Post 1/4
openthemagazine.com/article/art-culture/a-historical-sense
via rajeev2004.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/fwd-aatish-taseer-what-sanskrit-has.html
(I have not read the entire article.)
Being a fool again, as usual, I glanced at 4 paras - oh how I regret. So now I have 4 points to this post.
There's over 100 comments apparently to the article. I just looked over those visible on opening the page. And other than blind applause (and the usual bickering), I haven't seen any comments complain about some terribly obvious ... what's a diplomatic word .... oh yeah *errors*. There's the whiff of trouble in the article as well, but maybe that will come at end.
1. Eire is NOT cognate with Arya/Airya. Eire comes from Eriu, an important (founding?) female character for the Celts of the British Isles, who gave her name to the country.
Here. As I posted early on, *years* back when I first registered on IF to correct the constant flow of sillyness from BenAmi - the same link appears to still be operational:
mythicalireland.com/mythology/concordance2.html
Oh, and I see that even wackypedia says something of the same sort and doesn't pretend there's any relation between the word Eire and Arya/Airya. (Note: the relevant paras at wacky do know to go into IE cognates for Stuff and all, so it's not like this was an oversight.)
- The thing is, IE-ists/indologicals did at some point try to claim Eire was related to Arya, but have long since backtracked on it. At best they will no longer declare it with any certainty, so it need not be parroted. Also, was that not the closest sounding cognate the IE-ists could find in European space to Arya/Airya? And they tried hard to force it to fit - the way Cindy's stepsisters tried to force Cindy's glass slipper to fit them - but tragically, they had to drop it in the end, for reasons seen in the quoteblock above. That's not to say IE-ists wouldn't love to resurrect it - and finally claim the word Arya to exist in "Europe's" own space - but try as they might they seem not to have found a valid reason for such a resurrection.
- I think Aatish must have read expired IE-ist conjectures on Eire being related to Arya without reading the IE-ists' prevarications/retractions for these, and then also forgot to read what the Irish have always been saying about the origin of "Eire" and which still holds (and I don't know of anyone sensible who pretends otherwise).
But the mistake does reveal that Aatish did not do any proper (let alone independent) study of words and origins, but just read outdated indological opinions/hypotheses and regurgitated this now. But why then is he allowed to lecture to an audience who ought to know better (or so you'd think)?
And did anyone actually try to correct him, I wonder? Also, why didn't Rajeev Srinivasan at least add a few provisos to his copy-paste of the article at his blog? The only reason I can think of is that Rajeev didn't actually read the entire piece and did what I did: scanned a few lines. Except I saw the paras with the mistakes and Rajeev missed them presumably.
I'm sure 10 years from now, some Indian somewhere is still going to repeat the Arya/Airya and Eire thing, like it is some brilliant discovery/understanding on their part. Sigh.
To the next one then:
openthemagazine.com/article/art-culture/a-historical-sense
via rajeev2004.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/fwd-aatish-taseer-what-sanskrit-has.html
(I have not read the entire article.)
Being a fool again, as usual, I glanced at 4 paras - oh how I regret. So now I have 4 points to this post.
There's over 100 comments apparently to the article. I just looked over those visible on opening the page. And other than blind applause (and the usual bickering), I haven't seen any comments complain about some terribly obvious ... what's a diplomatic word .... oh yeah *errors*. There's the whiff of trouble in the article as well, but maybe that will come at end.
1. Eire is NOT cognate with Arya/Airya. Eire comes from Eriu, an important (founding?) female character for the Celts of the British Isles, who gave her name to the country.
Here. As I posted early on, *years* back when I first registered on IF to correct the constant flow of sillyness from BenAmi - the same link appears to still be operational:
mythicalireland.com/mythology/concordance2.html
Quote:Eire - variant of Eriu, one of the greatest of the women of the Tuatha de Danaan, she was one of three daughters of the Dagda who gave her name to Ireland (27)
Oh, and I see that even wackypedia says something of the same sort and doesn't pretend there's any relation between the word Eire and Arya/Airya. (Note: the relevant paras at wacky do know to go into IE cognates for Stuff and all, so it's not like this was an oversight.)
- The thing is, IE-ists/indologicals did at some point try to claim Eire was related to Arya, but have long since backtracked on it. At best they will no longer declare it with any certainty, so it need not be parroted. Also, was that not the closest sounding cognate the IE-ists could find in European space to Arya/Airya? And they tried hard to force it to fit - the way Cindy's stepsisters tried to force Cindy's glass slipper to fit them - but tragically, they had to drop it in the end, for reasons seen in the quoteblock above. That's not to say IE-ists wouldn't love to resurrect it - and finally claim the word Arya to exist in "Europe's" own space - but try as they might they seem not to have found a valid reason for such a resurrection.
- I think Aatish must have read expired IE-ist conjectures on Eire being related to Arya without reading the IE-ists' prevarications/retractions for these, and then also forgot to read what the Irish have always been saying about the origin of "Eire" and which still holds (and I don't know of anyone sensible who pretends otherwise).
But the mistake does reveal that Aatish did not do any proper (let alone independent) study of words and origins, but just read outdated indological opinions/hypotheses and regurgitated this now. But why then is he allowed to lecture to an audience who ought to know better (or so you'd think)?
And did anyone actually try to correct him, I wonder? Also, why didn't Rajeev Srinivasan at least add a few provisos to his copy-paste of the article at his blog? The only reason I can think of is that Rajeev didn't actually read the entire piece and did what I did: scanned a few lines. Except I saw the paras with the mistakes and Rajeev missed them presumably.
I'm sure 10 years from now, some Indian somewhere is still going to repeat the Arya/Airya and Eire thing, like it is some brilliant discovery/understanding on their part. Sigh.
To the next one then: