Progress Of Indic Languages Vs English - 2

[Husky]

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

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:

[Husky]

Post 2/4



2. Then Aatish declared:

‘Narindar’ might have sounded downmarket to the people I had grown up with, but it could no longer be that way for me. Not when I knew that beyond its simple meaning as ‘Lord of Men’, nara—cognate with the Latin nero and the Greek anér—was one of our oldest words for ‘man’.

(BTW, is Narindar not Punjabi/some northern Indian language's *prakritised* version of Skt Narendra? As in nara+indra meaning something like nara shreShTha? I don't know about how "downmarket" Narindar sounds to whomever, but Narendra has always been considered a perfectly respectable name by *Hindus*.)



I am not familiar with the Greek word, but as for Nero:

I really shouldn't have to do this, but then, there have been a lot of things no one should have to do:



Latin dictionary: archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/lookup.pl?stem=ner&ending=o

Nereus -eos and -ei m. [a sea god].



Nero -onis m. [a cognomen in the gens Claudia]; esp. C. Claudius Nero , [fifth Roman emperor (54-68)]. ****



nervosus -a -um [sinewy , nervous, strong, vigorous]; adv. nervose.



nervulus -i m. [nerve , strength].



nervus -i m. (usually plur.) , [sinew, tendon]; fig. [strength, vigor, energy; a string, esp. of an instrument; a strap, thong, fetter].

*** Explicating by expanding (for anyone who may need it, though I'm sure people already guessed it):

gens gentis f. [a clan , stock, people, tribe, nation]. Transf., [an offspring, descendant; a district, country]; esp. in partitive genit.: 'ubi gentium', [where in the world?]; plur., 'gentes', [foreigners].

cognomen -inis n. [a surname , family name].

Meaning: "a cognomen in gens Claudia" =~ a name used by the Claudius family/community. Of zoiets ongeveer.

(Nero's a name kept by members of the Claudius family of Roman aristocrats.

I suppose this is as opposed to Flavian or Antonine etc aristocratic/imperial lines.)



No one needs to be a know-it-all to know the bare minimum. But you need to know at least that much - i.e. the bare minimum - when you write an article for public consumption, especially an article where the meanings and origins of the words are *key* to the points the writer is trying to make!

And if people don't know, then why do they make it up instead of looking it up? Why would anyone *do* that?



And as for the proposed meaning of the name "Nero", the following site says:

www.babynamespedia.com/meaning/Nero

1: Nero is largely used in the English, French, German, Slavic, and Spanish languages, and its origin is Latin. The name's meaning is black, dark. The name is of uncertain origin; it could also be from Sabine roots. The first name is taken from the Roman nickname, which is known from the Roman emperor Nero (37-68). The emperor's notoriety has reduced the popularity of the name. The name Nerina is the female equivalent of Nero. Neroh, Neron (French, Slavic, and Spanish), Nerone (Italian), Niro, and Nyro are variants of Nero.

And same site, under Nerina, just in case:

2: Nerina is of Latin origin. The meaning here is 'black, dark'. From the Roman nickname. Nerina is the feminine version of the English, French, German, Slavic, Spanish, and Italian Nero.

But I wouldn't know to confirm. Noir in French is black, and another word that signifies the same is negre I think (used in the surname of Agnes Negre[s], IIRC this appeared in some end credits), which is hence related to negr* or something in Latin. So it's possible that Nero *could* theoretically mean black, but it's too short a word for me to dare guessing at.

(But possible Sabine roots to the word is interesting.)





I think the most common Italian word for 'man' that I know of is "homo" (as in, "il homo" or something, well, "l'homme" en francais at least) and the Latin word must be related: I think it would be just homo. Oh and turns out *it is*, what a great "miracle". Latin dict again:

homo -inis c. [a human being , man, mortal]; in pl., [men, people, the world]; used like a pronoun, [he, him]; milit., in pl., [infantry].

(Hence obviously nemo = no man, etc.)



But I'd like to know in what dictionary Aatish found Nero to mean man, then? I actually don't think he looked it up. 'Cause I just looked it up in yet another Latin dictionary, and that one mentions all the famous British Latin dictionary sources for ner* words, and none of them find ner*/nero to mean 'man'.



And honestly, his being/playing an expert at word derivations and relations and all, I don't know why Aatish Taseer didn't go for the obvious. See, now I would have done this in his place: Manusha (Skt). Mens (NL)/mensch(DE). And mens is probably related to man (EN). But the question then is, can we make it all related to the 'homo' above of Latin, pretty please? Perhaps if we related human to homo, because then the relationship between human and man is straightforward. Tadaa.

Obviously amateurish and hardly clever, but at least not dubious/suspect as the "Eire" and "Nero" that Aatish went in for. [Never mind that I don't know Skt and certainly didn't "study" it like Taseer. This doesn't take a brain or even half of one. And IE word games are easy to play even for me, BUT: if the example I made above were allowed, then there are other unspeakable if rather important arguments also that Hindus should be allowed to make concerning IE, no? Mais non.]





Anyway, did the editor at the magazine read Taseer's piece? Did he cross-check statements made therein? Else what *does* an editor get paid to do? It's obviously not spell-checking because the editor missed correcting "Paravati" to Parvati.

[Husky]

Post 3/4



3. Moving on to the above-mentioned para then. Aatish wrote:

Some might turn their nose up at a name like Aparna, say, preferring a Kaireen or an Alaaya, but not me. Not when it was clear that parna was ‘leaf’, cognate with the English ‘fern’, and aparna, which meant ‘leafless’, was a name Kalidasa had himself given Paravati: ‘Because she rejected, gracious in speech though she was, even the high level of asceticism that is living only on leaves falling from trees of their own accord, those who know the past call her Aparna, the Leafless Lady.’

Taseer seems to wrongly be implying Kalidasa invented the name Aparna for Parvati with the line "a name Kalidaasa had himself given Paravati [sic]". (Did he confuse her name "Paravata Vardhini" with her name "Paarvati"?)

Yet the translation in the para itself has Kalidaasa saying "Because [...] those who know the past call her Aparna". Which clearly implies in Kalidaasa's own words that was her name - one of her names - at least since the original event which he is merely *re*treading. (Actually, it is her name all along, from the beginning). As is well-known: Kalidaasa is just recounting in his own chosen poetic-prose style the pre-existing Pauranic account on Shiva, Parvati and the birth of Murugan in his work Kumara Sambhavam. Just as he was recounting the [R^ig?] Vedic account of King Vikrama and Apsara Urvashi in another work, and in yet another work he used an existing Hindu tradition associated with Rama/the Itihaasa on Rama, to cover Rama's ancestors and lineage, and in another he again stuck to an age-old pre-existing Hindu tradition concerning Shakuntala and the birth of Bharata.



As explained, Parvati's name of Aparna was already well-known to earlier Hindus and present in earlier Hindu religious works (as Kalidaasa himself seems to imply in the above translation), but Kalidaasa never gave it her. And that is why Aparna is repeated throughout several ancient Sahasranaamas to Amman taken from various Puranas. (And so Adi Shankara too I think repeated Aparna's name twice in his 20-verse AL.)



BTW, Aparna is a personal name of Hers, and She *answers* to it. <- But I suppose Aatish wouldn't know that. This is not his mother's Sikhism or his dad's islam after all. This is his deep ancestors' *Hindu* religion. But he's always welcome to revert to it Fully and Properly to find out the truth of what I just said about her answering to it.



Also let's be very clear. Kalidaasa was not and never shall be "Indian/subcontinental" tradition or 'civilisation' or 'culture' or whatever excuse is used by people to try and make an equal or any claim on his stuff.

He and his is HindOO onlee. Ever. What he wrote is Not secular. It is in fact sacred Hindoo. There are things he says - words he writes - that are practically mantras (which do not belong to him, but from the Persons he derives them from) and which are not "literature", no matter how much outside dabblers in Skt may wish this were some "general lit" instead, so they could imagine themselves to have a share in it. [I moreover think Kalidaasa's Shyamala Dandakam betrays that he is an SV practitioner, because he certainly says all the same things any L-U knows. But then, of course he would know all this.] IIRC even the opening invocation to each of the four Hindu narratives that Kalidaasa re-told is specifically to Shiva and Parvati, his Divine parents, and are correctly considered dhyAna shlokas by all Hindoo experts (i.e. Hindoos who know the Gods).



Aatish Taseer cannot pretend that naming subcontinental kids "Aparna" - like he seems to darkly threaten he may do with his own offspring, in saying he prefers this name to Kaireen or Alaaya (which both sound islamic to me :eek - he can't pretend naming his kid Aparna is some secular act just because of his hobby to read Sanskrit language "literature". His attempt to recommend it to non-Hindu others is also equally meaningless.

As stated, there is nothing secular about Kalidaasa and there is even less that is secular about Aparna which name AKA which person far predates Kalidaasa. And IIRC her other name in the LS is, after all, the one that destroys the Paashandas.

In any case, she isn't remotely 'secular' and she does not belong to "Indians" but to ethnic Hindoos alone. But like I said, Aatish Taseer is welcome to revert back to Her religion at any time he pleases. Then he is free to name his daughter Aparna if he ever wishes.



So annoying that people pretend to "discover" the name Aparna, especially when a lot of living ethnic Hindoos bear this name, for all the right=only reasons. A.o.t. new-agey/reconstructionists "I've discovered Skt"/"I'm digging IE"/"I want to be an Oryan" reasons. People who are into oryanism can always give reconstructed PIE names. Now there's an idea.

[Husky]

Post 4/4



4. Speaking of mantras and some things not being "Indian" - never being "Indian" - but ethnic-Hindu alone, on this bit Taseer wrote:

What was even more dismaying was that very few people in this world regarded Sanskrit as a language of literature. In fact, Sanskrit, having fought so hard historically to escape its liturgical function and become a language of literature and statecraft, had in the India I grew up been confined once again to liturgy. And an upper-class lady, on hearing that you were learning Sanskrit, would think nothing of saying: ‘Oh, I hate all that chanting-shanting.’

Absolutely every outsider who ever shows an interest in Skt actually wants to take it away from the Hindus/from Hindu purpose, and "liberate" it into pure-secularism/Indianism. (What next, is Taseer going to argue Skt deserves to replace Urdu as TSP's national language...? How very Roman Catholic that suggestion would be.)



But Sanskrit may never [=not allowed to/not possible to/no meaning to] "escape" its ...what he calls "liturgical" function.



- The very akSharas of that language are mantras in their own right, they are the Hindu Gods in their own right (which akSharas are identified as the names - hence persons - of the Gods, e.g. Saraswati Sahasranamam lists the akSharas of the pre-eminently HINDU language, the DevabhaaShaa, among Saraswati Amman's names).



- The first and foremost and fundamental "purpose" of existence/source of existence of the language is the Vedam (all the way up to Hindu Tantras and Stotras etc). Everything else in Skt that is Hindu derives from this and finds its inspiration/derivation in it. Including, as stated a few paras up, several of Kalidaasa's major oeuvres. Indeed, he could not have written anything had not aparNA enabled him to do so (starting with writing mantras/akSharas on his tongue with her trishoolam), ever since which he considered he belonged to her/his Divine Parents.



Also, Skt has been a language of Hindus' literature and the language of Vedic kings (including in statecraft) since - well - since what people seem to call the "Vedic" era, whenever that was :hand-waving: It never "only" had a liturgical function. But its use since ancient times was by Hindoos, in Hindoo society (since it's a Hindoo language). Later people would boo and hiss at it and then inculturate on it, but that never made it theirs.



And I don't know what India Aatish Taseer grew up in, but I grew up in a *Hindu* (a.o.t. Sikh or islamic) household, and even my dad wasn't so illiterate that he couldn't compose a Karnatik Kriti to the local temple's presiding God (who shall obviously not be named here) in the father tongue of the Hindus (Skt), which Kriti he apparently modelled on the style of Skt lyrics that M DikShitar composed: i.e. Sthala PuraNa + little Skt grammatical frills. [Clearly my dad had nothing better to do.] Apparently he also wrote Skt stories as well as inventing them on the spot for narration. His grandma wrote her personal letters in Skt to her husband and baby. Actual Skt expert relatives still living write commentaries on serious/complicated topics, in Skt, including on Kalidaasa's works. (And they're not new-agey readers of his works.) But it's what some *Hindoos* still do. This being a Hindoo language and all. And then there are the professionals.

Just because *I* belong to the pathetic illiterati doesn't mean other Hindus do.



This line:

And an upper-class lady, on hearing that you were learning Sanskrit, would think nothing of saying: ‘Oh, I hate all that chanting-shanting.’

Can't make it out from the sentence structure. Did he just invent this as a hypothetical case? Or was this an actual person who spoke to him in this way. In that case, why is he using the general "you"?

But who cares about the opinions of these fictional or real upper-class ladies anyway. They are free to stick to their terrible English. Hopefully they won't threaten to "discover" Skt tomorrow when they think it is fashionable.



I can understand how it's always tempting for people outside the native Heathen Religion to want to "Indianise" Skt (and Yoga and eventually even the Vedas etc) and use the convenient declaration that it all belongs to the "Indo-Europeans" and "Aryan ancestors" to pretend that 'therefore' Skt is the "shared inheritance" of Pakistani muslims and Dharmic Sikhs/just anybody and everybody from the subcontinent "too".* But sadly No: geography, shared history and even ethnicity is insufficient. (Also, isn't his mother Tavleen Singh? If so, didn't she actually make a veiled insult concerning Rama? I'm sure I remember something concerning this...) Anyway, the time for "Sharing" with and "Caring" about others is long over. Can't have the cake and eat it too. Not unless people are IN Hindu religion.



* You can see Aatish trying the same when he expressed consternation that Skt was being regarded as a 'liturgical' language "again", since he appears to want to secularise/indianise/subcontinentalise Skt (the way he even tried with Kalidaasa and the name AparNa. And he did a literal translation from Kalidaasa, and pretended that was great expertise. But he clearly doesn't know any more about it or its background- even after reading it - than its literal meaning. But this is a general complaint I have about all aliens reading all heathen stuffs.) People always try to do this to heathenisms - try to strip things of their heathenism so it can be repackaged as secular so that all who feel greedy towards such things can finally partake from what they had rejected. But too bad.



No "Indianising" the sacred language of the Hindus, Skt, full-stop. Or Hindu literature or culture or anything.

What was that Alexander Pope quote that the wonderful RSmith invoked concerning Julian again? Oh yeah, the Pierian Spring one:

(Julian's) revulsion at (christians') efforts to assimilate (=inculturate on) the literary and philosophic heritage of the Greeks without accepting the religious values voiced in it. To Julian's mind, that seemed wreckage, not assimilation.



On this point Julian's stance was basic and closed to argument: 'Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.'"

Since absolutely everybody else wants to peddle their religion among Hindus (examples are in the Buddhism thread), I'm allowed to peddle Hindoo religion (=Indics' ancestral religion) among all Indics too, at least where they want bits of the exclusively Hindu cake:

"[Proper] reverts are always welcome."





It's true what a popular book says: the internet *does* make people stupider. I can't believe people gushed over this article by Aatish. Is this owing to positive discrimination, i.e. just because he's a (semi) TSP-er and (semi/mostly?) islamic, so people want to "encourage" him, just because he doesn't sound like he wants to kill every kaffir? 'Cause I'm sure if I pretended to be an expert and wrote something so ...sappy ("Oh! Eire and Arya are related! [even though they're not] It's all so touching to me in my bones, in my roots!"), containing what look very much like errors at crucial points, and then further tried to "Indianise/secularise" Hindoo stuffs into "It all belongs to all subcontinental Indians, even islamics of TSP inclusive if only they'd just bother to incorporate it into their lives too", I'd get laughed/booed at by all the sensible Hindus who might read it. And deservedly so. (That presupposes any *sensible* Hindu actually read Taseer's article, which I have not confirmed and am not sure of...)

But Aatish Taseer gets special treatment. Once more proving how it's not what people say but who says it, which appeals to modern Indians. I.e. they think and judge sentimentally instead of rationally.



And also, is this the extent of popular subcontinental study/scholarship/research (or whatever this is supposed to be)? I mean, it pretends to be a serious piece, in some site pretending to be a serious paper or magazine.

[Husky]

1. Before moving on, I seemed to have missed putting up the only statement in the above article by Aatish Taseer that I read that was sensible. (But Aatish didn't write it.)

'It is hard to realize,' Coomaraswamy writes in The Dance of Shiva, 'how completely the continuity of Indian life has been severed. A single generation of English education suffices to break the threads of tradition and to create a nondescript and superficial being deprived of all roots—a sort of intellectual pariah who does not belong to the East or the West.'"

The statement "a single generation of English education suffices to break the threads of tradition..." is not sufficient. It should have been phrased fully. The full version - and a heathen would have known to make the complaint - is more damning. (But I suppose it's expected that Coomaraswamy wouldn't know that.)





2. Oh dear.



haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?PageID=17836

BJP MP from Uttarakhand seeks official status for Tamil

08/09/2013 03:45:19 [color="#0000FF"]articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-09-07/india/41854262_1_tarun-vijay-tamil-nadu-mps-rss-mouthpiece[/color]



CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu MPs in the Rajya Sabha were in for a surprise when Tarun Vijay, BJP MP representing Uttarakhand, demanded that the Centre declare Tamil the second official language of India.



"It is the arrogance and the feeling of a self-styled supremacy of some of my fellows in the north that we have not been able to fathom the real glory and importance of one of our greatest languages which is Tamil, its glory and influence can be felt across seven seas and caressing the highest peaks of the classical influence since ages and in all times," Vijay, a former editor of RSS mouthpiece 'Panchajanya', said in a special mention in the House on Thursday.



Vijay, one of the national spokespersons of the BJP and a former editor of RSS mouthpiece, Panchajanya, also said special scholarships, salary benefits and promotions be provided to government officials who gain a working knowledge of Tamil and demanded that Tamil chairs be established in all central universities.



Vijay, 52, said the Centre must start a scheme to propagate Tamil in all north Indian schools and colleges.



He said Tamil scholars had in the past visited Hindu holy places like Kedarnath and built links between the northern and southern parts of India. He buttressed the point about national integration with a mention of poet Subramania Bharati who, Vijay said, "wore a north Indian turban and became an icon of national unity and cultural renaissance".



He wondered if Tamil, "which has become the vehicle of a new Indian renaissance and cultural change", was ever given the respect and status it deserved. Vijay, who is learning Tamil, greets MPs from TN with a 'vanakkam'.



Expectedly, Vijay's unexpected eulogy for Tamil was welcomed by MPs from TN. CPI's D Raja said leaders living in north India acknowledging Tamil was very significant and they (MPs from TN) appreciated what Vijay said.



Vijay's promotion of Tamil is interesting as it also reflects a maturing of the approach towards languages in the country, especially within the Sangh Parivar. Outfits like Jan Sangh, the precursor of the BJP, and the RSS have been staunch proponents of making Hindi the sole national language. It was the aggressive championing of Hindi at the expense of regional languages that led to anti-Hindi protests and forced the Centre to continue with English as the second language for official purposes.



According to the Official Languages Act, 1963, Hindi is the official language of the Union of India with English as a second language for use of official purposes of the Union and for use in Parliament.



However, the Constitution allows states to adopt its own official languages. According to the 8th schedule of the Constitution, there are 22 official regional languages.

I don't want to critique poor well-meaning Hindus from region X in India who want to learn the regional language of Y. Or that they wish to promote it.



BUT:

He's gone about it all wrong. And is about to alienate people - and has already caused some readers even in HK to worry.



I mean, if Tarun had said "We must promote many/all of our native languages in our universities, and offer benefits for those who learn/teach/promote it. We will inaugurate our support of Bharatiya languages with Tamizh - because this is another one of our ancient and cherised languages - and then we will hereafter similarly grow our efforts to include all our other native languages in similar fashion",

had Tarun said something like that, then I am sure Hindu readers would have cheered unanimously.

I.e. the focus should have been on BJP wanting to promote all our native languages (or at the very least all our officially recognised native languages), explaining they're "starting with Tamizh" since they're focusing on expanding to include that at present. Also, compliments can be made with sincerity without accidentally giving the impression that other native languages are excluded from an equal admiration.





For straightforward reasons, multi-lingualism can make people cleverer. Monolingualism tends to make people stupider. I think BJP and every Hindoo - from the layman onwards - ought to promote multilingualism - ideally starting with themselves, and starting with learning their own regional/mother languages and Skt, and can expand from there.



Also, multilingualism has a parallel in heathenisms, the way monolingualism has a parallel to the mono-moronisms. Monolingualism wipes out everything in its path, like monotheism.

[rhytha]

I think that article was pretty good from a Anglophone. Lets just give him credit for that. <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />

[Husky]

This was highly predictable:



rajeev2004.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/quick-notes-better-than-ysr-english.html

The colonisation of the mind: Confidence level is the casualty when people are made to feel inferior if they are not proficient in English.

thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/the-colonisation-of-the-mind/article5706409.ece

[Husky]

Related to post 121-124 above.



Aatish Taseer covets Samskritam and has a latent hatred of the Hindoo view of Samskritam. Specifically, he wants to secularise Samskritam so that it doesn't particularly belong to Hindoos and Hindoo religion anymore, but belongs equally to non-Hindu Indians, aliens - by oryan right (Taseer subscribes to oryanism) including islamics.



In the following, Rajeev2004 blog member "Pagan" mistakes Aatish Taseer's fawning over Samskritam to be a compliment to Hindoo religion. No, it is a sign of Taseer coveting Samskritam to make it independent of Hindoo religion - which is exactly what Sheldon Pollock is aiming for w.r.t. Samskritam too.



rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-most-exquisite-language-ever-made.html



where one can see "Pagan" praising Taseer's "digestion" - as Malhotra would call it, and it's a phrase/concept well-known to the Rajeev2004 blog - of Samskritam.



For some reason Pagan can't tell that Taseer is dead set against any ongoing association (actually inseparable-ness) of Samskritam with Hindu religion. Pagan misinterprets Taseer's covetous remarks regarding Samskritam as a wish to convert to Hindu religion, and Pagan suggests that such a "transformation" in the sikh-islamic-conditioned Taseer should be reproduced all over TSP in the form of a Ghar Wapsi of that country.



Even Malhotra and gang have noticed that all complimenting of Hindoo stuffs by aliens is a part of what Malhotra has dubbed the "digestion" process (=Malhotra's custom re-labelling for the process of appropriation etc that Hindoos have long observed and documented), but that Hindus eagerly and blindly mistake such covetous alien self-interest in acquiring Hindooism piecemeal for their own ends & ideologies as being flattery of Hindoos' Hindooism instead.



Hindus have this romantic notion - totally removed from reality - that mere contact/familiarity with Samskritam will Hinduise unHindus and anti-Hindus. That it's not remotely true is seen in the example of indologists, and in many christians pillaging Skt too. The fact is, all Skt does to unHindus and anti-Hindus is arm them better against Hindu religion.





Taseer is a half-Sikh half-muslim. Neither half has any claim on Samskritam. (NO, let's be clear: Samskritam does not belong "equally" to Buddhism and Jainism let alone Sikhism as it does to Hindu=Vedic religion. In fact, it does not belong at all to Buddhism/Jainism/Sikhism, the first 2 of which only ever lambasted it and then inculturated on it when they coveted it. Christianism is following in the footsteps of Buddhism/Jainism regarding Samskritam, btw.)



Earlier (see posts 121-124 above), Taseer had even tried to secularise Kalidasa's "literature" into something he had an equal right to (and to pontificate and opinionate on), also because of his covetousness regarding Kalidasa. But just like Samskritam is exclusively Hindoo and no amount of secularising it or christianising it will change that, Kalidasa is an unapologetic Hindoo and so are his works. All of his materials are Hindoo *religious* works. And - and perhaps this is my point - some mere brush with Samskritam, as Taseer has had, is not going to make people understand the "literature" written in Samskritam. Consider the aliens/indologicals, who've "learnt" Samskritam but Do Not Understand the Vedas or sacred literature*. Further, teaching Samskritam to enemies has already - and will only ever - arm them against Hindoo religion.



INSERT: E.g. christo "sanskrit scholar" - professor at "nirmala college" catholic centre - penned jeebus sahasranamas and stotras, recently unleashed Yet Again on India's sheeples, with the hopes that this time it will catch on at last (while a catholic nun who learnt yoga at a Hindoo institution has now opened a christo yoga centre to teach what she had learnt as "jeebus yoga" now, complete with suryanamaskaras to jeebus instead of Surya).



Remember that phrase by emperor Julian** about how christos abused the learning of Hellenistic religious materials only to use it against Hellenismos and that therefore they should be kept away from it while they were not heathen in their attention? For the same reasons (and more), Hindoos really ought not to let non-Hindoos anywhere near Samskritam. Of course, Hindus pursue the opposite course: ready to teach any and all - including christoislamics, and allowing and encouraging those aiming to secularise Samskritam into the next universalism to go ahead and secularise it. Hence Taseer and Pollock.



** Emperor Julian's statements reposted from here:

'If your own Scriptures are sufficient for you, why do you nibble at the learning of the Greeks?' (229c). The comment hints at the writer's outrage at the uses to which Christians have put the cultural heritage of the Greeks - an outrage plain in remarks that Julian makes elsewhere. Two of his unplaced fragments set out the issue succinctly:

[Let us ensure] that they [the Christians] may not, by sharpening their tongues, prepare themselves to take on the Greeks in debate ... for as the proverb has it, we are struck by our own arrows. For they arm themselves from our own writings to do battle with us.75

Somewhere had come across Taseer writing about Rajeev Malhotra. Though not a fan myself, mainly because Malhotra is a subversionist in his own right (well, he is) - even if he perhaps doesn't intend to be (?) - but Taseer really, really hates Malhotra (it's a latent hatred) and for what seems to specifically be Malhotra's valid points. Taseer's hatred is probably because he sees in Malhotra's writings on "digestion" a mirror held up to himself, revealing his own interests as predatory and thus denying him access.





* BTW aliens - not counting western heathens, obviously - by and large suck not only at understanding the ancient religious materials written in Greek and Latin, but often even in the Classical languages themselves. I mean, it really does not compute to them/does not come natural to them, as per their own words.



Should one post how terrible many Latin "experts" are at Latin (the easiest of classical languages from a western-European POV)? There are direct quotes on this, e.g. I recall one of the prominent Latin teachers (IIRC a professor with many books that are commentaries to ancient Latin works to her name) admitting that she still can't read Latin naturally. She is but one of a great many, by the way.

And, most intriguingly, as it turns out, it's not just English-speaking Europeans who have this problem with Latin**:

- Very recently, I talked to my sister to find out if it was really that hard for her too. After describing to her the almost-uniformly attested problem that plagues western students (and even experts) of Latin - that they need to scan each sentence, grammatically break it down and then mentally translate it all to work out what it said - I asked my sister if this was her experience too. She said she remembered her (NL) classmates at school complaining about the very same thing - having to grammatically dissect each sentence in their mind to make sense of it before they could actually understand who did what to whom - but she (sister) never had that problem. She said she always thought it was *really* easy to understand Latin (i.e. original unabridged writings of ancient Latin writers).

- Native Spanish and Italian speakers and Hispanic Europeans spending years in tertiary learning Latin all complained about the same thing: they don't read it naturally.



** That it would be a problem for English monolinguists is more obvious. I thought it would be easy-as for Romance language speakers at least. Pronunciation of Latin is a lot like NL (and not like English), so at least that part is down easy for NW mainland Europeans.



Anyway, as hard as Latin was to my sister's classmates - and apparently is to many working in the field of Classics (but I'm sure RSmith is good at it and ancient Greek, as he has a heathen love for these things like my sister does) - they're still nowhere as bad at it as Taseer's pretences at Latin (see posts 121-124 again). I really worry that, considering Taseer's bragging know-it-allness regarding the Latin words he so pathetically and embarrassingly brought up, he might be quite as terrible at Samskritam too...







The point of this post was:



rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-most-exquisite-language-ever-made.html



where one can see "Pagan" praising Taseer's "digestion" - as Malhotra would call it, and it's a phrase/concept well-known to the Rajeev2004 blog - of Samskritam.