Mira
First things first - I agree to disagree here.
Just one thing about your first point - I agree that dating Hindu scriptures to trace it to its original time of creation is extremely difficult, and that the oral tradition does leave much room for error. In that sense, I agree that a lot of things that are today printed as being written by either Valmiki or Vyasa may not have been there in the original. From that pov, it is good to have a healthy skepticism about whether a certain incident is true just b'cos the available versions of 'original' texts have it.
However, that's completely different from accepting latter day accounts of the same topics, none of which state their sources. It's like let's say there was a car accident in the streets and police, after doing the arrests and everything, took eyewitness accounts of what happened. Now, it may turn out later that some or most or even all of those eyewitness accounts turn out to be unreliable, or downright fabricated.
But in such a case, the police would have to investigate further based on other clues. But one thing you can be sure they'll never do - they'll never visit people who were nowhere near the scene of the accident and ask them what happened, and use their testimony. They'd be laughed out of court if they did that. So the question of whether the eyewitnesses were reliable or not is irrelevant to the fact that people who were not eyewitnesses can not have the facts on the ground.
It's a similar situation here. Scholars would have to trace back as early as possible to find out what the original scriptures actually said, as well as what actually happened. But regardless of what they find out, I'd still say that what mediaeval texts say about them has no chance of being accurate. Much less serials that were done in the 60s to the 80s.
It would be one thing if we were just discussing Grimm fairy tales, or Hans Christian Anderson's or even Disney's. But these stories also influence religious practices, and in many cases define not just religious traditions, but also day to day living. So if some of the latter day versions are problematic, either for being misogynic or other negative attributes, they deserve to be discredited by more 'authentic' ones. Authentic as in - this was written at the time the characters being described existed, and not thousands of years later.
Edited by .Vrish. - 13 years ago
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