A soon to be published book

[Guest guest]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-

/books/0791455327/reviews/104-8334851-7697534

 

 

The following book is to be published by October.

 

Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority Through Myths of

Identity (Suny Series, the Margins of Literature)

by Dorothy Matilda Figueira

 

 

Editorial Reviews

Book Description

Explores the construction of the Artan myth and its uses in both

India and Europe. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

 

>From the Back Cover

In Aryans, Jews, Brahmins, Dorothy Figueira provides a fascinating

account of the construction of the Aryan myth and its uses in both

India and Europe from the Enlightenment to the twentieth century. The

myth concerns a race that inhabits a utopian past and gives rise

first to Brahmin Indian culture and then to European culture. In

India, notions of the Aryan were used to develop a national identity

under colonialism, one that allowed Indian elites to identify with

their British rulers. It also allowed non-elites to set up a counter

identity critical of their position in the caste system. In Europe,

the Aryan myth provided certain thinkers with an origin story that

could compete with the Biblical one and could be used to diminish the

importance of the West's Jewish heritage. European racial hygienists

made much of the myth of a pure Aryan race, and the Nazis later

looked at India as a cautionary tale of what could happen if a nation

did not remain pure. As Figueira demonstrates, the history of the

Aryan myth is also a history of reading, interpretation, and

imaginative construction. Initially, the ideology of the Aryan was

imposed upon absent or false texts. Over time, it involved strategies

of constructing, evoking, or distorting the canon. Each construction

of racial identity was concerned with key issues of reading:

canonicity, textual accessibility, interpretive strategies of

reading, and ideal readers. The book's cross-cultural investigation

demonstrates how identities can be and are created from texts and

illuminates an engrossing, often disturbing history that arose from

these creations. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

 

About the Author

Dorothy M. Figueira is Professor and Head of Comparative Literature

at the University of Georgia. She is the author of The Exotic: A

Decadent Quest and Translating the Orient: The Reception of

SÅaµkuntala in Nineteenth-Century Europe, both published by SUNY

Press. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

 

 

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The above book is a good example of western cultural imperialism.

i.e. looking at Indian history through the problems of the western

society and transposing it on Inian history as if whatver holds for

western culture holds for India also.

 

While what the authoress says about the western use of the

word 'aryan' seems to be close, her knowledge of Hindu traditions is

woefully inadequare. She believes Hindus became aryans just for the

pleasure of being under the colonial yoke of the British imperialism.

This west-centric view of the world arises from a total ignorance of

the vedic-centred culture prevailing upto this day in India