[Buddha-l] Jayarava's rave on the IE lingos

[Dan Lusthaus]

Joanna,


> What I wrote was: "...most warlike these days..." (emphasis on
> these days)

I'd challenge the claim on this reemphasized basis. It expresses a
misleading myth of our day, viz. that the most infernal and important and
entrenched conflict these days is over a tiny piece of real estate on the
eastern mediterranean -- a neat trick to distract from all the other
infernal, important, entrenched and endless conflicts elsewhere, of which
this particular one is only a recent joiner due to the ambience and
tradition of the neighborhood (that was Israel's initiation hazing into the
neighborhood; the day it was declared a state, five arab nations declared
war on it and attacked -- though the myth today might have you assume the
inverse). There have been interminable conflicts within, and especially on
the peripheries, of the Islamic world since Islam's inception (check your
Quran). As for linguistic basis, most Muslims from Iran eastward, speak IE
languages (Persian, Urdu, etc.), not semitic -- so the claim of linguistic
association to violence fails on that account as well.

As for Buddhist content, there is nothing more Buddhist than exposing false
myths for what they are.

Dan