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Airyanamen Vaejah

2010-03-30T07:51:00.000-07:00

The sad fact about this whole project is that although the evidence is seems compelling that the Indo-Europeans did in fact come from Sogdia, both the archaeological evidence and the linguistic kind, the fact remains that their exists no broad scholarly consensus that there even were a group called the Indo-Europeans in anything but name. Many scholars believe that the Indo-European language family is in fact a rather loose term for a rather loose group that migrated their language and not themselves. This can be seen as for example the widespread use of the English language as the universal Lingua Franca of the world. The actual English people did not migrate simply their language did. Such scholars seem to forget that the reason this happened is that English people really did invade, conquer and in some places replace the indigenous population. This theory to them also explains the fact that although obviously from the same family their exists such a widespread difference in the culture. After all even though there is a common root, a Bengali speaker cannot understand and English speaker. There are many reasons that this is preposterous but it seems in order to put this theory to rest it is best to shoe all the evidence that the Indo-Europeans exist, both archaeological and archeolinguistical that prove this fact beyond a reasonable doubt.

First of all the linguistic evidence is hard to ignore. The fact is that virtually everything can be traced conclusively back to a single language not
more than 10,000 years old, and not just the basics. In J.P. Mallory’s

book virtually every word in the English language can be traced back to have a common root with words from Greek, Sanskrit, Latin Slavic and Celtic languages. Often with extremely
surprisingly familiar roots in them. He also discovers a great deal of constants in the way they speak to words, their tones and inflections and the frequencies of glottal sounds which appear in no other language family quite like this. All this leads to only a single conclusion. There was at one point a single group of people speaking a single language which spread over the better part of Europe and Asia. Another point which stands in favour of this theory is the fact that we do not get very much of the earliest Indo-European dialects merging with other languages like we get say in Saharan Africa where in some places we find languages which are a mishmash of the African language family and the Semitic one. The best example Ge’ez or ancient Ethiopian which is a south Semitic language with many words that come from the Nilo-Saharan family. This suggests that the Indo-European language family developed in its early isolates relatively isolated with little
completion to its spread. This quite simply does not fir with a theory where the language spread without the spread of its people. First of all, all over the worlds right now pidgins are evolving within the English language as it attempts to extent its control throughout the globe. The most obvious example is Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea. This is a language, which combines the original language of New Guinea with English. This is in response to the fact that the country is trying to educate its people to speak English. Even in a market driven society where English is the language of getting ahead and a government structure which is actively trying to get people to speak English a pigeon or compromise language is still being stuck in there. In the original spread of the Indo-Europeans however we find no evidence that there would be any reason why there would even be stress on the population to learn a new language. The only scholar who even tries to answer this question is Colin Renfrew who believes that the Indo-Europeans brought agriculture with them from the Balkans. Even this however presents a very poor explanation, as the language moving as slowly as agriculture did to conquer the area would almost immediately become corrupted. Also this does not take into account that there were even agriculture changed as it passed through Europe. The Linear Band Keramik culture for example that appeared in Poland was a fundamental break from the mud brick huts of Mesopotamia. There is no good reason why a relatively useless point like a change in language would have remained unchanged despite the fact that what was carrying it, the spread of agriculture was so radically altered. Also this theory does not take into account the fact that those areas that never took on the Indo-European language, Finland for example were no later than anyone else in getting agriculture. However what all this evidence does point to is a group of people rapidly expanding into an area and largely displacing the native population. It is much easier once one invades a country for one to keep the language uncorrupted, especially if the early textual sources from the eastern migration, the Rig Veda are concerned where it is described in great detail a system of apartheid meant to keep themselves unchanged.

If the theory that the Indo-European language spread simply through osmosis and trade is true there should be no evidence of a massive migration of people to displace the native populations. The problem is that there is a great deal of such archeological evidence. This can roughly be broken down into the two parallel east and west migrations, the first into India and Iran and eventually Turkey, the second into Russia Ukraine and Western Europe. The Eastern migration is riddled with evidence of a great migration/invasion of the incoming Indo-Europeans into the areas inhabited by what some call the Elamo-Dravidian language family (that term is still very controversial). We see this is a variety of ways. The first and most immediate is the textual sources. The two oldest Indo-European books the Gathas and the Rig Veda describe this in a diverse way, and although their conclusions sometimes vary they all agree on some key points. Those being that before they settled in Iran and India, they had been a very nomadic pastoral people who invaded the south and subjugated/displaced its original inhabitants in a variety of ways. They also all believe that they came from the north and had a similar concept of Vaejah. There is also archaeological evidence, which backs up this story. The introduction of horses into the area is a huge indication that a new people were in the area. There is also the rapid decline of the Harappa civilisation to consider. Although the evidence does not quite fit a long drawn out siege it did fall very fast at about the time they were migrating. Also the pottery lifestyle and building style all lead us to believe that there was quite simply a new people living there at that time.

A similar situation was happening on the Western migration root. We see the sudden formation of the Black Axe culture, which streaks across Europe displacing other cultures in their artefacts. These people we know had horses and sophisticated ways of using them, and wherever they go, artefacts from the original culture quickly disappear. This keeps going until it gets to Austria where it merges with another culture to form the Celts, which would dominate the area of Central and Western Europe for the next 2000 years. This was however to be its only attempt at compromise however as almost wherever the black Axe culture went it practices assimilation through displacement, at least, in cultural terms. We also see genetic evidence which outlines the spread of the people, admittedly this only takes us back to southern Russia, not all the way back to Transoxiana, but it is happening at a very close proximity to the migration and it is close enough to clearly image a wider migration more corresponding with the domestication of horses in Transoxiana.

To summarise, it is not as though these scholars do not have good reason to be hesitant about declaring the spread of the Indo-European migration from Airyanemen Vaejah to the rest of Europe and South Asia. It should be very difficult to prove something that has this few parallels to the rest of human history. After all a people spreading out along two continents and then proceeding to displace the whole of the population, a very unbelievable story. It is particularly unbelievable when one considers the fact that the great advancement that allowed them to do this was not urbanisation or agriculture but something as simple as the domestication of the horse. And of course there are other reasons why people would prefer not to talk about this particular topic. A shadow hangs over this whole project, the shadow of a madman who used these ideas as a justification for the slaughter of millions. It is reasonable and understandable that people would like to see this particular subject or these particular understandings untold. But only by learning the absolute truth about the topic can society move forward and it is the job of academics to give that truth. And that truth is that 7000 years ago starting from the land of Airyanemen Veajah known today as Transoxiana in modern day Uzbekistan and southern Kazakhstan to conquer the better part of two continents.

The Expanses influence on other cultures

The term Airyanemen Vaejah is not well known in the western world. However the concept of an original homeland has had an incredible effect on cultural and religious processes up to and including Zoroastrianism Hinduism and Buddhism. Besides this it has had a great effect on the culture of Nazism that developed throughout the 19th and early 20th century. The single biggest effected religion is Zoroastrianism because it is the oldest faith descended from the Indo-Europeans and debatably the first to acquire writing. Zoroastrianism being with Hinduism as the oldest faith has some of the best information about the original homeland. It is from here that we get the words like arya to describe the people as well as the earliest recorded information about their language, culture and traditions. This is also the religious tradition, which reveals the name Vaejah as the earliest recorded name for the original homeland of the Aryans. This tradition gives us a great deal of information about the topic. It tells us for example that Airyanemen Vaejah is a fertile land with a mountain in the centre of it. This mountain will later take on a much greater significance as Mount Meru in the centre of the Buddhist world world.

It also gives what scholars have obsessed over, the direction of the expanse which in the Gathas is meant to be in the direction of the north star, which according to the Gathas are sacred for all Aryans. I say the direction of the north star because some pseudo-scientists in the 19th century took this not to mean that the Aryans came from simply north of the land that Zoroaster was writing from but from the north star itself and that the original people were aliens. Scientific evidence has yet to rule on this issue but its not looking good for the theory. However besides being their homeland, Vaejah took on a great deal of significance to their religious observances. The first and greatest of the lands made by Ahura Mazda Vaejah took on a sort of Garden of Eden quality to it, a land of earthly paradise where the livestock was always fed and the days were always sunny. Indeed it was stated in later Zoroastrian texts that if Ahura Mazda had not made the other 12 lands, all of them geographically known to the people at the time all the world would have flooded into Vaejah and their would be no more space for the Aryans. This is despite the fact that the Gathas themselves describe them, although still a nice land, a largely rocky one with as much as 10 months of winter a year. Over time the real, if there ever was one, location of Vaejah was lost, as it was never in the early sources mentioned in geographical terms other than to point vaguely to the north. This provided a great deal of controversy to the Zoroastrian faith, particularly after it nationalised. By the Pahlavi period in the 9th century Vaejah was solidified in its position as northern Azerbaijan. Their were a lot of reasons why this was mostly because the centre of the Persian Empire had moved to the west and it became politically advantageous to distance themselves from Khorosan (Central Asia) which the empire no longer controlled. As Zoroastrianism was always a Persian faith it was politically embarrassing to have its spiritual centre in a foreign land.

The Hindus on the other hand have their own view of the homeland. They believe that their original point of origin was a place in the Himalayas Mountains called Mount Meru. This was supposed to be not only the origin point for all the Aryans but also the centre of the whole universe. They evolved the original story of the mountain at the centre of Vaejah into something that was so large that even the sun and the planets revolved around. A variety of stories circulated around it including that a piece broke off the top of it and formed the island of Sri Lanka. Despite this the differences, the obvious similarities in the stories leave little room for debate that they at least started out as the same place. The fact that they both hold sway as the best of lands, the fact that they were the first to be created. Although the Hindu’s never point to the north star, or at least not in the more advanced stories, they do place Mount Meru in the Himalayas, which is directly north of the subcontinent. This idea even filtered indirectly through to the original Indian buddhism in the form of Sumeru and even Shangri-La the mythical paradise at the centre of the world can all be traced back to Vaejah in one form or another however by this point the myth is so obscured that it is difficult to recognise. Aiyanemen Vaejah is a place that is wreathed in myth and legend, but it has had a profound effect on the evolution of three of the world’s great religions as the mystical fatherland from whence they came.

A Note on Religion

There was in the past years been a great deal of work done in the area of finding the true religion of the Indo-Europeans. Most of that work has been done to try and prove whether or not it existed. It seems that in their zeal to discover the true nature of the origin of the Indo-Europeans, scholars of the 19th century may have severely jumped the gun as far as religion is concerned. The fact remains that a conclusive archaeological evidence of the original religion of the Indo-Europeans is nowhere to be found because of course scholars have yet to agree on even so much as the location of Vaejah. Scholars turned instead to tracing what they perceived as the similarities between the various faiths despite the fact that a lot of the time they were tracing them from completely different periods and they had obviously experienced outside contamination. For example 19th century scholars often trace the fact that many of the major Indo–European faiths have prominent sky gods which are at the head of the celestial pyramid these include the varuna/zeus/jupiter dichotomy is often being mentioned as sure proof of the unity of the faiths.

This however overlooks the fact that almost every organised religion on earth has had a mighty celestial sky figure. The often-whimsical Di for example, of Shang China would also have more to do with the always outrageous Zeus than the apathetic Jupiter. Even more damning evidence however for this original king of the gods is the fact that it is almost certain that the term and even the concept of kingship took place long after the eastern migration (the only one that we can trace conclusively) reached India. The Gathas, which trace themselves to a time before the migration, clearly describe their society as one where the only clear social distinctions are between nomadic shepherds and magians (or priests). In fact if the events of the Mahabarata are to be believed, they are usually not, we can see the first proto-kings were not established until they got to the Gangeatic plain. It is unlikely that they would have worshiped god-kings before they invented the concept of kings. There are however a few things that we can be fairly sure of. First is the fact that it was polytheistic . With the exception of Zoroastrianism, which is ironically, debatably, the oldest Indo-European faith, but nevertheless bases much of its teachings on rejecting polytheism, all Indo-European faiths possess a rich pantheon based primarily on the elements of nature around them. One can once again say that a great many faiths have these common elements to them but that does not make the evidence that these people seemed to have go away. Second these gods were attended to at least in the beginning by a hereditary caste of priests . These people not only show up in virtually every Indo-European religion but also are clearly mentioned in the earliest indo-european texts, the Gathas and the Vedas as long having been fully developed. The primary role of these people seems to have been the memorisation and rite of long songs recording the history of the gods and people. There is also ample evidence of the widespread use of hallucinogens, oddly almost never the same hallucinogen, along the eastern migration, a common enough process for people at this in a nomadic society but little, although not none along the western route. This could simply be a result of the fact that it had ample time to die out before the western migration got around to writing it down, or possibly of the fact that they did not start using them until they got to the more fertile land of Afghanistan. Other than that, little can be realistically gleaned. There are certain symbols that some have been able to trace to a great deal of the faiths, which could point to a common ancestry. Some people claim that the swastika unites the whole of the aryan people (these people often have ulterior motives for saying this). Others say that the sun chariot has a common ancestry, or the great serpent, or the image of the bull (by far the most plausible) or even the image of twins. But the fact remains that every society has twins and most (for reasons that escape me) have dragons. There is simply nothing in the present research that can compellingly state one way or the other whether they existed in the original state of Vaejah. Perhaps once scholars start waking up to the fact that Vaejah is located not in the Russian hinterlands but in the fertile plains of northern uzbekistan we will have more information but on the other hand perhaps not. After all what can we really expect to find in Transoxiana in the way of religious artefacts that have weathered 7,000 winters at least?

The discovery of this religious faith presents a great deal of positives and negatives. The positives are that one does not have to worry about the larger question of what a religion is or whether or not there is a baseline to the process. To the extent that a group of people cans all believe in one faith these people did. This project seeks to identify a single group of people and their particular belief system a single point in history. Of course an interesting question to ask at the end of all this would be just as to what extent are the Hui Muslim, to what extent are the Hindus Vaejan, and if they are not, to what extent have they failed?

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Jews along the Silk Road

2010-03-23T07:55:00.001-07:00

In reference to the Cansdale article let me first make it clear that I know why it was written. Like any other people the Jews have there own history and as students of religion it is important to study and challenge these histories. This is particularly evident in showing that the Jewish people were prominent on the Silk Road as far back as the 11th century. However aside from the fact that this is pointing out the fact that there were Jews along the Silk Road, this article simply does not make any point. I have long been an outspoken critic of religious bias in articles just like this, saying that drawing serious conclusions particularly using moral judgements as in the previous Taliban discussion is a slippery slope best left unslid. However this article takes it to the other extreme stating a point and then concluding. Also the length of this article, a mere 6 pages of which half is title or bibliography it does not have much more time than to state 3 or 4 historical phenomena and prove them with bibliographical information. It is simply frustratingly vague. This is not a bad article in the sense that I am not 100% sure this is an article.
As for the other article one can hardly fault either of these pieces for being to short of lacking in substance. The Leslie article in particular provided real historical information of the Diaspora and the lucrative opportunities of the Silk Road and how the Jews would have been ideal to take part in them. Although I find some of his claims dubious, such as the Han entry into China of the Jews, firstly I can understand why he said it. He makes very clear throughout the piece that he is putting forth any and all theories as to the Jews involvement in China no matter how ridiculous such as the Zhou dynasty fable. Secondly he at least backs up his claim with real documented evidence rather than forces us to look in the bibliography. The only real way I can fault this is the fact that at the beginning of this he says that it is neither interesting nor relevant to speculate on the religious and cultural similarities of the so-called 10 tribes of Israel. This is, after all a history paper and should be treated this way. I must admit that as a history student myself this was music to my ears but I remember thinking to myself, firstly who is this man to say what is interesting and secondly why am I reading this in a religion class. Are there no scholars of religion proper? I do of course find it useful to frame questions of religion in other ways particularly that of history or culture, however the fact remains that religion has little to do with history or culture. Religion is not a culture. Religion is an intrinsic set of beliefs held about the universe which colours the life of individual people, there are similarities and an overarching structure which can be connected to culture but even then. People are not going to except that the keeping kosher is wrong just because was historically seen that way, they will say that that was wrong. Religion is a complex and independent subject which must be studied that way.
Finally I will get to the debate that was implicit if not specifically stated in all of the readings, are these real Jews. Although never implicitly stated the fact remains that they were always described in sceptical terms. This is an issue we have dealt with again and again in this term although the Jewish faith is probably the example of the most stringent and set faith with the possible exception of Zoroastrianism. Like Zoroastrianism is makes claims that only people who are genetically Jewish are admitted into the faith or at least did so until very recently. Necessitating the formation of the lost tribes of Israel, something we also see in Ethiopia. However once again the fact remains that there is no hierarchical head to decide these things or at least not one that is talking. When compared to the Catholic Church for example one can clearly see that it has no set definition. The Catholic Church has one voice, one mind, the pope’s. To the extent that you follow it you are catholic to the extent that you don’t you don’t. As far as I know there is no other faith like this, even the Dao is not considered infallible, although one could say that this place is taken by the qu’ran in Islam. Judaism is if anything a hybrid faith, half religion and half, at least in its original form culture. That makes it almost impossible to make judgement calls on who falls into this category.

Russian colonialism?

2010-02-28T19:12:00.000-08:00

The discussion of this topic of course brought up many interesting points in terms of the nature of colonialism colonial discourse on cultural heritage its effect on the people’s of the area. One idea that stuck in my head from the beginning of the chapter readings however was the fact that the great game was largely considered the basic response of the colonialist aggression of the Russian Empire. Leaving aside for the moment the main issue of whether or not this really is colonialism, I would like to say for a moment that there was another major player in these proceedings, of central Asia, that of Iran. It is a common usage to say that all the problems of imperial china can be traced back to the dynasty problem. A system where Chinese scholars believe that every dynasty eventually fell to weakness after its initial superhuman status. However it is common to forget the Iran itself was before the advent of so-called Russian imperialism the main imperial power in central Asia, owning at one point the entirety of the territory as far as kyrgzistan and that Afghanistan itself. Far from being a colonial invention Afghanistan was the name of a kingdom, which separated from the Safavid dynasty fully, against the dying Safavid king Nadir Shah. Are we now going to say that Iran colonised these areas, after all no one ever attempted to colonise Iran, and the west had excellent diplomatic relations with them, does this make it a colonial power? This is of course ridiculous but it does raise some serious questions. We are constantly told these days about the evils of colonialism but what exactly does colonialism mean? What separates it from mere conquest which was been going on since time began? Is it really a distinctly modern phenomenon? Firstly it seems obvious to me that given the roots of the phenomena if Russia can indeed be considered a coloniser it dome by complete co-incidence. It is popularly acknowledged that European colonisation arose from the Portuguese age of exploration in the 14th century. This is turn can be traced back to there own reconquista which is when they took back there state from the Muslim forces of Granada. After this Portugal’s economy was so heavily weighed toward constant conquest that it could not stop lest it face crash which it eventually did experience in the 18th century. Russia’s story was much the same, after being hopelessly divided by its own hopeless inheritance system it was devastated by the Mongol invasion and in the prince of Moscow’s zeal to kick out the foreign invaders after united his lands he conquered all the area around him, following the Mongols all the way back to Siberia, with help from the enterprising nature of the Strogonova family. However the question remains, what is colonialism? Was it colonialism for Ivan the terrible to conquer Kazan for example or Kiev. It may seem as though I am rambling a bit but the fact is that there is little or no difference between this action and the so-called colonisation of central Asia and the attempted colonisation of Afghanistan. As far as I can tell the only tried and true definition of colonialism which can stand up to all the examples is that the conquering power must be significantly more powerful than the colonised power as to make any resistance or real war pointless and futile, that the country does not share a direct border with that country and that the colonising power must be conquering it purely for the purposes of the extraction of resources. None of these stand up to Russia’s example. Russia and Afghanistan were of comparable power at this time, Afghanistan certainly proving that resistance was far from futile (and is still doing so) It did share a direct border with Russia and they wanted it as a buffer state and to control central Asia’s population and prevent war. Like for example Poland. In fact now that I think about it Poland has a better claim to being a colonised power than many of the people on the modern day list.

Discussing Islam Today

2010-02-14T20:55:00.000-08:00

Throughout the article, entitled “Clash of Ignorance” that Edward Said wrote he goes on and on about his fellow academic Samuel Huntingdon’s theories that eventually, this was written before September 11th, there would be an attack on America from a Muslim fundamentalist terror group. In my experience academics so rarely get these things right, (Said’s other example Francis Fukyama) predicted world peace in a post soviet world) that in my humble opinion we ought to be throughing the man a ticker tape parade for being in the right time zone, let alone actively predicting a terrorist attack. Said’s excuse for being mad at his colleague and by the way he seems really genuinely mad at this person, using terms like confusing himself, inelegant and clumsy is that to get this information he generalised the Islamic culture into a monolithic block. Obviously this is a real concern, but for just a moment I want to take a step back and examine exactly what is going on here.
First of all I would like to say that I no more agree with Huntington than I do with Said, it is indeed wrong, if we as academics can use that word, to generalise a culture, if for no other reason than it is usually inaccurate. And it is, of course wrong to apply attitudes or behaviours to a specific culture, because, you know, a culture is defined merely as the predominating attitudes and behavior that characterize the functioning of a group or organization. But hey, what does Webster’s know. And if you were really going to give this article the complete lack of benefit of doubt we could say that Islam is a religion and therefore not a homogenous culture. Fine. I would certainly not say that Mozambique is part of the same culture as mine. However I would say that during the cold war, the two sides although remaining distinct and rife with internal dissent, also did in fact start acting like opposites. Each side had witch hunts trying to root out the other side, each had revving up of hostilities and long winded speeches about there mutual zero tolerance. Now does this mean that Americans or Russians are by there nature confrontational but it does mean that once an image of a culture has taken root it is very difficult to divorce yourself of it. Another classic example is the sort of self-fulfilling prophecy attitude of the post-colonial societies; they were told over and over again that they would fail, so in many ways they did. This is just the sort of way that culture works. Culture may not exist in and of itself but it does have a definition and it doesn’t always matter who gives it to it. Therefore this mans theories may well be right and very profitable to study over the next years because whether or not Mr. Said would like to admit it if people think that they are supposed to act a certain way, most of the time they will act that way.
There are 3 major points that saved the second article about Taliban women. The first is that it has none of the feel of one academic going up against another, this is actually targeted just at society in general’s opinion that the women of Afghanistan are being victimised. This is targeted at one person, namely Mavis Leno but it is clearly a message the author wants the world to know, which relieves it of that dry quality present in Said’s piece. The second is that it feels like it is being written for a reason, to expose a point of view that has been overlooked, rather than taunting the obviously extreme views of a colleague. The third saving grace of this piece is that it could have easily taken the line that the Leno’s were uneducated stupid uncaring Hollywood residents looking for a charity to clamp unto, instead it presented a more realistic picture of people that really wanted to help but just didn’t have all there facts straight. This is a refreshing change from Said’s name-calling.

The spread of islam

2010-02-02T07:59:00.001-08:00

Let me say before anything else that the first article Ayoub, "Spread of Islam" assigned on the spread of Islam around the world was fascinating. Not only did it provide an illuminating historical analysis, it also posed some pretty loaded questions, like what does the term missionary or militant religion mean in its relation to its prophetic base, and how far any religion can go while maintaining any semblance of purity. These are question that I will get to later.
However it is my unfortunate duty to read and write about both articles and, although the second article Ernst, "Following Muhammad" did make some good points, I found that particularly the beginning was unnecessary in its extreme view of modern academia. First of all I went to my local bookstore after reading this article (now to be fair I live on the Danforth, which is the equivalent of a hippie commune to a resident of west Virginia), and of the many views on Islam in the world today, I found not a single one which gave the opinion that it was anything but a severely misunderstood religion with a rich cultural heritage, demonized by the west for what it cannot understand: in other words, carbon copies of this article. Now I can understand that Muslims in the United States have a tough time of it, and I am not for a moment saying that at least at least some of that has not trickled into the academic community. But acting as if this piece is alone standing against the tide when it is at the head of a wave of literature that dominates academic thought makes me mad.

Now on to a far more fun discussion. Islam is, like Christianity, a missionary religion. The first article does a very good job of explaining exactly what this means. It has also a very good comparison to make to Christianity. Both were as described, religions of the Book, both believed in the one God who left very specific instructions for us to follow. At first glance we have a tried and tested formula, more a missionary and militantly expansionist religion. However, were the other examples of missionary faiths so clear cut? The answer is no. One of the oddest faiths that I have ever encountered is Indian Buddhism. It can best be described as desperately seeking oblivion. It sees the gods of the world the same way it sees everything else: as an annoying if not actively harmful presence, to be annihilated through self discovery. It is hard to think of a religion further away from Islam. It is hard to think of a religion further away than anything. And yet it had the same result, the rapid and sometimes violent conversion of the Silk Road along almost the exact same route that Islam would follow. And then there is Zoroastrianism, a religion now so xenophobic that the biggest controversy today is whether or not they should allow people to convert. This from a religion whose original mandate was to convert all from the truth to the lie.

But I digress.

Another fun topic, which can also be applied to Christianity, is the purity of the faith. As in any faith-based religion, Islam's only real claim to fame was that it had the direct words of God as they kept repeating, just in case anyone is tempted to call the Quran an inspired text. And in this case Islam seems to really give it their all. They have a direct line of the prophet as heads of state of a powerful Muslim empire which spreads from central Asia to Spain; however it doesn’t last and it fragments. What really surprises me, though, is that all the evidence indicates that the religion seemed to wait for political fragmentation before religiously fragmenting. The only real schism in the Islamic tradition today is Shia and Sunni and, although these have more in modern times to do with cultural differences, Iran being ??difficult, it seemed to really have a lot to do with the political schism of the Abbasid caliphate in the beginning. It seems inevitable that religions will change with the times, but with religions of the books, it seems they have three choices: admit defeat and say that the particular book isn’t relevant anymore; change your philosophy and hope no one notices; or define the times yourself and drag the world back to a place where it is relevant. Religions throughout history have tried all three of these options; it will be interesting to see which one Islam chooses in the near future.

Nestorianism

2010-01-10T21:12:00.000-08:00

This topic was one of surprising personal interest for me. At the beginning of this discussion I knew something about the subject matter, I knew that Nestorianism was a heresy which made itself well known in Asia which resulted from a debate about the singularity of Jesus Christ. However I also assumed that the divide was much bigger than it was. I assumed for example that the east, as it were would have swallowed up the faith so much that it would be unrecognisable as my own (I am Roman Catholic). As such I saw the Nestorian faith much the same way I saw for example Zoroastrianism, as a faith which was interesting from largely a historical perspective, which, what do you know? Have some odds and ends that connect it with mine. The first major break in this theory was the use of the term Assyrian church in class, I had never before associated the Nestorian church, what in my mind was a purely historical phenomenon with this real live living church which was a fundamentally similar to my own. The second major break to my preconception was the article assigned intitled Oxtoby, "Christian Origins". As a lifelong Catholic with 12 years of Catholic school to my name, I was brought up with this information, and not a real word of it was unknown to me having celebrated the traditions all my life. Ironically the only part that I was unfamiliar with was the actual break with the Nestorian church, I found out later that that was the only part we were obligated to read, although I was familiar with the bare bones of heretical separation. This brings up once again the uncomfortable subject of whether or not people should be permitted or whether it is possible to give a real interpretation of what is essentially ones own religion from a historical point of view. It was certainly an incredibly uncomfortable experience having to go through those explainations of the key points of my faith for the first time with a real critical eye, looking at it not as a faith to be awed at but rather as a historical conceptions, to explore or even critique. There is still no doubt in my mind that Nestorianism is a fundamentally different religion than my own but if you asked me before today what was number 1 on my list of descriptions of Christianity, the single natural of Jesus Christ would not be high on my list of defining features. I was much more on a firm footing with the other articles. I found particularly interesting the descriptions of the daily life in the Tang dynasty not only were these rich in historical detail but presented a very interesting picture of a society that is probably the most like ours of almost any civilization in the ancient world. The image of hundreds of different religions, skin colors and points of view conjure up images of a society very much like our own Toronto. After a more nuisanced reading of course one discovers the fear that people had when confronted with these new religions and cultures, the ministry in charge of them, and the slowly closing fist of Chinese imperial xenophobia which would clench entirely in the events of the An Lushan rebellion just a few years earlier. As for the last article, the description of the Nestorians as almost apologetic of there faith does seem to be of great interest in terms of there theological development as a religion and could easily be attributed to an evolution of the faith due to there time in the east. However it seems much more likely given the circumstances, that like many faiths that are surrounded on all sides by potentially, but not openly hostile forces, they as individuals decided to leave well enough alone and not draw trouble to themselves by openly proclaiming superiority.

Indian Buddhism

2009-11-10T07:50:00.000-08:00

First of all in the point of Indian Buddhism I must say that by all evidence there must have either been an extremely bloody conversion, or traditional Hinduism must have been among the weaker faiths of the world religion. When considering evidence like the Ashoka edicts one must parallel it with the conversion of the Christian conversion to Protestantism in the west. In the west, without a war that killed literally killed half of Europe there was no way that any king ever, insults and curtails the power of the priest in any form, let alone openly mocks the basis of the religion, like sacrifice. It seems that by far given the evidence, that Hinduism is an extremely weak faith to put up with that kind of abuse from what is after all simply a mortal king and therefore quite low on the celestial totem pole.
The main point I would like to address in this blog entry is something that has always troubled me about the larger topic of Buddhism and particularly at its Indian roots, when precisely does a philosophy become a religion. When did something which surely started out simply as reformist movement in the wider Hindu faith, evolved into a fully fledged faith on its own merits. And a question I actually consider much more interesting, when does summarily dismissing all the gods in a society, either directly or as irrelevancies stop becoming an organised faith and start becoming philosophy or even atheism. These sort of questions fascinate me endlessly, not the least of reasons being that it is my contention as a student of history that humans have never made a truly atheist society, none but us. First of all if one considers the original religion of the Buddha it is a very different matter than those of even those adapted even by Indian leaders like Ashoka, and bears little if any resemblance to the later versions exported to china. Therefore, I it is perfectly possible that the original Buddhism was in fact atheistic, while the religion it created was not, therefore not creating an atheistic society.
First of all in the discussion of religion versus philosophy, we must of course ask ourselves whether the mere distinction is simply a western idea. It should be noted that by what seems to be a remarkable co-incidence, almost the exact same revolution in traditional polytheistic religious procedures was happening in western Greece although of course it would be foolish to assume a significant ideological correspondence. As to the central philosophical question, it is my basic opinion that a philosophy, is something that must make all forms of the supernatural not part of the process in terms of creating a way of life. The original way of Buddhism therefore can take credit for the fact that it made the gods irrelevant in the wider process of attaining transcendent nothingness as they are simply other larger players of the same game, the fact that they do control the material world is irrelevant because of course the material world is irrelevant. However there is one snag to this theory, reincarnation, although it is the subject of constant and stimulating debate exactly to what extent, in any of Buddhism’s many, many incarnations, one soul has to do with another’s creation, whether it is just one soul lighting another or direct reincarnation, this does not jive with our modern scientific defintion of life. And so we hit the snag in our little theory, for to the people of ancient India, the word supernatural would have surely had almost no meaning, after all it was fact that the world was created by the gods, that life was suffering that the soul was reborn with no less belief than the fact that the sun set. The reason that faith wasn’t the major part of most ancient religions is because there was nothing to test it with, that is why Buddhism as a belief functioned it made rational arguments based on the basic precepts of society. Should these people be penalised or worse categorised simply because they don’t edit out what we might consider the supernatural, and what do we know any more then them anyway? No the short answer is that as far as I can tell there is no way to apply words like philosophy or religion to the belief system like Buddhism simply because there is no real difference.
As for those who call Buddhism atheism, all that they prove is that they have no idea what the word atheism means. Aethism means no god, period. Buddhism fully acknowledged the fact that there were gods, in India it acknowledged Vishnu and Brahma and all the pantheon, and wherever it went it acknowledged those gods too, because the material world still needed to be governed and ruled, there was evidence for these gods existence in the sheer creation of the world, in the fact that, with no human involvement the sun rose and set, and that with proper sacrifice the crops grew well. Buddhism tried to create a world where they didn’t, but to say that that was atheist, would be like saying that someone who believed that modern science was irrelevant in understanding the human heart, is dismissing and disagreeing with each and every scientific discovery ever conceived.

2009-11-03T07:47:00.001-08:00

There are many things that I noticed from the readings about Zoroastrianism. First I will discuss those ascribed to the great king Darius. This was extremely interesting, as I have often heard of the Behistan inscriptions before but never actually read them, also I have read much of Darius and the policies of the Achaemenid dynasty. The first thing I noticed was the stark contrasts between Cyrus the Great and his semi-maybe 5th cousin? Cyrus was famous not only for his mercy towards conquered citizens, but also for his religious tolerance (not hard when one is a polytheist). Darius seems to have done a complete 180 on the policy of his famous ancestor. This inscription portrays a militantly Zoroastrian figure, who portrays the conquest of conquered territories like Armenia with the same tactics as pacifying states that have gone into rebellion, with complete and utter destruction. Of course there is room for artistic license in these words. After all, if I were running a country, I would want to make it as hard as possibly for the people to revolt, but I might think twice before using words like druj (lie) to describe what was probably the vast majority of faiths in my kingdom, and allow others to destroy them.
Also on a partially irrelevant side note, it is interesting to see that on the Behistan inscriptions there is no evidence of contact with the Greeks, which suggests that Darius didn’t think them important enough to talk about. This is not unusual considering the size of Darius’s empire compared with the size of the Greek city states. I find it astonishing, how one people’s history can be so important to them, and to the whole history of western civilisation, and yet unimportant enough not to make it into another's history books.
Now concerning the real topic: the information on the Zoroastrian bible, the Gathas. I found a number of things interesting. First of all this must be the one religion most single-mindedly devoted to ritual I have ever heard of. After the required readings I looked up more on the Gathas on line, and the list is endless for the proper way to butcher cows, drink haoma, and avoid the various kinds of impurity that plague daily. Now the history of Zoroastrianism as an off-shot from early Hinduism has not escaped me, and although I can see certain similarities from my admittedly small understanding of the Hindu faith, the differences seem more prominent. For one thing, like many faiths that happen to be polytheist, Hinduism, it can be argued, is a religion that seems more tolerant of other gods, as a result of the sheer amount of gods they possess. However, it is clear that this faith is militant in all its dealings with all other faiths by the way that Darius says that all followers of the lie must be converted and equates them with generally bad people. Also I see no evidence of the caste system for which the Hindu faith is of course so famous in these writings. It seems from the Gathas that anyone who believes can not only go to heaven, but also take an active part in ceremony. It should be remembered of course that Zoroaster was an example that all people could and should follow. Also oddly enough, I see no evidence of reincarnation in either these stories or in the wider Zoroastrian mythos. If this truly was a rebel element of the Hindu faith, it is absolutely the most comprehensive revolution that I have ever seen, from origins to deity to daily life, the Zoroastrian community gutted everything but the kitchen sink when they separated from polytheism.
Of course one thing that they kept with them was the treatment of women, especially during menstruation. This emphasis on the impurity of menstruation as a contagion seems older than anything, which divides the human race. It can be found in the Bible, as well virtually every religion, and has been a key element in ensuring or justifying that woman have no real say in society. This is unsurprising but it does give you a real sense of their social structure, where even a women’s husband and children cannot go within 3 paces of her, several days a month. About the only that differs here is that there is no sense that a women in and of course herself has any control over who is near her, or even who sleeps with her at any given time. She receives neither condemnation nor punishment, when a man approaches her when she is in menstruation. This can be interpreted one of two ways the first of course is that this is a good thing, perhaps it shows that abuse or whipping of women was not tolerated in the society at large, but there is another way to interpret it, that the women was entirely passive in society and generally irrelevant. After all if someone has no control besides those that society gives one over their own body, one is not a major player in society. This tells us a lot in general about the society this was being written in. For example, in general hunter gatherer societies that we know of have rules that are far less strict for this sort of thing than agrarian. Which I find odd because all contemporary evidence points to the Gathas being written in a semi-settled lifestyle at earliest, of course, like many faiths this might merely be an addition added later.

2009-10-26T22:19:00.000-07:00

Of course the first thing that I think when I read these letters is the very different way that they spoke to each other than we do. Of course there is a language barrier, but I believe that it is more than that. Particularly in the letters written to wives and husbands, a lot can be said for the sense of real desperation and dread of being both away from their spouses and stuck in a foreign land. Obviously this speaks volumes about how this particular group of people saw both far-flung areas on the Silk Road and gender roles in society.
Although it is never easy being alone in a strange land with strange customs and a language barrier, as far as I can tell the Sogdians as a people ruled the Silk Road and administered it; therefore I have a hard time believing that the average Sogdian would have this sense of real fear and distress when talking about a foreign land, even when this was only private conversations with their spouses. This was partially explained by the second letter, which is famous for proving the connection between the Xiongnu and the Huns of Eastern Europe. In fact during this period I have often heard in my study of, for example Russia, about the constant wave of barbarian attacks coming from the fields of central Asia, which makes it even more unbelievable that a realistic trade route could have been maintained.
What really interests me, however, is the political institutions of the Sogdians. They do seem to have local leaders as mentioned in the person of Varzdak, but it seems to me that they lived largely in city states, unconquered, at least at this point, by larger emperors. This shines a fascinating light on just how important the Silk Road was to their life. The fertile flat plains of Central Asia would have been ideal for the making of such empires, purely because they could be so easily conquered, as successive rulers like Tamerlane learned. However the political system in Sogdia was tailored specifically for the use of Silk Roads, suggesting that for the sake of profit they barely tried to unite what would have been already linguistically and culturally one nation, just to keep up profit. This is indeed a wealth-crazed society.
Of course since these documents deal so explicitly with women writing to their husbands, it would be pointless to leave out the valuable information that can be learned about social structure of gender relations. Once again we see a political parallel. I found it very telling that men use many of the same terms to refer to their political superiors as women refer to their men. Here clearly we have a fairly ordinary pre-modern assessment where, at least in title, the man was the head (although these must have been fairly wealthy women, their husbands presumably being fairly important traders and themselves having at least enough surplus income to hire a letter writer). One wonders then why these women seem so desperate for their husband’s return? Of course once again we can safely assume much of the flowery dialogue to be simply a result of the time, and of course it is quite possible that she simply misses her husband, or at the very least wants him to think so. Still, when someone tells their spouse that they imagine themselves dead without them its certainly worth looking into further. It is of course also possible that with her husband gone away for so long, she would have limited access to money for example, or possibly imagined the results of a possible widowhood, although once again emotionally crippling, this would have worked out very badly for her in that society. Since these documents seem so incredibly rare and so extremely valuable as some of the very few documents from this period of Sogdian history, we must of course rule nothing out.

Xiongnu blog response

2009-10-13T07:38:00.000-07:00

I find the whole question of the Xiongnu an incredibly fascinating one, particularly their relationship with the Huns in Europe, although I am disappointed by the fact that this article does not site the indeed wide evidence of a mutual relationship between the Hephalites, Xiongnu and the Huns, such as those found in ancient Sogdian manuscripts clearly indicating a group of nomadic Huns, that were seen terrorizing the north of the Han capital Chang’an. It also shows that the Han Empire engaged in war against these people and that the confederacy was so strong that objective foreign travellers were unsure whether the result would be in China’s favour. This is an invaluable first hand resource that is available at http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/sogdlet.html. As for the arguments made against the theory, that the Huns didn’t shave, that they didn’t practice cranical alteration, these would be legitimate gripes if the Roman Empire had actually gone to north China to see them in their original habitat as it were, however, over 300 years and countless contact with other cultures it is perfectly understandable that they finetuned there habits. This whole paper is of great interest to me specifically because I am at this moment also taking a course in Chinese history where I am learning much of the same information from a completely different perspective. First of all I was taught, not 4 days ago that the so-called Martial Emperor Wudi practically controlled an area about twice the size of modern China and perhaps 4 times the size of the Roman Empire, including all of central Asia, southeast Asia and Siberia almost as far as the Arctic ocean. This seems fantastical to say the least, which is why I am relieved to hear about an article which gives a more realistic view of a complex relationship of official sovereignty tempered with the reality of a highly structured tribute based relationships, between two unlikely equals. This is best summed up in some of the ways that China describes its friendly neighbours to the north. First they use the term barbarians as a matter of course, but I particularly liked the terms like the incestuous, unspeakably cruel and perverted king and how they traded with him a thousand horses and of course them breaking up the dispute between the fat king and mad king. However the thing that most strikes me about this article is the way that the Chinese Empire describes its so-called barbarian neighbours. The ethnic slurs of the colonialist Europeans is often focussed on particularly in classes like this, so it is comforting to see that the racial slurs of other peoples are not forgotten. It seems astonishing to me that in this time their government was willing to go to such extremes to avoid the appearance of the Chinese state getting absolutely anything from the outside world. How fast mutual governmental gift giving becomes tribute from an inferior subjugated nation, how fast a steady trade of foreign goods and horses can so easily become a divine gift of the river god and the heavenly dragon of powerful new winged horses. However, you can’t even really blame them for inventing such charming fairytales. Ever since writings of Zhang Qian, China seems to have been very interested not only in its own history, but also the way in which its own actions would have been looked upon by the various people coming after them. How would it look after all if these mad fat and monstrously perverted kings in the barbarian lands outside of China’s borders were seen to be trading with the great Chinese empire. Wouldn’t it be better to show that these new inventions were the latest in the long, long line of China relying on its own ingenuity, on its own gods in order to solve the problems of its day, and even to increase its cavalry and beat out the very invaders that they used to get these things from? Politics is always a dirty business; that is no reason to remember it as such.
Finally, a very fascinating point for me was Zhang Qian himself. This figure, a cross between Marco Polo and Herodotus, answers a lot of questions that I had about Chinese civilization in general, like how much they did know about the various trade empires that there empire, relied on or at least exploited, but all in all it raises many more questions than it answers. First of all I am always fascinated by a society that is completely isolated from the world around it, as I as a historian of the western school always largely assumed China was. I always knew that China built the great wall to keep out foreign invaders, (although this seemed to reinforce the idea that at the very least China did not want to know foreign cultures) This article of course opened my eyes to the fact that besides what I can now only assume would be a largely symbolic wall, they had extensive contact with their neighbours to the north and at least some contact with their neighbours to the west across the steppe. However what really strikes me about this point is that China before the unlikely voyage of a soon to be castrato, China did not know that the people of the Central Asian steppe rode around on what would have seemed to them to be giant horses. Now this would not be like not knowing that a person collects stamps. By all accounts horses were the lifeblood and then some of many of the people occupying the land. Therefore in order not to know this very basic fact about there life, there would have to be almost no contact whatsoever between anyone connected with the Chinese government and the Persian Empire, or the various tribes of central Asia. Now I know very well that the Taklimakan desert was no picnic to get across, and it’s just mean to ask people to cross the Tibetan plateau, but China had been a civilization for thousands of years, and had reliable records for hundreds, and nowhere did it mention that there was a very lucrative horse trading business which would vastly improve China’s army just across the desert there until Zhang Qian. Did this state have a monopoly on adventurers?

2009-09-26T13:06:00.000-07:00

One thing that I have noticed in the readings is that the historians are looking at things to be there and finding them, rather than actually looking at the information. For example the book mentioned 5 metropoli named by the ancient Greek writer Strabo. They freely admit that they have not managed to find any information that in any way connects the first 4 cities to any that have ever existed in China, and the last of them called Thyne, they tried to relate back to the short lived Qin Dynasty in 2nd century China, which was by the way 100 years after the expeditions of Alexander the Great. Relying purely on the study of names of cities is always a tricky, and in my opinion unreliable thing to do. After all another one of those names on the list is Carracosta which to me sounds more like California. Now as an aspiring historian myself I know how important it is to try and look for even the smallest shred of evidence in first hand sources, and keeping in mind just how rare these first hand resources are I personally still think that it is important to realise that sometimes people just don't know what they are talking about, or got their wires crossed. After a little research I discovered the exact same spelling to describe a tribe or people living not a hundred miles east of where Strabo was writing from called the Thynia and I find it much more likely that they were talking about them.
The Chinese historians are of course no better. China can be given credit for getting most of the information about the Roman Empire right, or at least much of it. Modern Historical Research does not indicate that all Romans were bald or that they all wore red and they certainly did not possess Asian characteristics as the resources collected on the Da Qin seem to suggest. In fact it seems to me that the Chinese sources were really only representing an exact duplicate of themselves at the end of the Silk Road. This seems to be particularly odd, as historical Chinese imperial sources are so legendarily xenophobic, that ancient Greece only rivals them. Foreigners in outside the 4 oceans of Chinese historical hegemony are referred to as barbarians as a matter of course. Their political systems are usually something to be pitied laughed at or ignored. However in this one incident they not only refer to another kingdom well beyond their borders as equal to itself, but one could argue, that by using the term Da Qin or great Qin, they were actually describing a kingdom outside their own borders as better then themselves. This would be incredibly significant in the history of China if I thought for a second that it was true. It seems to me that China had no idea what was at the end of the Silk Road and simply invented another version of itself, at the end of the world to justify its creation. A world where people looked like them, wore similar, if not better clothes, and lived in an organized empire. Completely with subject kings, like the ones in their own past and a system which to me, far from the democracy of the Roman senate, sounds much like the Heavenly Mandate analogy of China. In short the Chinese Empire knew that it was dependent on trade from another empire. So it made an empire exactly like its own. Another area the authors of this book might look in is the amazing fact that it seems that people who traded with each other knew so precious little about each other.
Also a small point that struck me in the book when they were discussing the Alexandrine Empire is the fact that they seem to be under the impression that no one on earth at that time could have administrated the sheer landmass of the Empire. It should be noted that 14 generations of Achaemenid rulers, had absolutely no problem ruling the Empire, and expanding it, to become the greatest empire in the world up to that point. Alexander on the other hand, did not just fail to completely conquer, losing out the provinces of Armenia and the Caucasus but managed with his death to destroy, and carve up. In truth Alexander was a figure very much like Alaric, the Goth, who destroyed the Western Roman Empire, with the exception that Alexander actually managed to gut an entire empire, whereas Alaric left half of it.
Last but not least concerning the chapter on the actual making of silk itself. I am always struck at the sheer ingenuity of ancient man, I don't know how many generations it took for someone to consider that the webs that bugs weave can be painstakingly collected, to form somehow, into perfectly straight lines in order to fashion clothing out of them. Where they would have found the inspiration to do these things or what there motivation might have been. Besides even that I am always fascinated by the fact that a huge trading empire existed stretching all the way back through human history, to a time, before even the bronze age, long before anyone knew what was on the other side, connecting the 2 greatest empires in early history.