--- In cybalist@... s.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@ ...> wrote:
> A logical gap everyone seems to have missed. The first Hindus were
> either IE (Arya) speakers or they were Dravidian speakers. One group
> was Hindu, the other not. Now both are mainly Hindu, so must have
> intermarried like rabbits. Hinduism also seems to have assimilated
> Munda-speakers, Sino-Tibetans, etc. Many Indian Hindus in the NE
> look East Asian.
Of course, Rick!
The process of gradual absorption of groups of outsiders into the fold of Hinduism has been variously termed as Sanskritisation, Hinduisation, Aryanisation, or jati mobility. Legions of historians, anthropologists and sociologists have studied this process, even at the micro-level, during the last centuryn and continue to study it now. Hinduism has always shown through the ages the (rare) capacity of accommodating people of different ethnolinguistic origins and socio-religious mores, and from different walks of life, within its capacious conglomerate of sects and castes.
The case presently under discussion, that of the Hinduisation of the Yavanas, Sakas etc., is but a sub-species of this general trend within Hinduism. It is important because it is an *ancient* example of this trend.
Tragically enough, Hindu nationalists à la Shivraj Singh Khokra deny the very reality consisting in the absorption of originally non-Hindu groups into the fold of Hinduism. They only believe in a timeless, monolithic Hinduism which could only accept as "new entries" people who were already Hindus (although they probably did not know it... yet! :^)). That's the reason why the Kalyanaramans of this world have been coming up, time and again, with all those absurd theories about a prehistotic "Vedic-Munda- Dravidian" linguistic-cum- cultural- cum religious area that encompassed the whole of South Asia, and made all of its this defined "indigenous" groups "Hindus" from the dawn of history (obviously to the exclusion of any 'foreign' group such as the Indo-Aryan speakers of the 'Indo-Europeanist' linguistic school would be). This is also the reason why, for instance, our Shivraj cannot accept the fact that the Yavanas, Sakas, Pahlavas were 'foreigners' and
try to make them Hindus from the dawn of history. Finally, this is the reason why many Hindu nationalist theorists, in this case in close alliance with Indian politicians on the Hindutva side, have tried for years now to label the Indian tribals as "backward Hindus" with affirming that they are only "detached brothers" of mainstream Hindus.
This is a glaring example of a religion-based political ideology compeletly dominating social, historical, and anthropological would-be theories.
Cheers,
Francesco
Most of my Hindu friends, those who are religious, at least, do claim that essentially everyone is a Hindu and some point to the 19th century pronunciation that Jesus and Buddha were both avatars of Vishnu. But they add that the substance of Hinduism for them is to respect everyone's beliefs.