Siva and Vishnu (was: Kinship systems)

[Maran Kathirchelvan]

Vanbakkam Vijayaraghavan <vijay at VOSSNET.CO.UK> wrote:

>While I thank you for the prodigious amount of reference you
>have given, I am dismayed at your comments, which do not sound
>logical.

>You sume that familiarity with ANY tamil literature will lead
>to all the references you have given. I did write that the
>search I did with Cologne ebase yielded negative result

Mr. Vijayaraghavan,

> From your posts I surmise that you are a Tamil speaker, apparently from
Tamil Nadu.  So, if you had studied Tamil at any level at all in Tamil Nadu,
you won't need to search through any ebase to to KNOW that the words Saivam
and vaiNavam have existed prior to the arrival of the British in India.
This is too basic.

Would you agree that if one doesn't know something it is unwise to
speculate.  Most native Tamil speakers won't make the kind of mistakes that
you make.  It is surprising that in a list where meticulous scholars gather,
you are careless enough to make unfounded remarks using only an internet
search engine as a substitute for research.  One is reminded of the chapters
41 and 72 in the thirukkuRaL. ;-).

>I also notice that you have failed to give any reference for
>VaiNavam.

Sir, I can only give references from the books that I have.  Do you expect
me to be your research assistant?  You had asserted that ".. these words
[saivam and vaiNavam] are the Tamil translations of the English words
Saivism and Vaishnavism" based on a cursory search on the internet.  I have
painstakingly searched through the references I have to prove that there
really are hundreds of references to the word "saivam" in the medieval Tamil
literature.  Now may I expect you do a more careful search of Vaishnavaite
literature and look for the word "vaiNavam" before asserting that the term
was coined in the post-British period?

>>Sorry for the long post.  Since Mr. Vijayaraghavan often gets
>>away with long posts, I hope the Administrator will allow me
>>too, this time.

>These are wholly unwarranted and untrue comemnts. ..If this is
>what you term as "long" and "often", I would request you to use your
>arithmetic sense, which I am sure you possess in
>abundance.

It is interesting that even in a short post you could not help but attack my
logical and arithmetic sense.  Rather than restrict yourself to your most
recent 5 posts, if you care to look at your posting history, you will see
that you have the unfortunate habit of quoting an entire e-mail and then
append your comments.  I forgot to put a smiley at the end of my comments.
:-)). It was meant in good fun.  As for improving my logical and arithmetic
sense, I am always open to learning from great scholars such as you. ;-)).

Regards,

Maran

P.S.  If you can read Tamil, you may be interested in using on-line
resources such as Project Madurai ( http://www.tamil.net/projectmadurai/ ).
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