Post 4/?
1. PIE is a European technique for encroachment and appropriation of other people's religio-cultural civilisations, especially adjoining ones. And the following statement by Mair vocalises the exact "argument" by which the claim is made - it is the 2nd half of PIEism's credo (the first half affirms PIE and what all constitutes "PIE"/what achievements, what mythological motifs, what religious rituals <- which is practically *everything* of worthy of admiration, btw. Assimilated into PIE-ism one at a time).
Footnote 45 is of paramount importance, but it will come in a subsequent post.
"They perforce injected new ideas about war, death, and the cosmologies within which they smelted their iron and fought their battles." => Typical jingoism of PIE-ists. Only they fought hard. Only they loved the fight, the weapon, the chase, the thrills, the spills.
Any tendencies to heroism - and indeed any *kultur* of heroism - is uniquely PIE, ya know. So if the Chinese were also first into battle and had war songs, must be Oryan influence onlee. If the Gods of Daoist Heaven are arrayed in their divine armour - though not always, note - this too must be Oryan influence onlee. Yikes. I'm not even going to mention the culture of heroism among various African communities - complete with battle songs, and songs about heroes, and magic songs to strengthen the heroes and king to victory. Sigh.)
Anyway, look how the stuff in the quoteblock is all so innocuously phrased and so reasonable sounding, yet its conclusion is miraculously one-way transfer of religio-culture/civilisation from IE to China. (And note especially how no genetic transfer is claimed, whereas everywhere else they insist that this - along with language transfer - is the lynchpin).
* Translation: if those we call PIEs were present near or in any non-IE area, as happens in the interconnected continental mass known as Asia, then all religio-culture in said non-IE space has come from PIE-ism onlee. PIE did not just wander in as nomadic barbarians - the Chinese considered the C-Asians sliding in from the NW barbarians, BTW (and not cultural innovators) and IIRC Persians also thought the Shakas uncivilised/unArya at any rate despite Shakas being Iranian too - by their mere presence they transferred sheep/goat etc "culture", and "technology", and "therefore" all religio and art must be derived from there tooooo, since "cultures are *integral* packages" - implication being that if animals and possibly tech are transmitted, ideas associated with them must have been transmitted too, so all ideas the Chinese ever had must have been borrowed.
Note the introduction of a new fundamental PIE rule/a very important style of argument they introduce. "Cultures are *integral* packages" <=> "the religions, technologies, arts, and other components that they shared *were not* transmitted separately".
They need this rule to claim that if China can be proved to have borrowed anything at all - say a can-opener - then China borrowed everything else as well. Isn't this a *brilliant* new argument for appropriation?
So all of Chinese religion and art and technology and "other" (as yet unspecified, to be expanded in future to include everything Chinese) are are now owing to the pastoral nomads, whom the Chinese considered barbarians (uncivilised).
But then that Heiner Roetz - who wrote the critical article - shows some faint prickings of his common-sense and conscience again and puts a damper on the PIE party (who invited him anyway? No more invites for you, Roetz). Roetz notes that the reverse of "Galton's argument" holds equally true:
Note, this is actually an important point - assuming PIE-ists want to remain consistent with the internal logic/rules they set up. But, of course they don't:
The rules of PIE-ism change when they apply to China because China is not genetically regarded an IE population and doesn't really speak a lingo deemed IE (until Old Sinitic gets reconstructed in a convenient way to declare PIE influenced it :ominous: - they're working on it, I'm not kidding: it's in one of Mair's references to his own publishing mouthpiece). So while PIE-ists are still eager to declare that Chinese civilisation - being so kewl and all - "must be derived" from the white man onlee (since Hamites can't do anything by themselves and only white men are creative <= that is the PIE white supremacist rule that they Will Not State Out Loud, but they scream it in every intention and act of encroachment) - again: while they want to insist that all valuable aspects of Chinese civilisation "must be derived" from IE, in E Asia/China's case they're essentially implying that no [significant] genetic transfer need be necessary. AKA Oryan Influence Theory/They Came, They Saw, They Conquered-or-Shared And Then They Went Away Again /Now You See Them, Now You Don't. Or "From Central Asia to China - There and Back Again." (Note how I slipped in a ref to The Hobbit for no meaningful reason I can think of at all.)
It's a special clause/special pleading rule that PIE-ism has introduced for the Chinese case and for all other E Asians and non-IE people to be stripped of valuables hereafter.
PIE-ists are sophisticated thieves.
Heiner Roetz continues, after warning that (surely)
** But then where's the honorary mention for the other C-Asians that China considered equally barbaric: the Mongolians, also a horse culture, and also a source of 'influence' in that respect on China?
* And then Roetz goes on to explain why Mair didn't get - or else didn't represent - the whole claim of "sheep/goats everywhere in Chinese ethics" correct.
While I've left out the long and Chinese-linguistical details (uh, I can barely read the Roman script, I'm going to have to pass on Chinese script), note that Roetz showed this with actual examples - on how goats and sheep were not so overly represented in IIRC Chinese religio and jurisprudence after all, as Mair had claimed they were - (e.g. IIRC Mair had multiplied a single merely-repetitive instance into multiple independent instances instead) and essentially showed that Mair was overly eager (i.e. mistaken) and was speculating beyond evidence (i.e. mistaken).
Of course it is all an innocent mistake. Babble peddlers too, similarly innocently (aka motivated for their cause), read the origin of Chinese language/script - such as especially with the sheep references in Chinese judgments - as referring to the lamb of gawd and thus as pointing to the "Bible Did It". Another miracle. There are so many these days.
See:
- www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/3794-stories-in-the-characters/
- pinyin.info/news/2006/misunderstandings-of-biblical-proportions/
Useful reads for 2 reasons.
The links give an idea of a few of the problems of reconstructing Old Sinitic from its character set. (I may get back to this later.)
The second reason is that these links show that certain other people - not just PIE-ists - also eagerly construe at will the meaning of the presence of sheep in ancient Chinese jurisprudence. If Babble thumpers find that the Chinese characters represent the babble because of the sheepy references, then PIE-ists can declare the babble is IE onlee too, no? Since Mair's whole point was that the pastoral nomadic culture of sheep and goats was so heavily influential on the Chinese that it influenced - or as the PIE-ists really want to say: it created - Chinese law [because the Chinese can't have had laws without the civilising force of IE]. Tragically, Roetz argues Mair's mere insistence away for the Chinese case, but when the babble is so stuck on sheepy/goat religious metaphors too - from OT solomon and scapegoats to NT jeebus the lamb - Mair should rather focus on proving the *babble* is IE. The Chinese case may have fallen through, so why not pursue the biblical one (e.g. sheep + Solomon + law)? No civilisation there for IE to claim, though.
Another statement by Roetz:
Oh Roetz, how could you! Poor Mair. And poor PIE-ism. It had opened its mouth wide to ingest that part of Chinese religio-culture next, and Roetz snatched it away, unfeelingly.
I'm thinking Roetz is probably in Sinology (which was never part of IE Studies before, since Chinese/China were not in IE purview before) and he's unlikely to have graduated in indology/IE Studies - not many do both - and so Roetz doesn't know that what's expected of him is to just let PIE have its way.
Oh dear, I fear some Sinologists are going to be a problem to the advance of PIE-ism in China. They're just not all of PIE-ist mentality, not being IE Studies people. (IE Studies attracts a certain kind of alien; Asian Studies attracts a different kind of alien. The two only start becoming identical at the point where PIE-ism is poised to swallow E Asia into PIE-ism, as has been happening now.)
Heiner Roetz ends his critique on this matter with reference to Mair's leaping to drastic conclusions above (I wonder why no one bothered to put a sock in Mair at the very start):
I am quoting selectively - since commenting on everything would make these posts even longer - despite there being much stuff I'd like to complain and remark about concerning the rest of Mair's article and Roetz' response article.
1. PIE is a European technique for encroachment and appropriation of other people's religio-cultural civilisations, especially adjoining ones. And the following statement by Mair vocalises the exact "argument" by which the claim is made - it is the 2nd half of PIEism's credo (the first half affirms PIE and what all constitutes "PIE"/what achievements, what mythological motifs, what religious rituals <- which is practically *everything* of worthy of admiration, btw. Assimilated into PIE-ism one at a time).
Quote:If this investigation has shown anything, it is that the diverse early cultures of Eurasia were integrated, not isolated. Neither were the individual cultures of Eurasia isolated from each other, nor were the religions, technologies, arts, and other components that they shared transmitted separately. Cultures are integral packages.* Thus, for example, when late Neolithic pastoralists brought their sheep and goats eastward [color="#800080"][AIT on China, =predicate], [/color]they also brought their sacrificial practices and moral precepts with them [color="#800080"][=unproven conclusion they choose to derive from their predicate][/color]; when early Iron Age metallurgists introduced their new weapons and tools to the EAH, they perforce injected new ideas about war, death, and the cosmologies within which they smelted their iron and fought their battles. 45 [color="#800080"][Because the E Asians can't think up anything, not being Oryan Caucasoids.][/color]
Footnote 45 is of paramount importance, but it will come in a subsequent post.
"They perforce injected new ideas about war, death, and the cosmologies within which they smelted their iron and fought their battles." => Typical jingoism of PIE-ists. Only they fought hard. Only they loved the fight, the weapon, the chase, the thrills, the spills.
Any tendencies to heroism - and indeed any *kultur* of heroism - is uniquely PIE, ya know. So if the Chinese were also first into battle and had war songs, must be Oryan influence onlee. If the Gods of Daoist Heaven are arrayed in their divine armour - though not always, note - this too must be Oryan influence onlee. Yikes. I'm not even going to mention the culture of heroism among various African communities - complete with battle songs, and songs about heroes, and magic songs to strengthen the heroes and king to victory. Sigh.)
Anyway, look how the stuff in the quoteblock is all so innocuously phrased and so reasonable sounding, yet its conclusion is miraculously one-way transfer of religio-culture/civilisation from IE to China. (And note especially how no genetic transfer is claimed, whereas everywhere else they insist that this - along with language transfer - is the lynchpin).
* Translation: if those we call PIEs were present near or in any non-IE area, as happens in the interconnected continental mass known as Asia, then all religio-culture in said non-IE space has come from PIE-ism onlee. PIE did not just wander in as nomadic barbarians - the Chinese considered the C-Asians sliding in from the NW barbarians, BTW (and not cultural innovators) and IIRC Persians also thought the Shakas uncivilised/unArya at any rate despite Shakas being Iranian too - by their mere presence they transferred sheep/goat etc "culture", and "technology", and "therefore" all religio and art must be derived from there tooooo, since "cultures are *integral* packages" - implication being that if animals and possibly tech are transmitted, ideas associated with them must have been transmitted too, so all ideas the Chinese ever had must have been borrowed.
Note the introduction of a new fundamental PIE rule/a very important style of argument they introduce. "Cultures are *integral* packages" <=> "the religions, technologies, arts, and other components that they shared *were not* transmitted separately".
They need this rule to claim that if China can be proved to have borrowed anything at all - say a can-opener - then China borrowed everything else as well. Isn't this a *brilliant* new argument for appropriation?
So all of Chinese religion and art and technology and "other" (as yet unspecified, to be expanded in future to include everything Chinese) are are now owing to the pastoral nomads, whom the Chinese considered barbarians (uncivilised).
But then that Heiner Roetz - who wrote the critical article - shows some faint prickings of his common-sense and conscience again and puts a damper on the PIE party (who invited him anyway? No more invites for you, Roetz). Roetz notes that the reverse of "Galton's argument" holds equally true:
Quote:("Galton's problem") can be reversed: one cannot make secure inferences with regard to the existence of transfer unless the respective data is shown to be really genetically related.
Note, this is actually an important point - assuming PIE-ists want to remain consistent with the internal logic/rules they set up. But, of course they don't:
The rules of PIE-ism change when they apply to China because China is not genetically regarded an IE population and doesn't really speak a lingo deemed IE (until Old Sinitic gets reconstructed in a convenient way to declare PIE influenced it :ominous: - they're working on it, I'm not kidding: it's in one of Mair's references to his own publishing mouthpiece). So while PIE-ists are still eager to declare that Chinese civilisation - being so kewl and all - "must be derived" from the white man onlee (since Hamites can't do anything by themselves and only white men are creative <= that is the PIE white supremacist rule that they Will Not State Out Loud, but they scream it in every intention and act of encroachment) - again: while they want to insist that all valuable aspects of Chinese civilisation "must be derived" from IE, in E Asia/China's case they're essentially implying that no [significant] genetic transfer need be necessary. AKA Oryan Influence Theory/They Came, They Saw, They Conquered-or-Shared And Then They Went Away Again /Now You See Them, Now You Don't. Or "From Central Asia to China - There and Back Again." (Note how I slipped in a ref to The Hobbit for no meaningful reason I can think of at all.)
It's a special clause/special pleading rule that PIE-ism has introduced for the Chinese case and for all other E Asians and non-IE people to be stripped of valuables hereafter.
PIE-ists are sophisticated thieves.
Heiner Roetz continues, after warning that (surely)
Quote:Victor Mair would agree that one is well advised to avoid a diffusionism that overstates its case.
Such caution seems especially apposite if one looks for influences not only on the level of material goods but also on the level of more complex social phenomena, let alone comprehensive world-views that might have been transported together with the material borrowings.
Quote:As to horses and ovicaprids (goats etc), it is most probably uncontroversial that they were brought to China via inner Asia, with a key role played by Iranian peoples.** But does this mean that along with them pastoralist and nomadic "fundamental ethical, moral and esthetic concepts", as the author puts it, were also introduced to China? I do not find corroboration for this far-reaching thesis in Mair's article. It is difficult to see more than an instrumental role for these animals as sacrificial offerings in religious ritual. [...]*
** But then where's the honorary mention for the other C-Asians that China considered equally barbaric: the Mongolians, also a horse culture, and also a source of 'influence' in that respect on China?
* And then Roetz goes on to explain why Mair didn't get - or else didn't represent - the whole claim of "sheep/goats everywhere in Chinese ethics" correct.
While I've left out the long and Chinese-linguistical details (uh, I can barely read the Roman script, I'm going to have to pass on Chinese script), note that Roetz showed this with actual examples - on how goats and sheep were not so overly represented in IIRC Chinese religio and jurisprudence after all, as Mair had claimed they were - (e.g. IIRC Mair had multiplied a single merely-repetitive instance into multiple independent instances instead) and essentially showed that Mair was overly eager (i.e. mistaken) and was speculating beyond evidence (i.e. mistaken).
Of course it is all an innocent mistake. Babble peddlers too, similarly innocently (aka motivated for their cause), read the origin of Chinese language/script - such as especially with the sheep references in Chinese judgments - as referring to the lamb of gawd and thus as pointing to the "Bible Did It". Another miracle. There are so many these days.
See:
- www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/3794-stories-in-the-characters/
- pinyin.info/news/2006/misunderstandings-of-biblical-proportions/
Useful reads for 2 reasons.
The links give an idea of a few of the problems of reconstructing Old Sinitic from its character set. (I may get back to this later.)
The second reason is that these links show that certain other people - not just PIE-ists - also eagerly construe at will the meaning of the presence of sheep in ancient Chinese jurisprudence. If Babble thumpers find that the Chinese characters represent the babble because of the sheepy references, then PIE-ists can declare the babble is IE onlee too, no? Since Mair's whole point was that the pastoral nomadic culture of sheep and goats was so heavily influential on the Chinese that it influenced - or as the PIE-ists really want to say: it created - Chinese law [because the Chinese can't have had laws without the civilising force of IE]. Tragically, Roetz argues Mair's mere insistence away for the Chinese case, but when the babble is so stuck on sheepy/goat religious metaphors too - from OT solomon and scapegoats to NT jeebus the lamb - Mair should rather focus on proving the *babble* is IE. The Chinese case may have fallen through, so why not pursue the biblical one (e.g. sheep + Solomon + law)? No civilisation there for IE to claim, though.
Another statement by Roetz:
Quote:What is more important, however, is that it is hard to detect any foreign "pastoral" impact when it comes to the content of the specific ethical theorems which use, among other things, the "caprovine" terms or characters. The usage of "to flock" (qun) as the word for "community" in the passage from Xunzi 9 is no exception. For Xunzi society is something that human beings are capable of forming in distinction from animals. I do not see any parallel between humans and sheep or goats and an indication of a "nomadic lifestyle" that "dominates ethics" in the quoted passage. This remains true also if we take other appearances of yang terminology into account.2
Oh Roetz, how could you! Poor Mair. And poor PIE-ism. It had opened its mouth wide to ingest that part of Chinese religio-culture next, and Roetz snatched it away, unfeelingly.
I'm thinking Roetz is probably in Sinology (which was never part of IE Studies before, since Chinese/China were not in IE purview before) and he's unlikely to have graduated in indology/IE Studies - not many do both - and so Roetz doesn't know that what's expected of him is to just let PIE have its way.
Oh dear, I fear some Sinologists are going to be a problem to the advance of PIE-ism in China. They're just not all of PIE-ist mentality, not being IE Studies people. (IE Studies attracts a certain kind of alien; Asian Studies attracts a different kind of alien. The two only start becoming identical at the point where PIE-ism is poised to swallow E Asia into PIE-ism, as has been happening now.)
Heiner Roetz ends his critique on this matter with reference to Mair's leaping to drastic conclusions above (I wonder why no one bothered to put a sock in Mair at the very start):
Quote:China's links with her neighbors may well have been far more intimate, long lasting and important than has often been acknowledged. It is another matter, however, to make plausible that and how "pastoral" culture has in fact dominated a "core segment of the Sinitic value system". [= reference to Chinese religion and law] To corroborate this thesis would require more evidence. (More evidence? Where did Mair give any *actual* evidence and not mere speculation and massaging of data?)
I am quoting selectively - since commenting on everything would make these posts even longer - despite there being much stuff I'd like to complain and remark about concerning the rest of Mair's article and Roetz' response article.
Death to traitors.