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Re: Article : A new look at out History
Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote:
> > While I like reading puranas and personally think that there is a lot in many
> > of the puraaNas, there are problems with these books. The puranas doubtless
> > serve as expalanations for the vedas by illustrating many philosophical points
>
> I don't mean to devalue the Puranas completely. They have their purpose
> and their uses, but to assume that they are historical documents is
> plainly wrong.
Sorry. I didn't mean to give the impression that you had.
> > with stories. However, many other things are so patently wrong that it should
> > just be discarded as arthavaada. Why go to time scales etc? Even the geography
> > of India itself is completely wrong in the puraaNas I have read. The size of
> > India is bigger than that of the earth itself :-).
> >
> > Apart from these the it was an accepted tradition to insert things into
> > puraaNas. Thus we have multiple copies of various puraaNas and depending on
> > the philosophical inclination of the scholars various verses have been added.
>
> That is right. In the same padma purANa, for instance, there is one set
> of verses condemning all who worship vishNu to hell, and other portions
> where Siva is clearly subordinated to vishNu. Clearly, different groups
> of people with different sympathies have been at work, putting in things
> according to their own prejudices.
Yes. This curious fact is mentioned in Ludo Rocher's book on the
classification of puranas as tamasic, rajasic and satvik by the padma purana
also. He mentions a verse from the padma puraaNa which says that even the name
of vishhNu should not be mentioned since it will make shiva angry and is the
surest path to hell! The more curious things is that this verse is not
restricted to some particular region's copy, but seems to be present
universally. You might remember that I mentioned to you once that the padma
puraaNa also has the shiva giita, which contains shiva's instructions to raama
on how to achieve mukti. The shiva puraaNa is more catholic in it's views.
Though it keeps extolling shiva, shiva himself mentions at one place that if
any one thinks he and vishhNu are different they'll not attain mukti. In
another place he speaks very highly of raama. Another tendency among the
puranas is to extol different views at the same time. Eg, the suuta sa.nhita
mentions that advaita is the true way, but also speaks reverentially of some
shaiva aagamas which adopt the contrary view!
> > Yes, however it also seems to be the fact that the two cultures mixed very
> > quickly. By the 5th-6th century AD itself we have brahmin poets like
> > jnaanasampanthar etc writing poems in Tamil and according to their poems the
> > temples like kapaaliishvarar, arunachaleshvarar already had an aura of hoary
> > tradition around them!
> However, my point is that it is not only in the Vedas that one finds
> references to the word Arya. The Buddhists and Jains, who rejected the
> Vedas, thought of themselves as Arya. The Tamil references clearly
> connect the word Arya with the north. It is a stretch to assume that
> Arya means nothing more than "civilized." The Dravidians were as
> civilized as the Aryans. There is a significant geographical component
> to the terms Arya and Dravida, as seen from the names Aryavarta and
> Dravida-desa. It is important for historians not to lose sight of this.
> In the later smr.ti literature, the word Arya gives way to gauDa as a
> geographical reference. Thus there is mention of the panca gauDa (gauDa,
> i.e. Bengal, sArasvata, kAnyakubja, maithila and oDra, i.e. Orissa) and
> the panca drAviDa (drAviDa, karNATa, Andhra, mahArAshTra and gurjara)
> peoples. But in the earlier references to Aryavarta and brahmavarta, the
> term is geographical to a significant degree.
Interesting. I am sure you'll remember the reference to "draviDa sisu" in the
saundarya lahari. It's usually interpreted to be jnaanasampanthar, though I
believe lakshmiidara interprets it as sha.nkara. Whoever it is, I suppose they
got the name since they came from the south.
Ramakrishnan.
--
Two monks were arguing about a flag. One said, "The flag is moving." The other
said, "The wind is moving." The sixth patriarch happened to be passing by. He
told them, "Not the wind, not the flag; mind is moving." - The Gateless Gate
http://yake.ecn.purdue.edu/~rbalasub/
