Unmasking AIT

[acharya]

Please do a google.
I used the URL posted before that post. Somebody removed the URL.

check it out.

[Guest]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Pearson

http://web.archive.org/web/19981202070204/...s/genewar06.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_In...uropean_Studies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mankind_Quarterly

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_de_Benoist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Haudry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mircea_Eliade

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Altheim

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Dum%C3%A9zil

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_G%C3%BCnther

http://www.utexas.edu/depts/german/faculty/polome.html

http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/a...ntilla.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marija_Gimbutas

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-Bodhi+Aug 25 2006, 12:02 AM-->QUOTE(Bodhi @ Aug 25 2006, 12:02 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin-acharya+Aug 20 2006, 08:05 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(acharya @ Aug 20 2006, 08:05 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Introduction
Tacitus, the classical Roman writer, .... tree to which Hinduism has been often compared.
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Acharya, who is the writer of this article? Your own work? Any external resource?

Great clarity along with a logical flow. Clarifies many things for a naive reader of AIT-propoganda.
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Bodhi,
This is written by Dr Klaus Klostermaier who is a German but teaches at a Canadian University. He is world renowned Indologist and has many books to his credit. Some of his books are used as course curriculum at many universities.

Original source of the article can be found here:
http://www.iskcon.com/icj/6_1/6_1klostermaier.html

-Digvijay

[Guest]

I have been doing some reading about the history of the AIT stuff and feel that in order to really unmask AIT we will have to

1. study europe starting from 1700s
2. the prevailing situations during different times
3. leading scholars of the times
4. their opinions and researches that relate to AIT
5. Major events that changed or left a mark on the anglosphere.

Besides this we also need to study the psyche of the indologists in general.

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-rajesh_g+Sep 1 2006, 04:13 AM-->QUOTE(rajesh_g @ Sep 1 2006, 04:13 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->I have been doing some reading about the history of the AIT stuff and feel that in order to really unmask AIT we will have to

1. study europe starting from 1700s
2. the prevailing situations during different times
3. leading scholars of the times
4. their opinions and researches that relate to AIT
5. Major events that changed or left a mark on the anglosphere.

Besides this we also need to study the psyche of the indologists in general.
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Rajesh,
Do u have some fundamental questions w.r.t AIT? I do not claim to be an expert but perhaps I can answer some of your questions.

-Digvijay

[Guest]

Digvijay

To be honest I dont know enough to distinguish between a fundamental and a non-fundamental question. If I stress myself (at this point atleast) I can think of one. What are the falsification criteria for AIT in particular (and PIE in general) ?

I will give you the reason why I ask this question. From what I have read I have observed that the origin, the urheimat, the language, the lifestyle, the nature, the interaction, the type of the indo-europian etc has almost always followed what is the current rage in the west. There doesnt seem to be any set criteria about who or what this PIE is ?

So taking cue from Muller-uvach -> he-who-knows-one-knows-no-one, i am beginning to think, he who knows not the one who makes one know oneself doesnt know oneself. Basically lets study these fellows who have built our image in our eyes ? And maybe knowing these fellows will tell us about the image they have built for us ?

Not sure if that makes sense or not - but thats my 2np for now.

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-k.ram+Jul 25 2006, 12:31 PM-->QUOTE(k.ram @ Jul 25 2006, 12:31 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->A quick crack:
Biggest dumbasses are still "secular hindus" to fall for all this crap and not do their home work.

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Ram

Look in the link posted earlier about this fellow Pearson. The guy who heads one of the most prestigious journals in PIE research etc built world anti-communist league. The last invasionist model is propagated by Gimbustas who had sheer hatred for communists. The whole field is infested with such fellows and yet the communists in India are the biggest votaries of AIT.

Weird stuff !!!

[Guest]

I was looking up references on the indologists of the first stage of AIT. "Schlegel" is a whole family of them. Adolphus Schlegel, had many sons - of interest to us are "Augustus William Schlegel" born 1769, and "Frederich Von Schlegel" born 1772. The father Schlegel was a priest in Lutherian Church in England. The son Schlegels were early Indologists. These folks were Germans but were hired by East India Company.

Now my conern is, since the time line of the Indlogist brother Schlegels is definitely after William Jones (born 1746), they can not come in the stage 1 - before W Jones. I am reading some of their writings right now and they seem to refer to W Jones as the pioneer.

[Guest]

Interesting paper..

http://www.tobiashubinette.se/asianists.pdf

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Some plausible explanations</b>

So with all this said, why are Nazis and extreme rightists so frequently and variously involved with Asian Studies as empirical evidence from the Swedish milieu shows? To begin with, a first point of departure must be a general appreciation for Asian peoples and cultures coming from the public at large in the West. Contrary to the various cultures of the Americas, Africa and Oceania which Western colonialism encountered during its conquest of the world and which with few exceptions were deemed “primitive” according to the “scientific” logic of Social Darwinist thinking, Asia was considered to be an equal at least in its glorious past of empire buildings even if its contemporary state was universally condemned to have fallen into rampant stagnation and decay, thereby legitimizing missionary activities and military interventions and in the end outright occupation and colonization. The “Oriental lure” whereby Westerners simply create their own Asia by the use of the classical colonial strategies of representation and appropriation has certainly played an important role in the development of Western culture. Orientalism can be found among such diverse representatives as the canonical authors of Romanticism, the various occultist and esoteric New Age sects inspired by “Oriental” philosophy, religion and “Ariosophy” like the Jungians, the Hare Krishnaits, and the followers of Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy or Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophy, and last but not least Western popular culture’s almost childlike fondness of everything from belly dance to yoga, comics and cinema, acupuncture and martial arts, and numerous other expressions of “Oriental mystique”.67 There is of course a difference between the turning up of “Oriental” elements in Western high and popular culture versus academia such as American poet and Fascist Ezra Pound who like the French poststructuralist Roland Barthes was obsessed by the “pictographic characters of the Orient” and feminist scholars like Julia Kristeva and Hélène Cixous who are in search of “Oriental  femininity”, but the tendency to use Asia as a projection of visions and dreams is clearly the same.68 The American Sinologist Raymond Dawson traces the Western tradition to use Asia as a backdrop for ideological visions back to the Age of Enlightenment with its chic chinoiserie.

According to Dawson, China and soon also Japan became symbols and role models for Conservative forces and in their longing for the pre-modern, and ”the laws of nature” were often translated into Confucianism as a political ideology with social hierarchies perceived to be naturalized. Thus, the conservative types naturally admire Confucian East and South East Asia, while the hardcore Nazis go for Central and South Asia in their search for Aryan brethren, and the more aesthetic-minded seem to prefer West Asia where they can find solace for their romantic Orientalism. One bizarre aspect worth mentioning of the quest for the origin of the white race is the various “scientific” proposals of the Kalmucks, the Maoris, the Ainus or even the Koreans as distant kin to the white race.70 In other words, by imagining and conceptualizing an Asia of their own, Asia becomes a code word for political authoritarianism, racial homogeneity, patriarchal familialism and cultural traditionalism, all typical extreme rightist components in a Western ideological context. During the course of 20th century history, all these ideological ingredients have been able not only to survive but to dominate the field of Asian Studies either as the racist Orientalism of the colonialist era, or as the anti-Communist and highly politicized Area Studies of the Cold War. Accordingly, it is no surprise that a Nazi of the 1930s like Essén and a Nazi of the Cold War like Ek are to be found as rewarded and respected Asian Studies scholars.

Paradoxically, even present days’ Neo-Nazis are showing a growing appreciation for
East Asia, a region perceived as “racially homogenous” and where “the Führer principle” is governing. In 1996, the American Neo-Nazi magazine Resistance published a dialogue between the Canadian ideologist George Eric Hawthorne and Andrew Oswald, an Afro-American Moslem from Nation of Islam, where both were praising the rapid industrialization 15 of South Korea and China as a natural result of an “Asian National Socialism”.71 The scientific grounding for this comes from theories of East Asian intelligence superiority with the race theorists Richard Lynn, Philippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen as its main proponents and widely popularized through the bestseller The Bell Curve (1994).72 Barry Sautman has examined this image of East Asians as intellectual “supermen”, and how it has been used to explain the Pacific Asian economic miracle not only by Westerners but also among Asians  themselves in the indigenized version of internal Orientalism.73

However side by side with this appreciation, there is a continuous paranoid and resurgent fear of Asia, whether manifested as the “yellow peril” at the time of the colonial period, the “Jewish peril” during the 1930s, the “Oriental despotism” of “Socialismus Asiaticus” during the Cold War, the current “green peril” of Islamism, Huntington’s “Confucian-Islamic alliance” or Bush’s “axis of evil”, as an almost equal to Western civilization and therefore its coming combatant in an inevitable race war for global power and in the end its possible future superior.74 Because of this fear and perceived danger, it is absolutely necessary for the Westerners to master the languages and cultures of Asia not to mention to dominate the region politically and economically. This does not exclude the somewhat mundane fact that today’s Asian Studies and the study of Asian languages and cultures also has a lot to do with the spread of global capital and business opportunities as Tom Oakes points out.75 To master Asia and the Asians was also the reason why Asian Studies in the West was born in the first place with Arabic as its first subject in the 13th century at the time of the Crusades. In analogy with this, it was during the 18th century when Western colonial domination in Asia became more pronounced and obvious, that the study of the various languages spoken on the vast continent took on a more serious manner with the birth of Orientalism or Oriental Studies. James Hevia has written on how British scholars ethnographically mapped its way through China just like they did in India by the building up of an extensive Orientalist archive as an integrated part of
the colonial project to be able to decode and recode the country, provide intelligence in the contest with other Western powers and dominate the local scene, but also to be able to show that the spirit of this ancient and venerable civilization was gone forever and that it had stagnated and therefore was ripe for colonization, while simultaneously creating its own fears of the country in the form of the “yellow peril” which still makes itself heard in the subconscious mind of Western culture.76

Further, as has been shown by Ravi Palat in his analysis of Asian Studies as Area
Studies and by Harry Harootunian for Japanese Studies, Asian Studies is indeed composed by a strange mixture of classical Orientalism and Area Studies with its heavy stress on knowl16 edge of languages and pre-modern history as the method of understanding contemporary Asia and even diasporic Asians, and more importantly with its positivist, atheoretical and descriptive nature in commenting, categorizing, cataloguing and translating manuscripts and artifacts which all too often have been stolen and looted, and which still unfortunately is the main activity of Asian Studies in Sweden and in most other European countries.77 Finally, the asianists themselves are with few exceptions predominantly white males, the absolute majority coming from an upper-class background, and they are the ones monopolizing the positions of secure, well-paid and full-employed tenures and professorships. To be an Asianist is a lifestyle by consuming the racialized Other and going native considering the fact that so many occasionally like to dress up in “Oriental” clothes, play “Oriental” games, practice “Oriental” dance, martial arts and meditation, and eat “ethnic” food, while many female Asianists like to color their hair black or use “Asian” make-up style. Ethnic Asians in the field of whom most happen to be females, are confined to low-paid part-time teaching as “native informants” –
conversation teachers, calligraphy instructors and the like.

Even more disturbing is the still going strong general feminization and infantilization
of Asia as according to my personal estimate of Sweden and Europe at least 75 percent of these white men are married to Asian women, driven by the sexualization of Asian women with its classical ingredients of Harem fantasies, Indian Tantrism, geishas and kisaengs, and contemporary Middle Eastern homosexual sex tourism and South and South East Asian heterosexual or even paedophilic sex tourism, while the rest and all too many of the female Asianists have adopted an Asian child. The phenomenon of sexual relations between “scientists” and “native informants” has been dealt with by Benedict Anderson for the case of United States as it obviously has persisted in the field, even if reversed from those of the colonial era: “…[r]ather than the scholar-bureaucrat being creolized by these relationships, out there in the colony, it is the spouse or significant other, moved to California or Massachusetts
who is likely to be Americanized.”78 Thus, paradoxically Asian spouses or adopted children become Americanized or Europeanized, while the Asianists become Asianized. However, the Asianists do not stop at collecting “natives” in their colonial desires; they also collect “Oriental” art, manuscripts and rare books which very often have been purchased and smuggled out using dubious methods, a practice which is legitimized by shallow scientific arguments colonial rescue fantasies. So to sum up, I argue that the fact that Asia functions as a topos of fear and desire either as a distant homeland of, an equal to or a threat to the West, explains the fact that the field of Asian Studies has become a sanctuary and safe haven for Nazis and ex17
treme rightists, race ideology, right-wing extremism, white supremacy, authoritarian thinking and colonial romance. Through this twofold schizophrenic and split process Asian Studies largely missed the moments of de-colonization and de-nazification, and continues to live on fuelled by racist fantasies and dreams.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[ramana]

Try to get the date when the Schlegel made his connection. He might have preceded Jones. Or might have consolidated Jones discoveries and furthered them in Europe and supplemented Voltaire. So he gets in the chart at earleir stage.

Its this 'chicken and egg ' type of arguements that tie the Indics down and lose the big picture.

The object of the picture is to show that there was a progression of ideas from thinking India is the mother of all civilization(Voltarie, Schelgel granted could be later, mid 18th cent) to India is the reciveing end of all the invader dregs(Max Mueller, mid 19 cen) and thus has no originality. All this in 100 years. The big question should be why?

Also what did Voltaire base his views on?

BTW that was not Acharya's chart. He only posted it. So why complain to him? You could have said the same with out ref to the poster.

[Guest]

Check footnote and read full page

Read page from 196 -202
rest of commentary is also interesting

Bopps

[Guest]

Ramana-ji (and others if feel that way), please dont get offended. No such intent, nor was I 'complaining' about anything. I was only trying to share what I had noticed recently - that Schlegels are after Jones and not before - unless what I found is wrong - and I am open to learn and correct mself. I am not trying to 'argue chicken and egg', but just trying to find out the accurate and precise progression of the thought and impression of early Indologists. For sceintific understanding of the origins of AIT, inaccuracy will be fatal.

This particular thread - unlike the other AIT thread - is purposefully started to study and understand the development of AIT over last 3 centuries, which involves studying early Indologists and discuss the origins of AIT. I think -"Understanding the precise history of AIT" - is the dedicated focus of discussion here. Big piture of AIT and related research is being discussed on another thread.

Schlegels were historians of literature, mythology and philosophy. Apparently they tried to build upon Jones, over as well as beyond the linguistics and philology. And you are absolutely right - they furthered the studies on Indian origin in Dutch and German universities in early 19th century. They have also corrected various mis-judgements of Jones on Sanskrit and Persian, and started building on Sanskrit-German links. They are more learned and thorough in their approach than Jones. BTW, no invading Aryans so far.

Voltaire - he was a high official with French in Pondicherry in early 18th century (Referred also as a cousin of king of France or some relative),and a very established historian of french history. He is even more thorough in his studies of India. Seems to be honestly looking for the links of greek history in India. Unlike british and Germans, he does not seem to have a previous-design. (Also, please note, there were some very important works of french about Indian civilization before British arrived on the scene. East India Company seems to have purchased such manuscripts and studies from French, after defeating them in war)

Once again, if fellow members feel that I should not have referred to poster in my previous post, I wish to clarify that complaining was not my intent in the least. I will edit my previous post.

[acharya]

Bodhi,

We understand. You can avoid reporting that chart again.
Now if you can put those references you have about these orientalists and some exerpts then we can have better discussion. I like your analysis.
You can also create simple timeline of these dates and years to get an idea of the timeframe.

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->
Schlegels were historians of literature, mythology and philosophy. Apparently they tried to build upon Jones, beyond the linguistics and philology. And you are absolutely right - they furthered the studies on Indian origin in Dutch and German universities in early 19th century. They have also corrected various mis-judgements of Jones on Sanskrit and Persian, and started building on Sanskrit-German links. They are more learned and thorough in their approach than Jones. BTW, no invading Aryans so far.

Voltaire - he was a high official with French in Pondicherry in early 17th century (Referred also as a cousin of king of France or some relative),and a very established historian of french history. He is even more thorough in his studies of India. Seems to be honestly looking for the links of greek history in India. Unlike british and Germans, he does not seem to have a previous-design. (Also, please note, there were some very important works of french about Indian civilization before British arrived on the scene. East India Company seems to have purchased such manuscripts and studies from French, after defeating them in war)

<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[acharya]

Mudy,
Can you post that link you have posted in Sanskrit thread.
Can you put that small para which talks about the chaos in the language studies before sanskrit was discovered.

[Guest]

Freidrich is the guy being referred to and Bodhi is correct he came after Jones. Freidrich Schlegel wanted India as the <i>urland </i>- the land of the original revelation, although he thought Indians couldnt preserve it and now have became idolators.. Or so it went.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Schlegel

added later : This hero got attracted to India as did others like him to get even with the pope or church or whatever and then found the idolatory of yindoos too much to digest and finally converted to catholicism.

---------

IIRC Voltaire's line was --> ok the yindoos had some real monotheism going there and so church (pope actually) didnt have any monopoly. Was he a protestant ?

---------

can somebody who has studied anglosphere in those times post a summary of those times ??

[ramana]

Bodhiji, I didnt mean to pick on you. Thanks for your kind reply.

Mudy, the foot note is interesting. Both Jones and the writer ignore the fact that Persian in its original script was introduced during the time of Darius in Punjab ie in way before Christ. Punjab was for sometime a province of the Persians.

What they are talking of is the introduction of Persian in Arabic script after through the Patans and the Turkish slave rulers. This was after the Ghori period.

[Guest]

Some excerpts about Schlegel..

http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0791...TM_1apxXUmJKJqs

[Guest]

Check page 191
West started learning Sanskrit in 18th century.

read page 193,194 195
195 -first para
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->So, too, in Germany came full acknowledgment of the new truth, and a ROman Catholic, Frederick Schlegel. He accepted the discoveries in the old language and literatur of India as final : he saw the significance of these discoveries as regard philology, and grouped the languages of India, Persia, Greece, Italy and Germany under the name afterward so universally accepted - Indo-Germanic.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

read also 199

[agnivayu]

Breaking news...hot off the press...

There are unconfirmed reports of an Aryan invasion in Silicon Valley.

Witzel should come out and verify

[Guest]

Acharya, I will work on timeframing the scholarships.

On protestant-catholic issue, my thinking:

There is a very clear 'protestant-catholic' struggle amongst the early Indologists (Orientalists as they called themselves). One would be surprised to notice another aspect of the scholarly struggle amongst the same Indologists at that time -'whether Thomas the apostle ever visited India'. Surprising to note that majority of early protestant Indologists reject that Thomas ever visited India. Catholic Indologists (especially Jesuits) were very bitter about it with protestants. I read a book by an 18th century Jesuit mentioning this (will try to search if it is there on google, or scan some pages and post).

There were two clear camps of Indologists of 18th century. First - Portugese and Dutch, later joined by Germans, insisted that Bible is historically right to the last single word of it; that Hebrew is the original language of all humans; that Thomas the apostle was very much in India, that India and China both had rejected him and as a result suffered the spiritual and wordly calamities (they aparently did not know about Gupta period); that saint Francis-Xavior was sent by Pope to India to 'clear the weeds' that grew after Thomas, and so on. On the other camp, French and later British Indologists - mostly protestants, tried to demolish many of these points. SOme said Thomas went to Africa and not India and so on.... To counter this, Dutch Jesuits in India did a lot of writing around this, and their literature - mostly in dutch - can still be found (let me post some google book links later)

But, this would all change by the mid of 19th century when British have made up the plan of the 'Great Game' in India. All scholars are united that "Aryans from X invaded India". X continued to be debated. By now, all protestants concede that Thomas did somehow visit India, though failed to make any impression here (this leaves Catholics somewhat heart broken - if an apostle could not make India christian what would! - protestants answer, of course Aryan invaders would!)