On Sat, Sep 7, 2013 at 9:38 AM, SS <cybers...@gmail.com> wrote: > > specifically > demonstrate that the 1910 book reference is a one-off anomaly
Any Indian author of a printed book in those years would have been forced to submit their ideas to British egos. Severe censorship laws had placed the written word under strict supervision. Assuming the writing didn't offend the British one still had to come up with a considerable sum of money, and the support of friends in high places to actually produce a book. The work of a historian is a lot of field work, and a lot less of theorizing. No Indian or Indian organization in 1910 had the money or power to perform serious archaeology, so instead they put out a lot of arm chair analysis. See PT Srinivasa Iyengar's "History of the Tamils, from the earliest times to 600AD". Published in 1929, it offers inspired reasoning to make the case that Tamils conquered the Mesopotamian valley and started the Sumerian civilization. Until the discovery of the Indus Valley civilization (circa 1920) most Indians believed the 200 year old British hypothesis about the inferiority of their civilization. In Indian writing on history one can see this epochal effect. Pre-valley Indian authors rarely make bold claims about Indian ancestry. Post-valley there's a rash of over-compensation, and for the next 20 years or so the claims grow bold and ridiculous, but always in the non-threatening and non-verifiable ancient past. There's a reason most Indian epics don't carry an author's name. They thought it was egotistic to imagine the work belongs to the author when the author is animated by the Bramhan. Indians have never been very strong on recording egotistic history. What's the point when it's a cycle of endless lives reanimated?
