Near Eastern Deities in the Rigveda - Softcover

Srinivasan, Liny

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1524601896 ISBN 13: 9781524601898

Publisher: AuthorHouse, 2016

Synopsis

This book begins with a deep appreciation for the labor and devotion of all the 19th and early 20th century European scholars who made the Rigveda known to the world. Yet, questions kept lingering: why the Rigveda doesn’t have anything entailing Indian prehistory, culture, or of historical India? Who were the people for whose benefit certain sacrificers arranged elaborate festivities, most often participated by gods, so that hymns were composed to please them? The questions remained unanswered as the context of the entire Rigveda was assumed to be mythical or obscure. The Near Eastern sources of Indian Desi words made it possible to identify that it is the lack of context of the Rigveda, more than the obscurity of the language that had been the stumbling block in understanding it. Ancient Indian names were all titular and toponymic. In fact, all names, Sanskrit or Pali, Rigvedic or Puranic, were geo-ethnic in the sense, like Biblical names, both ethnic and personal names were made after the name of a place which could be a country or city, but usually a state. This property has been exploited to its fullest extent, and in doing so, this book answers the above questions, and brings coordination with later Indian literature Epic-Puranas. The book is aimed at understanding the Rigveda deities on the basis of Ancient Near Eastern place names in all available Near Eastern sources from inscription to books with historical and geographical data. It leads to the conclusion that the Rigveda deities are neither Indo-Aryan / Indo-European nor unique to the Rigveda. They are all well known Near Eastern deities except their names. The book opens up a number of new dimensions and should serve as a stepping stone for further research in many related fields of study.

About this title

About the Author

Liny Srinivasan received a B.A from the University of Calcutta, and a M.A from University of Poona, India. She then held the position of Lecturer in charge of the Dept. of Geography at Nistarini College, Purulia, India. Liny further received a M.A from SUNY, Binghamton, NY, and a Ph.D from University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA both in Geography. She was a Fulbright scholar for research on The Hindu Temples in Calcutta. Liny had the opportunity to associate with Dr. Cyrus H. Gordon and Dr. Constance W. Gordon for seven years. The time was for many lively discussions on ancient scriptures, languages, and culture of both the Ancient Near East and India. After the discovery of Near Eastern Origin of Desi i.e., non-Sanskrit words in major Indian languages, particularly in Bengali and publication of a joint article with Prof. Gordon in Mother Tongue, the journal of ASLIP in 1995, she published two books and twenty four articles in English, and twenty in Bengali, including a book ‘Mishor theke asa sabda’ showing presence of massive number of Canaanite and Egyptian words in Bengali.

Edition details

• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1524601896
• ISBN 13: 9781524601898
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 654