Who wants to trap you in history and why?

One of the questions raised and addressed by Joydeep Bagchee and Vishwa Adluri.
''The Enduring Meaning of the Mahabharata'' - Part 1


Part 2:

Information Wars

This is the age of the Information War, where all kinds of interests are trying to shape the universe of information that you live in.

My advice is -- if an issue really matters to you, then try to get to primary sources with as few layers of reporting between you and the source as possible.   If the issue doesn't matter to you, then be aware that the information you have is likely inaccurate, incomplete, and probably reflects somebody else's prejudices.

A very topical example is the difference between what Paul Krugman actually said in this speech in India and how it was reported in various India media with varying degrees of emphasis and accuracy. I'm not going to link to the reports, look them up for yourself!

Other examples are e.g., the hype about Stephen Hawking's last publication. See Not Even Wrong for a summary.   A really old example is from more than a decade ago, when Indian newspapers had screaming headlines "PM Vajpayee changes India's nuclear doctrine" (India had and has a no first-use doctrine.)   What PM Vajpayee said in a speech (in Hindi, rough translation) - "Does Pakistan imagine that India will remain sleeping while it (Pakistan) prepares a first strike?"  That this translates into a policy of a preemptive first strike takes a huge flight of imagination.

Koenraad Elst on "The Founder of My Religion"

While remaining within the "Hinduism is some type of religion" idea, Koenraad Elst describes the nature of religious authority in Hinduism, in this transcript of a talk that he gave in 2009, on the theme "The Founder of My Religion".

In Hinduism, authority rests with a vast array of scriptures: the Veda-s and the Bhagavad-Gita most famously, but also in the Agama-s or doctrinal scriptures of all the various sects, such as the Nanak Panth (= Sikhism)'s Guru Granth. But more importantly, it rests with every enlightened master, everyone who visibly embodies the sacred. It rests with your parents and personal teachers, and ultimately also with yourself. Your own common sense and intuition are the most important guide in your life's choices, informed by the plethora of Hindu sources of light, and not excluding even the non-Hindu sources. Living Hinduism is an application to the religious sphere of "the wisdom of crowds", the principle the combined insights of many provide a more accurate guide than the insights of an individual, be he prophet or messiah. I note with satisfaction that the Ahmadiya movement has incorporated a bit of this Hindu attitude by acknowledging Krishna and the Buddha as legitimate religious teachers.

May all beings in the Universe be happy.

A book on my reading list: The Impossibility of Religious Freedom

As a reminder to self:
Winnifred Fallers Sullivan (2007), The Impossibility of Religious Freedom
Introduction (PDF file)
Blurb (emphasis added):

The Constitution may guarantee it. But religious freedom in America is, in fact, impossible. So argues this timely and iconoclastic work by law and religion scholar Winnifred Sullivan. Sullivan uses as the backdrop for the book the trial of Warner vs. Boca Raton, a recent case concerning the laws that protect the free exercise of religion in America. The trial, for which the author served as an expert witness, concerned regulations banning certain memorials from a multiconfessional nondenominational cemetery in Boca Raton, Florida. The book portrays the unsuccessful struggle of Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish families in Boca Raton to preserve the practice of placing such religious artifacts as crosses and stars of David on the graves of the city-owned burial ground.

Sullivan demonstrates how, during the course of the proceeding, citizens from all walks of life and religious backgrounds were harassed to define just what their religion is. She argues that their plight points up a shocking truth: religion cannot be coherently defined for the purposes of American law, because everyone has different definitions of what religion is. Indeed, while religious freedom as a political idea was arguably once a force for tolerance, it has now become a force for intolerance, she maintains.

A clear-eyed look at the laws created to protect religious freedom, this vigorously argued book offers a new take on a right deemed by many to be necessary for a free democratic society. It will have broad appeal not only for religion scholars, but also for anyone interested in law and the Constitution.

Winnifred Fallers Sullivan is associate professor of law and director of the Law and Religion Program at the University at Buffalo Law School. She is also the author of Paying the Words Extra: Religious Discourse in the Supreme Court of the United States. 

What is इतिहास?

Itihaasa (इतिहास) is commonly translated as "history".

Here is a competing meaning, and seems to be more in tune with the actual exemplars of Itihaasa that we have (e.g., the Mahabharata).

इतिवृत्त (Itivritta) is the word that means chronicle, annals, record of historical events; and in dramaturgy, it means the plot of a play.

PS:

PS: footnote 20 on this page on the Natya Shastra has this:

https://www.wisdomlib.org/hinduism/book/the-natyashastra/d/doc202329.html#note-e-79660

Kauṭilya in his definition of itihāsa enumerates purāṇa and itivṛtta as belonging to its contents. An itivṛtta, according to Winternitz, can only mean an “historical event” and purāṇa probably means “mythological and legendary lore.” Vol. I. p. 518. Pargiter has, however, extracted solid historical facts from some of the extant Purāṇas (See his Ancient Indian Historical Traditions, London, 1922). According to the Indian tradition itihāsa is said to be an account of events that occured in the past, carrying in it instructions about duty, wealth, enjoyment of pleasure, and salvation. The same tradition assigns the position of itihāsa to the Mahābhārata the great Indian epic. It is possibly this itihāsa that has been connected with the Nāṭyaveda by the author of the śāstra. Hence it appears that Oldenberg’s theory about the original connexion between epic and dramatic poetry, is worthy of serious consideration. Nāṭyākhyaṃ pañcamaṃ vedaṃ setihāsaṃ karomy aham (15) seems to be very significant. Ag. (I. p. 13) explains setihāsam as itihāsopadeśakarūpaṃ saprabbedam. See Winternitz, Vol. I. pp. 100 ff, 312 n,

PS: duty, wealth, enjoyment of pleasure, and salvation = dharma, artha, kama, and moksha

On the Right to Bear Arms: George Mason

This webpage, of Dr Walter Williams of the faculty of George Mason University has a whole bunch of quotes of US of A founding fathers, supporting a particular interpretation of the Second Amendment of the US Constitution.

"I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials."
— George Mason, in Debates in Virginia Convention on Ratification of the Constitution, Elliot, Vol. 3, June 16, 1788

If you look up the source, (yes, it is the 1836 edition not the 1788 edition) you will see that it should read:

"I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except for a few public officers."

That "now" is significant, and is not some random addition by some editor, as can be seen by the full text below.  I wonder how many other distortions have been introduced by our worthy gun lobby.

Divya Jhingran on Shashi Tharoor's "Why I am a Hindu"

Shashi Tharoor published a book recently, "Why I am a Hindu". (As of this blog post, I haven't read it.)

Divya Jhingran, co-author with Balangangadhara of Do All Roads Lead to Jerusalem?: The Making of Indian Religions, has some reflections on Shashi Tharoor's book.  She argues that "a more apt title for Tharoor’s book would have been “Why I am a Protestant”.

As S.N. Balagangadhara notes, if you take away the Bible and you take away Jesus, there will be nothing left that would be recognizable as a religion called Christianity. Similarly, if you take away the Quran and take away Mohammad, there will be nothing left that would be recognizable as a religion called Islam. Religions stand or fall based upon these two factors. If these two factors are necessary components of religion, it obviously means that the Indian traditions are phenomena of a different kind. You cannot use different standards of determination in judging this matter. Even Buddhism does not need a Buddha, nor does Jainism need a Mahavira. The Indian traditions will still exist, each as a distinct entity and each distinguishable from the other without any such props. They are human discoveries that can be communicated in any number of ways, not a belief system handed down from God.

Jakob de Roover: "Europe, India, and the Limits of Secularism"

In this hour-long talk, Professor Jakob de Roover, a PhD student of Balagangadhara, gently explains why ideas that work in Europe don't work in India.  IMO, it is well worth the time spent.

Synopsis of The Heathen in His Blindness

Kausik Gangopadhyay has a synopsis of Balagangadhara's "The Heathen..." in Pragyata.

Rakhigarhi gossip

Per someone on the intertubes, he was told by Dr. Kumaraswamy Thangaraj that the Rakhigarhi aDNA publication would take several months.  So it isn't coming out anytime soon.

Gandhi on the authority of the shastras

 From the digital version of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi:

205. THE PUNDIT SABHA OF KASHI 

When I was in Kashi, three questions were sent to me on behalf of the Kashi Pundit Sabha. I considered it my duty to answer these questions, but I did not then have time to do so. Later the questions lay in my file. I could not attend to them during my tour either. Now I am cleaning up my file. The questions are:

1. How can a sanatani Hindu who is well versed in the doctrines of sanatana dharma and accepts the Vedas and the smritis based on them as an infallible authority, contend that there is no untouchability in Hinduism or lend his support to freely mixing with untouchables, excepting on the occasions enumerated in the well-known verse: “In religious processions, marriages, emergencies, rebellions and in all festivals, contact with untouchables does not polllute”? 

2. Your work is among the people of India who are predominantly sanatana dharmis and who implicitly believe in the Gita dictum: “Let the Shastras, therefore, be they authority in deciding what is to be done and what is to be shunned.” How can you then effectively carry on the work of eradicating untouchability till you have proved that this work is in conformity with the Shastras? 

3. The Muslim Ulemas are firmly convinced that there is merit in killing all those who follow any religion other than Islam for they are Kaffirs, and that Muslims can mingle with them only when they accept Islam. So long as all Muslims are under the influence of these Ulemas, how can Hindus make friends with Muslims while protecting the Hindu dharma? 

More on the Aryan nonsense

Professor Subhash Kak quotes Vernant and Olender 1992, Pannikar 1997 in the following; the highlighted sentences really caught my attention:

Now we know that to speak of a “pure” race is meaningless since all external characteristics of humans are defined in a continuum. In the 19th century atmosphere of European triumphalism, what obtained in Europe was taken to be normative. With hindsight it is hard to believe that these ideas were not contested more vigorously.

Although this was the age which marked the true beginnings of modern science, old myths continued to exercise great power. When it was found that the languages of India and Europe were related in structure and vocabulary, the West responded with “a tissue of scholarly myths. These myths were steeped in erudition, informed by profound knowledge of Hebrew and Sanskrit, fortified by comparative study of linguistic data, mythology, and religion, and shaped by the effort to relate linguistic structures, forms of thought, and features of civilization. Yet they were also myths, fantasies of the social imagination, at every level. The comparative philology of the most ancient languages was a quest for origins, an attempt to return to a privileged moment in time when God, man, and natural forces still lived in mutual transparency. The plunge into the distant past in search of `roots’ went hand in hand with a never forgotten faith in a meaningful history, whose course, guided by the Providence of the one God, could be understood only in the light of Christian revelation.

As scholars established the disciplines of Semitic and Indo-European studies, they also invented the mythical figures of the Hebrew and the Aryan, a providential pair which, by revealing to the people of the Christianized West the secret of their identity, also bestowed upon them the patent of nobility that justified their spiritual, religious, and political domination of the world.” (Vernant 1992)

Although the term Aryan never had a racial connotation in the Indian texts, the scholars insisted that this was the sense in which the term ought to be understood. It was further assumed that Aryan meant European by race. By doing so Europe claimed for itself all of the “Aryan” texts as a part of its own forgotten past. The West considered itself the inheritor of the imagination and the mythic past of the Aryan and the idea of the monotheism of the Hebrew. This dual inheritance was the mark of the imperial destiny of the West. Despite his monotheism, the poor Jew, since he lacked Aryan blood, should have seen “the dark silhouette of the death camps and the rising smoke of the ovens.” (Vernant 1992). On the other hand, the Asiatic mixed-blood Aryan had no future but that of the serf. He could somewhat redeem himself if he rejected all but the earliest core of his inheritance, that existed when the Aryans in India were a pure race. For scholars such as Max Muller this became ultimately a religious issue. Echoing Augustine, Muller saw in his own religious faith a way for progress of the Asiatic. We would smile at it now but he said, “Christianity was simply the name `of the true religion,’ a religion that was already known to the ancients and indeed had been around `since the beginning of the human race.”‘ (See Olender, 1992) But ideas – bad and good – never die. Muller’s idea has recently been resurrected in the guise that Christianity is the fulfillment of Vedic revelation! (E.g. Panikkar, 1977).

 Olender's book is The Languages of Paradise: Race, Religion, and Philology in the Nineteenth Century.  The blurb at amazon.com:

Aryan Mathematics!

(Wiki) Walter William Rouse Ball, known as W. W. Rouse Ball (14 August 1850 – 4 April 1925), was a British mathematician, lawyer, and fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1878 to 1905.....Educated at University College School, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1870, became a scholar and first Smith's Prizeman, and gained his BA in 1874 as second Wrangler. He became a Fellow of Trinity in 1875, and remained one for the rest of his life.

Ball wrote "A Short Account of the history of Mathematics", seems to have been first published in 1888, and went through four editions with revisions by the author, the last one which appeared in 1908.  Dover published an edition in 1960, and also published an edition in 2010 .

A quote from Ball:

The Hindoos, like the Chinese, have pretended that they are the most ancient people on the face of the earth, and that to them all sciences owe their creation. But it is probable that these pretensions have no foundation; and in fact no science or useful art (except a rather fantastic architecture and sculpture) can be definitely traced back to the inhabitants of the Indian peninsula prior to the Aryan invasion. This invasion seems to have taken place at some time in the latter half of the fifth century or in the sixth century, when a tribe of Aryans entered India by the north-west frontier, and established themselves as rulers over a large part of the country. Their descendants, wherever they have kept their blood pure, may still be recognised by their superiority over the races they originally conquered; but as is the case with the modern Europeans, they found the climate trying and gradually degenerated.  For the first two or three centuries they, however, retained their intellectual vigour, and produced one or two writers of great ability.

WageIndicator.org data on India

From wageindicator.org:

Notice also how the data is collected (in the footnote).

QOTD

Quote of the day, actually from January 13th.  This is the National Public Radio game show "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me".   In the Bluff the Listener segment, three bizarre stories are read out, only one of which is true, and the listener is supposed to guess which one that is.

Transcript here, or audio here.

The quote? Ah, yes!

See, this is the Silicon Valley, where everybody's got Asperger's syndrome or has to act like they do.

IBM's predictions from December 2013

http://venturebeat.com/2013/12/16/ibm-reveals-its-top-five-predictions-for-the-next-five-years/

In a nutshell, IBM says:

• The classroom will learn you.
• Buying local will beat online.
• Doctors will use your DNA to keep you well.
• A digital guardian will protect you online.
• The city will help you live in it.

Lemuria and the Aryan-Dravidian "debate" in India

Please read this.

To understand the Dravidianists of today, it is absolutely essential to understand the history and mythology of the ancient Tamil country.

According to this history and mythology, in really really really ancient times (nobody has told us how ancient), the eastern, western and southern parts of today’s Kanyakumari were attached to a really really really vast tract of land known as Lemuria or Kumari Nadu or Kumari Kandam. This really really really vast tract of land was subsequently submerged in the sea. The Tamils who survived this catastrophe migrated northwards.

And then in a short period, these Tamils migrated further northwards and occupied all of Bharata, and also made as their home today’s Pakistan and Afghanistan. The language they spoke in those days has today transformed into what is known as Brahui.

Today’s Dravidianists claim that because the Aryans invaded from outside, the ancient Tamils were exterminated from the northern parts of India, and also that because the invasion was unsuccessful south of the Vindhyas, the Tamils lived in peace and prosperity in these areas.

 And this:

It was 10 at night when this happened. The Tamil Professor directly went to the Vice Chancellor’s house and gave him an adverse report of what had occurred at the dinner. “You have filled the [History Endowment] Committee with only Aryans! The Aryan members have naturally selected another Aryan as the speaker. And you endorsed their selection. Now look what has happened—a direct humiliation of Tamil itself! A massive, utter humiliation!”

I later learned that the Vice Chancellor had erupted in fury, twirled his moustache and patted his biceps.

David Frum: who and what Trump is

David Frum in The Atlantic:

Who and what Donald Trump is has been known to everyone and anyone who cared to know for years and decades. Before he was president, he was the country’s leading racist conspiracy theorist. Before he was the country’s leading racist conspiracy theorist, he was a celebrity gameshow host. Before he was a celebrity gameshow host, he was the multi-bankrupt least trusted name in real estate. Before he was the multi-bankrupt least trusted name in real estate, he was the protege of Roy Cohn’s repeatedly accused of ties to organized crime. From the start, Donald Trump was a man of many secrets, but no mysteries. Inscribed indelibly on the public record were the reasons for responsible people to do everything in their power to bar him from the presidency.

Instead, since he announced his candidacy in mid-2015, Donald Trump has been enabled and protected.

The enabling and protecting not only continues. It accelerates.

 and

In 2016, there were voters who genuinely, in good faith, believed that Donald Trump was a capable business leader, moderate on social issues, who cared about the troubles of working class white America—and would do something to help. There may well still be some people who believe this—but nowhere near enough to sustain a presidency.

What sustains Trump now is the support of people who know what he is, but back him anyway. Republican political elites who know him for what he is, but who back him because they believe they can control and use him; conservative media elites who sense what he is, but who delight in the cultural wars he provokes; rank-and-file conservatives who care more about their grievances and hatreds than the governance of the country.

Some.Rakhigarhi news from April 2016

An Amar Ujala photo-story from April 14, 2016 says that a total of 18 skeletons have been recovered from Rakhigarhi.

The Tribune of Chandigarh reported that 15 skeletons were recovered in the recent round of excavation.

The sources said excavators had opened 20 graves and skeletons had been found in 15 of them. They said DNA samples were being sent to the laboratories for bio-molecular scientific analysis.

The archeologists said the DNA samples would be analysed at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad; Howard University, USA; and the Seoul National University, South Korea.

This I had missed.  I had thought that they were still trying to get aDNA from the skeletons excavated in 2014, and apparently, so did Tony Joseph, in his article in the Hindu.

Metspalu v Laziridis: trying to understand

Am trying to square Metspalu, et. al.'s 2011 paper and Laziridis et. al.'s 2016 paper.

Here's what's bugging me.  The diagram below is a crop from a diagram in the Metspalu paper, a graphical representation of the genetic make-up of various populations.

You can see South Asia is mainly k5 and k6.  k6 is mostly confined to South Asia, while k5 extends into Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Middle East and into Western Europe.

They write:

We found no regional diversity differences associated with k5 at K = 8. Thus, regardless of where this component was from (the Caucasus, Near East, Indus Valley, or Central Asia), its spread to other regions must have occurred well before our detection limits at 12,500 years. Accordingly, the introduction of k5 to South Asia cannot be explained by recent gene flow, such as the hypothetical Indo-Aryan migration. The admixture of the k5 and k6 components within India, however, could have happened more recently—our haplotype diversity estimates are not informative about the timing of local admixture.

___________
PS: thanks to guest's comment below, I know clarification is needed: Metspalu et. al. run  ADMIXTURE, which estimates how much a modern sample of unrelated individuals derives their ancestry from a set of postulated ancestral populations.

 The typical dataset consists of genotypes at a large number J of single nucleotide poly- morphisms (SNPs) from a large number I of unrelated individuals. These individuals are drawn from an admixed population with contributions from K postulated ancestral populations. Population k contributes a fraction qik of individual i’s genome.

You try various Ks and ADMIXTURE also estimates the standard errors on the results.  Reich 2009 used a Principal Components Analysis (PCA) to come up with ANI/ASI.  ADMIXTURE was created in 2009 apparently. 

We are told:

Choice of an appropriate value for K is a notoriously difficult statistical problem. It seems to us that this choice should be guided by knowledge of a population’s history. Be- cause experimentation with different values of K is advisable, admixture prints values of the familiar AIC (Akaike Information Criterion) and BIC (Bayesian Information Criterion) statistics, widely applied in model selection. 

_______________ 

 Strictly speaking, their detection limit is 500 generations, and they use 25 years per generation. The point is that k5 in South Asia dates to more than 500 generations or 12,500 years ago.

The next is a little leap of mine - is it justified? In the Ancestral North Indian/Ancestral South Indian (ANI/ASI) model,  ANI corresponds to k5 and ASI corresponds to k6.  That this is so is not entirely clear to me.

We now come to Laziridis et. al.  They do an ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis of Near Eastern samples (Near Eastern with respect to Europe)  dating from 12000 to 1400 years ago, and they refer to aDNA analyses of Steppe inhabitants; as far as I know, the Steppe aDNA does not go back before 12000 years.  Now, the Laziridis paper says:

We show that it is impossible to model the ANI as being derived from any single ancient population in our dataset. However, it can be modelled as a mix of ancestry related to both early farmers of western Iran and to people of the Bronze Age Eurasian steppe...

 But if ANI == k5, and k5 spread before 12500 years ago (strictly speaking, 500 generations, while the aDNA dates are presumably radiocarbon dates) why would one expect to explain ANI in terms of contemporary peoples or peoples younger than ANI?

Perhaps one can say that Near Eastern aDNA,  Steppe aDNA and ANI (k5) all arose from the mixture of two ancestral populations X and Y (ancestors of the 12000-year-ago-people) and the Near Eastern aDNA and the Steppe aDNA represent relatively unmixed descendants of X and Y respectively, while ANI is a descendant mixture of X and Y.   I don't think this is what the Laziridis paper does.

My guess is Laziridis et. al. instead of sticking to just to genetics, also buy into the predominant theory of the spread of Indo-European languages, and hence attempt to explain ANI in this illogical way, or else Laziridis thinks the Metspalu paper is wrong and ANI(k5) is younger than 12500 years; or else I have misunderstood Laziridis or else ANI != k5.

PS: the most probable of the above alternatives is that I misunderstand Lazirides, the second most probable is that Laziridis et. al. don't think Metspalu is correct, and ANI is (much) younger than 12500 years.

_____
PS: Jan 6: This larger excerpt of a diagram in Metspalu shows ADMIXTURE with K=8 and K=12 (K is the number of hypothetical ancestral populations) and you can see that it does not really change the story that most of Indian ancestry traces to two components.  One would hope that one can come up with an objective definition of k5, k6 that is the same when computed with different but adequate samples.