Is Western philosophy full of plagiarism of Eastern Philosophy?

[angellous_evangellous]

It was mentioned as an explaination for how the story of the fire-bringer Pramantha was brought to the Greeks then "Hellenized", made their own. Prometheus sounds like Pra-mantha, and so we have the impression of someone explaining to a youth "well, it means 'forethought'", because he was making it up, not knowing the original source. So the youth(s) grow up thinking it was originally a Greek word.

The argument is getting much, much worse here.

 

[doppelganger]

The same thing has happened with the name for "America"...many people believe (erroneously) that America was named for "Amerigo Vespucci". This myth was perpetrated by being repeated over and over, although there are ancient records left by the phoenicians stating they travelled to the land called "Merica" over the horizon, Merica or land of the star. Yet people today still think that America was named for Amerigo Vespucci.

There are a lot of theories about this. Here's an article that summarizes many of them: The Naming of America

It contains the following very insightful passage quoted from Jan Carew that I think has application to most of the places in our world that are in strife (Iraq, Ireland, India-Pakistan, Afghanistan, Central America, North/South Korea, etc.:

"Robbing peoples and countries of their indigenous names was one of the cruel games that colonizers played with the colonized…. To rob people or countries of their names is to set in motion a psychic disturbance which can in turn create a permanent crisis of identity. "

Such is the power of names . . . and of the lines we draw on maps.

 

[Troublemane]

Kewl beanz Dopp! thanx for the link!

 

[Surya Deva]

Suraj,

I thought I was clear on why I rejected what you said. I didn't just dismiss it. I rejected it on several premises, which I will outline and clarify below:

1. Errors of basic fact

There is a principle I follow in the evaluation of sources. If the material proves unreliable in regard to what I know, then I hold it suspect in what I do not know. The more unreliable it is, the more I consider it suspect. You included information on the "Aryan Invasion theory" for the origins of the Indo-European languages, and it betrayed a complete ignorance of the theory. In no way, no way at all, is it based on biblical chronology

I think No, and I say this with all sincerity, you are only aware of one perspective on Indian history and don't seem to give any credit whatsoever to Indian scholars to offer their own perspectives. I am aware of both perspectives though, I won't say I am a scholar in either Indology or Indo-European history, but I have a functional knowledge in both to do a comparative analysis and evaluation.

You lose credibility with me as soon as you call all Indologists(which are not all Indian by the way) dubious. As if all these indologists are not scholars, but Western scholars are scholars, despite the fact these indologists are educated in the same Western analytical and critical thinking tradition and are highly educated with Ph.d's, Masters and widely published in international journals? etc. They have only been brave enough to speak against what is academic racism. Many of these are non-Indian.

You said their theories of Out Of India are not supported, but actually their theory is based on modern scientific standards of evidence. They have provided very extensive evidence that many scholars today are being forced to revise their history. In fact AIT in its classical form is now considered obsolete, even by academics from the Harvard school.

I really don't think you know a lot about AIT and how it emerged, because if you did you would be coming to similar conclusions on AIT and will understand why it is discredited so widely today. Max Mueller, the founder of this theory, speculated that the Aryans and the Dravidians were different races. The Aryans were fair-skinned and the Dravidians were dark-skinned and concluded this can only be explained as an invasion of India by white-skinned nomads from Europe in the past(from the mountain regions of Russia he surmised) He then went onto render a translation of the the Hindu Rig Veda, the oldest text of India. He used the commentary on it by Sayana a medieval commentator to translate it.

How would you approach a foreign text in an arachic language of which you have no knowledge of? If you were going to read an unknown ancient text in Latin, you would consult Latin grammars and Latin speakers. You would look at the body of knowledge available on that text. This is the proper scientific method to approach language studies.

Max Mueller did not use this method. He dismissed Sanskrit Grammars, he dismissed all existing translations of the Rig Veda and the vast body of knowledge of commentaries, explanations, lexicons and discourses on it. The Rig Veda was seen as a philosophical text containing within it very high wisdom and was the backbone of Indian civilisation. The elaborate philosophical systems of India all saw their origins in these texts. The Vedas even had their own separate and pecuiliar grammar traditions, which were required to read them. This was based on using etymological science, where the meaning of the Vedic texts would be decoded by analaysing them into their root verbs and by rules of combination. This linguistic tradition was as old as the Vedic age.

Max Mueller and his associates rejected all of this. They derided this as "etymological fancies" and asserted that they have a far superior method of reading the Vedas; comparative phiology. That is that we can know what the meaning of the Vedic words were by comparing these words to other languages in the broad family known as Indo-European. A word in Sanskrit will be taken, then all other words in the Indo-European language it had some kind of similarity to would be studied and then Max Muller would opine what the most likely meaning is. He relied quite heavily on a Sayana's commentary on the Rig veda, because Sayana interpretation was ritualistic and consistent with Mullers thesis that the Aryans were primitive and barbaric ahd contained no high philosophy. Sometimes he even gave his own interpretations, when he found Sayana was going against his thesis.

The Sanskrit Pundits all protested against what Max Muller and his associates were doing. Their argument, and an argument that every modern student of Western science of research would agree with, how can they possibly translate their texts by rejecting Sanskrit Grammar and Sanskrit dictionaries? The most voiceforous of these was Swami Dayananda Saraswati, a leading scholar of Sanskrit at the time, he openly challenged the British Sanskritsts and exposed their complete ignorance of Sanskrit and what he saw nothing more than Christian missionary propoganda against his religion.

The translations of the Vedas done by Europeans using a dubious method of comparative philogy based on a lack of any kind of scientific method, had absolutely no resemblance with the translations done by Sanskrit grammarians themselves using Sanskrit grammar. The former showed the Vedas and the whole religion of Hinduism as barbaric, primitive, nonsensical and childish; the latter showed the Vedas to be high philosophy and metaphysical poetry.

The former created a huge split between Vedic period and the Classical period, which is only a few centuries apart. The Vedic period was polythestic and primitive to the extreme, the bards of the Vedas were just war lords. They sacrificed animals and humans to appease the gods, and spent their time high on Soma(an ancient narcotic apparently) They were racist and hated the dark-skinned and inferior people. Then, as if by some miracle a few centuries later, these barbaric people become civilised and begin to contemplate high philosophy, ethics, spirituality. They begin to build hospitals, universities, roads, find democracies, and do chemistry and surgery.

The criticism put forth thus by Sanskrit Pundits were, if your theory is correct our Vedic ancestors were buffoons, then how do you explain the high sophistication which emerged within a few centuries from the Vedic period. Such development do not take place suddenly, they require long periods of development. No satisfactory answer was given by the Western scholars, it is just assumed it happened.

The second criticism by Sanskrit Pundits were, if Western theory is correct, then why is it that all the Indian philosophical schools and sciences attribute all their knowledge to the Veda. In fact we can find many of these philosophies in latent form in Vedic hymns e.g, "Brahman as the ultimate reality" To this Western scholars responded that the Classical tradition were reading their philosophy into the Vedas, and the very few hymns(such as Nasadiya) that do relate to their philosophies are later compositions. To this the Pundit says, but the philosophical themes are not just contained in a few hymns, but are common themes running throughout. No satisfactory answer is given by Western scholars to this.

The third criticism of Sanskrit Pundits is if the Western theory is correct, why are Western translations of Vedas so incoherent and often make no sense, words seem to jump out of nowhere, sentences do not make sense.. The Western scholars respond that the Vedic bards were incoherent themselves and could not express themselves properly. To this the Pundit says that their translations observing the system of Sanskrit grammar produces lucid and coherent content, and it is only the Western system which produces garbled nonsense, indicating that the Western methodology itself is errornous. Again no satisfactory response has been given by Western scholars.

The fourth criticism is not even by Sanskrit Pundits, it is by European scholar peers of Max Mueller. They heavily abuse Max Mueller and his associates saying that they are are not scholars, but fanatics posing as scholars, trying to malingn the religion of the Hindus to facilitate their Christianization of India agenda. One of these is the dating by Western astronomers and mathematicians, who show that based on the astronomical records of Hindus, their religion is at least 4000BCE.(A view today held by Out of India theory) Western scholars have responded by accusing the Brahmins of fabricatubg all astronomical records to make their religion appear very ancient. But mathematians respond such accurate back-dating requires computer technology which was not available to the ancient Brahmins. Only somebody who lived during the time could have recorded such information.

 

[Surya Deva]

The fifth criticism comes from modern indologists. They show mainly from archeological evidence that the Vedic age could not have been later than the Indus, because the Indus already has all the Vedic features that were in later Hinduism. How could the Indus already be Hindu, if Hinduism appeared afters its decline?
The Vedas also mention a river called Saraswati(which also appears in the Mahabharata text) dozens of times, describing its geography. This river until only recently through satellite imagery has been discovered. It's description is indentical with Hindu records of it. This river was flowing before 4000BCE, and by 1900BCE it had dried up. According to the West the Aryans invaded India in 1500BCE(or so) when the river was long gone. Again no satisfactory reponse is given by Western scholars.

The so-called Aryan and Dravidian race debate is also now completely laid to rest. Genetic studies show that the North Indians(so-called Aryans) and the South Indians(Dravidians) belong to the same racial stock. They are not separate races.

The evidence for Out of India is so overwhelming and strong that you would be akin to a flat-earther to maintain AIT today. It is no longer considered so shocking to modern scholarship that shock-horror India could have been the homeland of the Indo-European cultures. Now we know the central position it held in ancient times and how vast its reach and influence was, and just how many cultures in the world support migrations of Indians around the world. This explains Monier Williams problem of why there is something called Indo-European culture.

 

[Surya Deva]

If you were following my previous posts I think you would be probably getting the same feeling that most honest researchers would get. The early Western 'scholarship' on India does not at all seem to be honest, fair and objective. There clearly seems to be a religious and political undertone to it and attitudes of social darwinism and racial supremacy are very prevalent.

The Western scholars did not think it necessary to study India within the Indian historical narrative or Indian context. It freely rewrote its history as it wanted. It even redefined its language. When it came to dating it only would assign(in the most arbitrary ways) dates that were very late e.g, the Mahabharata war was 1400BCE. In contrast the Indian records unanimously dated it to 3100BCE. It dated its classical phase(which corresponded with Indus in terms of development) a millenia after the so-called decline of the Indus valley, despite the fact that the description of cities in the classical phase corresponded to the Indus, including the metric standards employed. It dated its philosophical schools as all appearing nearly the same time as the Greeks, a few centuries earlier if they were generous. Despite the fact that these philosophical schools mentioned a long lineage of predecessors and the origin of their philosophies can be found in the Vedas and the Upanishads.

What does this all mean in context of this debate on India and the relations with the Greek and Indo-European culture. The meaning is clear: India is the source of the Indo-European civilisation, the homeland or the epicentre of the Indo-Europeans. Thus we could say it was the teacher of all Indo-European cultures and its teachings appeared throught Indo-europe, but the further afar they went the more diluted they seemed to have become. Which is why the Greeks only have fragments of the original philosophy. In fact the dilution is evident in India itself, it seems after 2000BCE, there is some kind of decline in India. This would explain why Jainism and Buddhism emerged later on as reactions to this decline. Today we know that there were huge ecological changes in India(the drying of the river for example) during that period and as per Indian recods the war of Mahabharata was very destructive, all of this may have lead to the decline of India from its glorious Indus phase.

The Greeks were definitely influenced strongly by Indian Philosophy, either directly or indirectly. In the cases of people like Pythagoras it was directly, with Plato and Aristotile it may have been indirectly.

 

[Troublemane]

I just learned that the name "Patanjali" comes from the words "Pat-"(from heaven) and "Anjali" (hands held in prayer),....and I wondered: could the term angel have come from the sanskrit anjali ??? Hands held in prayer describes the way most angels are depicted. And i've never understood how the word angel could have possibly come from kerubim (which are more like mythological beasts than little babies with wings):angel2:

 

[DarkSun]

I'm certainly no expert either... But rather than say that it was plagiarism, I'd be more inclined to say that these philosophers were viewing the same truths from different perspectives. There are universal similarities in morality between disparate cultures world-wide, so why should philosophical thought be any different?

 

[DarkSun]

I just learned that the name "Patanjali" comes from the words "Pat-"(from heaven) and "Anjali" (hands held in prayer),....and I wondered: could the term angel have come from the sanskrit anjali ??? Hands held in prayer describes the way most angels are depicted. And i've never understood how the word angel could have possibly come from kerubim (which are more like mythological beasts than little babies with wings):angel2:

I thought it originated from the Hebrew word "Mal-ach". And then the Greeks coined the word: "angelos", which was then taken in Latin as "angelus". Today they're just called "angels", I think.

I'm not entirely sure whether Indian culture had anything to do with that... but I could be wrong.

 

[Elessar]

On what I've read, the first and last pages, including the OP, I have this opinion to offer:

"Western Philosophy" is mostly, ultimately, derived from a few sources, in my not formally but somewhat educated belief. Primarily, it has three sources. The most important source is classical Greek, pre-Roman, philosophy. The second-most important source is medieval Arabic philosophy, and the third, I would place it, is traditional Jewish philosophy.

Classical Greek philosophy came, primarily, from two sources - it developed, much, on its own, deriving from cultural ideas going back to their Indoeuropean ancestors, with significant influence from Kemetic philosophy, in Egypt. It also, I believe, was slightly influenced by Semitic philosophy, coming from modern Iraq. Their Indoeuropean ancestors made them closely, culturally related to India, and there are more and more indications that classical Greek and other classical Indoeuropean religions in Europe were far less like how contemporary atheists, Semites and Kemites and later Christians described it, and more alike to Hinduism. As a result of this obvious common ancestry and cultural background to Greece and India, there was going to be very similar development - perhaps a pre-"civilization" age "Indoeuropean" civilization existed in the Volga or another river valley, and, due to some catastrophe, fell apart and was forced to disband and separate, leading ultimately to the Indoeuropean migrations into, well, India and Europe. India, resettling much more quickly than Europe, more quickly re-advanced to a higher philosophical and civilizational level, while the Europeans took a longer period of time to do so. However, due to accidents of geography, the Europeans had more contact with the Kemites and the Semites than did the Indians, leading to the divergence.

(Going on a tangent here, I firmly believe that "civilization" existed well before we have managed to archaeologically prove its existence - I, myself, believe there are ultimately six totally independent civilization developments - Semitism, in the Tigris-Euphrates River Valleys, in Iraq; Kemitism, in the Nile River Valley, in Egypt; Bantuism, in the Benue-Niger River Valleys; Indoeuropeanism, in the Volga River Valley; Sinitism, in the Yangtze River Valley; and Amerindism (for want of a better term), in the Amazon River Valley. Through the mere accidents of history, only Semitism, Indoeuropeanism and Sinitism have survived to the modern day in various forms (actually, on another tangent, it's not entirely accidental, these three civilizations have had certain, shall we say, environmental advantages over the others). Of course, these are all ideas in my mind formed from reading many different sources over my own experience, and my own unsubstantiated or little-substantiated hypotheses)

The classical Greek philosophy, then, was merged with Jewish philosophy with the arrival and dissemination of Christianity, which took several critical Jewish and, thus, Semitic, ideas, and affected Western philosophy greatly, in addition to their previous affection by the Kemites and Semites. With the destruction of Kemetic culture and philosophy, in general, by the Semites and Europeans both, it is impossible to know exactly the influence of Kemites upon Western philosophy.

The third influence would be Arabic philosophy which, itself, was a combination of very traditional Semitic philosophy, with the philosophies of another Indoeuropean civilization, Iran, or Persia, and then combining with the Indoeuropean ideas of Greece, which they also drew from, and India, which they had conquered and, unlike the later Europeans/Westerners, drew from and considered important. The Arabs, thus, created a cosmopoiltan civilization drawing from Indoeuropeanism AND Semitism. This, through the Crusades and the Reconquista, spread into Europe, where independent development began again, eventually developing to the modern day. European civilization has managed to dominate the planet, then, due to geographical and environmental advantages.

As a result of the shared root in Indoeuropeanism, and the significant influence of Indian civilization through Arab civilization, many Indian ideas seem to be or, in fact, are existent in Western philosophy, entirely without the Westerners realizing its existence in their own systems.

So, no, I don't think there's been any plagiarism by the West on the "East" as you put it, but there is significant shared ground, and a great amount of drawing on the "East" in the West, and then, the West, entirely ignorant of this, managed to conquer most of the planet. The "East", then, being the "inferior peoples" of the Age of Imperialism due to this accident of history, the West saw itself as better than the East, and, attributing to mere luck that the "inferiors" had some ideas similar to the "West".

The Europeans did this often, actually, not just to the "East" - they tried to attribute Greek philosophy as having been developed spontaneously, attempting to minimize, if not trying to completely eliminate, the evidence that there was an existing, very advanced, Kemetic civilization which contributed greatly to the Europeans' budding civilization.

 

[Smoke]

I'm certainly not expert, but I have to say I FULLY agree with your last paragraph. I took philosophy as my major at university, and although we never studied eastern expressions, western philosophy seemed to be pretty full of itself, thinking itself the last word (or at least the most important one) on just about everything.

I had the same experience, except philosophy was my cognate (sort of a minor for lazy people). None of my classes touched on Eastern philosophy at all. All those Greeks, Germans and Englishmen are interesting, but we could have used a broader view. And Descartes, for crying out loud. I can't think of any bigger waste of time than studying Descartes.