black hair

[Dominique.Thillaud]

Dear Indologists,
	I'm back and I apologize again :-) for my 'mouvement d'humeur'.
	After my leaving, I received many and various private mails and I
thank all sincerely (including injurious ones).

	I find perhaps in this mailing an answer to some communication
problems and I would like to have your point of vew about it.
	It seems to me that the main westerner criterium is
'free/constrained' and we find varna's system and women's slavery and
murdering unacceptable. Reversely, the main indian criterium would be
'pure/soiled' and they find unacceptable the westernian comportment about
money, sex, alcohol, &c.
	Do you have the same advice ?

	About hair's colour, I was not asking *today*'s names for this
meaning and I know the fair/black criterium (I was good friend one year
long with a noble indonesian (kshatriya) and he hated the sun of the beach,
too dangerous for his honourable pale skin). My problem was in *epic*,
especially the MBh, some twenty centuries ago:
	- in MBh II,60,24, draupadI is said atikRSNakezI, this 'ati'
suppose that's not the same for all peoples.
	- a friend said me (alas without references) duryodhana was red-haired.
	- Pr. Jayabarathi gave here some examples of golden, red or yellow
hairs in ancient indian corpus.
	- in many other eurindian epics the hair's colour is highly
significant (but not the colour of the skin). For example, in Greece,
Menelaus is 'xanthos' (blond-haired) and one of the names of Akhilleus is
'Pyrrha' (the Red); an Argonaut, son of Poseidon, is young but
white-haired. (other examples in germanic epics).
	- in RV I, 79, 1 (to Agni), the Snake is gold-haired:
hi'raNyakezo ra'jaso visAre' ahir dhu'nir vA'ta iva dhra'jImAn /

	I believe:
	- eurindian are the author(s) of the MBh
	- I and some ancient sanskrit-speakers have the same pitaras.
	- because most of ancient indian peoples were black-haired and
black was a 3th or 4th function (vaizia or zUdra) eurindian colour, they
have legitimately forget this hair's distinction. (I believe the
varna/guna/colour association is in the sAMkhya).
	I hope:
	- there are some old remainds of the distinction in indian epic.
	- someone can help me fo find it (I use Tokugawa sensei's indexes
but that needs to know the words searched) or give me some reference on
this problem.
	- I woul'd be more than happy if yudhiSThira white-haired, bhIma,
hanuman and duryodhana red, arjuna gold, nakula and sahadeva green, blue,
brown or black.

	I thank you in advance,
Dominique

P.-S. 1: I've found some mistakes in Tokugawa sensei's mahAbhArata but I've
forget his e-mail: can you give it me again ?
P.-S. 2: Can someone give me the e-mail of an indian scholar in botanic,
especially about pharmacological properties of plants ?
P.-S. 3: Is one of you an ancient fellow from Oxford's Trinity College and
can give (out of list's focus, then privately) references about an ivy's
beer brewed in this place ?

Dominique THILLAUD
Universite' de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France