^ Why do people keep mentioning that? Don't know how often this has to be said:
The author of that work - she's had 2 books out, last I heard - is the american woman calling herself "Acharya S" who pretends at being a 'mythologist' and 'linguist' and claims to know Latin, Greek and "Sanskrit" (yet she parrots another ignoramus - Walker was it - that "Mahaatma" comes from "Mahamata" or something and declares it originally meant 'great mother'.)
She is
a) ignorant
b ) hyper wrong about many a thing
c) not remotely a scholar
d) just parrots other people's works without a judgemental eye able to discern between what is proper scholarship worthy of parroting and what is fantasising/new-agey junk.
No clue as to why Hindus keep referring to her work.
Also, she is severely anti-Hindu. There are/were online discussions some years ago where Hindus found she gets all angry, aggressive and plays the usual resentful injured victim role (Doniger-like) when Hindus tell her she is wrong about her insinuations about the Hindu religion, such as the birthdate of Shri Krishna and why Hindus celebrate it on Gokulashtami and not the 25 December she wants it to have been on (that's her catch-all date: she's straining to support her pet theory that declares all Gods are of the same 'myth' and hence of the same date, and that jeebus is just another one in a long line of those). Like others of the monopolytheistic tendency, she declares Hindus don't know their own Gods and their own religion.
She clearly doesn't know what she's on about, so one can't trust her speculating on other religions either. Can people please know more about their own (Hindu) religion and try to know more about Hellenismos and other religions to stop referring to her and her ignorance. It reflects poorly on the referrers themselves.
In the 2nd half of the 3rd century, the emperor Aurelian I think it was decided the old Roman Sun God, Sol, would have a birthday that was to be nationally celebrated and which was therefore officially declared to be 25 December. And the Winter Solstice definitely made for a sensible date. (It was much later, in the 4th century when the western church - by their own admission, then as now - officially stole this date for jeebus. Though IIRC the eastern church for long chose to hang on to the locally-more popular Dionysus' Epiphanius in 6 January as the date for jeebus' birthday, later transferred to non-existent jeebus' non-forthcoming epiphany.)
Aurelian's Sol Invictus (and Romans' later and unnecessary decision to identify him with Mithras of the imported Iranian cult - because both were Sun Gods) were already discussed in this thread earlier (and that's why Rome was later seen celebrating the birthday of Sol Invictus 'Mithras' on 25 December, which was still well before christianism stole the date).
See for instance pages 13 and 14 of this thread for Aurelian's holy-day for Sol Invictus.
People will learn nothing from reading Acharya S. Not unless they know enough to tell the difference between fact and fiction (there's a few facts but especially lots of fiction present in her work). So why recommend her work?
The author of that work - she's had 2 books out, last I heard - is the american woman calling herself "Acharya S" who pretends at being a 'mythologist' and 'linguist' and claims to know Latin, Greek and "Sanskrit" (yet she parrots another ignoramus - Walker was it - that "Mahaatma" comes from "Mahamata" or something and declares it originally meant 'great mother'.)
She is
a) ignorant
b ) hyper wrong about many a thing
c) not remotely a scholar
d) just parrots other people's works without a judgemental eye able to discern between what is proper scholarship worthy of parroting and what is fantasising/new-agey junk.
No clue as to why Hindus keep referring to her work.
Also, she is severely anti-Hindu. There are/were online discussions some years ago where Hindus found she gets all angry, aggressive and plays the usual resentful injured victim role (Doniger-like) when Hindus tell her she is wrong about her insinuations about the Hindu religion, such as the birthdate of Shri Krishna and why Hindus celebrate it on Gokulashtami and not the 25 December she wants it to have been on (that's her catch-all date: she's straining to support her pet theory that declares all Gods are of the same 'myth' and hence of the same date, and that jeebus is just another one in a long line of those). Like others of the monopolytheistic tendency, she declares Hindus don't know their own Gods and their own religion.
She clearly doesn't know what she's on about, so one can't trust her speculating on other religions either. Can people please know more about their own (Hindu) religion and try to know more about Hellenismos and other religions to stop referring to her and her ignorance. It reflects poorly on the referrers themselves.
In the 2nd half of the 3rd century, the emperor Aurelian I think it was decided the old Roman Sun God, Sol, would have a birthday that was to be nationally celebrated and which was therefore officially declared to be 25 December. And the Winter Solstice definitely made for a sensible date. (It was much later, in the 4th century when the western church - by their own admission, then as now - officially stole this date for jeebus. Though IIRC the eastern church for long chose to hang on to the locally-more popular Dionysus' Epiphanius in 6 January as the date for jeebus' birthday, later transferred to non-existent jeebus' non-forthcoming epiphany.)
Aurelian's Sol Invictus (and Romans' later and unnecessary decision to identify him with Mithras of the imported Iranian cult - because both were Sun Gods) were already discussed in this thread earlier (and that's why Rome was later seen celebrating the birthday of Sol Invictus 'Mithras' on 25 December, which was still well before christianism stole the date).
See for instance pages 13 and 14 of this thread for Aurelian's holy-day for Sol Invictus.
People will learn nothing from reading Acharya S. Not unless they know enough to tell the difference between fact and fiction (there's a few facts but especially lots of fiction present in her work). So why recommend her work?