Re: [tied] Re: Scientific Nationalism?

----- Original Message -----

From: VAgarwalV@...

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 5:16 PM

Subject: [tied] Re: Scientific Nationalism?

> Namaste! In your various posts on the Cybalist, of which I became a member very recently, I noticed your tendency to caricature the opponents of AIT and its siamese twins (like AMT) as petty nationalists. While I personally do not believe in OIT, your caricaturing of opponents of AIT and upholders of OIT is as dogmatic, fanatical and erroneous as the caricaturing of AIT/AMT believers by OIT'ers.

> I think your own diatribe is based on selective reading of such caricaturing by Indian Marxists like Romila Thapar, R S Sharma, D N Jha etc., and by clearly prejudiced authors outside India. While you may not share their prejudices, you might have interiorized their views regarding OIT supporters. Besides, such a diatribe is a reflection of mental immaturity, and is nothing better than giving vent to one's own pent up frustrations.

Dear Vishal,

Namaste!

I knew we were opening a can of worms when this thread started. For your information, I am a professional linguist, holder of genuine degrees in historical linguistics, and mature enough to think and assess the evidence presented to me on my own, without internalising anyone's Marxist or other prejudices beforehand. I read much and am familiar with a wide range of views. Being an Indo-Europeanist rather than Indologist, I do not specialise in Indo-Aryan, and the question of its origin is for me only a fragment of a larger Indo-European mosaic, not something I feel very strongly about. If I have any pent-up frustrations, they have nothing to do with India or with Indo-Aryan migrations.

I do dislike all forms of aggressive ethnocentrism, though. For example, I heartily dislike Mr Slobodan Milos^evic' and the things he did, notwithstanding which my pet theory of IE origins makes the linguistic homeland overlap Serbia (Mr M. is a Great Serbian superpatriot, by the way, not a pan-Slavic enthusiast). By the same token, the majority of IEists who locate the homeland in the Pontic steppes are not East-Slavophiles. In general, I do politics and linguistics separately, and I am sure most of my colleagues do likewise.

By the way, if it is no great secret, what is _your_ opinion on the origin of the Indo-Aryans and the Indo-Europeans?

 

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> If we just look at the record, the proponents of AIT and its euphemisitic versions are the ones responsible for the holocausts, white supermacism, genocides and so on.

 

I wish to protest. What record? These are just hackneyed slogans. Even such prototypical AIT writers as Sir Mortimer Wheeler were not, as far as I know, genocidal maniacs but serious scholars who just happened to be wrong (without hurting anyone physically). As for Hitler and his cronies, they were not qualified at all to discuss scholarly questions, so whatever (if anything) they believed concerning Indo-Aryan origins is irrelevant. If you regard any form of Indo-Aryan influx theory as a euphemistic version of the AIT, then, since I support such a theory, does it make me responsible for unspecified but terrible crimes in you eyes? Mercy! I plead innocent. I support the incriminated theory for purely linguistic reasons, since linguistics is something I understand well.

 

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> Which OIT upholder has committed even a fraction of these crimes? If anything therefore, we ought to fear AMT, AIT and other such siamese twin theories. I could allege, for that matter, that all those who propose the PIE homeland in Europe are Eurocentric bigots, those who propose it in the Balkans are sympathetic to Pan-slavic movements like the Serbian dictator, and those who propose it in a German speaking area are German Superpatriots and descendants of Nazis. Do you like that? Please do some introspection and see if you are not merely venting your prejudices, insecurity and snobbery in rushing to caricature scholars from India, while not passing such remarks against dissidents from UK (e.g. Renfrew) and other countries.

 

I see no need to reply in detail to the offensive propaganda above (or to much more propaganda at the end of your posting). Maybe you mistake me for someone else, but I have not accused Aryan indigenists of fascist sympathies or of instigating genocide. As for Renfrew, if you read my postings (even some very recent ones), you will see that I don’t think much of his competence in matters linguistics, and I call a fig a fig in his case.

 

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> It is said that Victor Mair, an Austrian speaking German, prefers the PIE homeland near his country (Austria). Should we then characterize him as a descendant of Nazis, considering also his apparent fascination with the blonde and blue eyed Tocharian Mummies? I am sure and other IE scholars would frown at any such attempts, just as I would.

 

So would I, the more so since I support a Danubian homeland.

 

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> Before deciding whether OIT or AIT is correct, let the linguists figure out the PIE homeland first. Theoritically and logically, data from ALL the IE languages should converge directly, and unquivocally and lead us straight to the PIE homeland. The fact that there are more than 30 proposals for the location of the homeland itself shows the poor quality and quantity of the available data at hand, even if the methodology is brilliant. Determining the PIE homeland would put at rest the controversy over AIT/OIT and the broad range of intervening spectrum.

 

But that’s precisely what I’m trying to do. It is not a question of poor data but of the general difficulty of pinpointing reconstructed languages geographically. There is no theoretical or logical guarantee that a protolanguage reconstruction will carry any information about its place of origin. But there is a lot of circumstantial evidence if you know where a nd how to look for it. Anyway, the AIT/OIT controversy is not an autonomous question but part of a more general IE picture.

 

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> Is it then fair to speculate uselessly and pass non-verifiable and subjective linugistic conjectures on tax-payer's money?

 

Dear Vishal, if you mean _me_, I pay my own phone bills (including the modem connection), use my own PC and write these postings in my own spare time. The tax-payer has naught to fear. If you mean linguists in general, good linguistics conjectures are not arbitrary and less subjective than you might think. When I read what my colleagues write I understand what they want to say and either agree or disagree. We argue and keep the ball rolling. Without expressing one's views there would be no ball to roll and we'd never begin to understand the world. Scholars are paid for doing research and discussing the results. It is not useless in the long run.

 

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> I want to draw your attention to the latest books on this topic:
1. Title: The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture. The
Indo-Aryan
Migration Debate
Author: Edwin Bryant
Publisher: Oxford University Press, New York
Year: 2001 pp. 387, price = $55.00
Available from Amazon at

http://www.amazon.com

 

I will certainly read this book with pleasure, for I value Prof. Bryant’s opinions even when I disagree with them. He opts for giving the OIT a fair hearing, which I think is a waste of time, since the theory has been discussed and disproved by mainstream scholars time and time again. Edwin Bryant is not, strictly speaking, a linguist, but he at least appreciates the value of linguistic evidence and the insurmountable difficulties it causes for the OIT. It is all the more puzzling, as far as I am concerned, why he insists that it remains a serious theory.

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> 2. The Rigveda and History of India; David Frawley; Aditya Prakashan;
New Delhi; 2001

This I will not be looking forward to, as I have a passing acquaintance with the output of David Frawley.

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> 3. The Rigveda- A Historical Analysis
Available on-line at http://voi.org/books/rig/
Chapter 9 shows how the International 'experts' cannot get even their
elementary facts correct when it comes to the Rigveda.

Well, who can? At any rate, the mere fact of not being ‘international’ doesn’t make one a greater expert. You’d be surprised to see how many non-British scholars study Old English in exotic places like Germany, Japan, Finland or Poland. They sometimes get elementary facts wrong in _Beowulf_, but to compensate for that, they also come up with interesting new proposals. Needless to say, British scholars also happen to make blunders from time to time, since for them, too, Old English is a foreign language. There are some hopelessly difficult passages and no surviving native speakers whom we could ask for help.

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> I would also appreciate your remarks on the following URL's

1. The Aryan Migration Theory - Fabricating Literary Evidence
http://www.voi.org/vishal_agarwal/AMT.html

2. What is the Aryan Migration Theory
http://www.voi.org/vishal_agarwal/What_is_AMT.html

3. Mr. Talageri's response to Professor Michael Witzel's EJVS 7.2
http://sarasvati.simplenet.com/talageri01.pdf
(You will find very extensive comments on Professor Witzel's errors in the comprehension of the Vedic literature from me in the July 2001 archives of the IndianCivilization list. In any case, if you can wait for two more weeks, I will post them as an accessible URL).