California History Text Book Controversy

March 26, 2009

Dear Dr. Elst,This is further to my earliest post on a connected topic. You considered the outcome of the Hindu protests in the above controversy as complete failure. But I wish to make the record straight as it is better to give the facts rather than making sweeping statements like you have done. We have been successful in correcting some of the horrendous mistakes. Instead of continuing the AIT as it is the Witzel-group was made to accept that the there are two points of view : the foreign origin of the Aryans and the indigenous origin of the Aryans. Though we could not get the AIT / AMT deleted the SBE president Glee Johnson announced that all text books will mention the contested nature of the AIT /AMT. Further the Vedas will mentioned as Sacred texts instead of calling them as poems inspite of the opposition from Witzel group. The gods an goddesses

will be mentioned as deities. I hope these three points alone will show that the Hindu protest was not in vain like you wanted to project it.Regards,Sunil K. Bhattacharjya.--- On Wed, 3/25/09, Sunil <Sunil wrote:Sunil <Sunil[Abhinavagupta] Re: Fascinating journey through Sindhu-Saraswati civilization at LMUAbhinavagupta Cc: IndiaArchaeology , Date: Wednesday, March 25, 2009, 4:09 PM

Dear Dr. Koenraad Elst,

This is further to my last mail on the subject. You said as follows:

Quote

Moreover, if you want to prove the "colonial" historians wrong, a comprehensive rebuttal would ideally contain an explanation of how they were misled into drawing the wrong conclusions. They usually did give specific reasons for e.g. the sheet-anchor Sandrokottos/ Chandragupta. So far, I've only seen those arguments being ignored or being waived in a very loose manner. Thus, when an Ashokan pillar lists five non-Sanskrit king names, each of them resembling Greek names of known Hellenistic kings, what are the chances that all five merely happen to resemble Greek (Aliksundara/ Alexander, Amtiiyaka/Antiochos ) but actually belong to unknown kings of unknown language, as claimed by Sethna?

Unquote

You are quoting the mistakes of Sethna as if to prove that the western scholars / historians were right. Western / colonial historians were wrong in accepting Chandragup ta Maurya as Sandrocottus and this happened because of their dependence on the interpretation of Jones, who bulldozed the Account of Megasthenes to establish that Pataliputra was Palibothra. Sethna did not know about the above misinterpretation but he could find the truth separately from the Account of Alberuni. So Sethna was right on the date of Chandragupta of the Gupta dynasty whereas the western scholars, including you, are wrong in thinking that Chandragupta maurya was sandrocottus.

It is true that Sethna himself goofed up with two things. First he did not know, just like all the western scholars including you did not know too, that Piyadassi (Ashoka Maurya) was different from Devanampiya Piyadassi (Samudragupta - Ashokaditya) . Secondly Sethna as well as the western scholars including you did not know that the Ashokan pillar was of Samudragupta. So tell me in what way the western scholars are better off than Sethna in this particular case. This amply proves that you are not interested in facts and you are biased against the scholars who sincerely want to bring out the truth.

Regards,

Sunil K. Bhattacharjya

[Response to Koenraad's post (25 March 2009) at

http://groups. / group/Abhinavagu pta/message/ 4912]

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Sunil and other newcomers to this list,

Please observe the following rules while posting:

* Remove the earlier part of the thread (except snippets you are explicitly referring and responding to)

* Instead provide a hyperlink to the archive (in the exact format with date, poster's name, etc.) as I've done above).

* Do not post the same message again even if it takes several days to be approved (esp. when I'm on the road, as I'll be till 2nd April)

* Not how other long-timers (like Ashokji, Francesco, etc.) are following these rules (without prompting on my part).

* Read the guidelines (again) before posting further:

http://www.svabhina va.org/FAQS/ Posting/guidelin es-frame. php

I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm in contributing to these discussions (which is why I took on this editorial burden recently), but I'm unfortunately going to be very busy over the next month.

Thanks.

Sunthar