MN_shrmn

सत्यं वद। धर्मं चर।

[MN_shrmn @tuffimitten]

FAQ thread on the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) and assimilating it into the Hindu narrative.

My understanding derived from scholars such as @blog_supplement @agnimaan @RangaTheDude @GhorAngirasa @shrikanth_krish @razibkhan @IndianHistory0
(THREAD)

Will keep adding Qs over time

[Janhavi Nilekani @JanhaviNilekani]

The way people dehumanize those with limited means is deeply depressing

[MN_shrmn @tuffimitten]

@shrutammegopaya Vivek has also proven to take more hits for the team than Annamalai, something the latter is already complaining about

[MN_shrmn @tuffimitten]

YD-ji is an expert in philosophy on Mondays, IVC and Sanskrit on Wednesdays and women's fashion on the weekend

[Mukunda Raghavan @raghman36]

We can't do this nonsense. This idea that everything is India is just dumb and undercuts actual real Dharmik ideas, innovations and genius. The same with Western thinkers who were brilliant too.

Finding some similarity of ideas here and there isn't evidence of plagarism, that is just bad reasoning and logic. Show evidence that he knew Indic thought, not simply stating a translation existed therefore it is probable he knew, show direct words that indicate borrowing or knowledge. First, the Critique of Pure Reason was written around 1780-81, well before any western translation of the upanishads. He didn't have access to any of these texts you are referring to.

The phenomena/noumena point is something that has been discussed in some form by most philosophical traditions for millennia. In the west it starts with the pre-socratics into the period of time of Kant and after. So no, it isn't maya.

The tat tvam asi position you put forth isn't even the same idea that Kant is putting forth about how a knower is able to develop a single unified vision or perspective incorporating the diverse objects around him, it isn't claiming any identity or ontological claim just epistemology.

The sankhya position you posit and the Kantian idea of reason are not even speaking about the same thing. the Kantian idea is about experience vs reason and the limitations of each, he develops the concepts of antinomy. You experience the world of series or parts not as singular whole as a thing-in-itself. Reason deals with ideas not things that experience deals with, they are different things.

Dharma isn't absolute, it is contextual, it is a bit more complex than that but for these purposes it is sufficient. Kant is not that, he is a universalist, that is the categorical imperative that applies to all rational beings, devoid of context.

the Brhadaranyaka upanishad verse and the idea of treating all as end in themselves not merely means isn't even connected. Plus he didn't know that upanishad as far as we can see and it wasn't even translated into a language that he knew yet.

I'm not knowledgeable about Rasa and Bhava and frankly Kant's disinterested aesthetic judgement to say anything more than this seems to me to be beyond a stretch.

The samkhya position and kant's is also a stretch with nothing to evidence it

[Halley @halleyji]

Even people who are in India are weak in their mother tongue now because English dominates a lot of reading speaking writing thinking for many for their day to day. Mother tongue is reduced to a speaking and listening primary language. Listening usually is about watching Telugu movies in the case of Telugu people. Telugu movie consumption is the single biggest reason why Telugu as a language is surviving imho. Otherwise barely any reading and writing happens in Telugu. For many. Including me. My book shelf is dominated by English.

[MN_shrmn @tuffimitten]

@BastienFachan Good observation, pretty sure about it. I think he got emboldened by her reaction the first time. She should've clapped back !

[MN_shrmn @tuffimitten]

@calm_sutra @shrutammegopaya I think you are being too kind. I think blackpilling and dunking in this case is a cynical form of engagement farming

[MN_shrmn @tuffimitten]

Have never seen a single non-blackpill tweet from this person - not even neutral commentary

Very toxic

[Frontier Indica @frontierindica]

Can't wait for Australians to pick this up as their 20th most popular sport and still beat us at it.

[MN_shrmn @tuffimitten]

@shrutammegopaya Haha ! True that

[AgentSaffron @AgentSaffron]

Why so many grown men here seethe endlessly about women 24x7 ?

For paltry Twitter payout ?

Even doing basic Swiggy zomato delivery job will make more money

[Aryāṃśa @arya_amsha]

You aren't going to have good faith rebuttals on Twitter. This should be crystal clear by now. Twitter is for people with low attention span, dopamine addiction etc. It's a form of entertainment at best now.

[MN_shrmn @tuffimitten]

No fan of Minhaj, but he never mentions Hindus. As if one needed to invent reasons to criticise Islam and Muslims lmao

[Mr Sinha @Mrsinha]

First, Hasan Minhaj spread half-truths about CAA and NRC to paint India as some dystopian state.

Now he’s claiming that being Hindu, Buddhist, or even Indian is basically a Hamptons-style identity for wealthy Americans, while Islam is for “real people.”

There was absolutely no reason to drag Indians, Hinduism, or Buddhism into that conversation. Yet he did.

Then watch the clip. It tells you far more about Hasan Minhaj’s bigotry than it does about India.

[चेदिराड्रिपुपार्षदः 🟩⬜️⬛️ @Saatvata]

It's interesting how lay people (typically not scholars or Indologists) underestimate the intellectual rigour and continuity of India's indigenous traditions.
They tend to apply the same framework they apply for the Middle East to India.
Iraqis forgot about Hammurabi, Ashurbanipal, et al., Egyptians forgot about Khufu, Hatshepsut, et al.; Arabs forgot about Gindibuʾ, Karibʾīl Watār, et al.
These figures were (re)discovered by archaeologists and epigraphers in the 18th-20th centuries.
The accounts of az-Zabbāʾ/Zenobia in medieval Islamic historiography drew from both indigenous (Arab, Syriac) & Greco-Roman/Byzantine sources while the account of Dārā (Darius III) in Firdawsī's Šāhnāmah drew almost entirely from the Alexander Romance tradition (via Syriac translations from Greek, which were later translated into Pahlavi/Middle Persian)
Therefore, it must stand to reason than Indians also must've forgotten the names of rulers like Candragupta, Aśoka, etc. prior to the arrival of Westerners, no?
Yet this is clearly not true.
Although the Brāhmī script used in the inscriptions had changed so much as to be unrecognizable, Candragupta (Sandracottus of the Greeks) was well known through texts and plays like Viśākhadatta's Mudrārākṣasa, which were completely independent of Greco-Roman sources like Megasthenes.
The names of Aśoka Maurya and his sons Daśaratha and Samprati are recorded in the Puranic vaṃśāvalis and he is glorified in Buddhist sources such as the Divyāvadāna (which contains a section known as the Aśokāvadāna) and Srilankan chronicles like the Dīpavaṃsa and Mahāvaṃsa.
A manuscript of the Divyāvadāna in Sanskrit (or Sanskritized Prakrit) was discovered in Nepal in 1824, so the text was continually being copied.
One could argue that modern Persians had no knowledge of Old Persian for over 1,500 years (until the script was deciphered in the 19th century) and minimal knowledge of Avestan.
The Zand and Dēnkard commentaries composed by medieval Zoroastrians dasturs and mobeds often differs from modern philological readings.
Yet in the case of the Vedas, there is a largely unbroken chain or recitation reinforced by the śikṣās, prātiśākhyas, etc. and interpretation based on the Nirukta (the Naighaṇṭuka, Naigama, Daivatakāṇḍa-s of Yāska), Vyākaraṇa (Aṣṭādhyāyī + Vārttikas + Mahābhāṣya, along with the Uṇādisūtras and Phiṭsūtras), etc.
Therefore, the commentaries by Bhaṭṭabhāskara, Sāyaṇa, Veṅkaṭamādhava, Skandasvāmin, Mahīdhara/Uvaṭa are quite close to modern philological interpretations, simply because formal study of Sanskrit (including Vedic Sanskrit) never truly disappeared in India.
Even the study of the medieval Prakrits never disappeared among the Hindus and Jains.
Most people nowadays think of the 16th century grammarian Mārkaṇḍeya as the final Prakrit grammarian, yet Rāmaśarman Tarkavāgīśa composed his grammar of Prakrit and Rāmapāṇivāda composed his Kaṃsavaho and Usāṇiruddho less than two centuries before Norwegian-born German Indologist Christian Lassen's published his Institutiones Linguae Prakriticae.
When it comes to continuity, one can't treat the Indian Subcontinent the same way as the Middle East, Iran, or Central Asia, yet the fact that they rehash the same arguments regardless just highlights that these sorts of arguments (whether applied to India OR the Middle East) are ultimately rooted in racial paternalism ("the White Man's Burden," yet applied to history).

[Śrutaṃ me gopāya @shrutammegopaya]

It was your dad's generation. Built in the 1980s

[MN_shrmn @tuffimitten]

Demon/COVID/CBSE != Gulf war

Having said that, Modi is a very image conscious man to a fault

[Karan @karanrajan]

He has always been silent whenever his voice has mattered

Demonetisation execution mess up, Covid's deadly second wave, CBSE fiasco....

When shit gets tough, he keeps quiet

[Phield Martiall Jambavan @SirJambavan]

My usual gripe with India's aspirations.

The arivaaL is an ubiquitous blade in South India. Am sure we have been having this form factor for more than 2000 yrs now.

But, we never refined it. Not the form. That's unique and functional. But the finish. It is still made with ++

[Mukunda Raghavan @raghman36]

This is how Rajiv Malhotra @RajivMessage responds. Sends a cheap message then blocks. He no doubt has done some good work but now he only works with sycophants around him and raging. Pathetic

[🏎️ @parisianarchive]

lowkey to get the full tennis fan experience you need to support one player that’s really good, one player that’s always injured, and one random player that never wins anything but you still have hope for some reason

[MN_shrmn @tuffimitten]

People post the most mid shit and say "Never leaving this app". Maybe you should lmao

[Aditya Ojha @thispodcastguy]

Never leaving this app

[MN_shrmn @tuffimitten]

Is this you @d_jaishankar ?

[Melissa @MyUnveiledTruth]

This is the Indian doctor who implanted a heart valve upside down in a child, and his education was completed in India. In India, a person only needs to earn 40% to pass, which is basically an ‘F’ in the U.S.

Medical Degree: M.B.B.S., 1999, Madras Medical College, Chennai, India.

Internship: General Surgery, Government General Hospital, Chennai, India (2001).