<!--QuoteBegin-Bodhi+Mar 21 2007, 09:14 PM-->QUOTE(Bodhi @ Mar 21 2007, 09:14 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Husky, challenge to the AIT fancies had started even before Vivekananda or Aurobindo. Credit goes, several decades before them, to Madame HP Blavatsky and her Theosophical Soceity, who were probably the first to openly challenge these theories.Â
Also Maharshi Dayanand Saraswati in 1860s (before Vivekananda) challenged such 'explanations' to the origin of Sanskritam. Although at some point in time, he did seem to harbour the opinion that 'Aryans' were a people, who did inhabitate India as their first home of choice.[right][snapback]65946[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Thanks Bodhi.
I merely mentioned as examples the only two people whose statements of disbelief in AIT I had personally read. It's good to add Maharshi Dayanand Saraswati to that list.
Also, isn't Annie Besant the founder of the Theosophical Society? I now remember having read of her writings distrusting the AIT.
But of Madame Blavatsky I've only heard as being a dubious character. See here, from paper mentioned elsewhere in IF by Rajesh_G:
http://www.tobiashubinette.se/asianists.pdf
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Moreover, the American Sanskritist Revilo Pendleton Oliver was a racialist and anti-Communist, and a modern example of a scholarly proponent of âAryan Buddhismâ following Völkisch and occult Racialists and Nazis like Madame Blavatsky and Savitri Devi is the Danish Indologist Christian Lindtner who is symptomatically also deeply engaged in the murky Holocaust denial business.39<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->So Blavatsky was a racialist? (It is known that the Greek woman who dubbed herself 'Savitri Devi' was both a racist and nazi-sympathiser.)
Also Maharshi Dayanand Saraswati in 1860s (before Vivekananda) challenged such 'explanations' to the origin of Sanskritam. Although at some point in time, he did seem to harbour the opinion that 'Aryans' were a people, who did inhabitate India as their first home of choice.[right][snapback]65946[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Thanks Bodhi.
I merely mentioned as examples the only two people whose statements of disbelief in AIT I had personally read. It's good to add Maharshi Dayanand Saraswati to that list.
Also, isn't Annie Besant the founder of the Theosophical Society? I now remember having read of her writings distrusting the AIT.
But of Madame Blavatsky I've only heard as being a dubious character. See here, from paper mentioned elsewhere in IF by Rajesh_G:
http://www.tobiashubinette.se/asianists.pdf
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Moreover, the American Sanskritist Revilo Pendleton Oliver was a racialist and anti-Communist, and a modern example of a scholarly proponent of âAryan Buddhismâ following Völkisch and occult Racialists and Nazis like Madame Blavatsky and Savitri Devi is the Danish Indologist Christian Lindtner who is symptomatically also deeply engaged in the murky Holocaust denial business.39<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->So Blavatsky was a racialist? (It is known that the Greek woman who dubbed herself 'Savitri Devi' was both a racist and nazi-sympathiser.)