Quote:you have raised several significant questions. I had at first thought of not adding my bit, as this can perhaps go on into pages. You can blame Ramanaji for redirecting my attention. <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />
There can possibly be a connection to OIT and what you call monotheistic cultural terrorism. But I would rather think of it from entirely different viewpoint. Monotheism almost always appears in connection with the need for unification, either for a society under threat of fragmentation or for an empire where a regime needs homogenization and subjugation of disparate units under single central authority. Examples of the former would be Adi Shankara's advaita, Chaitanya/Basavanna's movements. Examples of the second will be Akhenaten, the Mosaic system (faced with unification needs against Canaanites) , Constantine, Carolus Magnus of the Franks, and of course the ideology of the "last" prophet of Islam. There is no direct reason as to why OIT should in itself give rise to monotheism, unless OIT specifically can be shown to give rise to monotheism, by sponsoring the two factors given above.
We have to remember that OIT also should strictly speaking encompass a migration ina different direction - that through the north-west passage but taking a more easterly route towards Siberia. Eventually this migration intermingled with more southerly expansions out of India through SE Asia, to form the various communities of China, Korea and Japan, and eventually the early Americans. We do not see such monotheistic cultural terrorists (I am not considering modern China - but previous Chinese empires, even though evolving towards a type of monotheism were still not culturally terroristic towards India).
I would hazard a hypothesis here, (supporting this with narrative reference would take pages <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' /> ) : maybe we should consider the possibility that at least some of the OIT migrations had a strong component of enforced migration or expulsions of Indic tribes and groups who either lost out over territorial resources or could not compete with those who remained. For reasons of migrations we can look at modern migrations - and we can reasonably assume thatsimilar causes drove people in the past. Druhyas, Panis - there are clear narratives of Indic groups losing out or being expelled who settle increasingly more and more to the west. [color="#0000FF"]Is it possible that these groups carried memories of their "uhrheimat" and always had a social psychological urge to return "home"[/color]? Simultaneously just as modern victims of forced migrations, did they carry a social anguish and a deep seated need for "revenge" and reconquering? Monotheism would then become just a tool for simplification of rules and unification. The Greeks and Romans were not monotheistic incidentally - and Alexander definitely was not. Just like Cyrus, Alexander is reputed to have encouraged multiple religions and even sponsor them himself. Also there are hints of this compromise or apparent abandonment of insistence on monotheistic violence in the Old Testament references to "reasons behind the fall" of Solomon (tolerance of his wives' native religions and even shadow of suspicion of participating in them - possibly an allegory to religious tolerance).
The recognition of ancient links could be a motivator to get even - to overcome that source which disinherited. There could be a longshot about moon+Shiva+megalithic phallic/fertility cults in the Islam story. But OT here probably (the use of lunar symbols in common with lunar cults in Canaan and a synbol of Shiva as well - stories of Lat/Manat taking refuge at Somnath - phallic rock symbols, some of which might have been reshaped under Islam, etc...)
Quote:Now I think we are going into more detailed analysis of monotheism per se. I was just responding to the connection to OIT angle. My points were only in respect of primarily the two later strands of what we loosely called the revealed traditions - and their apparent obsession with "conquering" "heathen" India. It is the sense of hostility and the desire to erase Indic "culture" that I was trying to relate. The main problem with the "local" reaction against "conquering Indic cultures" coming out of India theory is as I see it, that OIT had also NE Asian components almost along similar timelines, and we do not see obvious similar developments. So OIT alone would not explain this reaction. If we say it was prior native populations which resented this later expansion - then we have to wait for more genetic evidence, as at the moment, it does seem that the major peopling of the middle -east did indeed happen from western Indian expansions - so that there could not have been sufficient pre-existing populations to carry on social memories of "trauma". So I hypothesized, that there were probably differences in the nature of migrations among the various branches - and some were expelled while others simply move out of necessities not connected to human action, say droughts etc. Mere expansions need not always engender murderous hostility - since another significant and better documented OIT took place in SE Asia, (agreed, much later than the ones you are referring to) before Islam in those parts we do not see any such retaliatory initiatives back on India.
The origins of the revealed traditions (communism could be thought of as an inversion of Judaeo-christian traditions) probably also needs other components which can be discussed.
Quote:One of the primary arguments used in timing stages of development - rates of mutation - in linguistics, genetics is that current greater diversity of forms should appear at the earlier origin or source. If we extend that logic to philosophies or ideologies (they also mutate - and in fact could have great similarities to language itself) then we can have a theory of why we find the great diversity of religions and faiths or belief systems within the Indian heartland. A reasonable analogy to linguistic/genetic mutation will therefore indicate much greater diversity in the source region than in other areas where people simply carried over these ideas but where therefore they had much less time to "mutate" and proliferate. Of course there would be many other factors that modify this.
The much longer time line could also indicate why Indic philosophies show a tendency to evolve into meta-religions - frameworks or theories for religion rather than religions themselves. This is the fundamental difference from the later branches - and appears to be polytheistic to others. As a framework, it can analyze and put each "religion" or particular faith in its "box" within the framework. The revealed traditions therefore have great difficulty in comprehending and analyzing this as they simply do not have the tools.
Revealed traditions in particular carry the stamp of arising out of desert/arid marginal/subsistence economies which were in constant military conflict over scarce reproductive resources. Such conditions explain a lot of the tendencies :
(1) a great need to look for fertile, irrigated lands - fresh water/gardens
(2) a hatred of "luckier", richer economies - and therefore of the "city" and its "cosmopolitanism" - interpreted as "loose morals/sin"
(3) a great emphasis on sex for reproduction - and penalization of deviations
(4) greater demand for male births, as males are lost in military conflicts, and simultaneously greater demand for women, if needed to be acquired from conquered populations - for reproduction of more fighting males (this is something that could perhaps be shared by populations in and around India that faced wars of attrition in the past)
(5) simpler economies but occasional exposure to the riches of the "city" leading to intolerance of complexity, fear of loss from the group by "seduction", and the need for strict rule based faith systems and protecting reproductive resources, - probably an important factor behind proposition of a single supreme authority - this defence against "corruption" gives rise to the "siege" mentality so peculiar even in the philosophical characteristics.
(6) an inherent hatred and desire to erase more sophisticated and complex urbanized/cosmopolitan cultures that sit on fertile/well irrigated lands.