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^^ Have you read Romila Thappar or Irfan habib yet ??I'm sure you'll love them.
This is deep in the territory of the AIT VS. OOI (or OIT) controversy, and much dust has to settle before we can draw conclusions from hypotheses that have been put forward recently. These independent publications, by independent scholars working outside the sphere of academic discipline, have simply not gone through the peer review that academic publications Or academic work does. It might yet be that his views are borne out and vindicated other than by the self-referential claque that surrounds OOI theories, but that time is not yet. He has been attacked by Winzel, whose work he addresses at great length, and by Erdosy, but won back considerable credibility by pointing out inaccuracies in Winzel's review. No one has as yet engaged with him, and the main publicity he has got has been from OOI groupies like Rajaram, Koenraad Elst and everyone else in the revisionist school.
Until these views are examined critically and subjected to thorough examination, they remain views, very interesting because of the apparent detail in which the material surroundings in which the Vedas were composed were examined, but unproven, unaccepted views.
In writing this, I am considerably amused at the thought that the stricture of self-referential claque might be used against western academicians by Indian revisionists and their western trophy authors. Until there is a greater effort to engage with each other, and to bring in some common understanding of the rules of engagement, this will remain political literature, not academic finding. I say this on the understanding that the western methods are more reliable at present, in a manner that they were not two centuries ago, on this subject. Further, that Indian writing on the subject is today, whether Rajaram or others of his generation, or the new team of Talageri and Elst, more a matter of seeking evidence to bear out preconceived conclusions, just as some of the original western speculation used to be.
For the purposes of this discussion, a school of thought apparently developed hand-in-hand with a political ideology that demanded such academic explanations is not going to find much common ground. This school of thought resonates with a political ideology that resents and rejects European criticism of the decayed state of Indian culture and society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, seeks vindication in the transcendent virtues of its inherited culture, including its vast literature, and rejects any parallel between their culture and other, subsequent Conquistador cultures by proclaiming that it arose entirely within the geographical boundaries of India. It is in order to justify this Brahminical counter-attack that a mass of literature has been generated, mostly by autodidacts in the fields, whose education and training was otherwise elsewhere (mathematics and statistics for Rajaram, in Chinese healing for Frawley), and who have never won acceptance of their views in western academic circles. This failure to gain acceptance has led, ironically, to a situation where western sympathisers enjoy an enormous premium, Frawley earlier, the rather more sinister Elst currently.
In general, it has to be acknowledged that both Talageri and Elst are more credible figures, in terms of scholarship and knowledge of their subject, than perhaps Rajaram and Frawley were.
Caveat: I have not read Talageri yet.
Just as we have found, when we considered the Indian Vedas, that scholars are not agreed as to the date of the Vedic hymns, so also in the case of the Zend-Avesta, scholars differ as to what dates are to be ascribed to the sacred books of Parsis. Dr. Haug assigns a not much later date than 1200 B. C. to the Gathas, and fixes that of the much larger part of the Vendidad at 900 or 1000 B. C. Pike, however, thinks "that the Gathas are much older, even, than that, and perhaps older than the Rig Veda."
He says: Cauis Plinius the Second, tells us, in the Thirtieth Book of his Natural History, that Eudoxus said that Zarathustra lived 6,000 years before Plato (who was born 429 years before Christ); and that so it is asserted also by Aristoteles. Hermippus, Pliny informs us, who made a diligent study of the works of Zarathustra, explaining an immense number of verses, stated that he lived 5,000 years before the Trojan War (which is supposed to have taken place about 1,190 years before Christ).
In the Sacred Books and Early Literatures of the East, however, the date for the Gathas is placed about 2000 to 600 B. C, and that for the Vendidad at 600 to 400 B. C. If Pike is right, then the Zend-Avesta is a source of ancient ideas which date back to around 6000 B.C., and thus are around 8000 years old. Thus we are about to examine some ancient ideas of origin, some of which may antedate those of the Rigveda, which together with the Vedic notions were derived from still more ancient Aryan ideas.
Source:
SOME ANCIENT COSMOGONIES AND EVOLUTION.
GEORGE J. DUDYCHA,
Ripon College, Ripon, Wisconsin.
P.S. This is a paper from 1929-1930 I guess.
Can anybody tell me if the time lines in our ancient texts (read in some obscure book some time back, don't remember spare me for this) are factual (and practical) or not and the logic behind. As i found them too long a shot, basically it was explaining what a yuga meant like kaliyuga, kruta treta dwapara etc etc and others like manvantara kalpa....
These run into some lakhs of years, current i think its Vaivasvata Manvantara.
I was like
Can anybody tell me if the time lines in our ancient texts (read in some obscure book some time back, don't remember spare me for this) are factual (and practical) or not and the logic behind. As i found them too long a shot, basically it was explaining what a yuga meant like kaliyuga, kruta treta dwapara etc etc and others like manvantara kalpa....
These run into some lakhs of years, current i think its Vaivasvata Manvantara.
I was like
Not those, no, not unless we are also waiting impatiently for the release of the Towers of Midnight, but there is a significant amount of proto-history in Indian Vedic, Puranic and epic literature, in Buddhist literature, and in Jain literature.
This is proto-history, and its proud Indian proponents keep claiming it to be history, while many Europeans are completely unable to deal with it. The sensible ones sat down and battled their way through intricate king-lists and came up with a wealth of information - all strictly proto-historical. The calendars that you are referring to are philosophical concepts rather than material ones.
You must be referring to the paper by Das et al. 20,000+ years if fading memory serves me correctly. Don't know about lacs.
This is deep in the territory of the AIT VS. OOI (or OIT) controversy ...
This is deep in the territory of the AIT VS. OOI (or OIT) controversy, and much dust has to settle before we can draw conclusions from hypotheses that have been put forward recently. These independent publications, by independent scholars working outside the sphere of academic discipline, have simply not gone through the peer review that academic publications Or academic work does. It might yet be that his views are borne out and vindicated other than by the self-referential claque that surrounds OOI theories, but that time is not yet. He has been attacked by Winzel, whose work he addresses at great length, and by Erdosy, but won back considerable credibility by pointing out inaccuracies in Winzel's review. No one has as yet engaged with him, and the main publicity he has got has been from OOI groupies like Rajaram, Koenraad Elst and everyone else in the revisionist school.
Until these views are examined critically and subjected to thorough examination, they remain views, very interesting because of the apparent detail in which the material surroundings in which the Vedas were composed were examined, but unproven, unaccepted views.
In writing this, I am considerably amused at the thought that the stricture of self-referential claque might be used against western academicians by Indian revisionists and their western trophy authors.
Until there is a greater effort to engage with each other, and to bring in some common understanding of the rules of engagement, this will remain political literature, not academic finding. I say this on the understanding that the western methods are more reliable at present, in a manner that they were not two centuries ago, on this subject. Further, that Indian writing on the subject is today, whether Rajaram or others of his generation, or the new team of Talageri and Elst, more a matter of seeking evidence to bear out preconceived conclusions, just as some of the original western speculation used to be.
For the purposes of this discussion, a school of thought apparently developed hand-in-hand with a political ideology that demanded such academic explanations is not going to find much common ground. This school of thought resonates with a political ideology that resents and rejects European criticism of the decayed state of Indian culture and society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, seeks vindication in the transcendent virtues of its inherited culture, including its vast literature, and rejects any parallel between their culture and other, subsequent Conquistador cultures by proclaiming that it arose entirely within the geographical boundaries of India. It is in order to justify this Brahminical counter-attack that a mass of literature has been generated, mostly by autodidacts in the fields, whose education and training was otherwise elsewhere (mathematics and statistics for Rajaram, in Chinese healing for Frawley), and who have never won acceptance of their views in western academic circles. This failure to gain acceptance has led, ironically, to a situation where western sympathisers enjoy an enormous premium, Frawley earlier, the rather more sinister Elst currently.
In general, it has to be acknowledged that both Talageri and Elst are more credible figures, in terms of scholarship and knowledge of their subject, than perhaps Rajaram and Frawley were.
Caveat: I have not read Talageri yet.
True.
AIT partisans might, perhaps with greater justification, be accused of forming politically motivated self-referential claques.
Joe Shearer said:In writing this, I am considerably amused at the thought that the stricture of self-referential claque might be used against western academicians by Indian revisionists and their western trophy authors.
Was there any reason for quoting me back at me, other than an exquisitely honed sense of irony?
Not infrequently, it is the people outside the establishment (Arun Shourie and Rajiv Malhotra are other figures that come to mind) who show a greater clarity of thought, more intellectual vigour, and a willingness to engage with the other side.
Joe Shearer said:Until there is a greater effort to engage with each other, and to bring in some common understanding of the rules of engagement, this will remain political literature, not academic finding. I say this on the understanding that the western methods are more reliable at present, in a manner that they were not two centuries ago, on this subject. Further, that Indian writing on the subject is today, whether Rajaram or others of his generation, or the new team of Talageri and Elst, more a matter of seeking evidence to bear out preconceived conclusions, just as some of the original western speculation used to be.
Yes, that lack of engagement has been noticed, even noted. But the reasons why have not, and hence seem to have undergone some elision. It may be time to correct that.
The AIT side would be well advised to stop running away from the debate. In the information age, their opponents have as much, if not greater, reach than they do, despite all their establishment backing.
But anyway, we digress much.
True.
AIT partisans might, perhaps with greater justification, be accused of forming politically motivated self-referential claques.
Not infrequently, it is the people outside the establishment (Arun Shourie and Rajiv Malhotra are other figures that come to mind) who show a greater clarity of thought, more intellectual vigour, and a willingness to engage with the other side.
The AIT side would be well advised to stop running away from the debate. In the information age, their opponents have as much, if not greater, reach than they do, despite all their establishment backing.
But anyway, we digress much.
......one perspective that is missed when we talk of aircraft design is how history has played a role in such a way that each new development in flying is based on an earlier improvement. This has been a continuous chain of innovation going back more than a century to the first aircraft that were built.
The earliest aircraft that flew were not designed for amy military requirement. They were recognized as being useful by militaries for reconnaissance. Early military aircraft had a man with a bomb to be thrown by hand in the open back cockpit or a man witha gun. This was clearly so unsatisfactory that militaries looked for better armament.
The next step was (IIRC) the machine gun in a gunner's cockpit. But by the time this innovation came, aircrfat were already flying. The basic design, the engine, the materials etc were already known. Adding a gun added complications that were made easier if you already knew how to build a plane.
The next step in evolution was the forward firing machine gun. One idea was to have a pusher propeller to bypass the problem of firing through the propeller. But I think it was the Germans who came up with a timer that mechanically linked the gun to the propeller so that the gun would not fire when there was a prop blade in front of the barrel. By the time this complexity was added, they knew how to build flying aircraft and design them to fly with the extra weight of guns.
Further steps would be the development of ways of carrying underslung bombs and releasing them. These would have require new designed with strengthened wings. So by the time world war 2 came - all the European and American (and japanese) companies had solved these initial issues. Tens of thousands of planes had been built by tens of thousands of engineers and factory workers at a time when India had just a handful of engineers of any kind.
The fierce fighting and research and numerous production lines set up for world war 2 spurred new aircraft designs, armament, radar and jet engines. By the time WW2 ended the warring nations were past masters at building reliable flying aircraft with reliable engines. The newest post WW2 designs used the old knowledge of aircraft with the new jet engines. By this time India had HAL, but it was under American control during WW2 and was mainly overhauling and repairing.
By 1951 HAL had designed its own first aircraft - the HT-2 which was apparently modern in capability as a basic trainer but in reality its power, performance etc were not even equal to that of a German Me-109 built in the mid 1930s. In contrast the Canberra bomber was entering service in Britain in 1951. Can you picture the technology gap between HT 2 and the Canberra? And the HT-2 had an imported engine of course.
The HF 24 first flew in 1961. Although it was a big achievement for India, compare with what was being done in Europe and USA: The Alouette II that we still fly flew in 1957, An 12-1957, Vulcan Bomber 1956, Boeing 707 1955, B-52 in 1955, KC-135 in 1956, Ouragan 1952, Dassault Etendard (just retired or about to be retioted French navy) 1958, Mirage III, (still in service) 1956, A-4 Skyhawk 1956 the list is in the link below - see for yourself and check the tech capability gap.
Military Aircraft ... 0-1959.asp
Heck MiG 21 was 1959!!
By 2015 we will have the LCA in service. The MiG 21 will just have retired. The Mirage III may have retired. The B 52 will not have retired. But the Tejas uses technology similar to the F-16 and Mirage 2000. The F-16 entered service in 1978 but I would rate the Tejas as probably having newer flight control and other tech than the early F-16s. The Mirage 2000 entered service in 1982.
If you look back you find that France took from 1956 to 1982 (26 years) to graduate from HF-24/Mirage III level to Mirage 2000. The US did the same leap from Skyhawk (1956) to F-16 - 1978 - 22 years. But both countries had been building engines from the 1800s and jet engines soon after they were invented. India has taken 50 plus years to graduate from HF-24 to Tejas. But the US and France already had 50 years of experience to reach the Skyhawk/Mirage III level. India got there in 10 years - minus the engine tech. It was surely the Kurt Tank effect.
Still, if you look at the history of the last 60 years of Indian aircraft manufacture, we remain about 30 years behind the top countries of the world in technology. We are of course decades ahead of many countries who are incapable of doing what we have done, but if choose to compare ourselves with the top 3, then we are anywhere from 20 to 35 years behind. From the early years of aviation around 1900, the US and France took about 80 years to reach F-16/Mirage 2000 level. India's "early years" started in 1950 and we have taken about 65 years to get to F-16/Mirage 2000 level.
It is worth remembering that countries like Britain and the US have probably had more accident deaths from test flying since the early 1900s than the total number of test pilots ever trained by India. And the US, Britain and Germany, probably had more aircraft engineers working in 1940 than we have in 2012.
So when you compare, please be aware of the history of your own country. People who work in Indian industry do not deserve contempt. They deserve support so that they too can work, make mistakes and learn. No one will teach us any other way. As a nation we have been so enamoured of foreign tech that we have been fooled into thinking that the people who are 30 years ahead will just give is the experience they have. You cannot transfer experience. "Deep" technology transfer, an expression that we on *** went ga ga over a few years ago means little. We just have to learn the hard way.
It is pleasant to come to the fullness of one's days, and be cited as an authority not merely by one's own faction, but by others, sometimes bitterly inimical others, as well.
...
Was there any reason for quoting me back at me, other than an exquisitely honed sense of irony?
That our amateur historians and analysts and journalists-become-history-experts don't have a clue about how history is done.
Hmm ..?
Yes, the description of establishment historians as a "self referential claque" was from your post ... the additional remark was the "greater justification".
Compulsory reading for every serious student of Indian history -
Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud: Arun Shourie: 9788172233556: Amazon.com: Books
In mathematics, that is called "proof by appeal to authority". Usually it is meant to hide absence of proof by valid argument.