Actually the first claim is more likely to be correct.
Gah, I should have been more mindful of chronology when I commented. I was also not as careful as I could have been and was drawing on a few things together: 1) I've heard somewhere speculation that there was more contact with India earlier than we realize, 2) your comment that Apollonius found the teachings of the Brahmans consistent, rather than surprising, and 3) the possible shared ancestry of belief you mention below.
I actually think that what we are looking at are the descendants of what was once a unified tradition common to the ancestors of the Indo-European peoples.
I also suspect this to be the case. If you do videos, Tom Rowsell at Survive the Jive has a really interesting mini-documentary on the likely very, very old Indo-European myths about the underworld (it's a watery place with a tree growing out of it, ruled by a woman and guarded by a dog), as well as some discussion of reincarnation. The video is made for a popular audience, and so is not as circumspect in some of its claims or thorough in some of its evidence as would be ideal, but Rowsell is actually a pretty careful historian, so I don't hold it against him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exlcT_iL9-U
Personally, I have very mixed feelings about the book, but the positive mostly wins out. Most of my negative feelings come from two things: 1) the organization is poor, making it harder to follow and find specific topics than it needs to be, as well as repeating stuff, 2) Kvilhaug is a pantheist and believes that all Goddesses are basically reflections of one Goddess, who is also just a manifestation of an undifferentiated divinity. This means that she is excellent at finding parallels/similarities between myths or figures, but also means that sometimes she smooshes stuff together that I think warrants being distinct.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2023-11-24 04:24 pm (UTC)Gah, I should have been more mindful of chronology when I commented. I was also not as careful as I could have been and was drawing on a few things together: 1) I've heard somewhere speculation that there was more contact with India earlier than we realize, 2) your comment that Apollonius found the teachings of the Brahmans consistent, rather than surprising, and 3) the possible shared ancestry of belief you mention below.
I actually think that what we are looking at are the descendants of what was once a unified tradition common to the ancestors of the Indo-European peoples.
I also suspect this to be the case. If you do videos, Tom Rowsell at Survive the Jive has a really interesting mini-documentary on the likely very, very old Indo-European myths about the underworld (it's a watery place with a tree growing out of it, ruled by a woman and guarded by a dog), as well as some discussion of reincarnation. The video is made for a popular audience, and so is not as circumspect in some of its claims or thorough in some of its evidence as would be ideal, but Rowsell is actually a pretty careful historian, so I don't hold it against him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exlcT_iL9-U
Interesting! What's the name of her book?
The one I'm reading now is The Seed of Yggdrasill, which I've been reviewing over on my blog as I read it. Here's the latest, with links to the earlier pieces: https://jpowellrussell.com/#book_the_seed_of_yggdrasill_6_ragnarok_and_the_new_age
Personally, I have very mixed feelings about the book, but the positive mostly wins out. Most of my negative feelings come from two things: 1) the organization is poor, making it harder to follow and find specific topics than it needs to be, as well as repeating stuff, 2) Kvilhaug is a pantheist and believes that all Goddesses are basically reflections of one Goddess, who is also just a manifestation of an undifferentiated divinity. This means that she is excellent at finding parallels/similarities between myths or figures, but also means that sometimes she smooshes stuff together that I think warrants being distinct.