potters, brahmins, and RSis (contd.)

[Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan]

In a message dated 97-10-06 03:00:40 EDT, thillaud at UNICE.FR writes:

<<        I suppose there are technical constraints on the size of the
 bricks. All over the world and the time it seems approximately the same (no
 small, no large). The Vedic altar have a very particular shape. If you
 don't find this shape, made with bricks, elsewhere, you just proove a
 possibility, nothing else.>>

Staal and others reach their conclusions based on several strands of textual,
and  archaelogical evidence. I shall state the most important as I understand
it. The ukhA and MahAvIra pots were supposed to be fired in an "upside down"
position. This is the specific inverted firing technique used by the
indigenous people to produce the Black and Red Ware with the inside being
black and outside being red. The texts say that these rituals are to be done
"in the manner of aGgiras". These and other factors imply that aGgiras were
non-Vedic people.

 <<       We don't need such complicated proof to link Agni and Angiras.
 There are many other possibilities. Just an example:
         From *ag- 'to lead, sacrify, burn': *ag-n- 'fire', locative in
 Agnideva 'the God in the fire' > 'the fire'. With a nasal infix with
 causative sense *ang- 'to make a fire, a sacrifice', with agent suffix
 *-h1-l- : *angir- 'sacrificer'. The masculine sigmatic thema is an
 intensive abstraction: 'THE sacrificer'.
         We don't know the first rapports between Aryans and Dravidians. To
 suppose one of them better than other is just a fiction intending to attise
 the hate between today's people. In fact, both contribute to give birth to
 India. Compare the best known rapports between Greece and Roma: who was the
 winner ? >>
I defer to IE specialists in this regard. Only when they find available
etymologies unsatisfactory, I explore the possibility of a Dravidian
influence. I had already quoted the etymological discussion by Staal. I
think, Staal and other IE scholars were not satisfied with an etymology which
could not explain the whole word aGgiras. Since IE scholars had settled on a
non-Vedic origin of aGgirases as a people, and "aGgi" was an attested form in
Dravidian for the borrowed "agni", exploration of Dravidian borrowing and
re-Sanskritization seems a potential way to explain it. On the other hand, if
you could come up with an etymology which will explain the whole word, that
should be seriously considered.

While we do not know a lot about the interaction between early Dravidians and
IA-II peoples, I try to base my analysis on findings of scholars such as D.
D. Kosambi whose works, I presume, are well-respected by Indologists. I try
to call a spade a spade without any political considerations.

Regards

S. Palaniappan