The Senselessness of Internet Discussions on the “Aryan” Issue

The Senselessness of Internet Discussions on the “Aryan” Issue

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

I have basically stopped writing articles, whether on ancient history or on politics, since I am tired of repeating myself ad nauseam for people who do not, or cannot, read. Life is too short and precious to waste time repeating myself again and again into a vacuum. But sometimes, when something really taking the cake in ridiculousness is brought to my notice, my sense of humor tempts me to give a “response”. I have managed to avoid this temptation for a long time, but today a tweet was brought to my notice which was so hilarious (again a tweet by one of those pompous AIT-supporting Brahmins who cannot control their pathetic obsession with trying to link their superior Brahmin selves to alleged “Aryans” coming from the golden west which allegedly brackets them genetically with white Europeans rather than with Indian non-Brahmins, and who therefore regularly pour out their illiterate tweets on X), and so revealing about the writer’s ignorance and imbecility, that I sat down to write a short tongue-in-cheek piece.

The tweet in question is by a clownish AIT-supporting Brahmin Rahul @Rahulkrish91858:

Haha typical argument for sake of it ...Son firstly as per western scholars it was translated as attendants not as elephant . But son it was talageri who translated it as elephant . I think you better ask @ElstKoenraadabout ibha .

10:32 AM · Oct 25, 2024

 

Why trouble @ElstKoenraad with half-witted comments?

I do believe, however egotistic on my part it may seem to many, that I have revolutionized the subject of Rigvedic historical studies, that I have discovered many absolutely unchallengeable types of revolutionary evidence in the Rigveda conclusively proving the OIT beyond any doubt, and that no-one can prove anything that I have written to be wrong. But honestly, this clown gives me credit for something so incredible that even I am staggered! According to him the translation of the Rigvedic word ibha as “elephant” was first done by me, and that before I made this translation all scholars were unanimous that ibha means “attendants”!!!

What he is suggesting is so ridiculous, even as his fantastic estimation of my power and influence is incredibly naïve and flattering, that I feel I must spell out exactly what he is in effect saying. And to understand what he is saying one must read the works of Rigvedic scholars and see how they have dealt with the word ibha:

Two great Indological scholars, Pischel and Geldner, translate the word ibha, regularly, as “elephant” (Geldner, it must be noted, is the scholar whose translations were described by Witzel as the most reliable ones when he was castigating me for allegedly “relying” “wholly” on “unreliable” Griffith).

Here is what I had written in my article on elephants about this  translation as “attendants”:

 

“Throughout the entire history of Indian Vedic and linguistic tradition, the word íbha- means "elephant": the Uṇādi Sūtra (III.147) of Pāṇini (or, according to many authorities, of sources even anterior to him) tells us that the word means hastī "elephant". The same meaning is given by Yāska, Mahīdhara, Sāyaṇa, and all other traditional Indian Vedic scholars, grammarians, etymologists and lexicographers. Many of the western Indologists (Müller, Wilson, Uhlenbeck, Pischel, Geldner) also unambiguously translate the word as "elephant".

 

Then what is the basis for translating the word as "attendants, servants"? This motif was introduced in the last few hundred years, in defiance of the meaning accepted since thousands of years, and without any basis in either Indo-European or Sanskrit etymology, initially by a motley crowd of Indologists (Ludwig, Grassmann, Roth, Zimmer, etc.), on the basis of the following: the Nirukta of Yāska (6.12) elaborates on the meaning of "yāhi rājevamavāṁ ibhena" (a section of the Rigvedic verse IV.4.1) as follows: "yāhi rājeva/ amātyavān/ abhyamanavān/ svavānvā/ irābhṛtā gaṇena gatamayena/ hastinetivā", i.e. "Go like a king who is accompanied by his minister, or who is the terror of his enemies, or who is followed by his own attendants, i.e. retinue well nourished with food, or (riding) a fearless elephant". The word "attendants" in the above commentary actually refers to the word ama: Wilson, in his footnote to his translation, tells us that "ama has also different interpretations, a minister, for amátya, or ama, an associate". But it has been transferred to the following word íbha and interpreted as the "real" meaning of the word íbha - so the "misinterpretation of an original Vedic text" was done not by ancient Indian grammarians, lexicographers and interpreters of the Rigveda, but by certain early Indologists - and this misinterpretation has been blindly followed by most subsequent Indological scholars.

 

It may, incidentally, be noted that the word íbha is translated as "attendants, servants" by Griffith, who follows that interpretation, when the context is sufficiently general, eg. "Tugra with his íbhas", but in IX.57.3, where the reference is to people decking up an íbha, he perforce translates the word as "elephant"!

 

But, on the basis of this authoritative "evidence", scholars like Blažek (see above) confidently assert that "the meaning 'elephant' appears only in the later language (Mānava Dharmaśāstra) probably thanks to misinterpretation of an original Vedic text",”

 

But according to this clown Rahul @Rahulkrish91858, all the Indologists have been regularly translating the word as “attendants”, and I was the first to translate it as “elephant”. In that case, then, are we assume that all the Indologists of the past named above (Müller, Wilson, Uhlenbeck, Pischel, Geldner, and in some cases also Griffith) and all the ancient to medieval Indian Vedic scholars (from Pāṇini and Yāska to Mahīdhara and Sāyaṇa), all during their widely differing chronological points of existence, were equipped with crystal balls into which they were constantly gazing to see what translations or mistranslations of the Rigveda would be initiated by 20^th-21^st century CE writers; and the moment they saw me translating the word as “elephant”, they were so impressed that they immediately followed suit and mis-translated the word as “elephant” themselves following my example?

Sorry, Krish baby, flattering though your suggestion is to my ego, it is a bit too thick to swallow, even for me!

This is just one out of countless examples of the kind of illiterate bullshit that is bandied around on the internet, and even in so called academic forums, in respect of the AIT-OIT debate. I have written everything that was to be written and, except when I am in the mood to find it entertaining to point out the idiocies of clowns like the one illustrated here, I genuinely see no need to set pen to paper (or keyboard to computer) to keep repeating myself on any matter concerning the “Aryan” debate.

 

I finished writing the above two days ago, but did not upload it because I was wondering whether such illiterate imbeciles deserved to have me wasting my time on taking note of their senseless comments and pontifications. But today someone brought to my notice another tweet by this clown Rahul @Rahulkrish91858::

Pleistocene is dated pre-10K BCE but talageri' date doesn't go back beyond 4000BCE. Talageri also make a mistake stating that Oldest sections of rigveda is composed in Harayana and UP but according to Oldest sections of rigveda mentions about extreme cold so he was wrong.

4:22 PM · Oct 27, 2024

 

The man seems totally incapable of understanding the simplest points. According to him, the actual geographical data in the Rigveda, in the oldest books, which shows that the oldest sections are composed in Haryana and UP, have no relevance whatsoever, but general poetic references to “extreme cold” prove…. what? That these oldest parts were composed in the Arctic region or in the Steppes or in Central Asia  or in Kashmir?

To begin with he does not bother to list out these “mentions of extreme cold” in the oldest sections of the Rigveda. Secondly, as a resident of Mumbai, I have often read reports and articles in newspapers during certain particularly chilly spells in the winter months referring to “extreme cold” conditions prevailing in Mumbai. Where does this automatically locate Mumbai: in the Arctic region or in the Steppes or in Central Asia or in Kashmir?

This tendency to draw momentous historical or geographical conclusions from poetic phrases or references when the data and facts fail to provide aid is an old and jaded tactic among AIT writers and “scholars”. And particularly when contesting me, this is always the desperate last-ditch tactics of these losers when they cannot contest the data and facts presented by me. The following illustrates one such case quoted by me in my third book in 2008, where Witzel tried to counter the actual concrete references to “spokes” (i.e. spoked-wheels) in the Rigveda by treating references to the “swift” movements of vehicles in the Rigveda as automatic evidence of the existence of spokes! 

“Spoked wheels: In the year 2000, shortly after the publication of my second book, I was drawn into an e-mail debate between Farmer (joined later by Witzel) and some OIT protagonists on the subject of references to spoked wheels. It was the claim of Farmer and Witzel that the references to spoked wheels throughout the RV showed that the traditionalist OIT claim that the RV was completed by the fourth millennium BCE was wrong, and the AIT claim that the RV as a whole was composed in the late second millennium BCE was right, since spoked wheels were invented in the late third millennium BCE.  

The OIT side of the debate was unable to provide any coherent reply, and their main argument was that spoked wheels probably existed earlier, and only remained to be found in the archaeological record. However, appealing to faith against facts has never been my line, and I decided to examine the distribution of the references to spokes in the RV. I was confident they would be found only in the Late Books, and not “throughout” the RV. And, surely enough, that indeed was the exact case. The following are the only verses in the RV which refer to spokes:

V. 13.6; 58.5.

I. 32.15; 141.9; 164.11-13,48.

VIII. 20.14; 77.3.

X. 78.4.

It was then Farmer and Witzel who were reduced to appealing to faith against facts: quoting poetic references in the Rigveda to the “swift” motion of vehicles as evidence of the existence of spokes (as if references, in the RV, to vehicles “moving through the sky” were evidence of aeroplanes, and references to the destruction of mountains by Indra’s weapon can be cited as evidence of atomic weapons or explosives.). In fact, Witzel indulges in his compulsive lying and fraudulent behaviour in the recent Bryant-Patton volume, where he writes: “There have been efforts, of course always on the internet, to push back the dates of chariots and spoked wheels (also implied by Talageri’s 2000 years composition period for the RV, see Witzel 2001a,b)” (WITZEL 2005:393, note 159). When, in fact, far from “pushing back the dates” of spoked-wheeled chariots, I placed those dates exactly where Farmer and Witzel placed them, and only pointed out that the total ignorance of spokes in the books of the Early and Middle periods “pushed back” the dates of those books to periods before the invention of spokes.

In short, the Early and Middle Books of the Rigveda hark back to a period in the third millennium BCE or earlier, when spoked wheels were yet unknown or uninvented” (TALAGERI 2008:189-191). 

 

The two examples of tweets by this clown given above show why it is basically senseless to indulge in discussions with such illiterate and dogmatic sepoys on internet (or indeed on any) forums. I will ignore further rantings from this man, but thought it necessary to illustrate the low intellectual level of discussions on the subject of the IE Homeland to show why it is futile and senseless to “discuss’ anything with such people.

Appendix added 28-10-2024:

The buffoon is not satisfied with making a fool of himself. He is compounding his error with the following tweet:

Talageri also blatantly lies saying oldest section of mention of hima in old Rigveda (mandala 6) occurs only once. But reality RV6 mandala has most mention of hima in rigveda . Sometimes people resort to blatant lies . Now he might say satahima doesn't mean winter as such. :D

And then he himself demonstrates his stupidity by quoting me as follows:

 

“Haryana homeland: The word hima, in 10 verses in the Rigveda (I.34.1; 64.14; 116.8; 119.6; II.33.2; V.54.15; VI.48.8; VIII.73.3; X.37.10; 68.10), means "winter" (and winter is also not a "linguistic memory": it is a season occuring in every corner of India, and eg. the derived Marathi word for "winter" is hivāḷā. Further, far from depicting "memories" of a cold climate, in 4 of the references, the verses talk about the Indian winter offering relief from the burning heat of the Indian summer. Notably the only reference in the three Oldest Books, VI.48.8 above, is in a Redacted Hymn), and it is only in a very late reference in X.121.4 (a reference to the snow-covered mountains of the Himalayas or the northwest) that it means "snow", and in another reference in a New Book, in VIII.32.26, it could possibly refer to a weapon made of ice.”

When the whole point about this piece that he quotes from my article “The Full Out-of-India Case in Short…” is that hima does not mean “snow” or “ice” except in one verse (X.121.4) and possibly in another (VIII.32.26), and that everywhere else, it means only “winter” (a season found in every part of India and therefore not in itself an indicator of “memories” of a snowy climate), how does he conclude from this that now I “might say that satahima doesn’t mean winter as such”? Was he in a state of inebriation when he put up this tweet, or is that (which is more likely to be the case) the normal level of functioning of his brain?

In my article I listed the ten verses which refer to hima by itself, since these are the verses where the word could be deliberately and fraudulently mis-translated by AIT supporters as “snow/ice”, rather than as “winter”, in order to claim “memories” of a snowy land. The phrase satahima can only mean hundred winters, and not hundred “snows/ices”, and so I did not list them.

Pathetic!