Did the British Raj represent Greater India?

[aneeshm]

Seems the quote guy who hides in 'poly has a sense of humour. Look what he served up when I posted the last post:

To converse at the distance of the Indes by means of sympathetic contrivances may be as natural to future times as to us is a literary correspondence.
-- Joseph Glanvill, 1661

[Arrian]

Nice

-Arrian

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Arrian


Do the Mongols ring any bells with you?

-Arrian

As I said, why would the central river of the settled civilisation against whom the barbarians are fighting be accorded the status of a sacred river, and how would the barbarians have known about the flow of this river when they supposedly came at a time when it had already dried up?

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by aneeshm
So now, a bunch of unsettled, barbarian warrior clans somehow defeat a highly settled and urban civilisation, and manage to do it all while fighting within themselves.

Mongols, Hyksos, Huns, Franks, Goths, Kushans, Scythians, etc., etc., etc.

Originally posted by aneeshm
Would this myth and tribal memory have the sea as an all-pervading presence if they were in landlocked Central Asia? Would not the sea be simply something mentioned in passing rather than the elephant in the room it is now?

No. If I were to write a book right now, I could talk about memories while still making references to what I currently know

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by LordShiva


Mongols, Hyksos, Huns, Franks, Goths, Kushans, Scythians, etc., etc., etc.

I already addressed that.

Originally posted by LordShiva

No. If I were to write a book right now, I could talk about memories while still making references to what I currently know

If the Vedas described a war between the Aryans and Dravidians, would they not necessarily have very few references to the sea in that section which dealt with that war, before the contact or conquest?

[Arrian]

Originally posted by aneeshm


As I said, why would the central river of the settled civilisation against whom the barbarians are fighting be accorded the status of a sacred river, and how would the barbarians have known about the flow of this river when they supposedly came at a time when it had already dried up?

I don't know.

But warrior tribes taking down advanced, settled civilizations are not uncommon throughout history.

Alternatively, it could be that horses were introduced from central asia and the first native groups to gain access to those horses then subjugated those who didn't have them yet. Sorta like muskets in New Zealand. The Maoris who got ahold of them when and massacred those who lacked them, pretty much right away.

-Arrian

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Sandman


It will take more than an organisation with a cheap ugly website and a shoddy Wikipedia article to bring a language back to life. The reasons given to learn Sanskit are either nationalist gibberish ("A Sanskrit Scholar understands the world better than most others") or entirely unconvincing ("a scientist's paradise"). Meanwhile, in the real world, India continues to lag an embarassing distance behind China.

Websites of Indian organisations are notorious for this sort of thing. And their activities are far more widespread than the website lets on.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Arrian


I don't know.

But warrior tribes taking down advanced, settled civilizations are not uncommon throughout history.

Alternatively, it could be that horses were introduced from central asia and the first native groups to gain access to those horses then subjugated those who didn't have them yet. Sorta like muskets in New Zealand. The Maoris who got ahold of them when and massacred those who lacked them, pretty much right away.

-Arrian

But then there arises the problem of the 34 ribs versus the 36 ribs. Indian indigenous horses have 34 ribs, central Asian horses have 36. If they had been introduced from Central Asia, Indian horses also would have had 36 ribs. And the RigVeda explicitly mentions that the horse has 34 ribs.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by aneeshm


As I said, why would the central river of the settled civilisation against whom the barbarians are fighting be accorded the status of a sacred river,

I dunno. Why do the Muslims consider Jerusalem a sacred city? How did the Catholics in Mexico manage a shrine in Guadalupe, which IIUC was the holy site of a pre-columbian goddess? Its not uncommon for "sacred places" to remain sacred after conquests, IIUC.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by aneeshm


But then there arises the problem of the 34 ribs versus the 36 ribs. Indian indigenous horses have 34 ribs, central Asian horses have 36. If they had been introduced from Central Asia, Indian horses also would have had 36 ribs. And the RigVeda explicitly mentions that the horse has 34 ribs.

Is this 34 vs 36 rib thing supported in archeological/anthropological evidence, or is it simply from the RigVeda? Because a text can be wrong.

-Arrian

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by aneeshm


But then there arises the problem of the 34 ribs versus the 36 ribs. Indian indigenous horses have 34 ribs, central Asian horses have 36. If they had been introduced from Central Asia, Indian horses also would have had 36 ribs. And the RigVeda explicitly mentions that the horse has 34 ribs.

Duh. There are vineyards in the Eastern US that make wine from native North American grapes. Which were NEVER used for wine making, or even domesticated, by American Indians. The guys from Europe, who were used to European grapes, saw the local wild grapes growing, and domesticated them.

[Arrian]

From wikipedia:

Frawley (2005) speculates[16] that the Rigvedic horse could therefore be the Indian Equus sivalensis (which may or may not have had 34 ribs; modern horses usually have 36, with occasional specimens of 34 or 38).

Further, it's not so much having horses, it's knowing how to use them in battle.

Look at what happened when the stirrup was invented. At that point, people were already using horses, but the stirrup made horses all the more potent in battle.

-Arrian

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Sandman


It will take more than an organisation with a cheap ugly website and a shoddy Wikipedia article to bring a language back to life.

Im tirtzu, ain zo aggadah.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by aneeshm
As I said, why would the central river of the settled civilisation against whom the barbarians are fighting be accorded the status of a sacred river, and how would the barbarians have known about the flow of this river when they supposedly came at a time when it had already dried up?

Standard invasion procedure - the invaders appropriate elements of the "more civilised" culture, both because they like what they see, and also to give themselves legitimacy. The Mongols considered themselves Chinese. Charlemagne called himself Roman.

[LordShiva]

I mean, there are good arguments for either position. But those that maintain that the Aryans are indigenous rely exclusively on the Vedas. These can be explained away by various combinations of who did the writing, what were they referring to, when did they write them, what was in their memory, what they were writing about, what their intentions were, etc.

The AIT, on the other hand, relies on linguistic/philological evidence, as well as primary literature (not only the Vedas, but also that of Iran, where the nobility also considered itself Aryan). If I get the time, I'll do some research and dig up passages in the Vedas that support the AIT.