[Advaita-l] mleccha-s not eligible to take Hinduism??

[V Subrahmanian]

On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 2:45 AM, Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>wrote:

>  Both traditionalists and modernists tend to operate under the assumption
> that the "caste system" sprang into being fully-formed all at once.  But
> should it be so? Bhagavan said chaturvarNya mayA sR^iSTam but did He only
> do it once? Prehistoric man lived in small nomadic tribal units.  As they
> settled down, at differing rates they coalesced into larger units around
> the common culture we call Vedic which they entered into at different
> conceptual places.  From this perspective, Jatis are not the product of
> fissioning varnas.  Varnas are the amalgamation of uniting jatis.
>

Dear Jaldhar ji,

We had occasion to cite the Bh.Gita bhashya of Shankaracharya for the verse
3. १०:

सहयज्ञाः यज्ञसहिताः प्रजाः *त्रयो वर्णाः ताः सृष्ट्वा उत्पाद्य पुरा
पूर्वंसर्गादौ
*उवाच उक्तवान् प्रजापतिः प्रजानां स्रष्टा अनेन यज्ञेन प्रसविष्यध्वं प्रसवः
वृद्धिः उत्पत्तिः तं कुरुध्वम्। एष यज्ञः वः युष्माकम् अस्तु भवतु
इष्टकामधुक् इष्टान् अभिप्रेतान् कामान् फलविशेषान् दोग्धीति इष्टकामधुक्।

Also there is the Purusha sUkta utterance: ब्राह्मणोऽस्य मुखमासीत्, बाहू
राजन्यः कृतः, ऊरू तदस्य वैश्यः, पद्भ्यां शूद्रो अजायत which Shankara cites
in the BG verse 4.13 referred by you://  Bhagavan said chaturvarNya mayA
sR^iSTam but did He only do it once? //

From the two bhashya-s of Shankara put together we get an affirmative
answer to your question.

From the above it is clear that all the three varNa-s for whom Vedic rites
are prescribed were created 'at once'.  The view that man lived in tribal
units and then coalesced....is not in tune with the above bhashya.  Also,
the common culture we call Vedic had to have existed even before this
coalescing took place.  It had to have been in practice by people even
before such coalescing took place.  The intellectual evolution is also not
admitted by the traditional Acharyas.  For them, the society consisting of
all the varNas (jaatis) has existed at the very beginning of the creation.

regards
subrahmanian.v

>
> On the whole I don't think you can extract much history from mythology.
> the purpose of the shastras is to illumine dharma and accurate historical
> details are not the priority.  Ongoing DNA and archaeological research is
> likely to be more fruitful.
>
>