From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Fri May 1 03:16:14 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 98 21:16:14 -0600 Subject: Telugu history Message-ID: <161227038027.23782.1902715379185472354.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> * When I said "works", I had specific pieces in mind, not the whole *corpus of writing in Tamil. Kamil Zvelebil for example,("Smile of *murukan") gives us an analytical break up of Tamil vs Samskrt words in *the poems of aruNagirinAtar, the 14th/15th century Tamil poet. He *specifically quotes two verses ( one of which starts as "nAta pintu *kalAti namO nama") in which more than 50% of the words are Samskrt. I *believe that this is a very generic feature of aruNagirinAtar's works. Of the 1400+ tiruppukazs, some use many sanskrit words, many use a good mixture of both tamil & sanskrit, many use exclusively tamil. tiruppukaz were edited by a father-son team. Many more mss. have come to light since their days, awaighting to be printed. * We also have the savant and grammarian cuvAminAta dEcikar, who *supports writing in a samskrtized style; though he himself was from the *17th-18th centuries,I think that the works used by him in order to *formulate his views date back to the 12th-14th centuries. Yes. C. Tecikar was a heavily sanskritized person. I would like to know the 12th-14th century works he used. In the overall corpus of tamil writings, heavily sanskritized works do not dominate. * Lastly, I have read this statement in the works of Dr M.VaratarAjan2 * who lists( from what I remember) tamil zrIvaiSNava works where *over-Samskrtization is a feature. (I unfortunately donot remember the *names of the works he lists). I thought I said the same thing in my original posting: "May be in a few Jaina works like mErumantira purANam or the ubhaya vedAnta tradition of Srivaishnavas. Here, ubhaya-twofold refers to both Tamil and Sanskrit traditions. Srivaishnavas wrote beautiful commentaries on aazvaar paasurams quoting extensivily from sanskrit material bringing out inner nuances and philosophical contents of aazvaar bhakti. The aims here are different: 1) to explain Jainism in tamil 2) to spread aazvaar bhakti northwards respectively." Yours, N. Ganesan From zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL Fri May 1 04:48:20 1998 From: zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Fri, 01 May 98 02:48:20 -0200 Subject: Beluur and Belgaum Message-ID: <161227038058.23782.9044431880651575661.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Replies to msg 30 Apr 98: indology at listserv.liv.ac.uk (jayabarathi) >Seeking the opinion of Dravidian linguists on Indology >on two place names of S. India: > >Beluur and Belgaum appear to be related to the Tamil >cognates, vELuur and vELakam. > >My question: Are they related? > >Regards, >N. Ganesan bJM> I am afraid I will be opening a Pandora's box by answering bJM> that. They are related. The Hoysalas were collaterals of the bJM> vEL clan. I was told that bELUr = vEL+Ur, and beLgaum = bJM> vEL+grAm. The story behind Hoysala (Hoy! SaLA!) is similar bJM> to the Tamil Sangam name and its meaning, Pulikadi mAl. bJM> Though the Hoysalas make their appearance in history later bJM> than the vELir, they were always around in the Mysore bJM> region. And there were also more than one sect (kudi) of bJM> vELir. The Calukyas were also known to be related to the vEL bJM> clans. In fact, there are instances where they are denoted bJM> as the "vEL pula vEnthar". vEL pulam is the Karnataka, bJM> Southern Maharshtra and parts of Telengana. Though right now I am not in the ideal place from which to answer, I would, at first thought, rather be skeptical about the relatedness. If "Belur" in Karnataka is the city famous for the Hoysala temple, we have to bear in mind that it is beeluuru and not bee.luuru / beeLuuru. Robert Zydenbos zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Fri May 1 13:33:42 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Fri, 01 May 98 07:33:42 -0600 Subject: Telugu history Message-ID: <161227038039.23782.8041658973883836599.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> * Lastly, I have read this statement in the works of Dr M.VaratarAjan2 * who lists( from what I remember) tamil zrIvaiSNava works where *over-Samskrtization is a feature. (I unfortunately donot remember the *names of the works he lists). A "honey and coconut" story from Tamil side. From A. K. Ramanujan, Hymns for the Drowning, Poems for ViSNu by Nammaazvaar, Princeton university press, 1981 "From the 13th century on, the commentators debate endlessly the relative virtues of Sanskrit and Tamil as religious languages. For a list of pros and cons, see K. K. A. Venkatachari, The maNipravAla literature of the zrIvaiSNava aacaaryas, 12th to 15th centuries, AD. p. 25-27. One story about the tension in this dual heritage is poignant: VaGkIpurattu Nampi, a disciple of Ramanuja, was found praying to Vishnu standing among cowherd women. A disciple accosted him: 'Why do you stand among these illiterate women instead of among Vaishnava bhaktas?'. Nampi answered: 'Lord's grace flows over these illiterate cowherds as water flows from a higher to a lower level'. The disciple asked: 'How did they pray? How did your grace pray?' Nampi said: 'They prayed to the Lord in pure Tamil. They said - Please drink this milk, eat thais fruit. Live a hundred years. Wear this silk uppercloth -. I prayed in Sanskrit: Be victorious, be victorious'. The other man finally said: 'You couldn't forget your rough-sounding Sanskrit even among the cowherds. It looks as if we, the brahmins, will be the same wherever we are". Yours, N. Ganesan I am cognizant of the possibility of being asked: "What are you driving at?, What are the overtones?". Guilty as charged: Plainly pointing out the Tamil heritage, one of the two classical languages of India :-) A note to Mr. S. Krishna. I always enjoy your writings. But it seems to me when you write on tamil culture/literature, you are working from English material, eg., Zvelebil, Hart. There are some additions & minor corrections. I could not answer all of them for want of time. ng From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Fri May 1 09:15:18 1998 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Fri, 01 May 98 10:15:18 +0100 Subject: [Forwarded message] Re: Ghunyat-ul-munya Message-ID: <161227038029.23782.586211954868091836.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> --- forwarded message I am not currently a list member but am sending a brief note in reply to a recent posting that was forwarded to me. If you think it appropriate, can you please post it? Allyn Miner University of Pennsylvania An English translation of the Ghunyat al-munya by the late Shahab Sarmadee (editor of the published Persian text) is allegedly complete and in Delhi but has not yet been published. The edition of the text has an English introduction. Ghunyat-ul-munya:the earliest known Persian work on Indian Music ed. Shahab Sarmadee. New York:Asia Publishing House, 1978. Allyn Miner University of Pennsylvania From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Fri May 1 19:18:30 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Fri, 01 May 98 13:18:30 -0600 Subject: Telugu history Message-ID: <161227038044.23782.6136356308508686758.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA writes: *This is the limit I think. Do you really believe *that God prefers Tamil to Sanskrit or for that matter any other language? *Let not chauvinism deteriorate to arrogance. Namskar. Pardon me, I just typed what is in a Princeton university publication. The citation was provided too. The quotations marks indicate that they are from that book word by word. If anyone has problems with the legend narrated, the suggestion is to contact the manipravala commentator of 13th century CE or else, the 20th century translator. As far as morals go, different morals can be deduced from that legend. Sincerely believe that the legend quoted has more layers of meaning than what Mr. Sarma alludes to. *Do show some consideration for the feelings of other people on the *list. Hope you do the same. Regards, N. Ganesan From r.l.schmidt at EAST.UIO.NO Fri May 1 11:23:11 1998 From: r.l.schmidt at EAST.UIO.NO (Ruth Laila Schmidt) Date: Fri, 01 May 98 13:23:11 +0200 Subject: Kohistani Shina Message-ID: <161227038037.23782.2462539026116543644.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear members of the list, A very belated but grateful thanks to those who responded to my query about the phoneme /q/ in Kohistani Shina. With best wishes, Ruth Schmidt *********************************************** Ruth Laila Schmidt Dept of East European and Oriental Studies University of Oslo P.O. Box 1030 Blindern N-0315 Oslo, Norway Phone: (47) 22 85 55 86 Fax: (47) 22 85 41 40 Email: r.l.schmidt at east.uio.no From athr at LOC.GOV Fri May 1 18:28:10 1998 From: athr at LOC.GOV (Allen W Thrasher) Date: Fri, 01 May 98 14:28:10 -0400 Subject: Help at Northwestern U. library Message-ID: <161227038048.23782.12006162595618196230.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Is anyone on CONSALD or INDOLOGY at Northwestern? I need a favor photocopying a single issue of a small magazine of which they have the only other holdings, according to OCLC. Thanks, Allen Allen W. Thrasher, Ph.D. Senior Reference Librarian Southern Asia Section Asian Division Library of Congress 101 Independence Ave., S.E. Washington, DC 20540-4714 tel. (202) 707-3732 fax (202) 707-1724 email: athr at loc.gov The opinions expressed do not represent those of my employer. From srini at ENGIN.UMICH.EDU Fri May 1 18:55:56 1998 From: srini at ENGIN.UMICH.EDU (Srinivasan Pichumani) Date: Fri, 01 May 98 14:55:56 -0400 Subject: Telugu history Message-ID: <161227038046.23782.9488290761386237470.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> A "honey and coconut" story from Tamil side. From A. K. Ramanujan, Hymns for the Drowning, Poems for ViSNu by Nammaazvaar, Princeton university press, 1981 "From the 13th century on, the commentators debate endlessly the relative virtues of Sanskrit and Tamil as religious languages. For a list of pros and cons, see K. K. A. Venkatachari, The maNipravAla literature of the zrIvaiSNava aacaaryas, 12th to 15th centuries, AD. p. 25-27. One story about the tension in this dual heritage is poignant: VaGkIpurattu Nampi, a disciple of Ramanuja, was found praying to Vishnu standing among cowherd women. A disciple accosted him: 'Why do you stand among these illiterate women instead of among Vaishnava bhaktas?'. Nampi answered: 'Lord's grace flows over these illiterate cowherds as water flows from a higher to a lower level'. The disciple asked: 'How did they pray? How did your grace pray?' Nampi said: 'They prayed to the Lord in pure Tamil. They said - Please drink this milk, eat thais fruit. Live a hundred years. Wear this silk uppercloth -. I prayed in Sanskrit: Be victorious, be victorious'. The other man finally said: 'You couldn't forget your rough-sounding Sanskrit even among the cowherds. It looks as if we, the brahmins, ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ will be the same wherever we are". Yours, N. Ganesan Ganesan, I have no problem with your quoting this footnote from A.K.Ramanujan's book, which I know all too well from multiple readings of the book, as evidence of a certain historical tension between Tamil and Sanskrit over the centuries... Zvelebil has some additional remarks on this issue in the last or penultimate chapter of his "Companion Studies to history of Tamil literature". But let us try to be accurate when quoting and not add words of our own, even if it were for clarification ! There is no "we, the brahmins," in the footnote... the line simply reads "It looks as if we will be the same wherever we are". Unless it is an extreme case of printer's devil, that is what my personal copy of the book says too - I just confirmed it. -Srini. From sns at IX.NETCOM.COM Fri May 1 19:58:12 1998 From: sns at IX.NETCOM.COM (Sn. Subrahmanya) Date: Fri, 01 May 98 14:58:12 -0500 Subject: Telugu history Message-ID: <161227038050.23782.5489720797121474265.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > >..... > > Nampi said: > 'They prayed to the Lord in pure Tamil. They said > - Please drink this milk, eat thais fruit. Live a hundred years. > Wear this silk uppercloth -. I prayed in Sanskrit: > Be victorious, be victorious'. > The other man finally said: > 'You couldn't forget your rough-sounding Sanskrit even > among the cowherds...... There is nothing in this story to indicate that there is tension between Sanskrit & Tamil. The reference to "rough sounding sanskrit" could be just to the way in which Nampi spoke sanskrit or his accent. Basically, Nampi is being criticized for praying in Sanskrit among illiterates who may not understand it and not that Tamil or Sanskrit is better. Only those motivated enough to see linguistic warfare see it that way. There is another story of how Uddhava goes to teach the gopis, meditation and then realizes that the gopis are better devotees of Krishna than himself. These stories are about bhakti and nothing more. Also, tatsama and tadbhava basically refer to scriptural or official and desiya to colloquial usage. They do not convey any "foreign" influence. Motivated interpretations have played havoc with Indian history and succeeded in setting people against each other. The legacy of divide and rule policies - to which unfortunately, many naively fall prey. Subrahmanya Houston, TX From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Fri May 1 21:21:18 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Fri, 01 May 98 15:21:18 -0600 Subject: telugu history Message-ID: <161227038052.23782.6780092440498158570.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> *Ganesan, I have no problem with your quoting this footnote *from A.K.Ramanujan's book, which I know all too well from *multiple readings of the book, as evidence of a certain *historical tension between Tamil and Sanskrit over the *centuries... Zvelebil has some additional remarks on this *issue in the last or penultimate chapter of his "Companion *Studies to history of Tamil literature". Thanks, Srini. Zvelebil has some points. I have lots more from Tamil literature which I will give you some day. *But let us try to be accurate when quoting and not add words *of our own, even if it were for clarification ! *There is no "we, the brahmins," in the footnote... the line *simply reads "It looks as if we will be the same wherever we *are". Unless it is an extreme case of printer's devil, that *is what my personal copy of the book says too - I just confirmed *it. Before making the original posting, I confirmed whether the Tamil original says the conversation is between brahmins. The reference is M. Venugoplasvami Nayudu, tiruvEgkaTattantaati, Coimbatore, 1934. You might have noticed that in addition, I misspelt a word "thais" instead of "this"; (I do not mean Thai people :-) ) I broke up the conversation into separate units; and gave the K. K. A. Venkatachari's full citation. This citation does not occur inside the AKR story, but is given elsewhere in his book. Real sorry for not adding these details. "muraTTuc samskritam" is the "rough-sounding sanskrit" of AKR's words. Let me quote another 13th century zrIvaiSNava commentary portion. Can you please translate this? "vaTa ticai pin2pu kaaTTi - vaTakkut tikku aariya puumi aakaiyaalE, camaskrita muraNaraay, aazvaarkaL iirac collum naTaiyaaTaata tEcamAkaiyaalE, attikkait tiruttum pOtu, pin2pazaku ellaam vENum en2Riruntaar". (To be clear, the details are: in the old book of M. V. Nayudu the sandhi is not exploded, no gaps between words, no punctuation either.) Thanks, N. Ganesan From mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM Fri May 1 23:31:48 1998 From: mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM (S Krishna) Date: Fri, 01 May 98 16:31:48 -0700 Subject: Indian words for Europeans Message-ID: <161227038056.23782.16221422871402316272.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > >Greetings all, > >Does anyone know when Indians began using derivatives of the >word "gaur" = "yellow" to refer to Europeans? > >Regards >Paul Kekai Manansala I am no authority on Hindi literature, but I know that the word "gOrA" for Britisher IS used in a poetic form( Avadhi more than contemporary Hindi) called "aalhA". An "aalhA" (from what I know) is a poem praising the deeds and valor of Indians who fell fighting the Britishers in the 1857 war. However, I remember hearing about a poem( which was apparently written by some courtier of his though I don't know the name of the gentleman) that describes the way in which Wajid Ali Shah, the last Nawab of Avadh was armtwisted into surrendering his kingdom which also uses the word "gOrA" in a very deregatory way. If this gentleman was indeed a contemporary of Wajid Ali Shah, the date I think the concerned date would be pushed back into the late 18th century. REgards, Krishna ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Sat May 2 00:43:36 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Fri, 01 May 98 16:43:36 -0800 Subject: Indian words for Europeans Message-ID: <161227038054.23782.13252440588416924259.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Greetings all, Does anyone know when Indians began using derivatives of the word "gaur" = "yellow" to refer to Europeans? Regards Paul Kekai Manansala From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Fri May 1 15:48:18 1998 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Fri, 01 May 98 16:48:18 +0100 Subject: Errata to my book Message-ID: <161227038041.23782.4177644962229221301.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I've started an errata page for my new book _The Roots of Ayurveda_. This is clickable as "Errata" from my personal info page: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/wujastyk.html All the best, Dominik -- Dr Dominik Wujastyk, FAX: +44 171 611 8545 Wellcome Institute for URL: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/ the History of Medicine, Email: d.wujastyk at ucl.ac.uk Wellcome Trust, 183 Euston Road, Trust URL: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk London NW1 2BE, England. First Rule of History: History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each other. From hkumar2 at ICHIPS.INTEL.COM Sat May 2 00:22:10 1998 From: hkumar2 at ICHIPS.INTEL.COM (Harish Kumar) Date: Fri, 01 May 98 17:22:10 -0700 Subject: Origin of Konkan Brahmins? Message-ID: <161227038060.23782.5406522860550287857.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> As Indologists you must be aware of the Konkan Brahmins who have lighter skin and green/gray eyes unlike the other brahmins in India. Is there currently any theory that explains this difference? Appreciate your replies, Sushma. -- ---- Harish Kumar hkumar2 at ichips.intel.com JF1-19, 5200 NE Elam Young Pkwy (503) 264-4566 Hillsboro, OR 97124 ---- From mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM Sat May 2 01:35:00 1998 From: mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM (S Krishna) Date: Fri, 01 May 98 18:35:00 -0700 Subject: Beluur and Belgaum Message-ID: <161227038062.23782.7104424247665956320.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >Though right now I am not in the ideal place from which to answer, I would, at first thought, rather be skeptical about the relatedness. >If "Belur" in Karnataka is the city famous for the Hoysala temple, we have to bear in mind that it is beeluuru and not bee.luuru / beeLuuru. > >Robert Zydenbos >zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl > In addition to the point made by Robert,I would like to express my skepticism about "Belagaum" being related to Tamil "vEL".What I am not questioning is the etymology; my skepticism( as has happened earlier) stems more from a historical angle. BEfore considering the derivation,it is neccessary to remember that places in WEstern Karnataka were never part of the traditional Tamil sphere of influence. While it MAY be true that there was a relationship between the Tamils and the cAlukyas( questionable to some) kannaDa/marAThI were always the spoken languages in this areas, never Tamil. The traditional "tamizhakam" ended at tiruveGkaTam as the northern point and is bounded in the west by the Arabian sea i.e. modern kEraLA. The only time that there may have been possible Tamil rule in that area was when vAtApi was sacked and the idol of gaNEza brought down to taJjAvUr.(Even here, vAtApi was far removed from where beLgaum is located now). I therefore find it difficult to believe that the place names could have been derived from a Tamil root when there is little evidence to show Tamil influence in that area. I realise that this area was called "vEL pulam" in tamil, but the very fact that they called it "vEL pulam" and not a part of tamizhakam makes me think that the area was outside the sphere of Tamil influence ( as a parallel, most of the northern languages could be described as "vaTamozhi" thus indicating their non-locality w.r.t the Tamil country). I also find it strange to think that a Tamil root "vEL" would have been added to a samskrt root like "grAma" to yield "vEL- grAma". My experience has been that place names are in general derived from just one language as opposed to alloying; in tamil nATu itself there a no of places whose names use tamil words {i.e. tiruvArUr as opposed to alloyed "zrIvArUr"( though zrI= tiru)} or in an odd case, completely consists of samskrt words ( e.g. vEdAraNyam as opposed to "vEda maRaikATu" or "tirumaRaiyAraNyam", the later two being alloyed from Tamil and Samskrt). While there may be exceptions to the rule, I believe that bELgaum is not one. I believe that the derivation may more historically inconsistent if the kannaDa equivalent of "vEL" were used. I have been told( I'm not sure) that the name "bELagAum" comes from the fact that the local jasmines( marAThI "bELA") were famous in that area and the name of the village( i.e. marATHI "gAum")therefore became "bELAgAum". While this may seem a case of "folk-etymology", I must point out that from a history point of view, this derivation makes sense because 1. The town is next door to MahArASTra, the local population is more maRATHI than kannaDa; infact the "mAhArASTra ekIkaraNa samiti" has been trying to get "bELagaum" to join mahArASTra. 2. bELagaum seems to have come into prominence only after the 15th-16th century when there was a lot of marATHI influence here, but no tamil influence. While place-name derivations may be correct from an etymology point of view, I believe that it is important to verify a given derivation against history and sociology and then determine the validity of a given derivation. Regards, Krishna ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From apandey at U.WASHINGTON.EDU Sat May 2 02:31:58 1998 From: apandey at U.WASHINGTON.EDU (Anshuman Pandey) Date: Fri, 01 May 98 19:31:58 -0700 Subject: Origin of Konkan Brahmins? In-Reply-To: <199805020022.RAA17932@pdx078> Message-ID: <161227038064.23782.15778237238427232065.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Fri, 1 May 1998, Harish Kumar wrote: > As Indologists you must be aware of the Konkan Brahmins who have > lighter skin and green/gray eyes unlike the other brahmins in India. Is > there currently any theory that explains this difference? >?From what I recall reading in M. A. Sherring's "Hindu Tribes and Castes" (or was it elsewhere?) there is/was controversy surrounding the origin of the Konkanastha brahmins. I believe Sherring mentions that they are of Turko-Iranian origin and managed to supplant themselves in the region as administrators and brahmins. I remember reading about these Konkanasthas about five years ago when I was assisting a friend in researching his kula-v.rttaanta. Permit me to dig up my notes and get back to you on this. Another question: What is the relationship between the Konkanasthas and the Deshasthas? Is it amiable or one of hostility? Regards, Anshuman Pandey From yanom at KSUVX0.KYOTO-SU.AC.JP Fri May 1 11:14:47 1998 From: yanom at KSUVX0.KYOTO-SU.AC.JP (Michio Yano) Date: Fri, 01 May 98 20:14:47 +0900 Subject: etext of Baudhaayana-dhs Message-ID: <161227038035.23782.15052885705646593346.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Indologists, Only recently we found that the e-test of the Baudhaayana-Dharmasuutra (baudha.dhs) at my ftp server was incomplete. I am sorry for giving you inconvenience. Today I put the whole text in my ftp server: ccftp.kyoto-su.ac.jp /pub/doc/sanskrit/dharmas You can also get access to the server through my homepage: http://www.kyoto-su.ac.jp/~yanom/ I am planning to update the subdirectory jyotisa. Michio YANO Kyoto Sangyo University yanom at cc.kyoto-su.ac.jp From mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM Sat May 2 04:39:40 1998 From: mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM (S Krishna) Date: Fri, 01 May 98 21:39:40 -0700 Subject: Origin of Konkan Brahmins? Message-ID: <161227038071.23782.8000791385899469961.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >Another question: What is the relationship between the Konkanasthas and >the Deshasthas? Is it amiable or one of hostility? > A most interesting question! Since there are people who are experts on mahAraSTra history, I believe they would be the most competent authorities to address the issue, but I will tell you what I know.. The Deshastha Brahmins seemed to have held sway till about the early 18th century( The Deshastha Kingdoms" of Aundh and Bhor near Poona were created in this period) and treated the Konkanastha Brahmins as being little better than "hill-billies" since they were employed mainly as spies and did not have any hold over the adminstration. I believe that this attitude also continued into the initial years of the pEzvAI, since there is mention of Deshastha priests refusing to perform some of the ceremonies for Balaji Vishwanath. Once the Peshvas established themselves in the early 18th century and the Konkanastha influence grew, the Deshastha Brahmins seemed to have suffered a setback in the political sphere( none of the aSTapradhAn in the mid pEzvAi period were DEshastha) though there were Deshastha Brahmins and families who had a lot of power in their hands because of the land holdings acquired previously or because of the involvement in financing/business etc. Maurice Patterson mentions the formulation of a Konkanastha stereotype about DEshasthas as being "Brahminized Marathas"( since a Maratha would be the Deshmukh of a village and a DEshastha Brahmin was invariably the Deshpandey), I'm not sure if this is the time she says this stereotype began to be propagated. Interestingly one of the pEzvAs did marry a lady who belonged to the Deshastha "Bakre" family sometime in the mid 1700s in spite of lack of such marital relationships at a lower level and when there was no political gain involved( since the Konkanastha domination had peaked by this time); I am not sure as to why this took place. By the time of the 19th century, political power had passed out of the Konkanastha hands into the hands of the British. I believe that both Konkanasthas and DEshasthas resented and joined hands to undo what they percieved as injustices to them; i.e. Tatya Tope who was a DEshastha fought on the side of NAna Saheb Peshwa in the 1857 war, Bal Gangadhar Tilak fielded a Deshastha Pandit in the famous "zAstrArtha" in Poona regarding widow remarriage; at a slightly later stage while the Konkanastha stars Tilak and Gokhale were clashing in Pune, their DEshastha deputies Aney and Mudholkar (respectively) were clashing in the Central Provinces. This period also seems to have seen some intermarriage among the more wealthy elite on both sides; the 4 Deshastha native states and the 7 Konkanastha native states entered into marital relationships amongst themselves. However, the political and social life of Maharashtra was completely dominated by Konkanasthas during this period. Maurice Patterson has a few interesting things to say about their mutual relationship in her papers; I have also read a book called "the New Brahmins" which indirectly talks about the relationships of the various sub-groups in Maharashtra thru the medium of chroniciling the lives of 5 prominent Maharashtrian Brahmins in the late 19th-early 20th century. REgards, Krishna ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Sat May 2 03:45:25 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Fri, 01 May 98 21:45:25 -0600 Subject: Beluur and Belgaum Message-ID: <161227038066.23782.17620373835604135656.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Of course, bEluuru and belgaum are not derived from tamil. Is the 'bEl' related to its tamil cognate 'vEL'? That is the question. One time in Indology, there was an etymolgy on Pune from Dravidian. I remember pune possibly meant a hill village with dry lands. S. B. Joshi has a paper in ABORI called "Etymology of Place-names PaTTi-HaTTi" from Dravidian. Dr. F. C. Southworth has a paper on the Maharashtra placenames -vali/oli related to Dravidian paLLi. Here, ".l/(L)" transforms to "l". Can a similar change occur for bELuuru/bE.luuru to bEluuru? Medieval inscriptions will help a lot here. Regards, N. Ganesan This from Indology. ************************************************* MICHIGAN-LAUSANNE INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR "ARYANS AND NON-ARYANS IN SOUTH ASIA : EVIDENCE, INTERPRETATION, AND IDEOLOGY" October 25-27, 1996 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan DRAVIDIAN PLACE NAMES IN MAHARASHTRA F. C. Southworth (University of Pennsylvania) In their book _The_Rise_of_Civilization_in_India_and_Pakistan_ (1982), the Allchins state that there is a substratum of Dravidian place names in Maharashtra. This statement, based probably on the ideas of H. D. Sankalia, has never been properly investigated. Fortunately there exist two lists of Maharashtrian village names which provide the data for such a study. My investigation of these names turned up a number of candidates for Dravidian origin among the suffixes of Marathi place names. Among these suffixes, the most promising is -vali/oli, both because of its high frequency and because its Dravidian origin is not questioned (< Drav. paLLi 'hamlet, camp, place to lie down' < paT- 'lie,fall'). A study of the spatial distribution of village names with the suffix -vali/oli shows 90% or more of them concentrated in the coastal region known as Konkan. In the remainder of the Marahi-speaking area, the greatest concentration is in the southern part of the Desh, i.e. in the districts of Kolhapur and Solapur. A number of other suffixes of probable Dravidian origin are also found in these areas, though they are of lower frequency of occurrence. Thus these suffixes of Dravidian origin are in a continuous distribution with the Dravidian paLLi, as well as with similar suffixes in the state of Gujarat (discussed in Sankalia's doctoral thesis, which is based on early inscriptions in Gujarat). Thus there can be little doubt that these areas were previously inhabited by speakers of some Dravidian language(s). The paper will also discuss reflexes of Dravidian paLLi in place names in Sindh and Pakistani Panjab, where the evidence is somewhat less clear. From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Sat May 2 04:21:28 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Fri, 01 May 98 22:21:28 -0600 Subject: Beluur and Belgaum Message-ID: <161227038068.23782.4005552908476096711.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a trilingual Sanskrit-Telugu-Tamil inscription of 1257-58 AD in Nandaluru, what is called as velumas in telugu appear as veLLaaLar in tamil. In addition the relation between vali and paLLi shown earlier, here also we can notice .l/L and l transformations back and forth. N. Ganesan From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Fri May 1 17:48:15 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Fri, 01 May 98 22:48:15 +0500 Subject: Telugu history Message-ID: <161227038043.23782.14568448098634439713.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 07:33 AM 5/1/98 -0600, you wrote: >"From the 13th century on, the commentators debate endlessly the >relative virtues of Sanskrit and Tamil as religious languages. >For a list of pros and cons, see K. K. A. Venkatachari, >The maNipravAla literature of the zrIvaiSNava aacaaryas, 12th >to 15th centuries, AD. p. 25-27. One story about the tension >in this dual heritage is poignant: VaGkIpurattu >Nampi, a disciple of Ramanuja, was found praying to Vishnu >standing among cowherd women. >A disciple accosted him: >'Why do you stand among these illiterate women instead of >among Vaishnava bhaktas?'. >Nampi answered: >'Lord's grace flows over these illiterate cowherds as >water flows from a higher to a lower level'. >The disciple asked: >'How did they pray? How did your grace pray?' >Nampi said: >'They prayed to the Lord in pure Tamil. They said >- Please drink this milk, eat thais fruit. Live a hundred years. >Wear this silk uppercloth -. I prayed in Sanskrit: >Be victorious, be victorious'. >The other man finally said: >'You couldn't forget your rough-sounding Sanskrit even >among the cowherds. It looks as if we, the brahmins, >will be the same wherever we are". > > > Yours, > N. Ganesan Dear Mr.N.Ganesan, This is the limit I think. Do you really believe that God prefers Tamil to Sanskrit or for that matter any other language? Let not chauvinism deteriorate to arrogance.The moral of the story is that God prefers sincerity and simplicity to sophistication and arrogance of learning. Not that Tamil is the preferred language of Gods. Tamil arrogance is equally abhorring to God as is Sanskrit arrogance. Do you realise such postings can be annoying to list members? You quoted somebody to say that Sanskrit is a rough language. Do you know the name by which your language is known in Andhra? It is called "Aravam" , a voiceless language. This word is current in Andhra and it is in usage even before I was born. What sounds as sweet to some people sounds as harsh or listless to other people. Do show some consideration for the feelings of other people on the list. regards, sarma. From umadevi at SFO.COM Sat May 2 14:50:24 1998 From: umadevi at SFO.COM (Mary Storm) Date: Sat, 02 May 98 07:50:24 -0700 Subject: Puri: Jagannatha Temple: Relics Message-ID: <161227038078.23782.14172072229652294237.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Indologists, I just recently came across a 19th c. reference to relic bones in the Jagganatha Temple in Puri, which are supposedly associated with Krsna. Considering the pollution associated with death and the body in Hinduism this would seem to be highly unusual, not to say unlikely. Does anybody know anything about this Puri legend or any other Hindu veneration practices of body relics ? Was Puri a Buddhist site at one time? Many thanks for your thoughts on this, Mary Storm From mpt at U.WASHINGTON.EDU Sat May 2 15:07:59 1998 From: mpt at U.WASHINGTON.EDU (M. Tandy) Date: Sat, 02 May 98 08:07:59 -0700 Subject: Puri: Jagannatha Temple: Relics In-Reply-To: <354B32AD.6522@sfo.com> Message-ID: <161227038080.23782.8027308475686703214.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sat, 2 May 1998, Mary Storm wrote: > > Does anybody know anything about this Puri legend or any other Hindu > veneration practices of body relics ? > > Was Puri a Buddhist site at one time? > Check K.C. Mishra's The Cult of Jagannatha." If I remember correctly, I think he discusses this. As far as I know, Puri is said to have had some Buddhist connections to Sri Lanka in ancient times. Jagannatha is definitely sometimes identified with the Buddha. MT From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Sat May 2 14:19:34 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Sat, 02 May 98 08:19:34 -0600 Subject: Telugu history Message-ID: <161227038076.23782.7609488413391205148.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Mr. D. V. Sarma write: " This is the limit I think. Do you really believe that God prefers Tamil to Sanskrit..." Are you setting the limit?? Who gave you that power? God? Mr. D. V. Sarma wrote: "You quoted somebody to say that Sanskrit is a rough language". There is a 13th century zrIvaiSNava commentary, very revered among all Vaishnavaites. "muraTTu samskritam" occurs there. A. K. Ramanujan, a legend and whose about ten letters to me I treasure, translated "muraTTu" as "rough-sounding" in a *Princeton university* publication, 1981. Mr. D. V. Sarma continues to write: "Do you know the name by which your language is known in Andhra? It is called "aravam", a voiceless language. The word is current in Andhra and it is in usage even before I was born" All the people start calling their neighbours by the name of adjascent county names. Telugu people must have called Tamils aruvas because the country around Tirupati is aruvaa naaDu. I have heard funny explanations/etymologies for aravam by some telugus. "rava" is sound in sanskrit. So, "arava" is voiceless and start telling very derogatory remarks on Tamil or Tamils. Please stop that. kannadigas call tamils as konga and kaongati. For Malayalis, tamils are paaNDis. Interesting to know that tamils do not have name for AP and Kannada people, They are Telugus and Kannadigas always, for us. That is, teluGkar and kannadiyar. We do not have names. Even though originally they were harmless, now aravam is used to put down tamils. We tamils like to be addressed as tamils. Didn't the term "Negro" got changed to "Black", a Blacks' preference. I seek mercy from Sarma and the like. Mr. D. V. Sarma write: "Do show some consideration for the feelings of other people on the list". My record for about 4.5 years in Indology can be checked to see whether I have indulged in personal invectives. I have given 100s of references on Dravidian/tamil/south indian bibliographical items for which I have received innumerable thanks, both public and private. If you want I can compile who all thanked me. >?From the day you appeared on indology, whenever I say something "tamil" surely a response will come. Not a pleasurable experience though. This is just an illustrative example. For my writings, most of your responses can be answered this way. I do not have so much time like people do in India. Mr. D. V. Sarma writes (in the same posting, a little earlier) "Tamil arrogance is equally abhorring..." Whenever Tamil's antiquity is even hinted at, fury comes. We are repeatedly told that we are regional/parochial/political/short_sighted/chauvinistic/arrogant/ narrow_minded/.... What are the political overtones and undercurrents? I do not agree that these are true. I am glad that you are not. When the Sanskritization of Malayalam, a dialect of tamil until 10th century AD can be studied, is it wrong to ask a preliminary question on sanskritization of Telugu? Regards, N. Ganesan From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Sat May 2 17:07:46 1998 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Sat, 02 May 98 10:07:46 -0700 Subject: Puri: Jagannatha Temple: Relics Message-ID: <161227038095.23782.834888251429591761.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Mary Storm wrote: >I just recently came across a 19th c. reference to relic bones in the >Jagganatha Temple in Puri, which are supposedly associated with Krsna. Read "The Cult of Jagannath and the regional tradition of Orissa" (eds.) Anncharlott Eschmann, Hermann Kulke, Gaya Charan Tripathi; New Delhi: Manohar, 1978, for a very comprehensive set of articles on the subject. In the 19th c., there was great speculation, bordering on certainty through repeated assertion, that the "brahma-padArtha" that is put into the new idol of Jagannatha is a Buddhist relic. The most common assumption was that the relic is a tooth. However, the fact remains that neither the Brahmin priests of the temple nor outsiders know what it really is. The Brahmin priests think it is a sAlagrAma stone, but the "brahma-padArtha" is put into the idol by a non-Brahmin tribal priest, who is blindfolded when he transfers it from the old idol. It might be a tribal artefact that has nothing to do with either Buddhism or Brahminism in its origins. >Considering the pollution associated with death and the body in Hinduism >this would seem to be highly unusual, not to say unlikely. No pollution is associated with the death of a sannyAsin. The body is buried, and a memorial structure is usually built over the site. Erosion by the sea constantly damages these structures, which exposes the buried remains. It should be remembered that Puri has also been a major center for sannyAsins of various traditions, and not all of them are associated with the Jagannatha temple. If specific body relics have been found, they need not always be of Buddhist origin, nor necessarily associated with the Jagannatha temple tradition. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From nrao at CAIP.RUTGERS.EDU Sat May 2 15:20:27 1998 From: nrao at CAIP.RUTGERS.EDU (Nikhil Rao) Date: Sat, 02 May 98 11:20:27 -0400 Subject: Origin of Konkan Brahmins? In-Reply-To: <199805020022.RAA17932@pdx078> Message-ID: <161227038082.23782.6388268808348640444.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> There is the story in the Sahyadri Khanda about the origin of the kokanasthas, it was discussed in the indology list. In short it is highly offensive to the kokanasthas. May be it was invented to explain the etymology of the community name Chitpavan. The peshwas tried their best to snuff out any copies of the Sahyadri Khanda. Does some have informations as to what Sutras are followed by the chitpavans. Do most of them follow the aashvalaayana sutra ?. The sahyadri khanda also has a story of the origin of the Gauda Saraswat coomunity which is again an atempt to denigrate them. Nikhil On Fri, 1 May 1998, Harish Kumar wrote: > As Indologists you must be aware of the Konkan Brahmins who have lighter skin and green/gray eyes unlike the other brahmins in India. Is there currently any theory that explains this difference? > > Appreciate your replies, > Sushma. > > > -- > ---- > Harish Kumar > hkumar2 at ichips.intel.com JF1-19, 5200 NE Elam Young Pkwy > (503) 264-4566 Hillsboro, OR 97124 > ---- > From umadevi at SFO.COM Sat May 2 18:37:24 1998 From: umadevi at SFO.COM (Mary Storm) Date: Sat, 02 May 98 11:37:24 -0700 Subject: Puri: Jagannatha Temple: Relics Message-ID: <161227038098.23782.14671791917667627009.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote: > > Mary Storm wrote: > > >I just recently came across a 19th c. reference to relic bones in the > >Jagganatha Temple in Puri, which are supposedly associated with Krsna. > > Read "The Cult of Jagannath and the regional tradition of Orissa" (eds.) > Anncharlott Eschmann, Hermann Kulke, Gaya Charan Tripathi; New Delhi: > Manohar, 1978, for a very comprehensive set of articles on the subject. > > >Considering the pollution associated with death and the body in > Hinduism > >this would seem to be highly unusual, not to say unlikely. > > No pollution is associated with the death of a sannyAsin. The body is > buried, and a memorial structure is usually built over the site. Erosion > by the sea constantly damages these structures, which exposes the buried > remains. It should be remembered that Puri has also been a major center > for sannyAsins of various traditions, and not all of them are associated > with the Jagannatha temple. If specific body relics have been found, > they need not always be of Buddhist origin, nor necessarily associated > with the Jagannatha temple tradition. > > Vidyasankar Many thanks for the ref. to "The Cult of Jagannath..." I shall look it up. Your comments about the "relics" being associated with a sannyasin burial are interesting and shall be pursued. I think, however all types of death related matters are to some degree polluted, not just the death of a sannyasin. Numerous rites, rituals and customs keep matters of death and the dead body at a distance, e.g . the purification associated with fire. the cremation grounds on the edge of a village, particular segregated indidviduals who work on the cremation ghats, etc.. Thanks again, Mary From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Sat May 2 20:01:24 1998 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Sat, 02 May 98 13:01:24 -0700 Subject: Puri: Jagannatha Temple: Relics Message-ID: <161227038100.23782.1173135140238143676.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Mary Storm wrote: > I think, however all types of death related matters are to some degree >polluted, not just the death of a sannyasin. Numerous rites, rituals and >customs keep matters of death and the dead body at a distance, e.g . the >purification associated with fire. the cremation grounds on the edge of >a village, particular segregated indidviduals who work on the cremation >ghats, etc.. This is where the death of a sannyAsin stands out with respect to other deaths. The question of purification by fire does not arise when there is no cremation. There are rites and rituals for the internment, but there is no attempt to keep death at a distance. If the sannyAsin is the head of a maTha, the body is taken in procession through the village. People who come to pay their respects do not need to take a purifying bath, and the burial is done quite close to the temple, not on the outskirts of the village. Sivalingas or Tulasi Brindavanas are installed over the burial site, and often such a memorial structure itself becomes a mini-temple. People go and have darsan, in much the same way as they would at more normal temples. Such practices are not restricted to specific doctrinal affiliations, and as far as the daSanAmI orders and the mAdhva orders are concerned, there is also no pollution for the erstwhile family and relatives of the sannyAsin. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From barathi at PC.JARING.MY Sat May 2 05:15:42 1998 From: barathi at PC.JARING.MY (jayabarathi) Date: Sat, 02 May 98 13:15:42 +0800 Subject: Beluur and Belgaum Message-ID: <161227038072.23782.10258291748189938145.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 06:35 PM 5/1/98 PDT, you wrote: > >In addition to the point made by Robert,I would like to express my >skepticism about "Belagaum" being related to Tamil "vEL".What I am not >questioning is the etymology; my skepticism( as has happened earlier) >stems more from a historical angle. > > BEfore considering the derivation,it is neccessary to remember that >places in WEstern Karnataka were never part of the traditional Tamil >sphere of influence. While it MAY be true that there was a relationship >between the Tamils and the cAlukyas( questionable to some) >kannaDa/marAThI were always the spoken languages in this areas, never >Tamil. The traditional "tamizhakam" ended at tiruveGkaTam as the >northern point and is bounded in the west by the Arabian sea i.e. modern >kEraLA. Whoa there! Hold your horses! Dear Sir, I am on your side. I never said that the Chalukya land or Karnataka were parts of Tamil land. Neither do I claim that the Chalukyas and the Hoysalas are of Tamil origin. On the contrary, it is beleived that at least some of the Tamil VEL chieftains migrated from North India. There is a poem in PuRanAnURu - a Sangam work- sung by Kapilar. This Kapilar was a bossom friend of the vEL PAri. After the demise of PAri, Kapilar takes the two daughters of Pari into his custody, and takes them to IrungO VEL, the Lord of Thuvarai in Erumai NAdu. IrungO VEL belongs to one of the eighteen clans/septs? of the VEL community. His Erumai WAdu is identified with Mahisha Mandalam or Mysore. Thuvarai might be a fore-runner of Dvara Samudram, the later namesake. Thuvarai is said to have existed during the time of the SAta vAhanas. In this poem, Kapilar addresses thus: "If you enquire who these girls are, they are the daughters of PAri, the Great Philanthropist, of adorned elephants, the Lord of PaRambu. I am their father's friend; and these are my (adopted)children. I am a Brahmin; a poet. I have brought them to you. The VELir were born in the sacrificial pit of the Northern Rishi; they ruled over the invincible City of Thuvarai(Dwaraka) which was protected by long, huge walls inforced with copper; they were of unlimited philanthropy. You are "the" VEL among the VELir of the forty-ninth generation." NachchinArkkiniyar, in his commentary, several centuries later, mentions about a legend which says that the VELir were brought to South India by the Sage Agastya from Dwaraka, which was ruled by the "Great One of the tall crown, who covered the (entire) land", i.e., KrishNa, the incarnation of VishNu.(Nilam kadandha nedu mudi aNNal). Since there are supposed to be eighteen septs or clans or branches of the VELir, it is possible they might have settled along the way. If you draw an itinary line from the Kathiawar Peninsula and proceed along the Western Ghats towards Tamil Nadu, you will see it passes through the Chalukyan territory, the Thuvarai of IrungOVEL of Sangam age, the territory of the Hoysalas, the Tiruchi/KodumbaLur terrotory of the Irukku VEL of Medieval times, the territory of PAri and the other VeLirs of the Pandiya country, including the ThuvarApathi VEL of KaNNamangalam. Migration? Worth the while, if some learned scholars would make some research with sufficient, concrete archeological and inscriptional evidence. Sir! I don't have any territorial claims to make on VELpulam, the land of the Karnataka/Telengana/Maratha:-) By the way, sorry about the cowboy expression. (Otherwise might get monotonous). Regards Jayabarathi The only time that there may have been possible Tamil rule in >that area was when vAtApi was sacked and the idol of gaNEza brought down >to taJjAvUr.(Even here, vAtApi was far removed from where beLgaum is >located now). I therefore find it difficult to believe that the place >names could have been derived from a Tamil root when there is little >evidence to show Tamil influence in that area. > > >I realise that this area was called "vEL pulam" in tamil, but the very >fact that they called it "vEL pulam" and not a part of tamizhakam makes >me think that the area was outside the sphere of Tamil influence >( as a parallel, most of the northern languages could be described as >"vaTamozhi" thus indicating their non-locality w.r.t the Tamil country). > > I also find it strange to think that a Tamil root "vEL" would have >been added to a samskrt root like "grAma" to yield "vEL- >grAma". My experience has been that place names are in general derived >from just one language as opposed to alloying; in tamil nATu itself >there a no of places whose names use tamil words {i.e. tiruvArUr as >opposed to alloyed "zrIvArUr"( though zrI= tiru)} or in an odd case, >completely consists of samskrt words ( e.g. vEdAraNyam as opposed to >"vEda maRaikATu" or "tirumaRaiyAraNyam", the later two being alloyed >from Tamil and Samskrt). While there may be exceptions to the rule, I >believe that bELgaum is not one. > > I believe that the derivation may more historically inconsistent if >the kannaDa equivalent of "vEL" were used. I have been told( I'm not >sure) that the name "bELagAum" comes from the fact that the local >jasmines( marAThI "bELA") were famous in that area and the name of the >village( i.e. marATHI "gAum")therefore became "bELAgAum". >While this may seem a case of "folk-etymology", I must point out that >from a history point of view, this derivation makes sense because >1. The town is next door to MahArASTra, the local population is more >maRATHI than kannaDa; infact the "mAhArASTra ekIkaraNa samiti" has been >trying to get "bELagaum" to join mahArASTra. >2. bELagaum seems to have come into prominence only after the 15th-16th >century when there was a lot of marATHI influence here, but >no tamil influence. > > > While place-name derivations may be correct from an etymology point of >view, I believe that it is important to verify a given derivation >against history and sociology and then determine the validity of a given >derivation. > >Regards, >Krishna > >______________________________________________________ >Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com > > From omar at ASTRO.OCIS.TEMPLE.EDU Sat May 2 18:32:07 1998 From: omar at ASTRO.OCIS.TEMPLE.EDU (IAOmar) Date: Sat, 02 May 98 14:32:07 -0400 Subject: Position Announcement In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19980420100343.00a5b100@religion.ufl.edu> Message-ID: <161227038096.23782.618034534948375233.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Prof. Thursby, Is it too late to apply now? I did not see the post until now. I am currently writing my dissertation on Wahiduddin Khan and his approach to the Hindu-Muslim conflict. I am working with Prof. Mahmoud Ayoub at Temple Univesity and have taught Asian religions and Islam for over four years off and on. Thanks in advance Irfan Omar 215-542-1659 On Mon, 20 Apr 1998, Gene Thursby wrote: > Kindly circulate the following notice inviting applicants for a one-year > non-renewable faculty teaching post: > > The Department of Religion at the University of Florida anticipates a > one-year (replacement) position for 1998-99. Recent Ph.Ds and ABDs are > encouraged to apply. Candidates should be prepared to teach courses on > Religions of India, Religion in Modern India and others in her/his area of > speciality. Teaching competence in Islam in South Asia is necessary. The > position is incumbent on funds being made available by the administration. > Interested candidates should send a covering letter and vitae. > > If possible, please send reply by fax to > 352-392-7395, Attn. Thursby. > > If by post, to: > Dr. Gene Thursby > South Asia Search > University of Florida > Department of Religion > 125 Dauer Hall > Gainesville, FL 32611-7410 USA > From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Sat May 2 22:58:44 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Sat, 02 May 98 16:58:44 -0600 Subject: Puri: Jagannatha Temple: Relics Message-ID: <161227038105.23782.4171220331787003917.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Cholas, ardent Saivaites, built some temples on their parent's ashes. Those Siva temple inscriptions explicitly state they are built so. (paLLippaTai iiccaram). For the list of sites, consult S. R. Balasubrahmanyam, multivolume series on Chola temples. I think Rajendra,I built a paLLippaTai temple for his mother near Darasuram. Regards, N. Ganesan From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Sat May 2 23:25:18 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Sat, 02 May 98 17:25:18 -0600 Subject: Dravidology publications/interest Message-ID: <161227038107.23782.16219026927171886238.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dr. Bh. Krishnamurti wrote: *Please think about it yourself that you should not masquerade as a *scholar of either Indology or Dravidology. Then people will ask you *what are your credentials? Please let the people know what you have published *in these areas. Never prepared a CV, as I don't work as a professional. I am no linguist, however I have published about Tamil bibliography and literature a bit. Very Partial list: 1) 'Sirpi' Balasubramaniyam and N. Ganesan, Kavitaik KanikaL, Pablo Bharathi veLiyiiDu, Pollachi, 1984 (A collection of poems, Dr. Sirpi is a well-known poet and HOD, Dept. of Tamil, Bharathiyar university). 2) N. Ganesan, Kongu Nadu: An introductory bibliography, Jl. of the Institute of Asian Studies, v.7, no. 1, p. 113-126, Madras, 1990 3) ~Naanaciva Tecikar, koTumuTi mummaNik kOvai, Kongu Aayvakam, Tanjai, 1990 An 18th century pirapantam on KodumuDi, on the Kaveri banks. (Co-editor along with Dr. S. Raju, Head, Dept. of epigraphy, Tamil university, Thanjavur. Dr. S. Raju is famous for the discovery of a Tamil Brahmi inscription of 2-3rd centuries A.D. from Araccaluur near Erode. That is the oldest Indian inscription on Dance, I am informed. Short 4 lines of jatisvaram is given in that. Dr. Raju's student Sri. Selvakumar has discovered the Atiyamaan inscription from Jambai. I. Mahadevan and R. Nagaswamy has written on this inscription of Tagaduur Atiyamaan, a friend of Avvai. This inscription reads something like "satyaputo ataiyamaan iitta pazi". Satyaputos are mentioned by Asoka. This new found discovery only fixes them as Atiya chiefs. 4) MaturApuri Ampikai Maalai of KulasEkara PaaNTiyan (14th century). Madurai Meenakshi Temple Kumpabishekam Souvneir, Madurai, 1995. (This is a precursor to the popular bhakti text, abhiraami andaadhi. As this Maturaapuri Ambikai Maalai is not in print for almost a 100 years, I printed this. Inspiration is after seeing Murray S. Rajam editions of Kamban, sangam texts, prabandhas, ... The breaking of sandhi, adding punctuation marks, etc., Vidhvan M. Shanmugam Pillai, Tirikkural Chair Professor, U. of Madras & the chief disciple of S. Vaiyapuri Pillai checked and corrected some errors.) 5) N. Ganesan, ezuttukkaLin vaTivamaippil eLiya maaRRam, kaNaiyaazi, Literary magazine, June 1997. (kaNaiyaazi for decades has set standards for writing in tamil. KastuuriraGkan, Sujatha, Sundara Ramasamy write.) There are about 10 more of my publications in Dravidology; Will give them to anyone interested. Did not include US degrees, papers, patents of engineering. I have about 200 tamil books printed from 1870-1930 not found in for eg., U. Niklas' bibliography or in Roja Muttaiya library of rare tamil books. eg: The first novel in tamil is in verse: aatiyuur avadhaani caritam by sEshaiyangar printed in 1870s. This was not known to those who wrote history of tamil novel. In tamil itself, this is the case. Naturally, in english this data has not come out. In magazines of late 1980s, the novel historians found out about aadiyuur avadhaani caritam. They got a copy from British library. They said it does not exist in India. Well, I have the original. The first tamil novel. I read somewhere that Vikram Seth has done a whole novel in verse (Golden Gate) & This is the first Indian attempt to do so. May be, the academic professionals don't know of Seshaiyangaar's work. Regards, N. Ganesan From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Sat May 2 21:33:58 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Sat, 02 May 98 17:33:58 -0400 Subject: Vivekananda &c. Message-ID: <161227038102.23782.15654642641337549553.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> (9 Mar 1998 02:10) - Re: Vivekananda &c. On 9 Mar 1998, Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian said <<1. The shankaracarya's have _not_ wanted to ban conversion (not sure about the present Kanchi head).>> I had lost the news clippings from early 1980s showing that a zankarAcArya wanted to ban conversion. Better late than never. Here is the latest opinion from the current head (or is he the former head?) of Kanchi mutt. This is from Times of India dated April 29, 1998. This can be seen at the following web site. While this is from a recent news item, I think it has information relating to some of the discussions we had in the list earlier. I apologize if it is not appropriate for this list. Regards S. Palaniappan http://www.timesofindia.com/290498/29home3.htm Keep off temple issue, Kanchi seer tells politicians By Rajaram Satapathy The Times of India News Service BHUBANESWAR: Shankaracharya of Kanchi Jayendra Saraswati feels that politicians are responsible for the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid controversy and has urged them not to dabble in it anymore for the greater interest of the country. ``Politicians are creating all troubles, raking up a dead issue time and again and trying to solve it which they can never do,'' the Shankaracharya, now on a national peace and unity mission, remarked in an interview here. He said for all practical purposes, the subject had been closed after the demolition of the mosque at Ayodhya. Nevertheless, whether or not there should be a temple in its place could be decided only by followers of both religions. ``Mutual discussions and reconciliation will surely remove all irritants,'' he pointed out. There were various pressing problems facing the country like poverty, price rise, unemployment and tension from across the border. Politicians should engage themselves in solving them for the benefit of masses, he suggested. The Shankaracharya did not agree that fundamentalist forces were posing a threat to the country's integrity. He, however, regretted reports about the conversion of Hindus in different states. ``Conversion is not permitted in any religion. It is instead considered an irreligious act. But some people coming under the influence of `roti, petti and beti' (indicating food, money and girls) are changing their dharma. By this, they cannot please God, but end up losing the love and affection of all besides their self-respect and dignity,'' he observed. He apprehended that the present trend, if not checked, could lead to a majority-minority problem in the country in the future and favoured the bringing of an anti-conversion legislation by the government. He said such laws backed by a strong people's movement could halt the changing scenario. The 63-year-old Jayendra Saraswati, who was initiated into the life of ``sanyasa'' at the age of 19, is credited with diverting the role of theShankaracharya for the first time into taking up developmental projects. As a result, a deemed university,an international library,a chain of schools and hospitals, 32 Veda pathasalas, four free old age homes, two schools for thephysically handicapped, a 100-bed hospital at Guwahati and a school for thementally handicapped at Hardwar have come up in different parts of the country. The Shankaracharya, during his visit to Orissa, also laid the stone of a medical college and an eye hospital at Berhampur, which is scheduled to be completed in three years. A heart institute at Bhubaneswar and a school especially for tribal students at Gunpur are also proposed, which, he says, will be ready within a year. The state government has agreed to provide land for all these projects. To a question what advice he gave to former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and former Union communications minister Buta Singh, who met him here, the Shankaracharya said: ``Without politicians, things cannot move. They come seeking peace from me. I utilise their services for the country's development.'' He also denied that he had any difference of opinion with four other Shankaracharyas in the country. ``They are like different editions of one newspaper,'' he remarked. From barathi at PC.JARING.MY Sat May 2 09:44:55 1998 From: barathi at PC.JARING.MY (jayabarathi) Date: Sat, 02 May 98 17:44:55 +0800 Subject: Telugu history Message-ID: <161227038074.23782.14704269841540685806.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 10:48 PM 5/1/98 +0500, you wrote: >At 07:33 AM 5/1/98 -0600, you wrote: > >Dear Mr.N.Ganesan, > This is the limit I think. Do you really believe >that God prefers Tamil to Sanskrit or for that matter any other language? >Let not chauvinism deteriorate to arrogance.The moral of the story is >that God prefers sincerity and simplicity to sophistication and arrogance >of learning. Not that Tamil is the preferred language of Gods. Tamil >arrogance is equally abhorring to God as is Sanskrit arrogance. Do you >realise such postings can be annoying to list members? > > You quoted somebody to say that Sanskrit is a rough >language. Do you know the name by which your language is known in Andhra? >It is called "Aravam" , a voiceless language. This word is current >in Andhra and it is in usage even before I was born. Dear Sir, I agree with you that Tamil is known as "Arava Basha" among the Telugu people. You have given the meaning of the word as "a voiceless language". May I be allowed to put in a few words about the real origin and the real meaning of that innocent word? Disclaimer: I am not raising a controversy and neither am I a Dravidian movement chauvinist. Far from that. The ancient Tamil Nadu was divided into 12 regions. The northern region bordering on Andra, was called the "Aruvaa Naadu" and "Aruvaa Vada Thalai Naadu" The tribe that lived in this region was known as the "Aravar". It is always customary for people to address another group of people with a region that is closest or most aquainted with them . It acts as a sort of common factor. One such word is the name "Hindu". Anybody coming from the region of Sindhu was a Hindu. But the name came to be applied to all the peoples of the sub continent. Likewise, for the Andras, two thousand years ago, any non-Telugu living in the south were "Arava Vaadu" . And their language was called "Arava Baasaha". Same thing with the Karnatakas. The adjoining Tamil region to Karnataka was Coimbatore/Salem area. This was known as the Kongu territory. So the Tamils to this day are known as "Konga" to the Kannadigas. Some people in South Travancore region in Kerala, call the Tamils as "Paandi", because they knew and interacted closely with the people of Pandiya Nadu, which is just across the Western Ghats. You know, the Tamils living in South East Asia are known to the Malays as "Keling" and the Chinese in the same region call them as "Keh-Lay-Ngah". This name comes from Kalinga. The sea ports of Kalinga Pattnam and Paluur were the nearest geographical points in the subcontinent. The shortest sea-distance is from there. And they are in the most suitable direction for the monsoon winds. So ships reach fast. So the traffic was heavy from Kalinga. So, to the Malays and Javanese, everyone from South India is a Keling. But later on, the term took on a derogatory meaning, so much so, that a member of the Malaysian Parliament once had to apologise. May be now, the word "Aravam" is having a derogatory meaning. But Sir, your ancestors, most certainly, had the least intention of insulting the Tamils, and had given only the direct meaning to the word, i.e.,"the people of Arava". Thank you for your patient reading. Regards Jayabarathi What >sounds as sweet to some people sounds as harsh or listless to other >people. Do show some consideration for the feelings of other people on the >list. > >regards, > >sarma. > > From jp_stephens at CLASSIC.MSN.COM Sat May 2 22:39:10 1998 From: jp_stephens at CLASSIC.MSN.COM (Stephen) Date: Sat, 02 May 98 18:39:10 -0400 Subject: Telugu history Message-ID: <161227038109.23782.14677226928526968318.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> This is a response to all of you learned gentlemen who have participated in this thread. The attitude shown by many of you is the reason India does not have the standing it should in world society today. We Indians, have a bad habit of undermining each other without realising that ultimately we are shooting ourselves in the foot. How does Tamil's antiquity undermine the rest of the Dravidian languages? Why do we gladly accept the antiquity of Sanskrit, while we find it difficult to accept that one of our sister languages could have that distinction as well. I noticed one of you gentlemen say in the heat of the argument, "English, the greatest language". Why are we gladly giving English that distinction while fighting among ourselves. Here's a good anecdote for you. It goes like this: A ship was carrying a load of crabs. The crabs were being exported in baskets. When the ship's captain passed by he noticed that all the baskets were closed except for one. He asked why one of the baskets of crabs was left open and if the crabs will not get out. The attendant answered "Sir, those crabs in that particular basket are Indian crabs, they pull each other down. So they don't need a lid". Well, why not, for a change, look for the truth without prejudice. Regards, Sujatha From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sat May 2 23:53:41 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Sat, 02 May 98 19:53:41 -0400 Subject: devaanaampriya In-Reply-To: <199804282059.QAA29086@testpin.engin.umich.edu> Message-ID: <161227038111.23782.13239822011909780.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Tue, 28 Apr 1998, Srinivasan Pichumani wrote: > It first occurs in the vArttika of Katyayana as an instance > of aluk-compound having, as is now proved, no bad meaning > whatsoever. Unfortunately, devaanam priyaH occurs already in the Atharvaveda: Paippalaada: <18.54.2> ... devaanaam priyo bhuuyaasam <18.54.3> ... prajaanaam priyo bhuuyaasam cf. also: <16.124.3> vizveSaaM tvaa devaanaam priyeNa dhaamnaa praaznaamiity and Zaunaka: 15.1.4. bRhataz ca vai sa rathaMtarasya caadityaanaaM ca vizveSaaM ca devaanaam priyaM dhaama bhavati ya evaM veda //4// > The expression continued to be used as a courteous > substitute of the 2nd person pronoun tvam for centuries... obviously neither this nor the ironic meaning are found in the early Vedic texts. ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm phone: 1- 617 - 495 3295 (voice & messages), 496 8570, fax 617 - 496 8571 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Sat May 2 16:11:44 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Sat, 02 May 98 21:11:44 +0500 Subject: Telugu history Message-ID: <161227038084.23782.1399737805110094264.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 08:19 AM 5/2/98 -0600, you wrote: >Mr. D. V. Sarma write: >" This is the limit I think. Do you really believe that God prefers Tamil to >Sanskrit..." > >Are you setting the limit?? Who gave you that power? God? > Mr.Ganesan, I hope you have heard the saying that "your freedom ends where my nose begins". That puts a limit on everything. As long as you talk about the virtues of your language without deprecating others it is OK. Again doing this day-in and day-out is not a good strategy. But we can put up with it. >Mr. D. V. Sarma wrote: >"You quoted somebody to say that Sanskrit is a rough language". > >There is a 13th century zrIvaiSNava commentary, very revered among >all Vaishnavaites. "muraTTu samskritam" occurs there. >A. K. Ramanujan, a legend and whose about ten letters to me I treasure, >translated "muraTTu" as "rough-sounding" in a *Princeton >university* publication, 1981. > Your intention of quoting the passage is to deprecate Sanskrit in comparision to Tamil. However revered the commentary may be for you and others like you, you cannot expect the list members approve of all those things. Suppose X sends a posting quoting Y who calls Z an ass. Then X claims that he is only quoting therefore he is blameless. Will this be acceptable. The motive of X is obvious and he has to take the blame. >Mr. D. V. Sarma continues to write: >"Do you know the name by which your language is known in Andhra? >It is called "aravam", a voiceless language. The word is current >in Andhra and it is in usage even before I was born" > >All the people start calling their neighbours by the name of >adjascent county names. Telugu people must have called >Tamils aruvas because the country around Tirupati is >aruvaa naaDu. I have heard funny explanations/etymologies for aravam >by some telugus. "rava" is sound in sanskrit. >So, "arava" is voiceless and start telling very derogatory >remarks on Tamil or Tamils. Please stop that. > This is exactly what I said above. I have just quoted what is prevelent in Andhra. But still you are offended. You should know that neither I nor anybody for that matter can stop people using that word. It will require major campaign at the Government level. >>From the day you appeared on indology, whenever I say something "tamil" >surely a response will come. Not a pleasurable experience though. > >This is just an illustrative example. For my writings, most of your responses >can be answered this way. I do not have so much time like people do >in India. > You have made a wild accusation. Please, substantiate what you have said. The number postings about Tamil you have made and the number of times I responded and how many times it is about Tamil. >Mr. D. V. Sarma writes (in the same posting, a little earlier) >"Tamil arrogance is equally abhorring..." > >Whenever Tamil's antiquity is even hinted at, fury comes. >We are repeatedly told that we are >regional/parochial/political/short_sighted/chauvinistic/arrogant/ >narrow_minded/.... What are the political overtones and >undercurrents? Just look back. I would like to refresh your memory about the irrational outburst of one of the tamil members of this list when Microsoft announced introduction Devanagari fonts for Word. The shoe is on the other foot. regards, sarma. > >I do not agree that these are true. >I am glad that you are not. > >When the Sanskritization of Malayalam, a dialect of tamil until >10th century AD can be studied, is it wrong to ask a preliminary >question on sanskritization of Telugu? > >Regards, >N. Ganesan > > From bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Sat May 2 16:13:55 1998 From: bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (Bh. Krishnamurti) Date: Sat, 02 May 98 21:13:55 +0500 Subject: Telugu history Message-ID: <161227038086.23782.6590500256221572909.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 08:19 02/05/98 -0600, you wrote: >Mr. D. V. Sarma write: >" This is the limit I think. Do you really believe that God prefers Tamil to >Sanskrit..." > >Are you setting the limit?? Who gave you that power? God? > >Mr. D. V. Sarma wrote: >"You quoted somebody to say that Sanskrit is a rough language". > >There is a 13th century zrIvaiSNava commentary, very revered among >all Vaishnavaites. "muraTTu samskritam" occurs there. >A. K. Ramanujan, a legend and whose about ten letters to me I treasure, >translated "muraTTu" as "rough-sounding" in a *Princeton >university* publication, 1981. >Mr. D. V. Sarma write: >"Do show some consideration for the feelings of other people >on the list". > >My record for about 4.5 years in Indology can be checked >to see whether I have indulged in personal invectives. >I have given 100s of references on Dravidian/tamil/south indian >bibliographical items for which I have received innumerable >thanks, both public and private. If you want I can compile who >all thanked me. > > Mr. D. V. Sarma writes (in the same posting, a little earlier) >"Tamil arrogance is equally abhorring..." > >Whenever Tamil's antiquity is even hinted at, fury comes. >We are repeatedly told that we are >regional/parochial/political/short_sighted/chauvinistic/arrogant/ >narrow_minded/.... What are the political overtones and >undercurrents? > >I do not agree that these are true. >I am glad that you are not. > >When the Sanskritization of Malayalam, a dialect of tamil until >10th century AD can be studied, is it wrong to ask a preliminary >question on sanskritization of Telugu? > >Regards, >N. Ganesan Mr. Ganesan: Please think about it yourself that you should not masquerade as a scholar of either Indology or Dravidology. Then people will ask you what are your credentials? Please let the people know what you have published in these areas? This list must be confined to those who have a scholarly curiosity and not any other. I mentioned in my posting that your inquiry itself was political and you denied it. I will tell you how. You started with a naive notion that Tamil has not been susceptible to Sanskrit as Telugu did. Then you raised a silly question if it was due to many brahmins moving from Tamil Nadu to Andhra? What kind of scholarly inquiry is this? What is your evidence of Brahmins moving out into Andhra, when and why? What are your sources? All that you wanted to "establish to the sholarly world" was that Tamil had less of Sanskrit vocabulary and Telugu has more without any studies or evidence. If you had a sense of history, you should have known that Tamil was the most influenced by Sanskrit between pre-CE and the middle ages. Because West Coast Tamil was the most influenced and it later became Malayalam. If you had a scholarly bent of mind you should have asked the question why was Tamil influenced first by Sanskrit so extensively than the other languages? That would have helped many persons including me to know things that we did not. know. Because, I never bothered to know this aspect although it was interesting. Pre-CE Tamil borrowed more words from Sanskrit and Prakrits than any other Drav. language. We had no records. Sanskrit and Pkt. s- became zero in borrowings in Early Tamil; thus you have avai May I request all members involved in the Samskrt-vs-Tamil topic to look at something very interesting: Dr V.Narayana Rao, a professor of Telugu at the U Wisconsin who has authored scholarly commentaries on the padas of kSEtraiya as well has translated pAlakuriki sOmanAtha's basavapurANamu into English, has the following comments to make in his article "Coconut and Honey: Samskrt and Telugu in mediaval Andhra" (Social Scientist, Vol 23, October 1995, Pages 24-38): Page 33: ( from a translation of a poem by the 16th century telugu poet koravi gOparAju) "If I write lucidly in telugu, they say the poem is not tight, it is soft and lacks strength If I use samskrt with some force, they complain "it is as thorny as darbhA grass"." and translates a verse on page 34 by the poet vallabharAya as "Given a choice between the aged mother and the ravishing daughter, I'll take the daughter any day!" (The aged mother refering to samskrt, the ravishing daughter being telugu). In addition, I'm told that 14th century works in Malayalam categorize maNipravALam works as "adhamam"( low class) if they use a high proportion of samskrt words vis a vis malayALam and "uttamam" if they use a low proportion of samskrt words.( i.e. degree of samskrtization is inversely proportional to quality). Since the works quoted yesterday by Prof Ganesan in Tamil, and the above works in telugu and malayALam are all in the 12th-16th century ( a period which saw a lot of writing in the vernaculars), is it possible that there was some kind of resentment in this period towards the hitherto superior position that samskrt enjoyed and the poets writing in the vernaculars therefore took potshots at samskrt by describing it as "harsh"( as happened in the Tamil text) or as "thorny as darbhA grass"( as happened in the Telugu text)? I believe that this was more a feature of that period than any specific bias/animus on the part of one language or poet towards samskrt. In my humble opinion, we would benefit from a discussion of THAT i.e. "anti-samskrtization" phenomenon and it's causative factors than a discussion of which language is harsh and what is not, which is a highly subjective matter. May I therefore request all to bury any hatchets around and light the peace pipes and share any information that they may have regarding this phenomenon. REgards, Krishna ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From umadevi at SFO.COM Sun May 3 04:18:16 1998 From: umadevi at SFO.COM (Mary Storm) Date: Sat, 02 May 98 21:18:16 -0700 Subject: Puri: Jagannatha Temple: Relics Message-ID: <161227038116.23782.18006251470940720610.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> N. Ganesan wrote: > > Cholas, ardent Saivaites, built some temples on their > parent's ashes. Those Siva temple inscriptions explicitly > state they are built so. (paLLippaTai iiccaram). > > For the list of sites, consult S. R. Balasubrahmanyam, > multivolume series on Chola temples. I think > Rajendra,I built a paLLippaTai temple for his mother > near Darasuram. > > Regards, > N. Ganesan Sounds interesting, I'll check out S.R. Balasubrahmanyam. Thanks for your help! Mary From bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Sat May 2 16:32:27 1998 From: bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (Bh. Krishnamurti) Date: Sat, 02 May 98 21:32:27 +0500 Subject: Correction Message-ID: <161227038088.23782.6728461885974042544.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> "Let us stop this discussion and NOT start similar ones in the future." (sorry "not" omitted by mistake in the posting) end Bh. Krishnamurti H.No. 12-13-1233, "Bhaarati" Street No.9, Tarnaka Hyderabad 500 017, A.P. India Telephone (R)(40)701 9665 E-mail: From bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Sat May 2 17:13:27 1998 From: bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (Bh. Krishnamurti) Date: Sat, 02 May 98 22:13:27 +0500 Subject: Telugu history Message-ID: <161227038091.23782.7891786320608436501.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >Date: Sat, 02 May 1998 21:02:03 >To: Indology >From: "Bh. Krishnamurti" >Subject: Re: Telugu history > >At 08:19 02/05/98 -0600, you wrote: >>Mr. D. V. Sarma write: >>" This is the limit I think. Do you really believe that God prefers Tamil to >>Sanskrit..." >> >>Are you setting the limit?? Who gave you that power? God? >> >>Mr. D. V. Sarma wrote: >>"You quoted somebody to say that Sanskrit is a rough language". >> >>There is a 13th century zrIvaiSNava commentary, very revered among >>all Vaishnavaites. "muraTTu samskritam" occurs there. >>A. K. Ramanujan, a legend and whose about ten letters to me I treasure, >>translated "muraTTu" as "rough-sounding" in a *Princeton >>university* publication, 1981. > >Mr. D. V. Sarma write: >>"Do show some consideration for the feelings of other people >>on the list". >> >>My record for about 4.5 years in Indology can be checked >>to see whether I have indulged in personal invectives. >>I have given 100s of references on Dravidian/tamil/south indian >>bibliographical items for which I have received innumerable >>thanks, both public and private. If you want I can compile who >>all thanked me. >> >> Mr. D. V. Sarma writes (in the same posting, a little earlier) >>"Tamil arrogance is equally abhorring..." >> >>Whenever Tamil's antiquity is even hinted at, fury comes. >>We are repeatedly told that we are >>regional/parochial/political/short_sighted/chauvinistic/arrogant/ >>narrow_minded/.... What are the political overtones and >>undercurrents? >> >>I do not agree that these are true. >>I am glad that you are not. >> >>When the Sanskritization of Malayalam, a dialect of tamil until >>10th century AD can be studied, is it wrong to ask a preliminary >>question on sanskritization of Telugu? >> >>Regards, >>N. Ganesan > >Mr. Ganesan: >Please think about it yourself that you should not masquerade as a scholar of either Indology or Dravidology. Then people will ask you what are your credentials? Please let the people know what you have published in these areas? This list must be confined to those who have a scholarly curiosity and not any other. I mentioned in my posting that your inquiry itself was political and you denied it. I will tell you how. > You started with a naive notion that Tamil has not been susceptible to Sanskrit as Telugu did. Then you raised a silly question if it was due to many brahmins moving from other places to Andhra under the threat of muslims (corrected and edited)? What kind of scholarly inquiry is this? What is your evidence of Brahmins moving out into Andhra, when and why? What are your sources? All that you wanted to "establish to the sholarly world" was that Tamil had less of Sanskrit vocabulary and Telugu has more without any studies or evidence. > > If you had a sense of history, you should have known that Tamil was the most influenced by Sanskrit between pre-CE and the middle ages. Because West Coast Tamil was the most influenced and it later became Malayalam. If you had a scholarly bent of mind you should have asked the question why was Tamil influenced first by Sanskrit so extensively than the other languages? That would have helped many persons including me to know things that we did not. know. Because, I never bothered to know this aspect although it was interesting. > > Pre-CE Tamil borrowed more words from Sanskrit and Prakrits than any other Drav. language. We had no records. Sanskrit and Pkt. s- became zero in borrowings in Early Tamil; thus you have avai >Mr. Ganesan: >Please think about it yourself that you should not masquerade as a scholar of either Indology or Dravidology. Then people will ask you what are your credentials? Please let the people know what you have published in these areas? This list must be confined to those who have a scholarly curiosity and not any other. I mentioned in my posting that your inquiry itself was political and you denied it. I will tell you how. > You started with a naive notion that Tamil has not been susceptible to Sanskrit as Telugu did. Then you raised a silly question if it was due to many brahmins moving from Tamil Nadu to Andhra? What kind of scholarly inquiry is this? What is your evidence of Brahmins moving out into Andhra, when and why? What are your sources? All that you wanted to "establish to the sholarly world" was that Tamil had less of Sanskrit vocabulary and Telugu has more without any studies or evidence. > > If you had a sense of history, you should have known that Tamil was the most influenced by Sanskrit between pre-CE and the middle ages. Because West Coast Tamil was the most influenced and it later became Malayalam. If you had a scholarly bent of mind you should have asked the question why was Tamil influenced first by Sanskrit so extensively than the other languages? That would have helped many persons including me to know things that we did not. know. Because, I never bothered to know this aspect although it was interesting. > > Pre-CE Tamil borrowed more words from Sanskrit and Prakrits than any other Drav. language. We had no records. Sanskrit and Pkt. s- became zero in borrowings in Early Tamil; thus you have avai > Emeneau said in his study of Indian onomastics that the use of Sanskrit in naming persons and places is the phenomenon of "Sanskritization on a grand scale". Toda and some other Nilgiri languages are an exception. What does it matter when Sanskritized naming started in Tamil; with Bhakti movement, you said as though it did not matter to the Tamil language, if it started with the Bhakti movement. > > Mr. Ganesan, I respect you as an engineer. If you have a layman's interest you must talk to people who are your Telugu friends but why bother so many scholars on the Indology list who would not be interested in the kind of discussion that such inquiries lead to. In the final analysis Indian clientele will make fools of themselves. Let us stop this discussion and start similar ones in the future. > > I would send my pubications to any scholar who is interested in studying them. Regards, Bh.K. end Bh. Krishnamurti H.No. 12-13-1233, "Bhaarati" Street No.9, Tarnaka Hyderabad 500 017, A.P. India Telephone (R)(40)701 9665 E-mail: From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Sun May 3 13:16:54 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Sun, 03 May 98 07:16:54 -0600 Subject: human sacrifice Message-ID: <161227038118.23782.12623035877975418980.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Pl. see: K. Lahiri, Human sacrifice by Tantriks and its Suppression, Calcutta review, 137, 2, p. 173-178, 1955 N. Ganesan Aside: May be D. Shulman's book on human sacrifice in Indic literature, art, & a comparison to the West does not have the above reference. David will be happy on this reference, as I have given him rare titles of tamil stalapuraaNam, pirapantam, etc., almost for a decade now. If people leave me alone, I can do good things. eg: Chola Pallippatai temples & who built them for umaadevi. From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Sun May 3 14:30:23 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Sun, 03 May 98 08:30:23 -0600 Subject: Meenakshi kalyaaNam Message-ID: <161227038120.23782.11165942601811196809.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> An American couple are visiting Madurai. The flight is on Wednesday. Can a kind soul type few words from a book I am seeking? They will be in the right place to attend a festival that may be 2500 years old & where millions still participate which is happening on Chitra Paurnami day. 1) Megasthenes, the Grecian ambassador of Alexander, refers to the marriage of the goddess of Methora. Few lines of what William Harman says in his Sacred marriage of a Hindu Goddess, please. OR, it may be found in K. A. N. Sastri, Foreign notices of South India too. Million thanks for the helper in advance. 2) K. Zcelebil, 1992, p. 23, Companion studies to the history of tamil literature, "The first flourish of an attested Dravidian civilization on Indian soil - that of the early Tamils - appeared in the area of the Indo-Ceylon straits, in the Gulf of Mannar. This earliest Indo-Dravidian civilisation, the beginning of which can possibly be dated between ca. 600-300 BCE, is connected with the dynasty of the Pandyas. The "Pandya connexion" attain additional attraction in the light of Romila Thapar's and R. Champakalakshmi's suggest that the reference in Ashurbanipal's (668-631 BCE) inscription to Pad'e, the King of Quad'e, may in fact be to Pandya, King of KuuDal, one of the early capitals of the Pandya kingdom. (cf. Asoka's 2nd major rock edict, Girnar verson, where Pa.de' = Pandya)". 3) John J. Banninga, The marriage of the gods, National Geographic, 24, p. 1314-1330, 1913. (A nonessntial svayapuraaNic anecdote: This reference I found out. About this 85 year old article full of a century old photographs, Bill was pleased to know in 1987) Regards, N. Ganesan From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Sun May 3 03:31:56 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Sun, 03 May 98 08:31:56 +0500 Subject: Telugu history Message-ID: <161227038113.23782.15223023276463139631.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 06:39 PM 5/2/98 -0400, you wrote: >How does Tamil's antiquity undermine the rest of the >Dravidian languages? Please do not twist facts. Has anybody questioned the antiquity of Tamil? It is unnecessary to fight non-existent enimies. That will be fighting wind-mills. But just being an antique language does not make any language the best language in the world. This has to be kept in mind in order to have a balanced view of things. >Why do we gladly accept the antiquity of Sanskrit, >while we find it difficult to accept that one of our sister languages could >have that distinction as well. The antiquity of Sanskrit is an established fact and again there is not much anybody can do about it. But if somebody who has energy and time wants to question the antiquity of Sanskrit nobody can prevent him. But using invectives like "muraTTu" is not questioning its antiquity? It is simply giving vent to ones frustration. But is it necessary to question the antiquity of Sanskrit in order to establish the antiquity of Tamil? Why dont you try to find out the real reason behind this? If you do that I am sure you will find that the reasons are not academic. >I noticed one of you gentlemen say >in the heat of the argument, "English, the greatest language". Why are we >gladly giving English that distinction while fighting among ourselves. > English has become the lingua franca of the modern world not just because of a concerted campaign by English people. It has its present position because of its adaptability, readiness to borrow words from other languages, availability of a large body of modern knowledge (especially scientific and technical) and so on. I think that it will continue to enjoy this position quite for some time. Let us look at Tamil. The custodians of Tamil on this list are apologetic about the presence sanskrit words in Tamil. They perhaps consider it as pollution. They take heart in the assumption that Tamil has the least number of Sankrit words. (This has been questioned by Prof.Bh.KrishnaMurti in one of his recent postings). They want to straight-jacket Tamil. How can a straight-jacketed device function properly? >Here's a good anecdote for you. It goes like this: > >A ship was carrying a load of crabs. The crabs were being exported in >baskets. When the ship's captain passed by he noticed that all the baskets >were closed except for one. He asked why one of the baskets of crabs was >left open and if the crabs will not get out. The attendant answered "Sir, >those crabs in that particular basket are Indian crabs, they pull each other >down. So they don't need a lid". > Does not your example apply when there are attempts to pull down Hindi and Sanskrit? >Well, why not, for a change, look for the truth without prejudice. > Amen. >Regards, >Sujatha > > From pclaus at HAYWIRE.CSUHAYWARD.EDU Sun May 3 15:44:03 1998 From: pclaus at HAYWIRE.CSUHAYWARD.EDU (Peter J. Claus) Date: Sun, 03 May 98 08:44:03 -0700 Subject: Puri: Jagannatha Temple: Relics In-Reply-To: <19980502170746.17467.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <161227038125.23782.18103366213775370127.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sat, 2 May 1998, Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote: > "brahma-padArtha" is put into the idol by a non-Brahmin tribal priest, > who is blindfolded when he transfers it from the old idol. It might be a > tribal artefact that has nothing to do with either Buddhism or > Brahminism in its origins. > That it is transferred by a "tribal" (an unfortunately meaningless term) with eyes closed, reminds me that the Kannada-speaking Kadu Gollas (who have their own temples inside their settlements) keep their 'idols' inside a box (peTTige) covered with red cloth. The box is NEVER opened except by the priest once every 20 years or so when the idols are washed in a river. Even then the priest is not supposed to look directly at them. When asked, many told me the idols were 'lingams'. Once, however, a priest decided it was Ok to show me what was in the box and it turned out to be small bells and other very old metal objects and a few small stones which could, arguably, be called lingams. This, as it turns out, is just like what peoples such as the Chenchu and Todas have in their temples. And (more to the point of this discussion) the idols/relics are associated with (in some sense the remains of) ancestoral deities: human ancestors who led heroic lives / died heroic deaths for whom Golla oral literature maintains long (4-6 hour recitation) ballad/epic stories. If (as I think Eschmann et. al. argue) the Puri temple was once a 'tribal' one, it is not hard to link the idea of a dead and buried ancestor (whose descendants would retain the right to perform some basic act of worship) being transformed into Jagganatha. In fact, Gollas perform rituals at a number of temples to which the general public (all other castes) come and receive prasada and other forms of blessings and cures. Some of these have become very big and famous. SOme are now (as many no doubt were in the past) are being taken over by Lingayats and Brahmans. The Gollas are not, of course, unique in ANY of this. This is a common substratum of South Indian (to include Chattisghar and Orissa, at least) religious culture. Unfortunately, with the concentration on Brahmanical ritual and Sanskrit in Indology, a broad (perhaps 60% of all people living in India partake in it!) and important variant of Indian culture is ignored. Peter Claus From AppuArchie at AOL.COM Sun May 3 13:44:09 1998 From: AppuArchie at AOL.COM (AppuArchie) Date: Sun, 03 May 98 09:44:09 -0400 Subject: Telugu history Message-ID: <161227038122.23782.2335177344313825676.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 98-05-02 18:35:50 EDT, you write: << How does Tamil's antiquity undermine the rest of the Dravidian languages? Why do we gladly accept the antiquity of Sanskrit, while we find it difficult to accept that one of our sister languages could have that distinction as well. >> Well chosen words. I am no 'word-digger' but relish 'word garlands'. Paying homage only to English is a force of habit of the self proclaimed elites of South Asia during the British Raj and even carried forward to this day. To paraphrase, D. F. Karaka, [disowned by the east, discarded by the west, they are the living monuments of British adultery in India.] From vidynath at MATH.OHIO-STATE.EDU Sun May 3 20:26:02 1998 From: vidynath at MATH.OHIO-STATE.EDU (Vidhyanath Rao) Date: Sun, 03 May 98 16:26:02 -0400 Subject: Telugu history Message-ID: <161227038127.23782.12717453878328478209.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I don't really want to get involved in this fight, but there are a couple of things I just have get off my chest. DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA wrote: > English has become the lingua franca of the modern world not just > because of a concerted campaign by English people. It has its present > position because of its adaptability, readiness to borrow words from > other languages, availability of a large body of modern knowledge > (especially scientific and technical) and so on. The present position of English is a reflection of the economic and political dominance of the USA. Large body of technical knowledge in topology was in German till 1955, and much in French. None of these had been translated into English by 1978, and what I know of German and French comes from trying to read these books. But few new papers in topology were being published in German by 1980. This had nothing to do with the choice of technical words. ---- I disagree with what N. Ganesan said, but the correctness or acceptability of what he said cannot be determined by his CV, or by the length of his publication list or some kind of citation count, but by the particular idea itself. This particular point has always been what impressed me most about modern Western shcolarship, and which I always felt to be welcome contrast to the attitude seen in the legends of Ashtavakra, Anglimala etc. But what I have seen posted in the last few months makes me wonder if Indologists still believe that ideas have to be judged by themselves, with no reference to who put it forth. Imagine ourselves taken back to 1860's. Would we consider the knowledge of Roth to be same as that Yask? would that imply that criticisms of Roth are worthless? Why then this concern with CVs, than with ideas? ----- From umadevi at SFO.COM Mon May 4 01:32:43 1998 From: umadevi at SFO.COM (Mary Storm) Date: Sun, 03 May 98 18:32:43 -0700 Subject: human sacrifice Message-ID: <161227038130.23782.2337044029366290938.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> N. Ganesan wrote: > > Pl. see: > K. Lahiri, Human sacrifice by Tantriks and its Suppression, > Calcutta review, 137, 2, p. 173-178, 1955 > > N. Ganesan > > Aside: > May be D. Shulman's book on human sacrifice in Indic literature, > art, & a comparison to the West does not have the above reference. > David will be happy on this reference, as I have given him rare > titles of tamil stalapuraaNam, pirapantam, etc., almost for a > decade now. > > If people leave me alone, I can do good things. > eg: Chola Pallippatai temples & who built them > for umaadevi. Dear Dr. Ganesan, Any suggestions for tracking down info on the Khojas? FYI the umadevi email address came about because my husband is a well known criminal defense lawyer. He has been stalked by a few unsavory types, who even managed to track him down through my maiden name at my UCLA email address. I am not really a new age crackpot! Many thanks for your bibliographic help. yours, Mary Storm From athr at LOC.GOV Mon May 4 13:23:16 1998 From: athr at LOC.GOV (Allen W Thrasher) Date: Mon, 04 May 98 09:23:16 -0400 Subject: None Message-ID: <161227038139.23782.11402178076051819884.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Vidyasankar said: "...Such practices are not restricted to specific doctrinal affiliations, and as far as the daSanAmI orders and the mAdhva orders are concerned, there is also no pollution for the erstwhile family and relatives of the sannyAsin." But this would be for another reason than that a sannyasin's death does not create impurity. It would be because with respect to his natal family he became dead at sannyasa. Allen Thrasher Allen W. Thrasher, Ph.D. Senior Reference Librarian Southern Asia Section Asian Division Library of Congress 101 Independence Ave., S.E. Washington, DC 20540-4714 tel. (202) 707-3732 fax (202) 707-1724 email: athr at loc.gov The opinions expressed do not represent those of my employer. From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Mon May 4 17:35:13 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Mon, 04 May 98 09:35:13 -0800 Subject: Indo-Aryan im/e-migration (scholarly debate) Message-ID: <161227038153.23782.10164035872396072203.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > From: "Jan E.M. Houben" > [sorry for the previous, incomplete message] > > In March, taking up a suggestion by George Thompson that we should try to make > a discussion on "Indo-Aryan im-e-migration" more "scholarly" (and hence more > fruitful), I tried to collect some basic relevant literature on the issue and > proposed to look for some basic arguments. As an example I referred to the > 'horse-argument' as formulated by Parpola, and asked whether any > alternative/additional arguments were known which could serve as basic topics > to be discussed in a future, more scholarly discussion on the subject. A lively > discussion on the horse-argument followed immediately, but no-one came with an > alternative or additional argument for Indo-Aryan im/e-migration. So, besides > the complex and much-disputed linguistic evidence, only the horse argument (in > my view still valid, though open to deconstruction according to others) serves > to link speakers of Indo-Aryan in India with those in central Asia/Europe? > You're greatly overstating your case, since the idea that horses could enter India through trade and such is quite possible. Also there is nothing in particular that connects the earliest IE speakers with horses. Archaeological evidence suggests domesticated horses originated in Central Asia, but it does not suggest the language of the people who did the domesticating. We also have no idea of what language was spoken by the people who introduced horses to India, if they were indeed introduced. The ancient Indian horse is genetically different than the Central Asian horse. However, the most important point is that the movement of horses or any other domesticated animal does not imply the migration of people. There are numerous examples of this in history. In fact, it happens all the time today with new breeds of domesticated animals imported from one country to the next. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Mon May 4 16:36:43 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Mon, 04 May 98 10:36:43 -0600 Subject: Horse Message-ID: <161227038150.23782.8663259324092610288.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Those interested in Horse argument can pursue. A magnanimous response from a true scholar addressed to me. I have no interest to delve deep. If I get new citations, I will give to *anyone* interested. Probably I gave the maximum no. of citations on Horse issue, because sanskritized elites preaching to naive Indian public that Out-of-India model has been proved more scientifically.... Regards, N. Ganesan **************************************************************** listed below is a preliminary bibliography on horses in south asia. most of the information about horses in megalithic contexts is in excavation reports. i'm not sure how detailed or in depth you want to get into this, for these reports can be fairly dry. i've not yet been able to find a synthetic view of the megalithic horse remains. if you want the citations for those reports, i can get them to you. in the meanwhile, here are some more general citations: Anthony, David W. 1997. Current thoughts on the domestication of the horse in Asia. _South Asian Studies_ #13 Bokonyi, Sandor. 1996. Horse remains from the prehistoric site of Surkotada, Kutch, late 3rd millennium BC. _Harappan Studies_ #2 Thomas, P.K. 1992. Horse remains from Raipur. In G. B. Deglurkar and Gouri P. Lad, _Megalithic Raipur (1985-1990)_. Poona: Deccan College Postgraduate Research Institute. pp.133-36. Meadow, Richard and Hans-Peter Uerpmann. 1986. _Equids in the ancient world_. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag. and if you are interested in the question of the 'aryans' in south asia, i would really recommend that you look at this book. it's an edited volume which presents the most current thinking on this issue, and comes at it from several directions. Erdosy, George, ed. 1995. _The Indo-Aryans of ancient South Asia : Language, material culture and ethnicity_. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter. i hope this helps, at least a little bit. i will keep on the lookout, and will forward anything else that comes up. ************************************************ From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Mon May 4 21:08:48 1998 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Mon, 04 May 98 14:08:48 -0700 Subject: sannyasins, pollution, death. Message-ID: <161227038155.23782.11202297058779351732.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Allen W Thrasher wrote: >Vidyasankar said: > >"...Such practices are not restricted to specific doctrinal affiliations, and as >far as the daSanAmI orders and the mAdhva orders are concerned, there >is also no pollution for the erstwhile family and relatives of the sannyAsin." > >But this would be for another reason than that a sannyasin's death does >not create impurity. It would be because with respect to his natal family he >became dead at sannyasa. Yes, indeed. Usually, a ritual SrAddha is held before a person becomes a sannyAsin, but the nearest male relative does have a role in the rituals of internment of the sannyAsin's body. As for the death itself not creating any impurity, the oldest textual source for this is the bRhadAraNyaka passage, where the prANas of the desire-less man are said not to depart. That is part of the reason why cremation is not done. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From mcv at WXS.NL Mon May 4 15:21:42 1998 From: mcv at WXS.NL (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Mon, 04 May 98 15:21:42 +0000 Subject: Indo-Aryan im/e-migration (scholarly debate) In-Reply-To: <01IWN4DJT06W91W0OP@rullet.LeidenUniv.nl> Message-ID: <161227038147.23782.11556388206987009895.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> "Jan E.M. Houben" wrote: >Parpola presents: >. . . domesticated horse, wheeled vehicles, stockbreeding and limited >horticulture, spread from the Ukraine eastwards over the vast grasslands. >The Proto-Aryan word for 'horse' aZva . . . is clearly a Proto-Indo-European >inheritance. >. . . >The horse and chariot can thus with good reasons be expected to be physically >and ideologically present in the archaeological cultures identified as Aryan. >This is the case in the Gurgan culture of northern Iran, with the chariot seal >of Tepe Tissar . . in the Bactria and Margiana Archaeological Complex . . . While the *absence* of domesticated horse can be construed as a strong indication that the culture was not Aryan (given the word aZva), it does not work the other way: the *presence* of domesticated horse in itself proves nothing. Even if we ascribe the domestication of the horse to Indo-Europeans (and there can be little doubt IMHO that the Srednij Stog culture *was* IE-speaking), there was nothing to stop linguistically non-IE groups to adopt the horse as a domesticate (we know the Sumerians, Akadians, Hurrians and Egyptians did). ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From sreenivasa.nittala at BLR.SNI.DE Mon May 4 10:39:22 1998 From: sreenivasa.nittala at BLR.SNI.DE (Sreenivasa S. S. Nittala) Date: Mon, 04 May 98 16:09:22 +0530 Subject: Telugu history Message-ID: <161227038133.23782.4326249156141333120.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Though this seems to be like adding a bit more to the digression from the main issue viz., "Telugu History", I must say that the stature and position that English as a language enjoys today is due to its reach which in turn has its roots in the reach and span of the erstwhile British empire and the current political and economic position of USA. Adaptability of a language is not the key issue. The stature of a language is dependent on the subject and the quality of literature (in that subject) that gets expressed in that language. The relationship between thought and language is quite complex and intriguing. At one stage language seems to influence the thought, while at a later stage it is the other way round. The great philosophical treatises of India have been in Sanskrit (though of varying forms in script and grammar). In those topics Sanskrit is a default language. That's the power of the thought. For instance take the concept of "Maya". The Sanskrit term comes with a contextual and conceptual air around it. It is not a dead word but has the vitality in it. Try translating it into English : "illusion", etc. None of these words will have the same power. That is the power of the thought. So by this yardstick, English is not adaptable ?!! This holds good for all languages and thoughts. As another example : during the time when Berlin shone as the "Jewel in the Crown" for Theoretical Physics, German was THE language for Physics. Even Theoretical Computer Science has had its strong roots in the German and Dutch speaking zones. The question is not that of adaptabaility. "Adaptability" in the context of a language is a misnomer. The issue is that of the level of thought that is generated and published via a particular language. This has a sort of a binding effect and there is no option but to learn the language !!! With Regards, Sreenivasa S. S. Nittala ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Nittala Sreenivasa Subramanya Sharma Associate Consultant | Part Time Student Siemens Information Systems Ltd. | M. Tech. B - 8, Jungpura B | Computer Science & Engg. Mathura Road, New Delhi 110 014. | Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Tel. : +91- 11- 431 1245/2379/2389 | Email : Sreenivasa.Nittala at blr.sni.de | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -----Original Message----- From: Vidhyanath Rao [SMTP:vidynath at MATH.OHIO-STATE.EDU] Sent: Monday, May 04, 1998 1:56 AM To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Subject: Re: Telugu history I don't really want to get involved in this fight, but there are a couple of things I just have get off my chest. DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA wrote: > English has become the lingua franca of the modern world not just > because of a concerted campaign by English people. It has its present > position because of its adaptability, readiness to borrow words from > other languages, availability of a large body of modern knowledge > (especially scientific and technical) and so on. The present position of English is a reflection of the economic and political dominance of the USA. Large body of technical knowledge in topology was in German till 1955, and much in French. None of these had been translated into English by 1978, and what I know of German and French comes from trying to read these books. But few new papers in topology were being published in German by 1980. This had nothing to do with the choice of technical words. ---- I disagree with what N. Ganesan said, but the correctness or acceptability of what he said cannot be determined by his CV, or by the length of his publication list or some kind of citation count, but by the particular idea itself. This particular point has always been what impressed me most about modern Western shcolarship, and which I always felt to be welcome contrast to the attitude seen in the legends of Ashtavakra, Anglimala etc. But what I have seen posted in the last few months makes me wonder if Indologists still believe that ideas have to be judged by themselves, with no reference to who put it forth. Imagine ourselves taken back to 1860's. Would we consider the knowledge of Roth to be same as that Yask? would that imply that criticisms of Roth are worthless? Why then this concern with CVs, than with ideas? ----- -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: attachment.bin Type: application/ms-tnef Size: 4478 bytes Desc: not available URL: From JHOUBEN at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL Mon May 4 15:24:09 1998 From: JHOUBEN at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL (Jan E.M. Houben) Date: Mon, 04 May 98 16:24:09 +0100 Subject: Indo-Aryan im/e-migration (scholarly debate) Message-ID: <161227038141.23782.11343539625445293470.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In March, taking up a suggestion by George Thompson that we should try to make a discussion on "Indo-Aryan im-e-migration" more "scholarly" (and hence more fruitful), I tried to collect some basic relevant literature on the issue and proposed to look for some basic arguments. As an example I referred to the 'horse-argument' as formulated by Parpola, and asked whether any alternative/additional arguments were known which could serve as basic topics to be discussed in a future, more scholarly discussion on the subject. A lively discussion on the horse-argument followed immediately, but no-one came with an alternative or additional argument for Indo-Aryan im/e-migration. So, besides the complex and much-disputed linguistic evidence, only the horse argument (in my view still valid, though open to deconstruction according to others) serves to link speakers of Indo-Aryan in India with those in central Asia/Europe? A number of valuable references to relevant literature have been made. I tried to collate them and am willing to sent my collation in their unedited form to anyone interested. a chain is only as strong as its weakest link my last posting I suggested to look for a simple formula to represent the arguments for Indo-Aryan im/e-migration, in order to stimulate a fruitful debate of this issue. One example I may give even now, not in order to start discussion of this example but to stimulate others to look for alternative ones. A compact argumentation for the view that Aryans came to India, not necessarily in an invasion, is provided by Asko Parpola in his book: Deciphering the Indus Script, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994, pp. 155-159. The brevity of the argument (in four pages with maps and pictures) should make it a suitable topic of discussion. Parpola presents: "one important reason why the Harappans are unlikely to have been Indo-European or Aryan speakers. This is the complete absence of the horse (equus caballus) among the many wild and domesticated animals that have been identified at a large number of Early and Mature Harappan sites." It is further stated: "The wild relatives of the horse . . . and donkey . . . are ot native to the Iranian plateau and South Asia, the domesticated animals having been brought into the area probably from the west and north. Why should the horse be such a strong indication of the Aryan and Indo-European culture? The first strong evidence for horse domestication comes from Dereivka on the Dnieper rever, a site belonging to the Ukrainian Srednij Stog culture, which flourished about 4200-3500 BC. . . . domesticated horse, wheeled vehicles, stockbreeding and limited horticulture, spread from the Ukraine eastwards over the vast grasslands. The Proto-Aryan word for 'horse' aZva . . . is clearly a Proto-Indo-European inheritance. . . . The horse and chariot can thus with good reasons be expected to be physically and ideologically present in the archaeological cultures identified as Aryan. This is the case in the Gurgan culture of northern Iran, with the chariot seal of Tepe Tissar . . in the Bactria and Margiana Archaeological Complex . . . The picture is totally different when we turn to the Indus Civilisation. There is no evidence of the horse whatsoever.. . . This does not prove that Aryans never visited the Indus Valley in the third millennium - a few probably did - but it does suggest that the Indus Civilisation in general and its rulers were non-Aryan." iti Parpola uvAca In this posting, which, indeed, is becoming too long, I want to make a brief suggestion to expand Parpola's argument with a body of evidence which has been too much neglected so far: the Bhimbetka cave- and rock paintings. Prehistoric cave/rock-paintings comparable with those found in France and Spain were discovered at the end of the sixties in Bimbhetka near Bhopal. Research has been going on for decades, but comprehensive reports from the Archeological Survey are still forthcoming. The paintings of generations of people living in or near the caves have been preserved. The oldest are estimated to date back some 10.000 years, and youngest are attributed to the first millennium AD. These paintings, which I went to see almost two years ago, are in my view the best pratyakSa argument (in combination with Indus Valley evidence and Parpola's horse argument) against proposals for a VERY old date of the Veda and the Vedic people (as proposed by Frawley, Kak and others). The environment presupposed in the Veda is simply incompatible with the environment of reflected in these paintings (horse is missing, people apparently live as hunter-gatherers for millennia; writing appears very late). Scholars from the Archeology department in Poona have been working on these findings. The only preliminary scholarly publication I know of is Bhimbetka: Prehistoric man and his art in Central India, by Virendra Nath Misra, Yashodhar Mathpal, Malti Nagar, Pune: Deccan College, 1977. (With a foreword by H.D. Sankalia) Suppose these caves would have contained evidence for a very old Veda. How quickly would they have been studied, and how quickly would the results have been published and become famous? Should we conclude that "the Indians" are trying to cover up evidence against an old Veda? In fact I believe as little in such a 'conspiracy theory' as I believe in a 'conspiracy' of 19th century European scholars against Indians. After all, to quote Halbfass from the recent book Beyond Orientalism, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997, p. 9: "the causal and conceptual relationship between textual and academic Orientalism and actual political and economic subjugation of the Orient remains unclear and ambiguous . . . " as there are so many "twists and turns . . . unexpected transformations and side-effects in Europe's encounter with Asia . . . a process which locked, for instance, the Asian activities of the Christian missionaries into the growth of secularism and the critique of Christianity in Europe, and which turned the efforts of 'agents of imperialism' and arch-Orientalists as William Jones or Max Mueller into forces which would contribute to the demise of colonialism and imperialism." JH {Dominik, to atone for my too long postings (transgressing the two-screen rule) I promise to remain silent on this topic for the coming weeks} From JHOUBEN at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL Mon May 4 15:57:09 1998 From: JHOUBEN at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL (Jan E.M. Houben) Date: Mon, 04 May 98 16:57:09 +0100 Subject: Indo-Aryan im/e-migration (scholarly debate) Message-ID: <161227038145.23782.12751322903071216614.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> [sorry for the previous, incomplete message] In March, taking up a suggestion by George Thompson that we should try to make a discussion on "Indo-Aryan im-e-migration" more "scholarly" (and hence more fruitful), I tried to collect some basic relevant literature on the issue and proposed to look for some basic arguments. As an example I referred to the 'horse-argument' as formulated by Parpola, and asked whether any alternative/additional arguments were known which could serve as basic topics to be discussed in a future, more scholarly discussion on the subject. A lively discussion on the horse-argument followed immediately, but no-one came with an alternative or additional argument for Indo-Aryan im/e-migration. So, besides the complex and much-disputed linguistic evidence, only the horse argument (in my view still valid, though open to deconstruction according to others) serves to link speakers of Indo-Aryan in India with those in central Asia/Europe? A number of valuable references to relevant literature have been made. I tried to collate them and am willing to sent my collation in their unedited form to anyone interested. Since I could not read all of the relevant literature till now, I will not further participate in a discussion, lest I otherwise lower its level. After all, the level of a discussion thread on a complex issue as this is only as low as the least informed participant, just as the strength of a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. My impression is that the most valuable contributions in the last two or three months on Indo-Aryan im/e-migration were those referring to or summarizing published books or articles. On the other hand, the postings on the list seem not suitable to develop very complicated arguments. Perhaps the list-managers should consider to set apart a section for bibliographic statements and reviews in the archive, since these are generally of more lasting value ? Best wishes, JH From jp_stephens at CLASSIC.MSN.COM Mon May 4 21:38:06 1998 From: jp_stephens at CLASSIC.MSN.COM (Stephen) Date: Mon, 04 May 98 17:38:06 -0400 Subject: Meenakshi kalyaaNam Message-ID: <161227038157.23782.951939492875633897.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> 3) John J. Banninga, The marriage of the gods, National Geographic, 24, p. 1314-1330, 1913. (A nonessntial svayapuraaNic anecdote: This reference I found out. About this 85 year old article full of a century old photographs, Bill was pleased to know in 1987) Dear Dr. Ganesan: I have the above material in *.jpg file format. It can be opened in any browser and printed out. If you would like to have these files, please email me privately and I'll send them to you. Regards, Sujatha From barathi at PC.JARING.MY Mon May 4 11:13:32 1998 From: barathi at PC.JARING.MY (jayabarathi) Date: Mon, 04 May 98 19:13:32 +0800 Subject: Meenakshi kalyaaNam Message-ID: <161227038136.23782.8466642369626627256.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 08:30 AM 5/3/98 -0600, you wrote: >An American couple are visiting Madurai. The flight is on >Wednesday. Can a kind soul type few words from a book >I am seeking? They will be in the right place to attend >a festival that may be 2500 years old & where millions >still participate which is happening on Chitra Paurnami day. > >1) Megasthenes, the Grecian ambassador of Alexander, >refers to the marriage of the goddess of Methora. > >Few lines of what William Harman says in his >Sacred marriage of a Hindu Goddess, please. >OR, it may be found in K. A. N. Sastri, Foreign >notices of South India too. > Dear Dr.Ganesan, In the "Foreign Notices of South India I found only the following passages: The Pandaean nation is governed by females, and their first queen is said have been the daughter of Hercules. The city Nysa is assigned to this region, as is also the mountain sacred to Jupiter, Meros by name, in a cave on which the ancient Indians affirm Father Bacchus was nourshed. whlie the name has given roise to the fantastic story that Bacchus was born from the thigh of his father. Beyond the mouth of the Indus are two islans, Chryse and Argyre, which yeild ann abundant supply of metals that many writers allege their soils consist of gold and of silver. 2. Heracles begat a daughter in India whom he called Pandaia. To her he assigned that portion of India which lies to southward and extends to the sea, while he distributed the people subject to her rule into 365 villaages, giving orders that one village should each day bring to the treasury the royal tribute, so that the queen might always have the assistance of those men whose turn it was to pay the tribute in coercing those who for the time being were defaulterers in their payments. There is nothing mentioned in K.A.Nilakanta Saastriyaar's book. Perhaps in the source book - J.W. McCrindle's "Ancient India as described by Megastenes and Arrian"? Regards Jayabarathi >Million thanks for the helper in advance. > >2) K. Zcelebil, 1992, p. 23, Companion studies to the >history of tamil literature, >"The first flourish of an attested Dravidian civilization >on Indian soil - that of the early Tamils - appeared in the >area of the Indo-Ceylon straits, in the Gulf of Mannar. This >earliest Indo-Dravidian civilisation, the beginning of which >can possibly be dated between ca. 600-300 BCE, is connected with >the dynasty of the Pandyas. The "Pandya connexion" attain >additional attraction in the light of Romila Thapar's >and R. Champakalakshmi's suggest that the reference in >Ashurbanipal's (668-631 BCE) inscription to Pad'e, the >King of Quad'e, may in fact be to Pandya, King of KuuDal, >one of the early capitals of the Pandya kingdom. >(cf. Asoka's 2nd major rock edict, Girnar verson, >where Pa.de' = Pandya)". > >3) John J. Banninga, The marriage of the gods, >National Geographic, 24, p. 1314-1330, 1913. >(A nonessntial svayapuraaNic anecdote: >This reference I found out. >About this 85 year old article full of >a century old photographs, Bill was pleased to know in 1987) > >Regards, >N. Ganesan > > From magier at COLUMBIA.EDU Tue May 5 02:03:19 1998 From: magier at COLUMBIA.EDU (David Magier) Date: Mon, 04 May 98 22:03:19 -0400 Subject: database announcement (forwarded from SARAI) Message-ID: <161227038159.23782.7451756874666977308.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The following announcement is being forwarded to your listserv or mailing list from SARAI. Apologies for any cross-posting. Note that the BAS is the Bibliography of Asian Studies, and the online cumulated database contains very extensive South Asia indexing. Please contact John Campbell and the addresses listed below for any further information. David Magier SARAI ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 4 May 1998 21:20:37 -0400 (EDT) From: John Campbell Subject: BAS up for demonstration Dear Asia librarians, The AAS is happy to announce that the on-line BAS is now available for demonstration. Please point your browser to http://bas.umdl.umich.edu/b/bas/demo/ This demostration will be open for use by anyone until the end of May. AFter that, libraries interested in subscribing may request additional demonstration time (to be provided by password). Pricing information is available on the AAS home page at http://www.aasianst.org/bassub.htm An order form and dract licensing agreement will be posted there shortly. We are currently looking into whether subcriptions via agents is appropriate. Comments and suggestions from Asia librarians about the BAS on-line are welcome Anything regarding subscriptions should be addressed to me (jccamp at umich.edu). Remarks and questions about the BAS itself and how it workdsw should be sent to bas-note at umich.edu, and we will respond in due time. Finally, please note that although the BAS is fully functional, including the on-line documentation, there are still some errors in the data and other difficulties that we are working on. We hope most will be fixed by July 1 when it officially goes on-line. I hope you will enjoy using the BAS this month, and will consider having your institution subscribe. Sincerely, John Campbell ____________________________________________________________________________ John Creighton Campbell, Prof. of Political Science, University of Michigan, and Secretary-Treasurer, Association for Asian Studies. University address: Corner House, 202 S Thayer St, Ann Arbor MI 48104-1608. Tel 734 998 7558; Fax 734 998 7982. Traveling until early July. Address from May 1-June 22: 2-19-30-202 Mita, Minato-Ku, Tokyo 108-0073. Telephone +81 3 5476-9453. Fax to same number (but may have to call first) or to 3225-4828 (some delay). Email ok for most of the time I am away. From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Tue May 5 05:37:29 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Tue, 05 May 98 01:37:29 -0400 Subject: Telugu history Message-ID: <161227038164.23782.4630981649222814095.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 98-05-03 16:26:59 EDT, vidynath at MATH.OHIO-STATE.EDU writes: << I disagree with what N. Ganesan said, but the correctness or acceptability of what he said cannot be determined by his CV, or by the length of his publication list or some kind of citation count, but by the particular idea itself. This particular point has always been what impressed me most about modern Western shcolarship, and which I always felt to be welcome contrast to the attitude seen in the legends of Ashtavakra, Anglimala etc. But what I have seen posted in the last few months makes me wonder if Indologists still believe that ideas have to be judged by themselves, with no reference to who put it forth. >> I agree with this whole-heartedly. I wish everyone just responds to the ideas posted instead of imputing motives to the person posting it. I have always held that useful information can often come from unlikely sources. Let me give an example. A few months back, in a posting entitled "Tamil words in English" Dr. Ganesan, indicated that English "koel" is derived from Tamil "kuyil' according to a source on the internet. Dr. Sarma responded saying that "the word koel in english is more likely to be derived from telugu kOyila or hindi koyel rather than kuyil of tamil from the affinity sounds." In a later posting, Dr. Ganesan responded, "According to the Oxford dictionary, the word was first used by Erskine in 1826. There is a Erskine hospital in Madurai. It could have come from tamil too." The statements of both Dr. Ganesan and Dr. Sarma seemed reasonable to me. Considering the different sounds found in the words in the three languages, one would naturally assign Hindi to be the more likely source for English "koel". But the possibility of Erskine having lived in the Tamil region seemed to encourage looking at this further. On the face of it, among the three languages, the Hindi form quoted by Dr. Sarma seemed the closest with even the second vowel matching the English form. On the other hand, according to the Oxford dictionary, the word koel first occurs in 1826 in Erskine's translation of Baber's Mem. 323 note, "The koel....has a kind of song, and is the nightingale of HindustAn." The dictionary lists the Hindi word which was the possible source as "ko'il". When this is considered, the significant difference between the Tamil word and the Hindi word 2 is really the radical vowel, "u" in Tamil vs. "o" in Hindi. We seemed to have the good old problem of root vowel "u/o" alternation working here. Everybody knows that when the English borrowed Indian words into English, the source was likely to be the spoken form and not the literary form. One can see that in this process of borrowing, three word forms are at issue: the word as spoken by the native speaker, the word as heard by the Englishman, and the word form he transliterated it into. All three need not be identical. Is there any possibility, then, that what in literary Tamil is "u" is pronounced by Tamils in some cases in such a way that it finally becomes "o" in English. (We should also have the following/derivative vowel to be "i".) In other words, is it possible for a radical "u" to become "o" when followed by a derivative vowel 'i" in actual spoken Tamil? A cursory examination of data reveals English Tuticorin < Tamil tUttukkuTi, a port city in Tamilnadu. The comparison is between the latter parts of the words, i.e., corin and kuTi. Here we find Ta. "u" > Eng. "o" when the following vowel is "i". However, since this word is a compound, I wanted to look at cases where "u" was really in the root. Prior to this, I had accepted as given the basic premise of Burrow- Krishnamurti model of "u/o" alternation in Dravidian. According to this, in a word when the second vowel is "i" or "u" or non-existent, and if the original root vowel was "u", "u" should not change to "o". Based on the case of Tuticorin, I looked at words with root vowel "i/u" and followed by "zero/i/u" as the second vowel. What I discovered was very interesting. I found a number of cases where "u" > "o" even when the second vowel is "i" or "u" or non- existent. Consider the examples given below. In each one of the following cases, the vowel change "u"> "o" occurs, independent of the presence of a second vowel "a". DEDR 4281 Ta. puy, poy - to be pulled out DED 2211 Ta. curi, cori (from Tamil Lexicon) - to whirl DEDR 3728 Ta. nuRukku, noRukku - to crush DEDR 3698 Ta. nuGku, noGku - tender palmyra fruit DED 1368 Ta. kuccu, koccu - tassel ( I do not have ready access to DEDR. I have just a few pages from DEDR. So pardon my mixing up DED and DEDR references.) I have just shown a few examples of this "u">"o". Similar examples can be given for words with radical "i" also from Tamil Lexicon/DEDR. Considering the fact that the Tamil Lexicon favors literary usage, if one were to take a survey of all colloquial forms, I am sure we will find more examples. For instance, the form Ta. meti "to tread on" occurs in Tamil inscriptions. It is not found in the Tamil Lexicon or DED. One should note that based on Burrow-Krishnamurti approach to "i/e"-"u/o" alternation, P. S. Subrahmanyam (Dravidian Comparative Phonology, 1983, p.203) says, "The following criteria will enable one to discover the original Proto-Dravidian vowel: (i) related word in which the root contains a short vowel and is followed by either no derivative element or one that begins with -i or -u; and (ii) a related word in which the root contains a long vowel or a double consonant (for this purpose it is immaterial whether or not such a root is followed by a derivative element beginning with a vowel (including a) because such a derivative element can have no influence on this type of root.)". Based on the evidence presented above, these fundamental assumptions in Burrow-Krishnamurti model of Dravidian "i/e"-"u/o" alternation seem to be questionable. Coming back to English "koel", we can say that depending on the accuracy of word forms we work with, the word could have come from Hindi, Tamil or Telugu. Apparently, there was a Governor Erskine in Madras. I do not know if this Erskine was the same one who translated Baber?s work. If we know more about the places in India the author, Erskine, spent his time, we can say which language would more *probably* have been the source for English "koel". May be people with access to India Office Library can get the information about this person. I should note here that I embarked on this investigation because Dr. Ganesan posted his original note and Dr. Sarma responded to it with a reasonable argument against it. Considering the fact that a satisfactory interpretation of this "i/e"-"u/o" alternation was deemed to be an original contribution of "Telugu Verbal Bases" by Dr. Krishnamurti himself, I think the original posting by Dr. Ganesan has been very useful. If intellectual inquiry is stifled because of the presence or absence of publications, we will all be losers. Regards S. Palaniappan From zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL Tue May 5 03:50:00 1998 From: zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Tue, 05 May 98 01:50:00 -0200 Subject: Beluur and Belgaum Message-ID: <161227038192.23782.14160328584889022526.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Replies to msg 02 May 98: indology at listserv.liv.ac.uk (S Krishna) About "Belgaum": mC> I believe that the derivation may more historically mC> inconsistent if the kannaDa equivalent of "vEL" were used. I mC> have been told( I'm not sure) that the name "bELagAum" comes mC> from the fact that the local jasmines( marAThI "bELA") were mC> famous in that area and the name of the village( i.e. marATHI mC> "gAum")therefore became "bELAgAum". While this may seem a mC> case of "folk-etymology", I must point out that from a mC> history point of view, this derivation makes sense because mC> 1. The town is next door to MahArASTra, the local population mC> is more maRATHI than kannaDa; infact the "mAhArASTra mC> ekIkaraNa samiti" has been trying to get "bELagaum" to join mC> mahArASTra. mC> 2. bELagaum seems to have come into prominence mC> only after the 15th-16th century when there was a lot of mC> marATHI influence here, but no tamil influence. "Belgaum" is written, in Kannada script, as "be.lagaavi". In this case, unlike "Belur", the labial is retroflex. But what must be noted here is that the vowel is _short_. This may be completely lost on Marathi speakers, in whose language the Devanagari script is now commonly used, in which the short e "doesn't exist" (I do not know whether there is a spoken short e in modern Marathi, and if so, whether it has a phonemic significance; but in any case there is no Devanagari sign to represent it -- and this may also be lost on others who have not seen how the name is written in Karnataka). If a word / name contains an e, and if it is of Indo-Aryan origin, it is always represented in Kannada as a _long_ e (i.e., its original prosodic quantity is preserved; though this may differ in the case of tadbhava words). Although "Belgaum" looks linguistically a bit ugly as a name (it looks somewhat like an arisamaasa), some real arisamaasas are in everyday use in modern Kannada; and if the Aryan component is not Sanskritic but a later derivative from something Sanskrit, there is less resistance against forming compounds with Dravidian elements. Krishna is right in pointing out Kannada "be.la-" = white (in fact this gains noteworthiness if we consider that it is not "bee.la", as he wrote, but "be.la" - short): there are in fact a few other placenames in Karnataka containing be.la-, among them three Be.lago.las (be.la- = white, go.la < ko.la = lake, tank): I know of two Be.lago.las (Mysore and Chikmagalur districts) and one ;Srava.nabe.lago.la (Hassan district). We would have to see whether a name meaning 'white town' makes sense in view of local history, and also whether there are other towns in that area which have arisamaasa-names. Unfortunately I do not have with me at the moment my better dictionaries for looking up more information about -gaavi. Robert Zydenbos zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Tue May 5 03:03:43 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Tue, 05 May 98 08:03:43 +0500 Subject: Meenakshi kalyaaNam Message-ID: <161227038160.23782.49479372040947155.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 05:38 PM 5/4/98 -0400, you wrote: >3) John J. Banninga, The marriage of the gods, >National Geographic, 24, p. 1314-1330, 1913. >(A nonessntial svayapuraaNic anecdote: >This reference I found out. >About this 85 year old article full of >a century old photographs, Bill was pleased to know in 1987) > >Dear Dr. Ganesan: > >I have the above material in *.jpg file format. It can be opened in any >browser and printed out. If you would like to have these files, please email >me privately and I'll send them to you. > >Regards, >Sujatha > > I am interested in the above article. Will it be possible you to send these *.jpg files to me. regards, sarma. From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Tue May 5 14:33:04 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Tue, 05 May 98 08:33:04 -0600 Subject: Indo-Aryan im/e-migration (scholarly debate) Message-ID: <161227038178.23782.3770400189590254750.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Read this in Dr. Linguistics assn. news (Univ. of Kerala) from March 1998. N. Ganesan ******************************************************* Vishvanath Khaire, Pune writes: "The horse was not native in the American continent. The first horses were taken there by Columbus on his second voyage in the last decade of the 15th century. The American Indians who naturally did not have a word for horse in their languages, coined a new term for it, meaning 'the great dog'. The similarity of gait and speed of the two obviously influenzed their choice of name for the new animal. In due course, the plains Indians used for horses, not only for riding, but also for dragging their household effects and scantlings, works which their dogs had been doing for ages. The semantic similarity between 'horse' and 'dog' can be observed in our Indian languages also. Ta. kutirai, Ka. kudare 'horse' are obviously related to kuti 'to jump, leap, frolic, escape from', Marathi kutre (which is almost same as Ta. kutirai) means 'dog'. Te. guRRamu, Nk. ghurram 'horse', again similar with Marathi ghoDama (rural form), ghoDa 'horse'. Various other languages have cognate words, for which, Turner notes: non-aryan, prob. drav. Sanskrit azva and vedic hari mean 'horse'. The semantics of both are worth considering in relation to the following: Ta. acai 'to move, stir, go away), acaivu 'shaking, moving about, swing'; Ka. asavasa, 'haste'. Ta. pari 'run, escape; n. motion, a horse'; Tu. hariyuni 'to run'" From mittals at MAGELLAN.UMONTREAL.CA Tue May 5 12:52:36 1998 From: mittals at MAGELLAN.UMONTREAL.CA (Mittal Sushil) Date: Tue, 05 May 98 08:52:36 -0400 Subject: TOC: Volume 2, Number 1, 1998; Volume 1, 1997: IJHS Message-ID: <161227038174.23782.13960505590351171107.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> International Journal of Hindu Studies ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Volume 2, Number 1, 1998 (will be available in about 5 weeks) ARTICLES: The Indo-European prehistory of yoga ~ 1-20 N. J. Allen, University of Oxford At home in the world: The lives of Sitadevi ~ 21-42 Rebecca J. Manring, Indiana University Vivekananda and Ramakrsna face to face: An essay on the alterity of a saint ~ 43-66 Carl Olson, Allegheny College Early Advaita and Madhyamaka Buddhism: The case of the Gaudapadiyakarika ~ 67-83 Richard King, University of Stirling Ajatasattu and the future of psychoanalytic anthropology Part III: Culture, imagination, and the wish ~ 85-106 Dan W. Forsyth, University of Southern Colorada RESEARCH REPORT: Matrimonials: A variation of arranged marriages ~ 107-115 Rajagopal Ryali, Auburn University Montgomery BOOK REVIEWS (30) ~ 117-154 ========================================================================= CONTENTS Volume 1 (1997) ~ 656 pages April issue ----------- ARTICLES: The center and circumference of silence: Yoga, poststructuralism, and the rhetoric of paradox ~ 3-18 George Kalamaras, Indiana Univeristy-Purdue University Imagining Ayodhya: Utopia and its shadows in a Hindu landscape ~ 19-54 Philip Lutgendorf, University of Iowa The power of space in a traditional Hindu city ~ 55-71 Robert I. Levy, University of California San Diego Mountains of wisdom: On the interface between Siddha and Vidyadhara cults and the Siddha orders in Medieval India ~ 73-95 David Gordon White, University of California, Santa Barbara Temple rites and temple servants: Religion's role in the survival of Kerala's Kutiyattam drama tradition ~ 97-115 Bruce M. Sullivan, Northern Arizona University Bengali religious nationalism and communalism ~ 117-39 Peter Heehs, Aurobindo Ashram Ajatasattu and the future of psychoanalytic anthropology Part I of III: The promise of a culture ~ 141-64 Dan W. Forsyth, University of Southern Colorado Advaita Vedanta and typologies of multiplicity and unity: An interpretation of nondual knowledge ~ 165-88 Joseph Milne, University of Kent BOOK REVIEWS (16) ~ 189-220 August issue ------------ ARTICLES: When Rahu devours the moon: The myth of the birth of Krsna Caitanya ~ 221-64 Tony K. Stewart, North Carolina State University The yogi and the Goddess ~ 265-87 Nicholas F. Gier, University of Idaho Jaina ideology and early Mughal trade with Europeans ~ 288-313 Ellison Banks Findly, Trinity College Ajatasattu and the future of psychoanalytic anthropology Part II of III: The imperative of the wish ~ 314-36 Dan W. Forsyth, University of Southern Colorado What's a God? The quest for the right understanding of devata in Brahmanical ritual theory (mimamsa) ~ 337-85 Francis X. Clooney, Boston College Radhakrishnan as advocate of the class/caste system as a universal religio-social system ~ 386-400 Robert N. Minor, University of Kansas Scandals, cover-ups, and other imagined occurences in the life of Ramakrsna: An examination of Jeffrey Kripal's _Kali's child_ ~ 401-20 Svami Atmajnanananda [birthname, Stuart Elkman], Ramakrsna Order BOOK REVIEWS (9) ~ 421-40 December issue -------------- A Book Symposium of Robert I. Levy's _Mesocosm: Hinduism and the organization of a traditional Newar city in Nepal_ Goddesses dancing in the city: Hinduism in an urban incarnation A review article ~ 441-84 Steven M. Parish, University of California, San Diego Sacred Space and the city: Greece and Bhaktapur ~ 485-99 Michael H. Jameson, Stanford University Macrocosm, mesocosm, and microcosm: The persistent nature of 'Hindu' beliefs and symbolical forms ~ 501-39 Michael Witzel, Harvard University Does symbolism 'construct an urban mesocosm'? Robert Levy's _Mesocosm_ and the question of value consensus in Bhaktapur ~ 541-64 David N. Gellner, Brunel University Kingship and 'contra-priests' ~ 565-80 Declan Quigley, Queen's University of Belfast Afterthoughts ~ 581-95 Robert I. Levy, University of California San Diego BOOK REVIEWS (34) ~ 597-644 =========================================================================== From bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Tue May 5 03:53:37 1998 From: bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (Bh. Krishnamurti) Date: Tue, 05 May 98 08:53:37 +0500 Subject: Indo-Aryan im/e-migration (scholarly debate) Message-ID: <161227038162.23782.13720661501317956467.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 09:35 04/05/98 -800, you wrote: >> From: "Jan E.M. Houben" > >> [sorry for the previous, incomplete message] >> >> In March, taking up a suggestion by George Thompson that we should try to make >> a discussion on "Indo-Aryan im-e-migration" more "scholarly" (and hence more >> fruitful), I tried to collect some basic relevant literature on the issue and >> proposed to look for some basic arguments. As an example I referred to the >> 'horse-argument' as formulated by Parpola, and asked whether any >> alternative/additional arguments were known which could serve as basic topics >> to be discussed in a future, more scholarly discussion on the subject. A lively >> discussion on the horse-argument followed immediately, but no-one came with an >> alternative or additional argument for Indo-Aryan im/e-migration. So, besides >> the complex and much-disputed linguistic evidence, only the horse argument (in >> my view still valid, though open to deconstruction according to others) serves >> to link speakers of Indo-Aryan in India with those in central Asia/Europe? >> > >You're greatly overstating your case, since the idea that horses could >enter India through trade and such is quite possible. Also there is >nothing in particular that connects the earliest IE speakers with >horses. Archaeological evidence suggests domesticated horses >originated in Central Asia, but it does not suggest the language of >the people who did the domesticating. We also have no idea of what >language was spoken by the people who introduced horses to India, >if they were indeed introduced. The ancient Indian horse is genetically >different than the Central Asian horse. > >However, the most important point is that the movement of horses or >any other domesticated animal does not imply the migration of people. >There are numerous examples of this in history. In fact, it happens >all the time today with new breeds of domesticated animals imported >from one country to the next. > >Regards, >Paul Kekai Manansala Apparently the present generation of Indologists are not familiar with the arguments of Jules Bloch why OIA has ghoTa(ka) 'horse' > Hi. ghoDaa, etc., which has no IE-etymology (unlike Skt. as'va-). He derives ghoTa- (with guNa) from a root *ghuT- which he derives from Pre-Drav. *ghutr-. He then derives Ta.kutirai, Ma.kutira, Ka. kudire and Te. guR(R)amu, Konda guRam 'horse' from the root *ghutr- saying that pre-Dravidian had not only voicing contrast but also aspirates! ( I have given references to Jules Bloch's article in my TVB).The Dravidian words are quite ancient and were not borrowed from anyother known langauge. He suggested that Telugu preserved the PDr. voiced stop while the South Drav languages had devoiced g- to k-. He also derived Skt. gaard-abha- 'donkey' and Ta. kaZutai, Ka. katte, Te. gaaDida from *gard- again Te. preserving PDr. voiced stop. Apart from the linguistic ingenuity of these etymologies, which not many scholars (maybe nobody) questioned then, at the semantic and cultural level,this hypothesis presupposes that 'the horse' could be native to pre-Aryan India! Of course, donkeys do not pose a problem; they are cultural universals! Bh.K. end Bh. Krishnamurti H.No. 12-13-1233, "Bhaarati" Street No.9, Tarnaka Hyderabad 500 017, A.P. India Telephone (R)(40)701 9665 E-mail: From mittals at MAGELLAN.UMONTREAL.CA Tue May 5 13:14:12 1998 From: mittals at MAGELLAN.UMONTREAL.CA (Mittal Sushil) Date: Tue, 05 May 98 09:14:12 -0400 Subject: CFP: _International Journal of Hindu Studies_ Message-ID: <161227038176.23782.17174321165106490885.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> International Journal of Hindu Studies ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The aim of the _International Journal of Hindu Studies_ is to examine Hinduism centrally and in a special way. It wishes to consider Hinduism analytically and comparatively as a "form of life" as clarified by its contrasts and similarities to other historical and present day forms. This is to say that we will be less concerned with the intrinsic forms of Hinduism and its history, as illuminated by philological and descriptive studies. Rather, our focus will be, on the one hand, on Hinduism's adaptations to a wide range of historical circumstances and ecological, economic, and political possibilities and, on the other, on the Hindu forms that work "on the ground" in particular places and times to generate special kinds of social, cultural, and psychological order and problems. We consider this to be necessarily a comparative exploration and welcome (and need) contributions from scholars in other fields who wish to bring their own studies of religion, world views, theories of modernity and pre-modernity, social organization and social control, and so on, into dialogue with Hindu studies. We equally encourage South Asia scholars to explore such perspectives in their own work. We wish to explore whether it may be productive to ask--in addition to the descriptive "_What_ is Hinduism?"--the theoretical question (or questions, for we expect there is a large and productive set of answers) "_Why_ is Hinduism the way it is?" The Journal, therefore, invites submissions of a comparative or theoretical nature in all fields of the social sciences and humanities in the hope of furthering a dialogue that centers on one of the great human creations, Hinduism, which differs in so many respects from the religions and societies that have informed much of classical Western thought. Articles falling within the broad and deliberately somewhat vague boundaries we envisage will be chosen on the basis of the quality, importance and general interest of the research, the force of theoretical argument, and felicity of expression. Three copies of the paper should be submitted. All submissions will be peer reviewed. Completed manuscripts, inquiries about material for possible publication, and correspondence to the editor should be sent to the Journal's editorial office: Sushil Mittal, Editor, _International Journal of Hindu Studies_, International Institute of India Studies, 1270 St-Jean, St-Hyacinthe, Quebec, Canada J2S 8M2. Tel (514) 771-0213, Fax (514) 771-2776, Email . Books for review and correspondence concerning reviews should be sent to: Carl Olson, Review Editor, _International Journal of Hindu Studies_, Department of Religious Studies, Allegheny College, Meadville, Pennsylvania 16335-3902, USA. Tel (814) 332-3313, Fax (814) 333-8180, Email _International Journal of Hindu Studies_ (ISSN 1022-4556) is published three times a year in April, August, and December. Annual subscription rates: Institutional: $150 (North America); $156 (Rest of world). Individual: $60 (North America); $66 (Rest of world). Students: $30 (North America); $36 (Rest of world). Orders from outside Canada must be paid in US dollars. Prices include postage. To order a subscription, to receive advertising information, or to reserve ad space in the Journal, contact World Heritage Press, Journals Department, 1270 St-Jean, St-Hyacinthe, Quebec, Canada J2S 8M2. Tel (514) 771-0213, Fax (514) 771-2776. ========================================================================= Full details on _International Journal of Hindu Studies_ can be found on the Journal Homepage at: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/gthursby/ijhs/ ========================================================================= From sns at IX.NETCOM.COM Tue May 5 15:38:40 1998 From: sns at IX.NETCOM.COM (Sn. Subrahmanya) Date: Tue, 05 May 98 10:38:40 -0500 Subject: Indo-Aryan im/e-migration (scholarly debate) Message-ID: <161227038183.23782.15365832661283550678.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The equation of sanskrit z to kentum k is not only between Satem and Kentum but can easily be observed between sanskrit and dravidian languages. This has been conveniently ignored so far. for eg: "kutirai" can be from "azvatara" >Sanskrit azva and vedic hari mean 'horse'. ...In addition to Tamil pari Also, I would like to point out that tiger in kannada is "huli" and the root "hul" in sanskrit refers "to cover or conceal", obviously the tigers hunting techniques has been taken into consideration. Subrahmanya Houston, TX From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Tue May 5 17:00:01 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Tue, 05 May 98 11:00:01 -0600 Subject: Koel (and Hobson-Jobson) Message-ID: <161227038186.23782.10687529743072268938.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Once, Prof. Aklujkar wrote that for World-Wide Web, the Sanskrit term can be: viSva-vyApI-vitAnam (VVV). In Tamil, I suggest now: valaya-vaLai-valai (VVV) valaya-vaLai-valai is from valayam vaLaikkum valaiyam. valayam = ring, lake, sea, *world* vaLaikkum = encompassing, encircling valaiyam (or valai) = net, web. Note that 'vaLai valai' is a vin2ait tokai; the verb 'vaLai' does not indicate tense. I don't know what it is called in sanskrit or english. Once Prof. BhK said he prefers w to v for tamil 'v'. Then, valaya-vaLai valai (VVV) becomes WWW. Perfect Match. The cuckoo even on WWW/VVV senses that it is vasantam/iLavEn2il. When we simplify to essentials, India was born when Sanskrit kOkilam and Tamil kuyil met each other. nOtaka irum kuyil aalum arO! - kalittokai (an ancient tamil sangam text). Regards, N. Ganesan From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Tue May 5 11:42:14 1998 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Tue, 05 May 98 12:42:14 +0100 Subject: Oriya-TeX (fwd) Message-ID: <161227038169.23782.6862248706840959935.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 5 May 1998 13:24:27 +0200 From: Jeroen Hellingman To: ucgadkw at ucl.ac.uk Subject: Oriya-TeX Hi Dominik, I've made Oriya TeX available in the state it is now (Metafont + Macros) on Malayalam will soon follow Jeroen From jlc at CCR.JUSSIEU.FR Tue May 5 14:54:25 1998 From: jlc at CCR.JUSSIEU.FR (Jean-Luc CHEVILLARD) Date: Tue, 05 May 98 15:54:25 +0100 Subject: Koel (and Hobson-Jobson) In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.32.19980505121329.006bf24c@hd1.vsnl.net.in> Message-ID: <161227038180.23782.3311465203237844057.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> You're right! There is a very useful glossary, Hobson-Jobson (Henry Yule & A.C. Burnell) which does not seem to rest on everybody's shelf (as it should :-) On page 490 (Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1994 edition) it gives a 1526 quotation that reads as: c.1526. -- ``Another is the *Koel*, which in length may be equal to the crow, but is much thinner. It has a kind of song, and is the nightingale of Hindustan. It is respected by the natives of Hindustan as much as the nightingale is by us. It inhabits gardens where the trees are close planted.'' -- _Baber_, p.323 Best regards -- Jean-Luc CHEVILLARD (Paris) > >There can be a much more simple way for the occurance of word "Koel". >The word in Baber's original. > >regards, > >sarma. > From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Tue May 5 22:15:51 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Tue, 05 May 98 16:15:51 -0600 Subject: Beluur and Belgaum Message-ID: <161227038194.23782.13117109158663447884.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In spoken tamil, agriculture is 've.l.lAmai'. Only in literature, we see 'vE.lANmai'. In spoken tamil, it is 've.l.lA.lar'; In literature, they are 'vE.lA.lar'. M. Arokiaswami, The Kongu country, being the history of the modern districts of Coimbatore and Salem from the earliest time to the coming of the British, Univ. of Madras, 1956 says the river name 've.l.lA.ru' and 've.l.lA.lar' are connected. I think he has a whole chapter on this. It seems ve.l and vE.l are connected from the above. Regards, N. Ganesan From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Tue May 5 12:13:29 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Tue, 05 May 98 17:13:29 +0500 Subject: Telugu history Message-ID: <161227038171.23782.2932763474341721623.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 01:37 AM 5/5/98 EDT, you wrote: >In a message dated 98-05-03 16:26:59 EDT, vidynath at MATH.OHIO-STATE.EDU writes: > ><< I disagree with what N. Ganesan said, but the correctness or > acceptability of what he said cannot be determined by his CV, > or by the length of his publication list or some kind of > citation count, but by the particular idea itself. > > This particular point has always been what impressed me most about > modern Western shcolarship, and which I always felt to be welcome > contrast to the attitude seen in the legends of Ashtavakra, Anglimala > etc. But what I have seen posted in the last few months makes me wonder > if Indologists still believe that ideas have to be judged by themselves, > with no reference to who put it forth. >> > >I agree with this whole-heartedly. I wish everyone just responds to the ideas >posted instead of imputing motives to the person posting it. I have always >held that useful information can often come from unlikely sources. Let me give >an example. > >A few months back, in a posting entitled "Tamil words in English" Dr. Ganesan, >indicated that English "koel" is derived from Tamil "kuyil' according to a >source on the internet. Dr. Sarma responded saying that "the word koel in >english is more likely to be derived from telugu kOyila or hindi koyel rather >than kuyil of tamil from the affinity sounds." In a later posting, Dr. Ganesan >responded, "According to the Oxford dictionary, the word was first used by >Erskine in 1826. There is a Erskine hospital in Madurai. It could have come >from tamil too." The statements of both Dr. Ganesan and Dr. Sarma seemed >reasonable to me. Considering the different sounds found in the words in the >three languages, one would naturally assign Hindi to be the more likely source >for English "koel". But the possibility of Erskine having lived in the Tamil >region seemed to encourage looking at this further. > >On the face of it, among the three languages, the Hindi form quoted by Dr. >Sarma seemed the closest with even the second vowel matching the English form. >On the other hand, according to the Oxford dictionary, the word koel first >occurs in 1826 in Erskine's translation of Baber's Mem. 323 note, "The >koel....has a kind of song, and is the nightingale of HindustAn." The >dictionary lists the Hindi word which was the possible source as "ko'il". >When this is considered, the significant difference between the Tamil word and >the Hindi word 2 is really the radical vowel, "u" in Tamil vs. "o" in Hindi. >We seemed to have the good old problem of root vowel "u/o" alternation working >here. > >Everybody knows that when the English borrowed Indian words into English, the >source was likely to be the spoken form and not the literary form. One can see >that in this process of borrowing, three word forms are at issue: the word as >spoken by the native speaker, the word as heard by the Englishman, and the >word form he transliterated it into. All three need not be identical. > >Is there any possibility, then, that what in literary Tamil is "u" is >pronounced by Tamils in some cases in such a way that it finally becomes "o" >in English. (We should also have the following/derivative vowel to be "i".) In >other words, is it possible for a radical "u" to become "o" when followed by a >derivative vowel 'i" in actual spoken Tamil? A cursory examination of data >reveals English Tuticorin < Tamil tUttukkuTi, a port city in Tamilnadu. The >comparison is between the latter parts of the words, i.e., corin and kuTi. >Here we find Ta. "u" > Eng. "o" when the following vowel is "i". However, >since this word is a compound, I wanted to look at cases where "u" was really >in the root. > >Prior to this, I had accepted as given the basic premise of Burrow- >Krishnamurti model of "u/o" alternation in Dravidian. According to this, in a >word when the second vowel is "i" or "u" or non-existent, and if the original >root vowel was "u", "u" should not change to "o". Based on the case of >Tuticorin, I looked at words with root vowel "i/u" and followed by "zero/i/u" >as the second vowel. What I discovered was very interesting. I found a number >of cases where "u" > "o" even when the second vowel is "i" or "u" or non- >existent. > >Consider the examples given below. In each one of the following cases, the >vowel change "u"> "o" occurs, independent of the presence of a second vowel >"a". > >DEDR 4281 Ta. puy, poy - to be pulled out >DED 2211 Ta. curi, cori (from Tamil Lexicon) - to whirl >DEDR 3728 Ta. nuRukku, noRukku - to crush >DEDR 3698 Ta. nuGku, noGku - tender palmyra fruit >DED 1368 Ta. kuccu, koccu - tassel > >( I do not have ready access to DEDR. I have just a few pages from DEDR. So >pardon my mixing up DED and DEDR references.) I have just shown a few examples >of this "u">"o". Similar examples can be given for words with radical "i" also >from Tamil Lexicon/DEDR. Considering the fact that the Tamil Lexicon favors >literary usage, if one were to take a survey of all colloquial forms, I am >sure we will find more examples. For instance, the form Ta. meti "to tread >on" occurs in Tamil inscriptions. It is not found in the Tamil Lexicon or DED. > >One should note that based on Burrow-Krishnamurti approach to "i/e"-"u/o" >alternation, P. S. Subrahmanyam (Dravidian Comparative Phonology, 1983, >p.203) says, "The following criteria will enable one to discover the original >Proto-Dravidian vowel: (i) related word in which the root contains a short >vowel and is followed by either no derivative element or one that begins with >-i or -u; and (ii) a related word in which the root contains a long vowel or a >double consonant (for this purpose it is immaterial whether or not such a root >is followed by a derivative element beginning with a vowel (including a) >because such a derivative element can have no influence on this type of >root.)". > >Based on the evidence presented above, these fundamental assumptions in >Burrow-Krishnamurti model of Dravidian "i/e"-"u/o" alternation seem to be >questionable. > >Coming back to English "koel", we can say that depending on the accuracy of >word forms we work with, the word could have come from Hindi, Tamil or Telugu. >Apparently, there was a Governor Erskine in Madras. I do not know if this >Erskine was the same one who translated Babers work. If we know more about >the places in India the author, Erskine, spent his time, we can say which >language would more *probably* have been the source for English "koel". May be >people with access to India Office Library can get the information about this >person. > >I should note here that I embarked on this investigation because Dr. Ganesan >posted his original note and Dr. Sarma responded to it with a reasonable >argument against it. Considering the fact that a satisfactory interpretation >of this "i/e"-"u/o" alternation was deemed to be an original contribution of >"Telugu Verbal Bases" by Dr. Krishnamurti himself, I think the original >posting by Dr. Ganesan has been very useful. If intellectual inquiry is >stifled because of the presence or absence of publications, we will all be >losers. > >Regards > >S. Palaniappan > > There can be a much more simple way for the occurance of word "Koel". The word in Baber's original. regards, sarma. From barathi at PC.JARING.MY Tue May 5 10:40:58 1998 From: barathi at PC.JARING.MY (jayabarathi) Date: Tue, 05 May 98 18:40:58 +0800 Subject: sannyasins, pollution, death. Message-ID: <161227038166.23782.15411464798578570480.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 02:08 PM 5/4/98 PDT, you wrote: >Allen W Thrasher wrote: > >>Vidyasankar said: > > >Yes, indeed. Usually, a ritual SrAddha is held before a person becomes a >sannyAsin, but the nearest male relative does have a role in the rituals >of internment of the sannyAsin's body. As for the death itself not >creating any impurity, the oldest textual source for this is the >bRhadAraNyaka passage, where the prANas of the desire-less man are said >not to depart. That is part of the reason why cremation is not done. > >Vidyasankar > There was also a peculiar practice in Tamilnadu. In some of the cases of Sannyasis and Siddhas, after the bodily physiological activities cease, a coconut was broken on the top of the head. This was called , the "kapAla mOksha" among the Tamils. This was done in order to release the soul from the body. After that the remains were buried. Regards Jayabarathi >______________________________________________________ >Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com > > From jgardner at BLUE.WEEG.UIOWA.EDU Wed May 6 02:03:42 1998 From: jgardner at BLUE.WEEG.UIOWA.EDU (JR Gardner) Date: Tue, 05 May 98 21:03:42 -0500 Subject: 11th Hour Mayhem In-Reply-To: <4DCC63A72F3@its-sci1.cc.monash.edu.au> Message-ID: <161227038204.23782.12654638644924228532.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Our library is missing Mayrhofer's recent __Etymologisches Worterbuch des Altindoarischen__(1992/6), Band I, page 164 re. aatma'n: how doe sthis line read (my fax is blurred rather worrisomely and final deposit of my dissertation is tommorrow-- BTW, yes, I passed, and thanks to everyone for their help . . . copies forthcoming . . .): "stehen 'schwache' von tmaan" or "stehen 'schwache' von tma'n" Needless to say, a VERY important distinction! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ John Robert Gardner, Ph.D. Obermann Center School of Religion for Advanced Studies University of Iowa University of Iowa 319-335-2164 319-335-4034 http://vedavid.org www.uiowa.edu/~obermann/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Now, at some point you may encounter the Devil's Bargain. Any old soul is worth saving, at least to a priest, but not every soul is worth buying. So consider the offer a compliment." --William S. Burroughs "Words of Advice for Young People" From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Tue May 5 16:31:59 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Tue, 05 May 98 21:31:59 +0500 Subject: Indo-Aryan im/e-migration (scholarly debate) Message-ID: <161227038188.23782.16609150718576406872.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 10:38 AM 5/5/98 -0500, you wrote: >The equation of sanskrit z to kentum k is not only between Satem and Kentum >but can easily be observed between sanskrit and dravidian languages. >This has been conveniently ignored so far. > >for eg: "kutirai" can be from "azvatara" > >>Sanskrit azva and vedic hari mean 'horse'. >...In addition to Tamil pari > >Also, I would like to point out that tiger in kannada is "huli" and >the root "hul" in sanskrit refers "to cover or conceal", obviously >the tigers hunting techniques has been taken into consideration. > >Subrahmanya >Houston, TX > > Does this not overlook the fact that actually huli = puli regards, sarma. From mittals at MAGELLAN.UMONTREAL.CA Wed May 6 01:36:29 1998 From: mittals at MAGELLAN.UMONTREAL.CA (Mittal Sushil) Date: Tue, 05 May 98 21:36:29 -0400 Subject: TOC: Volume 2, Number 1, 1998; Volume 1, 1997: IJHS In-Reply-To: <4DCC63A72F3@its-sci1.cc.monash.edu.au> Message-ID: <161227038200.23782.7645699216094814762.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Jayant, Namaskara! Your article will appear in the August issue. Galley proofs will be sent to you in the very near future. Regards, Sushil On Wed, 6 May 1998, BAPAT JB wrote: > Sushil > Could you let me know which issue my Gurav article would be in? > Thanks > Jayant > ____________________________________________________________________ > Dr J.B. Bapat Phone (03)9054510 > Chemistry Department Fax (03)9054597 > Monash University e-mail:jayant.b.bapat at sci.monash.edu.au > Clayton, Victoria > Australia > ____________________________________________________________________ > From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Wed May 6 04:20:52 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Tue, 05 May 98 22:20:52 -0600 Subject: Beluur and Belgaum Message-ID: <161227038207.23782.17988023549618946942.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ve.l and vE.l are the same. >?From DED, there was a posting in Indology: DEDR 5507 lists Ta. veLLALan2, vELALan2, veLLAzan2 man of the VELaLa caste; fem. veLLALacci, veLLAzacci; veLLANmai veLLAmai cultivation; vELANmai agriculture, husbandry.....Te. velama name of a caste, man of this caste; (DCV) agriculture; (Inscr.) vElANDu a cultivator; affix to the names of cultivator caste in Tamilnad. Cf. 5545 Ta. vEL. ************************ Sri. Krishna raised a query. Can drvidian & sanskrit mix in place names? They do: devanuur, saGkaran kOvil, srikAzi, sritaLi, srikOyil, sapta maGkai, uttarakOsa maGkai, ... BUT in be.LgAm, the order is different. I found Tamil Nadu examples for this order too. koRRamangalam, pun2n2aivanam, paTTiisvaram, miinaakshi, viizi mayaanam, paaccil aacciraamam, kuTantaik kArONam (< kAyarohana), iTait taanam (< sthaana), tiruneyt tAnam (< sthAna) So, can beL(cognate with Ta. ve.l, vE.l) join with 'gAma' (< grAma) to produce be.lgAm? Regards, N. Ganesan From Jayant.Bapat at SCI.MONASH.EDU.AU Tue May 5 22:35:49 1998 From: Jayant.Bapat at SCI.MONASH.EDU.AU (BAPAT JB) Date: Wed, 06 May 98 08:35:49 +1000 Subject: TOC: Volume 2, Number 1, 1998; Volume 1, 1997: IJHS Message-ID: <161227038198.23782.14471524361123838546.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Sushil Could you let me know which issue my Gurav article would be in? Thanks Jayant ____________________________________________________________________ Dr J.B. Bapat Phone (03)9054510 Chemistry Department Fax (03)9054597 Monash University e-mail:jayant.b.bapat at sci.monash.edu.au Clayton, Victoria Australia ____________________________________________________________________ From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Wed May 6 14:47:28 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Wed, 06 May 98 08:47:28 -0600 Subject: Indian Place Names Website Message-ID: <161227038215.23782.15011469983460308989.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> It will be wonderful to have a website with all the place names of every Indian state. Indian state governments have published their village/town/city names. Those publications are hard to get, have very less circulation, and poorly printed on ink-smearing, deep-brown, brittle papers. Even if one goes and seeks those books, the bureaucrats are uasually not in a mood to sell or give info. Once the website is established and linked to for example, Indology, Inst. of Indology & Tamil Studies (Koeln), RISA-L, Vyakarana-l, ... it will be easier for Dravidian/Munda specialists acan to write papers on the etymology of site names; Dravidian/Munda speakers with high university degrees can help the dravidian/munda academics with good pointers. Regards, N. Ganesan From rscohen at POPMAIL.UCSD.EDU Wed May 6 16:03:12 1998 From: rscohen at POPMAIL.UCSD.EDU (Richard Cohen) Date: Wed, 06 May 98 09:03:12 -0700 Subject: Zraadha in Nepal Message-ID: <161227038229.23782.16333950435386497333.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I require some information about the practices and beliefs of the Kathmandhu valley's Sakyas. Either direct answers or references for further research would be most appreciated. 1) Though Buddhist, do the Sakyas perform zraadha ceremonies in honor of the dead akin to those performed by the valley's Hindu population? 2) Does Sakyamuni receive mention in the course of the Sakyas' funerary rites, in his capacity as a member of the clan rather than as a buddha? In other words, is he treated as an ancestor, or even clan-deity? 3) Does Dipankara have any place in the Sakyas' funerary rites? In other words, is he treated as an ancestor, or even clan-deity? 4) How is inhertance distributed upon the death of a father? How do the Sakyas' inheritance practices compare with those of other groups in the valley? Thanks in advance, Richard Cohen University of California, San Diego From pclaus at HAYWIRE.CSUHAYWARD.EDU Wed May 6 16:07:17 1998 From: pclaus at HAYWIRE.CSUHAYWARD.EDU (Peter J. Claus) Date: Wed, 06 May 98 09:07:17 -0700 Subject: Indian Place Names Website In-Reply-To: <01IWPGZU2UDE003VP6@cl.uh.edu> Message-ID: <161227038225.23782.9363049189121742709.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The Indian village/district/state census material is availbable on disk (and for all I know on a website). It would be a rather easy job to extract the names from the statistical data. I have done so for my own use in the case of certain districts of Karnataka and AP. It took me a couple of days (partly to write a program, partly to figure out data set what I wanted) Peter Claus On Wed, 6 May 1998, N. Ganesan wrote: > It will be wonderful to have a website with > all the place names of every Indian state. > > Indian state governments have published their > village/town/city names. Those publications are hard to get, > have very less circulation, and poorly printed on ink-smearing, > deep-brown, brittle papers. Even if one goes and seeks those books, > the bureaucrats are uasually not in a mood to sell or give info. > > Once the website is established and linked to > for example, Indology, Inst. of Indology & Tamil Studies (Koeln), > RISA-L, Vyakarana-l, ... it will be easier for > Dravidian/Munda specialists acan to write papers on > the etymology of site names; Dravidian/Munda speakers with > high university degrees can help the dravidian/munda academics > with good pointers. > > Regards, > N. Ganesan > From sns at IX.NETCOM.COM Wed May 6 14:19:24 1998 From: sns at IX.NETCOM.COM (Sn. Subrahmanya) Date: Wed, 06 May 98 09:19:24 -0500 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038219.23782.13871335099823271549.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The Hun Period - Denis Sinor from the Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, 1990, pg203 "Information on the horse, faithful and indispensable companion of the Hun warrior, is also lopsided. Written sources contain many references to the ugly but sturdy Hun horses and the veterinary surgeon Vegatius Renatus described them in some detail. On the basis of contemporary descriptions one may safely conclude that the typical Hun horse was from a breed of the Mongolian pony. There is a strange contrast between the vivid descriptions given by the authors and the absence of any information provided by burials. To quote S.Bokonyi, a foremost authority on the subject, "We know very little of the Hun's horses. It is interesting that not a single usable horse bone has been found in the territory of the whole empire of the Huns". There is yet no answer to the question of what happened to the mortal remains of these fearful conqurors and their strange mounts. Hun domination was short lived and if the dead were cremated and and the horse bodies not put into graves, the likelihood of finding their bones is necessarily limited." Bokonyi is quoted from his "History of Domestic Mammals in Central and Eastern Europe" Subrahmanya Houston, TX From steiner at MAILER.UNI-MARBURG.DE Wed May 6 08:00:51 1998 From: steiner at MAILER.UNI-MARBURG.DE (Roland Steiner) Date: Wed, 06 May 98 10:00:51 +0200 Subject: 11th Hour Mayhem In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038208.23782.6652900171524378774.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The line runs: "stehen 'schwache' von tma'n-". From pclaus at HAYWIRE.CSUHAYWARD.EDU Wed May 6 18:06:00 1998 From: pclaus at HAYWIRE.CSUHAYWARD.EDU (Peter J. Claus) Date: Wed, 06 May 98 11:06:00 -0700 Subject: Koel (and Hobson-Jobson) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038239.23782.4922301863314228157.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> dub-dub-dub or: shortened to dub-dot Peter On Wed, 6 May 1998, Dominik Wujastyk wrote: > Oh dear, I'm going to digress: > > There is an on-going debate in some circles on how to pronounce "WWW". My > favourite, proposed by a New Scientist reader, is "wibble, wibble, > wibble". :-) > > All the best, > Dominik > From imj at U.WASHINGTON.EDU Wed May 6 18:11:13 1998 From: imj at U.WASHINGTON.EDU (South Asia Section) Date: Wed, 06 May 98 11:11:13 -0700 Subject: Indian Place Names Website In-Reply-To: <01IWPGZU2UDE003VP6@cl.uh.edu> Message-ID: <161227038245.23782.2849870261351914403.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Wed, 6 May 1998, N. Ganesan wrote: > It will be wonderful to have a website with > all the place names of every Indian state. > In the meantime why not use the Thesaurus of Geographic Names presented by the Getty Information Institute. http://www.ahip.getty.edu/tgn_browser/ BTW India is Bharat on this site. South Asia Section Irene Joshi, M.L.S. South Asia Librarian University of Washington Libraries Box 352900 Seattle, Washington, 98195-2900 U.S.A. http://weber.u.washington.edu/~souasia/ From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Wed May 6 19:35:18 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Wed, 06 May 98 11:35:18 -0800 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038242.23782.13003467259698226361.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Georg von Simson . If we assume that the seals to a certain > degree reflect religious concepts, the absence of the horse is highly > significant, especially if we compare it with the high position of the > horse in other Indo-European cultures. Could you explain this high position of the horse in other Indo-European cultures. Preferably not Scythian ones as there has always been some argument over whether the Scythians were truly IE. What part did the horse play in Greek or Persian culture? >Therefore - even if some horse-bones > should be found in the Indus culture - the horse does not seem to have > played any prominent role in the minds of its people. This makes a very > strong contrast to Vedic culture as reflected in the Rgveda. But all we know about the Vedic culture comes from translations of the Rgveda. We don't have similar translations of the Indus texts. There are very fewt examples of horse iconography in the period of a few centuries after the fall of the IVC. Horses turn up in the early Sunga works, but certainly nothing on the scale of Scythian culture. But most importantly there is nothing even slightly suggestive of a nomadic horse culture at any archaeological sites. No signs of Kurgan or related cultures. The only suggestions we have is that horses were introduced into India gradually. And that they played a minimal role in the material culture. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From noel at FREENET.CARLETON.CA Wed May 6 17:02:57 1998 From: noel at FREENET.CARLETON.CA (Noel Evans) Date: Wed, 06 May 98 13:02:57 -0400 Subject: Koel (and Hobson-Jobson) Message-ID: <161227038232.23782.6754300928703383773.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >There is an on-going debate in some circles on how to pronounce "WWW". My >favourite, proposed by a New Scientist reader, is "wibble, wibble, >wibble". :-) > >All the best, >Dominik May I propose walla walla walla? I find it easier to say... -- regards n o e l @freenet.carleton.ca From mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM Wed May 6 21:23:30 1998 From: mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM (S Krishna) Date: Wed, 06 May 98 14:23:30 -0700 Subject: Koel (and Hobson-Jobson) Message-ID: <161227038254.23782.12040064153796049437.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dominik uvAca: > >At 16:58 06.05.98 +0100, you wrote: >>Oh dear, I'm going to digress: >> >>There is an on-going debate in some circles on how to pronounce "WWW". My >>favourite, proposed by a New Scientist reader, is "wibble, wibble, >>wibble". :-) LarsOvAca: >May I suggest WOWW! > >Lars Martin Fosse > My suggestion for pronouncing WWW: since most Indians pronounce W as "Da-bul-you", why don't we just make it "Dabbulu Dabbulu Dabbulu", a very meaningful construct since "Dabbulu" means money(Yeah! Money!) in Telugu.... REgards, Krishna ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From jhtatelman at FACSTAFF.WISC.EDU Wed May 6 14:42:12 1998 From: jhtatelman at FACSTAFF.WISC.EDU (Joel H. Tatelman) Date: Wed, 06 May 98 14:42:12 +0000 Subject: Zraadha in Nepal Message-ID: <161227038251.23782.3960232880469813421.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Regarding Richard Cohen's queries (below). I certainly can't answer any of them, but the following might be good places to seek the answers. David N. GELLNER. 1992. _Monk, Householder, and Tantric Priest: Newar Buddhism and its Hierarchy of Ritual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. idem. 1995. 'Saakyas and Vajraacaaryas: From Holy Order to Quasi-Ethnic Group'. In _Contested Hierarchies: A Collaborative Ethnology of Caste Among the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley_. Ed. David N. Gellner and Declan Quigley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 209-239. I require some information about the practices and beliefs of the Kathmandhu valley's Sakyas. Either direct answers or references for further research would be most appreciated. 1) Though Buddhist, do the Sakyas perform zraadha ceremonies in honor of the dead akin to those performed by the valley's Hindu population? 2) Does Sakyamuni receive mention in the course of the Sakyas' funerary rites, in his capacity as a member of the clan rather than as a buddha? In other words, is he treated as an ancestor, or even clan-deity? 3) Does Dipankara have any place in the Sakyas' funerary rites? In other words, is he treated as an ancestor, or even clan-deity? 4) How is inhertance distributed upon the death of a father? How do the Sakyas' inheritance practices compare with those of other groups in the valley? Dr. Joel Tatelman, Visiting Lecturer in Sanskrit, Department of South Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1250 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Drive, Madison, WI 53706 Tel.: (608) 276-0447 or 262-2749. Fax: (608) 265-3538 From saroja at UNIPUNE.ERNET.IN Wed May 6 22:16:19 1998 From: saroja at UNIPUNE.ERNET.IN (Saroja Bhate) Date: Wed, 06 May 98 15:16:19 -0700 Subject: computers and Indology Message-ID: <161227038212.23782.12574857223088127843.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear colleagues I have been asked to make a presentation on the use of computers for research in Indology in a multinational meet. I will be grateful to you all for whatever information on this subject.Your ideas and suggestions are also most welcome.Needless to say that I will be consulting the Indology website for initial information.Thanks in advance. Saroja Bhate From hueckst at CC.UMANITOBA.CA Wed May 6 21:41:12 1998 From: hueckst at CC.UMANITOBA.CA (RAH) Date: Wed, 06 May 98 16:41:12 -0500 Subject: WWW, was Koel (and Hobson-Jobson) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038260.23782.13004943756206903427.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> IMHO, the best understanding of WWW can be found in _Finnegans Wake_, particularly in the section, around page 71 or so, where a number of abusive names are listed for the "hero" HC Earwicker. One of them is "Woolworth's Worst". BTW, there's Sanskrit in FW, too. Bob Hueckstedt Robert A. Hueckstedt, Associate Professor of Indic Languages Asian Studies Centre, 328 Fletcher Argue, University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2N2 Canada http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/asian_studies phone 1 204 474-6427 fax 1 204 474-7601 From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Wed May 6 15:58:30 1998 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Wed, 06 May 98 16:58:30 +0100 Subject: Koel (and Hobson-Jobson) In-Reply-To: <01IWO7BO6GOY003H2B@cl.uh.edu> Message-ID: <161227038222.23782.18166858353735029194.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Oh dear, I'm going to digress: There is an on-going debate in some circles on how to pronounce "WWW". My favourite, proposed by a New Scientist reader, is "wibble, wibble, wibble". :-) All the best, Dominik From g.v.simson at EAST.UIO.NO Wed May 6 15:14:20 1998 From: g.v.simson at EAST.UIO.NO (Georg von Simson) Date: Wed, 06 May 98 17:14:20 +0200 Subject: Horses In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19980506141924.0094b4f8@ix.netcom.com> Message-ID: <161227038235.23782.7587760279250190928.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Sn. Subrahmanya wrote: >The Hun Period - Denis Sinor >from the Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, 1990, pg203 > >"Information on the horse, faithful and indispensable companion of >the Hun warrior, is also lopsided. Written sources contain many >references to the ugly but sturdy Hun horses and the veterinary >surgeon Vegatius Renatus described them in some detail. On the basis >of contemporary descriptions one may safely conclude that the typical >Hun horse was from a breed of the Mongolian pony. There is a strange >contrast between the vivid descriptions given by the authors and the >absence of any information provided by burials. To quote S.Bokonyi, >a foremost authority on the subject, "We know very little of the Hun's >horses. It is interesting that not a single usable horse bone has >been found in the territory of the whole empire of the Huns". >There is yet no answer to the question of what happened to the mortal >remains of these fearful conqurors and their strange mounts. Hun >domination was short lived and if the dead were cremated and and the >horse bodies not put into graves, the likelihood of finding their >bones is necessarily limited." > >Bokonyi is quoted from his "History of Domestic Mammals in Central and >Eastern Europe" > In our discussions about the Aryan-Invasion/Immigration-Theory a series of both linguistic and archaeological arguments have been brought forward. It seems to me that ideological arguments so far have been neglected. If you have a look at the vocabulary of the Rgveda, you will find that the horse plays a very prominent part in it, a fact that already would point to its ideological relevance even before you start reading the texts. Not only the word azva is used about 200 times (not to mention hari and other words for horse), there are also more than 30 derivatives from and compounds with azva! The Indus seals, on the other hand, often depict other animals, but - as far as I know - not the horse. If we assume that the seals to a certain degree reflect religious concepts, the absence of the horse is highly significant, especially if we compare it with the high position of the horse in other Indo-European cultures. Therefore - even if some horse-bones should be found in the Indus culture - the horse does not seem to have played any prominent role in the minds of its people. This makes a very strong contrast to Vedic culture as reflected in the Rgveda. For me the horse-argument still has much weight, in spite of the counterarguments that have been brought forward up to now. Georg v. Simson From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Thu May 7 03:29:19 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Wed, 06 May 98 21:29:19 -0600 Subject: Chola memorial temples Message-ID: <161227038266.23782.7021201804433021870.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The following are few words of the foremost authority on Chola temples. PallippaDai temples are built over Chola mortal remains. Regards, N. Ganesan **************************************************** S. R. Balsubrahmanyam, Early Chola Art, part I, Asia Publishing house, 1966 p.18- "There are also a number of memorial (sepulchral) tomb temples called paLLippaDai or samAdhi-kOyil. The earliest epigraphical reference to the building of a pallippadai is found in an inscription of the 8th year of Vijaya Kampavarman (886 A.D.) from Cholapuram (429 of 1902 and EI, vii, p.193). It mentions that Rajaditya, a member of the Gangeya vamsa bilingual and a subordinate Chief under Pallava Vijaya Kampavarman, built a memorial Siva temple and a tomb in memory of his deceased father Prithvigangaraiyar. The inscription is bilingual. The sanskrit part gives a part of the genealogy of the Gangas descended from Kongunivarman, and the tamil part records that Rajaditya built a palippadai Siva temple in memory of his father and a tomb where his mortal remains were interred. Here are the relevant lines: 'Ko visaya kamparkku yaaNDu eTTaavatu pritivigangaraiyar atitar aayina piRpaaDu tatputra Rajadityan Mahadevan tam appanaarai *paLLippaDutta iDattu* Isvara aalayamum, atita graramum (grihamum?) eDuppittuk kaNDu (ndu) sEvittaan'. The use of the expression *paLLippaDutta - iDattu* is siginficant. It means the place where the dead was laid to eternal rest - a tomb where the bones of the dead were buried. It seems to have been the practice to bury the dead in a tomb and also erect a memorial temple in memory of the dead. (The Ramayana of Valmiki mentions the 'Smasana Chaitya') Other important examples are the pallippaDai temples built by Parantaka I in honor of Aditya I/Kodandaraman/Tondaimaan Arruur Tunjina Devar alias Arinjaya at Melpadi built by Rajaraja I in his 29th regnal year (1014 AD) in memory of his grandfather Arinjaya who died at Arruur- which name seems to refer to Melpadi itself, on the banks of the Niva or Ponni river. "AaRRuur tuJcina tEvarkku paLLippaDaiyaaka Sri Rajaraja Devar eDuppittaruLina tiru-ariJcikai-iicuvaram" The devaraja cult in Indo-china and Indonesia: In an excellent guidebook, G. Coedes has devoted two chapters to the institution in Cambodia similar to that of paLLippaDai prevalent S. India. He holds that the great majaority of the statues of "siva, Vishnu, Buddha and other deities found in Cambodia were really representations of kings, princes and other dignitaries in the form of the gods into whom they expected to be absorbed at the end of their earthly existence. The "royal essence" was supposed to reside in a linga, or a statue of siva, vishnu or buddha. What the body was to a person while alive, that the temple became after the lifetime, namely, the architectural abode of the God-King. The communion between the king and the god tookplace thru' the mediation of the priest on the sacred mountain in the center of the capital. The devaraja became the palladium of the kingdom. And this custom prevailed in Cambodia from about the 9th century AD (if not earlier) to at least the end of the 12th century AD. But on account of the despoliation of the monuments by treasure-hunters, Coedes was unable to establish beyond doubt if the corpse was interred, or if, as in modern Cambodia or Thailand, the ashes or bones were enclosed in an urn after cremation and the urn deposited in a pagoda. However, he concludes that the monuments from the time of Jayavarman VII were temples as well as tombs, and ends by saying that "Angkor Wat was the final habitation of a being who enjoyed certain devine prerogatives during his life, and whom death had transformed into a god. It was a funerary temple". The epigraphical evidence in S. India confirms such a conclusion. The Cholapuram inscription of the 9th century mentions clearly both an Isvara-alyam and an atita griham. Usually such funerary temples were erected over the places of burial of the mortal remains of ascetics, saints ans sages. One of the latest and most popular of such funerary temples in S. India is the that of the great musician-saint Tyagaraja, on the banks of the river Kaveri. We know that the cultural drift was generally from India to SE Asia. But we do not know whether the personality or devaraja cult had an earlier common origin or was an outflow from India or had an independent parallel development in the two regions. We have to suspend judgement till such time as we get more light on this question, and meanwhile, rest satisfied with the knowledge that similar cults were in existence more or less in the same period in the land bordering Bay of Bengal, tho' the devaraja cult of SE asia had its own pecuiar development with its own individualistic features of its own". ********************************************************************** From AppuArchie at AOL.COM Thu May 7 02:05:49 1998 From: AppuArchie at AOL.COM (AppuArchie) Date: Wed, 06 May 98 22:05:49 -0400 Subject: Koel (and Hobson-Jobson) Message-ID: <161227038263.23782.1314913618214729066.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 98-05-06 13:06:53 EDT, you write: << >There is an on-going debate in some circles on how to pronounce "WWW". My >favourite, proposed by a New Scientist reader, is "wibble, wibble, >wibble". :-) > >All the best, >Dominik May I propose walla walla walla? I find it easier to say... -- regards n o e l @freenet.carleton.ca >> May I propose 'WAH, WAH, WAH! Thanks. AppuArchie From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Wed May 6 20:28:32 1998 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Wed, 06 May 98 22:28:32 +0200 Subject: Koel (and Hobson-Jobson) Message-ID: <161227038248.23782.9322532213341599835.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 16:58 06.05.98 +0100, you wrote: >Oh dear, I'm going to digress: > >There is an on-going debate in some circles on how to pronounce "WWW". My >favourite, proposed by a New Scientist reader, is "wibble, wibble, >wibble". :-) May I suggest WOWW! Lars Martin Fosse Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Tel: +47 22 32 12 19 Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no Mobile phone: 90 91 91 45 From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Wed May 6 21:47:08 1998 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Wed, 06 May 98 23:47:08 +0200 Subject: Koel (and Hobson-Jobson) Message-ID: <161227038257.23782.13999900777932277626.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > >LarsOvAca: >>May I suggest WOWW! >> >>Lars Martin Fosse Krishna uvAca: > >My suggestion for pronouncing WWW: >since most Indians pronounce W as "Da-bul-you", why don't we just make >it "Dabbulu Dabbulu Dabbulu", a very meaningful construct since >"Dabbulu" means money(Yeah! Money!) in Telugu.... Hmm. I am not entirely certain that money is the thing that strikes me particularly characteristic about the Internet and WWW. Judging by some of the debates on Indology, maybe a single Woww isn't enough. Maybe we should simply call it Wow-Wow-Wow! Doggedly, yours Lars Martin Fosse Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Tel: +47 22 32 12 19 Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no Mobile phone: 90 91 91 45 From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Thu May 7 03:54:02 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Wed, 06 May 98 23:54:02 -0400 Subject: Indo-Aryan im/e-migration (scholarly debate) Message-ID: <161227038268.23782.17766833588178741089.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 98-05-04 23:26:06 EDT, bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN writes: << Apparently the present generation of Indologists are not familiar with the arguments of Jules Bloch why OIA has ghoTa(ka) 'horse' > Hi. ghoDaa, etc., which has no IE-etymology (unlike Skt. as'va-). He derives ghoTa- (with guNa) from a root *ghuT- which he derives from Pre-Drav. *ghutr-. He then derives Ta.kutirai, Ma.kutira, Ka. kudire and Te. guR(R)amu, Konda guRam 'horse' from the root *ghutr- saying that pre-Dravidian had not only voicing contrast but also aspirates! ( I have given references to Jules Bloch's article in my TVB).The Dravidian words are quite ancient and were not borrowed from anyother known langauge. He suggested that Telugu preserved the PDr. voiced stop while the South Drav languages had devoiced g- to k-. He also derived Skt. gaard-abha- 'donkey' and Ta. kaZutai, Ka. katte, Te. gaaDida from *gard- again Te. preserving PDr. voiced stop. Apart from the linguistic ingenuity of these etymologies, which not many scholars (maybe nobody) questioned then, at the semantic and cultural level,this hypothesis presupposes that 'the horse' could be native to pre-Aryan India! Of course, donkeys do not pose a problem; they are cultural universals! Bh.K. >> Indologists also should consult the following view of T. Burrow. "It is well known that Tamil in contradistinction to other Dravidian languages does not admit of the voiced stops g, j, d, b at the beginning of a word; whereas in the middle of a word the unvoiced sounds are represented by the voiced, though the writing takes no notice of this distinction. Caldwell (3rd ed., p.138), formulating this state of affairs as the "Convertibility of Surds and Sonants", assumes it to have been characteristic of the primitive Dravidian tongue. In this most people have tended to follow him. More recently, however, contrary opinions have been expressed, notably by M. Jules Bloch. In his article "Sanskrit and Dravidian" (B.S.L., XXV, pp. 1ff.) he criticizes Mr. Subbayya for assuming in his articles in Indian Antiquary, 1909, that in the case of Ta. k-, etc., corresponding to Te. Ka. g-, etc. Tamil represents the primitive Dravidian state of affairs, and maintains on the contrary that the "antiquity of the sonants in Dravidian remains indisputable". Further, in comparing Skt. ghoTaka horse with Ta. kutirai, Ka. kutire, Te. guRRamu, which might have been derived from an original *ghutr-, he is prepared to admit also the possibility of sonant aspirates in the early history of Dravidian. This view has received a certain amount of support. K. Goda Varma, for instance (BSOS., VIII, p. 562), quotes as examples of Ka. ga < Primitive Dravidian ga-: Mal. keTTu in aNakkeTTu dam, Ka. gaTTu; Ma. keTTu bundle, Ka. gaTTe; keTTu in keTTu-tATi beard about the chin, Ka. gaDDa; keNTan large, Ka. gaNDu; keta palpitation, Ka. gada; in all of which instances Ma. e In a message dated 98-05-06 13:29:55 EDT, g.v.simson at EAST.UIO.NO writes: << In our discussions about the Aryan-Invasion/Immigration-Theory a series of both linguistic and archaeological arguments have been brought forward. It seems to me that ideological arguments so far have been neglected. If you have a look at the vocabulary of the Rgveda, you will find that the horse plays a very prominent part in it, a fact that already would point to its ideological relevance even before you start reading the texts. Not only the word azva is used about 200 times (not to mention hari and other words for horse), there are also more than 30 derivatives from and compounds with azva! The Indus seals, on the other hand, often depict other animals, but - as far as I know - not the horse. If we assume that the seals to a certain degree reflect religious concepts, the absence of the horse is highly significant, especially if we compare it with the high position of the horse in other Indo-European cultures. Therefore - even if some horse-bones should be found in the Indus culture - the horse does not seem to have played any prominent role in the minds of its people. This makes a very strong contrast to Vedic culture as reflected in the Rgveda. For me the horse-argument still has much weight, in spite of the counterarguments that have been brought forward up to now. >> I posted the following in Indology on July 6, 1997. "In Classical Tamil, there is a word, 'mAn2', which seems to denote wild animals and especially antelope/deer. This word is contrasted with 'An2' which refers to the domesticated cattle. The term used to refer to wild cattle is 'AmAn2'. This pair of 'mAn2' and 'An2' seems to be comparable to the contrasting pair 'mRga' and 'pazu' in Sanskrit. But there is a significant difference which seems to give some important information regarding the domestication of the horse and elephant, if it can be called so. In Sanskrit, horse is included in the category of 'pazu' as a domesticated animal. But in Classical Tamil literature which comes several centuries later, the horse is still called 'mAn2'. This is in spite of it being very widely used by itself for riding as well as for drawing chariots. This seems to suggest two things to me. For one, Dravidians did not domesticate the horse (which everybody knows anyway) and secondly, and more importantly, the language has preserved the original 'alienness' of the horse even after so many centuries if not millennia. This is one more evidence for the extraordinary preservation of ancient cultural elements in Classical Tamil. Another interesting fact is that apart from the horse, the elephant is also called 'mAn2'. When coupled with the fact that CT often talks about the Aryan language spoken by the elephant trainers/drivers, it leads one to wonder if the training of wild elephants was an Aryan contribution? or Did the semantics of 'mAn2' change? In Sanskrit, which category does the elephant belong to?" Regards S. Palaniappan From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Thu May 7 11:44:15 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 07:44:15 -0400 Subject: Indo-Aryan im/e-migration (scholarly debate) Message-ID: <161227038275.23782.5201532560532247042.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 98-05-04 23:26:06 EDT, bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN writes: << Apparently the present generation of Indologists are not familiar with the arguments of Jules Bloch why OIA has ghoTa(ka) 'horse' > Hi. ghoDaa, etc., which has no IE-etymology (unlike Skt. as'va-). He derives ghoTa- (with guNa) from a root *ghuT- which he derives from Pre-Drav. *ghutr-. He then derives Ta.kutirai, Ma.kutira, Ka. kudire and Te. guR(R)amu, Konda guRam 'horse' from the root *ghutr- saying that pre-Dravidian had not only voicing contrast but also aspirates! ( I have given references to Jules Bloch's article in my TVB).The Dravidian words are quite ancient and were not borrowed from anyother known langauge. He suggested that Telugu preserved the PDr. voiced stop while the South Drav languages had devoiced g- to k-. He also derived Skt. gaard-abha- 'donkey' and Ta. kaZutai, Ka. katte, Te. gaaDida from *gard- again Te. preserving PDr. voiced stop. Apart from the linguistic ingenuity of these etymologies, which not many scholars (maybe nobody) questioned then, at the semantic and cultural level,this hypothesis presupposes that 'the horse' could be native to pre-Aryan India! >> I forgot to add the following in my earlier posting. That "not many scholars (may be nobody)" questioned Bloch's views is not correct. This is what Dr. Krishnamurti says in Telugu Verbal Bases, p.24. "Caldwell's assumption that there were no initial voiced plosives in PDr. as reflected in Ta. and Ma. was contradicted by Jules Bloch on the basis of the history of a few words like ghOTaka horse and drAviDa name of a people, which, according to him, were originally native to Dravidian. This view rceived support from some quarters and contradiction from others. Burrow argued for Caldwell and analytically put forth evidence to show that voicing of initial stops appearing in some of the Dravidian languages, was only secondary and did not represent PDr." Regards S. Palaniappan From umadevi at SFO.COM Thu May 7 15:20:26 1998 From: umadevi at SFO.COM (Mary Storm) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 08:20:26 -0700 Subject: Chola memorial temples Message-ID: <161227038291.23782.5408240740223716528.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > N. Ganesan Wrote: > In an excellent guidebook, G. Coedes has devoted two chapters > to the institution in Cambodia similar to that of paLLippaDai > prevalent S. India. He holds that the great majaority of > the statues of "siva, Vishnu, Buddha and other deities found in Cambodia > were really representations of kings, princes and other > dignitaries in the form of the gods into whom they expected > to be absorbed at the end of their earthly existence. > The "royal essence" was supposed to reside in a linga, or a statue > of siva, vishnu or buddha. What the body was to a person > while alive, that the temple became after the lifetime, namely, > the architectural abode of the God-King. The communion > between the king and the god tookplace thru' the mediation of > the priest on the sacred mountain in the center of the capital. > The devaraja became the palladium of the kingdom. And this > custom prevailed in Cambodia from about the 9th century AD > (if not earlier) to at least the end of the 12th century AD. > > But on account of the despoliation of the monuments by > treasure-hunters, Coedes was unable to establish beyond > doubt if the corpse was interred, or if, as in modern > Cambodia or Thailand, the ashes or bones were enclosed > in an urn after cremation and the urn deposited in a pagoda. > However, he concludes that the monuments from the time > of Jayavarman VII were temples as well as tombs, and ends by > saying that "Angkor Wat was the final habitation of a > being who enjoyed certain devine prerogatives during > his life, and whom death had transformed into a god. > It was a funerary temple". Dear Dr. Ganesan, Thank you so much for this fascinating material on the Chola temples. The Deva-raja and funerary issues surrounding SEA temples has been very controversial. Human bones and ashes have been found under a number of Javanese temples as well, but agreement on the meaning has not been without a great deal of debate. I shall have a very good time pursuing this new (to me) Chola material. Thanks again. Mary From pclaus at HAYWIRE.CSUHAYWARD.EDU Thu May 7 15:23:20 1998 From: pclaus at HAYWIRE.CSUHAYWARD.EDU (Peter J. Claus) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 08:23:20 -0700 Subject: Horses In-Reply-To: <199805061804.LAA02490@dry.jps.net> Message-ID: <161227038288.23782.3974478596672724842.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Members, Returning to the horse discussion, Georg v S. seems to make a reasonable point here. I don't see why he should have to "explain this high position of the horse in other > Indo-European cultures. Preferably not Scythian ones as there has > always been some argument over whether the Scythians were truly IE. > What part did the horse play in Greek or Persian culture? " On the other hand, it would not seem unreasonable that there might be little representation of the horse generally in India for a long time to come if our primary written sources are texts such as the Rg Veda (or for that matter ANY of the early Skrt texts) which only represent a very small minority of the population. It seems to me to expect otherwise would be to expect that there was a flood of Aryans who invaded the region. It does not seem likely that that was the case. Peter Claus On Wed, 6 May 1998, Paul K. Manansala wrote: > Georg von Simson > . If we assume that the seals to a certain > > degree reflect religious concepts, the absence of the horse is highly > > significant, especially if we compare it with the high position of the > > horse in other Indo-European cultures. > > Could you explain this high position of the horse in other > Indo-European cultures. Preferably not Scythian ones as there has > always been some argument over whether the Scythians were truly IE. > What part did the horse play in Greek or Persian culture? > > >Therefore - even if some horse-bones > > should be found in the Indus culture - the horse does not seem to have > > played any prominent role in the minds of its people. This makes a very > > strong contrast to Vedic culture as reflected in the Rgveda. > > But all we know about the Vedic culture comes from translations of > the Rgveda. We don't have similar translations of the Indus texts. > There are very fewt examples of horse iconography in the period of a few > centuries after the fall of the IVC. Horses turn up in the early > Sunga works, but certainly nothing on the scale of Scythian culture. > But most importantly there is nothing even slightly suggestive of a > nomadic horse culture at any archaeological sites. No signs of > Kurgan or related cultures. > > The only suggestions we have is that horses were introduced into > India gradually. And that they played a minimal role in the material > culture. > > Regards, > Paul Kekai Manansala > From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Thu May 7 14:47:38 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 08:47:38 -0600 Subject: Vivekananda &c. Message-ID: <161227038277.23782.9770929698539732078.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I coined for WWW a tamil term: valaya-vaLai-valai. It can be extended to AppuArchie's liking: va-va-va -> wa-wa-wa -> wah-wah-wah Or else, Lars' choice va-va-va -> wav-wav-wav -> Wow-Wow-Wow Saw the following in Indology. Oh, dear! Are politicians masquerading as sankaracharyas??!!! Could not believe my eyes. Evidently, I have seen few politicians working as academics. Regards, N. Ganesan BTW, Sri. Jayendra Sarasvati of Kanchi Math has visited my home couple of times. I can send the *.jpg files of him with my parents at my home. Kanchi Math charges something like an ounce of gold for each visit. His senior, truly a giant of learning and stood upto Dravidian movement, visited our village in 1930s along with Kollengode Raja, Cat. Balakrishna Menon. PeriyavaaL was particularly fond of Sembu, a tuber that grows only in Palghat gap, which is used as an equivalent of soma. What is the name in Malayalam & its botanical name.? When Dr. R. Nagaswamy, Periyaval's disciple stayed with me for a week, I showed him the young Periyaval's picture. He took a copy, & said he will publish it somewhere. Dr. Nagaswamy took many Westerners to see Periyaval. Whenever people like Dr. Jean Filliozat came to meet Periyaval, Dr. Nagaswamy or T. M. P. Mahadevan will be at his side. -NG ****************************************** (9 Mar 1998 02:10) - Re: Vivekananda &c. On 9 Mar 1998, Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian said <<1. The shankaracarya's have _not_ wanted to ban conversion (not sure about the present Kanchi head).>> I had lost the news clippings from early 1980s showing that a zankarAcArya wanted to ban conversion. Better late than never. Here is the latest opinion from the current head (or is he the former head?) of Kanchi mutt. This is from Times of India dated April 29, 1998. This can be seen at the following web site. While this is from a recent news item, I think it has information relating to some of the discussions we had in the list earlier. I apologize if it is not appropriate for this list. Regards S. Palaniappan http://www.timesofindia.com/290498/29home3.htm Keep off temple issue, Kanchi seer tells politicians By Rajaram Satapathy The Times of India News Service BHUBANESWAR: Shankaracharya of Kanchi Jayendra Saraswati feels that politicians are responsible for the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid controversy and has urged them not to dabble in it anymore for the greater interest of the country. ``Politicians are creating all troubles, raking up a dead issue time and again and trying to solve it which they can never do,'' the Shankaracharya, now on a national peace and unity mission, remarked in an interview here. He said for all practical purposes, the subject had been closed after the demolition of the mosque at Ayodhya. Nevertheless, whether or not there should be a temple in its place could be decided only by followers of both religions. ``Mutual discussions and reconciliation will surely remove all irritants,'' he pointed out. There were various pressing problems facing the country like poverty, price rise, unemployment and tension from across the border. Politicians should engage themselves in solving them for the benefit of masses, he suggested. The Shankaracharya did not agree that fundamentalist forces were posing a threat to the country's integrity. He, however, regretted reports about the conversion of Hindus in different states. ``Conversion is not permitted in any religion. It is instead considered an irreligious act. But some people coming under the influence of `roti, petti and beti' (indicating food, money and girls) are changing their dharma. By this, they cannot please God, but end up losing the love and affection of all besides their self-respect and dignity,'' he observed. He apprehended that the present trend, if not checked, could lead to a majority-minority problem in the country in the future and favoured the bringing of an anti-conversion legislation by the government. He said such laws backed by a strong people's movement could halt the changing scenario. The 63-year-old Jayendra Saraswati, who was initiated into the life of ``sanyasa'' at the age of 19, is credited with diverting the role of theShankaracharya for the first time into taking up developmental projects. As a result, a deemed university,an international library,a chain of schools and hospitals, 32 Veda pathasalas, four free old age homes, two schools for thephysically handicapped, a 100-bed hospital at Guwahati and a school for thementally handicapped at Hardwar have come up in different parts of the country. The Shankaracharya, during his visit to Orissa, also laid the stone of a medical college and an eye hospital at Berhampur, which is scheduled to be completed in three years. A heart institute at Bhubaneswar and a school especially for tribal students at Gunpur are also proposed, which, he says, will be ready within a year. The state government has agreed to provide land for all these projects. To a question what advice he gave to former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and former Union communications minister Buta Singh, who met him here, the Shankaracharya said: ``Without politicians, things cannot move. They come seeking peace from me. I utilise their services for the country's development.'' He also denied that he had any difference of opinion with four other Shankaracharyas in the country. ``They are like different editions of one newspaper,'' he remarked. From sristi at AD1.VSNL.NET.IN Thu May 7 03:53:51 1998 From: sristi at AD1.VSNL.NET.IN (anil k gupta) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 09:23:51 +0530 Subject: FW: Flowers and plant reproduction Message-ID: <161227038312.23782.11504558689344206787.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> have you seen vriksha ayurveda This is an interesting querry and of great interest to me wince we have looked at similar issues in our Honey bee journal http://csf.colorado.edu/sristi/ occasionally in the context of ancient agriculture Majumdar gave a lecture in 1925 at presidency college entitled Vanaspati and thsi will definitely answer your question if you need more help pl send me mail at anilg at iimahd.ernet.in all the best anil do send you paper when completed -----Original Message----- From: Angus Murphy To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Date: Friday, May 01, 1998 8:09 AM Subject: FW: Flowers and plant reproduction >Dear Indologists, > I am currently researching some aspects of the history of the study of flowering plants for some popular science writing. One of the most crucial issues in such a history is that of sexual reproduction by plants. Although the Greeks appear to have understood that some plants like the date palm were unable to fertilize themselves and recognized two different flower types, pollen was regarded as a form of excrement rather than an agent of fertilization. > So far, in my amateur inquiries into early Indian writings, I find references to male and female flowers based on their shape or form and descriptions of pollen as dust, but no specific mention of hybridization or pollination. Yet there are some poetic texts that seem to include pollen gathering by bees in metaphors for amorous pastimes. Are ther any sources In English or another Western language) that I can be directed to? > Any information offered would be appreciated and , if used, would be properly attributed. > Thanking you in advance for any assistance. > Sincerely, > Angus Murphy > Biology Dept. > University of California, Santa Cruz > From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Thu May 7 15:24:27 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 09:24:27 -0600 Subject: Vivekananda &c. Message-ID: <161227038283.23782.16461320815876522196.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Saw this in newsgroup soc.culture.indian. What is going on? What a change from PeriyavaaL's days? Regards, N. Ganesan ----------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Nagereshu Kanchi From: Mohan Gopalakrishnan Date: 1998/01/31 Message-ID: <34D3B9A7.292DD896 at geocities.com> Newsgroups: soc.culture.tamil,soc.culture.indian [More Headers] [Subscribe to soc.culture.tamil] Please Note: I have kept the name of the people involved in this story hidden as the goal is not to hurt anybody. Some of this is a expression of frustration and some just a story that I share with you. I have just returned from India. I had made great plans to see very many places. Unfortunately bad planning, unavailability of Railway tickets and an acute attack of gastroentritis confined me to Madras(nay Chennai) and its suburbs. I had never been to Kanchi. Strange for a Brahmin boy raised in Madras for all my life. Well it so happened that everytime a visit to Kanchi was made, I was unavailable for various reasons. I had decided to change it this time. Since all other places were closed to me, I planned a visit to Kanchi. With a little coaxing I convinced my dad to come with me to see this ancient Pallava town and capital and home of a thousand temples. The city of Kanchipuram also called Kanchi by the tamils. Kanchi for those of you who do not know is about 70 Kms out of Madras and very close to another temple town of Sriperumbudur(famous for the Assasination of Rajiv Gandhi ) and is a good hour and a half by car. So I decided to hire a tourist taxi from Madras to Kanchi. It worked out to be about 1500 rupees(circa 40 dollars) for the entire journey. Not bad really. Since we began our journey a little late, it was decided that we should make our first halt at the Kamakshi Amman temple, since temples close for lunch and do not reopen until 4 PM. It was nearly past noon and very near the closing time when we arrived at the Kamakshi Amman temple. Scared that we may be locked out we ran into the temple to find out to our releif that the temple was far from closing this afternoon as they were conducting some special pooja. I had a video camera bag and wanted to shoot in the temple. Afraid that I may offend someone, I asked dad if he thought it was appropriate if I can shoot. Suddenly a voice from Behind said I could not shoot the Moolasthanam(Sanctum Santorum). I turned around and found a gentleman in his late 50's or early 60's spelling temple policy to me. So I asked him what I could shoot and what I could not. He glanced at me and said...OK you come with me with an authority of officialdom and showed me a few spots that I could shoot at and started playing the role of a tourist guide. I should say that he was not a bad tourist guide at all and went into some depth to explain the logic behind the temple and also other sites in Kanchi. He also took me via a special route and got me Darshan which would have otherwise entailed a very long wait. Later he explained to me that he was a "Special VIP tourist guide", I dont know what that meant. In any case I knew that it meant an expenditure of some sorts and rather than keeping the guy guessing I gave him a hundred rupees for his services. My dad standing next to me remarked that he must have stared a fox in the face when he woke up today. Balaji that was his name, gathered quite a few details about my background in the course of the tourist guiding that he did for me. I think in a moment of weakness I might have let out everything there was about to me. India does this thing to you where any sense of private you have simply disappears after a while. Well one of the things that Balaji gathered was that I was a Brahmin and realized that like all good Brahmins my next stop would be the Sankara Mutt. He asked me a few times if I had my sacred thread on and after getting a reply in the affirmative decided he would help me further. He said go and see Mr XYZ who runs the affairs of the mutt, tell him Balaji sent you and also explain that you are from the USA and they will take you straight to periyaval(the mutt head Sr). I thought it must be a joke, but I decided more out of curiosity than anything else to do some name dropping. Dad and I went and bought some offering for Periyaval and walked into the portals of the Sankara mutt. As we walked in with Video camera in hand, we immediately attracted attention. The standard question "Neenga Yaaru" was asked. Then I decided to follow Balaji's cue and explain that he had sent me to XYZ mama and that I was from the US. Suddenly the minor mutt official who was sitting in his chair jumped and shouted out to someone call XYZ mama. Soon XYZ mama a middle aged gentlemen clad in a Veshti and bare waist up, smelling of high grade scented tobacco showed up. He took charge of us. I was clad in my Veshti and Shirt as was my dad. He requested us that since we are going to see periyaval that we should remove our shirts. I asked him why, and he remarked that it was the way things are done here and also it would become very clear that we were brahmins when Periyaval see's us and be able to talk to us more freely. Having read Viveka Chudamani (the classic work of sankara the founder of this mutt) it seemed strange that it mattered that I was a Brahmin, but being in Rome you do as Romans do and hence I decided that I will simply follow without questioning. I saw a big long line of people and was taken past that. My US of A status and a desire to grow the mutt overseas apparently gave me that status of cutting accross lines. I was finally taken to the Mutt head (senior) to a back room. The mutt head was seated in a window distributing Prasadam to the long line of people who I saw while being whisked to this room. Suddenly the periyaval(called Pudhu Periyaval) turned his attention those of us inside the room. A gentleman got up and spoke to him. He must have been some high official or something in Government. He was telling the mutt head that he wanted a MCA admission for his son and that he(Periyaval) should do something about it. I did not follow the rest of the conversation as I was a bit exhausted by that time. I was also feeling pretty weird and confused. maybe the intoxication with Sankara and what I was seing at the mutt was confusing me. Finally XYZ mama introduced me to Periyaval. I asked permission to film him and was granted that. Then he asked me if I knew someone in the Sankara Mutt in california and I remarked in the negative. He muttered some intructions to XYZ mama, who then took us out of the room and said that he would take us to Bala Periyaval(the junior Mutt head) in the afternoon. We were off to have lunch at the local Saravana Bhavan. I had mixed feelings about coming back in the afternoon. However since I had promised I decided I would be back. Soon after lunch we decided to set out to see one of the temples that was open in the afternoon. This was the ancient Kailasanathar temple which was a magnificient piece of Pallava Architecture. No visitor to Kanchi should ever miss this. The temple is now controlled by the archieology dept. It was a beautiful day to be in Kanchi. It was the day of Siva, the day of the Star Arudra in the month of Margasirsha(markhazhi in tamil) the birthday of Lord Siva. It was also full moon, the day the Secret of the universe is revealed each year in chidambaram and the day they do Giri Pradakshanam in Tiruvannamalai. So a visit to any siva temple is Auspicious. There are five siva temples which represent the five forces of nature. As I recollect they are Tiruvanaikaval(near Trichy) for Water, Sri Kalahasti in AP for Air, Tiruvannamalai for fire, Sri Ekambereswarar in Kanchi for earth. Chidambaram I think represents ether but since I am not sure of that I will not comment. It is auspicious to be in any of these temples on the day of the star Arudra and I was to be there in Ekambareswarar temple on Arudra. Strange I had planned a trip to tiruvannamalai to do giri pradakshanam or to chidambaram to have Arudra Darshanam but I finally wound up in Kanchi unmindful of the fact I was in one of five siva holy sights at Kanchi on this day. So much for the diversion, at 4 PM as planned we had returned to the Sankara Mutt. XYZ mama was taking a group of people for coffee. He asked us to wait and we sat near one of the pillars of a new mandapam that was coming up. A few minutes into relaxation a gentleman with a Namam(caste mark red..) on his forehead comes to us and decides to delve into our life history. With a sense of helplessness my dad reveals to him who we are and what we do and where his children are settled. He the on his own reels out the story of his life and then after a while tired of the new aquaintance he retires. Then another gentleman in a tuft sitting along side one of the other pillars approaches us and we repeat the same process with him. I felt like I should carry a cyclostyled sheet containing all relevant details about my family life and add an appendix of all the Indian folks I know in the Bay area(A question that comes soon is do u know my Nephew so and so who is also somewhere near San Fransisco....He is very famous because he plays Kabbadi in San Fransisco or whatever). Finally XYZ mama returns. He takes us to see Bala Periyaval. Bala Periyavaal is this youngish swamiji. He is fluent it seems in multiple languages. A DIG or some such major Police official had come from Assam. So he was given first go before all of us. His holiness spoke to the Man in hindi and asked him a few question. We were all asked to keep a distance from the swami lest we pollute him. Strange I thought ascetics were liberated souls and Madi and Aacharam were only things for the world of Maya. Again Sankara confuses me..should I beleive his writings are the way to live or emulate his mutt which is quite the opposite. It is deep rooted in everything worldly. Or is there something that I dont understand? In any case the meeting ended, and XYZ mama decided to take me to his chambers. It was nice and cool in the basement where he took me. XYZ mama is a tall chap, he is always bare chested like all sideys in the mutt are. He sat down in front of us and gave us a bunch of pamphlets. I fully understood that coz his main work was to promote the mutt and it was well within his right to collect money or spread the word or get work done through us. I appreciated the fact that he wanted youngster involvement. However in the process of doing all this the cause i.e. to keep the teachings of Sankara alive and going, has long been dropped by the wayside. If you came to discuss the Viveka Chudamani I am sorry wrong place. This is like a cosmopolitan club for South Indian Brahmins and some other high officials. Coming back to XYZ mama, the conversation continued until it came to his personal life. It is then that he described how useful the mutt has been to get his children settled in life. XYZ mama has a regular government job. Thanks to his connections within the mutt he seldom goes there. Instead he spends his time in the mutt hobnobbing with the high and mighty. It definitely has served him well. The last stop in Kanchi( I wanted to do more, but the fear of hitting the Indian Roads at night prevented me) was the Siva Temple which I have described earlier. It is called the Ekambareswarar temple, named for the famous mango tree, 2000 years old which still stands and 4 different types of mangoes grow on its four branches. A wonderful site and something all should see. I like going to Siva temples as they tend to be non commercial. So I thought until I came to this one. With Priest after Priest hounding us for the next level of prayers for a little extra something, I came out very disillusioned. Maybe the priest lot should be cared for better. Why blame them for wanting to make money. We all do. -- "A Book of Verses underneath the Bough A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread, -- and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!" -The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (An Edward FitzGerald Translation) ----------------------------------------------------------------- From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Thu May 7 18:05:52 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 10:05:52 -0800 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038299.23782.14844253314586379702.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Georg von Simson wrote: > Paul K. Manansala asks me: > > > >Could you explain this high position of the horse in other > >Indo-European cultures. Preferably not Scythian ones as there has > >always been some argument over whether the Scythians were truly IE. > >What part did the horse play in Greek or Persian culture? > > See the article "Horses" by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, in The Encyclopedia > of Religion (Ed. Mircea Eliade). Vol. 6 (New York, 1987), p. 463-468. > I cannot quote the whole article; let me just quote the following (p. 463): > "Ancient Indo-European Horse Sacrifices: With the Greeks and the Vedic > Indians, and later with the Romans, the horse truly came into its own as a > religious symbol, one that pervades both myth and ritual. Rituals involving > horses, more particularly rituals that involve the killing of a white > stallion, are attested throughout the Indo-European world." > In the following she mentions ancient Norse, Greek, Roman, Persian and > Celtic ritual and mythological traditions which confirm her statement. See > also the Bibliography added to her article for further references. > > One could find notices like this in many culture. For example, both the Chinese and Japanese cultures place the horse fairly prominently in their cultures. However, neither was a nomadic horse culture. I'm no expert in IE mythology, but I don't recall the horse as a particularly important symbol in the Greek, Roman, Persian or Celtic mythology I've read. We do encounter the symbol, but not in the same sense as in Mongol or Turkic legend, where the horse was central to life itself. > >>Therefore - even if some horse-bones > >> should be found in the Indus culture - the horse does not seem to have > >> played any prominent role in the minds of its people. This makes a very > >> strong contrast to Vedic culture as reflected in the Rgveda. > > > >But all we know about the Vedic culture comes from translations of > >the Rgveda. We don't have similar translations of the Indus texts. > >There are very fewt examples of horse iconography in the period of a few > >centuries after the fall of the IVC. Horses turn up in the early > >Sunga works, but certainly nothing on the scale of Scythian culture. > >But most importantly there is nothing even slightly suggestive of a > >nomadic horse culture at any archaeological sites. No signs of > >Kurgan or related cultures. > > > >The only suggestions we have is that horses were introduced into > >India gradually. And that they played a minimal role in the material > >culture. > > > But there can be no doubt that they played a major role on the ideological > level with the early Indo-Aryans It played a role maybe in the Rgveda, but not such a major role. . You have still to convince me that they > played a similar role in the Indus culture. As long as we cannot read the > Indus texts, you may assume anything about their contents, of course. But > does not the absence of the horse among the animals of the figurative > tradition of that culture mean anything to you? There may have been horse figures among the IVC. However, my point there is no evidence of a horse culture entering India. There is some evidence of domesticated horses entering India, and horses do appear in the Rgveda. However, I'm at a lost to how anyone could derive anything remotely similar to Kurgan or Scythian culture from reading the Vedas. These latter people lived on mare's milk and horseback. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Thu May 7 18:13:03 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 10:13:03 -0800 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038302.23782.11161295084734777097.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >"Peter J. Claus" wrote: > On the other hand, it would not seem unreasonable that there might be > little representation of the horse generally in India for a long time to > come if our primary written sources are texts such as the Rg Veda (or for > that matter ANY of the early Skrt texts) which only represent a very small > minority of the population. It seems to me to expect otherwise would be > to expect that there was a flood of Aryans who invaded the region. It > does not seem likely that that was the case. > But how about among the invaders themselves? Who were these invaders in archaeological terms? Did they make representations of horses? Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From nrao at CAIP.RUTGERS.EDU Thu May 7 14:44:21 1998 From: nrao at CAIP.RUTGERS.EDU (Nikhil Rao) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 10:44:21 -0400 Subject: Namboothiris In-Reply-To: <01IWQWL0Z1WI0046QT@cl.uh.edu> Message-ID: <161227038293.23782.9263221003835023620.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I have read that the Namboothiris migrated to Kerala from the area that is present day Maharashtra in the 5-6th century. Are there any historical records (inscriptions etc) to indicate where they might have migrated from and in what period ?. Do any of their practices/customs/gotras link them with brahmins in other parts ?. Thanks, Nikhil From yigal at MD2.VSNL.NET.IN Thu May 7 07:01:21 1998 From: yigal at MD2.VSNL.NET.IN (Yigal Bronner) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 12:31:21 +0530 Subject: There was a king Alokavigraha (?) Message-ID: <161227038272.23782.7766914486275848160.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In 1929, in his edition of Nitivarman's poem "Kicakavadha" (KV) S. K. De suggested that Alokavigraha (KV 1.10) may be the name or epithet of the poet's patron- king. This seems to be a very reasonable interpretation of the verse, the first to describe the king, and it is in line with the view of the two available commentators (the other takes it as an adjective to the word 'king'). We know for sure that the poem was composed before the year 1050 (it is mentioned by Bhoja), and that it comes from East India. Other than that nothing seems to be known. Another bit of information is that the patron-king's fame was said to be spread from Kalinga (KV 1.21). Whether Kalinga was his seat or one of his important conquests, the text does not tell us, De writes (KV edition p. 64): In the present state of our knowledge about the political history of Kalinga anterior to the 11th century A.D. this name [Alokavigraha] appears strange and untraceable. But if the king did not belong to Kalinga.. the word vigraha naturally point to Vigraha-Pala of the Pala dynasty of Bengal... [and perhaps] an allusion to Vigraha-Pala I, whose uncle Jayapala is said to have made an expedition against Kalinga. I am looking for recent studies of the history of the Palas, possible candidates for Alokavigraha, and any new developments in "our present state of knowledge about the political history of Kalinga anterior to the 11th century" which might help to trace Nitivarmans patron. Yigal Bronner. From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Thu May 7 18:41:47 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 12:41:47 -0600 Subject: Vivekananda &c. Message-ID: <161227038305.23782.14170492588363774491.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Currently browsing thru' Raymond B. Williams, A sacred thread: Modern transmission of Hindu traditions in India and abroad, 1992, Pennsylvania. The politics of Kanchi math is described in: William Cenkner, The Sankaracharya of Kanchi and the Kamakshi temple as Ritual center, p. 52-67 The political undertakings of Sringeri Sankaracharya is ably dealt by: Glenn Yocum, The coronation of a Guru: Charisma, politics, and philosophy in contemporary India, p. 68-91 >?From p. 316, "A usually unstated, but implicit corollary of this charge is that the Brahmin gurus of the South Indian Sankaracharya mathas (Sringeri, Kanchi) clearly do know something, indeed know a great deal that ordinary folk, including their lay Brahmin followers, do not know." "Apparently the Congress-I's close relations with the Sringeri matha stem from the time of Indira Gandhi's premiership. According to a personal communication from Shrivatsa Goswami, the two Sankaracaryas in North India (Puri and Dwaraka) blessed Mrs. Gandhi's opponents. She therefore managed to establish friendly relations with the Sringeri pontiff, which had the additional advantage of not compromising her secular image in the North while simultaneously showing her to be a friend of established Hindu piety in the more traditional South. (personal communication, Oct. 3, 1990)" ***************************************** From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Thu May 7 20:03:30 1998 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 13:03:30 -0700 Subject: Vivekananda &c. Message-ID: <161227038329.23782.715662408784918806.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> "N. Ganesan" wrote - >Currently browsing thru' >Raymond B. Williams, A sacred thread: Modern transmission of >Hindu traditions in India and abroad, 1992, Pennsylvania. > >The politics of Kanchi math is described in: >William Cenkner, The Sankaracharya of Kanchi and the Kamakshi >temple as Ritual center, p. 52-67 > >The political undertakings of Sringeri Sankaracharya >is ably dealt by: >Glenn Yocum, The coronation of a Guru: >Charisma, politics, and philosophy in contemporary India, >p. 68-91 These two articles stand out in great contrast to each other. The first is almost deeply apologetic, the second is quite critical (which is welcome). But do note that many of Prof. Yocum's observations are based on reports in Deccan Herald, a newspaper which seems to have a political agenda of its own, and The Hindu, which has its own concerns! > >From p. 316, >"A usually unstated, but implicit corollary of this charge is that >the Brahmin gurus of the South Indian Sankaracharya mathas (Sringeri, >Kanchi) clearly do know something, indeed know a great deal that >ordinary folk, including their lay Brahmin followers, do not know." This observation has been made in the context of how Brahmin populations in Madras view the Sankaracharyas with respect to the gurus of Saiva Siddhanta Adheenams. I am not sure one should exclude SrIvaishNavas from this attitude - nowadays many of them look to the Sankaracharyas for leadership, often at the expense of their own institutions. If anything, it only shows how the caste divide has become more pronounced since India's independence. I have pointed this out to Prof. Yocum (personal communication) and would like to point out on this forum too, that till quite recently, Brahmins in Tamil Nadu did show a great deal of respect to the heads of Saiva Siddhanta mathams, who are normally Sudra by birth. For example, read U. V. Swaminatha Iyer's biography of Maha Vaidyanatha Sivan, re: the interaction with the Tiruvavaduthurai and other Saiva Samsthanams. Vaidyanatha Sivan and his brother, Ramaswami, were both highly learned in Tamil and Sanskrit, not to mention the Vedas and music, and were leaders of the Smarta Brahmin community in Tanjavur. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From apandey at U.WASHINGTON.EDU Thu May 7 20:10:41 1998 From: apandey at U.WASHINGTON.EDU (Anshuman Pandey) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 13:10:41 -0700 Subject: computers and Indology In-Reply-To: <01IWR7B6JKLU00454S@cl.uh.edu> Message-ID: <161227038332.23782.6486989415301424232.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Thu, 7 May 1998, N. Ganesan wrote: > 5) Font translations: With the touch of a button, the tyranny of script > can become a thing of the past. Translations from Sanskrit, Tamil etc., > can provide the original text in native script and roman with diacritics > eg., Saivagamas from Pondichery French Inst. can be provided in grantha, > diacritical roman, nagari, etc., It will be easier to switch from one > script to another from font-neutral files. For eg., a famous hindi novel > into gujarati script, a malayalam work into tamil etc., can be done > easily. Bilingual editions are possible. This is already possible using 7 and 8 bit transliterated texts and TeX packages. The only hinderance to full complicity is the lack of a standardized transliteration scheme. ISO/TC46/SC2/WG12 is discussing this standardization, which hopefully will result in a standard based on current practice. > 6) Historical dictionary: By loading all the texts in a particular > language & appr. date of the composition, a dictionary > of words and when it started its life in that language. An expanded CDIAL, eh? > 7) Saw elegant fonts for about 400 symbols used in Indus writings > developed by Prof. Parpola. If used widely, many can suggest; > may speed up the cracking the script, language. Aid in decipherment? How? Regards, Anshuman Pandey From fjkorom at NM-US.CAMPUS.MCI.NET Thu May 7 19:25:18 1998 From: fjkorom at NM-US.CAMPUS.MCI.NET (Frank J. Korom) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 13:25:18 -0600 Subject: FW: Flowers and plant reproduction Message-ID: <161227038323.23782.15422569191941368669.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Rahul Peter Das at the University of Halle in Germany has published his Habilitation on the Vrikshayurveda. It is worth taking a look at if you read German. Frank J. Korom At 09:23 AM 5/7/98 +0530, you wrote: >have you seen vriksha ayurveda > >This is an interesting querry and of great interest to me wince we have >looked at similar issues in our Honey bee journal > http://csf.colorado.edu/sristi/ occasionally in the context of ancient >agriculture > >Majumdar gave a lecture in 1925 at presidency college entitled Vanaspati and >thsi will definitely answer your question > >if you need more help > >pl send me mail at anilg at iimahd.ernet.in > >all the best > >anil > >do send you paper when completed > >-----Original Message----- >From: Angus Murphy >To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK >Date: Friday, May 01, 1998 8:09 AM >Subject: FW: Flowers and plant reproduction > > >>Dear Indologists, >> I am currently researching some aspects of the history of the study >of flowering plants for some popular science writing. One of the most >crucial issues in such a history is that of sexual reproduction by plants. >Although the Greeks appear to have understood that some plants like the date >palm were unable to fertilize themselves and recognized two different flower >types, pollen was regarded as a form of excrement rather than an agent of >fertilization. >> So far, in my amateur inquiries into early Indian writings, I find >references to male and female flowers based on their shape or form and >descriptions of pollen as dust, but no specific mention of hybridization or >pollination. Yet there are some poetic texts that seem to include pollen >gathering by bees in metaphors for amorous pastimes. Are ther any sources > In English or another Western language) that I can be directed to? >> Any information offered would be appreciated and , if used, would >be properly attributed. >> Thanking you in advance for any assistance. >> Sincerely, >> Angus >Murphy >> Biology >Dept. >> University >of California, Santa Cruz >> > > From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Thu May 7 17:49:25 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 13:49:25 -0400 Subject: Namboothiris Message-ID: <161227038308.23782.6183423364314913281.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 98-05-07 12:14:55 EDT, you write: << I have read that the Namboothiris migrated to Kerala from the area that is present day Maharashtra in the 5-6th century. Are there any historical records (inscriptions etc) to indicate where they might have migrated from and in what period ?. Do any of their practices/customs/gotras link them with brahmins in other parts ?. >> See the Frits Staal's "Agni: The Vedic Ritual of Fire Altar", 1983. Regards S. Palaniappan From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Thu May 7 20:31:50 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 14:31:50 -0600 Subject: computers and Indology Message-ID: <161227038321.23782.14971670973048051023.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> My list: 1) Index of Indian place names: If established, it will help to determine the Dravidian/Munda subdstratum by specialists. 2) Index of Literary motifs: Comparative study of ideas, diffusion, iconography will become easier if material from important Indic languages are established. 3) Bibliography: Good to see that BAS is on the web. M. L. Patterson's book & the like must get on the web. What about Indian language books lists in Roman and indian language scripts. What is very scarce is a good handle on research material published in Indian languages. 4) Lists of Manuscripts - in palm leaves or on paper, in important libraries. 5) Font translations: With the touch of a button, the tyranny of script can become a thing of the past. Translations from Sanskrit, Tamil etc., can provide the original text in native script and roman with diacritics. eg., Saivagamas from Pondichery French Inst. can be provided in grantha, diacritical roman, nagari, etc., It will be easier to switch from one script to another from font-neutral files. For eg., a famous hindi novel into gujarati script, a malayalam work into tamil etc., can be done easily. Bilingual editions are possible. 6) Historical dictionary: By loading all the texts in a particular language & appr. date of the composition, a dictionary of words and when it started its life in that language. 7) Saw elegant fonts for about 400 symbols used in Indus writings developed by Prof. Parpola. If used widely, many can suggest; may speed up the cracking the script, language. 8) Indian art webs: The huge collection of slides in French inst. of Indology & AIIS can become available on the web. Accessors can be charged a fee. Also the 4000+ Indus seals can be mounted on webs for many to see. ..... Regards, N. Ganesan From athr at LOC.GOV Thu May 7 18:58:55 1998 From: athr at LOC.GOV (Allen W Thrasher) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 14:58:55 -0400 Subject: Koel (and Hobson-Jobson) Message-ID: <161227038350.23782.14369406184054655989.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> For a reading of .www I suggest "triple-double-u", in Sanskrit tridviva, with possible allusion to tridiva, the triple heavens. Allen Thrasher From athr at LOC.GOV Thu May 7 19:03:06 1998 From: athr at LOC.GOV (Allen W Thrasher) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 15:03:06 -0400 Subject: Sivapujana-racanavali v. 3 : offer Message-ID: <161227038353.23782.2183711358769065635.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> We have an extra copy of the following: 76-984822 PK2098 .S2315 1956 Sahaya, Sivapujana, 1893- [Works. 1956] Sivapujana-pracanavali Navina samskara Patana : Bihara-Rashtrabhasha-Parishad, 1956-1959 v. 3 [of 4] In Hindi There may be another vol. around but I can't find it at the minute. Any library with an exchange relationship with the Library of Congress may take this. Allen Allen W. Thrasher, Ph.D. Senior Reference Librarian Southern Asia Section Asian Division Library of Congress 101 Independence Ave., S.E. Washington, DC 20540-4714 tel. (202) 707-3732 fax (202) 707-1724 email: athr at loc.gov The opinions expressed do not represent those of my employer. From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Thu May 7 21:20:52 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 15:20:52 -0600 Subject: Vivekananda &c. Message-ID: <161227038334.23782.5656651128150004350.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Thanks, Vidyasankar for a good point. The issue you are discussing is dealt in an article of The Hindu, Opinion section, 26-mar-98 Regards, N. Ganesan Thursday, March 26, 1998 SECTION: Opinion The fragmentation of the Tamil polity By M.S.S. Pandian [...] Though these imaginative interventions by the DMK are on the side of the subordinate sections of the non-Brahmins, they are woefully inadequate as a solution to the massive contradictions plaguing the non-Brahmin collectivity. Sadly, all these interventions remained as administrative moves, without the Dravidian politics confronting the multilayered elite-subaltern conflicts within the non-Brahmins at the ground level and recasting its agenda. If the subalternity of certain sections of the non-Brahmins has led them to drift away from Dravidian politics, others are doing so exactly for the opposite reason. The socially and materially advanced sections of the non-Brahmins look at Dravidian politics as no longer relevant to their newly emerging desires. Now they have enough economic resources to look at the whole of India as the terrain for education, jobs and investment; and, in this process, Tamil nationalism has lost much of its cutting edge for them. If a critique of Hinduism for its caste system is what has empowered them in the past, now they, in their search for a new identity outside the fold of Dravidian politics, are moving towards Hindu communalism. In their new-found confidence, they no longer view Brahminism as threatening. In other words, they are today willing collaborators in the agenda of the Tamil Brahmins who, after being politically sidelined for years in the State, are attempting a comeback through a pan-Hindu mobilisation. A number of key functionaries of Hindu communal organisations in the State are from these castes while the leadership remains with the Brahmins. [...] From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Thu May 7 23:28:37 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 15:28:37 -0800 Subject: Indo-Aryan im/e-migration (scholarly debate) Message-ID: <161227038339.23782.1920719758561211739.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> anil k gupta wrote: > I will be very grateful for examples of animal domesticated in one region > introduced in naother region without human migration, > According to some arguments, the domesticated horse originated with Indo-Europeans of Central Asia. I tend to think it originated with the Altaic peoples of Central Asia. However, either way, I don't think one must surmise that every where the domesticated horse is found involves migrations of either Altaic or IE peoples. For example, China, Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia. Some scientists believe the domesticated chicken originated in Southeast Asia, but that it spread at least partly, in an indirect fashion to other parts of the world. > Are you referring to trade in animals and distinguishing that through > permanent migration? in that case it is ok > Yes, this is exactly what I mean. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From raja at GALILEO.IFA.HAWAII.EDU Fri May 8 01:51:20 1998 From: raja at GALILEO.IFA.HAWAII.EDU (Narayan S. Raja) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 15:51:20 -1000 Subject: Vivekananda &c. Message-ID: <161227038348.23782.9098050585487394334.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Thursday, March 26, 1998 SECTION: Opinion The fragmentation of the Tamil polity By M.S.S. Pandian [...deleted...] In their new-found confidence, they no longer view Brahminism as threatening. In other words, they are today willing collaborators in the agenda of the Tamil ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Brahmins who, after being politically sidelined for ^^^^^^^^ years in the State, are attempting a comeback through a pan-Hindu mobilisation. A number of key functionaries of Hindu communal organisations in the State are from these castes while the leadership remains with the Brahmins. [...deleted...] "Agenda of the Tamil Brahmins"... "Return of the Killer Tomatos"... It's an interesting fact about many "leftist" or "subaltern" writers that, while they are often correct in identifying large social phenomena, they tend to ascribe a non-existent purposefulness to the participants in those phenomena. Taking an animal analogy, they correctly identify that "the elephants are on the move", but wrongly link it to "the warthog agenda to make a comeback through a pan-vegetarian mobilisation". In fact, the elephants -- and warthogs -- are merely wandering in search of water and food. "Tamil Brahmins" are a social group that just happens to exist, not a political group that was consciously created. As such, they don't have a political "agenda", any more than potato plants do. Their "agenda" doesn't go beyond making more money, getting their kids into school/college/job/marriage, etc. But oh well... it's good that in India we find every possible school of thought (or thoughtlessness). Regards, Narayan Sriranga Raja. From mmdesh at UMICH.EDU Thu May 7 19:51:20 1998 From: mmdesh at UMICH.EDU (Madhav Deshpande) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 15:51:20 -0400 Subject: Namboothiris In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038326.23782.5421950301273734732.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The Konkanastha Brahmans of Maharashtra link their arrival in the area to Parashuraama, who is still worshipped in the temple dedicated to him in the Konkan town of Chiplun. The Nambudris also connect their arrival in Kerala to Parashuraama. Madhav Deshpande On Thu, 7 May 1998, Nikhil Rao wrote: > I have read that the Namboothiris migrated to Kerala from the area that is > present day Maharashtra in the 5-6th century. Are there any historical > records (inscriptions etc) to indicate where they might have migrated from > and in what period ?. Do any of their practices/customs/gotras link them > with brahmins in other parts ?. > > Thanks, > Nikhil > From g.v.simson at EAST.UIO.NO Thu May 7 14:20:54 1998 From: g.v.simson at EAST.UIO.NO (Georg von Simson) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 16:20:54 +0200 Subject: Koel (and Hobson-Jobson) In-Reply-To: <199805062147.XAA27441@online.no> Message-ID: <161227038280.23782.14020274265397607672.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >> >>LarsOvAca: >>>May I suggest WOWW! >>> >>>Lars Martin Fosse > >Krishna uvAca: > >> >>My suggestion for pronouncing WWW: >>since most Indians pronounce W as "Da-bul-you", why don't we just make >>it "Dabbulu Dabbulu Dabbulu", a very meaningful construct since >>"Dabbulu" means money(Yeah! Money!) in Telugu.... > >Hmm. I am not entirely certain that money is the thing that strikes me >particularly characteristic about the Internet and WWW. Judging by some of >the debates on Indology, maybe a single Woww isn't enough. Maybe we should >simply call it Wow-Wow-Wow! > >Doggedly, yours > >Lars Martin Fosse > I would rather suggest to condense the ingenious "Dabbulu Dabbulu Dabbulu" into "bul-bul" (Arabic for "nightingale"), thus approaching the cuckoo (koel) and returning to the point from which Dominik's digression started. Which reminds me of our discussion on horses - Georg v. S. From g.v.simson at EAST.UIO.NO Thu May 7 15:02:55 1998 From: g.v.simson at EAST.UIO.NO (Georg von Simson) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 17:02:55 +0200 Subject: Horses In-Reply-To: <199805061804.LAA02490@dry.jps.net> Message-ID: <161227038285.23782.2739094587591595234.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Paul K. Manansala asks me: > >Could you explain this high position of the horse in other >Indo-European cultures. Preferably not Scythian ones as there has >always been some argument over whether the Scythians were truly IE. >What part did the horse play in Greek or Persian culture? See the article "Horses" by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, in The Encyclopedia of Religion (Ed. Mircea Eliade). Vol. 6 (New York, 1987), p. 463-468. I cannot quote the whole article; let me just quote the following (p. 463): "Ancient Indo-European Horse Sacrifices: With the Greeks and the Vedic Indians, and later with the Romans, the horse truly came into its own as a religious symbol, one that pervades both myth and ritual. Rituals involving horses, more particularly rituals that involve the killing of a white stallion, are attested throughout the Indo-European world." In the following she mentions ancient Norse, Greek, Roman, Persian and Celtic ritual and mythological traditions which confirm her statement. See also the Bibliography added to her article for further references. > >>Therefore - even if some horse-bones >> should be found in the Indus culture - the horse does not seem to have >> played any prominent role in the minds of its people. This makes a very >> strong contrast to Vedic culture as reflected in the Rgveda. > >But all we know about the Vedic culture comes from translations of >the Rgveda. We don't have similar translations of the Indus texts. >There are very fewt examples of horse iconography in the period of a few >centuries after the fall of the IVC. Horses turn up in the early >Sunga works, but certainly nothing on the scale of Scythian culture. >But most importantly there is nothing even slightly suggestive of a >nomadic horse culture at any archaeological sites. No signs of >Kurgan or related cultures. > >The only suggestions we have is that horses were introduced into >India gradually. And that they played a minimal role in the material >culture. > But there can be no doubt that they played a major role on the ideological level with the early Indo-Aryans. You have still to convince me that they played a similar role in the Indus culture. As long as we cannot read the Indus texts, you may assume anything about their contents, of course. But does not the absence of the horse among the animals of the figurative tradition of that culture mean anything to you? Best regards, Georg v. Simson From jds10 at CUS.CAM.AC.UK Thu May 7 16:14:23 1998 From: jds10 at CUS.CAM.AC.UK (John Smith) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 17:14:23 +0100 Subject: computers and Indology In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038296.23782.8669183133582451248.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Wed, 6 May 1998, Saroja Bhate wrote: > Dear colleagues > I have been asked to make a presentation on the use of computers for > research in Indology in a multinational meet. I will be grateful > to you all for whatever information on this subject.Your ideas and > suggestions are also most welcome.Needless to say that I will be > consulting the Indology website for initial information.Thanks in advance. > Saroja Bhate I would obviously stress the ability of computers to aid with the analysis of diction in texts such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, as I said in the talk I gave in your department last year. But there are other things computers can do to help Indologists also. It is not that they can do things which human beings cannot do; rather it's that they can do things blindingly fast which would take a human being a very long time -- sometimes so long that it isn't worth doing. Examples: 1. Metrical analysis. I wrote a little program that reads in MBh text and outputs a scanned version of it, using "-" for long (guru) and "u" for short (laghu). It takes a few minutes to complete the processing of the entire text; once this is done, you can search the result for interesting patterns, ask the computer to print every line beginning "- - - -", or whatever. 2. Indexing. The computer can be asked to create, say, a word index of a text. In practice this is getting less and less necessary: if the text is stored on a computer anyway, it's probably quicker to search through it looking for the word that interests you than it is to consult the index. 3. Concordancing. A more sophisticated version of (2), and less likely to become redundant. 4. Analysis of diction. It takes my slow old computer 15 seconds to report on every occurrence of a word or phrase in the MBh. This makes it possible to do serious study of the use of repeated phraseology, something which has been crying out to be done for fifty years, but which has been impossible for purely practical reasons (human beings don't live long enough). 5. In the Indian context, one may mention specifically the benefits of getting the indigenous scripts properly supported in computer representation. Not only does this allow the easy production of high-quality printed copy (as well as other benefits, such as those mentioned above); according to the CDAC people, it has also safeguarded the scripts themselves: "It was a significant achievement of DoE [Department of Electronics, which developed the ISCII standard for representation of Indian languages] to have brought about a standard for Indian languages before Romanisation could have been thrust on India as has happened in many other countries." They may well be right. There are no doubt other uses, but these are the ones which come soonest to my mind. John Smith -- Dr J. D. Smith * jds10 at cam.ac.uk Faculty of Oriental Studies * Tel. 01223 335140 (Switchboard 01223 335106) Sidgwick Avenue * Fax 01223 335110 Cambridge CB3 9DA * http://bombay.oriental.cam.ac.uk/index.html -- Dr J. D. Smith * jds10 at cam.ac.uk Faculty of Oriental Studies * Tel. 01223 335140 (Switchboard 01223 335106) Sidgwick Avenue * Fax 01223 335110 Cambridge CB3 9DA * http://bombay.oriental.cam.ac.uk/index.html From ycrnn14 at UCL.AC.UK Fri May 8 04:14:42 1998 From: ycrnn14 at UCL.AC.UK (Jibunnessa) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 21:14:42 -0700 Subject: Wet nurses... Message-ID: <161227038336.23782.3133413981884458341.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Indologists Recently reading a paper by Warren Harvey, I came across something which had never occurred to me before, but the images of which will probably remain etched in my thoughts for some time. It s not anything to do with India, but my discussion will be. Anyway, his paper is largely about dental & social conditions in London between 1696-1852, and in it, he states that, due to the unsanitary water conditions, ale drinking was very common and people were even often prescribed this by doctors. However, what I found really interesting was that elderly and sick patients at hospitals, such as St. Bartholomew s, were given wet nurses as a safe drinking alternative to water. I suppose, from a purely pragmatic perspective, this was a good idea! But, it does beg the question So what did the wet nurses drink? Also, was this a quaint London custom? Or was it practised in other places/cultures as well, ...such as in India? Does anyone know of any historical/textual references to this in the Indian context? All fascinating comments welcome! All the best Jibunnessa From wayneb at DNS3.UNIPISSING.CA Fri May 8 02:06:45 1998 From: wayneb at DNS3.UNIPISSING.CA (Wayne Borody) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 22:06:45 -0400 Subject: Plato in Sanskrit Message-ID: <161227038345.23782.6903521293735001791.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Colleagues: Is anyone aware of Sanskrit translations of Plato's dialogues (especially translations from the Greek) either in print or in the process of being translated ? Please reply to wayneb at dns3.unipissing.ca. Thank you, Wayne Borody Dept. of Philosophy Nipissing University North Bay, Ontario From sristi at AD1.VSNL.NET.IN Thu May 7 17:57:57 1998 From: sristi at AD1.VSNL.NET.IN (anil k gupta) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 23:27:57 +0530 Subject: Indo-Aryan im/e-migration (scholarly debate) Message-ID: <161227038315.23782.10856834955000162971.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I will be very grateful for examples of animal domesticated in one region introduced in naother region without human migration, Are you referring to trade in animals and distinguishing that through permanent migration? in that case it is ok anil -----Original Message----- From: Paul K. Manansala To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Date: Tuesday, May 05, 1998 8:07 AM Subject: Re: Indo-Aryan im/e-migration (scholarly debate) >> From: "Jan E.M. Houben" > >> [sorry for the previous, incomplete message] >> >> In March, taking up a suggestion by George Thompson that we should try to make >> a discussion on "Indo-Aryan im-e-migration" more "scholarly" (and hence more >> fruitful), I tried to collect some basic relevant literature on the issue and >> proposed to look for some basic arguments. As an example I referred to the >> 'horse-argument' as formulated by Parpola, and asked whether any >> alternative/additional arguments were known which could serve as basic topics >> to be discussed in a future, more scholarly discussion on the subject. A lively >> discussion on the horse-argument followed immediately, but no-one came with an >> alternative or additional argument for Indo-Aryan im/e-migration. So, besides >> the complex and much-disputed linguistic evidence, only the horse argument (in >> my view still valid, though open to deconstruction according to others) serves >> to link speakers of Indo-Aryan in India with those in central Asia/Europe? >> > >You're greatly overstating your case, since the idea that horses could >enter India through trade and such is quite possible. Also there is >nothing in particular that connects the earliest IE speakers with >horses. Archaeological evidence suggests domesticated horses >originated in Central Asia, but it does not suggest the language of >the people who did the domesticating. We also have no idea of what >language was spoken by the people who introduced horses to India, >if they were indeed introduced. The ancient Indian horse is genetically >different than the Central Asian horse. > >However, the most important point is that the movement of horses or >any other domesticated animal does not imply the migration of people. >There are numerous examples of this in history. In fact, it happens >all the time today with new breeds of domesticated animals imported >from one country to the next. > >Regards, >Paul Kekai Manansala > From bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Thu May 7 18:49:29 1998 From: bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (Bh. Krishnamurti) Date: Thu, 07 May 98 23:49:29 +0500 Subject: Indo-Aryan im/e-migration (scholarly debate) Message-ID: <161227038318.23782.1337777126749172804.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 07:44 07/05/98 EDT, you wrote: >In a message dated 98-05-04 23:26:06 EDT, bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN writes: > ><< Apparently the present generation of Indologists are not familiar with the > arguments of Jules Bloch why OIA has ghoTa(ka) 'horse' > Hi. ghoDaa, etc., > which has no IE-etymology (unlike Skt. as'va-). He derives ghoTa- (with > guNa) from a root *ghuT- which he derives from Pre-Drav. *ghutr-. He then > derives Ta.kutirai, Ma.kutira, Ka. kudire and Te. guR(R)amu, Konda guRam > 'horse' from the root *ghutr- saying that pre-Dravidian had not only voicing > contrast but also aspirates! ( I have given references to Jules Bloch's > article in my TVB).The Dravidian words are quite ancient and were not > borrowed from anyother known langauge. He suggested that Telugu preserved > the PDr. voiced stop while the South Drav languages had devoiced g- to k-. > He also derived Skt. gaard-abha- 'donkey' and Ta. kaZutai, Ka. katte, Te. > gaaDida from *gard- again Te. preserving PDr. voiced stop. Apart from the > linguistic ingenuity of these etymologies, which not many scholars (maybe > nobody) questioned then, at the semantic and cultural level,this hypothesis > presupposes that 'the horse' could be native to pre-Aryan India! >> > >I forgot to add the following in my earlier posting. > >That "not many scholars (may be nobody)" questioned Bloch's views is not >correct. This is what Dr. Krishnamurti says in Telugu Verbal Bases, p.24. >"Caldwell's assumption that there were no initial voiced plosives in PDr. as >reflected in Ta. and Ma. was contradicted by Jules Bloch on the basis of the >history of a few words like ghOTaka horse and drAviDa name of a people, which, >according to him, were originally native to Dravidian. This view rceived >support from some quarters and contradiction from others. Burrow argued for >Caldwell and analytically put forth evidence to show that voicing of initial >stops appearing in some of the Dravidian languages, was only secondary and did >not represent PDr." > >Regards >S. Palaniappan > Mr. palaniappan: You see I do not read what I wrote long time ago! Thanks! Bh.K. end Bh. Krishnamurti H.No. 12-13-1233, "Bhaarati" Street No.9, Tarnaka Hyderabad 500 017, A.P. India Telephone (R)(40)701 9665 E-mail: From apandey at U.WASHINGTON.EDU Fri May 8 10:23:28 1998 From: apandey at U.WASHINGTON.EDU (Anshuman Pandey) Date: Fri, 08 May 98 03:23:28 -0700 Subject: computers and Indology In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038363.23782.2855537382005625416.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > It is possible much more straightforwardly if the text in question is > coded in ISCII: the software can simply switch from script to script on > demand. If you haven't yet done so, download ALP Personal from CDAC's > website and play with it: it's a reduced version of a DOS-based word > processor modeled on WordStar, and thus somewhat ancient in look and feel, ... Hello John, I can't seem to find the CDAC website, I've checked the site from where Leaplite is available, but I can't find ALP? Do you happen to recall the URL for ALP? Thank you! Best regards, Anshuman From apandey at U.WASHINGTON.EDU Fri May 8 10:24:15 1998 From: apandey at U.WASHINGTON.EDU (Anshuman Pandey) Date: Fri, 08 May 98 03:24:15 -0700 Subject: computers and Indology (fwd) Message-ID: <161227038361.23782.8351784160423228725.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Apologies for sending a private message to the list. -Pandey > It is possible much more straightforwardly if the text in question is > coded in ISCII: the software can simply switch from script to script on > demand. If you haven't yet done so, download ALP Personal from CDAC's > website and play with it: it's a reduced version of a DOS-based word > processor modeled on WordStar, and thus somewhat ancient in look and feel, ... Hello John, I can't seem to find the CDAC website, I've checked the site from where Leaplite is available, but I can't find ALP? Do you happen to recall the URL for ALP? Thank you! Best regards, Anshuman From dargie at CLTR.UQ.EDU.AU Thu May 7 22:14:29 1998 From: dargie at CLTR.UQ.EDU.AU (David Dargie) Date: Fri, 08 May 98 08:14:29 +1000 Subject: computers and Indology In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038342.23782.10678655871011176250.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Thu, 7 May 1998, Anshuman Pandey wrote: > > 7) Saw elegant fonts for about 400 symbols used in Indus writings > > developed by Prof. Parpola. If used widely, many can suggest; > > may speed up the cracking the script, language. > > Aid in decipherment? How? Obviously, one benefit is that of instant recognition of a character or word once it has been recognised initially by a computer. As far as decipherment is concerned, I believe that a statistical methodology may help. For example, from my research it is clear that from a statistical point of view, `function' words invariably occur quite frequently, `theme' words occur less frequently, and specific context words occur less frequently still. There is no reason to expect that (meaningful) text from the Indus civilization does not follow this general paradigm. A similar method may be applied to the phonology and grammar of the Indus script. Of course, all of this processing could be achieved by hand, but it is better done by a machine while the user sips a cup of tea. :) My PhD research consists of an authorship analysis of samples of texts attributed to Shankara. I hope to show compelling statistical evidence why some of the Shankara attributions are more dubious than others. My trusty computer is an indispensible tool in this project. Regards David Dargie Centre for Language Teaching and Research University of Queensland Australia From jds10 at CUS.CAM.AC.UK Fri May 8 09:08:39 1998 From: jds10 at CUS.CAM.AC.UK (John Smith) Date: Fri, 08 May 98 10:08:39 +0100 Subject: computers and Indology In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038358.23782.9756168562486586362.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Thu, 7 May 1998, Anshuman Pandey wrote: > On Thu, 7 May 1998, N. Ganesan wrote: > > > 5) Font translations: With the touch of a button, the tyranny of script > > can become a thing of the past. Translations from Sanskrit, Tamil etc., > > can provide the original text in native script and roman with diacritics > > eg., Saivagamas from Pondichery French Inst. can be provided in grantha, > > diacritical roman, nagari, etc., It will be easier to switch from one > > script to another from font-neutral files. For eg., a famous hindi novel > > into gujarati script, a malayalam work into tamil etc., can be done > > easily. Bilingual editions are possible. > > This is already possible using 7 and 8 bit transliterated texts and TeX > packages. The only hinderance to full complicity is the lack of a > standardized transliteration scheme. ISO/TC46/SC2/WG12 is discussing this > standardization, which hopefully will result in a standard based on > current practice. It is possible much more straightforwardly if the text in question is coded in ISCII: the software can simply switch from script to script on demand. If you haven't yet done so, download ALP Personal from CDAC's website and play with it: it's a reduced version of a DOS-based word processor modeled on WordStar, and thus somewhat ancient in look and feel, but it does a stunning job. A Sanskrit text can be displayed in Devanagari, then converted at the touch of a key to Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, etc., etc. Text entry is also far more rationally handled than is the case when a word processor is simply given a Nagari font to use. I assume (hope?) Apple's Indian Language Kit works in a similar way, but I haven't ever seen it. CDAC's more recent Windows product, lEAP, certainly does. John Smith -- Dr J. D. Smith * jds10 at cam.ac.uk Faculty of Oriental Studies * Tel. 01223 335140 (Switchboard 01223 335106) Sidgwick Avenue * Fax 01223 335110 Cambridge CB3 9DA * http://bombay.oriental.cam.ac.uk/index.html From thillaud at UNICE.FR Fri May 8 08:13:52 1998 From: thillaud at UNICE.FR (Dominique.Thillaud) Date: Fri, 08 May 98 10:13:52 +0200 Subject: Horses In-Reply-To: <199805061804.LAA02490@dry.jps.net> Message-ID: <161227038373.23782.11922209410188920852.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Paul Kekai Manansala ask: >What part did the horse play in Greek or Persian culture? Very important in Greece. Horses are present in many myths and we know their names: pEgasos (bellerophontEs), arIOn (adrastos), xanthos (akhilleus), boukephalos (alexandros ho megas), &c. Two Gods are concerned with horses, hermEs and, when yoked, poseidOn. The root hippo- is largely used in anthroponyms, mythical (hippolytos/E, hippodameia) or historical (hipparkhos, hippokratEs, philippos). The Trojan War is framed by two horse's sacrifices: the first for the oath of Helen's suitors, the last being the famous Trojan Horse. If I remember well (no time to verify), Xerxes (or Darios?) gave a great sacrifice of white horses (drowning them in a river) when going against the Greece. And Herodotos give us several Persian names such hustaspEs (viztAspa) or aspathinEs where the Medic root asp- (= Skr. azv-) appears clearly. In the early Achemenid inscriptions (Ariaramnes, Arsames, Darius I), we find frequently the formula "this Persian people, having good horses (uvaspa = Ved. svazva), having good men" (again, the Medic or Avestic form aspa is prefered to the Old Persian asa, showing perhaps an outdated formula). Regards, Dominique Dominique THILLAUD Universite' de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Fri May 8 16:18:43 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Fri, 08 May 98 10:18:43 -0600 Subject: computers and Indology Message-ID: <161227038368.23782.7681280478044758157.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> What about OCR in the future? I saw once here about more possible approach; instead of scanning, read it to a computer. It will make a document. Using Verbot or something like that. Doctors tell their instructions, IBM has a product to convert into text files. May be one day, we will be able to read an Indic text to make it into a plain text file. What is CDIAL? Never heard of it. Is it a kind of historical dictionary? For what Indian languages, CDIAL is available? Regards, N. Ganesan From garzilli at SHORE.NET Fri May 8 08:35:04 1998 From: garzilli at SHORE.NET (Enrica Garzilli) Date: Fri, 08 May 98 10:35:04 +0200 Subject: computers and Indology Message-ID: <161227038355.23782.8944913912714198244.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> E-journals in Indology should not be forgotten. Some titles? The excellent *Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies* (http://www.shore.net/~india/ejvs), the *International Journal of Tantric Studies* (http://www.shore.net/~india/ijts/), the *Journal of South Asia Women Studies* (http://www.shore.net/~india/jsaws/), all active since April 1995. Enrica:) -- Dr. Enrica Garzilli University of Perugia (ITALY) Istituto di Linguistica Piazza Morlacchi, 11 06100 Perugia Tel/Fax: +39-75-585 3755 (office) Editor-in-Chief, Intl. Journal of Tantric Studies (www.shore.net/~india/ijts/) Journal of S. Asia Women Studies (www.shore.net/~india/jsaws/) ************************************************************** From thillaud at UNICE.FR Fri May 8 09:10:21 1998 From: thillaud at UNICE.FR (Dominique.Thillaud) Date: Fri, 08 May 98 11:10:21 +0200 Subject: Horses In-Reply-To: <9f8f8fc8.355130b5@aol.com> Message-ID: <161227038376.23782.1508383999905133460.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> S. Palaniappan wrote: >Another interesting fact is that apart from the horse, the elephant is also >called 'mAn2'. When coupled with the fact that CT often talks about the Aryan >language spoken by the elephant trainers/drivers, it leads one to wonder if >the training of wild elephants was an Aryan contribution? or Did the >semantics of 'mAn2' change? > >In Sanskrit, which category does the elephant belong to?" I would like to know. I remember the droNa's son azvatthAman "having the strength of a horse" who share his name with an elephant... I'd like to take advantage of this return of the elephant to ask again if the elephant is renowned in Indian tradition for a specially high sexual power. I'm particularly interested by the ability to have many intercourses. Not only reality but also litterary, or even popular, metaphors would be useful to me. Regards, Dominique Dominique THILLAUD Universite' de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France From tcoop at UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU Fri May 8 18:13:06 1998 From: tcoop at UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU (Tom Cooper) Date: Fri, 08 May 98 11:13:06 -0700 Subject: RupparUpaka Message-ID: <161227038381.23782.10229151923142708453.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I'm researching the history of shadow puppets, and a possible early documentation occurs in Theri-gatha #394. The word is "rupparUpaka" and is translated as "shadow play" [Schattenspiel] in Jacob, but as "puppet show" in Rhys David and Norman. Oldenberg & Pischel noted that the exact meaning is unclear. Does anyone know of any further scholarship on the word that might shed light on the question of whether this word should be regarded as a reference to shadow puppets? From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Fri May 8 10:05:21 1998 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Fri, 08 May 98 12:05:21 +0200 Subject: computers and Indology Message-ID: <161227038366.23782.12819872028845561757.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 08:14 08.05.98 +1000, you wrote: >On Thu, 7 May 1998, Anshuman Pandey wrote: > >> > 7) Saw elegant fonts for about 400 symbols used in Indus writings >> > developed by Prof. Parpola. If used widely, many can suggest; >> > may speed up the cracking the script, language. >> >> Aid in decipherment? How? > >Obviously, one benefit is that of instant recognition of a character or >word once it has been recognised initially by a computer. > >As far as decipherment is concerned, I believe that a statistical >methodology may help. For example, from my research it is clear that from >a statistical point of view, `function' words invariably occur quite >frequently, `theme' words occur less frequently, and specific context >words occur less frequently still. There is no reason to expect that >(meaningful) text from the Indus civilization does not follow this general >paradigm. A similar method may be applied to the phonology and grammar of >the Indus script. Of course, all of this processing could be achieved by >hand, but it is better done by a machine while the user sips a cup of tea. >:) Interesting point, David. However, a word of caution here: When I did national service in the Norwegian army, I was taught to be a cryptographer. We learnt that to make decipherment difficult for the enemy, manual codes often had several representations of the most common letters, so that statistics shouldn't be made too easy. (E.g.: the letter e is the most common letter in the Norwegian language. Therefore this letter could be represented in the code key by, say, x b and t. I think the same may obtain with a script like the Harappan one. Several signs may represent the same set of characters or concepts. I think, by the way, that Parpola has used statistical techniques on the Indus script, but I am not certain about it. Lars Martin Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Tel: +47 22 32 12 19 Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no Mobile phone: 90 91 91 45 From mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM Fri May 8 21:48:07 1998 From: mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM (S Krishna) Date: Fri, 08 May 98 14:48:07 -0700 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038387.23782.1119804261888159361.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> N.Ganesan writes: >Well, Dominique. On a spring day, Siva and Parvati >could not overcome passion. They transform themselves >to elephants. Ganesha is born as a result, so says >Sambandhar (fl. 642 AD). > There is a variant of this in Samskr*t mythology i.e. that is different from the usual story of gaNEza being given birth to by pAvati alone.. The story is that pArvati and ziva kept looking at each amorously and their glances intensified. An elephant which was trumpeting nearby drew their attention as a result of which their glances turned in the direction of the elephant. The intense glances which rested on the elephant fused into one and gaNEza was born. I believe this story is from the skandapurANa. I remember reading a verse by kAlidAsa which starts off as "garjanti varSanti" which describes the rainy season( the source is the "r*tu samhAra" I think, though I'm not sure) with the peculiarity that the first line has only verbs and the second line has only nouns ; each noun has a corresponding verb. In this verse, from what I remember there is a reference to "mattagajA:" and one of the verbs refers to "lovemaking". What I would like to know is 1. if this noun-verb combination is valid( i.e. elephants and lovemaking) and 2.the full verse and the source... Regards, Krishna ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM Fri May 8 22:15:03 1998 From: mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM (S Krishna) Date: Fri, 08 May 98 15:15:03 -0700 Subject: Vivekananda &c. Message-ID: <161227038389.23782.3777323610546789611.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > The fragmentation of the Tamil polity > By M.S.S. Pandian > > If the subalternity of certain sections of the > non-Brahmins has led them to drift away from Dravidian > politics, others are doing so exactly for the opposite > reason. The socially and materially advanced sections of > the non-Brahmins look at Dravidian politics as no longer > relevant to their newly emerging desires. >> I fail to understand what is so "NEW" about this process..The process described above w.r.t. "advanced" non-Brahmins is the very thing that is described by the sociologist M.N.Srinivas as "samskrtization"- this feature has also existed in Tamil Nadu before and during the DK, DMK inspired stuff and there has always been a non-Brahmin class, (however tiny) that has always "BRahminized" it's ways and has ocassionally beaten the Brahmins at their own game!. As an example, when a proposal for introducing only Tamil in the temples was introduced in the 50s, the loudest protests came not from any of the Brahmins in the legaslative assembly but from minjUr bhaktavatsalam, a veLLAla. Likewise, the family of O.V.Alagesan, the ex-minister has rubbed shoulders with the kanci paramAcArya more than many Brahmin families in TN and probably all the Brahmin families put together. Washbrook( in his book about the late 19th-20th century South India) gives examples of the dealings and doings of Justice Party leaders( including the redoubtable piTTi tyAgarAya ceTTi) and posits that the anti-Brahminism in these gentlemen was more a political ploy than any genuine bitterness against the Brahmins. He says that when it suited their purpose, they i.e. the non-Brahmin elite were willing not only to hob-nob with the Brahmins but could also be more Brahmin than the Brahmins themselves. > > In their new-found confidence, they no longer view > Brahminism as threatening. In other words, they are > today willing collaborators in the agenda of the Tamil > Brahmins who, after being politically sidelined for > years in the State, are attempting a comeback through a > pan-Hindu mobilisation. A number of key functionaries of > Hindu communal organisations in the State are from these > castes while the leadership remains with the Brahmins. > [...] With all due respect for the analytical skills of tiru pANDiyan.. Are the AIADMK and Congress(I) "Hindu communal arganizations"? The former has been led by JayalalitA, a Brahmin and the later has fielded candidates like maNi sankar iyer, who has made a namefor himself thru volume if not political stature. SubramaNiam svAmi, another brAhmin, has hop-skip-jumped quite a few parties at the state level, managing to make himself a "leader" in every case and is currently with the janatA. Are all these parties communal? I doubt if the representation of Brahmins in the "Communal organizations"( hindu munnani?) is any higher than it is in other parties.... The problem with the self-proclaimed secular crowd in India is that THEY make a bigger issue out of caste than any communal party would.. REgards, Krishna ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Fri May 8 21:55:05 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Fri, 08 May 98 15:55:05 -0600 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038385.23782.4285282545644247337.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Well, Dominique. On a spring day, Siva and Parvati could not overcome passion. They transform themselves to elephants. Ganesha is born as a result, so says Sambandhar (fl. 642 AD). This origin myth of Ganesa is different from the majority of tamil/sanskrit stories on Ganesa's birth. You must hear this tEvaaram sung by an Otuvaar in a "siva temple to realize the power. piTi atan2 uru umai koLa miku kari atu vaTikoTu tan2atu aTi vazipaTumavar iTar kaTi kaNapati vara aruLin2an2 miku koTai vaTivin2ar payil valivalam uRai iRaiyE. gajAnana sevaka, N. Ganesan From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Sat May 9 00:10:03 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Fri, 08 May 98 16:10:03 -0800 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038391.23782.9397452352177497008.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dominik Wujastyk wrote: > On Fri, 8 May 1998, DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA wrote: > > > [...] But I > > suspect that it is the untiring capacity to gallop of a horse that is > > linked with the sexual activity of men rather than the actual sexual > > prowess of horses. > > If you have seen a stallion mating with a mare you don't forget it easily. > Galloping is a Sunday snooze by comparison. > Yes, but have you seen mating elephants? (linking to another post) Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From spmittal at GIASDL01.VSNL.NET.IN Fri May 8 11:06:08 1998 From: spmittal at GIASDL01.VSNL.NET.IN (Surya P. Mittal) Date: Fri, 08 May 98 16:36:08 +0530 Subject: The Great Tope of Manikyala Message-ID: <161227038405.23782.11363221325857236380.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> From: D.K. AGENCIES (P) LTD. E-MAIL TRANSMISSION Our Ref. No.: EME/FI-4534-98 May 8, 1998 To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK INDOLOGY Dear Sir, The following books may be relevant: 1. Cunningham, Alexander, Sir, 1814-1893. The Bhilsa topes, or, Buddhist monuments of central India : comprising a brief historical sketch of the rise, progress and decline of Buddhism ; with an account of the opening and examination of the various groups of topes around Bhilsa / Alexander Cunningham. -- New Delhi : Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1997. xxxvi, 370 p., xxxiii leaves of plates : ill., map ; 23 cm. Includes inscriptions in Pali (roman) Originally published: London : Smith, Elder & Co., 1854. Includes reproduction of the original t.p. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 81-215-0759-6 $45.80 DK-103823 2. Snodgrass, Adrian, 1931- The symbolism of the stupa / Adrian Snodgrass. - 1st Indian ed. - Delhi : Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1992. Ix, 469 p. ill. ; 25 cm. Reprint. Originally published: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1985. Bibliography : p. 381-407. Includes index. $ 25.00 DK-77903 3. Vacissara Thera. [Thupavamsa. English]. The legend of the topes = Thupavamsa / [by Vacissara Thera] ; translated into English by Bimala Churn Law. - Calcutta : Asiatic Society, 1993. [12], 101 p., [1] leaf of plates : ill. ; 24 cm. -- (Bibliotheca Indica : a collection of oriental works ; work no. 268). Translated from Pali. Author statement from pref. Originally published: 1945. Classical work on the life of Buddha with a detailed account of the topes of India and Ceylon, erected over the bodily relics of Buddha with their later history. Includes bibliographical references (11th-12th prelim. page). Includes index. $5.40 (pbk.) DK-85867 Thanking you, Yours sincerely Surya P. Mittal surya at pobox.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From: D.K. AGENCIES (P) LTD. Fax: (+91-11) 5647081, 5648053 A/15-17 Mohan Garden Phones: (011) 5648066, 5648067 Najafgarh Road Orders ->E-mailto:ordproc at dkagencies.com New Delhi - 110 059. E-mailto:custserv at dkagencies.com Our Website : http://www.dkagencies.com Online Search : http://www.dkagencies.com/booksearch ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jaap Pranger wrote: > > I've not been keeping up with the literature on (buddhist) > archaeology > in Pakistan for the last fifteen years, but am still being haunted > by an old question: > > What has become of the 'Great Tope' near the village of Manikyala, > located to the south-east of Rawalpindi/Islamabad (33' 28", > 75'15"), > since it was "discovered" at the beginning of the last century? > > I think a remark of Debala Mitra (Buddhist Monuments, 1971) on > the old finds in this stupa (coins of Kanishka and Huvishka), is > the > last information I have about it. > > A reasonable state of preservation of this stupa would be one the > main reasons for an eventual trip to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. > > I guess there may be more appropriate Lists or Groups for dropping > my question. Most lists about Buddhisme however seem to be devoted > more to spiritual matters than just old mounds of bricks. > > For any more recent information on this stupa, references to it, > or suggestions for other platforms to put my question, > I will be very grateful, > > Jaap Pranger > From jds10 at CUS.CAM.AC.UK Fri May 8 15:43:52 1998 From: jds10 at CUS.CAM.AC.UK (John Smith) Date: Fri, 08 May 98 16:43:52 +0100 Subject: computers and Indology In-Reply-To: <01IWSCRQ2T76004FBX@cl.uh.edu> Message-ID: <161227038371.23782.85008324387775125.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Fri, 8 May 1998, N. Ganesan wrote: > What is CDIAL? Never heard of it. > Is it a kind of historical dictionary? > For what Indian languages, CDIAL is available? Comparative Dictionary of the Indo-Aryan Languages, by R. L. Turner, Oxford, 1966. Indexes 1969; Phonetic Analysis 1971; Addenda and Corrigenda 1985. A classic. I believe work on a volume of further addenda is under way. John Smith -- Dr J. D. Smith * jds10 at cam.ac.uk Faculty of Oriental Studies * Tel. 01223 335140 (Switchboard 01223 335106) Sidgwick Avenue * Fax 01223 335110 Cambridge CB3 9DA * http://bombay.oriental.cam.ac.uk/index.html From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Fri May 8 18:49:32 1998 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Fri, 08 May 98 19:49:32 +0100 Subject: Horses In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.32.19980508182735.006a296c@hd1.vsnl.net.in> Message-ID: <161227038383.23782.9239644534063688373.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Fri, 8 May 1998, DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA wrote: > [...] But I > suspect that it is the untiring capacity to gallop of a horse that is > linked with the sexual activity of men rather than the actual sexual > prowess of horses. If you have seen a stallion mating with a mare you don't forget it easily. Galloping is a Sunday snooze by comparison. Dominik From mmdesh at UMICH.EDU Sat May 9 00:41:25 1998 From: mmdesh at UMICH.EDU (Madhav Deshpande) Date: Fri, 08 May 98 20:41:25 -0400 Subject: SamskRtasubodhinI Message-ID: <161227038399.23782.18356937489360636321.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Indology Members, I have received a number of messages from different colleagues indicating that my Sanskrit textbook SamskRtasubodhinI is out of print. Just to clarify the situation, the book is not yet out of print and is still available from the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Michigan. Their phone number is: (734) 764-0352. Their email address is: csseas at umich.edu All the best, Madhav Deshpande From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Sat May 9 01:03:07 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Fri, 08 May 98 21:03:07 -0400 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038402.23782.13376612712031992311.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 98-05-08 16:55:59 EDT, GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU writes: << This origin myth of Ganesa is different from the majority of tamil/sanskrit stories on Ganesa's birth. You must hear this tEvaaram sung by an Otuvaar in a "siva temple to realize the power. piTi atan2 uru umai koLa miku kari atu vaTikoTu tan2atu aTi vazipaTumavar iTar kaTi kaNapati vara aruLin2an2 miku koTai vaTivin2ar payil valivalam uRai iRaiyE. >> This origin myth is the subject of a lesson in the Tamil Reader authored by James Lindholm and K. Paramasivam. This book was used in the '70s and early '80s in US universities that offered courses in Tamil. I do not know if it is still being used. Regards S. Palaniappan From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Fri May 8 18:27:35 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Fri, 08 May 98 23:27:35 +0500 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038379.23782.1392175835711095610.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 11:10 AM 5/8/98 +0200, you wrote: > I'd like to take advantage of this return of the elephant to ask >again if the elephant is renowned in Indian tradition for a specially high >sexual power. I'm particularly interested by the ability to have many >intercourses. Not only reality but also litterary, or even popular, >metaphors would be useful to me. > Regards, >Dominique > >Dominique THILLAUD >Universite' de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France > > As far as I know there is no reference in sanskrit literature for specially high sexual powers of elephants. Horse is slightly connected with sexual power. Aphrodisiacs are known as 'vAjIkaraNa auSadha'. But I suspect that it is the untiring capacity to gallop of a horse that is linked with the sexual activity of men rather than the actual sexual prowess of horses. The word vAjIkaraNa can be interpreted another way also. That which gives men the capacity for men to ride women as though they are horses. Anology between sexual intercourse and horse rinding is ancient and pancultural. regards, sarma. From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Sat May 9 01:07:37 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Sat, 09 May 98 06:07:37 +0500 Subject: RupparUpaka Message-ID: <161227038395.23782.17442550575059985366.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 11:13 AM 5/8/98 -0700, you wrote: >I'm researching the history of shadow puppets, and a possible early >documentation occurs in Theri-gatha #394. The word is "rupparUpaka" and is >translated as "shadow play" [Schattenspiel] in Jacob, but as "puppet show" >in Rhys David and Norman. Oldenberg & Pischel noted that the exact meaning >is unclear. > >Does anyone know of any further scholarship on the word that might shed >light on the question of whether this word should be regarded as a >reference to shadow puppets? > > rUpa rUpaka (play of forms) might have been tranformed into rupparUpaka. regards, sarma. From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Sat May 9 01:07:43 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Sat, 09 May 98 06:07:43 +0500 Subject: horses Message-ID: <161227038397.23782.9949365548343659437.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Here is some Indian Mythology saMjJa is the daughter of vizvakarma and the wife of sUrya. She could not stand the scorching heat of her husband and decided to run away leaving her two sons and daughter, manu, yama and yami. She created an exact replica of herself (known as chAya) and leaving her as substitute, ran away. sUrya not knowing the difference (What sort of jagatcakSu is he I do not know. This shows that even gods cannot unravel the mysteries of their wives.) lived with her and they had two sons and a daughter, zani, another manu and tapati. chAya was a replica of saMjJa only in body not in heart. She started ill treating her step children. yama complained to his father. On the stern demand of her husband chAya related the whole story. Then sUrya using his divine powers knew that saMjJa is in the form of a horse was doing tapasyA in a forest. He himself took the form of a horse and mated with her. azvani dEvatas and rEvant were born. Later vizvakarma mounted his son-in-law on a lathe and cut down one-eighth of him to reduce the light and heat, so as to to make him bearable for his daughter. With the turnings he made weapons for the dEvas like the discus for viSNu, trident for ziva etc. Thus the divine Physicians azvani twins are born. regards, sarma. From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Sat May 9 01:37:35 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Sat, 09 May 98 06:37:35 +0500 Subject: horses Message-ID: <161227038403.23782.7681769833685062453.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Here is an addedndum. azvani dEvAs are expert in their trade. They know how to make old people young. This is better than vAjikaraNa which increases only sexual prowess. Such medicines are called rasAyanAs (I hope I am correct). They made the an old sage chyavana young to the delight of his young wife sukanya. regards, sarma. From ramakris at EROLS.COM Sat May 9 11:42:17 1998 From: ramakris at EROLS.COM (Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian) Date: Sat, 09 May 98 07:42:17 -0400 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038410.23782.13075906769425570449.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Lars Martin Fosse wrote: > >Yes, but have you seen mating elephants? (linking to another post) > > But REALLY guys! How do you spend your Sundays?? You should watch the dicovery channel :-). See the episode on blue whales :-) :-). Rama. From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Sat May 9 14:09:38 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Sat, 09 May 98 08:09:38 -0600 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038412.23782.1267457547548251906.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> To an outsider, horse looks important in ancient Persia. A. Cotterell, The Penguin Encyclopaedia of Classical Civilizations, 1993 p.153 has a cylinder seal with cuneiform letters. In this seal, Darius I of the Achamenid empire around 520 BC is shown hunting lions. Two palm trees are there. The King of Kings is shooting an arrow from chariot. There are horses, charioteer, etc., See also, Jaan Puhvel, Comparative mythology, Johns Hopkins univ. press, 1989. Some chapter names: The concepts of Indo-European and Indo-Iranian, Vedic India, Ancient Iran, Ancient Greece, Rome, Celts, HORSE and ruler, ... Jivanji Jamshedji Modi (1854-1933) The bas-relief of Behram Gour at Naksh-i-Rustam and the horse in ancient Iran. Bombay: Educational society's steam press, 1895 Bahram was dead at 438. Regards, N. Ganesan From yanom at KSUVX0.KYOTO-SU.AC.JP Sat May 9 00:30:32 1998 From: yanom at KSUVX0.KYOTO-SU.AC.JP (Michio Yano) Date: Sat, 09 May 98 09:30:32 +0900 Subject: jtotisa_texts Message-ID: <161227038393.23782.11306209428346382621.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear colleagues, I have upgraded the jyotisa directory of my ftp server: ccftp.kyoto-su.ac.jp pub/doc/sanskrit/jyotisa where the following files are available --- Mathematics and matmematical astronomy: abh.gnt AryabhaTIya of AryabhaTa bg.gnt BIjagaNIta of BhAskara bss.gnt Mathematical chapters of BrAhmasphuTasiddhAnta of Brahmagupta lil.gnt LILAvatI of BhAskara which we owe to Prof.Takao Hayashi, Doshisha University, Kyoto Astrology: bj.jyt BRhajjAtaka of VarAhamihira bs.jyt BRhatsaMhitA of VarAhamihira by.jyt BRhadyogayAtrA of VarAhamihira ty.jyt TikanikayAtrA of VarAhamihira vp.jyt VivAhapaTala of VarAhamihira yy.jyt YogayAtrA of VarAhamihira zka.jyt ZArdUlakarNAvadAna (a part of the DivyAvadAna) These texts were digitalized by Mizue Sugita. We shall continue upgrading our Sanskrit archives. Michio YANO Kyoto Sangyo University yanom at cc.kyoto-su.ac.jp You can visit the archives through my homepage: http://www.kyoto-su.ac.jp/~yanom/ From umadevi at SFO.COM Sat May 9 16:34:04 1998 From: umadevi at SFO.COM (Mary Storm) Date: Sat, 09 May 98 09:34:04 -0700 Subject: Self-sacrifice, funerary temples, and Pallava inscriptions Message-ID: <161227038416.23782.5295253846098176876.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Palaniappa wrote: > > In the course of my research on potters, I have come across this Tamil > inscription on self-sacrifice of Pallava times. I do not know if she has it > already. The reference is SII vol.12, no.106. It also has a picture of the > sculpture also. > > "This inscription of Kampavarman, dated in the 20th year, is engraved above > the figure of a person holding his severed head by the tuft in his left hand, > while the right hand grasps a sword (Plate VI). It registers a gift of land > made by the UrAr of tiruvAn2mUr to paTTai-pOttan2 for the pious act of > okkoNDanAgan2 okktIndAn2 paTTai-pOttan2, probably his father, in cutting off > flesh from nine parts of his body and finally his head as an offering to the > goddess bhaTAri, i.e., durgA." > > This inscription is in Mallam, Gudur taluk, Nellore District of Andhra > Pradesh. This inscription, set up by the villagers themselves, seems to > indicate that they were Tamil-speaking at that time. Dear S. Palaniappan, I had heard of the existence of the Mallam inscription, but never found the actual stone, nor what was specifically incised. A picture! Great! Thank you very much for sending this information! Mary Storm From Chantal.Lemay at TYPOLITHO.COM Sat May 9 13:42:00 1998 From: Chantal.Lemay at TYPOLITHO.COM (Chantal Lemay) Date: Sat, 09 May 98 09:42:00 -0400 Subject: Shiva Purana Message-ID: <161227039717.23782.1669675109976719277.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I am not a scholar but only conducting a personal research. I previously wrote to a few professors but I received no answer, so I decided to ask the question to this forum. I am trying to find a sanskrit book called Bhaskhar Sangita (or probably Samhita?) supposedly a part of the Shiva Purana, but I couldn't trace this name neither in the Puranas nor in the Vedas. I know that there are rare sanskrit editions of the Shiva Purana that it could be part of. I have been in India last year and asked for this title in many libraries, in Delhi and Varanasi, with no success. I also went to Motilal Banarsidass press in New Delhi but no one could help me, since I didn't found what I was looking for in their english translations of the Puranas. Has anyone heard about this book by any chance? It should contain a dialog between Angiras and Brahma, concerning Angiras' mission on earth and his other incarnations as Vasishta and Vyasa. A sanskrit scholar in India suggested that it could be an excerpt of the Bhrigu Samhita, which is a manuscript of astrological predictions about incarnations of all human beings. This sounds much more esoteric and difficult to trace. Any hint would be greatly appreciated. Chantal Lemay Quebec, Canada Chantal at dynagram.com P.S. I am french speaking. Please excuse my english. From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Sat May 9 08:30:19 1998 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Sat, 09 May 98 10:30:19 +0200 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038407.23782.12759146411592417018.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 16:10 08.05.98 -800, you wrote: > Dominik Wujastyk >wrote: > >> On Fri, 8 May 1998, DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA wrote: >> >> > [...] But I >> > suspect that it is the untiring capacity to gallop of a horse that is >> > linked with the sexual activity of men rather than the actual sexual >> > prowess of horses. >> >> If you have seen a stallion mating with a mare you don't forget it easily. >> Galloping is a Sunday snooze by comparison. >> > >Yes, but have you seen mating elephants? (linking to another post) But REALLY guys! How do you spend your Sundays?? Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Tel: +47 22 32 12 19 Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no Mobile phone: 90 91 91 45 From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Sat May 9 18:50:52 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Sat, 09 May 98 10:50:52 -0800 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038418.23782.5543802730316192590.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> "N. Ganesan" wrote: > To an outsider, horse looks important in ancient Persia. It depends on what you mean by important. I'm not denying the existence of horses. These were also found in Semitic, Chinese, Japanese and other cultures. What I'm saying there is no evidence that horses were ever central to IE material culture. The whole argument here seems to revolve around the presences of horses in India suggesting migration of IE peoples. However, there are many other possible explanations for horses in India. And horse culture does not equate to Indo-European. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Sat May 9 16:14:15 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Sat, 09 May 98 12:14:15 -0400 Subject: Self-sacrifice, funerary temples, and Pallava inscriptions Message-ID: <161227038414.23782.6675656782431140909.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sun, 25 Jan 1998 15:56:11 -0800 Mary Storm wrote: <> In the course of my research on potters, I have come across this Tamil inscription on self-sacrifice of Pallava times. I do not know if she has it already. The reference is SII vol.12, no.106. It also has a picture of the sculpture also. "This inscription of Kampavarman, dated in the 20th year, is engraved above the figure of a person holding his severed head by the tuft in his left hand, while the right hand grasps a sword (Plate VI). It registers a gift of land made by the UrAr of tiruvAn2mUr to paTTai-pOttan2 for the pious act of okkoNDanAgan2 okktIndAn2 paTTai-pOttan2, probably his father, in cutting off flesh from nine parts of his body and finally his head as an offering to the goddess bhaTAri, i.e., durgA." This inscription is in Mallam, Gudur taluk, Nellore District of Andhra Pradesh. This inscription, set up by the villagers themselves, seems to indicate that they were Tamil-speaking at that time. Inscription No.159 of the same volume, deals with a paLLippaTai temple. "vikkiramacOzanallUr is here called paLLippaTai, but in No. 275 of 1913 belonging to jaTAvarman sundara-pANDya I dated in the 14th regnal year it bears the alternative name of akkan2-paLLippaTai. From this it may perhaps be inferred that the remains of the elder sister (akkan2) of vikrama-cOza were interred here and that the village called after the king as 'vikramacOzanallUr' was founded at this locality." Regards S. Palaniappan From mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM Sat May 9 20:40:04 1998 From: mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM (S Krishna) Date: Sat, 09 May 98 13:40:04 -0700 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227038423.23782.11739953238647772607.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I read the translation of a Kannada vacana by dEvara dasimaiya that goes as:(paraphrase mine) A man with a gunny sack which was tattered walked all night long fearing the toll gate By the time he reached the gate, all the grain had fallen thru the holes and all that he had was a torn gunny bag It is thus with the devotion of the faint-hearted, O Ramanatha! My questions are: 1. Can anybody please post the original in Kannada and provide a translation/explanation for the connection between being faint hearted and the analogy given in the first part of the vacana 2. I find that the signature of the poets in the vacanas is seldom their own name, but the name of a God to whom the poem has been dedicated..i.e. basavEzvara uses "kUDala sangamEzvara!" mahAdEviyakka uses "cennamallikArjuna", dasimaiya uses "O rAmanAtha!"...is there any special reason for this? At a subsequent stage, we find that many of the signatures of poets belonging to the "dAsakUTa" school are largely their own names i.e. purandAra dAsa uses "purandara viTThala", viTThala dAsa uses "vijaya viTThala dasa" etc( though kanakadAsa uses "kAginEle kEzava" which is closer to the style of the vIrazaiva school than the dAsakUTa)..What is the reason for the stylistic change? All pointers and help appreciated. Regards, Krishna ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL Sat May 9 20:10:30 1998 From: zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Sat, 09 May 98 18:10:30 -0200 Subject: Koel (and Hobson-Jobson) Message-ID: <161227038421.23782.13285787380727389999.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Replies to msg 07 May 98: indology at listserv.liv.ac.uk (AppuArchie) AC> << >There is an on-going debate in some circles on how to AC> pronounce "WWW". My >favourite, proposed by a New Scientist reader, is "wibble, wibble, >wibble". :-) > >All the best, >Dominik AC> May I propose walla walla walla? I find it easier to say... AC> -- AC> regards AC> n o e l AC> @freenet.carleton.ca AC> >> AC> May I propose 'WAH, WAH, WAH! AC> Thanks. AppuArchie What I haven't seen yet is the simple adoption of what people have been saying in Dutch and German all along: "way way way". Robert Zydenbos zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl From zwilling at FACSTAFF.WISC.EDU Sun May 10 00:36:24 1998 From: zwilling at FACSTAFF.WISC.EDU (Leonard Zwilling) Date: Sat, 09 May 98 19:36:24 -0500 Subject: Plato in Sanskrit Message-ID: <161227038431.23782.4779043136637399981.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> It's been many years since I read it, but isn't it in J.D.Salinger's short story A Fine Day for Banana Fish that brother Seymour, a dropout from an ivy league university (later hooked on the Jesus Prayer, as I recall) was translating Plato into Sanskrit? From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Sun May 10 13:51:13 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 06:51:13 -0700 Subject: Indus valley writing Message-ID: <161227038445.23782.2543044757998235712.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> hi, I agree with Dr.Lars Martin Fosse. Dr. Jha's work is totally unconvincing and offers very shaky methods to cope with the problems posed by the orthography and pictorials. Only a leap of faith can catch up with the claims made. In fact, almost all the decipherment claims so far have not successfully addressed the problem of what Parpola calls "pictorial motifs" and what Mahadevan calls "field symbols" in their concordances. What for instance does the svastika_ glyph connote, in semantic terms? What was the 'rhinoceros' called in those times, by those people on the river valleys of NW India? A comprehensive review of many claims appears in Prof. Gregory Possehl's latest work, "Indus Age: Writing System." (This does not however analyse Dr. Jha's work). Prof. Possehl's conclusion echoes Mahadevan's address to the Indian History Congress: ne_ti, ne_ti:not this, not that. I had earlier prepared a bibliography on the problem of the Indus Script, cited in Parpola's work "Deciphering the Indus Script". (Parpola's claim was also reviewed negatively by Mahadevan, while appreciating the encyclopaedic nature of Parpola's work as an aid to the future decipherers.) Regards, Dr. S. Kalyanaraman ---Lars Martin Fosse wrote: > > At 12:32 10.05.98 -0700, you wrote: > >Dear members, > >It has been alleged in non specialized pblications that the seals of the > >Indus valley have now been deciphered thanks to the work done by a > >Dr.Natwar Jha (apparently a sansckrit scholar and school principal in > >West Bengal) and by a mathematician, named N.S. Rajaram of Bangalore. Is > >this serious and do we laymen have to assume that the Indus scripthas > >now been cracked ? > > No, you don't. From what I have seen of Jha's attempts, they do not convince. > > The matter has been discussed earlier on the list. You may want to rummage > in the archives. > > Best regards, > > Lars Martin Fosse > > > Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse > Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, > 0674 Oslo > > Tel: +47 22 32 12 19 > Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 > Email: lmfosse at online.no > Mobile phone: 90 91 91 45 > == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From AppuArchie at AOL.COM Sun May 10 11:39:35 1998 From: AppuArchie at AOL.COM (AppuArchie) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 07:39:35 -0400 Subject: Mother Message-ID: <161227038436.23782.17194070567058236012.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> To All Mothers Always. By AppuArchie May 10, 1998 Mother A Wonder Anytime! (Copyrights ? 1998, Ramalingam shanmugalingam) Mother is one without a second Repository of seed to create mankind Preserve, nurture and deliver the baby Protect and feed the dependent body Breathed for the embryo, cared and soothed With the musical rhythm of her heart-beat Tick tock in the love dome of the womb. Once out in the open strange sphere With the howl of a cheer or wail of fear The U-cord cut, strange noises greet Newborn and mum are two separate lives The one helpless the other ever helpful Feeding and caring clinging and clasping The bonding continues more spiritually Less physically but deep emotionally. The bundle of joy grows and grows Facing life to extent exposed Attracting attention only by crying The signal only the mum understands The U-cord days gave shelter in a cocoon No such security in this wide open Until mother?s embrace opens that music. Hunger, pain all forgotten in part With mum?s embrace with ear to her heart The familiar tick tock is music to ear Even as we have grown now and here Taste bud senses accentuated by the magic touch Only mother can add to the original potage Spouse and chidren try hard to equal We cannot, but only give that to another But never get it once mother is no more! From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Sun May 10 14:59:23 1998 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 07:59:23 -0700 Subject: The use of drink in the Kula ritual of the TantrAloka of Abhinavagupta Message-ID: <161227038447.23782.16963634639589118145.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> John Dupuche wrote: Re: The use of drink in the Kula ritual of the TantrAloka of Abhinavagupta >Quotation 5 "Ever since and and from the moment when [drink] was >spoiled by a demon master, .......... Those, however, who have been initiated in the tradition of ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >?a*kara and in the tradition of the goddess, who obey the guru's ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >command, who are discreet, engrossed in recitation and worship, skilled >in knowledge and discriminating knowledge, whose attitude is true, not >arising out of greed [for wine]: these twice-born bear no hostility to >always [using drink], O Beloved." Which Sankara is this? The God Siva or a human teacher? Does Abhinavagupta mention the tradition of Sankara elsewhere, and what is the speciality of initiation into this tradition? Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Sun May 10 15:46:19 1998 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 08:46:19 -0700 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227038449.23782.2246275832848787140.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> S Krishna wrote: >2. I find that the signature of the poets in the vacanas is seldom their >own name, but the name of a God to whom the poem has been >dedicated..i.e. basavEzvara uses "kUDala sangamEzvara!" mahAdEviyakka >uses "cennamallikArjuna", dasimaiya uses "O rAmanAtha!"...is there any >special reason for this? My guess is that this is a reference to Siva-rAmanAtha at a little known rAmakshetra in northern Karnataka, not to rAmanAtha at the Setu. If I remember right, this rAmakshetra is the site of an old battlefield, on the Tungabhadra. Some of the Calukya-Cola battles were fought here. >At a subsequent stage, we find that many of >the signatures of poets belonging to the "dAsakUTa" school are largely >their own names i.e. purandAra dAsa uses "purandara viTThala", viTThala >dAsa uses "vijaya viTThala dasa" etc( though kanakadAsa >uses "kAginEle kEzava" which is closer to the style of the vIrazaiva >school than the dAsakUTa)..What is the reason for the stylistic change? > Well, the vIraSaiva poets refer to specific temples of Siva. The situation is not very different with the dAsakUTa poets, and it is not really a stylistic change within Kannada poetry. Each name has strong geographical connotations, e.g. Pandharpur, Hampi. The dAsas take their names after the particular temple/form of vishNu to which/whom they relate their dAsa-hood. Rather than putting their own names into their songs, they have changed their names to reflect their religious sentiment. In each case, the song carries only the name of the God the poet regards as his/her own. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From dupuche at ONE.NET.AU Sun May 10 09:14:26 1998 From: dupuche at ONE.NET.AU (John Dupuche) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 09:14:26 +0000 Subject: The use of drink in the Kula ritual of the TantrAloka of Abhinavagupta Message-ID: <161227038425.23782.547025433267932766.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> A few weeks ago, 10 March 1998, J. Hanneder raised the question about the use of alcohol in Tantraloka ch.29 and especially in Jayaratha?s viveka. He raised the question of the extent to which Jayaratha was avoiding the extremes of ?libertinage? or Mimamsa. In response I would like the make the following comments. I The text Hanneder is referring to is found in the Motilal Banarsidass edition, 1987, of the Tantraloka, vol.7, pp.3301-3302. A possible translation follows. For convenience I have numbered Jayaratha?s statements and the quotations. Jayaratha 1 'Always' means ?at the time of sacrifice?. Otherwise, if he abstains from drinking wine even for a moment, sin would result. Accordingly: Quotation 1 "If he stops drinking liquor for one day or half a day or for a quarter [of a day] or, indeed, an [eighth of a day], he should become a penitent." Jayaratha 2 That [quote] is understood to refer just to the duration of the sacrifice." By contrast [the statement]: Quotation 2 "The best drink is every time. The medium drink is at the 'junctures'. The worst is only once a month. Beyond a month he becomes a ?bonded animal?." Jayaratha 3 etc., is made with respect to misfortune. On the other hand, the statement (uktam): - Quotation 3 "[Substitution] is made with sandal-wood for brahmans and with saffron for warriors, liquid camphor for peasants, with spoiled liquor for serfs, O Beloved." Quotation 4 "[Alcohol is used] on the occasion of the initiation of a brahman, during battle in the case of a warrior, at the peasant's ritual of blessing the earth, at the funeral rite of a serf." - 3302 Jayaratha 4 etc., refers the uninitiated [brahman], while in the earlier [quotation 3] we made special reference to the case of a person who is particularly faithful to the posthumous rite of ceremonial libation. In any other respect the division into castes would be unjustified. 'On the occasion of the initiation': during the sautramani etc. Therefore it is said: Quotation 5 "Ever since and and from the moment when [drink] was spoiled by a demon master, from that time on the separative designation of the castes was taught. The use of drink is known [to occur] in the sautramani sacrifice of the brahmans, as it is during a great battle in the case of warriors, during farming in the case of the peasants, at great family celebrations, and in the gathering of friends and at the conclusion of the cremation ground [ritual] for the serfs, on the occasion of a marriage, at the birth of a son. That limitation on [the use of] drink, O Lovely One, belongs to deluded people [such as the above]. Those, however, who have been initiated in the tradition of ?a*kara and in the tradition of the goddess, who obey the guru's command, who are discreet, engrossed in recitation and worship, skilled in knowledge and discriminating knowledge, whose attitude is true, not arising out of greed [for wine]: these twice-born bear no hostility to always [using drink], O Beloved." II Jayaratha is commenting on the word sadA, ?always?, in T? 29.13d, since it is clearly open to misunderstanding. Jayaratha?s first comment is to limit the word to the kula ritual context. Jayaratha 1 and 2 and Quotation 1 refer in general terms to the kula ritual and to the person who might be present at the ritual but refuses to partake of the drink. This problem is broached in T? 29.99 and especially in Jayaratha?s commentary on that text where he considers both the person who refuses to drink during the ritual and the person who drinks outside the ritual: both will go to the terrifying and frightful hell. Next Jayaratha goes on to discuss some particular rituals. These have been anticipated. That is, Tantraloka 28 provides the larger ritual context for chapter 29. In 28.6-8, twenty-three occasional rites are listed. Furthermore, Tantraloka 28.76b-78 lists the initiation of brahmins and the posthumous rites as two of the occasions on which a mUrti-yAga or cakra-yAga, i.e. ?a circle-sacrifice?, should be performed. According to Tantraloka 29.99 the ?circle-sacrifice? is a context in which the 3 M?s, madya-ma?sa-maithuna, are used. Quotation 2, as Jayaratha 3 notes, refers to misfortune, Apad, i.e. to occasional rite no. 11, ?in time of misfortune? vipat. Quotation 3, as Jayaratha 4 notes, refers to occasional rite no. 10, the posthumous rite, s/raddha. The proper performance of the posthumous rite, requires many libations. If a person is particularly devoted to this ritual or has to do it for a number of persons, he would be involved in an impossible program of drinking alcohol. Therefore substitutes are allowed. Quotation 4 prepares the reader for Quotation 5. It makes the point that all castes, even the brahmin, use alcohol. Quotation 5 sums up very well what Jayaratha considers to be the right attitude. The last sentence in particular describes the attitude of the true practitioner: ?obedient to the guru etc. ... whose attitude is true, not arising out of greed [for wine]?. Again, at the end of chapter 29, in stanza 291, Abhinava states the ritual with the cup, which was mentioned in 286-289, should take place at certain points in the ceremony and should take place at the guru?s command. This is a far cry from the Westernised attitude towards drink. At the end of Quotation 5 the word ?always?, sadA reappears, as though to conclude the discussion and give the real meaning to the word ?always?. III Therefore the drinking is clearly ritualised and is not copious, even if we are to take the statement ?eighth of a day? literally. On the other hand the use of the word rasa in 29.11b clearly implies an emotional impact caused by the alcohol. This does not amount to ?libertinage?, although it has been interpreted in this way. The ritual use of alcohol does not have to mean ritualism in the sense of mere ritual, as though ritual were by itself is effective. Chapter 29 is not suggesting a return to a desiccated Mimamsa. What then is the purpose of the drinking? The clue is found in 29.10 which defines the ingredient as ?forbidden?, nisiddha. To drink alcohol, as the legend referred to in Quotation no.5 recounts, is equivalent to brahmanicide, the most serious of sins. In other words, the drinking of alcohol is not out of a wish to get ?high? but out of a wish to transcend, nirvikalpa, all the limits, vikalpa, of ?good? and ?evil?, of ?this? and ?that?, kalpa. The discussion has so far focussed on alcohol. It is important to recall that other ingredients are employed. There are not to our taste, and certainly not to a Westernised libertine taste. They consistute the ?oblation?, caru, which consists of the ??five jewels? or the ?twelve beautiful ingredients?, p.3306. These are too gross to name here but are an important help to understanding the use of wine. Jayaratha?s comment on 29.198cd-200 classes the eating of 'oblation' etc. as an indirect means (parikaratvam) of the 'non-means' (anupAya), a sort of shock into supreme consciousness. In short, the use of a forbidden ingredient in the ritual context prepares a person to rise above injunctions, above taste and distaste. There he may, perhaps, experience consciousness in all its freedom and bliss. This practice is clearly subject to abuse. For that reason Jayaratha, on pp.3299-3303, provides one of the longest set of quotations in the whole of chapter 29. I would welcome some discussion on this subject. From John.Powers at ANU.EDU.AU Sun May 10 01:01:18 1998 From: John.Powers at ANU.EDU.AU (John Powers) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 11:01:18 +1000 Subject: Plato in Sanskrit Message-ID: <161227038428.23782.4175222887668951828.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Wayne: I saw your posting on Indology, and was wondering if you're the same guy who was a t McMaster. If so, hi. Hope you're doing well. As you can see from the return address, I'm now at Australian National University, where I teach courses on Buddhism, Modern India, and lots of other things. Cheers, John Powers __________________________________________ Dr. John Powers Senior Lecturer Faculty of Asian Studies Australian National University Canberra, ACT 0200 Australia Office: (612) 6249 2686 FAX: (612) 6279 8326 E-mail: John.Powers at anu.edu.au From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Sun May 10 20:12:07 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 12:12:07 -0800 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038459.23782.15462353962823573686.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> "Jan E.M. Houben" wrote: > On Sat, 9 May 1998 "Paul K. Manansala" > wrote: > > >What I'm saying there is no evidence that horses were > ever central to IE material culture. > > Recent contributions to this thread (most recently the one by N.Ganesan) > contain sufficient references to show that horses were of considerable > importance in IE. > I think that they only mention that horses occur to some extent in mythology. Horses certainly were not that important in the material culture of early Europeans or Persians. Maybe for use in war they were important. > >These were also found in Semitic, Chinese, Japanese and > other cultures. > > The question of relative chronology comes up here. In the Ukraine evidence for > domesticated horses is found going back to more than 4000 B.C. When was the > domesticated horse introduced in Japan? Wasn't horse-culture in China strongly > associated with "western people"? Semitic cultures may have made important > contributions of their own to horse-breeding, charioteering, etc., but when? > Here we have to cross the boundaries of Indology, I cannot give anything like a > definitive answer, only pose the questions . . . > The earliest domesticated horses associated with human remains do not suggest Indo-Europeans. The people were much more like the Altaic peoples who inhabit the Steppe. However, according to the logic used in this thread horses in China and Japan translates to IE migrations to these regions. Obviously there is no evidence that this is the case. > >The whole argument here seems > to revolve around the presences of horses in India suggesting > migration of IE peoples. > > It is not simple matter of presence, but a matter of former well-documented > absence and subsequent well-documented presence. The idea of mass-migrations > has already been largely given up, as far as I know. This is replaced by micro- > migrations and language and culture shifts, transitory phases of bilingualism > etc. But as I've already stated there are many possible explanations including trade. We certainly are not forced to conclude that the introduction of horses proves an "Aryan" migration into India. Indeed, there are morphological differences between early Indian horses and Central Asian ones that suggest a very gradual introduction. > > >From an earlier posting by "Paul K. Manansala" : > >Some scientists believe the > domesticated chicken originated in Southeast Asia, but that it spread > at least partly, in an indirect fashion to other parts of the world. > > Domesticating a chicken is not so much dependent on technique and long-term > planning as domesticating, breeding, employing and taking care of horses . . . Sorry, I don't agree. Have you tried raising chickens? You seem to be suggesting that Indo-Europeans were required to introduce horses everywhere. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From cponcet at IPROLINK.CH Sun May 10 19:32:45 1998 From: cponcet at IPROLINK.CH (Charles) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 12:32:45 -0700 Subject: Indus valley writing Message-ID: <161227038433.23782.10121577620695616913.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear members, It has been alleged in non specialized pblications that the seals of the Indus valley have now been deciphered thanks to the work done by a Dr.Natwar Jha (apparently a sansckrit scholar and school principal in West Bengal) and by a mathematician, named N.S. Rajaram of Bangalore. Is this serious and do we laymen have to assume that the Indus scripthas now been cracked ? Regards Charles From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Sun May 10 20:51:53 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 12:51:53 -0800 Subject: Horse argument revisited Message-ID: <161227038463.23782.5730571561308197449.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Vidhyanath Rao wrote: > BTW, I remember Lehman saying somewhere in ``Theoretical Bases of > Indo-European'' that `ek'uo' cannot be pre-IE and might be a loan! This > is apparently a consequence of his views on the history of velars (or > tectals) in IE. In particular, he gave the impression that he considers > the sequence k'u strange. [What about the word for dog?]. I don't really > understand `internal reconstruction', and would appreciate any comments > of this `heresy' of Lehman. [Of course, the Greek hipppos is strange > from the viewpoint of IE history, and the i is already there in Myc.] > Does IE have distinct words for wild and domesticated horses? Regarding solitary dating of horse remains, there is an obvious bias as to which ones are accepted and which ones are not. For example, it has been mentioned that some horses have been found in an IVC context. I might also mention that remains of Equus Sivalensis possibly going back as far as 8000 BCE have been found in a Neolithic burial with associated artifacts in Southeast Asia! (See Maria Isabel Ongpin, _Bone recoveries from the Obsidian Non Geometric Microlith Cultural Level, Lemery Archaeological Site_ (Manila: Ateneo de Manila University: 1981). Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Sun May 10 21:01:06 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 13:01:06 -0800 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038465.23782.9454832341785827154.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal > "Paul K. Manansala" wrote: > > >The earliest domesticated horses associated with human remains do not > >suggest Indo-Europeans. The people were much more like the Altaic > >peoples who inhabit the Steppe. However, according to the logic used > >in this thread horses in China and Japan translates to IE migrations > >to these regions. Obviously there is no evidence that this is the > >case. > > "Altaic peoples" in the Ukraine 4000-3500 BC? Impossible. > > The first signs of r-Turkic tribes (Huns, Xiongnu) moving into the > Eastern steppe are from the last centuries BC. Before that, there is > abundant and overwhelming evidence (e.g. written records in > Khwarezmian, Sogdian, Saka (Khotanese), Scytho-Sarmatian and > Bactrian, borrowings into Finno-Ugrian and Slavic lgs., etc.) that > the steppe (both Eastern and Western) was inhabited by Iranian > peoples. > You are quite incorrect. First of all, I was referring primarily to anthropological remains. Many of the early steppe people were biologically similar to modern and ancient Altaic speaking peoples but not to modern or ancient Iranians. The fragmentary evidence of Iranian writings in the steppe mean nothing. No more than early fragmentary Arabic writings in Indonesia or China. There is evidence of Altaic archaeological culture in the steppe and also linguistic evidence in local languages. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Sun May 10 17:22:30 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 13:22:30 -0400 Subject: Belur and Belgaum (was Re: Kannada vacanas) Message-ID: <161227038454.23782.9821358084217924317.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 98-05-09 16:41:58 EDT, you write: << .i.e. basavEzvara uses "kUDala sangamEzvara!" >> Is this "kUDala sangamEzvara" not a Dravidian/IA hybrid type you were talking about in the thread on Belur/Belgaum? To me kUDala sangama also seems to be a hybrid composed of words meaning the same but of two different linguistic lineages. I would like to know the accepted interpretation of this name. Thanks. Regards S. Palaniappan From JHOUBEN at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL Sun May 10 13:04:46 1998 From: JHOUBEN at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL (Jan E.M. Houben) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 14:04:46 +0100 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038438.23782.17838486182882221940.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sat, 9 May 1998 "Paul K. Manansala" wrote: >What I'm saying there is no evidence that horses were ever central to IE material culture. Recent contributions to this thread (most recently the one by N.Ganesan) contain sufficient references to show that horses were of considerable importance in IE. >These were also found in Semitic, Chinese, Japanese and other cultures. The question of relative chronology comes up here. In the Ukraine evidence for domesticated horses is found going back to more than 4000 B.C. When was the domesticated horse introduced in Japan? Wasn't horse-culture in China strongly associated with "western people"? Semitic cultures may have made important contributions of their own to horse-breeding, charioteering, etc., but when? Here we have to cross the boundaries of Indology, I cannot give anything like a definitive answer, only pose the questions . . . >The whole argument here seems to revolve around the presences of horses in India suggesting migration of IE peoples. It is not simple matter of presence, but a matter of former well-documented absence and subsequent well-documented presence. The idea of mass-migrations has already been largely given up, as far as I know. This is replaced by micro- migrations and language and culture shifts, transitory phases of bilingualism etc. >?From an earlier posting by "Paul K. Manansala" : >Some scientists believe the domesticated chicken originated in Southeast Asia, but that it spread at least partly, in an indirect fashion to other parts of the world. Domesticating a chicken is not so much dependent on technique and long-term planning as domesticating, breeding, employing and taking care of horses . . . A main-frame computer system (say) is quickly sold, but needs follow up care by the producing company for years . . . JH From JHOUBEN at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL Sun May 10 13:11:07 1998 From: JHOUBEN at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL (Jan E.M. Houben) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 14:11:07 +0100 Subject: Indo-Aryan im/e-migration (horse argument and Bhimbetka) Message-ID: <161227038440.23782.9599184332803624797.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Since last week I accidently re-sent an old message on the HORSE ARGUMENT (specially as formulated by Parpola) and BHIMBETKA, I would like to make a brief clarification. Selectively quoting from Parpola 1994 I wrote: "The picture is totally different when we turn to the Indus Civilisation. There is no evidence of the horse whatsoever.. . . " However, Parpola is well aware that claims have been made for early horses in the Indus-culture, but "some specimens come from archaeological deposits which could be considerably younger than the main body of material at the site (e.g. Mohenjo Daro and Harappa)." Moreover, "Identifications, no matter how firm, are not particularly useful if the bones on which they are based come from poorly defined contexts." Further, on BHIMBETKA I wrote: "The environment presupposed in the Veda is simply incompatible with the environment of reflected in these paintings (horse is missing, people apparently live as hunter-gatherers for millennia; writing appears very late)." Here, "the horse is missing" refers only to the oldest paintings. The absence of the horse becomes more striking if placed against the background of its conspicuous presence in later paintings. The dating of the different paintings is crucial, and for this I have to lean heavily on the preliminary publication which I cited, namely Bhimbetka: Prehistoric Man and his Art in Central India by Virendra Nath Misra et al., Deccan College: Pune, 1977. On the topic of dating the different paintings it is said (p. 18f): "As mentioned earlier, often the later artists executed their work on already painted surfaces. Thus we find younger paintings partially overlapping older paintings. While this mars the visual impact of the artistic creation, such a situation is a boon to the archeologist for he can arrange the paintings into a relative chronology on the basis of their superimposition. Sometimes in a single cave as many as four layers of paintings can be seen. Correlating the paintings of one cave with those of others on the basis of their position in superimposition it has been possible to detect as many as sixteen layers. . . . produced over a period of about ten thousand years . . . " Further on p. 21: "In paintings of phase VI we can clearly see the influence of Chalcolithic pottery designs . . . Domestic animals also make their appearance in this phase . . . " The date assigned to this phase is "second millennium and early first millennium B.C." (p. 22) Again on p. 21: "Paintings of phases VII-IX clearly belong to the historic period when urban life was well established in the plains. These paintings are often superimposed over the older prehistoric paintings. They depict royal processions, battle scenes, men riding caprisoned horses and elephants . . . " The caves which contain the paintings contain also pits and trenches with remains of tools, animals and human burials. Two caves are claimed to contain remains from the Palaeolithic (before 100.000 years) with small and weathered "chopper-chopping tools". Remains of the Mesolithic (c. 10.000 - 2.500 years) can probably be correlated with the oldest paintings. If anyone knows of more recent scholarly publications on the archeological research done in Bhimbetka I will be grateful for references. JH From mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM Sun May 10 21:15:47 1998 From: mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM (S Krishna) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 14:15:47 -0700 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227038475.23782.16530848996633811272.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Robert Zydenobos writes: <> Thank you very much for your kind offer, I however regret that I cannot give you the first words since only the translation is available to me...can I request you to give me books where the vacanas of people like dAsimaiya or couDaiya are available in kannaDa? I have seen books brought out by the Institute of Kannada Studies, Dharwar which give the vacanas in kannaDa of mahAdEviyakka and basa vEzvara but none of the other vIrazaiva saints... A special thanks for the explanation of the vacana, it does make more sense to me after your explanation. > mC> At a subsequent stage, we find that many of the signatures of > mC> poets belonging to the "dAsakUTa" school are largely their > mC> own names i.e. purandAra dAsa uses "purandara viTThala", > mC> viTThala dAsa uses "vijaya viTThala dasa" etc( though > mC> kanakadAsa uses "kAginEle kEzava" which is closer to the > mC> style of the vIrazaiva school than the dAsakUTa)..What is the > mC> reason for the stylistic change? <> This is a very interesting explanation and I'm surprised to know that kanakadAsa came from a zrIvaiSNava background.. From what I know, he came from a wealthy buNT i.e. (shepherd?) family near mangaLUru and was orphaned early in life. HE then wandered around and finally settled down in uDupi and most of his songs were composed in uDupi. I was also under the impression that since his ideas are accepted as part of the dvaitic corpus, he was more a dvaitin. Were his parents zrIvaiSNava? Was there a lot of zrIvaiSNava activity at any point of time in the uDupi area? Can you please elaborate on this.... Vidyansankar Sundaresan says that there was no stylistic change from the "ankita" of the saraNa and the dAsakUTa schools ..Firstly, kanakadAsa's kAginEle kEzava , AFAIK has nothing to do with uDupi whose krSNa temple he was associated with( viz the kanakanda khiDkI episode) but with the village of kAginEle where he was born and left at a fairly young age; I therefore believe that this ankita has nothing do with the temple i.e. uDupi with which he was associated. Out of the many dAsas who named themselves after viTThala, I am not sure of how many actually visited/became sannyAsins/had their iStadEvata as viTThala of pandharpUr( Their region of activity was more in the vicinity of north-eastern/central karnATaka i.e. rAyichUr and in Southern/Western karnATaka) where even today there is a strong dvaitic presence in the temples. I therefore believe that there was a big stylistic change in that the poets were refering to themsleves in the first person and included their signature even when writing about MULTIPLE dieties which is certainly not the case with the zaraNas. S.Palaniappan wants to know the origin of the name "kUDala sangama". >?From what I know, there is a ziva temple here in this town which stands at the confluence of the kr*SNa and mAlAprabhA rivers. The confluence (kannaDa kUDala, samskrt saGgama) coupled with Izvara seems to have become kUdala saGgamEzvara. As regards etymology, since kUdala= saGgama, why wasn't this place simply called "sangamEzvara" or "kUDAlEzvara"...why the doubling of the "kUDala" in samskrt and kannaDa? Or is that there were so many sangamas in that area that they came up with this thumb-of-rule to distinguish between the various dieties and places? All answers to questions raised here are welcome. Regards, Krishna ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From vidynath at MATH.OHIO-STATE.EDU Sun May 10 18:34:15 1998 From: vidynath at MATH.OHIO-STATE.EDU (Vidhyanath Rao) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 14:34:15 -0400 Subject: Horse argument revisited Message-ID: <161227038456.23782.18439184674789882834.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> It is deja vu all over again! I don't want to repeat every thing I said during the previous round, which was about a month ago. I have verified that these are in the Indology archives. I will simply repeat the two questions I asked then, questions which nobody answered. [For more detailed references, see the list posted then or descend recursively into their references.] Firstly, the similarities in the rituals cannot be taken as proof that the rituals go back to PIE days. True chariots cannot be dated back before 1800 BCE. [the Shintasha vehicle cannot have been very maneuverable: See Littauer and Crouell, Antiquity '96]. So the similarities in how chariot races were integrated into rituals cannot go back to PIE days, but must instead be ascribed to diffusion or parallel evolution. Why should other details related to horses be any different? Without addressing this question, the argument as put forth by Georg von Simson can only prove that the Vedic culture is post mature phase Harappan, not that horse was not brought in trade contacts. Second: David Anthony is certain that Sredny Stog (sp?) culture used bits to control horses, based on evidence of tooth wear from a horse found there. However, Arrian and other Hellenistic sources clearly that the bit was unknown in India at the time of Alexander. Their description of Indian horse control mechanism indicates the use of a dropped nose band. This is supported by references to `nasor yama.h' [note the dual: nasor must mean `at the >nostrils<'] and horses bound at the nose [for true bits, the band(s) would be higher up.] This is known from 2nd millennium BCE Near East for horses and 3rd for asses/hemiones. If Indo-Aryans and their ancestors had unbroken association with domesticated horse, why did they give up the bit for the inferior nose band control? Without answering this question, the argument based on a"sva as put forth by M. Vidal cannot be conclusive. Without satisfactory answers to these questions, it would be simpler to assume that the domesticated horse came to India via contact with Near East rather than via migrants from the Pontic area. Already in 1968, Littauer drew attention to the fact that, according to Herodotus, Indians on occassion used hemiones to draw chariots at the time of Darius (see also AA 3.2.4). Such use is known from Ancient Near East, but not in the Ist millennium. This might be relevant inv view of theories that have been proposed based on the Sangam Tamil ivuli (I think I got that right, but I will need to check this). BTW, I remember Lehman saying somewhere in ``Theoretical Bases of Indo-European'' that `ek'uo' cannot be pre-IE and might be a loan! This is apparently a consequence of his views on the history of velars (or tectals) in IE. In particular, he gave the impression that he considers the sequence k'u strange. [What about the word for dog?]. I don't really understand `internal reconstruction', and would appreciate any comments of this `heresy' of Lehman. [Of course, the Greek hipppos is strange from the viewpoint of IE history, and the i is already there in Myc.] From zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL Sun May 10 17:02:36 1998 From: zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 15:02:36 -0200 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227038452.23782.3617347993755681856.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Replies to msg 09 May 98: indology at listserv.liv.ac.uk (S Krishna) mC> I read the translation of a Kannada vacana by dEvara mC> dasimaiya that goes as:(paraphrase mine) mC> A man with a gunny sack mC> which was tattered mC> walked all night long mC> fearing the toll gate mC> By the time he reached the gate, mC> all the grain had fallen thru the holes mC> and all that he had was a torn gunny bag mC> It is thus with the devotion of the mC> faint-hearted, O Ramanatha! mC> My questions are: mC> 1. Can anybody please post the original in Kannada and mC> provide a translation/explanation for the connection between mC> being faint hearted and the analogy given in the first part mC> of the vacana I can look up the original for you in about a month from now, when I am back in India. (It would be helpful if you could give the opening words in Kannada.) As for an explanation, I suggest this: many vacanas of that period deal with relationships between the (at that time) new Virasaiva community and the orthodox around them. It appears that many new followers hesitated to openly admit their beliefs for fear of public opinion. Daasimayya's imagery may mean this: the grain is the man's faith, the sack is his conduct (not firm and in agreement with the faith he would like to profess), the toll gate represents orthodox society, which he fears to face, and when finally he is confronted by the orthodox (which may be relatives, friends, or just anybody) his faith has weakened so much (because he is too faint-hearted to live in agreement with it) that it is practically no longer existant. mC> 2. I find that the signature of the poets in the vacanas is mC> seldom their own name, True. (In fact, I cannot recall any ankita (the term which you have rendered as 'signature') of a major vacanakaara containing that author's own name.) mC> but the name of a God to whom the poem has been mC> dedicated..i.e. basavEzvara uses "kUDala sangamEzvara!" mC> mahAdEviyakka uses "cennamallikArjuna", dasimaiya uses "O mC> rAmanAtha!"...is there any special reason for this? What is obvious from many vacanas is that they are addressed to the divinity who is referred to in the a:nkita, i.e. Basavee;svara is telling Kuu.dalasa:ngamadeeva something, or asking something from him, etc. Or something may be stated to the listener / reader about the divinity, and the a:nkita is not merely an interjection but a regular part of the sentence in which it is found (and hence it is declined and assumes a case form: dative, accusative, etc.). But it need not always be the case that a vacana is addressed to or says something to us about the divinity. In any case the a:nkita serves as a unique identifier of the author. The a:nkita need not contain the name of a divinity either. For instance, in the case of a few women authors, the ankita contains the name of a male relative (brother, husband). mC> At a subsequent stage, we find that many of the signatures of mC> poets belonging to the "dAsakUTa" school are largely their mC> own names i.e. purandAra dAsa uses "purandara viTThala", mC> viTThala dAsa uses "vijaya viTThala dasa" etc( though mC> kanakadAsa uses "kAginEle kEzava" which is closer to the mC> style of the vIrazaiva school than the dAsakUTa)..What is the mC> reason for the stylistic change? Though I am not sure, I suspect that this difference is a subtle one, rooted in a metaphysical difference: the haridaasas are Dvaitins, the ;siva;sara.nas are ;Saktivi;si.s.taadvaitins, and these doctrines have different notions about the ontological status of the individual. (Here it is worth mentioning that Kanakadaasa apparently was from a ;Sriivai.s.nava, i.e. a Vi;si.s.taadvaitin background.) Robert Zydenbos zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Sun May 10 23:29:43 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 15:29:43 -0800 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038477.23782.8838475485139077088.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Indology wrote: > "Paul K. Manansala" wrote: > > >> "Altaic peoples" in the Ukraine 4000-3500 BC? Impossible. > >> > >> The first signs of r-Turkic tribes (Huns, Xiongnu) moving into the > >> Eastern steppe are from the last centuries BC. Before that, there is > >> abundant and overwhelming evidence (e.g. written records in > >> Khwarezmian, Sogdian, Saka (Khotanese), Scytho-Sarmatian and > >> Bactrian, borrowings into Finno-Ugrian and Slavic lgs., etc.) that > >> the steppe (both Eastern and Western) was inhabited by Iranian > >> peoples. > >> > >You are quite incorrect. First of all, I was referring primarily to > >anthropological remains. Many of the early steppe people were biologically > >similar to modern and ancient Altaic speaking peoples but not to modern or > >ancient Iranians. > > Do these "modern Iranians" include the Ossetes, the Yaghnobi or the > Tajiks? > Yes. > Modern Turks of Turkey speak an Altaic language, yet "biologically" > they are similar to ancient Anatolian populations speaking > Indo-European (Anatolian, Phrygian, Greek) languages. I hear nobody > claiming that the Hittites were Altaic... > But the ancient remains were not biologically similar to the stock believed to be the original speakers of Indo-European languages. > >The fragmentary evidence of Iranian writings in the steppe mean > >nothing. No more than early fragmentary Arabic writings in Indonesia or > >China. There is evidence of Altaic archaeological culture > >in the steppe and also linguistic evidence in local languages. > > The evidence is not fragmentary. So what is the evidence then? > > What is an "Altaic archaeological culture"? What evidence in which > local languages? Why are all the ancient loanwords in Finno-Ugrian > from Iranian or Tocharian, not Altaic? How do you explain Tocharian > in the Tarim basin? > The evidence of Tocharian in the Tarim basin is fragmentary. Regarding the Altaic culture, the similarities between Hsiung-nu and later Turko-Mongol culture with the culture ascribed to Scythians by Herodotus and others is well-known. Here is a partial list: 1. The joint burial of humans with horses often oriented toward East. 2. Fully nomadic society on horseback. 3. Slitting the throat of the chief's wife and servants on tomb 4. Cutting one's enemy's skull at eyebrow level, inlaying with gold and covering with leather to make a drinking cup. 5. Head-hunting. 6. Hanging scalps of victims from bridles. 7. Wide trousers strapped to the ankle. 8. Fur cap and cape. 9. Mourn dead by gashing face with knives so "blood flows with tears." 10. Had flocks of sheep and herds of horses, camel and cattle. 11. Meat and milk diet.Rarely practiced regular agriculture. 12. Dressed in skins. 13. Wolf as totem guard and revival totem. 14. Used felt tents and brought women and children in wagons. 15. Practiced shamanism based on woship of Heaven and sacred mountains. 16. Supreme leader summoned all tribes in the autumn for census of humans and animals. 17. Used raiding and fleeing tactics. 18. Depended on mounted bowmen in battle. 19. Used same feigned retreat strategies. 20. Both were experts at firing bows to the rear while mounted. 21. Slept on furs. 22. Usually shaved head except small tuft on top. 23. Used similar small yet fierce pony. 24. Switched horses in battle. 25. Drank blood of horse during battle to prevent dehydration. 26. Usually no beard except tuft on chin. 27. Sheath of bow suspended from belt in front of left thigh. 28. Quiver attached to belt and suspended across back with arrows to right. 29. Preferred mare's milk to other types of milk. 30. Similar burial in raised mounds. 31. Similar "plank and file" coffins 32. Similar bows Practically all of these features appear in later Altaic burials in Central and Northern Asia as far as Korea. This culture is world's apart however from early Persian, European or even Hittite culture. Also has very little in common with Vedic culture. Concerning linguistic aspects, you know very well yourself that Yenesei-Ostyak languages used to be grouped together with Altaic langauges in the Ural-Altaic family. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Sun May 10 13:37:50 1998 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 15:37:50 +0200 Subject: Indus valley writing Message-ID: <161227038442.23782.15862218911097998930.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 12:32 10.05.98 -0700, you wrote: >Dear members, >It has been alleged in non specialized pblications that the seals of the >Indus valley have now been deciphered thanks to the work done by a >Dr.Natwar Jha (apparently a sansckrit scholar and school principal in >West Bengal) and by a mathematician, named N.S. Rajaram of Bangalore. Is >this serious and do we laymen have to assume that the Indus scripthas >now been cracked ? No, you don't. From what I have seen of Jha's attempts, they do not convince. The matter has been discussed earlier on the list. You may want to rummage in the archives. Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Tel: +47 22 32 12 19 Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no Mobile phone: 90 91 91 45 From mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM Sun May 10 22:38:19 1998 From: mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM (S Krishna) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 15:38:19 -0700 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227038483.23782.13456946740102174032.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I had written in my earlier posting: <> "Bunt" does not not refer to the shepherd community; the correct term for this is "kuruba"..I apologize for the mistake and would like to express my heartfelt thanks to Nikhil Rao(nrao at caip.rutgers.edu) for bringing this to my attention. REgards, Krishna ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Mon May 11 00:26:54 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 16:26:54 -0800 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038486.23782.12883029844686861733.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote: > "Paul K. Manansala" wrote: > > >> Modern Turks of Turkey speak an Altaic language, yet "biologically" > >> they are similar to ancient Anatolian populations speaking > >> Indo-European (Anatolian, Phrygian, Greek) languages. I hear nobody > >> claiming that the Hittites were Altaic... > > > >But the ancient remains were not biologically similar to the stock > >believed to be the original speakers of Indo-European languages. > > So what? If modern Central Asians look like ancient Central Asians, > it's because biologically they are still largely Iranian. Modern Central Asians come in all types. Most indigenous Central Asians (non-Russians) like the Kazakhs, Kirghiz, Uzbeks, Uighurs and so are Altaic peoples. >What does > that have to do with the "original IE stock", whatever that means? > The idea that started this thread is that the IE stock was somehow connected with a horse culture. Thus, horses = IE migration. > What *do* you believe is the "stock believed to be the original > speakers of Indo-European langugaes"? > It's not me. Just read any of numerous authors on the subject. Were the original IE speakers similar to Mongols? > >> >The fragmentary evidence of Iranian writings in the steppe mean > >> >nothing. No more than early fragmentary Arabic writings in Indonesia or > >> >China. There is evidence of Altaic archaeological culture > >> >in the steppe and also linguistic evidence in local languages. > >> > >> The evidence is not fragmentary. > > > >So what is the evidence then? > > Inscriptions, manuscripts, a body of literature... Could you give a reference? > > >> What is an "Altaic archaeological culture"? What evidence in which > >> local languages? Why are all the ancient loanwords in Finno-Ugrian > >> from Iranian or Tocharian, not Altaic? How do you explain Tocharian > >> in the Tarim basin? > >> > > > >The evidence of Tocharian in the Tarim basin is fragmentary. > > No it isn't. See: W. Krause/W. Thomas, "Tocharisches Elementarbuch", > 2 volumes, Heidelberg 160, 1964. Fully aware of this evidence and it is fragmentary. There is nothing to suggest the local people spoke Tocharian. > > >Regarding the Altaic culture, the similarities between Hsiung-nu and > >later Turko-Mongol culture with the culture ascribed to Scythians by > >Herodotus and others is well-known. Here is a partial list: > > > >1. The joint burial of humans with horses often oriented toward East. > > You are simply inverting the arguments of the outdated "Aryan > invasion" theorists. You tended to repeat this statement, although I don't know what you mean. [clip] > >9. Mourn dead by gashing face with knives so "blood flows with > > tears." > >10. Had flocks of sheep and herds of horses, camel and cattle. > >11. Meat and milk diet.Rarely practiced regular agriculture. > >12. Dressed in skins. > >13. Wolf as totem guard and revival totem. > >14. Used felt tents and brought women and children in wagons. > >15. Practiced shamanism based on woship of Heaven and sacred > > mountains. > >16. Supreme leader summoned all tribes in the autumn for census of > > humans and animals. > >17. Used raiding and fleeing tactics. > >18. Depended on mounted bowmen in battle. > >19. Used same feigned retreat strategies. > >20. Both were experts at firing bows to the rear while mounted. > >21. Slept on furs. > >22. Usually shaved head except small tuft on top. > >23. Used similar small yet fierce pony. > >24. Switched horses in battle. > >25. Drank blood of horse during battle to prevent dehydration. > >26. Usually no beard except tuft on chin. > >27. Sheath of bow suspended from belt in front of left thigh. > >28. Quiver attached to belt and suspended across back with arrows to > > right. > >29. Preferred mare's milk to other types of milk. > >30. Similar burial in raised mounds. > >31. Similar "plank and file" coffins > >32. Similar bows > > All typical of *any* horse-based steppe pastoralist culture. Please, you must be kidding. > There is no such thing as a Ural-Altaic family, that's a 19th century > construct that has been utterly disproved. There may not even be an > Altaic family. There may not be an Indo-European family. Current consensus is that Mongol and Tungusic are > related, and probably further linked to Korean and Japanese. The > similarities between Turkic and Mongol-Tungus(-Korean-Japanese) are > now thought to be due to areal diffusion. Turkic is best treated as > an isolate for the time being. > Just are simply modifying old "Aryan" racial theories. Indo-European is all this and that, but we don't know about the rest. What about all these new theories connecting Altaic and Uralic, but under the great white Nostratic/Proto-World banner? Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Mon May 11 01:53:46 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 17:53:46 -0800 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038493.23782.3722713918946695772.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal > wrote: > "Paul K. Manansala" wrote: > > >Modern Central Asians come in all types. Most indigenous Central > >Asians (non-Russians) like the Kazakhs, Kirghiz, Uzbeks, Uighurs and > >so are Altaic peoples. > > Altaic-speaking, yes. So are the Turks of Turkey. So are the Yakut > of Siberia. They are also of a different physical type than Iranians. > >> Inscriptions, manuscripts, a body of literature... > > > >Could you give a reference? > > "Compendium linguarum iranicarum", ed. R. Schmitt, Wiesbaden 1989 (E, > F and G) gives a description of all Iranian lgs. Interesting, but I'm quite sure I will not find any Scythian "manuscripts" there. > >> There is no such thing as a Ural-Altaic family, that's a 19th century > >> construct that has been utterly disproved. There may not even be an > >> Altaic family. > > > >There may not be an Indo-European family. > > You wish. I guess I'm treading on holy ground here. But the fact remains that IE is nothing but a theory. > > > Current consensus is that Mongol and Tungusic are > >> related, and probably further linked to Korean and Japanese. The > >> similarities between Turkic and Mongol-Tungus(-Korean-Japanese) are > >> now thought to be due to areal diffusion. Turkic is best treated as > >> an isolate for the time being. > > > >Just are simply modifying old "Aryan" racial theories. Indo-European > >is all this and that, but we don't know about the rest. > > > >What about all these new theories connecting Altaic and Uralic, but > >under the great white Nostratic/Proto-World banner? > > Yes, Uralic and Altaic (or Uralic, Turkic and Altaic, if one prefers) > are probably Nostratic languages, along with a few others. There is > sufficient evidence for that, I think, although much work still needs > to be done. I see. Now that one can give these languages a good "white" origin all of a sudden they are related again. First you claim that Iranians were the original steppe dwellers. Then you modify that to include speakers of Caucasian and Yenesei-Ostyak. Then, you assert there may not be an Altaic family, and even if there is it is not related to Uralic. Now, you think all these are related under the Caucasoid Nostratic banner. Let me say the idea that early Scythians were mixtures of Mongoloid and "Europid" people have led to much confusion. Just A little research on the term "Europid" reveals that it was a term used in early literature to postulate a herrenvolk movement through SE Asia and Indonesia into the Pacific. In most modern literature, it is referred to as Southern Mongoloid. However, the whole Tarim Basin-Siberia-Kennewick line of argument has tried to resurrect the old dark whitetheory in favor of blond Caucasoids peopling the New World and gifting the Chinese with horses. The skeletons associated with Scythian burials are by and large platyrrhine and prognathous with wide prominent malars and robust mandibles. That is, they do not conform to modern Iranian or European phenotypes and most of the burials are not that old in relative terms. I guess we have reached the end of enlightenment in our discussion. However, I will discuss the matter with anyone who doesn't see the Scythian/Hsiung-nu likenesses as purely coincidental. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From mcv at WXS.NL Sun May 10 19:00:27 1998 From: mcv at WXS.NL (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 19:00:27 +0000 Subject: Horses In-Reply-To: <199805101840.LAA15525@dry.jps.net> Message-ID: <161227038461.23782.14745188052217216100.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> "Paul K. Manansala" wrote: >The earliest domesticated horses associated with human remains do not >suggest Indo-Europeans. The people were much more like the Altaic >peoples who inhabit the Steppe. However, according to the logic used >in this thread horses in China and Japan translates to IE migrations >to these regions. Obviously there is no evidence that this is the >case. "Altaic peoples" in the Ukraine 4000-3500 BC? Impossible. The first signs of r-Turkic tribes (Huns, Xiongnu) moving into the Eastern steppe are from the last centuries BC. Before that, there is abundant and overwhelming evidence (e.g. written records in Khwarezmian, Sogdian, Saka (Khotanese), Scytho-Sarmatian and Bactrian, borrowings into Finno-Ugrian and Slavic lgs., etc.) that the steppe (both Eastern and Western) was inhabited by Iranian peoples. ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Mon May 11 03:10:54 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 19:10:54 -0800 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038508.23782.12114121553270055828.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote: t. I don't care much for your > platyrrhine skeletons, whatever that means: linguistics alone tells > us, if we're prepared to listen, that the steppe population is and > has always been mixed, neither "Caucasoid" nor "Mongoloid". > Sorry, I can't resist. Linguistics tells us absolutely nothing about the biological relations of the steppe population. > >I guess we have reached the end of enlightenment in our discussion. > >However, I will discuss the matter with anyone who doesn't see the > >Scythian/Hsiung-nu likenesses as purely coincidental. > > It isn't. The Xiongnu adopted the steppe way of life from the > Scythians. > Yes, and those Scythians were blondies I suppose. Hippocrates describes Scythians as short and stocky with legs shorter than the trunk. He states thay had little facial or body hair, and that their features were not well-defined like Europeans. He calls this "humidity of features." Basically this agrees with the remains found in the Scythian burials. They were physically not different than the Hsiung-nu or from modern Mongols or Uighurs. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Mon May 11 01:25:58 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 19:25:58 -0600 Subject: Belur and Belgaum (was Re: Kannada vacanas) Message-ID: <161227038496.23782.4902790967094945485.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Belur and Belgaum (was Re: Kannada vacanas) Mr. S. Krishna wrote: << .i.e. basavEzvara uses "kUDala sangamEzvara!" >> Dr. S. Palaniappan writes: *Is this "kUDala sangamEzvara" not a Dravidian/IA hybrid type you were talking *about in the thread on Belur/Belgaum? To me kUDala sangama also seems to be a *hybrid composed of words meaning the same but of two different linguistic *lineages. I would like to know the accepted interpretation of this name. I think Krishna has answered his own question. This usage can be observed in contemporary Tamil speech, the only difference being English replacing Sanskrit. eg., naDu center post kambam ditch kuzi .... Regards, N. Ganesan From mcv at WXS.NL Sun May 10 19:32:54 1998 From: mcv at WXS.NL (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 19:32:54 +0000 Subject: Horse argument revisited In-Reply-To: <199805101834.OAA17682@math.mps.ohio-state.edu> Message-ID: <161227038467.23782.3403398073146353404.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Vidhyanath Rao wrote: >Second: David Anthony is certain that Sredny Stog (sp?) 'Srednij' using the official Akademija Nauk transcription (where is English y). But sredni or sredny are acceptable in English. >culture used >bits to control horses, based on evidence of tooth wear from a horse >found there. However, Arrian and other Hellenistic sources clearly that >the bit was unknown in India at the time of Alexander. Their description >of Indian horse control mechanism indicates the use of a dropped nose >band. This is supported by references to `nasor yama.h' [note the dual: >nasor must mean `at the >nostrils<'] and horses bound at the nose [for >true bits, the band(s) would be higher up.] This is known from 2nd >millennium BCE Near East for horses and 3rd for asses/hemiones. If >Indo-Aryans and their ancestors had unbroken association with >domesticated horse, why did they give up the bit for the inferior >nose band control? Without answering this question, the argument >based on a"sva as put forth by M. Vidal cannot be conclusive. The argument indeed does not necessarily imply unbroken association with _domesticated_ horses, just with horses. >BTW, I remember Lehman saying somewhere in ``Theoretical Bases of >Indo-European'' that `ek'uo' cannot be pre-IE and might be a loan! This >is apparently a consequence of his views on the history of velars (or >tectals) in IE. In particular, he gave the impression that he considers >the sequence k'u strange. [What about the word for dog?]. I don't really >understand `internal reconstruction', and would appreciate any comments >of this `heresy' of Lehman. [Of course, the Greek hipppos is strange >from the viewpoint of IE history, and the i is already there in Myc.] The *k^u in *ek^uo- is, as you say, also found in *k^uon-, *k^un- "dog", which is not likely to be a loanword in PIE. The combination of *k^ or *k with *w (as opposed to the single labio-velar *kw) is a rare one, but it does occur in some other words as well (*kuapno- "smoke" [Grk. kapnos, Lat. vapor, Lith kvapas], *kuatH- "to seethe, boil, ferment" (Skt. kvath-, Lat. caseus > cheese, Russ kvas, etc.). There is no need from "internal reconstruction" to think that PIE *ek^wos is a borrowing, but if it is, a ready source can be found in Proto-Yeniseian *ku?s- "horse", Proto-Dagestanian *kwaccwV "mare" (unlike Altaic, Yeniseian and NE Caucasian *are* plausible candidates for being descended from the Ur-inhabitants of the steppe, c. 8000-5000 BC, before the Indo-Europeans moved in). In any case, the word predates the domestication. Greek (Myc. i-qo) is curious, and must surely descend from a form with preposed *y- (*yek^wos > *yik^wos, by vowel assimilation), cf. Tocharian B yakwe, A yuk. ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM Mon May 11 02:47:28 1998 From: mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM (S Krishna) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 19:47:28 -0700 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227038514.23782.2929970474289730895.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> N. Ganesan writes: <> If one looks at place names in Karnataka one can notice that it is fairly common for the name of a place and the presiding diety there to be pronounced together as one name i.e. the town of bAgevADi( basavEzvara was a native of this place) is sometimes refered to as bAgevADi-ingaLEzvara,( called bAgevADi-ingaLe in places) the town of kappaDi where there is another sangamEzvara temple becomes kappaDisangamEzvara which is shortened to kappaDisangama. I therefore believe that there was a point of time in karnATaka where if there was a place by name "X" and a diety of Shiva by name "Y" the place could be refered to as simple "X", or "XY" or "XY-Izvara"( The last is eximplified by the name malaimahadE(vE?)zvara hills where there was a mahadEvEsvara temple in the middle of the "hills"..so we get another example of "doubling" i.e. just as kUDala and sangama are synonyms but are pronounced together, malai and hills are also synonyms but are pronounced together, the difference being that the later started much later).{I think that the place name is also spelt as malaimahadEzvara, but in any case the point made still remains). This leads me to believe that the name of the place was just kUDala( pls note that there is another place in uttara kannaDa dist by the same name) . It may have been that in order to differentiate between the two sangamEzvaras i.e. kUDala and kappaDi( a nearby town) the Gods were called kUDalasangamEZvara and kappaDisangamEzvara which is now being interpreted as that the place names THEMSELVES were kUDalasangama and kappaDisangama... REgards, Krishna ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From mcv at WXS.NL Sun May 10 19:52:24 1998 From: mcv at WXS.NL (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 19:52:24 +0000 Subject: Horses In-Reply-To: <199805101929.MAA13704@dry.jps.net> Message-ID: <161227038470.23782.9186064776660796397.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> "Paul K. Manansala" wrote: >> "Altaic peoples" in the Ukraine 4000-3500 BC? Impossible. >> >> The first signs of r-Turkic tribes (Huns, Xiongnu) moving into the >> Eastern steppe are from the last centuries BC. Before that, there is >> abundant and overwhelming evidence (e.g. written records in >> Khwarezmian, Sogdian, Saka (Khotanese), Scytho-Sarmatian and >> Bactrian, borrowings into Finno-Ugrian and Slavic lgs., etc.) that >> the steppe (both Eastern and Western) was inhabited by Iranian >> peoples. >> >You are quite incorrect. First of all, I was referring primarily to >anthropological remains. Many of the early steppe people were biologically >similar to modern and ancient Altaic speaking peoples but not to modern or >ancient Iranians. Do these "modern Iranians" include the Ossetes, the Yaghnobi or the Tajiks? Modern Turks of Turkey speak an Altaic language, yet "biologically" they are similar to ancient Anatolian populations speaking Indo-European (Anatolian, Phrygian, Greek) languages. I hear nobody claiming that the Hittites were Altaic... >The fragmentary evidence of Iranian writings in the steppe mean >nothing. No more than early fragmentary Arabic writings in Indonesia or >China. There is evidence of Altaic archaeological culture >in the steppe and also linguistic evidence in local languages. The evidence is not fragmentary. The Iranian languages (Khwarezmian, Khotanese etc.) are unique to the steppe-zone, constituting a separate Eastern branch of Iranian, represented today by Ossetic [modern Scytho-Sarmatian], Yaghnobi [modern Sogdian] and Pashto and the Pamir languages [modern Bactrian]. They are quite unlike the Western Iranian languages [Farsi, Kurdish, Baluchi]. Arabic writings in Indonesia and China are just standard Arabic and indeed mean nothing, linguistically. What is an "Altaic archaeological culture"? What evidence in which local languages? Why are all the ancient loanwords in Finno-Ugrian from Iranian or Tocharian, not Altaic? How do you explain Tocharian in the Tarim basin? ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Mon May 11 02:19:27 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 20:19:27 -0600 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038504.23782.15661444858430315318.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> What is the position of horse in Old Iranian texts. Do they occur in Avestan gathas? Is there an equivalent of aZvameda from Iranian side? Obviously, there are many sculptural representations of horse in old Iran. N. Ganesan From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Mon May 11 02:28:50 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 20:28:50 -0600 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227038506.23782.11510842463206601980.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> There was a suggestion that kuuDala is the place name and sangamesvara refers to the God's name. kuuDala samngama is a place name. How do we know this? There were two Chola era prabandhams of war, now lost except for a few verses and their names occur in medieval commentaries. The 10th century paraNi prabandhams are called 1) koppattup paraNi and 2) kuuDala sangamattup paraNi. Hence, koppam and kuuDala sangamam will refer to place names. AND, kuuDala sangamam is hybrid name. This may very well be the case of BelgAm too. Regards, N. Ganesan From mcv at WXS.NL Sun May 10 20:31:07 1998 From: mcv at WXS.NL (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 20:31:07 +0000 Subject: Horse argument revisited In-Reply-To: <199805101920.MAA08382@dry.jps.net> Message-ID: <161227038472.23782.2631646918187385081.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> "Paul K. Manansala" wrote: > >Does IE have distinct words for wild and domesticated horses? No. There is a separate Celto-Germanic word *marko- (> E. "mare") for what may have been a local NW European variety of the horse (distinct from the steppe kind). ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From mcv at WXS.NL Sun May 10 22:31:23 1998 From: mcv at WXS.NL (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 22:31:23 +0000 Subject: Horses In-Reply-To: <199805102158.OAA16804@dry.jps.net> Message-ID: <161227038480.23782.3981580455119899739.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> "Paul K. Manansala" wrote: >> Modern Turks of Turkey speak an Altaic language, yet "biologically" >> they are similar to ancient Anatolian populations speaking >> Indo-European (Anatolian, Phrygian, Greek) languages. I hear nobody >> claiming that the Hittites were Altaic... > >But the ancient remains were not biologically similar to the stock >believed to be the original speakers of Indo-European languages. So what? If modern Central Asians look like ancient Central Asians, it's because biologically they are still largely Iranian. What does that have to do with the "original IE stock", whatever that means? What *do* you believe is the "stock believed to be the original speakers of Indo-European langugaes"? >> >The fragmentary evidence of Iranian writings in the steppe mean >> >nothing. No more than early fragmentary Arabic writings in Indonesia or >> >China. There is evidence of Altaic archaeological culture >> >in the steppe and also linguistic evidence in local languages. >> >> The evidence is not fragmentary. > >So what is the evidence then? Inscriptions, manuscripts, a body of literature... >> What is an "Altaic archaeological culture"? What evidence in which >> local languages? Why are all the ancient loanwords in Finno-Ugrian >> from Iranian or Tocharian, not Altaic? How do you explain Tocharian >> in the Tarim basin? >> > >The evidence of Tocharian in the Tarim basin is fragmentary. No it isn't. See: W. Krause/W. Thomas, "Tocharisches Elementarbuch", 2 volumes, Heidelberg 160, 1964. >Regarding the Altaic culture, the similarities between Hsiung-nu and >later Turko-Mongol culture with the culture ascribed to Scythians by >Herodotus and others is well-known. Here is a partial list: > >1. The joint burial of humans with horses often oriented toward East. You are simply inverting the arguments of the outdated "Aryan invasion" theorists. >2. Fully nomadic society on horseback. It's a steppe isn't it? >3. Slitting the throat of the chief's wife and servants on tomb Suttee? You are simply inverting the arguments of the outdated "Aryan invasion" theorists. >4. Cutting one's enemy's skull at eyebrow level, inlaying with gold > and covering with leather to make a drinking cup. >5. Head-hunting. >6. Hanging scalps of victims from bridles. You are simply inverting the arguments of the outdated "Aryan invasion" theorists. >7. Wide trousers strapped to the ankle. >8. Fur cap and cape. Like the ancient Germans/Slavs? >9. Mourn dead by gashing face with knives so "blood flows with > tears." >10. Had flocks of sheep and herds of horses, camel and cattle. >11. Meat and milk diet.Rarely practiced regular agriculture. >12. Dressed in skins. >13. Wolf as totem guard and revival totem. >14. Used felt tents and brought women and children in wagons. >15. Practiced shamanism based on woship of Heaven and sacred > mountains. >16. Supreme leader summoned all tribes in the autumn for census of > humans and animals. >17. Used raiding and fleeing tactics. >18. Depended on mounted bowmen in battle. >19. Used same feigned retreat strategies. >20. Both were experts at firing bows to the rear while mounted. >21. Slept on furs. >22. Usually shaved head except small tuft on top. >23. Used similar small yet fierce pony. >24. Switched horses in battle. >25. Drank blood of horse during battle to prevent dehydration. >26. Usually no beard except tuft on chin. >27. Sheath of bow suspended from belt in front of left thigh. >28. Quiver attached to belt and suspended across back with arrows to > right. >29. Preferred mare's milk to other types of milk. >30. Similar burial in raised mounds. >31. Similar "plank and file" coffins >32. Similar bows All typical of *any* horse-based steppe pastoralist culture. Says nothing about the language. >Concerning linguistic aspects, you know very well yourself that >Yenesei-Ostyak languages used to be grouped together with Altaic >langauges in the Ural-Altaic family. I wouldn't be a linguist if I believed that! Yenisey-Ostyak, the old name for Ket, is closely allied to the extinct Yug, Kott, Arin, Pumpokol and Assan languages, together forming the Yeniseian family. They are unrelated to either Altaic or Uralic, and in fact the Yeniseian family is best considered a small isolate family (links to North Caucasian and Sino-Tibetan have been suggested, but are not entirely convincing). There is no such thing as a Ural-Altaic family, that's a 19th century construct that has been utterly disproved. There may not even be an Altaic family. Current consensus is that Mongol and Tungusic are related, and probably further linked to Korean and Japanese. The similarities between Turkic and Mongol-Tungus(-Korean-Japanese) are now thought to be due to areal diffusion. Turkic is best treated as an isolate for the time being. ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Mon May 11 06:04:23 1998 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 23:04:23 -0700 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227038516.23782.14618512595921030259.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Re: the dAsakUTa, let me clarify that kanakadAsa's connection to Udupi is simply because Udupi is the center of the mAdhva sampradAya. And even here, legend has it that he was not allowed inside the temple because he was not a brAhmaNa. Certainly, mAdhvas are allowed to express special devotion to vishNu at places other than Udupi. The specific connection of the chosen God to a place seems equally important in the signatures of both vIraSaiva and dAsakUTa poets, notwithstanding other metaphysical differences. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From mcv at WXS.NL Sun May 10 23:31:47 1998 From: mcv at WXS.NL (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Sun, 10 May 98 23:31:47 +0000 Subject: Horses In-Reply-To: <199805102255.PAA22435@dry.jps.net> Message-ID: <161227038491.23782.3880437965152842874.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> "Paul K. Manansala" wrote: >Modern Central Asians come in all types. Most indigenous Central >Asians (non-Russians) like the Kazakhs, Kirghiz, Uzbeks, Uighurs and >so are Altaic peoples. Altaic-speaking, yes. So are the Turks of Turkey. So are the Yakut of Siberia. >>What does >> that have to do with the "original IE stock", whatever that means? > >The idea that started this thread is that the IE stock was somehow >connected with a horse culture. Thus, horses = IE migration. And I agree that such an idea is false. IEans have no monopoly on horses. FYI, neither do Altaic peoples. >> Inscriptions, manuscripts, a body of literature... > >Could you give a reference? "Compendium linguarum iranicarum", ed. R. Schmitt, Wiesbaden 1989 (E, F and G) gives a description of all Iranian lgs. >> >The evidence of Tocharian in the Tarim basin is fragmentary. >> >> No it isn't. See: W. Krause/W. Thomas, "Tocharisches Elementarbuch", >> 2 volumes, Heidelberg 160, 1964. > >Fully aware of this evidence and it is fragmentary. There is nothing >to suggest the local people spoke Tocharian. So whose language was it then? It is found only in the Tarim basin, and while there is evidence that Toch. A was not a living language anymore at the time of our documents, there is every reason to assume Tocharian B was the living language of the city of Kucha. And how do you explain Ossetic and Yaghnobi? >> There is no such thing as a Ural-Altaic family, that's a 19th century >> construct that has been utterly disproved. There may not even be an >> Altaic family. > >There may not be an Indo-European family. You wish. > Current consensus is that Mongol and Tungusic are >> related, and probably further linked to Korean and Japanese. The >> similarities between Turkic and Mongol-Tungus(-Korean-Japanese) are >> now thought to be due to areal diffusion. Turkic is best treated as >> an isolate for the time being. > >Just are simply modifying old "Aryan" racial theories. Indo-European >is all this and that, but we don't know about the rest. > >What about all these new theories connecting Altaic and Uralic, but >under the great white Nostratic/Proto-World banner? Yes, Uralic and Altaic (or Uralic, Turkic and Altaic, if one prefers) are probably Nostratic languages, along with a few others. There is sufficient evidence for that, I think, although much work still needs to be done. Proto-World is nonsense, linguistically, but considering that its proponents claim it was spoken in Sub-Saharan Africa 50-100,000 years ago, and spread out from there all over the world, I can see what's "great", but I don't quite see what's so "white" about it. ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From mcv at WXS.NL Mon May 11 01:03:21 1998 From: mcv at WXS.NL (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 01:03:21 +0000 Subject: Horses In-Reply-To: <199805110022.RAA21876@dry.jps.net> Message-ID: <161227038501.23782.9867165155804763582.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> "Paul K. Manansala" wrote: >I see. Now that one can give these languages a good "white" origin >all of a sudden they are related again. First you claim that >Iranians were the original steppe dwellers. Then you modify that to >include speakers of Caucasian and Yenesei-Ostyak. Then, you assert >there may not be an Altaic family, and even if there is it is not >related to Uralic. Now, you think all these are related under the >Caucasoid Nostratic banner. Confusing isn't it? Well, that's the facts for you. They are never simply black and white. I would put the origin of the Indo-Europeans in SE Europe (and ultimately Anatolia), and therefore the Indo-Europeans must have entered the steppe-lands from the West. The Turkic and Mongolian peoples originated in SE Siberia/Mongolia, and therefore entered the steppe-lands from the East. Who were the original inhabitants? Well, possibly the ancestors of the Yeniseians, North Caucasians and Sino-Tibetans (whether these three groups are linguistically related or not). If you look at the linguistic map of the Northern Caucasus, it makes sense: the Caucasus is what Johanna Nichols calls a 'residual zone', while the steppe north of it is a 'spread zone'. Layer by layer, as the dominant populations of the spread zone are replaced by new arrivals, the residual zone gathers the linguistic sediment: North Caucasians (Abkhaz-Circassians and Chechen-Dagestanians) first, followed by Iranian Ossetes, followed by Turkic peoples (Kumyk, Nogay, Karachay, and Balkar), by Mongols (Kalmyk), by Slavs (Russians). We have the whole linguisic prehistory of the Western Eurasian steppe right there, reaching back maybe 10,000 years. People coming in from the west and people coming in from the east. I don't care much for your platyrrhine skeletons, whatever that means: linguistics alone tells us, if we're prepared to listen, that the steppe population is and has always been mixed, neither "Caucasoid" nor "Mongoloid". >I guess we have reached the end of enlightenment in our discussion. >However, I will discuss the matter with anyone who doesn't see the >Scythian/Hsiung-nu likenesses as purely coincidental. It isn't. The Xiongnu adopted the steppe way of life from the Scythians. ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From mcv at WXS.NL Mon May 11 01:55:58 1998 From: mcv at WXS.NL (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 01:55:58 +0000 Subject: Horses In-Reply-To: <199805110139.SAA12895@dry.jps.net> Message-ID: <161227038511.23782.2540754974458869558.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> "Paul K. Manansala" wrote: > Miguel Carrasquer Vidal >wrote: >t. I don't care much for your >> platyrrhine skeletons, whatever that means: linguistics alone tells >> us, if we're prepared to listen, that the steppe population is and >> has always been mixed, neither "Caucasoid" nor "Mongoloid". >> > >Sorry, I can't resist. Linguistics tells us absolutely nothing about >the biological relations of the steppe population. Neither can I. Your skeletons tell us absolutely nothing about the linguistic relations of the steppe population. The Scythian inscriptions do. Brown-haired regards, ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From apandey at U.WASHINGTON.EDU Mon May 11 11:31:28 1998 From: apandey at U.WASHINGTON.EDU (Anshuman Pandey) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 04:31:28 -0700 Subject: "Devanagari for TeX" updated. Message-ID: <161227038530.23782.11002589469567902281.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The "Devanagari for TeX" package by Frans Velthuis has been updated. The new version, 1.5, is a compliation of various revisions and enhancements made to the original package. This release has been authorized by Velthuis, and is available from CTAN (ie. ftp.tex.ac.uk) in directory language/devanagari/. The package now officially supports the hyphenation of Devanagari text, the use of LaTeX size changing commands, and is fully compliant with LaTeX2e. The manual has also been revised. The METAFONT themselves have been changed, so all metric files (*.tfm) and printer font files (*.pk) must be rebuilt. It is suggested that all files from previous versions be removed. Please direct any questions or comments to me. Regards, Anshuman Pandey From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Mon May 11 00:01:31 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 05:01:31 +0500 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227038489.23782.15585578390648929727.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> S.Krishna writes on Sun, May 10, '98. >As regards etymology, since kUdala= saGgama, >why wasn't this place simply called "sangamEzvara" >or "kUDAlEzvara"...why the doubling of the "kUDala" in samskrt and >kannaDa? Or is that there were so many sangamas in that area that they >came up with this thumb-of-rule to distinguish between the various >dieties and places? > >All answers to questions raised here are welcome. sangamEzwara is the nome of the diety. "kUDala sangamEzwara" means sangamEzwara at the confluence of the rivers. There seems to be a practice of constructing siva temples at river confluences and naming the diety as sangamEzwara. One such temple at the confluence of krishNA and tungabhadrA threatened by zrisailam project has been dismantled stone by stone and reconstructed at alampuram near Kurnool. regards, sarma. From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Mon May 11 14:37:56 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 06:37:56 -0800 Subject: Horses (China) Message-ID: <161227038541.23782.18253448511164845792.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Wolfgang Behr wrote: > At 14:04 10.05.98 +0100, Jan Houben wrote: > > > Wasn't horse-culture in China strongly > > associated with "western people"? > > Yes indeed. There is strong evidence, that the domesticated horse > first appeared in association with the chariot during the late Shang > period (i.e. 12th c. b.c.). The chariot is almost certainly a "Western" > cultural innovation. Cf. for textual & archaeological evidence > There is no evidence though that these "Western" people were Indo-Europeans or that the domesticated horse was associated with any migrations of people into China. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From grimesj at PILOT.MSU.EDU Mon May 11 05:54:28 1998 From: grimesj at PILOT.MSU.EDU (john grimes) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 06:54:28 +0100 Subject: address In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038532.23782.17934287396196737256.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Martin Gansten - what is your email address? I have some more jyotisa information for you. John From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Mon May 11 13:10:41 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 07:10:41 -0600 Subject: Asoka: a new link Message-ID: <161227038534.23782.3177425370649051872.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Prof. Peter Schalk, Uppsala university asked me: *I saw your list of publications. You mention: "I. Mahadevan and R. *Nagaswamy has written on this inscription of Tagaduur Atiyamaan, a friend *of Avvai." I know what Nagaswamy has written, but not Mahadevan. Can you *give an exact bibliographical note? Please see: I. Mahadevan, 1994, Recent discoveries of Jaina cave inscriptions in Tamilnadu, Rishabh Saurabh, Delhi, p. 116-134 R. Nagaswamy, 1981, Asoka and Tamil country: a new link, The Indian Express Sunday magazine, 6 Dec. 1981 >?From I. Mahadevan, Recent trends in early Tamil epigraphy: An overview, J. of the Inst. Asian studies, Madras, XIII, 1, p. 1-31 p. 13 " Jambai (South Arcot): This is without doubt one of the most important Tamil-Brahmi cave inscriptions discovered so far and ranks with the earlier discoveries of the Pandyan inscriptions at MaankuLam and the Chera inscriptions at Pugaluur. The inscription has been published by Nagaswamy (1981) and recently re-edited by me (Mahadevan 1994: p. 123-127) It may be assigned to about the first century A.D. on paleographical grounds and is written in TB-II style. It records the endowment of a cave shelter by Atiyan NeTumaan AJci who sports the title SatyaputO in Prakrit. The donor can be identified with the Chieftain Atiyamaan NeTumaan AJci, one of the most celebrated heroes of the sangam age, with a large number of poems on him especially by the Poetess Avvaiyaar (pu.ram 87-104 etc.,) The occurence of the title satiyaputO in the inscription has settled once for all the question of identification of this expression occuring in the Second Rock edict of Asoka. The suggestion made by T. Burrow (1968: p. 158-9) on linguistic grounds equating satiya with atiya and putO with makan2 > maan2 stands vindicated " ... p. 1 "In recent years, there has been a veritable explosion of knowledge in the feild of Early Tamil Epigraphy. Not only have many interesting and important inscriptions been discovered like, for example, the Chera, Pandya and Atiyaman inscriptions bringing the Tamil Sangam Age into the limelight of history; but also wholly new types of evidence have become available like, for example, megalithic symbols in sequential writing especially on materials other than pottery; megalithic graffti and Tamil-Brahmi characters juxtaposed in some sort of 'mixed writing'; coins inscribed with Pandya and Chera names known earlier only from Sangam works; gold silver and terracotta seals and rings inscribed with Tamil-Brahmi legends; widespread occurrence of inscribed shreds in both urban and rural areas revealing an unexpectedly high level of early Tamil literacy; and new light on early Tamil contacts abroad. The flood of new evidence is already forcing Tamil epigraphists to grapple with their implications and to take a fresh look at problems like the significance of the megalithic graffiti, origin and evoloution of the Tamil scripts, the vital role played by Tamil-Brahmi in promoting early Tamil literacy, contrasting developments of Vatteluttu as the native script and the Tamil script as elitist in origin etc. This paper attempts in brief an overview of recent discoveries and current trends in early Tamil Epigraphy from the earliest times upto the end of the sixth century A.D. A general survey like the present one cannot perhaps avoids reading like a catalogue of new finds. Perhaps also it is too early to analyse in full the implications of the newly emerging trends." .... From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Mon May 11 16:37:45 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 08:37:45 -0800 Subject: Horses (China) Message-ID: <161227038550.23782.12286596462605379325.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Lars Martin Fosse wrote: > At 06:37 11.05.98 -800, you wrote: > > Wolfgang Behr > >wrote: > > > >> At 14:04 10.05.98 +0100, Jan Houben wrote: > >> > >> > Wasn't horse-culture in China strongly > >> > associated with "western people"? > >> > >> Yes indeed. There is strong evidence, that the domesticated horse > >> first appeared in association with the chariot during the late Shang > >> period (i.e. 12th c. b.c.). The chariot is almost certainly a "Western" > >> cultural innovation. Cf. for textual & archaeological evidence > >> > > > >There is no evidence though that these "Western" people were > >Indo-Europeans or that the domesticated horse was associated with any > >migrations of people into China. > > AS far as I know, archaeological remains have been found of almost "Nordic" > looking people in Sinkiang (pl. correct me if I am wrong about the place). > The bodies are well preserved, and they should indicate that migrations of > Indo-European looking people took place. But, of course, the dead don't speak. > You are right about the place, although it is not directly connected with the Shang dynasty. However, regarding the Xinkiang mummies, this appear to be more hype than anything else. Some studies on crania in Xinkiang have followed the same erroneous path as the interpretation of the Kennewick remains. That is, they have interpreted anything that doesn't fit into typical northeast Mongoloid as "Caucasoid" or "Pre-Caucasoid." Most of the remains associated with Xinkiang and also the Siberian "Caucasoids" are related to modern Southern Mongoloid/Pacific types that once were very common in Northeast and Central Asia. In fact, Shang remains, especially the earliest ones, often resemble "Oceanic Negroids" more than anything else Regarding blonde mummies, even such mummies were found in Peru. Unfortunately, what many of these archaeologists do not say is that mummification can change the color of hair. There is an old study by Virchow that explained that salts, a common material in mummification, tends to cause blondness in dead hair. He was examining specifically pre-dynastic Egyptian remains that had been sun-dried and exposed to soil with high salt content. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Mon May 11 14:46:30 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 08:46:30 -0600 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227038546.23782.14465016521828504087.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> S. Krishna writes as the concluding line: *This leads me to believe that the name of the place was just kUDala * [...] *kUDala and kappaDi( a nearby town) the Gods were *called kUDalasangamEZvara and kappaDisangamEzvara which is now being --------------- *interpreted as that the place names THEMSELVES were kUDalasangama and ---------------------------------- *kappaDisangama... My earlier posting is clear enough. The place names are NOT interpreted as kuuDalasangama NOW. They are that way for atleast ONE THOUSAND years! There exists pieces from a tamil pirapantam (ciRRilakkiyam). The book is called kuuDalacaGkamattup paraNi in which clearly place name is kuuDalasangama. This is a hybrid dravidian/IA name. IF kuuDala were the placename, the paraNi would have been kuuDalap paraNi or kuuDal paraNi, but this is not the case. BTW, maturai in sangam classics is refered to as kuuDal all the time. In Kannada also, the place name is kuuDalasangama. (The place name is not kuuDala). >?From the book in which the vacana translaton occurs. AKR, Speaking of "Siva, Penguin, 1973, p. 62 "In kuuDalasangama, he found a guru, with whom he studied the Vedas and other religious texts" I would think in Kannada also, there is a long tradition of kuuDalasangama as the place name. Regards, N. Ganesan Earlier N. Ganesan wrote <> From fsmith at BLUE.WEEG.UIOWA.EDU Mon May 11 14:51:14 1998 From: fsmith at BLUE.WEEG.UIOWA.EDU (F. Smith) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 09:51:14 -0500 Subject: Roots of Ayurveda In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038548.23782.1542808853043882079.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> DOminik, Yes, I have also had trouble ordering it. I was referred to one book importer in this country that specializes in imported books, but they too said it was impossible for them. If nobody out there has done this already, I will contact Jerry Barrier at South Asia Books. It is likely that he can get copies of it. Fred Smith On Mon, 11 May 1998, Dominik Wujastyk wrote: > A number of friends have kindly contacted me to say that they are having > difficulty getting my book from local bookshops. Apparently Penguin > outside India is not willing to supply Indian-published Penguin books > (I'd be glad to hear people's experiences in this area, especially > counter-examples.) > > If you wish to order Indian Penguin books directly from the publishers in > India, you can send your requests > by email to > penguin at del2.vsnl.net.in > or by fax to > +91 11 623 4250 for > > All the best, > Dominik > > -- > Dr Dominik Wujastyk, FAX: +44 171 611 8545 > Wellcome Institute for URL: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/ > the History of Medicine, Email: d.wujastyk at ucl.ac.uk > Wellcome Trust, 183 Euston Road, Trust URL: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk > London NW1 2BE, England. > From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Mon May 11 09:52:06 1998 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 10:52:06 +0100 Subject: Roots of Ayurveda Message-ID: <161227038523.23782.11766791558874094221.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> A number of friends have kindly contacted me to say that they are having difficulty getting my book from local bookshops. Apparently Penguin outside India is not willing to supply Indian-published Penguin books (I'd be glad to hear people's experiences in this area, especially counter-examples.) If you wish to order Indian Penguin books directly from the publishers in India, you can send your requests by email to penguin at del2.vsnl.net.in or by fax to +91 11 623 4250 for All the best, Dominik -- Dr Dominik Wujastyk, FAX: +44 171 611 8545 Wellcome Institute for URL: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/ the History of Medicine, Email: d.wujastyk at ucl.ac.uk Wellcome Trust, 183 Euston Road, Trust URL: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk London NW1 2BE, England. From JHOUBEN at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL Mon May 11 10:02:14 1998 From: JHOUBEN at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL (Jan E.M. Houben) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 11:02:14 +0100 Subject: Indo-Aryan im/e-migration (collation of bibl. references) Message-ID: <161227038521.23782.13664552979311965252.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Suggestions on literature connected with "Indo-Aryan Invasion / im/e-migration" (a personal bibliographical collage): Several people requested me to send them my collation of bibliographical references in the Indo-Aryan im/e-migration discussion, in spite of my warning my collation is very incomplete and only partly edited. I want to add that I left the references mostly in their shape as they were given, whether complete or incomplete, and that I did not check them (I hope to do this for a few which interest me most). Well, here follows what I collected the last few months: *** Fri, 27 Feb 1998, Lmfosse at online.no, on Indo-Aryan Invasion . . . magnum opus on the genetics of the world by Cavalli-Sforza called The History and Geography of the Human Genes, Princeton University Press, 1994 . . . **** G. Thompson mentioned (somewhere in March?): Hock H.H. "Pre-rgvedic convergence between Indo-Aryan and Dravidian: A survey of the issues and controversies" [esp. relevant for discussion on retroflexion] in: Ideology and Status of Sanskrit: Contributions to the History of the Sanskrit Language, ed. by J.Houben, Leiden, Brill 1996. **** G. Thompson, 16 Mar: P. Oktor Skjaervo's article in Erdosy, Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, 1995; and his: "The state of Old Avestan scholarship" JAOS 117.1 (1997). **** Lars Martin Fosse , ca. 10 March, on Indo-Aryan Invasion (proposal for virtual sattra) I would like to suggest another paper appearing in the same volume as Erdosy's (The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity). [The paper is written by Michael Witzel and is called "Rgvedic history: poets, chieftains and polities"). Then not only the linguistic and the archaeological dimension would covered, but also the historical. [note JH: publisher: Walter de Gruyter: Berlin/New York, 1995; According to a note in Witzel's "The Vedic Canon and its Political milieu" in Inside the Text - Outside the Text, ed. by M. Witzel, Harvard Oriental Series, Opera minora vol. 2 (p. 262 note 21): "The Volume has now been reprinted, at an affordable rate, by Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi."] ******** Palaniappa , 12 March The views of late Candrasekaraendra Sarasvati (ZankarAcArya) of Kanchi should also be considered here. According to him, the racial connotation of the terms Arya and Dravida was due to the Divide and Rule policy of the Whites. (teyvattin2 kural, vol.2, 35). In a discussion of the 'research of the Whites: good and bad' ("veLLaiyar ArAycci:nallatum keTTatum" teyvattn2 kural, vol. 2, p. 234-244), he discusses the work of Indologists and Orientalists (Max Mueller, William Jones, Arthur Avalon) and their approach to Vedic studies and Vedic chronology. By the way, is there any reason why the IA experts do not seem to consider Kuiper's book (in which he discusses Deshpande's thesis) as worthwhile to include in their discussion, Indo-Aryan Invasion "focussed discussion"? ************ Luis Gonzalez-Reimann , 13 March on Indo-Aryan Invasion (proposal for virtual sattra) A topic that I have never seen mentioned when the discussion comes up is whether we can draw any conclusions from references to weather or the environment in the Rg Veda and Iranian texts. More specifically, the fact that whereas water plays an important role in both Rg Vedic and Iranian mythologies, in Iran it is mainly through images of rivers, while in the Rg Veda rain is added as an important element, and it grows in importance as times goes on. This coincides with the fact that monsoon weather covers the subcontinent but it doesn't reach Iran. A recent article that mentions this is G. V. Vajracharya's "The Adaptation of Monsoonal Culture by Rgvedic Aryans: A Further Study of the Frog Hymn," in the Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies 3,2 (1997). ***** JH: For instance, Hock's article on retroflexes (see earlier postings) pre- fixes a period of Aryan-Dravidian harmony to the Vedic period, but it does not say anything directly on Aryans coming into or going out of India. It is only relevant to the Indo-Aryan im/e-migration debate to the extent that it places great question marks behind ONE of the traditional arguments for emigration. On the other hand, Erdosy's "Language, material culture and ethnicity" (see earlier postings) seems more centrally important for the debate. In the mean time, in the archive of this very Indology List I found a posting of Raoul Martens, dated 16 Jan 1998, with several references on "the Indus script", "Aryan Invasion Theory" and "horse in Indus valley". This could form the basis of a list of literature for "the other side of the argument". The posting mentions also addresses of various websites, but several of these seem to have become outdated. I was only successful at the site http://www.indiastar.com This contains postings with reviews of recently appeared books, and it seems that books "debunking Aryan Invasion" are extremely popular (does this reflect the popularity of the subject with Indian readers or the policy of the maintainers of the site?). Under the sub-address http://www.indiastar.com/ancient.htm a review of four "new age" antiAryanInvasion books may be found: In search of the Cradle of Civilization, by Feuerstein, Kak and Frawley; Myth of Aryan Invasion by Frawley; Politics of History: Aryan Invasion and Subversion of Scholarship, Navaratna Rajaram; Return of the Aryans by Bhagwan S. Gidwani. *** "N. Ganesan" on Indo-Aryan invasion A) Language Change: ******************* When the incoming Indo-Aryans have attained sufficient political power and population numbers, the existing people abandoned and/or were made to abandon their native language (some form of Dravidian?) and started to use Indo-Aryan tongues. Is this formulation written by anyone? Much like how Spanish in Mexico or Portugese in Brazil spread as a "prestige" language, as suggested by Dr. Fosse. I searched academic databases, could come up with interesting, but did not see anything for Indic situation. Is this because scarce written data from Dravidian side exists, to a lesser extent from Indo-Aryan. William Labov, On the mechanism of linguistic change, NY J. P. Lantolf, Linguistic change as a socio-cultural phenomenon, PhD P. S. Ureland, Prehistoric bilingualism and pidginization as forces of Linguistic change, J. IE studies, 7, 77-104, 1979 L. M. Torres, Linguistic change in a Language contact situation: A cross-generational study, PhD, 1988 etc., ************************************************************************* B) Place Names: *************** The vast databank of Indian settlement names is under-researched. Lot more work can be done. For example, I give a section of an old posting in Indology. Old names from inscriptions should be special, in this regard. MICHIGAN-LAUSANNE INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR "ARYANS AND NON-ARYANS IN SOUTH ASIA : EVIDENCE, INTERPRETATION, AND IDEOLOGY" October 25-27, 1996 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan DRAVIDIAN PLACE NAMES IN MAHARASHTRA F. C. Southworth (University of Pennsylvania) In their book _The_Rise_of_Civilization_in_India_and_Pakistan_ (1982), the Allchins state that there is a substratum of Dravidian place names in Maharashtra. This statement, based probably on the ideas of H. D. Sankalia, has never been properly investigated. Fortunately there exist two lists of Maharashtrian village names which provide the data for such a study. My investigation of these names turned up a number of candidates for Dravidian origin among the suffixes of Marathi place names. Among these suffixes, the most promising is -vali/oli, both because of its high frequency and because its Dravidian origin is not questioned (< Drav. paLLi 'hamlet, camp, place to lie down' < paT- 'lie,fall'). A study of the spatial distribution of village names with the suffix -vali/oli shows 90% or more of them concentrated in the coastal region known as Konkan. In the remainder of the Marahi-speaking area, the greatest concentration is in the southern part of the Desh, i.e. in the districts of Kolhapur and Solapur. A number of other suffixes of probable Dravidian origin are also found in these areas, though they are of lower frequency of occurrence. Thus these suffixes of Dravidian origin are in a continuous distribution with the Dravidian paLLi, as well as with similar suffixes in the state of Gujarat (discussed in Sankalia's doctoral thesis, which is based on early inscriptions in Gujarat). Thus there can be little doubt that these areas were previously inhabited by speakers of some Dravidian language(s). >The paper will also discuss reflexes of Dravidian paLLi in place names in >Sindh and Pakistani Panjab, where the evidence is somewhat less clear. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Satyanarayana Dasa, Dravidian in North Indian toponymy, Varanasi, 1987 V. Khaire, Dravida Maharashtra, 1977 K. Nachimuthu (editor), Perspectives in place names, 1987, Trivandrum has a paper by Lalitha Prabhu on Palli and its variants in Central India. (I don't know whether Prof. F. C. Southworth has seen this one) Parso Gidvani has written on Sindhi names from Dravidian. Krishnapada Goswami, Place names of Bengal, 1984 H. D. Sankalia, Prehistory of India, 1977 H. D. Sankalia, The prehistory and protohistory of India and Pakistan, N. Lahovary, Dravidian origins and the West, 1963 G. S. Ghurye, Caste and Race in India, Bombay, 1979 For years, F. C. Southworth has written on related topics: a) The reconstruction of Prehistoric South Asian language contact, in E. H. Bendix(ed.), The uses of linguistics, p. 207-234, NY 1990 b) Dravidian and Indo-European: The neglected hypothesis, Int. J. Dravidian linguistics, 11, 1, p.1-21, 1982 c) Lexical evidence for early contacts between Indo-Aryan and Dravidian, in Aryan & Non-Aryan in India, UMich. 1979 d) F. C. Southworth, Ancient economic plants of South Asia: Linguistic archaeology and early agriculture. in Language and Culture: Studies in honor of E.C. Polome, p. 649-648, 1988 e) Linguistic masks for power: some relationships between semantic and social change. Anthropological linguistics, 16, p. 177-191 f) Linguistic stratigraphy of North India, IJDL, 3, 2, 1974 C) Substratum theory: ***************** von Munkwitz-Smith, Jefrrey C. Substratum influence in Indo-Aryan grammar, PhD thesis, 1995, U. Minnesota O. Szemerenyi, Structuralism and substratum:Indo-Europeans and Aryans in the Ancient Near East, Lingua 13, 1-29, 1964 Jaroslav Vacek, The non-IE linguistic substratum in the IE languages of India, with reference to the Ashokan inscriptions. 1969 C. A. Winters, The Dravidian and Manding substratum in Tokharian, Central Asiatic Jl., 1988, v.32, 1-2, p. 131- D) Retroflexion in Sanskrit: ******************************** M. B. Emeneau in Collected papers says: "The fact, however, that the later in Indo-Aryan linguistic history we go, the greater is the incidence of retroflex constants and the further fact that most of the Dravidian languages and the proto-Dravidian itself have this type of consonants in abundance, can only lead to the conclusion that the later Indo-Aryan developments are due to a borrowing of indigenous speech habits through bilingualism, and to the well-grounded suspicion that even in the early development of retroflexes from certain IE consonant clusters results from the same historic case." A recent article: Eric P. Hamp, On the IE origin of retroflexes in Sanskrit, JAOS, 116, 4, 719- **** Palaniappa , 6 May, on Indo-Aryan im/e-migration (scholarly debate) In a message dated 98-05-04 23:26:06 EDT, bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN writes: << Apparently the present generation of Indologists are not familiar with the arguments of Jules Bloch why OIA has ghoTa(ka) 'horse' > Hi. ghoDaa, etc., which has no IE-etymology (unlike Skt. as'va-). . . . >> Indologists also should consult the following view of T. Burrow. . . . The reference is "Dravidian Studies-I: Notes on "Convertibility of Surds and Sonants" in Collected Papers on Dravidian Linguistics, by Prof T. Burrow, 1968, Annamalai University, Annamalainagar, S. India. This is a reprint of a BSOS IX [1937-39] article. **** Georg von Simson , 7 May, on Horses Paul K. Manansala asks me: > >Could you explain this high position of the horse in other >Indo-European cultures. Preferably not Scythian ones as there has >always been some argument over whether the Scythians were truly IE. >What part did the horse play in Greek or Persian culture? See the article "Horses" by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, in The Encyclopedia of Religion (Ed. Mircea Eliade). Vol. 6 (New York, 1987), p. 463-468. I cannot quote the whole article; let me just quote the following (p. 463): "Ancient Indo-European Horse Sacrifices: With the Greeks and the Vedic Indians, and later with the Romans, the horse truly came into its own as a religious symbol, one that pervades both myth and ritual. Rituals involving horses, more particularly rituals that involve the killing of a white stallion, are attested throughout the Indo-European world." In the following she mentions ancient Norse, Greek, Roman, Persian and Celtic ritual and mythological traditions which confirm her statement. See also the Bibliography added to her article for further references. **** "N. Ganesan" , 9 May on Horses To an outsider, horse looks important in ancient Persia. A. Cotterell, The Penguin Encyclopaedia of Classical Civilizations, 1993 p.153 has a cylinder seal with cuneiform letters. In this seal, Darius I of the Achamenid empire around 520 BC is shown hunting lions. Two palm trees are there. The King of Kings is shooting an arrow from chariot. There are horses, charioteer, etc., See also, Jaan Puhvel, Comparative mythology, Johns Hopkins univ. press, 1989. Some chapter names: The concepts of Indo-European and Indo-Iranian, Vedic India, Ancient Iran, Ancient Greece, Rome, Celts, HORSE and ruler, ... Jivanji Jamshedji Modi (1854-1933) The bas-relief of Behram Gour at Naksh-i-Rustam and the horse in ancient Iran. Bombay: Educational society's steam press, 1895 Bahram was dead at 438. Regards, N. Ganesan ***** JHOUBEN 10 May: Here, "the horse is missing" refers only to the oldest paintings. The absence of the horse becomes more striking if placed against the background of its conspicuous presence in later paintings. The dating of the different paintings is crucial, and for this I have to lean heavily on the preliminary publication which I cited, namely Bhimbetka: Prehistoric Man and his Art in Central India by Virendra Nath Misra et al., Deccan College: Pune, 1977. *** Note: there were a number of important references to "horse in megalithic culture" which I have not yet included in this list. It should be not too difficult to find them in the INDOLOGY archive of March, April, May this year . . . JH From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Mon May 11 10:11:56 1998 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 11:11:56 +0100 Subject: Oriya-TeX (fwd) Message-ID: <161227038525.23782.4786938884976968272.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 08:20:46 +0200 From: Jeroen Hellingman Subject: Re: Oriya-TeX Hi Dominik, This morning I've send Malayalam-TeX to the CTAN archive [i.e., ftp://ftp.tex.ac.uk], so it will be available soon in the directory "languages". New in this package: - changed transcription scheme - metafont code now included - status changed to freeware (but I retain the copyright) - various minor fixes and updates The fonts have changed, so existing .pk and .tfm files should be all replaced. [...] best wishes, Jeroen Hellingman From sns at IX.NETCOM.COM Mon May 11 18:01:02 1998 From: sns at IX.NETCOM.COM (Sn. Subrahmanya) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 13:01:02 -0500 Subject: Xinjiang Mummies Message-ID: <161227038560.23782.149757189256876093.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The Europoid mummies are from 1800BC. The older mummies are exclusively europoid, mongoloid mummies only turn up from around 1000BC. The mummies have clothes with celtic weaves and a tilak on their forehead !! What is very interesting is A.K.Narains labelling them as the first indo-europeans (great yueh chih,spelling??) using textual evidence and relationship between Tokharian and Hittite. Mallory tries to brush off Narain's argument using some "lexical-cultural" argument, which seemed pretty unconvincing to me. If older remains are found, it can potentially cause real problems to the currently touted Aryan invasion/migration theory. What is also fascinating is that Shrikant Talageri in his Aryan Invasion Theory - A Reappraisal, places the Druhyus (later Druids/celts) around the same geographical area. The transcipt of the PBS program on Xinjiang mummies is at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/chinamum/ Subrahmanya Houston, TX From steiner at MAILER.UNI-MARBURG.DE Mon May 11 11:01:25 1998 From: steiner at MAILER.UNI-MARBURG.DE (Roland Steiner) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 13:01:25 +0200 Subject: RupparUpaka In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19980508111306.00715af8@uclink4.berkeley.edu> Message-ID: <161227038527.23782.5690784236416663488.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> See Heinrich LUEDERS, "Die ;Saubhikas", in: Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1916, pp. 698-737 (= Philogica Indica. Ausgewaehlte kleine Schriften von H. L. Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1940, pp. 391-428, esp. pp. 394ff.). -- Dr. Roland Steiner Fachgebiet Indologie, FB 11 der Philipps-Universitaet Wilhelm-Roepke-Strasse 6 D-35032 Marburg (Briefanschrift / for letters) D-35039 Marburg (Paketanschrift / for parcels) Germany Tel.: +49-6421-282184; Fax: +49-6421-284995 email: steiner at Mailer.Uni-Marburg.DE From w.behr at EM.UNI-FRANKFURT.DE Mon May 11 13:17:14 1998 From: w.behr at EM.UNI-FRANKFURT.DE (Wolfgang Behr) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 14:17:14 +0100 Subject: Horses (China) Message-ID: <161227038537.23782.2538013844928709236.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 14:04 10.05.98 +0100, Jan Houben wrote: > Wasn't horse-culture in China strongly > associated with "western people"? Yes indeed. There is strong evidence, that the domesticated horse first appeared in association with the chariot during the late Shang period (i.e. 12th c. b.c.). The chariot is almost certainly a "Western" cultural innovation. Cf. for textual & archaeological evidence Edward L. Shaughnessy "Historical Perspectives on the Introduction of the Chariot in China", Harvard J. of Asiatic Studies 48 (1988): 189-237 "Western Cultural Innovations in China, 1200 b.c.", Sino-Platonic Papers 11 (1989), 8 pp. The rather late appearance of the domesticated horse in China is in- directly confirmed by Chinese mythology, which credits a certain Xiangtu (OC *Sangtha:?), the grandson of the founder of the Shang dynasty Xie (ca. 1500 b.c.), with the first domestication of the horse. There might have been an earlier domestication of an _equus genus_ in the far North- East of what is now China, but it is by no means clear, if it was known by Xia or Shang people in the central plains area. Cf. Stanley J. Olsen "The Early domestication of the Horse in North CHina", Archaeology 37 (1984) 1: 62-63, 77 As far as the introduction of the horse into Japan is concerned, I would certainly be greatful for any up-to-date pointers myself. The once famous theory of invading Altaic horseriders as the founders of Japanese culture (for an English summary cf. G. Ledyard, "Gallopping Along with the Horseriders: Looking for the Founders of Japan", J. of Japanese Studies 1 (1975): 217-254), has apparently been totally debunked by archaeologists during recent years. See, for instance, Walter Edwards "Event and process in the founding of Japan: The horserider theory in archeological perspective", J. of Japanese Studies 2 (1983): 265-295 and, for a linguistic comment on the question, Roy A Miller, "Altaic Evidence for Prehistoric Incursions of Japan", Ural-Altaic Yearbook 58 (1986): 39-64 Cheers, Wolfgang From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Mon May 11 22:23:24 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 14:23:24 -0800 Subject: Xinjiang Mummies Message-ID: <161227038569.23782.1253942833016351511.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> "Sn. Subrahmanya" wrote: > The Europoid mummies are from 1800BC. The older mummies are exclusively > europoid, mongoloid mummies only turn up from around 1000BC. > The mummies have clothes with celtic weaves and a tilak on their forehead !! The problem is with the term "Europoid" which I believe should be "Europid." The term Europoid is usually used for early types like Cro-Magnon. "Europid" does not equate to modern "Caucasoids" even given quite a bit of leeway for variation. In fact, the early mummies are quite like very old types found in East Asia. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From sreeni at KTPSP2.UNI-PADERBORN.DE Mon May 11 12:25:49 1998 From: sreeni at KTPSP2.UNI-PADERBORN.DE (Sreenivas Paruchuri) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 14:25:49 +0200 Subject: Madonna creating waves in Benare Sanskrit circles Message-ID: <161227038539.23782.11152481659003502255.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Greetings! A month or so ago, there was a thread on Madonna's Om Shunti, and it was discussed if her latest album 'd eventually help with more student enrollments at Sanskrit studies Centres of 'western' universities :). If you read Telugu, pl. point your browsers at the on-Line Telugu daily: aandhrabhUmi, which carries an article on Madonna's selection of some Sanskrit Sloka-s from Sankaracharya's _yOgatArAvaLi_ for her latest album: Ray of Light, and Benares Sanskrit Scholors' comments on the same. Acc. to this article Achaarya Vighnesh Sastry didn't even spare the prime minister: AB Vajpayee, for his false pronunciation of Sanskrit :-). www.deccan.com/bhoomi/special.html#(none) Right below the afore mentioned article there is another news item that 'd be of interest to Sanskritists. It mentions that baaNabhaTTa's (of harsha's court) place of origin is questioned by one Prof. Manavendra Bhattacharya, who in his recently published book, concluded that baaNa is from today's Assam, and not, as assumed, from Maharashtra. Regards, --Sreenivas From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Mon May 11 22:48:54 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 14:48:54 -0800 Subject: Asva, haya, ghota, etc., Was: Horses Message-ID: <161227038574.23782.16339000285789284427.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> With all this discussion on horses in India, what are the origins for the words for horse in Sanskrit. Ghota seems somewhat similar to Yenesei-Ostyak "kuta" and even Austronesian "kud(j)a". Haya has been connected with the English word "horse." I believe there is an Indic "hyivor" that compares with an Old Germanic "hyros" or something like that. Does anyone accept asva > equus? According to Indian tradition, the domesticated horse originated in the east during the Churning of the Milky Ocean. The Asura Bali was said to first have possession of this horse, and legend ascribes domestication of horses to the Asuras. Tamed horses were fed rice donated to their sage trainers, and thus horses are also called salihotra. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM Mon May 11 22:31:02 1998 From: mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM (S Krishna) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 15:31:02 -0700 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227038586.23782.13805397609028983598.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> N.Ganesan writes: <NOT interpreted as kuuDalasangama NOW. They are that >way for atleast ONE THOUSAND years!>> I'm sorry for not being clear enough...the "now" part refered to kUDalasangama after the temple came up, as opposed to a time when the temple did not exist....Does a sthalapurANam of the temple exist? Will anybody familiar with the intricacies of kannaDa comment on a special relation existing between "kUDala" and it's indicating the addition/confluence of TWO things?( as opposed to three or more?) <> Isn't this a good reason for refering to other "kUDala"s with some other prefix/word in order to distinguish between them? What do the prabandhams talk about? <> Does anybody know the name of the place before the temple was constructed? I believe this will tell us what is what... Krishna ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Mon May 11 13:32:27 1998 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 15:32:27 +0200 Subject: Horses (China) Message-ID: <161227038544.23782.9404993458796923534.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 06:37 11.05.98 -800, you wrote: > Wolfgang Behr >wrote: > >> At 14:04 10.05.98 +0100, Jan Houben wrote: >> >> > Wasn't horse-culture in China strongly >> > associated with "western people"? >> >> Yes indeed. There is strong evidence, that the domesticated horse >> first appeared in association with the chariot during the late Shang >> period (i.e. 12th c. b.c.). The chariot is almost certainly a "Western" >> cultural innovation. Cf. for textual & archaeological evidence >> > >There is no evidence though that these "Western" people were >Indo-Europeans or that the domesticated horse was associated with any >migrations of people into China. AS far as I know, archaeological remains have been found of almost "Nordic" looking people in Sinkiang (pl. correct me if I am wrong about the place). The bodies are well preserved, and they should indicate that migrations of Indo-European looking people took place. But, of course, the dead don't speak. There is an Internet site about this, but I have lost the web-address. Sorry. On the other hand, the horse-and-chariot concept may have passed through non-Indo-European hands before reaching China. So we shan't know for sure. Too bad. Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Tel: +47 22 32 12 19 Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no Mobile phone: 90 91 91 45 From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Mon May 11 22:47:26 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 16:47:26 -0600 Subject: Rock paintings Message-ID: <161227038577.23782.9734789879152973697.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dr. E. Neumayer can be asked of the nonoccurence of horse and its later appearance in Bhimbetka rock paintings. Some references may be of interest: 1) Baidyanath Saraswati, Rock art of India and China: The Unity of Primal Vision, Indian horizons, 1994, 43, 1-2, p. 383- 2) Izumi Niro, Mural art at Bhimbetka, India (Text in Japanese), kokogaku kenkyu, June 1, 1995, 42, 1, p. 25- 3) Robert G. Bednarik, The cupules on Chief's rock, Auditorium cave, Bhimbetka The artefact: Official newsletter of the archae..., 1996, v.19, p. 63- 4) Anita Verma, Rock paintings. Testimony of Man's evolution. India perspectives, 10/1/1996 5) Subhashini Aryan, Rock paintings: Reflections on Man's evolution. India perspectives, 4/1/1996 6) Giriraj Kumar, Darakhi-Chattar: a paleolithic cupule site in India. Rock art research, J. of the Australian ... March 1 1996, 13, 1, p. 38- 7) Erwin Neumayer, Bodies in motion (prehistoric performing arts in India's rock paintings) Archaeology, v. 50, 1997, p. 56-59 8) E. Neumayer, Lines on Stone: the prehistoric rock art of India, 1993, Manohar: Delhi 9) S. K. Pandey, Indian rock art, Aryan Books: Delhi, 1993 10) Yashodhar Mathpal, Rock art in Kumoan Himalaya, Indira Gandhi National Center for Performing arts, 1995 11) Y. Mathpal, Prehistoric rock paintings of Bhimbetka, Central india, Abhinav: Delhi, 1984 12) A. Sundara, Karanaataka pragitihaasa kaalada kale. Karnataka Lalitkala Akademi, 1994 (85 pages of plates) Regards, N. Ganesan From mmdesh at UMICH.EDU Mon May 11 20:53:06 1998 From: mmdesh at UMICH.EDU (Madhav Deshpande) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 16:53:06 -0400 Subject: [Fwd: [Fwd: The material girl dabbles in metaphysics.]] (fwd) Message-ID: <161227038565.23782.13027322833634570736.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Indologists, Here are some reactions of the Pandits of Banaras to Madonna's Sanskrit. These attachments were sent to me by my daughter. Best, Madhav -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: unknown sender Subject: no subject Date: no date Size: 6263 URL: From bvi at AFN.ORG Mon May 11 21:14:15 1998 From: bvi at AFN.ORG (Chris Beetle) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 17:14:15 -0400 Subject: Kirfel's Die Kosmographie der Inder Message-ID: <161227038572.23782.4240350062809463825.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Greetings! Do you know of an English translation of Willibald Kirkel's book entitled Die Kosmographie der Inder? We need one for some research on Indian cosmography. Thank you for your help. Chris Beetle From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Mon May 11 16:34:17 1998 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 17:34:17 +0100 Subject: jtotisa_texts In-Reply-To: <009C5EB5.93CD1B1E.13@ksuvx0.kyoto-su.ac.jp> Message-ID: <161227038555.23782.7275282152862564732.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michio, The addition of these texts to your Kyoto archive is a fantastic contribution. Thank you *very* much, and of course also to Hayashi and Sugita for their work and generosity. All the best, Dominik -- Dr Dominik Wujastyk, FAX: +44 171 611 8545 Wellcome Institute for URL: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/ the History of Medicine, Email: d.wujastyk at ucl.ac.uk Wellcome Trust, 183 Euston Road, Trust URL: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk London NW1 2BE, England. First Rule of History: History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each other. From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Mon May 11 16:36:54 1998 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 17:36:54 +0100 Subject: Malayalam-TeX (was: Re: Oriya-TeX (fwd)) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038558.23782.7303321364113631337.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Oops, Malayalam-TeX; Oriya-TeX was two weeks ago! All the best, Dominik From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Tue May 12 00:58:50 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 18:58:50 -0600 Subject: Chola memorial temples Message-ID: <161227038588.23782.14707329871059363504.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Earlier, I gave a reference on Prithvigangaraiyar, Chieftain of the Pallava Vijaya Kampavarman, erecting a PaLLippaDai temple. Here are three more attested funerary temples. One is to Queen Panchavan Maadevi, wife of Rajaraja I. On Pasupatas, Indira Peterson referred me to Charles D. Collins book on Elephanta (SUNY). The entire temple is built as Mount Kailas, Ravana is shaking it at the bottom. Parvati looks for the help of Siv, .... More in Nagaswamy's Tantric ciults in South India, also D. Lorenzen's work. The link to SEA's Devaraja cult is intriguing. Once, heard that Ms. Tamara Hudec or someone is doing a PhD on relations between S. India and South east Asia at U. of Penn. Was it completed? Very keen to know any PhD theses or books exploring the relations between South India and south east Asia. Many thanks for any references. Eager to read on the inscription of the Kadamba king who killed himself on behalf of his pet parrot. Regards, N. Ganesan *********************************************************************** 1) PALLIPPADAI TEMPLE FOR A CHOLA QUEEN Panchavan Maadevi Isvaram S. R. Balasubrahmanyam, Middle Chola temples, Thompson press, 1975 p. 269 Ramanathankoil is about 2 KM southwest of Pattisvaram. Pattisvaram, Ramanathan koil, PalaiyaaRai, TiruccattimuRRam, and Darasuram were important Chola centers lying close to one another, having formed an integral part of the ancient secondary Chola capital of Palaiyaarai. It is referred to in a record of Kundavai PiraaTTiyaar (ARE 639 of 1909) as the royal home of her nephew Rajendra I. p. 270 An inscription of the seventh year of Rajendra I (ARE 271 of 1927) found here, mentions a gift of land for worship and offerings, by the king and a queen of his (NampiraaTTiyaar) made to the "Mahadevar of Panchavan Maadevi Isvaran, built as a paLLiPPaDai at Palaiyaarai alias Mudikonda Cholapuram". Provisons ae made for offerings on the days of Tiruvaadirai, the natal star of Rajendra I, and Revati, stated there to be that of the (unnamed) queen. [... Two paras to establish which Panchavan Maadevi's temple is this] p.271 In view of the many acts of devotion attributed to Queen Panchavan Maadevi of Rajaraja I, it is highly probable that the paLLiPPaDai temple was erected over her mortal remains (though Uttama Chola and Rajendra I had queens of the same name). Though there is no foundation inscription revealing its date or builder, it likely that it was erected by Rajendra I himself in homage to the saintly character of his step mother. In any event, this temple is unique as the only pallippaDai known to be erected in honor of a QUEEN. p.272 The above inscription makes mention of a mathadhipati Lakulisvara Pandita who supervised the affairs of the temple.. We will see while discussing Tiruvorriyur, the hold which the Lakulisa and soma Siddhanta cults had over the Cholas in general, and over Rajendra I in particular. p. 307 The Cholas of the Middle and Later periods seem to have been deeply interested in the Saiva cult called Lakulisa cult. it is likely that Tiruvorriyur was a strong center of this cult during these periods, and that this shrine is dedicated to Lakulisa (corrupted in course of time into Gaulisa). Rajadhiraja II is said to have attended a festival in the shrine; two gurus, Chaturaanana Pandita and Vagisvara Pandita were also present on the occasion, and the latter expounded the Soma Siddhanta (the philosophy of the Kapalika sect of Saivism) in the royal presence; later all the three listened to a discourse on the life of Sundaramurti Nayanar (Aludaiya Nambi). ****************************************** 2) S. R. Balsubrahmanyam, Early Chola temples, Orient Longman, 1971 p.213 "Melpadi is situated 6 miles north of Tiruvallam on the Western bank of Niva river. It occupies an important strategic position in respect of the northern border of the Chola dominions." p. 214 "Further, this temple is mentioned as the northern boundary of the new temple of Arinjihai Isvarattu Mahadevar established by Rajaraja I sometime before his 29th year (A.D. 1014) as a paLLippaDai (memorial sepulchral temple) built at the place where the mortal remains of Arinjihai devar were buried (86 of 1889 and SII, v.3, no17). Here is the relevant extract: 'Sri kO Rajaraja Rajakesari varmaraana Sri Rajaraja Devarkku yaaNDu (20) 9-vatu JayamkoNDa Chola maNDalattup perumbaaNappaaDi tuu naatTu MElpaaDiyaana Rajasraya purattu Arruurt tuJcina devarkkup paLLippadaiyaaha Udaiyaar Sri rajarajadevar eDuppittaruLina Tiruvarinjihai iisvarattu Mahadevarkku ...' Arinjaya was the grandfather of Rajaraja I and a contemporary record pays him a great tribute as one 'who possessed keen intelligence, who was the beloved of the Goddess of Wealth, who was the God of Death to his enemies and whose greatness was accompanied by virtuous character and good qualities'". p.216 "It may be of interest to mention that in the days of Rajendra I its management was in the hands of Lakulisa Pandita, the head of the mutt of the Saivas of the Pasupata sect." ************************************************************ 3) S. R. Balsubrahmanyam, Early Chola temples, Orient Longman, 1971 p. 101, "TondaimaanaaD is about 6 miles from Kalahasti. It was formerly called Tondaimaan Arruur (or Peraarruur) in AaRRuurnaaDu, a division of TiruvEGkaTak kOTTam in Tondainaadu. Here is a temple called KodandarAmEsvaram or Adityesvaram. This is said to be a PallippaDai temple, a tomb temple erected in honor of Kodandaraamanalias Aditya I. At Tirumalpuram there is an inscription of the 14th year and 211th day of a KOnErinmai koNDaan (230 of 1903, SII, v.3, no. 142) which should be asccribed to Uttama Chola and which mentions an earlier gift of the 21st year of 'Tondaimaan aaRRuurt tunjiya uDaiyaar' (he who died at Tondaimaan Arruur) ie., Aditya I." " Pallippadai Vagisvara Pandita Bhattaarar Sri Kodandaraamesvaram aahiya Adityesvarattu .." "for the celebration of a seven-day long festival lasting from the asterism of kETTai to that of catayam (this being the natal star of the king) in the month of puraTTaaci for feeding on all seven days of the festival, a thousand persons, tapasvins of all sects including Mahavratins, brahmins and devotees of various classes. It is of special interest that this inscription mentions among other items the time-honored celebration of the Indra festival so graphically described in the tamil epics, Silappatikaaram and Manimekhalai... The sabha and nagaram of Tondaimaan PeraaRRuur agreed to maintain this charity in favour of the Pallippadai Vagisvara Pandita Bhattarar temple, as requested by the Mahavratins of Adityesvaram, the ka.nap perumakka.l of Panriisvarattu Prithivi Vitangar temple and the Panmahesvaras (SII, v. 7, no. 529) Thus we conclude that this is a temple named after Aditya I, being in fact a pallippadai, built over the mortal remains of this king who died in this place. It was built by Parantaka I sometime before his 34th year as a tangible expression of the filial piety of a dutiful son" ************************************************** From dupuche at ONE.NET.AU Mon May 11 19:25:11 1998 From: dupuche at ONE.NET.AU (John Dupuche) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 19:25:11 +0000 Subject: =?utf-8?Q?The_word_'Sankara'_in_the_Kula_tradition_of_chapter_29_of_the______________Tantr=EF=BF=BDloka_of_Abhinavagupta?= Message-ID: <161227038518.23782.3667739481792469411.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Vidyasankar Sundaresan, on Sunday, 10 May 1998, refers to the quotation given by Jayaratha in his commentary on the Kula ritual in the TantrAloka of Abhinavagupta, which reads: "Those, however, who have been initiated in the tradition of S/an.kara and in the tradition of the goddess" Vidyasankar Sundaresan raises two questions: 1. Regarding the meaning of the word S/an.kara. Does it refer to the ?iva or to some human such as the great Sankaracarya? In his commentary following on TantrAloka 29.75, Jayaratha, quotes a passage which roundly rejects a number of schools."The Siddh?nta, Vais.n.ava, Buddhist, VedAnta and SmArta teachings are to be avoided diligently indeed, since they are called 'bonded animals'. They avoid the [divine] presence which comes from contact with wine (advaita-drava). They turn away from it. They are dead, deprived of life.? It is clear, therefore, that Jayaratha, who lived about 1200 CE had a knowledge of the VedAnta. As a skillful commentator, it is unlikely that he would have quoted another text - the one we are discussing - which would give such a high profile to Sankaracarya. Jayaratha indeed knows something of the Vedanta but it is uncertain whether the teachings of Sankaracarya were known in the Kashmir of Abhinvagupta, two hunded years earlier. In short, the reference is to ?iva. 2. What initiation is being referred to? The quote reads: ?Those, however, who have been initiated in the tradition of Sankara and in the tradition of the goddess ... s/An.kare tantre devItantre ca dIks.itAh.\ In TantrAloka 4.366d, Abhinava locates the college or mAth.ikA which derives from the daughter of Trymambaka - i.e. the Kula tradition - 'within the line of ?a*kara', s/An.kare krame. Therefore, to conclude, the simplest interpretation is that the text in question refers to initiation into the Kula tradition which is governed by the union of S/iva and s/akti, i.e. Akula and Kula. From mcv at WXS.NL Mon May 11 20:21:28 1998 From: mcv at WXS.NL (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 20:21:28 +0000 Subject: Horses (China) In-Reply-To: <199805111505.IAA21385@dry.jps.net> Message-ID: <161227038562.23782.9870489007996689546.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> "Paul K. Manansala" wrote: >However, regarding the Xinkiang mummies, >this appear to be more hype than anything else. Agreed about the hype. We've known since the 1890's that Tocharian was spoken in the Tarim basin, so I don't really understand why so much fuss about these mummies. ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Mon May 11 16:04:30 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 21:04:30 +0500 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227038553.23782.13193323346537143472.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 08:46 AM 5/11/98 -0600, you wrote: >Earlier N. Ganesan wrote ><sangamesvara refers to the God's name.kuuDala samngama is a place name. >How do we know this?There were two Chola era prabandhams of war, now >lost except for a few verses and their names occur in medieval >commentaries.The 10th century paraNi prabandhams are called >1) koppattup paraNi and 2) kuuDala sangamattup paraNi. >Hence, koppam and kuuDala sangamam will refer to place names. >AND, kuuDala sangamam is hybrid name.This may very well be the case of >BelgAm too.>> > > This does not explain the occurance of name saGgamezwara without the addition of kUDala. A more rational hypothesis will be to assume that ordinary people who did not understand that sangama = kUDala started calling saGgamEZwara as kUDala saGgamEzwara. In Andhra people are named as saGgamEzwara. For example the great vaiNika TumurADa SaGgamEzwara sAstri. Thus the gods name as saGgamEZwara is prevelent in Andhra. regards, sarma. From mcv at WXS.NL Mon May 11 22:00:12 1998 From: mcv at WXS.NL (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Mon, 11 May 98 22:00:12 +0000 Subject: Asva, haya, ghota, etc., Was: Horses In-Reply-To: <199805112120.OAA28148@dry.jps.net> Message-ID: <161227038584.23782.15295196595258492287.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> "Paul K. Manansala" wrote: >Ghota seems somewhat similar to Yenesei-Ostyak "kuta" The Proto-Yeniseian is *ku?s (Ket ku?S "cow", Yug ku?s, Kott, hus^, Arin kus, Pumpokol kut). >and even >Austronesian "kud(j)a". > >Haya has been connected with the English word "horse." Horse is related to Sankrit ku:rd- "to jump". The word haya- is derived from the verbal root hi- "to set in motion, impel" (< PIE *ghei-). >I believe >there is an Indic "hyivor" that compares with an Old Germanic >"hyros" or something like that. That would be hros(s) = horse, I guess. See above. >Does anyone accept asva > equus? Not since Schleicher (actually, he reconstructed *akvas). ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Mon May 11 22:05:56 1998 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 00:05:56 +0200 Subject: Kirfel's Die Kosmographie der Inder Message-ID: <161227038580.23782.1798762764249203465.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 17:14 11.05.98 -0400, you wrote: >Greetings! > >Do you know of an English translation of Willibald Kirkel's book entitled >Die Kosmographie der Inder? We need one for some research on Indian >cosmography. > >Thank you for your help. I am afraid not. I know Kirfel's work, but I have never seen an English translation of it. Try asking the Indolog net. If a translation exists, there is surely someone there who will know. Best regards, Lars Martin Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Tel: +47 22 32 12 19 Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no Mobile phone: 90 91 91 45 From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Mon May 11 22:09:19 1998 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 00:09:19 +0200 Subject: Kirfel's Die Kosmographie der Inder Message-ID: <161227038582.23782.17615162765720410611.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 00:05 12.05.98 +0200, you wrote: >At 17:14 11.05.98 -0400, you wrote: >>Greetings! >> >>Do you know of an English translation of Willibald Kirkel's book entitled >>Die Kosmographie der Inder? We need one for some research on Indian >>cosmography. >> >>Thank you for your help. > >I am afraid not. I know Kirfel's work, but I have never seen an English >translation of it. > >Try asking the Indolog net. If a translation exists, there is surely someone >there who will know. > Sorry about this idiotic answer. Thought the message was for me personally. The net will certainly know. I really MUST go to bed now. Lars Martin Fosse Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Tel: +47 22 32 12 19 Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no Mobile phone: 90 91 91 45 From zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL Tue May 12 02:19:53 1998 From: zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 00:19:53 -0200 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227038615.23782.4809274684929269157.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Replies to msg 10 May 98: indology at listserv.liv.ac.uk (S Krishna) mC> I had written in my earlier posting: mC> < know that kanakadAsa came from a zrIvaiSNava background.. mC> From what I know, he came from a wealthy buNT i.e. mC> (shepherd?) family near mangaLUru and was orphaned early in mC> life. HE then wandered around and finally settled down in mC> uDupi and most of his songs were composed in uDupi. I was mC> also under>> mC> "Bunt" does not not refer to the shepherd community; the mC> correct term for this is "kuruba"..I apologize for the mC> mistake and would like to express my heartfelt thanks to mC> Nikhil Rao(nrao at caip.rutgers.edu) for bringing this to my mC> attention. Bunts are the largely (but certainly not entirely) agricultural community in southwestern Karnataka (around Udupi and Mangalore). Kurubas are traditionally (but again, no longer exclusively of course) shepherds; Kanakadaasa was a Kuruba by birth (from central Karnataka if I am not mistaken), but apparently a successful military man before he became a daasa. Robert Zydenbos zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl From zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL Tue May 12 03:29:14 1998 From: zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 01:29:14 -0200 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227038617.23782.8954599061805883545.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Replies to msg 11 May 98: indology at listserv.liv.ac.uk (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) >Earlier N. Ganesan wrote ><sangamesvara refers to the God's name.kuuDala samngama is a place name. >How do we know this?There were two Chola era prabandhams of war, now >lost except for a few verses and their names occur in medieval >commentaries.The 10th century paraNi prabandhams are called [...] nVNI> This does not explain the occurance of name saGgamezwara nVNI> without the addition of kUDala. A more rational hypothesis nVNI> will be to assume that ordinary people who did not nVNI> understand that sangama = kUDala started calling nVNI> saGgamEZwara as kUDala saGgamEzwara. In Andhra people are nVNI> named as saGgamEzwara. For example the great vaiNika nVNI> TumurADa SaGgamEzwara sAstri. Thus the gods name as nVNI> saGgamEZwara is prevelent in Andhra. Maybe it is not out of place here to mention that Basava's a:nkita is not "kuu.dalasa:ngamee;svara", as a few list members have been writing, but "kuu.dalasa:ngamadeeva". :-) (The meaning may not differ much, but I think that we ought to get such details right.) "Kuu.dalasa:ngama" is of course a hybrid tautological name. As has been pointed out earlier, it _is_ topographical (and there are Kannada sources for finding out that, so we don't need Tamil sources from far away, although of course it is nice to know that such exist too). If the name of the place is that tautology, then one can hardly blame a learned person like Basava for using it, because that is simply the way it is. If we had no other sources that tell us about the existence of such a place, then Basava's using of such an odd word would in itself already have been an indication that it was a locally existing name. Robert Zydenbos zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl From zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL Tue May 12 03:52:18 1998 From: zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 01:52:18 -0200 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227038619.23782.8525572686078330109.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Replies to msg 10 May 98: indology at listserv.liv.ac.uk (S Krishna) mC> Robert Zydenbos writes: mC> < now, when I am back in India. (It would be helpful if you mC> could give the opening words in Kannada.)>> mC> Thank you very much for your kind offer, I however regret mC> that I cannot give you the first words since only the mC> translation is available to me...can I request you to give me mC> books where the vacanas of people like dAsimaiya or couDaiya mC> are available in kannaDa? I have seen books brought out by mC> the Institute of Kannada Studies, Dharwar which give the mC> vacanas in kannaDa of mahAdEviyakka and basa vEzvara but none mC> of the other vIrazaiva saints... Alas: behold the result, on the one hand, of excessive modesty on the part of Kannada people in publicising their treasures, and, on the other hand, of limited inquisitiveness to date in the scholarly community. -- Practically every vacana that has been found has been published. The Directorate of Kannada and Culture, Bangalore, has brought out all the known early vacanas in 15 hardbound volumes a few years ago, under the general editorship of Prof. Dr. M.M. Kalaburgi of Dharwad. Small publishers, mainly in northern Karnataka, have brought out many editions of the writings of individual vacanakaaras. (As for where to get them: please wait another few weeks. I happen to have here _Ambiga Cau.dayyana vacanaga.lu_, ed. B.R. Surapura [Dharwad: Hejjeenu prakaa;sana, 1980], containing 177 vacanas. I believe Prof. Dr. L. Basavaraju of Mysore has brought out Deevara Daasimayya's vacanas, but I'll have to check.) mC> I'm surprised to know that kanakadAsa came from a zrIvaiSNava mC> background.. From what I know, he came from a wealthy buNT mC> i.e. (shepherd?) family near mangaLUru and was orphaned early mC> in life. (See other message.) mC> HE then wandered around and finally settled down in mC> uDupi and most of his songs were composed in uDupi. I was mC> also under the impression that since his ideas are accepted mC> as part of the dvaitic corpus, he was more a dvaitin. This apparently happened at a later stage in his life. But his relationship with Udupi is simply that U. was the centre of Madhvaacaarya's activities and has since remained the centre of the Dvaitin tradition, and not that Kanakadaasa was born there, or had family relations there, etc. mC> Were his parents zrIvaiSNava? This is the common assumption. mC> Was there a lot of zrIvaiSNava activity at any point of time mC> in the uDupi area? I would say none at all; or if there had been any, then all traces have been obliterated by the Vaishnavism of Madhva. mC> Vidyansankar Sundaresan says that there was no stylistic mC> change from the "ankita" of the saraNa and the dAsakUTa mC> schools ..Firstly, kanakadAsa's kAginEle kEzava , AFAIK has mC> nothing to do with uDupi whose krSNa temple he was associated mC> with( viz the kanakanda khiDkI episode) but with the village mC> of kAginEle where he was born and left at a fairly young age; This seems correct. mC> I therefore believe that this ankita has nothing do with the mC> temple i.e. uDupi with which he was associated. Correct. mC> Out of the many dAsas who named themselves after viTThala, I mC> am not sure of how many actually visited/became mC> sannyAsins/had their iStadEvata as viTThala of pandharpUr( mC> Their region of activity was more in the vicinity of mC> north-eastern/central karnATaka i.e. rAyichUr and in mC> Southern/Western karnATaka) where even today there is a mC> strong dvaitic presence in the temples. I therefore believe mC> that there was a big stylistic change in that the poets were mC> refering to themsleves in the first person and included their mC> signature even when writing about MULTIPLE dieties which is mC> certainly not the case with the zaraNas. Multiple deities, or manifestations of one deity? This brings up the complex issue of "little traditions" vs. inclusivistic "great traditions", but also the religio-psychological (drat, how does one say this in English? I want to say: "religionspsychologische") question of localisation of the divine and how the devotee relates to the divinity in its local(ised) form. If Kaaginele Kee;sava and Vi.t.thala of Pandharpur are to be thought of as 'multiple deities' of the Maadhvas, one could argue that the same ought to be true of, e.g., Kuu.dalasa:ngamadeeva and Guhee;svara among the Virasaivas. Theologically (on a 'great tradition' level), neither group would agree with such an interpretation. Siva is one. Maadhva theologians have apparently tried to accommodate local traditions more explicitly (cf. Madhva's verse: "arcitaas sarvadevaas syur yatas sarvagato Hari.h" in his K.r.s.naam.rtamahaar.nava), but here there are gods and gods, and the only two eternal gods are the coexistent! Hari and Lak.smii. Literarily, we can speak of a 'stylistic' difference; but why should it be there in the first place? In Virasaivism, the devotee ultimately realises his / her essential unity with Siva, whereas in Dvaita such a notion is considered perditious hybris, and individuality never ceases to be. Thus in the theology of the daasas an explicit placing in the foreground of the individual and a stressing of the daasa's personal relationship with God (_Purandaradaasa's_ Vi.t.thala, etc.) makes sense (in view of religious polemics of the time), whereas in Virasaivism individuality, which is worldly, is played down. But I can agree with Vidyasankar Sundaresan to the extent that this difference between the a:nkitas of the ;sara.nas and the daasas is not absolute. We should perhaps also note that Kannada scholars agree that the use of such signatures as a literary device among the daasas has been borrowed from the Virasaiva ;sara.nas. If the ;sara.nas had never had such a usage, then the daasas might never have developed it. Robert Zydenbos zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Tue May 12 14:08:18 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 07:08:18 -0700 Subject: PRE-COLUMBIAN MAIZE IN CHINA AND INDIA? Message-ID: <161227038610.23782.7499524870399326060.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Jibunessa, you will find the links and pictures at: http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha/grahastemples.html This is in the context of explaining the significance of icons in sculptures in Indian temples. Regards, Kalyanaraman. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Tue May 12 14:42:08 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 08:42:08 -0600 Subject: Panini Message-ID: <161227038605.23782.801475620731844253.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> S. Palaniappan wrote in Nov. 1997 *By the way, according to R. Ghose, "It is significant that the tyAgarAja *temple in tiruvoRRiyUr has a vyAkaraNamaNDapa, a pavilion for the teaching of *grammar and the God is called vyAkaraNadAnapperumAL or the "Lord who has *given grammar as his gift." Inscriptions connect this temple with the *kALAmukhas of Kashmir. S. R. Balasubrahmanyam, Middle Chola temples, Thompson press, 1975 p.304 "This record also refers to two officers who held an enquiry into the temple affairs at the 'vakkaNikkum maNDapam' (ARE 128 of 1912) Is vakkaNai in tamil from vyAkaraNa? It looks so. Jayasinga kulakAla vizupparaiyan was associated with this temple. The nataraja is called kArAnai viTaGka tEvar in inscriptions. In JayamkoNTaar's kArAnai vizupparaiyan maTal, aatinaatan is praised with many sanskrit epithets. May be kArAnai vizupparaiyar, high Chola officials were important in fostering PaaNinIyam in TN. p. 305 "PaaNini's vyAkaraNa seems to have received cond=siderable attention in TiruvoRRiyuur. According to tradition, the first 14 aphorisms of that grammar were produced by his Siva from His damaru (kettle-drum) and made a gift of them to PaaNini. Hence the name of vyAkaraNa daanap perumaaL is applied to Siva. The name of a local temple-priest is given as vyaakaranadaana bhattar. The above hall is presumably set up for the purpose of expounding this grammar". kuutta nuul, a dance treatise of medieval times speaks of the sounds emanating from one side of "Siva's damaru becoming Sanskrit, sounds from the other side becoming Tamil. kAnchip purANam of Madhava Sivagnaana YogigaL says that "Siva taught Sanskrit to Panini and Tamil to Agastya. In which Sanskrit text, "Siva teaching grammar to Panini episode occurs? Regards, N. Ganesan From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Tue May 12 15:35:03 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 09:35:03 -0600 Subject: panini Message-ID: <161227038613.23782.15015890917669334841.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Thanks, Prof. Deshpande *For some details on the history of this topic, see my recent article *"Who Inspired Panini? Reconstructing the Hindu and Buddhist *Counter-Claims", Journal of the American Oriental Society, *117.3 (1997), pp. 444-465. Will check the article soon. From the title, I can tell a parallel material from tamil. Tamil texts usually attribute tamil's guru is "Siva, he teaches them to Murugan who teaches in turn to Agastya. However, there is a 12th century grammar, ViiracOziyam. Its author is puttamittiran2 (Buddhamitra), the Chieftain of PonpaRRi naaDu. He says in the forword (paayiram) of the book that AvalOkitiisvara taught Tamil to Agastya first. "Ayum kuNattu avalOkitan2 pakkal akattiyan2 kETTu Eyum puvan2ikku iyampiya taNTamiz IGku uraikka nIyum uLaiyO? en2il, 'karuTan2 cen2Ra nIL vicumpil Iyum paRakkum', itaRku en2 kolO collum! EntizaiyE." I am told that no critical edition exists even for this important grammar by a Buddhist author. Regards, N. Ganesan From mmdesh at UMICH.EDU Tue May 12 14:01:57 1998 From: mmdesh at UMICH.EDU (Madhav Deshpande) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 10:01:57 -0400 Subject: Panini In-Reply-To: <01IWXUKF5IYQ004FOQ@cl.uh.edu> Message-ID: <161227038608.23782.14942291499712922525.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> For some details on the history of this topic, see my recent article "Who Inspired Panini? Reconstructing the Hindu and Buddhist Counter-Claims", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 117.3 (1997), pp. 444-465. Madhav Deshpande On Tue, 12 May 1998, N. Ganesan wrote: > S. Palaniappan wrote in Nov. 1997 > *By the way, according to R. Ghose, "It is significant that the tyAgarAja > *temple in tiruvoRRiyUr has a vyAkaraNamaNDapa, a pavilion for the teaching of > *grammar and the God is called vyAkaraNadAnapperumAL or the "Lord who has > *given grammar as his gift." Inscriptions connect this temple with the > *kALAmukhas of Kashmir. > > S. R. Balasubrahmanyam, Middle Chola temples, Thompson press, 1975 > p.304 > > "This record also refers to two officers who held an enquiry into > the temple affairs at the 'vakkaNikkum maNDapam' (ARE 128 of 1912) > > Is vakkaNai in tamil from vyAkaraNa? It looks so. > Jayasinga kulakAla vizupparaiyan was associated with this temple. > The nataraja is called kArAnai viTaGka tEvar in inscriptions. > In JayamkoNTaar's kArAnai vizupparaiyan maTal, aatinaatan > is praised with many sanskrit epithets. May be kArAnai > vizupparaiyar, high Chola officials were important in fostering > PaaNinIyam in TN. > > p. 305 > "PaaNini's vyAkaraNa seems to have received cond=siderable attention > in TiruvoRRiyuur. According to tradition, the first 14 aphorisms > of that grammar were produced by his Siva from His damaru (kettle-drum) > and made a gift of them to PaaNini. Hence the name of > vyAkaraNa daanap perumaaL is applied to Siva. The name of a > local temple-priest is given as vyaakaranadaana bhattar. > The above hall is presumably set up for the purpose of > expounding this grammar". > > kuutta nuul, a dance treatise of medieval times speaks > of the sounds emanating from one side of "Siva's damaru > becoming Sanskrit, sounds from the other side becoming > Tamil. kAnchip purANam of Madhava Sivagnaana YogigaL > says that "Siva taught Sanskrit to Panini and Tamil to > Agastya. > > In which Sanskrit text, "Siva teaching grammar to Panini episode > occurs? > > Regards, > N. Ganesan > From w.behr at EM.UNI-FRANKFURT.DE Tue May 12 10:19:46 1998 From: w.behr at EM.UNI-FRANKFURT.DE (Wolfgang Behr) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 11:19:46 +0100 Subject: Horses (China) Message-ID: <161227038591.23782.6303655777113067182.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 08:37 11.05.98 -800, Paul Kekai Manansala wrote: | Some studies on crania in Xinkiang have followed the same | erroneous path as the interpretation of the Kennewick remains. | That is, they have interpreted anything that doesn't fit into | typical northeast Mongoloid as "Caucasoid" or "Pre-Caucasoid." | Most of the remains associated with Xinkiang and also the Siberian | "Caucasoids" are related to modern Southern Mongoloid/Pacific | types that once were very common in Northeast and Central Asia. Would you please be so kind as to provide some references for these claims? In the series of craniometric studies published by the physical anthropologist Han Kangxin during the late 80ies and early 90ies by (cf. Xinjiang Shehui Kexue, 6 [1985]: 61-71; Kaogu Xuebao 3 [1990}: 371-390; Xiyu Yanjiu 2 [1992]: 3-23; Wenwu Tiandi 5[1992]: 44-47; see also his book on the subject: _Sichouzhilu gudai jumin zhongzu renleixue yanjiu_, Wulumuqi: Xinjiang Renmin [1994]) there are quite detailed comparisons with _Southern_ Mongoloid types, but they are found definitely _not_ to be related with the Xinjiang mummies (see esp. 1990 388 seq.). Even the more balanced study of seven skulls from Xinjiang and Qinghai by Djuric-Srejic & Nikolic ("Odlike lobanja drevnih skeleta is provincije Sin-Jang u Kini" ["Characteristics of skulls of ancient skeletons from the province of Xinjiang in China"], Srpski Arhiv za Celokupno Lekarstvo 124 [1996] 5-6: 124-9) found that (a) "among the studied skulls there was no case showing Mongoloid characteristics" (b) only 10 percent of the 274 skulls studied by Han et al. showed Mongoloid features (c) Mongoloid features appear late, around 300 b.c. (d) one of the allegedly "European" type skulls showed East Mediterranean (rather than Northern European) characteristics In any case, if you find physical anthropological data problematic (which they certainly are in many respects), what are you going to do about the DNA analysis by Francalacci (J. of Indo-European Studies 23 [1995]: 385- 398) who concludes that "the sequence amplified from the ancient Xinjiang corpse is more likely related to continental European lineages"? Cheers, Wolfgang ps: Interesting pointer to Virchow. Do you have a reference for that? From roheko at MSN.COM Tue May 12 09:55:57 1998 From: roheko at MSN.COM (Rolf Heiner Koch) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 11:55:57 +0200 Subject: Asva, haya, ghota, etc., Was: Horses Message-ID: <161227038593.23782.2501213126340550391.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Schleicher (Darwin and linguistic) is never actual, sorry. see H. Christmann: Sprachwissenschaft des 19. Jhts (contains Schleicher's paper) and see H. Arens: Sprachwissenschaft , 1969 (all in German) compare the so called "Wellentheorie" of Joh. Schmidt etc. The similarities of the IG language are n o t monocausal there are not one root !! there are only *-roots (= a system of help) Mfg RHK roheko at msn.com -----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht----- Von: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal An: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Datum: Dienstag, 12. Mai 1998 00:15 Betreff: Re: Asva, haya, ghota, etc., Was: Horses >"Paul K. Manansala" wrote: > >>Ghota seems somewhat similar to Yenesei-Ostyak "kuta" > >The Proto-Yeniseian is *ku?s (Ket ku?S "cow", Yug ku?s, Kott, hus^, >Arin kus, Pumpokol kut). > >>and even >>Austronesian "kud(j)a". >> >>Haya has been connected with the English word "horse." > >Horse is related to Sankrit ku:rd- "to jump". The word haya- is >derived from the verbal root hi- "to set in motion, impel" (< PIE >*ghei-). > >>I believe >>there is an Indic "hyivor" that compares with an Old Germanic >>"hyros" or something like that. > >That would be hros(s) = horse, I guess. See above. > >>Does anyone accept asva > equus? > >Not since Schleicher (actually, he reconstructed *akvas). > > >======================= >Miguel Carrasquer Vidal >mcv at wxs.nl >Amsterdam > From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Tue May 12 20:26:54 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 12:26:54 -0800 Subject: Horses (China) Message-ID: <161227038624.23782.17306341827771846196.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Wolfgang Behr >wrote: > At 08:37 11.05.98 -800, Paul Kekai Manansala wrote: > > | Some studies on crania in Xinkiang have followed the same > | erroneous path as the interpretation of the Kennewick remains. > | That is, they have interpreted anything that doesn't fit into > | typical northeast Mongoloid as "Caucasoid" or "Pre-Caucasoid." > | Most of the remains associated with Xinkiang and also the Siberian > | "Caucasoids" are related to modern Southern Mongoloid/Pacific > | types that once were very common in Northeast and Central Asia. > > Would you please be so kind as to provide some references for these > claims? In the series of craniometric studies published by the > physical anthropologist Han Kangxin during the late 80ies and early > 90ies by (cf. Xinjiang Shehui Kexue, 6 [1985]: 61-71; Kaogu Xuebao 3 > [1990}: 371-390; Xiyu Yanjiu 2 [1992]: 3-23; Wenwu Tiandi 5[1992]: > 44-47; see also his book on the subject: _Sichouzhilu gudai jumin > zhongzu renleixue yanjiu_, Wulumuqi: Xinjiang Renmin [1994]) there > are quite detailed comparisons with _Southern_ Mongoloid types, but > they are found definitely _not_ to be related with the Xinjiang mummies > (see esp. 1990 388 seq.). Even the more balanced study of seven skulls > from Xinjiang and Qinghai by Djuric-Srejic & Nikolic ("Odlike lobanja > drevnih skeleta is provincije Sin-Jang u Kini" ["Characteristics of > skulls of ancient skeletons from the province of Xinjiang in China"], > Srpski Arhiv za Celokupno Lekarstvo 124 [1996] 5-6: 124-9) found that > I'm aware of the last article, and the analysis of the author is simply Kennewick-style mishmash. For those unfamiliar with Kennewick, it involves claims by certain anthropologists that crania found in the Northwest U.S. are "Pre-Caucasoid." The arguments they use are easily refuted. For example, Chatters suggests that the Sundadont dental type of Kennewick Man is suggestive of ancient Caucasoid. However, any familiar with the topic knows that the term "Sundadont" was originally constructed to describe Southern Mongoloid dentition. You find other scholars also using this Sundadont pattern now to suggest ancient Siberians were "Pre-Caucasoid." > (a) "among the studied skulls there was no case showing > Mongoloid characteristics" He is referring only to "typical Mongoloid" features, and even here he is incorrect. The skulls do show features like prognathism and broad nasal bones which are "Mongoloid" characteristics > (d) one of the allegedly "European" type skulls showed > East Mediterranean (rather than Northern European) > characteristics Not really. The suggestion is that they show "Primitive Caucasoid" characteristics. For example, a steep mandible is somehow mentioned as a "Caucasoid" characteristic. However, steep mandibles hardly a modern typical feature of Caucasoids. They are very common among some contemporary and modern Southeast Asian/Pacific populations. Another error is claiming palatine torus is a "Caucasoid" characteristic. The highest rates of palatine torus occur among Eskimos and Polynesians. > > In any case, if you find physical anthropological data problematic (which > they certainly are in many respects), what are you going to do about the > DNA analysis by Francalacci (J. of Indo-European Studies 23 [1995]: 385- > 398) who concludes that "the sequence amplified from the ancient Xinjiang > corpse is more likely related to continental European lineages"? There are about 100 mummies and many other remains. There is also abundant genetic evidence that modern and ancient residents of Xinkiang are closely related to East Asian types. Here are a few to look over: AUTHOR: Mizuki M; Ohno S; Ando H; Sato T; Imanishi T; Gojobori T; | Ishihara M; Ota M; Geng Z; Geng L; Li G; Kimura M; Inoko H | ADDRESS: Department of Ophthalmology, Yokohama City University School | of Medicine, Kanagawa, Japan. | TITLE: Major histocompatibility complex class II alleles in Kazak | and Han populations in the Silk Route of northwestern China. | SOURCE: Tissue Antigens (VSV), 1997 Nov; 50 (5): 527-34 AUTHOR: Li HJ; Liu DX; Li L; Liu ZG; Qing F; Lo SL; Kang QS; Chen J; | Chang YQ; Xie DS; et al | TITLE: Hemoglobinopathies in Xinjiang. | SOURCE: Hemoglobin (G57), 1986; 10 (4): 435-49 However, I need to warn that there are many problems with bias in genetic studies There is a distinct racial element in all these studies that cannot be ignored. The roots are old and more submerged now, but they still certainly exist. The Kennewick conflict is just one very prominent sign of this problem. I've pasted two abstracts relating to Sundadonty and palatine torus that will clear us some of these mispresentations of "Caucasoid" traits. ----from Medline--- AUTHOR: Haydenblit R | ADDRESS: Department of Biological Anthropology, University of | Cambridge, United Kingdom. | TITLE: Dental variation among four prehispanic Mexican populations. | SOURCE: Am J Phys Anthropol (3T0), 1996 Jun; 100 (2): 225-46 | LANGUAGE: English | COUNTRY PUB.: UNITED STATES | ANNOUNCEMENT: 9701 | PUB. TYPE: HISTORICAL ARTICLE; JOURNAL ARTICLE ABSTRACT: In this paper, the dental morphology of prehispanic Meso- | american populations is described, compared, and examined | within the context of New World dental variation. Twenty- | eight morphological dental traits were studied and compared | in four samples of prehispanic Mexican populations. After | eliminating intra- and interobserver error, the dental | morphological characteristics observed show evidence of | heterogeneity among the populations. In particular, the | oldest population, Tlatilco (1300-800 BC), was significantly | different from the other three groups, Cuicuilco (800-100 | BC), Monte Alban (500 BC-700 AD) and Cholula (550-750 AD). | When the four samples were compared to other Mongoloid | populations, either univariately or multivariately, it was | observed that the Mexican groups did not follow a strict | Sinodont (characteristic of Northeast Asia)/Sundadont | (characteristic of Southeast Asia) classification (Turner | [1979] Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 51:619-636). From the traits | examined, 27% presented frequencies consistent with Sinodont variation, while 73% of the traits showed similar incidence | to Southeast Asian groups. Multivariately, the Mexican | populations were found to fit an overall Sundadont | classification. These results indicate that there is more | dental morphological variation among American Indian | populations than previously shown. AUTHOR: Reichart PA; Neuhaus F; Sookasem M | ADDRESS: Department of Oral Surgery (North), Free University of | Berlin, West Germany. | TITLE: Prevalence of torus palatinus and torus mandibularis in | Germans and Thai. | SOURCE: Community Dent Oral Epidemiol (DNF), 1988 Feb; 16 (1): 61-4 | LANGUAGE: English | ABSTRACT: Torus palatinus (TP) was recorded in 13.5% of 1317 German | patients (606 men, 711 women). There was no statistically | significant difference between the sexes. Torus palatinus | was found in 23.1% of 947 Thai (404 men, 543 women). The | difference between the sexes was significant (P less than | 0.001); women were affected in 28.5%, men showed a TP in | 15.8%. The differences in prevalence rates between Germans | and Thai was also statistically significant (P less | 0.001). Torus mandibularis (TM) was recorded in 5.2% of the | German patients with 8.6% of the men and 2.4% of the women | being affected (P less than 0.001). In the Thai, 9.4% of the | men and 9% of the women showed TM. The difference between | the prevalence rates in Germans and Thai was significant (P | less than 0.001). While generally milder forms of tori were | observed in German patients, marked forms of TM were also | seen in this group. While the etiology of TP and TM is still | no quite clear, racial factors must definitely be considered. From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Tue May 12 21:01:45 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 13:01:45 -0800 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038631.23782.7590573832799572211.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> "Yaroslav V. Vassilkov" wrote: > Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote: > > <"Altaic peoples" in the Ukraine 4000-3500 BC? Impossible. > > > Not only by Iranian. In the languages of the Volga and Permian Finns > (Mordovian, Mari/Cheremis, Udmurt/Votyak and Komi) there are many loanwords > from Indo-Iranian and Proto-Indo-Aryan languages. They coincide with evident > loans in the fields of mythology and ritual. This contacts can be dated by > 3rd - 2nd mill. B.C. In Indo-Aryan there are, on the other hand, some > borrowings from Proto-Uralic (dated by the Neolithic period). Well, there is certainly much in common between Altaic and Uralic. So much so, that even Western scholars at one time considered them as part of the same genetic family (many scholars particularly in the "Turanian world" still do). The early comparative linguists did not consider Uralic and IE as even distant cousins. > I could > give examples but I am sure that no reasonable arguments, no proven facts > can make the protagonists of the "India as homeland of all mankind" theory > change their opinion and betray their holy cause. > For the record, I don't support any such theory, nor the AIT theory. I believe the answer is much more complicated than any of these arguments. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Tue May 12 20:17:04 1998 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 13:17:04 -0700 Subject: Panini Message-ID: <161227038632.23782.6431752916861879255.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >...... based on the evidence presented by Deshpa= >nde, the >Tamil grammatical and literary traditions, and Chinese accounts of T= >amil >region, a case could be made that the zaivite and Buddhist claims or= >iginated >not in the northwest of Indian subcontinent but in the southern porti= >on of > ancient Tamil region which includes present Tamilnadu and Kerala. I think the identification of the same local divinity as Siva and as a bodhisattva is widespread, and it may be difficult to pinpoint its geographical origin. Even today, there is Siva as manjunAtha in southern Karnataka, evoking immediate comparison with manjuSrI, who occurs in close association with avalokiteSvara in Buddhist legends. And note that this Siva temple has close associations with Jains, and its legend also refers to fierce local divinities, while the Siva temple was established, interestingly enough, by a Vaishnava (Madhva) saint. Note also that there are southeast Asian inscriptions which say "Siva is Buddha and Buddha is Siva." All this may simply be a sign of how a "little" tradition divinity is assimilated into one of the two (or should one say three, to include Jainism?) "great" traditions, and at a different time and/or place, how one "great" tradition is absorbed by the other. Also note that the description of the word "parvata" (in the vAkyapadIya) mentions a tilingaika-deSa, which is hardly the southern portion of the old drAviDa-deSa. Perhaps Prof. Aklujkar can share his research here. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From ycrnn14 at UCL.AC.UK Tue May 12 20:41:58 1998 From: ycrnn14 at UCL.AC.UK (Jibunnessa) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 13:41:58 -0700 Subject: PRE-COLUMBIAN MAIZE IN CHINA AND INDIA? Message-ID: <161227038595.23782.2334233508515957617.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear All Thought you might find this interesting! ----------------------------------------------------- PRE-COLUMBIAN MAIZE IN CHINA AND INDIA? The evidence of maize in archaeological sites in China and its depiction in Hoysala Temples in India, both dated before the 15th century A.D., suggests that this domesticated crop was diffused by human action before the arrival of Columbus in the New World. The implications of this evidence are of great magnitude, since the presence of maize in Asia indicates that humans were able to migrate between both hemispheres; more than likely through trans- oceanic means of travel. ----------------------------------------------------- This comes from an article by Carl Johannessen and Anne Z. Parker, "Maize Ears Sculptured in 12th and 13th Century A.D. India as Indicators of Pre-Columbian Diffusion," Economic Botany 43 (2), 1989, pp. 164-180. Just in case anyone is REALLY interested, I've attached some (what I think) useful WEB pages. The first is Carl Johannessen's own page at University of Oregon. The second from the University of Ohio, also talks about the same thing, and has a rather useful bibliography. The last is an article from the Maize Genetics Cooperation Newsletter, called, "Antiquity of Maize in India". It's by M. Kumar and JKS Sachan from Rajendra Agricultural University in India. They also suggest that maize being grown in the very remote Northeastern Himalayan tracts adjoining Burma and Tibet, could be further evidence of possible pre-Columbian introduction. I hope this stimulates interest! I'd be interested to hear what people think. And anyone who knows any more about the subject, I'd be grateful for some illumination and further leads. All the best Jibunnessa -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From blackwel at WSU.EDU Tue May 12 20:54:40 1998 From: blackwel at WSU.EDU (Fritz Blackwell) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 13:54:40 -0700 Subject: PRE-COLUMBIAN MAIZE IN CHINA AND INDIA? Message-ID: <161227038634.23782.15105714444977924020.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> They look like beaded conch shells to me. F. Blackwell Washington State University S. Kalyanaraman wrote: > Jibunessa, > you will find the links and pictures at: > http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha/grahastemples.html > This is in the context of explaining the significance > of icons in sculptures in Indian temples. > Regards, > Kalyanaraman. > > == > 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. > http://www.probys.com/sarasvati > http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm > http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha > http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) > kalyan97 at yahoo.com > > _________________________________________________________ > DO YOU YAHOO!? > Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From ycrnn14 at UCL.AC.UK Tue May 12 21:02:11 1998 From: ycrnn14 at UCL.AC.UK (Jibunnessa) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 14:02:11 -0700 Subject: PRE-COLUMBIAN MAIZE IN CHINA AND INDIA? Message-ID: <161227038599.23782.1329876187214134543.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear All In my last sending of this, I accidentally attached the wrong WEB site. So, here goes, I'm sending it again ========================================================= Thought you might find this interesting! ----------------------------------------------------- PRE-COLUMBIAN MAIZE IN CHINA AND INDIA? The evidence of maize in archaeological sites in China and its depiction in Hoysala Temples in India, both dated before the 15th century A.D., suggests that this domesticated crop was diffused by human action before the arrival of Columbus in the New World. The implications of this evidence are of great magnitude, since the presence of maize in Asia indicates that humans were able to migrate between both hemispheres; more than likely through trans- oceanic means of travel. ----------------------------------------------------- This comes from an article by Carl Johannessen and Anne Z. Parker, "Maize Ears Sculptured in 12th and 13th Century A.D. India as Indicators of Pre-Columbian Diffusion," Economic Botany 43 (2), 1989, pp. 164-180. Just in case anyone is REALLY interested, I've attached some (what I think) useful WEB pages. The first is Carl Johannessen's own page at University of Oregon. The second from the University of Ohio, also talks about the same thing, and has a rather useful bibliography. The last is an article from the Maize Genetics Cooperation Newsletter, called, "Antiquity of Maize in India". It's by M. Kumar and JKS Sachan from Rajendra Agricultural University in India. They also suggest that maize being grown in the very remote Northeastern Himalayan tracts adjoining Burma and Tibet, could be further evidence of possible pre-Columbian introduction. I hope this stimulates interest! I'd be interested to hear what people think. And anyone who knows any more about the subject, I'd be grateful for some illumination and further leads. All the best Jibunnessa -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Tue May 12 20:29:18 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 14:29:18 -0600 Subject: Panini Message-ID: <161227038629.23782.5848284237277725740.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Tamil texts usually attribute tamil's guru as "Siva, (eg., kuutta nuul, tiruviLaiyaaDal puraaNam, kAnchip purANam, ...). He teaches tamil to Murugan who teaches it in turn to Agastya. However, there is a 12th century grammar, ViiracOziyam. Its author is puttamittiran2 (Buddhamitra), the Chieftain of PonpaRRi naaDu. He says in the foreword (paayiram) of the book that AvalOkitiisvara taught Tamil to Agastya first. "Ayum kuNattu avalOkitan2 pakkal akattiyan2 kETTu Eyum puvan2ikku iyampiya taNTamiz IGku uraikka nIyum uLaiyO? en2il, 'karuTan2 cen2Ra nIL vicumpil Iyum paRakkum', itaRku en2 kolO collum! EntizaiyE." I saw the following post in Indology. The above material shows that grammar was taught by Siva or Avalokitiisvara depending on whether it is a "saivaite or buddhist text that we are reading. This legend is current not only in the Northwest part of India, but also in the extreme South of India as well. Regards N. Ganesan S. Palaniappan wrote: *Of course, if candrAcArya is not the same as candragomin, then we have two *similar and possibly separate traditions linking grammar and gods. S. Palaniappan wrote: In an excellent article in JAOS 117.3 (1997) entitled, "Who Inspired PANini? Reconstructing the Hindu and Buddhist Counter-Claims", M. M. Deshpande traces the competition of the zaivite claim on PANinian grammar with claims of the Buddhists and "points out that the competing claims on behalf of ziva and avalokitezvara can be best understood as originating specific local traditions in the northwestern part of the Indian sub-continent, where the same local divinity was recognized by the zaivas and Buddhists as ziva and avalokitezvara, respectively. He also suggests that the "participation of the Buddhists in the transmission and interpretation of the PANinian grammar eventually led the PANinian grammarians gradually to separate the Vedic rules from the rules for colloquial Sanskrit, and that this has resulted in an attenuation of interest in the Vedic rules, and greater prominence for colloquial rules." I am not a Sanskritist. But based on the evidence presented by Deshpande, the Tamil grammatical and literary traditions, and Chinese accounts of Tamil region, a case could be made that the zaivite and Buddhist claims originated not in the northwest of Indian subcontinent but in the southern portion of ancient Tamil region which includes present Tamilnadu and Kerala. For this to be resolved, the critical problem is the identification of a mountain called "potalaka". Deshpande has used S. Beal?s report of Yuan Chwang?s travelogue. Other scholars such as Lal Mani Joshi and Shu Hikosaka based on Thomas Watter's work on Yuan Chwang's travels, have identified the "potiyil/potikai/potikai" mountain in Tamilnadu as "potalaka". According to Joshi, maJjuzrimUlakalpa was discovered from Manalikkara Matam near Padmanabhapuram in South India. Cunnningham, Nandolal De, and N. Dutt all suggest that "potiyil" is "potalaka". If all these scholars are right, and Beal is wrong, then there are many reasons to believe that we should look to the "potiyil" region for considerable grammatical contribution. After all the relationship between Tamil, potiyil, and a sage at potiyil is part of Tamil tradition. Even MBh associates potiyil with agastya. Tolkappiyar most probably hailed from the area near potiyil. The preface to his grammar states that he based his grammar on "vazakku" and "ceyyuL", i.e, "(common) usage" and "poetry". So the contribution to PANinian tradition by Buddhists may very well have been due to the Tamil grammatical tradition. "potiyil" is also known as "malaya" which can be translated as "parvata". So the preservation of Paninian tradition by candragomin may have been from "potiyil" as well. There are other interesting resonances as well. From blackwel at WSU.EDU Tue May 12 22:03:50 1998 From: blackwel at WSU.EDU (Fritz Blackwell) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 15:03:50 -0700 Subject: PRE-COLUMBIAN MAIZE IN CHINA AND INDIA? Message-ID: <161227038640.23782.456561566796944217.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Jibunnessa: You're right, up close they don't look like conch shells. But they don't look much like corn to me, either. I have a feeling they are some kind of stylized icon, but not corn. A colleague, Richard Williams who is an ancient historian, mentioned that the Romans had styled pine cones in some statuary. Little far south for evergreens, I suppose, and they don't much look like coconuts, so I guess until a better solution, carmeled apples will do. Seriously, I can't imagine corn popping up in a contextual vacuum. Regards, Fritz Blackwell Jibunnessa wrote: > Dear Fritz > > > They look like beaded conch shells to me. > > Perhaps from far they might! But, if you look > at a close-up photo from Carl Johannessen's > pages at University of Oregon, they don't look > like conch shells at all! ...beaded or othewise. > > I do think though, that they look a lot like > custard apples! > > Jibunnessa From mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM Tue May 12 22:09:38 1998 From: mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM (S Krishna) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 15:09:38 -0700 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227038643.23782.7133895934615417189.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Robery writes: <>. Yep, couldn't agree with you more....IS it mere coicidence that none of the participants in the kannaDa vacana thread all are non-Kannada? (That; when you see Kannada sounding-looking names on the list...) It is a pity that due to lack of participation by KAnnadigas/Kannada scholars matters have to be resolved by looking up texts whose origins are far removed from Karnataka instead of refering to local texts... <> What I had in mind was that the dAsakUTa poets who used a "ankita" that they took for THEMSELVES allowed them ( for lack of a better expression) to write about dieties as *diverse* as ziva,kr*SNa,rAma and gaNapati(purandara dAsa) or gaNESa,hanumAn, kr*SNa( viTThala dAsa) while the vIrazaiva tendency of not putting in their name "restricted" them( so to speak) to only ONE FORM OF A given diety ( mahAdEvi does not refer to kUDalasangama dEva nor does allama prabhu refer to "cennamallikArjuna")...otherwise I agree with what you have to say below >Literarily, we can speak of a 'stylistic' difference; but why should it be there in the first place? In Virasaivism, the devotee ultimately realises his / her essential unity with Siva, whereas in Dvaita such a notion is considered perditious hybris, and individuality never ceases to be. Thus in the theology of the daasas an explicit placing in the foreground of the individual and a stressing of the daasa's personal relationship with God (_Purandaradaasa's_ Vi.t.thala, etc.) makes sense (in view of religious polemics of the time), whereas in Virasaivism individuality, which is worldly, is played down. >> <> This is interesting...you mean that the 10th century poets pampa, ponna and ronna never used an ankita? ..also thanks for the "kUDalasangamadEva" thing...is there any difference between kuDala, and kUDala since both versions appear in basava's "vacanas"..Doesn't he also refer to "kUDala" by some other variant? What is the significance of these variants? Looking forward to your reply, Regards, Krishna > >Robert Zydenbos >zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Tue May 12 13:31:19 1998 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 15:31:19 +0200 Subject: PRE-COLUMBIAN MAIZE IN CHINA AND INDIA? Message-ID: <161227038603.23782.15985116540314543868.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 13:41 12.05.98 -0700, you wrote: >Dear All > >Thought you might find this interesting! > > ----------------------------------------------------- > PRE-COLUMBIAN MAIZE IN CHINA AND INDIA? > > The evidence of maize in archaeological sites in > China and its depiction in Hoysala Temples in India, > both dated before the 15th century A.D., suggests > that this domesticated crop was diffused by human > action before the arrival of Columbus in the New > World. The implications of this evidence are of > great magnitude, since the presence of maize in Asia > indicates that humans were able to migrate between > both hemispheres; more than likely through trans- > oceanic means of travel. > ----------------------------------------------------- This shouldn't really surprise anyone. Whatever we may think about the ideas of Thor Heyerdal, he has proven beyond reasonable doubt that you can sail almost anywhere in practically any kind of vessel. (I don't think he has tried to do it in an old boot yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if he could make that work too.) Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Tel: +47 22 32 12 19 Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no Mobile phone: 90 91 91 45 From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Tue May 12 22:46:50 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 16:46:50 -0600 Subject: Columbia book on Indian poetry ?? Message-ID: <161227038638.23782.16543356323424668307.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> What happened to the Columbia book of Indian poetry project? Now that Barbara S. Miller is gone. There are Columbia book of Chinese poetry, Columbia book of later Chinese poetry etc., It will be great if a few volumes on Indian poetry are brought out. Is there an encyclopaedia of Sanskrit literature, with a page or so on each of the important works. Similar encyclopaedias on other Indian languages are desirable too. There are encyclopaedias on virtually anything, except things Indian. Regards, N. Ganesan From apandey at U.WASHINGTON.EDU Wed May 13 01:17:42 1998 From: apandey at U.WASHINGTON.EDU (Anshuman Pandey) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 18:17:42 -0700 Subject: Proposed changes to Velthuis Devanagari fonts. Message-ID: <161227038650.23782.11098888400298576250.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hello, There is a proposal to change the glyphs of three conjunct characters in the Devanagari Metafont designed by Frans Velthuis. These these glyphs are "h+n", "h+l", and "h+v". The current and proposed glyphs, as well as further details, are given in the file available at: http://weber.u.washington.edu/~apandey/dvng-chg.ps I am requesting that users of Mr. Velthuis's package please review the proposal and respond with comments. Regards, Anshuman Pandey From ycrnn14 at UCL.AC.UK Wed May 13 05:10:43 1998 From: ycrnn14 at UCL.AC.UK (Jibunnessa) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 22:10:43 -0700 Subject: PRE-COLUMBIAN MAIZE IN CHINA AND INDIA? Message-ID: <161227038636.23782.6225751674429461390.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Fritz > They look like beaded conch shells to me. Perhaps from far they might! But, if you look at a close-up photo from Carl Johannessen's pages at University of Oregon, they don't look like conch shells at all! ...beaded or othewise. I do think though, that they look a lot like custard apples! Jibunnessa From yavass at YV1041.SPB.EDU Tue May 12 18:14:58 1998 From: yavass at YV1041.SPB.EDU (Yaroslav V. Vassilkov) Date: Tue, 12 May 98 22:14:58 +0400 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038626.23782.9338752369139372717.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote: <"Altaic peoples" in the Ukraine 4000-3500 BC? Impossible. Message-ID: <161227038622.23782.2722304256269808854.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > Is vakkaNai in tamil from vyAkaraNa? It looks so. > Jayasinga kulakAla vizupparaiyan was associated with this temple. > The nataraja is called kArAnai viTaGka tEvar in inscriptions. > In JayamkoNTaar's kArAnai vizupparaiyan maTal, aatinaatan > is praised with many sanskrit epithets. May be kArAnai > vizupparaiyar, high Chola officials were important in fostering > PaaNinIyam in TN. > > Regards, > N. Ganesan > > Lexicons give vakkaNa as the vikriti of vyAkhyAna. But perhaps it is not impossible for it to be vikriti of vyAkaraNa. What do linguists say? regards, sarma. From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Wed May 13 05:27:03 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Wed, 13 May 98 05:27:03 +0000 Subject: Kannada vacanas In-Reply-To: <020_9805121838@flevoland.xs4all.nl> Message-ID: <161227038645.23782.5227905161780149011.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > Replies to msg 11 May 98: indology at listserv.liv.ac.uk (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) > > >Earlier N. Ganesan wrote > >< >sangamesvara refers to the God's name.kuuDala samngama is a place name. > >How do we know this?There were two Chola era prabandhams of war, now > >lost except for a few verses and their names occur in medieval > >commentaries.The 10th century paraNi prabandhams are called [...] > > nVNI> This does not explain the occurance of name saGgamezwara > nVNI> without the addition of kUDala. A more rational hypothesis > nVNI> will be to assume that ordinary people who did not > nVNI> understand that sangama = kUDala started calling > nVNI> saGgamEZwara as kUDala saGgamEzwara. In Andhra people are > nVNI> named as saGgamEzwara. For example the great vaiNika > nVNI> TumurADa SaGgamEzwara sAstri. Thus the gods name as > nVNI> saGgamEZwara is prevelent in Andhra. > > Maybe it is not out of place here to mention that Basava's a:nkita is not "kuu.dalasa:ngamee;svara", > as a few list members have been writing, but >"kuu.dalasa:ngamadeeva". :-) (The meaning may not > differ much, but I think that we ought to get such details right) > "Kuu.dalasa:ngama" is of course a hybrid tautological name. As has been pointed out earlier, > it _is_ topographical (and there are Kannada sources for finding out >that, so we don't need Tamil sources ...... > Robert Zydenbos > zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl > I differ with Robert Zydenbos for the following reasons 1. The existence of two words kUDalasangadEva and kappaDi sangadEva clearly shows that kUDala and KappaDi are adjectives qualifying the noun sangadEva. 2. The great bilingual virasaiva poet pAlakuriki sOmanAtha who has written the epic basavapurANa based on the life of basavEswara uses the the word sanga as the name of the god. I am quoting from trlugu version from memory OdakumOdaku mOrOri sanga! ODakumODAku monDuyu nolla Hey you sanga! Do not run! Do not run! Do not run! I want nothing from you! Unless there was a stromg virasaiva tradition of treating the word sanga as a noun and a name of the god, sOmanAtha would not have written like that. If there is some body on the list who has the kannaDa version of bbasavapurANa I will be very happy if they check there. regards, sarma. From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Wed May 13 05:59:10 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Wed, 13 May 98 05:59:10 +0000 Subject: Horses In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038648.23782.5214183826788431580.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > "Yaroslav V. Vassilkov" on Tue, 12 May 1998 writes > I could > give examples but I am sure that no reasonable arguments, no proven facts > can make the protagonists of the "India as homeland of all mankind" theory > change their opinion and betray their holy cause. > > Yaroslav Vassilkov > > India is too vast. I prefer my hometown to be "homeland of all mankind." regards, sarma. From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Wed May 13 13:03:51 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Wed, 13 May 98 07:03:51 -0600 Subject: Columbia book of Indian poetry Message-ID: <161227038659.23782.13872547661004715211.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Thanks, Prof. von Simson. I have seen the volumes you mention. They have a long way to go to be comprehensive and critical. Regards, N. Ganesan From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Wed May 13 14:09:43 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Wed, 13 May 98 08:09:43 -0600 Subject: Belur and Belaum (was Re: Kannada vacanas) Message-ID: <161227038660.23782.4541858401639294165.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The thread on Kannada vacanas is illuminating. I read: *the name of the place was just kUDala (pls note that *there is another place in uttara kannaDa dist by the same name) *It may have been that in order to differentiate ... For the case of Beluur and BelgAm, this may have been the case too. Seeing that Beluur already exists, an equivalent of uuru is used. gAm (< grAm) is identical to uuru. Also saw: *is there any difference between kuDala and kUDala *since both versions appear in basava's "vacanas". Applying the same, bElgAm is equivalent to belgAm too. Kannada retains '.l' instead of just 'l' in Belgaum. Regards, N. Ganesan From physgb1 at MATHOU.UOM.AC.MU Wed May 13 13:51:16 1998 From: physgb1 at MATHOU.UOM.AC.MU (Girish Kumar Beeharry) Date: Wed, 13 May 98 09:51:16 -0400 Subject: Columbia book on Indian poetry ?? Message-ID: <161227038652.23782.16539622754035613390.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> N. Ganesan wrote: >Is there an encyclopaedia of Sanskrit literature, with a page >or so on each of the important works. Similar encyclopaedias >on other Indian languages are desirable too. >There are encyclopaedias on virtually anything, >except things Indian. That will happen when the Indians start writing them! :-) On a more serious note, I have seen that expatriate Indians are more keen in cultural matters than desi people. Of course, the expatriates form a very non representative group, castewise. Also, who will get the various paNDitas from Varanasi, Chennai, Pune etc to write something in common. No doubt someone will blame the British for this situation... :-) Bye, Girish Kumar Beeharry From pfilliozat at MAGIC.FR Wed May 13 07:57:49 1998 From: pfilliozat at MAGIC.FR (Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat) Date: Wed, 13 May 98 09:57:49 +0200 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227038654.23782.16386031545983107603.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >I read the translation of a Kannada vacana by dEvara dasimaiya that goes >as:(paraphrase mine) > >A man with a gunny sack >which was tattered >walked all night long >fearing the toll gate Dear friend I found the text of the vacana in Kannada saahitya caritre vol. IV, p.394, published by the Kannada adhyayana samsthe, Manasagangotri, Mysore 1977. The text runs like this : HaRida gooNeyalobba kaLaveya tumbida IruLella naDedanaa sunkakanji kaLaveyellA hoogi baRigooNi uLiyittu aKimanadavana bhakti intAyittu Raamanaatha Here the poet or sharaNa gives a picture of devotion of an unstable mind. Hope it is satisfactory to you. Regards, Vasundhara Filliozat. > >______________________________________________________ >Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Wed May 13 17:04:58 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Wed, 13 May 98 11:04:58 -0600 Subject: Etymology of naa.dii Message-ID: <161227038664.23782.6875102249430808107.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The naa.di astrology is very interesting. In general, tamil words do not end with 'ii'. I read a nice article by Clive's great grandson of his experiences with a naa.dii astrologer. Clive (Is his first name Robert??) was one of the founders of British rule in India. The grandson goes to TiruvAnaikkaa or Vaidheesvaran kOil, as I recollect. will give the reference later. naa.du as a verb is to desire. naaTTam = desire. Does it have anything to do with naa.di jOtiDam?? nA.di in tamil means pulse also. Are there sanskrit texts called suuryanaa.dii, candranaa.dii, ... Regards, N. Ganesan From reimann at UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU Wed May 13 19:05:09 1998 From: reimann at UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU (Luis Gonzalez-Reimann) Date: Wed, 13 May 98 12:05:09 -0700 Subject: Roots of Ayurveda Message-ID: <161227038675.23782.12684423411971355853.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 09:51 AM 5/11/98 -0500, Fred Smith wrote: >DOminik, > >Yes, I have also had trouble ordering it. I was referred to one book >importer in this country that specializes in imported books, but they too >said it was impossible for them. If nobody out there has done this >already, I will contact Jerry Barrier at South Asia Books. It is likely >that he can get copies of it. > >Fred Smith He can, I already placed an order. Their email address is: sabooks at juno.com Best, Luis Gonzalez-Reimann University of California, Berkeley From sns at IX.NETCOM.COM Wed May 13 17:30:16 1998 From: sns at IX.NETCOM.COM (Sn. Subrahmanya) Date: Wed, 13 May 98 12:30:16 -0500 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038671.23782.15136264107785365307.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 05:59 AM 5/13/98 +0000, Yaroslav Vassilkov wrote: > I could > give examples but I am sure that no reasonable arguments, no proven facts > can make the protagonists of the "India as homeland of all mankind" theory > change their opinion and betray their holy cause. > > Yaroslav Vassilkov > It seems that people are unwilling or unable to recognize the importance of the Sarasvati and its implications to the dating of the Vedas. The dating of the Vedas will in turn affect the rest of the Indian chronology and all of Indo-European studies. It is also interesting that scholars who argue that Max Muller's works are outdated have no qualms in still accepting a chronology that was proposed by him. It is a symptom of the massive retrofitting of data. We have a 'circular evidence' problem -Indian chronology is not changed citing linguistic evidence and linguistic evidence in turn depends on the chronology !! I think there will be a better appreciation of arguments of archeologists and scholars from India, when the vedas are dated after taking the Sarasvati evidence into consideration. As an FYI, the aryan invasion/migration theory was accepted by the archeologists of ASI and in all Indian academic circles,until the rediscovery of the Sarasvati. Unless, you think that there is a conspiracy that has been hatched. I have to repeat Mr.Vassilovs words with a little change: "but I am sure that no reasonable arguments, no proven facts can make the protagonists of the "Aryan Invasion/Migration" theory change their opinion and betray their holy cause." Subrahmanya Houston,TX From g.v.simson at EAST.UIO.NO Wed May 13 10:43:52 1998 From: g.v.simson at EAST.UIO.NO (Georg von Simson) Date: Wed, 13 May 98 12:43:52 +0200 Subject: Columbia book on Indian poetry ?? In-Reply-To: <01IWYBH3Y3OI00511G@cl.uh.edu> Message-ID: <161227038656.23782.8466433322647435195.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> N. Ganesan asks: >Is there an encyclopaedia of Sanskrit literature, with a page >or so on each of the important works. Similar encyclopaedias >on other Indian languages are desirable too. >There are encyclopaedias on virtually anything, >except things Indian. > There are two rather comprehensive Encyclopaedias on Indian Literature(s) published in India: 1) Amaresh Datta (Chief Editor): Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature, Vol. 1-6, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, 1987-94. This runs through the alphabet from A to Z (works and authors). 2) GangA RAm Garg: International Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature, First published in 1982 ff., Revised and Enlarged Edition, Mittal Publications, Delhi,1987 ff. This is divided according to the different languages of India. Vol. I (2 Parts) contains Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit & ApabhraMza. The Dravidian literatures are covered by Vol. II (Tamil), IV (Kannada), V (Telugu), VI (Malayalam). Don't ask me about the scholarly quality of these encyclopaedias! But even if they in many respects do not reflect the latest state of scholarship, they are useful in their own way. Regards Georg v. Simson From apandey at U.WASHINGTON.EDU Wed May 13 22:17:20 1998 From: apandey at U.WASHINGTON.EDU (Anshuman Pandey) Date: Wed, 13 May 98 15:17:20 -0700 Subject: Proposed changes to Velthuis Devanagari fonts. In-Reply-To: <003201bd7e8d$28e61de0$65f973c0@default> Message-ID: <161227038677.23782.16836699672196075381.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Wed, 13 May 1998, Daniel Baum wrote: > While on the subject of changes to the Velthuis Devanagari package, is there > any possibility of adding Vedic accents to it? This seems to be the only > thing missing from an otherwise perfect package. Alternatively, is there any > other package that can do it? I know it can be fudged into Itrans, but that > seems to be missing other stuff. A package called "Sanskrit for LaTeX" by Charles Wikner handles Vedic accents, allows the user to choose between variant forms of several characters, handles technical transliteration, etc. The package is available from CTAN (ftp://ftp.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/language/sanskrit/). A compiled and patched DOS executable is available from my website at: http://weber.u.washington.edu/~apandey/skt2-exe.zip. There are no more available positions in Velthuis's font, so nothing more can be added to it. Regards, Anshuman Pandey From mgansten at SBBS.SE Wed May 13 15:30:05 1998 From: mgansten at SBBS.SE (Martin Gansten) Date: Wed, 13 May 98 17:30:05 +0200 Subject: Etymology of naa.dii Message-ID: <161227038662.23782.10447442125114702487.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I recently saw a Nadi (naa.dii) astrologer of Tamil Nadu quoted as saying, "The very word 'Nadi' in Tamil means (destined) to come on own accord." As a Tamil-illiterate Sanskritist, I would be greatful for any comments from Tamil scholars on this list as to whether there is any substance to this etymology. Thanks in advance, Martin Gansten From patte at MATH-INFO.UNIV-PARIS5.FR Wed May 13 16:12:11 1998 From: patte at MATH-INFO.UNIV-PARIS5.FR (Francois Patte) Date: Wed, 13 May 98 18:12:11 +0200 Subject: Proposed changes to Velthuis Devanagari fonts. Message-ID: <161227038667.23782.400528615276634534.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Anshuman Pandey wrote: > Hello, > > There is a proposal to change the glyphs of three conjunct characters in > the Devanagari Metafont designed by Frans Velthuis. These these glyphs are > "h+n", "h+l", and "h+v". The current and proposed glyphs, as well as > further details, are given in the file available at: > > http://weber.u.washington.edu/~apandey/dvng-chg.ps > > I am requesting that users of Mr. Velthuis's package please review the > proposal and respond with comments. > > Regards, > Anshuman Pandey I forgot to tell you this morning that "h+r" could be changed in the same way. Regards. -- Fran?ois Patte. UFR de math?matiques et informatique. 45 rue des St P?res. 75270 Paris Cedex 06 Tel: 01 44 55 35 59 -- Fax: 01 44 55 35 35 http://www.math-info.univ-paris5.fr/~patte From mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM Thu May 14 01:40:44 1998 From: mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM (S Krishna) Date: Wed, 13 May 98 18:40:44 -0700 Subject: Panini Message-ID: <161227038679.23782.7526339101981497793.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> For my comments please scroll down:(Apologize for the long post) N.Ganesan says: <(eg., kuutta nuul, tiruviLaiyaaDal puraaNam, kAnchip purANam, ...). >He teaches tamil to Murugan who teaches it in turn to Agastya.>> and S.Palaniappan had said: >I saw the following post in Indology. The above material >shows that grammar was taught by Siva or Avalokitiisvara >depending on whether it is a "saivaite or buddhist text >that we are reading. This legend is current not only in the Northwest of India, but also in the extreme South of India as well. >But based on the evidence presented by Deshpande, the Tamil grammatical and literary traditions, and Chinese accounts of T= >amilregion, a case could be made that the zaivite and Buddhist claims or=iginated not in the northwest of Indian subcontinent but in the southern porti=on of ancient Tamil region which includes present Tamilnadu and Kerala.>> My understanding of the case being made for a southern origin is that 1. there is a similar tradition of contention in Tamil between Buddha and Siva revealing Tamil grammar to Agastya 2. There is some evidence to believe that the Potalaka being refered to is not the one in the north-west of India but lies in the southern part of the country. The earliest proof of "linguistic conflict" in Tamil seems to be the conflict between the vaTakalai and the teGkalai vaiSNavas over the status of Tamil and Samskrt. As Indira Peterson points out, this conflict seems to have been carried over into the Saiva tradition in the 11th-12th century. Since the "vIracOziyam" is itself a 12th century text, I believe that a restatement of the story of the revealation( i.e. Buddha in place of ziva) seems to be an extension of the existing tension between Tamil and Samskrt into Buddhism; in other words while the zaivas and vaiSNavas simply debated the status of the languages, the buddhist texts seem to have put a religious spin on the existing conflict by talking about the revelation of the "vIracOziyam" by buddha. If one follows the patterns of myth making as explained in various places e.g. Kosambi or an analysis of the rAmAyaNa in south-east Asia,it is possible to see that a given myth always propogates in increasing order of complexity i.e. a simple story involving say X and Y will involve an extra person Z when it travels to a second place, will involve a 4th person A when it travels to a third place. If this principle were to be applied here, it can be seen that the samskrt version has only two people involved, ziva and pANini. In the Tamil version, there exist 4 different people starting from ziva i.e. ziva, murukan2, agastya and tolkAppiyar. Not only does the line of tranmission become more complex( itself evidence of the story being extant for some time and external to the place), it also invloves a very Tamil factor i.e. murukan2 which is a good example of localization of an external legend. In addition, we can also see the EXTENT to which the Tamil myth was developed since there also seems to have been a point in Tamil literature when both sides were willing to resolve things and concede a *joint-ownership* over the "vIracOzhiyam". This occurs in the story of kAcciyappaiyAr, the author of the kaNTapurANam. According to legend, murukan2 appeared to kAcciyappayAr and asked him to write poems in praise of ziva, which the poet did and presented in front of an audience. The audience pointed out an error in his "sandhi"-fication which he was asked to explain; the same night murukan2 appeared to kAciyappa and asked him to look up the "vIracOziyam" which had the neccesary rule. Thus this myth involves both murukan2 and ziva from the Hindu side as well as the buddhist text the "vIracOziyam". It would now seem that an external origin is more probable since the point of grammar over which there was a contest seemed to have been more influenced by samskrt than by Tamil. Thus, the fact that a further layer of resolution( with involvement by both sides) is added to the embryo of the conflict and THAT involves samskrtic influence makes me think that the actual myth is external to the Tamil country and seems to have come there through diffusion. I believe that the earliest references to ziva in Tamil literature go no earlier than the 6th century C.E. at which time the conflict seems to have already existed elsewhere.As Zvelebil points out, the need for having Ziva as the father of the Tamil diety murukan2 itself arose after contact with the north. At the same time, I believe that the legend of the 3 sangams, available from the 9th century onwards talks about the presence of sarasvati at the 2nd sangam; the peculiarity of sarasvati being that she is a northern diety.(What is interesting here is that because the legend goes back to the 9th century and we find sarasvati..if the legend dated back to the 2nd century, I'm sure that we would not have seen sarasvati) Thus, since we see that any legend involving vedic dieties( ziva=rudra) has to be traced back north, it is possible to say that a legend involving a diety like siva also has to be traced northwards i.e. it would have an origin outside the Tamil country. What I would also like to point out is that as a result of contact with the northern part of India, there seems to have arisen a situation in the Tamil country where every concept or place of some importance in the north had to have a southern/local counterpart. As evidence of this, among places we have ten2kAci which namewise is the southern counterpart of kAzi, man2n2ArkuTi which is the southern counterpart of dvAraka, the kAvEri which according to certain texts is the southern equivalent of the gaGgA, citamparam/nAkapaTTinam which like the kailAsa mountain is refered to as "zivarAjadhAnikSEtra" etc.Thus, the above conflict between Buddha and Ziva w.r.t Tamil seems to be part of a bigger pattern of having a local equivalent for every given place/situation/contention in Samskrt/the North, which is as very prevalent and pervasive as the above nomenclatures show. I realise that the evidence presented may be circumstancial but the huge amount of it available would seem in my humble opinion to support the fact that the conflict arose among Hindus and Buddhists outside the Tamil country, which the local groups adopted and then adapted to the local circumstances. REgards, Krishna ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM Thu May 14 02:01:16 1998 From: mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM (S Krishna) Date: Wed, 13 May 98 19:01:16 -0700 Subject: A small correction Re: Panini Message-ID: <161227038681.23782.15184177654424942827.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In my earlier post I had written: in other words while the zaivas and vaiSNavas simply debated the status ofthe languages, the buddhist texts seem to have put a religious spin onthe existing conflict by talking about the revelation of the "vIracOziyam" by buddha. >---------------------------- I meant to say "the revealation of Tamil by Buddha" as stated in the vIracOziyam....I apologize for the error. REgards, Krishna > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From msdbaum at MSCC.HUJI.AC.IL Wed May 13 16:35:22 1998 From: msdbaum at MSCC.HUJI.AC.IL (Daniel Baum) Date: Wed, 13 May 98 19:35:22 +0300 Subject: Proposed changes to Velthuis Devanagari fonts. Message-ID: <161227038669.23782.8635270322167951285.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hi, While on the subject of changes to the Velthuis Devanagari package, is there any possibility of adding Vedic accents to it? This seems to be the only thing missing from an otherwise perfect package. Alternatively, is there any other package that can do it? I know it can be fudged into Itrans, but that seems to be missing other stuff. Daniel Baum msdbaum at mscc.huji.ac.il Home Page http://www.angelfire.com/il/dbaum Tel: ++972-2-583-6634; Mob. ++972-51-972-829 -----Original Message----- From: Anshuman Pandey To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Date: ??? ?????, ??? 13, 1998 04:17 Subject: Proposed changes to Velthuis Devanagari fonts. >Hello, > >There is a proposal to change the glyphs of three conjunct characters in >the Devanagari Metafont designed by Frans Velthuis. These these glyphs are >"h+n", "h+l", and "h+v". The current and proposed glyphs, as well as >further details, are given in the file available at: > > http://weber.u.washington.edu/~apandey/dvng-chg.ps > >I am requesting that users of Mr. Velthuis's package please review the >proposal and respond with comments. > >Regards, >Anshuman Pandey > From zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL Wed May 13 22:04:03 1998 From: zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Wed, 13 May 98 20:04:03 -0200 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227038707.23782.7548114808581529135.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Replies to msg 13 May 98: indology at listserv.liv.ac.uk (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) nVNI> I differ with Robert Zydenbos for the following reasons nVNI> 1. The existence of two words kUDalasangadEva and kappaDi nVNI> sangadEva clearly shows that kUDala and KappaDi are nVNI> adjectives qualifying the noun sangadEva. I fear that I must give a very dull response here: all the vacanas of Basava say "kuu.dalaSA:NGAMAdeeva", and never "kuu.dalaSA:NGAdeeva". nVNI> 2. The great bilingual virasaiva poet pAlakuriki sOmanAtha nVNI> who has written the epic basavapurANa based on the life of nVNI> basavEswara uses the the word sanga as the name of the god. nVNI> I am quoting from trlugu version from memory nVNI> OdakumOdaku mOrOri sanga! nVNI> ODakumODAku monDuyu nolla nVNI> Hey you sanga! Do not run! Do not run! nVNI> Do not run! I want nothing from you! nVNI> Unless there was a stromg virasaiva tradition of treating nVNI> the word sanga as a noun and a name of the god, sOmanAtha nVNI> would not have written like that. If there is some body on nVNI> the list who has the kannaDa version of bbasavapurANa I nVNI> will be very happy if they check there. I have not yet read the Basavapuraa.na; but I hope to be back in India soon, and then I am curious to see whether this is there in the Kannada version too. And of course we would have to see where else "sa:nga" is used, if it is used elsewhere. Without having at all seen the puraa.na yet, I think I may mention here that scholars in Karnataka, while appreciating Soomanaatha's work in general, are not always equally impressed with his sense of history, and that what he says at times is in conflict with other historical sources. He apparently wrote more as a devotee than as a scholar (which of course should not be held against him! Just as we do not dismiss Rembrandt as a painter because he dressed up a few biblical characters in 17th-century armour). Robert Zydenbos zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl From zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL Wed May 13 22:41:54 1998 From: zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Wed, 13 May 98 20:41:54 -0200 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227038705.23782.7034362492725736224.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Replies to msg 12 May 98: indology at listserv.liv.ac.uk (S Krishna) mC> Robert writes: mC> < and Vi.t.thala of Pandharpur are to be thought of as mC> 'multiple deities' of the Maadhvas, one could argue that the mC> same ought to be true of, e.g., Kuu.dalasa:ngamadeeva and mC> Guhee;svara among the Virasaivas.>> mC> What I had in mind was that the dAsakUTa poets who used a mC> "ankita" that they took for THEMSELVES allowed them ( for mC> lack of a better expression) to write about dieties as mC> *diverse* as ziva,kr*SNa,rAma and gaNapati(purandara dAsa) or mC> gaNESa,hanumAn, kr*SNa( viTThala dAsa) while the vIrazaiva mC> tendency of not putting in their name "restricted" them( so mC> to speak) to only ONE FORM OF A given diety ( mahAdEvi does mC> not refer to kUDalasangama dEva nor does allama prabhu refer mC> to "cennamallikArjuna")...otherwise I agree with what you mC> have to say below Aha: you mean one and the same author writing about different deities? My impression is that, very much in general, the daasas are more pauraa.nika in their outlook than the ;sara.nas. Scripture, ancient narratives, and the great epics figure more prominently in the compositions of the daasas than in vacanas (N.B.: I am not saying that these things are absent in the vacanas). It would seem that the general tendency in the vacanas is not to think very much about a variety of divinities, or various pauraa.nika manifestations of a divinity; and this has little to do with the a:nkita in itself. mC> < that the use of such signatures as a literary device among mC> the daasas has been borrowed from the Virasaiva ;sara.nas. If mC> the ;sara.nas had never had such a usage, then the daasas mC> might never have developed it.>> mC> This is interesting...you mean that the 10th century poets mC> pampa, ponna and ronna never used an ankita? We should keep in mind that 10th-century poetry was of a very different character: very lengthy narratives. An exceptionally long vacana may be more than a page or two in length, but the bulk of them are only a few lines. They went from mouth to mouth and were easily copied in numerous manuscripts (due both to their briefness and their popular appeal), whereas copying e.g. a puraa.na by Pampa or Ranna was a big undertaking, and the name of the author was less likely to be lost, or a work less likely to be ascribed to another author. On the other hand, there are cases of vacanas (and pada's of daasas) with variant readings (including variant a:nkitas! obvious corruptions in oral transmission). I think the ;sara.na and daasa authors were aware of this possibility and hence made a point of using their personal a:nkitas. mC> ..also thanks for the "kUDalasangamadEva" thing...is there mC> any difference between kuDala, and kUDala since both versions mC> appear in basava's "vacanas"..Doesn't he also refer to mC> "kUDala" by some other variant? What is the significance of mC> these variants? I have never seen a variant "ku.dala": it is always "kuu.dala" (did _I_ write "ku.dala"? Then that was a typo). "Kuu.dala" is from the intransitive verb root "kuu.du-", 'to join, unite'. Robert Zydenbos zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl From sristi at AD1.VSNL.NET.IN Wed May 13 17:36:10 1998 From: sristi at AD1.VSNL.NET.IN (anil k gupta) Date: Wed, 13 May 98 23:06:10 +0530 Subject: PRE-COLUMBIAN MAIZE IN CHINA AND INDIA? Message-ID: <161227038673.23782.1845861602297217091.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Prof Javed Asgraf at JNU Delhi has argued thsi issue in several fo his papers and also another author who worte the book American discoverers ( I forget teh name just now but can send it later) also pointed out thsi possibility about maize. there rae picytures of scuptures ( I have one inmy office) of Budhdhist period in which corn is shown. It obviously was here in such a case. anil k gupta -----Original Message----- From: Jibunnessa To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Date: Wednesday, May 13, 1998 5:27 AM Subject: PRE-COLUMBIAN MAIZE IN CHINA AND INDIA? Dear All Thought you might find this interesting! ----------------------------------------------------- PRE-COLUMBIAN MAIZE IN CHINA AND INDIA? The evidence of maize in archaeological sites in China and its depiction in Hoysala Temples in India, both dated before the 15th century A.D., suggests that this domesticated crop was diffused by human action before the arrival of Columbus in the New World. The implications of this evidence are of great magnitude, since the presence of maize in Asia indicates that humans were able to migrate between both hemispheres; more than likely through trans- oceanic means of travel. ----------------------------------------------------- This comes from an article by Carl Johannessen and Anne Z. Parker, "Maize Ears Sculptured in 12th and 13th Century A.D. India as Indicators of Pre-Columbian Diffusion," Economic Botany 43 (2), 1989, pp. 164-180. Just in case anyone is REALLY interested, I've attached some (what I think) useful WEB pages. The first is Carl Johannessen's own page at University of Oregon. The second from the University of Ohio, also talks about the same thing, and has a rather useful bibliography. The last is an article from the Maize Genetics Cooperation Newsletter, called, "Antiquity of Maize in India". It's by M. Kumar and JKS Sachan from Rajendra Agricultural University in India. They also suggest that maize being grown in the very remote Northeastern Himalayan tracts adjoining Burma and Tibet, could be further evidence of possible pre-Columbian introduction. I hope this stimulates interest! I'd be interested to hear what people think. And anyone who knows any more about the subject, I'd be grateful for some illumination and further leads. All the best Jibunnessa -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ebryant at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Thu May 14 11:51:26 1998 From: ebryant at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Edwin Bryant) Date: Thu, 14 May 98 07:51:26 -0400 Subject: Horses In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19980513173016.015679a0@ix.netcom.com> Message-ID: <161227038691.23782.12186569969383172457.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Wed, 13 May 1998, Sn. Subrahmanya wrote: > It seems that people are unwilling or unable to recognize the importance of > the Sarasvati and its implications to the dating of the Vedas. > The dating of the Vedas will in turn affect the rest of the Indian > chronology and all of Indo-European studies. Are you referring to the dating proposals of the French team? Have there been any thorough efforts made to date the drying up of this river (references would be welcome)? Thanks, Edwin Bryant From fjkorom at NM-US.CAMPUS.MCI.NET Thu May 14 14:11:29 1998 From: fjkorom at NM-US.CAMPUS.MCI.NET (Frank J. Korom) Date: Thu, 14 May 98 08:11:29 -0600 Subject: Indian Place Names Website Message-ID: <161227038699.23782.6851162529876492455.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> David Lee, Professor of Biology at the Florida International University (University Park Campus, Miami, Florida 33199) has been working on ayurvedic gardens and ecological isues with a focus on sustainability in south India. He may be of some help. Frank J. Korom At 03:50 PM 5/14/98 +0200, you wrote: >Could any of you kindly help us find reefrences to Hindu Garden tradion >(Mysore etc.)? Has there beeen any research work in this area? A freind of >mine is doing her post-doctoral work in this area. Many thanks in advance! > >Ghanshyam Sharma > > From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Thu May 14 14:14:43 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Thu, 14 May 98 08:14:43 -0600 Subject: Panini Message-ID: <161227038696.23782.14932686726563415982.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> "Siva occurs much before 6th century CE in tamil. What you see in tamil is a mature, elaborate bhakti texts on "Siva from 5th century onwards. (eg., Cilappatikaaram, Karaikkaal Ammai are dated by many scholars in 5th century CE. They have copiuos references to "Siva) For Mayentiram, a tamilized form of Mahendra appearing in Cambodia, see my post last month. It is recorded in China in 484 AD. For references on "Siva from classical sangam texts (200bc - 200ad), I will compile & post for you after some time. BTW, kantapurANam in 12th century CE is written by kacciyappa civAccAriyAr, an adhisaiva priest. From adhisaiva homes, the major saivagamas were found. Regards, N. Ganesan From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Thu May 14 16:04:58 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Thu, 14 May 98 10:04:58 -0600 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227038701.23782.13755002172810785214.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Want to know the references on identifying Sarasvati of the Rig Veda as the Ghaggar river. Who did this identification first? Did s/he publish it? See the old posting in Indology. If Aristouboulos in 330 BCE is referring to Indus valley civilization (IVC) ruins, the ruins are already 1200 to 1400 years old. This fits well with the dating of the vedas to 1200 BCE, in my opinion. Some scholars even say Rig veda is 1000 BCE. BTW, recent scholarship shows that upani.sads have been dated too early. They are really few centuries later than the conventional wisdom. Would like to see references on the dating of the drying of rivers in Indus valley. Regards, N. Ganesan Subject: Re: arma-, armaka 'ruined site' > On Tue, 31 Mar 1998, N. Ganesan wrote: > > > Reading an article by Prof. Thomas Burrow on Aryans intruding > > into India. Reference: Arthur Cotterell, Encyclopaedia of > > ancient civilizations, 1980 > > > > "The Aryans were aware of the numerous ruined Indus sites > > among which they lived, and they referred to them by the term > > arma, armaka, 'ruined site, ruins'. Among the references to these > > the following is of particular significance: *The people to > > whom these ruined sites, lacking posts, formerly belonged, > > these many settlements widely distributed. they, O, Vaishvaanara, > > having been expelled by thee, having migrated to another > > land*." - T. Burrow > > Erik Seldeslachts wrote: * [...] In Strabo, *Geography 15.1.19, there is a parallel piece of information - drawn *from Aristoboulos, a companion of Alexander -, which puts into *perspective the quotations above:"He says that when he was sent upon *a certain mission he saw a country of more than a thousand cities, *together with villages, that had been deserted because the Indus had *abandoned its proper bed, and had turned aside into the other bed on *the left that was much deeper, and flowed with precipitous descent *like a cataract, so that the Indus no longer watered by its overflows *the abandoned country on the right, since that country was now above *the level, not only of the new stream, but also of its overflows." From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Thu May 14 09:03:06 1998 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Thu, 14 May 98 11:03:06 +0200 Subject: REference Message-ID: <161227038685.23782.5898442768812062305.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Members of the list: On p. 25 of his book "Vedic Aryans and the Origin of Civilization" Navratna Rajaram says: "Assuming the date 4004 BCE for the creation of the world (as Max Mueller did), leads to 2448 BCE as the date for the Biblical flood." As is often the case, Rajaram does not give a reference. Does anybody know exactly where Max Mueller supports the Biblical chronology? Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Tel: +47 22 32 12 19 Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no Mobile phone: 90 91 91 45 From martin.bemmann at URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE Thu May 14 09:11:33 1998 From: martin.bemmann at URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (Martin Bemmann) Date: Thu, 14 May 98 11:11:33 +0200 Subject: Biblio. details Message-ID: <161227038687.23782.5752646621639455759.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The OPAC of the British Library gives following information: Shelfmark: 2254.f.1. Author: BENTLEY, Robert and TRIMEN, (Henry) Title: Medicinal Plants, being descriptions with original figures of the principal plants employed in medicine and an account of the characters, properties and uses of their parts ... The plates by David Blair. Publisher: 4 vol. pl. 306. J. & A. Churchill: London, 1880. 8o. PROF. BH. KRISHNAMURTI schrieb: > > I shall be grateful if any member can supply me with the initials of the > authors of the following title and any other details on reprint, et. > Bently and Henry. 1880. Medicinal plans (4 vols). London: J&A Church-Hill. > Bh.Krishnamurti. bhk at hd1.vsnl.net.in Thanks. Regards, -- Martin Bemmann Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften >Felsbilder und Inschriften am Karakorum Highway< Karlstrasse 4 Postfach 102769 D-69017 Heidelberg -- Germany phone: ++49-6221-543276 fax: ++49-6221-543355 mailto:martin.bemmann at urz.uni-heidelberg.de http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/institute/sonst/adw/kara/welcome.html From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Thu May 14 10:26:12 1998 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Thu, 14 May 98 11:26:12 +0100 Subject: [ADMIN] Re: Postponing Indology Message-ID: <161227038689.23782.2046889347165019650.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> To get details of how to control your INDOLOGY subscription, send the message "help" to "listserv at liverpool.ac.uk". Listserv will then send you further instructions and help about the listserver's commands All the best, Dominik From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Thu May 14 20:22:15 1998 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Thu, 14 May 98 13:22:15 -0700 Subject: Etymology of naa.dii Message-ID: <161227038716.23782.4012042168531869562.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Martin Gansten wrote: >I recently saw a Nadi (naa.dii) astrologer of Tamil Nadu quoted as saying, >"The very word 'Nadi' in Tamil means (destined) to come on own accord." As a >Tamil-illiterate Sanskritist, I would be greatful for any comments from >Tamil scholars on this list as to whether there is any substance to this >etymology. This is probably similar in spirit to the correlations that Indians are so fond of. It goes back to upanishad days, e.g. idamdra, svam apiti etc, and you will find such things not only in Sanskrit but almost every other spoken language. I doubt if you will find much of a modern sense of etymology in it. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Thu May 14 20:35:48 1998 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Thu, 14 May 98 13:35:48 -0700 Subject: Panini Message-ID: <161227038718.23782.9065453735134219745.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> S Krishna wrote: ... > I believe that the earliest references to ziva in Tamil literature go >no earlier than the 6th century C.E. at which time the conflict seems to >have already existed elsewhere.As Zvelebil points out, the need for >having Ziva as the father of the Tamil diety murukan2 itself arose after >contact with the north. But remember that Tamil contacts with the north go back to much, much earlier times than the 6th century CE. Asoka clearly knew of the Tamil kingdoms. And if Candragupta Maurya did come down to southern Karnataka, there is no big barrier for going further south, down to the cape, and interacting with Tamil natives. All this dates to some eight or nine centuries earlier than the 6th century CE. Also remember that skanda/kumAra as Siva's son was a very popular god among the Guptas, who ruled only in the north. The identification is primarily between the Tamil Murukan and the Sanskritic Skanda, necessitating the identification of Siva as the father of Murukan. This could have happened much earlier than the 6th century CE. One cannot account for the full-fledged bhakti of the nAyanmArs to Siva in a total vacuum. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Thu May 14 08:57:00 1998 From: bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (PROF. BH. KRISHNAMURTI) Date: Thu, 14 May 98 13:57:00 +0500 Subject: Biblio. details Message-ID: <161227038683.23782.18089741325778201894.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I shall be grateful if any member can supply me with the initials of the authors of the following title and any other details on reprint, et. Bently and Henry. 1880. Medicinal plans (4 vols). London: J&A Church-Hill. Bh.Krishnamurti. bhk at hd1.vsnl.net.in Thanks. From athr at LOC.GOV Thu May 14 18:52:29 1998 From: athr at LOC.GOV (Allen W Thrasher) Date: Thu, 14 May 98 14:52:29 -0400 Subject: Talk on Shingly Jews of Kerala Message-ID: <161227038711.23782.14099877405173289786.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The Library of Congress Hebraica Research Seminar presents: "SHINGLY JEWS, THE PEPPER TRADE, AND ABRAVANEL'S CALCULATION OF REDEMPTION : TWO NEW DOCUMENTS FROM 1504" by Arthur M. Lesley Associate Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature Baltimore Hebrew University 12:30-1:30 p.m. African and Middle Eastern Division conference room LJ220, Jefferson Building First and Independence Washington, DC 1 block from Capitol Hill Metro stop From athr at LOC.GOV Thu May 14 18:58:28 1998 From: athr at LOC.GOV (Allen W Thrasher) Date: Thu, 14 May 98 14:58:28 -0400 Subject: Shingly Jews of Kerala talk : corrected announcement Message-ID: <161227038713.23782.16806173751789794657.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I just sent out an announcement of the following without including the date. For those for whom my attempt to withdraw the message from their inbox didn't work, here is the corrected announcement. Allen Thrasher The Library of Congress Hebraica Research Seminar presents: "SHINGLY JEWS, THE PEPPER TRADE, AND ABRAVANEL'S CALCULATION OF REDEMPTION : TWO NEW DOCUMENTS FROM 1504" by Arthur M. Lesley Associate Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature Baltimore Hebrew University Thursday, May 21, 1998 12:30-1:30 p.m. African and Middle Eastern Division conference room LJ220, Jefferson Building First St. and Independence Ave., SE Washington, DC 1 block from Capitol Hill Metro stop From ebryant at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Thu May 14 19:45:19 1998 From: ebryant at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Edwin Bryant) Date: Thu, 14 May 98 15:45:19 -0400 Subject: Muller/William JOnes/Genesis In-Reply-To: <199805140903.LAA22338@online.no> Message-ID: <161227038709.23782.8678021813287042422.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I haven't come across a reference like this in Muller, but Rajaram may be confusing him with William Jones (Muller is often the generic target of anti-Orientalist invective in this genre of work). Jones ostensibly went to India with the purpose (or with one purpose amongst others) of settling the controversy regarding the dates of immense antiquity for the human race that were being relayed back to a startled Europe by scholars like Holwell, Dow and Halhed. THese dates, which were being accessed for the first time from translations of the PUranas, completely undermined OLd Testament historicity (Usher's 4004 BCE date for the creation) causing much consternation amongst the orthodox (and much delight to the Voltaire types striving to break free from the literalism of Genesis). Jones fiddled around with the king lists of the Puranas, made his famous correlations between Puranic and BIblical personalities, and concluded that Genesis had emerged safe and sound since the beginning of the Indian chronology was 3800 years prior to his time (ie, the HIndu sources *verified* the narrative in Genesis, rather than undermined it). He also came up with a figure for the flood (I can't recall if it was 2448 BCE, but this sounds about right, since he figured that the Kaliyuga was around 2000 BCE, or something, and the flood would have been between then and creation). If this is, indeed, a reference to Muller, then please let me know. Regards, Edwin Bryant On Thu, 14 May 1998, Lars Martin Fosse wrote: > Members of the list: > > On p. 25 of his book "Vedic Aryans and the Origin of Civilization" Navratna > Rajaram says: "Assuming the date 4004 BCE for the creation of the world (as > Max Mueller did), leads to 2448 BCE as the date for the Biblical flood." > > As is often the case, Rajaram does not give a reference. Does anybody know > exactly where Max Mueller supports the Biblical chronology? > > Best regards, > > Lars Martin Fosse > > > Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse > Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, > 0674 Oslo > > Tel: +47 22 32 12 19 > Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 > Email: lmfosse at online.no > Mobile phone: 90 91 91 45 > From sharmave at UNIVE.IT Thu May 14 13:50:01 1998 From: sharmave at UNIVE.IT (Ghanshyam Sharma) Date: Thu, 14 May 98 15:50:01 +0200 Subject: Indian Place Names Website In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038697.23782.8080519079463521561.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Could any of you kindly help us find reefrences to Hindu Garden tradion (Mysore etc.)? Has there beeen any research work in this area? A freind of mine is doing her post-doctoral work in this area. Many thanks in advance! Ghanshyam Sharma From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Thu May 14 22:31:41 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Thu, 14 May 98 16:31:41 -0600 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227038721.23782.18189234986702889735.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Earlier, Dr. R. Zydenbos wrote: *"Kuu.dalasa:ngama" is of course a hybrid tautological name. As has * been pointed out earlier, it _is_ topographical (and there are * Kannada sources for finding out that, ...) Just some additional data. About 15 Chola inscriptions starting from Aditya I's days says the place name is "kuuDalasangamam". Please check the several volumes of South Indian Inscriptions of ASI. I remember seeing kuuDalasangama as tautological in tamil version of medieval age Basava purANam. "vruSapEntra vijayam allatu nantikEsvaravijayam ennum vacava purANam. itu SRImat nAki ceTTiyAr iyaRRiya uraiyuTan. cennai: kurupacava etc., 1931, 934 p." We seek evidence from Greek sources for many things Indian. The two South Dravidian tongues, kannada and tamil afterall are not that apart. Hope Dr. Zydenbos turns out to be the Zvelebil for Kannada letters. I will definitey buy his books. An overview, lexicon of kannada literature, a book on raga.le poems. Would love to see the comparison with tamil saiva texts, a study on Purandara ViTTala, MuddaNa's Ramayanam written in 19th (?) century in an archaic ha.le kannada style, .... Regards, N. Ganesan ************************************ S. Krishna writes as the concluding line: *This leads me to believe that the name of the place was just kUDala * [...] *kUDala and kappaDi( a nearby town) the Gods were *called kUDalasangamEZvara and kappaDisangamEzvara which is now being --------------- *interpreted as that the place names THEMSELVES were kUDalasangama and ---------------------------------- *kappaDisangama... My earlier posting is clear enough. The place names are NOT interpreted as kuuDalasangama NOW. They are that way for atleast ONE THOUSAND years! There exists pieces from a tamil pirapantam (ciRRilakkiyam). The book is called kuuDalacaGkamattup paraNi in which clearly place name is kuuDalasangama. This is a hybrid dravidian/IA name. IF kuuDala were the placename, the paraNi would have been kuuDalap paraNi or kuuDal paraNi, but this is not the case. BTW, maturai in sangam classics is refered to as kuuDal all the time. In Kannada also, the place name is kuuDalasangama. (The place name is not kuuDala). >?From the book in which the vacana translaton occurs. AKR, Speaking of "Siva, Penguin, 1973, p. 62 "In kuuDalasangama, he found a guru, with whom he studied the Vedas and other religious texts" I would think in Kannada also, there is a long tradition of kuuDalasangama as the place name. Regards, N. Ganesan Earlier N. Ganesan wrote <> From bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Thu May 14 12:35:33 1998 From: bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (PROF. BH. KRISHNAMURTI) Date: Thu, 14 May 98 17:35:33 +0500 Subject: Biblio. details In-Reply-To: <355AB545.EF5472AC@urz.uni-heidelberg.de> Message-ID: <161227038694.23782.9753242172351646194.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Dr. Bemman: Many many thanks. Bh. Krishnamurti. On Thu, 14 May 1998, Martin Bemmann wrote: > The OPAC of the British Library gives following information: > > Shelfmark: 2254.f.1. > Author: BENTLEY, Robert and TRIMEN, (Henry) > Title: Medicinal Plants, being descriptions with original figures of > the principal plants employed in medicine and an account of the > characters, properties and uses of their parts ... The plates by David > Blair. > Publisher: 4 vol. pl. 306. J. & A. Churchill: London, 1880. 8o. > > > > PROF. BH. KRISHNAMURTI schrieb: > > > > I shall be grateful if any member can supply me with the initials of the > > authors of the following title and any other details on reprint, et. > > Bently and Henry. 1880. Medicinal plans (4 vols). London: J&A Church-Hill. > > Bh.Krishnamurti. bhk at hd1.vsnl.net.in Thanks. > > > Regards, > -- > Martin Bemmann > > Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften > >Felsbilder und Inschriften am Karakorum Highway< > Karlstrasse 4 > Postfach 102769 > D-69017 Heidelberg -- Germany > > phone: ++49-6221-543276 fax: ++49-6221-543355 > mailto:martin.bemmann at urz.uni-heidelberg.de > http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/institute/sonst/adw/kara/welcome.html > From mittals at MAGELLAN.UMONTREAL.CA Thu May 14 21:47:56 1998 From: mittals at MAGELLAN.UMONTREAL.CA (Mittal Sushil) Date: Thu, 14 May 98 17:47:56 -0400 Subject: URGENT -- Q. Number of institutions offering courses on Hinduism Message-ID: <161227038723.23782.9964245910144373571.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Greetings, all, I write to ask for a tentative number of institutions in English-speaking countries, except US, Canada, and Nez Zealand, offering introductory and intermediate level courses on Hinduism and Religious Traditions of India. Any information that I could get would be of immense help. Thanks. Regards, Sushil From jneuss at ZEDAT.FU-BERLIN.DE Thu May 14 16:18:35 1998 From: jneuss at ZEDAT.FU-BERLIN.DE (Juergen Neuss) Date: Thu, 14 May 98 18:18:35 +0200 Subject: Dharmashastra Message-ID: <161227038703.23782.9261433064632174731.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear you, I am at present working on an edition of the Yamasmrti, one of those "minor" dharmashastra texts, which are often found in collections of smrtis, in print (Smrtisandarbha e.c.) as well as in manuscripts. The fact that a good number of manuscripts of the Yamasmrti still exist in almost all parts of India seems to indicate that the text was quite popular and wide-spread. What is at present rather difficult for me to find out is, whether these minor dharmashastras in general and the Yamasmrti in particular were/was connected to any specific section of Indian society and if so, which groups regarded these texts as their source of dharma? Any idea? Thanks for reading Juergen Neuss From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Thu May 14 22:20:46 1998 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Fri, 15 May 98 00:20:46 +0200 Subject: Muller/William JOnes/Genesis Message-ID: <161227038725.23782.2437245835933127733.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 15:45 14.05.98 -0400, you wrote: >I haven't come across a reference like this in Muller, but Rajaram >may be confusing him with William Jones (Muller is often the generic >target of anti-Orientalist invective in this genre of work). This is precisely my suspicion too. I find it very hard that a scholar who died in 1900 would believe in Ussher's dates! I have another couple of examples where Rajaram seems to have been stealing ideas from the very early Indologists. But I have to check! > >If this is, indeed, a reference to Muller, then please let me >know. Regards, Edwin Bryant I certainly will! But I wish R. wouldn't make claims like that without citing his sources. The man is sloppy and superficial, and he gets carried away by his own rhetorical talent, which is considerable. He makes fun reading in a quaint sort of way until you start checking him. Then it isn't so fun any more. Too much work. Best regards, Lars Martin Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Tel: +47 22 32 12 19 Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no Mobile phone: 90 91 91 45 From rospatt at WLINK.COM.NP Fri May 15 14:25:36 1998 From: rospatt at WLINK.COM.NP (A. v. Rospatt) Date: Fri, 15 May 98 07:25:36 -0700 Subject: Zraadha in Nepal Message-ID: <161227038727.23782.12893377044640965410.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Richard Cohen, a brief and tentative answer to some of Your questions: > 1) Though Buddhist, do the Sakyas perform zraadha ceremonies in honor of the > dead akin to those performed by the valley's Hindu population? I know that vajracaryas perform zraadha ceremonies and in all likelihood this will also hold good for Shakyas. I am ignorant about the precise details but I know that the ritual is thoroughly buddhicized, involving the building of a durgatiparizodhana-caitya and the veneration of the three jewels. > 2) Does Sakyamuni receive mention in the course of the Sakyas' funerary > rites, in his capacity as a member of the clan rather than as a buddha? In > other words, is he treated as an ancestor, or even clan-deity? > 3) Does Dipankara have any place in the Sakyas' funerary rites? In other > words, is he treated as an ancestor, or even clan-deity? As all Newars, Shakyas have a clan deity. All my informants agreed that Shakyamuni and Dipankara never feature as such. The contrary would also have been somthig of a surpirse to me. > > 4) How is inhertance distributed upon the death of a father? How do the > Sakyas' inheritance practices compare with those of other groups in the valley? According to my informants, as is customary in much of South Asian Societies: The male members of the joint family jointly own their property. This does not change when the father dies, though at this junction brothers ofen start struggles and end up dividing the family property in equal parts among themselves. Regards, Alexander Rospatt -- Dr. Alexander v. Rospatt Tel.: 00-977-1-271018 Nepal Research Center Fax: 00-977-1-474463 PO Box 180 Kathmandu, Nepal From thillaud at UNICE.FR Fri May 15 06:52:36 1998 From: thillaud at UNICE.FR (Dominique.Thillaud) Date: Fri, 15 May 98 08:52:36 +0200 Subject: Homeland vs AI/M (was erroneously Horses) In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19980513173016.015679a0@ix.netcom.com> Message-ID: <161227038765.23782.11151419437104611938.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Mr Subrahmanya, You post: >At 05:59 AM 5/13/98 +0000, Yaroslav Vassilkov wrote: >> I could >> give examples but I am sure that no reasonable arguments, no proven facts >> can make the protagonists of the "India as homeland of all mankind" theory >> change their opinion and betray their holy cause. > >I have to repeat Mr.Vassilovs words with a little change: >"but I am sure that no reasonable arguments, no proven facts >can make the protagonists of the "Aryan Invasion/Migration" theory >change their opinion and betray their holy cause." I suspect that, behind rhetoric and humour, you intend to give symmetric roles to both adversaries. I'm afraid you're wrong. The "cause" of the AI/M "protagonists" is not an holy one, just a scholary one. Regards, Dominique PS (without any link, I hope so): Congratulations to the Indian Government for their great step towards the end of this horrible Kaliyuga... Dominique THILLAUD Universite' de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France From filipsky at SITE.CAS.CZ Fri May 15 08:45:19 1998 From: filipsky at SITE.CAS.CZ (Jan Filipsky) Date: Fri, 15 May 98 10:45:19 +0200 Subject: Karuna/metta sought Message-ID: <161227038729.23782.2709012693971496416.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Netters, I wonder if any of the Buddhologists on the list could exercise his/her karuna and metta and provide me with a textual reference to the following extract: "In a recommended meditation exercise, the meditator is asked to pervade the four directions successively with thought charged with friendliness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and impartiality by considering all beings as one considers oneself and by having thought that by being large, sublime, immesurable, generous, and nonviolent, pervades the whole universe." Cited by Narayan Champawat, Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama), in: Ian P. McGreal (ed.), Great Thinkers of the Eastern World, Harper Collins, New York 1995, p. 165. The wording doesn't sound very clear to me - especially the part "by having thought that by being large... pervades" seems ambiguous in the subject. Who or what "pervades the universe", the meditator or his thought? Maybe the Pali text would sound better. Can anybody help? Gratefully Yours, J.F. Jan Filipsky, Oriental Institute, Pod vodarenskou vezi 4, 182 08 Praha 8 phone 004202 6605 3729 e-mail private: U Pentlovky 466/7, 181 00 Praha 8 - Troja phone 004202 855 74 53 From D.H.Killingley at NEWCASTLE.AC.UK Fri May 15 09:51:45 1998 From: D.H.Killingley at NEWCASTLE.AC.UK (D.H. Killingley) Date: Fri, 15 May 98 10:51:45 +0100 Subject: URGENT -- Q. Number of institutions offering courses on Hinduism In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038731.23782.18389809632101173742.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The Department of Religious Studies, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK (address below) has the following modules in the BA Religious Studies programme: Hinduism New religious movements of Hindu origin Upanishads and Bhagavadgita Indian religions since 1800 Hinduism in Britain Buddhism Sanskrit Sanskrit texts Dr Dermot Killingley Dept of Religious Studies University of Newcastle upon Tyne Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU Phone 0191 222 6730 Fax 0191 222 5185 On Thu, 14 May 1998, Mittal Sushil wrote: > Greetings, all, > > I write to ask for a tentative number of institutions in English-speaking > countries, except US, Canada, and Nez Zealand, offering introductory and > intermediate level courses on Hinduism and Religious Traditions of India. > > Any information that I could get would be of immense help. Thanks. > > Regards, > Sushil > From d53 at IX.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE Fri May 15 09:49:53 1998 From: d53 at IX.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (Thomas Lehmann) Date: Fri, 15 May 98 11:49:53 +0200 Subject: Bangani In-Reply-To: <355C5060.1CEB@wlink.com.np> Message-ID: <161227038734.23782.9164813718546560458.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I have recently placed a new text dealing with the Bangani controversy at the homepage of the Department of Modern Indology at the South Asia Institute. The text can be read and downloaded under the following address: http://www.sai.uni-heidelberg.de/MIND/zoller/Bangani.html Till middle of July I can be contacted by e-mail under the following address: ce0 at ix.urz.uni-heidelberg.de Claus Peter Zoller From steiner at MAILER.UNI-MARBURG.DE Fri May 15 10:51:43 1998 From: steiner at MAILER.UNI-MARBURG.DE (Roland Steiner) Date: Fri, 15 May 98 12:51:43 +0200 Subject: Karuna/metta sought In-Reply-To: <199805150845.KAA08164@lorien.site.cas.cz> Message-ID: <161227038736.23782.7212725423882869269.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On 15 May 98 at 10:45, Jan Filipsky wrote: > I wonder if any of the Buddhologists on the list could exercise > his/her karuna and metta and provide me with a textual reference to > the following extract: > > "In a recommended meditation exercise, the meditator is asked to > pervade the four directions successively with thought charged with > friendliness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and impartiality by > considering all beings as one considers oneself and by having > thought that by being large, sublime, immesurable, generous, and > nonviolent, pervades the whole universe." Cf., e.g., Majjhimanikaaya I.38.20-30 (PTS ed.): So mettaasahagatena cetasaa eka.m disa.m pharitvaa viharati, tathaa dutiya.m, tathaa tatiya.m, tathaa catutthi.m, iti uddham-adho tiriya.m sabbadhi sabbatthataaya sabbaavanta.m loka.m mettaasahagatena cetasaa vipulena mahaggatena appamaa.nena averena abyaabajjhena pharitvaa viharati. Karu.naasahagatena cetasaa -- pe -- muditaasahagatena cetasaa -- upekhaasahagatena cetasaa eka.m disa.m pharitvaa viharati, tathaa dutiya.m, tathaa tatiya.m, tathaa catutthi.m, iti uddha.m-adho tiriya.m sabbadhi sabbatthataaya sabbaavanta.m loka.m upekkhaasahagatena cetasaa vipulena mahaggatena appamaa.nena averena abyaabajjhena pharitvaa viharati. > The wording doesn't sound very clear to me - especially the > part "by having thought that by being large... pervades" seems > ambiguous in the subject. Who or what "pervades the universe", the > meditator or his thought? The relevant passage has to be translated: "... he pervades the whole world with a heart (cetasaa) that is connected with friendship (etc.), that [= the heart] is extensive (or wide, vipula), enlarged (or great, mahaggata), immeasurable (appamaa.na), without hostility (avera), invulnerable (abyaabajjha)." Regards, Roland Steiner -- Dr. Roland Steiner Fachgebiet Indologie, FB 11 der Philipps-Universitaet Wilhelm-Roepke-Strasse 6 D-35032 Marburg (Briefanschrift / for letters) D-35039 Marburg (Paketanschrift / for parcels) Germany Tel.: +49-6421-282184; Fax: +49-6421-284995 email: steiner at Mailer.Uni-Marburg.DE From agriffit at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Fri May 15 18:10:31 1998 From: agriffit at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Arlo Griffiths) Date: Fri, 15 May 98 14:10:31 -0400 Subject: ORISSA In-Reply-To: <19980514202215.10129.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <161227038745.23782.14807251057436208366.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hello - Can anyone provide me with the address of Dr. Pfeffer, the oen who wrote his dissertation for the German Orissa Project on "Puri's Sasandoerfer" in the early '80-s. Then, can anyone recommend me a good *detailed* (historical?) map or atlas (and a way to get it) of Orissa and Southern Bihar? There are a couple of place names mentioned in colophons to Oriya mss. I am working on, which are hard to identify on the maps I have. Finally, can anyone recommend a publication in which the seemingly typical Orissa way of giving dates by mentioning the particular aNka of the reign of a king, is explained? Thank you very much, Arlo Griffiths Instituut Kern Rijksuniversiteit Leiden P.O. Box 9515 2300 RA Leiden the Netherlands From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Fri May 15 20:17:13 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Fri, 15 May 98 14:17:13 -0600 Subject: East Indies book?? Message-ID: <161227038749.23782.6574112562801443234.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Book Title on East Indies? --------------------------- The following question is with me for a long time. Hope some Indologist can answer this query. I read from a book by K. Zvelebil that some in Indonesia use "cEntanAr's tiruppallANTu" during some festivals. The book he cites is G. K. Vanborough, The peoples in the East Indies. The author and title may not be very exact, though very close. Can anybody give the exact author, title, please? In Thailad, during the coronation ceremony for the King, Tiruppaavai and TiruvempAvai are recited for centuries. French Inst. of Indology, Pondichery published the old Thai manuscripts. I want to find out whether TiruppallaaNDu exists in Indonesia from rather old times? Or, a recent usage? N. Ganesan nas_ng at lms420.jsc.nasa.gov From mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM Fri May 15 21:33:52 1998 From: mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM (S Krishna) Date: Fri, 15 May 98 14:33:52 -0700 Subject: A question about the term "Iyer" Message-ID: <161227038752.23782.11590655116896682339.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I would like to know as to what is the approx time period since which the word "aiyar" has been used to refer to a Tamil speaking Smartha Brahmin. Earlier discussions by S.Palaniappan have been helpful in giving us the etymology of "ai" related words and have proved that the word does go back to classical Tamil..but since when has the word been specifically used to denote a Smartha Brahmin? Likewise, does Tamil literature ever use terms like "aiyAL" to refer to a smArta woman? All replies will be appreciated. Regards, Krishna ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM Fri May 15 21:50:23 1998 From: mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM (S Krishna) Date: Fri, 15 May 98 14:50:23 -0700 Subject: Music related questions Message-ID: <161227038754.23782.1252464761057866946.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> 1. Would anybody who is interested in Carnatic music please tell me the significance(musically and lyrically) of starting a kr*ti with the anupallavi instead of the pallavi as happens in the case of tyAgarAja's "bAla kanaka maya" (athANa) or "sompaina manasu tO" ( Ahiri). Among composers whose compositions are heard on a frequent basis, it is only tyAgarAja whose kr*tis begin this way( though I did read about a certain Munipalli Subrahmanya Kavi in the Journal of the Music Academy whose krtis INVARIABLY start with the anupallavi)..Was this the way it was also sung in tyAgarAja's days or is this a later improvisation? 2. In the nATa kr*ti "pavanAtmaja" by dIkshitar where the caraNam starts as "kapaTa vAnara vEza kAvya nATaka tOSa", what is the significance of "kapaTa vAnara"? Hanuman( i.e. vAnara) took on the guise of a brAhmin( kapaTa? vEza) when he meet rAma; so why does dIkshitar tag on the kapaTa to vAnara? i.e. kapaTa brAhmaNa vEza or kapaTa vipra vEza( with the vipra being elongated to sound like vI.ipra) would have been correct metrically. Any light on this word-order of dIkSitar would be most welcome.... Regards, Krishna Regards, Krishna ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From roheko at MSN.COM Fri May 15 12:53:29 1998 From: roheko at MSN.COM (Rolf Heiner Koch) Date: Fri, 15 May 98 14:53:29 +0200 Subject: Karuna/metta sought Message-ID: <161227038741.23782.10821502329762818502.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Comparing the posting of KIM it might be interested to read a text written in Prakrit daNDa-kavADe mantha-antare ya sAharaNayA sarIra-tthe bhAsA-joga-nirohe selesI sijjhaNA ceva that is (in this context the Karman is a material - dust, very small particles which are influencing the soul. the process described in the above stanzas says how it is possible to destroy all these particles on the soul - as an alternative to the long way of a monk) "he in activating his body in sending his Karman-influenced soul-particles in the form of a staff (daNDa, that measures from the Zenith to the Nadir - plus a kapaTa ("doorwing") on each side (reaching to the end of the world in the west/east) ... )thereby constructing the universal form of a "Quirlstaff (mantha)" ... and finally he contracts his soul-particles again which are now free from any karmic particle." In another more comprehensive describtion this whole process is divided into four time-quantities: four moments (samayas) in the first samaya he ejects his karmic soulparticles and forms a rUcaka-shaped daNDa in the second samaya he makes the kapaTa (doorwings) in the third samaya he makes pratara in the fourth samaya he contracts the soulparticles again This process is called samudghAta Mfg RHK roheko at msn.com -----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht----- Von: Jan Filipsky An: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Datum: Freitag, 15. Mai 1998 10:58 Betreff: Karuna/metta sought >Dear Netters, >I wonder if any of the Buddhologists on the list could exercise his/her >karuna and metta >and provide me with a textual reference to the following extract: > >"In a recommended meditation exercise, the meditator is asked to pervade the >four directions >successively with thought charged with friendliness, compassion, sympathetic >joy, and >impartiality by considering all beings as one considers oneself and by >having thought that >by being large, sublime, immesurable, generous, and nonviolent, pervades the >whole universe." >Cited by Narayan Champawat, Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama), in: Ian P. McGreal >(ed.), Great Thinkers of the Eastern World, Harper Collins, New York 1995, >p. 165. >The wording doesn't sound very clear to me - especially the part "by having >thought that by being >large... pervades" seems ambiguous in the subject. Who or what "pervades the >universe", the >meditator or his thought? Maybe the Pali text would sound better. Can >anybody help? >Gratefully Yours, J.F. >Jan Filipsky, Oriental Institute, Pod vodarenskou vezi 4, 182 08 Praha 8 >phone 004202 6605 3729 >e-mail >private: U Pentlovky 466/7, 181 00 Praha 8 - Troja >phone 004202 855 74 53 > From roheko at MSN.COM Fri May 15 14:06:37 1998 From: roheko at MSN.COM (Rolf Heiner Koch) Date: Fri, 15 May 98 16:06:37 +0200 Subject: Bangani Message-ID: <161227038743.23782.6664962120184982169.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> To which word or root van Driem connects dinevala? Not with Skt. dhenu or yes? Mfg RHK roheko at msn.com -----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht----- Von: Thomas Lehmann An: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Datum: Freitag, 15. Mai 1998 12:08 Betreff: Bangani >I have recently placed a new text dealing with the Bangani controversy at >the homepage of the Department of Modern Indology at the South Asia >Institute. The text can be read and downloaded under the following >address: > >http://www.sai.uni-heidelberg.de/MIND/zoller/Bang ani.html > >Till middle of July I can be contacted by e-mail under the following >address: >ce0 at ix.urz.uni-heidelberg.de > >Claus Peter Zoller > From athr at LOC.GOV Fri May 15 21:01:33 1998 From: athr at LOC.GOV (Allen W Thrasher) Date: Fri, 15 May 98 17:01:33 -0400 Subject: Library of Congress welcomes ALA to DC Message-ID: <161227038756.23782.18185017938777769974.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS WELCOMES THE ALA TO DC The Annual Conference of the American Library Association will be held in Washington, D.C. this summer, June 25-July 1. To welcome all attendees to the nation's capital, the Library of Congress will host the ALL Conference Reception in the newly restored Great Hall, as well as offer many special programs and tours designed to appeal to a broad range of interests. Of special note are: Presentations on the Foreign Language Collections, tours of the Area Studies Reading Rooms, Briefings for Area Studies Specialists, "Experience LC" program, Area Studies Practicum, Country Studies Online, and Reference Service in a Digital Age : A Library of Congress Institute. Information is available on the Library of Congress Website at http://lcweb.loc.gov/ala/. From jungwon at L.U-TOKYO.AC.JP Fri May 15 11:28:28 1998 From: jungwon at L.U-TOKYO.AC.JP (KIM Jae-sung(Jung Won)) Date: Fri, 15 May 98 20:28:28 +0900 Subject: Karuna/metta sought In-Reply-To: <199805150845.KAA08164@lorien.site.cas.cz> Message-ID: <161227038738.23782.15803097783908562361.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Jan Filipsky; My name is Jae-sung Kim. May I give you some information about your question ? You can check the meaning of original Paali text. I hope you have better understanding on Brahmavihaara meditation through another translation. On Fri, 15 May 1998 10:45:19 +0200 $B!$ (BJan Filipsky wrote ; > Dear Netters, > I wonder if any of the Buddhologists on the list could exercise his/her > karuna and metta and provide me with a textual reference to the following extract: > > "In a recommended meditation exercise, the meditator is asked to pervade the > four directions successively with thought charged with friendliness, compassion, sympathetic > joy, and impartiality by considering all beings as one considers oneself and by > having thought that by being large, sublime, immesurable, generous, and nonviolent, pervades the > whole universe." > Cited by Narayan Champawat, Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama), in: Ian P. McGreal > (ed.), Great Thinkers of the Eastern World, Harper Collins, New York 1995, > p. 165. > The wording doesn't sound very clear to me - especially the part "by having > thought that by being large... pervades" seems ambiguous in the subject. Who or what "pervades the > universe", the meditator or his thought? Maybe the Pali text would sound better. Can anybody help? > Gratefully Yours, J.F. > Jan Filipsky, Oriental Institute, Pod vodarenskou vezi 4, 182 08 Praha 8 > phone 004202 6605 3729 > e-mail > private: U Pentlovky 466/7, 181 00 Praha 8 - Troja > phone 004202 855 74 53 I find following a Paali passage on practicing of Brahmavihaara meditation. . so mettaasahagatena cetasaa eka.m disa.m pharitvaa vihaasi, tathaa dutiya.m, tathaa tatiya.m, tathaa catutthi.m; iti uddhamadho tiriya.m sabbadhi sabbattataaya sabbaavanta.m loka.m mettaasahagatena cetasaa vipulena mahaggatena appamaa.nena averena avyaapajjhena pharitvaa vihaasi. karu.naasahagatena cetasaa - pe - muditaasahagatena cetasaa upekhaasahagatena cetasaa eka.m disa.m pharitvaa vihaasi, tathaa dutiya.m, tathaa tatiya.m, tathaa catu.t.thi.m; iti uddhamadho tiriya.m sabbadhi sabbattataaya sabbaavanta.m loka.m upekhaasahagatena cetasaa vipulena mahaggatena appamaa.nena averena avyaapajjhena pharitvaa vihaasi. This passage is translated into English as below. He abided pervading one quarter with a mind imbued with loving-kindness, (compassion, appreciative joy, equanimity) likewise the second, likewise the third, likewise the fourth; so above, below, around, and everywhere, and to all as to himself, he abided pervading the all-encompassing world with a mind imbued with loving-kindness,(compassion, appreciative joy, equanimity) abundant, exalted, immeasurable, without hostility and without ill will. Translated by Bhikkhu ~Naa.namoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi, Boston: Wisdom Publication, 1995, p.693. >Who or what "pervades the universe", the meditator or his thought? Meditator's mind imbued with loving-kindness pervade all world(sabbaavanta.m loka.m) KIM Jae-sung (Jung Won) Department of Indian Philosophy and Buddhist Studies University of Tokyo Tel/Fax : +81-3-5662-6019 jungwon at l.u-tokyo.ac.jp ------------------ sabbe sattaa bhavantu sukhitattaa ---------------------- ----------------- May all living-beings be happy!------------------------- From jneuss at ZEDAT.FU-BERLIN.DE Fri May 15 18:35:18 1998 From: jneuss at ZEDAT.FU-BERLIN.DE (Juergen Neuss) Date: Fri, 15 May 98 20:35:18 +0200 Subject: ORISSA Message-ID: <161227038747.23782.14339666618039692736.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Arlo Griffiths wrote: > > Hello - > > Can anyone provide me with the address of Dr. Pfeffer, the oen who wrote > his dissertation for the German Orissa Project on "Puri's Sasandoerfer" in > the early '80-s. > Then, can anyone recommend me a good *detailed* (historical?) map > or atlas (and a way to get it) of Orissa and Southern Bihar? There are a > couple of place names mentioned in colophons to Oriya mss. I am working > on, which are hard to identify on the maps I have. > Finally, can anyone recommend a publication in which the seemingly > typical Orissa way of giving dates by mentioning the particular aNka of > the reign of a king, is explained? > > Thank you very much, > > Arlo Griffiths > > Instituut Kern > Rijksuniversiteit Leiden > P.O. Box 9515 > 2300 RA Leiden > the Netherlands Pfeffer is at present professor at the Institut f?r Ethnologie, Freie Universit?t Berlin, Drosselweg 1-3, 14195 Berlin. With respect to the maps, I can only suggest the maps of the Geographical Survey of India, which are the most detailed ones available, as far as I know. Best regards jn From falk at ZEDAT.FU-BERLIN.DE Fri May 15 20:29:03 1998 From: falk at ZEDAT.FU-BERLIN.DE (Harry Falk) Date: Fri, 15 May 98 22:29:03 +0200 Subject: ORISSA Message-ID: <161227038750.23782.18269331105170694460.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Arlo Griffiths wrote: > > Hello - > > Can anyone provide me with the address of Dr. Pfeffer, the oen who wrote > his dissertation for the German Orissa Project on "Puri's Sasandoerfer" in > the early '80-s. > Then, can anyone recommend me a good *detailed* (historical?) map > or atlas (and a way to get it) of Orissa and Southern Bihar? There are a > couple of place names mentioned in colophons to Oriya mss. I am working > on, which are hard to identify on the maps I have. > Finally, can anyone recommend a publication in which the seemingly > typical Orissa way of giving dates by mentioning the particular aNka of > the reign of a king, is explained? > > Thank you very much, > > Arlo Griffiths > > Instituut Kern > Rijksuniversiteit Leiden > P.O. Box 9515 > 2300 RA Leiden > the Netherlands Im Winkel 5 14195 Berlin From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Sat May 16 03:31:13 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Fri, 15 May 98 23:31:13 -0400 Subject: A question about the term "Iyer" Message-ID: <161227038763.23782.3820656524302943634.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 98-05-15 20:07:31 EDT, barathi at PC.JARING.MY writes: << The earliest reference to this word, that one can think of occurs in the "TholkAppiyam". In the "KaRpu iyal", verse #4 mentions it. "Poyyum valzuvum thOnRiya pinnar, Aiyar yAththanar karaNam enba" This with reference to mariage regulations. At one time the "KaLaviyal" form of love, living together as husband and wife was in vogue. Boy meets girl and they decide to become husband and wife. In this custom, a lot of deceit, and wrongs crept in. So, after that the "aiyar" compiled the set-rules. So say the ancient ones. When TholkAppiyar says that someone else has already said so, it would naturally mean that it was said before his time. And the institution of the karaNam's by the aiyar's was even earlier than the saying was done. It could mean Brahmins in general. >> There is no need to assume tolkAppiyar meant brahmins here -smArtas or others. The literal meaning is elders or respected ones. CT poems have descriptions of ritualized wedding ceremonies that were brahmin-less and fire-less. Regards S. Palaniappan From riccardo.garbini at IOL.IT Fri May 15 23:41:57 1998 From: riccardo.garbini at IOL.IT (riccardo garbini) Date: Sat, 16 May 98 00:41:57 +0100 Subject: Jain inscription Message-ID: <161227038757.23782.15021295327110040086.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> My name is Riccardo Garbini, and I deal with Indian Epigraphy. This subject is very hard. Now I am trying to understand a Jain inscription dated on VS 1349 from Pindawara (Sirohi district). Could someone help me? Thank you . Riccardo. sincerely yours,riccardo From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Sat May 16 01:19:12 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Sat, 16 May 98 06:19:12 +0500 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227038761.23782.5795007645715719187.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Mr. Robert Zydenbos writes >Maybe it is not out of place here to mention that Basava's a:nkita >is not "kuu.dalasa:ngamee;svara", as a few list members have been >writing, but "kuu.dalasa:ngamadeeva". :-) (The meaning may not >differ much, but I think that we ought to get such details ..................................................................... >I fear that I must give a very dull response here: all the vacanas >of Basava say "kuu.dalaSA:NGAMAdeeva", and never >"kuu.dalaSA:NGAdeeva". I fail to see the point you are making here. Of course I appreciate your eye for the details. But unless you want to claim "saMgamEswara" , "saMgama" and " SaMga" are different dieties (and any such claim cannot be maintained ) I fail to see what difference it makes >I have not yet read the Basavapuraa.na; but I hope to be back in >India soon, and then I am curious to see whether this is there in >the Kannada version too. And of course we would have to see where >else "sa:nga" is used, if it is used elsewhere. >Without having at all seen the puraa.na yet, I think I may mention >here that scholars in Karnataka, while appreciating Soomanaatha's >work in general, are not always equally impressed with his sense of >history, and that what he says at times is in conflict with other >historical sources. He apparently wrote more as a devotee than >as a scholar ( which of course could not be held against him )... I did some looking up in the library here. Though the historical accuracy of sOmanAtha is irrelevant here, because we are dealing with the meaning of a word, we can leave him alone for the present. cennabasava is the nephew of basavEswara and more or less his successor He has a large body of vacanAs to his credit. His ankita is "kUDalacennasaMgamadEvA". The word "cenna" is right in the middle of "kuDAla" and "saMgana". This shows that he does not consider "kUDalasaMgama" as a tautological compound. Therefore we should not do that. Futher in his vacanAs he addresses the deity as "saMgA!" in many places. This shows sOmanAtha afterall is following the prevalent tradition. This I hope settles the issue and proves for all the people concerned that the deity's name is "saMgamadEva" and "kUDala' is a qualifier and also "saMga" , "saMgama", samGamadEva' are all one. Thanking you, regards, sarma. From ebryant at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sat May 16 12:04:54 1998 From: ebryant at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Edwin Bryant) Date: Sat, 16 May 98 08:04:54 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati/dating In-Reply-To: <01IX0Q1SYYC2005Q3K@cl.uh.edu> Message-ID: <161227038772.23782.9100596506331001241.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Thu, 14 May 1998, N. Ganesan wrote: > Want to know the references on identifying Sarasvati of the > Rig Veda as the Ghaggar river. Who did this identification first? > Did s/he publish it? Sir Aurel Stein. It was published recently in a volume by S.P.Gupta called 'An Archaeological Tour Along the Ghaggar/Hakra River' (or some such thing). I personally find the identification with Sarasvati convincing. However, I don't know of any reliable and thorough efforts made to date the various stages of the drying up of this river. Until this is done, her usefulness for dating the texts that mention her seems limited. Does Dr. Subramanya know of any authoritative dating data? Regards, Edwin From barathi at PC.JARING.MY Sat May 16 00:06:22 1998 From: barathi at PC.JARING.MY (jayabarathi) Date: Sat, 16 May 98 08:06:22 +0800 Subject: A question about the term "Iyer" Message-ID: <161227038759.23782.5754335915955606930.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 02:33 PM 5/15/98 PDT, you wrote: >I would like to know as to what is the approx time period since which >the word "aiyar" has been used to refer to a Tamil speaking Smartha >Brahmin. > > Earlier discussions by S.Palaniappan have been helpful in giving us >the etymology of "ai" related words and have proved that the word does >go back to classical Tamil..but since when has the word been >specifically used to denote a Smartha Brahmin? Likewise, does Tamil >literature ever use terms like "aiyAL" to refer to a smArta woman? Dear Dr.Krishna, The earliest reference to this word, that one can think of occurs in the "TholkAppiyam". In the "KaRpu iyal", verse #4 mentions it. "Poyyum valzuvum thOnRiya pinnar, Aiyar yAththanar karaNam enba" This with reference to mariage regulations. At one time the "KaLaviyal" form of love, living together as husband and wife was in vogue. Boy meets girl and they decide to become husband and wife. In this custom, a lot of deceit, and wrongs crept in. So, after that the "aiyar" compiled the set-rules. So say the ancient ones. When TholkAppiyar says that someone else has already said so, it would naturally mean that it was said before his time. And the institution of the karaNam's by the aiyar's was even earlier than the saying was done. It could mean Brahmins in general. But whether they are Smarthas are nor not, or perhaps the Siva Brahmins or SivAchAryas and DhIkshithars, I would'nt venture to pin-point. This calls in a lot of other variables, like the date of TholkAppiyam, the date of Adhi Sankara, etc. In the epigrapical records , don't remember any Brahmin being addressed as "aiyar" On the other hand, they are known by epithets like "BrammAdhi rAjan" "BrammarAyan", "Kiramaviththan". Kiramaviththan would be the indicating a Brahmin well-versed with Krama-pAta of VEdhic recital. These could mean Smarthas, especially since these names are generally found after AdhiSankara's influence. But I have seen later palmyra records where Smarthas are addressed as aiyar, ganapaadi, sAstri, and as Sarma. There is a curious useage for this word "aiyar" in the Periya PuraNam. NandhanAr is one of the 63 nAyanmAr devotees and he happened to be a Dalit. In the Periya PuraNam, he is addressed as "aiyar". Never heard of feminine gender of aiyar being addressed as aiyaL. [Pssst..normally we call them as "aiyarAththu mAmi" or simply "ammAmi":-)] Regards Jayabarathi > > All replies will be appreciated. > >Regards, >Krishna > > > >______________________________________________________ >Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com > > From Velu at RELHIST.UU.SE Sat May 16 09:58:14 1998 From: Velu at RELHIST.UU.SE (Alvappillai Veluppillai) Date: Sat, 16 May 98 10:58:14 +0100 Subject: A question about the term "Iyer" Message-ID: <161227038767.23782.5768864685171920656.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I am of opinion that the word aiyar in this TolkAppiyam sUtra means elders and not necessarily Brahmins. A.Veluppillai >At 02:33 PM 5/15/98 PDT, you wrote: >>I would like to know as to what is the approx time period since which >>the word "aiyar" has been used to refer to a Tamil speaking Smartha >>Brahmin. >> >> Earlier discussions by S.Palaniappan have been helpful in giving us >>the etymology of "ai" related words and have proved that the word does >>go back to classical Tamil..but since when has the word been >>specifically used to denote a Smartha Brahmin? Likewise, does Tamil >>literature ever use terms like "aiyAL" to refer to a smArta woman? > > Dear Dr.Krishna, > > The earliest reference to this word, that one > can think of occurs in the "TholkAppiyam". > In the "KaRpu iyal", verse #4 mentions it. > > "Poyyum valzuvum thOnRiya pinnar, > Aiyar yAththanar karaNam enba" > > This with reference to mariage regulations. > At one time the "KaLaviyal" form of love, > living together as husband and wife was in vogue. > Boy meets girl and they decide to become husband and > wife. > In this custom, a lot of deceit, and wrongs > crept in. So, after that the "aiyar" compiled the > set-rules. So say the ancient ones. > When TholkAppiyar says that someone else has > already said so, it would naturally mean that it was > said before his time. And the institution of the > karaNam's by the aiyar's was even earlier than the > saying was done. It could mean Brahmins in general. > But whether they are Smarthas are nor not, or perhaps > the Siva Brahmins or SivAchAryas and DhIkshithars, > I would'nt venture to pin-point. This calls in > a lot of other variables, like the date of TholkAppiyam, > the date of Adhi Sankara, etc. > In the epigrapical records , don't remember > any Brahmin being addressed as "aiyar" On the other > hand, they are known by epithets like "BrammAdhi rAjan" > "BrammarAyan", "Kiramaviththan". Kiramaviththan would > be the indicating a Brahmin well-versed with Krama-pAta > of VEdhic recital. These could mean Smarthas, especially > since these names are generally found after AdhiSankara's > influence. > But I have seen later palmyra records > where Smarthas are addressed as aiyar, ganapaadi, > sAstri, and as Sarma. > There is a curious useage for this word "aiyar" > in the Periya PuraNam. > NandhanAr is one of the 63 nAyanmAr devotees > and he happened to be a Dalit. > In the Periya PuraNam, he is addressed as "aiyar". > Never heard of feminine gender of aiyar being > addressed as aiyaL. [Pssst..normally we call them > as "aiyarAththu mAmi" or simply "ammAmi":-)] > > Regards > > Jayabarathi > >> >> All replies will be appreciated. >> >>Regards, >>Krishna >> >> >> >>______________________________________________________ >>Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com >> >> From IMILEWS at VELA.FILG.UJ.EDU.PL Sat May 16 12:40:22 1998 From: IMILEWS at VELA.FILG.UJ.EDU.PL (Iwona Milewska) Date: Sat, 16 May 98 12:40:22 +0000 Subject: learning Sanskrit: thanks Message-ID: <161227038769.23782.13572299786883069758.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I can suggest two very recent and really very good Sanskrit handbooks. One is Prof. A.Aklujkar "Sanskrit. An Easy Introduction to an Enchanting Language" consisting of 4 volumes and a set of 6 cassettes, Dept. of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia,1992. The second -Prof. M.Deshpande - "Samskrita Subodhini. A Sanskrit Primer", University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1997.(1 vol) I have information about other hanbooks and grammars (in European tradition of teaching we "produced'' more than 100 of them,so if you are still interested in something please contact me directly. I have just finished my PhD on "The tradition of teaching Sanskrit in the West",so I hope I may be of help. Iwona Milewska. From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Sat May 16 21:13:54 1998 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Sat, 16 May 98 14:13:54 -0700 Subject: Music related questions Message-ID: <161227038778.23782.14069826809202655900.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> S Krishna wrote: >1. Would anybody who is interested in Carnatic music please tell me >the significance(musically and lyrically) of starting a kr*ti with the >anupallavi instead of the pallavi as happens in the case of tyAgarAja's >"bAla kanaka maya" (athANa) or "sompaina manasu tO" ( Ahiri). Among >composers whose compositions are heard on a frequent basis, it is only >tyAgarAja whose kr*tis begin this way( though I did read about a certain >Munipalli Subrahmanya Kavi in the Journal of the Music Academy whose >krtis INVARIABLY start with the anupallavi)..Was this the way it was >also sung in tyAgarAja's days or is this a later improvisation? Most padams of pre-Tyagaraja and post-Tyagaraja composers start with the anupallavi and then lead into the pallavi. Many of the utsava sampradAya compositions of Tyagaraja are also sung that way. The major criteria are that - 1. The pallavis of such compositions do not offer great opportunity for musical elaboration in the form of sangatis. For example, the musical structure of elani dayaradu (in balakakamaya) is like that. 2. The pallavi acts mainly as a refrain, and sangatis are avoided even if they are possible. This is especially the case with Tyagaraja's utsava sampradAya compositions and with padams. The form of musical composition that is called a kRti was still evolving during Tyagaraja's time. Composers like Margadarsi Seshayyangar and Uttukkadu Venkatasubbaiyer were some of the earliest to explore the kRti format. The earlier dhruvapada form of composition did not have a three-fold division into pallavi, anupallavi and caraNam, but a two-fold (a)sthAyI and antara division, to be preceded by free improvisation of the raga, with AlApa and 'nom-tom'. This has been retained in the dhrupad of Hindustani music and in the Ragam-Tanam-Pallavi of Carnatic music. In fact, Tyagaraja's disciples and grand-disciples were the ones who gave great importance to sangati development in the pallavis of kRtis. Any such features in the compositions of Syama Sastri and Muttuswami Dikshitar are because of the predominance of Tyagaraja's disciple lineages in Carnatic music. Many of Dikshitar's compositions only allow for one or two sangati variations, as compared to the numerous sangatis possible with Tyagaraja's compositions. As for pre-Tyagaraja composers like Puranadaradasa or Annammayya, their compositions have been retro-fitted into the mature kRti format that musicians have become used to, although it did not exist in their own times. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From roheko at MSN.COM Sat May 16 12:26:06 1998 From: roheko at MSN.COM (Rolf Heiner Koch) Date: Sat, 16 May 98 14:26:06 +0200 Subject: WARNING Message-ID: <161227038774.23782.11762575404983091810.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dubious people prefer to ask scholars to write essays etc. about India, China, etc. for a friendship-forum or so - nothing they will pay you. Later on they use your writings to find internet-supportes among the industry and government to earn a lot money. you are never able to influence what they use your writings for. Be carefully. Mfg RHK roheko at msn.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From barathi at PC.JARING.MY Sat May 16 11:33:37 1998 From: barathi at PC.JARING.MY (jayabarathi) Date: Sat, 16 May 98 19:33:37 +0800 Subject: Aiyer Message-ID: <161227038770.23782.579056756483215938.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 18:52:41 PDT > > >Dr Jayabarathi, > > how old are the palmyra records that are being refered to here... > >Regards, >Krishna >You wrote: >> But I have seen later palmyra records >> where Smarthas are addressed as aiyar, ganapaadi, >> sAstri, and as Sarma. >> Dr.Krishna, They are around two hundred years old. I remember having coming across that word in the KIrththanais of the "NandhanAr Chariththirak kIrththanaikaL" composed by Gopala Krishna Bharathiyar during the early part of the 19th century. There is also an epigraphical record, listed in the Epigraphical Records of the Madras Presidency. It is No.139 of 1903. It is found on the south wall of kitchen belonging to the MangaiBAgEsWara Temple in Piranmalai of Sivaganga District. It is a mutilated record of the SALuva king Immadi Narasimha rAya in Saka 1422 Raudri. Records a gift for the merit of Tipparasar Ayyan. There is also another record in the same place dated Saka 1422 also mentioning Tipparasar Ayyan receiving grants of land from Eppuli NAyakkar. I have also seen a record which has never been copied. It was in a Sri Vaishnava temple in KAraiyur near Tiruppathur of Sivaganga District. This was also about a gift of land to Tipparasar Ayyan by Eppuli NAyakkar. Saka 1422 works out to 1500A.D. So we can surmise that the Aiyer epithet was already used for Brahmins in 1500A.D. Regards Jayabarathi ======================================================================= At 07:36 PM 12/11/97 +0100, you wrote: >Incidentally an apparently common set of delocutive verbs >that wasn't mentioned is the series onomatop.+kR where onomat. >is used as gati: khaaT+karooti, puut+karooti,... (khaaT represents >the sound of spitting, I have not idea what puut is) > >Incidentally (this is a question -- if you can't stand "inane" >questions don't read this) can the same construction apply to >address sounds ?bhooH-karooti, ?dhik-karooti or even vocatives >?amba-karooti and _if_ yes, will that be with a _transitive_ meaning >or only in an intransitive meaning? (the kR compounds with onomatop. >are intransitive of course). In other words can one say things like: >teena saa dhik-krtaa? for he told her shame or teena saa amba-krtaa? >for he called her mother? etc. Are such constructions possible? > From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Sat May 16 15:17:38 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Sat, 16 May 98 20:17:38 +0500 Subject: Pornography & pANini Message-ID: <161227038776.23782.18008150546564586903.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> This posting is supposed to be on the lighter side i.e., funny. Has pANini the sage and grammarian embedded pornographic material in the dry aphorisms of sanskrit grammar? People who see such things everywhere say that the answer is 'yes'. In the following sutras, they say, that pANini was trying to allay the most common fears of boys at puberty (who come to study his grammar) about their masculinity. hrasvaM laghu (1.4.10) saMyOgE guru, dIrghaM ca (1.4.11-12) According to them the word 'laghu' in the earlier sutra stands for 'laghusaGkAyAM'. regards, sarma. From ebryant at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sun May 17 02:50:48 1998 From: ebryant at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Edwin Bryant) Date: Sat, 16 May 98 22:50:48 -0400 Subject: Horses/Indus seals In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038781.23782.15056295673608652387.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Thu, 7 May 1998, Georg von Simson wrote: > does not the absence of the horse among the animals of the figurative > tradition of that culture mean anything to you? It has been pointed out that the cow is not represented on the seals either, although the bull is ubiquitous and cow bones have been found in large quantities. Nor is the camel represented figuratively despite camel bones also being found. Likewise with the onager and perhaps other animals as well. Accordingly, the animals represented on the seals do not exhaust the zoological diversity of the IVC. Regards, Edwin Bryant. From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Sun May 17 00:01:46 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Sun, 17 May 98 05:01:46 +0500 Subject: Music related questions Message-ID: <161227038780.23782.8408508190071461330.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 02:13 PM 5/16/98 PDT, Vidyasankar writes: >Most padams of pre-Tyagaraja and post-Tyagaraja composers start with the >anupallavi and then lead into the pallavi. Many of the utsava sampradAya >compositions of Tyagaraja are also sung that way. The major criteria are >that - > >1. The pallavis of such compositions do not offer great opportunity for >musical elaboration in the form of sangatis. For example, the musical >structure of elani dayaradu (in balakakamaya) is like that. > >2. The pallavi acts mainly as a refrain, and sangatis are avoided even >if they are possible. This is especially the case with Tyagaraja's >utsava sampradAya compositions and with padams. > >The form of musical composition that is called a kRti was still evolving >during Tyagaraja's time. Composers like Margadarsi Seshayyangar and >Uttukkadu Venkatasubbaiyer were some of the earliest to explore the kRti >format. The earlier dhruvapada form of composition did not have a >three-fold division into pallavi, anupallavi and caraNam, but a two-fold >(a)sthAyI and antara division, to be preceded by free improvisation of >the raga, with AlApa and 'nom-tom'. This has been retained in the >dhrupad of Hindustani music and in the Ragam-Tanam-Pallavi of Carnatic >music. In fact, Tyagaraja's disciples and grand-disciples were the ones >who gave great importance to sangati development in the pallavis of >kRtis. Any such features in the compositions of Syama Sastri and >Muttuswami Dikshitar are because of the predominance of Tyagaraja's >disciple lineages in Carnatic music. Many of Dikshitar's compositions >only allow for one or two sangati variations, as compared to the >numerous sangatis possible with Tyagaraja's compositions. As for >pre-Tyagaraja composers like Puranadaradasa or Annammayya, their >compositions have been retro-fitted into the mature kRti format that >musicians have become used to, although it did not exist in their own >times. > >Vidyasankar > I would like to add that in "bAlakanakamaya" the anupallavi consists of invocation (saMbOdhana). Keeping saMbOdhana at the end of sentence is not natural for conversational telugu. Usually it is at the beginning of the sentence. (Ofcourse there are exceptions to this in metric poetry). But for the bhAva to come out naturally the conversational structure and intonation will be of great help. Both of these are satisfied by starting with anupallavi. The dhAtu starts with madhya sthAyi pancama with a general upward trend reaches the tAra madhyama near the beginnig of pallavi and then has a general trend of going down reaching madhya shaDja at the end of the pallavi. This is in agreement with the speech intonation of a sentence starting with saMbOdhana. Usually invocation involves an ascending pitch and questioning (ElA) involves a high pitch. End of a sentence (virAma) corresponds to low pitch. Knowledgeable people say that the beauty of tyAgarAjA's compositions lies in this frequent blending of the musical notation with speech intonation. Afterall in his compositions the bard is conversing with his ishTa dEvata rAma. We have also to remember that the earliest sishyAs and vidvans who sang the compositions of tyAgarAja knew conversational telugu very well and preserved this aspect. This also answers the question why in tyAgarAjA's compositions we do not find the complete rAga swarUpa which we find in dikshitar's compositions. Dikshitar's compositions are mostly descriptive in nature. No conversation is involved. He can give the complete rAga structure without any fear of going against the intonation. But tyAgarAja has to confine himself to those phrases of the rAga which agree with the general intonation in speech of the sahitya. regards, sarma. From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Sun May 17 15:32:41 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Sun, 17 May 98 09:32:41 -0600 Subject: Horses/Indus seals Message-ID: <161227038785.23782.17080137652165029143.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dr. Lars Fosse writes: >I believe the point here is that the horse plays a central role in >Indo-European ritual, which is why we would expect to find it on the seals. >The reason why the bull is frequently represented on the seals may be that >it played a role in the Indus culture which it didn't play in Indo-European >culture. The camel may have played no significant part in the culture apart >from performing menial work. >But it goes without saying that all such interpretations are uncertain. We >simply do not have enough data to state emphatically that things are in a >certain way. The bull is frequently represented in Indus seals. Does it have anything to do with the Nandi vaahana of "Siva in later Hinduism? Have seen in articles that "Siva is largely pre-vedic and pre-Aryan. Vedic folks sought many (100,000?) cows. Have seen that even the universe is born out of a Cow. gOdaana is important in dharmasaastras. Is there any link of cows largely, but NOT bulls, to vedic material? Thoughts, corrections welcome. Regards, N. Ganesan From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Sun May 17 15:40:05 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Sun, 17 May 98 09:40:05 -0600 Subject: Horses/Indus seals Message-ID: <161227038787.23782.16189908565378346025.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dr. Lars Fosse writes: >I believe the point here is that the horse plays a central role in >Indo-European ritual, which is why we would expect to find it on the seals. >The reason why the bull is frequently represented on the seals may be that >it played a role in the Indus culture which it didn't play in Indo-European >culture. The camel may have played no significant part in the culture apart >from performing menial work. >But it goes without saying that all such interpretations are uncertain. We >simply do not have enough data to state emphatically that things are in a >certain way. The bull is frequently represented in Indus seals. Does it have anything to do with the Nandi vaahana of "Siva in later Hinduism? Have seen in articles that "Siva is largely pre-vedic and pre-Aryan. ********************************************************* Forgot to ask earlier: Is the tripura dahanam episode in "Siva's myth, a development from Vedic Indra & so on. When many of Indra's qualities become "Siva's attributes, this also gets transferred?? Interesting that "Siva only smiles at the three puri/purams. Prof. F. C. Southworth has indicated 'puri' is Dravidian. ************************************************************ Vedic folks sought many (100,000?) cows. Have seen that even the universe is born out of a Cow. gOdaana is important in dharmasaastras. Is there any link of cows largely, but NOT bulls, to vedic material? Thoughts, corrections welcome. Regards, N. Ganesan From fjkorom at NM-US.CAMPUS.MCI.NET Sun May 17 16:56:07 1998 From: fjkorom at NM-US.CAMPUS.MCI.NET (frank korom) Date: Sun, 17 May 98 09:56:07 -0700 Subject: Horses/Indus seals In-Reply-To: <01IX4VRNWLO2005VYB@cl.uh.edu> Message-ID: <161227038790.23782.10031612208560364745.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The best book on cows in the Vedic period is by Doris Srinivasan, and deals extensively with both economic and symbolic factors that led to the bovine's elevated status. Frank J. Korom From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Sun May 17 18:42:22 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Sun, 17 May 98 10:42:22 -0800 Subject: Saravasti/dating Message-ID: <161227038800.23782.17703178997532113194.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> There was a geological study at Kalibangan that found the sedimentary layer of the Yamuna extended 11 meters deeper than at present. The sendiment was deposited at an estimated rate of 2 meters per thousand years, so the oldest level before a drying out period was about 5.5 thousand years ago. Dr. Kalyanaraman probably has more details. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From ebryant at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sun May 17 19:03:06 1998 From: ebryant at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Edwin Bryant) Date: Sun, 17 May 98 15:03:06 -0400 Subject: Horses/Indus seals In-Reply-To: <199805171417.QAA27753@online.no> Message-ID: <161227038804.23782.4107085966136033408.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sun, 17 May 1998, Lars Martin Fosse wrote: > I believe the point here is that the horse plays a central role in > Indo-European ritual, which is why we would expect to find it on the seals. > The reason why the bull is frequently represented on the seals may be that > it played a role in the Indus culture which it didn't play in Indo-European > culture. The camel may have played no significant part in the culture apart > from performing menial work. The point, as I understand it, is that irrespective of the debate concerning the findings of horse *bones*, if the horse (and by extension the I-A's) were present in the IVC, the horse would be represented figuratively on the seals given its prominence in I-A culture. Therefore neither the horse nor the I-A's were significantly present in the IVC (and the residents of the IVC may have been culturally partial to the bull, etc). To reiterate the counter point that is offered by Indigenous Aryanists, the cow is also very prominent in I-A culture (even if camel and other animals are not), but this bovine also does not appear on the seals -- and there is no doubt that cow bones have been found in large quantities. From this perspective (which is open to considering that the I-A's may have had some significant presence in the IVC), the significance of an animal culturally (or, more specifically, its significance in I-A culture) may not be reflected by its occurrence or absence on the seals -- there may have been other factors at work regarding which animals commanded the artistic attention of the seal makers. The horse seal lacuna, accordingly, cannot therefore be a decisive factor in determining the linguistic identity of the inhabitants of the IVC. As you note, and as is the case with all the 'evidence' in this whole debate, here we have another example of how the same data is read very differently when viewed through different predispositions or perspectives. Regards, Edwin Bryant From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Sun May 17 23:06:20 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Sun, 17 May 98 16:06:20 -0700 Subject: Horses/Indus seals Message-ID: <161227038809.23782.9697844531302852202.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hi, I agree with Edwin Bryant. Why should it be assumed that the seals should show all the animals with which the people of the civilization were familiar? Do we know the significance of the animals depicted as field symbols (to use the phrase of Mahadevan) or pictorial motifs (to use the phrase of Parpola)? In fact, to my knowledge, none of the decipherment claims so far has addressed the problem of animals on the inscriptions. Animal motifs and glyphs combine in curious ways to constitute messages on inscriptions... Regards, Kalyanaraman. ---Edwin Bryant wrote: > > In case my last posting was confusing (as it was to at least one person), > may I just again try to reiterate the point (I realize we may all be > growing rather weary of all this). > > Just as the horse is prominent in the Rg, so is the cow. So *if* the > I-A's were in the IVC, they did not depict either cows or horses on their > seals despite these being their two most important cultural animals. > > The logic, here (from within the parameters of the assumption that the > I-A's could have been present in the IVC), is that just as the > culturally-important I-A cow is not depicted on the seals, but was present > physically (as evidenced by cow bones), so, in a parallel fashion, could > the culturally-important I-A horse have been present despite also not > being depicted on the seals (and although 'physically' less evidenced than > the common cow in terms of bones due to it being a rare, elite item). > > I hope this logic is not as convoluted as my prose. Obviously, the > alternative is that the cow-and-horse-centered I-A's were not > significantly present in the IVC at all and hence the lacuna of *both* the > cow and the horse on the seals. Best, Edwin > == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Sun May 17 14:17:22 1998 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Sun, 17 May 98 16:17:22 +0200 Subject: Horses/Indus seals Message-ID: <161227038783.23782.18311251165418224258.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 22:50 16.05.98 -0400, you wrote: >On Thu, 7 May 1998, Georg von Simson wrote: > >> does not the absence of the horse among the animals of the figurative >> tradition of that culture mean anything to you? > >It has been pointed out that the cow is not represented on the seals >either, although the bull is ubiquitous and cow bones have been found in >large quantities. Nor is the camel represented figuratively despite camel >bones also being found. Likewise with the onager and perhaps other >animals as well. Accordingly, the animals represented on the seals do not >exhaust the zoological diversity of the IVC. Regards, Edwin Bryant. > I believe the point here is that the horse plays a central role in Indo-European ritual, which is why we would expect to find it on the seals. The reason why the bull is frequently represented on the seals may be that it played a role in the Indus culture which it didn't play in Indo-European culture. The camel may have played no significant part in the culture apart from performing menial work. But it goes without saying that all such interpretations are uncertain. We simply do not have enough data to state emphatically that things are in a certain way. Lars Martin Fosse Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Tel: +47 22 32 12 19 Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no Mobile phone: 90 91 91 45 From aklujkar at UNIXG.UBC.CA Mon May 18 00:45:11 1998 From: aklujkar at UNIXG.UBC.CA (Ashok Aklujkar) Date: Sun, 17 May 98 16:45:11 -0800 Subject: prayojana In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.16.19980518034418.2eaf293e@hd1.vsnl.net.in> Message-ID: <161227038812.23782.16659472877283967919.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 03:43 +0500 18-05-98, DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA wrote: >prayOjanam anuddizya na mandOpi pravartatE - mahAbhASya of pataJjali< Although there are discussions concerning prayojana in Pata;njali's Mahaa-bhaa.sya, the quoted line does not occur there. It comes from Kumaarila (probably ;Sloka-vaarttika; if not try Tantra-vaarttika), as I recall. On the question that Sara McClintock asked, the sources I would expect to be generally helpful are: Kevalaananda Sarasvati's Miimaa.msaa-ko;sa (7 vols), Bhiimaacaarya Jha.lakiikara's Nyaaya-ko;sa,W.K. Lele's book on Tantra-yuktis and the Vaada treatises of Vasu-bandhu, Dharma-kiirti etc. In the first two, . one should look under pryojana as well as anubandha-catu.s.taya. In Hari-bhadra's Abhisamayaala.mkaaraalokaa (the title is sometimes given with a short "a" in the final syllable), there is some discussion of prayojanasya prayojanam in the opening part. It is rather difficult to follow but has been translated by Gareth Sparham in his unpublished Ph.D. thesis completed at the University of British Columbia in 1989. From pclaus at HAYWIRE.CSUHAYWARD.EDU Sun May 17 23:50:30 1998 From: pclaus at HAYWIRE.CSUHAYWARD.EDU (Peter J. Claus) Date: Sun, 17 May 98 16:50:30 -0700 Subject: Horses/Indus seals In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038811.23782.2145709426741705618.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> There still seems to be something illogical about the argument. Peter Claus On Sun, 17 May 1998, Edwin Bryant wrote: > In case my last posting was confusing (as it was to at least one person), > may I just again try to reiterate the point (I realize we may all be > growing rather weary of all this). > > Just as the horse is prominent in the Rg, so is the cow. So *if* the > I-A's were in the IVC, they did not depict either cows or horses on their > seals despite these being their two most important cultural animals. > > The logic, here (from within the parameters of the assumption that the > I-A's could have been present in the IVC), is that just as the > culturally-important I-A cow is not depicted on the seals, but was present > physically (as evidenced by cow bones), so, in a parallel fashion, could > the culturally-important I-A horse have been present despite also not > being depicted on the seals (and although 'physically' less evidenced than > the common cow in terms of bones due to it being a rare, elite item). > > I hope this logic is not as convoluted as my prose. Obviously, the > alternative is that the cow-and-horse-centered I-A's were not > significantly present in the IVC at all and hence the lacuna of *both* the > cow and the horse on the seals. Best, Edwin > From mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM Sun May 17 23:55:58 1998 From: mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM (S Krishna) Date: Sun, 17 May 98 16:55:58 -0700 Subject: Music related questions Message-ID: <161227038814.23782.15852221471651401065.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I would like to thank Vidyasankar and D.V.N.Sarma for their comments ...I however have a few comments myself. >At 02:13 PM 5/16/98 PDT, Vidyasankar writes: >>Most padams of pre-Tyagaraja and post-Tyagaraja composers start with the anupallavi and then lead into the pallavi. >> Do Post-Tyagaraja composers compose that way? I have seen padams of SvAthi tirunAl and other composers who seem to follow the format of pallavi, anupallavi and caraNam with a lot of rigor.. >> >>1. The pallavis of such compositions do not offer great opportunity for musical elaboration in the form of sangatis. For example, the musical structure of elani dayaradu (in balakakamaya) is like that.>> Hmmm..isn't this true of kr*ti pallavis generically in athANa? i.e . "anupama guNAmbudhi" by tyAgarAja also has an equally quick and difficult to sing pallavi, infact singing the starting sangati at the end of the pallavi( with the notes "sa ni ni sa ni ni sa..) is quite an achievement in itself... Even if compositions by composers from a later stage are taken( by this time the sangatifying tendency was in full bloom)the compositions in athANa are such that not many sangatis can be sung e.g. zrI mahAgaNapatim bhaje'ham by jayacAmarAjEndra woDeyAr. <<2. The pallavi acts mainly as a refrain, and sangatis are avoided even if they are possible.>> Would this be all that common?..Afterall, the padam is crucial for dance performances and one does find a fair tendency of sangatifying in various padams i.e. Brinda's rendering of various padams.. As you suggested, if a krti is musically simple( sangatiless) and is wordy/emphasizes a lyric, it would be useful for a harikathA point of view...(I will come back to this later in the post) <> TRue, and the fifteen odd sangatis that we find in "vAtApi gaNapatim" may or may not meet dIkSitar's approval:-) D.V.N.Sarma: <anupallavi consists of invocation (saMbOdhana). Keeping >saMbOdhana at the end of sentence is not natural for >conversational telugu. Usually it is at the beginning of the >sentence. (Ofcourse there are exceptions to this in metric >poetry). But for the bhAva to come out naturally the conversational >structure and intonation will be of great help. Both of >these are satisfied by starting with anupallavi. The dhAtu >starts with madhya sthAyi pancama with a general upward trend >reaches the tAra madhyama near the beginnig of pallavi and >then has a general trend of going down reaching madhya shaDja >at the end of the pallavi. This is in agreement with the >speech intonation of a sentence starting with saMbOdhana.>> This is an interesting point; however tyAgarAja seems to have used the sambOdhana at the end of the sentence frequently...as random examples, we have "nenaruncarA! na paini cAla......zrirAma!" (simhavAhini),"santamulEka soukhyamulEdu...."(sAma),"vinA nasakoni yunnanurA"(pratapavarALi)..in fact a large number of the krtis where he addresses his own heart/himself i.e. O manasA!" all have the sambOdhana at the end of the pallavi e.g. "rAmabhakti samrAjyam"(zuddhabangaLa), "nidhi cAla sukhama?"(kalyANI), "sangItajnAnamu bhaktivinA"( dhanyAsi) etc.... The feature that you pointed out i.e. the rising trend in notes ( in the pallavi in this case) seems to be a feature common in the anupallavi of tyAgaraja kr*tis. In addition, since much of the singing was done by vidvAns who knew telugu well( as has also been said by you) is it possible that these songs where we find the anupallavi being sung first in tyAgaraja kr*tis were popular in the harikathA tradition? In the harikathA tradition since it is important to get the people's attention( which would require something dramatic and has to therefore avoid the mundane madhya stAyi) and the lyric is very important, is it possible that there were certain krtis which were taken up by the harikathA performer and sung with the anupallavi first solely for the purpose of making a point and "reaching out" to the audience..In turn this tradition seemed to have been so popular that people follow this tradition down to this day and sing the anupallavi first instead of the pallavi.... I myself came accross this feature in a program where a performer started his performance with "praNavasvarUpa vakratuNDam"( from vAtapi gaNapatim) refering to "Om" and "gaNapati" in a fairly high pitch, followed by the madhyama kAlam which would hold the crowd's interest since it is fast and sets a good pace. The reason why many harikathas begin with "zrIgaNapatini"( saurASTram)out of umpteen krtis on gaNEza seems to be that it hits the tArasthAyi in the begining phrase itself and is in fairly simple language thus making it meaningful to the audience; infact this seems to have been the very reason why tyAgarAja made it the first kr*ti in the prahlAda bhakti vijayamu, an opera i.e. "a good begining is half the game".... I would appreciate all comments... REgards, Krishna ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From ebryant at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sun May 17 21:43:06 1998 From: ebryant at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Edwin Bryant) Date: Sun, 17 May 98 17:43:06 -0400 Subject: Horses/Indus seals Message-ID: <161227038805.23782.5469475084505029724.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In case my last posting was confusing (as it was to at least one person), may I just again try to reiterate the point (I realize we may all be growing rather weary of all this). Just as the horse is prominent in the Rg, so is the cow. So *if* the I-A's were in the IVC, they did not depict either cows or horses on their seals despite these being their two most important cultural animals. The logic, here (from within the parameters of the assumption that the I-A's could have been present in the IVC), is that just as the culturally-important I-A cow is not depicted on the seals, but was present physically (as evidenced by cow bones), so, in a parallel fashion, could the culturally-important I-A horse have been present despite also not being depicted on the seals (and although 'physically' less evidenced than the common cow in terms of bones due to it being a rare, elite item). I hope this logic is not as convoluted as my prose. Obviously, the alternative is that the cow-and-horse-centered I-A's were not significantly present in the IVC at all and hence the lacuna of *both* the cow and the horse on the seals. Best, Edwin From Sara.Mcclintock at ORIENT.UNIL.CH Sun May 17 15:48:48 1998 From: Sara.Mcclintock at ORIENT.UNIL.CH (Sara McClintock) Date: Sun, 17 May 98 17:48:48 +0200 Subject: prayojana of treatises Message-ID: <161227038789.23782.474710020346287930.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear List-members, I am seeking for information on the development of the idea of the prayojana, or purpose, of philosophical treatises in Sanskrit literature. I am especially interested in learning about early debates concerning the "purpose of the purpose" (prayojanasya prayojana.h). In other words, why was it considered important or necessary to state the purpose of the treatise at the beginning of the text? I would also be interested in any articles or other secondary literature that list-members know of that touch upon this topic (I am already familiar with T. Funayama's article "Arca.ta, "Saantarak.sita, Jinendrabuddhi, and Kamala'siila on the Aim of a Treatise" published in 1995 in WZKS 39). Any related ideas also appreciated, Sincerely, Sara McClintock ____________________ Sara McClintock Section de langues et civilisations orientales Universit? de Lausanne email: Sara.McClintock at orient.unil.ch From Sara.Mcclintock at ORIENT.UNIL.CH Sun May 17 16:42:23 1998 From: Sara.Mcclintock at ORIENT.UNIL.CH (Sara McClintock) Date: Sun, 17 May 98 18:42:23 +0200 Subject: prayojana -- modification Message-ID: <161227038798.23782.16216296005927845441.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hello List-members again: In my previous post requesting information on the prayojana of a treatise, I erroneously stated that I was especially interested in the purpose of the purpose (prayojanasya pryojanam). In fact, what I am more interested in are debates concerning the purpose of *stating* the purpose (prayojanakathanasya prayojanam). In other words, why is it necessary to state the purpose at the beginning of a treatise? Regards, Sara McClintock ____________________ Sara McClintock Section de langues et civilisations orientales Universit? de Lausanne email: Sara.McClintock at orient.unil.ch From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Sun May 17 17:51:09 1998 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Sun, 17 May 98 18:51:09 +0100 Subject: panini In-Reply-To: <01IWXWF0JMJM004ZWJ@cl.uh.edu> Message-ID: <161227038802.23782.5732035415498051198.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Tue, 12 May 1998, N. Ganesan wrote: > [...] > I am told that no critical edition exists even for > this important [Tamil] grammar by a Buddhist author. There isn't even a critical edition of Panini's Astadhyayi, though moves are afoot now to do one at Pune. All the best, Dominik -- Dr Dominik Wujastyk, FAX: +44 171 611 8545 Wellcome Institute for URL: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/ the History of Medicine, Email: d.wujastyk at ucl.ac.uk Wellcome Trust, 183 Euston Road, Trust URL: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk London NW1 2BE, England. First Rule of History: History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each other. From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Mon May 18 02:51:27 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Sun, 17 May 98 19:51:27 -0700 Subject: Horses/Indus seals Message-ID: <161227038820.23782.4353282917708936517.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---George Thompson wrote: > As far as I can tell, the last great hope for the Indigenous Aryan thesis> is that we will *never* decipher the IVC script [if that is what it is], > for our fundamental ignorance re IVC is what keeps that thesis alive. > And Michael WItzel wrote: >All of which Archaeologists ( the late W. Fairservis), >and now M.Kenoyer in his recent book: Ancient Cities >of the Indis Cvilization,Oxford (Karachi) 1998) have >often treated as clan signs. (And jointfigures, with >multiple heads, as clan alliances). The following comments are offered on these two points: 1. A sound method for decipherment of the IVC script is close at hand. Stay tuned for the website (which will be unravelled in a few weeks) with the clusters of IVC inscriptions and clusters of lexemes of the Indian languages. [I don't know if the indigenous hypothesis will survive or not.] 2. Fairservis, Kenoyer and (also Heras) called them clan signs; but what were the names of these clans or alternatively, what were these animals called in the lingua franca of the civilization? Why are the tiger and antelope depicted with their heads turned? Parpola notes that there is even a squirrel depicted, apart from snakes and birds; of course even hoofed, horned, tailed persons, not excluding 'sex' scenes; and perhaps, a field-mouse. What is the svastika_; is it a sign or a pictorial motif? Regards, Kalyanaraman. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From gregjay at POI.NET Mon May 18 03:58:11 1998 From: gregjay at POI.NET (Greg Jay) Date: Sun, 17 May 98 19:58:11 -0800 Subject: prayojana of treatises In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19980517174848.0073d910@pop-server.unil.ch> Message-ID: <161227038823.23782.11616861704437684349.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Note that also ritualistic acts are preceded by the sankalpa statement giving the purpose of the ceremony. Even when chanting a mantra one should give the viniyogah of purpose for which the mantra is to be used. It seems only natural that an author would give the prayojana or purpose of a treatise in the beginning of his work. Afterall this practice is also followed by many authors today. It may be that this systematic aproach to the writing of books on particular subjects came about during the sutra period. As we see that the sutras themselves were a systemization of their subject matter. The first sutras of several texts contain in a nutshell the purpose for which they were composed. Initial statement of purpose may therefore have become an essential writing form along with other forms of brevity used in the construction of the sutras themselves. matra laghava matram putrotsavah. Greg Jay From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Mon May 18 00:36:39 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Sun, 17 May 98 20:36:39 -0400 Subject: Horses/Indus seals In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038816.23782.7874757641231136874.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sun, 17 May 1998, Peter J. Claus wrote: > There still seems to be something illogical about the argument. I could not agree more! And that means, as far as the WHOLE horse debate is concerned (more about this later, now that the semester has ended). With regard to horses or cows on seals, it is of course a well known fact that only certain animals appear on the seals, esp. the Unicorn, Zebu bull, rhinoceros, water buffalo, and the short-horned bull. Also elephant, tiger, seals . ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Harvard University www.shore.net/~india/ejvs 2 Divinity Avenue (Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies) Cambridge MA 02138, USA phone: 1- 617 - 495 3295 (voice & messages), 496 8570, fax 617 - 496 8571 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- my direct line (also for messages) : 617- 496 2990 From thompson at JLC.NET Mon May 18 00:37:40 1998 From: thompson at JLC.NET (George Thompson) Date: Sun, 17 May 98 20:37:40 -0400 Subject: Horses/Indus seals Message-ID: <161227038818.23782.6090843450966212185.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Thank you, Edwin, for trying once again to clarify the logic of the Indigenous Aryan thesis. Unfortunately, the logic just does not work. As far as I can tell, what this logic amounts to is simply a "just say no" strategy, along the lines of Nancy Reagan's response to America's drug problem. But we are scholars, for whom such a "just say no" policy is completely unacceptable. The horse and the cow are fundamental elements of Vedic ideology. That is a simple and unerasable fact. If you take these elements away, what remains will not be recognizably Vedic. Now, the absence of these elements in IVC iconography surely indicates that IVC is not Vedic. You [not *you*, Edwin, but anyone] can say "no" all you want, but the fact remains that IVC is not recognizably Vedic. As a point of logic, of course one could argue that the lack of recognizably Vedic features is no* proof* that IVC is *not* Vedic. But besides desiring to be logicians we should also desire to be scholars, and as such we should be dealing with *evidence*, and not simply the lack of such. As far as I can tell, the last great hope for the Indigenous Aryan thesis is that we will *never* decipher the IVC script [if that is what it is], for our fundamental ignorance re IVC is what keeps that thesis alive. Best wishes, George Thompson Edwin Bryant wrote: >In case my last posting was confusing (as it was to at least one person), >may I just again try to reiterate the point (I realize we may all be >growing rather weary of all this). > >Just as the horse is prominent in the Rg, so is the cow. So *if* the >I-A's were in the IVC, they did not depict either cows or horses on their >seals despite these being their two most important cultural animals. > >The logic, here (from within the parameters of the assumption that the >I-A's could have been present in the IVC), is that just as the >culturally-important I-A cow is not depicted on the seals, but was present >physically (as evidenced by cow bones), so, in a parallel fashion, could >the culturally-important I-A horse have been present despite also not >being depicted on the seals (and although 'physically' less evidenced than >the common cow in terms of bones due to it being a rare, elite item). > >I hope this logic is not as convoluted as my prose. Obviously, the >alternative is that the cow-and-horse-centered I-A's were not >significantly present in the IVC at all and hence the lacuna of *both* the >cow and the horse on the seals. Best, Edwin From kellner at IPC.HIROSHIMA-U.AC.JP Sun May 17 15:26:36 1998 From: kellner at IPC.HIROSHIMA-U.AC.JP (Birgit Kellner) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 00:26:36 +0900 Subject: prayojana of treatises Message-ID: <161227038843.23782.5578205344931105159.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Sara McClintock wrote: > > Dear List-members, > > I am seeking for information on the development of the idea of the > prayojana, or purpose, of philosophical treatises in Sanskrit literature. I > am especially interested in learning about early debates concerning the > "purpose of the purpose" (prayojanasya prayojana.h). In other words, why > was it considered important or necessary to state the purpose of the > treatise at the beginning of the text? I would also be interested in any > articles or other secondary literature that list-members know of that touch > upon this topic (I am already familiar with T. Funayama's article "Arca.ta, > "Saantarak.sita, Jinendrabuddhi, and Kamala'siila on the Aim of a Treatise" > published in 1995 in WZKS 39). > There is a short Japanese article by Amano Hirofusa, "on the composite purpose of the Abhisamayaalam.kaara'saastra" in Indogaku Bukkyougaku Kenkyuu 34/1969. According to my notes, this article compares prayojana, prakaran.a, sambandha etc. in the AA'S with the corresponding statements in the Tattvasam.grahapa~jjikaa. -- birgit kellner department for indian philosophy hiroshima university From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Mon May 18 04:28:51 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 00:28:51 -0400 Subject: vyakarana, and Tamil brahmins going to Andhra Message-ID: <161227038821.23782.5355668016197907093.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Just by accident, I came across this reference. In a 1949 publication of lectures by the late Sankaracharya of Kanchi delivered in 1932 in Madras, he has a lecture on grammar. In that he says that the Nirnaya sagara press in Bombay has a series called KAvya MAlA. In that series, there were some volumes called pracInalekhamAlA. They are supposed to contain inscriptions. One of the inscriptions is a copper plate grant belonging to the kingdom of Vengi. According to this, Kulottunga Cholan, presumably before he ascended the throne in Tamilnadu, brought 500 brahmins from Tamilnadu and settled them in present Andhra. Sankaracharya gives some of the Tamil names in the grant as "ampalakkUttATuvAn2 paTTan2" and "tiruvaraGkamuTaiyAn2 paTTan2" (as transliterated from Sankaracharya's book). According to Sankaracharya, the descendants of these brahmins belong to the branch called Dravidalu. The grant apparently gives detailed information about name, the zAstra of their expertise, the grant they received, etc. Sankaracharya mentions that apart from assigned teaching of Vedas and zAstras, a separate grant was made for the teaching of "rUpAvatAra", a grammatical text. He quotes the following sentence from the grant. rUpAvatAravaktuh eko bhAgah | I have seen inscriptional evidence of rUpAvatAra being taught at a major vedic/Sanskrit center under a grant by Rajendra Cholan in Tamilnadu. I know the same was also used in Kerala. According to Sankaracharya, before the appearance of siddhanta kaumudi of Bhattoji Dikshitar, a disciple of Appaiya Dikshitar of aTaiyappalam, rUpAvatAra was the popular grammar. Has anybody seen this text with the copper plate grant? Does it have an English translation? Any reference to this text will be appreciated. Regards S. Palaniappan From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Sun May 17 22:43:12 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 03:43:12 +0500 Subject: prayojana -- modification Message-ID: <161227038807.23782.5839694311685490738.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 06:42 PM 5/17/98 +0200, you wrote: >Hello List-members again: > >In my previous post requesting information on the prayojana of a treatise, >I erroneously stated that I was especially interested in the purpose of the >purpose (prayojanasya pryojanam). In fact, what I am more interested in are >debates concerning the purpose of *stating* the purpose >(prayojanakathanasya prayojanam). In other words, why is it necessary to >state the purpose at the beginning of a treatise? > >Regards, >Sara McClintock >____________________ > >Sara McClintock >Section de langues et civilisations orientales >Universit? de Lausanne >email: Sara.McClintock at orient.unil.ch > > prayOjanam anuddizya na mandOpi pravartatE - mahAbhASya of pataJjali Even a fool does not act without a purpose ( because without purpose there is no motivation to act). There is a good discussion there. regards, sarma. From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Mon May 18 12:55:07 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 06:55:07 -0600 Subject: Horses/Indus seals Message-ID: <161227038832.23782.15785734534926720920.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dr. M. Witzel wrote: *With regard to horses or cows on seals, it is of course a well known fact *that only certain animals appear on the seals, esp. the Unicorn, Zebu *bull, rhinoceros, water buffalo, and the short-horned bull. Also elephant, *tiger, seals . To pick up Dr. Ganesan's thread on classifiers in historical periods: The auspicious signs used in epigraphical inscriptions are: svastika_, siddham and Om (pran.avam). The groupings are in eight: as.t.a man:gala for household cultural icons, as.t.a bho_ga for property rights. In households, the auspicious icons/objects are: svastika_, s'an:khu, cakra, deepam, s'ri_vatsam, to_ran.am, bilva patram and kum.kumam. The insignia of a king: The insignia are 21: mut.i (crown), kut.ai (umbrella), kavari (yak-tail fan), to_t.t.i (sharp weapon planted in the ground), muracu (war-drum, tabour), cakkaram (wheel), ya_n-ai (elephant), kot.i (flag), matil (fortification), to_ran.am (ornamented gateway surmounted with an arch; ni_rkut.am (water-pot), pu_ma_lai (flower-garland), can:ku (conch), kat.al (sea), makaram (crocodile), a_mai (tortoise), in.ai-k-kayal (brace or carp (a tank-fish, cyprinus fimbriatus ) in gold or silver, an auspicious object carried before kings), cin:kam (lion), ti_pam (lamp), it.apam (< r.s.abha bull), a_can-am (throne) Regards, Kalyanaraman == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From filipsky at SITE.CAS.CZ Mon May 18 07:21:16 1998 From: filipsky at SITE.CAS.CZ (Jan Filipsky) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 09:21:16 +0200 Subject: Indian Place Names Website Message-ID: <161227038825.23782.3984079764138965350.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> BTW, could any of the netters give me the correct (Telugu) spelling of S. Radhakrishnan's birthplace/given name - is it SarvapaLLi or SarvepaLLi or even SarvEpaLLi? Gratefully, J.F. Jan Filipsky, Oriental Institute, Pod vodarenskou vezi 4, 182 08 Praha 8 phone 004202 6605 3729 e-mail private: U Pentlovky 466/7, 181 00 Praha 8 - Troja phone 004202 855 74 53 From athr at LOC.GOV Mon May 18 14:10:27 1998 From: athr at LOC.GOV (Allen W Thrasher) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 10:10:27 -0400 Subject: Indian Army study of Persian in 20th c. Message-ID: <161227038841.23782.9150679524123566538.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I have been reading Old Soldier Sahib, by Pvt. Frank Richards of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers ([N.Y.] : Harrison Smith and Robert Haas Inc., c 1986), the autobiography of a Welsh miner who served as a private in the British Army in India from 1900 to 1909. Several times in the course of the book he mentions that privates were offered a bounty for learning both Hindustani and Persian. Hindustani being a lingua franca both for the Army and for much of India is of obvious utility, but why would the British be encouraging the study of Persian at this date? Was it in anticipation of another invasion of or from Afghanistan, or a conflict involving Russia in Central Asia? Were they thinking of the utility of talking to locals or to prisoners in 'Dari'-speaking parts of Afghanistan, or of using Persian as a lingua franca in Central Asia? Did they think a major conflict with Iran was likely? Why not encourage some other languages like Pushto? Did they assume the Pushto-speakers they were likely to come into significant contact with would also know Hindustani? Allen Thrasher Allen W. Thrasher, Ph.D. Senior Reference Librarian Southern Asia Section Asian Division Library of Congress 101 Independence Ave., S.E. Washington, DC 20540-4714 tel. (202) 707-3732 fax (202) 707-1724 email: athr at loc.gov The opinions expressed do not represent those of my employer. From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Mon May 18 16:32:13 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 10:32:13 -0600 Subject: Horses/Indus seals Message-ID: <161227038845.23782.14344421879308013077.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The KV kulam, tuuran people are also called tuvaran. They say they come from tuvarApati. Is it related to the sangam quotes, of tuvaraapati vEL?? At least, I have heard it as a teenager from two 'tuurans': 1) M. P. Periyasamy Thooran, a famous composer of carnatic music krithis. His achievment is the massive Tamil encyclopaedia in 10 volumes in 1960s called kalaikkaLanjiyam. I was told that the kalaikkaLanjiyam is the first encyclopaedia among all Indian languages. 2) Kovai Ayyamuttu, a poet, entrepreneur, who introduced Khadi in Tiruppuur, brought Gandhiji to Palani, (in Ooty Ramkrishna ashram of Swami Chidbhavanandar, Gandhi opened the temple to Harijans first; then he went to Madurai Meenakshi). In Mahatma Trust museum at Coimbatore, many letters from Gandhiji to Kovai Ayyamuttu are kept. Ayyamuttu, who presided over Bharatidaasan's only son's wedding, he split with EVR Nayakkar, worked for Swatantra, ... I will give Kovai Ayyamuttu(d. 1976)'s poem on me under the title: Dravidology interest/publications later. Dr. Jean-Luc Chevillard writes: *Interesting remarks but ... *where do you get the form "puuttantai"? *The commentary for Tolk. Ezhut. (Nacc. 348) & (ILam. 349) *gives puuntai and the alternative form puutantai ********************************** Thanks for the correction. There is a KV kuuTTam called pUntai. That should fit exactly with your comment.. (puutan + tantai = puuntai). Similarly, aantai (I have to check with aantai kulattaar of KV). Is aantai aatan + tantai or is it coming from aantai bird? There is a group called puuttantai. This may be from puuttan + tantai. (Like cempuuttu, puuttu may refer to a bird) Regards, N. Ganesan From kumar at PIXIE.UDW.AC.ZA Mon May 18 09:42:46 1998 From: kumar at PIXIE.UDW.AC.ZA (Prof P Kumar) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 11:42:46 +0200 Subject: Advert : Hindu Studies Message-ID: <161227038828.23782.9459026487978362673.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear List manager, Please announce the following advert on your list. The applicants should contact the humnan resource office directly and not me. Prof P Kumar Prof. P. Kumar >Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 15:40:41 -0200 (GMT) >From: Nalineedevi Maharaj >To: Pratap Kumar >Subject: Advert : Hindu Studies >MIME-Version: 1.0 >Status: > >Applications are requested for the position of Professor/Associate >Professor or Senior Lecturer in the Department of Hindu Studies and Indian >Philosophy at the University of Durban-Westville, in Kwa-Zulu Natal in >South Africa. > >The University of Durban-Westville is a progressive institution with >approximately 10 000 students and 63 departments. The Department of Hindu >Studies and Indian Philosophy is a small department which is engaged in >the process of faculty and University transformation. In particular the >successful candidate should possess the following: > >- An impressive research profile and publication record >- An ability to supervise and encourage research >- Administrative ability, to develop and promote the discipline within > the context an African University >- Proficiency in Sanskrit >- Academically the person should have been trained in the fields of > Hinduism and/or Indian Philosophy >- Teaching experience at undergraduate and postgraduate level through > the medium of English >- A knowledge on one modern language like Tamil, Hindi, etc will be an > advantage >- Experience in a developing environment would be an advantage. > >The closing date for applications is 5 June 1998. > >Initial applications, containing CVs and names of referees, can be sent by >e-mail. (Preferably by fax). After this, official application forms must >be completed. > >e-mail address : nmaharaj at pixie.udw.ac.za >postal address : Mrs K Singh, H.R. Officer, Human Resource Division, >University of Durban-Westville, Private Bag X54001, Durban, 4001. >Fax : (031) 204-4315 >Tel.: (031) 204-4222, 204-4223, 204-4916. > > > Human Resource Division > University of Durban-Westville > P/Bag X54001 > Prof. P. Kumar (Head of Dept) Department of Science of Religion University of Durban-Westivlle Private BagX54001 Durban 4000 South Africa Tel: 027-31-204-4539 (work) Fax: 027-31-204-4160 (work) Email: kumar at pixie.udw.ac.za Director of the 18th Quinquennial Congress of the IAHR Durban- August 5-12 2000 For more info on the Congress please see: http://www.udw.ac.za/iahr From sns at IX.NETCOM.COM Mon May 18 18:29:44 1998 From: sns at IX.NETCOM.COM (Sn. Subrahmanya) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 13:29:44 -0500 Subject: Sarasvati/dating Message-ID: <161227038851.23782.1602800799031941215.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> S.P.Gupta in "The Indus-Sarasvati Civilization, Origins, Problems and Issues" 1996, writes: "The Saraswati before 10,000BC, may be still earlier by a few thousand years, however appears to have flowed not through Kurukshetra but through the Panchabhadra region in the Aravalis, following the path of the Luni and and ending up in the great Rann of Kutch (Ghose, et al 1990). The landsat imagery and the geological changes now recorded show that tectonic movements which took place in Rajasthan and Haryana shifted the course of the Saraswati to its present position in the north-west." SP.Gupta doesnt give more details on the paper by Ghose (1990) but there is an older paper which is given below. Here are some of the references given by SP.Gupta. Ghose, B et al 1979 "The lost courses of the Saraswati River in the Great Indian desert. New Evidence from Landsat Imagery". The Geopgraphic Journal Vol 145 (3) pages 446-451 Yashpal, et all 1984 Remote Sensing of the lost Sarasvati river. In "Frontiers of the Indus civilization" Bharadwaj, O.P 1988 The Vedic Saraswati, Harayana Sahitya Akademi, Journal of Indological Studies, Vol II, nos1-2, Chandigarh In addition There are other papers by Raikes and Gurdip Singh which deals with the geographical/environmental conditions. On superficial comparision of a not very detailed map given by SP.Gupta(fig 9,pg15) with a map of pre-harappan sites in Frontiers of the Indus civilization(1984) where the oldest course of the Sarasvati is not marked, it appears that there is greater concentration of pre-harappan sites on the oldest course of the Sarasvati!, (I would appreciate any feedback on this observation,as I havent been able to get the references by ILL yet ). Subrahmanya Houston, TX From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Mon May 18 19:48:20 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 13:48:20 -0600 Subject: sarasvati/dating Message-ID: <161227038853.23782.813886899777967554.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> {few references ...} Do any of the references given address the issue of dating the drying up of sarasvati? Can anyone summarize or give the dates. That date is VERY crucial for the Out-of-India model. *On superficial comparision of a not very detailed map given by *SP.Gupta(fig 9,pg15) with a map of pre-harappan sites in Frontiers *of the Indus civilization(1984) where the oldest course of the *Sarasvati is not marked, it appears that there is greater concentration *of pre-harappan sites on the oldest course of the Sarasvati! Does this mean that IVC villages were lying on the lost river, whose name we don't know? If IVC is pre-Aryan, (which most of the scholarly opinion suggests), then it might not have been called Sarsvati at all. After 1000 B.C, the changed river was named Sarasvati. Can we call it renaming like renaming English names of places/streets after India's independence?? Any thoughts, corrections welcome. Regards, N. Ganesan From jds10 at CUS.CAM.AC.UK Mon May 18 13:08:24 1998 From: jds10 at CUS.CAM.AC.UK (John Smith) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 14:08:24 +0100 Subject: Jain inscription In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038836.23782.5133886597997285289.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sat, 16 May 1998, riccardo garbini wrote: > My name is Riccardo Garbini, and I deal with Indian Epigraphy. This subject > is very hard. Now I am trying to understand a Jain inscription dated on VS > 1349 from Pindawara (Sirohi district). Could someone help me? Thank you . > Riccardo. > > sincerely yours,riccardo > I don't think anyone can say whether they can help you without knowing a bit more. Is your problem script-, language-, or content-related? If language, what language are we talking about, or don't you know? Could you not post (a portion of) the inscription so we can see what it looks like? John Smith -- Dr J. D. Smith * jds10 at cam.ac.uk Faculty of Oriental Studies * Tel. 01223 335140 (Switchboard 01223 335106) Sidgwick Avenue * Fax 01223 335110 Cambridge CB3 9DA * http://bombay.oriental.cam.ac.uk/index.html From athr at LOC.GOV Mon May 18 18:12:13 1998 From: athr at LOC.GOV (Allen W Thrasher) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 14:12:13 -0400 Subject: Yugapurana ed. Makad on exchange Message-ID: <161227038856.23782.16016810817973070876.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The following title is available for exchange with any library having an exchange relationship with the Library of Congress: Yugapuranam / edited with the help of a new MS by D. R. Mankad Vallabhvidyanagar : Charutar Prakashan, 1951. 49 p. 91-915182 BL1140 .4 .Y87 1951 (Orien Sans) Allen Thrasher Allen W. Thrasher, Ph.D. Senior Reference Librarian Southern Asia Section Asian Division Library of Congress 101 Independence Ave., S.E. Washington, DC 20540-4714 tel. (202) 707-3732 fax (202) 707-1724 email: athr at loc.gov The opinions expressed do not represent those of my employer. From Gerard.Huet at INRIA.FR Mon May 18 12:20:04 1998 From: Gerard.Huet at INRIA.FR (Gerard Huet) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 14:20:04 +0200 Subject: Proposed changes to Velthuis Devanagari fonts. Message-ID: <161227038834.23782.14418113093362384297.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hello. While we are discussing changes to Velthuis Devanagari fonts, I encountered problems with certain ligatures, whose horizontal space must be somehow wrongly computed; it concerns kt, kl, ~nc, ~nj, j~n and ky. Whenever such combination letters appear, TeX justification and alignments are wrongly computed. This must be due to some mistake in the Metafont tables describing devnag, and some expertise is needed there in order to fix the problem. I have not tried the Wilkner variant on this problem, and I imported the Velthuis package a long time ago, so I am wondering whether anyone corrected or knows how to correct the bug. Regards, Gerard Huet From jds10 at CUS.CAM.AC.UK Mon May 18 13:42:32 1998 From: jds10 at CUS.CAM.AC.UK (John Smith) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 14:42:32 +0100 Subject: Proposed changes to Velthuis Devanagari fonts. In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19980518142004.0093f220@pop-rocq.inria.fr> Message-ID: <161227038838.23782.14865344665211222877.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Mon, 18 May 1998, Gerard Huet wrote: > Hello. While we are discussing changes to Velthuis Devanagari fonts, > I encountered problems with certain ligatures, whose horizontal space must > be somehow wrongly computed; it concerns kt, kl, ~nc, ~nj, j~n and ky. > Whenever such combination letters appear, TeX justification and alignments > are wrongly computed. This must be due to some mistake in the Metafont tables > describing devnag, and some expertise is needed there in order to fix the > problem. I have not tried the Wilkner variant on this problem, and I > imported the Velthuis package a long time ago, so I am wondering whether > anyone corrected or knows how to correct the bug. > Regards, > Gerard Huet I have been using Velthuis for about ten years, and I have never encountered a problem with these characters. I suspect the problem must be local to your setup. A good start would presumably be to download and install the current "new" version of the package that Anshuman has put up on CTAN. John Smith -- Dr J. D. Smith * jds10 at cam.ac.uk Faculty of Oriental Studies * Tel. 01223 335140 (Switchboard 01223 335106) Sidgwick Avenue * Fax 01223 335110 Cambridge CB3 9DA * http://bombay.oriental.cam.ac.uk/index.html From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Mon May 18 23:17:52 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 16:17:52 -0700 Subject: Horses/Indus seals Message-ID: <161227038865.23782.18072331680769933522.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hi, Is tuvarApati the same as dwa_raka_? Hence, the name is a combination of place name and profession (agriculture)? Regards, Kalyanaraman. ---Palaniappa wrote: > > In a message dated 98-05-18 11:34:10 EDT, GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU writes: > > << > The KV kulam, tuuran people are also called > tuvaran. They say they come from tuvarApati. > Is it related to the sangam quotes, of > tuvaraapati vEL?? >> > > The Chola, Pandya inscriptions mention several people with the name tuvarApati > vELAn2. From a pair of father-son duo, both of whom have "tuvarApati vELAn2" > in their name, one can make out it is a family name or clan name. > > Regards > > S. Palaniappan > == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Mon May 18 11:32:01 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 16:32:01 +0500 Subject: Indian Place Names Website Message-ID: <161227038830.23782.4876921613321353239.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 09:21 AM 5/18/98 +0200, you wrote: >BTW, >could any of the netters give me the correct (Telugu) spelling of S. >Radhakrishnan's >birthplace/given name - is it SarvapaLLi or SarvepaLLi or even SarvEpaLLi? >Gratefully, J.F. >Jan Filipsky, Oriental Institute, Pod vodarenskou vezi 4, 182 08 Praha 8 >phone 004202 6605 3729 >e-mail >private: U Pentlovky 466/7, 181 00 Praha 8 - Troja >phone 004202 855 74 53 > > sarvEpalli rAdhAkriSNan From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Tue May 19 00:09:23 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 17:09:23 -0700 Subject: Horses/Indus seals Message-ID: <161227038869.23782.16564005572173018308.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hi, Was there any reaction to Prof. Vidyanatha Rao's earlier reference to the etymon for horse in Dravidian: ivul.i horse (Tamil); (h)ulli_ horse(Bra_hui)? Regards, Kalyanaraman. ---Palaniappa wrote: > > In a message dated 98-05-18 11:34:10 EDT, GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU writes: > > << > The KV kulam, tuuran people are also called > tuvaran. They say they come from tuvarApati. > Is it related to the sangam quotes, of > tuvaraapati vEL?? >> > > The Chola, Pandya inscriptions mention several people with the name tuvarApati > vELAn2. From a pair of father-son duo, both of whom have "tuvarApati vELAn2" > in their name, one can make out it is a family name or clan name. > > Regards > > S. Palaniappan > == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From r.l.schmidt at EAST.UIO.NO Mon May 18 15:46:42 1998 From: r.l.schmidt at EAST.UIO.NO (Ruth Laila Schmidt) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 17:46:42 +0200 Subject: Indian Army study of Persian in 20th c. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038847.23782.6083859930437197811.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >I have been reading Old Soldier Sahib, by Pvt. Frank Richards of the Royal >Welsh Fusiliers ([N.Y.] : Harrison Smith and Robert Haas Inc., c 1986), the >autobiography of a Welsh miner who served as a private in the British Army >in India from 1900 to 1909. Several times in the course of the book he >mentions that privates were offered a bounty for learning both Hindustani >and Persian. Hindustani being a lingua franca both for the Army and for >much of India is of obvious utility, but why would the British be >encouraging the study of Persian at this date? Was it in anticipation of >another invasion of or from Afghanistan, or a conflict involving Russia in >Central Asia? Were they thinking of the utility of talking to locals or to >prisoners in 'Dari'-speaking parts of Afghanistan, or of using Persian as a >lingua franca in Central Asia? Did they think a major conflict with Iran was >likely? Why not encourage some other languages like Pushto? Did they >assume the Pushto-speakers they were likely to come into significant >contact with would also know Hindustani? > >Allen Thrasher > The encouragement of Persian skills along with Hindustani skills was typical of the 19th century. Could this have been some bureaucratic glitch - a clause in the jobscope for privates that was just kept on the books past its expiration date (possibly with an eye on events in Afghanistan)? Ruth Schmidt *********************************************** Ruth Laila Schmidt Dept of East European and Oriental Studies University of Oslo P.O. Box 1030 Blindern N-0315 Oslo, Norway Phone: (47) 22 85 55 86 Fax: (47) 22 85 41 40 Email: r.l.schmidt at east.uio.no From vedak at GLOBALNET.CO.UK Mon May 18 17:28:32 1998 From: vedak at GLOBALNET.CO.UK (Harshavardhan Vedak) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 18:28:32 +0100 Subject: Indian Army study of Persian in 20th c. Message-ID: <161227038858.23782.6305903533822259563.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Welsh Fusiliers ([N.Y.] : Harrison Smith and Robert Haas Inc., c 1986), the >autobiography of a Welsh miner who served as a private in the British Army >in India from 1900 to 1909. Several times in the course of the book he > The encouragement of Persian skills along with Hindustani skills was > typical of the 19th century. Could this have been some bureaucratic glitch > - a clause in the jobscope for privates that was just kept on the books > past its expiration date (possibly with an eye on events in Afghanistan)? The main preoccupation of the Indian army during this period was the Notheh-West Frontier (now NW Frontier state of Pakistan) where the Army foruht Pathan tribesman from Afghanistan. Also around this time, the British Indian army had border skirmishes with Persia. It may be that, for the forces along that border, it would be an obvious tool. I know that the officers Scinde Horse and various other forces along that border had to know Hindustani/Urdu and perhaps Persian. But I don't believe that the Bombay and Madras armies in the south needed to know Persian so perhaps that Welsh miner was in one of the (few) totally European regiments in the NW frontier. -Harshavardhan Vedak ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Webmaster of Bharat Rakshak- the Consortium of Indian Military Websites @: http://www.bharat-rakshak.com Email address- vedak at globalnet.co.uk Please visit my Indian Army page @: http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/ARMY Jai Hind!! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Tue May 19 01:39:00 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 18:39:00 -0700 Subject: "vELAppArppAn2": potter-priest or non-sacrificing brahmin? Message-ID: <161227038880.23782.16639513804634635386.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hi, The superb analysis linking archaeology, accounting, literary texts and Tamil heritage is fascinating. Is it clear from the Harappan artefacts that the professions of a potter and a blacksmith were differentiated at that time, ca. 3000 B.C.? Is it possible that the fire-worker worked with faience, silica, silver (there are two silver seals!)and copper plates ?(Note: he even incised on bronze implements). Is there any other contemporaneous civilization which used copper plates to record the conveyance of property rights? Regards, Kalyanaraman. ---Palaniappa wrote: The potters' connection to > the accounting profession was noted in another posting "Leiden Plates, other> inscriptions, and potters." Tamil Lexicon even mentions a sub-caste among > potters by the name "kucakkaNakku" specializing in the 'numbers' profession. > > Any comments would be appreciated. > == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Mon May 18 22:50:58 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 18:50:58 -0400 Subject: Horses/Indus seals Message-ID: <161227038862.23782.16924601381281209824.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 98-05-18 11:34:10 EDT, GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU writes: << The KV kulam, tuuran people are also called tuvaran. They say they come from tuvarApati. Is it related to the sangam quotes, of tuvaraapati vEL?? >> The Chola, Pandya inscriptions mention several people with the name tuvarApati vELAn2. From a pair of father-son duo, both of whom have "tuvarApati vELAn2" in their name, one can make out it is a family name or clan name. Regards S. Palaniappan From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Tue May 19 01:50:02 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 19:50:02 -0600 Subject: Horses/Indus seals Message-ID: <161227038875.23782.3703883227743786827.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> It appears that Dwaraka, Dvaarasamudram, tuvaraippati vEL of tamil sangam poetry are related. Almost sure that I. Mahadevan will deal with this in his paper on vELir, vEL, vELaan, veLLaalar in Jl. of tamil studies article. Regards, N. Ganesan From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Tue May 19 02:03:51 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 20:03:51 -0600 Subject: "vELAppArppAn2": potter-priest or non-sacrificing brahmin? Message-ID: <161227038877.23782.2712979689515479016.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Pl. read R. Nagaswamy, Thiruttani and Velanjeri copper plates. Madras: State dept. of Archaeology, 1979. (pre-10th century inscriptions) The village name is vE.laan cEri in the suburban Madras. Are the copper plates by vE.laar too? N. Ganesan From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Tue May 19 00:12:46 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 20:12:46 -0400 Subject: "vELAppArppAn2": potter-priest or non-sacrificing brahmin? Message-ID: <161227038871.23782.17279573293098845304.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> There is a poem in the Classical Tamil text akanAn2URu which has the follwing lines. vELAp pArppAn2 vALaram tumitta vaLai kaLaintu ozinta kozuntin2 an2n2a taLai piNi avizAc curimukap pakanRai This has been conventionally interpreted as " the unloosened spiral-faced pakanRai flower like the tip of the conch shell remaining after the conch shell is cut for bangles by the saw of the non-sacrificing brahmin". This text has been used as evidence for the practice of some brahmins to be engaged in making bangles from conch (shank) shells in ancient Tamilnadu. For instance, Clarence Maloney, in his article "Archeology in South India: Accomplishments and Prospects", uses this to state that in Sangam period, there were "non- sacrificing" Brahmans who cut conch shells. Also according to a medieval poem, nakkIran2, the Classical Tamil poet, put down ziva by saying that nakkIran2 had a caste/lineage that was one of cutting conch shells while ziva had no lineage whatsoever. Based on this story, nakkIran2e is claimed to have been a non-sacrificing brahmin. I have always wondered about this interpretation. As far as I know, there is no other evidence in Indian texts that says that non-sacrificing brahmins were engaged in making conch shell bangles. (I am willing to be corrected on this.) >?From what I know of the brahminic concept of pollution in those days, such a job would have been considered to be working with a dead animal and hence unclean. When I understood the etymology of "pArppAn2" as a priest in general including potter priests, the interpretation of "vELA-" in the compound "vELAppArppAn2" as a negative adjectival participle seemed suspect. It rather looked like a case of assimilation of the word "vELAr/vELAn2". Compare the name "vELAkkuTi" in colloquial usage to refer to the potters' hamlet. If one were to interpret it at face value, one would take it to mean "non-sacrificing hamlet". Similarly, there is also a village called vELAkkuLam in Tamilnadu (meaning non-sacrificing pond/tank if one were to interpret it literally). One would rather expect the name to be either vELAn2kuLam or vELAGkuLam if the first part of the word were to be singular vELAn2 or vELArkuLam if the first part were to be plural vELAr. (Consider another village name pAppAGkuLam < pArppAn2kuLam, pond/tank of pArppAn2.) In none of these cases, normally you will expect to find vELAkkuLam where the gemination is due to assimilation. But the prevailing form indeed shows gemination. I think a similar assimilation is what has happened in the case of vELAppArppAn2. As the poem was being transmitted over the centuries, when the term "pArppAn2" lost its general meaning and came to apply only to brahmins, the text with assimilation (error) could have been easily accepted as the correct text. In order to justify my interpretation, we have to have some information that the potters had the habit of using saws and they had made bangles using conch shells. Also, one would normally expect coastal residents such as fishermen to have easy access to the conch shells and hence are likely to make bangles using them. Since we would expect the potters to live further inland, we need some evidence for conch-shell bangle making further inland. Shereen Ratnagar's book, "Enquiries into the Political Organization of Harappan Society", gives some information which seems to confirm the interpretation that "vELAppArppAn2" referred to potter priests, if we assume that the skill set of the potter priests remained intact for a very long time. Talking about the Harappan seals, Ratnagar says, "For example, a few unfinished seals have been found (Marshall 1931:378; Mackay 1938: 345-346), either unperforated, or with incomplete boss, or with saw marks.....In the HR area, section B, house X, sawn or partially worked pieces of steatite were found in one room (Marshall 1931:184)...." (p.26) Also, she says, "The excavations of Marshall and Mackay uncovered some 1245 seals at Mohenjo-Daro. In addition, there were about 90 message sealings, casts of seals in faience or terracotta, presumably dispatched with goods or information when the sender could not travel or communicate himself, and obviously could not dispatch his own seal." (p. 41) She also mentions,"On a rectangular clay sealing from Harappa (Vats 1940:332, pl. XCIII.309) is depicted a human figure..."(p. 148) Thus the IV seal manufacturing seems to have connections with both the use of saw and clay. If one assumes potters to be the ones most familiar with clay working, they were probably familiar with the use of saws also. Discussing the craft work using shells, she says, "Surveys of the unexcavated areas of the site have revealed shell-work debris in three other parts of the site (Kenoyer 1983:190ff): north of the L area (inlay work); eastern HR area (bangles, ladles, and inlays); and also 500m to the east of the main residential area (preliminary preparation of shankh shells for bangle-making). The last may have been located outside the habitation because of the stench raised by stacks of uncleaned shells." (p.26-27) To me this unpleasant aspect rules out any potential brahmin participation in bangle-making using conch shells. Regarding the regional distribution of bangle manufacture, she says, "At the same time the manufacture of bangles from shankh was not confined to coastal settlements like Balakot, Lothal, and Nageshwar, but also occurred at Mohenjo- Daro, Harappa, and Amri, far inland..."(p.55-56). I had posited that the potters and chieftains were from the same group. Ratnagar says, "Ceramic production probably took place at all MH settlements, so that, if the uniformity of ceramics is confirmed, we would have to suggest that a standard process of manufacture, with controls on clays and firing technology, was established, as also controls on the number of potters, and that producers had particular functions in mind when they made particular vessel forms. Thus pottery production may also have been a matter of state direction and organization." (p. 98) Also, Ratnagar says, IV culture used clay for defensive purposes. She says, "Hoards of clay sling stones, large and small, were found behind this parapet." (p. 46) This seems to imply a state interest in clay technology. Regarding the manufacture of shankh bangles, she says, " At MH sites where shankh shell bangles were made, Kenoyer (1983:171ff) finds a uniform manufacturing technique and evidence for the use of similar metal tools......I suggest that shankh bangle manufacture was under state direction..." (p.98) Thus the assumption that the potters/potter priests and chieftains of early Tamil society were descendants of the same ruling group from Indus Valley culture would seem to agree with Shereen Ratnagar's findings. That both pottery and conch shell (shankh) bangle making crafts were state-directed would imply that if the potters were part of the state establishment, they would have the knowhow related to the manufacture of both. Thus, interpreting "vELAppArppAn2" as "potter-priest" seems to make more sense than "non-sacrificing brahmin". In light of this, the poet nakkIran2 should also belong to the potter community. His link to the potter community seems to be also strengthened by his father's profession revealed by the full name, "maturaik kaNakkAyan2Ar makan2Ar nakkIran2Ar", i.e., nakkIran2 who was the son of mathematics teacher of Madurai. ( Both mathematics and accounting professions deal with numbers. In fact, one can interpret the word kaNakkAyan2 as one who investigates/examines accounts or mathematics. Although the later connotation of kaNakku relates to numbers, originally it meant whatever was incised. That is why the Tamil alphabet is called neTuGkaNakku. The eighteen minor didactic works in Tamil literature are called by the collective noun "patineNkIzkkaNakku". The potters' connection to the accounting profession was noted in another posting "Leiden Plates, other inscriptions, and potters." Tamil Lexicon even mentions a sub-caste among potters by the name "kucakkaNakku" specializing in the 'numbers' profession. Any comments would be appreciated. Regards S. Palaniappan From agriffit at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Tue May 19 00:33:57 1998 From: agriffit at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Arlo Griffiths) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 20:33:57 -0400 Subject: ORISSA In-Reply-To: <355CA58F.6B46@zedat.fu-berlin.de> Message-ID: <161227038873.23782.10759391295636469795.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hello! - One more question pertaining to Orissa: does anyone happen to have the address for Prof. (Emeritus) K.C. Acharya, who pubslished on the Paippalada Samhita in the early '80-s. I believe he is either from Puri or Bhuvanesvar. Thank you very much, Arlo Griffiths From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Mon May 18 16:27:10 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 21:27:10 +0500 Subject: Music related questions Message-ID: <161227038849.23782.9730745081503079050.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 04:55 PM 5/17/98 PDT, S.Krishna wrote: >This is an interesting point; however tyAgarAja seems to have used the >sambOdhana at the end of the sentence frequently...as random examples, >we have "nenaruncarA! na paini cAla......zrirAma!" >(simhavAhini),"santamulEka soukhyamulEdu...."(sAma),"vinA nasakoni >yunnanurA"(pratapavarALi)..in fact a large number of the krtis where he >addresses his own heart/himself i.e. O manasA!" all have the sambOdhana >at the end of the pallavi e.g. "rAmabhakti samrAjyam"(zuddhabangaLa), >"nidhi cAla sukhama?"(kalyANI), "sangItajnAnamu bhaktivinA"( dhanyAsi) >etc.... > I tried to indicate why singing 'bAlakanakamaya' starting with anupallavi is effective. If you sing it starting with anupallavi you have agreement with conversational sentence structure and intonation making it effective.I do not think I said that tyAgarAja retained the conversational sentence structure in his compositions. Various restrictions like yati and prasa are there for kritis also and this will come in the way of any such attempt. In 'bAlakanakamaya' itself it is not there because saMbOdhana is in anupallavi. I did say that there is a frequent blending of speech intonation with rAga phrases. This has to be expected because telugu being the mother tongue of tyAgarAja such blending will occur naturally and automatically without any conscious effort on his part. I wonder whether the same intonation and rAga phrase blending is responsible for the popularity of pApanAzaM zivan's compositions. The intonation of cajoling in 'kA vA vA' the intonation corresponding to an inquiry in 'nAnoru vilayATTu bommayA' are unmistakable. If you take the composition 'citraratnamaya' in kharaharapriya the reason for singing it starting it with anupallavi is either because tyAgarAja composed it to be sung that way only or the disciples have settled for starting it with anupallavi instead of singing it with an atIta graha. This is because 'mitri' at the start of pallavi will be meaningless without the syllable 'sau' which is at the end of the pallavi. >The feature that you pointed out i.e. the rising trend in notes ( in the >pallavi in this case) seems to be a feature common in the anupallavi of >tyAgaraja kr*tis. > It is true that usually anupallavi is at a higher pitch than pallavi though there are exceptions. This is because in a kriti also delineation of raga is done and pallavi starts usally in madhya sthAyi and by the time of anupallavi reaches tArasthAyi is reached. But this is there in tyAgarAja kritis without violating the intonation. Finally an artist is a creator. To create one should have freedom. It is a freedom to do some thing or not to do something or to do something unexpected (kartum akartum anyadhAkartum). We can analyse what an artist has done and understand it. But we cannot make rules about what an artist has to do. That will be interfering with his freedom. Even the exceptions of an artist have a purpose. regards, sarma. >REgards, >Krishna > >______________________________________________________ >Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com > > From ebryant at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Tue May 19 02:56:50 1998 From: ebryant at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Edwin Bryant) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 22:56:50 -0400 Subject: Horses/Aryans/IVC In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038882.23782.10227881637338411989.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sun, 17 May 1998, Michael Witzel wrote: > What has NOT been mentioned in the debate is that "all major domestic and > wild animals are represented by terracotta figurines" ( Kenoyer, p. 118), > But there are NO HORSES (neither on on seals, inor n painting, nor as > figurines). Actually, horse figurines have been reported in the Indus valley and not just by Indian archaeologists (Mackay 1938, Piggot, 1952, Sir Mortimer Wheeler, 68). I mention these Western archaeologists because it is often implied or stated that Indian arcaeologists who make such claims or question establish paradigms must have some kind of a political agenda. But let us steer clear of the politics and stick to the data for now. Unfortunately, it is not clear from the published photos of these figurines whether these are representations of horses or dogs. Accordingly, Professor Witzel's comments hold good. I agree that the absence of *undisputed* horse representations is a significant obstacle to the Indigenous Aryan position that cannot just be brushed aside cursorily. > Since horses appear only by 1700 BC (bones AND representations) in the > Kachi plain/ Mehrgarh (on the border of the Iranian plateau, thus) the > argumentum ex nihilo carries SOME, if not a lot of weight. Well, if we are to be fully rigorous and scholarly as George has required we be, I think a full analysis of the horse issue requires the following procedures: 1) A complete compilation of the exact extent of the horse bone/figurine evidence during the time when the Indo-Aryans *were* indisputably in the subcontinent, say from 1700 -- 700 BCE. According to the formula that the presence of Indo-Aryans = horses (and abiding by the same logic that denies the I-A's a place in the IVC), we should be able to trace a quantitative increase in horse bone evidence over space and time during this period when the Aryans were settling into the subcontinent. This may well prove to be the case. 2) I have personally read at least 15 first hand reports from both Western and Indian archaeologists claiming findings of horse evidence in the IVC. Let us be clear: these reports have not been *disproved*, they merely have not been proved: "many claims have been made...but few have been documented with sufficient measurements, drawings, and photographs to permit other analyists to judge for themselves" (Meadows, 1987). This is fine, but if we are to avoid being skewed, we will have to ensure that the findings reported from our control period of 1700 -- 700 BCE have been subject to *the same intense scrutiny* and independent analysis as the findings reported from the IVC. Were it not for this whole debate (and more specifically its political ramifications), I suspect that the reports of horse evidence in the IVC would not have raised any eyebrows. 3) THe evidence and implications of the evidence of the horse in the South has to be taken into account. Personally, I am withholding my judgement on the value of the horse evidence until I have completed undertaking the above steps (which I will be doing under the guidance of Meadows). I will be out of town and off e-mail for the next two weeks and so will not be able to contribute anything further on this issue till then. Regards, Edwin Bryant From ebryant at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Tue May 19 02:57:27 1998 From: ebryant at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Edwin Bryant) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 22:57:27 -0400 Subject: IVC/Indo-Aryans In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038884.23782.7415153206013651976.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sun, 17 May 1998, George Thompson wrote: > As far as I can tell, what this logic amounts to is simply a "just say no" > strategy, But we are scholars, for whom such a "just say no" policy is > completely unacceptable. > as such we should be dealing with *evidence*, and not simply the lack of > such. It's not quite true, George, that the Indig. Aryan school has just pursued a "just say no policy." THere have been two pieces of 'positive' evidence pertaining to the IVC/I-A connection that have often been brought forward for whatever they are worth: a variety of reports of fire altars, most especially at Kalibhangan, and the evidence of the 'Sarasvati.' In my opinion, the identification of these so-called fire altars is not compelling (although these were accepted by the Allchins) and so this issue is not worth while discussing. But the Sarasvati evidence is more complex and does merit attention. I have papers to finish grading and will be leaving town, but I would be happy to discuss the evidence of the 'Sarasvati' upon returning if there is interest. Best, Edwin From ebryant at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Tue May 19 02:57:47 1998 From: ebryant at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Edwin Bryant) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 22:57:47 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati/dating In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19980518182944.00950ff8@ix.netcom.com> Message-ID: <161227038886.23782.8226856781473190502.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I have all these articles, but I have found no reports of thorough dating attempts of the various stages of the drying up of this river Ghose, quoted below, gives no grounds for his opinion (but Mughal's dates seem more reliable and likely to be of interest). As N. Ganesham notes, such dates are crucial for the Indig. Aryan position. In any event, I think professor Witzel might have some comments to make from the philological side; I will have to wait till I return to pursue this discussion further. Best, Edwin On Mon, 18 May 1998, Sn. Subrahmanya wrote: > S.P.Gupta in "The Indus-Sarasvati Civilization, Origins, Problems > and Issues" 1996, writes: > "The Saraswati before 10,000BC, may be still earlier > by a few thousand years, however appears to have flowed not > through Kurukshetra but through the Panchabhadra region in the > Aravalis, following the path of the Luni and and ending up in the > great Rann of Kutch (Ghose, et al 1990). The landsat imagery and > the geological changes now recorded show that tectonic movements > which took place in Rajasthan and Haryana shifted > the course of the Saraswati to its present position in the > north-west." > > SP.Gupta doesnt give more details on the paper by Ghose (1990) but > there is an older paper which is given below. > Here are some of the references given by SP.Gupta. > > Ghose, B et al 1979 > "The lost courses of the Saraswati River in the Great Indian desert. > New Evidence from Landsat Imagery". > The Geopgraphic Journal Vol 145 (3) pages 446-451 > > Yashpal, et all 1984 > Remote Sensing of the lost Sarasvati river. In "Frontiers of the Indus > civilization" > > Bharadwaj, O.P 1988 > The Vedic Saraswati, Harayana Sahitya Akademi, > Journal of Indological Studies, Vol II, nos1-2, Chandigarh > > In addition There are other papers by Raikes and Gurdip Singh > which deals with the geographical/environmental conditions. > > On superficial comparision of a not very detailed map given by > SP.Gupta(fig 9,pg15) with a map of pre-harappan sites in Frontiers > of the Indus civilization(1984) where the oldest course of the > Sarasvati is not marked, it appears that there is greater concentration > of pre-harappan sites on the oldest course of the Sarasvati!, > (I would appreciate any feedback on this observation,as I havent been able > to get the references by ILL yet ). > > Subrahmanya > Houston, TX > From ebryant at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Tue May 19 03:22:18 1998 From: ebryant at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Edwin Bryant) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 23:22:18 -0400 Subject: Apology In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038888.23782.10634031697420357839.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Mon, 18 May 1998, Edwin Bryant wrote: > As N. Ganesham notes, > such dates are crucial for the Indig. Aryan position. My apologies to N. Ganesan for misspelling his name. Edwin From thompson at JLC.NET Tue May 19 03:27:31 1998 From: thompson at JLC.NET (George Thompson) Date: Mon, 18 May 98 23:27:31 -0400 Subject: Horses in early Iran Message-ID: <161227038890.23782.13167114780582797436.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Some time ago, N Ganesan asked about the evidence for the horse in early Iran. I am sorry that I was unable to respond to his post then. Perhaps this brief note will be of use. The importance of the horse is clearly evident from Avestan onomastics. One finds the term aspa- [= Skt. azva] for example in the following names: auruuaTaspa ["having swift horses"] pouruSAspa ["having gray horses"] yuxtAspa ["having yoked horses"] hitAspa ["having a team of horses"] jAmAspa ["having ?? horses"] The same preoccupation with swift steeds and victory in races that we find in Vedic imagery is found in Avestan [Yasht 5.50, Yasht 19.77]. Not only is horse sacrifice known, but something like the same canonical hierarchy of victims that we see in Vedic [the paJcapazu doctrine] appears in Avestan: In Yasht 5 [to the goddess anAhitA] reference is made several times to the sacrifice of 100 stallions, 1,000 cows, and 10,000 sheep. Clearly, within Avestan ritual currency, a horse was equal to 10 cows or 100 sheep. The familiar association of the horse and the sun is attested in Yasht 10.13: am^Sahe hU auruuaT.aspahe ["of the immortal swift-horsed sun"; a word for word translation into Skt. = *amRtasya svar arvatazvasya*] The Greeks were aware of horse sacrifice among the Persians. I think that Herodotos and Philostratos mention it, but I haven't had the chance to look up exact refs. There is much more relevant material, but perhaps the point is already made. Best wishes, George Thompson p.s. I hope to be able to forward a post soon responding to the interesting question of Yaroslav Vassilkov concerning Iranians in Ancient India. But not tonight. From Sara.Mcclintock at ORIENT.UNIL.CH Mon May 18 22:04:11 1998 From: Sara.Mcclintock at ORIENT.UNIL.CH (Sara McClintock) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 00:04:11 +0200 Subject: prayojana of treatises In-Reply-To: <355F01AB.C54C9578@ipc.hiroshima-u.ac.jp> Message-ID: <161227038860.23782.10534905900587427663.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Thanks to Birgit Kellner for the reference to the 1969 Amano article. I should have mentioned that, in addition to the Amano article, there is also an article in Japanese by ICHIGO Masamichi(1985) on "Saantarak.sita and Kamala'siila's Views on the Purpose of the Composition in Chuukanshoogonron no kenkyuu -- "Saantarak.sita no shisoo. Bun'eido, Kyoto: 1-11. Both these articles are mentioned by Funayama. Unfortunately I have no access to them as I cannot read Japanese (a major disadvantage at times). Thanks also to Ashok Aklujkar for various good ideas for places to look for discussions of the importance of stating the prayojana. The reminder to check the discussion in Haribhadra's commentary on the Abhisamayaala.mkaara was a good one. The quotation mentioned first by Devarakonda Sarma does not appear to be found in the "Slokavaartika. There does not seem to be much question that a prayojanam is a necessary condition for action (prav.rttya.ngam, prav.rttihetu.h). But it seems that some authors disagreed about how the statement of the prayojanam serves to induce one to engage (prav.rtti) with the text. For many Buddhist authors, at any rate, the statement of the prayojana (along with the subject matter and the relation between them) can at best serve only to engender a doubt in the listener/reader. So the question becomes whether and how doubt can motivate action. On Funayama's reading, Arca.ta does not accept that doubt can motivate action, but rather thinks that action is based only on pramaa.na. Thus for Arca.ta, the reason for stating the prayojanam at the beginning of the treatise is merely to dispell the idea that the treatise has no purpose at all (since it is a well known principle that speech without a purpose is not worthy of being either expounded or listened to). ____________________ Sara McClintock Section de langues et civilisations orientales Universit? de Lausanne email: Sara.McClintock at orient.unil.ch From riccardo.garbini at IOL.IT Tue May 19 00:08:15 1998 From: riccardo.garbini at IOL.IT (riccardo garbini) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 01:08:15 +0100 Subject: Jain inscription Message-ID: <161227038867.23782.8853966904010166582.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear John Smith, I have been really happy to receive your response. Regarding the inscription, I need comparative material - mainly epigraphical one - to give an adequate historical and linguistical collocation to this small inscription. In the meanwhile, let me offer you the small results of such a study in progress. Paleographically, the inscription's characters fit very well with the specimens from Sirohi district belonging to XIII-XIV century. The engraving is rather rough, so that it shows the secondary importance of the commitment. The tentave reading so far detected by me is as follows: 1. siddham || sa?vat 1349 phagu?a ?udi 5 ravidivyo | u esa (?) y?cchaka kva(?) dh?c? ya(?) san?to ?r^ Siddhasanasuri ?r^(?) Vikrama(?) 2. bhadr?saha draja(?) sakha?ga?aputtra suta som?j? s^tala e(?)s^?ha usas dra bhaya s^havasan?th? (raralu?) 3. padamadgarap?la | deh?suta naradeva (ka?) dh^j? | prat? (?) kya(ka?)lpy?? je gamala {ma?gala} || The date has been tested as corresponding to AD 1292, February 24th, sunday. The language should be a kind of early Gujarati, but on order to get a better idea I need to see several inscriptions of this type, but in Italy libraries are not so well endowed with... Moreover, I add the scanty bibliography available to me at moment: Deo, S.B. (1956) The History of Jaina Monachism from Inscriptions and Literature, Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute, XVI (June 1954-March 1955). Poona. Halder, R.R. (1928) Inscription of the Time of Hammir of Ranthambhor Dated (V.S.) 1345, Epigraphia Indica, XIX (1927-28), pp. 45-52. Calcutta. Jain, K.C. (1972) Ancient Cities and Towns of Rajasthan. Delhi. Somani, R.V. (1982) Jaina Inscription of Rajasthan. Jaipur. Suri, C.L. (1968) Dhanta Image Inscription of Paramara Somasimha, Vikrama 1277, Epigraphia Indica, XXXVII (1967-68), pp. 209-11. Tiwari, M.N.P. (1983) Elements of Jaina Iconography. Varanasi. Trivedi, H.V. (1991) Inscriptions of the Paramaras, Chandellas, Kachchhapaghatas and Two Minor Dynasties (Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. VII), 2 voll. New Delhi. As attachment you will find a short note (in Italian language) on the small item, written in McIntosh - Microsoft Word 5.1. Any kind of suggestion and emprovement of the study - through bibliographical material for instance - well be greatly wellcome! Many thanks. Riccardo Garbini. sincerely yours,riccardo -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Jaina_inscription.doc Type: application/mac-binhex40 Size: 16749 bytes Desc: not available URL: From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Tue May 19 05:50:31 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 01:50:31 -0400 Subject: "vELAppArppAn2": potter-priest or non-sacrificing brahmin? Message-ID: <161227038894.23782.12260704976055200288.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 98-05-18 21:04:42 EDT, GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU writes: << The village name is vE.laan cEri in the suburban Madras. >> This place well-known to IIT Madras students (it is bordering the IIT campus) is known as vELa/AccEri today. In the inscriptions its name is given as vELiccEri. I have thought about this. It is possible for vELir cEri > vELiccEri. I did not pursue it further since I wanted items more directly comparable to vELAn2/r. Regards S. Palaniappan From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Tue May 19 06:00:14 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 02:00:14 -0400 Subject: literature on commentarial style Message-ID: <161227038896.23782.9774319711643997057.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 98-05-19 00:24:01 EDT, adrian.burton at ANU.EDU.AU writes: << Can anyone direct me to *any* discussion of the traditional style used by commentators ( i.e., the literary style employed by the writers of bhaashya, Tiikaa, TippaNii etc.). >> If you are interested in a discussion of the commentatorial prose style in Tamil, Kamil Zvelebil has a major chapter on it in The Smile of Murugan. Regards S. Palaniappan From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Tue May 19 01:48:57 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 06:48:57 +0500 Subject: prayojana of treatises Message-ID: <161227038878.23782.18340155916314235580.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 12:04 AM 5/19/98 +0200, you wrote: >There does not seem to be much question that a prayojanam is a necessary >condition for action (prav.rttya.ngam, prav.rttihetu.h). But it seems that >some authors disagreed about how the statement of the prayojanam serves to >induce one to engage (prav.rtti) with the text. For many Buddhist authors, >at any rate, the statement of the prayojana (along with the subject matter >and the relation between them) can at best serve only to engender a doubt >in the listener/reader. So the question becomes whether and how doubt can >motivate action. On Funayama's reading, Arca.ta does not accept that doubt >can motivate action, but rather thinks that action is based only on >pramaa.na. Thus for Arca.ta, the reason for stating the prayojanam at the >beginning of the treatise is merely to dispell the idea that the treatise >has no purpose at all (since it is a well known principle that speech >without a purpose is not worthy of being either expounded or listened to). > > Doubt can produce action which will tend to remove the doubt. Taking the rajjusarpabhrAnti of advaitins You see in dim light something which looks like a snake. Does this not motivate you to bring a light and ascertain whether it is indeed a snake or something else. regards, sarma. From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Tue May 19 11:23:53 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 07:23:53 -0400 Subject: Horses (words, archaeology) In-Reply-To: <199805112120.OAA28148@dry.jps.net> Message-ID: <161227038901.23782.14420322555115505528.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Since the semester is over, a few points on the ongoing discussion: In answer several contributors, last: Edwin Bryant and: 11 May 1998, Paul K. Manansala: > what are the origins for the words for horse in Sanskrit. > Ghota seems somewhat similar to Yenesei-Ostyak "kuta" and even > Austronesian "kud(j)a". I doubt the etymology of ghoTa < guurd. It does not mean 'to jump' in Vedic. ghoTa is first attested only in the Vedic Suutras. However, S. Dravidian has kutiray 'horse'. This has been borrowed into Koraput Munda as *kuXrtag, (Zide and Zide 1976, 1331) T changes in Skt.) It has been compared with Elamite kuti 'to bear, carry' , kutira 'bearer' (McAlpin 1981:147-8; Southworth 1979:181, DED 1711). But as Prof. Krishnamurti has pointed out in this list, the Elamite-Dravidian connection is open to (many) questions. Dravidian, Munda, Nahali and Tibeto-Burmese also have other words (hullii, sadom, maav, rta etc.). Some *may* have been local epithets ("racer" etc.). Or, the horse can have been introduced by various people several times and from different directions. For example, *if* it should turn out that the speakers of Proto-Dravidian made it (out of Central Asia/Iran) straight for the Deccan, via Sindh, Gujarat, Maharastra, as some think. And there can have been adaptations of a earlier word for 'hemione' (half-ass) which looks very much like a horse -- as is supposed to have happened for Drav. hullii: (O.)Tam. ivuLi 'horse' and Brahui (h)ullii 'horse' < 'hemione' (Burrow already in 1972; see DED 500). MORE IMPORTANTLY: That the domesticated horse (equus caballus) has been INTRODUCED into South Asia only late is clear *even* when reading Bokonyi who believed in the existence of true horses in some Indus finds (Surkodata) . He says: "horses reached the Indian subcontinent in an already domesticated form coming from the Inner Asiatic horse domestication centers." *Well recorded and stratified* finds of TRUE horse bones first occur in the Northern Kachi plain of Sindh/E. Baluchistan (c. 1700 BC; cf. also the contemporary Pirak figurines of horses and camels). All others belong to hemiones (equus hemionus khur, the khara? half-ass), not to true horses (equus caballus), see Meadow & Patel, 1997. Meadow and Patel deny the existence of the true horse in any well documented level of the Indus civilization. All "finds" are from unclear horizons or have not been tested carefully enough to distinguish between horses and hemiones. See detailed discussion in : South Asian Studies 13, 1997, 297-318, with papers by Bokonyi, Meadow and Patel, Anthony and the journal editor. (NB, ad personam: for those who who have alleged here some time ago that I do not listen to archaeological evidence: well, R. Meadow and I have been teaching a class precisely on this topic TOGETHER for the third time now since 1991: we systematically compare archaeological and textual evidence, which normally is not done or at least not to that extent. -- Jim Shaffer simply says he wants to neglect textual evidence as he does not find things in his arch. record that the texts talk about: thus, monologue is possible, dialogue is not.) > Does anyone accept asva > equus? As Mr. Vidal said: Nobody for the last 100 years or so. But even Schleicher (1868) had IE *akva- not IE. *as'va (now S.S. Misra has taken back some steps beyond this and reconstructs IE * as'va-!! I would like to see more cases in other languages where sh becomes k...) Nowdays we reconstruct, after the discovery of the laryngeal sounds (predicted a hundred years ago) IE *Hek'wo- (with largyngeal h1) All of this is nicely summed up in M. Mayrhofer, Etymologisches Woerterbuch des Altindoarischen, 1986-1996, which one should at least consult before making outlandish claims. Of course, Mayrh. also reports uncertainties about the IE root underlying *Hek'wo-s. In addition, some have pointed out that the declination of *Hek'wo- is younger (IE o-stem) than that of cow and sheep (u and i stems; "cow" even has the very old IE dissimilation shared with "heaven" in the acc. sing: *gwo:wm > gwo:m > Skt. ga:m; *dye:wm > *dye:m >skt. dya:m) That *could* mean that the word for horse was taken over only in middle or late (but still COMMON) proto-IE from a neighboring language. (more about riding & chariots separately). Finally, > According to Indian tradition, the domesticated horse originated in > the east during the Churning of the Milky Ocean. All of this mythology is of course quite useless as it re-tells and re-elaborates the much earlier Vedic versions where the horse was born from the ocean, from the tear of Prajapati, etc. That tradition alone indicates that horse lore (the As'vin!!!, diskuroi, the 2 horse(-faced) ancestors of all Anglo-Saxons: Hengist and Horsa, etc.) is firmly rooted in Indo_Aryan and Iranian myth Thanks to Elliot M. Stern, whose ability to trace ;saastra citations I have now admired for a long time, for confirming what I recalled concerning the line prayojanam anuddi;sya na mando 'pi pravartate. He saved me a trip to the bookshelves. The discussion reminds me of questions I have meaning to ask. Is anyone working on a critical edition of any of Kumaarila's works? Does anyone have computer/electronic/digitized versions of any of Kumaarila's works? -- ashok aklujkar From aklujkar at UNIXG.UBC.CA Tue May 19 16:23:39 1998 From: aklujkar at UNIXG.UBC.CA (Ashok Aklujkar) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 08:23:39 -0800 Subject: T. Venkatacharya address Message-ID: <161227038912.23782.7868396529405742067.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Professor T. Venkatacharya 5 Salinger Court, Willowdale, North York, Ontario Canada M2J 3R8 I do not think he has any e-mail address. >Does anyone know the mailing or emailing address of Professor T. >Venkatacharya in Toronto? Thanks. > Madhav Deshpande From emstern at NNI.COM Tue May 19 12:45:04 1998 From: emstern at NNI.COM (Elliot Stern) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 08:45:04 -0400 Subject: prayojana of treatises In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19980519000411.007563c8@pop-server.unil.ch> Message-ID: <161227038903.23782.17683605271363099674.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Sara McClintock said: >Thanks also to Ashok Aklujkar for various good ideas for places to look for >discussions of the importance of stating the prayojana. The reminder to >check the discussion in Haribhadra's commentary on the Abhisamayaala.mkaara >was a good one. The quotation mentioned first by Devarakonda Sarma does not >appear to be found in the "Slokavaartika. > Though I have trashed the message, I hope I recall correctly that the text in question here is: prayojanamanuddiZya na mandopi pravartate. This is indeed ZlokavArttika, sambandhAkSepaparihAra vs. 55ab. Elliot M. Stern 552 South 48th Street Philadelphia, PA 19143-2029 USA telephone: 215 747 6204 From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Tue May 19 15:46:39 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 08:46:39 -0700 Subject: Horses (words, archaeology) Message-ID: <161227038916.23782.5451571969203341359.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---Michael Witzel wrote: > Or, the horse can have been introduced by various people several> times and from different directions. For example, *if* it should turn out > that the speakers of Proto-Dravidian made it (out of Central Asia/Iran)> straight for the Deccan, via Sindh, Gujarat, Maharastra, as some think.> And there can have been adaptations of a earlier word for 'hemione' > (half-ass) which looks very much like a horse -- as is supposed to have> happened for Drav. hullii: (O.)Tam. ivuLi 'horse' and Brahui (h)ullii > 'horse' < 'hemione' (Burrow already in 1972; see DED 500). A comment on the suffix -ul.i may be relevant. -ul.i an affix that denotes a person or beast following an occupation or being possessed of, e.g. at.t.ul.i (a hunting animal), eggul.i (a rustic or low person; a bashful person); oggul.i: a joining, mass, multitude; dondul.i: a mass, a crowd, a throng; jan:gul.i: a mass, an assemblage, a herd; jan:gul.iga: name of a class or caste of people (Ka.); ul.iga an affix denoting a man who lives on or by, e.g. de_vul.iga (an attendant upon an idol); man.n.ul.iga (one who is engaged in earth-work)(Ka.lex.) cf.u_l.iga serice, work (Tu.) The suffix in the words, ivul.i (Tamil), hulli_ (Bra_hui) should therefore, be interpreted in terms of the usefulness of the 'hemione' (or the Arab horse?)for carrying loads over land. May be not to land on a chariot taxi ca. 1700 B.C. The question is: what do the phonemes: iv- and h- (proto-laryngeal?) connote in Dravidian? I would revert to the more important subject of sarasvati dating in a separate posting. I am happy that there is some recognition of the importance of sarasvati river (both locus and secular sequence of desiccation of a mighy perennial flow from molten snows) for objective appraisal of the linguistic/archaeological evidence. Regards, Kalyanaraman == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Tue May 19 17:04:55 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 09:04:55 -0800 Subject: Horses (words, archaeology) Message-ID: <161227038914.23782.2889814248859169734.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel > Since the semester is over, a few points on the ongoing discussion: > In answer several contributors, last: Edwin Bryant and: 11 May 1998, Paul > K. Manansala: > > > what are the origins for the words for horse in Sanskrit. > > Ghota seems somewhat similar to Yenesei-Ostyak "kuta" and even > > Austronesian "kud(j)a". > > I doubt the etymology of ghoTa < guurd. It does not mean 'to jump' > in Vedic. ghoTa is first attested only in the Vedic Suutras. > Interestingly, ghoTa generally replaced other Sanskrit terms for horse. The modern words ghora, kura, ghur, etc., in the vernaculars are believed to have derived from ghoTa. Wasn't ghoTa originally used more to describe the domesticated horse? > However, S. Dravidian has kutiray 'horse'. > This has been borrowed into Koraput Munda as *kuXrtag, (Zide and Zide > 1976, 1331) T changes in Skt.) > > It has been compared with Elamite kuti 'to bear, carry' , kutira 'bearer' > (McAlpin 1981:147-8; Southworth 1979:181, DED 1711). But as Prof. > Krishnamurti has pointed out in this list, the Elamite-Dravidian > connection is open to (many) questions. > Hmmm, this would suggest a domesticated horse, but then again the questions on the Elamite-Dravidian relationship. > Dravidian, Munda, Nahali and Tibeto-Burmese also have other words (hullii, > sadom, maav, rta etc.). Some *may* have been local epithets ("racer" > etc.). Or, the horse can have been introduced by various people several > times and from different directions. For example, *if* it should turn out > that the speakers of Proto-Dravidian made it (out of Central Asia/Iran) > straight for the Deccan, via Sindh, Gujarat, Maharastra, as some think. > Then we have at least one alternative to the IE introduction theory. Other possibilities are introduction by Altaic, Austro-Asiatic or Tibeto-Burman speakers. Or local independent domestication. > And there can have been adaptations of a earlier word for 'hemione' > (half-ass) which looks very much like a horse -- as is supposed to have > happened for Drav. hullii: (O.)Tam. ivuLi 'horse' and Brahui (h)ullii > 'horse' < 'hemione' (Burrow already in 1972; see DED 500). > Most of the Munda languages and even Khasi use variants like gura, kura, etc., that are almost certainly related to other North Indian terms. Even Tai and Austronesian have similar sounding words. > MORE IMPORTANTLY: > > That the domesticated horse (equus caballus) has been INTRODUCED into > South Asia only late is clear *even* when reading Bokonyi who believed in > the existence of true horses in some Indus finds (Surkodata) . > Still this would pooh-pooh the argument about horses supposedly not showing up in IVC art. Also, it muddies up the question of how the domesticated Indian horse such as Equus Sivalensis came about in India. The latter is distinguished morphologically by large upper premolars, pre-orbital depression and only 17 pairs of ribs. Such anatomical divergence only comes about through long periods of evolution or selective interbreeding. So one way or another we seem stuck with the idea that there were indigenous horse breeds. The idea of diffusion is stronger if horses were not indigenous to India. > He says: "horses reached the Indian subcontinent in an already > domesticated form coming from the Inner Asiatic horse domestication > centers." > But this is not a universal opinion. SR Rao, whose 'decipherment' work doesn't really impress me, has compiled much of the research on horses at Harappan levels. > > Finally, > > According to Indian tradition, the domesticated horse originated in > > the east during the Churning of the Milky Ocean. > > All of this mythology is of course quite useless as it re-tells and > re-elaborates the much earlier Vedic versions where the horse was born > from the ocean, from the tear of Prajapati, etc. That tradition alone > indicates that horse lore (the As'vin!!!, diskuroi, the 2 horse(-faced) > ancestors of all Anglo-Saxons: Hengist and Horsa, etc.) is firmly rooted > in Indo_Aryan and Iranian myth George Thompson and others (and add material culture: words such as axle > etc., borrowed by Dravidian, see DED). Sorry, but there seem to be too many assumptions in this passage. The similarities you mention are vague and late. The ancient Greek texts mention Indian philsophers in Greece, and we know that Gypsies may have visited Europe at an early age, so most of this evidence is really convincing. None of this necessarily hearkens back to proto-IE, although the Avestan material is certainly different than the rest. The question is why would the "Aryans" have traditions of horses being domesticated by Asuras or coming from the east? Why would domesticated horses be raised on rice? Doesn't jibe with the traditional idea of horses being introduced by pastoral nomadic Indo-Europeans. Also, V. Rao raised many interesting points about the differences in technology used in regards to Indian and other horses that contradict the normal horse=Indo-Aryans argument. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From mmdesh at UMICH.EDU Tue May 19 13:46:50 1998 From: mmdesh at UMICH.EDU (Madhav Deshpande) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 09:46:50 -0400 Subject: question? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038907.23782.8024184717922521480.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Does anyone know the mailing or emailing address of Professor T. Venkatacharya in Toronto? Thanks. Madhav Deshpande From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Tue May 19 10:00:46 1998 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 11:00:46 +0100 Subject: [Publication] Handlist of Sanskrit MSS II Message-ID: <161227038899.23782.6224515537255081373.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I am pleased to announce the publication of the following book: Author = Dominik Wujastyk Title = A Handlist of Sanskrit and Prakrit Manuscripts in the Library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, Volume II. Date = 1998 Place = London Publisher= Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine ISBN = 0-869835-99-9 Supplier = for copies, please contact Ms Tracy Tillotson, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE, UK. Tel: +44 171 611 8486 FAX: +44 171 611 8545 (marked for the attention of Ms Tillotson) email: t.tillotson at wellcome.ac.uk This Handlist contains brief descriptions of about 1000 manuscripts from the Indic collection of the Wellcome Institute. The subject matter of the MSS ranges across almost all sastras from alankara to yoga; this particular volume of the Handlist has particularly numerous items in the categories of itihasa, jyotisa, puja, purana, stotra, and tantra. Volume I of the handlist is still available; copies are being sold at a heavily discounted price, and are available from Ms Tillotson as above. All the best, Dominik -- Dr Dominik Wujastyk, FAX: +44 171 611 8545 Wellcome Institute for URL: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/ the History of Medicine, Email: d.wujastyk at ucl.ac.uk Wellcome Trust, 183 Euston Road, Trust URL: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk London NW1 2BE, England. First Rule of History: History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each other. From sns at IX.NETCOM.COM Tue May 19 16:46:51 1998 From: sns at IX.NETCOM.COM (Sn. Subrahmanya) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 11:46:51 -0500 Subject: Sarasvati Message-ID: <161227038923.23782.5109855716124971318.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > I am happy that there is some recognition of the importance of >sarasvati river (both locus and secular sequence of desiccation of a >mighy perennial flow from molten snows) for objective appraisal of the >linguistic/archaeological evidence. > >Regards, >Kalyanaraman > I agree.....the dating of when Sarasvati stopped flowing from the mountains to the sea is critical because that would make the Rgveda prior to it. Hope that Prof Witzel comments on this issue. I would also like to request Mr. Houben to add this work to his list: J Harmatta. The Emergence of the Indo-Iranians: The Indo-Iranian languages. History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Vol 1. Ed: A.H.Dani and V.M Masson. Regards, Subrahmanya From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Tue May 19 17:55:04 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 11:55:04 -0600 Subject: literature on commentarial style Message-ID: <161227038925.23782.17185012083580933132.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> A ninth century prose (Have to see what date Zvelebil gives), first available prose commentary in tamil, is described in: David C. Buck, K. Paramasivam (Translators) Nakkiiran2aar, The story of stolen love: a translation of kaLaviyal en2Ra iRaiyan2aar akapporuL with commentary. Scholar's press, 1997, 323 p. This treats PaaNDik kOvai and its commentary which predates TirukkOvaiyaar of Saint Maa.nikkavaacakar. Regards, N. Ganesan From athr at LOC.GOV Tue May 19 17:43:02 1998 From: athr at LOC.GOV (Allen W Thrasher) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 13:43:02 -0400 Subject: Yugapurana ed. Mankad taken Message-ID: <161227038929.23782.4972910415034979577.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Our members are really alert. For the Yugapurana offered on exchange David Nelson for Penn beats out Jim Nye for Chicago by five minutes (taking into account the time zone difference) and David Magier to Columbia by ten minutes. This is acquisitions librarianship to Olympic standards of microtime differences, fellows. Allen Allen W. Thrasher, Ph.D. Senior Reference Librarian Southern Asia Section Asian Division Library of Congress 101 Independence Ave., S.E. Washington, DC 20540-4714 tel. (202) 707-3732 fax (202) 707-1724 email: athr at loc.gov The opinions expressed do not represent those of my employer. From adrian.burton at ANU.EDU.AU Tue May 19 04:23:03 1998 From: adrian.burton at ANU.EDU.AU (Adrian Burton) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 14:23:03 +1000 Subject: literature on commentarial style Message-ID: <161227038892.23782.15405777805945749969.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Indologists, Can anyone direct me to *any* discussion of the traditional style used by commentators ( i.e., the literary style employed by the writers of bhaashya, Tiikaa, TippaNii etc.). I would be looking for: articles (e.g. something like Staal's "Scientific Sanskrit"), books (perhaps introductions to academic presentations of such and such a commentary), or traditional (Indian) analyses of the components of the commentarial style. merci d'avance, Adrian Burton From gthursby at RELIGION.UFL.EDU Tue May 19 19:01:24 1998 From: gthursby at RELIGION.UFL.EDU (Gene R. Thursby) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 15:01:24 -0400 Subject: Web site on Hindu worship Message-ID: <161227038927.23782.6716277076281794633.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Two national museums of Asian art in the USA -- the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, both part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. -- recently have developed a set of web resources on Hindu worship to complement the museum exhibition "Puja: Expressions of Hindu Devotion." On the web is an online guide for educators that includes include information on Hindu deities, video footage of worship, lesson plans for teachers, and proposed classroom activities for students. A response form is provided at the web site, and Smithsonian staff are requesting feedback from scholars, teachers, students, and the general public. The exhibit and resources are intended to be accessible to younger as well as advanced students. The URL http://www.si.edu/asia/ opens to Sackler/Freer main page. A hyperlink to http://www.si.edu/asia/puja/start.htm takes one to the beginning of the "Puja" online exhibit and the multi-part guide for educators. Gene Thursby U. of Florida From roheko at MSN.COM Tue May 19 13:32:57 1998 From: roheko at MSN.COM (Rolf Heiner Koch) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 15:32:57 +0200 Subject: literature on commentarial style Message-ID: <161227038905.23782.13023501263459782904.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I work actually on Jain-cUrNis, TIkAs, VivaraNas. That is the commentators like JinadAsa and Haribhadra comment upon AryA-memoric-stanzas thereby using a fixed scientific system for interpretation: they apply so-called anuyogadvAras for the interpretation of each term provided in the stanza. The system for applying anuyogadvAras is transmitted in the so-called AnuyogadvAra-sUtra. The basis for all these seems to be borrowed partly from the NyAya-system (possibly!!qde) Mfg RHK roheko at msn.com -----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht----- Von: Adrian Burton An: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Datum: Dienstag, 19. Mai 1998 06:23 Betreff: literature on commentarial style >Dear Indologists, > >Can anyone direct me to *any* discussion of the traditional style used by >commentators ( i.e., the literary style employed by the writers of >bhaashya, Tiikaa, TippaNii etc.). > >I would be looking for: > > articles (e.g. something like Staal's "Scientific Sanskrit"), > > books (perhaps introductions to academic presentations of such and >such a commentary), > > or traditional (Indian) analyses of the components of the >commentarial style. > >merci d'avance, > >Adrian Burton > From roheko at MSN.COM Tue May 19 14:23:08 1998 From: roheko at MSN.COM (Rolf Heiner Koch) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 16:23:08 +0200 Subject: Jain inscription Message-ID: <161227038909.23782.17924803288141217599.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> If you could use any of the known system for transcription like the Kyoto-Harvard-convention, not sending Apple-documents and no BINHEX-documents, just writing a simple text-formatted document we could help you probably. Italian language is not known to all. Mfg RHK roheko at msn.com -----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht----- Von: riccardo garbini An: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Datum: Dienstag, 19. Mai 1998 02:08 Betreff: Re: Jain inscription Dear John Smith, I have been really happy to receive your response. Regarding the inscription, I need comparative material - mainly epigraphical one - to give an adequate historical and linguistical collocation to this small inscription. In the meanwhile, let me offer you the small results of such a study in progress. Paleographically, the inscription's characters fit very well with the specimens from Sirohi district belonging to XIII-XIV century. The engraving is rather rough, so that it shows the secondary importance of the commitment. The tentave reading so far detected by me is as follows: 1. siddham || sa?vat 1349 phagu?a ?udi 5 ravidivyo | u esa (?) y?cchaka kva(?) dh?c? ya(?) san?to ?r^ Siddhasanasuri ?r^(?) Vikrama(?) 2. bhadr?saha draja(?) sakha?ga?aputtra suta som?j? s^tala e(?)s^?ha usas dra bhaya s^havasan?th? (raralu?) 3. padamadgarap?la | deh?suta naradeva (ka?) dh^j? | prat? (?) kya(ka?)lpy?? je gamala {ma?gala} || The date has been tested as corresponding to AD 1292, February 24th, sunday. The language should be a kind of early Gujarati, but on order to get a better idea I need to see several inscriptions of this type, but in Italy libraries are not so well endowed with... Moreover, I add the scanty bibliography available to me at moment: Deo, S.B. (1956) The History of Jaina Monachism from Inscriptions and Literature, Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute, XVI (June 1954-March 1955). Poona. Halder, R.R. (1928) Inscription of the Time of Hammir of Ranthambhor Dated (V.S.) 1345, Epigraphia Indica, XIX (1927-28), pp. 45-52. Calcutta. Jain, K.C. (1972) Ancient Cities and Towns of Rajasthan. Delhi. Somani, R.V. (1982) Jaina Inscription of Rajasthan. Jaipur. Suri, C.L. (1968) Dhanta Image Inscription of Paramara Somasimha, Vikrama 1277, Epigraphia Indica, XXXVII (1967-68), pp. 209-11. Tiwari, M.N.P. (1983) Elements of Jaina Iconography. Varanasi. Trivedi, H.V. (1991) Inscriptions of the Paramaras, Chandellas, Kachchhapaghatas and Two Minor Dynasties (Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. VII), 2 voll. New Delhi. As attachment you will find a short note (in Italian language) on the small item, written in McIntosh - Microsoft Word 5.1. Any kind of suggestion and emprovement of the study - through bibliographical material for instance - well be greatly wellcome! Many thanks. Riccardo Garbini. From adrian.burton at ANU.EDU.AU Tue May 19 06:42:27 1998 From: adrian.burton at ANU.EDU.AU (Adrian Burton) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 16:42:27 +1000 Subject: literature on commentarial style Message-ID: <161227038897.23782.4498424602727267625.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 2:00 AM 19/5/98 -0400, Palaniappa wrote: > >If you are interested in a discussion of the commentatorial prose style in >Tamil, Kamil Zvelebil has a major chapter on it in The Smile of Murugan. > Thank you I shall persue that. However I am more immediately interested in the Classical Sanskrit tradition of commentary. From bagchee at MAILEXCITE.COM Tue May 19 16:20:44 1998 From: bagchee at MAILEXCITE.COM (Malay K. Bagchi) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 21:50:44 +0530 Subject: Roots of Ayurveda Message-ID: <161227038918.23782.13786932825515538746.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Indologists: The book ROOTS OF AYURVEDA by Dominik Wujastyk (published by Penguin India) is available with us at a price for US$25.00. The price includes free Air Mail shipping. For our sevaral catalogs on Ayurveda you may email us at service at bagchee.com Thank you. ================================================================================== Bagchee Associates Kalyan Nagar Pansila, West Bengal 743 180 Tel: +91-33-5532225 India Fax: +91-33-2482973 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Email: service at bagchee.com Web: http://www.bagchee.com ================================================================================== -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bagchee at MAILEXCITE.COM Tue May 19 16:23:45 1998 From: bagchee at MAILEXCITE.COM (Malay K. Bagchi) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 21:53:45 +0530 Subject: review indology Message-ID: <161227038921.23782.1076907938340218940.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> review indology ================================================================================== Bagchee Associates Kalyan Nagar Pansila, West Bengal 743 180 Tel: +91-33-5532225 India Fax: +91-33-2482973 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Email: service at bagchee.com Web: http://www.bagchee.com ================================================================================== -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Wed May 20 02:58:10 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 22:58:10 -0400 Subject: "vELAppArppAn2": potter-priest or non-sacrificing brahmin? Message-ID: <161227038932.23782.6840829606357133155.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 98-05-18 21:39:51 EDT, you write: << Is it clear from the Harappan artefacts that the professions of a potter and a blacksmith were differentiated at that time, ca. 3000 B.C.? >> I do not have access to Ratnagar's book now. When I am able to get it in the next couple of weeks, I shall check it. Regards S. Palaniappan From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Wed May 20 05:56:18 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Wed, 20 May 98 01:56:18 -0400 Subject: vyakarana, and Tamil brahmins going to Andhra Message-ID: <161227038934.23782.16872217801803567199.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Pursuing the Tamil-Telugu connections further, it was interesting for me to learn that Tamils have made contributions directly or indirectly towards Telugu developing its individual identity. According to Dr. C. R. Sarma's paper "Tamil-Telugu contacts: A Rich Segment of National Solidarity", "It is worth mentioning that either during the Pallava period or earlier, a branch of the Chola family had migrated to the Telugu region and ruled for a brief period at Renadu in Cuddappah district. It seems that their families had later migrated to Pakanadu, a part of the present Nellore district and they are distinctly termed as Telugu Cholas. We owe the earliest Telugu inscriptions to the Renadu Cholas." Later discussing the Chola-Vengi royal alliances, he says, "Due to these royal alliances, a good number of Tamil Brahmin families migrated to Vengi and permanently settled in different places of the Telugu country. It is significant that these families, though completely merged with the Andhras as years passed by are called by the term Dravida and the Arama Dravida, the Timila Dravida, the Puduru Dravida and others constitute the Dravida families." According to Telugu historian Vedam Venkataraya Sastry's paper, "The influence of Tamil on Kannada and Telugu", the word Telugu is found for the first time in the the records of Rajendra Chola and Rajadhiraja in their conflict with the Awestern Chalukyas of Kanchi. He adds, "It is to be noted with astonishment that the Kakatiyas did not encourage a single Telugu poet while the Telugu Colas alone did much to popularise Telugu after Rajaraja Narendra." Rajaraja Narendra of Vengi was Rajaraja Chola's grandson and was the patron of Telugu's Adikavi Nannayabhatta. According to Sastry, "His patron Rajaraja Narendra,a grandson of Rajaraja Cola lost his throne several times and had to stay at his maternal grand-father's place. His records are found at Tiruvaiyar. Nannaya should definitely have accompanied his patron on all such occasions. Rajaraja Narendra found peace only during the last ten years of of his life A.D. 1051-1061 when he got the Andhra Mahabharata to be composed." According to Sarma, "Nannaya had employed in his Mahabharata certain expressions which are very close to Tamil. Words like Enu (Yan-I), Kola (Kol- stick), Kittu (to approach) etc., are found in his work. Prhaps [sic] influenced by the Tamil literary tradition, he referred to the four-fold division of the Telugu poetry as Asu, Madhura, Chitra, and Vistara. Some of the later poets like Nannechoda, Palkuriki Somanatha, Sri Krishnadevaraya and others also had employed a few Tamil expressions and Tamil literary traditions as well. But all these references will come under the indirect contribution of the Tamils to Telugu literature." I would like to know if these views of Dr. C. R. Sarma and Vedam Venkataraya Sastry presented during the Vth international Tamil conference are also accepted by other Telugu scholars. Regards S. Palaniappan From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Wed May 20 00:51:50 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Wed, 20 May 98 05:51:50 +0500 Subject: sannyasins, pollution, death. Message-ID: <161227038931.23782.1405276580589844733.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Sometime back there was a discussion on this list of period impurity following birth and death. The following sloka from viSNupurANa may be of interest. bAlE dEzAntarasthE ca patitE ca munau mRtE sadyazzaucaM tathEcchAtO jalAgnyudbandhanAdiSu 3.13.17 On the death of a child, a person living in a far off country, a fallen person, a muni and people who committed suicide in water, fire or by rope; immediate purification. (Period of pollution nil). There is also a general discussion of period of impurity for the various castes in the above chapter. regards, sarma. From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Wed May 20 12:05:14 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Wed, 20 May 98 08:05:14 -0400 Subject: Hindi Studies (fwd) Message-ID: <161227038938.23782.15213108231778460999.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Could someone please answer the following question I got recently? Thanks, MW> ========================================================================== From: "R. MOHABEER" I am interested in studying Hindi at first degree level by distance learning method. Grateful if you could inform me if there is ny University in UK or elsewhere from where I could do it. Thanks With regards Raj From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Wed May 20 13:19:25 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Wed, 20 May 98 09:19:25 -0400 Subject: Horse argument Message-ID: <161227038942.23782.1540191744804601403.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sun, 10 May 1998, Vidhyanath Rao wrote: > Firstly, the similarities in the rituals cannot be taken as proof that > the rituals go back to PIE days. how so? the Roman and the Indian horse sacrifice and the W. Ural (Volga) horse burials have a lot of items in common that put the "asvamedha" back to 1700 BC at least. Add the myths... The Celtic (Irish) ritual is somewhat different but it has the same "royal" intentions. > True chariots cannot be dated back before > 1800 BCE. [the Shintasha vehicle cannot have been very maneuverable: > See Littauer and Crouell, Antiquity '96] . This is just one example dug up, so far. But it is important to note that the narrow width of the axle still indicates origins from the older load bearing wagon (which cannot have a wide axle!) and thus not from a *supposed* (see below) more developed Near eastern chariot. Also, the E. Ural case may be archaic (relict) while other areas may have advanced more. More evidence on chariots, for the time beeing, in Kuzmina (South Asian Archaeology 1993, ed. by A. Parpola et al., Hesinki 1994) Importantly not only do we find a chariot at Sintashta, East of the Urals, but we should also note the combination with "Indian/Roman type" horse sacrifice and the Vedic Dadhyanc motif (bones of human body with horse head) in one grave near Kujbyshev, West of the Urals, near the Volga. That is AT LEAST suggestive for IE/Vedic-related ritual and thought. The wheel ( IE *kwekwelo- from Sumerian gilgul?) may have been invented in Mesopotamia, but note how carefully Littauer & Crouwell phrase their statement about a Near Eastern origin of the chariot: "Does it not seem more likely that the horse's introduction to draught in the Near East stimulated the local wheel-wrights to invent a lighter wheel for the long existing two-wheelers than a people without a history of two-wheeled vehicles and with an already superior personal conveyance - the mounted horse - should find reason suddenly to invent such a vehicle in its entirety?" In other words, they don't know. Many scenarios are possible to explain the sudden occurence of the two-wheel, spoke-weeled vehicles in the steppes. One has been given: development from pre-existing 4 wheel ox wagon (with solid wheels, Skt. anas). Others include adaptation and improvement fom a Near Eastern solid-wheel status "chariot" (Tell Agrab, is it from c. 2800 BC??), which in C.-L.'s publication looks more like a bike than a chariot -- and is NOT drawn by horses! The earliest non-steppe chariot picture comes from Kultepe, Turkey, c. early 2nd mill. BC, thus roughly from the same time as Sintashta. It has 2 horses(?) and spoked wheels (with 4 spokes). Importantly, -- and that is always neglected in the discussion -- not all Vedic chariots will have been status symbols, though the later, post-Rgvedic RITUAL chariot was so vulnerable that it had to be transported on a wagon before use, just like our race cars. But there also was the vipatha chariot for rough, cross-country driving! And how do you account for the traffic accident in Jaiminiya Brahmana in which a boy was dismembered and killed: some people must have driven at high speed through a settlement... Obviously we need much more evidence to settle all these questions. > So the similarities in how > chariot races were integrated into rituals cannot go back to PIE days, > but must instead be ascribed to diffusion or parallel evolution. The Greek one (in the Iliad) is too close to the Indian ones to be simply diffused across a lot of space and time (descr. in Max Sparreboom, Chariots): At least Late COMMON IE (note the many grammatical correspondences in Greek and Vedic/Old Iranian - also by "diffusion" from India??). There is of course much more to it: the uneven number of turns with the Mitanni, the COUNTER-clockwise turning (continued, this time probably via Rome, to this day in our sport stadiums) etc. : all by diffusion? > Why should other details related to horses be any different? But note that the word for chariot is a specialization of IE *reth2o- "wheel", found only in Indo-Iranian (thus c. 2000 BC, see separate posting): This time, the Greeks have NOT taken over this term by diffusion/osmosis! (And they separated from the IIr.s long before the Mature Indus Civ.) > Second: David Anthony is certain that Sredny Stog (sp?) culture used > bits to control horses, based on evidence of tooth wear from a horse > found there. One horse, yes, and somewhat problematic with regard to its date: maybe 3000 rather than 4000 BC), see South Asian Archaeology 13, 1997. >However, Arrian and other Hellenistic sources clearly that > the bit was unknown in India at the time of Alexander. This is SIMPLY not correct: Arrian's description, (Indike 16) ALSO includes a pin/peg/bolt : obelos (a word next to obeliskos, for bit), in addition to the nose band with inside-turned "not too sharp thorn/pins" (kentron), which" force the horse to obey" (Arrian). One should also take a look at Sanchi/Bharhut where there are many sculputures of such horses and chariots! Maybe two different traditions are mixed here. The Iranians had the bit much earlier than the time Arrian describes. All of this is not unlikely if you compare even modern donkey management (outside America/ W. Europe: often still without bit or nose band) and that of bitted horses (in two styles, the Spanish/Hungarian-"Western" and the "English" one). They exist side by side. Similar accounts by Littauer & Crouwel for the Near East. > Their description > of Indian horse control mechanism indicates the use of a dropped nose > band. This is supported by references to `nasor yama.h' [note the dual: > nasor must mean `at the >nostrils<'] and horses bound at the nose [for > true bits, the band(s) would be higher up.] See above... > If Indo-Aryans and their ancestors had unbroken association with > domesticated horse, why did they give up the bit for the inferior > nose band control? again, argumentum ex nihilo. We need more evidence.But Swat from 1700 BC onwards has horse furnishings as far as I remember (needs exact check). Also there probably was more than one Indo_Aryan immigration/trickling in: even the Yajurveda Samhita texts still speak of the need to watch one's back and not just to move eastwards... Multiple traditions are possible. ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm phone: 1- 617 - 495 3295 (voice & messages), 496 8570, fax 617 - 496 8571 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- my direct line (also for messages) : 617- 496 2990 From gae at BODLEY.OX.AC.UK Wed May 20 08:37:16 1998 From: gae at BODLEY.OX.AC.UK (Gillian Evison) Date: Wed, 20 May 98 09:37:16 +0100 Subject: Indian Institute Library, Oxford UK closed 29thJune-4th July 1998 Message-ID: <161227038936.23782.15511149848932014590.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The Indian Institute Library will be closed for essential electrical work from Monday 29th June - Saturday 4th July. Services during this period will be extremely limited and library users are advised to avoid these dates if at all possible. Readers will be able to request a limited number of books to be transferred to the Bodleian Library Oriental Reading Room by prior arrangement with Indian Institute Library staff. A restricted fetching service from the Indian Institute Library to the Oriental Reading Room may be available at certain times of day but cannot be guaranteed. Staff apologize in advance for the disruption and inconvenience to Indian Institute Library Readers. Any queries about the closure should be directed to the official library contact addresses: Indian Institute Library, Bodleian Library, Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3BG : Phone: 01865 277081 : Fax: 01865 277182 : Email: indian.institute at bodley.ox.ac.uk. Dr. Gillian Evison (Indian Institute Librarian) The Indian Institute Library A department of the Bodleian Library Oxford OX1 3BG Tel. 01865 277083 Fax. 01865 277182 From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Wed May 20 16:11:17 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Wed, 20 May 98 10:11:17 -0600 Subject: SI mss. libraries Message-ID: <161227038957.23782.16027896006292104526.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Y. ManikaNDan and KuDavAsal Balasubramaniam work at Tanjore Sarasvati Mahal. Regards, N. Ganesan From sohail at U.WASHINGTON.EDU Wed May 20 17:45:49 1998 From: sohail at U.WASHINGTON.EDU (Naseem Hines) Date: Wed, 20 May 98 10:45:49 -0700 Subject: Hindi Studies (fwd) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038959.23782.16541969773561382523.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> For distance learning of the Hindi Language Mr. Mohabeer may contact the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They have a program in place where a class may be taught at Chapel Hill and at the State University of North Carolina simultaneously. I do not know if this resource could be tapped into and what the rules and regulations might be. On Wed, 20 May 1998, Michael Witzel wrote: > Could someone please answer the following question I got recently? > Thanks, > MW> > =========================================================================== > From: "R. MOHABEER" > > > I am interested in studying Hindi at first degree level by distance > learning method. > > Grateful if you could inform me if there is ny University in UK or > elsewhere from where I could do it. > > Thanks > With regards > Raj > From RSharma144 at AOL.COM Wed May 20 14:48:10 1998 From: RSharma144 at AOL.COM (RSharma144) Date: Wed, 20 May 98 10:48:10 -0400 Subject: SI Mss. Libraries Message-ID: <161227038953.23782.7548429945695732256.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hi, I visited the Sarasvati Mahal a year and a half ago and I do have some literature lying around. I will have look and see I can send any names, addresses and phone numbers your way. The library is very small and understaffed and they are quite strict about letting people view their holdings. I will get back in touch with you. Anita Sharma From erpet at COMP.CZ Wed May 20 12:00:42 1998 From: erpet at COMP.CZ (Petr Mares) Date: Wed, 20 May 98 14:00:42 +0200 Subject: None Message-ID: <161227038940.23782.17678570618261704069.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Colleagues Recently I have read article on the net called "Essentials of Buddhism". The article says following: "It also occurs in the Buddhist Mahayana scripture, the Lankavatara sutra, which purports to be an account of the revelation of the true Religion by Gautama, the Buddha, when he visited Ceylon and there gave discourses to the King of the island, Ravana, and his wife, Mahamati. Does anybody heard that Ravena's wife was Mahamati or is it mentioned anywhere. I have seen few manuscripts of Lankavatara in Sanskrit as well as Chinese and all of them treat Mahamati as the leader of Bodhisattvas, but I have not seen anything about him (her?) being Ravana's wife. PS Does anybody know about publication of any Lankavatara manuscripts except the Newari published by Lokesh Chandra. Or does anybody knows where are they located? I am trying to translate the scripture for past few years and any material or information would be highly appreciated. Thank you Sincerely Petr Mares lengqie at gmx.net From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Wed May 20 21:23:39 1998 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Wed, 20 May 98 14:23:39 -0700 Subject: Indus - Sarasvati etc. Message-ID: <161227038961.23782.4557125308756938153.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> List members might be interested in seeing the May 8, 1998 issue of Frontline, a Chennai magazine. It carries an article by Ram Sharan Sharma of the Indian Council for Historical Reasearch (Delhi) on the Indus-Sarasvati debate(s). There is another very informative article on early (18th c.) German and Danish interest in Tamil studies. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Wed May 20 14:06:28 1998 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Wed, 20 May 98 15:06:28 +0100 Subject: Proposed changes to Velthuis Devanagari fonts. In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19980518142004.0093f220@pop-rocq.inria.fr> Message-ID: <161227038947.23782.475988514615845017.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Mon, 18 May 1998, Gerard Huet wrote: > Hello. While we are discussing changes to Velthuis Devanagari fonts, > I encountered problems with certain ligatures, whose horizontal space must > be somehow wrongly computed; it concerns kt, kl, ~nc, ~nj, j~n and ky. > Whenever such combination letters appear, TeX justification and alignments > are wrongly computed. In many years of using Velthuis's font, I have not observed this problem. Can you post the minimum file which demonstrates the problem clearly? This sort of thing can arise if you use TFM files which don't match the MF files; Velthuis's font did undergo an upgrade some years ago when the hyphenation feature was added. At that time it became necessary to delete the old fonts altogether, and the TFMs, and reinstall the new fonts. If you have a hybrid old/new system, you might get unpredictable results. All the best, Dominik -- Dr Dominik Wujastyk, FAX: +44 171 611 8545 Wellcome Institute for URL: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/ the History of Medicine, Email: d.wujastyk at ucl.ac.uk Wellcome Trust, 183 Euston Road, Trust URL: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk London NW1 2BE, England. First Rule of History: History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each other. From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Wed May 20 14:18:00 1998 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Wed, 20 May 98 15:18:00 +0100 Subject: Roots of Ayurveda In-Reply-To: <01bd8342$133d3320$1b3436ca@default> Message-ID: <161227038949.23782.12773929879344157574.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Tue, 19 May 1998, Malay K. Bagchi wrote: > The book ROOTS OF AYURVEDA by Dominik Wujastyk (published by Penguin > India) is available with us at a price for US$25.00. The price > includes free Air Mail shipping. I am very grateful to Bagchee for stocking my book, and for offering a convenient air-mail service. Residents or travellers passing through India in the near future are reminded that the local price in the subcontinent is Rs.250. Dominik From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Wed May 20 14:28:28 1998 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Wed, 20 May 98 15:28:28 +0100 Subject: SI Mss. Libraries In-Reply-To: <3562DC3A.2A38@zedat.fu-berlin.de> Message-ID: <161227038951.23782.481621409158832205.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I strongly suggest a visit to the GOML and SM libraries. It is the only sure way to get what you need. Take a good 35mm camera, and some good black-and-white film. The curator of MSS at GOML is Mr Soundarapandian, who is quite pleasant. All the best, Dominik -- Dr Dominik Wujastyk, FAX: +44 171 611 8545 Wellcome Institute for URL: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/ the History of Medicine, Email: d.wujastyk at ucl.ac.uk Wellcome Trust, 183 Euston Road, Trust URL: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk London NW1 2BE, England. First Rule of History: History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each other. From jneuss at ZEDAT.FU-BERLIN.DE Wed May 20 13:35:54 1998 From: jneuss at ZEDAT.FU-BERLIN.DE (Juergen Neuss) Date: Wed, 20 May 98 15:35:54 +0200 Subject: SI Mss. Libraries Message-ID: <161227038944.23782.12421235592928134667.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Indologists, for my present work I need copies of manuscripts, which are available in the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library (GOML), Madras (now: Chennai) and in the Maharaja Serfoji's Sarasvati Mahal Library, Thanjavur. I have written twice to both institutions, but have got only one reply from GOML, stating that they have no means to reproduce manuscripts. Now my requests: 1.) Is anybody in the possession of the exact addresses of these libraries, including the name of the present curator, or any other person responsible for the reproduction of mss. 2.) Does anybody have any experience in obtaining mss. from one of these institutions? Every info/suggestion is welcome. Thanks for reading jn -- Juergen Neuss Freie Universitaet Berlin Institut f?r Indische Philologie und Kunstgeschichte K?nigin-Luise-Str. 34a 14195 Berlin From mkv1 at YORK.AC.UK Wed May 20 10:53:46 1998 From: mkv1 at YORK.AC.UK (Mahendra Verma) Date: Wed, 20 May 98 15:53:46 +0500 Subject: Hindi Studies (fwd) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038955.23782.17815075849070190087.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Raj I can't think of any university / college in the UK where there is facility for a distance-learning programme in Hindi. The only place which does offer such a programme is The Hindi Directorate,Ministry of Education, Government of India, New Delhi. You should write to the Hindi Officer, The Indian High Commission, Aldwych,London for more details. Mahendra K vERMA LECTURER IN lINGUISTICS & HINDI From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Wed May 20 21:49:14 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Wed, 20 May 98 17:49:14 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.) In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19980513173016.015679a0@ix.netcom.com> Message-ID: <161227038963.23782.17970093855347161635.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Yes, the Sarasvati, Edwin: That really is an old horse (Oldham 1887, Raverty 1893, Wilhelmy 1959, Yash Pal 1984), and we should look into her mouth : For example, On 13 May 1998, Sn. Subrahmanya wrote: > It seems that people are unwilling or unable to recognize the importance of > the Sarasvati and its implications to the dating of the Vedas. > The dating of the Vedas will in turn affect the rest of the Indian > chronology and all of Indo-European studies. Really, all of IE? as if there were no early data from the Hittites and Mycenean Greeks.... (1900 BC onwards) Indeed, in the Rgveda, the Sarasvati is well known and highly praised in as a great stream. And, indeed, once it is called a river flowing from the mountains to the 'sea' samudra (RV 7.95.2, cf. 7.6.7), i.e. apparently in the Ghagghar-Hakra-Nara channel (see Oldham 1887, Raverty 1893!!), --- unless the whole passage is not a reminiscence of the E. Iranian Sarasvati (= Avestan: Haraxvaiti) and the great Hamum lake (Kangsaoiia, cf. also Avestan texts on Vourukasha), into which the E.Ir. rivers flow, as *sam-udra. NOTE that Sarasvati/Haraxvaiti mean "(river) having ponds", certainly not a good name for a mighty stream; that this must at least refer to a slow flowing river with many bends and u-shaped cut-off ponds, or it may be a river disappearing in the Iranian/Indian desert with many ponds in its lower course. However, the Brahmana texts (JaimBr 2.297, PancavB 25.10.1) clearly state that the Sarasvati disappears or "dives under" in the desert at a place called vinazana / upamajjana. (Later texts such as the Puranas theorize that it flows underground from there up to the confluence of the Yamuna and Ganga at Prayaga/Allahabad). Again, the present dry bed of the Ghagghar-Hakra is indeed cluttered with Harappan sites. But these settlements are *on* the actual flood plain of the old Sarasvati/Ghagghar-Hakra, which again speaks against an enormous river during the Harappan (or a supposed pre-Harappan Rgvedic) period. Or does one want to live in place that is flooded each summer? The estimates of archaeologists on the exact date of the drying up of much of the Sarasvati differ considerably: Mughal (1995) argues that the Hakra was a perennial river in the 4th and early 3rd millennium BC and that it had dried up about the end of the second. Other dates range from 2500-1700 BC. Apart from the older studies quoted above (-- I always drew the Sarasvati down to the Indus even on my student time maps...reenforced by data from Wilhelmy whom I accidentally met in 1982 or so --), there now are satellite photos but they taken *alone* do not provide dates. Painstaking exploration on the ground is necessary. -- Even then, the old Sarasvati-Sutlej can never have been larger than the Indus during the millennia in question. While RV 7.95.2 (cf. 7.6.7) indeed speaks of the Sarasvati flowing to the/an ocean, this is not unambiguous, due to the various meanings of samudra "ocean" or "confluence of rivers" (debated for more than 100 years when the whole immigration/emigration debate was not known in its present form) see: RV 6.72.3, and cf. Klaus, Kosmographie,1989; --- RV style is generally quite hyperbolic: the Soma juice dripping through the sieve into a cup is not exactly "rivers" "rushing" to the "ocean"... What does a "Sarasvati flowing into an ocean" *really* mean?? Be that as it may, however, a *neglected* contemporary piece of evidence comes from RV 3.33, which, on internal grounds, describes a situation of only a few years before RV 7.95.2 (see my forthc. paper). RV 3.33 *must* speak of an already smaller Sarasvati as it refers to the confluence of the Beas and Sutlej (Vipaaz,Zutudrii). That means: the Beas had already captured the Sutlej away from the Sarasvati. The later RV (books 3, 7 and the late book 10) thus depict the present day situation, with the Sarasvati having lost most of its waters to the Beas and probably also to the Yamuna; it was no longer the larger river it *may* have been in the earlier Rgvedic period (and remembered in RV 7.95). This INTERNAL evidence, and the otherwise accepted date of the Rgveda at c.1500-1200 BC, also agrees remarkably well with the new evidence from Bahawalpur/Cholistan (Mughal 1995, who discovered all the now famous multitudes of Harappan/Indus sites on the Hakra). He indicates that the area along the lower Hakra (Sarasvati) was abandoned after c. 1400 BC by its (post-Indus civ.) people, who moved eastwards, due to lack of water, not due to "invading Aryans" (as J.Shaffer also says). The area was not settled again until the establishment of some Painted Gray Ware (PGW) settlements there (800 BC), when we indeed hear of sparse settlements in the west (AitBr 3.45). More data in Taitt.Br. and Pancavimsa Br... This also agrees with the scenario developed recently (Witzel 1995): early Indo-Aryan immigration (*maximally* starting at the end of the Indus civ., 1900 BC, and down to c.1400 BC) of the Yadu-Turvaza, Anu-Druhyu into the Panjab, and immigration of the Bharata tribe (from across the Indus, well remembered at JaimBr 3.238) only after that, when the major part of the Sarasvati waters had been captured by the Sutlej/Beas (and the Yamuna). This scenario, consistent with the geological, archaeological and textual evidence is in striking contrast to that of the Indian homeland theory. (for example, of a pre-Indus civ. Rgveda). (And I am not even talking about copper (ayas) in the RV which would be *globally* out of date in a pre-Harappan Rgveda). A few final points: > It is also interesting that scholars who argue that Max Muller's works are > outdated have no qualms in still accepting a chronology that was proposed by > him. Everybody knows, and he himself says, that it was a guess, but it was a shrewd one, as the above data again indicate. Also, we must remember the contemporary data of the Mitanni, at c.1380 BC -- which he did not yet know. > It is a symptom of the massive retrofitting of data. I think the above shows that the retrofitting goes the other way. The rest does not need comments as it is based on the Sarasvati argument MW> ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm phone: 1- 617 - 495 3295 (voice & messages), 496 8570, fax 617 - 496 8571 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- my direct line (also for messages) : 617- 496 2990 From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Thu May 21 00:13:42 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Wed, 20 May 98 20:13:42 -0400 Subject: Correction to "Re: vyakarana, and Tamil brahmins going to Andhra" Message-ID: <161227038965.23782.12329072989811082369.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 98-05-20 01:56:18 EDT, I wrote: << the word Telugu is found for the first time in the the records of Rajendra Chola and Rajadhiraja in their conflict with the Awestern Chalukyas of Kanchi. >> Sorry, there is an error here. This should actually read, "the word Telugu is found for the first time in the the records of Rajendra Chola and Rajadhiraja in their conflict with the Western Chalukyas of Kalyani". Regards S. Palaniappan From zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL Wed May 20 23:17:18 1998 From: zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Wed, 20 May 98 21:17:18 -0200 Subject: literature on commentarial style Message-ID: <161227038993.23782.3639752493201080430.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Replies to msg 19 May 98: indology at listserv.liv.ac.uk (Adrian Burton) abEA> Can anyone direct me to *any* discussion of the traditional abEA> style used by commentators ( i.e., the literary style abEA> employed by the writers of bhaashya, Tiikaa, TippaNii abEA> etc.). abEA> I would be looking for: abEA> articles (e.g. something like Staal's "Scientific abEA> Sanskrit"), One basic text on this matter is an article by Hermann Jacobi. I do not have the precise reference, but it is included in his _Kleine Schriften_, publ. by the Von Glasenapp-Stiftung (in that famous series of green volumes of 'kleine Schriten' by various German-language Indologists). I remember having read it as a student with great profit. Robert Zydenbos zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl From kharimot at SAS.UPENN.EDU Thu May 21 02:45:03 1998 From: kharimot at SAS.UPENN.EDU (Kengo Harimoto) Date: Wed, 20 May 98 22:45:03 -0400 Subject: prayojana of treatises In-Reply-To: <199805182300.TAA19287@orion.sas.upenn.edu> Message-ID: <161227038968.23782.14616490460617307669.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > The quotation mentioned first by Devarakonda Sarma does not > appear to be found in the "Slokavaartika. and > Though I have trashed the message, I hope I recall correctly that the text > in question here is: prayojanamanuddiZya na mandopi pravartate. This is > indeed ZlokavArttika, sambandhAkSepaparihAra vs. 55ab. Also see "Slokavaarttika Pratij~naasuutra 11--25. Kumaarila seems to be convinced that a "saastra needs to express prayojana and sa.mbandha at the beginning. And how about consulting the beginning of the Nyaayabhaa.sya and the Nyaayavaarttika. Although they do not explicitly say that a "saastra needs to state prayojana and sa.mbandha at the beginning, they discuss the prayojana of the "saastra/pramaa.na. Oh by the way, a commentary (Vivara.na) on the Yogabhaa.sya ascribed to "Sa"nkara takes it granted that a "saastra needs prayojana and sa.mbandha and that they have to be explicitly stated. There is a good deal of discussion at the very beginning of the text. -- kengo From elfn at ANTARES.COM.BR Thu May 21 05:57:43 1998 From: elfn at ANTARES.COM.BR (Bryan) Date: Wed, 20 May 98 22:57:43 -0700 Subject: Brhadaranyaka Upanisad III. ii .12 Message-ID: <161227038966.23782.9464390162472132076.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Friends Could someone explain the meaning of the passage of Br.Up. III.ii,12? What's the meaning of the sentence "anantam vai nAma"? Best wishes Edgard Leite Rio de Janeiro State University From lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM Thu May 21 15:44:31 1998 From: lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM (Lakshmi Srinivas) Date: Thu, 21 May 98 08:44:31 -0700 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.) Message-ID: <161227038980.23782.1517376071837181035.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---"Sn. Subrahmanya" wrote: >Yes indeed...it is a old horse, but it is only recently with Mughals >excavations that it has been found that the concentration of sites is >on the Sarasvati and not on the Indus. I do not wish to enter the thread of your discussion but something just caught my eye. Correct me if I'm wrong but I understand Mughal has only surveyed the dry bed of the Hakra in the erstwhile Bahawalpur State (Cholistan), not excavated any site there. For example, Ganweriwala continues to remain unexcavated. Warm Regards. == Lakshmi Srinivas _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From aklujkar at UNIXG.UBC.CA Thu May 21 16:45:38 1998 From: aklujkar at UNIXG.UBC.CA (Ashok Aklujkar) Date: Thu, 21 May 98 08:45:38 -0800 Subject: Textual doubt (Gitagovinda) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038983.23782.2648177106473588402.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> This response has gone to the personal e-mail address of Jakub Cejka. I am posting it to the list only to inform others that Cejka's inquiry has received a response. >Barbara Stoler Miller's ... text of the GG ... stanza 10 of sarga 2< valastRSNe" (valast.r.s.ne) is a misprint for valattRSNe, Miller's actual (intended) reading. I have it so marked on my copy of the edn. 'K.r.s.na, whose desire is turning toward young women -- who is getting interested in (other) women' is the contextually intended meaning. As I recall, Jaya-deva uses the root val in some other verses too, sometimes in keeping with the saying current among pa.n.ditas "kali-valii kaama-dhenuu": 'one can invest the roots kal and val with any meaning that the context requires. They are the wish-fulfilling cows (for authors/poets)' From Anand.Nayak at UNIFR.CH Thu May 21 07:50:10 1998 From: Anand.Nayak at UNIFR.CH (Anand Nayak) Date: Thu, 21 May 98 08:50:10 +0100 Subject: Brhadaranyaka Upanisad III. ii .12 In-Reply-To: <3563C257.7535@antares.com.br> Message-ID: <161227038972.23782.3146579808778747801.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >Dear Friends >Could someone explain the meaning of the passage of Br.Up. III.ii,12? >What's the meaning of the sentence "anantam vai nAma"? >Best wishes >Edgard Leite >Rio de Janeiro State University Dear Mr.Leite, The expression nama-rupa (name-form) in the upanisads is the principle of individuality (cf. Br.Up. I,4,7; I,6,1-3; Mundaka up. I,2,9 etc). Death wipes out the form; but not the name. Chandogya up. has an intresting explanation: VII,2,1-5 which is I think is the meaning of the Br.Up. verse you have quoted for explanation. The name (which is the sum total of all acquisitions in life) can last eternally. But Mundaka 3,2,8 and Prasna 6,5 seem to say that at the final liberation the name too should disappear. Is it the reason why the upanisadic sages have not left behind their names? As you probably know, the nama-rupa is also a fundamental category in Buddhism in the paticca-samuppada. All the best. Anand Nayak Sarvesham svastirbhavatu May all be prosperous sarvesham santirbhavatu May all be peaceful sarvesham purnambhavatu May all be whole sarvesam mangalambhavatu May all be happy INSTITUT DE MISSIOLOGIE ET DE SCIENCE DES RELIGIONS INSTITUT FUER MISSIONS- UND RELIGIONSWISSENSCHAFTEN Universit? de Fribourg Route du Jura CH-1700 Fribourg Tel: 026/ 300 74 38 (Office) 026/ 475 27 91 (Private) Fax; 026/ 300 9768 URL: http://www.unifr.ch/imr Prof.Dr.Anand NAYAK From winnie.fellows at UNIKEY.COM.BR Thu May 21 12:36:18 1998 From: winnie.fellows at UNIKEY.COM.BR (winnie fellows) Date: Thu, 21 May 98 09:36:18 -0300 Subject: Brhadaranyaka Upanisad III. ii .12 Message-ID: <161227039019.23782.7504952318537403485.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Edgard Leite wrote:- >Dear Friends >Could someone explain the meaning of the passage of Br.Up. III.ii,12? >What's the meaning of the sentence "anantam vai nAma"? >Best wishes >Edgard Leite >Rio de Janeiro State University > "( The ) name is indeed imortal". Name here stands for some sort of essence-category behind form ( rUpa ) in the sense that it will survive after death, Sauda??es Jesualdo Correia jesualdocorreia at unikey.com.br From sns at IX.NETCOM.COM Thu May 21 15:15:48 1998 From: sns at IX.NETCOM.COM (Sn. Subrahmanya) Date: Thu, 21 May 98 10:15:48 -0500 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.) Message-ID: <161227038978.23782.2747555190691195113.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Pardon the long posting as I did not want to edit Prof.Witzels posting much I have tried to divide it into sections so as to make it easier to read. At 05:49 PM 5/20/98 -0400, Michael Witzel wrote: >Yes, the Sarasvati, Edwin: >That really is an old horse (Oldham 1887, Raverty 1893, Wilhelmy 1959, >Yash Pal 1984), and we should look into her mouth : > Yes indeed...it is a old horse, but it is only recently with Mughals excavations that it has been found that the concentration of sites is on the Sarasvati and not on the Indus. -------------------- >Indeed, in the Rgveda, the Sarasvati is well known and highly praised in >as a great stream. And, indeed, once it is called a river flowing from >the mountains to the 'sea' samudra (RV 7.95.2, cf. 7.6.7), i.e. apparently >in the Ghagghar-Hakra-Nara channel (see Oldham 1887, Raverty 1893!!), --- > >unless the whole passage is not a reminiscence of the E. Iranian >Sarasvati (= Avestan: Haraxvaiti) and the great Hamum lake (Kangsaoiia, >cf. also Avestan texts on Vourukasha), into which the E.Ir. rivers flow, >as *sam-udra. > >NOTE that Sarasvati/Haraxvaiti mean "(river) having ponds", certainly not >a good name for a mighty stream; that this must at least refer to a slow >flowing river with many bends and u-shaped cut-off ponds, or it may be a >river disappearing in the Iranian/Indian desert with many ponds in its >lower course. > >However, the Brahmana texts (JaimBr 2.297, PancavB 25.10.1) clearly state >that the Sarasvati disappears or "dives under" in the desert at a place >called vinazana / upamajjana. (Later texts such as the Puranas theorize >that it flows underground from there up to the confluence of the Yamuna >and Ganga at Prayaga/Allahabad). > Your argument here is that the 7.95.2 refers to the "reminiscencing" of the Haraxvavaiti but the later references is to the Sarasvati in India. We will look at this later. -------------------- >Again, the present dry bed of the Ghagghar-Hakra is indeed cluttered with >Harappan sites. But these settlements are *on* the actual flood plain of >the old Sarasvati/Ghagghar-Hakra, which again speaks against an enormous >river during the Harappan (or a supposed pre-Harappan Rgvedic) period. Or >does one want to live in place that is flooded each summer? > You have your facts wrong here: The Satluj and Yamuna are perennial and are fed by the Himalayan glaciers. The Ghaggar, Sarasvati, Markanda, Chautang all arise in the Sivaliks and are non-perennial. Presently none of them reach the sea (Yashpal,84) --------------------- >The estimates of archaeologists on the exact date of the drying up of much >of the Sarasvati differ considerably: Mughal (1995) argues that the Hakra >was a perennial river in the 4th and early 3rd millennium BC and that it >had dried up about the end of the second. Other dates range from 2500-1700 >BC. > The concentration of sites on the Sarasvati is very clear. All three - Early, Mature and Late - Harappan sites are on the Sarasvati. So even if we are accept that the river had dried up by 1400BC there is very clear evidence of a continous civilization. The reason some of the sites are ON the ancient bed is precisely because they were built AFTER the water had been captured away from the Sarasvati and the river became smaller !! ----------------------- >While RV 7.95.2 (cf. 7.6.7) indeed speaks of the Sarasvati flowing to >the/an ocean, this is not unambiguous, due to the various meanings of >samudra "ocean" or "confluence of rivers" (debated for more than 100 years >when the whole immigration/emigration debate was not known in its present >form) see: RV 6.72.3, and cf. Klaus, Kosmographie,1989; --- RV style is >generally quite hyperbolic: the Soma juice dripping through the sieve into >a cup is not exactly "rivers" "rushing" to the "ocean"... What does a >"Sarasvati flowing into an ocean" *really* mean?? A Sarasvati flowing into an ocean means a Sarasvati flowing into an ocean ! ---------------------------- >Be that as it may, however, a *neglected* contemporary piece of evidence >comes from RV 3.33, which, on internal grounds, describes a situation of >only a few years before RV 7.95.2 (see my forthc. paper). RV 3.33 *must* >speak of an already smaller Sarasvati as it refers to the confluence of >the Beas and Sutlej (Vipaaz,Zutudrii). > >That means: the Beas had already captured the Sutlej away from the >Sarasvati. The later RV (books 3, 7 and the late book 10) thus depict the >present day situation, with the Sarasvati having lost most of its waters >to the Beas and probably also to the Yamuna; it was no longer the larger >river it *may* have been in the earlier Rgvedic period (and remembered in >RV 7.95). You contradict yourself completely here. Initially you stated that 7.95.2 probably is a reminiscencing of the Haraxvaiti. But if the earlier RV3.33 refers to the smaller Sarasvati in India then how can you argue that 7.95.2 refers to the reminiscensing of the Haraxvaiti ??? Again, If 7.95.2 is a remembering of the Sarasvati(and not the Haraxvaiti) then does it not mean that the Aryans were already in the SIVC when the Sarasvati was bigger ??? --------------------------- >This INTERNAL evidence, and the otherwise accepted date of the Rgveda at >c.1500-1200 BC, also agrees remarkably well with the new evidence from >Bahawalpur/Cholistan (Mughal 1995, who discovered all the now famous >multitudes of Harappan/Indus sites on the Hakra). He indicates that the >area along the lower Hakra (Sarasvati) was abandoned after c. 1400 BC by >its (post-Indus civ.) people, who moved eastwards, due to lack of water, >not due to "invading Aryans" (as J.Shaffer also says). The area was not >settled again until the establishment of some Painted Gray Ware (PGW) >settlements there (800 BC), when we indeed hear of sparse settlements in >the west (AitBr 3.45). More data in Taitt.Br. and Pancavimsa Br... > >This also agrees with the scenario developed recently (Witzel 1995): early >Indo-Aryan immigration (*maximally* starting at the end of the Indus civ., >1900 BC, and down to c.1400 BC) of the Yadu-Turvaza, Anu-Druhyu into the >Panjab, and immigration of the Bharata tribe (from across the Indus, well >remembered at JaimBr 3.238) only after that, when the major part of the >Sarasvati waters had been captured by the Sutlej/Beas (and the Yamuna). As already shown your Internal evidence infact negates your arguments. Considering that you date the Rgveda to between 1500-1200BC. Dont you find it strange that the Aryans were "reminiscencing" about a Haraxvaiti which they had left atleast a few hundred years ago...and then when they talk of a river going underground you say that they decided to call a already long dead or almost dead river which goes nowhere as their Sarasvati (and calling it the river that flows from the mountains to the sea too!)... when bigger rivers are around ? --------------------------- >This scenario, consistent with the geological, archaeological and textual >evidence is in striking contrast to that of the Indian homeland theory. >(for example, of a pre-Indus civ. Rgveda). >(And I am not even talking about copper (ayas) in the RV which would be >*globally* out of date in a pre-Harappan Rgveda). > Again..your facts are wrong. Please look up the following RC Agrawala, 1984, Aravalli, the Major source of copper for Indus and Indus related cultures D.P.Agrwal, 1984 Metal technology of the Harappans. Frontiers of the Indus Civilization. --------------------------- > >A few final points: > >> It is also interesting that scholars who argue that Max Muller's works are >> outdated have no qualms in still accepting a chronology that was proposed by >> him. > >Everybody knows, and he himself says, that it was a guess, but it was a >shrewd one, as the above data again indicate. Also, we must remember the >contemporary data of the Mitanni, at c.1380 BC -- which he did not yet >know. > You are completely ignoring the much earlier presence of clearly Vedic names and vocabulary in west Asia, and there is nothing Iranian about them. More of this later, as this message is alrady very long. So in conclusion, I am afraid there are big holes in both the facts and logic that you have proposed. Regards, Subrahmanya From Anand.Nayak at UNIFR.CH Thu May 21 09:18:58 1998 From: Anand.Nayak at UNIFR.CH (Anand Nayak) Date: Thu, 21 May 98 10:18:58 +0100 Subject: URGENT -- Q. Number of institutions offering courses on Hinduism In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038976.23782.16687733564248289252.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Sushil. Hinduism and Buddhism are taught at this university. I do the teaching on these subjects also at the uniersity of Neuch?tel. Both are in Switzerland.Greetings.Anand Sarvesham svastirbhavatu May all be prosperous sarvesham santirbhavatu May all be peaceful sarvesham purnambhavatu May all be whole sarvesam mangalambhavatu May all be happy INSTITUT DE MISSIOLOGIE ET DE SCIENCE DES RELIGIONS INSTITUT FUER MISSIONS- UND RELIGIONSWISSENSCHAFTEN Universit? de Fribourg Route du Jura CH-1700 Fribourg Tel: 026/ 300 74 38 (Office) 026/ 475 27 91 (Private) Fax; 026/ 300 9768 URL: http://www.unifr.ch/imr Prof.Dr.Anand NAYAK From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Thu May 21 18:27:26 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Thu, 21 May 98 10:27:26 -0800 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.) Message-ID: <161227038985.23782.7392156271890428893.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > > >The estimates of archaeologists on the exact date of the drying up of much > >of the Sarasvati differ considerably: Mughal (1995) argues that the Hakra > >was a perennial river in the 4th and early 3rd millennium BC and that it > >had dried up about the end of the second. Other dates range from 2500-1700 > >BC. > > > The concentration of sites on the Sarasvati is very clear. All three - Early, > Mature and Late - Harappan sites are on the Sarasvati. So even if we are > accept that the river had dried up by 1400BC there is very clear > evidence of a continous civilization. > The reason some of the sites are ON the ancient bed is precisely because > they were built AFTER the water had been captured away from the Sarasvati > and the river became smaller !! > Excellent point. Also, even the latter date of 1,700BCE is before the supposed arrival of Indo-Europeans. Using this chronology, it hardly seems that they would have described the Sarasvati as a raging river from the mountains to the sea. Personally, I don't believe IVC was IE, but at the same time, the facts don't match the chronology of invasion/migration. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Thu May 21 05:40:12 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Thu, 21 May 98 10:40:12 +0500 Subject: Brhadaranyaka Upanisad III. ii .12 Message-ID: <161227038970.23782.16810130560074983.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 10:57 PM 5/20/98 -0700, you wrote: >Dear Friends >Could someone explain the meaning of the passage of Br.Up. III.ii,12? >What's the meaning of the sentence "anantam vai nAma"? >Best wishes >Edgard Leite >Rio de Janeiro State University > > Endless indeed is name. regards, sarma. From cejka at PRAHA1.FF.CUNI.CZ Thu May 21 08:53:07 1998 From: cejka at PRAHA1.FF.CUNI.CZ (Jakub Cejka) Date: Thu, 21 May 98 10:53:07 +0200 Subject: Textual doubt (Gitagovinda) In-Reply-To: <39222b90.356371b8@aol.com> Message-ID: <161227038974.23782.2410897647950765608.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear listmembers, what follows is a question on a reading in the text of the Gitagovinda-kavya of Jayadeva. NOTE: For disk-space and time limitations, I do not receive any mail from the list at present, therefore please post your reply, if any, to my personal e-mail address , otherwise I won't be able to read it. Thank you. QUESTION: I have a copy of the Indian (MLBD) edition of Barbara Stoler Miller's translation of the Gitagovinda ("Love Song of the Dark Lord"). It's just a reprint of the original (CUP, 1977) edition, I suppose, so the text of the GG included there should be identical. In the text of the stanza 10 of sarga 2, there is a reading "yuvatiSu valastRSNe" (yuvati.su valast.r.s.ne). To me "valaH" makes no sense here. No variant reading is noted by Miller in the critical apparatus, but other editions (differences of which she normally mentions as variant readings) read "valattRSNe" (or calattRSNe). So I consider "valas" to be a mere misprint for "valat" which I assume to be Miller's actual (intended) reading. Do you find this assumption correct? Or do I miss something, I mean, does the reading which is printed in the book, make any sense to you? Thank you Jakub Cejka Muchova 11, Prague 6, 160 00 - CZ cejka at praha1.ff.cuni.cz From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Thu May 21 19:33:13 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Thu, 21 May 98 12:33:13 -0700 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.) Message-ID: <161227038990.23782.7629197264065548747.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---"Paul K. Manansala" wrote: > Personally, I don't believe IVC was IE, but at the same time, the > facts don't match the chronology of invasion/migration. > Hi, I started penning a mail to the indology mailing list on the subject of 'dating' Sarasvati River. It has become rather long, about 15 pages. I will be happy to email it directly to you. Please send me an email. I can respond attaching a html or word draft document in three parts of evidence from: (1) earth sciences; (2) archaeology; (3) linguistics. These drafts will constitute the preface to the forthcoming website on the corpus of inscriptions and clusters of Indian lexemes. Regards, == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From thompson at JLC.NET Thu May 21 20:32:09 1998 From: thompson at JLC.NET (George Thompson) Date: Thu, 21 May 98 16:32:09 -0400 Subject: literature on commentarial style Message-ID: <161227038995.23782.11256828152826740000.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> See also: Louis Renou: "Sur le genre du sUtra dans la litte'rature sanskrite", in *Journal Asiatique* 251, 1963. George Thompson >Replies to msg 19 May 98: indology at listserv.liv.ac.uk (Adrian Burton) > > abEA> Can anyone direct me to *any* discussion of the traditional > abEA> style used by commentators ( i.e., the literary style > abEA> employed by the writers of bhaashya, Tiikaa, TippaNii > abEA> etc.). > > abEA> I would be looking for: > > abEA> articles (e.g. something like Staal's "Scientific > abEA> Sanskrit"), > >One basic text on this matter is an article by Hermann Jacobi. I do not >have the precise reference, but it is included in his _Kleine Schriften_, >publ. by the Von Glasenapp-Stiftung (in that famous series of green >volumes of 'kleine Schriten' by various German-language Indologists). I >remember having read it as a student with great profit. > >Robert Zydenbos >zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl From dominic.goodall at WOLFSON.OXFORD.AC.UK Thu May 21 17:18:47 1998 From: dominic.goodall at WOLFSON.OXFORD.AC.UK (Dominic Goodall) Date: Thu, 21 May 98 18:18:47 +0100 Subject: prayojana of treatises In-Reply-To: <19980520224503T.kharimot@postoffice.sas.upenn.edu> Message-ID: <161227038988.23782.12298360217996079107.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > Also see "Slokavaarttika Pratij~naasuutra 11--25. Kumaarila seems to > be convinced that a "saastra needs to express prayojana and sa.mbandha > at the beginning. When commenting on tantras, some exegetes of the "Saivasiddhaanta assert that it is not correct for them to state these at the beginning. "Siva himself provides them in the `suutras' of the tantra when he sees fit. One might argue that they should be stated by a commentator at the beginning of his work because they provide the motivation to study; but this is not necessary, because, unlike in other worldly "saastras, students of the Siddhaanta must from the moment of approaching a guru act in all things in accordance with the guru's command, and not from any other motive. See, e.g., Raamaka.n.tha's v.rtti ad Kira.natantra 1:1: yat tu prathamam evotsuutra.m kai"scic chaastrasvaruupa.m tatsambandhaabhidheyaadi caatra var.nyate, tat suutrair eva vak.syamaa.natvaad ayuktam eva. athaadau prav.rttihetutvenaava"sya.m tad vaktavyam iti cet. "saastraantaraa.naam ivaatra tadabhidhaanena prav.rttyayogaat. atra hi guruupasadanaat prabh.rti guruvaakyaad eva sarvatra pravartitavyam, naanyata.h. The same point is discussed at somewhat greater length in Raamaka.n.tha's commentary on the Mata"ngapaarame"svaratantra (vol.1, pp.2--3) and the issue is reiterated in Aghora"sivaacaarya's M.rgendrav.rttidiipikaa (p.5). Dominic Goodall. From winnie.fellows at UNIKEY.COM.BR Fri May 22 01:26:48 1998 From: winnie.fellows at UNIKEY.COM.BR (winnie fellows) Date: Thu, 21 May 98 22:26:48 -0300 Subject: Brhadaranyaka Upanisad III. ii .12 Message-ID: <161227038999.23782.3980437033723375812.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >>Edgard Leite wrote:- >> >> >>>Dear Friends >>>Could someone explain the meaning of the passage of Br.Up. III.ii,12? >>>What's the meaning of the sentence "anantam vai nAma"? >>>Best wishes >>>Edgard Leite >>>Rio de Janeiro State University >> >> >> >>> "( The ) name is indeed imortal( endless )l". Name here stands for some sort of >>essence-category behind or beyond form ( rUpa ) in the sense that it will survive >>after death or disaperance of what is manifested. >> >>Sauda??es >> >>Jesualdo Correia >> >>jesualdocorreia at unikey.com.br >> From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Fri May 22 06:06:48 1998 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Thu, 21 May 98 23:06:48 -0700 Subject: South India geography Message-ID: <161227039001.23782.12325151945918239599.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I am reading a small poem in which a number of south Indian place names are given. Where are the following places? Could some list member give corresponding modern names? 1. mahAsurAlaya (in Kerala) - is this Sucindram? 2. anantaSayana (in Kerala) - Travancore? 3. darbhaSayana (in TN) - is this near Ramesvaram? 4. koTTalampAkkam (in TN) - somewhere near Cidambaram - kuRRAlam? 5. pinAkinI (river in TN) 6. payonadI ( -do- ) - somewhere in Salem-Coimbatore area? The context mentions the village of Satyamangalam. Thanks, Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Fri May 22 06:14:42 1998 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Thu, 21 May 98 23:14:42 -0700 Subject: Brhadaranyaka Upanisad III. ii .12 Message-ID: <161227039003.23782.11323049643015055662.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >seem to say that at the final liberation the name too should disappear. Is >it the reason why the upanisadic sages have not left behind their names? The upanishad vamSa lists do give a number of patronymics and matronymics, especially in the BAU and in CU, not to mention the large number of names given as those who challenge yAjnavalkya. Even the praSna gives names for the six students who approach pippalAda for instruction. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From torella at AXRMA.UNIROMA1.IT Thu May 21 23:59:22 1998 From: torella at AXRMA.UNIROMA1.IT (Raffaele Torella) Date: Fri, 22 May 98 00:59:22 +0100 Subject: SI Mss. Libraries In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227038997.23782.15253539893572125082.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >I strongly suggest a visit to the GOML and SM libraries. It is the only >sure way to get what you need. This is also my advise. >Take a good 35mm camera, and some good >black-and-white film. The curator of MSS at GOML is Mr Soundarapandian, >who is quite pleasant. > >All the best, >Dominik At the time of my last visit to Tanjore Library (which has no curator but only an officer-in-charge), two years ago, I was not allowed to make photographs of MSS (and I even had to overcome many difficulties just to consult two or three MSS I needed). If the MSS that interest you are among those already microfilmed under the IGNCA project, you can ask for a duplicate (in Tanjore, not in Delhi). An answer in the positive is not to be taken for granted; however, in my case I was lucky enough (but only after much insistence, getting angry, showing a letter of K. Vatsyayan, etc.) to obtain a duplicate in three days. With best wishes (literally), Raffaele Torella Raffaele Torella, Dipartimento di Studi Orientali Universita' di Roma "La Sapienza" (fax: 6-4451209) From Johannes.Bronkhorst at ORIENT.UNIL.CH Fri May 22 06:56:04 1998 From: Johannes.Bronkhorst at ORIENT.UNIL.CH (Johannes Bronkhorst) Date: Fri, 22 May 98 06:56:04 +0000 Subject: literature on commentarial style In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227039004.23782.8309533677791272821.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I have written some articles that might be of interest in this connection: "Two literary conventions of classical India." Asiatische Studien / Etudes Asiatiques 45 (2), 1991 [1992], 210-227. "Vaarttika." Wiener Zeitschrift fuer die Kunde Suedasiens 34 (1990), 123-146. >See also: > >Louis Renou: "Sur le genre du sUtra dans la litte'rature sanskrite", in >*Journal Asiatique* 251, 1963. > >George Thompson > >>Replies to msg 19 May 98: indology at listserv.liv.ac.uk (Adrian Burton) >> >> abEA> Can anyone direct me to *any* discussion of the traditional >> abEA> style used by commentators ( i.e., the literary style >> abEA> employed by the writers of bhaashya, Tiikaa, TippaNii >> abEA> etc.). >> >> abEA> I would be looking for: >> >> abEA> articles (e.g. something like Staal's "Scientific >> abEA> Sanskrit"), >> >>One basic text on this matter is an article by Hermann Jacobi. I do not >>have the precise reference, but it is included in his _Kleine Schriften_, >>publ. by the Von Glasenapp-Stiftung (in that famous series of green >>volumes of 'kleine Schriten' by various German-language Indologists). I >>remember having read it as a student with great profit. >> >>Robert Zydenbos >>zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Fri May 22 13:01:38 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Fri, 22 May 98 07:01:38 -0600 Subject: South India geography Message-ID: <161227039012.23782.6013020868679801754.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> 1. mahAsurAlaya (in Kerala) - is this Sucindram? 2. anantaSayana (in Kerala) - Travancore? anantaSayana must be Thiruvananthapuram 3. darbhaSayana (in TN) - is this near Ramesvaram? Called as TiruppullaNai (TiruppullaaNi) Rama enshrined is called Teyvaccilaiyaar. 4. koTTalampAkkam (in TN) - somewhere near Cidambaram - kuRRAlam? In South Arcot dist., I think. Not near Kurraalam, Have to check though. koTTi is a water lily." koTTiyum aampalum pOl puutta" 5. pinAkinI (river in TN) In S. Arcot again 6. payonadI ( -do- ) - somewhere in Salem-Coimbatore area? The context mentions the village of Satyamangalam. Regards, N. Ganesan From GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU Fri May 22 13:11:24 1998 From: GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU (N. Ganesan) Date: Fri, 22 May 98 07:11:24 -0600 Subject: Sanskritization of Tamil Message-ID: <161227039014.23782.9586305781215499082.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In Indology, there was a statement about Tamil's sanskritization. I tend to differ and will explain why. In the following discussion, when I discuss which language is more Sanskritized than some other language, I am not making any value judgement for speakers of those languages. It is the right of the speaker to decide how to speak. I have my preference. Others may have theirs. Also, collectively a language community may decide how to continue its tradition. Again, it is the right of that community to decide and not for other communities to criticize it. When Tamils think that Tamil is less influenced by Sanskrit than other languages, it is not just out of intuition. The first reason is the alphabet. Except Tamil, all other literary Dravidian languages reproduce all the Sanskrit sounds. Secondly, with respect to other Dravidian languages borrowing more words from Sanskrit, the opinion of Tamils is not due to any ill feeling or intuition. It is based on the opinion of the father of Dravidian linguistics, Robert Caldwell, who said in "A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages", 1974, Third Editionand Revised and Edited by Rev. J. L. Wyatt and T. Ramakrishna Pillai, p.45, "It is true it would now be difficult for Telugu to dispense with its Sanskrit: more so for Canarese; and most of all for MalayALam:-those languages having borrowed from Sanskrit so largely, and being so habituated to look up to it for help, that it would be scarcely possible for them now to assert their independence. Tamil, however, the most highly cultivated ab intra of all Dravidian idioms, can dispense with its Sanskrit altogether, if need be, and not only stand alone, but flourish without its aid." Caldwell also noted that "a Tamil poetical composition is regarded as in accordance with good taste and worthy of being called classical, not in proportion to the amount of Sanskrit it contains, as would be the case in some other dialects, but in proportion to its freedom from Sanskrit." Noting the employment of more Sanskrit loans in the religious field than other fields of Tamil literature, he compared the relative use of loans in the Tamil translation of Ten Commandments and the English version. He found that "in the department of nouns, numerals, and verbs, the amount of the foreign element is in both instances the same-viz., as nearly as forty-five percent. In both instances, also, all the pronouns, prepositions, adverbs, and conjuctions, and all the inflexional forms and connecting particles are the property of the native tongue . Though the proportion of Sanskrit which we find to be contained in the Tamil version of the Ten Commandments happens to correspond so exactly to the proportion of Latin contained in the English version, it would be an error to conclude that the Tamil language is as deeply indebted to Sanskrit as English is to Latin. Tamil can readily dispense with the greater part or whole of its Sanskrit' and by dispensing with it rises to a purer and more refined style; whereas English cannot abandon its Latin without abandoning its perspicuity If the Ten Commandments were expressed in the speech of the lower classes of the Tamil people, the proportion of Sanskrit would be very greatly diminished; and if we wished to raise the style of the translation to a refined and classical pitch, Sanskrit would almost disappear In the other Dravidian languages, whatever be the nature of the composition or subject-matter treated of, the amount of Sanskrit employed is considerably larger than in Tamil; and the use of it has acquired more of the character of a necessity. This is in consequence of the literature of those languages having chiefly been cultivated by BrAhmans. Even in Telugu the principal grammatical writers and the most celebrated poets have been BrAhmans. There is only one work of note in that language which was not composed by a member of the sacred caste; and indeed the Telugu Zudras, who constitute par excellence the Telugu people, seem almost entirely to have abandoned to the BrAhmans the culture of their own language, with every other branch of literature and science. In Tamil, on the contrary, few Brahmans have written anything worthy of preservation. The language has been cultivated and developed with immense zeal and success by native Tamilians; and the highest rank in Tamil literature which has been reached by a BrAhman is that of a commentator.*(p. 46-48)" The editors footnote "*This is not strictly accurate. Brahmins have contributed also to Tamil literature, devotional as well as philosophical." Regards, N. Ganesan From jlc at CCR.JUSSIEU.FR Fri May 22 08:09:46 1998 From: jlc at CCR.JUSSIEU.FR (Jean-Luc CHEVILLARD) Date: Fri, 22 May 98 09:09:46 +0100 Subject: literature on commentarial style In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227039008.23782.1180288350802760922.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> A 16:32 21/05/98 -0400, vous avez ?crit : >See also: > >Louis Renou: "Sur le genre du sUtra dans la litte'rature sanskrite", in >*Journal Asiatique* 251, 1963. > >George Thompson > > Please note that this is one of the 42 articles that have been "re-printed" (in fac-simil?) by Nalini Balbir and G.J. Pinault in the two volumes: Louis Renou, Choix d'Etudes Indiennes R?impression de l'Ecole Fran?aise d'Extr?me-Orient No 9 PARIS 1997 ISBN 2-85 539-562-3 -- Jean-Luc CHEVILLARD ( jlc at ccr.jussieu.fr ) From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Fri May 22 14:22:39 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Fri, 22 May 98 10:22:39 -0400 Subject: South India geography Message-ID: <161227039016.23782.3950667301392265907.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 98-05-22 08:05:43 EDT, GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU writes: << 4. koTTalampAkkam (in TN) - somewhere near Cidambaram - kuRRAlam? In South Arcot dist., I think. Not near Kurraalam, Have to check though. koTTi is a water lily." koTTiyum aampalum pOl puutta" >> pAkkam means it should probably be located on the coast. paTTin2am and pAkkam are supposed to be the names of localities in the neytal area. Regards S. Palaniappan From John.Dunne at ORIENT.UNIL.CH Fri May 22 08:36:51 1998 From: John.Dunne at ORIENT.UNIL.CH (John Dunne) Date: Fri, 22 May 98 10:36:51 +0200 Subject: literature on commentaries Message-ID: <161227039010.23782.572820749931982030.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Just a quick note... Filed forlornly in a weathered manila folder somewhere in distant Cambridge is a photocopy of what was then a work in progress: a textbook on Sanskrit commentarial style prepared by Gary Tubb (with Emory Boose?). Although it's been quite some time since I've looked at it, my recollection is that it offered both general and extremely specific discussions on styles of commentary. Much of the book was dedicated to explaining specific commentarial conventions, along with terms from ala.mkaara'saastra, etc. I don't know whether Gary ever finished the work (are you out there Gary?), or whether it has been published, but I found it quite useful. Yours, John Dunne ______________________________ John Dunne Section de langues et civilisations orientales Universit? de Lausanne From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Fri May 22 16:36:24 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Fri, 22 May 98 12:36:24 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.I) Message-ID: <161227039023.23782.7092314208847400872.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> One is always pleased if one's writing is read carefully. That is what discussion is all about. But I am afraid I have been misunderstood many times here... I divide the message into two parts as it would become too long, with all the puurva- and uttara-paksas, - and hopefully, siddhaanta. On Thu, 21 May 1998, Sn. Subrahmanya wrote: > only recently with Mughals > excavations that it has been found that the concentration of sites is > on the Sarasvati and not on the Indus. Nice, ironically, a Pakistani delivering evidence for a "Sarasvati" theory... He does not seem to be too happy with the *spin* his work is used for. The fact is that we do not know what the Ghaggar/Hakra -Nara river has been called in ancient times, as was already said on this list. <> This is "just" a naming issue. You can also call it "Civilization X" since we cannot yet read its script consistently. So far no one has convincingly shown that the local people called the Gh.-H. by its Sanskrit name, "Sarasvati". When (if) the happy moment of decipherment of the Indus script arrives, one can perhaps see what the local people called it/themselves and name the civilization and the river accordingly. > -------------------- > >Harappan sites. But these settlements are *on* the actual flood plain of > >the old Sarasvati/Ghagghar-Hakra, which again speaks against an enormous > >river during the Harappan (or a supposed pre-Harappan Rgvedic) period. Or > >does one want to live in place that is flooded each summer? > You have your facts wrong here: The Satluj and Yamuna are perennial and > are fed by the Himalayan glaciers. The Ghaggar, Sarasvati, Markanda, Chautang > all arise in the Sivaliks and are non-perennial. Presently none of them > reach the sea (Yashpal,84) Have I ? -- Precisely my point. Once more: The Sarasvati=Ghagghar-Hakra can only have been a great stream when the glacier-fed Sutlej (and the Ur-Yamuna) still flowed in her bed. Once the Sutlej takes its own westward course (see Mughal 1995) the Ghagghar-Hakra becomes a small river, as the Sarsuti is now (well described in the old Imperial Gazetteer). Thus, if the G-H. was a mighty stream in the distant past, nobody would build villages and towns on its flood plain, to be inundated each summer (when the ice melts in the Himalayas and when we also get some monsoon in the area). The Indus civ.towns ARE on the flood plain. By this time, no great Sarasvati anymore. <> The Rgveda tells us (3.33) that the (glacier-fed) Sutlej joined the Beas. A look on the map will show that, due to that westward shift, the Sarasvati lost the bulk of its water (all in Mughal 1995). Clearly the later part of the RV ( books 3,7, 10) is LATER than the "great Sarasvati". Thus, NO Rgvedic "Sarasvati civilization." (more on this last sentence separately if wished). > --------------------- > The concentration of sites on the Sarasvati is very clear. All three - Early, > Mature and Late - Harappan sites are on the Sarasvati. So even if we are > accept that the river had dried up by 1400BC there is very clear > evidence of a continous civilization. Nobody doubts that. But you overlook one or two things: (a) The great number of the (unexcavated) "Sarasvati" sites on the Hakra in Cholistan is due to the fact that this is a dead, fossile river bed: therefore, the sites have been preserved for the past 3-4000 years. (b) this is usually NOT the case in the rest of the Panjab with its frequently shifting rivers. Much of what had been, say, near the ancient Ravi or Beas has long been obliterated by these rivers... Also, many Harappan sites might be under present towns, such as Lahore, and of course, the modern town of Harappa.... Sn sum, we still do not know the full, real distribution of Harappan Civ. sites in *real* percentages. > The reason some of the sites are ON the ancient bed is precisely because > they were built AFTER the water had been captured away from the Sarasvati > and the river became smaller !! Exactly what I implied. (Most of) the Indus/Harappan etc civ. is later than the "great Sarasvati". . More in part II. MW/ ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm phone: 1- 617 - 495 3295 (voice & messages), 496 8570, fax 617 - 496 8571 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- my direct line (also for messages) : 617- 496 2990 From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Fri May 22 16:40:40 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Fri, 22 May 98 12:40:40 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039025.23782.14175872955829092578.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Part II: (I wrote:) > >While RV 7.95.2 (cf. 7.6.7) indeed speaks of the Sarasvati flowing to > >the/an ocean, this is not unambiguous, due to the various meanings of > >samudra "ocean" or "confluence of rivers" (debated for more than 100 years > >RV ...generally quite hyperbolic On Thu, 21 May 1998, Sn. Subrahmanya wrote: > A Sarasvati flowing into an ocean means a Sarasvati flowing into an ocean ! Logically correct, but *first* someone has to do the philological study and show what samudra REALLY means (s. K. Klaus, Kosmographie 1986). I have alluded to the century old discussion. What, e.g., about the "northern samudra" in Atharvaveda? (Witzel 1984, but in French) The positivistic Whitney could not believe his eyes when translating. But he died before he could read BG Tilak's book. Also, RV 6.72.3 (referred to by me already last time) has rivers flowing towards the oceans (aa samudraaNi) How many "oceans = oceans" are there in Vedic India? SamudraaNi means: at least 3... Cf. again the northern one! Again RV 7.6.7, mentioned last time, has: aa samudraad avaraad aa parasmaad, aa agnir dade diva aa pRthivyaaH. Are these real oceans, the Bay of Bengal and the Arabia Sea? When you mention heaven and earth next?? Obviously your average "samudra" in the RV is not (just) the Indian Ocean! And, obviously these samudra-s are not the samudra = ocean and not = the samudra of the one passage mentioning the Sarasvati. A little philology never hurts. Readers are invited to do their own study! > ---------------------------- >> RV 3.33 *must* speak of an already smaller Sarasvati... >>... it was no longer the larger river it *may* have been in the earlier >> Rgvedic period (and remembered in RV 7.95). << > You contradict yourself completely here. Initially you stated that > 7.95.2 probably is a reminiscencing of the Haraxvaiti. But if the > earlier RV 3.33 refers to the smaller Sarasvati in India then how can > you argue that 7.95.2 refers to the reminiscensing of the Haraxvaiti??? No, it is just a little more complex (could not go into details in my already long posting): Again: RV 3 and 10 have the smaller Sarasvati of today. RV 3 and 7 are contemporary (king Sudas). RV 7.95.2 thus is anormal, with its great Sarasvati. How to explain that? Now, RV 7.95 is supposed to be composed by Vasistha (in Anukramani). Indeed, the hymn seems to be solid, of one piece (no trca-s here) and thus is not thought to be late (Oldenberg, Prolegomena, 1888!). If we thus take Vasistha's authorship (contemporary of Sudas) seriously, we are faced with the abnormal "great Sarasvati" at the time Sudas crosses the confluence of the Beas & Sutlej (necessitating a small Sarasvati). Now, Vasistha is a suspicious figure. He does not belong to the well known RV gotras, but is mentioned in RV 7.33.3 to have come from across the Indus. He also has the typical Iranian idea of Yama being 'our' ancestor, not Manu (RV 7.33.9). All of this opens the *possibility* of Iranian (and thus Hamum-lake) conections. And thus a remmebrance of the other (Iranian, Haraxvaiti; note other Iranian recollections, below). If this should not be the case (and it is of course just a possibility for the moment), then: > Again, If 7.95.2 is a remembering of the Sarasvati (and not the Haraxvaiti) then does it not mean that the Aryans were already in the SIVC when the Sarasvati was bigger ??? Why the "Aryans"? There is continuity at of *certain* cultural traits (NOT RV religion etc, of course) between the Indus civ. and the Vedic civ. Anybody living there could have heard of a great Sarasvati in the distant past. But, such people must have had a very long memory, see above! >> agrees with the scenario developed recently (Witzel 1995): >> early Indo-Aryan immigration (*maximally* starting at the end of the >> Indus civ., 1900 BC, and down to c.1400 BC >As already shown your Internal evidence infact negates your arguments. >Considering that you date the Rgveda to between 1500-1200BC. Dont you >find it strange that the Aryans were "reminiscencing" about a Haraxvaiti >which they had left at least a few hundred years ago.. Not at all. There are many references to Afghani rivers in the RV (Witzel 1995). And other recollections of even further Iran/Central Asia (PaNi, Daasa, Rasaa, etc.). And, with repect to the great Sarasvati of RV 7, not "the Aryans", but ONE poet (of unclear western origins) and then only ONCE. Note that this is found in one of two hymns by Vasistha (7.95-96) which praise the Sarasvati, the homeland (RV 3.53 etc.) of Vasistha's sponsor Sudas. In such situations a little hyperbole (typical for RV poets) is called for. Also, if not one or the other remembrance (see above), a mythological explanation for the phrase is not excluded (Witzel 1984), -- << briefly: the heavenly Sarasvati flowing from the nightime sky, called asman in Iranian: "the rock", to the earth, like the later Heavenly Ganga >>.-- In short too many *if*s in this ONE sentence in order to take the abnormal mentioning too literally and too seriously to build a whole theory on it. >.and then when they >talk of a river going underground you say that they decided to call a >already long dead or almost dead river which goes nowhere as their >Sarasvati (and calling it the river that flows from the mountains to the >sea > too!)... when bigger rivers are around ? Don't undertand that at all. The Sarasvati is in RV. The 'underground' river Sarasvati only in Jaiminiya and Pancavimsa Brahmana, and later on. As I have mentioned the Iranian and the RV Indian Sarasvati are *similar* in so far as they both disappear in the desert and have many ponds there: thus both are saras-vant "having ponds"! So why not name one after the other? The Afghani Sarayu (Haroiiu) appear as UP.Sarayu (Sarju) and the E. Afghani Gomati as U.P. Gomati (Gumti). For the Sarasvati to the sea, see above: ONCE, etc etc. Things are more complex than one brief look may indicate. And one has to fit them into the GENERAL picture of the RV as well. > > --------------------------- >> in striking contrast to that of the Indian homeland theory. > >(for >> example, of a pre-Indus civ. Rgveda). (And I am not even talking >> about copper (ayas) in the RV which would be *globally* out of date >> in a pre-Harappan Rgveda). > Again..your facts are wrong. Please look up > the following RC Agrawala, 1984, Aravalli, the Major source of copper > for Indus and Indus related cultures Don't get that. Of course the Indus civ. had copper (copper/bronze).So does the RV. But a "pre-Indus RV" of the Aryan homeland theory cannot have copper since it was not used .. yet. (To be clear, not to be misunderstood again. *Incidentally*, copper and even iron have always been used, for example there is an "exotic" copper bead in a neolithic Mehrgarh grave (c. 6500 BC). ) --------------------------- >> we must remember the > >contemporary data of the Mitanni, at c.1380 BC > You are completely ignoring the much earlier presence of clearly Vedic > names and vocabulary in west Asia, and there is nothing Iranian about > them. More of this later, as this message is alrady very long. Well, in fact, not at all: I just mentioned the Mitanni, eh? And I mentioned them earlier (Mitanni with their Asvins = Nasatya), I guess in another "horse" message. Well known since Thieme's c. 1960 argumentation. Their importance depends on the spin you want to give to their appearanae at c.1380 BC in Syria/Iraq. > > So in conclusion, I am afraid there are big holes in both the facts and logic that you have proposed. I hope I have filled some of the perceived holes here. Otherwise, tell me. MW. ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm phone: 1- 617 - 495 3295 (voice & messages), 496 8570, fax 617 - 496 8571 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- my direct line (also for messages) : 617- 496 2990 From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Fri May 22 21:28:18 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Fri, 22 May 98 14:28:18 -0700 Subject: The Indus and the Sarasvati Message-ID: <161227039030.23782.17006940125186648810.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hi, This is the title of a 5-page article which appeared in the Frontline of 22 May 1998. I will be happy to forward this to anyone interested. The article is by Dr. Ram Sharan Sharma, former Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research. This seeks to refute the views of "religious fundamentalists who want to establish the superiority of the Sarasvati over the Indus", to quote from a blurb. I can email this in pdf format (1.3mb) or as five jpg or gif files (1.47mb). Please let me know your preference. Regards, Kalyanaraman == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM Fri May 22 21:46:33 1998 From: mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM (S Krishna) Date: Fri, 22 May 98 14:46:33 -0700 Subject: South India geography Message-ID: <161227039032.23782.49684085490769445.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Vidyasankar Sundaresan writes: <> 1. mahAsurAlaya (in Kerala) - is this Sucindram? It seems to me that this place(since there is reference to kEraLa) would be more some place that is connected to bAli who was "Conquered" by vAmana.... >2. anantaSayana (in Kerala) - Travancore? ISn't this tiruvanantapuram..there is a well known padmanAbhasvAmi temple there where viSnu is shown to be reclining...At the same time, the place mentions the name "ananta" as in anantapadmanAbha or anantazayana... >5. pinAkinI (river in TN) AFAIK, this is a reference to the river "penna/pennAr" whose southern branch meets the sea near kaTalUr; the northern branch meets the sea near nellUru in Andhra pradEza. >6. payonadI ( -do- ) - somewhere in Salem-Coimbatore area? The context mentions the village of Satyamangalam. Isn't this the pAlAr river, which for all it's *milkiness*( namewise) is perenially dry? I think this flows thru the South Arcot District.. BTW, Vidyasankar, could you please share the zlOka with us? Regards, KRishna ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From barathi at PC.JARING.MY Fri May 22 07:16:25 1998 From: barathi at PC.JARING.MY (jayabarathi) Date: Fri, 22 May 98 15:16:25 +0800 Subject: South India geography Message-ID: <161227039006.23782.9136797639871432373.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 11:06 PM 5/21/98 PDT, you wrote: >I am reading a small poem in which a number of south Indian place names >are given. Where are the following places? Could some list member give >corresponding modern names? > >1. mahAsurAlaya (in Kerala) - is this Sucindram? >2. anantaSayana (in Kerala) - Travancore? >3. darbhaSayana (in TN) - is this near Ramesvaram? It is near Rameswaram. It is to the north of Ramanathapuram. There is a place called Devipattinam. The sea-front in this place is known as Dharbha Sayanam. As you would have guessed, it is associated with Rama. Just before crossing the sea, Rama is said to have ` done a penance and as an associated ritual, he is said to have lain on a spread of Dharbha grass. Regards Jayabarathi >4. koTTalampAkkam (in TN) - somewhere near Cidambaram - kuRRAlam? >5. pinAkinI (river in TN) >6. payonadI ( -do- ) - somewhere in Salem-Coimbatore area? The context >mentions the village of Satyamangalam. > >Thanks, >Vidyasankar > >______________________________________________________ >Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com > > From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Fri May 22 22:52:40 1998 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Fri, 22 May 98 15:52:40 -0700 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039034.23782.17989423448946613323.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Why limit this debate to a river that may or may not have been mighty, and may or may not have flown into the ocean? How about looking at the Rgvedic sarasvatI in a more generic sense, with reference to a delta region, with coastal lagoons and/or estuaries? Aren't these "ponds" too? Then the reference to samudrANi would be to more saline environments, where saras is more "fresh-water" - one "flows" into the other, depending on tidal mechanisms. Wouldn't this also explain the sindhu as the "mother" of the sarasvatI? Any serious evidence against such an interpretation? Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From jneuss at ZEDAT.FU-BERLIN.DE Fri May 22 15:08:31 1998 From: jneuss at ZEDAT.FU-BERLIN.DE (Juergen Neuss) Date: Fri, 22 May 98 17:08:31 +0200 Subject: SI Mss. Libraries II Message-ID: <161227039021.23782.8996751208779525448.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Indologists, first of all I want to express my gratitude for the suggestions I received regarding my earlier message. However the suggestions made were rather frustrating as it seems that there is no way of obtaining mss. from both libraries via mail. However I have had good experiences with other libraries like Adyar in Madras, BORI in Poona or Asiatic Society in Calcutta, to name a few. Hence my somewhat naive request to you. Some of you suggested that I should visit the libraries equipped with a good 35 mm camera and b/w films. Although this is a good way of documenting mss. I have been experimenting with colour slides as well, which can be scanned with a photo-scanner and thereafter be processed with programs like PaintShop etc. I have done this with paper and palmleaf mss. and the results were very good, as you can also have a coloured reproduction of the mss., which is sometimes helpful for a detailed description of mss. (For instance if you have red lines in the margin). Enlargement of difficult passages is also no problem. To put it briefly: there are certain advantages which anyone who has some expierence with mss. can easily imagine. Thanks for reading and kind regards. jn -- jneuss at zedat.fu-berlin.de Juergen Neuss Freie Universitaet Berlin Institut f?r Indische Philologie und Kunstgeschichte K?nigin-Luise-Str. 34a 14195 Berlin From a9607945 at UNET.UNIVIE.AC.AT Fri May 22 19:29:38 1998 From: a9607945 at UNET.UNIVIE.AC.AT (nathalie Pernstich) Date: Fri, 22 May 98 21:29:38 +0200 Subject: Brhadaranyaka Upanisad III. ii .12 Message-ID: <161227039028.23782.3582195074776355321.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >But Mundaka 3,2,8 and Prasna 6,5 >seem to say that at the final liberation the name too should disappear. Is >it the reason why the upanisadic sages have not left behind their names? What disappears after final liberation is the association of an individual's soul with a name and form (this is how I read Mundaka 3.2.8; Mundaka 3.2.11 states that this truth was declared by the seer Angiras), but a name can not disappear if sound is taken to be eternal and uncreate. Greetings N.P. ---------- From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Fri May 22 18:15:22 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Fri, 22 May 98 23:15:22 +0500 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.) Message-ID: <161227039027.23782.13142541989213341025.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 05:49 PM 5/20/98 -0400, Michael W1tzel wrote: > >NOTE that Sarasvati/Haraxvaiti mean "(river) having ponds", certainly not >a good name for a mighty stream; that this must at least refer to a slow >flowing river with many bends and u-shaped cut-off ponds, or it may be a >river disappearing in the Iranian/Indian desert with many ponds in its >lower course. > >unless the whole passage is not a reminiscence of the E. Iranian >Sarasvati (= Avestan: Haraxvaiti) and the great Hamum lake (Kangsaoiia, >cf. also Avestan texts on Vourukasha), into which the E.Ir. rivers flow, >as *sam-udra. As far as I am concerned whether aryans are indigenous or immigrants does not make any difference to me. I am trying to point out just something which does not click in the argument. If the river had the name Haraxvaiti even in Iran where it is supposed to be mighty river (vasiSTa remembers it as such!) how can you justify the interpretation of the name as a river made up of ponds, not mighty and disappearing? A mighty river could not have been given the name Haraxvaiti which represents only a small river made up of ponds. The word Vourukasha is very close to Bharukaccha (modern Broach). Does this have any significance? regards, sarma. From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Fri May 22 23:52:44 1998 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Sat, 23 May 98 01:52:44 +0200 Subject: The Indus and the Sarasvati Message-ID: <161227039035.23782.3627356496235228074.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 14:28 22.05.98 -0700, you wrote: >Hi, > >This is the title of a 5-page article which appeared >in the Frontline of 22 May 1998. I will be happy to >forward this to anyone interested. The article is >by Dr. Ram Sharan Sharma, former Chairman of the Indian >Council of Historical Research. This seeks to refute the views of >"religious fundamentalists who want to establish the superiority of >the Sarasvati over the Indus", to quote from a blurb. > >I can email this in pdf format (1.3mb) or as five jpg or gif files >(1.47mb). Please let me know your preference. Please do. pdf format will do nicely! Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Tel: +47 22 32 12 19 Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no Mobile phone: 90 91 91 45 From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sat May 23 12:02:01 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Sat, 23 May 98 08:02:01 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.) In-Reply-To: <19980521154431.2706.rocketmail@send1c.yahoomail.com> Message-ID: <161227039041.23782.8531216021237303824.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Thu, 21 May 1998, Lakshmi Srinivas wrote: > Correct me if I'm wrong but I understand Mughal has only surveyed the > dry bed of the Hakra in the erstwhile Bahawalpur State (Cholistan), > not excavated any site there. For example, Ganweriwala continues to > remain unexcavated. That is also what I remember from his recent book and from his talks here. He has done extensive surveys though. They are part of a more genera scheme to survey (large parts of) Pakistan to get a clear idea of what is around for excavation. If I rememeber correctly, a large part of the Panjab (east of the Indus) has been surveyed so far. I can find out. ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm my direct line (also for messages) : 617- 496 2990 From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sat May 23 12:02:12 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Sat, 23 May 98 08:02:12 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.) In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.16.19980522231800.0f27d0c4@hd1.vsnl.net.in> Message-ID: <161227039043.23782.1714343936542294334.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Fri, 22 May 1998, DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA wrote: > At 05:49 PM 5/20/98 -0400, Michael W1tzel wrote: > >NOTE that Sarasvati/Haraxvaiti mean "(river) having ponds", certainly not > >a good name for a mighty stream; that this must at least refer to a slow > >flowing river with many bends and u-shaped cut-off ponds, or it may be a > >river disappearing in the Iranian/Indian desert with many ponds in its > >lower course. > As far as I am concerned whether aryans are indigenous or > immigrants does not make any difference to me. I Nor to me. Nice to hear though. -- Our job is just to make sense of the SUM of available data: linguistic, textual, archaeological, geological, floral, faunal, genetic, etc. And of course without multiple contradictions. > If the river had the name Haraxvaiti even in Iran where it is supposed > to be mighty river (vasiSTa remembers it as such!) how can you justify > the interpretation of the name as a river made up of ponds, not mighty and > disappearing? A mighty river could not have been given the name Haraxvaiti > which represents only a small river made up of ponds. I think I answered that already in my original posting: See the first few lines above. As usual, SIMPLE answers are not available. The ponds can refer to the cut-off ponds (u-shape lakes) or to the series of ponds where the river ends in the desert. > The word Vourukasha is very close to Bharukaccha (modern Broach). Does > this have any significance? The Avestan word is from vouru "wide" (Skt. uru) and ka.s'a "incision, bay" (Skt. *karta, from kRt 'to cut"): 'having wide bays'. It is a mythical lake or ocean, similar to the heavenly samudra/sindhu of the Vedas. (Note the eastern and western hendu-s= sindhu-s of the Avesta) ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm my direct line (also for messages) : 617- 496 2990 From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sat May 23 12:02:24 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Sat, 23 May 98 08:02:24 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) In-Reply-To: <19980522225240.6855.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <161227039045.23782.1051703738210041543.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Fri, 22 May 1998, Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote: > Why limit this debate to a river that may or may not have been mighty, > and may or may not have flown into the ocean? How about looking at the > Rgvedic sarasvatI in a more generic sense, with reference to a delta > region, with coastal lagoons and/or estuaries? Aren't these "ponds" too? Yes, but the geographical limit of the Rgveda seems to be limited to the area from the Himalayas to the borders of Sindh (Bhalanas ~ Bolan pass) and from Afghanistan to the Yamuna/Ganga. No mentioning of the Indian Ocean -- unless one wants to understand the mythological hundred-oared ship of the mythological figure Bhujyu (in the ocean of the night sky) as the "ocean going ships of the Rgveda" (RV 1.116.3 sqq.) > Then the reference to samudrANi would be to more saline environments, > where saras is more "fresh-water" - one "flows" into the other, > depending on tidal mechanisms. Fine, but samudrANi "3, 4 etc. oceans"? : otherwise one would say, e.g., samudrau "2 oceans". Where multiple oceans are mentioned they seem to be mythological like the 2 hindu-s of the Avesta. All in "Sur le chemin du ciel, Bulletin des Etudes indiennes,2, Paris 1984. > Wouldn't this also explain the sindhu as > the "mother" of the sarasvatI? typical of the RV: one can be the mother of X, and at the same time the daughter of x. It only refers to a close connection of Sarasvati and Sindhu (which also may be the -mythological- ocean if we compare Avestan hendu). NB: Skt. sindhu mostly is masculine! No mother/daughter here! ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Sat May 23 16:48:37 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Sat, 23 May 98 08:48:37 -0800 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039051.23782.6588809148866572846.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel wrote: > Part II: > > (I wrote:) > > > >While RV 7.95.2 (cf. 7.6.7) indeed speaks of the Sarasvati flowing to > > >the/an ocean, this is not unambiguous, due to the various meanings of > > >samudra "ocean" or "confluence of rivers" (debated for more than 100 years > > >RV ...generally quite hyperbolic > > On Thu, 21 May 1998, Sn. Subrahmanya wrote: > > > A Sarasvati flowing into an ocean means a Sarasvati flowing into an ocean ! > > Logically correct, but *first* someone has to do the philological study > and show what samudra REALLY means (s. K. Klaus, Kosmographie 1986). I > have alluded to the century old discussion. Isn't it quite clear from linguistic tradition that samudra means ocean. Clearly it does not mean a regular lake or desert. A very large lake could be confused with the ocean, but do any of these rivers empty into large lakes? Also "north" is a very relative term. There is a northern Indian ocean adjacent to northern India and a southern one next to southern India. We don't necessarily have to accept Tilak to explain the northern samudra. The least complex explanation for a river flowing from the mountains to the ocean is the literal one since there are indeed such rivers in modern and ancient India. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM Sat May 23 16:18:22 1998 From: lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM (Lakshmi Srinivas) Date: Sat, 23 May 98 09:18:22 -0700 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.) Message-ID: <161227039053.23782.10815587187678982619.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I really meant "only surveyed", "not excavated". Evidently, M. Rafique Mughal has surveyed regions other than the Cholistan region (or the river bed alone as I seem to have unwittingly implied in my post). I am obliged to Prof Witzel for pointing this out. Warm Regards. ---Michael Witzel wrote: > > On Thu, 21 May 1998, Lakshmi Srinivas wrote: > > > Correct me if I'm wrong but I understand Mughal has only surveyed the > > dry bed of the Hakra in the erstwhile Bahawalpur State (Cholistan), > > not excavated any site there. For example, Ganweriwala continues to > > remain unexcavated. > > That is also what I remember from his recent book and from his talks here. > He has done extensive surveys though. They are part of a more genera > scheme to survey (large parts of) Pakistan to get a clear idea of what is > around for excavation. If I rememeber correctly, a large part of the > Panjab (east of the Indus) has been surveyed so far. I can find out. > > > > ========================================================================== > Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu > www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm > my direct line (also for messages) : 617- 496 2990 > == Lakshmi Srinivas _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Sat May 23 14:12:19 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Sat, 23 May 98 10:12:19 -0400 Subject: A question on Jain temples Message-ID: <161227039047.23782.13046489261739116002.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In the worshipping rituals of Jain temples of South India, were there any intermediaries like brahmin priests? Who administered these temples? Lay persons or monks or other intermediaries? Thanks in advance. Regards S. Palaniappan From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Sat May 23 14:20:47 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Sat, 23 May 98 10:20:47 -0400 Subject: A question on "kvath" Message-ID: <161227039049.23782.4626946346873455839.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Cologne's Digital Sanskrit Lexicon gives the following meanings for the words "kvath" and "kvAthi". "kvath" - Meaningcl. 1. A1. %{kvathate} , to boil , prepare by heat Ka1t2h. ; to digest W. ; to be hot (as the heart) Hcar.: Caus. %{kvAthayati} , to cause to boil , decoct Kaus3. S3a1rn3gS. ; (Pass. %{kvAthyate}) MBh. Sus3r. i , 45 , 3 Ma1rkP. xii , 36. "kvAthi" - Meaningm. (fr. %{kvatha} , `" boiling pot "' cf. %{kumbha- janman})N. of Agastya L. Has the word "kvath" or any of its derivates been used to refer to ziva, zaiva priests or brahmins in general? Also was Agastya born from a boiling pot? Thanks in advance. Regards S. Palaniappan From pclaus at HAYWIRE.CSUHAYWARD.EDU Sat May 23 17:49:45 1998 From: pclaus at HAYWIRE.CSUHAYWARD.EDU (Peter J. Claus) Date: Sat, 23 May 98 10:49:45 -0700 Subject: A question on Jain temples In-Reply-To: <15d2046b.3566d944@aol.com> Message-ID: <161227039055.23782.11700399567385166500.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Yes, they are (ARE, in coastal Karnataka, at least, where there are many active Jain temples [basadi]) called Indras. Peter Claus On Sat, 23 May 1998, Palaniappa wrote: > In the worshipping rituals of Jain temples of South India, were there any > intermediaries like brahmin priests? Who administered these temples? Lay > persons or monks or other intermediaries? > > Thanks in advance. > > Regards > S. Palaniappan > From JHOUBEN at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL Sat May 23 10:17:50 1998 From: JHOUBEN at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL (Jan E.M. Houben) Date: Sat, 23 May 98 11:17:50 +0100 Subject: literature on commentarial style Message-ID: <161227039038.23782.5443293785029471272.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Wed 20 May Robert Zydenbos wrote >Replies to msg 19 May 98: indology at listserv.liv.ac.uk (Adrian Burton) > > abEA> Can anyone direct me to *any* discussion of the traditional > abEA> style used by commentators ( i.e., the literary style > abEA> employed by the writers of bhaashya, Tiikaa, TippaNii > abEA> etc.). >>>One basic text on this matter is an article by Hermann Jacobi. I do not have the precise reference, but it is included in his _Kleine Schriften_, The intended article is probably: "Ueber den nominalen Stil des wissenschaftlichen Sanskrits", Indogermanische Forschungen 14 (1903):236-251. reproduced in Kleine Schriften, Wiesbaden 1970. On this "nominal style" see also Peter Hartmann, Nominale Ausdrucksformen im Wissenschaftlichen Sanskrit, Heidelberg 1955. George Thompson wrote on 21 May: >>>See also: Louis Renou: "Sur le genre du sUtra dans la litte'rature sanskrite", in *Journal Asiatique* 251, 1963. What understanding of the Sutra- and (other) different commentarial genres did the authors who wrote these texts have ? The validity of Renou's reconstructions and speculations with hindsight (e.g. on Suutra as 'leitmotiv') is limited. The same applies to speculations on etymologies of Tamil equivalents of the term Suutra (see Indology archive March-April 1997). Fortunately, Bhartrhari's Mahabhasya-Diipikaa offers us a quite elaborate (5th century C.E.) peep into the intellectual kitchen where these genres have been produced since Vedic times (for understandable reasons, the Sanskrit tradition favors the conservation of finished products only; and the MBhDiipikaa has indeed been preserved, but only in a single manuscript, in a lamentable state). This source (Bhartrhari's MBhD) was one of the major ones for some important revisions in our modern view on the relation between different commentarial genres in Johannes Bronkhorst's article "Vaarttika" (Wiener Zeitschrift f.d. Kunde Suedasiens 34:123-146), and more recently in my "Suutra and Bhaasyasuutra in Bhartrhari's Mahaabhaasya-Diipikaa: on the theory and practice of a scientific and philosophical genre", in: India and Beyond: aspects of literature, meaning, ritual and thought: essays in honour of Frits Staal, London: Kegan Paul, 1997. If someone needs the last-mentioned article urgently: I still have a few copies which I can send to the first two or three persons who ask me for it (please send a brief message with your mail-address to my personal email, as I sometimes miss parts of the Indology-list digests due to their immoral bulk). Other recommendations: Nalini Balbir: "The perfect Suutra as defined by the Jainas", Berliner Indologische Studien 3:3-21. Colette Caillat: "Le genre de suutra chez les jaina", in: Genres litteraires en Inde:73-101. Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne, 1994. Jan E.M. Houben Department of Languages and Cultures of South- and Central Asia ("Kern Institute") P.O. Box 9515 2300 RA Leiden From JHOUBEN at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL Sat May 23 10:27:44 1998 From: JHOUBEN at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL (Jan E.M. Houben) Date: Sat, 23 May 98 11:27:44 +0100 Subject: literature on commentarial style Message-ID: <161227039040.23782.1016923217135893246.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Addendum to the "Other recommendations" of the previous message (if not already mentioned by others, I missed some recent List-contributions): Bhattacharya, S.R. 1956 "Kinds of expositions in Sanskrit literature." ABORI 36:123-132. Hinueber, Oskar von 1994 "Die Neun Angas." Wiener Zeitschf. f.d.K.Suedasiens 38:121-135. Of interest is also the elaborate introduction of Rafaele Torella in his edition of The Isvarapratyabhijnakarika of Utpaladeva with the author's Vrtti: Critical edition and annotated translation. Roma: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1994. Jan E.M. Houben Department of Languages and Cultures of South- and Central Asia ("Kern Institute") P.O. Box 9515 2300 RA Leiden From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Sat May 23 17:57:31 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Sat, 23 May 98 13:57:31 -0400 Subject: A question on Jain temples Message-ID: <161227039057.23782.8770622254796950363.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dr. Claus, In a message dated 98-05-23 13:41:54 EDT, you write: << Yes, they are (ARE, in coastal Karnataka, at least, where there are many active Jain temples [basadi]) called Indras. >> It is not clear for me if you mean these Indras are priests or administrators? Can you clarify? Thanks. Regards S. Palaniappan From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Sat May 23 19:48:57 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Sat, 23 May 98 15:48:57 -0400 Subject: Inscriptions and Dravidian sound changes "y" > "c" and "y" > "t" Message-ID: <161227039059.23782.10578507458626257156.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Regarding the Dravidian y/c/s alternation, at 01:41 19/01/98 EST, Dr. Bh. Krishnamurti wrote: <> But this is not as universal a process as it is made out to be. According to the conventional weakening hierarchy of sound change as shown by Hans H. Hock in Principles of Historical Linguistics, 1991, p.83, the voiceless stops and voiced stops exemplified by "t" and "d" are higher in the weakening hierarchy than "y". If this hierarchy were to apply strictly and universally, proto- Dravidian "-y-" cannot have a reflex "-j-" which is a voiced stop. But this is precisely what the comparative Dravidianists posit in the case of Kui which Dr. Krishnamurti seems to accept (Pr. Dr. *kay > Kui kaju). Given this, there seemed to be no reason to believe in the one-way change proposed by Krishnamurti and Subrahmanyam. A two-way alternation as suggested by G. Sambasiva Rao seemed to be the correct one. Indeed, my examination of inscriptional evidence showed irrefutable evidence for y > c. To prove my case, I have to show that a "y" reconstructable to Proto-Dravidian should change to "c" in a medial position. Consider the following case. matacAn2ai (SII, vol. 5, no. 431 ) < matayAn2ai The compound "matayAn2ai" is composed of "mata"+"yAn2ai". It means rutting elephant. "mata" (DEDR 4687) means "to be furious as by must" and "yAn2ai" (DEDR 5161) means elephant. From the inscription it is obvious that it was treated as a compound. There is no word break between "mata" and "yAn2ai". In effect, "y" in "matayAnai" is inter-vocalic. There is no doubt that the word for elephant "yAn2ai" begins with yA-. According to P. S. Subrahmanyam's "Dravidian Comparative Phonology" published in 1983, this initial yA- can be assumed for Proto-Dravidian (p. 388-390). This means we have here a clear proof for y > c. It is strange that the comparative Dravidianists have not used the data in "Study of The Dialects in Inscriptional Tamil" by A. Velu Pillai, Publication no. 21 of Dravidian Linguistics Association, published in 1976 six years before the publication of P. S. Subrahmanyam's book. Velu Pillai lists several cases where y > c. One of these is the word cecuviccOm (p. 370). cecuviccOm (T.A.S. Vol. IV, p.118/119, Part II) < ceyvittom (we caused to do) The causative form of Ta. cey (to do) is given as "ceyvi" (to cause to do) by P. S. Subrahmanyam in his book "Dravidian Verb Morphology" (p. 7). Here "cey" takes on an epenthetic vowel, "u". Along with the palatalization of the first person plural past tense suffixes, this leads to the following process ceyvittOm > ceyuvittom > cecuviccOm In this case also, there can be no doubt that y > c. Some more words with y > c are: ucar < uyar (DEDR 646) vacakkal < vayakkal (DEDR 5258) vAcal < vAyil (DEDR 5352) vicalUr < viyalUr = viyal (DEDR 5404) +Ur P. S. Subrahmanyam notes that intervocalic *-c- can change to -d- (p.331-332). What is interesting is the change y > c can also proceed further resulting in y >t. For instance, we find: utarattu (S.I.I. vol. III, p.191, no. 47, Part II) < uyarattu (of the height). Regarding the position of L. V. Ramaswami Aiyar regarding y > c changes, Subrahmanyam noted, " Ramaswami Aiyar (1932b) identified a number of such cases but he argued that y is original and -s'-, -j- (Tulu) and -s- are secondary developments. He based his argument on the fact that in Kannada and Telugu -s- occurs in words with derivatives. He (1932b.21) says that y>s is "ultimately due to the incorporation of a strong breath current to mark off the medial syllable of derivatives." He seems to have been too much influenced by the facts that (i) y is found in greater number of languages than c and that (ii) literary Tamil y is often replaced by s'/s in the colloquial, e.g. L. Ta. muyal > colloq. Ta. mosali 'hare'." While I do not have access to Aiyar's paper, based on the evidence presented here, it rather looks like Krishnamurti and Subrahmanyam are the ones in error who failed to take into account very pertinent and relevant Tamil data. If that is done, many proto- Dravidian reconstructions of *-c- will have to be replaced with *-y-. Regards S. Palaniappan From sns at IX.NETCOM.COM Sat May 23 21:17:35 1998 From: sns at IX.NETCOM.COM (Sn. Subrahmanya) Date: Sat, 23 May 98 16:17:35 -0500 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.I) Message-ID: <161227039061.23782.17094614156240019834.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > As far as I am concerned whether aryans are indigenous or > immigrants does not make any difference to me. I I have no problem with it either....but I also believe that knowing the truth about Indian history is important. Atleast till now, I have found that there is a total lack of conclusive evidence of either a invasion/migration of Aryans into India. Now back to Prof Witzels posting... >The Rgveda tells us (3.33) that the (glacier-fed) Sutlej joined the Beas. >A look on the map will show that, due to that westward shift, the >Sarasvati lost the bulk of its water (all in Mughal 1995). Clearly the >later part of the RV ( books 3,7, 10) is LATER than the "great Sarasvati". >Thus, NO Rgvedic "Sarasvati civilization." (more on this last sentence >separately if wished). > If 3.33 tells us that the Satluj joined the Beas. One may argue that the info was passed down but wouldnt that indicate that whoever observed it and passed it on was present at that time ? You would probably argue that it was possibly a dravidian or pre-vedic aryan presence, but it can also be equally valid that it was the same rgvedic people as well !. Archeological evidence shows that there has been a continous cultural evolution and there is no sign of any migration or invasion. So it seems that it is more logical to conclude that the people who first observed the Sutlej joining the Beas were the same people who put it into the Rgveda as well. We will see more about this later with the "cultural" and "religious" traits later as well. >> --------------------- > >> The concentration of sites on the Sarasvati is very clear. All three - Early, >> Mature and Late - Harappan sites are on the Sarasvati. So even if we are >> accept that the river had dried up by 1400BC there is very clear >> evidence of a continous civilization. > >Nobody doubts that. But you overlook one or two things: > >(a) The great number of the (unexcavated) "Sarasvati" sites on the Hakra >in Cholistan is due to the fact that this is a dead, fossile river bed: >therefore, the sites have been preserved for the past 3-4000 years. > >(b) this is usually NOT the case in the rest of the Panjab with its >frequently shifting rivers. Much of what had been, say, near the ancient >Ravi or Beas has long been obliterated by these rivers... Also, many >Harappan sites might be under present towns, such as Lahore, and of >course, the modern town of Harappa.... > >Sn sum, we still do not know the full, real distribution of Harappan Civ. >sites in *real* percentages. > I agree with (a). But (b) is completely unjustified. ...The rivers of the Punjab just did not start to shift after or during IVC. They have been doing that for much longer time period. So it might be that the SIVC people did not even settle there because of the shifting rivers. The reason there are more sites on the Sarasvati is precisely because it was comparitively more stable than the rivers in the Punjab. After the capture of the Sarasvati it probably became worse. Also, many(not all) of the pre-Harappan and mature Harappan sites on the Sarasvati are on the eastern sides of the river where the denudation by floods was less and they also had the technology to counter the occasional floods compared to the floods in the Punjab. (1984, Raikes. Mohenjo Daro environment. Joshi et al,1984, A reconsideration based on distribution maps). As for your arguments about what is under Lahore .... One can also come up with all kinds of speculation about what is under Delhi or Kashi ! We come to conclusions, based on available data, the rest is mere speculation. Regards, Subrahmanya From sns at IX.NETCOM.COM Sat May 23 21:34:43 1998 From: sns at IX.NETCOM.COM (Sn. Subrahmanya) Date: Sat, 23 May 98 16:34:43 -0500 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039063.23782.7251934061537984210.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 12:40 PM 5/22/98 -0400, Michael Witze wrote: >Part II: >RV 3 and 10 have the smaller Sarasvati of today. RV 3 and 7 are >contemporary (king Sudas). RV 7.95.2 thus is anormal, with its great >Sarasvati. How to explain that? > >Now, RV 7.95 is supposed to be composed by Vasistha (in Anukramani). >Indeed, the hymn seems to be solid, of one piece (no trca-s here) and thus >is not thought to be late (Oldenberg, Prolegomena, 1888!). > >If we thus take Vasistha's authorship (contemporary of Sudas) seriously, >we are faced with the abnormal "great Sarasvati" at the time Sudas crosses >the confluence of the Beas & Sutlej (necessitating a small Sarasvati). > >Now, Vasistha is a suspicious figure. He does not belong to the well known >RV gotras, but is mentioned in RV 7.33.3 to have come from across the >Indus. He also has the typical Iranian idea of Yama being 'our' ancestor, >not Manu (RV 7.33.9). All of this opens the *possibility* of Iranian (and >thus Hamum-lake) conections. And thus a remmebrance of the other >(Iranian, Haraxvaiti; note other Iranian recollections, below). If this >should not be the case (and it is of course just a possibility for the >moment), then: > You say that 7.95.2 is old and then proced to connect its supposed author to Iranian ideas. If Vasishta came from across the Indus, why connect him all the way to Iran?. You also tend to presume that the Iranian ideas were probably contemporary to Rgvedic times!!. This need not be, we just dont know. The Iranian ideas could be from a later date. Also, what you have suggested is only a *possibility* as you say and does not conclusively prove that the 'mountain to the sea'Sarasvati is deifferent from the Indian Sarasvati river. Infact it neither proves nor disproves anything. --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> Again, If 7.95.2 is a remembering of the Sarasvati (and not the >Haraxvaiti) then does it not mean that the Aryans were already in the >SIVC when the Sarasvati was bigger ??? > >Why the "Aryans"? There is continuity at of *certain* cultural traits (NOT >RV religion etc, of course) between the Indus civ. and the Vedic civ. >Anybody living there could have heard of a great Sarasvati in the distant >past. But, such people must have had a very long memory, see above! > Exactly, there is continuity of cultural traits in the SIVC from before and after the "supposed migration of Aryans". Also: 1. We dont know what the actual religion of SIVC people was. 2. We dont really know much about the culture of the Aryans either. There is zilch archeological/textual evidence of migration from central asia into India. 3. The little that we do know about religion is just what we have from the Rgveda 4. We also know that there is a cultural continuity in the SIVC. So how can one postulate a migration ??? The only evidence that is claimed to show a migration into India is the so called "Linguistic evidence". -------------------------------------------------------------------- >Don't get that. Of course the Indus civ. had copper (copper/bronze).So >does the RV. But a "pre-Indus RV" of the Aryan homeland theory cannot >have copper since it was not used .. yet. > >(To be clear, not to be misunderstood again. *Incidentally*, copper and >even iron have always been used, for example there is an >"exotic" copper bead in a neolithic Mehrgarh grave (c. 6500 BC). ) There is evidence of wide usage (not just minimal) of copper in "Pre-Harappan times" as well. This is what R.C.Agrawala has to say "...most scholars suggest that copper was scarcely made us during the pre-Harappan period at Kalibangan. But this is far from true. The excavators have told us that the pre-Harappan levels of Kalibangan have yielded a rich variety of 56 copper objects which included...." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Regards, Subrahmanya From sns at IX.NETCOM.COM Sat May 23 21:47:26 1998 From: sns at IX.NETCOM.COM (Sn. Subrahmanya) Date: Sat, 23 May 98 16:47:26 -0500 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.III) Message-ID: <161227039065.23782.12306775634971841663.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >Michael Witzel wrote: >Well, in fact, not at all: I just mentioned the Mitanni, eh? And I >mentioned them earlier (Mitanni with their Asvins = Nasatya), I guess in >another "horse" message. Well known since Thieme's c. 1960 argumentation. >Their importance depends on the spin you want to give to their appearanae >at c.1380 BC in Syria/Iraq. > Here are some excerpts from "The Emergence of the Indo-Iranians: The Indo-Iranian languages." Harmatta, In History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Ed: A.H.Dani and V.M.Masson Harmatta writes {begin quote}" In the scanty linguistic material of the Kassites three important terms denoting deities occur: Suriyas,Maruttas and Bugas corresponding to the Old Indian names Surya, Marut and Bhaga. Surya and Marut are unknown in Old Iranian; this fact clearly points to the borrowing by the Kassites of these names from the Proto-Indian. Thus, linguistic evidence speaks clearly for the assumption that the people of war-charioteers, which had induced the Kassites to invade Babylonia, belonged to the Proto-Indians." ......... "...Proto-Indian linguistic influence was considerable on the vocabulary of horse breeding, horse training, social life and training as shown by the following list of Proto-Indian terms borrowed by the Hurrians and other peoples of Western Asia. Horse breeding and horse training: azvani 'horse driver';azva 'horse'. This term was borrowed by Heiroglyphic Hittite in the form azuwa, by Hebrew in the form of the radical s-w-s(<*azvas) becoming sus and by Akkadian with metathesis *azvas s-w-s > s-s-w giving sisu. *vazhanasya Gen.'ground', vartani 'round', babhru 'brown', palita 'grey' pingala 'red', *aika -'one', tri 'three', panca 'five', sapta 'seven', nava 'nine', vart 'to turn', rathya 'part of the chariot' Social life: marya 'member of the charioteer aristocracy', *mizdha 'wage', magha 'gift,present', mani 'necklace', rukma 'jewel', khadi 'bracelet' Religion: Mitra, Varuna, Indra, Nasatya, Agni (in Hittite ritual texts) 'names of gods' (Phonetic forms which are earlier than Vedic Indian are marked with an *) Also many personal names are known; they enlarge considerably our knowledge of the Proto-Indian vocabulary. There were heated debates to the extent and importance of the Proto-Indian ethnic elements in Mesopotamia. In the present writers opinion recent research tends to underestimate or even to deny the role played by the Proto-Indians in Mesopotamia in general and in the Mittani kingdom in particular." {end quote} ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thus there is clear evidence of Indian vedic names (not Indo-Iranian!) and vocabulary showing up in West Asia long before the time you say the Rgveda was compiled. Also, as we have already seen, by your own argument the Rgveda has indications of the time of the confluence of the Beas and the Satluj (probably a time even before the appearance of Indian vocabulary in west-asia) and even older as well. Because of this evidence, I think that the dating of the Rgveda to 1500-1200 is a gross underestimation. As already stated, it seems that you interpret based on a presumption that the Rgvedic people came into India from outside and thus have to fit the date of the Rgveda accordingly. For this hypothesis to be true we have to assume these Vedic people having come in from outside and then compose the Rgveda using remembered information from the locals about the Satluj and the Beas and then rename a local river as the Sarasvati based on a still older reminiscence of an Iranian river!. Anyway, I really appreciate Prof Witzel for taking the time to answer the questions and I have learnt a few more things in the process. Thanks a lot. Regards, Subrahmanya (please pardon the long postings) From sns at IX.NETCOM.COM Sat May 23 22:41:58 1998 From: sns at IX.NETCOM.COM (Sn. Subrahmanya) Date: Sat, 23 May 98 17:41:58 -0500 Subject: Sarasvati,boats myths etc... Message-ID: <161227039067.23782.5784088752838581050.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 08:02 AM 5/23/98 -0400, you wrote: >On Fri, 22 May 1998, Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote: > >> Why limit this debate to a river that may or may not have been mighty, >> and may or may not have flown into the ocean? How about looking at the >> Rgvedic sarasvatI in a more generic sense, with reference to a delta >> region, with coastal lagoons and/or estuaries? Aren't these "ponds" too? > >Yes, but the geographical limit of the Rgveda seems to be limited to the >area from the Himalayas to the borders of Sindh (Bhalanas ~ Bolan pass) >and from Afghanistan to the Yamuna/Ganga. No mentioning of the Indian >Ocean -- unless one wants to understand the mythological hundred-oared >ship of the mythological figure Bhujyu (in the ocean of the night sky) >as the "ocean going ships of the Rgveda" (RV 1.116.3 sqq.) > Sorry...but I just couldnt resist posting.. How does a myth become a myth ? To come up with a hundred oared ship myth - one should first know about boats and oars. So there might not have been a 100 oared ship, but a boat with a few oars is definitely possible. Also, it is important to realize that the Rgveda was not meant to be a encyclopaedia and if something is not mentioned in it - doesnt necessarily mean that it was unknown either. A more realistic judgement is required. Subrahmanya Houston, TX From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Sun May 24 03:20:39 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Sat, 23 May 98 20:20:39 -0700 Subject: Sarasvati,boats myths etc... Message-ID: <161227039071.23782.5625881310040056311.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel wrote: >Now, RV 7.95 is supposed to be composed by Vasistha >(in Anukramani). Indeed, the hymn seems to be solid, of >one piece (no trca-s here) and thus is not thought >to be late (Oldenberg, Prolegomena, 1888!). >If we thus take Vasistha's authorship (contemporary of >Sudas) seriously, we are faced with the abnormal >"great Sarasvati" at the time Sudas crosses the >confluence of the Beas & Sutlej (necessitating a small >Sarasvati). ---George Thompson wrote: > I think that Michael Witzel's point was that we can't expect such wildly > mythological material to lead us to any solid conclusions about geography. > Can we date the sequential dates of RV hymns with precision? George Thompson is right; we have to be careful in relying on RV to establish the sequence of desiccation of the Sarasvati river. Geological evidence is perhaps more reliable, though paleogeography tends to measure time in terms of large units such as 10,000 years, even for the quaternary period. Glaciology and geomorphology [not excluding tritium analysis of BARC using samples of waters taken from Jaisalmer etc. along the course of the paleochannels of Sarasvati river (S.)] seem to indicate the sequence as follows: 1. Circa 2500 B.C. the river was navigable from Ropar thru S.atra_n.a thru Bhawalpur thru Kotda thru Lothal. The river had carried the glacial waters of both S.atadru (from Mt. Kailas) and Yamuna (from Yamunotri and Har-ki-dun glaciers via Tons and Giri rivers in W. Garhwal). 2. S.atadru took a 90 degree turn at Ropar and turned westward, and ceased to be a tributary of S. (Note the two sequences of desiccation of the river around Ganweriwala referred to in Mughal's surveys). 3. Ganga pirated Chambal (later called Yamuna) at Paonta Saheb and took this tributary of S. to meet Ganga at Prayag. 4. The changes caused in earth formations (continuing even today evidenced by the rise of the Arbuda and Himalayan ranges) and the numerous faults in NW India led to the problem of subsurface drainage in aquifers, more vividly along the S. paleo-channels. For more precise dates, archaeology (carbon-14 dates) of S. sites, offers some help. Kotdiji, Kalibangan, Kotda (Dholavira), Lothal, Rakhigarhi, Ropar, even Chanhudaro and Mohenjodaro are caught between the two great rivers , the Sindhu and the Sarasvati. The migrations of people away from Sindh towards the Ganga-Yamuna doab is also noticeable, based on this cumulative archaeological record. When S.atadru joined S. at S.atra_n.a, Kalibangan was directly accessible by road from Harappa. The riverine/maritime civilization had transported their wares (and seals) along the S. and Sindhu river channels and the Persian gulf into the Tigris-Euphrates doab. Tritium analysis has yielded only broad data (Current Science article). The waters of Jaisalmer deep wells are identical to those of the waters of S. upstream. The dates are approximately 4500 years B.P. Certainly more work has to be done on the ground to establish the ground truth more precisely. Regards, Kalyanaraman. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL Sat May 23 23:28:16 1998 From: zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Sat, 23 May 98 21:28:16 -0200 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039076.23782.5166114812071881709.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Replies to msg 23 May 98: indology at listserv.liv.ac.uk (Paul K. Manansala) kJN> Michael Witzel kJN> wrote: > (I wrote:) [...] > > Logically correct, but *first* someone has to do the philological study > and show what samudra REALLY means (s. K. Klaus, Kosmographie 1986). I > have alluded to the century old discussion. kJN> Isn't it quite clear from linguistic tradition that samudra kJN> means ocean. Clearly it does not mean a regular lake or kJN> desert. Which tradition? In southern Karnataka there is a body of fresh water which still today is called ";Sivasamudra". Is this a different 'tradition'? Robert Zydenbos zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl From thompson at JLC.NET Sun May 24 01:54:31 1998 From: thompson at JLC.NET (George Thompson) Date: Sat, 23 May 98 21:54:31 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati,boats myths etc... Message-ID: <161227039069.23782.18436279941466932271.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> [large snip] and then Sn. Subrahmanya asks: > >How does a myth become a myth ? > >To come up with a hundred oared ship myth - >one should first know about boats and oars. > >So there might not have been a 100 oared ship, but a boat with a few >oars is definitely possible. > >Also, it is important to realize that the Rgveda was not meant >to be a encyclopaedia and if something is not mentioned in it - >doesnt necessarily mean that it was unknown either. > >A more realistic judgement is required. Please examine RV 1.116 more closely. You will see that, besides having 100 oars, these "ships" had Atmans [Atmanva'tIbhiH] [and thus alive], they swam in the sky [antarikSapru'dbhiH], and were far from water [a'podakAbhiH, if we accept the explanation of Lueders, in *VaruNa*, p.115]. Elsewhere in this hymn there is referemce to chariots with 100 feet [st. 4], to a horse's hoof from which 100 jugs of wine are poured [st. 7], etc., etc. This ocean by the way is without basis, without support, and ungraspable [st. 5: anArambhaNe' ...anAsthAne' agrabhaNe' samudre']. I think that Michael Witzel's point was that we can't expect such wildly mythological material to lead us to any solid conclusions about geography. Wouldn't you agree? George Thompson From zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL Sun May 24 00:00:40 1998 From: zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Sat, 23 May 98 22:00:40 -0200 Subject: A question on Jain temples Message-ID: <161227039078.23782.9512864471506542702.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Replies to msg 23 May 98: indology at listserv.liv.ac.uk (Palaniappa) PC> In the worshipping rituals of Jain temples of South India, PC> were there any intermediaries like brahmin priests? Who PC> administered these temples? Lay persons or monks or other PC> intermediaries? These questions should be answered with the most Jaina of answers: "yes and no". Monks are sannyaasins and therefore cannot have any official links with institutions like temples. They can visit temples, can be guests of honour there, can give lectures in temples, but cannot take part in the administration. In the course of time, a certain class of persons developed within the Jaina community in South India (I am now speaking about the living practice in Karnataka and southern Maharashtra) who were considered ritual specialists, and in time these people assumed what we can call brahminical traits: they considered themselves a separate section of the community, did not intermarry with other Jainas, etc. etc. (The origins of this group are not quite clear: whether they were converted brahmins or non-brahmins who imitated brahmins, or both. But it is one of the things about which I constantly question people, so give me some more time and I may come up with a definite answer.) This class of people is called by various names in different regions. Vaidika brahmins look down upon them as inferior and phony, but in lifestyle, learning and traditional functions in the community they are hardly distinguishable from the Vaidikas. But of course the Jainas are not 'Vaidika', and they find th! e study of the Vedas useless. The official position of these priests is more a matter of tradition than of doctrine. They are highly respected for their specialistic knowledge, but do not hold any exclusive right or authority in religious matters. Temples are generally administered by boards of trustees who are Jaina laypeople. As a rule, each Digambara temple (and all the older, indigenous Jaina temples in South India are Digambara) has a more or less formal association with one of the nine still active ma.thas, and the ma.thaadhipati has an important say in critical decisions (e.g., appointing new priests). Robert Zydenbos zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Sun May 24 13:51:40 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 06:51:40 -0700 Subject: SarasvatI etc. Message-ID: <161227039085.23782.16053411394087023876.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---"Yaroslav V. Vassilkov" wrote: > We can not yet read the texts, but there is enough > pictorial material (images on the seals, statuettes etc.) and other archaeological > evidence to conclude that the IV people practiced the archaic cults of > fertility, performed calendar rites (including probably the sacred > marriage rite), that female deities, goddesses played a prominent part in > this religion, that among their sacred animals were rhinoceros, tiger, > peacock, crocodile, scorpion and others, never mentioned (as sacred > objects) by the Vedas. If there are some scenes depicted on the seals, they > correspond > either with the themes of Sumerian or Elamite art, or with later Hinduism, > but never with the Vedic myths. Generally speaking, the IVC religion is > of different type as compared with the Vedic religion: it resembles > rather the religions of ancient Middle East. > And > if one of the parties in the discussion does not consider this science a > pramAna - then we have no common ground and this fruitless debate is to > be stopped, the sooner the better. Are we not making some assumptions here (as Parpola did in his Deciphering the Script) that the seals represented the religious beliefs thru the pictorials? How do we understand 'religion' from the archaeological artefacts unearthed? Regards, K. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Sun May 24 15:41:54 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 08:41:54 -0700 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039096.23782.9743456501795585184.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---Michael Witzel wrote: [snip]> But we can see enough from their seals and tablets. They do not fit > *Rgvedic* religion. A deity wrestling with 2 lions? A deity killing a > buffalo? A deity wrestling a buffao? etc. Not in RV > > > > But, in the post_Indus age we also have NEW items: > cremation and burial in urns (as described in the Vedic texts) replaced > burial of bodies in the ground. Already Vats in c. 1930 has pointed out > the curious birds (with minute human bodies inside!) painted on Cemetary H > cremation urns, -- which fits Vedic ideas about movement of souls after > death... But the *style* of these paintings (thus artisans, lower level, > small tradition) continues, is in Indus style. The ideas are new -- and > fit Vedic texts. This is little discussed in arch. these days. > Archaeoogists would have to read Vedictexts --- and therefore my > cooperation with R. Meadow... Let me repeat my question: can we read 'religion' in the pictorials of seals without making a leap of faith? The urns evidence is more vivid in re 'religion'. The painted urns are Kotdiji par excellence, core of the very early IVC trait. It is indeed intriguing that vedic texts seem to match some of this burial method evidence. Archaeologists will also have to start naming the artefacts they unearth using the ancient lexemes of the NW region. The bronze artefacts are stunning in their diversity and numerous in hundreds of sites. To note the migrations away from Sindh toward the Ganga-Yamuna doab I have attempted this: took Witzel's map of river sarasvati; superimposed Parpola's map of IVC sites on the banks of the river sarasvati; dated each of these sites (with corrected c-14 dates). The evidence is striking; the earlier radio-carbon dates are in the Kutch/Sindh; the later dates are sequenced towards Ropar... It is of course a moot question if Daimabad on the banks of Godavari or even Bet Dwaraka with a tyical IVC seal are reminscences... Regards, K. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Sun May 24 17:34:37 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 09:34:37 -0800 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039196.23782.9898897417566051178.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > > The RV is not a geography handbook. But complicated IA/IE poetry. Each > passage needs detailed investigation. All I did was to cast some > (intra-textual) doubt on the "proof passage" of the "great Sarasvati" in > the *later* RV. > As I see it the RV is the main evidence for the early IE invasion/migration theory. And the evidence is textual since we have no manuscripts from the Vedic period. So every major proponent of the AIT has attempted some fairly liberal interpretations of the RV regarding geography and many other subjects. Therefore, we cannot use the RV as proof in one direction but not the other. My contention about the Sarasvati is that the AI theorists do seem to be "retrofitting" the data here and there. The first and foremost thing is there is no hard archaeological evidence of a "Vedic" culture entering India. We certainly cannot label PGW culture as Vedic anymore than IVC. We have, at best, undoubted similarities between the medieval Vedic texts and the Avestan texts/inscriptions dating from several centuries before this era. From this we are attempting to extrapolate on events of anywhere from 1,500 BCE to 3,000+ BCE using mainly text interpretation.. For example, our belief that the supposed "Vedic" peoples used horses is based entirely on the Vedic texts. Since we do know the dating of the entire corpus for sure, how can we make any theories using these texts? Is the use of the Vedas as historical sources even valid? Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala ps -- regarding the use of saagara for lakes, doesn't this have a long tradition in the literature? Maybe I'm thinking of something else, but I'll investigate. From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Sun May 24 18:06:49 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 10:06:49 -0800 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039202.23782.13635396151513745766.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel wrote: > On Sat, 23 May 1998, Sn. Subrahmanya wrote: > > > At 12:40 PM 5/22/98 -0400, Michael Witze wrote: > > >Part II: > > >RV 3 and 10 have the smaller Sarasvati of today. RV 3 and 7 are > > >contemporary (king Sudas). RV 7.95.2 thus is anormal, with its great > > >Sarasvati. How to explain that? > > > You say that 7.95.2 is old and then proced to connect its supposed > > author to Iranian ideas. If Vasishta came from across the Indus, > > why connect him all the way to Iran?. > > Precisely because he professes un-Indian, Iranian ideas: I mentioned some > of them last time: .... Last time, I forgot his special relation with > Varuna in RV 7 86-88. A much more personal relationship of the poet and a > god (Varuna) than most of the RV. reminds of Zoroaster again (and Varuna = > "Asura Medha", has often been thought to have been the model for Zor's > Ahura Mazda) > Isn't Vasistha connected with Eastern India in later literature? Some intereresting facts about Vasistha: 1. He promoted cow worship (among beef-eaters?). 2. He raised tens sons on King Sudas' wife (among patriarchal peoples?) 3. In later literature he is the priest of Danavas and Daityas. > > You also tend to presume that the Iranian ideas were probably contemporary > > to Rgvedic times!!. This need not be, we just dont know. > > The Iranian ideas could be from a later date. > > No. There are indications of Iranian words in the RV, such as in RV 8. > Both languages and religions are very close. After several weeks in either > 'country" you could understand the local language easily, but maybe not > speak it grammatically correctly. All of this is well known. > > The Old Iranian of the older Avesta (Zarathustra's Gatha-s) is > linguistically hardly younger than the RV. Absolute dating has not been > established, though. But there are a few tantalizing hints (the YOUNG > Avestan name of Bactria in the Atharvaveda, for ex.) > But the Avesta is in neighboring Iran several centuries after the proposed "invasion". If the Avestan language is younger, then using the standard presumption we should suggest a migration from east to west. > > Also, what you have suggested is only a *possibility* as you say and does > > not conclusively prove that the 'mountain to the sea' Sarasvati is > > deifferent from the Indian Sarasvati river. Infact it neither proves > > nor disproves anything. > > Of corse not. But I had to point out that *something* is going on in > Vasistha's hymns: the proof passage for the "great Saravati". His > Sarasvati line does not fit the contemporary one of Visvamitra in 3.33!!! > > That still as to be explained. > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > Exactly, there is continuity of cultural traits in the SIVC from before and > > after the "supposed migration of Aryans". Also: > > 1. We dont know what the actual religion of SIVC people was. > > But we can see enough from their seals and tablets. They do not fit > *Rgvedic* religion. A deity wrestling with 2 lions? A deity killing a > buffalo? A deity wrestling a buffao? etc. Not in RV > Is there a religion of the Rgveda? Or do these simply reflect a particular type of hymn to certain deities. Besides we should not be comparing the Rgveda or Avesta only to IVC seals. Is there anything in Iran or Central Asian remotely more "Vedic" in nature? > > 2. We dont really know much about the culture of the Aryans either. > We know a great deal, from the RV and the Avesta. Their family system, > tribal system, their material cultue, their animals, their (little) > agriculture, their deities, their rituals, their poetics, their language, > etc. > > > There is zilch archeological/textual evidence of migration > > from central asia into India. > > That has changed wit the finds in Bactria-Margiana and Baluchistan. > Now their is a *trail*, see Hiebert in Erdosy, Indo_Aryans of Ancient > South Asia, 1995. Plus the Gandhara grave culture, plus Swat. All > starting about 1880/1700 BC., and after the destruction of the Bactrian > horizon about 2100 BC. > Highly questionable. We have to question the "Aryan" identification here. A lot of presumptions used to back up other presumptions. > > 3. The little that we do know about religion is just what > > we have from the Rgveda > > Not little. We can more or less reconstruct their Soma, Animal, Pravargya, > Horse and Fire rituals right from the Rv. Plus a lot of mythology. Add the > Avesta with very similar data. > Well, soma is a particularly interesting subject. Didn't it come from the Himalayas (Mt. Mujavant). > > > So how can one postulate a migration ??? > > The texts themselves speak of it many times, even in RV; and the RV > remembers places and tribes in Afghanistan, Iran and even beyond: The > Rasaa = Avestan Ranghaa = Scythian *Rahaa (written Rhaa in Greek), where > it designates ... the Volga. > All very questionable. Maybe we should discuss each passage that supposedly speaks of migration. How in the world can you be sure that Rasaa is the Volga? Mass migrations are not usually forgotten by people. We should not have to thread together tidbits if the Vedic peoples really did migrate from all the way from the Volga. All of this should be very clearly spelled out. Regards Paul Kekai Manansala From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Sun May 24 18:14:04 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 10:14:04 -0800 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.I) Message-ID: <161227039198.23782.17028585591843856357.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel wrote: > > As I said. -- But as for archaeological evidence for an immigration of a > movable (groups of) tribes, that's tricky business. For example, even the > highly invasive Huns (375 AD+ in Europe) had not been located > archaeologically until some of their graves were found in Hungary a few > years ago... Yes, but evidence of Hun culture clearly matching the text description is found outside of Europe. Do we find Vedic culture outside of India in pre-Harappan times? Also, the Hun invasion is very clearly spelled out in historical writings. Not so, regarding the supposed invasion of Vedic peoples. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Sun May 24 17:16:06 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 10:16:06 -0700 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039106.23782.2049921222880799327.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hi, I am fascinated by and agree with Sarma's views. I have been brought up right from grade 1 to college level in Penukonda, Anantapure district, studying in Telugu medium. It is a strong tradition in Andhra to call place names ending with -samudram any town supported by a lake. Even in Penukonda (which was the second capital of the Vijayanagara kingdom with a fort and all that) at the foothills of the mountain, 5 miles from the town, is a lake called samudram which served the drinking water needs of the entire town. As in Rajasthan, so in Penukonda, I had a routine chore to help my mother by carrying on my shoulder pots of drinking water walking 5 miles to the samudram. The point is: samudram is not necessarily a salty ocean. [Aside; a joke: I have often wondered if a popular etymology may be suggested! sa-mudra; were the ancestors of these people near the samudra's using seals?] How do the texts differentiate between samudra and sa_gara? Regards, K. ---DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA wrote: > In Andhra Pradesh there is a tradition of calling natural as well as > manmade large irrigational lakes as 'samudram'. Examples are > > 1. Chilka Samudram > 2. Tippa Samudram > 3. Anatasagaram > 5. Pillalamarri Samudram > 6. Chounda Samudram > 7. Eraka Samudram > 8. Nama Samudram > 9. Bacha Samudram > 10. Ganapa Samudram > 11. Prola Samudram > 12 Tamma Samudram > 13. Udayaditya Samudram > > But this does not prove anything because we do not know whether such> tradition of calling lkakes as 'samudram' existed in the RV times. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Sun May 24 17:28:38 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 10:28:38 -0700 Subject: samudra Message-ID: <161227039108.23782.12753205772966370322.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> hi, let me add my two cents worth, clustering CDIAL and DEDR. root: udan water (RV.); udaga water (Pkt.); u_ water (Burusha_ski). udanya_ thirst (ChUp.) anudra waterless; udrin abounding in water (RV.) ulla wet (Pkt.) ul.a mud (Ma.) but, u_l.a_ a carnivorous marine fish (Ta.) samudda large river, sea (Pali); sodo bha_sa_na boat festival, lit. launching at sea; muhuda ocean (OSi.) Are we dealing with lakes formed in the marshes of the Rann? or even close to the legendary Nal lake in Saura_s.t.ra which linked Kotda (Dholavira) and Lothal? British India gazetteers refer to the Nal lake expanding north- and south-wards cutting off the peninsula from Ahmedabad during monsoons. See the map in S.R. Rao's Lothal report. Regards, K. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sun May 24 14:32:40 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 10:32:40 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.I) In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19980523211735.00980960@popd.ix.netcom.com> Message-ID: <161227039087.23782.16402156519072153979.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Prof. Vassilkov has just answered most of the points but since this and the following messages were in my machine anyhow, here are my 2 cents: On Sat, 23 May 1998, Sn. Subrahmanya wrote: > I have found that there is a total lack of conclusive evidence > of either a invasion/migration of Aryans into India. That is, of course, one of the items we have to settle and the present discussion is but a minute aspect of it. As I mentioned last time: we have to make data from various sciences FIT each other, not pursue just one thing, the Sarasvati. But the S. data *also* have to fit, therefore: > If 3.33 tells us that the Satluj joined the Beas. > One may argue that the info was passed down but wouldnt that indicate > that whoever observed it and passed it on was present at that time ? Exactly, the latter: RV 3.33 is a quasi-eye-witness account of the crossing of the Beas and Sutlej by kind Sudas, composed by Visvamitra and 7.18 is a quasi-eye witness account of the 10-Kings'-Battle compsoed by his arch-enemy, Vasistha. (As is well known, Visvamitra was ousted as purohita by the newcomer Vasistha. This is so well remembered that even in the middle ages and more recently their decendants do not quote each others RV poems....). Of course, both Suuktas are in highly poetic format. Tricky. Many puns. (H.-P. Schmidt has dealt with 7.18 in Indica, some 15 years ago.) How else do you talk about your (defeated) enemies? : the Yadu become yaksu "sacrificial animals", the Matsya are 'hooked' etc. And since such hymns could not be changed after the fact (except for the minute phonetical changes made by the redactors, Sakalya and others, we have here, as I like to call it: a tape recording from the Vedic period. > Archeological evidence shows that there has been a continous cultural > evolution and there is no sign of any migration or invasion. So it seems > that it is more logical to conclude that the people who first observed the > Sutlej joining the Beas were the same people who put it into the Rgveda as well. As I said. -- But as for archaeological evidence for an immigration of a movable (groups of) tribes, that's tricky business. For example, even the highly invasive Huns (375 AD+ in Europe) had not been located archaeologically until some of their graves were found in Hungary a few years ago... To follow the "arch.line of argmentation": until then, c. 1980, they did not enter Europe, "there was no disturbance [of late Roman civ. which continued, politically, for another 100 years]", but *now* the Huns have entered indeed! So all we are missing are a few Rgvedic graves... and they may even have been found already. More below. (Of course, we have massive literary evidence for the Huns, just as we have it for the Indo-Aryans in the Rgveda, but that does not count in an 'archaeological' argument as made above, or as always pursued by J. Shaffer -- more on this below.) > >> --------------------- > >(b) this is usually NOT the case in the rest of the Panjab with its > >frequently shifting rivers. Much of what had been, say, near the ancient > >Ravi or Beas has long been obliterated by these rivers... Also, many > >Harappan sites might be under present towns, such as Lahore, and of > >course, the modern town of Harappa.... > > > But (b) is completely unjustified. > ...The rivers of the Punjab just did not start to shift > after or during IVC. They have been doing that for much longer time period. > So it might be that the SIVC people did not even settle there because of > the shifting rivers. I am afraid this is arm chair sociology. Just supposition. I forget the number of sites surveyed by Mughal in the rest of the Panjab, but I remember it was not a *small* number. I can find out. And they did settle there: otherwise no Harappa, Mohenjo Daro etc. -- But these are large sites. Mughal mostly found small ones in undisturbed, dry Cholistan which would have disappeared in many other locations. > The reason there are more sites on the Sarasvati > is precisely because it was comparitively more stable than the > rivers in the Punjab. The Sarasvati (Gh.-Hakra) never was stable as the multiple channels especially in its upper courses show. All Panjab rivers are unstable, inculuding even the Yamuna and further east. As I said: the Ghagghar-Hakra presents a SPECIAL case as it has been FOSSILE, dry and and undisturbed since late Harrappan times. THEREFORE you find a lot of sites there, on the Sarasvati/G-H. -- sites which have been washed away in other places, leveled, ploughed over etc. > As for your arguments about what is under Lahore .... > One can also come up with all kinds of speculation about what is > under Delhi or Kashi ! > We come to conclusions, based on available data, the rest is mere speculation. We actually know this about the modern town of Harappa; Delhi has 7 sites (Indarpat etc), and Benares 3 from North to South. Lahore, of course, needs investigation. ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu --------------------------------------------------------------------------- my direct line (also for messages) : 617- 496 2990 From Anand.Nayak at UNIFR.CH Sun May 24 09:32:51 1998 From: Anand.Nayak at UNIFR.CH (Anand Nayak) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 10:32:51 +0100 Subject: A question on Jain temples In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227039081.23782.8327872845263492590.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Last February I assisted at the jain centre at Sravanabelgola a puja performed by rahmin priests at the feet of Bahubali. The priests told me that they were brahmins of tantric traditions and were performing this puja daily at the request of the Jain Mutt. The brahmin priests perform the abhisekas of the Jain Thirthankaras. You could get more information from a Jain source person who welcomed our study groupe:Mrs. Babitha Pramod kumar . Anand NAYAK >Yes, they are (ARE, in coastal Karnataka, at least, where there are many >active Jain temples [basadi]) called Indras. > >Peter Claus > > >On Sat, 23 May 1998, Palaniappa wrote: > >> In the worshipping rituals of Jain temples of South India, were there any >> intermediaries like brahmin priests? Who administered these temples? Lay >> persons or monks or other intermediaries? >> >> Thanks in advance. >> >> Regards >> S. Palaniappan >> Sarvesham svastirbhavatu May all be prosperous sarvesham santirbhavatu May all be peaceful sarvesham purnambhavatu May all be whole sarvesam mangalambhavatu May all be happy INSTITUT DE MISSIOLOGIE ET DE SCIENCE DES RELIGIONS INSTITUT FUER MISSIONS- UND RELIGIONSWISSENSCHAFTEN Universit? de Fribourg Route du Jura CH-1700 Fribourg Tel: 026/ 300 74 38 (Office) 026/ 475 27 91 (Private) Fax; 026/ 300 9768 URL: http://www.unifr.ch/imr Prof.Dr.Anand NAYAK From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sun May 24 14:32:52 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 10:32:52 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19980523213443.00945b7c@ix.netcom.com> Message-ID: <161227039089.23782.9494626507769792776.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sat, 23 May 1998, Sn. Subrahmanya wrote: > At 12:40 PM 5/22/98 -0400, Michael Witze wrote: > >Part II: > >RV 3 and 10 have the smaller Sarasvati of today. RV 3 and 7 are > >contemporary (king Sudas). RV 7.95.2 thus is anormal, with its great > >Sarasvati. How to explain that? > You say that 7.95.2 is old and then proced to connect its supposed > author to Iranian ideas. If Vasishta came from across the Indus, > why connect him all the way to Iran?. Precisely because he professes un-Indian, Iranian ideas: I mentioned some of them last time: .... Last time, I forgot his special relation with Varuna in RV 7 86-88. A much more personal relationship of the poet and a god (Varuna) than most of the RV. reminds of Zoroaster again (and Varuna = "Asura Medha", has often been thought to have been the model for Zor's Ahura Mazda) > You also tend to presume that the Iranian ideas were probably contemporary > to Rgvedic times!!. This need not be, we just dont know. > The Iranian ideas could be from a later date. No. There are indications of Iranian words in the RV, such as in RV 8. Both languages and religions are very close. After several weeks in either 'country" you could understand the local language easily, but maybe not speak it grammatically correctly. All of this is well known. The Old Iranian of the older Avesta (Zarathustra's Gatha-s) is linguistically hardly younger than the RV. Absolute dating has not been established, though. But there are a few tantalizing hints (the YOUNG Avestan name of Bactria in the Atharvaveda, for ex.) > Also, what you have suggested is only a *possibility* as you say and does > not conclusively prove that the 'mountain to the sea' Sarasvati is > deifferent from the Indian Sarasvati river. Infact it neither proves > nor disproves anything. Of corse not. But I had to point out that *something* is going on in Vasistha's hymns: the proof passage for the "great Saravati". His Sarasvati line does not fit the contemporary one of Visvamitra in 3.33!!! That still as to be explained. > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > Exactly, there is continuity of cultural traits in the SIVC from before and > after the "supposed migration of Aryans". Also: > 1. We dont know what the actual religion of SIVC people was. But we can see enough from their seals and tablets. They do not fit *Rgvedic* religion. A deity wrestling with 2 lions? A deity killing a buffalo? A deity wrestling a buffao? etc. Not in RV > 2. We dont really know much about the culture of the Aryans either. We know a great deal, from the RV and the Avesta. Their family system, tribal system, their material cultue, their animals, their (little) agriculture, their deities, their rituals, their poetics, their language, etc. > There is zilch archeological/textual evidence of migration > from central asia into India. That has changed wit the finds in Bactria-Margiana and Baluchistan. Now their is a *trail*, see Hiebert in Erdosy, Indo_Aryans of Ancient South Asia, 1995. Plus the Gandhara grave culture, plus Swat. All starting about 1880/1700 BC., and after the destruction of the Bactrian horizon about 2100 BC. > 3. The little that we do know about religion is just what > we have from the Rgveda Not little. We can more or less reconstruct their Soma, Animal, Pravargya, Horse and Fire rituals right from the Rv. Plus a lot of mythology. Add the Avesta with very similar data. > 4. We also know that there is a cultural continuity in the SIVC. yes, but at what level? - The great Indus cities, their script and long their distance overland trade disappeared... All cultural traits continue at much reduced scale. But, in the post_Indus age we also have NEW items: cremation and burial in urns (as described in the Vedic texts) replaced burial of bodies in the ground. Already Vats in c. 1930 has pointed out the curious birds (with minute human bodies inside!) painted on Cemetary H cremation urns, -- which fits Vedic ideas about movement of souls after death... But the *style* of these paintings (thus artisans, lower level, small tradition) continues, is in Indus style. The ideas are new -- and fit Vedic texts. This is little discussed in arch. these days. Archaeoogists would have to read Vedictexts --- and therefore my cooperation with R. Meadow... > So how can one postulate a migration ??? The texts themselves speak of it many times, even in RV; and the RV remembers places and tribes in Afghanistan, Iran and even beyond: The Rasaa = Avestan Ranghaa = Scythian *Rahaa (written Rhaa in Greek), where it designates ... the Volga. > The only evidence that is claimed to show a migration into India > is the so called "Linguistic evidence". Yes, and that is powerful evidence which has not been disproved by anyone so far. S.S. Misra has tried, recently, but that is a very long and "interesting" chapter... > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > >does the RV. But a "pre-Indus RV" of the Aryan homeland theory cannot > >have copper since it was not used .. yet. > >(To be clear, not to be misunderstood again. *Incidentally*, copper and > >even iron have always been used, for example there is an > >"exotic" copper bead in a neolithic Mehrgarh grave (c. 6500 BC). ) > There is evidence of wide usage (not just minimal) > of copper in "Pre-Harappan times" as well. Copper (mined, smelted, worked on) does not go back to, say, 5000 BC. > this is far from true. The excavators have told us that the pre-Harappan > levels of Kalibangan have yielded a rich variety of 56 copper objects > which included...." I would have to see exactly which kind of copper objects... I mentioend the bead at Mehrgarh at an even much earlier date. But this does not mean copper smelting + regular usage.... ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm --------------------------------------------------------------------------- my direct line (also for messages) : 617- 496 2990 From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sun May 24 14:33:01 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 10:33:01 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.III) In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19980523214726.0096e674@ix.netcom.com> Message-ID: <161227039093.23782.17477306475190455867.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sat, 23 May 1998, Sn. Subrahmanya wrote: > >Michael Witzel wrote: > >Well, in fact, not at all: I just mentioned the Mitanni, eh? And I > >mentioned them earlier (Mitanni with their Asvins = Nasatya), I guess in > >another "horse" message. Well known since Thieme's c. 1960 argumentation. > >Their importance depends on the spin you want to give to their appearanae > >at c.1380 BC in Syria/Iraq. > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALL of Harmatta's materials you quote are well known I just did not want to get into another sideline discussion. Incidentally, but not very important here: The few Kassite names are disputed, they may well represent a para-Indo_Aryan tradition (for example people who were exposed, similar to the Mitanni, to *some* IA traits and who invaded - this time really invaded -- and took over the country for centuries, the "dark ages" of Mesopotamia ) But, more importantly, you miss one important aspect: The Mitanni speak, after all a non-IE, non-IA Caucasian language, Hurrite (from the Caucasus area), not Proto-Indo-Aryan. However, they have many PIA *words*. Scholars now think that they were heavily infuenced by PIA speakers a few hundred years (north of Iraq) *before* they emerged in the N.Iraq area. This is useful, as it pushes back the date of the preceding *Indo-Iranian* cultural and linguistic period a bit (to what? 2000 BC, 2500 BC. Nobody knows.) Only an (unlikely) early inscription or archaeology combined with linguistics (chariots) may provide the dates. > Thus there is clear evidence of Indian vedic names (not Indo-Iranian!) > and vocabulary showing up in West Asia long before the time you say > the Rgveda was compiled. Also, as we have already seen, by your own argument > the Rgveda has indications of the time of the confluence of the > Beas and the Satluj (probably a time even before the appearance of > Indian vocabulary in west-asia) and even older as well. No, rather about the same time for the Mitanni agreement of c.1380 and the Sudas crossing at the Beas/Sutlej confluence. That dating needs a long discussion agan, which I could provide, if I do not develop a carpal tunnel syndrome that way. Briefly: The RV does not know of iron : ayas is *NOT* iron but copper(/bronze). (Smelted, not meteroic!) iron first occurs in S. Asia abbout 1200 BC. The next level of texts (Mantras of YV, AV etc,) has iron, in the Atharveda in old enough sections as to date it close to 1200, not many centuries later. Here iron is, quite logically for a new product, called krsna, zyaama ayas "the black metal". - Anyhow, the later strata of the RV must be before 1200 BC. and the upper limit is supplied by the breakdown of the Indus civilization, the parallel info from the Mitanni, the dating of the first spoke-wheeled, *horse*-drawn race/war chariots (with 2 wheels) around 2000 BC together with its IIr designation (cakra), and one can add the breakdown of the Bactrian civ. etc. --- all of which points to the 2d millennium and not the 3rd or earlier. > Because of this evidence, I think that the dating of the Rgveda > to 1500-1200 is a gross underestimation. One would have to provide *solid* data to get much beyond this date... Say, Rgveda style chariots or te remnants of a RV style horse sacrifice in (pre-)Indus levels. I wait for that find! > As already stated, it seems that you interpret based on a presumption > that the Rgvedic people came into India from outside and thus have to > fit the date of the Rgveda accordingly. The other way round: we have to fit the data (and thus also the date) of the RV with all available data from other sources, as mentioned recently: archaeology, palaeo-fauna, linguistics, genetics etc. etc. So far no one has shown (to my and many others' satisfaction) that such data fit a supposed local emergence / origin of the Indo-Aryan language and material/spiritual culture in South Asia, not to speak of Indo-Iranian or even Indo_European language and culture. (But I am open to suggestions: I would not care, e.g., if the IA-s could be shown to emerge from the proto-Massai culture of E.Africa ...Africa, from where they got their millet....). The combination of all data just does not add up to an Indian homeland theory -- but this would fill a book. We would have to discuss point by point. > For this hypothesis to be true we have to assume these Vedic people > having come in from outside and then compose the Rgveda using remembered > information from the locals about the Satluj and the Beas and then > rename a local river as the Sarasvati based on a still older > reminiscence of an Iranian river!. All rivers of the Panjab -- with the possible exception of the Kubha (Kabul R.), Sutudri (Sutlej) -- have IA names; and at least the Vitastaa (Jhelum) reminds of the Iranian Vitanghuuaitii [Ved. *Vitasvatii), not to speak of the Rasaa = Avest. Ranghaa and the Sarasvatii = Haraxvaiti. The form of the names Kubha, Sutudri shows that local substrates were assimilated to sound IA. (see my forthc. paper in the IA/non-IA Michigan conf.) Local information clearly filters down, as Kuiper has tried to show long ago (1950) with his Austroasiatic myth in the RV which does not fit normal IA myth. And the 'hero" , Emusha, clearly does not have a good IA name.... ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm --------------------------------------------------------------------------- my direct line (also for messages) : 617- 496 2990 From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sun May 24 14:33:10 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 10:33:10 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati,boats myths etc... In-Reply-To: <19980524032039.17949.rocketmail@send1b.yahoomail.com> Message-ID: <161227039091.23782.3719763810420721010.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Thank you fo your informative data! I just have a few minor points this time: On Sat, 23 May 1998, S. Kalyanaraman wrote: > Can we date the sequential dates of RV hymns with precision? George > Thompson is right; we have to be > careful in relying on RV to establish the sequence > of desiccation of the Sarasvati river. Certainly, but some data are better than others: RV 3.33 with the confluence of the Beas and Sutlej, for example. > Geological evidence is perhaps > more reliable, yes, especially if wee add LOCAL investigation, for example of archaeological sequences (as you mention below, too), as to date certain palaeo-channels "in use", filled with water, and running rivers. As I said, you do not build straight on the flood plain unless the river is small and there is only a small chance to get flooded. > 1. Circa 2500 B.C. the river was navigable from Ropar > thru S.atra_n.a thru Bhawalpur thru Kotda thru Lothal. The river had > carried the glacial waters of both S.atadru ... and > Yamuna ... Fine, for the "great Sarasvati" (*perhaps* remembered later on). > 2. S.atadru took a 90 degree turn at Ropar and turned > westward, and ceased to be a tributary of S. The question still pending is : when. *Local* geological, archaeological etc. investigation at the Satlej bend is necessary. > the two great rivers , the Sindhu and the Sarasvati. The migrations of > people away from Sindh towards the Ganga-Yamuna doab is also > noticeable, based on this cumulative archaeological record. from Sindh? Shaffer speaks of late/post Indus people movement from the *Panjab* into the Kuruksetra/Haryana, and upper doab area. If you mean: during the main periods of the Indus/Harappan civ. is there any evidence for movement away from Sindh? Recent excavations at Harappa (Kenoyer, Meadow, Wright etc,) indicate that there was a continuity of development from the pre-Indus ("Ravi phase") civ. to the Indus civ. ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu --------------------------------------------------------------------------- my direct line (also for messages) : 617- 496 2990 From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Sun May 24 17:37:35 1998 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 10:37:35 -0700 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039110.23782.9572295973820455415.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >> >> Isn't it quite clear from linguistic tradition that samudra means >> ocean. Clearly it does not mean a regular lake or desert. A very large >> lake could be confused with the ocean, but do any of these rivers >> empty into large lakes? > >My suggestion: Do the investigation, then we ca talk. Also see R. >Zydenbos' example. And a lot more, plus the saagara "ocean" often >indicating lakes nowadays ! > To Zydenbos's example, add a number of village names in the Tirunelveli region of Tamil Nadu, e.g. ambAsamudram, gopAlasamudram, ravaNasamudram .... There isn't even any substantial incidence of lakes in this region. And there is the important historical site of dvArasamudra, in Karnataka again. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Sun May 24 05:43:28 1998 From: bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (Bh.Krishnamurti) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 10:43:28 +0500 Subject: Inscriptions and Dravidian sound changes "y" > "c" and "y" > "t" Message-ID: <161227039075.23782.17075498810983790891.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> There is a phenomenon called hypecorrection; since c>y is related as old-later, some crackpot at a later date would represent an underlying -y- form by -c- thinking that he was writing an older spelling. A good example is inscriptionl mata-c:nai for mata-ya:nai. So if there were many crackpots like that, it would even mislead us as a sound change. In Sanskrit there is a fricative y and a semi-vowel y (both probably occurred in complemenary distribution). The first one as in yama, yamuna:, etc was a fricative like Modern German J or English y in yes. Prakrit develops j- (palatal affricate) out of it,e.g. jama-, jamuna:. The Dravidian *y was not a fricative. It was a frictionless continuant. Kui kaju for *kay is a doubtful transcription; I have to check how regular is *y = Kui j. I know Schulze a German wrote j for y. PD *c and *y fell together in most of the languages but the distinciton is preserved by some members (particularly Kannada). where Ka also has an intervocalic -y- (bayal) it goes to PD *y. So Kannada holds the clue for PD reconstriction (Ta. poy = Ka. pusi <*posi 'a lie'; PD *poc-). Please check the chronology of -c- ~ -y- forms in Tamil. Are the-c- forms older or -y- forms in terms of literary attestation? You have to examine a sound change from a number of angles before making generalizations about others' scholarship. Bh.K. At 15:48 23/05/98 EDT, you wrote: >Regarding the Dravidian y/c/s alternation, at 01:41 19/01/98 EST, Dr. Bh. >Krishnamurti wrote: > ><strengthened by a natural phonetic process. -c- [-s-] thus gets weakened to >-y- and not the other way round.>> >Indeed, my examination of inscriptional evidence showed irrefutable evidence >for y > c. To prove my case, I have to show that a "y" reconstructable to >Proto-Dravidian should change to "c" in a medial position. >Consider the following case. >matacAn2ai (SII, vol. 5, no. 431 ) < matayAn2ai > >The compound "matayAn2ai" is composed of "mata"+"yAn2ai". It means rutting >elephant. "mata" (DEDR 4687) means "to be furious as by must" and "yAn2ai" >(DEDR 5161) means elephant. From the inscription it is obvious that it was >treated as a compound. There is no word break between "mata" and "yAn2ai". In >effect, "y" in "matayAnai" is inter-vocalic. >There is no doubt that the word for elephant "yAn2ai" begins with yA-. >This means we have here a clear proof for y > c. > Velu Pillai lists several cases where y > c. One of these is the word >cecuviccOm (p. 370). >cecuviccOm (T.A.S. Vol. IV, p.118/119, Part II) < ceyvittom (we caused to do) >The causative form of Ta. cey (to do) is given as "ceyvi" (to cause to do) by >P. S. Subrahmanyam in his book "Dravidian Verb Morphology" (p. 7). Here "cey" >takes on an epenthetic vowel, "u". Along with the palatalization of the first >person plural past tense suffixes, this leads to the following process > >ceyvittOm > ceyuvittom > cecuviccOm it rather looks like >Krishnamurti and Subrahmanyam are the ones in error who failed to take into >account very pertinent and relevant Tamil data. If that is done, many proto- >Dravidian reconstructions of *-c- will have to be replaced with *-y-. >Regards >S. Palaniappan Bh.Krishnamurti H.No. 12-13-1233, "Bhaarati" Street 9, Tarnaka Hyderabad 500017 Telephone:40-7019665 From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sun May 24 15:09:18 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 11:09:18 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) In-Reply-To: <199805231514.IAA09893@dry.jps.net> Message-ID: <161227039095.23782.12558268940823895082.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sat, 23 May 1998, Paul K. Manansala wrote: > > > A Sarasvati flowing into an ocean means a Sarasvati flowing into an ocean ! > > > > Logically correct, but *first* someone has to do the philological study > > and show what samudra REALLY means (s. K. Klaus, Kosmographie 1986). I > > have alluded to the century old discussion. > > Isn't it quite clear from linguistic tradition that samudra means > ocean. Clearly it does not mean a regular lake or desert. A very large > lake could be confused with the ocean, but do any of these rivers > empty into large lakes? My suggestion: Do the investigation, then we ca talk. Also see R. Zydenbos' example. And a lot more, plus the saagara "ocean" often indicating lakes nowadays ! > Also "north" is a very relative term. There is a northern Indian > ocean adjacent to northern India and a southern one next to southern > India. We don't necessarily have to accept Tilak to explain the > northern samudra. Unfortunately, the Rgveda does not knwo about South India and the closest ocean was the Arabian sea, definitley SOUTH of the Panjab, at least after the continental drift. The next northern ocean I have read about in Indian texts is the "ocean of sand" in Kalhana's Rajatanrangini 1150 AD... > The least complex explanation for a river flowing from the mountains > to the ocean is the literal one since there are indeed such rivers in > modern and ancient India. Certainly, but this is not a mathematical problem with "elegant proofs"... As A. Hillebrandt (under the pseudonym Fritz Bon-sens) wrote about the Rgveda a hundred years ago, in the tradition of the great Euheumeros: "Indra war ein grosser Raja -- so wie es auch heute noch in Indien viele Rajas gibt..." The RV is not a geography handbook. But complicated IA/IE poetry. Each passage needs detailed investigation. All I did was to cast some (intra-textual) doubt on the "proof passage" of the "great Sarasvati" in the *later* RV. ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Sun May 24 19:23:27 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 11:23:27 -0800 Subject: samudra Message-ID: <161227039200.23782.7985755860860059641.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> "S. Kalyanaraman" > hi, > let me add my two cents worth, clustering CDIAL and DEDR. > > root: udan water (RV.); udaga water (Pkt.); u_ water (Burusha_ski). > udanya_ thirst (ChUp.) anudra waterless; udrin abounding in water > (RV.) ulla wet (Pkt.) ul.a mud (Ma.) but, u_l.a_ a carnivorous marine > fish (Ta.) > > samudda large river, sea (Pali); sodo bha_sa_na boat festival, lit. > launching at sea; muhuda ocean (OSi.) > > Are we dealing with lakes formed in the marshes of the Rann? or even > close to the legendary Nal lake in Saura_s.t.ra which linked Kotda > (Dholavira) and Lothal? Any large body of water into which a river empties could potentially be called "samudra" however, again we have to be specific. There is evidence of a possible Sarasvati running to the sea, or sea marshes. What are the other proposals for the "samudra." Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From jnye at MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU Sun May 24 17:02:05 1998 From: jnye at MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU (James Nye) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 12:02:05 -0500 Subject: First grant competition, Seturaman Centre In-Reply-To: <199805241656.LAA27211@harper.uchicago.edu> Message-ID: <161227039101.23782.3367619168175886488.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> My colleagues at MOZHI in Chennai have asked me to alert scholars to the creation of the Professor Seturaman Centre for Culture Studies at MOZHI and the Centre's first award of grants. Support will be provided to complete a manuscript in the fields of critical theory, literary criticism, or translation studies. More information is available at the following URL: James Nye Bibliographer for Southern Asia University of Chicago From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Sun May 24 16:06:31 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 12:06:31 -0400 Subject: A question on Jain temples Message-ID: <161227039098.23782.10517726564521324248.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 98-05-24 01:44:29 EDT, zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL writes: << In the course of time, a certain class of persons developed within the Jaina community in South India (I am now speaking about the living practice in Karnataka and southern Maharashtra) who were considered ritual specialists, and in time these people assumed what we can call brahminical traits: they considered themselves a separate section of the community, did not intermarry with other Jainas, etc. etc. (The origins of this group are not quite clear: whether they were converted brahmins or non-brahmins who imitated brahmins, or both. But it is one of the things about which I constantly question people, so give me some more time and I may come up with a definite answer.) This class of people is called by various names in different regions. Vaidika brahmins look down upon them as inferior and phony, but in lifestyle, learning and traditional functions in the community they are hardly distinguishable from the Vaidikas. But of course the Jainas are not 'Vaidika', and they find th! e study of the Vedas useless. The official position of these priests is more a matter of tradition than of doctrine. They are highly respected for their specialistic knowledge, but do not hold any exclusive right or authority in religious matters. Temples are generally administered by boards of trustees who are Jaina laypeople. As a rule, each Digambara temple (and all the older, indigenous Jaina temples in South India are Digambara) has a more or less formal association with one of the nine still active ma.thas, and the ma.thaadhipati has an important say in critical decisions (e.g., appointing new priests). >> In my research on the word "pArppAr" (which is usually interpreted as referring to brahmins but, based on etymological grounds, I consider to be referring to priests in general), I have come across two Tamil inscriptions of 9th century which together seem to offer positive evidence for a group of people called "pAppAr cAn2ROr" who were involved in a Jain temple (paLLi). SII, vol. 14, no. 40 refers to a gift of 50 sheep to maintain a lamp in the resthouse erected by one vELAn2 of irumpATu at a place called perumpazanci. Another inscription registers a gift of land by the same person as "paLLiccantam" to the "paTarakar at tiruviruttalai-aruvALam". In both grants the responsibility for maintenance was taken up by "pAppArcAn2Ror". The second inscription even has a a Tamil verse at the end of the record, stated to have been composed by the donor himself. This verse contains an exhortation to all to offer worship to arhant. At the end of the sections outlining the grant the words "zrI cilaccikari" are found. The inscriptions are found in Nanguneri taluk of Tirunelveli District in Tamilnadu. Given the date of the inscription, 9th century, when the antagonism between the zaiva-vaiSNava bhakti movements and non-vedic Jainism and Buddhism was still strong, I doubt if any Hindu brahmin group would be involved in the preservation and maintenance of Jain temples. While the rulers may have shown tolerance towards all religions, the followers of zaivism and vaiSNavism could not be expected to be this tolerant. The form we have in these Jain inscriptions "pAppArcAn2ROr" is composed of "pAppAr" and "cAn2ROr". The literary form "pArppAr" is found in inscriptions as "pAppAr" as in SII, v.14, no. 36. "cAn2ROr" means respected/exalted ones and has been used to refer to officials/employees of Hindu temples also. Unless there is evidence of Hindu brahmins participating in Jain temple affairs in that timeframe, we have to assume that here we have a positive evidence of the word "pArppAr" referring to priests or "persons who praise" in general. "pArppAr" does not mean "seers". The Tamil inscriptions seem to refer to some respectable ritualists involved in Jain temples of 9th century. I am looking forward to hearing more from Zydenbos on this. Thanks a lot for all those who gave valuable information. Regards S. Palaniappan From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Sun May 24 19:07:33 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 12:07:33 -0700 Subject: sarasvati: etymology question Message-ID: <161227039112.23782.4062509912162489676.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> hi, Here are some comments which members may like to discuss further. 1) The following terms refer to the juniper: serec (Kt.); saras, sa_ras (Dm.); sa_ras (Kal.); saru_s (Kho.) There is a semantic link with rasa juicy in the following etyma: sarsa_i_ moisture (H.); sarasa juicy (Pkt.) 2)The semantic link between a pond and a fountain is intriguing (subject of course to the acceptability of the phonetic transform su--sa): sur fountain (Kt.Ash.); sur, su_ru (Pr.); sar pool (Dm.); sara lake, pond (Pali.Pkt.) 3)Note also the tradition which associates Sarasvati river with gold (pannier gold?). rasava_tam in Tamil connotes alchemy. In sum, is it reasonable to suggest that the term, 'sarasvati' and the semant. connoting 'juicy' or 'juniper' and 'mountainous terrain', can be clustered with: (a) curra_ sweet juice from the new leaves of sa_l tree (Kur.); cure gum (Malt.); cuna juice (Ma.); cun-ai mountain pool of spring, tan, reservoir; cun-aivu rock water (Ta.); and (b)curam ghaut (Ma.) In sum, is it unreasonable to suggest that sarasvati is associated more with juniper with its habitat in NW India and Himalayan flora than with sara = pool? Regards, K. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Sun May 24 19:43:07 1998 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 12:43:07 -0700 Subject: South India geography Message-ID: <161227039114.23782.12303386057205184247.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Many thanks to all who answered my query on the South Indian place names. The references were from a 17th century kAvya called SankarAbhyudya, by one rAjacUDAmaNi dIkshita. The two places I'm still unsure of are mahAsurAlaya in Kerala and koTTalampAkkam in TN. The Sanskritized names occur in numerous verses, so I won't quote them all. One verse which I thought was particularly interesting refers to the Tamil literary tradition of Madurai (V. 34) - atha tatra sanghapalakAdhirohiNo draviDa prabandha paradevatAtmanaH | kalaSIkumArakRta sUtravartmanA kavayan vyajeshTa katicit kavISvarAn || Here, SankarAcArya is said to have debated with some Tamil poets. The word sanghapalaka is a reference to the Tamil cankam, kalaSIkumAra is agastya, and the sUtra attributed to him is the Tamil grammar. Rather than viewing this as purely legendary, I think the verse talks of a very real interaction between Sanskritic and Tamil traditions in 17th century Tamil Nadu. The "SankarAcArya" of this verse is not the author of the Advaita commentaries, but almost certainly a later personality, who bore the name SankarAcArya as a title. In this connection, note the draviDa SiSu reference in the saundaryalaharI, attributed to SankarAcArya by the 16th century commentator, lakshmIdhara. This reference is supposedly to the Saiva saint, jnAnasambandar. Thus, the contemporary practice of calling a number of religious figures as SankarAcAryas may have a history of at least three or four centuries. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From yavass at YV1041.SPB.EDU Sun May 24 09:38:20 1998 From: yavass at YV1041.SPB.EDU (Yaroslav V. Vassilkov) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 13:38:20 +0400 Subject: SarasvatI etc. Message-ID: <161227039083.23782.10695771346974085217.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> 1) S.Subrahmanya (May 24) quotes an article by J.Harmatta on "Proto-Indian" names and terms in Babilonian, Mitanni and Hittite documents - and considers this data to be a "clear evidence of Indian Vedic (not Indo-Iranian!) names and vocabulary showing up in the West Asia long before the time you (Prof. Witzel) say the RV was compiled"... Having added to it the dubious date of the catastrophe which changed the flow of SarasvatI, S.Subrahmanya concludes: <"Because of this evidence, I think that the dating of the RV to 1500-1200 "c" and "y" > Message-ID: <161227039120.23782.3086008121026304321.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---Palaniappa wrote: > The placement of DEDR 5259 Ta. vayiRu belly with an implied *-y- seems to be > correct even though Kannada has basiR. Colloquial Tamil has forms like vakuRu, > vavuRu, but no vacuRu. DEDR places Tamil lexemes first, irrespective of whether they represent the proto-D forms or not. It is however emphasised that this does not mean that Tamil phonemes represent the proto-D. Re: Semant. 'belly', how do we explain the following? 'Borrowing' to and fro seems to be the bon mot. kucam < kuca woman's breast (Pa_rata. Campava. 55); kuyam woman's breast (Tan-ippa_. ii,75,190)(Ta.lex.) koch, kochi lap, lower part of bosom where babies are carried or dandled (K.); kukhi slender part of the body below the ribs; kuchir. hip (S.); kukh side between hip and ribs; kucchir. carrying a child astride the hip; kuchur. lap (L.); kukkh belly, side of belly, womb (P.);ku_kh hips (H.); belly (Marw.); belly, womb, side below ribs, armpit (G.)(CDIAL 3213).kon:ka woman's breast (Ma.); kangur.i nipple, teat (Kui)(DEDR 2038). Regards, K. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From matsya at IBM.NET Sun May 24 03:29:55 1998 From: matsya at IBM.NET (JM) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 15:29:55 +1200 Subject: The Indus and the Sarasvati Message-ID: <161227039073.23782.12776625732659311047.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Please send it to me as a pdf. Thanks. Jay Matsya -----Original Message----- From: S. Kalyanaraman To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Date: Saturday, 23 May 1998 09:27 Subject: The Indus and the Sarasvati >Hi, > >This is the title of a 5-page article which appeared >in the Frontline of 22 May 1998. I will be happy to >forward this to anyone interested. The article is >by Dr. Ram Sharan Sharma, former Chairman of the Indian >Council of Historical Research. This seeks to refute the views of >"religious fundamentalists who want to establish the superiority of >the Sarasvati over the Indus", to quote from a blurb. > >I can email this in pdf format (1.3mb) or as five jpg or gif files >(1.47mb). Please let me know your preference. > >Regards, >Kalyanaraman > > > > >== >34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. >http://www.probys.com/sarasvati >http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm >http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha >http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) >kalyan97 at yahoo.com > >_________________________________________________________ >DO YOU YAHOO!? >Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com > From sns at IX.NETCOM.COM Sun May 24 21:27:44 1998 From: sns at IX.NETCOM.COM (Sn. Subrahmanya) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 16:27:44 -0500 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch) Message-ID: <161227039116.23782.15590169303444629749.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Micheal Witzel wrote: >The RV does not know of iron : ayas is *NOT* iron but >copper(/bronze)." Let me reiterate ..I did not bring up iron at all...but there is definitely wide usage of COPPER (again NOT iron!) in pre-Harappan levels. >Not little. We can more or less reconstruct their Soma, Animal, >Pravargya, Horse and Fire rituals right from the Rv. Plus a lot of >mythology. Add the Avesta with very similar data. What about the "fire altars" in SIVC with the animal remains?. And also isnt it interesting that Parpola uses the vedic myths to explain the iconography on the SIVC seals, but switching to dravidian just for the script ? So how can you be sure that the vedic myths are representative of true Aryan religion ? >But we can see enough from their seals and tablets. They do not >fit *Rgvedic* religion. A deity wrestling with 2 lions? A deity >killing a buffalo? A deity wrestling a buffao? etc. Not in RV Have you seen some of the celtic motifs ? A man and two beasts are in them too. Art historians have noted the similiarities between the cross legged 'yogic' horned deities of the celts with that of the seals from the SIVC also. Let me point out some more "cultural" evidence that might be of interest: Figuirines have been found in SIVC with red pigmentation between the parting of the hair (just like women in India do even today) and there is elephant head with a red pigmentation on top, like kumkum usage of today. (Look up India-Land of Mystery by Time Life books for the photos) Also, Parpola uses the 'pottu-min' to try and decipher the script on the seals. I mention all this just to reiterate the point that the 'tilak' is a uniquely Indian and stron cultural feature. It should also be remembered that the Xinjiang mummies, who are supposed to have taken a wrong turn in the Ukraine and ended up in the wrong place, also have the uniquely Indian 'tilak' on their forehead in addition to their celtic clothes and kentum language. So do we have to have believe that these people rode in with the 'tilak' on their foreheads from the Ukraine ? As for the migration trail - only the future will tell: Depending on the dating of the future archeological finds in the Tarim Basin and other central asian regions, it will be conclusively proven whethar it was a migration INTO India or OUT of an Indian cultural influence area( i.e from the Tarim Basin down to Baluchistan). Until that conclusive evidence is found, it is the responsibility of scholars to make it clear that the Aryan Invasion/Migration into India theory is *NOT* a proven historical fact and only one of the hypotheses. Regards Subrahmanya From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Sun May 24 21:58:35 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 17:58:35 -0400 Subject: Inscriptions and Dravidian sound changes "y" > "c" and "y" > Message-ID: <161227039118.23782.8503151632396873614.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 98-05-24 01:15:45 EDT, bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN writes: <y is related as old-later, some crackpot at a later date would represent an underlying -y- form by -c- thinking that he was writing an older spelling. A good example is inscriptionl mata-c:nai for mata-ya:nai. So if there were many crackpots like that, it would even mislead us as a sound change. In Sanskrit there is a fricative y and a semi-vowel y (both probably occurred in complemenary distribution). The first one as in yama, yamuna:, etc was a fricative like Modern German J or English y in yes. Prakrit develops j- (palatal affricate) out of it,e.g. jama-, jamuna:. The Dravidian *y was not a fricative. It was a frictionless continuant. Kui kaju for *kay is a doubtful transcription; I have to check how regular is *y = Kui j. I know Schulze a German wrote j for y. PD *c and *y fell together in most of the languages but the distinciton is preserved by some members (particularly Kannada). where Ka also has an intervocalic -y- (bayal) it goes to PD *y. So Kannada holds the clue for PD reconstriction (Ta. poy = Ka. pusi <*posi 'a lie'; PD *poc-). Please check the chronology of -c- ~ -y- forms in Tamil. Are the-c- forms older or -y- forms in terms of literary attestation? You have to examine a sound change from a number of angles before making generalizations about others' scholarship. Bh.K. >> Fortunately, we can check for the crack-pot theory or hyper-correction in the case of "matacAn2ai". The word occurs in two inscriptions SII, vol. 5, no. 300 as well as no. 431 which I had mentioned earlier. No. 431 has far fewer sections missing than no. 300. No. 431 is found in Tirunelveli and no. 300 is found in Tenkarai near cOzavantAn2, north of Madurai. A comparison of the two inscriptions makes it obvious that the eulogy portion was composed by a single person while the actual inscribing was done by different persons at the two locations. The inscriptions belong to the period of the famous cuntarapANTiyan of the 13th century. The eulogy portion of 431 in which the word "matacAn2ai" occurs, also has the words "An2ai" and "yAn2ai" used in other places. Inscription 300 has the corresponding occurrences of "matacAn2ai" and "yAnai". But the middle section with the "An2ai" form is missing. The occurrences of the words "An2ai" and "yAn2ai" are given below. akkaLattil An2aiyin veNmaruppuGkaiyyuG - in that battlefield the elephant's white tusk and trunk kaTalenn2a muzaGkuG kazinalliyAn2ai - the excellent elephant which trumpets like the ocean. The usage nalliyAn2ai with an "i" inserted is similar to Classical Tamil usage (compare nalliyAz - good lute in malaipaTukaTAm 450) If the composer was being hyper-corrective, he would not have used "An2ai" or "yAn2ai". Further he seems to have been aware of the classical forms. The only conclusion possible is that he is using the different forms current at that time, classical as well as colloquial forms, in a very long inscription in which the eulogy portion alone runs to almost one and a half pages of a book of 8.5''x11" size. As for the chronolgy of the forms mentioned, each of the forms with -y- occurs in Classical Tamil. ucar < uyar (DEDR 646) vacakkal < vayakkal (DEDR 5258) vAcal < vAyil (DEDR 5352) - vicalUr < viyalUr = viyal (DEDR 5404) +Ur uyar - to rise puRanAn2URu 334.8 vayakku - to tame akanAn2URu 344.10 vAyil - entrance puRanAn2URu 350.6 viyalUr - a place akanAn2URu 97.13 vayal - cultivated field puRanAn2URu 354.4 (Kannada has both vayal and bayal(u)) The forms with -c- are found in inscriptions at least 600 years later than the literary attestations of -y-. None of the -c- forms discussed above are found in Classical Tamil. Some of the -y- forms are used even today in formal speech while some of the -c- forms are considered very substandard. For instance, literate persons will not use ucar- in colloquial speech. The preferred form is -y-. -c- and -y- are clearly distinguished. On the other hand, vAcal is acceptable and vAyil is found in very formal speech. Inscriptions show not only vacakku, but also, mayakku, and macakku reflecting all the variant dialectal forms. Todau tiruvicalUr is the name of the town. The placement of DEDR 5259 Ta. vayiRu belly with an implied *-y- seems to be correct even though Kannada has basiR. Colloquial Tamil has forms like vakuRu, vavuRu, but no vacuRu. Finally, I was not generalizing about others' scholarship. My comment was made in the same spirit as P. S. Subrahmanyam was making with respect to L. V. Ramaswamy Aiyar and it was specific to the discussion at hand. Moreover, what I said was not an inference as P. S. Subrahmanyam did, but was a fact. The Reference list in Subrahmanyam?s book does not include Velu Pillai?s book which appeared full 7 years before Subrahmanyam?s book. The book has an introductory note by scholars representing all major Dravidian Languages R. C. Hiremath (Dharwar) for Kannada , K. Mahadeva Sastry (Sri Venkateswara University) for Telugu, and V.I. Subramoniam (Kerala) for Tamil and Malayalam. Further A. Velu Pillai who had earned a Ph.D. under T. Burrow had produced this book at the invitation of the Dravidian Linguistics Association. So I felt that the quality of the work had been recognized by other scholars and I was surprised it was not consulted in the preparation of "Dravidian Comparative Phonology". For the benefit of those interested, in its 1132 pages, "Study of the Dialects of Inscriptional Tamil" mainly deals with phonology and morphology. It is based on about 1750 inscriptions grouped into 5 periods: (1) 6th to 8th centuries, (2) 9th century, (3) 10th century, (4) 11th century and (5) 12th century. As the introduction of the book notes, it covers only a small portion of about 30,000 Tamil inscriptions that had been collected by the Archaelogical Survey of India at that time. However, it is a significant work bringing together the results of many earlier unpublished research efforts including that of Pillai. Regards S. Palaniappan From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Sun May 24 23:01:14 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 19:01:14 -0400 Subject: Inscriptions and Dravidian sound changes "y" > "c" and "y" > Message-ID: <161227039122.23782.4088463497621049235.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 98-05-24 18:20:05 EDT, kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM writes: << DEDR places Tamil lexemes first, irrespective of whether they represent the proto-D forms or not. It is however emphasised that this does not mean that Tamil phonemes represent the proto-D. >> See DEDR p. xxxv. "The order of the groups is essentially that of the PDr phonemes in the reconstructed PDr roots or stems involved, with the order of the Tamil alphabet applied to these phonemes. This is possible since the inventory of Tamil phonemes probably corresponds very closely to that of the PDr phonemes - though it does not follow that all, or even most, Tamil forms will serve as PDr reconstructions." This has beennoted by Dr. Krishnamurti in his review of DED in Language, vol. 39, Number 3, (1963), p. 559. He says, "In other words, the arrangement of groups in an alphabetical order of implied reconstructions (without actually citing them) necessarily committed to the very responsibility that they had sought to avoid." Consider the word Ta. cey "to do". Its PDr reconstruction is not *ce- but *ke-. So DED placed Ta. cey and related words after those groups which can be reconstructed to be *ke- instead of those that are *ce-. But the overall order of groups follows the Tamil alphabet. Regards S. Palaniappan From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Sun May 24 17:34:22 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Sun, 24 May 98 22:34:22 +0500 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039103.23782.7362128498618109136.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 11:09 AM 5/24/98 -0400, Michael Witzel wrote: >On Sat, 23 May 1998, Paul K. Manansala wrote: > >> > > A Sarasvati flowing into an ocean means a Sarasvati flowing into an ocean ! >> > >> > Logically correct, but *first* someone has to do the philological study >> > and show what samudra REALLY means (s. K. Klaus, Kosmographie 1986). I >> > have alluded to the century old discussion. >> >> Isn't it quite clear from linguistic tradition that samudra means >> ocean. Clearly it does not mean a regular lake or desert. A very large >> lake could be confused with the ocean, but do any of these rivers >> empty into large lakes? > >My suggestion: Do the investigation, then we ca talk. Also see R. >Zydenbos' example. And a lot more, plus the saagara "ocean" often >indicating lakes nowadays ! > (snip) >Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu > www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm > > In Andhra Pradesh there is a tradition of calling natural as well as manmade large irrigational lakes as 'samudram'. Examples are 1. Chilka Samudram 2. Tippa Samudram 3. Anatasagaram 5. Pillalamarri Samudram 6. Chounda Samudram 7. Eraka Samudram 8. Nama Samudram 9. Bacha Samudram 10. Ganapa Samudram 11. Prola Samudram 12 Tamma Samudram 13. Udayaditya Samudram But this does not prove anything because we do not know whether such tradition of calling lkakes as 'samudram' existed in the RV times. regards, sarma. From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Mon May 25 08:49:54 1998 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Mon, 25 May 98 01:49:54 -0700 Subject: South India geography Message-ID: <161227039134.23782.10628120451241011575.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote: >atha tatra sanghapalakAdhirohiNo draviDa prabandha paradevatAtmanaH | >kalaSIkumArakRta sUtravartmanA kavayan vyajeshTa katicit kavISvarAn || > >Here, SankarAcArya is said to have debated with some Tamil poets. The >word sanghapalaka is a reference to the Tamil cankam, kalaSIkumAra is >agastya, and the sUtra attributed to him is the Tamil grammar. I should probably clarify the above a little. The verse should not be taken as an indication that the poet takes SankarAcArya to the age of the Tamil cankam. It only seems to be an acknowledgement of the old association of Madurai with the cankam. This is also the only verse that talks of draviDa prabandha and kavis in Madurai. The rest of the chapter is filled with stotras on Siva and Minakshi, the presiding deities of Madurai. The stotras are attributed to SankarAcArya. Does somebody on the list know whether Tirumala Nayaka of Madurai revived old cankam traditions in the late 16th century? Perhaps the SankarAbhyudaya's reference is to a more recent custom of giving an honored seat (sangha-palaka-adhirohiNa) to the best poets. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Mon May 25 09:34:29 1998 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Mon, 25 May 98 02:34:29 -0700 Subject: South India geography Message-ID: <161227039138.23782.11306981775146222392.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >>Does somebody on the list know whether Tirumala Nayaka of Madurai >>revived old cankam traditions in the late 16th century? .... > May be what you meant was Thirumalai Raayan and not > Thirumalai Nayakkan. No, I meant Tirumala Nayakan, because of his proximity in time with Rajacudamani Dikshita, the author of the Sankarabhyudaya. This text describes a number of places in TN which Sankaracharya is supposed to have visited, but it is only in Madurai that a reference to Tamil literary tradition is found. And I have reason to believe that the poet refers to many events which were in the recent past for him. Be that as it may, what was the old Tamil custom with respect to a palaka? Were the honored poets given a palakai (wooden seat)? Or perhaps, only for the poet(s) adjudged to be the best in a contest? Is there evidence of such a custom in the 16th-17th century? Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From mcv at WXS.NL Mon May 25 04:42:47 1998 From: mcv at WXS.NL (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Mon, 25 May 98 04:42:47 +0000 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.III) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227039124.23782.15515851200614918627.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael, Just two questions off-list. You write, on the IE [?]-strate in Mitanni Hurrian: >This is useful, as it pushes back the date of the preceding *Indo-Iranian* >cultural and linguistic period a bit (to what? 2000 BC, 2500 BC. Nobody >knows.) Only an (unlikely) early inscription or archaeology combined with >linguistics (chariots) may provide the dates. Am I to interpret that as that you agree with me that the IE element in Mitanni Hurrian is *Indo-Iranian* not necessarily Indo-Aryan (after all, Proto-Indo-Iranian "1" may have been *aika, right?)? >Anyhow, the later strata of the RV must be before 1200 BC. and the upper >limit is supplied by the breakdown of the Indus civilization, the parallel >info from the Mitanni, the dating of the first spoke-wheeled, >*horse*-drawn race/war chariots (with 2 wheels) around 2000 BC together >with its IIr designation (cakra), and one can add the breakdown of the >Bactrian civ. etc. --- all of which points to the 2d millennium and not >the 3rd or earlier. What does "Bactrian civilization" refer to exactly? I suspect the area of urban settlememts along the Amu Darya (Shortugai, Namazga) all the way to Shah Tepe etc. on the Caspian, but I'm not familiar with the term. Greetings, ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From mcv at WXS.NL Mon May 25 04:44:46 1998 From: mcv at WXS.NL (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Mon, 25 May 98 04:44:46 +0000 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.III) In-Reply-To: <356ff46e.82381649@mail.wxs.nl> Message-ID: <161227039126.23782.15288411358669677866.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote: >Michael, > >Just two questions off-list. Oh well, on-list. Doesn't matter. ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Mon May 25 13:10:43 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Mon, 25 May 98 06:10:43 -0700 Subject: SarasvatI etc. Message-ID: <161227039146.23782.3746705061827191040.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---"Yaroslav V. Vassilkov" wrote: > The images of animals on the Indus seals are not just animalistic > sketches. So often we can see that they are represented standing before a > kind of "feeding trough", and the more dangerous a particular animal is > (tiger, buffalo), the more often it is depicted in this position. They > are sacred and feared animals (teriomorphic gods) who are to be propitiated. > The scenes depicted on the seals are also mythic or ritual. In what > other way can we interprete the image of a personage killing a buffalo with > a spear, in the same way as much later DurgA or Skanda does the same thing (the > parallelism is enriched by a detail: both IVC personage and the Goddess in the > DevImahAtmya first stamps one foot on the buffalo's head and then pierces its > withers with the spear). Or a scene where a goddess in a horned headdress is > standing in the "azvattha arc", while adorants offer her a (sacrificial?) > goat? And so on. The problem I have with such a 'reading' of the seals is this and limited only to the assumed use of the seals/tablets: The corpus of seals have not been fully deciphered. We are taking anecdotal evidence from a few imageries (from out of a very small statistical sample of about 3000 inscriptions only; note also the over 50 seals with svastika_) and concluding that the pictorials are vividly religious(with an underlying assumption that the IVC traditions continued into later historical periods of the region). How about the signs which accompany the pictorials? Can they be read in this 'religious' context? What language? Why were the seals used to depict these religious beliefs? Can we assume that they were used like 'amulets' comparable to the later-day lingayat tradition? Is it unreasonable to start with a hypothesis that many seals/tablets were used in trade? Regards, k. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From filipsky at SITE.CAS.CZ Mon May 25 07:37:18 1998 From: filipsky at SITE.CAS.CZ (Jan Filipsky) Date: Mon, 25 May 98 09:37:18 +0200 Subject: Spelling of S. Radhakrishnan's name sought Message-ID: <161227039131.23782.11305941558178903547.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 09:21 AM 5/18/98 +0200, I wrote: >Could any of the netters give me the correct (Telugu) spelling of S. >Radhakrishnan's birthplace/given name - is it SarvapaLLi or SarvepaLLi or >even SarvEpaLLi? To which I received the following response: sarvEpalli rAdhAkriSNan However, when I consulted Glossary of the Madras Presidency by C.D. Maclean, reprint of the 1893 ed., AES, New Delhi 1982 under SARWAPULLY (p. 790), I found out that there is a village (spelled in Telugu Sarvapalle) in the Nellore District, Goodoor taluk, lat. 14 deg. 18', long. 80 deg. 01', 13 miles N.E. from Goodoor, 11 miles S. from Nellore, 11 miles W. from the sea. Remains of old Rohilla fort. Etymology is given from "sari" Tel. straight + "palle", Tel. village. Is it THE village that gave S. Radhakrishnan his name, and if so, what about its spelling? Gratefully, J.F. Jan Filipsky, Oriental Institute, Pod vodarenskou vezi 4, 182 08 Praha 8 phone 004202 6605 3729 e-mail private: U Pentlovky 466/7, 181 00 Praha 8 - Troja phone 004202 855 74 53 From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Mon May 25 13:39:42 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Mon, 25 May 98 09:39:42 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch 1) Message-ID: <161227039148.23782.277199632798317097.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Now here we have an interesting bag of related and non-related items. But even then, large gaps in a comprehensive theory. Since this would become too long I divide this post into three parts and hope my fingers won't fall off in the meantime. So one point after another: On Sun, 24 May 1998, Sn. Subrahmanya wrote: > Micheal Witzel wrote: > >The RV does not know of iron : ayas is *NOT* iron but > >copper(/bronze)." > Let me reiterate ..I did not bring up iron at all...but there is > definitely wide usage of COPPER (again NOT iron!) in pre-Harappan > levels. Yes, but I had to, as iron is important for the low limit of the RV.. And, as I said, copper mining & smelting for its upper limit. It is impossible at 5000 BC, a favorite date for a "pre-Harappan RV". Or when do YOU want to put it? > What about the "fire altars" in SIVC with the animal remains?. Interesting point. Unfortunately it does not work, either. First of all, the so-called fire altars have small steles or "pillars" inside them, which *no* Vedic fire altar has, -- but which even today normal kitchen fire places in the area do have indeed. Take a look at Cholistan etc., fire places. Second, the so-called Vedic 7 fire places in the early and later stages of the Harappan site of Kalibangan (2200 BC., Lal 1984, see Allchin 1982, B.B. Lal 1997 for photos) and similarly at Lothal. Some of these fire places are in a domestic and some in a public context: the Kalibangan ones are seven (actually preserved only 4 or 5!) fire places, on a raised platform facing a brick wall; a well and bath pavements nearby suggest ceremonial(?) bathing. Some, including Allchin (1982), S. P. Gupta (1996) regard them as similar to or identical with the seven dhishnya hearths of the (*post-Rgvedic*) 'classical' Srauta ritual. However, none of this, including the brick-built bathing places, fits any Vedic ritual, neither that of the RV nor of the later Srauta ritual. The RV only knows of 1-3 fires, and in Srauta ritual we find the three fires arranged in a typical, irregularly *triangular* fashion. The seven dhishnya fire altars of the complicated post-Rgvedic Soma ritual are additional fires, placed east of the three main fires on the trapezoid Mahavedi platform. None of these features, however, is met with at Kalibangan. It also does not fit the Vedic evidence that animal bones are found in some of the supposed fire altars. The Indus finds, therefore, do not represent Vedic ritual but local Harappan kitchen practices. Not every fire place is sacred and not all bones in fire places are offerings. What you want to see is what you get. > And also isnt it interesting that Parpola uses the vedic myths to > explain the iconography on the SIVC seals, but switching to > dravidian just for the script ? So how can you be sure that > the vedic myths are representative of true Aryan religion ? The first point has nothing to do with my argument but only with Parpola's suppositions and working hypotheses and methods. The decipherment has not been universally accepted, just like any other one of the 50-odd ones proposed (Possehl, Indus Age, The Writing System, Philadelphia 1996, discusses some 50 'decipherments', 33 in detail. They mutually disagree with each other. The interpretation of the famous "Siva" seal provides the best examples for that. Your second sentence is an oxymoron. We know of the ancient-most Aryans (Indo-Aryans, to be correct) from the RV, where they call *themselves* arya,aarya (-- but not their enemies). The Vedic language is "aarya vaac" (Kaus.Br.) and the RV talks almost exclusively about Aryan religion, is used for the all-important Aryan rituals of Aryan society of the time. Whatever else was around in the Panjab at the time is hardly noticed or it is denigrated as anarya, dasyu etc. -- So, is it the "true Aryan religion" that is either not mentioned or denigrated in the text of people who expressively call themselves aarya??? (similar for ancient Iran) Incidentally what is "not true Aryan religion"? How does one know? ================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Mon May 25 13:39:56 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Mon, 25 May 98 09:39:56 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch 2) Message-ID: <161227039150.23782.16891294467522068855.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sun, 24 May 1998, Sn. Subrahmanya wrote: > >But we can see enough from their seals and tablets. They do not > >fit *Rgvedic* religion. A deity wrestling with 2 lions? A deity > >killing a buffalo? A deity wrestling a buffao? etc. Not in RV > Have you seen some of the celtic motifs ? > A man and two beasts are in them too. Yes I have, but this is a well-known, ancient Mesopotamian motif. ... Celtic motifs are from a much later period and show mediterranean influence (among others). > Art historians have noted the similiarities between the cross > legged 'yogic' horned deities of the celts with that of the seals > from the SIVC also. Yes, - I think there is only one, and I always told that to students as a joke. Since the Gundestrup vessel comes from (Germanic) Denmark but is supposed to be Celtic, from Yugoslavia, some 500 BC or even later. An export from the Indus valley 2000 years later? The Celtic Cernunnos 'the horned one' rather is the typical shamanistic/hunters' religion "Lord of the Animals" which precedes both the IE and the Harappan civilizations. You can see him at work already in the Trois Freres Stone Age paintings, of palaeolitic times, at 14,000 BC ... in Southern France. Exported from the Indus? More about export: Don't forget the great simililarty of the Indus and the Easter Island's rongo-rongo script, just off S. America! The prof is that Polynesians also use maalaas and practice ritual dance, even have some fire ceremonies.... And not to forget, they also have a 4-caste system with very strict taboo rules similar to those about untouchables, and Vedic myths like those of the Rgvedic Dyaus Pitaa and PRthivii (Rangi and Papa), who were separated by the Polynesian Indra (Toko 'pole', sorry: Indradhvaja). I suggest a sympathetic reading of Chaman Lal's book "Hindu America": that will provide much more evidence of such exports, ... and I can save some time. > Let me point out some more "cultural" evidence that might be > of interest: > Figuirines have been found in SIVC with red pigmentation > between the parting of the hair (just like women in India > do even today) and there is elephant head with a red > pigmentation on top, like kumkum usage of today. > (Look up India-Land of Mystery by Time Life books for the photos) I have seen red linings and pigmentation before. (I have worked in Nepal for 5 years and I actually have travelled and lived in India as well). But what has all of that to do with immigration or emigration? We rather talked about certain cultural survivals. In this case, while there is simantonnayana in the Grhya Sutras, the red lining of the partition of the hair is not mentioned. Again, the typical mixture of two traditions. > Also, Parpola uses the 'pottu-min' to try and decipher the script > on the seals. I mention all this just to reiterate the point > that the 'tilak' is a uniquely Indian and stron cultural feature. No, it isn't. It has a long (and, so far, well hidden history). To put you on the track, read the later Rajataranginis and you will find that it was done, even in the 15th c. AD with the blood of a slain enemy... I suppose the Near Eastern and European hunting customs of doing the same thing (with blood) is an export from the Indus Valley again? ======================= M.Witzel From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Mon May 25 13:40:06 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Mon, 25 May 98 09:40:06 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch 3) Message-ID: <161227039152.23782.16605280303830787554.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > It should also be remembered that the Xinjiang mummies, who > are supposed to have taken a wrong turn in the Ukraine and > ended up in the wrong place, also have the uniquely Indian > 'tilak' on their forehead in addition to their celtic clothes > and kentum language. > So do we have to have believe that these people rode > in with the 'tilak' on their foreheads from the Ukraine ? > Whatever they have or not, and from wherever they came, we have not yet recorded or listened to their language, and as for the uniquely Indian tilak, see above. (NB.: in Hsingkiang, in post-Kushana times...). > As for the migration trail - only the future will tell: > Depending on the dating of the future archeological finds > in the Tarim Basin and other central asian regions, > it will be conclusively proven whethar it was a migration > INTO India or OUT of an Indian cultural influence area( > i.e from the Tarim Basin down to Baluchistan). >From wherever in Central Asia the (series of) movement(s) started, it certainly does not look like the Tarim basin. Anyhow, the "Indian cultural influence area" is only from Kushana and later, medieval times. Before that, one can speak of an Iranian one, from Rumania to Mongolia and from the Urals to the Persian Gulf : of the N.Iranians (Scythians, Saka), W.Iranians (Persians), E. Iranians (Avesta texts) etc.etc. And as for THE EXPORT MODEL, I still need to see any sort of evidence that indicates that (apart from the Gypsies, and such incidental affairs as Buddhist missionaries) tribal or other groups from South Asia have left the sub-continent in a western direction. They should have left SOME undeniable trace, in language, culture... > Until that conclusive evidence is found, it is the > responsibility of scholars to make it > clear that the Aryan Invasion/Migration into India > theory is *NOT* a proven historical fact and only one of > the hypotheses. This completely neglects the linguistic data, those of material culture (e.g., racing/war chariots, domesticated horses & furnishings), spiritual culture: Vedic myth, poetry, religion, ritual, potics & poetic texts, family and social set-up, etc. etc. -- As even some archaeologists sometimes say(d): pots don't speak... (We can make them, to an extent). However, archaeology *alone* makes for a poor fit. It has been shown, for example, that the remains of a 5 language/people area in Papua would produce just the same archaeological remains and we would never know that 5 distinct peoples lived there. Or, take a look at modern dump site, and see how far one may find in them distinctions between Canadian, US, Bahaman, Bermudan, -- even Quebequois, Michelon-St Pierre, -- or Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican etc. cultures... (suppose, you don't find texts or cannot read the Latin script plus English, French, Spanish)... A few thousand years from now, results may be that English writing and printing was invented in New Zealand, cars & computers in Japan, while Asians, Africans, and "Caucasians" emigrated from the densely populated US (where the same archaeological records show a very popular cult of various types of mother goddesses!) to distant shores... ity alam! ========================================================================== MichaelWitzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Mon May 25 13:42:34 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Mon, 25 May 98 09:42:34 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.III) In-Reply-To: <356ff46e.82381649@mail.wxs.nl> Message-ID: <161227039154.23782.11060853549090395971.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Mon, 25 May 1998, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote: > >This is useful, as it pushes back the date of the preceding *Indo-Iranian* > >cultural and linguistic period a bit (to what? 2000 BC, 2500 BC. Nobody > >knows.) > Am I to interpret that as that you agree with me that the IE element > in Mitanni Hurrian is *Indo-Iranian* not necessarily Indo-Aryan > (after all, Proto-Indo-Iranian "1" may have been *aika, right?)? We do not now, it is likely Pre_Indo_Aryan, precisely because of aika(-vartana) = Pre-Vedic aika > Ved. eka. In Pre-Old-Iranian it would have been *aiva as in the old Iran. languages. Seems to be an old dialect difference. But a slim one. The usual other arguments (Varuna, Nasatya) don't work that well (due to the reform of Zoroaster: Ahura Mazda, *one* Nanghaithya in Videvdad). At any rate, the form of the IIr language in Mitanni is pre-Vedic : IIr sounds are preserved, *zdh, in Priyamazda :: Ved. priyamedha :: Avest. -mazda... But I suppose you are well aware of all of this... >> the breakdown of the Bactrian civ. etc. > What does "Bactrian civilization" refer to exactly? I suspect the > area of urban settlememts along the Amu Darya (Shortugai, Namazga) > all the way to Shah Tepe etc. on the Caspian, but I'm not familiar > with the term. Sorry, just short for the *pre* - Bactria-Margiana archaeological complex (minus Shortugai! which has Harappan connections:trading post?), with a destruction horizon before the BMAC: The BMAC is dated by Hiebert, (Erdosy, The Indo-Aryans, p.192 sqq.) at 1900-1700 BC.: "the *intrusive* (his italics) BMAC burials has suggested a movements of population from Central Asia into ... Iranian plateau..." ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Mon May 25 17:27:36 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Mon, 25 May 98 10:27:36 -0700 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch 1) Message-ID: <161227039158.23782.17515489305442768658.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---Michael Witzel wrote: [snip]Some of these fire > places are in a domestic and some in a public context: the Kalibangan ones > are seven (actually preserved only 4 or 5!) fire places, on a raised > platform facing a brick wall; a well and bath pavements nearby suggest > ceremonial(?) bathing. [snip] > However, none of this, including the brick-built bathing places, fits any > Vedic ritual, neither that of the RV nor of the later Srauta ritual. [snip] > > It also does not fit the Vedic evidence that animal bones are found in> some of the supposed fire altars. > > The Indus finds, therefore, do not represent Vedic ritual but local > Harappan kitchen practices. Not every fire place is sacred and not all> bones in fire places are offerings. What you want to see is what you get. > Why kitchen? Away from religion, why not the workplace of, say, a jeweller? (see Banawali evidence). The small 'bath' was perhaps essential to store water used to cool off the embers. Bones have been used in ancient metallurgy as reducing, 'oxidizing' agents for baser metals in the ma_ks.ika_ or pyrite ores. (see the RV reference in the context of soma.) Prof. Witzel is right; we can get what we want to see. Regards, k. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From erpet at COMP.CZ Mon May 25 09:45:05 1998 From: erpet at COMP.CZ (Petr Mares) Date: Mon, 25 May 98 11:45:05 +0200 Subject: Ancient Geography (+transcription) Message-ID: <161227039141.23782.17295270564917034440.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Indologist First of all I am sorry for the transcription. But I am using Sanskrit transcription from Taiwan. Can somebody please send me the transcription of devanagari used in this list. For some years I am trying to translate Lan%ka^vata^ra su^tra from the 4th century Chinese translation. Since I have seen the discussion on some ancient geography here I would like to ask about a place where the sutra suppose to take place. In the most of the manuscripts it is mentioned as lan%kagiri in the malaya kingdom and is some commentarries it is mentioned as malayagiri in the malaku^t!a kingdom In some latter translations from 6th and 7th century author of the Lan%ka^vata^ra says that his father is Praja^pati, his mather Vasumati, his name is Viraja and he is from the Ka^tya^yana race born in Campa. I found that forest called the Malaya mountains is mentioned in Nagananda I do not know whether it is the same place, since no word about Lan%ka is there). Please, does any of these names says anything to anybody on the list? I would be glad to transcribe them to the standard used in the list if I know where to obtain it. I would like to know where it is in today's India and where I can leran more about the places people or times mentioned above. Since the Chinese translation is from the beginning of the fifth century the names reffered must be much older. Thank you very much for kind attention Cordially Petr Mares From yavass at YV1041.SPB.EDU Mon May 25 07:50:41 1998 From: yavass at YV1041.SPB.EDU (Yaroslav V. Vassilkov) Date: Mon, 25 May 98 11:50:41 +0400 Subject: SarasvatI etc. Message-ID: <161227039133.23782.9432975443786507606.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Responding to my attempts to give a historico-typological definition to IVC religion, S.Kalyanaraman puts a question (May 24): "c" and "y" > Message-ID: <161227039128.23782.8122173809105461449.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 17:58 24/05/98 EDT, you wrote: > Please check the chronology of -c- ~ -y- forms in Tamil. Are the-c- forms > older or -y- forms in terms of literary attestation? You have to examine a > sound change from a number of angles before making generalizations about > others' scholarship. Bh.K. >> > >Fortunately, we can check for the crack-pot theory or hyper-correction in the >case of "matacAn2ai". The word occurs in two inscriptions SII, vol. 5, no. 300 >as well as no. 431 which I had mentioned earlier. No. 431 has far fewer >sections missing than no. 300. No. 431 is found in Tirunelveli and no. 300 is >found in Tenkarai near cOzavantAn2, north of Madurai. A comparison of the two >inscriptions makes it obvious that the eulogy portion was composed by a single >person while the actual inscribing was done by different persons at the two >locations. The inscriptions belong to the period of the famous >cuntarapANTiyan of the 13th century. That is exactly the time, medieval period, for hyperstandard forms to arise. The old change of s>*h>y (in other positions) >0 (initially) was known to writers through loanwords like a:yiram, e:Ni, avai,etc. An underlying y forms were written with s. There are many examples from Tamil also to show that R > r led later to some r's being represented as R. Hypercorrect forms are generally less systematic and give the impression of a reversal of sound change. >The eulogy portion of 431 in which the word "matacAn2ai" occurs, also has the >words "An2ai" and "yAn2ai" used in other places. Inscription 300 has the >corresponding occurrences of "matacAn2ai" and "yAnai". But the middle section >with the "An2ai" form is missing. The occurrences of the words "An2ai" and >"yAn2ai" are given below. > mataca:nai is clearly a hyperstandard writing. If it was a sound change it should continue into later times. >ucar < uyar (DEDR 646) >vacakkal < vayakkal (DEDR 5258) >vAcal < vAyil (DEDR 5352) - >vicalUr < viyalUr = viyal (DEDR 5404) +Ur > >uyar - to rise puRanAn2URu 334.8 >vayakku - to tame akanAn2URu 344.10 >vAyil - entrance puRanAn2URu 350.6 >viyalUr - a place akanAn2URu 97.13 >vayal - cultivated field puRanAn2URu 354.4 (Kannada has both vayal and >bayal(u)) The above with -c- are hypercorrect forms. If y became c why not vasal and vasil. > >The forms with -c- are found in inscriptions at least 600 years later than the >literary attestations of -y-. None of the -c- forms discussed above are found >in Classical Tamil. Some of the -y- forms are used even today in formal speech >while some of the -c- forms are considered very substandard. For instance, >literate persons will not use ucar- in colloquial speech. The preferred form >is -y-. -c- and -y- are clearly distinguished. On the other hand, vAcal is >acceptable and vAyil is found in very formal speech. Inscriptions show not >only vacakku, but also, mayakku, and macakku reflecting all the variant >dialectal forms. Todau tiruvicalUr is the name of the town. > What you say proves my point. >The placement of DEDR 5259 Ta. vayiRu belly with an implied *-y- seems to be >correct even though Kannada has basiR. Colloquial Tamil has forms like vakuRu, >vavuRu, but no vacuRu. No. -c- is older as I said earlier. Konda and other SCD languages preserve the s form, Konda vasking(velar nasal)'entrails'. You seem to think that the oldest forms are only foound in Tamil in every respect. What is your basis for taking -y- in vayiRu as older? what am I doing again; take a lsesson on comparative Drav phonology? Who cares? Linguistics is not a layman's hobby. Bh.K. >Finally, I was not generalizing about others' scholarship. My comment was made >in the same spirit as P. S. Subrahmanyam was making with respect to L. V. >Ramaswamy Aiyar and it was specific to the discussion at hand. Moreover, what >I said was not an inference as P. S. Subrahmanyam did, but was a fact. The >Reference list in Subrahmanyams book does not include Velu Pillais book >which appeared full 7 years before Subrahmanyams book. The book has an >introductory note by scholars representing all major Dravidian Languages R. C. >Hiremath (Dharwar) for Kannada , K. Mahadeva Sastry (Sri Venkateswara >University) for Telugu, and V.I. Subramoniam (Kerala) for Tamil and Malayalam. >Further A. Velu Pillai who had earned a Ph.D. under T. Burrow had produced >this book at the invitation of the Dravidian Linguistics Association. So I >felt that the quality of the work had been recognized by other scholars and I >was surprised it was not consulted in the preparation of "Dravidian >Comparative Phonology". > >For the benefit of those interested, in its 1132 pages, "Study of the Dialects >of Inscriptional Tamil" mainly deals with phonology and morphology. It is >based on about 1750 inscriptions grouped into 5 periods: (1) 6th to 8th >centuries, (2) 9th century, (3) 10th century, (4) 11th century and (5) 12th >century. As the introduction of the book notes, it covers only a small portion >of about 30,000 Tamil inscriptions that had been collected by the >Archaelogical Survey of India at that time. However, it is a significant work >bringing together the results of many earlier unpublished research efforts >including that of Pillai. > >Regards > >S. Palaniappan > > Bh.Krishnamurti H.No. 12-13-1233, "Bhaarati" Street 9, Tarnaka Hyderabad 500017 Telephone:40-7019665 From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Mon May 25 11:57:55 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Mon, 25 May 98 16:57:55 +0500 Subject: Spelling of S. Radhakrishnan's name sought Message-ID: <161227039145.23782.11907579459293643004.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >sarvEpalli rAdhAkriSNan That is the correct name. regards, sarma. From barathi at PC.JARING.MY Mon May 25 09:16:53 1998 From: barathi at PC.JARING.MY (jayabarathi) Date: Mon, 25 May 98 17:16:53 +0800 Subject: South India geography Message-ID: <161227039136.23782.14093037907498384110.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 01:49 AM 5/25/98 PDT, you wrote: >Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote: > > >>atha tatra sanghapalakAdhirohiNo draviDa prabandha paradevatAtmanaH | >>kalaSIkumArakRta sUtravartmanA kavayan vyajeshTa katicit kavISvarAn || >> >>Here, SankarAcArya is said to have debated with some Tamil poets. The >>word sanghapalaka is a reference to the Tamil cankam, kalaSIkumAra is >>agastya, and the sUtra attributed to him is the Tamil grammar. > >I should probably clarify the above a little. The verse should not be >taken as an indication that the poet takes SankarAcArya to the age of >the Tamil cankam. It only seems to be an acknowledgement of the old >association of Madurai with the cankam. This is also the only verse that >talks of draviDa prabandha and kavis in Madurai. The rest of the chapter >is filled with stotras on Siva and Minakshi, the presiding deities of >Madurai. The stotras are attributed to SankarAcArya. > >Does somebody on the list know whether Tirumala Nayaka of Madurai >revived old cankam traditions in the late 16th century? No. I am afraid not. In fact he was real Tamil-hater. There is an interesting true episode involving the poet Supra Deepa KaviRaayar, which stands witness to this. The fact that he honoured Kumara Guruparar and his Meenaatshiyamman PiLLaith Thamilz is more due to religious fervour than anything else. But it looks like there have been Sangams for Tamil along the course of history. There was VajraNandhi's Sangam. In the SriVaishnava Parambara, there is mention of a Tamil Sangam in existence during the time of Nammaalzvar. It is possible that some of the Pandyan kings would have tried to revive the tradition, since some of them call themselves as "iRantha Kaalam eduththa". Some of them like Paraakram Pandya and Adhiveera Raama Pandya surrounded themselves with many poets and scholars. Even minor lords like ThirumalaiRayan of Karaikkaal had 64 poets who clashed with the Aasukavi KaaLamegam. May be what you meant was Thirumalai Raayan and not Thirumalai Nayakkan. As late as the 18th century, Marudhu Brothers of Sivaganga did have a coterie of scholars in permanent residence with them. Regards Jayabarathi Perhaps the >SankarAbhyudaya's reference is to a more recent custom of giving an >honored seat (sangha-palaka-adhirohiNa) to the best poets. > >Vidyasankar > >______________________________________________________ >Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com > > From barathi at PC.JARING.MY Mon May 25 10:08:49 1998 From: barathi at PC.JARING.MY (jayabarathi) Date: Mon, 25 May 98 18:08:49 +0800 Subject: South India geography#2 Message-ID: <161227039140.23782.9742570164487669293.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 02:34 AM 5/25/98 PDT, you wrote: >>>Does somebody on the list know whether Tirumala Nayaka of Madurai >>>revived old cankam traditions in the late 16th century? >.... > >> May be what you meant was Thirumalai Raayan and not >> Thirumalai Nayakkan. > >No, I meant Tirumala Nayakan, because of his proximity in time with >Rajacudamani Dikshita, the author of the Sankarabhyudaya. This text >describes a number of places in TN which Sankaracharya is supposed to >have visited, but it is only in Madurai that a reference to Tamil >literary tradition is found. And I have reason to believe that the poet >refers to many events which were in the recent past for him. > >Be that as it may, what was the old Tamil custom with respect to a >palaka? Were the honored poets given a palakai (wooden seat)? Or >perhaps, only for the poet(s) adjudged to be the best in a contest? Is >there evidence of such a custom in the 16th-17th century? > >Vidyasankar It is shrouded in Mythology.The Sanga Palakai is an ornamental board.This is supposed to have been in the PoRRaamarai Tank in Madhurai. The literary work which is to gain entry into the Tamil Sangam, is placed on the Palakai. If it is of originality and fulfills all the qualifications, the plank is said to support it. Otherwise, it sinks together with the literary work. There is also an oral traditional version which says that ] the Sanga Palakai is a plank serving as seat for the poets of Sangam. If any new entrant wishes to be accepted, the work is examined, but the final authority seems to have been the plank itself. If the poet is worthy, it grows lengthwise and allows the new entrant to be seated with due honour and comfort. If unworthy, the plank just shrinks and the poor blighter is thrown of his seat. Probably it must have been rows of seats of honour, similar to the Sarvagna PeeTam which was ascended by the Great Sankaracharya himself which was single. The entrant's work would have been subjected to great scrutiny, questions asked, discussions held at length and finally to the satisfaction of the King/patron and the other occupants of the Sangam, the honorary seat would have been awarded. There is a copper grant belonging to the Intermediate Pandyas which says, "Madhurapuri Sangam vaiththu". The possibilty of another Sangam during the 7th century onwards for at least one or two centuries, is there. Or on the other hand that copper plate could have mentioned an old tradition. This was in Madhurai. This could be the same as Nammaalzvaar's reference. But Sangam in 17th century Madhurai was not there. Not through royal patronage. But may be, people like NachchinArkkiniyar could have had some sort of a small academy for Tamil studies. Especially taking into consideration, the amount of cross-references that he makes in his commentaries, this could account for a battery of Tamil scholars. Regards Jayabarathi > >______________________________________________________ >Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com > > From selvakum at VALLUVAR.UWATERLOO.CA Mon May 25 22:11:47 1998 From: selvakum at VALLUVAR.UWATERLOO.CA (C.R. Selvakumar) Date: Mon, 25 May 98 18:11:47 -0400 Subject: Inscriptions and Dravidian sound changes "y" > "c" and "y" > Message-ID: <161227039162.23782.6812334864311761330.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> @ @At 17:58 24/05/98 EDT, you wrote: @ > Please check the chronology of -c- ~ -y- forms in Tamil. Are the-c- forms @> older or -y- forms in terms of literary attestation? You have to examine a @> sound change from a number of angles before making generalizations about @> others' scholarship. Bh.K. >> @> @>Fortunately, we can check for the crack-pot theory or hyper-correction in the @>case of "matacAn2ai". The word occurs in two inscriptions SII, vol. 5, no. 300 @>as well as no. 431 which I had mentioned earlier. No. 431 has far fewer @>sections missing than no. 300. No. 431 is found in Tirunelveli and no. 300 is @>found in Tenkarai near cOzavantAn2, north of Madurai. A comparison of the two @>inscriptions makes it obvious that the eulogy portion was composed by a single @>person while the actual inscribing was done by different persons at the two @>locations. The inscriptions belong to the period of the famous @>cuntarapANTiyan of the 13th century. @ @That is exactly the time, medieval period, for hyperstandard forms to arise. @The old change of s>*h>y (in other positions) >0 (initially) was known to @writers through loanwords like a:yiram, e:Ni, avai,etc. An underlying y @forms were written with s. There are many examples from Tamil also to show I've heard that 'aayiram' (meaning thousand in tamil) is a borrowing, presumably from skt.(sahasra). Can someone point to the arguments for this ? The Tamil word for hundred is nURu and, as I understand it, it comes from the verb 'nURuthal' (imperative/infinitive verb 'nURu') meaning 'to split into many parts'. A related word is 'noRungu' (=crush). Semantically it is 'split > small > many'. Similarly the word 'aayiram', as I understand it, comes from the verbal root' 'aaythal' ( imperative/infinitive verb 'aay'). Even today it is used in the sense of 'minutely split/separate' by those who work in the kitchen when they are preparing 'keerai' (indian spinach or greens). The standard expression is 'keerai aaythal'. Or when they are separating tiny stones from the rice etc. The standard expression is 'aayntu kodu'. The word 'aayiram' is semantically almost identical to the word 'nURu' for hundred. 'Minutely split/separate > many'. Similarly I don't know how the word ENi = ladder is shown to be a loan word. I wonder what the arguments are ? @that R > r led later to some r's being represented as R. Hypercorrect forms @are generally less systematic and give the impression of a reversal of sound @change. @ @ @ @>The eulogy portion of 431 in which the word "matacAn2ai" occurs, also has the @>words "An2ai" and "yAn2ai" used in other places. Inscription 300 has the @>corresponding occurrences of "matacAn2ai" and "yAnai". But the middle section @>with the "An2ai" form is missing. The occurrences of the words "An2ai" and @>"yAn2ai" are given below. @> @mataca:nai is clearly a hyperstandard writing. If it was a sound change it @should continue into later times. @ @ @>ucar < uyar (DEDR 646) @>vacakkal < vayakkal (DEDR 5258) @>vAcal < vAyil (DEDR 5352) - @>vicalUr < viyalUr = viyal (DEDR 5404) +Ur @> @>uyar - to rise puRanAn2URu 334.8 @>vayakku - to tame akanAn2URu 344.10 @>vAyil - entrance puRanAn2URu 350.6 @>viyalUr - a place akanAn2URu 97.13 @>vayal - cultivated field puRanAn2URu 354.4 (Kannada has both vayal and @>bayal(u)) @The above with -c- are hypercorrect forms. If y became c why not vasal and @vasil. @ @ @> @>The forms with -c- are found in inscriptions at least 600 years later than the @>literary attestations of -y-. None of the -c- forms discussed above are found @>in Classical Tamil. Some of the -y- forms are used even today in formal speech @>while some of the -c- forms are considered very substandard. For instance, @>literate persons will not use ucar- in colloquial speech. The preferred form @>is -y-. -c- and -y- are clearly distinguished. On the other hand, vAcal is @>acceptable and vAyil is found in very formal speech. Inscriptions show not @>only vacakku, but also, mayakku, and macakku reflecting all the variant @>dialectal forms. Todau tiruvicalUr is the name of the town. @> @What you say proves my point. How ? @ @ @>The placement of DEDR 5259 Ta. vayiRu belly with an implied *-y- seems to be @ @>correct even though Kannada has basiR. Colloquial Tamil has forms like vakuRu, @>vavuRu, but no vacuRu. Palaniappan, I've come across both forms 'vasuru paciccaa thaana varuvaan' and 'vavuru paciccaa thaanE varuvaan' ( literally 'if stomach feels hunger, he will come'). The 'u' in 'vasuru' is short and it is difficult to say whether it is 'i' or 'u', as heard. The word 'vaasal' (entrance) is a modification of 'vaayil'. Strict transformation would lead to 'vaasil', but it is not uncommon. For example (1) payiRu becomes pasaRu (= a lentil), (2) mayiRu becomes 'masuru' (hair). etc. The transformation is y > s - as is well known in Tamil. What is the best source for the arguments of K's theory of 'hypercorrection' ? @ @No. -c- is older as I said earlier. Konda and other SCD languages preserve @the s form, Konda vasking(velar nasal)'entrails'. You seem to think that the @oldest forms are only foound in Tamil in every respect. What is your basis @for taking -y- in vayiRu as older? what am I doing again; take a lsesson on @comparative Drav phonology? Who cares? Linguistics is not a layman's hobby. Palaniappan and Gansesan have been making excellent and detailed comments, and I'm really suprised at Prof. Krishnamurti's unwarranted remarks to their postings in this listserv. What is the basis for taking the Konda example as older ('preserve') ? Thanks C.R.(Selva) Selvakumar P.S. (1) I'm very glad to see that Palaniappan and Ganesan are recording their thoughts here and I'm sure they will be useful to many sincere researchers. (2) I wonder whether anyone else can comment on Palaniappan's observation about omission of Velu Pillai's work. From barathi at PC.JARING.MY Mon May 25 10:41:40 1998 From: barathi at PC.JARING.MY (jayabarathi) Date: Mon, 25 May 98 18:41:40 +0800 Subject: Ancient Geography (+transcription) Message-ID: <161227039143.23782.4747918297095716901.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 11:45 AM 5/25/98 +0200, you wrote: >Dear Indologist > >First of all I am sorry for the transcription. But I am using Sanskrit >transcription from Taiwan. Can somebody please send me the transcription of >devanagari used in this list. > >For some years I am trying to translate Lan%ka^vata^ra su^tra from the 4th >century Chinese translation. Since I have seen the discussion on some >ancient geography here I would like to ask about a place where the sutra >suppose to take place. > >In the most of the manuscripts it is mentioned as > >lan%kagiri in the malaya kingdom > >and is some commentarries it is mentioned as > >malayagiri in the malaku^t!a kingdom > >In some latter translations from 6th and 7th century author of the >Lan%ka^vata^ra says that his father is Praja^pati, his mather Vasumati, his >name is Viraja and he is from the Ka^tya^yana race born in Campa. > > >I found that forest called the Malaya mountains is mentioned in Nagananda >I do not know whether it is the same place, since no word about Lan%ka is >there). > >Please, does any of these names says anything to anybody on the list? I >would be glad to transcribe them to the standard used in the list if I know >where to obtain it. >I would like to know where it is in today's India and where I can leran more >about the places people or times mentioned above. > >Since the Chinese translation is from the beginning of the fifth century the >names reffered must be much older. Dear Sir, The Malaya mountains might mean the Podhiyil Mountains of the tail end of the Western Ghats in India. But there is no Lankagiri thereabout. The second possibility may be SriLanka itself, because there is a place called Malainadu. Ramani Kandiah and Sivalingam Ramalingam in this list are from the island. May be they can throw some light. The third possibilty is Cambodia, since Campa is mentioned as his birth place. Malaya name is also associated with Cambodia. The fourth possibility and the one with a greater likelihood is the east coast of the Malay Peninsula itself. The name of the peninsula is known as Malaya. This is actually derived form the word "malaya" of Tamil origin. There is still an island called Langkawi which is said to have been the site of Asoka Vana where Ravana hid Sita. But there was an ancient kingdom which sprawled across the northern part of the peninsula and this was called the kingdom of "Langka Suka". Champa was just three hundred miles away across the Gulf of Thailand. In those days five day's journey. It should be noted that Lanka Suka was a Buddhist kingdom for most part of its existence. Parts of it are now in Buddhist Thailand. It is a mountainous place, and the funny thing is that while other mountains have Malay names, the mountains in the earstwhile Lanka Suka still have Sanskrit names. Lanka Suka was a port of call for the Chinese and was of great importance to them. Must check up whether Yuen Chwang mentions this place. It Sing has mentioned it. This seems to be a likely place since both Malaya and Lanka are found in combination. Regards Jayabarathi > >Thank you very much for kind attention > >Cordially > >Petr Mares > > From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Mon May 25 23:31:35 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Mon, 25 May 98 19:31:35 -0400 Subject: Inscriptions and Dravidian sound changes "y" > "c" and "y" > Message-ID: <161227039164.23782.2484555409229630410.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 98-05-25 03:24:12 EDT, bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN writes: <*h>y (in other positions) >0 (initially) was known to writers through loanwords like a:yiram, e:Ni, avai,etc. An underlying y forms were written with s. There are many examples from Tamil also to show that R > r led later to some r's being represented as R. Hypercorrect forms are generally less systematic and give the impression of a reversal of sound change.>> Fine. But I have shown why we have to assume that the composer was not hypercorrective but was using existing forms. So, according to Krishnamurti, the persons in the Tamil society who used "cAn2ai" were hypercorrective. Krishnamurti is not considering an important factor, i.e., the basic social factor involved in who was literate and knowledgable in Sanskrit and who was not and who uses -c- forms in native Tamil words. The -c- forms are predominantly used by illiterate/lower class persons with little or no Sanskrit or linguistic knowledge. The hyper-corrective behavior Krishnamurti mentions can be expected from a person with literacy in Sanskrit and comparative/historical linguistic knowledge. An illiterate person does not know that the word ENi he uses is a loan word let alone that the original word began with s or z or zr. If you look at the -c- forms like ucaram, it is a mark of illiteracy. It is not a mark of upper caste language. Some upper caste dialects use ?z? instead of ?c? even in words where PDr forms would have "c" because of their knowledge of the phonology of Sanskrit loan words. (Example: Sollu/zollu instead of collu/sollu) So the colloquial use of -c- instead of -y- predominantly by illiterate persons shows the truth is diametrically opposite to what Dr. Krishnamurti says. As for Tamil r/R, the confusion is there even in CT. Consider oLiRu and oLir. I do not know if that is to be attributed to hypercorrection. << mataca:nai is clearly a hyperstandard writing. If it was a sound change it should continue into later times.>> Not necessarily. As we all know, formation of new words and loss of old words is an ongoing process in any language. This has even been recognized by Tamil grammarians. According to nan2n2Ul, "Old ones disappearing and new ones entering due to variation in times are not wrong". There are many words in the Tamil Lexicon which are not used today. Survival of a form has nothing to do with whether it was a result of "genuine" sound change or hypercorrection. Just following Krishnamurti?s reasoning, we know that "ucaram", etc. still survive. So can?t one argue it is due to sound change? << >ucar < uyar (DEDR 646) >vacakkal < vayakkal (DEDR 5258) >vAcal < vAyil (DEDR 5352) - >vicalUr < viyalUr = viyal (DEDR 5404) +Ur > >uyar - to rise puRanAn2URu 334.8 >vayakku - to tame akanAn2URu 344.10 >vAyil - entrance puRanAn2URu 350.6 >viyalUr - a place akanAn2URu 97.13 >vayal - cultivated field puRanAn2URu 354.4 (Kannada has both vayal and >bayal(u)) The above with -c- are hypercorrect forms. If y became c why not vasal and vasil. >> The reason is elementary. Language as a social phenomenon does not work like Microsoft Word. You cannot guarantee global changes like you do in word processing. << >The forms with -c- are found in inscriptions at least 600 years later than the >literary attestations of -y-. None of the -c- forms discussed above are found >in Classical Tamil. Some of the -y- forms are used even today in formal speech >while some of the -c- forms are considered very substandard. For instance, >literate persons will not use ucar- in colloquial speech. The preferred form >is -y-. -c- and -y- are clearly distinguished. On the other hand, vAcal is >acceptable and vAyil is found in very formal speech. Inscriptions show not >only vacakku, but also, mayakku, and macakku reflecting all the variant >dialectal forms. Todau tiruvicalUr is the name of the town. > What you say proves my point. >> Absolutely not. See the discussion above. >The placement of DEDR 5259 Ta. vayiRu belly with an implied *-y- seems to be >correct even though Kannada has basiR. Colloquial Tamil has forms like vakuRu, >vavuRu, but no vacuRu. <> No, I am definitely not thinking only Tamil has the oldest forms. Only in a posting yesterday, I noted the palatalization of *k- before front vowels as in Ta. cey, with the result that Tamil forms are not the oldest. But the case of y/c alternation in the root final position we are talking about goes back to PDr. stage according to G. Sambasiva Rao (A Comparative Study of Dravidian Noun Derivatives, p. 14). In this case, I do not see any reason to choose a form attested chronologically later to be the proto-form. Krishnamurti seems to be thinking Tamil forms are later because he begins with an axiom that -c- forms are older. That cannot be taken as an axiom. It has to be proven. Without that axiomatic reasoning, one has to prove that SCD forms are "preserved ones" and colloquial Tamil forms spoken by illiterate/lower class persons are "hyperstandard". In other words, one has to show why the SCD forms cannot be considered to have undergone sound change or "hyperstandard forms" as he puts it. Earlier when I mentioned that the change y>j in Kui accepted by Subrahmanyam and Krishnamurti as going against the weakening hierarchy of Hock, Krishnamurti said, "Kui kaju for *kay is a doubtful transcription; I have to check how regular is *y = Kui j. I know Schulze a German wrote j for y." Dr. Krishnamurti is contradicting himself. In Telugu Verbal Bases, p.120, he has stated: "2. Ta. kai hand; Ma. kai, kayyi; Ka. kayi, keyyi; Kod. kay; Tu. kei; Te. cEyi, also kai-, and kE(lu); Go. kai; Kui kaju (-j- < -y-);....." Please note that he was very explicit in showing -y- > -j- in Kui. In "A vocabulary of the Kui Language [Kui-english]" by Rev. W. W. Winfield, the author says, "This vocabulary has grown out of my own need for such a list of words and from the attempts made to supply that need for private use as a missionary among the Konds. It owes a very great deal also to Mr. A. J. Ollenbach, formerly of Phulbani and now Divisional Officer of Angul in Orissa, who most generously placed at my disposal the whole of his valuable collection of Kui words gathered together during more than twenty-five years of administration among the people of the Khondmals." This book, first published in 1929 (more than 30 years before TVB) and reprinted in 1985, does show Kui kaju "the arm, hand". Moreover, according to Hock, "k" and "g" are higher than "y" in the weakening hierarchy. If this rule is to be strictly and universally applicable, "y" cannot become "g" or "k". But this is exactly what Krishnamurti derives for Telugu. In Telugu Verbal Bases, p. 33, he states: "Te. -g- < PDr. *-y-" To show that -y- passed through the stage of -k- before becoming -g-, in Telugu Verbal Bases, p. 34, he states: "..-g- proceeds from an older *-y-; that -y- passed through the stage of -k- is evident from Ta. vici (*viki) corresponding to Te. Ka. bigi < *viki < *viyi; another striking proof of this can be found in the following etymology: Te. vAkili doorway; Tu. bAkil; Ka. bAgil; Ta. vAyil, vAcal; Ma. vAtil (Ma. -t- < *-c-)" One should note that here -y- > -k- or -g- is presented not as a "hyper- correction". It is obvious that he implies it is a sound change. Also, note that Krishnamurti himself gives vAyil and vAcal as alternate forms. But, in the present discussion the change from Tamil vAyil to vAcal is somehow "hyperstandard" and not a sound change! What can we conclude from all this? The Kui vocabulary was not transcribed by Schultze. Kui does show y>j, as accepted by DED and DEDR. This means the one- directional weakening hierarchy is not universal. So a -y- > -c- seems to be possible. Regards S. Palaniappan From erpet at COMP.CZ Mon May 25 17:59:41 1998 From: erpet at COMP.CZ (Petr Mares) Date: Mon, 25 May 98 19:59:41 +0200 Subject: Ancient Geography (+transcription) Message-ID: <161227039160.23782.10239142778554766170.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Mr. Jayabarathi I once more apologize for my transcription but I am used to different standard and cannot find out what is being used here. (Since the places I am looking for I transcribed from Chinese language of almost 1600 years ago it is not that important in this case). The place you mentioned as fourth is very interesting to me. I have been thinking about Campa, the ancient capital of Anga that was joined with Magada and which is described by Fa Xien in his fourth century travel book. But I could not find any Lanka or Malaya close to it. The first place you mention is possible, since although no lankagiri is in Western Ghats, I read that in some ancient languages of this area lanka simply means island, but I do not know aout any place called Malaya, whether city, country or mountain there. For the second possibility I think speaks that the aldest surviving Sanskrit (much younger than any Chinese) are in Malayalam script. But there is no mountain called lanka on the island and actually the oldest surviving Chinese translation does not at all mention Ravana, and the only places mentioned are lanka and malaya. The third possibility is not including lanka and I would not vote for it. The most interesting is the "langka suka" and island langkawi. I will have to check some of the oldest buddhist travellers to see what they say about the place. But it is the most promising of all. Thank you again for your notes and please, if you come accross anything related to lankAvatAra and its ancient origin, please let me know. Cordially Petr Mares lengqie at gmx.net > Dear Sir, > > The Malaya mountains might mean the Podhiyil > Mountains of the tail end of the Western Ghats in India. > But there is no Lankagiri thereabout. > The second possibility may be SriLanka itself, > because there is a place called Malainadu. Ramani > Kandiah and Sivalingam Ramalingam in this list are > from the island. May be they can throw some light. > The third possibilty is Cambodia, since Campa > is mentioned as his birth place. Malaya name is > also associated with Cambodia. > The fourth possibility and the one with a > greater likelihood is the east coast of the Malay > Peninsula itself. The name of the peninsula is known > as Malaya. This is actually derived form the word > "malaya" of Tamil origin. > There is still an island called Langkawi which is said > to have been the site of Asoka Vana where Ravana hid > Sita. But there was an ancient kingdom which sprawled > across the northern part of the peninsula and this > was called the kingdom of "Langka Suka". Champa was > just three hundred miles away across the Gulf of > Thailand. In those days five day's journey. > It should be noted that Lanka Suka was a > Buddhist kingdom for most part of its existence. > Parts of it are now in Buddhist Thailand. > It is a mountainous place, and the funny thing > is that while other mountains have Malay names, > the mountains in the earstwhile Lanka Suka still > have Sanskrit names. > Lanka Suka was a port of call for the Chinese > and was of great importance to them. > Must check up whether Yuen Chwang mentions this > place. It Sing has mentioned it. > This seems to be a likely place since both > Malaya and Lanka are found in combination. > > Regards > > Jayabarathi > > > > >> >>Thank you very much for kind attention >> >>Cordially >> >>Petr Mares >> >> From bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Mon May 25 17:24:48 1998 From: bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (Bh.Krishnamurti) Date: Mon, 25 May 98 22:24:48 +0500 Subject: Spelling of S. Radhakrishnan's name sought Message-ID: <161227039156.23782.3312463342886679574.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> S.Radhakrishnan's birth place was tiruttaNi in Tamil NaDu. His surname is sarve:palli. I have to investigate where it is located. His surname and birth place are two different things. Anyway please check his biography by his son Dr. S. Gopal; the title Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, New Delhi : Oxford (may be 1990 or 1989). Bh.K. At 09:37 25/05/98 +0200, you wrote: >At 09:21 AM 5/18/98 +0200, I wrote: > >>Could any of the netters give me the correct (Telugu) spelling of S. >>Radhakrishnan's birthplace/given name - is it SarvapaLLi or SarvepaLLi or >>even SarvEpaLLi? > >To which I received the following response: > >sarvEpalli rAdhAkriSNan > >However, when I consulted Glossary of the Madras Presidency by C.D. Maclean, >reprint of the 1893 ed., AES, New Delhi 1982 under SARWAPULLY (p. 790), I found >out that there is a village (spelled in Telugu Sarvapalle) in the Nellore >District, >Goodoor taluk, lat. 14 deg. 18', long. 80 deg. 01', 13 miles N.E. from Goodoor, >11 miles S. from Nellore, 11 miles W. from the sea. Remains of old Rohilla fort. >Etymology is given from "sari" Tel. straight + "palle", Tel. village. >Is it THE village that gave S. Radhakrishnan his name, and if so, what about its >spelling? >Gratefully, J.F. >Jan Filipsky, Oriental Institute, Pod vodarenskou vezi 4, 182 08 Praha 8 >phone 004202 6605 3729 >e-mail >private: U Pentlovky 466/7, 181 00 Praha 8 - Troja >phone 004202 855 74 53 > > Bh.Krishnamurti H.No. 12-13-1233, "Bhaarati" Street 9, Tarnaka Hyderabad 500017 Telephone:40-7019665 From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Tue May 26 01:11:14 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Tue, 26 May 98 06:11:14 +0500 Subject: Inscriptions and Dravidian sound changes "y" > "c" and "y" > Message-ID: <161227039166.23782.6356868450247805028.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 07:31 PM 5/25/98 EDT, S.Palaniappa wrote: >The hyper-corrective behavior Krishnamurti mentions can be expected from a >person with literacy in Sanskrit and comparative/historical linguistic >knowledge. This is not correct. It is the illiterate person who is afraid that he is pronouncing a word wrongly that tries to hypercorrect. For example a street vendor selling limes calling 'darbhakAyalu' instead of 'dabbakayalu'. Sometimes even the learned fall into the hypercorrection trap but more often it is the unlearned and illiterate. regards, sarma. From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Tue May 26 01:11:18 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Tue, 26 May 98 06:11:18 +0500 Subject: Inscriptions and Dravidian sound changes "y" > "c" and "y" > Message-ID: <161227039167.23782.3662299080176406115.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 06:11 PM 5/25/98 -0400, C.R.Selvakumar wrote: > > > P.S. (1) I'm very glad to see that Palaniappan and Ganesan are recording > their thoughts here and I'm sure they will be useful to many > sincere researchers. > > (2) I wonder whether anyone else can comment on Palaniappan's > observation about omission of Velu Pillai's work. > > The person who has to answer i.e., Sri P.S.Subrahmanyam is not on this list. Since nobody else can answer for him, bringing up this matter and harping on it is a waste of time for all conderned. regards, sarma. From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Tue May 26 13:46:09 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Tue, 26 May 98 06:46:09 -0700 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039180.23782.9396645470366579819.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---Roland Steiner wrote: > > Let me just add the following bibliographical note: > For the meaning of samudra in Vedic texts, see also: > -- Konrad Klaus: "samudr? im Veda", in: XXIII. Deutscher > Orientalistentag ... Ausgewaehlte Vortraege. Hrsg. von Einar von > Schuler. Stuttgart 1989. = Zeitschrift der Deutschen > Morgenlaendischen Gesellschaft. Supplement VII. pp. 364-371.> -- Konrad Klaus: "Die Wasserfahrzeuge im vedischen Indien" (?Water > Vehicles in Vedic India?). Stuttgart 1989 (Akademie der Wissenschaften > und der Literatur, Mainz. Abhandlungen der geistes- und > sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse. 1989. No. 13.). esp. pp. 20-26. > By means of a precise investigation of the relevant texts Klaus > comes to the conclusion that samudra in several Vedic passages does > not designate the ocean, but a broad stream formed by the union of > two or more rivers. > > Roland Steiner > Would deeply appreciate info. on how we can get an English translation of this posted on the web or this mailing list. It will be nice to have the textual investigations backed up by ground surveys. Geologically, the Sindh-Kutch area is a very complex area. What we see today are salty marshes in the Large and the Little Ranns of Kutch and also some marshes around the Gulf of Khambat. The sites of IVC in this area are remarkable considering the possibility that the region was not as hostile for supporting settlements of metal- and lapidary-workers. One theory is that the Nara/Mihran flowed through the Nal lake south of the Little Rann. (Nara/Mihran flowing parallel to the Sindhu about 300 kms. east of Sindhu). Add to this the gulfs around the Ranns, there was perhaps a confluence of two mighty streams and the gulf-streams. (Not to forget the added problem of raising of the ocean levels submerging areas such as Bet Dwaraka ca. 1500 B.C. See the Indian marine archaeology website.) Another theory (undated) is that the entire saura_s.t.ra (including the Ranns) was an island providing for direct navigation from Kotda to Lothal on the Nara/Mihran extended stream, explaining other sites such as Rojdi. Regards, k. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Tue May 26 13:24:18 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Tue, 26 May 98 09:24:18 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.III) In-Reply-To: <356A8FA2.357F@rug.ac.be> Message-ID: <161227039178.23782.4621239044302051708.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Tue, 26 May 1998, Erik Seldeslachts wrote: > Michael Witzel wrote: > > We do not now, it is likely Pre_Indo_Aryan, precisely because of > > aika(-vartana) = Pre-Vedic aika > Ved. eka. In Pre-Old-Iranian it would > > have been *aiva as in the old Iran. languages. Seems to be an old dialect > > difference. But a slim one. > > At any rate, the form of the IIr language in Mitanni is pre-Vedic : IIr > > sounds are preserved, *zdh, in Priyamazda :: Ved. priyamedha :: Avest. > > -mazda... But I suppose you are well aware of all of this... > This is a typical example of the kind of selective argumentation we are > swamped with on this list. > aika- : long e and o have always considered to be diphthongs by the > Sanskrit grammarians and it is likely that they still were real diphthongs > in Vedic and even later times.(On the other hand there is also Old-Iranian > *aivaka- 'one' preserved in Persian yek). This -again- is a typical example of the kind of selective argumentation we are swamped with on this list. The facts are: In Old Iranian we only have aiva (O.Pers.) and aEuua, Oiuua (Avestan) In Middle Persian we have Ev, Evak ( < *aivaka, NOT *aika!!!) and and thus, in New Persian we have yak. -ka suffixes are about the most common in Middle Persian (and Skt.) and added virtually everywhere. (Actually, even Avestan has something like the preform: aEuuAkam 'at the same time", from *aeuuAka-) One look into Bartholomae's Altiranisches Woerterbuch would have helped to avoid this kind of selective argumentation. Rather, the dialect difference between Pre-vedic *aika "1" and Pre-Iranian *aiva"1" (and, maybe, reinforced by *aiva-ka!) is old; note that Vedic has specialized a presumable IIr *aiva > adverb eva "only". (and did I not say: " Seems to be an old dialect difference. But a slim one." ???) It seems to me that the my main point was completely missed: Iranian used -va, IA used -ka (and other IE *-no) for "1". Philology = "slow reading". The question of Vedic diphtongs is quite separate from all of this. I also think that we might prove -inner Vedic- that the RV people still pronounced ai, au , not yet e, o. But you did not say *how* to show it INSIDE the Vedic texts. > Near-Eastern documents .... also there is no > conclusive evidence to state it is pre-Vedic. But what about above: > > the form of the IIr language in Mitanni is pre-Vedic : IIr > > sounds are preserved, *zdh, in Priyamazda :: Ved. priyamedha :: Avest. > > -mazda... As every 1st year student of hist. lingustics knows, IIr is characterized by *azd,azdh, retained in Iranian -azd-, while Vedic has got rid of such combinations > ed, edh. (best example perhaps is: the perfect of sad : *sa-zdai > Ved. sede but retained as Young Avestan haz-de) Typical innovations in RV follow suit: perfects such as man: mene, nam: neme etc. etc.. Thus, in sum: "Mitanni-Aryan" has the pre-Vedic stage Also characterized by aika (not aiva, aivaka!). -az- is not found in Ved. any more. And that development has been used to build a whole new class of perfects. A wide gap separates the Mitanni and RV forms of IA. (implications for dating??) All of this has been well known since Kammenhuber's Habil. thesis on Kikkuli's horse treatise, Mayrhofer's "Mythos", etc. etc. As Prof. Krishnamurti once wrote: do we have to give intro-s to linguistics here? > One could as well argue that > this language conserves some archaic features but on the whole presents a > transitional phase between Old-Indo-Aryan and Middle-Indo-Aryan: e.g. > satta(-vartanna) : MIA satta- 'seven', with assimilation of the consonant > cluster in OIA sapta-; Indara, with typical MIA vowel-epenthesis to resolve > the consonant cluster in OIA Indra-; Bardashva : Skt VRdhAZva-, with > evolution of initial v- to b-; etc. This merely repeats S.S. Misra, The Aryan problem 1992, who is "famous" for his his IE. *a = Greek e,o,a; no laryngeals; IE. z (as in Ved. azva-s = IE *azvas!!!) instead of *k', etc. etc. ---- And already answered by Prof. Vassilkov. Perhaps it is better to select other types of "selective argumentation". ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm --------------------------------------------------------------------------- my direct line (also for messages) : 617- 496 2990 From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Tue May 26 16:31:10 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Tue, 26 May 98 09:31:10 -0700 Subject: Inscriptions and Dravidian sound changes "y" > "c" and "y" > Message-ID: <161227039183.23782.13900790513259491828.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---Palaniappa wrote: > Just out > of curiosity, how and when many Tamil members on this list knew the > derivations of Ayiram and ENi, and what those member's Sanskrit/linguistic > knowledge background is > I will be happy to respond to the poll. I am a Tamil member with background education in sanskrit, telugu, kannada, tamil, french and hindi. My telugu teacher discussing Po_tana's poetry, told me of these derivations 45 years ago. Other than this, I have no comments on the s', c, y problem. Regards, k. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From mcv at WXS.NL Tue May 26 09:34:55 1998 From: mcv at WXS.NL (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Tue, 26 May 98 09:34:55 +0000 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.III) In-Reply-To: <356A8FA2.357F@rug.ac.be> Message-ID: <161227039173.23782.16102359146588436796.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Erik Seldeslachts wrote: >I think it is not only wrong to consider the language preserved in the >Near-Eastern documents as IIr in stead of IA, but also there is no >conclusive evidence to state it is pre-Vedic. One could as well argue that >this language conserves some archaic features but on the whole presents a >transitional phase between Old-Indo-Aryan and Middle-Indo-Aryan: e.g. >satta(-vartanna) : MIA satta- 'seven', with assimilation of the consonant >cluster in OIA sapta-; Indara, with typical MIA vowel-epenthesis to resolve >the consonant cluster in OIA Indra-; Bardashva : Skt VRdhAZva-, with >evolution of initial v- to b-; etc. Don't forget that these words have come to us in cuneiform (syllabic) writing. Indra or Indara would both have been written indifferently as IN-DA-RA, so we can infer nothing from that. *sapta > satta is so trivial and common a change, that not much can be concluded from it either. I'm not familiar with the name (?) Bardashva, but Kikkuli's treatise contains the forms -wartanna "turn" and wasanna "horse training area, stadium", with v- rendered as w-. Gamq'relidze and Ivanov in their "Indoevropejskij jazyk i indoevropejcy" conclude, based i.a. on that word wasanna (Iranian *wazana "road") that the Aryan layer in Mitanni is closer to Iranian than Indo-Aryan. A somewhat provocative conclusion, to be sure, but I'd say the linguistical basis for considering it specifically Indo-Aryan (aika-) is equally shaky. ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Tue May 26 17:33:30 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Tue, 26 May 98 10:33:30 -0700 Subject: Verbal Reflexives Message-ID: <161227039189.23782.15344990682239390395.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> hi, comparable auxiliaries with reflexive meaningare: kol.ka (imperfect ko_) to receive (Malaya_l.am); konu take (Telugu). usage: per-ru-k-kon.t.e_n- I received (Tamil); telusu-konna_nu I have learnt (Telugu). k. ---Deepthi Kumara Henadeerage wrote: > > Hi there, > > Sinhala has a special verb-verb compound which gives the reflexive > meaning. In this construction, the verb gannawa 'take' is suffixed to > the perfect partciple form of a verb. > For instance, tuwaala_kara+gannawa (hurt+gannawa) means 'hurt oneself', while > tuwala_karanawa 'hurt', without gannawa means 'hurt somebody', but not > 'hurt oneself'. > > I have heard that there are similar constructions in Tamil and Teligu > (ie. verb+koL construction). > > I'd like to know if there are any other Indic languages which have > similar construtions. Also I appreciate if someone can point out some > references for verbal reflexives in Tamil and Teligu. > > > Kumara. > > > > ________________________________________________ > Kumara.Henadeerage at anu.edu.au > http://www.anu.edu.au/linguistics/sinhala/ku.htm > Linguistics - Australian National University > ================================================ > == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From steiner at MAILER.UNI-MARBURG.DE Tue May 26 08:41:37 1998 From: steiner at MAILER.UNI-MARBURG.DE (Roland Steiner) Date: Tue, 26 May 98 10:41:37 +0200 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227039169.23782.671856976693095781.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Let me just add the following bibliographical note: For the meaning of samudra in Vedic texts, see also: -- Konrad Klaus: "samudr? im Veda", in: XXIII. Deutscher Orientalistentag ... Ausgewaehlte Vortraege. Hrsg. von Einar von Schuler. Stuttgart 1989. = Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlaendischen Gesellschaft. Supplement VII. pp. 364-371. -- Konrad Klaus: "Die Wasserfahrzeuge im vedischen Indien" (?Water Vehicles in Vedic India?). Stuttgart 1989 (Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz. Abhandlungen der geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse. 1989. No. 13.). esp. pp. 20-26. By means of a precise investigation of the relevant texts Klaus comes to the conclusion that samudra in several Vedic passages does not designate the ocean, but a broad stream formed by the union of two or more rivers. Roland Steiner From erik.seldeslachts at RUG.AC.BE Tue May 26 09:47:14 1998 From: erik.seldeslachts at RUG.AC.BE (Erik Seldeslachts) Date: Tue, 26 May 98 10:47:14 +0100 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.III) Message-ID: <161227039171.23782.8268799224674062475.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel wrote: > We do not now, it is likely Pre_Indo_Aryan, precisely because of > aika(-vartana) = Pre-Vedic aika > Ved. eka. In Pre-Old-Iranian it would > have been *aiva as in the old Iran. languages. Seems to be an old dialect > difference. But a slim one. > > The usual other arguments (Varuna, Nasatya) don't work that well (due to > the reform of Zoroaster: Ahura Mazda, *one* Nanghaithya in Videvdad). > > At any rate, the form of the IIr language in Mitanni is pre-Vedic : IIr > sounds are preserved, *zdh, in Priyamazda :: Ved. priyamedha :: Avest. > -mazda... But I suppose you are well aware of all of this... This is a typical example of the kind of selective argumentation we are swamped with on this list. aika- : long e and o have always considered to be diphthongs by the Sanskrit grammarians and it is likely that they still were real diphthongs in Vedic and even later times.(On the other hand there is also Old-Iranian *aivaka- 'one' preserved in Persian yek). I think it is not only wrong to consider the language preserved in the Near-Eastern documents as IIr in stead of IA, but also there is no conclusive evidence to state it is pre-Vedic. One could as well argue that this language conserves some archaic features but on the whole presents a transitional phase between Old-Indo-Aryan and Middle-Indo-Aryan: e.g. satta(-vartanna) : MIA satta- 'seven', with assimilation of the consonant cluster in OIA sapta-; Indara, with typical MIA vowel-epenthesis to resolve the consonant cluster in OIA Indra-; Bardashva : Skt VRdhAZva-, with evolution of initial v- to b-; etc. Erik Seldeslachts Universiteit Gent Gent, Belgium From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Tue May 26 15:58:03 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Tue, 26 May 98 11:58:03 -0400 Subject: Inscriptions and Dravidian sound changes "y" > "c" and "y" > Message-ID: <161227039181.23782.7634606658410927792.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 98-05-25 20:43:53 EDT, narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN writes: << This is not correct. It is the illiterate person who is afraid that he is pronouncing a word wrongly that tries to hypercorrect. For example a street vendor selling limes calling 'darbhakAyalu' instead of 'dabbakayalu'. Sometimes even the learned fall into the hypercorrection trap but more often it is the unlearned and illiterate. >> I cannot comment on the Telugu forms. But as far as Tamil is concerned, the type of hypercorrections made by an illiterate Tamil person is very different from the type of hyperstandard forms suggested by Dr. Krishnamurti. In Tamilnadu, upper caste dialects often use Sanskrit words with voiced sounds in the word-initial positions, and sounds such as S, z, and J. So, a person with hyper-corrective behavior would sometimes use these sounds in places where the original does not have them. For instance, pUri, the well-known food item, is called by a person I know as "bUri". Similarly the name "padmA" is changed by some into "batma". A friend's wife's name is "Shuseela". I have come across all these in college-educated persons. All these I can accept as possible even from an illiterate person because these are based on features readily observable in literate/upper class persons by a illiterate/lower class persons. But the knowledge of the loss of initial c/s etc. based on words like Ayiram, ENi, etc., is simply impossible to expect from ordinary people. I have been interested in the study of language for a long time. I did not know about this phenomenon until I read Burrow's work. The posting by Selvakumar reflects that too. The average illiterate person is not a Burrow or Emeneau. Just out of curiosity, how and when many Tamil members on this list knew the derivations of Ayiram and ENi, and what those member's Sanskrit/linguistic knowledge background is In any case, my point is simple. Until an objective linguistic reason is presented (without any circular reasoning), which explains why *-y->-k-/-g- and *-y->-j- are acceptable as natural sound changes while *-y->-c-/-s- is not, we have to accept *-y>-c-/-s- also as natural. Regards S. Palaniappan From lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM Tue May 26 19:16:06 1998 From: lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM (Lakshmi Srinivas) Date: Tue, 26 May 98 12:16:06 -0700 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039191.23782.9997962890817001714.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---Michael Witzel wrote: > > > We can more or less reconstruct their Soma, Animal, Pravargya, > Horse and Fire rituals right from the Rv. Plus a lot of mythology. Add the > Avesta with very similar data. > In this discussion of the external vs indigenous origin, the evidence with respect to Soma, in our current state of knowledge, seems to be somewhat ambiguous. (Cremation also!) I do not know if the list members are generally aware of I. Mahadevan's theory that the IVC Cult Object represents a Soma filter. A summary for those who are not aware: Based on the overall appearance of the cult object and the variant styles in which it has been depicted in the Indus seals, Mahadevan identified 15 signs of the Indus script as pertaining to the Soma ritual. His entire study is based a fresh interpretation of the hymns in the ninth Mandala of the RV. ( See The cult object on unicorn seals: a sacred filter? Paper presented at The 31st Int'l Cong of Human Sciences in Asia and North Africa, Tokyo and Kyoto, 1983. On this topic, Mahadevan read one more paper in 1993, I think, in Helsinki. I don't have the reference.) This hypothesis is quite significant as in Mahadevan's words "the cult object is the third most frequent symbol depicted on the Harappan inscribed objects" (ibid.). Equally significant is Mahadevan's conclusion "that the Soma (Haoma) rituals of the Indo-Iranian religions are based on a pre-Aryan Harappan substratum and that this is the reason for the remarkable resemblances between the Harappan symbolism of the Sacred Filter and the Soma ritual as described in the Rgveda" (ibid.). The hypothesis itself seems to have been well received in the world of South Asian archaeology. (See Possehl, Indus Age: The writing system, Philadelphia, 1996.) A post-script perhaps worth mentioning is that the cult object in ivory has recently been found by the HARP project in the continuing excavations of Harappa. The physical appearance of the object seems to confirm the suspicion that it is some kind of a filter e.g., it has deeply drilled holes in the bottom etc.. Wonder what the ziSHTAs think? (Of course, Mahadevan does not think that the Indo-Aryan speakers were responsible for the IVC. His entire work in this area is based on the Dravidian hypothesis.) Warm Regards. == Lakshmi Srinivas _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Tue May 26 20:04:31 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Tue, 26 May 98 13:04:31 -0700 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039193.23782.15851787413687043446.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---Lakshmi Srinivas wrote: > > I do not know if the list members are generally aware of I.> Mahadevan's theory that the IVC Cult Object represents a Soma filter. > [snip] > > The hypothesis itself seems to have been well received in the world of > South Asian archaeology. (See Possehl, Indus Age: The writing system, > Philadelphia, 1996.) > I have read Possehl's book. I do not think Possehl said so. Would appreciate the reference since I do not have access to the book right away. You may recall Fairservis' reading of the 'fish' sign as a 'loop'. It is tough to 'read' extraordinary symbolism into this device used in the IVC script. It is tougher still to figure out what the device represented. To me, the device looks like a portable furnace combined with a drill lathe on top. The dotted circles may symbolise perforations of beads? The wavy signs on the top part of the device is explained by I.M. as 'flow' symbolism. To me it looks like a 'churning' motion of the drill! We can keep speculating governed by our faiths, until we gain a rational 'understanding' of, or just 'read', in the lingua fraca, the entire corpus of inscriptions. I should add that I have the highest regard for the magnificent work done by both I.M. (whom I have met and with whom I have discussed a number of times in Chennai) and A.Parpola in presenting the evidence of the inscriptions and internal, structural analyses of the evidence. Regards, k. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM Tue May 26 20:47:26 1998 From: lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM (Lakshmi Srinivas) Date: Tue, 26 May 98 13:47:26 -0700 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039195.23782.16604411335926362548.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---"S. Kalyanaraman" wrote: > > ---Lakshmi Srinivas wrote: > > > > I do not know if the list members are generally aware of I.> > Mahadevan's theory that the IVC Cult Object represents a Soma filter. > > > [snip] > > > > The hypothesis itself seems to have been well received in the world > of > South Asian archaeology. (See Possehl, Indus Age: The writing > system, > > Philadelphia, 1996.) > > > > I have read Possehl's book. I do not think Possehl said so. Would > appreciate the reference since I do not have access to the book right > away. > Well, Possehl did say the following: "Mahadevan's approach to the soma press is a departure from his method of parallelisms. It is based mainly on common sense, and the development of an argument. There may be more scope to this general approach and Mahadevan's work is certainly one of the few decipherments that deserves further attention." (ibid. p 131) Possehl's work is a review of various attempts at deciphering the Indus script. Of the 30 or so decipherment attempts reviewed, many have been dismissed with remarks such as "makes no sense" , "elaborate fantasy", "difficult to use as a guide", "little to be said by way of critical evaluation", "unsuccessful venture" etc.. One particular attempt has even been characterized as "Unlike Mahadevan's work, it seems to have pretty much run its course". However a dozen or so decipherment attempts seem to have been taken seriously and have been reviewed in detail, of which Mahadevan's is one. But as may be seen from above, not all of his hypotheses have been received the same way. For example, Mahadevan's soma hypothesis has received much better press than his method of parallelisms. That is all I meant to say. Warm Regards. == Lakshmi Srinivas _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From yavass at YV1041.SPB.EDU Tue May 26 11:52:27 1998 From: yavass at YV1041.SPB.EDU (Yaroslav V. Vassilkov) Date: Tue, 26 May 98 15:52:27 +0400 Subject: Sarasvati (samudra-) Message-ID: <161227039176.23782.9234364901112197870.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In support of Prof. Witzel's view on samudra-, I would like to quote a latest work of another prominent modern Vedic scholar: "Waters on earth are rivers, their confluences (samudra-) - it is a problem whether the RVic Aryans really knew of the sea or the ocean - ponds, springs, etc." T.Y.Elizarenkova. The Concept of Water and the Names for It in the Rgveda. - "Orientalia Suecana", vol. XLV-XLVI (1996-1997), Uppsala, p. 21. Best wishes to all, Ya.V. From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Wed May 27 00:48:31 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Tue, 26 May 98 17:48:31 -0700 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039204.23782.9556896183772486645.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---"Paul K. Manansala" wrote: > > ps -- regarding the use of saagara for lakes, doesn't this > have a long tradition in the literature? Maybe I'm thinking of > something else, but I'll investigate. > Isn't the earliest attestation of 'sa_gara' in Manu? In Sindhi and Bengali, the lexeme means both an ocean and a river/lake. There is of course the tradition of the ocean dug up by Sagara. Regards, k. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From erik.seldeslachts at RUG.AC.BE Tue May 26 18:11:53 1998 From: erik.seldeslachts at RUG.AC.BE (Erik Seldeslachts) Date: Tue, 26 May 98 19:11:53 +0100 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.III) Message-ID: <161227039187.23782.6161873920923978379.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel wrote: > > On Tue, 26 May 1998, Erik Seldeslachts wrote: > > > This is a typical example of the kind of selective argumentation we are > > swamped with on this list. > > aika- : long e and o have always considered to be diphthongs by the > > Sanskrit grammarians and it is likely that they still were real diphthongs > > in Vedic and even later times.(On the other hand there is also Old-Iranian > > *aivaka- 'one' preserved in Persian yek). > > This -again- is a typical example of the kind of selective argumentation > we are swamped with on this list. The facts are: > > In Old Iranian we only have aiva (O.Pers.) and aEuua, Oiuua (Avestan) > > In Middle Persian we have Ev, Evak ( < *aivaka, NOT *aika!!!) and > > and thus, in New Persian we have yak. > > -ka suffixes are about the most common in Middle Persian (and Skt.) and > added virtually everywhere. > > (Actually, even Avestan has something like the preform: aEuuAkam 'at the > same time", from *aeuuAka-) > > One look into Bartholomae's Altiranisches Woerterbuch would have helped to > avoid this kind of selective argumentation. > Rather, the dialect difference between Pre-vedic *aika "1" and Pre-Iranian > *aiva"1" (and, maybe, reinforced by *aiva-ka!) is old; note that Vedic has > specialized a presumable IIr *aiva > adverb eva "only". > > (and did I not say: " Seems to be an old dialect > difference. But a slim one." ???) > > It seems to me that the my main point was completely missed: Iranian used > -va, IA used -ka (and other IE *-no) for "1". > Philology = "slow reading". > I don't understand why you take so much trouble to repeat my own statement. Please reread my posting and you will see that I posited Iranian *aivaka- and NOT Iranian *aika- as you seem to think. > > Near-Eastern documents .... also there is no > > conclusive evidence to state it is pre-Vedic. > > But what about above: > > > the form of the IIr language in Mitanni is pre-Vedic : IIr > > > sounds are preserved, *zdh, in Priyamazda :: Ved. priyamedha :: Avest. > > > -mazda... > > As every 1st year student of hist. lingustics knows, IIr is characterized > by *azd,azdh, retained in Iranian -azd-, while Vedic has got rid of such > combinations > ed, edh. This argument is merely based on the untenable supposition that the Vedic Aryans were the only Aryans. It may be as I have said an archaism of certain Aryan groups. On the other hand Mitanni-Aryan in satta- not only retains s, which changed to h in Iranian, but shows assimilation of the consonant group which is indeed a common linguistic feature as Vassilkov wrote, but would be nearly impossible for reconstructed IIr. > Thus, in sum: "Mitanni-Aryan" has the pre-Vedic stage Also characterized > by aika (not aiva, aivaka!). -az- is not found in Ved. any more. And that > development has been used to build a whole new class of perfects. A wide > gap separates the Mitanni and RV forms of IA. (implications for > dating??) > > All of this has been well known since Kammenhuber's Habil. thesis on > Kikkuli's horse treatise, Mayrhofer's "Mythos", etc. etc. As Prof. > Krishnamurti once wrote: do we have to give intro-s to linguistics here? > Perhaps it is better to select other types of "selective argumentation". I know perfectly well all what you are saying here and I need no intros. You did not get my point at all. I only wanted to contrast one type of selective argumentation to another (which is not necesssarily my own) in order to show that there is no base for such definitive conclusions as you are drawing at the moment. Erik Seldeslachts Universiteit Gent Gent, Belgium From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Wed May 27 08:17:26 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 00:17:26 -0800 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039208.23782.13331303969387895516.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Roland Steiner wrote: > By means of a precise investigation of the relevant texts Klaus > comes to the conclusion that samudra in several Vedic passages does > not designate the ocean, but a broad stream formed by the union of > two or more rivers. > Shouldn't we expect something more specific in the passage then? For example, if I say the river flows into the sea, we take it for granted that I mean the ocean. However, if I specify the Aral Sea, the Caspian Sea, or the Sea of Galilee, then we know it is a lake. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From Kumara.Henadeerage at ANU.EDU.AU Tue May 26 16:39:10 1998 From: Kumara.Henadeerage at ANU.EDU.AU (Deepthi Kumara Henadeerage) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 02:39:10 +1000 Subject: Verbal Reflexives Message-ID: <161227039185.23782.17596936475512014729.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hi there, Sinhala has a special verb-verb compound which gives the reflexive meaning. In this construction, the verb gannawa 'take' is suffixed to the perfect partciple form of a verb. For instance, tuwaala_kara+gannawa (hurt+gannawa) means 'hurt oneself', while tuwala_karanawa 'hurt', without gannawa means 'hurt somebody', but not 'hurt oneself'. I have heard that there are similar constructions in Tamil and Teligu (ie. verb+koL construction). I'd like to know if there are any other Indic languages which have similar construtions. Also I appreciate if someone can point out some references for verbal reflexives in Tamil and Teligu. Kumara. ________________________________________________ Kumara.Henadeerage at anu.edu.au http://www.anu.edu.au/linguistics/sinhala/ku.htm Linguistics - Australian National University ================================================ From jacob.baltuch at EURONET.BE Wed May 27 01:49:44 1998 From: jacob.baltuch at EURONET.BE (Jacob Baltuch) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 02:49:44 +0100 Subject: Vedic diphthongs? Message-ID: <161227039207.23782.8191194024759303547.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> How does one show from internal evidence alone a aai/aau/ai/au pronunciation (not ai/au/ee/oo) is implied in the RV? Something else: are there any Iranian loans in the RV? (I vaguely remember someone saying some- thing like this but maybe not). If yes, can I get a few examples? Cheers (and thanks) From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Wed May 27 14:49:36 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 06:49:36 -0800 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039224.23782.17181675039928484994.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Lars Martin Fosse wrote: > We know that migrations are forgotten. Examples: > The examples you give might all be examples of gradual diffusion rather than mass migration. I was referring specifically to the idea of an IE invasion (as parallel to a Hun invasion). Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Wed May 27 14:55:44 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 06:55:44 -0800 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.I) Message-ID: <161227039226.23782.6219650158130661848.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel wrote: > On Sun, 24 May 1998, Paul K. Manansala wrote: > > > > > Do we find Vedic culture outside > > of India in pre-Harappan times? > > I have mentoned the highly suggestive Ural burials, c. 2000 BC, with a > Dadhyanc-like figure (human body, no head, but instead: horse head). As in > RV. (Gening 1977!) Any other Dadhyances in Uralic, Siberian myth?> > Parpola has given other comparisons, especially for the BMAC (again, > Erdosy, 1995) > But human and horse burials are very common among Altaic and probably Uralic peoples. Surely we should expect something more given the standards already set in this discussion for IVC. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Wed May 27 14:16:06 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 07:16:06 -0700 Subject: Verbal Reflexives Message-ID: <161227039236.23782.1390616417283291502.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hi, This is an excellent point. This is characteristic of the entire linguistic area and is perhaps, ancient. In Hindi, it is very common to add the auxiliary: -liya_. e.g.,maine_ le_ liya_ (I have taken for myself). Regards, k. ---Jaroslav Strnad wrote: > > The so called compound verbs occur in modern Indo-aryan languages as > well: in Hindi, for example, a construction of verbal stem (or simple > absolutive, as this form is often called) with the verb "lenaa", "to > take" suggests that the action expressed by the stem/simple absolutive > is done for the use or interest of the doer himself, is directed towards > the doer, etc. > E.g.: likhnaa - to write > likh lenaa - to write for one's own use, to write down. > Compound verbs where the second member modifies the meaning (and in > quite a few cases also the verbal aspect) of the first, is probably one > of characteristic features of the Indian linguistic area. > > Jaroslav Strnad > strnad at orient.cas.cz > == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Wed May 27 15:26:05 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 07:26:05 -0800 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039233.23782.14678586867616856261.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel > On Sun, 24 May 1998, Paul K. Manansala wrote: > > > Isn't Vasistha connected with Eastern India in later literature? > > Some intereresting facts about Vasistha: > > > > 1. He promoted cow worship (among beef-eaters?). > > 2. He raised tens sons on King Sudas' wife (among patriarchal > > peoples?) > > 3. In later literature he is the priest of Danavas and Daityas. > > PRECISELY: in later literature. The Epics and the Puranas are > re-formulations and re-interpretations, with a lot of changes made, of the > Vedic texts. Vasistha as been promoted "to the Heavens" in such texts, > while in the RV he is a newcomer, without Angirasa background etc. > However, even in the RV Vasistha's culture does not seem particularly IE. The RV (II 5-3-7) states that the priests of the Saudasas were Angirasas, and Vasistha was the priest of Sudas. > Or do you also doubt that the Epics/Puranas are *late* texts compared to > the Vedas? > (Love to see the proof!) > Well, according to tradition, Krishna Dvaipayana compiled both at the same time. Also, the Puranas are at least attempts at historical writing. One can't say the same thing about the Vedas. > > > The Old Iranian of the older Avesta (Zarathustra's Gatha-s) is > > > linguistically hardly younger than the RV. Absolute dating has not been > > > established, though. B > > > But the Avesta is in neighboring Iran several centuries after the > > proposed "invasion". If the Avestan language is younger, then using > > the standard presumption we should suggest a migration from east to > > west. > > How do you know that? Standard presumption? The practice used in most other cases. Why make exceptions here? There simply is no means so > far to date any Avesta texts independently from the Near Eastern sources > and from correpondensces with the Vedas, see O Skjaervo in the Erdosy > Volume 1995. (We would love to have a Chinese ambassador at that time in > Bactria. Unfortunately, he came 1000 years too late!). > > Avestan is often MORE archaic than the frequently INNOVATIVE Rgvedic. > > The last sentence gives away your suppositions. -- On reading any Avesta > section in the original you would see that it does not contain anything > (linguistically) that could have come out of India. No Indian words, no > Indian ideas, no Harappan items etc. I would strongly disagree with this statement, but the argument against it could get long and complicated. > > > That has changed wit the finds in Bactria-Margiana and Baluchistan. > > > Now their is a *trail*, see Hiebert in Erdosy, Indo_Aryans of Ancient > > > South Asia, 1995. Plus the Gandhara grave culture, plus Swat. All > > > starting about 1880/1700 BC., and after the destruction of the Bactrian > > > horizon about 2100 BC. > > >> > > Highly questionable. We have to question the "Aryan" identification > > here. A lot of presumptions used to back up other presumptions. > > > > "Highly questionable" does not do it. This is a scholarly list (so we > > hope) , not politics. Some examples are necessary. Let's have > discussionon the arch. cultures mentioned above... But then,the horse, or > rather Dadhyanc will raise its ugly horse head again... > Wrong. The onus is on you to prove IE identification. Since we are talking mainly about language, I would love to hear of something more than a horse burial which was very common among *non-IE* peoples. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Wed May 27 15:42:50 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 07:42:50 -0800 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039234.23782.17126384313797627508.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel wrote: > On Sun, 24 May 1998, Paul K. Manansala wrote: > > > My contention about the Sarasvati is that the AI theorists do seem to be > > "retrofitting" the data here and there. The first and foremost thing > > is there is no hard archaeological evidence of a "Vedic" culture > > entering India. > > We certainly cannot label PGW culture as Vedic anymore than IVC. > > That last sentence alone shows that the data are not taken into account. > The data of the Indus civ. just do not fit the RV (we need a special > e-sattra on that), but the PGW has many correspondences, in spread, > material culture, etc., with the *POST*-RV texts. > I find the above statements biased.. While one could argue that IVC is not particularly Vedic, neither is PGW. The latter was primarily a pig and rice culture. The people were sendentary and lived in mud huts. They made very little use of the horse, and I'm not aware of any chariots associated with them. They used wheel-made pottery, associated with Asuras, instead of the "Aryan" handmade variety. The work of Dilip Chakrabarti suggests that the iron used by the PGW culture was not of foreign origin as previously thought. Could you provide a list of the correspondences between PGW and Vedic culture? Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From pf at CIX.CO.UK Wed May 27 07:07:00 1998 From: pf at CIX.CO.UK (Peter Flugel) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 08:07:00 +0100 Subject: Hindi Distance Learning Message-ID: <161227039210.23782.14801367947348749873.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hello Peter, can you forward this to the indology list, for some reason my server keeps rejecting my messages to it. **************************** In relation to the recent thread on Distance Learning Hindi La Trobe University Melbourne Australia also offers a University first year level distance learning Hindi course. More details are available from the address below. ------------------------------------------ Dr Peter G Friedlander Department of Asian Studies La Trobe University Bundoora 3083 Victoria Australia tel:(03) 9479 2064 fax:(03) 9479 1880 email: p.friedlander at latrobe.edu.au ------------------------------------------------------- Dr Peter G. Friedlander Hindi Distance Learning Project Department of Asian Studies La Trobe University Bundoora 3083 Victoria Australia tel: (03) 9479 2064 fax: (03) 9479 1880 email: p.friedlander at latrobe.edu.au From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Wed May 27 12:16:01 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 08:16:01 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) In-Reply-To: <199805241559.IAA22631@dry.jps.net> Message-ID: <161227039213.23782.6919955980454189062.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sun, 24 May 1998, Paul K. Manansala wrote: > As I see it the RV is the main evidence for the early IE > invasion/migration theory. And the evidence is textual since we have > no manuscripts from the Vedic period. So every major proponent of > the AIT has attempted some fairly liberal interpretations of the RV > regarding geography and many other subjects. Therefore, we cannot > use the RV as proof in one direction but not the other. As usual in this discussion the baby is thrown out with the bath water. Of course, there are no RV time manuscripts. But, except for some minute, well known details, the ORAL tradition has been fixed from the beginning. No changes allowed. Thus, I call it a "tape recording" of the RV period. It is as good as any well preserved inscription. Of course, as Indologists have underlined for some 150 years, even such texts are POLITICAL. If you can read between the lines, and that is of course part of our training, you get a pretty good idea of what was going on. The geographical data can be studied just like anything else in the text. Some things are obvious, such as a RV area of the Greater Panjab and surroundings. Others such as the samudra and the Rasaa need more study. And we have to use the *RV* since we do not have anything else for the whole period, say from 3000-1000 BC, except archeology, or, as we cannot read it (Indus inscriptions). Or we can resign ourselves, and shut up. Archaeology? - Archaeology alone did not tell us that the Mayas were not as peaceful as they had been portrayed until we could read their texts.... > My contention about the Sarasvati is that the AI theorists do seem to be > "retrofitting" the data here and there. The first and foremost thing > is there is no hard archaeological evidence of a "Vedic" culture > entering India. > We certainly cannot label PGW culture as Vedic anymore than IVC. That last sentence alone shows that the data are not taken into account. The data of the Indus civ. just do not fit the RV (we need a special e-sattra on that), but the PGW has many correspondences, in spread, material culture, etc., with the *POST*-RV texts. Again the arch. evidence alone. Even tehre w have soem data as I have already pointed out. Should I repeat myself again? -- What about language, material and spiritual culture, customs, beliefs, rituals, religion etc as found in RV? These data have all the kinks with Iran and beyond, not with the Indus civ. etc. > We have, at best, undoubted similarities between the medieval Vedic > texts and the Avestan texts/inscriptions dating from several > centuries before this era. From this we are attempting to > extrapolate on events of anywhere from 1,500 BCE to 3,000+ BCE > using mainly text interpretation.. medieval Vedic texts? The RV and te other Vedic texts were composed much earlier: as even quotations in Panini and the Pali canon show... I give up! Better to get the data right before drawing such hasty conclusions. As for text interpretation: if we do or jb of understanding these texts well, we can restore even damaged texts correctly, as indeed happend to me long ago in my thesis, when I discovered the actual wording restored by me, hidden under some broken off section of a birchbark manuscript that was not visible in the film I used... Every interpretation is of course an approximation, until you use time travel and talk to the local people, lots of them... We have been at it for some 150 years now... and know something about these texts, for example all, those points I critized above. And more importantly, we know quite well what we do *not* know, for example about the 'little tradition" in the RV. (for that we read te Atharvaveda etc.) There are no Avestan inscriptions. We would be so happy. If only the 3/4 of the lost Avesta corpus could be found in Balkh, allegedly written there before "Alexander destroyed the texts"! Facts, again.... With our data coming straight from the Vedic period itself we do not extrapolate backwards for 3000-odd years... we *listen* to what Visvamitra or Vasistha composed. (Such tapes & records have been published). > For example, our belief that the supposed "Vedic" peoples used horses > is based entirely on the Vedic texts. Since we do know the dating of > the entire corpus for sure, how can we make any theories using these > texts? Is the use of the Vedas as historical sources even valid? Using your wording, we "do know the dating for sure" - I suppose the medieval MSS? That, we know for sure indeed. (otherwise the passage makes not sense to me) --- But we can also make very good educated guesses (and do even better) about the historical situation of the time of the composition. Of course, we can use poetic texts and mine them for some historical information: Using the famous line from the Psalms where the author (Salomon, I think) compares his girl friend's teeth to the parapets of the walls of Jerusalem you can make some deductions about (a) Jer.having a type of wall, and (b) about the ideal nature of teeth/ a smile usual (or conversely the uneven nature of teeth) at the time... Again, well known procedures. By your standard we should give up the use of texts such as Homer's, the Bible, Roman annals, old Chinese history, the Kojiki etc., since all of them have "medieval MSS" (well, a few are a bit earlier). Tell that to the Israelis, the Chinese etc. ! The term "Vedic peoples" is not a good one. 'Tribes speaking Old Indo-Aryan' or the 'Vedic variety of Old Indo-Aryan' would be correct. "Vedic peoples" would be those who use that language, and adhere to the cultural norms spelled out in the texts. All well known (Kuiper, Southworth etc.)_ ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Wed May 27 12:22:10 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 08:22:10 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) In-Reply-To: <199805241632.JAA09468@dry.jps.net> Message-ID: <161227039215.23782.12417211429236430251.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sun, 24 May 1998, Paul K. Manansala wrote: > Isn't Vasistha connected with Eastern India in later literature? > Some intereresting facts about Vasistha: > > 1. He promoted cow worship (among beef-eaters?). > 2. He raised tens sons on King Sudas' wife (among patriarchal > peoples?) > 3. In later literature he is the priest of Danavas and Daityas. PRECISELY: in later literature. The Epics and the Puranas are re-formulations and re-interpretations, with a lot of changes made, of the Vedic texts. Vasistha as been promoted "to the Heavens" in such texts, while in the RV he is a newcomer, without Angirasa background etc. Or do you also doubt that the Epics/Puranas are *late* texts compared to the Vedas? (Love to see the proof!) > > The Old Iranian of the older Avesta (Zarathustra's Gatha-s) is > > linguistically hardly younger than the RV. Absolute dating has not been > > established, though. B > But the Avesta is in neighboring Iran several centuries after the > proposed "invasion". If the Avestan language is younger, then using > the standard presumption we should suggest a migration from east to > west. How do you know that? Standard presumption? There simply is no means so far to date any Avesta texts independently from the Near Eastern sources and from correpondensces with the Vedas, see O Skjaervo in the Erdosy Volume 1995. (We would love to have a Chinese ambassador at that time in Bactria. Unfortunately, he came 1000 years too late!). Avestan is often MORE archaic than the frequently INNOVATIVE Rgvedic. The last sentence gives away your suppositions. -- On reading any Avesta section in the original you would see that it does not contain anything (linguistically) that could have come out of India. No Indian words, no Indian ideas, no Harappan items etc. > Is there a religion of the Rgveda? Or do these simply reflect a > particular type of hymn to certain deities. Besides we should not be > comparing the Rgveda or Avesta only to IVC seals. Is there anything > in Iran or Central Asian remotely more "Vedic" in nature? Of course, there is a RV religion: many books have been written about it. -- It differs somewhat from Iranian one (even neglecting the reform of Zoroaster), and it differs somewhat from post-Rgvedic religion. Some intra-RV regional and clan-wise distinctions in belief and ritual can also be seen. But it stands out clearly against the other types of "Arya" religion mantioned just now. > > > There is zilch archeological/textual evidence of migration > > > from central asia into India. > > > > That has changed wit the finds in Bactria-Margiana and Baluchistan. > > Now their is a *trail*, see Hiebert in Erdosy, Indo_Aryans of Ancient > > South Asia, 1995. Plus the Gandhara grave culture, plus Swat. All > > starting about 1880/1700 BC., and after the destruction of the Bactrian > > horizon about 2100 BC. > >> > Highly questionable. We have to question the "Aryan" identification > here. A lot of presumptions used to back up other presumptions. > > "Highly questionable" does not do it. This is a scholarly list (so we > hope) , not politics. Some examples are necessary. Let's have discussionon the arch. cultures mentioned above... But then,the horse, or rather Dadhyanc will raise its ugly horse head again... > Well, soma is a particularly interesting subject. Didn't it come from > the Himalayas (Mt. Mujavant). Yes, and from the high Iranian Mountains (Yasna 9). Apparently in the way you go and collect your Peyotl, send out somebody or trade it from the local people (whom you then beat up in the process, according to the post-RV ritual). migration: > > The texts themselves speak of it many times, even in RV; and the RV > > remembers places and tribes in Afghanistan, Iran and even beyond: The > > Rasaa = Avestan Ranghaa = Scythian *Rahaa (written Rhaa in Greek), where > > it designates ... the Volga. > > All very questionable. Maybe we should discuss each passage that > supposedly speaks of migration. How in the world can you be sure > that Rasaa is the Volga? All? - The Rasaa /Rangha/ Rha is indeed a special case which is in need of a *long* discussion. The above note on Rasaa is primarily linguistic. But it can be sustained. We can have a discussion of that. > Mass migrations are not usually forgotten by people. We should not > have to thread together tidbits if the Vedic peoples really did > migrate from all the way from the Volga. All of this should be very > clearly spelled out. "Are not usually forgotten" -- a sweeping statement. We need details. - As I said, I have supplied such data in Erdosy 1995. No need to repeat myself again. My fingers are tired by now. And Parpola has done so for 2 decades or so. I suggest to read his papers and then come back. ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Wed May 27 12:23:07 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 08:23:07 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.I) In-Reply-To: <199805241639.JAA13396@dry.jps.net> Message-ID: <161227039217.23782.18017423979523721441.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sun, 24 May 1998, Paul K. Manansala wrote: > > highly invasive Huns (375 AD+ in Europe) had not been located > > archaeologically until some of their graves were found in Hungary a few > > years ago... > > Yes, but evidence of Hun culture clearly matching the text > description is found outside of Europe. A simile is a simile. I spoke about Europe!! > Do we find Vedic culture outside > of India in pre-Harappan times? I have mentoned the highly suggestive Ural burials, c. 2000 BC, with a Dadhyanc-like figure (human body, no head, but instead: horse head). As in RV. (Gening 1977!) Any other Dadhyances in Uralic, Siberian myth?> Parpola has given other comparisons, especially for the BMAC (again, Erdosy, 1995) > Also, the Hun invasion is very clearly spelled out in historical > writings. Not so, regarding the supposed invasion of Vedic peoples. Yes, but we do not have historical writings from India at that time. Must use the RV. And there was no Vedic invasion but a complicated pattern of gradual clan/tribe-wise movements and a lot of acculturation in the Panjab, See Erdosy 1995... Anyhow, enough to see whence and how *speakers* of Vedic Old Indo_Aryan arrived. Read Parpola's and my paper in Erdosy 1995.... ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu From lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM Wed May 27 15:34:20 1998 From: lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM (Lakshmi Srinivas) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 08:34:20 -0700 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039246.23782.749731345630858664.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Well, I read this paper some time ago.It has illustrations in it and some sections of the text closely follow the illustrations so it may be best if one read it for oneself and drew the appropriate conclusions. It deals with some very physical stuff such as pavitra, aNvI, pavamAna, indu and vRSHan and thereby attempts to establish the parallelism between the Harappan cult object and the RV strainer, sieve etc.. Mahadevan makes the case that the lower vessel as depicted in the IVC cult object is a perforated vessel (for which there is no RV textual support). But he interprets the imagery of holes in Indra's body and the metaphor sahasrabhRSHTi according to the physical appearance of the lower vessel of the IVC cult object in the seals. BTW, the cult object is a representation of the filter, not the filter itself. I hope this helps. Warm Regards. ---George Thompson wrote: > > In response to the recent post of Lakshmi Srinivas: > > Thank you for this summary. I am not familiar with Mahadevan's work. The > Vedic filter [pavitra] was made from sheep's wool [aNvANi meSyaH] or a skin > [avya tvac], and not from more obdurate materials like ivory. I don't think > that one would find deeply drilled holes in the bottom of a Vedic pavitra. > Does Mahadevan address this difference? > > Best wishes, > > George Thompson > == Lakshmi Srinivas _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Wed May 27 12:39:50 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 08:39:50 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.III) In-Reply-To: <356B05E9.5664@rug.ac.be> Message-ID: <161227039218.23782.4450761209395496699.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> No need to go into most of it again. But to set the record straight: Only imporant: Mitanni aika : Vedic eka : Old Iranian aiva (aivAka) Thus Proto-Indo_Iranian: *aika ("Indo_Aryan"/"Mitanni" dialect), *aiva ("Iranian" dialect). Draw your conclusions from that.... The rest is of interest only to the specialists: On Tue, 26 May 1998, Erik Seldeslachts wrote: > > > aika- : long e and o have always considered to be diphthongs by the > > > Sanskrit grammarians and it is likely that they still were real diphthongs > > > in Vedic and even later times.(On the other hand there is also Old-Iranian > > > *aivaka- 'one' preserved in Persian yek). The point for importance for the Mitanni question is not your supposed old Iranian *aivaka (actually, Old Iranian only has aiva, not aivaka. Even Avestan has only >>something like the preform: aEuuAkam 'at the same time", from *aeuuAka- << as I wrote, -- this is something else, not Avest. *aEuuaka!) For the Mitanni question only Vedic eka and pre-Vedic *aika vs: Old Iranian and pre-Iranian aiva, (not *aiva-ka and Pers. yak) is of importance (tere are,after all, innovations inlanguage!), as it shows the SAME dialect feature in Mitanni : aika. Mitanni-Aryan (or rather to be correct, the IA words in Mitanni) agrees with Vedic, not with Iranian. But is has retained the IIr -az-. The combination of the two facts (and there are others) points to a pre-Vedic Indo-Aryan dialect. If you do not like that (I can well gues why), -- and I myself pointed to dating issues here,-- you can call it an Indo-Aryan dialect with archaic features (-az-), with an unknown history and unknown linguistic developments (problem of cuneiform, below). So why all the fuss? All of this is a mere repetition of the Kammenhuber debate of some 40 years ago. > > IIr is characterized > > by *azd,azdh, retained in Iranian -azd-, while Vedic has got rid of such > > combinations > ed, edh. > > This argument is merely based on the untenable supposition that the > Vedic Aryans were the only Aryans. It may be as I have said an archaism > of certain Aryan groups. Whoever said that?: "Vedic = the only Aryans"? Not me, I actually have written on Vedic dialects, which paper includes, in the margin, also various Nuristani, Iranian, Varnu etc. "Aryan dialects". After all, Dareius calls his language "ariya". Even then, I do not understand the reasoning given above. In my note I named 3 (out of actually more) "arya/Arya/ariya" (various IIr speaking) groups: (1) those with -az- (Iranians), those with -ed-, -edh- (Vedic, as for other EARLY IA, we do not have it attested in India), those with *-azd, azdh- (the Proto-Indo-Iranians, *IIr for short). The "Mitanni_Indo-Aryans" have, as well as they can spell it in their cuneiform, azd for *IIr *azdh, thus have retained the IIr form (unless one supposes that they lost the aspiration, like the Iranians. I think so far nobody has said that). If Mitanni-Aryan was an "archaic" dialect, so be it. I myself raised the point of dating. Actually, earlier, I had reported that some think that the contact between pre-Indo_Aryanns and Hurrites (Mitanni) goes back several hundred years before they left us their documents (1380 BC, etc.) which brings us closer to the IIr period: where you would have -azdh- not -edh-. > On the other hand Mitanni-Aryan in satta- not > only retains s, which changed to h in Iranian, Are you thinking of Mitanni-Aryan as something in between the two?? Yes, I said that we regard them as Indo-Aryan, not Iranian. So we expect s. not h. Though that, again, is a very tricky business, see forthc. paper by A. Hintze in Idg. Fachtagung Innsbruck of 1996, (now out or nearly out): the change s > h may be dated later than we commonly think. The Assyrians still have Assara Mazash in c. 800 BC > but shows assimilation of > the consonant group which is indeed a common linguistic feature as > Vassilkov wrote, but would be nearly impossible for reconstructed IIr. Anyhow, first you need to do a study of Mesopotamian 'spellings' and compare the Mitanni evidence with other spellings of foreign words. Then we can talk about satta. (see below!) -- Materials in Mayrhofer (which I do not have here at home) Actually, the grammarians may help with their detailed description of the pronunciation of double consonants: they first one is an implosive, and thus pt >tt is possible at any time and anywhere. (like in Romance languages). But better, first suppply other cases of pt > tt or comparable materials. One pt > tt doesn't make for Prakrits. In fact we doubt > > Thus, in sum: "Mitanni-Aryan" has the pre-Vedic stage Also characterized > > by aika (not aiva, aivaka!). -az- is not found in Ved. any more. And that > > development has been used to build a whole new class of perfects. A wide > > gap separates the Mitanni and RV forms of IA. (implications for > > dating??) doubt what? the new perfects? such productive developments must have a reason, and here one has been seen for a LONG time. or do you see -az - in Vedic anywhere? or the gap between Mitanni Aryan and Vedic? > You did not get my point at all. I only wanted to contrast one type of > selective argumentation to another (which is not necesssarily my own) in > order to show that there is no base for such definitive conclusions as > you are drawing at the moment. any better conclusion? A "archaic Mitanni Prakrit"? I suggest you go to the linguistic meeting somewhere in Europe and recite from S.S. Misra there and see the reaction. It will be a little worse than the one here. Prof. Vassilkov has already written about this point. One can add: Note Mitanni *baruna but uruna for Varuna !!! So why here va- > u- and why vR- > bar in your/ SS Mira's example: >> Bardashva : Skt VRdhAZva-, with evolution of initial v- to b-; etc.<< ??? Wrong recnsruction by Misra? Freak devevlopment, against the expected sounds? Or rather, after all, due to the local writing system and pronunciation? We must not forget that we have all this information about "Mitanni-Aryan" only third or forth hand: *pre-Indo_Aryan --> loans in pre-Mitanni Hurrite ---> use in Mitanni language ---> writing in local cuneiform. A Near Eastern expert may sort it all out. ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm From jai at FLEX.COM Wed May 27 19:20:59 1998 From: jai at FLEX.COM (Dr. Jai Maharaj) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 09:20:59 -1000 Subject: Verbal Reflexives In-Reply-To: <356C0AFB.73DC@orient.cas.cz> Message-ID: <161227039248.23782.17565280022065433535.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > From: Indology [mailto:INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK]On > Behalf Of Jaroslav Strnad > . . . > E.g.: likhnaa - to write > likh lenaa - to write for one's own use, to write down. > Compound verbs where the second member modifies the meaning . . . Namaste! The "likh laynaa", "daykh laynaa", etc., form is used especially when advice of this form is being given to someone: "Try to make sure that you have written it," or "Do write it." The instruction almost always refers to an action in the future. In contrast, "likhnaa" usually refers to the present, unless modified as "likhnaa baad mei(n)," etc. Of course, "likhnaa" also has noun-like usage, as in "uskoe likhnaa aataa hai," signifying that "he/she has the ability of writing." Jai Maharaj http://www.flex.com/~jai Om Shanti From sns at IX.NETCOM.COM Wed May 27 14:33:41 1998 From: sns at IX.NETCOM.COM (Sn. Subrahmanya) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 09:33:41 -0500 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039238.23782.9031581520978622970.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 08:22 AM 5/27/98 -0400, Michael Witzel wrote: >>Avestan is often MORE archaic than the frequently INNOVATIVE Rgvedic. Isnt it the case, that the centre innovates and the peripheral areas retain archisms ? Considering that these are oral traditions - doesnt this weaken your case of making the Rgveda contemporary to the Avesta ? Subrahmanya Houston, TX From thompson at JLC.NET Wed May 27 13:34:56 1998 From: thompson at JLC.NET (George Thompson) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 09:34:56 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039231.23782.5781627136585847015.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In response to the recent post of Lakshmi Srinivas: Thank you for this summary. I am not familiar with Mahadevan's work. The Vedic filter [pavitra] was made from sheep's wool [aNvANi meSyaH] or a skin [avya tvac], and not from more obdurate materials like ivory. I don't think that one would find deeply drilled holes in the bottom of a Vedic pavitra. Does Mahadevan address this difference? Best wishes, George Thompson From thompson at JLC.NET Wed May 27 14:36:44 1998 From: thompson at JLC.NET (George Thompson) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 10:36:44 -0400 Subject: Iranians in Ancient India Message-ID: <161227039240.23782.7313586845125676093.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On 30 April 1998, Yaroslav Vassilkov asked: > can anybody give me a reference to Sanskrit texts or secondary sources >mentioning the presence of Iranians (Magas or otherwise) in Ancient or >>Mediaeval India (especially, in historical Magadha/Bihar)? > Perhaps it is not too late to respond to this interesting question. Since my own interest is Vedic, particularly the RV, most of these notes are focussed there [I apologize if this has little reference to the Magadha / Bihar area]. In my view it is more accurate to view Vedic as an Indo-Iranian tradition than a strictly Indic one. It therefore seems obligatory to identify possible references to Iranian elements in Vedic culture. Here is a small step in that direction. When we encounter references to non-Vedic persons or peoples in the RV it is often difficult to determine whether these may be Dravidian, or Munda, or on the other hand Iranian. Most of the data used here is drawn from Witzel's recent series of articles [those in the Erdosy volume, as well as "Tracing the Vedic Dialects" (1989) and "Early Eastern Iran and the Atharvaveda" in *Persica* 9 (1980)]. Also important is Parpola's lengthy article on "The Coming of the Aryans to Iran and India and the cultural and ethnic identity of the DAsas" [Studia Orientalia 64, 1988], as well his essay in the Erdosy volume. Recently *Inside the Texts, Beyond the Texts: New Approaches to the Study of the Vedas* has appeared in the Harvard Oriental Series, Opera Minora Vol. 2 [1997]. It includes relevant articles by Witzel, Parpola, Rau, Falk, among many others. Kuiper's *Aryans in the Rigveda* [1991], with its catalogue of non-Aryan names in Vedic, has also been useful. Perhaps these notes will inspire the list's ziSTas [some of whom, I am glad to see, are returning to the list with enthusiasm] to comment further. That at least is my hope in taking the trouble to send them to the list. The term maga [= "Magus, sun-priest"] cited by V.V. is not attested in Vedic. That it is a borrowing from Iranian into Skt. seems clear, esp. in light of the variant form magu [cf. Avest. moGu, Old Pers. magu]. Mayrhofer in KEWA [II.544, under "magaH"] cites zAkadvIpa as possibly = "Sakenland"; bhojaka, also = sun-priest, possible related to Mid. Persian *bOZak, "savior"; similarly mihira is derived clearly from Iranian. pa'rzu = Persian [cf. Old Persian 'pArsa']. [see RV 8.6.46, 10.86.23]. Witzel, "RV History: Poets...", p.321. Also Cardona, *PANini: A Survey of Research* [1976], p.276. The identification of parzu with OP pArsa is quite old, going back to Ludwig. Geldner doesn't accept it. But K. Hoffmann does. See KEWA s.v. ba'lhika [ba'hlika] = Bactrian [AVZ 5.22.5 (also 7 & 9); AVP 13.1.] Compare Avestan bAxDI, bAxDra [Witzel "Early Eastern Iran...", p.90 et passim; also Parpola 1988, p.216]. kamboja. not attested in Vedic, but in Nirukta and Panini [cf. Witzel, "Early Eastern Iran...", p.92f]. Possibly Vedic paNi' = Parnoi [Iranians mentioned by Greeks]. See Witzel, "RV History: Poets...", p.321; also Parpola 1988 p.215; 1995, p.367. A very important term that needs more attention. The crucial names da'syu and dAsa' = prob. an ethnic name originally, as in Avestan Daha = Scythian [cf.Parpola 1988 p.220; 1995, p.367; Witzel "RV History: Poets...", p.321.] Tiri'ndira [hapax at RV 8.6.46 adjacent to pa'rzu; cf the Achaeminid Tiribazos and the Iranian ally of Alexander Tiridates; however no Iranian forms of these names are known In a message dated 98-05-27 08:35:44 EDT, witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU writes: << Vasistha as been promoted "to the Heavens" in such texts, while in the RV he is a newcomer, without Angirasa background etc. >> Being a bystander in this debate, I was, however, intrigued by this statement. I have read Staal's view that Angirasas were pre-Aryan. It will be useful to hear Dr. Witzel's views on Angirasas which might update Staal's work. Regards S. Palaniappan From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Wed May 27 15:01:08 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Palaniappa) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 11:01:08 -0400 Subject: Iranians in Ancient India Message-ID: <161227039244.23782.4124701238287610028.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 98-05-27 10:41:42 EDT, thompson at JLC.NET writes: << > can anybody give me a reference to Sanskrit texts or secondary sources >mentioning the presence of Iranians (Magas or otherwise) in Ancient or >>Mediaeval India (especially, in historical Magadha/Bihar)? > Perhaps it is not too late to respond to this interesting question. Since my own interest is Vedic, particularly the RV, most of these notes are focussed there [I apologize if this has little reference to the Magadha / Bihar area]. >> It will be useful to know why a bard called mAgadha (name supposedly derived from magadha) is used in the sacrificial rituals supposedly of pre-Vedic origins as discussed by Parpola? To put it in other words why a bard is called mAgadha in the first place? Secondly, why is a mAgadha used as opposed to a sUta? Regards S. Palaniappan From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Wed May 27 20:13:28 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 13:13:28 -0700 Subject: Inscriptions and Dravidian sound changes "y" > "c" and "y" > Message-ID: <161227039253.23782.8830911660311956654.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---Robert Zydenbos wrote: > It is precisely due to an awareness of what sort of thing is correct (but not quite understanding why) that hypercorrection can occur at all. Literacy actually increases this (plain 'literacy' is not the same as >'learning' and 'understanding'). Is the same term (hypercorrection)used to explain hyper-sanskritization evident in many Sanskrit lexemes? Regards, k. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From aklujkar at UNIXG.UBC.CA Wed May 27 22:07:26 1998 From: aklujkar at UNIXG.UBC.CA (Ashok Aklujkar) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 14:07:26 -0800 Subject: Electronic versions of ;Sabara, Kumaarila, Prabhaakara, Ma.n.dana? Message-ID: <161227039255.23782.17133188741010624546.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> A few days ago I asked in the context of the prayojana discussion if there were any electronic (digitized or computerized) versions of any of the works of Kumaarila or of sections thereof. Let me take the present opportunity to extend the question to the works of three other authors closely associated with Kumaarila. I am thinking of inputting or getting input at least some sections of the ;Saabara-bhaa.sya, ;Sloka-vaarttika etc. (no firm plans yet). Any information I get on similar work already done will be helpful in avoiding duplication of effort and in arranging sharing of resources. I am also interested in knowing if anyone is working on or has a mind to work on critical editions of any of the works associated with the *first three* authors I have mentioned. I have at preent no intention of working on such editions myself. My hands are full with the editions I have undertaken. However, I do wish to suggest to others to edit ;Sabara, Kumaarila and Prabh?kara (especially the first two) critically if no steps have been already been taken in that respect. Thanks. --------------------- Ashok Aklujkar, Professor, Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 1Z2. From strnad at SITE.CAS.CZ Wed May 27 12:45:47 1998 From: strnad at SITE.CAS.CZ (Jaroslav Strnad) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 14:45:47 +0200 Subject: Verbal Reflexives Message-ID: <161227039220.23782.1066065893958159857.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The so called compound verbs occur in modern Indo-aryan languages as well: in Hindi, for example, a construction of verbal stem (or simple absolutive, as this form is often called) with the verb "lenaa", "to take" suggests that the action expressed by the stem/simple absolutive is done for the use or interest of the doer himself, is directed towards the doer, etc. E.g.: likhnaa - to write likh lenaa - to write for one's own use, to write down. Compound verbs where the second member modifies the meaning (and in quite a few cases also the verbal aspect) of the first, is probably one of characteristic features of the Indian linguistic area. Jaroslav Strnad strnad at orient.cas.cz From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Wed May 27 12:52:52 1998 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 14:52:52 +0200 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039222.23782.15069499924455841817.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >> Mass migrations are not usually forgotten by people. We should not >> have to thread together tidbits if the Vedic peoples really did >> migrate from all the way from the Volga. All of this should be very >> clearly spelled out. > >"Are not usually forgotten" -- a sweeping statement. We need details. - As >I said, I have supplied such data in Erdosy 1995. No need to repeat myself >again. My fingers are tired by now. And Parpola has done so for 2 >decades or so. I had decided I wouldn't but in, but here goes anyway: We know that migrations are forgotten. Examples: 1) The migration of Indians from the Amazonas area to the West Indies was forgotten, they had created a new myth of origins by the time the Europeans came into contact with them. 2) Germanic tribes seem to have penetrated Norway about 800 BC. There is, to the best of my knowledge, no memory of this migration. 3) I believe, but correct me if I am wrong, that the Aztecs were in the process of forgetting their migration from up north when they were "discovered" by the Europeans. They were busy constructing a new myth of origins while still having memories of their long trip in the wilderness (which lasted, I think, for a couple of centuries). 4) The Romans had no memory of their migration into Italy. They thought that their "founding father" Romulus came from Troy. (Sources for 1) and 3) are TV programs, which is why I can't give you more precise details). Is there a memory of the migration Japanese to Japan? The theory "are not usually forgotten" could easily be tested on people that migrate to islands. Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Tel: +47 22 32 12 19 Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no Mobile phone: 90 91 91 45 From mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM Wed May 27 21:54:58 1998 From: mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM (S Krishna) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 14:54:58 -0700 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039259.23782.10271054049301423533.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Lars MArtin Foss: > >(Sources for 1) and 3) are TV programs, which is why I can't give you more precise details). With all due respect to you Lars, should we be taking TV programs so seriously?(i.e. if the company that made these programs is as knowledgable and *objective* as dear old CNN, the less said the better )... Another interesting( analogical) case I've seen recently is Shri Bhagwan Gidwani's NOVEL "Return of the Aryans" where in he gives us the history of the Aryans a la Hinduttvavaada..This NOVEL which was written by a person known for his very poor research is now flaunted as the gospel truth by our Hinduttvavaadi friends ....an example of a clear myth replacing a *probable* myth << Is there a memory of the migration Japanese to Japan? The theory "are not usually forgotten" could easily be tested on people that migrate to islands.>> AFAIK, the JApanese version is that the Goddess Ameratsu breathed life into the first Japanese person ON the islands of Japan. There seems to have been no such migration-memory prevalent..What I do know is that some of the Chinese believed that the Japanese were descended from a group of ship-wrecked Chinese sailors...this seems to a case where migration has been forgotten.. OTOH, the Sinhalese do remember their migration from India very distinctly..Coming to think of it, all the immigrations that started off from India are remembered in one form or the other... Regards, Krishna ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Wed May 27 22:19:53 1998 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 15:19:53 -0700 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039264.23782.4884262550253366253.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >Bhagwan Gidwani's NOVEL "Return of the Aryans" where in he gives us the >history of the Aryans a la Hinduttvavaada..This NOVEL which was written >by a person known for his very poor research is now flaunted as the >gospel truth by our Hinduttvavaadi friends ....an example of a clear >myth replacing a *probable* myth The same Bhagwan Gidwani had written a historical novel titled _The Sword of Tipu Sultan_. This was the source for a recent TV serial on Tipu. I remember this was just not liked by the Hindutvavaadis, as Tipu was shown as a major hero. Note the timing - Tipu Sultan novel in 1976, TV serial in 1990-92, Aryan novel in 1994. Maybe I'm reading more into it, but perhaps Gidwani wrote this Aryan novel just to take the heat off his back, or to appease them. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From roheko at MSN.COM Wed May 27 13:32:07 1998 From: roheko at MSN.COM (Rolf Heiner Koch) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 15:32:07 +0200 Subject: Verbal Reflexives Message-ID: <161227039229.23782.10905403415463942016.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Indeed, that is what I just think to have find out in several Prakrit stories: The old Jamadagni went away from his strong tapas to look for a wife, to get children. He went into the maidens chamber of a king and tAhiM daTThUNa nicchUDham -- traditionally scholars use to make the conjecture nicchUDham=nicchUDho and translate: after the (maidens) had seen (the old and ugly Jamadagni) they pushed him away (nicchUDho). I think in opposite to this there is no conjecture necessary. The text is clear and correct, if we think about the retrospect argument: after the maidens had seen him they went away (nicchUDham). After I collected a list of all occurences of similar expressions, it seems that in this Prakrit sources the retrospect view is always formed as neuter (ending -am) RoHeKo roheko at msn.com -----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht----- Von: Jaroslav Strnad An: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Datum: Mittwoch, 27. Mai 1998 14:50 Betreff: Verbal Reflexives >The so called compound verbs occur in modern Indo-aryan languages as >well: in Hindi, for example, a construction of verbal stem (or simple >absolutive, as this form is often called) with the verb "lenaa", "to >take" suggests that the action expressed by the stem/simple absolutive >is done for the use or interest of the doer himself, is directed towards >the doer, etc. >E.g.: likhnaa - to write > likh lenaa - to write for one's own use, to write down. >Compound verbs where the second member modifies the meaning (and in >quite a few cases also the verbal aspect) of the first, is probably one >of characteristic features of the Indian linguistic area. > > Jaroslav Strnad > strnad at orient.cas.cz > begin 666 Rolf Heiner Koch.vcf M0D5'24XZ5D-!4D0-"DXZ2V]C:#M2;VQF.TAE:6YE<@T*1DXZ4F]L9B!(96EN M97(@2V]C: T*3D]413I00T*3$%"14P[2$]-13M%3D-/1$E.1SU154]4 M140M4%))3E1!0DQ%.DMR975Z > > But wouldn't it be a point here that most - if not all - of these migrations > started not long before or after writing had been invented? But what about the Vedic hymns? Supposedly these hearken back to a time when little Indian influence had affected the language. Anyway, my point > was this: Migrations are sometimes remembered, sometimes not. The fact that > the early Aryans had little or no memory of their migrations into India > therefore proves very little. > Maybe not in the case of gradual demic diffusion. However, a mass migration of whole communities in wagons (and chariots?) from the Volga invading a foreign land is something to sing about. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Wed May 27 23:47:40 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 16:47:40 -0700 Subject: pot-shaped lamp in temples supported on a stand Message-ID: <161227039271.23782.13114924372570358460.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hi, Tamil lexicon has this entry: ce_n-ai-k-ka_l stand of a pot-shaped lamp used in temples. Can someone on the list provide more information on this? Particularly intriguing is the prefix ce_n-ai. s'en is a support for vine, pergola (Khotanese Iranian) Regards, k. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Thu May 28 00:06:45 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 17:06:45 -0700 Subject: Saras... (Soma vessel) Message-ID: <161227039276.23782.2817526653394537081.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---Michael Witzel wrote: > [snip] > Well, Soma/Haoma is a purely descriptive Indo-Iranian word, based on the > root su "to press out." Supposing it comes from the Indus people/language, > one would expect a local (Dravidian, for Mahadevan) word. -- Be that as it > may, more importantly, is it a Soma filter? - No [snip] There is one entry in Winslow's Tamil lexicon: co_ma man.al = sand containing silver ore. Maybe this relates to the soma as a moon (white) metaphor? Regards, k. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Thu May 28 00:20:52 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 17:20:52 -0700 Subject: 'Religion' in IVC: painted pheasant on urns Message-ID: <161227039278.23782.7653532893988715496.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hi, Prof. Witzel had referred to the funerary urns in an earlier posting. Some typical scenes painted on the pottery include a pheasant. As I was running through the Indian lexicon entries I am working on for the website, I found the following: ji_van-ji_vaka, ji_vaji_vaka, ji_vaji_vaka onom. name of a bird, a sort of pheasant (or partridge?) which utters a note sounding like ji_van ji_va; ji_vanji_ven.a gacchai ji_vanji_venan cit.t.hai [Jain phrase translated as: 'living he goes with life' or 'he goes like the bird?'] (Pali.lex.) jion the tailor bird; jian., jiam id., orthotomus sutorius, so called from its note (Santali.lex.) chin.agi_ a kind of partridge; chi_n. chi_n. a scream, a shriek (P.lex.) I will just leave this entry for review/comment, without jumping into further analysis or language problem at this time. Reards, k. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL Wed May 27 20:38:24 1998 From: zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 18:38:24 -0200 Subject: Inscriptions and Dravidian sound changes "y" > "c" and "y" > Message-ID: <161227039251.23782.1976647872198321616.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Replies to msg 26 May 98: indology at listserv.liv.ac.uk (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) nVNI> At 07:31 PM 5/25/98 EDT, S.Palaniappa wrote: >The hyper-corrective behavior Krishnamurti mentions can be expected from a >person with literacy in Sanskrit and comparative/historical linguistic >knowledge. nVNI> This is not correct. It is the illiterate person who is nVNI> afraid that he is pronouncing a word wrongly that tries to nVNI> hypercorrect. Not necessarily so. See e.g. an article by Wm. Labov, "Hypercorrection by the lower middle class as a factor in linguistic change", in Wm. Bright, _Sociolinguistics_ (The Hague/Paris. 1966), pp. 84-113. It is precisely due to an awareness of what sort of thing is correct (but not quite understanding why) that hypercorrection can occur at all. Literacy actually increases this (plain 'literacy' is not the same as 'learning' and 'understanding'). Robert Zydenbos zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl From thompson at JLC.NET Wed May 27 23:06:56 1998 From: thompson at JLC.NET (George Thompson) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 19:06:56 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039269.23782.13244263321383623671.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >> >> But wouldn't it be a point here that most - if not all - of these migrations >> started not long before or after writing had been invented? > >But what about the Vedic hymns? Supposedly these hearken back to >a time when little Indian influence had affected the language. > Forgive me for the bad pun, but I think that Paul Kekai Manansala is beating a dead horse here. First there are literally hundreds of references to migration in the RV [just look at occurrences of the verb car-, to start with]. Second of all, there was no *India* then, no signs at the borders telling the Vedic Aryans that they were entering *India*. Even the term Bharatavarza applied to this time period is anachronistic. So, though they were on the move all the time, naturally the RV Aryans were not aware of a mass migration in PKM's sense. Of course not. Third, read Kuiper's book *Aryans in the Rigveda* which offers mounds of evidence of various non-Vedic "influences." Best wishes, George Thompson From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Wed May 27 23:57:33 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Wed, 27 May 98 19:57:33 -0400 Subject: Saras... (Soma vessel) In-Reply-To: <19980526191606.21871.rocketmail@send1d.yahoomail.com> Message-ID: <161227039273.23782.2103826563202429323.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> George Thompson has answered this already; I wanted to check Geldner's handy summary again which I could not do at home On Tue, 26 May 1998, Lakshmi Srinivas wrote: > I do not know if the list members are generally aware of I. > Mahadevan's theory that the IVC Cult Object represents a Soma filter. Well, Soma/Haoma is a purely descriptive Indo-Iranian word, based on the root su "to press out." Supposing it comes from the Indus people/language, one would expect a local (Dravidian, for Mahadevan) word. -- Be that as it may, more importantly, is it a Soma filter? - No (below). > The hypothesis itself seems to have been well received in the world of > South Asian archaeology. (See Possehl, Indus Age: The writing system, > Philadelphia, 1996.) Indeed, Possehl, p. 131 singles hims out as "certainly one of the few decipherment efforts that deserves further attention." I also like his cautious approach and his combinations and would proceed in a somewhat similar fashion if I were to start working on the script... But, Possehl also has to say: M's "approach to the Soma press is a departure from his method of parallelisms. It is based mainly on common sense and the development of an argument." However, whatever the object on the seals and in ivory may be, AGAIN, it does not fit the Rgvedic evidence. Even if it were a Soma filter/sieve, this filter looks different in the RV: We need a sheep skin and a vessel into which Soma flows. Short description in Geldner, RV translation, intro to book 9. > the cult object ... found in Harappa .... > confirm the suspicion that it is some kind of a filter e.g., it has > deeply drilled holes in the bottom etc.. Whoever the Harappans/Indus/Ghaggar-Hakra-Nara people were and whatever their religion was, the Soma filter in the RV and Mahadevan's do not fit. Geldner says, RV translation vol. III (Harvard Oriental seies 35) p. 5: (I translate from the German and summarize:) * watering the soma stems; repeated dipping, shaking, and watering * pressing the soma on a stone with the help of another stone -- above a cow skin (sorry!!) perhaps also by using 2 (wooden) pressing boards (it sometimes seems that this pressed fluid runs down directly into a watery vessel) << I may add that Ahalya does all of this with just her teeth... and Indra comes running >> * the pressed juice is poured on a sieve made of ***sheep hair***. and is cleansed of its filament remnants on this sieve, Soma moves about in circles and flows down through it, with 'spouts/beams/rays' (Strahl = dhAra) into the large Soma vessel or vessels below it. * water is added in order to water down the Soma and make it drinkable. Water is either poured into the vesel or it flows down via the sieve * Soma is then drunk pure, or mixed with milk, or with sour milk The RV soma vessels apparently were all made of wood; later, <> ritual partly of clay.They are simply called "wood". Thus Geldner. There are no (100) holes drilled in the RV sieve. Rather the texts speak about Soma running like rivers to the samudra ... not into caves/holes.... A pity that one item after the other doesn't work out... One has to look for REAL survivals/matches, such as the system of weights... ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Wed May 27 22:14:27 1998 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 00:14:27 +0200 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039261.23782.17040963142148684947.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 14:54 27.05.98 PDT, you wrote: >Lars MArtin Foss: >> >>(Sources for 1) and 3) are TV programs, which is why I can't give you >more precise details). > > >With all due respect to you Lars, should we be taking TV programs so >seriously?(i.e. if the company that made these programs is as >knowledgable and *objective* as dear old CNN, the less said the better >)... It would depend on the program, of course! In this case, the program seemed well documented, it was a popular, but "scientific" exposition of the early geological and natural history of Meso-America and the Indies with a bit of history and ethnography thrown in. But I DO mention that it is TV, which means that I am not *entirely* confident. The underlying assumption is, of course, that there are so many shisthas out there on Indology net that a couple of them might know more about this and correct me if I am wrong. (I don't HAVE to be right all the time, I am quite happy to be wrong sometimes :-)) > << Is there a memory of the migration Japanese to Japan? The theory >"are not usually forgotten" could easily be tested on people that >migrate to islands.>> > >AFAIK, the JApanese version is that the Goddess Ameratsu breathed life >into the first Japanese person ON the islands of Japan. There seems to >have been no such migration-memory prevalent..What I do know is that >some of the Chinese believed that the Japanese were descended from a >group of ship-wrecked Chinese sailors...this seems to a case where >migration has been forgotten.. > >OTOH, the Sinhalese do remember their migration from India very >distinctly..Coming to think of it, all the immigrations that started off >from India are remembered in one form or the other... But wouldn't it be a point here that most - if not all - of these migrations started not long before or after writing had been invented? Anyway, my point was this: Migrations are sometimes remembered, sometimes not. The fact that the early Aryans had little or no memory of their migrations into India therefore proves very little. Best regards, Lars Martin Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Tel: +47 22 32 12 19 Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no Mobile phone: 90 91 91 45 From zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL Thu May 28 03:17:55 1998 From: zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 01:17:55 -0200 Subject: Verbal Reflexives Message-ID: <161227039283.23782.3567208356165956226.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Replies to msg 26 May 98: indology at listserv.liv.ac.uk (S. Kalyanaraman) kC> hi, kC> comparable auxiliaries with reflexive meaningare: kol.ka kC> (imperfect ko_) to receive (Malaya_l.am); konu take (Telugu). kC> usage: per-ru-k-kon.t.e_n- I received (Tamil); kC> telusu-konna_nu I have learnt (Telugu). k. kC> ---Deepthi Kumara Henadeerage kC> wrote: > > Sinhala has a special verb-verb compound which gives the reflexive > meaning. In this construction, the verb gannawa 'take' is suffixed to > the perfect partciple form of a verb. > For instance, tuwaala_kara+gannawa (hurt+gannawa) means 'hurt kC> oneself', while > tuwala_karanawa 'hurt', without gannawa means 'hurt somebody', but not > 'hurt oneself'. > > I have heard that there are similar constructions in Tamil and Teligu > (ie. verb+koL construction). The same goes for Kannada too, and also for Tulu, though in the latter case the verb root for 'take' has lost its initial consonant and therefore its origin is not immediately recognisable. Robert Zydenbos zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Thu May 28 14:14:21 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 07:14:21 -0700 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039313.23782.5246005802583128076.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---Michael Witzel wrote: >[snip] > Nothing to do with the above question. Copper was there in India before > the IA and (meteoric) iron, too. And, by this time we have had a long > time of acculturation of local & IA speakers, called, after all, by> post-RV texts: the Shudra-Arya ... Smiths were low caste people. > "A look at the material culture of the texts is facilitated by W. Rau's > investigations: They provide evidence for: ayas ("Nutzmetall", copper > (bronze which is unusual in India; not, as usually translated:"iron"), but> also iron ( zyaama- ayas-), wattle (and daub) huts, which were easily > removable; cultivation of rice, barley, etc., cattle (horse, etc.), in > short, a generally still very >simple material culture.[snip] Were smiths low-caste people at the time of the PGW? Is this attested in the Yajurveda samhita_? As the rituals grew secretive, it was perhaps necessary to exclude even the skilled artisans from the process of making the pravargya etc. pots and pans. >?From an IVC perspective, the smiths were not perhaps differentiated professionally from other artisan groups. This can be substantiated by the nature of the settlements and the extensive finds of seals/tablets in many households. I will post more evidence separately at the forthcoming website. To summarize, it may be noted that the IVC was a transition from chalcolithic (lithic+copper) into the bronze age. Agarwal et al (1978) note the use of alloyed coper hoard artefacts in 33 samples from Hami, Bahadurabad, Narsiur, Sababad, Shahabad and nine other sites which show arsenic alloying. Of the 200 artefacts examined, tin was the major alloy in 30 percent of the sample (14 percent assayed 8 to 12 percent in and 6 percent assayed 12 percent tin). Chalcolithic samples are generally unalloyed and if alloyed were more with Pb and Sn than Arsenic. In the context of the earlier datings normally assigned to Iranian artefacts for ushering in the bronze age, it is noted that arsenic alloying preceded tin alloying (which started in Iran only during the third millennium B.C.) This makes Agarwal wonder if the copper hoard culture started even earlier than the IVC. This is, however, only a surmise (undated). Regards, k. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Thu May 28 11:42:52 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 07:42:52 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & SAFARA In-Reply-To: <19980527004831.6856.rocketmail@send1a.yahoomail.com> Message-ID: <161227039290.23782.11743045485950589397.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Tue, 26 May 1998, S. Kalyanaraman wrote: > Isn't the earliest attestation of 'sa_gara' in Manu? *sagara* is already found in RV: 10.89.4. But it has somehow escaped Monier Williams. I did not check the PW, maybe it is already missing there. In short: don't simply trust "the dictionaries". RV 10.089.04a indrAya giro anizitasargA apaH prerayaM sagarasya budhnAt | Isn't it strange that the waters come from the depth of the ocean? (for those who like natural science. Of course there are passages in the post-RVic YV texts where the clouds are are said t rise form the ocean... Then Yajurveda, Manu, Epic, etc. But : sAgara in Manu etc. > In Sindhi and Bengali, the lexeme means both an ocean and a > river/lake. There is of course the tradition of > the ocean dug up by Sagara. ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Thu May 28 11:43:30 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 07:43:30 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.I) In-Reply-To: <199805271320.GAA24479@dry.jps.net> Message-ID: <161227039293.23782.15907988320191456497.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I give up: Can one be more specific than below about Dadhyanc? And still be misunderstood or misinterpreted? Henceforth I will answer in two- liners. And urge to read the texts/books --- before venturing opinions such as "probably also Uralic". On Wed, 27 May 1998, Paul K. Manansala wrote: > > > Do we find Vedic culture outside of India in pre-Harappan times? > > I have mentoned the highly suggestive Ural burials, c. 2000 BC, with a > > Dadhyanc-like figure (human body, no head, but instead: horse head). As in > > RV. (Gening 1977!) Any other Dadhyances in Uralic, Siberian myth?> > > Parpola has given other comparisons, especially for the BMAC (again, > > Erdosy, 1995) > But human and horse burials are very common among Altaic and > probably Uralic peoples. Surely we should expect something more given > the standards already set in this discussion for IVC. Human burials are common. Horse burials are common. BUT is a human body with attached horse head common? -- Typical RV myth, see Keith-MacDonell, Vedic Index I p. 338. Again: Foudn anywhere ELSE???? ity alam! ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Thu May 28 11:44:37 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 07:44:37 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) In-Reply-To: <199805271350.GAA14355@dry.jps.net> Message-ID: <161227039295.23782.6516987156205888363.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Wed, 27 May 1998, Paul K. Manansala wrote: > However, even in the RV Vasistha's culture does not seem particularly > IE. IE ???? Long ago, RV = IA language & culture ... V's poetry is in typical IA < IIr < IE style, and so is his religion/ritual. > The RV (II 5-3-7) states that the priests of the Saudasas were > Angirasas, and Vasistha was the priest of Sudas. Fine, but not all RV poets/priests are Aangirasa, e.g. the Kanva-s. And V. > > Or do you also doubt that the Epics/Puranas are *late* texts compared to > > the Vedas? --- (Love to see the proof!) > Well, according to tradition, Krishna Dvaipayana compiled both at the > same time. Also, the Puranas are at least attempts at historical > writing. One can't say the same thing about the Vedas. According to J-Chr. tradition the world is just 6000 years old. And the Bible is at least an attempt etc. etc. About the Vedas: their AIM is different but they contain, must I repeat, CONTEMPORARY data of politics & society. > > > But the Avesta is in neighboring Iran several centuries after the > > > proposed "invasion". If the Avestan language is younger, then using > > > the standard presumption we should suggest a migration from east to > > > west. > > How do you know that? Standard presumption? > > The practice used in most other cases. Why make exceptions here? J. Joyce (Ireland) is younger than Shakespeare (England). Therefore J.'s ancestors have invaded/immigrated from S. England??? Don't think so. > > On reading any Avesta > > section in the original you would see that it does not contain anything > > (linguistically) that could have come out of India. No Indian words, no > > Indian ideas, no Harappan items etc. > I would strongly disagree with this statement, but the argument > against it could get long and complicated. Love to hear it. ANY Indian words, of Dravidian, Munda, nay even Burushaski origin in Avesta ???? If not, silence is appropriate. (IA immigration) > > > > That has changed wit the finds in Bactria-Margiana and Baluchistan. > > > > Now their is a *trail*, see Hiebert in Erdosy, Indo_Aryans > > > Highly questionable. We have to question the "Aryan" identification > > "Highly questionable" does not do it. .... > > Dadhyanc will raise its ugly horse head again... > Wrong. The onus is on you to prove IE identification. Since we are > talking mainly about language, I would love to hear of something more > than a horse burial which was very common among *non-IE* peoples. Just don't get it. Dadhyanc is a RV myth, not a *non-IE* horse burial. That's why I chose him, not any old horse burial. Unfortunately he can't *speak* to us. ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Thu May 28 11:46:39 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 07:46:39 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) In-Reply-To: <199805271407.HAA26943@dry.jps.net> Message-ID: <161227039298.23782.2224481998083155041.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Wed, 27 May 1998, Paul K. Manansala wrote: > > > We certainly cannot label PGW culture as Vedic anymore than IVC. > > That last sentence alone shows that the data are not taken into account. > > The data of the Indus civ. just do not fit the RV (we need a special > > e-sattra on that), but the PGW has many correspondences, in spread, > > material culture, etc., with the *POST*-RV texts. > I find the above statements biased.. While one could argue > that IVC is not particularly Vedic, neither is PGW. The latter was > primarily a pig and rice culture. The people were sendentary and > lived in mud huts. They made very little use of the horse, and I'm > not aware of any chariots associated with them. They used wheel-made > pottery, associated with Asuras, instead of the "Aryan" handmade > variety. Just pig & rice? This is not S. China. -- Too simple. Sedentary style changes 3 times in the area (Allchin 1995). This is a 2-level society: PGW is just the fine, 'expensive' table ware (made by local wheel-using specialists; again: handmade pottery made by Brahmins is just for Vedic ritual: that has hardly been detected so far. Read Staal 1983 and see what you get even of an Agnicayana after a few years... Horses get buried outside the "village" (if at all) -- THAT is why they are hardly ever found ---, chariots are re-used. No more horse/chariot burials at this period of Vedic civ. -- We need to get lucky, as we do in Swat. Allchin has data such as these: (my summary) >>post-Indus period (c. 2000-1600 BC) in Haryana and the extreme western Doab: post-urban/Cemetery H type pottery, but in some sites with brick buildings; contrast, however, the subsequent period (p. 37; c. 1600-1200 BC) with single-room houses of timber and thatch, followed again by many-room brick houses, etc. (c. 1200-800 BC, Painted Gray Ware culture).<< I add from my recent Canon & society paper (Inside the texts, beyond the texts,ed, M. Witzel, Cambridge 1997): "differently from the half-nomadic Aryans with their graamas relocating periodically, permanent settlements were (mostly?) inhabited by the aboriginal population or Nisadas," and : "permament Indo-Aryan villages (graama) are late... The alleged Vedic towns are phantoms, such as Paricakra SB 13.5.4.7 (just a place name or temporary settlement) or Kampiila(-vaasin)." > The work of Dilip Chakrabarti suggests that the iron used by the PGW > culture was not of foreign origin as previously thought. Nothing to do with the above question. Copper was there in India before the IA and (meteoric) iron, too. And, by this time we have had a long time of acculturation of local & IA speakers, called, after all, by post-RV texts: the Shudra-Arya ... Smiths were low caste people. > Could you provide a list of the correspondences between PGW and Vedic > culture? If I get all my arch. books together from my office, yes. Briefly a few, off the cuff: Time period & area & material culture fit the Yajurveda Samhita prose texts (MS, KS TS, -- not Satapatha Br of course). ======================================================================== ADD: For the moment, I simply quote from my dialect paper (C.Caillat, ed., Dialectes dans les litteratures indo-aryennes, Paris 1989): "A look at the material culture of the texts is facilitated by W. Rau's investigations: They provide evidence for: ayas ("Nutzmetall", copper (bronze which is unusual in India; not, as usually translated:"iron"), but also iron ( zyaama- ayas-), wattle (and daub) huts, which were easily removable; cultivation of rice, barley, etc., cattle (horse, etc.), in short, a generally still very simple material culture. Pottery, as described in the texts, unfortunately does not provide a good possibility for comparison: Vedic pots, as used in ritual and described in the texts, were handmade or even built up of several lumps (the Pravargya mahAvIra vessel); they could not be made by potters as these did not belong to the three higher castes; they had, instead, to be made by the Brahmins, typical non-specialists of pottery thus. Both the well-known archaism of ritual implements as well as the caste system conspire to deprive us of one of the most important and useful parts of archeological comparison. However, apart from the general agreement of the testimony of the texts on material culture and archeological finds, there is one more surprising correspondence. The area of the YV Samhitas and of Paippalada-AV is: E. Panjab, Kuruksetra, Haryana, W. Uttar Pradesh up to Allahabad/Benares (KAzi). This is precisely the area that is covered by PGW culture.. W. Rau, on other grounds, came to a similar conclusion: Altertumskunde, p.48: "The so-called.../OCP/...agrees best, according to the area of spread, technical condition, and approximate age, with the pottery described in the Vedic texts." (my transl.) ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Thu May 28 11:47:21 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 07:47:21 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19980527143341.00926a08@ix.netcom.com> Message-ID: <161227039300.23782.17155897582956554979.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Wed, 27 May 1998, Sn. Subrahmanya wrote: > >>Avestan is often MORE archaic than the frequently INNOVATIVE Rgvedic. > > Isnt it the case, that the centre innovates and the peripheral areas > retain archisms ? > Considering that these are oral traditions - > doesnt this weaken your case of making the Rgveda contemporary > to the Avesta ? Correct about innovations, but not always: Those who brought American English have emigrated from England 1630+. US Engl.is sometimes more conservative, sometimes more innovative than British Engl. Cf. Quebecquois French : Paris French. Avestan (and Old Persian) also have innovated in certain respects. But Vedic has been "Indianized", Avestan has not, and it has been less "Iranized" than Vedic has been affected by S. Asian features. Oral tradition (well fixed in India, less so in Iran) is affected only by minimal *phonetical* changes (on both sides, more in Iran); the texts remain stable. No "late interpolations" which we cannot detect immediately. ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Thu May 28 11:49:06 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 07:49:06 -0400 Subject: Iranians in Ancient India In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227039303.23782.14366252736864125092.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Thanks, George, for your interesting list. I may add two or three: Kasu RV 8, instead of IA *Kazu KanIta RV 8 cf. Scythian Kanites one more? like your TirO-(nakathwa) All in K.Hoffmann's first paper, 1941, reprinted in his Aufsaetze, p.1 spq. Add the mentioning of camels in book 8, the *not* denigrated dogs (as in Iran), opposite to India, also in book 8. > On 30 April 1998, Yaroslav Vassilkov asked: > > can anybody give me a reference to Sanskrit texts or secondary sources > > mentioning the presence of Iranians (Magas or otherwise) in Ancient or > > Mediaeval India (especially, in historical Magadha/Bihar)? I may add a note (footnote 333) from my dialect paper (C.Caillat 1989): "....-- the problem of the Brahmanisation of the "foreign " territory of Magadha (and Anga), .... the late/post-Vedic immigration of new tribes into the East (Malla, Licchavi, Zakya, etc.) and the possibility of an Iranian element among them (note the river names from E. Iran/Afghanistan like GomatI, SarayU in the East, and cf. the Zakyas and their marriage customs, further Balhika in SB, etc.). --- Taken up again in my recent Canon & society paper: " it is the Sakya and their neighbors, the Malla, Vajji, etc. who are reported in the Pali texts as builders of high grave mounds, such as the one built for the Buddha. According to SB 12.8.1.5 the easterners and others(!) are reported to have round demonic graves, some of which may have been excavated at Lauriya in E. Nepal. These graves are similar to the kurgan type grave mounds of S. Russia and Central Asia. However, the origin of the Sakya is not as clear as that of the Malla and VRji. They may very well have been (northern) Iranian, and would then constitute an earlier, apparently the first wave of the later Zaka invasions from Central Asia." with notes 273sqq: H. Kottkamp, Der Stupa as Repraesentation des Buddhistischen Heilsweges, Wiesbaden 1992. At Lauriya and Piprawa, in E. Nepal, they contained a gold figure of a naked woman -- Mother Earth? -- See now Kottkamp, Der Stupa, and cf. Caland, De archeologische vondsten in de heuvels van Lauriya. VMKAW 4, 11, 1912, 378-385. These graves are now regarded as belonging to the Maurya/Sunga period. Cf. the traditional Zakya legend about the <> marriage of the sons of King OkkAka with their own sisters, see Author, Tracing, p. 239, n.333; more materials in a forthcoming article. < The term maga [= "Magus, sun-priest"] and other items such as the initiation belt abhyanga < avest. aiwyangha (terrible transcriptions in 7-bit ASCII!) etc., data in von Stietencron, Iran. Feuerpriester... > seems possible that Iranians are referred to in the RV with other generic > or non-specific terms. What might such terms be? Very nice point, even if it takes up an old problem again (remember the common statements about a "religious split between the Indians & Iranians", c. 1900?) But we can now approach this with new data & background!.... For example, the burials (not exposure to birds) of the dead even in the late Videvdad 1.12, -- of all places still performed in the Iranian country .... Haraxvaiti! IA survivals? ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Thu May 28 11:49:36 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 07:49:36 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) In-Reply-To: <9449d5d9.356c26d7@aol.com> Message-ID: <161227039305.23782.14602897658752112968.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Wed, 27 May 1998, Palaniappa wrote: > I have read Staal's view that Angirasas were pre-Aryan. It will be useful to > hear Dr. Witzel's views on Angirasas which might update Staal's work. Well, 1/2 or more of the poets of the RV claim to be Angirasa -- one way or the other, sometimes by adoption (Visvamitra, via Sunahotra who at first was an Angirasa, then got adopted by the Bhargavas), Erdosy vol., p. 316, cf. also Deshpande in Erdosy vol. p. 79. The Angirasa are typical (though in part already mythical ancestors of) RV poets. Nothing non-Aryan about them. Pre-Aryan only in the sense just mentioned. Maybe much older, due to possible etymology Angiras = Greek aggelos [angelos] and Iran. angaros [angara-s] 'messenger' as reported by the Greeks. ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Thu May 28 11:50:36 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 07:50:36 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) In-Reply-To: <199805272228.PAA27663@mail2.jps.net> Message-ID: <161227039308.23782.16383634206899525543.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Wed, 27 May 1998, Paul K. Manansala wrote: > Maybe not in the case of gradual demic diffusion. However, a mass migration > of whole communities in wagons (and chariots?) from the Volga invading a > foreign land is something to sing about. <> Nobody says that these days. I stressed gradual immigration, trickling in. Invasion -- that's your constant Mantra. and, BTW, whole communities have indeed moved often enough. I think Lars Fosse has given the examples of Caesar's Helvetii (peacefully!), hundred thousands strong, or of the Cimbri & Teutoni (not peacefully); well before the Mongols, we may add the curious really LONG DISTANCE case of the E. Germanic Vandali from E. Europe, who moved (not so peacefully) all the way via Spain... (V)andalusia... to Tunesia, and all of this TOGETHER with the Alani, a North Iranian tribe from the Ukraine, now surviving as the Ossetes in the Caucasus. One may guess that the Tunesian Vandals were not exactly the same kind of people that set out from E.Europe.... A good model of what may *really* have happened in IIr times and what kind of curious symbiosis one may expect. (note: Mitanni, Kassites, etc.) ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Thu May 28 11:51:41 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 07:51:41 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227039311.23782.4073094984296557136.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> P.Manasala: > But wouldn't it be a point here that most - if not all - of these > migrations started not long before or after writing had been > invented? Generalizations... The Hawaiians and Maori remmeber very well where they came from (*Sawaiki, Tahiti > Kahiki), without script --- and over a period of some 1000-1500 years and with a less strict oral tradition than the Vedic one. DATA???? ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu From Sara.Mcclintock at ORIENT.UNIL.CH Thu May 28 07:33:11 1998 From: Sara.Mcclintock at ORIENT.UNIL.CH (Sara McClintock) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 09:33:11 +0200 Subject: E-text for ;Slokavaarttika Message-ID: <161227039285.23782.7340177841542201199.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In response to Ashok Aklujkar's request for electronic texts: You can get an electronic version of Kumaarila's ;Slokavaarttika by going to the following site: http://www-orient.unil.ch/ and clicking on the Vienna Archives. This e-text was made available by Helmut Krasser of Vienna. Sincerely, ____________________ Sara McClintock Section de langues et civilisations orientales Universit? de Lausanne email: Sara.McClintock at orient.unil.ch From sns at IX.NETCOM.COM Thu May 28 14:37:28 1998 From: sns at IX.NETCOM.COM (Sn. Subrahmanya) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 09:37:28 -0500 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227039316.23782.15434167659654176067.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Just as an FYI: There was some very intersting news on the BBC today about Turkmen horses. It seems that these horses (heard it as ako teki ? ) are the finest in the world, and far superior to the Persian horses. A story about a Persian King offering all his wealth for a few of these horses was mentioned. Only about 2500 of these horses are remaining and they have been in Turkmenistan from about 3500-4000 years. Many were slaughtered for meat during Soviet times. Also, these horses seem to have been forgotten only in the past 200 years or so, and there are stories of how these horses have been exported to Greece in the ancient past!. With commercialization, these horses are all set to storm the Western racing circles in the very near future. Also, ako teki (anyway it sounded like that) reminds me of azvatara :) So we might be in for some radical rethinking on the horse evidence as well, and this will have implications for Indology. Questions thathave been raised on this list about the assumptions made about Aryans and Horses seem very valid. As it was mentioned on the list sometime ago: Afghanistan, could very well have been azvasthana. I will appreciate it if anyone has more info (references) on these horses . It just gets curiouser and curiouser. Regards Subrahmanya From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Thu May 28 16:41:28 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 09:41:28 -0700 Subject: Sarasvati: sa_gara, samudra; 'cults' and meanings Message-ID: <161227039326.23782.13442624735692470560.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---Michael Witzel wrote: >[snip] > *sagara* is already found in RV: 10.89.4. But it has somehow escaped > Monier Williams. I did not check the PW, maybe it is already missing > there. In short: don't simply trust "the dictionaries". > > RV 10.089.04a indrAya giro anizitasargA apaH prerayaM sagarasya budhnAt | > > Isn't it strange that the waters come from the depth of the ocean? > > (for those who like natural science. Of course there are passages in the > post-RVic YV texts where the clouds are are said t rise form the ocean... > > Then Yajurveda, Manu, Epic, etc. > > But : sAgara in Manu etc. > > > In Sindhi and Bengali, the lexeme means both an ocean and a > > river/lake. There is of course the tradition of > > the ocean dug up by Sagara. > How fascinating! Simply trust the linguists. Or, just believe the inscriptions of the civilization on copper tablets and other media, if only linguists can 'read' them and also explain the artha... Were samudra and sa_gara synonyms in RV? Did the lexemes (thanks for small mercies, there were no lexicographers then!)just connote broad expanses of water (salty or fresh, stagnant or flowing)? On another note, see how archaeologists can do better than the lexicographers? Sir John Marshall uses the term 'cult object' and every analyst thereafter gets trapped in the lead. The only 'cult' evidence we seem to find is the emergence and stabilisation of a bronze-age culture, apart from burnt bricks. Regards, k. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Thu May 28 04:50:12 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 09:50:12 +0500 Subject: Inscriptions and Dravidian sound changes "y" > "c" and "y" > Message-ID: <161227039281.23782.15846190238269199166.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 06:38 PM 5/27/98 -0200, you wrote: >Replies to msg 26 May 98: indology at listserv.liv.ac.uk (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) > > nVNI> At 07:31 PM 5/25/98 EDT, S.Palaniappa wrote: > >>The hyper-corrective behavior Krishnamurti mentions can be expected from a >>person with literacy in Sanskrit and comparative/historical linguistic >>knowledge. > > nVNI> This is not correct. It is the illiterate person who is > nVNI> afraid that he is pronouncing a word wrongly that tries to > nVNI> hypercorrect. > >Not necessarily so. See e.g. an article by Wm. Labov, "Hypercorrection by the lower middle class as a factor in linguistic change", in Wm. Bright, _Sociolinguistics_ (The Hague/Paris. 1966), pp. 84-113. > >It is precisely due to an awareness of what sort of thing is correct (but not quite understanding why) that hypercorrection can occur at all. Literacy actually increases this (plain 'literacy' is not the same as 'learning' and 'understanding'). > >Robert Zydenbos >zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl > > A learned man knows the correct form of the word and he does not try to hypercorrect. Yes, semiliterate also hypercorrect. But it does not mean that illiterate do not hypercorrect. They get a vague sort of idea of correct speech by listening to educated people and by trying to imitate them hypercorrect. Taking a concrete example the following is actually found on a signboard Sri ...... nAdhazwarabhRMdaM which actually should be Sri ...... nAdaswarabRMdaM Replacing 'd' and 'b' by 'dh' and 'bh' is done because the person thinks that aspiration which is more prevelent in educated people's speech to be the correct form. Similarly replacing 's' with 'z'. Most probably an illeterate man dictated this sign to the painter who faithfully reproduced it. Usually painters who paint a number of signboards are better informed about the correct form of a word and can do a better job if left to themselves. Another one is writing 'zAkhAhAra' for 'zAkAhAra' (vegetarian food) Hyderabad hotels are famous for this hypercorrection. This can be called the semiliterate hypercorrection. But the customers are reduced to animals eating tree branches. On the back of autorikshas you will find hypercorrections galore. Another new source of hypercorrections is Dooradarsan. regards, sarma. From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Thu May 28 17:52:20 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 09:52:20 -0800 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039321.23782.4876569499579845104.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel wrote: > On Wed, 27 May 1998, Paul K. Manansala wrote: > > > > > We certainly cannot label PGW culture as Vedic anymore than IVC. > > > > That last sentence alone shows that the data are not taken into account. > > > The data of the Indus civ. just do not fit the RV (we need a special > > > e-sattra on that), but the PGW has many correspondences, in spread, > > > material culture, etc., with the *POST*-RV texts. > > > I find the above statements biased.. While one could argue > > that IVC is not particularly Vedic, neither is PGW. The latter was > > primarily a pig and rice culture. The people were sendentary and > > lived in mud huts. They made very little use of the horse, and I'm > > not aware of any chariots associated with them. They used wheel-made > > pottery, associated with Asuras, instead of the "Aryan" handmade > > variety. > > Just pig & rice? This is not S. China. -- Too simple Pigs and rice rather than barley and cows. Not Vedic. . Sedentary style > changes 3 times in the area (Allchin 1995). This is a 2-level society: > PGW is just the fine, 'expensive' table ware (made by local wheel-using > specialists; again: handmade pottery made by Brahmins is just for Vedic > ritual: that has hardly been detected so far. Read Staal 1983 and see what > you get even of an Agnicayana after a few years... Horses get buried > outside the "village" (if at all) -- THAT is why they are hardly ever > found ---, chariots are re-used. No more horse/chariot burials at this > period of Vedic civ. -- We need to get lucky, as we do in Swat. > But all this seems to confirm the non-Vedic nature of PGW. You seem to simply give explanations why there is no evidence. We could apply also give such explanations for IVC. The saffron argument is that there have been wheels discovered in the IVC, so there could have been chariots. > "differently from the half-nomadic Aryans with their graamas relocating > periodically, permanent settlements were (mostly?) inhabited by the > aboriginal population or Nisadas," and : "permament Indo-Aryan villages > (graama) are late... The alleged Vedic towns are phantoms, such as > Paricakra SB 13.5.4.7 (just a place name or temporary settlement) or > Kampiila(-vaasin)." Well this is a hard view, which certainly is not universal. Sounds more like the semi-nomadism found among some modern "tribal" populations. How do they figure people with brick or timber houses are nomadic? Shouldn't they be living in tents or temporary shelters. Also, most of the information I've read ascribes mud huts as the primary shelter in PGW. Generally rice and pig farmers are not nomadic, unless you're talking about very common shifting around in a small area. > > > The work of Dilip Chakrabarti suggests that the iron used by the PGW > > culture was not of foreign origin as previously thought. > > Nothing to do with the above question. Copper was there in India before > the IA and (meteoric) iron, too. And, by this time we have had a long > time of acculturation of local & IA speakers, called, after all, by > post-RV texts: the Shudra-Arya ... Smiths were low caste people. > I thought the IE peoples of this time were iron age. We should see iron coming in from the West, and iron artifacts similar to those found outside India. >?From this point, you give mostly explanations as to why we don't find what we would expect to find. Quite a bit different from the Hun comparison, where we can find nearly exact matches between the texts and the archaeological evidence. Another important question is whether the IE migration/invasion is linked with a biological intrusion. Were the IE peoples physically similar to ancient Persians. A pertinent question considering Kennedy's statement in _Eastern Anthropologist_ that no biological "Aryan" series has been discovered at the ancient sites. While I have no problem with a gradual diffusion of IE influence into India, the chronology and the supposed Vedic=PGW that are so popular now are full of problems. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET Thu May 28 18:12:26 1998 From: kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET (Paul K. Manansala) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 10:12:26 -0800 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039323.23782.2370349360179944832.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel wrote: > On Wed, 27 May 1998, Paul K. Manansala wrote: > > > However, even in the RV Vasistha's culture does not seem particularly > > IE. > > IE ???? Long ago, RV = IA language & culture ... > Sorry, that should be Iranian rather than IE. > V's poetry is in typical IA < IIr < IE style, and so is his > religion/ritual. > Doesn't Vasistha make a sacrifice to Vishnu in Chap. VII? Vishnu is possibly an aboriginal god with a Dravidian name. I don't see anything particularly different between V's style/ritual and the rest of the RV. > > The RV (II 5-3-7) states that the priests of the Saudasas were > > Angirasas, and Vasistha was the priest of Sudas. > > Fine, but not all RV poets/priests are Aangirasa, e.g. the Kanva-s. And V. > The divine birth of V together with Agastya in a pot is said by some to indicate aboriginal origin. Such devices were often used to explain divine births as in the case of the birth of the Pandavas, who all had the same mother but different divine fathers. I think that the later association of V with Eastern India cannot be ignored. > > > Or do you also doubt that the Epics/Puranas are *late* texts compared to > > > the Vedas? --- (Love to see the proof!) > > > Well, according to tradition, Krishna Dvaipayana compiled both at the > > same time. Also, the Puranas are at least attempts at historical > > writing. One can't say the same thing about the Vedas. > > According to J-Chr. tradition the world is just 6000 years old. And the > Bible is at least an attempt etc. etc. > > About the Vedas: their AIM is different but they contain, must I repeat, > CONTEMPORARY data of politics & society. > But the question is do they contain material that is not contemporary. Is there interpolation, and how many different variants did KD have to sort through. What did traditions did he use to sort the good from the bad? Finally what periods are the Vedas contemporary to? > J. Joyce (Ireland) is younger than Shakespeare (England). Therefore J.'s > ancestors have invaded/immigrated from S. England??? Don't think so. > Yes, but most of the specialists use the age of the language to date the Rgveda! I was only using the prevailing logic. As far as I'm concerned the RV could have been written around ~500 BCE rather than ~1500 BCE. > > > On reading any Avesta > > > section in the original you would see that it does not contain anything > > > (linguistically) that could have come out of India. No Indian words, no > > > Indian ideas, no Harappan items etc. > > > I would strongly disagree with this statement, but the argument > > against it could get long and complicated. > > Love to hear it. ANY Indian words, of Dravidian, Munda, nay even > Burushaski origin in Avesta ???? If not, silence is appropriate. > Not a question of whether they exist, but whether the Eurocentric mindset will accept. > > > Wrong. The onus is on you to prove IE identification. Since we are > > talking mainly about language, I would love to hear of something more > > than a horse burial which was very common among *non-IE* peoples. > > Just don't get it. Dadhyanc is a RV myth, not a *non-IE* horse burial. > That's why I chose him, not any old horse burial. Unfortunately he can't > *speak* to us. > > But horse burial is common. A single burial with a horse's head just doesn't get it. Maybe that was all that was left of the poor fellow's horse after a battle. Or maybe it was just a local variation. But I'm confused. You're referring now to RV culture rather than IE? Why would we find an RV burial in the Urals so early? Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala From AndrewC at MAIL.UCA.EDU Thu May 28 10:45:22 1998 From: AndrewC at MAIL.UCA.EDU (Andrew Cohen) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 10:45:22 +0000 Subject: New book pub Message-ID: <161227039318.23782.8951328598227394779.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Indology listserv readers, May I please announce my new book publication: >Andrew L. Cohen, _Temple Architecture and Sculpture of the Nolambas_ >(Manohar, 1998). ISBN 81-7304-222-5 >This is the first comprehensive study of monuments from Nolambavadi >(southeast Karnataka and contiguous portions of Andhra Pradesh and >Tamilnadu) built during the Nolamba period (9th-10th centuries). Using the >Nolambas as an example, chapter one questions the way art historians often >assign centrality and periphery to dynastic periods and examines how these >assumptions have allowed certain periods of art to be neglected. Next, >after a brief political summary of the Nolambas, the following chapters >furnish detailed description and analysis of Nolamba monuments, breaking >Nolambavadi into three subregional groupings that correspond roughly with >traditional territorial divisions. > >Andrew Cohen From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Thu May 28 08:53:35 1998 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 10:53:35 +0200 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039288.23782.10743928284877488475.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > Anyway, my point >> was this: Migrations are sometimes remembered, sometimes not. The fact that >> the early Aryans had little or no memory of their migrations into India >> therefore proves very little. >> > >Maybe not in the case of gradual demic diffusion. However, a mass migration >of whole communities in wagons (and chariots?) from the Volga invading a >foreign land is something to sing about. Hm.. I thought the general picture painted of the migration / invasion now is rather one of smaller tribes trickling into India in the course of several generations or centuries. I don't think anybody claimed that the IA migrated straight from the Volga to India. But then who knows? If you look at the movements of Germanic tribes in the late Roman empire, they sometimes covered fairly large distances in a few years. BTW, I don't know to what degree this is relevant for the discussion, but there was a Vandal chieftain who actually made a census to see how many people where with him. The reason was that he needed boats the cross over to Africa. The number given by the sources is about 80,000, presumably men, women and children, which would imply that the Vandal army would be about 20,000 men, perhaps less. Enough, though, to make a military difference, even to Rome. Would this, in your mind, constitute a mass migration? Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Tel: +47 22 32 12 19 Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no Mobile phone: 90 91 91 45 From zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL Thu May 28 13:12:20 1998 From: zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 11:12:20 -0200 Subject: hypercorrection(was: Inscriptions and Dravidian sound changes) Message-ID: <161227039332.23782.7828895192207845734.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Replies to msg 27 May 98: indology at listserv.liv.ac.uk (S. Kalyanaraman) kC> ---Robert Zydenbos wrote: > It is precisely due to an awareness of what sort of thing is correct kC> (but not quite understanding why) that hypercorrection can kC> occur at all. Literacy actually increases this (plain kC> 'literacy' is not the same as >'learning' and kC> 'understanding'). kC> Is the same term (hypercorrection)used to explain kC> hyper-sanskritization evident in many Sanskrit lexemes? One case in which I remember that scholars have presumed hypercorrection is the word "draavi.da" <- "drami.la" <- "dami.la" <- "tami_l", where an 'r' was inserted to account for the last consonant being retroflex. This is the only one I can think of right now, but surely somebody will have given the topic more serious attention and written about it. Robert Zydenbos zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Thu May 28 18:32:29 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 11:32:29 -0700 Subject: Sarayu_ and RV Message-ID: <161227039330.23782.11825376436143986258.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hi, Here is a specific lexeme in the context of another language problem related to another river: s'ar-mu_w source of the Sarju river at the Pin.d.a_ri_ glacier (Kumauni_). A cognate in Telugu: car-iya, car-i cliff, precipice, side of a hill or mountain (Te.) explained in the context of a precipice. Tamil lexicon is emphatic: carayu a river on which stands the ancient city of Ayo_dhya_ (Kampara_. Pa_laka_. A_r-r-up. 12) Is this the same as Sarayu_(RV. v.53.9)? Regards, k. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Thu May 28 20:15:14 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 13:15:14 -0700 Subject: Saras... (Soma vessel) Message-ID: <161227039334.23782.326052104273657917.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---Michael Witzel wrote: > > George Thompson has answered this already; I wanted to > check Geldner's handy summary again which I could not do at home [snip] > RV: We need a sheep skin and a vessel into which Soma flows. > [snip] > > Geldner says, RV translation vol. III (Harvard Oriental seies 35) p. 5:> (I translate from the German and summarize:) > > * watering the soma stems; repeated dipping, shaking, and watering> > * pressing the soma on a stone with the help of another stone > -- above a cow skin (sorry!!) > perhaps also by using 2 (wooden) pressing boards > (it sometimes seems that this pressed fluid runs down directly into a > watery vessel) << I may add that Ahalya does all of this with > just her teeth... and Indra comes running >> > > * the pressed juice is poured on a sieve made of ***sheep hair***. > and is cleansed of its filament remnants> > on this sieve, Soma moves about in circles and flows down through it, > with 'spouts/beams/rays' (Strahl = dhAra) into the large Soma > vessel or vessels below it. > > * water is added in order to water down the Soma and make it drinkable. > Water is either poured into the vesel or it flows down via the sieve > > * Soma is then drunk pure, or mixed with milk, or with sour milk > > The RV soma vessels apparently were all made of wood; later, < post-RV "classical">> ritual partly of clay.They are simply called > "wood". > > Thus Geldner. > > There are no (100) holes drilled in the RV sieve. Rather the texts speak > about Soma running like rivers to the samudra ... not into caves/holes.... > > A pity that one item after the other doesn't work out... One has to look > for REAL survivals/matches, such as the system of weights... When I.Mahadevan presented his paper in Tokyo, the discussions included questions on establishing parallels with the pravargya sa_magri_ replicas kept in Pune. It is too tempting not to jump into this soma problem, briefly. [Hopefully, Munshiram will bring out my mss. already announced in the forthcoming publications list.] RV is poetry par excellence with allegories, puns and metaphors. An alternative metallurgical interpretation of soma is possible (adding to the scores of flora-based decipherments compiled by Henry Falk); to be cryptic: *s'ulva connotes copper. *ma_ks.ika_ connotes pyrites. *ams'u connotes projecting sharp branches (this is how *a pyrite ore block will look). *the only process described in RV fits the process of reducing the ore (purifying?) to produce potable (not drinkable!) somnakay (Gypsy) or assem (Ancient Egyptian as reported by Joseph Needham). *Not to forget (1) the Tamil/Siddha alchemical tradition of rasa-va_da; (2) links between Sarasvati river and gold; and (3) the anecdotes of the golden fleece. Regards, k. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From adheesh at OCF.BERKELEY.EDU Thu May 28 20:39:25 1998 From: adheesh at OCF.BERKELEY.EDU (Adheesh Sathaye) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 13:39:25 -0700 Subject: Panchatantra online Message-ID: <161227039337.23782.8240259807437363239.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I would like to know what sort of online resources/encoding has been done on the tale collections such as panchatantra, kathasaritsagara, etc. I have checked out the sanskrit documents site, but it is a bit unclear as to what has been done and what needs doing--apparently the panchatantra is partially done? In any case, any possible leads would be appreciated... Thanks! Adheesh Sathaye From girish at MUSHIKA.WANET.COM Thu May 28 21:10:12 1998 From: girish at MUSHIKA.WANET.COM (Girish Sharma) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 14:10:12 -0700 Subject: Shani names Message-ID: <161227039344.23782.12613796399510405984.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I am trying to understand the following three names of Shani (Saturn). Several popular editions containing the names have the same forms for each name. I would greatly appreciate any help in understanding these names. The names are given in the dative case. 8. sura.mvandyaaya The anusvaara may be just a mark in the printing in one book but then also appears in others. Should it be suravandya, "The One fit to be worshipped by suras"? 62. varadaa bhayahastaaya Should there be no space yielding varada + abhaya + hasta "The One whose hands bestow boons and remove fear" (possibly referring to two of the hand postions of the muurti)? 108. bhaktasa.mghamanobhii.s.taphaladaaya Should there be there an avagraha between mano and bhii.s.ta yielding "The Bestower of the fruit of the objects desired in the minds of a multitude of devotees"? Thank you for any help you can provide. ------------------------------------------------------- Girish Sharma San Diego, CA From lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM Thu May 28 21:22:04 1998 From: lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM (Lakshmi Srinivas) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 14:22:04 -0700 Subject: Sarasvati: sa_gara, samudra; 'cults' and meanings Message-ID: <161227039342.23782.2966180187196782491.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---"S. Kalyanaraman" wrote: > > > On another note, see how archaeologists can do better than the > lexicographers? Sir John Marshall uses the term 'cult object' and > every analyst thereafter gets trapped in the lead. The only 'cult' > evidence we seem to find is the emergence and stabilisation of a > bronze-age culture, apart from burnt bricks. > Almost all the writers on the subject use this term. It is a convenient working name for the object while one theorizes about it.However if you were to propose a better term for it, I would be happy to use it. Warm Regards. == Lakshmi Srinivas _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Thu May 28 21:36:08 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 14:36:08 -0700 Subject: Sarasvati: sa_gara, samudra; 'cults' and meanings Message-ID: <161227039347.23782.13578685656853866701.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> hi, How about 'device' as an alternative? Primarily because, the motif is also used independently as a field symbol and in some tablets is shown being carried on the shoulder of a person. Of course, it is integrally linked with the 'one-horned heifer or bull' (or 'unicorn'). Note how Dr. Sharan calls it a rhinoceros! Regards, k. ---Lakshmi Srinivas wrote: > > ---"S. Kalyanaraman" wrote: > > > > > > On another note, see how archaeologists can do better than the > > lexicographers? Sir John Marshall uses the term 'cult object' and > > every analyst thereafter gets trapped in the lead. The only 'cult' > > evidence we seem to find is the emergence and stabilisation of a > > bronze-age culture, apart from burnt bricks. > > > > Almost all the writers on the subject use this term. It is a > convenient working name for the object while one theorizes about > it.However if you were to propose a better term for it, I would be > happy to use it. > > Warm Regards. > == > Lakshmi Srinivas > > > > > > _________________________________________________________ > DO YOU YAHOO!? > Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com > == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Thu May 28 21:47:25 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 14:47:25 -0700 Subject: Saras... (Soma vessel) Message-ID: <161227039355.23782.15126073991275065043.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> hi, it is a drink for the 'gods'. Those who 'know' don't drink it! Isn't drinking a way of 'enjoying' the usufructs (sic)or use of a product? k. ---Alfredo Villarroel wrote: > > >An alternative metallurgical interpretation of soma is possible > >(adding to the scores of flora-based decipherments compiled by Henry > >Falk); to be cryptic: > > > > How this can be, soma is for drinking ? > > AV > == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From avillarr at IS.DAL.CA Thu May 28 21:01:27 1998 From: avillarr at IS.DAL.CA (Alfredo Villarroel) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 18:01:27 -0300 Subject: Saras... (Soma vessel) In-Reply-To: <19980528201514.27217.rocketmail@send1d.yahoomail.com> Message-ID: <161227039339.23782.3444775568519710494.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >An alternative metallurgical interpretation of soma is possible >(adding to the scores of flora-based decipherments compiled by Henry >Falk); to be cryptic: > How this can be, soma is for drinking ? AV From jp_stephens at CLASSIC.MSN.COM Thu May 28 22:16:03 1998 From: jp_stephens at CLASSIC.MSN.COM (stephen) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 18:16:03 -0400 Subject: Inscriptions and Dravidian sound changes "y" > "c" and "y" > Message-ID: <161227039350.23782.6403135512933558858.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >Fine. But I have shown why we have to assume that the composer was not >hypercorrective but was using existing forms. So, according to Krishnamurti, >the persons in the Tamil society who used "cAn2ai" were hypercorrective. >Krishnamurti is not considering an important factor, i.e., the basic social >factor involved in who was literate and knowledgable in Sanskrit and who was >not and who uses -c- forms in native Tamil words. The -c- forms are >predominantly used by illiterate/lower class persons with little or no >Sanskrit or linguistic knowledge. I am curious to know how the following fits in this theory. The verb cei (do) In Tamil Nadu you hear this word pronounced both as "sei" and "cei". According to the above theory (if I understand it correctly), people who have some sort of Sanskrit background would pronounce it as "sei". If this is so, what is the explanation for the same verb occuring in the -c- form in Malayalam, a language "supposedly" developed by the Namboodhris who of course had a strong Sanskrit background. E.g. in Malayalam - Avan ceidhu (he did). P.S. I do not know the Tamil/English transliteration scheme, so may not have spelt the words correctly. From aklujkar at UNIXG.UBC.CA Fri May 29 02:35:09 1998 From: aklujkar at UNIXG.UBC.CA (Ashok Aklujkar) Date: Thu, 28 May 98 18:35:09 -0800 Subject: E-text for ;Slokavaarttika etc. Message-ID: <161227039359.23782.11987658747640634207.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Thanks to Sara McClintock and Birgit Kellner for information on electronic texts of the sections of works of Kumaarila and ;Sabara. From bmisra at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Fri May 29 10:13:01 1998 From: bmisra at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Bijoy Misra) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 06:13:01 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & SAFARA In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227039364.23782.11625959990234337607.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Thu, 28 May 1998, Michael Witzel wrote: > (for those who like natural science. Of course there are passages in the > post-RVic YV texts where the clouds are are said t rise form the ocean... > Clouds indeed rise from the ocean. I will like to check what they exactly say. Reference? > Then Yajurveda, Manu, Epic, etc. > > But : sAgara in Manu etc. > From barathi at PC.JARING.MY Thu May 28 22:56:31 1998 From: barathi at PC.JARING.MY (jayabarathi) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 06:56:31 +0800 Subject: Shani names Message-ID: <161227039353.23782.17881871945255894152.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 02:10 PM 5/28/98 -0700, you wrote: >I am trying to understand the following three names of >Shani (Saturn). Several popular editions containing >the names have the same forms for each name. I would greatly appreciate >any help in understanding these names. >The names are given in the dative case. > >8. sura.mvandyaaya >The anusvaara may be just a mark in the printing in one >book but then also appears in others. Should it be suravandya, "The One fit >to be worshipped by suras"? Dear Sir, Probably doubts have arisen because SanaiScara is always regarded as a malevolent planetary deity. But the various nAmAvaLis for SanaiScara do praise and eulogise him with benevolent qualities. So in addition to names describing his fierce or malefic nature, we can also find many many names which give him benevolent attributes. As such, it should be varadha+abhaya+hastAya. In fact, in iconography, we come across two-armed and four-armed forms of SanaiScara. In the four-armed form, SanaiScara does have the abhaya and varadha mudras. The other nAma should also be, "bhakta+sangha+mana+abhIsta+phala+dAya" So you have to make your adjustments, I suppose:-) Regards Jayabarathi > >62. varadaa bhayahastaaya >Should there be no space yielding >varada + abhaya + hasta "The One whose hands bestow >boons and remove fear" (possibly referring to two of >the hand postions of the muurti)? > >108. bhaktasa.mghamanobhii.s.taphaladaaya >Should there be there an avagraha between mano and bhii.s.ta yielding "The >Bestower of the fruit of >the objects desired in the minds of a multitude of >devotees"? > >Thank you for any help you can provide. > > >------------------------------------------------------- > >Girish Sharma >San Diego, CA > > From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Fri May 29 13:56:46 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 06:56:46 -0700 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227039371.23782.3894401965987904169.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> hi, There is a small horse or pony in the region. It is called : t.a~_gun a species of hill pony (Ka_s.mi_ri_); t.a~_gan, t.a~_n.an (Nepalese) Two of them draw a t.onga: ta_n:ka_ < ta_n:ga_ (Urdu) t.onga, wheeled conveyance drawn by two ponies (Tamil) Regards, k. ---Martin Bemmann wrote: > > Sn. Subrahmanya schrieb: > > > > Just as an FYI: > > > > There was some very intersting news on the BBC today about > > Turkmen horses. > > > > It seems that these horses (heard it as ako teki ? ) are the > > finest in the world, and far superior to the Persian horses. > > > > I didn't see the report but most probably you are refering to the famous > Akhal Teke horses, the *blood sweating* or *heavenly* horses adored by > the Chinese. There should be a vast literature on them. A short article > is available online at: http://www.silk-road.com/artl/maslow.shtml > There is even an *akhal-teke-network* on the web ;) > http://www.akhalteke.net/ > > Regards, > -- > Martin Bemmann > > Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften > >Felsbilder und Inschriften am Karakorum Highway< > Karlstrasse 4 > Postfach 102769 > D-69017 Heidelberg -- Germany > > phone: ++49-6221-543276 fax: ++49-6221-543355 > mailto:martin.bemmann at urz.uni-heidelberg.de > http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/institute/sonst/adw/kara/welcome.html > == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Fri May 29 15:09:17 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 08:09:17 -0700 Subject: Suffixes and abstractions Message-ID: <161227039391.23782.9733370781618589828.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hi, Here is an example from Tulu creating abstract nouns: -dige, -tike, -tige a suffix used to make derivative abstract nouns; bad.a-tige poverty; malla-dige greatness I wonder if there are similar examples in the linguistic area. Regards, k. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Fri May 29 15:21:29 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 08:21:29 -0700 Subject: Suffixes and abstractions Message-ID: <161227039394.23782.12298821179803363110.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hi, In addition to the Tulu example, Telugu has some abstractions: e.g., illarikamu = family Is the suffix -ik related to: ig- (igy-) to separt from others leaving a space between (Kota) or for e.g.to the -ka ending in: ani_ka point, front, row (RV.) derived from ani_ point (Hindi_); an.i_ point (Gujara_ti_) Regards, k. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From martin.bemmann at URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE Fri May 29 06:54:49 1998 From: martin.bemmann at URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (Martin Bemmann) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 08:54:49 +0200 Subject: Horses Message-ID: <161227039362.23782.17237903886930183526.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Sn. Subrahmanya schrieb: > > Just as an FYI: > > There was some very intersting news on the BBC today about > Turkmen horses. > > It seems that these horses (heard it as ako teki ? ) are the > finest in the world, and far superior to the Persian horses. > I didn't see the report but most probably you are refering to the famous Akhal Teke horses, the *blood sweating* or *heavenly* horses adored by the Chinese. There should be a vast literature on them. A short article is available online at: http://www.silk-road.com/artl/maslow.shtml There is even an *akhal-teke-network* on the web ;) http://www.akhalteke.net/ Regards, -- Martin Bemmann Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften >Felsbilder und Inschriften am Karakorum Highway< Karlstrasse 4 Postfach 102769 D-69017 Heidelberg -- Germany phone: ++49-6221-543276 fax: ++49-6221-543355 mailto:martin.bemmann at urz.uni-heidelberg.de http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/institute/sonst/adw/kara/welcome.html From rospatt at WLINK.COM.NP Fri May 29 16:20:22 1998 From: rospatt at WLINK.COM.NP (A. v. Rospatt) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 09:20:22 -0700 Subject: Zraadha in Nepal Message-ID: <161227039357.23782.10500985886964294927.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Richard Cohen, a belated further comment on Your questions regarding zraadha among the Shakyas of Nepal. Your questions seem to imply that the Saakyas of Nepal are related to the clan of Shakyamuni. This is probably a misconception, though a popular one which can also be found among Shakyas themselves. It is more likely that they are called Shakyas because they are the descendents of a class of people who used to be called Shakya-Bhiksus, i.e. Bhikshus in the order of Shakyamuni. Unlike the Vajracaryas, these Shakya-Bhiksus did not take the further step of becoming tantric masters (vajracaryas), but like them they did become grihasthas. Hope this helps, Alexander Rospatt > > I require some information about the practices and beliefs of the Kathmandhu > valley's Sakyas. Either direct answers or references for further research > would be most appreciated. > > 1) Though Buddhist, do the Sakyas perform zraadha ceremonies in honor of the > dead akin to those performed by the valley's Hindu population? > > 2) Does Sakyamuni receive mention in the course of the Sakyas' funerary > rites, in his capacity as a member of the clan rather than as a buddha? In > other words, is he treated as an ancestor, or even clan-deity? > > 3) Does Dipankara have any place in the Sakyas' funerary rites? In other > words, is he treated as an ancestor, or even clan-deity? > > 4) How is inhertance distributed upon the death of a father? How do the > Sakyas' inheritance practices compare with those of other groups in the valley? > > Thanks in advance, > > Richard Cohen > University of California, San Diego -- Dr. Alexander v. Rospatt Tel.: 00-977-1-271018 Nepal Research Center Fax: 00-977-1-474463 PO Box 180 Kathmandu, Nepal From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Fri May 29 17:27:46 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 10:27:46 -0700 Subject: Suffixes and abstractions Message-ID: <161227039398.23782.2068431560138349002.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA wrote: > What about 'peddarikaM' , 'rAcarikaM', 'kannerikaM', 'pEdarikaM', > 'illarikaM', 'kODaNTrikaM' etc., in telugu? > > Also > > 'peddatanaM', 'cinnatanaM', 'musilitanaM', 'gaDusudanaM', > 'telivitakkuvatanaM', 'metakadanaM' etc., in telugu? > Thanks for the leads. It is interesting that suffix -tan ('stretch'; also 'self') tries to extend the semantic content of the susbtantive. Suffixes -ikam, -tige seem to evolve an abstract thought. I am thankful for the leads because I am struggling to understand further the classifiers used in the linguistic area. Regards, k. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From thillaud at UNICE.FR Fri May 29 09:04:53 1998 From: thillaud at UNICE.FR (Dominique.Thillaud) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 11:04:53 +0200 Subject: sarasvatI (etymology) Message-ID: <161227039439.23782.1179860211136145912.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hi, I would give here some remarks about the name of the Goddess and of the river. My opinion is that there was an early confusion between two Eurindian roots, *ser- and *sel-, both giving Skr. *sar-. *ser- is known by Latin "serO" (to string) with good cognates in Celtic, Germanic, Greek and Tokharian. A very common metaphora shows the speech as a string of words (we say today "syntagmatic axis") and Latin give us the word "sermO" (coherent speech > sermon) who use it. And the MMW dictionary give a ref. "saras" (speech) in naighaNTuka i,11, used to explain the Goddess' name. This is highly coherent with some features of sarasvatI, Who, associated with vac, evoke the Greek Muses (early fewer than nine), even in litterary use: like in Homer and Hesiod, the first zloka of the MBh is an address to the Goddess. *sel- is known by Greek "hals", currently (salt) but earlier (sea) and homeric and ritual uses show that the word designates properly the water-part of a beach, where the boats can land and the bath can occur. The "bath" sense is very clear in an old formula such that "halade mustai!" used in Eleusinian initiation. Hence, "saras" could be simply a bathing place, able to give a common name for a river (the Greek hydronymy shows many hal- for sweet waters). The confusion between the two roots gave an unexpected importance to this river name and the river became definitively linked to the Goddess. I believe that many rivers were named "sarasvatI", early as a common name, later to honour the Goddess and perhaps to perform some rituals. Hence, any archeological or geographical conclusion about such river is probably fruitless. Comments are welcomed, Dominique Dominique THILLAUD Universite' de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France From zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL Fri May 29 14:00:40 1998 From: zydenbos at FLEVOLAND.XS4ALL.NL (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 12:00:40 -0200 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039367.23782.17080104030081683445.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Replies to msg 28 May 98: indology at listserv.liv.ac.uk (Paul K. Manansala) kJN> Michael Witzel kJN> wrote: > > I would strongly disagree with this statement, but the argument > > against it could get long and complicated. > > Love to hear it. ANY Indian words, of Dravidian, Munda, nay even > Burushaski origin in Avesta ???? If not, silence is appropriate. kJN> Not a question of whether they exist, but whether the kJN> Eurocentric mindset will accept. Remarks like this one do not benefit the discussion. Please give us examples of such words, if they exist; otherwise it is indeed better to remain silent. Robert Zydenbos zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl From falk at ZEDAT.FU-BERLIN.DE Fri May 29 10:38:27 1998 From: falk at ZEDAT.FU-BERLIN.DE (Harry Falk) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 12:38:27 +0200 Subject: Shani names Message-ID: <161227039369.23782.5703135805235678936.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> apropos Shani: I am looking for literature on those black dressed people who visit towns on shanivar in Maharasthra, making collections for their god. The usual reference works on tribes and castes are silent. Any help? Harry Falk From vidynath at MATH.OHIO-STATE.EDU Fri May 29 20:39:48 1998 From: vidynath at MATH.OHIO-STATE.EDU (Vidhyanath Rao) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 16:39:48 -0400 Subject: Horse argument Message-ID: <161227039400.23782.7092438698676644246.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> It is deja vu all over again. Much of the ground was already covered in late March/early April. Being on a quarter system (and due to other demands on my time) I cannot devote much time to this. But it seems that the basic points need to be restated, again. Michael Witzel wrote: >On Sun, 10 May 1998, Vidhyanath Rao wrote: >> Firstly, the similarities in the rituals cannot be taken as proof that >> the rituals go back to PIE days. >how so? Because there are also similarities the uses of chariots, and there is no evidence that chariots existed in PIE times. If the use of chariots is due to later developments, why can't that be the case for horses as well? >[delted material] The point is that the Shintasha vehicle cannot have been usable in war or races of the type we see later. This relates to practical matters, which I will return to in a separate post. >More evidence on chariots, for the time beeing, in Kuzmina (South >Asian Archaeology 1993, ed. by A. Parpola et al., Hesinki 1994) I am sorry to have to put this this crudely, but I don't know how else to say it. Kuzmina, like many IE-ists/Indologists repeats as settled conclusions statements which have been called into question. This makes the argument circular and makes me wonder if they read what people outside their own specialities are saying. For example, the Kikkuli book is cited to prove that chariots were introduced into the Near East from Central Asia. But fragments of older texts on horses/chariots have been found in the Hittite archives. So why should we consider the Kikkuli text as proving that Mitannis taught chariotry to others in the Near East? >[...] but note how carefully Littauer & Crouwell phrase their >statement about a Near Eastern origin of the chariot: > >"Does it not seem more likely that the horse's introduction to draught in >the Near East stimulated the local wheel-wrights to invent a lighter wheel >for the long existing two-wheelers than a people without a history of >two-wheeled vehicles and with an already superior personal conveyance - >the mounted horse - should find reason suddenly to invent such a vehicle >in its entirety?" >In other words, they don't know. I fail to see that. To me it looks like a rhetorical question. In the Near East we see a gradual trend towards the chariot. Keep in mind that hemiones were harnessed in the Near East by the 24th c. BCE. As early horses were as small as modern ponies, the change to horses would not have been that great a step once horses began to be imported. On the other hand, evidence for internal evolution of such vehicles in the steppes is scarcer than horse bones in IVC. As I will explain in my promised post, a practical chariot needs so many features that simply replacing oxen by horses is simply absurd. That would have produced a vehicle that would be inferior for bearing loads (oxen do better in muddy paths than horses, and with the old cart harness oxen will be able pull larger loads than ponies) without adding speed or maneuverability. >But there also was the vipatha chariot for rough, cross-country driving! >And how do you account for the traffic accident in Jaiminiya Brahmana in >which a boy was dismembered and killed: some people must have driven at >high speed through a settlement... Reconstructed chariots based on finds in Tut's tomb would have served as well. The question here is who developed such chariots? Driving at high speeds comes back to the questions of practicality, which I will discuss in another post. If my memory serves me right, the JB passage you refer to also says that the boy was revived by a saman. So why should we take one piece of it as realistic? >Obviously we need much more evidence to settle all these questions. The evidence from the Near East would be more than enough if it weren't for an IE chauvinism that only IE speakers could handle horses and chariots. >The Greek one (in the Iliad) is too close to the Indian ones to be simply >diffused across a lot of space and time (descr. in Max Sparreboom, >Chariots): Diffusion from the Near East westward quite plausible. Hittite zone of influence (if not the empire itself) reached the east cost of the Agean. Mycenean Greeks had overseas contacts towards the east. Etruscans provide the link further westward. >At least Late COMMON IE (note the many grammatical >correspondences in Greek and Vedic/Old Iranian - also by "diffusion" from >India??). I thought that I had made it clear that I believe the true chariot to have been diffused from the Near East, not India. This has nothing to do with the spread of IE languages. Anyway, are you arguing that chariots had been invented before I-Irs and proto-Greeks separated? >There is of course much more to it: the uneven number of turns >with the Mitanni, the COUNTER-clockwise turning (continued, this time >probably via Rome, to this day in our sport stadiums) etc. : all by >diffusion? The odd number of turns is a consequence of the race, which consists of returning to the starting point after reaching a preset mark. If you run n laps, you must make 2n+1 turns. I suspect that the racing practice has to do with how chariots were used in war: the races were used to demonstrate and hone the skills needed in battle. I am not sure about the counter-clockwise turn, because I am not sure why the archer stood to the left of the charioteer (this may be due to the ease, for right-handed archers, of shooting to the left than to the right). But the two must be related: One likely way the chariot was used is to approach the enemy infantry, shoot the arrows and (re)turn out of the range of enemy javelins and other missiles quickly. In view of practical requirements of archery, it makes more sense to turn counterclockwise than the other way. >> Why should other details related to horses be any different? >But note that the word for chariot is a specialization of IE *reth2o- >"wheel", found only in Indo-Iranian (thus c. 2000 BC, see separate >posting): This time, the Greeks have NOT taken over this term by >diffusion/osmosis! (And they separated from the IIr.s long before the >Mature Indus Civ.) So chariots spread by diffusion after all? And how does this contradict the idea that chariots spread from the Near East after 1800 BCE? [In case there is any doubt, I do not think that Vedic civilization dates to 1800 BCE or earlier. ] >> Second: David Anthony is certain that Sredny Stog (sp?) culture used >> bits to control horses, based on evidence of tooth wear from a horse >> found there. >One horse, yes, and somewhat problematic with regard to its date: maybe >3000 rather than 4000 BC), see South Asian Archaeology 13, 1997. I assume that you mean SAA of 95, published in 1997. I would appreciate more particulars as I need to get it by ILL. >>However, Arrian and other Hellenistic sources clearly that >> the bit was unknown in India at the time of Alexander. >This is SIMPLY not correct: If only things were so simple to permit such certainity. >Arrian's description, (Indike 16) ALSO includes a pin/peg/bolt : >obelos (a word next to obeliskos, for bit), in addition to the nose band >with inside-turned "not too sharp thorn/pins" (kentron), which" force >the horse to obey" (Arrian). I know about this bolt (translations usually say spit). But there is a reason why it is not called a bit. Horses have a convenient gap in their teeth, between their front and back teeth. The bit is placed in this gap, just about at the corner of their mouths. The bit acts by pressure on the mouth. If the bit stays here, as it is supposed to, there would be no `bit wear'. The bit wear Anthony reported occurred because the horse moved the bit, and the wear was in the pre-molars. On the other hand, the nose band + cheek pieces + bolt acted by pressure on the nose (braking) and the spikes in the cheek pieces acted on the lips. The bolt simply provided a connection between the cheek pieces and did not act by itself. To judge by the representations, the nose-band in the nose-band + `cheek piece' + bar was placed rather low. As the studs (the kentron) in the `cheek pieces' acted on/near the lips, (it would have to: lips are more sensitive than the area of the head further back), the bolt, which connected the cheek pieces (its main purpose) must be in that area, a little ahead of the corners of the mouth. The nose band would prevent this bolt from moving much, certainly from moving back. So how can it produce the kind of wear that a displaced bit causes? Just because there is a bolt in the horse's mouth does not mean that it acts the way a true bit does. That is why Hellenistic writers said that bits were unknown in India. BTW, the nose-band's drawback is that it constricts horse's breathing in a way that bit does not. So if PIE had true bits, it is still puzzling why Indians switched to nose-bands. >One should also take a look at Sanchi/Bharhut where there are many >sculputures of such horses and chariots! More about these in my promised post. >Maybe two different traditions are mixed here. [...] But bits were completely unknown in India, according to Arrian and others. Why was it so, if there were two different traditions? That Iranians had the bit does not prove anything as in the Near East, the bar and snaffle bits were known 13th c. BCE and Iranians come into history much latter. Some of them were also subjects of Assyrians. So presence of bits among Iranians does not prove anything for proto-I-Ir. -Nath From vidynath at MATH.OHIO-STATE.EDU Fri May 29 20:40:52 1998 From: vidynath at MATH.OHIO-STATE.EDU (Vidhyanath Rao) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 16:40:52 -0400 Subject: Chariots Message-ID: <161227039403.23782.3327090198840048733.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> This is my promised post about practical details concerning chariots. This is based on reports of experiments with reconstructed vehicles in the references I gave in March. These are requirements forced by mechanics and horse anatomy. If you disagree with the necessity of these features in a practical chariot, you need to build a chariot that is like what you think the old I-Ir chariot was like and show by practical experiments that it is practical. Without such a demonstration (or a re-analysis of Vedic texts that shows that the usual picture of Vedic chariot needs to be changed), the practicality of the Vedic chariot must remain in doubt. How many Indologists would accept existence of flying machines in ancient India that do not fit the requirements of aeronautics, purely on the basis of the epics and the puranas? --------------- 1. Yoke placement: The withers of horses are sensitive and it would not do to put a load on them for any length of time. The yoke must be placed ahead of the withers (on the neck) or behind the withers. In the former case, a girth makes no sense. The girth will pull the yoke down when tightened. It will also rub against the join of legs and body and irritate the horse. 2nd m. BCE chariots all seem to have used a neck yoke. At some point, Greeks switched to the dorsal yoke (Spruytte suggests that this was during the geometric or archaic period). Confusion of the two led des Noettes to reconstruct a harness with yoke on the withers and a girth. [He was also grinding his own axe, about technological reasons for slavery in the ancient world.] Unfortunately this idea continues to exert an influence: Sparreboom, who lists Spruytte in his references, for unstated reasons assumes that Noettes' reconstruction of harness is correct and was used everywhere in the ancient world. 2. Backing element: The necks of horses become narrower as it approaches the head. Without any further device, when the chariot slows down (whether approaching a turn or stopping), the neck band will slide up and put pressure on the throat. The so called girth in Near Eastern representations is actually a backing element. That this had no role in securing the yoke is proved by the fact this is always shown loose in the Near Eastern representations.. Of course, with the dorsal yoke, there has to be a girth to secure the yoke to the horses. But this is totally different kind of harnessing. 3. Yoke saddle: Yoke saddle functioned like a very primitive horse collar. [Again, failure to appreciate the real nature led to strange conclusions. It was assumed that this was a functionless ornament and was thought to have been mounted with the fork up. Some museum (Florence?) even showed a reconstructed chariot thus (corrected some time in the 70's). Several months ago, I saw a book about horses in Barnes and Nobles (published by them) which showed a photo of the old, incorrect reconstruction.] So with the yoke saddle, the horse pushes that with its shoulders, and this is transmitted via the yoke and the pole to the chariot. This leaves too many links to break, but is serviceable. But without it, the horse is pulling by its neck and this is hard to reconcile with fast, maneuverable chariot. Noettes, based on his reconstruction, concluded that ancient harnessing limited the load to about 500 kg. But, once the chariot is in motion, force is needed to overcome mainly the friction between the wheel and the axle. This is proportional to the velocity (and to the load). So a chariot weighing 30 kg and carrying two men with their gear, weighing let us say 70kg each, with the horses in a trot (a chariot with horses always in a walk is hardly a great improvement over older vehicles) and going up a slope of 1 in 150 would put more strain than walking horses pulling 500kg on level ground. [When you go up a slope, you need to overcome gravity continuously. Based on the value of friction of wood on wood greased with animal fat given in ``Mechanics of pre-industrial technology'', a slope with sine of 1/105 would make the force needed to overcome gravity equal to the force to overcome friction between the wheel hub and the axle.] 4. Hub construction: It is hard to get tight fit between a wooden axle and a wooden wheel/hub. In Egyptian chariots found the the tombs, this was overcome by making the hub quite long. This will reduce the vibrations in the axle (try putting a rod in a ring, and then in a short tube and wiggling the rod about) and reduce the strain on the axle. There is also a side effect of increasing the wheel base and making the chariots more stable in fast turns. Conversely, without some such arrangement, the `chariot' will be more prone to breakage due to vibrations and to tipping over in fast turns. 5. Axle placement: With a neck yoke, it is important to keep the yoke down at all times to avoid undue pressure on the underside of horses' neck. [Spruytte flatly states that shoulder traction is incompatible with balanced loads unless the horses remain at a walk.] This is easily achieved by placing the axle at the rear of the chariot. In the reconstructed vehicle Spruytte used, about 15% of the load was on the horses' neck, enough to keep the yoke down. With central axle, there is every danger that the load would shift, causing the neck-band to rise. The Near Eastern representations with central axles come from seals or sealings where space was at a premium. Egyptian sculptures show all chariots with axles in the rear. Of course, with the dorsal yoke, there is no need for this. It would be better to use central axles to reduce the load on the horses. 6. Horse size: The horses in the ancient world were small by modern standards, mostly fitting into the category of large ponies or smaller. This means that the vehicles of the time must be light enough for these horses to pull at trot or gallop. It also means that the horses were not that much of an improvement in power over hemiones or ass-hemione hybrids. [Hemiones have been clocked at 60 kmph or faster and are said to be capable of maintaining 20-25 kmph for hours. By 3nd m. BCE standards, that is break neck speed. It is the failure to domesticate hemiones that led to the eventual discontinuation of their use.] Since these were in use already in Sumerian times, the assertions that the `chariots' of the steppes were a secret weapon that would have unnerved the people of the Near East or that it made the I-Ir warriors invincible is a flight of fancy. And it also removes one more objection to gradual evolution of chariots. If, as Witzel is apparently willing to admit now, steppe chariots were `relics', this objection becomes stronger. ------ Let us turn to Sanchi representations and Sparreboom's reconstruction: The Sanchi representations often show the yoke high on the neck. This is not feasible if a girth was also used to secure them as Sparreboom reconstructs. Some of the Sanchi representations also show a true girth, running around the body of the horse. But they are well behind the yoke, which leaves them without any clear purpose. In some cases, there is a strap running to the yoke from the girth. Sometimes this strap is tied to the tail. In other cases, this strap itself seems to run around the horse's body. But in some cases this strap shows bends that are not compatible with it being under tension. In addition the axle is always placed centrally under the chariot body, which is problematic with a neck yoke. For these reasons, I cannot agree with the conclusion that these show a realistic chariot. The likely explanation is clear once we realize the Greek influence on Indian sculpture of this period. The artist is probably mixing up Indo-Greek chariots with dorsal yokes, ox-carts (one of the Sanchi reliefs shows a vehicle with two spoked wheels being pulled by oxen) and hear-say reports of chariots with neck yokes. So for the Vedic chariots we are left with only the textual evidence. If you are going to insist on realism of Sanchi representations, the only possible conclusion is that the Indian chariot was an hodge-podge of features, thrown together without clear understanding of harnessing and was never practical the way Near Eastern chariots were. There goes the alledged mastery of chariotry by I-Irs, the Kikkuli treatise and the rest of it. -------- -Nath From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Fri May 29 22:58:01 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 18:58:01 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) In-Reply-To: <199805281637.JAA04589@dry.jps.net> Message-ID: <161227039405.23782.8083607644412568118.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Thu, 28 May 1998, Paul K. Manansala wrote: > > > However, even in the RV Vasistha's culture does not seem particularly > > > IE. > Sorry, that should be Iranian rather than IE. Did I not just give a number of hints that Vasistha may be linked to Iran rather than to an IA background? These items need to be discussed OR SILENCE IS APPROPRIATE. We do not need simple OPINIONS such as the one above. That could be done on any india.alt list. > Doesn't Vasistha make a sacrifice to Vishnu in Chap. VII? Vishnu is > possibly an aboriginal god with a Dravidian name. I don't see > anything particularly different between V's style/ritual and the > rest of the RV. See above. DETAILS? (for Visnu check Mayrhofer EWA + KEWA! There are several possibilities here) > The divine birth of V together with Agastya in a pot is said by some > to indicate aboriginal origin. Such devices were often used to > explain divine births as in the case of the birth of the Pandavas, > who all had the same mother but different divine fathers. I think > that the later association of V with Eastern India cannot be ignored. First, we have to deal with the RV. Not with the *much* later Epic (which copies + re-interprets Vedic data). Indeed, the Mira+Varuna-dropped-seed-into-a-lake (puSkara) birth of Vasistha (RV 7.33, I forgot last time) is another trick to circumvent his unclear origins (speaking in Kuruksetra, he says "from across the Indus" NB!) Not from the EAST. I quoted the RV passage already... FACTS! not opinions... > As far as I'm > concerned the RV could have been written around ~500 BCE rather than > ~1500 BCE. This is, I am afraid, and it must be said finally, pure ignorance! First. The RV was not written either at 1500 nor at 500 BC. But composed and preserved ORALLY. All of this really is first year Vedic. Remember Prof.Krishanmurti's exasperation? - I WILL NO LONGER PROVIDE such basic info. There is other work to do. Second, how do you get from the archaic language of the RV to the Prakrit spoken by the Buddha at or shortly after 500 BC? Or to Asoka's Prakrits, c. 250 BC??? Or Patanjali's Sanskrit 150 BC??? Instead, the development of the Vedic language inside the Vedic texts (five !! stages) indicates that a *long* time was needed to get from A to B (RV to Upanisads). And Buddha's Prakrt. And Patanjali. > > Love to hear it. ANY Indian words, of Dravidian, Munda, nay even > > Burushaski origin in Avesta ???? If not, silence is appropriate. > Not a question of whether they exist, but whether the Eurocentric > mindset will accept. examples or SILENCE! > > Dadhyanc is a RV myth, not a *non-IE* horse burial. > > That's why I chose him, not any old horse burial. Unfortunately he can't > > *speak* to us. > But horse burial is common. A single burial with a horse's head just > doesn't get it. Maybe that was all that was left of the poor > fellow's horse after a battle. Or maybe it was just a local > variation. Maybe, maybe.... opinions... The case is so special that I chose it. It is NOT a horse burial. But one of a man whose head was removed and SUBSTITUED by that of a horse. Plus Yama's flute at his feet. V. F. Gening, Mogil'nik Sintashta i problema rannikh Indoiranskikh plemen. Sovietskaya Arkheologiya 1977, p. 53-73 Gening, V.F., Zdanovich, G.B., Gening, V.V. Sintashta. Chelyabinsk : Iuzhno-Ural'skoe Izdatel'stvo 1992 First look at the reports, then judge! > But I'm confused. You're referring now to RV culture rather than IE? > Why would we find an RV burial in the Urals so early? Read again.I did not say RV burial. The myth is attested in RV. <> ALAM!!! tUSNIM bhavatu! ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm phone: 1- 617 - 495 3295 (voice & messages), 496 8570, fax 617 - 496 8571 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- my direct line (also for messages) : 617- 496 2990 From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Fri May 29 23:05:30 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 19:05:30 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039408.23782.772388726999420772.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Thu, 28 May 1998, Paul K. Manansala wrote: PGW = > > Just pig & rice? This is not S. China. -- Too simple > > Pigs and rice rather than barley and cows. Not Vedic. Again, you do not read the texts: The early Yajurveda is full of varieties of cows (a special breed from Videha [N.Bihar] of all places!!!), horses, sheep and goat but ALSO pigs (see below) ! It has seven cultivated plants (sapta grAmyA oSadhayaH); usually rice (!!!), barley, wheat, sesame, buckwheat,etc. The later YV (SatapathBr 14,9,3,22 = BrhadAr.Up. 6,3,22) has ten: vrIhi, rice: Oryza sativa L.; yava: barley Hordeum vulgare L. subsp. hexastichum (L.) Schinz et Kell.; tila, sesame: Sesamum indicum L.; mASa beans: Phaseolus mungo L. var. radiatus = Phaseolus Roxburghii; ANu millet: Panicum miliaceum L.; priyaGgu millet: Setaria italica (L.) Pal. Beauv.= Panicum italicum L.; godhUma wheat: Triticum aestivum = Triticum sativum Lam.; masra Lens culinaris Medic. = Ervum lens L.; khalva beans: Phaseolus radiatus L. a variety of Phaseolus mungo L. = mASa(?); khala-kula Dolichos biflorus L. (see W. Rau in: Witzel, Inside the texts, beyond the texts, Cambridge 1997) - But YV (I think, MS, must check) also says that the pig follows the cows into the wilderness (aranya). We are talking about Vedic "rice & pig farmers " here!!! Further, below! =========================== > > "permament Indo-Aryan villages > > (graama) are late... The alleged Vedic towns are phantoms, such as > > Paricakra SB 13.5.4.7 (just a place name or temporary settlement) or > > Kampiila(-vaasin)." > Well this is a hard view, which certainly is not universal. May be not universal (e.g. B.B. Lal, The earliest civ. of S. Asia, 1997, p. 284 sq. appendix is completely wrong/ignorant about pur), The statement made above is based on the Vedic texts. Read W.Rau on pur (in ENGLISH): only mud/palisade forts,wild-west style. No towns, but semi-nomadic graamas through the early Brahmana period. <> > Sounds > more like the semi-nomadism found among some modern "tribal" > populations. How do they figure people with brick or timber houses > are nomadic? Shouldn't they be living in tents or temporary > shelters. Also, most of the information I've read ascribes mud huts > as the primary shelter in PGW. Did I not speak about a 2-level society? You have some market places. But who lives there? Not many Vedic people. They do not talk about towns (nagara/nagarin only in late Brahmans); tehy prefer to follow their cattle. The post_RV texts and the PGW share the same area and same time period. (see above). And same cultural traits (separately). The Vedic house indeed is flimsy and easily removable (W. Rau, Zur indischen Altertumskunde etc.) More separately. > Generally rice and pig farmers are > not nomadic, unless you're talking about very common shifting around > in a small area. The Yajurveda texts say that you go east to rob people of their crop when ripe... Both semi-nomadic Vedic and settled local people interact on various levels. Also there is a substantial number of non-Arya, zUdra people in any vedic graama. Yeah, the YV has Aryan "pig farmers". See above. Rather: the Sudras belonging to an Arya graama who take care of agriculture and pigs. After all it was the *smith* Cunda who killed the Buddha with his sukara-maddana... some sort of zukara-dish. (Now, don't come with Buddhaghosa and tell me it was a mushroom dish!). 2 level society: The 3 Arya classes (Brahm., Ksatr., Vaishya) could not care less about pigs (who are expressively supposed to be unclean & not eatable in all Dharma texts): the "arya" tend their cattle in the near-wilderness surrounding their frequently relocating graamas (all data in : W. Rau, Altindische Alterumskunde, and Staat und Gesellschaft. -- All of this information largely neglected in English language publications. Except Kulke/Rothermund's Indian Hist.) While the earlier Yajurveda texts say that you go east to rob people of their crop when ripe... the late Vedic Satapatha Brahmana says that that is no longer done.. > I thought the IE peoples of this time were iron age. We should see iron > coming in from the West, and iron artifacts similar to those found > outside India. I give up: How often do we have to repeat that ayas is not = iron??? As has been said several times, the (intrusive) Rgveda was not of iron age but of copper/bronze age period. The geographical horizon of the RV is the greater Panjab. Contrast: The post-RV texts (Atharvaveda, Yajurveda) know of iron implements. The geo. hor. of the YV/AV is Kuruksetra, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Equals: hist. layers, accompanied by geographical spread eastwards. (as the YV explicitly says!) All of this well known. (Read Hermann Oldenberg, Buddha. [pp.115 sqq. [Engl. transl. ALREADY by W.Hoey, London 1882, pp. 391-411; Gonda, Ved. Lit Samhita volume; Witzel, Localisation of Vedic texts & Schools (FS Eggermont, ed. G. Pollet, Leuven 1986, my dialect paper mentioned before and the recent Canon paper...) etc. etc. ) Since there is cultural continuity between RV and YV/Brahmanas why do we need "iron people" coming from the west? More about the Painted Gray Ware culture separately. ================================= From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Fri May 29 23:09:42 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 19:09:42 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039410.23782.1255989484868745377.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> P. Manasala wrote: > >From this point, you give mostly explanations as to why we don't find > what we would expect to find. Quite a bit different from the Hun > comparison, where we can find nearly exact matches between the texts > and the archaeological evidence. I CLEARLY said that was preliminary, just what I had in hand at home. (more separately). I give all the data not just the ones favorable to my position. More on PGW separately. Nothing to do with the Huns, whom I mentioned in quite a different context. I said many times that the RV does not support INVASION on chariots (Manansala's Mantra) but gradual trickling in of clans and tribes. AFTER THIS, I WILL NO LONGER ANSWER TO SUCH RECURRENT ITEMS, brought up by the present correspondent. We have to stay with the direction of the discussion here and must not open up, in true old *vivAda* technique, a new front each time to divert the attention when one issue is close to being settled. Such as: > Another important question is whether the IE migration/invasion is > linked with a biological intrusion. Were the IE peoples physically > similar to ancient Persians. A pertinent question considering > Kennedy's statement in _Eastern Anthropologist_ that no biological > "Aryan" series has been discovered at the ancient sites. A NEW front again. Needs separate argument. A few points here: What are "Aryan skeletons"? And what are "Dravidian skeletons"? (Brahuis, Todas and Tamils do not exactly look the same...) There never was a "pure Indo-Aryan,Indo-Iranian,Indo_European" skeleton (or "race"). It is the texts, IA language, IA material and spiritual culture that counts not the shapes of the bodies that their speakers had. Such data will have to be evaluated against genetic testing, now becoming possible for ancient burials. I will glady wait for that, and I predict quite a few "foreign traits". That is a number of human remains with non-South Asian strains. Their number is not important (in the light of "trickling in", not "invasion"). Only the fact that a "foreign", IE > Indo-Iranian > Indo_Aryan language ALONG with its new material and spiritual culture has been imported, -- that is important -- by whoever, of whatever biological/genetical make-up and from wherever outside the subcontinent. Quite apart from that, on an *impressionistic* level: Well, Kashmiris and other Dardic groups such as THOSE in Swat (all speakers of northern IA), as well as the 3rd IIr group, the Nuristanis (Kafirs), look a lot like "Persians" and not like the "Indus/Ganges plain" people from the Panjab/Sindh, UP. etc. But all of these represent just *two* strains of IA/IIr speakers. With regard to still *another* strain in IA speakers: What about Mr. Hiranyakesin, a Sutra author? (I do not quote data about gods, of course: lots of hiranya there). Or what about Patanjali, Mahabhasya 5.1.115 at 150 BC (probably at Mathura): ad Panini 5.1.115: II.363.11 sqq: brAhmaNakArakam ... gauraH zucyAcAraH piGgalaH kapilakeSa iti "What makes a Brahmin? ... white/yellowish, of pure behavior, tawny, with red hair" (cf.Manu 3.8) (Personally, to be clear, I *could not care less* if the first speakers of Indo_Aryan in the subcontinent were blue in the face and had sprouted 6 fingers...) Only their cultural innovations & heritage is of importance. Clearly they are no longer the same people who lived in the BMAC or earlier Central Asian cultures. Who cares? Their language, their material and spiritual culture count. To be clear: all people living in the present US, speaking English and following US cultural "norms" = Indo-Europeans, what ever their origin, family customs etc.... Apply that to Rgvedic India... and you have your "Arya" who look down on their various neighbors. ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu From srini_pichumani at MENTORG.COM Fri May 29 23:33:09 1998 From: srini_pichumani at MENTORG.COM (Srini Pichumani) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 19:33:09 -0400 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039413.23782.9846527253372364351.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel wrote: > First. The RV was not written either at 1500 nor at 500 BC. But composed > and preserved ORALLY. All of this really is first year Vedic. Remember > Prof.Krishanmurti's exasperation? - I WILL NO LONGER PROVIDE such > basic info. There is other work to do. Herr Witzel, you should really stop this backscratching nonsense. The merits of the case(s) you are discussing and the ones that have evoked Bh.K's outbursts-in-the-main (I am thinking of his blasts in response to the reasoned postings from Palaniappan here) are very different. -Srini. From swamiji at GIASBG01.VSNL.NET.IN Fri May 29 14:09:44 1998 From: swamiji at GIASBG01.VSNL.NET.IN (Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 19:39:44 +0530 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227039374.23782.3082354015612308004.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> S Krishna writes: <> Well, here you find one of them. I am a native of Karnataka speaking Kannada and familiar with the Vacana literature both academically and by religious faith. I looked into this thread of Kannada Vacanas rather very late because of some technical problems to access my e-mail. Here is my response to various issues raised in this interesting discussion. <<"kUDalasangamadEva" thing...is there any difference between kuDala, and kUDala since both versions appear in basava's "vacanas"..Doesn't he also refer to "kUDala" by some other variant? What is the significance of these variants?>> The correct word form in Kannada is "kUDala" only and not "kuDala". The latter must be a printer's devil in the Vacana book you are referring to. There are other words like "kUDali" or "kUDalu" in usage but certainly not "kuDala" (with 'ku' as hrasva) The other varients of the name of the deity is "kUDalasanga", "sanga" or "sangama-naatha". All these varients are used by Basavanna in his Vacanas. No special meaning be attached to these varients. They are just the short forms of the name of one and the same deity. Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sri Taralabalu Jagadguru Brihanmath * Taralabalu Kendra Sirigere - 577 541, Karnataka, India * 3rd Main Road, 2nd Block Email: swamiji at giasbg01.vsnl.net.in * RT Nagar, Bangalore - 560 032 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ . ---------- From: S Krishna[SMTP:mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM] Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 1998 3:39 AM To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Subject: Re: Kannada vacanas Robery writes: <>. Yep, couldn't agree with you more....IS it mere coicidence that none of the participants in the kannaDa vacana thread all are non-Kannada? (That; when you see Kannada sounding-looking names on the list...) It is a pity that due to lack of participation by KAnnadigas/Kannada scholars matters have to be resolved by looking up texts whose origins are far removed from Karnataka instead of refering to local texts... -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: attachment.bin Type: application/ms-tnef Size: 2811 bytes Desc: not available URL: From swamiji at GIASBG01.VSNL.NET.IN Fri May 29 14:10:27 1998 From: swamiji at GIASBG01.VSNL.NET.IN (Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 19:40:27 +0530 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227039377.23782.16057943867922219029.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---------- From: S Krishna[SMTP:mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM] Sent: Sunday, May 10, 1998 2:10 AM To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Subject: Kannada vacanas <2. I find that the signature of the poets in the vacanas is seldom their own name, but the name of a God to whom the poem has been dedicated..i.e. basavEzvara uses "kUDala sangamEzvara!" mahAdEviyakka uses "cennamallikArjuna", dasimaiya uses "O rAmanAtha!"...is there any special reason for this?> ........ It is not totally true. Some of the authors (Shiva Sharanas as they are called) do use their own names as signature (ankita) referring to their personal God. To quote only a few names of such Vacanakaras and their signature (given within brackets): 1. ambigara cauDayya (ambigara cauDayya) 2. urilingadeva (urilingadeva) 3. nijaguNayogi (nijaguNayogi) 4. nivRttiyogi (nivRttiyogi) 5. eeleeshvara keetayya (eeleeshvara linga) 6. baLLeesha mallayya (baLLeshvara) 7. gangamma (gangeshvara linga) 8. soDDaLa bAcarasa (soDDaLa) 9. telugeesha masaNayya (telugeeshvara) 10. gangambike (gangaapriya kuuDalasanga) As you see from the above sample list of signatures, some use their own name as it is, some others with a little modification adding a word or two like "linga" or "Ishvara" or something else. Yet others use the personal name of their own family members like husband or brother. As for example, muktayakka, a woman poet, uses the signature of "ajagaNNa" which is the name of her own brother. But one thing is certain. All the ankitas, including those corraborating with the author's name, refer to their personal God only. They cannot be equated with the pennames of modern poets. Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sri Taralabalu Jagadguru Brihanmath * Taralabalu Kendra Sirigere - 577 541, Karnataka, India * 3rd Main Road, 2nd Block Email: swamiji at giasbg01.vsnl.net.in * RT Nagar, Bangalore - 560 032 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: attachment.bin Type: application/ms-tnef Size: 2527 bytes Desc: not available URL: From swamiji at GIASBG01.VSNL.NET.IN Fri May 29 14:11:05 1998 From: swamiji at GIASBG01.VSNL.NET.IN (Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 19:41:05 +0530 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227039380.23782.17990926240648130976.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I do see some point in what Robert Zydenbos wrote. As I understand him what he means is that the words "ii;svara" and "deeva" convey the same meaning, but when we refer to the ankita (signature) of the Vacanas of BasavaNNa, it is "kuu.dalasa:ngamadeeva" only and not "kuu.dalasa:ngamee;svara". In quite a number of Vacanas, BasavaNNa uses also the word "kuu.dalasa:nga" as his ankita. The name of the deity at Kudala Sangama is "saMgamEswara". The words "saMgamEswara" and " SaMga" are of course synonymous and refer to the same deity. But it is not the case with the word "saMgama". The word "saMgama" is always used with reference to a place (confluence) and not for referring to any deity. However, the use of the word in conjunction with other words like "saMgama-nAtha" referring to the deity can be found in the Kannada Vacana literature Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sri Taralabalu Jagadguru Brihanmath * Taralabalu Kendra Sirigere - 577 541, Karnataka, India * 3rd Main Road, 2nd Block Email: swamiji at giasbg01.vsnl.net.in * RT Nagar, Bangalore - 560 032 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ---------- From: DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA[SMTP:narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN] Sent: Saturday, May 16, 1998 6:49 AM To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Subject: Re: Kannada vacanas Mr. Robert Zydenbos writes >Maybe it is not out of place here to mention that Basava's a:nkita >is not "kuu.dalasa:ngamee;svara", as a few list members have been >writing, but "kuu.dalasa:ngamadeeva". :-) (The meaning may not >differ much, but I think that we ought to get such details .................................................................... DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA Replies <> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: attachment.bin Type: application/ms-tnef Size: 2535 bytes Desc: not available URL: From swamiji at GIASBG01.VSNL.NET.IN Fri May 29 14:11:30 1998 From: swamiji at GIASBG01.VSNL.NET.IN (Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 19:41:30 +0530 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227039384.23782.17871530634961427423.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> 1. There is NO usage like "kUDalasangadEva" or "kappaDisangadEva" or "sangadEva" in Kannada. You can either say "kUDalasangama-dEva" or "kUDalasanga" or "sangama-dEva". 2. The author of "Basava Purana" in Kannada is "Bhima Kavi". It is not a translation of Palkurike Somanatha's Basava Purana in Telugu but is an independent work based on the latter. 3. The Telugu Basava Purana of Palkurike Somatha is translated into Kannada by a noted Kannada scholar Dr P V Narayana. The book is published by our Ashram in the year 1982. <> 4. You have rightly guessed. No need to check any Basava Purana for the use of the word "Sanga" as a noun. It is used by BasavaNNa himself in his Vacanas addressing God: "sangaa, nimma tottutanakke duuravayyaa" (Vacana 434) "sangaa, nimmanu puujisi bhavageTTenu naanayyaa" (Vacana 521) 5. The word "sanga" is also used as a proper name by persons of Virashaiva tradition whether male or female.Examples: Male names: Sangappa, Sangayya, Female names: Sangamma, Sangavva, Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sri Taralabalu Jagadguru Brihanmath * Taralabalu Kendra Sirigere - 577 541, Karnataka, India * 3rd Main Road, 2nd Block Email: swamiji at giasbg01.vsnl.net.in * RT Nagar, Bangalore - 560 032 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ---------- From: DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA[SMTP:narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN] Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 1998 10:57 AM To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Subject: Re: Kannada vacanas <> <<2. The great bilingual virasaiva poet pAlakuriki sOmanAtha who has written the epic basavapurANa based on the life of basavEswara uses the the word sanga as the name of the god. Unless there was a stromg virasaiva tradition of treating the word sanga as a noun and a name of the god, sOmanAtha would not have written like that. If there is some body on the list who has the kannaDa version of bbasavapurANa I will be very happy if they check there.>> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: attachment.bin Type: application/ms-tnef Size: 2711 bytes Desc: not available URL: From swamiji at GIASBG01.VSNL.NET.IN Fri May 29 14:11:37 1998 From: swamiji at GIASBG01.VSNL.NET.IN (Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 19:41:37 +0530 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227039387.23782.13269971612544281055.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---------- From: DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA[SMTP:narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN] Sent: Monday, May 11, 1998 9:34 PM To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Subject: Re: Kannada vacanas << A more rational hypothesis will be to assume that ordinary people who did not understand that sangama = kUDala started calling saGgamEZwara as kUDala saGgamEzwara. In Andhra people are named as saGgamEzwara. For example the great vaiNika TumurADa SaGgamEzwara sAstri. Thus the gods name as saGgamEZwara is prevelent in Andhra.>> It is wrong to attribute it to the ignorance of ordinary people who did not know that sangama = kuuDala. As a matter of fact, when we use the proper name of any person or a place, we hardly think of its meaning or its derivation. I wonder whether we can extend the character of "doublets" we find in common words of daily usage to the proper names. Please note the genetive case of the Kannada word "kuuDala". The word "kuuDala sangama" would literally mean the Sangama of kuuDalu or kuuDali. There is a place called "kuuDali", the confluence of the rivers Tunga and Bhadra in Shimoga Dist of Karnataka. Though it is also a Sangama, it is known as "kuuDali" only. There is also a place called "kuuDaluuru" at the confluence of the river Tungabhadra and a stream. We find reference to this place in the inscription of 11th and 12th century AD. After the famous "Hari-hareshvara" temple was constructed several centuries ago, the old name was lost and the place became popularly known as Harihar. There is another place called "tirumakuuDala-narasiipura" in Mysore Dist. The derivation of the word is: "tiru + mukkuuDal + narasiipura. It refers to the place called "narasiipura" situated at the confluence of the rivers Kaveri, Kapila and an under-current of a lake called SphaTika Sarovara. Please note the word "mukkuuDal" which means the confluence of the three. Something like the "TriveNi Sangama" in Allahabad. The influence of English in modern times has made the place to be more popularly known as T.Narasipura. There are many villages in Karnataka with such English abbreviations prefixing the names. Examples: B.Durga, S.Bidare, K.Bidare, H.Kalpanahalli, B.Kalpanahalli. The kuuDala-sangama is the confluence of the two rivers namely KrishNaa and Malaprabhaa. There is also another Sangama called "muurumaTTi-sangama" not very far away from kuuDala-sangama. It is the confluence of KrishNa and GhaTaprabhaa rivers. It has also an ancient temple. The Kannada word "kuuDala" may not, therefore, be used out of ignorance of the meaning of the Sanskrit word "Sangama", but out of necessity to identify the place properly in the daily life of the people. Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sri Taralabalu Jagadguru Brihanmath * Taralabalu Kendra Sirigere - 577 541, Karnataka, India * 3rd Main Road, 2nd Block Email: swamiji at giasbg01.vsnl.net.in * RT Nagar, Bangalore - 560 032 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: attachment.bin Type: application/ms-tnef Size: 3015 bytes Desc: not available URL: From swamiji at GIASBG01.VSNL.NET.IN Fri May 29 14:11:53 1998 From: swamiji at GIASBG01.VSNL.NET.IN (Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 19:41:53 +0530 Subject: Ganaka Vacana Samputa Message-ID: <161227039389.23782.2280550873878907483.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Indologists, This has reference to the Kannada Vacana thread in this list. I have developed a software on the Vacana literature. The name of the software is "Ganaka Vacana Samputa". I have released a preliminary DOS version (1.5) of it with the first 250 Vacanas of BasavaNNa and 200 Vacanas of Akkamahadevi. It has the original text (unedited) in roman script with diacritical marks and English translation. You can search for a particular Vacana you are looking for, either by reference or by keying in the first few letters. You can also search for the occurance of a particular word or a phrase which will be flashed on the screen giving reference and the full text. It can thus help you more than a concordance can do for you. The Vacanas or the words you are looking for will all be really at your finger tips ! The software can be freely downloaded from the internet. Those who are interested in it, may visit the website: and click the section The revised version of it with all the Vacanas of BasavaNNa including the English translation will be released shortly. The windows version of the same software is also in the final stage of its development and the demo copy of it will be made available at the same site in July this year. In this window version, you will also have the option of reading the original text in Kannada script as well as in roman script. Any suggestions or comments for its improvement are most welcome. Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sri Taralabalu Jagadguru Brihanmath * Taralabalu Kendra Sirigere - 577 541, Karnataka, India * 3rd Main Road, 2nd Block Email: swamiji at giasbg01.vsnl.net.in * RT Nagar, Bangalore - 560 032 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Sat May 30 04:27:57 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 21:27:57 -0700 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039420.23782.11326657426506818148.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hi, I agree with Bh.K. Prof. Witzel has presented well-researched arguments and also posed a number of questions for further research work. I am reminded of an earlier posting about exported crabs. We can ennoble indology by respecting indologists who have chosen this calling. Regards, k. ---"Bh.Krishnamurti" wrote: > > Reasoned postings!!Who is this self-appointed judge? Bh.K. > > > > At 19:33 29/05/98 -0400, you wrote: > >Michael Witzel wrote: > > > >> First. The RV was not written either at 1500 nor at 500 BC. But composed > >> and preserved ORALLY. All of this really is first year Vedic. Remember > >> Prof.Krishanmurti's exasperation? - I WILL NO LONGER PROVIDE such > >> basic info. There is other work to do. > > > >Herr Witzel, you should really stop this backscratching nonsense. The merits > >of the > >case(s) you are discussing and the ones that have evoked Bh.K's > >outbursts-in-the-main > >(I am thinking of his blasts in response to the reasoned postings from > >Palaniappan here) > >are very different. > > > >-Srini. > > > > > Bh.Krishnamurti > H.No. 12-13-1233, "Bhaarati" > Street 9, Tarnaka > Hyderabad 500017 > Telephone:40-7019665 > == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Sat May 30 01:35:21 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 21:35:21 -0400 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227039416.23782.14844314327897220753.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 98-05-29 10:25:45 EDT, swamiji at GIASBG01.VSNL.NET.IN writes: << Please note the genetive case of the Kannada word "kuuDala". The word "kuuDala sangama" would literally mean the Sangama of kuuDalu or kuuDali. There is a place called "kuuDali", the confluence of the rivers Tunga and Bhadra in Shimoga Dist of Karnataka. Though it is also a Sangama, it is known as "kuuDali" only. There is also a place called "kuuDaluuru" at the confluence of the river Tungabhadra and a stream. We find reference to this place in the inscription of 11th and 12th century AD. After the famous "Hari- hareshvara" temple was constructed several centuries ago, the old name was lost and the place became popularly known as Harihar. There is another place called "tirumakuuDala-narasiipura" in Mysore Dist. The derivation of the word is: "tiru + mukkuuDal + narasiipura. It refers to the place called "narasiipura" situated at the confluence of the rivers Kaveri, Kapila and an under-current of a lake called SphaTika Sarovara. Please note the word "mukkuuDal" which means the confluence of the three. Something like the "TriveNi Sangama" in Allahabad. The influence of English in modern times has made the place to be more popularly known as T.Narasipura. There are many villages in Karnataka with such English abbreviations prefixing the names. Examples: B.Durga, S.Bidare, K.Bidare, H.Kalpanahalli, B.Kalpanahalli. The kuuDala-sangama is the confluence of the two rivers namely KrishNaa and Malaprabhaa. There is also another Sangama called "muurumaTTi-sangama" not very far away from kuuDala-sangama. It is the confluence of KrishNa and GhaTaprabhaa rivers. It has also an ancient temple. The Kannada word "kuuDala" may not, therefore, be used out of ignorance of the meaning of the Sanskrit word "Sangama", but out of necessity to identify the place properly in the daily life of the people. Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji >> In his book, A History of South India", K. A. Nilakanta Sastri says, "The chAlukya invaders of gangavADi were driven back in disorder and heavily defeated in a battle at kUDal-zangamam, that is kUDali at the junction of the tunga and bhadra in the Mysore country. Somezvara's attempt to reverse the verdict of Koppam thus ended in failure (1061-2)." I would appreciate information on if kUDali was also ever called kUDala sangama. Or is Sastri confusing two different places? (The Tamil inscriptions of 11th century actually use the names "kUTal caGkamam". They do not use the Sanskrit character "z". Sastri's transliteration of caGkamam as zaGkamam was a hypercorrect transliteration one will find in works of his times.) Regards S. Palaniappan From narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Fri May 29 16:56:36 1998 From: narayana at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 21:56:36 +0500 Subject: Suffixes and abstractions Message-ID: <161227039396.23782.8403684232021737404.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 08:09 AM 5/29/98 -0700, you wrote: >Hi, >Here is an example from Tulu creating abstract nouns: > >-dige, -tike, -tige a suffix used to make derivative abstract nouns; >bad.a-tige poverty; malla-dige greatness > >I wonder if there are similar examples in the linguistic area. > >Regards, >k. > > What about 'peddarikaM' , 'rAcarikaM', 'kannerikaM', 'pEdarikaM', 'illarikaM', 'kODaNTrikaM' etc., in telugu? Also 'peddatanaM', 'cinnatanaM', 'musilitanaM', 'gaDusudanaM', 'telivitakkuvatanaM', 'metakadanaM' etc., in telugu? regards, sarma. From kellner at IPC.HIROSHIMA-U.AC.JP Fri May 29 13:26:59 1998 From: kellner at IPC.HIROSHIMA-U.AC.JP (Birgit Kellner) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 22:26:59 +0900 Subject: E-text for ;Slokavaarttika etc. Message-ID: <161227039425.23782.10672146697249875070.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Elliot Stern asked me, via private e-mail, why Ashok Aklujkar thanks me via INDOLOGY, for providing information on e-texts, even though I did not post any such information to the list. The answer is simple: I forwarded information to Ashok about e-texts which I know to exist, yet not in the public domain, with additional information as to whom to contact in order to find out more. As I myself am not the person in charge of these files, I am not in a position to make any public announcements. However, once certain aspects regards copyright and such are clarified, I am sure the relevant information will duly be announced on Indology, and the e-texts will be made publicly accessible. I personally hope that this will happen soon, for in my opinion, it is important to make as many e-texts publicly accessible as possible, and not just circulate them somewhere behind the curtains. Additional information as regards manuscripts and critical editions of Kumaarila's texts which I forwarded to Ashok was: I know that Omae Futoshi (presently in Shimane, Japan) has gathered a considerable amount of Miimaam.saa-manuscripts, but I don't know what he intends to do with them. My former PhD-colleague in Hiroshima, Uno Tomoyuki (currently working with Richard Hayes in Montreal) edited and translated (into Japanese) sections of 'SV aatmavaada, together with Sucarita's Kaa'sikaa, and Paarthasaarathi's Nyaayaratnaakaara. I believe that he currently continues his work on the kaarikaas. Also, in the appendix to my own study of the Buddhist critique of Kumaarila's abhaavapramaan.a (in German, "Nichts bleibt nichts", Vienna 1997: Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde 39), I have listed all variant readings of 'SV abhaavavaada which I came across in Buddhist, Jaina or Nyaaya-Vai'see.sika texts. I plan to put a file of the kaarikaas of this particular chapter up on my homepage, and will post a message to the list once that happens - some time soon ... best wishes, -- birgit kellner department for indian philosophy hiroshima university From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Sat May 30 05:43:12 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Fri, 29 May 98 22:43:12 -0700 Subject: Yamuna Message-ID: <161227039422.23782.5949813129057683940.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hi, In Tamil, the river Yamuna is called tor..un-ai in Akana_nu_ru. Cognate lexemes refer to an artificial channel or a rivulet: e.g. to_d.u water-course; co_d.i rivulet (Kannad.a); d.u~r., d.u~r.h wooden or bamboo water-channel, gutter (Nepalese) This offers interesting points for speculation in the context of archaeological dates of sites along Yamuna being later than the ones on the Sindhu and Sarasvati rivers. Prof. Valdiya notes that there is another aggrading river in Assam also called Yamuna and adds that the name seems to have been preferred for pirate rivers which cut deeper channels and capture the more sedately flowing target rivers. Regards, k. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From Toru.Tomabechi at ORIENT.UNIL.CH Sat May 30 00:34:11 1998 From: Toru.Tomabechi at ORIENT.UNIL.CH (Toru Tomabechi) Date: Sat, 30 May 98 02:34:11 +0200 Subject: E-text for ;Slokavaarttika etc. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227039415.23782.1042338919112107785.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Thousand apologies to those who have downloaded and are going to download the Slokavarttika e-text from: ftp://ftp-orient.unil.ch/ There is some copyright problem surrounding this e-text. We have to suspend the download service until the problem is solved. We would like to ask those who have already downloaded *not* to redistributed the file in question. Sorry for inconvenience. Toru Tomabechi University of Lausanne From bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN Sat May 30 04:45:01 1998 From: bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (Bh.Krishnamurti) Date: Sat, 30 May 98 09:45:01 +0500 Subject: Sarasvati (texts & arch.II) Message-ID: <161227039418.23782.3100938334038427406.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Reasoned postings!!Who is this self-appointed judge? Bh.K. At 19:33 29/05/98 -0400, you wrote: >Michael Witzel wrote: > >> First. The RV was not written either at 1500 nor at 500 BC. But composed >> and preserved ORALLY. All of this really is first year Vedic. Remember >> Prof.Krishanmurti's exasperation? - I WILL NO LONGER PROVIDE such >> basic info. There is other work to do. > >Herr Witzel, you should really stop this backscratching nonsense. The merits >of the >case(s) you are discussing and the ones that have evoked Bh.K's >outbursts-in-the-main >(I am thinking of his blasts in response to the reasoned postings from >Palaniappan here) >are very different. > >-Srini. > > Bh.Krishnamurti H.No. 12-13-1233, "Bhaarati" Street 9, Tarnaka Hyderabad 500017 Telephone:40-7019665 From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sat May 30 14:22:41 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Sat, 30 May 98 10:22:41 -0400 Subject: Saras.. (Painted Grey Ware) Message-ID: <161227039427.23782.18102998813499089268.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Wed, 27 May 1998, Paul K. Manansala wrote > > I find the above statements biased.. While one could argue > > that IVC is not particularly Vedic, neither is PGW. The latter was > > primarily a pig and rice culture. The people were sendentary and > > lived in mud huts. They made very little use of the horse, and I'm > > not aware of any chariots associated with them. They used wheel-made > > pottery, associated with Asuras, instead of the "Aryan" handmade > > variety. I think the best is to quote a clear opponent to the Aryan immigration theory, George Erdosy. For his credentials in casu, read the following: "...the emergence of the aarya ideology can be traced just as confidentally to the geographical milieu of the Rgvedic hymns, to the spread of Indo-Aryan languages. ....the [RV] hymns neither use language or race as markers of ethnic affiliation, nor refer bounded by the Indus and Sarasvati rivers, and need not be linked language or race as markers of ethnic affiliation, nor refer (explicitly) to a home outside South Asia. ... the inescapable conclusion is that while Indo-Aryan languages have an external origin, the aaryas of the Rgveda were not their carriers into South Asia... " (from Erdosy, The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, Berlin/NY 1995, p.3-4; similar statement in the book quoted below, p. 89sq.: "aaryas ...as racial or linguistic groups originating outside South Asia is questionable.... RV ... preserved no memory of a foreign country... ) The same G. Erdosy has the following to say about the Painted Gray Ware culture of the Gangetic doab: "... few advances occur in material culture. Rice, wheat barley, sesame, gram and cotton had already been known... and continue to be cultivated. ... The horse is the only significant addition to the range of domesticated animals which from Neolithic times onwards, had included cattle, sheeps, goats and pig...." A pig and rice culture??? And compare the texts I provided last time. He continues: "...ground stone and microlithic tools.... those fashioned from bone; copper is employed mainly in ornaments, iron in weapons." Again fits the texts exactly. (all from Erdosy, in: F.R. Allchin, The archaeology of early historic South Asia, Cambridge 1995, p. 82) He then includes a lengthy discussion of PGW based on the middle Vedic texts (Yajurveda Samhita prose texts: Katha, Maitrayani, Taittiriya Samhitas, and the various Brahmanas), assuming that they belong to the same period and geographical area (p. 85 sqq.) About settlements: "Individual houses continue to be made of wattle and daub, .... a single elaborate structure of mud brick at Bhagawanpura ... has been cited as an example of elite residence but since it is the only (!) houseplan as yet available for this period, such an interpretation is hazardous" (p. 82-83) He also has the "modest nature of central places confirmed by the late appearance (TA 1.1.18) of the term nagara... wide belts of rural settement still acted as buffers between evolving polities" p. 86 He also has PGW as table ware of the elite (p. 96). Most interestingly, he has now included a statement about regional differences in paintings on PGW pottery, - a point he and I had discussed earlier --and which in my view reflect the differences between the Kuru (Haryana, W. Uttar Pradesh) and their rivals, the Pancala (Eastern U.P.): "wide reprertoire of painted designs on PGW".... (p.83) "the diversity of designs from site to site ... Hastinapura ... and Atranjikhera: .... On the one hand common use of simple geometrical designs, ... on the other hand, many of the more elaborate decorative motifs have limited distribution. ... tridents, three-armed swastikas and trefoils are common at Atranjikhera and absent at Hastinapura, while concentric rings recalling solar or floral designs have the opposite distribution. ... ...interiors of bowls and dishes... : at Atranjikhera ... three sets of parallel lines converging and occasionally intersecting at the at the centre... while Hastinapura concentric rings at the centre... the restriction of more complex designs to individual sites may be taken as indications of the diverse ethnical affiliations of the people who subscribed to it." (p.95-6) Why the stress of "3" with tridents/ even three-armed swastikas/ triple lines? The Pancalas (Atranjikhera) are expressively said to have had 3 subtribes originally, not 5 as scholars always assumed because of the appearance of their name. In fact, later on (Brahm., period) they had 6 subtribes. (Witzel, Early Sanskritization. Origins and development of the Kuru State. in: B. Klver (ed.), Recht, Staat und Verwaltung im klassischen Indien. The state, the Law, and Administration in Classical India. Mnchen : R. Oldenbourg 1997, 27-52) I think this should do it. Texts and archaeological evidence, time period and geographical spread of Middle Vedic and PGW overlap to a large degree. And that concludes my contributions to this problem. ALAM... ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sat May 30 14:23:47 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Sat, 30 May 98 10:23:47 -0400 Subject: Horse argument I Message-ID: <161227039430.23782.5211094188077649081.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Maybe deja vu, yet, I was not trying to rehash the old discussion or to develop a treatise on horse riding / charioteering here. But responding, if memory serves, to some specific points. From a slightly different angle, involving also linguistic data *independent* from archaeology. Thus, a few points: (I see, due to retaining the purva- and uttarapaksa, this again becomes too long, I divide it into 2 parts) On Fri, 29 May 1998, Vidhyanath Rao wrote: > >> Firstly, the similarities in the rituals cannot be taken as proof that > >> the rituals go back to PIE days. > > >how so? > Because there are also similarities the uses of chariots, and there is > no evidence that chariots existed in PIE times. If the use of chariots > is due to later developments, why can't that be the case for horses as > well? I think I said precisely that. Late Common Eastern IE or rather Indo-Iranian has developed the word *ratha (Skt. ratha, Old Iranian ratha with Engl type -th) from IE *rot-h2-o < *rot-e2h "wheel" as in Latin rota 'wheel, disk', Lithuanian ra~tas 'Rad', German Rad 'wheel'. This indicates innovation based on technological innovation. At the same time we find remnants of chariots in S.Russia/Urals. (if imported from the Near East you would use the Near Eastern term,like gilgul 'wheel': see below). (more about IE chariots below) Relative archaism (IIr age) is also seen in the archaic compound Ved. rathe-SThA, Avest. rathaE-s`'tA, rathOi-s`'tA. By contrast, the IE word for 'horse' may belong to Late Common IE (but not to early Proto-IE) if we take the innovative -o stem in *h1ekwo- seriously. Whatever the (IE) etymology may be. Consequences to be drawn from that: either new formation due to need for characterization : "quick" *h1Okwu'- (for example as ridden/driven horse, also in contest : other animals are quick as well...), or it may indicate a newly introduced animal. Only possible if the early speakers of IE had no contact with horses before (for ex. in Gramkrelidze's etc Anatolian homeland),-- there is no word to distinguish wild horses from domesticated ones-- or if another word for horse has been supplanted by H1ekwo- completely across all IE languages: unlikely. > The point is that the Shintasha vehicle cannot have been usable in > war or races of the type we see later. This relates to practical Maybe, I myself said that it is archaic due to narrow width: developed from ox wagon. At this stage/locality maybe just status symbok in processins, who knows? The future wil tell. > >More evidence on chariots, for the time beeing, in Kuzmina (South > >Asian Archaeology 1993, ed. by A. Parpola et al., Hesinki 1994) > > I am sorry to have to put this this crudely, but I don't know how else > to say it. Kuzmina, like many IE-ists/Indologists repeats as settled > conclusions statements which have been called into question. Unfortunately she is not an Indo-Europeanist but a well known Russian archaeologist, and, AT THAT, horse woman herself. Not an ivory tower woman. (Neither do I belong to that tower myself, nor Sparreboom who has driven chariots a lot, *before* and after his thesis). > For example, the Kikkuli book > is cited to prove that chariots were introduced into the Near East from > Central Asia. But fragments of older texts on horses/chariots have been > found in the Hittite archives. So why should we consider the Kikkuli > text as proving that Mitannis taught chariotry to others in the Near > East? Simply, because the Hittites *imported* a Mitanni man, Kikkuli, to teach them [better methods]. One does not import and employ people whom one does not need. (the exact interpretation of his 'training manual' is still under discussion. People have studied its methods closely by comparing REAL horses. Have to look up the names). > >[...] but note how carefully Littauer & Crouwell phrase their > >statement about a Near Eastern origin of the chariot:..... > I fail to see that. To me it looks like a rhetorical question. We should ask them! They don't say it outright (and do not have *clear* evidence in their paper) for what you allege. If my memory does not fail, I gave a *possible* scenario for the dev .of the chariot in the steppes (plus literature). The ultimate instigation for wheeled vehicles *may* have come from Mesopotamia if IE "wheel" is indeed from Sumerian (or a 3rd unknown source): IE *kwe-kwl-o- > ved. cakra-, Avest. caxra-, Greek kuklo-, Engl. wheel, etc. (EWA I 521) :: Sumer. gigir / gil-gul, semit. *galgal. The details, except for a few early steppe finds and a few early art representations in the Near East -- by no means always clear as to horses or hemiones -- largely escape us so far. All conclusions are provisional and based on present state of archaeology (and linguistics). The future will tell. But I confidently predict more early chariots in Russia. More to follow. ============================================================================= Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sat May 30 14:34:36 1998 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Sat, 30 May 98 10:34:36 -0400 Subject: Horse argument 2 Message-ID: <161227039432.23782.14199372997532330901.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Fri, 29 May 1998, Vidhyanath Rao wrote: (I wrote:) > >Obviously we need much more evidence to settle all these questions. > The evidence from the Near East would be more than enough if it weren't > for an IE chauvinism that only IE speakers could handle horses and > chariots. Nice political piece in itself! Language, though, can help: we KNOW about horses, and chariots, and from which level of the languages involved. And, who says only IE could handle horses? Scholars, however, will rely on the evidence. The moment the first really old chariot is produced from Sumeria or depicted there, nobody will object. Until then, earliest evidence in arch. *and* language counts. > >The Greek one (in the Iliad) is too close to the Indian ones to be simply > >diffused across a lot of space and time > Diffusion from the Near East westward quite plausible. The point is not just racing, but the whole IE horse complex (below) (we had some discussion on that). > I thought that I had made it clear that I believe the true chariot to > have been diffused from the Near East, not India. This has nothing to > do with the spread of IE languages. But thevery word for "horse", horse driving, horse mythology, horse rituals go *together* in IE cultures.... Diffusion from a post-common IE center does not work here. > Anyway, are you arguing that chariots had been invented before I-Irs > and proto-Greeks separated? We cannot know perfectly. Greek has other terms for chariots (harma, cf.harmos 'joint', Latin arma 'gear, weapons', O.Slavic jar-bm-b 'yoke'). As do the Romans with : currus. **Linguistically,** then, one cannot reconstruct an IE chariot, from *roth-o- (ratha), nor from *kwe-kwl-o- (cakra). One would need a correspondence across more IE languages. [though: Skt. ratha, Lith. ra~tai (plural) 'vehicle', Gallic Celtic petor-ritum '4 wheeled wagon'] [And, though, all probably secondarily, cf. mod.Engl. "my wheels = car": Phryg. kileen 'Wain/Great Wagon/Ursa Maiior', Tocharian kuka"l, kokale 'vehicle'] However, this is nothing unusual. We cannot, I think, reconstruct the IE small finger. That does not mean that IEs had only 4 fingers... (and, I think, there is a Proto-Drav. peacock feather, but .... no peacock) But, unfortunately, we have Homer's "Indian style" description of the race. If you then invoke the Hittites as transmitters, we are stuck with Kikkuli, the *Indo-Aryan*-inspired Mitanni. > >the uneven number of turns > >with the Mitanni, the COUNTER-clockwise turning .... : all by > >diffusion? > The odd number of turns is a consequence of the race, which consists of > returning to the starting point after reaching a preset mark. If you > run n laps, you must make 2n+1 turns. The turn (vartana) is around the pole at the end of the track. Where one crashes (you will have seen Ben Hur some time), a very much loved topic in Zoroaster's, Indian and Greek texts. -- Yes, but there also is 1 turn only: Thus, 1 turn: up to the post and back; 2 turns = 2x the same; 3 turns = 3x etc. Only the turn around the post at the "end" of the track is counted. But only *odd* numbers are used. Why? Well, the Greek one is at a funeral, like anything unauspicious, always connected with uneven numbers and anti-clockwise movement. If my memory serves me right, the Vedic ritual also has the other type of turn. Not too clear in Sparreboom's book.- Including one where you just drive up to the pole and then stop. These are ritualistic "races", though. And there is solstice symbolism. > And how does this contradict the idea that chariots spread from the > Near East after 1800 BCE? [In case there is any doubt, I do not > think that Vedic civilization dates to 1800 BCE or earlier. ] No one knows the exact dates. The Indus situation allows immigration after c. 1900 BC., though (theorectically, but unlikely in larger numbers, even earlier). And the BMAC (1900-1700) reflects the same type of IA culture, mixed with pre-BMAC sedentary cultures. Immigration should be older in India than c. 1400 though (see other, Sarasvati discussion and the drying up of the river). The IIr *ratha points to a time BEFORE 1800 BC, and we find [various types of] chariots E. and W.of the Urals then. > see South Asian Archaeology 13, 1997. > I assume that you mean SAA of 95, published in 1997. I would appreciate Sorry, should have been South Asian Studies, 13, 1997, Oxford: Society for South Asian Studies. > >Arrian's description, (Indike 16) ALSO includes a pin/peg/bolt : > >obelos (a word next to obeliskos, for bit), in addition to the nose band > >with inside-turned "not too sharp thorn/pins" (kentron), which" force > >the horse to obey" (Arrian). > I know about this bolt (translations usually say spit). But there is a > reason why it is not called a bit. But you did not mention it, masking the evidence. We need all if it. That's why I checked this passage again, remembering the 'spit' or whatever. Actually the text reads: "They have noseband .. with spikes... In their mouth, the horses carry an iron (piece) like a bolt/peg/spit where the reins are fastened. When they draw in the reins, the bolt forces the horse (to obey) and the spikes pierce it and do not allow (the horse) anything but to obey the reins." The rest may be as you say, ... or not. The text is too short to tell with certainty. The only thing we can say is that the Greeks were somewhat astonished about the noseband & spikes. And they used a slightly different word for the spit/bit (see above) than normally. > But bits were completely unknown in India, according to Arrian and > others. Why was it so, if there were two different traditions? Arrian? Where? In the quoted passage, he onlys says that they have a management different from the Greek + Celtic one. (Indike 16). > That Iranians had the bit does not prove anything as in the Near East,.. > presence of bits among Iranians does not prove anything for proto-I-Ir No, we are only talking about 300 BC here. (Arrian). Of course, there was close contact between Iran and the Panjab/Sindh ever since the RV, see parallel Iran/India discussion (G.Thompson's reply) in this list; (and, of course, for pre-IA cultures as well, thousands of years before). ========================================================================== Michael Witzel witzel at fas.harvard.edu www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm From swamiji at GIASBG01.VSNL.NET.IN Sat May 30 15:19:51 1998 From: swamiji at GIASBG01.VSNL.NET.IN (Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji) Date: Sat, 30 May 98 20:49:51 +0530 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227039434.23782.16076429877800201824.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---------- From: Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan[SMTP:Palaniappa at AOL.COM] Sent: Saturday, May 30, 1998 7:05 AM To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Subject: Re: Kannada vacanas <> <> As far as I know, kUDali situated at the confluence of the rivers Tunga and Bhadra, is never called kUDala sangama. Incidentaly, my birth place (Suguru) is on the bank of the river Tunga at this very confluence and I know it for sure. You have rightly guessed the confusion of the historian K A Nilakantha Sastri. I have pointed out this wrong identification made by Sastri in my book in Kannada "KaDala-sangamada aLivu uLivu" (The Life and Death of Kudala Sangama) published by our Ashram in the year 1988 (pp. 35-37). I have also pointed out the confusion of other scholars like F Kittel (Kannada English Dictionary, 1894, p.456), J F Fleet (Bombay Gazetter, vol. 1, 1846, p.480) had with regard to the place, ie., kUDala Sangama. Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sri Taralabalu Jagadguru Brihanmath * Taralabalu Kendra Sirigere - 577 541, Karnataka, India * 3rd Main Road, 2nd Block Email: swamiji at giasbg01.vsnl.net.in * RT Nagar, Bangalore - 560 032 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: attachment.bin Type: application/ms-tnef Size: 2615 bytes Desc: not available URL: From swamiji at GIASBG01.VSNL.NET.IN Sat May 30 15:19:54 1998 From: swamiji at GIASBG01.VSNL.NET.IN (Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji) Date: Sat, 30 May 98 20:49:54 +0530 Subject: Kannada vacanas Message-ID: <161227039437.23782.14582111850230823486.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---------- From: Palaniappa at aol.com[SMTP:Palaniappa at aol.com] Sent: Saturday, May 30, 1998 7:10 AM To: swamiji at GIASBG01.VSNL.NET.IN Subject: Re: Kannada vacanas << telugeesha masaNayya (telugeeshvara) >> <> Kalyana (now known as Basava Kalyana) where BasavaNNa led his socio-religious movement during 12th century AD, is in the Bidar Dist of Karnataka very close to the Telugu speaking region. "telugeesha masaNayya" is a contemporary of BasavaNNa. Only seven Vacanas written by him are available now. You will find his Vacanas in the 7th volume of "Samagra Vacana Samputa" published by Deptt of Kannada and Culture of Karnataka Government, in the year 1993 (pp332-34) He must be from Telugu speaking area only. I have never heard of any person joining the movement of BasavaNNa from the Tulu region. Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sri Taralabalu Jagadguru Brihanmath * Taralabalu Kendra Sirigere - 577 541, Karnataka, India * 3rd Main Road, 2nd Block Email: swamiji at giasbg01.vsnl.net.in * RT Nagar, Bangalore - 560 032 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From mcv at WXS.NL Sat May 30 23:08:05 1998 From: mcv at WXS.NL (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Sat, 30 May 98 23:08:05 +0000 Subject: sarasvatI (etymology) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227039440.23782.6896470695460731934.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> "Dominique.Thillaud" wrote: > *sel- is known by Greek "hals", currently (salt) but earlier (sea) >and homeric and ritual uses show that the word designates properly the >water-part of a beach, where the boats can land and the bath can occur. The >"bath" sense is very clear in an old formula such that "halade mustai!" >used in Eleusinian initiation. Hence, "saras" could be simply a bathing >place, able to give a common name for a river (the Greek hydronymy shows >many hal- for sweet waters). *Sal- is also one of Krahe's "Alteuropaeische" hydronyms, giving river names from Scandinavia (Sala) to Spain (Jal?n) and from Wales (Hail) to the Ukraine (Solja), passing through the Saumur, the Saale and the Szala. Are you suggesting that the original sense of the IE root was "water, bathing place" rather than "salt"? Or were you referring only to Pre-Greek? ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Sun May 31 17:33:23 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Sun, 31 May 98 10:33:23 -0700 Subject: SarasvatI (Semantics) Message-ID: <161227039445.23782.18276054228495479349.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hi, This posting is intended to focus on the semantics of selected lexemes (excluding: rasa 'juice, sap') and not an etymological excursus: "Dominique.Thillaud" wrote: > *sel- is known by Greek "hals", currently (salt) but earlier (sea)>and homeric and ritual uses show that the word designates properly the >water-part of a beach, where the boats can land and the bath can occur. The >"bath" sense is very clear in an old formula such that "halade mustai!" >used in Eleusinian initiation. Hence, "saras" could be simply a bathing >place, able to give a common name for a river (the Greek hydronymy shows >many hal- for sweet waters). Miguel Carrasquer Vidal >*Sal- is also one of Krahe's "Alteuropaeische" hydronyms, giving river names from Scandinavia (Sala) to Spain (Jal?n) and from Wales (Hail) to the Ukraine (Solja), passing through the Saumur, the Saale and the Szala. Raoul Martens >Mayrhofer has "saravati" & "sarah" = Eng. "reed"; a hint at that they may be related? Also Monier-Willams & Walde seem to relate Skt "saras-" to "sarah" = "reed". Cfr Skt "sararih" = Eng. "heron" a bird thriving in shallow or swampy water. Analogous names abound in Bahlow's "Deutschlands geographische Namenwelt". Michael Witzel had in another context noted: >Mayrhofer (new Etym. Dict.) now divides it from IE *sar "to jump" / "to start running, run, flow". [snip]... the link with ponds (IE *seles, Greek helos 'swampy depression, bog', etc. saras, sa_ras (Dm.); saru_s (Kho.) meaning 'juniper'. See also: sallo pine tree (Ku.); sarala pinus longifolia (MBh.)(CDIAL 13253)ci_li_ cypress; juniper (Sh.); ci_l pine (K.); ci_l, ci_l (P.)(CDIAL 4837). calli a reed (Ma.Tu.) (DEDR 2382). The following lexemes are cognate: salila water, sea (RV.); sarira (VS.); salila water (Pali.Pkt.); salila_ large river (Pkt.); silil-a water (Si.); sal move (Skt.)(CDIAL 13288). zar, zari fountain (Kon.lex.) sele spring, fountain=-head (Ka.); sela, selaye_r-u waterfall, cascade; jela a spring of water (Te.)(DEDR 2785). jallu rain, a shower, spray of rainwater etc.; v.i. = callu (Te.); sall- to sprinkle (Nk.); cal- (rain) falls in a shower (Pa.); jall- to sow seed, scatter (Ga.); jal- to strain water from boiled rice; jall- to swill with water; all- to sprinkle (water)(Go.); jallinai to scatter; jal- (-it-) to throw out liquids (Kuwi)(DEDR 2384). calacala a noise in wading through water (Tu.); rippling of a current or streamlet (Te.)(DEDR 2366). chara flood (S.); chalakka splashingly (N.); chal.ko splash (G.); chall overflowing of water, very heavy rain (L.P.); chala_r wave (Ku.); cha_l wave (N.); wave, spray (H.); alla waterfall, rapids (Si.); cha_lak wave (G.); chalko shower of rain (S.)(CDIAL 5002). jaru water (S.); jal (WPah.N.B.H.); jal. (G.M.); zal (A.); jal.a (Or.); jal-thal flood (N.); jala_-ta_l flood (N.); jala_ marshy, marsh (B.);jala water (Pali.Pkt.MBh.); jad.a (BHSkt.); jal.a_ watery, moist (Or.); jala_ mass of water, tank, lake (H.); zali_ya_ river-bank (A.); jal.ia_ watery (Or.); jalua_ (B.); jala_ro blight due to too much rain (WPah.); jaladhara sea (Pali)(CDIAL 5155-7). jalthal broad sheed of water (P.); flood (N.); jalthal, jal.thal sheet of water (H.)(CDIAL 5159). zala_h broad expanse of water (A.)(CDIAL 5160). cilucilu (-pp-, -tt-) to rain gently (Ta.); cilk ir.- to drizzle (Ko.); cilbi to splash water with the finger (Kor.); silka small river (Go.); cilva brook, rivulet (Pa.); s'ilka river (Kol.); silk- (-it-) to splash (Kuwi); cilicilia_ a shower; cilicilla wet (Pkt.)(DEDR 2569). ciluppu to churn (Ta.); cilku cilku noise of milk in churning (Ka.); ciluku to churn (Te.)(DEDR 2570). chalnu to churn (e.g. whey)(WPah.)(CDIAL 5002). al.akam water (Ta.)(DEDR 305). all- to sprinkle (water)(Go.); jallinai to scatter (Kuwi); callu to sprinkle, scatter (Te.)(DEDR 2384). This cluster of lexemes help postulate a semantic classification of the sememe: -sala. The classifiers are: water, churn, wave, spring, cascade/overflow, and (perhaps, juniper). It is also notable that another river originating from Pin.d.a_i glacier gets names sarayu. *sar, *seles is perhaps very close to a proto-Indian (also IE)hypothetical form. (See also the Skt. sememes: car move; sr. flow). Regards, k. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From jonathan.silk at YALE.EDU Sun May 31 17:56:33 1998 From: jonathan.silk at YALE.EDU (jonathan silk) Date: Sun, 31 May 98 12:56:33 -0500 Subject: Iranians in Ancient India Message-ID: <161227039498.23782.13237288340814384590.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I could not send this earlier because my change of email address forbade me from sending to the list -- sorry! ************** Having just moved, I've been out of the email loop for a while, so perhaps I missed it, but with regard to Iranians in India, I did not notice reference to the considerable work on the Sun Priests, mostly in the West if I recall correctly. See among others: H. v. Stietencron, _Indische Sonnenpriester_ A. Weber Ueber die Magavyakti des Krishadasa Micra (_Monatsberichte Kgl Ak Wiss Berlin_ 1879) A Weber Ueber zwei Parteischriften... ibid 1880 H Humbach Iranische Sonnenpriester in Indien, _XVII Deutscher Orientalistentag 1968_ There are also a number of books on Sun Worship in Ancient India, and see also a few articles in the journal _Purana_ 11, 12, 13. I hope I have not misunderstood the discussion. The question discussed by the works above deals with the Zaakyadviipiiya BraahmaNa, and the BhaviSya-puraaNa and the saamba-puraaNa. hoping it helps (and anyway, it is I think an issue of inherent interest, even if off the original point ;-) jonathan Jonathan SILK ****Note New Email Address***: jonathan.silk at yale.edu From raoul at MARTENS.PP.SE Sun May 31 11:21:41 1998 From: raoul at MARTENS.PP.SE (Raoul Martens) Date: Sun, 31 May 98 13:21:41 +0200 Subject: sarasvatI (etymology) In-Reply-To: <35918dc2.100059176@mail.wxs.nl> Message-ID: <161227039442.23782.2312430171614242686.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Referring to recent postings by Dominique Thillaud and Miquel Carrasquer, although no indologist, I would like to direct attention to that Mayrhofer has "saravati" & "sarah" = Eng. "reed"; a hint at that they may be related? Also Monier-Willams & Walde seem to relate Skt "saras-" to "sarah" = "reed". Cfr Skt "sararih" = Eng. "heron" a bird thriving in shallow or swampy water. Analogous names abound in Bahlow's "Deutschlands geographische Namenwelt". The Sarasvati river probably originated following the end of the last glacial trend ca 11.000 BC when mighty glaciers in the Himalayas started melting. It's becoming dry many thousands of years later could thus, at least partially, be due to the diminishing or finally changing flow of water from the mountains. Rajaram thinks that Sarasvati disappeared because of general extreme drought some hundred years before 2000 BC which led to the downfall of both the Indus Valley and the Akkadian cultures. However, Feuerstein et a. believe that Saras- vati's disappearance in the Thar desert east of Indus was due to tectonic plate displacements which changed the courses of its tributaries Yamuna and Sutlej. Whatever the case, a great number of settlements along the former river bed, at the shores of once shallow lakes with stagnant water which dried up, were aban- doned. Misra (Eastern Anthropologist Vol. 45, 1992) says: "More than two-thirds of all the settlements have been found along the Sarasvati River and a majority of the remaining sites are in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat. The Indus Valley proper has less than one hundred sites of a total of about 2500." Couldn't the Sarasvati name thus be related to the time before the final drying up of the shallow and swampy lakes, where evidently many settlements existed? Regards, Raoul Martens From kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM Sun May 31 20:26:37 1998 From: kalyan97 at YAHOO.COM (S. Kalyanaraman) Date: Sun, 31 May 98 13:26:37 -0700 Subject: Truth and method in Indology, III Message-ID: <161227039455.23782.2094167575019640580.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---Lars Martin Fosse wrote: > I think you forget one very important factor here - MONEY. So, the thread should read: truth, method and money! I remember reading about an ancient Tibetan scholar (who came to India to study Buddhism and alchemy from Nagarjuna) stating that one needed lots of money to learn about religion in India... k. == 34315 Eucalyptus Terrace, Fremont, CA 94555, USA. http://www.probys.com/sarasvati http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch1208a.htm http://members.tripod.com/~navagraha http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2875(Cosmic Dancer Shiva-Nataraja) kalyan97 at yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From reusch at UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU Sun May 31 21:19:53 1998 From: reusch at UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU (B. Reusch) Date: Sun, 31 May 98 14:19:53 -0700 Subject: sarasvatI (etymology) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227039459.23782.13946336116340731265.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dominique.Thillaud wrote: > *ser- is known by Latin "serO" (to string) with good cognates in >Celtic, Germanic, Greek and Tokharian. A very common metaphora shows the >speech as a string of words (we say today "syntagmatic axis") and Latin >give us the word "sermO" (coherent speech > sermon) who use it. Acc. to Pokorny, Latin *sermo* is connected with an IE root *suer* = speaking, etc., which may be a later form of an older IE root *wer* = speaking. > *sel- is known by Greek "hals", currently (salt) but earlier (sea) Pokorny relates *hals* and *sal* to a IE root *sal* > Comments are welcomed, As far as SarasvatI is concerned, *saras-* shows up in Pokorny under IE *selos* = swamp, sea (with sarasvatI/haraxvati = river name as a parenthetical remark). Also mentioned under IE *selos* are Gk. *helos* and Lat. *solum* Pokorny has another entry for IE *ser* = flowing, running, gushing. Here he lists Skt. *sisarti* *sarati* *sarayu* etc. and, although with variant etymologies in a footnote, Gk. *oros* and Lat. *serum* Beatrice Reusch University of California, Berkeley From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Sun May 31 22:25:00 1998 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Sun, 31 May 98 15:25:00 -0700 Subject: Truth and method in Indology, III Message-ID: <161227039461.23782.14323599105889359247.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > >> I think you forget one very important factor here - MONEY. > >So, the thread should read: truth, method and money! Thus, in the space of three postings, we have gone from Popper to Lakatos. Kuhn is there somewhere, implicitly, looking at the heat generated by the paradigm shift that some are demanding. Bravo :-))) Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Sun May 31 23:28:49 1998 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Sun, 31 May 98 16:28:49 -0700 Subject: Truth and method in Indology, III Message-ID: <161227039466.23782.3685427021692714992.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >If Indian universities and institutions make serious efforts to get the latest >information and get trained in the best methods in medical and technical >disciplines and establish international exchanges etc. in order to acquire the >ability to make reliable decisions in these fields >(and to make atom bombs that WORK . . . ), >why should much lower standards be accepted if someone claims to make reliable >statements about the cultural and linguistic past of South Asia ? May I point out that getting trained in Munchen or Paris or Cambridge (near Boston) is not at all a necessary prerequisite for making reliable decisions in any field? Do note that Dr. Abdul Kalam, the father of the Indian bomb and the Indian long-range missiles, is completely *Indi*genous - he does not have a single scientific degree from outside the country. And I daresay he is much better than many of the phoren-returned scientists working under him put together. Making bombs that WORK is fairly easy for scientists who know the physics involved, irrespective of their nationalities or the countries where they got educated. It is this very ease that makes the complicated treaties necessary, to deny some nations the materials to actually produce what is theoretically possible. And perhaps this is where the really explosive material lies - the assumption that if somebody has not been trained in the West, he/she is not worth being listened to. It necessitates that much bigger a blast then, to be heard as a legitimate voice in the discourse. This is not an argument for Indian isolationism, nor is it meant to legitimate the shoddy work that some Indian paNDitam-manyAH produce. I just want to point out that maybe international scholarship (in all fields) will stand to gain by giving a fair hearing to those not from the West, instead of dismissing their opinions as arising simply out of chauvinism or jingoism, or holding a lack of Western training against them. Being from a post-colonial nation, Indians are especially sensitive to this issue. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM Sun May 31 23:49:41 1998 From: mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM (S Krishna) Date: Sun, 31 May 98 16:49:41 -0700 Subject: Truth and method in Indology (study of ancient South Asian languages and cultures) Message-ID: <161227039468.23782.2473654873338233403.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >From: "Jan E.M. Houben" > In fact Mueller's guess was subdivided into smaller ones, which brought him to 1000 B.C. as the latest date for the Rgveda. His 'firmest' starting point was the date of the Buddha at ca. the 6th century B.C. In his time this was either a guess or a naive acceptance of Buddhist sources; it would take much philological research and the testing of several diverging hypotheses>?> Is this the way he established the date of the Vedas?...I remember reading Dr Thomas Trautmann's comments about work in the late 18th century which centred around the meeting between Alexander and Porus ( which was historically verifiable and had been recorede by both sides)...the chronology was then back -calculated according to the Christian calender and the date of the Veda arrived at...I believe that Mueller's estimates for the date of the Veda are simply a more detailed examination of guesstimates that were already existing by then.... A request: How about requesting archeologists involved in IVC research to come forward and present their views...We've seen rephrasings of their words by people who are Vedicists, philologists or others..I think that if the concerned gentlemen were brought in themselves, then a more meaningful( or atleast a more spirited debate:-) would result, which is infinitely better than some of the latest postings full of one-liners aimed at tearing down the other person's post rather than bringing in anything new.... One interesting development from the discussion seems to be that we have *obtained* *limits* for Veda composition: The Sarasvatists( from what I understand) think that it happened in 8000 BC and Manansala-ists( after Paul Kekai Manansala) think it was composed in 500 BC...so why don't we just average the whole thing out( Earlier on, there were complaints by some nettors that results were obtained thru unscientific methods and that Seidenberg's papers/methodology should be emulated) and say that the Vedas were composed in 3750 BC?:-) Back to whipping the dead horse again....:-) Regards, Krishna > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Sun May 31 23:57:48 1998 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Sun, 31 May 98 16:57:48 -0700 Subject: The south Asian bombs Message-ID: <161227039470.23782.13495811481787463538.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> It is now almost three weeks after Pokhran-II, and a day after the most recent test in Chagai. I've seen no direct reference to the nuclear testing on this list. Maybe Sarasvati and Dravidian etymology are explosive enough for us here. Maybe the bomb is not one of the issues that Indology should bother about. If so, it would be much appreciated if indirect references to it, frequently in a negative/contemptuous tone, are also avoided. If there is to be any talk about the bombs, let it be done directly and in the open. The ten (or eleven) explosions in south Asia have brought us no further into Kaliyuga than the thousands of explosions that preceded them elsewhere in the world. And unbelievable as it may seem, a substantial portion (or all) of the newest Indian and Pakistani bombs is due to domestic expertise, and in spite of Western opposition, not due to any great assistance. This might be a bizarre thing to be proud of, but such is international politics. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From jonathan.silk at YALE.EDU Sun May 31 22:51:16 1998 From: jonathan.silk at YALE.EDU (jonathan silk) Date: Sun, 31 May 98 17:51:16 -0500 Subject: -vimzati? -vimzatikA? Message-ID: <161227039508.23782.16238128962914400241.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Probably this is a stupid question, but: Is there something more than free variation going on in the parallel use of both VetalapamcavimzatikA and Vetalapamcavimzati? A relatively brief look at the books I have which might mention this turned up nothing other than the fact that editions and studies seem to use the two interchangeably (as far as I could notice in a cursory glance). Jonathan SILK ****Note New Email Address***: jonathan.silk at yale.edu From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Sun May 31 22:33:56 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan) Date: Sun, 31 May 98 18:33:56 -0400 Subject: Smoking, seasoning, and cooking in Dravidian Message-ID: <161227039463.23782.1932661008787144150.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In the Dravidian concept of seasoning, i.e., adding spices was tantamount to smoking. This is revealed by the words used to describe both processes. For instance, both seasoning and smoking were referred to by the term "pukai" in classical Tamil. Consider the text below. pulavu nARRatta pain taTi pU nARRatta pukai koLIi Un2 tuvai kaRi cORu uNTu ???. ( puRanAn2Uru 14.12-14) This can be translated as "having eaten the rice and mashed meat curry made by causing the raw flesh-smelling meat piece to take on seasoning with spreading (good) smell". Here the term used for seasoning is "pukai". DEDR 4235 shows "Ta. pukai smoke, mist, vapour, steam; (-v-, -nt-) to smoke emit vapor or steam; (-pp-, -tt-) ?to cause to smoke?;.... pukAr ?mist, fog, haze?.....Te, poga ?smoke, fume?; pogayu, povayu ?to smoke?; pogucu, pogacu, pogapu ?to season with spices?; pogapu, pogupu, pOpu ?seasoning?." (DEDR has missed to include the meaning seasoning for the Tamil entry.) Thus Tamil and Telugu both have this meaning. As I have mentioned earlier in one of my postings, the nature of the smoke is to spread. (The root "puk-" means "to spread".) One of the results of seasoning is a good smell, which also spreads. In the following description of Madurai, it is described as a city where "the fatty meat piece is heated with its fat melting, and items fried in clarified butter are making noise with the seasoning smoke spreading to resemble rain clouds". niNam Un2 cuTTu urukku amaiya ney kan2intu vaRai Arppa kurUuk kuyp pukai mazai maGkulin2 parantu............. (maturaikkAJci 755-758) In this poem, the word for seasoning is "kuy". DEDR 1760 lists Ta. kuy seasoning with spices, spicy seasoned curry. Te. kUra a vegetable, garden- stuff or curry-stuff. Kol. (Br.) kucce curry. Nk. kucce cooked vegetables...Go. (Tr.) kusrI dal, i.e., cooked pulse....Kui kUsa edible leaves, greens, vegetables, herbs, addition to curry. Kuwi (S.) kuca curry..." The noise resulting from the addition of seasoning is described in a post- Classical text as given below. kuJcaram ayA uyirttu an2aiya kuy kamaz am cuvai aTicilai amarntu uNTArkaL tAm (cIvakacintAmaNi 2941.1-2) We can infer the process of adding seasoning from this. When seasonings like, mustard, black gram, cumin seeds are fried in fat -hot oil or clarified butter- and added to a sauce or mashed curry, the water in the relatively colder sauce or curry is vaporized and rises as fumes. There is also an accompanying noise. This noise is compared to the an elephant letting out a deep breath (sighing). In the examples shown above, "kuy" is used as a noun. The following line from a CT text indicates that "kuy" functions as a verb too. kuykural malinta kozum tuvai aTicil ( puRanAn2Uru 250.1) This is translated as "the rich mashed food (made with) a lot of seasoning noise". Obviously, here kuy means "to season". But is that its original meaning? I do not think so. One set of meanings given for "kuy" by Tamil Lexicon is "burnt odors, incense, odorous smoke". In fact, the original meaning of "kuy" is embedded in the word "kuyin" (DEDR 1765) meaning "cloud". A comparison of the word "kuyin" meaning "cloud" and the lines "kurUuk kuyppukai mazai magkulin2 parantu?" indicates that the original meaning of the root "kuy" is also "to smoke" same as "pukai". That the basic meaning of "kuy" is smoking is also indicated by related words in other Dravidian languages. The recent finding that the alternation of radical u>o is possible even without the presence of any derivative vowel "a" (See DEDR 4281 Ta. puy, poy - to be pulled out), allows us to link Tamil "kuy" with central and north Dravidian words such as the following. DEDR 2226 KonDa gOyi smoke (of kitchen). Pe. koy smoke; kOd- (kOtt-) to smoke (intr.); kOt- (kOtt-) id. (trans.), burn incense. ?Pa. gUJ- to smoke; gUJi, gUJjkud smoke. ? Go. (W. Ph.) kusso smoke; (SR. Ch. Mu.) kosso, (Mu. Ma.) kosoy, (G.) kosoyi soot; (Tr.) kossO soot on bottom of cooking-pot (Voc. 954). ?Kui kuhula smoke. Although DEDR does not show them, Kurukh kuhkuhrnA meaning "to rise up in clouds (said only of smoke and dust)", kuhRa?Ana "to apply smoke to, to fumigate", kuilA "charcoal" (Source: An Oraon-English Dictionary); and Malto kuhe "mist fog" (Source: Malto-Hindi-English Dictionary) also seem to be related "to kuy". It is probable that with a metaphorical extension of smoking, the same word has come to be used for seasoning as well as cooking because these processes create either smoke or smoke-like vapors. Regards S. Palaniappan From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Sun May 31 23:00:33 1998 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan) Date: Sun, 31 May 98 19:00:33 -0400 Subject: Correction to smoking, seasoning and cooking in Dravidian Message-ID: <161227039464.23782.121283774951538645.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In my earlier posting, the discussion on DEDR listing of "pukai" should read as given below. DEDR 4235 shows "Ta. pukai smoke, mist, vapour, steam; (-v-, -nt-) to smoke emit vapor or steam; (-pp-, -tt-) ?to cause to smoke?;.... pukAr ?mist, fog, haze?.....Te, poga, pova smoke, fume; pogayu, povayu to smoke; pogucu, pogacu, pogapu (K. also) pogapu to smoke, fumigate, fry, season with spices; pogapu, pogupu, frying, seasoning with spices......" (DEDR has missed to include the meaning seasoning for the Tamil entry.) Please note the correction. Thanks. Regards S. Palaniappan From thillaud at UNICE.FR Sun May 31 17:49:55 1998 From: thillaud at UNICE.FR (Dominique.Thillaud) Date: Sun, 31 May 98 19:49:55 +0200 Subject: sarasvatI (etymology) In-Reply-To: <35918dc2.100059176@mail.wxs.nl> Message-ID: <161227039475.23782.1772613703190383841.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal answer: >> *sel- is known by Greek "hals", currently (salt) but earlier (sea) >>and homeric and ritual uses show that the word designates properly the >>water-part of a beach, where the boats can land and the bath can occur. The >>"bath" sense is very clear in an old formula such that "halade mustai!" >>used in Eleusinian initiation. Hence, "saras" could be simply a bathing >>place, able to give a common name for a river (the Greek hydronymy shows >>many hal- for sweet waters). > >*Sal- is also one of Krahe's "Alteuropaeische" hydronyms, giving >river names from Scandinavia (Sala) to Spain (Jal?n) and from Wales >(Hail) to the Ukraine (Solja), passing through the Saumur, the Saale >and the Szala. > >Are you suggesting that the original sense of the IE root was "water, >bathing place" rather than "salt"? Or were you referring only to >Pre-Greek? Both. My research is mainly based on Greek files but Skr. saras (if cognate) could suggest a greater extension. I'm not sure that the opposition salted/sweet is the key and, when kRSNa evokes His preeminence in all sort of things, He says (BhG X,24d = Mbh VI,32,24d): "sarasAm asmi sAgaraH", implying that the ocean is a saras and, even, the better. Knowing if salt > sea or sea > salt is not clear but I could prefer the second choice by the simple evidence that the salt comes from the sea. This fact is perhaps sustained by the gender: hals "sea" is feminine, but the salt is commonly masculine, frequently neutral as the fruit of a tree. An other puzzling fact is the Skr. lavaNa, perhaps a witness of the same semantic shift if we think to Latin lavere, Greek loutron ... Probably a file to open again. Regards, Dominique Dominique THILLAUD Universite' de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France From JHOUBEN at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL Sun May 31 20:53:39 1998 From: JHOUBEN at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL (Jan E.M. Houben) Date: Sun, 31 May 98 21:53:39 +0100 Subject: Truth and method in Indology (study of ancient South Asian languages and cultures) Message-ID: <161227039446.23782.2245221475264766907.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Grateful to those who are investing much time to produce a breathtaking virtual discussion on WILD & tamed horses and rivers, and, on a deeper level, on Indo- Aryan im/e-migration, I cannot resist making a few comments from the sideline (in three different posts, reacting to three selected statements, one still stemming from March when some thoughts were exchanged on how to make discussions like the present one more rewarding). Ca. 13 May 1998, Sn. Subrahmanya wrote: >It is also interesting that scholars who argue that Max Muller's works are >outdated have no qualms in still accepting a chronology that was proposed by >him. My reaction (a bit different from Witzel's, 20 May) would be: If someone argues that Max Mueller's works are outdated, there can be no logical necessity for him either to agree or to disagree with his conclusions. The quality of Max Mueller's date for the Rgveda depends first of all on the method through which it was reached. If the method was "guessing" than the result is nothing more or less than a guess. My mathematics teacher was always more satisfied with an incorrect result reached through good methods, than with a correct result reached through wrong methods. In fact Mueller's guess was subdivided into smaller ones, which brought him to 1000 B.C. as the latest date for the Rgveda. His 'firmest' starting point was the date of the Buddha at ca. the 6th century B.C. In his time this was either a guess or a naive acceptance of Buddhist sources; it would take much philological research and the testing of several diverging hypotheses before the Buddha was generally accepted as a historical personality (rather than, e.g., the hero of a solar myth) in the first decades of the present century (esp. on the basis of Oldenberg's arguments). Although the Buddha's date is still not precise, it is now much more than an (educated) guess: textual sources, Buddhist lineages, contextual archeological evidence for important cultural transitions (urbanisation) in the Buddha's main geographical area in the Ganges basin, mostly converge to the fourth or fifth century as the period of a historical Buddha (cf works ed. by Bechert, and review article on Indology web site). Mueller's next step was to accept that the Vedic Samhitas and Brahmanas must have been well-established in the time of the Buddha and early followers who are aware of these texts and reject the intricate and socially deeply consequential ritual system with which they are inseparably bound up (or rather, the Buddha of the Pali canon suggests thorough reforms: teaching what a true Aryan would accept, what a true Brahmin would do, what a true sacrifice would consist of). In spite of the uncertainty factor of the relatively big gap between the historical Buddha and the major final redaction of the Pali sources (fourth century A.D. when Buddhaghosa's commentaries leave only little room for variation; reflections from earlier versions are preserved in Chinese), this step of Mueller basically still stands (cf. e.g. Winternitz, Hist. of Ind. Lit. I, p. 281f): comparatively old parts of the canon presuppose some familiarity of the Buddha and the early Buddhists with a Brahminical system in which Vedic hymns and rituals comparable to the presently known ones were already well- established. Apart from the Buddhist texts, also Patanjali (250 B.C.) and Panini (one or two centuries earlier, and, NB, geographically far removed from the main area of early Buddhism) contain their own indications for socially well-established Vedic texts and rituals (for the texts cf. e.g. Thieme 1935 and Bronkhorst in Paninian Studies ed. by M. Deshpande and S. Bhate, Ann Arbor 1991). But from Buddha's 600 B.C. on, Mueller guessed further: the Brahmanas might have arisen in a period of 200 years before the Buddha, and the Samhitas in a period of 200 years before this, leading to 1000 B.C. as the date of the oldest Samhita (the Rg). As Gonda wrote more than two decades ago in the latest major handbook on Vedic literature, Mueller's "ideas of chronological uccession of 'literary genres' and of corresponding forms of religious interest can no longer be maintained." After Muller's early guess (1859), L. von Schroeder, for instance, guessed 1500 B.C. as the date of the Rgveda in 1887; and, on the basis of problematic starting points, Jacobi calculated ca. 4500 B.C. What is the methodological status of modern estimates for the "period of the Rgveda", compared to that of the earlier ones of e.g. Max Mueller and Schroeder? I will not try to judge existing attempts, but rather point to an ideal but possible situation which modern scholarship may try to attain. As far as philology is concerned, centuries of continuity prevails. -- Methodologically, there are important parallels between European and traditional Indian philology, cf. my articles in IIAS Newsletter 13-14 (accessible via http://iias.leidenuniv.nl -- Now, as in the nineteenth century (and earlier), reliable texts are to be established, and as many possibly relevant texts as possible are to be read and re-read. Especially compared to M. Mueller many more relevant texts have become available. Linguistic and etymolgical studies have advanced, and, whatever their intrinsic value, I enlist them here (for the issue under discussion) as additional tools for the philologist. IDEALLY, therefore, the present level of philological scholarship contributing to the issue could be higher (i.e., methodologically similar but richer on account of a greater number of available edited texts, better tools, etc.). Archeology was still a very young science in the last century when many scholars in Europe remained satisfied with a 'Biblical' date for the origin of the earth (and Indian traditional scholars with Puranic dates for the same). Presuppositions have been renewed, methods have been sharpened, tools have improved (e.g. with carbon-dating). The archeological information for the relevant periods in South Asia is therefore richer and methodologically far superior to that of the 19th century. To bridge the gap between archeological and philological data, we may resort to the old method of guessing. But in addition, the ever evolving social, socio- linguistic and ethnographic sciences provide theories which may help to bridge the gap in a more methodical way (hence in a more falsifiable way, hence in a scientifically more satisfactory way). It is therefore obvious that the preconditions are there to make MUCH BETTER statements regarding the Age of the Rgveda than in the previous century. And also that intensive exchange between disciplines is much needed. The time may not yet have arrived to make definite statements. This need not be a drawback: being able to work with uncertainties marked a certain maturity in sciences like mathematics and physics. (After all, when one issue is more or less solved, a new one of an earlier era presents itself with more urgency.) But as far as our issue is concerned, who among present-day scholars can claim he makes full use of the favorable preconditions? Greetings, JH From JHOUBEN at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL Sun May 31 20:55:35 1998 From: JHOUBEN at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL (Jan E.M. Houben) Date: Sun, 31 May 98 21:55:35 +0100 Subject: Truth and method in Indology, II Message-ID: <161227039448.23782.14386640349754238698.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Thu, 28 May 1998 "Paul K. Manansala" wrote: >As far as I'm concerned the RV could have been written around ~500 BCE rather >than ~1500 BCE. . . . RV . . . written around ~500 BCE . . . Dear Sir, whatever your fields of learning, apparently they do not include either Vedic philology or archeology of South Asia. Indeed, a few months ago, when suggestions were being made for articles/books to be read before participating in an email-discussion related to Indo-Aryan im- /e-migration in May, a primer like Basham's The Wonder that was India was unfortunately not mentioned. From JHOUBEN at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL Sun May 31 21:01:05 1998 From: JHOUBEN at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL (Jan E.M. Houben) Date: Sun, 31 May 98 22:01:05 +0100 Subject: Truth and method in Indology, III Message-ID: <161227039451.23782.11069894638478354531.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> More than a month ago, Fri 20 Mar 1998 Edwin Bryant wrote: >You are right that no serious scholar talks of invasions anymore (although >see Allchin as late as 1993 in Possehl's "Harappan Civilization"). >However, we should be aware that many people (including scholars in many >universities in India) do not have access to state-of-the-art material [ . . . ] This is a sympathetic position, but: If Indian universities and institutions make serious efforts to get the latest information and get trained in the best methods in medical and technical disciplines and establish international exchanges etc. in order to acquire the ability to make reliable decisions in these fields (and to make atom bombs that WORK . . . ), why should much lower standards be accepted if someone claims to make reliable statements about the cultural and linguistic past of South Asia ? After all, this past contains a rich 'cultural capital' (to speak with Bourdieu), and its own potentially explosive material. The quality of statements in this area depend on the quality of the methods and that of the data, and the quality of the latter again depends on methods. Let Indian scholars hold dear their cultural past, and let them challenge accepted hypotheses: if their methods have become solid by international training and exchange (one may think of e.g. Sukthankar and Dandekar having been partly trained in Germany, Subrahmanya Iyer having studied in Paris, etc.) the results of their research are on the long term more valuable for both Indian and international scholarship. It is said that a rice-plant grows better if replanted in another bed: something similar could very well apply to academicians, including philologists and archeologists. These are just some reflections on: how to proceed in a better way? Greetings, JH From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Sun May 31 20:19:25 1998 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Sun, 31 May 98 22:19:25 +0200 Subject: Truth and method in Indology, III Message-ID: <161227039453.23782.12797955034168770007.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 22:01 31.05.98 +0100, you wrote: >More than a month ago, Fri 20 Mar 1998 Edwin Bryant wrote: > >>You are right that no serious scholar talks of invasions anymore (although >>see Allchin as late as 1993 in Possehl's "Harappan Civilization"). >>However, we should be aware that many people (including scholars in many >>universities in India) do not have access to state-of-the-art material >[ . . . ] > >This is a sympathetic position, but: >If Indian universities and institutions make serious efforts to get the latest >information and get trained in the best methods in medical and technical >disciplines and establish international exchanges etc. in order to acquire the >ability to make reliable decisions in these fields >(and to make atom bombs that WORK . . . ), >why should much lower standards be accepted if someone claims to make reliable >statements about the cultural and linguistic past of South Asia ? After all, >this past contains a rich 'cultural capital' (to speak with Bourdieu), and its >own potentially explosive material. I think you forget one very important factor here - MONEY. India has invested in the "hard" sciences, and in those skills that will make India - presumably - work like a 21st century regional power. But since India's means are limited, something has to give, and in this case, I think that "something" are the humanities. In other word: Indian humanities are seriously underfunded, and have been so for a long period. Result: Indian research libraries are not updated on scholarly material from the West, both as far as books are concerned and as far as journals are concerned. Not to mention the fact that most Indian scholars would be utterly unable to buy books published in the West for personal use. (Some of these books are even beyond MY purse!). It is clear that Indian and Western scholarship is out of step. I think funding may be one of the reasons. But it would be interesting to get some data from Indian scholars working in India on how the the funding situation works. Best regards, Lars Martin Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Tel: +47 22 32 12 19 Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no Mobile phone: 90 91 91 45 From JHOUBEN at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL Sun May 31 21:34:59 1998 From: JHOUBEN at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL (Jan E.M. Houben) Date: Sun, 31 May 98 22:34:59 +0100 Subject: Indo-Aryan im-/e-migration discussion and beyond Message-ID: <161227039457.23782.4532825497511206319.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The recently flaring-up of the email discussion on Indo-Aryan im/e-migration (focused on horses and rivers), has shown several things, among them: quite diverging starting points; and: lack of understanding of each other's position; but above all: an implicit agreement on matters of method: good philology means reading all relevant sources; good archeology means well-described findings; good extrapolations from "direct data" are backed up by parallels in other cultural areas or by social or socio-linguistic theories. Is there a way to proceed the discussion and to make it more fruitfull for all participants, no matter his/her expectations, hopes, emotional attachments etc.? In my view, there is such a way: a focus on improving the method and the data (the latter being again based on method). It could also be more fruitful to focus on part-problems rather than directly on the far-away Indo-Aryan im-/e-migration problem. One part-problem which is important both in an immigration-scenario and in an emigration-scenario is the problem of the age of the Vedic literature. A focus on this closer-to-home issue could be more directly fruitful and provide a better view on the im/e- migration problem. So how old is the Vedic literature really? Each statement about this should probably be indexed according to the evidence and estimates on which it is based. The two periods of urbanization are now archeologically well established, and, both in im- and in the e-migration scenarios, in between these periods some Vedic acculturated Aryans must have been around in the north of the Indian subcontinent. A large number of fixed Rgvedic hymns are presupposed by all Yajurvedic texts, but the former know of barley rather than rice, while the latter employ rice in offerings they prescribe. The collection of Rgvedic hymns must have been largely closed before the corresponding transition (otherwise we would have a few hymns referring to rice-offerings), though some variations in ordering and redaction remained possible. In later times the Rgvedic hymns are fixed in more and more precise ways (zAkalya, preceding pANini). But in the Vedic hymns themselves, the creation of NEW hymns (according to authentic and traditional techniques) is highly valued. So if we go back in time, there is more and more room for an increased entropy in the Rgvedic hymns, and there must be a *melting point* when TECHNIQUES of composing are fixed, but only few hymns as available now have been petrified. To determine this melting point and to associate it with an archeological context will be an important task of cooperating Vedic philologists and South Asian archeologists, whether working from an im- or e-migration background. My initial view which I am ready to modify if good arguments are presented, is that the melting point of Rgvedic hymns may well be somewhere between the two urbanization periods, while the nature of the techniques of composition seem to link it with other IE-traditions. s'ubham astu, JH