> again I don't think there is any evidence for the former, > other than hearsay, and we know what that's worth. I would not take the "worthlessness" of "hearsay" very far..We just do not have a history of recording our history by any other means other than passing it word of mouth through generations.. sure, there is a strong chance that there were embellishments added by succeeding generations, but if we look at multiple sources of available evidence and if the hearsay kind of meshes with the data we have, then we can conclude that the hearsay indeed is true..It must be agreed that due to our own biases/cirumstances, we will tend to lend more weight to "hearsay A" rather than "hearsay B"... but if one digs deep enough, some facts can indeed be found that help us form a factual conclusion.. even the vEdAs were passed word of mouth and so were the nAlAyiram, or for that matter most of our scriptures.. One can definitely make a case for embellishments in those as well as they were passed through generations..i.e. how does one prove that the version of taittiriya upanishad I have is the *authentic* version? How do i know that the "brahmins" with a vested interest have NOT added embellishments to it? There is a book on the "actual version" of gItA written by some person that takes the above stance.. adiyEn rAmAnuja dAsan, varadhan
Home Page
http://www.ibiblio.org/sripedia |
ramanuja-subscribe@yahoogroups.com To subscribe to the list |