No Aryan migration into India / Pakistan? Its' all a myth?

[Kinetic]

This theory was floated in order to rationalize Buddha's critique of Vedas. In spite of that, a bunch of loopholes remain. Off the top of my head, if Buddha was really an incarnation of Vishnu, how come Buddha was born human. All other incarnations of Vishnu were divine from birth. But it was only Buddha who had to toil to achieve 'nirvana'. Also, all incarnations have grand narratives in form of Puranas. But Buddha does not have any (like Kalki).

Our ancestors have given a good touch on it as well.

Buddha was made an incarnation of Vishnu mainly for two purposes as we know.

1) Buddhism was signifying some shortcomings of Vedic Aryans/Hinduism.
2) Buddhism though don't have followers in number, it got substantial supports from few early kings/emperors.

And our ancestors killed two birds with one stone by making Buddha incarnation of Vishnu.

Now come to your point. Its said that whenever Vishnu incarnates its in different forms, different times at different places. Buddha incarnated at a time when India was not united and various kings were often fighting with each other. You must have heard about "War of the Ten Kings". So here Vishnu takes a new incarnation to teach people the peaceful way of life, love for every living beings. Thats what Buddha did!!!! Splendid match up!!!

About divinity, it was added substantially as well like killing demons or bringing them to the right path which is always duty of Vishnu's incarnations. It was also said that he had all signs to be the Avatar of Vishnu like having 'Shankh, Chakra, Gada, Padma' markings on his feet etc etc.

Another reason was Buddhist 'non-violence' theory was a popular belief amongst number of Hindu traditions, mainly Vaishnavism. As per recorded history one of the influential sage and poet of Vaishnavism, Jayadeva Goswami was first found praising Buddha as incarnation of Vishnu. Though he might not be the first. Buddha was mentioned as avatar in Puranas as well.

 

[shuntmaster]

The ‘Aryan invasion theory’​

There was once an ancient people, the ‘Indo-Europeans,’ or ‘Aryans,’ who were nomadic herders and warriors somewhere in Central Asia. They were a white-skinned, blond, and blueeyed race. These Aryans suddenly burst forth from this place in Central Asia, or perhaps it was somewhere in Eastern Europe (anyway, but somewhere landlocked such that they didn’t even know about the ocean). Wherever they went, they conquered, and made everybody their servants, because they were great warriors and also very smart (blondes, after all). Some Aryan
tribes traveled West, and became the ancestors of the modern Europeans, and other Aryans traveled south to the Indus Valley where, around 1500 BCE, they easily defeated the materially advanced Harappan civilization, which had drainage and water supply systems that even the Romans, much later, would not quite match. And yet the Harappans somehow did not produce any literature, perhaps because they were dark-skinned, and
hence, in the end, not very bright. Although the Aryans completely destroyed the advanced Harappan civilization, these victorious white nomads—as if by magic, and despite the fact that they were illiterate when they arrived—almost immediately produced a classic work of literature to celebrate their victory over the Harappans, the Rigveda, in a language so perfect that computer scientists are now turning to it for insights. In Europe, the Germans are the purest descendants of these ancient Aryans, but all the peoples of Europe whose languages show similarities with Sanskrit are likewise descendants of the Aryans, and this explains those similarities.
All of these languages together are called ‘Indo-European.’
Where do the Iranians fit in? They belong to the Indo- European language family, so they are also descendants of the Aryans. Or else of the Indo-Aryans—or Indo-Iranians. In other words, there was an ancestral group, the Indo-Iranians, which itself was descended from the Indo-Europeans (or Aryans), and it split, and some of them went to Iran and became the Iranians, and the others went to the Indus Valley and became the Indo- Aryans.
That about sums it up. I think I got it right.
Please resist any urge to laugh at this theory. It is the theory that helped unify Germany, and one reason it was popular as a unifying myth was that it yielded a story of origins where the wonderful ancestors of the German people were not Jews, and therefore a welcome alternative, in an antisemitic culture looking for a national myth, to the Christian story of origins, which is Jewish. As is famously known, this ‘Aryan invasion theory’ later became a favorite of the German Nazis, which is why they talked incessantly of their ‘Aryan superiority’ and moreover borrowed the swastika of the ancient Indians as a symbol, though they did not borrow its meaning.
This is also the theory that has been taught in the West, until now, as the history of India, and it is taught in India still today as the mainstream theory. Not a shred of evidence agrees with it.
This is serious.
How the ‘Aryan invasion theory’ came to be As the Catholic ex-priest James Carroll (2001) has detailed in Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews, European Christians have, for a tragically long time, denigrated and reduced the living Jews among them, oppressing them alternatively with genocide, inquisition, forced conversion, expulsion, genocide… The same history has inflicted, on Christians, a profound intellectual awkwardness: the ancient ‘heroic age’ of Christianity is Jewish! It just doesn’t feel comfortable, in an antisemitic civilization, that one’s story of origins should be Jewish; or that this story should be so much longer than the Christian ‘New Testament’; or that it should be so much more interesting and fun to read. But it cannot be avoided, because Christianity claims to have developed out of ancient Judaism.
It is remarkable that this absurd state of affairs has remained stable for so long, but signs that it would not remain so forever began to appear in the eighteenth century. At this time, many European intellectuals began looking for a way out and tried to give themselves an ancient ‘heroic age’ that would not be Jewish. Navaratna S. Rajaram explains that, The humanist movement now known as the European Renaissance was followed by voyages of discovery in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, leading to greatly increased trade and colonizing activities. This had resulted in Europe becoming aware of the richness, antiquity and the complexities of Indian history and culture. As Jim Shaffer notes:
“Many scholars such as Kant and Herder, began to draw analogies between the myths and philosophies of ancient India and the West. In their attempt to separate Western European culture from its Judaic heritage, many scholars were convinced that the origin of Western culture was to be found in India rather than in the ancient Near East.” (Shaffer 1984:80)
At the time, skin color in particular was also capturing the European imagination, because colonialism brought close contact with dark-skinned peoples whom the Europeans, with their more effective weaponry, had subjugated. So the story these conquering Europeans came up with became that, in ancient times, mirroring the contemporary experience, the socalled ‘Aryan race’—blond, blue-eyed, and white-skinned— had burst forth from Central Asia and invaded everything, becoming the ruling class in India, Iran, and Europe, replacing the dark-skinned natives just as the modern Europeans in colonial times were subjugating the dark-skinned natives everywhere else.
Not exactly original.
It was German intellectuals with a nationalist bent who became most interested in this alternative ‘heroic age’ story of origins, the better to coalesce around it in pride. Why? Because, for a long time, the Germans had been divided into small principalities rather than unified into a single state, and in consequence were pushed around by the other European powers. The ‘Aryan race’ theory was a convenient and unifying alternative myth of origins with which the German nationalists were able to stir the imagination of the German masses to mobilize together politically. The theory became popular all over ‘Nordic’ Europe, but the German nationalists claimed special ownership over this theory by saying that the Germans were the ‘purest’ descendants of the original Aryans.
As a dominant European power, the British had zero interest in fostering German unification—and yet they
accidentally did just that, by sponsoring the ‘Aryan race’ theory. Here is how it happened.
The British were looking for ways to undermine Indian culture and pride in order more effectively to rule India. For example, in 1831, Colonel Boden bequeathed to Oxford University his entire fortune—worth £25,000—to create the Boden Professorship of Sanskrit, the explicit purpose of which was to promote knowledge of Sanskrit among Englishmen so as “to enable his countrymen to proceed in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian religion” (quoted in Rajaram 1995:71). More significantly, “as chairman of the Education Board,” Thomas Babbington Macaulay (1800-1859)
“was instrumental in establishing a network of modern English schools in India, the principal goal of which was the conversion of Hindus to Christianity” (ibid. p.105). This is not speculation: in a letter to his father in 1836, Macauley wrote, It is my belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolater among the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years hence. And this will be effected without any efforts to proselytize, without the smallest interference with religious liberty, by natural operation of knowledge and reflection. I heartily rejoice in the project.— quoted in Rajaram (1995:105)1
Macauley was obviously a narrow Christian chauvinist, convinced of the superiority of Christian doctrine. And yet he was not so self-assured that he felt comfortable with a level playing field: to ensure that the Brahmins would become Christians, he “wanted someone willing and able to interpret Indian scriptures in such a way that the newly educated Indian elite would see for itself the difference between their scriptures and the New Testament and choose the latter” (ibid. p.106). It was in Germany that Sanskrit studies were flourishing the most, so Macauley eventually recruited a German scholar to make a translation of the Vedic scriptures that would undermine Indian religion. That he selected his man with care may be inferred from the fact that it took him fifteen years to find him: the ardent German nationalist and Sanskrit scholar Max Müller.
Given that the rise of German Prussia as a European power was then worrying the British, and given the fateful
1 Clive, J. 1975. Macauley: The shaping of a historian. New York:
Viking. (pp.412-13)
consequences of Max Müller’s work for Prussian expansion, it is ironic that it was the Prussian ambassador, Christian Karl Hosias, who brought the 31-year-old Müller to meet Thomas Babbington Macauley, the man who would become his British sponsor. It was hardly fitting for a German nationalist to assist the British in their efforts to turn themselves into an even more formidable international power, but Max Müller was also a devout Protestant Christian—and hard up. So, for the sake of Christianity, and for the sake of his own economic stability, he accepted payment from the British East India Company for the work that Macauley commissioned (ibid. pp.106-107). A letter that he wrote to his wife in 1866 shows that Max Müller took his Christian mission seriously:
…this edition of mine and the translation of the Veda, will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It [the Vedic scripture] is the root of their religion and to show them what that root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last three thousand years.
Rajaram quotes the above passage and comments that, since Müller had no particular reason to misrepresent his
motives in a private letter to his wife, we may take the above as a sincere expression of his intent (ibid. p.108). I think that’s reasonable. Rajaram (ibid. p.114) also quotes a letter that Müller wrote to N.K. Majumdar, an Indian social reformer, late in his life:
The first thing you have to do is to settle how much of your ancient religion you are willing to give up, if
not as utterly false, still as antiquated; …Tell me some of the chief difficulties that prevent you and your countrymen from openly following Christ, and when I write to you I shall do my best to explain how I and many who agree with me have met them, and solved them… (In Devi Chand 1988:xxvi-xxvii)
This leaves little doubt that Müller’s purpose was to undermine Indian belief, which is hardly a recommendation for someone who is supposed to be a scholarly authority on Indian beliefs, and the author of the Vedic translation that many scholars still today are using.
In one sense Macauley’s effort was highly successful, because the upper-class Indians whom Macauley targeted
responded very well to British-style education—except that they didn’t convert to Christianity. But if Macauley failed to undermine Indian religion, he did manage to create a new religion in Europe, because Müller’s work was a huge log in the fire of the ‘Aryan race’ theory.
Though he was not the only one or the first German nationalist to do this, Müller interpreted the words ‘Arya’ and
‘Aryan,’ which appear repeatedly in the Rigveda, as referring to a race—the ancestral ‘Aryan race’ to which the German nationalists were learning to imagine themselves as the purest descendants. Thus, for example, “in 1861 he gave a series of lectures under the title ‘Science of Languages’ in which he made extensive use of Vedic hymns to show that the Vedic words Arya and Aryan were used to mean a race of people”
(ibid. p.109). This completely contradicts the way in which these words are used in the original Sanskrit. For this distortion Müller bears a special responsibility because, “Unlike most other German romantics and nationalists, he as a Sanskrit scholar was fully aware that in Sanskrit, Arya does not refer to any race” (ibid.; original emphasis). Not all Sanskrit scholars followed Müller in this. For example, “Shlegel, no less a romantic or German nationalist always used the word Aryan to mean ‘honorable’ or ‘noble’ which is much closer to the original Sanskrit in meaning” (ibid. p.110). But the interpretation of the Aryans as a supposed race was more influential by far. And it matters, because it was the claim that the ancient Sanskrit texts speak of a supposed Aryan race— when they don’t—that became the basis for the belief that there had ever existed such a race or people.
As it turned out, Max Müller was very successful with this ‘Aryan race’ stuff, and the emerging ideology was instrumental to Otto von Bismarck’s push to create a unified German empire by extending the borders of his native Prussia.
Ever since the 1700s, when Frederick I of Prussia had “raised the army to 80,000, effectively making the whole state a military machine,”1 Prussia had been, as in the case of the ancient Greeks, though not quite as extreme, society as army. Though Prussia had lost—like everybody else—to Napoleon Bonaparte, by the time it provoked a war with France in 1870-71 (after provoking wars with Denmark and Austria), it was again a redoubtable fighting machine. The outcome of the Franco-Prussian war was a resounding victory for Prussia, 1 "Prussia." Britannica Student Encyclopedia from Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
http://proxy.library.upenn.edu:8409/ebi/article?tocId=9276562
which then allowed its leader, Bismarck, to annex the south German principalities, creating Germany. In order to expand Prussia’s borders to create the German Empire or ‘Reich,’ Bismarck appealed to the German speaking peoples of Europe in a way that shows the importance of the ‘Aryan race’ theory of German origins:
Bismarck’s famous exhortation to the German people, over the heads of their particular political leaders, to ‘think with your blood’ was a[n]…attempt to activate a mass psychological vibration predicated upon an intuitive sense of consanguinity.
An unstated presumption of a Chinese (or German) nation is that there existed in some hazy, prerecorded
era a Chinese (or German) Adam and Eve, and that the couple’s progeny has evolved in essentially unadulterated form down to the present.—Connor (1994[1978]:93-94)
The Germans were learning to think of themselves as the exalted pure descendants of an Aryan—not Jewish—Adam and Eve: the ‘Aryan race.’ This worked so well that even in Austria, which was then a major power in Europe, a movement grew among the German-speakers to join ‘Germany.’ For example, “a large part of the membership [of the student fraternity Deutsche Lesehalle in Vienna] insisted on Austria’s subservience to Germany…and supported Austria’s eventual union with Bismarck’s militant empire” (Elon 1975:52). This
view was widespread. As is well known, the mood of nineteenth century pan-German nationalism continued into the twentieth century, making Adolf Hitler’s bloodless annexation of his native Austria—under the banner of a now truly assertive ‘Aryan race’ ideology—relatively easy. German nationalism produced a tragic irony: “Many, if
not most, Jewish students in Austria were ardent German patriots” (Elon 1975:53). In fact, hardly anybody was more infatuated with German culture than the German-speaking Jews: “many Jewish intellectuals were dazzled by the rise of German power under Bismarck” (ibid.). It took these Jews a long time to recognize the dangers to them inherent in German power, something that can be dramatically appreciated by the fact that one of the Austrian Jews who most firmly believed himself to be ‘German,’ and who was initially most in love with the rise of Germany, was Theodore Herzl, the very man who in time would create the Zionist movement to protect the European Jewish population from the antisemitic violence that he finally realized would engulf his people. And yet German nationalism was clearly antisemitic, based on the ‘Aryan race’ theory that exalted white skin, blue eyes, and yellow hair, and explicitly desired to exclude Jews: “‘Nowadays one must be blond,’ Herzl wrote in a revealing note found among his papers from that time” (ibid. p.54). Herzl’s own pro-German fraternity, Albia, soon became a nest of antisemites, and in March of 1883 he resigned in anger (ibid. pp.60-61)—but it was a while still before he became seriously worried for the fate of the Jews, and despite the eventual success of his belatedly feverish and heroic efforts to create a Jewish homeland, his dire predictions would find themselves confirmed in the twentieth-century German assault against the Jewish people.
The Western Jewish naïveté before the growing German threat appears to many, in hindsight, remarkable; but
proper—i.e., historically informed—hindsight produces an exactly opposite assessment: this was normal. Herzl’s
biographer, Amos Elon, writes that “Never was an attachment by a minority [German-speaking Jews] to a majority [Germans] so strong” (1975:53), and yet the modern Jewish attachment to and infatuation with the United States is arguably stronger, despite the fact that US foreign policy towards Israel in the twentieth-century, and into the twenty-first, has been a series of stunningly vicious attacks, something the Jews appear entirely blind to, but of which I have now given a book-length demonstration.1 Anybody who has read historian Christopher
Simpson’s 1988 work, which documents, with material obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, that US
Intelligence was created after the World War by absorbing in secret tens of thousands of Nazi war criminals, cannot be surprised that US foreign policy has prepared the impending destruction of the Jewish state.2 But most Jews have not read 1 “Is the US an ally of Israel?: A chronological look at the evidence”;
Historical and Investigative Research; by Francisco Gil-White =http://www.hirhome.com/israel/ihrally.htm]Countdown & Redirect[/url]
2 Simpson, C. 1988. Blowback: America's recruitment of Nazis and its on the Cold War. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicholson.
To read an analysis of how the recruitment of these Nazis affected the
conduct of the US government, read:
”Did the National Security Act of 1947 destroy freedom of the press?: The
red pill...”; Historical and Investigative Research; 3 January 2006; by
Francisco Gil-White
HIR | Coup of '47: National Security Act destroy the free press?
Simpson’s book, and so they are fulfilling George Santayana’s dire prediction that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Indeed, just as many Western Jews in the nineteenth century decided, absurdly, to embrace antisemitism rather than abandon their German patriotism, tragically destroying themselves, today many Jews inside and outside of Israel have turned themselves into enemies of the Jewish state by supporting the foreign policy of the United States, or else (or simultaneously) by supporting the PLO, whose controlling core (Al Fatah) was created by Hajj Amin al Husseini, mentor to Yasser Arafat, and earlier one of the top leaders of Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution.1 These Jews represent their historically ignorant and politically absurd behaviors to themselves, in honest delusion, as ‘peace-seeking,’ not realizing that antisemitism has to be fought (for it will not be appeased)2; but they are once again assisting their own 1 “How did the ‘Palestinian movement’ emerge? The British sponsored it.
Then the German Nazis, and the US”; from UNDERSTANDING THE PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT; Historical and Investigative Research; 13 June 2006; by Francisco Gil-White
HIR | Understanding the 'Palestinian' movement
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
4
2 As the Jewish author Kenneth Levin has tried to explain in The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege (2005), such behaviors are instances of the famous Jewish ‘self-hatred,’ a tragic phenomenon that destruction, and that of their more patriotic brethren. The predictable result will be another Catastrophe.
Returning to our main thread, I note that if Max Müller was dramatically successful promoting the theory of the ‘Aryan race,’ he also spat into the wind. Something funny happened as a result of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. I don’t mean the war itself, and certainly not the barbaric behavior of the Germans in occupied France, but rather its effects on British perceptions and in turn on poor Max Müller.
About the impact of Sanskrit studies on German nationalism, “Sir Henry Maine, an influential Anglo-Indian
scholar and former Vice Chancellor of Calcutta University pronounced a view that many Englishmen shared about the unification of Germany: ‘…a nation has been born out of Sanskrit’ (Sathe 1991:13)” (Rajaram & Frawley 1997:29-30).
The British had so far been amused by the romantic German attachment to Sanskrit, but after the ‘unification of Germany’ they took a different view:
German unification was followed in England by an outburst of British patriotism in which the hapless
Max Müller found himself having to walk a political tightrope. As already noted, ideas about the Aryan
race and culture were being seen by the British as having played a significant part in German nationalism that led to unification; the two ideas— the Aryan nation and German unification—were afflicts all systematically oppressed populations (e.g. blacks in the US have their ‘uncle Tom’s&#8217.
inseparable in the public mind.—Rajaram
(1995:111)
In other words, the vigorous British waving of the Union Jack in reaction to Bismarck’s success, plus the reasonable British perception that the ‘Aryan race’ theory of Sanskritists had helped produce this competing and fearsome military power, was the sort of thing to make the most important German Sanskritist, then in the employ of the British government, and permanently installed in Britain, less comfortable. So, to play it safe in his British environment, it was advisable for Max Müller to backpedal from his earlier claims about an ‘Aryan race.’ Thus, following the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian war in 1871, in a big rush, Max Müller put together what became the linguistic as opposed to the racial theory of Aryan origins.
He placed the original Aryan ancestors in in the Trans-Oxus region in Central Asia north of Kashmir. According to this new theory, a linguistic reincarnation of the old race theory, one branch migrated southeast into Iran,
Afghanistan and India to become the Indo-Iranians, a second branch migrated southwest and went on to become the Greeks and the Europeans. As support he claimed that the original Aryans were landlocked and immobile and therefore had no notion of the sea or any word for fish. But he overlooked the elementary fact that both Iran and Afghanistan lie not to the southeast of Samarkand but to the southwest. Further, Afghanistan has
always been culturally and linguistically an extension of India. Compounding the absurdity, Max Müller failed to note that several species of fish including such staple varieties as katala and loch are found in Samarkand.
Looking at it today, the extraordinary shoddiness with which his new theory was put together is astounding. In his rush to dissociate himself from the Aryan race theory, Max Müller had succeeded in creating the most absurd contradiction imaginable:
The Aryans of Central Asia were so immobile that they were ignorant of the ocean only a few hundred miles away, and fish found even closer. And yet they were so fleet of foot (or horse) that they managed to spread over a vast stretch from Ireland to the east coast of India. As one of his recent critics put it: “Max Müller has made as many mistakes as is possible to make in one argument.”1 Nothing but extreme haste can account for so preposterous a theory from a scholar of his standing.—Rajaram
(1995:116)
From this point onwards, Max Müller never wavered:
“Just as he had been using the word Aryan in the racial sense twenty years until 1871, for the next thirty years he was insistent that Aryan could only refer to a language family or culture, but to little or no avail” (ibid. p.110). To little or no avail… There is a reason for that. Max Müller’s contemporaries were obsessed with the idea of ‘race,’ and this is precisely why such an idea had proved instrumental in ‘unifying Germany’ in the first place. To help you understand 1 Waradapande, N. R. 1989. Aryan invasion: A myth. Nagpur: Babasaheb
Apte Smarak Samiti.


What the ‘Aryan invasion theory’ was on
Indian historical tradition has zero memory of an ‘Aryan .’ This was pointed out a long time ago by F.E. , an authority on the Puranas, a class of ancient Indian . Sorting is not categorization: A critique of the claim that have fuzzy racial categories. Journal of cognition and culture :219-249.
http://www.hirhome.com/academic/emic.pdf
—. 2002. The cognition of ethnicity: Native category systems under the -experimental microscope. Field 14:170-198.
http://www.hirhome.com/academic/methods.pdf
works chronicling the ruling dynasties of India: “Vedic says, I believe, nothing about the entrance of the
Aryans from the north-west into India” (quoted in Rajaram :153). Since the Puranas say nothing about this, the only ’ for this supposed invasion came from Max Müller’s of the most ancient Vedic work: the Rigveda.
According to Max Müller, the Rigveda’s account of a battle the forces of light and darkness was describing a between invading light-skinned people and the darkskinned whom they defeated. And this invasion, he
said, happened around the year 1500 BCE.
How did he come up with this date?
Max Müller believed firmly in the Biblical that the world was created on October 23, 4004 . “[A]s late as 1875, Max Müller himself wrote to the Duke Argyll: ‘I look upon the account of creation given in the as simply historical’” (ibid. pp.95, 98). This naturally a constraining effect on the chronology that he produced, which assigned the Rigveda, the earliest of the ancient scriptures, to the period 1200 to 1000 BCE. For you see, date of The Flood, by the Biblical reckoning, was 2448 . As Rajaram explains, “Allowing another 1000 years for waters to subside and for the ground to get dry enough for mounted Aryan tribes to begin their invasion of India, us inside of 1500 BCE for the invasion” (ibid. p.95).
Max Müller then went looking for something— —in the old Indian works that would support his . He found it in a collection of fairy tales written by of Kashmir around 1060 CE, which is to say more 2000 years after the supposed invasion that Müller was to date. In addition, I point out that “[Somadeva] records that his stories were written to entertain , the wife of King Ananta of Kashmir” (ibid. p.93)— even the author did not claim they had any historical value.
never mind that, because the way Müller used fairy tales is quite preposterous enough all by . In one of Somadeva’s stories, there is a one-eyed ghost claims that one Vararuchi, who in the story is the minister the Magadhan ruler Nanda, was a reincarnation of a certain . Max Müller somehow decided that this was the Katyayana as a Vedic commentator from the Sutra period the same name, and therefore that this Vedic
was a contemporary of Nanda. “Since Nanda is thought to have in the 4th century BCE, Max Müller assigned the Sutra to the period around Nanda. His own imagination did rest” (ibid. p.92).
I will clarify. Somadeva’s story does not say that was a contemporary of Nanda, but only that reincarnation, Vararuchi, was. So Max Müller, in to what the story stated, decided that Vararuchi not really the reincarnation of Katyayana, but Katyayana , and moreover that this was not just any Katyayana, but the Vedic commentator from the Sutra period of same name, an identification that the story nowhere makes.
And yet things can get crazier still: Max Müller himself noted his reckoning was a bit uncertain because the Southern substituted Chandragupta for Nanda (ibid. p.93), so did not even have a stable fairy tale to! there is more. Having thus ‘fixed’ the Sutra to the period 600 to 200 BCE, which captures the century Nanda, Müller worked his way backwards, the following chronology (ibid. p.91):

Work Time of Composition
Rigveda 1200 to 1000 BCE
Mantras 1000 to 800 BCE
Brahmanas 800 to 600 BCE
Sutras 600 to 200 BCE​

It’s all very neat, every time a period of 200 years (except for the last one), and always perfectly consecutive. How did Müller come up with the other dates? He didn’t bother to misinterpret a one-eyed ghost story from the eleventh century those—he just made them up. you might expect, Müller’s chronology did not criticism in his time, to which he replied with a radical :
I need hardly say that I agree with every one of my . I have repeatedly dwelt on the entirely character of the dates which I venture assign to the first three periods of the Vedic . All I have claimed for them is that they are
minimum dates. If now we ask how we can fix the of these three periods, it is quite clear that we fix a quo. Whether the Vedic were composed 1000, 1500 or 2000 or 3000 , no power on earth will ever determine.— in Rajaram (1995:94)
In fact, powers on earth can determine it, but it is noteworthy in the above Max Müller completely repudiated his own hypothetical” chronology.
But there is still room for astonishment. In the year , historian of India A.L. Basham was writing as follows:
The earliest Indian literary source we possess is the , most of which was composed in the half of the 2nd millennium [i.e. 1500 BCE to BCE]. It is evidently the work of an invading , who have not yet fully subjugated the inhabitants of N.-W. India. …The invaders of called themselves Aryas, a word generally into Aryans… …[Here is the theory] seems to us most reasonable, and which, we , would be accepted by a majority of those
who specialize in the subject. About 2000 BCE the steppeland which stretches from Poland to Asia was by semi-nomadic , who were tall, comparatively fair, and long-headed. …They migrated in bands , southwards and eastwards, conquering populations, and intermarrying with them to a ruling class.—Basham (1954:28-29) of this was being defended in 1954; it was stated passing that the “most reasonable” scenario, and the one by the majority of those who specialize on the ,” was still Max Müller’s nonsense.
But add another half century and still nothing changes. Thapar, another prominent historian, also of Indian
nationality, wrote the following in 1992:
The generally accepted chronology is that the Rig hymns were composed over a period from 1500 BCE to 1000 BCE…—quoted in Rajaram :91)
In other words, at the turn of the twenty-first century, “generally accepted chronology”—even by historians
happened to be Indian nationals—was still the nonsense used support the ‘Aryan invasion theory’ and which, over one years ago, even the original Max Müller had decided to defend. Scholars who endorse this such as
Basham and Thapar nowhere demonstrate the validity of this , which they have inherited from Max Müller— just it. They can get away with this because it is the “generally chronology,” and what is generally accepted hardly to be defended.
In the year 2005, Washington State University has a called World Civilizations: An Internet Classroom and .1 In here one can find a page dedicated to Ancient , and within it, a page on the “Ancient Aryans.”2 The , this page confidently explains, a tribal and nomadic peoples living in the far of Euro-Asia in hostile steppe lands barely out a living. … They swept over Persia lightening speed, and spread across the river plains of India. Their nature as a, conquering people are [sic] still preserved in
World Cultures
2 Ancient India
Vedic religion [i.e. supposedly in the Rigveda], the of Hinduism.
And here is what the Encyclopedia Britannica writes, in the year 2005, concerning the origins of Hinduism:
Around 1500 BCE the Indus Valley was invaded by Indo-European people called Aryans. They totally transformed Indian civilization, and in doing they imposed new forms of religion.1 from the other absurdities, can you think of more embarrassing than to find the Encyclopedia sticking to Max Müller’s date of 1500 BCE, which himself disowned?
For anybody to be defending the ‘Aryan invasion
theory’ today, it would have to be true that Max Müller, despite simply invented the Aryan invasion story in a vacuum, , and quite spectacularly, got it right. But he didn’t.
Indian archaeology really hit the ground running as a (which it hadn’t in Müller’s time), all sorts of were discovered when attempting to interpret the evidence in light of the ‘Aryan invasion theory.’
When the [Aryan invasion] theory was formed in the century there was no evidence of any urban civilization in ancient India before "Hinduism." Britannica Student Encyclopedia from Encyclopædia Online.
http://proxy.library.upenn.edu:8409/ebi/article?tocId=202038
[Accessed April 21, 2005].
1000 BCE. The Aryan invasion theory was thus first in terms of the Aryans overrunning of an culture, which had small settlements. On invasion assumption, the Vedic battle between powers of light and darkness was interpreted as the Aryan invasion with more advanced -skinned people overwhelming the dark-skinned who were regarded as crude and .
However, in the early twentieth century evidence of large urban civilization was found in Western —the so-called Indus civilization of Harappa Mohenjo-daro (c. 3000-1800 BCE). The Aryan theory was recast in light of these ruins. It suggested that the Aryans plundered and this culture and were responsible for the and possibly violent ending to it. This was initial view of researchers like Wheeler, who trained to accept the Aryan invasion theory, since the end of the Harappan era to occur about the time proposed for the -called invasion (c. 1500 BCE)—Rajaram & (1997:53)
This was a big change. The original Aryan invasion was that the blonde super-warrior nomads from the were much smarter than the primitive darkies, who were easily conquered. When it turned out that the primitive darkies had in fact constructed advanced cities in the Indus Valley (Harappa and Daro), the Aryan invasion was hardly ; it was simply modified to say that the blond had easily conquered this highly urban of Indus Valley, because apparently dark-skinned people are stupider than blondes, whether or not dark-skinned
people have built advanced cities. Turning once again to the , defenders of the ‘Aryan invasion theory’ now claimed saw in it descriptions of how the invading Aryans had the cities of the Harappans. But they had not noticed descriptions when they maintained that the Aryans had primitive villagers.
I do not mean to suggest that nomadic invaders cannot a materially more advanced civilization. This has more than once, most famously with the spectacular conquests that have in fact served as an inspiration this new version of the ‘Aryan invasion theory.’ The with using the Mongols as a model, however, as Elst points out in Update on the Aryan Invasion, is the following:
…the outcome of such episodes [nomadic invasions more advanced civilizations] is [that]…the were usually assimilated into the sedentary which they had overpowered in battle, if were not driven back out. The Mongols
became Chinese in China, Muslim in Iran, and of the territory they conquered, there is (with the of Kalmykia) not one square mile where a language was permanently replaced with.—(Elst 1999:4.1.2) ‘Aryan invasion theory’ maintains, on the contrary, the invading Aryan culture completely displaced what was. This is not in principle impossible but in that case we expect to see signs of the violent destruction. Koenraad explains that in Europe some linguistic evidence is with the view that the Hellenes, Illyrians, and invaded and displaced a advanced native in the Balkans, but that here we do find evidence of destruction, which we don’t in the case.
These [Balkan] natives had used an as yet writing system reportedly going back 5300 BC, and disappearing along with the Old culture in about 3500 BC. So there it was an advanced civilization being overrun by barbarian invaders who largely destroyed it.
Model is being projected onto the Vedic-Harappan history: a literate urban and agricultural civilization being overrun by semi-nomadic horsemen. But the crucial difference is that in the Balkans, this violent scenario is attested by archaeological findings…The same thing happened when, according to most specialists, the Greeks
entered mainland Greece in 1,900 BC, driving thelast remains of Old European culture to their last refuge on Crete… This [archeological] testimony of many settlements having been burnt down is absent at the [Indus Valley] Harappan sites.—Elst(1999:4.7.1; emphasis mine)
As Rajaram & Frawley put it, “[t]here is no real archaeological evidence of any violent demise for the Harappan civilization”(1997:54). But such negative findings failed to put a dent in the enthusiasm for the Aryan invasion ‘theory,’ because…by this time the invasion theory was so impressed upon the minds of researchers that they continued trying to remold it. Some assumed the Aryan invasion occurred when the cities were in decline or had already been abandoned—that it was only the degenerate remains of Harappans the Aryans conquered. That this refuted their previous assumptions that Vedic literature portrayed the destruction of cities in battle did not seem to cause any problems for such scholars. It is clear by such shifts of view that Vedic literature was never taken seriously by these scholars and one wonders if they feel any need to account for it at all.—Rajaram &Frawley (1997:54)
In other words, the ‘Aryan invasion theory,’ whose only support had been a particular interpretation of the Rigveda, has kept going strong even though the archaeological evidence has roundly contradicted this interpretation of the Rigveda. This is remarkable, because what it means is that the ‘Aryan invasion theory’ no longer explains anything. In a sense this is what makes it so stable, because evidence cannot refute a dogmatic
religious faith.
How the ‘Aryan invasion theory’ has been supported It is a bit of an exaggeration, however, to say that the ‘Aryan invasion theory’ is based entirely on nothing. The discovery by European scholars of a number of interesting similarities between Sanskrit words and European and Iranian language cognates led to the speculation that all of these languages had a common ancestor. The ‘Aryan invasion theory,’ which has the mythical blond and blue-eyed Aryans spreading out in remote times from Central Asia and invading both Europe and India, was offered as an explanation for the puzzle of the similarities between all these languages. In the absence of archaeological data agreeing with the invasion scenario, it was the comparative linguists, so-called, who would provide the lasting ‘support’ for this historical hypothesis. But comparative linguistics—or philology, as the discipline was once called—is more a branch of superstition than a science, and in this section
I will explain why.
The 1968 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (vol. 14, p.76) stated that Special linguistic methods, elaborated mostly for the study of the Indo-European languages, enable one to determine the genetic relationships between the languages by a comparison of their forms. These relations permit the supposition that there once existed a parent language.
Since the “study of the Indo-European languages” is practically synonymous with the defense of the ‘Aryan invasion’ scenario, what we learn above is that “special linguistic methods” were created to defend the theory that Max Müller designed to give German nationalists a ‘heroic age’ purged of the Jews. That does not bode well for these “special linguistic methods.”
Already in 1933 the linguist Leonard Bloomfield had pointed out the rather extreme assumptions that were required:
The comparative [linguistic] method assumes that each branch or language bears independent witness of the forms of the parent language, and that identities or correspondences among the related languages reveal features of the parent speech. This is the same thing as assuming, firstly that the parent community was uniform as to language, and secondly, that the parent community split suddenly and sharply into two or more daughter communities, which lost all contact with each other.—Bloomfield (1933:310)
Why did philologists or ‘comparative linguists’ assume that linguistic communities split neatly, suddenly, and sharply, and thereafter lost all contact with each other? Naturally, because they were thinking of linguistic communities as if they were biological species. When a biological population splits into two reproductively isolated lineages these will begin to evolve independently, because the information relevant to organismal design—carried by genes—cannot be ‘exchanged’ between two populations unless they mate with each other. The manner in which cultural populations evolve, however, hardly corresponds to this model.
The evolution of cultural populations cannot be understood except by reference to the psychological and other
laws governing the social acquisition of what are now called ‘memes’: socially transmissible bits of information such as ideas, beliefs, norms, habits, laws, traditions, etc. The evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins (1976) coined the term ‘meme’ to rhyme with ‘gene’ so as to emphasize that memes, too, are subject to Darwinian forces of mutation, inheritance, and selection, because some memes will perforce be more ‘popular,’ becoming more common at the expense of other memes. But apart from its sound, Dawkins deliberately coined this term to suggest morphemic linkages with mimesis, memory, and the French word même (which means ‘the same&#8217.
Why? Because memes are transmitted through social learning (as opposed to biological reproduction), they are stored in memory (as opposed to in the cell’s nucleus), and they must show some non-trivial degree of similarity between parent and copy for Darwinian analyses to apply.
Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson, in 1985, launched what is arguably the most productive approach to elucidating the laws governing the transmission of memes in Culture and the Evolutionary Process. For an update of their ideas and a summary of twenty years of research, consult Richerson & Boyd’s Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed the Evolutionary Process, published in 2005 (full disclosure: I got my Ph.D. in cultural and biological anthropology at UCLA, with Robert Boyd as my thesis advisor). One of the purposes of the research agenda of these two pioneers is to determine the relative importance of various forms of cultural transmission in producing historical change. It is certainly true that parents will transmit many memes to their biological children, and here the direction of transmission is identical to what happens in genetic transmission. However, humans also learn from their peers, from adults who are not their ancestors, from those who are younger, and even from foreigners, and these directions of transmission are radically different from what happens in the genetic case. In addition, a population boundary defined by ethnic identity and/or the preservation of certain traditions will by no means always correspond neatly to the boundary of a speech community; as any anthropologist will tell you, humans display maddening complexity in their social boundary
overlaps.
For example, different classes in the same society always speak different dialects and sometimes entirely different languages. Bits of a language can travel horizontally in piecemeal fashion and be adopted by foreigners without more substantial cultural contact or influence—and certainly without implying an ancestor-descendant relationship between the donor and borrower populations. In fact, a population can acquire an entirely new language, whole, without being descended from the population that originally spoke it (e.g. the Irish). Therefore, imagining that one can look at similarities between different speech communities to reconstruct a neat splitting and branching historical pattern of cultures conceived of as indivisible wholes, in the manner of the phylogeny of biological species, is an obvious non-starter. But if any doubts remain, nthropologist Richard McElreath (1997), who likewise studied with Robert Boyd, has given a definitive mathematical demonstration that one cannot construct cultural phylogenies the way biologists do for species. He concludes (p.38):
Current work in this area…still tackles the problem [of reconstructing cultural phylogenies] as if cultures had a single “real” phylogeny. This may certainly be for some classes of traits, but we do not know yet which traits these are. We cannot presuppose that the traits we are interested in share a phylogeny with language.
In other words, the various forms of social transmission of information, and the fact that different bits of information are transmitted through different channels and in different ways, make it impossible to reconstruct branching trees of ancestor-descendant relations as if cultures branched whole, with all their traits traveling together, in the manner of biological species. So the so-called comparative linguists presuppose something that “we cannot presuppose,” and this is the method that has been recruited to support the ‘Aryan invasion theory.’
The linguist Leonard Bloomfield (1933:311) explained some time ago what the consequence of this was:
…studies of Indo-European did not realize that the family tree diagram was merely a statement of their
method: they accepted the uniform parent , and their sudden clear cut splitting, as realities.
That’s the polite way of saying that the comparative linguists up believing their own nonsense.
But what did the comparative linguists do, exactly?
They invented a fictional language: ‘Indo-European.’ This was supposedly the ancestor language to all so-called Indo- European languages. Another name for ‘Indo-European,’ of course, is Aryan. The claim by comparative linguists to have demonstrated that there had been a Indo-European or Aryan language, parent to Sanskrit, Iranian languages, and German, among other European languages, was simply their entirely incorrect assumption—as pointed out above—concerning what the similarities between languages will imply about ancestor-descendant relations. Therefore, the existence of ancestral ‘Indo-European’ or ‘Aryan’ has never been supported, let alone demonstrated; this language was just conjured out of thin air.
Naturally, in order to defend the ‘Aryan invasion theory’ it is important to privilege the so-called ‘evidence’ of
comparative linguists over all other, because otherwise the archaeological evidence will lead people to the obvious hypothesis: that the ‘Indo-European’ languages are similar because they are all descendants of Sanskrit. This would make a whole lot of sense.
With its extensive and fertile river systems of the Indus, Saraswati and Ganga, India was the best place on earth for food production, for demographic growth, for cultural life and for scientific progress.
…it is perfectly plausible that large groups of Indians went to other countries as traders and colonists, precisely like the Europeans did when it was their turn to have a demographical as well as a technological edge over their neighbors. And just like a dominant Spanish minority managed to make its own language the mother-tongue of much larger populations which are genetically predominantly Native American, so also the slightly darker
emigrants from India may have passed on their language to the white people of Russia and Europe.—Elst (1999:4.1.1)
What about the genetic evidence?
The genetic evidence likewise does not support the ‘Aryan invasion theory.’ On 10 January 2006 National Geographic News reported on the results of a genetic study by “Vijendra Kashyap, director of India’s National Institute of Biologicals in Noida.”1 According to National Geographic, “the data reveal that the large majority of modern Indians descended from South Asian ancestors.”
It is by now perhaps needless to say that this has not shaken the ‘Aryan invasion theory’ in the least, and in fact the National Geographic article takes pains to explain this.
The finding disputes a long-held theory that a large invasion of central Asians, traveling through a northwest Indian corridor, shaped the language, culture, and gene pool of many modern Indians within the past 10,000 years.
That theory is bolstered by the presence of Indo-European languages in India, the archaeological record, and historic sources such as the Rig Veda, an early Indian religious text.
… Peter Underhill, a research scientist at the Stanford University School of Medicine's department of genetics, says he harbors no doubts that Indo-European speakers [i.e. the supposed ‘Aryans’] did move into India. But he agrees with Kashyap that their genetic contribution appears small.
"It doesn't look like there was a massive flow of genes that came in a few thousand years ago," he 1 “India Acquired Language, Not Genes, From West, Study Says”; by Brian Handwerk for National Geographic News; January 10, 2006.
India Acquired Language, Not Genes, From West, Study Says
said. "Clearly people came in to India and brought their culture, language, and some genes."
Clearly? This is remarkable. Who can doubt that if the genetic data supported the view of a population movement from the Northwest into India, mainstream scholars would be telling us that, naturally, this is because the ‘Aryan invasion theory’ is correct? And yet, if the genetic data go the other way the ‘Aryan invasion theory’ is still “clearly” the right one. As before, we see that it matters little which way the evidence goes: the ‘Aryan invasion theory’ will simply be asserted, with confidence.
The title of the National Geographic article is in perfect agreement with Peter Underhill, for it reads: “India Acquired
Language, Not Genes, From West, Study Says.” In other words, if the data says that Indians are genetically descended from South Asians, well then the invading Aryans—because there must be invading Aryans—bequeathed their culture to Indians but few genes.
The problem is not that Underhill’s theory of a deep cultural but shallow genetic impact of invading Aryans from the Northwest has to be incorrect in principle—the problem is that there is simply no evidence to support it, and the genetic evidence is just the latest blow. Regurgitating the mainstream view matter-of-factly, National Geographic tells its readers that the ‘Aryan invasion theory’ “is bolstered by the presence of Indo-European languages in India, the archaeological record, and historic sources such as the Rig Veda, an early Indian religious text.” But we have already seen that the archaeological evidence refutes this theory, and that the linguistic ‘evidence’ is no evidence at all. I shall now turn to the supposed evidence from the Rigveda in order to show that there is simply nothing—nothing at all—that will support this theory. This exercise will finally take us where we ultimately wanted to go: towards an elucidation of the origins of the ancient Persians.
So who were ‘the Aryans’ of the Rigveda, then?
The original scholarly impetus for the entire ‘Aryan invasion theory’ was a misinterpretation of the word ‘Aryan’ as used in the Rigveda. At first, as we saw, Max Müller along with others said that the Aryans were a ‘race.’ Then, when the political winds made his position delicate he changed his tune and said that the Aryans were a linguistic group. The notion of the Aryans as a ‘race’ persisted despite Müller’s flip, but was made disreputable when the Nazis put it to their infamous uses. So in the academic community what has flourished since has been the theory of the ‘Indo-European language family,’ developing Müller’s second theme. But the ‘race’ idea was never quite abandoned: “An original Aryan race that spoke proto-Indo- European [i.e. Aryan, the language from which all the ‘Indo-European’ languages are supposedly descend] was proposed, which then migrated and transmitted its language, but not necessarily its racial type to other people” (Rajaram & Frawley 1997:61). Actually this is the same old Nazi idea, isn’t it? It suggests that only some of the modern Europeans will be ‘pure Aryans.’
But the point here is the evidence: the term ‘Arya’ in the ancient Sanskrit literature is a concept having zero similarity either to a ‘race’ or to a ‘language group,’ which guarantees that the notion of the ‘Aryan people,’ in either version, will be nonsensical in principle. Here is an example of how the term ‘Aryan’ is used in the Rigveda:
The Gods generated the Divine Word (Brahman), the cow, the horse, the plants, the trees, the Earth,
the mountains and the Waters. Raising the Sun in Heaven, the bountiful Gods released the Aryan laws
over the world. RV.x.65.11—translation, Rajaram & Frawley (1997:63)
Now, with nothing but the above for context, ask yourself, if we were to rewrite the last phrase, which of the
following three possibilities would make more sense:

1) “…the bountiful Gods released the laws of the Aryan race over the world”; or
2) “…the bountiful Gods released the laws of the Aryan-speaking people over the world”; or
3) “…the bountiful Gods released the good laws over the world”?​

What in the text forces the first or second choices? The text is obviously exalting the gods—they have done everything well. And these gods, who are so “bountiful” and have thus created everything, blessed us also with laws. Therefore, to me it seems as though “the Aryan laws” has to mean ‘the perfect laws’ of the gods or something like that. I can find no good reason to suppose that this is a reference to the laws of an ‘Aryan race’ or speech community.
Another reason for preferring the third option is that a Sanskrit dictionary which is one-thousand five-hundred years old agrees with it.
The most authoritative source for classical Sanskrit words is Amarakosa, a lexicon from about 500 CE.
According to this authority an Arya is: mhakulakulinarya- sabhya-sajjanasadhavah. This is unambiguous and means: an Arya is one who hails from a good family, of gentle behavior and demeanor, good natured and of righteous conduct.—Rajaram (1995:151).
The Aryan laws = the righteous laws; nothing to do with ‘race’ or language.
The definition of ‘Arya’ in Amarakosa reminds me of the way Mexican aristocrats speak, and on the basis of the
Mexican comparison I would submit the following hypothesis:
the ancient Sanskrit word ‘Arya’ is an aristocratic marker for a class distinction. But is it legitimate for me to use modern Mexico as a model to interpret the ancient Indus Valley civilization? It is, so long as, regardless of time and location, humans will tend to feel compassion unless an ideological structure intervenes. If this is true, then the only stable aristocracies will be those which reliably equip young aristocrats, every generation, with a belief in their own superiority, there to preempt the compassion that would otherwise make them band together with the lower classes and institute some form of progressive politics. And what could be more effective, for the stability of an aristocratic class, than to define words in such a way that compassion will be effortlessly and automatically trumped in the daily act of speaking? So, if it is true that stable aristocratic classes in different times and places will code certain meanings in similar ways, then the Mexican comparison may well prove useful. Let’s see how far it takes us.
I grew up as a member of a prominent aristocratic family in Mexico, a country with sharp class divisions. Since I was always of an anthropological bent (and thus became an anthropologist) my experience in my own native society was to a certain extent that of a participant-observer. In other words, I was always, in a sense, a oreigner, never quite in my own skin, and more than one person made the observation. Less charitably, I was weird, because nothing about my society seemed natural—it all demanded an explanation. My atypical mental and social experience has equipped me with reflections about the Mexican aristocracy that I think will prove useful here. (Note: I am using the word ‘aristocracy’ loosely because there are no titles of nobility in Mexico; but this is a distinction without much of a difference: the very upper classes in Mexico are a relatively stable group of people who inherit their position to their children, and whose physical appearance is mostly European. They are certainly a hereditary ruling class in effect if not formally).
The people around me (the Mexican aristocrats) were always cutting up the Mexican universe into two types of
people: ‘gente decente’ (or ‘gente bien,’ a synonym) in opposition to ‘nacos.’ The word ‘gente’ means ‘people,’ and although the word ‘nacos’ appears all by itself, it is also referring to a group of people, which is why I have it in the plural. So the opposition ‘gente decente’ vs. ‘nacos’ is an opposition between two different categories of people. I shall now try to give you a sense for the meanings of these words, and I will be careful to specify the relevant context, each time, because usage and precise meaning vary by context.
First, let us imagine a situation without a class-relevant but a clear moral one. Thus, imagine that you are a
Mexican aristocrat and that somebody—another aristocrat— did not keep a promise, or cheated in a transaction, or tried to bribe you. This person, in consequence, is not ‘decente’; he is ‘naco.’ Or suppose that this fellow aristocrat threw trash out of the window of his car, or spat on the ground, or didn’t wash his hands after going to the restroom. Once again, this person is not ‘decente’; he is ‘naco.’ Or suppose that this fellow aristocrat called you names, or took some liberties when speaking to you even though you had not been quite introduced. Once again, he is not ‘decente’; he is ‘naco.’ So on a first pass it appears that ‘decente’ is not that different from ‘Arya’ as defined in the ancient Sanskrit dictionary Amarakosa, as it easily covers the meanings of being “of gentle behavior and demeanor, good natured and of righteous conduct.”
Now take a look at the remaining meaning for Arya in Amarakosa: “hailing from a good family.” For the Mexican aristocrats, “hailing from a good family” is a euphemism for being a member of the aristocracy—and when finer distinctions apply, for being a member of the old aristocracy as opposed to the nouveau riches. So this makes me wonder whether the Sanskrit dictionary means the same thing when it says that “Arya is one who hails from a good family.” If so, this would agree perfectly with the Mexican model, because when a class
context is involved, Mexican aristocrats will use ‘gente decente’ (lit. ‘decent people&#8217 to refer to themselves, the
aristocrats, who come from ‘good families’—they are not qualifying anybody’s behavior (though there is always an implication that the behavior of aristocrats is morally superior).1 By symmetry, in a class context, Mexican
aristocrats will use the contrast term ‘nacos’ to refer to the lower classes.
Does Sanskrit have a term to contrast with ‘Arya’ that will be the equivalent of ‘naco’? It does: Dasa or Dasyu.
Navaratna S. Rajaram and David Frawley explain that the dasas are “[those] opposed to the Vedic way of life. …Literally it means servant…” (1997:272; emphasis mine). Interesting.
The slang term ‘gato’ (lit. ‘cat&#8217 is used by Mexican aristocrats, with derogation, to refer to their servants, and it is often used interchangeably with ‘naco’ when referring to the lower classes at large, or when criticizing ‘improper’ forms of behavior (according to aristocratic standards).
Elsewhere, Rajaram & Frawley write (ibid. p.72):
Dasyus, Dasas, and Panis as people are opposite to Aryans. They are unspiritual people. They do not sacrifice, do not offer gifts, do not honor the Gods.
In other contexts they are not even people but demons… Dasyu means destroyer and often simply means a robber, a criminal or an uncivilized person, or a low class person (such as we find its usage in the Manu Samhita).
1 It is also precisely when a class context is involved that ‘gente bien’ (lit. ‘good people&#8217 becomes a perfect synonym of ‘gente decente.’
Just as with ‘naco,’ Dasa or Dasyu, depending on context, means someone who breaks the norms, or else a low
class person (or both simultaneously). The opposition between Arya and Dasyu does indeed appear to follow rather closely the Mexican opposition between ‘gente decente’ and ‘nacos,’ allowing for the fact that the authors of the Vedic texts were hyper-religious and so added a religious dimension to the distinction (an Aryan does the sacrifices properly, etc., and a Dasyu does not).
Additional support for the usefulness of the Mexican model is the following:
…the most common use of the word Arya in classical Sanskrit is as an honorific—as in addressing people. ‘Arya Chanakya’ simply is equivalent to Mr. Chanakya. Addressing a man as Arya is equivalent to calling him ‘Sir’ in English or ‘Monsieur’ in French.—Rajaram (1995:152)
If the word Arya was used by the ancient Indus Valley aristocrats, in a class context, to refer to themselves, then by the Mexican model it is not in the least surprising that the same word should have functioned also as an honorific, because honorifics are also used to mark class distinctions in the daily intercourse between two people. In Mexico, when two people of the same class are speaking to each other, they may address each other honorifically as Don this or that. But when members of the upper and lower classes speak to each other, it is
traditional (and still common) for the upper-class person to be addressed as Don something (with honorific grammar) and for the lower-class person to be addressed by their first name (with familiar grammar).
English speakers unfamiliar with the class discourse of Mexican society can nevertheless plumb their own intuitions by reflecting on English usage. For example, the observations above also apply to the use of the Spanish term ‘Señor,’ which is a good translation for the French ‘Monsieur’ and the English ‘Sir.’ But the specifically British ‘Sir’ also has affinities with ‘Don,’ because it is sometimes employed as an aristocratic title. Since I am arguing that aristocrats everywhere will make a linkage between membership in the aristocracy and
supposedly superior manners and moral values, it is telling that a member of the lower classes can become Sir in Britain through meritorious behavior in the eyes of the aristocracy, which aristocracy then condescends to confer the title on the ‘worthy’ commoner.
But the most productive English-language intuition here comes from reflecting on the use of the word ‘noble,’ which in a class context means “of high birth or exalted rank:
ARISTOCRATIC,” as Merriam Webster Online puts it; outside a class context, according to the same dictionary, ‘noble’ means all of the following: “possessing outstanding qualities,” “possessing very high or excellent qualities or properties,” “very good or excellent,” “grand or impressive especially in appearance,” and “possessing, characterized by, or arising from superiority of mind or character or of ideals or morals.”
On first pass it might seem as if a contradiction to my interpretation appears in the great epic Ramayana, where the following description of Rama is given: “Arya—who cared for the equality of all and was dear to everyone” (Rajaram 1995:153). But even interpreting this passage to mean that Rama frowns on class divisions, this is not a contradiction.
Caring for the equality of all, here, is not part of the definition of Arya. Rather, ‘Arya’ in my view is simply being used here as an adjective to qualify the general worthiness of Rama, which would agree with the most common use of ‘Arya’ in the Rigveda: “The Rigveda uses the word [Arya] mainly as an adjective, invariably as a term implying finer qualities”
(Rajaram 1995:153). So Rama is a noble divinity (nice guy), who therefore cares for the equality of all. This is also how the word ‘decente’ is mostly used in Mexico, as an adjective, for this is its primary and default meaning. Hence, “la gente decente lucha por la igualdad de todos” (“the gente decente fight for everybody’s equality&#8221 will be a perfectly reasonable phrase in many a Mexican context, just as “the fight for equality is a noble pursuit” is a perfectly good English phrase, despite the fact that ‘noble’ in some contexts means aristocrat.
In further support of this interpretation I note that “The Buddha called his religion Aryan (Arya Dharma)…[and] Cyrus, the first emperor of Persia also called himself an Aryan, or a noble person” (Rajaram & Frawley 1997:63). Both the Buddha and Cyrus the Great were interested in justice for all, as in the case of Rama, so ‘Arya’ cannot have been used by them in its aristocratic sense, but simply as an adjective of moral worthiness.
By the way, the interpretation that the Arya/Dasyu opposition marks a class distinction is one that Navaratna Rajaram, my source on the meanings of these words, does not like, and which he derogatorily labels ‘Marxist’ (Rajaram 1995:152). So if one can build this case even with Rajaram’s translations, then perhaps there is something to it.
Now, I find it quite interesting that, although Dasyu was a term of derogation in the Vedic works, “[t]he Iranians and some Central Asiatics…seem to have described themselves as Dasyu after they broke away from the Vedic fold” (ibid. p.272). What could explain this? Well, we know from the modern experience that it is not uncommon for discriminated groups, when politicized, to adopt—in proud defiance of the symbol system they mean to oppose—the insults heaped on them by their oppressors. Famously, within the African- American community, ‘nigger’ may be used in certain contexts as a comradely term of endearment, and some politicized gays have adopted as an identity symbol the pink triangle that the Nazis designed to brand them with. Since the Iranians, as we have seen, eventually developed a successfully egalitarian, justice-seeking, world-saving religion, Zoroastrianism, the fact that they adopted for themselves the term Dasyu suggests that perhaps they emerged out of a major class struggle in ancient Vedic civilization.
This hypothesis has going for it that it avoids the absurdities that otherwise emerge when you try to interpret the battles between Aryas and Dasyus in the Rigveda as wars between blue-eyed-blond and dark-skinned ‘races’ or ethnies.
The Rigveda describes a battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. This is the battle between the Gods (Devas) and the demons (called variously Panis, Dasyus, Dasas&#8230 The Vedas proclaim the victory of the light and the destruction of the forces of darkness.—Rajaram & Frawley (1997:64)
If the Rigveda uses the term Dasa or Dasyu to denote the demons or ‘bad guys,’ and the same classical Sanskrit term is used to denote the lower classes, this is further support for the view that the Rigveda depicts a class conflict. What does not appear well supported is the interpretation that the battle between ‘light’ and ‘darkness’ represents a racial or ethnic conflict between groups of people of contrasting complexion.
As Rajaram and Frawley note, the battle between ‘forces of light’ and ‘forces of darkness’ occurs in many other cultures, and nowhere does it have a racial interpretation of white skinned, blond, blue-eyed people fighting with dark-skinned people. For example, nobody gives this interpretation to The War of the Children of Light Against the Children of Darkness, one of the documents found in the famous Dead Sea Scrolls uncovered at Qumran, in present-day Israel. Why give a ‘racial’ or ethnic interpretation, then, to the Vedic scriptures?
Aryans vs. Dasyus is a representation of the ‘good guys’ versus the ‘bad guys’ from the point of view of those who won (as usual); no racial or ethnic interpretation is called for.
Those who would interpret the Rigveda’s battle between the forces of ‘light’ and ‘darkness’ as a story written by the invading and supposedly white-skinned Aryans to celebrate their victory over the supposedly native and
supposedly dark-skinned Dasyus, run into obvious problems.
Consider, for example, the so-called Battle of the Ten Kings, which is one of the most prominent stories in the Rigveda. Its hero is King Sudas, who was aided by miraculous floods called forth by the god Indra.
The floods extended for Sudas. Indra you made them shallow and easy to cross. The host of the Simyus who are unworthy of praise, Indra, who is to be lauded by speech, gave the curse of the rivers. Turvasa was the leader, seeking gain, like hungry fish with an appetite for gain. The Bhrgus and the Druhyus followed his advice. Friend to friend crossed over from opposite regions. The Pakthas, Bhalanas, Alinas, Visaninas, and Sivas came. Yet Indra came and led the side of the Aryans.
Of evil mind, trying to drain the Earth (Aditi), the unwise parted the Parusni river. The ruler of the Earth, Indra with his might scattered them. The herd and their leader lay still piled up (in their defeat).
They went to their goal, their defeat on the Parusni.
Even the swift did not return. Indra for Sudas, for man, defeated the strong, unfriendly people of false speech. RV. VII.18.5-9—translation, Rajaram & Frawley (1997:76)
Above we are told that the god “Indra came and led the side of the Aryans.” But this has to mean ‘the good guys,’ in this passage, because elsewhere we are told that, Indra and Varuna, aid Sudas with grace and destroy
his opponents both Dasa and Arya… Both sides call upon you in battle, Indra and Varuna, for victory.
RV.VII.18.12-14—translation, Rajaram & Frawley (1997:77)
If both sides call upon the same gods, it is obvious that both sides are members of the same culture, which contradicts the idea that nomads from Central Asia called ‘Aryans’ were invading non-Aryan people already in the Indus Valley. And if there are both Aryans and Dasyus opposing King Sudas, then it is impossible to interpret this conflict neatly as one between Aryans against Dasyus, with the Aryans as the white-skinned race who defeated the dark-skinned race—that would make zero sense. And yet this is how the ‘Aryan invasion theory’ interprets the text!
By contrast, accepting my defense of the idea that the Arya/Dasyu distinction is labeling a class division from the aristocratic point of view, then perhaps the Indus Valley was witness to some rather extended political conflicts which, as in the first century Mediterranean, will benefit from a ‘modern’ interpretation in terms of a sophisticated ideological contest between an ancient right-wing and an ancient left-wing. Why not? After all, it is already quite clear that the ancient Indians were terribly sophisticated, and in some ways more advanced
than modern Europeans. Consider for example Panini and Patañjali (of Yogasutra fame):
Panini [was an] ancient Sanskrit grammarian whose Astadhyayi is generally regarded as the greatest work on descriptive linguistics ever written. …
Computer scientists are only now beginning to discover the linguistic treasures of Panini’s Astadhyayi and Patañjali’s Mahabhasya. The value of Indian linguistics in modern computer science is well established, by researchers in artificial intelligence and computer languages.—Rajaram & Frawley (1997:285, 14).
Panini and Patañjali belong to the Sutra period, which in the corrected, scientific chronology—as opposed to in Max Müller’s superstitious nonsense—is contemporaneous with the Harappans and Sumeria (as we shall see). This means that the traditional Indian dating of these authors, which places them around 3000 BCE, cannot be far off. If that bygone civilization could produce better linguistics than we have today, why should we imagine that their political awareness was less sophisticated than ours? So I find the possibility intriguing that if the most important political conflict depicted in the Rigveda represents the opponents of King Sudas as including both Aryans and Dasyus, perhaps an ideological movement not unlike the leftist movements that produced ancient Judaism, the French revolution, or modern socialism, all of which involved alliances of aristocrats and commoners, may have also taken place in the ancient Indus Valley.
King Sudas won, says the Rigveda, which is consistent with the fact that progressive politics was dealt a severe blow in India, but nevertheless flourished among the Vedic offshoot that became the Iranians, who not only turned the deity Indra, patron of the Vedic warriors, into an evil spirit (as we saw in the previous chapter), but also defiantly adopted for themselves the designation Dasyu (as we saw above). Consistent with these speculations is the fact that the ancient Vedic works lump the Panis with the Dasas and Dasyus as enemies of the Aryans.
The Panis are traders and merchants—businesspeople. This is consistent with social conflicts in other times and places, where the lower classes have found allies among the traders and merchants against the aristocrats and their mercenaries.
On the basis of this interpretation, I will now turn to thequestion of when the Iranians came into their own.

 

[LaBong]

They will cite burning of Bodhi tree, and atrocities during a minor king in Bengal.

Well, Abir, I think you are a saner Communist. SImply, by brushing aside facts and in their place, myths perpetrated to serve political interests have got the better of Indians.

The only ism I believe in is tourism!

Anyway I'm not an expert in History, I'm more of a guy who likes to see things from sideline with an occasional smirk on the face.

 

[zombieland]

I am not sure about this ... but has any one in this thread spoken about Indus Valley / Harappa Civilization which formed the basis of aryan settlers (note the word settlers) in India.

If this has not been spoken about, I would be very very surprised.

Also, as per the Harappa / Indus valley civilization the settlers came from a place which is now a modern day Iran. I am quite sure about this, but I would still require some source to validate it.

 

[Joe Shearer]

This thread is going from strength to strength, and is plumbing depths of scholarship never imagined. Think Marianas Trench.

I am not sure about this ... but has any one in this thread spoken about Indus Valley / Harappa Civilization which formed the basis of aryan settlers (note the word settlers) in India.

This is the proposition of the Hindutvavadis. I am interested to note that the Hindutvavadis, the Sangh Parivar and the BJP are alive and well in Pakistan. Now some of the sectarian violence becomes easier to understand.

If this has not been spoken about, I would be very very surprised.

Also, as per the Harappa / Indus valley civilization the settlers came from a place which is now a modern day Iran.

And this is the exact opposite of the Hindutvavadi theory, the Aryan Invasion of India Theory. I am glad to see that at least one person believes in both together. This makes a future reconciliation much easier.

I am quite sure about this, but I would still require some source to validate it.

 

[rudrakx]

repeated post

 

[rudrakx]

I believe Gautam Budhha chose more specific path/belief (non-violence- which one of the biggest policy in Hinduism) to follow but that didn't mean he left Hinduism!?

Our ancestors have given a good touch on it as well.

Buddha was made an incarnation of Vishnu mainly for two purposes as we know.

1) Buddhism was signifying some shortcomings of Vedic Aryans/Hinduism.
2) Buddhism though don't have followers in number, it got substantial supports from few early kings/emperors.

And our ancestors killed two birds with one stone by making Buddha incarnation of Vishnu.

Now come to your point. Its said that whenever Vishnu incarnates its in different forms, different times at different places. Buddha incarnated at a time when India was not united and various kings were often fighting with each other. You must have heard about "War of the Ten Kings". So here Vishnu takes a new incarnation to teach people the peaceful way of life, love for every living beings. Thats what Buddha did!!!! Splendid match up!!!

About divinity, it was added substantially as well like killing demons or bringing them to the right path which is always duty of Vishnu's incarnations. It was also said that he had all signs to be the Avatar of Vishnu like having 'Shankh, Chakra, Gada, Padma' markings on his feet etc etc.

Another reason was Buddhist 'non-violence' theory was a popular belief amongst number of Hindu traditions, mainly Vaishnavism. As per recorded history one of the influential sage and poet of Vaishnavism, Jayadeva Goswami was first found praising Buddha as incarnation of Vishnu. Though he might not be the first. Buddha was mentioned as avatar in Puranas as well.

 

[zombieland]

This is the proposition of the Hindutvavadis. I am interested to note that the Hindutvavadis, the Sangh Parivar and the BJP are alive and well in Pakistan. Now some of the sectarian violence becomes easier to understand.

And this is the exact opposite of the Hindutvavadi theory, the Aryan Invasion of India Theory. I am glad to see that at least one person believes in both together. This makes a future reconciliation much easier.

I am not sure what is meant by the word "Hindutvavadis".

My point was on the basis of your ASI, which had found inscriptions and tablets resembling Hindu Idol Gods and since they were fair skinned.

And pls dont mix all this with Islamist views, cos I just mentioned that settlers arrived from Modern day Iran. As far as I know the indus valley civilization were one of the first few civilization which existed that time. You may compare it with Sumerian Civilzation that existed that time. Both these civilzation flourished well before even Islam came into picture.

And I also never wrote that Aryans went on a rampage in this sub continent the moment they arrived. Its just that they settled flourished and came in contact with the Dravidian's (a theory).

Also one more thing, the people of Indus valley were mostly traders with almost no knowledge of weapons, which means they were quite peaceful.

 

[Manas]

Aryan has the male lineage of R1a1a.

As several indian members have already said Aryan is sanskrit word meaning pure or noble. It has nothing to do with race or ethnicity.Period.


Lets hear what secular historian Romila Thapper says about it.

 

[Manas]

The Buddha as an Avatar of Vishnu - The Times of India

THE story of Gautama, the Buddha (the enlightened one), is well known. He expounded the four noble truths (Arya Satya)(see the context of word "Arya" being used here) concerning suffering, its cause, its destruction and the way to the elimination of sorrow. He was against the extremes of both self-indulgence and self-mortification. A Middle Path was advocated consisting of right views, right aspirations, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right contemplation. He rejected the authority of the Vedas, condemned ritualistic practices, especially animal sacrifice, and denied the existence of gods. Buddhism flourished for more than a millennium and spread to foreign lands also. But a decline set in after the Golden Age of the Guptas (4th to 5th centuries AD).
Foreign historians, with limited knowledge of Indian philosophical systems, have attributed the decline of Buddhism in the land of its birth to the advent of Adi Sankara. The 68th Sankaracharya of the Kanchi Kamakoti Math, Shri Chandrasekharendra Saraswati, has effectively nailed this canard. According to him, Sankara was more concerned with setting right the errors in Saankhya and Meemaamsa philosophies of Hinduism which denied the importance of Isvara though basically subscribing to the Vedas. Even where he specifically dealt with Buddhism, he condemned only its denial of the existence of God. Then how did the religion decline? It was because of the vehement opposition to Buddhism on philosophical and religious grounds by Meemaamsakas and Taarkikas (logicians).
The point is also that, even as people admired Buddha and turned to his religion, they did not give up their old beliefs and ritualistic practices. To give a contemporary example, many call themselves Gandhians but in their lives, official or personal, they follow a path just the opposite of what he showed! King Ashoka (2nd century BC) did much to propagate the religion within India and without. Still in his rock edicts he calls himself as "Devanampiya" or "the beloved of the gods".(while Buddism don't believe in the existence of God) There were no gods in Buddhism at his time. So obviously he was referring to Hindu gods. In other words, he continued to believe in Hindu religion even as he admired Buddha. Buddhist texts written by bikshus have a Saraswati stotra in the beginning paying obeisance to the Hindu goddess of learning. It is not unusual to see an idol of Lord Ganesh in a Buddhist temple.
Adi Sankara accepted the tenets of Buddhism at the level of pure consciousness. The ultimate stage in his philosophy was the giving up of rituals and concentrating the mind on the infinite. Buddha wanted his followers to take a quantum leap at the initial stage itself to this ultimate goal, something which is difficult to expect of ordinary men and women. Sankara advocated abiding by the karmas, as stipulated by Meemaamsa, to begin with, and proceeding gradually to the stage envisaged by Buddha of giving them up altogether. However, Buddha did believe in two cardinal principles of Hinduism, viz. the transmigration of the soul and the law of karma (that our actions have consequences). Thus fundamentally there is little difference between the two religions except that Buddha conceived his as an ethical and secular way of life.
Perhaps the most important reason for the decline of Buddhism as a separate religion was the absorption of its founder in the Hindu pantheon of gods - indeed an irony for one who denied their existence! There are many incarnations of Vishnu of which the Dasavatar or the ten incarnations are the most well known. In the Southern tradition they are: matsya (fish), koorma (tortoise), varaha (boar), Narasimha (the man-lion), Vamana (the dwarf) Parasurama (the angry prince), Rama (the perfect human), Balarama, his younger brother Krishna (the divine statesman) and Kalki (the redeemer of righteousness in the kali yuga, who is yet to appear). In the Northern tradition Balarama is replaced by Buddha who appears as the ninth avatar after Krishna, his mission being to purify Hinduism. Srimad Bhagavatam (circa 900 AD, according to Farquhar) takes the stand that Krishna is the original form of Vishnu and the incarnations were all his. In its list of Dasavatar, which many consider as the most authentic, both Baladeva (or Balarama) and Buddha appear. Krishna is not mentioned because he is the original god. The Dasavatara Stotra of Jayadev (12th century), parts of which are included in Adi Guru Granth compiled by Guru Arjun Singh, follows the list of Bhagavatam. In this scheme, Buddhism was like the reformation movement of Martin Luther in Christianity. Once Buddha himself became an incarnation of Vishnu there was no need for the religion to exist separately in this country.

 

[KS]

Incorrect. Buddha was made an avatar of Vishnu but not in the manner that most assume. Buddha was (supposedly) malevolent Vishnu deceiving the Asuras by propagating a false doctrine. This absorption of Buddha was done to strengthen Brahminism by portraying the Buddha's teachings as being deliberately false. Only much later, after Buddhism was rendered non-existent was it glossed over & read as being a benign avatar of Vishnu.

Interesting.

 

[Joe Shearer]

It is encouraging to see that so many of us have thoughts and views on these subjects. Of course, if these had been based on some detailed reading, that would have been so much the more encouraging. Still, we cannot be pompous about it; it is nice to have enthusiastic amateurs seeking to contribute, and they need encouragement.

Our ancestors have given a good touch on it as well.

Buddha was made an incarnation of Vishnu mainly for two purposes as we know.

1) Buddhism was signifying some shortcomings of Vedic Aryans/Hinduism.
2) Buddhism though don't have followers in number, it got substantial supports from few early kings/emperors.

And our ancestors killed two birds with one stone by making Buddha incarnation of Vishnu.

An interesting observation. It is not clear, however, how the first two comments lead to your conclusion that our ancestors killed two birds with one stone by making the Buddha an incarnation of Vishnu. Further, your second comment is surprising; Buddhism swept the land, and made masses of converts.

Now come to your point. Its said that whenever Vishnu incarnates its in different forms, different times at different places. Buddha incarnated at a time when India was not united and various kings were often fighting with each other. You must have heard about "War of the Ten Kings". So here Vishnu takes a new incarnation to teach people the peaceful way of life, love for every living beings. Thats what Buddha did!!!! Splendid match up!!!

Are you sure that the dates of the War of the Ten Kings influenced the Buddha? Are you saying that the dates were close, that there was a causal relationship, and that there were no other wars which might have influenced the Buddha's thinking?

Further, on the Buddha's thinking, to say that he sought to teach people the peaceful way of life, and love for every living being does not seem very accurate. Are you sure that this was his teaching? a kind of fifth century BC pacifism, or was he outlining a way of life that would progressively free humans from the chains of desire and elevate themselves progressively until they attained freedom from re-birth and a permanent release from the cycle?

About divinity, it was added substantially as well like killing demons or bringing them to the right path which is always duty of Vishnu's incarnations. It was also said that he had all signs to be the Avatar of Vishnu like having 'Shankh, Chakra, Gada, Padma' markings on his feet etc etc.

Another reason was Buddhist 'non-violence' theory was a popular belief amongst number of Hindu traditions, mainly Vaishnavism. As per recorded history one of the influential sage and poet of Vaishnavism, Jayadeva Goswami was first found praising Buddha as incarnation of Vishnu. Though he might not be the first. Buddha was mentioned as avatar in Puranas as well.

This is even more astonishing. Do you know the dates of Jayadeva and of the Buddha, and did you know that Jayadeva was born after Buddhism had been all but wiped out by the Hindu revival?

 

[Joe Shearer]

I am not sure what is meant by the word "Hindutvavadis".It has been explained earlier in this thread. If that is too tiresome a proceeding, you might try a Google search for the term - you will get 9,290 results in about 0.32 seconds. Try it; it's quite easy.

My point was on the basis of your ASI, which had found inscriptions and tablets resembling Hindu Idol Gods and since they were fair skinned.

And pls dont mix all this with Islamist views, cos I just mentioned that settlers arrived from Modern day Iran. As far as I know the indus valley civilization were one of the first few civilization which existed that time. You may compare it with Sumerian Civilzation that existed that time. Both these civilzation flourished well before even Islam came into picture.

And I also never wrote that Aryans went on a rampage in this sub continent the moment they arrived. Its just that they settled flourished and came in contact with the Dravidian's (a theory).

Also one more thing, the people of Indus valley were mostly traders with almost no knowledge of weapons, which means they were quite peaceful.

Your original two propositions were self-contradictory. They belong to two opposite schools of thought.

1. The ASI has found dozens of inscriptions and tablets; which are you referring to, and how do inscriptions and tablets show you that the gods were fair-skinned?
2. The Islamist views have nothing to do with Iran; they have to do with the views of Aitzaz Ahsan.
3. The dates of the Indus Valley Civilisation were long before the Indo-Aryan dates and the dates of the Rig Veda. As you may have read already in the very long excerpt from one of the readers, the Hindutvavadi view is that it was the other way around; the Rig Vedic civilisation was older than the Indus Valley Civilisation; the Indus Valley Civilisation was peopled by Rig Vedic Sanskrit speaking people; Sanskrit was the oldest Indo-European language; all Indo-European languages originated and reached their land of final use due to migrants from India moving out of India to those other lands of final use.
4. Who mentioned a rampage?

 

[Kinetic]

It is encouraging to see that so many of us have thoughts and views on these subjects. Of course, if these had been based on some detailed reading, that would have been so much the more encouraging. Still, we cannot be pompous about it; it is nice to have enthusiastic amateurs seeking to contribute, and they need encouragement.

Enthusiastic amateur? Are you talking about yourself? How do yo know who is amateur and who is not?

An interesting observation. It is not clear, however, how the first two comments lead to your conclusion that our ancestors killed two birds with one stone by making the Buddha an incarnation of Vishnu.

By making Buddha incarnation of Vishnu they not only adopted nonviolence which was gaining influence over common people but also removed an obstacle from their path.

Further, your second comment is surprising; Buddhism swept the land, and made masses of converts.

Nope. Buddhism was relatively much smaller than Hinduism. There was no mass conversion nor that swept the land. Do you think these people converted to other religion and Hinduism accepted them later? NO. Otherwise that mass number didn't just vaporized.

Are you sure that the dates of the War of the Ten Kings influenced the Buddha? Are you saying that the dates were close, that there was a causal relationship, and that there were no other wars which might have influenced the Buddha's thinking?

You didn't got what I mean, the War of Ten kings was just an example of war mania of that time. Violence and war was common. The over all scenario influenced Buddha's thinking.

Further, on the Buddha's thinking, to say that he sought to teach people the peaceful way of life, and love for every living being does not seem very accurate. Are you sure that this was his teaching? a kind of fifth century BC pacifism, or was he outlining a way of life that would progressively free humans from the chains of desire and elevate themselves progressively until they attained freedom from re-birth and a permanent release from the cycle?

What you talking is just another part of His teachings but the main purposes of Buddha's works were making people living peacefully and love for every being. These two were issues at that time. First one was against war and second one against mass sacrifice of animals by the Aryans for religious purposes.

This is even more astonishing. Do you know the dates of Jayadeva and of the Buddha, and did you know that Jayadeva was born after Buddhism had been all but wiped out by the Hindu revival?

Now I couldn't stop laughing!!!! What do you think of yourselves and others? My maternal side was strict followers of Vaishnavism, there was many books about Vaishnavism and Git-Gobinda was one of them. Morning chanting of Gita, Vaishnav Padabali and Git Gobinda was common. I have studied almost all of them as well as Kalidas. Jaydeva (more commonly known as Jaydev Goswami) was a 13th century sage and a great poet. So naturally he has born much after Buddha. lol

did you know that Jayadeva was born after Buddhism had been all but wiped out by the Hindu revival?

First try to understand my view, before posting comment. I said incarnation of Buddha was there in the Puranas but as far as sages or historical people are concerned its found first in the writing of Jaydeva where he is praising Buddha as Avatar of Vishnu and I have cited why Gaudiya Vaishnavism and Buddhasim came close because of their commonality of non-violence. Buddhism was alive in Bengal in a major way compared to other parts of India.

the Hindu revival

What Hindu revival? Shankaracharya and other sages were mainly religious reformers, no one revived Hinduism. It was always the main and primary religion of subcontinent.

 

[toxic_pus]

Recollecting from memory here: Buddha is mentioned probably in Vishnu Purana (or is it Kalki Purana). Vishnu Purana (or Kalki Purana) happens to be a post-Buddha, post-Mahavira text. It is probably easy to 'predict' an event after it has already happened.