Re: AIT

--- In cybalist@..., markodegard@... wrote:

>
> There is room on the net for a nice, quiet English-language group
> dedicated to Vedic and early Indic studies, rather much like

Cybalist

> here does IE studies, where the usual scholarly consensus is
> respected. We get chattily off topic, but not that off topic. We

want

> to learn something.

This is what I was looking for too when I joined the Indian
Civilization list but soon found out that I had waded into the middle
of a battle and was expected to choose sides and take cover!

> The trouble with Vedic/Indic studies is you need an extensive
> introduction, particularly if you want to make use of web

resources.

> Most of what I have come across on the web looks like the

approximate

> equivalent to what you get with premillenial dispensationalist

sites

> vis-a-vis the Bible.

Yes it's bizarre. Everyone is busy creating glorious fantasy pasts
for their ancestors on the web. And what's the deal with Sumerian?
Why does everyone and his mother want to prove that they came from
the Sumerians?

I am not interested in reading the RV as a

> born-againer reads the bible; rather, I want to read the RV as one
> would read The Epic of Gilgamesh or the Iliad, and read about the

RV a

> la Robert Graves' _The Greek Myths_ or, say, Noth's commentaries on
> the Old Testament.
>
> Yeah. I wanna read the Rig Veda -- but with some insight, with some
> introduction. And there seems to be NOTHING, either on the web, or

in

> print, that gets me there (I've asked around). I'd hafta enroll in

a

> course at a Big University to do this -- and they'd pro'ly make me
> learn Sanskrit first.

I'm hoping that the Indo-European Data Base will someday include more
such.
-David