[min-suvadi] Alex on The Dravidian Foundations of Ancient Religion Comments -14
Alex on The Dravidian Foundations of Ancient Religion Comments -14
Alex
Recently, Oates has shown that, in spite of their qualitative differences, there are generic similarities also between the Samarra and the Ubaid pottery.120 And Charvat has revealed that the fundamental social and religious forms of later Mesopotamian culture, including that of Uruk, are evident already in embryonic form in the early chalcolithic sites of northern Mesopotamia.121 Crematory practices associated with fire-rituals are noticed here122 and Tell Arpachiyah (TT6) also gives the first evidence of the use of the white-red-black colour triad which persists from chalcolithic times to Uruk123 and is representative of the three primary castes - priests, warriors and agriculturists - amongst the Indo-Europeans.124 So we may assume that the proto-Dravidians including proto-Akkadians were present in the north as well as in Elam and Eridu. Since Armenia is the most likely place from which the cultures of both Çatal Hüyük and Tel el Halaf may have originated, it is probable that we are dealing, in the case of the sixth- and fifth millenium pottery of the north as well as the south, with the proto-Dravidian or Noachidian race.
The Uruk culture (from ca. 3500 B.C.), however, is significantly different from the earlier Susaite culture of the Ubaid period, and we may detect the arrival of the Armenoid, proto-Alpine founders of Sumerian culture in this period. It must be noted also that the earliest Uruk tablets are from both Kish and Uruk proper,125 which suggests an extensive north-south migration of the new Sumerians.
But the fact that the Sumerian king-list begins its postdiluvian section with the establishment of a kingdom at Kish in the north, which is more likely proto-Dravidian and proto-Akkadian, suggests that the political ascendancy of the Sumerians in Uruk was a gradual one, beginning with political accomodation with the original inhabitants of the north and ending with a final establishment of independence at Uruk.
Loga
I find certain claims here quite unacceptable and probably very forced. The first is linking the pottery colors of white-red-black with the caste divisions of kings priests and farmers. In my reasonably extensive studies of Sumerian literature ranging from Suruppaks NeRi( c, 3000 BC) to the Old Babylonian incantation texts, nowhere I find mention of strict social divisions that we can call caste while admittedly there were kings Priets and the ordinary people of various kinds. The initial social organization must have been quite fluid before some of these became hereditary. Kingship was not an exception.
The word for king in Sumerian are quite revealing. One is `lu-gal' which means really great(gal, Ta, kaL) person ( Lu, Ta, aaLu, Ak awilu) More revealing is `u-mu-un' and which exists as Ta, man, mannan and where it means the one (u) who stands in the front(mu-un) Thus it would appear that in the early stages kinfship did not descend from the heavens as said later in the King List but rather a social event where a person enrged as in the forefront abd great and so forth to meet some social challenges like attacks by other tribes and so forth.
Even in the case of the founder of the Thrid Ur Dynasrty, Utu Hegal ( Ta, utu eekaL: the great rising sun) we find something similar. He becoemns the King only by convinsing people of the dreams he had and in which he was given the divine rask of rescuing Sumer from a Semitc- Trigan and so forth
In the hymns of Sulgi we find that Sulgi was also the headpriest . We find the kingly functions and the priestly going together and with the possibility that anyone capable of meeting a social crisis can become the King and so forth
Here I also mention after studying the Sumerian King List that:
However the most fascinating understanding and which is germane to our study is that of "kingship was lowered down from the heavens' (uLugaLnam vaan-ta izittee abba). This shows that kingship though enjoyed by human beings and different persons at different places and times, it is somethinglowered down from the heavens and hence something that is a GIFT or BLESSING of the Gods and which notion is restated by Punitavati in terms of "aruLee ulakellaam aaLvippatu' (It is the Grace that rules the world)
Thus kingship is NOT something that runs in the blood, something that can be transmitted to the scions by blood relationships and which was assumed to be so in the transmutation of kingship as a matter of genetics, hereditary. This is the beginning of VarNasrama Dharma and which must be something later, a post 3rd millennium phenomenon, something that emerged after the Classical Sumerian period came to a close and probably the Kaliyuga began.
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This List probably world;'s earliest histrocial document but which is quite dantastic like allowing 30,000 years and so forth for a king, begins however with the very interesting line:
nam-lugal an-ta e-de-a-ba
Which is Tamil: uLukaL-nam vaantu izittee appo : when Kingship descended from the Heavens. . .
Such view of the origins of kingship has nothing to do with later caste view of it where what is divine is transmuted into the biological with which begins the caste organization of society. This must have been a very late development and as I have already shown not available in Rig Veda.