--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Daniel Koechlin <d.koechlin@...> wrote:
>
> Mkelkar often asks us to visit the website www.voiceofdharma.com. This
> site actively promotes Hinduism and favourably reviews books such as
> "How I became a Hindu", "Defence of Hinduism", "Heroic Hindu Resistance
> to Muslim invaders", "Muslims : the demographic siege", "Hindu
> Revivalism", "Report on Christian missionary activity in India", "Who is
> a Hindu ?" and even "Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate". I am not sure
> voiceofdharma is a reliable source of information.
> I read "Update on the Aryan Invasion". Its author asserts that the
> Rg-Veda was completed before 4 000 BC and the the Mahabharata around 3
> 000 BC. The brahmanas, sutras, etc are "the products of high Harrapan
> period towards the end of the 3rd millenium BC". Actualy those are
> conservative estimates : I have read other Hindu scholars who claim that
> the Rg Veda was composed ca. 8 000 BC.
> All this of course is UTTER nonsense. Any linguistic, scientific,
> exegesis of those texts will reveal that they were composed at a much
> later date. The RG Veda in the 2nd millenium BC and the Mahabharata
> around the year 0 CE. To say the contrary is a magnificent act of faith
> and devotion (for exemple : "The astronomical lore in Vedic literature
> provides elements of an absolute chronology in a consistent way") but
> has little to do with comparative linguistics.
There is nothing fundamentalist or superstitious about the claim that
a text (or at least) parts of it were composed only 3000 years before
chronology worked out by comparative linguists. The limitations of
comparative linguists are well known and have been thoroughly
discussed in our paper proto vedic continuity theory.doc in the files
section. There is no agreement among IEL scholars themselves about
where and when the PIE originated.
The Indian subcontinent has been home to an ancient civilization that
goes back 6000-7000 BCE. The disagreement is about who exactly were
the inhabitant of this great civilization. This disagreement is of an
entirely scholarly nature and should not be linked to any religious or
fundamentalist groups which are part of all major religions today like
Christianity.
IEL are in the habit of accusing their opponents of religious
fundamentalism when their theories are challenged. This is not
conducive to scholarly debate. Any one who has read our paper in the
files section can verfiy that we do not make any fantastical claims
about the Vedas or Hinduism. We do not think that Sanskrit was the
first language spoken by "Man" or that the Rig Veda is divinely
inspired or,India is the greatest of all lands etc. The Rig Veda is a
liturgical text that is open to examination by ALL, not just
comparative linguists. There are astronomical, geographical,
geological, zoological, botanical, agricultural references in the Rig
Vedas which have been used by experts in these fields to arrive at
estimates of when that text may have been composed. Many times these
estimates are at variance with those worked out by comparative
linguists. But again these are scholarly disagreements not debated
between creationist crackpots and scientists as some would like to
portary them.
.
>
> _ that the great Hindu mythological figures, such as Ram or Arjun, were
> real persons who lived 5 000 - 50 000 years ago and fought wars with
> horses and chariots. Many calculations have been offered by Hindu
> scholars based on "astronomical internal evidence" (the Mahabarata and
> the Ramayana mention "celestial phenomenae") which they think proves
> without a doubt that the (proto-)Vedic culture started TENS of thousands
> of years ago !!!
The astronomical evidence from the Vedas and Mahabharat does not yield
dates that are "TENS of thousands > of years ago !!!." These are
simply exaggerations to help avoid dealing with the evidence.
Astronomy yields a date of 4500 BCE and around 3012 BCE for the
Mahabharata (please refer to p. 66 of proto vedic continuity
theory.doc) These dates are not impossilbe and they fall in the realm
of real life possibilites. We know that people have lived on the
Indian subcontinent from 6500 BCE.
> A certain amount of pressure is put on Indian archeologists by the rest
> of Indian society to make their findings conform to religious teachings.
> Funding by the Indian government (especially under the BJP, a
> nationalist and very religious one) is more readily available to
> archeologists intent on "proving" the Harrapa-Vedic continuity theory.
Archaologist like Kenoyer, Schaffer, Licthenstein, Renfrew, Possehl,
McIntosh are not susceptible to pressure from the Indian government
which changes every few years. Currently the secularist Congress party
is in power not the "Hindu Fundamentalist" BJP. Political winds
change by the minute. The archaeological data from Indus-Sarasvati
civilization does not.
> Many Indian people, regrettably, have great difficulty differentiating
> between History and Myth. Leafing through an Indian history textbook for
> children is a real eye-opener.
Then one should try reading what the American children are reading
about Hinduism in their texts. The portrayal of Vedic/Hindu culture
in Western textbooks is a subject of a huge current controversy in
California.
>
> The oldest vedas do not mention such elements of Indian landscape as
> tigers, elephants, sugar cane or rice. The words for these are dravidian
> (or Munda) in origin and not Indo-European. The Ganges river is never
> mentioned, only the Indus and the Sarasvati (which Hindu scholars claim
> cannot be the Gange).
The above is simply wrong. The Rig Vedas do mention Ganga many times.
The famous River Hymn of the Rig Veda mentions rivers including Gagna
and Sarastvati from east to the west contray to the supposed migration
routs theorized by IEL.
About the loan words: There is no agreement among IEL about how many
substratum words are their in Vedic. Estimates range from 0 to 380.
The flaura and fauna mentioned in the Rig Veda is very much native to
the Indian Subcontinent (Lal 2005).
"Lal (2005), The Homeland of the Aryans: Evidence of Rigvedic Flora
and Fauna & Archaeology, New Delhi: Aryan Books International."
The words for elephant, tiger, rice do have Indo-European etymologies
(Elst 2000).
http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.com/articles/aid/urheimat.html
If one is reluctant to visit the free voiceofdharma website, one is
welcome to purchase a hard copy of Update on the Aryan Invasion
Debate by Koenraad Elst for about 30 U.S. Dollars or read him and
Subhash Kak for $ 43.95 in the following volume.
The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History,
Edwin F. Bryant and Laurie L. Patton Eds., New York, NY: Routledge
The inevitable conclusion is that when the Rg Veda
> was composed, their authors lived in the northwest of India and only
> gradually expanded eastwards. Dravidian speakers are only found in the
That surely does not prove that the Vedic culture is somehow "foreign"
to its historicall known habitat.
> south of the Peninsula or in remote mountanous regions (as far north as
> Pakistan incidentally) where they survive as isolates. The southern
> dravidian languages borrowed indo-european words at a later stage than
> that represented by the vedas.
Please refer to p. 44 of proto vedic continuity theory.doc in the
files section of Cybalist.
Ergo : the Indo-aryan languages spread
> from north to south and west to east Try reconciling that with the
> out-of-India theory.
It does no preclude expansion from west to further west!
M. Kelkar
>