[tied] Re: Why India?

From: wtsdv
Message: 13209
Date: 2002-04-12

Reply to 13181

--- In cybalist@..., "vishalsagarwal" <vishalagarwal@...> wrote:
>
> VA: We are not talking of mere grandmother tales. We are talking
> of a corpus that is 8-10 times the length of the Bible, and is
> full of stories, mythical or otherwise.

It wasn't my intent to denigrate it. Though you might not want
to dismiss other people's oral histories as mere grandmother tales
either.

> In these tales, the Vedic Seers (that is what we call them in
> India, whether you like them or note) are not merely participants,
> they are often the main enactors or actors.

Well I like them very much! Without them we wouldn't have
the Vedic language to study. The reason I contrast 'poet' with
'seer' is to make clear that I don't recognize them as having
special psychic or spiritual powers, and so their compositions
do not have to be accepted as historical fact. Literature is
consciously created. It can omit or alter details of events
that happened, and create events that didn't. However the
processes at work in language change happen over long
periods of time, spread across several generations, and so
go mostly unnoticed by its speakers. Some of these
processes do happen with regularity or such near regularity
that they can legitimately be used as the basis of a science.
My point is that while the story the poet chooses to tell is
effected by his or her particular world view, the structure
of the language used to tell the story betrays facts about
its origin, of which the poet is unaware and thus can't
consciously manipulate.

> There are stories of why Vipas got its name (Rishi Vasishtha is
> involved), why Satadru split up into a 100 channels (again
Vasishtha
> is involved), how the Sarasvati became muddy for an year
(Vishvamitra
> is involved), why the Sarasvati went underground in the desert (new
> warlike barbarians from West are mentioned, and they apparently
> harrass the descendants of Vedic Rishis!). Where Central Asian
> influences were adopted, they are mentioned. For instance, the 3
> Fires of Shrauta ritual were given to Pururava by Gandharvas (many
> treat this as mythical, whereas others place Gandharvas in POK and
> adjacent areas). The Soma comes from Munjavant and is distant for
the
> Plains IA speakers.
>
> Instances can be multiplied. If you want to wish away these
passages
> and come up with your own non-verifiable speculations, the sky is
the
> limit. There is nothing I can disprove in your speculations, and
> there is nothing you can prove.

My only "non-verifiable speculation" is that events described
in literature aren't necessarily factual. This can be fairly
easily verified by, among other things, the existence of many
pieces of literature that contradict others, or even themselves
in reporting the same event. This isn't really "my" speculation
but rather a generally recognized fact.

> The view that you are proposing has been expounded earlier by
> Indologist Malati Shengde.

No, not really.

> She traces the legends of Mahabharata,
> Ramayana, Vedic texts etc. to a pre-Aryan population with close
> cultural contacts with the Middle-East. Then she proposes that IA
> speakers came and surreptitiously appropriated the entire popular
and
> religious corpus of of the pre-Aryan population, and merely
> translated it into IA tongues.

To suggest that speakers of Indo-Aryan in India would have been
common heirs to local knowledge of past events is not the same
thing as saying that a pre-Indo-Aryan Mahabharata, Ramayana or
Rig Veda was later translated into Indo-Aryan.

> For this, Professor Witzel and Steve Farmer called her a
revisionist
> and lumped her with Hindu Nationalists.
> When she protested in a letter that she has actually opposed Hindu
> nationalists, they retorted that nevertheless she is crediting
Indian
> traditions with a 'hoary antiquity' and thus her views are
consistent
> with Hindu nationalism and their devious political agendas.
Therefore
> they are fair in lumping her with the 'revisionists'.

If this actually happened just as you've said, then it was of
course unfair. However we're only hearing one side of the story.

> So this is the level of debate we readers in India have to contend
> with - "My speculations are more holy than your facts. Your
> literature is myth and fancy when compared to my linguistic dogmas,
> which are perfectly objective BTW."

People are having to contend with low levels of debate all
around. The comparison of "my speculation" and "your facts"
is not apt. That which is being compared is not my speculation,
but rather the observation that a literary description of an
event is not the same as proof of that event's actuality, along
with the observed relationship between the Indo-European
languages and what that tells us about their possible time and
place of origin. That to which these are being compared is not
your facts, but rather your interpretation of the written
evidence. You can of course debate linguists' objectivity
and what you consider to be dogmas in linguistics, but please
do be specific so there's something to answer. A general
condemnation of linguists and linguistics as being flawed,
biased, built on the biases of past scholars, needing to
re-examine itself because its conclusions are at variance
with some people's interpretation of historical evidence,
etc. is just the opening. The possibility of all this has
been granted, and you have people's attention, but now an
elaboration of exactly what, in specific terms, is wrong,
and why, is being awaited. Are the similarities of one sort
in Greek and Indo-Iranian in question? Are similarities of
another sort in Slavic and Indo-Iranian doubted? Should
Swedish be removed from the Germanic family and placed in
the Slavic? Was it wrong to make a separate branch within
Indo-Iranian of Nuristani? Should it have been grouped
together with Indo-Aryan? If so, why? These are the sort
of arguments that are appropriate to this list, and are
the only kind, succesfully argued, that are going to force
changes in linguistics, if indeed they are needed. What
would you have linguists do, write that the I.E. homeland
is in India because literature has been interpreted as
proving so, but give no linguistic arguments in support of it?
If this is what historians studying the Vedas believe, then
let them write so. If this is what archaeologists digging in
India believe, then let them write so. However, as it stands,
this is not what linguists believe that their observations prove.
If one field of study ignores its own conclusions and caves
in to pressure from another field and its conclusions, then
multilateral confirmation of an idea can't really be claimed.

> I do need to know BTW, what is your extent of knowledge with the
> Vedic literature (not just linguistic aspects) before we proceed
> ahead.

Not much more than what you give in part 1 below. As I wrote
you before, I'm not familiar with most of the Indo-Aryan
literature, nor do I have my own copy of the Rig Veda or
even a Vedic dictionary. I've only been able to study
Vedic from comparative grammars.

> For your convenience, I am listing the texts with a brief
> mention of their contents (only Samhita-Brahmana-Aranyaka). Please
> let me know which text(s) you would like to discuss in the view of
> your speculation of IA speakers appropriating pre-Aryan legends in
> toto.

Not "in toto", my use of qualifers like "some", "... composers
also mixed ... with myth, ... license to alter details", precludes
such a characterization. What I've described are original Indo-
Aryan compositions, which include local knowledge of pre-Indo-
Aryan events. I don't think this suggestion is outrageous, or
even original. In fact, a scenario in which all of Indo-Aryan
literature were "pure" of any indigenous input would be startling,
not the opposite. However, if it isn't a great deal of trouble –
I know how tiresome and time consuming it is typing in long quotes
(do you have them already in e-format?) – I for one would be
very grateful for any passages from the Rig Veda about the
Sarasvati, especially if you could include the untranslated
passages for comparison. Although the rest of the list might
prefer that this discussion were transfered to the Indo-Iranian
linguistics or Indology lists, I don't know.

David

> 1. The Rigveda Samhita
> This is the oldest Vedic text, as also the largest. It comprises of
> 10552 mantras in 1028 hymns (=Suktas). The hymns are divided
amongst
> 10 books called the `mandalas'. Mandala 9 has 114 hymns address to
> Soma. Portions of Mandalas 1 and 10 are considered later additions.
> The hymns are altogether attributed to 407 Rishis, or Sages, of
which
> 21 are women Sages ( = Rishika). The Sages belong, in general, to
10
> families, each of which has a special hymn (=Apri Sukta) associated
> with them. Mandalas 2-8 are family mandalas since each of these
> mandalas contains hymns predominantly from 1 major family of Vedic
> seers. These families subsequently gave rise to most of the Brahmin
> communities of the Hindu society. Mandala 2 is associated with
> Grtsamadas, Mandala 3 is associated with Vishvamitra and his
lineage,
> 4 with Vamadeva and related Rishis, 5 with Atris, 6 with
Bharadvajas,
> 7 with Vasisthas. Mandala 8 has numerous hymns by Kanvas.