Scavenging about the Sarasvati-googlepages site led to this:
http://sarasvati95.googlepages.com/aryanmythology.pdf
<b>Aryan Mythology as Science and Ideology</b> by Stefan Arvidsson (who also wrote that book "Aryan Idols" which Rajesh_G had brought to our attention).
I've not read all of the above PDF - just glanced over it and copied/typed out what I found interesting from the bits that I did have a look at.
Arvidsson makes many different points. Some of them - the way I've excerpted them below - don't seem directly connected with the Oryan Theory. Like the bits on "Myth" - but in their own right, I found these additional points instructive or supportive of things we already suspect/know.
Read the entire article, there would probably more such ideas in there.
(All stuff in quoteblocks in this post are Arvidsson's words, <i>except</i> for the purple stuff which are mine.)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Since the 1980s there has been a heated debate about whether or not the influential theories of George Dumezil have been affected by ideological motives. Critics of Dumezil have argued that Dumezil's ideas about the unique structure of Indo-European mythology were governed by his right-wing sympathies and his romantic view of ancient Indo-Europen - that is, "Aryan" - peoples. This article is meant as a background to that debate. By discussing the historical relationships between the scholarly and the political interest in Aryan religion, I hope to shed light on the intricate but important work of identifying ideological components in the history of religious studies.
Let us begin by looking into one of the most successful attempts to create a religion for "the Indo-European race": the sounds, visions, movements, and messages of the "total art" of Richard Wagner (1813-1883).<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Other sections:
THE MYTHOLOGICAL ALTERNATIVE
....
THE INTERPRETATION OF MYTH
Includes the paras:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In the world of Christian scholars non-biblical, "pagan" (i.e., mainly Greek and Roman) myths were used as educational and artistic aids (de Vries:18-32). With the help of the allegoric and euhemeristic modes of interpretation taken over from antiquity, the religious content of these myths could be disregarded, thus preventing the myths from forming a truly religious, "heathen" alternative. Aside from the allegorical and euhemeristic ways of interpretation the church also developed what could be called a <i>hermeneutic of mission</i>. This mode of interpretation unveiled the pagan myths as mere plagiarism of the Holy Writ or, even more crudely, as the work of the devil. In contrast to the earlier, classical modes of interpretation the hermeneutic of mission efficiently excludes the possibility of finding anything rational in the mythologies.
(Christianity does the same today to every non-christoislamic religion. Hence psecular Indians with their christo-conditioned mindsets blindly accept the historicity of a jeebus and his 'resurrection' from death as a fact, whilst immediately assuming Dharmic or other countries' religious characters and recorded/handed-down traditions are all myths.)
In fact, four modes of hermeneutics have continued into our own day, although in a modified form: myths are speculation about nature (the nature-allegoric school of the nineteenth century), myths are disciplinary or moral stories (the sociological approach), myths are distorted history (historicism), myths are lies (Marxism). <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Myth, however, was for the first time thought of as a life-affirming genre in the romantic vogue in fashion around the beginning of the nineteenth century and contradicted the everyday sense of the word (which it retains despite protests from today's spiritual camps) as a false story.
The word "myth" (mythos) became a synonym of "lie" already in its etymological country of birth, the Greece of antiquity (see Graf; Lincoln 1996; Vernant: 203-260).<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->...
THE 'MYTH' OF ROMANTICISM
...
TWO RELIGIOUS STRATEGIES
p.6 on how Europeans then "immunized Christianity from rationalistic attacks" in a recent century.
...
A SCIENCE OF RELIGION
...
MYTH OR REASON
...
HISTORY OF RELIGION: AN ANTI-LIBERAL RIPOSTE
(Mueller wanted philology to be the science that lead to religion: p. 7-10)
Hah. Here, Arvidsson says it himself:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The science of religion that Mueller dreamt of never materialized. Instead, <b>the discipline called history of religions was created with the aim to study all religions excluding Christianity</b>. This division of labor between academic subjects gave rise to two diverse concepts (Christianity shares some concepts with its "Semitic" cousins, Judaism and Islam): Christian theology/pagan cosmology, Christian liturgy/pagan rituals, Christian angels/pagan spirits, Christian religion/pagan mythology. <b>Even today the concepts of myth and mythology - the focus of this article - are seldom used when it comes to Christian or "Semitic" (Abrahamic) stories: the man who was swallowed by a giant fish or the carpenter's son who could walk on water are not "myths".7 The collections of myths that today are sold in large editions follow the same model, as do scientific surveys of the world's mythologies.8</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->ARYAN MYTH, SEMITIC PIETY (pages 337-338 missing...)
...
REAL ARYANS CELEBRATE LIFE
...
JESUS THE ARYAN
...
MYTH AND AUTHENTICITY
...
MYTH AND WISDOM
Funny paragraph:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Furthermore, Jung emphasized the importance for every individual to connect with the gods/archetypes of his or her own people. Similar ideas were at the same time being formulated among neo-pagan groups, active in Europe since the late nineteenth century: to be able to bear living in the modern, disenchanted world one has to contact - through heathen rites, <b>"Germanic yoga,"</b> or the like - the ancient Aryan divinities or one's own Teutonic ancestors.19<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->'Germanic yoga'? <!--emo&:lol:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laugh.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='laugh.gif' /><!--endemo--> Why do people who are in love with the Oryan Idea keep copycatting from India? There is no - nor ever was - a 'Germanic yoga', a 'Germanic dharma', a 'Germanic Samskritam'. Period. There never was, is and never will be. Why do they keep following that still-invisible-and-intangible Indo-European ball of wool to India and then use that to even claim stuff that India's Hinduism developed *locally*? Any place they can put in their IE collection-box and they start imagining they must have had all the things developed there as well... Very funny.
Why don't they look for what they actually did have, instead of imagining up things that never were (basing their ideas of the past on some pure fantasy - the Oryan Fantasy)? Hopeless. Why did and do they prefer to continue with wishful thinking rather than try to uncover historic facts?
THE REBIRTH OF THE ARYAN MYTHOLOGY
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Dumezil, however, had since the 1930s argued that the mythology of the Aryan/Indo-European peoples is altogether unique. In the Vedas, in the Eddas, in Roman texts, and in other texts written in Indo-European languages, Dumezil detected a special "tripartite ideology" that he claimed, due to the similarity between the structure occurring in different sources, had been transmitted from a primordial proto-Indo-European people and thus could properly be called Indo-European. The three different "functions" in the tripartite structure appeared, according to Dumezil, in the social organization as well as in the pantheon of the Indo-Europeans. In the Vedas, for example, Dumezil found traces of the three positiojs: farmers and artisans (vaisyas) warriors (ksatriyas), and priests (brahmanas) and corresponding divinities: the Gods of production (Nasatyas), the God of War (Indra) and the Gods of Sovereignty (Mitra-Varuna).
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->The keywords in here being: "Dumezil detected", "according to Dumezil" and "Dumezil found".
That is, he was merely delusioning solo (he then set the tone for others like him to delusion themselves too: like today's Victor Meh-Meh Mair).
The above does explain so much: they imagine something must be the case, then they magically 'find' it everywhere where they wish to see it... Good one! That explains why those of the online crowd who are infatuated with Oryans have the most peculiar ideas about Kshatriyas, Brahmanas,... I always did wonder where they got their preconceived notions from, when actually they *know* nothing about the matter and never even been to India. It must be all this indological dawaganda that they've been exposed to over the last couple of centuries.
Continues from the above:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>In his early works, Dumezil used a sociological perspective in which the pantheon was conceived as a reflection of the social order.</b> It was the drift away from Mueller's nature-allegorical view to this perspective that could be called social-allegorical, which made it possible to restore the tarnished Aryan mythology and to make it appear more relevant to contemporary scholarly concerns. <b>The sociological approach, however, threatens the entire project: if mythology is determined by social organization, why then should linguistic criteria determine the field of study, i.e., why select myths recorded in Indo-European languages rather than myths grounded in similar socio-political systems? Therefore, Dumezil in his later works chose to place the Indo-European "essence" in a Platonic world of ideas, since he clamed that an Indo-European "ideology" had existed that determined both the pantheon <i>and</i> the social organization (see Littleton:3-5; Pinotti).22</b> What it is exactly that should have supported the existence of this "ideology" so firmly that it was able to continue its existence over centuries of geographical, cultural and economical change was never established. Was it the languages, the race, or something else?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->As is apparent from the above, these indologicals just keep changing the story whenever they think common sense is approaching or science is about to dismantle everthing. So they keep making things more abstract: placing their fables further and further into Neverland where these might not be disturbed by inconvenient things like sense, science and logic.
Further down:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->It has for good reasons been suggested that the "tripartite ideology" of the Aryans/Indo-Europeans owes its origins as much to the politics of fascist Italy, which Dumezil admired, as to the Vedas or the Eddas.23 in his scholarly work Dumezil seems to have tried to ground in nature - with the help of <b>his theory</b> about the Indo-Europeans' unique
order of producers, warriors, and sovereigns - the fascist dream about an integrated, hierarchical society consisting of workers, soldiers, and leaders. Even the division of "the sovereign function" into two distinct parts - the power of magic and the power fo legislation - which, <b>according to Dumezil</b> is a typical Indo-European trait, might, if we are to believe the historian of religions Bruce Lincoln, be nothing but a reflection of Dumezil's enthusiasm for Mussolini's decision not to crush the magical power flowing from the Vatican but instead to reach an agreement about the distribution of power (the Lateran treaty) (Lincoln 1997).<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Two things:
(1) Dumezil's "theory about the Indo-Europeans' unique order of producers, warriors, and sovereigns":
How frustrating it must be that their data points from India don't align with their theories: in Hinduism, Kshatriyas are the warriors <i>and</i> rulers (the 'sovereigns'). But indologicals will doubtless manage to fudge this too so that it can fit in with their grandiose nonsense-theories.
(2) Again, Indologicals imagine something (in this case it is Dumezil's infatuation with Italy's fascist period) and then project it onto the lalaland of the Oryans which exists only in their heads (<- yes, the Urheimat has finally been found). All the early and even recent indologicals either had ulterior motives, or were trying to make a contemporary point using the imaginary Oryans as the backdrop (Maria Gimbutas), or they were outright liars. So why is anyone still taking the Oryan fantasy seriously when all the most important pillars the theory was resting on turn out to be nothing but air?
Oh that's right. The lie must prevail at all costs, eh? Because the whole Oryan thing is just too pretty an idea to them - however unrealistic and therefore fragile - for them to allow it to be wafted away by uncomfortable truth. Shouldn't let small negligeable things like 'facts' get in the way.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->POSTSCRIPT
As we have seen, the scientific study of Indo-European mythology has been permeated with different ideologies (Christian liberalism, romanticism, fascism, and so forth). <b>Today it is disputed whether or not the downfall of the Third Reich brought about a sobering among scholars working with "Aryan" religions</b>; the discussion of Dumezil's Indo-European mythology, his political sympathies, and their impact on his scholarly works, which historians of religion have lauded as some of the best research the discipline has produced, is still not closed. <b>Perhaps it will lead to the <i>ragnarok</i> (twilight of the Gods) of the concept of Aryan/Indo-European mythology.</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Yes please, curtains down on IE/Oryan mythology. And Oryans too. "<i>'Til Never!</i>" - and other such words of fond parting.
http://sarasvati95.googlepages.com/aryanmythology.pdf
<b>Aryan Mythology as Science and Ideology</b> by Stefan Arvidsson (who also wrote that book "Aryan Idols" which Rajesh_G had brought to our attention).
I've not read all of the above PDF - just glanced over it and copied/typed out what I found interesting from the bits that I did have a look at.
Arvidsson makes many different points. Some of them - the way I've excerpted them below - don't seem directly connected with the Oryan Theory. Like the bits on "Myth" - but in their own right, I found these additional points instructive or supportive of things we already suspect/know.
Read the entire article, there would probably more such ideas in there.
(All stuff in quoteblocks in this post are Arvidsson's words, <i>except</i> for the purple stuff which are mine.)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Since the 1980s there has been a heated debate about whether or not the influential theories of George Dumezil have been affected by ideological motives. Critics of Dumezil have argued that Dumezil's ideas about the unique structure of Indo-European mythology were governed by his right-wing sympathies and his romantic view of ancient Indo-Europen - that is, "Aryan" - peoples. This article is meant as a background to that debate. By discussing the historical relationships between the scholarly and the political interest in Aryan religion, I hope to shed light on the intricate but important work of identifying ideological components in the history of religious studies.
Let us begin by looking into one of the most successful attempts to create a religion for "the Indo-European race": the sounds, visions, movements, and messages of the "total art" of Richard Wagner (1813-1883).<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Other sections:
THE MYTHOLOGICAL ALTERNATIVE
....
THE INTERPRETATION OF MYTH
Includes the paras:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In the world of Christian scholars non-biblical, "pagan" (i.e., mainly Greek and Roman) myths were used as educational and artistic aids (de Vries:18-32). With the help of the allegoric and euhemeristic modes of interpretation taken over from antiquity, the religious content of these myths could be disregarded, thus preventing the myths from forming a truly religious, "heathen" alternative. Aside from the allegorical and euhemeristic ways of interpretation the church also developed what could be called a <i>hermeneutic of mission</i>. This mode of interpretation unveiled the pagan myths as mere plagiarism of the Holy Writ or, even more crudely, as the work of the devil. In contrast to the earlier, classical modes of interpretation the hermeneutic of mission efficiently excludes the possibility of finding anything rational in the mythologies.
(Christianity does the same today to every non-christoislamic religion. Hence psecular Indians with their christo-conditioned mindsets blindly accept the historicity of a jeebus and his 'resurrection' from death as a fact, whilst immediately assuming Dharmic or other countries' religious characters and recorded/handed-down traditions are all myths.)
In fact, four modes of hermeneutics have continued into our own day, although in a modified form: myths are speculation about nature (the nature-allegoric school of the nineteenth century), myths are disciplinary or moral stories (the sociological approach), myths are distorted history (historicism), myths are lies (Marxism). <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Myth, however, was for the first time thought of as a life-affirming genre in the romantic vogue in fashion around the beginning of the nineteenth century and contradicted the everyday sense of the word (which it retains despite protests from today's spiritual camps) as a false story.
The word "myth" (mythos) became a synonym of "lie" already in its etymological country of birth, the Greece of antiquity (see Graf; Lincoln 1996; Vernant: 203-260).<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->...
THE 'MYTH' OF ROMANTICISM
...
TWO RELIGIOUS STRATEGIES
p.6 on how Europeans then "immunized Christianity from rationalistic attacks" in a recent century.
...
A SCIENCE OF RELIGION
...
MYTH OR REASON
...
HISTORY OF RELIGION: AN ANTI-LIBERAL RIPOSTE
(Mueller wanted philology to be the science that lead to religion: p. 7-10)
Hah. Here, Arvidsson says it himself:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The science of religion that Mueller dreamt of never materialized. Instead, <b>the discipline called history of religions was created with the aim to study all religions excluding Christianity</b>. This division of labor between academic subjects gave rise to two diverse concepts (Christianity shares some concepts with its "Semitic" cousins, Judaism and Islam): Christian theology/pagan cosmology, Christian liturgy/pagan rituals, Christian angels/pagan spirits, Christian religion/pagan mythology. <b>Even today the concepts of myth and mythology - the focus of this article - are seldom used when it comes to Christian or "Semitic" (Abrahamic) stories: the man who was swallowed by a giant fish or the carpenter's son who could walk on water are not "myths".7 The collections of myths that today are sold in large editions follow the same model, as do scientific surveys of the world's mythologies.8</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->ARYAN MYTH, SEMITIC PIETY (pages 337-338 missing...)
...
REAL ARYANS CELEBRATE LIFE
...
JESUS THE ARYAN
...
MYTH AND AUTHENTICITY
...
MYTH AND WISDOM
Funny paragraph:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Furthermore, Jung emphasized the importance for every individual to connect with the gods/archetypes of his or her own people. Similar ideas were at the same time being formulated among neo-pagan groups, active in Europe since the late nineteenth century: to be able to bear living in the modern, disenchanted world one has to contact - through heathen rites, <b>"Germanic yoga,"</b> or the like - the ancient Aryan divinities or one's own Teutonic ancestors.19<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->'Germanic yoga'? <!--emo&:lol:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laugh.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='laugh.gif' /><!--endemo--> Why do people who are in love with the Oryan Idea keep copycatting from India? There is no - nor ever was - a 'Germanic yoga', a 'Germanic dharma', a 'Germanic Samskritam'. Period. There never was, is and never will be. Why do they keep following that still-invisible-and-intangible Indo-European ball of wool to India and then use that to even claim stuff that India's Hinduism developed *locally*? Any place they can put in their IE collection-box and they start imagining they must have had all the things developed there as well... Very funny.
Why don't they look for what they actually did have, instead of imagining up things that never were (basing their ideas of the past on some pure fantasy - the Oryan Fantasy)? Hopeless. Why did and do they prefer to continue with wishful thinking rather than try to uncover historic facts?
THE REBIRTH OF THE ARYAN MYTHOLOGY
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Dumezil, however, had since the 1930s argued that the mythology of the Aryan/Indo-European peoples is altogether unique. In the Vedas, in the Eddas, in Roman texts, and in other texts written in Indo-European languages, Dumezil detected a special "tripartite ideology" that he claimed, due to the similarity between the structure occurring in different sources, had been transmitted from a primordial proto-Indo-European people and thus could properly be called Indo-European. The three different "functions" in the tripartite structure appeared, according to Dumezil, in the social organization as well as in the pantheon of the Indo-Europeans. In the Vedas, for example, Dumezil found traces of the three positiojs: farmers and artisans (vaisyas) warriors (ksatriyas), and priests (brahmanas) and corresponding divinities: the Gods of production (Nasatyas), the God of War (Indra) and the Gods of Sovereignty (Mitra-Varuna).
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->The keywords in here being: "Dumezil detected", "according to Dumezil" and "Dumezil found".
That is, he was merely delusioning solo (he then set the tone for others like him to delusion themselves too: like today's Victor Meh-Meh Mair).
The above does explain so much: they imagine something must be the case, then they magically 'find' it everywhere where they wish to see it... Good one! That explains why those of the online crowd who are infatuated with Oryans have the most peculiar ideas about Kshatriyas, Brahmanas,... I always did wonder where they got their preconceived notions from, when actually they *know* nothing about the matter and never even been to India. It must be all this indological dawaganda that they've been exposed to over the last couple of centuries.
Continues from the above:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>In his early works, Dumezil used a sociological perspective in which the pantheon was conceived as a reflection of the social order.</b> It was the drift away from Mueller's nature-allegorical view to this perspective that could be called social-allegorical, which made it possible to restore the tarnished Aryan mythology and to make it appear more relevant to contemporary scholarly concerns. <b>The sociological approach, however, threatens the entire project: if mythology is determined by social organization, why then should linguistic criteria determine the field of study, i.e., why select myths recorded in Indo-European languages rather than myths grounded in similar socio-political systems? Therefore, Dumezil in his later works chose to place the Indo-European "essence" in a Platonic world of ideas, since he clamed that an Indo-European "ideology" had existed that determined both the pantheon <i>and</i> the social organization (see Littleton:3-5; Pinotti).22</b> What it is exactly that should have supported the existence of this "ideology" so firmly that it was able to continue its existence over centuries of geographical, cultural and economical change was never established. Was it the languages, the race, or something else?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->As is apparent from the above, these indologicals just keep changing the story whenever they think common sense is approaching or science is about to dismantle everthing. So they keep making things more abstract: placing their fables further and further into Neverland where these might not be disturbed by inconvenient things like sense, science and logic.
Further down:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->It has for good reasons been suggested that the "tripartite ideology" of the Aryans/Indo-Europeans owes its origins as much to the politics of fascist Italy, which Dumezil admired, as to the Vedas or the Eddas.23 in his scholarly work Dumezil seems to have tried to ground in nature - with the help of <b>his theory</b> about the Indo-Europeans' unique
order of producers, warriors, and sovereigns - the fascist dream about an integrated, hierarchical society consisting of workers, soldiers, and leaders. Even the division of "the sovereign function" into two distinct parts - the power of magic and the power fo legislation - which, <b>according to Dumezil</b> is a typical Indo-European trait, might, if we are to believe the historian of religions Bruce Lincoln, be nothing but a reflection of Dumezil's enthusiasm for Mussolini's decision not to crush the magical power flowing from the Vatican but instead to reach an agreement about the distribution of power (the Lateran treaty) (Lincoln 1997).<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Two things:
(1) Dumezil's "theory about the Indo-Europeans' unique order of producers, warriors, and sovereigns":
How frustrating it must be that their data points from India don't align with their theories: in Hinduism, Kshatriyas are the warriors <i>and</i> rulers (the 'sovereigns'). But indologicals will doubtless manage to fudge this too so that it can fit in with their grandiose nonsense-theories.
(2) Again, Indologicals imagine something (in this case it is Dumezil's infatuation with Italy's fascist period) and then project it onto the lalaland of the Oryans which exists only in their heads (<- yes, the Urheimat has finally been found). All the early and even recent indologicals either had ulterior motives, or were trying to make a contemporary point using the imaginary Oryans as the backdrop (Maria Gimbutas), or they were outright liars. So why is anyone still taking the Oryan fantasy seriously when all the most important pillars the theory was resting on turn out to be nothing but air?
Oh that's right. The lie must prevail at all costs, eh? Because the whole Oryan thing is just too pretty an idea to them - however unrealistic and therefore fragile - for them to allow it to be wafted away by uncomfortable truth. Shouldn't let small negligeable things like 'facts' get in the way.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->POSTSCRIPT
As we have seen, the scientific study of Indo-European mythology has been permeated with different ideologies (Christian liberalism, romanticism, fascism, and so forth). <b>Today it is disputed whether or not the downfall of the Third Reich brought about a sobering among scholars working with "Aryan" religions</b>; the discussion of Dumezil's Indo-European mythology, his political sympathies, and their impact on his scholarly works, which historians of religion have lauded as some of the best research the discipline has produced, is still not closed. <b>Perhaps it will lead to the <i>ragnarok</i> (twilight of the Gods) of the concept of Aryan/Indo-European mythology.</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Yes please, curtains down on IE/Oryan mythology. And Oryans too. "<i>'Til Never!</i>" - and other such words of fond parting.