From: Koenraad
Message: 66233
Date: 2010-06-27
>Ø conventional AIT to be the case.<
> I have been lurking with respect to discussions here re: the vexed debate
> over AIT.
> If appropriate I might interject a short remark, and leave it at that.
> These discussions of AIT versus OIT are complex and confusing, but it
> should be noted that they
> are curiously recent in the sense that a generation ago many students of
> Indic religion cared little for the issues, and simply assumed varieties of
> A figure such as the guru Rajneesh (significantly a Jain), as I recall,"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing": Rajneesh has pontificated on nearly every subject under the sun, but was competent on only few, certainly not on the Aryan invasion debate. The OIT long predated the Hindutva movement, which initially swallowed the AIT for want of proper study of the topic. The very coiner of the term Hindutva as a political concept, VD Savarkar, assumed the AIT in his seminal book Hindutva, 1923. Hindu nationalist Congress leader BG Tilak notoriously theorized the "Arctic homeland", a variation on the AIT. There need, after all, not be a conflict between nationalism and an invader history: the Rumanians celebrate Roman invader Trajanus; Pakistan celebrates Arab invader Md bin Qasim as the founder of Pakistan (i.e. Muslim India); the US celebrates Columbus and the Mayflower pilgrims. Among pre-independence Hindu nationalists, it was only the marginalized Sri Aurobindo who argued against the AIT. (His secretary was KD Sethna, cfr. supra.)
> denounced as Hindutva nonsense the sudden appearance of these claims denying
> AIT. Thus the discussion transcends colonialist harangues, pro or anti.
>
> Thus, also, that devoted student of Hinduism and convert thereto, Danielou,Ø about Indus archaeology, which often muddles all arguments from all sides.<
> with his useful A History of India, from another generation, simply
> assumed AIT in some form and, issues of the Indus set to one side, since we can
> speak of the Indic tradition (primordial Shaivism with its tantra/yoga, and
> Jainism/proto-Jainism) going back to the near Neolithic, without deciding
> In the process he also made clear that he thought Indic tradition precededØ tradition being the case.<
> the Aryan entry on the scene, thus implying the problematical character of
> the Vedas in that regard. The exact language involved would not therefore
> have been Indo-European, presumably thus by speculative inference a Dravidian
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, nemonemini@... wrote:
>
> I am not a 'true
> believer' in Danielou's theories, and I appreciate the problematic character of
> his notions of an Indo-Mediterranean religio-cultural complex'. It is also
> true that much conventional, supposedly non-speculative scholarship on
> Hinduism, is even worse, and has gone completely astray, terminally muddled,
Ø although taken as normative.<
Sure enough. A lot of scholarship on Hinduism is muddled, and the AIT has added to the muddle.
> So, however shaky, Danielou's unwitting commentary is a clue, no more, to
> a possible solution to at least some of the problems of the religious
> traditions here. Hinduism, if not a modern invention, and whatever it refers to,
> is a series of bum steers and gross historical fictions, so the sudden
> jolt given by Danielou can act like shock treatment, and reorient one's
> thinking, hopefully without buying into all his other speculations.
>
"Hindu" is the object of manipulation, esp. by non- and anti-Hindu authors, where its definition is changed according to convenience. Sometimes, the term is used minimalistically as meaning "Brahminical", sometimes it is used more broadly as including all Indic religionists, as when Hindu complaints about their oppression in or expulsion from Kashmir, the Northeastern states and local Muslim pockets have to be countered: "How can Hindus be oppressed?! That's ridiculous, they are 82% of the population!" Of course I don't want to trouble linguists in their ivory towers with such political facts, but they intrude where Indian religious politics enters the AIT debating horizon.
No scripture of any pre-Muslim Indian sect, Vedic or non-Vedic, uses the word "Hindu", and it can be dispensed with altogether. It appears in the recentmost scriptures, esp. of Sikhism, where the Sikhs themselves are designated as Hindus. Its use as an encompassing self-designation for all or most Indic religionists is typical of the Bengal Renaissance and the Freedom movement, i.e. of the British period. In the process, a synthesis and European-influenced streamlining was attempted that was advertised internationally as "Hinduism", in that sense it is a modern invention. However, the term "Hindu", originally Persian for "India(n)", was introduced by the Muslim invaders and applied to all Indic religionists without distinction. It is in that sense, with its unrivalled right of primogeniture, that the Hindu nationalist movement tries to use it. In my opinion, it's a hopeless battle and Hindus themselves have an interest in abandoning the term, which is now mainly a toy in the hands of their enemies.
> Danielou's, and not only
> his, intuitive sense that the Indic stream of religion is far older than the
> probable entry point of Indo-European cultural/linguistic influence,
> leaving the situation as it conventionally taken equally problematic.
>
On the contrary, Daniélou's is precisely the conventional (but admittedly problematic) viewpoint, viz. that the Vedic people were latecomers who gradually adopted a lot of indigenous lore.
> Vedism in the Neolithic has to be
> nonsense, blinding us to the obvious other point that non-Aryan Indic religion
might indeed be that old.<
Vedism is only the literarily-preserved form given in the Bronze Age to traditions of an indeterminate age. If the Puranas of the 1st mill. CE can contain age-old ("non-Aryan", "pre-Vedic", "Neolithic") traditions, so can the 2nd mill BC Vedas.
Ø As a non-specialist I must nonetheless point to what
> was always my perspective, visible in the analog of the Aryan invasion of
> Greece. The OIT protest against an Aryan invasion ought to be equally
> indignant with respect to Homeric invaders, and bloodthirsty Spartans with their
> helots. The Greek case is the other instance of the obvious pattern that
> would seem hard to throw out.
>
It is pretty well-established that the Trojans conquered by "Homeric invaders" were themselves IEs, viz. Anatolian-speakers, some kind of Hittites, so it was but an inter-IE quarrel. Never mind, a pre-Homeric invasion by the proto-Greeks of what was to become their historical habitat is generally accepted. (Whether the helots were remnants of the pre-Greek native population is an undecided question, or do you have evidence for it?) But to deduce from this case of an IE invasion in SE Europe that an "analog" invasion must have underlain the Aryan presence in India, as tacitly or openly assumed in much laymen's AIT discourse, is a fallacy. You can only equate two phenomena after you know both independently; and here, while perhaps you do know something factual about a Greek invasion of Greece, you know nothing about an Aryan invasion of India. You certainly believe and have heard things about it, but these are not based on even one piece of literary or archaeological evidence.
> it makes sense to consider the antecedents of Shaivism, with its
> yoga/tantra, and putative proto-Jain spinoff in some non-Aryan form going back
> to very early times. The discovery of yoga via elements of tantra is a
> concept that might almost prediate even the Neolithic and be a Paleolithic brand
> of evolutionary psychology, as Danielou suggests. The discovery of some
Ø connection of self-consciousness and sex as cave man stuff sounds right to me!<
Very appealing indeed. On the other hand, newer research emphasizes the recent and foreign origin of lots of Tantric and Yogic lore, such as the conspicuous indebtedness (1st mill. CE) of the Cakra system and Kundalini Yoga to Chinese "inner alchemy" with its practice of the "microcosmic orbit".
>
> Again that is speculative. But at the very least it would seem that
> Jainism, from which Buddhism is in many ways a side branch and
> renovation/reform, had an entire interval going back several millennia or more. A similar
> prior record for proto-Shavism makes altogether a lot of sense.
>
Since Shaivism is a part of Hinduism by any definition, we have your word for the very ancient Indian origin of Hinduism.
> But I can't reject out of
> hand the existence of a Neolithic 'commons' in the sense of a series related
> religious formats in an early oikoumene passed on via oral traditions.
> Without more evidence it is hard to proceed, but we should keep in mind the idea
> put forth by a recent author of a text on the Neolithic, After The Ice,
> that the Neolithic is the real source of all later civilization, in its basic
Ø elements.<
Vedic self-history starts with a Flood, of which founder Manu is the survivor. Tamil Sangam tradition does even better by positing successive floods that forced the ancestors to move inland time and again. That neatly fits the post-Glacial rise of the sea level by about a hundred meter, forcing the majority of human settlements to move higher up. But I have no idea how they could preserve such recollection during the nine or so millennia between the event and its apparent recounting in Sanskrit and Tamil literature. Tantalizing stuff indeed, those Neolithic origins, but then what?
Ø
Ø Much of Indian religion still looks Neolithic.<
Especially Vedic religion.
>
> As to the question of Dravidian, my suggestion could be off the wall, but
> there aren't very many other candidates for a pre-Aryan linguistic backdrop.
> I would note also the puzzling contradictions in the figure of the
> blue/dark (dravidian?) Krishna, as if a very much more ancient myth is painted
Ø over with later mythhistory.<
Yes, the Aryan Kshatriya heroes Rama and Krishna, as well as Rama's Aryan Brahmin enemy Ravana, are described as dark-skinned. No matter, except for those (including you?) still carry this notion that Aryan = white. Was Krishna Dravidian? His tribal name Yadu may be from Drav. *yatu, cattle, and the seat of his kingdom was on the Gujarat coast which had a Dravidian prehistory. Then again, his tribal occupation of cowherd neatly fits the AIT image of the Aryan invaders.
Ø
Ø
Ø In any case, South India (which I note in passing
> has some of the most ancient genetic strains known to man, standing in the
> direct path to the Out of Africa migrations) holds still many
> archaeological secrets, no doubt, and the remains of trace elements of primordial
> Shavism are all there to be understood.
>
Shaivism is normally traced to the foothills of the Himalaya, wellpsring of the Ganga river, as evidenced by Shiva's entire symbolism and the location of his main places of pilgrimage, Mount Kailiash and the Kashi Vishvanath in Varanasi on the Ganga. Tamil Shaivism is a case of Aryan penetration of the South. Murugan and the various Ammas are native South-Indian gods, the rest are "Aryan".
>
> In any case, the basic streamlined version of Danielou's idea might help
> many, especially New Agers sold into slavery in the Neo-Brahminical guru
> circuit, to sort out their confusion and entanglement in the so-called Hindu
> history of Indian religion here. It comes as a shock to realize that this
> history is false, an already ancient brand of propaganda, and makes no sense
> for the obvious reasons Danielou points to, minus his other speculations.
> Danielou unfortunately compromised with this latter Hinduism even as he
> seems to have undermined it, adding another layer to his complicated reasoning.
>
It is very good that you express your hatred for Hinduism so openly, and link it with your pro-AIT position. Most Western champions of the AIT can be quoted as expressing their anti-Hindu animus somewhere, but rarely do they make the un-academic mistake of compromising their positions on historical topics by interlacing these directly with a statement of their religio-political sympathies and antipathies. In India, this unabashed Hindu-baiting as stated context for pro-AIT arguments is far more common.
Indeed, the unthinking enthusiasm with which the Hindu nationalist movements has embraced the reviving OIT since the 1980s was precisely a reaction to the consistent use of the AIT as an ideological war-horse for various anti-Hindu movements, starting long before independence with the Christian mission, South-Indian "non-Brahmin" movement and Dravidianist separatism, all of them supported by the British colonial authorities. Since then, all other anti-Hindu parties and movements in India, without exception, have to some extent incorporated the AIT in their discourse. Thus, while Dr. Ambedkar, leader of the ex-Untouchables, had argued against the AIT himself, his neo-Ambedkarite followers have adopted the AIT with a vengeance. Even some Khalistani Sikh separatists, though "Aryan" by any definition, have claimed that since they are anti caste (disregarding the prevalence of caste among Khalistan-supporting Sikh communities even in the UK) and anti India, and since caste is an Aryan imposition and India is a state of Aryan-Brahminical hegemony, they represent the revolt of the pre-Aryan natives against Aryan oppression. So, leave aside the uses of the AIT in the racist and Nazi worldview in the West, the AIT in India is political through and through. In India this is nobody's secret, but in the West, academics prefer to stick to form and keep their personal pros en cons separate from their scholarly theorizing. You don't.
> I might conclude by noting that while I give little credence to Indic
> notions of age periods, it is amusing, a real howler of a laugh, to consider
> that Hinduism is a concoction of the Kali Yuga, Indic religion in decline,
> and that Buddhism (I am not a Buddhist) as a restoration movement availed
> itself of much of the stream of Jain religion, trying to evade the
> crystallizing Hindu nexus coming into being on its ancient archaeological site. The
> orphaned Jain stream was already ancient by the time of Mahavir/Gautama,
> speaking of not less than twenty four teertankers. The odd way Mahavir comes at
> the end of something, and Gautama at the beginning suggests the Danielou
> idea of something very ancient.
> If you do the math (??) at a rate of one teertanker per century that puts
Ø us back to ca. 3000 BCE.
No problem with your conjecture that the Shramanic (renunciate) stream represented by Jainism is thousands of years older than Mahavira Jina. But after your mocking Hindu mytho-historiography with its age-deep extrapolations, it is somewhat "amusing", perhaps even "a real howler of a laugh", that you take the Tirthankara (Jain guru) tradition so literally. While the 23rd and 24th are clearly historical, with a distinctive life story, the earlier ones are stereotypes, easily thought up by sectarian hagiographers. Quite a few historians would include the Tirthankara story among the "bum steers and gross historical fictions".
According to Hindu tradition, Vedic Dharma starts with Manu in the Satya Yuga, the Age of Truth, or Krta Yuga, Age of Completion. By contrast, the dark Kali Yuga, starting with Krishna's death, is when practically all other existing religions started. So, in the Hindu view itself, it is the others who are infected with darkness, while their own tradition hails from the age of light. Of course I don't believe in those ages either, but it must be admitted that the system is internally consistent. You can use many arguments against Hinduism (and I dare say you do), but not its own Yuga doctrine.
> I find it comical to consider 'Hinduism' a stage of the decline of Indic religion. In any case, Indian religion <
for which the Muslim invaders coined the term "Hindu"
> was already ancient by the period of the Axial Age and the formation of Buddhism,
> Hinduism based on Vedism, and the rest. In some ways Buddhism would seem closer to
> our own time than to the primordial birth of Jainism in the Shaivite
> complex, whatever exactly that was, and which is arguably a Neolithic legacy.
>
Not merely arguable, but quite certain and a matter of consensus, is that Shaivism is one of the main strands in the complex called "Hinduism".
> It is very hard to make one's way in this labyrinth, and it is clear that everyone is confused, Hindus most of all.<
I could now name at least one non-Hindu (indeed, anti-Hindu) who is even more confused about it.
> John Landon
>
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, nemonemini@... wrote:
>
> The
> stream of Indic religion goes back before the putative Indo-European entry point,<
"putative" indeed.
Ø " and the appearance given by so-called 'Hinduism' is completely
> misleading, the Vedic tradition being a later construct, which a serious New
> Ager might learn to disregard apart from its intrinsic historical or
> achaeological interest. It has no relevance to the mainline of Indic spirituality.
> Thus the status of Hinduism is highly misleading and any student thereof
> might judiciously consider the primordial Shaivism and Jain traditions, as
> outlined by figures such as Danielou, taking these with care. This is a
> treacherous line of study, but the basic outline is clear. This tradition
> belongs to no one and the student of the great yogas should altogether defy the
> propaganda and outright exploitations of the Neo-Brahmin tyranny over the
> Indian tradition which has been crippled by sophistical doctrines and class
>warfare of the most subtle brand.<
That "this tradition belongs to no one" sounds like part of the ongoing debate between some Hindu-American Foundation and Hindu-born New-Age guru Deepak Chopra, who lays a personal claim to some old yoga stuff recycled by him and therefore denies that yoga has anything to do with Hinduism. Of course, Hinduism is a despised religion worldwide. In India and in expat Indian communities, it is a sinking ship. So now, the rats hurry to leave this sinking ship, pleading some clever reasons why they should not be counted as Hindu. Among these rats, you have the Sikhs (once the "sword-arm of Hinduism"), the Arya Samaj (once a vanguard of Hindu revival and renewal), the Ramakrishna Mission (once started under the motto: "Say with pride, we are Hindus!"), the ISKCON, and also the tribe of spiritualist money-makers such as Deepak Chopra. Before the 13th century, no yogi ever called himself a "Hindu", but all yogis were dubbed Hindu by the Muslim invaders. To the extent that the exonymous term "Hindu" makes sense, as it did to the Muslim invaders, it includes by definition the entire Indic yoga tradition, no matter how deep into the past you trace it.
> But the basic outline or periodization given by such as Danielou can help
> to orient oneself toward the real Indian spirituality. This is no small
> matter as the implications of these views show that, for example, the endemic
> confusion with caste is a later imposter and has nothing to do with the
Ø real tradition.<
That caste is a later imposition that "has nothing to do with the real tradition" of Indic religion, is a standard line in Hindu nationalist discourse since the 19-th century Arya Samaj. They'll like you for repeating it.
> Without getting into the equally treacherous realm of Buddhist propaganda,
> we can see that it represented a reform movement trying to outflank the
Ø crystallizing Hindu establishment.<
The Buddha, the proudly self-proclaimed "Arya", was a tall light-skinned prince, upper-class in every respect. He owed the spectacular success of his sect to his expert networking among kings and commercial magnates, who gifted him land and whose personnel built monasteries and even universities for his followers, most of whom were upper-caste. He acted as political adviser to kings. Like the Dalai Lama in today's India, he was often invited to officiate at inaugural ceremonies and the like. By any reckoning, he was part of the "Aryan" establishment. The now-common story that Buddhism was an egalitarian low-caste ("native", "non-Aryan") revolt against Brahminical oppression strikingly exemplifies how, in the right circumstances, you can sell even the most ludicrous fairy-tale to millions of otherwise intelligent people.
> New Agers are often systematically misled by these phantoms of 'Indian
> religion' in decline as of the Axial Age. It comes as a shock to realize that
Ø two thousand years of Hinduism has been based on a set of distortions,<
I readily agree that some 2000 years ago, give or take a few centuries, Hindu philosophy got distorted from its promising beginnings by the rise of theism and of Shramanic karma belief, which forced bizarre and contradictory doctrines on previously consistent schools of thought; and by the intrusion of a hardening caste consciousness into the properly religious sphere. At the level of popular religion, it won't have made much difference, but for those enamoured of Upanishadic thought, the later development of Hinduism is indeed disappointing. But not to the extent of justifying the raging hatred now directed at Hinduism from many quarters.
As for the "Axial Age", ca. 6th-4th century BC, it is an optical illusion. Some thinkers of that age merely continued old traditions and said so themselves, but had the benefit of being the first whose teachings were well preserved in writing and became the backbone of a surviving tradition, e.g. Confucius, Laozi and the Buddha. The Hebrew prophets of the age expressly only continued the prophetic monotheism of Moses (13th cent. BC), and the original element they added, viz. apocalyptic predictions, were hardly progress. Zarathushtra, who is mostly included in the list of thinkers revolutionizing human religion and ethics in that period, actually lived centuries earlier. So, in spite of Socrates and Plato who did constitute a revolution within their own tradition, I don't think there was a collective worldwide mental breakthrough at that time, though otherwise there is no harm in cherishing this cute notion of an Axial Age.
> but
> the defenders of Indian tradition would do better to write off their losses
> and pick up the real threads of yoga/tantra spawned by primordial Shaivism.
> In fact, those traditions, to a close look, are already the case tucked
> away behind the various fronts of the Vedic phantoms.
>
>
> Thank you for your time, and the insights of Indo-European linguistic
> studies on this, for many, a practical life and death issue of entanglement in
> endless confusion.<
Cheer up, there is an Ariadne's threat that can lead you out of this labyrinth. It's called scholarly method. Just follow the evidence and the confusion will clear up soon enough. The Aryan invasion entanglement is not forever unsolvable.
> John Landon
> There is more on this at The Gurdjieff Con blog
>
Ah, Gurdjieff, the con man... Wasn't he a notorious exploiter of his gullible followers? Just a rumour, not sure. About your other authority, Bhagwan Rajneesh, it is at any rate well-established that he exploited and ultimately terrorized his numerous followers. Since you want to warn guru-seeking New-Agers against "neo-Brahmin tyranny" and "slavery to neo-Brahminical gurus", it may be worth remembering how your Jain guru Rajneesh turned his colony Rajneeshpuram (now, as formerly, Antelope, Oregon) into a concentration camp full of spy cameras and armed guards, who also filmed every move of the non-follower townspeople. I haven't heard of any "neo-Brahminical guru" who outdid him on that. If the shadow of his approval rests on the AIT, that may be an extra reason for distrusting it.
Kind regards,
Dr. Koenraad Elst