!Re: Sri Aurobindo

[Lars Martin Fosse]

> In this respect,  Dayananda states in his "Summary of my beliefs" (at
> No. 30) that:
>
> "This country is called Aryavarta because it has been the abode of the
> Aryas from the very dawn of Creation. It is bounded on the north by
> the Himalayas, on the south by the Vindhyachala mountains, on the west
> by the Attok (Indus), and on the east by the Brahmaputra. The land
> included within these limits is Aryavarta and those that have been
> living in it from times immemorial are also called Aryas."
>
> (Light on Truth: or An English Translation of the Satyarth Prakash.
> Trans. Chiranjiva Bharadwaja.  Delhi: Sarvadeshik Arya Pratinidhi
> Sabha, 1975, p.729.)
>
> And Yadav, in his introduction to Dayananda's autobiography, writes:
>
> "Dayanand's next concern was to arouse national consciousness among
> his people. To begin with, he examined the plans of his predecessors
> and concluded that these men, though well-intentioned, had borrowed
> too heavily from the West. He believed that no nation could build its
> edifice on a foreign foundation. He, therefore, gave a clarion call to
> his countrymen to go back to the Vedas, and to lay their foundations
> on them.
> This was, as rightly put by Aurobindo Ghosh, surely a master glance of
> practical intution on Dayanand's part, for, in a real sense, the Vedas
> were the original source of religion, culture and civilization of
> India; they were the foundations of Indian thought, philosophy and
> knowledge; and they 'concealed in themselves the  seed for a radical
> new birth of the Indian nation.' "

Thank you Louis. This means that some of my other sources are not
entirely correct, or at least not complete. Here is what Jaffrelot says:

The Aryans of the Vedic era are described as a chosen people to whom
"the formless God revealed perfect knowledge of the Veda". Some time
after Creation, they came down from Tibet into Aryavarta - a virgin
territory between the Himalayas and Vindhya mountains, the Indus and the
Brahmaputra - and then became the "sovereign lords of the Earth", whose
inhabitants they instructed in Sanskrit, the "mother of all languages".
Jaffrelot refers to "The Light of Truth", pp. 248, 277-9, and 341-5.

Hans Joachim Klimkeit also mentions the Tibetan theory (Klimkeit,
Hans-Joachim. 1981. Der politische Hinduismus. Indische Denker zwischen
religiöser Reform und politischem Erwachen. Wiesbaden: Otto
Harrassowitz., p. 233)

Jordans also mentions the Tibetan theory, sp. 254. However, Jordans also
state that D. rejected the Aryan invasion theory. In other words, the
Aryans that presumably entered India from Tibet came to an emptly
territory. This is admittedly an important nuance.

So once again, thank you for the reference. It is very useful, and shows
that the seeds of Indigenous Aryanism go back into the nineteenth
century, even if Dayananda is somewhat ambivalent in his formulations.

Lars Martin