On Mar 22, 2005, at 1:03 AM, Rick Archer wrote:
> As I mentioned before, this fellow is passing off theory as fact. He > mentions Danielou's work but Danielou is no expert on the pre-Aryan, > Indus > Valley culture (often called the "Saraswati Valley Culture" here in > India. > With the excemption of some small metal seals (used as indentification > tags contained with trade goods) that bear a likeness that MAY be a > proto > Shiva, there is scant evidence that there was a Shaivite tradition. Probably not if you are a Vedantin and not part of the tradition. Much of it is oral. A lot of it is still in Tamil. The great error of modern worldview on India's origins was simply what happened when the British Raj took over and tried to establish what the Hindu "bible" was. Thus we have the prevalence of such reworked texts like the Bhagavadgita presented as Hindu bibles. Because of this we still have a huge corpus of works in pre-Sanskrit languages which still haven't even been translated into western languages. This ain't about Brahmi script, it's about languages we know but have failed to translate. I hardly expect a Vedantin to know this. It's not unusual. > We do > not know their language (if you crack their code you'll win the Nobel > Prize) and it is dangerous to overinterpret the archeological evidence. He is confusing the Brahmi script with Dravidian languages, an obvious error. I would hardly expect someone familiar with brahmin lore to substantiate pre-Brahmin lore! One is deeply invested in touting it's own superiority. > Regarding Kashmiri Shaivism, it is not a very old tradition - though it > claims to be. Again, if you rely of textual evidence, this may be the case. The oral traditions which are associated with Kashmir and the neighboring regions are quite ancient. To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
