People From Greece

"Behold, another new year! Once again, wishes and hopes. But death is lurking somewhere, waiting for us, too. Some day or night will be the last one of our life. Wherefore, blessed is he who remembers his death day and night and prepares himself to meet it. For it has a habit of coming joyfully to those who wait for it, but it arrives unexpectedly, bitterly, and harshly for those who do not expect it."

"When grace comes, all the schemes of the evil one cease, for it abolishes them. It comes like a gentle breeze, like a subtle, fragrant zephyr which deadens the flesh and then raises the soul. It enlightens our nous. And in the end, when it comes, grace itself teaches a person."

"Illumination is followed by interruptions in the prayer and frequent theorias, rapture of the nous, cessation of the senses, stillness, profound silence of the bodily members, and union of God and man into one. This is the divine exchange in which, if one endures temptations and does not stop struggling along the way, one exchanges the material for the immaterial…."

"So he got up and went inside the place where he was staying, for it was already night. Then he bent his head upon his chest and began eating the sweetness that gushed forth from the prayer that he had been given. Immediately he was caught up into theoria and was totally beside himself. He wasn’t confined by walls and rocks; he was beyond all volition — without body and with a deep tranquility, in extraordinary light, and unlimited breadth. His nous contemplated only this thought: “May I never return to the body, but remain here forever.” This was the first theoria that brother saw, who then returned to himself and continued struggling for his salvation."

"So come, my dearly beloved son. Come now, even if for only one day, to talk about God and to theologize; to enjoy what you yearn for; to listen to the rough crags, those mystical and silent theologians, which expound deep thoughts and guide the heart and nous towards the Creator. After spring it is beautiful here — from Holy Pascha until the Panagia’s day in August. The beautiful rocks theologize like voiceless theologians, as does all of nature — each creature with its own voice or its silence. If you bump your hand against a little plant, immediately it shouts very loudly with its natural fragrance, “Ouch! You didn’t see me, but hit me!” And so on, everything has its own voice, so that when the wind blows, their movement creates a harmonious musical doxology to God. And what more shall we say about the creeping things and winged birds? When that saint sent his disciple to tell the frogs to be quiet so that they could read the Midnight Service, they answered him, “Be patient until we’re done with Matins!”"

"Then grace overflows and one is filled with illumination and infinite joy. And since he who has been seized is unable to bear the fire of love, his senses cease, and he is caught up into theoria. Up until this point, man acts with his own will. Beyond this, he is no longer in control, nor does he recognize himself. For he has now been united with the fire and has been entirely transformed — a god by grace."

"The waves of thoughts amaze my mind; my tongue grows numb and cannot speak, unable to utter the words in time. The noetic siphons gush forth dew in torrents - however, there is but little soil in our days. The riches of our Lord are many, but unfortunately there are few heirs. To inherit them requires a bloody struggle, but here there is only laziness. Thus I am compelled to open the ducts unto the world; for there is hope that pure souls will receive the word, and then I shall receive the reward of love. So listen to my words, lend me your ears..."

"God is everywhere. There is no place where God is not. The more you pay attention to Him, the more He pays attention to you. You cry out to Him, “Where art Thou, my God?” And He answers, “I am present, my child! I am always beside you.” Both inside and outside, above and below, wherever you turn, everything shouts, “God!” In Him we live and move. We breathe God, we eat God, we clothe ourselves with God. Everything praises and blesses God. All of creation shouts His praise. Everything animate and inanimate speaks wondrously and glorifies the Creator. Let every breath praise the Lord!"

"The Catholic Church in Greece must play the game of the European Union, pushing for a secular, free, independent and modern state."

"We are Muslims and we have an ethical tradition. We believe that the Quran is universal and one of the essential doctrines of it is to ensuring equality and justice without any discrimination between poor and rich."

"More than ten million African children die per year due to malnutrition and over two million people all around the world cannot afford basic needs. I think Islam will resolve this inequal and unjust situation."

"Information isn't knowledge, knowledge is what you become."

"Sometimes we don’t understand Islam as it is, we understand Islam as we are. In many ways Islam is a mirror. It will reflect our state of being."

"The oneness of God’s Creativity is to affirm and recognise that God is the sole creator, master and owner of everything that exists. God is the One who sustains, takes care of, and nourishes everything. According to the Islamic doctrine of tawheed, anyone who denies this has associated partners with God, which is polytheism (known as shirk in Islamic theology). Anyone who believes that these descriptions of God can be shared by any created thing has deified that thing. Therefore, they have associated partners with God."

"It was my advanced research in physics that had started me on a spiritual quest. It culminated in me accepting the non-dualism or absolute monism of Shankara as my philosophy of life and science."

"You are fortunate to inherit such knowledge. I envy you. While Greece is the country of my birth, India is the country of my soul."

"O wonder beyond wonders, rapture, power, and amazement is it, that one can say nothing at all about the gospel, nor even conceive of it, nor compare it with anything."

"Listen, then. I say justice is nothing other than what is advantageous for the stronger."

"... the changing perception of the chronology of the Indian proto-history (see "The Rgveda and the Indo-Europeans" by Nicholas Kazanas, ABORI vol. 80, 1999, pp. 15-42) has not been taken into account. If it gets well-established, a fresh thinking on this subject may be necessary."

"I do believe, though, that Kazanas is doing a great service to Indology in campaigning to change the mindset of how academia an interested intelligent people all over look at the dating of the early Indian tradition. While my disagreements with Kazanas are significant, they pale when it is taken into consideration that we both agree that there is no reasonable reason for the usual present Western academic dating of the Vedic tradition, and that this tradition is to be dated much earlier."

"Kazanas is heavily influenced here by Frawley’s most amazing paradox."

"I agree that a plausible explanation has yet to be given as to how the newcomers could have completely eradicated the pre-existing language of the entire North of the subcontinent in the short interval normally allotted between their arrival and the composition of the Rg Veda, in which the local topography is Indo-Aryan. ... Kazanas has a right to wonder how and why would the Indus Valley dwellers have so thoroughly and completely adopted the language of these illiterate herdsmen if the latter were not invaders – a status denied them by archaeology?"

"The situation whereby the Aryans are indigenous and compose the bulk of the [Rg Veda] in the 4th millennium in Saptasindhu is a very simple one and in harmony with the archaeological data in the region. Scholars who think that this simple situation is at odds with their linguistic theories need do no more than reexamine these theories, which necessitate the further theory of the Aryan immigration, which theory generates complexities and problems and is in conflict with the data of archaeology. After all it is not as though these linguistic theories are without problems of their own or that in their present form they harmonize with archaeological data anywhere else in the Eurasian belt involved....Instead of emitting such strident emotional cries and witch- hunt slogans, Prof Witzel and his followers had better re-examine their unfounded linguistic assumptions and recall the words of Edmund Leach [published in 1990], who was neither an Indian nationalist technocrat, nor a New-Age writer, but a solid, mainstream pillar of the academic establishment..."

"Why does he attack this group of Indians and allies himself to a group of marxists, like the editors of Frontline? A Professor of his standing ought to be publishing his scholarly papers in the most prestigious academic Journals (like ABORI), not lend status to such popular magazines. Marxists of this sort have caused untold damage to every country – whether they usurped power (as in Czechoslovakia) or failed to do so (as in Greece)."

"Such were the motives of the mainstream pundits who were also pillars of the Church: to preserve their own power. Why today all this feverish fight against the indigenists? I don’t believe it is racist as many Indians think, nor any noble motive to keep Indological studies “scholarly”as W claims, though neither need be ruled out altogether. I think it is mainly the most shameful of all motives – to be on top and keep control of others. As soon as a Head of Dept or Professor feels strong (and rich) enough, they launch a Journal (with other people’s money) to promote their own pet theories, acquire kudos, confound opposition and control thinking thus perpetuating their own power and all the advantages this entails. And to this referred E Leach in a quotation I gave fully in AS ¨ 19, very end, which W presented in a truncated form omitting the sentences saying that IE scholars did not scrap their theories because “vested interests and academic posts were involved”. I added “They still are”. And W ought to know because like Leach he has been up to his ears in the game for many years. (Sweeping the dirt under the doormat will not make it disappear.)"

"The odd thing about this story is that the heliocentric view was known in Europe long before Copernicus but, for various reasons, was totally ignored by the "established" dogma... All this time all kinds of absurdities were written about the heavens, the celestial spheres, the Empyrean and so on, which constituted the “established” view. And all the time the real knowledge was there and all those schoolmen, could, with some practical observation and sensible application of Mathematics, have found out that the Ptolemaic system was not true. But they did not: they preferred to argue about such weighty matters as how many angles could sit on the point of a pin. And when the proofs were presented to them in black and white, hard and irrefutable mathematical demonstrations, they still rejected them preferring the comforts of the ‘‘established” dogma. Theology (and Church interests) decided what was acceptable, not Mathematics."

"Saptasindhu as the name of the ancient region of the Seven Rivers in N-W India and Pakistan - countries which did not exist at that period. I use it as a bahuvrīhi, as many others have done before me, although in the RV we find references only to the Seven Rivers saptá síndhavaḥ (and different oblique cases of the plural). Now (e6) Avestan has the name Haptahǝndu as a place, like Airyana Vaējah, Raŋhā, Haetumant, etc, from which the Iranians had passed before settling down in eastern Iran, then spreading west and north. But what is this name? Yes, hapta- is the numeral ‘seven’ but what of hǝndhu? It is a fairly obvious Avestan correspondence to the Sanskrit síndhu. Now hǝndu is an isolated occurrence. The stem does not otherwise exist in Avestan. Hindu appears in Old Persian indicating the Indian province under the Achaemenids, and that is all. The interpretation ‘seven rivers’ comes from the Sanskrit collocation. But the Avestan for river is usually θraotah- (=S srotas) and raodah-.... Surely nobody would be so foolhardy as to suggest that the IAs took this otherwise unattested stem from Iranian and used it so commonly and productively."

"But what of the Iranian name Haraxvaiti? This name appears in the first chapter of the Vidēvdād along with placenames Haetumant (=Helmand), Māuru or Margu (= Margiana), Bāxδī or dhri (=Bactria) etc and, of course, Haptahǝndu. Haraxvaiti means simply ‘one who has harah-’. But Harah̦ - or Harax- is a stem entirely isolated in Avestan: it has no cognates, no other related lexemes.... But nothing, not one cognate, in Avestan other than the lonely and pitiful *harah̦ -! Observe now two absurdities implicit in the Doctrine. The Iranians who stayed put in Iran lost their own root *har/*hǝrᵊ- or whatever and all derivatives, while the IAs who moved further away retained this thoroughbred IE root and all its ramifications. And then they gave the name Sarasvatī (with the change of ha > sa) not to a large river like the Indus but to a dried-up stream in memory of the Haraxvaiti in Arachosia!"

"Rather, the Iranians left the region of the 7 rivers and held the name in their memory. Something very similar happens with the V river-name Sarasvat/ and Av Harahvaiti-. Avestan has no other cogn with harah- whereas S has sr > sarati/sisarti, sarana, saras, sarit, etc, etc and of course cognates are found in other IE branches: here again it is the Iranians that took with them the memory of the Indic river and gave it to a river in their new habitat... Moreover, Vedic retains the PIE s but this becomes h in Avestan. All this actual linguistic evidence and the conclusion it forces upon us has some archaeological/geographical support. G Gnoli, who is a normal AIT adherent and by no means an indigenist, showed very clearly that the early portions of the Avesta hardly know northern and western Iran and he analyses migrations there from south to north and east to west but not north- west down to south-east (1980). Thus while the conjectural Indo-Iranian movement south-eastward contains many anomalies, the Iranian movement from Saptasindhu north-westward accommodates all facts."

"I find it very difficult to think that I am dealing with a science fully grounded in the realities of language as we ordinarily know and use it. All these specialized terms, the artificial models, the reconstructions that exist in no known texts and cannot be verified and the endless hypotheses — they all seem to belong to a world of airy-fairy speculation."

"Now in Avestan ‘lake/pool’ is vairi-. In fact Avestan has no verb or nouns cognate to the Sanskrit ones √sṛ >sar-. The only cognation is harah- in the name of the river harahvaiti – nothing else. But S √sṛ >sar- is a perfectly PIE morpheme appearing in Tocharian B sal-ate, Gk hiallō/hallomai and Latin salire all implying ‘moving, jumping’. Avestan somehow lost this root and its derivatives. So, how did the Iranians manage to concoct this name Harahvaiti, that sounds so exactly like a transliteration of the Vedic Sarasvatī , when they had no words from √sṛ > sar-? Adherents of the AIT offer no rational answers. (For full discussion see Kazanas 2004b, Prabhakar 1994/1995.) There is only one possible explanation. The Iranians, having lived in Saptasindhu moved to Iran (retaining the memory of the place as Haptahәndu); on meeting an amenable river there they gave it the name of the river they had formerly known – Sarasvati > Harahvaiti. The AIT can in no way, except by violating rationality, explain the two Avestan names Haptahәndu and Harahvaiti. This, if nothing else, should have alerted the AIT adherents to the possibility that there is something very seriously wrong in their migrationist scenario. Moreover, it is part of the general linguistic theory that the Avestan h derives from PIE s: so, it is again extremely difficult to see how the IAs who moved further southeast, retained the original s (in saras and saptasindhu) while the Iranians changed it to h."

"From a very long experience of reading, studying and teaching, of participating in Conferences and, in recent years, of editing articles for Journals (and, of course, private contacts and exchanges with scholars in many fields) I acquired the certainty that very few academics use their reason to the full and even fewer are, despite their vociferous protestations to the contrary, interested in truth."

"It could be argued that the IAs developed their complex but secure system of oral transmission while on the move. ... But, if that were so, what would the IAs (or Indo- Iranians, since they were one people, according to the AIT) be transmitting and thus preserving? Their sacred RV was composed in the Saptasindhu. If they had developed their superb system while on the move, then they would have at least a few tales of their adventurous trekking and these would have been embodied in the hymns of the RV."

"In this study Witzel talks of a peaceful immigration but also uses the terms "battles" and "campaigns" (324), "initial conquest" (326) and "frequent warfare" (339) thus indicating that beneath the lipservice to "migration" (which became fashionable) lurks the notion of invasion."

"That most mainstream philologists will react unfavourably to this thesis I take for granted. I know well in myself the force of habit and of attachment to deep-rooted notions that reacts more through emotional outbursts than cool rationality. I repeat that the issue of origins, of when and how, is one not for philologists but for archaeologists and experts in related fields. We owe it, other than to the peoples of India who, I think, have long been wronged (by their own faults no less than foreign influences), to truth itself, which is the primary concern of all of us, to consider this thesis without prejudice."

"In summing up his extended survey of linguistic evidence Witzel tells us that the mode of the IA entry is "archaeologically still little traced"; it is, he states, securely traced in the texts (horses, chariots, religion etc) and from linguistics and possibly from future studies of the male Y chromosome (2001: 55-56). Here we have an attempt at falsification ("little" when in fact it is none) and wishful thinking. Neither horses and chariots nor linguistic phenomena, such as Witzel provides, prove any entry. They are interpretations of facts by a mind already colored by the AIT."

"Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo were ‘revisionists’ in rejecting the geocentric system of Ptolemy (which held sway for some 1500 years) and, against an oppressive and repressive mainstream opinion (and officialdom), reinstated—with improvements—the heliocentric system of Aristarchos of Samos (3rd cent BCE)."

"M. Witzel attacked several scholars who since the early 1990s manifested support for the Indian Indigenous Origin (IIO hereafter); amid various criticisms he used the term “revisionists”, ignoring obviously that in the early 19th century many European scholars took India, on the strength of Sanskrit, to be the original homeland... The term “revisonist” is therefore inapplicable. Witzel ignores also that Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo were ‘revisionists’ in rejecting the geocentric system..."

"I start with some literary evidence. RV 4.1.13 & 4. 2.16 the Angirases declare that their ancestors made sacrifices “here” atra, ie in Saptasindhu. 3.53.11 Sudās fought enemies prāk ‘east’, apāk ‘west’ and udāk ‘north’ only, but not south. So we have no Indoaryans coming from the north and driving natives southward. The movement here is from east westward (apāk) and from south northword (udāk)! M6.61.9,12: Sarasvatī, the Rivergoddess, spread all five tribes beyond the other seven sister-rivers as the sun spreads out the days – again, days and sunlight from the east! 7.6.3 Agni turned the unholy Dasyus from east to west –pūrvaś cakāra áparām! Notice – NOT SOUTH (avāk or nyāk)."

"Sanskrit appears to have lost far fewer items and preserves much greater organic coherence than the other branches. This supports the general idea that Sanskrit is much closer to Proto-Indo-European and that, since this could only happen in sedentary conditions, the Indoaryan speakers of Sanskrit did not move (much) from the original homeland."

"Neither the AIT, nor the invasionists’ or non-invasionists’ views, nor IE reconstructions, nor philological, archeological etc pursuits, hold much interest for me. What essentially concerns me is the subject of Ethics (in Scholarship and daily life) because this will determine how we meet death. Everything else in the world can be avoided, hoodwinked etc, but not death. Ethics also infuses communal life with the quality of excellence."

"This, then, is the basis for the mainstream chronology of ancient Indian literature and the AIT. It is not based on linguistic evidence as is generally and vaguely but vociferously claimed but on a ghost story composed 2500 years after the alleged Aryan invasion (which initially was Egyptian and Mesopotamian) and on a Christian ecclesiastic myth: in other words, on two fictions!"

"Frankly, his strident obsession with New-Age/Hindutva/Right-wing recalls right-winger MacCarthy who thought he saw in every closet conspiring communists, or left-winger Stalin hounding Jews, Gypsies, dissidents, revisionists and other “enemies of the State”."

"Furthermore, if W had examined his last reference with only a fraction of the assiduity he uses to witch-hunt New-Age/Hindutva/Right-wing people he would have noticed... If we reject every ancient source (even if not Indian) because it does not suit our theory, we may as well end the pretence of discussion."

"The all-inclusiveness of the RV in the realm of mythology is also observable in the sphere of poetics. There is hardly a major poetic device in the various IE branches that is not present in the RV. A significant aspect, for example, is that in early Greek poetry (epics of Homer and Hesiod, and some epigraphic material) the fairly strict syllabic meter (the hexameter with its dactylic, iambic and other variants) is preponderant with only traces of alliteration; in Germanic poetry alliteration prevails while the syllabic meter is very loose: both are present in the RV. ...Early Irish poetry (6th century CE) has both meter and alliteration (and rhyme) but this hardly counts since the Irish poets knew these poetic devices “from Vergil and Ovid” and, of course, the Romans developed them from the Greek tradition."

"First, it is the function of scholarship to establish and promote true knowledge so that our life be regulated by this – not prejudices, partisan views (even patriotic but false) or pet theories. Second, Indian (proto-)history must be restored and revalued in a correct time-frame."

"So sarcasm should be aimed at in that direction also - unless W practises discriminatory self-restraint... the isoglosses - an area full of quick-sand uncertainties."

"I have seriously changed my mind on this subject; I have no axe to grind, as it were, no position or reputation to maintain; I can and shall change my mind again if strong and sufficient evidence emerges. Prof Witzel raises many points for discussion - some useful, some wasteful - but offers no evidence other than conjecture. Conjecture or hypothesis is not admissible as evidence in any impartial Court of Law."

"And in case these academics wonder, yes, I would allow a dissenting view if I edited a Journal: I am not afraid of truth and I have no position, no reputation and no income to maintain."

"All in all, I cannot fault Kazanas for feeling the need to undertake a critique of the evidence supporting the Aryan Migration hypothesis. In my view, the Indo-Aryan invasion/migration theory, at least in its present forms, as well as the dating of the Vedic texts, remain unresolved issues that invite unbiased fresh scrutiny."