Sunday, June 18, 2017

Aryan Issue

Context:
As someone who likes Indian history and sanskrit I naturally follow some handles like @TrueIndology  and scholars like @blog_supplement . 
I think they provide much needed 140 char sized interesting information and a drive to know more details. A recent article in new paper The Hindu created interesting discussions and debates in twitter space from so called forward thinking people mocking "sanghis" that they lost and also cited very strong pro Hindu handle like @blog_supplement (Manasataramgini) agrees to these conclusions.

Aryan issue in India's non scholarly circles is a  serious play of words , changing goal posts and confusion. I feel a need to summarize this problem from a commoners perspective. As bizarre as it may seem but without understanding this i don't think any learned acharya in this field has right to dismiss them as "Idiots" and "Fans of Talageri"


A scholar may have a very clear understanding of what these words mean but here is what  "lay man" mean by these words:

Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT):  India was full of Dravidians living and speaking a language similar to Tamil. Sanskrit speaking Aryans came from some where in central asia on horse drawn carts and destroyed harappa and mohenjadaro pushing tamilians down south imposing sanskrit all over.

ASI: The DNA of dravidians , hence all indians before aryan invasion
ANI: The DNA of north indians, hence all north indians are outsiders


Aryan Migration Theory (AMT): same as above only the war took painfully long time and they slowly migrated and imposted sanskrit


Out of India Theory (OIT): No one came into India  but all sanskrit speaking people in sapta sindhi migrated out taking their language with them


With these definitions ...
1) why an ordinary Indian (who doesn't even know what Linguistics is)  is worried about Linguistic and archeological/anthropological theories ?
2) Why politicians like Subramayam swamy had to constantly talk about genetics and DNA and we are all one ?
3) Why Dravidian handles get excited whenever there is a "break through" proving an outside India Aryan Home land ?


Let us get quick answers:

1) For an ordinary Indian outside Aryan home land automatically means:
         outsiders  came on horse back and pushed the dravidians down so one india is difficult to convince when talking to morons from Dravidian parties. Our divine sanskrit is not ours any more

2) Swamy wants  to propagate a consolidated Hindu identity w.r.t Language , and all Dharmic groups. He also wants to unite Muslim community by asking them to say their ancestors were Hindus.  Lot of OIT supporters are great fans of Swamy

3) The identity of Dravidian politics will fade away if Aryan homeland is estabilished in India so any small information regarding Outside current India's border will excite them

A proper way to think about this problem is forget land boundaries of 2017 and realize that we are part of a great civilization which lost most of it and confined to current boundaries.







Sunday, January 22, 2017

Two Bodies .. a sanskrit translation

आक्टवियो पाज्  महोदयेन विरचितं  "Two Bodies" काव्यस्य संस्कृत अनुवादं


सम्मुखिनौ देहौ कदाचित् तरले
रात्रि  समुद्रमिव भाती ।

सम्मुखिनौ देहौ कदाचित् शिले
रात्रि निर्जन सद्रुसं भाती ।

सम्मुखिनौ देहौ कदाचित्
रत्रौ तरुमूल परिश्वंगमिव भाती ।

सम्मुखिनौ देहौ कदाचित् चुरिके
रात्रे: द्रप्स धारा भवति ।

सम्मुखिनौ देहौ कदाचित्
रिक्ताकाशे पतताम् तारकेव भाती ।