History of Chennai

[Bless]

Hi Fusionist,
You seems to give a long/huge/big paragraph, which i'm unable to comprehend. Can you give me the gist of your argument?

The one gist I got from you is 'cast in TN exist only for 400 years.' if this is what you mean to say.
can you give me the meaning of Thirukural #972 written 2000 years back? (i know you will be having different dimension)
"பிறப்பொக்கும் எல்லா உயிர்க்கும் சிறப்பொவ்வா
செய்தொழில் வேற்றுமை யான்"

one of the tamil scholars explained that this seems to show that people were discriminated by their work, and that is the start of castism. it make me to logically conclude it is true.

Whats your view.

1. Please tell in small passage.
2. Please don't bring a question was there only one thiruvalluvar and when did he live etc

And the other is we dont have any history written by other than western scholars, and the perception is always wrong. --I'll take this part some times later.

Hi all others,
Sorry for deviating form main topic. it looks this is interesting...

[Fusionist]

Originally Posted by Bless

Hi Fusionist,
You seems to give a long/huge/big paragraph, which i'm unable to comprehend. Can you give me the gist of your argument?

I wish you had joined the discussion earlier if you are intereste

The one gist I got from you is 'cast in TN exist only for 400 years.' if this is what you mean to say.

I never said that. I think such simplification itself, is what is causing the problem. It makes my argument look rediculous, even though it seems to immitate my pattern. Thats why its better to elaborate and try understand for yourself the ideas being floated.

can you give me the meaning of Thirukural #972 written 2000 years back? (i know you will be having different dimension)
"பிறப்பொக்கும் எல்லா உயிர்க்கும் சிறப்பொவ்வா
செய்தொழில் வேற்றுமை யான்"

one of the tamil scholars explained that this seems to show that people were discriminated by their work, and that is the start of castism. it make me to logically conclude it is true.

It probably shows that the scholar was 'looking' for something. The kural itself, it can mean anything.

Vettrumai, might not mean the same in different ages. Sirappu might not mean the same in all context. We simply do not know what it all means or implies.

The problem might not be the object ( the kural ), but the way you look at it ( the interpreter's personal views ). So if you see caste discrimination, it simply shows you are caste conscious. An interpreter who is not caste conscious will never detect it. So which is right ? We don't know. All it shows is the perception of the interpreter, the society he/she lives in, culture etc. So determining anything by interpreting the Kural is wrong, it doesnt prove that caste differences existed, neither does it prove that caste differences didnt exist. The Kural is simly the Kural, an interesting rich ancient Tamil script.

Whats your view.

1. Please tell in small passage.
2. Please don't bring a question was there only one thiruvalluvar and when did he live etc

And the other is we dont have any history written by other than western scholars, and the perception is always wrong. --I'll take this part some times later.

Hi all others,
Sorry for deviating form main topic. it looks this is interesting...

Well I feel a bit awkward when you try be so blunt to me ? You will have to jump into the debate and contribute, rather than trying to ask others to halt and explain.

Well anyways, just for you only this time as you are keen, I will try explain, I am not looking for precise answers like you seek. There are local are more recent origins to social problems ( be it caste discrimination or lingual divide )and there is usually no grand narrative that explains the problem from a single source ( like we were all taught in schools, old history books and documentaries, public perception etc ). I am merely deleberating the problems of such false ideas we stick to with respect to caste, language, race etc. I think most of the problems arose when we started looking at history and society from the Colonial historian's perspective. False theories were taught through the Colonial education system, something which we still believe in. It is time to throw away such false conceptions.

[ramvaradan]

Fusionist,

Your arguments have been very complex, albeit interesting, in a way... that its not easy to comprehend on a single read. But I agree with you on the 'Aryan' invasion scheme perpetuated by the 19th century adulterated historians. Its pathetic that we still read that cockamamy in history books.

That the Brits and perverted Euro psuedo-scholars cooked up the 'Aryan' theory is fairly well understood in the scholarly circles. Though I've not read the Max Mueller, I've seen many quotes .. and read a book by David Frawley that refutes the claim. Not only that, the more recent discovery of Indus valley sites puts serious dent on the theory. Unfortunately, only a handful of 'enlightened' souls such as Swami Vivekananda called it for what its worth. Absolute lies. But mind that, there are still serious Indologists and Archeologists that standby the Aryan Immigration by connecting the virtual dots of kinship in languages betn. Avestans and Aryans .. and some other intriguing 'indigenous' arguments. Lots of rebuttals using scientific evidences and behavioural patterns such as 'Saraswathi' river drying up, and 'tendency' of mass amnesia of the so-called Aryans to sing hymns about their own ancestral places have been brought up and are still unaswered.

But to deny that the Indian caste system was deep-rooted even prior to euro-influence and only skimmed at the surface by the Brits not planted by them -- is totally another kettle of fish. There are so many evidences of sudras and ill-treatments meted out to them in Puranas and other medieval literatures. I am not even sure if Manu-shastra was the beginning of it, I am sure the dude did'nt codify it sitting in one corner. It must have been prevalent by then.

[barrykul]

For a long time, India tolerated diversity in religion, thought, practices, culture and much more. No other country comes close to such a record of tolerance. India also is the birthplace of numerous religions, ideas, thoughts. The only other place that comes close is Israel / Jerusalem - Christianity, Muslim, Jewish Religion.

With the onslaught of invasions from the Islamic hoardes and the colonists, Indian tolerance was taken advantage of and manipulated in sinister ways. Forced conversions happened. People became edgy and distraught with brutal regimes. Most of the extreme caste, religion and other divisions happened during these times. There can be no other explanation given the historical fact above.

Today, Indians are spending too much time on the problems created by colonists and Islamic rulers. Caste and religious divisions and its analysis does not pay any dividends. What we need to be thinking about is not these least common factors but what are the highest achievable goals. Goals like education, reclaiming India's share of world GDP, establishing excellence in every sphere of human development - education, work, culture, trade, goods/services. These are the endeavors that need to be discussed. Not "Aryan" Invasion, not caste divides, not religious differences. It starts with first unlearning the hubris in history taught by our schools, questioning the past record and asking the question "how can I better myself" given all of these. Can we create 100% educated population, billion dollar multi-national companies of Indian origin, lead in trade of goods/services, leadership in global themes/ideas/culture.

[barrykul]

the Brits and perverted Euro psuedo-scholars cooked up the 'Aryan' theory is fairly well understood

This “Aryan” theory is bunch of croc and drivel. Laziness in analysis best explains the notion of the theory. Max Mueller was a pathetic Sanskrit scholar and he mistook many words in the Vedas. The term Arya is like Sir not a race, meaning noble, respected etc. If Aryans immigrated from some mythical land, pray tell where is that land today and are those people chanting the Vedas or practicing even a semblance of Hindu customs. Even the notion of the so-called Aryans is debunked by genetic theory. All Indians are descended from 8 Austroloid Females, the genetic variation of Indians is minimal and has no relevance to other races.

It is a known fact that India has had civilizations for aeons. The Indus valley civilization stretching along the defunct Saraswati River lasted for thousands of years. The civilization practiced democratic norms, there was no single ruler but it had rules and laws, well laid out roads, public baths, a uniform metric for bricks, urban planning and so on. Quite naturally a thriving civilization could attract people from all over the world, similar to what happens in the US. It disappeared over time due to natural causes, maybe due to the drying up of river Saraswati. The collective wisdom of such a civilization is enormous and I have a feeling that out of this chaos emerged the Vedas and other tomes. The chanting of hymns is a way of preserving knowledge during chaotic times. Its influence could have been dispersed over the world, i.e. an immigration out of India to other lands.

On the caste issue, one of the thing that is not emphasized is that Hinduism is an ongoing religion, i.e. the question of man to the “maker” is still in debate. The Vedas and Upanishads are a collection of deep observations by many learned seers. It is like use cases instead of a product. There are many deep philosophical conjectures embedded in it. A few people have tried to interpret its meaning and given their own theories, e.g. Sankararcharya, Madhwarcharya, Ramanujarcharya. Nevertheless, these are theories with quite impeccable logical conclusions. The revered gods/demigods of Hinduism are people of noble character. Rama, Krishna and others were of Royal lineage. People like Buddha, Mahavira, Guru Nanak were similar background. Ironically a Brahmin like Ravanna is abhorred by the religion and even more ironical is that demonizing the Brahmin has turned into demonizing the worship of noble people who were Kshatriyas.

There is tendency in India/Indians to dismiss a lot of their own contributions. The Marxists for instance deny anything that is Indian. We need to revisit the knowledge base and research some of these old texts once again. For example, the Indian concept like Yuga is highly promising. No other culture has the concept of thousands of years, a cycle of birth and destruction. Current day string theory, multiverse instead of universe are getting back to the notion of continuous birth / destruction and huge time spans.

[ramvaradan]

Originally Posted by barrykul

For a long time, India tolerated diversity in religion, thought, practices, culture and much more. No other country comes close to such a record of tolerance. India also is the birthplace of numerous religions, ideas, thoughts. The only other place that comes close is Israel / Jerusalem - Christianity, Muslim, Jewish Religion.

With the onslaught of invasions from the Islamic hoardes and the colonists, Indian tolerance was taken advantage of and manipulated in sinister ways. Forced conversions happened. People became edgy and distraught with brutal regimes. Most of the extreme caste, religion and other divisions happened during these times. There can be no other explanation given the historical fact above.

Today, Indians are spending too much time on the problems created by colonists and Islamic rulers. Caste and religious divisions and its analysis does not pay any dividends. What we need to be thinking about is not these least common factors but what are the highest achievable goals. Goals like education, reclaiming India's share of world GDP, establishing excellence in every sphere of human development - education, work, culture, trade, goods/services. These are the endeavors that need to be discussed. Not "Aryan" Invasion, not caste divides, not religious differences. It starts with first unlearning the hubris in history taught by our schools, questioning the past record and asking the question "how can I better myself" given all of these. Can we create 100% educated population, billion dollar multi-national companies of Indian origin, lead in trade of goods/services, leadership in global themes/ideas/culture.

Constructive, Progressive things are being discussed and has to be. But not at the cost of taking lessons from the past.

How would you know you're moving forward or stuck in a vicious loop -- if you've not accounted for the the path tread, so far, accurately. The problem is we take it too personally the matters to heart, while we discuss this, that it almost gets in our way of being rationale. And then, we stop discussing.. act as if it was not our fault at all, we were all so pristine and quintessentially humane. The illusion of well-being perpetuates the sickness.

Buddha was a renegade partly due to conflicts in Vedas. And, he wanted to shed the bad, reap the good. But the steadfast proponents were too arrogant to listen. As they were incases of many many modern prophets of change.

Whats happening now, has happened in the past. The way current forward caste are devoid of access to education/employment has happened in the past a century back or even a millenia back. We look aside, saying its 'reversal of justice' or 'reparations' or anything. But the perpetuation of such deeds mire the growth of nation in such an advanced era of competition and science.

This is the time to kill. Kill the ignorance, contempt, fear of knowing who we were, what we have been through, the good, bad and the gory.

Achchamillai Achchamillai ... Achcham Ini Michcham Illai.

[Fusionist]

Originally Posted by ramvaradan

Fusionist,

Your arguments have been very complex, albeit interesting, in a way... that its not easy to comprehend on a single read. But I agree with you on the 'Aryan' invasion scheme perpetuated by the 19th century adulterated historians. Its pathetic that we still read that cockamamy in history books.

That the Brits and perverted Euro psuedo-scholars cooked up the 'Aryan' theory is fairly well understood in the scholarly circles. Though I've not read the Max Mueller, I've seen many quotes .. and read a book by David Frawley that refutes the claim. Not only that, the more recent discovery of Indus valley sites puts serious dent on the theory. Unfortunately, only a handful of 'enlightened' souls such as Swami Vivekananda called it for what its worth. Absolute lies. But mind that, there are still serious Indologists and Archeologists that standby the Aryan Immigration by connecting the virtual dots of kinship in languages betn. Avestans and Aryans .. and some other intriguing 'indigenous' arguments. Lots of rebuttals using scientific evidences and behavioural patterns such as 'Saraswathi' river drying up, and 'tendency' of mass amnesia of the so-called Aryans to sing hymns about their own ancestral places have been brought up and are still unaswered.

well, yes I would overall agree with your on the race theory, but I would infact go a step further to elaborate the extend it has damaged our perceptions. As nowadays people don't use the term 'race' but other fanciful terms like 'language group' that are still very acceptable. The languages 'groups', itself is a completely false theory. The connecting of Brahui to Tamil & Sinhalese to Icelandic is simply absurd. Most of lanauge connectivity occured partly due to layering through migration and invasion. Sadly what people dont realise is langauge can be learnt, so it is adopted, and is not necessarily the tool to understand our roots. mtDMA is, and it shows there is hardly much differences between most of the Indian communities.

But to deny that the Indian caste system was deep-rooted even prior to euro-influence and only skimmed at the surface by the Brits not planted by them -- is totally another kettle of fish. There are so many evidences of sudras and ill-treatments meted out to them in Puranas and other medieval literatures. I am not even sure if Manu-shastra was the beginning of it, I am sure the dude did'nt codify it sitting in one corner. It must have been prevalent by then.

Well I would suggest you do a bit more research then. Scriptures are not the ways to understand history like I have pointed before. For example the Mahabharata itself gives conflicting views on caste. If at one point shows caste is by bith, while at another point acknowledges caste is by quality and even elaborats on intercaste relationships.

For every proverb there is a negating couplet. For example nowadays Pongal is touted as the 'authentic Tamil new year' and 'proved' through proverbs such as 'thai piranthal vazhi pirakkum'. But how authentic is this proverb ? It rose into prominence because Pongal rose into prominence. It was just one of the proverbs of the old times.

Before that the proverb 'aadi alzhaikkum, thai thudaikkum' was very popular. it means festivites and good times starts with Aadi, ad ends with Thai, when the dry summer starts. Now it is rarely used. Why ? Because people are very selective. If Aadi festival rises into prominence then gradually 'thai piranthal' proverb wil fade off and 'aadi azhaikkum' proverb will become popular. It is all relative.

Same way 'oru panai sothitku oru soru patham' can be used to argue some point. But at the same time there is the negating provery 'oru maram thoppagathu'. So in effect, proverbs, literatre etc can come into prominence based on what people WANT to see.

So if the concept of seeing caste harmoney becomes popular, suddenly many scriptures from the past will seem to suggest the same. This is why the overall study of scriptures to understand history ( teleology ) is defunct.

Like they say, beauty lies the eye of the beholder.

How can you determine what 'discrimination' was 2000 years ago based on todays value ? Back to the toilet example, so if in a few centuries from now we have gender neutral toilets, does it mean till today what we were folloing was gender supression ?

Discrimination or hostility occurs when someone feels the heat, and is being treated against norms. 400 years ago MOST part of the world ( including Europe ) stuck to family trade. Knowledge was passed on from parents to children, and marrying people from a different community was unheard of. India was no more brutal than any other part of the world. Why just the Vedas ? There are several literature from all the ancient civilisations, be it Egyptian, Aztec or Rome that talks of extreme brutality. The only difference is the other civilisations weren't regidified through racial science so the differences gradually got receded. But in India's case because of racial science/census the communities got rigidified through caste identity.

So discrimination arose only through foreign intervention when they set community agains't community by affecting the symbiotic relationship between people in India. It is like messing around with the food chain, even if you try get rid of the rats, the entire food chain will get affected. It will lead to hostility as there is scarecity of food, and it will be a survival of the fittest. This is precisely what the Colonialists did when they tampered with the delicate ethnic fabric in India. Created caste turmoil.

[dis.agree]

some of us (people in general and not just forumers) seem to have pre-disposed ideas and defend it to no end by looking for an evidence that support our view and ignoring others that oppose it, sometimes wilfully. there are others who are too proud & of their history, too patriotic and looking for an argument that best explains our recent impoverishment. i suppose that's is not how a good history student should be investigating.

societies generally rise & remain stagnant for lots of reasons. suggest you guys read this fascinating book by jared diamond - guns germs & steel, that explains short 17,000 years of human history. indus valley civilization too rose & fell. i will risk by stating that, i imagine harappan to something like an andipatti - i risk because i am sure some one from andipatti would take offence at this.

my view is that societies everywhere as they evolved practised division of labour. we moved away from an egalitarian hunter-gatherer groups to kingdoms/chiefdoms that practized centralized governments until a century or 3 ago, when we evolved a democratic system. through those early centuries, as division of labor evolved, it would be obvious that some professions would be more sort after than others and constantly evolving. and if you look at the history, it seems wealth got distributed similar to a inverse of a pyramid, with the bottom consituting lowest class. while such social hierachies with fiefdoms & serfdoms existed in almost every other medieval society i find it strange that, going by arguments from some here, it did not happen in india. surely, india was not an egalitarian society, with kings & peasants co-existing. and i don't believe we were so enlightened to think everyone is one & the same, just doing their duties.

india was probably a very important region first 1000 years of christ era. since then it has steadily declined. last 500 years saw the renaissance of european & american civilizations and growth seen during last 200 years was phenomenal as we figured use of coal & oil and start a new industrial economy and which is now so called post industrial (services based) economy. we could argue that brits grew by exploiting us, but what do we have to say about spectacular growth of american economy? world gdp was miniscule with just over 1% of what we are now only 200 years ago. a thousand years ago, it was about 0.2% when whole world was a pre-dominantly agrarian society. and when historians say there were active other professions, we need to understand the perspective in terms of numbers correctly. i also saw someone (barrykul?) say we had robust trade 1000 years ago. that depends on what robust means - would you call such trade as robust if it was just 0.1% of what we are now. all we had then were bullock carts and boats over rivers (which probably flowed for 3 months and likely very dangerous during such turbulent rainy season). there were no decent roads & no automobiles, no canals to avoid long route around africa & no decent ships, and ofcourse no flights unless you want to beleive in mythologies. amount of trade even as a percentage of what they produced has to be far less. it is obvious since agrarian societies are more self sufficent with little needs, but a modern economy trades probably thousands of times as much. it is not without reason we call present times as globalized economy.

[ramvaradan]

Originally Posted by Fusionist

Well I would suggest you do a bit more research then. Scriptures are not the ways to understand history like I have pointed before. For example the Mahabharata itself gives conflicting views on caste. If at one point shows caste is by bith, while at another point acknowledges caste is by quality and even elaborats on intercaste relationships.

For every proverb there is a negating couplet. For example nowadays Pongal is touted as the 'authentic Tamil new year' and 'proved' through proverbs such as 'thai piranthal vazhi pirakkum'. But how authentic is this proverb ? It rose into prominence because Pongal rose into prominence. It was just one of the proverbs of the old times.

Fusionist,

It is almost as if dis-agree's note was pointed towards you
But, what the heck, all of us are trying to prove a point ... so am I.
Your wealth of knowledge is almost uni-directionally pointed to one cause and only one.. that is to acquit ancient Indians of any wrong practices. How could they -- they are ours!!?

I think to mix the proverbs and literature into the same pot is a mistake. Proverb is also used as a 'wise retort/quip' and some can only stand in the context of use. The literature is prosaic (even if in verses) and tells a story with vivid description. Sure, sometimes figments of the author gets in .. For example, Mahabratha talks about pushpak vimana, nuke-like missiles (asthra-s etc), chemical warfares and boomerangs etc. Are we to conclude that we really had WMDs? On the other-hand, there are chilling instances of factoids and assertions that can even be proved by advanced science. For example, a lot of a astronomists and historist have fed to the computers the data of constellation pattern described by 'Sahadevan' to mark an austere day for the beginning of the Kurukshetra. It has been found accurate. And, it has helped to put an age to the Mahabarata. Now what that proves is -- they had some sort of advanced system of observing and making stellar calculations. Undeniable.

My point is that -- if they say that 'Oru Panai Sotrukku ...' we must atleast conclude the ManPanai was used to make SOru. Even if you string together such material and circumstantial evidences, its easy to see the caste system was rampant.

Now, you're absolutely right the Brits stirred the pot. But, thats what happens modern science and social rationale meets the old and traditional. The status-quo of justice through the prism of caste was shattered ... Not all of that was a part of evil-scheme, In My Humble Opinion. Infact, I'd call that awakening.

[kannan infratech]

A small deviation - History of Ancient Indian Wisdom:

I feel that the connection between our past history & achievements and the present has gone missing due to the distortion of civic and society practices initially by a section of our our own people and exploited fully by the British.

The Rig, Yajur & Sama Vedas talk of worship, rituals and music, whereas Atharva Veda has all the science & technology. The British simply ignored or distorted this to their advantage. They branded the practitioners of Atharva veda & their followers like Ayurved Physicians, Mandriks, Sculptors as Black Magicians, Fakirs or Barbarians.

I was told Germans showed keen interest in Atharva veda and there are lots of Indian books and translated books on this in Germany. I have met a few german students myself who were very knowledgable with our ancient achievements. One of their projects was to study Rudram and Yagnyam as means to fight and withstand pollution of any kind.

They also referred to those Bhopal families who were not at all affected by the Bhopal Gas Tragedy since they conducted Agni Hotra on that day at their houses.

Though I did not believe in ancient indian wisdom earlier during my school & college days, I had to change my mind when I went through a personal health problem. What Allopathy could not do ( I was advised by the best doctors of India to take complete bed rest for minimum 3 years without an assurance that I would be fully cured !?!), Ayurved completely cured me in 3 months: but all the 3 months, I had to go through a very diciplined Life style. Touch wood! There is not even a trace of the problem now.

Ayurved treats every patient as an individual and they are treated with a unique program. Chinese system also almost follows the same and Arabic system closely follws. But the British ignored this and still the western pharma world is trying to brand these medicines & systems as toxic as they use metals in them.

I have met & interviewed some of the great Spathathis (Sculptors) of Tamil Nadu. They follow a very unique system of calculation whcih I feel is very advanced. They could multiply numbers to the level of 10 or more decimals in their mind and much faster than me using the calculator.

They also use trigonametry in a very different & practical fashion and are able to measure angles and distances much faster than our instruments.

My question is WHY WE WERE NOT TAUGHT about these brilliant techniques?

It is high time that the Govts in India encourage these ancient systems in a big way and try to achieve our old glory.

Sorry I deviated so much from History of Chennai.

[Fusionist]

Originally Posted by ramvaradan

Fusionist,

It is almost as if dis-agree's note was pointed towards you
But, what the heck, all of us are trying to prove a point ... so am I.
Your wealth of knowledge is almost uni-directionally pointed to one cause and only one.. that is to acquit ancient Indians of any wrong practices. How could they -- they are ours!!?

Then I am being misunderstood My effort is uni-directionally pointed at deconstructing old theories perhaps, yes.

We can deconstruct, only what was constructed. What was constrcted is the present perception of caste. My aim is to open a door, so that new possibilites can come in. Hence my concentrated effort. I in no circumstances painted any picture as to what the 'real' history was. If a particular approach is causing a lot of stress, then you simply will have to take a different approach to understand things

So what is this door I am trying to open ? Colonial era theories.
There is clear evidence that the tool the Colonialists used to determine our history is wrong. So I am pointing out that what we 'see' is what the Colonialists saw... and there is problem with how the Colonialists perceived things.. so in effect the problem arose as a consequence of how we 'see'.

Why not try reading these books ?

'Castes of Mind' By Nicholas B Dirks

When thinking of India, it is hard not to think of caste. In academic and common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India, marking it as fundamentally different from other places while expressing its essence. Nicholas Dirks argues that caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural value. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern phenomenon--the product of a concrete historical encounter between India and British colonial rule. Dirks does not contend that caste was invented by the British. But under British domination caste did become a single term capable of naming and above all subsuming India's diverse forms of social identity and organization.

Dirks traces the career of caste from the medieval kingdoms of southern India to the textual traces of early colonial archives; from the commentaries of an eighteenth-century Jesuit to the enumerative obsessions of the late-nineteenth-century census; from the ethnographic writings of colonial administrators to those of twentieth-century Indian scholars seeking to rescue ethnography from its colonial legacy. The book also surveys the rise of caste politics in the twentieth century, focusing in particular on the emergence of caste-based movements that have threatened nationalist consensus.

Castes of Mind is an ambitious book, written by an accomplished scholar with a rare mastery of centuries of Indian history and anthropology. It uses the idea of caste as the basis for a magisterial history of modern India. And in making a powerful case that the colonial past continues to haunt the Indian present, it makes an important contribution to current postcolonial theory and scholarship on contemporary Indian politics.

Each community rose and fell out of fashion in Indian history. Hunters were famous when hunting was popular, sculptures were famous when archutecture was patronised, warriors were famous when kings won wars, prists were famous if a king was religious. however the negativesalso happened. Warriors and kigs were ostracised when they lost wars, hunters went out of fashion when agriculture took prominence etc

Since communities were trade based, say a hunting community would have lost its prominence and been overtaken by others. It doesnt mean they were discriminated ? It simply means the concept of sticking to family owned trade was not a good idea. But my point it it was the same even in Europe 400 years ago !

It all got codified as caste recently, because British wanted easy administration. People were merely reduced to numbers and put into groups based on caste names. 'oru panai' logic was applied. People lost thier uniqueness. Sadly British also thought that since the proverb 'oru panai' was a Tamil proverb, convinced the people that what they were introducing new, was always there in Tamil culture ! We simply need to learn the difference between the signifier and the signified !!!!!!!!

I am merely trying to open up that door.. and yes it can be done by applying a lot of focus and determination ! It is very different from 'giving out a uni-directional answer' even though it seems to mimic the latter.

I think to mix the proverbs and literature into the same pot is a mistake. Proverb is also used as a 'wise retort/quip' and some can only stand in the context of use. The literature is prosaic (even if in verses) and tells a story with vivid description.

I think the depth of the problem is manyfold and when extrapolated can be all consuming ! you seem to be merely content correcting the spelling mistakes

When you come out with your analogy about literature and provers I assume you are using your own perceptions and judgements ? Well nothing wrong with it and infact you are not too much off track either, but why not read a bit more on textuality, metanaratives etc ?

There is a whole branch of study relating to these. It is called semiotics.

There are better communication models adopted nowadays. There are pioneering work by post-modern communication experts like Umberto Eco etc

Eco's work on medieval aesthetics stressed the distinction between theory and practice. About the Middle Ages, he wrote, there was "a geometrically rational schema of what beauty ought to be, and on the other [hand] the unmediated life of art with its dialectic of forms and intentions" — the two cut off from one another as if by a pane of glass. Eco's work in literary theory has changed focus over time. Initially, he was one of the pioneers of "Reader Response".

During these years, Eco began seriously developing his ideas on the "open" text and on semiotics, penning many essays on these subjects, and in 1962 he published Opera aperta ("Open Work").

In Opera aperta, Eco argued that literary texts are fields of meaning, rather than strings of meaning, that they are understood as open, internally dynamic and psychologically engaged fields. Those works of literature that limit potential understanding to a single, unequivocal line are the least rewarding, while those that are most open, most active between mind and society and line, are the most lively and best — although valuation terminology is not his business. Eco emphasizes the fact that words do not have meanings that are simply lexical, but rather operate in the context of utterance. So much had been said by I. A. Richards and others, but Eco draws out the implications for literature from this idea. He also extended the axis of meaning from the continually deferred meanings of words in an utterance to a play between expectation and fulfillment of meaning. Eco comes to these positions through study of language and from semiotics, rather than from psychology or historical analysis (as did theorists such as Wolfgang Iser, on the one hand, and Hans-Robert Jauss, on the other). He has also influenced popular culture studies though he did not develop a full-scale theory in this field.

Sure, sometimes figments of the author gets in .. For example, Mahabratha talks about pushpak vimana, nuke-like missiles (asthra-s etc), chemical warfares and boomerangs etc. Are we to conclude that we really had WMDs? On the other-hand, there are chilling instances of factoids and assertions that can even be proved by advanced science. For example, a lot of a astronomists and historist have fed to the computers the data of constellation pattern described by 'Sahadevan' to mark an austere day for the beginning of the Kurukshetra. It has been found accurate. And, it has helped to put an age to the Mahabarata. Now what that proves is -- they had some sort of advanced system of observing and making stellar calculations. Undeniable.

It is not about reading into signs, but about signs. Rather than trying to figure out what signs means, we need to spend more energy in understanding that what the signs seem to imply might not be what they are.

I am more interested in understanding social structure and phenomenon and not about what our ancestors achieved or didn't achieve. So I am less interested in studying ancient science or achievements.

My point is that -- if they say that 'Oru Panai Sotrukku ...' we must atleast conclude the ManPanai was used to make SOru. Even if you string together such material and circumstantial evidences, its easy to see the caste system was rampant.

Man pannai could have been used by one community, but not the other
It might have been a novelty which the author might have seen is some village on his travel, and hence chose to write about it as he thought it was unique, while in his own house they could have used bronze panai ! or copper panai etc etc After all people write about what they see as unique ! We can go on assuming things, we will never know what he meant.

We simply cannot afford to extrapolate ! as quite simply putting it 'thani maram thoppagathu'.

But is that what the proverb really implies ? We never know ! We simply cant afford to give it meanings.

Same way...

Now, you're absolutely right the Brits stirred the pot. But, thats what happens modern science and social rationale meets the old and traditional. The status-quo of justice through the prism of caste was shattered ... Not all of that was a part of evil-scheme, In My Humble Opinion. Infact, I'd call that awakening.

So will you call raping a woman as a 'stirring the pot' ? Obviously the woman will not be the same after that, and yes it might change her life. If you cal lthat 'awakening' as she now got many sympathy cards, media publicty and the press were at her door, well then its up to you.

There is a difference between evolution and cultural changes to brutal intervention and categorisation. If you superimpose a new system on top of an old system, it will cause severe mental agony, and inways split one personality itself. What the new system will claim is that they are better and right and demean the old system. But is that the real case ? What is this new system ? The 'modern science' you mention is actually anthropometry, and the 'social rationale' is actually racism and caste segregation based on anthropometry ! It was actually a lot worser than the old system. India is still unwilling to give up on old colonial theories as the people still haven't seen the problems with it. This is in ways equivalent to protecting the aggressor, partly due to shame and partly due to ignorance.

Instead some people are trying to ride the wave by seeing some 'merits' out of such abuse, like world sympathy, more skilled labour etc Isnt that like being content being fed Thirunelvelli halwa I would think twice before claiming any part of Colonisation as an 'awakening'.

Such words are perhaps a consolation to hide the pain I suppose, but if it is repeated, or if we try to make materialistic profit out of it, it is called raping our selves, and it will come at a huge emotional cost. We all do it at some point in life I suppose, but I wouldnt prescribe it and most certainly not glorify it.

[kannan infratech]

Double Post

[barrykul]

Originally Posted by dis.agree

i also saw someone (barrykul?) say we had robust trade 1000 years ago. that depends on what robust means - would you call such trade as robust if it was just 0.1% of what we are now. all we had then were bullock carts and boats over rivers (which probably flowed for 3 months and likely very dangerous during such turbulent rainy season). there were no decent roads & no automobiles, no canals to avoid long route around africa & no decent ships, and ofcourse no flights unless you want to beleive in mythologies. amount of trade even as a percentage of what they produced has to be far less. it is obvious since agrarian societies are more self sufficent with little needs, but a modern economy trades probably thousands of times as much. it is not without reason we call present times as globalized economy.

You have to have a perspective of the times in which people lived. To superimpose the "industrial revolution" on bygone times is not apt. Future generations will laugh at our so called progress. The fact is that India traded with the world and people craved its goods and services. Black Pepper was valued more than gold in weight. India's spice trade was the cause that brought the colonists to India, prompted Christopher Columbus to undertake a journey to discover a route to India, instead landed up in the Americas. There is a chart out in Wiki land with world GDP over time. India and China dominate the world trade over the centuries. Today both the nations are struggling to regain their position in the world.

I will give you one instance wherein Indian influence went across seas into other lands. Ankor Wat in Cambodia. The river Mekong flows towards the oceans but during snow melt in the mountains the river floods, backing up its way (reverse flow). In the midst of this area is Ankor Wat rising like a lotus bud. This is an outstanding example of civil/hydrological engineering for its times. The area of its civilization exceeded modern day Los Angeles in area.

Originally Posted by kannan infratech

Though I did not believe in ancient indian wisdom earlier during my school & college days, I had to change my mind when I went through a personal health problem. What Allopathy could not do ( I was advised by the best doctors of India to take complete bed rest for minimum 3 years without an assurance that I would be fully cured !?!), Ayurved completely cured me in 3 months: but all the 3 months, I had to go through a very diciplined Life style. Touch wood! There is not even a trace of the problem now.

I have a similar tale with my mother's leg problem. She was unable to walk and Dr from Allopathy suggested surgery. She instead chose Ayurveda and now is normal and can walk like she used to.

I have met & interviewed some of the great Spathathis (Sculptors) of Tamil Nadu. They follow a very unique system of calculation whcih I feel is very advanced. They could multiply numbers to the level of 10 or more decimals in their mind and much faster than me using the calculator.

They also use trigonametry in a very different & practical fashion and are able to measure angles and distances much faster than our instruments.

You have to marvel at the precision with which our ancients created temple structures. I am still in awe whenever I visit temples and see the magnificent stone sculptures, pillars with precise alignment for every detail. You wonder how they managed to do this feat that still stands testimony even today. Then you look at how current day projects are executed and you see various obvious flaws, shoddy workmanship.

In the US, there is a casino called LUXOR in Las vegas, Nevada, built like a Egyptian Pyramid. Guess what happened to the top cap stone - Out of alignment. This with laser technology and other modern tools!

There are ancient texts like the Śulbasūtras of Baudhāyana which have empirical rules for many trignometric problems including pythagorean theorem.

e.g.

Circling the Square: Draw half its diagonal about the centre towards the East-West line; then describe a circle together with a third part of that which lies outside the square.

Square root of 2: = 1 + 1/3 + 1/(3*4) + 1/(3*4*34) = 577/408 = 1.414216

[dis.agree]

Originally Posted by barrykul

You have to have a perspective of the times in which people lived. To superimpose the "industrial revolution" on bygone times is not apt. Future generations will laugh at our so called progress. The fact is that India traded with the world and people craved its goods and services. Black Pepper was valued more than gold in weight. India's spice trade was the cause that brought the colonists to India, prompted Christopher Columbus to undertake a journey to discover a route to India, instead landed up in the Americas. There is a chart out in Wiki land with world GDP over time. India and China dominate the world trade over the centuries. Today both the nations are struggling to regain their position in the world.

i looked at a similar chart on gdp over centuries about 5 years ago and it changed many of the things i do. i find it strange that chart had little effect on you. we grew just 6 times in the first 1800 years of chirst era. compare that to growth of 100 times in last 200 years. that represents growth rate in last 200 years at about 3%. i will agree that it is unsustainable but fact remains we grew at such phenomenal pace recently after being practically frozen with time for nearly 1800 years. many would conclude that pretty much everything that happened before 1800 was inconsequential.

you keep talking about some pepper trade and i don't understand why. you also say pepper was valued more than gold. pepper was called black gold and even used as money but i didn't know it was valued more - references please. but so what if pepper was indeed valued more than gold. even aluminium, metal that is most abundant in earth, at some point was valued more than gold. that is just free market evolving to determine a commodity's use and it's availability. trade is an exchange. if europeans valued pepper, we valued something else. perhaps if you say we exchanged pepper for their countrymen as our slaves, i can understand the value of pepper.

it was europeans who travelled all around the world to reach india instead of other way around - indians travelling to europe. that itself says a lot about advances that they had made in terms of engineering & technology compared to us. if indians knew how to build such ships & learnt those routes, don't you think indians would have understood the markets better and sold at a higher value closer to consumers instead of european traders who would have made most of it.

[Fusionist]

Here is a good review of Dirk's work by Literary Reviewer R. Champakalakshmi in The Hindu - Sunday, Nov 03, 2002

Excerpts from the review..

Cultural technologies of colonial rule

CASTE in India has been the subject of many scholarly works as well as public and private debate in the last century and a half. It still eludes understanding, in its role in Indian society in various periods, although it is often "valorised" as the central organising principle in Indian society.

Nicholas Dirks is one of those historians whose work on the Poligars and colonialism has been significant and provided useful insights into the ways in which colonialism constructed "native" institutions and their history for building up its own technologies of imperial rule over the colonised and even shaping its future history to a large extent. The present book is about the historicity of caste and the ways in which caste came into being, and as such been "conditioned by history to condition (and make conditional) any possibility of a future beyond or without caste."

Tracing its career from the medieval kingdoms of southern India to the textual sources of early colonial archive, from the commentaries of the 18th Century Jesuit missionaries to the enumerative obsessions of late 19th Century census, from the ethnological writing of colonial administrators and missionaries to those of the 20th Century western and Indian scholars, Dirks's work marks a historiographical advance in the ways in which colonial rule in India has been understood and characterised, adding new dimensions to the study of modern India.

Dirks recognises two major phases in colonial rule, the early phase in which Orientalist forms of knowledge about the colonised and Christian missionary views dominated, and the later, more important phase, when (after the Mutiny of 1857) direct rule was established and major transformations in the nature of colonial state took place, and concomitantly, new forms of knowledge emerged, and Indian tradition and social institutions, particularly caste, were studied. More importantly, to serve the needs of the colonial state, caste was reconstituted, historicised and understood as fundamental to Indian civilisation, culture and tradition, in effect, caste as India.

The four parts into which the book is divided have titles which reveal the main thrust of the author's thesis (1. The Invention of Caste; 2. Colonisation of the Archive; 3. The Ethnographic State; 4. Recasting India: Caste, Community and Politics). Dirks argues that colonialism invented caste in a way which was to have a lasting and indelible mark on Indian society and its present post-colonial politics. It is not Dirks's argument that caste was invented ex nihilo by the colonisers. His aim is to identify the complex relationship(s) between knowledge (in this case ethnographic categories), power (colonial governmentality) and history (as a sign of the modern). An overview of the author's main arguments may elucidate these connections.

Caste endures and is so significant today because it has been the precipitate of a powerful history, in which colonial role (and rule) has been very significant. Caste became a single term capable of expressing, organising and above all "systematising" India's diverse forms of social identity, community and organisations. It became a core feature of colonial power/knowledge. Caste under colonial rule was refigured as a distinctly religious system and as mediating the private domain. Caste was understood as the quintessential form of civil society, to have always resisted political intrusions and as opposed to the basic premises of individualism.

Colonial views on caste, according to Dirks, were consciously articulated. They ignored or did not recognise that in pre-colonial India, the units of social identity had been multiple, heterogeneous and determined by context (e.g. the temple and the state = king) in a complex, conjunctured, constantly changing political world. It is a striking act of history and studied disregard for ethnographic specificity, as well as a systematic denial of the political mechanisms that selected different kinds of social units as significant, and as most valorised, at different times, that made caste central to social organisation.

The present work builds on those of earlier critics of colonial modernity such as Ranajit Guha and Partha Chartterjee and is influenced by works of Bernard Cohn and Edward Said, on the power of colonial history, the hegemonic character of colonial rule and the history of the colonised. Colonial conquest was not only the result of the power of superior arms and military organisation, but sustained and strengthened as much by the cultural technologies of rule. This was achieved by the creation of an archive, built up through Orientalist approach to archaeology, ritual texts, agrarian structure, land organisation, classification and assessment, anthropological surveys and the enumeration of caste in the census, through which the British set in motion equally powerful transformations. Colonialism played a critical role in the identification and production of Indian tradition, devalued under conditions of colonial modernity. The Orientalist view that in India there was a lack of history and caste was the sign of the lack of historical consciousness dominated all colonial efforts to study the country and its people.

The textual basis of colonial views on caste was the Dharma Sastra (of Manu), taken as the classical statement. Thus the idea that varna — the four hierarchical orders with the Brahmans at the top — could conceivably organise the social identities and relations of all Indians (in the subcontinent) was developed, Dirks argues, under the peculiar circumstances of British rule. While one may agree with Dirks that this is largely true as has often been expressed in most scholarly writings, yet it is necessary to go further back into the pre-colonial past, to see whether, and if so, how, political factors influenced medieval kingdoms like Vijayanagara to revive and reinforce the idea of varna to organise social identities and relations, which is indisputably established by the Vijayanagara inscriptions in south India. Recent studies on Vijayanagara polity have shown that attempts were made to homogenise multiple and complex identity markers and socio-religious organisation through a very conscious use of the Vedic and Sastric texts as foundational to Indian tradition. In pre-colonial south India there appears to have been an oscillation between caste and community identities. Later, caste was appropriated and reconstructed in a different context, i.e., for colonial power, in a new and disembodied form, modern India's apparition of its traditional being.

The canonic importance given to Manu's text encapsulated British attempts to codify not just law but also social relations in a single orthodox "Hindu" — and therefore necessarily "Brahmanic" — register, based on varnasrama dharma, that centrepiece of "Hinduism". For the Orientalists and even for later Sociologists from Louis Dumont to McKim Marriott (and Ronald Inden?), it has taken on a general anthropological significance, with enormous consequences for the refashioning of basic assumptions about both religion and society, i.e., caste by definition as Brahmanic, and opened the Hindu world to charges of Brahman domination and privileges. Thus in Orientalist views the limits of the textual version of the position of Brahmans in society was not grasped.

In early colonial historiography (19th Century) the most influential views on caste were those of the Missionary, who denounced caste as the most serious impediment to the spread of the Gospel, the Indologist, who produced text-oriented views on Indian society and the Orientalist who created stereotypes such as Oriental Despotism and Village Republics. British interest in the institution of caste intensified in very new ways depending upon the documentation projects of the early colonial state around matters of land revenue — to understand local forms of landholding, to reorganise the agrarian order, to resurrect local landlords or the Ryotwari against landlords and the village community, all of which played a critical role in the primary transformations of British rule from the late 18th to the early 19th Centuries.

In the second half of the 19th Century, in the wake of the 1857 rebellion (itself attributed to caste and religious differences) and the establishment of direct British rule (an ethnographic state), colonial ethnology took the place of colonial history. Ethnography became the primary colonial modality of representation linking politics and epistemology. Knowledge became privileged more than any other form of imperial understanding. Attempts to find some method that could produce useful and uniform knowledge for all of India, beyond district gazetteers and manuals, led to compilation of material on caste, in a new kind of empirical quest. A relentless anthropologising resulted in a colonial anthropology and sociology, which had the greatest impact and force in relation to the subsequent colonial and post-colonial history of India.

The extraordinary burden of knowledge and responsibility was arrogated by the coloniser, in order to regulate knowledge by fixing tradition, modifying or reifying custom, differentiating between authenticity and inauthenticity and legislating about "Sanskritisation." Moral discourse and reformist ideology concealed the forms (and effects) of the hegemonic power that the colonial state itself exercised, as seen in the policing of tradition and controlling of custom e.g., rituals like Hookswinging, involving physical torture, as in the earlier debates about sati and human sacrifice among tribes. Caste was defined as the genetic boundary of the Indian body, i.e., the colonised body as ethnographic text. A relationship between martiality and criminality was established and those martial tribes who were disloyal to British rule were denominated as criminal castes (Kallar, Maravar and Bhils), while others were recruited to the military and police, these two being the most crucial agencies of the colonial state.

In the process of defining rituals as either sanctioned by Brahmanical religion or as folk/ popular, Hinduism itself was redefined and a rigid separation between the high classical and the low popular religion made, producing the model of the Great and Little traditions.

The relation of knowledge and power, and the ways in which cultural hegemony was produced are best illustrated in the Aryan-Dravidian racial theory and more significantly by Robert Caldwell, who developed a complex sociology of religion in southern India and contributed to the establishment of a distinctive Tamil culture by challenging the cultural hegemony of the Brahmans. This is the first "valorisation" of a Dravidian race as against the Aryan by William Jones. Interestingly, it was appropriated by the Dravidian nationalists like E.V.R. (Periyar), the rationalist, and others, showing the conversions of meanings of caste in translation and appropriation.

The effects of colonial anthropology were most direct in the census, which was related in fundamental ways to imperial projects of army recruitment, policing, labour migration or even controlling of prostitution. However, problems of fixing the criteria for enumeration led to a vacillation between the varna categories and occupational basis or functional categories, mainly economic. Social precedence varied considerably by region and dominant groups were specific to regions (e.g. Vokkaligas in Karnataka and Vellalas in Tamil Nadu). With the exception of the Brahmans and the untouchables (outcastes) the middle level was extremely heterogeneous and often unidentifiable within the four-fold varna.

Yet, with the racial theories and the authropometric preoccupations of H.H. Risley (like measuring the nose etc.), who dominated colonial sociology for 30 years in late 19th Century, varna and textual authority continued to be used, until 1891, when overlapping of caste, sect (religion — as castes existed among Muslims and Christians too) and locality defeated the purposes of returns leading to the abandoning of varna. There were myriad claims to caste status and position by many groups through origin stories and history of castes. Risley's list of social precedence hence became a political document. Ethnography unleashed a political revolution and rise of caste organisations (e.g. Vanniyar in Tamil region). Despite the apotheosis of ethnography, the colonial state failed to contain caste and custom.

In short caste groups have thier origins in Risley's race segregation ( using anthropometry ). Sadly in order to validate their existance most of these caste groups planted themselves on the varna, to give them a better history and authenticity. Sadly this is how the foreign and recent concept of racism got nativised through caste divisions in India.

[dis.agree]

Originally Posted by ramvaradan

Fusionist,

It is almost as if dis-agree's note was pointed towards you

oh no, most certainly not. i respect fusionist's views. i sincerely hope he has no other motives but to dispel incorrect perceptions. same goes to barrykul & others, with whom too i seem to debate often.

i may disagree but that doesn't matter.

[Arasu]

Genesis of Caste: A paper presented by Dr. Ambedkar in Columbia University

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/p...ar_castes.html

[Fusionist]

Originally Posted by Arasu

Genesis of Caste: A paper presented by Dr. Ambedkar in Columbia University

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/p...ar_castes.html

when ?! on 9th May 1916 !

..and it is directly based on the racial anthropometry of Herbert Risley and the writings of Emile Senart !

[Arasu]

The date of the paper should not detract from the simple logic and deduction used by him. If you have any issue with any of the statements, you can explain why instead of saying it is old. He is not using any anthropometry or whatever of Risley as his basis for the conclusions.

MN Srinivas who is considered the father of Indian Sociological studies in a seminal research on site in a village (Rampura) in Karnataka came up with very similar paper. The lower caste people emulate higher caste people to try to move up in the social hierarchy. This process he termed 'Sanskritization'. MN srinivas was of a later vintage, if you are interested. He died in the late 90s.

By the way, Sociology is not rocket science (to use a much abused term) or even semiconductor technology that advances every six months that needs update every now and then unless some ground breaking theories come up. While ground breaking discoveries may be made in the domain of natural sciences, I very much doubt they will happen in the field of sociology especially something like origin of caste system.

[Arasu]

MN Srinivas' essay on Indian sociological studies

http://www.indiaclub.com/shop/Search...ProdStock=8537