Re: Much needed change in Historiography?

On Sat, Aug 9, 2008 at 5:06 PM, koenraad_elst <koenraad.elst@...> wrote:

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "kishore patnaik"

<kishorepatnaik09@...> wrote:
>
> Date:30/06/2008 URL:
> http://www.thehindu.com/2008/06/30/stories/2008063052631000.htm
>

> Changing interpretations of early Indian history
> Upinder Singh
>

Kishore,

You ought to have noticed by now that most list members are not very
interested in your rewriting of Indian history. Nonetheless I will
give some comments on Upinder Singh's article to which you have drawn
attention, and then refocus his message towards linguistic issues,
the normal topic of this list.

>
>
> History is not one but many stories; only a few of them have been
written.
>

You like this because it seems to mean that after the Western
version, now the Indian version must be heard. Nothing wrong with
that, though a bit predictable.

>
>
> The 18th and 19th centuries were dominated by the writings of
European
> scholars, referred to as Orientalists or Indologists, although they
often

> described themselves as 'antiquarians'. A major contribution of the

Indologists lay in their efforts to
> collect, edit, and translate ancient texts. In this, they depended
heavily

> on information provided by 'native informants.' The decipherment of

Ashokan Brahmi and Kharoshthi scripts
> were breakthroughs.<

Kudos to the much-maligned Orientalists.

> The Brahmanical
> perspective of ancient Sanskrit texts was often uncritically taken
as
> reflecting the Indian past.<

This is indeed often held against them. It means that they *trusted*
their native informers. No anti-brown prujudice there. If they were
wrong in trusting the Brahminical version, it is a mistake they have
in common with most Hindu activists. On Hindu-centred yahoo lists you
frequent, all the time you come across Hindus citing scripture as
argument of authority, both on ethical/philosophical and on
historical claims.

> The periodisation of the Indian past into Hindu, Muslim, and
> British periods <

This was not a British nor Indian-nationalist invention but flowed
logically from the Muslim worldview and was common among indian
Muslims: first the Jahilliyya or Heathen rule, i.c. Hindu; then the
establishment of God-ordained Muslim rule; then the unforeseen
usurpation by a Judeo-Christian power. Both the Muslim and the
British version ignore the fact that in the larger part of India,
Muslim rule was in fact followed by a brief period of Hindu (mainly
Maratha and Sikh) rule.

For early history, Upinder Singh misses two phases: the "Vedic
period" and the "Buddhist period", with the subsequent "Hindu period"
only referring to the Shunga-Gupta period, not to the pre-Buddha age.
This corresponds to an authentic religious difference between Vedic
and "Hindu", with the devotionalism, icon-worship, karma belief and
otherworldliness now deemed typical of Hinduism being absent or at
most embryonic in the Vedic phase. And this brings us to the key
point:

> Indian society was presented as

> static (...) over the centuries.<

In fact, modern Hindus have a far more static view of Indian history
than the Orientalists. And to the extent that the latter had a static
view of India, they had largely borrowed it from their native
informers. Go to any of the Hindu activist forums, where Vaishnava or
Arya etc., you will see all the anger at Orientalists for
acknowledging *change* in Indian religious history.

Thus, on a list where both of us are members, we just had a little
debate on whether the notion of reincarnation exists in the Rg-Veda.
Francesco Brighenti was attacked for saying that it doesn't. All that
anyone could come up with as proof of this notion was three verses
from the latest part of the Rg-Veda, in which "rebirth" may perhaps
be mentioned, but not at all as a natural process affecting us all,
inevitably, and not as a miserable fate we have to get away from,-- a
Buddhist notion now pretty universally accepted (lip service) by most
Hindus but most definitely non-Vedic. So no, reincarnation was not
part of Sanâtana ("eternal") Dharma, it was an innovation. (Or as a
believer might put it, a "discovery": first the notion wasn't there,
then some yogi saw the "truth" of reincarnation, then the idea
spread, while more and more practitioners learnt the technique
to "verify" the "fact" of reincarnation.)

Nonetheless, most Hindus insists on projecting their cherished post-
Vedic notions onto the Vedas, calling the karma/reincarnation
doctrine "Vedic", just as they call the Indian version of Hellenistic
astrology "Vedic astrology", or Indian cooking with Portuguese-
imported potatoes and tomatoes and chillis "Vedic cooking". No harm
done, I suppose, but when Orientalists have patiently deconstructed
this *Hindu* belief in the static unchanging "eternal" character of
Hindu beliefs, I see many Hindus reacting angrily to
this "Eurocentric" disrespect for Hindus' self-understanding.

Likewise, Vaishnavas like to project the practice of idol-worship
onto the Vedas, and more importantly, the belief in divine
incarnations. The Greeks and many other pre-Christian ancients had
this notion of particular human beings, heroes or sages, being gods
incarnate, so it is not impossible that ancient Indians had a similar
notions. Only, translators have never found it in the Rg-Veda. Worse,
even in the Ramayana and Mahabharata, philological analysis has shown
that Rama and Krishna were originally just humn beings, heroes
alright, but human mortals nonetheless. Only in the latest-added
parts do they start becoming divine incarnations. Vishnu's penchant
for incarnating among us humans, now a core belief of the majority of
Hindus, is a post-Vedic innovation.

The same tendency to reject historicity is in evidence in the debate
on the origins of Indo-European and Indo-Aryan. Though the
distinction between Vedic and Classical Sanskrit has been
acknowledged since Panini himself, numerous Hindus deny a history,
i.e. change, to the language of the gods. If at all they acknowledge
the existence of an Indo-European language family, they cannot
conceive of a pre-Sanskrit language as its origin, with Sanskrit
merely an evolute on the same footing as Greek or Hittite.

I have been wondering for some time why Hindu opponents of the AIT
(with the exception of Shrikant Talageri) have failed so completely
to try and fit their favoured Indian-origin scenario with the data of
historical linguistics. The fact that historical linguistics is
simply not taught in Indian universities is not the whole
explanation. I now believe that the deeply ingrained Hindu aversion
to the idea of change in a deeply cherished and religious item such
as the Sanskrit language has more to do with it.

Another factor for the aversion to PIE is of course the perceived
claim by AIT believers that historical linguistics has somehow proven
the AIT. Anyone still under this illusion ought to study the inter-
linguist Urheimat debate. Watch the confidence with which they
dismiss each other's theories, how one fully qualified linguist can
believe it was Anatolia, another it was the Baltic area, another
finding it in South Russia, and none stumbling against hard
linguistic data that preclude his own preferred scenario. Surely an
attempt could be made to make a case at least equally convincing for
India, all dressed up in linguistic jargon. Then at least the AIT
opponents could still be on speaking terms with the rest of the
world.

But so far, the present generation of Indian AIT opponents has
completely failed to even make a beginning. That includes you,
Kishore. Your presence on this list indicates you are at least aware
of the importance of IE linguistics, I hope you use the occasion to
learn.

Kind regards,

KE

--
Love is a fruit in season at all times,
and within the reach of every hand.
~:~ Mother Theresa ~:~