"Science" in India

[Dominik Wujastyk]

On Sat, 21 Oct 2000, Subrahmanya S. wrote:

> Standard model ? Based on that flawed assumption you extrapolate that
> the others are wrong. How are you so sure that your standard model is
> close to the truth - it has its origins in a racist past and arrogant
> present.

The standard model is not based on racism, but on the dispassionate
scholarship of people from various countries, including India, over a
period of two centuries.  It may not be perfect, but a lot of people have
done their best to look at all the evidence and draw conclusions from it.

> It is ok to be partisan - but please do not present it is objective
> scholarship.

I think you are confusing scholarship with football.  In scholarship it is
okay to be wrong!  (Thank goodness!)  In fact, from a certain point of
view all serious scholars are wrong all the time. The search for academic
truth is a process of approximation.

> Considering the history of mistranslations and misrepresentations
> that europeanist scholars have indulged in from anaasa to amaavasu
> they cannot be trusted anymore.

This is lame conspiracist thinking.  First, you would be hard put to it to
demonstrate to dispassionate scholarship that the great translators have
really made widespread systematic and deliberate errors in their work,
i.e., errors beyond the bell-shaped curve that everyone has to live with.

Second, it would be impossible to establish to dispassionate scholarship
that any particular selection of translation errors was part of a
conspiracy of European scholars.

--
Dominik Wujastyk
Founder, INDOLOGY list.