Harappan Euhemerus

[Steve Farmer]

Paul Kekai Manansala writes:

> The Witzel-Farmer response is strange.
>
> It suggests that Shendge's differing views constitute "attacks"
> on Indological research and that they put her in the same company
> with "Hinduvta" folk.
>
> Does this mean Witzel and Farmer are in the same company with
> white supremacists who regularly quote from Western Indologists'
> pet theories?

Read what we said more closely. We point out that Shendge's
books, reaching back to the 70s, anticipated much of the
current wave of historical fiction (aka "revisionism") by linking
Harappan and Vedic civilizations in fantastic ways hardly
less absurd than Rajaram's. Have you actually read Shendge's
works? Do so and you will find the full range of Rgvedic gods --
Indra and Varuna and Vishnu and Rudra and the Ashvins, etc. --
transformed euhemeristically into Indus Valley officials or
flesh-and-blood heroes of the "Aryas" who supposedly brought the
Valley to its knees. What remarkable hindsight, we ask,
lay behind the following passage we quoted from her most recent
work --_The Aryas: Fact without Fancy or Fiction_ -- which
reconstructs in wonderous detail the tale of a top-secret spying
mission by "Vishnu the young, tall, lanky assistant of Indra":

  When the Aryas could not defeat the Asuras
  in straight fight, they beg for a patch of
  land and are granted one grudgingly. Erecting
  temporary sheds, they begin to live there. Vishnu,
  the young, tall, lanky assistant of Indra, disappears
  thrice. Where he goes is not known but apparently he
  makes three exploratory trips under disguise into the
  Asura territory to collect information on their sensitive
  points. On its basis a strategy is hatched. The quarrels
  and jealousies between the Asura chiefs or courtiers are
  used and one is aided against the other. So Indra emerges
  as a friend of some of them. With their help, he gets
  access to the Asura weapons and secures a vajra, thunderbolt,
  from the chief counsellor of the Asuras, Ushanas...

Nothing like a top-secret Asuran thunderbolt when you get
into trouble!

And would Manansala please name some of these unnamed "white
supremacists who regularly quote from Western Indologists' pet
theories?" Is he speaking of "pet theories" of the AIT variety,
from the 1940s -- as I suspect?

Steve Farmer