Apech

Anyone know what happened to the Harrapan Ancestry Project - have they mapped the DNA? I can't find the results.

I lifted this joke from the comments section: What do you call a cave man with no sense of direction? A meanderthal. ha ha

Except that there is no real hard evidence that the Indus Valley Culture was Dravidian. I'm not saying it wasn't just we don't know it was. The most frequently named river in the Rig Veda is the Saraswati and there is some evidence that this is a dried up river parallel to the Indus which dried up by 1900 BC pre-dating the nominal date of the Veda of 1200 BC (unless you are an Indian nationalist who give a much earlier date). So it is likely that the people who wrote the Rig Veda were in the Indus Valley when the IVC was still extant or they were (part of at least) the IVC. As you suggest there is (I think) some evidence that the area now known as Afghanistan was a continuous trading route from the earliest times allowing movement of people form North India to and from Iran and so on. I would suggest there was a percolation of peoples from the time when the IVC was at its height - from then on at least.

I was looking for where I picked up the idea that Vedic culture was language based/cultural and not ethnic and found this - which does not address the point but is quite interesting:

the people of the Vedas presumably ...

It does! Actually I read somewhere that the Vedic people distinguished on language and included Dravidians provided they spoke Sanskrit (or a Prakrit presumably). I don't think these distinction are ethnic so much as cultural.

Yes.

Ok I await the mods.

In your very first post you accused Nungali of lifting bs from a neo-nazi site. I can't be bothered to reread any of the rest.

Mods do not flag things - we have to report them.

You are right ad hominems are strictly not ok. But I have seen them on both sides. As feedback you would communicate a lot better without the large font. It's just off putting - and what's the point of it anyway.

Hi, Your disgust may be cultural. I can see why from a certain perspective you might see things this way but actually it is better to see it from the point of view of the Tibetans themselves. I can't speak for Bon about which I know little but Tibet inherited vajrayana Buddhism from Medieval India - that is the period from say 600 AD to the end of the 13th century when Buddhism disappeared from India. Before that happened the social and cultural conditions were quite unstable and war like. You can see from history that Buddhism is very adaptable to whatever cultural environment it finds itself, so Chinese Buddhism and Japanese Buddhism are distinct and so on. It does this without giving up its core principles or Dharma Seals. What is reflected in the imagery and 'memes' I suppose you could call them is the rich and vibrant culture of Medieval India which comprised waring kingdoms - what was valued in this culture which was constantly threatened by Islam and aggressive Hinduism was active kingship - dominance, war like stance and sexual potency to preserve the line. Thus most vajrayana images place a central 'deity' on a throne like king, surrounded by his attendants (mandala) and within a big circle (chakra) = his kingdom. You could compare this in Western iconography to the medieval Christ as King type images. Tibet took and 'froze' this tradition for over a thousand years (800ish - 1950ish) and as it is culturally embedded it is instinctive to place a lineage holder or abbot or high lama on a throne and dress him in king-like regalia as a matter of respect. To us it looks either odd or beautifully exotic depending on your own standpoint. If we hold values of equality and so forth then placing someone on a throne seems odd. But this really is just a cultural clash and not that significant - although I agree that opens the door to many people misinterpreting what they see.

Still with the big fonts after you were asked nicely not to do that. It comes across as the equivalent of shouting loudly in the other person's face.

I think you may mean ngondro. The ngondro is not endless - which is kind of the point of them, although they do take a long time. It is a mistake that you do not practice the 'highest teachings' in the ngondro - the word 'preliminary' is ver confusing. However I am interested in this Suttavada - is this what you practise???

Yeah but ... I have no idea what I am looking at. Some explanation required - otherwise they are just a set a strange looking photographs. Is this some kind of religious movement?

What is this all about? Why have those people got pressure cookers on their heads? Confused.

Well, maybe, but the term 'noble savage' is from Rousseau and is a kind of reverse racism. It is as if we are saying genocide (or near genocide) was bad because these people were noble savages. While actually even if they were, as I believe, like all humans something of a mixture of good and bad and indifferent - well, still genocide is wrong. They were/are no better or worse than we are - which is fine, they are human the same as us. Otherwise you fall into the intersectionalist view that 'whiteness' = bad and 'people of colour' = good.

Can you tell us what Suttavada is?

i watched that film with leonardo de Caprio where he gets mauled by a bear. In this film there are nice indians who help him and nasty ones who attack and kill everyone. When I researched the 'nice' tribe I found out they practiced human sacrifice. Because they were the victims of near genocide we tend to look back with fondness - but the noble savage is a myth.

You're getting very proper these days, Jeff. (I agree with you tho')

... This very unfortunately true. And it's very sobering to think that even adherents of the 'religion' in which there is no promotion of violence to an end, can still use it. Tibet itself, Sri Lanka, Burma and so on have checkered histories. This is why I am keen on a secular state with no established religion and the freedom to practice what I want.

That's a very interesting idea. I am quite certain that there is more influence from China to Tibet and India than our usual historical accounts allow - which is pretty much one way - but we have to bear in mind those histories were written mostly by Buddhist monks.

"In the history of mankind the heritage of practices of Tien Shan has left a trace in the constellation of the brightest names of Enlightened Masters: Tilopa, Naropa, Marpa, Milarepa and Gambopy. " Can I point out that Naropa and Tilopa were Indian and not Tibetan - so I am not sure if the writer quoted by Starjumper is implying that the Taoists penetrated to the mahasiddhi 'culture' of medieval India or not. Also it is Gampopa not Gambopy.

Yes! Nungali is a neo-nazi why else would he use that term. You made your point very well.