SV: Did IVC have low-intensity wars?

[Lars Martin Fosse]

Vanbakkam Vijayaraghavan [SMTP:vijay at VOSSNET.CO.UK] skrev 7. februar 2001
11:58:
> Then how do you place which layer i.e. the date a particular line of
Thol.
> belongs to? If your theory is correct, then Thol. was constantly
interfered
> with and lines added probabaly till 7th century and Thol. as we know is a
> late product

You are rasing an extremely interesting methodical problem in Indology. The
fact is that from the earliest times, India's ("anonymous") literature has
been much tampered with, a fact which is easy to see if you look at the
different manuscripts for the various texts. (Check for instance the
critical apparatus of the Mahabharata). Separating the different
chronological layers of a text that has grown over centuries is extremely
complicated. Comparing manuscripts is one way of doing it: which sections
are always found, which are found only in some manuscripts? Sometimes, you
can show that a text section is different linguistically from other
sections, or you may get an idea about the relative age of sections by
comparing mythological or narrative motives. But names of gods are indeed
problematic. Sometimes, new names are simply inserted where an older name
stood, which means that the text (section) itself may be old, but the name
recent. Therefore, saying when gods like Indra and Varuna entered the Tol.
requires very careful argumentation, to say the least. Although I am not a
Tamil specialist, I don't think that you will get an entirely definitive
answer!

Lars Martin Fosse

Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse
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