Unmasking AIT

[Husky]

Post 3/?



From here on it's mostly Victor Mair. 'Cause he's leading the PIE cavalry - appropriate term for oryanism, surely? - to subsume Chinese civilisation as an IE product.



AIT - Aryan Invasion/Influence Theory via northwest of China. ("West west, forever west. Do the Oryans ever invade non-IE from the east?" :grin

(But Mair repeatedly and ominously promises to take up [predictably PIE] influences in south China and in Japanese [Shinto] mythological motifs too - stating that these are topics that deserve articles of their own and are to be dealt with in future.)





Abbreviations Mair is known to use in his works:

EAH = East Asian Heartland (i.e. the Chinese/E-Asian sink or receptacle for gracious IE donations)

OSBI = Oracle Shell and Bone Inscription





- [color="#0000FF"]AIT in India's case could be reconciled owing to the doctrine of miscegenation.[/color] PIE-ism needs to claim your language, (to claim) your oldest ritual texts (i.e. the Vedam in India's case).

- [color="#0000FF"]AIT in India's case required a genetic invasion - actual IE genetic presence.[/color] Initially this was to have been large scale/full-fledged invasion. All your kShatriyas and Brahmanas certainly. And to this day: anything pretty. Now the genetic presence is to have been to some relatively minor degree (they keep it to a minimum sufficient to claim what they want, without being stuck with too much Indians).



Genetic invasion/input was necessary since, as per their original argument - documented in western articles pasted on IF much earlier - language transfer of Skt to Indians needed people transfer of hypothetical Oryans into India. (But note, language will cease to depend on people transfer if argued in any other direction: hardcore PIE-ists don't want to be miscegenated or a product).

- Whenever they can't push the argument completely (if there's sudden contradicting data, any sign of genes travelling the other way, etc.) they declare small migration (small enough to be barely detected, large enough to crown IE as the well-spring of Indian civilisation). And then IE still stands. (So you'll never disprove it except with a time machine. Get inventing.)



[color="#0000FF"]Aryan Influence Theory is only a fallback in the Indian case.

Aryan Influence Theory is a major cornerstone of the AIT for China.[/color]

- That's not to say that Oryanists deny "IE" people having influenced the Chinese gene pool - but China is not Caucasoid and you have to bear in mind that the entire PIE enterprise is for the glory of "caucasianism" onlee, by which the un-miscegenated "white man" is meant, not people who are unwanted collateral damage (which is why Indians are to have been miscegenated).

- And the future will be conducive to start arguing for a greater IE genetic input into China, since China has very beautiful women after all (and IE-ists have a weakness for a pretty face. Every pretty Indian female is always argued as being "obviously a product of some IE ancestry somewhere" followed by "See, she's of <insert obscure Hindu community> which is <insert magic relation to IE>").



As it is, PIE-ists do claim minor but very key actual Oryan influential presence in China - as major emperors et al. (Previously they had pounced on the Yellow Emperor, but that became a different problem, now they pounced on the heads of imperial dynasties - or at least their gurus - for important reasons.)





Anyway, onto Mair. Let's start with my favourite declaration/conclusion of his.

Certain ancient Chinese religious texts (Daoist) ask cosmological questions. When I first heard of these, it had reminded me of when I was spying through some translations from Hindus' upanishads, also full of such existential and cosmological questions. <- Common feature of heathenism by the way. (Unlike christoislamic dogmas, heathen religions ponder the nature of the universe, as well as man's place in it and in relation to it.) But in the hands of PIE-ists such enquiry must always be PIE onlee, and hence when detected in non-IE space, it is from IE influence onlee. (Surely?) Just asking questions requires IE prompting, apparently.

The relevant section from Victor Mair's article follows. Some time after that, the response by Heiner Roetz will follow, asking the very question that surely pops into the minds of all non-PIE-ist readers.

Note that at this point in the Mair article, Mair has already developed his argument (but not with proof) that any Taoists possessed of magical powers are of the Magi tradition alone: all magical people, all incantation, all sacrifice, all ritual, all oracling is claimed for IE-ness (Mair has done so via handwaving already at this stage, and feels he can just continue by referring to Chinese cases with "IE" terms from here on in. He declared a Wu was a Magi. And all within a page in some publication. A miracle. Now does that mean the entire Daoist Wu-dan mountain and all of Daoist Wu-xia martial arts lit is now IE?)

Anyway. And so he uses the word mage/Magi for Daoist ritualists at this point in a self-evident manner - and of course Rishi is also used in an encroaching way. (Important note: whenever I referred to Daoist "Rishis" I only meant the kind of Daoists who would remind Hindus of Rishis, and did not use it to insinuate that there is any IE connection or even Hindu connection.)

6. Heavenly Questions



An Iranian style mage #1 and an Indian-like RiShi ("seer") appear together in a memorable passage from the Zhuang Zi, a Taoist philosophical text dating to around the latter half of the 4th c. BC. This is the story of the contest of spiritual powers between Ji Xian and Master Hu (7.5). #2



The former, a mage, also appears in 14.1 playing the role of dispenser of cosmic wisdom who can answer riddles that would stump even an ancient Chinese sage. The puzzles that mage Xian solves have an even broader, trans-Eurasian resonance since they take the form of an extended series of riddles uncannily like those posed by early Indo-European seers and priests. 37



37. Mair, Victor H. (tr. and intro.), Wandering on the Way. Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu <etc> 1998 ...; Chen Guying (ed. and tr.), Zhuang Zi jin zhu jin yi [A Modern Annotation and Translation of the Chuang Xi], Beijing; Zhonghua 1983 ; a slightly revised reprinting <of a Taiwanese publication from 1975>.

(And this is the sole purpose of Mair translating and introducing Daoist texts, by the way. To work his way - over time - into claiming them for oryanism. He does this regularly.)



The Indo-European quality of such riddles #3 appears even more clearly in one of the most unusual and baffling texts #4 in the whole of Chinese literature, "Heavenly Questions" (Tian wen).38 Attributed to the first Chinese poet known by name and about whom we have a modicum of biographical information, Qu Yuan (340?-278 BCE), "Heavenly Questions" forms a part of the celebrated southern anthology known as the Chu ci (Elegies of Chu). Qu Yuan was a member of the royal family of Chi and a loyal official to two of its rulers.#5



38. For a complete, annotated translation of "Heavenly Questions," see Mair, Victor H., <bla> 1994

(Look he's even provided annotations to his translations. No doubt *full* of helpful pointers to "PIE did it" conclusions. And I'm sure his translations are very convenient too, to bring it closer to IE-ism - considering how he deals with Chinese words even in this article. But need to read other sections of his article for this.)



"Heavenly Questions" consists entirely of a long series of mysterious and essentially unanswered queries concerning the origin and nature of the universe, the founding of civilisation by various semidivine beings, and the complicated affairs of the rulers of the legendary and historical kingdoms right up to the time of the poet himself.

(Sounds like a lot of heathen oral traditions.)

Most of the questions are of such maddening obscurity that they are extremely difficult to interpret, let alone answer. If, however, we treat "Heavenly Questions" as part of the Indo-European tradition of riddle texts #6, it becomes perfectly intelligible as a well-known type of catechism for imparting wisdom.



The authors of the ancient Vedic hymns, the earliest of which date to roughly the beginning of the first millennium BC #7, were often deliberately cryptic (e.g. R^ig Veda, 1.164). The subject matter of their riddles is, furthermore, virtually the same as that of the "Heavenly Questions" (e.g., Atharva Veda, X 7-8).

(The minute PIE-ists notice and especially the minute they *admit* noticing it, is the minute their appropriation starts, don't you know.)

The UpaniShads, which followed the Vedas, are even more similar to the "Heavenly Questions." The Shvetashvatara UpaniShad #9 begins with a series of comparable questions, and the Prashna UpaniShad (literally, the "UpaniShads [Secret Session] of Questions") consists entirely of all sorts of difficult and profound questions that are put to a R^iShi. Elsewhere in the UpaniShads and in the Braahmnas as well, there are series of questions concerning cosmology and mythology that are quite like the "Heavenly Questions."



In the ancient Iranian Zend-Avesta, doctrine is presented in a series of questions and answers between the prophet Zarathustra (i.e., Zoroaster ["possessing old camels"]) and the creator-deity Ahura Mazda (i.e., O[h]rmazd, Ormuzd ["wise spirit/lord"]). In "Yasna" 44, for example, the questions posed by Zarathustra are astonishingly reminiscent of those in the opening portion of the "Heavenly Questions": "Who is that supported the earth below and the sky above so that they do not fall?" "Who is that joined speed with wind and welkin?" "Who is it that created blessed light and the darkness?" #9 Even at the far northwestern end of hte Indo-European range, the same types of riddles persist in some of the earliest of the poetic Edda. In "Vafthrudnismaal," questions between Gangrath (Wodan) and Wabedrut focus on the origins of heaven and earth. Similar questions abound in "Fioelvinnsmaal," "Alvissmaal," and other songs in the Edda.



In chapter VI ("Playing and Knowing") of his classic Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga 39 has analyzed such question series as related to cult indoctrination and sacrifices. The tradition of imparting and testing knowledge through a series of riddles is prominent throughout the ancient IE tradition, especially its Indo-Iranian and Germanic branches.

(Usually they say that when they can't find other IE examples.)

The texts consisting of questions cited above (and many others like them) may thus be viewed as vestiges of ancient riddle-solving contests, the participants in which were rewarded or punished (sometimes with their lives), depending on their performance in responding to the questions.

(But uh... didn't the Sphynx pose riddles too? And djinn? And just about every quest involving a hero. Ever. All "borrowed from PIE onlee!"

Yudhisthira being questioned on life-and-death issues by the Yaksha/divine Snake I grant you is like a quick summary of upanishadic questions and answers combined with the threat of death looming (but really, Yudhisthira is the heroic all-wise and divine protagonist, so it's unlikely his life is in any real danger), but I don't remember the Shvetaashvatara upaniShad being like a Russian Roulette involving riddles... cratches head: And still, how is riddle games original to IE? In every ancient story from all over the world, where the hero is posed riddles during his quest, it is seen as a sign of spiritual maturing, a parallel spiritual quest to the physical one he undertakes...

Never mind. I guess PIE placed first dibs on that too.)



The emphasis on cattle in the "Heavenly Questions" also indicates an Indo-European steppe connection.

(I should mention that Mair has this thing about over-emphasising sheep and goats everywhere in Chinese religious texts - which IIRC his critic commented on in the subsequent article discussing this one. Mair then uses his over-emphasis to further extrapolate them as indicating that the influence of nomadic pastoralists aka IE-ists "must" have dominated [Chinese] ethics and even judicial system/law thereby). So I wouldn't be surprised if Mair has over-weighted the alleged emphasis on cattle too.

Also, rather tempted to bring up the issue of genes for A2 milk again concerning Indian and African cows. See #462 and #464)



39 Huizinga, Johan, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, Boston Beacon 1955. tr. from the German ed. of 1944, 105-118.

(O nee, laat 't niet een mof wezen... But German edition could have been translated from Dutch original, I suppose. But in 1944, when nazi Germany had occupied NL?? Must google.)

I will post the relevant part from the subsequent article that critiques the above, but first my own comments.



#1 Is the character Mair refers to as Magi a Daoist Xian, rather than Xian being his name? Xian is supposed to be a Daoist state, IIRC. Also IIRC: people who have attained that Daoist state are supposed to have very great spiritual (special) powers. Like a super-siddha.



#2 Spiritual and tai chi and magical incantation battles are *very* common for ancient and modern Taoist masters by the way. Frequently and well-documented - in great detail - in ancient Daoist texts and oral traditions of temples. And which are learnt first-hand by traditional Daoists who have cultivated their Tao to a high state.



Oh and such things as spiritual and magical incantation battles are also common all the way among - say - Africans and Oceanic heathens... But never mind. PIE will turn its roving green eye there tomorrow. (Wait for it)



BTW, I hate the word "magical" outside of fantasies and fairy tales. It brings on the Evil Eye of Sauron I mean christianism - which spells another type of death for heathens and heathenism.



I've been using "magic" temporarily in this thread. (For dragons it was okay, because I tend to associate dragons mentally with fantasy.) In this case, I however don't want to use words like mantra and tantra either, because the very topic in question is IE encroachment on non-IE, and the fact that Mair et al use Hindu etc religion to encroach on non-IE people means I can't use such words in this specific current context without heavy qualification to distinguish my use from Mair's.



#3 Note how now he has introduced the concept that existential riddles are IE, so that he then finds he can therefore continue on to speak of "the Indo-European quality of such riddles"! That's how he did the whole Wu is magi thing by the way, and some PIE linguististics on how PIE reconstruction for magi (magh or something) is related to the Chinese word "Wu".



#4 "Unusual" <-> "therefore PIE"/"starts making sense in a PIE context" said Mair. Except he admitted the other Daoist text he referred to from the same era - "Zhuang Zi" - concerned profound questions too. But he'd claimed that for PIE-ism too.

Isn't it great? Thousands of years of a population slowly developing their stuff, generating their sacred literature etc, and suddenly a bunch of alien upstarts come around millennia later, write a bunch of articles donating other people's stuff to themselves and this becames the new established truth. A miracle. Of christo proportions.



#5 Earlier in the article Mair declared that Chinese emperors - who tended to be Wu (Emperors were important Daoist ritualists) - were "magi" in the IE sense, and declared that tiny images - of less than 3cm - of Wu characters "clearly" pointed to caucasoid features [translation: "Wu/Chinese emperors were IE!"]. So his statement that the author of the Heavenly Questions/TianWen text "Qu Yuan was a member of the royal family of Chi and a loyal official to two of its rulers" is merely Mair's sneaky 'innocent' way of intimating to alien readers that Qu Yuan was IE/Oryan himself because he was of imperial lineage. => "Hence, ergo and therefore Tian Wen is IE literature"



Just to note: Mair denied that the Wu were shamanists - by a very convenient but unconvincing de-lineation of definition between magical shamans and magical IE magis. (Oracling is common among shamanists, as are exorcisms: IIRC Alaskan natives did it. Sacrifices are common, etc.) Now, among the special things that the Emperors who were Wu did was dancing to make it rain for the nation. I note that native Americans were famous for dancing to make it rain as were Africans. *Well documented, in fact.* But of course, China borders Central-Asia. And so if the Chinese do anything magical at all, it must be PIE Onlee.



Man, heathens just can't win with these people. In this way, the aliens can claim *every* bloody native heathen thing for oryanism. It's an amazing, utterly ingenious appropriating technique. The Single Greatest Invention the "White Man" ever came up with. This passes for actual scholarship, by the way. PIE scholarship is special in that respect. Every bit of speculative drivel is applauded and adored since it is for the greater glory of PIE-ism (oryanism/aka the legitimised form of white supremacism).

Sick.



Also, Mair refuses to refer to the Tianwen lit as Taoist for some [actually predictable] reason, but just calls it "ancient Chinese". The authorship is Daoist. Look, even the following alien source admits it. And instead of screeching "PIE" it moreover mentions the sphynx as comparison (so I'm not the only one who noticed):



ndbooks.com/book/tian-wen-a-chinese-book-of-origins

Tian Wen

A Chinese Book of Origins

Relatively unknown in the West, Tian Wen: A Chinese Book of Origins is a fascinating, though often baffling, archaic collection of 186 "questions" about the origins of life and the meanings of a wide variety of happenings startling and mundane, earthly and celestial. Because the poem has no single narrative thread, the most informed speculation posits group authorship by a number of roving Taoist scholars, each contributing riddles about the history and legends of his own province as well as ironically posed inquiries into the nature of the universe. The enigmatic and sometimes Sphinxlike conundrums may have been originally intended for debate––to give the popular and prominent dialecticians of over 2,300 years ago a tool for honing their convoluted responses. But however the poem took on its present shape and content, it remains the single most comprehensive catalogue of ancient Chinese mythology and pre-Imperial legend in existence.

Apparently there are "basic Chinese myths alluded to in the questions." Next these will all be transmogrified into being "PIE myths onlee".



#6 "the Indo-European tradition of riddle texts" <= Note invention of new trope as unique IE legacy.

Should have a game to count how many tropes PIE-ists invent in this manner. They *always* do this. So don't make it a drinking game - I'll just have orange juice - you don't want to die of alcohol poisoning.



But I wonder if "riddle texts" were already declared an IE trope before this? Or did Mair just invent it as one when he noticed the Chinese had it, in order to declare that "Since it is PIE 'tradition' - because we say so - the Chinese must have got it by way of IE".



#7 "The authors of the ancient Vedic hymns, the earliest of which date to roughly the beginning of the first millennium BC"

Wow, that's like closer to Yesterday than the earliest part of Rig Veda was last year! Tomorrow it will be moved to my Roman birthday and I can declare that *therefore* I composed the Rig. Woohoo. Make it so! I never shrank from plagiarism where good taste was involved.



#8 Mair alludes to the ancientry of the Shwetashwatara Upanishad by naming it as an example of the Hindu case alongside the Rig and Atharva etc. He essentially mentions the upanishad self-evidently as an example of "IE". Not that its ancientry is in doubt by traditional Hindus, but I note this specifically to remark that ur-Shramanism peddlers as well as all those claiming "Yoga/Sankhya are borrowed into Vedic religion" or are "late developments" or are "distinct from the Hindu Gods" [ShU is where yoga/sankhya etc appear, and IIRC law of karma as well as release from samsaara is tied directly back to the Gods in chapter 5], let alone the claim that re-incarnation in Hindu tradition is "late", can go fight it out with Victor Mair and other hardcore PIE-ists. <- They're the last ones to let any bit of Vedic religion be declared unVedic/borrowed. (Which is ironic if you think about it.)



#9 Satirically speaking, one notes that christoislamism starts with all the answers: "In the beginning there was the Void..." (Koran) Followed by "invisible non-existent monogawd did it" type declarations.*



After all, if IE has first dibs on existential and cosmological questions, then the seal of all religion is the religion of the seal of all the prophets, no?

* Of course Hindoo religion in the upaniShads also says that "the Hindoo Supreme Ultimate aka the Hindoo Gods did it" but Hindoos show their working and don't blame invisible non-existent monogawd-s, which makes all the difference. Same goes for all the Other Heathens: they answer their existential questions with "their real Gods did it" too.



So, the very fact that there exist ancient Daoist texts asking cosmological and existential questions (that heathen religions and heathen individuals all over the planet have asked at least in oral traditions, but PIE-ists wouldn't know) is taken by Mair as definitive proof of the text being Oryan else of Oryan influence onlee. (On that note, even much of atheist sci-fi are meditations on strange questions on the nature of reality, memory, knowability, etc. Many of these being written by people who have no knowledge of any heathen religions or of PIE-ism, i.e. conceived independent of the influence.)



[color="#0000FF"]Even Heiner Roetz - another contributor to the compendium that contained Mair's article (and whom Mair thanked for typsetting help) - noticed that questioning the universe in just such a manner, with just such questions is a rather basic human [heathen] pursuit and does not imply PIE.[/color] (But philosophy is exclusively PIE - the oryanists will proclaim - because only their kind is allowed to be deep, profound or clever. Correction, though: philosophy is exclusively Hellenistic, NOT any other heathenism).

In his article written specifically as a comment on Victor H. Mair's piece, Roetz writes what would be obvious to any but PIE-ists (and the same argument should have been made by Roetz for many of the other Mere Claims - and further hyper-speculations based on them - advanced by Mair et al). Perhaps Roetz is merely doing damage control: not wanting all of Mair's claims to be dismissed as nonsense because of the more-obviously extreme claims. In any case, Roetz states about this one:

As to the similarities between the Tianwen and Indian, Iranian and even Scandinavian riddle literature, it remains open whether we are dealing with borrowings from a common (in this case indo-European [sic]) source or with independent phenomena. It is not only possible but to be expected that people from different cultures will ask the same basic questions (Why does the sky not fall down? Who causes light and darkness?, etc.) out of their own experiences, learning processes and wonderment over the world without necessarily being inspired from outside. There are, for example, statements in philosophical Greek and Chinese texts* that sound like they are being copied in one direction or the other. Yet, it is very unlikely that they are, and borrowing is not a necessary assumption in order to explain their appearance.

* Yes, Hellenismos and Daoism (=native Chinese religio) said heavily similar things. But don't worry, tomorrow Mair will work on this too - release a paper on this - where it must all be owing to PIE influence on China onlee. No? Wherever IE insinuates itself there's no such thing as natural human tendencies or individual heathenisms, there can only be borrowing and influence. And uni-directional borrowing (of anything remotely important) from IE to recipients incapable of doing anything remotely meaningful and civilisational themselves (because they're not oryan/white/caucasoid).