A new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (subscription required) offers a counter theory to the long held Aryan Invasion Theory (thanks for the tip “Gujjubhai” and “Mauritious”). But before I get into that, I want to address a pet peeve of mine. The word “theory” is one of the most mis-used words in the English language. When most people use the word theory, they actually mean to use “hypothesis” or “hunch.” A theory by definition means:
A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.
By definition a theory has already stood up to repeated challenges, and on the basis of scientific evidence has held true despite many assaults on its validity. Therefore the Theory of Evolution isn’t just some willy-nilly hunch. It has taken on and turned aside all would-be challengers. Everybody “knows” that gravity is real, but did you know that Newton’s gravity is in fact a theory? When dealing with physics that approach the speed of light, the Newtonian Theory of Gravity fails, and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity takes over. Now that we are past that let’s go back to the PNAS paper. First, what is the “Aryan Invasion Theory”:
… a term that refers to the theory developed by 19th Century European linguists to explain the similarity between Sanskrit and European languages, by hypothesising that peoples originating outside India invaded or migrated to India. Another view is that this theory was developed as a means to show the superiority of European Aryan race. Max Muller and other western scholars who studied Sanskrit were very impressed with it and wanted to develop a link of this brilliant language with there own race i.e Europeans. They found some roots common in german and sanskrit and invented AIT. There is no archaeological evidence for the invasion. In ancient times there were abundant contact between civilization in India and Europe and European languages borrowed lot of words/roots from Sanskrit. Interesting fact is that modern non-Indians still cling to this theory even though it has no locus standi or a scientific basis. [Link]
You see? Even the great Wikipedia perpetuates the inaccuracy. The so-called “Aryan Invasion Theory” has no archaeological evidence supporting it. Therefore, it should have been called the “Aryan Invasion Hunch.” The PNAS paper however forwards a real theory based on actual scientific evidence which throws cold water on the Aryan Invasion Hunch:
Understanding the genetic origins and demographic history of Indian populations is important both for questions concerning the early settlement of Eurasia and more recent events, including the appearance of Indo-Aryan languages and settled agriculture in the subcontinent. Although there is general agreement that Indian caste and tribal populations share a common late Pleistocene maternal ancestry in India, some studies of the Y-chromosome markers have suggested a recent, substantial incursion from Central or West Eurasia. To investigate the origin of paternal lineages of Indian populations, 936 Y chromosomes, representing 32 tribal and 45 caste groups from all four major linguistic groups of India, were analyzed for 38 single-nucleotide polymorphic markers. Phylogeography of the major Y-chromosomal haplogroups in India, genetic distance, and admixture analyses all indicate that the recent external contribution to Dravidian- and Hindi-speaking caste groups has been low. The sharing of some Y-chromosomal haplogroups between Indian and Central Asian populations is most parsimoniously explained by a deep, common ancestry between the two regions, with diffusion of some Indian-specific lineages northward. The Y-chromosomal data consistently suggest a largely South Asian origin for Indian caste communities and therefore argue against any major influx, from regions north and west of India, of people associated either with the development of agriculture or the spread of the Indo-Aryan language family. The dyadic Y-chromosome composition of Tibeto-Burman speakers of India, however, can be attributed to a recent demographic process, which appears to have absorbed and overlain populations who previously spoke Austro-Asiatic languages. [Link]
Is there a Razib in the house? For you non-science types here is an article from National Geographic for the layman.
Most modern Indians descended from South Asians, not invading Central Asian steppe dwellers, a new genetic study reports.
The Indian subcontinent may have acquired agricultural techniques and languages–but it absorbed few genes–from the west, said Vijendra Kashyap, director of India’s National Institute of Biologicals in Noida… The finding disputes a long-held theory that a large invasion of central Asians, traveling through a northwest Indian corridor, shaped the language, culture, and gene pool of many modern Indians within the past 10,000 years…Testing a sample of men from 32 tribal and 45 caste groups throughout India, Kashyap’s team examined 936 Y chromosomes. (The chromosome determines gender; males carry it, but women do not.)
The data reveal that the large majority of modern Indians descended from South Asian ancestors who lived on the Indian subcontinent before an influx of agricultural techniques from the north and west arrived some 10,000 years ago…Kashyap and his colleagues say their findings may explain the prevalence of Indo-European languages, such as Hindi and Bengali, in northern India and their relative absence in the south.
“The fact the Indo-European speakers are predominantly found in northern parts of the subcontinent may be because they were in direct contact with the Indo-European migrants, where they could have a stronger influence on the native populations to adopt their language and other cultural entities,” Kashyap said. [Link]
Very interesting stuff. Despite the close contacts with Aryan populations, this evidence suggestes that South Asians and Aryans didn’t “get it on” nearly as much as some people thought they did.
If steppe-dwelling Central Asians did lend language and technology, but not many genes, to northern India, the region may have changed far less over the centuries than previously believed.<
p>”I think if you could get into a time machine and visit northern India 10,000 years ago, you’d see people … similar to the people there today,” Underhill said. “They wouldn’t be similar to people from Bangalore [in the south].”
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p>The larger relevance of this issue is that it was the most contentious point in the debate over corrections to California textbooks that I blogged about earlier. It seems the Hindu groups who slammed Harvard Sanskrit scholar Michael Witzel now have some formidable ammunition on their side:
One of the most contentious issues the Hindu groups and Witzel and his supporters locked horns over was whether there was any truth to the Aryan invasion theory, which maintains that a group of people from Central Asia who called themselves Aryans invaded India around 1,500 B.C., and that Hinduism grew out of the beliefs and practices of the Aryans. Witzel and his group support the theory; the Hindu groups do not. The Hindu groups say that more recent archeological and DNA findings debunk the theory and suggest that the Aryans were an indigenous people who did not invade. Moreover, say the Hindu groups, plenty of linguistic and other evidence indicates that Hinduism existed in India long before 1,500 B.C.
At a special meeting held by the Board of Education on Jan. 6, to which Witzel and Prof. Shiva Bajpai, whose views the Hindu groups support, were invited, a compromise was hammered out and accepted by both sides. The textbooks would reflect both views, and the word “invasion” would be replaced by migration. [Link]
BongBreaker/Razib –
But Hindus do not have a belief system. It makes no sense to ask a Hindu “Do you believe in Shiva”? Or “Which God do you believe in?” Both of these are questions that I have been asked. Both yes and no answers, or the name of any god, do not capture my experience in the least bit. In the Judeo/Christian/atheist paradigm “Do you believe in God?” is a valid question. How can there not be a different cognitive structure around this? In the Indian languages the words for belief are along the lines of having respect for or performing rituals to or keeping fasts for (maano Shiva, etc.). Of course we have tons of scholarship regarding what Buddhists believe and what Hindus believe. This type of scholarship is the work of Indologists and comes from a religious mindset. But Hindus/Buddhists ect. have logical grounds for holding their views unlike the faith-based systems which just pulled stuff out of their hats. So it won’t do to equate the Vedic notions of “God makes the sun rise” with the Judeo-Christian ones. Vedic terminology is technical and each word refers to something in particular and most certainly does not correspond to the JC concept of God who sits outside the universe with a will and a purpose.
The Greek and Roman pagan traditions too did not have a belief system. They worshipped numerous gods but they had a wild mythology which was not meant to be literally believed. The word “religio” for the Ancients simply meant “tradition.” The belief in God syndrome started with Christianity and its claims to truth. Faith-based beliefs is what makes religion and religion was a concept absent from culture before BC. The Asian languages do not have a word for religion – hence the generalization.
Some of Razib’s post went over my head so these are just general comments mostly triggered by the word “belief”. Try and not give me too much flak for stating that Indian/Buddhists etc. did not have a belief system before giving it some thought. Superstitious beliefs will always exist and that’s not the same thing. I will concede that at this point in time the whole world (including the atheists) are all drowning in religion – and what’s more, we’re all Christian.
By the way, this theory is developed in a very thorough, well-researched manner by Prof. S.N. Balagangadhar in his book “The Heathen in his Blindness”.
divya,
we are speaking past each other. if you want the gist of my point it is this: the systems of beliefs elucidated by religious professionals who codify the ‘hindu,’ ‘buddhist’ and ‘christian’ religions are not relevant on the cognitive level. the thread of scholarship you are talking about has particular methodological biases in regards to the importance of texts, i am appealing to a ‘naturalistic’ cognitive psychological tradition which doesn’t privilege texts or the religious authorities but engages in experiments and field work with the mass of believers. intellectual/rational models of god aren’t particularly important in my opinion if you want to talk about broad based cultural comparisons.
Razib said:
i have regularly come across the assertion that ‘atheism is a product of western christian thought.’ i think the problem with this is simple: people take verbal descriptions and semantical obscurity and impart upon them great significance.
I’m not sure Razib. No mystery religion in the ancient world claimed that all other faiths were in error; I think that is a Christian (and Jewish) claim. You mentioned the Epicureans, but they did not reject the gods, they believed the gods existed, but had no agency over human affairs. As John Gray has said, In a world of many gods, unbelief can never be total.The pagans prized artful illusion–the goal of philosophy was happiness or salvation, not truth. Carvaka/Lokayata is naturalistic, but we have scant evidence that they were persecuted. Modern Hindus like Amartya Sen identify as Lokayata, but no one to my knowedge has ever claimed he is not Hindu! (Divya may be onto something about the necessity of belief). In Christianity, that salvation became dependent upon truth–a single truth. Atheism is also premised on its own certitudes about truth, and thus implicitly accepts Christian categories.
Divya wrote:
The secularization of Christian concepts is reflected all over the social sciences. Western Psychology for example is based on the assumption that human beings are rational creatures. This too comes from religion where God has a Will and acts in accordance with this will. The Asian (or at least the Indian) traditions recognize rationality to be only a miniscule portion of the human mind.
I agree with Divya. The Enlightenment is premised upon the Christian categories it thinks it rejected, notably the belief in the final perfection of man, in which the Christian God is displaced by a faith in rationality and science. Comte’s Positivist Church was literally a Church, with a system of rituals and daily observances. Social ‘physics’, the long discredited phrenology and a host of other absurdities replaced Christian sacraments. Comtes’s Religion of Humanity influenced Mill and morphed into Secular Humanism. Marxism is also a child of Christianity and the Enlightenment, and similarly believes in the perfection of man through not only anarchic egalitarianism but also through science. Now we have neo-liberalism, where the perfection of man will be achieved through liberal democracy and free markets. Fukuyama’s End of History sounds positively Christian, doesn’t it? It is also absurd. The Hindu (and the Pagan) view of life did not conceive of final perfection for humanity. Their viewpoint is cyclical. Things get better..and then worse…and then better again. The Hindutva viewpoint is, on the other hand, crypto-Christian, and a byproduct of colonialism.
This is not to say that all scientists are crypto-Christians, but its near impossible to eradicate the cultural categories we grew up thinking in. I’ve noticed that some Indian scientists throw in a good deal of Hinduism when writing about science; I think of VS Ramachandran the neuroscientist and George Sudarshan the physicist.
No mystery religion in the ancient world claimed that all other faiths were in error; I think that is a Christian (and Jewish) claim.
well, this is a defensible claim, but, i would contend that some interpretations of zoroastrianism and mithraism did emphasize salvation to the point where it verged on the christian ethos. after all, the zoroastrian refutation of the ‘daevas’ was a rejection of the indigenous aryan religious subculture. i will agree that christianity was the apotheosis of a particular religious attitude which is somewhat exception (at least before the rise of islam).
but in regards to the epicureans, would you actually say that the gods that the epicureans believed in were truly gods? in other worlds, i understand that epicureans were atomistic materialists. in other words, yes, they believed in gods, but they were not “supernaturalists.” additionally, my understanding is they also believed that the gods had little interaction or influence on human affairs. epicurean appeal to mysterious forces was mostly in regards to the “swerve” which they used to break out of the bind of determinism.
The pagans prized artful illusion–the goal of philosophy was happiness or salvation, not truth.
i think this is debatable. there is no one vision of philosophy, then, or now. i would contend that hellenistic philosophy is closer to what you are asserting, while the pre-socratics in the natural philosophical mold and the various spawn of plato and aristotle (and in a strange way pythogoras) were concerned with truth.
Atheism is also premised on its own certitudes about truth, and thus implicitly accepts Christian categories.
atheism is simply the lack of theism by a common definition. explicit/positive atheism rejects particular definitions of the god hypothesis, whether via deduction or empirical observation (i.e., god is logically incoherent, or, individual X is not really god because a, b, c, d….). but, implicit/negative atheism is simply a lack of belief without evidence. many people are syntheses between these two, christians and muslims are positive atheists on all gods but the one they worship. in any case, there is a lot of diversity in atheism. some atheists, in the objectivist mode are highly rationalistic and reject the term skeptic. other atheists are skeptics and empiricists, in a more humean mode.
in the above passages, i’m not trying to quibble, i’m simply getting at what i perceive to be common cognitive motifs which often get elided by the generalizations of scholars in a grand weberian mode. the grand weberian mode is necessary and fruitful in certain contexts, but it is susceptible to overreach.
The Enlightenment is premised upon the Christian categories it thinks it rejected
this is the way i would phrase it: christianity was sufficient for the enlightenment mindset (i.e., it was a foil), but i am not totally convinced it was necessary (though i am open to that possibility). though there is something to the monotheistic linear vs. non-monotheistic cyclical dichotomy, i think again, we should be cautious of overreach in that we see what we see and jam data points into the preconceived notions.
but, getting back to my original intent, my point was to emphasize that i do not believe that ‘linear thinking’ or ‘cyclical thinking’ is necessarily that salient on a personal level, and that these generalizations about cultures often derive from theoretical systemetized texts generated elites. and, these elites can often make whatever they wish to out of their texts. i.e., medieval individuals were fatalistic, because they believed in an afterlife, etc., while later christians were progressive because of linear thinking, etc. hinduism is harmonious because of the organic nature of caste, or, hinduism promotes faction because of the fissures of caste. confucianism is antithetical to capitalism because of its emphasize on filial piety and resultant cronyism, or, it is a positive in regards to capitalism because of the confucian mantra toward good behavior and proper forms and scholarship.
the take home message i’m trying to hammer in is that extrapolating from textually derived observations (i.e. christian linear salvation vs. reincarnation) toward the day to day behavior, as if texts suffuse a culture, might not be valid. in the case of jews, for example, this works, but halakhic judaism arose in a particular social context where jews were an urban minority who could specialize in particular professional roles which allowed textual adherence to law to be central.
Wow, it took me a couple hours to read all this. Beer helped. A couple comments/questions if I may…
Who the heck reads AIT, which I guess we all did if we grew up back in the day, and considers nomadic war-mongering invaders to be “superior” to civilized city-dwellers? I guess it may just be a matter of opinion & I’m showing my city-slickin bias…
Last I heard it was undeciphered, has there been any progress lately on the Indus Valley script/hieroglyphs? Do they bear any resemblance (probable or even just superficial, looks like, etc) to any modern Indian language/scripts?
go tell a greek that his language came from somewhere else and he’ll tell you all languages started in Greece Windex too 🙂 Regards, kd
Is it important for us to know our ancestral origins?I believe that we indians have tendency to live in the past.I would not personally care if i am european decent or african.Where we are heading now is important.
raj,
u read my brown-assed mind. 🙂 but people do care. the past echos down the ages whether we like it or not, whether it is true or not.
Kush Tandon / Divya,
It is not a matter of my being “offended for the sake of being offended” or “singing the same old song”, it is a matter of accuracy. I believe SM receives approximately 175,000 hits per month, so that includes a huge number of people browsing the blog who do not necessarily actively participate with the rest of us “regulars”. For that reason, it is important to be as precise as possible in the assertions one makes — and I also believe in ensuring that the truth should be paramount. Bong Breaker made some excellent points stating that some sweeping generalisations are being made, and unless one has a sufficient degree of knowledge of Sikhism to really know what one is talking about, it’s better to restrict comments to Hinduism or “the Vedic traditions”, or at least to say “many Indian traditions” rather than “the Indian traditions”, the latter of which implies a uniformity across several Indian religions which doesn’t necessarily exist in the context of the subject one is discussing. There have been multiple instances on this thread where the above has occurred with regards to posts by Divya, even if there wasn’t necessarily any maliciousness behind her intentions.
Fellow Sikhs on SM, including relatively liberal and “Westernised” ones like myself, will understand the frustration of having one’s religion misrepresented, even if it is occurring “by default” rather than explicitly. As you know, there was a fairly explosive precedent for this here on SM a few months ago, and in the absence of people like Punjabi Boy who normally addressed such issues, I have to speak up if I feel any clarification is required. In any case, I would hope that your responses were not an attempt to shut me up and prevent me from voicing any legitimate protests; I think I’ve got to know Kush well enough on this blog to assume that this wasn’t his intention, at least.
Razib:
There is truth and there is truth. But there is nothing like the Gospel truth and you better believe it or you are headed for eternal damnation. Science and philosophy also seek the “truth” but the true scientist or the true philosopher knows that his truth is open to revision and questioning.
As long as we’re talking of an “ism” we are in the belief-system mode. The scope and depth of the explicit/positive rejection simply seems to revolve around the one true God (note the capital G). If atheists reject the Judeo-Christian God that’s hardly a biggie. As long as we’re clear that this is not the god that Nietzsche was lamenting about or the one that rocks the pagan boats. The implicit/negative atheism also has its problems. There is lack of evidence for many things. Anyone who rejects something simply as a matter of principle is functioning in the religious mode (and to be more precise, the JC mode).
Jai – Again I request you to please chill. Knowledge about Sikhism has nothing to do with Sikhism. Are you more Sikh than an illiterate Sikh peasant or a housemaid who has never studied the Gurbani? What about my Sikh friends who taught me how to cuss and swear and drink? Do you not include them in your Sikh fold? (This is in referene to your post in the Britney blog, btw). Attitudes like yours only perpetuate divisiveness and exclusivity. If you need me to rally around a particular cause (Sikh harrassment for example) I’m more than willing to join the parade. But I cannot give in to political correctness for any reason.
Divya,
I phrased my previous post as politely and carefully as possible, in order to be diplomatic and because SM is normally a fairly friendly place. However, since you have “gone there” despite my best efforts to prevent it, here are my thoughts:
It most certainly does if you are going to make sweeping generalisations encompassing Sikhism within your repeated term “Indian traditions”. Unless you genuinely have detailed, accurate knowledge about the tenets of the faith, don’t include it if you’re going to discuss religions originating in the Indian subcontinent.
You are attempting to inflame the situation further by going into unrelated tangents and, worse, attempting to provoke me by turning this around on me. We are not talking about who has a greater degree of spiritual awareness. We are discussing the tenets of various Indian religions from an academic perspective.
I already cleared the air with the person concerned on that particular thread, and she agreed that my point was correct, so your comment is a moot issue.
You are so far off the mark. I don’t know how long you’ve been visiting SM before you decided to start actively participating, but if you’ve been a fairly long-term browser here then you should know exactly how inaccurate you are in your assessment of myself and my “attitudes”. There are plenty of other people here on SM who could confirm this. A more paranoid person would say that your own prejudices and preconceptions are beginning to show.
As you stated yourself on another thread, it is about being “correct”, not “politically-correct.” You cannot expect people to stay silent if you make inaccurate, factually-incorrect statements.
Let me offer some quiet, friendly advice — and before you start flaming this any further, let me state that this is voiced in good faith. Something you repeatedly do here on SM is make comments that are either controversial and/or inaccurate, and then when other parties contradict you, you engage in fast-talking verbal sophistry in an attempt to deny any wrongdoing on your part — despite the fact that the original comments are there for all to see in black & white. In such situations, it is better to to have the integrity and humility to admit that one may have been wrong in one’s original assertion, rather than resorting to mind-games and attempting to patronise the other person into submission.
A little more straightforwardness and a little less “chaalaaki” would be a better, more constructive course of action 😉
Jai – We did not discuss any tenents or principles. In any case, I reject all tenets of all faiths, including the word tenet itself. I hope you will permit me this rejection. In the context of the discussion, the use of the phrase Indian traditions is fine. Find me a word in any native Asian language that means Religion and I will stop generalizing. Until then the points I am trying to make revolve precisely around this eastern/JC distinction of religion vs. tradition and this includes all non-JC Asia.
Jai,
I think I’ve got to know Kush well enough on this blog to assume that this wasn’t his intention, at least.
Never. You should speak your heart and mind at all times, not onlly here but everywhere. If you feel there is a misrepresentation anytime, please speak up. I will personally not try to “subdue” your voice.
What happended few months ago, it had left a “real” bad taste. I was caught in a cross-fire where I was even defering to your opinions, and just asking questions. Well, let’s even forget even that. Let’s move to new things. New frontiers, man.
Personally, I have not contributed to this thread, maybe a sentence or two.
Don’t worry.
Divya,
Can I please ask to back-off.
A board like this more light, on-the-fly, fun and somewhat academic fun. We should not take this too seriously. Writing comments on the speed of light can never be really academic – at best a sincere effort. Most of the discussion here is on Bollywood. Just my idea, in the end, you do as you wish. Have fun, for what SM is worth.
Divya, not to be a stickler, there’s enough back-n-forth going on otherwise, but just as a point of clarification, from my understanding, religio didn’t mean “tradition”. I remembered the basic meaning, but found something online that backed me up:
I got that from http://www.tentmaker.org/Dew/Dew1/D1-EtymologyOfReligion.html . I heard that definition of “religio” a long while back and have seen it in a few places since as well.
Kush,
Thank you very much for your kind words — you are an amazingly decent guy, as I’ve said before. Brought tears to my eyes 😉
With regards to the previous controversy around Diwali, I was extremely impressed with the sensitivity and maturity shown by both you and Umair — I did notice it, so neither one of you should think that I didn’t appreciate it immensely.
I did consider posting a detailed reply to Divya (post no. 111), but I will hold fire for the time-being in view of your own recent message to her.
My heartfelt thanks again for your brotherly words of support and encouragement.
Well it seems that this topic has defintely engaged many in wortwhile discussion.
That was the whole point if I’m not mistaken, thank you SM. I think that it is a necessary discussion for the brown person, whether they like it or not, whether they —-“believe in pomo deconstructionist bullshit”—- or not. We can’t sit back and be aloof, and take what was spoonfed to us, but chew on it and either swallow it or spit it back out. The important point is that we are talking about it. Some of us believe that we can afford to be aloof and condescending in our comments. Reality is that we have all been raised and influenced by the past far deeper than we think or acknowledge by hegemonic media and intellectualism. Although we are living in the 21st century and are supposedly free of the evils of colonialism, orientalism, slavery, apartheid, casteism, etc… we must acknowledge and incorporate the negativity which is branded upon us. You can go ahead and categorize it as pomo deco bs, but it holds water in comparison to the biased nature of the original perspective from which it all came from. For the paradigm to shift there must be another perspective. And even if gets negative hype as being nationalistic or some other categorization it still has relevence because of questionable underlying motives of the original perspective no matter how “SCIENTIFIC” it was.
This brand may be less visible as we grow older and perhaps tend to relate to a media which tries to reflect a hunky-dory peaceful image which attempts to appease any notion that what we were taught when we were younger exalted the Euro-centric past, but “bizarro tirades about Max Mueller” are very much necessary for our unglorified redemption, or im sorry if that sounds a little too emotional, our collective regurgitation.
As an anthropology major in my undergraduate education, I was taught by many of my professors that the origins of the study of anthropology itself was initiated on racist motivations. Which was to go out in the world and prove that Europeans as a race were more advanced than the other races. The point was to stratify and classify. I am pretty damned sure that MAX MUELLER was a part of this cadre of elitist and prejudiced intellectualism. Yes he was the cream of that crop of anthropologists/linguists/philologists/archaeologists.
Therefore for us simple people who cannot easily swallow a theory/conjecture which was spoonfed to me, until I started to question it myself, it makes total sense to me to question the motives and BITCH about the intentions of such a man with my fellow people who created the theory itself.
There’s definitely a lot of BS in pomo, poco, and pocopomo stuff, but there is also a lot of value in the tools it proivdes. As far as the existence of objective reality is concerned, even physicists stopped talking about that since Shoridinger’s Cat. So unless one is a Randroid, I think the notion of an objective reality is just as much BS. And even if there’s this one idealized abstract object reality, how much of it is knowable? How much ii is actually known? How much of that knowledge it influenced by the observer? And finally, how much is its description influnced by the narrator, especially one with unpure motives? We can go from Heizenberg to Hume to Hegel to Popper all day long without getting anywhere. But to claim that a politicized field like Indic studies is engaged in the depiction of objective reality or description of natural “laws” – a very tenuous notion in a non-empirical field – is at best a very naive veiewpoint.
The real value of deconstructionist tools is the analysis of motives and understanding the power dynamics at play in framing the narrative. I don’t have to go too far away from my PBS and Fox News channel to see this played out every day in real life. One of them is the dominant description of reality in the Red states and the other one is its counterpart in the Blue states. Of course, neither of them is the reality in the rest of the world – for some, it’s Al-Jazeerah and others it’s the People’s Daily. Even as we speak, different histories are being created, written and taught all around the world, just as it was done in the days of the Cold War and used as an instrument to serve the interests of the ruling elites.
The bottomline on this subject is, ironically enough, something I stumbled upon in the Wikipedia article. At the end of the day, the Proto-Indo-European – the hypothesized root language of Arayns – was supposedly spoken 4000 to 9000 years back and for which zero written records are in existence today. It is a language that has been artifically constructed in its entirety by modern linguists. Calvert Watkins’ observation on the Wikipedia page is that in spite of its 150 years’ history, comparative linguistics is not in the position to reconstruct a single well-formed sentence in PIE. Yet, it is on the “strength” of this philological “evidence” that the entire edifice of the AIT rests – whether you take it’s strong form (wars, invasion) or weak form (migration). Yes, it is on the basis of this one constructed language, whose native land of origin is uncertain (interesting that linguists departments are more concerned about finding the home land of the language rather than any actual evidence of the existence of the language itself regardless of the fact that even in arhaeological excavations in Dholavira that date back to 7000 BC there are no inscriptions of P-I-E), that 200 years of colonization was justified by the proponents of the AIT. This freak theory of implied segregation-and-oppression dynamics between the north and the south continued to destroy our socio-cultural well-being by serving as justification for the conflation of the evils of caste system with fair skin vs. dark skin, language riots in Tamilnadu, colonization of our minds manifested in our fixation for finding fair skinned brides, fawning all over whiteys at Indian airports, the contempt of the convent-educated for the “vernacs” and all the rest of the ugliness that we continue to live with even today! The mind truly boggles at how well the framed narrative has served the interests of the ruling elite that manufactured it. Personally, I thank poco and pomo deconstructionist tools that taught me to see through all of this : if someone thinks that’s BS, I’ll pray for them and wish them good luck in their quest to find objective reality. BTW, Said’s “Orientalism” is the fountainhead of poco.
My final thought on this subject is from none other than the great JM Keynes : “the ideas of economists and political philosophers are more powerful than commonly understood; indeed the world is ruled by little else”. Those who question why we need to care about our history or who controls the creation of myth about browns would do well to ponder over this.
This has been a great thread. Thank you all. Gujjubhai is now headed out to get some dhokla and gaanthiya.
razib seems to have broken quite a few lovingly nurtured ‘hunches’ here. how did a discussion on an extract from a scientific study stray into a.sanskrit b. color c. ancestry of american universities and max mueller etc.,? the commenters do not seem to have bothered to read & absorb fully (and understand, may i add, because i know i would have to look up quite a few dictionaries and encyclopedias to do that) the post before banging away at their keyboards. razib is the only one here who seems to know genetics and a little linguistics and history here..shouldn’t we be thanking him for interpreting the report for us ( i for one feel grateful)? a few doubts on the chagrin expressed by some on some of razib’s views:
commenters who disagree with the idea that sanskrit and the indo-aryan civilisational heritage might have marked non-indian inputs are nevertheless upset that a punjabi might have more in common genetically with a madrasi than with an iranian… why?
shouldn’t we first be trying to see what’s not being done at indian universities before we try to critique the work being done by ‘christian’ universities..? the ait was handed down by outsiders and the new evidence also seems to be coming from outside.
and sanskrit and hindu philosophy.. is that the whole of indian heritage ?
finally, far as i can tell from razib’s comments (i thank him again) we borrowed a little and evolved a little & developed a …on our own.
Gujjubhai & Kaffir,
Quite well written. Sometimes, I reading ony is better than writing comments.
but in regards to the epicureans, would you actually say that the gods that the epicureans believed in were truly gods? in other worlds, i understand that epicureans were atomistic materialists. in other words, yes, they believed in gods, but they were not “supernaturalists.”
Their gods were stripped of vitality, really of godliness, and this permitted Lucretius (Epicurus’s disciple) to construct a science-religio “dualism”, giving man more agency over his fate. I would classify it as a half-way house to atheism (although some Pagans may have disagreed). Interestingly, in roman times, anything antithetical to religio would be atheism, and that would have included Christianity. Modern atheism undoubtedly arose in a Christian context.
Surely there is no one vision of philosophy, then, or now. i would contend that hellenistic philosophy is closer to what you are asserting, while the pre-socratics in the natural philosophical mold and the various spawn of plato and aristotle (and in a strange way pythogoras) were concerned with truth.
Neither plato nor aristotle believed in a single truth and perfection for all of humanity, as did Christianity. How many did they concede could truly live the “good life”? Very few. The rest of humanity may not have even been worth redeeming. Christianity’s child, Enlightenment, is also purportedly universal (until po-mo came along), as is Marxism, and now neo-liberalism. To my mind, there is a continuity, though the efficient cause of the universalizing faith in man’s ultimate redemption may have changed with time.
As an aside, how “rational” were the pre-socratics, really? Heraclitus sounds like a Buddhist, Parmenides like an Upanishadic monist. Pythagoras…well, like a modern Hindu. :-). I suspect the idea of the “rational truth-seeking pre-Socratics” is an Enlightenment construction.
the take home message i’m trying to hammer in is that extrapolating from textually derived observations (i.e. christian linear salvation vs. reincarnation) toward the day to day behavior, as if texts suffuse a culture, might not be valid.
Sure, when put in black and white terms like that. But I don’t think we’ll ever have a science for social relations, and actually such an idea smacks of an essentializing positivism or a metaphysical faith in the uniformity of nature, because, for one, even at the individual level, people are influenced by, as they concomitantly influence, (to use a po-mo term) grand narratives. Beliefs are not merely what goes on in the head when we look sky-ward; they are also the processes by which we undertake or avoid action. Why hasn’t religious war or heresy really happened in India? Why doesn’t Europe have a caste system? If individual agents’ cognitive experiences are so astoundingly similar, then all of our differences would be superficial, a discardable veneer, and I don’t think they are.
Fuerza:
In the Greek and Roman pagan era, the primary truth in religious matters was indeed custom and tradition. Every once in a while a school of philosophy would develop which questioned the legitimacy of the gods or wanted proof of their existence. These were generally out-argued by other philosophers and custom and tradition won the day. Here’s one such argument by Cotta in response to his Stoic opponent Balbus:
There are similar arguments for tradition by many other distinguished philosophers of the time. No proof or reason was deemed necessary with respect to traditions that had been passed down generation after generation. It is not that religion was transmitted down with other things, but that which was transmitted was religion. Even if an Epicurus, a Cicero or a Plutarch asserted that they did not believe in the gods, or even mocked them, they nevertheless participated in and actually even led religious practices. It is odd when you think that the Enlightenment philosophers were influenced by these very writers and were led to reject religion and adopt atheism, yet these Ancients, the authors of the philosophy, were not similarly affected. In the intervening 1800 years belief and doctrine had taken hold of the human mind and this made all the difference. It was Christianity’s answer to the pagan question to link practices to beliefs, to be the ones with the right beliefs, and consequently place so much emphasis on the written word and its interpretation. Thus the religious critque of the Ancients made all the difference in the Enlightenment age. To the ancient pagans it was not about belief but tradition.
The etymology of religion that you have provided is the generally accepted one at the present time. This was not always the case. The earlier definition was based on the Latin re-leggare (re-read) meaning to retrace.
for those who might be interested, there’s an article on the evolution of language in primates: The eloquent ape: genes, brains and the evolution of language, it’s here (subscription maybe required); Fisher & Marcus (2006), Nature Reviews Genetics (2006) (7):9-20.
There is lack of evidence for many things. Anyone who rejects something simply as a matter of principle is functioning in the religious mode (and to be more precise, the JC mode).
implicit atheism does not reject, it simply lacks positive belief. it shades into agnosticism.
As an anthropology major in my undergraduate education, I was taught by many of my professors that the origins of the study of anthropology itself was initiated on racist motivations. Which was to go out in the world and prove that Europeans as a race were more advanced than the other races. The point was to stratify and classify. I am pretty damned sure that MAX MUELLER was a part of this cadre of elitist and prejudiced intellectualism. Yes he was the cream of that crop of anthropologists/linguists/philologists/archaeologists.
scientific taxonomy (derived from linneaus) was only refinement of human cognitive biases. an understanding of kinds seems to be pretty intuitive and innate. see speciation by orr & coyne or paul blooms’ work on dualism or scott atran’s on folk biology.
s far as the existence of objective reality is concerned
i’m not a metaphysical objectivist, but a methodological naturalist.
finally, far as i can tell from razib’s comments (i thank him again) we borrowed a little and evolved a little & developed a …on our own.
this is the closest to my own view. some of my ‘opponents’ seem to move from a small difference of opinion re: sanskrit to the “AIT” theory which no one really holds to in strong form except for racists. i don’t really defend the “AIT” theory, but i guess that’s besides the point. as i’ve said, there is no necessary connection between the provenance of indo-aryan languages and racism/anti-hinduism/colonialism/relativism/etc. etc. at least that’s my opinion.
Modern atheism undoubtedly arose in a Christian context.
that’s an empirical fact, not an analysis. the modern world developed in a christian context. what we’re trying to get at is whether christianity as a cultural matrix is a necessary condition for the emergence of ‘atheism.’
Neither plato nor aristotle believed in a single truth and perfection for all of humanity, as did Christianity
here we go on generalizations…do you get from the NT that universal salvation was a real possiblity??? i didn’t. relevations, and even some of paul’s letters seem to take some joy in the wrath god would mete out onto unbelievers. now, i suppose you mean that christianity believed that universal salvation was a possibility, but the problem is that there have been many manifestations outside of that box operationally in christian history. the early christians were very parochial, and the rejection of the viability of universal salvation reappeared in the reformation as radical protestant gave up the project of converting everyone and simply focused on the saved and elected.
As an aside, how “rational” were the pre-socratics, really? Heraclitus sounds like a Buddhist, Parmenides like an Upanishadic monist. Pythagoras…well, like a modern Hindu. :-). I suspect the idea of the “rational truth-seeking pre-Socratics” is an Enlightenment construction.
there is a blur boundary between the rational man and the magician. thales was both. anaxogorous and anaximander and democritus certainly attempted to construct rational systems. though pythagorous was a mystic, he certainly was rationalistic in looking toward the implications of mathematical axioms.
If individual agents’ cognitive experiences are so astoundingly similar, then all of our differences would be superficial, a discardable veneer, and I don’t think they are.
i don’t think they are a veneer either. but
a) there is underlying uniformity that can emerge. prior to world war ii japanese were warlike. today they are pacifists. is the japanese culture fundamentally different, or has it simply expressed a mode that was always latent because of the vareigated nature of human psychology? in any case, i think you are playing a double game here, on the one had you reject positivism and on the other you do believe in concrete facts of difference and distinction. in terms of grand narratives, i think part of the problem is many people focus too much on what the texts say, as if texts have grand power over life & death. let me consider your two examples:
religious war caste
certainly there are differences here, but in terms of absolute body, how many deaths can be attributed to religious war in europe vs. india? (let’s exclude islam attributable conflict as it is derived from the same root as christianity). more in the former than in the latter, but, on expectation what is the chance that a random individual selected out of a sample space which consists of all individuals who lived in europe and india between fixed points of comparison would have been the victim of a religious pogrom or persecution? more in europe, but in terms of the day to day experience i think the difference would be minimal on absolute terms because the baseline is so low. similarly, india has a baroque and well elaborated caste system, but examining the whole sample space over time would we find that the average european was filled with far greater self esteem and worth in the face of his betters because of the lack of caste? did not the peasant eat cake? the serf toil? the gentry pass on their status? was caste fixed in india so that no fluidity was possible? there are differences, but i would argue that the emphasis on written records, and the goings on of the high and might overemphasize them.
in sum, some people would say that culture shapes humans to be what they are. i would argue that humans shape culture to be what it is. in my conception cultures are manifold expressions of human cognition which are constrained by the architecture of our mind. ergo, certain cultural universals will be reprised throughout history because they are fundamental human modalities.
Even if an Epicurus, a Cicero or a Plutarch asserted that they did not believe in the gods, or even mocked them, they nevertheless participated in and actually even led religious practices.
yes, and the sons of constantine, both christians, were titular heads of the roman pagan cults and participated in public celebrations. you seem to believe that the “Ancients” cogitated in a fundamentally different fashion. i disagree.
Razib:
Yes, I’m becoming more and more convinced of it. After all our thinking is structured and centuries of brainwashing must have an effect. But why do you disagree? Innateness can’t be everything.
By the way, how do you pronounce your name? Ruzz-eeb? Raa-zib? Or have you succumbed to Ray-zib? Just curious, since I’ve never heard this name before and like to know these things.
But their greatgrandsons didn’t. The Roman empire took a while to be annihilated and there was a bit of an overlap there. The point I was trying to make is that the early pagan practices were not tied into a belief system. The current christian practices are tied into a belief system.
But their greatgrandsons didn’t.
constantine’s dynasty ended with julian, the half-nephew of constantine, so yes, the great grandsons didn’t participate in the pagan cults 🙂
some ppl say ‘ruhzeeb’ and some saw ‘rahzeeb.’ more the former. also, close female friends and girlfriends always say ‘zeeb.’
now, i suppose you mean that christianity believed that universal salvation was a possibility,
Yes. This is what I meant. Are you seriously suggesting that Paul didn’t universalize Christianity? You’ve elided another aspect of this universality: Not only is universal salvation a possibility, but one could only hope to actualize this possibility by adherence to this specific truth claim. Sure, it may have taken a while for this claim to develop, and there were undoubtedly proto-gnostic and gnostic claims that competed for a time. But I don’t think this fact mars the central point. Christianity is unique (in the ancient world) in this regard. And this universalizing tendency has impacted Western grand narratives ever since.
in any case, i think you are playing a double game here, on the one had you reject positivism and on the other you do believe in concrete facts of difference and distinction.
How so? Wouldn’t you say that the central thrust of political positivism was to uncover “laws” that govern human interaction by means of the scientific method? I ask you: name one “law” that has emerged from this approach. Are there any “laws” of economics for instance? Yes there is fluidity in grand narratives, but the world as I know it is in a constant state of difference. When grand narratives in the social sphere assume “universality” (X is the only true faith, Y is the only true polical system) it will come into conflict with this natural state of affairs. This is not relativism, btw. Some beliefs may be sublime, others execrable. Anyway, you concede that there is an impact, but that an overreliance on texts (and the sway of the elites?) may exaggerate them. Have you considered that different cultures may respond differently to texts themselves? At an individual level, where you believe “universals” express themselves, Do you think a textual belief in eternal damnation had or had not an impact over indivual decsion making in say, 14th century Europe? In other words, would it influence how people acted in a non-trivial, particularized way on a day to day basis? Would different beliefs have impacted people in a different way in 14th century China?
certainly there are differences here, but in terms of absolute body, how many deaths can be attributed to religious war in europe vs. india. more in the former than in the latter, but, on expectation what is the chance that a random individual selected out of a sample space which consists of all individuals who lived in europe and india between fixed points of comparison would have been the victim of a religious pogrom or persecution?
Those examples demonstrate that grand narratives impact socio-cultural outcomes, and would obviously depend on the period we select.
Do you think a textual belief in eternal damnation had or had not an impact over indivual decsion making in say, 14th century Europe? In other words, would it influence how people acted in a non-trivial, particularized way on a day to day basis? Would different beliefs have impacted people in a different way in 14th century China?
no. i doubt it.
Have you considered that different cultures may respond differently to texts themselves?
and yes, they do. my overall point is that there is a really weak correspondence between:
culture(text) => output
i.e., grand generalizations between cultures are just as suspect as grand unifications, because cultural differences are often epiphenomena that overlay human individual universals. that is, people have different faces, a man can be a good father, and the next day murder someone, it doesn’t mean that the man was influenced a) by a good father culture and b) a murdering culture.
Hi Razib I was a little curious to know who you are and your background and found out that a lot of people say a lot of nasty things about you. Well, being a blogger with a blog about genetics will get some nasty comments. But the worst thing they said was that you were just pretending to be some kind of a scientist. Say it isn’t so.
But the worst thing they said was that you were just pretending to be some kind of a scientist. Say it isn’t so.
i don’t have a ph.d. so i don’t consider myself a scientist.
Razib Well, just spend a decade or so and get one – simple.
just spend a decade or so and get one
huh, if you have to spend a decade, you shouldn’t be gettin’ one 🙂
The impatience of youth… (sigh).