From: selvakum@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca (C.R.Selvakumar - Electrical Engineering)
Subject: Ancient Indian History
Keywords: Ancient Indian History
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 20:53:07 GMT


In article <BxBv3J.4II@cs.psu.edu>, narayana@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu (Kuram T Narayana) writes:
> Mani Varadarajan correctly pointed out that Ramanuja was born 
> in Sri Perumbudur. Unfortunately I cannot locate where in my refernces
> I read his birth place as Tirupathi. However I could check out the varacity
> of Mani Varadarajan from Dr. Radahakruishnan's account of Ramanuja's life.
> 
> I am extremely sorry for this factual error in my notes. Selvakumar
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> can rightlyclaim that Ramanuja is a Tamilan, if he is hell bent on that.
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       I was NOT trying to show that the Sri Adi Sankara, Sri Ramanujaacharya
       and Sri Madhvaacharya were Tamil !! Is that all you understood,
       from my postings ? (-;  I was saying that Dravidacharyas were
       their Gurus ( except Sri Madhvaacharya since I'm not sure) and
       their works were composed in the Tamil/Dravidian milieu. The 
       Bakthi movement and the rich intellectual atmosphere in Tamil
       Naadu was responsible for the growth of such literature. 
       ( to understand the rich intellectual atmosphere in the sense of
        religious progress one has to read the ThEvaarams, Thiruvaasagam,
         ThirukkOvaiyar, Thirumanthiram etc...,)
       so called hindu revival and the production of Sanskrit works
       of that period were happening in the Tamil country ( Kerala, 
       karnataka, Telugu nadu were not very different in language and 
       culture at that time). Not only Sanskrit religous acharyas but
       many scholars in other fields such as Aryabhatta, Bhaskara,
       Katyaana, Buddha Gosh were from Tamil lands ( or close to it)
       My point is much of india's culture is 
       dravidianoid and non-vedic. The vedic is non-foundational and
       constitute less than 5% of India's culture then and now. The post
       vedic sanskrit literature is heavily impacted by dravidianoid
       theories and philosophies. It is
       a serious distortion to say that india's culture is vedic and
       sanskritic.
       
> 
> Incidentally Sriperumbudur is about 30 miles form Chittor and only
> a few miles from the broder of AP. Still it is Tamil...kt

      Why, Narayana do you think Chittor or Andhra Pradesh as a land of
      aryans ? !! (-: (-: I had been trying to convince you and some
      of your friends that the entire indian sub-continent WAS and IS
      dravidianoid and vedic aryanism was subsumed ( or mostly discarded) 
      by dravidian culture, 
      but you are talking of 30 miles from Chittor !! (-:
      Whenever you get some doubt remember that in the northwest
      Brahui, a dravidian language is still spoken and in the North east
      the Suhmas ( of Southwest Bengal) had their capital in Tamilipti 
      which the well-known Suniti Kumar Chatterji says is "Tamil House"
      [see Chatterji's work 'The origin and development of bengali
      language' page 68] [ The modern name of this tamilipti is
      Tam(o)luka. The chinese visitors also talk of this tamilipti. 
      The whole of India was and is overwhelmingly dravidian and NOT 
      aryan ( = vedic-culture-people).
> 

      Regards,
      Selva Selvakumar



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