Indo-Aryan migration vs Indigenous origin - scholarly debate

[Robert J. Zydenbos]

Vaidix wrote on Tue, 17 Mar 1998 07:04:09 EST:

> The term "revisionists" is not acceptable or even not respectable.

Since you are not a careful reader, allow me to quote myself from
that previous posting of mine, where I refer to a racist revisionist:

Z> this scholar had the audacity to declare in public that "All that
Z> is the talk of white people. We don't have to believe that." This
Z> is the level on which most of the 'debate' takes place.

Please answer these questions (if not in public, then at least for
yourself):
(a) do you respect such a mentality / person?
(b) do you seriously expect me to respect such a mentality / person?
(c) should scholars respect such a mentality / person?

(A simple 'yes' or 'no' will do for an answer.)

> I believe "Indology" is a
> generic term meant to study ancient and medieval India.

Also modern India.

> It must not be meant
> "literary or linguistic" only.

I have never said so; on the contrary, I have earlier denied it
(admittedly in a different thread).

> Vivekananda's linguistic works may
> be third rate but he had a great social impact equalling Adi
> zaGkara.

(1) I said nothing about V.'s linguistics.
(2) To compare V. to ;Sa:nkara looks rather absurd (something like
comparing Jerry Falwell to John Calvin).

> Terming him
> racist shows that you did not really read his works.

Wrong: you didn't read him, or you would have seen lots of
essentialisations about the French, the Germans, the British, the
Americans, the what-not, and of course the super-race: the Hindu.
"The debt which the world owes to our motherland is immense...
there is not one race on this earth to which the world owes so much
as to the patient Hindu... who has always been the blessed child of
God. Civilisations have risen in other parts of the world... great
ideas have emanated from strong and great races... India...
peacefully existed... when even Greece did not exist, when Rome was
not thought of, when the very fathers of the modern Europeans lived
in the forests and painted themselves blue", etc. etc. (from "First
Public Lecture in the East"). This is the man whom you compared to
Aadi-;Sa:nkaraacaarya. Another list member speaks of him as a
'genius'. (I just happened to have this lying on my desk. I am
collecting more, for later.)

So here again:
(a) do you respect such a mentality / person?
(b) do you seriously expect me to respect such a mentality / person?

> The words like
> right/left/revisionists/colonialism being themselves narrow and
> stereotypic, and of recent origin (coined at best a century or two
> ago), can not be used to describe ancient and medieval societies
> when these phrases were not in use.  I hope such phrases will be
> dropped in future.

The English language did not exist in those early times either. I
will gladly switch over to Sanskrit, if there is a popular will to
do so on this list.

RZ