Danielou and Puranas as translations was Re: [tied] Re:Talageri's re

From: nemonemini@...
Message: 66197
Date: 2010-06-13

I have been lurking with respect to discussions here re: the vexed debate over AIT.
If appropriate I might interject a short remark, and leave it at that.
These discussions of AIT versus OIT are complex and confusing, but it should be noted that they
are curiously recent in the sense that a generation ago many students of Indic religion cared little for the issues, and simply assumed varieties of conventional AIT to be the case.
A figure such as the guru Rajneesh (significantly a Jain), as I recall, denounced as Hindutva nonsense the sudden appearance of these claims denying AIT. Thus the discussion transcends colonialist harangues, pro or anti.
 
Thus, also, that devoted student of Hinduism and convert thereto, Danielou, with his useful A History of India, from another generation, simply assumed AIT in some form and, issues of the Indus set to one side, since we can speak of the Indic tradition (primordial Shaivism with its tantra/yoga, and Jainism/proto-Jainism) going back to the near Neolithic, without deciding about Indus archaeology, which often muddles all arguments from all sides. In the process he also made clear that he thought Indic tradition preceded the Aryan entry on the scene, thus implying the problematical character of the Vedas in that regard. The exact language involved would not therefore have been Indo-European, presumably thus by speculative inference a Dravidian tradition being the case.
The point of my communication is to refer to some of Danielou's considerations as a possible alternate form of research here, for it was his hypothesis that literature such as the Puranas, and much else, was in fact translated from this original pre-Aryan language. That's a line of attack rarely taken up, but a brilliant intuition, one that Danielou simply assumed as the case, given his linguistic specialties.
These are statements that an expert in the history and linguistics here could verify or refute, surely, with a close analysis of the texts involved, thus offering, as Danielou in all innocence suggested as the case, a new way to support the AIT or dismiss it. Thus, it seemed obvious to a close scholar such as Danielou that these literatures were in many instances were translations (cf. Danielou's work on this). These are probably falsifiable hypotheses, thus yielding an alternate venue in the AIT/OIT debate.
 
 
On Danielou and Puranas:
http://www.gurdjieff-con.net/2009/09/03/puranas-and-evidence-of-pre-aryan-culturehistory/