etymo note: some cultural notes

many western words cognate with counterparts in the indian languages, particularly hindi , have a B sound in their western branches, that is
substituted with a V sound in the indian languages.

This pattern is also found in some languages neighboring the indian subcontinent such as farsi and turki.

Indeed we find that identity between an eastern V with a western B (phoenician greek romance and germanic - don't know about celtic yet) in the russian or slavic languages as well.


Incidentally this division is more of a true (more literal) east-west division with russia, persia, turkic asia, india on the east * (not mentioning the far east, the more easterly half of this "east") ; and europe , at leastthe western levant ** , and africa on the western side.

As if


* this includes the caucasus, being a region comprising the extensions of three nations, the russ, the turks, the persians (kurds are a turkic people) and perhaps those of arab or semitic nations too.

** the arab world would happen to be smack in the middle looking onto both sides - though the linguistic implications thereof do not concern us here.


then we have to think what does it take for a person to sound a B as a V.

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in the process of imagining realizing the hindu religion is as it were to its people it helps to think of ancient greek religion.

firstly, we must ask whether we can talk of a greek "religion" in the first place. it seems to me from past encounters in reading that individual regions bestowed their own religious elements, not least bringing / adding their regional deity(ies) to the relgious dogma of "belief". it would thus appear that greek religion which we know chiefly via mythology related to us by poets (maybe they weren't poets
at all) was in fact my fragmented regional religions and cults sharing a common general pantheon that rather liberal in its admission policy and a general cosmogony. these common religious elements become closely tied / entertwined with linguistic features (such as greek names for hell like hades and to culture in general (contributing to a large canon of poetry dramaturgy folklore and philosophy).

It seems reasonable that hinduism is similar in this way to its greek
contemporary.

as it were there may have been a brief and interesting encounter between indic culture and perhaps by extension hinduism and buddhism and greek culture in the moment of alexander the great.

another linkage bridging the two east and west localities (hind/sindh
and europe) is the famed indo-european , or indo-aryan connection
connection and ethnic.

a reasonable / useful reminder is the paradoxical disdain of those germanic aryans to the roma who by most trusted accounts hailed from india during the late middle ages.

i was once told that hinduism is a collection or agglomeration of numerous local cults sects and regional folk religions. an agglomeration that catalogues regional and recurrent elements such as deities and that embraces different scriptural books into a common persistent pantheon and textual canon.

it should be understood as such.

i would hazard that the degree of fragmentation not only in a typical "religion" 's divergent spiritual schools but als in its sects is much higher in hinduism than it is in islam (both now with comparable population sizes ).

that degree of fragmentation is a good measure of the aspect of religion concerning the solidity and consistency of its defining dogmatic idiosyncracies.

for instance compare the degree of fragmentation in divergence from central dogma in protestantism with that of its counterpart in catholicism.


hinduism is more fragmented than buddhism as well.


the modern (recent) spread of interest in hindu belief and practices - largely in the form of exceedingly peripheral orders and sect and schools - is trans-atlantic phenomenon. to a larger extent, the
persistence of the hindu collective religion despite the presence of more consistent forms of buddhism , and abrahamic religions , may have been also the effect of a western europe influence in the form of colonization (the dutch and then french and english east india companies , and the raj).

I could not help but notice the effect the raj has had on the displacement of a largely muslim predomination throughout the indian subcontinent , not only in terms of political power but also in terms of population size.

to appreciate the effect this kind of displacement or eradication has on the collective power and reach of the muslim religion,

we can use as an illustration the analogue of the effect displacing the arabic alphabet as the alphabet for many of the turkic languages from xin-jiang/turkestan in the east to turkey in the west,and replacing it with latin and cyrillic on the mutual reach and readibility between arabic and all those languages.

the displacement of both population (by expulsion or extermination)
and influence in many parts of the muslim worlds have been a recurrent pattern in the era european colonization that extends from the late midieval age to the present time. this has also been true in the case of latin american and australian nations and elsewhere.

in light of european colonization's displacement of social orders prevalent in the XVIth cent. the persistence of the archaic hindu system today may have been due to a revival and a patronage exercised over it by the brits.

this is not dissimilar to charges of british incubation of other religious trends such as arabian wahabism or ismaili and bahai religions.

one finds a pattern here, for it was in england as well that some of the more exotic offshoots of protestanism took refuge or were incubated.


Even if this is not true for the modern hinduism in the subcontinent, it would account for much of hinduism's interface with the "west"
(for it is through the residual colonial filter that hinduism comes in contact with arabs africans and latin americans in addition to europe)
particularly in the form of the exceedingly divergent sects and imitations of western-tinted persuasions such as the transatlantic movement of hare krisna - notably with charges of abuses among the western dominated communities.

P.S.

As if to support the argument , after posting the current entry i ran into this passage at wikipedia (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_denominations
):
"Influential 19th to 20th century Hindu revivalist organizations include Arya Samaj, Tilak Mission Bhagwan Swaminarayan, Brahmo Samaj, Parisada Hindu Dharma, Prarthana Samaj, Ramakrishna Mission, Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana, Swadhyay Movement, Swaminarayan Sampraday, Sathya Sai Organisation.

Hinduism was politicized in the context of the Indian independence movement, and has resulted in the rise of Hindu nationalism to a significant political force in the Republic of India."