Truth and method in Indology (study of ancient South Asian languages and cultures)

[S Krishna]

>From:         "Jan E.M. Houben" <JHOUBEN at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL>

>        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





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