Answer to Mr. Ararwal

[Yaroslav V. Vassilkov]

>From yavass Wed Sep  1 14:33:40 MSD 1999
Dear Mr Agarwal,
        sorry, but I can not answer both your brief posting on the list and
the large private one: this is the single answer to both. I have
a lot of work at the moment and there is no time to oppose all your
arguments. I think that there is also no sense to do it. If you prefer to
believe in Vedic Harappans, common origin of Sanskrit and Dravidian,
"astronomical date of the MahAbhArata" and all that set of pseudo-patriotic
fantasies, I am afraid no argumented objections will make you change your
mind. It is a matter of quasi-religious belief, not of scholarly differences.
        Thank you very much for your frank admittance of the fact that except
the marginal example of Dr. Elst (whose chief contribution to Indian studies
is constituted, as it seems, by his support of the Hindutva point of view in
the Ayodhya controversy) all other protagonists of the "Anti-AIT" or
"Out of India" theory are not Indologists, but diletanti. You also wrote in
one of your letters that Rajaram's book is a popular book addressed to
non-specialists. So I simply can not understand: why do you try so
insistently to propagate your views on the INDOLOGY professional list, where
they have no chances to meet a positive responce?
        You gallantly warned George Thompson that "in the interest of his own
self preservation" he should not use "pejorative terms" in relation to the
creators of "Anti-AIT" theory, because this theory is very popular in India
now. For me the popularity of such views in India is a real psychological
mystery. Here, in Russia it is said in our schoolbooks that Ancient Slavs,
our forefathers, came to the territory of European Russia in 5th-6th
centuries CE (before that the country had been populated by Iranians,
Finno-Ugrians and other ethnic groups). By the way, neither in the first
written sources in Old Russian, which appear in IX-X centuries, nor in folklore
there is no mention of the migration which took place only several
centuries earlier! But what I want to say is this: I can not understand why
should I (or any other Russian) want to question the fact of the migration?
Why should I want to rebel against all historical, linguistic and
archaeological data in order to assert that Russians lived on this land for
many millenia and created in times immemorial most developed civilization on
earth? This is not to say that there are not in Russia some people who
really believe such things (among their inventions there is, by the way,
the most ancient esoterical "Russian Veda") - but, thank God, such people
are not welcomed at scholarly forums or at the Universities here. They
open their own web-sites, publish articles in the tabloids and make speeches
at the meetings of people who blame for the sufferings of Russia all
foreigners - from the West, East or South (to the North there are only
Polar bears!). But not in the Universities. Not in schools. And it is a
great pity, if the situation in India is different.
        Best regards
                                        Yaroslav Vassilkov