I may well be astonishingly naive, that obviously is something of which I would be the least qualified judge. And astonishment is naturally an entirely subjective experience, so you are welcome to it. But please please let us keep politics off this list. [Again, simply to make overly clear: this does NOT mean that I think discussion of the theories concerning the MBh propounded by whomever are not fair game. Certainly they are, but just because, for instance, the authors of those theories engage in ad hominem attacks does not mean that the proper response is to respond in kind. "Racist" anything stands or falls on its own merits. [this is a different, although not entirely different, perhaps, issue than whether we should acknowledge and take into account the work of persons whose history is absolutely clear -- eg the studies of Wust, or I would venture to say, although foreign to most of the readers of the Indology list, the research of Miyamoto Shoson, who was an incredible Japanese imperialist--one of his prefaces celebrates the day the Imperial Japanese army entered India, the land of the Buddha's birth. This, to be as polite as possible, turns my stomach, but that does not solve the question whether I should, therefore, stop reading his book at the preface. [you might, all of you, take solace in the fact that this proves that at least one person reads prefaces!]]] (sorry, lost count of my embedded brackets!)

Anyway, back to the point (there was one): I am far from the first person to notice that it hardly makes any sense at all to speak of "German" Indology in the first place, but whatever attacks are made against one approach or another, whether the nature of those attacks makes any sense is not to be determined by the motivation of the attacker. Let's sift the wheat from the chaff, and perhaps, after all, some ideas, even if published as scholarship, are not really worthwhile rebutting at all.

Hoping earnestly that I have clarified my ideas, as poor and unhelpful as they may be,

Jonathan