Re: A China-Sumer connection

From: Comm (tjsrno_at_spampost.com)
Date: 03/05/05 

Date: Sat, 05 Mar 2005 21:48:45 GMT

"Neeraj Mathur" <neemathur@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:d0b7c5$6hm$1@news.ox.ac.uk...
>
> <a.manansala@attbi.com> wrote in message
> news:1109988949.484072.23180@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>> The Vedic hymns have been used to attempt to recreate pictures of
>> chalcolithic or Iron Age cultures that are dated around 1500 to 1700
>> BCE, but some even give older dates.
>>
>> The reasons given are the supposedly strict rules of pronunciation,
>> meter, etc and various types of curses and such that were supposed to
>> scare people from any deviation in the hymns.
>>
>> This is very commonly done up until the present day. I acutally have
>> nothing against it, except that there is a double standard.
>>
>> Of course, no one knows when the rules and curses came into play. Nor
>> are such devices unknown in other oral traditions.
>>
>> No one has any direct evidence at all about how the hymns were really
>> transmitted until they and associated literature were committed to
>> written texts in late medieval times.
>
> Are you suggesting that the texts were invented in late medieval times, or
> something like that? How do you explain the philological evidence?
>
> The supposed mode of transmission (the curses etc that you speak of) are
> very secondary; no scholar would contend that these alone are proof of the
> antiquity of the Vedic verses. The proof of their antiquity is in their
> language. While exact dates are of course impossible, it is nonetheless
> clear from an examination of the linguistic nature of the texts that they
> are ancient. Having established that the text is ancient by reliable
> linguistic methods, it is natural to use the content of the poems to
> explain the culture.
>
> Do you read Sanskrit? How do you account for the nature of the Vedic
> language, if you do not accept the antiquity of the verses? When do you
> believe they were written, and how do you explain the morphological and
> philological conservatism of their language?
>
> I am interested in what you offer, because I have never heard any serious
> claim that they are 'late medieval' or anything other than very ancient,
> due to the archaic nature of their language in comparison with Epic and
> Classical (ie. Paninian) Sanskrit.

Well, you do know that Genesis 1 in the Old Testament was written by a
completely different person than the person who wrote Genesis 2, right? In
Theology, the Gen 1 writer was an Elohist; the Gen 2 writer was a
Jehovist. It was not written in 5000 BC, and tho it's based also on oral
stories of the Hebrews as their religious thoughts adapted to situations,
changed, even merged with other things, it was written MANY years after the
facts (?). ? because Egyptians did keep records and write their history
down. There is not much mention of anything to account for the epic Exodus.
Egyptians kicked out MANY "hapiru" (strangers) - not just the Hebrews. It
was also no big deal - almost a footnote in their own history. The things
that the epic Exodus claims happened, did not happen. People tend to ignore
the Egyptian reality and keep harping on the Hebrew fantasy. Nothing wrong
with writing fantasy - it's religion (heh) - but facts are facts and some
people notice which group of facts are accepted, which ones ignored. I also
notice that the place is called Egypt when it's really supposed to be Khem!

Take ancient Attic Greek. Anyone that knows that language, how to write it,
and so forth, would easily be able to write a document in that language long
after it's in disuse. I don't see why anyone would do that, tho. It is
generally accepted that no one did this. - BUT - Even if the oral history
of eg the Hebrews starts around 5000 BC? (I'm not sure when the Bible
claims its dates) - it's a fact that the actual OT was probably written
around 1000 BC or maybe a bit longer ago than that. It is accepted,
however, that the oral stories survived for all those thousands of years.
Just looking at the NT, however, you can clearly see how WRITTEN text can
drastically change due to translations and rewrites. It can change so much
that the text no longer even means what it was intended to mean. Prime
example of that (I should have written down chapter and verse, but didn't")
where Jesus says in the 3rd century Greek version "If you have logic, you
can not sin (sin means internal error!)." The translation is "if you have
Jesus, your flesh will die."

I was told by Dr. Inderjit Thind (he did not write a book about it, he TOLD
me this - I used to work with him and for him) that the Puranas actually
were older than the Vedas - but that the originals were destroyed in a local
flood about 6000 BC and then reconstructed, rewritten.
>
> Neeraj Mathur
>

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