Some excellent compilation by N3 :
http://jitnasa.india-forum.com
http://jitnasa.india-forum.com/Docs/Refere...ies_Circus.html
We did have have thread over a year or so ago listing the shennanigans being pulled by these so called scholars like Courtright, Doniger, etc. For some reason, the thread's disappeared <!--emo&  --><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo--> , nevertheless an attempt to revieve this topic cause something intresting I came across.
Some questions:
What does one know about <b>Francis Xavier Clooney </b>(who will now move to the
Harvard Divinity School from Boston College, heading a special chair)
Divine Mother, Blessed Mother , Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary
He's supposedly issued a press note which was reported in The Hindu of August 2 repeating a startling claim, with a potential to disturb the peace in the nation, <b>that five Vaishnava mandirams were originally churches</b>.
Any details on this?
The five temples being demanded by Jesuits for Church are in <b>Srirangam, Kulithalai, Chidambaram, Aaduthurai, and Aavoor</b>.
Western Indologists: A Study in Motives
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->a majority of the modern Jews and the dogmatic Christians and especially many professors of Sanskrit found it hard to reconcile themselves to the view that any race or civilisation could be older than the date of Adam accepted by them. They resented the hoary antiquity ascribed by their broad-minded brother scholars to the literature and civilisation of Bharatavarsa and much more to the origin of man. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<b>Western Indologists: A Study in Motives</b>
by Purohit Bhagavan Dutt (with minor additions by authors of "Review of Beef in Ancient India")
<b>INTEREST OF EUROPEANS IN BHARATVARSHA AND ITS ANCIENT LITERATURE: </b>The battle of Plassey, fought in Samvat 1814, sealed the fate of India. Bengal came under the dominance of the British. In Samvat 1840, William Jones was appointed Chief Justice in the British settlement of Fort William. He translated into English the celebrated play "Shakuntala" of the renowned poet Kalidasa (Circa 4th cent. B. V. ) in Samvat 1846, and the Code of Manu in Samvat 1851, the year in which he died. After him, his younger associate, Sir Henry Thomas Colebrooke, wrote an article 'On the Vedas' in Samvat 1862.
In the Vikram year 1875, August Wilhelm von Schlegal was appointed the first professor of Sanskrit in the Bonn University of Germany. Friedrich Schlegel was his brother. He wrote in 1865 V. a work entitled 'Upon the languages and Wisdom of the Hindus'.[1] Both brothers evinced great love for Sanskrit. Another Sanskritist Hern Wilhelm von Humboldt became the collaborator of August Schlegel whose edition of the Bhagavad Gita directed his attention to its study. In Samvat 1884 he wrote to a friend saying: 'It is perhaps the deepest and loftiest thing the world has to show'. At that very time Arthur Schopenhauer (1845-1917 V.), a great German philosopher, happened to read the Latin translation of the Upanishads (1858-1859 V.), done by a French writer Anquetil du Perron (1788-1862 V.) from the Persian translation of prince Dara Shikoh (1722 V.), named as Sirre-Akbar - the great secret. He was so impressed by their philosophy that he called them 'the production of the highest human wisdom',[2] and considered them to contain almost superhuman conceptions.[3] The study of the Upanishads was a source of great inspiration and means of comfort to his soul, and writing about it he says, 'It is the most satisfying and elevating reading (with the exception of the original text) which is possible in the world;' it has been the solace of my life and will be the solace of my death."[4] It is well-known that the book 'Oupnekhat' (Upanishad) always lay open on his table and he invariably studied it before retiring to rest. He called the opening up of Sanskrit literature 'the greatest gift of our century', and predicted that the philosophy and knowledge of the Upanishads would becomes the cherished faith of the West.
RESULT OF THAT INTEREST: Such writings attracted the German scholars more and more to the study of Sanskrit, and many of them began to hold Bharatiya culture in great esteem. Prof. Winternitz has described their reverence and enthusiasm in the following words:
"When Indian literature became first known in the West, people were inclined to ascribe a hoary age to every literature work hailing from India. They used to look upon India as something like the cradle of mankind, or at leat of human civilisation."[5]
This impression was natural and spontaneous. It was based on truth and had no element of bias. The historical facts that were handed down by the sages of Bharatavarsa were based on true and unbroken traditions. Their philosophical doctrines delved deep into the source and mysteries of life and propounded principles of eternal value. When the people of the West came to know of them for the first time, many unbigoted scholars were highly impressed by their marvellous accuracy and profound wisdom and being uninfluenced by any considerations of colour or creed they were generous in their acclamations. This enthusiastic applause of the honest people of Christian lands created a flutter in the dovecotes of Jewry and Christian missionaries, who were as ignorant of the real import of their own Scriptures and traditions as those of Bharatavarsa and followed only the dictates of dogmatic Pauline Christianity which had made them intolerant of all other faiths.[6]
The correctness of our conclusion can be judged from the following observation of Heinrich Zimmer:-
"He (Schopenhauer) was th first among the Western people to speak of this in an incomparable manner - in that great cloudburst of European-Christian atmosphere."[7]
How revengeful are dogmatic Christians and Jews on those who do not hold opinions similar to their own, is amply illustrated by the fate of Robertson Smith (1846-94 A.D.), the author of 'The Religion of the Semites'. and a professor of Hebrew in the Free Church College, Aberdeen. The punishment he got for the frank and fearless expression of his scientific researches is well recorded by Lewis Spence in the following words:-
"The heterodox character of an encyclopaedia article on the Bible led to his prosecution for heresy, of which charge, however, he was acquitted. But a further article upon 'Hebrew Language and Literature' in the Encyclopaedia Brittannica (1880) led to his removal from the professoriate of the College."[8]
<b>Primary Reason</b>
<b>JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN BIAS: </b> The ancient Jews were descendants of the Aryas. Their beliefs were the same of those of Aryas. The Primeval Man, whom they called Adam, was Brahma, the originator of mankind. The Hebrew name is derived from 'Atma-Bhu", one of the epithets of Brahma. In the beginning of Creation 'Brahma gave names to all objects and beings',[9] and so did Adam according to Jewish tradition ; 'and whatsoever Adam called every living creature that was the name thereof'.[10] In later times the Jews forgot their ancient history and ancestry and became narrow in their outlook. They considered themselves to be the oldest of all races.[11] But in 1654 A.D. Archbishop Usher of Ireland firmly announced that his study of Scripture had proved that creation took place in the year 4004 B.C. Som from the end of the seventeenth century, this chronology was accepted by the Europeans and they came to believe that Adam was created 4004 years before Christ.[12]
Hence a majority of the modern Jews and the dogmatic Christians and especially many professors of Sanskrit found it hard to reconcile themselves to the view that any race or civilisation could be older than the date of Adam accepted by them. They resented the hoary antiquity ascribed by their broad-minded brother scholars to the literature and civilisation of Bharatavarsa and much more to the origin of man. referring to this deep-rooted prejudice, A.S. Sayce writes :-
"But as far as man was concerned, his history was still limited by the dates in the margin of our Bibles. Even today the old idea of his recent appearance still prevails in quarters where we should least expect to find it and so-called critical historians still occupy themselves in endeavouring to reduce the dates of his earlier history.... To a generation which had been brought up to believe that in 4004 B.C. or thereabout the world was being created, the idea man himself went back to 100,000 years ago was both incredible and inconceivable."[13]
Ample evidence can be adduced to prove the existence of this inveterate prejudice but the above quotation from a great anthropologist would suffice for our purpose.
The studies of Sanskrit continued and flourished in Europe and very rapidly the opinions and judgments of scholars also became warped by the influence of the inherent prejudice fanned by the clergy. From the Vikram year 1858 to 1897 Eugene Burnouf occupied the chair of Professor of Sanskrit in France. He had two German pupils Rudolph Roth and Max Muller, who later on made a name in European Sanskrit scholarship.
THE PURPOSE OF BODEN CHAIR OF SANSKRIT IN OXFORD UNIVERSITY : In Samvat 1890 Horace Hayman Wilson became the Boden Professor of Sanskrit in the Oxford University. His successor Prof. M. Monier-Williams has drawn the attention of scholars to the object of the establishment of that chair in the following words ;-
"I must draw attention to the fact that I am only the second occupant of the Boden Chair, and that its Founder, Colonel Boden, stated most explicitly in his will (dated August 15, 1811 A.D.) that the special object of his munificent bequest was to promote the translation of Scriptures into Sanskrit; so as to enable his countrymen to proceed in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian religion."[14]
<b>Prejudiced Sanskrit Professors</b>
I. Prof. Wilson was a man of very noble disposition, but he had his obligations towards the motives of the founder of the Chair he occupied. He, therefore, wrote a book on 'The Religious and Philosophical System of the Hindus' and explaining the reason for writing it he says ; "These lectures were written to help candidates for a prize of ^200-given by John Muir, a well-known old Haileybury man and great Sanskrit scholar, for the best refutation of the Hindu Religious System".[15]
From this quotation the learned readers can conclude to what extent the aim of European scholarship could be called scientific, how far the theories propounded by them could be free from partisanship and called reliable, and how true would be the picture of Bharatiya civilisation and culture drawn by them.
II. In the same spirit of prejudice the aforesaid scholar Rudolph Roth wrote his thesis 'Zur Literatur und Geschichte des Veda,'[16] a dissertation on the Vedic literature and history. In 1909 V. was published his edition of te Nirukta of Yaska.[17] He was too proud of his own learning and of the German genius. He asserted that be means of the German 'science' of philology Vedic mantras could be interpreted much better than with the help of Nirukta.[18] Roth wrote many other things in this haughty vein.
III. The same pedantry is exhibited in the writings of W.D. Whitney who asserts ; "The principles of the 'German School' are the only ones which can ever guide us to a true understanding of the Veda."[19]
IV. MAX MULLER : Max Muller was a fellow-student of Roth. Besides his teacher's stamp on him, Max Muller's interview with Lord Macaulay on the 28th December, 1855 A.D. also played a great part in his anti-Indian views. Max Muller had to sit silent for an hour while the historian poured out his diametrically opposite views and then dismissed his visitor who tried in vain to utter a simple word : "I went back to Oxford", writes Max Muller, "a sadder man and a wiser man."[20]
Max Muller's name became widely known to the people of Bharatavarsa for two reasons. Firstly, he was a voluminous writer and secondly his views were severely criticised by the great scholar and savant Swami Dayananda Saraswati (1881-1940 V.) in his public speeches and writings. The value of Max-Muller's opinions, may be estimated from his following statements :-
(1) "History seems to teach that the whole human race required a gradual education before, in the fullness of time, it could be admitted to the truths of Christianity. All the fallacies of human reason had to be exhausted, before the light of a high truth could meet with ready acceptance. The ancient religions of the world were but the milk of nature, which was in due time to be succeeded by the bread of life.... 'The religion of Buddha has spread far beyond the limits of the Aryan world, and to our limited vision, it may seem to have retarded the advent of Christianity among a large portion of the human race. But in the sight of Him with whom a thousand years are but as one day, that religion, like the ancient religions of the world, may have but served to prepare the way of Christ, by helping through its very errors to strengthen and to deepen the ineradicable yearning of the human heart after the truth of God."[21]
(2) "Large number of Vedic hymns are childish in the extreme ; tedious, low, commonplace."[22]
(3) "Nay, they (the Vedas) contain, by the side of simple, natural, childish thoughts, many ideas which to us sound modern, or secondary and tertiary."[23]
Such blasphemous reviling of the most ancient and highly scientific scripture of the world can come only from word of the mouth of a bigoted (not an honest) Christian, a low pagan or an impious atheist. Barring Christianity, Max Muller was bitterly antagonistic to every other religion which he regarded as heathen. His religious intolerance is borrowed from his bitter criticism of the view of the German scholar, Dr. Spiegel, that the Biblical theory of the creation of the world is borrowed from the ancient religion of the Persians or Iranians. Stung by this statement Max Muller writes: "A writer like Dr. Spiegel should know that he can expect no money ; nay, he should himself wish for no mercy, but invite the heaviest artillery against the floating battery which he has launched in the troubled waters of Biblical criticism."[24] (Strange to say that our History supports the truth of Dr. Spiegel's view to the extent that the Biblical statements were derived from Persian, Babylonian and Egyptian scriptures, which according to the ancient history of the world, were in turn derived from Vedic sources.)
At another place the same devotee of the Western 'scientific' scholarship says : "If in spite of all this, many people, most expectant to judge, look forward with confidence to the conversion of the Parsis, it is because, in the most essential points, they have already, though unconsciously, approached as near as possible to the pure doctrine of Christianity. Let them but read Zend-Avesta, in which they profess to believe, and they will find that their faith is in longer the faith of the Yasna, the Vendidad and the Vispered. As historical relics, these works, if critically interpreted, will always retain a pre-eminent place in the great library of the ancient world. As oracles of religious faith, they are defunct and a mere anachronism in the age in which we live."[25]
Even a superficial reader can see the strain of Christian fanaticism running through these lines. If Bharatiya culture could exact occasional praise from the pen of a bigoted man like Max Muller, it was only due to its unrivalled greatness and superiority.
MAX MULLER AND JACOLLIOT: The French scholar Louis Jacolliot, Chief Judge in Chandranagar, wrote a book called 'La Bible dans l'Inde' in Samvat 1926. Next year an English translation of it was also published. In that book all the main currents of thought in the world have been derived from the ancient Aryan thought. He has called Bharatvarsha 'the Cradle of Humanity'.[26]
'Land of ancient India! Cradle of Humanity. hail! Hail revered motherland whom centuries of brutal invasions have not yet buried under the dust of oblivion. Hail, Fatherland of faith, of love, of poetry and of science, may we hail a revival of thy past in our Western future.'
This book cut Max Muller to the quick and he said while reviewing it that 'the author seems to have been taken in by the Brahmins of India'.
MAX MULLER'S LETTER: Personal letters give a true picture of the writer's inner mind. A person expresses his inmost feelings in the letters which he writes to his intimate relations and friends. Such letters are very helpful in estimating his real nature and character. Fortunately, a collection called the 'Life and Letters of Frederick Max Muller' has been published in two volumes. A few extracts from those letters would suffice to expose the mind of the man who is held in great esteem in the West for his Sanskrit leaning and impartial judgement.
(a) In a letter of 1866 A.D. (V Sam, 1923) he writes to his wife:
'This edition of mine and the translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India, .....it is the root of their religion and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has spring from it during the last three thousand years.'(Vol. 1., Ch. XV, Page 346.).
(b) In another letter he writes to his son:
'Would you say that any one sacred book is superior to all others in the world? ........I say the New Testament, after that, I should place the Koran,[27] which in its moral teachings, is hardly more than a later edition of the New Testament. Then would follow according to my opinion the Old Testament, the Southern Buddhist Tripitaka, the Tao-te-king of Laotze, the Kings of Confucius, the Veda and the Avesta.'(Vol. II, Ch. XXXII., page 339.).
© On 16th December 1868 A.D. (Samvat 1925) he writes to Duke of Argyle, the Minister for India:
'The ancient religion of India is doomed and if Christianity does not step in, whose fault will it be?'(Vol. I., Ch. XVI., page 378.)
(d) On 29th January 1882 (Samvat 1939) he wrote to Sri Bairamji MALABARI:
'I wanted to tell.......what the true historical value of this ancient religion is, as looked upon, not from a n exclusively European or Christian, but from a historical point of view. But discover in it 'steam engines and electricity and European philosophy and morality, and you deprive it of its true character.'(Vol. II, Ch XXV., pages 115-116.)
(e) Max Muller grew so insolent and audacious that he started to challenge Indians in a direct foolhardy manner. It is clear from a letter written by him to N.K. Majumdar:
'Tell me some of your 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........ From my point of view, India, at least the best part of it, is already converted to Christianity. You want no persuasion to become a follower of Christ. Then make p your mind to work or yourself. Unite your flock - to hold them together and prevent them from straying. The bridge has been built for you by those who came before you. STEP BOLDLY FORWARD, it will break under you, and you will find many friends to welcome you on the other shore and among them none more delighted that you old friend and fellow labourer F. Max-Muller.'(Vol. II., Ch. XXXIV., pages 415-416.)
Herein Max Muller claims to know 'the true historical value' of Vedic religion, but our history is going to expose the hollowness of the learning and scholarship which he and his colleagues boast of possessing.
V. WEBER'S BIAS: At the time when Max Muller was busy besmirching the glory of Bharatiya literature and religion in England, Albert Webber was devoting himself to the same ignominious task in Germany. We have already referred to the unstinted praise of the Bhagavad Gita by Humboldt. Weber could not tolerate this. He had the temerity to postulate that the Mahabharata and Gita were influenced by Christian thought. Mark what he writes:-
'The peculiar colouring of the Krsna Sect, which pervades the whole book, is noteworthy: Christian legendry matter and other Western influences are unmistakably present........[28]
The view of Weber was strongly supported by two other Western scholars, Lorinser[29] and E. Washburn Hopkin.[30] Yet the view was so blatantly absurd that most of the professors in European universities did not accept it in spite of their Christian leanings. But the propagation of this wrong view played its mischief and was mainly responsible for the hesitation of the Western scholars (including the antagonists) to assign to the Mahabharata a date, earlier that the Christian era.
WEBER AND BANKIM CHANDRA: I am not alone in holding this view.
This is what Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya, the well known Bengali scholar, has to say about Weber in his Krishnacharita, 4th chapter:-
'The celebrated Weber was no doubt a scholar but I am inclined to think that it was an unfortunate moment for India when he began the study of Sanskrit. The descendants of the German savages of yesterday could not reconcile themselves to the ancient glory of India. It was therefore, their earnest effort to prove that the civilisation of India was comparatively of recent origin. They could not persuade themselves to believe that the Mahabharata was composed centuries before Christ was born'.[31]
WEBER AND GOLDSTUCKER: Weber and Boehtlingk prepared a dictionary of the Sanskrit language called the 'Sanskrit Worterbuch. Prof. Kuhn was also one of their assistants. Being mainly based on the wrong and imaginary principles of philology, the work is full of wrong meanings in many places and is, therefore, unreliable and misleading. It is a pity that so much labour was wasted on account of sheer prejudice. Th dictionary was subject of severe criticism by Prof. Goldstuker which annoyed the two editors. Weber was so much upset that he stooped to use abusive language of the coarsest kind[32] against Prof. Goldstucker. He said that the views of Prof. Goldstucker about the Worterbuch showed 'a perfect derangement of his mental faculties', [33] since he did not reject the authority of the greatest Hindu scholars freely and easily. Replying to their undignified attacks Prof. Goldstucker exposed the conspiracy of Professors Roth, Boehtlingk, Weber and Kahn which they had formed to undermine the greatness of ancient Bharatvarsha. He wrote:
'It will, of course, be my duty to show, at the earliest opportunity, that Dr. Boehtlingk is incapable of understanding even easy rules of Panini, much less those of Katyayana and still less is he capable of making use of them in the understanding of Classical texts. The errors in his department of the Dictionary are so numerous........ that it will fill every serious Sanskritist with dismay, when he calculates the mischievous influence which they must exercise on the study of Sanskrit philology'.[34]
He further remarks: '....that questions which ought to have been decided with the very utmost circumspection and which could not be decided without very laborious research have been trifled with in the Worterbuch in the most unwarranted manner.'[35]
Goldstucker was called upon by one of Boehtlingk's men not only to have respect for 'the editor of Panini.....'(i.e. Boehtlingk) but even for the hidden reasons for foisting on the public his blunders of ever kind.[36]
We know that there were no other 'hidden reasons' than their Christian and Jewish bias which impelled them to suppress the correct information of the Hindu grammarians and underrate and vilify Aryan civilisation and culture, and at the same time to serve as tools of the British Government towards the same end.
Professor Kuhn, who 'gave his opinion on the Worterbuch' was 'an individual whose sole connection with Sanskrit studies consisted in handling Sanskrit books to those who could read them, a litery naught, wholly unknown, but assuming the airs of a quantity, because it had figures before it that prompted it on, a personage who, according to his own friends, was perfectly ignorant of Sanskrit'.[37]
Provoked by the unwarranted flouting of the authentic Hindu tradition, Professor Goldstucker was compelled to raise his 'feeble but solitary voice' against the coterie of mischievous propagandists masquerading under the garb of 'scientific' scholars. He concludes his laborious work with the following significant remarks:
'When I see that the most distinguished and most learned Hindu scholars and divines - the most valuable and sometimes the only source of all our knowledge of ancient India - are scorned in theory, mutilated in print, and, as consequence, set aside in the interpretation of Vaidik texts; .......when a clique of Sanskritists of this description vapours about giving us the sense of the Veda as it existed at the commencement of Hindu antiquity; ......when I consider that those whose words apparently derive weight and influence from the professional position they hold; ........then I hold that it would be a want of courage and a dereliction of duty, if I did not make a stand against these Saturnalia of Sanskrit Philology.[38]
VI. MONIER-WILLIAMS: who revealed the real object of the purpose of the establishment of the Boden chair, thus delivers himself:-
'Brahmanism, therefore, must die out. In point of fact, false ideas on the most ordinary scientific subjects are so mixed up with its doctrines that the commonest education - the simplest lesson in geography - without the aid of Christianity must inevitably in the end sap its foundations.'[39]
'When the walls of the mighty fortress of Brahmanism are encircled, undermined, and finally stormed by the solders of the cross, the victory of Christianity must be signal and complete.'[40]
Therefore we are justified in drawing the conclusion that his book, 'The Study of Sanskrit in Relation to Missionary work in India' (1861 A.D. London) was written with the sole object of promoting Christianity and ousting Hinduism. Inspite of this some of our Indian Sanskrit scholars call these Europeans scholars, unbiased students of Sanskrit literature, whose sole aim has been to aquire knowledge for its own sake.
Again, expressing his deep rooted veneration for the Bible, Monier-Williams writes:- '....the Bible, though a true revelation.'[41]
VII. RUDOLF HOERNLE: Rudolf Hoernle was the Principal of Queen's College, Banaras, in Samvat 1926. At that time Swami Dayananda Saraswati, who later on founded the Arya Samaja happened to reach Banaras for the first time for the propagation of his mission. Dr. Hoernle met Swami Dayananda on several occasions. He wrote an article[42] on /Swamiji from which the following extract is noteworthy, because it reveals the real intention of many European scholars who take to study of Sanskrit and ancient scriptures of Bharatvarsha. Hoernle says:-
'.......he (Dayananda) may possibly convince the Hindus that their modern Hinduism is altogether in the opposition to the Vedas....... If once they became thoroughly convinced of this radical error, they will no doubt abandon Hinduism at once...... They cannot go back to the Vedic state; that is dead and gone, and will never revive; something more or less new must follow. We hope it may be Christianity,.......'[43]
VIII RICHARD GARBE: was a German Sanskritist, who edited many Sanskrit works. Besides these, in 1914 he wrote a book for the missionaries, entitled 'Indien und das Christentum'. His religious bias is quite evident in the book.
IX WINTERNITZ: The pride of the superiority of their own philosophy and religion and of the infallibility of their own conclusions has become so ingrained in the above-mentioned type of Western Sanskrit scholars that they feel no hesitation in giving expression to it brazen-facedly before the public. Reverent admiration of the philosophy of the Upanishads by Schopenhauer, often quoted by Bharatiya writers, ranked in the heart of the Europeans, and as late as A.D. 1925 Prof. Winternitz thought it incumbent on him to denounce the sincere and heartfelt views of Schopenhauer in the following words:-
'Yet I believe, it is a wild exaggeration when Schopenhauer says that the teaching of the Upanishads represents 'the fruit of the highest human knowledge and wisdom' and contains 'almost superhuman conceptions the originators of which can hardly be regarded as mere mortals.......'[44]
Not content with his invective against the Upanishads he had the audacity to deprecate even the greatness of the Vedas by saying:-
'It is true, the authors of these hymns rise but extremely seldom to the exalted flights and deep fervour of, say, religious poetry of the Hebrews.'[45]
This vilification did not remain confined to Sanskrit scholars alone, but through them it percolated into the field of Science. Not knowing a word of the exact and multifarious scientific knowledge of the ancient Hindus, Sir William Cecil Dampier writes:
'Perhaps the paucity of Indian contribution to other sciences (the Philosophy and Medicine) may in part be due to the Hindu religion.[46]
The climax of hatred against Hinduism is seen in the highly mischievous and provoking remarks like the following even in popular literature:-
(a) 'The curse of India is the Hindoo religion. More than two hundred million people believe a monkey mixture of mythology that is strangling the nation.' 'He who yearns for God in India soon loses his head as well as his heart.'[47]
(b)Prof. McKenzie, of Bombay finds the ethics of India defective, illogical and anti-social, lacking any philosophical foundation, nullified by abhorrent ideas of asceticism and ritual and altogether inferior to the 'higher spirituality' of Europe. He devotes most of his book 'Hindu Ethics' to upholding this thesis and comes to the triumphant conclusions that Hindu philosophical ideas, 'when logically applied leave no room for ethics'; and that they prevent the development of a strenuous moral life.'[48]
It is a matter of serious mistake on the part f a Government which is anxious to win the friendship and sympathy of Bharat to allow such heinous type of literature as Ripley's to be published. And again, it is a matter of regret that such books, whether published in India or abroad, are not taken notice of by our politicians and have not been banned by our National Government. Not only is our Government indifferent to the interdiction of such slanderous literature, but even our Universities not only prescribe but recommend for higher study books on Bharatiya history and culture written by foreign scholars who lose no opportunity of maligning our civilisation openly or in a very subtle way.
Remarks like those of McKenzie on the ethics of a country from whose Brahmanas the whole world learnt its morality and rules of conduct,[49] are nothing short of blasphemy and national insult. The irony of the situation is that, instead of being condemned such persons receive recognition and honour from our educationists and political leaders.
MOST BHARATIYA SCHOLARS AND POLITICIANS ARE UNAWARE OF THIS BIAS: We have sufficiently exposed the mentality of this type of Western scholars. They received enormous financial aid from their Governments and also from the British Government in India, which they freely used in writing articles, pamphlets and books propagating their reactionary views in a very subtle and disguised manner. It was their careful endeavour not to give themselves away and to mislead the world and the people of Bharatvarsha under the cloak of scholarship and impartiality. They might have pretty well succeeded in their work had not their apple-cart been upset by Swami Dayananda Saraswati, who ruthlessly exposed their nefarious designs. Swamiji was a man of unique personality, indomitable courage, keen intellect and far-reaching vision and imagination. He had come in contact with many European scholars of his time. He had met George Buhler, Monier Williams,[50] Rudolf Hoernle, Thibaut and others who had worked with Christian zeal in the field of Sanskrit research. He was the first man whose penetrating eye could not fail to see through the ulterior motives of their research work, although the common run of people in Bharatvarsha and even most of the learned men in the employ of the Government here had permitted themselves to be deluded by their so-called profound scholarship, strict impartiality, scientific and liberal outlook. Hr gave a timely warning to the people of his country and to a great extent succeeded in saving them from the clutches of these pseudo-scholars and clandestine missionaries.
We have studied almost the entire literature produced by generations of Western scholars and have thoroughly examined it with an open mind. We have arrived at the conclusion that there is a definite tinge of Christian prejudice in the writings of most of these scholars, which is responsible for discrediting all that is great in Bharatvarsha. The ultimate aim of the writers seems to be the proselytization of the people of this land to Christianity by instilling into their head in a subtle manner the inferiority of their indigenous religion and culture.
But truth can never remain hidden for long. Now some modern scholars of Bharatvarsha have also begun to see to some extent, though not thoroughly, through the thin veneer of European scholarship, e.g.:-
1/. Prof. Rangacharya writes:-
'Incalculable mischief has been done by almost all the English and American scholars in assuming arbitrarily the earliest dates for Egypt or Mesopotamia - dates going back to B.C. 5000 at least - and the latest possible dates for Ancient India on the ground that India borrowed from them.'[51]
2/. Sri Nilakantha Shastri, the Head of History Department of Madras University, although a supporter of many untenable Western theories, had to write:-
'What is this but a critique of Indian society and Indian history in the light of the nineteenth century prepossessions of Europe? This criticism was started by the English administration and European missionaries and has been nearly focussed by the vast erudition of Lassen; the unfulfilled aspirations of Germany in the early nineteenth century, doubtless had their share in shaping the line of Lassen's thought.'[52]
3/. Sri C. R. Krishnamacharlu, Ex-Epigraphist to the Government of India, having realised the ulterior motives of European writers, has expressed his views more strongly. He writes:-
'These authors, coming as they do from nations of recent growth, and writing this history with motives other than cultural, which in some cases are apparently racial and prejudicial to the correct elucidation of the past history of India, cannot acquire testimony for historic veracity of cultural sympathy.'[53]
4/. Prof. R. Subba Rao, M.A., L. T., in his Presidential Address, (Sectional), Sixteenth Session of Indian History Congress, Waltair, (29th December, 1953.) writes:-
'Unfortunately, the historicity of Puranas and their testimony has been perverted by certain Western scholars who stated rather dogmatically that the historical age cannot go back beyond 2000 B. C., and that there is no need for fixing the Mahabharata war earlier than 1400 B.C. They accused the Brahmins of having raised their antiquity and questioned the authenticity of the Hindu astronomical works.'[54]
<b>Conclusion</b>
In short, the foregoing pages make it clear that it was this Christian and Judaic prejudice which:-
(a) .....did not allow the real dates of ancient Bharatiya history to be accepted by the occidental scholars, who were always reluctant to give the Vedas a higher antiquity than the earliest portion of the Old Testament and place them beyond 2500 B.C. [55]
Even the school of Paul Deussen, A.W. Ryder and H. Zimmer, which followed Schopenhauer in the appreciation of ancient Indian intellect, but which did not work directly on chronology, could not throw off the burden of these extremely unscientific, fictitious dates.
(b) ......gave rise to the two interrelated diseases of Western Indologists; firstly the disease of myth, mythical and mythology, according to which Brahma, Indra, Vishnu, Parvat, Narada, Kashyapa, Pururavas, Vasishta and a host of other ancient sages have been declared as mythical. Nobody ever tried to understand their true historical character apprehending that the dates of Bharatiya history would go to very ancient periods; and secondly, as a corollary to the above, the disease of 'attribution' and 'ascription', under which the works of these and other sages have been declared to be written by some very late anonymous persons who are said to have ascribed or attributed them to those 'mythical' sages.
© ......brought to the fore-front, the most fanciful and groundless theory of the migration of the Aryans into India, according to which the very existence of Manu, the first Crowned King of Bharat, Egypt etc., Ikshvaku, Manu's glorious son; Bharata Chakravarti, the glorious son of Shakuntala; Bhagiratha, who changed the course of the Ganga; Kuru, after whom the sacred sacrificial land is called Kurukshetra:; Rama, the son of Dasaratha and a number of other kings is being totally denied.
(d) ....was responsible for the altogether wrong translations of Vaidika (Vedic) works, and misrepresentation of the Vaidika culture.
(e) .....did not allow the acceptance of Sanskrit, as being the mother language of at least the Indo-European group; as at first very ably propounded by Franz Bopp, and often mentioned by ancient Indian authors.
We are not sorry for all this, for, nothing better could be expected from such biased foreign pioneers of Sanskrit studies.
With these brief remarks we earnestly pray that the light of truth may dawn on every thinking and learned man of Bharatvarsha, so that in these days of political and individual freedom he may shake off the yoke of intellectual slavery of the West."(Pt. Bhagavan Dutt. A Review Of "Beef In Ancient India". pages 17-38.)
Check out these three verses:
"Through astronomy, geography and geology, go though to all the different countries of the world under the sun. Mayest thou attain through good preaching to statesmanship and artisanship, through medical science obtain knowledge of all medicinal plants, through hydrostatics lean the different uses of water, through electricity understand the working of ever-lustrous lightning. Carry out instructions willingly...."(Yajur Veda, 6:21.)(Stephen Knapp. 1986. The Secret Teachings of the Vedas. page 26.)
"O royal skilled engineer, construct sea-boats, propelled on water by our experts, and airplanes, moving and flying upward, after the clouds that reside in the mid-region, that fly as the boats move on the sea, that fly high over and below the watery clouds. Be thou, thereby, prosperous in this world created by the Omnipresent God, and flier in both air and lightning." Yajur Veda 10:19.)(Stephen Knapp. 1986. The Secret Teachings of the Vedas. page 26.)
"The Atomic Energy fissions the ninety-nine elements, covering its path by the bombardments of neutrons without let of hindrance. Desirous of stalking the head, i.e., the chief part of the swift power, hidden in the mass of molecular adjustments of the elements, this atomic energy approaches it in the very act of fissioning it by the above-noted bombardments. Herein verily the scientist know the similar hidden striking force of the ray of the sun working in the orbit of the moon."(Arthava Veda, 20:41:1-3.)(Stephen Knapp. 1986. The Secret Teachings of the Vedas. page 26.)
<b>The History & Traditional Source Of The Vedas.</b>
It may be asked, how were the Vedas established? What were their origins? What is their history? How were they divided and why does it seem that there are different paths to choose from within the Vedas?
First of all there are two ways to answer these questions: one is to consider the theories presented by some of the contemporary scholars and historians in regard to when the Vedas appeared, and the second way is to consider the traditional account as presented in the Vedic literature itself.
Many modern historians held the idea that it was the Aryans who invaded India in the second millennium B.C. that were the founders of the Indian culture and Vedic traditions. They say that the Aryans came from somewhere near the southern part of Russia bringing their Vedic rituals and customs with them.
This theory, however, does not hold as much weight as it used to. For example, the culture of the Indus valley, where the Aryans are said to have invaded, flourished between 3500 and 2500 B.C. The two main cities were Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Many finds have come from the archaeological excavations from Harappa which give evidence to suggest that many aspects of later Hinduism were already a part of the early Indus valley culture. Such things have been found as images of yogis sitting in meditation, as well as many figures of a god similar to Lord Shiva. Evidence has also been found to suggest that temple worship played a major role in daily life, which is what the Veda has prescribed as the process for attaining the greatest amount of spiritual advancement for people of that time.
Keeping in mind that the Indus valley enveloped a vast area and the cultural traits of that society continued to serve for a long time, then how could the pre-Aryan language of the Indus valley people, which is not known today, die out without leaving any trace of its existence? Maybe there actually wasn't any pre-Aryan language. And if not, if this is where the Aryan invaders were supposed to have appeared when they brought their Vedic culture with them, maybe there really wasn't any Aryan invasion, not at least the way some scholars seem to think.
Furthermore, most scholars agree that the earliest Vedic hymns seem to belong to a pre-1500 B.C. date, which means it was not necessarily invaders to had brought Vedic culture with them, since at least the oldest Vedic books, if not most of them, were already in existence by the time any invaders arrived.
Let's consider another point using nothing more than our common sense. It is generally accepted that Lord Buddha appeared about 2,500 years ago, and we know that Lord Buddha preached against the Vedas. So the Vedas had to have been existing at that time, otherwise how could he preach against them? In fact the reason why he no longer accepted the Vedas was because many of the leading Vedic followers were no longer truly following them, but were abusing them. And any student of history knows that abuse of something takes place after there is a flourishing. So if the deterioration had reached such an extreme 2,500 years ago that people embraced Buddha's teachings, then clearly such gradual degeneration had been going on for many hundreds of years. Since the Vedas were a highly developed form of philosophy, it would indicate that they must have been in existence and quite widespread several thousand years before that. Therefore we can easily understand how old the Vedas must be.
Considering the above mentioned points, it is safe to say at this time that the migration and the homes of the Vedic people, or where and when the Vedas originally appeared, can not be proved archaeologically. Furthermore, let us not forget that it was the British Sanskritists and educators in India, during the 1700 and 1800's, who first portrayed Vedic literature and culture as something barbaric, inferior and recent. They formed estimated dates on when different Vedic books were written according to such things as the contents of the books and style of writing. But it should be pointed out that even the Vedic tradition describes that once the Vedic knowledge had been divided and the different volumes were written, they were handed down to sages who became expert in the content of that portion of the Vedic knowledge who then continued to hand it down to others who formed sub branches of it. Thus it may look like the Vedas gradually evolved as if they had been influenced and changed by many authors over a long period of time, but actually that is not necessarily the case.
We also have to remember that for many years the Vedic literature was written on palm leaves and would have to be copied when they wrote out or when other copies were wanted. Down through the years as other copies were repeatedly made, certain conventional modifications of the script would have taken place making some scholars think their origin was more recent. But in the case of the Bhagavat Puranas, the Sanskrit text still contained the archaic form of writing, verifying its antiquity. Nonetheless, the English scholars said the author of the Purana must have purposely used the archaic script to make people think it was older than it was. Why the English proposed this sort of theory in an attempt to disqualify its ancient origins simply shows how biased they were against the Vedic literature.
The cultural prejudice was the result of deliberate undermining with the disguised intention of asserting the superiority of their own Christian-based values and outlook, as well as the perpetuation of colonial rule. This intention actually played a prominent role in the reason why they wanted the Sanskrit texts interpreted into English and to have their Christian scripture interpreted into Sanskrit. And many of the notable professors at the time had the audacity to consider themselves to be better authorities on their questionable interpretations of the Vedas than the Indian scholars.
In any case, the attempts to belittle the Vedic literature made only a minor impact. In fact by interpreting such texts, many of the notable writers and poets in the West, as mentioned in the previous chapter (chapter two of "The secret Teachings of the Vedas), were allowed to see what lofty views of the world the Vedic literature held and were indeed very impressed and influenced by them.
So where did the Vedas come from? Though modern historians may offer their many changing theories about how the Vedas were compiled and where they originated, we can see that this is their attempt to find an oversimplified key to understanding Vedic thought, or to even discredit the value of the Vedas. But they must admit that they are still unsure of their theories and lack detailed evidence for many of their opinions. In fact most historians today feel that any accurately recorded history only goes back to around 600 B.C.., and prior to this period all events and stories related in the scriptures are simply imaginary myths and legends. This reflects and extremely narrow-minded way of looking at things. Many Vedic authorities and self-realised sages in the past have accepted the stories, as found in the Mahabharata and Puranas, to be factual, and have also attained lofty states of consciousness by following the Vedic instructions for spiritual perfection. Therefore, the best way to understand the history of how the Vedas were formed is to simply let the Vedic literature speak for itself."(Stephen Knapp. 1986. The Secret Teachings of the Vedas. Chapter three, page 28-30.)
[1]In this book he 'derives the Indo-Germanic family from India'. See 'A Literary History of India', by R.W. Frazer, London, p. 5, note 2, third impression, 1915.
[2]Quoted in 'A History of Indian Literature' by M. Winternitz, English translation, Vol. I. p. 20 (1927 A.D.).
[3]Ibid. p. 266.
[4]Ibid. P.267. Also see, New Indian Antiquity, Vol. 1, No. 1. April 1938. p.59, article of Heinrich Zimmer. The translation is, 'the consolation of his old age.' The original of this quotation is in Parerga et Paralipomena, Vol. II, p.427, 1851.
[5]Lectures in Calcutta University, August, 1923, printed in 1925 at as 'Some Problems of Indian Literature,' p. 3.
[6]Intelorence was inherent in all the Semetic faiths and was responsible for the crusades, jehads, and the institution of the inquisition. A centuary before the time of Schopenhauer, Voltaire also fell a victim to the wrath of the clergy. He wrote an essay on the Morals and the Sprit of the Nations, which offended everybody because it told the truth. It spoke highly of the ancient cultures of India, China and Persia and relegasted Judea and Christendom to a relitively inferior position. How could then he be forgiven for 'so unpatriotic a revelation'? He was exiled for a second time by the French Government. (vide 'The Story of Philosophy', by Will Durant, p. 241.)
[7]New Indian Antiquary, April 1938, p. 67.
[8]'An Introduction to Mythology,' New York. (Date of publication not indicated in the book.)
[9]Manu-smriti, I.21.
[10]Genisis, II.10.
[11]"....that the Jewish race is by far the oldest of all these"Fragments of Megasthenes, p.103.
[12]"Archbishop Usher's famd chronology, which so long dominated the ideas of man...." Historians'History of the World, Vol. I, p.626, 1908. Duncan Macnaughton in his "A Scheme of Egyption Chronology', London, 1932, writes :"It is strange to see that Wilkinson place Menes (or Manu the first King of Egypt) as low as 2320, but it is to be remembered that in 1836 English-speaking scholars were still under the hypnotic influence of Usher's Biblical Chronology. The dates printed in the Bible were regards as sacred, and it was positively wicked to disregard them." (p.6.)
[13]'Antiquity of Civilized Man,' Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 60, July-December, 1930.
[14]'Sanskrit-English Dictionary' b Sir M. Monier-Williams, Preface, p. IX, 1899.
[15]"Eminent Orientalists," Madras, p.72.
[16]English translation published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1847.
[17]A teatise on etymology and semantics.
[18]It would be interesting here to point out that in the introduction of his edition of Nirukta, Roth has given a wrong interpretation of a passage of Aitareya Brahmana, whic has invited a derisive comment from Gold-strucker (cf.Panini, p.198).
[19]American Or. Soc. Proc., Oct., 1867.
[20]Life and Letters of Max Muller, Vol.I, Ch. IX, p. 171.
[21]History of Ancient Sanksrit Literature. p.32, 1860.
[22]'Chips from a German Workshop', second edition, 1866, p. 27.
[23]'India, What can it teach us', Lecture IV, p. 118, 1882.
[24]"Chips from a German Workshop", Genesis and the Zend Avesta, p. 147.
[25]Ibid. The Modern Parsis, p.180. To write about an unconscious approach of an anterior religion to the doctrines of a posterior faith can only become a person of 'scientific' mind like that of Max Muller. How repugnant to a biased Christian mind is the idea of Christianity borrowing anything from another ancient eligion even when the similarity is so striking! And these very so-called unbiased pedagagues have not hesitated to attribut to Bharatiya literature a Greek borrowing on the flimsiest excuse, i.e., where the similarity is not at all obvious but is strained.
[26]Cf quotation from Winternitz after 3rd para from the beginning of this chapter. Probably Winternitz refers to Jacolliot.
[27]A clear indication of Anglo-Muslim alliance worked out by the English bureaucrats and later evident in a work like the Cambridge History of India and a hoard of other works.It is also evident in the works of the French author Garcin de Tassy, Les Anteurs Hindoustanis et leurs ouvrages 2nd., Paris 1868 and Histoire de la literature Hondoustainic, 3 vols, 2nd ed., Paris 1870-71.
[28]'The History of Sanskrit Literature' Popular ed. 1914., p. 189, footnote; of also p. 300., foot-note.
[29]He also wrote an article, 'Die Bhagavad Gita' in samvat 1926.
[30]'India, Old and New', New York, 1902., p. 146. Also cf. his Religions of India, p. 429., Boston, 1895.
[31]An English translation from Bengali version.
[32]'Paninian His Place in Sanskrit Literature'. Allahabad Edition, p. 200., 1914.
[33]Ibid. p. 200.
[34]Ibid. p.195.
[35]Ibid. p. 197.
[36]Ibid. p. 203.
[37]Ibid. p. 203.
[38]Ibid. pp. 204-205.
[39]Modern India and the Indians, by M. Williams, third ed. 1879., p 261.
[40]Ibid. p. 262.
[41]Indian Wisdom, p. 143.
[42]The Christian Intelligence, Calcutta, March 1870, p. 79.
[43]A.F.R.H. quoted in 'The Arya Samaj' by Lajpat Rai, 1932., p. 42.
[44]Some Problems of Indian Literature, Calcutta 1925., p. 61.
[45]History of Indian Literature, page 79., 1927.
[46]A History of Science, 4th edition, p. 8. Cambridge University Press. 1948.
[47]Ripley's 'Believe it or Not', Part I. page 14., 26th edition Pocket-books Inc New York.
[48]Vide 'Ethics of India' by E.W. Hopkins, Preface, pp.x and xi, New Haven, 1924.
[49]Manu, II. 20.
[50]Monier Williams himself writes of his meeting:- 'Dayananda Saraswati,.... I made his aquantance at Bombay in 1876., and was much struck by his fine countenance and figure. There I heard him preach an eloquent discourse on the religios development of the Aryan race. He began by repeating a hymn to Varuna (IV.16) preeded by the syllable Om - prolating the owel in deep sonorous tones'. Brahmanism and Hinduism. M.Williams, 4th ed. 1891., p. 529. 'In one of my interviews with him, I asked him for his definition of religion. He replied in Sanskrit:- Religion (Dharm) is a true and just, views (nyayah)(logic) and the abandonment of all prejudice and partiality (pasupaatasahityam) - that is to say, it is an impartial inquirey into the truth by means of the senses and two other instruments of knowledge (praman), reason and revalation.' Ibid. (p. 530.).
[51]History of Pre-Musalman India, Vol. II., Vedic India, Part I. 1937 A.D. .page 145.
[52]All India Oriental Conference, December 1941., Part II. page 64., printed in 1946.
[53]'The Cradle of Indian History', page 3., Adyar Library, Madras, 1947.
[54]J.A.H.R.S., Vol. XX., pages 187.
[55]Cf A.L. Basham:- 'Few European scholars would agree with professor Altekar (page 19) that the Rigveda dates from 2500 B.C. ' (J.R.A.S., 1950. A.d. , parts 3-4., page 202.)
Doe anybodyknow whetheryvetteRosser hasfully recovered from her accident ( about a year ago)
<!--QuoteBegin-Mudy+Nov 21 2005, 08:40 PM-->QUOTE(Mudy @ Nov 21 2005, 08:40 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin--> http://www.mssu.edu/projectsouthasia/tsa...Rosser.htm
<b>Teaching South Asia by Yvette C. Rosser</b>
[right][snapback]41678[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Good read, especially for Indians born in the US/UK/....
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Maharashtra: Police launch drive to confiscate book on Shivaji</b>
January 10, 2006 19:56 IST
http://ia.rediff.com/news/2006/jan/10book.htm
Police have launched a state-wide drive to confiscate and seize
American scholar James Laine's controversial book, "Epic of Shivaji",
after the Maharashtra Government banned the book following some
derogatory remarks in it about the warrior king.
Director General of Police P S Pasricha told PTI orders to seize the
book have been issued all over the state after the ban on
Monday. "The government has imposed the ban on the book since some
portion in it is not written in good taste and casts aspersions on
Chhatrapati Shivaji", he said.
Police said the success of the drive to seize the book will be known
only by Wednesday after all police units in the state send a
feedback.
Apparantly there was no such drive launched in Mumbai. Joint Police
Commissioner (Law and Order) Arup Patnaik told PTI he was yet to go
through the directions of the government and, therefore, would not
comment about the drive.
According to sources, the ban on the book comes in the wake of
representations received by the state Home Ministry from several
quarters, including social groups, about "offensive remarks on
Shivaji".
The reasons cited for banning the book, published by Orient Longman,
include "possible threat to law and order situation and social
stability," official sources said.
Laine's earlier book, 'Shivaji - Hindu King in Islamic India' was
banned in January 2004 after the state government received objections
to the derogatory references in that book about Shivaji Maharaj's
parentage.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Politics of Cultural Studies
by Francis Mulhern
Among the more striking intellectual phenomena of these putatively postmodern times is the rise, in the metropolitan academy, of the new discipline of cultural studies. I say "new" because cultural studies properly understood was never merely the organized study of "culture"; it was, from the start, a directed, self-consciously oppositional program of theoretical and empirical investigation. Today, an idea that first took institutional shape as an annex of Birmingham University's English Department has developed to fill out the entire repertoire of academic activity: specialized degree and graduate programs, a new generation of teachers who, unlike their improvising mentors, are graduates trained in the discipline, professional associations, high-profile conferences, networks that cross continents. Corporate publishers devote whole catalogues to the written output of cultural studies, which by now includes not only the prolific research in the field, but also histories of the discipline itself, bulky course readers, and not a few bluffer's guides. At the same time as building its own impressive organization, cultural studies proposes, with increasing success, to remodel teaching and research in other areas of the academy, notably those of literary studies, history, sociology, and women's studies. The radical minority intervention of thirty years ago is now increasingly widely relayed as a new general formula for work across the entire range of what, for convenience, we may call the human sciences.
The feeling of incongruity - or of simple unreality - that this development must induce in a lucid observer is sharpened by the reflection that it has come about in historical conditions that, on the face of things, should have tended to frustrate it. The years in which cultural studies - a self-defined project of radical innovation and reconstruction - has flourished have been ones of severe financial austerity for the academic institutions that house the subject (especially but not only in Britain) and of setback and disorientation for the radical movements that have been its inspiration. The cultural studies boom is an impressive reality, but no one should rush to celebrate it as a simple tale of progress. While acknowledging, as is proper, the individual and collective achievements that cultural studies has made possible, we should pause for some necessary critical reflection on the general logic of the project as a mode of cultural analysis, and on what is called cultural politics.
I attempt this here in the form of five brief notes, beginning with a definition of cultural studies as a distinctive trend in cultural analysis, going on to dwell on some paradoxes of life and thought in the discipline, and closing with some general critical remarks on the relationship that is at stake in it, namely that between culture and politics.
1
The classic definition of what came to be cultural studies was proposed by Raymond Williams: it would investigate the creation of meaning in and as a formative part of "a whole way of life," the whole world of sense-making (descriptions, explanations, interpretations, valuations of all kinds) in societies understood as historical material human organizations. In the first place, then, cultural studies called for a drastic expansion of the field of analysis, beyond the boundaries maintained by the literary criticism from which it emerged: all social meanings are eligible for scrutiny. However, this does not suffice to define it. The older tradition of cultural criticism (or kulturkritik, the standard German term which I prefer to use here, in roman type from now on, on the grounds that the familiar English words are too familiar to hold the strict definition my argument calls for) gave special importance to the study of everyday meaning. Writers in this tradition, like the literary critics F.R. and Q.D. Leavis in England, or the philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset in Spain, or the younger Thomas Mann in Germany, responded passionately to the new "mass" culture of democracy and commercialized literacy, but always in a spirit of high-minded, traditionalist revulsion. Unlike them, cultural studies proposes a procedural equalization of its data: in other words, while poetry and popcorn advertisements may not be of equal value in any plausible moral terms, both are potentially interesting as carriers of social meanings and in that precise sense should be approached with equal analytic seriousness. However, this distinction, like the first, is insufficient to characterize cultural studies, which is not merely a style of anthropology, devoted to the study of society as a set of symbolic processes. There is a third specification, the crucial one. Cultural studies did not merely extend the range and social sensibility of kulturkritik; it set out to challenge the whole system of values that supported the older tradition, a whole system of cultural authority, and to explore, if not quite establish, the forms of an alternative authority. This is the sense in which cultural studies is defended as "intrinsically political."
2
This idea of an expanded, level field of study is a matter of principle rather than of actual practice. No one, no professional collective, can pretend to study "everything," and the notion of a truly indifferent selection of materials is self-contradictory. There are basic choices to make; and, for all the variety of its possible realizations and the diversity of institutional circumstance, cultural studies has seemed rather constant in its sense of priorities. Its main field of analysis has been the same range of social phenomena that so alarmed and repelled traditional kulturkritik: the "mass" cultural forms and practices of advanced capitalism - cinema, television, popular journalism, advertising, shopping. And its leading polemical theme, which flatly opposes the stock conviction of kulturkritik, has been that such culture is not a mere opiate, successfully designed to induce passivity in a homogenized mass, but on the contrary that popular participation in it is active, deliberate, selective, and even subversive.
These linked alterations of field and perspective are crucial for any socialist theory of culture. If the dogmatic propositions of kulturkritik were in fact valid - and some Marxists, most notably Herbert Marcuse, have veered close to that view - then the classical understanding of socialism as the self-emancipation of the working class would amount to little more than a sectarian piety. When Antonio Gramsci affirmed that all human beings are intellectuals, even though only some are assigned the social function and status of "intellectual," it was in just that classical spirit. However, the decisive aspect of Gramsci's formula is its twofold character: it asserts not only the material possibility of liberation but also the established fact of domination. The leading tendency in cultural studies has struck a different emphasis. Insofar as cultural studies neglects to integrate "high" cultural forms and practices into its field of analysis, it compromises its own theoretical ambition, which is to analyze "whole ways of life," or, in other, more pointed terms, the existing social relations of culture in their totality. And insofar as it insists, one-sidedly, on the active and critical element in popular cultural usages, it tends to overlook the overwhelming historical realities of inequality and subordination that condition them. These tendencies jointly work against the development of properly critical theory and analysis; claiming to supersede kulturkritik, they actually offer something more like a compensatory reaction to it.
A minority in cultural studies has stood out against these tendencies, but without much success. "Populism" is one charge laid against the majority inclination, and with good reason. But populism, in all its varieties, sees itself as oppositional; there is a still graver charge that might be laid here. Given that most metropolitan popular culture today takes the form of commodified recreation or aestheticized subsistence activity, all organized as a market in "life-styles," the spontaneous bent of cultural studies is actually conformist - at its worst, the theoretical self-consciousness of satellite television and shopping malls.
3
This is a worst-case account, granted. Against it must be set the evidence of remarkable energy and talent, and a remarkable record of work. But it prompts further reflection on the meaning of the received conviction that cultural studies is necessarily on the left or, as we are repeatedly told, in a phrase that is both emphatic and apparently empty, "intrinsically political."
There is no doubt that cultural studies has attempted to further emancipatory social aims - socialist, feminist, antiracist, anti-imperialist. Its intervention has been in those substantial, specified senses political. But it is romantic to go on thinking of cultural studies as an "intervention." It is now an instituted academic activity, and academic activity, whatever its intrinsic merits, is inevitably not the same thing as a political project. What happens when an oppositional tendency becomes a budget-holding discipline, offering credentials, careers, and research funds? More or less what any realistic observer would expect. No academic discipline may honorably or realistically apply political tests to its students and teachers. The day cannot be far off - indeed, it has probably arrived already - when the first real professionals of the discipline, trained in it and now pursuing it as a scholarly career, take their places in classrooms to give the introductory lecture on "subversion" or some other such routine syllabus heading. This is not just a sour hypothesis - if we seek a precedent, we need only recall the case of F.R. Leavis and his circle, whose militant, truculently anti-academic style of literary criticism was widely copied, becoming in the end quite conventional but retaining its oppositional mannerisms. It is useless to moralize; but leftist practitioners in cultural studies have need of far greater ironic self-consciousness than their new "political" discipline seems inclined to encourage.
4
This recall of Leavis prompts further thought about the relationship between kulturkritik and cultural studies - and this time in the dimension where they appear most deeply opposed, that of politics.
For all its differing national and disciplinary colorations, kulturkritik was a stable intellectual phenomenon. Its exponents normally claimed to speak from an authoritative center of values, which might be characterized as "human" or "universal" or "traditional," and for which the most favored summarizing term was culture. Their self-defined task was to defend the interests of culture in this sense against the advancing threats of modernity, which might be epitomized in intellectual specialization or industrial technology or commercialism or "the masses," and for which the classic summarizing term was civilization. Kulturkritik was invariably elitist: it was an indisputable truth that culture must always be a minority affair, to be sustained in the face of general indifference and incomprehension. The particular political options of its advocates were variable, from right to left, but in all cases they were secondary, for the inborn desire of kulturkritik was to assert a kind of social authority that would transcend the "merely" political. In effect, the key distinction between culture, the realm of essential values, and civilization, the realm of social "machinery," made it impossible to conceive of politics as a meaningful social activity at all.
Cultural studies has striven to overthrow kulturkritik. It has proposed an alternative understanding of "civilization" and "the masses," discovering activity, choice, and significance where kulturkritik could see only stupefaction and automatism, and it has done so in the name of radical social goals. Yet there is something curious here. Cultural studies, of course, has repeatedly challenged liberal and conservative thinking, but it has, if anything, been more preoccupied with what it perceives as the shortcomings of the left. Now it is true that there are many to perceive, but cultural studies has focused on one above all others: its persistent suggestion - the signature-tune of the discipline in effect - is that the analysis of popular culture does not merely enhance political understanding, but in some sense invalidates and supersedes the inherited political traditions of the left. In other words, cultural studies seeks to subordinate the merely political (the old concepts "class," "state," "struggle," "revolution," and the like) to the higher authority of popular culture. And in doing this, it faithfully repeats the basic pattern of kulturkritik. It does indeed negate kulturkritik, but only as a mirror-image reverses its original, preserving the form intact. Here if any where lies the source of the paradoxes that make up the life of the interventionist discipline called cultural studies.
5
How, then, may we try to think through the relationship between cultural theory and politics? I have claimed that cultural studies reiterates a specific, strong understanding of the relationship, and, by implication, that this understanding is false, and liable to compromise the sincere political intentions of the left in the discipline. By way of conclusion, I would like to venture an alternative way of thinking about the "political" status of socialist cultural theory.
The relationship between culture and politics has been subject to two kinds of reductionism on the left. We can, without regret, discard one major option: the familiar political reductionism, for which the communist movement became notorious, which categorizes all cultural initiative in the terms of an already given programmatic scheme, and whose sense of human possibilities begins and ends with the political bottom line. But we now have an alternative reductionism, this time of a culturalist variety, promoted in the academy under the leadership of cultural studies and in the wider world as postmodern wisdom. This reductionism honors all manifestations of cultural difference as political, so encouraging particularism and a narcissistic dissolution of politics in the necessary stricter sense. If the first acknowledged culture only as a political instrument, the second has effectively dissolved the very possibility of politics, and indeed, I would argue, the possibility of culture itself as a field of political struggle.
A socialist cultural theory must recognize both the possibilities and the limitations of cultural practices. It must be able to acknowledge that such practices are both more and less than politics. Though culture is a contested terrain, a space for political struggle, it cannot be only a political theater; nor can it wholly encompass the political. The first principle of a socialist theory of culture would say that the typical state of the politics-culture relationship is discrepancy. This may not seem a very glamorous proposition, but it must be emphasized once we expand the field of "culture" to include the totality of social meanings or "a whole way of life." For while this expanded understanding may be vital for socialist cultural theory, it also creates its own conceptual problems.
If culture is the totality of social meanings, and if political activity is aimed at the totality of social relations within a given space (as a truly emancipatory politics must surely be), it may look at first as if culture and politics really are the same thing, as cultural studies is now prone to assume. We cannot say, in principle, that one kind of social content is political and another not; if culture covers the whole society, it seems that any cultural tendency can legitimately call itself "political."
But there is a fundamental misconception here. Both culture and politics can be understood as encompassing the totality of social relations, but they do so in distinctive ways. Politics differs from other social practices by virtue of its role in determining the character of social relations. Even when it operates entirely in the zone of meaning - as word and image, say - political practice is regulated by its specialized function. It is a deliberative practice, normally oriented to decisions; the controlling question is always, What is to be done.? In peaceful democratic conditions, it is an injunctive practice, a struggle for effective consent. And in the last resort, it turns to resources that cannot be reduced to culture: the means of physical coercion.
Cultural practices, which we may understand rather less abstractly as those whose principal function is to produce meanings, are not of this kind. They share the same world of meaning; they are rich in political suggestion; but they lack, have no need of, those specialized characteristics: it is not the function of culture to determine the nature of social relations by means of deliberation, injunction, and coercion. The implications of this distinction were perceived by Gramsci: cultural judgment and political judgment are by nature distinct and, moreover, tend not to coincide.
Cultural practices may treat any and all differences as absolute (as Georg Lukacs once remarked, there are no united fronts in the realm of art and ideas). Politics, in seeking to being about or to forestall some particular state of affairs, to secure this or that general condition of existence, cannot treat difference in the same way. It must be able to bridge the kinds of difference that cultural practices may regard as absolute, to create solidarities in pursuit of specific ends. At the same time, and for the same reason, political interests may make it necessary to promote division within what looks like a field of cultural affinity. For instance, to achieve a political goal (state-funded nursery provision, for instance), it may be necessary to draw out class and sex-gender antagonisms within a community of religious belief. Viewed in the perspective of any given cultural interest, a political demand is always either too much or too little; and the political complaint against culture is always of the same kind. Each, with regard to the other, is both sectarian and ecumenical.
This is the fundamental distinction that cultural studies elides. There is no space here to explore the historical reasons for this, but something can be said about its consequences. From the beginning, cultural studies has tended to dissolve politics into culture. Even Raymond Williams, who remained politically engaged and active outside the field of culture proper, in retrospect conceded that he had inflated the possibilities of cultural politics, and never quite escaped that tendency in his theoretical work. Yet he and other early practitioners of socialist cultural studies did at least two important things: first, while refusing the reduction of culture to political instrumentality in the Stalinist manner, they acknowledged its importance as a terrain of struggle, especially in the era of consumer capitalism and "mass" media. Second, they insisted on the legitimacy of "popular" culture, against the elitist tendency to dismiss it as so much narcotic mystification. Popular culture in capitalist society never existed outside relations of domination, or beyond the imperatives of commodification; yet within those relations and imperatives, "the masses" were never only passive and subordinate. Popular culture was marked by both subordination and resistance.
Cultural studies today is not only furthering the dissolution of politics into culture but in the process is also squandering the legacy of its pioneers. It leaves no room for politics beyond cultural practice, or for political solidarities beyond the particularisms of cultural difference. Indeed, there is hardly room even for a politics of cultural contestation. There is no space, and in fact no need, for struggle if all popular culture, abstracted from "high" culture and from the historical realities of inequality and domination, is already active and critical, if television and shopping are already theaters of subversion. But if nothing lies beyond these cultural manifestations, then the subordination of "the masses," their submission to consumer capitalism, must be as thorough as the exponents of kulturkritik assumed it was. Here is the deepest paradox of cultural studies: that it ends by confirming and even celebrating this antidemocratic judgment.
<i>Francis Mulhern is a professor in the School of English, Cultural, and Communication Studies at Middlesex University in London. A preliminary version of this article has appeared in Travesia: Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies (London).
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Publication Information: Article Title: The Politics of Cultural Studies. Contributors: Francis Mulhern - author. Magazine Title: Monthly Review. Volume: 47. Issue: 3. Publication Date: July-August 1995. Page Number: 31+. COPYRIGHT 1995 Monthly Review Foundation, Inc.; COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group</i>
I plan to research some of the main Western indologists and how their contributions led to the massive misportrayal o f the Indic people and ther civilization] Here is a tentative list
<img src='http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4889/319/1600/EuropeansinIndia.1.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
Western Indologists who studied India
Jean-Antoine Abbe Dubois
French missionary in India, b. in 1765 at St. Remèze (Ardèche); d. in Paris, 17 Feb., 1848. The Abbé Dubois was a director of the Seminary of the Foreign Missions, a member of the Royal Societies of Great Britain and Paris, and of the Literary Society of Madras. At the outbreak of the French Revolution he went to India to preach Christianity to the natives, whose favour he soon won by his affability and patience. For their instruction he composed elementary treatises on Christian doctrine which won general commendation. Though he remained thirty-two years in that arduous field, his labours were all fruitless and he returned convinced that the conversion of the Hindus with the deep-rooted prejudices of centuries was impossible under the existing conditions. This opinion which he broached in "Letters on the State of Christianity in India" etc. (London, 1823), was vigorously attacked in England. Two Anglican ministers, James Hough and H. Townley, published, respectively, "A Reply to the Letters of the Abbé Dubois" etc. (London, 1824) and "An Answer to the Abbé Dubois" (London, 1824). "The Friend of India", a journal of Calcutta (1825), contained a refutation of his letters, to which the abbe rejoined in a letter of much gravity and moderation. It found its way into the "Bulletin des Sciences", May, 1825, and the first volume of the "Asiatic Journal" (1841). Besides these letters he wrote: "Description of the Character, Manners and Customs of the People of India, and of their Institutions, religious and civil" (London, 1816). This work was bought by the East India Company for twenty thousand francs and printed at their expense. The author published an enlarged edition in French under the title "Moeurs, institutions, et cérémonies des peuples de l'Inde" (Paris, 1825, 2 vols.), which is considered the best and most complete work on the subject. "Exposé de quelques-uns des principaux articles de la théologie des Brahmes" (Paris, 1825); "Le Pantcha-tantra ou les cinq ruses, fables du Brahme Vichnou-Sarma" (Paris, 1826). Abbé Dubois was one of the collaborators of the "Bulletin Universel des Sciences" of the Baron de Férussac
Mantras of Anti-Brahminism
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Secondly, regarding their secret books, Grant claimed that â[w]ith respect to the real tenets of the Hindusâ¦they are to be taken from their ancient booksâ¦â (cited in Mill 1817: 410 ff). However, when Rammohun Roy later translated the Upanishads a contemporary pundit charged him with having fabricated them himself (Hay 1963: 46 ff). Moreover, on the subject of Bengal, Fitzedward Hall wrote in 1868 that â[u]ntil very recently, the learned Bengali has long been satisfied, substantially, to do without the Vedaâ (cited in Kejariwal 1988: 3). A strange state of affairs, suggesting that brahmins didnât really know what Europeans were talking about when they enquired about their sacred books. Even more, those who did seem to know about the texts didnât seem to understand them. Regarding their secret language, Abbé Dubois, for example, had the following observation to make:
It is trueâ¦that those who devote themselves to the study of these books (the Vedas) cannot hope to extract any instruction from them, for they are written in ancient Sanskrit, which has become almost wholly unintelligible; and such numberless mistakes have been introduced by copyists, either through carelessness or ignorance, that the most learned find themselves quite unable to interpret the original text. Out of 20,000 brahmins I do not believe that one could be found who even partially understood the real Vedas [Dubois 1816: 173-74].
What Dubois saw was not the exception but the rule. When talking of the prayers in the Vedas, Horace Hayman Wilson discovered that they were hardly studied at all. Besides, âwhen they are studied it is merely for the sake of repeating the words; the sense is regarded as a matter of no importance, and is not understood even by the Brahman who recites or chants the expressionsâ (1840: 49).
There were other elements as well that did not fit the picture of a class of priests that controlled the laity through the corruption of original beliefs. Wilson, for example, felt it necessary to nuance Jonesâ views as based on Manuâs text, stating that brahmins were not âin great measure the ghostly advisers of the peopleâ¦This office is now filled by various personsâ¦Many of these are brahmans, but they are not necessarily so, and it is not as brahmans that they receive the veneration of their lay followersâ¦â (1832: 311).
However, when Indian intellectuals began to write their own story, they did not start from those experiences. Neither did they try to make them intelligible: India, as they saw it, had its own religion of priests and the hierarchy of caste system was due to priestly despotism. The implication of this account is the unconditional acceptance of Christianityâs theological conception of religion by Indian intellectuals. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->]
IX
<img src='http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4889/319/1600/UndermineCivilizationPg96.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
Origin of Master Aryan Race Theory
(Scanned pages from Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies by Abbe J.A. Dubois
Manuscript first completed in 1806, English translation first published in 1816.)
Dubois: We must undermine Hindu civilization
The OCR of scanned pages 96,97
-
A POLICY OF NON-INTERFERENCE 97
96 TUE HINDUâS INBRED CONSERVATISM
unreclaimed, it is due to the hopeless sterility of the soil, which, even in the best seasons, would never repay the laborer for his trouble, or else because, to yield any profit at all, they would require more capital and more courage than most of the people possess.
It is, to my mind, vain hope to suppose that we can really very much improve the condition of the Hindus, or raise their circumstances of life to the level prevailing in Europe. The efforts of a Government which is humane and generous, as well as just may succeed up to a certain point in lessening some of their hardships; but as long as it is in the nature of the Hindus to cling to their civil and religious institutions, to their old customs and habits, they must remain what they have always been, for these are so many insurmountable obstacles in the path of progress and to the attainment of a new order of things better calculated to bring them happiness. They will continue to grovel in poverty as long as their physical and intellectual faculties continue in the same groove.
Therefore, to make a new race of the Hindus, one would have to begin by undermining the very foundations of their civilization religion, and polity, and by turning them into atheists and barbarians. Having accomplished this terrible upheaval, we might then perhaps offer our services to them as Law givers and religious teachers. But even then our task would be only half accomplished. After dragging them out of the depths of barbarism, anarchy, and atheism into which we had plunged them, and after giving them new laws, a new polity, and a new religion we should still have to give them new natures and different inclinations. Otherwise we should run the risk of seeing them soon relapse into their former state, which would be worse if anything, than before.
Let our theoretical philanthropists, with their mistaken and superficial notions concerning the genius and character of the Hindus and the varied and multitudinous social links that bind them together, exclaim as much as they please in their unreflecting enthusiasm, that nothing has been done for the physical and spiritual improvement of the race. My reply is, âWhy do you expound your shallow theories in Europe. Come and study the question on the spot
Make personal inquiry into the manners and customs of the people; realize for yourselves, whether all possible means have been tried with a view to gaining this desirable end And then, but not till then, make up your minds on the question. Since our European ways, manners, and customs, so, utterly different from theirs, do not allow of our winning their confidence, at least let us continue to earn their respect and admiration by humane examples of compassion, generosity, and well-doing. Let us leave them their cherished laws and prejudices, since no human effort will persuade them to give them up, even in their own interests, and let us not risk making the gentlest and most submissive people in the world furious and indomitable by thwarting them. Let us take care lest we bring about, by some hasty or imprudent course of action, catastrophes which would reduce the country to a state of anarchy, desolation, and ultimate ruin, for, in my humble opinion, the day when the Government attempts to interfere with any of the more important religious and civil usages of the Hindus wiII be the last of its existence as a political power.
CHAPTER VII
The Mythical Origins of the BrahmanasâTheir Name and their Original FoundersâObjections on their True OriginâBuddhist and
Jaina
The real origin of the Brahmins is wrapped in mystery, and one can only hazard conjectures on the subject, or put belief in myths. The story most generally accepted says that they were born from Brahmaâs head, which accounts for their name. One would suppose that as all castes Were born from this same father they would be privileged to bear the same name; but as the Brahmins were the firstborn, and issued from the noblest part of the common parent, they claimed special privileges from which all others were rigorously excluded. They have another theory to bear out the accepted belief that no one else Is entitled to the illustrious name of Brahmana. They say that no one knows anything about Brahmaâs attribute
Dubois says brahmins originated in Caucasus!
Dubois introduces philology and says brahmins are descendents of Japheth!
Dubois says Hinduism is just allegories
Max Muller's prefatory note to Dubois' book
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->I plan to research some of the main Western indologists and how their contributions led to the massive misportrayal o f the Indic people and ther civilization] Here is a tentative list
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Add current fraud Western Indologists. Now they have started distancing themselves from Max Muller etc and started their own fake theories or using old academician tool "plagiarism". Old wine in new bottle.
We can first list more visible current fraud Western Indologists.
Thus Spake Michael Witzel
canyou list some of them MUdy (witzel,Fosse,JoanneKirkpatrick)
Edwin F. Bryant, PhD,
has impressive credentials, but thequestion is why is he is so studiously agnostic in the face of mounting evidence that AIT is untenable. Is it the fear that he will be academically blackballed
Edwin F. Bryant
Committee for the Study of Religion
Barker Center
12 Quincy Street
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
E-mail: ebryant@fas.harvard.edu
Education
Columbia University, Ph.D. 5/97. M.A. 9/93, M.Phil 5/94.
Major Subjects:
Indic civilizations, religions, cultures and history; ancient and modern Indic languages and dialects; Hinduism; Middle Eastern Cultures, Comparative Religion; Study of Religion.
Columbia University, B.A., MEALAC, 8/91.
University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, (1986-89).
Manchester University (1976-77).
Awards and Fellowships
American Council of Learned Societies/Social Science Research Council/National Endowment of the Humanities International and Area Fellowship, 2000-2001.
Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, 1995-96.
Whiting Fellowship, 1995-96 (declined).
American Institute of Indian Studies Junior Fellowship for research in India, 1994-95.
FLAS fellowship for the study of Hindi, 1992-93, 1993-94, summer 1992.
Magna cum Laude, Columbia University, 1991.
Phi Beta Kappa, Columbia University, 1991.
Columbia University School of General Studies Scholarship, 1990-91.
Languages
Read, spoken and written: Italian, French, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Sanskrit.
Read: Latin, German, Spanish, Pali, Avadhi and Bhrajabhasa (medieval Indic dialects).
Other: Two semesters of Arabic.
Time Spent Abroad. Upbringing in the British Foreign Office: Italy, 1957-61; Gemany, 1964-67; Taiwan, 1967-70; Zaire, 1970-73; Nigeria, 1973-75; Israel, 1977-78.
Independant travel: France, 1975-76; Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, 1978-79; India, 1979-84, 1987, 1992, 1994-95; Bahrain, 1984-1985; Syria,1993; Italy, continuous travel.
Academic and Related Employment
Lecturer on Indology, Committee for the Study of Religion, Harvard University, 1997- present.
Visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of World Religion, Harvard University, 1997- 2000.
Instructor, Elementary Sanskrit, Religion Deptartment, Columbia University, 1996-97.
Instructor, Hindi/Urdu, MEALAC Deptartment, Columbia University, 1996-97.
Teaching Assistant, Introduction to Eastern Religions, Religion Deptartment, Barnard College, Columbia University, 1994.
Teaching Assistant, Sanskrit, MEALAC Department, Columbia University, 1993-94.
Teaching Assistant, Hinduism, Religion Deptartment, Barnard College, Columbia University, 1993.
Tutor, All levels of Hindi to students referred by the Hindi/Urdu faculty, Columbia University, 1991-1997.
Research Consultant, 1992-93, for Amy Poster, Curator, Oriental Section of the Brooklyn Museum.
Translated Braj Bhasa and Sanskrit inscriptions on Indian miniature paintings and provided commentaries.
Rapporteur, The Integrated Humanities Institute on India funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, 1992-93.
Teaching Assistant, all levels of Hindi/Urdu, MEALAC Deptartment, Columbia University, 1991-92.
Teacher of English as a foreign language, Jerusalem, 1977-78; Tehran, 1978-79; Bahrain, 1984-85.
Courses Taught
Introduction to Hinduism; Krishna; Theism in Indic Thought; The Bhagavad Gita and its Commentaries; The Yoga of Devotion: Reading of a Hindu Theological Text; Philosophies of India; Reading Hindu Texts; Hindu Gurus in the West; The Rise of the Goddess Tradition; God as Lover, Child & Friend; Sanskrit; Hindi.
Courses in preparation for the next academic Year: Vedanta and its Commentaries; The Rise of Hindu Nationalism; Siva & Sakti; The Encounter of Europe and India in the 19th Century; the Yoga Sutras.
Courses Capable of Teaching
All aspects of Hinduism; Survey Courses on Indian Literatures, Civilizations and Cultures; South Asian Buddhism; History of Religion; Theory and Methods; Islam; Middle Eastern Civilization and Cultures; Eastern Religions; East Asian Civilization and Cultures; Asian Humanities; Hindi (all levels); Sanskrit (all levels); Comparative Religion.
Publications
Books
In Quest of the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Invasion Debate. New York: Oxford University Press, in press.
In Quest of the Historical Krishna. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
Krishna: The Srimad Bhagavat Purana, 10th canto. Translation from Sanskrit.
London: Penguin, forthcoming.
The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History. Co-edited with Laurie Patton, Richmond: Curzon Press, forthcoming.
The Hare Krishna Movement: The Post-Charismatic Fate of a Religious Transplant. Co-
edited with Ekstrand, Maria. New York: Columbia U press, forthcoming.
Primary Sources in the Krishna Tradition. Edited volume New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
Articles
'The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate and Nationalist Discourse" in New Perspectives on Vedic and Ancient Civilization Ed. Sharma, B.D. Meerut: World Association for Vedic Studies, 2000 11-26.
"Linguistic Substrata and the Indo-Aryan Migration Debate." Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia. Harvard Oriental Series. 3 (1999): 59-83.
"The Indo-Aryan Invasion Debate: The Logic of the Response." Proceedings from the 10th Annual Indo-European Conference at UCLA. Monograph Series 32 (1998): 205-228.
"The Indo-Aryan Invasion Debate and the Politics of Identity." 'Arier' und Dravidien. Neue Hallesche Berichte. Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte und Gegenwart Suedindiens Halle: Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen, forthcoming.
"History of Vegetarianism in Sanskrit Sources." _A Communion of Subjects: Animals in
Religion and Ethics. Eds. Patton, K & Waldau, P. forthcoming.
Foreword for Das, Navadvip Jaiva Dharma. forthcoming.
Contributor to Poster, Amy G., Indian Paintings of the Brooklyn Museum. New York: Hudson Hills, 1993.
Translated two Braj Bhasa poems from the Sur Sagar (10: 4156-57) Journal of Vaishnava Studies. 1:1 (1992): 6-7.
Papers Presented
"A History of Vegetarianism." American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, 1999.
"The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate and the politicization of History." Conference on 'Arier und Dravidien' at Nartin Luther Universität, Halle, Germany. Oct 2-6, 1999.
"Dating Vedic Texts: An Astrochronological Approach." Annual Conference of South Asia, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Oct 1998.
"The Indo-Aryan Invasion Debate: The Politics of a Discourse." 2nd Annual Conference of the Association of Vedic Studies, Los Angeles. Aug 1998.
"The Indo-Aryan Invasion Debate: Dissident Voices from India." 10th Annual Conference of Indo-European Studies, Los Angeles. July 1998.
"Sacred Sources of Indic Tradition." The Agha Khan program for Islamic Architecture, MIT. Nov 1997.
"The Indigenous Aryan School of Historians." American Academy of Religion annual meeting. Nov, 1997.
"The Aryan Invasion debate: the Linguistic Evidence." Annual Conference on South Asia, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Oct, 1997.
"The Indo-Aryan Invasion Debate." Study of Religion Colloquium, Harvard University. Nov, 1997.
"Linguistic Substrata and the Indo-Aryan Migration Debate." Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia Conference, University of Michigan. Oct, 1996.
"The Origin of the Aryans: Some Linguistic Considerations." Indus Sarasvati Conference, Atlanta. Oct, 1996.
"Indian Proto-history from a Traditional Hindu Point of View." University of Mysore, India. Feb, 1995.
"In Defense of the Tradition." Regional meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Union Theological Seminar, New York. April, 1994.
Most modern Western Indologists and their sepoys have similar roles as their colonial counterpart. In the past colonialism was directly effected by the presence of the white man in the colonies. These days it is done more subtly and in long distance. As result the Indologist has also become a master of subterfuge and deceit. He protests against accusations of "racism" and tries to put on Indian facades like the romAka brAhmaNa, but beneath s/he is the same. He continues to exploit the same allies: the avarNas and Dravidianists. The Malhotran U-turn theory explains much of the genesis and evolution of these academics. In fact this must be studied in the much larger context of why the US universities allowed leftism to flourish while firmly eliminating it from the political scene and other areas of public life. Academic Indologists and leftists are the like the virus harbored by wasps for deployment against targets for pyscops. The Califoria book affair shows that the modern Indologist serves the Anglosphere (or rather the more inclusive Leukosphere) in no different a way from the archaic versions operating in India of the Raj.
Given this it is hardly surprising that Bryant is cautious, lest his stomach go empty.
This said it does not mean we should ignore all what they produce, just as we wisely did not ignore everything of the Industrial revultion because of its Anglical antecedents.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->This said it does not mean we should ignore all what they produce, just as we wisely did not ignore everything of the Industrial revultion because of its Anglical antecedents<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ohne zweifel, mein herr
Even in that truism, we have to learn from the master empire builders of the millenium. Note that while they overtly professed indifference and even contempt for the traditions of the land which they ruled, that did not stop them or others in the rest of Europe from encouraging their best minds to study the same in great depth
<!--QuoteBegin-Kaushal+Jan 16 2006, 06:56 AM-->QUOTE(Kaushal @ Jan 16 2006, 06:56 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--> Thus Spake Michael Witzel
canyou list some of them MUdy (witzel,Fosse,JoanneKirkpatrick)
[right][snapback]44897[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Hi,
>> http://www.vigilonline.com/downloads/Dos...Witzel.pdf
Does someone on this forum know anybody at vigilonline, if yes , could you please
tell them to keep a pure txt or html file for this link ( as a matter of fact all pdfs ),
if not irritating, its certainly reduces chances mailing info to other ppl.
Not everybody likes or can afford to install blotted acrobat or look for/think of thinner alternatives.
In my view it certainly defeats the purpose of spreading info.
Thanks
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Lars Martin Fosse,Lars Martin Fosse, Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse, Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114, 0674 Oslo - Norway
Dominik Wujastyk, University College London
Boris Oguibenine, University of Strasbourg, France<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Kaushal,
Add these three name with known history to twist facts.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Sudha Shenoy - She believe in waving her tail in front of above listed anti Hindu/anti Indic civilization experts.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What to say about her? She makes me laugh, joker on lose. <!--emo&  --><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Hats off to sabha.info
Arvind Kumar has carefully re-constructed the history of world base on these scholars <!--emo&:lol:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laugh.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='laugh.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--emo&:lol:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laugh.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='laugh.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Visit the site.. it's worth a trip.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>4004 BCE:</b> The world is created in six days.
<b>2348 BCE:</b> A flood submerges the apple orchard in the desert where humans inhabit. 600-year-old Noah escapes along with his 100-year-old son Japheth, goats, and other animals.
<b>2200 BCE:</b> The seven sons of Japheth (i.e., the seven Hindu sages mentioned in Hindu texts) lead one-third of humanity to the Caucasian region and populate it. There they build the world's first civilization called the Aryan civilization.
Stanley Wolpert explains lucidly in his book, The New History of India, the fate of the inhabitants of this civilization.
Around 2000 B.C. the original Indo-European speaking, seminomadic barbarians, who most probably lived in the region between the Caspian and the Black seas, were driven by some natural disaster, possibly drought, prolonged frost, or plague. Elaborating on the type of natural disaster, he writes,
Whatever the cause of their dispersion - it may even have been a series of Mongol invasions from Central Asia - the ancestors . . . were forced to flee from Southern Russia to survive.
We chose "whatever" as the cause (since we haven't yet figured out how a series of Mongol invasions falls under the category of natural disasters), and were in luck when we found the actual explanation buried in an article by Michael Witzel! Apparently, civilizations developed on pond sides! A tsunami from the pond must have drowned the entire civilization. Well, not quite the entire civilization. The male members and horse chariots survived!
<b>1500 BCE:</b> The male members of the Aryan Civilization get onto their chariots and ride to India. When they arrive in their thundering chariots, the men folk in North India are terrified by the neighing horses and run away to South India leaving behind the women! The Aryans then proceed to civilize India.
<b>1552 CE:</b> As James Heitzman points out, India became so civilized that miracles started occurring and one such miracle was that the mummified body of "Saint" Francis Xavier did not decay!
<b>1950 CE to 2005 CE:</b> The Aryans start to cover up their misdeed of invading others and hatch a worldwide conspiracy along with Stanford University, BBC, National Geographic, American Journal of Human Genetics, Indian Statistical Institute, all genetic scientists, scientists involved in carbon dating, University of Durham, and many other institutions around the world. Together, they start rigging evidence against the Aryan Invasion 'Theory' and evidence against Aryan Invasion Theory starts appearing in academic journals.
<b>2005 CE:</b> One Steve Farmer, who has reportedly been described as some sort of assistant to Michael Witzel in a petition to end Harvard's association with hate groups, indicates in a response to the last edition of 4M Report, that there is massive money behind SABHA (it costs under $20 a year to run this site) and he is actually hot on the money trail to unearth this cunning conspiracy by Hindus!
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