'll try, despite my poor English, to explain my
opinion. That's not a problem for me to believe Draupadi's or Helen's
existence. Being a 'pagan' (there is no words for the old Greek religion)
and a scholar, I have not an uniform conception of the truth or of the
reality: there are not only exoteric meanings but esoteric ones, too. And
history and ethnology are modern sciences, definitely out of this scope and
unable to treat such problems.
	The Heroes of the Greek or Indian epics have a reality because they
are divine models of the human life. But this reality is not an historical
one, we are unable to give them place and date of birth and death, and that
would be stupid to try it! The important is: they are in our past and the
past is teaching our present (history has the same objective but needs
dates, I don't know why).
	About the rapports with Biblical or Babylonian mythologies, I don't
know anything because just eurindian ones are in my scope.
	Regards,
Dominique

PS: I was very interrested by the mail of Dr Ramkumar, considering the root
kRS- is very simple and give good tracks.

Dominique THILLAUD
Universite' de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France