Hinduism isn't Vedism, sorry
Hmm. . . Do I send my post in response to "Vedic and Hindu is really the same thing" to the public list, or do I not?
Arg. I've spent an entire hour's lunch writing it, looking up source material, and putting it together. It's a good post, too, citing my translator when needed, and the book I got the information from. . . I dunno.
These are the issues with sitting down with the source material and seeing that the scholarship on it has more holes than the amateur work does.
I admit, I do worry about doing a "scholarship bomb" on the ADF lists. I figure asking for a source citation once is probably enough: I'm not trying to stomp out dissent, but I need a source citation in order to discuss this stuff intelligently. I know what a scholarship bomb will do, though, and that's shut people up or hurt them: I've seen it happen often.
(FYI, my favourite point in my response is that if we can call the Vedics "Hindu" because Hinduism evolved from Vedism, then we can call Jews "Muslims".)
I'm going to sit on this post a while longer.
One of these days, I expect that I'll meet Wendy Doniger and I'll have to play nice on this infernal topic. I'm not looking forward to that.
Edit: Thank you, Cei. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Arg. I've spent an entire hour's lunch writing it, looking up source material, and putting it together. It's a good post, too, citing my translator when needed, and the book I got the information from. . . I dunno.
These are the issues with sitting down with the source material and seeing that the scholarship on it has more holes than the amateur work does.
I admit, I do worry about doing a "scholarship bomb" on the ADF lists. I figure asking for a source citation once is probably enough: I'm not trying to stomp out dissent, but I need a source citation in order to discuss this stuff intelligently. I know what a scholarship bomb will do, though, and that's shut people up or hurt them: I've seen it happen often.
(FYI, my favourite point in my response is that if we can call the Vedics "Hindu" because Hinduism evolved from Vedism, then we can call Jews "Muslims".)
I'm going to sit on this post a while longer.
One of these days, I expect that I'll meet Wendy Doniger and I'll have to play nice on this infernal topic. I'm not looking forward to that.
Edit: Thank you, Cei. Thank you, thank you, thank you!