[Re: Comparative linguistics]

[Rahul Oka]

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


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