Wikipedia: Varna (Hinduism)
But beware: The wikipedia article is filled with Whig bullshit.
Varna (varṇa (वर्ण)) is a Sanskrit term. It is derived from the root vṛ, meaning "to cover, to envelop, count, classify, consider, describe or choose" (compare vṛtra).[14]
The word appears in the Rigveda, where it means "colour, outward appearance, exterior, form, figure or shape".[3] The word means "color, tint, dye or pigment" in the Mahabharata.[3][clarification needed] Varna contextually means "colour, race, tribe, species, kind, sort, nature, character, quality, property" of an object or people in some Vedic and medieval texts.[3] Varna refers to four social classes in the Manusmriti.
DAVID REICH HAVING IT BOTH WAYS
'Ancient DNA has established major migrations and mixture between highly divergent populations as a key force shaping human prehistory, and ideologies that seek a return to a mythical purity are flying in the face of hard science.' DR, p 121.
'In the oldest text of Hinduism, the Rig Veda, the warrior god Indra rides against his impure enemies, or dasa, in a horse-drawn chariot, destroys their fortresses, or pur, and secures land and water for his people, the arya, or Aryans.' DR, p 123.
For Indra, the purity of his arya people, and the impurity of the dasa, while not perhaps genetically correct according to Reich, must have been based on something about which we know very little or nothing.
it certainly wasn't mythical purity at all, either for Indra or for his people.
Let's just put it this way:
Indra and his arya people, primitive people to say the least, did not just make up, in a postmodern way, the difference they obviously perceived, or read into, and then acted on, regarding the dasa.
Maybe the dasa were worshippers of a rival priesthood within the same overarching temple cult. That would explain the issue of ritual purity versus impurity. That would also explain the terminology, by analogy to the Old Testament Hebrews and the rivalry between Moses and Aaron.
They were quite real rather than mythical, a present reality 5 thousand years ago or so.
If it was not borne out by differences of DNA
(and that detail, as between the arya and the dasa, whoever they may have been in relation to Reich's more general data, seems not to have either been borne out or confuted by Reich here),
that did not make it any less a real question of purity of some sort, and and did not rule out perhaps perceptible and marked racial and cultural differences as well, either then or now.
No comments:
Post a Comment