At 2007-07-14 06:54:47 +0530, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > "Outsiders" typically had no wish (at least none that have been > recorded to my knowledge) to visit Badrinath or Kashi.
I think it was in no way unusual for Buddhist pilgrims to visit places held sacred by Hindus. You could quibble and say that their pilgrimage ended at Gaya, and that any visits elsewhere were just pit stops, but nevertheless, pilgrims from elsewhere did travel to and within India. > "India" was defined by an accident of geography. I don't disagree with that. What I'm saying is: pilgrims having "free access" to their sacred places cannot be used to infer anything about an awareness of national identity because 1. The access wasn't particularly free, and more importantly, 2. It was not in any way less restrictive than the access outsiders had. To put it differently, Indian pilgrims received no special privileges. At different times and in different places, they were welcomed, ignored, or persecuted, which is, on the whole, how they were treated outside the subcontinent; and also how Chinese pilgrims were treated here. > This geographic quirk created a pooling of people within India with > certain social, linguistic and cultural practices. Ancient texts frequently refer to cultures both far away and nearby, but still within the subcontinent, as demons and monsters. Formulaic though such references inevitably are (eating children, etc.), that situation seems unlikely to have arisen if there were only *one* pool of similar social and cultural practices. So yes, I agree that the geographic quirk caused a number of people to collect in the same region, but I would go no further in pooling them together. (Hell, it's difficult enough to pool them together in any meaningful way even *today*, either linguistically or socially.) > At best the concept of "India" among Indians was a loose and tenuous > concept, but the point is the concept was not absent. No, but it's probably a much more modern concept than you're giving it credit for. (But making it, and other things associated with Hinduism, seem more ancient is a favourite pastime of the RSS loony fringe.) > It was utilized, as I said, by both Vivekananda and Gandhi Why wasn't it utilised by, say, Ashoka? I can think of a number of rulers who could have benefited from playing up the vaguest hint of a linking factor in trying to keep their empires together, and who did in fact play up *other* factors to this end. Why wouldn't they use vague feelings of national identity if they existed? Why did those empires always fall apart without strict military control, and the same smaller kingdoms always emerge from the debris? -- ams
