From malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU Wed Mar 1 00:32:41 2000 From: malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU (Yashwant Malaiya) Date: Tue, 29 Feb 00 17:32:41 -0700 Subject: "Dalitstan" (RE: 'INDIA ABROAD' on new textbooks) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056217.23782.18355446002882789397.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Samar Abbas wrote: >There are several facts indicating that Rama was a historical figure >which are summarised in these sites by the Dalit and *** schools > http://dalitstan.org/books/bibai/bibai3.html >... The site is about the native "Dravidian Negroids" conquered during "Krishnaite" and "Ramaite" invasions etc. The "Dalitstan" website, apparently a well funded operation, is run by some people in Texas, who are certainly not Dalit (or Indian). It seems that the same people have created the websites: Rajputana Liberation Front of Sakastan Sakastan Liberation Organization Sudrastan Books Mughalstan Message Board These other sites are certainly inspired by writings by Gurupdesh S. Pandher, but are far too extensive and well designed to have been done by him. I have read some of Ambedkar's works and other books that have come out of neo-Buddhist movement. Dalits have a lot to complain about, but these web sites are not done by them. Yashwant From cssetzer at MUM.EDU Wed Mar 1 04:06:30 2000 From: cssetzer at MUM.EDU (Claude Setzer) Date: Tue, 29 Feb 00 22:06:30 -0600 Subject: Address of Junji Tsutsui Message-ID: <161227056280.23782.10399898239164123778.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Could someone please send me the email address of Junji Tsutsui of Oosaka City , Japan. thank you Claude Setzer cssetzer at mum.edu From rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM Wed Mar 1 03:21:51 2000 From: rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM (Rajarshi Banerjee) Date: Tue, 29 Feb 00 22:21:51 -0500 Subject: AIT, NEW genetic evidence Message-ID: <161227056223.23782.6559569075959258643.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> SM> Texts speak of chariots in India. Sparreboom, Chariots in the Veda. Barbarian tides, Timeframe 1500-600 BC, Time-Life books, p.129 has a caption for a picture. "The bow ruins the enemy's pleasure; with the bow let us conquer all the corners of the world.... Once shot, fly far away, arrow, sharpened with prayer. Go straight to our foes, and do not leave a single one of them there. - from the Rig Veda." RB> Judging by archeological traces left chariotry was not very prevalant. Whta does the picture in the aticle look like is it based on any real chariots of India? The "ratha yatra" chariot is hardly functional...... In the vedas chariots are atleast part of the imagination maybe inspired by the knowledge of grand chariot armies in the west. After all the name dasharatha appears in mitanni texts. Is the word ratha present in avestan? The ashvamedha could imply ritual warfare with minimal bloodshed. Maybe there werent too many horses to go around. It would make sense in a rural setting which does not amass huge organized armies and yet allows for some form of political reorganization on a larger scale. A precursor to the more urban kingdoms in gangetic India. regards R Banerjee From vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM Wed Mar 1 07:14:59 2000 From: vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM (Vishal Agarwal) Date: Tue, 29 Feb 00 23:14:59 -0800 Subject: ICHR controversey Message-ID: <161227056225.23782.7644462281008393482.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In the latest controversy over the withdrawal of books by ICHR, the secularist press is projecting Dr. Panniker as a victim who is a neutral historian. I suggest that list members read this interview by Dr. Panniker himself and decide if such a person is capable of writing an objective work of history: http://www.rediff.com/news/1999/mar/19panik.htm The interview clearly states that Dr. Pannniker applies the Marxist methodology in his work. In any case, the ICHR is bringing out a white paper on the issue and let us see what it says. The prima facie reasons stated by B R Grover (as reported in the press)for the withdrawal of the volume are quite sloppy, but the cloud of suspicion on Sarkar/Pannikker's volume remains if his interview is read carefully. ______________________________ Laxmi Srinivas: As somebody asked on another list: for Ram's sake what has Arun Shourie, an investigative journalist turned BJP politician, got to do with Indian history? Vishal replies: One does not have to be a Historian to expose nepotism, self aggrandization at the expense of others, misappropriation of funds, suppression of historical evidence, slander of Professional colleagues (I can post numerous examples of this, including the ones in the works of D N Jha and R S Sharma upto 1998 and 1999 if the listmaster permits). The EMINENT HISTORIANS's only response to Shourie's books have been abuses (specifically from Pannikker) or platitudes like "History is a Professional Field" (eg. Romila Thapar, copy of a personal letter written by her in my possession) which is just a haughty dismissal of what their opponents have to say. For that matter, why doesn't Ms. Srinivas herself reads the book with an open mind and points out 5 blatant errors in the work of Shourie where he has criticized these eminent Historians, rather than making clearly non relevant retorts. Please read the *relevant* review of the book *EMINENT HISTORIANS* at the following website: http://www.voi.org/reviews/ This recent controversy is another instance of how Western Acedemicians are often mislead by one sided reporting by the 'Secularist' press. _________________________ L. Srinivas: Perhaps the presumption is that it is sufficient to be a Hindu to be able to write on Indian history. VA: That is your own presumption, and a clear demonization of people who present a view countering yours. Perhaps you are unaware that one of the first books of Arun Shourie was "Hinduism: Causes and Consequences" and this book is one of the most damning indiction of Hinduism (and Advaita Vedanta interpretations of the Prasthana Traya in particular) that I have read. ______________________________ L. Srinivas: In electronic forums, I keep coming across lists of names of scholars, professionals in their field, whose writings are to be avoided. Mr Agarwal's post is no exception to this trend. VA: Please re-read my original post. Nowhere have I said that we should not read their publications. I myself read them and this should be evident to all. ___________________________________ L. Srinivas:Is this perhaps a new kind of 'denial of service' attack? VA: As Shourie has shown, the EMINENT HISTORIANS have procrastinated projects for decades and have produced next to nothing but at the same time, they have *graciously* accepted hefty 'honorariums". As an Indian, I am enraged that so much of the Indian tax payer's money has been siphoned off by these people. I suggest that these EMINENT HISTORIANS should be tried in the court of law. _________________ L. Srinivas said: QUOTE Professor Sharma's zeal in fighting the obscurantist, revivalist and communal approach to history is best seen in his role in the recent controversy centering around Ayodhya. His Communal History and Rama's Ayodhya (1990, rev 1992) exposes the hollowness of the claims of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and successfully unmasks the political design behind their arguments which has led to the obfuscation of Indian archaeology and history. END QUOTE Prof DN Jha, an anti communalist scholar, is a professional historian with many publications to his credit. VA REPLIES: Apparently you are refering to publications like 1. "Ramajunmabhumi-Babri Masjid: A Historian's report to the Nation" (1991) by R. S. Sharma, D N Jha et al and allied publications like: 2.Mandal, D. 1993: ?Ayodhya- Archaeology After Demolition?; Tracts for the Times/5; Orient Longman Limited; Hyderabad Such publications continue to pour in as I write The nature of the list does not permit me to expose the sophistry and distortions of the original sources that is the hallmark of these publications. A refutation of these publications has already appeared (and shows these authors' biases). For instance: 1. History versus Casuitry (Voice of India):1991 2. Harsh Narain; The Ayodhya Temple Mosque Dispute (a Focus on the Muslim Sources); Penman Publishers; Delhi; 1993 and so on Is it not sad that the 22 EMINENT HISTORIANS (S. Gopal, Suraj Bhan, Romila Thapar,...) declared that there is no piece of pre-British evidence stating that a temple was displaced with a mosque but thereafter, other historians produced evidence (at least a dozen sources) to the contrary. And now, we have some of the EMINENT HISTORIANS stating that the 200 artifacts unearthed during the demolition frenzy were stolen from some museum and planted there! For some old information on their pamphlets, read the on-line books at http://www.voi.org I am told that 11 more books will be up in a few weeks at this site. No one can prove that Lord Rama was a historical figure, just as no one can prove that the cloak at Tonk really belonged to Prophet Muhammad or the hair at Hazratbal is that of the Prophet. But in any case, such dishonesty and slander of their disagreeing colleagues (as is shown by these historians) is unheard of. I think that the recent efforts by Shishu Mandirs etc. to distort history are also quite reprehensible and certainly cannot be overlooked. Unfortnately, this phenomenon is very pervasive, with the USA being no exception. And as someone who studied in a Catholic school and Protestant Missionary college for 14 years, there was a time when I believed that there is a black person called the Satan who has two horns and that 'God created the world in 6 days". Such teachings continue unabated in Missionary schools and Madrassas, many of which are funded by the Govt. of India. Apparently, the jargon of 'mind control' and 'brainwashing' and 'communalism' (add words like 'credulous Hindus', 'fascist RSS' etc. in D N Jha's book written in 1998) is invoked only when the the Missionaries, Marxists and Muslims are not involved. I hope for a more balanced perspective Vishal I request L. Srinivas wrote: ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Wed Mar 1 11:05:33 2000 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Wed, 01 Mar 00 03:05:33 -0800 Subject: SV: ICHR controversey Message-ID: <161227056235.23782.15933879676283161094.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I make a comment on this issue against my own better judgment, but something has to be said, and so be it. Perhaps this is the wrong forum, its focus not being on contemporary politics, but as the topic has already been raised, here goes. The contemporary problem is not so much one about history as about historiography. K. N. Panikker's online interview (http://www.rediff.com/news/1999/mar/19panik.htm) says as much. What exacerbates the problem is that every Sukla, Misra and Tiwari, and every Abdul, Rahim and Siddiqui thinks he has a say in the debate, without even defining what it is that is being debated. Even worse, there is a basic tendency towards ad hoc denial of certain aspects of India's past. It is hardly justifiable, but that is what has happened, repeatedly. I don't need to dwell on the may faults of the Hindutva-vadis. However, the accepted professional historians have their own brand of negationism, which should not be overlooked. Example from Panikker's interview - -------begin excerpt----------- Q. Isn't it true that the differences between Hindus and Muslims have always existed? And there is nothing new about it? A. (Angrily) What type of differences? Q. Communal differences. A. No, it is not communal. If you are saying that you are a Muslim or a Christian or a Hindu, it means that your religious belief is different. If you say you are a teacher and the other person says that he is a businessman, so it's a different lifestyle, isn't it? It does not mean it is antagonism that you fight against each other. But it has not led to riots which is a modern phenomenon in the way it has been taking place in India from the colonial times. ---------------end excerpt------------ The interviewer had a Muslim name, by the way. Just FYI. The south Asian situation in pre-colonial times was never as simple as all this, was it? The difference between being a Hindu and a Muslim is nothing like that between a teacher and a businessman, is it? Wouldn't the same Dr. Panikker accept the standard notion (found in every eighth grade Indian history text book) that lower castes in India converted in large numbers to Islam, in order to escape the oppression of the higher castes? It should be obvious that conflict between lower caste and higher caste would have been simply replaced by religious conflict between higher caste Hindu and lower caste Muslim, not to mention the conflict between native Kshatriya elite and immigrant Sultan's armies. After all, Marxist theory fundamentally depends upon the notion of conflict in society. What religious co-existence then does Dr. Panikker have in mind? Religion may be the opiate of the masses, but Indian Marxists know all too well that far from inducing a state of rest, religion has induced a lot of violent action, in India and elsewhere. Furthermore, almost every single Indian historian has this idealized notion that everything was rosy and healthy before India became a British colony, and that every little contemporary communal problem really began only in the 19th century. Before that, it was all Hindu-Muslim-bhai-bhai, presumably. The favorite culprit is the British policy of divide-and-rule. The slightest murmur that there may be more to this than simply British policy is denied with an almost visceral hatred. Hence Panikker's anger at the question that was raised. Anger usually stems from frustration, and frustration stems from inability - an inability to explain certain data based upon the given theory. They glibly overlook that the colonial policy of divide-and-rule worked well precisely because there already was something with which to divide. As a scientist, I would say, if the data don't fit the theory, throw the theory out or modify it accordingly. But historians, whether of the established Marxist/liberal/conservative kind or the budding Hindutva kind, are not scientists. They would rather deny the data than have their pet theories questioned. Presumably, they've never heard of cutting the coat according to the cloth. To mix metaphors, they are probably afraid of washing dirty linen in public, but the longer it remains unwashed, the worse it stinks. One need not search too long to find out why this is so. It has been incumbent upon Indian historians to accept the above-mentioned idealized picture as a matter of faith, because of independent India's rejection of the two-nation theory that created Pakistan. The secular, democratic republic of India may have accepted the existence of Pakistan in practice, but has never reconciled itself to it in principle. India's rejection of the two-nation theory, with nothing to counter it except a false picture of pre-colonial communal amity, comes at the cost of its own identity, both in internal goverment and in foreign relations. The Hindutva-vadis have their vision of an "Akhanda Bharat", but the secular thinkers have their own vision of an "Undivided India" too. How long can a nation live in denial? That, dear reader, if you have read so far, is what really affects India today. The biggest problem, for me personally, is that the only people in India who are willing to pursue this line of thought are either born VHPites, or they achieve VHPite-ness. A small percentage of them end up having VHPite-ness thrust upon them, both by the self-proclaimed secularists and the self-proclaimed VHPites. Pretty soon, everything boils down to the favorite form of debate - name-calling. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM Wed Mar 1 15:13:56 2000 From: smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM (Swaminathan Madhuresan) Date: Wed, 01 Mar 00 07:13:56 -0800 Subject: center of being Message-ID: <161227056253.23782.5937431223395321213.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Atleast in tamil, manasu/manam refers to residing in the heart exclusively. I was indeed surprised when North Indian friends told that mAnas refers to head. --- Bob Peck wrote: > Any comments about a general observation that Indians identify their center > of being as exisiting within their chest and their center of feelings as > being in the lower abdomen; whereas Westerners identify their center as > being in the head and their center of feelings in the chest? > regards, > Bob Peck > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From rpeck at NECA.COM Wed Mar 1 13:53:50 2000 From: rpeck at NECA.COM (Bob Peck) Date: Wed, 01 Mar 00 08:53:50 -0500 Subject: center of being Message-ID: <161227056243.23782.13788660215695320826.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Any comments about a general observation that Indians identify their center of being as exisiting within their chest and their center of feelings as being in the lower abdomen; whereas Westerners identify their center as being in the head and their center of feelings in the chest? regards, Bob Peck From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Wed Mar 1 14:11:07 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Wed, 01 Mar 00 09:11:07 -0500 Subject: center of being In-Reply-To: <000501bf8385$94f2eaa0$120053be@lianda> Message-ID: <161227056246.23782.16710565382876330606.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >Any comments about a general observation that Indians identify their center >of being as exisiting within their chest and their center of feelings as >being in the lower abdomen; whereas Westerners identify their center as >being in the head and their center of feelings in the chest? Since the Vedas: manas 'mind' is occasionally connected with 'heart'; and *more often* than one might think. while the connection of Manas and Vaac is much more prominent, there are quite a few quotes which clearly establish the connection between Manas and the heart, see especially below, ZB and JUB... But there is some connection between the two already in the early Yajurveda texts (c. 1000 BCE), Maitr. Samhita (MS) etc.: Ordered by text level: Early Yajurveda Samhitas and Brahmanas: hRdasyaavadyati, manasa eva tenaavadyati MS 3.10.3 mano haardim yaccha MS 1.2.18 mano hRdaye (pratitiSThitam) TS 3.10.8.6; ZaankhAr. 11.6 (vaag ca vai manaz ca devaanaaM mithunam AB 5.13) later Brahmanas/early Upanisads: !! kasmin nu manaH pratiSThitaM bhavatiiti hRdaya iti ZB 14.6.9.25 !! sa eSa hRdaH kaamaanaaM puurNo, yan manaH JUB 1.18.3.3 aatmaa vai mano hRdayam ZB 3.8.3.6 kaamaH saMkalpo vicikitsaa zraddhaa 'zraddhaa dhRtir adhRtir hriir dhaarbhiir ity etat sarvaM mana evA ZB 14.4.3.9 na saMdRzo tiSThati ruupam asya, na cakSuSaa pazyati kaiz cainainam / hRdaa maniiSaa manasaabhigupto, ya etad viduramRtAste bhavanti KathSamkalanam 104: 9-10 hRt-pratiSThaM yad ajaraM yaviSThaM, tan me manaH zivaM saMkalpam astu KathSamk. 134: 11 (yat tapa iti manasvat JB 3.360) cf. also: yad dhy eva manasaa kaamayeta, tad vaacaa vadati JB 3.349 Late Vedic : hRdasya reto mano, manaso vaak Ait.Ar. 2.1.3 hRdayaan mano manasaz candramaaH AitAr. 2.4.1, Ait Up. 2.14 prajaanaaM reto hRdayaM, hRdayasya reto manaH AitAr. 2.1.3 And the most complex one, closer to what you might see in Pali: yad etad hRdayaM manaz caitat saMjJaanam AjJaanaM vijJaanaM prajJaanaM medhaa dRSTir dhRtir muurtir maniiSaa juutiH smRtiH saMkalpaH kratur asuH kaamo vaza iti sarvaaNy evaitaani prajJaanasya naamadheyaani bhavanti Ait Ar. 2.6.1 I hope this helps..... we really need a detailed study.... Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: attachment.bin Type: text/enriched Size: 2586 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jrgardn at EMORY.EDU Wed Mar 1 14:57:38 2000 From: jrgardn at EMORY.EDU (John Robert Gardner) Date: Wed, 01 Mar 00 09:57:38 -0500 Subject: center of being In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056250.23782.16558661039523777896.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I could also add there is a cursory survey of the uses of -man with brahman in the early and late RV, discussed in my dissertation, online at http://vedavid.org/diss/, use the pull-down menu top left to select chapter four (4), then 5, and on the right, after selecting 4 or five, choose the section on mental faculties. It is brief, but juxtaposes -man, -cit, and dhii viz. brahman. Per MW, definitely, a detailed study is warranted! jr =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-= John Robert Gardner ATLA-CERTR Emory University ------------------------------------------------------------ http://vedavid.org/diss/ "If there is something you're thinking of doing, or wish you could do, begin it. In boldness there is mystery and power . . . . " -Goethe On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, Michael Witzel wrote: > >Any comments about a general observation that Indians identify their center > >of being as exisiting within their chest and their center of feelings as > >being in the lower abdomen; whereas Westerners identify their center as > >being in the head and their center of feelings in the chest? > > > Since the Vedas: > manas 'mind' is occasionally connected with 'heart'; and *more often* than > one might think. > > while the connection of Manas and Vaac is much more prominent, there are > quite a few quotes which clearly establish the connection between Manas and > the heart, see especially below, ZB and JUB... But there is some connection > between the two already in the early Yajurveda texts (c. 1000 BCE), Maitr. > Samhita (MS) etc.: > > Ordered by text level: > > Early Yajurveda Samhitas and Brahmanas: > > hRdasyaavadyati, manasa eva tenaavadyati MS 3.10.3 > > mano haardim yaccha MS 1.2.18 > > mano hRdaye (pratitiSThitam) TS 3.10.8.6; ZaankhAr. 11.6 > > (vaag ca vai manaz ca devaanaaM mithunam AB 5.13) > > > > later Brahmanas/early Upanisads: > > !! kasmin nu manaH pratiSThitaM bhavatiiti hRdaya iti ZB 14.6.9.25 > > !! sa eSa hRdaH kaamaanaaM puurNo, yan manaH JUB 1.18.3.3 > > aatmaa vai mano hRdayam ZB 3.8.3.6 > > kaamaH saMkalpo vicikitsaa zraddhaa 'zraddhaa dhRtir adhRtir hriir > dhaarbhiir ity etat sarvaM mana evA ZB 14.4.3.9 > > na saMdRzo tiSThati ruupam asya, na cakSuSaa pazyati kaiz cainainam / > hRdaa maniiSaa manasaabhigupto, ya etad viduramRtAste bhavanti > KathSamkalanam 104: 9-10 > > hRt-pratiSThaM yad ajaraM yaviSThaM, tan me manaH zivaM saMkalpam astu > KathSamk. 134: 11 > > (yat tapa iti manasvat JB 3.360) > > cf. also: > > yad dhy eva manasaa kaamayeta, tad vaacaa vadati JB 3.349 > > > > Late Vedic : > > hRdasya reto mano, manaso vaak Ait.Ar. 2.1.3 > > hRdayaan mano manasaz candramaaH AitAr. 2.4.1, Ait Up. 2.14 > > prajaanaaM reto hRdayaM, hRdayasya reto manaH AitAr. 2.1.3 > > And the most complex one, closer to what you might see in Pali: > > yad etad hRdayaM manaz caitat saMjJaanam AjJaanaM vijJaanaM prajJaanaM > medhaa dRSTir dhRtir muurtir maniiSaa juutiH smRtiH saMkalpaH kratur asuH > kaamo vaza iti sarvaaNy evaitaani prajJaanasya naamadheyaani bhavanti > Ait Ar. 2.6.1 > > > I hope this helps..... we really need a detailed study.... > Michael Witzel > Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University > 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 > > ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) > home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm > > Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM Wed Mar 1 15:54:04 2000 From: rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM (Rajarshi Banerjee) Date: Wed, 01 Mar 00 10:54:04 -0500 Subject: SV: ICHR controversey Message-ID: <161227056256.23782.10416906609574112645.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Communal tension was obviously not invented by the british. Certain aspects of Indias past are overlookd or censored for political reasons for keeping harmony as they say but also to for the sake of vote bank politics. And its not just history even news is censored in really dumb ways. I remembr an incident when sikh terrosists stopped a bus and selectively killed over 50 hindu passengers. The newspaper report said that members of a certain community were killed. I can imagine that the bombay riots where many muslims died were also described in a similar mealy mouthed fashion, although I was in the US at that time. It is not hard to imagine that a govt funded organization would pomote govt sponsored inhibitions and platitudes. If you go to places like the qutab minar in Delhi or many other islamic architechtural sites you often see pre-islamic masonry complete with statues which have been broken and reused or sometimes left untouched out of sheer laziness. Why does it suddenly become so bizzare to see similar things at babri masjid and why cant it be looked at dispassionately. regards RB From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Wed Mar 1 10:02:04 2000 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Wed, 01 Mar 00 11:02:04 +0100 Subject: SV: ICHR controversey Message-ID: <161227056232.23782.13676088705582520213.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Vishal Agarwal [SMTP:vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM] skrev 01. mars 2000 08:15: > In the latest controversy over the withdrawal of books by ICHR, the > secularist press is projecting Dr. Panniker as a victim who is a neutral > historian. I suggest that list members read this interview by Dr. Panniker > himself and decide if such a person is capable of writing an objective work > of history: > http://www.rediff.com/news/1999/mar/19panik.htm > The interview clearly states that Dr. Pannniker applies the Marxist > methodology in his work. So what? I read the interview, and there is nothing inherently wrong in what Panikkar says. He stresses the use of an identifiable method, which is what all professional historians strive for, Marxist or not. This debate reminds me of a talk on the BBC I heard last year. Two conservatives were discussing Marx, and they agreed that M. had been right in his analysis of the capitalism of his day, but wrong in his evaluation of the future possibilities of capitalist society. The fact is that certain Marxist ideas have stuck in Western academia, regardless of people's political orientation, simply because they conform with observed facts. The difference between a "Marxist" historian in the strict sense and an historian occasionally drawing on certain Marxist ideas is that the non-Marxist is eclectic, whereas the Marxist historian usually "buys the whole package" and becomes doctrinaire. That sort of Marxism has lost considerable influence in the West, particularly after the fall of Communism and will certainly lose influence in India too, Hindutva or not. However, the views expressed by Panikkar in the interview would undoubtedly be acceptable to most Western historians. Rewriting history is one thing, rewriting method is a totally different proposition. The failure of Hindutva history to convince is caused by its intellectual poverty and the obvious fact that history is written to support certain political agendas. The West has seen more than its share of this kind of history writing, and professionals are simply not impressed by the products that are coming from India these days. It is the same old stuff with curry. Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Norway Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Wed Mar 1 11:32:07 2000 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Wed, 01 Mar 00 12:32:07 +0100 Subject: SV: SV: ICHR controversey Message-ID: <161227056240.23782.6338688066030650976.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Vidyasankar Sundaresan [SMTP:vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM] skrev 01. mars 2000 12:06: > Even worse, there is a basic tendency towards ad hoc denial of certain > aspects of India's past. It is hardly justifiable, but that is what has > happened, repeatedly. > Furthermore, almost every single Indian historian has this idealized notion > that everything was rosy and healthy before India became a British colony, > and that every little contemporary communal problem really began only in the > 19th century. Before that, it was all Hindu-Muslim-bhai-bhai, presumably. > The favorite culprit is the British policy of divide-and-rule. Blaming the British for communal conflict is a trend that can be observed among some scholars in the West as well, particularly political scientists and historians dealing with the modern world (say after 1850). I have never quite understood why, possibly because to these people everything before 1850 belongs to deep geological time :-). But there are exceptions, such as the German historian Klimkeit who follows the conflict and the roots of Hindu nationalism back to Shivaji. If anything, I believe the British contributed to giving communal conflict a modern form, and certainly to exacerbating it. But I don't buy the idea that they "invented" it. Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Norway Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no From zydenbos at BIGFOOT.DE Wed Mar 1 11:43:01 2000 From: zydenbos at BIGFOOT.DE (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Wed, 01 Mar 00 12:43:01 +0100 Subject: Brahma: in chanting Message-ID: <161227056238.23782.10094073065940933200.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Am 28 Feb 00, um 19:54 schrieb Vishal Agarwal: > The pronounciation of Brahma as Bramha is a classical case of how > a 'mispronounciation' attains legitmacy because of tradition. > [...] As an anecdote, I can add the similar case of a pundit in Mysore who pooh-poohed me for my Western ignorance and insisted that the names 'Prahlaada' and 'Baahliika' are to be pronounced 'Pralhaada' and 'Baalhiika'. However, when two weeks later a famous indigenous scholar visited the same institute and in the course of a conversation ridiculed the "idiots" who say things like "braamha.na", "Pralhaada" and "Baalhiika", nobody, including my critic, said anything, but all just sat with delighted smiles. The visiting scholar argued just as I had done; but I suppose he had the right caste. I found it reassuring that the present state of a tradition is not necessarily considered the final word. RZ From rah2k at UNIX.MAIL.VIRGINIA.EDU Wed Mar 1 18:04:48 2000 From: rah2k at UNIX.MAIL.VIRGINIA.EDU (Robert A. Hueckstedt) Date: Wed, 01 Mar 00 13:04:48 -0500 Subject: Job openings Message-ID: <161227056262.23782.12104200103504942589.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The University of Virginia-Emory University Consortium is accepting applications for two positions in the UVA-EMORY STUDY ABROAD PROGRAM IN JODHPUR, INDIA, for Fall semester, 2000: MONITOR and HINDI INSTRUCTOR. Qualifications for MONITOR include good conversational Hindi, background in South Asia Studies (preferably at the graduate level), and experience in India. Responsibilities include assisting the program Director in the following areas: pre-program arrangements, on-site administration, counseling students regarding cross-cultural and health issues, overseeing kitchen, organizing extra-curricular events, coordinating travel arrangements, assisting students in their independent research projects, and maintaining accurate accounting records. Qualifications for HINDI INSTRUCTOR include experience in teaching spoken and written Hindi, and experience in India. Responsibilities include: teaching classes in Introductory, Intermediate, and Advanced Hindi, testing and evaluating students in these classes, working closely with native language partners and Assistant Hindi teacher, arranging field-trips, assisting students in their independent research projects, and serving as a liaison between students and their Indian host families. APPLICATION: For both positions, send resume, transcript, 3 letters of recommendation, and a statement explaining your background and why you wish to work for this program to: Dr. Tara Doyle, UVa-Emory India Program, Religion Department, S214 Callaway Center, Emory University, Atlanta GA 30322. PH: 404-727-9416, FAX: 404-727-7597, EMAIL: tndoyle at emory.edu. DEADLINE: March 31, 2000. From rah2k at UNIX.MAIL.VIRGINIA.EDU Wed Mar 1 18:05:32 2000 From: rah2k at UNIX.MAIL.VIRGINIA.EDU (Robert A. Hueckstedt) Date: Wed, 01 Mar 00 13:05:32 -0500 Subject: Semester in India program Message-ID: <161227056264.23782.10467424439792978020.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA -- EMORY UNIVERSITY SEMESTER-IN-INDIA PROGRAM THE FORT, JODHPUR AUGUST-DECEMBER 2000 Enrollment in the program is open to third- and fourth-year undergraduates enrolled in U.S. or Canadian universities. Students may earn up to 16 credits for their semester in Jodhpur, for study of Hindi (introductory, intermediate, or advanced), civilization and elective courses. The program offers unique opportunities in the areas of classical and performing arts. The program fee of approximately $6,800 includes international travel to Jodhpur (via Delhi), academic tuition and fees, housing in the Fort, three meals a day, and a stipend for research and travel. Applications due: March 16, 2000 For more information, follow the "Semester in India" link at or contact the UVA CSAS at the following addresses: Center for South Asian Studies southasia at virginia.edu University of Virginia 110 Minor Hall Charlottesville, VA 22903 (804) 924-8815 From rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM Wed Mar 1 18:40:37 2000 From: rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM (Rajarshi Banerjee) Date: Wed, 01 Mar 00 13:40:37 -0500 Subject: SV: ICHR controversey Message-ID: <161227056267.23782.16961869098142376884.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The ultimate consequences of a civil moral based on the principle of revenge (which is really at the bottom of you argument) can be seen vividly in the former Yugoslavia. You may turn a place into a desert and call it peace. But you can also turn a place into a heap of dung and call it justice. RB>I am not talking about morals, who wronged who, or preaching anything. When a naturalist goes into the field he does not take sides between say prey and predator, Such an approach would compromise truth and limit understanding. Its undestandable to sanitize news stories if they can be iflammatory but such principles should not be used for long term analysis of history. Marxist scholars indeed become defensive when its time to deal with islamic activities in India. If you are worried that the sight of broken pre-islamic monuments will make hindus vengful you are off track. Compare INdian attitudes with the paranoid israelis, Americans who bombed libya over a hijacking. INdia probably has faced more terrorist attacks than all of them combined. Starting with 747 blown oput of the sky, stock exchange bombings ....... assasinations , bomb blasts, mowing down of many marriage processions in jammu, migrant labourers shot dead as they sleep to give just a few examples all happening over and over again. These are never reported in the western media. Even the so called rabid and nationalsit BJP government is pretty laid back and restrained by world standards. regards RB From Sfauthor at AOL.COM Wed Mar 1 19:34:41 2000 From: Sfauthor at AOL.COM (Brian Akers) Date: Wed, 01 Mar 00 14:34:41 -0500 Subject: Need a break? Message-ID: <161227056274.23782.4180723868790241072.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> For those of you desiring a respite from philological heavy lifting, there is a delightful site at: http://netnow.micron.net/~ricksha/ Brian From lazarowitz at HAWK.UCC.EDU Wed Mar 1 19:40:34 2000 From: lazarowitz at HAWK.UCC.EDU (Bob Lazarowitz) Date: Wed, 01 Mar 00 14:40:34 -0500 Subject: SV: ICHR controversey Message-ID: <161227056271.23782.7217673074268984472.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Rajarshi, I belong to this listserve because I am very much interested in and profoundly impressed by the wisdom that has come out of India over the centuries. But of course I also have other interests. Your recent posting touched on one of them. Perhaps you explain to me why or in what sense the Israelis are "paranoid." Without doubt, many people see the Zionists as the aggressors in the Arab-Israeli conflict (even if many of such people remain well-disposed toward Israel). So if this is the way you see it, I am hardly shocked by this. But the point is, I am very interested in exactly how such people actually do see the Arab-Israeli conflict, since I believe that strong cases can be made against the typical charges leveled against Israel and the Zionist movement. If you prefer, you may respond directly to me at lazarowitz at hawk.ucc.edu Kol tov (all the best), Bob Lazarowitz ----- Original Message ----- From: Rajarshi Banerjee To: Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2000 1:40 PM Subject: Re: SV: ICHR controversey > The ultimate > consequences of a civil moral based on the principle of revenge (which is > really at the bottom of you argument) can be seen vividly in the former > Yugoslavia. You may turn a place into a desert and call it peace. But you > can > also turn a place into a heap of dung and call it justice. > > RB>I am not talking about morals, who wronged who, or preaching anything. > When a naturalist goes into the field he does not take sides between say > prey and predator, Such an approach would compromise truth and limit > understanding. > Its undestandable to sanitize news stories if they can be iflammatory but > such principles should not be used for long term analysis of history. > Marxist scholars indeed become defensive when its time to deal with islamic > activities in India. > > If you are worried that the sight of broken pre-islamic monuments will make > hindus vengful you are off track. Compare INdian attitudes with the paranoid > israelis, Americans who bombed libya over a hijacking. INdia probably has > faced more terrorist attacks than all of them combined. Starting with 747 > blown oput of the sky, stock exchange bombings ....... assasinations , bomb > blasts, mowing down of many marriage processions in jammu, migrant labourers > shot dead as they sleep to give just a few examples all happening over and > over again. These are never reported in the western media. > > Even the so called rabid and nationalsit BJP government is pretty laid back > and restrained by world standards. > > regards RB > From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Wed Mar 1 16:31:26 2000 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Wed, 01 Mar 00 17:31:26 +0100 Subject: SV: SV: ICHR controversey Message-ID: <161227056259.23782.18335207724476638030.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Rajarshi Banerjee [SMTP:rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM] skrev 01. mars 2000 16:54: > If you go to places like the qutab minar in Delhi or many other islamic > architechtural sites you often see pre-islamic masonry complete with statues > which have been broken and reused or sometimes left untouched out of sheer > laziness. Why does it suddenly become so bizzare to see similar things at > babri masjid and why cant it be looked at dispassionately. Because today we know better, or at least should know better. There is no reason to go on repeating the atrocities of former centuries. The fact that the forefathers of group X committed atrocities against the forefathers of group Y does not give group Y the right to commit atrocities or unjustice against the members of group X TODAY. If we accept that idea, things never stop, do they? I don't ask people to forget and forgive, only to be pragmatic: Brutality and injustice will go on repeating itself indefinitely if we don't call a stop here and now. Muslims living today are not responsible for the crimes committed by past Muslim princes. Consequently, the victimization of Muslims for those very reasons that we see in some quarters is not only immoral and unjust, it is stupid. That is not tantamount to saying that Muslims never do/did anything wrong. Muslim wrongs should be addessed just like Hindu wrongs, but within the framework of a constitutional state founded on legal protection. The ultimate consequences of a civil moral based on the principle of revenge (which is really at the bottom of you argument) can be seen vividly in the former Yugoslavia. You may turn a place into a desert and call it peace. But you can also turn a place into a heap of dung and call it justice. Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Norway Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no From kekai at JPS.NET Thu Mar 2 01:49:51 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Wed, 01 Mar 00 17:49:51 -0800 Subject: "Dalitstan" (RE: 'INDIA ABROAD' on new textbooks) Message-ID: <161227056220.23782.3308905519676873180.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Yashwant Malaiya wrote: > > > These other sites are certainly inspired by writings by > Gurupdesh S. Pandher, but are far too extensive and > well designed to have been done by him. > > I have read some of Ambedkar's works and other books > that have come out of neo-Buddhist movement. Dalits > have a lot to complain about, but these web sites are not > done by them. Dalits are indeed involved, although the funding may come from elsewhere. There is a sort of 'pan-Black' movement inspired in part by African Americans and particularly Runoko Rashidi. It seeks the liberation or upliftment of "Black" people worldwide to include the Sudras, Dalits and Dravidians of India, the Melanesians, the Negritos, the Australians, etc. Mr. Rashidi told me that he goes to India every few years to meet with Dalit organizations there. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com From BLQM at MUSICB.MCGILL.CA Thu Mar 2 01:37:20 2000 From: BLQM at MUSICB.MCGILL.CA (GHOSE,LYNKEN,MR) Date: Wed, 01 Mar 00 20:37:20 -0500 Subject: Robert Goldman's address Message-ID: <161227056282.23782.7195783080913735884.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Indology Members: Does anyone have Dr. Robert Goldman's email address at U. California at Berkeley? I would like to ask him some questions regarding his Sanskrit textbook. Thank you, Lynken Ghose McGill University From jon.skarpeid at HINT.NO Wed Mar 1 20:12:46 2000 From: jon.skarpeid at HINT.NO (Jon Skarpeid) Date: Wed, 01 Mar 00 21:12:46 +0100 Subject: references of the origin of veda Message-ID: <161227047127.23782.2665863973521002857.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> According to K.Subharhmanyam, in his trans and commentary to BrahmakANDa of BhartRharis VAkyapadIyam, the Veda is described as anAdi, without beginning. Are anybody able to give me some references to texts. I am particulary interested if this notion is found in the writings of Abhinavagupta, but any referance would do. Jon. From utkragh at HUM.KU.DK Wed Mar 1 20:30:07 2000 From: utkragh at HUM.KU.DK (Ulrich T. Kragh) Date: Wed, 01 Mar 00 21:30:07 +0100 Subject: Address of Prof. Schmithausen Message-ID: <161227056276.23782.12124289070538340534.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Can anyone provide me with the email address of Professor Lambert Schmithausen at the University of Hamburg? Regards, Ulrich T. Kragh University of Copenhagen -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cnarayan at SOCRATES.BERKELEY.EDU Thu Mar 2 05:33:49 2000 From: cnarayan at SOCRATES.BERKELEY.EDU (Chandan R. Narayan) Date: Wed, 01 Mar 00 21:33:49 -0800 Subject: Robert Goldman's address In-Reply-To: <01MAR00.22272030.0022.MUSIC@MUSICB.MCGILL.CA> Message-ID: <161227056285.23782.3764757712397591913.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Prof. Goldman's address is sseas at socrates.berkeley.edu chandan r. narayan || cnarayan at socrates.berkeley.edu || socrates.berkeley.edu/~cnarayan "You couldn't fool your mother on the most foolingist day of your life, even if you had an electrified fooling machine. " On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, GHOSE,LYNKEN,MR wrote: > Dear Indology Members: > > Does anyone have Dr. Robert Goldman's email address at U. California > at Berkeley? I would like to ask him some questions regarding his > Sanskrit textbook. > > Thank you, > > Lynken Ghose > McGill University > From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Wed Mar 1 22:58:59 2000 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Wed, 01 Mar 00 23:58:59 +0100 Subject: SV: SV: ICHR controversey Message-ID: <161227056296.23782.11800201387840584002.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Rajarshi Banerjee [SMTP:rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM] skrev 01. mars 2000 19:41: > > RB>I am not talking about morals, who wronged who, or preaching anything. > When a naturalist goes into the field he does not take sides between say > prey and predator, Such an approach would compromise truth and limit > understanding. > Its undestandable to sanitize news stories if they can be iflammatory but > such principles should not be used for long term analysis of history. > Marxist scholars indeed become defensive when its time to deal with islamic > activities in India. As I was trying to say in another mail: not just Marxist scholars. However: we are evidently discussing two things at the same time: on the one hand, mass-media communication where a certain amount of responsibility and restraint is called for (for the reasons you mention yourself), and scholarly discussions where professional attitude and factuality is called for. Discussing past Muslim atrocities is perfectly in order as long as this discussion is delinked from the modern political situation and not used as a tool to dehumanize Muslims in general. In India this principle hardly seems to obtain. > If you are worried that the sight of broken pre-islamic monuments will make > hindus vengful you are off track. Compare INdian attitudes with the paranoid > israelis, Americans who bombed libya over a hijacking. There is a slight difference here: I am not talking about an immediate reaction to an act of terrorism or a military attack. (This is called "defending your country"). I am talking about revenge for injustices suffered by past generations many decades or centuries ago. (BTW: I do not necessarily endorse all action taken by Israelis and Americans. Israeli treatment of Palestinians can be atrocious, but then Palestinian behaviour is not always adequate either). If you want to react to military threats or acts of terrorism, the targets should ideally be the perpetrators and/or their political leaders, not random, ordinary civilians. But that is part of a definitely non-Indological discussion). The harping on Muslim injustice in the pre-British period is used as a means of targeting Muslims *in general*, and Muslims at that who are innocent of the atrocities committed in the past. But as I said, that does not mean that Muslims are beyond criticism. I have seen stupid and brutal reactions on the part of Muslims as well, and there is no excuse for committing such acts of terrorism as you mention. INdia probably has > faced more terrorist attacks than all of them combined. Starting with 747 > blown oput of the sky, stock exchange bombings ....... assasinations , bomb > blasts, mowing down of many marriage processions in jammu, migrant labourers > shot dead as they sleep to give just a few examples all happening over and > over again. These are never reported in the western media. You are wrong. As far as I can see, such episodes get mentioned fairly often, although they do not necessarily become first page headlines. Journalists tend to look for a bit of blood and gore to enliven the pages of otherwise boring newspapers, and items such "30 persons gunned down at Indian wedding", "25 persons drown in ferry accident on the Ganges" etc. usually end up at the bottom of page 3 or 4. I have seen fairly regular - but underemphasized reports on atrocities in South Asia in the local press here. The problem is that they are rarely analyzed in a broader context. The reader gets scraps of information on South Asia, but seldom intelligent explanations. And of course, our local petty political quarrels are always more in focus than major catastrophies in the world beyond Norway. > Even the so called rabid and nationalsit BJP government is pretty laid back > and restrained by world standards. That is highly debatable. I have been a subscriber to the "Organiser" for a year, and "laid back" and "restrained" are hardly words that pop into my mind. The BJP and its sister organisations run pretty hard-nosed campaigns against both Muslims and Christians, thus exposing them to violence at grass-root levels. >???From a practical political point of view, Panikkar's version of history is probably less damaging to India's body politic and society than the "critical" version of history you want to see published. However, if Panikkar's view is as stated by you earlier, I don't share it. So should I shout my opinion from the rooftops and contribute to a potential blood-bath? Or should I discuss my views in fora where I am surrounded by responsible persons who will not run off and kill their Muslim neighbours because of injustice suffered by their forefathers long ago? I would opt for responsibility. As an afterthought, I come to remember the situation in France a couple of years ago, when several books on French collabation with the German occupation force during WWII were published. As I remember it, it transpired that such collaboration had been much more widespread than assumed until recently. Apparently, the true war history of France had been deliberately suppressed on the initiative of General de Gaulle, who had the statesmanlike idea that it would be easier to build a new and better France if the French were convinced that they had been a nation of heroic resistance fighters rather than a bunch of unprincipled opportunists, traitors and cowards. So for 50 years, they were told that they had been heroes (which of course many of them were). And now, it doesn't matter what they are told. Is there a lesson here? Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Norway Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no From cnarayan at SOCRATES.BERKELEY.EDU Thu Mar 2 15:52:26 2000 From: cnarayan at SOCRATES.BERKELEY.EDU (Chandan R. Narayan) Date: Thu, 02 Mar 00 07:52:26 -0800 Subject: bhASya definition In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056299.23782.221238924238159322.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear List members, Does anybody know the second half of the verse that begins: sUtraArtho varNyate yatra padaiH sUtrAnukAribhiH | ..... I only remember the first half. Any help would be most appreciated. Thanks, chandan chandan r. narayan || cnarayan at socrates.berkeley.edu || socrates.berkeley.edu/~cnarayan "You couldn't fool your mother on the most foolingist day of your life, even if you had an electrified fooling machine. " From fo6z001 at PUBLIC.UNI-HAMBURG.DE Thu Mar 2 17:44:22 2000 From: fo6z001 at PUBLIC.UNI-HAMBURG.DE (Barbara Schuler) Date: Thu, 02 Mar 00 09:44:22 -0800 Subject: Address of Prof. Schmithausen Message-ID: <161227056293.23782.5017935669459528892.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Please contact Prof. Schmithausen under his email-address schmithausen at rrz.uni-hamburg.de Ulrich T. Kragh schrieb: > Can anyone provide me with the email address of Professor Lambert > Schmithausen at the University of Hamburg? Regards, Ulrich T. > KraghUniversity of Copenhagen -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From emmerick at UNI-HAMBURG.DE Thu Mar 2 09:46:38 2000 From: emmerick at UNI-HAMBURG.DE (Ronald E.Emmerick) Date: Thu, 02 Mar 00 09:46:38 +0000 Subject: Address of Prof. Schmithausen Message-ID: <161227056289.23782.3864988883847608675.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> "Ulrich T. Kragh" wrote: > Can anyone provide me with the email address of Professor Lambert > Schmithausen at the University of Hamburg? Regards, Ulrich T. > KraghUniversity of Copenhagen schmithausen at rrz.uni-hamburg.de -- Prof. Dr. Ronald E. Emmerick Hamburg University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From raja at IFA.HAWAII.EDU Thu Mar 2 21:06:56 2000 From: raja at IFA.HAWAII.EDU (Narayan S. Raja) Date: Thu, 02 Mar 00 11:06:56 -1000 Subject: SV: SV: SV: ICHR controversey In-Reply-To: <01BF8486.F058D1A0.lmfosse@online.no> Message-ID: <161227056320.23782.2193289478203401076.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> While I agree with most of what Dr. Fosse says, I perceive (perhaps mistakenly), in this particular posting from him, a European "holier than thou" attitude which is not justified by the facts: On Thu, 2 Mar 2000, Lars Martin Fosse wrote: > strike me as a sound policy. Please have a look at Europe: our history is > littered with tragedies and atrocities of all sorts: countries and ethnic > groups clashing, different brands of Christianity trying to stamp each other > out, Protestant iconoclasm etc. (The Middle East would of course complain about > our crusades). We are able to discuss these things freely because (with the > exceptoin of the former Yugoslavia) we do not base our modern policies and ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > attitudes on the idea that we can make right was done wrong decades or ^^^^^^^^^ > centuries ago by maltreating the descendants of the ones that wronged our > forefathers. I presume you refer only to "official" policies and attitudes, as opposed to individuals' prejudices, which are alive and well in Europe as elsewhere. And even when it comes to "official" policies and attitudes, your observation is not quite correct: for example, I vividly remember how, when I was travelling in Europe some years ago, even I (a brown-skinned third-worlder, i.e., a leper to most European consulates) was granted a Greek visa on the spot, while the Turk behind me in the line was told to come back in 1 month. Apparently, the Greeks still hadn't realized that it was un-European to seek petty bureaucratic revenge from the Turks. :-) Other problem areas such as Northern Ireland, Cyprus, and the Basque region of Spain come to mind. Then one hears of official harassment of Gypsies in various European countries. I won't even go into details of the problems Europeans have with third-world immigrants, because they are not "traditional" chronic problems of your societies. > After Germany had been beaten in WWII, Europe reached the > conclusion that we all needed to be friends because being enemies was so > costly. This is not quite analogous to the situation in India. The European Union was not achieved by suppressing discussion of Nazi atrocities. In India, the BJP et al represent a section of Hindu society which can be described as a "majority group with a minority complex", i.e., a majority group with an acute sense of insecurity, paranoia, and grievance. Rather similar to politicized Francophones in Quebec, Jews in Israel, Pakistanis in Pakistan, or White Nationalists in the U.S.A. All these come from linguistic/religious/ethnic groups which are actually majorities in their respective homelands, but display the insecurity, paranoia, and belligerence characteristic of oppressed minority groups. > But we [...in Europe...] can also study Catholic cruelties against > Protestants (and vice versa) without anybody rushing into the street to take > revenge on the former "opposition". This is no longer a live issue for most Europeans (well, except Northern Ireland). But how about a live issue -- can one study the modus operandi of illegal Turkish immigrants into Germany without Neo-Nazis "rushing into the street to take revenge"? I don't mean to gloat at the many social problems of Europe. I just want to point out that a "holier-than-thou" attitude about "European" tolerance vs. BJP fanaticism is not justified by the facts. With best wishes to Dr. Fosse, whose writings I always respect and enjoy, Raja. From TMirajka at UMMG.COM Thu Mar 2 18:42:57 2000 From: TMirajka at UMMG.COM (Mirajkar) Date: Thu, 02 Mar 00 11:42:57 -0700 Subject: Please remove my name from the list. Message-ID: <161227056307.23782.1001067772024591942.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear List members, Please remove my name from the list. Regards, Tushar Mirajkar From mmdesh at UMICH.EDU Thu Mar 2 19:53:37 2000 From: mmdesh at UMICH.EDU (Madhav Deshpande) Date: Thu, 02 Mar 00 14:53:37 -0500 Subject: bhASya definition In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056313.23782.935819743781581444.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The second half of the line is: svapadAni ca varNyante bhASyam bhASyavido viduH // This is the traditional definition of a bhASya. Madhav Deshpande On Thu, 2 Mar 2000, Chandan R. Narayan wrote: > Dear List members, > > Does anybody know the second half of the verse that begins: > > sUtraArtho varNyate yatra padaiH sUtrAnukAribhiH | > ..... > > I only remember the first half. Any help would be most appreciated. > Thanks, > chandan > > > > chandan r. narayan || cnarayan at socrates.berkeley.edu > || socrates.berkeley.edu/~cnarayan > > "You couldn't fool your mother on the most foolingist day > of your life, even if you had an electrified fooling machine. " > From vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM Fri Mar 3 02:53:32 2000 From: vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM (Vishal Agarwal) Date: Thu, 02 Mar 00 18:53:32 -0800 Subject: ICHR controversy Message-ID: <161227056330.23782.4543685785346820587.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ----Original Message Follows---- From: Sundeep Dougal Has Mr. Aggarwal perhaps read _Investigative Journalism or Slander: Do you have more Questions Mr. Shourie?_ by one Vishwa Mohan Jha, brought out by Sahmat in 1998? "...For that matter, why doesn't Ms. Srinivas herself ..." Why conclude that it is "Ms." Srinivas? Perhaps one needs to at least enquire before jumping to a conclusion? Couldn't it be a "Mr."? In any case, based only on this, I wouldn't like to imply that Mr. Agarwal is being very judgemental. _____________________ VA: I take note of your posting. It is Midterm exam time here and it will be at least a week before I start posting a response. If I have misjudged Laxmi Srinivas' gender, I apologize. However, Mr. Dougal will note that I spell my name as 'Agarwal', not as 'Aggarwal'. I would certainly appreciate Mr. Dougal's views on the rest of my post, realizing that he has responded to a very small fragment of the same. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Thu Mar 2 19:35:28 2000 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Thu, 02 Mar 00 20:35:28 +0100 Subject: SV: SV: SV: ICHR controversey Message-ID: <161227056310.23782.17885117124372543223.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Bharat Gupt [SMTP:abhinav at DEL3.VSNL.NET.IN] skrev 02. mars 2000 22:42: > Lars Martin Fosse wrote: > > Discussing past > > Muslim atrocities is perfectly in order as long as this discussion is > > delinked > > from the modern political situation and not used as a tool to dehumanize > > Muslims in general. In India this principle hardly seems to obtain. > > The primary reason for the non-obtainance of this principle has been the > creation > of a phobia by the Congress Party and the Communist Left that any discussion, > however > academic, about the history of Islamic iconoclasm against Hindu temples and > culture > cannot but result in witch-hunting of the Indian Muslims. Although I am not enthusiastic about everything the Congress Party did/does, it seems to me that there is something to commend the view you describe here. The forces engendering communal tension in India are complex (and Hindus are not the only ones to blame), but bringing old atrocities into the public focus in an unstable society with a very tragic partition to look back on does not strike me as a sound policy. Please have a look at Europe: our history is littered with tragedies and atrocities of all sorts: countries and ethnic groups clashing, different brands of Christianity trying to stamp each other out, Protestant iconoclasm etc. (The Middle East would of course complain about our crusades). We are able to discuss these things freely because (with the exceptoin of the former Yugoslavia) we do not base our modern policies and attitudes on the idea that we can make right was done wrong decades or centuries ago by maltreating the descendants of the ones that wronged our forefathers. After Germany had been beaten in WWII, Europe reached the conclusion that we all needed to be friends because being enemies was so costly. The result is the European Union. A lot of bhai-bhai there. In spite of bouts of narrow-minded nationalism in various places, responsible politicians do not encourage such tendencies here but try to maintain peace and order. In India, the opposite is happening. Again, Hindus are not the only sinners, but the present government and its sister organisations have a lot to answer for. It is ironic that a political movement that complains about "forced conversions" in the past is deeply into forcing Muslims and Christians back into the Hindu fold. And this at the end of a century where the democratic right to free thought and free choice of religion has been recognized as a part of human rights. These are some of the reasons, I think, why any discussion about former Muslim atrocities so readily creates a feeling of unease in thinking outsiders. > This phobia has been encashed by them politically at the electoral level and > a > regimented historical research has been conducted at the universities > ( which in India are entirely State funded ) to keep this phobia in the minds > of > intellegensia and future bureaucracy. This phobia gave ample cause for the BJP > to term > it as Muslim protectionism and cash it for the consolidation of the Hindu > vote. Which goes to show the irresponsible attitude of the BJP. However, I would agree with you that Congress in various ways have been playing the cards into the hands of the extreme right. I am afraid that India shall have to go through the same kind of disconcerting experiences that we have had with right-wing politics here. > If an academic scrutiny of Islamic iconoclasm and its doctrine of theocratic > statehood has been discussed without the generation of this politically > motivated > fear-syndrome, results would have been much better for an ideological > adjustments > between the Muslims and Hindus in India because neither the majority of Indian > Muslims > support iconoclasm (or even wish to ostracise the Hindu modes of worship) nor > the > majority of Hindus so much care for ancient sites to become vengeful. In my opinion, the problem is not really academic studies of iconoclasm (or the lack of them), but the way such studies are used by irresponsible politicians and agitators. You should never underestimate how primitive people's reactions can be in a volatile situation. I am therefore not sure if I follow your argument here. The idea that you should let sleeping dogs lie is sometimes better, although academically frustrating. Islamic atrocities and iconoclasm have been studied in the West, but here they do not lead to political action, as you can imagine. But we can also study Catholic cruelties against Protestants (and vice versa) without anybody rushing into the street to take revenge on the former "opposition". It would seem to me that India needs to come to peace with itself before a public discussion of past wrongs can unfold without damage to India's society. Academics who want to work with such questions should at least be very careful about how they present the past. > The unfortunate thing is that the Congress and the Socialist still persist in > creating > this phobia as they believe that talking or teaching religions (please note > there > are no religious studies here from school to univs) ONLY means riots. I have noticed that teaching religions in school can be a problem even here, although it does not lead to riots. The fact that you do not have religious studies is of course deplorable. Nor do you have comparative linguistics, which is a pity too. But I had the notion that the main reason why the humanities seem to have been systematically neglected in India is basically the same reason as here: they are not regarded as economically productive and therefore get less funding than the "useful" subjects. If they have been neglected for political reasons as well, that is new to me. > This denigration of religion per se has been part of the Congress-Socialist- > MArxist > ethos in every sphere of post-independent India. If it is any consolation, religion has been put on the back-burner in Western academic life as well. The attitude is basically empiricist and rationalist with a negative view on metaphysics and a penchant for historical explanations. Religion and culture are treated entirely as man-made entities and explained through social and historical dynamics. This situation in India is therefore part of an international trend, and I would not link it too strongly to Marxism or socialism. In the West, even conservatives think in this way. It is simply part of being academic. Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Norway Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no From abhinav at DEL3.VSNL.NET.IN Thu Mar 2 21:42:08 2000 From: abhinav at DEL3.VSNL.NET.IN (Bharat Gupt) Date: Thu, 02 Mar 00 21:42:08 +0000 Subject: SV: SV: ICHR controversey Message-ID: <161227056302.23782.12793551735164677688.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Lars Martin Fosse wrote: > Discussing past > Muslim atrocities is perfectly in order as long as this discussion is delinked > from the modern political situation and not used as a tool to dehumanize > Muslims in general. In India this principle hardly seems to obtain. The primary reason for the non-obtainance of this principle has been the creation of a phobia by the Congress Party and the Communist Left that any discussion, however academic, about the history of Islamic iconoclasm against Hindu temples and culture cannot but result in witch-hunting of the Indian Muslims. This phobia has been encashed by them politically at the electoral level and a regimented historical research has been conducted at the universities ( which in India are entirely State funded ) to keep this phobia in the minds of intellegensia and future bureaucracy. This phobia gave ample cause for the BJP to term it as Muslim protectionism and cash it for the consolidation of the Hindu vote. If an academic scrutiny of Islamic iconoclasm and its doctrine of theocratic statehood has been discussed without the generation of this politically motivated fear-syndrome, results would have been much better for an ideological adjustments between the Muslims and Hindus in India because neither the majority of Indian Muslims support iconoclasm (or even wish to ostracise the Hindu modes of worship) nor the majority of Hindus so much care for ancient sites to become vengeful. The unfortunate thing is that the Congress and the Socialist still persist in creating this phobia as they believe that talking or teaching religions (please note there are no religious studies here from school to univs) ONLY means riots. This denigration of religion per se has been part of the Congress-Socialist-MArxist ethos in every sphere of post-independent India. Consequently serious areas of research in ancient and medieval history such as the economic role of the temple cities and complexes, migration of artists and performers, systems of their patronage and livelihood, the actual organisation of educational system (other than lexical accounts from Smritis), and many many more, have been totally neglected. As in India religion is part of every cultural activity, cultural studies as a whole have been overlooked. Bharat Gupt Associate Professor, Delhi University From ap1955 at HOTMAIL.COM Thu Mar 2 23:16:32 2000 From: ap1955 at HOTMAIL.COM (Avanindra Prakash) Date: Thu, 02 Mar 00 23:16:32 +0000 Subject: SV: SV: ICHR controversey Message-ID: <161227056325.23782.14727362319512837958.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I am not a history scholar or teacher but even as a common man when I read history I want to know exactly what happened,when,where, how and why. I want an insight in to the past to understand the present better. No sanitised censored version of convenience to the government of the day can help me there. But again as they said history is always written by the victor. The villain of Mahabharat of Duryodhan and not Suyodhan. AP >From: Lars Martin Fosse >Reply-To: Indology >To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK >Subject: SV: SV: ICHR controversey >Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 23:58:59 +0100 > >Rajarshi Banerjee [SMTP:rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM] skrev 01. mars 2000 >19:41: > > > > RB>I am not talking about morals, who wronged who, or preaching >anything. > > When a naturalist goes into the field he does not take sides between say > > prey and predator, Such an approach would compromise truth and limit > > understanding. > > Its undestandable to sanitize news stories if they can be iflammatory >but > > such principles should not be used for long term analysis of history. > > Marxist scholars indeed become defensive when its time to deal with >islamic > > activities in India. > >As I was trying to say in another mail: not just Marxist scholars. However: >we >are evidently discussing two things at the same time: on the one hand, >mass-media communication where a certain amount of responsibility and >restraint >is called for (for the reasons you mention yourself), and scholarly >discussions >where professional attitude and factuality is called for. Discussing past >Muslim atrocities is perfectly in order as long as this discussion is >delinked >from the modern political situation and not used as a tool to dehumanize >Muslims in general. In India this principle hardly seems to obtain. > > > If you are worried that the sight of broken pre-islamic monuments will >make > > hindus vengful you are off track. Compare INdian attitudes with the >paranoid > > israelis, Americans who bombed libya over a hijacking. > >There is a slight difference here: I am not talking about an immediate >reaction >to an act of terrorism or a military attack. (This is called "defending >your >country"). I am talking about revenge for injustices suffered by past >generations many decades or centuries ago. (BTW: I do not necessarily >endorse >all action taken by Israelis and Americans. Israeli treatment of >Palestinians >can be atrocious, but then Palestinian behaviour is not always adequate >either). If you want to react to military threats or acts of terrorism, the >targets should ideally be the perpetrators and/or their political leaders, >not >random, ordinary civilians. But that is part of a definitely >non-Indological >discussion). > >The harping on Muslim injustice in the pre-British period is used as a >means of >targeting Muslims *in general*, and Muslims at that who are innocent of the >atrocities committed in the past. But as I said, that does not mean that >Muslims are beyond criticism. I have seen stupid and brutal reactions on >the >part of Muslims as well, and there is no excuse for committing such acts of >terrorism as you mention. > >INdia probably has > > faced more terrorist attacks than all of them combined. Starting with >747 > > blown oput of the sky, stock exchange bombings ....... assasinations , >bomb > > blasts, mowing down of many marriage processions in jammu, migrant >labourers > > shot dead as they sleep to give just a few examples all happening over >and > > over again. These are never reported in the western media. > >You are wrong. As far as I can see, such episodes get mentioned fairly >often, >although they do not necessarily become first page headlines. Journalists >tend >to look for a bit of blood and gore to enliven the pages of otherwise >boring >newspapers, and items such "30 persons gunned down at Indian wedding", "25 >persons drown in ferry accident on the Ganges" etc. usually end up at the >bottom of page 3 or 4. I have seen fairly regular - but underemphasized >reports >on atrocities in South Asia in the local press here. The problem is that >they >are rarely analyzed in a broader context. The reader gets scraps of >information >on South Asia, but seldom intelligent explanations. And of course, our >local >petty political quarrels are always more in focus than major catastrophies >in >the world beyond Norway. > > > Even the so called rabid and nationalsit BJP government is pretty laid >back > > and restrained by world standards. > >That is highly debatable. I have been a subscriber to the "Organiser" for a >year, and "laid back" and "restrained" are hardly words that pop into my >mind. >The BJP and its sister organisations run pretty hard-nosed campaigns >against >both Muslims and Christians, thus exposing them to violence at grass-root >levels. > >From a practical political point of view, Panikkar's version of history is >probably less damaging to India's body politic and society than the >"critical" >version of history you want to see published. However, if Panikkar's view >is as >stated by you earlier, I don't share it. So should I shout my opinion from >the >rooftops and contribute to a potential blood-bath? Or should I discuss my >views in fora where I am surrounded by responsible persons who will not run >off >and kill their Muslim neighbours because of injustice suffered by their >forefathers long ago? I would opt for responsibility. > >As an afterthought, I come to remember the situation in France a couple of >years ago, when several books on French collabation with the German >occupation >force during WWII were published. As I remember it, it transpired that such >collaboration had been much more widespread than assumed until recently. >Apparently, the true war history of France had been deliberately suppressed >on >the initiative of General de Gaulle, who had the statesmanlike idea that it >would be easier to build a new and better France if the French were >convinced >that they had been a nation of heroic resistance fighters rather than a >bunch >of unprincipled opportunists, traitors and cowards. So for 50 years, they >were >told that they had been heroes (which of course many of them were). And >now, it >doesn't matter what they are told. Is there a lesson here? > >Best regards, > >Lars Martin Fosse > >Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse >Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, >0674 Oslo >Norway >Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 >Email: lmfosse at online.no > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From sivadasi at EROLS.COM Fri Mar 3 05:18:14 2000 From: sivadasi at EROLS.COM (Katherine K. Brobeck) Date: Fri, 03 Mar 00 00:18:14 -0500 Subject: Indian police training Message-ID: <161227056336.23782.69294523720038501.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Sir: Try looking up the novels of the author RUMER GODDEN. Her last novel before her death was on just this subject. The found statue of Siva was taken to England, but acted in its own defense, wanting to be returned to INDIA. Sources of this case in England might give you some leads. Sorry, I can't remember the title of the book. ---------- >From: Atimidus >To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK >Subject: Indian police training >Date: Thu, Mar 2, 2000, 10:47 PM > > Greeting to everyone. > > I am giving a course on International methods of law and order defense. > There are topics in the course like specifics of police training, prison > organization, crime punishment and prevention in different countries. I am > interested is there any historical ethic or philosophical background in the > way Indian police is trained (ksatriya mood, dharma rules, etc)? I have > heard of the case, when Indian justice proved the Deity as the legal > proprietor of the land, so there might be some pecularities in the law and > order defense also. If you have any kind of the material, bibliography, I > would be gratefuful fro your reply. I have taken already some information on > internet, but it's scarce. > > > Best regards, > Alexey Timoschuk > Vladimir Institute of Law > mailto:hrim at polbox.com ICQ:48347430 > www.philosophy.ru/timoschuk From mbj at VSNL.COM Thu Mar 2 18:50:18 2000 From: mbj at VSNL.COM (Mahendra Jain) Date: Fri, 03 Mar 00 00:20:18 +0530 Subject: Please remove my name from the list Message-ID: <161227056305.23782.8288549057774727379.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear List members, Please remove my name from the list. Regards, Mahendra Jain From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Thu Mar 2 23:28:37 2000 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Fri, 03 Mar 00 00:28:37 +0100 Subject: ICHR controversey Message-ID: <161227056327.23782.13330928086982466088.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Narayan S. Raja [SMTP:raja at IFA.HAWAII.EDU] skrev 02. mars 2000 22:07: > While I agree with most of what Dr. Fosse says, > I perceive (perhaps mistakenly), in this > particular posting from him, a European > "holier than thou" attitude which is not > justified by the facts: First of all: an apology for sounding "holier than thou". That was not my intention, but I see that what I said can be interpreted that way. We are able to discuss these things freely because (with the > > exceptoin of the former Yugoslavia) we do not base our modern policies and > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > > attitudes on the idea that we can make right was done wrong decades or > ^^^^^^^^^ > > centuries ago by maltreating the descendants of the ones that wronged our > > forefathers. > > I presume you refer only to "official" > policies and attitudes, as opposed > to individuals' prejudices, which > are alive and well in Europe as elsewhere. I think I hinted at individual prejudices. You are perfectly correct, if you start scratching the surface, you will find both racism, religious prejudice etc. in European countries. > And even when it comes to "official" > policies and attitudes, your observation > is not quite correct: for example, > I vividly remember how, when I was > travelling in Europe some years ago, > even I (a brown-skinned third-worlder, > i.e., a leper to most European consulates) > was granted a Greek visa on the spot, > while the Turk behind me in the line > was told to come back in 1 month. > Apparently, the Greeks still hadn't > realized that it was un-European to > seek petty bureaucratic revenge from > the Turks. :-) I can assure you that similar and even worse cases of bureaucratic harassment occur here in Norway, too. And here as elsewhere in Europe, you have political parties that would like to kick out most foreigners. But my point is: the majority of politicians and people in responsible positions actively try to avoid and oppose attitudes and policies that would lead to discrimination of large groups of people. Extremists are not encouraged. > Other problem areas such as Northern Ireland, > Cyprus, and the Basque region of Spain come > to mind. This is a slightly different matter. The Spanish government is dealing with a problem that was caused by discriminatory fascist politics of the kind that I fear India is introducing. As for Northern Ireland, this too is an inherited conflict where oppression of Catholics by Protestants created a situation that has turned out to be rather difficult to handle. Again something India shouldn't copy. Then one hears of official harassment > of Gypsies in various European countries. This is certainly true, particularly in The Czech Republic and the former Yugoslavia, where the Kosovo Albanians believe that the Gypsies were in cahoots with the Serbs (there is no evidence for that, but the Albanians act as if there were nevertheless). > I won't even go into details of the > problems Europeans have with third-world > immigrants, because they are not "traditional" > chronic problems of your societies. Again, you are perfectly right: there are problems. But the authorities try to combat racist attitudes. Please notice the reaction to Joerg Haider in Austria: a man and a party that has made fairly unpleasant statements. The reaction from the European Union has been quite blunt. > > After Germany had been beaten in WWII, Europe reached the > > conclusion that we all needed to be friends because being enemies was so > > costly. > > This is not quite analogous to the > situation in India. The European Union > was not achieved by suppressing > discussion of Nazi atrocities. The origins of the EU was the understanding that enmity between European countries was catastrophic to all concerned. After all, this continent has seen two major wars this century alone. As for suppressing discussion of Nazi atrocities, there was hardly anything to be gained by that. The Nazis had been whipped good and proper, Germany was partly occupied by the Allies, partly by the Soviet Union. I think the example with France is better: by suppressing discussion of French collaboration, France obtained a degree of social peace avoiding the disruptions that a bitter national debate could have created. Today, France has the distance it takes to discuss collaboration without severe social disruption. You will find similar policies in Latin American states that have emerged from a dictatorial past partly by renunciating a settlement of accounts with former dictators and their henchmen, because these individuals enjoy substantial support in some sectors of the population (not to mention that they control the guns). > This is no longer a live issue for most > Europeans (well, except Northern Ireland). > But how about a live issue -- can one study the > modus operandi of illegal Turkish immigrants > into Germany without Neo-Nazis "rushing into > the street to take revenge"? I am not sure the motive of the Neo-Nazis is to take revenge: it is rather to run the "foreigners" out of Germany. Civilized Germans protest against this. Immigration of orientals into European societies is a matter that is hotly debated in many countries, also in Norway, but the vast majority - whatever their feelings - reject violence. The few that perform acts of violence are dragged before the courts, sentenced and jailed. > I don't mean to gloat at the many social > problems of Europe. I just want to point > out that a "holier-than-thou" attitude > about "European" tolerance vs. BJP fanaticism > is not justified by the facts. Yes it is. Not because we are "holier" than the average person in India or elsewhere, but because responsible politicians here reject violence and discrimination and actively try to do something about it. The Council of Europe recently published a document on human rights that address different kinds of discrimination and discusses ways to combat such discrimination. The document expresses the ideas that most European governments (with the possible exception of Austria) adhere to. The fact that individual bureaucrats and private citizens can be both racist, intolerant and downright evilminded in their attitude to other social groups is beside the point. Their attitudes are not encouraged by the state apparatus. You pointed out that we can discuss Catholic and Protestant cruelties because these largely have ceased to be a living issue. That is indirectly the point I was trying to make in connection with the study of Muslim iconoclasm: it should be treated with extreme care because it is still a living issue. Again, I would point to the alleged initiative of general de Gaulle. I think that the definitive criterium when we discuss these matters is the body count. In the period 1870 to 1945, the European body count was horrendous: p eople dying by the millions on the battlefields and in concentration camps. In this period, I believe (guess) that some 50-60 million Europeans may have met a violent death of some sort. The Nazis murdered some 6 million Jews, 1 million gypsies, an unknown number of homosexuals, retarded people, mentally ill people etc. The Stalinist terror seems to have cost the Russian people some 20 million dead. The history of Europe after 1945 is among other things the history of a concerted effort to avoid such horrors in the future. Not because we are holier than others. We - or at least some of us - have just learned our lesson. Why should India repeat our follies? Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Norway Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no From holden at GIASDL01.VSNL.NET.IN Thu Mar 2 20:06:43 2000 From: holden at GIASDL01.VSNL.NET.IN (Sundeep Dougal) Date: Fri, 03 Mar 00 01:36:43 +0530 Subject: SV: ICHR controversey Message-ID: <161227056317.23782.10434873456925743682.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I have long been a lurker on this list, and much as I realise this is the wrong forum for it, heartened by the interjections of Vidyasankar Sundaresan & Lars Martin Fosse, I am tempted to post some quick responses to Mr. Vishal Aggarwal's message: "Jha and R S Sharma upto 1998 and 1999 if the listmaster permits). The EMINENT HISTORIANS's only response to Shourie's books have been abuses..." Has Mr. Aggarwal perhaps read _Investigative Journalism or Slander: Do you have more Questions Mr. Shourie?_ by one Vishwa Mohan Jha, brought out by Sahmat in 1998? "...For that matter, why doesn't Ms. Srinivas herself ..." Why conclude that it is "Ms." Srinivas? Perhaps one needs to at least enquire before jumping to a conclusion? Couldn't it be a "Mr."? In any case, based only on this, I wouldn't like to imply that Mr. Agarwal is being very judgemental. "...the book with an open mind and points out 5 blatant errors in the work of Shourie where he has criticized these eminent Historians, rather than making clearly non relevant retorts..." Only 5? Laxmi Srinivas, I am sure, is capable of making many relevant retorts and pointing out far too many errors - but for now, given the constraints of space and time, let me just sequentially run through the above Sahmat book and not try to decide what is more blatant than the other: 1. Kosambi's _Myth & Reality_ Shourie starts by accusing in Chapter 15, that Lord Indra has been called ' "rowdy and amoral" ' without evidence (p. 156) Perhaps Shourie was in too much of a hurry to have missed out the details on pp 19 & 24 of _M&R_? C'mon, even good old Amar Chitra Kathas used to say that, and Kosambi gives more than adequate evidence on the pages cited above. I am sure you would corroborate after checking the same? Let me admit that I am at present only going by this Sahmat book (p 6) but of course anybody is free to counter, as the purpose is to examine one criticism made of Shourie's eminent book. 2. Kalidasa (see pg 6&7 of the Sahmat booklet) Shourie argues while that the Soviet historians appreciated the Indian Civilization in full measure, the Indian Marxists exerted to belittle them as much as they could, that while, e.g. K.Anatova, G.Bongard-Levin & G.Kotovsky recognised Kalidasa as 'one of the pearls of ancient Indian Literature' etc. the Indians _in contrast_ did not. (Pg 174-177 where he discusses D.N.Jha's work) One may justifiably, and only incidentally wonder why he doesn't discuss the 'other eminence' R.S. Sharma on Kalidasa. Could it be that because his _Ancient India_ states, inter alia: 'Kalidasa wrote _Abhijnananshakuntalam_ which is considered to be one of the best hundred literary works in the world'? (Ancient India, Pg 163-64) Maybe Shourie could also quote from Pg 113 from Jha's book instead of the quote from Pg 114? It is only for the sake of a shortage of time that I am being brief for now, but I am sure you'd be able to verify for yourself. (and Shourie does say that he is discussing Pg 112-115, so perhaps it is only fair that we also look at the quote): 'The poems of Kalidasa remain unequaled in their metrical and verbal perfection. His most famous work, the play _Abhijnanashakuntalam_, ... remains the supreme achievement of early Indian literature and stagecraft.' It is possible that Jha and Sharma may be found lacking in their panegyrics, or their prose may not be as florid as the Soviets', but surely they do not do Kalidasa any disservice? 3. The Extended Phallus (Pg 8 of the booklet) On Pg 159 of his eminent book, for Jha, he asserts 'Lord Shiva is just a "development of phallic cults" ' (citing from Jha, op cit., p.90). Now this 'just' is just Shourie's imputation, not a part of the quote. I hope you'd pardon my referring to the Shiv Lingam as above, but that is what Shourie claims Jha sees in Lord Shiva unlike the effulgence that 'even a foreigner - Stella Kramrisch - is able to see. On this page, 90 (nor for that matter in any of the 8 pages mentioned for the entry 'Shiva') of Jha's book, this quote is (surprise surprise) not there. It would take too long to reproduce what IS there on this page, though - and I am sure you would be kind enough to check and confirm the same to us? As the Sahmat booklet puts it: "the onus on Shourie here is twofold; he must both show where Jha has written the alleged thing and admit that he did not read or understand the above quote from Jha's book. Failing either he stands accused of lying. 4. The Theory (pg 9 of the booklet) Please refer to Pg 228-232 of Shourie's book where he disparages Kosambi & Jha of following & propagating as a gang (giroha), what he describes as, The Theory as "revealed to" Marx & Engeles ..that bhakti was no more than a product of feudalism... Perhaps Shourie forgets that Marx had pointedly rejected Kovalevsky's view that there was a feudal period in Indian history, that Kosambi firmly rejected Marx's views on Indian history, and that the concept of feudalism and its applications have been a most complex and contentious issue among these very historians? 5. Disappearance of Buddhism (pg 10-11 of the booklet) Here's a quotation from Shourie citing J.S. Sharma's _Ancient India_, p 78 [p 90 of Eminent Historians]: 'We find that in the beginning every religion is inspired by the spirit of reform', this historian [i.e. Sharma] tells us, 'but eventually it succumbs to rituals and ceremonies it originally denounced. Buddhism ..._became a victim to the evils of brahmanism against which it had fought in the beginning_.' Hence: the original seed of evil is in 'brahmanism', indeed it is evil _per se_; and Buddhism lost out because it fell back into that cesspool. But is Sharma calling brahmanism itself evil, a cesspool? Or is he speaking of the evils present in brahmanism. Let's see the same page 78 of Sharma's book: It [i.e. Buddhism] became a victim to the evils of brahmanism against which it had fought in the beginning. To meet the buddhist challenge the brahmans reformed their religion. They stressed the need for preserving the cattle wealth and assured women and shudras of admission to heaven. Buddhism, on the other hand, changed for the worse." Distortion? Selective quotation? Spin? Miscomprehension? I am only on page 11 of this booklet and I have reached the 5 points required by you, omitting many, randomly picking in page-sequence those which might be easily condensable, though you may like to read the rest for temple destruction figures, and of course Aurangjeb & Jaziya & what a muslim actually is & other such gems. Despite all this, all I'd say for now is that let's be fair. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let's discriminate & leave it for professionals to sort out the details. I hope Mr. Aggarwal will agree. Excuse me as this is rushed & seeing the heat generated by this book, did wish to post in at least a hurried response before this thread was declared off-limits. Warm regards, Sundeep From troyoga at YAHOO.COM Fri Mar 3 10:06:46 2000 From: troyoga at YAHOO.COM (Ven. Tantra) Date: Fri, 03 Mar 00 02:06:46 -0800 Subject: Re. D.ombii Message-ID: <161227056347.23782.5289224730245663180.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In reference to a sort of tantric muse/partner, two popular scholars (Eliade and Walker) from the 50?s and 60?s translated the Sanskrit word d.ombii as ?washerwoman.? But I see no connection to ?washer? here. Are we to presume that they mistook d.ombii for a female dhobi* or ?laundry person?? Could the apparent confusion be caused by mistaking the retroflex d in d.ombii for a unretroflex dh as in dhobi? *Dhobi: presumably from Sanskrit root dhav, as is the Hindi word dhona, both of which mean, ?to wash?? Kindly, Troy Harris __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From Atimidus at PRONTO.BBT.SE Fri Mar 3 03:47:00 2000 From: Atimidus at PRONTO.BBT.SE (Atimidus) Date: Fri, 03 Mar 00 06:47:00 +0300 Subject: Indian police training Message-ID: <161227056333.23782.16506832303192871809.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Greeting to everyone. I am giving a course on International methods of law and order defense. There are topics in the course like specifics of police training, prison organization, crime punishment and prevention in different countries. I am interested is there any historical ethic or philosophical background in the way Indian police is trained (ksatriya mood, dharma rules, etc)? I have heard of the case, when Indian justice proved the Deity as the legal proprietor of the land, so there might be some pecularities in the law and order defense also. If you have any kind of the material, bibliography, I would be gratefuful fro your reply. I have taken already some information on internet, but it's scarce. Best regards, Alexey Timoschuk Vladimir Institute of Law mailto:hrim at polbox.com ICQ:48347430 www.philosophy.ru/timoschuk From pwyzlic at UNI-BONN.DE Fri Mar 3 10:09:23 2000 From: pwyzlic at UNI-BONN.DE (Peter Wyzlic) Date: Fri, 03 Mar 00 11:09:23 +0100 Subject: bhASya definition In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056344.23782.12560107207264788884.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Thu, 2 Mar 2000, Madhav Deshpande wrote: > The second half of the line is: > > svapadAni ca varNyante bhASyam bhASyavido viduH // > > This is the traditional definition of a bhASya. > On Thu, 2 Mar 2000, Chandan R. Narayan wrote: > > > Does anybody know the second half of the verse that begins: > > > > sUtraArtho varNyate yatra padaiH sUtrAnukAribhiH | Ram Shankar Bhattacharya cites the sloka in this form: sUtrasthaM padam AdAya padaiH sUtrAnusAribhiH / svapadAni ca varNyante bhASyaM bhASyavido viduH // And he gives as source: Parasara Upapurana, adhyaya 18; see R. S. Bhattacharya: "Kinds of expositions in Sanskrit literature." In: ABORI 36 (1955), 123-132, resp. 127. Peter Wyzlic -- Peter Wyzlic Indologisches Seminar, Universitaet Bonn Regina-Pacis-Weg 7 D-53113 Bonn From swantham at TECHPARK.NET Fri Mar 3 05:56:27 2000 From: swantham at TECHPARK.NET (Swantham) Date: Fri, 03 Mar 00 11:26:27 +0530 Subject: (no subject) Message-ID: <161227056340.23782.17271022112399566258.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Sir, I also join to share my feelings on the sad demise of Prof. Dalsukhbhai Malvania. I have been fortunate enough to listen to a few of his lectures at B.L.Institute of Indology ,Delhi.Let us now take oath that we will continue his mission. With regards Dr.K.Maheswaran Nair Professor Dept. of Sanskrit University of Kerala Trivandrum ---------- > From: Mr. Jitendra B. Shah > To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK > Subject: (no subject) > Date: Wednesday, March 01, 2000 12:29 AM > > Date : 28-2-2000 > > A sad demise of Prof. Dalsukhbhai Malvania, > a, Scholar and Legend of Indian Philosophy and Jain Religion > > > Prof. Dalsukhbhai malvania has completed his journey on this earth and > passed away in the early morning of 28th Feb.-2000 at his residence in > Ahmedabad. He was 90 years old. He was a Legendary, and a scholar of > Vedic, Buddha, and Jaina Philosophy. He had edited old scriptures of > Buddha philosophy and edited and published many scriptures of Jaina > philosophy. The Grantha like Nyayavatar Vartik Vritti, and Praman > Mimamsa are considered to be an ideal ones. The translation of > Gandharvad and its scholarly preface is his scholatic evidence. He > started his career as Professor in Banaras Hindu University at Varanasi > and with Pt. Sukhlalji, edited and translated several Granthas there. He > lend his active co-operation in the establishment of Parshwanath > Vidyashram, Jain Sanskruti Vidya mandal and Prakrut Text Society at > Kashi and by doing various activities, became basic foundation stone for > the study of Jaina philosophy. Afterwards, he was appointed as Director > of Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Vidya Mandir at Ahmedabad, remained on the same > post till retirement and during his tenure at this institution, he was > instrumental in achieving international fame to this institution by his > service in the fields of Teachings, Research, and editing of Indian > Philosophy, Religion and Indolgoy. He had presented several scholatie > articles in the conferences held in and out side the country. During his > life-span he had written about 200 articles and guided several scholars > towards obtaining Ph. D. degree. There is an end of traditional Pandit > era of a principal stream line of Indian philosophy in his death. > > > Jitendrabhai B. Shah > > (Director of L. D. Indology) From milton_degeorge at HOTMAIL.COM Sat Mar 4 04:14:19 2000 From: milton_degeorge at HOTMAIL.COM (milton degeorge) Date: Fri, 03 Mar 00 20:14:19 -0800 Subject: Retroflex and Boghazkoy. Message-ID: <161227056355.23782.15120132539298424696.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Thank you Ms. Kruegel. >Dear Mr. Degeorge, > >Please see: >-Paul Thieme, The Aryan Gods of the Mitanni Treaties, Journal of the >Ancient Oriental Society 80. >-Manfred Mayrhofer: Die Arier im Vorderen Orient-ein Mythos >-A. Kammenhuber on the Kikkuli-Texts (horse training) > >Sincerely, S. Kruegel > >milton degeorge schrieb: > > > > Hello list members, > > > > I have recently heard of the discovery of Sanskrit words in the remains >of > > the Hittite capital of Boghazkoy. Being interested in what the words >were > > and their characters, where might I find reports on the findings? Could >it > > be that some of the words contain characters that are later associated >with > > retroflex sounds? Wouldn't that be something? > > > > Milton DeGeorge Jr. > > Dept. of Languages and Cultures of Asia > > University of Wisconsin-Madison > > E-mail: milton_degeorge at hotmail.com > > ______________________________________________________ > > Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From haridasc at YAHOO.COM Sat Mar 4 04:43:41 2000 From: haridasc at YAHOO.COM (Haridas C) Date: Fri, 03 Mar 00 20:43:41 -0800 Subject: Toward a Science of Translating--Sanskrit Texts Message-ID: <161227056357.23782.16713841148918465755.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear List, wondering about the variety of the past authors which have been foundational to the science and the practice of translating sanskrit, pali, and prakrit literature in the west. Any thoughts upon recent thinkers, such as Foucault, Derrida, Godamer in light of the mechanics of translating would be warmly welcomed also. thank you. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From ap1955 at HOTMAIL.COM Fri Mar 3 23:46:01 2000 From: ap1955 at HOTMAIL.COM (Avanindra Prakash) Date: Fri, 03 Mar 00 23:46:01 +0000 Subject: Indology seminars/workshops Message-ID: <161227056350.23782.13088422999313034548.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hi from a newbie I'll be grateful if anybody can give some information on any seminars or workshops on Indology going to be held in 2000 or early 2001. Thanks specially if a copy sent to my email address as well. Dr A Prakash ap1955 at hotmail.com ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From davinci at VSNL.COM Sat Mar 4 02:40:45 2000 From: davinci at VSNL.COM (Vidya Kamat) Date: Sat, 04 Mar 00 08:10:45 +0530 Subject: Thanks(Information request) Message-ID: <161227056352.23782.8056489671757667865.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> My thanks to list members who responded to my information request on male breasts with valuable material. Vidya From sreeni at KTP.UNI-PADERBORN.DE Sat Mar 4 19:01:19 2000 From: sreeni at KTP.UNI-PADERBORN.DE (Sreenivas Paruchuri) Date: Sat, 04 Mar 00 20:01:19 +0100 Subject: Toward a Science of Translating--Sanskrit Texts In-Reply-To: <20000304044341.28027.qmail@web3105.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <161227056359.23782.13527166306865541816.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > of translating sanskrit, pali, and prakrit literature in the west. Theres a special issue (?) of Journal of s. Asian Literature, from 1991, dedicated to the subject of "translations". Most of the essays therein may be of interest to you; esp. John Cort's: "Elevating the living body of Sanskrit poetry into American English". JSALit, 26.1&2 (1991), p. 44-76. (also see: Martha Selby's "On the translatability of Intention in Indian Poetry" in the same issue. p. 111-24) Well, Teju Niranjana's _Sitting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism, and the colonial context_ (UC-Berkely Press, 1992) doesn't have anything to say on translations from Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrt literatures, but in last chapter she discusses A.K. Ramanujan's work (taking a couple of poems from his: _Speaking of Siva_). On same note, check: Vinay Dharwadker's essay on AKR's Theory and Practice of Criticism and Translation (Indian Literature, 1994, p.??, can provide if interested!). The only essay on transl. theory with special ref. to Indian texts, I am aware, is: G.N. Devy's "Translation Theory: An Indian Perspective", Bombay Literary Review" (1990). A couple of years ago there was a small volume from HOS Opera Minora series with the title: _Tranlsating, Translations, Translators_. I only read Sheldon Pollock's essay (which I 'd highly recommend) and can't comment about the rest. Regards, Sreenivas P.S. see: AKR, "On translating a Tamil Poem" in: _The art of translation - Voices from the field_, R. Warren (ed). From vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Mar 5 04:46:09 2000 From: vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM (Vishal Agarwal) Date: Sat, 04 Mar 00 20:46:09 -0800 Subject: ICHR controversy (Part 1 of reply to Mr. Dougal) Message-ID: <161227056365.23782.10522326885581286081.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ----Original Message Follows---- From: Sundeep Dougal SD1:Has Mr. Aggarwal perhaps read _Investigative Journalism... VA1: The book is not accessible to me right now but the response to its citations by you is fairly simple. See below. ________________ SD2:Only 5? Laxmi Srinivas, I am sure, is capable of making many ...........1. Kosambi's _Myth & Reality_......... Shourie starts by accusing in Chapter 15, that Lord Indra has been called ' "rowdy and amoral" ' without evidence (p. 156) Perhaps Shourie was in too much of a hurry to have missed out the details on pp 19 & 24 of _M&R_? ............. VA2: Shourie is here criticizing the work "Ancient India- An introductory outline" (1997) and not Dr. Kosambi's work, as is clear from the footnote on Page 157 of 'Eminent Historians'. Therefore, V Jha's remarks are mischievous. To continue with Shourie's citations from Jha's book (Pg. numbers from D. N. Jha's book are in the fns and I have added them in brackets): " Lord Indra is rowdy and amoral (pg. 18). The God Krishna has a rather questionable personal record (pg. 91). Lord Shiva is just a development of Phallic cults (pg. 90). Bhakti is just the reflection of the complete dependence of the serfs or tenants on the landowners in the context of Indian feudal society (pg.xvii)." I need not comment on these statements of the Secularist Historian D. N. Jha In short, you have been taken for a ride and Shourie's criticism stands. _____________________________ SD3: 2. Kalidasa (see pg 6&7 of the Sahmat booklet) Shourie argues while that the Soviet historians appreciated the Indian Civilization in full measure, the Indian Marxists exerted to belittle them as much as they could, that while, e.g. K.Anatova, G.Bongard-Levin & G.Kotovsky recognised Kalidasa as 'one of the pearls of ancient Indian Literature' etc. the Indians _in contrast_ did not. (Pg 174-177 where he discusses D.N.Jha's work) VA3: The SAHMAT booklet is again innaccurate. Shourie *does not* state or imply any such thing in pages 174-177 of his book!!! There is no mention of Russians in these pages except for the last short sentence which has nothing to do with Levin etc. However, the Soviet Historians are mentioned in the following chapter and I will deal with the matter in my next post. Here, Shourie is merely referring to Dr. D. N. Jha's thesis (and the arguments given by Dr. D. N. Jha to justify it) that the 'Gupta age was not the Golden age of India.' You may read the details of this thesis in Chapter 8 of Ancient India In Historical Outline; D. N. Jha; Manohar (Publisher); New Delhi; 1998 Compare Shourie's book with the original by D N Jha and you will see that Shourie's criticism stands. ________________________ SD4: One may justifiably, and only incidentally wonder why he doesn't discuss the 'other eminence' R.S. Sharma on Kalidasa. Could it be that because his _Ancient India_ states, inter alia: 'Kalidasa wrote _Abhijnananshakuntalam_ ................. VA4: Because the entire chapter 15 of Shourie's book deals with D N Jha's text only. Dr. Ram Sharan Sharma or Dr. Dharmanand Kosambi have not been invoked. Therefore, the comments of the SAHMAT booklet are misleading, as is often the case with the works and articles of 'secularist'/Marxist authors. ________________________________ In the passing, I mention that SAHMAT means "Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust" and is named after 'Safdar Hashmi" who was murdered allegedly by Congress I goons. The trust has been, at times linked to CPI(m) and at other times to Congress I and once, even to the BJP--an indication of the changing political equations in India. Cn send you URL's for a further elaboration on this privately. Rest in the next post........ Best regards from a fellow Dilliwalla Vishal ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From abhinav at DEL3.VSNL.NET.IN Sun Mar 5 01:19:32 2000 From: abhinav at DEL3.VSNL.NET.IN (Bharat Gupt) Date: Sun, 05 Mar 00 01:19:32 +0000 Subject: ICHR controversey Message-ID: <161227056362.23782.12352290018445291452.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > I believe (guess) that some 50-60 million Europeans may have met a > violent death of some sort. .... >The history of Europe after 1945 is among other things the history of a > concerted effort to avoid such horrors in the future. Not because we are holier > than others. We - or at least some of us - have just learned our lesson. Why > should India repeat our follies? Certainly not, and the advise/concern should be well taken. There are, however, major differences between the Indian/ South Asian and the European situation as far as conflict based on religion/ideology goes. The two world wars were not so much ideological as economic as the question was, who shall control the colonised world. Also there seems to be presumption in Prof. Fosse comparison that just as religion withered away in Europe due to success of materialistic technology, so shall it be in Asia. The futility of dogmatic differences shall be realised through suffering as they were in affluent Europe and then dogmatism shall be abandoned. But the events are going in a different direction for Asia. The affluence achieved in Europe and America is an environmental impossibilty in Asia. If asian populations begin to consume as much as the West, the earth shall be depleted in a decade. Anyway Asian technocratisation (to meet Euro-norms) is a very very distant dream. Also as a cultural phenomenon, religious zest in Asia has increased both among the poor and the affluent. Asia is not likely to take the European road. And so has Islam acquired a greater assertiveness (often with Western support as in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan to humble Orthodox Russia). The South Asian and Indian conflicts based on religion and community differences, therefore, have to be resolved by bridging the communication gaps and not by ignoring, subduing or wishing away religion as the secularists have been doing for fifty years. It is for this reason that Islamic iconoclasm , which does not mean historical plunderings only but also the present day Islamic fundamentalist ideology of not accepting iconophilia (not just of Hinduism but of all kinds in its broadest cultural and philosophical sense) needs to be addressed , discussed and engaged in India. This does not at all mean seeking revenge, compensation or demonising the Muslims and Christians but it certainly means acceptance of modernity and pluratity that includes iconolatry. The Marxist lobby with its own prejudice against "the opium of the masses" finds no utility in such discussions and engagements and continues with the usual phobia-mongering,. Hence every attempt at reassessment of history written in Congress Raj is projected as a Hindutva conspiracy. best wishes, Bharat Gupt From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Sun Mar 5 11:53:30 2000 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Sun, 05 Mar 00 12:53:30 +0100 Subject: SV: ICHR controversey Message-ID: <161227056368.23782.16484728108603092783.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Bharat Gupt [SMTP:abhinav at DEL3.VSNL.NET.IN] skrev 05. mars 2000 02:20: > > Also there seems to be presumption in Prof. Fosse comparison that just as > religion > withered away in Europe due to success of materialistic technology, so shall > it be > in Asia. The futility of dogmatic differences shall be realised through > suffering > as they were in affluent Europe and then dogmatism shall be abandoned. No, this is not my presumption. I don't believe that religion will wither away in Asia for the foreseeable future. Nor do I believe that Asia will/can obtain the sort of wasteful affluence that you see in the West. > Also as a cultural phenomenon, religious zest in Asia has increased both among > the > poor and the affluent. Asia is not likely to take the European road. > And so has Islam acquired a greater assertiveness (often with Western support > as > in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan to humble Orthodox Russia). Here you seem to imply that the West was/is concerned with humbling Russia for religious reasons. I don't believe that the politics of Bosnia/Kosovo has anything to do with such concerns. The Yugoslav conflict did not only produce a humanitarian problem of enormous dimensions that was the concern of many Westerners. What is more important is that it generated a great deal of refugees that were a burden on Western treasuries while at the same time introducing a general instability in the area that could have developed into a much bigger and more dangerous conflict. When the West finally intervened in Kosovo, it did so to take care of its own immediate interests. As for Afghanistan, it is worth noticing that the American who probably did the most important job to get the US involved was Zbigniew Brzesinski, an ethnic Pole with a hatred for Soviet oppression. The American involvement in Afghanistan was basically an attempt to fight communism by proxy, and this seems to have worked. The fact that Russia is Orthodox, is irrelevant. > The South Asian and Indian conflicts based on religion and community > differences, > therefore, have to be resolved by bridging the communication gaps and not by > ignoring, > subduing or wishing away religion as the secularists have been doing for fifty > years. I would certainly agree that there are gaps that need to be bridged. My point is rather that dealing with past Muslim sins in the present situation is not going to bridge any gaps. To the contrary, in the present situation, any discussion of past atrocities on either side is likely to deliver ammunition to the fanatics. Let me here state clearly that the Hindus are not the only ones to blame for the unpleasant situation. Muslim extremists are every bit as bad as their Hindu counterparts. Thus, the challenge to responsible politicians, both Muslim and Hindu, is immense. I would also say that many of the problems we are faced with today are due to Congress politics, as I have said earlier, they really played the cards into the hands of the extreme religious right. Now, the BJP/RSS/VHS combine has made certain political claims very clear: members of non-Indian religions have nothing to do in India. Thus both Christians and Muslims are being targeted in various ways. If you want my scenario for such politics, here it is: I do not believe that India will end up in a trench war of any kind. What I foresee is rather the possibility of a social melt-down, caused by pressure brought to bear on the Muslim and Christian minorities. It is fairly naive to believe that they will all accept being re-enrolled as Hindus. The more pressure, the more likely it is that you get guerilla and terrorist movements. India has had them before (remember the Naxalites?) Furthermore, India has enemies that might be quite happy to fund and arm such movements. India has a tremendous coast line which would make arms smuggling fairly easy (at least, that is what I suspect). Since violence creates violence, you will get into a spiral where members of different castes, religions etc. are at each other's throats. Then the death toll starts to rise. The experiences of the Brits in Norther Ireland and of the Spanish authorities in the Basque area shows us that terrorist organizations are extremely difficult to deal with. The constant need for weapons that such organisations have will produce a corresponding need for weapons in other sectors of India's society. You risk getting an serious increase in arms among various private citizens and self-defence organizations, caste senas etc. Before you know it, India will become extremely difficult to control, if not simply uncontrollable. The challenge for India's politicians is therefore to create a society based on religious tolerance. You can be zealous of your religion and still respect the right of others to think and pray differently. I never understood why people with ideas about a "unitary" state for a multiethnic society don't look to the only multi-ethnic state that is a resounding success: Switzerland. There is no "Swiss" religion, ther e is no "Swiss" language, there is just the perception of a commonality of interests shared by all Swiss. But the Swiss got started at a time when modern nationalism with all its weird supremacy ideas hadn't been invented. > It is for this reason that Islamic iconoclasm , which does not mean > historical > plunderings only but also the present day Islamic fundamentalist ideology of > not > accepting iconophilia (not just of Hinduism but of all kinds in its broadest > cultural > and philosophical sense) needs to be addressed , discussed and engaged in > India. The problem is not that fundamentalists don't accept icons. They do not have the power to do anything about Hindu and Christian iconism anyway. Muslims may be aniconic among themselves, they may think that iconism is a bad idea, and they may even say so - these things are part of normal human rights. But of course they do not have the right to force others to become aniconic. The debate that India needs, is rather a debate about how human rights and religious rights are supposed to function. No religious group has the right to force its views on another group. How do you draw the line between "private" religion and public society? How do you create mutual respect and mutual tolerance? I will still claim that a focus on the questions you bring up will only create more problems. When Muslims feel that their religion is being targeted, they tend to jump into the trenches. What India needs is a society where people can believe freely in their various gods or philosophies while respecting the rights of others to do the same. If Hindus "target" aspects of Islam that they regard as problematic in the present situation, there will not be a dialogue, only a quarrel. In principle, critique of a religion should primarily be the responsibility of the members of that religion. Hence every attempt at reassessment of history written in > Congress > Raj is projected as a Hindutva conspiracy. All countries need to rewrite their history every now and then (here we rewrite world history every 20th year or so). What matters is how you do it, and in the case of India, probably also *when* you do it. Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Norway Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Sun Mar 5 15:11:22 2000 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Sun, 05 Mar 00 16:11:22 +0100 Subject: Message for Robert Zydenbos Message-ID: <161227056371.23782.16519750531791847103.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I apologize to the other members of the list for trying to reach RZ in this way. Robert, I have tried to answer your last mail, but my replies get rejected: 550 ... Host unknown (Name server: gxm.li: host not found) Could you please check what is wrong? Best regards, Lars Martin Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Norway Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no From vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM Mon Mar 6 00:23:07 2000 From: vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM (Vishal Agarwal) Date: Sun, 05 Mar 00 16:23:07 -0800 Subject: ICHR controversy (Reply to Mr. Dougal: Part 2) Message-ID: <161227056379.23782.10316092025444831889.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dr. D. N. JHA ON KALIDASA I do not have the 1977 book used by Mr. Shourie (and reprinted 9 times till 1997), but possess the revised and enlarged edition from 1998. All references will be from this book. On Kalidasa, Dr. D. N. Jha says: pg. 172: "The main component of the so called Hindu renaissance therefore is the writings of Kalidasa, the composition of some Puranas...... But the work of Kalidasa is not indicative of an intellectual rebirth or revival of literary activity; it merely implies a development of the literary forms and styles which were evolving in an earlier period." Then, Dr. D N Jha goes on to make similar remarks about the Puranas, Shaivism/Vaishnavism amd concludes: "The much publicized Hindu renaissance was, in reality, not a renaissance, much less a Hindu one". On page 173 he adds: "True, the upper classes were happy and prosperous, and lived in comfort and ease, but this could hardly have been true of the lower orders." And all this, after stating that "The poems of Kalidas remain unequalled in their metrical and verbal excellence" (ibid.,Pg. 170)as Dr. V Jha's booklet points out. The whole discussion starts with a 'class conflict' in mind ("The paintings at Ajanta relect the lifestyle of the rich only" --paraphrase) and ends in the same vein (as evident from the quote from pg 173) and it is this tendency that colors Dr. D N Jha's notions of Indian history and makes him 'balance' the perspective of those times. Shourie does not deny that D N Jha admits the greatness of Kalidasa etc. (see page 174 of Eminent Historians), but laments that all this is drowned in his socialist biases (pg. 175-177 of EH). In contrast, Shourie quotes the Russians like Levin etc. as saying that "Without severing from earlier traditions, Kalidasa stood out as an innovator in many respects.....This explains why his work has been so accessible to the minds and the hearts of the people of India for so many centuries" (Pg. 191-192 of EH). This extract clearly implies that in the views of Russian historians, the work of Kalidasa was not as elitist as D N Jha would like us to believe, just to deprive the Hindus of their notions of a golden age. The causes of divergence of D N Jha (and others of his category) from the Russian communist historians is dealt with by Shourie in pages 193-196 of EH and must be read in totality before castigating Mr. Shourie. After all, did not the NCERT guidelines for history writing state: "Glorification of the ancient period is not allowed". The book of R S Sharma is missing from the shelves of the local library here and so I cannot comment. But the tendency to downrate the 'Gupta Age' can be seen in the works of Dr. D. D. Kosambi too. Let me know what you think of the review of EH by 1. Indiastar.com at http://www.indiastar.com/wallia19.html 2. India Today at http://india-today/itoday/07121998/books.html The latter makes very comical reading. Vishal ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM Sun Mar 5 21:31:42 2000 From: rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM (Rajarshi Banerjee) Date: Sun, 05 Mar 00 16:31:42 -0500 Subject: SV: SV: ICHR controversey Message-ID: <161227056375.23782.1426985036450255109.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Discussing past >Muslim atrocities is perfectly in order as long as this discussion is >delinked >from the modern political situation and not used as a tool to dehumanize >Muslims in general. In India this principle hardly seems to obtain. You are voicing some well meant concerns. I agree that there should be checks against inciting violence and chaos. But you seem to be implying that europe has a social conscience and well established checks against bigotry/racism while India is just on the verge of discovering/losing them. As a resident of India I have seen enough evidence of balanced broad minded thinking in India. I have nothing against israel and its existance but would like to illustrate a point. A whole nation was founded on the basis of ancient history by reclaiming palestine, for the sake of essentialy a european population. There was a vast disconnect between mordern arab palestine and its jewish past but that and the rights of the residents was never made an issue. Contrast this with what happened at ayodhya where there was an attempt to reclaim an unused mosque also on historical grounds(however flimsy) which was accompanied by was so much soul searching and regret. I have met basques and macedonians who have been forced to give up their language. Such policies are unthinkable in India. There is a kind of racism in the assumption that whatever is done by europeans or americans is moral. You should meet some Indian muslims and ask them if they think that the Indian govt policies are becoming progressively fascist or anti-muslim or whether their dignity is threatened, For eg my ex-room mate is a muslim from India.he would think such views are silly.. Compare with the attitudes of serb muslims. There are muslims in the indian army who died fightning the enemy in kasmir. Abdul kalaam is called the father of the Indian missile program. Do any gypsies, serb muslims ever enroll in the yugoslav army. India has a rather stable society pehaps due its long convoluted history. Maybe europe has more unification pangs to go through compared to INdia. I sometimes wonder how tolerant US society would be if people were illiterate and had poverty levels like India. regards R Banerjee. From vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM Mon Mar 6 01:06:32 2000 From: vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM (Vishal Agarwal) Date: Sun, 05 Mar 00 17:06:32 -0800 Subject: ICHR controversy (Reply to Mr. Dougal Part 3) Message-ID: <161227056381.23782.2146903333506845687.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Mr. Dougal, It was Shivaratri yesterday. Did you do worship the phallus? ________ From: Sundeep Dougal Shourie starts by accusing in Chapter 15, that Lord Indra has been called ' "rowdy and amoral" ' without evidence (p. 156) 3. The Extended Phallus (Pg 8 of the booklet) On Pg 159 of his eminent book, for Jha, he asserts 'Lord Shiva is just a "development of phallic cults" ' (citing from Jha, op cit., p.90). Now this 'just' is just Shourie's imputation.........On this page, 90 (nor for that matter in any of the 8 pages mentioned for the entry 'Shiva') of Jha's book, this quote is (surprise surprise) not there............ Vishal replies: Again, relying merely on 1998 book which seems to have revised heavily the chapter on IVC/AIT, it is clear nonetheless that Dr. D N Jha drew his inspiration from the works of Dr. Kosambi. In addition to M and R, I have his other book "An introduction to the Study of Indian History; 1975; Popular Prakashan; Bombay" Chapters 3 and 4 of this book describe the AIT in gory detail, translating certain RV verses as showing Indra as a maruader who 'broke dams' and inundated Hariyupiya (which is equated with Harappa), who killed the dark skinned Dasyus, who burnt down their cities......... and that this brought an end to IVC. These are precisely the interpretations that modern Indologists reject for AIT/AMT purposes, and the 1977 book of D N Jha might well contained these. But his is not to deny the overall character of Indra as depicted in the Rigveda. Rather, Shourie laments that the gutter inspector in D N Jha makes him write only negative statements on Hindu gods and goddesses whereas even foreigners can see postive things in them. And Shourie is right in stating so, for does the RV not have any good things to say about Indra? Eg. "trataram indram avitaram han..." One might say that it is unacademic on part of Mr. D N Jha to sing panegyrics to Hindu gods. But then, is it not a manifestation of his disdain for Hinduism and also unacademic on his part to make such misleading statements (which are no less emotional than a panegyric could be): 1. "Saraswati flows underground to meet the Ganga and Yamuna at the sangam only in the minds of credulous Hindus" (parahrasing from memory) 2. "The cow became an object of worship; the seeds of modern Indian communal politics were thus sown" (Pg. 138; 1998 book) 3. "In our own times, it(the Gita) is talked about more than read, its glaring contradictions and poetic excellence being convenientlly ignored by those who tirelessly swear by it." (Pg. 137) 4. "..Krishna despite his rather questionable personal record" (Pg. 137) 5. "Krishna, who is mentioned in the RV as a demon and as an enemy of Indra " Pg. 133 (This is a clear distortion. Krishna IS NOT mentioned in the RV except for some Sanatani tracts written in recent centuries). It is OK to de-romanticize History, but why make such unnecessary slurs? On Dr. D. N. Jha's treatment of the Shivalinga in the following post........... Vishal PS. A link in my last post did not work. I am re-posting it to show the hysterical response of the secularist press on Shourie's book http://www.india-today.com/itoday/07121998/books.html ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM Sun Mar 5 22:13:54 2000 From: rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM (Rajarshi Banerjee) Date: Sun, 05 Mar 00 17:13:54 -0500 Subject: ICHR controversey Message-ID: <161227056377.23782.14970108080792207251.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> LM>I do not believe that India will end up in a trench war of any kind. What I foresee is rather the possibility of a social melt-down, caused by pressure brought to bear on the Muslim and Christian minorities. It is fairly naive to believe that they will all accept being re-enrolled as Hindus. An average muslim or christian in India is not under any pressure to convert, the thought would never occur to them. There has been some propoganda against evengelization. The only reconverts to hinduism are a small fraction of tribals who are recent christians to start with. They typically spend a few days or months as christians. regards R B From hoysala at WORLDNET.ATT.NET Mon Mar 6 05:26:23 2000 From: hoysala at WORLDNET.ATT.NET (Shikaripura Harihareswara) Date: Sun, 05 Mar 00 21:26:23 -0800 Subject: EMail address of Dr. Robert J. Zydenbos Message-ID: <161227056384.23782.145182636821419011.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> -------------------------- To all friends of Indology who wanted to reach our Professor RZ: Recently I corresponded with Dr. Robert J. Zydenbos. Here is where you can reach him, I hope. >Dr. Robert J. Zydenbos >de Genestetlaan 6 >NL-5615 EH Eindhoven >the Netherlands >tel. (+31-40-) 211-7804 >e-mail Have a nice Day! Sincerely, -Harihareswara Stockton, California. ========COPY of what appeared in Indology webpage==== Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2000 16:11:22 +0100 From: Lars Martin Fosse Subject: Message for Robert Zydenbos I apologize to the other members of the list for trying to reach RZ in this way. Robert, I have tried to answer your last mail, but my replies get rejected: 550 ... Host unknown (Name server: gxm.li: host not found) Could you please check what is wrong? Best regards, Lars Martin Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Norway Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no ============ From SKTJLBS at SRV0.ARTS.ED.AC.UK Mon Mar 6 10:24:57 2000 From: SKTJLBS at SRV0.ARTS.ED.AC.UK (John Brockington) Date: Mon, 06 Mar 00 10:24:57 +0000 Subject: address request Message-ID: <161227056391.23782.14209652969297004476.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Colleagues, Can anyone please supply me with the current address (preferably e-mail, but postal would help) of Dr H. G. Dewa who was until fairly recently at the University of Durban-Westville? Messages by both means have been returned to me as "gone away" but without any alternative address. With thanks John Brockington Professor J. L. Brockington Sanskrit, School of Asian Studies University of Edinburgh 7-8 Buccleuch Place Edinburgh EH8 9LW U.K. tel: +131 650 4174 fax: +131 651 1258 From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Mon Mar 6 10:01:00 2000 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Mon, 06 Mar 00 11:01:00 +0100 Subject: SV: SV: SV: ICHR controversey Message-ID: <161227056386.23782.14640884195268534276.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Rajarshi Banerjee [SMTP:rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM] skrev 05. mars 2000 22:32: > But you seem to be implying that europe has a social conscience and well > established checks against bigotry/racism while India is just on the verge > of discovering/losing them. I think I have answered this already, but to be on the safe side: racism/bigotry/prejudice is NOT an Indian prerogative. As everybody knows, including myself, Europe has one of the most bigoted and racist histories of the world. When I contrast the politics of the Sangh combine versus the politics expressed by the European Union and the Council of Europe, it is because I want to stress the point that Indians seem to be on the verge of walking directly into the same ideological and political traps that Europe with a lot of bloodshed has managed to extricate itself from. (Those of you are interested in more data on this might want to check out the web page of the Council of Europe, where a number of documents are available for downloading). > As a resident of India I have seen enough evidence of balanced broad minded > thinking in India. Again, I don't doubt that. > I have nothing against israel and its existance but would like to illustrate > a point. A whole nation was founded on the basis of ancient history by > reclaiming palestine, for the sake of essentialy a european population. I think this is an interesting point. There are historical reasons for Israel coming into existence, but when Israel was founded, this history was only part of the moral justification. The rest of the justification - and an ongoing part of it - is theological. As a secular person (although I am not a Marxist), I do not accept theological justifications for creating a state. Israel has prevailed and cannot be undone, and all parties in the Middle East would probably be better served by a just peace, but originally Europe's persecuted Jews simply did what many other persecuted people have done in the past: they migrated to another territory and took it by force. They had no "right" to do so, they simply had the determination and the weapons. > There was a vast disconnect between mordern arab palestine and its jewish > past but that and the rights of the residents was never made an issue. You seem to forget that the Brits made an effort to stop the creation of a Jewish state. But after Israel was created, there was a very long period of acquiescence where Israelis could get away with murder. Today, the situation is different. Israel certainly meets with criticism in quarters that used to be silent. > I have met basques and macedonians who have been forced to give up their > language. Such policies are unthinkable in India. Basques are today not forced to give up their language. But Franco's Spain certainly tried very hard to "Spanify" them. Comparable policies were used in France against people who spoke Breton (France's Celtic language). These are the policies that the Council of Europe decry and want to replace with policies that support and accept minority rights and minority languages. > There is a kind of racism in the assumption that whatever is done by > europeans or americans is moral. Who made such an assumption? > You should meet some Indian muslims and ask them if they think that the > Indian govt policies are becoming progressively fascist or anti-muslim or > whether their dignity is threatened, For eg my ex-room mate is a muslim from > India.he would think such views are silly.. Compare with the attitudes of > serb muslims. There are muslims in the indian army who died fightning the > enemy in kasmir. Abdul kalaam is called the father of the Indian missile > program. Do any gypsies, serb muslims ever enroll in the yugoslav army. > India has a rather stable society pehaps due its long convoluted history. > Maybe europe has more unification pangs to go through compared to INdia. I also subscribe to other lists than Indology, where the picture presented is not quite so idyllic as the one you give here. But I will readily grant you that the situation in India is not uniform. In some places, Muslims have a tough time, elsewhere there life is easier. People like Abdul Kalaam are special cases. I will bet that noone, particularly not the BJP, would aggravate a man of such obvious usefulness to India. > I sometimes wonder how tolerant US society would be if people were > illiterate and had poverty levels like India. Now, that is a very apt remark! One of the ongoing mysteries about India, seen from my point of view, is this: Why isn't India MORE violent? Seen from a European point of view, the social situation with which Indians have to live would seem to be excellent reasons for revolutions. The poverty and complexity of India do not really invite tolerance, rather cut-throat competition. But as for US society: is it really all that tolerant? I seem to remember endless struggles for "people of colour" to acquire elementary rights. Today, many people will probably still complain about intolerance, although the situation seems to be much better than it was in the fifties. What worries me about India is that it seems to be giving up its traditional tolerance and to be heading for an ideology of uniformity with a repressive streak. Which brings us back to the origin of this discussion: Should India spend a lot of energy debating past Muslim atrocities, or should it, as I would suggest, rather focus on the matter of religious tolerance and try to make a distinction between civic, public life on the one hand and religious life on the other the way we have ended up doing in the West. It took us about 350 years. I don't expect India to make the same journey in a jiffy. Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Norway Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Mon Mar 6 10:12:10 2000 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Mon, 06 Mar 00 11:12:10 +0100 Subject: SV: ICHR controversey Message-ID: <161227056389.23782.2960397919541919694.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Rajarshi Banerjee [SMTP:rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM] skrev 05. mars 2000 23:14: > An average muslim or christian in India is not under any pressure to > convert, the thought would never occur to them. There has been some > propoganda against evengelization. The only reconverts to hinduism are a > small fraction of tribals who > are recent christians to start with. They typically spend a few days or > months as christians. Somehow, this doesn't quite jibe whith what I have been reading in the Organiser (and gathered from the news elsewhere). "Reconversion" is an old theme in Hindu nationalism, going back to the Arya Samaj at least. As for Christians: India has some 35-40 million Christians. Between ten and fifteen procent of India's dalits are Christians, and about three-quarters of India's Christians are dalits. We are not just talking tribals here. The majority of the dalits started converting in droves to Christianity about a 100 years ago. These are the people that the Hindutva crowd wants to see back in the Hindu fold. Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Norway Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Mon Mar 6 11:24:24 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Mon, 06 Mar 00 11:24:24 +0000 Subject: [ADMIN] ICHR controversey In-Reply-To: <01BF875D.D94EED80.lmfosse@online.no> Message-ID: <161227056394.23782.11265981456291367696.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I should like to thank the participants for their views -- sometimes exceptionally well expressed -- on this important topic. However, I think that I should now ask everyone to take this discussion off-list, and to allow space for more narrowly-defined indological topics. With thanks, -- Dominik Wujastyk Founder, INDOLOGY list. From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Mon Mar 6 16:28:13 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Mon, 06 Mar 00 11:28:13 -0500 Subject: chariots (was: AIT, NEW genetic evidence) In-Reply-To: <003D0A33B331D2119E470008C72892CD013F3C64@SMGMAIL> Message-ID: <161227056420.23782.10209582133474781676.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Reverting, after the 'animated' discussion of the past week, to a more academic topic that has languished in my machine : Part of the present thread (some messages by Rajarshi Banerjee, of Tue, 29 Feb 2000 on chariots etc.) unfortunately have been armchair sociology & history. In spite of Swaminathan Madhuresan Feb 28/29) pointing to detailed investigations (plus, incidentally, Sparreboom actually learned how to drive *real* horse carts with teams, for this purpose...): >SM> Texts speak of chariots in India. Sparreboom, Chariots in the Veda. R. Banerjee Tue, 29 Feb 2000 22:21:51 -0500: >Judging by archeological traces left chariotry was not very prevalant. >Whta does the picture in the aticle look like is it based on any real >chariots of India? The "ratha yatra" chariot is hardly functional...... As I said recently, yaatra rathas and popular depictions of "ancient chariots" are fanciful. -- Wood is not well preserved in a monsoon climate. One has to look at Old Persian sculptures, the Oxus treasure, actually preserved Old Near Eastern and Chinese chariots, and one has to compare them with the slightly later Sanchi & Barhut sculptures (as shown in Sparreboom). One of them is on the cover of our Bronkhorst/Deshpande "Aryan/Non_Aryan" volume (HOS-OM 3). >In the vedas chariots are at least part of the imagination maybe inspired by >the knowledge of grand chariot armies in the west. Where is such knowledge? Do you have access to some unknown Vedic texts? > After all the name dasharatha appears in mitanni texts. Is the word ratha >present in avestan? There are many names in -ratta, IA loans in the Hurrite language of the Mitanni (tush-, abi- etc.), = Ved. ratha/Iran. ra0a (0= Engl. th, thorn) `chariot`, Ved. ratheSTha : Avestan ra0aEStaa- 'standing on a chariot= charioteer`, Ved. rathin, Avestan rai0ii 'charioteer'. All these are attested in the oldest texts. And the *old* compound rathe-STha-/ra0aESta- points to a common Indian (Vedic) & Iranian heritage. The date of the invention of the horse-drawn chariot ratha/Ir. ra0a `chariot`` is indicated by the fact that the word it is not shared by W. Indo-European.: Lat. rota, Germ. Rad `wheel`; the specialized meaning ``chariot`` is restricted to IIr. -- Similarly, for cakra. >The ashvamedha could imply ritual warfare with minimal bloodshed. Maybe >there werent too many horses to go around. Well, the RV mentions, e.g., a thousand horses 9.78.2, or hundreds and thousands of horses as gift at 6.63.10, thousand cows and horses at 1.29.1 --- RV 8.46.29 has 60,000 horses, the same at 8.26.21: 60,000 horses, 2000 camels, 1000 mares.... in a daanastuti. Even taking into account the usual predilection of poets for hyperbole (Indira-zatakam of 1977 CE !!), LOTS horses are quite apparent here. The Asvamedha is something entirely different... ONE horse is to be offered. The rest is a show of strength indeed (400 young noblemen/warriors following the horse); it can tell us nothing about the number of horses available. >It would make sense in a rural setting which does not amass huge organized >armies Well, the RV, again, has large numbers of men killed in battle: At 7.18.14 with 6066 killed, at 1.53.9 with 60,099 killed (There is a recent paper on such numbers which I have to re-read). >and yet allows for some >form of political reorganization on a larger scale... > R Banerjee obviously, see Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies, vol. 1, 4, Dec. 1995, http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs. I suggest the reading of some texts and the occasional monograph before speculating and extrapolating on this list... Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK Mon Mar 6 15:10:17 2000 From: s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK (Stephen Hodge) Date: Mon, 06 Mar 00 15:10:17 +0000 Subject: ICHR controversey Message-ID: <161227056402.23782.10380119237436443921.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Lars Martin Fosse wrote: > You seem to forget that the Brits made an effort to stop the creation of a > Jewish state I wish people would stop referring to the inhabitants of the UK as "Brits" -- this Americanism is nearly always used in negative situations and many people in the UK find it somewhat offensive. It seems it bit insensitive especially in the context of the present discussion. Would you similarly write "Yanks" when talking about the Americans ? Best wishes, Stephen Hodge From jonathan.silk at YALE.EDU Mon Mar 6 21:02:37 2000 From: jonathan.silk at YALE.EDU (Jonathan Silk) Date: Mon, 06 Mar 00 16:02:37 -0500 Subject: Kalmasapada In-Reply-To: <000701bf87a4$d8507100$471f893e@default> Message-ID: <161227056414.23782.18052383710947779175.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >Can anybody advise me if there has been any research done or being >done on the Kalmaa.sapaada legend and its origins. > >Many thanks, >Stephen Hodge an old, but excellent, paper by Kaigyoku WATANABE Watanabe, Kaigyoku. 1909. "The Story of Kalm? ap?da and its Evolution in Indian Literature." Journal of the P?li Text Society 6: 236-310. Jonathan Silk jonathan.silk at yale.edu Dept. of Religious Studies Yale University 320 Temple St. New Haven CT 06520-8287 USA tel. 203-432-0828 fax. 203-432-7844 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: attachment.bin Type: text/enriched Size: 675 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jfitzge1 at UTK.EDU Mon Mar 6 21:20:15 2000 From: jfitzge1 at UTK.EDU (James L. Fitzgerald) Date: Mon, 06 Mar 00 16:20:15 -0500 Subject: Kalmasapada Message-ID: <161227056417.23782.17613959372913999893.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > Can anybody advise me if there has been any research done or being > done on the Kalmaa.sapaada legend and its origins. See J. Ensink, "Mitrasaha, Sudaasa's son, with the Spotted Feet," in the FBJ Kuiper Festschrift *Pratidanam* (The Hague: Mouton, 1968): 573-584. The bibliography refers to, among other more general items: 1) a 1912 study by H. Kern ("kalmaaSapaada en Sutasoma," *Verhandelingen en Medelingen der Kon. Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde. Amsterdam:* 170-208) 2) a 1909 study by K. Watanabe ("The story of kalmaaSapaada," Journal of the Pali Text Society:* 238-310. From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Mon Mar 6 15:57:22 2000 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Mon, 06 Mar 00 16:57:22 +0100 Subject: SV: ICHR controversey Message-ID: <161227056404.23782.5434608651216270914.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Stephen Hodge [SMTP:s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK] skrev 06. mars 2000 16:10: > I wish people would stop referring to the inhabitants of the UK as > "Brits" -- this Americanism is nearly always used in negative > situations and many people in the UK find it somewhat offensive. It > seems it bit insensitive especially in the context of the present > discussion. Would you similarly write "Yanks" when talking about the > Americans ? Sorry, I didn't know that calling the English/British "Brits" was regarded as offensive. Thank you for letting me know. I'll be more careful in the future. Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Norway Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no From jds10 at CAM.AC.UK Mon Mar 6 17:08:59 2000 From: jds10 at CAM.AC.UK (John Smith) Date: Mon, 06 Mar 00 17:08:59 +0000 Subject: CARB fonts for Macintosh Message-ID: <161227056407.23782.17161754431587979158.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Macintosh users wishing to be able to use the CARB fonts -- supplementary fonts containg a wide range of "extra" characters likely to be useful to Indologists -- will now find Mac versions of them at my website (URL given below: bombay.oriental...). Follow the "fonts" link, then the "carb" link. 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 holden at GIASDL01.VSNL.NET.IN Mon Mar 6 12:45:41 2000 From: holden at GIASDL01.VSNL.NET.IN (Sundeep Dougal) Date: Mon, 06 Mar 00 18:15:41 +0530 Subject: ICHR controversy (Part 1 of reply to Mr. Dougal) Message-ID: <161227056396.23782.6594103620468859413.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Mr. Agarwal, I realise that my first message may have misled you a bit because of its heading for my point 1, viz. "Kosambi's _Myth and Reality_". I apologise. Let me clarify that I had intended to show the errors of Shourie's reading of this book. Since that would've run into many pages therefore I ended up taking a relatively minor point up. Every thing else stands. V.M.Jha's remarks, far from being mischievous are very pertinent. Because the basic argument is that for ancient Indian history Shourie has picked out: R.S Sharma's Ancient India D.N Jha's Ancient India, An Introductory Outline & D.D Kosambi's Myth & Reality His main accusation is that in the name of writing history, these historians made a series of 'assertions & accusations' without any evidence. The point that the Sahmat booklet tries to make and makes very convincingly is that he either happily ignores or is ignorant of the "evidence" or context provided and cited in the research works these books are based on. Very relevant in the context of the research work on which quotations from D.N. Jha's small introductory work is concerned. A reference to his bibliography would readily reveal that. Then it proceeds to examine what Shourie definitely seems to have at least consulted and how he presents the material there. Since Shourie picks up Kosambi's _Myth & Reality_ for special criticism, it is relevant to note the context & discussion Kosambi provides for Lord Indra, Krishna, Bhakti etc. And also, Mr. Agarwal's post with the subject header: "ICHR controversy (Reply to Mr. Dougal Part 3)" also refers to Kosambi's work. It would be a drag but I would be glad to provide the context and quotes in the citations of my previous post too if required or of other In view of the foregoing it should be obvious however that apart from the heading, the criticism remains. To give the context where even D.N.Jha refers to Indra thus, here's a small excerpt (D.N. Jha, op cit: pg 18) Among the gods the most popular was Indra, who shared some of the characteristics of the Greek god Zeus. Always ready to smite dragons and demons, he is credited with the sacking of many cities. Rowdy and amoral, Indra is described as fond of feasting and drinking Soma, which was the name of a heady drink of the Aryans as well as of the Vedic god of plants. The largest number of hymns in the Rig Veda is addressed to Indra. In short, I was not 'taken for a ride' nor did I intend to take anyone for one. I leave the others to look up the rest of the citations referred to by Mr. Agarwal. for further edification. The one on phallic cults has been dealt with below. For the one on Bhakti, the correct page number, as given by Shourie is (xviii) and not (xvii) In short, I am happy to change the heading of the aforesaid point to: 1. Lack of Evidence (or Amoral god) I hope we now do not have any disagreements on this. 2. Kalidasa 2. My point 2. Kalidasa I am sorry I did not provide the page numbers mentioned in the Sahmat booklet for the quote from the Soviet historians. It was an omission, and not any intent to deceive or take any one for a ride. The Sahmat booklet does provide the correct Pg number in Shourie's book, viz. p 191. Let me reproduce it here as my last message was written in a hurry: (Sahmat, p 6): 'The work of Kalidasa is referred to [by the Soviet historians] as one of the pearls of ancient Indian Literature', as 'an illustrious page of history's world culture'...'Without swerving from earlier traditions Kalidasa stood out as an innovator in many respects', _the Soviet historians write in contrast to our eminences_ (op cit, Shourie, p 191, emphasis added) This omission _by me_ of the pg number has _no_ bearing on the argument, however. To quote from pg 7 of Sahmat booklet: And this is the sentence from Jha's book with which Shourie has drawn the contrast: '"But the words of Kalidasa", declares our historian, "are not indicative of an intellectual rebirth or revival of literary activity; they merely imply a further development of the literary forms and styles which were evolving in the earlier period"' (p. 175 citing from D.N. Jha op cit., p 114). However the point that Jha makes here is one against the idea of 'intellectual rebirth or revival', which is what the the nationalist historians imply when speaking of the Gupta period as one of renaissance. The same point is made by the Soviet historians in the clause 'without swerving from the earlier traditions' in the quoted passages. But does the contrast lie Jha's remaining silent on the greatness of Kalidasa? Shourie claims to have discussed pages 112 to 115 from Jha's book (p 176, n. 51), the criticised sentence being from p. 114. This is what Jha states on Kalidasa on the preceding page: 'The poems of Kalidasa remain unequaled in their metrical and verbal perfection. His most famous work, the play _Abhijnanashakuntalam_, ... remains the supreme achievement of early Indian literature and stagecraft.' (Jha, op cit, pg 113) In addition to this bit quoted by the Sahmat booklet it may be instructive to look at what else D.N.Jha says about Kalidasa on the same page 113. The basic point is about Shourie's selective quotings and generalisations and not about the Gupta period. The Sahmat booklet is not trying to hide the fact about the broader issue of Gupta period. That is a different debate all together. 3. 'The Extended Phallus' On Pg 89-90 of Jha's book, the reference to Shiva is: Pg 89 Shiva mentioned by Megasthenes as Dionysus, evolved from the Rigvedic god Rudra and the Tamil god Murugan, Pg 90 though his Tamil antecedents are sometimes doubted. A number of non-Aryan fertility cults, such as those of the phallic emblem (lingam) and the bull (nandi), merged with the worship of Shiva. The earliest evidence of the phallic cult goes back to the Harappan period. It was incorporated into Brahmanism around the beginning of the Christian era, and Shiva has been chiefly worshipped in the form of a linga ever since. But he was worshipped in human form as well. One of the earliest representations of Shiva in his human form comes from the village Gudimallam (near Madras)... Let's see how Shourie presents this in Pg 157 of his book: Lord Shiva is just "a development of phallic cults" (op cit Pg 90)... ...that even a foreigner - Stella Kramrisch - should see such an effulgence in the concept of Shiva and this eminent historian just the extended phallus... The old charge remains. You decide. To repeat, quoting from the Sahmat booklet: As the Sahmat booklet puts it: "the onus on Shourie here is twofold; he must both show where Jha has written the alleged thing and admit that he did not read or understand the above quote from Jha's book. Failing either he stands accused of lying." Since Mr. Agarwal has not yet responded to pts 4 & 5, I'll refrain from adding anything further for the time being. Warm regards, Sundeep From holden at GIASDL01.VSNL.NET.IN Mon Mar 6 12:49:20 2000 From: holden at GIASDL01.VSNL.NET.IN (Sundeep Dougal) Date: Mon, 06 Mar 00 18:19:20 +0530 Subject: ICHR controversy (Reply to Mr. Dougal Part 3) Message-ID: <161227056398.23782.5996044746502458856.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> | Dear Mr. Dougal, | | It was Shivaratri yesterday. Did you do worship the phallus? Dear Mr. Agarwal, It would be imprudent to get into pedantries on when exactly Shivaratri was, and I am not sure how exactly to parse your second sentence, but if your reference was to worshipping the Shivalingam, I am afraid I did not. I respectfully wish to point out that questions like this run the risk of mischievous minded leaving the context of Shivaratri & bringing in supplementary questions like: Do _I_ worship the Vagina? Do _I_ worship Arse Holes? How best to respond to them? Some may like your method, and some mine, but I suspect we'd be back to, what was predicted some time back by a perceptive list-member: name calling & so on & it then becomes only a matter of discretion & better or worse judgement. I think such digressions, amusing though they might be to some, might compel this thread off the list, as the weak-hearted might complain & such like. Heat might be generated but not, perhaps, light. Personally, I have no problem in engaging in such, well, engaging conversation, but just thought should point out the obvious. Looking at the way you wish to structure this, well, for want of a better word, 'discussion' - that is, move it from pointing out 5 blatant specific errors to selectively making sweeping statements & vague generalizations about Marxist-historians etc. - I am not too inclined to participate further. As it happens, however, I did wish to reply to your 'responses' - so far in 3 parts - & was thinking of waiting till you had exhausted yourself in addressing my first post on the subject but now I am just sending off my responses to whatever has been posted so far. What I think of Sahmat, of worthies like CJS Walia and their 'reviews', or indeed about some of these eminent historians, or Arun Shourie for that matter or, indeed, that of his eminent book, or of the rest of your message which I did not address in my first post & so on are not really relevant to the extent of my participation in this, uh, discussion. If you do insist, I would state that I tend to view them not in black and white terms but in various shades of grey, in all their darkest & lightest hues. I agree with you on your suggested response to the India Today review though. I've always thought Sanjay Subramaniam to be a perceptive and witty writer. I may not agree in entirety or in matters of detail, but that is merely a matter of detail. I think Subramaniam does indulge in some ad hominem, and perhaps Sita Ram Goel & Shourie might feel aggrieved, and I leave it for them to sort it out. All that said, I do have problems in which the "secular press" tends to represent Shourie even in those matters where, where the facts are concerned, he happens to be on the right side. The 'rational' versus 'national' issue, for example. I think the whole matter does require serious academic debate. To that an extent I am unable to contribute anything much, being at best an interested layman trying to come to grips with what might be going on. Any of this is not affected by what I may or not personally think about you (based solely on my limited readings of your posts in the past or now) or what or who you may or not have worshipped on Shivaratri or on any other day. It matters not a whit, as they say. My interjection is limited to a demand for '5 blatant errors'. I would happily take back whatever extra I may have said & would like to confine myself to those. If I feel that you demonstrate one of those not to be an error at all, I'd take it as an instance of V.S. Jha being wrong, and go back to examining another one. It might prove to be a drag, but I think I may be willing to put in the effort, if the list-members would bear with it. Else, I am happy to hold my peace. Lastly may I mention that it is not my intent to defend or condemn Shourie or Sahmat. I was responding to a very specific demand. If we were ever to have occasion to discuss other issues, I might get tempted to expound on my views, inchoate though they may, on the so called marxist-historians too. With warm regards, & a belated happy Shivaratri to you, Sundeep From holden at GIASDL01.VSNL.NET.IN Mon Mar 6 12:54:25 2000 From: holden at GIASDL01.VSNL.NET.IN (Sundeep Dougal) Date: Mon, 06 Mar 00 18:24:25 +0530 Subject: [ADMIN] ICHR controversey Message-ID: <161227056400.23782.15121030490965820675.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I am sorry I just downloaded this message _after_ posting my responses to Mr. Agarwal, as my Outlook Express is configured to send first and receive later. Apologies to the list & to Mr. Dominik Wujastyk for any aggravation. Warm regards, Sundeep From s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK Mon Mar 6 19:47:10 2000 From: s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK (Stephen Hodge) Date: Mon, 06 Mar 00 19:47:10 +0000 Subject: Kalmasapada Message-ID: <161227056409.23782.3203485808670726040.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Can anybody advise me if there has been any research done or being done on the Kalmaa.sapaada legend and its origins. Many thanks, Stephen Hodge From zydenbos at GMX.LI Mon Mar 6 20:49:16 2000 From: zydenbos at GMX.LI (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Mon, 06 Mar 00 21:49:16 +0100 Subject: EMail address of Dr. Robert J. Zydenbos In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.20000305212623.0084f600@postoffice.worldnet.att.net> Message-ID: <161227056411.23782.13617057143473149093.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On 5 Mar 00, at 16:11, Lars Martin Fosse wrote: > I apologize to the other members of the list for trying to reach > RZ in this way. [...] On 5 Mar 00, at 21:26, Shikaripura Harihareswara wrote: > To all friends of Indology > who wanted to reach our Professor RZ: [...] Sorry, sorry, it is entirely my fault: a new address, a new e-mail address, and while I installed new mailing software I typed an error. RZ -------------------------------------------- Dr. Robert J. Zydenbos e-mail zydenbos at bigfoot.de / zydenbos at gmx.li From ramakris at EROLS.COM Tue Mar 7 02:52:07 2000 From: ramakris at EROLS.COM (Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian) Date: Mon, 06 Mar 00 21:52:07 -0500 Subject: on zankara's date - 2 Message-ID: <161227056422.23782.7140213592636658397.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Prof. Aklujkar wrote: <<<<< Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian wrote: >Another interesting paper in the literature is S.Sankaranarayanan, "The colophon in the Bhamati: A New Study," ALB, Vol 49, pp.34-61. I think it's a very good paper. The >>>>> [ ... ] <<<<< other "The Prologue and Epilogue Verses of Vacaspati-misra-I? is forthcoming in Rivista degli Studi Orientali. In both these, I have pointed out the weaknesses of Sankaranarayanan's paper mentioned above and also of a subsequent paper of his in ALB 1997. >>>>> Thanks to Prof Aklujkar for the references. The last issue of the ALB, in the only good library I have access to, is 1995. I had assumed that they stopped publication since the library gets other journals like PEW, JAOS, JIP and so on. I'll try to obtain your papers and read them. I agree that some of Sankaranarayanans views on poetic exageration about nR^iga seemed quite subjective. <<<< Sankaranarayanan is unaware that there were two Vaacaspati-mi;sras. The Nyaaya-sutroddhaara could be ascribed to the 15th century Vaacaspati-mi;sra, although the status of the text is not as certain as one would wish. >>>>> Sankaranarayanan gives the colophon verse for the nyAya-sUtroddhAra and the date it mentions caitra 828 (caitrai vasvaxivAsave). Can this mean a 15th century date also? Of course vAcaspati mishra II was also from mithilA, so there could have been a confusion. But, if the colophon has not been interpreted properly by Sankaranarayanan, much of his paper loses force straightaway. Notwithstanding any of these things, I have not seen any other paper which takes into account the relative chronology of all the 3 authors; uddyotakara, Vacaspati Mishra I and udayana. I'd have liked to see a better analysis of udayanas quotations of Vacaspati. But, I think it's safe to say that the date of Vacaspati is certainly not settled by any means and definitely not from Hackers erroneous identification of the nyAyama.njarI quotation. Rama From rchawla at DELLNET.COM Tue Mar 7 06:40:37 2000 From: rchawla at DELLNET.COM (Ravi Chawla) Date: Mon, 06 Mar 00 22:40:37 -0800 Subject: Shivaratri - worshipping the phallus Message-ID: <161227056427.23782.14768262789570235460.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ----- Original Message ----- Vishal Agarwal wrote: > Dear Mr. Dougal, >> It was Shivaratri yesterday. Did you do worship the phallus? > I hope Vishal Agarwal is not not making fun of Mr.Dougal or of Shivalingam. My understanding of Shivalingam ( Phallus symbol that is worshipped on Shivaratri) is that it represents the sexual energy that is the source of all creation in this universe. Without sexual energy this creation will come to an end within a short period of time. Just imagine no life on this earth!! I ask people who do not have understanding of Shivalingam, how will they feel by just imagining that their all sexual energy has left them? I am sure this very thought will terrify them. No wonder people of knowledge and understanding worship the sexual energy in the form of Shivalingam. People may or may not worship Shivalingam by name, but all recognize the importance of sexual energy. All people throughtout the world seek it to pro-create and to have sexual pleasures in their lives.. These days billion of dollars worth of Viagra is being sold, and millions of people all over the world are buying it. Even many women have been reported using Viagra. All these users of Viagra are in a way worshipping and/or seeking this sexual energy. I feel all symbols of Hindu mythology have deeper meaning, and if we have some clear understanding of those symbols, we find them as very practical components of this creation. Regards RChawla > > 3. The Extended Phallus (Pg 8 of the booklet) > On Pg 159 of his eminent book, for Jha, he asserts 'Lord Shiva > is just a "development of phallic cults" ' (citing from Jha, op > cit., p.90). Now this 'just' is just Shourie's imputation.........On this > page, 90 (nor for that matter in any of the 8 pages > mentioned for the entry 'Shiva') of Jha's book, this quote is > (surprise surprise) not there............ > , Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET Tue Mar 7 09:06:10 2000 From: kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET (S.Kalyanaraman) Date: Tue, 07 Mar 00 09:06:10 +0000 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227056425.23782.16138800166455707972.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> A news report of Feb. 23, THE HINDUSTAN TIMES may be of interest: http://sarasvati.listbot.com [View Archive Message #92] Regards, Kalyanaraman ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. From selvakum at VALLUVAR.UWATERLOO.CA Tue Mar 7 15:56:47 2000 From: selvakum at VALLUVAR.UWATERLOO.CA (C.R. Selvakumar) Date: Tue, 07 Mar 00 10:56:47 -0500 Subject: chariots (was: AIT, NEW genetic evidence) Message-ID: <161227056432.23782.14023133676673154739.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Professor Witzel, May I ask a few questions, which may be unrelated to the current discussion ? [..] '>'The date of the invention of the horse-drawn chariot ratha/Ir. ra0a '>'`chariot`` is indicated by the fact that the word it is not shared by W. '>'Indo-European.: Lat. rota, Germ. Rad `wheel`; '>'the specialized meaning ``chariot`` is restricted to IIr. -- Similarly, for '>'cakra. I find it intriguing that Tamil has the following words: uruL meaning roll, uruNdai meaning round or spherical uruTTu = rotate or roll Are Tamil words related to Latin rota ? How come Tamil rule of the retroflex consonants L,N,T seems to be related to the words roll-round-rotate ? Is it a coincidence ? Has someone studies such connections (apparent or real) ? [..] '>'Well, the RV mentions, e.g., a thousand horses 9.78.2, or hundreds and '>'thousands of horses as gift at 6.63.10, thousand cows and horses at '>'1.29.1 --- RV 8.46.29 has 60,000 horses, the same at 8.26.21: 60,000 '>'horses, 2000 camels, 1000 mares.... in a daanastuti. '>'Even taking into account the usual predilection of poets for hyperbole '>'(Indira-zatakam of 1977 CE !!), LOTS horses are quite apparent here. '>' What is the estimate of world population around 1000BC and and what fraction of them were 'aryans'? Would it be reasonable to assume such large numbers of people (and animals) were killed ? Assuming that the various accounts of events described in Vedas is true where people are said to be killed, what is the approximate total number of people killed ? Is it possible to estimate the number of 'black' people with 'thick lips or bull lips' killed by Vedic civilization ? Many thanks (in advance) for your thoughts. Regards Selva From smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM Tue Mar 7 20:17:07 2000 From: smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM (Swaminathan Madhuresan) Date: Tue, 07 Mar 00 12:17:07 -0800 Subject: chariots (was: AIT, NEW genetic evidence) Message-ID: <161227056441.23782.4650872145890733975.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > > I find it intriguing that Tamil has the following words: > > uruL meaning roll, > uruNdai meaning round or spherical > uruTTu = rotate or roll > > Are Tamil words related to Latin rota ? How come Tamil rule of > the retroflex consonants L,N,T seems to be related to > the words roll-round-rotate ? Is it a coincidence ? > Has someone studies such connections (apparent or real) ? > Intriguing also is Tamil shares the words for nail, axle, etc., Do they all go to Southwest Asia where wheeled transport was invented? Regards, SM __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM Tue Mar 7 20:26:15 2000 From: smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM (Swaminathan Madhuresan) Date: Tue, 07 Mar 00 12:26:15 -0800 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227056445.23782.10054081687716638236.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Thanks, Prof. Kalyanaraman, for the URL address. It is satisfying to know that scientists of all sorts, ranging from micro-atomic experts to macro-satellite photographers, have confirmed our Sarasvati culture. --- "S.Kalyanaraman" wrote: > A news report of Feb. 23, THE HINDUSTAN TIMES may be of interest: > > http://sarasvati.listbot.com [View Archive Message #92] > > Regards, > Kalyanaraman > > ____________________________________________________________________ > Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at > http://webmail.netscape.com. > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Tue Mar 7 13:55:30 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Tue, 07 Mar 00 13:55:30 +0000 Subject: question (fwd) Message-ID: <161227056429.23782.14505717147940717089.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Answers CC to the author, please. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 10:53:20 +0100 From: "Robert, Eric" Subject: question Here is once again a question I'd like to post on the Indology m-list if you agree. I am searching for early references to karman and re-birth theory. I have several passages in the older upanishads: BU (eg 6.2), CU (5.3-5.10), KsU (1.1-1.2). These are relatively clear in their statements about the path of the gods, leading to brahman, and the path leading, through the world of fathers, to a new birth in a pleasant or foul womb, according to one's pleasant or foul behaviour. In KsU, it is said that the moon propels them to new birth in various conditions in accordance with his actions and his knowledge. Is there clear evidence or reference to such theory in prior material, ie samhitaas, braahmaNas or aaraNyakas? In advance than you Eric Robert From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Tue Mar 7 16:08:06 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Tue, 07 Mar 00 16:08:06 +0000 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location In-Reply-To: <20000307033610.7108.qmail@ww182.netaddress.usa.net> Message-ID: <161227056434.23782.1652594935872777587.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I'm afraid that I neither trust nor believe anything said by atomic scientists about humanistic subjects (or most other subjects). Let's try to keep this list scholarly, shall we! -- Dominik Wujastyk Founder, INDOLOGY list. From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Wed Mar 8 01:50:49 2000 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Tue, 07 Mar 00 17:50:49 -0800 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227056447.23782.3896875586346909796.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dominik Wujastyk wrote: >I'm afraid that I neither trust nor believe anything said by atomic >scientists about humanistic subjects (or most other subjects). Let's try >to keep this list scholarly, shall we! Well, as a general rule, don't dismiss the scientists so easily. What scientists actually do, what they say they do, and what journalists say scientists do - these can all be very different things. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From ondracka at TIGER.VSCHT.CZ Tue Mar 7 19:35:04 2000 From: ondracka at TIGER.VSCHT.CZ (Lubomir Ondracka) Date: Tue, 07 Mar 00 19:35:04 +0000 Subject: re-birth theory In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056438.23782.14683469891417239670.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> See the very detailed study on this topic: Klaus BUTZENBERGER: Ancient Indian conceptions on man's destiny after death: The beginnigs and the early development of the doctrine of transmigration. Berliner Indologische Studien 9(1996):55-118 [pt.1], 11-12(1998):1-84 [pt.2]. > I am searching for early references to karman and re-birth theory. I have > several passages in the older upanishads: BU (eg 6.2), CU (5.3-5.10), KsU > (1.1-1.2). These are relatively clear in their statements about the path of > the gods, leading to brahman, and the path leading, through the world of > fathers, to a new birth in a pleasant or foul womb, according to one's > pleasant or foul behaviour. In KsU, it is said that the moon propels them to > new birth in various conditions in accordance with his actions and his > knowledge. > Is there clear evidence or reference to such theory in prior material, ie > samhitaas, braahmaNas or aaraNyakas? -- Lubomir Ondracka ============================================= Institute of Philosophy & Religious Studies Charles University Namesti Jana Palacha 2 116 38 Prague 1 Czech Republic --------------------------------------------- e-mail: ondracka at tiger.vscht.cz --------------------------------------------- phone: 00420-2-21619356 ============================================= From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Wed Mar 8 03:27:52 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Tue, 07 Mar 00 22:27:52 -0500 Subject: chariots (was: AIT, NEW genetic evidence) In-Reply-To: <20000307201707.23697.qmail@web305.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <161227056450.23782.13733890034544543602.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >> Tamil : >> uruL meaning roll, >> uruNdai meaning round or spherical >> uruTTu = rotate or roll >> Are Tamil words related to Latin rota ? If so, (according to the Nostratic theory which derives Dravidian, Indo_Euroepan, Uralic, Altaic, Kartvelian in the Caucasus, Afro-Asiatic/Hamito-Semitic from a parent language of c. 10,000 BCE), then indirectly. As Nostratic is so early, no entry for 'to turn/roll' in the Nostr. dictionary by Illich-Svitych, except for **t.ur^ 'fast', IE *twer, etc. (I suggest the journal Mother Tongue - $ 25 per year - for such questions, see the website of the journal, newsletter of the Association for the Study of Language In Prehistory (ASLIP): http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/aslip.html Latin rota, German Rad (both 'wheel') go back to an IE root *reth 'to turn'; Skt. ratha is derived from it, by extension of meaning, cf. Engl. 'my wheels' = 'my car'. (cakra is more interesting, see below). Since Dravid. words cannot really begin with r-, the initial u- of uruL may be epenthetic, as in the very old loan word arahan (inscr.) DEDR 201 < Skt. raajan, cf. also araicu < raajan ''king'', and uruva(m) < ruupa 'form, appearance'... >> How come Tamil rule of >> the retroflex consonants L,N,T seems to be related to >> the words roll-round-rotate ? Is it a coincidence ? >> Has someone studies such connections (apparent or real) ? Onomatopoetic sounds are everywhere of course, --- cf. late Sanskrit lolati / lollati 'to roll, to loll,', Slavic lel-, Latin lolium; -- and cf. Engl. to roll, etc., French rouler, etc. etc. --- note also Skt. gola 'ball, round', Old Newari guluca 'marble', New. guli 'round object', gulicaa 'pill', Japanese goro-goro 'rolling around, thundering etc.'; --- but they differ from language to language, as do imitations of (animal) sounds... Many studies on onomatopoetica or 'expressive', etc. words, whatever linguists happen to call them. Emeneau has one on Drav. of the type kara-xara, K.Hoffman on the type bal-bal, and others in Vedic. > Intriguing also is Tamil shares the words for nail, axle, etc., > Do they all go to Southwest Asia where wheeled transport was invented? Well, 'axle' comes from IE *ak'sa (Latin axis, Greek -aksa, O.H.German ahsa, etc./ Vedic: akSa > (N?) Drav. accu; but ANi 'lynch pin' is foreign to both Drav. and Vedic languages (though DEDR derives it from Skt.!) -- and a local loan. But cakra, Engl. wheel, etc. < IE *kwe-kw-lo- may ultimately derive from Sumerian gilgul 'wheel', cf. also (GIS-)gigir 'wagon'. However, Dravidian has quite a number of loans from Sumerian in the agricultural field, see Blazek, V. and C. Boisson, The Diffusion of Agricultural Terms from Mesopotamia. Archiv Orientalni 60, 1992, 16-37 , -- -- such as Sumerian ur 'millstone', Proto-South Drav. *ur-al 'mortar' (p. 24), Sumer. ili 'sesame', Akkad. ellu/Ulu 'sesame oil', which is only found in South Drav. with eL, eLLu 'Sesamum indicum' but cf. Ved. tila and jar-tila 'sesame'; etc. etc. ---- which seems to point to a location of early Proto-Drav. closer to Mesopotamia on the Iranian plateau, (cf. also the --supposed -- genetic connection of Drav. and Elamite, in McAlpin's work, denied by a number of Dravidian scholars). A Drav.- Mesopotamian link, at least of loan words, seems clear, though. ============ Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From reimann at UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU Wed Mar 8 09:33:38 2000 From: reimann at UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU (Luis Gonzalez-Reimann) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 01:33:38 -0800 Subject: question (fwd) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056456.23782.1977882805553336294.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I would recommend the following article: Butzenberger, Klaus. 1996. Ancient Indian Conceptions on Man's Destiny After Death: The Beginnings and the Early Development of the Doctrine of Transmigration. Part I. Berliner Indologische Studien 9: 55-118. Note that, in contrast with the UpaniSads, in the Gita (8.23-26) it is not one's actions/behavior that determines which path one will follow after death, but the moment of death, and this is consistent with BhISma's decision to postpone his death until the beginning of the uttarAyaNa. The two paths seem to be combined in the JaiminIya BrAhmaNa (1.49), and this is probably an earlier version of the theory. The devayAna and pitRyANa of the Rg Veda are probably not the same as the UpaniSadic paths. The two paths are also based on the general Vedic division of time cycles into a light and a dark half (or, an ascending and descending half), where the light half of a cycle is auspicious and the dark one is not. I have written on this (in Spanish) in: Tiempo ciclico y eras del mundo en la India. Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico, 1988:43-53. Best, Luis Gonzalez-Reimann University of California, Berkeley At 01:55 PM 03/07/2000 +0000, Eric Robert wrote: >Answers CC to the author, please. > >---------- Forwarded message ---------- >Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 10:53:20 +0100 >From: "Robert, Eric" > >I am searching for early references to karman and re-birth theory. I have >several passages in the older upanishads: BU (eg 6.2), CU (5.3-5.10), KsU >(1.1-1.2). These are relatively clear in their statements about the path of >the gods, leading to brahman, and the path leading, through the world of >fathers, to a new birth in a pleasant or foul womb, according to one's >pleasant or foul behaviour. In KsU, it is said that the moon propels them to >new birth in various conditions in accordance with his actions and his >knowledge. >Is there clear evidence or reference to such theory in prior material, ie >samhitaas, braahmaNas or aaraNyakas? > >In advance than you > >Eric Robert > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM Wed Mar 8 12:52:19 2000 From: smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM (Swaminathan Madhuresan) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 04:52:19 -0800 Subject: chariots (was: AIT, NEW genetic evidence) Message-ID: <161227056466.23782.8432020226277442368.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >Well, 'axle' comes from IE *ak'sa (Latin axis, Greek -aksa, O.H.German >ahsa, etc./ Vedic: akSa > (N?) Drav. accu; >but ANi 'lynch pin' is foreign to both Drav. and Vedic languages (though >DEDR derives it from Skt.!) -- and a local loan. >But cakra, Engl. wheel, etc. < IE *kwe-kw-lo- may ultimately derive from >Sumerian gilgul 'wheel', cf. also (GIS-)gigir 'wagon'. Is Sanskrit aa.ni related to tamil verb aa_li(-ttal) = to dig deep, to sink? Also, aa_li= wheel, Vishnu's discus; aa_lvaar = drowner, Srivaishnava saint; aa_lttu = to immerse, to plunge. "aa_l" to "aa.l" change seems to be in aa.lva.l.li=cakkarava.l.li=wild yam. >However, Dravidian has quite a number of loans from Sumerian in the >agricultural field, see >Blazek, V. and C. Boisson, The Diffusion of Agricultural Terms from >Mesopotamia. Archiv Orientalni 60, 1992, 16-37 , -- -- >such as Sumerian ur 'millstone', Proto-South Drav. *ur-al 'mortar' (p. 24), >Sumer. ili 'sesame', Akkad. ellu/Ulu 'sesame oil', which is only found in >South Drav. with eL, eLLu 'Sesamum indicum' but cf. Ved. tila and jar-tila >'sesame'; etc. etc. >---- which seems to point to a location of early Proto-Drav. closer to >Mesopotamia on the Iranian plateau, (cf. also the --supposed -- genetic >connection of Drav. and Elamite, in McAlpin's work, denied by a number of >Dravidian scholars). >A Drav.- Mesopotamian link, at least of loan words, seems clear, though. Is this due to interactions between Harappa and Sumeria? __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From haridasc at YAHOO.COM Wed Mar 8 15:19:49 2000 From: haridasc at YAHOO.COM (Haridas C) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 07:19:49 -0800 Subject: Toward a Science of Translating--Sanskrit texts--the basis for the meaning of meaning Message-ID: <161227056483.23782.5012833817488198608.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear List members, With respect to the Sarasvati and chariot discussion which has been taking place, I am re-posting and adding to my inquiry which follows below. The basis for most of the debates on this list and in other areas is centered upon the basic question of 'what is the meaning of the word/text?' So I wondering about the variety of the past authors which have been foundational to the science and the practice of translating sanskrit, pali, and prakrit literature in the west. Any thoughts upon recent thinkers, such as Foucault, Derrida, Godamer in light of the mechanics of translating into english, german, french etc., would be warmly welcomed also. For example, Derrida wrote: "Il n'y a pas d'hors texte ('there is nothing outside a text')" how might this apply to the topic of interpretation/misinterpretation translation/mistranslation on the list. I am also interested in essays and discussion on the mechanics of translating Sanskrit into English. thank you. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From rpeck at NECA.COM Wed Mar 8 12:35:43 2000 From: rpeck at NECA.COM (Bob Peck) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 07:35:43 -0500 Subject: Science versus Indology Message-ID: <161227056463.23782.12058805594282633528.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I read about a reaction to scientists from this site and wonder if I am in the right group (I am a physicist). I approached Indology starting with the Rig Vedas looking for answers to personal physiological and mystical experiences. I believed that I found them. However, I had trouble with existing translations and found I had to revert to the roots of Sanskrit words. For instance, In many ancient documents I found tapas meaning fervor made a great deal of sense in terms of experience. I took a translation of mine to a local Professor of Sanskrit who told me that I had to use the ?accepted? meanings of words even though my translation was consistent with root meanings and logic. I am not a Sanskrit scholar, but I believe that many of the early documents are in fact scientific and if approached in this manner can be understood. Most scientists are taught to read a foreign technical language with good accuracy who cannot read a child?s primer. One must of coarse have experience in the topic. I would love to raise questions concerning this interface of ancient Sanskrit and experience. I believe that it would point to a fundamental philosophy different from today ?s religious interpretations. Are scientific interpretation acceptable or must it be ?correct?? Respect to you all Bob Peck From bmisra at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Wed Mar 8 13:16:50 2000 From: bmisra at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Bijoy Misra) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 08:16:50 -0500 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056468.23782.17224812651664914925.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Wed, 8 Mar 2000, Dominik Wujastyk wrote: > On Tue, 7 Mar 2000, Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote: > > > Well, as a general rule, don't dismiss the scientists so easily. > > I'm sorry, but on indological matters I insist on dismissing scientists > very easily. > I don't get this statement. Is this a private view or a creed for the forum? What you probably think is that interdiscipinary science is a serious task. But don't dismiss scientific point of view. Any discovery of any kind is analytic science. Some of us do Sanskrit as a hobby ( I teach Sanskrit over weekends) and study Indology for understanding the origin of ideas (I do experiments on cognition for learning and perception). And we amuse ourselves at many unconnected statements made at random on cultural and religious forums. And we come from hard core physical sciences (mine is in physics and astronomy that we teach..) This group goes biased occasionally, but to go against scientists would be a big turn backwards.. Regards, Bijoy Misra From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Wed Mar 8 13:23:44 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 08:23:44 -0500 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location In-Reply-To: <20000308015050.59827.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <161227056471.23782.7577237818410170506.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >Dominik Wujastyk wrote: >>I'm afraid that I neither trust nor believe anything said by atomic >>scientists about humanistic subjects (or most other subjects). Let's try >>to keep this list scholarly, shall we! I agree: In this connection, and in line with the original post, I suggest to read the 1999 volume: Vedic Sarasvati--Evolutionary History of a Lost River of Northwestern India, eds. B.P.Radhakrishna and S.S.Merh, Memoir 42 of the Geological Society of India, PB 1922, Gavipuram, P.O., Bangalore 560019. While the contributors of first 1/3 of the book -- almost all Indian Sanskritists -- know *exactly* where and what the Vedic Sarasvati was; the contributors of the second 2/3 -- almost all Indian natural scientists -- are much more circumspect, stress the MANY "Sarasvati" palaeo-channels of the past few ten thousand years, and also indicate the MANY incertainties connected with the problem, for example the --so far-- missing long section between the end of the visible Hakra-Ghagghar-Sarsuti (Sarasvati) channel near Derawar Fort (east of Khanpur, Pak., eg. p. 127) and the channel paralleling the Indus and continuing as Nara/Wahind etc. down to the Rann of Cutch. Also, the archaeological data have not been sorted out. Moh. Rafique Mughal, Cholistan, Rawalpindi 1997, can help for the Pakistani side. For example, how can one have an Indus settlement in the MIDDLE of the flood plain of a mighty active river? This question has not even been raised by the proponents of the "Indus-Sarasavati culture" (which should be renamed, if at all, to something like *Sende-*Vishambazh culture", -- that at least comes close to what the rivers were called by Indus Civ. people). What we need, is a close correlation not just between linguists/textual scholars and natural sciencists, attempted but not yet solved at all in the above volume, but *also* with archaeologists. As I always say, LANDSAT photos do not deliver *absolute* historical dates... There is a lot of uncritical belief in science here. One sees what one wants to see... ================= Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From tarekwani at USA.COM Wed Mar 8 14:27:17 2000 From: tarekwani at USA.COM (Tarek Wani) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 09:27:17 -0500 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227056475.23782.10251338283157336279.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dominik Wujastyk wrote: >I'm afraid that I neither trust nor believe anything said by atomic >scientists about humanistic subjects (or most other subjects). Let's try >to keep this list scholarly, shall we! Although Mr Wujastyk is entitled to his opinion, it is unreasonable to dismiss work by others that does not belong to one's area of expertise without reading it. The ad hominem attacks on work coming out of India, without looking at the evidence, takes us back to the attitudes of the colonial period. Is it too much to ask to keep racial prejudices and hate-mongering out of this list? -TW --------------------------------------------------------------- Get free personalized email from USA.com at http://mail.usa.com From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Wed Mar 8 09:27:46 2000 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 10:27:46 +0100 Subject: SV: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227056453.23782.3301887844853664702.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Vidyasankar Sundaresan [SMTP:vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM] skrev 08. mars 2000 02:51: > Well, as a general rule, don't dismiss the scientists so easily. What > scientists actually do, what they say they do, and what journalists say > scientists do - these can all be very different things. I think the basic problem is a small matter of textual interpretation. Whatever the scientists find, this has to be related somehow to Vedic material. But the Vedic material is in no way so clear as some people seem to think, and the identifications made in some quarters between science finds and Vedic phenomena are, to say the least, tenuous. I realize that we are now threatening to embark on a debate that has been outlawed on Indology, so this will be my last remark on the subject. Sadly, because I also happen to think that science may be able to give valuable contributions as long as we don't overestimate its potential or abuse the authority which it has with the general public. Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Norway Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no From gargsam at HOTMAIL.COM Wed Mar 8 16:09:14 2000 From: gargsam at HOTMAIL.COM (Sam Garg) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 11:09:14 -0500 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227056488.23782.4111044734399750221.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> As an Indology layperson, who has recently subscribed to the list, I find myself in agreement with John Smith. I do not see any hate mongering or racial prejudice in the statement made by Dominik Wujastyk. I think we should err on the side of caution in the Saraswati debate. I do wish to make the point, though, that Indian scientists/ philosophers tend, much more than their counterparts in the West, to overlap with 'religion'. Presumably, this is because there is not the fundamental divide between science vs. religion in Hinduism. In fact, 'rational learning' (Gnyana) is considered one of the paths to the 'ultimate truth'. >From: John Smith >Reply-To: Indology >To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK >Subject: Re: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location >Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 14:47:23 +0000 > >On Wed, 8 Mar 2000, Tarek Wani wrote: > > > Dominik Wujastyk wrote: > > > > >I'm afraid that I neither trust nor believe anything said by atomic > > >scientists about humanistic subjects (or most other subjects). Let's >try > > >to keep this list scholarly, shall we! > > ... > > Is it too much to ask to keep racial prejudices and > > hate-mongering out of this list? > >Bizarre. I might not agree with what Dominik wrote, but I can see no trace >whatever of racial prejudice or hate-mongering in it. > >I don't think I can be bothered to subscribe to Indology any more: with >honourable exceptions -- including many Indian contributors, but not >including Tarek Wani -- it has degenerated into an endless sequence of >flamewars on topics that are of little interest to me as a fairly >mainstream Indologist with interests in both ancient and modern India. >What a pity. > >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 ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From rah2k at UNIX.MAIL.VIRGINIA.EDU Wed Mar 8 16:30:40 2000 From: rah2k at UNIX.MAIL.VIRGINIA.EDU (Robert A. Hueckstedt) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 11:30:40 -0500 Subject: Toward a Science of Translating--Sanskrit texts--the basis for the meaning of meaning In-Reply-To: <20000308151949.29517.qmail@web3106.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <161227056490.23782.2785783629804655731.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Haridas C's appeal for material relevant to the problem(s) of translating from Sanskrit into English: 1. The introduction by Daniel H.H. Ingalls to the abbreviated version of his translation of Vidyaakara's _Subhaa.sitaratnako"sa_, Harvard University Press, 1965. 2. A Ph.D. thesis done by Hank Heifetz at Berkeley in the mid eighties on this very problem. I don't know the title. And there are more things that don't immediately come to mind. Both the above works deal, however, specifically with translating kaavya. Translating other types of texts into English is another problem(s). Bob Hueckstedt University of Virginia From rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM Wed Mar 8 16:34:23 2000 From: rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM (Rajarshi Banerjee) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 11:34:23 -0500 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227056493.23782.14818116865621394953.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> An ancient river flowing through rajasthan and pakistan would definitely have influence on the people and wildlife of the region. Why should we overlook geographical features which would have had an impact on the ecosystem and the society. Ground water I believe can be dated. A scientist may choose names stemming from popular imagination, but that does not negate his finds or their relevance to the ancient people of the region. Should we ignore such finds because it may not have been called sarasvati. regards RB From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Wed Mar 8 12:33:08 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 12:33:08 +0000 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location In-Reply-To: <20000308015050.59827.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <161227056459.23782.3574466216139472628.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Tue, 7 Mar 2000, Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote: > Well, as a general rule, don't dismiss the scientists so easily. I'm sorry, but on indological matters I insist on dismissing scientists very easily. Unless they have some demonstrable formal training in matters concerning the study of history and culture, that is. However, this is almost never the case. Would you ask a Sanskritist for help with a broken leg? No, unless the Sanskritist happened to be trained in medicine. Similarly, don't ask a scientist for sensible opinions about topics in classical history. I really do mean this. -- Dominik Wujastyk Founder, INDOLOGY list. From jds10 at CAM.AC.UK Wed Mar 8 14:47:23 2000 From: jds10 at CAM.AC.UK (John Smith) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 14:47:23 +0000 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location In-Reply-To: <000308092717AU.05953@weba6.iname.net> Message-ID: <161227056478.23782.6892345134060741735.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Wed, 8 Mar 2000, Tarek Wani wrote: > Dominik Wujastyk wrote: > > >I'm afraid that I neither trust nor believe anything said by atomic > >scientists about humanistic subjects (or most other subjects). Let's try > >to keep this list scholarly, shall we! > ... > Is it too much to ask to keep racial prejudices and > hate-mongering out of this list? Bizarre. I might not agree with what Dominik wrote, but I can see no trace whatever of racial prejudice or hate-mongering in it. I don't think I can be bothered to subscribe to Indology any more: with honourable exceptions -- including many Indian contributors, but not including Tarek Wani -- it has degenerated into an endless sequence of flamewars on topics that are of little interest to me as a fairly mainstream Indologist with interests in both ancient and modern India. What a pity. 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 vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Wed Mar 8 22:53:13 2000 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 14:53:13 -0800 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227056506.23782.3988645225562135030.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> My statement seems to have provoked a flurry of responses. Perhaps I should clarify a bit, in light of Prof. Witzel's remarks. Michael Witzel >Vedic Sarasvati--Evolutionary History of a Lost River of Northwestern >India, eds. B.P.Radhakrishna and S.S.Merh, Memoir 42 of the Geological >Society of India, PB 1922, Gavipuram, P.O., Bangalore 560019. > >While the contributors of first 1/3 of the book -- almost all Indian >Sanskritists -- know *exactly* where and what the Vedic Sarasvati was; Most list readers may not have read this book, so a little elaboration might help. Do these contributors place Vedic Sarasvati exactly through Punjab and Rajasthan, or do they place it exactly further west, in modern Afghanistan, or exactly somewhere else? >the contributors of the second 2/3 -- almost all Indian natural scientists >-- are much more circumspect, stress the MANY "Sarasvati" palaeo-channels >of the past few ten thousand years, and also indicate the MANY >incertainties connected with the problem, for example the --so far-- That is one reason to listen to the scientists carefully. It is in the nature of properly trained scientists to maintain a degree of skepticism and a willingness to constantly re-evaluate data. If many paleo-channels are what the ground data indicate, that is what the scientists will say. They might want to call it Sarasvati, in order to provoke some official interest and obtain government funding for their work, but that is besides the point. And if it is shown convincingly that this old river which shifted course many times and left evidence of many channels *is not* and *cannot be* the Vedic Sarasvati, I daresay the scientists will be willing to drop the name. That is why, the original comment by Dominik, >>I'm afraid that I neither trust nor believe anything said by atomic >>scientists about humanistic subjects (or most other subjects). Let's try >>to keep this list scholarly, shall we! seems quite biased to me. Perhaps it was meant to provoke, and directed towards some particular list-members. However, it pits "scholars" (humanists?) and "scientists" against each other in highly general terms. I agree that most scientists may not have the requisite training to say anything much about Indological subjects. That is no reason, however, to dismiss what they say about hard physical data. And for that matter, with all due respect, a number of those who claim formal training in Indology have not been above making highly unscholarly remarks in the past. Meanwhile, it is not as if the contributions of list-members with scientific backgrounds have been of zero or negative value. To refuse to talk, claiming a monopoly on scholarliness, seems to me highly short-sighted. Think about it. As of now, only those who believe in the indigenous origin of Vedic culture are willing to talk to the scientists. As a result, they know very little of other kinds of data that may have some bearing on their conclusions. Those on the other side of the Indus-Sarasvati debate can hardly blame the scientists if you refuse to listen/talk to them and if you refuse to point out the merits of your own position. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From rdsaran at UMICH.EDU Wed Mar 8 19:55:52 2000 From: rdsaran at UMICH.EDU (Richard D. Saran) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 14:55:52 -0500 Subject: Phaaraka, Phaarakii Message-ID: <161227056503.23782.4754951535814908335.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Can anyone suggest etymologies for: Phaaraka (type of soldier) Phaarakii/Phaaraki (type of catapult or sling) These two words appear in the Old Gujarati poem, KanhaDadeprabandha. Thank you, Richard D. Saran South Asia Division Graduate Library University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109 USA (313) 936-2346 rdsaran at umich.edu From rpeck at NECA.COM Wed Mar 8 20:24:17 2000 From: rpeck at NECA.COM (Bob Peck) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 15:24:17 -0500 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227056504.23782.1708713607828314380.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Is your web site denying the input of gurus? In the Western modern world is not a scientist comparable to a Guru? Is not a reverence of the role of the Guru essential in understanding the writings of India? Does only an Indologist in academia understand India? Would it not make sense to limit the subject matter and length rather than who contributes? Most technical journals do this. Respects Bob Peck From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Wed Mar 8 15:17:46 2000 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 16:17:46 +0100 Subject: SV: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227056481.23782.4453832779848851959.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Tarek Wani [SMTP:tarekwani at USA.COM] skrev 08. mars 2000 15:27: > Although Mr Wujastyk is entitled to his opinion, > it is unreasonable to dismiss work by others > that does not belong to one's area of expertise without > reading it. The ad hominem attacks on work coming out > of India, without looking at the evidence, takes us > back to the attitudes of the colonial period. > > Is it too much to ask to keep racial prejudices and > hate-mongering out of this list? Racial prejudice and hate-mongering do not come into it. Let me give you a counter-example: Recently, Thor Heyerdahl of Kon-Tiki fame, together with a cartographer published a book on the Norse migrations to Canada containing some "controvesial" views. Heyerdahl is man of great personal courage and daring-do, and both respected and admired for it, but unfortunately he also wants to count as a scholar without having the relevant qualifications and consequently not the critical attitude expected in a scholar. The Norwegian specialists within the field have politely rejected his hypotheses. Possibly, his lavishly produced book will appeal to the general public. I could give a couple of other examples from other fields than Indology where enterprising amateurs with a good standing within other fields have tried to attack difficult problems. One of these, a biologist called Barry Fell, some years ago published a book where he argued that Norwegians had discovered America 1700 BCE. He also claimed that he had solved the mystery of certain American rock carvings, which - surprise, surprise! - turned out to be Old Norse (for once not Sanskrit). (The Old Norse he read into the carvings turned out to be in a language that was younger than the oldest Norse inscriptions we know. Barry Fell, like so many scientists, was a lousy philologist). In Norway, I am probably the only one to know about Fell's book, and only because I have an American aunt who brought it home in the mistaken idea that she had some wonderful news for us. I had a hard time convincing her that the book was nonsense. Apparently, Norwegian-Americans were delighted with Fell's ideas (does this sound familiar to anybody?). Please drop the idea that we reject ideas simply because we are racists. That is a too convenient explanation. We usually reject ideas because they are badly argued and often based upon nationalist prejudice of a kind that is all too familiar in Europe and elsewhere. Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Norway Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no From sreeni at KTP.UNI-PADERBORN.DE Wed Mar 8 15:35:53 2000 From: sreeni at KTP.UNI-PADERBORN.DE (Sreenivas Paruchuri) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 16:35:53 +0100 Subject: The anon-s problem In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056486.23782.9570737573789300019.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >> John Smith schrieb: > On Wed, 8 Mar 2000, Tarek Wani wrote: > > Is it too much to ask to keep racial prejudices and > > hate-mongering out of this list? > > I don't think I can be bothered to subscribe to Indology any more: with > honourable exceptions -- including many Indian contributors, but not > including Tarek Wani -- it has degenerated into an endless sequence of > flamewars on topics that are of little interest to me as a fairly "Indology" List faced this problem many times before in the past. deja vu! Perhaps, this list readers may be interested to know that Shri/Shrimati "TW" signs, on one list, so: -Tarek (or Tariq) and on Indology-List signed so: tAraka wANi I wish (s)he maintains some consistency while signing his/her name! Welcome to the club of NG/SM/VI/KR/...., DG/SC/.... Well, if you are a long time subscriber to Indology-list or Usenet groups like RMIC, you 'd know what club it is! Regards, --Sreenivas From malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU Thu Mar 9 00:53:16 2000 From: malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU (Yashwant Malaiya) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 17:53:16 -0700 Subject: Queries: Diwali, Buddhism and Brahmins Message-ID: <161227056512.23782.18364441329875191139.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I include two separate queries here. I will appreciate any help on them. 1. Diwali or Dipavali is celebrated on Amavasya of Kartika (Purmimanta). I am looking for historical mentions of Diwali in Indian texts. I will appreciate if someone has some information on the history of Diwali. I know that it was celebrated by Mughals as a popular Indian festivals. It is also mentioned in Sandesh-Rasak of Addahamana (Abdul-Rahman? 13th cent?). 2. There is a view that Buddhism arose in opposition to the Brahmins. Does anyone know when this view first arose? It does not appear to be correct. That Buddhism arose in protest is certainly not the Buddhist view. Gotama Buddha (Shakyamuni) was not the only Buddha, majority of the former Buddhas were Brahmin ("Homage to Konagamana, the Brahmin who lived the life perfected", DN-32 etc). While their historicity has not been established, monuments to former Buddhas once existed. Future Buddha Maitreya too will be born a Brahmin. Gotama addressed his students by their gotra, which is the name of associated Brahmanical Rishi. He often used the term Shramana and Brahmin together, suggested they were both considered respected. A large fraction of his immediate followers were Brahmin, including the agra-shravakas Sariputta and Moggalayana. Most of the famous Buddhist authors were Brahmin. In Gandhari Dharmapada, BrammaNa-varga is the very first chapter (although not in the Pali Dhammapad). Buddhist universities must have been dominated by Brahmins. According to Dharmasvamin, the Tibetan visitor, the last teacher of Nalanda was supported by a local wealthy Brahmin. While Gotama was opposed to animal sacrifices and superiority of Brahmins by birth alone, there is no evidence that the Buddha or the Buddhists were ever opposed to Brahmins. Throughout history Brahmins performed the rituals when a Buddhist king ascended the throne, as it is still done today in Thailand. What is then the basis of the supposed opposition of Buddhism to Brahmins? It is so frequently mentioned by historians. How did this view become popular? Yashwant From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Wed Mar 8 22:59:07 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 17:59:07 -0500 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location In-Reply-To: <003D0A33B331D2119E470008C72892CD013F3C85@SMGMAIL> Message-ID: <161227056508.23782.6875240734906865471.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Tarek Wani: >An ancient river flowing through rajasthan and pakistan would definitely >have influence on the people and wildlife of the region. Why should we >overlook geographical features which would have had an impact on the >ecosystem and the society. who would, and who has denied that? >Ground water I believe can be dated. Unfortunately,it also travels. Especially, following gravity along slopes. Such as the one from the Himaslayan foothills towards the Indus. Ever heard of artesian wells? >A scientist may choose names stemming from popular imagination, but that >does not negate his finds or their relevance to the ancient people of the >region. Should we ignore such finds because it may not have been called >sarasvati. Nobody neglects these findings. The question is, as always, their, eh, 'mushy' interpretation (and also; what is the reason for the renaming of the Indus civilization, for whatever purpose...?) In this context is must be underlined that a considerable segment of the Harappan population shifted eastwards from the Indus and the Ghaggar-Hakra the post-Harappan period and built smaller new settlements in the Eastern Panjab/Haryana/UP. The outspoken, anti-immigrationist archaeologists Shaffer and Lichtenstein (Erdosy Vol., 1995:138) attribute this in part to the loss of waters of the Ghaggar-Hakra to the Yamuna and Sutlej (see in detail Mughal, Cholistan 1997). Indeed, the *dry* bed of the Ghaggar-Hakra is lined with Harappan sites (and *still* cluttered with millions of sherds (Mughal 1997). But, as I said, many of these settlements are on the actual flood plain of the Ghaggar-Hakra, which speaks against an enormous river during the Harappan period. In fact, the estimates of archaeologists on the exact date of the drying up of much of the Gagghar-Hakra differ considerably. Mughal proposes 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 2500-2200 BCE to 2200-1700 BCE. It is now thought that the Sarasvati lost the mass of its water volume to the nearby Yamuna and Satlej due to tectonic upheaval (Yash Pal 1984; Radhakrishnan 1999). The new evidence from Bahawalpur/Cholistan (Mughal 1997) indicates that the area along the lower Hakra was abandoned when its people moved eastwards, after c.1400 BCE. The area was not settled again until well into the iron age, with the introduction of some PGW settlements into the area (800 BCE). At that time, indeed, we hear of sparse settlements in the west and populous ones in the east (in the E. Panjab text, the Aitareya Brahmana). Incidentally, it also must not be forgotten that the many hundred Indus settlements in the Ghagghar-Hakra area do *not* indicate that this was *the* center of the Indus civilization (there are about 5! From Harappa to Dholavira in Cutch). Rather, the clustering is due to the fact that the lower 'Sarasvati' area is "fossile": it has not changed its geomorphology, it has hardly been settled and, most importantly, it has neither received new alluvium nor has it been subject to ploughing since the end of the Indus period. Such data are usually forgotten in the common one-track discussions ("atomic science / LANDSAT photos prove the existence... etc etc." ity alam. A few science/archaeology monographs, (and, sorry, the 'mushy' evidence from texts and linguistics) would have helped... =========== ========================================================================== Michael Witzel Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies Harvard University www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs --------------------------------------------------------------------------- my direct line (also for messages) : 617- 496 2990 home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm From troyoga at YAHOO.COM Thu Mar 9 02:25:23 2000 From: troyoga at YAHOO.COM (Ven. Tantra) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 18:25:23 -0800 Subject: River Sarasvati Message-ID: <161227056514.23782.2068658362402617940.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Boys, boys!! --- Lars Martin Fosse wrote: > Tarek Wani [SMTP:tarekwani at USA.COM] skrev 08. mars > 2000 15:27: > > Although Mr Wujastyk is entitled to his opinion, > > it is unreasonable to dismiss work by others > > that does not belong to one's area of expertise > without > > reading it. The ad hominem attacks on work coming > out > > of India, without looking at the evidence, takes > us > > back to the attitudes of the colonial period. > > > > Is it too much to ask to keep racial prejudices > and > > hate-mongering out of this list? > > Racial prejudice and hate-mongering do not come into > it. Let me give you a > counter-example: Recently, Thor Heyerdahl of > Kon-Tiki fame, together with a > cartographer published a book on the Norse > migrations to Canada containing some > "controvesial" views. Heyerdahl is man of great > personal courage and daring-do, > and both respected and admired for it, but > unfortunately he also wants to count > as a scholar without having the relevant > qualifications and consequently not > the critical attitude expected in a scholar. The > Norwegian specialists within > the field have politely rejected his hypotheses. > Possibly, his lavishly > produced book will appeal to the general public. > > I could give a couple of other examples from other > fields than Indology where > enterprising amateurs with a good standing within > other fields have tried to > attack difficult problems. One of these, a biologist > called Barry Fell, some > years ago published a book where he argued that > Norwegians had discovered > America 1700 BCE. He also claimed that he had solved > the mystery of certain > American rock carvings, which - surprise, surprise! > - turned out to be Old > Norse (for once not Sanskrit). (The Old Norse he > read into the carvings turned > out to be in a language that was younger than the > oldest Norse inscriptions we > know. Barry Fell, like so many scientists, was a > lousy philologist). > > In Norway, I am probably the only one to know about > Fell's book, and only > because I have an American aunt who brought it home > in the mistaken idea that > she had some wonderful news for us. I had a hard > time convincing her that the > book was nonsense. Apparently, Norwegian-Americans > were delighted with Fell's > ideas (does this sound familiar to anybody?). > > Please drop the idea that we reject ideas simply > because we are racists. That > is a too convenient explanation. We usually reject > ideas because they are > badly argued and often based upon nationalist > prejudice of a kind that is all > too familiar in Europe and elsewhere. > > Best regards, > > Lars Martin Fosse > > > Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse > Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, > 0674 Oslo > Norway > Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 > Email: lmfosse at online.no > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Wed Mar 8 19:20:18 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 19:20:18 +0000 Subject: Adhikaara [was SV: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location] In-Reply-To: <01BF891A.0A78B0E0.lmfosse@online.no> Message-ID: <161227056497.23782.558218903623514388.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The point, for those able to think straight, is a simple one: Classical Indian Studies is a professional field with a long history and its own literature of scholarly journals, monograph publications, conferences, and whatnot. It takes many years of study to qualify as a university teacher or researcher in this field. The INDOLOGY list was designed from the beginning to serve this community. This is made very clear in the rules and regulations posted on the INDOLOGY website five years ago, and in the early postings to the list ten years ago. This has been repeated often. Anyone qualified in this way, who participates professionally in the field of Classical Indian Studies, attends conferences, writes books and articles, etc., is welcome to participate in the discussion on this list. Others with an amateur interest in Indian cultural history are welcome to lurk, but are not encouraged to participate volubly. That's the setup as far as this list is concerned. I warmly encourage people not interested in this list's profile to unsubscribe. -- Dominik Wujastyk Founder, INDOLOGY list. [I am away from my desk from now until next week.] From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Wed Mar 8 19:21:44 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 19:21:44 +0000 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location In-Reply-To: <000308092717AU.05953@weba6.iname.net> Message-ID: <161227056499.23782.1398220384773954393.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Wed, 8 Mar 2000, Tarek Wani wrote: > Although Mr Wujastyk is entitled to his opinion, ... Thank you. And that's Doctor, to you. -- Dominik Wujastyk Founder, INDOLOGY list. From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Wed Mar 8 19:22:40 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 19:22:40 +0000 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056501.23782.7663149504935081239.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Wed, 8 Mar 2000, Bijoy Misra wrote: > I don't get this statement. Is this a private view or a creed for the > forum? Yes. -- Dominik Wujastyk Founder, INDOLOGY list. From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Thu Mar 9 03:25:38 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 22:25:38 -0500 Subject: Toward a Science of Translating--Sanskrit texts--the basis for the meaning of meaning In-Reply-To: <20000308151949.29517.qmail@web3106.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <161227056518.23782.12316087706435570871.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > the basic question of >'what is the meaning of the word/text?' > >... science and the >practice of translating sanskrit, pali, and prakrit >literature in the west. I may draw your attention to the Volume we published a few years ago: Translating, Translations, Translators From India to the West, ed. by E. Garzilli (Harvard Oriental Series, Opera Minora, 1) Cambridge 1996 (available from South Asia Books, Columbia, MO) see: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/hos.htm >For example, Derrida wrote: "Il n'y a pas d'hors texte >('there is nothing outside a text')" how might this >apply to the topic of interpretation/misinterpretation >translation/mistranslation on the list. what about your text above? is "science and the practice of translating.." inside or outside ? Or is it just politics? Or Just kidding. But: The last mono-causal or megalo-maniac interpretation of reality of the past century. I am (not very eagerly) waiting for the first one of this new century/millennium. >I am also interested in essays and discussion on the >mechanics of translating Sanskrit into English. See above. Very hands-on volume, next to some theory. Hope this helps! =-======= Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Wed Mar 8 23:25:41 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 00 23:25:41 +0000 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location In-Reply-To: <20000308225313.19237.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <161227056510.23782.9663309455567657577.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Wed, 8 Mar 2000, Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote: > To refuse to talk, claiming a monopoly on scholarliness, seems to me > highly short-sighted. Oh dear. I don't see how I could possibly make my view any clearer. And yet in spite of everything I have said, using reasonably short sentences and no excessive sesquipedalianism, someone can manage to wrestle the above view from my words. I give up. -- Dominik Wujastyk Founder, INDOLOGY list. From vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM Thu Mar 9 13:43:03 2000 From: vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM (Vishal Agarwal) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 05:43:03 -0800 Subject: Saraswati: Atomic Scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227056532.23782.10916172425393250360.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dr. Wujastyk said: I'm afraid that I neither trust nor believe anything said by atomic scientists about humanistic subjects (or most other subjects). Let's try to keep this list scholarly, shall we! -- Dominik Wujastyk Founder, INDOLOGY list. ________________________________ VA asks: Before I spend my money, I request the mainstream Indologists for their opinion on Rajesh Kochar's book. I ask because Dr. Kochar is neither a trained philologist nor a professional indologist, and his area of expertise (astrophysics) is intimately related to atomic science. Morever, just a few months back, one mainstream Indologists from India complimented this work as "one of the best from India in recent years" while a Western Indologist heaved a sigh of relief and said that "at least there is one Indian who has written something that is not biased" (to paraphrase).And yet another mainstream Indologist thinks that Sarawati is in heaven, i.e., neither in India/Pakistan, nor in Afghanistan. Whereas some mainstream Indologists place the river in Afghanistan. The various postings under the thread make a good study and I will braodcast and publicize them in various forums of the laity and the academia. The readers will then decide who amongst the various Indologists are genuine scholars (I know that there are many), mediocre/intelligent academics who hold Eurocentric notions? Of if they include in their ranks the followers of Macaulay too. Science can also sometimes approach Theology in dogmatism, but not to the extent that Indology seems to. This is really sad. The importance of science can hardly be over-estimated, and I hope of a greater collaboration between the various fields of knowledge. Regards Vishal ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From vijay0104 at YAHOO.COM Thu Mar 9 05:46:48 2000 From: vijay0104 at YAHOO.COM (Vijay Shankar) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 05:46:48 +0000 Subject: Elst's review of Kochhar's Vedic People Message-ID: <161227056522.23782.11237177614467070839.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In his review of Kochhar's Vedic People, Elst has complimented the author for mentioning data which on closer examination goes against the author's own position. But in his long review Elst ignores points whch go against his own position.Example: horse. Elst does not mention horse even though it adorns the cover page of Kochhar's book. Horse(asva in Skt, aspa in Avestan) is a fundamenta,basic,crucial part of the Vedic and Avestan culture as well as of the Indo-Europeans in general.India is not the natural habitat of the MODERN horse.There are no wild horses in India .If India is the original home of the Aryans where did they get horse from?Mr Erst would perhaps like to explain. From rpeck at NECA.COM Thu Mar 9 12:30:23 2000 From: rpeck at NECA.COM (Bob Peck) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 07:30:23 -0500 Subject: translation assistance Message-ID: <161227056530.23782.5760636567355912287.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> in reference to Prof. Witzel's search for translation articles. As an amateur I found that the ParAtriiSikA Vivarana, was able to give me insights that I had never found in other texts. Abhinavagupta's discussion on how to translate the ParAtriMSikA struck me as pointing to the many problems of translating Sanskrit plus also indicating out the absolute requirment to understand the starting thesis of the text (that may be in partial support for Dr.Wujastyk's stand). regards Bob Peck From kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET Thu Mar 9 08:37:00 2000 From: kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET (S.Kalyanaraman) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 08:37:00 +0000 Subject: Myth and Reality [Was River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location] Message-ID: <161227056516.23782.5979351347287156280.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dominik Wujastyk wrote: > I'm afraid that I neither trust nor believe anything said by atomic > scientists about humanistic subjects (or most other subjects). Let's try > to keep this list scholarly, shall we! Scholarly? Methinks, Indology, though a private mailing list, has not yet become the monopoly for scholarship... Main Entry: schol?ar?ly Pronunciation: -lE Function: adjective Date: 1638 : of, characteristic of, or suitable to learned persons (Webster's Online Dictionary) "Aredvi_ su_ra_ ana_hita_...The original name of the Indo-Iranian goddess, he (Lommel) suggested, was Sarasvati_ 'She who possesses waters'. In India she continued to be worshipped by this name, which she gave there to a small but very holy river in Madhyades'a (the Punjab); whereas in Iran Sarasvati_ became, by normal sound changes, *Harahvati_, a name preserved in the region called in Avestan\ Harakhvaiti_, and known to the Greeks as Arachosia-- a region rich in rivers and lakes. (Old Persian Harahuvati_, see Bartholomae, Air.Wb.1788). Originally, *Harahvati_ was the personification of the great mythical river which flows down from high Hara_ into the sea Vourukas'a, and is the source of all the waters of the world... *Harahvati_'s own name came to be eclipsed by her attributes aredvi_ and su_ra_, which in later times coalesced to give her the new name of Ardvi_ (moist, humid) su_ra_ (strong, mighty)...The Avestan hymn to Aredvi_ su_ra_ is one of the longest and apparently most ancient of the yas'ts...Like the Indian Sarasvati_, she nurtures crops and herds...Aredvi_ also bestows rich material possessions--horses and chariots, arms and house-hold goods (Yt. 5.130)." (Mary Boyce, 1989, A History of Zoroastrianism, pp.71-2) Sarasvati_ was also called vais'ambha_lya_... Dr. S. Kalyanaraman kalyan97 at yahoo.com ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. From aklujkar at UNIXG.UBC.CA Thu Mar 9 07:37:29 2000 From: aklujkar at UNIXG.UBC.CA (Ashok Aklujkar) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 08:37:29 +0100 Subject: Queries: Diwali In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056542.23782.18317163050017842056.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> As I recall, P.K. Gode has an article on the antiquity of Diwali. Please check the volumes of his collected writings: (a) Studies in Indian Literary History, Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. (b) Studies in Indian Cultural History, Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. Another possibility: Raghavan, V. 1979. Festivals, Sports and Pastimes of India. Ahmedabad: B. J. Institute of Learning and Research. From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Thu Mar 9 13:41:06 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 08:41:06 -0500 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location In-Reply-To: <38C7F160.2B465050@jps.net> Message-ID: <161227056534.23782.10565780585922183791.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Paul Kekai Manansala: > Prehistory is not usually determined by philological study >of texts written down thousands of years after the proposed events. Think again: the Rgveda, due to its near-perfect ORAL transmission, can serve as a contemporaneous document (even when it was first written down, c. 1000 CE, as Albiruni and the first surviving Vedic manuscripts seem to indicate)... >Archaeology, anthropology, genetics, etc., are the 'harder' approaches >that must be used in analyzing the past. Ever noticed that archaeologists (Allchin :: Shaffer), anthropologists (do they even know what they *should* do, right now?), even geneticists (Cavalli-Sforza :: Vince Sarich, Berkeley) INTERPRET their data? And always differently... >Free interpretation of Vedic hymns, dating of language, etc. is very >soft, mushy stuff. Mushy indeed, if one does not pay attention to the differences between 'normal', classical Sanskrit and Vedic, to textual/linguistic levels, basic rules of comparative linguistics etc. As for some really mushy stuff, I suggest that readers check out P.K.Manansala's Austro-centric website which bristles with etymologies that put Plato's Kratylos and Yaska's Nirukta to shame. In this particular case, it was the Roman etymologists that were right: not: ex oriente (Savaiki-Pilippinense) lux, but : lucus a non lucendo... ----------------------- Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Thu Mar 9 13:47:56 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 08:47:56 -0500 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location In-Reply-To: <20000308225313.19237.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <161227056536.23782.174267720575808468.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Vidyasankar Sundaresan : >My statement seems to have provoked a flurry of responses: >>Vedic Sarasvati--Evolutionary History of a Lost River of Northwestern >>India, eds. B.P.Radhakrishna and S.S.Merh, >Do these contributors place Vedic Sarasvati exactly through Punjab and >Rajasthan, or do they place it exactly further west, in modern Afghanistan, >or exactly somewhere else? Most of them in in Haryana-Rajasthan-Cholistan --> Cutch. R.Kochhar, however, draws attention to the name sake in Afghani Arachosia (Haraxvaiti = Sarasvati). I cannot agree with this: >As of now, only those who believe in the >indigenous origin of Vedic culture are willing to talk to the scientists. Simply not correct. e.g., our Indologist colleague K.Mylius has 2 PhD degrees, one in Indology and one in Geography. Or, to give -- for which I beg indulgence -- a few personal examples. I remember to have read, already as a student, a lot on the historical climate and geography of Central Asia and India, worked and talked with natural scientists of all stripes at our research institute in Kathmandu (learning about the geological background of the mythical Kathmandu lake cleared by Visnu, about bird song - East Asia and Europe overlap there-- , looking at Terai mastodon fossile heads, learning a few things about Hepatitis A/B, taking a wonderful flight over the Himalayas with a Japanese glacierologist team, etc. etc. etc.) And of course we read nat.sc. items or talk to our nat.sc. colleagues. Or, archaeologists from metal preservationists to geneticists (one such vol., ed. by M.Kenoyer, on the Indus civ., is coming out this year). I often discuss these matters with Indian scientist friends teaching elsewhere in the US... They, as scientists, have for long given up on items such as the Aryan invasion or the Sarasvati discussions... and hope for better times, a change in the weather. ========= Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM Thu Mar 9 14:42:44 2000 From: rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM (Rajarshi Banerjee) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 09:42:44 -0500 Subject: Elst's review of Kochhar's Vedic People Message-ID: <161227056538.23782.12720327332518931708.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> PKM>However, the Indian cow is an entirely different breed than Bos taurus of West Asia, separated by many thousands of years. And the zebu shows little signs of introgression from bos taurus, quite the reverse in fact. RB> Actually Bos Indicus has separated from other Bos atleast 200000 to 300000 yrs ago. The african breeds are also distinct and domestication is local although the branching off is more recent. Skeletal data from mehergarh and other places show evidence of local domestication( reuction in size from wild state ). regards RB From venkatraman_iyer at HOTMAIL.COM Thu Mar 9 18:01:04 2000 From: venkatraman_iyer at HOTMAIL.COM (Venkatraman Iyer) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 10:01:04 -0800 Subject: NArada Message-ID: <161227056556.23782.308312506098811487.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dr. S. Palaniappan wrote: <<< I would like to note the following discussion by Asko Parpola in his "The Pre-Vedic Indian Background of the S'rauta Rituals" in "Agni: The Vedic Ritual of the Fire Altar" ed. by Frits Staal. Discussing the etymology of the word kinnara, he says, "The second part of the compound could be the Proto-Dravidian root Jaral, naral, naraku, etc., meaning "to sound, make noise, hum (as many voices), grumble, groan, roar," which is attested in all branches of Dravidian from Tamil to Malto (DED 2365). In Tamil we have from this root naralvu 'sounding, roaring, high pitch, vibrating sound of a lute', and narampu 'the string of the harp (yAz)' (also 'the particular tune appropriate to the string' and 'stringed instrument'), which is attested very many times in Old Tamil texts, including the most ancient one (tolkAppiyam, ez.33; akam 109.2; see also Subrahmanian 1966, 479, and Tamil Lexicon, s.v.). Another possibility is the Proto-Dravidian word Jarampu, narampu 'nerve, sinew, vein' (DED + DEDS + DEN no. 2364, attested from Tamil to Malto), from which we have forms like Kannada naravu, nara, Tulu nara, Telugu naramu, Kolami naram, Gondi naral, naram. Sinews have been used as bow and harp strings, and so the former item seems to be derived from the word." He also derives the Old Babylonian word "kinnArum" from this Dravidian nara. Considering Narada's association with music, I would ask IE/IA experts if the name cannot be derived from Dravidian nar-. >>> I agree. NArada in the epics probably represents a characterization of the PaaNar, the bards in sangam poems.The paaNan bards, perhaps the archetype for nArada, can be seen in the 100s of kOvai prabandhams. Typically, paaNan arrives at the heroine's home as a messenger for the husband who returned from prostitutes. Sometimes, he will be scolded by Her for the kalakam he creates, She throws stones at him, his yAzh(veena) gourd gets punctured,.... In Indology list, it was announced about Prof. Parpola's kinnara paper. I was looking for it in the Deshpande/Bronkhorst "Aryan/Non-Aryan" volume (HOS), but could not find it. Did Prof. Parpola publish this elsewhere? Thanks, V. Iyer 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 SANSKRIT KIMPURUSA AND KINNARA: AN EARLY MIXTURE OF ARYAN AND DRAVIDIAN Asko Parpola (University of Helsinki) At the Fourth World Sanskrit Conference held in Weimar in 1979 I presented a paper on this very same theme, and a one-page abstract was published in the proceedings. A more extended outline of the argument was included in a paper that came out four years later with the title "The pre-Vedic Indian background of the Zrauta rituals" (pp. 41-75 in: Frits Staal ed., Agni: The Vedic ritual of the fire altar, vol. II, Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1983). I am returning to this subject for three reasons. Firstly, the documentation of those earlier outlines is defective; secondly, my contentions have escaped the notice of scholars writing on kiMpuruSa / kinnara (cf. M. Mayrhofter, Etymologisches Woerterbuch des Altindoarischen I, Heidelberg 1992, p. 348; and A. Wayman's paper on kinnara read at the meeting of the AOS in 1994); and thirdly, some striking new material pertinent to this topic has come to light in the meantime. I have also continued my work on the prehistory of early Indian religions, which I find necessary for understanding the mixture of early Indo-Aryan and Dravidian, as represented by these words. The structure of the paper is as follows: 1. The meaning of kiMpuruSa and kinnara in classical Sanskrit, Prakrit and Neo-Indo-Aryan. 2. The meaning of kiMpuruSa in Vedic texts. 3. The ritual context of Vedic kiMpuruSa and its Proto-Aryan background. 4. Etymology of kiMpuruSa and kinnara: Proto-Dravidian *kinnaram and its occurrence in the Near East (Semitic *kinnAru) since the last quarter of the third millennium BC --- if accepted, this is by far the earliest attestation of any Dravidian word. 5. Hypotheses concerning the contexts of *kinnaram in the Harappan / Dravidian religion. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From perichandra at YAHOO.COM Thu Mar 9 18:31:42 2000 From: perichandra at YAHOO.COM (Periannan Chandrasekaran) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 10:31:42 -0800 Subject: NArada Message-ID: <161227056560.23782.8991454942080537175.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> --- Venkatraman Iyer wrote: > Dr. S. Palaniappan wrote: > <<< > I would like to note the following discussion by Asko Parpola in his > "The Pre-Vedic Indian Background of the S'rauta Rituals" in "Agni: > The Vedic Ritual of the Fire Altar" ed. by Frits Staal. > > Discussing the etymology of the word kinnara, he says, "The second > part of the compound could be the Proto-Dravidian root Jaral, naral, > naraku, etc., meaning "to sound, make noise, hum (as many voices), > grumble, groan, roar," which is attested in all branches of Dravidian > from Tamil to Malto (DED 2365). In Tamil we have from this root > naralvu 'sounding, roaring, high pitch, vibrating sound of a lute', > and narampu 'the string of the harp (yAz)' (also 'the particular tune > appropriate to the string' and 'stringed instrument'), which is > attested very many times in Old Tamil texts, including the most > ancient one (tolkAppiyam, ez.33; akam 109.2; see also Subrahmanian > 1966, 479, and Tamil Lexicon, s.v.). Another possibility is the > Proto-Dravidian word Jarampu, narampu 'nerve, sinew, vein' (DED + > DEDS + DEN no. 2364, attested from Tamil to Malto), from which we > have forms like Kannada naravu, nara, Tulu nara, Telugu naramu, > Kolami naram, Gondi naral, naram. Sinews have been used as bow and > harp strings, and so the former item seems to be derived from the > word." > > He also derives the Old Babylonian word "kinnArum" from this > Dravidian nara. > > Considering Narada's association with music, I would ask IE/IA experts > if the name cannot be derived from Dravidian nar-. > >>> ... Looks like the root (DEDR #3651) nAr = fibre, string, cord, rope is not finding mention so far. nAri = bow-strin nAram = cord. Ma. nAr; Ko.nar; To. nOr; Ka. nAr, nAri; Kod. narI; Tu. nAru; Te. nAra, nAri; Kol. nARA, nAra; Go. nAr; Konda. nari. > > Thanks, > V. Iyer > > MICHIGAN-LAUSANNE INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR > "ARYANS AND NON-ARYANS IN SOUTH ASIA : > EVIDENCE, INTERPRETATION, AND IDEOLOGY" You quote of Parpola from that reads: > 4. Etymology of kiMpuruSa and kinnara: Proto-Dravidian *kinnaram and > its occurrence in the Near East (Semitic *kinnAru) since the last > quarter of the third millennium BC --- if accepted, this is by far > the earliest attestation of any Dravidian word. What exactly is meant by "the earliest attestation"? __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU Thu Mar 9 17:33:54 2000 From: malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU (Yashwant Malaiya) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 10:33:54 -0700 Subject: Pluralism, Texts, and Oaths In-Reply-To: <006001bf89ec$74153fa0$f994883e@default> Message-ID: <161227056554.23782.9882514145873187188.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Incidentally Hinduism is also not a religion "of the book". Gita, though quite popular now, is not necessarily universally accepted, for example, the Arya Samajis and Lingayats will not accept it as "scripture". It is uncommon among Jains to use a book to take oath. I remember one case when a Jain had taken a "Jina-Vani-Samgraha", a prayer book, to court to take the oath. This was widely condemned by the Jain community who thought that such a use of a sacred text is disrespectful. Yashwant -----Original Message----- From: Indology [mailto:INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK]On Behalf Of Stephen Hodge Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2000 10:25 AM To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Subject: Re: Pluralism, Texts, and Oaths Noel Salmond wrote: > I recently got a call from an official of the government of Canada asking > for information with regard to choosing sacred texts for use in swearing-in > ceremonies for new Canadians [snip] > For instance, they want to know what to provide for Buddhists. I'm aware of > how complex this can be: what kind of Buddhist? Buddhism isn't a "religion > of the book" in the way that the biblical traditions are etc. [snip] > Could someone tell me what the drill is in the U.S., in the U.K., in India. > I gather that in secular India one swears on a copy of the constitution. The idea of swearing on books of holy scriptures is alien, as far as I know, to Buddhism. I have served on a juries here in the UK and when one is sworn in, a bible is normally proffered unless one specifically asks otherwise. For Muslims, a Quran is obviously needed while I believe a copy of the Bhagavad Gita may be provided for Hindus. As a Buddhist I chose to affirm (as do Quakers) rather than swear and this is what most Buddhists do here. However, in the past I think it was decided that a copy of the Dharmapada/Dhammapada was accepted. Arguably, the best thing for a Buddhist would be to "swear" on the Three Jewels -- the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. FYI although nominally a Buddhist country, people in Japan in similar situations merely affirm to tell the truth sincerely etc. Best wishes, Stephen Hodge From rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM Thu Mar 9 15:41:17 2000 From: rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM (Rajarshi Banerjee) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 10:41:17 -0500 Subject: chariots (was: AIT, NEW genetic evidence) Message-ID: <161227056540.23782.4367710375893678200.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> MW> ........... one has to compare them with the slightly later Sanchi & Barhut sculptures (as shown in Sparreboom). One of them is on the cover of our Bronkhorst/Deshpande "Aryan/Non_Aryan" volume (HOS-OM 3). RB> Many thanks to MW and SM, I finally checked out sparebooms book. depiction of relistic chariots in India is indeed very rare. Slightly later??, well the sanchi chariots are atleast a millenia later than the vedic chariot as the author himself says. There is also some rock art from MP depicting chariots which cannot be reliabaly dated. Sparreboom alo notes that unlike the near east where chariots are were used in large numbers for tactical warfare in the defence of large city states or empires, the vedic chariots role and manner of use can only be conjectured at. He highlights their use in rituals and cattle raids. At later times their presence in rituals is just symbolic. MW> Well, the RV mentions, e.g., a thousand horses 9.78.2, or hundreds and thousands of horses as gift at 6.63.10, thousand cows and horses at 1.29.1 --- RV 8.46.29 has 60,000 horses, the same at 8.26.21: 60,000 horses, 2000 camels, 1000 mares.... in a daanastuti. Even taking into account the usual predilection of poets for hyperbole (Indira-zatakam of 1977 CE !!), LOTS horses are quite apparent here. RB> Hyperbole is right. MW> I suggest the reading of some texts and the occasional monograph before speculating and extrapolating on this list... RB> I read your monograph regarding the expansion of the kurus. It does describe a non urban setting with cattle raids and social/political uplifment by performing rituals and RITUAL WARFARE. So my speculation is not off the mark. Compared to the near east there was a power vaccum and wars were not very frequent. Maybe because of that, major wars like the mahabharata war were a big deal and stuck permanently in every ones memory. regards RB From kekai at JPS.NET Thu Mar 9 18:45:53 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 10:45:53 -0800 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227056496.23782.3506144038955093620.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Bijoy Misra wrote: > > On Wed, 8 Mar 2000, Dominik Wujastyk wrote: > > > On Tue, 7 Mar 2000, Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote: > > > > > Well, as a general rule, don't dismiss the scientists so easily. > > > > I'm sorry, but on indological matters I insist on dismissing scientists > > very easily. > > > > I don't get this statement. Is this a private view or a creed > for the forum? > > What you probably think is that interdiscipinary science > is a serious task. But don't dismiss scientific point > of view. Any discovery of any kind is analytic science. > I agree. Prehistory is not usually determined by philological study of texts written down thousands of years after the proposed events. Archaeology, anthropology, genetics, etc., are the 'harder' approaches that must be used in analyzing the past. Free interpretation of Vedic hymns, dating of language, etc. is very soft, mushy stuff. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM Thu Mar 9 19:36:16 2000 From: smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM (Swaminathan Madhuresan) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 11:36:16 -0800 Subject: Pluralism, Texts, and Oaths Message-ID: <161227056564.23782.87023700361724331.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Many Tamils take oath with Tirukkural in courts, swearing in ceremonies, weddings. For a good translation, K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, Tirukkural, an English verse rendering, M. P. Birla Foundation, 1988. P.S.Sundaram, The Kural, Penguin is easily available. --- Noel Salmond wrote: > Dear Colleagues > > I recently got a call from an official of the government of Canada asking > for information with regard to choosing sacred texts for use in swearing-in > ceremonies for new Canadians. In Canada you have the choice to either be > sworn on a holy book or not. For those who do so wish they provide Bibles > but have been concerned in the last decade or so to be a bit more inclusive > -- hence the Gita is available for Hindus, the Qur'an for Muslims and so > on. They also invite anyone to bring their own holy book, if they want one. > The official wanted help concerning what other books they should provide. > For instance, they want to know what to provide for Buddhists. I'm aware of > how complex this can be: what kind of Buddhist? Buddhism isn't a "religion > of the book" in the way that the biblical traditions are etc. > > Could someone put me on to any literature that may be out there on the use > of sacred texts for legal and oath taking purposes. > With all the work being done on comparative notions of scripture and on > pluralism I would imagine that this topic has been addressed. > > Could someone tell me what the drill is in the U.S., in the U.K., in India. > I gather that in secular India one swears on a copy of the constitution. > > With thanks > > Noel Salmond > Carleton University > Ottawa, Canada [apologies to those who saw > this cross-posted to RISA-L] > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From nsalmond at CCS.CARLETON.CA Thu Mar 9 16:36:30 2000 From: nsalmond at CCS.CARLETON.CA (Noel Salmond) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 11:36:30 -0500 Subject: Pluralism, Texts, and Oaths Message-ID: <161227056544.23782.16814986691018818206.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Colleagues I recently got a call from an official of the government of Canada asking for information with regard to choosing sacred texts for use in swearing-in ceremonies for new Canadians. In Canada you have the choice to either be sworn on a holy book or not. For those who do so wish they provide Bibles but have been concerned in the last decade or so to be a bit more inclusive -- hence the Gita is available for Hindus, the Qur'an for Muslims and so on. They also invite anyone to bring their own holy book, if they want one. The official wanted help concerning what other books they should provide. For instance, they want to know what to provide for Buddhists. I'm aware of how complex this can be: what kind of Buddhist? Buddhism isn't a "religion of the book" in the way that the biblical traditions are etc. Could someone put me on to any literature that may be out there on the use of sacred texts for legal and oath taking purposes. With all the work being done on comparative notions of scripture and on pluralism I would imagine that this topic has been addressed. Could someone tell me what the drill is in the U.S., in the U.K., in India. I gather that in secular India one swears on a copy of the constitution. With thanks Noel Salmond Carleton University Ottawa, Canada [apologies to those who saw this cross-posted to RISA-L] From rpclemen at INDIANA.EDU Thu Mar 9 16:42:47 2000 From: rpclemen at INDIANA.EDU (Richa Pauranik Clements) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 11:42:47 -0500 Subject: a SAYINGS querry Message-ID: <161227056546.23782.7423719591986951179.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear members, I need some information for a class tomorrow. It is about the saying in Hindi "ek tIr se do shikAr" the rough equivalent for which is the English "to kill two birds with one stone." There is a similar one in Spanish "to kill two birds with one throw/shot" (the instrument is not specified, can be a stone, an arrow, or a gun-shot). Would these sayings have a common origin? Does anyone on the list know of the history (ie dating) of any of these sayings? Can one speculate upon a chronology of these and other related sayings based on the name of the instruments mentioned? I would really appreciate any help with my questions. Thank you. Regards, Richa Pauranik Department of Religious Studies/India Studies IU Bloomington, IN From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Thu Mar 9 20:07:38 2000 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 12:07:38 -0800 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227056569.23782.14264511305679945944.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >And of course we read nat.sc. items or talk to our nat.sc. colleagues. Or, >archaeologists from metal preservationists to geneticists (one such vol., Well, I hope such interaction does not cease. What irks me is the apparent disdain with which scientists are being dismissed. >They, as scientists, have for long given up on items such as the Aryan >invasion or the Sarasvati discussions... and hope for better times, a >change in the weather. That does make sense, but it also seems as if things have to get much worse before they get better. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET Thu Mar 9 12:54:56 2000 From: kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET (S.Kalyanaraman) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 12:54:56 +0000 Subject: Myth and Reality: Sarasvati_, rasa_ Message-ID: <161227056526.23782.12182570840830027046.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Here are some Vedic texts and elaborate etymological excursus, which may be of interest to indology: http://sarasvati.listbot.com View Archive Message #93(Sarasvati_, ghr.ta_ci_: R.gveda allegory) http://sarasvati.listbot.com View Archive Message #94 (Sarasvati_, rasa_: butter, metal infusion; including notes on rasa_tala) Nirukta (7.9) explains the nature of the deities in the R.gveda: They may be both anthropomorphic and unanthropomorphic (purus.avidha_na_meva)... What is myth and what is reality? Dr. S. Kalyanaraman ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. From kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET Thu Mar 9 13:13:15 2000 From: kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET (S.Kalyanaraman) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 13:13:15 +0000 Subject: [Elsts review of Kochhars Vedic People] Message-ID: <161227056528.23782.6884280164694766449.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Vijay Shankar wrote: > In his review of Kochhar's Vedic People, Elst has complimented the author > for mentioning data which on closer examination goes against the author's> own position. For reference, the review is at the website: http://members.xoom.com/_XMCM/KoenraadElst/articles.html This may also be of interest in the context of the ongoing River Sarasvati problem. Dr. Dominik Wujastyk, beware! The Asian problem will always surface in indology, whether one talks of a horse, a chariot, a river or even the location of Ganga and Yamuna in Afghanistan... In other words, indology cannot stay immune from research-findings of other "scholarly" disciplines... Regards, Dr. S. Kalyanaraman ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. From saf at SAFARMER.COM Thu Mar 9 22:07:24 2000 From: saf at SAFARMER.COM (Steve Farmer) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 14:07:24 -0800 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056571.23782.1253029232956318997.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel writes: > Think again: the Rgveda, due to its near-perfect ORAL transmission, can > serve as a contemporaneous document (even when it was first written down, > c. 1000 CE, as Albiruni and the first surviving Vedic manuscripts seem to > indicate)... Please excuse these questions from a Western textual scholar and comparative historian: 1. Oral transmission that is "near-perfect"? If the Rgveda were passed on this way for the better part of two millennia, as I've repeatedly heard Indologists claim, it would be a unique event in premodern intellectual culture; 2. The Rgveda was first written down c. 1000 CE? I've always considered traditional statements like this from Indologists to be extremely naive. There are repeated suggestions in texts like Manu that the Rgvedas were studied in written form. How is this evidence, as well as the supposedly unique ability of Indian reciters to achieve "near-perfect oral transmission," explained by Indologists? >?From what I know from my studies of the evolution of literate traditions in other societies (especially in China and Europe), these claims seem very unlikely. Steve Farmer, Ph.D. http://www.safarmer.com/pico From saf at SAFARMER.COM Thu Mar 9 22:26:14 2000 From: saf at SAFARMER.COM (Steve Farmer) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 14:26:14 -0800 Subject: Syncretism in premodern India Message-ID: <161227056573.23782.6753238956970568351.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I'm a comparative historian who has spent much of the past two decades studying syncretic processes in manuscript traditions in 14th - 17th century Eurasia. Parts of those studies have led to the construction of computer simulations of the part that syncretic processes played on the development extreme scholastic/correlative systems. (For an abstract of a recent paper, see http://www.safarmer.com/abstract.html.) Most of my research has been conducted on Chinese and European scholastic systems - using, e.g., the textual evidence is extreme Western syncretists like Pico della Mirandola (1463-94). Could anyone on the List point me to any of the scholarly literature that deals specifically with syncretic developments in premodern India (up through the 16th century CE)? It is not difficult to find good examples of sycretic phenomena in the primary literature, but so far I have only been able to dig up a handful of useful secondary sources. Thanks in advance, Steve Farmer, Ph.D. http://www.safarmer.com/pico/ From saf at SAFARMER.COM Thu Mar 9 22:30:58 2000 From: saf at SAFARMER.COM (Steve Farmer) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 14:30:58 -0800 Subject: Syncretism in premodern India (correction) Message-ID: <161227056575.23782.12202657696808680803.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The URL I gave in my post to the abstract on computer simulations of the growth of premodern syncretic systems was incorrect. The correct URL is: http://www.safarmer.com/pico/abstract.html From rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM Thu Mar 9 20:00:48 2000 From: rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM (Rajarshi Banerjee) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 15:00:48 -0500 Subject: NArada Message-ID: <161227056565.23782.16757937228191027900.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Looks like the root (DEDR #3651) nAr = fibre, string, cord, rope is not finding mention so far. nAri = bow-strin nAram = cord. Ma. nAr; Ko.nar; To. nOr; Ka. nAr, nAri; Kod. narI; Tu. nAru; Te. nAra, nAri; Kol. nARA, nAra; Go. nAr; Konda. nari. Sanskrit nAda = sound and in Hindi, Bengali ..... etc nARI = pulse/vein/sinew/nerve nARA = draw string of pyjamas nAl = double headed drum Are these words considered loans from dravidian then ? Is it always possible to trace words which have widespread use all over India to a certain language family? From nsalmond at CCS.CARLETON.CA Thu Mar 9 20:01:05 2000 From: nsalmond at CCS.CARLETON.CA (Noel Salmond) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 15:01:05 -0500 Subject: Pluralism, Texts, and Oaths In-Reply-To: <20000309193616.9584.qmail@web305.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <161227056567.23782.1330183856651479698.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 11:36 AM 3/9/00 -0800, you wrote: >Many Tamils take oath with Tirukkural in courts, swearing in >ceremonies, weddings. For a good translation, >K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, Tirukkural, an English verse rendering, >M. P. Birla Foundation, 1988. > >P.S.Sundaram, The Kural, Penguin is easily available. > Would this be a text also used by Tamils from Sri Lanka for the same purposes? What is the policy of the Indian courts with regard to the use of sacred texts for oaths, is it optional altogether? Was or is their use debated given the commitment to secularism? in abysmal ignorance, but with many thanks Noel Salmond Carleton University Ottawa, Canada From tawady at YAHOO.COM Fri Mar 10 00:34:49 2000 From: tawady at YAHOO.COM (Raveen S. Nathan) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 16:34:49 -0800 Subject: Pluralism, Texts, and Oaths Message-ID: <161227056579.23782.17013099383778424779.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> From: Noel Salmond Subject: Re: Pluralism, Texts, and Oaths At 11:36 AM 3/9/00 -0800, you wrote: >>Many Tamils take oath with Tirukkural in courts, >>swearing in >>ceremonies, weddings. For a good translation, >>K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, Tirukkural, an English verse >>rendering, >>M. P. Birla Foundation, 1988. >>P.S.Sundaram, The Kural, Penguin is easily available. >Would this be a text also used by Tamils from Sri Lanka >for the same purposes?What is the policy of the Indian >courts with regard to the use ofsacred texts for oaths, >is it optional altogether? Was or is their use debated >given the commitment to secularism? in abysmal >ignorance, but with many thanks >Noel Salmond -------------- If the Sri Lankan Tamils are Christians then the Bible will do, if they are Mulsims then the Holy Quran will do and if they are Hindus then the Bhagawat Gita or Thirukural would do. If they are agnostics (like me) and atheists then ask them :-) good luck. Raveen __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From rbm49 at STUDENT.CANTERBURY.AC.NZ Thu Mar 9 04:08:26 2000 From: rbm49 at STUDENT.CANTERBURY.AC.NZ (Mahoney, Richard B.) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 17:08:26 +1300 Subject: BiBTeX Packages for citing MSS Message-ID: <161227056520.23782.15219421421611689081.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Readers, Over the past few months I have been making the - at times frustrating - transition from WordPerfect to TeX and LaTex. Looking back, all the effort seems worth it. Now I hope I'll never have to use a word processor again. I am especially indebted to those who have made ``Devanaagarii'' and ``EDMAC'' available. On a primitive and antiquated PC, I can now typeset Skt. class readings. A short while ago I considered this unrealistic. All this said, I have encountered a problem with BiBTeX. BiBTeX has been useful in organizing and typesetting most run of the mill citations and bibliographies. I am using the ``Oxford'' package: its closest to the way I have always tried to do things. But what does one do if MSS need to be cited? Does anyone know of a BiBTeX package which can appropriately format references to South East Asian Skt. MSS? -- Richard B. Mahoney Student Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies University of Canterbury Christchurch NEW ZEALAND Email: rbm49 at student.canterbury.ac.nz Telephone: 0064-3-351-5831 From s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK Thu Mar 9 17:24:53 2000 From: s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK (Stephen Hodge) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 17:24:53 +0000 Subject: Pluralism, Texts, and Oaths Message-ID: <161227056552.23782.14191307485348171326.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Noel Salmond wrote: > I recently got a call from an official of the government of Canada asking > for information with regard to choosing sacred texts for use in swearing-in > ceremonies for new Canadians [snip] > For instance, they want to know what to provide for Buddhists. I'm aware of > how complex this can be: what kind of Buddhist? Buddhism isn't a "religion > of the book" in the way that the biblical traditions are etc. [snip] > Could someone tell me what the drill is in the U.S., in the U.K., in India. > I gather that in secular India one swears on a copy of the constitution. The idea of swearing on books of holy scriptures is alien, as far as I know, to Buddhism. I have served on a juries here in the UK and when one is sworn in, a bible is normally proffered unless one specifically asks otherwise. For Muslims, a Quran is obviously needed while I believe a copy of the Bhagavad Gita may be provided for Hindus. As a Buddhist I chose to affirm (as do Quakers) rather than swear and this is what most Buddhists do here. However, in the past I think it was decided that a copy of the Dharmapada/Dhammapada was accepted. Arguably, the best thing for a Buddhist would be to "swear" on the Three Jewels -- the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. FYI although nominally a Buddhist country, people in Japan in similar situations merely affirm to tell the truth sincerely etc. Best wishes, Stephen Hodge From raja at IFA.HAWAII.EDU Fri Mar 10 04:15:38 2000 From: raja at IFA.HAWAII.EDU (Narayan S. Raja) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 18:15:38 -1000 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda In-Reply-To: <4e.2a80a47.25f9ac54@cs.com> Message-ID: <161227056583.23782.15032608981746143850.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Thu, 9 Mar 2000, George Thompson wrote: > that there is no solid evidence for writing in the Indan sub-continent before > the 3rd cent. BCE [...deleted...] There is the undeciphered writing from the Indus Valley civilization (approx 3000? BC to 1500? BC). Does it have anything to do with the Vedic culture? I don't know. No hidden meaning or hinting is intended. Regards, Raja. From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Thu Mar 9 17:24:28 2000 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 18:24:28 +0100 Subject: SV: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227056562.23782.12679799235421757595.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Paul Kekai Manansala [SMTP:kekai at JPS.NET] skrev 10. mars 2000 18:00: > > > > As for some really mushy stuff, I suggest that readers check out > > P.K.Manansala's Austro-centric website > > For Indic languages: > > http://www.geocities.com/pinatubo.geo/austric.htm > > For Sumerian: > > http://www.geocities.com/pinatubo.geo/sumer.htm > > > And I won't mind discussing the hard evidence behind the theories > either. Those of you who like to compare similar words in various languages might have fun reading the following piece (the reference is from the Indo-European list): "An easy accessible attempt on this topic is Mark Rosenfelder 'How likely are chance resemblances between languages? in http://www.zompist.com/chance.html. Though in the binomial formulas one faculty mark '!' is always set wrong*, the results are correct. (*what shows that in one year nobody with minimal mathematical competence really did read this article). [Signed HJH(olm), a competent mathematician and Indo-Europeanist] Enjoy! Lars Martin Fosse Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Norway Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no From Ursula.Graefe at T-ONLINE.DE Thu Mar 9 18:23:33 2000 From: Ursula.Graefe at T-ONLINE.DE (Graefe) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 19:23:33 +0100 Subject: a SAYINGS querry Message-ID: <161227056558.23782.15140172251633964644.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Richa Pauranik Clements schrieb: > Dear members, > > I need some information for a class tomorrow. It is about the saying in > Hindi "ek tIr se do shikAr" the rough equivalent for which is the English > "to kill two birds with one stone." There is a similar one in Spanish "to > kill two birds with one throw/shot" (the instrument is not specified, can > be a stone, an arrow, or a gun-shot). > > Would these sayings have a common origin? Does anyone on the list know of > the history (ie dating) of any of these sayings? Can one speculate upon a > chronology of these and other related sayings based on the name of the > instruments mentioned? > > I would really appreciate any help with my questions. Thank you. > > Regards, > Richa Pauranik > Department of Religious Studies/India Studies > IU Bloomington, IN Dear Mr. Pauranik, in German we say "zwei Fliegen mit einer Klappe schlagen", (to kill to flies with one slap). About the origin of this I am not sure, but there is a Brothers Grimm folk tale about a tailor who hits seven flies with one slap (and after that considers himself a hero). Not much help, but maybe interesting - Regards Ursula Graefe From GthomGt at CS.COM Fri Mar 10 01:39:32 2000 From: GthomGt at CS.COM (George Thompson) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 20:39:32 -0500 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056581.23782.17800918443694571017.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> So here we go again. Another truly NAIVE challenge from someone who, in all ignorance, asserts that *Vedicists* are naive. In fact, Vedicists have long wrestled with this problem. It is understandable that you and other comparatists might be skeptical about the large claims that are made for the fidelity of Vedic oral tradition. But if you did your homework you would know: that in a *very* large Vedic literature there is *not one* reference to writing anywhere; that there is no solid evidence for writing in the Indan sub-continent before the 3rd cent. BCE [whereas, if we are willing to overcome reasonable doubt, we *might* be able to push that date back to the 6th cent. BCE -- in any case, by this date the Vedic period is essentially over, or about to end]; that the Vedic tradition developed, very early, a remarkable system of mnemonic devices intended to assure the accurate transmission of the traditional texts; that the date of the RV, for linguistic reasons alone, cannot be reasonably put very much *after* 1000 BCE, so that in fact there has been an extended period of time during which it was transmitted purely by oral means; that theorists of orality seriously underestimate the capacity of the 'oral mind' [as if such a thing has actually been demonstrated to exist at all as something significantly different from the 'literate mind'] to do things like adding and subtracting, recognizing cause and effect, memorizing sacred texts, etc. -- never mind serious phonological analysis, the likes of which you will not find, I believe, in either Europe or China before the 19th cent, CE. I'm tempted to give a bunch of references. But, no, I think yoiu should do your own homework. And if you want our help with it, let me suggest that you ask for it politely, instead of telling us that *we* are naive. Please excuse me for my impatience, but recent messages to the list have become very annoying. The list, scholarly in intent, has been over-run once again by a bunch of fundamentalists on a crusade. George Thompson From kekai at JPS.NET Fri Mar 10 06:46:54 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 22:46:54 -0800 Subject: Elst's review of Kochhar's Vedic People Message-ID: <161227056524.23782.10838194130457038659.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Vijay Shankar wrote: > > Horse(asva in Skt, aspa in Avestan) is a fundamenta,basic,crucial part of > the Vedic and Avestan culture as well as of the Indo-Europeans in > general. I do not agree with this statement, or at least the last two parts of it. India is not the natural habitat of the MODERN horse.There are no > wild horses in India .If India is the original home of the Aryans where did > they get horse from?Mr Erst would perhaps like to explain. You might want to check a little deeper into specialized literature. In fact, Asiatic horses of today often show anatomical features related to the prehistoric Indian horse (Equus sivalensis). One problem with early Indological theory is that they often just dipped deep enough into other fields to support their assertions. For example, according to some Indologists 'Vedic Aryans' were supposed to be cattle herders from the Central Asian steppe who brought their herds and cow worship with them. However, the Indian cow is an entirely different breed than Bos taurus of West Asia, separated by many thousands of years. And the zebu shows little signs of introgression from bos taurus, quite the reverse in fact. Also, the steppe is really not suitable for cattle herders (or charioteers for that matter). Goats, sheep, camels, etc. are the adaptable livestock. Elements of cow/bull worship are already apparent in Harappan civilization. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Fri Mar 10 03:50:16 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 22:50:16 -0500 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location In-Reply-To: <38C92A16.2A9B757E@jps.net> Message-ID: <161227056586.23782.3809124667502575337.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Amusing: > Paul Kekai Manansala: MW: >> > Think again: the Rgveda, due to its near-perfect ORAL transmission... >The history of the oral transmission is not known. The oral transmission >that we know now is very good, but it might not have always been that >way. Opinions, opinions, opinions. The problem is YOU do not know about RV tradition. It has been studied at great length for more than 100 years. That's INDOLOGY. We know very well the (few) cases where it is deficient. I suggest, before speculating, some reading up on oral transmission in Madhav Deshpande's recent AV Pratisakhya ed. & transl. & comm. HOS, Volume 52. Saunak?ya Catur?dhy?yik?. A Pr?tis?khya of the Saunak?ya Atharvaveda, with the commentaries Catur?dhy?y?bh?sya, Bh?rgava-Bh?skara-Vrtti and Pancasandhi, critically edited, translated & annotated by MADHAV M. DESHPANDE. 1997. Pages, vi, 815. see: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/hos.htm Even more amusing: >>> Archaeology, anthropology, genetics, etc., are the 'harder' approaches >> Ever noticed that archaeologists, >> anthropologists, >> even geneticists >> INTERPRET their data? And always differently... >The history of linguistics is not very much different. Nor do linguists >today agree with each other, check out Nostratic theory, Proto-World, >EuroAsiatic, etc. So, now suddenly, *all* of them INTERPRET their data? -- That's real progress... Finally, I cringe: Of course, I am aware of Nostratics, as the list archives will show, and see the MOTHER TONGUE/LONG RANGER website that I have arranged & host: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/aslip.html (or via : http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm ...) ke garne? que fare? doo suru? and what more to say ?? ======= Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Fri Mar 10 03:58:01 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 22:58:01 -0500 Subject: Saraswati: Atomic Scientists reconfirm location In-Reply-To: <20000309134303.63657.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <161227056589.23782.13414845741678663038.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Amusing: > one mainstream Indologists from India complimented this work as >"one of the best from India in recent years" while a Western Indologist >heaved a sigh of relief and said that "at least there is one Indian who has >written something that is not biased" (to paraphrase).And yet another >mainstream Indologist thinks that Sarawati is in heaven, i.e., neither in >India/Pakistan, nor in Afghanistan. Whereas some mainstream Indologists >place the river in Afghanistan. One track reasoning, comme l'habitude. Why can a word (sarasvatii 'the female one having ponds/lakes') refer (a) only to *one* certain river? (b) not also to a goddess? (rivers are female in India....), (c) and/or to a celestial phenomenon? In this case to all the three. See discussion (and drawings, maps) in "Sur le chemin du ciel", Bulletin des etudes indiennes, 2, 1984. (As for the above statement, suddenly afraid to name names? Looking forward to another slew of 'panzer corps generals'...) >The various postings under the thread .... will publicize them in various >forums of the laity and >the academia. The readers will then decide who >amongst the various Indologists are genuine >scholars ..., mediocre/intelligent academics who hold Eurocentric notions? One can only hope that your readers will have the nat.sc./linguistic/philological, etc. background necessary, and do not just follow previous or present trendy theories. Otherwise, labour lost. (And, of course, I will collect these data for future historical study... ) As a footnote, since now I believe that VA wants to classify me, by all means, as Eurocentric, is it Eurocentric if I maintain that (small) groups of local "BACTRIANS" or "Afghans" of the Hindukush area, speaking the local language, behaving like local "Afghans", having the genetic make-up of Bactria/Margiana/Afghanistan people of the mid-second millennium BCE crossed over the Khyber/Bolan passes on their transhumance wanderings? And became the *catalyst* of ensuing changes...(cf. also Ehret, Mallory). This is not an 'invasion', hardly a migration, and NOT one by EUROPEANS but by "Afghans'" (before their time) -- to put it facetiously: some tribals got lost, took the wrong turn, and there you have your 'Aryan invasion'... They were not the first and have not been the last (Persians, Greeks, Yue-ji/Tukhara/Kushana, Saka, 'Pahlava', Abhira?, Hephtalite Huns (huuNa), Gurjara, to quote only the more prominent ones of the 1000 years we know more about, i.e. between c. 550 BCE and c. 600 CE., -- all in their own, various, and very different ways. The really interesting question here is: Why is it that of all of these and the ensuing movements, just one, the "Aryan"one (=Indo-Aryan, proto-Vedic), is NOT allowed these days? The answer to *this* question is very revealing, as it is, of course, also at the bottom of the present thread... Hence, the digression. > The importance of science >... I hope of a greater collaboration between > the various fields of knowledge. Om/tathaa. ================ Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: attachment.bin Type: text/enriched Size: 3366 bytes Desc: not available URL: From saf at SAFARMER.COM Fri Mar 10 07:35:29 2000 From: saf at SAFARMER.COM (Steve Farmer) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 23:35:29 -0800 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056598.23782.2975671752908602265.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> George Thompson writes, concerning a post of mine questioning the date that Michael Witzel gives for the first written Rgveda: > So here we go again. Another truly NAIVE challenge from someone who, in all > ignorance, asserts that *Vedicists* are naive. > > In fact, Vedicists have long wrestled with this problem. It is > understandable that you and other comparatists might be skeptical about the > large claims that are made for the fidelity of Vedic oral tradition. But if > you did your homework you would know: > > that in a *very* large Vedic literature there is *not one* reference to > writing anywhere; > > that there is no solid evidence for writing in the Indan sub-continent before > the 3rd cent. BCE [whereas, if we are willing to overcome reasonable doubt, > we *might* be able to push that date back to the 6th cent. BCE -- in any > case, by this date the Vedic period is essentially over, or about to end]; > > that the Vedic tradition developed, very early, a remarkable system of > mnemonic devices intended to assure the accurate transmission of the > traditional texts; > > that the date of the RV, for linguistic reasons alone, cannot be reasonably > put very much *after* 1000 BCE, so that in fact there has been an extended > period of time during which it was transmitted purely by oral means; It wasn't my intention to be impolite. If I seemed so, please except my sincere apologies. Nevertheless, my scholarly questions remain. Here they are, rephrased, I hope, less polemically: 1. Is there indeed a consensus among Vedicists that the Rgveda was passed on for as much as two millennia through "near-perfect ORAL transmission" (to quote Michael Witzel) until it "was first written down c. 1000 CE"? If true, this would be a unique situation in premodern thought; that is the source of my skepticism. 2. How is this consensus view -- if there *is* indeed a consensus -- reconciled with repeated suggestions in the Laws of Manu that the Vedas were utilized at least at some point in antiquity in literate form? This is a serious question that requires a evidential response. Are there textual strata in the Laws of Manu that date from as late as 1000 CE, providing conservative Vedicists with an easy way out of the problem? If not, how do they face this and similar counterevidence? 3. The obvious signs of textual stratification in the received text of the Rgveda suggests that various hymns were repeatedly *reshaped* in early stages of the text's oral development. How, this being the case, do Indologists explain that the text in *later* oral periods remained unchanged for nearly two millennia? How *can* a textual canon be fixed over wide geographical and cultural regions in the absence of written exemplars? What makes the relationship between oral and written traditions in Vedic sources different from that found in every other premodern tradition? Thompson further writes: > the Vedic tradition developed, very early, a remarkable system of > mnemonic devices intended to assure the accurate transmission of the > traditional texts Every premodern society that I've studied created its own elaborate systems of "mnemonic devices intended to assure the accurate transmission of the traditional texts" (think of the methods described in the West in the pseudo-Ciceronian Hortensius) -- and in every such society, nonetheless, traditions drifted conceptually in largely predictable ways. Much evidence on this topic has accumulated in dozens of studies of oral and early-literature traditions in Africa, the Mediterranean, Southeast Asia, China, Japan, and Mesoamerica. My own studies have uncovered cases of such drift involving supposedly "near-perfect" memorization of canonical texts in the premodern West. There is good evidence that neurobiological constraints on memory systems probably have something to do with this drift. If it is really true that premodern Vedic reciters, unlike those found in every other known premodern civilization, maintained "near-perfect ORAL transmission" over two millennia of a highly stratified compilation like the Rgvedas, Indologists should be prepared with a credible reason to explain India's uniqueness. Alternately, they should be able to point to other instances of "near-perfect transmission" in premodern societies outside India. (I'd be extremely interested in what evidence they try to cite.) Thompson also writes: > that the date of the RV, for linguistic reasons alone, cannot be reasonably > put very much *after* 1000 BCE, so that in fact there has been an extended > period of time during which it was transmitted purely by oral means You are missing the point elaborated in #3, above. Abundant internal evidence demonstrates that the received text of the Rgvedas is itself "layered" (stratified) -- just like virtually every other known Eurasian compilation from this level of antiquity. It would certainly be curious if the Rgveda in its *earliest* stages of oral development were continuously reshaped by processes of transmission and then, magically, in *later* stages it became "fixed" in the absence of written exemplars. Perhaps my questions are naive, as Thompson claims. But if that's the case, I'm sure that he can quickly point to evidence that demonstrates that. The use of such evidence would, of course, be much more effective than declarations ex cathedra. Best wishes, Steve Farmer, Ph.D. http://www.safarmer.com/pico/abstract.html From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Fri Mar 10 04:59:13 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Thu, 09 Mar 00 23:59:13 -0500 Subject: Elst's review of Kochhar's Vedic People In-Reply-To: <38C89A5C.5A0FC74D@jps.net> Message-ID: <161227056592.23782.14101220538347716034.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >>India is not the natural habitat of the MODERN horse.There are no >> wild horses in India .If India is the original home of the Aryans where did >> they get horse from? PK Manasala:> >You might want to check a little deeper into specialized literature. >In fact, Asiatic horses of today often show anatomical features >related to the prehistoric Indian horse (Equus sivalensis). That myth should be exploded. Last I heard, that horse was dead and gone 15 million years ago. >For example, according to some Indologists 'Vedic Aryans' were supposed >to be cattle herders from the Central Asian steppe who brought their >herds and cow worship with them. Whatever earlier Indologists might have thought, they cannot be accused for not knowing recent genetics. (Cow worship by Rgvedic people??? Where, by Indra, does that come from?) >Also, the steppe is really not suitable for cattle herders So why do we have the (early) 300,000 horses (their bones) at Botai, Kazakhstan? And cattle are of course found all over the steppes, from the Ukraine eastwards, from at least c. 4000 BCE onwards. They did not go there of their own volition. How to keep them during winter is another problem. How long do we have to endure such statements as the one above?? > Goats, sheep, camels, etc. are the >adaptable livestock. You forget half-asses and real asses. ============ Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From yavass at YV1041.SPB.EDU Thu Mar 9 23:17:48 2000 From: yavass at YV1041.SPB.EDU (Yaroslav Vassilkov) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 00 02:17:48 +0300 Subject: Queries: Diwali, Buddhism and Brahmins In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056577.23782.4036919781485877249.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Thu, 09 Mar 100 03:53 +0300 MSK Yashwant Malaiya wrote to INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK: 1. Diwali or Dipavali is celebrated on Amavasya of Kartika > (Purmimanta). I am looking for historical mentions of Diwali > in Indian texts. I will appreciate if someone has some > information on the history of Diwali. > > I know that it was celebrated by Mughals as a popular Indian > festivals. It is also mentioned in Sandesh-Rasak of Addahamana > (Abdul-Rahman? 13th cent?). There is an old but very informative article by W.Crook: The DIvAlI, the Lamp Festival of the Hindus - "Folk-Lore", vol. XXXIV, No.IV, Dec. 1923, pp.267-292. It contains detailed ethnographic description of the DIvAlI celebrations in different regions of India. There are also some speculations on DIvAlI's hypothetical roots in more archaic rites. Being a folk festival, DIvAlI seems to be poorly represented in the literature of the "Great (i.e., Sanskritic, Brahmanic) Tradition". But there is at least one reference to the ViSNupurANa. Yaroslav Vassilkov (yavass at YV1041.spb.edu) Fri, 10 Mar 2000 02:05 +0300 MSK From smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM Fri Mar 10 16:24:52 2000 From: smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM (Swaminathan Madhuresan) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 00 08:24:52 -0800 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056611.23782.8923238557799740641.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dr. Farmer, Generally, Indologists date the Rig Veda to around 1200 BCE. After the Indus valley culture declined around 1700 BCE, Aryan migrations tookplace spreading Indo-Iranian language into India. Sanskrit developed out of it. In the Indus culture, Dravidian, not Sanskrit, was the high language. See A. Parpola, Deciphering the Indus script, Cambridge. Of course, Manu smrthi was written after 3rd cent. BCE giving supremacy to Varnashrama system. Regards, SM --- Steve Farmer wrote: > George Thompson writes, concerning a post of mine questioning the date > that Michael Witzel gives for the first written Rgveda: > > > So here we go again. Another truly NAIVE challenge from someone who, in > all > > ignorance, asserts that *Vedicists* are naive. > > > > In fact, Vedicists have long wrestled with this problem. It is > > understandable that you and other comparatists might be skeptical about the > > large claims that are made for the fidelity of Vedic oral tradition. But > if > > you did your homework you would know: > > > > that in a *very* large Vedic literature there is *not one* reference to > > writing anywhere; > > > > that there is no solid evidence for writing in the Indan sub-continent > before > > the 3rd cent. BCE [whereas, if we are willing to overcome reasonable doubt, > > we *might* be able to push that date back to the 6th cent. BCE -- in any > > case, by this date the Vedic period is essentially over, or about to end]; > > > > that the Vedic tradition developed, very early, a remarkable system of > > mnemonic devices intended to assure the accurate transmission of the > > traditional texts; > > > > that the date of the RV, for linguistic reasons alone, cannot be reasonably > > put very much *after* 1000 BCE, so that in fact there has been an extended > > period of time during which it was transmitted purely by oral means; > > It wasn't my intention to be impolite. If I seemed so, please except my > sincere apologies. Nevertheless, my scholarly questions remain. Here they > are, rephrased, I hope, less polemically: > > 1. Is there indeed a consensus among Vedicists that the Rgveda was passed > on for as much as two millennia through "near-perfect ORAL transmission" > (to quote Michael Witzel) until it "was first written down c. 1000 CE"? If > true, this would be a unique situation in premodern thought; that is the > source of my skepticism. > > 2. How is this consensus view -- if there *is* indeed a consensus -- > reconciled with repeated suggestions in the Laws of Manu that the Vedas > were utilized at least at some point in antiquity in literate form? This > is a serious question that requires a evidential response. Are there > textual strata in the Laws of Manu that date from as late as 1000 CE, > providing conservative Vedicists with an easy way out of the problem? If > not, how do they face this and similar counterevidence? > > 3. The obvious signs of textual stratification in the received text of the > Rgveda suggests that various hymns were repeatedly *reshaped* in early > stages of the text's oral development. How, this being the case, do > Indologists explain that the text in *later* oral periods remained > unchanged for nearly two millennia? How *can* a textual canon be fixed > over wide geographical and cultural regions in the absence of written > exemplars? What makes the relationship between oral and written traditions > in Vedic sources different from that found in every other premodern > tradition? > > Thompson further writes: > > > the Vedic tradition developed, very early, a remarkable system of > > mnemonic devices intended to assure the accurate transmission of the > > traditional texts > > Every premodern society that I've studied created its own elaborate > systems of "mnemonic devices intended to assure the accurate transmission > of the traditional texts" (think of the methods described in the West in > the pseudo-Ciceronian Hortensius) -- and in every such society, > nonetheless, traditions drifted conceptually in largely predictable ways. > Much evidence on this topic has accumulated in dozens of studies of oral > and early-literature traditions in Africa, the Mediterranean, Southeast > Asia, China, Japan, and Mesoamerica. My own studies have uncovered cases > of such drift involving supposedly "near-perfect" memorization of > canonical texts in the premodern West. There is good evidence that > neurobiological constraints on memory systems probably have something to > do with this drift. > > If it is really true that premodern Vedic reciters, unlike those found in > every other known premodern civilization, maintained "near-perfect ORAL > transmission" over two millennia of a highly stratified compilation like > the Rgvedas, Indologists should be prepared with a credible reason to > explain India's uniqueness. Alternately, they should be able to point to > other instances of "near-perfect transmission" in premodern societies > outside India. (I'd be extremely interested in what evidence they try to > cite.) > > Thompson also writes: > > > that the date of the RV, for linguistic reasons alone, cannot be reasonably > > put very much *after* 1000 BCE, so that in fact there has been an extended > > period of time during which it was transmitted purely by oral means > > You are missing the point elaborated in #3, above. Abundant internal > evidence demonstrates that the received text of the Rgvedas is itself > "layered" (stratified) -- just like virtually every other known Eurasian > compilation from this level of antiquity. It would certainly be curious if > the Rgveda in its *earliest* stages of oral development were continuously > reshaped by processes of transmission and then, magically, in *later* > stages it became "fixed" in the absence of written exemplars. > > Perhaps my questions are naive, as Thompson claims. But if that's the > case, I'm sure that he can quickly point to evidence that demonstrates > that. The use of such evidence would, of course, be much more effective > than declarations ex cathedra. > > Best wishes, > > Steve Farmer, Ph.D. > http://www.safarmer.com/pico/abstract.html > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From kekai at JPS.NET Fri Mar 10 17:00:07 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 00 09:00:07 -0800 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227056548.23782.1346549729724252004.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel wrote: > > Paul Kekai Manansala: > > Prehistory is not usually determined by philological study > >of texts written down thousands of years after the proposed events. > > Think again: the Rgveda, due to its near-perfect ORAL transmission, The history of the oral transmission is not known. The oral transmission that we know now is very good, but it might not have always been that way. > > >Archaeology, anthropology, genetics, etc., are the 'harder' approaches > >that must be used in analyzing the past. > > Ever noticed that archaeologists (Allchin :: Shaffer), > anthropologists (do they even know what they *should* do, right now?), > even geneticists (Cavalli-Sforza :: Vince Sarich, Berkeley) > INTERPRET their data? And always differently... > The history of linguistics is not very much different. Nor do linguists today agree with each other, check out Nostratic theory, Proto-World, EuroAsiatic, etc. > >Free interpretation of Vedic hymns, dating of language, etc. is very > >soft, mushy stuff. > > Mushy indeed, if one does not pay attention to the differences between > 'normal', classical Sanskrit and Vedic, to textual/linguistic levels, basic > rules of comparative linguistics etc. > > As for some really mushy stuff, I suggest that readers check out > P.K.Manansala's Austro-centric website For Indic languages: http://www.geocities.com/pinatubo.geo/austric.htm For Sumerian: http://www.geocities.com/pinatubo.geo/sumer.htm And I won't mind discussing the hard evidence behind the theories either. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From kkalale1 at SAN.RR.COM Fri Mar 10 17:25:45 2000 From: kkalale1 at SAN.RR.COM (Krishna Kalale) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 00 09:25:45 -0800 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056616.23782.4178382483750746418.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> unsubscribe -----Original Message----- From: Swaminathan Madhuresan [SMTP:smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM] Sent: Friday, March 10, 2000 8:25 AM To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Subject: Re: Dates of written Rgveda Dr. Farmer, Generally, Indologists date the Rig Veda to around 1200 BCE. After the Indus valley culture declined around 1700 BCE, Aryan migrations tookplace spreading Indo-Iranian language into India. Sanskrit developed out of it. In the Indus culture, Dravidian, not Sanskrit, was the high language. See A. Parpola, Deciphering the Indus script, Cambridge. Of course, Manu smrthi was written after 3rd cent. BCE giving supremacy to Varnashrama system. Regards, SM --- Steve Farmer wrote: > George Thompson writes, concerning a post of mine questioning the date > that Michael Witzel gives for the first written Rgveda: > > > So here we go again. Another truly NAIVE challenge from someone who, in > all > > ignorance, asserts that *Vedicists* are naive. > > > > In fact, Vedicists have long wrestled with this problem. It is > > understandable that you and other comparatists might be skeptical about the > > large claims that are made for the fidelity of Vedic oral tradition. But > if > > you did your homework you would know: > > > > that in a *very* large Vedic literature there is *not one* reference to > > writing anywhere; > > > > that there is no solid evidence for writing in the Indan sub-continent > before > > the 3rd cent. BCE [whereas, if we are willing to overcome reasonable doubt, > > we *might* be able to push that date back to the 6th cent. BCE -- in any > > case, by this date the Vedic period is essentially over, or about to end]; > > > > that the Vedic tradition developed, very early, a remarkable system of > > mnemonic devices intended to assure the accurate transmission of the > > traditional texts; > > > > that the date of the RV, for linguistic reasons alone, cannot be reasonably > > put very much *after* 1000 BCE, so that in fact there has been an extended > > period of time during which it was transmitted purely by oral means; > > It wasn't my intention to be impolite. If I seemed so, please except my > sincere apologies. Nevertheless, my scholarly questions remain. Here they > are, rephrased, I hope, less polemically: > > 1. Is there indeed a consensus among Vedicists that the Rgveda was passed > on for as much as two millennia through "near-perfect ORAL transmission" > (to quote Michael Witzel) until it "was first written down c. 1000 CE"? If > true, this would be a unique situation in premodern thought; that is the > source of my skepticism. > > 2. How is this consensus view -- if there *is* indeed a consensus -- > reconciled with repeated suggestions in the Laws of Manu that the Vedas > were utilized at least at some point in antiquity in literate form? This > is a serious question that requires a evidential response. Are there > textual strata in the Laws of Manu that date from as late as 1000 CE, > providing conservative Vedicists with an easy way out of the problem? If > not, how do they face this and similar counterevidence? > > 3. The obvious signs of textual stratification in the received text of the > Rgveda suggests that various hymns were repeatedly *reshaped* in early > stages of the text's oral development. How, this being the case, do > Indologists explain that the text in *later* oral periods remained > unchanged for nearly two millennia? How *can* a textual canon be fixed > over wide geographical and cultural regions in the absence of written > exemplars? What makes the relationship between oral and written traditions > in Vedic sources different from that found in every other premodern > tradition? > > Thompson further writes: > > > the Vedic tradition developed, very early, a remarkable system of > > mnemonic devices intended to assure the accurate transmission of the > > traditional texts > > Every premodern society that I've studied created its own elaborate > systems of "mnemonic devices intended to assure the accurate transmission > of the traditional texts" (think of the methods described in the West in > the pseudo-Ciceronian Hortensius) -- and in every such society, > nonetheless, traditions drifted conceptually in largely predictable ways. > Much evidence on this topic has accumulated in dozens of studies of oral > and early-literature traditions in Africa, the Mediterranean, Southeast > Asia, China, Japan, and Mesoamerica. My own studies have uncovered cases > of such drift involving supposedly "near-perfect" memorization of > canonical texts in the premodern West. There is good evidence that > neurobiological constraints on memory systems probably have something to > do with this drift. > > If it is really true that premodern Vedic reciters, unlike those found in > every other known premodern civilization, maintained "near-perfect ORAL > transmission" over two millennia of a highly stratified compilation like > the Rgvedas, Indologists should be prepared with a credible reason to > explain India's uniqueness. Alternately, they should be able to point to > other instances of "near-perfect transmission" in premodern societies > outside India. (I'd be extremely interested in what evidence they try to > cite.) > > Thompson also writes: > > > that the date of the RV, for linguistic reasons alone, cannot be reasonably > > put very much *after* 1000 BCE, so that in fact there has been an extended > > period of time during which it was transmitted purely by oral means > > You are missing the point elaborated in #3, above. Abundant internal > evidence demonstrates that the received text of the Rgvedas is itself > "layered" (stratified) -- just like virtually every other known Eurasian > compilation from this level of antiquity. It would certainly be curious if > the Rgveda in its *earliest* stages of oral development were continuously > reshaped by processes of transmission and then, magically, in *later* > stages it became "fixed" in the absence of written exemplars. > > Perhaps my questions are naive, as Thompson claims. But if that's the > case, I'm sure that he can quickly point to evidence that demonstrates > that. The use of such evidence would, of course, be much more effective > than declarations ex cathedra. > > Best wishes, > > Steve Farmer, Ph.D. > http://www.safarmer.com/pico/abstract.html > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From kekai at JPS.NET Fri Mar 10 17:26:10 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 00 09:26:10 -0800 Subject: Elst's review of Kochhar's Vedic People Message-ID: <161227056550.23782.10016661933015192442.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Rajarshi Banerjee wrote: > > PKM>However, the Indian cow is an entirely different breed than Bos > taurus of West Asia, separated by many thousands of years. And the zebu > shows little signs of introgression from bos taurus, quite the reverse > in fact. > > RB> Actually Bos Indicus has separated from other Bos atleast 200000 to > 300000 yrs ago. > The african breeds are also distinct and domestication is local although the > branching off is more recent. Skeletal data from mehergarh and other places > show evidence of local domestication( reuction in size from wild state ). > > regards RB African breeds are either Bos indicus or Bos indicus-Bos taurus hybrids. Interestingly, practically everywhere one finds domesticated Bos Indicus one also finds domesticated Bus bubalis (water buffalo). Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM Fri Mar 10 15:36:43 2000 From: rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM (Rajarshi Banerjee) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 00 10:36:43 -0500 Subject: Elst's review of Kochhar's Vedic People Message-ID: <161227056609.23782.16043409699684188997.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> PKM> Equus sivalensis may be gone but domesticated horses with sivalensis dentition, pre-orbital depression and 17 pairs of ribs are still found in South and Southeast Asia. RB> Unlike the case for cattle there is no evidence for horse domesication in the sub continent. If sivalensis was extinct how did such features survive. Did some wild horses in central asia also have sivalensis traits? Are there any surviving wild equids which have sivalensis traits? PKM> Interestingly, practically everywhere one finds domesticated Bos Indicus one also finds domesticated Bus bubalis (water buffalo). RB> Any signs of bubalis in the near east? I believe that the swamp and river buffalos cannot inter breed. When were the swamp buffaloes of south east asia domesticated? How old is the tradition of associating yama with a buffalo. Any refrences to buffaloes in the rig veda? regards RB From saf at SAFARMER.COM Fri Mar 10 19:02:46 2000 From: saf at SAFARMER.COM (Steve Farmer) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 00 11:02:46 -0800 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056620.23782.16341971603103063946.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Swaminathan Madhuresan writes: > Generally, Indologists date the Rig Veda to around 1200 BCE. Is this really true? I thought that I had seen a wide range of dates in the literature, with later strata of the Rgveda sometimes placed as late as the mid first millennium BCE. Am I wrong about this? Later dates are easier than early ones to reconcile with evidence from studies of similar canonical texts compiled outside India (in China, Persia, Greece, the Middle East, etc.). Are you really claiming that all levels of the Rgveda date from before around 1200 BCE? Are you further arguing that this is the consensus view? As you probably know, there is a widespread tendency in contemporary pan-Eurasian studies to: (1) acknowledge that early canonical sources were heavily layered texts, suggesting long gestation periods and frequent reshapings in later redactions; and (2) push the dates by which those documents assumed their final shapes considerably forward -- sometimes by many centuries. The most striking example of this tendency is probably found in the deep revisions of traditional dates of canonical texts currently taking place in Chinese studies (e.g., it is now widely recognized that the Analects grew through accretional processes in a school setting over several hundred years). But similar tendencies to push dates considerably forward clearly also exist in your own field -- e.g., of course, in the work of Bechert and his colleagues, first presented in the 1980s. Are you claiming that late strata of the Rgveda do *not* date from as late as the mid first millennium BCE? If, on the other hand, you accept the fact that there are early and late strata in the text itself, it would seem difficult to uphold the claimed *later* fixity of the text (supposedly for as much as 2200 years) solely through oral means. (I'm suggesting that the text probably existed in written form at a significantly earlier date; this doesn't mean that it wasn't memorized, however. In many premodern cultures, written text was viewed primarily as a memory aid). A man who knows the true meaning of the teachings of the Veda becomes fit for union with ultimate reality even while he remains here in this world....Those who read the books are better than those who do not know them; those who remember them are better than those who read them; those who understand them are better then those who remember them....Manu 12.103 (trans. Doniger/Smith). SM writes further: > Of course, Manu smrthi was written after 3rd cent. BCE... My question had to do with the many apparent references in the text to written use of the Veda. I asked how Indologists reconciled these parts of the text with Michael Witzel's view, which is suggested as the consensus of the field, that the Rgveda "was first written down c 1000 CE." Maybe there is a simple answer to my question; maybe not. Thanks much for your help, Steve Farmer From g.v.simson at EAST.UIO.NO Fri Mar 10 10:07:33 2000 From: g.v.simson at EAST.UIO.NO (Georg von Simson) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 00 11:07:33 +0100 Subject: chariots (was: AIT, NEW genetic evidence) In-Reply-To: <003D0A33B331D2119E470008C72892CD013F3C8C@SMGMAIL> Message-ID: <161227056600.23782.5779099800125347217.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Rajarshi Banerjee wrote: >RB> Many thanks to MW and SM, I finally checked out sparebooms book. >depiction of relistic chariots in India is indeed very rare. >Slightly later??, well the sanchi chariots are atleast a millenia later than >the vedic chariot as the author himself says. There is also some rock art >from MP depicting chariots which cannot be reliabaly dated. Sparreboom alo >notes that unlike the near east where chariots are were used in large >numbers for tactical warfare in the defence of large city states or empires, >the vedic chariots role and manner of use can only be conjectured at. He >highlights their use in rituals and cattle raids. At later times their >presence in rituals is just symbolic. > In the battle description of the Mahabharata the chariot troops are still the main force of the army, and all the major heroes fight from chariots. they (almost) never are riding on horse-back (though horse-riders are one of the four branches of the army) and there are only a few instances where a king is riding on an elephant. The chariot as the most important weapon probably was an anachronism at the time when the younger layers of the epic were composed, but what about the time when the Mahabharata started (let us say around the middle of the first millennium BCE - I am not talking about the Mahabharata war as a historical event, but about the epic poem)? At least the memory of the importance of the chariot seems to have been strong throughout the history of the epic. From r.l.schmidt at EAST.UIO.NO Fri Mar 10 09:28:46 2000 From: r.l.schmidt at EAST.UIO.NO (Ruth Laila Schmidt) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 00 11:28:46 +0200 Subject: Query re LC entry Message-ID: <161227056603.23782.12483060272796022716.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear colleages, I have just received a query from "Elin Gr?nneberg" who is a student librarian, who in the course of preparing a bibliography on Fridtjof Nansen has found the following entry in the Library of Congress catalogue: Author: Bhatta, MuulazaGkara Mohanalaala Title: Naanasena [microform]: Pravaasakathaao MuulazaGkara Mo. Bhatta Published: Amadaavaada: Mukhyavikretaa Bhaaratii Saahitya Sangha, 1946 LC Call No.: Microfilm BUL-GUJ-214 (G) > With the help of the Sanskritist L.M. Fosse I deduced that Pravaasakathaao is "descriptions of travel" and Mukhyavikretaa Bhaaratii Saahitya is "Head Sales, the Indian Literature Society". However I am not able to tell Groenneberg what Amadaavaada is, nor the language of the entry. Could Amadaavaada be a Sanskritization of Ahmadabad, and the language Gujarati (as suggested by final -o in Pravaasakathaao, which we take to be a plural form)? Any help would be appreciated by this bewildered Urdu scholar. 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 r.l.schmidt at EAST.UIO.NO Fri Mar 10 10:24:13 2000 From: r.l.schmidt at EAST.UIO.NO (Ruth Laila Schmidt) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 00 12:24:13 +0200 Subject: LC entry Message-ID: <161227056605.23782.3459536439010004831.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Thanks to my colleagues for explaining Amadavada and the language of the LC entry. 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 zysk at HUM.KU.DK Fri Mar 10 11:42:11 2000 From: zysk at HUM.KU.DK (Kenneth Zysk) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 00 12:42:11 +0100 Subject: Jaganmohana Message-ID: <161227056607.23782.5030289179238053691.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I should appreciate any information about Jaganmohana mentioned as a source on Samudrikasastra in the Viramitrodaya. Many thanks, KGZ -- Kenneth G. Zysk University of Copenhagen Department of Asian Studies Leifsgade 33, 5 DK-Copenhagen S Denmark Phone: +45.35.32.88.32 FAX: +45.35.32.88.35 Email: zysk at hum.ku.dk If email fails use: zysk at spam.hum.ku.dk From r0j7402 at UNIX.TAMU.EDU Fri Mar 10 19:04:41 2000 From: r0j7402 at UNIX.TAMU.EDU (Rajesh Jayaraman) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 00 13:04:41 -0600 Subject: Query Message-ID: <161227056622.23782.12529938487543595528.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hi all, This is my first posting to the egroup..i subscribed to it yesterday. I was going through an article, where it says, UFO sightings during the vedic period. i was pretty excited on reading this.It also said that the Indians of that time had powerful nuclear and atomic weapons. Also there was a mention of space vehicles which are supposed to resemble today's so called UFO mother ship. Can anyone enlighten me on this? moreover I am interested in knowing the scope of the discussions in this forum. Thanks, Rajesh Thought For The Day ------------------- If you love someone, Set her free ... * If she comes back, and if you love her still, set her free again, repeat * \\\|/// \\\|/// \\ - - // \\ - - // ( 0 0 ) ( 0 0 ) **********oOOo--(_)--oOOo******************oOOo--(_)--oOOo***** Rajesh Jayaraman Graduate Research Assitant Department of Industrial Engineering Texas A&M University - College Station Tel: (Res)409-846-4477 (Off)409-862-4517 ********************-Oooo-******************-oooO-************* oooO ( ) ( ) Oooo ( ) ) / \ ( ( ) \ ( (_/ \_) ) / \_) (_/ From malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU Fri Mar 10 21:13:14 2000 From: malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU (Yashwant Malaiya) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 00 14:13:14 -0700 Subject: "Dalitstan" (RE: 'INDIA ABROAD' on new textbooks) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056633.23782.11799506024096302963.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Raveen Satkurunathan wrote (about dalitstan.org): >I know at least two Dalits who are involved in this project one in >the US and the other in India. Thanks for this information. It would be interesting to know - Which organization is running this project - Are two persons so-called "untouchables" or converted tribals (like Munda etc.)? Yashwant From rpeck at NECA.COM Fri Mar 10 19:22:55 2000 From: rpeck at NECA.COM (Bob Peck) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 00 14:22:55 -0500 Subject: --the basis for the meaning of meaning Message-ID: <161227056625.23782.14563991142940505222.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> We are currently working on a method of using a computer to assist in translations. our starting approach is that any translation must be based upon the subject matter, the time and place as well as the source. In other words it is as if different dictionaries must be used for different translations. A modern computer is ideal for this application. Sanskrit seems to have its own problems, as I mentioned Abhinavagupts's ParAtrISikA VivaraNa in which he gives assistance to the Sanskrit reader as to how to extract the meaning. If such problems existed in his time in his own Language, they surely are worse today? Let me know if you find your answer. regards Bob Peck -----Original Message----- From: Haridas C To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Date: Wednesday, March 08, 2000 10:20 AM Subject: Toward a Science of Translating--Sanskrit texts--the basis for the meaning of meaning >Dear List members, > >With respect to the Sarasvati and chariot discussion >which has been taking place, I am re-posting and >adding to my inquiry which follows below. > >The basis for most of the debates on this list and in >other areas is centered upon the basic question of >'what is the meaning of the word/text?' > >So I wondering about the variety of the past authors >which have been foundational to the science and the >practice of translating sanskrit, pali, and prakrit >literature in the west. > >Any thoughts upon recent thinkers, such as Foucault, >Derrida, Godamer in light of the mechanics of >translating into english, german, french etc., would >be warmly welcomed also. > >For example, Derrida wrote: "Il n'y a pas d'hors texte >('there is nothing outside a text')" how might this >apply to the topic of interpretation/misinterpretation >translation/mistranslation on the list. > >I am also interested in essays and discussion on the >mechanics of translating Sanskrit into English. > >thank you. > >__________________________________________________ >Do You Yahoo!? >Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. >http://im.yahoo.com > From malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU Sat Mar 11 00:05:57 2000 From: malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU (Yashwant Malaiya) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 00 17:05:57 -0700 Subject: "Lanka" (was RE: "Dalitstan" ) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056640.23782.434062746111572194.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Katherine K. Brobeck asked: >Was Lanka perhaps in the Murwara Basin, MP ? Kathy, I assume you are asking about Lanka in Ramayana, ruled by Ravana. One thing is certain, it is not today's Srilanka. Several books mention "Lanka" of Ramayana as being distinct from the Simhal island (which is SriLanka): Mahabharata (ArNya 51) Markandeya Purana (55.20.29) It mentions that at the time Ravana ruled Lanka, Simhal was ruled by Chandrasena. Devi Purana (42.46) Bhagavata (5.19, 29.30) Balaramayana of Rajsekhara Here during Swamvara, Ravana address another king as "simhala-pate". Briharsamhita of Varahamihira (14.11) RajtarangiNi of KalhaNa (1.294, 1.298) Katha-srtitsagara (18.1.93, 2.4.124) Vikramankadeva Charita (4.20-25,7-70;18.15,54) Padmavata of Jayasi (p.10,11,12,15) When I first read Padmavata, I was surprized to note that Lanka and Simhal were assumed to be different islands. The above list is from Hiralal Shukla's "Lanka ki Khoj", 1977. The fact that some other islands are also called Lanka, suggests that the word has been used to mean any island as well as a specifc island. According to practically all modern historians, the Lanka of Ramayana was not SriLanka, because the accounts in Ramayana does not match it. My best guess is that it was one of the islands of the Godavari delta, where the term "lanka" is still used for the islands and the local inscriptions suggest that some of the rulers derived their descent from Ravana. Some authors have indeed suggested it was somewhere in modern MP, but I like Godavari delta theory. Some activists see aryan-dravidian struggle in the Rama-Ravana conflict. However that is far fetched. Ravana was a Brahmin and Rama was dark-skinned, making the equation difficult. Yashwant From jehms at KABELFOON.NL Fri Mar 10 17:34:07 2000 From: jehms at KABELFOON.NL (Erik Hoogcarspel) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 00 18:34:07 +0100 Subject: Pluralism, Texts, and Oaths Message-ID: <161227056618.23782.3293591821035780339.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> For some buddhists swearing on a book might be pure fetishism. Buddhism is not a religion of the book, this is a pure semitic thing. A buddhastatue would be more effective in this case. However spoken formula's are very much respected as well. Let buddhists say the refuge formule and forget about books. Noel Salmond wrote: > Dear Colleagues > > I recently got a call from an official of the government of Canada asking > for information with regard to choosing sacred texts for use in swearing-in > ceremonies for new Canadians. In Canada you have the choice to either be > sworn on a holy book or not. For those who do so wish they provide Bibles > but have been concerned in the last decade or so to be a bit more inclusive > -- hence the Gita is available for Hindus, the Qur'an for Muslims and so > on. They also invite anyone to bring their own holy book, if they want one. > The official wanted help concerning what other books they should provide. > For instance, they want to know what to provide for Buddhists. I'm aware of > how complex this can be: what kind of Buddhist? Buddhism isn't a "religion > of the book" in the way that the biblical traditions are etc. > > Could someone put me on to any literature that may be out there on the use > of sacred texts for legal and oath taking purposes. > With all the work being done on comparative notions of scripture and on > pluralism I would imagine that this topic has been addressed. > > Could someone tell me what the drill is in the U.S., in the U.K., in India. > I gather that in secular India one swears on a copy of the constitution. > > With thanks > > Noel Salmond > Carleton University > Ottawa, Canada [apologies to those who saw > this cross-posted to RISA-L] From sivadasi at EROLS.COM Fri Mar 10 23:46:43 2000 From: sivadasi at EROLS.COM (Katherine K. Brobeck) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 00 18:46:43 -0500 Subject: "Dalitstan" (RE: 'INDIA ABROAD' on new textbooks) Message-ID: <161227056636.23782.7963048851791451009.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Was Lanka perhaps in the Murwara Basin, MP ? ---------- >From: Yashwant Malaiya >To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK >Subject: Re: "Dalitstan" (RE: 'INDIA ABROAD' on new textbooks) >Date: Fri, Mar 10, 2000, 4:13 PM > > Raveen Satkurunathan wrote (about dalitstan.org): > >>I know at least two Dalits who are involved in this project one in >>the US and the other in India. > > Thanks for this information. It would be interesting to know > > - Which organization is running this project > - Are two persons so-called "untouchables" or converted > tribals (like Munda etc.)? > > Yashwant From vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM Sat Mar 11 03:42:20 2000 From: vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM (Vishal Agarwal) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 00 19:42:20 -0800 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056645.23782.7908417492659556591.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ----Original Message Follows---- From: Steve Farmer 1. Is there indeed a consensus among Vedicists that the Rgveda was passed on for as much as two millennia through "near-perfect ORAL transmission" (to quote Michael Witzel) until it "was first written down c. 1000 CE"? VA responds: Dr. Witzel's argument that the Vedas were probably not written down till 1000 C.E. on the basis of Alberuni's testimony and absence of manuscripts are monolateral. First, Alberuni visited only the NW corner of India, a region that had already seen a massive decline in Vedic study because of a millennia long foreign depredations. In addition, Alberuni's account on the Vedas is extremely scrappy and probably based in heresay, in contrast to his rather lengthy treatment of Yoga Patanjala, the Gita, the Puranas, the Brihatsamhita and so on. The only things he states about the Vedas are: There are 4 Vedas, AV has very few followers. The Brahmins learn the Veda from each other and guard its contents very closely. And that a few decades back, a Kashmiri named Vasukra got them written down, fearing that they would be lost. Neither Vasukra, nor Alberuni would have known what was the situation in Central, Eastern and Southern India. Note that even for the Gita etc., Alberuni's accounts is not 100% correct (see, in addition to Sachau's translation, the book "A study in Alberuni's India" by Arvind Sharma). The absence of manuscripts older than 1000 CE of course does not mean there there were no manuscripts of the Vedas before that date. In fact, the eclectic nature of Vedic citations in older works like the Shabara Bhashya and even before that, in the Apastamba Srauta Sutra, attest to the fact that Vedic manuscripts did exist much before 1000 CE. These authors (and many others), quote dozens of Vedic works, and the only way they could have done this was that they either possessed manuscripts (because it is virtually impossible to memorise so many texts) or that they were helped by a 'Parishad' of scholars belonging to different Vedic schools--which is not attested by tradition. Alternately, the quotations were added in layers and over several generations, another unlikely possibility because the texts some of these teachers comment on (the Mimamsa Sutras in case of Shabara, and the Brahmasutras in case of Shankaracharya) are already eclectic in nature, drawing from numerous branches of the 4 Vedas. A study of the available fragments of the older teachers of Mimamsa (there are 70 extant fragments/citations of Alekhana and Ashmarathya alone) also displays eclecticism with regard to the Vedic texts. ______________ Steve Farmer: 2. How is this consensus view -- if there *is* indeed a consensus -- reconciled with repeated suggestions in the Laws of Manu that the... VA responds: Well, contrary to what Dr. Thompson states, old texts like the Aitreya Aranyaka do allude to writing. I would like to point out that some non-'mainstream' persons opine that that the Indus script represents an IA language. The following book, that was released 3 weeks back, might be useful to you N. Jha and N. Rajaram Deciphering the Indus Script; Aditya Prakashan; Delhi; 2000 Price: Indian rupees 950 (1 USD = Rs. 43 approx) The publisher's address is Aditya Prakashan F-14/65, Model Town-II 110009 Delhi, India ___________ Steve Farmer: were utilized at least at some point in antiquity in literate form? This is a serious question that requires a evidential response. VA comments: Despite the mnemonic devices and a host of texts facilitating the oral tradition (these texts are called Lakshana granthas), the recitors still use the written text as an aid in memorization, and for occassional cross checking. The orally transmitted text is considered more accurate, but is nevertheless supplemented by a written text (some recitors place it in front of them, some behind them, while others who are perfect, do not use it at all atleast in public because of the stigma attached to it). The same thing has been pointed out by you also. _______________ Steve Farmer states: 3. The obvious signs of textual stratification in the received text of the Rgveda suggests that various hymns were repeatedly *reshaped* in early stages of the text's oral development. How, this being the case, do Indologists explain that the text in *later* oral periods remained unchanged for nearly two millennia? How *can* a textual canon be fixed over wide geographical and cultural regions in the absence of written exemplars? What makes the relationship between oral and written traditions in Vedic sources different from that found in every other premodern tradition?..........If it is really true that premodern Vedic reciters, unlike those found in every other known premodern civilization, maintained "near-perfect ORAL transmission" over two millennia of a highly stratified compilation like the Rgvedas, Indologists should be prepared with a credible reason to explain India's .............[..] VA comments: In my opinion, the compilation of the Koran and an establishment of its oral tradition provide an interesting parallel. The traditional Islamic accounts contained in the various biographies of the Prophet, the histories of Tabari etc., and the Hadith collections are not very consistent, but in summary, whenever the Prophet had a revelation, he would call a scribe and the words were recorded by that scribe. Many followers of the Prophet, in his lifetime alone, committed large portions of the revelations to memory (since literacy levels were low and memorization of poetry was a prevelant tradition)and some portions were passed in a written form. Due to the consonantal nature of the Kufic script, the prevelance of different dialects in Arabia, the varying inclinations of his followers and so on, different codices and oral versions of the Koran appeared soon after the demise of the Prophet. Alarmed, Caliph Othman standardized one particular text which had the readings in the Quraish dialect and had been collected from 'writings on bones and hides and from the hearts of men', and stamped out all deviant versions. This standard version was copied and sent to all parts of the Arab Empire, and other versions were burnt out. An oral tradition, (partially stemming from the pre-Othmanic times), also started and within a century or two, there were now numerous oral versions of the text. These versions differed in their accents, minor or major textual differences (due to dialects, consonant nature of early scripts, interpolations and so on) and again, a Muslim scholar stepped into the scene. He mandated that only 7 pairs of recitational modes were authentic and the others were heretical. All these modes were based on the Othmanic text and the deviations from the same are termed as 'Tafsir' and so on. Even to this day, these 14 modes are considered authentic and the oral text is given primacy over the written text. Many printed versions of the Koran still bear the seal of a Hafiz e Koran (who has memorized the whole text) to certify that the printed text is authentic. Thus, we see that 'writing' of the text of Koran played a crucial role in its initial compilation, and it was this written compilation that propelled the current recitiational modes-- a perfect case of the written and oral traditions supplementing each other. There is actually a modern case of a person (I do not wish to name him) who composed and compiled a work of 10000 verses without the aid of writing materials, while imprisoned. But, such a scenario is quite different from the compilation of a stratified text like RV. Having said all this, there is no clear evidence in the RV that writing existed in those days, and the oral nature of the Vedic tradition has been the subject of study for the last 100 years, starting with the work of the Repetitions in the Rigveda to the 'introduction' of Saunakiya Caturadhyayika (Dr. Madhava Deshpande) and works like "The Rigveda as Oral Literature" (Nilanjan Sikdar Datta; 1999). However, it is really difficult to understand how the original compilation was done. And there is a strong reason to believe that the written tradition supplemented the oral tradition certainly much before 1000 C.E. The 'introduction' of the 'Vedic Concordance" also states that the written texts have long supplemented the oral tradition. Manuscripts before 1000 CE are in any case rare from South Asia, except the well known cases of Jaislamere, Nepal, some from Gujarat and so on. Most manuscripts, even for the non Vedic texts, are clearly post 1000 CE. I request references for comparative studies between the Koranic oral tradition and the Vedic recitations. Vishal ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From tawady at YAHOO.COM Fri Mar 10 20:21:31 2000 From: tawady at YAHOO.COM (Raveen Satkurunathan) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 00 20:21:31 +0000 Subject: NArada Message-ID: <161227056628.23782.13512865892389854899.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Thu, 9 Mar 2000 15:00:48 -0500, Rajarshi Banerjee wrote: >Are these words considered loans from dravidian then ? > Is it always possible >to trace words which have widespread use all over India to a certain >language family? Yes, in most of the time From tawady at YAHOO.COM Fri Mar 10 20:48:35 2000 From: tawady at YAHOO.COM (Raveen Satkurunathan) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 00 20:48:35 +0000 Subject: "Dalitstan" (RE: 'INDIA ABROAD' on new textbooks) Message-ID: <161227056630.23782.9363755401536084897.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Tue, 29 Feb 2000 17:32:41 -0700, Yashwant Malaiya wrote: >Samar Abbas wrote: > >>There are several facts indicating that Rama was a historical figure >>which are summarised in these sites by the Dalit and *** schools >> http://dalitstan.org/books/bibai/bibai3.html >I have read some of Ambedkar's works and other books >that have come out of neo-Buddhist movement. Dalits >have a lot to complain about, but these web sites are not >done by them. > >Yashwant I know at least two Dalits who are involved in this project one in the US and the other in India. From kekai at JPS.NET Sat Mar 11 06:29:50 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 00 22:29:50 -0800 Subject: Elst's review of Kochhar's Vedic People Message-ID: <161227056595.23782.12341890170611435832.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel wrote: > > >>India is not the natural habitat of the MODERN horse.There are no > >> wild horses in India .If India is the original home of the Aryans where did > >> they get horse from? > > PK Manasala:> > >You might want to check a little deeper into specialized literature. > >In fact, Asiatic horses of today often show anatomical features > >related to the prehistoric Indian horse (Equus sivalensis). > > That myth should be exploded. Last I heard, that horse was dead and gone 15 million years ago. > Equus sivalensis may be gone but domesticated horses with sivalensis dentition, pre-orbital depression and 17 pairs of ribs are still found in South and Southeast Asia. > >For example, according to some Indologists 'Vedic Aryans' were supposed > >to be cattle herders from the Central Asian steppe who brought their > >herds and cow worship with them. > > Whatever earlier Indologists might have thought, they cannot be accused for > not knowing recent genetics. (Cow worship by Rgvedic people??? Where, by > Indra, does that come from?) > > >Also, the steppe is really not suitable for cattle herders > > So why do we have the (early) 300,000 horses (their bones) at Botai, > Kazakhstan? The steppe is quite suitable for horses. > > You forget half-asses and real asses. > You really get emotional when someone challenges your "aryan" theories don't you. Madame Blavatsky would be proud. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sat Mar 11 04:56:48 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 00 23:56:48 -0500 Subject: Elst's review of Kochhar's Vedic People In-Reply-To: <38C9E7DD.70E8FBD7@jps.net> Message-ID: <161227056647.23782.4283991243054827555.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > PK Manasala:> > Also, the steppe is really not suitable for cattle herders You conveniently cut my note on cows: >>" And cattle are of course found all over the steppes, from the Ukraine eastwards, from at least c. 4000 BCE onwards. They did not go there of their own volition. How to keep them during winter is another problem." >The steppe is quite suitable for horses. ...everybody knows that... >> You forget half-asses and real asses. >You really get emotional when someone challenges your "aryan" theories ??? -- I don't follow here; -- what is the relation between (half-)asses and Aryans? -- Half-asses and asses are attested in the S.Central Asian BMAC culture (Arch. lingo : bricks, mortar, asses and camels). Where they thrived in the desert oasis/steppe/thick delta brush of the Central Asian rivers flowing down from the Kopet Dagh/Hindukush. Half-asses were local (=onager, hemione); the real ass (asinus) was a more recent import from the Near East (Mesopotamia), just as camels were of more recent adaptation in the BMAC. Sorry, no horses there, so far. So, no horse riding/chariot riding BMAC Aryans. >Madame Blavatsky would be proud. Don't remember her to well from my last life. Never was found of that kind of 'spiritualism'. NamaH kharaaya, namo raasabhaaya, namo gardabhaaya. (Details in McKim Marriotts' description of Holi in 'his' village) =============== Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK Sat Mar 11 00:03:15 2000 From: s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK (Stephen Hodge) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 00:03:15 +0000 Subject: Kalmasapada Message-ID: <161227056638.23782.17622440193517359334.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> My thanks to all those who sent me useful leads concerning my earlier query about research on the Kalmasapada legend. Stephen Hodge From cheapies at CABLEREGINA.COM Sat Mar 11 07:18:18 2000 From: cheapies at CABLEREGINA.COM (Benjamin Fleming) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 01:18:18 -0600 Subject: utkuTika Message-ID: <161227056652.23782.15196305222802680612.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear list members, I was hoping someone might be able to affirm or deny the following question regarding the iconography of narasiMha. The *utkuTika* pose (legs crossed with heels touching the ground) is a pose exclusive to the yoga-narasiMha mUrti. There is supposed to be some reference to this in the VaikhAnasAgama (patala 58), but I do not have access to this work presently. Any help or further references would be most appreciated. Sincerely, B. Fleming From vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM Sat Mar 11 14:54:01 2000 From: vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM (Vishal Agarwal) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 06:54:01 -0800 Subject: Saraswati (Dr. Witzel) Message-ID: <161227056664.23782.11689430178663895601.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Vishal HAD said: >one mainstream Indologists from India complimented this work as >"one of the best from India in recent years" while a Western >Indologist[...] ___________________________ Dr. Witzel remarked:One track reasoning, comme l'habitude. Why can a word (sarasvatii 'the female one having ponds/lakes') refer (a) only to *one* certain river? (b) not also to a goddess? (rivers are female in India....), (c) and/or to a celestial phenomenon? In this case to all the three. Vishal comments: True. Never have I said that Saraswati in RV always refers to an earthly river. My post #224 in December 1999 archives might give you the wrong impression (well, not really) but I normally do not think of a river while reciting verses like say Rigveda 1.3.12 I find the following work extremely useful: Airi, Raghunath; Concept of Sarasvati (in Vedic Literature); 1977 The book is written within AIT pradigms and it is easy to see how AIT/AMT notions can lead people to distort certain verses or introduce forced interpretations. The mongraph is by and large very good. No maps though, the lacuna is fulfilled by 'Vedic Saraswati; 1999 (Mehr et al); Bangalore. Of course you have derisively referred to the last work, probably because of your incapability of comprehending some articles of a scientific nature in the book. The editors have certainly not hidden the fact that the dessication of 'Saraswati' was not a discrete cataclysmic event but was a progressive phenomenon/process, probably aided by periodic tectonic movements and accompanied by a gradual dislocation of the river beds towards the west. Therefore, one cannot expect a 'description' of this extremely slow process in the ancient texts, it can only be inferred by scanning the texts in chronological order. Neverthelss, the various paleochannels remain to be dated precesely, and in particular, the pre-historic drainage patterns east of the Arravalis are yet to be investigated. This is acknowledged in the book itself, which though remains the best update on the issue and your dismissal of the book is indicative of your own lack of proficiency in matters pertaining to science. It is therefore irrelevant whether there was ONE Saraswati or more as rivers have frequently changed their courses. Just 250 years back, the Beas changed its course drastically after a flood. The phenomenon is not well recorded in history but is livid in the memories of many people in the Jallandhar Doaba. This shifting of the course of Beas (and numerous other shifts in history (it used to meet Ravi and not Satlaj in olden days) does not mean that there is 'no single Beas'. For that matter, there are numerous Gangas. The Muslim J and K region still has a Kishen Ganga, Rama Ganga, Bana Ganga (I have actully seen these rivulets) and so do we have Sarsuti in Haryana and Saraswati in Gujarat and so on. But at a given time, there is one Beas, one Ganga (which might still be called Jumna in Bangladesh) and so on. _____________________ Dr. Witzel asks: (As for the above statement, suddenly afraid to name names? Looking forward to another slew of 'panzer corps generals'...) Vishal comments: The names are irrelevant. You still have not answered my question on Dr. Rajesh Kochar's book. Note that I never referred to the 'Aryan Panzers' as such (prove it if you can) but merely demonstrated your self contradictory invasionist views by quoting your own work (Post # 132 in February 2000 archives). Nevertheless, this citation, straight from the Azva's mouth like the mighty Brahmaputra, does wash out your cover ups on this issue following the expose of your views by others as well. Rather than covering up your faults, have the grace to accept them. __________________________ >The various postings under the thread .... will publicize them in various >forums of the Dr. Witzel: (And, of course, I will collect these data for future historical study... ) Vishal: I hope you take care not to misquote me. ____________________ Dr. Witzel: As a footnote, since now I believe that VA wants to classify me, by all means, as Eurocentric, Vishal replies: I never said or implied that. Presumably your guilt consience is at work. Anyway, others sometimes infer such things when they read words in your works like "Why is it that it is Non Indians always...."(To paraphrase from the Preface of 'Inside the texts..'). Anyway, I draw your attention to the appendix specifically devoted to you and illustrative of the sad depths to which Indology has sunk (according to the author) in the book "Rigveda- A Historical Analysis; Shrikant Talageri; Aditya Prakashan; Delhi; 2000" On my part, I publicly acknowledge your contributions to the studies on the Kathaka, Paippalada, Vadhula schools of the YV/AV and you are aware of that. And this will be clear when my own work on the Vedic schools is published. _____________________ Dr. Witzel asked: "is it Eurocentric if I maintain that (small) groups of local "BACTRIANS" or "Afghans" of the Hindukush area, speaking [..]And became the *catalyst* of ensuing changes...(cf. also Ehret, Mallory). This is not an 'invasion', hardly a migration, and NOT one by EUROPEANS but by "Afghans'" (before their time) --to put it facetiously: some tribals got lost, took the wrong turn, and there you have your 'Aryan invasion'... Vishal comments: Not an invasion and neither a migration but successive and numerous successive instances of 'loosing their way' !!!(Shireen Ratnagar will recoil in horror if she reads this)--This 'anirvachaniya' character of the 'advent' is but a collection of several compelling scenarios. As you say 'Think about it'. ________________ VA: Please decide whether you want to propose migrations or invasions or wanderings because the instances **below** certainly come close to invasions. In any case, they were not catalysts for any monumental changes like (magnitude of) the ones that are attributed to the advent of IA speakers after 1700 BCE MW wrote: They were not the first and haMW: ve not been the last (Persians, Greeks, Yue-ji/Tukhara/Kushana, Saka, 'Pahlava', Abhira?, Hephtalite Huns (huuNa), Gurjara, ____________________ Dr. Witzel wrote: The really interesting question here is: Why is it that of all of these and the ensuing movements, just one, the "Aryan"one (=Indo-Aryan, proto-Vedic), is NOT allowed these days? VA responds: No body states that human beings originated in India. As I understand, the 'non mainstream' view is simply that the IVC was IA in nature and the RV was compiled after the IA speakers were resident in India for several millenia and that it is an Indian text through and through. A version of this view is that the various IE speakers were initially present in N India. And then there are a few other varieties. BTW, Dr. Parpola thinks that IVC was Dravidian whereas you have pointed links with another language family. You must have met Dr. Parpola in Japan in November 1999. What transpired then? Who withdrew his hypothesis? He or you? In a private email (in September 1999), you stated that you will ask him these questions. Best wishes Vishal ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From GthomGt at CS.COM Sat Mar 11 12:49:30 2000 From: GthomGt at CS.COM (George Thompson) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 07:49:30 -0500 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056655.23782.10427830711248581211.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 3/10/00 2:27:19 AM Eastern Standard Time, saf at SAFARMER.COM writes: [snip] > > It wasn't my intention to be impolite. If I seemed so, please except my > sincere apologies. Nevertheless, my scholarly questions remain. Here they > are, rephrased, I hope, less polemically: Sure. I will be glad to 'except' your apologies. Please 'except' mine too. > > 1. Is there indeed a consensus among Vedicists that the Rgveda was passed > on for as much as two millennia through "near-perfect ORAL transmission" > (to quote Michael Witzel) until it "was first written down c. 1000 CE"? If > true, this would be a unique situation in premodern thought; that is the > source of my skepticism. > Well, I hesitate to speak for everyone, but to my knowledge there is consensus on this point. As for your skepticism, we have encountered it before in the work of Goody, Finnegan, Ong, and others. Please understand: I think that it is good that comparatists want to confront the Vedic material, because it does pose a serious problem for at least the cruder forms of the orality thesis. Perhaps it is time to abandon such crude distinctions as "the oral mentality" on the one hand, and the "literate mentality" on the other. I don't know where you stand on this, but I myself am deeply suspcious of attempts at hypostasizing human mentality into merely two convenient types like this. > 2. How is this consensus view -- if there *is* indeed a consensus -- > reconciled with repeated suggestions in the Laws of Manu that the Vedas > were utilized at least at some point in antiquity in literate form? This > is a serious question that requires a evidential response. Are there > textual strata in the Laws of Manu that date from as late as 1000 CE, > providing conservative Vedicists with an easy way out of the problem? If > not, how do they face this and similar counterevidence? > As far as I can see, Manu is irrrelevant. Nobody denies that writing was commonplace by the post-Vedic period [and Manu is clearly post-Vedic]. That the Brahminical orality of this period may have been a a type of secondary orality [influenced by literacy] does not negate the fact that in the Vedic period itself we seem to have primary orality [no influence of writing]. > 3. The obvious signs of textual stratification in the received text of the > Rgveda suggests that various hymns were repeatedly *reshaped* in early > stages of the text's oral development. How, this being the case, do > Indologists explain that the text in *later* oral periods remained > unchanged for nearly two millennia? How *can* a textual canon be fixed > over wide geographical and cultural regions in the absence of written > exemplars? What makes the relationship between oral and written traditions > in Vedic sources different from that found in every other premodern > tradition? We recognize a certain amount of pre-canonical fluidity in the text of the RV, of course. But once it was canonized the RV was subjected to rigorous methods of text preservation. We do not claim that this process occurred "over wide geographical and cultural regions." No, it occurred within small, isolated, intensely focussed, Vedic schools. As for the length of time, which apparently staggers you, once it was fixed, the text was fixed. Period. I fail to see what is impossible about this. As for length of text, remember that the RV is a collectioon of over a thousand hymns, the longest of which is only a few hundred lines. > > Thompson further writes: > > > the Vedic tradition developed, very early, a remarkable system of > > mnemonic devices intended to assure the accurate transmission of the > > traditional texts > > Every premodern society that I've studied created its own elaborate > systems of "mnemonic devices intended to assure the accurate transmission > of the traditional texts" (think of the methods described in the West in > the pseudo-Ciceronian Hortensius) -- and in every such society, > nonetheless, traditions drifted conceptually in largely predictable ways. > Much evidence on this topic has accumulated in dozens of studies of oral > and early-literature traditions in Africa, the Mediterranean, Southeast > Asia, China, Japan, and Mesoamerica. My own studies have uncovered cases > of such drift involving supposedly "near-perfect" memorization of > canonical texts in the premodern West. There is good evidence that > neurobiological constraints on memory systems probably have something to > do with this drift. Have you studied Avestan? It is another preliterate oral tradition. > > If it is really true that premodern Vedic reciters, unlike those found in > every other known premodern civilization, maintained "near-perfect ORAL > transmission" over two millennia of a highly stratified compilation like > the Rgvedas, Indologists should be prepared with a credible reason to > explain India's uniqueness. Alternately, they should be able to point to > other instances of "near-perfect transmission" in premodern societies > outside India. (I'd be extremely interested in what evidence they try to > cite.) > I know that Vedic and Avestan both exhibit the behavior that I describe. I don't make any universal claims at all re uniqueness. That is your worry, not mine. If you wish to attack my claims re Vedic and Avestan, then I think that you are obliged to study the Vedic and Avestan material. If your objections are based merely on preconceptions about what preliterate cultures are capable of remembering, then I would suggest that you reconsider, instead of dismissing evidence that strikes you as 'curious' or 'unique.' > Thompson also writes: > > > that the date of the RV, for linguistic reasons alone, cannot be > reasonably > > put very much *after* 1000 BCE, so that in fact there has been an extended > > period of time during which it was transmitted purely by oral means > > You are missing the point elaborated in #3, above. Abundant internal > evidence demonstrates that the received text of the Rgvedas is itself > "layered" (stratified) -- just like virtually every other known Eurasian > compilation from this level of antiquity. It would certainly be curious if > the Rgveda in its *earliest* stages of oral development were continuously > reshaped by processes of transmission and then, magically, in *later* > stages it became "fixed" in the absence of written exemplars. > Facts are facts, and curiosities are curiosities. If you find something curious and magical about Vedic oral tradition, then it is *your* responsiblity to demonstrate this. If it is your view that all cultures must behave like the ones that you are familiar with, then it is *your* resonsibility to demonstrate this. Like Goody, you have to come to terms wih the Vedic evidence and establish that Vedic bears the marks of literacy, in spite of the complete absence of reference to writing in the texts and the absence of writing of any kind in the Vedic period. As I see it, the Vedic material clashes with Goody's model of oral mentality. His solution was to explain that material away by insisting that literacy must have played a role. But he did not demonstrate this. I'd be glad to consider your attempt at doing so. Best wishes, George Thompson From kekai at JPS.NET Sat Mar 11 16:40:15 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 08:40:15 -0800 Subject: Elst's review of Kochhar's Vedic People Message-ID: <161227056613.23782.12499654935244829008.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Rajarshi Banerjee wrote: > > PKM> Equus sivalensis may be gone but domesticated horses with sivalensis > dentition, pre-orbital depression and 17 pairs of ribs are still found > in South and Southeast Asia. > > RB> Unlike the case for cattle there is no evidence for horse domesication > in the sub continent. If sivalensis was extinct how did such features > survive. Did some wild horses in central asia also have sivalensis traits? > Are there any surviving wild equids which have sivalensis traits? > There are few truly wild horses left anywhere. Most are domesticated horses which returned to the wild state. At one time, after wild horses migrated from the Western hemisphere to Asia, they were spread out over vast ranges of the "Old World" including India. There really is no solid evidence that *all* these species went extinct prior to the domestication of the horse. IOW, wild horses were not necessarily confined to Central Asia before the single or multiple domestication events. I personally have not read anywhere about wild equids with sivalensis traits, but domesticated horses do exist quite commonly. Since these horses are mostly in southeast Asia and are strongly divergent from other equids, I doubt very seriously that the resemblance is a coincidence. Anyway, if DNA can be extracted from old sivalensis remains comparison studies should be revealing. > PKM> Interestingly, practically everywhere one finds domesticated Bos > Indicus> one also finds domesticated Bus bubalis (water buffalo). > > RB> Any signs of bubalis in the near east? Not in ancient times that I'm aware of. They do exist there now, and are also found in parts of Europe particularly Italy. >I believe that the swamp and > river buffalos cannot inter breed. > No, not only can swamp (48 chromosomes) and river buffalo (50 chromosomes) interbreed and produce fertile offspring, but both can interbreed with cattle (60 chromosomes) although fertile offspring from such unions are rare. Incidently about 70% of the milk produced in India still comes from water buffalos. >with When were the swamp buffaloes of south > east asia domesticated? > Don't know for sure, but probably at least by the Aeneolithic. Clay figurines of water buffalo and Bos indicus are common in Somrong Sen and Ba Na cultures of the Indochinese neolithic possibly suggesting some sacred value. > How old is the tradition of associating yama with a > buffalo. Any refrences to buffaloes in the rig veda? uy> Water buffalos are mentioned in the Rgveda. For example: Satam mahiSAN ksIrapAkamondanaM varAhamindra Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From sivadasi at EROLS.COM Sat Mar 11 13:46:00 2000 From: sivadasi at EROLS.COM (Katherine K. Brobeck) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 08:46:00 -0500 Subject: "Lanka" Message-ID: <161227056658.23782.11574282732394382063.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Thank you, Yashwant, for all the citations. I've been burning to know more about this. I'm not a scholar, so now I'll go back to being a lurker. KB ---------- >From: Yashwant Malaiya >To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK >Subject: "Lanka" (was RE: "Dalitstan" ) >Date: Fri, Mar 10, 2000, 7:05 PM > > Katherine K. Brobeck asked: > >>Was Lanka perhaps in the Murwara Basin, MP ? > > Kathy, I assume you are asking about Lanka in Ramayana, > ruled by Ravana. > > One thing is certain, it is not today's Srilanka. > > Several books mention "Lanka" of Ramayana as being distinct > from the Simhal island (which is SriLanka): > > Mahabharata (ArNya 51) > Markandeya Purana (55.20.29) > It mentions that at the time Ravana ruled Lanka, > Simhal was ruled by Chandrasena. > Devi Purana (42.46) > Bhagavata (5.19, 29.30) > Balaramayana of Rajsekhara > Here during Swamvara, Ravana address another king as > "simhala-pate". > Briharsamhita of Varahamihira (14.11) > RajtarangiNi of KalhaNa (1.294, 1.298) > Katha-srtitsagara (18.1.93, 2.4.124) > Vikramankadeva Charita (4.20-25,7-70;18.15,54) > Padmavata of Jayasi (p.10,11,12,15) > > When I first read Padmavata, I was surprized to note > that Lanka and Simhal were assumed to be different > islands. The above list is from Hiralal Shukla's > "Lanka ki Khoj", 1977. > > The fact that some other islands are also called Lanka, > suggests that the word has been used to mean any island > as well as a specifc island. > > According to practically all modern historians, the Lanka of > Ramayana was not SriLanka, because the accounts in Ramayana > does not match it. My best guess is that it was one of the > islands of the Godavari delta, where the term "lanka" is > still used for the islands and the local inscriptions suggest > that some of the rulers derived their descent from Ravana. > > Some authors have indeed suggested it was somewhere in > modern MP, but I like Godavari delta theory. > > Some activists see aryan-dravidian struggle in the Rama-Ravana > conflict. However that is far fetched. Ravana was a Brahmin and > Rama was dark-skinned, making the equation difficult. > > Yashwant From kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET Sat Mar 11 09:11:27 2000 From: kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET (S.Kalyanaraman) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 09:11:27 +0000 Subject: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location] Message-ID: <161227056642.23782.13224834395722975634.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel wrote:> snip> > Incidentally, it also must not be forgotten that the many hundred Indus > settlements in the Ghagghar-Hakra area do *not* indicate that this was > *the* center of the Indus civilization (there are about 5! From Harappa to > Dholavira in Cutch)... Prof. Witzel, can you please name the five? Your number does not match with the monumental Gazetteer of Sites of the Indus Age (2600 sites listed in Appendix A of Possehl, 2000, Indus Age--The Beginnings, Delhi, Oxford and IBH); of these 2600, about 80% are in the Sarasvati River Basin. Also, only a few sites are found located on the river bed of Hakra in Cholistan, many are on the river banks. Also, views on Dr. Kocchar's arguments locating Ganga and Yamuna in Afghanistan (p.131 of his book)? Regards, Dr. S. Kalyanaraman ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. From saf at SAFARMER.COM Sat Mar 11 18:36:36 2000 From: saf at SAFARMER.COM (Steve Farmer) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 10:36:36 -0800 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056671.23782.15748235406842777245.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I wrote to George Thompson: > It wasn't my intention to be impolite. If I seemed so, please except my > sincere apologies. Nevertheless, my scholarly questions remain. Here they > are, rephrased, I hope, less polemically: George Thompson responded: > Sure. I will be glad to 'except' your apologies. Please 'except' mine too. Thank God for Freudian slips to lighten things up! (That is, if humor is your aim in underlining my slip-of-the-keyboard.) I wrote: > 1. Is there indeed a consensus among Vedicists that the Rgveda was passed > on for as much as two millennia through "near-perfect ORAL transmission" > (to quote Michael Witzel) until it "was first written down c. 1000 CE"? If > true, this would be a unique situation in premodern thought; that is the > source of my skepticism. Thompson responded: > Well, I hesitate to speak for everyone, but to my knowledge there is > consensus on this point. Curious that you claim this, since I thought that I had run into a number of references in the literature placing later strata of the Rgveda as late as the mid first millennium. Even Patrick Olivelle, who gives me the impression of being a rather conservative scholar, places the composition of later strata of the Rgvedas (including, I assume, much of books 1 and 10) in the early centuries of the first millennium BCE. Beyond this, there is obviously no agreement on when the work was first written down, despite your claims that a consensus exists. On this see your own statements below, which seem to sharply conflict with Michael Witzel's. So the consensus doesn't seem to be much of a consensus after all. > As for your skepticism, we have encountered it > before in the work of Goody, Finnegan, Ong, and others. Please understand: I > think that it is good that comparatists want to confront the Vedic material, > because it does pose a serious problem for at least the cruder forms of the > orality thesis. Perhaps it is time to abandon such crude distinctions as > "the oral mentality" on the one hand, and the "literate mentality" on the > other. I don't know where you stand on this, but I myself am deeply > suspcious of attempts at hypostasizing human mentality into merely two > convenient types like this. My views often diverge from those of Havelock, Goody, Finnegan, Ong, et al. I agree, however, with the views put forward in Vishal Agarwal's post, for which I've found much evidence, e.g., in Western and Indonesian traditions: That even in cases in which oral transmission was insisted upon as primary, written texts often surreptitiously served as memory aids, helping "fix" the canon. My working assumption (just a heuristic stance at present) is that this was probably true in the case of the Rgveda, which I'd guess was probably first written down in the last half of the first millennium BCE. Hence my question about the passages in Manu that clearly refer to literate uses of the Veda. Thompson writes: > As far as I can see, Manu is irrrelevant. "Irrrelevant" -- I gather from *your* slips that you get rather emotional about the issue! Is that because you recognize that the position that you are arguing here is a trifle inconsistent? To whit: > Nobody denies that writing was > commonplace by the post-Vedic period [and Manu is clearly post-Vedic]. That > the Brahminical orality of this period may have been a a type of secondary > orality [influenced by literacy] does not negate the fact that in the Vedic > period itself we seem to have primary orality [no influence of writing]. Your position here has shifted radically, which hopefully means that we're getting somewhere. What triggered my original post was Michael Witzel's remark -- which you represent above as the consensus view -- that the Rgveda wasn't written down until 1000 CE, well over a millennium *after* Manu. Now I find that you apparently don't even believe this yourself. I *never* claimed that any of the Rgveda was written down in the last half of the second millennium (if that's what you mean here by the "Vedic period"). If, however, final redaction of the text -- for it does show internal signs of redaction -- is pushed closer to the mid first millennium BCE, I do have some questions about the involvement of literate processes. The 1000 CE date cited by Witzel, preceded by supposedly 2200 years of "near-perfect oral transmission" is impossible to accept. But the idea of Brahminical orality being "a type of secondary orality (influenced by literacy)" is one that I can live with -- and is in harmony as well with the views that Vishal Agarwal put forward at length in his post. But it is *not* in harmony with Witzel's claims, which you earlier represented as the consensus view in the field. Well, consensual views can shift quickly. Thompson writes: > Like Goody, you have to come to terms wih > the Vedic evidence and establish that Vedic bears the marks of literacy, in > spite of the complete absence of reference to writing in the texts and the > absence of writing of any kind in the Vedic period. > As I see it, the Vedic material clashes with Goody's model of oral mentality. > His solution was to explain that material away by insisting that literacy > must have played a role. But he did not demonstrate this. If I'm not mistaken, Dr. Thompson, *you* just made a pretty large admission about the role of literacy in preserving Vedic materials. In any event, my interest is in discovering the truth, not in supporting my own models at any cost. My training in the hard sciences leads me to view models as heuristic devices, nothing more. If the evidence conflicts with my historical models, I'm happy to discard or modify them. I often find that a good place to start an analysis is by highlighting the inconsistencies or clarifying the views seen in previous researchers in the field. Let's return to your statement that "the Brahminical orality of this period" -- i.e., the period of Manu, in the last half of the first millennium BCE --- "may have been a type of secondary orality [influenced by literacy]." Can I take it here that you are admitting that the "near-perfect oral transmission" of the Rgveda over a supposedly 2000+ year period may have had a little help from literate processes? If so, we're on the same page, as it were. Sorry to add questions to questions -- and thanks much for your detailed response. My best, Steve Farmer http://www.safarmer.com/pico/abstract.html From abhinav at DEL3.VSNL.NET.IN Sat Mar 11 11:46:13 2000 From: abhinav at DEL3.VSNL.NET.IN (Bharat Gupt) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 11:46:13 +0000 Subject: Pluralism, Texts, and Oaths Message-ID: <161227056717.23782.15076237416698140892.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Noel Salmond wrote: > > At 11:36 AM 3/9/00 -0800, you wrote: > >Many Tamils take oath with Tirukkural in courts, swearing in > >ceremonies, weddings. For a good translation, > >K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, Tirukkural, an English verse rendering, > >M. P. Birla Foundation, 1988. > > > >P.S.Sundaram, The Kural, Penguin is easily available. > > > Would this be a text also used by Tamils from Sri Lanka for the same > purposes? > What is the policy of the Indian courts with regard to the use of sacred > texts for oaths, is it optional altogether? Was or is their use debated > given the commitment to secularism? > > in abysmal ignorance, but with many thanks > > Noel Salmond > Carleton University > Ottawa, Canada In the trial Courts in the Delhi State, and I am told that in UP and Harayana also,the witness is made to say, "I swear by Dharma that I shall speak the truth" (Main dharma se kahataa hoon ki sach boloongaa). The Gita, is hardly ever brought out and put on the table for swearing. This is the normal practice these days. This has become popular because the courts have very little time for each case and perhaps it is presumed that by uttering the word "dharma" the witness calls to the source of his faith, whatever that it may be. Muslims, however, do not use the word dharma. They swear by Khudaah or Allah and Christians use the word God. ( I do not know what word in Hindi, Tamil or other language, the totally non-English-knowing Christians use ). Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists use the word dharma. All Courts , including the High Courts, keep a copy of the Gita for swearing if the need be. The Koran Sharif and the Granth Sahib are never kept in the Courts. I am told by the members of the Bar, that binging these two would invite very strong objecions from Muslims and Sikhs. Bharat Gupt Associate Professor , Delhi University. From saf at SAFARMER.COM Sat Mar 11 20:51:42 2000 From: saf at SAFARMER.COM (Steve Farmer) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 12:51:42 -0800 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056682.23782.14516945838528786851.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Dr. Vassilkov: Thanks much for your thoughtful note. I'll limit my comments here to a few points, since I've already addressed some of these questions in my reply to Dr. Thompson: You write: > I am afraid, you will not succeed in your attempts to apply > to the text of the Rgveda patterns and approaches developed > on the basis of the early written (or oral poetic) texts of > other cultures. The technique of composition and transmission > of Vedic texts is absolutely unique. I admit that the idea that much in any one culture is "absolutely unique" is anathema to the comparativist in me. For parts of my work, over the past two decades I've closely followed specialized developments in neurobiology -- especially in respect to prefrontal functions, where important parts of memory as well as cultural models are encoded. The deep biological constraints on memory processes are, despite much neural plasticity, culturally invariant. The same "wetware" and the similar means of internal and external encoding (in use of rhyming patterns, imagistic mnemonics, writing, etc.) implies that there will be broad structural similarities in cultural byproducts as well. > The concept of stratification which implies any > *redactions* or *revisions* of the earlier texts does not work > here. The composition of a Vedic hymn was a sacred process, its > text was produced as a precious artefact (a gift to a god), the > text was often strewn with alliterations and anagramms, > which hinted at the name of the god; nothing could be changed > or omitted in it. Identical claims are made for the sacred canons in every other major premodern society that I have studied. These religious claims can't stand as philological proof, however. > Special mnemonic technique made it possible to preserve the text > word for word, sound for sound.There was even a myth stressing > the mortal danger of the mispronunciation of a single syllable > in a Vedic text. Ditto for my remarks above. Jewish Rabbinical traditions make similar claims for the Torah, for example; same for the Kabbalistic texts of the later middle ages. Many other examples can be cited. A lot is known about mnemonic techniques in a wide range of half-literate societies. Again, neurological constraints apply. > The "stratification" as regards Vedic texts means > only that some mandalas contain old hymns and other mandalas > (or their parts) contain late hymns; old and late hymns differ > in style and language and no late revision of the > old hymns was possible. There are many signs of internal commentary in Vedic hymns that at some point was integrated into the received text, following familiar patterns seen in many other half-oral/half-literate traditions. This seems most evident in the presumptively youngest materials in the Rgvedas found in books 1 and 10, so far as I can tell. Again, this kind of internal development is common in other, non-Indian, traditions. This goes far beyond the question of so-called interpolations: There were many ways in which premodern oral/literate texts could become stratified. > There is a consensus between the majority of > scholars: the earliest "strata" is dated approximately by 1500 > BC, the latest one - around 1000 BC. The proposed correction of > the date of the Buddha can make the Vedic > hymns younger by a century, let us say, and not more. Dating of similar texts that have always been assumed to be of exactly the same period in other premodern fields is currently being pushed radically forward. In China, e.g., the date of the Yijing (Classic of Changes), which also has traditionally been dated to the second millennium BCE, is now placed by prominent researchers in the Warring States group in the 4th century CE -- a shift of over 600 years! The philological grounds on which ancient texts composed under presumptively preliterate conditions have been traditionally dated are anything but solid, despite claims to the contrary. Assumptions about rates of linguistic change (e.g., by the old glottochronologists) are particularly untrustworthy when applied to sacred languages, in which great lengths were made in priestly classes to artificially retard linguistic drift. Violent arguments about dating the Shijing (Book of Odes) and Yijing in China on philological grounds, about dating various strata of the Homeric corpus, and about dating different layers in ancient Persian, Hebrew, and even Mesoamerican texts makes me question the assumption that all layers of the Rgvedas lie so neatly in the date ranges that you claim. Good scholarship doesn't depend on majority opinions. > The first written records in > India belong to the 3rd century BC. I know the studies of Fussman, von Hin?ber, and Falk, et al. that make these claims -- summarized, e.g., by Richard Solomon at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/position/salomon.html But much depends in the works of these scholars on the argument of silence, which isn't a strong one when you consider that neither the climate nor the nature of the typical materials used for writing in ancient India would favor the survival of early texts. (This is dissimilar to the situation in China, where a long series of new tomb-text discoveries are now shaking the field.) Moreover, as you point out, some evidence pushes that date back as far as the 6th century, which is early enough for my purposes. (Please don't confuse my views with Jack Goody's.) In any event, to clarify matters: I don't argue against the original oral composition of the Rgveda, by any means. My interest revolves around how the canon was fixed and transmitted starting around the mid part of the first millennium BCE, when there was a greatly increased use of lightweight writing materials in most major Eurasian civilizations. My views on many points are in accord with those put forward on this List in the last few days by Vishal Argawal and even by George Thompson, who admits that "Brahminical orality" in the latter half of the first millennium BCE (the period of Manu) "may have been a type of secondary orality [influenced by literacy]." I can live with that view. I would strenuously argue, on the other hand, against Michael Witzel's comment that "near-perfect oral transmission" of the Rgveda went on for over two millennia *before* the text was written down, which he claims was not until c. 1000 CE. If *that's* the consensus view in the field, it should be reexamined. Deep down, on dating, BTW, I think there are many similarities in the question of dating the Rgvedas, the Shijing in China, the Psalms in the Middle East, and similar compilations in Eurasia. All, I would guess, were reduced to writing in some way -- although official canonization didn't come until later -- by the 4th century CE. My best, Steve Farmer http://www.safarmer.com/pico/abstract.html From saf at SAFARMER.COM Sat Mar 11 20:55:44 2000 From: saf at SAFARMER.COM (Steve Farmer) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 12:55:44 -0800 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda (correction) Message-ID: <161227056685.23782.10146369763534004735.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I wrote: > Dating of similar texts that have always been assumed to be of > exactly the same period in other premodern fields is currently > being pushed radically forward. In China, e.g., the date of the > Yijing (Classic of Changes), which also has traditionally been > dated to the second millennium BCE, is now placed by prominent > researchers in the Warring States group in the 4th century CE -- > a shift of over 600 years! > I obviously meant in the 4th century BCE - not CE. Steve Farmer From g.v.simson at EAST.UIO.NO Sat Mar 11 14:12:29 2000 From: g.v.simson at EAST.UIO.NO (Georg von Simson) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 15:12:29 +0100 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda In-Reply-To: <68.1c26873.25fb9ada@cs.com> Message-ID: <161227056661.23782.2191637300603010561.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Steve Farmer wrote (I quote only one sentence): >> If it is really true that premodern Vedic reciters, unlike those found in >> every other known premodern civilization, maintained "near-perfect >> ORAL transmission" over two millennia of a highly stratified compilation >> like the Rgvedas, Indologists should be prepared with a credible reason >> to explain India's uniqueness. The uniqueness (if it really exists) might be explained by the fact that at an early date (maybe during the Indus Valley Culture, which then would have influenced the later Vedic culture) techniques of concentration and mind controll were developed in India that seem to lack parallels in other cultures (see the yoga schools spreading over the whole world these days as an export from India). Another striking example of this uniqueness (beside the oral transmission of the Vedic texts) is in my opinion Panini's grammar. Regardless whether one assumes that writing existed in his time (ca. 400 BCE?) in India or not, the whole, extremely complicated and sophisticated, work is conceived in a way that makes it useful under the condition only that you instal it in your mind and let it work there as a kind of computer software. Otherwise - used as a written text in the same way we use our grammars today - it is difficult to survey and rather unpractical. A piece of evidence of the orality of this grammar is the fact that the scope of some comprehensive rules is marked by an accent, which is to be heard and not written (the Panini experts on the List may correct me if I am wrong!). With good reason Paul Thieme imagined Panini as a kind of meditating, truth-working yogi, cf. Thieme, Kleine Schriften II, p. 1186 f., quoting and translating Patanjali I.39.10 ff.: "The teacher (Panini) functioning as an authoritative means of cognition, used to produce the sUtra with great effort (that is: with the effort of spiritual concentration required for the recognition and formulation of a deep truth): holding a cleansing bunch of darbha-grass in his hand, being seated on clean ground, his face turned toward the east." Whereas this picture does not resemble a scholar writing a grammar, Patanjali (2nd century BCE) might very well have composed his large commentary on Panini by writing it. Best regards Georg v. Simson From rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM Sat Mar 11 20:52:22 2000 From: rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM (Rajarshi Banerjee) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 15:52:22 -0500 Subject: chariots (was: AIT, NEW genetic evidence) Message-ID: <161227056688.23782.14867580661584987287.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> GVS>In the battle description of the Mahabharata the chariot troops are still the main force of the army, and all the major heroes fight from chariots. they (almost) never are riding on horse-back (though horse-riders are one of the four branches of the army) and there are only a few instances where a king is riding on an elephant. The chariot as the most important weapon probably was an anachronism at the time when the younger layers of the epic were composed, but what about the time when the Mahabharata started (let us say around the middle of the first millennium BCE - I am not talking about the Mahabharata war as a historical event, but about the epic poem)? At least the memory of the importance of the chariot seems to have been strong throughout the history of the epic. RB> What about the actual war, should all descriptions be treated literally. Were chariots really used or were the heroes reto-fitted with chariots to fit imagined stereotypes. We ofcourse have a sArathi caste. krishna as a Sarathi could simply symbolize a non combatant schemer. In general I just believe that there was a war and it left some memories but I am afraid to guess more. Sparreboom is cautious in claiming wide spread chariot use even in vedic times and implies diminishing importance of chariots quite early on. Mauryan india had chariots but their importance in warfare was not that great. So we basically have people in 500 BC composing mahabharata using stereotypes almost a millenia older implying some knowledge of ancient practices or simply the presense of older versions of the epic which were treated as history. UT> However, I get my doubts when seeing this etymology. Having a background in Tibetan studies, I know that the basic meaning of the word kha (exact same spelling and pronounciation) in Tibetan and possibly in other Himalayan languages is again "hole", but usually referring to "the mouth". RB> khA means eating in all north indian languages khAnA/ khAbAr is food. khAn( Is this persian )is a mine or a big hole in the ground. good axel hole indeed seems quite a stretch. From rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM Sat Mar 11 21:08:10 2000 From: rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM (Rajarshi Banerjee) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 16:08:10 -0500 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056690.23782.12417711706909039254.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> SF> I admit that the idea that much in any one culture is "absolutely unique" is anathema to the comparativist in me. I am not an expert on the vedas but how does one explain the near perfect match between different schools of the vedas in different parts of India without much standardiing influence or contact between them or is this just a myth. Isnt this somewhat unique as compared to other cultures. Perhaps the answer partly lies in the nature of sanskrit phonology which is unique compared to other natural languages. regards RB From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Mar 12 01:28:52 2000 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 17:28:52 -0800 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056707.23782.18169696491720241498.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> George Thompson wrote: >I seriously doubt that Patrick Olivelle *gave* you this impression. It >would >seem to me rather that you just took it. Patrick Olivelle knows that 500 >BCE >is too late for the latest strata of the RV. It seems to me that the confusion is due to not specifying what is the extent of the text that gets to be called RV. For most Indologists, it is primarily the samhitaa portion, whereas a lot of Prof. Olivelle's comments relate to the AraNyakas and upanishads. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From GthomGt at CS.COM Sun Mar 12 00:11:00 2000 From: GthomGt at CS.COM (George Thompson) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 19:11:00 -0500 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056696.23782.9789595830701149399.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 3/11/00 1:30:48 PM Eastern Standard Time, saf at SAFARMER.COM writes: [snip] > > Well, I hesitate to speak for everyone, but to my knowledge there is > > consensus on this point. > > Curious that you claim this, since I thought that I had run into > a number of references in the literature placing later strata of > the Rgveda as late as the mid first millennium. Even Patrick > Olivelle, who gives me the impression of being a rather > conservative scholar, places the composition of later strata of > the Rgvedas (including, I assume, much of books 1 and 10) in the > early centuries of the first millennium BCE. Beyond this, there > is obviously no agreement on when the work was first written > down, despite your claims that a consensus exists. On this see > your own statements below, which seem to sharply conflict with > Michael Witzel's. So the consensus doesn't seem to be much of a > consensus after all. I seriously doubt that Patrick Olivelle *gave* you this impression. It would seem to me rather that you just took it. Patrick Olivelle knows that 500 BCE is too late for the latest strata of the RV. If you would like to create disagreements between me and Patrick Olivelle and Micahel Witzel, it will be necessary to document them. For as far as I know, there aren't any when it comes to the dating of the Vedic period. > > > As for your skepticism, we have encountered it > > before in the work of Goody, Finnegan, Ong, and others. Please understand: > I > > think that it is good that comparatists want to confront the Vedic > material, > > because it does pose a serious problem for at least the cruder forms of > the > > orality thesis. Perhaps it is time to abandon such crude distinctions as > > "the oral mentality" on the one hand, and the "literate mentality" on the > > other. I don't know where you stand on this, but I myself am deeply > > suspcious of attempts at hypostasizing human mentality into merely two > > convenient types like this. > > My views often diverge from those of Havelock, Goody, Finnegan, > Ong, et al. I agree, however, with the views put forward in > Vishal Agarwal's post, for which I've found much evidence, e.g., > in Western and Indonesian traditions: That even in cases in which > oral transmission was insisted upon as primary, written texts > often surreptitiously served as memory aids, helping "fix" the > canon. My working assumption (just a heuristic stance at present) > is that this was probably true in the case of the Rgveda, which > I'd guess was probably first written down in the last half of the > first millennium BCE. Hence my question about the passages in > Manu that clearly refer to literate uses of the Veda. Your working assumption is the same as Goody's. Heuristic or not, it has no basis I think that you should either provide it with one, or abandon it. > > Thompson writes: > > > As far as I can see, Manu is irrrelevant. > > "Irrrelevant" -- I gather from *your* slips that you get rather > emotional about the issue! Is that because you recognize that the > position that you are arguing here is a trifle inconsistent? My response was not a slip, nor was it an expression of emotion. ManusmRti is irrelevant because it is post-Vedic. And by the way its date is 2nd or 3rd cent. CE. To whit: > > > Nobody denies that writing was > > commonplace by the post-Vedic period [and Manu is clearly post-Vedic]. > That > > the Brahminical orality of this period may have been a a type of secondary > > orality [influenced by literacy] does not negate the fact that in the > Vedic > > period itself we seem to have primary orality [no influence of writing]. > > Your position here has shifted radically, which hopefully means > that we're getting somewhere. What triggered my original post was > Michael Witzel's remark -- which you represent above as the > consensus view -- that the Rgveda wasn't written down until 1000 > CE, well over a millennium *after* Manu. Now I find that you > apparently don't even believe this yourself. I *never* claimed > that any of the Rgveda was written down in the last half of the > second millennium (if that's what you mean here by the "Vedic > period"). If, however, final redaction of the text -- for it does > show internal signs of redaction -- is pushed closer to the mid > first millennium BCE, I do have some questions about the > involvement of literate processes. > No, my position hasn't shifted at all. You are utterly confused about your dates. > The 1000 CE date cited by Witzel, preceded by supposedly 2200 > years of "near-perfect oral transmission" is impossible to > accept. But the idea of Brahminical orality being "a type of > secondary orality (influenced by literacy)" is one that I can > live with -- and is in harmony as well with the views that Vishal > Agarwal put forward at length in his post. But it is *not* in > harmony with Witzel's claims, which you earlier represented as > the consensus view in the field. > > Well, consensual views can shift quickly. Let's be clear. Vedic is Vedic and Brahminical is Brahminical. They are not the same thing. What you find impossible to accept on the one hand, and in harmony with the views of one Vishal Agarwal on the other, has nothing to do with the matter. You are confused. > > Thompson writes: > > > Like Goody, you have to come to terms wih > > the Vedic evidence and establish that Vedic bears the marks of literacy, > in > > spite of the complete absence of reference to writing in the texts and the > > absence of writing of any kind in the Vedic period. > > > As I see it, the Vedic material clashes with Goody's model of oral > mentality. > > His solution was to explain that material away by insisting that literacy > > must have played a role. But he did not demonstrate this. > > If I'm not mistaken, Dr. Thompson, *you* just made a pretty large > admission about the role of literacy in preserving Vedic > materials. In any event, my interest is in discovering the truth, > not in supporting my own models at any cost. My training in the > hard sciences leads me to view models as heuristic devices, > nothing more. If the evidence conflicts with my historical > models, I'm happy to discard or modify them. What are you talking about? I have made no 'pretty large admission' whatsoever. The Vedic period was preliterate. It preserved itself. Even after the arrival of literacy in the Indian subcontinent it continued to preserve itself. Why is this hard to understand? > > I often find that a good place to start an analysis is by > highlighting the inconsistencies or clarifying the views seen in > previous researchers in the field. Let's return to your statement > that "the Brahminical orality of this period" -- i.e., the period > of Manu, in the last half of the first millennium BCE --- "may > have been a type of secondary orality [influenced by literacy]." > Can I take it here that you are admitting that the "near-perfect > oral transmission" of the Rgveda over a supposedly 2000+ year > period may have had a little help from literate processes? If so, > we're on the same page, as it were. Nope. Manu is much later than this, and Manu 12.103 does not establish that the RV was preserved by literate processses. Comparison of Vedic with other traditions may well be fruitful in the long run. But it won't be until you get basic facts of Vedic right. Best wishes, George Thompson p.s. please let us know what western traditions you have worked on in detail > From utkragh at HUM.KU.DK Sat Mar 11 18:31:22 2000 From: utkragh at HUM.KU.DK (Ulrich T. Kragh) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 19:31:22 +0100 Subject: Etymology of sukha and duHkha Message-ID: <161227056674.23782.9770476203862650014.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The recent discussion thread on chariots inspired me to bring up the following question, which I have been wondering about: Do you have any comments on the etymologies of the Sanskrit words sukha "happiness" and duHkha "misery"? As far as I know, the standard etymology for sukha is based on the earliest occurrence of this word, namely in Rgveda; e.g. Monier-Williams (p. 1220, entry 'sukha') writes: "Sukha, mfn. (said to be fr. 5.su+3.kha and to mean originally 'having a good axle-hole;' possibly a PrAkRit form of su-stha, q.v.; cf. duHkha) ..." The word kha itself seems simply to have the basic meaning of "hole" or "aperture", also an aperture of the human body; again, MW gives reference to Rgveda, where kha occurs (unfortunately, I haven't got a concrete reference for you here) in sense "the hole in the nave of a wheel through which the axis runs" (MW p. 334, entry "kha"). Thus, I think the standard etymology for sukha "happiness" is taken to be "having a good axle-hole", i.e. having a functioning (or perhaps fast) chariot, and thus in the extended meaning thereby meaning "to be happy". Oppositely, duHkha would refer to the state of not having such a good hole. However, I get my doubts when seeing this etymology. Having a background in Tibetan studies, I know that the basic meaning of the word kha (exact same spelling and pronounciation) in Tibetan and possibly in other Himalayan languages is again "hole", but usually referring to "the mouth". I believe that the same meaning can be seen in the Skr. word mukha "mouth, face", which likewise occurs in Rgveda. This led me to think that sukha could actually be derived from kha in the sense of mouth (lit. "good mouth") in the extended meaning of "being nourished or satisfied with food" and thus being "happy", whereas duHkha similarly would come to mean "hungry" and thus "unhappy". Since sukha and duHkha are such fundamental terms in human existence, I find such an etymology more believable than the perhaps far-fetched "having a good axle-hole". I would very much appreciate clarification on these terms. With best regards, Ulrich T. Kragh University of Copenhagen From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sun Mar 12 00:54:35 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 19:54:35 -0500 Subject: Saraswati (Dr. Witzel) In-Reply-To: <20000311145402.65626.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <161227056699.23782.12059278884023698990.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> VA: >>You must have met Dr. Parpola in Japan in November 1999. What transpired then? Who withdrew his hypothesis? He or you? No. ------------ Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sun Mar 12 00:55:19 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 19:55:19 -0500 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda In-Reply-To: <38CAB1CD.29FC01A8@safarmer.com> Message-ID: <161227056702.23782.12390519395466160704.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Dr. Farmer, Most of the pertinent arguments of the 'consensus' have been provided by Profs. Thompson and Vassilkov, so I can be fairly brief, and will limit myself to those items not yet mentioned. (1) Oral tradition: The RV certainly has several layers, but they are in the same style of poetry, in the same Koine (barring SOME dialect features). There is no evidence of reshaping of stanzas/hymns at the time of composition of the texts during these (I believe), 3 historical layers with ACTIVE composition, which I think, should be dated between roughly 1450-1200 BCE) The first critical point is the collection (samhitaa) of the available poems under the Kuru kings (c. 1200 BCE), which preserves the clan-wise arrangement of hymns (these poet-priests competed with each other and would not give up their poems that easily). This first RV Samhita is a collection of the texts, arranged in a strictly 'mathematical' order (longer down to shorter hymns; the nucleus, from smallest clan collection, RV 2, up to longest clan collection, RV 7). In short, author, deity and meter set the order (as remembered even today). Exceptions to that rule stick out like a sore thumb, and have been discussed already by Bergaigne and Oldenberg (1888). Some interpolations are later -- but, again, we know which ones!) We can also tell when these interpolations took place (by language) and before which date: i.e. before or after the redactor, Sakalya, a Bihar person of the late Brahmana period, i.e. shortly before the Buddha (c. 500 or 400 BCE). We also know *what* has been changed since the time of collection (samhitaa) : they are a few, clearly visible phonetic developments, due to historical development, (Cuv > Cv, etc.) and a few 'strange', schoolmaster type changes, --- we would say "in orthography" --- but is was, at that time of course, orthoepic diaskeuasis. All of the above is, basically, old news (summed up and elaborated for the socio-political context, in "Inside the texts" 1997 (for this and other secondary lit., see my web site, below). The one point which you don't seem able to accept is that the text was indeed so faithfully transmitted *orally* only, over these maximally 1000 years, until the redaction. As pointed out by my colleagues, this is nothing special in inside India, while it may be elsewhere. It has been the ethos of this culture(also in neighboring Iran: Avestan) from the first hymn of the RV onwards. Even early post-RV texts refer to it, explicitly, by a story: Indra came to cut off someone's head because he had mispronounced the tonal accents in a nominal compound, and thus (grammatically) had turned himself from an "enemy of Indra" into someone Indra hates ('whose enemy is Indra'). Indra had no choice, since Mantras always work... The same story was still told to me by some Nepalese Pandits when they corrected the manuscript with the Mantras for the coronation of the present king, in 1975. And, one can of course learn by heart the c. 800 pp. of the RV, in small Roman characters, perfectly. Just go to the various corners of India, and you will still find men who can do it! Make them start anywhere inside the text, without a written text in front of them. I have seen it. So why not in 500 CE, 500 BCE and 1000 BCE? (And there are people who know more than one text by heart!) In the SAME form, whether you go to E, S, or W India, or to Benares, -- whatever scholars say about the restrictions of human 'software'. I have seen it and I have *tested* it (politely of course, since I have the highest regard for *traditional* Indian scholars and Veda reciters.) We have already talked about the several mnemotechnical aids in preserving this tradition. If you, further, cannot believe that the texts is, apart from the changes referred to above, the same as in 1500/1200 BCE, consider that (almost ) all the ealry emendations by western scholars of the 19th cent. have been given up: we are very cautious now to edit the RV (though not other, less well preserved Vedic texts, such as Maitr. or Katha S.,Jaim. Brahm. etc,-- a special long topic, why and how...). The RV transmision is just unlike the written text transmission of Homer, the Bible, the Chinese classics, etc. While one may try to argue that certain very specific rules of grammar, such as for accented/unaccented verbs and vocatives, may have been re-edited later on according to the very well developed Indian grammar (Panini), this does *not* hold in cases where Panini DOES NOT KNOW or TEACH the details. The 'elided' (augmentless) Aorists (injunctives) are a point in case, where Panini throws up his hands, and it is even more surprising to see individual poet's points of 'stress'/"underlining" applied (again by use of the *long lost* tonal accent) in quite a number of cases (for all of which no grammatical rule by Panini exists). See discussion of verbal accent by Kline in INSIDE... In other words, there are quite a number of cases where no one /nothing could help the post-RV transmitters and the redactor to 'correct' the text since they COULD no longer know: it is indeed a tape recording (slightly amended, though not a` la Nixon) of c. 1200 BCE. In one word, India is different here from the rest of the world (minus, to some degree, the Zoroastrian texts of their closest relatives, the old Iranians), due to the stress, put from the very beginning on correct pronunciation and recitation, -- from tonal accents, to words, to sentences, all in the proper textual order. No changes, no substitutions. As my colleagues (or the Nepalese pandits, above) have said: any change in pronunciation will result in unwanted or dangerous consequences... (We can talk about the tradition of the early Samaveda, Yajurveda and Atharvaveda separately. Here things are a bit more complex). About the DATEs: As for the dates used above, please see my all too short statement that Dominik Wujastyk put on the Indology 'position' page ( http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/indology.html ) some time ago: I will elaborate on details when I get the time, maybe during the spring break. More about the written tradition of Vedic texts, in a separate msg. ============== Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From zydenbos at GMX.LI Sat Mar 11 19:25:08 2000 From: zydenbos at GMX.LI (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 20:25:08 +0100 Subject: (was) BiBTeX Packages for citing MSS In-Reply-To: <01JMU4PV3R8Q91WGKI@its.canterbury.ac.nz> Message-ID: <161227056680.23782.4841362531612403164.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Am Thu, 09 Mar 2000 schrieb Richard B. Mahoney: > Dear Readers, > > Over the past few months I have been making the - at times > frustrating - transition from WordPerfect to TeX and LaTex. Looking > back, all the effort seems wor Have you used the WordPerfect version 5 to LaTeX conversion program that was written at the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven several years ago? The source code in Pascal is freely available, and I've used it on a few texts that I had written. Probably you're aware of the program's existence, but I thought I should mention it, just in case. RZ -- Dr. Robert J. Zydenbos Eindhoven, the Netherlands e-mail: zydenbos at gmx.li From magier at COLUMBIA.EDU Sun Mar 12 01:27:23 2000 From: magier at COLUMBIA.EDU (David Magier) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 20:27:23 -0500 Subject: Study in Tamil Nadu announcement Message-ID: <161227056705.23782.9961989655435561094.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I was asked to forward the following study abroad announcement to your mailing list or listserv. Please contact Prof. Harrigan directly for any further information. David Magier ================= From: "Patrick Harrigan" Subject: Study in Tamil Nadu announcement Study in Tamil Nadu 2000-01 Tamil University, Thanjavur Eight-month diploma course in Tamil language and culture (September 2000 - April 2001) Students of South Indian culture are invited to undertake a year of practical fieldwork in Tamil Nadu under the professional guidance of academic counselors and the teaching faculty of the Tamil University at Thanjavur in central Tamil Nadu. Participants in the Study in Tamil Nadu diploma course in Tamil Culture will: * Learn elementary spoken and written forms of modern Tamil; * Read the course list of required books and articles recommended by the Dean; * Attend lectures by experts including TU teaching faculty on aspects of Tamil culture; * Participate in monthly guided field trips to sites of historical, architectural and/or cultural interest; * Undertake a theoretical-cum-practical research project under faculty supervision; and * Submit an original research paper documenting their fieldwork in Tamil Nadu. Program enrollment is limited to 6-12 foreign students to ensure optimal class size and to facilitate field trips. The cost of the programme is tentatively set at US$240 only for the eight-month course (September 1 - April 30). For details, contact the Program Facilitator: Patrick Harrigan Or visit the Study in Tamil Nadu home page: http://xlweb.com/heritage/skanda/sitn.htm From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Sat Mar 11 20:15:18 2000 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 21:15:18 +0100 Subject: SV: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056693.23782.10574738795455714071.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Yaroslav Vassilkov [SMTP:yavass at YV1041.SPB.EDU] skrev 11. mars 2000 20:07: > The "stratification" as regards Vedic texts means only that some mandalas contain old hymns and other mandalas (or their parts) contain late hymns; old and late hymns differ in style and language and no late revision of the old hymns was possible. I am not sure I agree with this. The Rigveda and the Atharvaveda give us two diverging versions of the Hiranyagarbha hymn. The version of the RV 10.90 (the purusha hymn) and the version that we find in the Vajasaneyi Samhita are slightly different, and different with a theological significance. Apparently, these hymns were played around with to a certain degree and up to a point. But the end result was that they were frozen, or to put it differently: if there were variations in addition to the ones we've got, they have been lost to posterity. >The first written records in India belong to the 3rd century BC. Even if we suggest the invention of writing two or three centuries earlier (it seems possible, in particular, that KharoSTi was invented in the Achemenian chancelleries of the North-West, acc. to Prof.B.N.Mukherjee), we have to suggest that during the same two or three centuries the writing was used only for administrative/household records (as elsewhere). It is worth noticing that Megasthenes claims that there was no writing system in India (M. was ambassador to the court in Pataliputra in the 3rd century BCE). We know, of course, that this is wrong, but it proves that writing was not something that sprung in your face. As matter of comparison, an oral literature existed in West Africa in the middle ages in spite of the fact that Arabic writing was well known. But it was used for other purposes. >So there always be a gap of several centuries, during which RV had to be transmitted solely by oral means, without use of any written text even for "control" purposes. Wouldn't it seem likely that commentaries to the Vedas were written down, just like commentaries to Panini? The question is of course if the Vedic verses were written in extenso in these commentaries or if they were just alluded to by their initial words (as is the case in the Brahmanas). The Brahmana reference system is actually a strong indicator of orality. Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Norway Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no From yavass at YV1041.SPB.EDU Sat Mar 11 19:06:56 2000 From: yavass at YV1041.SPB.EDU (Yaroslav Vassilkov) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 22:06:56 +0300 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda In-Reply-To: <38C945D1.55D89CA1@safarmer.com> Message-ID: <161227056677.23782.7769515226122191429.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Dr.Farmer, I am afraid, you will not succeed in your attempts to apply to the text of the Rgveda patterns and approaches developed on the basis of the early written (or oral poetic) texts of other cultures. The technique of composition and transmission of Vedic texts is absolutely unique. The concept of stratification which implies any *redactions* or *revisions* of the earlier texts does not work here. The composition of a Vedic hymn was a sacred process, its text was produced as a precious artefact (a gift to a god), the text was often strewn with alliterations and anagramms, which hinted at the name of the god; nothing could be changed or omitted in it. Special mnemonic technique made it possible to preserve the text word for word, sound for sound.There was even a myth stressing the mortal danger of the mispronunciation of a single syllable in a Vedic text. The "stratification" as regards Vedic texts means only that some mandalas contain old hymns and other mandalas (or their parts) contain late hymns; old and late hymns differ in style and language and no late revision of the old hymns was possible. What particularly makes you think that "various (Vedic) hymns were repeatedly *reshaped* in early stages of the text's oral development"? As far as I know, few suggestions of *interpolations* in the RV text, made by some scholars of the 19 century, referred not to the early "strata", but precisely to some late, "philosophical" hymns and were not convincing; the aim of this suggestions was to explain away imaginary "unconsistencies" in the Vedic texts, and the method itself was uncritically borrowed from the European tradition of text-criticism which had been developed in the fields of Classical and Biblical studies. Now, the problem of dating. There is a consensus between the majority of scholars: the earliest "strata" is dated approximately by 1500 BC, the latest one - around 1000 BC. The proposed correction of the date of the Buddha can make the Vedic hymns younger by a century, let us say, and not more. The first written records in India belong to the 3rd century BC. Even if we suggest the invention of writing two or three centuries earlier (it seems possible, in particular, that KharoSTi was invented in the Achemenian chancelleries of the North-West, acc. to Prof.B.N.Mukherjee), we have to suggest that during the same two or three centuries the writing was used only for administrative/household records (as elsewhere). So there always be a gap of several centuries, during which RV had to be transmitted solely by oral means, without use of any written text even for "control" purposes. Best regards, Yaroslav Vassilkov --- Yaroslav Vassilkov (yavass at YV1041.spb.edu) Sat, 11 Mar 2000 19:06 +0300 MSK From tawady at YAHOO.COM Sun Mar 12 06:25:48 2000 From: tawady at YAHOO.COM (Raveen S. Nathan) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 22:25:48 -0800 Subject: "Lanka" (was RE: "Dalitstan" ) Message-ID: <161227056710.23782.6961209855029937956.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Subject: "Lanka" (was RE: "Dalitstan" ) What is accepted etymology of the word "Lanka". I have read somewhere that it is a "Munda" word just like "Ganga" is. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From troyoga at YAHOO.COM Sun Mar 12 06:59:38 2000 From: troyoga at YAHOO.COM (Ven. Tantra) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 22:59:38 -0800 Subject: N.J. Allen Article & Tapas Message-ID: <161227056712.23782.3515516641555225276.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Many thanks to N.J. Allen for attaching the text to his very interesting article ?THE INDO-EUROPEAN PREHISTORY OF YOGA," International Journal of Hindu Studies, 2, 1 (April, 1998):1-20. Of particular interest is his ?Indo-European cultural comparativistic? approach to the subject of "tapas". He compares the heroic ordeals of Odysseus with ascetics from pre-historic Indian sources. Hence when ?he sleeps in his pile of leaves, the Greek hero is likened to a firebrand (dalon) carefully kept alight under a heap of ashes (5.487).? The author then points to a series of Svetaambara Jain scriptural stories where a king that becomes an ascetic similarly ?undertakes intense austerities and is likened to ?fire confined within a heap of ashes.? For my own, I would agree with the author that if accepted, ?the rapprochement has bearing on the history of the notion of tapas (literally ?heat?),? n. 12. Best regards, Troy Harris __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From kekai at JPS.NET Sun Mar 12 07:29:48 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 00 23:29:48 -0800 Subject: Elst's review of Kochhar's Vedic People Message-ID: <161227056649.23782.8825707675413028396.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel wrote: > > > PK Manasala:> > > Also, the steppe is really not suitable for cattle herders > > You conveniently cut my note on cows: > >>" And cattle are of course found all over the steppes, from the > Ukraine eastwards, from at least c. 4000 BCE onwards. They did not go there > of their own volition. How to keep them during winter is another problem." > > Cattle may have been present but that's not the same as describing the invading "Aryans" as cattle herders, which implies they were nomadic cowboys. In the same sense, chariots may have been present in the steppe, but the nomadic people from that region have traditionally been mounted warriors. Is there any evidence to suggest large chariot panzer divisions in the steppe? For example, there is quite a bit of evidence that war chariots were widely used in the Middle East and Northeastern Africa. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From cheapies at CABLEREGINA.COM Sun Mar 12 08:05:14 2000 From: cheapies at CABLEREGINA.COM (Benjamin Fleming) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 00 02:05:14 -0600 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056715.23782.8278701172782340811.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Steve Farmer writes: >I admit that the idea that much in any one culture is "absolutely >unique" is anathema to the comparativist in me. For parts of my >work, over the past two decades I've closely followed specialized >developments in neurobiology -- especially in respect to >prefrontal functions, where important parts of memory as well as >cultural models are encoded. Could you please elaborate upon "as well as cultural models" specifically, how you propose that a cultural model can be located in any part of the brain, meaning, the reductivist tendency of your approach to culture is suspect. Even if one's "wetware" as you call it is identical to another's this does not mean that one group cannot come up with a more effective means of using their function of memory in rhymn and verse, etc. This effective means, the Vedas, is the cultural product and is the result of parameters that are contextual and specific to India and cannot be reduced to a point in one's brain, whether or not this brain is identical throughout the world. These parameters have been elaborated upon by others already. Hence, The deep biological constraints on >memory processes are, despite much neural plasticity, culturally >invariant. whether or not "memory processes are . . culturally invariant" cultures are not invariant, and consitstent patterns (your "wetware") do not automatically imply that they are and that we should assume that one culture could not develop a technique of memorization better than others. This is not to say that I completely disagree with all your conclusions, but I have problems with the "brain" argument; the brain is limited as you say and should not be used for arguments of cultural perrenialism. The same "wetware" and the similar means of internal >and external encoding (in use of rhyming patterns, imagistic >mnemonics, writing, etc.) implies that there will be broad >structural similarities in cultural byproducts as well. No, this implies nothing, or at least it does not imply that Vedic systems of memorization could not be more effective than in other parts of the world. Cultural "byproducts" [a problematic term] need not be a direct result of brain function only. One must approach an entire physiology and its total enviornment, not only the brain. Please do not assume you can consume all essential differences with the brain argument, its limited at best. Respectfully B. Fleming From maniambalam_arasu at YAHOO.COM Sun Mar 12 11:33:22 2000 From: maniambalam_arasu at YAHOO.COM (Maniambalam Arasu) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 00 03:33:22 -0800 Subject: Dates of the written veda Message-ID: <161227056720.23782.15655327817849206489.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Dr. Thompson, I have seen Sakuntala Devi, the "human computer" in performance. Also, long lines of ashtavadanis, shatavadanis, ... Did the RV poets and the Aryans associated with them form separate guilds/schools and taught the veda only to themselves? Is the fidelity of the RV text thru oral transmission because of this close-knit school network, small but widely spread across India? Arasu __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From GthomGt at CS.COM Sun Mar 12 13:41:47 2000 From: GthomGt at CS.COM (George Thompson) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 00 08:41:47 -0500 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056723.23782.2284923307917540087.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 3/11/00 8:30:52 PM Eastern Standard Time, vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM writes: > George Thompson wrote: > > >I seriously doubt that Patrick Olivelle *gave* you this impression. It > >would > >seem to me rather that you just took it. Patrick Olivelle knows that 500 > >BCE > >is too late for the latest strata of the RV. > > It seems to me that the confusion is due to not specifying what is the > extent of the text that gets to be called RV. For most Indologists, it is > primarily the samhitaa portion, whereas a lot of Prof. Olivelle's comments > relate to the AraNyakas and upanishads. > > Vidyasankar Well, technically speaking, you are right, of course. But it is hard to imagine anyone understanding "RV" as a reference to RV brAhmaNas or RV AraNyakas or RV upaniSads. No, RV is generally recognized to be a short-hand but unambiguous reference to RV saMhitA. Of course, I do not know if Dr. Farmer knows this. There is no evidence to suggest that he does. So it is probably better to be explicit about this. Thanks for your correction. GT ------------------------------------ Also, Maniambalam Arasu adds the following: <<>> __________________________ Briefly, I think that the answer is yes. There are many members of this list who are much more familiar with contemporary Vedic schools, and their traditions, than I am. Perhaps they can provide some details and insights. I myself have never heard of Sakuntala Devi. Please tell me more about her Best wishes, GT From kekai at JPS.NET Sun Mar 12 17:54:19 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 00 09:54:19 -0800 Subject: SV: River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227056668.23782.2759150376002934188.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Lars Martin Fosse wrote: > > Paul Kekai Manansala [SMTP:kekai at JPS.NET] skrev 10. mars 2000 18:00: > > > > > Those of you who like to compare similar words in various languages might have > fun reading the following piece (the reference is from the Indo-European list): > > I agree that it is easy to find a limited list of similar words between any number of languages especially if there is substantial 'fuzziness' in lexical or sound correspondence. However, if the fuzzy factor is generally low and the word list extensive and generally cutting across many language families, the probability of coincidence becomes very low. I have pursued comparison in other areas and know personally that this is the case. Greenberg, Ruhlen and a number of the Nostracists abide by this principle. However, there are also phonological and morphological similarities which further help eliminate the possibility of coincidence. But nobody would suggest that there is no Austric, at least in terms of Munda or "Para-Munda", influence in India. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sun Mar 12 15:37:17 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 00 10:37:17 -0500 Subject: Great Discoveries, must read! Message-ID: <161227056728.23782.8343875873032238604.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> IMPORTANT: "must read!" >> PK Manasala: >the prehistoric Indian horse (Equus sivalensis).... may be gone, but >domesticated horses with >sivalensis dentition,.... are still found in >South ... Asia. How could we all have overlooked this important piece of news for so long? It definitely proves that (a) the Rgveda, with its all its horse lore, was *of the age of Equus Sivalensis* (died out some 15 mill. years ago, I hear), -- something that has, of course, always been maintained by the indigenous tradition. After all, the Rgveda, like all Shruti, is apaurusheya. And precedes our present Kaliyuga, indeed the whole Kalpa. (For details see, for example, http://www.hindubooks.org/wehwk/ch3.htm, http://www.consciousnet.com/vedic/Institute.htm, and many other authoritative web sites). (b) or, if our *present* recension of the Rgveda, redacted by Vedavyaasa -- (Steve Farmer is right in pointing out that our RV is *not* the primordial one of the beginning of the present Kalpa, some 4,320,000,000 years ago) -- is only the one of the present Yuga, at 3102 BCE; in that case, the S. Asian horses influenced by the Sivalensis type can be only have been the product of deliberate inbreeding of the Central Asian strain, by the genetic engeneers among the Rgvedic Rsis. They used Sivalensis DNA preserved in Himalayan ice (e.g., at the source of the great central river of the Vedic peoples, the Sarasvati, at the Har-ki Dhun glacier, see Dr. Kalyanaraman at http://sarasvati.simplenet.com/nsindex.htm http:/www.harappa.com, or http://www.probys.com/sarasvati After all, the Rsis had ample laboratories for that, the Yajna grounds (see: Agnihotra : a study from the chemical standpoint, by Swami Satya Prakash Saraswati. New Delhi : Jan Gyan Prakashan, 1974, or many similar studies, out of Poona, or see: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/5084/agni.html , http://www.summit.net/home/agnihotra/ , http://hindunet.org/srh_home/1997_2/0031.html , and others). The many beneficial effects of the Agnihotra were actually discovered and described already a hundred years ago by Dayanand Sarasvati (see his Satyarth Prakash/The Light of Truth, - Engl. transl. Allahabad 1915). And note, finally, Rajesh Jayaraman's quote of yesterday: "article, (with) UFO sightings during the vedic period.... powerful nuclear and atomic weapons. Also ... space vehicles which are supposed to resemble today's so called UFO mother ship." It is, of course well known all over India and Nepal (I often heard it from local pandits and Govt. ministers in New Delhi) that "the Germans --such has Max Mueller-- stole the secrets of the Vedas, and then built areoplanes and atomic bombs." And, the Rsis had funds enough (note the many RV daanastutis! -- with gifts of horses, camels, cows, gold, slave girls) to proceed with such testing for a long time, until they succeeded in producing such great horses as Dadhikraavan (RV 4.38-40) of Trasadasyu, for fear of whom the Dasyu-s trembled. They were indeed so successful in breeding these horses that the RV can speak of thousands of them that were given away as gifts (daana) by some of the great Kings of the ancient Puuru and Bharata race, whose ancient history is authoritatively described in the Mahaabhaarata and the Puraanas (all compiled by the prolific Vedavyaasa, as he himself tells us). (c) It is much more likely, though, that the Central Asian horse is but a denegerate descendent of the Sivalensis: it must have been taken by the emigrant Druhyus, as S. Talageri has shown a few years ago (S. Talageri, The Aryan Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism, Voice of India Publications, 1993), and again, it seems, more recently (Rigveda- A Historical Analysis, Delhi, Aditya Prakashan, 2000), to Central Asia and Europe, especially to England (Druhyu is of course a much more apt name than the traditional Anguli-sthaana that P.N. Oak has recognized in the Apabhramsa dialect used on those islands, Anglo-(Saxon). Actually, it has been shown long ago, in the Monsoon of 1979, by Wing Commander Simha(?) of the Indian Air Force, as reported in detail on a half page in the Hindustan Times (cannot find it right now), that English is a daughter of the South Indian language Tulu: because, as he has observed, both English and Tulu do not have the sound 'f', and 'hekkate' is the origin of English 'hickup'. Which clinches the comparison. For deeper insight into these linguistic relationships, see however, the more recent discoveries by PK Manansala at http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/9845/austric.htm , and for a grander view of other, African relatives of Tulu and Dravidian in general, see C. Winters at http://@@@http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/8919/ or in part of http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/8919/diop.htm And, speaking of the Druhyus, whoever invented Shaarmanya-desha for 'Germany'? - must have been that self-congratulatory society of R. Roth (Ratha), O. Boethlingk (Bhuutalinga) and company (to quote Th. Goldstuecker in his "Panini", originally published in his Manava-kalpa-sutra, London 1861), -- right during the dark ages of the imperialist 19th century. Little does it help them that they have also stolen the name of their airline from Skt. hamsa 'swan' (Luft-hansa), and broadcast Sanskrit twice per month on their foreign radio, Deutsche Welle, to propagate the recently exposed prachanna Christian missionary, Max Mueller (Moksamuula) and their M.M. Bhavans in India. In the end, they all remain Druhyus, long exiled from Bharatavarsha. Indeed, according to Bhagwan S. Gidwani, Return of the Aryans, Penguin (India), 1994 the Black Sea and Germany's Black Forest 'were named in memory of dark-skinned Aryans from India', which gives us a good idea of their trail via Central Asia towards the Atlantic... However, another trail leads westwards, as Bhagavad Datta and Surya Kanta have recognized long ago, early in the last century, via the Asura (Assyrians), Sura (Syrians), Maitrayaniya (Mitanni), KaTha (Hittites), PaNi (Phoenicians), etc. etc. (Bhagavad Datta, Vaidika vanmaya ka itihasa, New Delhi, repr. 1974, Surya Kanta, Kathakasamkalana, Lahore 1943) If we take all these and other important discoveries, i.e. * the ancient empires of the Africans (Winters) in Egypt (unfortunately he forgets Greece's Black Athene!), and in Mexico (Olmeks), * those of India, i.e. the "Black people ... the Sudras, Dalits and Dravidians of India" (PK Manansala, March 1, 2000), some of whose expansion to the Americas is detailed by Chaman Lal (Hindu America, Hoshiarpur 1956, with prefaces/testimonials by such important authorities as M.K. Gandhi, J. Nehru, S. Radhakrishnan, S. Naidu...): they settled in Mexico as Maya (the name gives it away!), Aztecs, etc.; we should also not forget those who went to China early on, see: Paramesh Choudhury, Indian origin of the Chinese nation; and * the South East Asians (Austrics), who are spread from Sumeria to Easter Island (Manansala) and finally add things up, the "tropical" people (J. Campbell) will receive their proper place in (pre)history, and the Eurocentric notion of innovation and expansion by blue-eyed and blond-haired Europeans, such as the Fins, Esthonians etc., ( http://www.hindubooks.org/david_frawley/myth_aryan_invasion/page16.shtml ) will be replaced, as the great mythologist Joseph Campbell has foreshadowed, by the so far neglected ones of the tropical forests. But to return to the horse question, which has perturbed this list for too long and which, like "so many Asian questions, would not go away," as Dr. Kalyanaraman has so correctly observed recently, -- were it not for the great discoveries mentioned above. It is a great pity that it have gone unnoticed for so long among Indologists, otherwise, they would not have indulged in the "Saturnalia of Sanskrit philology", to quote Goldstuecker again, for some 200 years. It is apt that this news comes on the heels of the yearly Saturnalia, finished just now on Ash Wednesday, so that these Eurocentrists can repent and put a black ash tilaka on their forehead (incidentally another item stolen from India, the list is long ....) May this message also serve as my answer to the various "Aryan" threads that have populated "Indology" recently. The news is, after all, important enough that I could not wait for another 2 weeks, until April 1. ========== Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From saf at SAFARMER.COM Sun Mar 12 20:17:59 2000 From: saf at SAFARMER.COM (Steve Farmer) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 00 12:17:59 -0800 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056733.23782.10598327130322802802.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I wrote, in response to George Thompson: > Even Patrick > Olivelle, who gives me the impression of being a rather > conservative scholar, places the composition of later strata of > the Rgvedas (including, I assume, much of books 1 and 10) in the > early centuries of the first millennium BCE. Dr. Thompson responded: > I seriously doubt that Patrick Olivelle *gave* you this impression. It would > seem to me rather that you just took it. Patrick Olivelle knows that 500 BCE > is too late for the latest strata of the RV. If you would like to create > disagreements between me and Patrick Olivelle and Micahel Witzel, it will be > necessary to document them. For as far as I know, there aren't any when it > comes to the dating of the Vedic period. Please note that I *didn't* say that Olivelle dated later strata of the RV to 500 BCE. What I said, quite clearly, was that even Olivelle places later strata of the Rgveda "in the early centuries of the first millennium BCE." That is easy to document, since you ask for proof. See, e.g., Olivelle's introduction to his Upanishads translations (1996: xxvii), where he writes of "the time of the latest hymns of the Rgveda, probably the early centuries of the first millennium BCE." I mentioned Olivelle only when questioning your claim that a consensus existed that placed the composition of the Rgveda between 1500 and 1200 BCE. Prof. Olivelle doesn't tell us which parts of the Rgveda he has in mind (since people have subsequently raised that issue), but his dating nonetheless falls well after 1200 CE. I've seen references in other scholars to even later dates than Olivelle's. Thompson writes: > Your working assumption is the same as Goody's. The differences between my work and Goody's are profound. Goody dealt in ancient traditions only with what he thought were the consequences of sudden shifts from oral to written modes of transmission. I don't think that such shifts were necessarily all that sudden. My work in Western traditions (e.g., in _Syncretism in the West_, 1998, a 595-page book) involves the transformations that took place in religious and philosophical systems under the impact of two thousand years of exegetical processes in manuscript traditions. Nowhere in his works does Goody discuss long-range exegetical transformations nor, for that matter, anything concerning later manuscript traditions. Your argument with Goody apparently lies in his claim that written texts were involved in the early formation of the Rgveda. I make no such claims. My original post, instead, questioned Prof. Witzel's views that *after* the Vedic period a "near-perfect oral transmission" of the Rgveda existed until it was supposedly "first written down c 1000 CE." This point I do doubt. I suspect that the Rgveda was committed to writing much earlier than 1000 CE. I also suspect, despite the emphasis placed in tradition on oral transmission of the Rgveda, that those texts were used as guides to memory by reciters at least by the beginning of the common era. Apparently, judging from the private email responses that I've gotten over the last few days, there are quite a number of Indologists who agree with me. So where's the consensus? My views are in also agreement with those of Vishal Agarwal, which he published in this List: > ...the eclectic nature of Vedic citations in older works like the Shabara > Bhashya and even before that, in the Apastamba Srauta Sutra, attest to the > fact that Vedic manuscripts did exist much before 1000 CE. These authors > (and many others), quote dozens of Vedic works, and the only way they could > have done this was that they either possessed manuscripts (because it is > virtually impossible to memorise so many texts) or that they were helped by > a 'Parishad' of scholars belonging to different Vedic schools--which is not > attested by tradition. Vishal Agarwal goes on: > Despite the mnemonic devices and a host of texts facilitating > the oral tradition (these texts are called Lakshana granthas), the recitors > still use the written text as an aid in memorization, and for occassional > cross checking. The orally transmitted text is considered more accurate, but > is nevertheless supplemented by a written text (some recitors place it in > front of them, some behind them, while others who are perfect, do not use it > at all atleast in public because of the stigma attached to it). The same > thing has been pointed out by you also. I also take it that references to written versions of the Veda are strongly implied, e.g., in Manu 12.102-103, which reads (following Doniger/Smith): A man who knows the true meaning of the teachings of the Veda becomes fit for union with ultimate reality even when he remains here in this world....Those who read the books are better than those who do not know them; those who remember them are better than those who read them; those who understand them are better than those who remember them. The surrounding passages reinforce that suggestion by referring explicitly to the Rgveda. I agree with Thompson that "Manu 12.103 does not establish that the RV was preserved by literate processes." But this passage (and many others in Manu) do strongly suggest that written texts of the canon existed long before Prof. Witzel's 1000 CE date, and hence may have functioned as secondary memory aids. That point holds whether or not the whole of Manu dates from early centuries of the common era, as Dr. Thompson suggests. (I assume that the text, which is obviously heavily layered, was compiled over many centuries.) At one point in his posts, referring to Manu, Thompson writes: > That the Brahminical orality of this period may have been a a type of > secondary orality [influenced by literacy] does not negate the fact that > in the Vedic period itself we seem to have primary orality [no influence > of writing]. I responded that: > the idea of Brahminical orality being "a type of > secondary orality (influenced by literacy)" is one that I can > live with -- and is in harmony as well with the views that Vishal > Agarwal put forward at length in his post. But it is *not* in > harmony with Witzel's claims [that the Rgveda was first written > down c 1000 CE], which you earlier represented as > the consensus view in the field. Thompson responded: > Let's be clear. Vedic is Vedic and Brahminical is Brahminical. They are not > the same thing. What you find impossible to accept on the one hand, and in > harmony with the views of one Vishal Agarwal on the other, has nothing to do > with the matter. You are confused. To repeat my point again: My main question about Prof. Witzel's position has nothing to do with the Vedic period (although I do have secondary concerns about that issue). It has to do with the way that the Rgveda was supposedly transmitted in the post-Vedic period. My only interest in making my original post was in flushing out evidence that the 1000 CE date for the text's first written form is in error. There may be a (rough) consensus of sorts on when the Rgveda was first composed. There clearly isn't a consensus on when the text was written down. Thompson's admission that Brahminical orality was "a type of secondary orality (influenced by literacy)" in fact seems to be more in harmony with my views than with Michael Witzel's -- at least insofar as Brahminical orality involved recitation of the Rgveda. I suspect that there was a mixture of oral and literate processes going on in the post-Vedic transmission of the Rgveda that reached back long before 1000 CE. Apparently there are at least some credible Indologists who agree with me. But let me drop references to Michael's Witzel's views and ask Prof. Thompson a direct question: When do *you* think that the first version of the Rgveda was written down? 1000 CE -- or earlier? Do you believe that written versions of the text might have served as secondary memory aids long before this date? > Thompson writes: > > Like Goody, you have to come to terms with > the Vedic evidence and establish that Vedic bears the marks of literacy... Again, unlike Goody, my main concern involves the transmission of the Rgveda long after the Vedic period. I've repeatedly made that point and you keep missing it. To whit: I wrote: > ...*you* just made a pretty large > admission about the role of literacy in preserving Vedic > materials. [Referring to Thompson's statement that Brahminical > orality was "a type of secondary orality (influenced by literacy)." Thompson responded: > What are you talking about? I have made no 'pretty large admission' > whatsoever. The Vedic period was preliterate. It preserved itself. Even > after the arrival of literacy in the Indian subcontinent it continued to > preserve itself. Why is this hard to understand? To repeat again: My central question was not about the Vedic period. However, I do admit that statements that Vedic tradition (I'm sure you don't mean Vedic period) "preserved itself" *is* a bit hard to understand. Warmest regards, Steve Farmer From das at NETCOM.COM Sun Mar 12 21:38:47 2000 From: das at NETCOM.COM (Das Devaraj) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 00 13:38:47 -0800 Subject: Great Discoveries, must read! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056739.23782.5870640397729229014.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sun, 12 Mar 2000, Michael Witzel wrote: > The news is, after all, important enough that I could not wait for another > 2 weeks, > until April 1. OK, that does it - enough of this disparaging of scientists or for that matter anybody else who is not a linguist! What really happened (or for that matter what is going to happen) is pretty simple :-) We wrote Vedas in our future, taped it, and using a "Time machine (TM)" (already invented in future), went back and replayed it to invading/migrating/loitering/indigenous Aryans. They are then forced to commit all these things to memory for the next thousand years or so (pretty ease to police with a time machine!) When a mistake was made once every hundred years or so, the punishment was swift, inhumane and ghastly - they were forced to take classes in historical linguistics ;-( Hope this puts things in the proper perspective :-) Ducking and running for cover - Warmest regards, Das Devaraj From saf at SAFARMER.COM Sun Mar 12 23:02:00 2000 From: saf at SAFARMER.COM (Steve Farmer) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 00 15:02:00 -0800 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056742.23782.12568514519833378012.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel writes; > Dear Dr. Farmer, > > Most of the pertinent arguments of the 'consensus' have been provided by > Profs. Thompson and Vassilkov, so I can be fairly brief, and will limit > myself to those items not yet mentioned. > Thanks much for your detailed note and the references, which I will study carefully. Most of my reservations to these views have also already been put forward. I'll limit my response to an even smaller subset of your comments. You write: > The one point which you don't seem able to accept is that the text was > indeed so faithfully transmitted *orally* only, over these maximally 1000 > years, until the redaction [which Prof. Witzel places just before c. 500 > or 400 CE). Correct. I also have doubts about the supposed transmission of the text from this period forward - over the roughly 1500 years until the 1000 CE date that you set for the supposedly *first* written version of the text. (That is the claim that I find least credible.) I find that later date unlikely in the light of references to written versions of the text found in sources from somewhere not long after the start of the common era. Apparently, at the least, not every scholar on the List is convinced by the 1000 CE date. > As pointed out by my colleagues, this is nothing special inside India, > while it may be elsewhere. It has been the ethos of this culture(also in > neighboring Iran: Avestan) from the first hymn of the RV onwards. Even > early post-RV texts refer to it, explicitly, by a story: Indra came to cut > off someone's head because he had mispronounced the tonal accents in a > nominal compound, and thus (grammatically) had turned himself from an > "enemy of Indra" into someone Indra hates ('whose enemy is Indra'). Indra > had no choice, since Mantras always work... The same story was still told > to me by some Nepalese Pandits when they corrected the manuscript with the > Mantras for the coronation of the present king, in 1975. As I've pointed out in an earlier post, I've seen *exactly* the same sorts of claims about totally faithful transmission in Hebrew Rabbinical documents. They don't pan out. Same for similar claims in Islamic traditions. The same dangers regarding mispronunciation are also raised in Kabbalistic documents from the later Middle Ages -- and, in fact, in Maya written traditions as well. On closer examination, you discover that the transmission was far from faithful when it depended solely on oral means. The only exception comes when texts were used as aids to memorization, which helped (even if surreptitiously) to fix the text. Many studies of the contemporaneous interaction of literate and oral traditions exist that depart considerably from (say) Goody's simple model of oral/literate transformations. A review of some of the issues involved is found in Th?r?se de Vet, "The Joint Role of Orality and Literacy in the Composition, Transmission, and Performance of the Homeric Texts: A Comparative View," Transactions of the American Philological Association 126 (1996) 43-76. de Vet looks at the traditional work on this issue in Parry and Lord and compares with the results of her own field work on oral recitation in Bali. (I don't agree with all of de Vet's conclusions, but the paper has its points.) As a personal aside, I might point out that many intellectuals in the European Middle Ages and Renaissance supposedly had eidetic memories for texts cultivated by long mnemonic training. This training supposedly allowed them to recite long works, including the Aristotelian corpus (far longer than the Rgvedas) verbatim. Perhaps the most famous of these figures was Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-94), who (according to many contemporary accounts) could, after a single hearing of a text, immediately repeat it "backwards as well as forwards" without error. In 1486 Pico proposed a debate "de omni re scibili" (on all knowable things) involving twenty-eight past traditions and subtraditions -- the largest such debate for which we have a record in Western thought. I know the work well, since I've edited, translated, and commented upon the 900 theses that Pico drew up for his debate. That editorial work allowed me to test the "backwards and forwards" thesis at length, leaving me very skeptical about extraordinary memory claims in other premodern societies. In sum, Pico's "near-perfect oral transmission" turned out to be an illusion, and his quotations from memory turned out to have many telltale errors of those found in tests of memory processes by neuropsychologists. None of these were spotted by his contemporaries. In any event, if *truly* "near-perfect oral transmission" was involved in India, my inclination would be to suspect that somewhere, behind the scenes, written texts were playing a role in helping *fix* oral memory. (See infra.) > And, one can of course learn by heart the c. 800 pp. of the RV, in small > Roman characters, perfectly. Just go to the various corners of India, and > you will still find men who can do it! Make them start anywhere inside the > text, without a written text in front of them. I have seen it. So why not > in 500 CE, 500 BCE and 1000 BCE? The faithful memorization of a text at one point in history with aid of a written canon in the background is one thing; the faithful transmission of a text over two millennia in the supposed total absence of a written text is another. Note that even in this paragraph you assume a *written* text against which to *test* your thesis. There are also, of course, scholarly dissenters from your position in your own field -- which makes me question the claim for a consensus. Vishal Agarwal's previous comments, which I've quoted before, speak eloquently to your last point: > Despite the mnemonic devices and a host of texts facilitating > the oral tradition (these texts are called Lakshana granthas), the recitors > still use the written text as an aid in memorization, and for occasional > cross checking. The orally transmitted text is considered more accurate, but > is nevertheless supplemented by a written text (some recitors place it in > front of them, some behind them, while others who are perfect, do not use it > at all at least in public because of the stigma attached to it). You write, in conclusion: > In one word, India is different here from the rest of the world (minus, to > some degree, the Zoroastrian texts of their closest relatives, the old > Iranians), due to the stress, put from the very beginning on correct > pronunciation and recitation, -- from tonal accents, to words, to > sentences, all in the proper textual order. No changes, no substitutions. > As my colleagues (or the Nepalese pandits, above) have said: any change in > pronunciation will result in unwanted or dangerous consequences. Again, with all due respect, I've seen such claims in many cultures about canonical sources, and remain highly skeptical. There is apparent evidence that texts of the Rgvedas may have considerably predated 1000 CE. What objection do you have to the hypothesis that, despite the extraordinary emphasis that premodern Indian tradition placed on "perfect oral transmission" -- which had obvious political/religious uses, I might add -- these texts may have helped fix the canon in ways that were more reliable than orality alone. Images suggested by Vishal Agarwal's post keep reverberating in my head: of religious/political reciters placing the text "behind them" or hidden away "in public because of the stigma attached to it"? I raise these issues only as questions, which had their origins when I read those pesky passages in Manu that clearly refer to early written versions of the Veda. Apparently, judging from dissenters on this List, other evidence of early versions of the written work exist as well from well before your 1000 CE date. I'll watch the Indology List in coming months for more evidence on this question. Thanks in the meantime for your detailed and helpful response. My best, Steve Farmer From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Sun Mar 12 14:52:37 2000 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 00 15:52:37 +0100 Subject: SV: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056725.23782.39511583993727103.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> George Thompson [SMTP:GthomGt at CS.COM] skrev 12. mars 2000 14:42: > Of course, I do not know if Dr. Farmer knows this. There is no evidence to > suggest that he does. So it is probably better to be explicit about this. Having read most of Dr. Farmer's paper, ("Commentary Traditions..."), it seems that the difference of opinion between the Indologists on the list and Dr. Farmer is not quite so great as it would seem. The bone of contention is the transmission of the Vedic text, where Indologists would claim (correctly, in my opinion) that the Vedic text is a special case. Otherwise, the model described in Farmer's paper shouldn't be quite so controversial to Classical Indologists. It might, however, present problems to other members of the list who may find, to their consternation, that their best "friends" are the very Western Indologists they have been badgering for the last few years. That is, of course, unless Farmer relents and accepts that the Vedic text is a special case :-). As a famous poet said: "Necessity makes strange bedfellows." Watch out, George and Michael! Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Norway Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no From beitel at GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU Sun Mar 12 21:21:50 2000 From: beitel at GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU (beitel) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 00 16:21:50 -0500 Subject: FWD: RE: FWD: RE: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056736.23782.6820734639855383917.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Frits Staal asked me to forward this note. Regards, Alf Hiltebeitel I happened to see the replies of George Thompson and Michael Witzel to questions about orality by Steve Farmer and others as well as the last piece by Georg v. Simson adding new features. I would like to add something more, on four points: (1) recitation, (2) linguistics, (3) breath and (4) uniqueness. (1) The most impressive evidence for oral transmission and memory comes from the areas of Veda recitation, first of all the Padapatha (word-for-word recitation) with its extensions and modifications (vikrti) which incorporate a good measure of linguistic analysis. Second and much more extraordinary are the ritual recitations of which many are exemplified in "Agni: The Vedic Ritual of the Fire Altar." If we exclude the Samaveda, which is amazing in its transmission from beginning to end, the most astonishing feat is perhaps the recitation for the Asvins which is described and discussed in detail in Volume I, pages 683-6, with special reference to techniques of memorization. I have expanded that discussion in "The Fidelity of Oral Tradition and the Origins of Science," Mededelingen KNAW, Afd. Letterkunde (Amsterdam), n.s., 49/8 (1986) 251-88. (2) The chief REASON for this entire development is simple and basic: the absence of writing. There is no direct link with the problem of the origins of writing in the subcontinent because even when writing came to be used in certain quarters and/or for certain purposes, the Vedas were not written down. The probably most significant CONSEQUENCE has been the origin of linguistics and the essential insight in this respect was formulated in 1953 by Jean Filliozat in L'Inde Classique from which I translate: "A Semitic type of writing would have been an obstacle to the origin of phonological and phonetic studies if it had existed at the time in India." I developed this further (against Goody) in "The Independence of Rationality from Literacy", European Journal of Sociology 30(1989)301-10 and (with reference to math) in "Greek and Vedic Geometry," Journal of Indian Philosophy 27(1999)105-27, especially part III. (3) There is no DIRECT link with yoga as Georg v. Simson suggests. Yoga requires concentration and mental discipline, of course, but so do linguistics, mathematics, chess, (some kinds of) music and countless other things. It is well known that the recitation of mantras preceded the meditation on mantras by many centuries. It has nothing to do with the quoted passage from Patanjali which has been frequently discussed (Scharfe, Wezler, Ojihara, myself...) and continues to be discussed: it uses Vedic ritual forms for the expression of respect for the authority of a great teacher (acarya), not a seer (rsi) or muni (sage), designations of Panini that came much later (as Deshpande has shown, the latter including Patanjali); and certainly not a Yogi. But there is a link between recitation and some forms of yoga through breathing or prana because recitation is certainly also a breathing exercise, more so in fact than the mental concentration on mantras (plenty of cases from Samaveda and Rigveda discussed in Agni). As for "uniqueness," George Thompson has already mentioned parallels. The basic problem about claims of uniqueness (substitute Christianity, Hinduism, science, rationality ...) is that they can only be convincingly made when ALL possible parallels and alternatives have been taken into account - a tall order. I am sorry, this is likely to be my first and last appearance on this web-site. Perhaps the reader says well and good - and as for me, I have no time! Frits Staal On Sat, 11 Mar 2000, beitel wrote: > >===== Original Message From Indology ===== > Steve Farmer wrote (I quote only one sentence): > > >> If it is really true that premodern Vedic reciters, unlike those found in > >> every other known premodern civilization, maintained "near-perfect > >> ORAL transmission" over two millennia of a highly stratified compilation > >> like the Rgvedas, Indologists should be prepared with a credible reason > >> to explain India's uniqueness. > > The uniqueness (if it really exists) might be explained by the fact that at > an early date (maybe during the Indus Valley Culture, which then would have > influenced the later Vedic culture) techniques of concentration and mind > controll were developed in India that seem to lack parallels in other > cultures (see the yoga schools spreading over the whole world these days as > an export from India). > > Another striking example of this uniqueness (beside the oral transmission > of the Vedic texts) is in my opinion Panini's grammar. Regardless whether > one assumes that writing existed in his time (ca. 400 BCE?) in India or > not, the whole, extremely complicated and sophisticated, work is conceived > in a way that makes it useful under the condition only that you instal it > in your mind and let it work there as a kind of computer software. > Otherwise - used as a written text in the same way we use our grammars > today - it is difficult to survey and rather unpractical. A piece of > evidence of the orality of this grammar is the fact that the scope of some > comprehensive rules is marked by an accent, which is to be heard and not > written (the Panini experts on the List may correct me if I am wrong!). > With good reason Paul Thieme imagined Panini as a kind of meditating, > truth-working yogi, cf. Thieme, Kleine Schriften II, p. 1186 f., quoting > and translating Patanjali I.39.10 ff.: "The teacher (Panini) functioning as > an authoritative means of cognition, used to produce the sUtra with great > effort (that is: with the effort of spiritual concentration required for > the recognition and formulation of a deep truth): holding a cleansing bunch > of darbha-grass in his hand, being seated on clean ground, his face turned > toward the east." > Whereas this picture does not resemble a scholar writing a grammar, > Patanjali (2nd century BCE) might very well have composed his large > commentary on Panini by writing it. > > Best regards > > Georg v. Simson > > From latapy at BONNIE.LIAFA.JUSSIEU.FR Sun Mar 12 15:58:06 2000 From: latapy at BONNIE.LIAFA.JUSSIEU.FR (Mathieu Latapy) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 00 16:58:06 +0100 Subject: Representations of Hindu deities in North-West India Message-ID: <161227056730.23782.12520837922848212019.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Indologists, I am a graduate student in Indian art history and Archaeology at the Sorbonne-Paris IV, and I began a study about the representations of the Hindu deities in the art of North-West India, from the first ones, dated from the IIIth century B.C., up to the Xth century A.D. The geographic scale of my research will be as large as possible, including the regions of the present India, Gandhara (between Pakistan and Afghanistan), and the Silk Roads. The aim of this study is to show the role of this cultural area, merging Greek, Iranian, Chinese and Indian influences, in the development of Hinduism. My research will be based on historical, numismatical, archaeological and philological datas. I wish to develop this wide subject during my PhD, and I am looking for financial supports for this study. I am greatly interested by any information you could give to me. Thanks in advance. Magali Vacherot. From r0j7402 at UNIX.TAMU.EDU Sun Mar 12 23:41:43 2000 From: r0j7402 at UNIX.TAMU.EDU (Rajesh Jayaraman) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 00 17:41:43 -0600 Subject: Vimanas! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056744.23782.6028565742986062856.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> According to ancient Indian texts, the people had flying machines which were called vimanas. The ancient Indian epic describes a vimana as a double- deck, circular aircraft with portholes and a dome, much as we would imagine a flying saucer. It flew with the "speed of the wind" and gave forth a melodious sound. There were at least four different types of vimanas; some saucer shaped, others like long cylinders (cigar shaped airships)." D. Hatcher Childress, "Ancient Indian Aircraft Technology" In The Anti-Gravity Handbook "In the Vedic literature of India, there are many descriptions of flying machines that are generally called vimanas. These fall into two categories: (1) manmade craft that resemble airplanes and fly with the aid of birdlike wings, and (2) unstreamlined structures that fly in a mysterious manner and are generally not made by human beings. The machines in category (1) are described mainly in medieval, secular Sanskrit works dealing with architecture, automata, military siege engines, and other mechanical contrivances. Those in category (2) are described in ancient works such as the Rg Veda, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Puranas, and they have many features reminiscent of UFOs." "There are ancient Indian accounts of manmade wooden vehicles that flew with wings in the manner of modern airplanes. Although these wooden vehicles were also called vimanas, most vimanas were not at all like airplanes. The more typical vimanas had flight characteristics resembling those reported for UFOs, and the being associated with them were said to possess powers similar to those presently ascribed to UFO entities. An interesting example of a vimana is the flying machine which Salva, an ancient Indian king, acquired from Maya Danava, an inhabitant of a planetary system called Taltala." From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Mon Mar 13 00:42:06 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 00 19:42:06 -0500 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056753.23782.14282501468076098587.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Dr. Farmer, here is the rest, in which you are much more interested. And which should have come together with the last one. It was sent yesterday evening, but refused by the list as the Liverpool server accepts only 3 message per (UK) day per person. So I had to wait until midnight UK time to resend... More on your last post later. There still seems to be some misunderstanding. I suggest to take a look at the menotechnical treatises first before asserting written tradition well *before* what I detail here: ------------------------ (2) WRITTEN TRADITION: Script is, indeed, *not* used, as Falk, von Hinueber, Fussmann etc. have discussed, after the Indus civ. (ended c. 1900 BCE) until Asoka, in mid 3rd Cent BCE (some news from Sri Lanka points to an earlier use of Brahmi there at c. 500 BCE; needs countercheck). The first to actually use a word for 'script' is the grammarian Panini, (variously dated in the 4thc. or in the late Brahmana period). He a native of the Panjab, Gandhara -- which probably was Persian during his time. Indeed, he uses the Persian word for script, dipi (pron. thipi with 'th' as in 'the'), but he also knows the EAST Iranian one, lipi, which has become the standard Indian term. (Why, if not a new, foreign term?) I have no doubt that some 'progressive' Brahmins and others *may* have tried to use written Veda texts during the time of the Smritis (NB: no one knows the date of "Manu" for sure; the Manu Smrti used to be dated, based on certain overlaps with the Mahabharata, which also is not exactly datable as such). This much is clear from the injunction NOT to use written texts. But it did not become the main, major way of transmission until much later, -- and taking into account modern recitation, not even until today. A proper Brahmin (Veda reciter) did not rely on books. (I think the Chinese pilgrims - Fa Hsien - of mid first mill. CE also have such statements, need to re-check). We do not hear about written Veda texts, as far as I have seen, throughout early medieval 'classical' Skt. literature. There are, however, some clearly delineated exceptions: Grammatical texts such as that of Patanjali (c. 150 BCE) quote Vedic lines, which thus have received a written tradition. (Nobody has checked out, however, the stemma of Patanjali which I urged to do already in 1986). Or the Mimamsaka philolosophers (often real philologists) did so. Again no one has checked on their stemmata. Or, the Vedanta comm. by Sankara (of the later 1st mill. CE) depends on materials which *might* have been collected in a 'Upanisad corpus' (note however that he still can pinpoint their exact source inside a VEDIC text/recension). This has not been tested either. I myself have concluded (1985) that, by great exception, one version of the Atharvaveda, Paippalada Samh., *must* go back to a written archetype of c. 800-1000 CE. But this exception seems to be due to the fact that the Atharveda reciters were a very small minority (c. 1% among the reciters, according to inscriptional evidence). They may have taken special measures early on to preserve their weak line of tradition. - And, finally, there are some mid-1st mill. (by all appearance, written) commentaries on certain post-RV texts. In any case, we do not get the RV, and certainly not all of the Vedas, in (a) surviving MS(S), or see such MSS mentioned in literature before c. 1000 CE. The matter could be tested also in another way: by pointing out (as I have done for Paipp.Samh.) that our received text shows typical mistakes that could arise only when the *supposed* Veda MSS have actually gone through one or two of the major changes in Indian scripts, one around 1000 AD from post-Gupta Siddhamatrika, etc. into Nagari, etc., or the earlier one, from Brahmi into Gupta script. Nobody has taken up my note/challenge of 1986. No written Vedas, in short, until the great Choresmian scholar Albiruni (1030 CE). He knows quite a lot about the Panjab and also about Kashmir, for which he must have relied on Kashmiri Brahmins (who traditionally traveled a lot, pace V.Agarwal, see my paper of 1994), since Kashmir was off limits for Muslims then, as A. himself underlines. At the same time, the first surviving Vedic MSS occur in Nepal. The even older Hsinkiang/E.Turkestan MSS are never Vedic, but Buddhist, etc. Nepal is a special case, as old MSS were and could be well kept there. The earliest dated one just after A PERIOD OF DISRUPTION and political reshaping, is 810 CE, but there are some undated, earlier ones. The bulk of the early MSS comes from the Nepalese 'renaissance' period of the 11th cent. Yet, the first RV MS is still later. The earliest I have seen or heard of is at Benares, dated 1380 or so (under glass, so could not check myself). But the one of the Vajasaneyi Samhita on the cover of "INSIDE..." rather points to 1200 CE. Hence my earlier statement. There MAY have been some specific earlier manuscripts (such as Paipp.etc mentioned above), earlier by one, two, even three centuries (Sankara?), but not much more. The gap between Sakalya, say 600/500 BCE, and Sankara/Paipp.S. around 800 CE, remains. And, of course, recitation *still* is better than any surviving manuscript... (though very little used in studies!) If all of the above does not fit the framework of comparative studies, too bad. Comparativitists would have to show WHERE there is evidence in India that supports their general claims. ------------------------ I hope that clarifies some of your questions. Best wishes, Yours MW> =============== Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From GthomGt at CS.COM Mon Mar 13 01:41:11 2000 From: GthomGt at CS.COM (George Thompson) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 00 20:41:11 -0500 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056755.23782.512506112760237208.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Okay. Let's see if we can clear things up a bit. First, I did misread your paragraph on Olivelle, and I apologize, both for my carelessness and for the harsh tone of my response. But I still think that you are exaggerating this 'disagreement.' We are certainly dealing with a preliterate culture, and as a result precise dating is difficult to achieve. This is not an ad hoc concession on my part. I have publically speculated on this list that the redaction of the RV might have been as late as 1000 BCE [you might ask your new-found ally Vishal Agarwal what he thought of my speculations at the time]. While I am a bit surprised by Olivelle's dating, it is not too far off the mark -- nor far from the consensus [in fact I have read this passage a number of times, without noticeable shock -- context is everything, I guess]. The fact remains that Patrick Olivelle knows as well as I do that the Vedic period ended before there is any solid evidence of literacy in the Indian subcontinent. I urge you to distrust anyone who suggests a later date than Patrick's for a terminus ad quem for the RV. When I say that your working assumption is the same as Goody's, I mean this with regard to his view of Vedic material, not to his overall orality thesis. He merely expresses his doubts about the possibility of a Vedic literature that is free of the influence of literacy, and as far as I can tell that is your point of view as well. But in my view his doubts are entirely unfounded, based as they are on preconceptions about what a supposed oral mentality is capable of. Tell me, aren't your views also based on a similar preconception? As for my question re your work on western traditions, I'm not interested in the anount of pages that you've written as much as in the traditions that you have worked on. I'd like to know what it is that you are comparing the Vedic material to. For example, if you were to compare Vedic orality with the researches of Vygotsky and Luria on the illiterate population of Soviet Central Asia in the 1930's, I would want to register my objections to what I would consider a comparison of apples and oranges. For in my view a preliterate culture like Vedic, which appears to have had little or no contact with other literate cultures, is significantly different from the culture studied by Vygotsky and Luria, which was surrounded and in fact dominated by the literate culture which studied it. As for your suspicion re a written RV before 1000 CE, this is still merely a suspicion, for, as I understand Michael Witzel's position, since we have no manuscripts before this date, all that we can say with confidence is 'maybe.' In fact, the RV was much more 'sacred' than other Vedic texts, in the sense that there was less tolerance for variation with regard to it than with other Vedic texts [cf. the three volumes of 'Vedic Variants']. More advice: the RV is 'unique' within Vedic, both because of its antiquity and also because of its atypicality as a 'Vedic' text. In spite of its aura, the RV is *not* the heart of Vedic tradition. No, you find the living heart of the Vedic tradition in the Yajurvedic texts. The RV is esoteric and hard to understand even before the end of the Vedic period. I do not deny that Vedic is impervious to the kind of drift that you find in other traditions. In fact, I have been known to emphasize this. In short, the Vedic material is much more complex and intersting than you have been led to believe about it. Best wishes, GT From saf at SAFARMER.COM Mon Mar 13 05:50:07 2000 From: saf at SAFARMER.COM (Steve Farmer) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 00 21:50:07 -0800 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056767.23782.1591359264109788878.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Dr. Witzel, Thanks very much for your last note. I obviously stumbled unwary into a hornets' nest, since I've received over two dozen off-List messages in the last two days on the subject -- rather astonishing (and disturbing, since this all came in the middle of a publication deadline). I didn't know that I was hitting an open scholarly nerve when I asked an innocent (I thought) question about oral/literate transmission of the Rgveda on the List. Such is the fate of the comparative historian, who is perpetually a neophyte and clumsy disciplinary intruder. I will, in the next few weeks, take a close look at the mnemonic literature specific to India, as you suggest. I do know quite a bit about the literature on mnemonic traditions applicable to other civilizations, so the comparison should be fruitful. I already know the philological work of Falk, Fussman, et al., and that of other figures who you mention in your note. I appreciate the time that you took in answering my note; much of the information in it I've found invaluable. That being said, I'll cut to the chase; you wrote: > I have no doubt that some 'progressive' Brahmins and others *may* have > tried to use written Veda texts during the time of the Smritis (NB: no one > knows the date of "Manu" for sure; the Manu Smrti used to be dated, based > on certain overlaps with the Mahabharata, which also is not exactly datable > as such). This much is clear from the injunction NOT to use written texts. > But it did not become the main, major way of transmission until much later. Thanks -- that is the *only* admission that I was really looking or hoping for. I can live with this view. What you write here is, I think, a considerable move away from your original claim (possibly made polemically, and in haste) that the first written text of the Rgveda came no sooner than c. 1000 CE. As Lars Martin Fosse has pointed out, in some ways our work may not really be all that far apart. (I'm still not certain.) I still have doubts, as I have expressed before, about the fidelity of oral transmission in the total absence of written texts. But I'll reserve my judgment about the supposed uniqueness of Indian mnemonics until I look at the collection of specialized studies in Staal et al. and others (Lars has sent me a useful bibliography). Thanks to the other messages people have sent me, I now have over sixty Indological studies in a half dozen languages that I will try to work through in the next month or so. As to the proposed links between the language of the Rgveda and Indian Valley civilizations argued for by Vishal Agurwal and others -- part of the bloody internecine war that I've unwarily stumbled into -- I have insufficient data at this point to form any kind of judgment at all. I only hope that the war doesn't destroy this List [internecine = equally murderous to both sides], since all of you have furthered my understanding of the basic issues in the past few days. I will be watching the List closely for data in the coming month while I take time to read the scholarly literature that people have kindly directed me to. I note looking at my computer desktop that over a dozen more unanswered messages, some still unread, carry the title "Dates of written Rgveda." I will hold off for now in responding immediately to any publicly posted messages -- Luft! as chessplayers have it -- but I invite continued private correspondence with all those who have approached me off-List. I suspect that I may have something further to say about the issue -- and surely more questions -- on-List at a later point. To George Thompson: Thanks for your last much more conciliatory message in INDOLOGY. One clarification: Vishal Agarwal isn't my new-found "ally," since I've taken no sides in this currently mutually destructive scholarly war. Vishal has, however, provided me with a lot of interesting and useful information that I plan to evaluate in the coming weeks, along with the other useful data that I've received from you and those on your side of the issue. On Vygotsky and Luria (also mentioned in Dr. Thompson's note): I admit to being an admirer of their classic study of rapid oral/literate shifts in Central Asia in the 1930s, and even more so of Luria's groundbreaking works on cortical function, which still plays a surprisingly big role in the field. But I agree with you that Vygotsky/Luria do not shed light on the kinds of oral/literate interactions that are relevant here. More relevant are studies involving the relationships between oral and literate traditions seen throughout the manuscript age, stretching for a minimum of two millennia everywhere in Eurasia starting in most areas around 400 BCE. (Please NB that I am referring here to the incremental accumulation of *manuscript traditions*, not to the first introduction of literacy, which is a very different issue.) This is the period that I study most extensively in my work -- originally just in the West but, more with collaborators and recently, in China and Southeast Asia as well. The complexity of these oral/literate interactions in this extended period were just as complex in other parts of Eurasia as they were in India. (Also in Mesoamerica, incidentally, on which we have a surprising large body of data on oral/literate interactions in the late pre-Columbian period.) My best to all, Steve Farmer Michael Witzel wrote: > > Dear Dr. Farmer, here is the rest, in which you are much more interested. > And which should have come together with the last one. It was sent > yesterday evening, but refused by the list as the Liverpool server accepts > only 3 message per (UK) day per person. So I had to wait until midnight UK > time to resend... More on your last post later. There still seems to be > some misunderstanding. I suggest to take a look at the menotechnical > treatises first before asserting written tradition well *before* what I > detail here: > ------------------------ > > (2) WRITTEN TRADITION: > > Script is, indeed, *not* used, as Falk, von Hinueber, Fussmann etc. have > discussed, after the Indus civ. (ended c. 1900 BCE) until Asoka, in mid > 3rd Cent BCE (some news from Sri Lanka points to an earlier use of Brahmi > there at c. 500 BCE; needs countercheck). The first to actually use a word > for 'script' is the grammarian Panini, (variously dated in the 4thc. or in > the late Brahmana period). He a native of the Panjab, Gandhara -- which > probably was Persian during his time. Indeed, he uses the Persian word for > script, dipi (pron. thipi with 'th' as in 'the'), but he also knows the > EAST Iranian one, lipi, which has become the standard Indian term. (Why, if > not a new, foreign term?) > > I have no doubt that some 'progressive' Brahmins and others *may* have > tried to use written Veda texts during the time of the Smritis (NB: no one > knows the date of "Manu" for sure; the Manu Smrti used to be dated, based > on certain overlaps with the Mahabharata, which also is not exactly datable > as such). This much is clear from the injunction NOT to use written texts. > But it did not become the main, major way of transmission until much later, > -- and taking into account modern recitation, not even until today. A > proper Brahmin (Veda reciter) did not rely on books. (I think the Chinese > pilgrims - Fa Hsien - of mid first mill. CE also have such statements, need > to re-check). We do not hear about written Veda texts, as far as I have > seen, throughout early medieval 'classical' Skt. literature. > > There are, however, some clearly delineated exceptions: > Grammatical texts such as that of Patanjali (c. 150 BCE) quote Vedic lines, > which thus have received a written tradition. (Nobody has checked out, > however, the stemma of Patanjali which I urged to do already in 1986). Or > the Mimamsaka philolosophers (often real philologists) did so. Again no one > has checked on their stemmata. Or, the Vedanta comm. by Sankara (of the > later 1st mill. CE) depends on materials which *might* have been collected > in a 'Upanisad corpus' (note however that he still can pinpoint their exact > source inside a VEDIC text/recension). This has not been tested either. I > myself have concluded (1985) that, by great exception, one version of the > Atharvaveda, Paippalada Samh., *must* go back to a written archetype of c. > 800-1000 CE. But this exception seems to be due to the fact that the > Atharveda reciters were a very small minority (c. 1% among the reciters, > according to inscriptional evidence). They may have taken special measures > early on to preserve their weak line of tradition. - And, finally, there > are some mid-1st mill. (by all appearance, written) commentaries on > certain post-RV texts. In any case, we do not get the RV, and certainly > not all of the Vedas, in (a) surviving MS(S), or see such MSS mentioned in > literature before c. 1000 CE. > > The matter could be tested also in another way: by pointing out (as I have > done for Paipp.Samh.) > that our received text shows typical mistakes that could arise only when > the *supposed* Veda MSS have actually gone through one or two of the > major changes in Indian scripts, one around 1000 AD from post-Gupta > Siddhamatrika, etc. into Nagari, etc., or the earlier one, from Brahmi > into Gupta script. Nobody has taken up my note/challenge of 1986. > > No written Vedas, in short, until the great Choresmian scholar Albiruni > (1030 CE). He knows quite a lot about the Panjab and also about Kashmir, > for which he must have relied on Kashmiri Brahmins (who traditionally > traveled a lot, pace V.Agarwal, see my paper of 1994), since Kashmir was > off limits for Muslims then, as A. himself underlines. > > At the same time, the first surviving Vedic MSS occur in Nepal. The even > older Hsinkiang/E.Turkestan MSS are never Vedic, but Buddhist, etc. Nepal > is a special case, as old MSS were and could be well kept there. The > earliest dated one just after A PERIOD OF DISRUPTION and political > reshaping, is 810 CE, but there are some undated, earlier ones. The bulk of > the early MSS comes from the Nepalese 'renaissance' period of the 11th > cent. Yet, the first RV MS is still later. The earliest I have seen or > heard of is at Benares, dated 1380 or so (under glass, so could not check > myself). But the one of the Vajasaneyi Samhita on the cover of "INSIDE..." > rather points to 1200 CE. > > Hence my earlier statement. There MAY have been some specific earlier > manuscripts (such as Paipp.etc mentioned above), earlier by one, two, even > three centuries (Sankara?), but not much more. > > The gap between Sakalya, say 600/500 BCE, and Sankara/Paipp.S. around 800 > CE, remains. > And, of course, recitation *still* is better than any surviving > manuscript... (though very little used in studies!) > > If all of the above does not fit the framework of comparative studies, too > bad. Comparativitists would have to show WHERE there is evidence in India > that supports their general claims. > ------------------------ > I hope that clarifies some of your questions. > Best wishes, Yours MW> > =============== > > Michael Witzel > Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University > 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 > > ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) > home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm > > Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From saf at SAFARMER.COM Mon Mar 13 06:00:01 2000 From: saf at SAFARMER.COM (Steve Farmer) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 00 22:00:01 -0800 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056769.23782.10881886094768388232.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I am fatigued after this long exchange, and my final post reads: > As to the proposed links between the language of the Rgveda and Indian > Valley civilizations argued for by Vishal Agurwal and others... Language slips as fatigue slips in and neurotransmitters begin to deplete. "Indus" in such cases may become "Indian." I imagine that similar things happened to ancient reciters of the Veda, with the drift sometimes becoming permanent after sufficient repetitions. Cheers, Steve Farmer From harryspier at HOTMAIL.COM Mon Mar 13 03:27:12 2000 From: harryspier at HOTMAIL.COM (Harry Spier) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 00 22:27:12 -0500 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056760.23782.9684878455751773547.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dr. Witzel wrote: >all the early emendations by western scholars of the 19th cent. have been >given up: we are very cautious now to edit the RV While looking up another article I came across "On the Possibility of Corruptions in RgVeda" by V.K. Rajvade in "K.B. Pathak Commemoration Volume (BORI c. 1930's)" in which he lists 18 Rks for discussion as possible corruptions that occurred between the composition of the Rks and their redaction. His tentative emendments are: (Harvard-Kyoto) 1.6.6 girA instead of giraH 1.72.9 svapasyAni instead of svapatyAni 4.34.9 svapasyAni instead of svapatyAni 7.91.3 svapasyAni instead of svapatyAni 2.17.3 zuSNaM instead of zuSmaM 2.35.4 tamu smerAH instead of tamasmerAH 4.44.2 devatAtA instead of devatA tAM 5.1.9 atyeti instead of atyeSi 5.17.2 svaM yazaH instead of svayazaH 5.53.8 mApa sthAta instead of mAva sthAta 8.65.10 hiraNyayInIM instead of hiraNyavInIM 8.77.9 adArayaH instead of adhArayaH 8.100.6 bandhave instead of RSibandhave 9.12.5 indraH instead of induH 9.54.1 ahrayaM instead of ahrayaH sahasrasAm followed by some other word instead of RSIM 9.108.7 remove rajasturaM 10.96.7 hariH instead of harI Does modern Vedic scholarship agree with any of these tentative emendments of V.K. Rajvade? Also would this be the same V.K. Rajvade who discovered the Jnaneshwari manuscript? Best wishes, Harry Spier 371 Brickman Rd. Hurleyville, New York USA 12747 ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From rchawla at DELLNET.COM Mon Mar 13 06:51:03 2000 From: rchawla at DELLNET.COM (Ravi Chawla) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 00 22:51:03 -0800 Subject: Vimanas! Message-ID: <161227056765.23782.9415854077310219918.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ----- Original Message ----- From: Rajesh Jayaraman RJ wrote: > According to ancient Indian texts, the people had flying machines which > were called vimanas. The ancient Indian epic describes a vimana as a > double- deck, circular aircraft with portholes and a dome, much as we > would imagine a flying saucer. It flew with the "speed of the wind" and > gave forth a melodious sound. There were at least four different types of > vimanas; some saucer shaped, others like long cylinders (cigar shaped > airships)." > In my personal opinion, consider all this as a fiction. Do we have any archeological proof of above vimanas? If you really believe in the ancient Indian texts that you refer, do you have any idea of the time period when they had such flying machines? Regards. RChawla From s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK Sun Mar 12 23:58:55 2000 From: s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK (Stephen Hodge) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 00 23:58:55 +0000 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056747.23782.9705986320307998522.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I think that the Buddhist Pali suttas tend to corroborate a relatively late date for the introduction and use of writing in India. Given that these scriptures record in passing many aspects of Indian society at the time of the Buddha an during the ensuing one hundred + years before the Pali canon was closed, it is surprising that there is no mention (as far as I know) of anything connected with writing if it had indeed been in use in India at that time, given also that the extent of this material far exceeds the length of the RV. The precise dates for putting these scriptures down in writing is not definite but must be some time after the reign of the emperor Ashoka given the relatively primitive nature of the writing system used in Ashoka's edicts. Thereafter, one has a similar situation to that suggested by some subscribers where an oral tradition continued in tandem with a written record of the texts. Best wishes, Stephen Hodge From s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK Mon Mar 13 00:13:45 2000 From: s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK (Stephen Hodge) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 00 00:13:45 +0000 Subject: Vimanas! Message-ID: <161227056750.23782.18385162401005280673.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Rajesh Jayaraman wrote: > According to ancient Indian texts, the people had flying machines which > were called vimanas. The ancient Indian epic describes a vimana as a > double- deck, circular aircraft with portholes and a dome, much as we > would imagine a flying saucer. "Imagine", of course being the operative word ! Stephen Hodge From smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM Mon Mar 13 13:55:17 2000 From: smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM (Swaminathan Madhuresan) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 00 05:55:17 -0800 Subject: Etymology of sukha and duHkha Message-ID: <161227056785.23782.10940508484193094880.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> --- "Ulrich T. Kragh" wrote: > I believe that the same meaning can be seen in the Skr. word mukha "mouth, > face", which likewise occurs in Rgveda. mukha is Dravidian. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET Mon Mar 13 07:37:53 2000 From: kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET (S.Kalyanaraman) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 00 07:37:53 +0000 Subject: Great Discoveries, must read! Message-ID: <161227056758.23782.17366655993040509166.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel wrote: >snip>(c) It is much more likely, though, that the Central Asian horse is but a > denegerate descendent of the Sivalensis: it must have been taken by the > emigrant Druhyus, as S. Talageri has shown a few years ago... Prof. Witzel's sarcasm is a refreshing break from the pathless meanderings which have recently beset the mailing list. On Druhyu, I have a question: Which Druhyu? Druhyu I is a son of King Yaya_ti. Two sons, Yadu and Turvasu were born to Yaya_ti, the son of Na_hus.a, by his wife Devaya_ni_ and three sons Druhyu, Anudruhyu and Pu_ru by his wife S'armis.t.ha_. Druhyu II is a son of Matina_ra, a king of the Pu_ru dynasty (MBh. A_di Parva. Ch. 94, Stanza 14). Since Druhyu seems to be central to the process of emigrations which have haunted indology for a long, long time, I would appreciate a further discussion on this issue, with or without sarcasm, with or without early references from vedic texts! If you run out of space in this list, you can email upto 200k size texts to the unmoderated web-list: sarasvati at listbot.com Best regards, Dr. S. Kalyanaraman http://sarasvati.simplenet.com ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. From kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET Mon Mar 13 08:44:03 2000 From: kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET (S.Kalyanaraman) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 00 08:44:03 +0000 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056762.23782.10043305674864028085.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel wrote: >snip> This much is clear from the injunction NOT to use written texts. > But it did not become the main, major way of transmission until much later,> -- and taking into account modern recitation, not even until today. A> proper Brahmin (Veda reciter) did not rely on books. (I think the Chinese > pilgrims - Fa Hsien - of mid first mill. CE also have such statements, need > to re-check). Would appreciate info. on the textual references which include an 'injunction' NOT to use written texts. Why, pray, the secrecy in communicating the texts? I am sure early indologists would have expatiated on the issue of 'secrecy'... Regards, Kalyanaraman ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. From selwyn at DTN.NTL.COM Mon Mar 13 09:03:49 2000 From: selwyn at DTN.NTL.COM (L.S.Cousins) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 00 09:03:49 +0000 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda In-Reply-To: <38CC21E4.86B7FCDE@safarmer.com> Message-ID: <161227056778.23782.17380850300506586066.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Steve Farmer writes: >As I've pointed out in an earlier post, I've seen *exactly* the >same sorts of claims about totally faithful transmission in >Hebrew Rabbinical documents. They don't pan out. Same for similar >claims in Islamic traditions. The same dangers regarding >mispronunciation are also raised in Kabbalistic documents from >the later Middle Ages -- and, in fact, in Maya written traditions >as well. On closer examination, you discover that the >transmission was far from faithful when it depended solely on >oral means. The only exception comes when texts were used as aids >to memorization, which helped (even if surreptitiously) to fix >the text. I have assumed for a long time that the situation is quite different once writing becomes common place. One might think in terms of a kind of Gresham's Law effect. Once printing comes along, the same effort no longer goes into the production of manuscripts and after some time the general quality of written manuscripts deteriorates greatly. Similarly once writing exists and is used for a given purpose, the motivation for a society to invest heavily in expensive methods of oral memorization must deteriorate. If that is right, then none of the above examples are in any way comparable. Prior to the introduction of writing some societies invested heavily in institutions which specialized in large-scale memorization i.e. priestly and/or monastic orders of one kind or another (or bardic?). The two obvious surviving examples are the Iranian and the Indian. I doubt very much whether they were unusual or unique. It seems more likely that such methods were once more widely spread prior to the invention of writing. One example to support that would be Roman accounts of the training of the Druids. That seems to suggest a similar kind of social investment. It also shows the vulnerability of such traditions: if their institutional basis is destroyed, they can disappear completely. Conversion to another religion can have the same effect, even when the priestly vehicle is not directly a target for systematic destruction. (Even written literature does not always survive such a targeting, as in the case of the Maya.) Add to that the fact that literature intended for memorization or chanting may not read at all well when written down and it is not surprising that only a few examples survive and that only where conversion to an Abrahamic religious tradition has not taken place. So it seems likely that this was the mechanism for retention of knowledge in some or even many Neolithic societies, not only in that of India. Of course, this - however probable - cannot really be proven. Lance Cousins -- OXFORD, UK CURRENT EMAIL ADDRESSES: L.S.Cousins at nessie.mcc.ac.uk or selwyn at dtn.ntl.com From GthomGt at CS.COM Mon Mar 13 14:35:37 2000 From: GthomGt at CS.COM (George Thompson) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 00 09:35:37 -0500 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056788.23782.14779404133537678163.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 3/12/00 8:42:07 PM Eastern Standard Time, GthomGt at CS.COM writes: > I do not deny that Vedic is > impervious to the kind of drift that you find in other traditions. In fact, > I have been known to emphasize this. In short, the Vedic material is much > more complex and intersting than you have been led to believe about it. > Like Steve Farmer I get tired. Here I left out a crucial 'not'. What I meant was: "I do not deny that Vedic is *not* impervious to the kind of drift that you find in other traditions." Of course, it is an ugly sentence with a few too many negatives. GT From pwyzlic at UNI-BONN.DE Mon Mar 13 10:16:45 2000 From: pwyzlic at UNI-BONN.DE (Peter Wyzlic) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 00 11:16:45 +0100 Subject: utkuTika In-Reply-To: <000401bf8b2a$22839800$1d334818@cheapies> Message-ID: <161227056780.23782.10183763362116365839.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sat, 11 Mar 2000, Benjamin Fleming wrote: > I was hoping someone might be able to affirm or deny the following > question regarding the iconography of narasiMha. The *utkuTika* pose (legs > crossed with heels touching the ground) is a pose exclusive to the > yoga-narasiMha mUrti. > There is supposed to be some reference to this in the VaikhAnasAgama > (patala 58), but I do not have access to this work presently. Any help or > further references would be most appreciated. The term utkutuka (or derivations, like utkutika) occurs also in Buddhist Vinaya texts, see e.g. Edgerton's Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Dictionary, s.v. utkutuka. A note on utkutukasana (u.tku.tukAsana) and garudasana (garu.dAsana) in Buddhist Tantric literature and iconography can be found in R. O. Meisezahl: Geist und Ikonographie des Vajrayana-Buddhismus. Hommage ? Marie-Th?r?se de Mallmann. Sankt Augustin 1980, pp. 241-243 (die Hocksitze utkutukasana und garudasana). Peter Wyzlic -- Peter Wyzlic Indologisches Seminar, Universitaet Bonn Regina-Pacis-Weg 7 D-53113 Bonn From abbas at IOPB.RES.IN Mon Mar 13 07:07:29 2000 From: abbas at IOPB.RES.IN (Samar Abbas) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 00 12:37:29 +0530 Subject: Saraswati: Atomic Scientists reconfirm location In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056772.23782.6236075164553086562.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Congratulations to Dr. Witzel on his excellent series of posts in the last few days. The `Vedic panzer' post was especially enlightening. And the following is of course a classic - On Thu, 9 Mar 2000, Michael Witzel wrote: > Why is it that of all of these and the ensuing movements > [Persians, Greeks, Yue-ji/Tukhara/Kushana, Saka, 'Pahlava', Abhira, > Hephtalite Huns (huuNa), Gurjara ] ... just one, the > "Aryan"one (=Indo-Aryan, proto-Vedic), is NOT allowed these days? This would ordinarily be a coup de grace. However, it is interesting to note that this same `indigenist' group does not accept these invasions either, all of which are held to be `western conspiracies' : "... the Rajput race is the descendent of ancient Kshatriya families (p. 170 HSIB 1). That they had their ancestry in certain invaders is dismissed as a conspiracy of western historians." [ http://members.tripod.com/indowindow/edu/itnoHist.htm ] Perhaps, we shall soon see authoritative websites on `Myth of Saka Invasion Theory (SIT),' and `Huna Invasion Theory (HIT) debunked'. Already, D.P.Agarwal has stated that the `Greek Invasion' was no invasion at all (cf. his polemics on `AIT'). No doubt, this will be followed up by a `Myth of Greek Invasion Theory (GIT) debunked' website. Meanwhile, count me in on the Witzel fan club. Samar Abbas `What I say is no jest - Witzel is the best !' From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Mon Mar 13 17:44:02 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 00 12:44:02 -0500 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda In-Reply-To: <38CC8188.2E94BACB@safarmer.com> Message-ID: <161227056800.23782.118006089056570840.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Dr. Farmer, I suppose we all get tired by now, but let me underline just one or two points, as not to be misunderstood. >I'll cut to the chase; you wrote: >> I have no doubt that some 'progressive' Brahmins and others *may* have >> tried to use written Veda texts during the time of the Smritis ... This >>much is clear from the >>injunction NOT to use written texts. >> But it did not become the main, major way of transmission until much later. >Thanks -- that is the *only* admission that I was really looking >or hoping for. I can live with this view. What you write here is, >I think, a considerable move away from your original claim >(possibly made polemically, and in haste) that the first written >text of the Rgveda came no sooner than c. 1000 CE. Not really. Please read this line together with the one where I stress, that (your) case still is to be made by showing *clear miswritings* in Vedic texts that can ONLY be due to the palaeographic development of the Brahmi etc. scripts. (not, to local pronunciation) As long as that is not done, and if one cannot come up with clear statements in the literature about Veda reciters with their manuscripts in front of them, -- all remains (comparative) theory. Footnote: The history of Vedic quotations, too, indicates their ORAL origins. Right from Yaska's Nirukta who slightly misquotes a Kathaka Samhita line, to the RV commentary of SaayaNa (died 1387 CE, if I remember the date correctly) the Veda quotations in commentaries show that their authors relied on their -- not always perfect -- memory of texts that did NOT BELONG to their own tradition (i.e.: a Rgvedin quoting a Samaveda Brahmana text, etc.). You always find the typical substitutions (words, collocations, etc.) which we all make when reciting a poem/singing a song that we do not remember too well anymore. One does not do that so easily when one actually looks up and compares a written text (pace: the common copying mistakes we all make; they are different in nature). Just check out the list of such lapses of memory by the great Sayana, published already by Max Mueller in his Rgveda edition more than 100 years ago (or is this just another one of his secret, destructive schemes?). The list can be extended. (I think I have some such data in my Caraka papers of 1981/82). Also, please note that the available Veda MSS were habitually, until (almost?) today, corrected by reciters, from memory; they frequently also put in the (red) accent marks. Much of this is even *visible* in extant MSS. Modern habits -- Veda teachers with their printed texts/manuscripts, open, in front of them (as I also have seen) -- does not tell us anything, after some one thousand years of use of Veda MSS, about the practices of the first millennium CE. Second, I totally agree with S. Cousins in what he writes about early, even Neolithic societies. Neolithic Polynesia is a good test case. The main mythological texts, transmitted orally by their "druids" (Kahuna, etc.) well into the 19th century, often agree well across this vast region over some 2-3000 years, -- more specifically in Tahiti, Hawaii, New Zealand (in this case, origin of settlement in the Society Islands, roughly, after the beginning of our era). However, not literally as in India. And certainly not when it comes to genealogies, which were -- as everywhere (compare the Indian Epics & the Vedas) -- influenced by the interests of the local chieftains. In Polynesia, large genealogical sections agree, but not all of them; and of course, not, when it comes to local items. No surprise to anyone who has read Parry-Lord. ------------- Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From abbas at IOPB.RES.IN Mon Mar 13 07:45:17 2000 From: abbas at IOPB.RES.IN (Samar Abbas) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 00 13:15:17 +0530 Subject: Great Discoveries, must read! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056774.23782.133151168479396855.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Another classic post by Dr. Witzel. I agree fully with all that he says, except for the following : On Sun, 12 Mar 2000, Michael Witzel wrote: > ...those of India, i.e. the "Black people ... the Sudras, Dalits and > Dravidians of India" (PK Manansala, March 1, 2000) ... for a grander > view of other, African relatives of Tulu and Dravidian in general, see C. > Winters at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/8919/ or in Even if Dr. Winters' linguistics is wrong, there is a lot of other (incl. genetic, anthro.) evidence to prove that the Sudras of India are indeed Negroid : - cf. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Ithaca/1335/Anthro/sud_afr.html, esp. the recent genetics papers by Dr. Bamshad et al.) - A map at http://dalitstan.org/journal/politics/dalitism/pan_neg.html shows South India as part of `Negroland'. - The website http://saxakali.com also has many articles stating that the Dalits and Dravidians are Negroids. - I hear many LTTE cadre are also Africans and that Nelson Mandela supports LTTE : http://dalitstan.org/journal/politics/dravidia/pntamsin.html - The Black Panther militia has now entered India - the `Dalit Panthers' who are fighting for `Black Revolution.' The Dravidians are definitely not whites, nor are they Mongoloids. So, they are by default, Negroes. Surely, all this can not be baseless ? The rest of the post is, of course, brilliant. > Little does it help them that they have also > stolen the name of their airline from Skt. hamsa 'swan' (Luft-hansa), and > broadcast Sanskrit twice per month on their foreign radio, Deutsche Welle, > to propagate the recently exposed prachanna Christian missionary, Max > Mueller (Moksamuula) and their M.M. Bhavans in India. In the end, they all > remain Druhyus, long exiled from Bharatavarsha. Kindly add my name to any fan club of Dr. Witzel ! Samar. From hbd at DDIT.ERNET.IN Mon Mar 13 10:31:11 2000 From: hbd at DDIT.ERNET.IN (H.B.Dave) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 00 16:01:11 +0530 Subject: Etymology of sukha and duHkha Message-ID: <161227056783.23782.17327568030465763311.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Ulrich T. Kragh wrote: > The recent discussion thread on chariots inspired me to bring up the > following question, which I have been wondering about: > > Do you have any comments on the etymologies of the Sanskrit words sukha > "happiness" and duHkha "misery"? > > As far as I know, the standard etymology for sukha is based on the earliest > occurrence of this word, namely in Rgveda; e.g. Monier-Williams (p. 1220, > entry 'sukha') writes: > > "Sukha, mfn. (said to be fr. 5.su+3.kha and to mean originally 'having a > good axle-hole;' possibly a PrAkRit form of su-stha, q.v.; cf. duHkha) ..." > > The word kha itself seems simply to have the basic meaning of "hole" or > "aperture", also an aperture of the human body; again, MW gives reference to > Rgveda, where kha occurs (unfortunately, I haven't got a concrete reference > for you here) in sense "the hole in the nave of a wheel through which the > axis runs" (MW p. 334, entry "kha"). > > Thus, I think the standard etymology for sukha "happiness" is taken to be > "having a good axle-hole", i.e. having a functioning (or perhaps fast) > chariot, and thus in the extended meaning thereby meaning "to be happy". > Oppositely, duHkha would refer to the state of not having such a good hole. > > However, I get my doubts when seeing this etymology. Having a background in > Tibetan studies, I know that the basic meaning of the word kha (exact same > spelling and pronounciation) in Tibetan and possibly in other Himalayan > languages is again "hole", but usually referring to "the mouth". > > I believe that the same meaning can be seen in the Skr. word mukha "mouth, > face", which likewise occurs in Rgveda. > > This led me to think that sukha could actually be derived from kha in the > sense of mouth (lit. "good mouth") in the extended meaning of "being > nourished or satisfied with food" and thus being "happy", whereas duHkha > similarly would come to mean "hungry" and thus "unhappy". > > Since sukha and duHkha are such fundamental terms in human existence, I find > such an etymology more believable than the perhaps far-fetched "having a > good axle-hole". > > I would very much appreciate clarification on these terms. kha (lit. a hole) is used to denote a port, i.e. a means of access or interface. Generally denotes sense organs or means of acquiring information. Remember that "manas" is also a sense organ, a means of acquiring information according to Indian philosophy. In the etymology of sukha and du.hkha, it means that if one's mind is "su" in happy state or "dus" unhappy state. As I was trying to tell members of the august Indology list some time back, you have to know the "concept coding" used in Vedic literature if you are going to make some headway with etymologies and meanings. You can not neglect Nighantu and Nirukta. > > > With best regards, > Ulrich T. Kragh > University of Copenhagen Best wishes -- Himanshu From Frank.vandenbossche at RUG.AC.BE Mon Mar 13 15:41:49 2000 From: Frank.vandenbossche at RUG.AC.BE (Frank Van Den Bossche) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 00 16:41:49 +0100 Subject: JambUdvIpaSaMgrahaNI Message-ID: <161227056790.23782.13299963936061993007.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear members of the list, Currently I am working on Haribhadra SUri's JambUdvIpaSaMgrahaNI, a Jain text on geography. I am looking for an edition of the JDS, published by Bhimsi Manek (bhImasiMh MANakanI) in Bombay; 1908. I found this reference in the Jina-Ratna-KoSh. Can anyone give me more details about this edition and, if possible, tell me were I can find it? I heard that it is republished in 1985. Thanks in advance. Frank Van Den Bossche University of Ghent Dept. of languages and cultures of South and East Asia frank.vandenbossche at rug.ac.be From koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE Mon Mar 13 16:42:11 2000 From: koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE (Koenraad Elst) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 00 17:42:11 +0100 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056792.23782.13101091041713334388.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Friends, Just returned from India, carrying among other things the freshly published Deciphered Harappan Script by N. Jha & N.S. Rajaram. I find a question addressed to me about the horse evidence. Well, I have nothing to add to the status quaestionis, with archaeologists like BB Lal claiming that a number of horse remains have been found in a dozen Harappan sites. Still very marginal, of course, and in that sense an argument from silence against the identification of Harappa with a horse-centred culture. Considering that Shereen Ratnagar has argued against a much broader argument from silence, viz. the absence of traces of an Aryan invasion which in her opinion need not prove the absence of such an invasion, I suppose we need not jump to conclusions in the case of the paucity of horse remains either. But I agree that the horse evidence is problematic. Speaking of arguments from silence, I agree with Dr. Farmer's caution regarding the affirmation by Fussman, von Hin?ber, and Falk, et al., that > > The first written records in > > India belong to the 3rd century BC. As Farmer points out, > much depends in the works of these scholars on the argument > of silence, which isn't a strong one when you consider that > neither the climate nor the nature of the typical materials used > for writing in ancient India would favor the survival of early > texts. What also pleads against Fussmann etc.'s very late dating of post-Harappan writing (implying what used to be called a "dark age" of Indian illiteracy for more than a thousand years after 1900 BC or so) is the sheer improbability that the civilization then in existence did without writing. There was plenty of prose writing which is even harder to memorize than versed hymns. There were very technical writings, and while I find the quoted line about Panini thinking up his grammatical rules as if in spirit visions very charming, I also find it quite unbelievable that he worked from a purely oral text corpus to compose his own purely oral grammar. Panini was a genius alright, but the implications of the Dark Age thesis simply overestimate his brain capacity. One text which carries its own unambiguous dating, as shown by the much-applauded Prof. Rajesh Kochar, is the Vedanga Jyotisha: 14th century BC, in the middle of the "dark age". The text is admittedly not long and easy to memorize, but the astronomical observations which it presupposes are already harder to conceive in an entirely non-writing culture. As for the Vedic hymns, the situation implied in the orality thesis would indeed be what list members call "unique". Homer or the Confucian classics were first written and only started to get memorized after gaining some fame as written texts. In the case of Homer, declamation by heart may have been the author's intention, but in the case of the Confucian classics or the Quran, no such intention is indicated. In Iran there are regular contests in reciting the Quran (whole, half or one-third) by heart, but the jury members, though certainly well-versed in this discipline, keep an eye on their printed Quran copies to check for possible errors. Learning by heart is valued because you incorporate the sacred text in your personality, and writing is depreciated because it reduces the sacred text to materiality, exposing it to possible foul treatment by the uninitiated (e.g. a Belgian schoolteacher in the Emirates was fired because she threw a pupil's satchel into the dustbin, remembering too late that the satchel contained a copy of the Quran). So, memorizing the Veda makes sense, but by no means implies oral composition. I admit that this by itself doesn't rule out oral composition either, but on that point, the argument of feasibility comes in. One of us should try the test of doing the titanic feat of memory which Dark Age theorists impute to Vyasa. Dr. Koenraad Elst http://members.xoom.com/KoenraadElst/ From vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM Tue Mar 14 03:51:48 2000 From: vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM (Vishal Agarwal) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 00 19:51:48 -0800 Subject: Ancient Rivers of khvaniratha and indology Message-ID: <161227056809.23782.2107406767994372569.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I think such remarks are in quite bad taste. Dr. Kalyanaraman merely joked and Dr. Thompson took it seriously. Anyway, I would actually be embarassed if Mr. Abbas were to praise me. Your message assumes that Mr. Abbas understands Vedic and Avestan, whereas anyone with an iota of commonsense would conclude otherwise. I recall a verse here in connection with these fan clubs: Ushtranaam vivaaheshu, geetam gaayanti gardhabhaah | Parasparam prasamsanti, aho roopam ! aho dhvanih ! || For that matter, while hardly anyone knows who Dr. Thompson is, his bete noires (you know who) have a 100 fold readership. Should we apply your logic here too then? Maybe you will understand when I reproduce a private message sent by Dr. Witzel to me in June 1999 (before he left for Japan) where he rejects your dating of the RV and your assumption behind the same. So much for your fancy notions of consensus on this issue. ----Original Message Follows---- From: George Thompson Subject: Re: Ancient Rivers of khvaniratha and indology Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 22:24:24 EST In a message dated 3/13/00 9:41:07 PM Eastern Standard Time, kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET writes: > Since indology (which recognizes only the science of Sanskrit) seems to be > dealing with fan clubs started by Prof. Witzel and ancient rivers, the > following notes on Avestan and Puranic mythologies will be useful for the > ongoing 101 on-line course on historical linguistics: Dear Dr. Kalyanaraman, Your resentment has gotten the best of you. You shouldn't blame Michael Witzel for the failure of your website, and for your failure to gain an audience on this list. Your failure is the result of the fact that you insist on talking about Vedic and Avestan as if you knew these languages, when it is clear that you don't. Who is the blame for that? Michael Witzel? I don't think so. GT ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From GthomGt at CS.COM Tue Mar 14 03:24:24 2000 From: GthomGt at CS.COM (George Thompson) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 00 22:24:24 -0500 Subject: Ancient Rivers of khvaniratha and indology Message-ID: <161227056807.23782.16888722205893455510.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 3/13/00 9:41:07 PM Eastern Standard Time, kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET writes: > Since indology (which recognizes only the science of Sanskrit) seems to be > dealing with fan clubs started by Prof. Witzel and ancient rivers, the > following notes on Avestan and Puranic mythologies will be useful for the > ongoing 101 on-line course on historical linguistics: Dear Dr. Kalyanaraman, Your resentment has gotten the best of you. You shouldn't blame Michael Witzel for the failure of your website, and for your failure to gain an audience on this list. Your failure is the result of the fact that you insist on talking about Vedic and Avestan as if you knew these languages, when it is clear that you don't. Who is the blame for that? Michael Witzel? I don't think so. GT From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Tue Mar 14 06:26:08 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 01:26:08 -0500 Subject: Ancient Rivers of khvaniratha and indology In-Reply-To: <20000314024014.2380.qmail@www0n.netaddress.usa.net> Message-ID: <161227056813.23782.13985877748154364844.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> While I must confess that I have some difficulties in parsing the following sentence >Since indology (which recognizes only the science of Sanskrit) seems to be >dealing with fan clubs started by Prof. Witzel and ancient rivers, (who started fan clubs? moi??) ((or moi + the ancient rivers, -- with the last I would agree, the river names indeed need more study)) ; (((or dealing with fan clubs and ancient rivers?))), the following one is correct: >the following notes on Avestan and Puranic mythologies will be useful for the >ongoing 101 on-line course on historical linguistics: Certainly, and it would do some good to learn a few rules about sound correspondences between Avestan and Vedic, (and, incidentally, also to get the name of the Avestan correspondent of Sarasvatii right: not the antiquated spelling Haraqaiti, but: local Arachosian Avestan Haraxvaitii, with -i- epenthesis (a sort of umlaut), and xv standing in for a consonant that the stupid ASCII 7-bit encoding does not allow to reproduce. The Old Persian form is Hara(h)uvatii and normal Avestan would have been *Harangvhaitii, where ngv is another difficult consonant). >Apart from Arang, Vanhvi_ da_itya_ (veh da_iti_, veh ro_d) [veh = an epithet, >'good'] is a river mentioned in Avestan texts. So, here it goes: Arang is not Avestan but Middle Iranian (Pahlavi) and not mentioned as such in Avesta , where it is Ranghaa (ng = Ved. G). = Ved. Rasaa = N.Iranian Rahaa (as in the Greek loan: Rhaa designating the Volga , while Vanghuuii Daaitiiaa is Avestan again, and Veeh Root is Pahlavi again (= Avest. Vangvhii = Vedic *vasvii daatyaa or dhaatyaa). Two different rivers: *rasaa, *vasvii. And not clear at all that one or both = Oxus (= Iran. VaxSu, modern VaxS, Sanskritized as VakSu, or with spelling mistake in several Puranas as CakSu, or even reinterpreted as IkSU "sugar cane" , and often mythical like the Rasaa and Sarasvatii.... >Bundahisn, the Uniquely-created >Bull lived on the bank of this river (GBd. I.a.12--BTA, 25); on the opposite >bank stood Gayo_ maretan (mortal life), Pahlavi Gayo_mard, the mythical First >Man. (GBd. I.1.13). It is also a mythical river on the eastern boundary of >Khvaniratha. The Bundahishn is only in Middle Iranian, a Pahlavi text. Gayoo mar at tan (@ = schwa) is the counterpart of the Vedic Aaditya god MaartaaNDa, father of Manu (see K. Hoffmann, Aufsaetze zur Indoiranistik, Wiesbaden 1985-6, Engl. 1991) More on Xvanira0a (0 = Engl. th), and some of these rivers, in a forthcoming paper (Festschrift J. Narten). Acc. to this, the "eastern boundary" does not fit the Oxus. I do not see what the following sentence has to do with the preceding ones: >Maha_bha_rata refers to an ancient river, veda_s'va_ (Bhi_s.ma Parva, >Ch. 9, stanza 28); the people of Bha_rata drank the water of this river. except for ve- of Veeh Root... (??) As far as I see, a bull is not a horse, in spite of what we had to read on INDOLOGY in recent months. Similar for : >Daityadi_pa is mentioned as a son of Garud.a, in MBh. Udyoga Parva, Ch. 101, >Stanza 11. Daityasena_ is a sister of Devasena_, wife of Subrahman.ya; >Daityasena_ was married to an asura, Kes'i. Daityasena_ >was seen playing in Ma_nasa saras. (Vana Parva, ch. 223,224). Again, no connection, except for Daitya, from Diti, -- which has nothing to do with Avestan Daaitiiaa, from Indo_Iran. *daata or *dhaata. The -i- of Daaitiiaa is again epenthetic. Here some Ling. 101 would indeed come handy. Otherwise the comparisons remain popular etymology, Kratylos/Nirukta style analysis. Much or even most of the stuff given above can be looked up easily enough in Christian Bartholomae's Altiranisches Woerterbuch, 1904, repr. Berlin 1961. ======== Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET Tue Mar 14 08:10:14 2000 From: kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET (S.Kalyanaraman) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 08:10:14 +0000 Subject: Ancient Rivers of khvaniratha and indology Message-ID: <161227056804.23782.16856075926332866670.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Since indology (which recognizes only the science of Sanskrit) seems to be dealing with fan clubs started by Prof. Witzel and ancient rivers, the following notes on Avestan and Puranic mythologies will be useful for the ongoing 101 on-line course on historical linguistics: Apart from Arang, Vanhvi_ da_itya_ (veh da_iti_, veh ro_d) [veh = an epithet, 'good'] is a river mentioned in Avestan texts. Bundahisn, the Uniquely-created Bull lived on the bank of this river (GBd. I.a.12--BTA, 25); on the opposite bank stood Gayo_ maretan (mortal life), Pahlavi Gayo_mard, the mythical First Man. (GBd. I.1.13). It is also a mythical river on the eastern boundary of Khvaniratha. Maha_bha_rata refers to an ancient river, veda_s'va_ (Bhi_s.ma Parva, Ch. 9, stanza 28); the people of Bha_rata drank the water of this river. Daityadi_pa is mentioned as a son of Garud.a, in MBh. Udyoga Parva, Ch. 101, Stanza 11. Daityasena_ is a sister of Devasena_, wife of Subrahman.ya; Daityasena_ was married to an asura, Kes'i. Daityasena_ was seen playing in Ma_nasa saras. (Vana Parva, ch. 223,224). Regards, Dr. S. Kalyanaraman ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. From kekai at JPS.NET Tue Mar 14 17:35:03 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 09:35:03 -0800 Subject: Harappan=like Santal writing Message-ID: <161227056795.23782.1073153235493040837.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At the risk of provoking further Witzelean comic antics, I need to know of any websites having images of the Harappan script-like writing of the Santals discussed by S.K. Biswas. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From kekai at JPS.NET Tue Mar 14 17:38:03 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 09:38:03 -0800 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056798.23782.18068490089904092507.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Koenraad Elst wrote: > > Friends, > > Just returned from India, carrying among other things the freshly published > Deciphered Harappan Script by N. Jha & N.S. Rajaram. > > I find a question addressed to me about the horse evidence. Well, I have > nothing to add to the status quaestionis, with archaeologists like BB Lal > claiming that a number of horse remains have been found in a dozen Harappan > sites. Still very marginal, of course, and in that sense an argument from > silence against the identification of Harappa with a horse-centred culture. > Considering that Shereen Ratnagar has argued against a much broader argument > from silence, viz. the absence of traces of an Aryan invasion which in her > opinion need not prove the absence of such an invasion, I suppose we need > not jump to conclusions in the case of the paucity of horse remains either. > I don't know of any uncovered culture (archaeologically) in India that could be described as "horse-centered." Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET Tue Mar 14 09:46:17 2000 From: kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET (S.Kalyanaraman) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 09:46:17 +0000 Subject: [Re: Ancient Rivers of khvaniratha and indology] Message-ID: <161227056811.23782.2463897539033356104.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> George Thompson wrote: > snip> Who is the blame for that? Michael Witzel? I don't think so. Oh, dear! The club is setting the rules already. I didn't realise that I will be graded (I don't need one) even before the 101 course has started. I forgot to mention Ja_hnavi_ a river which was drunk up by the R.s.i Jahnu who was born of Kes'ini_ and Ajami_d.ha... Cheers. Kalyanaraman ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. From Royce.Wiles at ANU.EDU.AU Mon Mar 13 22:55:33 2000 From: Royce.Wiles at ANU.EDU.AU (Royce Wiles) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 09:55:33 +1100 Subject: JambUdvIpaSaMgrahaNI Message-ID: <161227056802.23782.832605194940704563.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> 1. A comprehensive and critical dictionary of the Prakrit languages : with special reference to Jain literature. Pune : The Bhandarkar Institute, 1996- . v.1 (p. viii) says there is a copy of the work you want (1915 edition not 1908) in the office of the Prakrit Dictionary Project Bhandarkar Oriental Research Instutite Cnr Bhandarkar and Law College Roads Pune 4 MAHARASHTRA INDIA They have an edition published in Bhavnagar: Jain Dharma Prasarak Sabha, 1915. (Mostly those editions include the original text and Gujarati translation in Devanagari script). I suggest you write to Dr. Ghatage there and ask for a photocopy, they will tell you how much you need to remit to cover the costs. 2. It is very likely there is also a copy in London, you need to check Catalogue of the Library of the India Office. Volume 2 part I (revised edition) Sanskrit books / by Prana Natha and Jitendra Bimala Chaudhuri. London : HMSO, 1938-57. Lots of Prakrit texts are listed there. Since W. Schubring refers to this text (Die Lehre der Jainas (1935) paragraph 200) maybe there is a copy in Germany (Hamburg?). 3. Republishing. An edition was reprinted in 1985 (details below). Whether you can get a copy or not is another thing, Jinasasana Aradhana Trasta publishes mainly for exclusive distribution to Jain individuals and libraries, only if spare copies are available from their small print runs are copies sold to the public. This would only be a photo-mechanical reprint, not a reediting, whether it is the 1907 edition you want or the 1915 is another thing. Probably the 1915 edition is better than Manek's. I think you should contact DK Agencies in New Delhi since they listed the book in their lists of publications, maybe email Surya Mittal at . Jambudvipasangrahani / Haribhadrasuriviracita : Prabhanandasuriviracitavrttisahita ; sampadakah samsodhakas ca Danasurisvarah. Mumbai : Sri Jinasasana Aradhana Trasta, 2042 [1985] 42 p. ; 13 x 28 cm. [DKS-4617. DK Agencies Recent Sanskrit, Prakrit and Pali publicatios Ref. no. CIR-1432 / 1994-95 item 28] Royce Wiles Asian History Centre Faculty of Asian Studies Australian National University Canberra From roheko at MERKUR.NET Tue Mar 14 09:24:56 2000 From: roheko at MERKUR.NET (Rolf Koch) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 10:24:56 +0100 Subject: JambUdvIpaSaMgrahaNI Message-ID: <161227056816.23782.14608283092351079104.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I would like to suggest you looking for the commentary of Shanticandra since Haribhadra suri did not understand Prakrit language very well and his commentary is often obscure. samgrahani-stanzas will be very difficult to understand without the text of the sutra. Why not using the complete text of the sutra (as provided by Shanticandra. All earlier treatrises on the Jambudvipa refer to Shanticandra. ??NTICANDRA, Jamb?dv?pa-praj?apti (Bombay, 1920). roheko Frank Van Den Bossche wrote: > Dear members of the list, > > Currently I am working on Haribhadra SUri's JambUdvIpaSaMgrahaNI, a Jain > text on geography. I am looking for an edition of the JDS, published by > Bhimsi Manek (bhImasiMh MANakanI) in Bombay; 1908. I found this reference > in the Jina-Ratna-KoSh. Can anyone give me more details about this edition > and, if possible, tell me were I can find it? I heard that it is > republished in 1985. > Thanks in advance. > > Frank Van Den Bossche > University of Ghent > Dept. of languages and cultures of South and East Asia > frank.vandenbossche at rug.ac.be From koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE Tue Mar 14 10:24:05 2000 From: koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE (Koenraad Elst) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 11:24:05 +0100 Subject: Horse Message-ID: <161227056820.23782.14983687234582264341.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Paul Kekai Manansala wrote: > I don't know of any uncovered culture (archaeologically) in India that > could be described as "horse-centered." Interesting point. The implication seems to be that to evaluate the importance of the horse in Harappa, the [admittedly meagre] quantity of horse evidence should be compared with that in Indian sites generally acknowledged as Vedic-Aryan, reputedly horse-centred, e.g. Hastinapura. I recall an explanation by Prof. Romila Thapar about Hastinapura (in Social Scientist, Delhi, Jan. 1996), to the effect that the paucity of horses found there was due to the confinement of the use of horses to the (necessarily minoritarian) aristocracy. So there too, the harvest of horse bones was disappointing. Had carbon-14 dating not put the site squarely in a period when that part of India is universally acknowledged to have been Indo-Aryan-speaking, then it might well have been diagnosed as non-Aryan for lack of sufficient horse remains to match the reputed centrality of the horse in Aryan culture. But, not having the archaeological body of evidence at my fingertips, I don't want to press this point and leave it to specialists, say Jim Shaffer or BB Lal, to draw the appropriate conclusions. K Elst From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Tue Mar 14 17:13:37 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 12:13:37 -0500 Subject: Etymology of sukha and duHkha In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056836.23782.11684999714430932159.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Prof. Kumar, greetings, nice to hear from you again. You are right that, on the surface, >I find the following etymological conclusions quite humorous, though! There >is fun in doing etymology, after all!!! >>> "Sukha, mfn. (said to be fr. 5.su+3.kha and to mean originally 'having a >>> good axle-hole;' >>> Oppositely, duHkha would refer to the state of not having such a good hole. But, please, think of the passion for horse racing among the Indo-Aryans (Veda), Mitanni Indo-Aryans (aika-, tri-, panza-, satta-, nava-vartana etc.), and "Avestan people" (Zoroaster uses horse race terms as theological terms), cf. also the Oxus chariot, Old Persian monuments at Persepolis etc etc. No wonder that su-kha and duH-kha can refer to the state of your race car: it needs 'oiling'. See SPARREBOOM, Chariots. The etym. is maintained by M. Mayrhofer, EWA (Etym. Woerterbuch des Altindoarischen) 1986- Incidentally, if connected at all with Ved. khaa, Avest. xaa 'well,source', then already of Indo_Iranian age. (Must check the materials in EWA, maybe connected with khan- 'to dig'). And, of course etymology can be fun, if done scientifically (identifying root, stem, meaning), -- but also, when we derive, say, putra from *put+traa (Upanisads, from an imagined *put 'hell') or Bhairava from bhii + ru + vam as in Kashmiri Shivaism... The German (of course, humorous) version is "Loewe, weil er durch die Wueste loewt (laeuft)", or as the Romans do: lucus a non lucendo. Best, Yrs MW> > Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Tue Mar 14 17:19:08 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 12:19:08 -0500 Subject: Ancient Rivers of khvaniratha and indology In-Reply-To: <20000314114514.20022.qmail@wwcst088.netaddress.usa.net> Message-ID: <161227056839.23782.2152274719557153315.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dr. Kalyanaraman: >Now to khvaniratha... >I suggest the semantic correspondence as follows; sva_ni-ratha = sva_nad ratha >(having a rattling chariot, RV; cf. Monier Williams) khvaniratha (German. >schwan; Anglo Sax. swin).sva_n = making sound (RV 1.104.1); sva_nah = sound >(RV 5.2.10; also name of one of the guards of the Soma (Taittiri_ya Sam.hita_ >1.2.7.13). sva_ni-ratha = rattling chariot. >>But, svan = also meaning 'adorn' (Dha_tup. 1`9.62) You have one ety. here which I also discuss in my forthc. paper, but dismiss it. Note that already Bartholomae in 1904, (Air.WB. column 1864) dismissed his own similar one, from *svani 'beautiful', as there is lack of epenthesis: in Avestan we would expect *xvaini-. The word is to be analyzed differently. And, PAROKSA, like many etymologies. They are not always that obvious. And, one has to know some historical linguistics. In spite of the aversion/hatred by some on the list, evident again just a few days ago, historical linguistics is as close as its gets in language study to natural science (after all, we can move our mouth, tongue, lips, teeth etc., in only so many ways...) Lack of knowledge or dismissal of this aspect of linguistics by the very natural scientists who like to take the high road on the list is indeed surprising. We can of course let such items as the present one pass by, and save, with F.Staal, a lot of time (the favorite choice among my colleagues as their thundering silence shows, and I can understand them). But that would only let the list denegerate further into a chat room where, in the postmodern fashion of the past century, anything goes. In the end, Xvaniratha is best derived from *sva-ni-ra-tha (verb ram 'to stay somewhere with pleasure', as in mano-ra-tha). Zero grade formation, as in seen niitha, uktha, tiirtha. Thus, "(a place) that has its own (sva) particular (ni) pleasure(s) (ratha) ... -- Long story, see the paper. >sva_ni-ratha is a land where agni is the 'chariot' or vehicle.... The >semantic expansion of svana- is more elaborate in the Vedic than in Avestan >which seems to refer to this morpheme only in the context of Airyanem Vae_jah >or Arya Vis'a, the land mass circumscribed by two rivers: Ranha_ and >Vanhi_... Twice wrong : Bartholomae has also xvanaT.caxra (cf. svanad-ratha), xvaini-star at ta/u, xvaini.saxta; And Avestan vaEjah simply cannot be = Ved. vis'a (viz???), as Avestan j = Vedic j. While Vedic s' (z) = Avestan s. The items mentioned above can easily be looked up even in the old Avestan Grammar by A.V.W. Jackson, of 1892 (!!), where he constantly compares Skt. (and Whitney's Skt. Grammar). Jackson, A. V. Williams, 1862-1937. An Avesta grammar; in comparison with Sanskrit. Stuttgart, W. Kohlhammer, 1892- As everyone can see now, G.Thompson was right after all. ================== > >Dr. S. Kalyanaraman > >____________________________________________________________________ >Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at >http://webmail.netscape.com. Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Tue Mar 14 11:19:23 2000 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 12:19:23 +0100 Subject: SV: Ancient Rivers of khvaniratha and indology Message-ID: <161227056823.23782.12411491976410155168.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Vishal Agarwal [SMTP:vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM] skrev 14. mars 2000 04:52: > For that matter, while hardly anyone knows who Dr. Thompson is, his bete > noires (you know who) have a 100 fold readership. Should we apply your logic > here too then? This is an interesting angle. A large readership should be an indicator of academic quality. Gee wiz, the Theory of Relativity must be sheer nonsense. And Quantum mechanics? A total waste of time, since the readership is minuscule. Let's forget Mr. Einstein and that guy Heizenberger - Schmeizenberger or whatever his name. Noone reads them anyway. On the other hand, we have intellectual giants like Mr. Schulz, the creator of "Peanuts", who has managed to reach untold millions with his (admittedly quite charming) cartoon characters. Not to mention that soul-shattering genius Walt Disney, without whom the modern world and its wonders would be unthinkable. Mr. Agrawal, you have really opened my eyes. Why do I send emails to this puny list of some 600 members, when I could be out there talking to the teeming masses? You really made my day! Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Norway Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no From kumar at PIXIE.UDW.AC.ZA Tue Mar 14 10:32:08 2000 From: kumar at PIXIE.UDW.AC.ZA (Prof. P. Kumar) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 12:32:08 +0200 Subject: Etymology of sukha and duHkha Message-ID: <161227056817.23782.2298908687979208537.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I find the following etymological conclusions quite humorous, though! There is fun in doing etymology, after all!!! Pratap >> "Sukha, mfn. (said to be fr. 5.su+3.kha and to mean originally 'having a >> good axle-hole;' >> Oppositely, duHkha would refer to the state of not having such a good hole. Prof. P. Kumar, Centre for Religious Studies, University of Durban-Westville 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 *IMPORTANT NOTICE: THOSE COMING TO THE IAHR:DURBAN PLEASE READ THIS* Delegates to the IAHR Durban congress can now deposit the congress related fees in to the following bank account directly. Although we still accept checks and credit card modes of payment, in order to lessen the administrative and other delays in transacting those payments, the secretariat will prefer payments directly into the Bank account given below and send us the deposit slip either by fax or ordinary mail. Name of Account: IAHR: Durban 2000 Name of Bank: First National Bank, South Africa Branch Name : Durban North, Broadway Branch Branch Code: 220426 Account No: 62010873017 From g.v.simson at EAST.UIO.NO Tue Mar 14 11:46:54 2000 From: g.v.simson at EAST.UIO.NO (Georg von Simson) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 12:46:54 +0100 Subject: Horse In-Reply-To: <002f01bf8d9f$e3925dc0$530fe0d5@pandora.be> Message-ID: <161227056828.23782.7138438896286549472.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Koenraad Elst wrote: >Paul Kekai Manansala >wrote: >> I don't know of any uncovered culture (archaeologically) in India that >> could be described as "horse-centered." > >Interesting point. The implication seems to be that to evaluate the >importance of the horse in Harappa, the [admittedly meagre] quantity of >horse evidence should be >compared with that in Indian sites generally acknowledged as Vedic-Aryan, >reputedly >horse-centred, e.g. Hastinapura. I recall an explanation by Prof. >Romila Thapar about Hastinapura (in Social Scientist, Delhi, Jan. 1996), to >the effect that the paucity of horses found there was due to the confinement >of the use of horses to the >(necessarily minoritarian) aristocracy. So there too, the harvest of horse >bones was disappointing. Had carbon-14 dating not put the site squarely in >a period when that part of India is universally acknowledged to have been >Indo-Aryan-speaking, then it might well have been diagnosed as non-Aryan for >lack of sufficient horse remains to match the reputed centrality of the >horse in Aryan culture. The frequency or paucity of bones is of little relevance for the argument. An example: In late medieval and early modern Europe we have thousands of pictorial representations of the unicorne showing that this animal occupied an important place in the mind of European people around 1500 CE. How many unicorne bones have been found? Likewise one could mention eagle and lion as animals of great symbolic value. So what can be compared are pictorial representations of animals in the IVC with the role of animals in the hymns of the Rgveda. Bones (unless found on sacrificial grounds) tell us something about the role of animals as human food, draft animals and other functions within the material culture, but very little about their symbolic function in a religious context. To define Vedic culture without taking religion into account would seem rather odd. The expression "horse centered" apparently means something else for P. K. Manansala than for most Vedic scholars. As long as we do not agree what we are talking about, it seems useless to exchange arguments. Regards, Georg v. Simson From athr at LOC.GOV Tue Mar 14 19:07:58 2000 From: athr at LOC.GOV (Allen W Thrasher) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 14:07:58 -0500 Subject: Indian police training Message-ID: <161227056841.23782.9924525264667147268.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The novel Katherine Brobeck mentioned is probably this: LC Control Number: 97016458 Personal Name: Godden, Rumer, 1907- Main Title: Cromartie v. the god Shiva acting through the government of India / Rumer Godden. Variant Title: Cromartie versus the god Shiva acting through the government of India Edition Information: 1st U.S. ed. Published/Created: New York : Morrow, c1997. Description: 170 p. ; 22 cm. ISBN: 0688155502 Subjects: Art thefts--India--Fiction. India--Fiction. Genre/Form: Romantic suspense novels. LC Classification: PR6013.O2 C76 1997 Allen Thrasher Allen W. Thrasher, Ph.D. Senior Reference Librarian 101 Indendence Ave., SE Southern Asia Section LJ-150 Asian Division Washington, DC 20540-4810 Library of Congress U.S.A. tel. 202-707-3732 fax 202-707-1724 Email: athr at loc.gov The opinions expressed do not necessarily represent those of the Library of Congress. From athr at LOC.GOV Tue Mar 14 19:09:41 2000 From: athr at LOC.GOV (Allen W Thrasher) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 14:09:41 -0500 Subject: Vimanas Message-ID: <161227056844.23782.16947980805611033093.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On this I can only say what I used to say to my students. In general you have to have the idea of a technology before you have the technology. Therefore the descriptions of flying palaces in the Indian texts are extremely weak evidence for their actual existence. In addition, the vimanas would require an elaborate accessory technology to build them, to house them, and to have places to take off and land. Why has no one stumbled across archaeological evidence of this technology? Allen Thrasher Allen W. Thrasher, Ph.D. Senior Reference Librarian 101 Indendence Ave., SE Southern Asia Section LJ-150 Asian Division Washington, DC 20540-4810 Library of Congress U.S.A. tel. 202-707-3732 fax 202-707-1724 Email: athr at loc.gov The opinions expressed do not necessarily represent those of the Library of Congress. Allen W. Thrasher, Ph.D. Senior Reference Librarian 101 Indendence Ave., SE Southern Asia Section LJ-150 Asian Division Washington, DC 20540-4810 Library of Congress U.S.A. tel. 202-707-3732 fax 202-707-1724 Email: athr at loc.gov The opinions expressed do not necessarily represent those of the Library of Congress. From shrao at NYX.NET Tue Mar 14 21:30:02 2000 From: shrao at NYX.NET (Shrisha Rao) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 14:30:02 -0700 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056848.23782.2263654290673028546.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sat, 11 Mar 2000, Michael Witzel wrote: > We also know *what* has been changed since the time of collection > (samhitaa) : they are a few, clearly visible phonetic developments, due > to historical development, (Cuv > Cv, etc.) and a few 'strange', > schoolmaster type changes, --- we would say "in orthography" --- but is > was, at that time of course, orthoepic diaskeuasis. In this regard, the following may be of interest: "Sunassepa is credited with the composition of 100 rks. in the I Mandala. But we have only 97 rks. of his there and the rest are found distributed between iv (two rks.: tvaM no agne varuNasya (iv.1.4) and v.2.7 (shunashchichchhepaM ***). Madhva contends that these were originally in I Mandala. In mA nastenebhyo (ii.23.16) there is a gap UnatA dR^ishyate.arthataH | which is supplied by Madhva in his B.S.B. iii.4.49." Sharma, B.N.K., `History of the Dvaita School of Vedanta', 2d. ed. Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1981, p. 182. If these errors, which are clearly not phonetic or orthographic, were not due to scribes, then we must say that the oral transmission was at times only 97% accurate. Regards, Shrisha Rao From anand.nayak at UNIFR.CH Tue Mar 14 15:52:55 2000 From: anand.nayak at UNIFR.CH (NAYAK Anand) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 16:52:55 +0100 Subject: Source of quotation Message-ID: <161227056834.23782.1138108329429503621.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Sergei Tawaststjerna "vAN me manasi pratiSThitA, mano me vAci pratiSThitam" appears in the shanti-patha of the aitareya upanishad. It is also the same shantipatha used in some other upanishads. It is just the first verse. Hope you have the whole text. Several modern editions of the upanishads drop the shanti pathas. I have here an India sanskrit edition of the Samskrit samsthana " 108 upanishad ". All the best. A. 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 Avenue de l'Europe 20 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 -----Message d'origine----- De: Sergey S.Tawaststjerna [mailto:tawast at ST1798.SPB.EDU] Date: mardi, 14. mars 2000 15:41 ?: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Objet: Source of quotation Dear list members! Please, help me to idetify the source of the following quotation: "vAN me manasi pratiSThitA, mano me vAci pratiSThitam" I found in one book concerning "Teaching Sanskrit", but the source was not pointed out. Thank you in advance Sergei Tawaststjerna From kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET Tue Mar 14 17:15:14 2000 From: kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET (S.Kalyanaraman) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 17:15:14 +0000 Subject: Ancient Rivers of khvaniratha and indology Message-ID: <161227056825.23782.2474429548865773210.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel wrote: /snip/ Certainly, and it would do some good to learn a few rules about sound > correspondences between Avestan and Vedic... I agree entirely with this alteration: "to learn a few rules about sound AND sememes (sememe is a minimal unit of meaning; for some, a sememe is equivalent to the meaning of a morpheme; for others, it is a feature of meaning, equivalent to the notion of 'semantic component' or 'semantic feature' in some theories..." (fr. David Crystal, A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, Blackwell, 1991, p. 312). Now to khvaniratha... I suggest the semantic correspondence as follows; sva_ni-ratha = sva_nad ratha (having a rattling chariot, RV; cf. Monier Williams) khvaniratha (German. schwan; Anglo Sax. swin).sva_n = making sound (RV 1.104.1); sva_nah = sound (RV 5.2.10; also name of one of the guards of the Soma (Taittiri_ya Sam.hita_ 1.2.7.13). sva_ni-ratha = rattling chariot. But, svan = also meaning 'adorn' (Dha_tup. 1`9.62) In the context of the soma purification (treatment) process, svani (in tuvi- and mahi-shvan.i) = fire, hence also called a synonym of agni. Thus, sva_ni-ratha is a land where agni is the 'chariot' or vehicle. So, MBh. Vana Parva, Ch. 219, Verse 15 notes: svana is the son of agni, called Satya; the agent which causes disease to livin things. Agni got this name because human beings produce svana (pitiable cryy) when afflicted with diseases. The semantic expansion of svana- is more elaborate in the Vedic than in Avestan which seems to refer to this morpheme only in the context of Airyanem Vae_jah or Arya Vis'a, the land mass circumscribed by two rivers: Ranha_ and Vanhi_... Dr. S. Kalyanaraman ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. From malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU Wed Mar 15 00:27:50 2000 From: malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU (Yashwant Malaiya) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 17:27:50 -0700 Subject: quotation? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056859.23782.17529911651125034166.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I was told by someone (author of A historical study of the Brahmin community) that it is the second line of hastinaa taaDyamaanopi na gachchhejjainamandiram yaavaniim is obviously Farsi. He did not know who composed this shloka, but he thought that he must not have been anyone significant. Yashwant -----Original Message----- From: Indology [mailto:INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK]On Behalf Of Madhav Deshpande Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2000 4:22 PM To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Subject: quotation? Does anyone know the source of this line: na vadet yaavaniim bhaa.saam praa.nai.h ka.n.thagatair api / Thanks for any suggestions. Madhav Deshpande From tawast at ST1798.SPB.EDU Tue Mar 14 14:40:32 2000 From: tawast at ST1798.SPB.EDU (Sergey S.Tawaststjerna) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 17:40:32 +0300 Subject: Source of quotation Message-ID: <161227056831.23782.15153625789692305238.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear list members! Please, help me to idetify the source of the following quotation: "vAN me manasi pratiSThitA, mano me vAci pratiSThitam" I found in one book concerning "Teaching Sanskrit", but the source was not pointed out. Thank you in advance Sergei Tawaststjerna From mmdesh at UMICH.EDU Tue Mar 14 23:22:08 2000 From: mmdesh at UMICH.EDU (Madhav Deshpande) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 18:22:08 -0500 Subject: quotation? In-Reply-To: <38D01490.E0C9207E@jps.net> Message-ID: <161227056857.23782.2748306268859984846.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Does anyone know the source of this line: na vadet yaavaniim bhaa.saam praa.nai.h ka.n.thagatair api / Thanks for any suggestions. Madhav Deshpande From shrao at NYX.NET Wed Mar 15 01:44:35 2000 From: shrao at NYX.NET (Shrisha Rao) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 18:44:35 -0700 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056867.23782.1902513569265284435.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Tue, 14 Mar 2000, Michael Witzel wrote: > Unfortunately Srisa Rao confuses two things: Unfortunately Micale Wiztel thinks the material is mine, although I gave a clear reference to the source quoted. > 1* the collection (samhitaa) of the RV early one by some unknown vy-aasa, > and later on, its redaction by Sakalya (and some others, Baskala etc.) [*chomp*] That gobbledygook does not clarify whether it is your position that (i) the claim that Sunassepa authored 100 rks. is erroneous; or that (ii) three of his rks. have migrated from Mandala I is erroneous. Regards, Shrisha Rao From vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM Wed Mar 15 03:54:33 2000 From: vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM (Vishal Agarwal) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 19:54:33 -0800 Subject: quotation? Message-ID: <161227056872.23782.11549575828462260873.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Well, I have read this line in the Bhavishya Purana. Cannot recall the exact location but suggest you look there. ----Original Message Follows---- From: Madhav Deshpande Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 18:22:08 -0500 Does anyone know the source of this line: na vadet yaavaniim bhaa.saam praa.nai.h ka.n.thagatair api / Thanks for any suggestions. Madhav Deshpande ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Wed Mar 15 01:19:59 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 20:19:59 -0500 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056864.23782.12449546322494887522.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Unfortunately Srisa Rao confuses two things: 1* the collection (samhitaa) of the RV early one by some unknown vy-aasa, and later on, its redaction by Sakalya (and some others, Baskala etc.) 2* the notices we have in the Anukramani and in the post-Rgvedic texts about authors of the Rgvedic hymns. No one (at least not in modern Indology, last 200 years) has claimed that no. 2 is correct. Or does anyone accept Ms. Vaac as author of the hymn on Speech? (RV 10.125) Also, the notices about the authors of the SAME stanza in RV,AV, YV, AV disagree. This is all secondary stuff. People tried to find authors when no living tradition was available. However, as far as 1* is concerned, even where we cannot be sure about the author or his clan (Vasistha etc.), the ORDER, arrangement of the hymns still indicates what belongs together and what not, and what had been inserted by the time of Sakalya, from unknown sources. Old news, see Bergaigne, and Oldenberg, Prolegomena 1888 (why do we always have to repeat such old news?? I mean it: it shows that people talk about the RV and do not know the basics. ) What is much more interesting is that Satapatha Brahmana, of the same time as Sakalya, quote the Pururavas/Urvasi hymn as having 15 stanzas while it now has 18 (*against* the order of arrangement in RV). Again, very old news. But it shows exactly what we know anyhow, that there were several early redactions (Sakalya, Baskala, Mandukeya etc.) of which we have only Sakalya and a few notes about the two others. (The existence of their texts has always been rumored, but nothing has appeared or at least been described in some detail. In the meantime, we wait, patiently.) Therefore, Rao's statement, below, is 100% besides the point I made in the quote immediately following: >On Sat, 11 Mar 2000, Michael Witzel wrote: > >> We also know *what* has been changed since the time of collection >> (samhitaa) : they are a few, clearly visible phonetic developments, due >> to historical development, (Cuv > Cv, etc.) and a few 'strange', >> schoolmaster type changes, --- we would say "in orthography" --- but is >> was, at that time of course, orthoepic diaskeuasis. QED. Srisa Rao: >In this regard, the following may be of interest: > > "Sunassepa is credited with the composition of 100 rks. in the I Mandala. > But we have only 97 rks. of his there and the rest are found distributed > between iv (two rks.: tvaM no agne varuNasya (iv.1.4) and v.2.7 > (shunashchichchhepaM ***). Madhva contends that these were originally > in I Mandala. In mA nastenebhyo (ii.23.16) there is a gap > UnatA dR^ishyate.arthataH | which is supplied by Madhva in his > B.S.B. iii.4.49." > > Sharma, B.N.K., `History of the Dvaita School of Vedanta', 2d. ed. > Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1981, p. 182. > >If these errors, which are clearly not phonetic or orthographic, were not >due to scribes, then we must say that the oral transmission was at times >only 97% accurate. Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Wed Mar 15 01:24:40 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 20:24:40 -0500 Subject: quotation? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056862.23782.313184873865184400.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Madhav, not this one, and not even from personal practice, I am afraid, though it refers to us Yavanas. But a somewhat similar description of Greek in Syamilaka's Padataditaka (Kashmiri author , c. 500 CE) , about the Greek woman whose speech no one likes... Among others, too many -s- sounds. Must check the exact wording. Ed. by G. Schokker c. 1960, The Hague. >Does anyone know the source of this line: > >na vadet yaavaniim bhaa.saam praa.nai.h ka.n.thagatair api / ------------ Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM Wed Mar 15 04:36:05 2000 From: vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM (Vishal Agarwal) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 20:36:05 -0800 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056878.23782.17216145990783619065.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dr. Witzel said: But it shows exactly what we know anyhow, that there were several early redactions (Sakalya, Baskala, Mandukeya etc.) of which we have only Sakalya and a few notes about the two others. (The existence of their texts has always been rumored, but nothing has appeared or at least been described in some detail. In the meantime, we wait, patiently.) ______________________ I would like to add a few comments: 1. The RV tradition is itself not unanimous on the Rishis of individual hymns. For instance, the Bashkala anukramani (manuscript at Calcutta) of Parasara gives different Rishis for several hymns that occur in the Sakala version too. The commentator Jagannatha actually criticizes Saunaka for giving the 'wrong' Rishis.(See catalog description). Note also that the AV Brihatsarvanukramani (Chapter on Kanda 20 only) claims to be based on Asvalayana's RV anukramani and sometimes gives different Rishis for the verses that occur also in the Sakala version.(See the VVRI ed. of AV Sarvanukramani). And of course, the Rishis of SV are often different from those of RV. All such instances have been discussed in great detail in Hindi articles (have copies of some of them). 2. Manuscripts of Bashkala, Sankhayana (two sub-versions) and Aswalayana do exist and I have seen some Sankhayana manuscripts. The last two even have their own Padapathas. The *arrangement* of hymns is significantly different only in Bashkala, as is well known. In UP (and maybe elswhere too) amongst some Rigvedin families, a person who does things hapahazardly is often teased as 'Bashkala'(The reason is obvious). For a rather detailed explanation of the Aswalayana version, please read an article in a recent (I think 1996) issue of VIJ. It says that VVRI is in the process of publishing this Samhita. Scrappy accounts of different Shankhayana manuscripts are available (I have been compiling them), the most signficant being in the 'Parisishtani' section of the VSM edition of RV + Sayana Bhashya, and an old article in the Hindi journal called 'Prajna'. (The editors of VSM edition borrowed 2 Shankhayana manuscripts from the collection of Pt. Satavalekar. Both of them come from Gujarat and are 250 + years old). The textual differences and the extra verses etc, and similar things are too numerous to be listed here. I tried to obtain Peterson's catalog of manuscripts at Ulwar (=Alwar) but failed. In my opinion, the present Sakala Samhita itself is a *slightly* composite text. Note that the Sakalya Padapatha does not exist for 6 (if I recollect correctly) mantras in the Samhita (like 10.121.10; 10.190.3...). Maybe things will be a little clearer when the Padapathas of Shankhayana and Ashwalayana samhitas are also published. Vishal ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From tawady at YAHOO.COM Tue Mar 14 22:09:25 2000 From: tawady at YAHOO.COM (Raveen S. Nathan) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 22:09:25 +0000 Subject: Trilingual inscription from Sri Lanka Message-ID: <161227056851.23782.7901286234164892037.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> To learn more about Professor Paranavithana's role in developing early Sinhala ethno nationalism please see this article. http://kafula.msrc.sunysb.edu/~sbarrkum/newsgroups/complexion From troyoga at YAHOO.COM Wed Mar 15 06:33:24 2000 From: troyoga at YAHOO.COM (Ven. Tantra) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 22:33:24 -0800 Subject: Etymology of Cerebrum Message-ID: <161227056883.23782.5418202061824973293.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I would like to thank those of the Indologist List who came forward in response to my query on the deep etymology of Cerebrum. Though a student, I do not have access to a proper research library and so am therefore very grateful for the assistance of learned people. If I am not mistaken (then) the basic fact is that cerebrum cannot be segmented into two units cere? and ?brum, as I erroneously assumed. The word, however, does certainly mean ?brain.? Cere-, for its own part, also corresponds to the Vedic/Sanskrit ?siras and to the older Rig-Vedic ?siir.san, both meaning, ?head.? In fact, cere- and ?siras are both based on the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *k?.rH-, as are a host of other Indo-European words, e.g. Greek keras (?head?) and Latin cornu (?horn?). This shows that *k??H- originally indicated ?the uppermost part of the body, head, horn, summit,? etc., as affirmed by Julius Pokorny in his _Indogermanisches Etymologisches W?rterbuch_, 574. The two Indic derivatives ?siras and ?siir.san (then) go back to the pre-forms *k?.rH-os and *k?.rH-s-n-os, respectively. These PIE roots are the source of words in many other languages related to the same semantic field through varied means of suffixes and affixes. Cerebrum, which is derived from the identical pre-form, differs only in its affix *-ro- as seen in the reconstructed *k?.rHs-ro-m. It then developed through various stages whereby *-sr- became -br- through a secondary sound-change. The -o- in the final syllable, which is still retained in Old Latin, became -u- in the classical language. The segmentation thus became cereb-ru-m, producing ?cerebrum.? The final -m is simply the ending of the neuter nominative/accusative singular. Now the fact that the meaning of cerebrum is ?brain? confirms that Latin used a -ro- suffix in its derivation (vis-?-vis Greek, keras-rom), denoting ?something that belongs to the head.? But I find it very interesting that the Latin word for ?head,? which should have been something along the lines of cere-, was supplanted by the altogether different word, ?caput.? As a final point: There seems to be evidence of an early correlation between Latin ?caput? and Sanskrit kapaala meaning, ?skull,? though this has not been definitively proven. Best regards, Troy Harris __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From BLQM at MUSICB.MCGILL.CA Wed Mar 15 03:51:27 2000 From: BLQM at MUSICB.MCGILL.CA (GHOSE,LYNKEN,MR) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 22:51:27 -0500 Subject: Bhartrhari Message-ID: <161227056870.23782.5474933991020613143.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Indology List: How would you categorize someone like Bhartr.hari vis-a-vis the 6 orthodox schools of Indian philosophy. Would it be fair to say that he represents another school of philosophy, i.e. philosophy of language, that looked upon the Veda as sacred, yet with slightly less deference given to the Veda than in the 6 orthodox schools? Thank you, Lynken Ghose McGill University From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Wed Mar 15 03:51:39 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 00 22:51:39 -0500 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056875.23782.11060605910772847784.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Raam, Raam, another failure in reading what has been stated clearly enough. The tradition that Sunahsepa composed 100 verses does *not* come from the RV, only the 97 hymns that are *attributed* to him, and attributed only by *later* Vedic tradition. I explained already in my last message that this is not = oral transmision of the RV *text*. (points *1 and * 2). In other words, DIFFERENT from (a) the arrangement of RV hymns and stanzas and (b) from any changes in pronunciation etc. that these stanzas may or may not have undergone (my original statement). "Sunassepa is credited with the composition of 100 rks. in the I Mandala. But we have only 97 rks. of his there and the rest are found distributed between iv (two rks.: tvaM no agne varuNasya (iv.1.4) and v.2.7 (shunashchichchhepaM ***). Madhva contends that these were originally in I Mandala. In mA nastenebhyo (ii.23.16) there is a gap UnatA dR^ishyate.arthataH | which is supplied by Madhva in his B.S.B. iii.4.49." Now Shrisha Rao orders me to tell what *my position* is with reference to this still later, in part only medieval tradition that he has quoted. Do I? Do I have to have an opinion whether Sankara is the author of this or that hymn? Or about a bad hymn ATTRIBUTED by some manuscript colophon to Kalidasa? Not my problem. But since he has ordered me: The statements quoted by S. Rao are as much worth as one by Sayana or any more recent scholar. It is one man's opinion. And clearly motivated by the wish to make RV agree with what only a much later Vedic text, Aitareya Brahmana 7.16 (and the equally late Anukramani) say about the clearly legendary Sunahsepa. Fine, if Madhva (and his followers!) was/are happy with it. That is their problem. Anybody is free to believe in whatever tradition. But this is not a religious list. One can, of course, see why this attribution has been made, if one reads these the 'original 97' and the "additional" stanzas. To fit the AB legend with its 100 stanzas. 100 is of course the most natural number of stanzas you would compose when you are bound to a stake. All well known, again!!! Raam, why do I always have to be the bearer of OLD NEWS? : Read Geldner's intro to the "Sunahsepa collection" which clarifies some points and Oldenberg's detailed discussion that clarifies the order of the hymns in the set RV 1.24-30. Then come back. I am not a translation bureau. Of course, on closer reading, one can even see that "Sunahsepa" *cannot* have been the author of RV 1.24-30. Find out yourself. Then come back. Shrisha Rao still does not see that the collection of RV 1.24-30 is *attributed* to Sunahsepa by LATER TEXTS, but that the RV text *itself* does not say so (though RV authors often refer to themselves, directly or with hidden references) , and that therefore his whole argument, taken from some old authors, is VOID. Their problem, and his, not mine. When he says: >If these errors, which are clearly not phonetic or orthographic, were not >due to scribes, then we must say that the oral transmission was at times >only 97% accurate. he simply does not seem to know what has happened in *general* Vedic oral tradition of Brahmins about ANY ITEM of their culture, between the RV and the late Brahmanas. (Not that of the *RV text*). Or does he now want to have Brahmanical scribes, writing in a non-prexisting pre-Brahmi, copying the RV and getting it wrong already by the time of AB 7 ??? A section coming from eastern India (Bihar etc.), pre-Magadha and pre-Buddhist... Or did these Brahmins just continue to write in the Indus script, now discovered nearby among the Santals??? Oral transmission of the RV remains untouched by this interesting bit of 'gobbledygook '. Sorry, I mean jarbhari turphari. *Attribution* of hymns, to say it ONCE MORE, is different from the oral transmission of the RV *text.* About which I wrote. I hope three times is enough. Ity alam. MW SHRISHA RAO: >That gobbledygook does not clarify whether it is your position that >(i) the claim that Sunassepa authored 100 rks. is erroneous; or that >(ii) three of his rks. have migrated from Mandala I is erroneous. > >Regards, > >Shrisha Rao Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From swamiji at VSNL.COM Tue Mar 14 20:37:16 2000 From: swamiji at VSNL.COM (Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 02:07:16 +0530 Subject: Ganakashtadhyayi - A Software on Panini's Sutras Message-ID: <161227056845.23782.12027122679362814009.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear scholars of Indology, The 11th World Sanskrit Conference scheduled to be held in Turin in the beginning of next month reminds me of its previous conference held at our Taralabalu Kendra in Bangalore 3 years ago. I had the privilege of being the Honorary President of the Organizing Committee. Many of you attended the Bangalore conference and presented scholarly papers. Some of you even helped me in organizational/academic matters with good advice and active participation. After the conference was over, I could not personally thank you enough, for all that help I received. On the eve of the Turin Conference and the Sanskrit year, I wish to offer all of you a small gift in the form of a software developed by me on Panini's sutras. The software is named as Ganakashtadhyayi (windows version 1.0) and is freely downloadable from the site: http://www.vsna.org/swamiji/panini/win/win_panini.html The present version (1.0) is only a preliminary version containing minimum features: 1. All the Sutras of Panini are given in Roman script using standard diacritical marks. 2. Pada-Patha: Splitting of Sandhis in the Sutras for easy comprehension (Incomplete) 3. Vrittis on the Sutras as found in the Siddhanta Kaumudi and Laghu Kaumudi (Incomplete) 4. Sutras can be sorted in the order of Ashtadhyayi, Siddhanta Kaumudi or Laghu Kaumudi. We have tested the software with Internet Explorer (4.0) and Netscape (4.7) on the operating system Windows 98. However, Windows NT users are advised not to download. Any comments or suggestions for the improvement of the software are most welcome. Looking forward to seeing some of you at the Turin conference! Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ * Taralabalu Kendra, 3rd Main, 2nd Block, RT Nagar, Bangalore - 560 032, India * swamiji at vsnl.com Fax: +91-(0)80-3334541, Tel: +91-(0)80-3332759 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM Wed Mar 15 14:53:50 2000 From: smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM (Swaminathan Madhuresan) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 06:53:50 -0800 Subject: Indian police training Message-ID: <161227056901.23782.11163844827474193022.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Ms. Rumer has penned this novel based on the London newspaper reports. Some smugglers swindled away a famous Chola bronze Natarajar from the Thanjavur village, Paththuur. Dated to 9-10th cent. AD. Tamil Nadu Govt. sued on behalf of the presiding deity, Lord Shiva of Paththuur in the court of London. Dr. George Schwindler, an American art historian represented the buyers. But the court, in a landmark judgement, returned the precious Natarajar back to the village temple. Regards, SM --- Allen W Thrasher wrote: > The novel Katherine Brobeck mentioned is probably this: > > LC Control Number: 97016458 > Personal Name: Godden, Rumer, 1907- > Main Title: Cromartie v. the god Shiva acting through > the government of > India / Rumer Godden. > Variant Title: Cromartie versus the god Shiva acting > through the government > of India > Edition Information: 1st U.S. ed. > Published/Created: New York : Morrow, c1997. > Description: 170 p. ; 22 cm. > ISBN: 0688155502 > Subjects: Art thefts--India--Fiction. > India--Fiction. > Genre/Form: Romantic suspense novels. > LC Classification: PR6013.O2 C76 1997 > > > > Allen Thrasher > > > > Allen W. Thrasher, Ph.D. > > Senior Reference Librarian 101 Indendence Ave., SE > Southern Asia Section LJ-150 > Asian Division Washington, DC 20540-4810 > Library of Congress U.S.A. > tel. 202-707-3732 fax 202-707-1724 > Email: athr at loc.gov > > The opinions expressed do not necessarily represent those of the > Library of Congress. > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From vijay0104 at YAHOO.COM Wed Mar 15 09:36:42 2000 From: vijay0104 at YAHOO.COM (Vijay Shankar) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 09:36:42 +0000 Subject: horsing around with horse Message-ID: <161227056891.23782.2632691990365588778.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The horse problem is not of archaeology but of natural history. We are not looking for horse bones in human settlements but for wild horse. The following questions are neighing for answer: 1.Why is the term for horse the same in Rgveda and Avesta? 2.What is the scientific name of Rgvedic asva/ Avestan aspa ? 3.Is India/Iran the natural habitat of horse? Were there wild asva/aspa in Indian subcontinent/ Iran ? 4.If yes,when was the horse domesticated? If not, where did asva/aspa come from? From kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET Wed Mar 15 10:35:45 2000 From: kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET (S.Kalyanaraman) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 10:35:45 +0000 Subject: Ancient Rivers of khvaniratha and indology Message-ID: <161227056880.23782.13538187017234625638.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel wrote: > Bartholomae has also xvanaT.caxra (cf. svanad-ratha), xvaini-star at ta/u, > xvaini.saxta;> And Avestan vaEjah simply cannot be = Ved. vis'a (viz???), as Avestan j => Vedic j. While Vedic s' (z) = Avestan s. My response on etyma and semantic tracks is posted at http://sarasvati.listbot.com View Archives Message #96 (since the size is 7.2k and too much for this list). Longer responses (upto 200k) can be sent to sarasvati at listbot.com which will automatically get posted on the Archives. Would deeply appreciate further comments and suggestions. Yes, indeed, linguistics (phonetics, semantics and transformational grammar) is what indology has for 'science', however, imperfect... On semantics vs. phonetics, later... Regards, Dr. S. Kalyanaraman ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. From birgit.kellner at UNIVIE.AC.AT Wed Mar 15 09:42:19 2000 From: birgit.kellner at UNIVIE.AC.AT (Birgit Kellner) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 10:42:19 +0100 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056893.23782.9513793882621963155.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Klaus Karttunen wrote: > While I am not suspecting the oral character of Veda, which I have myself > asserted (see my article in the Estonian journal Folklore 8, 1998, 114ff., > also in http://haldjas.folklore.ee/folklore/vol8/veda.htm), I think that > this argument is not so good. Living in a wholly literate culture the Greek > and Latin authors, when quoting written books, normally did it from memory, > without actually checking the text and thus committed many kinds of > mistakes. Therefore it is important that the mistakes somehow show the oral > character of the text. Fortunately Witzel goes on to this: > Forgive me for barging in on a thread that I haven't been able to follow from its beginning, with a very general question that has always intrigued me (and is, I think, also discussed by Ong): How is a "mistake" determined in a transmission that is wholly oral? Evidently, the transmitted "text" could only be checked against the memory of other "transmitters", so one would presume the stability of an orally transmitted text to increase with the number of people who memorize it, but this still leaves open the question of how such stability (or instability) is ascertained - aren't all such ascertainments, in a manner of speaking, post mortem declarations about oral cultures, pronounced already on the basis of available written records? Just wondering ... Birgit Kellner From Klaus.Karttunen at HELSINKI.FI Wed Mar 15 09:05:03 2000 From: Klaus.Karttunen at HELSINKI.FI (Klaus Karttunen) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 11:05:03 +0200 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056885.23782.8554558979287651906.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel wrote: >Footnote: >The history of Vedic quotations, too, indicates their ORAL origins. >Right from Yaska's Nirukta who slightly misquotes a Kathaka Samhita line, >to the RV commentary of SaayaNa (died 1387 CE, if I remember the date >correctly) the Veda quotations in commentaries show that their authors >relied on their -- not always perfect -- memory of texts that did NOT >BELONG to their own tradition (i.e.: a Rgvedin quoting a Samaveda Brahmana >text, etc.). While I am not suspecting the oral character of Veda, which I have myself asserted (see my article in the Estonian journal Folklore 8, 1998, 114ff., also in http://haldjas.folklore.ee/folklore/vol8/veda.htm), I think that this argument is not so good. Living in a wholly literate culture the Greek and Latin authors, when quoting written books, normally did it from memory, without actually checking the text and thus committed many kinds of mistakes. Therefore it is important that the mistakes somehow show the oral character of the text. Fortunately Witzel goes on to this: >You always find the typical substitutions (words, collocations, etc.) which >we all make when reciting a poem/singing a song that we do not remember too >well anymore. One does not do that so easily when one actually looks up >and compares a written text (pace: the common copying mistakes we all >make; they are different in nature).... I was also waiting for somebody to mention the Polynesian traditions. Thanks to Witzel for doing that. Regards Klaus Klaus Karttunen Institute for Asian and African Studies Box 59, 00014 Helsinki, Finland tel. +358-9-191-22224, fax. +358-9-191-22094 From Klaus.Karttunen at HELSINKI.FI Wed Mar 15 09:16:41 2000 From: Klaus.Karttunen at HELSINKI.FI (Klaus Karttunen) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 11:16:41 +0200 Subject: Vimanas and Yavanas Message-ID: <161227056888.23782.10667045018437093325.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear colleagues, while Allen W. Thrasher certainly said all necessary about the "historicity" of flying palaces or cars, it is perhaps interesting to note that constructing of flying machines as well as that of artificial servants was often described among the skills of Yavana artisans (e.g. in some Vinaya texts, in Schiefner/Ralston's Tibetan tales, in BRhatkathAzlokasaMgraha). As to the yAvanI bhASA, there are several references to this in Sanskrit and Middle Indo-Aryan literature, but I must check them at home. I'll be back in Monday. Regards Klaus Klaus Karttunen Institute for Asian and African Studies Box 59, 00014 Helsinki, Finland tel. +358-9-191-22224, fax. +358-9-191-22094 From r.l.schmidt at EAST.UIO.NO Wed Mar 15 11:34:00 2000 From: r.l.schmidt at EAST.UIO.NO (Ruth Laila Schmidt) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 13:34:00 +0200 Subject: Etymology Message-ID: <161227056897.23782.5604370562570683712.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear members of the list, Does someone have an etymology for Hindi-urdu mushTanDa ( ~ musTanDa), 'sturdy, robust'? McGregor gives musTanDa with no etymology; Platts gives mushTanDa tracing it back to Skt. muZTi, 'fist'. Turner, the usual arbiter of such matters, is silent. 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 g.v.simson at EAST.UIO.NO Wed Mar 15 13:40:52 2000 From: g.v.simson at EAST.UIO.NO (Georg von Simson) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 14:40:52 +0100 Subject: Etymology In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056899.23782.3879507766183190491.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Ruth Schmidt wrote: >Does someone have an etymology for Hindi-urdu mushTanDa ( ~ musTanDa), >'sturdy, robust'? McGregor gives musTanDa with no etymology; Platts gives >mushTanDa tracing it back to Skt. muZTi, 'fist'. Turner, the usual arbiter >of such matters, is silent. If nothing better turns up, I would suggest to explain the word from Sanskrit *muSTANDa=muSTa-aNDa, "one who has been deprived of his testicles" which means that he has become plump (a normal result of castration); from here the meaning "sturdy, robust" might have developed. Compare the Bengali word pA~R, according to Turner (7717) derived from Sanskrit paNDa, "eunuch, weakling" (the latter meaning tallies badly with "sturdy, robust", I admit!), but having now in Bengali the meanings "huge, ungainly, ugly, full-grown, overripe". paNDa is probably an early development of apa-ANDa, "one whose testicles are removed", see Wezler, ZDMG 148 (1998), p. 261-276, esp. p. 263. muSTa-aNDa would then be a nice parallel to apa-aNDa (or -ANDa, as Wezler suggests). The other meanings of the Hindi word given by McGregor, "a depraved person" and "a lout", suggest that the word is used as an invective, which would tally well with an original meaning "eunuch". Best regards, Georg v. Simson. From kekai at JPS.NET Wed Mar 15 22:52:35 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 14:52:35 -0800 Subject: Horse Message-ID: <161227056853.23782.6461631674928782623.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Georg von Simson wrote: > > So what can be compared are pictorial representations of animals in the > IVC with the role of animals in the hymns of the Rgveda. If the frequency or paucity of bones is not of value in the argument than neither is the presence or absence of the horse in Harappan artwork. I should point out here that I do not believe that Harappa was Vedic. However, there could be reasons that the horse was not depicted artistically. Given the wide range of Harappan civilization, I doubt that all varieties of fauna were depicted in their art. One possibility is that representations of horses, if they existed, were -- for religious reasons -- made solely of wood, in which case preservation would be rare. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From kekai at JPS.NET Wed Mar 15 22:54:09 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 14:54:09 -0800 Subject: Horse Message-ID: <161227056855.23782.4574799319362429845.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Koenraad Elst wrote: >of > horse evidence should be > compared with that in Indian sites generally acknowledged as Vedic-Aryan,> reputedly> horse-centred, e.g. Hastinapura. I recall an explanation by Prof.> Romila Thapar about Hastinapura (in Social Scientist, Delhi, Jan. 1996), to> the effect that the paucity of horses found there was due to the confinement> of the use of horses to the > (necessarily minoritarian) aristocracy. So there too, the harvest of horse> bones was disappointing. Had carbon-14 dating not put the site squarely in> a period when that part of India is universally acknowledged to have been> Indo-Aryan-speaking, then it might well have been diagnosed as non-Aryan for> lack of sufficient horse remains to match the reputed centrality of the> horse in Aryan culture. > I agree. If horse-centeredness is central to the "Aryan" invasion/migration theory then it cannot only be used as negative evidence against conflicting theories. Likewise, is there any evidence of the Dasa cities of metal/copper anywhere in India? Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From tawady at YAHOO.COM Wed Mar 15 15:31:03 2000 From: tawady at YAHOO.COM (Raveen S Nathan) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 15:31:03 +0000 Subject: Brahui-English dictionary in the net Message-ID: <161227056905.23782.16541858216949221485.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> http://members.tripod.com/~Svaxen/ From swamiji at VSNL.COM Wed Mar 15 10:01:13 2000 From: swamiji at VSNL.COM (Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 15:31:13 +0530 Subject: Ganakashtadhyayi (ver1.0) - Error message reported Message-ID: <161227056895.23782.6200241589587562368.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear scholars of Indology, Inspite of all the care taken to make it error-free, an unexpected error message viz., > "Run-time error '380' Invalid property value." has been reported. I deeply regret for the frustration and inconvenience caused to the list members. I am indebted to all those scholars who first downloaded the software and detected the error. I am temporarily disabling the link to the download page. We are trying to fix the error. Please wait till my next announcement. Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ * Sri Taralabalu Jagadguru Brihanmath, Sirigere - 577 541, Chitradurga Dist, Karnataka, India * Taralabalu Kendra,3rd Main, 2nd Block, RT Nagar, Bangalore - 560 032, India * swamiji at vsnl.com Fax: +91-(0)80-3334541, Tel: +91-(0)80-3332759 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From tawady at YAHOO.COM Wed Mar 15 15:35:59 2000 From: tawady at YAHOO.COM (Raveen S Nathan) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 15:35:59 +0000 Subject: Brahui-English dictionary in the net Message-ID: <161227056907.23782.3538749462402544096.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> opps sorry, http://members.tripod.com/~Svaxen/brahdic.htm From koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE Wed Mar 15 14:55:02 2000 From: koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE (Koenraad Elst) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 15:55:02 +0100 Subject: Horse Message-ID: <161227056903.23782.1660971599247064713.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Seems I ought to join Herr Witzel's fan club. I never studied the BMAC (well, the one whose writings I did study was the Babri Masjid Action Committee), except for some much-discussed BMAC data on soma and fire temples. Stupid me, I never questioned the widespread assumption that it was a "horse-centred" culture, implied in Bernard Sergent's thesis that the BMAC was the Indo-Iranians poised to invade India. But now I read: Michael Witzel Aan: Verzonden: zaterdag 11 maart 2000 5:56 Onderwerp: Re: Elst's review of Kochhar's Vedic People saying: > Sorry, no horses there, so far. So, no horse > riding/chariot riding BMAC Aryans. If that were true, it would change the picture concerning the horse evidence completely. If the absence of horses in the BMAC doesn't disprove its being Aryan, the near-absence of horses in Harappa need not disprove its being Aryan either. Koenraad Elst From venkatraman_iyer at HOTMAIL.COM Thu Mar 16 00:23:15 2000 From: venkatraman_iyer at HOTMAIL.COM (Venkatraman Iyer) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 16:23:15 -0800 Subject: Comparative linguistics Message-ID: <161227056926.23782.4148129051672440784.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Contrary views on Linguistics by distinguished Professors. Prof. Witzel: >In spite of the aversion/hatred by some on the list, evident again just a >few days ago, historical linguistics is as close as its gets in language >study to natural science (after all, we can move our mouth, tongue, lips, >teeth etc., in only so many ways...) Lack of knowledge or dismissal of this >aspect of linguistics by the very natural scientists who like to take the >high road on the list is indeed surprising. Prof. Kalyanaraman 5 years ago: >I believe, that it is not necessary to establish 'ancestry' for a word. If >it is found across scores of languages spread across vast >distances, and authenticated in very, very ancient literary texts and >epigraphs, it does not really matter which phonetic variant came >first, despite Mayrhoffer and Burrow/Emeneau disagreeing. What is more >important are the 'images' Prof. Fosse in a reply to Prof. B. Gupt: >I have noticed that teaching religions in school can be a problem even >here, although it does not lead to riots. The fact that you do not have >religious studies is of course deplorable. Nor do you have comparative >linguistics, which is a pity too. Prof. Gupt earlier: >'Aryan' or 'Indo-Europeans' as 'people', 'tribes', 'races' or 'linguistic >gropus' may very well be a construction by the Europeans to reclaim their >original self as the dynamism behind the flowering of 'classical' Greece, >Persia and India. If it is being put to question in India today, should it >suppresed as 'ethnocentric rant' obstructive of good work. Aryan construct >served not only the colonial regime, it still serves the current >north-south divide. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Wed Mar 15 17:05:47 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 17:05:47 +0000 Subject: BiBTeX Packages for citing MSS In-Reply-To: <01JMU4PV3R8Q91WGKI@its.canterbury.ac.nz> Message-ID: <161227056909.23782.6102986017487980996.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> You need to write your own bst file, I'm afraid. Have you looked at Bibdb, which might help, and is very customizable. It's a graphical-interface bibliography database which works with bibtex files. I can imagine you could write a format for MSS. But you would still need a bst for bibtex to process when reading the database. Two more tools: natbib and custom-bib, both available from CTAN, are indispensible, to my mind. It's a long time since I used custom-bib, but you might be able to do something for MSS, or use it in some non-standard way to invent what you need. The problem is that you need your .bst file to define headings for you like "scribe" and "script" etc. One thing I've done is have a basic bst written using custom-bib, and then go in and add features I want by analogy to what is there. But bibtex's bst language is reverse-Polish notation, and pretty nasty. Okay for PostScript hackers, but not mere mortals. -- Dominik Wujastyk Founder, INDOLOGY list. From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Wed Mar 15 17:08:09 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 17:08:09 +0000 Subject: Myth and Reality [Was River Sarasvati: Atomic scientists reconfirm location] In-Reply-To: <20000309030700.17613.qmail@wwcst088.netaddress.usa.net> Message-ID: <161227056911.23782.16961363636496234950.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Thu, 9 Mar 2000, S.Kalyanaraman wrote: > Dominik Wujastyk wrote: > Let's try to keep this list scholarly, shall we! > > Scholarly? Methinks, Indology, though a private mailing list, has not yet > become the monopoly for scholarship... iti na, atiprasa"ngado.saat // -- Dominik Wujastyk Founder INDOLOGY list From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Wed Mar 15 17:18:06 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 17:18:06 +0000 Subject: Saraswati: Atomic Scientists reconfirm location In-Reply-To: <20000309134303.63657.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <161227056915.23782.8103753380105954910.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Thu, 9 Mar 2000, Vishal Agarwal wrote: > The importance of science can hardly be over-estimated, and I hope of > a greater collaboration between the various fields of knowledge. Science is okay, as far as it goes. It doesn't go as far as Sanskrit or Tamil or Persian, or a training in History, as a means of understanding pre-modern India. Scientists trained in classical languages, or historical methods, may call themselves Historians, in which case it is as Historians that we think of them and their writings, not as scientists. A scientist qua scientist is simply unqualified to write about historical and cultural topics! There is nothing about partial differential equations, say, which in se qualifies one to interpret Vedanta Desika's philosophy. DD Kosambi was a fine mathematician, but it was as a fine philologist and literary historian that he contributed so valuably to the study of Bhartrhari's poetry. It would be ridiculous to say that his contribution to indology was because he was a Scientist. -- Dominik Wujastyk Founder, INDOLOGY list. From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Wed Mar 15 17:38:39 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 17:38:39 +0000 Subject: Vimanas In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056917.23782.811377466396328666.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I think this has come up before, but for good measure, cf. Mahar.si bhardvaaja pra.niita ya.mtrasarvasve Vimaana Prakara.nam sa.m"sodhaka "Srii Bhuvane"svarii Pii.thaadhii"sa Aacaarya "srii Cara.natiirtha Mahaaraaja Muulya 0-75 "Srii Bhuvane"svarii Prakaa"sana Go.m.dala-Sauraa.s.tra, Bhaarata The book's colophon dates it to sa.mvat 2008 Cara.natiirtha is the initiated name of Jivarama Kalidasa Sastri, who published a number of alchemical and medical books in Bombay and Gondal. -- Dominik Wujastyk Founder, INDOLOGY list. From tawady at YAHOO.COM Wed Mar 15 18:12:07 2000 From: tawady at YAHOO.COM (Raveen Satkurunathan) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 18:12:07 +0000 Subject: linguistics (was: Tamil words in English) Message-ID: <161227056921.23782.2434609477024929675.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On , Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote: >>> I (and many other Indians) personally find that Kannada and Telugu >>> so similiar to >>> other north-Indian languages that I refuse to believe that they >>> belong to different language families until some concrete evidence >>> that can be independently >>> verified is offered. >>"similar to other north-Indian languages"? I hope there is a typo >>there. There are heaps of concrete evidence. >I shouldn't presume to speak for someone else, but I think this was no >typo. >For many Kannada and Telugu speakers, saying that these languages are >similar to north Indian languages, and that they are allied to Sanskrit, >serves as a way of setting themselves apart from Tamil and Tamil >speakers. Since Sanskrit is popularly thought to be older than any other >language, it also serves as a means of suggesting that Kannada and >Telugu are somehow older than Tamil. >No serious linguistic argument this, but a political one. But then, they >are caught between a rock and a hard place, as the Americans say >nowadays. Most Tamilians revel in their Dravidian "other"-ness, while >most Indians north of Belgaum consider themselves fair-skinned Aryans. Not the politically "aware" Dalits, Tribals and some instances the OBC's >The fact that Tamil politicians have appropriated the word "Dravida" >means that non-Tamil south Indians want to downplay their own >associations with things Dravidian, and to align themselves with things >"Aryan". > >Vidyasankar Not just native Kannada and Telugu speakers but also "many" native Malayalam speakers also believe that their "Mula Basha" is Sanskrit not Tamil and are enraged when confronted with 'evidence" which is most of the time brushed aside as western "propaganda". This notion that all languages are derived from Sanskrit is not a modern development in India but has its origin in many Purans. From rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM Wed Mar 15 23:16:50 2000 From: rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM (Rajarshi Banerjee) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 18:16:50 -0500 Subject: Saraswati: Atomic Scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227056924.23782.229921059515167692.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> MW> Why is it that of all of these and the ensuing movements, just one, the "Aryan"one (=Indo-Aryan, proto-Vedic), is NOT allowed these days? Why was it allowed in the first place as concrete truth down to the last detail with no room for speculation? The other ones are historical. But this one is a reconstruction based on at best circumstantial evidence and needs to be treated with some scepticism atleast. There are so many gaps to be filled in. One can easily imagine mitannian mercenaries and their traditions straying into India and kick starting martial / political practices, why should we fixate on afghans. What about pakis from harappa? We also need to ask if they also brought about a linguistic change , or only social ones and to what degree? Why do we always have to assume that IE languages were intrusive. Deciphering linear B pushed back greek by almost a millenia. regards RB From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Thu Mar 16 00:42:23 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 19:42:23 -0500 Subject: Vimanas In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227056927.23782.2170757262852718406.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Re Vimaana: I have a partial photocopy of : maharSibharadvAjapraNIta bRhadvimAnazAstra arthAt maharSibharavAjapraNIta "yantrasarvasva" granthAntargata yatibodhAnanadakRtazlokavaddhavRttisahita "vaimAnika prakaraNa" (sic) priyagrantamAlApuSpa 46 brahmanunigranthamAlA - puSpasaMkhyA 17 Unfortunately I have only pp. 242-344; text is in Skt Shlokas, with Hindi summaries, always after a number of verses. I vaguely remember, from 10 years ago, that the author says in the introduction that he did not have a manuscript but "received the text". The classic on this matter, is however, by our famous Indian colleague, the late V. Raghavan of Madras. He wrote a c. 20 pp. paper on vimaanas in ancient Indian texts, published by the Mythic Society of Bangalore, some 20-30 years ago. Unfortunately I don't have my copy now, gave it to a scientist friend. But it can be found out from the bibliography of V.Raghavan, published as a separate book, (Bibliography of the books, papers & other contributions of Dr. V. Raghavan, Professor of Sanskrit, University of Madras. With the foreword of S. Radhakrishnan and the introd. of D.H.H. Ingalls. Ahmedabad, New Order Book Co. [1968] ) Quoting strictly *from memory*, of some 10 years ago: King Bhoj'as Bhojaprabandha (Malwa, c. 1050 CE) has a chapter on Vimaanas, with detailed descriptions such as : ~~~ Build a wooden bird, put seven pots of mercury inside and heat them, and it will fly, except that you also need the mantra which I will not tell you since then, everyone could build one. However, if you really want to know, go to the masters in this craft, the Yavanas. ~~~ Which,incidentally, should also teach those a lesson who want to find airplanes in the Atharvaveda (none in our computer files of teh Saunaka and Paippalaada recension of the AV). Or,are the tucked away in a appendix to the appendix of the AV, (Atharvaveda Paris'ista), --- just like the recently 'discovered' mathematical Sutras?? ===== Dominik Wujastyk: >I think this has come up before, but for good measure, cf. > >Mahar.si bhardvaaja pra.niita >ya.mtrasarvasve >Vimaana Prakara.nam > >sa.m"sodhaka >"Srii Bhuvane"svarii Pii.thaadhii"sa >Aacaarya "srii Cara.natiirtha Mahaaraaja > >Muulya 0-75 > >"Srii Bhuvane"svarii Prakaa"sana >Go.m.dala-Sauraa.s.tra, Bhaarata > >The book's colophon dates it to sa.mvat 2008 ========================================================================== Michael Witzel Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies Harvard University www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs --------------------------------------------------------------------------- my direct line (also for messages) : 617- 496 2990 home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Thu Mar 16 01:51:33 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 20:51:33 -0500 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056930.23782.3939979117235261665.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> PK Manansala: >Which goes back to the fact that we don't know the history of the oral >transmission (before written records). > >We don't know if the brahmins used special mnemonic systems at all >during this period. > Problem is, it is not "we" but PKM who does not know: Read Aitareya and Kausitaki Aranyaka -- RgVedic texts which speak about (Rg)Veda transmission. net, tuuSniim bhavatu ! For him and all others who have their doubts, I suggest to study the intricacies of, for example, RV accentuation: use of udaatta in verb forms, vocatives, deliberative questions, and especially the cases NOT covered by Panini such as certain forms of verbal accent studied by J. Klein (HOS- Op.Min. 3: Inside the texts); or even, as was mentioned, to consider Thieme's study of use of accent by Panini in the meta language used by his grammar, then wonder a little how much of this could have been transmitted by writing, which had no accents (before the Alexandrian Greeks, horrible of course to think of them in this context!!), and THEN come back, instead of voicing speculations/opinions based on NOTHING, no Indian evidence at all. ========== ========================================================================== Michael Witzel Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies Harvard University www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs --------------------------------------------------------------------------- my direct line (also for messages) : 617- 496 2990 home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Thu Mar 16 01:59:19 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Wed, 15 Mar 00 20:59:19 -0500 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056932.23782.3971715195728945658.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> B.Kellner: >a very general question that has always intrigued me ... > How is a "mistake" determined in a >transmission that is wholly oral? Evidently, the transmitted "text" could only >be checked against the memory of other "transmitters", so one would >presume the >stability of an orally transmitted text to increase with the number of people >who memorize it, but this still leaves open the question of how such stability >(or instability) is ascertained - aren't all such ascertainments, in a >manner of >speaking, post mortem declarations about oral cultures, pronounced already on >the basis of available written records? Just wondering ... Good point. I discussed this several times in 1983/6, I believe. (*see note below) Our experience with less known Vedic schools (zaakhaa) shows precisely what you refer to. Very few variants in texts that are spread over a large part of South Asia, e.g. in the Yajurveda, Vajasaneyi (Samh./ Satapatha in Madhyandina version) all over northern India and Nepal, or Taittiriya texts found all over S.India, where according to the proverb,"even the house cats know the YV" (gRR, gRR...) But when it comes to Maitrayani texts (Gujarat, NW Maharastra, a little in Nagpur), they were transmitted only by a small section of the 100 clans of Gujarat Brahmins (Pancoli), and mistakes and differences in the (written) transmission abound (the oral one has hardly been studied; in M. Haug's time c. 1860, Brahmins still recited the whole Samhita by heart... Another loss, due to neglect by scholars, see HOS OM 2, intro.) The same applies to the Katha school (only Kashmir), or to other small schools (Vadhula, Agnivesya, Jaiminiya, etc.) And the Atharvaveda (which seems to have been learnt only by less than 1% of the Vaidika Brahmins, acc. to inscriptional evidence). The point is precisely your point: In such small schools/zaakhaa-s, there was little possibility to countercheck, once a mistake was introduced in recitation/writing during the period of decline of such schools in the middle ages. I remember one such typical case in Maitr. Samh. (in my thesis). Or, what could actually happen (in the even less studied Atharvaveda) is nicely described in S.P.Pandit's (unread!!) preface to his ed. of the Atharvaveda, Bombay, end of 19th. cent. Luckily, Madhav Deshpande has unearthed and discussed this case in his ed. & transl. of the AV Pratisakhya (HOS Volume 52. Saunak?ya Catur?dhy?yik?. A Pr?tis?khya of the Saunak?ya Atharvaveda, with the commentaries Catur?dhy?y?bh?sya, Bh?rgava-Bh?skara-Vrtti and Pancasandhi, critically edited, translated & annotated by MADHAV M. DESHPANDE. 1997. Pages, vi, 815) Imagine a southern Rgvedin or Samavedin coming to Benares and reciting his text (same zaakhaa) in public in front of a, say, Gujarati. Any mistake would immediately be spotted, etc etc.; and of course, there are and always have been public recitations, during the 2nd mill. CE often in comnnection with temples, especially in the South. And rituals such as a (post-Vedic) Laksahoma where one has to recite all 4 Vedas in public. ... Not to speak of Grhya rites, as in marriage, or sraddhas where your colleagues can butt in and scold you. No ritual without a ritual discussion... =========== Footnote: discussion in: * Regionale und ueberregionale Faktoren in der Entwicklung vedischer Brahmanengruppen in Mittelalter. (Mat. zu den ved. Schulen, 5). Regionale Tradition in Suedasien, H. Kulke and D. Rothermund (ed.) (= Beitraege zur Suedasienforschung 104), Heidelberg 1986, 37-76 *On the Archetype of Patanjali's Mahabhasya. IIJ 29, 1986, 249-259 Also in: Die muendliche Tradition der Paippaladins von Orissa. Festgabe fuer K. Hoffmann, I. = MSS 44, 1985, 259-287 Die Atharvaveda-Tradition und die Paippalada-Samhita. ZDMG, Supplementband VI, (XXII. Deutscher Orientalistentag, Tuebingen, March 1983), Stuttgart 1985, 256-271 =================== Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From saf at SAFARMER.COM Thu Mar 16 16:39:13 2000 From: saf at SAFARMER.COM (Steve Farmer) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 00 08:39:13 -0800 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056942.23782.17119693973407399149.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> George Thompson wrote: > I hope that Steve Farmer has not given up on this thread. In spite of the > heat and volume of the responses which his original question has generated, > both on and off the list, I think that his question has now been adequately > answered. > This naive comparative historian, who naively jumped into this list and called the Indologists naive, is deep into studies of Vedic mnemonics, Panini, Pali suttas, Bechert's redating of Buddha, and related topics -- trying to cure his naivite. The question of oral/literate transmission is coupled to other questions, tied to issues involving the growth of premodern cosmological systems throughout Eurasia, that I have been studying with a sinological collaborator for many years. I understand now, at a late date and with some pain, what issues, including political issues, are at stake here for Indologists as well. Since I started the most recent battle over this topic -- or, rather, stumbled onto a battlefield in a lull, awakening everyone to bloody combat -- I have an obligation to return to the List in the next few weeks with an outsider's report on what he's learned. John Archibald Wheeler once suggested: "In every field find the strangest thing and then explore it." In Indology, I've quickly found the strangest thing. For that, thanks to all. >?From an outsider's perspective: The Indology List is a unique international resource. I can say that as a participant in two dozen scholarly Lists. But what friction! as Krishnamurti used to put it. I'll be back in the next few weeks. Thanks to all those off-line who are feeding me data and pointing me to useful sources. Much appreciated. My regards, Steve Farmer From GthomGt at CS.COM Thu Mar 16 14:14:58 2000 From: GthomGt at CS.COM (George Thompson) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 00 09:14:58 -0500 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056940.23782.2414963740731227638.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I hope that Steve Farmer has not given up on this thread. In spite of the heat and volume of the responses which his original question has generated, both on and off the list, I think that his question has now been adequately answered. The two most recent posts from Michael Witzel culminate a series of responses that shows not only that there *IS* a consensus concerning Vedic orality and the transmission of Vedic texts, but also that many reasonable and well-informed members of the list have not been driven away yet by all of the squabbling. The list continues to serve its function very well. George Thompson From kekai at JPS.NET Thu Mar 16 17:24:17 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 00 09:24:17 -0800 Subject: horsing around with horse Message-ID: <161227056913.23782.12789329869813008533.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Vijay Shankar wrote: > > The horse problem is not of archaeology but of natural history. We are not > looking for horse bones in human settlements but for wild horse. The > following questions are neighing for answer: > > 1.Why is the term for horse the same in Rgveda and Avesta? > There is more than one term for horse in both. One can argue that these are not related to the European terms, that is against the asva = equus argument. > 2.What is the scientific name of Rgvedic asva/ Avestan aspa ? > All are Equus caballus, but as I've said before there are anatomical differences between horses in South/Southeast Asia and Central Asia, Europe, etc. And specialists have attributed these to Equus Sivalensis as much as this might diminish Yavanacharya Witzel's axle-hole. > 3.Is India/Iran the natural habitat of horse? Were there wild asva/aspa in > Indian subcontinent/ Iran ? > Actually, the true native habitat of wild horses is the Western hemisphere. However, after migrating to Asia they did come to inhabit India. > 4.If yes,when was the horse domesticated? If not, where did asva/aspa come > from? The horse may have been domesticated more than once. This is another weakness of the argument. Also whereever the horse came from it did not necessarily include human migrations. I once argued that if we use that argument then we must account for human migrations that carried the domesticated chicken from Southeast Asia to Europe. The problem with the natural history arguments of the "Aryan" invasion is that they have always been minimally researched before reaching conclusions. For example, it was once argued that the humped cattle of India were merely the result of selective breeding of Central Asian cattle that sometimes have small humps. However, genetic studies reveal that the zebu is not the result of such selective breeding, but a different species that separated from taurine breeds long before domestication. If anything, the small humps sometimes found in Near Eastern cattle come from introgression of Bos indicus as genetic studies have shown. Out of India theorists could even use this to bolster their theories, or variants of such. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET Thu Mar 16 09:50:09 2000 From: kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET (S.Kalyanaraman) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 00 09:50:09 +0000 Subject: Comparative linguistics Message-ID: <161227056934.23782.3267561727022572706.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Venkatraman Iyer wrote: > Contrary views on Linguistics... No problem with the sound rules evolved over the last 150 years of indology. While evaluating the 'word-plays' replete in the R.gveda (often dismissed as pop.etym.), it is apposite to pay heed to the world's earliest etymological work. "(Niruktam 2.1)Now (we shall deal with) etymology. With reference to this, the words, the accent and the grammatical form of which are regular and are accompanied by an explanatory radical modification, should be derived in the ordinary manner. But the meaning being irrelevant, and the explanatory radical modification being non-existent, ONE SHOULD ALWAYS EXAMINE THEM WITH REGARD TO THEIR MEANING, by the analogy of some (common) course of action. If there be no (such) analogy, one should explain them even by the community of a (single) syllable or letter..." The scholiast Durga cites Jowett (Dialogues of Plato, 3rd edn., vol. i, p. 335, 341, 358; the Cratylus, 393): "And whether the syllables of the name are the same or not the same makes no difference provided the meaning is retained; nor does the addition or subtraction of a letter make any difference so long as the essence of the thing remains in possession of the name and appears in it...Now attend...and just remember that we often put in and pull out letters in words and give names as we please and change the accents...but then you know that the original names have been long ago buried and disguised by people sticking on and stripping off letters for the sake of euphony, and twisting and bedizening them in all sorts of ways..." I submit that we have to exercise extraordinary caution in trying to be definitive about sound changes; as Jules Bloch found out in evaluating the Mara_t.hi_ language evolution, semantics over-ride phonetics. It is reasonable to assume that in transformation grammar, the same phenomenon will persist across Pra_kr.ts, thus finding common features of semantic expansions between say Old Tamil and Bhojpuri. Best regards, Dr. S. Kalyanaraman ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. From kekai at JPS.NET Thu Mar 16 18:05:28 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 00 10:05:28 -0800 Subject: Dates of written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227056919.23782.989125269590086410.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Birgit Kellner wrote: > >> > > > Forgive me for barging in on a thread that I haven't been able to follow from> its beginning, with a very general question that has always intrigued me (and> is, I think, also discussed by Ong): How is a "mistake" determined in a> transmission that is wholly oral? Evidently, the transmitted "text" could only> be checked against the memory of other "transmitters", so one would presume the> stability of an orally transmitted text to increase with the number of people> who memorize it, but this still leaves open the question of how such stability > (or instability) is ascertained - aren't all such ascertainments, in a manner of> speaking, post mortem declarations about oral cultures, pronounced already on> the basis of available written records? Just wondering ... > Which goes back to the fact that we don't know the history of the oral transmission (before written records). We don't know if the brahmins used special mnemonic systems at all during this period. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From shrinivast at HOTMAIL.COM Thu Mar 16 19:50:15 2000 From: shrinivast at HOTMAIL.COM (Shrinivas Tilak) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 00 11:50:15 -0800 Subject: Vimanas Message-ID: <161227056951.23782.6411389638843504559.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Two years ago Dharmabhaskar,a Marathi monthly, published an article entitled "Marutsakha" by D.R. Bhave in which the writer explains that Pundit Shivkar Bapuji Talpade, a graduate of J.J. School of Art, flew a prototype of aeroplane on the beach in Mumbai (Chowpatty) in 1895 (that is some years before the Wright Brothers). Apparently, a large crowd watched the demonstration including the Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad of Baroda, Justice Mahadeo Govind Ranade, and Lalji Narayanji. Mr Bhave claims that the British administration hushed up the whole incident. I have seen similar accounts of Mr Talpade's experiments in other Indian print media including The Times of India (05-09-1995). A photo journalist of Banglore by the name of Mr Ayyar persuaded the Talpade family to donate his notes, research papers etc to the Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, Banglore some years ago. But I have not seen any follow up on that. Does anyone on the list know about any attempts to investigate the claims made on behalf of Mr Talpade? According to Mr Bhave, Mr Talpade based his experiments on some ancient manuscripts. Mr Bhave may be reached at 401 Anand House, E.M.E. Temple Road, Fatteganj, Vadodara 390 002. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM Thu Mar 16 20:04:08 2000 From: lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM (Lakshmi Srinivas) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 00 12:04:08 -0800 Subject: Telugu history Message-ID: <161227056953.23782.105642029621226718.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> --- Raveen Satkurunathan wrote: > In my opinion even the CT names > reflect a difference between the > urbane, aristocratic and culturally Indic urban > elites and the common people > except the emphasis of the then elites was on being > ?refined Tamil? rather > than ?Sanskrit? most probably due to Buddhist and > Jaina influences. Refined > Tamil enabled them to differentiate them from the > common people with "unrefined" > Tamil names such as listed above. > Are there any reliably known names of the common people from the CT texts? If you omit the names of the kings, poets, famous chieftains etc , that is. Regards, LS __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Thu Mar 16 12:54:52 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 00 12:54:52 +0000 Subject: [ADMIN] additional INDOLOGY URL Message-ID: <161227056936.23782.4813009689551235902.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I have just registered a new URL for the INDOLOGY website: http://www.indology.org.uk At present this merely redirects your browser to the website which you have been familiar with in the past, i.e., www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/indology.html But I hope that the new URL is slightly more memorable (don't forget that .uk at the end). Some time ago I also registered the URL http://indology.findhere.com This web service was out of action for a while, but it now seems to be working again. However, it depends on someone else's account, and so is subject to vagaries beyond my control. The www.indology.org.uk site is, I hope, stable and permanent. Best, -- Dominik Wujastyk Founder, INDOLOGY list From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Thu Mar 16 13:10:13 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 00 13:10:13 +0000 Subject: [ADMIN] Indology Archive Message-ID: <161227056938.23782.7619249587360307046.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 11:02:13 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Indology Archive The Indology mirror archive is now set up, at the URL: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/indology.html ************************************** Anthony Aristar Associate Professor Moderator, LINGUIST aristar at linguistlist.org Linguistics Program a.aristar at wayne.edu College of Liberal Arts Dept. of English Wayne State University 51 W. Warren Detroit, MI 48202 URL: http://linguistlist.org/aristar/ ************************************** From yogacara_assoc at HOTMAIL.COM Thu Mar 16 18:26:03 2000 From: yogacara_assoc at HOTMAIL.COM (Dan Lusthaus) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 00 13:26:03 -0500 Subject: New Yogacara website Message-ID: <161227056944.23782.6227376935305634799.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The Yogacara Buddhism Research Association is pleased to announce that its official website is now on-line. The URL is http://www.human.toyogakuen-u.ac.jp/~acmuller/yogacara/index.html The Yogacara Buddhism Research Association is dedicated to promoting the academic study of Yogacara Buddhism. The site contains information on Yogacara, major figures in Yogacara history, details on important texts, essays and articles, a detailed glossary, and links to other sites with Yogacara content. Since one of our primary goals is to facilitate the sharing of ideas between scholars working on the many facets of Yogacara thought and history, we look forward to receiving feedback from interested academics. Though we have taken great pains to make the site accessible to all flavors of browser and platform, discrepancies in the implementation of unicode have forced us to offer two versions of most documents on the site: one version in utf-8 unicode (with instructions and links on the site for necessary language and font software) and the other using ASCII diacriticals (aa for macron-a, .n for n-underdot, etc.) with pre-unicode CJK encoding (usually Big5, but some docs are in S-JIS). That solution, though not ideal, seemed the best compromise while we await unicode uniformity. Click the "Technical: Browser Display" link on the main page for more information. The site will be updated periodically with additional materials. Dan Lusthaus Director, yogacara_assoc at hotmail.com Charles Muller, Webmaster, acmuller at human.toyogakuen-u.ac.jp Yogacara Buddhism Research Association http://www.human.toyogakuen-u.ac.jp/~acmuller/yogacara/index.html From zydenbos at GMX.LI Thu Mar 16 14:45:58 2000 From: zydenbos at GMX.LI (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 00 15:45:58 +0100 Subject: Comparative linguistics In-Reply-To: <20000316002315.44940.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <161227056955.23782.10311437232826866520.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Am Thu, 16 Mar 2000 schrieb Venkatraman Iyer: > Contrary views on Linguistics by distinguished Professors. > > Prof. Gupt earlier: > > [...] Aryan construct > >served not only the colonial regime, it still serves the current > >north-south divide. Like the contributions of some other list members, this too reveals a fundamental misunderstanding. The sentence *should* have read: "[The] Aryan construct [may have] served not only the colonial regime [even if we do not know how, and linguists are totally unaware of this, but] it still serves [i.e., helps] [*to explain*] the current north-south divide [which already existed for a very long time prior to the British period]." Probably Prof. Gupt in Delhi is not a linguist, or if he is, he has not done the basics of Dravidian studies (which in itself is no terrible sin, since linguistics is a vast field with many specialisations. But for an Indian linguist this would be strange). But by reading some old messages to this list over the past few years, he and others can learn a little about the 'Madrasis' -- as everyone roughly south of Bombay is pejoratively called in Delhi: and that is a divide that has not been caused by any activities of modern linguists. RZ From haridasc at YAHOO.COM Fri Mar 17 02:03:47 2000 From: haridasc at YAHOO.COM (Haridas C) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 00 18:03:47 -0800 Subject: Comparative linguistics--advantage--criteria desired Message-ID: <161227056957.23782.14652558897311135165.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> --- Paul Kekai Manansala wrote: > In this sense, those raised in the culture and > language studied are at > an advantage. Could you please detail the criteria involved with your assessment? Why exactly are 'they' at an advantage, and where might 'they' be presently located in time with respect to an utterance once spoken in the far past, perhaps within the same frame of mind as the original speaker/writer? Your response would be interesting to include with my previous inquiry into the nature of translating from language to language, and also interesting to think about in terms of interpretation as well. thank you __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From rahul.oka at USA.NET Fri Mar 17 01:55:50 2000 From: rahul.oka at USA.NET (Rahul Oka) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 00 18:55:50 -0700 Subject: History, Science and Indology Message-ID: <161227056959.23782.9916734376362062339.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> For some time I have been following the various threads of this forum and the debates in which the participants always seem to be engaged in polemics and arrange themselves around the Wheelerian paradigm, whether they want to or not. I am not a linguist, historical or othervise. My training has been social sciences and the natural sciences rather than humanistic fields. I am an ecological archaeologist and study urbanism and urban decay through scientific rather than humanistic tools. I do however, follow philosophy of history and linguistics, right-wing and left wing, constructivist, deconstructivist and reconstructivist. The attempts of historians and linguists engaged in science-envy has always been interesting if slightly amusing. The epistemology of Indology and veracity of sources dealing with Indian studies is grounded in the Western paradigm, see Europe and The People without History. A book that created controversy yet raised the fact that Non-Western cultures seen through Western eyes must always be through a power-laden hierarchy. The debate between Marshall Sahlins and Gananath Obeyeskere is quite pertinent. I do not think that we can ever completely cross the border between being Insiders and Outsiders. The Linguists here are all eminent scholars, yet complain about scientists barging into their fields. I think that the socio-politics of India demand such a cross-field attention to Indian history. The reading of Indian history, whether through Wheeler's (since retracted) ideas or the agendas of Leftist Historians who wish to base their analysis on conflict primarily, has created a severe problem, one which will never be addressed sitting in a leather-backed chair in Harvard or Oxford. The notion of Aryan Invasion (frowned upon by archaeologists utilizing scientific rather than linguistic techniques) has created a conquerer-conquered complex within Indian society. Hence when a student from Bengal comes and tells me that there is a distinct division between North Indians and South Indians and that he's glad "we" kicked "their" arse, I get worried. Physical anthropologists have not indicated any such differences between the so-called Aryans and Dravidians and from our own ethnographic research, we know that body-types and lingusitic-types are hardly indicative of any grouping pattern. I find it amusing that questions regarding the Indus phases, a point in times when "Vedas" were not supposed to be there, and linguists have not been able to 'crack' the language to each others' satisfactions (no help there), are being regarded as a province of humanists rather than scientists, who really have to only access to information. Why are there huge debates on the dates of Rigveda. I am not a fan of "dubious" sources, but I recall reading about astronomical dates mentioned in the Rgveda which places the date way back. Someone here dismissed that source out of hand, prefering instead to rely on the "scientific analysis" of linguistic approach. I am not saying the dates are absolutely right, (using Occam's Razor here), but assuming that a primary source (the dates mentioned in the Vedas) is stupid (got the whole star-planet config. way off), or just wrong or may be, made it up (to perplex and irritate Indologists) is quite unscientific a series of assumptions. So is the over-reliance on a field which grew out of and also informed colonialization, eugenics and is still problematic, given that it contnues to be based on assumptions created a hundred years ago. Let's take this straight: Max Muller proposes 1200 BCE. He is regarded as an authority then (not now as was mentioned before) but his methodologies and ideas inform subsequent research through the 20th century. By now, we are well aware that he plucked the idea out as an "educated guess" based on a Judeo-Christianic view. But we say that our latter and contemporary research confirms his guess. (Scientific Creationists make similar statements when arguing about the literal veracity of the Bible.) But ..., our research is based on his and subsequent works. When did we ever say, let us change paradigms completely and examine Muller's date through a completely different perspective, may be stuff offered by scientists. So then may be, we should not quibble that Sarasvati may have been a small lake, that the ansectors of the Hindus were stupid or primitive enough to have not travelled towards larger bodies of water to make that distinction. May be if the early Vedic peoples mention the S. River is as big as an ocean and that later they say that it is not as big, then may be they did record an actual geological event (confirmed by science) and were not the atrocious chroniclers and observers of data (a 'fact' that has infuriated Indologists the world over!, since the beginning of history, circa 1492 ACE). Occam's razor is working: Rather than go into obscure, non-falsifiable details of lake/river/ocean, if we take a primary source at its face value, and subject it to scientific scrutiny, it stands up. But not by the science of linguistics. But it is that latter which is more scientific because "there are only so many ways in which the mouth can move, and sounds which can be produced." I opine that the "sciences" practiced here should realize that there are other sources of communication which will not be understood from the chairs in the departmental offices but only through hard ethnographic research done in the "field." Why the strict opposition (almost patronizing) towards scientists in this forum? Why does India and her "civilized" age (or for that matter China) bother so many people. Is it because these are the only areas where there has been cultural and syncretic continuity, possibly from the Bronze age, while in the other areas (Sumer, Egypt, Mesoamerica), Semetic hegemony obliterated the local culture from its dominant form? Does it bother people that Indians claim that centuries of foreign invasions were unable to stamp out the local culture from its dominant position, a process which took place quite fiercely in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the Americas (and to a Huge extent Asia and Africa)? I do not wish to resart the tired AIT thread. Just that I question the idea that the "science" practiced by linguists as the best way to study Indian History, especially when other disciplines fail to verify the linguists claims, no matter how much the data is tweaked within the parameters of error. I do think that we need border-crossers for studying history, and definitely scientists (real ones) for studying Indian history. I would like to state that I do not endorse studying history through any particular meta-narrative or agenda and am not saying that humanist scholars cannot do history, but that there should be convergent verification between disciplines. We do that in archaeology all the time. If I have a pet theory over the collapse of a society and a physicist, geologist, biologist come and tells me (through reproducible verification) that I am way off, I think that I will rethink my ideas rather than question scientific data. But then I would have to ensure that I was well conversant with scientific techniques and theories to understand the others work. I cannot do that if I studied basically language (linguistic and humanistic history) in undergrad, grad and post-grad work. Rahul Oka ____________________________________________________________________ Get free email and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 From tawady at YAHOO.COM Thu Mar 16 19:31:42 2000 From: tawady at YAHOO.COM (Raveen Satkurunathan) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 00 19:31:42 +0000 Subject: Telugu history Message-ID: <161227056948.23782.13946646111618836606.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On , Bh. Krishnamurti wrote: >And what about the naming pattern in Tamil Nadu--GaNesan, KaruNaanidhi, >SaNmukam, etc. How old is this tradition? Most Tamil names, if you look at >the electoral roles, are of Sanskrit origin as it is true of the other >literary Dravidian languages. Nativizing Sanskrit names into Tamil, like >neTunceZiyan, aaRmukam, etc. is a recent trend which has political origins >and overtones.Post Independent Tamil naming conventions Indian sub continental society irrespective of regional, religious differences has had ?at least? two vastly different naming conventions till post colonial time period, one for a miniscule Sanskritized and Arabised elite and yet another for a vast majority people underneath them. It is only after the emergence of western educated elites and their social movements and modern nation states that an awareness of Sanskritic, Arabic and Judeo-Christian cultural roots penetrated many of ?downtrodden? people. Till that time they were and in some instances still are lead by animist beliefs and village elders or shamans associated with a tribal or insular ?caste? way of life superimposed by a thin veneer of Sanskritic or Turko-Persian Arabic culture. Their names reflected local culture, regional features and non-Hindu deities. Until three to four generations ago vast majority of South Indians except a tiny Sanskritized and Arabised minority had a preponderance non-Sanskritic or Prakrit and Arabic names. The commonly used ?elements? of names irrespective of religious affiliations among ?native? Tamil speakers were the following. Karupu, Kuppai, Vellai, Sudalai, Anna, Akka, Appa, Amma, Pichai, Palani, Thambi, Peria, Sinna, Muthu etc., Other South Indian ethnic groups also used and still use similar cognates including IE dominated Sri Lanka. With independence and the push by the formerly ?downtrodden? castes for social up liftmen and acceptance has made them imitate as one-aspect of this rebellion names of their social elites. This is true of even of the Tamil speaking Muslims of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka whose Arabization started in earnest only after independence due to many social conditions. Modern mass literacy schemes, mass media, social movements, religious revivalism and regional ?pride? movements also aided the tendency to Sanskritize or Arabise names. The transition to Sanskritized names is very evident in many names of modern Tamils, Take for or example a typical Tamil name, Sinnapan Naresh. His father?s name Sinnappan a purely a Tamil one where as his given name Naresh is Sanskrit derived name. Very many Tamils carry such hybrid names without even realizing the significance of it. In a typical non-Brahmin Tamil family where I started this interesting research regarding Sanskritized names, one branch had had Sanskritized or hybrid names for at least up to seven generations where as another had it just for two generations. The clan, which had it only for two generations were considered as upstarts and were ?looked down? upon the rest of the family members As a reaction to this phenomenon some Tamils aided by the Dravidian Movement and others such as Manipuris and indigenous Tripuris also influenced by nativist tendencies have revived an effort to go back to their roots renouncing the postcolonial so called ?aberration?. But politically ?aware? Tamils specially in India instead of going back to the names of their grand parents and great grand parents seem to prefer the names of Tamil aristocracy of the Cankam Tamil (CT) period, because these ?refined? names seems not have any ?lower caste? connotations. In my opinion even the CT names reflect a difference between the urbane, aristocratic and culturally Indic urban elites and the common people except the emphasis of the then elites was on being ?refined Tamil? rather than ?Sanskrit? most probably due to Buddhist and Jaina influences. Refined Tamil enabled them to differentiate them from the common people with "unrefined" Tamil names such as listed above. Interesting observation is that just before dawn of colonial period even the Brahmins who were at the apex of the caste system had Tamil or hybrid Tamil/Sanskrit names such as Appaiah Iyer. Many Vellalas who were just below the Brahmins in the caste hierarchy also had Tamil names intermixed with Tamilized Sanskrit names which was eventually aped by the other castes during the modern times. So the emphasis on purely Sanskritized names and its mirror the purely Tamils names is a very modern concept with echoes in the distant CT past. This would be an interesting subject for a ?real? Indologist or Dravidiologist to investigate. Raveen From rahul.oka at USA.NET Fri Mar 17 02:39:20 2000 From: rahul.oka at USA.NET (Rahul Oka) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 00 19:39:20 -0700 Subject: [Re: Comparative linguistics] Message-ID: <161227056962.23782.4250385601425608299.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> "the current north-south divide [which already existed for a very long time prior to the British period]." Really? There was a North India and a South India before the British came? I would really like to see some sources on this one. All my reading history in pre-British India was that the scene on the sub-continent was geo-political negotiation between various ethnic (not linguistic) groups who did not align themselves according to North-South. Did the Southern Kingdoms and peoples regard themselves as a block, (and same for the north), based on local and temporal socio-economics and cultural movements or based on ideas that "they are the medevial Madrasi's and the North Indian equivalent?" If there were any cultural alliances between areas, I think that it exists in a continuum, notwithstanding mutually unitelligible languages. Pigdinization, trade forms of communication do exist. I don't doubt that differences exist, (or that there is a radical difference between North and South Indian architecture) but the centre is where you will see the continuity. There might be severe differences among members of the same species but on either side of the normal curve but there is also the continuity. The extent of trade in ancient and historical India suggests that people were not the culturally isolated parochial people, divided strictly in groups that once was assumed (still is). I would really like to see some evidence that the Indian ethos was divided into North and South well before the British came. ____________________________________________________________________ Get free email and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Fri Mar 17 03:36:47 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 00 22:36:47 -0500 Subject: Saraswati: Atomic Scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227056965.23782.14987627500781618589.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Even my recent "great discoveries" parody could not be as confused as the following post by R. Banerjee. Let us analyze it, as a specimen, line by line, even if this is a complete waist of time, like many of the recent "discussions": >>MW: Why is it that of all of these and the ensuing movements, just one, the >>"Aryan"one (=Indo-Aryan, proto-Vedic), is NOT allowed these days? RB: >Why was it allowed in the first place as concrete truth down to the last >detail with no room for speculation? Nope, there was a lot of speculation over the past 200 years. Early Indo-Europeanists put the home of IE in India, and changed their mind only when they noticed that Skt. is not the mother but a sister of Greek, Latin etc., -- incidentally, at c.1870, these were not British colonialists but the Leipzig Neo-Grammarians ("Junggrammatiker"), i.e. German ivory tower professors of linguistics who had no interest at all in British politics in Asia. Once the Mitanni documents were found, more speculation: Indo_Aryans lost on their way to India, (back-)emigration from India? etc. etc. etc. Or, Archaeologist M. Wheeler's Mohenjo Daro "massacre" of local people by invading Aryans: "Indra stands accused"... Rather, too much speculation. >The other ones are historical. But this one is a reconstruction based on at >best circumstantial evidence and needs to be treated with some scepticism >atleast. There are so many gaps to be filled in. Of course, I intentionally quoted the ones historically attested, and said so. The Indo-Aryan one is not based on circumstantial evidence. It is the same kind of evidence that makes the Tokharians in W.China speaking an IE language of *western* (centum) type. How did THEY get there? And how did the speakers of IA (an eastern IE language, of satem type) get into South Asia? One does not need historical records or much imagination to see that *someone* must have transmitted IA, directly, or via intermediaries. I am not interested whether those people were red- or blue-faced. As I have said before (search the archives): it is their language, texts, religion that is of interest. These, and also the actual *mode of transport* of the new elements is what I have been writing about. >One can easily imagine mitannian mercenaries and their traditions straying >into India But that would be a Near Eastern Aryans' INVASION into India, simply horrible!!! Just the kind of fact RB denies above.... >and kick starting martial / political practices, Here he actually is on a better track, described in earlier msgs (the osmosis/billiard-ball model, or -- horribly, Mallory's "Kulturkugel", which means the same). > why should we fixate on afghans. "Afghans" before their time, of course, and simply because "they" were on, in front of, and behind the two major (Khyber, Bolan) and many smaller passes leading into South Asia. Areas the RV speaks about. > What about pakis from harappa? Here the good RB really bares himself and his soul: Who ever spoke about an IA move ("invasion") into present day *India* (Bharat)?? The usual models speak about an initial move into, and semi-nomadic, transhumance 'settlement' in Gandhara/Panjab, i.e. Eastern Afghanistan and Pakistani Panjab, to use the modern terms... Harappa is of course out, unless one thinks of Cemetery H. For many reasons which would fill a book. (see below) >We also need to ask if they also brought about a linguistic change , or only >social ones and to what degree? Also??? The linguistic evidence of the RV, with its substrate (missing in closely related Old Iranian) is evidence enough that the people in the Panjab/Harappans did *not* speak IA but the substrate language(s). Anyhow, IA is Indo_Iranian, which is part of eastern Indo-European, which is part of Proto-IE. All spoken outside S. Asia (see immediately). The percentage of IE/Indo_Iranian words to non-IE words in the RV is 96% : 4 %. Any comment necessary? Social change is implied in the new tribal structure of pastoralists, their IE rituals,religion, etc. etc. etc. >Why do we always have to assume that IE >languages were intrusive. See above. In short: The very closely related Old Iranian does neither have Indian words NOR Indian (Vedic) linguistic innovations (mene type perfects, absolutives, etc. etc. etc.) In natural science, biology for example, the later branch on a "family tree" is always innovative and by its very nature, later, than the "trunk": in case, Vedic is innovative, not the "trunk", IIr/IE. >Deciphering linear B pushed back greek by almost a millenia. A "millenia"?? People speaking about language should at least check their ENGLISH dictionary and find out that "millennia" (sic) is the plural of "millennium" (etymology needed?). Well, I won't charge you even one Rupees for that. And, where are the 1000 years between the Mycenean inscriptions in Archaic Greek at c.1200 BCE and the first Greek texts, compiled by Homer? Last I heard, 1200 minus 1000 = 200. By 200 BCE we are already well beyond Pythagoras, Herodotos, Sokrates/Plato, Alexander,... Natural Scientists please comment on this new aspect of number theory! And: What has RB's last sentence to do with any of the above? RB seems to imply that the Indus documents could be written in Sanskrit and that would push back IA / Vedic beyond 2600 BCE, the beginning of the Indus civilization. Non licet. See above. Or does he think of non-writing IA-s somewhere in the Panjab at the same time? Of course,not ONCE does RB come even close to what the reason for the rejection of the so-called (and in this form, antiquated) "Aryan invasion" model may be... ---- This is about as much as I will write about this and similar messages, even if some of their originators seem to think that constant assault will bring down resistance and carry the day: hurray to the "paradigm change!" Actually, I wouldn't have bothered and would not even have written these messages if I were not occupied right now with rewriting a paper on the various "Out of India" models, and if I were not collecting materials, --- conveniently supplied by non sequitur messages such as the one by RB. Well, I will presently return to the favorite attitude of my colleagues (and myself!), apparent by their collective thundering silence, and will concentrate on better things, leaving the field to the fans of Harappan 17-ribbed horses/half-asses and mules, spell-checking Vedic Rsis, nairukta etymologists, and vimaana engineers. Welcome to the alt.ind chat club! Cheers, MW ======= From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Fri Mar 17 03:37:33 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 00 22:37:33 -0500 Subject: Comparative linguistics Message-ID: <161227056967.23782.4055303543416497906.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >I agree with Dr. Kalyanaraman that identifying semantic sets is very >important. As if this was something new. See the summary, a very detailed scheme of how to do etymologies, by K.Hoffmann and Eva Tichy, reprinted in his Aufsaetze zur Indoiranistik, Wiesbaden 1991, p.761-767 > One must examine the mind of those who created the language. > >In this sense, those raised in the culture and language studied are at >an advantage. Beautiful! Please introduce me to a speaker of Proto-Austric, or Proto- Dravidian, or Proto-Indo-European for that matter. I always wanted to talk to Mr. Plth2u-K'lewos (or his Vedic descendent, King Prthu-s'ravas)... MW. ========================================================================== Michael Witzel Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies Harvard University www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs --------------------------------------------------------------------------- my direct line (also for messages) : 617- 496 2990 home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm From reimann at UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU Fri Mar 17 07:39:26 2000 From: reimann at UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU (Luis Gonzalez-Reimann) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 00 23:39:26 -0800 Subject: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga (1) In-Reply-To: <19990908022619.36367.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <161227056977.23782.8939030452462353372.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> This is a (very) late response to a question by V. Agarwal. I have split it in two. Part 1: With respect to Vishal Agarwal's earlier statement that: > The introduction to a recent edition of the >Vedanga Jyotisha (Yajurvediya) are written by a Vaidik proficient in >Astronomy and he has demonstrated that the text belongs to the 14th Cent. >B.C.E. And in reply to his later posting: >VA: Vedanga Jyotisa of Lagadha in its Rk and Yajus Recensions ( With the >Translation and Notes of Prof. T. S. Kupanna Sastry); Ed. K. V. Sarma; >Please see the 'Introduction' of the volume. Yes, differences in the dates >are discussed in brief and the reasons for the confusion is also stated. >Will appreciate your own comments on this issue. Here are my comments: K. Sastry (p. 12) acknowledges that "the classical language employed in the work as current now would indicate that the original must have been redacted by a later person belonging to the last centuries B.C." In other words, he accepts that the JyotiSa VedAnga that we know is from the last centuries B.C.E., based on the language of the text. Pingree (p.3), on the other hand, attributes the JV to about the same time on astronomical grounds. He thinks that "the astronomy of the Rk-recension [which is the earliest] was formulated in the fifth or fourth century B.C. on the basis of information about originally-Mesopotamian methods and parameters transmitted to India during the Achaemenid occupation of the Indus Valley between ca 513 and 326 B.C." He then analyses such methods and parameters and compares them to contemporary Babylonian texts. (David Pingree, The Mesopotamian Origin of Early Indian Mathematical Astronomy, Journal for the History of Astronomy 4(1973):1-12.) The early dating comes in because K. Sastry considers the purported author, Lagadha, to have been much earlier than our text, on the basis of the mention of the winter solstice being in zraviSThA/dhaniSThA. He calculates (p.13) that this happened sometime between 1370 and 1150 BCE, while Pingree's (p.10) estimate is around 1180 BCE, the difference apparently having to to with the rate of precession (Sastry uses 72 years/degree). continued in next message... From reimann at UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU Fri Mar 17 07:40:32 2000 From: reimann at UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU (Luis Gonzalez-Reimann) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 00 23:40:32 -0800 Subject: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga (2) Message-ID: <161227056979.23782.7048279559253554703.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Part 2: So there seems to be agreement on the date of the text (ca 4th c. BCE), but Sastry believes that it preserves a tradition dating back to when the winter solstice was at the beginning of zraviSThA. Pingree disagrees, he writes (p. 10) that, "We simply do not know where Lagadha would have placed the beginning of the equal nakSatra DhaniSThA with respect to the fixed stars, nor do we know the accuracy with which he could have determined the sidereal longitude of the Sun at the winter solstice. Since a displacement of the beginning of the equal nakSatra by some 10 degrees, or an error of 10 days in computing the date of the winter solstice, or some combination of these two effects is all that is required to bring the date from the 12th century to the 5th century B.C., we should not lend much weight to the chronological argument. Furthermore, we must consider that an intercalation-cycle based on such a crude parameter for the length of a year as 365 days does not inspire much confidence in the accuracy with which its author was able or wished to endow the positions of the solstices." Now, we do not have to agree with Pingree on everything, but his doubts about accuracy are relevant. I may also add that we don't know since when equal nakSatras were used, and if they are not equal we don't know exactly where their boundaries lie. Sastry (p. 15) also states that "The system of the VJ is the same as that taught in the GargasamhitA of the SamhitA period, being the immediate centuries before Christ and the next following...' So, once again, we are in the early centuries BCE. If the astronomy of the text can safely be placed in that period, then the position of the solstice is the only discordant note, and we must look for different possible explanations. As far as the GargasamhitA is concerned, Pingree, in a separate study (p. 295), looked at the similarities of its Venus omens and those in Mesopotamian texts, and concluded that they were probably borrowed from Mesopotamia. And Pingree also places the GargasamhitA in the 5th or 4th centuries BCE. (this second article by Pingree is: Venus Omens in India and Babylon. in Francesca Rochberg-Halton, ed. Language, Literature and History: Philological and Historical Studies Presented to Erica Reiner. American Oriental Society, 1987:293-315). So Sastry did not demonstrate that the JV belongs to the 14th century BCE. He draws attention to the stated position of the solstice, and this is, indeed, something interesting, but one cannot uncritically conclude that the text dates from that time. And this was my original comment on this subject, that we must be careful in these cases about saying something has been proved or demonstrated, when the issues are not so straightforward. Regards, Luis Gonzalez-Reimann University of California, Berkeley From GthomGt at CS.COM Fri Mar 17 04:59:47 2000 From: GthomGt at CS.COM (George Thompson) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 00 23:59:47 -0500 Subject: Saraswati: Atomic Scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227056973.23782.10393942590520594064.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Dr. Kalyanaraman, Please, stop for a moment and consider this: we are all of us here, now, in the year 2000, 3rd month, 16th day [accd to the calendar that rules the Internet]. Not one of us stands any closer in time to the period of the Rgveda than anyone else, whether Vaidika or European, Subaltern or American, etc. No matter who we are, the RV stands equally distant and remote and difficult for every single one of us. Without exception. As far as I can see, no scientist, not even a nuclear physicist or an electrical engineer, is better prepared to understand the Rgveda than those scientists who actually devote their lives to studying it. I don't know whether Rahul Oka is a scientist or not. But if you give me a sample of his observations about the RV I can tell you right away whether or not he is a scientist of the Rgveda. In my view, if we are talking about the RV, we should try to be scientists of that text. If we are talking about IVC, we should try to be scientists of IVC. If we are talking about horses, then we should try to be horse scientists. This is simply to say, once again, that this is a scholarly list, where preference [attention] should be given to those who have studied *as scientists* the item that is up for discussion. I don't think that being a scientist of human behavior, for example, gives one any special advantage when it come to the science of the RV. You have an admirable passion for these topics, but I think that it is fair to say that you are not a scientist of old Indo-Iranian, nor of comparative nor any other kind of linguistics. This is demonstrated once again by your recent comments about sememes, etc. To talk about meaning divorced from phonology and morphology is like talking about Vedic divorced from saMhitAs, or brAhmaNas, or zrauta sUtras, etc. It is like separating body and soul [you know, signifier and signified, and all that linguistic mumbo jumbo]. A sememe without a phonology, etc., would be a ghost whose existence we could not perceive at all, except by means of crystal balls. That sort of methodology is, I think, not allowed on scholarly lists. I do not deny that you may well be a scientist, and a good one, of other things. But in my opinion you have not demonstrated that you are a scientist of the RV, of Avestan, etc. Best wishes, George Thompson From mahesh at STARNETINC.COM Fri Mar 17 11:19:54 2000 From: mahesh at STARNETINC.COM (Mahesh) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 05:19:54 -0600 Subject: Oral traditions In-Reply-To: <38D12267.4A395A0E@jps.net> Message-ID: <161227056985.23782.16361039093982313207.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Would there be any connection with a phonetic language and an oral tradition? Would there be any connection with a "rythmic" language and an oral tradition -- i.e. make it easier to memorize? From grimesj at PILOT.MSU.EDU Fri Mar 17 11:17:20 2000 From: grimesj at PILOT.MSU.EDU (john grimes) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 06:17:20 -0500 Subject: Muktinath In-Reply-To: <20000317020347.8531.qmail@web3101.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <161227056988.23782.9914447120386271054.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Can anyone provide some references for Muktinath in Nepal? I have a student who is doing an Independent Study project and asked for such. Any suggestions? Thanks, John Grimes MSU From gregjay at POI.NET Fri Mar 17 16:20:32 2000 From: gregjay at POI.NET (Greg Jay) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 06:20:32 -1000 Subject: Muktinath In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227057012.23782.6853019733333675072.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >Can anyone provide some references for Muktinath in Nepal? I have a student >who is doing an Independent Study project and asked for such. Any >suggestions? Muktinath is one of the 108 Divya Deshas spoken of by the Sri Vaishnava Alvars. I believe that it is mentioned in the verses of Nalayira Divya Prabhandam attributed to Tirumangai Alvar. For more info on this please contact Mani Varadrajan at mani at alum.calberkeley.org. There is also a Sthala Purana of this place written on a column next to the Temple there. I don't know the source of this. You may also find references in works concerning Salagrama Sila (the ammonite deities of Visnu). Greg From rahul.oka at USA.NET Fri Mar 17 14:01:12 2000 From: rahul.oka at USA.NET (Rahul Oka) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 07:01:12 -0700 Subject: [creative atomic scientist's translations] Message-ID: <161227057007.23782.9774513951539456315.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> My dear detractors, I do heartily congratulate you on independently confirming my hypothesis. Your views are as informed by your politics and exclusionist principles as well as a completely half-baked idea of the epistemology of science. I did not find in your responses a single opposition to my queries regarding the application of Occam's razor, just "Oh he is not an Indologist, he does not read the Journals." Trust me, India is my land, the sub-continent is where I find my home. If Indology is the study of ancient India through linguistics alone, then .... I hardly need to point that this field is indeed exclusionist and doomed to even attain science-envy, let alone science. Your research emerges from the hallowed halls of the great Western Civilization, without having a clue that what you are studying is still in a synchronic state of change today as it was three thousand years ago, and more. I doubt that you have done any field work. Those particular Journals of which Mr. (Dr.) Cahill so patronisingly spoke about are familiar but they are to me just literary theory, laden with statistics, hardly a combination which can lead to science. I did not say that Indologist linguists should not do ancient Indian history, but that they should realize that convergent verification from other (more falsifiable) areas will only serve to strengthen the field itself. Isn't that more important, not endorsement of a personal agenda but a closer look at verifiable facts. Maybe a few die hards will have to give up pet theories, but, hey, that happens all the time, in science at least. In our own work, we have alliances with archaeologists, anthropologists, ecologists, linguists (yes), geologists, physicists, etc. I think we welcome their perspective, usually guided by different agendas which stops us from falling into Locke's trap. Don't forget St. Libby (hallowed be his name), a physicist. Were it not for him, archaeology of Mesoamerica would be in the same state as Indological studies of the Indus. No languages there to study, just jingoistic speculation which is essentially bupkus. We would still be stuck in the Victorian Christian pelvis. The natural sciences freed the social sciences from the strict grasp of the humanities by providing detached verification of chronologies and other factors. "Scientists" of the Rigveda indeed. I could probably read any journal flung at me by linguists, because (a) I know how to read and I probably know mathematics (statistics and computer math) better than most of the linguists (theory rather than just application). I challenge the same linguists to understand and make sense of scientific journals. By the way, among those journals that were rather flung at me, I did not see a significant number published in South Asia (whose peoples speak the results of the multi-chronic changes in the area itself). I would have expected a group as flexible as this one to be more PC, as it were. Is it because research done here in the west is superior to the ones produced by those "stupid presumptuous natives," or are some of these same "pandies" producing work which is challenging dominance of the Western ideas? BTW. DR. Witzel, you are wondering why there are evidences of IE groups in such varied areas of the work, if it were not for .... If I tell you that archaeological evidence speaks for the ability of ancient peoples to travel distances which are incomprehensible to (especially) Western people used to cars and other locomotive luxuries, would you believe me? The idea that ancient people regarded distances in the same way that we do, given respective modes of transport and communication, is a phenomenon which I call chrono-spatial bias. The work done by Hally in Georgia is an evidence of the same thought. He placed parameters of 20 km between dominant and allied chiefdoms in the American Southeast, which facilitated trade and cultural exchange. When we got those figures, they were quite laughable. Even today peoples in the Third world, who do not have access to cars and such, travel 20 km ++ a day (on foot) for basis subsistence. Trade "usually" (maybe not for an Indologist) is established over much larger areas (distribution of sources). Hally took the 20th century idea that 20 km is a large distance to walk and then said that this will work for the peoples of SE. For anthropological archaeologists, the presence of IE in "those" parts of the world is not an indication that the "Aryans" came from abroad, but that people moved themselves and goods over vast distances to trade. I think that if the linguists actually indulged in a proper study of history (all histories) and the social and natural sciences, it would teach us more about ancient Indian society, than just quibbling over when and if "i" changed to an "e" in some text, interpreted 2000 years after its time, when we have no access to its author(s). Thanks Rahul Oka ____________________________________________________________________ Get free email and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 From smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM Fri Mar 17 15:26:12 2000 From: smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM (Swaminathan Madhuresan) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 07:26:12 -0800 Subject: Etymology Message-ID: <161227057010.23782.8255923623845467680.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Pl. look into DEDR, item on muTTi etc., Also, use Online Tamil Lexicon on muTTu & the verb, muTTu-tal, muTT*, May help. Allotting a good percentage of funds pie available for Indian studies in the West to build a chronological dictionary of Dravidian words and features in IA and Sanskrit, something like ongoing projects EWA, KEWA (to find relationships between IE, German, Sanskrit,...) will prove to be fruitful. By now hopefully Indologists realize the importance of increasing Dravidologists breed amidst them, and you can see that in India, ideology sometimes acts as a barrier to do good linguistics studies. Hope Indologists will help increase in academic Dravidology pursuits. It is within their power and budgets. Regards, SM --- Ruth Laila Schmidt wrote: > Dear members of the list, > > Does someone have an etymology for Hindi-urdu mushTanDa ( ~ musTanDa), > 'sturdy, robust'? McGregor gives musTanDa with no etymology; Platts gives > mushTanDa tracing it back to Skt. muZTi, 'fist'. Turner, the usual arbiter > of such matters, is silent. > > 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 > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From rpeck at NECA.COM Fri Mar 17 12:41:58 2000 From: rpeck at NECA.COM (Bob Peck) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 07:41:58 -0500 Subject: creative atomic scientist's translations Message-ID: <161227057000.23782.331880887382568697.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> As a scientist and amateur (whatever that means) Indologist I would like to question the current theme about science VERSUS expert Sanskrit scholars. I became interested in Sanskrit as offering a basis for modern physics. I found for instance that earth air fire and water as used earlier as mystical elements do indeed fit within the new turn toward mysticism in physics. Einstein?s concepts (not math) would have been readily accepted by many early thinkers. I found that to extract the original ideas however, that I had to dig beneath the religious and spiritual interpretations that I assume came from ?expert? translators. I find that some (not all by any means) writings are scientific in nature and certainly offering some sound physiology and philosophy that is supportable by scientific means that contributes to modern understanding. Let me suggest another role of translation and that is to work closely WITH science such as is being done in modern labs today to fully derive the original meanings and the nuances that a scientist can miss. Regards, Bob Peck From GthomGt at CS.COM Fri Mar 17 13:35:02 2000 From: GthomGt at CS.COM (George Thompson) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 08:35:02 -0500 Subject: creative atomic scientist's translations Message-ID: <161227057002.23782.6490214451869088825.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I do not doubt that we all come to an old sacred text like the RV with some preconception or other, acquired from any number of reliable or unreliable sources. Recently we have learned of a list member who comes to the RV with the preconception that it is a predecessor to modern mystical physics. Another has suggested that it is a book on Advanced Calculus. Dr. Kalyanaraman sees an ancient primeval alchemy in it. I first encountered Sanskrit as a teenaged boy, reading T.S. Eliot's famous poem, "The Wasteland." The fragments of the UpaniSads that are quoted there suggested that, for Eliot, a way out of the wasteland that he found himself in might be provided by the Vedas. I suppose that this is where my own first preconceptions about Vedic were formed. However, when I started to study Vedic, I soon realized that my preconceptions did not always match the realities which I encountered in the texts. The entire history of my own Vedic studies is simply my effort to modify my preconceptions, and abandon them where necessary, and to try to come up with adequate conceptions of Vedic that conform with what one finds in the texts. There is a place for creativity, but in my view it must be strictly subservient to what the texts themselves say. After all, that is the responsibility of all philology. Couldn't we all agree on this at least? If so, let us all abandon our preconceptions and let the Rgveda, for example, speak for itself. Best wishes, GT From kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET Fri Mar 17 09:25:22 2000 From: kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET (S.Kalyanaraman) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 09:25:22 +0000 Subject: Saraswati: Atomic Scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227056970.23782.4258589463199356912.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel wrote: >snip>...leaving the field to the fans of Harappan > 17-ribbed > horses/half-asses and mules, spell-checking Vedic Rsis, nairukta > etymologists, and vimaana engineers.> > Welcome to the alt.ind chat club! What pray, does the term 'nairukta etymologists' mean? Do you think, the text should be ignored completely and replaced by *IE constructs as the only basis for all arguments? Nairukta is a fact of early linguistic history and cannot be wished away. For e.g., modern pundits in R.gveda have to reckon with the nature of the 'divinities' expounded in this text. Rahul Oka has raised some interesting questions which also need to be answered in the chat club or whatever. Regards, Dr. S. Kalyanaraman ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Fri Mar 17 17:26:50 2000 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 09:26:50 -0800 Subject: Indian police training Message-ID: <161227057016.23782.1869343606542487648.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Swaminathan Madhuresan wrote: > Ms. Rumer has penned this novel based on the London newspaper reports. >Some smugglers swindled away a famous Chola bronze Natarajar >from the Thanjavur village, Paththuur. Dated to 9-10th cent. AD. >Tamil Nadu Govt. sued on behalf of the presiding deity, Lord Shiva Siva as a "juristic person" was added to the case quite late in the day, for tactical reasons. In itself, this is a concept that developed in the 19th century, when Dharmasastra codes were being reinterpreted through the lens of Roman/English law. Initially, it was simply a case of trying to recover stolen antiquities. So, rather than a case of the government suing on behalf of Siva, it was as if Siva was brought in as a party to the case, on behalf of the government. >of Paththuur in the court of London. Dr. George Schwindler, an American >art historian represented the buyers. But the court, in a landmark >judgement, returned the precious Natarajar back to the village temple. > Wrong again. The court returned the Nataraja bronze to India, not specifically to the temple. As of now, the Pathur Nataraja is stored in the TN Govt's Icon Center in Tiruvarur. The temple at Pathur is in ruins, with the central Sivalinga lying exposed, and not receiving any form of worship. Richard Davis's "Lives of Indian Images" (Princeton, 1997) has a full chapter on this case, which is essential reading for anyone interested in the political, cultural and judicial issues involved. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From perichandra at YAHOO.COM Fri Mar 17 17:41:18 2000 From: perichandra at YAHOO.COM (Periannan Chandrasekaran) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 09:41:18 -0800 Subject: Etymology Message-ID: <161227057018.23782.3912321195565039626.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> --- Swaminathan Madhuresan wrote: > Pl. look into DEDR, item on muTTi etc., Also, use Online Tamil Lexicon > on muTTu & the verb, muTTu-tal, muTT*, May help. muSTANDa There is an entry in DEDR #4929 that says: Ta. muTTattan2am = ignorance, stupidity; muTTan = dunce; Ta. muTTATTam = stupidity, pertinacity or conceit arising from ignorance. Ma. muTTan2 = a stout, obstinate, stupid person. It is very well attested that Dravidian -TT- often morphs into -NT- (which as is well known is actually pronounced as -ND-): For a few concrete attested examples cf. DEDR # 3221: Ta. tiTTu = rising ground, bank. elevation, hillock Ma. tiNDU = earthern wall,, bank, shoal Ka. diTTu = hillcok; diNDu = hillock. DEDR #4939: lists both Ta. muTTai and Ta. muNDai = egg/ovum kaTTi -> kaNDu (lump as in kaRkaNDu = hard candy) DEDR #1148:Ta. kaTTi = clod, lump... Ma. kaTTa = lump; kaTTi = what is condensed, solid, ingot kaNDi = lump, concretion Hence one may safely conclude that Dr. muTTANDa- > muSTANDa. That I hope satisfies the etymology of muSTANDa. In general Dravidian root muTT- is rich in the senses of stoutness, bulkiness, emptiness, hindrance etc. One may also consider the following Dravidian words which coney a sense of sturdiness/robustness: DEDR #4932: muTTu = (verb) to butt, oppose, meet, assault, attack, fight. =(noun) battering, butting; Ma. muTTi = hammer DEDR #4933 muTTu = to hinder, be hindered, prevented n. hindrance, obstacle, impediment, prop, support The DEDR indirectly states that muSTi is a hypersanskritism of the Dravidian muTTi. The Cologne Tamil Lexicon: muTTi otl muTTi muTTi 02 1. fist; 2. blow with the fist; 3. a gesture with one hand in which the four fingers are closed tightly and the thumb is pressed over them, one of 33 in2aiya1-vin6aikkai , q.v.; 4. handful; 5. alms; 6. a mode of holding a weapon; 7. art of discovering anything concealed in the closed hand, one of ar6upattuna1lu-kalai , q.v.; 8. small earthen pot; 9. a standard weight=1 palam ; 10. quantity consisting of 20 kaval2i ; 11. oblation of ball of rice deposited on the boundary line of a village in a festival; 12. jaggery; 13. broken brick DEDR entry #4935 lists muTTu: Ta. = knee, elbow, knuckle Ma. knob, joint or knot of cane or bamboo ... That entry cross references DEDR #4919 muTagku = (verb) to contract, become lame or maimed, bend, be spoiled. DEDR #4932: muTTu = (verb) to butt, oppose, meet, assault, attack, fight. =(noun) battering, butting; Ma. muTTi = hammer > ...> studies. Hope Indologists will help increase in academic Dravidology > pursuits. > It is within their power and budgets. > > Regards, > SM > I sure hope so too. > > --- Ruth Laila Schmidt wrote: > > Dear members of the list, > > > > Does someone have an etymology for Hindi-urdu mushTanDa ( ~ musTanDa), > > 'sturdy, robust'? McGregor gives musTanDa with no etymology; Platts gives > > mushTanDa tracing it back to Skt. muZTi, 'fist'. Turner, the usual arbiter > > of such matters, is silent. > > > > 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 > > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Fri Mar 17 15:04:54 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 10:04:54 -0500 Subject: Saraswati... (nairukta) In-Reply-To: <20000317035522.13238.qmail@www0j.netaddress.usa.net> Message-ID: <161227057009.23782.14953895696368365105.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dr. Kalyanaraman: >What pray, does the term 'nairukta etymologists' mean? Those who proceed in Nirukta fashion, --as opposed to the severe linguistic method of Panini who distinguishes clearly between root, suffixes and endings, as does modern linguistics (which, it is *gladly* admitted by all linguists, learned a lot from him in this respect, initially, some 200 years ago). The Nirukta often proceeds in the same way, but most of its etymologies are the 'popular' ones of the Kratylos, Roman, Vedic-Puranic-Tantric type (az-va 'horse' from az-ru 'tear', putra from put+traa, bhairava from bhii+ ru+ vam)... > Do you think, the text should be ignored completely and replaced by *IE >constructs as the only >basis for all arguments? Not the text (Yaska's Nirukta?), but the analysis of words should proceed (more or less) in the Paninean way, updated by IE linguistics (and, as the case may be, Dravidian, Munda, Tib.-Burm., etc. linguistics) >Nairukta is a fact of early linguistic history and cannot be wished away. Nobody does that. The Nirukta can be studied as such, as an example of someone (Yaska) who wants to make sense of the RV where Paninean grammar does not help, or where he thinks his own way of etymologizing helps. These "etymologies" are interesting *on their own*, and should be /are indeed studied, such as the fanciful ones mentioned above. >For e.g., modern pundits in R.gveda have to reckon with >the nature of the 'divinities' expounded in this text. ??? We do. All of the time. Even look at what a fanciful text such as the Nirukta has to say. >Rahul Oka has raised some interesting questions which also need to be answered >in the chat club or whatever. Let others do that. Or, perhaps, when I get time and my quota is free: you know , 3 mssgs per day... Enough said. MW ========== Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From perichandra at YAHOO.COM Fri Mar 17 18:12:26 2000 From: perichandra at YAHOO.COM (Periannan Chandrasekaran) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 10:12:26 -0800 Subject: non-elite CT names (Re: Telugu history) Message-ID: <161227057020.23782.1560524213914547149.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> --- Lakshmi Srinivas wrote: > --- Raveen Satkurunathan wrote: > > In my opinion even the CT names > > reflect a difference between the > > urbane, aristocratic and culturally Indic urban > > elites and the common people > > except the emphasis of the then elites was on being > > ?refined Tamil? rather > > than ?Sanskrit? most probably due to Buddhist and > > Jaina influences. Refined > > Tamil enabled them to differentiate them from the > > common people with "unrefined" > > Tamil names such as listed above. > > > > > Are there any reliably known names of the common > people from the CT texts? If you omit the names of the > kings, poets, famous chieftains etc , that is. > > Regards, > > LS > one may survey the rich cast of the great CT epic "cilappatikAram": the hero and heroine who are scions of rich businessmen: kOvalan2 & kaNNaki Their fathers: mAcAttuvAn2 (great merchant), mAnAykan2 (great leader?) The courtesan: mAtavi (the name of a domestic creeper/vine) Her female friend (of mAtavi): vAcavadattai The milkmaids at madurai suburb: mAtari, aiyai (= "great consort of king" ?given name )jain monk: The Jain monk guiding the hero/heroine: kavunti Brahmins: The brahmin friend of kaNNaki: tEvanti The brahmin messenger sent by mAtavi to kOvalan2: kOcikamANi (kaucikan2?) The brahmnin visitor from pUmpuhAr at madurai: mADalan2 Brahmin names mentioned: kIrantai (a tamil name), parAcaran2, vArttikan2, kArttikai, takkiNan2 (dakSiNa) The "elite": Coza: karikAl vaLavan2 The paNdiyan emperor/empress: ceziyan2 (hereditary title), kOp perun tEvi Chera: ceGkuTTuvan2 Chera chieftains: azumpil vEL, villavan2 kOtai Brahmin names are evidently Sanskrit. But it is difficult to detect any differences among the non-brahmin names. P.Chandrasekaran __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Fri Mar 17 09:29:00 2000 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 10:29:00 +0100 Subject: SV: Saraswati: Atomic Scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227056983.23782.5053493762421273341.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> H.B.Dave [SMTP:hbd at DDIT.ERNET.IN] skrev 17. mars 2000 08:33: > > Let us assume, for sake of argument, that RV is a book on Advanced Calculus. > Who stands better chance of decoding RV, an IE linguist or a mathematician > who > knows some thing of Vedic? There are no overt mathematical formulas in the Vedas, so if you want to find mathematical stuff there, you need to know your Vedic language very well indeed. The right person to look for would be an Indologist with a good knowledge of mathematics (like e.g. Paul Hacker, who was an excellent mathematician, but never found any maths in the Veda, I believe. > You may have spent your life stduying the "language" of RV, but it does not > mean > that you are better prepared to tell others what is in RV. Yes, it does. If you don't know the language well, you can read any sort of nonsense into it. Amateur Vedic studies abound in "creativity" caused by a lack of philological and linguistic knowledge. > I find the attitude of Indologists extremely narrow minded. Scientists do not > talk like that. You may point out mistakes of others, but to say that only > IE > linguists have claim to understand RV, and not others is too much . Are we > building up a new caste of "super Brahmins"? Unlike certain "scientists", we (the Indologists) do not try to lecture scientists on e.g. cosmology, physics, or chemistry. We simply assume that they know their business, and if they disagree (which they often do), we leave it to them to thrash it out. We do not presume that reading a couple of books on physics qualify us to engage the pros in complex discussions. Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Norway Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no From zydenbos at GMX.LI Fri Mar 17 09:51:55 2000 From: zydenbos at GMX.LI (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 10:51:55 +0100 Subject: [Re: Comparative linguistics] In-Reply-To: <20000317023920.2835.qmail@nwcst283.netaddress.usa.net> Message-ID: <161227057027.23782.16320081332263666918.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Am Fri, 17 Mar 2000 schrieb Rahul Oka: > "the current north-south divide [which already existed for a very long time > prior to the British period]." > > Really? There was a North India and a South India before the British came? I > would really like to see some sources on this one. References have already been given, on this very list, already a long time ago, and they can be found in the archives if you are interested. There you will find, e.g., references to the ancient Tamil word va.tamo_li, literally "northern language", for "Sanskrit". > All my reading history in > pre-British India was that the scene on the sub-continent was geo-political > negotiation between various ethnic (not linguistic) groups who did not align > themselves according to North-South. Please note that the subject is "comparative linguistics", not "comparative ethnology". Even if language is closely related to society and ethnicity, ethnic and linguistic groups should not be considered identical. > Did the Southern Kingdoms and peoples > regard themselves as a block, (and same for the north), based on local and > temporal socio-economics and cultural movements or based on ideas that "they > are the medevial Madrasi's and the North Indian equivalent?" No, not in such a crude form. For that matter, India as a block did not exist either, and people from certain parts of the geographical expanse that today is called India happily went around pillaging other parts (much like some Europeans pillaged other parts of Europe). - And that is precisely what makes criticisms like that of Prof. Gupt (and so many others nowadays) so absurd. Linguists are faced with factual data, of considerable antiquity, spanning many hundreds of years, that cannot be brushed aside and that lead to well-founded conclusions. The findings of linguists (Indian as well as non-Indian, mind you, in case this makes any readers feel happier) cannot in any way be blamed for modern socio-political tensions. > I would really like to see some evidence that the Indian ethos was divided > into North and South well before the British came. Apart from that a question about "ethos" is irrelevant to this lingustic matter, I am afraid that the question as given here is too vague to discuss. But I am willing to say that an "Indian ethos" will be something like a "European ethos", based on a very long history of exchange of diverse cultural items (material civilisation, religious beliefs, artistic expressions, words and other elements of language,...), just as happened across the European continent. Just as Europe is not one monolithic whole, neither is India. There is diversity in the unity. There is north and south in India just as there is in Europe. Just exactly where the Indian south begins, is a matter of debate, based on one's criteria. Linguistically it is where the majority language is Dravidian. Some anthropologists take the Tungabhadra river as the northern limit, based on certain features of traditional social organisation, or the extent of the Vijayanagara empire (it is noteworthy that ever more cities in Karnataka have new extensions named 'Vijayanagara'). Language, as the prime vehicle of culture, plays a major role in this matter. But to say that linguists and linguistics are in the forefront of a conspiracy to divide and rule colonial and even post-colonial India, as we hear so often nowadays (also on this list), is plainly laughable. The accusers will have to find some other whipping boy. RZ -- Dr. Robert J. Zydenbos Eindhoven, the Netherlands e-mail: zydenbos at gmx.li From kekai at JPS.NET Fri Mar 17 19:07:40 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 11:07:40 -0800 Subject: Comparative linguistics Message-ID: <161227056946.23782.15715351233626605866.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I agree with Dr. Kalyanaraman that identifying semantic sets is very important. One must examine the mind of those who created the language. In this sense, those raised in the culture and language studied are at an advantage. > I submit that we have to exercise extraordinary caution in trying to be> definitive about sound changes; as Jules Bloch found out in evaluating the> Mara_t.hi_ language evolution, semantics over-ride phonetics. It is reasonable> to assume that in transformation grammar, the same phenomenon will persist> across Pra_kr.ts, thus finding common features of semantic expansions between> say Old Tamil and Bhojpuri. > Yes, sound changes can occur within a language which are contrary to the sound changes from the proto-language. These can occur with sets of words or even a single word and in many cases the reasons for these changes would be hidden to historical linguists. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET Fri Mar 17 11:13:01 2000 From: kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET (S.Kalyanaraman) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 11:13:01 +0000 Subject: Saraswati: Atomic Scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227056975.23782.12240659454875584698.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> George Thompson wrote: snip>> we are all of us here, now, in the year 2000, 3rd month, 16th day [accd to > the calendar that rules the Internet]. Dear Dr. Thompson, Since you have chosen to post on the list, I have to respond. I have posed a Nirukta (closer in time to R.gveda than any of us) question 2.10.8 re: ma_yu. (http://sarasvati.listbot.com Message#97: Divinities in the R.gveda (1); the series will continue). I am sure indology has been accepting postings from a variety of disciplines beyond IE linguistics. I am not the subject to be graded, I am only an inquisitive student posing questions. The subject now is ma_yu: semant.divinity. Regards, Kalyanaraman ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. From raja at IFA.HAWAII.EDU Fri Mar 17 21:29:58 2000 From: raja at IFA.HAWAII.EDU (Narayan S. Raja) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 11:29:58 -1000 Subject: non-elite CT names (Re: Telugu history) In-Reply-To: <20000317181226.4949.qmail@web702.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <161227057023.23782.6440263049201955798.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Fri, 17 Mar 2000, Periannan Chandrasekaran wrote: > --- Lakshmi Srinivas wrote: > > Are there any reliably known names of the common > > people from the CT texts? If you omit the names of the > > kings, poets, famous chieftains etc , that is. > > one may survey the rich cast of the great CT epic "cilappatikAram": [...list of names deleted...] > The Jain monk guiding the hero/heroine: kavunti Kavunti is a nun (i.e., a female), if I remember rightly, not a monk (i.e., a male). Regards, Raja. From koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE Fri Mar 17 11:15:28 2000 From: koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE (Koenraad Elst) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 12:15:28 +0100 Subject: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga Message-ID: <161227056993.23782.12780204730705183157.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Luis Gonzalez-Reimann 17 maart 2000 8:40 wrote: > So there seems to be agreement on the date of the text (ca 4th c. BCE) Not at all: not counting myself, Rajesh Kochhar is only the latest in a long list to date it unequivocally ("uncritically"?) at ca. 1300 BC. > Sastry believes that it preserves a tradition dating back to when the > winter solstice was at the beginning of zraviSThA. Why should a manual instructing priests in the astronomical aspects of their rituals point to stellar positions of a thousand years earlier rather than those actually visible, esp. when the matter at hand is not too complicated and the instruction given could be falsified at the first implementation? > Pingree writes that, " Since a displacement > of the beginning of the equal nakSatra by some 10 degrees, or an error of > 10 days in computing the date of the winter solstice, or some combination > of these two effects is all that is required to bring the date from the > 12th century to the 5th century B.C., we should not lend much weight to the > chronological argument. This lack of precision is a valid point, but it works in both time directions: with the same probabaility, it could push the date to 2000 BC. > Sastry (p. 15) also states that "The system of the VJ is the same as that > taught in the GargasamhitA of the SamhitA period, being the immediate > centuries before Christ and the next following...' So, once again, we are > in the early centuries BCE. If the astronomy of the text can safely be > placed in that period, it cannot, it is only in spite of and against its astronomical data that the VJ can be placed in the early centuries BC > then the position of the solstice is the only > discordant note, but a consequential one, especially in a manual of astronomy. It is harder evidence than much else on which indological chronology relies, e.g. the fabled "sheet-anchor" of Indian chronology, the Megasthenes-Sandrokottos synchronism, in which the all-important identity of "Sandrokottos" is much less clear than is conventionally assumed. On that identification rests a lot, partly also the belief that classical Sanskrit as used in the VJ is typical of the centuries around Christ. K. Elst From hbd at DDIT.ERNET.IN Fri Mar 17 07:32:34 2000 From: hbd at DDIT.ERNET.IN (H.B.Dave) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 13:02:34 +0530 Subject: Saraswati: Atomic Scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227056981.23782.9532948975130491474.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> George Thompson wrote: > Dear Dr. Kalyanaraman, > > Please, stop for a moment and consider this: > > we are all of us here, now, in the year 2000, 3rd month, 16th day [accd to > the calendar that rules the Internet]. Not one of us stands any closer in > time to the period of the Rgveda than anyone else, whether Vaidika or > European, Subaltern or American, etc. No matter who we are, the RV stands > equally distant and remote and difficult for every single one of us. Without > exception. Let us assume, for sake of argument, that RV is a book on Advanced Calculus. Who stands better chance of decoding RV, an IE linguist or a mathematician who knows some thing of Vedic? > > As far as I can see, no scientist, not even a nuclear physicist or an > electrical engineer, is better prepared to understand the Rgveda than those > scientists who actually devote their lives to studying it. I don't know > whether Rahul Oka is a scientist or not. But if you give me a sample of his > observations about the RV I can tell you right away whether or not he is a > scientist of the Rgveda. > You may have spent your life stduying the "language" of RV, but it does not mean that you are better prepared to tell others what is in RV. As far as your claim of telling if Mr. XYZ is scientist of Rv is concerned, is it not presumming too much on your part? I find the attitude of Indologists extremely narrow minded. Scientists do not talk like that. You may point out mistakes of others, but to say that only IE linguists have claim to understand RV, and not others is too much . Are we building up a new caste of "super Brahmins"? -- Himanshu From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Fri Mar 17 12:32:37 2000 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 13:32:37 +0100 Subject: Guests (inquiry on behalf of a colleague not on the list) Message-ID: <161227056996.23782.123452793000972475.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear members of the net. A colleague non involved in sanskrit studies has sent me the following question: "Hindus normally explain their hospitality as inspired by the following line in Sanskrit: "Atithi devo bhava" (treat your guests like God). Can anyone tell me what scriptures this line appears in?" I assume that it should be "Atithir devo bhavatu" or something to that effect. Please send your answers to Kathinka Froystad, Kathinka at prio.no. [PRIO is the Peace Research Institute of Oslo] Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Norway Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no From Eric.Robert at UM.BE Fri Mar 17 12:38:46 2000 From: Eric.Robert at UM.BE (Robert, Eric) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 13:38:46 +0100 Subject: thanks Message-ID: <161227056998.23782.8176507386290714181.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I'd like to thank all list members who helped me with their useful comments and references for my questions about varNa and reincarnation theory. Eric Robert From gargsam at HOTMAIL.COM Fri Mar 17 18:39:05 2000 From: gargsam at HOTMAIL.COM (Sam Garg) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 13:39:05 -0500 Subject: Saraswati: Atomic Scientists reconfirm location Message-ID: <161227057021.23782.11520950874167525711.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >As far as I can see, no scientist, not even a nuclear physicist or an >electrical engineer, is better prepared to understand the Rgveda >than >those scientists who actually devote their lives to studying it. Agreed. Then you should have no objection to renaming this forum "Science of the Rgveda". Why call it 'Indology'? As a recent subscriber, attracted by the name 'Indology', I find it misleading. It is similar to saying that Egyptology is the 'scientific study of Egyptian hieroglyphics'. Sanjay >From: George Thompson >Reply-To: Indology >To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK >Subject: Re: Saraswati: Atomic Scientists reconfirm location >Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 23:59:47 EST > >Dear Dr. Kalyanaraman, > >Please, stop for a moment and consider this: > >we are all of us here, now, in the year 2000, 3rd month, 16th day [accd to >the calendar that rules the Internet]. Not one of us stands any closer in >time to the period of the Rgveda than anyone else, whether Vaidika or >European, Subaltern or American, etc. No matter who we are, the RV stands >equally distant and remote and difficult for every single one of us. >Without >exception. > >As far as I can see, no scientist, not even a nuclear physicist or an >electrical engineer, is better prepared to understand the Rgveda than those >scientists who actually devote their lives to studying it. I don't know >whether Rahul Oka is a scientist or not. But if you give me a sample of his >observations about the RV I can tell you right away whether or not he is a >scientist of the Rgveda. > >In my view, if we are talking about the RV, we should try to be scientists >of >that text. If we are talking about IVC, we should try to be scientists of >IVC. If we are talking about horses, then we should try to be horse >scientists. This is simply to say, once again, that this is a scholarly >list, >where preference [attention] should be given to those who have studied *as >scientists* the item that is up for discussion. I don't think that being a >scientist of human behavior, for example, gives one any special advantage >when it come to the science of the RV. > >You have an admirable passion for these topics, but I think that it is fair >to say that you are not a scientist of old Indo-Iranian, nor of comparative >nor any other kind of linguistics. This is demonstrated once again by your >recent comments about sememes, etc. To talk about meaning divorced from >phonology and morphology is like talking about Vedic divorced from >saMhitAs, >or brAhmaNas, or zrauta sUtras, etc. It is like separating body and soul >[you know, signifier and signified, and all that linguistic mumbo jumbo]. >A >sememe without a phonology, etc., would be a ghost whose existence we could >not perceive at all, except by means of crystal balls. That sort of >methodology is, I think, not allowed on scholarly lists. > >I do not deny that you may well be a scientist, and a good one, of other >things. But in my opinion you have not demonstrated that you are a >scientist >of the RV, of Avestan, etc. > >Best wishes, > >George Thompson ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From Martin.Gansten at TEOL.LU.SE Fri Mar 17 13:47:37 2000 From: Martin.Gansten at TEOL.LU.SE (Martin Gansten) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 14:47:37 +0100 Subject: Guests (inquiry on behalf of a colleague not on the list) In-Reply-To: <01BF9015.5ACA8D00.lmfosse@online.no> Message-ID: <161227057004.23782.13200525306360448913.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >"Hindus normally explain their hospitality as inspired by the following line >in Sanskrit: "Atithi devo bhava" (treat your guests like God). > >Can anyone tell me what scriptures this line appears in?" > >I assume that it should be "Atithir devo bhavatu" or something to that effect. Atithideva.h is a bahuvrihi compound: devo yasya atithi.h. The line goes: maat.rdevo bhava, pit.rdevo bhava, aacaaryadevo bhava, atithidevo bhava... You will find it in Taitt. Up. 1.11.2. Regards, Martin Gansten From malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU Fri Mar 17 22:34:58 2000 From: malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU (Yashwant Malaiya) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 15:34:58 -0700 Subject: Negroids & Shudras, North-south In-Reply-To: <38D2F101.571@del3.vsnl.net.in> Message-ID: <161227057029.23782.10744522102798095467.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> 1. The siddis or shidis loving in the coastal areas of Sindh, Maharastra and Konkana are of Negro descent. Since some of them are Hindu, and since they are concentrated in coastal areas, suggests that not all of them were brought as slaves during the Muslim period. They could have arrived as traders etc. They are physically quite distinct and have nothing to do with Dravidians. 2. Who is a shudra? There are 4 points of view. a. By traditional view (as expressed in BrahmaNotpatti- maartNDa and Jaati-bhaaskara) all those who do not tradionally go through the upveet ceremony are shudra. By this, about 80-90% of the population of India is shudra. b. There is an extreme view that at the present time there are only Brahmins and the rest are Shudras. This view is not without some historical justification. c. By liberal view, all those in "clean" occupations are not shudra. This view would thus accept zamindars as Kshatriyas and all traders as vaishyas. d. One view, that I take, is that the 4-fold division ceased to be of any applicability quite some time ago, and thus all, to some extent, are Shudra (and of the other 3 varnas). 3. Are shudras generally darker skinned? Not necessarily. Some quite "high" castes tend to be darker. Rajputs of noble blood are often darker. Members of some quite "high" merchant castes are darker skinned. A few very light skinned castes are shudras, at least according to the traditional criterion. A lot of brahmins can be quite dark. If there is an average "shudra" racial type, it would not be different from an average Indian racial type. North South divide: Dakshinapatha or the Dravida country included modern Gujarat and Maharashtra. Thus the Gujarati and Marathi brahmins are among the "panch-dravida". Orissa is tradionally considered North. Incidentally the old Gurjara country, now in Rajasthan, is not considered Dravida. Yashwant From malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU Sat Mar 18 00:09:21 2000 From: malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU (Yashwant Malaiya) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 17:09:21 -0700 Subject: Negroids & Shudras, North-south In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227057036.23782.13924563824568807159.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Raveen Satkurunathan wote: >Pretty interesting that without the help of modern linguistics, old Puranic >writers ?some how? knew that the natives of Gujarat and Maharashtra were >Dravidian speaking although currently a majority of them speak in IE I don't know if there is any relationship with this, I know about a specific community in Maharashtra/Karnataka where many parents/grandparents speak Kannada but the children generally often speak Marathi. I should mention here something regarding Rajputs. The Solanki (Chaulukya) and Rathore (Rashtrakuta) clans originated in the south with absolute certainty. Very likely the Parmars (who "originated" at mount Abu) have something to do with Rashtrakutas. The Gahadavals (V.P. Singh, the former PM, is one) are thought to have been related to the Rashtrakutas in some way. Paul Kekai Manansala wrote: >They argue either for a Holocene or pre-Holocene migration from the >Sahara or East Africa as the main source of 'recent' African genetic and >cultural contribution to the Dravidian population. Is this "African genetic contribution" a speculation or there is scientific basis for it? I assume this does not go back to the time when humankind originated in Africa. >Strangely, the ancient Greeks also noted that there were very hoary >connections between 'Ethiopia' and India. Can you mention the authors and the what they said? Thanks. Yashwant From vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM Sat Mar 18 02:09:08 2000 From: vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM (Vishal Agarwal) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 18:09:08 -0800 Subject: Mushtanda; and Bharat Message-ID: <161227057038.23782.17751367970842622021.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dr. Zydenbos wrote: No, not in such a crude form. For that matter, India as a block did not exist either........... VA responds: The concept of nation state itself is fairly new, so why should India be held to different standards. Notwithstand its colorful diversity, the concept of Bharat has existed for at least 15-18 centuries. Else why would we have dozens of verses like "In Bharat, the men and women are of various skin colors, engaged in the worship of various devatas and employed in different professions. Their life is limited to a 100 years." Kurma Purana 1.45.20 The Kurma Purana is quoted by Sri Sankaracharya (7-8th Cent) in the Sariraka Bhashya as well as in the Bhashya on the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. The preface of the critical edition (Kashiraj Trust) of the Kurma Purana suggests that the extant text was established at least by the 9th Cent or so. And of course, from the even older Vishnu Purana we have the following verse: (quoting from memory) "To the north of which lies the Himadri, and to the south of which is the ocean--that landmass goes by the name Bharata, and its inhabitants 'bharati yatra santatih'." There are 100's of such verses in the Puranas and the Itihasas, and in comparison, does Europe have anything? Therefore, the remarks of Dr. Zydenbos are one sided. I refer him to the booklet "The Fundamental Unity of India" by historian R C Majumdar (Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan) which collects several such passages ____________________________ Mushtanda: As a native Hindi speaker, let me dilate a little on how we use this word. It is used to refer to a stout, muscular, robust, athletic or a strong man (definitely not to a plump person). Since the Zamindars, the politicans etc, hire such 'musclemen' for their protection, often recruiting the pahelwans (wrestlers) of the local akharas, the word has acquired negative connotations and is therefore used to refer to a bully, a lout and so on. However, the word is used affectionately also (with the negative connotation in the background). For instance, when I and my cousins were growing up as young men and played some pranks or did some mischief, our elders sometimes used he word 'Mushtandey' for us. BTW, the word 'Mushti' is used in the AVZ for clenched fist as well as for a strapping, robust man (see all the occurances of this word in the Samhita with the help of the Hoshiarpur concordance). I also recall a mantra in which a herb/vegetarian diet is said to be 'mushtihA' ('hit with a fist' or drive away) with regard to fever. The word 'Mushti' itself is used for 'wrestler' even in Hindi TV serials like the Mahabharata. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From cssetzer at MUM.EDU Sat Mar 18 00:19:54 2000 From: cssetzer at MUM.EDU (Claude Setzer) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 18:19:54 -0600 Subject: Horse & BMAC & much more Message-ID: <161227057182.23782.18161099491132230228.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> From: Koenraad Elst . >There is an aspect of the scientific temper and method which > is little developed in the hard sciences, as opposed to the humanities. I > once wrote a report for the Belgian weekly Trends about the Natural Law > Party, Maharishi's international party which promises world peace by means > of 7000 levitating yogis centralized in each country's capital. To my > half-surprise, the party cadres in most countries were full of engineers, > theoretical physicists and the like. They are, by training and temperament, > not inclined to "sterile" *critical* thinking, > Since you and Dominik seem so insistent that "Humanists" are superior in their care about getting the facts straight, you should be rather ashamed of yourself for doing so little research about something you publish. 1) The correct number is 0.1% of the population to be effected, as is clearly stated in many research papers published by studies both within and outside of the TM organizations. Several years ago, the number 7,000 was 0.1% of the world's population, so it was projected that locally proven 0.1% effects could be scaled to include the entire world with one group of 7,000. To be "safe" this was extended to several groups of 7,000. It was not said (or perhaps was said by accident) that "each" (implying "every" ) country needed 7,000. But even if someone did say this, a "good Humanist" would do his research and get the correct data before publication. 2) You seem to make very light of this, but some of the most conservative and skeptical professional journals have taken it very seriously. In the US, for example, even the FBI (federal police) statistics have confirmed a substantial decrease in crime during a TM project specifically designed to do so in the nation's capitol, Washington DC. And the (very skeptical) federal government of the US has put very substantial funding into TM research because, in some areas of need, it has been clearly proven to be more effective than anything else, sometimes even the only thing that is proven to work. Sincerely, Claude Setzer From dsm at CYPRESS.COM Sat Mar 18 03:03:51 2000 From: dsm at CYPRESS.COM (Dinesh Maheshwari/CAD) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 19:03:51 -0800 Subject: Ceremonial disposal of the "asva" carcass ? Message-ID: <161227057045.23782.6843076036184263912.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Are there any direct or indirect references in the Vedic texts regarding the disposal of the "asva" carcass? Considering the significance of the "asva" in the "Vedic culture", could the "asva" carcasses have been disposed off (buried, cast off in the river/sea, cremated) ceremoniously ? Thanks, Best Regards, Dinesh Maheshwari From cssetzer at MUM.EDU Sat Mar 18 02:36:19 2000 From: cssetzer at MUM.EDU (Claude Setzer) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 20:36:19 -0600 Subject: Horse & BMAC & TM Message-ID: <161227057191.23782.14611831064281745273.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > But if you care to know my opinion, I think that a possibly good > project of promoting meditation and putting it to some socially beneficial > use has been delivered to ridicule with this levitation gimmick, especially > since after all these years of hopping, not one TM champion has been seen > flying. > > K. Elst > Thank you for your pleasant response to my comments. I think there is no question that the marketing for NLP sometimes hits people the wrong way. But there is very solid research to show without a doubt that the process that is called "yogic flying" has some very unusual effects both on the individual doing it and on the people nearby. On the individual it is found that the process of practicing the technique results in very unusual brain wave patterns that cannot be invoked by any other known means. In society, very carefully performed and analyzed studies have shown repeatedly that a group of people performing the technique have an unprecedented effect of creating good results on thousands, even millions of nearby people. If people will not believe the results, then I do not know why they would believe other results either. Would seeing someone levitate for an hour convince them?? If so, then they are more interested in spectacle than in good benefits to themselves and to society. I think the TM organization has made it very clear and straight forward by many public demonstrations that the average person practicing this technique does what you call "hopping." For now, this hopping IS, almost by definition, "yogic flying." There are people, on an irregular basis, that experience more than that, but that is not really the point. To add a little Sanskrit to the discussion, above you said, "not one TM champion has been seen flying." As you know, the word, aneka, which literally means, "not one" in Sanskrit, is often interpreted as "many." In fact, many have been seen flying (for very short times) but probably not publicly. The thing that is important is that the practice of a specific technique has extremely beneficial results both for the person and for the environment. It seems to me that this effect is much more "useful" than the traditional interpretation of the prediction, of Pantanjali and others, that a person can perfect the event that we call levitation. Sincerely, Claude Setzer From reimann at UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU Sat Mar 18 05:22:37 2000 From: reimann at UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU (Luis Gonzalez-Reimann) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 21:22:37 -0800 Subject: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga In-Reply-To: <001901bf9003$73828b20$530fe0d5@pandora.be> Message-ID: <161227057056.23782.10513510717453100848.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 12:15 PM 03/17/2000 +0100, K. Elst wrote: >> So there seems to be agreement on the date of the text (ca 4th c. BCE) > >Not at all: not counting myself, Rajesh Kochhar is only the latest in a long >list to date it unequivocally ("uncritically"?) at ca. 1300 BC. I meant agreement between Sastry's and Pingree's dates. I was responding to V. Agarwal's question about Sastry, whom he describes as a Vaidik proficient in astronomy. Kochhar's opinion is another matter. >> Sastry believes that it preserves a tradition dating back to when the >> winter solstice was at the beginning of zraviSThA. > >Why should a manual instructing priests in the astronomical aspects of their >rituals point to stellar positions of a thousand years earlier rather than >those actually visible, esp. when the matter at hand is not too complicated >and the instruction given could be falsified at the first implementation? If it is due to a lack of precision (which you acknowledge as possible, below), then that could be the answer. What is "actually visible" would depend on what kind of precision was used. As for why to preserve an observation made much earlier (assuming that is actually the case), I can say the following: Traditions are, almost by definition, conservative, especially (but not exclusively) religious traditions. When, within such a tradition, there is a statement attributed to some earlier authority, there is usually a strong resistance to any changes. Consider the following. On January 7 of this year there was an important meeting of Christian Eastern Orthodox leaders in Bethlehem to celebrate Christmas. Even Boris Yeltsin, fresh out of office, attended. Why on January 7? Because several branches of the Orthodox Church still use the Julian calendar. Now, if you wanted to date Yeltsin's participation in this event astronomically, you might decide that you should look at when the winter solstice (or a couple of days after it) fell on the 7th of January. You could ask the patriarchs the same question you asked me: "why not use the calendar that actually coincides with the seasons?" They are obviously aware of the Gregorian reform, now hundreds of years old. But there are other reasons for their use of an outdated calendar, and they have nothing to do with "pure" astronomy. >> Pingree writes that, " Since a displacement >> of the beginning of the equal nakSatra by some 10 degrees, or an error of >> 10 days in computing the date of the winter solstice, or some combination >> of these two effects is all that is required to bring the date from the >> 12th century to the 5th century B.C., we should not lend much weight to >the >> chronological argument. > >This lack of precision is a valid point, but it works in both time >directions: with the same probabaility, it could push the date to 2000 BC. Sure, but if you push it down it makes more sense, because then it coincides with other factors, such as that its astronomical knowledge is the same one reflected in the GargasamhitA; the language used; etc. And Garga's text has been dated on several grounds, including the fact that the Yuga Purana (which is part of it) was convincingly dated by Mitchiner (p.82) to the end of the last century BCE (the Yuga Purana actually mentions historical rulers). (John E. Mitchiner, The Yuga Purana. Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 1986) >> Sastry (p. 15) also states that "The system of the VJ is the same as that >> taught in the GargasamhitA of the SamhitA period, being the immediate >> centuries before Christ and the next following...' So, once again, we are >> in the early centuries BCE. If the astronomy of the text can safely be >> placed in that period, > >it cannot, it is only in spite of and against its astronomical data that the >VJ can be placed in the early centuries BC By "its astronomical data" you presumably mean the stated position of the winter solstice, but as far as the kind of astronomical knowledge of the text is concerned, both Sastry and Pingree agree that the astronomy of the text is from that period (so, again, the solstice position is the discordant note, as I wrote). And see above concerning the GargasamhitA. >> then the position of the solstice is the only >> discordant note, > >but a consequential one, especially in a manual of astronomy. But this, again, is Pingree's point about accuracy: even though it is a manual on astronomy it has crude calculations for the intercalation cycle, so why not on other matters? It is harder >evidence than much else on which indological chronology relies, e.g. the >fabled "sheet-anchor" of Indian chronology, the Megasthenes-Sandrokottos >synchronism, in which the all-important identity of "Sandrokottos" is much >less clear than is conventionally assumed. On that identification rests a >lot, partly also the belief that classical Sanskrit as used in the VJ is >typical of the centuries around Christ. This is an entirely different arena. If you wish to revive the theory that Sandrokottos is the Gupta and not the Maurya Candragupta -against the general opinion of historians- then the burden of proof is on you. It is not enough to say that the identitity "is much less clear than is conventionally assumed." A study with detailed arguments would be necessary. Regards, Luis Gonzalez-Reimann University of California, Berkeley From vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM Sat Mar 18 05:29:29 2000 From: vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM (Vishal Agarwal) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 21:29:29 -0800 Subject: Saraswati: Atomic Scientists reconfirm location (Dr. Wujastyk) Message-ID: <161227057058.23782.12254355640864442067.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dr. Wujastyk said: DD Kosambi was a fine mathematician, but it was as a fine philologist and literary historian that he contributed so valuably to the study of Bhartrhari's poetry. It would be ridiculous to say that his contribution to indology was because he was a Scientist. Vishal responds: To collect data for concordances and publish critical texts is one thing, and to interpret data (which is what history is most about) is another. Dr. Kosambi's flaws lie in using his pre-conceived notions to distort data and derive marxist interpretations of history. However, since you have banned discussion on the works of Eminent Historians, I will take the example of another great contemporary philologist/linguist Dr. Hans H Hock (whose book on historical linguistics comes very strongly recommended by Dr. George Thomspon), to demonstrate how such linguists and philologists make a mockery of ancient texts. Refer Pg. 145-147 of "Aryan and Non Aryan in South Asia" ed by Dr. M Deshpande and Dr. J Bronkhorst (HOS 2; 1999) where Dr. Hock says: "........I found that the parable is not apocryphal, but is referred to as early as Sankaracharya;s time: detad dhastidarsana eva jatyandhah, i.e., like people blind by birth/when viewing an elephant.(Sankaracarya's commentary on Chhandogya Upanishad 5.18.1) There is however, an important difference between the interpretation of the parable by modern scholars and Sankaracarya. The former take the parable as emblematic of how difficult scholars to enquire into the true nature of things; for Sankaracharya, by contrast, the true nature of things is pre-established, but those whom he would characterise as blind fail to see the truth." Two pages later, after decrying the Hindu nationalists and the Dravidian Nationalists, Dr. Hock pontificates: "Not unlike religious thinkers such as Sankara, national or religious zealots are convinced that the nature of truth is pre-established, while for those operating in the tradition of scholarship the truth is something to be sought after, something to be approximated by means of hypotheses." I would suggest that the Indologists read the subsequent words of the Acharya's commentary on Chhandogya Upanishad 5.18.1 to see how Dr. Hock has terribly distorted/misunderstood the words of Sankaracarya. In fact, it shows a lack of understanding of even the basic paradigms of Advaita Vedanta which is the most important school of Indian philosophy, and is also a clear slander of the Teacher. If Dr. Hock, despite being an eminent LINGUIST could not interpret the passage correctly, he could have referred to the tippana of Anandagiri, or even the Dipika of Sayana! Time constraints forbid me from showing similar follies in the articles of Herr Witzel, who discovered that the word 'sukha' meant axle holes. Considering that one eminent linguist discovered that Rishika Apala had few pubic hair, and another found that she actually had a small vulva, I would not be surprised on the meaning that Dr. Witzel would attribute to the 'sukha' in his future discovery of proto-proto IE that was spoken by delighted men before they invented chariots. Ironically, Dr. Hock is now the vice-president of WAVES, which is composed primarily of the 'Hindu Nationalists' like Dr. Kak, whom he criticized so vehemently in the article quoted above. Would Dr. Fosse now recall his comment that 'necessity makes strange bedfellows." Let me stop this email here lest Dr. Witzel says with his foul-mukha that I am indulging hate-mongering or before Dr. George Thompson SPAKE that 'the list, scholarly in intent, has been over-run once again by a bunch of fundamentalists on a crusade". ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM Sat Mar 18 03:12:39 2000 From: rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM (Rajarshi Banerjee) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 22:12:39 -0500 Subject: None Message-ID: <161227057042.23782.12169865943140927047.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >>MW: Why is it that of all of these and the ensuing movements, just one, the >>"Aryan"one (=Indo-Aryan, proto-Vedic), is NOT allowed these days? RB> Altogether I think MW is spending too much time writing parodies and acquiring "a fan". Please note I have no indological rep to protect. I just found the above statement whiney. MW> But that would be a Near Eastern Aryans' INVASION into India, simply horrible!!! Just the kind of fact RB denies above.... RB> I dont deny anything neither do I believe much. Has MW heard healthy scepticism ... confidence intervals, error bars? It would appear that some indologists are burdened with a belief system. Why make fun of vimAnas when you yourself belive in chariots armies used to herd cows. MW> "Afghans" before their time, of course, and simply because "they" were on, in front of, and behind the two major (Khyber, Bolan) and many smaller passes leading into South Asia. Areas the RV speaks about. RB> Please Dr W. you may call them afghans if you like. There are regional variations in the material culture of norhtwest india but no archeological evidence for cultural diffusion or spread be it cemetry H or BMAC or IVC etc... Ofcourse there is a limited migration of people from the IVC region to the east and a shift to more rural life which may predate the composition of the rig veda. All immigrants/invaders to india did not come through the bolan pass. We all know about the islamization of sindh and early islamic raids into gujarat. MW> The linguistic evidence of the RV, with its substrate (missing in closely related Old Iranian) is evidence enough that the people in the Panjab/Harappans did *not* speak IA but the substrate language(s). Anyhow, IA is Indo_Iranian, which is part of eastern Indo-European, which is part of Proto-IE. All spoken outside S. Asia (see immediately). The percentage of IE/Indo_Iranian words to non-IE words in the RV is 96% : 4 %. Any comment necessary? RB> Such loans are also seen in other ancient IE languages like hittite, Was there ever a pure unadulterated PIE language if I understand correctly it is a theoretical construct. All real languages have loan words. What is the purest IE language is it avestan?? MW> In natural science, biology for example, the later branch on a "family tree" is always innovative and by its very nature, later, than the "trunk": in case, Vedic is innovative, not the "trunk", IIr/IE. RB> I have a genuine problem visualizing the evolution of voiced aspirates from murmurred stops or whatever of PIE. what about the increase in the the number of basic phonemes from PIE to sanskrit - three basic typs of stops branch into four. Isnt this an unnatural innovation not seen in any other siblings? I am no linguist and would appreciate any pointers perhaps these are easy leaps(of faith?) for linguists but I am not one and would appreciate pointers as to how linguists treat such issues. Does any one talk of reflexes of hittite laryngeals in sankrit or vedic? It looks like linguists are busy figuring out the evolution of european languages but neglecting problems in IIr and IA. Can indic have been an early branch of PIE. RB >Deciphering linear B pushed back greek by almost a millenia. MW> A "millenia"?? People speaking about language should at least check their ENGLISH dictionary and find out that "millennia" (sic) is the plural of "millennium" (etymology needed?). Well, I won't charge you even one Rupees for that. RB>To continue in the same bitchy vein, that would be "one Rupee" not Rupees. I won't charge you even one dollar for that. RB> Yes I admit that I did not know about early dates for homer but was thinking of classical greece. Maybe I should recall MW's earlier sentence that "the sanchi chariots occur SlIGHTLY later than the vedic period" or something to that effect. Vedic age being 1700-1200 BC according to MW and sanchi scultures from 100 AD(if I recall correctly). MW> Natural Scientists please comment on this new aspect of number theory! RB> Statisticians please note this extreme stretch in fuzzy logic! MW> This is about as much as I will write about this and similar messages, even if some of their originators seem to think that constant assault will bring down resistance and carry the day: hurray to the "paradigm change!" Actually, I wouldn't have bothered and would not even have written these messages if I were not occupied right now with rewriting a paper on the various "Out of India" models, and if I were not collecting materials, --- conveniently supplied by non sequitur messages such as the one by RB. RB> Wow never thought this would be called an assault. Probably all this reading is having its psychological toll on MW. MW> Well, I will presently return to the favorite attitude of my colleagues (and myself!), apparent by their collective thundering silence, Cheers RB> Good I get to have the last word...... MW> Even my recent "great discoveries" parody could not be as confused as the following post by R. Banerjee. Let us analyze it, as a specimen, line by line, even if this is a complete waist of time, like many of the recent "discussions": RB> I also dont have time to "WAIST", in fact I have a vimAna to catch and a chariot to rent ... regards RB From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sat Mar 18 03:57:11 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 22:57:11 -0500 Subject: Comparative linguistics--advantage--criteria desired Message-ID: <161227057049.23782.5666766670957191810.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> PK Manansala: >For example, someone writes >"it came straight from the horse's mouth." Herr Witzel, in a future >life still as an historical linguist, might interpret this as meaning >present day rishis were able to actually talk to horses. Tuan/Se?or Manansala is wrong, comme l'habitude: rather, a philologist -- (I am not a linguist by profession, incidentally, though I have a lot of training in that area) -- will soon find out that this is a saying. Derived, no doubt, like all Anguli-sthaana speech and folklore, from the real horse's mouth, given by the ancient Rishi Dadhyanc Atharvana, to the Ashvins. These, incidentally, are the ancestors of the English subgroup of the Druhyu that emigrated from India. Too bad that Talageri etc. did not notice it: the first Englishmen are Hengist ('stud', German: Hengst) and Horsa... All Hail to these Thanes! MW =========================================================================== Michael Witzel Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies Harvard University www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs --------------------------------------------------------------------------- my direct line (also for messages) : 617- 496 2990 home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sat Mar 18 03:57:30 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 22:57:30 -0500 Subject: Comparative linguistics Message-ID: <161227057051.23782.4882268863472282809.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> P K Manansala (below) again raises topics on this list that are well known and have been discussed *forever*. Historical linguists rely on the rules of regular sound change from one stage of a language to the next, which allows to posit and prove regular correspondences of sounds between related languages (the Neogrammarians of 130 years ago: "Lautgesetze") However, they also knew that these rules can *occasionally* be contravened by local developments in the MEANING of the word concerned, by import of dialect forms into the standard language, etc. Such items stick out like a sore thumb, and they are readily discovered and discussed by linguists. Often, even explained. PKM again takes a restricted case in order to show the invalidity of the whole system. Non licet. Most IE/IIr/IA exceptions can be explained already. Further (sub)sub-rules still are there to be discovered. Which people do all of the time. Indo-Europeanists would be out of work by now, otherwise. Each leap in this particular science, such as the discovery of laryngeals (actual proof in written!!! Hittit; pace S.S. Misra), has further streamlined and simplified the basic description of the Proto-language, or to speak like a Mathematician: each further step has made the formulations more succinct and "more beautiful". Much less is "hidden" here than PKM assumes. Why doesn't he study 'traditional' comp. ling. in action? Instead of telling us his 130 years OLD 'new discoveries': PK Manansala: >> I submit that we have to exercise extraordinary caution in trying to be >>definitive about sound changes; as Jules Bloch found out in evaluating >>the> Mara_t.hi_ language evolution, semantics over-ride phonetics. >sound changes can occur within a language which are contrary to the >sound changes from the proto-language. These can occur with sets of >words or even a single word and in many cases the reasons for these >changes would be hidden to historical linguists. ====================== Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Sat Mar 18 06:58:21 2000 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 22:58:21 -0800 Subject: Mahabharata question Message-ID: <161227057060.23782.3602663312880186312.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In consonance with the much bemoaned transformation of this list into a battlefield, partly due to a perceived scientists vs. humanists polarity, let me ask an astronomical question regarding an ancient battle. In the Mahabharata, when acting as an envoy for the Pandavas, Krishna parts from Karna with the statement that the two armies should meet in seven days time, on a new moon day. Is the epic consistent throughout, in telling us that the battle started on the new moon day? I would very much appreciate specific references. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From tawady at YAHOO.COM Fri Mar 17 23:03:24 2000 From: tawady at YAHOO.COM (Raveen Satkurunathan) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 23:03:24 +0000 Subject: Negroids & Shudras, North-south Message-ID: <161227057030.23782.12064825577351000157.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Fri, 17 Mar 2000 15:34:58 -0700, Yashwant Malaiya wrote: >1. The siddis or shidis loving in the coastal areas of >Sindh, Maharastra and Konkana are of Negro descent. Since >some of them are Hindu, and since they are concentrated in >coastal areas, suggests that not all of them were brought >as slaves during the Muslim period. They could have >arrived as traders etc. > >They are physically quite distinct and have nothing to do with >Dravidians. There are few "Dravidian" speaking tribals who exhibit typical "Negroid" physical characteristics; 1. Kurumba of Tamil Nadu 2. Paniyan of Kerala among others Further Dravidian is a language group not a racial group contrary to what a lot of people want to believe. Speakers range from Caucasian Brahui to Negroid Paniyan and every possible human combination in-between including the much contested Australoid and even some Mongoloid characteristics of tribals in the east. >2. Who is a shudra? There are 4 points of view. > > >North South divide: Dakshinapatha or the Dravida country >included modern Gujarat and Maharashtra. Thus the Gujarati and >Marathi brahmins are among the "panch-dravida". Orissa >is tradionally considered North. See 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..... (Archived in Indology list) Pretty interesting that without the help of modern linguistics, old Puranic writers ?some how? knew that the natives of Gujarat and Maharashtra were Dravidian speaking although currently a majority of them speak in IE >Incidentally the old Gurjara country, now in Rajasthan, >is not considered Dravida. > >Yashwant Raveen From tawady at YAHOO.COM Fri Mar 17 23:14:43 2000 From: tawady at YAHOO.COM (Raveen Satkurunathan) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 23:14:43 +0000 Subject: non-elite CT names (Re: Telugu history) Message-ID: <161227057034.23782.4761440686170847965.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Fri, 17 Mar 2000 10:12:26 -0800, Periannan Chandrasekaran wrote: > >one may survey the rich cast of the great CT epic "cilappatikAram": > >the hero and heroine who are scions of rich businessmen: kOvalan2 & kaNNaki > >Their fathers: mAcAttuvAn2 (great merchant), mAnAykan2 (great leader?) >The courtesan: mAtavi (the name of a domestic creeper/vine) >Her female friend (of mAtavi): vAcavadattai >The milkmaids at madurai suburb: mAtari, aiyai >(= "great consort of king" ?given name )jain monk: > >The Jain monk guiding the hero/heroine: kavunti > >Brahmins: >The brahmin friend of kaNNaki: tEvanti >The brahmin messenger sent by mAtavi to kOvalan2: kOcikamANi (kaucikan2?) >The brahmnin visitor from pUmpuhAr at madurai: mADalan2 >Brahmin names mentioned: >kIrantai (a tamil name), parAcaran2, vArttikan2, kArttikai, takkiNan2 (dakSiNa) > >The "elite": >Coza: karikAl vaLavan2 >The paNdiyan emperor/empress: ceziyan2 (hereditary title), kOp perun tEvi >Chera: ceGkuTTuvan2 >Chera chieftains: azumpil vEL, villavan2 kOtai >Brahmin names are evidently Sanskrit. But it is difficult to detect any >differences among the non-brahmin names. > >P.Chandrasekaran > The survey needs to be complete including all possible CT literature and evaluated with respect "refined Tamil" (Chen Thamizh) versus "unrefined Tamil" names. I will be surprised that if "unrefined names" such as Kuppan, Suppan, Karupaih, Muniyandi etc., did not exist then, that some how it is a post CT development. Because these names are primordial and describe a person in very basic terms versus the flowery highly descriptive names of the CT elite. ( Will be good topic for a masters thesis to a student of Tamil:-)) From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sat Mar 18 04:33:32 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 00 23:33:32 -0500 Subject: Etymology In-Reply-To: <20000317152612.8390.qmail@web303.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <161227057054.23782.17697384366321848049.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Swaminathan Madhuresan has refreshingly new, good point in these times of online wars: >Allotting a good percentage of funds pie available for Indian studies in the >West to build a chronological dictionary of Dravidian words and features >in IA and Sanskrit, something like ongoing projects EWA, KEWA >(to find relationships between IE, German, Sanskrit,...) will prove >to be fruitful. Indeed, as the DED/DEDR of Burrow/Emeneau is just a beginning, comparable to the Indo_European materials contained in Pokorny's Indogermanisches Woerterbuch. IE and Drav. studies have progressed well beyond the stage that these two great dictionaries represent. Luckily Mayrhofer's EWA fills the gap for Old Indo-Aryan now. However, while we all --- > By now hopefully Indologists realize the importance of >increasing Dravidologists breed amidst them, and you can see that in >India, ideology sometimes acts as a barrier to do good linguistics >studies. --- the following is not so easy: >Hope Indologists will help increase in academic Dravidology pursuits. >It is within their power and budgets. Not really. I, for one, have tried since my arrival here in 1986, to get a Dravidian chair. However, to no avail: one cannot expect that the University administration just gives you another post, like that. They have other goals, predilections, problems. Nor can we expect much help from the general wealthy populace (they like Tibet or Buddhism), and apparently also not those who should be interested in the first place, South Asians here and in S.Asia herself. I could give along list here, but will resist the temptation. Let me just say: many unkept promises, and a great loss of time... And, chairs are not cheap. They now cost 3.5 million here (the interest of which is used to pay the prof.). Let me rather sum up: most Indians here are (understandlingly) much more interested in building temples. But, --- Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Arabs do a much better job to propagate their civilization outside their area. In sum, if you want more Indian Studies in "the west", do something about it! ============ Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From zydenbos at GMX.LI Fri Mar 17 23:07:27 2000 From: zydenbos at GMX.LI (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 00:07:27 +0100 Subject: Comparative linguistics In-Reply-To: <38D2F101.571@del3.vsnl.net.in> Message-ID: <161227057068.23782.1112066797795420257.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Am Sat, 18 Mar 2000 schrieb Bharat Gupt: > > Like the contributions of some other list members, this too reveals a > > fundamental misunderstanding. The sentence *should* have read: "[The] Aryan > > construct [may have] served not only the colonial regime [even if we do not > > know how, and linguists are totally unaware of this, but] it still serves > > [i.e., helps] [*to explain*] the current north-south divide [which already > > existed for a very long time prior to the British period]." > I am further awed by the thunderous correction to my sentence. I am used to it. > Like many Indians from missionay schools, even when I was saying exactly what > I meant, my English has been improved by tutors from the Indo-European nations. > Prof. Zydenbos has rushed to put words in a mouth where Saraswati fears to tread. This is not the first time that the two of us have disagreed on how a different wording does not constitute a mere formal or cosmetic alteration but a fundamental difference in meaning (may I refer to line 2 of my paragraph? "Fundamental misunderstanding", not "English language error". I assumed this was clear. Sorry if it was not). You see, as a linguist I believe that language is first and foremost a medium for conveying meaning, and that this is also the intention (or should be) behind discussions and most other verbal exchanges. If my additions to your original sentence do not convey any new meaning to you, then I fear that your missionary school education has not done you much good. On the other hand, if you believe that this Canadian-born reader did not understand your correct English correctly, then I invite you to henceforth write to this list in Sanskrit. The list could benefit greatly if more persons were to do that (and believe me, this is _not_ a joke. Na katha.mcit). > But I wonder why for more than century after establishing the Boden chair, > the British continued to include the Tamilians, Kannadigas, Telugus, Marathawadis > and Malayalis under the "Madras Presidency "? Monier Williams admonished nothing > to the Burrah Sahibs ? Perhaps because the area presided over by an administration in Madras had to be called _something_? Like Mysore State was named after the city of Mysore? Just a thought... There was also a Bombay Presidency, yet I am not aware that, e.g., Gujaratis are therefore today referred to in northern India as "Bombayees". So I fear I do not quite see the point of your question. (By the way, could you enlighten me on when Marathwada was a part of Madras Presidency? According to the maps I have seen, there seems to have been a lot of Mysore and Hyderabad and Bombay Presidency between Madras Presidency and Marathwada. But I may be wrong. Anyhow, this is a mere secondary matter.) > Why was all Maharashtra and beyond called "dakkhin" by Turks and Mughals ? > Too bad , the wisdom of comparative philology and Dravidian studies never fell on > the ears of Allauddin Khalji, Akbar or Aurangzeb. Inshallah, we Delhi-ites would not > have so ignorant. So I take it that you agree that the recognition of something like South India is not an evil colonial construct by some modern linguists, but that it existed prior to the British period, which is what I was saying in the first place. That's nice. Perhaps we could also think about the idea expressed by the Sanskrit term "pa;ncadraavi.da", which is still older. But on a very different note: both of us should watch out! Rahul Oka may take up the issue with us... Let's hope that you know computer math, which in his view apparently makes him as great an authority as you or I can ever be (as for myself, I am only an amateur computer programmer, just as there are amateur Indologists on this list. My difference with them is that I do not bother the programming experts on their lists with my amateurism), and that you can make sense of 'scientific journals', whatever they may be, otherwise you may incur his ire, and who would want that? Or another universal 'scientist' may complain that you refer to the word "dakkhin", and that I dare write "pa;ncadraavi.da", while he says that philological data are "mushy" stuff and thereby presumably not scientific. Should we not tremble and hang our heads in shame and fear at seeing such astoundingly relevant logic? :-) RZ From abhinav at DEL3.VSNL.NET.IN Sat Mar 18 02:59:14 2000 From: abhinav at DEL3.VSNL.NET.IN (Bharat Gupt) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 02:59:14 +0000 Subject: Comparative linguistics Message-ID: <161227057025.23782.14841320267428479640.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Robert Zydenbos wrote: > > Am Thu, 16 Mar 2000 schrieb Venkatraman Iyer: > > > Contrary views on Linguistics by distinguished Professors. > > > > Prof. Gupt earlier: > > > [...] Aryan construct > > >served not only the colonial regime, it still serves the current > > >north-south divide. > > Like the contributions of some other list members, this too reveals a > fundamental misunderstanding. The sentence *should* have read: "[The] Aryan > construct [may have] served not only the colonial regime [even if we do not > know how, and linguists are totally unaware of this, but] it still serves > [i.e., helps] [*to explain*] the current north-south divide [which already > existed for a very long time prior to the British period]." BG: I am overwhelmed on my inclusion in the category of distinguished professors. What greater sukha ("axle holes" ?)! Perhaps my next promotion shall be to the company of "eminent" indologists. I am further awed by the thunderous correction to my sentence. I am used to it. Like many Indians from missionay schools, even when I was saying exactly what I meant, my English has been improved by tutors from the Indo-European nations. Prof. Zydenbos has rushed to put words in a mouth where Saraswati fears to tread. > Probably Prof. Gupt in Delhi is not a linguist, or if he is, he has not done > the basics of Dravidian studies (which in itself is no terrible sin, since > linguistics is a vast field with many specialisations. But for an Indian > linguist this would be strange). But by reading some old messages to this list > over the past few years, he and others can learn a little about the > 'Madrasis' -- as everyone roughly south of Bombay is pejoratively called in > Delhi: and that is a divide that has not been caused by any activities of > modern linguists. > > RZ BG : Yes, we are all cab-drivers in Delhi and we look down upon all Indians. For us "Madrasis" includes not only South Indians, but Sri Lankans and Australian natives too. But I wonder why for more than century after establishing the Boden chair, the British continued to include the Tamilians, Kannadigas, Telugus, Marathawadis and Malayalis under the "Madras Presidency "? Monier Williams admonished nothing to the Burrah Sahibs ? Why was all Maharashtra and beyond called "dakkhin" by Turks and Mughals ? Too bad , the wisdom of comparative philology and Dravidian studies never fell on the ears of Allauddin Khalji, Akbar or Aurangzeb. Inshallah, we Delhi-ites would not have so ignorant. Bharat Gupt From kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET Sat Mar 18 08:48:39 2000 From: kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET (S.Kalyanaraman) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 08:48:39 +0000 Subject: creative atomic scientists translations Message-ID: <161227057047.23782.10352588226048220041.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> George Thompson wrote: snip>...let us all abandon our > preconceptions and let the Rgveda, for example, speak for itself. The entire text in devana_gari with English rendering based on sa_yan.a's translation is posted at http://sarasvati.simplenet.com Then the problem begins: whose rendering is 'truer': geldner's or sa_yan.a's? Ya_ska's or Barthalomae's? Kalyanaraman ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. From kekai at JPS.NET Sat Mar 18 17:06:06 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 09:06:06 -0800 Subject: Comparative linguistics--advantage--criteria desired Message-ID: <161227057014.23782.13045776175964567063.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Haridas C wrote: > > --- Paul Kekai Manansala wrote: > > > In this sense, those raised in the culture and > > language studied are at > > an advantage. > > Could you please detail the criteria involved with > your assessment? > > Why exactly are 'they' at an advantage, and where > might 'they' be presently located in time with respect > to an utterance once spoken in the far past, perhaps > within the same frame of mind as the original > speaker/writer? > I was referring to comparative linguistics as a whole and not just studying ancient languages. Understanding the cultural milieu is important. Take a look at the Chinese process of derivation. Some of this makes no sense unless you understand the thinking and culture. That is one reason why informants are so valuable. You probably know, as I do, people raised in the "old country" who, although they may have lived in the West longer than their children, still query the latter on aspects of Western culture and thinking they don't understand. If you are raised in the culture of the languages studied, some semantic expansions stand out like beams of light, but these might not be noticed by someone with different cultural background. Furthermore these might not be acceptable to the latter because they don't appeal to their own sense of logic, or they might not agree with the relationships between different sets of objects. Re: translations and interpretation, phrases are a good example of the need for interpretation. For example, someone writes "it came straight from the horse's mouth." Herr Witzel, in a future life still as an historical linguist, might interpret this as meaning present day rishis were able to actually talk to horses. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From rpeck at NECA.COM Sat Mar 18 14:07:16 2000 From: rpeck at NECA.COM (Bob Peck) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 09:07:16 -0500 Subject: Agni is scientific Message-ID: <161227057066.23782.7715482377573395122.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> How can Agni and Indra be explained without a knowledge of the physical nature of energy and of the heavens? For a scientific explanation: ... ancient India saw the solar eclipse as the union and separation of moon and fire. The sun was the exact same size as the moon and hence fell away from the moon as burning pitch falls away from a stick. The moon, therefore, is the source of fuel to the heavens and earth. The fire of the sun is the illumination. Energy is a mystical substance even today; it takes many forms and no one knows what pure energy may be. Energy is only manifested when it changes its form or nature. The Rig Veda points to the science of the time, why do people study the finger rather than what it is pointing at? Regards, Bob Peck From kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET Sat Mar 18 09:40:20 2000 From: kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET (S.Kalyanaraman) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 09:40:20 +0000 Subject: Saraswati... (nairukta) Message-ID: <161227057052.23782.1736939076015331291.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel wrote: >snip> Those who proceed in Nirukta fashion, --as opposed to the severe linguistic > method of Panini who distinguishes clearly between root, suffixes and > endings, as does modern linguistics... I submit that 'nairukta etymologists' is a tautology. Let me cite Ya_ska (Nirukta 7.5.5-7): "'[tisra eva devata_ iti nairukta_h)There are three deities only' (see AB 2.17; KB 8.8) say the etymologists: (1) Agni, whose sphere is earth; (2) Va_yu or Indra, whose sphere is atmosphere; (3) the sun, whose sphere is heaven...Now (we shall discuss) the appearance of the gods. Some say that they are anthropomorphic...Others say that they are not anthropomorphic, because whatever is seen of them is unanthropomorphic...As to the view that their panegyrics are like those of sentient beings, (we reply) that inanimate objects, beginnign from dice and ending with herbs, are likewise praised..." I also submit that Pa_n.ini or modern linguistics and IE reconstructions can't help in these semant. of divinities, assuming that semant. is as important as phonetics... Regards, Kalyanaraman ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Sat Mar 18 17:26:02 2000 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 12:26:02 -0500 Subject: Thirukkural and Buddhism Message-ID: <161227057072.23782.12386750280506788691.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 2/13/2000 11:43:56 PM Central Standard Time, aklujkar at UNIXG.UBC.CA writes: > Why is walking taken as meaning sitting/seating? Is there any account of > the Buddha walking on lotuses? In Jain literature one finds the word > pu.spa-caara.na, which is explained as ' a .rddhi accepted in Jainism; when > a person, typically a saaadhu, has this extraordinary capability, he can > walk over flowers without touching them -- without causing the suffering of > jiivas in them' (Siddhantashastri, Balchandra. 1970?s. Jain Lak?a??vali, p. > II.718.) In the Tamil Jain tradition, arukan2/arukakkaTavuL, the Jain divinity, is supposed to have walked on the flower. It is seen in the cilappatikAram line forming part of a arukakkaTavuL nAmAvali malar micai naTantOn2 malar aTi allatu (cil. 10.204) The section also praises arukan2 as eNkuNan2 (one of eight guNas) and pakavan2. Regards S. Palaniappan From rahul.oka at USA.NET Sat Mar 18 19:38:58 2000 From: rahul.oka at USA.NET (Rahul Oka) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 12:38:58 -0700 Subject: [Re: creative atomic scientists translations] Message-ID: <161227057081.23782.14684752097843491812.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Dr. Thompson, I completely agree with you that all of us bring "ourselves" to the Rigveda, including our own personal ethnohistories. But that is the problem.You see, the Rigveda has no voice of its own. You are its voice. Its message can only be transferred through mediums. The written word, the chronal distance and the cultural distance are all areas in which the negotiation between the text of the Rigveda and the minds of the scholars. Hence the views "and" experiments of scientists who try and verify events expressed in the Vedas are the best "other" sources for detached looks at chronologies and sequences. The only thing that I was wondering was why everybody jumped upon the scientists when they proposed something, which as an archaeologist, is quite feasible. Occam's Razor does state that in a number of different explanation for a phenomena, it will probably be the simplest one, since it has the least of assumptions. It is easier to assume that peoples traded and travelled in those days within their parameters of time and distance as it is to assume that there was an invasion or a mass migration from a central locus. Searching for locational and temporal origins is too close to Biblical creation, when I know that diasporas are not a colonial (and post) phenomenon. Thanks Rahul Oka ____________________________________________________________________ Get free email and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 From rahul.oka at USA.NET Sat Mar 18 19:49:21 2000 From: rahul.oka at USA.NET (Rahul Oka) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 12:49:21 -0700 Subject: [Re: Comparative linguistics] Message-ID: <161227057083.23782.16397600006119306436.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Philology, a throwback to Victoriana? Maybe. Dr. Zydebos, your words do come across exactly as a burrah sahib, one who knows Sanskrit, but will never ever understand "Sanskriti." That's because you have to live it, not "learn it in academia." When I spoke about usage of science, it was for a reason. Convergent verification. If our dating techniques do not confirm your methods, no matter how "scientific" one claims philology is, I am sorry, it will be unacceptable. The idea of "dakkhin" and the South as a post 1757 construct are something that will not be understood through philology. This will be only through history and archaeology. I think that you actually need to conduct some ethnography and dare I say it, move out of the dept. chair on OLD TEXTS and BIG TEXTS and study economic and ecological history to know why peolle moved, why peol,e warred and why peopled hated those who were different. The idea of North being different from the South is essentially Western European. The work of Montesquie just fit in too well with the early Indian philogists, without understanding the particular histories were more important than huge bifurcative metanarratives. Rahul Oka ____________________________________________________________________ Get free email and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Sat Mar 18 17:56:30 2000 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 12:56:30 -0500 Subject: on zankara's date - 2 Message-ID: <161227057073.23782.10872196999800508121.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> While cleaning up some old files, I came upon an old Indology posting. On Sun, 24 May 1998 12:43:07 PDT, Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote, "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." It will be good if he can expand on this. Is the kAvya about Adi zaGkara or a later zaGkarAcArya? What are the reasons for postulating a later zaGkarAcArya? My reason is that if this Sanskrit tradition is about Adi zaGkara, it will agree with the possibility of zaGkara meeting mANikkavAcakar who was a poet-saint who earlier was the minister of the Pandyan king in Madurai. Regards S. Palaniappan From malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU Sat Mar 18 20:04:15 2000 From: malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU (Yashwant Malaiya) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 13:04:15 -0700 Subject: Thirukkural and Buddhism, North/south architecture In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227057084.23782.1693716983836833383.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan wrote: ---- aklujkar at UNIXG.UBC.CA writes: > Why is walking taken as meaning sitting/seating? Is there any account of > the Buddha walking on lotuses? In Jain literature one finds the word > pu.spa-caara.na, ... In the Tamil Jain tradition, arukan2/arukakkaTavuL, the Jain divinity, is supposed to have walked on the flower. It is seen in the cilappatikAram line forming part of a arukakkaTavuL nAmAvali malar micai naTantOn2 malar aTi allatu (cil. 10.204) The section also praises arukan2 as eNkuNan2 (one of eight guNas) and pakavan2. ---- The Jain divinity here is Arahanta (Skt. Arhat). The 24 Jinas, like Lord Mahavira were Arhantas. There is an interesting painting http://www.si.umich.edu/Art_History/UMMA/1975/1975_2.174.jpg that illustrates this. Incidentally Buddha too is said to have walked on lotuses, some of you might remember that from a movie couple of years ago, I foreget the name. Because of reasons I mentioned before, Thirukkural is the work of a Jain. Incidentally a new Jain translation of Thirukkural has just come out ( I haven't received it yet). It is published by the Tamil Jain community. The translation by Sundaram (Penguin) has been out of print for a long time. Incidentally, the architectures of north/south are closely related. The gopuram structures are often said to be of "dravidian" style. The long building on the top represents structures which were very common in north (but were made of wood). You can see them reproduced in the caves. Yashwant From lmfosse at ONLINE.NO Sat Mar 18 12:32:00 2000 From: lmfosse at ONLINE.NO (Lars Martin Fosse) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 13:32:00 +0100 Subject: SV: Comparative linguistics Message-ID: <161227057065.23782.4855950640822800173.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> RM.Krishnan [SMTP:poo at GIASMD01.VSNL.NET.IN] skrev 18. mars 2000 12:59: > I just want to add one remark. > > In this honoured list itself, with many scholars around, the word 'Indology' > is almost always interpreted as > 'Sanskritology' i.e. matters relevant to north India. > > Where is South India and related matters? Once in a while a few scholars write > about Tamil and others are apparently > dismissive about it. In two of my postings, I mentioned that indology does not > get benefitted by restricting like this. I believe this has to do with historical reasons. Traditionally, "Indology" referred primarily to the study of India's *classical* languages as this term was understood in the last century. In other words: Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali. (There is in other words an element of habit here). In the US, I believe one has tried to give the child a new name: South Asian studies. The problem with this term, however, is that it covers too much, so that when we want to refer to India's classical culture(s) and languages, we revert to the older term. In fact, Indology is not a good term, try to coin the term "Europology", and you will immediately see what I mean, particularly if you restrict its meaning to the study of classical antiquity. More differentiated and less clunky terms would have been an advantage, but if we don't want to use "South Asian" studies, Indology is what we've got. I believe that I am now pushing my quota for this month, so this will be the last email from me in March. Best regards, Lars Martin Fosse Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo Norway Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19 Email: lmfosse at online.no From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Sat Mar 18 19:30:30 2000 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 14:30:30 -0500 Subject: Mushtanda; and Bharat Message-ID: <161227057079.23782.16457929000133823339.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 3/17/2000 8:10:17 PM Central Standard Time, vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM writes: > And of course, from the even older Vishnu Purana we have the following > verse: (quoting from memory) > "To the north of which lies the Himadri, and to the south of which is the > ocean--that landmass goes by the name Bharata, and its inhabitants 'bharati > yatra santatih'." > Notwithstanding whatever Vishnu Purana might say, according to Tamil tradition, the Indian subcontinent was a geographic area much like Asia. Tamils' emotional and national identity was based on the Tamil-speaking region. V. Agarwal had earlier (7 January 2000) referred to to maNimEkalai and Vishnu Purana thus: "And in contrast to some Tamil texts, one could cite texts from the Kama Sutra to the Vishnu Purana etc. (the latter was a hallowed text in Tamil Nadu long ago if the Manimekhalai is to be believed) to prove the unity of India and so on." What maNimEkalai says is this: "kAtal koNTu kaTalvaNan2 purANam OtinAn2 nAraNan2 kAppu en2Ru uraittan2an" (maN. 27.98-99) Translation: The one who studied the ancient story/text of the sea-colored one said nArAyaNa is the one who protects. There is no explicit reference to a specific text, Vishnu Purana. While the Vishnu Purana stories may have been prevalent in Tamilnadu at that time, a common Tamil national at that time would not have subscribed to the concept of Bharata as a national identity as that will require accessing a text in Sanskrit and then accepting its viewpoint. (Even a Vaishnavite AzvAr had used the term tamizan2 as I had mentioned in an earlier posting.) Many Indians may know about Jesus, but may not accept Christianity or agree with Bible. There are numerous references regarding the North Indian - South Indian identity dichotomy in Tamil tradition beginning in CT texts. North Indians are referred to by the term "vaTavar". "vaTamozi" meant Sanskrit (and Prakrit). North Indian Aryan kings are called "vaTa Ariya man2n2ar" in cilappatikAram. Regards S. Palaniappan From kekai at JPS.NET Sat Mar 18 23:24:59 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 15:24:59 -0800 Subject: Negroids & Shudras, North-south Message-ID: <161227057032.23782.14250399898433272653.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Yashwant Malaiya wrote: > > 1. The siddis or shidis loving in the coastal areas of > Sindh, Maharastra and Konkana are of Negro descent. Since > some of them are Hindu, and since they are concentrated in > coastal areas, suggests that not all of them were brought > as slaves during the Muslim period. They could have > arrived as traders etc. > > They are physically quite distinct and have nothing to do with > Dravidians. > Yashwant, the theories of Runoko Rashidi, Bernard Sergeant, Clyde Ahmad Winters and others are not acutally linked with the medieval arrival of the Siddis. They argue either for a Holocene or pre-Holocene migration from the Sahara or East Africa as the main source of 'recent' African genetic and cultural contribution to the Dravidian population. Strangely, the ancient Greeks also noted that there were very hoary connections between 'Ethiopia' and India. > A lot of > brahmins can be quite dark. > One of the darkest people I've seen was a brahmin that I met in Delhi, although I don't think he was originally from there. The lightest brahmins I've seen were Kashmiri migrant/refugees living in Kathmandu. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From zydenbos at GMX.LI Sat Mar 18 14:57:21 2000 From: zydenbos at GMX.LI (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 15:57:21 +0100 Subject: Mushtanda; and Bharat In-Reply-To: <20000318020908.84290.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <161227057075.23782.16976129613259576434.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Am Sat, 18 Mar 2000 schrieb Vishal Agarwal: > Dr. Zydenbos wrote: No, not in such a crude form. For that matter, India as > a block did not exist either........... > > VA responds: The concept of nation state itself is fairly new, so why should > India be held to different standards. Notwithstand its colorful diversity, > the concept of Bharat has existed for at least 15-18 centuries. Else why > would we have dozens of verses like [...] Please bear in mind the contexts in which utterances are made. Of course there is such a thing as "India", but intelligent people should beware of overly reifying it. There is such a thing as multidimensionality of even a single individual's social identity. And any Indian who is reasonably sane and not living a pipe dream should be aware of that. > There are 100's of such verses in the Puranas and the Itihasas, and in > comparison, does Europe have anything? Of course. Start with the fact that "Europa" is an ancient Greek name, and from there you can follow it right down to today, and in various languages. But if you do not want to find out for yourself, I suggest that you consult lists other than the Indology List. > Therefore, the remarks of Dr. Zydenbos are one sided. Not at all. Of course it would be possible for a polemicist to pretend that they are by imposing a one-sided interpretation and make a big point out of this; a person of ill will can always do so, and I do not think that we should worry too much about that. RZ From tawady at YAHOO.COM Sat Mar 18 16:05:06 2000 From: tawady at YAHOO.COM (Raveen Satkurunathan) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 16:05:06 +0000 Subject: Negroids & Shudras, North-south Message-ID: <161227057070.23782.11958598694733446947.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Fri, 17 Mar 2000 17:09:21 -0700, Yashwant Malaiya wrote: >Raveen Satkurunathan wote: > >>Pretty interesting that without the help of modern linguistics, old Puranic >>writers ?some how? knew that the natives of Gujarat and Maharashtra were >>Dravidian speaking although currently a majority of them speak in IE > >I don't know if there is any relationship with this, I know >about a specific community in Maharashtra/Karnataka where >many parents/grandparents speak Kannada but the children generally >often speak Marathi. True, another community, which has become complete Marathised, atleast in the interior districts of Maharashtra are the Komatis who are Telugu speaking. Further there are still, many Adivasis in Maharshatra who speak in Dravidian languages (Gondi?) and it is only a question of time when these people also will also acquire Marathi as their mother tongue. This phenomenon of entire groups who have given up one or more languages to acquire a culturally and "now" numerically "superior" language must have gone on for a long time in Maharashtra because its caste structure reflects the structure of castes in South India, Bengal and Orissa. Essentially there are Brahmins and Shudras and nothing in between (there will be many protestations :-)) the dominant Marathas are considered historically as Shudras suggesting local origin and possibly Dravidian speaking. From tccahill at LOYNO.EDU Sat Mar 18 22:09:18 2000 From: tccahill at LOYNO.EDU (Timothy C. Cahill) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 16:09:18 -0600 Subject: recent controversies Message-ID: <161227057088.23782.8039487252432934398.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Disputants! I came across a nice line attributed to a Naiyaayika by the Vaiyaakaranas: "asmaakuunaaM naiyaayikezaam arthani taatparyam zabdani kozcintaa!" (It seems to lose something in transliteration...) This reminded me just a bit of the ongoing debates on the list between scientists and Indologist/philologists. The following 'exchange' is also supplied as a parody of a fruitless debate between the same two: Vaiy: "Naiyaayikaah pazavah!" Naiy: "VaiyaakaraNaas tRNavah!" Vaiy: "tRNava iti katham?!" Naiy: "pazava iti yatham!!" Vaiy: "azuddham iva vakSyase." Naiy: "mahe raNaaya cakSase." The latter was declared the winner, which just goes to show what can happen if you shout a Vedic mantra loud enough --and at just the right moment. sham, Tim Cahill From zydenbos at GMX.LI Sat Mar 18 15:37:42 2000 From: zydenbos at GMX.LI (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 16:37:42 +0100 Subject: SV: Comparative linguistics In-Reply-To: <01BF90DE.7EB083E0.lmfosse@online.no> Message-ID: <161227057077.23782.12885723832797627922.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Am Sat, 18 Mar 2000 schrieb Lars Martin Fosse: > RM.Krishnan [SMTP:poo at GIASMD01.VSNL.NET.IN] skrev 18. mars 2000 12:59: > > > > In this honoured list itself, with many scholars around, the word 'Indology' > > is almost always interpreted as > > 'Sanskritology' i.e. matters relevant to north India. > > > I believe this has to do with historical reasons. Traditionally, "Indology" > referred primarily to the study of India's *classical* languages as this term > was understood in the last century. In other words: Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali. Dear RM.Krishnan, What LMF says here is true, but perhaps we should add that "Indology" in the sense of "studying India" can assume different forms. In India I have heard the word "Indology" used in the sense of "archaeology of India" (e.g., at the Univ. of Mysore). Elsewhere, the word acquires very wide meanings. The Univ. of Heidelberg (Germany) once had 3 Indological departments: Indologie I (classical India), II (modern India), and III (religious studies), and "Indologie II" did include Tamil and Kannada (and not only modern, as their inclusion in "II" would suggest). "Indologie" at the Univ. of Utrecht (Netherlands) included Dravidology (with Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and comparative Dravidian linguistics and South Indian cultural studies, until Indian studies as a whole disappeared from Utrecht), and Tamil is taught in the Indol. dept. of the Univ. of Leiden (Netherlands). The Indological institute of the Univ. of Cologne (Germany) has been renamed "Institut fuer Indologie und Tamilistik" to emphasise that it is not an exclusively Sanskritic and North Indian institute but stresses the study of the South, and Malayalam is also taught there. Examples from elsewhere can also be given. So Dravidian studies are not ignored everywhere, even if that unfortunately is the tendency; and also within Sanskrit studies, there is a tendency to ignore the southern contributions (in spite of facts like ;Sa:nkara, Raamaanuja and Madhva being southerners, to give only one obvious illustration). Habit, as Dr. Fosse says, is one factor, and when professors habitually go to Poona or Calcutta, their students will tend to follow their example; financing is another factor, as Prof. Witzel mentioned in another thread; it is also true, as Witzel wrote, that Indians in general (those in India and those living abroad) are not so good at propagating the cause of their civilization in the West as some other non-Western people are, which contributes to the closing of already existing university departments of Indian studies in times of financial reorganisation. Under such circumstances, it is hard to expand Indology in such a way as to give due attention to the real importance of southern India. Cologne is a rare exception. RZ From poo at GIASMD01.VSNL.NET.IN Sat Mar 18 11:58:52 2000 From: poo at GIASMD01.VSNL.NET.IN (RM.Krishnan) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 16:58:52 +0500 Subject: Comparative linguistics Message-ID: <161227057061.23782.5575274314661334640.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 3/16/00 3:45:00 PM, you wrote: >Am Thu, 16 Mar 2000 schrieb Venkatraman Iyer: > >> Contrary views on Linguistics by distinguished Professors. >> >> Prof. Gupt earlier: >> > [...] Aryan construct >> >served not only the colonial regime, it still serves the current >> >north-south divide. > >Like the contributions of some other list members, this too reveals a >fundamental misunderstanding. The sentence *should* have read: "[The] Aryan >construct [may have] served not only the colonial regime [even if we do not >know how, and linguists are totally unaware of this, but] it still serves >[i.e., helps] [*to explain*] the current north-south divide [which already >existed for a very long time prior to the British period]." > >Probably Prof. Gupt in Delhi is not a linguist, or if he is, he has not done >the basics of Dravidian studies (which in itself is no terrible sin, since >linguistics is a vast field with many specialisations. But for an Indian >linguist this would be strange). But by reading some old messages to this list >over the past few years, he and others can learn a little about the >'Madrasis' -- as everyone roughly south of Bombay is pejoratively called in >Delhi: and that is a divide that has not been caused by any activities of >modern linguists. > >RZ > I just want to add one remark. In this honoured list itself, with many scholars around, the word 'Indology' is almost always interpreted as 'Sanskritology' i.e. matters relevant to north India. Where is South India and related matters? Once in a while a few scholars write about Tamil and others are apparently dismissive about it. In two of my postings, I mentioned that indology does not get benefitted by restricting like this. Any introspection ? With regards, RM.Krishnan From poo at GIASMD01.VSNL.NET.IN Sat Mar 18 11:58:53 2000 From: poo at GIASMD01.VSNL.NET.IN (RM.Krishnan) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 16:58:53 +0500 Subject: [Re: Comparative linguistics] Message-ID: <161227057063.23782.2081177198925209588.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 3/16/00 7:39:00 PM, you wrote: >"the current north-south divide [which already existed for a very long time >prior to the British period]." > >Really? There was a North India and a South India before the British came? I >would really like to see some sources on this one. All my reading history in >pre-British India was that the scene on the sub-continent was geo-political >negotiation between various ethnic (not linguistic) groups who did not align >themselves according to North-South. Did the Southern Kingdoms and peoples >regard themselves as a block, (and same for the north), based on local and >temporal socio-economics and cultural movements or based on ideas that "they >are the medevial Madrasi's and the North Indian equivalent?" If there were any >cultural alliances between areas, I think that it exists in a continuum, >notwithstanding mutually unitelligible languages. Pigdinization, trade forms >of communication do exist. >I don't doubt that differences exist, (or that there is a radical difference >between North and South Indian architecture) but the centre is where you will >see the continuity. There might be severe differences among members of the >same species but on either side of the normal curve but there is also the >continuity. The extent of trade in ancient and historical India suggests that >people were not the culturally isolated parochial people, divided strictly in >groups that once was assumed (still is). > >I would really like to see some evidence that the Indian ethos was divided >into North and South well before the British came. > Ethos is a huge concept. I restrict to a few historical references. I suggest you read 'vanjikkANDam' in 'CilappathikAram' - a tamil epic from 200 CE. Similarly read a few verses from puRa naNURu describing Mauryan attempts at colonising the extreme south; also about references on pre-mauryan nanDA rule. There have even been mercenery attacks by yaudeya warlords (whose territories were supposed to be around the modern eastern Rajasthan/Western UP and closer to Delhi). It has not been smooth relations, after all, between the north and the south.. Dismissive attitude about the 'Madrasis' is not a recent development. In the epic 'CilappathikAram', When the CErA king Cenkuttuvan hears that the kings, expecially from around pAtaliputra, talks dismissive about Tamils, he wanted to give a fitting reply. He embarks on a warring expedition with the help of sAta vAhana king catakarNi; he defeats the northern kings; culls out a stone from the himalayas to erect a statue for kaNNAgi in the newly built temple (which is existing even today in the border of tamil nADu and Kerala near tEni. Many ancient and not so ancient tamil and kalingA kings were more oriented often towards the south east Asia and Srilanka rather than north India. Still, occasionally they have spectacularly invaded the north. Even an ancient kalinga (orissa) king kharavela (through his inscription - 200 BCE) talks about a century old confederacy of Tamil Kings Which prevented nanDa/Maurya expansion in to the south. This is not to suggest that there are no commonalities between north and South. But tell me, how many north Indian Scholars,historians or otherwise, would know these stories. .Even south Indian history professors conveniently gloss over, while we study so much about vEdAs, Upanishads, Asoka, Aurangazeb etc, With regards, RM.Krishnan From kekai at JPS.NET Sun Mar 19 02:45:12 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 18:45:12 -0800 Subject: Negroids & Shudras, North-south Message-ID: <161227057040.23782.11613567409174941137.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Yashwant Malaiya wrote: > Paul Kekai Manansala wrote: > > >They argue either for a Holocene or pre-Holocene migration from the > >Sahara or East Africa as the main source of 'recent' African genetic and > >cultural contribution to the Dravidian population. > Is this "African genetic contribution" a speculation or there > is scientific basis for it? > Yes, Samar posted some of these and they should be in the archives. The most notable are those from Bamshad et al. Also, a study last year tended to confirm what many thought but was never proven -- a degree of relationship between Andaman Islanders and the Pgymy of Africa. As Raveen noted there are still some whole groups and plenty of individuals with 'Negrito-like' characterisitics on the subcontinent. Also, it has long been noted that his type frequently appears in Gupta artwork. You can find the whole Scientific American article on the web: "Out of Africa, into Asia" http://www.sciam.com/1999/0199issue/0199scicit1.html However, no study has been constructed to examine this theory specifically. Most of the data has come accidentally while trying to prove something else. >I assume this does not go back to > the time when humankind originated in Africa. > Yes and no -- something more recent is often suggested -- the Holocene period. Rashidi notes that there was an expansion of Asian "Negroid" types around 20-30 kya, but I don't believe he specifies where this originates. In fact, the evidence points to an Australomelanesian movement around this time probably originating in SE Asia. These people likely developed out of African migrants who came to Asia around 60 kya. > >Strangely, the ancient Greeks also noted that there were very hoary > >connections between 'Ethiopia' and India. > > Can you mention the authors and the what they said? Thanks. > Well here is something from Runoko Rashidi's website: --- ANCIENT AFRICA AND EARLY INDIA Exceptionally valuable writings reflecting close relationships between Africa and early India have existed for more than two thousand years. In the first century B.C.E., for example, the famous Greek historian Diodorus Siculus penned that, "From Ethiopia he (Osiris) passed through Arabia, bordering upon the Red Sea as far as India.... He built many cities in India, one of which he called Nysa, willing to have remembrance of that (Nysa) in Egypt, where he was brought up." Another important writer from antiquity, Apollonius of Tyana, who is said to have visited India near the end of the first century C.E., was convinced that "The Ethiopians are colonists sent from India, who follow their forefathers in matters of wisdom." The literary work of the early Christian writer Eusebius preserves the tradition that, "In the reign of Amenophis III [the mighty Dynasty XVIII Egyptian king] a body of Ethiopians migrated from the country about the Indus, and settled in the valley of the Nile." And still another document from ancient times, the Itinerarium Alexandri, says that "India, taken as a whole, beginning from the north and embracing what of it is subject to Persia, is a continuation of Egypt and the Ethiopians.' -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sun Mar 19 00:28:46 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 19:28:46 -0500 Subject: Saraswati: Atomic (Dr. Wujastyk) In-Reply-To: <20000318052929.14231.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <161227057091.23782.6390798636363142300.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Another classic by web-meister V.Agarwal who decrees: >Advaita Vedanta >which is the most important school of Indian philosophy, well? Looks like a "construction of western Indologists" to me... and, ahem, who decides? > Time constraints forbid me from >showing similar follies in the articles of Herr Witzel, who discovered that >the word 'sukha' meant axle holes. Nope, not poor me, but virtually everybody, ever since those two great agents of imperialism, Boethtlingk/Roth, of the great kingdoms of Saxony and Wuerttemberg respectively, who stole all available Sanskrit words and put them in their great Petersburger Woerterbuch (*) = translated by the Oxfordian M. Monier Williams, and still repeated in the Vienna prof., M. Mayerhofer's etym. Dict.s. I suggest Agarwal-Sahib read the Rgveda on su-kha (**) before talking about follies. However, his own predilection is for duH-kha "characterized by a foul mouth", from kha 'hole ' as someone suggested here, as is evident from his constant lack of net etiquette, even in this very mssg.: >Let me stop this email here lest Dr. Witzel says with his foul-mukha that I >am indulging hate-mongering Well? ? ? Just check 'foul' in the archives, you will discover its author. Guess who who just wrote: "[HH Hock's writing] "is also a clear slander of the Teacher. " (Sankara, with capital T as in Truth) ... ... Talking about psychology, as Great Rishi Banerjee does so well... And, finally, who cares whether Agarwal-Hazuur et alii *like* our interpretations of texts or not? Our work is not a popularity contest. There is, after all, the good old proverb: "Was kuemmert es den Mond, wenn ihn der Hund anbellt?" Ceterum censeo: ye vaa bhadraM duuSayanti ... ======== * B-R. in PW (I translate for Kazi VA's benefit) : "in the old language only (said) of the chariot, which has well-bored naves (kha 'nave hole'), thus especially 'running well' (cf. eutrokhos in Homer), RV 1.20.3" etc. etc. etc. ** NB: su-kha, always used of chariots in RV, plus cf. sukha-ratha!, cf. these epithets of chariots: su-cakra; su-ratha, su-razmi, su-dhur(a); and for similar compounds: su-kratu, su-ksatra, su-ksiti, su-gabhasti, su-gava, su-gu, su-caksus, su-jihva etc. etc. etc. so, su=-kha "having beautifully mouthed chariots", duH-kha 'having foul-mouthed chariots' ??? ------------------ Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Mar 19 03:32:30 2000 From: vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM (Vishal Agarwal) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 19:32:30 -0800 Subject: Mushtanda; and Bharat Message-ID: <161227057098.23782.8571384506975409797.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> From: Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan What maNimEkalai says is this: "kAtal koNTu kaTalvaNan2 purANam OtinAn2 nAraNan2 kAppu en2Ru uraittan2an" (maN. 27.98-99) Translation: The one who studied the ancient story/text of the sea-colored one said nArAyaNa is the one who protects. VA: Thank you for the correction. This was an example of how I can be mislead by English translations of Tamil texts. As I am not proficient in Tamil literature, I cannot add anything more here except that my intention (as stated in my post) was merely to express my view that the statement of Dr. Zydenbos is rather one sided. In reading the English translation (by Alain Danielou) I did feel that he was probably straying from the original text at some places (though not this one). Could you recommend a more exact translation? Thank you in advance Vishal ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sun Mar 19 00:32:54 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 19:32:54 -0500 Subject: [creative atomic scientist's translations] In-Reply-To: <20000317140112.28555.qmail@nwcst021.netaddress.usa.net> Message-ID: <161227057093.23782.14993700775196978719.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Rahul Oka wrote: >BTW. DR. Witzel, you are wondering why there are evidences of IE groups in >such varied areas of the work, if it were not for .... You mean the "world" I assume. >If I tell you that archaeological evidence speaks for the ability of ancient >peoples to travel distances which are incomprehensible to (especially) Western >people used to cars and other locomotive luxuries, would you believe me? Don't tell me: you ASSUME too much about other people, even about 'westerners', and our arm chairs (in an earlier and in today's msgs). Well, even at Harvard, I don't have one (our Dept. is not exactly rich, to understate) ... nor is my office in an ivory tower. (NB: Dr. Zydenbos will tell you the same about himself). I guess no one but you is interested, however: I have walked for hundreds of miles in one stretch, and I know how much I can cover per day... And of course, you don't know that I worked in Nepal for more than 5 years during the Seventies, that was at a time still minus many of the present luxuries, and that I made many long trips to India then and later on. I know SOMETHING of South Asia from my own observations, not just from arm chair study. Then, I also went on horse back for long distances, and I thus happen to know that I can cover much more than "20 (or even 40) km" per day that way. Again, you don't know that I have been working together with the Archaeologists across the street who have been digging at Harappa for some 15 years. Some of your beloved archaeologist colleagues actually argue (Anthony, Mallory, etc.) that it was precisely the use of the horse for riding together with (the SLOW!) oxen-car wagons as well as the quicker horse-drawn carts and chariots that facilitated easier movements in the steppes, from the Ukraine to Siberia and W. China. >I think that if the linguists actually indulged in a proper study of history >(all histories) and the social and natural sciences, it would teach us more >about ancient Indian society, Who said (a) that Indologists only use linguistics to read (Vedic) texts? and (b) don't use other sciences ? My own description of proper working procedure in philology includes all of them, see my detailed introduction on the state of the art in "Inside the texts"(*), and you will find many of your wishes fulfilled... (*) Inside the Texts, Beyond the Texts. New Approaches to the Study of the Vedas. Harvard Oriental Series. Opera Minora, vol. 2. Cambridge 1997 Again, argued from lack of knowledge. >just quibbling over when and if "i" changed to an "e" in some text, >interpreted 2000 years >after its time, when we have no access to its >author(s). The last line shows that you have *no idea* how linguistics works. Unwittingly, I just presented an example in my msg for Mr.Banerjee which, because of my typo (waist/waste), allows your future linguist or philologist the reconstruction of the 21st cent. Engl. pronuncition of |a| and |ai|. See another message. We Indologists, at least, do not criticize natural scientists, wether Dr . XYZ round the corner, or Einstein or Heisenberg for what *they* work(ed) on. Sorry for the repetition. Apparently still necessary. For the rest: yo maa paakena manasaa carantam abhicaSTe anRtebhir vacobhiH, ye paakazaMsaM viharanta evair ye vaa bhadraM duuSayanti svadhaabhiH, -- ahaye vaa taan pradadaatu soma aa vaa dadhaatu nirRter upasthe || --------------- Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From SSRVJ at AOL.COM Sun Mar 19 00:47:13 2000 From: SSRVJ at AOL.COM (Somayaji Rajagopala) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 19:47:13 -0500 Subject: Agni is scientific Message-ID: <161227057097.23782.9806841625304841328.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The syllable Agni seems to have been NOT used in the sense of F-I-R-E=FIRE-(as is usually translated) with the accompniments of Light-Heat-Sound etc .-----13 kinds of Agni are described in Ayurveda.--Jaataraa Agni=1(Pylorus)--Dhaatvaagni =7(in Rasa(chyle)/ Raktha(formed elements of blood)/Maamsa(Musle)/ Majja(Marrow)/ Asthi(bone)/ Medas(adipose)/Sukra(semeniferal fluids))---Bhoothaagni =5(Appu/Theyu/Vayu/Prthvi/Akaasam)--total 13.In none of these tissues Fire(as is usually understood) with a temperature above >1000 degree Celsius can exist (tissues would be burned to ash)--So it might not have used in the sense of Fire- must have been used in the sense of "Silent combustion"(as rusting of Iron) From vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Mar 19 03:52:01 2000 From: vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM (Vishal Agarwal) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 19:52:01 -0800 Subject: Mushtanda; and Bharat Message-ID: <161227057100.23782.1703020763223715102.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >There are 100's of such verses in the Puranas and the Itihasas, and in >comparison, does Europe have anything? Dr. Zydenbos responded: Of course. Start with the fact that "Europa" is an ancient Greek name, and from there you can follow it right down to today, and in various languages. But if you do not want to find out for yourself, I suggest that you consult lists other than the Indology List. VA comments: Of course I am aware of the antiquity of the term 'europa'. However, I suggest that you read the book by Radha Kumud Mukherjee and then prove whether the concept of Europa is as well defined and comprehensive as the concept of Bharat in the Puranas. I am sure that you will recall lengthy sections of Puranas to understand what I am trying to say. I repeat again that the concept of nation state is rather modern. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From selwyn at DTN.NTL.COM Sat Mar 18 19:58:21 2000 From: selwyn at DTN.NTL.COM (L.S.Cousins) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 19:58:21 +0000 Subject: Sandrakottos and Candagutta/Candragupta In-Reply-To: <001901bf9003$73828b20$530fe0d5@pandora.be> Message-ID: <161227057087.23782.10168258232671016843.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> K. Elst writes: >It is harder >evidence than much else on which indological chronology relies, e.g. the >fabled "sheet-anchor" of Indian chronology, the Megasthenes-Sandrokottos >synchronism, in which the all-important identity of "Sandrokottos" is much >less clear than is conventionally assumed. On that identification rests a >lot, partly also the belief that classical Sanskrit as used in the VJ is >typical of the centuries around Christ. Seems pretty clear to me. How can you justify this claim ? Or, are you referring to the identity of the prince who supposedly joined Alexander ? The synchronism, does not depend on that. Lance Cousins -- OXFORD, UK CURRENT EMAIL ADDRESSES: L.S.Cousins at nessie.mcc.ac.uk or selwyn at dtn.ntl.com From vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Mar 19 04:09:29 2000 From: vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM (Vishal Agarwal) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 20:09:29 -0800 Subject: Saraswati (Dr. Witzel) Message-ID: <161227057102.23782.11897107013567491346.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dr. Witzel said: Just check 'foul' in the archives, you will discover its author. Guess who who just wrote: "[HH Hock's writing] "is also a clear slander of the Teacher. " (Sankara, with capital T as in Truth) ... ... Talking about psychology, as Great Rishi Banerjee does so well... And, finally, who cares whether Agarwal-Hazuur et alii *like* our interpretations of texts or not? Our work is not a popularity contest. VA responds: You have totally missed the point. FYI, I am not an Advaitin myself and this is known to many list members. Why not check Sankaracharya's commentary on Chhandogya Upanishad 5.18.1 and verify for yourself whether Dr. Hock's interpretation is correct or not? Pay attention to the suceeding words and thn recall the Advaitin paradigms. In any case, such remarks by him were totally uncalled for, especially since Sri Sankaracharya was accused by his detractors of having distorted the long standing tradition of Vedanta. In other words, he was accused of being too radical an innovator. The capital T was used by me in the same way I preface the word Muhammad with the customary 'Prophet' although I am not a muslim either. So maybe you need to take a course in psychology. And I regard Advaita as the most important school of Indian philosophy because it is indeed the most high profile school in India right now (although I do not subscribe to its notions). Just as Dr. Thomspon remarked that 'YV is the heart of the Vedic tradition' (to paraphrase)-- a statement which is correct as well as wrong. So the question of popularity contests does not arise, because this was a clear case of putting words into the mouth of Samkaracharya and then criticizing him for stating those words. Since you are yourself so durmukha, you cannot appreciate the need for people to be polite in such matters. Of course, you are most welcome to accept the sukha = axle hole equation. After all, we are all too familiar with your Hast-in dveep-in type logic, that I find quite infantile (ironical, since you were born in the same year as my father). Ali Dashti indeed said it so well: "The capacity of a man to delude himself is unlimited." Having said all this, I must express my remorse for bringing Dr. Hock into this discussion and I apologize to him. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From cw002g at MAIL.ROCHESTER.EDU Sun Mar 19 05:07:28 2000 From: cw002g at MAIL.ROCHESTER.EDU (Chris Wallis) Date: Sun, 19 Mar 00 00:07:28 -0500 Subject: A plea for respect and decency In-Reply-To: <20000319040929.76627.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <161227057104.23782.11375170030756504579.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> After observing the discussion for the past week, I feel compelled, though a humble student of Indology, to make a brief comment. I have been disappointed and dismayed to read the vituperative ad hominem attacks that are repeatedly posted in this forum by otherwise reputable scholars. One sometimes gets the feeling that the list is more of a schoolyard playground in an inner-city school than an mature academic forum. Please note that this observation is NOT directed at any one personage, but I think that *everyone* who is unable to conduct themselves with kindness or at least politeness ought to be ashamed of themselves. We are not reflecting well on the dignity of our profession. Besides, no-one ever succeed in winning over the opponent to their point of view by insulting them; so if the former is your goal, please pause and erase the offending lines from your email before sending it. Thank you for your kind attention. respectfully yours, Christopher Wallis ______________________________________ Christopher D. Wallis President, Religion & Classics Council Intern, Interfaith Chapel University of Rochester ** Believe in love. ** From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Mar 19 08:16:30 2000 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Sun, 19 Mar 00 00:16:30 -0800 Subject: Bhartrhari Message-ID: <161227057107.23782.2297007810426941777.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Mr. Lynken Ghose seems to have asked the following question at a very inopportune time. >How would you categorize someone like Bhartr.hari vis-a-vis the >6 orthodox schools of Indian philosophy. Would it be fair to say >that he represents another school of philosophy, i.e. philosophy of >language, that looked upon the Veda as sacred, yet with slightly less >deference given to the Veda than in the 6 orthodox schools? The editors of the multi-volume Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies have included a separate volume on the "Philosophy of the Grammarians". Rightly so. Generally, vyAkaraNa is called a zAstra, and not a darzana. However, it is not clear that Bhartrhari's deference to the Veda is any less than that shown by other traditional darzanas like sAMkhya and yoga. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From gargsam at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Mar 19 05:23:51 2000 From: gargsam at HOTMAIL.COM (Sam Garg) Date: Sun, 19 Mar 00 00:23:51 -0500 Subject: Comparative linguistics Message-ID: <161227057106.23782.4816439157851568888.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >But on a very different note: both of us should watch out! Rahul Oka >My >difference with them is that I do not bother the programming >experts on >their lists with my amateurism), and that you can make >sense of >'scientific journals' Of course you 'do not bother the programming experts on their lists with my amateurism'. I'm sure their lists are true to their area of expertise and do not pretend to be any more than that... On the other hand, this list calls itself "Indology" but is in fact a narrow subset of "Indology". So, why act surprised when you see 'amateur Indologists bother this list'? BTW, would you also not classify as an 'amateur Indologist'? I presume you are NOT a PhD in Indology? Sanjay >From: Robert Zydenbos >Reply-To: Indology >To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK >Subject: Re: Comparative linguistics >Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 00:07:27 +0100 > >Am Sat, 18 Mar 2000 schrieb Bharat Gupt: > > > > Like the contributions of some other list members, this too reveals a > > > fundamental misunderstanding. The sentence *should* have read: "[The] >Aryan > > > construct [may have] served not only the colonial regime [even if we >do not > > > know how, and linguists are totally unaware of this, but] it still >serves > > > [i.e., helps] [*to explain*] the current north-south divide [which >already > > > existed for a very long time prior to the British period]." > > > I am further awed by the thunderous correction to my sentence. I am >used to it. > > Like many Indians from missionay schools, even when I was saying >exactly what > > I meant, my English has been improved by tutors from the Indo-European >nations. > > Prof. Zydenbos has rushed to put words in a mouth where Saraswati fears >to tread. > >This is not the first time that the two of us have disagreed on how a >different wording does not constitute a mere formal or cosmetic alteration >but a fundamental difference in meaning (may I refer to line 2 of my >paragraph? "Fundamental misunderstanding", not "English language error". I >assumed this was clear. Sorry if it was not). You see, as a linguist I >believe >that language is first and foremost a medium for conveying meaning, and >that >this is also the intention (or should be) behind discussions and most other >verbal exchanges. If my additions to your original sentence do not convey >any >new meaning to you, then I fear that your missionary school education has >not >done you much good. > >On the other hand, if you believe that this Canadian-born reader did not >understand your correct English correctly, then I invite you to henceforth >write to this list in Sanskrit. The list could benefit greatly if more >persons were to do that (and believe me, this is _not_ a joke. Na >katha.mcit). > > > But I wonder why for more than century after establishing the Boden >chair, > > the British continued to include the Tamilians, Kannadigas, Telugus, >Marathawadis > > and Malayalis under the "Madras Presidency "? Monier Williams >admonished nothing > > to the Burrah Sahibs ? > >Perhaps because the area presided over by an administration in Madras had >to >be called _something_? Like Mysore State was named after the city of >Mysore? Just a thought... There was also a Bombay Presidency, yet I am not >aware that, e.g., Gujaratis are therefore today referred to in northern >India as "Bombayees". So I fear I do not quite see the point of your >question. > >(By the way, could you enlighten me on when Marathwada was a part of Madras >Presidency? According to the maps I have seen, there seems to have been a >lot >of Mysore and Hyderabad and Bombay Presidency between Madras Presidency and >Marathwada. But I may be wrong. Anyhow, this is a mere secondary matter.) > > > Why was all Maharashtra and beyond called "dakkhin" by Turks and >Mughals ? > > Too bad , the wisdom of comparative philology and Dravidian studies >never fell on > > the ears of Allauddin Khalji, Akbar or Aurangzeb. Inshallah, we >Delhi-ites would not > > have so ignorant. > >So I take it that you agree that the recognition of something like South >India is not an evil colonial construct by some modern linguists, but that >it existed prior to the British period, which is what I was saying in the >first place. That's nice. Perhaps we could also think about the idea >expressed by the Sanskrit term "pa;ncadraavi.da", which is still older. > >But on a very different note: both of us should watch out! Rahul Oka may >take >up the issue with us... Let's hope that you know computer math, which in >his >view apparently makes him as great an authority as you or I can ever >be (as for myself, I am only an amateur computer programmer, just as there >are amateur Indologists on this list. My difference with them is that I do >not bother the programming experts on their lists with my amateurism), and >that you can make sense of 'scientific journals', whatever they may be, >otherwise you may incur his ire, and who would want that? Or another >universal 'scientist' may complain that you refer to the word "dakkhin", >and >that I dare write "pa;ncadraavi.da", while he says that philological data >are >"mushy" stuff and thereby presumably not scientific. Should we not tremble >and hang our heads in shame and fear at seeing such astoundingly relevant >logic? :-) > >RZ ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Mar 19 09:08:12 2000 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Sun, 19 Mar 00 01:08:12 -0800 Subject: on zankara's date - 2 Message-ID: <161227057109.23782.284258526111607859.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan wrote: Re: zankarAbhyudaya of rajacUDAmaNi dIkshita (early 17th c), > >It will be good if he can expand on this. Is the kAvya about Adi zaGkara or >a >later zaGkarAcArya? What are the reasons for postulating a later >zaGkarAcArya? My reason is that if this Sanskrit tradition is about To the first question - neither and both. The text includes most of the basic legends that are known about Adi Sankara from many other sources too, but there are also some anecdotes that are quite unique to this text. I think that is because this poet adds on to the general hagiography, material from the lives of titular Sankaracharyas who lived close to his own time. There are two basic reasons for this. In the first chapter, the poet salutes his own guru, gIrvANendra sarasvatI, as a titular Sankaracarya (paryAya zankarAcAryam pAre vAcAm avasthitaM, prapancasAra-pramukha-prabandha-kRti vedhasam). There is a well known commentary by gIrvANendra on the prapancasAra, a mantra-zAstra text attributed to Sankara, and frequently cited by most zAkta tAntric authors. The poet also tells us that his guru appeared to him in a dream and commanded him to write this text. In the seventh chapter, the poet tells us that during his travels, the teacher visited Satyamangalam, the village of his own father, Manikheta Yajvan (nirIkshamANas sa pathi..... nivAsayogyam maNikheTa yajvanaH). We are also told that the AcArya ate at the home of Bhavasvami, another near ancestor of the poet (pavitrayann atra sa bhaikshacaryayA svayam bhavasvAmi sudhIniketanam). It is quite probable that Advaita monks from the poet's own guru's immediate lineage would have visited his ancestor's home and his father's village. It seems to me that what we have here is a very close association between the dIkshita's family and a late 16th century lineage of titular Sankaracharyas, so much so that the deeds of these latter gurus get attributed to Adi Sankara in the poem. This is probably aided by the general notion that this or that contemporary Sankaracharya is a reincarnation of Adi Sankara. Indeed, we must expect that something like this has always been at work, in order to account for the diverse legends and texts attributed to Sankara, the bhAshyakAra. I see further confirmation for this interpretation in the fact that the last four chapters of this text include a great number of hymns that the poet attributes to Sankara, but which are not popularly known at all. It is highly likely that these hymns were composed by gIrvANendra sarasvatI and/or others in that lineage, and handed down in a select circle, including rAjacUDAmaNi dIkshita's family. If one takes just these hymns out of the larger poem, they all seem to have distinct compositional and thematic peculiarities. The detailed accounts of pilgrimage tours in the Tamil country could also be related to members of this lineage, rather than being really attributable to Adi Sankara. Adi >zaGkara, it will agree with the possibility of zaGkara meeting >mANikkavAcakar >who was a poet-saint who earlier was the minister of the Pandyan king in >Madurai. I rather think rAjacUDAmaNi dIkshita is talking about a much later personality, perhaps gIrvANendra sarasvatI, when he talks of the draviDa-prabandha and sanghapalaka in Madurai. Has to do with the way the kAvya is structured. Note that the poet was from a family that had migrated into Tamil country towards the end of the Vijayanagara period. Probably from Karnataka, as Satyamangalam is on the TN-Karnataka border. An interaction of his hymn-composing guru with a Tamil literary tradition would have stood out prominently in the poet's mind. Madurai does not otherwise have any significant traditional connection with Adi Sankara's life. The city is not even mentioned in the more well-known hagiographic texts. I've discussed all this in greater detail in my paper on the Sankara hagiographies, which is scheduled to appear in the International Journal of Hindu Studies, when it resumes publication. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From youmar at YAHOO.IT Sun Mar 19 00:43:36 2000 From: youmar at YAHOO.IT (youri martini) Date: Sun, 19 Mar 00 01:43:36 +0100 Subject: Mughal Message-ID: <161227057095.23782.12884245049860819602.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I would like to have a list about accounts of missionaries in Mughal India. Could I receive, also, a bibliography about this argument? Thank You Youri Martini ______________________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Il tuo indirizzo gratis e per sempre @yahoo.it su http://mail.yahoo.it From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sun Mar 19 14:07:07 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Sun, 19 Mar 00 09:07:07 -0500 Subject: Sarasvati (makSU ... avo vRNImahe!) In-Reply-To: <20000319040929.76627.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <161227057111.23782.3854815034061490447.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Sarasvati, makSU ... avo vRNImahe! Haraxvaiti, moSu mee jauua avanghe! V. Agarwal allows: >Of course, you are most welcome to accept the sukha = axle hole equation. Many thanks indeed, for the permission, I am deeply touched. But: he should check the RV *himself* first, *then* judge 150 years of scholarship. Not judge etymologies by emotion. Basic rule of philology, ahem, science. ----------------------- Chris Wallis: "please pause and erase the offending lines from your email before sending it." Take a look at some gems from the pen of... V. Agarwal reigns himself in: >> lest Dr. Witzel says with his foul-mukha that I >>am indulging hate-mongering (!!!) >Dr. Witzel said: >Just check 'foul' in the archives, you will discover its author. V. Agarwal advises: > ... So maybe you need to take a course in psychology. V. Agrawal decrees: >... Since you are yourself so durmukha, > you cannot appreciate the need for people to be polite in such matters. (???) V. Agarwal judges: >After all, we are all too familiar with your Hast-in dveep-in type logic, >that I find quite infantile and check on many more, before... MW comments: any comments ??? ----------------- So, now we have : * Several INDOLOGY members' (Vidhyanath Rao, S. Subrahmanya, SNS, TAREK WANI, VISHAL AGARWAL) invention of 'my' chariot panzers, etc. (see my gem collection of 2/13), * Rajarshi Banerjee's new attempt at imputing words to me (17 Mar 2000 22:12:39) "you ... belive in chariots armies used to herd cows" (WHERE did I write that, ksaamyataam ??), * and a small selection of the collected writings of V. Agarwal, above (who cannot even keep private correspondence to himself, BEWARE!). What, pray, irks them? Old proverb: "Many enemies, much honor." Ceterum censeo: ye vaa bhadraM duuSayanti ... (VASISTHA, Rgveda) ======================================================================= Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: attachment.bin Type: text/enriched Size: 2650 bytes Desc: not available URL: From cw002g at MAIL.ROCHESTER.EDU Sun Mar 19 15:58:08 2000 From: cw002g at MAIL.ROCHESTER.EDU (Chris Wallis) Date: Sun, 19 Mar 00 10:58:08 -0500 Subject: A plea for respect and decency In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227057115.23782.2644217711176894180.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > >sometimes gets the feeling that the list is more of a schoolyard > >playground in an inner-city school than an mature academic forum. > "Inner city schools", are we struck in some stereotypes or what how about > suburban schools, how about just any high school in America why just inner > city schools ? Because inner-city schools display the racial and cultural tensions that we see exhibited on the list. C.W. ______________________________________ Christopher D. Wallis President, Religion & Classics Council Intern, Interfaith Chapel University of Rochester From langstonrob at JUNO.COM Sun Mar 19 18:40:58 2000 From: langstonrob at JUNO.COM (robert langston) Date: Sun, 19 Mar 00 12:40:58 -0600 Subject: A plea for respect and decency Message-ID: <161227057122.23782.16059624558131648162.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Raveen Satkurunathan wrote: > "Inner city schools", are we struck in some stereotypes Paul Kekai Manansala writes: > I wonder Chris where you live. The tensions you mention are > increasingly > found outside the inner city as minorities continue to migrate to > the > suburbs and even rural areas as they have over the past decade or > so. and >Sorry for straying off topic. Such sardonic and hypercritical responses toward what seems an earnest gesture by Chris Wallis do little to advance one's credibility or to further one's own cause. As a teacher on the south side of Chicago in a college preparatory school with a diverse population (Hindu/Muslim/Christian-Indian/Pakistani/African/African American/Middle Eastern/Anglo-American.... etc.), I can say from experience that it is this type of rhetoric that exacerbates divisiveness and misunderstanding among our students. How can such transparent retorts do anything for INDOLOGY other than provoke the unsolicited response of morally minded lurkers like myself? Respectfully, Robert -------------------------------------- Robert Langston Morgan Park Academy 2153 W. 111th Street Chicago, IL 60643 Office (773) 881-6729 Home(773) 239-2250 langstonrob at juno.com From tawady at YAHOO.COM Sun Mar 19 15:48:26 2000 From: tawady at YAHOO.COM (Raveen Satkurunathan) Date: Sun, 19 Mar 00 15:48:26 +0000 Subject: A plea for respect and decency Message-ID: <161227057113.23782.7877529645359088862.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sun, 19 Mar 2000 00:07:28 -0500, Chris Wallis wrote: >sometimes gets the feeling that the list is more of a schoolyard >playground in an inner-city school than an mature academic forum. "Inner city schools", are we struck in some stereotypes or what how about suburban schools, how about just any high school in America why just inner city schools ? Raveen From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Sun Mar 19 22:35:32 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Sun, 19 Mar 00 17:35:32 -0500 Subject: Ceremonial disposal of the "asva" carcass ? In-Reply-To: <38D65CC5.5470E6E1@jps.net> Message-ID: <161227057124.23782.16505740652242722129.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> PK Manansala: >Incidentally, the asvamedha, although sometimes portrayed as coming from >the "Aryan" homeland, already has offerings of rice, rice cakes and rice >cooked in milk in the YV. Both items have nothing to do with each other: 1) the Horse sacrifice is attested in at least 3 IE areas: Ireland, Rome (October horse) and South Asia (Rgveda ++). Germanic tribes also were fond of eating sacrificial horse meat (until Christian missionaries forbade it). An Arab visitor to 11th cent.(?) Russia says the same in connection with a Viking burial, if my memory is correct here. -- Should that be, a la Talageri et alii, an import from the rice eating Gangetic plains to Europe??? Further, the Altai Turks still performed it even in the late 1800-s CE. 2) There is, of course, the older form of the Vedic horse sacrifice in the Rgveda (1.162-163, etc.,) which has nothing to do with rice. Rice offerings make their entry into the (always and everywhere) conservative ritual only AFTER the RV, in the first post-RV Mantra texts, the Yajurveda, Atharvaveda. Incidentally, a question for all those OIT people who find the "Aryan Home" in the Gangetic Plains, why should Rgvedic people NOT have offered their staple, rice but the uncharacteristic barley??? Which only underlines what we already know anyhow: The RV is a text of the Greater Panjab/Afghanistan, the post-RV texts range from the Kuruksetra/W. Uttar Pradesh/Chambal area early on, to the lower plains in Bihar later on. (summed up and detailed in Witzel 1987, with map). <> >The importance of rice suggests to an extent that the Vedic culture of >the YV and SB was already 'Gangetic' or at least not very NW Indian. Old news. Since Albrecht Weber, Heinrich Zimmer (the elder), 150 years ago. >In the RV, wheat is not mentioned but there may be indirect mention of >rice, for example, ksirapakamodanam, which is usually interpreted as >rice cooked with milk. Both YV and SB mention this type food and >offering. old news, see : FBJ Kuiper, An Austro-Asiatic myth in the Rgveda, Amsterdam 1950, (= Mededelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Amsterdam 13, 1950, 163-182) and cf. Kuiper 1991 (Aryans in the Rgveda, intro.) Similarly, MW, EJVS 5. 1 with details about rice (attested in late Indus times, at Pirak/Baluchistan, near the Bolan pass), the Rgvedic (!) Emusa/odana myth, and the Greater Sindh area with Munda and Para-Munda influences. ============== Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From dsalmon at SALMON.ORG Mon Mar 20 04:16:38 2000 From: dsalmon at SALMON.ORG (David Salmon (Kettenpom)) Date: Sun, 19 Mar 00 20:16:38 -0800 Subject: Sarasvati (makSU ... avo vRNImahe!) Message-ID: <161227057135.23782.14610627455477447062.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel asks: "What, pray, irks them?" Vishal Agarwal said: "your Hast-in dveep-in type logic, that I find quite infantile (ironical, since you were born in the same year as my father). " Odd he should remark that. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rpeck at NECA.COM Mon Mar 20 01:41:19 2000 From: rpeck at NECA.COM (Bob Peck) Date: Sun, 19 Mar 00 20:41:19 -0500 Subject: vedas as science Message-ID: <161227057126.23782.4916440009486428919.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Sorry if I took too large of a step. The sun was the source of creation as symbolized by Agni. Indra was the symbol (or God) of the manifest or the firmament. The two constitute the physical reality as creation and manifest (as is almost universal). In modern physics this is equivalent to Law (Agni) versus energy and matter (Indra). In the beginning was the concentrated energy (Indra) and the indwelling Law (Agni) that would determine the future manifested worlds as given in the concept of the Big Bang hypothesis. Energy and matter are now known to be equivalent through E equals mc squared of Einstein, however it is apparent in the description of the early Gods that they too were aware of this connection. Religions therefore start with the giver of Law and the source of energy and manifest (typically male and female elements). The problem that us moderns have is that we know that the energy of the sun comes from inner reactions in the sun, the ancients however could only perceive the fire of the sun as being fueled by the moon. This idea of heat coming from something inert is not in the common awareness of modern man yet heat (or phlogiston) comes from inert oil and wood that early man was well aware of. Another factor that the indoor educated modern man forgets is that the sun and moon are viewed as exactly the same size (as seen in an eclipse). The connection between the sun and moon are therefore obvious to the early observers. The two together was the One or Brahma or the source of Law and Manifest. Agni or the creative fire was also found to reside inside of creative individuals, but that is another issue. regards Bob Peck From GthomGt at CS.COM Mon Mar 20 02:28:52 2000 From: GthomGt at CS.COM (George Thompson) Date: Sun, 19 Mar 00 21:28:52 -0500 Subject: vedas as science Message-ID: <161227057128.23782.4675192396887535454.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a word, and not meaning to offend, all this is simply: ANACHRONISTIC. Best wishes, George Thompson In a message dated 3/19/00 8:46:59 PM Eastern Standard Time, rpeck at NECA.COM writes: > Sorry if I took too large of a step. The sun was the source of creation as > symbolized by Agni. Indra was the symbol (or God) of the manifest or the > firmament. The two constitute the physical reality as creation and manifest > (as is almost universal). In modern physics this is equivalent to Law > (Agni) versus energy and matter (Indra). In the beginning was the > concentrated energy (Indra) and the indwelling Law (Agni) that would > determine the future manifested worlds as given in the concept of the Big > Bang hypothesis. Energy and matter are now known to be equivalent through E > equals mc squared of Einstein, however it is apparent in the description of > the early Gods that they too were aware of this connection. Religions > therefore start with the giver of Law and the source of energy and manifest > (typically male and female elements). > The problem that us moderns have is that we know that the energy of the sun > comes from inner reactions in the sun, the ancients however could only > perceive the fire of the sun as being fueled by the moon. This idea of heat > coming from something inert is not in the common awareness of modern man yet > heat (or phlogiston) comes from inert oil and wood that early man was well > aware of. Another factor that the indoor educated modern man forgets is that > the sun and moon are viewed as exactly the same size (as seen in an > eclipse). The connection between the sun and moon are therefore obvious to > the early observers. The two together was the One or Brahma or the source of > Law and Manifest. > > Agni or the creative fire was also found to reside inside of creative > individuals, but that is another issue. > regards > Bob Peck From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Mon Mar 20 03:15:52 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Sun, 19 Mar 00 22:15:52 -0500 Subject: Saraswati... (nairukta) Message-ID: <161227057131.23782.8069265634972992112.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >Michael Witzel wrote: >> Those who proceed in Nirukta fashion, --as opposed to the severe >linguistic method of Panini who distinguishes clearly between root, suffixes >and endings, as does modern linguistics... Dr. Kalyanaraman: >I submit that 'nairukta etymologists' is a tautology. not, if you distinguish between Paninean etymology, modern linguistic one and Yaska's Nirukta style (i.e. nairukta), as I did, plainly. --- 3 different approaches. >I also submit that Pa_n.ini or modern linguistics and IE reconstructions can't >help in these semant. of divinities, assuming that semant. is as important as >phonetics... Semantics is part of linguistics (and of course of philology); see my earlier reference to K.Hoffmann's list in his paper on how to do etymologies (K.Hoffmann, Aufsaetze... Wiesbaden 1991) ---------- Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Mon Mar 20 03:16:30 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Sun, 19 Mar 00 22:16:30 -0500 Subject: Horse & BMAC In-Reply-To: <00ab01bf8e8f$84e60d80$530fe0d5@pandora.be> Message-ID: <161227057133.23782.12485180727291034367.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Mijn - heer Elst wrote some time ago: >Seems I ought to join Herr Witzel's fan club. (Mijnheer Elst, dit soort stomme grapjes behooren toch niet in deze lijst. Ten minste niet van iemand, die denkt een serieuse onderzoeker te wezen. Ik noem U toch niet, met Uw norderlijke vrienden, een stomme Belg, of iets dergelijks...) >I never studied the BMAC >... I never questioned the widespread assumption that it >was a "horse-centred" culture, implied in Bernard Sergent's thesis that the >BMAC was the Indo-Iranians poised to invade India. But now I read: >> Sorry, no horses there, so far. So, no horse >> riding/chariot riding BMAC Aryans. There are two or three doubtful items. No horse bones or chariot parts: A picture on a seal of a spoke-wheel chariot drawn by an equid, from Tepe Hissar IIIB, N.Iran. A copper axe from Bactria, with something that looks indeed like a horse. And a mace, ditto. No dates. And, later, from Pirak/Baluchistan: A clay figure of a horse/half-ass or whatever, onto which the figure of a person(?) with bird face, with spread legs, MIGHT fit. All in Parpola, The Coming of the Aryans to India and Iran. Studia Orientalia vol. 64, 1988, p. 295, 285, 288. >If that were true, it would change the picture concerning the horse evidence >completely. If the absence of horses in the BMAC doesn't disprove its being >Aryan, I DID NOT SAY THAT. We simply do not have any indication yet that it was INDO-IRANIAN or INDO-Aryan, not even real horses and chariots. The Central Asian loan words in Iranian and Vedic (EJVS 5.1) actually argue AGAINST an "Aryan" BMAC. We have to go where our evidence takes us. >the near-absence of horses in Harappa need not disprove its being >Aryan either. Non sequitur. Take a look at the substrate words. Any "Aryan" word in Vedic for city, trade, script, "priest-king", "great bath", "granary", cube dice, etc. etc. etc. ?? ================= Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From abhinav at DEL3.VSNL.NET.IN Mon Mar 20 00:00:59 2000 From: abhinav at DEL3.VSNL.NET.IN (Bharat Gupt) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 00:00:59 +0000 Subject: Comparative linguistics Message-ID: <161227057120.23782.16332529112346425887.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Robert Zydenbos wrote: > > > Like the contributions of some other list members, this too reveals a > > > fundamental misunderstanding. The sentence *should* have read: "[The] Aryan > > > construct [may have] served not only the colonial regime [even if we do not > > > know how, and linguists are totally unaware of this, but] it still serves > > > [i.e., helps] [*to explain*] the current north-south divide [which already > > > existed for a very long time prior to the British period]." >"Fundamental misunderstanding", not "English language error". I > assumed this was clear. Sorry if it was not). ... > If my additions to your original sentence do not convey any > new meaning to you, then I fear that your missionary school education has not > done you much good. The peremptory "should" reveals the correction that you seek to make in the thoughts of others expressed by them, in this case in English. Else, you would have written your own sentence instead of ammending mine. Quite clearly, by "my English" I could not have meant its grammar etc. Such teaching to write (please look for the vyanjanaa this time) by missionaries at schools or elsewhere has done no good to anybody. > On the other hand, if you believe that this Canadian-born reader did not > understand your correct English correctly, then I invite you to henceforth > write to this list in Sanskrit. The list could benefit greatly if more > persons were to do that (and believe me, this is _not_ a joke. Na katha.mcit). You are not the only one I wish to communicate with on this list, nor is this a place to display or test my sanskrit on others. You may, but I do not presume that the list members are waiting to "benefit", and least of all from me. In any case, if sanskrit was natural or acceptable (ask your other fellow Dravidianologists) to Indology members, they would be talking in that, instead interjecting mere exclamations. > So I take it that you agree that the recognition of something like South > India is not an evil colonial construct by some modern linguists, My post " Aryan construct served not only the colonial regime, it still serves the current north-south divide", has no comment on the existence or situation of precolonial Northern and Southern parts of India/Bhaarata/Jambudvipa/Karma Bhumi/Hindostaan, but on the "current" situation, that is, on the cultural constructs prevailing in modern times. In these modern constructs the "Aryan" has given a victim syndrome to many "Dravidian" south Indians (including the ideologues of Tamil Elam and LTTE) as a result of modern philological and historical theories. You yourself declare that what Nehru and Kosambi have said "in essence still holds good" (whatever that may mean). By repeating the obvious that North and South Indians invaded each other before the British came are you trying to absolve the linguists of the strife-promoting impact of their concepts which they set afloat on evidence which they earlier regarded as sufficient. Terms like dravida, pancadravida, kerala or andhra were geographic and culturally descriptive but not glossocentrically ethnic promoting new nation states threatening to carve their own territores. > But on a very different note: both of us should watch out! Rahul Oka may take > up the issue with us... Or another > universal 'scientist' may complain that you refer to the word "dakkhin", and > that I dare write "pa;ncadraavi.da", while he says that philological data are > "mushy" stuff and thereby presumably not scientific. I doubt becasue dakkhin or pancdravida are not so mysterious as the IVC script. Bharat Gupt From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Mon Mar 20 12:53:12 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 07:53:12 -0500 Subject: Horse & BMAC In-Reply-To: <002601bf924e$732a0020$530fe0d5@pandora.be> Message-ID: <161227057152.23782.11261317873362813515.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Mijnheer Elst, since you found it necessary to refer in English to my half-private message to you, and nicely twist it, here is the text & translation of my remark: >Mijn - heer Elst wrote some time ago: >Seems I ought to join Herr Witzel's fan club. >(Mijnheer Elst, dit soort stomme grapjes behooren toch niet in deze lijst. >Ten minste niet van iemand, die denkt een serieuse onderzoeker te wezen. >Ik noem U toch niet, met Uw norderlijke vrienden, een stomme Belg, of >iets dergelijks...) = (Mr. Elst, this kind of stupid jokes don't belong, indeed, on this list. At least not by one who thinks himself to be a serious researcher. I do *not* call you, indeed, together with your northern friends, a stupid Belgian, or something like this...) exacty the opposite of what Mijn-herr Elst makes of it in the post below. And, though not part of Indology discussion (except for all those similar North/South exchanges), the expression "een stomme Belg" is not a German but a Dutch expression, as are the "Belgian jokes" that I was subjected to during my 10 years or so in Holland. I have never heard one outside the Netherlands; the concept of "stupid Belgians" is unknown there. And thanks for the Adenauer quote. Was a funny man, with his concept of three kinds of truth: the common truth, the clear truth, and the *real* truth... Shouldn't we introduce that in our discussions? T1, T2, T3? Groetjes, MW >Herr Witzel, > >I have by now understood that you are something of a humorist, so I don't >mind in the least if you call me "een stomme Belg"*. Only, a German should >be careful with what he calls Belgians. Your great post-War Chancellor >Konrad Adenauer (and I suspect that my Christian-Democratic father had him >in mind when he picked a first name for me) described the Germans as >"Belgians with megalomania". > >And now that we're at it: any bilingual Belgian could tell you that the >correct French expression is not "comme l'habitude" but "comme d'habitude". > >All the same: sincere thanks for the information on the BMAC. > >Yours sincerely, >Koenraad Elst > > > >* for those who don't understand the language of paradise: "stom" means >something between "dumb" and "stupid", a common stereotype in the "Belgian >jokes" narrated by our neighbours. Thus, on a train, three Dutchmen and a >Belgian, one of the Dutchmen tells a Belgian joke. The two other Dutchmen >laugh, but the Belgian doesn't. "Why aren't you laughing?" -- "I am Belgian >myself." -- "Oh, then I'll tell it to you more slowly." ================================= Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From BLQM at MUSICB.MCGILL.CA Mon Mar 20 12:57:07 2000 From: BLQM at MUSICB.MCGILL.CA (GHOSE,LYNKEN,MR) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 07:57:07 -0500 Subject: plea for decency Message-ID: <161227057154.23782.6139798670429379857.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Indology Members: I would like to also put in my vote for a little more respect and decency on the list. Chris Wallis' message was obviously a sincere one, as was Robert Langston's. I recently posted a question concerning Bhartr.hari, and, while it was answered satisfactorily, it was also answered with a kind of "put down" at the beginning. This little quip was very unnecessary. In fact, these quips tend to obfuscate each point made rather than clarify them. Lynken Ghose McGill U. From rpeck at NECA.COM Mon Mar 20 13:04:34 2000 From: rpeck at NECA.COM (Bob Peck) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 08:04:34 -0500 Subject: Anachronistic energy Message-ID: <161227057156.23782.2667052946276209494.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I agree, the ancients did not view energy as the average person of today does as something physical. They did not view fire as we do to today, but rather saw it as a manifesting of transformational energy with or without high temperature. This is obvious by their writings. However, they did view energy as a mystical element behind change that is absolutely true today. Any change must be paid for with an equal amount of energy in another form. Much of the modern world assumes falsely that an individualistic change does not require energy but can come about by some psychic or belief type phenomena. I read the RV as a fundamental treatise on the inner energy of change of an individual (as well as being ritualistic). Soma is a source of transformational energy (not just a hallucinogenic). If you wish to change you must find a source of energy (soma) to drive that change (all excellent physics). My particular bias is that I obtained several patents and worked with funding from ARCO on devices that would convert a low temperature flow of heat into useable electrical power and found that at a meeting with other energy scientists that none of us were really cognizant as to the mystical nature of energy even though we had all learned the fundamentals. Then I started to read ancient Indian writings. I am attempting to argue now that the ancients did in fact have a more correct view of energy than science until Einstein. Einstein stated what I perceive as the summation of the fundamental writings of most religions, that the manifested world comes from energy. Energy and matter are essentially one and the same. Energy can take many forms from light, to heat, to motion to matter. My last letter briefly stated an obvious allegorical? description of the view of the sun and moon from the perspective of Einstein?s equation and observations of the sky. The sun is masculine and the source of Law or creation while the moon is the source of energy and matter. The Vedic writings, in my understanding, then take this analogy and apply it to the individual with the inner fire, energy and matter. If you desire to change you must find the inner heaven that contains the inner sun and moon. This inner heaven I again argue is universal even though it has been glossed over by religious interpretations around the world. I find that much of the world describes an inner fire of transformation in one way or another. They also point to a separate creative element that directs the change. To be religious, I strongly believe that modern man needs to find the inner fire of soma, spirit, chi, ki, holy ghost or whatever it might be called. I believe that the early Indian writings contain the science of how to change (along with a lot of added BS). I think the challenge of today is to separate the wheat from the chaff. And you guys have the training! Respects Bob Peck From smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM Mon Mar 20 16:14:54 2000 From: smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM (Swaminathan Madhuresan) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 08:14:54 -0800 Subject: Indological funding pie Message-ID: <161227057174.23782.15227279952804898099.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> How is the oldest classical language of India, ie., Tamil faring nowadays in London and Europe? Does Stuart Blackburn teach at SOAS? He just went there a few years ago. --- Stephen Hodge wrote: > > The undergraduate course in Sanskrit at SOAS is the latest thing to > > go. There will be no intake for the 2000/2001 academic year, and > > the course has effectively been cancelled until further notice > > The current situation at SOAS is just the latest installament of a > process that has been going on since the late 60s when I was an > undergrad there. The then director, C Phillips, had an early > "Thatcherite" vision of "value for money" -- courses deemed to be > commercially/business orientated and desirable were encourages while > those that were not were pruned. Dominik may know of the saga > involving the professorship for Indian Philosophy. Other staff were > pressurized to take early retirement with their courses shut down -- > Sanskrit is just one language to have got the axe and there are a > number of others. > The library is also on the verge of collapse for lack of funding -- > very few "specialist" books are purchased these days in most > departments. > > My overall impression is that the much of the teaching at SOAS, in > areas I am familiar with, is symptomatically of poor quality these > days -- for example, the teaching of Buddhism is hardly adequate but > is often used as a platform to deride Buddhist doctrines under the > guise of "academic objectivity" -- despite complaints from Asian > students upon whom SOAS relies for funding ! Sanskrit is/was poorly > taught without any imagination using an antiquated text-book. The > place is also rife with nepotism with posts regularly allocated to > cronies -- the interview process is often a complete sham. Little > wonder half the students spend most of their time in the bar smoking > marijuana. > > Best wishes, > Stephen Hodge > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM Mon Mar 20 16:21:22 2000 From: smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM (Swaminathan Madhuresan) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 08:21:22 -0800 Subject: [ADMIN] INDOLOGY account cancellations Message-ID: <161227057178.23782.2469685426973612972.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> --- Stephen Hodge wrote: > I had begun to wonder if you had be > away on holiday and were unaware of the barrage of vituperative msgs. On holidays, does he not use laptops? __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From kekai at JPS.NET Mon Mar 20 16:40:59 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 08:40:59 -0800 Subject: A plea for respect and decency Message-ID: <161227057117.23782.17097403631461178921.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Chris Wallis wrote: > > > >sometimes gets the feeling that the list is more of a schoolyard > > >playground in an inner-city school than an mature academic forum. > > "Inner city schools", are we struck in some stereotypes or what how about > > suburban schools, how about just any high school in America why just inner > > city schools ? > > Because inner-city schools display the racial and cultural tensions that > we see exhibited on the list. > C.W. > I wonder Chris where you live. The tensions you mention are increasingly found outside the inner city as minorities continue to migrate to the suburbs and even rural areas as they have over the past decade or so. I have a friend from rural Minnesota who knew only a few Native Indian people from a nearby Chippewa reservation as he was growing up. Now, the convienence store down the road from his parent's house is owned by Ethiopian immigrants, and all the gas stations in town by Indians or 'Middle Easterners.' He says that there is a fairly large African American student body at his former high school now, while there was not one while he went there. Sorry for straying off topic. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From kekai at JPS.NET Mon Mar 20 17:15:49 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 09:15:49 -0800 Subject: Ceremonial disposal of the "asva" carcass ? Message-ID: <161227057118.23782.14886902360694843393.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dinesh Maheshwari/CAD wrote: > > Are there any direct or indirect references in the Vedic texts regarding > the disposal of the "asva" carcass? > Considering the significance of the "asva" in the "Vedic culture", could > the "asva" carcasses have been disposed off (buried, cast off in the > river/sea, cremated) ceremoniously ? > > Are you referring to the asva carcass of the asvamedha sacrifice? The ritual of the royal queen or mahishi (water buffalo?) with the asva carcass is a rather interesting cultural study. Even if pandits would claim this ritual was not literally performed, even the suggestion is a bit unbridled. Incidentally, the asvamedha, although sometimes portrayed as coming from the "Aryan" homeland, already has offerings of rice, rice cakes and rice cooked in milk in the YV. In the SB, various types of rice are the main offerings for most of the primary gods. If I remember right among the exceptions were barley to Varuna, and coix to Rudra. Wheat was not used in the earliest sacrifices. The importance of rice suggests to an extent that the Vedic culture of the YV and SB was already 'Gangetic' or at least not very NW Indian. In the RV, wheat is not mentioned but there may be indirect mention of rice, for example, ksirapakamodanam, which is usually interpreted as rice cooked with milk. Both YV and SB mention this type food and offering. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE Mon Mar 20 09:20:13 2000 From: koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE (Koenraad Elst) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 10:20:13 +0100 Subject: Horse & BMAC Message-ID: <161227057140.23782.14655316973519742676.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Herr Witzel, I have by now understood that you are something of a humorist, so I don't mind in the least if you call me "een stomme Belg"*. Only, a German should be careful with what he calls Belgians. Your great post-War Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (and I suspect that my Christian-Democratic father had him in mind when he picked a first name for me) described the Germans as "Belgians with megalomania". And now that we're at it: any bilingual Belgian could tell you that the correct French expression is not "comme l'habitude" but "comme d'habitude". All the same: sincere thanks for the information on the BMAC. Yours sincerely, Koenraad Elst * for those who don't understand the language of paradise: "stom" means something between "dumb" and "stupid", a common stereotype in the "Belgian jokes" narrated by our neighbours. Thus, on a train, three Dutchmen and a Belgian, one of the Dutchmen tells a Belgian joke. The two other Dutchmen laugh, but the Belgian doesn't. "Why aren't you laughing?" -- "I am Belgian myself." -- "Oh, then I'll tell it to you more slowly." From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Mon Mar 20 10:36:09 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 10:36:09 +0000 Subject: Agni is scientific In-Reply-To: <003e01bf90e3$46f4fda0$120053be@lianda> Message-ID: <161227057143.23782.3817421006167016644.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sat, 18 Mar 2000, Bob Peck wrote: > [...] Energy is a mystical substance even today; it takes many forms > and no one knows what pure energy may be. Energy is only manifested > when it changes its form or nature. Since the seventeeth century, when European science developed a new vocabulary for describing the physical world, the word "energy" has increasingly been used in non-scientific language as though it were a measure of a real quantity. Pre-modern people didn't have "energy" as far as I am able to tell. The ancient Greeks had dynamis, I believe; in ancient India the great motive force of nature was wind, manifesting in the body as the pra.nas. If one's goal is historical, then when discussing ancient Indian texts it is important to try not to read into them concepts from modern culture. This is extremely tricky, but an effort worth making. I would suggest that "energy" is a modern term, and one which is generally inappropriate for explaining ancient Indian cultural concepts. One sure way to test out this sort of thing is mentally to translate one's English sentences into Sanskrit: what Sanskrit words would you use for "energy" in the above sentence? In fact, what word would you use for "mystical" or "substance". This can be a very illuminating exercise, telling much about the difference between contemporary and ancient thought. -- Dominik Wujastyk Founder, INDOLOGY list. From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Mon Mar 20 10:59:41 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 10:59:41 +0000 Subject: [creative atomic scientist's translations] In-Reply-To: <20000317140112.28555.qmail@nwcst021.netaddress.usa.net> Message-ID: <161227057147.23782.3279963183899438412.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Fri, 17 Mar 2000, Rahul Oka wrote: > I could probably read any journal flung at me by linguists, because > (a) I know how to read and I probably know mathematics (statistics and > computer math) better than most of the linguists (theory rather than > just application). I challenge the same linguists to understand and > make sense of scientific journals. This is a particularly pure expression of the central problem about "Scientists" and humanistic study. The arrogance in such a view is simply staggering, yet I am afraid that many people trained in science actually do think like this. Some people appear to believe that a training in science is in some sense a general training, that it confers a sort of sarvajnatva, a universal ability to engage at a high level with scholars of quite different disciplines. I am afraid that scientists who express themselves on humanistic topics in which they have no formal training are probably rarely, if ever, told how embarrassing their writing is when read by professionals. So the myth persists. But I insist once again that only people with a university-level training in a professional field should engage in university-level discussion of that topic. A good knowledge of statistics is admirable, but it is no substitute for a training in historical and comparative philology when wrestling with the problems of interpreting Vedic texts, for example. -- Dominik Wujastyk Founder, INDOLOGY list. From dsm at CYPRESS.COM Mon Mar 20 19:05:47 2000 From: dsm at CYPRESS.COM (Dinesh Maheshwari/CAD) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 11:05:47 -0800 Subject: Ceremonial disposal of the "asva" carcass (apart from the asvamedha sacrifice)? Message-ID: <161227057196.23782.14011428184320077937.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear list members, > Are you referring to the asva carcass of the asvamedha sacrifice? Perhaps I should have been more specific and should have phrased my question as follows. "Ceremonial disposal of the "asva" carcass apart from the asvamedha sacrifice ? " I am interested in knowing as to how the carcasses of the "asva"s that died a natural death were disposed off. Given the significance associated to the "asva", is it possible that the carcasses of even the "asva"s that died of natural causes were disposed off ritualistically (say buried, cast off in a body of water, cremated etc.)? BTW, as far as I know, the carcasses of Cobra snakes, irrespective of the cause of death of the snake, are still disposed of ceremoniously in India. Could the carcasses of the "asva"s be treated similarly during the Vedic times ? Thanks, Best regards, Dinesh Maheshwari From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Mon Mar 20 11:42:34 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 11:42:34 +0000 Subject: Saraswati: Atomic Scientists reconfirm location (Dr. Wujastyk) In-Reply-To: <20000318052929.14231.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <161227057149.23782.1046598561207644908.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Fri, 17 Mar 2000, Vishal Agarwal wrote: > To collect data for concordances and publish critical texts is one > thing, and to interpret data (which is what history is most about) is > another. Dr. Kosambi's flaws lie in using his pre-conceived notions to > distort data and derive marxist interpretations of history. I agree that Marxist historians can sometimes be dull because of their dogmatism, but Kosambi's writings on numistmatics and cultural history generally are by no means dull. He was an extraordinarily interesting writer, and there is much to be learned from his researches. I am not aware of him distorting data, although I do not always agree with his deductions. But I referred, in fact, to his editions of Bhartrhari, as an example of excellent scholarship which arose out of a deep engagement with the methods of textual criticism and editorial technique, not from his work as a mathematician. Your comments about "collecting data for concordances...critical texts" rather understates Kosambi's great work on Bhartrihari manuscripts; I wonder if you have done this kind of editorial work yourself? It is very tough indeed. > However, since you have banned discussion on the works of Eminent > Historians, This is not true. I have banned discussion of the AIT, that's all, simply because the topic has been discussed at g r e a t length several times already, and those postings are available in the INDOLOGY archive, and because futher discussion of the topic rapidly seems to become rancorous. -- Dominik Wujastyk Founder, INDOLOGY list. From r.l.schmidt at EAST.UIO.NO Mon Mar 20 09:51:38 2000 From: r.l.schmidt at EAST.UIO.NO (Ruth Laila Schmidt) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 11:51:38 +0200 Subject: Etymology Message-ID: <161227057145.23782.6859739120865548253.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> My thanks to all who responded to my query. 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 cw002g at MAIL.ROCHESTER.EDU Mon Mar 20 17:26:52 2000 From: cw002g at MAIL.ROCHESTER.EDU (Chris Wallis) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 12:26:52 -0500 Subject: A plea for respect and decency In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227057184.23782.12696720413900726594.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > >> Because inner-city schools display the racial and cultural tensions that > >> we see exhibited on the list. > >> C.W. > Sorry for getting off topic again, I consider this "ignorance" (?). Inner city > schools are more or less homogenous minority dominated; the "racial" problems > are in ?transitional? neighborhoods and suburbs where the minorities are moving > into. Could anyone possibly miss the point more completely, please? ;] C.W. ______________________________________ Christopher D. Wallis President, Religion & Classics Council Intern, Interfaith Chapel University of Rochester From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Mon Mar 20 13:27:03 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 13:27:03 +0000 Subject: Indological funding pie [was Re: Etymology] In-Reply-To: <20000317152612.8390.qmail@web303.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <161227057160.23782.4624466451082919022.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Fri, 17 Mar 2000, Swaminathan Madhuresan wrote: > Allotting a good percentage of funds pie available for Indian studies > in the West [...] If *only* there existed such a pie! On all sides, the study of classical India is dwindling away. Professorships are not renewed, courses are closed down, funding of any substance is extremely hard to get. The undergraduate course in Sanskrit at SOAS is the latest thing to go. There will be no intake for the 2000/2001 academic year, and the course has effectively been cancelled until further notice. (Some introductory Sanskrit will be available for MA students.) This decision has been taken by William Radice, currently head of the SA department, after much agonizing and exploration of alternatives. Without students even being taught Sanskrit in London University, any major project work on comparative linguistics is a pipedream, at least in Britain. > Hope Indologists will help increase in academic Dravidology pursuits. > It is within their power and budgets. Ha ha ha ha! -- Dominik Wujastyk Founder, INDOLOGY list. From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Mon Mar 20 13:30:23 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 13:30:23 +0000 Subject: [ADMIN] INDOLOGY account cancellations Message-ID: <161227057162.23782.1789750347046874591.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I've finally got fed up with the insulting tone of some posters on this list. From now on, I shall summarily unsubscribe any member who -- in my judgement -- insults or slights another member of the list. I am uncertain how effective this will be in practice, but let's see. I shall not engage in discussion about my decisions in this matter. -- Dominik Wujastyk Founder, INDOLOGY From george9252 at EMAIL.MSN.COM Mon Mar 20 18:37:21 2000 From: george9252 at EMAIL.MSN.COM (george9252) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 13:37:21 -0500 Subject: A plea for respect and decency Message-ID: <161227057188.23782.17545453447962486553.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Gosh, it's just amazing. Chris Wallis makes a plea for list members to stop bickering, etc., and his message stimulates others to bicker about (merely illustrative aspects of) his message!!! No wonder Dominik must step in and "KA"! George Cronk (NJ) ----- Original Message ----- From: Chris Wallis To: Sent: Monday, March 20, 2000 12:26 PM Subject: Re: A plea for respect and decency > >> Because inner-city schools display the racial and cultural tensions that > >> we see exhibited on the list. > >> C.W. > Sorry for getting off topic again, I consider this "ignorance" (?). Inner city > schools are more or less homogenous minority dominated; the "racial" problems > are in "transitional" neighborhoods and suburbs where the minorities are moving > into. Could anyone possibly miss the point more completely, please? ;] C.W. ______________________________________ Christopher D. Wallis President, Religion & Classics Council Intern, Interfaith Chapel University of Rochester From masalewala at HOTMAIL.COM Mon Mar 20 18:38:48 2000 From: masalewala at HOTMAIL.COM (Rustam Masalewala) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 13:38:48 -0500 Subject: Avestan language Message-ID: <161227057193.23782.5564735613598616534.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I was wondering if Avestan is taught in any of the Canadian or US Universities? How much knowledge of Sanskrit do they assume? Rustam ' ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From beitel at GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU Mon Mar 20 18:47:33 2000 From: beitel at GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU (Alf Hiltebeitel) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 13:47:33 -0500 Subject: Mahabharata question In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227057189.23782.12608208254293280436.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Prof. von Simson's reference is informative with regard to insistence in Tamil circles that Aravan's (Skt. Iravat's) sacrifice takes place on a new moon day. This sacrifice to Kali does denote the beginning of the war, though how the eighteen days would be counted therefrom is something I have not learned. Alf Hiltebeitel Director, Human Sciences Program Columbian School Professor of Religion and Human Sciences Human Sciences Program The George Washington University 2035 F Street, NW Washington, D.C., 20052 202/ 994-4297 Fax: 202/ 994-7034 Department of Religion 2106 G St., NW Washington, D.C. 20052 202/ 994-6325 or 202/ 994-1674 Fax: 202/ 994-9379 On Mon, 20 Mar 2000, Georg von Simson wrote: > Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote: > > >In consonance with the much bemoaned transformation of this list into a > >battlefield, partly due to a perceived scientists vs. humanists polarity, > >let me ask an astronomical question regarding an ancient battle. > > > >In the Mahabharata, when acting as an envoy for the Pandavas, Krishna parts > >from Karna with the statement that the two armies should meet in seven days > >time, on a new moon day. Is the epic consistent throughout, in telling us > >that the battle started on the new moon day? I would very much appreciate > >specific references. > > As far as I can see, Mbh. (Poona Edition) 5.140.18 is the only passage > where the start of the battle on the new moon day "which has Indra as its > deity" (that means probably jyeSThA so that the month would be mArgazIrSa) > is mentioned. Though the chronological account of the Mahabharata battle > does not seem to be quite consistent (see my article "Narrated time and its > relation to the supposed Year Myth in the MahAbhArata", in M. Brockington > and P. Schreiner (ed.): Composing a Tradition. Proc. of the First Dubrovnik > Int. Conference on the Sanskrit Epics and Puranas, Zagreb 1999, p.49-66, > here p. 59 f.), it is nowhere said that the battle did NOT start on a new > moon day. > > Best regards, > > G.v.Simson > From mfroelic at MAILER.FSU.EDU Mon Mar 20 19:02:15 2000 From: mfroelic at MAILER.FSU.EDU (Mark Froelich) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 14:02:15 -0500 Subject: Avestan language In-Reply-To: <20000320183848.71434.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <161227057194.23782.10669650464984478628.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> This might be a good question to address to Dr. William Malandra in the Classical and Near Eastern Studies Dept. at the University of Minnesota. He has done a lot of work in Avestan, though last I knew he was only teaching Sanskrit there. Mark Froelich On Mon, 20 Mar 2000, Rustam Masalewala wrote: > I was wondering if Avestan is taught in any of the Canadian > or US Universities? > > How much knowledge of Sanskrit do they assume? > > Rustam > > ' > ______________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com > From koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE Mon Mar 20 13:34:58 2000 From: koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE (Koenraad Elst) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 14:34:58 +0100 Subject: Horse & BMAC & much more Message-ID: <161227057164.23782.17550883876231616169.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Herr Witzel! Please, please, no need for invective about my "twisting" your words. I only wrote that i don't mind if you call me a stupid Belgian, and this remains an apt reply even when the original was: "I will not call you a stupid Belgian". I like that old orator's trick, insinuating a label all while disowning it: "I won't say that you are..." Incidentally, Belgian jokes are not confined to Holland: unbeknownst to the Dutch and their German guest-professors, the goriest Belgian jokes actually circulate in France. And it was an English editor who expressed his euroskepticism by describing the perfect EU citizen as (from memory) "humorous like a German, talkative like a Swede, generous like a Dutchman, modest like a Frenchman, well-organized like an Italian, etc., briefly, a Belgian". Back to Indology: thanks in my turn for an Adenauer quote which you just provided: > Adenauer was a funny man, with his concept of > three kinds of truth: > the common truth, the clear truth, and the *real* truth. Isn't that an interesting case of "Indo-European trifunctionality"? I still intend to join your fan club. I prefer your omnipresence in the debating arena (this month you must have set a record) to the august absence of most of your colleagues. At last here's an academic who takes his responsibility to society seriously. Sometimes you (and Dr. Wujastyk) even joust with scientists about the scientific seriousness and autonomy of indology/philology. And there you do have a point. There is an aspect of the scientific temper and method which is little developed in the hard sciences, as opposed to the humanities. I once wrote a report for the Belgian weekly Trends about the Natural Law Party, Maharishi's international party which promises world peace by means of 7000 levitating yogis centralized in each country's capital. To my half-surprise, the party cadres in most countries were full of engineers, theoretical physicists and the like. They are, by training and temperament, not inclined to "sterile" *critical* thinking, preferring rather to devote their energies (oops, that word) to something that "works". Hence their complaints that you bookworms studying Vedantic enlightenment through the fine print of the Upanishads are like apprentice-boxers who approach historians of boxing rather than boxing champions for teaching: hail practice, down with theory! Travelling gurus echo this approach with their dictum: "an ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory". Kind regards, Koenraad Elst From prasad_velusamy at HOTMAIL.COM Mon Mar 20 22:39:25 2000 From: prasad_velusamy at HOTMAIL.COM (Prasad Velusamy) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 14:39:25 -0800 Subject: Dates of the written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227057211.23782.17259189500684183422.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Also, the Tamil sangam material must be sifted with care. Phrases like ezhdAk kiLavi, ezhudA maRai, ezhudAk kaRpu etc., tell that vedas are not written down even by 2nd cent. BCE to 2nd cent. CE. Even 6th century Saiva texts talk of brahmins/shiva reciting RV ('irukku Odi...'). Look at the ta. word for veda: maRai (hidden/secret). Brahmins = maRaiyavar. Both god and brahmins are "maRaiyOn"! In tamil literature, the six duties of brahmins are described: 'aRu thozhil aNdaNar', the first 2 being: reciting veda (Odal), teaching veda (Oduvittal). Is this 6 jobs of brahmins common prescription in Sanskrit? Are they in dharmashastras? Thanks, Prasad << I think that the Buddhist Pali suttas tend to corroborate a relatively late date for the introduction and use of writing in India. Given that these scriptures record in passing many aspects of Indian society at the time of the Buddha and during the ensuing one hundred + years before the Pali canon was closed, it is surprising that there is no mention (as far as I know) of anything connected with writing if it had indeed been in use in India at that time, given also that the extent of this material far exceeds the length of the RV. The precise dates for putting these scriptures down in writing is not definite but must be some time after the reign of the emperor Ashoka given the relatively primitive nature of the writing system used in Ashoka's edicts. Thereafter, one has a similar situation to that suggested by some subscribers where an oral tradition continued in tandem with a written record of the texts. Best wishes, Stephen Hodge>> ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM Mon Mar 20 22:41:19 2000 From: lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM (Lakshmi Srinivas) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 14:41:19 -0800 Subject: on zankara's date - 2 Message-ID: <161227057213.23782.608991198658354894.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> --- Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan wrote: > 1. The tradition refers indeed to Adi zaGkara. In > that case, the fact that it > was not mentioned by other texts may be due to the > authors not being > conversant with all the details. > > 2. This was part of a post-zaGkara trend to > incorporate some Tamil zaiva > devotional traditions into zaGkara hagiography. In > such a scenario, zaGkara > going to Madurai and debating Tamil scholars may be > modeled after campantar > debating the Jains in Madurai or the musicians' and > poets' contests described > in the tiruviLaiyATal purANam. BTW, was the Periyapuranam translated into other languages e.g., Telugu or Kannada? It is said that the Virasaiva vacanakaras revered the "aRupattimUvar" i.e., the 63 Tamil saiva saints and that their legends were current in the Kannada speaking land at that time. It'd be interesting to know how these stories were transmitted? In the original Tamil as, for example, the Ramayana of Kampan? Perhaps the Madhavadigvijayam (14th cent?) and the Periyapuranam (13th cent?) draw from a common source? Thanks and Warm Regards, LS __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From Klaus.Karttunen at HELSINKI.FI Mon Mar 20 13:25:44 2000 From: Klaus.Karttunen at HELSINKI.FI (Klaus Karttunen) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 15:25:44 +0200 Subject: Yavanas Message-ID: <161227057158.23782.10979479357381136752.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear colleagues, as I have just spent an extremely frustrating couple of hours going through the messages of the last few days, I really hesitate to send anything. I must say that I very much appreciate the patience of Dominik with this list and wholly agree with the plea of Chris Wallis. However, on last wednesday I promised to comment the yAvanIbhASA and here it comes. In addition to the language, I have taken also references to yavana writing. Remember that in early sources yavana means Greek, but later Arab or Muslim in general. The verse na vadet yAvanIM bhASAM prANaiH kaNThagatair api is quoted in Apte's Dictionary "from SubhASita". Perhaps it is from the BhaviSyapurANa (anybody knows the exact reference?). One of the earliest references is the well known passage KAtyAyana and Pat on P 4, 1, 49 yavanAnI lipi, Greek script. In the PAdatAdiTaka 111f. Ghosh (115f. Schokker) the talk of the yavanI courtesan "sounds like the screeching of a female ape, consisting for the greater part of the sIt sound". On yavana (javaNa) courtesans see also the NammayAsundarIkathA of MahendrasUri. KumArila, TantravArttika on MS 1, 3, 6, 10 gives an interesting account of foreign languages (including Dravidian). In the list pArasIka-barbara-yavana-raumakAdi the languages must be Persian, Turkish (?), Arabic (as Yavana is Muslim) and Greek (as spoken by Byzantines as Romans). According to Keith, Sanskrit Drama p. 336 the RasArNavasudhAkara of SiMhabhUpAla (unavailable to me) assigns ApabhraMza to CaNDAlas and Yavanas. According to Weber, Indische Studien 2, 247f. the late HAyanaratna by Balabhadra says that the TAjika (Islamic astronomy) was available in a version in PArasIbhASA, though the original was in YavanabhASA. Reading these languages is generally forbidden in the SmRti, but can be allowed for useful purposes like this. Among Buddhist sources the DIghanikAya-Commentary on 1, p. 176 lists barbarian languages: damiLa-kirAta-yavanAdi-millakkhAnaM bhAsA (see also the TIkA ad l.). The same also in ANguttaran. Commentary 2, p. 289. Another list in the VibhaNga-Comm. p. 387f.: oTTa-kirAta-andhaka-yonaka-damiLa-bhAsAdikA aTThArasa bhAsA. The MahAvastu 1, p. 135 mentions YAvanI or rather yonAnI among various scripts. The same also in the Tibetan Lalitavistara (see Edgerton, Dictionary s.v. yonAnI). In Jaina sources: javaNalivi as one of the 18 kinds of writing in SamavAyANga 18, 43 and ZIlaNka's CauppaNNamahApurisacariaM 124. There are probably other passages, too. The PurANas have many Yavana passages in the connection of geographical divisions and legends (especially those of Sagara and KAlayavana), but I have found no references to their language. BTW, it has been claimed somewhere that there is a passage about Yavanas in the ZizupAlavadha, but I have not found it. Does anybody know it? Regards Klaus P.S. Yavana made vimanas are mentioned in BKZS 5, 194ff. and VasudevahiNDi p. 62. PP.S. Tamil has been taught, beside Sanskrit and Hindi, at our Department (University of Helsinki) since 1971. Klaus Karttunen Institute for Asian and African Studies Box 59, 00014 Helsinki, Finland tel. +358-9-191-22224, fax. +358-9-191-22094 From pwyzlic at UNI-BONN.DE Mon Mar 20 14:49:57 2000 From: pwyzlic at UNI-BONN.DE (Peter Wyzlic) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 15:49:57 +0100 Subject: Mughal In-Reply-To: <20000319004336.5130.qmail@web1501.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <161227057166.23782.15312313213624266364.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sun, 19 Mar 2000, youri martini wrote: > I would like to have a list about accounts of > missionaries in Mughal India. This would be a very large list. For Roman Catholic missionary activities please refer to Robert Streit et al.: Bibliotheca Missionum (i.e. a multi-volume bibliographical work, vol. 4 and 5 dealing with "Asiatic" missions, vol. 6 with missionaries in India, one of the later volumes gives additions if memory serves me right). > Could I receive, also, a bibliography about this > argument? Besides Streit, there are some reference works (mostly on a broader scale like Carlos Sommervogel on the Jesuits: Biblioth?que de la Compagnie de J?sus: bibliographie; histoire ... in many volumes). You know already Stephen Neill's: A History of Christianity in India. 2 vols. Cambridge 1984-85? Or Edward McLagan: The Jesuits and the Great Mogul, publ. 1932? Peter Wyzlic -- Peter Wyzlic Indologisches Seminar, Universitaet Bonn Regina-Pacis-Weg 7 D-53113 Bonn From s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK Mon Mar 20 15:54:53 2000 From: s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK (Stephen Hodge) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 15:54:53 +0000 Subject: Indological funding pie Message-ID: <161227057168.23782.12916464219732821323.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > The undergraduate course in Sanskrit at SOAS is the latest thing to > go. There will be no intake for the 2000/2001 academic year, and > the course has effectively been cancelled until further notice The current situation at SOAS is just the latest installament of a process that has been going on since the late 60s when I was an undergrad there. The then director, C Phillips, had an early "Thatcherite" vision of "value for money" -- courses deemed to be commercially/business orientated and desirable were encourages while those that were not were pruned. Dominik may know of the saga involving the professorship for Indian Philosophy. Other staff were pressurized to take early retirement with their courses shut down -- Sanskrit is just one language to have got the axe and there are a number of others. The library is also on the verge of collapse for lack of funding -- very few "specialist" books are purchased these days in most departments. My overall impression is that the much of the teaching at SOAS, in areas I am familiar with, is symptomatically of poor quality these days -- for example, the teaching of Buddhism is hardly adequate but is often used as a platform to deride Buddhist doctrines under the guise of "academic objectivity" -- despite complaints from Asian students upon whom SOAS relies for funding ! Sanskrit is/was poorly taught without any imagination using an antiquated text-book. The place is also rife with nepotism with posts regularly allocated to cronies -- the interview process is often a complete sham. Little wonder half the students spend most of their time in the bar smoking marijuana. Best wishes, Stephen Hodge From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Mon Mar 20 20:58:24 2000 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 15:58:24 -0500 Subject: on zankara's date - 2 Message-ID: <161227057200.23782.128678546699775522.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 3/19/2000 3:08:46 AM Central Standard Time, vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM writes: > An interaction of his hymn-composing guru with a Tamil > literary tradition would have stood out prominently in the poet's mind. > Madurai does not otherwise have any significant traditional connection with > Adi Sankara's life. The city is not even mentioned in the more well-known > hagiographic texts. But there was no Tamil caGkam in Madurai in the 16th century. Its revival (under Panditturai Tevar?) is about 4 centuries later. As far as I know, no Tamil tradition mentions a Madurai debate with a visiting zaGkarAcArya. That leads us to two possibilities. 1. The tradition refers indeed to Adi zaGkara. In that case, the fact that it was not mentioned by other texts may be due to the authors not being conversant with all the details. 2. This was part of a post-zaGkara trend to incorporate some Tamil zaiva devotional traditions into zaGkara hagiography. In such a scenario, zaGkara going to Madurai and debating Tamil scholars may be modeled after campantar debating the Jains in Madurai or the musicians' and poets' contests described in the tiruviLaiyATal purANam. We have two other stories about zaGkara modeled after the stories of Tamil zaiva saints. The story of ziva appearing as an outcaste accompanied by the four vedas as dogs seems to be based on the story of cOmAci mARa nAyan2Ar as described in the Sanskrit works mucukundasahasranAmam and zivabhaktavilAsa. For a discussion of the nAyan2Ar's story, see "The Tyagaraja Cult in Tamilnadu" by Rajeshwari Ghose, 1996, pp.173-174. Another story is that of zaGkara, in response to a challenge from maNDan2a mizra's wife, leaving his body and entering the body of a king and having sex with the queen. This seems to be modeled after the story of tirumUlar in periyapurANam, albeit with some very crucial differences. Seeing the distress of some cows when the cowherd, mUlan2, died, the yogi who will be later called tirumUlar left his body and entered the cowherd's body. But, when the cowherd's wife came to touch him, he refused to be touched by her and said to her that he was not in any way related to her. Of course, we also have zaGkara being associated with dakSiNAmUrti. The question I have is: Was this in order to win over to advaita those Smarta brahmins leaning towards devotional zaivism? Regards S. Palaniappan From s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK Mon Mar 20 16:01:53 2000 From: s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK (Stephen Hodge) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 16:01:53 +0000 Subject: [ADMIN] INDOLOGY account cancellations Message-ID: <161227057170.23782.6991363003615376338.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Dominik, > I've finally got fed up with the insulting tone of some posters on this > list. From now on, I shall summarily unsubscribe any member who > in my judgement -- insults or slights another member of the list. And not too soon, in my opinion. I had begun to wonder if you had be away on holiday and were unaware of the barrage of vituperative msgs. I subscribe to a number of Buddhist acdemic lists but have not encountered anything like the recent spate of unpleasantness on the Indology list. I would have unsubscribed but for the members who provide information and discussion that is useful and presented in a friendly and courteous manner. Best wishes, Stephen Hodge From tarekwani at USA.COM Mon Mar 20 21:08:20 2000 From: tarekwani at USA.COM (Tarek Wani) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 16:08:20 -0500 Subject: Unsubscribe Message-ID: <161227057202.23782.12634400845692013296.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Please cancel my subscription. I tried to cancel through the internet, but it didn't work. -Tarek Wani --------------------------------------------------------------- Get free personalized email from USA.com at http://mail.usa.com From zydenbos at GMX.LI Mon Mar 20 15:33:36 2000 From: zydenbos at GMX.LI (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 16:33:36 +0100 Subject: [Re: Comparative linguistics] In-Reply-To: <20000318194921.2876.qmail@nw177.netaddress.usa.net> Message-ID: <161227057204.23782.5688478482308528556.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Am Sat, 18 Mar 2000 schrieb Rahul Oka: > Philology, a throwback to Victoriana? Maybe. No. > Dr. Zyde[n]bos, your words do come across exactly as a burrah sahib, one who > knows Sanskrit, but will never ever understand "Sanskriti." That's because you > have to live it, not "learn it in academia." I hope the scientists on this list will not take it amiss that last time you were asking about an "Indian ethos" and this time speak about "living a sa.msk.rti". (We've had some complaints here recently about "mushy stuff". I do not know whether you could offer us a falsifiable criterion [I think you will remember that you were writing about falsification the other day] for determining whether a person "lives a sa.msk.rti".) But your remarks do offer an avenue for clearing up a misunderstanding, viz. about what it is that Indologists do. The academic, scholarly study of Indian culture / history / religion / philosophy / etc. is not the same as being an Indian, or being a part of Indian history, or being a mystic or practitioner in an Indian religious tradition, or being a creative Indian philosopher, etc. I do not want to spend too much time / too many words on what is actually a very basic matter, but instead I will offer you a few parallels to consider. A theologian need not be a mystic (in fact, being a mystic, or being a very fervent devotee, may be an impediment). A historian who studies, let us say, Napoleon, need not be Napoleon himself; Napoleon would in fact be not the proper person to write an objective history about himself, about the results of his actions, etc. It is not necessary, and in fact undesirable, for an orthopaedic surgeon to have broken bones himself in order to be an expert in his field. And a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist should not be stark raving mad himself. > When I spoke about usage of science, it was for a reason. Convergent > verification. If our dating techniques do not confirm your methods, no matter > how "scientific" one claims philology is, I am sorry, it will be unacceptable. Firstly, as Prof. Witzel has also written very recently, Indologists (I am now using the word "Indologist" in the more usual, philological sense) do not put on blinkers to shut out whatever is not linguistics from their studies. Secondly, in your opposition of "our dating techniques" (about whom are you speaking?) vs. "your methods" (and who may that be?), you are taking it for granted that "our [etc.]" are better than "your [etc.]". Who says so? What is the criterion? Indologists have always assumed that first of all we should let Indian** people speak directly to us through their own words (hence the importance of philology), since nothing else is more explicit. Problems arise when their statements are not explicit enough, or when comparably explicit statements are in conflict with each other. In such cases, other sciences may, secondarily, be of use. --- ** South Asian, etc.; when we are dealing with developments over a few thousand years, we are not very rigid in insisting on exactly what the limits of "India" are. They are rather commonsensically determined by the context under consideration. ..................... We see such conflicts arise already very early in history. Recently a few people on this list were writing about Yaaska (5th century BCE?). This same Yaaska already tells us that there were serious differences of opinion among scholars about the meanings of certain passages in Vedic texts. He quotes conflicting commentaries by 17 predecessors. One interprets a word "naasatyau" as meaning "true, not false"; another as "leaders of truth", while Yaaska himself suggests "nose-born". (Cf. the beginning of chapter 4 in A.A. Macdonell, _A History of Sanskrit Literature_, London, 1900. Reprinted Delhi, 1990.) What does this tell us? That we should make a critical examination of the relevant texts, and not take just any old one of them as the correct explanation of the phenomenon which we are studying - just as Yaaska reviewed what went before him; and just as he critically reviewed his predecessors, there is no reason for us to blindly follow him either. It also tells us that we should not make unwarranted, tall assumptions about the unbroken traditional oral transmission of Vedic texts: as far as meaning is concerned, something had evidently gone wrong already by Yaaska's time. Now another 2500 years have passed. Can a practitioner of some other science offer a solution in such cases? Perhaps, but *only on a firm philological basis*, since that is the starting point. (This has been argued here again only last Friday by Dr. Fosse: "If you don't know the language well, you can read any sort of nonsense into it. Amateur Vedic studies abound in "creativity" caused by a lack of philological and linguistic knowledge." The same has happened with, e.g., what Plato has written about Atlantis.) Therefore, whatever contributions other scientists may have to offer, it is the philologists who must decide whether those contributions make sense and are acceptible. (Compare: let us suppose that I, as an amateur computer programmer, think up something new to be built into the Internet. It may be brilliant, who knows. But there are experts who should judge the fate of my invention!) Western Indologists on the whole are not a stingy, cramped, bigoted lot (real Western bigots would not be interested in India in the first place). I find it particularly ironical that Prof. Witzel draws a lot of flack on this list from agitators for 'paradigm shifts' and what not (the accusations about the 'Aryan panzers' being just about the limit of warpedness, comparable to what I was accused of here last September); for instance, I remember a very recent issue of his journal of Vedic studies with a lengthy article on astronomy by an Indian-born *physicist* who now works in the USA. > The idea of "dakkhin" and the South as a post 1757 construct are something > that will not be understood through philology. This will be only through > history and archaeology. This shows that you are unaware that history is *primarily based on* philology. And I think that Prof. Gupt referred to something preceding 1757. And I completely fail to understand how archaeology fits in here. (We cannot expect an old brick, a potshard or a plowshear to jump up and say "hello! I am from the north, and I know that the owner of the pot of which I am a shard never thought himself different from the owners of pots in the south.") > I think that you actually need to conduct some > ethnography and dare I say it, move out of the dept. chair on OLD TEXTS and > BIG TEXTS and study economic and ecological history to know why peolle moved, > why peol,e warred and why peopled hated those who were different. Texts by those people, in which they voice their thoughts, remain the first and foremost data to work on. What do you mean by "old texts" and "big texts"? What are you talking about? Perhaps you should move out of the chair in front of your computer screen, away from your math, and step into a major department of Indian studies to find out what is going on there, and how, before you arrogate to yourself the right to publish vague condemnations. Still better: enrol in a course of academic studies in a leading university in this field and be a full-time student for a minimum of six years. You will surely know more about Indology after that. At least for the time being, this burrah sahib (who, strangely enough, after learning Sanskrit learnt over half a dozen other Indian languages, of which he now speaks Kannada at home half of the time) is not interested in having you for his guruji. > The idea of > North being different from the South is essentially Western European. No, not at all. Cf. what Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan and R.M. Krishnan have mentioned just last Saturday, if for some reason you don't want to refer to the older online archives (or, still better, to a proper academic research library). This is simple philology. The people of olden times have spoken clearly enough through their writings; and who are we to contradict them? Is there any reason to? Hoping that all this has clarified something, RZ From saf at SAFARMER.COM Tue Mar 21 00:38:43 2000 From: saf at SAFARMER.COM (Steve Farmer) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 16:38:43 -0800 Subject: Dates of the written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227057223.23782.1198834906285754455.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Prasad Velusamy quotes Steve Hodge on an apparent lack of references to writing in the Pali canon: > Given > that these scriptures record in passing many aspects of Indian society > at the time of the Buddha and during the ensuing one hundred + years > before the Pali canon was closed, it is surprising that there is no > mention (as far as I know) of anything connected with writing if it > had indeed been in use in India at that time.... Is this true? My question isn't rhetorical, and I currently have no firm opiniont. There are what appear to be references to writing in the Pali scriptures -- same as references in Manusmrti. I know that ways exist to discount such citations, just as in the case of references to script in Panini. But at a minimum the prima facie evidence has to be dealt with, I'd think. E.g., in Nighanikaya 27.23, we read: ...some of those beings [i.e., the Brahmins], not being able to meditate in leaf-huts, settled around towns and villages and compiled books [ganthe]. People saw them doing this and not meditating. "Now these do not Meditate' is the meaning of Ajjhayaka. Which is the third regular title to be introduced. At that time it was regarded as a low designation, but now it is the higher. This, then, Vasettha, is the origin of the class of Brahmins in accordance with the ancient titles that were introduced for them (Walshe, trans.). Is this a misreading? Buddhaghosa apparently claims that the passage refers to compiling the Vedas. Are there other, similar examples? Since a rank outsider like me ran into this passage by accident, I suspect there must be others. Again, I have no firm opinion on the issue at present, although I'm interested in the answer. Regards, Steve Farmer From prasad_velusamy at HOTMAIL.COM Tue Mar 21 00:47:49 2000 From: prasad_velusamy at HOTMAIL.COM (Prasad Velusamy) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 16:47:49 -0800 Subject: Dates of the written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227057225.23782.8394608073910185181.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dr. Farmer, A request. Can you post the list of references on Vedic orality? Thanks, Prasad --------------------- > Given > that these scriptures record in passing many aspects of Indian society > at the time of the Buddha and during the ensuing one hundred + years > before the Pali canon was closed, it is surprising that there is no > mention (as far as I know) of anything connected with writing if it > had indeed been in use in India at that time.... Is this true? My question isn't rhetorical, and I currently have no firm opiniont. There are what appear to be references to writing in the Pali scriptures -- same as references in Manusmrti. I know that ways exist to discount such citations, just as in the case of references to script in Panini. But at a minimum the prima facie evidence has to be dealt with, I'd think. E.g., in Nighanikaya 27.23, we read: ...some of those beings [i.e., the Brahmins], not being able to meditate in leaf-huts, settled around towns and villages and compiled books [ganthe]. People saw them doing this and not meditating. "Now these do not Meditate' is the meaning of Ajjhayaka. Which is the third regular title to be introduced. At that time it was regarded as a low designation, but now it is the higher. This, then, Vasettha, is the origin of the class of Brahmins in accordance with the ancient titles that were introduced for them (Walshe, trans.). Is this a misreading? Buddhaghosa apparently claims that the passage refers to compiling the Vedas. Are there other, similar examples? Since a rank outsider like me ran into this passage by accident, I suspect there must be others. Again, I have no firm opinion on the issue at present, although I'm interested in the answer. Regards, Steve Farmer ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From tawady at YAHOO.COM Mon Mar 20 17:03:18 2000 From: tawady at YAHOO.COM (Raveen Satkurunathan) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 17:03:18 +0000 Subject: A plea for respect and decency Message-ID: <161227057180.23782.4866913265130305694.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Mon, 20 Mar 2000 08:40:59 -0800, Paul Kekai Manansala wrote: >Chris Wallis wrote: >> >> Because inner-city schools display the racial and cultural tensions that >> we see exhibited on the list. >> C.W. Sorry for getting off topic again, I consider this "ignorance" (?). Inner city schools are more or less homogenous minority dominated; the "racial" problems are in ?transitional? neighborhoods and suburbs where the minorities are moving into. Yes there are problems in inner city schools but the core issue there is structural poverty which leads to crime and related problems NOT racism. I will respond to this thread anymore.Thanks for your patience. From g.v.simson at EAST.UIO.NO Mon Mar 20 16:13:21 2000 From: g.v.simson at EAST.UIO.NO (Georg von Simson) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 17:13:21 +0100 Subject: Mahabharata question In-Reply-To: <20000318065822.4009.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <161227057176.23782.8543601225574077005.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote: >In consonance with the much bemoaned transformation of this list into a >battlefield, partly due to a perceived scientists vs. humanists polarity, >let me ask an astronomical question regarding an ancient battle. > >In the Mahabharata, when acting as an envoy for the Pandavas, Krishna parts >from Karna with the statement that the two armies should meet in seven days >time, on a new moon day. Is the epic consistent throughout, in telling us >that the battle started on the new moon day? I would very much appreciate >specific references. As far as I can see, Mbh. (Poona Edition) 5.140.18 is the only passage where the start of the battle on the new moon day "which has Indra as its deity" (that means probably jyeSThA so that the month would be mArgazIrSa) is mentioned. Though the chronological account of the Mahabharata battle does not seem to be quite consistent (see my article "Narrated time and its relation to the supposed Year Myth in the MahAbhArata", in M. Brockington and P. Schreiner (ed.): Composing a Tradition. Proc. of the First Dubrovnik Int. Conference on the Sanskrit Epics and Puranas, Zagreb 1999, p.49-66, here p. 59 f.), it is nowhere said that the battle did NOT start on a new moon day. Best regards, G.v.Simson From mmdesh at UMICH.EDU Mon Mar 20 22:20:03 2000 From: mmdesh at UMICH.EDU (Madhav Deshpande) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 17:20:03 -0500 Subject: Yavanas In-Reply-To: <000a01bf92b8$2fdfd820$525265cb@aumkara> Message-ID: <161227057207.23782.146872147668734738.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I found the source of the verse I was looking for. The following verse: na vadet yaavaniim bhaa.saam praa.nai.h ka.n.thagatair api / gajair aapii.dyamaano 'pi na gacchej jainamandiram // is found in the Bhavi.syapuraa.na, Pratisargaparvan, Adhyaaya 28, verse 53, p. 520, Venkateshwar Press Edition, Bombay 1959. Madhav Deshpande From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Tue Mar 21 01:28:56 2000 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 17:28:56 -0800 Subject: Yavanas Message-ID: <161227057232.23782.14097881128005460680.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Prof. Karttunen, These identifications are very puzzling, given Kumarila's date. Or do you assign a very late date to Kumarila? Vidyasankar >KumArila, TantravArttika on MS 1, 3, 6, 10 gives an interesting account of >foreign languages (including Dravidian). In the list >pArasIka-barbara-yavana-raumakAdi the languages must be Persian, Turkish >(?), Arabic (as Yavana is Muslim) and Greek (as spoken by Byzantines as >Romans). ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Tue Mar 21 01:31:07 2000 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 17:31:07 -0800 Subject: Horse & BMAC & much more Message-ID: <161227057234.23782.16248672797973789312.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Koenraad Elst wrote: >Sometimes you (and Dr. Wujastyk) even joust with scientists about the >scientific seriousness and autonomy of indology/philology. And there you >do >have a point. There is an aspect of the scientific temper and method which >is little developed in the hard sciences, as opposed to the humanities. Most scientists I have seen go through some sort of a crisis in their lives. After a prolonged phase of questioning everything, they desperately feel a need to believe in something. Increasingly, for scientists of Western origin, various things clubbed together as "Oriental mysticism" come in handy. It doesn't matter if it is Yoga/Vedanta/Zen/Taoism/Tibetan-Buddhism. It's all the same thing; only Hare-Krishna-ism stands out as different. Those more in tune with their own traditions discover the "scientific validity" of the Bible (Old/New, depending on their parents' religion). With their specialized backgrounds, scientists are often at a loss when it comes to religion. For scientists of Indian origin, this need to believe takes other forms, which have been much discussed on this list recently! People who study the humanities perhaps learn to be more critical and less willing to suspend disbelief, when it comes to such things. People like me, who have a scientific education, and also can appreciate humanistic areas of study independently, are left feeling amused/irritated at the significant amount of bile that is generated by simple human folly. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Tue Mar 21 02:05:41 2000 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 18:05:41 -0800 Subject: on zankara's date - 2 Message-ID: <161227057236.23782.14106910545312571859.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan wrote: > > Madurai does not otherwise have any significant traditional connection >with > > Adi Sankara's life. The city is not even mentioned in the more >well-known > > hagiographic texts. > >But there was no Tamil caGkam in Madurai in the 16th century. Its revival >(under Panditturai Tevar?) is about 4 centuries later. As far as I know, no >Tamil tradition mentions a Madurai debate with a visiting zaGkarAcArya. >That >leads us to two possibilities. The single verse in the SankarAbhyudaya is very meager evidence. The verse does not necessarily indicate the kind of cankam that ancient Tamil land was famous for. "sanghapalaka" in the verse seems to be just a generic reference to a seat of honor, and chosen to evoke a memory of times long gone. I suppose it could have been something as simple as an Advaitin monk discussing Tamil with a poet attached to a Saiva Adheenam. After all, there is a substantial Advaita literature in Tamil, with a pronounced Saiva slant, from around the same period. There are also a few monastic institutions that were born around the same time, combining Sanskritic Advaita and Tamil Saiva elements, e.g. Koviloor Mathadheenam. >1. The tradition refers indeed to Adi zaGkara. In that case, the fact that >it >was not mentioned by other texts may be due to the authors not being >conversant with all the details. > That presumes there were some in and around Madurai who were conversant with details that had been lost elsewhere. I find that somewhat hard to believe. >We have two other stories about zaGkara modeled after the stories of Tamil >zaiva saints. > Hagiography is very fluid, and there are some standard themes that recur. For example, Dattatreya is always depicted with four dogs, representing the four Vedas. And Siva often appears in the most surprising places, and often subverts the assumptions of the social order. Re: entering a dead person's body (parakAyapraveZa), this is a Yogic accomplishment mentioned in Patanjali's Yogasutra, definitely a pre-Sankaran text. However, in all the Skt. hagiographies on Sankara, this legend is invariably linked with a reference to Matsyendranatha and Gorakshanatha, revealing a rather Hathayogic background to how and why Sankara is also claimed to have demonstrated his ability to enliven another person's dead body. Given that almost all extant older hagiographies of Sankara were written by south Indians, I don't doubt that these authors were influenced by Saiva legends, deliberately or unconsciously. However, as for Advaitins trying to attract Smartas with a leaning towards Saivism, see the salutations of Sankara in the writings of his own direct disciples. Both Suresvara and Padmapada compare Sankara to Siva. Notwithstanding Hacker's conclusion about Sankara's Vaishnava identity, I think from the earliest times, there was a substantial Saiva component among those who followed Sankara's teachings. Perhaps this is also consistent with the fact that it was most often the Vaishnavas who offered other interpretations of the Vedantasutras in post-Sankaran times. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE Mon Mar 20 17:38:15 2000 From: koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE (Koenraad Elst) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 18:38:15 +0100 Subject: Horse & BMAC & TM Message-ID: <161227057186.23782.7582240452600957610.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Claude Setzer wrote: > Since you and Dominik seem so insistent that "Humanists" are superior in > their care about getting the facts straight, you should be rather ashamed of > yourself for doing so little research about something you publish. > 1) The correct number is 0.1% of the population to be effected, as is > clearly stated in many research papers published by studies both within and > outside of the TM organizations. And in my own report. But an E-mail to a discussion list is not a Ph.D. thesis, so perhaps you may forgive me for not enumerating all the details here. > Several years ago, the number 7,000 was > 0.1% of the world's population, so it was projected that locally proven 0.1% > effects could be scaled to include the entire world with one group of 7,000. > To be "safe" this was extended to several groups of 7,000. It was not said > (or perhaps was said by accident) that "each" (implying "every" ) country > needed 7,000. But even if someone did say this, a "good Humanist" would do > his research and get the correct data before publication. In the election manifestoes of the NLP of a number of countries, the number of 7,000 "yogic fliers" is given as the target for the country itself. But I'll readily accept any correction on these data which you may offer. > 2) You seem to make very light of this, but some of the most conservative > and skeptical professional journals have taken it very seriously. In the US, > for example, even the FBI (federal police) statistics have confirmed a > substantial decrease in crime during a TM project specifically designed to > do so in the nation's capitol, Washington DC. And the (very skeptical) > federal government of the US has put very substantial funding into TM > research because, in some areas of need, it has been clearly proven to be > more effective than anything else, sometimes even the only thing that is > proven to work. Writing for the generally skeptical readership of Trends business magazine, I did point these things out. On the other hand, these data have so far not kept professional skeptics (Skeptical Enquirer and the like) from dismissing the claims for Transcendental Meditation, so even more convincing data are called for. But in principle I still concede that there may be something to it. Recent news of prayer being shown to be effective in prolonging the lives of terminal patients might be cited as another indication that good vibrations have a tangible effect. In the little paragraph of mine which you read, I did not intend to judge TM one way or the other, merely to point out that scholars are much less attracted to this than scientists are. Indologists might look up what the Yoga Sutra or the Shiva Sutra have to say about the effect of yoga on the yogi's environment, and what about siddhis like levitation, and that would not uniformly support the Maharishi's teachings. But if you care to know my opinion, I think that a possibly good project of promoting meditation and putting it to some socially beneficial use has been delivered to ridicule with this levitation gimmick, especially since after all these years of hopping, not one TM champion has been seen flying. K. Elst From saf at SAFARMER.COM Tue Mar 21 03:05:30 2000 From: saf at SAFARMER.COM (Steve Farmer) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 19:05:30 -0800 Subject: Dates of the written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227057240.23782.1103178102969524620.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Prasad Velusamy wrote: > Dr. Farmer, > > A request. Can you post the list of references on Vedic > orality? Thanks, Prasad List of apparent references on Vedic literacy, you mean? I wish I had a definitive list. Then we could look at them calmly, one by one, and decide together how credible they are. I'm an outsider - a comparative historian - forced to reexamine this question for reasons different from those of Indologists. I need your help. (Falk collects some of these, but not all, BTW.) I originally responded (here I attempt to fix my botched formatting): > There are what appear to be references to writing in the Pali > scriptures -- same as references in Manusmrti. I know that ways > exist to discount such citations, just as in the case of > references to script in Panini. But at a minimum the prima facie > evidence has to be dealt with, I'd think. E.g., in Nighanikaya 27.23, > we read: > > ...some of those beings [i.e., the Brahmins], not being able to > meditate in leaf-huts, settled around towns and villages and > compiled books [ganthe]. People saw them doing this and not > meditating. "Now these do not Meditate' is the meaning of > Ajjhayaka. Which is the third regular title to be introduced. > At that time it was regarded as a low designation, but now it > is the higher. This, then, Vasettha, is the origin of the > class of Brahmins in accordance with the ancient titles > that were introduced for them (Walshe, trans.). > > Is this a misreading? Buddhaghosa apparently claims that the > passage refers to compiling the Vedas. Are there other, similar > examples? Since a rank outsider like me ran into this passage by > accident, I suspect there must be others. > > Again, I have no firm opinion on the issue at present, although > I'm interested in the answer. Stephen Hodge replied: > Well, I did say "as far as I know" ! I have not made it my business > to check the entire Pali canon since it is not my main area of > research. However, it seems likely that DN 27 belongs to a fairly > late textual stratum, post-dating the Buddha's era and the immediate > period following it by some time. This is based on internal liguistic > evidence -- it uses some terms that would have been anachronistic -- > and doctrinal grounds. The Pali term "gantha / gandha" (S: grantha) > means any literary product or composition, though it (later ?) often > also means a book. What are the internal linguistic evidence and doctrinal grounds that suggest it is late? How anachronistic is it? It certainly must precede the 1000 CE date that we've been given. On "gantha/gandha," Hodge writes: > > Given the ambivalence of the term, it would > > perhaps be better to look for any mention of the act of writing, > > scribes, writing materials and so forth. I'm putting forward the only evidence I know. If there are more explicit passages in the Pali canon, I'd like to see them myself. But this one, at a minimum, seems suggestive -- as do the passages in Manuscriti I've already pointed to. Question: Does anyone know any more? It would be interesting to reexamine the passages in Panini, which are of course much earlier. I'm content to step back and listen to those who know far more than I do. Regards to all, Steve Farmer From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Tue Mar 21 00:19:20 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 19:19:20 -0500 Subject: Ceremonial disposal of the "asva" carcass ? Message-ID: <161227057219.23782.18348290601465673297.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> PK Manansala: >While it is true that rice is not specifically mentioned in the Vedic >version, there is a bit of interesting information in these passages: > 1.162.18 The axe penetrates the thirty-four ribs > of the swift horse; ... >(Other breeds have 18 pairs, Arabian has 19 pairs). So you checked. After checking the two RV hymns for any (vague) references to rice/odana at home yesterday, I was about to do the same, for zoology, to have reliable information. I know, of course, about the Arabian horse, but what we need is good information, such as the RV one, on the distribution of the various types of horses *early on*. More later on. At any rate, all of this does *not* yet solve the initial problem : how a VERY long gone pre-prehistoric type of horse (the Sivalensis) could have effected the emergence of 17 pairs of ribs in Indian (Rgvedic) horses. (And how the Arabian one could sprout another 4 extra ribs...) ========= From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Tue Mar 21 00:20:29 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 19:20:29 -0500 Subject: [ADMIN] INDOLOGY account cancellations Message-ID: <161227057221.23782.16143265769688205771.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >I've finally got fed up with the insulting tone of some posters on this >list. From now on, I shall summarily unsubscribe any member who -- in my >judgement -- insults or slights another member of the list. diSTyA! may zAnti reign now... saM gachadhvaM saM vadadhvaM saM vo manAMsi jAnatAm | samAno mantraH samitiH samAnI samAnam manaH saha cittam eSAm | samAnam mantram abhi mantraye vaH | samAnI va AkUtiH samAnA hRdayAni vaH | samAnam astu vo mano yathA vaH susahAsati || From tawady at YAHOO.COM Mon Mar 20 20:20:51 2000 From: tawady at YAHOO.COM (Raveen Satkurunathan) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 20:20:51 +0000 Subject: A plea for respect and decency Message-ID: <161227057198.23782.2812166753429439284.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Mon, 20 Mar 2000 12:26:52 -0500, Chris Wallis wrote: >> >> Because inner-city schools display the racial and cultural tensions that >> >> we see exhibited on the list. >> >> C.W. >> Sorry for getting off topic again, I consider this "ignorance" (?). Inner city >> schools are more or less homogenous minority dominated; the "racial" problems >> are in ?transitional? neighborhoods and suburbs where the minorities are moving >> into. > >Could anyone possibly miss the point more completely, please? ;] >C.W. Here we go again, inner city in the US is a euphemism for crime, non-Anglo culture, poverty etc and is a stereotypical term with negative connotations. If you say inner cities schools are full of racial tension then you are misinforming the world regarding what is really going on in the US. It is the suburban schools, which have racial tension that too directed against the minorities who are moving into the suburbs. Sorry guys :-) again!! End From zydenbos at GMX.LI Mon Mar 20 20:05:20 2000 From: zydenbos at GMX.LI (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 21:05:20 +0100 Subject: Mushtanda; and Bharat In-Reply-To: <20000319035201.43438.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <161227057228.23782.439927932865790048.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Am Sun, 19 Mar 2000 schrieb Vishal Agarwal: > Dr. Zydenbos responded: > Of course. Start with the fact that "Europa" is an ancient Greek name, > [...] > VA comments: Of course I am aware of the antiquity of the term 'europa'. > However, I suggest that you read the book by Radha Kumud Mukherjee and then > prove whether the concept of Europa is as well defined and comprehensive as > the concept of Bharat in the Puranas. Who cares? Quite frankly, I don't. If anyone is interested in proving such a vague and useless matter, let them do so, but I have other things to do. And I repeat that this whole issue is beside any point I was making. > I repeat again that the concept of nation state is rather modern. I never denied that. It is also immaterial to the discussion. "India" can have many meanings, depending on the context (e.g., the time about which we are speaking). If you insist on interpreting my use of "India" as "the modern nation-state known since 1947 as India, also as Bhaarata", then this is a one-sided interpretation and an irrelevant deviation from the discussion. RZ From zydenbos at GMX.LI Mon Mar 20 20:48:51 2000 From: zydenbos at GMX.LI (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 21:48:51 +0100 Subject: Comparative linguistics In-Reply-To: <20000319052351.49808.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <161227057226.23782.414045715989571010.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Am Sun, 19 Mar 2000 schrieb Sam Garg: > BTW, would you also not classify as an 'amateur Indologist'? I presume you > are NOT a PhD in Indology? > > Sanjay Just for your information, because you asked: no, I am a D.Litt. As for professionalism, I have taught Indological subjects at universities on three continents, including the University of Madras. -- Dr. Robert J. Zydenbos ( <-- maybe I should add this more often) From hart at POLBOX.COM Mon Mar 20 20:52:34 2000 From: hart at POLBOX.COM (Artur Karp) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 21:52:34 +0100 Subject: Mahabharata question In-Reply-To: <20000322064510.53938.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <161227057315.23782.6984902246736902131.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From zydenbos at GMX.LI Mon Mar 20 20:58:48 2000 From: zydenbos at GMX.LI (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 21:58:48 +0100 Subject: Comparative linguistics In-Reply-To: <38D56A3B.2D0E@del3.vsnl.net.in> Message-ID: <161227057230.23782.2731639488087508763.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Am Mon, 20 Mar 2000 schrieb Bharat Gupt: > In these modern constructs the "Aryan" has given a victim syndrome to many "Dravidian" > south Indians (including the ideologues of Tamil Elam and LTTE) as a result of modern > philological and historical theories. Postings by other list members should have convinced you by now that these tensions are not the "result" of "modern philological and historical theories". If not, then please do supplementary reading in an academic research library before returning to the topic. These real tensions, that are purely indigenous (not recently created by evil foreigners), have been around for quite some time, and the only thing that research does is to put the pieces of the puzzle together, so that we understand more about the origins of the tensions. To say that the research caused what already was there, is an unwarranted, anti-historical reversal of matters. I am becoming tired of repeating that the researchers are _not_ responsible for abuse and twisted renderings of their findings by political personalities in South Asia for political gain. I already told you this in a discussion on the Religion In South Asia List. Could you tell us what you want? Do you want to drag to court the designer of a pair of dressmaker's scissors that was used by a lunatic to commit a murder? Do you want to impose a worldwide ban on linguistics and philology and cover up facts? Sorry, but I think it is cheap, even if it is fashionable, to pretend that once upon a time everything used to be good and beautiful in India and to throw the blame for each and every unpleasant thing on foreigners. Why should your unproven idea be considered otherwise? Accusing linguists of promoting strife in India is totally frivolous. > By repeating the obvious that North and South Indians invaded each other before the > British came are you trying to absolve the linguists of the strife-promoting impact of > their concepts [...] At least you find it "obvious" that north and south invaded each other, apparently without wicked, scheming linguists in the background. That's already something. If the work of linguists ever promoted strife, it is someone else's responsibility. Have you ever cared to wonder why a very small country like Switzerland has four official languages without members of different linguistic groups being at each other's throats? Why can't a gigantic country like India have many more? Conversely, why do Serbians and Croats murder each other, while their languages are almost identical? Evidently, language in itself is only a minor factor. RZ From tawady at YAHOO.COM Mon Mar 20 22:23:00 2000 From: tawady at YAHOO.COM (Raveen Satkurunathan) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 22:23:00 +0000 Subject: Asko Parpola on Todas, any comments ? Message-ID: <161227057209.23782.6411188889483724245.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >In my article on Toda, I suggest that this language descends from >that form of early South Dravidian which was later to become Old Tamil. It >branched off from this "pre-Tamil" mother language when the ancestors of >the Toda and Kota speakers moved to the Nilagiris from the plains and lost >contact with other pre-Tamil speakers. This "proto-Toda-Kota" then >developed on its own, until it branched into two, Toda and Kota, when >Iranian horsemen belonging to the Sakas who ruled western India entered >the Nilagiris around 400 AD. The newcomers, probably just men, married >local "pre-Toda" speakers, and started speaking their language, but >the Dravidian speech of these Iranians was modified by the influence of >their own native Saka language, and this strange way of speaking was >inherited by their children. Evidence for this is the similarity of Toda >phonology with Iranian phonology, while it differs very much from other >Dravidian languages including the neighbouring and closely related >Kota; archaeological evidence points to the coming of Sakas to Nilagiris >c. 400 AD, and the physical features of the Todas as well as their >polyandric marriage system also point to Iranians. It remains to search >the Toda vocabulary carefully for possible Iranian loanwords, which could >provide really clinching evidence. With best regards, Yours, Asko Parpola. From kekai at JPS.NET Tue Mar 21 06:57:42 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Mon, 20 Mar 00 22:57:42 -0800 Subject: Ceremonial disposal of the "asva" carcass ? Message-ID: <161227057138.23782.6704813885182318598.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Michael Witzel wrote: > > 2) There is, of course, the older form of the Vedic horse sacrifice in the > Rgveda (1.162-163, etc.,) > which has nothing to do with rice. While it is true that rice is not specifically mentioned in the Vedic version, there is a bit of interesting information in these passages: 1.162.18 The axe penetrates the thirty-four ribs of the swift horse; the beloved of the gods, (the immolators), cut up (the horse) with skill, so that the limbs may be unperforated, and recapitulating joint by joint. (from Wilson) Now, 17 X 2 = 34. (Other breeds have 18 pairs, Arabian has 19 pairs). Those amazing flying rishis and their genetic engineering marvels! Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK Tue Mar 21 02:26:47 2000 From: s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK (Stephen Hodge) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 02:26:47 +0000 Subject: Dates of the written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227057238.23782.6767798415349280750.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Steve Framer wrote: > But at a minimum the prima facie evidence has to be dealt with, I'd > think. E.g., in Dighanikaya 27.23, we read: [snip] > Is this a misreading? Buddhaghosa apparently claims that the > passage refers to compiling the Vedas. Are there other, similar > examples? Since a rank outsider like me ran into this passage by > accident, I suspect there must be others. Well, I did say "as far as I know" ! I have not made it my business to check the entire Pali canon since it is not my main area of research. However, it seems likely that DN 27 belongs to a fairly late textual stratum, post-dating the Buddha's era and the immediate period following it by some time. This is based on internal liguistic evidence -- it uses some terms that would have been anachronistic -- and doctrinal grounds. The Pali term "gantha / gandha" (S: grantha) means any literary product or composition, though it (later ?) often also means a book. Given the ambivalence of the term, it would perhaps be better to look for any mention of the act of writing, scribes, writing materials and so forth. Best wishes, Stephen From hart at POLBOX.COM Tue Mar 21 01:36:28 2000 From: hart at POLBOX.COM (Artur Karp) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 02:36:28 +0100 Subject: Mahabharata question In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227057330.23782.4057825232708024020.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 17:05 2000-03-22 +0100, Georg v. Simson wrote: >I don't think we can use the last two passages you quote as evidence for the >new moon day at the beginning of the battle. The poet here just collects all >kind of sinister omens: meteors, hurricanes, earthquakes and all kind of >queer movements of the planets - if you try to take this astronomically >seriously, you will see that it doesn't work. This is not on the same level >as the first quote (V.140.18). If I dare to entertain that idea, it is because of the presence of the triad: Moon, Moon's node, Sun. Even if the fragments V.141.10 and VI.3.11 with their image of the Moon's node moving towards and "devouring" the Sun are , taken together the three of them form a meaningful whole. A cursory check tells me that the images of solar eclipses aren't used helter skelter throughout the Epic. RAhu is mentioned in a dozen or so comparisons with yathA, iva; once or twice in lists of celestial and other beings. Three times RAhu is said to eclipse the Sun on a day that is "out of joint" (aparvani, i.e. "not on the new moon day"), but that fact is stressed, as in II.72.21 (rAhuz cArkam upAgrasat aparvaNi mahAghoraM prajAnAM janayan bhayam), where it terrifies people by its sheer untimeliness, or in IX.55.10 (rAhuz cAgrasad Adityam aparvaNi). The two times when the term 'aparvaNi' is not used, are precisely V.141.10 and VI.3.11, where the presence of the new moon could be implied. Which would make THIS solar eclipse perfectly 'parvaNi'. I am far from trying to convince anyone that this (or other) solar eclipse could provide the events depicted in the Epic with a hard date. Although its appearance is made quite realistic, I would rather imagine its role as one of signs by which the last eighteen days of the Dvapara-yuga are cut off from the rest of time and given their special status. With regards, Artur Karp University of Warsaw Poland From lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM Tue Mar 21 11:58:24 2000 From: lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM (Lakshmi Srinivas) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 03:58:24 -0800 Subject: on zankara's date - 2 Message-ID: <161227057252.23782.5293919201271852106.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> --- Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote: > Notwithstanding > Hacker's conclusion about > Sankara's Vaishnava identity, I think from the > earliest times, there was a > substantial Saiva component among those who followed > Sankara's teachings. > Perhaps this is also consistent with the fact that > it was most often the > Vaishnavas who offered other interpretations of the > Vedantasutras in > post-Sankaran times. Vidya, It seems to me you're overlooking a phenomenon such as the Bhagavatapurana which in its philosophical position, is known to be closer to advaita than anything non-Sankaran. Perhaps it may make sense to view this purana as an attempt to present the AzvAr bhakti in an advaitic light. Significantly, Ramanuja does not quote it despite proximity in geography and time. Thanks and Warm Regards, LS __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK Tue Mar 21 04:12:10 2000 From: s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK (Stephen Hodge) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 04:12:10 +0000 Subject: Dates of the written Rgveda Message-ID: <161227057242.23782.6954104187915787006.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Steve Farmer wrote: > What are the internal linguistic evidence and doctrinal grounds > that suggest it is late? How anachronistic is it? It certainly > must precede the 1000 CE date that we've been given [for the > "written Vedas" ? SH]. Possibly 100 -- 150 + years after the passing of the Buddha. The text uses terminology associated with later developments -- difficult to date per se -- such as the "dhammakaaya". It also has the Buddha speak on the origin of the universe, a topic which he specifically refused to answer. This text seems to have been composed for specific heuristic reasons involving brahmins. > I'm putting forward the only evidence I know. If there are more > explicit passages in the Pali canon, I'd like to see them myself. As I said, the Pali canon is not my main area of expertise so I rely on the researches of others. I am not aware that any clear-cut / unambiguous evidence for writing has been found in the Pali canon -- perhaps others on the list who are more involved in early Buddhist studies could comment. If you look through the archives of Indology a couple of months or so ago (before you subscribed) a couple of the subscribers (Dr LC Cousins was one) did discuss the origins of Brahmi script and it was noted then that this script as used in the C 3rd BCE shows clear signs of being innovative due to its fluid character -- it was still evolving. > But this one, at a minimum, seems suggestive -- as do the > passages in Manusmriti I've already pointed to. Question: Does > anyone know any more? As a good Buddhist, it is of little import to me when the Rg Veda was first put down in writing. However, I would be quite happy with a considerably earlier date for a written Rg Veda than the 1000 CE mentioned. You may note that orality was important in Buddhism also -- even after the canon was put down in writing to preserve it, monks continued for centuries to memorize the respective portions allocated to their "recitation groups" (the canon was divided into segments that were memorized by specialist groups of monks). Best wishes, Stephen Hodge From swamiji at VSNL.COM Mon Mar 20 23:57:57 2000 From: swamiji at VSNL.COM (Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 05:27:57 +0530 Subject: Ganakashtadhyayi (ver1.0) - A Software on Panini's Sutras - Errors fixed Message-ID: <161227057217.23782.24914024610725324.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear scholars of Indology, Glad to inform you that we have at last fixed the "Run-time error" noticed by some users. I am very much indebted to those scholars who first downloaded the software and reported to me the frustrating error. It is very kind of them to have responded to all my requests privately and to have repeatedly tested the error-free functioning of the software. You can now freely download the software, Ganakashtadhyayi (ver 1.0), offered to you as a small gift on the eve of the Sanskrit year. The URL is: http://www.vsna.org/swamiji/panini/win/win_panini.html As informed earlier, the present version (1.0) is only a preliminary version containing minimum features: 1. All the Sutras of Panini are given in Roman script using standard diacritical marks (Complete) 2. Pada-Patha: Splitting of Sandhis in the Sutras for easy comprehension (Incomplete) 3. Vrittis on the Sutras as found in the Siddhanta Kaumudi and Laghu Kaumudi (Incomplete) 4. Provision for English Translation and Explanation has been made (Incomplete) 5. Sutras can be sorted in the order of Ashtadhyayi, Siddhanta Kaumudi or Laghu Kaumudi. 6. Some of the commands are made available at a click away using the right mouse button. We have tested the software with Internet Explorer (4.0) and Netscape (4.7) on the operating system Windows 98. Those of you who cannot download the self-extracting zipped files (*.exe) at the site and save them to their system: the problem is with their browser. Such scholars may inform me their operating system and the kind of browser they are using and its version. Please use my personal e-mail address and not that of the list. However, Windows NT users are advised NOT to download at all. Those who have already downloaded the software earlier, are advised to uninstall the programme from their system (through the control panel) and once again newly download the program files from the site since many other bugs in the programme have been fixed. The data also is updated partially. I hope that the world community of scholars would like this personal gift and make use of it in their studies. Any comments or suggestions for the improvement of the software are most welcome. With best wishes, Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ * Sri Taralabalu Jagadguru Brihanmath, Sirigere - 577 541, Chitradurga Dist, Karnataka, India * Taralabalu Kendra,3rd Main, 2nd Block, RT Nagar, Bangalore - 560 032, India * swamiji at vsnl.com Fax: +91-(0)80-3334541, Tel: +91-(0)80-3332759 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From mmdesh at UMICH.EDU Tue Mar 21 11:34:57 2000 From: mmdesh at UMICH.EDU (Madhav Deshpande) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 06:34:57 -0500 Subject: Angavastram In-Reply-To: <12XJqN-1AwuQaC@fwd02.sul.t-online.de> Message-ID: <161227057248.23782.1951501321912944519.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Would help to know what kind of text you are dealing with. In Marathi for the past century or two, the word has been euphemistically used to refer to a mistress. Madhav Deshpande On Tue, 21 Mar 2000, Graefe wrote: > Dear list members, > would anybody know what kind of garment an *angavastram* is? > Thank you very much > Ursula Graefe > From kekai at JPS.NET Tue Mar 21 16:25:34 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 08:25:34 -0800 Subject: Saraswati: Atomic Scientists reconfirm location (Dr. Wujastyk) Message-ID: <161227057172.23782.12891115172245111454.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dominik Wujastyk wrote: > He was an extraordinarily interesting > writer, and there is much to be learned from his researches. I agree. And when he did analyze in the sense of class struggle, his arguments were not forced or far-fetched as with some other Marxist writers. Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From dasa at ONE.NET.AU Mon Mar 20 21:28:20 2000 From: dasa at ONE.NET.AU (Ramadas) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 08:28:20 +1100 Subject: Yavanas Message-ID: <161227057205.23782.16227633794691722650.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> From: "Klaus Karttunen" Sent: Tuesday, 21 March 2000 12:25 AM Subject: Yavanas > language, I have taken also references to yavana writing. Remember that in > early sources yavana means Greek, but later Arab or Muslim in general. This is an interesting (EC selective) point you have made. I was always told that *yavana* did not refer to any particular race, but meant a *foreigner* of any description, but Europeans mistranslate/misconstrue to means Greeks for their own particular reasons. Hence, even in India, I have been often referred to, being born an Australian, as being yavana. ---- Kindest regards Ramadas From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Tue Mar 21 13:39:35 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 08:39:35 -0500 Subject: Avestan language In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227057254.23782.8846313393490621183.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Schwartz/UC, HP Schmidt (emer.) at UC, Insler at Yale, Skjaervo at Harvard, Windfuhr at Michigan, Malandra at MN, etc. Many linguists/Vedic scholars also teach Avestan... The more Vedic Sanskrit you know the better. Since Avestan is so close to Vedic, and since Avest. texts are much smaller in actual size (3/4 have been lost after 650 CE) -- and not 'because Alexander burnt them' -- we use to joke that a Rgveda grammar is the best Avestan grammar, -- not true, but it shows what is useful to learn Avestan. >> I was wondering if Avestan is taught in any of the Canadian >> or US Universities? >> >> How much knowledge of Sanskrit do they assume? ========== Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Tue Mar 21 13:54:11 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 08:54:11 -0500 Subject: Yavanas In-Reply-To: <000a01bf92b8$2fdfd820$525265cb@aumkara> Message-ID: <161227057256.23782.17440815626957578309.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >> language, I have taken also references to yavana writing. Remember that in >> early sources yavana means Greek, but later Arab or Muslim in general. Ramadas: >This is an interesting (EC selective) point you have made. I was always told >that *yavana* did not refer to any particular race, but meant a *foreigner* >of any description, but Europeans mistranslate/misconstrue to means Greeks >for their own particular reasons. Hence, even in India, I have been often >referred to, being born an Australian, as being yavana. Indologists are quite aware of the fact that Yavana (Old Pers. Yona) originally meant the Greeks, but was applied to various foreigners on the western border of S.Asia , and in later times, used as a general term for 'foreigner'. That is, when they were not detailed, as visibile in Prof. Karttunen's recent collection on this list. Similarly, TuruSka means a "Turk" but is often used for Muslims, for example in Kashmirian texts, such as the various Rajatarangini-s. Mleccha seems to have a similarly restricted origin, later widened to mean all 'Barbarians', to use the Greek ethnocentric term. Another term is, e.g., the 19th cent. Nepalese use of GoraNDa for 'the foreign traders on boats, the British'. Adopted from words for tribes, such as MuruNDa, etc. All such developments are also known from outside the subcontinent (Farinj < Franks, Kafir/Kaffer, etc.), not our topic here. =========== Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From jwalse01 at EMERALD.TUFTS.EDU Tue Mar 21 14:14:12 2000 From: jwalse01 at EMERALD.TUFTS.EDU (Joseph Walser) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 09:14:12 -0500 Subject: Asvamedha in Kasmir/Gandhara In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227057258.23782.4898571841328638958.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear All, I am looking for any mention (either in an inscription or in literature) of the aSvamedha sacrifice being performed in North India and/or the Kasmir/Gandhara region. I am particularly interested in the second and third centuries. As I have just started to look, I was wondering if someone out there could point me toward some good sources for this material. Thanks in advance, Joseph Joseph Walser Department of Comparative Religion Tufts University Medford, MA 02155 Ph#: (617) 627-2322 fax: (617) 627-3191 From Ursula.Graefe at T-ONLINE.DE Tue Mar 21 08:16:51 2000 From: Ursula.Graefe at T-ONLINE.DE (Graefe) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 09:16:51 +0100 Subject: Angavastram Message-ID: <161227057244.23782.7879944135341998954.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear list members, would anybody know what kind of garment an *angavastram* is? Thank you very much Ursula Graefe From gargsam at HOTMAIL.COM Tue Mar 21 15:35:42 2000 From: gargsam at HOTMAIL.COM (Sam Garg) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 10:35:42 -0500 Subject: Comparative linguistics Message-ID: <161227057260.23782.4804948540362047686.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Thank you for clarifying. Your credentials certainly are impeccable. Contrary to the tone of my post, I did not intend any disrespect towards you and do admire/ respect every scholar on this list. My objection is based on your insistence, as evidenced from your posts of the last few days, that comparative ligusitics is/ must be/ should be the final arbiter of things Indological. Here is a brief background which will serve as my rationale for my objection. Born in India and living in Canada for the last 25 years, I've fed my passion for Indology by reading every available history/ analysis book or article on India (ancient, medieval and modern). In order to get answers on some key 'open' issues, I brought myself up to date on the histories of Sri Lanka, Iran, Iraq, the Gulf area, Middle East, Turkey and Europe. Unfortunately, most of those questions remain unanswered. Comparative lingusitics has had over two centuries to prove their Indological models but have been unable to do so. How much more time will be needed? In the meanwhile, we amateur Indologists (here I speak only for my own group) have become increasingly sceptical of 'classic' interpretations of Indian history. I do not use the word 'classic' pejoratively as I have no political axe to grind and have only recently become aware of the 'paradigm shift movement' 2 months ago. Since it is we 'amateurs' who, in turn, actually disseminate this down to the 'masses', this scepticism will also be pushed down. It is then that Comparative lingusitics risks becoming irrelevant. Sanjay >From: Robert Zydenbos >Reply-To: Indology >To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK >Subject: Re: Comparative linguistics >Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2000 21:48:51 +0100 > >Am Sun, 19 Mar 2000 schrieb Sam Garg: > > > BTW, would you also not classify as an 'amateur Indologist'? I presume >you > > are NOT a PhD in Indology? > > > > Sanjay > >Just for your information, because you asked: no, I am a D.Litt. As for >professionalism, I have taught Indological subjects at universities on >three >continents, including the University of Madras. > >-- > >Dr. Robert J. Zydenbos ( <-- maybe I should add this more often) ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM Tue Mar 21 18:56:48 2000 From: smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM (Swaminathan Madhuresan) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 10:56:48 -0800 Subject: Comparative linguistics Message-ID: <161227057265.23782.14035588709944594114.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > Since it is we 'amateurs' who, in turn, > actually disseminate this down to the 'masses', this scepticism will also be > pushed down. It is then that Comparative lingusitics risks becoming > irrelevant. Isn't the position of out-of-India model too that linguistics is irrelevant? __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From selwyn at DTN.NTL.COM Tue Mar 21 11:42:37 2000 From: selwyn at DTN.NTL.COM (L.S.Cousins) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 11:42:37 +0000 Subject: Dates of the written Rgveda In-Reply-To: <38D6E655.BFC8B083@safarmer.com> Message-ID: <161227057250.23782.4412215300507508339.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dr. Farmer wrote: > > There are what appear to be references to writing in the Pali >> scriptures -- same as references in Manusmrti. I know that ways >> exist to discount such citations, just as in the case of >> references to script in Panini. But at a minimum the prima facie >> evidence has to be dealt with, I'd think. E.g., in Nighanikaya 27.23, > > we read: As was mentioned at an earlier point in these discussions, Pali evidence as to writing has been dealt with in detail in: Hin?ber, Oskar von, _Der Beginn der Schrift und fruhe Schriftlichkeit in Indien_, Abhandlungen der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse / Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur ; Jahrg.1989/Nr.11, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz, 1990?, 3515056270 . As to the passage in the _Agga??a-sutta_ (D III 94), there is no need to be concerned here with the date of that. Gantha (in this sense) is a rather rare word. It does not occur at all elsewhere in the first four Nikaayas. It does occur in the Vinaya and Suttanipaata once each and it is clear from the passages in question that it means something like 'composition' i.e. it does not in the early period imply something written down. The passages are: Vinaya-pi.taka IV 15: anaapatti ekato uddisaapento, ekato sajjhaaya.m karonto, yebhuyyena pagu.na.m gantha.m (Ee gandha.m) bha.nanta.m opaateti, osaarenta.m opaateti, ummattakassa, aadikammikassaa ti. (I.B. Horner, _Book of the Discipline, Part 2, p. 193, translates: 'There is no offence in making (him) recite it together, in studying it together, if while speaking he drops a phrase usually familiar, if he drops it while expounding, if he is mad, if he is the first wrong-doer.') There are perhaps problems with some parts of this rendering, but it is in any case clear that a gantha is something you say and in which you become proficient. Sutta-nipaata v. 303f. = 306f.: braahma.naa te tattha mante ganthetvaa, Okkaaka.m tadupaagamu.m. (Norman translates: 'Having composed hymns for this purpose, they went up to Okkaaka again.') Here we see the verb gantheti lit. 'to tie' or 'string together', but in this usage 'to compose'. The transition from '(oral) composition' to '(written) book' is of course a very natural one. One mention also in a very late portion of the Canon: Apadaana II 503: <205> Na ciren' eva kaalena sabbasattavisaarado nipu.no Buddhavacane ahosi.m gu.nisammato. || <206> Tadaa catasso gaathaayo ganthayitvaa subya?janaa, santhavitvaa tilokagga.m desayissa.m dine dine. || Here the reference is to composing (ganthayitvaa) four stanzas. More generally, similar discussions of orality and oral literature arise for Pali too. See the bibliography to: Allon, Mark, _Style and Function. A study of the dominant stylistic features of the prose portions of P?li canonical sutta texts and their mnemonic function_, Studia Philologica Buddhica. Monograph Series XII, The International Institute for Buddhist Studies, Tokyo, 1997, 4-906267-40-8 . According to Sinhalese works (extant from the late third or early fourth century onwards) the Pali Canon was first put into writing in Ceylon in the first century B.C. (after an invasion and famine). This used to be thought rather early, but has gained credence from the recent discoveries of written texts from the area of modern Afghanistan. These belong to the parallel Canon of another Buddhist school and appear to date to the first century A.D. This would not preclude the use of some written texts earlier than this. Probably some of the verse texts of the Khuddaka-nikaaya existed in written form at an earlier date. Some too of the latest Canonical works (whose canonical status was disputed in early times) may have been added a little later. None of this invalidates the basic facts of the case. The major part of the Canon existed first of all (and for some time) in an oral form without being written down and this was almost certainly initially in a period when writing was unknown in the Gangetic area. I am uncertain whether the Vedas can really only have been written down as late as the end of the first millennium A.D. and would not be surprised if evidence for a somewhat earlier date should eventually surface. In any case not much hangs upon this. I would have thought that even 300 years of accurate oral preservation is quite remarkable enough. For the .Rgveda we can certainly be sure of a much longer time-span than that. Lance Cousins -- OXFORD, UK CURRENT EMAIL ADDRESSES: L.S.Cousins at nessie.mcc.ac.uk or selwyn at dtn.ntl.com From steiner at MAILER.UNI-MARBURG.DE Tue Mar 21 11:17:24 2000 From: steiner at MAILER.UNI-MARBURG.DE (Roland Steiner) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 12:17:24 +0100 Subject: Obituary: Dr S. Sharma Peri Message-ID: <161227057246.23782.7032288816570261214.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The members of the Department of Indology, University of Marburg, Germany, are extremely sorry to report the passing away of Dr. Sarveswara Sharma Peri on March 17, 2000 (born May 15, 1926). From 1964 until his retirement in 1991 he was a "Lektor" in the department teaching Hindi, Telugu and Sanskrit. Those who knew him will recall very well his recitation skill in Sanskrit which he so readily and enjoyably displayed. In everything he did the traditional Sanskrit training combined with philological methodology in the tradition of his teacher Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Rau (1922-1999) was also evident, especially for the areas in which he has come to be a renowned specialist: Sanskrit grammar, particularly Bhart.rhari, and Indian astrology. He was himself even a poet having recently published his autobiographical poem Madv.rttaanta.h - katham atha ca me jarmaniide"savaasa.h in the difficult Mandaakraantaa metre which he so much liked. His death comes after a long struggle with heart problems. The department will always remember him as a congenial and pleasant teacher and colleague. From venkatraman_iyer at HOTMAIL.COM Tue Mar 21 22:38:05 2000 From: venkatraman_iyer at HOTMAIL.COM (Venkatraman Iyer) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 14:38:05 -0800 Subject: on zankara's date - 2 Message-ID: <161227057274.23782.3922004050678206555.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> << We have two other stories about zaGkara modeled after the stories of Tamil zaiva saints. The story of ziva appearing as an outcaste accompanied by the four vedas as dogs seems to be based on the story of cOmAci mARa nAyan2Ar as described in the Sanskrit works mucukundasahasranAmam and zivabhaktavilAsa. For a discussion of the nAyan2Ar's story, see "The Tyagaraja Cult in Tamilnadu" by Rajeshwari Ghose, 1996, pp.173-174. Another story is that of zaGkara, in response to a challenge from maNDan2a mizra's wife, leaving his body and entering the body of a king and having sex with the queen. This seems to be modeled after the story of tirumUlar in periyapurANam, albeit with some very crucial differences. Seeing the distress of some cows when the cowherd, mUlan2, died, the yogi who will be later called tirumUlar left his body and entered the cowherd's body. But, when the cowherd's wife came to touch him, he refused to be touched by her and said to her that he was not in any way related to her. Of course, we also have zaGkara being associated with dakSiNAmUrti. >> Earlier, I gave another instance where Sankaran hagiography reworks old themes from Tamil lit.: Begin Quote: >This sort of imagery seems to recur in Indian poetry. In the >Sankaravijaya texts, Sankara identifies Mandana Misra's house as >the one where the parrots are debating the theories of svata.h >pramANa and parata.h pramANa. The imagery of parrots speaking in a 'hidden' language is real old. Even their name, ki.li/ki.l.lai is related to speech (ki.lavi/ki.lattal). CT perumpaa.naa.r.ruppa.tai mentions parrots singing vedas at Brahmins' homes - "va.lai vaayk ki.l.lai ma.rai vi.li payi.r.rum ma.rai kaappaa.lar u.rai pati ceeppi_n". Two examples close in time to Sankaravijaya texts. "ta.n taar meyk ki.lik kuu.t.tam caa_n.roorka.l urai payi.r.ra" - villi p. "tii vi_nai anta.naa.lar ci.raar payil teyva veetam naa uru ee.r.rak kee.t.tuk ki.lika.loo navilum vee.r.rup puuvaiyum payi_n.ru puttee.l ulaku u.rai putu mantaarak kaa u.rai ki.lika.tku ellaam kaca.ta.rap payi.r.ru ma_n_noo" -tiruvi.lai. End Quote. The Madurai 'sangapalaka' legend briefly mentioned in the late text is likely to come from Srivaishnavism very prevalent in Satyamangalam. More on this later. Regards, V. Iyer ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From gargsam at HOTMAIL.COM Tue Mar 21 19:48:05 2000 From: gargsam at HOTMAIL.COM (Sam Garg) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 14:48:05 -0500 Subject: Comparative linguistics Message-ID: <161227057267.23782.17011892589315044169.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >?From my limited exposure to the out-of-India model, it certainly appears that way. My own feeling is that it would be folly to replace a model, however incomplete, with another model which is new and lacks sufficient and positive evidence. Having said this, your question would be better answered by someone more familiar with the out of India model. My own exposure to the 'out of India' model has only come via the Web over the past two months (hence, my subscription to this list). Over the balance of my 20 years of reading Indology related material, I had not encountered it even once in print. Sanjay >From: Swaminathan Madhuresan >Reply-To: Indology >To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK >Subject: Re: Comparative linguistics >Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 10:56:48 -0800 > > > Since it is we 'amateurs' who, in turn, > > actually disseminate this down to the 'masses', this scepticism will >also be > > pushed down. It is then that Comparative lingusitics risks becoming > > irrelevant. > > Isn't the position of out-of-India model too that linguistics is >irrelevant? > > > >__________________________________________________ >Do You Yahoo!? >Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. >http://im.yahoo.com ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From kekai at JPS.NET Tue Mar 21 23:13:48 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 15:13:48 -0800 Subject: Asko Parpola on Todas, any comments ? Message-ID: <161227057215.23782.11638029582920388611.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Raveen Satkurunathan wrote: >, and the physical features of the Todas as well as their > >polyandric marriage system also point to Iranians. Did Iranians practice polyandry? Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Tue Mar 21 20:16:12 2000 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 15:16:12 -0500 Subject: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga Message-ID: <161227057269.23782.6229020665063151004.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 3/17/2000 11:22:37 PM Central Standard Time, reimann at UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU writes: > >> then the position of the solstice is the only > >> discordant note, > > > >but a consequential one, especially in a manual of astronomy. > > But this, again, is Pingree's point about accuracy: even though it is a > manual on astronomy it has crude calculations for the intercalation cycle, > so why not on other matters? > I have an interesting scenario. The CT text paripATal has some interesting astronomical information, even though the text is not an astronomical text. In this century (20th), it has been translated into Sanskrit. Assuming the Tamil tradition is totally lost and replaced with Hindi/Sanskrit, won't a future researcher a la Elst and Kak looking at the Sanskrit translation of paripATal say that the text was produced 1500+ years earlier based on the astronomical information? On the other hand, won't a traditional Indologist looking at the features of the language use say that it is a much later text (assuming the Sanskrit used in the 20th century text is different from an older text)? Is such a scenario possible w.r.t Vedanga JyotiSha? Regards S. Palaniappan From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Tue Mar 21 20:47:59 2000 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 15:47:59 -0500 Subject: Thirukkural and Buddhism Message-ID: <161227057272.23782.2578343242791056870.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Sat, 18 Mar 2000 13:04:15 -0700, Yashwant Malaiya wrote: <> One cannot be that certain. There is an important philosophical difference. It has to do with the concept indicated by the Tamil word "Uz" dealt with in the verses 371-380 by vaLLuvar. Dr. R. Vijayalakshmi has shown that it is not the equivalent of karma as found in Jainism or Buddhism. Rather, it is equivalent to niyati (destiny or fate) as expounded by Ajivikas. (See "tamizakattil AcIvakarkaL" by Dr. R. Vijayalakshmi, 1988, International Institute of Tamil Studies, Madras-600113) It is difficult to neatly categorize tiruvaLLuvar as an adherent of any particular religion. Regards S. Palaniappan Yashwant From utkragh at HUM.KU.DK Tue Mar 21 17:44:01 2000 From: utkragh at HUM.KU.DK (Ulrich T. Kragh) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 18:44:01 +0100 Subject: Sv: Re: Muktinath Message-ID: <161227057262.23782.14810369090594803522.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> There exists a very fine article in English on the Buddhist sites at Muktinath and its vicinity in the Himalayan journal "Kailash". Unfortunately, I do not have a copy at hand and I cannot recall its title, date or author. If needed, email me off-list and I can try to get the reference. With best regards, Ulrich T. Kragh University of Copenhagen Email utkragh at hum.ku.dk -----Oprindelig meddelelse----- Fra: john grimes Til: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Dato: 17. marts 2000 12:18 Emne: Re: Muktinath >Can anyone provide some references for Muktinath in Nepal? I have a student >who is doing an Independent Study project and asked for such. Any >suggestions? >Thanks, >John Grimes >MSU > From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Wed Mar 22 01:42:49 2000 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 20:42:49 -0500 Subject: on zankara's date - 2 Message-ID: <161227057277.23782.13794230571180703764.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 3/20/2000 8:06:31 PM Central Standard Time, vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM writes: > Hagiography is very fluid, and there are some standard themes that recur. > For example, Dattatreya is always depicted with four dogs, representing the > four Vedas. And Siva often appears in the most surprising places, and often > subverts the assumptions of the social order. While the different elements may indeed occur in separate myths, it is in comAcimARar's story we first have the combination of ziva as an outcaste with four vedas as dogs. The comAcimARar story is linked to tiruvArUr. It is ziva from tiruvArUr who goes as the outcaste to the saint's soma ceremony. tiruvArUr is the place of ajapA dance of ziva. To quote Ghose, "It is thus in the tirumantiram that for the first time acapai is equated with mantrazastra and the dance of ziva and thus, provides the iconology of tyAgarAja." > > Re: entering a dead person's body (parakAyapraveZa), this is a Yogic > accomplishment mentioned in Patanjali's Yogasutra, definitely a pre-Sankaran > text. However, in all the Skt. hagiographies on Sankara, this legend is > invariably linked with a reference to Matsyendranatha and Gorakshanatha, > revealing a rather Hathayogic background to how and why Sankara is also > claimed to have demonstrated his ability to enliven another person's dead > body. "The tirumantiram, says Zvelebil "contains in nuce all or almost all the typical features of the Tamil Siddha movement." The Third Tantra deals with eight aGgas of Yoga and closely follows pataJjali's yogasUtras II.29. He also deals with the eight great powers or mahAcitti (mahA siddhi). He asserts the importance of the human body to achieve all this. The body is the means to salvation, flawless and fully disciplined. For this, he takes recourse to haThayoga." It was tirumUlar's tirumantiram which for the first time in Tamil literature made the figure of 51 denote the fifty-one letters of the Sanskrit alphabet. Much later we find kAmakalAvilAsa of the zrIvidya school equating the fifty-one letters with zrIcakra. I think it will be worthwhile to investigate the links between the tirumantiram tradition and zaGkaran traditions and also to see if tiruvArUr area had any specific role in the zaGkaran traditions. Regards S. Palaniappan From koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE Tue Mar 21 20:20:40 2000 From: koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE (Koenraad Elst) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 21:20:40 +0100 Subject: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga Message-ID: <161227057270.23782.12087473784497634878.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Yours sincerely, Koenraad Elst http://members.xoom.com/KoenraadElst/ ----- Oorspronkelijk bericht ----- Van: Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan Aan: Verzonden: dinsdag 21 maart 2000 21:16 Onderwerp: Re: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga > In a message dated 3/17/2000 11:22:37 PM Central Standard Time, > reimann at UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU writes: > > > >> then the position of the solstice is the only > > >> discordant note, > > > > > >but a consequential one, especially in a manual of astronomy. > > > > But this, again, is Pingree's point about accuracy: even though it is a > > manual on astronomy it has crude calculations for the intercalation cycle, > > so why not on other matters? > > > > I have an interesting scenario. The CT text paripATal has some interesting > astronomical information, even though the text is not an astronomical text. > In this century (20th), it has been translated into Sanskrit. Assuming the > Tamil tradition is totally lost and replaced with Hindi/Sanskrit, won't a > future researcher a la Elst and Kak looking at the Sanskrit translation of > paripATal say that the text was produced 1500+ years earlier based on the > astronomical information? On the other hand, won't a traditional Indologist > looking at the features of the language use say that it is a much later text > (assuming the Sanskrit used in the 20th century text is different from an > older text)? Is such a scenario possible w.r.t Vedanga JyotiSha? > > Regards > S. Palaniappan > From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Wed Mar 22 06:31:26 2000 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 22:31:26 -0800 Subject: on zankara's date - 2 Message-ID: <161227057281.23782.7146487188185279393.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > > Notwithstanding Hacker's conclusion about Sankara's Vaishnava > > identity, I think from the earliest times, there was a substantial > > >Saiva component among those who followed Sankara's teachings. > > Perhaps this is also consistent with the fact that it was most > > often the Vaishnavas who offered other interpretations of the > > Vedantasutras in post-Sankaran times. > >Vidya, > > It seems to me you're overlooking a phenomenon such >as the Bhagavatapurana which in its philosophical >position, is known to be closer to advaita than >anything non-Sankaran. Not really. I don't claim that Sankara's followers were exclusively Saivas. I don't doubt that Vaishnava groups also got influenced by Sankaran Advaita. All I'm saying is that there must have been a significant Saiva orientation even among Sankara's direct disciples. My real criticism of Hacker in this regard is that it is impossible to identify Sankara himself or his disciples as being either Saiva or Vaishnava. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Wed Mar 22 06:45:10 2000 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 22:45:10 -0800 Subject: Mahabharata question Message-ID: <161227057284.23782.18337406804189583922.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Thanks to Profs. von Simson and Hiltebeitel for their responses. My query was provoked by reading a recent attempt to date the Mbh war on astronomical grounds. The author claims that the episode where Krishna made the sun disappear for a while, so that Arjuna could kill Jayadratha, is a reference to a solar eclipse. Apparently, no one else knew that there was going to be an eclipse that day. However, as a solar eclipse can happen only on a new moon day, and as the war started on a new moon day, this seems totally impossible. Unless, of course, the war lasted for more than 30 days... Another example of a false application of science. Sadly, the said author is a reasonably well-known scientist himself. He also places the composition of the Rgveda somewhere in Turkey, but puts its date around 7000 BCE, based on astronomical information. So I don't think he is going to be well-received by anybody involved in the debate on Indo-Aryan origins. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From zydenbos at GMX.LI Tue Mar 21 22:07:39 2000 From: zydenbos at GMX.LI (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 00 23:07:39 +0100 Subject: Comparative linguistics In-Reply-To: <20000321153543.47742.qmail@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <161227057387.23782.3443353731669722390.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Am Tue, 21 Mar 2000 schrieb Sam Garg: > My objection is based on your insistence, as evidenced from your posts of > the last few days, that comparative ligusitics is/ must be/ should be the > final arbiter of things Indological. If that was your impression from my posts, then it is very unfortunate, since I do not believe that myself. (Meanwhile, on Monday, I posted a rather more lengthy bit of writing addressed primarily to Mr Oka, and I hope this has clarified still more.) You must know that Indology is largely, but not only philology, and that philology is not only linguistics. While it is sympathetic, on the one hand, to have this list open for all interested persons, it is rather sad, on the other, that the list owner on repeated occasions has to write policy statements like in the "Horse & BMAC" thread (in spite of his having already written something clearly enough on the Indology Web Page, where everybody should be able to see it) about things that everybody should know before they enter here. It should not be necessary for me to give my recent example of the talking potshard to prove that philology is superior to archaeology (leave aside other disciplines) in understanding history. Similarly, it should not be necessary for Prof. Witzel, in the Jyotisa Vedanga thread, to give such simple examples of the use of linguistics in dating. But when the dilettantism becomes very irritating or insulting, one feels like talking back, and sometimes one has little patience left. > I brought myself up to date on the histories of Sri > Lanka, Iran, Iraq, the Gulf area, Middle East, Turkey and Europe. [...] > Unfortunately, most of those questions remain unanswered. Comparative > lingusitics has had over two centuries to prove their Indological models but > have been unable to do so. How much more time will be needed? But are your questions such that linguistics can legitimately answer, i.e., are they *linguistic* questions? And, however unpleasant it may sound, we have to face the possibility that some questions cannot be decisively answered. Or indeed, maybe more time is needed. It is hard to draw up time plans for when which discoveries will be made! > In the meanwhile, we amateur Indologists (here I speak only for my own > group) have become increasingly sceptical of 'classic' interpretations of > Indian history. There is of course such a thing as healthy scepticism. The professionals repeatedly find good reasons for doubting earlier theories, and so they dig deeper, find out more, etc. (this is called 'progress'. Many lay critics, also on this list, for some reason believe that the human sciences are stagnant and rigid. Cf. all the noise that is regularly made about people who wrote over a century ago). But much recent dilettantish criticism is rooted in being uninformed about what has already been done and / or is ideologically based: one already 'knows' what the answers 'should' be, and if mainstream academics do not lend their support, then those academics 'must be wrong' and are maligned in any (un)thinkable manner. RZ From lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM Wed Mar 22 10:03:57 2000 From: lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM (Lakshmi Srinivas) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 02:03:57 -0800 Subject: on zankara's date - 2 Message-ID: <161227057291.23782.16689718545940236169.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> --- Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote: > Not really. I don't claim that Sankara's followers > were exclusively Saivas. > I don't doubt that Vaishnava groups also got > influenced by Sankaran Advaita. Yes of course. I was trying to distinguish between advaitin's and pancharatrin's as two distinct groups of vaishnavas, among others. > All I'm saying is that there must have been a > significant Saiva orientation > even among Sankara's direct disciples. Even assuming this is true, it is surprising to me that there seems to have been no major doctrinal attempt to bridge the distance between advaita and the emotional siva bhakti of the nAyanmAr's. From the time of Sankara to the end of Rajendra I, the Chola emperor, is I guess about 250 years. Thanks and Warm Regards, LS __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM Wed Mar 22 13:41:49 2000 From: smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM (Swaminathan Madhuresan) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 05:41:49 -0800 Subject: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga Message-ID: <161227057298.23782.3158717686349495538.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> --- Dr. Michael Witzel wrote: > This is not the only case where older astronomical observations have been > mentioned in a much later text. Note the case recently discussed by > N.Achar and me in EJVS 5.2 http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs where an > astronomical observation, of the equinox in KRttikA (3rd mill.BCE), has > been mentioned in the clearly Iron Age, slightly pre-Buddhist, pre-Magadha > realm text, the Satapatha Brahmana. Much has been made of that, but one can > by no means date the SB in the 3rd mill. BCE. The equinox in KRttikA (3rd mill. BCE) is discussed in Parpola's book well. The later tamil texts, MaNimEkalai (5th cent.?) and TEvAram (7th century) also state that KRttikA is the first nakshatram just as in Krishna YV. No one argues for dating T. or M. in 3rd millennium BCE! > assuming the Sanskrit used in the 20th century text...." > -- Well, we are in the 21st now... We go straight from c. 1 B.C. to c. 1 A.D. No 0 B.C/A.D in between. Then 2000 A.D. is 20th century. Regards, SM __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM Wed Mar 22 13:43:36 2000 From: smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM (Swaminathan Madhuresan) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 05:43:36 -0800 Subject: kumArila question Message-ID: <161227057300.23782.6429047113804089999.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I saw in the web that kumArila bhaTTa includes Telugu as drAviDa-bhAsha. Is this so or not? Thanks for the answer, SM __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM Wed Mar 22 15:25:34 2000 From: smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM (Swaminathan Madhuresan) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 07:25:34 -0800 Subject: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga Message-ID: <161227057313.23782.14849919931581208274.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> --- Koenraad Elst wrote: > Anyway, the theory that the IVC and its astronomy were Dravidian is now > being abandoned even by prominent opponents of any "Vedic Harappa" theory, > who have installed "para-Munda" and "language X" in its place. Prof. Witzel's hypothesis of making Munda as the high language of IVC will be contended by Dravidologists in the future. Many unanswered questions and problems in that. Dravidian linguistics and philology are nascent fields, not any Professorships at all! Academic dravidology is miniscule compared to well entrenched IA/IE studies. Foll. Prof. Parpola, what about the Fish symbol as Star in IVC? Also, how to explain Retroflexion in IVC and later? Regards, SM __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Wed Mar 22 12:52:48 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 07:52:48 -0500 Subject: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga In-Reply-To: <38.3938a2f.2609328c@aol.com> Message-ID: <161227057295.23782.3939596011774113067.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> S. Palaniappan: >I have an interesting scenario. The CT text paripATal has some interesting >astronomical information, even though the text is not an astronomical text. >In this century (20th), it has been translated into Sanskrit. Assuming the >Tamil tradition is totally lost and replaced with Hindi/Sanskrit, won't a >future researcher a la Elst and Kak looking at the Sanskrit translation of >paripATal say that the text was produced 1500+ years earlier based on the >astronomical information? On the other hand, won't a traditional Indologist >looking at the features of the language use say that it is a much later text >(assuming the Sanskrit used in the 20th century text is different from an >older text)? Is such a scenario possible w.r.t Vedanga JyotiSha? Interesting, as a thought experiment, but not likely in *this* very fashion: 1. The Jyotisa Vedanga is composed, as has already been said by several members, in post_Vedic language. For example, there are long compound nouns, or compounds with tat- as first part, or space fillers in meter such as: tu, caiva, tathaa, tathaiva ca, eva ca, api ca. Most interestingly, "Vedic" vai occurs once, but not as usual, in slot no. 2 in a sentence or Paada but at the end of a Paada: indro nirRtir Apo vai / vizve devAs tathaiva ca / (note: eva ca!). As I have noticed some years ago (unpublished), this is precisely a feature of LATE Epic. In both texts, Mbh. and Ram., c. 13% of all cases of vai have this characteristic: they occur at the end. And are most common in Mahabharata 12, Ramayana 1 and 7. . Which provides an interesting time frame for the COMPOSER of the Jyotisa (and vice versa). 2. We can add: The text is composed in Epic Shloka meter which is not exactly a Vedic one (though we have the Vedic Anustubh). Now, its is a well known fact that you cannot change arround or modernize sentences as easily in verse as you can in prose. Note the famous case (Lueders) of the old, eastern forms in stanzas of the Pali canon. In the present case, the 'empty' words such as tu, vai, eva ca etc. clearly belong to the verses they stand it, since their very function is to fill gaps in the meter that the "real text' does not cover. Common in Epic as well. In short, the present Jyotisa text is an *'Epic time'/style composition.* Not a translation, to follow the experiment presented above by S.Palaniappan. Note that even the section mentioning Vedic gods, (including even the very rare, typically Rgvedic Ahir Budhnya), has these late features: tathaiva ca, eva ca. Someone put them together in an Epic line... 3. Add now the facts produced already by Luis Gonzalez-Reimann (on 3/17) and you have an "Epic"production, whatever the time of the original observations of the stars may have been. Cf. L. Gonzalez-Reimann's 2nd msg: the "astronomical knowledge is the same one reflected in the GargasamhitA; the language used; etc. And Garga's text has been dated on several grounds, including the fact that the Yuga Purana (which is part of it) was convincingly dated by Mitchiner (p.82) to the end of the last century BCE" This is not the only case where older astronomical observations have been mentioned in a much later text. Note the case recently discussed by N.Achar and me in EJVS 5.2 http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs where an astronomical observation, of the equinox in KRttikA (3rd mill.BCE), has been mentioned in the clearly Iron Age, slightly pre-Buddhist, pre-Magadha realm text, the Satapatha Brahmana. Much has been made of that, but one can by no means date the SB in the 3rd mill. BCE. It simply is a reminiscence, as is the mentioning of Ursa Maior as RkSAH "the bears", while they are of course usually called sapta rSAyaH. Now, the "bears" are an old Indo_European expression (Greek, Latin, etc.), but they still occur ONCE in the Rgveda , and they clearly are remembered here -- as SB says: "formerly called", in the SAME section that deals with the Krttika equinox. (This fact is never mentioned in the discussions!!) Note also the interesting slip, we *all* still make every day, and for some time to come, see above: "In this century (20th), it has been translated into Sanskrit .... assuming the Sanskrit used in the 20th century text...." -- Well, we are in the 21st now... In short, in these 3 cases you have a remembrance of some older traditions, "written up", I mean composed, by a later author, and -- that all, folks! =========== Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From pfilliozat at MAGIC.FR Wed Mar 22 07:49:19 2000 From: pfilliozat at MAGIC.FR (Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 08:49:19 +0100 Subject: Query on a myth of "Siva killing a shark Message-ID: <161227057287.23782.11985598810325898249.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Member, In the Shaiva mythology what I have read is that Shiva takes the form of a "Hamsa" Indian swan to kill the Fish. This fish was none else but VisNu in Matsyaavataara. With this regard, in the temple of Ekaa,breshvara at Kancipuram there is a sculpture of a Hamsa with trident and Damaru holding a fish in its beak. This fish is adorned with Shankha and Cakra. Tyhe story you have related is really interesting. Vasundhara Filliozat -----Original Message----- From: Nobumi Iyanaga To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK Date: Wednesday, March 22, 2000 5:02 AM Subject: Query on a myth of "Siva killing a shark >Dear List Members, > >I have a question on the source of a "Saiva myth I found in a Japanese >book. It is the Japanese translation of Veronica Ions, Indian Mythology, >London: The Hamlyn Publishing Group, 1973, 1983 (translated by Sakai >Denroku, Tokyo, Seido-sha, 1990, p. 212). > >I retranslate it from Japanese: > > One day, when "Siva was reading the inscriptions in a loud voice > and explaining them to Paarvatii, he discovered that she was > sleeping. He reprimanded her for being not attentive to such > important things. She then replied that she was not sleeping, but > only closing her eyes to listen better to her husband. He asked > her about what was explained, and she could not answer. He cursed > her to fall from Kailaasa and become a human fisher-woman as > punishment for her inattention and lie. > > "Siva became alone on the Kailaasa mountain and tried to meditate. > But he discovered that his concentration was disturbed by his > thoughts of Paarvatii. However, he had to wait sometime to obtain > her again. He first sent his servant Nandin to the human world > after transforming him as a shark. The shark teared the nets of > fishers (among whom was Paarvatii) and plagued them. As the shark > became the biggest trouble of the population of the coast, people > decided to give the most beautiful girl as bride -- that is Paarvatii > -- to the man who would subjugate it. Hearing of that > offer, "Siva, transforming himself as a human fisherman, went to > the village where lived Paarvatii and subjugated the shark. Thus, > he married her, and they went back to their Kailaasa palace. > >Could anyone be so kind as to indicate me the source of this myth, and, if >the details are different from the original, let me know the differences? > >Thank you very much in advance! > >Best regards, > >Nobumi Iyanaga >Tokyo, >Japan > From mmdesh at UMICH.EDU Wed Mar 22 14:03:32 2000 From: mmdesh at UMICH.EDU (Madhav Deshpande) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 09:03:32 -0500 Subject: kumArila question In-Reply-To: <20000322134336.21772.qmail@web305.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <161227057302.23782.4387907195161693837.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The editions of Tantravaarttika that I have seen say dravi.daadibhaa.saa, but Kunjunni Raja refers to a manuscript which has the reading aandhra-dravi.daadibhaa.saa. So there is no clear evidence of specificity in Kumaarila. Madhav Deshpande On Wed, 22 Mar 2000, Swaminathan Madhuresan wrote: > I saw in the web that kumArila bhaTTa includes Telugu as > drAviDa-bhAsha. Is this so or not? > > Thanks for the answer, > SM > > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. > http://im.yahoo.com > From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Wed Mar 22 14:40:00 2000 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 09:40:00 -0500 Subject: Query on a myth of "Siva killing a shark Message-ID: <161227057304.23782.1548710539896986026.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 3/22/2000 1:53:29 AM Central Standard Time, pfilliozat at MAGIC.FR writes: > Dear Member, > In the Shaiva mythology what I have read is that Shiva takes the form of a > "Hamsa" Indian swan to kill the Fish. This fish was none else but VisNu in > Matsyaavataara. > Wrong!!! The story is indeed part of the 64 "games" of ziva in Madurai described in the tiruviLaiyATal purANam versions. The details are essentially correct but left out are some interesting details regarding how ziva's sons murukan2 and piLLaiyAr (vinAyaka) get upset with ziva. So ziva curses murukan2 to be a deaf-mute child of a merchant who later judges which is the best commentary among the many ones on a grammar of tamil love poetry. For a discussion in English, see "Sacred Marriage of a Hindu Goddess", by William P. Harman, 1992, pp. 120-122. Regards S. Palaniappan From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Wed Mar 22 14:48:00 2000 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 09:48:00 -0500 Subject: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga Message-ID: <161227057307.23782.18006755339796191573.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 3/22/2000 7:43:12 AM Central Standard Time, smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM writes: > We go straight from c. 1 B.C. to c. 1 A.D. No 0 B.C/A.D in between. > Then 2000 A.D. is 20th century. > Precisely why I indicated we are in the 20th century in spite of all the hoopla. Regards S. Palaniappan From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Wed Mar 22 15:24:47 2000 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 10:24:47 -0500 Subject: kumArila question Message-ID: <161227057311.23782.3679295924506826849.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 3/22/2000 8:04:32 AM Central Standard Time, mmdesh at UMICH.EDU writes: > The editions of Tantravaarttika that I have seen say dravi.daadibhaa.saa, > but Kunjunni Raja refers to a manuscript which has the reading > aandhra-dravi.daadibhaa.saa. So there is no clear evidence of specificity > in Kumaarila. A. C. Burnell has used the reading Andhra drAviDAdi. In his book, "Dravidian Linguistics: An Introduction," talking of Caldwell, Zvelebil (pp. xxi) says, "He found it in a passage in the ancient Sanskrit savant's work, probably misread as Andhra drAviD(a) Adi instead of atha drAviD(a) Adi. The pertinent text in KumArila BhaTTa (7th century A.D.) begins tadyathA drAviDAdi bhASAyAm eva..." Zvelebil based his views on the printed text of the tantravArttika and the manuscript copy in the Telugu script used by Ganganatha Jha (the translator of the work) takes the reading to be tadyathA drAviDAdi. Regards S. Palaniappan From steiner at MAILER.UNI-MARBURG.DE Wed Mar 22 09:28:55 2000 From: steiner at MAILER.UNI-MARBURG.DE (Roland Steiner) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 10:28:55 +0100 Subject: (Fwd) Religion news - daily newsletter. Message-ID: <161227057289.23782.5488926903048849076.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> 0100,0100,0100------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: 0000,0000,8000Tue, 21 Mar 2000 14:02:21 -0500 (EST) To: 0000,0000,8000steiner at Mailer.Uni-Marburg.DE From: 0000,0000,8000"Religion news daily mailing list." <er.com> Subject: 0000,0000,8000Religion news - daily newsletter. Send reply to: 0000,0000,8000mailing_lists_automated_administrator at moreover.com 0000,8000,0000[ Double-click this line for list subscription options ] If this newsletter has been forwarded to you, and you wish to subscribe, simply send a blank e-mail to: mailto:on-index_religion_d at e.moreover.com ....................................................... 40 Sikhs shot in Kashmir massacre http://d.moreover.com/click/here.pl?e6174356 Evening Standard [snip] 40 Sikhs killed in Kashmir as Clinton begins state visit http://d.moreover.com/click/here.pl?e6172516 AP via New Jersey Online [snip] 36 Sikhs killed in Kashmir http://d.moreover.com/click/here.pl?e6172264 Independent [snip] 35 Sikhs shot in Kashmir http://d.moreover.com/click/here.pl?e6171679 Evening Standard 36 Sikhs killed in Kashmir as Clinton begins state visit http://d.moreover.com/click/here.pl?e6171600 AP via New Jersey Online ....................................................... 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Name: attachment.bin Type: text/enriched Size: 2101 bytes Desc: not available URL: From steiner at MAILER.UNI-MARBURG.DE Wed Mar 22 10:13:55 2000 From: steiner at MAILER.UNI-MARBURG.DE (Roland Steiner) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 11:13:55 +0100 Subject: Apologies [(Fwd) Religion news - daily newsletter] In-Reply-To: <200003220929.KAA47092@Mailer.Uni-Marburg.DE> Message-ID: <161227057293.23782.2380972138608804657.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> My apologies to the list for inadvertently sending a message [Subject: "(Fwd) Religion news - daily newsletter"] on the list. Roland Steiner -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: attachment.bin Type: text/enriched Size: 143 bytes Desc: not available URL: From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Wed Mar 22 16:29:24 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 11:29:24 -0500 Subject: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga In-Reply-To: <20000322134149.8469.qmail@web306.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <161227057321.23782.16844983971612119136.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> MW: >> assuming the Sanskrit used in the 20th century text...." >> -- Well, we are in the 21st now... Swaminathan Madhuresan: >We go straight from c. 1 B.C. to c. 1 A.D. No 0 B.C/A.D in between. >Then 2000 A.D. is 20th century. Nice point! However, discussed for a long time... and not in (common) people's mind. Who will celebrate the New Millennium next Jan 1st??? But again, it underlines with what kind of concepts we approach items of dating, calenders,retention of old(er) concepts, etc. etc. ========== Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs From n-iyanag at PPP.BEKKOAME.NE.JP Wed Mar 22 03:51:21 2000 From: n-iyanag at PPP.BEKKOAME.NE.JP (Nobumi Iyanaga) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 12:51:21 +0900 Subject: Query on a myth of "Siva killing a shark Message-ID: <161227057279.23782.1083224636336948416.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear List Members, I have a question on the source of a "Saiva myth I found in a Japanese book. It is the Japanese translation of Veronica Ions, Indian Mythology, London: The Hamlyn Publishing Group, 1973, 1983 (translated by Sakai Denroku, Tokyo, Seido-sha, 1990, p. 212). I retranslate it from Japanese: One day, when "Siva was reading the inscriptions in a loud voice and explaining them to Paarvatii, he discovered that she was sleeping. He reprimanded her for being not attentive to such important things. She then replied that she was not sleeping, but only closing her eyes to listen better to her husband. He asked her about what was explained, and she could not answer. He cursed her to fall from Kailaasa and become a human fisher-woman as punishment for her inattention and lie. "Siva became alone on the Kailaasa mountain and tried to meditate. But he discovered that his concentration was disturbed by his thoughts of Paarvatii. However, he had to wait sometime to obtain her again. He first sent his servant Nandin to the human world after transforming him as a shark. The shark teared the nets of fishers (among whom was Paarvatii) and plagued them. As the shark became the biggest trouble of the population of the coast, people decided to give the most beautiful girl as bride -- that is Paarvatii -- to the man who would subjugate it. Hearing of that offer, "Siva, transforming himself as a human fisherman, went to the village where lived Paarvatii and subjugated the shark. Thus, he married her, and they went back to their Kailaasa palace. Could anyone be so kind as to indicate me the source of this myth, and, if the details are different from the original, let me know the differences? Thank you very much in advance! Best regards, Nobumi Iyanaga Tokyo, Japan From koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE Wed Mar 22 14:22:55 2000 From: koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE (Koenraad Elst) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 15:22:55 +0100 Subject: Fw: Re: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga Message-ID: <161227057309.23782.15263412959406792739.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Oops, that last E-mail was this one without the contents. So here goes. Van: Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan dinsdag 21 maart 2000 21:16 wrote: > > The CT text paripATal has some interesting > > astronomical information, even though the text is not an astronomical > text. > > In this century (20th), it has been translated into Sanskrit. Assuming the > > Tamil tradition is totally lost and replaced with Hindi/Sanskrit, won't a > > future researcher a la Elst and Kak looking at the Sanskrit translation of > > paripATal say that the text was produced 1500+ years earlier based on the > > astronomical information? (..) Those who would say that the text was contentswise produced 1500 years earlier, would obviously be right. As for the translation from Dravidian to Sanskrit, I've heard that so many times now that i wonder why no supporter of that hypothesis ever gives compelling evidence from the ancient texts themselves proving that they are really translations from Dravidian. Why so little Dravidian in religious and astronomical Sanskrit terminology? Anyway, the theory that the IVC and its astronomy were Dravidian is now being abandoned even by prominent opponents of any "Vedic Harappa" theory, who have installed "para-Munda" and "language X" in its place. Thank you Prof. Witzel for detailing some reasons why the Vedanga Jyotisha most be "late-Epic" and at any rate post-Vedic. That fits very neatly in an over-all higher chronology which puts the Vedas themselves well before 1400 BC. As for the 1st millennium AD Tamil texts mentioning Krttika as the beginning of the lunar calendar: this is perfectly normal, as calendars once established tend to be preserved for ages (that is precisely their whole point: putting time on a permanent common denominator). The Chinese system of lunar asterisms started ca. 2400 BC with Krttika at the head, and retained that system for thousands of years, even when Krttika was no longer on the spring equinox. But that is a very different matter from the VJ, where the position of the solstices is given as such, not as a calendrical relic. K. Elst From g.v.simson at EAST.UIO.NO Wed Mar 22 16:05:12 2000 From: g.v.simson at EAST.UIO.NO (Georg von Simson) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 17:05:12 +0100 Subject: Mahabharata question In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227057318.23782.2445569862289986134.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Arthur Karp wrote: > Two other fragments of the text confirm, indirectly, the information about > the new moon day as the time for the beginning of the battle (as indicated > by KRSNa in Mbh. V.140.18: saptamAc cApi divasAd amAvAsyA bhaviSyati/ > saMgrAmaM yojayet tatra tAM hy AhuH zakradevatAm). They also seem to point to a solar eclipse, but not on the day of Jayadratha's death. > > Consider V.141.10: rAhur arkam upeSyati - "the Moon's node (rAhu) approaches > the Sun (arka)" (KarNa, right after KRSNA, seven days before the battle), and - > > VI.3.11: arkaM rAhus tathAgrasat - "also the Moon's node (RAhu) swallowed > (eclipsed) the Sun" (VyAsa, describing the situation sometime in the morning > hours of the first day of the battle, before the start of the hostilities). > > NB: At VI.3.11 the Bombay ed. has arkaM rahurupaiti ca, suggestive of an approaching eclipse. (I don't have the Calcutta ed. on hand.) I don't think we can use the last two passages you quote as evidence for the new moon day at the beginning of the battle. The poet here just collects all kind of sinister omens: meteors, hurricanes, earthquakes and all kind of queer movements of the planets - if you try to take this astronomically seriously, you will see that it doesn't work. This is not on the same level as the first quote (V.140.18). Best regards, Georg v. Simson -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: attachment.bin Type: text/enriched Size: 1442 bytes Desc: not available URL: From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Wed Mar 22 23:07:41 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 18:07:41 -0500 Subject: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga In-Reply-To: <004401bf940b$229b08c0$530fe0d5@pandora.be> Message-ID: <161227057337.23782.3709253718542397939.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> K.Elst: >... some reasons why the Vedanga Jyotisha >most be "late-Epic" and at any rate post-Vedic. That fits very neatly in an >over-all higher chronology which puts the Vedas themselves well before 1400 >BC. No, it does not. (a) see discussion by Pingree and Gonzalez-Reimann on this list. (b) the astronomical system --if indeed of 1400 BCE / cf the Krttika equinox of the 3rd mill.and your own note below-- can of course predate the texts by a long shot. We have been through this many times. Also on this list. Why always the link between text and 'astronomical content'? The Satapatha case clearly argues AGAINST such links. When I write here "today the sun rose at 6:30 a.m." would that make me pre-Copernican? Nope, since I wrote this sentence by computer... Old habits of speech, calendars, rituals, etc. die slow. >the 1st millennium AD Tamil texts mentioning Krttika as the beginning >of the lunar calendar:... calendars once >established tend to be preserved for ages ... The Chinese system >of lunar asterisms started ca. 2400 BC with Krttika at the head... ======================= ========================================================================== Michael Witzel Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies Harvard University www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs --------------------------------------------------------------------------- my direct line (also for messages) : 617- 496 2990 home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm From vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM Thu Mar 23 02:32:10 2000 From: vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 18:32:10 -0800 Subject: on zankara's date - 2 Message-ID: <161227057350.23782.4632771965011355161.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Being a Tamilian myself, I am highly intrigued by the parallels that keep cropping up between Sankara's hagiography and Tamil Saiva legends. However, I would like to err on the side of caution, as I think mythic themes have a way of rapidly travelling far. Take the case of Sankara's debate with Mandana Misra. The former is a monk, the latter is a householder. Sankara enters Mandana's home during an annual Sraaddha ritual, and they banter about for a while before entering into a serious philosophical debate. It all sounds highly Hindu/Brahminical, with a vivid description of the tension between ascetic and householder. Recently, I found from Robert Thurman's "The Central Philosophy of Tibet" that a very similar report is found in 16th c. Tibetan texts, about a debate between Aryadeva and mAtRceTa. Here too, an ascetic visits a householder's home during an annual Sraaddha ritual, and engage in similar banter before getting into a debate. >?From what I can make out from Thurman's account, even the quips about being shaven-headed and the rest of the word-play seem quite similar. I don't know if such a story is found in older Pali accounts. What is the direction of indebtedness? Has the late Tibetan author taken up an Indian Hindu theme and cast it into a Buddhist legend, or has the follower of Sankara taken a Tibetan Buddhist theme and given it a Vedantic spin on the householder vs. ascetic tension? Or is it that what is central to both accounts is precisely this tension, that is present in all Indian religions? I wonder if there is a similar story from some Jaina source, and I wouldn't be surprised to find one. The specific doctrinal aspects of these accounts could then be secondary, and we might want to point to a cultural aspect of Indian society. Similar things could be happening with other mythological themes too. Deriving geographical and historical information out of them is quite tricky. Venkataraman Iyer wrote: > The Madurai 'sangapalaka' legend briefly mentioned in the late text >is likely to come from Srivaishnavism very prevalent in Satyamangalam. >More on this later. > Intriguing. Do elaborate on the relationship between Srivaishnavism and the Madurai sanghapalaka reference. Satyamangalam is of course important in stories of Ramanuja's life also, but it is quite close to the TN-Karnataka border, not in Madurai. It is Veerappan land nowadays. Vidyasankar ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU Thu Mar 23 01:36:48 2000 From: malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU (Yashwant Malaiya) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 18:36:48 -0700 Subject: Thirukkural, Yavanas Message-ID: <161227057348.23782.15738890567738515713.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> 1. S. Palaniappan wrote: >It has to do with the concept indicated by the Tamil word >"Uz" dealt with in the verses 371-380 by vaLLuvar. Dr. R. >Vijayalakshmi has shown that it is not the equivalent of >karma as found in Jainism or Buddhism. Rather, it is equivalent >to niyati (destiny or fate) as expounded by Ajivikas. Kural takes multiple points of view. It praises ascetics in one place, householders in another. This is similar to paralaukika and laukika dharmas mentioned by Haribhadra Suri or Somadeva. That is quite consistant with anekanta. I am not aware of Ajivikas worshipping divinity walking on lotus, or with dharma-chakra at the feet of the deity. To consider that the Ajivikas were fatalistic would be an over-simplification. Manimekhalai presents the Ajivika teachings in brief. It suggests that they too believed in the principle of karma. Is there any other reason to think that Kural can be the work of an Ajivika? 2. Madhav Deshpande wrote: > na vadet yaavaniim bhaa.saam praa.nai.h ka.n.thagatair api / > gajair aapii.dyamaano 'pi na gacchej jainamandiram // >is found in the Bhavi.syapuraa.na, Pratisargaparvan, Adhyaaya 28, verse Is there a relationship between what is being said in the two lines? It remind me something that is completely unrelated to this verse. One Jain sect, that once existed near Konkan region was named Yaapaniiya in Sanskrit (jaavNiiya in Prakrit). I have wondered about the origin of the term. Incidentally some Buddhist donors mentioned in caves in maharashtra were Yavan. Vaishnavism must also have been popular among Indian Yavanas. Heliodorus, envoy of Antialcidas of Taxila, erected a Vaishnava column near Vidisha. If I remeber correctly the first representation of Lords Vasudeva and Balabhadra was on the coins issued by Antialcidas. There is a Gujarati Hindu community which is sometimes said to be a descendant of the Yavanas. However that appears to be wrong, they originated from the mountain regions near Punjab/Afghanistan border. Yashwant From harryspier at HOTMAIL.COM Thu Mar 23 01:22:45 2000 From: harryspier at HOTMAIL.COM (Harry Spier) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 20:22:45 -0500 Subject: Bibliographic information needed: Black Yajur Veda Message-ID: <161227057345.23782.2644231014738999677.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear list members, Can anybody help me with the following bibliographic information. 1) Reprint of A. Webers taittirIya saMhitA R.N. Dandekar in his forward to the reprint of the Sastri and Rangacharya edition says that Webers edition was reprinted in 1973 but I have been unable to locate any information about it. 2) TaittirIya saMhitA published by Vaidika saMzodhana maNDala of Poona, edited by N.S. and Dharmadhikari Sontakke. Does this edition still only contain three kANDas? If so, which three kANDas? 3) Printed editions of kAThaka, kapiSThala, and maitrAyaNI saMhitAs Winternitz in his History of Indian Literature mentions editions of the kAThaka (L. v. Schroeder 1900-1910) and the MaitrAyaNI (L. v. Schroeder 1881-1886). Have these editions been reprinted? Are there other printed editions of kAThaka, kapiSThala or maitrAyaNI saMhitAs? Many thanks in advance, Harry Spier 371 Brickman Rd. Hurleyville, New York USA 12747 ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From dsm at CYPRESS.COM Thu Mar 23 04:25:20 2000 From: dsm at CYPRESS.COM (Dinesh Maheshwari) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 20:25:20 -0800 Subject: Spread of Iron usage around 1000BCE? Message-ID: <161227057361.23782.16505438572705786881.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Listmembers, Leafing through the "Historical Atlas of the Ancient World - 4,000,000 to 500 BC" (1998, Andromeda Oxford Ltd, compiled by John Haywood with 18 academic advisors from the universities spread all over the world) during a leisurely diversion, I was struck by the map in section 1.05 which depicts the extent of iron working around 1000 BC to be limited to two isolated areas - 1. Contiguous land mass in north west India and Gangetic plains 2. . Contiguous land mass in the Near East and portions of mediterranean - comprised of the then Assyria, Babylonia, Urartu and some areas then inhabited by the Hittites, Phrygians, Thracians and Dorians (in a part of modern day Greece). My questions to the listmembers are - 1. Is the depiction correct as per the archaeological evidence till 1998 ? 2. Have there been any other archaeological discoveries since 1998 that would warrant a change in the afore-mentioned depiction ? If yes, how ? 3. If the depiction is correct then why is there no evidence of iron usage from the area in between the two regions ? Were'nt there migrations and/or trade between the two regions during the early iron age ? 4. And why is there not any evidence of iron usage from the areas north of the depicted areas from where the Aryans are supposed to have migrated to the depicted areas during the iron age ? Perhaps the questions above have already been answered before on the list; if yes then please accept my apologies for repeating them, but please help me find the answers. Thanks, Best regards, Dinesh Maheshwari From tawady at YAHOO.COM Wed Mar 22 20:57:00 2000 From: tawady at YAHOO.COM (Raveen Satkurunathan) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 20:57:00 +0000 Subject: Announcing Project South Asia (FWD) Message-ID: <161227057328.23782.2185266034038390282.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> From: Announcing Project South Asia Subject: Project South Asia Dear Fellow South Asianists: I am writing to you today to let you know about a new, freely-accessible on-line resource called Project South Asia that is being developed at Missouri Southern State College with the aid of a two-year federal grant. What is Project South Asia? Project South Asia will be a free, Web-based library of post-secondary teaching resources, specifically designed for use by undergraduates and graduate students, as well as teaching faculty in the field of South Asian studies. It will create and introduce an innovative materials and resource development program, designed to assist professors in advancing the study and teaching of South Asian history and culture across several disciplines and at various levels throughout the post-secondary curriculum. The two-year project will focus on developing on-line materials to support courses in the following disciplines: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art History, Economics, Geography, History, International Affairs, Languages, Literature, Philosophy, Political Science, Religion, Sociology, Theatre, and Women's Studies. How will Project South Asia be of benefit? Project South Asia will help stimulate faculty involvement and create new faculty capabilities in many disciplines. It will help improve the teaching of existing courses (including those which may not normally include units on South Asia) and aid in the development of new courses in South Asian Studies. Project South Asia will include these three major objectives: ? Creating linkages across academic departments and with other institutions of higher education, both in the U.S. and in South Asia, to support the goals of the project by stimulating a wider faculty involvement. We will draw upon the strengths of current faculty members at Missouri Southern who have teaching expertise in India and Pakistan, while also drawing on the expertise found worldwide in the field of South Asian Studies, especially but not exclusively among professors who teach at smaller colleges and universities. We have already established an editorial board for the project, which includes prominent specialists in many disciplines, both in the United States and in South Asia. ? Creating an innovative South Asian Studies Website from which a worldwide audience could gain easy access to information and resources on the study and teaching of South Asia. The Project South Asia Website will be a comprehensive site (the first of its kind on the Internet), designed to assist users in teaching and learning about South Asia by providing a core of information for use in a wide variety of courses. Among other items, the Website will contain an on-line historical dictionary of South Asia, an encyclopedia of indexed on-line essays in each discipline, annotated bibliographies of works in the field and other reference materials, all produced by academic contributors from across the country and indeed, the world. The essays will cover a wide range of topics, from an overview of the ancient Harappan civilization, to the history of the Kashmir dispute and current Indo-Pakistani foreign relations, to discussion of the epic tradition in India. The Website will also contain an extensive image bank of historical and contemporary South Asia, and other resources designed to aid in teaching. Among many other items, it will include cultural materials such as images of political figures, historical and contemporary cityscapes and landscapes, secular and religious architecture, the arts, and maps. Documents, texts, translations, and other primary sources will also be included, and will comprise one of the main strengths of the Website. Other important resources which will be available on the Website are course syllabi, highlighting a wide range of courses, from those which have partial South Asian content, like introductory World History, to more specialized, advanced courses in South Asian history, politics, geography, art history, archaeology, among others. Finally, the Website will contain information about the study and teaching of South Asian languages, especially Hindi, and will have details about study and internship abroad programs in South Asia. Our goal is to include materials that will be of utility to a wide range of users, emphasizing those materials and resources that are not currently available on the Internet, and are not easily accessible through inter-library loan or other similar means. More also needs to be done to diffuse teaching and learning about South Asia at all levels of the college curriculum, focusing especially on general education courses, in order to have an impact on the largest number of college students possible, not just on those who may enroll in an upper-division specialty course. The Website will aid this process by offering faculty materials and resources needed to incorporate South Asian topics in the non-specialty courses they teach every semester. In an introductory World History course, for example, faculty could use primary documents to illustrate the Indian experience with imperialism. In a comparative government course, faculty could make comparisons between the Indian and Pakistani constitutions and that of the United States. In an International Studies course, faculty could ask students to use the Website to examine Indian economic development, the nature of the Kashmir dispute, or changes in U.S. policy toward South Asia. The range of courses that could be affected is as wide and varied as the courses taught by the faculty members who will use the Website and its resources. The project Website will be an invaluable electronic resource to teaching professors by providing comprehensive and up-to-date materials on South Asia. It will enable professors across the country, who may not have the time or the financial resources to create their own course WebPages, to utilize the Website we create and thus be able to "Web-enhance" their own courses, making use of this new technology. Our project will enable faculty around the world to improve and enhance the South Asian content of their courses, increase the number of students exposed to information and ideas about South Asia, and thereby help advance this critical field of international education. ? Creating a unique on-line journal, freely accessible through the project Website, which will be devoted exclusively to promoting the study and teaching of South Asia at the post-secondary level. The electronic journal will feature articles, written by teaching professors from across the world, addressing issues and problems of course and curriculum development relating to South Asia, from introductory courses in World History and International Studies, to upper division specialty courses in the field. The on-line journal will act as a forum for teaching professors discussing new and innovative ways of infusing the study of South Asia into the college and university classroom in a wide range of courses, and will lay important emphasis on interdisciplinary teaching methods. It will contain sections dealing with the art and craft of teaching about South Asia, the state of the field, notes and comments, review articles, and book reviews. Unlike traditional print journals, for which rising paper and printing costs are a factor, our on-line journal will provide more space for discussion and thus serve to stimulate faculty involvement in the project in ways that no print journal can. How can you help with Project South Asia? Although many parts of the Project South Asia Website will be built by our in-house staff, we want the site to grow and to be useful to a wide range of users, from undergraduate and post-graduate students to specialists in the field of South Asian studies. We strongly encourage those with academic credentials in South Asian studies (including faculty members and advanced graduate students) to consider submitting a written work or other items for use on the site. Our concern is the same as that of our users: we want the site to be of high quality, contain academically reliable information and interpretations, and to be a forum for those who study and teach about South Asia. To maintain the academic integrity of the Project South Asia Website, submissions should meet the general professional standards found in other, more conventional academic works, such as journals, encyclopaedias, or dictionaries, use primary sources whenever possible, and be accessible to an intelligent, but general academic readership at the undergraduate level. Submissions may be in any of the following disciplines represented by Project South Asia: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art History, Economics, Geography, History, International Affairs, Languages, Literature, Philosophy, Political Science, Religion, Sociology, Theatre, and Women's Studies. Submissions to the Project South Asia Website can take a number of forms: ? Article-length essays on topics of general interest to those in the field of South Asian studies ? Photo essays ? Edited documents ? Images (slides, photos, maps) ? Research reports ? Case studies ? Interviews ? Dictionary entries ? Translations into English ? Original writings in South Asian languages for use in language courses ? Conference reports ? Workshop reports ? Literature reviews (review articles) ? Reviews of books, journals, film, video, and software ? Pedagogical studies, reviews of teaching materials, and course syllabi will be considered for publication in Teaching South Asia, Project South Asia's on-line journal Length of submissions may vary depending upon the type of submission. General guidelines are as follows: ? Article-length essays (up to 10,000 words) ? Photo essays (up to 7,000 words) ? Edited documents (length may vary) ? Images (number submitted may vary) ? Research reports (up to 7,000 words) ? Case studies (up to 7,000 words) ? Interviews (up to 7,000 words) ? Dictionary entries (up to 500 words) ? Translations into English (up to 7,000 words) ? Original writings in South Asian languages (up to 7,000 words) ? Conference reports (500-1,500 words) ? Workshop reports (500-1,500 words) ? Literature reviews (up to 3,000 words) ? Reviews of books, journals, film, video, and software (up to 1,000 words) ? Pedagogical studies, reviews of teaching materials, and course syllabi will be considered for publication in Teaching South Asia, Project South Asia's on-line journal (maximum length varies) Submissions generally should be previously unpublished, but if an author can secure permission for us to reprint an article or other item for use on the Project South Asia Website at no cost, we will consider that type of submission as well. All written submissions must be made electronically, preferably as an e-mail attachment in MSWord or WordPerfect. Before submitting any manuscript, potential authors must make an initial e-mail query of the project director, Dr. Karl J. Schmidt (psa at mail.mssc.edu), who will determine if the intended submission falls within the general scope and goals of Project South Asia. In your e-mail query, please include the following information: ? Full name, including preferred form of address (Ms., Mr., Dr., Professor, etc.) ? E-mail address ? Title or topic of intended submission ? Brief abstract of intended submission ? Type of submission ? Brief statement of academic credentials and background After being accepted in principle by the project director, submissions in the form of essays, photo essays, research reports, case studies, dictionary entries, translations into English, and pedagogical studies will be peer reviewed. Referees will comment on content as well as how the submission will best be placed on the Website. This review process may take 2-4 months. All other submissions will be reviewed in-house by the Website co-editors. This process can occur more quickly, taking no more than one month. Once reviewed and accepted for publication, your work will appear on the Website within a month. We will copyright all submissions under the general copyright of Project South Asia (Copyright ? 2000 Project South Asia) unless you would prefer to hold the copyright in your own name. In addition to submissions, we are also looking for suggestions for what should be included on the Website. One of our first tasks has been to develop a list of documents, images, and other items that we should include on the Website. As our purpose is to offer teaching materials that would be of assistance to professors at the college level, what sorts of materials should we include? As you think about your own courses, what South Asian-related documents, images, and other items would be useful for you and your students to have easy access to on-line? In other words, what ancillary materials would enhance your own teaching about South Asia? Our plan is to locate these materials, whether they are in archives, museums, in books, or wherever, and obtain or copy them for use on the Website. The bulk of these materials need to be in either the public domain (anything published before 1923 is in the public domain in the U.S.) or documents or images that Project South Asia can get permission to reproduce on-line at low cost. Part of the Website will be devoted to course syllabi. Would you be willing to send me copies of your course syllabi that contain South Asian material for posting on the site? The syllabi do not have to be for courses that are only about South Asia. If you teach World History, World Literature, Asian religions, or other courses that contain some South Asian component, please submit those as well. Part of our goal is to show even non-South Asian specialists that bringing a South Asian component into their regular courses is possible. If you can send syllabi, we would prefer them sent as e-mail attachments. If that is not possible, then feel free to send them on disks through the regular mail. We currently have a preliminary Website on-line. Although it is only in the beginning stages, this preliminary site will give you some idea of the final scope of Project South Asia, and the promise it will hold as a post-secondary teaching resource. It can be accessed at: http://www.mssc.edu/projectsouthasia Please feel free to visit the site and let us hear from you. Yours sincerely, Karl J. Schmidt, Ph.D. Director, Project South Asia Associate Professor of History Missouri Southern State College 3950 E. Newman Rd. Joplin, Missouri 64801-1595 U.S.A. E-mail: psa at mail.mssc.edu From koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE Wed Mar 22 19:57:26 2000 From: koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE (Koenraad Elst) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 20:57:26 +0100 Subject: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga Message-ID: <161227057325.23782.6467889704280297031.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Paul Kekai Manansala wrote: > The Chinese calendar can be dated back to 2679 BCE based on its 3600 > year cycle. Rather, to 2697 BC, if you permit this little pedantry, and the calendar intended is not based on lunar mansions but on artificial cycles of 60 years (also known in India as Brhaspati era). Legend has it that 2697 was the year of the enthronement of the Yellow Emperor. Legends about him have been interpreted by Chang Tsung-tung (Taiwan/Frankfurt) as describing the Indo-European conquest of China, no less. Chang identifies no less than 1500 IE words in the basic vocabulary of Chinese, and concurs with Edwin Pulleyblank's thesis that the standard shape of PIE words is identical with that of ancient Chinese words. The Yellow Emperor was credited with bringing, among other things, the script,-- and it has long been acknowledged that the early Chinese script owes a lot to more westerly sources of inspiration, including the early IVC. That the system of lunar mansions was started in 2400 BC is merely a back-calculation of modern scholars, based precisely on the assumption that Krttika as the first mansion was on the equinox. This may be a case of a visual inaccuracy of a few degrees of night sky translating into an inaccuracy of centuries in the precession-based chronology: it may have been adopted in 2697 BC when Krttika served as marker of the equinox-holding section of the ecliptic because it was the conspicuous star pattern closest to the equinox though not yet exactly on it. Likewise in Indian dates based on precession, an inaccuracy of several degrees is generally possible, and this means so many times 71 years earlier or later. But this can hardly account for shifts of 1200 years or more, as some philologists postulate in the case of Vedanga Jyotisha. K Elst From limonard at WXS.NL Wed Mar 22 21:49:52 2000 From: limonard at WXS.NL (T. Limonard) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 22:49:52 +0100 Subject: It works! Message-ID: <161227057334.23782.5307805791819020325.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear dr. Shivamurthy Swamiji I am very happy that this time I can report to have gotten your Ganakashtadhyayi program to work perfectly. At first I installed the Divya Devanagari font and tried to run it, but in vain. I then removed the program from my computer, downloaded it anew, installed it again and lo, it worked. I am very glad to have it and hope I can put it to good use in my further Sanskrit study. I like to thank you very much to make it available to me so kindly and hope that you will keep me informed of further developments and improvements thereof. With kind regards and namaskar. T. Limonard. From witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU Thu Mar 23 03:52:25 2000 From: witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU (Michael Witzel) Date: Wed, 22 Mar 00 22:52:25 -0500 Subject: Munda, Dravidian, etc. Message-ID: <161227057358.23782.15435138989047463693.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Koenraad Elst < wrote: >> Anyway, the theory that the IVC and its astronomy were Dravidian is now >> being abandoned even by prominent opponents of any "Vedic Harappa" theory, >> who have installed "para-Munda" and "language X" in its place. To be clear, not Munda but "Para-Munda", because I am not as sure as my old friend FBJ Kuiper about their "Munda-ness". One would expect more words with n-infix. Etymologies are even more difficult, due to lack of good materials (see below), just some more or less good modern dictionaries. And, there is a gap of some 3500 years between the RV and available Munda texts. Even Kuiper thinks that the Munda languages have gone through several shifts in the meantime (see below), and have become "Indian" and part of the Indian linguistic region (Sprachbund). As he wrote in a letter to me, some 1 1/2 years ago, "like an old mountain chain, now eroded into (pleasant, rolling) hills..." So, I won't be surprised if it should turn out that this RV substrate is (a) a more distant relative of Munda/Austro-Asiatic/Austric or (b) a different substrate altogether, "Language Y" or "Z". Hence, my caution in calling it Para-Munda. It shares some characteristics, but not all, of Munda/Austro_Asiatic. Swaminathan Madhuresan : >>Prof. Witzel's hypothesis of making Munda as the high language >>of IVC will be contended by Dravidologists in the future. Many >>unanswered questions and problems in that. Certainly, and I look forward to it. Parpola has a paper in press already (in Japan). (And I have an answer). The problem is that there are few, very few Drav. words in the oldest RV (adstrate loans?), and even in the rest of RV, not many. After 700 years of Indus civilization, one would expect at least a few more, such as "(village) headman, trader, merchandise, weight, bath, granary, town" etc. etc. None of this kind of words. Just "farm/village words" (The last item already underlined by Kuiper,in 1955!!, without reference to the Indus civ.). >>Dravidian linguistics >>and philology are nascent fields, not any Professorships at all! >>Academic dravidology is miniscule compared to well entrenched >>IA/IE studies. Historical accident. Let the Tamil film industry do something about it! (the Chinese one did...) Or do you know someone on Singapur? As I said, I am tired of running after elusive people. But if you bring a funded chair, we'll take it tomorrow. Each new Drav. (and Munda) chair matters a lot to the whole field. Munda linguistics is even worse off. And not well described so far. There is only one complete phonology, by KH Pinnow, 1959 (in German), no comp. grammar, no comp. syntax, no etymological dictionary! Southern Munda, which really would give us clues about Proto-Munda, is almost undescribed. It also would tell us more about the situation in eastern India at the time of the arrival of Austroasiatic. Tell friends, colleagues & students to do something about it! >>Foll. Prof. Parpola, what about the Fish symbol as Star in IVC? Well, just for your amusement: Two years ago, I tried precisely these symbols, reading them in rebus fashion as REAL Munda -- and they worked perfectly. Won't publish it, as not to get G. Possehl's badge "no. 56" -- of failed attempts of deciphering the Indus script... Only one of the two explanations (or none of both) can be right..... >>Also, how to explain Retroflexion in IVC and later? Retroflexes are an altogether different problem. It is a myth that they must be of Drav. origin. Why should the people highup in the Pamirs have some of the strongest groups retroflex sounds? (Some E. Iranian Pamir dialects, Pashto, Nuristani, Dardic -- and Burushaski) see the map of B. Tikkanen, reprinted in Parpola's Indus script, 1994. In short, people on arrival, at the fringes of South Asia, start bending back their tongues. Last case: The Baluchis, arrived c. 1000 CE, from W. Iran. Half of their dialects now have retroflexion. ======== Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138 ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: attachment.bin Type: text/enriched Size: 4367 bytes Desc: not available URL: From s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK Thu Mar 23 00:44:47 2000 From: s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK (Stephen Hodge) Date: Thu, 23 Mar 00 00:44:47 +0000 Subject: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga Message-ID: <161227057341.23782.14099866779740749000.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >> Legends about him have been interpreted by Chang Tsung-tung >> (Taiwan/Frankfurt) as describing the Indo-European conquest >> China, no less > Evidence of an "Aryan" invasion of China is astronomically less > than that concerning a similar invasion of India. I think what Chang Tsung-tung actually suggests is the takeover of the early Chinese state by a numerically small group of techologically advanced IE people -- rather like the Rus in the case of Russia or the Normans for England. To talk of a "conquest" or "invasion" might be exaggerated -- but the idea sounds familiar. He suggests that the name Huang-ti (the Yellow Emperor) should be reconstructed as something like hoang-deeg (= honey-[coloured] deva) -- those blonde aryans again ? Actually his material seems to establish a range of fairly reliable cognates that need further investigation. > Also, the connection of IVC with the Chinese script is a little > far-fetched since we really don't know what Harappan symbols > represent Chinese scholars now date the eaerliest proto-writing in China to around 4000 BCE based on the pottery fragments found at Banpo near Xian and elsewhere. A trifle early for Harappa ? Best wishes, Stephen Hodge From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Thu Mar 23 01:16:57 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Thu, 23 Mar 00 01:16:57 +0000 Subject: Horse & BMAC & much more In-Reply-To: <003801bf9074$42c9f100$0bcc91d0@cs> Message-ID: <161227057343.23782.6370154627592208637.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Fri, 17 Mar 2000, Claude Setzer wrote: > Since you and Dominik seem so insistent that "Humanists" are superior in > their care about getting the facts straight, Claude! This isn't at all what I have been arguing so painstakingly. Many scientists are very good at getting their facts straight. I have been trying to say that people who express serious sweeping opinions on humanistic topics should be trained in that subject; the same exactly goes for people who want to make claims about this or that aspect of science. The problem I am addressing is that there is a sort of glamour about science and scientists in some circles today that makes it appear that a Nuclear Physicist (say) must be worth listening to on the subject of the date of the vedas (say), just by virtue of his scientific standing. I disagree. If this NP has studied Sanskrit and the veda, then fine, but his opinions will then be based on his humanistic studies, not on his knowledge of nuclear science. It really isn't a particularly controversial point I'm making. -- Dominik Wujastyk Founder, INDOLOGY list. From s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK Thu Mar 23 02:22:54 2000 From: s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK (Stephen Hodge) Date: Thu, 23 Mar 00 02:22:54 +0000 Subject: Yavanas Message-ID: <161227057353.23782.2825500961479213418.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Yashwant wrote: > It remind me something that is completely unrelated to this > verse. One Jain sect, that once existed near Konkan region > was named Yaapaniiya in Sanskrit (jaavNiiya in Prakrit). I > have wondered about the origin of the term. I would have thought this was quite obvious -- they are a long-lost tribe of early Japanese tourists who took the wrong turning in Korea and migrated through Turkic speaking Central Asia into India. Of course, this forms part of the neglected JIT, which is another story. Best wishes, Stephen Hodge From smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM Thu Mar 23 15:45:53 2000 From: smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM (Swaminathan Madhuresan) Date: Thu, 23 Mar 00 07:45:53 -0800 Subject: Munda, Dravidian, etc. Message-ID: <161227057372.23782.11758136048763874865.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >After 700 years of Indus civilization, one would expect at least a few >more, such as "(village) headman, trader, merchandise, weight, bath, >granary, town" etc. etc. None of this kind of words. Just "farm/village >words" (The last item already underlined by Kuiper,in 1955!!, without >reference to the Indus civ.). [...] >Retroflexes are an altogether different problem. It is a myth that they >must be of Drav. origin. Why should the people highup in the Pamirs >have some of the strongest groups retroflex sounds? (Some E. Iranian Pamir >dialects, >Pashto, Nuristani, Dardic -- and Burushaski) see the map of >B. Tikkanen, reprinted in Parpola's Indus script, 1994. >In short, people on arrival, at the fringes of South Asia, start >bending back their tongues. Last case: The Baluchis, arrived c. 1000 >CE, from W. Iran. Half of their dialects now have retroflexion. As an outsider, comments in brief. My understanding is for (para)munda theory to succeed, it has to divorce retroflexion from dravidian origins. A hard thing to do. Dardic, Burushaski etc., might have gotten retroflexion originally from IVC drav. and, expanded them to sibilants like S, z which was not in drav. originally. Sanskrit philologists or linguists in general, mostly work from DED, their knowledge of drav. texts/word-roots is rather poor. Dr. S. Palaniappan (Aug. '99) had some questions on Vedic VANA. Along similar lines, vedic words paNa(money), pra-paNa (cognate with tamil peru-paNa), vaNi/vaNij (cognate to vaNiyan) might be explained. Dr. N. Ganesan derives the word for wheat from dr. *kOLam (related to english cooley) in nov. '99. If trained Dravidology professionals work at it, many items in the etymology basket of "language X" and ivc features will likely turn out to be dravidian. After all dravidian is the only language family with no close cousins like Avestan or Mon-Khmer. B. Sergent says dravidians reached India 10000 years ago. Dravidian's relations to any other language on earth being very remote supports this, I would think. Kind regards, SM __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From Ursula.Graefe at T-ONLINE.DE Thu Mar 23 07:31:57 2000 From: Ursula.Graefe at T-ONLINE.DE (Graefe) Date: Thu, 23 Mar 00 08:31:57 +0100 Subject: thank you: angavastram Message-ID: <161227057363.23782.11377357726630649494.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Mr. Deshpande and Mr. Chandran, thank you very much for your information. As a translator I am also reading the German translator's list u-litfor. The question was asked by a lady translating a novel by a Bengali author. She did not give any other background information, but sends her best regards. Thank you again - Ursula Graefe From kekai at JPS.NET Thu Mar 23 16:52:57 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Thu, 23 Mar 00 08:52:57 -0800 Subject: Fw: Re: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga Message-ID: <161227057323.23782.15416428447287721896.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Koenraad Elst wrote: > > > As for the 1st millennium AD Tamil texts mentioning Krttika as the beginning> of the lunar calendar: this is perfectly normal, as calendars once> established tend to be preserved for ages (that is precisely their whole> point: putting time on a permanent common denominator). The Chinese system > of lunar asterisms started ca. 2400 BC with Krttika at the head, and > retained that system for thousands of years, even when Krttika was no longer > on the spring equinox. The Chinese calendar can be dated back to 2679 BCE based on its 3600 year cycle. Does anyone know of any other calendars similar to the Chinese and Indian ones (spring equinox at Krttika)? Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From n-iyanag at PPP.BEKKOAME.NE.JP Thu Mar 23 00:36:33 2000 From: n-iyanag at PPP.BEKKOAME.NE.JP (Nobumi Iyanaga) Date: Thu, 23 Mar 00 09:36:33 +0900 Subject: Query on a myth of "Siva killing a shark In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227057339.23782.1752424168875692420.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Ms. Filliozat and Mr. Palaniappan, Thank you very much for your prompt and helpful replies. >The story is indeed part of the 64 "games" of ziva in Madurai described in >the tiruviLaiyATal purANam versions. The details are essentially correct but >left out are some interesting details regarding how ziva's sons murukan2 and >piLLaiyAr (vinAyaka) get upset with ziva. So ziva curses murukan2 to be a >deaf-mute child of a merchant who later judges which is the best commentary >among the many ones on a grammar of tamil love poetry. For a discussion in >English, see "Sacred Marriage of a Hindu Goddess", by William P. Harman, >1992, pp. 120-122. > I found the legend in R. Dessigane, P.Z. Pattabiramin and J. Filliozat, La Legende des Jeux de ,Civa `a Madurai, d'apr`es les textes et les peintures, [Publication de l'Institut Fran,cais d'Indologie, No 19], Pondichery, 1960, Fasc. I, Texte, p. 88-91. That is the 57th story of the series. By the way, the text says that MiiNaa.t.cii was not sleeping, but only was embarrassed and indifferent at the teaching of Veda by her husband... It is really a very interesting myth. Thank you again! Best regards, Nobumi Iyanaga Tokyo, Japan From koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE Thu Mar 23 09:43:16 2000 From: koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE (Koenraad Elst) Date: Thu, 23 Mar 00 10:43:16 +0100 Subject: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga Message-ID: <161227057366.23782.8057062838325911024.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Stephen Hodge 23 maart 2000 1:44 wrote: > those blonde > aryans again ? My hypothesis is that the initial PIE speakers were not blond at all, at least not more than your average Panjabi Sardar, but the first population to whom they imparted their language, in Central Asia, may well have been predominantly blond, witness the blond mummies of Xinjiang or the remaining blond populations in Afghan/Pakistan, like the Kalash Kafirs, this after millennia of decrease (blondness being a recessive trait). So, the Yellow Emperor, bringing civilization from an Indian colony or ex-colony in Central Asia, may well have been a fair-haired type. Incidentally, a recent issue of Discover monthly reports that Oetzi, the Tiroler iceman of ca. 3000 BC, had tattoos on his body, exactly on the location of a number of acupuncture points. Now, the Yellow Emperor was credited with the invention of Chinese medicine. Both Oetzi's tribe and the Yellow Emperor came from somewhere in Central Asia, which in turn was in the Indian sphere of influence. And Indian medicine does have a tradition (likely much older than its first appearance in writing) of acu-points... To make matters worse (for opponents of eccentric flights of fancy), Jean-Pierre Voiret has reported (Asiatische Studien, Bern 1997/4) finds of quasi-runic inscriptions near Xi'an dated to the 3rd millennium BC, of undatable quasi-runic inscriptions in the Altai region, and the persistence of quasi-runic signs in the Lolo alphabet in SW China. Chang's IE-Chinese vocabulary (Indo-Platonic Papers 1988) contains many words attested only in the Celtic or Germanic branches of IE, like ma, "horse", cfr. mare). Gamkrelidze and Ivanov, while locating the PIE Urheimat in Anatolia, have the Germanic branch first travel to the Altai region before turning westward, to account for Altaic rock drawings reminiscent of Germanic mythology and Germanic-Yeniseian lexical exchanges. Of course, all this is easily taken care of in a Central-Asian Urheimat theory, or in a South-Asian one which takes Central Asia as a secondary centre of dispersal. > Chinese scholars now date the earliest proto-writing in China to > around 4000 BCE based on the pottery fragments found at Banpo near > Xi'an and elsewhere. A trifle early for Harappa ? Yes, but not for the pre-Harappan cultures which developed locally over millennia. Writing or proto-writing is considerably older than its schoolbook genesis in Sumeria 3100 BC, as more and more findings from Vinca (Serbia) to the Harappan area keep on testifying. Of course, the older it gets, the scarcer the traces of such writing; but I guess any ancient-historian is aware beforehand that what he finds is but a small fragment of what was originally there. Which is why I find it amazing that scholars keep on asserting that writing was unknown in India in the millennium preceding the Mauryas, when by all accounts sizable states (not just the Nanda empire, even the Magadha state was already big enough to require a complex administration) and intellectual works of high complexity were being created. The discrepancy between India's civilizational achievements in the pre-Maurya age and its alleged illiteracy in that alleged Dark Age is enormous. At best, it is a tribute to the exceptional brain capacity of those illiterate Indians. K. Elst From d53 at IX.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE Thu Mar 23 09:58:07 2000 From: d53 at IX.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (Thomas Lehmann) Date: Thu, 23 Mar 00 10:58:07 +0100 Subject: Summer school in spoken Sanskrit Message-ID: <161227057364.23782.9129995001225395788.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Announcement ------------------ SUMMER SCHOOL IN SPOKEN SANSKRIT The Department of Classical Indology, South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg, Germany, offers you this unique opportunity to participate in a spoken Sanskrit course this summer under the tutelage of a Sanskrit native speaker. It is the aim of the course to enable students, particularly those pursuing Indological Studies, to overcome the perception of Sanskrit as a written language alone and, instead, to learn to pronounce, speak and recite it. The three-week course will make the study of Sanskrit a playful experience and demystify it. Prerequisites: Elementary knowledge of Sanskrit and English Organizer: Prof. Dr. Axel Michaels Teachers: Shri Sadananda Das, aided by Dr. Srilata Mueller Venue: South Asia Institute Date: 11 September - 30 September 1800 Fees: DM 250,- (including teaching material) Accomodation: can be arranged at the University Student Hostel at the cost of DM 275,- to DM 400,- Registration: until 10. 06. 2000 by e-mail at http://www.sai.uni-heidelberg.de/IND/summer.htm or letter to: The Sekretariat, Dept. of Classical Indology, South Asia Institute, Im Neuenheimer Feld 330, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany Maximum number of participants is 15. -- Axel Michaels From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Thu Mar 23 11:26:41 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Thu, 23 Mar 00 11:26:41 +0000 Subject: [ADMIN] list volume Message-ID: <161227057370.23782.82102883484311558.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I have discussed the recent high volume of INDOLOGY postings with the maintainers of the list in Liverpool. They too have been finding the list harder to manage because of the very high volume. Because we are guests on their system, it is very important for INDOLOGY to be perceived as "well behaved" from a technical point of view as well as from a social point of view. We have agreed to reduce the upper limit on the number messages per day from 50 to 40. We have also decided to reduce the maximum number of postings per day per person from 3 to 2. -- Dominik Wujastyk, Founder, INDOLOGY list From malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU Thu Mar 23 18:59:56 2000 From: malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU (Yashwant Malaiya) Date: Thu, 23 Mar 00 11:59:56 -0700 Subject: Yavanas In-Reply-To: <041801bf9470$f8b01300$4d1e893e@default> Message-ID: <161227057378.23782.961777134252785086.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Responding to mine: > It remind me something that is completely unrelated to this > verse. One Jain sect, that once existed near Konkan region > was named Yaapaniiya in Sanskrit (jaavNiiya in Prakrit). I > have wondered about the origin of the term. Stephen Hodge wrote: >I would have thought this was quite obvious -- they are a long-lost >tribe of early Japanese tourists who took the wrong turning in Korea >and migrated through Turkic speaking Central Asia into India. Of >course, this forms part of the neglected JIT, which is another story. I assume that you are not convinced about Yavanas in India. You can find the Heliodorus inscription (in central India) photo and text in The Indo_Greeks by A.K. Narain 1957, Oxford Univ Press and photographs of Indo-Greek coins with Vasudev/Balabhadra in Mathura : The Cultural Heritage by Doris Meth Srinivasan, Ed. (July 1989) South Asia Books; ISBN: 8185054371 As Klaus Karttunen wrote javaNalivi is mentioned as one of the 18 scripts in Jain literature. The Yavanas in India were Indo-greeks, having originated from the Greek colonies in Balkh region. Some of the Yavanas had settled as far as Tamilnadu in India. What I was wondering about is: could JaavaNiiya have been Yaavaniiya rather than Yaapaniiya. Yashwant From kekai at JPS.NET Thu Mar 23 21:25:38 2000 From: kekai at JPS.NET (Paul Kekai Manansala) Date: Thu, 23 Mar 00 13:25:38 -0800 Subject: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga Message-ID: <161227057332.23782.9007776050518401743.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Koenraad Elst wrote: > > Paul Kekai Manansala > wrote: > > > The Chinese calendar can be dated back to 2679 BCE based on its 3600 > > year cycle. > > Rather, to 2697 BC, if you permit this little pedantry, and the calendar> intended is not based on lunar mansions but on artificial cycles of 60 years> (also known in India as Brhaspati era). Legend has it that 2697 was the> year of the enthronement of the Yellow Emperor. Legends about him have been> interpreted by Chang Tsung-tung (Taiwan/Frankfurt) as describing the> Indo-European conquest of China, no less. Chang identifies no less than> 1500 IE words in the basic vocabulary of Chinese, and concurs with Edwin> Pulleyblank's thesis that the standard shape of PIE words is identical with > that of ancient Chinese words. The Yellow Emperor was credited with > bringing, among other things, the script,-- and it has long been > acknowledged that the early Chinese script owes a lot to more westerly > sources of inspiration, including the early IVC. > Evidence of an "Aryan" invasion of China is astronomically less than that concerning a similar invasion of India. I don't think even in most Eurocentric circles is this accepted. Also, the connection of IVC with the Chinese script is a little far-fetched since we really don't know what Harappan symbols represent. As there are tens of thousands of Chinese characters and quite a few Harappan characters there is bound to be some vague similarity here and there. If there really was a connection might we not use the Chinese radicals to figure out the Harappan script? Regards, Paul Kekai Manansala -- Check out http://AsiaPacificUniverse.com/ From cssetzer at MUM.EDU Thu Mar 23 19:49:33 2000 From: cssetzer at MUM.EDU (Claude Setzer) Date: Thu, 23 Mar 00 13:49:33 -0600 Subject: Horse & BMAC & much more Message-ID: <161227057355.23782.9742394302103176615.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> From: Dominik Wujastyk . I have > been trying to say that people who express serious sweeping opinions on > humanistic topics should be trained in that subject; the same exactly goes > for people who want to make claims about this or that aspect of science. > ...a sort of glamour about > science and scientists in some circles today that makes it appear that a > Nuclear Physicist (say) must be worth listening to on the subject of the > date of the vedas (say), just by virtue of his scientific standing Dear Dominik, I am delighted that my comment evoked this clarification from you. I was hoping this was what you really felt. I think if you had said it more like this before, many people would not have been bothered by your statements. Unfortunately I think you got a little over excited and thus over expressed your self so it sounded different than what you intended. My background is somewhat varied, with graduate degrees in both Sanskrit and Electrical Engineering and, if I had written a second dissertation, could have gotten a Ph. D. in Physics, too. Like you, I often get quite frustrated with some "scientists" who think they know Electrical Engineering and really don't have the slightest idea what they are talking about. But I think it is more the specific person with a problem rather than the field of "scientists." The point of my post is that "scientists" have no monopoly on making incorrect or incomplete statements about matters of Indology. We should ALL be much more careful to be accurate in our statements. One of the most unfortunate and disappointing things that I have observed is that very very famous and highly respected Sanskritists publish book after book of translations that are filled with errors. Errors so obvious that first year Sanskrit students immediately notice them. Others that are major philosophical mistranslations because they do not understand the context of the book they are translating. What is even worse is that those "scholars" are on this very list and other "scholars" praise the greatness of their books. There seems to be no effort at all to correct the errors or to publish a list of corrections. This type of careless ( even "unprofessional") attitude would never be tolerated in engineering text books. With all this stated, I wish to respectfully disagree with a subtle sub-part of your statement about "scientists." I think there are many cases where a "GOOD Scientist" or an engineer could make very valuable contributions to things that interest Indologists. Even things that they have absolutely no Indological training about. I think some of this knowledge could be dramatically more useful to this list than some of the publications filled with errors that so- called "experts" and "scholars" on Indology have contributed. There are many parables in Sanskrit literature, as well as western literature, about the dangers of arrogance, and all should note them!! I wish you all the best, Dominik and hope that you can appreciate these ideas. Claude PS. I will risk violating my own complaint by giving a quick example of an engineering solution that would quickly disprove the "expert opinion of scholars." I remember sometime back that someone said that a chariot could not have been made at a given time because iron had not yet been invented. This was complete nonsense. I personally could make a chariot in a matter of a week or two without using any iron at all. I could also quite easily make a supply of wheels for this chariot, so that, in time of need, they could be replaced often and keep the chariot working well without iron rims. Have people never seen a modern race of the most technologically advanced "chariots" on earth?? Even with steel and rubber, the tires can be replaced several times during a race. If an ancient chariot were used in battle there is no reason why the wheel would need to last more than an hour or two, even less. Iron is not necessary for this. Iron is also not necessary for making the wheels or other things. Sand is extremely plentiful all over the earth and is made of silicon dioxide (glass) which can very easily cut wood to any shape desired. From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Thu Mar 23 20:05:03 2000 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan) Date: Thu, 23 Mar 00 15:05:03 -0500 Subject: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga Message-ID: <161227057381.23782.7940891447712704318.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Wed, 22 Mar 2000 15:22:55 +0100 Koenraad Elst writes <> What else can one expect when one language replaces another? Look at the common names for weekdays. In Tamil, five of the seven days have Dravidian names. Other Dravidian languages could have even fewer. Even in Tamilnadu, when it comes to some religious observance on Mondays, it is called cOmavAra (somavAra) viratam. If eventually cOmavAra usage prevails over tiGkaL kizamai, one cannot say, Tamils never had a word for Monday. Same goes for speakers of other Dravidian languages. In Tamilnadu in India, the common word for "week" is IA vAram but in Tamil Eelam, the traditional Tamil region of Sri Lanka, the Dravidian word kizamai survives. If you look at Tamil lexical works, you can find Dravidian names for the asterisms. Just to give some examples, iralai, aTuppu, aRumIn2, vaiyam, mummIn2 are respectively the names of the first five asterisms. A CT work calls anurAdha by the Tamil term "muTappan2ai" (bent palm). But today you will not find anybody using the Dravidian names. I have discussed in the past that the IA terms sUtra, tantra, tantu are IA translations of Dravidian concepts. <> I think for the present discussion, it is immaterial whether IVC spoke Dravidian or para-Munda or both. All we have to consider is that the language used during the original astronomical observation need not have been IA. As for Dravidian's role in this whole Aryan/Non-Aryan debate is concerned, nobody seems to notice that Dravidian specialists are conspicuous by their absence. If I am not mistaken, among the participants in this Aryan/Non-Aryan controversy, even those academics who use Dravidian materials are primarily IA specialists. (I am willing to be corrected on this.) As Witzel and others had already noted, much more lexical work needs to be done on the Dravidian side to bring it up to the level of work in IA. We need more open-minded scholars from different linguistic backgrounds working together before one can conclude one way or other. Regards S. Palaniappan From tawady at YAHOO.COM Thu Mar 23 15:57:11 2000 From: tawady at YAHOO.COM (Raveen Satkurunathan) Date: Thu, 23 Mar 00 15:57:11 +0000 Subject: Munda, Dravidian, etc. Message-ID: <161227057374.23782.10728863725704984601.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > >>>Dravidian linguistics >>>and philology are nascent fields, not any Professorships at all! >>>Academic dravidology is miniscule compared to well entrenched >>>IA/IE studies. >Each new Drav. (and Munda) chair matters a lot to the whole field. >Munda linguistics is even worse off. I agree with Dr. Witzel further the relationship between Munda and Dravidian is not clearly studied either. What would be ground breaking ?one of a kind? study would be to investigate the so-called Munda substratum of Dravidian languages like Tamil and Telugu. From hbd at DDIT.ERNET.IN Thu Mar 23 10:40:24 2000 From: hbd at DDIT.ERNET.IN (H.B.Dave) Date: Thu, 23 Mar 00 16:10:24 +0530 Subject: Horse & BMAC & much more Message-ID: <161227057368.23782.15235613986741676918.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dominik Wujastyk wrote: > On Fri, 17 Mar 2000, Claude Setzer wrote: > > > Since you and Dominik seem so insistent that "Humanists" are superior in > > their care about getting the facts straight, > > Claude! This isn't at all what I have been arguing so painstakingly. > Many scientists are very good at getting their facts straight. I have > been trying to say that people who express serious sweeping opinions on > humanistic topics should be trained in that subject; the same exactly goes > for people who want to make claims about this or that aspect of science. > > The problem I am addressing is that there is a sort of glamour about > science and scientists in some circles today that makes it appear that a > Nuclear Physicist (say) must be worth listening to on the subject of the > date of the vedas (say), just by virtue of his scientific standing. I > disagree. If this NP has studied Sanskrit and the veda, then fine, but > his opinions will then be based on his humanistic studies, not on his > knowledge of nuclear science. > > It really isn't a particularly controversial point I'm making. > > -- > Dominik Wujastyk > Founder, INDOLOGY list. What if the NP shows that RV (say) contains something about Neuclear Physics? Do you listen to him or not becuase he is a NP? -- Himanshu e-mail : hbd at ddit.ernet.in ============================================ From athr at LOC.GOV Thu Mar 23 22:28:34 2000 From: athr at LOC.GOV (Allen W Thrasher) Date: Thu, 23 Mar 00 17:28:34 -0500 Subject: Varanasi o.p bookdealers Message-ID: <161227057383.23782.12550101082028934066.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Could anyone who has recently had dealings with Bhagwan Das and Sons, Asbhairav, Varanasi please contact me off the list? I want to discuss his out of print holdings. Also, could anyone suggest any other dealers in Varanasi in out of print and antiquarian books? It has been about a decade since I visited there. Thanks, Allen Thrasher Allen W. Thrasher, Ph.D. Senior Reference Librarian 101 Indendence Ave., SE Southern Asia Section LJ-150 Asian Division Washington, DC 20540-4810 Library of Congress U.S.A. tel. 202-707-3732 fax 202-707-1724 Email: athr at loc.gov The opinions expressed do not necessarily represent those of the Library of Congress. From koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE Thu Mar 23 17:49:07 2000 From: koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE (Koenraad Elst) Date: Thu, 23 Mar 00 18:49:07 +0100 Subject: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga Message-ID: <161227057376.23782.3037840827776981108.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Swaminathan Madhuresan 22 maart 2000 16:25 wrote > Foll. Prof. Parpola, what about the Fish symbol as Star in IVC? Nothing in the Harappan record says that the fish-like glyph means "star", only some modern interpreters do. Though at some point I didn't know better than to believe the Dravidian Harappa theory, this one interpretation made me suspicious. It is rather absurd for a pictographic script to use the rebus principle for an easy-to-depict object such as a star. Sumerian, at any rate, writes "star" with a sketchy drawing of a star. Luis Gonzalez-Reimann 18 maart 2000 6:22 wrote (and meanwhile Michael Witzel quoted): > the Yuga Purana was convincingly dated by Mitchiner > (p.82) to the end of the last century BCE (the Yuga Purana actually > mentions historical rulers). (John E. Mitchiner, The Yuga Purana. Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 1986) Interesting, thanks for the reference. I'll look that up. But I predict that I will find his proofs to be synchronisms with Indian dynasties whose dating is ultimately dependent on the Sandrokottos "sheet-anchor". > If you wish to revive the theory that > Sandrokottos is the Gupta and not the Maurya Candragupta -against the > general opinion of historians- then the burden of proof is on you. Scientists continually, or at least periodically, question their own most basic assumptions in the light of recent findings. To most of you the sheet-anchor will look like the answer to a 19th-century question, but it may be right to reopen the question. If you have no time for it, you can give it as a useful exercise to your students: prove the sheet-anchor. Unlike on some other matters, this is one in which I don't have a decided opinion, though of course underdog opinions have my sympathy. So, it was with sympathy that I read KD Sethna's admittedly laborious objections to the Maurya-Megasthenes synchronism (Ancient India in a New Light, Aditya Prakashan 1990). I'll try to summarize them sometime soon. Mainly, he tries to show that Megasthenes' description fits the Guptas better than the Mauryas, and that the Maurya identification leads to chronological absurdities, e.g. that Purana editors writing in the Gupta period gave chronological frameworks which would put their own Gupta contemporaries some six centuries in the past. Of course, one major problem is that there are plenty of calendars in India, often dynasty-based and with no clear indication about synchronism or otherwise with other known dynasties. I don't know enough about the wide-ranging post-Vedic literature and all its direct or indirect data on interdynastic or international synchronisms to have a definite opinion. I see some prima facie objections, e.g. the mention of Greek kings on an Ashokan pillar (which, then again, doesn't name "Ashoka"...), but I have learned by now not to take too much conventional wisdom in Indian history for granted. Dr. Koenraad Elst From tawady at YAHOO.COM Thu Mar 23 19:37:49 2000 From: tawady at YAHOO.COM (Raveen Satkurunathan) Date: Thu, 23 Mar 00 19:37:49 +0000 Subject: Yavanas Message-ID: <161227057380.23782.9950142744107787404.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Thu, 23 Mar 2000 11:59:56 -0700, Yashwant Malaiya wrote: >Responding to mine: >> It remind me something that is completely unrelated to this >> verse. One Jain sect, that once existed near Konkan region >> was named Yaapaniiya in Sanskrit (jaavNiiya in Prakrit). I >> have wondered about the origin of the term. > >What I was wondering about is: could JaavaNiiya have been Yaavaniiya >rather than Yaapaniiya. > >Yashwant Javaka people have been coming to Sri Lanka. One Javaka king Chandra Bhanu invaded Sri Lanka with South Indian mercenary help and founded a town called Javaka Kotta (Currently Chavakatcheri) in the Jaffna Peninsula of Sri Lanka. He is credited by some historians as the progenitors of the Hindu Tamil kingdom in north of Sri Lanka which lasted till the Portugese colonial time period. Further Javaka Hindus and Buddhists also fled to Sri Lanka during the Islamization of Java. If there are Javanese settlements in Sri Lanka it is not hard to imagine that they would have existed in India too. Someone more versed in Sri Lankan history can provide you with the references. From s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK Fri Mar 24 00:31:19 2000 From: s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK (Stephen Hodge) Date: Fri, 24 Mar 00 00:31:19 +0000 Subject: Yavanas Message-ID: <161227057389.23782.17783225919631183585.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Dr Yashwant Malaiya, > I assume that you are not convinced about Yavanas in India. No, on the contrary -- the archeological evidence seems conclusive. Indeed, I believe that there would have been a fairly strong Hellenic presence down much of the west coast of India. What I wrote was just a little humour I could not resist -- after all, the Japanese seem to get everywhere these days But on a more serious note, genetic data has recently discovered a hitherto unexpected population diffusion moving outward from Japan rather the received belief that the population of Japan was entirely inward bound. Given the extremely early dates for pottery in Japan -- the oldest known to date (c10,000 BCE) -- and the network of trade that seems to have existed even as early as 4000 BCE (Japanese pottery finds near Fiji), one wonders what was going on in that area then. There is also the question of the close genetic links between the population of central Japan and Tibetans. Best wishes, Stephen Hodge From deartein at CAPACCESS.ORG Fri Mar 24 01:26:07 2000 From: deartein at CAPACCESS.ORG (Tein Network) Date: Fri, 24 Mar 00 01:26:07 +0000 Subject: Thanks For "Gypsies: Out of Bharat" In-Reply-To: <20000324040146.23394.qmail@www0k.netaddress.usa.net> Message-ID: <161227057403.23782.18144466050448214932.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> March 24, 2000 A special thanks for the linguistic origin discussion on the gypsy language to S.Kalyanaraman to bring this to everyone's attention. If anyone has a complete list of references on the scholarly studies of gypsy languages and culture, I would very much appreciate any such references for possible future further discussions. The linguistics discussion must have been a private discussion as I did not see this topic discussed recently at INDOLOGY. Let me suggest that scholarly discussion on gypsy language must also include other aspects of this unique community in Europe who are struggling to survive under tremendous and retain their cultural and linguistic identify, today, as much as anytime in recent history ! I would appreciate any comments and references beyond the issue of linguistic origin (which of course is vitally impotant, and thank you again, S.Kalyanaraman, for your insightful comments and references). Such discussions as cultural identity and history is important. For example, a recent book, "The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies" by Guenter Lewy, Oxford University Press, 2000 is worth reviewing. I have just started reading this book which has some valuable documentation worthy of attention by scholars such as INDOLOGY subscribers. On cursory review of this book, one thing that surprised me is that the author seems to have delibertately avoided linking gypsies to Historic India ! Any comments ? Avi Dey NSW3/TEIN Vienna, VA USA [admin note: date changed from Fri, 24 Mar 1972 08:24:32 -0500] From zydenbos at GMX.LI Fri Mar 24 00:26:08 2000 From: zydenbos at GMX.LI (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Fri, 24 Mar 00 01:26:08 +0100 Subject: Yavanas In-Reply-To: <200003232253.JAA16106@mail.anu.edu.au> Message-ID: <161227057406.23782.851370865028834560.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Am Thu, 23 Mar 2000 schrieb Royce Wiles: > yApanIyas: try the index to > > Padmanabh .S. Jaini's > Gender and salvation : Jain debates on the spiritual liberation of women. > New Delhi : Munshiram Manoharlal, 1992. > > or Monier Williams p. 849 col. 3 There is also a nice article on the Yaapaniiyas in A.N. Upadhye, _Upadhye Papers_ (Mysore: University of Mysore, 1983). RZ From koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE Fri Mar 24 05:09:37 2000 From: koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE (Koenraad Elst) Date: Fri, 24 Mar 00 06:09:37 +0100 Subject: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga Message-ID: <161227057394.23782.6488742559111032930.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Van: Mark Phillips 24 maart 2000 5:38 wrote: > The copies of the photos of the Tiroler iceman tattoos that I have do not > show that they occupy the Chinese Jingluo (acupuncture) points. To the > contrary, these tattoos run horizontally like shaivite lines, That's even better for my purpose. That would make it one more of the many cultural items often claimed as "pre-Aryan Indian" but in fact attested also in European IE cultures, e.g. the Pashupati seal of Mohenjo Daro returning as the Cernunnos depiction on the Gundestrup cauldron, or Shiva's trident returning in Poseidon's iconography and as a national symbol of Ukraine. It is at any rate not me but the Discover editor who identified the tattooed points as acu-points. >This is a very interesting subject! Aryan and Dravidian sources explain > marma and marmam from texts attributed to Sushruta and Agustya, but how do > we place a date on the Dravidian marmam model. Can you please explain this? Unfortunately, no. This line of research is only beginning, as far as I'm concerned, though general studies comparing the Chinese and Indian systems certainly must have been done by someone somewhere. K. Elst From mmdesh at UMICH.EDU Fri Mar 24 11:27:05 2000 From: mmdesh at UMICH.EDU (Madhav Deshpande) Date: Fri, 24 Mar 00 06:27:05 -0500 Subject: Out of Bharat In-Reply-To: <20000324040146.23394.qmail@www0k.netaddress.usa.net> Message-ID: <161227057396.23782.4913687305215410869.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> For a critical review of S.S. Misra's theories, see: H.H. Hock, "Out of India? The Linguistic Evidence", in Aryan and Non-Aryan in India, edited by Bronkhorst and Deshpande, Harvard Oriental Series, Opera Minora, Vol. 3, 1999. Madhav Deshpande On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, S.Kalyanaraman wrote: > Prof. Kochar has not refuted the views of Prof. Satya Swarup Misra who has > presented a well-argued thesis on IE out of Bharat. I will separately present > a detailed list of etyma evaluated by Prof. Misra. "...That the Gypsy > languages are of Indo-Aryan origin is no more controversial...the Gypsy > dialects present sufficient evidence, which shows that Indo-Aryan a changed > into a,e,o in European Gypsy. Thus in a way the linguistic change in Gypsy, > suggests a clear picture of an assumption for a similar change in > Proto-Indo-European stage, of Indo-European a (as shown by Sanskrit and as > reconstructed by Bopp, Sleicher etc.) into dialectical a,e,o (as shown by Gk. > etc.). Uptil now no evidence to the contrary is available that > Proto-Indo-European a,e,o (as reconstructed by Brugmann etc.) have merged in > India...Gypsy languages show a repetition of the linguistic change, which > occurred in a remote history of Indo-Europeanj, when the original groups, > speakers of various historical languages, left their original homeland (India) > and travelled to Europe...the borrowed elements in the Uralic languages show > borrowed R.gvedic forms in 5000 BC...the date of RV must be beyond 5000 BC..." > [Satya Swarup Misra, The Aryan Problem: A Linguistic Approach, Munshiram, > Delhi, 1992, pp. 81,82,94] > > ____________________________________________________________________ > Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. > From kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET Fri Mar 24 09:31:46 2000 From: kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET (S.Kalyanaraman) Date: Fri, 24 Mar 00 09:31:46 +0000 Subject: Out of Bharat Message-ID: <161227057390.23782.14870806251979518238.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Prof. Kochar has not refuted the views of Prof. Satya Swarup Misra who has presented a well-argued thesis on IE out of Bharat. I will separately present a detailed list of etyma evaluated by Prof. Misra. "...That the Gypsy languages are of Indo-Aryan origin is no more controversial...the Gypsy dialects present sufficient evidence, which shows that Indo-Aryan a changed into a,e,o in European Gypsy. Thus in a way the linguistic change in Gypsy, suggests a clear picture of an assumption for a similar change in Proto-Indo-European stage, of Indo-European a (as shown by Sanskrit and as reconstructed by Bopp, Sleicher etc.) into dialectical a,e,o (as shown by Gk. etc.). Uptil now no evidence to the contrary is available that Proto-Indo-European a,e,o (as reconstructed by Brugmann etc.) have merged in India...Gypsy languages show a repetition of the linguistic change, which occurred in a remote history of Indo-Europeanj, when the original groups, speakers of various historical languages, left their original homeland (India) and travelled to Europe...the borrowed elements in the Uralic languages show borrowed R.gvedic forms in 5000 BC...the date of RV must be beyond 5000 BC..." [Satya Swarup Misra, The Aryan Problem: A Linguistic Approach, Munshiram, Delhi, 1992, pp. 81,82,94] ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. From venkatraman_iyer at HOTMAIL.COM Fri Mar 24 17:42:25 2000 From: venkatraman_iyer at HOTMAIL.COM (Venkatraman Iyer) Date: Fri, 24 Mar 00 09:42:25 -0800 Subject: Rebus writing (was: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga) Message-ID: <161227057408.23782.7299947350471333631.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> >> Foll. Prof. Parpola, what about the Fish symbol as Star in IVC? Elst wrote: { Nothing in the Harappan record says that the fish-like glyph means "star", only some modern interpreters do. Though at some point I didn't know better than to believe the Dravidian Harappa theory, this one interpretation made me suspicious. It is rather absurd for a pictographic script to use the rebus principle for an easy-to-depict object such as a star. Sumerian, at any rate, writes "star" with a sketchy drawing of a star. } Of course, we can't read the IVC seals completely yet. However, fish and stars are depicted together in IVC for sure. Father Heras, the Jesuit missionary, may finally be right in pointing to tamil mIn(=fish and star). It is apparent that even though IVC painted "star" symbol on the pottery, they did not include "star" in their sign list. Only the "fish" sign. A. Parpola, Deciphering the Indus script, Ch. 10, The 'fish' signs of the Indus script, p. 179-197. See especially p. 183 "Fig 10.5, 'Fish' and 'star' motifs combined on Mature Harappan pottery from Amri: (a) period IIIA, (b) period IIIC. After Casal 1964: II, fig. 92: no.487(=a) and fig. 78: no 343 (=b)." Also, on p.183 "Fig 10.6 A monochrome goblet painted with three 'star' symbols, discovered among 143 in a storage room (locus 118) at Mehrgarh, period VII, c.3000-2600 BC. After Santoni 1989: 183, fig. 8: 21; cf. ibid. 181-5." A. Robinson, The story of writing, 1999, Thames & Hudson, p.148 "The Aryans never penetrated to south India, thus allowing the region to preserve its own languages, which (it is postulated) are related that of the Indus dwellers. If the Dravidian hypothesis is correct, it might be possible to match words from the old form of Tamil, a Dravidian language spoken in today's Madras, with suitable Indus signs. A very common Indus sign is the fish. The old Tamil word for fish is 'mIn'. But mIn has another meaning too - 'star' or 'planet'. Could the fish sign be a rebus signifying an astral name? The occurence of fish signs with stars and anthropomorphic images (see seal on previous page) supports this interpretation, as does Indus Valley pottery in which fishes and stars are adjascent: [pictures of two pottery shards not included in this email] The fish also sometimes appears with six strokes before it in the script, indicating '(constellation) of six stars', i.e. the Pleiades, known as 'aRu-mIn' in the most ancient Dravidian texts." The IVC appears to use the rebus principle to depict stars, nakshatrams. Best wishes, V. Iyer ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From Royce.Wiles at ANU.EDU.AU Thu Mar 23 22:52:48 2000 From: Royce.Wiles at ANU.EDU.AU (Royce Wiles) Date: Fri, 24 Mar 00 09:52:48 +1100 Subject: Yavanas Message-ID: <161227057385.23782.18319533374999458606.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> yApanIyas: try the index to Padmanabh .S. Jaini's Gender and salvation : Jain debates on the spiritual liberation of women. New Delhi : Munshiram Manoharlal, 1992. or Monier Williams p. 849 col. 3 From koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE Fri Mar 24 12:25:57 2000 From: koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE (Koenraad Elst) Date: Fri, 24 Mar 00 13:25:57 +0100 Subject: Queries: Diwali, Buddhism and Brahmins Message-ID: <161227057400.23782.17072169050885900370.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Yashwant Malaiya wrote (9 maart 2000) > There is a view that Buddhism arose in opposition to > the Brahmins. Does anyone know when this view first arose? > It does not appear to be correct. > That Buddhism arose in protest is certainly not the > Buddhist view. How did this view become popular? Today this question is totally politicized, so we must resist the temptation of assuming that the initial suggestion that Buddhism was an "anti-Brahminical revolt" was also politically motivated. Unless it really was. On this count, I think we must absolve the Indian Marxist *scholars*. Though the assumption of socio-political concerns as the "true" motive behind religious innovation comes naturally to Marxists, i find that the older generation (DD Kosambi, DR Chanana) was as critical of Buddhist as of Brahminical "superstitions" and "social injustices", detailing the employment of serfs by Buddhist monasteries, their rejection of tribal or runaway-slave candidates, their encouragement of passivity vis-?-vis oppression in the name of Karma, etc. Marxists back then were also unimpressed by the egalitarian-activist interpretation of Buddhism by the convert (1956) Dr. BR Ambedkar, an anti-Communist socialist. It is only lately, with Marxism becoming a marginal force in need of an alliance with casteist-populist forces (formerly decried as "lumpen"), that some Marxist scholars have started peddling this version of history. One Marxist *politician* who played a central role in creating or popularizing this story of Buddhism-as-revolt was Communist Party founder MN Roy, who, in his book (if I remember correctly:) Role of Islam in Indian History, ca.1930, claimed that Buddhism was an egalitarian revolt of the masses (in fact, like hippyism, it originated with dissatisfied though well-to-do upper-class youngsters), that it was crushed by "Brahminical onslaught", and that the masses then welcomed Islam as the next liberator from Brahminical oppression. This fairy-tale is now standard fare in schoolbooks and pop history books in India. MN Roy probably didn't invent this himself. Considering the parallel between the Buddhist-Brahminical and Christian-Jewish antagonisms (interiority vs. ritualism, compassion vs. the law), it is safe to surmise some 19th-century Christian influence on the conventional wisdom regarding Buddhist-Brahminical relations, particularly its systematic anti-Brahmin bias. But there maybe someone else has the details? At any rate, now that Christians are discovering "Jesus the Jew", it may be time to recognize "Gautama the Hindu". K. Elst From zysk at HUM.KU.DK Fri Mar 24 12:31:04 2000 From: zysk at HUM.KU.DK (Kenneth Zysk) Date: Fri, 24 Mar 00 13:31:04 +0100 Subject: Position in Tibetan Studies Message-ID: <161227057398.23782.14619502737439315825.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> TEACHING FELLOW (AMANUENSIS) IN TIBETAN STUDIES in the Department of Asian Studies, University of Copenhagen, to be filled by August 1st, 2000 The appointee will teach courses in Tibetan Language and Civilisation at all levels in the Tibetan Studies Programme of the department. Normal teaching load is twelve (12) hours per week over twenty-eight (28) weeks per year. Exams are in January and June. Academic requirement for the position is a MA-degree in Tibetan Studies or similar qualifications. The Tibetan Studies Programme has no other full-time academic staff but it is closely associated with the department's South Asian Studies Programme with one associate professor. The department also has separate programmes in Chinese Studies, East Asian/Korean Studies, Japanese Studies, and Southeast Asian Studies. The appointment is limited to two years. If the appointee is covered by a double taxation agreement there is a possibility of a considerate tax concession. The selected candidate should be prepared to take up the position not later than August 1st 2000. Applications must include full information and documentation of the applicant's scholarly qualifications and teaching experience. If the applicant wishes publications to be taken into account these should be included in triplicates. Material in electronic form - such as discs - is not accepted. The names of the members of the appointment committee will be sent to the applicants. Each applicant will receive his or her own evaluation. Salary and other conditions of appointment are those agreed between the Danish Ministry of Finance and the Organisation of Academic Graduates. Further information about the position may be obtained from Leif Littrup, Director of the Department tel. + 45 35 32 88 22, fax + (45) 35 32 88 35. Applications should be addressed to the Rector of the University of Copenhagen with reference to J.nr. 401-223-195/00-4291 and sent to the Faculty of Humanities, Njalsgade 80, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark, so that they reach the Faculty not later than 2nd May 2000, 12 noon. -- Kenneth G. Zysk University of Copenhagen Department of Asian Studies Leifsgade 33, 5 DK-Copenhagen S Denmark Phone: +45.35.32.88.32 FAX: +45.35.32.88.35 Email: zysk at hum.ku.dk If email fails use: zysk at spam.hum.ku.dk From markphillipsuts at YAHOO.COM Fri Mar 24 04:38:53 2000 From: markphillipsuts at YAHOO.COM (Mark Phillips) Date: Fri, 24 Mar 00 15:38:53 +1100 Subject: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga Message-ID: <161227057392.23782.10895158428200003509.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Koenraad Elst wrote: 1. >Incidentally, a recent issue of Discover monthly reports that Oetzi, the Tiroler iceman of ca. 3000 BC, had tattoos >on his body, exactly on the location of a number of acupuncture points. The copies of the photos of the Tiroler iceman tattoos that I have do not show that they occupy the Chinese Jingluo (acupuncture) points. To the contrary, these tattoos run horizontally like shaivite lines, across the channels, not in the same direction. They could equally be some sort of ritualistic tattooing. >exactly on the location of a number of acupuncture points< Please find a body part which doesn't have acupoints! There are acupoints (as there are marmas) all over the body, that is true, but to claim that these tattoos represent acupoints is difficult to prove. 2. >Now, the Yellow Emperor was credited with the invention of Chinese medicine. Both Oetzi's tribe and the >Yellow Emperor came from somewhere in Central Asia, which in turn was in the Indian sphere of influence. And >Indian medicine does have a tradition (likely much older than its first appearance in writing) of acu-points... This is a very interesting subject! Aryan and Dravidian sources explain marma and marmam from texts attributed to Sushruta and Agustya, but how do we place a date on the Dravidian marmam model. Can you please explain this? Best regards, Mark. Mark Phillips UTS College of Traditional Chinese Medicine Dept Health Sciences, Faculty of Science University of Technology, Sydney PO Box 123, Broadway, NSW, 2007, Australia Phone: (02) 9514 7853 (direct line) (02) 9514 2500 (messages) FAX: (02) 9281 2267 URL: http://www.science.uts.edu.au/depts/hs/tcm/ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From dsm at CYPRESS.COM Sat Mar 25 04:44:22 2000 From: dsm at CYPRESS.COM (Dinesh Maheshwari) Date: Fri, 24 Mar 00 20:44:22 -0800 Subject: Horse with 17 pairs of ribs==Przewalski horse? Message-ID: <161227057415.23782.14346440225164723140.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear List members, Paul Kekai Manansala wrote : >1.162.18 The axe penetrates the thirty-four ribs > of the swift horse; the beloved of the gods, (the > immolators), cut up (the horse) with skill, so > that the limbs may be unperforated, and > recapitulating joint by joint. > > (from Wilson) > >Now, 17 X 2 = 34. The rare Przewalski horse (Equus przewalski poliakov), currently found in the Mongolian steppe, has 66 chromosomes instead of the 64 chromosomes that other horses have. Could it be the one that has 17 pairs of ribs ? I have already sent an email to the ARMBA of Australia, which has bred these horses in captivity, asking them if the Przewalski horse indeed has 17 pairs of ribs. I am anxiously waiting for their response. Does any one else know if the Przewalski horse has 17 pairs of ribs ? Thanks, Best regards, Dinesh Maheshwari Fremont, California USA From CDMilesY at AOL.COM Fri Mar 24 21:20:40 2000 From: CDMilesY at AOL.COM (Christopher Miles-Yepez) Date: Fri, 24 Mar 00 21:20:40 +0000 Subject: Rope-Snake Message-ID: <161227057410.23782.3280379621409877674.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I am trying to track down the earliest written references to the rope-snake analogy. Can anyone out there provide any clues? Christopher Miles-Yepe From s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK Sat Mar 25 03:21:58 2000 From: s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK (Stephen Hodge) Date: Sat, 25 Mar 00 03:21:58 +0000 Subject: Literacy in India Message-ID: <161227057413.23782.10884061230129487950.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> If a post-IV writing system was introduced during the Mauryan period, when was coinage introduced ? Are the restrictions imposed in the Vinaya upon bhik.sus regarding the handling of money deemed to post-date the Buddha's own lifetime ? If some form of monetary system was actually operating in Magadha and elsewhere around the time of the Buddha, this suggests to me accounts and other forms of record-keeping which in most places involves some kind of writing unless a quipu system was used as by the Inca. Does literacy presuppose numeracy or vice versa ? Best wishes, Stephen Hodge From maniambalam_arasu at YAHOO.COM Sat Mar 25 14:04:50 2000 From: maniambalam_arasu at YAHOO.COM (Maniambalam Arasu) Date: Sat, 25 Mar 00 06:04:50 -0800 Subject: Comparative linguistics Message-ID: <161227057419.23782.94683183195695839.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Prof. Kalyanaraman: >It is reasonable to assume that in transformation grammar, >the same phenomenon will persist across Pra_kr.ts, thus finding common >features of semantic expansions between say Old Tamil and Bhojpuri. Sir, Are you calling the Dravidian language family a kind of Pra_kr.ts? Not confidant that Tamilists will agree to your proposal that their language is a Prakritham. On deep similarities between Old Tamil and Bhojpuri, probably because Dravidian languages got replaced with Indo-Aryan. Arasu __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From maniambalam_arasu at YAHOO.COM Sat Mar 25 14:15:02 2000 From: maniambalam_arasu at YAHOO.COM (Maniambalam Arasu) Date: Sat, 25 Mar 00 06:15:02 -0800 Subject: [q] Possehl book Message-ID: <161227057420.23782.14907988094674966695.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Prof. Witzel >Won't publish it, as not to get G. Possehl's badge "no. 56" -- >of failed attempts of deciphering the Indus script... I remember reading in a review that Greg Possehl's 1996 book, (Indus Age: The writing system) that Asko Parpola's 1994 book was not included because Possehl finished the mss. before Parpola's work was printed. Does Possehl's book include the analysis on Parpola's book? Arasu __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM Sat Mar 25 15:30:29 2000 From: lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM (Lakshmi Srinivas) Date: Sat, 25 Mar 00 07:30:29 -0800 Subject: Literacy in India Message-ID: <161227057422.23782.13161565977105115753.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> --- Stephen Hodge wrote: > Does literacy > presuppose numeracy or > vice versa ? D. Schmandt-Besserat, talking of clay tokens of the ancient Near East (which were used as counters and tallies) in her Before Writing (Univ of Texas Press, Austin, 1992, p. 195), says "They were the precursor of writing and document communication in prehistory. They were the precursor of numerals and shed light on the origin of mathematics". In what follows she asks certain questions. "The tokens also raise new questions concerning the essence of writing. Was the first script of the Near East unique in deriving from a counting device? Or is literacy universally tied to numeracy? Is numeracy a prerequisite for literacy?" In answer she quotes the following verse by Thomas Astle and concludes the book :-) >?From whence did the wond'rous mystic art arise Of painting speech, and speaking to the eye That we by tracing magic lines are taught How both to colour, and embody thought? Just fyi, in one of her earlier and shorter versions of her thesis published in a Scientific American special number publ. 1984, she says that tokens were found in Chanhu Daro. You may want to check EJH Mackay for this. It appears that Near Eastern archaeology has not turned up even "one example of tokens regarded in the hypothesis as prototypes of logograms other than numbers". We aren't any forr'arder, are we? :-) Thanks and Warm Regards, LS __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From lel at LEL.MSK.RU Sat Mar 25 13:26:14 2000 From: lel at LEL.MSK.RU (Dmitriy Lielukhine) Date: Sat, 25 Mar 00 16:26:14 +0300 Subject: sending mail to the list Message-ID: <161227057417.23782.1950253097637772877.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Indologists, Up to date the texts of Indian inscriptions are not submitted in the net. Now I am happy to announce first "electronical collection" of epigraphy (Early sanskrit epigraphy from Nepal, Licchavi's inscriptions), which is located on the server of Oriental Institute, Moscow and can be browsed from http://www.orient.ru/eng/resour/index.htm. It is need only to download our ttf font from the same page. I continue the work for preparation the other collections of ancient and early mediaeval Indian epigraphy, which, as I hope, can be useful for the indologists. I would very like to learn opinions, comments and advices about this collection and future publications. Lielukhine D.N. Oriental Institute. From aklujkar at UNIXG.UBC.CA Sun Mar 26 08:35:57 2000 From: aklujkar at UNIXG.UBC.CA (Ashok Aklujkar) Date: Sun, 26 Mar 00 09:35:57 +0100 Subject: Austric ... Atharva-veda Message-ID: <161227057435.23782.1039289540608115960.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The following work may not come to the attention of list members. Hence I am mentioning it. Not knowing much about the subject, I am not expressing any view as to its content. Ghosh, Abhijit. 1998. Some Austric Lexical Elements in the Atharvaveda: a Diachronic Approach. Dissertation presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Arts) in Sanskrit of the Jadavpur University, Calcutta. Department of Sanskrit, Jadavpur University, Calcutta 700 032 (India). July 1998. From kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET Sun Mar 26 10:20:43 2000 From: kalyan99 at NETSCAPE.NET (S.Kalyanaraman) Date: Sun, 26 Mar 00 10:20:43 +0000 Subject: [Re: Comparative linguistics] Message-ID: <161227057424.23782.13968617204093994336.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Maniambalam Arasu wrote: >snip> probably because Dravidian languages> got replaced with Indo-Aryan. Yes, indeed. Prof. Satya Swarup Misra (refce. cited in earlier posting) endorses Prof. Swaminatha Aiyer's analyses of common features betweeen Aryan and Dravidian..."...from a linguistic point of view also, Dravidian is more comparable to Indo-Aryan than to any other language family in the world...But Dravidian may be the first to have been separated and went north. Next the centum peop0le separated and left through the Himalayan passes to Caspin or Pamir and then to Europe etc. The satem speakers left after that, batch by bach. The last batch might have been the Iranians." To me this is as good a hypothesis as any in comparative linguistics (substantiation of which of course needs help from other scientific scholarship, e.g. archaeology). Regards, Kalyanaraman ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. From vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Mar 26 21:44:16 2000 From: vishalagarwal at HOTMAIL.COM (Vishal Agarwal) Date: Sun, 26 Mar 00 13:44:16 -0800 Subject: [Re: Comparative linguistics] Message-ID: <161227057430.23782.8953783962579138093.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ----Original Message Follows---- From: Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan The views of Hindutvavadins who may think that they are praising Tamil by calling [...] VA responds: Dr. Satya Swarup Misra, whose views quoted by Dr. Kalyanaraman have apparently annoyed you, is NOT a follower of Hindutva. This is acknowledged by none other than Dr. H H Hock in his article (referred to by Dr. Madhav Deshpande in a recent post) wherein he criticizes the views of Dr. Mishra. I felt compelled to clarify this because in the past, a list member accused me of 'threatening' another list member just because some of my views coincided with those of some Hindutva organizations, that, in the opinion of the accuser, frequently resorted to bullying and terror tactics to silence their opponents. The accusation was not withdrawn despite my clarification to the contrary. And another esteemed list member stated erroneously, in a rather pejorative sense, that my Uncles were occupying high positions within the BJP. I hope we all refrain from unnecassary such name calling especially now that the chief minister of Tamil Nadu has eagerly given a clean chit recently to RSS, which is the mother of all Hindutva organizations :-) Moreover, the listmaster has asked us to control our language. With this, my monthly quota of posting to the list is over. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Sun Mar 26 19:07:43 2000 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan) Date: Sun, 26 Mar 00 14:07:43 -0500 Subject: [Re: Comparative linguistics] Message-ID: <161227057426.23782.8998982311833343888.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The views of Hindutvavadins who may think that they are praising Tamil by calling it a Prakrit will be dismissed with outright contempt by even devout Tamilphile Hindu Tamils. Consider the following two verses of campantar, the militant zaiva saint of the 7th century AD. AkamattoTu mantiragkaL amainta cagkata pagkamA pAkatattoTu iraittu uraitta can2agkaL veTku uRu pakkamA mA katakkari pOl tirintu purintu nin2Ru uNum mAcu cEr Akatarkku eLiyEn2 alEn2 tiru AlavAy aran2 niRkavE. (tEv. 3.39.2) cantucEn2an2um intucEn2an2um tarumacEn2an2um karumai cEr kantucEn2an2um kan2akacEn2an2um mutal atu Akiya peyar koLA manti pOl tirintu AriyattoTu centamizp payan2 aRikilA antakarkku eLiyEn2 alEn2 tiru AlavAy aran2 niRkavE. (tEv. 3.39.4) Another saint, appar (6/7th century AD) says of ziva, vaTamoziyum ten2 tamizum maRaikaL nAn2kum An2avan2 kAN (tEv. 6.87.1) In a nutshell, for these devout zaivas, Sanskrit and Tamil are equals. Prakrit is a shameful deformation of Sanskrit. So it cannot be Tamil's equal. campantar sang these verses in Madurai before his debates with the jains whom he criticized as speaking Prakrit and not knowing/speaking either Sanskrit or Tamil. appar praises ziva as one who became Sanskrit, Tamil, and four vedas. If Hindutvavadins want to do politico-religious linguistics, then they should give this due consideration. Regards S. Palaniappan From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Sun Mar 26 19:41:04 2000 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan) Date: Sun, 26 Mar 00 14:41:04 -0500 Subject: [Re: Comparative linguistics] Message-ID: <161227057428.23782.17232289195125572841.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 3/26/2000 1:08:36 PM Central Standard Time, Palaniappa at AOL.COM writes: > AkamattoTu mantiragkaL amainta cagkata pagkamA > pAkatattoTu iraittu uraitta can2agkaL veTku uRu pakkamA > mA katakkari pOl tirintu purintu nin2Ru uNum mAcu cEr > Akatarkku eLiyEn2 alEn2 tiru AlavAy aran2 niRkavE. (tEv. 3.39.2) For the benefit of those who do not know Tamil, let me explain how this verse is interesting from the point of view of linguistic attitudes and awareness. Here the saint uses many tadbhava forms. For example, Akamam = agama mantiram = mantra caGkata = saMskRta pAkatam = prAkRta So, we can infer that, it was agreeable to him that such transformations take place when Sanskrit words are used in Tamil which is genetically-unrelated to Sanskrit. But since he calls Prakrit as a deformation of Sanskrit, he does not like such transformations within Indo-Aryan! Regards S. Palaniappan From cssetzer at MUM.EDU Mon Mar 27 03:57:19 2000 From: cssetzer at MUM.EDU (Claude Setzer) Date: Sun, 26 Mar 00 21:57:19 -0600 Subject: sending mail to the list Message-ID: <161227057433.23782.207909237895003891.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Dimitriy, This is a wonderful work that you have done and I enjoy it very much. There is one advise that I give for you and for others trying to view this. Your original page is using Russian/Cyrillic encoding and it thus sets the user's web browser to Cyrillic encoding. (I use MS Explorer 5) Then your font (and other things) do not display properly. In order to get proper display of your font, I have to go into the View menu and set encoding to "western European." Then everything looks great. It is somewhat of a problem, because every time the browser goes back to one of your other pages, the browser is automatically set back to Cyrillic encoding and shows Russian characters. So you have to keep resetting to western European encoding to see your font correctly. This type of thing is a long standing serious problem with using any font that correctly displays (any) language. It sure would be nice if we could somehow get the international standards committees to stop using all their resources on horrible looking 7-bit encoding schemes and start figuring out how to standardize display of real characters!!! Claude Setzer From: Dmitriy Lielukhine > Dear Indologists, > > Up to date the texts of Indian inscriptions are not submitted in the net. > Now I am happy to announce first "electronical collection" of epigraphy > (Early sanskrit epigraphy from Nepal, Licchavi's inscriptions), which is > located on the server of Oriental Institute, Moscow and can be browsed from > http://www.orient.ru/eng/resour/index.htm. It is need only to download our > ttf font from the same page. > > From aklujkar at UNIXG.UBC.CA Sun Mar 26 21:14:48 2000 From: aklujkar at UNIXG.UBC.CA (Ashok Aklujkar) Date: Sun, 26 Mar 00 22:14:48 +0100 Subject: P.V.Kane's HDS in abridged form Message-ID: <161227057437.23782.6271031753149074932.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- The Asiatic Society of Bombay and Dr.P.V.Kane Memorial Trust,Mumbai,cordially invite you and your friends to a function to be held in the Durbar Hall of the Asiatic Society of Bombay on Tuesday,18th Aprial 2000 at 6 P.M. for the release of the book entitled _Bharatratna Dr.P.V.Kane`s History of Dharmashastra-in Essence``_ by Dr.S.G.Moghe. The encyclopaedic History of Dharmashastra represents a monumental single-handed effort by the late Pandurang Vaman Kane (07-05-1880 to 18-04-1972). The original work in seven volumes covering more than six thousand five hundred pages and the first volume revised in mid-sixties contain such extensive discussions of Smritis,Sanskrit literature, numismatics, epigraphy and lexicography that these volumes are frequently referred to by scholars. A strong feeling was expressed by several persons that the contents of this great work should be made accessible in a concise form to non-specialist general readers. This has now been done by Dr. S. G. Moghe, a dedicated scholar in the field of Dharmashastra. Kane?s HDS was published over four decades. So discussions of particular topics are to be found not only in different volumes of the History of Dharmashastra but also in other books and journals. In the present book, an attempt has been made to present coherent accounts of these discussions. Summaries of chapters and long sections in the original work are also given. The book will be available directly from the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune - 411004, INDIA. Bhandarkar Oriental Series No. 30. PRICE: Rs. 1200/- excluding postage. PUBLISHER: Dr. S.G.Kane, Managing Trustee, Dr.P.V.KANE MEMORIAL TRUST, Mumbai From rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM Mon Mar 27 06:11:55 2000 From: rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM (Rajarshi Banerjee) Date: Mon, 27 Mar 00 01:11:55 -0500 Subject: NArada Message-ID: <161227057439.23782.16024774509250022509.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > He also derives the Old Babylonian word "kinnArum" from this > Dravidian nara. > > Considering Narada's association with music, I would ask IE/IA experts > if the name cannot be derived from Dravidian nar-. > >>> ... Looks like the root (DEDR #3651) nAr = fibre, string, cord, rope is not finding mention so far. nAri = bow-strin nAram = cord. Ma. nAr; Ko.nar; To. nOr; Ka. nAr, nAri; Kod. narI; Tu. nAru; Te. nAra, nAri; Kol. nARA, nAra; Go. nAr; Konda. nari. latin: nodus: knot English: knell: sound of bell, ominous sound knot:......... nettle : fibres ae extracted from this plant, nerve sounds very much like naravu in kannada Hindi, Bengali and many other north indian languages: nARI: nerve, siniew, vein nAl: double headed drum which actually emits sounds which sounds like nal...nal.. get it ? reminds one of knell in english. nARA: draw string of pyjamas Sanskrit: nAda: sound nArada: this guys plays a stringed instrument... Another possibility is the > Proto-Dravidian word Jarampu, narampu 'nerve, sinew, vein' (DED + > DEDS + DEN no. 2364, attested from Tamil to Malto), from which we > have forms like Kannada naravu, nara, Tulu nara, Telugu naramu, > Kolami naram, Gondi naral, naram. Sinews have been used as bow and > harp strings, and so the former item seems to be derived from the * word." Some of these claims of words being proto dravidian or IE sound one sided with shades of fond imagination. A layman like me can also cook up etymologies... A dravidian linguist from India should atleast know or mention the apparance of the same words or even similar words in neighbouring non drav languages. In light of all these words above I don't see what is especially proto dravidian about "nar". Could someone please explain? What about the word Simha in sanskrit and simba in swahili. Is this considered a coincidence or a borrowing from bantu to IE or vice versa. How can one build exact histories on such floozy things which cannot be stamped in date and time? Regards RB From mmdesh at UMICH.EDU Mon Mar 27 15:38:56 2000 From: mmdesh at UMICH.EDU (Madhav Deshpande) Date: Mon, 27 Mar 00 10:38:56 -0500 Subject: Rajvade In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227057445.23782.17253063171528102296.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> These two Rajvades were brothers. I have works of both of them and will dig up the dates. Madhav Deshpande On Mon, 27 Mar 2000, Klaus Karttunen wrote: > on 12th March Harry Spier asked about emendations proposed by V. K. Rajvade > to the Rigveda. In am not a Vedicist enough to answer this, but he also > added a second question: > "Would this be the same V, K, Rajvade who discovered the Jnaneshwari > manuscript?" > While I do not know the answer, I can at least surmise it: > The Vedic scholar was probably Vaijanath Kashinath Rajvade, who also wrote > the study Words in the Rigveda, Poona 1932. The Marathi scholar seems to be > Visvanatha Kashinath Rajvade (1860-1944). Igf somebody knows more (or more > correctly), for instance the dates of birth and death of the first, I would > appreciate. > > Regards > > Klaus > > > Klaus Karttunen > Institute for Asian and African Studies > Box 59, 00014 Helsinki, Finland > tel. +358-9-191-22224, fax. +358-9-191-22094 > From mlbd at VSNL.COM Mon Mar 27 07:15:26 2000 From: mlbd at VSNL.COM (Motilal Banarasidass Publishers) Date: Mon, 27 Mar 00 12:45:26 +0530 Subject: ICANAS 2000,CANADA Message-ID: <161227057441.23782.13984808414944112982.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Sir, Is anybody planning to be in Montreal for ICANAS,scheduled to be sometime in September this year ? Do let me know the dates & the venue ? Thanking you, Kind Regards, Abhishek Jain Export Department Motilal Banarsidass Publishers 41, UA, Bungalow Road, Jawahar Nagar Delhi-110007, India Tel: (011)-3974826,3918335,3911985,3932747 (011)-5795180, 5793423, 5797356 Fax: (011)-3930689, 5797221 Email:mlbd at vsnl.com , gloryindia at poboxes.com Website: www.mlbdbooks.com From gargsam at HOTMAIL.COM Mon Mar 27 18:14:47 2000 From: gargsam at HOTMAIL.COM (Sam Garg) Date: Mon, 27 Mar 00 13:14:47 -0500 Subject: Comparative linguistics Message-ID: <161227057447.23782.4800243214668296010.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Collating the different strands from your post: >Indology is largely, but not only philology >philology is superior to archaeology (leave aside other disciplines) in >understanding history Indology = philology and philology superior. No wonder the fight to get on the Indology 'shelfspace' gets so fractious! >But are your questions such that linguistics can legitimately >answer, >i.e., are they *linguistic* questions? And, however unpleasant it may >sound, we have to face the possibility that some questions cannot be >decisively answered. Or, indeed, maybe more time is needed Linguistics subset Philology cannot answer all questions; or ,it may take a few centuries; maybe these questions are not even philological questions. Philologists, however, do not intend relinquishing an inch of said shelfspace. >Many lay critics, also on this list, for some reason believe that >the >human sciences are stagnant and rigid. Not the human sciences but, certainly, the all too human scientists certainly can appear that way. >But much recent dilettantish criticism is rooted in being uninformed >about >what has already been done and / or is ideologically based Last, but not least, malign the critics. Thanks to all who provided links and reference materials offline. It has made for some interesting reading. Given the vast Indology universe built upon philology, all I can say is that Vishnu must have incarnated as a philologist recently and had one of his 'universe out of a navel dreams'! >From: Robert Zydenbos >Reply-To: Indology >To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK >Subject: Re: Comparative linguistics >Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 23:07:39 +0100 > >Am Tue, 21 Mar 2000 schrieb Sam Garg: > > > My objection is based on your insistence, as evidenced from your posts >of > > the last few days, that comparative ligusitics is/ must be/ should be >the > > final arbiter of things Indological. > >If that was your impression from my posts, then it is very unfortunate, >since I do not believe that myself. (Meanwhile, on Monday, I posted a >rather >more lengthy bit of writing addressed primarily to Mr Oka, and I hope this >has clarified still more.) You must know that Indology is largely, but not >only philology, and that philology is not only linguistics. > >While it is sympathetic, on the one hand, to have this list open for all >interested persons, it is rather sad, on the other, that the list owner on >repeated occasions has to write policy statements like in the "Horse & >BMAC" >thread (in spite of his having already written something clearly enough on >the Indology Web Page, where everybody should be able to see it) about >things >that everybody should know before they enter here. It should not be >necessary >for me to give my recent example of the talking potshard to prove that >philology is superior to archaeology (leave aside other disciplines) in >understanding history. Similarly, it should not be necessary for Prof. >Witzel, in the Jyotisa Vedanga thread, to give such simple examples of the >use of linguistics in dating. But when the dilettantism becomes very >irritating or insulting, one feels like talking back, and sometimes one has >little patience left. > > > I brought myself up to date on the histories of Sri > > Lanka, Iran, Iraq, the Gulf area, Middle East, Turkey and Europe. [...] > > Unfortunately, most of those questions remain unanswered. Comparative > > lingusitics has had over two centuries to prove their Indological models >but > > have been unable to do so. How much more time will be needed? > >But are your questions such that linguistics can legitimately answer, i.e., >are they *linguistic* questions? And, however unpleasant it may sound, we >have >to face the possibility that some questions cannot be decisively answered. >Or >indeed, maybe more time is needed. It is hard to draw up time plans for >when >which discoveries will be made! > > > In the meanwhile, we amateur Indologists (here I speak only for my own > > group) have become increasingly sceptical of 'classic' interpretations >of > > Indian history. > >There is of course such a thing as healthy scepticism. The professionals >repeatedly find good reasons for doubting earlier theories, and so they dig >deeper, find out more, etc. (this is called 'progress'. Many lay critics, >also on this list, for some reason believe that the human sciences are >stagnant and rigid. Cf. all the noise that is regularly made about people >who >wrote over a century ago). But much recent dilettantish criticism is rooted >in being uninformed about what has already been done and / or is >ideologically based: one already 'knows' what the answers 'should' be, and >if >mainstream academics do not lend their support, then those academics 'must >be >wrong' and are maligned in any (un)thinkable manner. > >RZ ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From saf at SAFARMER.COM Mon Mar 27 21:44:11 2000 From: saf at SAFARMER.COM (Steve Farmer) Date: Mon, 27 Mar 00 13:44:11 -0800 Subject: Literacy in India Message-ID: <161227057453.23782.5585641243931499264.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Lakshmi Srinivas writes, on the work of Denise Schmandt-Besserat: > D. Schmandt-Besserat, talking of clay tokens of the > ancient Near East (which were used as counters and > tallies) in her Before Writing (Univ of Texas Press, > Austin, 1992, p. 195), says "They were the precursor > of writing and document communication in prehistory. > They were the precursor of numerals and shed light on > the origin of mathematics". > > In what follows she asks certain questions. "The > tokens also raise new questions concerning the essence > of writing. Was the first script of the Near East > unique in deriving from a counting device? Or is > literacy universally tied to numeracy? Is numeracy a > prerequisite for literacy?" LS continues: > It appears that Near Eastern archaeology has not > turned up even "one example of tokens regarded in the > hypothesis as prototypes of logograms other than > numbers". Is this last quotation in fact from Schmandt-Besserat? I wonder, since it reverses what I understand of her central thesis. In a number of papers going back to the 70s, Schmandt-Besserat repeatedly argues that there are *direct* links between the shapes of these tokens and the earliest forms of Sumerian cuneiform writing -- not only of numbers). What is the origins of this quotation? From mmdesh at UMICH.EDU Mon Mar 27 18:56:17 2000 From: mmdesh at UMICH.EDU (Madhav Deshpande) Date: Mon, 27 Mar 00 13:56:17 -0500 Subject: Rajvade In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227057449.23782.15740705936432995093.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Vishvanath Kashinath Rajvade, the Marathi historian and scholar of Jnaneshwari was born on June 24 1863 and died on Jan 1, 1927. His older brother Vaijnath Kashinath Rajvade was the scholar who worked on the RV and the Nirukta. He was born on Feb 27, 1860 and died on December 17, 1944. The obituary notice about the latter may be found in the Annals of the BORI, vol 25, 1944 (published in 1945), pp. 266-268. The younger Rajvade was known more widely among the scholars of the history of Marathi and Maharashtra. A biography of his has been published by S.S. Puranik in Marathi: Vizvanaath Kaazinaath Raajavaa.de : Vyaktitva kart.rtva va vicaar, Raviraj Prakashan, Pune, 1989. Madhav Deshpande On Mon, 27 Mar 2000, Klaus Karttunen wrote: > on 12th March Harry Spier asked about emendations proposed by V. K. Rajvade > to the Rigveda. In am not a Vedicist enough to answer this, but he also > added a second question: > "Would this be the same V, K, Rajvade who discovered the Jnaneshwari > manuscript?" > While I do not know the answer, I can at least surmise it: > The Vedic scholar was probably Vaijanath Kashinath Rajvade, who also wrote > the study Words in the Rigveda, Poona 1932. The Marathi scholar seems to be > Visvanatha Kashinath Rajvade (1860-1944). Igf somebody knows more (or more > correctly), for instance the dates of birth and death of the first, I would > appreciate. > > Regards > > Klaus > > > Klaus Karttunen > Institute for Asian and African Studies > Box 59, 00014 Helsinki, Finland > tel. +358-9-191-22224, fax. +358-9-191-22094 > From srsarbac at STUDENTS.WISC.EDU Mon Mar 27 23:06:32 2000 From: srsarbac at STUDENTS.WISC.EDU (Stuart Ray Sarbacker) Date: Mon, 27 Mar 00 15:06:32 -0800 Subject: Pandita Ramabai In-Reply-To: <200003262258.QAA62378@mail2.doit.wisc.edu> Message-ID: <161227057451.23782.16229106458846187946.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Indologists, Prof. Gudrun Buhnemann has asked me to post a message asking whether anybody can identify the following two unattributed Sanskrit quotations in Pandita Ramabai's work. 1) "But my friend, once and for all make this decision: 'Karyam va sadhayeyam, deham va patayeyam' (that is, 'Either I shall accomplish my task or I shall renounce my body'); and face up to your enemies and adversities such as despair." 2) "I only appreciated the true worth of these old kinsmen and friends of ours however when I met them after a long, long time in a foreign country like America. Before this I had never understood so clearly the meaning of the verse, 'Mosquitoes cause more hurt by humming in the ear than by sucking the blood--rudhiradanadadhikam dunoti karne kvanan masakah.'" If you can, please forward your responses to Dr. Buhnemann: Gudrun Buhnemann I will forward any responses posted on the list to her as well. Thanks for your kind assistance. Best Wishes, Stuart Sarbacker From venkatraman_iyer at HOTMAIL.COM Mon Mar 27 23:09:55 2000 From: venkatraman_iyer at HOTMAIL.COM (Venkatraman Iyer) Date: Mon, 27 Mar 00 15:09:55 -0800 Subject: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga Message-ID: <161227057460.23782.12503648843957206165.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Wed, 22 Mar 2000 15:22:55 +0100 Koenraad Elst writes <> Having no access to good libraries, I am handicapped. Did Koenraad Elst do any work in Dravidian religious and astronomical terminology? Here is a sample of tamil names for 27 natal stars, which are not in Monier-Williams. **************************************** 1) tEn2el, puravi (asvini) 2) naTuvanAL, pakalavan, cORu, tAzi, yAmai, tAti 3) azaRkuTTam, erinAL 4) vayamIn, tiGkaNAL, paNTi 5) narippuRam, mummIn, mAzku, veyyOn 6) Atirai, mUtirai, ceGkai 7) puNartam, mUGkil, karumpu, piNTi, AvaNam 8) vaNTu, kuTam, pUcam 9) aravinAL, kavai, kaTcevi 10) ezuvAy, Jemali, koTunukam, vAykkAl 11) pUram, eli 12) pARkuni, mArinAL, mAn2ERu 13) kaimmIn, kaini 14) nErvAn, naTunAL 15) vIzkkai, marakkAl 16) muRam, cuLaku 17) puRRaLi, pOntai 18) centazal, vallArai 19) neRkaTai, mUlam 20) nIrnAL, uTaikuLam 21) kaTaikkuLam, piRkuLam 22) ONam, mAyOnAL 23) viTTam, puL, kAkam 24) cekku, cataiyam 25) vArUNi, nAzi, nIr 26) aRivan, muracu 27) icainAL, nAvAy. ****************************************** Regards, V. Iyer ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From Klaus.Karttunen at HELSINKI.FI Mon Mar 27 14:07:13 2000 From: Klaus.Karttunen at HELSINKI.FI (Klaus Karttunen) Date: Mon, 27 Mar 00 17:07:13 +0300 Subject: Rajvade Message-ID: <161227057443.23782.4488725820037731150.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> on 12th March Harry Spier asked about emendations proposed by V. K. Rajvade to the Rigveda. In am not a Vedicist enough to answer this, but he also added a second question: "Would this be the same V, K, Rajvade who discovered the Jnaneshwari manuscript?" While I do not know the answer, I can at least surmise it: The Vedic scholar was probably Vaijanath Kashinath Rajvade, who also wrote the study Words in the Rigveda, Poona 1932. The Marathi scholar seems to be Visvanatha Kashinath Rajvade (1860-1944). Igf somebody knows more (or more correctly), for instance the dates of birth and death of the first, I would appreciate. Regards Klaus Klaus Karttunen Institute for Asian and African Studies Box 59, 00014 Helsinki, Finland tel. +358-9-191-22224, fax. +358-9-191-22094 From cssetzer at MUM.EDU Tue Mar 28 03:40:26 2000 From: cssetzer at MUM.EDU (Claude Setzer) Date: Mon, 27 Mar 00 21:40:26 -0600 Subject: sending mail to the list Message-ID: <161227057462.23782.13841430454806211888.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> > > Thank you very much, I try to see again, but in all my pages I use western > encoding. May be you start from other (russian) pages of our server ? But if > this base is interesting for you, I can send it in zip file directly. I started out with the link in your post to Indology. Then there was no clear link to your database in your introduction, but I found that several of the links got me into the database. When I changed to western encoding, the Russian/Cyrillic characters went away. If I use back arrow on the web browser or go to some other page in your site, then the Cyrillic encoding comes back. Since I figured out how to get it to work, I can continue to do that, but I think many people will not be able to figure this out and so cannot see your fonts correctly unless you either tell them or somehow figure to how to make it not do this. I suggest that you: 1) put very clear message at the beginning of your introduction that tells the user how to best enter your database, and 2) warn the user of the potential for incorrect encoding of your fonts. thanks Claude Setzer From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Mon Mar 27 21:47:57 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Mon, 27 Mar 00 22:47:57 +0100 Subject: P.V.Kane's HDS in abridged form In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227057455.23782.12965022844585072411.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Isn't that what Robert Lingat did so successfully, years ago? -- Dominik Wujastyk Founder, INDOLOGY list. From lel at LEL.MSK.RU Mon Mar 27 21:53:56 2000 From: lel at LEL.MSK.RU (Dmitriy Lielukhine) Date: Tue, 28 Mar 00 01:53:56 +0400 Subject: sending mail to the list Message-ID: <161227057457.23782.13761428553775495582.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> ----- Original Message ----- From: Claude Setzer To: Sent: Monday, March 27, 2000 7:57 AM Subject: Re: sending mail to the list Thank you very much, I try to see again, but in all my pages I use western encoding. May be you start from other (russian) pages of our server ? But if this base is interesting for you, I can send it in zip file directly. From lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM Tue Mar 28 11:37:55 2000 From: lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM (Lakshmi Srinivas) Date: Tue, 28 Mar 00 03:37:55 -0800 Subject: Literacy in India Message-ID: <161227057475.23782.14895089299483451796.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Steve Farmer wrote: > It appears that Near Eastern archaeology has not > turned up even "one example of tokens regarded in the > hypothesis as prototypes of logograms other than > numbers". This is from the foreword to her book "Before Writing" by Prof. William H Hallo wherein he recounts some of the objections to Schmandt-Besserat's hypothesis, since its original appearance in the '70's. > I wonder, since it reverses what I understand of her > central thesis. Some of these objections perhaps do not reverse her central thesis as you put it; the hypothesis merely gets limited to numeracy. > In a number of papers going back to the 70s, > Schmandt-Besserat repeatedly argues that > there are *direct* links between the shapes of these > tokens and the earliest forms of Sumerian cuneiform > writing -- not only of numbers). Yes. There have been objections and reservations too from people such as S.J. Lieberman, I.J. Gelb, M.J. Shendge among others. Thanks and Warm Regards, LS __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From gargsam at HOTMAIL.COM Tue Mar 28 16:12:58 2000 From: gargsam at HOTMAIL.COM (Sam Garg) Date: Tue, 28 Mar 00 11:12:58 -0500 Subject: Comparative linguistics Message-ID: <161227057480.23782.13343228937309240521.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> No insult taken, as none was intended. In principle, our views are startlingly alike. I am therefore confident that you will join me in requesting the name of this list be changed to "Speculations in Indology - A philological perspective". I respectfully submit this title change will bring about two key benefits: 1) more accurately reflect the nature of this list 2) sharply reduce the number of 'non-specialists' that subscribe to/ clutter this list warmest regards, Sanjay Garg >From: Roland Steiner >Reply-To: Indology >To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK >Subject: Re: Comparative linguistics >Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 13:09:09 +0200 > >On 27 Mar 00, at 13:14, quoting some remarks of Robert Zydenbos Sam Garg >wrote: > > > >Indology is largely, but not only philology > > >philology is superior to archaeology (leave aside other disciplines) in > > >understanding history > > > > Indology = philology and philology superior. No wonder the fight to get >on > > the Indology 'shelfspace' gets so fractious! >May I explain in a few words? Philology has to do with human >language, and that is the simple reason why the object of >philology _in principle_ (that does not mean in each and every >case) has more to say to us than other non-linguistic objects >because speaking and writing is the most natural way of mutual >understanding among human beings, at least in more complex >situations. The "superiority" of philology is not a matter of >methods and/or philologists (versus archeologists, scientists, >etc.). > > > Philologists, however, do not intend relinquishing an inch of said > > shelfspace. >What is the meaning and the consequence of such statements? >Even if there were philologists who "do not intend relinquishing >an inch of said shelfspace", they would not be acting as philologists >in these cases. Let us say: a "biologist" refuses to read any journal on >chemistry. Would this be an argument against science as science? The same >if a "physician" states that "everything is (a form of) matter and >energy" (for example!) believing (metaphysically) that "everything" is >everything... >To simplify, or to make it easier (than it is): Each field of human >investigation has its own objects defined and limited by its own methods. A >philologist or a scientist who speaks about things or objects >which are not covered by his specific methods, does not speak >as a philologist or a scientist. Sometimes it may happen that a >philologist, an archeologist and a scientist seem to speak about >the same thing using the same word(s), but meaning quite different things. >However, among us rational beings it need not be said that each method or >way of investigation which helps in clarifying or improving the >understanding of a certain object is undoubtedly welcome (for example, the >dating of material objects). But the decision whether and in which way >something can be seen as an aid for one's investigation, is up to the >competent researcher, i.e., one who "defines" this specific object >(according to his/her method). > > >> Many lay critics, also on this list, for some reason > >> believe that the human sciences are stagnant and rigid. > > > > Not the human sciences but, certainly, the all too human > > scientists certainly can appear that way. >Without further argumentation, data, and information in the >course of the investigation "probable" remains "probable", "likely" >only "likely", "perhaps" only "perhaps", etc. Some problems arise >if author A says that XY is "not completely impossible", author B >(on the authority of A) writes that XY is "possible", author C (on >the shoulders of B) states that XY is "likely", whereas D >("quoting" C) declares, that XY has been proved. I think that D >certainly will not appear stagnant and rigid. > > > Last, but not least, malign the critics. >In our context the only interesting question is whether the critique >is justified or not, and, even more interestingly, why. > > > Given the vast Indology universe built upon philology, all I can > > say is that Vishnu must have incarnated as a philologist recently > > and had one of his 'universe out of a navel dreams'! >Too much honour, but may be true. Unfortunately not a suitable >topic for philologists. Any theologians out there? > >No insult intended! > >With kind regards, >Roland Steiner ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From reimann at UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU Tue Mar 28 19:44:10 2000 From: reimann at UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU (Luis Gonzalez-Reimann) Date: Tue, 28 Mar 00 11:44:10 -0800 Subject: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga In-Reply-To: <004401bf940b$229b08c0$530fe0d5@pandora.be> Message-ID: <161227057485.23782.4836117042266384799.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 03:22 PM 03/22/2000 +0100, K. Elst wrote: >As for the 1st millennium AD Tamil texts mentioning Krttika as the beginning >of the lunar calendar: this is perfectly normal, as calendars once >established tend to be preserved for ages (that is precisely their whole >point: putting time on a permanent common denominator). Then you agree that an old tradition can be preserved (you even consider it "normal") even though it no longer corresponds to "what is actually observed," which was your main complaint earlier. But, somehow, this should not apply to the JV, for you say that: >But that is a very different matter from the JV, >where the position of the solstices is given as such, not as a calendrical >relic. How is it different? The JV is meant to provide calendrical information for the celebration of the sacrifice, it is not an abstract text on astronomy. In the JV how can you make a distinction between an astronomical position "given as such" and one with a calendrical purpose? By the way, Pingree considers the nakSatras in the VJ to be tropical, not sidereal (Jyotihsastra: Astral and Mathematical Literature, p. 10. Harrassowitz, 1981) Regards, Luis Gonzalez-Reimann University of California, Berkeley From reimann at UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU Tue Mar 28 19:46:28 2000 From: reimann at UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU (Luis Gonzalez-Reimann) Date: Tue, 28 Mar 00 11:46:28 -0800 Subject: Alternative theories. was: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga In-Reply-To: <000d01bf94f0$18851520$530fe0d5@pandora.be> Message-ID: <161227057487.23782.14915092212840978505.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> At 06:49 PM 03/23/2000 +0100, K. Elst wrote: >Scientists continually, or at least periodically, question their own most >basic assumptions in the light of recent findings. Right, so do Indologists, provided the findings warrant it. > Unlike on >some other matters, this [Sandrokottos] is one in which I don't have a decided opinion, It's good that you clarified this, because it certainly looks like you do have a decided opinion. You are using it as one of your arguments against the JV date. >though of course underdog opinions have my sympathy. It is interesting that you should say this. You come across as trying to defend (almost) every alternative explanation, even if you sometimes agree they are far-fetched. Is it because of the shock value you think they might have against "the establishment"? To question assumptions is part of the process of research, and this implies looking at alternative explanations. But if you pile up alternative explanations that don't have firm bases you end up with a house of cards. It could become iconoclasm for iconoclasm's sake (maybe a strong Uranus?). Regards, Luis Gonzalez-Reimann From aktor at FILOS.SDU.DK Tue Mar 28 11:47:30 2000 From: aktor at FILOS.SDU.DK (Mikael Aktor) Date: Tue, 28 Mar 00 11:47:30 +0000 Subject: P.V.Kane's HDS in abridged form Message-ID: <161227057464.23782.1629445088165088888.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> The idea of an abridged version of HDhS is of course to make Kane's work more accessible. Lingat's book (if we are talking about _The Classical Law of India_) is not a systematic abridgement of HDhS. Only the first part, which is a history of the literature, could be seen as an abridgement of Kane's vol.1, while the other part only treats a few selected dharmasastra subjects. Another help would be to publish a detailed, systematic index to HDhS. Partly, this has already been done in: Krishan Lal Khera, _Index to History of Dharmasastra by Pandurang Vaman Kane_, Munshiram Manoharlal, 1997, which, however limits itself to the subject of purification (big enough!). The first part of the index is thematic while the second is arranged according to textual source. All in all it comes to 282 pages. An abridged HDhS would be a help if it is done very systematically (like a one-volume encyclopedia with references to the complete work for instance). It would have been nice to see a table of content of Moghe's version. Best ragards Mikael -------------------------- Dr Mikael Aktor, Assistant Professor, PhD Department of Religious Studies University of Southern Denmark Campusvej 55, DK-Odense M Denmark Phone: +45 6550 3318 Fax: +45 6593 2375 E-mail: aktor at filos.sdu.dk From r.l.schmidt at EAST.UIO.NO Tue Mar 28 08:56:04 2000 From: r.l.schmidt at EAST.UIO.NO (Ruth Laila Schmidt) Date: Tue, 28 Mar 00 11:56:04 +0300 Subject: CARB fonts for Macintosh In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227057466.23782.8841827991255701884.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear John Smith, I downloaded the Times_CARB font for Macintosh, unstuffed it, installed the fonts in my Fonts folder in the System folder and restarted my machine: however the fonts don't appear under the Fonts menu when I start my Word Processors. (I tried Nisus and Word). What have I done wrong? I was trying to get the Truetype font. Thanks, and with best wishes, Ruth Schmidt >Macintosh users wishing to be able to use the CARB fonts -- supplementary >fonts containg a wide range of "extra" characters likely to be useful to >Indologists -- will now find Mac versions of them at my website (URL given >below: bombay.oriental...). Follow the "fonts" link, then the "carb" link. > >John Smith > *********************************************** 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 r.l.schmidt at EAST.UIO.NO Tue Mar 28 09:16:55 2000 From: r.l.schmidt at EAST.UIO.NO (Ruth Laila Schmidt) Date: Tue, 28 Mar 00 12:16:55 +0300 Subject: Apology Message-ID: <161227057468.23782.14082630087968908492.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I apologize to members of the list for inadvertently sending a private letter to the list. Besr regards, 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 jrasik at COLMEX.MX Tue Mar 28 20:27:08 2000 From: jrasik at COLMEX.MX (Joshi Rasik) Date: Tue, 28 Mar 00 12:27:08 -0800 Subject: reuest help Message-ID: <161227057483.23782.13941717879342992513.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I shall appreciate if some one can help me the etymology of the following two words: 1.Galvarka (Harca-caritam of Bana-bhatta Chaptet V) 2.Kalaacii (Laksmi-sahasram of Venkataadhari) I do have have the exact reference of the texts.It states "dhatte kalaciim Sacii" Rasik Vihari From axel.michaels at URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE Tue Mar 28 10:33:53 2000 From: axel.michaels at URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (Axel Michaels) Date: Tue, 28 Mar 00 12:33:53 +0200 Subject: P.V.Kane's HDS in abridged form Message-ID: <161227057470.23782.11490403844218323347.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Why an abridged version of what is supposed to be a kind of compendium or English nibandha? There are shorter publications on sections of the material Kane has collected, e.g. Pandey?s Hindu Samskaras, Derrett?s fasc. in the History of Ind. Lit., Altekar and Sternbachs bibl. on Arthasastra, Altekar on education, etc. - not to speak about the topics of Kane?s vol. IV-V (karma, pilgrimage, tapas, vratas and utsavas etc.) Moreover, there are extensive indices in each volume, but an Index of these indices would be practically helpful. Best regards, Axel Michaels Mikael Aktor schrieb: > The idea of an abridged version of HDhS is of course to make Kane's work more accessible. > Lingat's book (if we are talking about _The Classical Law of India_) is not a systematic > abridgement of HDhS. Only the first part, which is a history of the literature, could be > seen as an abridgement of Kane's vol.1, while the other part only treats a few selected > dharmasastra subjects. > > Another help would be to publish a detailed, systematic index to HDhS. Partly, this has > already been done in: Krishan Lal Khera, _Index to History of Dharmasastra by Pandurang > Vaman Kane_, Munshiram Manoharlal, 1997, which, however limits itself to the subject of > purification (big enough!). The first part of the index is thematic while the second is > arranged according to textual source. All in all it comes to 282 pages. > > An abridged HDhS would be a help if it is done very systematically (like a one-volume > encyclopedia with references to the complete work for instance). It would have been nice > to see a table of content of Moghe's version. > > Best ragards > Mikael > -------------------------- > > Dr Mikael Aktor, Assistant Professor, PhD > Department of Religious Studies > University of Southern Denmark > Campusvej 55, DK-Odense M > Denmark > > Phone: +45 6550 3318 > Fax: +45 6593 2375 > E-mail: aktor at filos.sdu.dk ______________________________________________________________ Prof. Dr. Axel Michaels e-mail: axel.michaels at urz.uni-heidelberg.de Dept. of Classical Indology phone: ++49-6221-548817 South Asia Institute fax: ++49-6221-546338 University of Heidelberg Im Neuenheimer Feld 330 69120 Heidelberg Germany ______________________________________________________________ From steiner at MAILER.UNI-MARBURG.DE Tue Mar 28 11:09:09 2000 From: steiner at MAILER.UNI-MARBURG.DE (Roland Steiner) Date: Tue, 28 Mar 00 13:09:09 +0200 Subject: Comparative linguistics Message-ID: <161227057473.23782.13011823041595690282.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On 27 Mar 00, at 13:14, quoting some remarks of Robert Zydenbos Sam Garg wrote: > >Indology is largely, but not only philology > >philology is superior to archaeology (leave aside other disciplines) in > >understanding history > > Indology = philology and philology superior. No wonder the fight to get on > the Indology 'shelfspace' gets so fractious! May I explain in a few words? Philology has to do with human language, and that is the simple reason why the object of philology _in principle_ (that does not mean in each and every case) has more to say to us than other non-linguistic objects because speaking and writing is the most natural way of mutual understanding among human beings, at least in more complex situations. The "superiority" of philology is not a matter of methods and/or philologists (versus archeologists, scientists, etc.). > Philologists, however, do not intend relinquishing an inch of said > shelfspace. What is the meaning and the consequence of such statements? Even if there were philologists who "do not intend relinquishing an inch of said shelfspace", they would not be acting as philologists in these cases. Let us say: a "biologist" refuses to read any journal on chemistry. Would this be an argument against science as science? The same if a "physician" states that "everything is (a form of) matter and energy" (for example!) believing (metaphysically) that "everything" is everything... To simplify, or to make it easier (than it is): Each field of human investigation has its own objects defined and limited by its own methods. A philologist or a scientist who speaks about things or objects which are not covered by his specific methods, does not speak as a philologist or a scientist. Sometimes it may happen that a philologist, an archeologist and a scientist seem to speak about the same thing using the same word(s), but meaning quite different things. However, among us rational beings it need not be said that each method or way of investigation which helps in clarifying or improving the understanding of a certain object is undoubtedly welcome (for example, the dating of material objects). But the decision whether and in which way something can be seen as an aid for one's investigation, is up to the competent researcher, i.e., one who "defines" this specific object (according to his/her method). >> Many lay critics, also on this list, for some reason >> believe that the human sciences are stagnant and rigid. > > Not the human sciences but, certainly, the all too human > scientists certainly can appear that way. Without further argumentation, data, and information in the course of the investigation "probable" remains "probable", "likely" only "likely", "perhaps" only "perhaps", etc. Some problems arise if author A says that XY is "not completely impossible", author B (on the authority of A) writes that XY is "possible", author C (on the shoulders of B) states that XY is "likely", whereas D ("quoting" C) declares, that XY has been proved. I think that D certainly will not appear stagnant and rigid. > Last, but not least, malign the critics. In our context the only interesting question is whether the critique is justified or not, and, even more interestingly, why. > Given the vast Indology universe built upon philology, all I can > say is that Vishnu must have incarnated as a philologist recently > and had one of his 'universe out of a navel dreams'! Too much honour, but may be true. Unfortunately not a suitable topic for philologists. Any theologians out there? No insult intended! With kind regards, Roland Steiner From steiner at MAILER.UNI-MARBURG.DE Tue Mar 28 11:46:15 2000 From: steiner at MAILER.UNI-MARBURG.DE (Roland Steiner) Date: Tue, 28 Mar 00 13:46:15 +0200 Subject: Comparative linguistics (Addendum) Message-ID: <161227057478.23782.15217795304700842938.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In my previous post I forgot to type in the last half-sentence: >> Many lay critics, also on this list, for some reason >> believe that the human sciences are stagnant and rigid. > > Not the human sciences but, certainly, the all too human scientists > certainly can appear that way. Without further argumentation, data, and information in the course of the investigation "probable" remains "probable", "likely" only "likely", "perhaps" only "perhaps", etc. Some problems arise if author A says that XY is "not completely impossible", author B (on the authority of A) writes that XY is "possible", author C (on the shoulders of B) states that XY is "likely", whereas D ("quoting" C) declares, that XY has been proved. I think that D certainly will not appear stagnant and rigid, but all too human. From dsm at CYPRESS.COM Wed Mar 29 02:28:28 2000 From: dsm at CYPRESS.COM (Dinesh Maheshwari) Date: Tue, 28 Mar 00 18:28:28 -0800 Subject: Depiction of "horse" in the rock paintings of Bhimabetaka? Message-ID: <161227057495.23782.7015867040185947576.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear list members, The web site http://www.kamat.com/kalranga/rockpain/betaka.htm depicts the supposedly prehistoric rock paintings of Bhimabetaka in Madhya Pradesh. Amongst the depictions is one that of a reined horse or horse like animal with a human rider wielding a spear like object. A perusal of Kamats' web site attests their photographic and artistic skills but the few articles on historical aspects seem to be addressed to the populace and lack scholarly rigor. That notwithstanding, the rock paintings, especially that with the "horse", raise some questions; which I pose to the list members: 1.What time period have these rock paintings been dated to ? The Kamats mention a time period of 5000 to 20,000 years ago on their home page but mention figures of 500,000 to 20,000 years in the article associated with the depiction. The latter figures seem to be a typographical error but even the former figures are a little vague. 2.Which people have these rock paintings been attributed to ? Thanks, Best regards, Dinesh Maheshwari Fremont, California, USA PS: Australian Rare and Minority Breeds Association has directed me to the Western Plains Zoo, which has bred the Przewalski horse, and I am waiting for their response to my query regarding the numbers of ribs in the Przewalski horse. I will inform the list members once I receive their response. From vpcnk at HOTMAIL.COM Wed Mar 29 04:15:48 2000 From: vpcnk at HOTMAIL.COM (nanda chandran) Date: Tue, 28 Mar 00 20:15:48 -0800 Subject: Info on Bhattas Message-ID: <161227057498.23782.18419918051660809752.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Can someone give me information on Bhattas? I understand that they're brahmins, but which part of the country are they predominant in? KumArilla Bhatta is considered to be a South Indian - was he from Kerala? Also PrabhAkara - was he a bhatta too - and where was he from in South India? Surprisingly an elderly brahmin in my neighbourhood says that Bhatta or Bhattars are not brahmins! Were there non-brahmin bhattars in Tamil Nadu? Was Abhirama Bhattar who according to popular legend was saved from death by Ambal, a brahmin? Advance thanks for any helpful info. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Tue Mar 28 21:40:46 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Tue, 28 Mar 00 22:40:46 +0100 Subject: P.V.Kane's HDS in abridged form In-Reply-To: <001b01bf98ab$65e37be0$799be182@rotak> Message-ID: <161227057489.23782.6943907543249477387.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Does everyone share my view that the earlier edition of Kane was by far the better, and that his second edition became mired by his rejoinders to his critics, lengthy self-justificatory digressions, etc.? -- Dominik Wujastyk Founder, INDOLOGY list. From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Tue Mar 28 21:46:10 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Tue, 28 Mar 00 22:46:10 +0100 Subject: Indological projects [was: P.V.Kane's HDS in abridged form] In-Reply-To: <001b01bf98ab$65e37be0$799be182@rotak> Message-ID: <161227057493.23782.13452523321101668826.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Mikael Aktor and Axel Michaels have both identified good indexes to Kane as being a desideratum. I agree. A few months back, I raised the topic of completing Raghavan's NCC. Several people agreed that this was also a worthwhile indological project. What are we to do about these things? There are several important "enabling" tools of this type that our field would greatly benefit from. They are hardly the sorts of job on which a PhD should be spent. But in what way can they be made to happen? Should the IASS have a bursary to sponsor such project work? Would we all be prepared to pay into such a fund? Is that the right way to proceed? Or perhaps an independent Indological Charity Fund should be established to sponsor these and similar tasks. Payment could be made to pre- or post- doctoral students who could use some funds. Perhaps I'm dreaming. -- Dominik Wujastyk Founder, INDOLOGY list. From griffithsa at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL Wed Mar 29 07:30:26 2000 From: griffithsa at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL (Arlo Griffiths) Date: Wed, 29 Mar 00 09:30:26 +0200 Subject: (Email) Address of Thomas Malten Message-ID: <161227057500.23782.13184576261036464027.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear fellow Indologists, I am looking for a way to contact our Koeln (?) colleague Thomas Malten. Can anyone help me? Thank you very much, -- Arlo Griffiths CNWS / Instituut Kern Universiteit Leiden Postbus 9515 2300 RA Leiden the Netherlands tel.: +31-71-5272979 From axel.michaels at URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE Wed Mar 29 08:35:49 2000 From: axel.michaels at URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (Axel Michaels) Date: Wed, 29 Mar 00 10:35:49 +0200 Subject: Indological projects [was: P.V.Kane's HDS in abridged form] Message-ID: <161227057502.23782.4620323409484086022.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I didn?t mean that Kane?s index is useless, on the contrary, it?s not very comfortable but fairly comprehensive. I agree, however, with Dominik?s opinion on a completion of Raghavan?s NCC. This is a desideratum. It needs perhaps some iniative in India, eventually the Rasthriya Samskrit Samsthan? A. M. Dominik Wujastyk schrieb: > Mikael Aktor and Axel Michaels have both identified good indexes to Kane > as being a desideratum. I agree. A few months back, I raised the topic > of completing Raghavan's NCC. Several people agreed that this was also a > worthwhile indological project. > > What are we to do about these things? There are several important > "enabling" tools of this type that our field would greatly benefit > from. They are hardly the sorts of job on which a PhD should be > spent. But in what way can they be made to happen? Should the IASS have > a bursary to sponsor such project work? Would we all be prepared to pay > into such a fund? Is that the right way to proceed? Or perhaps an > independent Indological Charity Fund should be established to sponsor > these and similar tasks. Payment could be made to pre- or post- doctoral > students who could use some funds. > > Perhaps I'm dreaming. > > -- > Dominik Wujastyk > Founder, INDOLOGY list. -- ______________________________________________________________ Prof. Dr. Axel Michaels e-mail: axel.michaels at urz.uni-heidelberg.de Dept. of Classical Indology phone: ++49-6221-548817 South Asia Institute fax: ++49-6221-546338 University of Heidelberg Im Neuenheimer Feld 330 69120 Heidelberg Germany ______________________________________________________________ From axel.michaels at URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE Wed Mar 29 08:41:23 2000 From: axel.michaels at URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (Axel Michaels) Date: Wed, 29 Mar 00 10:41:23 +0200 Subject: Info on Bhattas Message-ID: <161227057505.23782.13885378358595537594.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> nanda chandran schrieb: > Can someone give me information on Bhattas? > > I understand that they're brahmins, but which part of the country are they > predominant in? Some information you can get in the old gazetteers, e.g. Nanjundaya/Iyer 1928: 314; Bhattacharya, Hindu Castes and Sects (p. 73 and 83). Bhatta was a caste name as well as a title, not necessarily, but predominantly for brahmins. It?s also a caste name for brahmins in Nepal, as well a term for the priests of the Pashupatinatha temple (which are from South India). Best wishes, A.M. ______________________________________________________________ Prof. Dr. Axel Michaels e-mail: axel.michaels at urz.uni-heidelberg.de Dept. of Classical Indology phone: ++49-6221-548817 South Asia Institute fax: ++49-6221-546338 University of Heidelberg Im Neuenheimer Feld 330 69120 Heidelberg Germany ______________________________________________________________ From christiane.sarrazin at GMX.DE Wed Mar 29 10:28:05 2000 From: christiane.sarrazin at GMX.DE (Christiane Sarrazin) Date: Wed, 29 Mar 00 12:28:05 +0200 Subject: email Address of Thomas Malten Message-ID: <161227057507.23782.9200955255609595940.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Arlo Griffiths, Thomas Malten's email-address: th.malten at uni-koeln.de CS. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gargsam at HOTMAIL.COM Wed Mar 29 20:43:38 2000 From: gargsam at HOTMAIL.COM (Sam Garg) Date: Wed, 29 Mar 00 15:43:38 -0500 Subject: Comparative linguistics Message-ID: <161227057512.23782.7844101324122794947.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I will not presume to speak for the practical jokers. Unlike that group, we live, breathe and practice Indian culture daily. If it is any comfort to the scholars on this list, I, for one, would not have subscribed to this list though I would have certainly taken the time for a courtesy look. Sincerely, Sanjay >From: Robert Zydenbos >Reply-To: Indology >To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK >Subject: Re: Comparative linguistics >Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 21:36:33 +0200 > >Am 28 Mar 00, um 11:12 schrieb Sam Garg: > > > In principle, our views are startlingly alike. I am therefore > > confident that you will join me in requesting the name of this list > > be changed to "Speculations in Indology - A philological > > perspective". I respectfully submit this title change will bring > > about two key benefits: > > > > 1) more accurately reflect the nature of this list > > 2) sharply reduce the number of 'non-specialists' that subscribe > > to/ clutter this list > > > > warmest regards, > > Sanjay Garg > >Would this help against the practical jokers who join this originally >scholarly list to politely waste the time of those for whom the study >of Indian culture is not a joke or mere hobby? > >Sincerely yours, > >Dr. Robert J. Zydenbos >the Netherlands ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From bvi at AFN.ORG Wed Mar 29 21:22:43 2000 From: bvi at AFN.ORG (Chris Beetle) Date: Wed, 29 Mar 00 16:22:43 -0500 Subject: Vimanas! Message-ID: <161227057514.23782.6745454436874096068.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> For those interested in the UFO-vimana connection, there is a nice book called Alien Identities that elaborately compares modern UFO accounts and descriptions of vimanas and which finds a remarkable number of similarities both in descriptions of the flying machines themselves and the characteristics of their inhabitants. The first part of the book analyzes the modern UFO phenomena, and the second discusses Vedic parallels. There is a web site on on the book which lists its table of contents at: http://www.alienidentities.com/ Chris Beetle At 05:41 PM 3/12/00 -0600, you wrote: >According to ancient Indian texts, the people had flying machines which >were called vimanas. The ancient Indian epic describes a vimana as a >double- deck, circular aircraft with portholes and a dome, much as we >would imagine a flying saucer. It flew with the "speed of the wind" and >gave forth a melodious sound. There were at least four different types of >vimanas; some saucer shaped, others like long cylinders (cigar shaped >airships)." > >D. Hatcher Childress, "Ancient Indian Aircraft Technology" In The >Anti-Gravity Handbook > >"In the Vedic literature of India, there are many descriptions of flying >machines that are generally called vimanas. These fall into two >categories: (1) manmade craft that resemble airplanes and fly with the aid >of birdlike wings, and (2) unstreamlined structures that fly in a >mysterious manner and are generally not made by human beings. The machines >in category (1) are described mainly in medieval, secular Sanskrit works >dealing with architecture, automata, military siege engines, and other >mechanical contrivances. Those in category (2) are described in ancient >works such as the Rg Veda, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Puranas, >and they have many features reminiscent of UFOs." "There are ancient >Indian accounts of manmade wooden vehicles that flew with wings in the >manner of modern airplanes. Although these wooden vehicles were also >called vimanas, most vimanas were not at all like airplanes. The more >typical vimanas had flight characteristics resembling those reported for >UFOs, and the being associated with them were said to possess powers >similar to those presently ascribed to UFO entities. An interesting >example of a vimana is the flying machine which Salva, an ancient Indian >king, acquired from Maya Danava, an inhabitant of a planetary system >called Taltala." > From venkatraman_iyer at HOTMAIL.COM Thu Mar 30 00:57:16 2000 From: venkatraman_iyer at HOTMAIL.COM (Venkatraman Iyer) Date: Wed, 29 Mar 00 16:57:16 -0800 Subject: Tiruvalluvar Rock Memorial Message-ID: <161227057516.23782.9835458135329179210.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Esteemed Indology listers, When you visit India next time, please pay a visit to her southern tip, Kanyakumari. A huge memorial dedicated to the poet Tiruvalluvar standing 133 feet tall, and weighing 7000 tons of solid granite has been opened on Jan. 1, 2000. Considered to be the world's largest granite sculpture carved in the round, the 133 feet signify the number of chapters in the short text that Valluvar wrote. The pustakam in Valluvar's hand is 15 feet,his beard is 7 feet, the face about 15 feet. The statue was designed by Vai. Ganapathi Sthapathi who has many monuments in the Pallava-Chola style. For a look at Tiruvalluvar memorial, go to http://www.thedmk.org/thirukural/133.htm Secular in concepts, Tirukkural is full of compassion and love for humankind. It is unlike any other ancient literary product of India, emphasizing equality of all. "The maxims of Valluvar has touched my soul" - Mahatma Gandhi "With sure strokes, the Kural draws the idea of simple ethical humanity. There hardly exists in literature of the world, a collection of maxims in which we find so much wisdom" - Albert Schweitzer "Kural has entered into the very soul of a whole people. It proclaims in sweetest mystic couplets virtue, truth, wealth and joy" - G. U. Pope ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From dsm at CYPRESS.COM Thu Mar 30 00:57:37 2000 From: dsm at CYPRESS.COM (Dinesh Maheshwari) Date: Wed, 29 Mar 00 16:57:37 -0800 Subject: Horse with 17 pairs of ribs Message-ID: <161227057518.23782.10639009449304087899.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear list members, My quest to find the horse with 17 pairs of ribs elicited some unexpected data. The relevant excerpts from the emails I received on the issue are as follows. "The modern horses with 17 pairs are the Timor horse, the Sulu horse and other horses of southeastern Asia. The distribution of the above breeds is confined, as far as I know, to Southeast and South Asia. The 'purest' types are found in Timor and Sulu, probably due to their isolation from intermixture with other breeds. These breeds also have other features such as Sivalensis-like dentition and pre-orbital depression that link them with ancient equids in the region. As far as I know, the Przewalski and their descendants all have 18 pairs. The Barb horses of Africa also sometimes have only 17 pairs of ribs. They are somewhat different than the South/Southeast Asian horses though, in that they have only five lumbar vertebrae rather than six, and a convex facial profile. The S/SE Asian horses have a slight depression near the orbit. I don't know whether Barb horses have the large first premolars of the upper jaw found in S/SE Asian horses." Best regards, Dinesh Maheshwari Fremont, California, USA From zydenbos at GMX.LI Wed Mar 29 19:36:33 2000 From: zydenbos at GMX.LI (Robert Zydenbos) Date: Wed, 29 Mar 00 21:36:33 +0200 Subject: Comparative linguistics Message-ID: <161227057510.23782.4593444102355691945.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Am 28 Mar 00, um 11:12 schrieb Sam Garg: > In principle, our views are startlingly alike. I am therefore > confident that you will join me in requesting the name of this list > be changed to "Speculations in Indology - A philological > perspective". I respectfully submit this title change will bring > about two key benefits: > > 1) more accurately reflect the nature of this list > 2) sharply reduce the number of 'non-specialists' that subscribe > to/ clutter this list > > warmest regards, > Sanjay Garg Would this help against the practical jokers who join this originally scholarly list to politely waste the time of those for whom the study of Indian culture is not a joke or mere hobby? Sincerely yours, Dr. Robert J. Zydenbos the Netherlands From maniambalam_arasu at YAHOO.COM Thu Mar 30 13:43:10 2000 From: maniambalam_arasu at YAHOO.COM (Maniambalam Arasu) Date: Thu, 30 Mar 00 05:43:10 -0800 Subject: Java based Email Message-ID: <161227057520.23782.5016541910583346077.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> From: "K. Kalyanasundaram" Reply-To: agathiyar at egroups.com To: pmadurai at onelist.com, agathiyar at egroups.com Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 09:05:03 +0200 BUSINESS LINE, February 16, 2000 CHENNAI, Feb. 15 Lastech tool for Web-based Tamil e-mail LASTECH Systems (P) Ltd was launched its web facility by which surfers may send and receive e-mail in Tamil without having to download separate fonts. Users will need to log on to www.tamilanjal.com, and use the instruction panel to key in e-mails in Tamil. 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He said that the committee responsible for the fund is looking for entrepreneurs wishing to develop software tools that enable English to Tamil translation; Tamil sorting which will come in useful in the public distribution system (PDS); voice recognition for Tamil phonetics, and use of a Tamil dictionary. The nature of funding may be on the lines of venture capital or loans, depending on whether entrepreneurs wish to return the sum given out initially, he said. He also said that work on the Tamil Virtual University (TVU), is in progress and the Government would be looking to collaborate which universities in other countries such as South Africa, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia and Mauritius to administer the curriculam decided by the TVU. --- THE ECONOMIC TIMES CHENNAI TUESDAY 15 FEBRUARY 2000 Tamil e-mail www.tamilanjal.com launched Chennai: You can now send and receive e-mails in Tamil without downloading any font or software. Chennai-based Lastech Systems has come out with a pioneering web facility www.tamilanjal.com, that will enable Internet users to send e-mails in Tamil without having to download a font or software onto a user's computer system. This facility can be operated across several platforms - Windows, Unix, Linux and Mac. The company has developed a Java-based software for using 12 Indian Languages on the net. The website has various easy-to-use keyboard layouts like DOE, Phonetic, Typewriter and Romanised. The Tamil messages can be composed easily by using the `onscreen keyboard layout and layout-sensitive character set window'. Any e-mail client software such as Netscape Mail, Microsoft, Outlook, Eudora can be used to read this Tamil mail. Lastech is planning to launch another website www.email2india.com next week which will enable users to send emails in any of the 12 Indian Languages such as Assamesse, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil and Telugu. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From nsalmond at CCS.CARLETON.CA Thu Mar 30 16:30:44 2000 From: nsalmond at CCS.CARLETON.CA (Noel Salmond) Date: Thu, 30 Mar 00 11:30:44 -0500 Subject: Need infor. on Kavadi and other Indian body piercing rituals (FWD) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227057524.23782.9805554286443811627.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dr. Raymond Prince and a team of medical researchers from Montreal at the McGill University Dept. of Psychiatry (Institute of Cross-Cultural Psychiatry) did a study of kaavadi bearing by Tamil Hindus in Kuala Lumpur (I think this was back in the early 80's). They were investigating the role of endorphins with the hypothesis that the trance states induced by the religious preceptors generated these natural pain inhibitors. Dr.Prince is retired but someone at the institute might be able to put you on to the paper describing the results of the tests conducted in this study. Noel Salmond Carleton University Ottawa, Canada At 05:11 PM 3/30/00 +0100, you wrote: >Hello there: > >I am doing a film for the Discovery Channel on various religious practices >involving the body and am interested in the rituals done in Tamil >Nadu or elsewhere in India involving piercing the flesh or kaavadi bearing. I >want to know how I could find out more. I have had a hard time getting >information on this. Thanks > >My e mail is Terni at aol.com > >Thanks in advance for any tips. > >Heidi Ewing >Producer >NY, NY > From tawady at YAHOO.COM Thu Mar 30 16:11:15 2000 From: tawady at YAHOO.COM (Raveen Satkurunathan) Date: Thu, 30 Mar 00 17:11:15 +0100 Subject: Need infor. on Kavadi and other Indian body piercing rituals (FWD) Message-ID: <161227057522.23782.4824378152879417488.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Hello there: I am doing a film for the Discovery Channel on various religious practices involving the body and am interested in the rituals done in Tamil Nadu or elsewhere in India involving piercing the flesh or kaavadi bearing. I want to know how I could find out more. I have had a hard time getting information on this. Thanks My e mail is Terni at aol.com Thanks in advance for any tips. Heidi Ewing Producer NY, NY From tccahill at LOYNO.EDU Fri Mar 31 03:44:31 2000 From: tccahill at LOYNO.EDU (Timothy C. Cahill) Date: Thu, 30 Mar 00 21:44:31 -0600 Subject: tech. question, Mac OS 8.6 In-Reply-To: <000401bf92c8$1d9e6ea0$8802fea9@gateway1> Message-ID: <161227057526.23782.16956619338995326810.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear Mac+Indologists, The greeting shows my problem. I hit hyphen, it types plus. In an effort to retain my beloved keyboard layout (US sys. 6, a.k.a. Old US) I copied the keyboard icon out of my neighbors Mac (sys. 7.5.x) and floppied it over to my new Mac G+4. Upon depositing it into my sys. folder, it prompted me to put it in the control panel folder. Yes. Then it asks me if I want to keep the new keyboard in place of the one thats there. Yes. Now I not only have no Indic diacritics, but the regular keyboard has gone awry. (No apostrophe by the way, it just barks at me.) It appears that all upper ASCII code characters are rearranged or do not produce any character at all. Any advice would be appreciated. best, Tim Cahill From selwyn at DTN.NTL.COM Fri Mar 31 05:53:04 2000 From: selwyn at DTN.NTL.COM (L.S.Cousins) Date: Fri, 31 Mar 00 06:53:04 +0100 Subject: tech. question, Mac OS 8.6 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227057530.23782.10255101099744917413.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I have no problem using Sys 8.6 and Word98. But I use Normyn/Times_Norman for the font. Have you checked the keyboard selection - small icon next to the icon on the top right you use to change between running programs. Lance Cousins >I am also having a problem using the keyboard for the old Indic Times >font. The keyboard actually works fine in my G4 with system 9 as long >as I stay in Word 5.1. However, when I switch to Word 98, then certain >keys such as the semicolon and the Indic diacritics no longer work >properly. Are you also using Indic Times with the caps-lock switch for >diacritics? Does anyone know if there are any updated versions of the >Mac keboard for this font? I neglected keeping up with changes in >fonts-software because what I used had been working fine until now. > >David Lawrence -- OXFORD, UK CURRENT EMAIL ADDRESSES: L.S.Cousins at nessie.mcc.ac.uk or selwyn at dtn.ntl.com From smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM Fri Mar 31 15:06:59 2000 From: smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM (Swaminathan Madhuresan) Date: Fri, 31 Mar 00 07:06:59 -0800 Subject: Word Processor based on TN encoding Message-ID: <161227057542.23782.3320887711325384801.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> For the benefit of the readers of the Indology list, especially those producing fonts, I reproduce below recent information that I have received on Tamil softwares. --- Kamban Softwares, Australia & Singapore has announced release of their latest Tamil Word Processor Kamban (kampan ezuttOlai), version 3.0 with the following features: - Tamil/English Menus and Interfaces - facile full typing of bilingual (Tamil/roman) text with formatting - based on New Tamilnadu Govt Tamilnet99 standard TAB, TAM encoding and also classical Tamil typewriter encoding (incl. 11 TAM, 4 TAB, 10 typewriter encoding based fonts) - multiple keyboard input options: Kamban, Tamilnadu recommended phonetic and typewriter keyboard based input - spellcheck, find/replace options in English and Tamil - user-editable dictionary in Tamil - multiple save formats including HTML, TAB & TSCII, the latter two for sending Email - 280 color clip arts of gods, goddesses and traditional symbols - Tamil etexts (thirukuRaL, Bharathiyar & Bharathidasan songs) - Tamil greeting cards This 32-bit based software works only on Windows 95, 98, NT and 2000 OS and not on early Windows 3.x (nor OS/2 nor Unix nor Mac) ! A complete re-haul of previous releases, this program is completely written in Visual C++ to provide speed and enhanced performance. Price: US$38 (28$ + 10$ freight) for single user. For more details visit Kamban website or contact author Mr. V. Vasudevan srin- at kamban.com.au at Sydney or Vendor at Singapore lakshma- at cyberway.com.sg. Non-profitable Organisations, Orphanages and Community Schools can obtain a free copy of the software by writing to the author. FREEWARES from Kamban Softwares If you are interested in a simple editor FREEWARE based on Tamilnadu Govt Bilingual encoding TAB, see: http://www.kamban.com.au/prodTBE.htm For simple TSCII based E-mail application, TMAIL, also a FREEWARE see: http://www.kamban.com.au/prodTMail.htm Recent TMAIL+ Beta release provide multiple keyboard layout (incl. Mylai) for text input and Spell check in English and Tamil. --------------------------------------------- __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From Palaniappa at AOL.COM Fri Mar 31 14:24:14 2000 From: Palaniappa at AOL.COM (Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan) Date: Fri, 31 Mar 00 09:24:14 -0500 Subject: Tiruvalluvar Rock Memorial Message-ID: <161227057541.23782.14591637601788857298.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> In a message dated 3/29/2000 6:58:24 PM Central Standard Time, venkatraman_iyer at HOTMAIL.COM writes: > For a look at Tiruvalluvar memorial, go to > http://www.thedmk.org/thirukural/133.htm > > Secular in concepts, Tirukkural is full of compassion > and love for humankind. Given the nature of tirukkuRaL, I am curious about the artistic style of the sculpture. Is it religiously neutral? If anything, how does it compare to buddhist or jain styles? Thanks in advance. Regards S. Palaniappan From fsquarcini at FTBCC.IT Fri Mar 31 08:09:46 2000 From: fsquarcini at FTBCC.IT (Federico Squarcini) Date: Fri, 31 Mar 00 10:09:46 +0200 Subject: tech. question, Mac OS 8.6 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227057535.23782.558966894383647002.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Dear members, I hope the following can be of some help. It seems from my works on Mac (since System 6.5 until 9.0.4), that this problem stand with Microsoft Word, mainly between the key of Word 5.1 and the ones of Word 98. This last version use by default some of the key for some of his functions (that you can manage from the Word 98 menu "option") that in the previous version were free and so used by the previous creators of "alternative" keyboards layout. So, what to do now: or you can deal with the menu "option" of Word 98 and get free those key combinations that you need to tape the sanskrit fonts, or try to find a new keyboard layout made on the new setting of Word 98. That's my view, Federico Squarcini From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Fri Mar 31 10:16:35 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Fri, 31 Mar 00 11:16:35 +0100 Subject: Electronic Mahabharata Message-ID: <161227057537.23782.14037453638284091654.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> As many of our members are aware, John Smith's version of the e-Mahabharata is available from the file server at http://bombay.oriental.cam.ac.uk I would encourage anybody interested in the electronic version of the Mbh to take a copy. Anybody with the server space to provide a mirror of the text could usefully do so. All the best, Dominik -- Dr Dominik Wujastyk, FAX: +44 171 611 8545 Wellcome Library for the History URL: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/ and Understanding 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 Fri Mar 31 10:30:23 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Fri, 31 Mar 00 11:30:23 +0100 Subject: Electronic Mahabharata In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227057539.23782.9827452612562703093.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> On Fri, 31 Mar 2000, Dominik Wujastyk wrote: > Anybody with the server space to provide a mirror of the > text could usefully do so. Oops. Sorry, the files are not for public distribution, just for individual private scholarly use. So get a copy for yourself, but abide by the privacy conditions. -- Dominik Wujastyk Founder, INDOLOGY list. From hmdplawr at UXMAIL.UST.HK Fri Mar 31 13:24:38 2000 From: hmdplawr at UXMAIL.UST.HK (hmdplawr at UXMAIL.UST.HK) Date: Fri, 31 Mar 00 13:24:38 +0000 Subject: tech. question, Mac OS 8.6 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227057528.23782.16979189808464976799.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> I am also having a problem using the keyboard for the old Indic Times font. The keyboard actually works fine in my G4 with system 9 as long as I stay in Word 5.1. However, when I switch to Word 98, then certain keys such as the semicolon and the Indic diacritics no longer work properly. Are you also using Indic Times with the caps-lock switch for diacritics? Does anyone know if there are any updated versions of the Mac keboard for this font? I neglected keeping up with changes in fonts-software because what I used had been working fine until now. David Lawrence On Thu, 30 Mar 2000 21:44:31 -0600 tccahill at LOYNO.EDU (Timothy C. Cahill) wrote: >Dear Mac+Indologists, > > The greeting shows my problem. I hit hyphen, it types plus. In an >effort to retain my beloved keyboard layout (US sys. 6, a.k.a. Old US) >I >copied the keyboard icon out of my neighbors Mac (sys. 7.5.x) and >floppied >it over to my new Mac G+4. Upon depositing it into my sys. folder, it >prompted me to put it in the control panel folder. Yes. Then it asks me >if >I want to keep the new keyboard in place of the one thats there. Yes. >Now >I not only have no Indic diacritics, but the regular keyboard has gone >awry. (No apostrophe by the way, it just barks at me.) It appears that >all >upper ASCII code characters are rearranged or do not produce any >character >at all. Any advice would be appreciated. > >best, >Tim Cahill From hmdplawr at UXMAIL.UST.HK Fri Mar 31 14:38:33 2000 From: hmdplawr at UXMAIL.UST.HK (hmdplawr at UXMAIL.UST.HK) Date: Fri, 31 Mar 00 14:38:33 +0000 Subject: tech. question, Mac OS 8.6 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <161227057533.23782.6498327859225269465.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Yes, I am aware of the switch. Some keys work properly and some don't. David On Fri, 31 Mar 2000 06:53:04 +0100 selwyn at DTN.NTL.COM (L.S.Cousins) wrote: >I have no problem using Sys 8.6 and Word98. But I use >Normyn/Times_Norman for the font. > >Have you checked the keyboard selection - small icon next to the icon >on the top right you use to change between running programs. > >Lance Cousins > >>I am also having a problem using the keyboard for the old Indic Times >>font. The keyboard actually works fine in my G4 with system 9 as long >>as I stay in Word 5.1. However, when I switch to Word 98, then >certain >>keys such as the semicolon and the Indic diacritics no longer work >>properly. Are you also using Indic Times with the caps-lock switch >for >>diacritics? Does anyone know if there are any updated versions of the >>Mac keboard for this font? I neglected keeping up with changes in >>fonts-software because what I used had been working fine until now. >> >>David Lawrence >-- >OXFORD, UK > >CURRENT EMAIL ADDRESSES: >L.S.Cousins at nessie.mcc.ac.uk or selwyn at dtn.ntl.com From ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK Fri Mar 31 16:07:42 2000 From: ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK (Dominik Wujastyk) Date: Fri, 31 Mar 00 17:07:42 +0100 Subject: New translation of PS Filliozat's book Message-ID: <161227057544.23782.14815749171653274086.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat The Sanskrit Language: an Overview. History and Structure, Linguistic and Philosophical Representations, Uses and Users. Translated from the French by T. K. Gopalan. Indica Books, D 40/18 Godowlia, Varanasi 221 001, UP, India. 2000. ISBN 81-86569-17-0. A perfect book for any Skt undergraduate. Wish I'd had it as a student. Also excellent for anyone interested in the intellectual traditions of classical India, including its social aspects. Formerly in the "Que sais-je?" series. Dominik From koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE Fri Mar 31 22:12:16 2000 From: koenraad.elst at PANDORA.BE (Koenraad Elst) Date: Sat, 01 Apr 00 00:12:16 +0200 Subject: Date of Jyotisa Vedanga Message-ID: <161227057546.23782.3009822032653767499.generated@prod2.harmonylists.io> Luis Gonzalez-Reimann wrote: > > >As for the 1st millennium AD Tamil texts mentioning Krttika as the beginning > >of the lunar calendar: this is perfectly normal, as calendars once > >established tend to be preserved for ages (that is precisely their whole > >point: putting time on a permanent common denominator). > > Then you agree that an old tradition can be preserved (you even consider it > "normal") even though it no longer corresponds to "what is actually > observed," which was your main complaint earlier. But, somehow, this > should not apply to the JV, for you say that: > > >But that is a very different matter from the JV, > >where the position of the solstices is given as such, not as a calendrical > >relic. > > How is it different? The JV is meant to provide calendrical information > for the celebration of the sacrifice, it is not an abstract text on astronomy. > In the JV how can you make a distinction between an astronomical position > "given as such" and one with a calendrical purpose? How it is different: well, very simple, the Christian calendar continues to use the birth of Christ at its starting point, but that doesn't mean that every text which uses that calendar will also anachronistically claim that the birth of Christ is taking place at the time of writing. The VJ is not merely using a calendar and mentioning its ancient starting-point, it is saying that certain stellar configurations are visible at the time of writing. > By the way, Pingree considers the nakSatras in the VJ to be tropical, not > sidereal (Jyotihsastra: Astral and Mathematical Literature, p. 10. > Harrassowitz, 1981) Rather unlikely. Even in the Hellenistic world, the shift from sidereal to tropical only took place with Ptolemy (2nd century AD), who by himself conditioned the whole European and Arabic traditions of astro-logy/nomy to use r-the tropical Zodiac. > Regards, Dr. K. Elst