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Re: the Aryan-Dravidian controversy
An article on racial identification of the Hindu Gods is nice,
but quite irrelevant. More on the irrelevant topic(!)-
>This idea was taken further and Hindu gods like Krishna, whose name means
>dark, or Shiva who is portrayed as dark, were said to have originally been
>Dravidian gods taken over by the invading Aryans (under the simplistic idea
>that Dravidians as dark-skinned people must have worshipped dark colored
>gods). Yet Krishna and Shiva are not black but dark blue. Where is such a
>dark blue race? Moreover the different Hindu gods, like the classes of Manu,
>have diffe- rent colors relative to their qualities. Lakshmi is portrayed as
>pink, Saras- wati as white, Kali as blue-black, or Yama, the God of death,
>as green. Where have such races been in India or elsewhere?
The puranas say that Sarasvati was Shiva's sister,and they are
both fair. Bramha and Lakshmi were brother and sister - they are
both Golden. Vishnu and Parvati are brother and sister. They are
both dark.Hence, the incarnation of Vishnu,i.e.,Krishna, is also
'dark'.
>Some hold that Shaivism is a south Indian religion and the Vedic religion is
>north Indian. However, the greatest supporter of Vedanta, Shankaracharya,
>was a Dravidian Shaivite from Kerala. Meanwhile many south Indian kings have
>been Vaishnavites or worshippers of Vishnu (who is by the same confused
>logic considered to be a north Indian god). In short there is no real
>division of India into such rigid compartments as north and south Indian
>religions, though naturally regional variations do exist.
Very,very doubtful that Shaivism is a South-Indian religion.
For the reasons mentioned, and also because the oldest literature
in Tamil- 'Tolkappiyam'(I think-or nearly the oldest), mentions Brahmins,which
probably means that there was some amount of Vedanta in the
South even then.
Also, Adi Sankara, though a Keralite, left no commentary or
original work on Tamil literature(I don't think Malayalam was
a language then-think it evolved later) or any other literature but
Sanskrit for that matter.
-Kartik
