Joe Shearer
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- Joined
- Apr 19, 2009
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@INDIC
The point of the comparison, which was obviously an exaggerated and overblown one, was that using old paradigms in a contemporary discussion is perhaps a little futile.
You may or may not be aware: the term Aryan was the battleground for much of European racism, some of it by the pioneering Indologist scholars themselves, but much more by professional racists. The term Dravidian was drawn from Dravid and Dramil, but you need to read up on how it entered international discussion. Nobody sane and reasonably well-read makes the mistake,any longer, of confusing either of these terms with a race-name.
Before jumping to conclusions about the correctness of the definition in what has rather airily been termed 'ancient books of India', we need to ask ourselves why the Indian point of view was completely ignored by the international community of scholars. We need to remind ourselves about the horrible state of knowledge of our own ancient books among the tightly restricted community that only permitted itself access to these books. Let us not pretend that the Indian society, especially the Indian intellectual community then, even remotely resembled society and the equivalent intellectual community now.
India's ancient books and their supposed precise classification of Aryan and Dravidian were never in the discussion thanks to the failures of our own intellectual community. Let us stop whining about those who dragged us kicking and screaming into the present, and concentrate on re-building our knowledge of these areas.
The point of the comparison, which was obviously an exaggerated and overblown one, was that using old paradigms in a contemporary discussion is perhaps a little futile.
You may or may not be aware: the term Aryan was the battleground for much of European racism, some of it by the pioneering Indologist scholars themselves, but much more by professional racists. The term Dravidian was drawn from Dravid and Dramil, but you need to read up on how it entered international discussion. Nobody sane and reasonably well-read makes the mistake,any longer, of confusing either of these terms with a race-name.
Before jumping to conclusions about the correctness of the definition in what has rather airily been termed 'ancient books of India', we need to ask ourselves why the Indian point of view was completely ignored by the international community of scholars. We need to remind ourselves about the horrible state of knowledge of our own ancient books among the tightly restricted community that only permitted itself access to these books. Let us not pretend that the Indian society, especially the Indian intellectual community then, even remotely resembled society and the equivalent intellectual community now.
India's ancient books and their supposed precise classification of Aryan and Dravidian were never in the discussion thanks to the failures of our own intellectual community. Let us stop whining about those who dragged us kicking and screaming into the present, and concentrate on re-building our knowledge of these areas.