Originally posted by: lola610
@ Sherlock - Thank you for raising a point that I often try to raise in discussions of the authenticity of various scriptures, but often to no avail. People often claim that the older the scripture, the more authentic it is, because that puts it closer chronologically to the actual incidents it is describing. But having read various articles about interpolations in currently available versions of Valmiki Ramayan (particularly Uttar Kand as you mentioned) and other texts from that era, I would say that the older the scripture, the more time human beings have had to tamper with it for various reasons, and the further back those interpolations can recede into society's memory so that by the time our generation comes along, we can no longer differentiate between what is authentic and what is inauthentic with certainty. Your list of scriptures that may and may not have been tampered with seems to support that view, and we are both clear in our assertion that we do NOT doubt the sages who originally authored the texts, but the generations of human beings who may have amended their works afterwards. So, in short, great post ;)
I'd make an analogy b/w the above and a crime scene. Let's say a hit & run happens on a street, and there are a couple of eyewitnesses who describe what's happened. They give their accounts to the cops, and then discuss it w/ their friends, who spread it around, and pass it off as theirs. In such an event, it's natural that the original account would keep getting distorted, and the probability of its accuracy reduces as time goes on.
But now, let's say that someone who was not at the crime scene and did not talk to the original witnesses comes up w/ an account of their own. Maybe months or years after the event. Has no way of revisiting the crime scene like Holmes (the original one) and checking for clues. Nonetheless, that someone goes ahead and writes something that's radically different from the witness's account, no matter whether first hand or 143,212,342th hand. In such a case, do we give this author credibility just b'cos the original eyewitness's account has been tampered w/?
The cops, if they were to revisit the case after those years, certainly wouldn't - they'd painstakingly re-examine the accounts of the original witness, if available, and if not, look at the derivative accounts of that witness's associates who spread the story. Even though those accounts would be distorted, that's what they would examine while reaching for the facts, not something that people totally not there made up months or years later.
Note that in the case of Ramayan, it has been used as a source for the actual history of what probably happened during the Vedic era, and in doing that, only Valmiki's account was used. I have no idea whether the works of Vaishistha were also available for review and analysis, but if they were, I'd suspect that they'd be used as well. However, latter works like Tulsidas, or even Vyasa, are never used for this purpose precisely b'cos they were not contemporaneous accounts of events. Yeah, some do prefer them due to their 'bhakti' content, which is fine, but it lacks that credibility of describing events that took place then, just like I'd lack credibility if I wrote my own account of the 1857 mutiny.
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