--- In cybalist@..., vishalagarwal@... wrote:
> --- In cybalist@..., naga_ganesan@... wrote:
>
> > Yes, the Rgvedic Aryans entering India
> > via Afghanistan is well accepted by almost
> > all experts on Rgveda. For example,
> > Frits Staal, UC, Berkeley in Vedic and Greek
> > Geometry, Jl. Ind. Phil. (The Netherlands)
> > writes about Rgvedi Aryans in the Bolon pass,
> > circa 1500 BCE. Michael Witzel, Harvard univ.,
> > does the same in his papers.
> VA: Such a view is qualified or outrightly rejected by Chakrabarti,
> Mallory and in fact even by Jarrige- the excavator of these sites. I
> had quoted these works in IC list earlier, so why repeat the name
> dropping excercise here?
> **********
>
I want to point out the main point of my post in this thread:
Parpola knows and acknowledges the Indic origin of the Vedas,
including RV.
While Mallory, Jarrige, Chakrabarti are not experts of
Classical Sanskrit or the Vedas, professors Witzel (Harvard),
Parpola, Staal (Berkeley) are world-class experts on Vedas.
Here is a review of one of Chakrabarti's books. - N. Ganesan
_________________________________________________________
Source: The Journal of the American Oriental Society
Date: 04-06/1998
Subject(s): Books--Reviews
Citation Information: (v118 n2) Start Page: p307(2)
ISSN: 0003-0279
Author(s): Rocher, Rosane
_________________________________________________________
Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the Ancient Indian
Past.
(book reviews)
_________________________________________________________
By DILIP K. CHAKRABARTI. New Delhi: MUNSHIRAM MANOHARLAL,
1997. Pp. xi + 257. Rs 350.
Archaeologist Dilip K. Chakrabarti has produced a
polemical survey of scholarship on ancient India. In
addition to rehashing the "racist" assumptions of Western
Indology, he charges his "mainstream" or "establishment"
Indian colleagues with perpetuating the conventions of
colonial scholarship in a way that is emblematic of the
subservient relationship of the Third World to the West.
Calling for the construction of an Indian perception of
the Indian past, he argues, in apparent reference to
historians of ancient India such as Romila Thapar, that
this goal cannot be realized by combining India's ancient
ahistorical texts with social-science theories. What is
needed, he submits, are detailed investigations of the
land in its relation with the people-such as are to be
found in his other works. The point of the present volume
is to blunt the thrust of earlier research. What he
offers here is the first major exercise with regard to
India of an expanding area of archaeological studies,
that of the sociopolitics of the past, ushered in by
Peter Ucko in sessions of the World Archaeological
Congress since 1986.
The introductory chapter which sets the issue includes a
critique of current conditions for the study of
archaeology and ancient Indian history in Indian colleges
and universities: even in one of the more favorable
cases, that of Delhi University, "archaeology is still
'side-show of a side-show', the second side-show being
'ancient India'" (p. 9). It also offers a broad survey of
the interaction between archaeology, ideology, and
nationalism in various parts of the world, ending with a
rare positive evaluation of Martin Bernal's Black Athena.
Chapter 2 surveys the interplay of race, language, and
culture in the history of racial classifications, which
reached their sorry acme in Risley's anthropometric
measurements. Although much of this is well known and
Chakrabarti's sustained vituperative tone tends to dull
the reader's response, the survey is based on extensive
reading and documentation and includes some lesserknown
episodes, such as Fergusson's "racist" use (in his
Archaeology in India with Especial Reference to the Works
of Babu Rajendralala Mitra, 1884) of a critique of the
works of the respected Indian scholar in opposing the
famed Ilbert Bill, which sought to allow senior Indian
judges to try criminal cases in which Britons were
involved. The interplay of linguistic and ethnological
paradigms in the construction of race in colonial India
is a complex and thorny issue, deserving of less-leveling
indictments and of more fine-grained studies, such as
Thomas R. Trantmann's just-released Aryans and British
India (1997).
Chapter 3 offers an Indian take on a number of
controverted issues in ancient Indian history. Building
on a characterization of "the hypothesis of Aryan
invasions of India" as "a racist myth," it is asserted
that there was no Vedic Age in Indian history. This
contention is based on three arguments: the ahistorical
nature of the texts themselves, prejudices in their
interpretation, and, more curiously, "the fact that they
leave out of their consideration a very great part of
India and thus cannot be given the status of a specific
historical stage from which a course of unilineal
evolution followed" (p. 158). The claim is made that,
nothwithstanding contacts with regions to its west, the
Indus civilization "remained exclusively Indian
throughout its entire term of duration" (p. 167).
Bechert's proposal of a later date for the Buddha is
suspected of having been motivated by a desire to rule
out Indian influence on Indian philosophy, while
Spooner's suggested Achaemenid influence on Kumrahar is
rejected, and Gandharan art described as representative
of "the modern 'pushtu'-speaking peoples of this part of
the subcontinent," rather than Hellenistic (p. 200).
There follows a critique of Kulke's and Rothermund's
attempt to determine the limits of the Maurya empire on
the basis of the distribution of Asoka's edicts.
Arguments in favor of a more expansive empire are that
the Mauryas "could quite logically travel beyond . . ."
or "would have been in a position to control . . ." (p.
206). Proofs for the validity of an "Indian" position
take a back seat to scorn heaped on alternative
interpretations.
The thirty-six pages of conclusions reprise many of the
points raised in the book, including the issue that seems
to be a primary source of the author's anger, the
neocolonial character of Indian historical education. The
perpetuation of this model requires, so he contends, that
"institutions on the national level have to be 'captured'
and filled up with stooges of various kinds. . . . That
is why, there is no great difficulty for folksingers to
be appointed to the chairs of scientific archaeology. . .
. In such a context, the elites fail to see the need of
going beyond the dimensions of colonial Indology, because
these dimensions suit them fine and keep them in power"
(pp. 212-13). 'Nuff said.
ROSANE ROCHER UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
COPYRIGHT 1998 American Oriental Society