Indologists

"Arya and Dasa were only horizontal divisions, denoting groups of people living in their separate territories in north-western India... [dasyus were only] a segment of Dasas...[the term paṇi was used for people who were] rich and niggardly [and possibly] usurers, [and that the group of paṇis] cross-cuts the otherwise horizontal stratification of non-Aryas, [...] and may denote either an occupation or simply a set of values attributable to anyone."

"Erdosy testifies that “the principal concern” of scholars (like Witzel) studying South Asian linguistics is to find “evidence for the external origins - and likely arrival in the 2nd millennium BC - of Indo-Aryan languages”;"

"[Burrow] suggests that Saraswati was a proto-Indoaryan term, originally applied to the present Haraxvaiti when the proto-Indoaryans still lived in northeastern Iran.... It would be just as plausible to assume that Saraswati was a Sanskrit term indigenous to India and was later imported by the speakers of Avestan into Iran. The fact that the Zend Avesta is aware of areas outside the Iranian plateau while the Rigveda is ignorant of anything west of the Indus basin would certainly support such an assertion."

"George Erdosy, a Canadian scholar, is refreshingly perceptive: Even apparently clear indications of historical struggles between dark aborigines and Arya conquerors turn out to be misleading…. [The Dasas and Dasyus] appear to be demonic rather than human enemies…. It is a cosmic Struggle which is described in detailed accounts that are consistent with one another."

"We reiterate that there is no indication in the Rigveda of the Arya‘s memory of any ancestral home, and by extension, of migrations. Given the pains taken to create a distinct identity for themselves, it would be surprising if the Aryas neglected such an obvious emotive bond in reinforcing their group cohesion. Thus their silence on the subject of migrations is taken here to indicate that by the time of composition of the Rigveda, any memory of migrations, should they have taken place at all, had been erased from their consciousness."

"The historians of [India] have been noticed down to a period when new actors appear upon the stage; when a more stirring and eventful era of India's History commences; and when the full light of European truth and discernment begins to shed its beams upon the obscurity of the past, and to relieve us from the necessity of appealing to the Native Chroniclers of the time, who are, for the most, dull, prejudiced, ignorant, and superficial… there is no Native Indian Historian; and few have even approached to so high a standard…of philosophy…we search in vain for any sign or symptom…[The history we write of India] will make our native subjects more sensible of the immense advantages accruing to them under the mildness and and equity of our rule."

"The period between the arrival of the Indo-Aryan in the Indian subcontinent and the composition of the oldest Vedic hymns must have been much longer than was previously thought."

"The noted sanskritist Aklujkar (Professor at British Columbia, Canada) does not consider the mainstream chronology incontestable and writes “only relative chronology has been well argued for”(1996: 66)."

"Holtzmann Jr. saw himself as taking up arms on behalf of a lost antiquity. As was typical of the Romantic age, he valued the old merely because it was old."

"If we were ever to succeed in determining the oldest cultural stage of the Indian race . . . and to dissolve away almost by means of a chemical process all influences of . . . Brahmanism . . . we would find conditions before us only a little different from those described by Tacitus as unique to the ancient Germans. But even in its contemporary ruined form the Mahābhārata often delivers us the best commentary on Germania. Here we read of the passion for gambling of the Germans, of how they wagered possessions and property, wife and child, [and] finally even themselves: extremo ac novissimo iactu de liberate contendunt [sic]."

"Oldenberg was well aware of the Christian, medievalizing aspects of Holtzmann’s work. He accurately diagnosed Holtzmann’s work as having, “full of enthusiasm for the newly discovered idea of Indo-Germanic tradition, seen Germanic tribes in the Indians.”"

"The whole foundation of Mueller's date [for the Rigveda] rests on the authority of Somadeva, the author of 'an Ocean of (or rather for) the River of Stories' who narrated his tales in the twelfth century after Christ. Somadeva, I am satisfied, would not be a little surprised to learn that 'a European point of view" raises a 'ghost story' of his to the dignity of an historical document. Neither is there a single reason to account for his allotting 200 years to the first of his periods, nor for his doubling this amount of time in the case of the Sutra period."

"As was true of Romanticism in general, Holtzmann activated an ideal of the past as an element of a critique of modernity itself. This made his work, for all its restorative tendencies, thoroughly modern. If Lassen was the founder of German Mahābhārata studies, Holtzmann Jr. can, with justification, be called the father of modern Mahābhārata studies."

"[A] sign of ancient brutality . . . common to both the Mahābhārata and the Nibelungenliede [is that] the blood of the slain foe is drunk. As he had already sworn at the game, Bhīmasena drinks the blood of Duḥ çāsana who is slain by him and calls out: never did I drink so sweet (this is even better than wine, it is said in the Nibelungenlied). This trait was too horrific to the later redactors; with lamentable sophistry they present the state of affairs as though Bhīmasena never really drank the blood, it reached his lips and not his throat and then he spat it out again."

"The inspired network of the hymnic portion of the three Vedas, called the Yajur-, Sâma-, and Atharva- Veda, is apparently closer drawn than that of the other writings just named: but now that it is laid open before the investigating mind of modern Europe and India; now that the spell is broken which made the study of the Veda consist of intonating its verses to the melody of the Guru, and mechanically committing them to memory; now that native and European industry has given us in print not merely the obscure words of the hymns, but also the commentaries which lead us to their inner meaning, no Hindu can shrink from the duty of examining the grounds on which the inspiration of these three Vedas rests.”)"

"In the worst days of Roman Catholicism, when the multitude professing that religion was steeped in ignorance and its worship was no better than idolatry, there was still a considerable portion of its priesthood fully acquainted with the text-book of Christianity. It was no doubt, with its priests a question of policy whether their flock should be admitted to the knowledge which they possessed, and restored to a purer faith; but that they had the power to work that change is borne out by the history of Protestantism."

"We may, therefore, still entertain the hope that the regeneration of Hinduism will proceed from these schools, provided that they possess the energy to refuse any compromise with sectarian worship, which has brought Hinduism into contempt and ridicule. The means which they possess for combating that enemy is as simple as it is irresistible; a proper instruction of the growing generation in its ancient literature, an instruction, however wholly different from that now constituting the education of a Hindu youth; to whom reading the Veda is jabbering thoughtlessly the words of the verse, or intoning it to the melody of a teacher as ignorant as himself of its sense; who, by studying grammer, understands cramming his memory with some grammatical forms, without any notion as to the linguistic laws that regulate them; who believes that he can master philosophy or science by sticking to the textbook of one school and disregarding its connexion with all the rest of the literature. That such a method and such a division of labour do not benefit the mind is amply evidenced by the crippled results which they have brought to light. The instruction which India requires, though adapted to her peculiar wants—religious, scientific, and political—must be based on that system which has invigorated the European mind; which, free from the restrictions of rank or caste, tends to impart to it independence of thought and solidity of character."

"The... glimpses we have...of Hindus slain for disputing with Muhammadans , of general prohibitions against processions, worship and ablutions and of other intolerant measures, of idols mutilated, of temples razed, of forcible conversions and marriages, of proscriptions and confiscations, of murders and massacres, and of the sensibility and drunkenness of the tyrants who enjoined them, show us that this picture is not overcharged."

"Alas! that Scottish maid should sing The combat where her lover fell! That Scottish Bard should wake the string, The triumph of our foes to tell!"

"In Vishnu’s lotus-foot alone Confide! His power shall ne’er decay, When tumbles every earthly throne, And mortal glory fades away."

"By separating the meaning of the Vedic varana from the classical one, Roth allowed himself to be led to believe that the elephant was still foreign to the songs of the Rigveda. If this statement were correct, the Vedic Indians would not have been Indians at all, for the elephant is inseparable from India. But as shown, it is erroneous; in addition to hastin and varana, athari and apsas could also be identified as Vedic words for "elephant". A further joint examination of the words ibha and ibhya has also shown us... that ibha also means nothing other than what it means in classical Sanskrit, namely "elephant". ... Not only ibha, but also ibhya has exactly the same meaning as in classical Sanskrit, and Sayana got it right because he was familiar with Indian views."

"The translations by Grassmann and Ludwig show once again quite strikingly the errors that an exegesis that wants to see in the Veda something other than a purely Indian monument and that does not take Indian views into account must lead to. ... Here, verse 1 says that the gods determined that the place where a man who makes a sacrifice is to be found is the east. Such a man, the text says directly, is the east, but verse 4 says that in the west is a miser who lets nothing come of it and a rich man who gives no gifts. ... "In the west are the ill-wishers whose horses are badly harnessed; in the east are those who are here for giving, who give a variety of gifts," i.e. the misers who have given bad horses are to be in the extreme west, the region of the sunset, thus of darkness and therefore of raksas, while the generous are to be in the east, the region of the sunrise, thus in the eternal light, which is what 10, 107,2 says. So 7,6,3 is to be translated quite literally: "He (Agni), the Eastern One, has made those who do not make sacrifices into Westerners," i.e. he, the bright one, has plunged them into deep darkness."

"In any case, this superficial glance at Sangam literature makes it clear at the very least that, in the words of John R. Marr, “these poems show that the synthesis between Tamil culture and what may loosely be termed Aryan culture was already far advanced.”"

"Of Christian Lassen, it was said as early as 1890 [Oldenberg 1890:27] that “the sagacity of philological thought is wanting in him”. Need we say more?"

"The comprehensive picture of ancient Indian civilization that he was able to give meant that the Indians were now finally and "fully accepted" into the circle of ancient cultural peoples that were significant for the history of mankind and, as such, could be included in historical comparisons. The expansion of the historical-geographical horizon that Lassen's four volumes made possible was a very important step in the process of overcoming the old biblical view of history - after all, just twenty years earlier, like for Peter von Bohlen in his History of the Ancient World, only the old biblically relevant cultures of Egypt, Israel, Persia, Greece and Rome had been considered the roots of human culture."

"It was already in the middle of the former century that Christian Lassen qualified the opposition of arya and dasyu or dasa as a contrast between different religions expressed by the age-old symbolism of black opposed to white and not as a contrast of darkcomplexioned to white coloured men."

"The result of this inquiry, which is presented here, is that Arja in part in itself, in part in forms derived from it, is proven to be the ancient, indigenous, honorable designation of the Iranian peoples and lands in its widest extension, as it also [designates] the three higher Indian casts and the Brahmanical constitution and the Sanskrit rhetoric of the Indian lands. It shows us the sense in which we are to differentiate the Aryan Indians from the rest. For the name seems not to apply to other peoples of the Indogerman family.’"

"There is little doubt that Lassen was one of the foremost theoreticians of race of the nineteenth century, responsible in large part for supplying the “historical” data that led to the creation of the “Āryan” race concept. This makes the present-day enthusiasm for him even more puzzling."

"The key role played by Lassen in the development of modern ideas of race is not a matter of dispute, but what is less often noted is the central role the Mahābhārata played in his reconstructions of ancient Indian history. If the racism of Gobineau is unimaginable without Lassen’s researches, it is equally true that Lassen’s researches are unimaginable without the Mahābhārata."

"It is thus one of the ironies of history that a method that was to become such a core component of the methodological self-understanding of the textual sciences {Textwissenschaften) within the university not only had a theological origin but also was essentially theological: in spite of the name historical-critical method, what Semler was interested in was not history, but to identify that part of scripture that could be considered the pure Word of God."

"In spite of his copious studies on the Mahābhārata, however, Lassen’s work was not especially innovative: once laid down, his basic views on the epic remained unchanged for nearly a quarter century. Later studies amplified and provided additional “ethnographic” evidence for views he had already articulated in his 1837 article, but they did not in any way question or otherwise critically illuminate the basis for these views. Regardless, Lassen’s pedantic, self-assured tone and the confidence with which he put forth speculative assertions about ancient India as established fact greatly impressed a generation of scholars. Albrecht Weber, Theodor Goldstücker, and Adolf Holtzmann Jr. all accepted his reconstructions of ancient Indian history and ethnography."

"If one compares the fate and acceptance of Johannes Hertel's "Aryan research" with what was said above about Zimmer and Schroeder, one can hardly find a better illustration of the complicated situation that an Indologist who was interested in Aryan antiquity could get into with the gradual institutionalization of the National Socialist idea and the seizure of political power by the NSDAP. While Heinrich Zimmer's scientific work is still highly valued today and Leopold von Schroeder is also respected as a Veda researcher, the judgment on Johannes Hertel with regard to his "Aryan research" is, to put it mildly, somewhat uncertain."

"Although German scholars claimed to take a scientific approach to the epic, their interpretations were at best tangential and at worst irrelevant to the text at hand. No German interpreter in a period extending one hundred years (i.e., if we take Lassen’s 1837 article on the Mahābhārata as the starting point and Hauer’s 1937 book on the Bhagavadgītā as the end point) had succeeded in presenting a coherent, philosophically illuminating interpretation of the Mahābhārata. The histories they presented of the epic existed nowhere else outside their own minds."

"One does more justice to the way of thinking of the poets of the Rgveda and the nature of this text if one places the term krsnä tvac in RV 1.130.8 in the context of the ideas of the "skin" or the "black skin" that are common elsewhere and thus assigns it to the vocabulary of Rgvedic mythology, especially since the equation of the Dasyu and Dasa with the non-Aryan population of northwest India can be doubted with good reason."

"However, if one looks at the passages more closely, the context and sentence or verse construction also allow for a different interpretation, especially since tvac - more on this below - is used much more frequently in the meaning "fur, blanket" than in the meaning "(human) skin"."

"And so a gap is definitely apparent: there is a lack of a scientific history of the term “Aryan” that would illuminate the entire breadth of meaning that the term has been given since its inception, and it is the classical Indologists familiar with the field of research who are in demand here."

"Krsna tvac as a metaphor for darkness in the RV yet is no abstract idea, but in the minds of Rgvedic man a real part of the world, of the cosmological scheme. The poets describe it eventually as a cloth a cover which could spread over the earth. Darkness is related to the ‘depth’, the lowest region of the trinominal concept of the world-structure, being at the same time the home of the waters. Two verses give a vivid picture of this. In RV 4. 13. 4 the poet adresses Surya who drove away the nig'ht ...Definitely the verse means the night, the “black cloth” lying over the earth, not the symbolical darkness. But in the minds of the poets the bounds between real and symbolic darkness were fluent, as RV 4. 17. 14 — 15 suggests... If at the three above cited passages krsna tvac is translated with ‘dark cloth, dark cover’ but not with ‘dark skin’ in the sense of ‘dark complexion’ it fits better into the habits of thinking of the Rgvedic poets, than the rather trivial translation current up till now. Assumedly the Rgvedic hymns are mythological poetry not in the first line depicting real events but out of these events creating myths — myths as models for reality. The fight against enemies dominating the life of the Aryan immigrants, this theme presented itself to be an excellent (and necessary) subject for mythologization."

"Considering context and construction of the verses the term cited ‘dark skin’ should not merely be taken as a reference to the complexion of certain non-vedic people but as a quantity of its own, a symbolic expression for the darkness, the embodiment of the forces impairing the well-being of the Aryan tribes. As such, it fits into a complex of mythological motifs centered on the polarity of evil and good which plays an important role in the world-view of the Vedic tribes. Criterion for the qualification of a phenomenon as good was the relation to .society, religion and cult of the Vedic Aryan. As good the Rgvedic hymns classify the light, bright, goldencolourcd, the sun, heaven and large space, well-being and security, the right (religio-rnoral) norms and behaviour [suvrala), the arya or aryavarna Indra. Soma and their adoration by sacrificing to them, to the sphere of evil belong darkness, the night, the black colour, the unbelieving and non-sacrificing (to Indra and Soma) people, the dilsa, the dasyu, a bad or no vrata at all {apa- anya or avrata), the ‘black skin’, the depth, danger, narrowness. It was already in the middle of the former century that Christian Lassen qualified the opposition of arya and dasyu or dasa as a contrast between different religions expressed by the age-old symbolism of black opposed to white and not as a contrast of dark- complexioned to white coloured men."

"It is a victory of light, of the sun, of wide space over darkness, narrowness or distress, which is equated or compared with the victory of day over night. Light, sunbeams or fire are also the means by which Indra overcomes evil and its representations, and again the boundary between the human and the supernatural sphere is quite fluid. The ancient symbolism of black and white also serves to depict the all-dominating polarity of good and evil, light and darkness. Bright, golden, shiny, white is everything that symbolizes light, that brings it to power or is otherwise connected to it: the sun, the soma drops, the day, Indra's dun horses, etc. m. Bright, shining, white is accordingly the color of those on whose side and for whose benefit Indra fights ."

"The poet in this hymn supplies Indra to give support to those who drive away the evil and spread the light throughout the World (i.e. to the Aryan.) This spreading of light is a frequent motif in Rgvedic hymns ... Here, too, light is the antithesis to darkness. Soma, after all, is often called ‘shining golden, white, bright, goldencoloured {suklavarna) or ‘bringer of light’... (By the way, only at this place dasyu and krsna tvac really occur together in one sentence)."

"There are a whole series of standard opinions in the Indological literature, which are regarded as expressions of proven research results and are adopted in this capacity from one book to another to this day, without anyone believing that they need to be checked again against the source material and/or in the context of newer research and hypotheses. One of these standard opinions is the view that the population that the Arya encountered when they immigrated to India was radically different from them, especially in terms of their external appearance. They were dark-skinned and flat-nosed and spoke a different language - so says the Rgveda."

"This spreading of light is a frequent motif in Rgvedic hymns. The motif is worked out by the poets on two different levels, the human, and the super-human. On the human level it is the succour Indra lends to his adorants (the drya or dryavarm) in their combats against the non-vedic dasa-or dasyu tribes. On the super- human level, Indra’s (and the Aryan’s adversaries are evil-doing, demonical beings like Susna, Pipru, Vrtra, Vala, Sambara or the above-mentioned Arsasana. They also are called dasa or dasyu, their symbol is darkness, night, the depth, the lowest region of the world."

"Here, too, light is the antithesis to darkness. Soma, after all, is often called ‘shining golden, white, bright, goldencoloured {sukla- varnay or ‘bringer of light’."

"This also shows that Smith is not as great an imperialist as he is occasionally made out to be. In fact, on close reading, it is impossible to characterise Elphinstone and Smith as imperialist and anti-India historians. This cannot be said about E J Rapson, a Cambridge University Sanskrit professor, the editor of the ancient Indian history volume in the Cambridge History of India series, and the author of brief book, Ancient India, meant for the Indian Civil Service candidates. To Rapson there never was any originality in ancient Indian history, which was also a collection of histories of many separate countries. It is against characters like Rapson that Indian scholars of ancient India wielded their pens."

"Their oldest literature supplies no certain indication that they still retained the recollection of their former home; and we may reasonably conclude therefore that the invasion which brought them into India took place at a date considerably earlier."

"Modern scholars, then, sought a method for containing Sanskrit’s potential to activate its cultural politics, by subjecting the study of Sanskrit to scholarly protocols which were antithetical to the language’s genius and charisma. They opted for a decidedly unromantic array of curatorial and antiquarian forms of scholarship: philologizing, cataloguing, typologizing, organizing into chronologies, and so on; eminently useful practices, no doubt, but none of them glamorous."

"For Gonda, “chariot drives and other races have often the function of regenerating the productive forces in nature,” while the gods “are described as driving swift horses [10.92.6 ...,] as approaching the sacrificers in their chariots [1.84.18, 7.2.5]” (Gonda 1965: 72, 98)."

"Gonda (1975: 65–67) emphasized the “inspired vision of the universal order” expressed in the hymns, in which a “rsi seeks, or enters into contact with, divinity or transcendent reality.”"

"[The Aryan invasion] is not reflected in the [Rig-Vedic] hymns."

"In all times and among many peoples there have ... been men, who were aware of the reality of "visions" and intuitions, of inspirations and sudden thoughts and ideas, men who understood that besides the purely sensuous impression a thought, a flash of intuition, in short know- ledge, may come to the human mind, as it were spon- taneously, at least without any conscious activity of the organ of sensory perception and which leaves an impres- sion of great reality; men who know that the "doors of the mind may be opened" (RV. 9,10,6). Often also the source of this knowledge is divine. The god Agni, the guest among men and his guru, is explicitly called a dhiirii rtasya (RV. 1,67,7), i.e. "stream or 'fountain' of transcendental truth", the inventor of brilliant speech (2,9 ,4 sukrasya vacaso manotii) , who brings the light of the vibrations of inspiration (3 ,10 ,5 vipiim jyotimsi bibhrat). He opens the thoughts of the poets (4,11,2), his are the origins of the specialgifts of the seers (4,11,3), and in 6,9 we find an elaborate description of the relation between the god - who is the light of the world as well as the internal light illumining poets and sages - and the poet who by devout concentration upon the god experiences the inspiration as an ecstasy."