Thank you for your reply. I have learned a few things here, which is that
in broad strokes something might be true, but then we add details that won't
work. Thus I have no real idea about whether the Puranas show evidence of
translation (etc..) and to cite Danielou's idea there precipitated possible
deserved charges of speculation. Similar pitfalls surround Indus
archaeology. I can make my point without deciding about the Indus. I just don't
know. This 'extras' precipitate chaotification of the basic simple idea, that,
pace. Jainism, Indic spirituality goes back a long way, and it is hard to
take Vedic Sanskrit along for the ride.
But what we are talking about here is something that is doubtfully
speculative, the great age of the Indic tradition. I will accept the critique of
speculative notions on a case basis, but let me note my late discovery in a
short life that the entire history of Hinduism is mostly speculative form of
thought, based on the false sequence: Vedas, Puranas, Upanishads, etc...
That sequence makes no sense. And, as I recall, through all the years that I
believed that history, I also assumed, why I am not sure, but
instinctively, that the Jain tradition was older. That's a contradiction that is easily
resolved by Danielou's perspective, minus the add ons.
We are confronted by several likelihoods:
The Indic religious tradition is very ancient, perhaps even going back to
the Neolithic
Indo-European linguistics (cf. a recent book by Beckwith: Empires of the
Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present.
The appendix has an interesting take on IE differentiation dating) makes it
awfully hard to posit 'Vedic Sanskrit' at anything like an early date,
viz. prior to 2500 BCE. And even the later is unrealistic. We are talking
about the obvious parallel of the lead up to Homeric Greek, and the obvious
analog to Vedic Sanskrit. That makes just after 2000 BCE at the absolute
outside an important probable cut off. So, unfortunately, just as the AID gang
tended to suggest, we are talking about second millennium Vedic Sanskrit.
Even for an amateur such as myself, this seems an obvious situation, one
that is a hard given that is hard to reinterpret.
As to the colonial question, I am a trained student of classics, with
reverent awe of Homeric Greek literature, and I find it hard to admit (as
Nietzsche discovered, before going off the deep end here) that, viz. the Spartan
canon of ethics was 'colonialism squared', and a sadistic endeavor at
keeping helots subjected.
If anything the Indian analog shows the strange way in which the subjected
overcame the conquerors. What seems to have happened is that an oral
tradition was written down in 'Sanskrit' and other related languages.
But even as we cite Nietzsche we come to what is possibly one of the root
errors, not the least of modern fascism, here: a kind mystic Aryanism, that
had all sorts of preposterous notions about Indo-European tribesmen as
superior beings. Nietzsche's nonsense about the 'overman' is an obvious muddle
of eugenics, and garbled Buddhism, with highly fascist material lurking in
the background. The IE's were highly intelligent primitives, the source no
doubt for the stunning over 160-200 IQ's that were nonexistent or rare in
the older oikouemene, that's it. It was perhaps that factor that seeded the
deranged mystique of the Aryan supremacists who are truly nutcases.
They entered the old oikoumenes and contributed fresh troopers to the
advance of civilization, often with spectacular results, but rarely with the
seed ideas that had generated civilization. You can see the point in the
Iliadic literature: a sudden apparition of the highest quality art, but a still
primitive barbarian world view.
The idea that the IE's in India wrote down the Vedas, and then developed
Indian spirituality along the lines of yoga, has contributed to that false
mystique, with the spin off notion of the garbled 'overman' nonsense. But we
can see that the real aspirant to 'overman' was the humble fakir and yogi
of primordial India, I will wager a lowly Dravidian. Nietzsche's, among
others', hopeless confusion here has still to be properly critiqued. And he is
highly clever in his own way at hiding his real views.
Again, all this is not necessary to the basic idea: that Indic spirituality
is ancient, and probably not linguistically IE at its root. I can't
honestly see any other possibility here.
It is in this context that reading Danielou made sense. There are many very
loose or streamlined versions of Danielou's thesis, without his other
hypotheses, that are robust, and very hard to reject. Viz., I cannot find any
source for Jainism in Vedism. Impossible for me. In that sense, Danielou
made official what was obvious all my life, in a state of contradictory
confusion. It is an important clarification. Anyone who tries to get from Vedism
to the Upanishads to Buddhism can easily end up horribly confused. Hindus
ended up with the impudence to accuse Buddhists off being outsiders, or of
distorting the tradition. In fact, Buddhism makes sense as a rebirth of
Jainism, other things being equal. Its allergic refusal of Hindu extraneous
elements was in fact an aspect of canonical tradition that knew nothing of
Vedism.
The simplest perspective here wouldn't even need an idea of 'primordial
Shaivism', but simply refers to an Indic stream of religion going back very
early, and including sources of yoga/tantra, Jainism, etc...
As to Rajneesh, I am not one of his followers, and merely recall an
one-liner from him from somewhere, speaking as a Jain by birth scoffing at the
Hindutva attempts to rewrite the AIT as OIT. The charge of colonialism
produced derision in him and others. He was too busy colonializing Western
seekers to care less. In general he represents the spontaneous revival of
Shaivite elements in India, over and over again, and his indifference to Hinduism
made his teaching highly popular in the West, and in India also. I would
not be so certain of who he was based on the journalism over him in the
West. In any case, his remarks here were en passant, and never developed. I
merely indicate the way a person from a Jain background thought less of
Hinduism than of Aryan barbarians.
I am interested that OIT predates the AIT, as noted. But then, so what?
Again, I need make no hard assumptions about AIT either, but I do have a
problem with Vedic Sanskrit in the Neolithic. That won't work.
As to Gurdjieff, I referred to the blog The Gurdjieff Con, a critique of
that fellow. Actually, Gurdjieff had a perspective not unlike Danielou's. He
also thought the traditions of esoteric spirituality went back thousands
of years. But his statements are actually less reliable than even Danielou's
and make obvious errors, so, in any case, that doesn't really concern us,
save that he is perhaps in general correct that some things are very
ancient indeed. Danielou is more honest, as a scholar, where Gurdjieff makes
things up, outrageously, viz. the reference to a complete fiction, Ashieta
Shiemash, then collated with Zoroaster, to say nothing of Nietzsche's brand of
the recycled zarathustras of the late nineteenth century, unspoken in the
background, etc... In the same way he claims that 'pre-sand Egypt' was the
source of his 'fourth way', a typically preposterous, if possibly true,
claim, for which he presents no evidence. Nothing Gurdjieff claims is thus
reliable.
Danielou, as far as I know, was respectful of scholarly honesty.
The question of Nietzsch is highly complex, and not irrelevant to this
issue, since he is the source, often invisible, of much Aryan supremacy
nonsense, as this is mixed with Darwinian-style eugenics, and the whole witches'
brew of the last century.
For a wild yet sober book (self-published), out of the mainline of
Nietzsche research, which sanitizes Nietzsche, check out
Nietzsche, Prophet of Nazism: The Cult of the Superman--Unveiling the Nazi
Secret Doctrine Abir Taha (cf. Amazon.com)
Read at your own risk, this highly toxic, but cogent underground
perspective. Mostly it is quotes form Nietzshe's writings, which many Nietzsche
scholar assist readers in never reading. The confusion over the overman,
eugenics, reductionism scientism mixed with Aryan nonsense (in part from
Nietzsche's studies of Archaic Greeks) as a 'transvaluation of values' etc etc
lurks behind this AIT/OIT imbroglio.
Three cheers for the Dravidian fakirs.
John Landon
In a message dated 6/27/2010 12:43:17 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
koenraad.elst@... writes:
[Indiscriminate quoting and HTML deleted. -BMS]