Fair enough. Such intercultural translation of the one's correspondent's 'emic' into one's own 'emic' ( which could be viewed as 'etic' depending on where one is coming from), is fair enough. 

Understanding things through such translation is part of everyday experience not only of an Anthropologist whose jobs it is to understand things that way, but is part of any prudent and healthy interpersonal interaction. 

It is professional for an Anthropologist to understand things that way as much as it is professional for a historian to arrive at the accurate dates etc. 

Claims, among common people particularly as part of their belief in legends, of greater antiquity to things than a historical critical scrutiny can approve of, are widespread across different parts of the world , not limited to Indian society. 

Claims of antiquity and their diametrically opposite claims of 'state of the art' both, used across the globe in marketing , may not always stand the scrutiny for factuality. Whichever of these two claims suits the product is used by the marketing people. The same marketing agency may use both the claims for different products. Hence a certain marketing agency can not be characterised as atiquity-claiming or sate - of - the- art-claiming.  

History is part of a larger logical positivist paradigm. Claims of 'scientific' by people working for religion and religious things not standing the scrutiny of science is widespread across the globe across religions. Historical claims about things religious not standing the scrutiny of historical critical studies is part of the same situation. 

On Fri, Sep 22, 2017 at 5:29 AM, Dominik Wujastyk via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:
Nowadays, whenever I see "5000" asserted as a date, whether before present or BCE, I now treat it as a purely symbolic gesture to antiquity rather than a date that a professional historian would attend to.

Best,
Dominik



On 19 September 2017 at 22:36, patrick mccartney via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:
Nagaraj, 
​[...]​

For instance, there is a type of 'Vedic Thai Yoga Massage' that claims to be 5000 years old, and which also claims this date for the Bhāgavatam, and which explicitly states that Dhanvantari is a Vedic god. Yet, as far as I was aware, and which Dagmar confirmed in another email, the Ashvins are the Vedic gods related to healing, and any mention of Dhanvantari does not appear until the current era. However, this 5000 yo date  asserts an untenable date for the 

 

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--
Nagaraj Paturi
 
Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.


BoS, MIT School of Vedic Sciences, Pune, Maharashtra

BoS, Chinmaya Vishwavidyapeeth, Veliyanad, Kerala

Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies
 
FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education,
 
(Pune, Maharashtra, INDIA )