Vicious Debate

[N. Ganesan]

<<<
I think the answer to your question is partly to be found in
internal Indian politics. I have been digging around in the little
nationalisms  that India produced at the turn of the century and that
 partly are still there (particularly Dravidianism), and it would
 seem that Indigenous Aryanism is a knee-jerk reaction to some of the
 more Aryan-unfriendly ideas that turned up in the South. (I think
there are other reasons as well of a non-scholarly nature).
>>>

  Indigenous Aryan schoolers point to Europeans wanting to
  come out of their long hold from "Bible, Neareast, Semiticism"
  etc., William Jones' discovery gave Europe a good avenue to
  do that. So, Europeans all of a sudden became "Indo-Europeans".
  It is natural that Anybody likes to dig for their roots.
  Sanskrit professorships got endowed all over the West.
  Hitler took the Aryan idea too far!

  The writeup from Dr. Fosse shows that Dravidian culture
  plays an important role in  modern India. Others
  say it did in ancient times as well.
  To understand India, neglecting ancient
  literatures from Dravidian side and focussing exclusively on
  Sanskrit will be lopsided. For example, Sanskrit literary
  theories and Dravidian literary theories (tolkAppiyam)
  have not been compared so far. (Dhvany of Anandavardhana
  is related to uLLuRai plus iRaicci of TolkAppiyam, predating
  Anandavardhana by several centuries.)

  To understand India, I am confidant that Dravidian
  studies in the West will go a long way.

  Hopefully yours,
  N. Ganesan



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