Siva and Vishnu (was: Kinship systems)

[N. Ganesan]

"V. C. Vijayaraghavan" wrote:
>Your meaningless speculations are revealed in your
>Ratri in Skr being "said" to come from Tamil Iravu? Why not it be the other
>way around? Again you will be making a solid case for what you say if you
>can bring more textual evidence?

S. K. Chatterji in "The Origin and Development of the Bengali
language" (p. 42) thinks rAtri is from Dravidian. But Mayrhofer
lists it as IE and < 'raa'.

DED 2102 Ta. 'iravu, ira, iraa, raa' night; 'iru' black;
'iruTci, iruTTu, iruNmai, irumai' darkness ...
[see the full entry for other Dravidian entries].
Wonder whether this is related to Vedic iirma, ilayati etc.,

>About your "interesting" observation of "black as evil" in the
>Bible coming from Iran (presumably the racist aryans)-another
>meaningless speculation- there are two possibilities to satisfy your
>curiosity- a. Jews and other semites don't need to learn racism from aryan
>texts, it is inborn. b. Jews in their sojourn in Egypt learnt it from the
>Egyptians - after all the Pharoahs loathed the black people in Sudan and
>southern Egypt and waged exterminatory campaigns against them.

That exactly was my request to the list  a while ago.
Appreciations for any references (from the listers) where black
and/or darkness being considered evil in the Egypt of the
Pharoahs or the Judaic literature from pre-Iranian contact
periods. Ie., before, say, 600 BCE.

>About "RV definitely talks of "black" enemies and so forth" there is a
>contradiction in what you say. If you are so definite, why are you putting
>in black in apostrephes? That itself shows you don't realise what are you
>writing.

M. Witzel, Rgvedic history: poets, chieftains and politics,
in Erdosy volume, 1995, p. 325
"The meaning of "black" in the Rgveda repesents a difficult
problem: while it would be easy to assume reference to
skin colour, this would go against the spirit of the hymns:
for Vedic poets "black" always signifies evil, and any other
meaning would be secondary in these context. Skin colour
has, of course, played a significant role in Hindu
society; cf. the varNa ("colour") used for social groups
even in the Rgveda. A glance at modern marriage advertisements
will amply confirm this obsession."

H. H. Hock, Through a glass darkly: Modern "racial"
interpretations vs. textual and general prehistoric
evidence on Arya and dAsa/dasyu in Vedic society
(p. 145-174, Aryan and Non-Aryan in India, 1999).

p. 150-1
"[6] AryaM prAvad ... svarmi.lhe.sv ... |
    ... tvacaM k.r.s.nAm arandhayat (1.130.8)
  Ge: 'Indra helped the Aryan in the battles for the
  sunlight ... he made the black skin subject ...[8]
(Geldner's note: 'the black skin'[9] refers to 'the
black aborgines'[10])."

Some other translations from the RV given are:
(see the original Skt., discussion by Dr. Hock etc.,
in his paper)

"Ge: 'Fifty thousand Blacks you defeated. You slit up
the forts like age [slits up] a garment.' [11]

"Ge: 'Out of fear of you the black tribes moved way, leaving
behind their possessions without fight...'[14]

There are many more like these.

p. 155, Hock writes:
"..., the evidence of the Avestan designation for 'caste',
pistra (from paEs = Skt. piz 'paint') suggests that
the use of words for 'color, paint' goes back at least
to Proto-Indo-Iranian times, presumably before the
contact between Aryas and dAsas/dasyus."

Reading N. Cohn, How Time acquired a Consummation,
in Malcolm Bull, Apocalypse theory and the ends of the
World, Blackwell, 1995 where the Iranian influence
is described and Sons of Light vs. Sons of Darkness
(S. Hodge' mail).
Hence my quetion: is this an Indo-Iranian heritage in
the Bible?

Regards,
N. Ganesan

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