Book Review: History, Linguistics & Anthropology

The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World
by J. P. Mallory
Oxford University Press (Amazon)
Published 2006

Basel in the Age of Burckhardt: A Study in Unseasonable Ideas
by Lionel Gossman
Princeton University Press (Amazon)
Published 2002

Tristes Tropiques
by Claude Levi-Strauss (Amazon)


If I had to hold the American higher education answerable for a single sin, it would be the proliferation of academic specialization in the "social sciences." First of all, "social sciences" ain't science. Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Fenyman once said of "social sciences", "When I want to say something about physics I go to my lab, come up with ways to test my ideas, then have those ideas reviewed according to universally accepted standards (i.e. "the scientific method") It's not like that with social science, where they just say "Well I say it's so because I say so."

The bottom line is that all social sciences is more or less the discipline of "history." You can parse it up however you want but it's all dealing with the same idea system. I think it's important to traverse those lines of academic discipline, since those walls/divisions are essentially bullshit designed to support the institution of tenure in universities.

After reading Doinger's The Hindus: An Alternative History (Amazon) and the much, much older book by MacDonnell about Sanskrit literature (Amazon)(Doinger's book was published this year, MacDonnel's book in 1900) I really wanted to learn more about the links between Sanskrit/Greek/Latin/German/Spanish/English/Hindi (they all come from the same language called "proto-indo-european.) It's an area of study that is full of crack pots (like Adolf Hitler ha ha!) so I wanted something that was as sober as possible. I ended up shelling out $50 for the very-imposing Oxford text-book on the subject.

When it showed up the "The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World" looked as imposing as the title sounds. Plain green cover, about six hundred pages plus. But my doubts were allayed by what is just objectively interesting material. In a lot of ways, linguistics delivers the kind of insight that other "modern" social-sciences disciplines like history and anthropology can only hope to match. So it turned out that this linguistic text book was actually the most interesting book I've read in several years. I mean, we're talking about the language spoken by 7 of the top 10 languages in the world. Including English, Spanish, French, German, Latin, Greek, Russian, Hindi, Urdu. Think about that for a second. About the world. All these people speak a language derived from one distinct culture that existed a little more then 5000 years ago, either in south east europe or central asia/Caucasus. You're talking about the ancient myths of the Norse, the Romans, Ancient Greece, Ancient Sanskrit. That's pretty much all of it.

It's mind blowing material, but the sober, sober, sober presentation takes you down from the edge of madness.

Moving from the beginning of time to 19th century Switzerland, Lionel Gossman's "Basel in the Age of Burckhardt: A Study in Unseasonable Ideas" is a recent fairly straight-forward intellectual history of the Swiss/German-speaking city of Basel, Switzerland. Although the title only references the historian Jacob Burckhardt, the book also focuses on Johann Jacob Bachofen (who actually is the focus of the book) and a philosopher you might have heard of... Friedrich Nietzsche? All three taught at the University of Basel- the first two were older the Nietzsche, and both were more/less "forgotten" as supposed to Nietzsche, who is read by every idiot in the whole wide world. Both Burckhardt and Bachofen wrote about the Ancient World (Greece and Rome) and both articulated a profound critique of "modern culture." Burckhardt is, in many ways, the founder of what we now call "art history" He pretty much "invented" the idea of the Renaissance as we understand it today. Bachofen was the progenitor of the "mother right" theory which postulates that originally matriarchal cultures were replaced by patriarchy. This fact is little known in the west, since little of his work was even translated into english until the 1960s. The theory itself has been discredited and to a certain extent rehabilitated, often without even referencing Bachofen.

But Unseasonable Ideas does a profound job of contextualizing their writing as well as linking both to Nietzsche. Like Oxford's Proto Indo European book, I felt like Unseasonable Ideas was first rate intellectual history and well worth the effort.

Finally I read "Tristes Tropiques" by Claude Levi Strauss. I randomly bought this book at a thrift store in Lemon Grove because it was a dollar and looked like something I should probably have available. I know about Levi-Strauss in a vague way- that he is associated with something called "structural anthropology." I lucked out, because as I found out later, alot of his stuff in ponderous french theory a la Derrida et al- and I hate that crap. But Tristes Tropiques is his first book and it has a breezy, anecdotal tone- sort of. The style, frankly, reminded me of Foucault. Levi Strauss is comfortable with making broad generalizations. To call his methods "anthropology" is to deprive the term of any scientific meaning, but he also packs observational and explanatory punch in his writing. Levi Strauss also inserts some chapters based on this experience teaching/travelling in India/Pakistan to fully explicate the title/thesis of the book "Tristes Tropiques" or "sad tropics."

To me, the essential point of this book is that the whole idea of the "noble savage" "state of nature" "natural law" is total bullshit. Even with the most primitive peoples, you find highly developed spiritual and religious ideas as well as complex cultural organization consistent with "civilization" in a broad sense. By working on this more broadly inclusive analytical level, Levi Strauss links his work (written in the 1950s) with writers like Rousseau, Voltaire, Burckhardt, Bachofen, Nietzche, Marx, Hegel, etc. That broadly expansive tone was carried forward by writers like Habermas and, to a lesser degree, Foucault.

So I doubt I'll EVER read Levi-Strauss again- who has the time for theory, you know? But Tristes Tropiques is an easy enough book to read (hint: skip the first eight chapters!) once you get to the "field work." I imagine Levi-Strauss, cigarette in hand, muttering to himself in french about the dreadfulness of the mosquitos. I think alot of people interpret this book as being "anti-modern" or in some way being a precursor of "politically correct" thought, but I think such observations are meritless. He's more a theorist then an anthropologist.

This is all to say that you can hop between these so-called "disciplines"- like linguistics, anthropology and european history/intellectual history, and follow the same stream of thought- which more or less originates in the work of Hegel and the 18th century French philosphes and moves forward through the rise of the university of Berlin, through Basel and then continuing into Paris and Frankfurt in modern times. Then there is a separate anglo/american tradition- and that is what focuses so much on dividing books into different "specialities." And it's ridiculous- it's much easier to follow the European stuff, because it holds onto the philosophy/history roots and eschews the hyper-technical psuedo-scientific bullshit that plagues American "social scientists."

Let the Stereogum Commenting on Wavves Meltdown Commence

Stereogum

Photograph of Au Revoir Simone

What is blog love?

Defining "Blog Love"

One of the oft-observed phenomenons of the Pitchfork model of the music industry is the relationship between amateur music enthusiasts and personal computing technology. Certainly, consumers of popular music have been enthusiasts since before the emergence of the modern "music industry": For example, salons in ancien regime europe. However, the expansion of the music industry via recorded music has created more enthusiasts. Some sub-groups include: archivists, artist specific "super fans," those who produce recorded music for consumption outside of the "music industry" proper, people who write about music for mass and niche audiences. It's hard to imagine a "zine" of the classical period. Likewise, the idea of a group of people who enjoy historical recorded music is unthinkable without recorded music itself.

Thus when looking at "blog love" you are talking about three aspects: 1. popularization of non-"music industry" sponsored artists to a niche audience of fellow amateur music enthusiasts. 2. Proliferation and duplication of recordings outside the monetary cycle of the "music industry." 3. Impact of amateur music enthusiast selection on the promotion of acts to "music industry" involved status.

The rise of blogs as always involved the active participation of industry professionals.. This relationship is one that is fraught with conflict, particularly within the blogging community itself. However, any rational analysis of any facts at any stage of history shows that the overlap between amateur music enthusiasts and music industry professionals can be expressed in the simple statement that "people don't get jobs in the music industry without first being fans of music." It's the same way that ushers in a theater tend to be fans of theater.

You can also observe this phenomenon at a surface level as venues for amateur music enthusiasm become incorporated into the music industry proper. Such is already the case for many "first tier" properties. Of course, such a relationship is neither an infiltration nor a perversion, but rather the "point" of the enterprise existing in its current form.

Such activity has also spawned secondary and tertiary lairs of purely amateur bloggers- lying outside major media centers and having no professional relationship with music. Such sources are considered targets of criticism by first tier blogs. In a social grouping sense, it is analgous to the relationship between first and second wave student radicals during the anti-vietnam war movement. First wave leaders were mostly east coast elite white males who were already tracked for "government" work; second wave leaders tended do be more diverse both in terms of class, gender and geographic location. (Todd Gitlin)

In terms of quantifying it numerically, you just identify your categories (bands, artists, labels) and count recurrences. Every source of "blog love" can be quantified in terms of repetition, just as "radio spins" are used as the criteria for certain music industry charts. Thus any act can can be assigned a number, and those numbers can be compared. Most acts are at "0" as an absolute, i.e. they have no blog love. Many acts get to "one" or "two" in that they are mentioned by one blog but not "picked up" by others. As acts rise in recurrence, they are more likely to be influence by music industry professionals. While there is a strong correlation between "blog love" and music industry involvement (both inside and outside the "blog world") there is a weaker to non-existent correlation between blog love and general public interest. Thus, many successful artists receive little or zero "blog love" but are popular with the general public due either to savvy music industry involvement.

Greatest Hits: First Crocodiles Show, Soft Pack 05 27 2008

JFCD came down for the memorial day weekend- and he brought "Rock Band" the video game with him. All I have to say about Rock Band is that being the drummer is super tough, and the other two instruments are easy.

On saturday night we went to the Brick by Brick to see the first third of the Crocodiles/Maps & Atlases/ Foals line up. Crocodiles is the new project of Brandon Welchez(ex-Prayers) and Chuck Rowland (ex-Prayers, ex-Some Girls). They've got the whole two piece thing going. Two pieces; so hot right now! Basically, Brandon sings and Chuck plays guitar and operates the keyboard/drum machine. It's a simple set up, and the music sounds quite like you would expect- the Prayers with a drum machine; although one of their songs had the hint of something more grandiose and majestic about it- comparisons were being bandied about to Spiritualized.

There was a good crowd on hand, enough to give the mausoleum-like Brick by Brick some life.

After that we headed down to the enormous cluster fuck that was the Muslims/Booty Bassment Ivy Hotel. Our group took one look at the line- in terms of who was IN LINE more then the length of the line itself, and decided against it. I would like to mention that the last time I went to the Gaslamp, it was for Switch and the promoter, Barry Weaver, put me on the "guest list." I went to the front door of the Stingaree, and there was a dude with a clipboard, and I was like "hey- I'm on the list" and he looked at his clipboard and crossed my name off and I went inside.

On the other hand, the list was fake and everyone was on it, so it was total bullshit. Fake lists suck! Promoters should indicate that when they make the "hit me up for the list" posts or what not "This list is FAKE and you WON'T BE ABLE TO GET IN." But man it was crazy packed down there.

Instead of douching it at the Ivy we went to No Kontrol at the Whistle Stop where, unfortunately, it was all 60s soul. I have nothing against 60s soul as an element of a larger mix, but a whole night of soul? It sounded like my Mom's Volvo circa 1987. Specifically, the Big Chill soundtrack. But it was a good size crowd and people were into and such; with the dancing and the what not. Just not my "cup of tea" as they say. (CAT DIRT SEZ)

Pitchfork Describes "Epic" Wavves Melt Down in Barcelona

Gorilla v. Bear polaroid

Pitchfork: Barcelona Wavves Melt Down. Let the hateful Stereogum comments commence...

Stan Van Gundy is a Hero

How great is America that Stan Van Gundy can be coaching in the NBA's Eastern Conference Championship? Stan Van Gundy is an American hero.

Photograph of the Rolling Stone San Diego Article

What's funny is that is going to be followed with photos/articles in Fader and Spin... this month? or next.... See Mario's distinctive german army jacket? Lady GaGa is on the cover.

Terrorist Attack... Inside Iran?

TEHRAN (Reuters) - An explosion at a prominent Shi'ite Muslim mosque in the southeast Iranian city of Zahedan on Thursday killed 30 people and wounded 60, the semi-official news agency ILNA reported.

The agency said the blast was a suicide bombing but no person or group had claimed responsibility.

Provincial Governor Ali Mohammad Azad was quoted as saying a "terrorist group" had been arrested but only one person was behind the explosion in the city.

(RUETERS)

WeeKEND Events!

Looks like another weekend of "not going out" ha ha. You know, being a music blogger isn't about going to shows, it's about writing paragraph length descriptions of newish artists and uploading mp3's.


THURSDAY (or "Thors Day" in the Norse) 05 28

Dueling Pianos at 710 Beach Club (10p-close): Haven't made it to dueling pianos @ 710 Beach Club yet- but I will... I will...

Citizen Video Local Film Fest Volume 5 at the Whistlestop




FRIDAY ("Frey's Day" in the Norse)05 29

Dane Cook at San Diego Sports Arena: Dane Cook is this reallllyyy funny stand up comedian. If you haven't seen him- check him out!






SATURDAY 05 30

St. Vincent, Pattern is Movement(!) at the Casbah (Early Show, Doors 5:30p): Whoop-whoop it's the sound of indie blogger nation. Bloggers love St. Vincent. And I love kinda-awkward white girls.

Hotel St. George, Fever Sleeves, Team Abraham, Satellite Crush(Los Angeles, CA) at the Soda Bar: Official "scene heat check" of the week.



SUNDAY 05 31

Fleetwood Mac Unleashed: Hits Tour 2009 at San Diego Sports Arena
Dueling Pianos at 710 Beach Club

! = beard alert

City Beat Article on Early San Diego DIY Scene

I am after all, a history buff. (San Diego City Beat)

Rand(om) Band Photos

This is- I think? Insects v. Robots and/or their fans. I get the sense that they are west side la.



Religious Girls are coming to San Diego 06 21 @ Too Many Creeps w/ Mario Orduno et al (Whistlestop):



Neon Navaho Smell band Los Angeles, CA. I'm not sure if this a "band photo" or not:



Oh the Soft Pack:



San Diego's The Tighten Ups. A class act:



Jail Weddings from Los Angeles, CA. IDK:



The Dabbers from San Diego, CA.:

Photo: Sade Williams/​www.​sweditorial.​com

The one NOT wearing a bikini top is a local San Diego DJ:



Ugh:

CD Review: Music of Indonesia 12: Gongs And Vocal Music From Sumatra (Smithsonian Folkways)

Music Of Indonesia 12:
Gongs And Vocal Music From Sumatra
Smithsonian Folkways
(1996)(AMAZON)

I was thinking "Sheesh where do I start?" about accessing music from the "east"- not China. Then I was like "Indonesia": huge, diverse, melding of different religions/indigenous cultures over time. The Smithsonian Folkways "Music of Indonesia" series has at least 18 entries: Vol. 18 "Sulawesi -- Festivals, Funerals, Work." I knew I wanted to stay away from vocals and that I like gongs/percussion so I settled on Music of Indonesia 12: Gongs and Vocal Music From Sumatra.


The album is presented with three different ethnic groups represented. The first and third groups feature predominantly gongs/percussion, while the middle group, the Gayo from Aceh, have more tedious vocal based arrangements. I don't want to be a hater on Indonesian/West Sumatran vocals but I've heard enough Native American chanting to last a life time, thank you.

The best tracks on Music of Indonesia 12 have an almost techno-y or even drum and bass feel to them. The BPM rate is hard and the percussion is complex and interesting. The deeper gongs are used as a kind of sonic punctuation. While I originally expected to view this record as a novelty, I find that the more complex percussion driven tracks are as interesting as the latest Gui Buratto tracks, so to speak.

"Street Justice" in the news

"This is not a gang shooting," Castleton said. "The defendant didn't kill Terrel Milam because they were in different gangs. They were, but that was not the motivation."

"This is a case about justice," he added, "a justice that takes place on the streets." Street justice led to man's execution, prosecutors say.

(Seattle Post Intelligencer)

Street Justice (wiki): Carl Weathers TV Show?!?

flyerzzzzzzz

Let's start it off w/ tonight's locals (Beaters + Spirit Photography + Mark Lewis) + Julian Lynch spectacular:





This one is... disturbing... Bay Area show?



London indie lives on- check out Sex is Disgusting Records if you haven't already. Cold Cave is Wes from Some Girls/Pete Wentz's Wallet.



Golden Red CD release yay...



LA/Smell/Hipster blargh




Citizen Video is not a band per se but I want to support their shit:



The Coathangers in Portland at the end of June:



Another cool looking show @ the East End in Portland, Ore:



Rhinceropolis = cool (all ages) venue in Denver Co FYI.



Non-Smell LA pysch hipster in Venice, CA:

Soft Pack Playing Glastonbury

Glastonbury Festival line-up.

Zoo Exhibit Review: Elephant Odyssey @ The San Diego Zoo

Zoos suck, but i still go.

Zoos do not have a sympathetic history. Whether you're talking the grand vizer's pleasure garden in ancient babylon, the "lion v. shark" fights of ancient Rome, the 18th century collections of European Royals or the American public Zoo of the 20th century, you are talking about a place where humans place animals on display for the amusement of their fellow humans. Typically, cages and confined space are coupled with... well... being put on display. Perhaps the best thing that can be said for zoos is that they are less evil then other amusements and that they can be useful for inculcating children with environmentalist values. But seriously, is there anything sadder then an elephant in a cage?

So yeah, they did a pretty good job of getting the elephant exhibit up to snuff from a "let's justify zoos from an environmentalist stand-point" but we're still talking elephants in cages. In America, in the 20th century, people were displayed in Zoos. Think about that for a second.

SAN DIEGO — The Sheriff's Department will be the first law enforcement agency in California to use a comprehensive system designed to streamline the identification and deportation of criminal illegal immigrants, officials announced Tuesday.

Under the new program that begins today, called “Secure Communities,” every person booked into jail throughout San Diego County will be screened to determine his or her criminal and immigration history, said Lauren Mack, spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“It starts the process rolling right at the intake,” Mack said.

Fingerprints that are already routinely taken during the booking process will now be checked simultaneously with the fingerprint identification systems of the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, which should reveal prior criminal and immigration history.

Previously, these fingerprints were checked only against the Justice Department's database for criminal records, Mack said.

Immigration authorities, as well as the law enforcement agency that makes an arrest, are automatically notified within a few hours if there is a match in both systems, reducing the risk that a criminal immigrant will be released back into the community.

(SD UT)

Music Events This Week(day) in San Diego CA.

This is a "wave form."


It's already Tuesday? That's crazy!

Back in 2006 I was talking to Rodney- he used to do sound at the Sports Club, then he did sound at the Beauty Bar & now he does sound at the Soda Bar. This was during an early GOP show I think and we were talking about "the scene" and he said "It moves in waves." And I kind of shrugged and was like, "I guess." But he was right for sure. Music enthusiast interest def. moves in waves, both to individual's and as to the group as well. As I suppose, does artist activity- although there is some reason to think that they might move independently in some cases, they probably move close together or artist activity precedes enthusiast interest. What's interesting here is that neither the general public or the music industry are involved at all. Those two interest levels do not "move in waves." If you think about two wave forms: one is "amateur music enthusiast interest level" and two is "artist activity level," and they occupy the same space on a graph, you can imagine "music industry activity" as a straight line far, far above the two wave forms- so far above that they look like straight lines. And then far, far above that music industry line, you have "general public interest level,"


05 26 San Diego, CA. The Soda Bar: Basshaters, Peninsula Project, Swanwelder: This is the most interesting show going on tonight. It's all experimental noise. You should check out this show while you can, because if they don't draw there won't be more of them.

05 27 San Diego, CA. The Soda Bar: Beaters, Spirit Photography, Julian Lynch, Mark Lewis: Four bands on a Wednesday night ho-boy. Hopefully this show starts on the early side. I know when I show up at 10 PM on a Wednesday night for a four band bill and no one is playing, my heart sinks and I'm like "Oh well." But this is the four-star must see bill of the week. Spirit Photography & Beaters are both local winners; Julian Lynch is touring and Mark Lewis is friends with Spirit Photography, so he's probably cool, too.

Also check out the myspace page of SD Noise. But is it music?

San Diego Gets Ready for Medical Marijuana Cards!

With the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal last week to consider San Diego County's lawsuit against state medical-marijuana laws, local officials appear poised to begin offering identification cards to qualified patients.

Steve Walter, who oversees the narcotics unit for District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, said storefront dispensaries are not allowed. Walter said the demise of the county's lawsuit will not change much.

“I have yet to see (a dispensary or collective) that does comply with the attorney general's guidelines,” Walter said. “I have yet to see one that doesn't make a profit.”

The state guidelines allow marijuana suppliers to charge enough money to recover their costs. They also encourage counties to develop more specific local rules governing medical marijuana.

(SD UT)

Show Review: Sunday Times, Roxy Jones, Pizza! & Northern Towns

I read all about the proto indo european language this weekend- I'll have to tell about it sometime. Next Sunday, maybe.

Junior Metro (ex-Fifty on Their Heels) has a new band and it's called Sunday Times. Sunday Times was the focal point of a mixed local bill at the Soda Bar on Friday night, and I wanted to make some observations.

Soda Bar: Hard to argue with the sound system, management or the crowd. Friday night's gathering was mixed-hipster, "tough guy" with a smattering of normal folks who cleared out early. Later on in the night the bar area was dominated by mixed guy/girl groups and a large tough guy group w/ at least one member who might have actually done some real prison time. The physical layout of the stage splits the crowd into two groups- which is different for sure.

Pizza!: They used to be called "The New Motherfuckers" in a past life. They were/are a cool group that sound like "early talking heads." They also produce- for example Tyler did the new Abe Vigoda EP. They played a good set and the crowd was into it. They are always fun to have around.

Roxy Jones: This is Peter Graves (booker of Soda Bar band)- he sings and plays guitar. I had expected it would be soft indie type stuff but it was instead fairly raw, angry rock-flavored indie- hints of the Replacements or Bob Mould. That kind of style. Roxy is dropping a 7" sooner or later this year so that's something to watch out for.

Sunday Times: This is the new Junior Metro project. They'd played a couple of times around town but I'd held off so as to give them more time to form up the sound. Sunday Times sounds... more clash-y and less buzzcock-y but if you dug Fifty on Their Heels you'll like Sunday Times, too. On the other hand, if you hated Fifty on Their Heels, this is also not going to be something you like.

Northern Town: Opening band; showed up 20 minutes late ("We were recording") played a spirited set that sounded like they listen to a lot of the Clash (Who doesn't?) and reminded me quite literally of So So Glos with so cal Ska bros instead of Brooklyn hipsters. They had some fans out. They left after their set.

Book Reviews: The Cultural Histories of the Hindus

I've been thinking a lot about the Indian sub-continent recently. I've been following... Indian election results (Go Congress Party!) and trying to figure out what the biggest newspaper in "Hindustan" is. But that process was slowed/delayed because I didn't know fact one about Hinduism. How can you understand India or the sub-continent region without understanding Hinduism? Impossible.


First I read the just-published "revisionist" culture history by University of Chicago Sanskrit Professer Wendy Doinger. Her work is called (accurately The Hindus: An Alternative History (Amazon) This book is exactly what you'd expect from a white lady working at the University of Chicago: Super intelligent, and not into propagating received ideas about the "meaning" of beliefs. So if you're a fan of Elaine Pagels or Camille Paglia or even Naomi Wolf you might enjoy this book even if you don't care about Hinduism. Sure, it's 700 pages, but it's worth it- if only to get to her breakdown of Trantra-cism. That's a spicy meatball!

Doinger's basic method is that she looks at parts of texts that have been deemed less important "historically" by other (male) scholars. Unlike Christianity's Bible, Hinduism has no one text that serves as the source of religious knowledge. Rather, there are hundreds, even thousands of important texts that were created other thousands of years, thousands of miles apart from one another. If you're a "revisionist" style historian (is there any other kind, now?) it's pretty, ahem, fertile ground.

After finishing The Hindus: An Alternative Hindus, Sophie bought me the Indian Art (Oxford History of Art) by Partha Mitter from the museum in NYC. That was a little museum paperback- recently updated with good photos but pretty short. From Indian Art I learned that when you are talking about "Indian Art" you are pretty much talking about temple architecture. Unlike Muslim art, there are representations of narrative scenes and in fact it is the proliferation of detail that is the exemplary quality of "Indian Art." Crowd scenes with hundred of monkeys- that is the stuff that Indian Art is made of.

After reading those two books randomly back-to-back I thought "What's the deal with the all the literature?" You're not talking Old Testament/New Testament with India. Also there is basically no literature EXCEPT religious literature for 2000+ years. I typed "Sanskrit Literature" into Amazon and found A History of Sanskrit Literature by Aurthur A. Macdonnell. Even though this book was written in 1900 I thought it was great- if only because the age meant that the complexity level was low. There is no way around the statement that "Sanskrit literature is difficult to fully grasp." First of all- it goes way, way, way back- way beyond the Greek texts (or Persian texts), so we're talking about the common linguistic ancestor of English, Spanish, German, Greek, etc. Second of all, "Indians" were not that big into chronology or dating events, so it's hard to put one thing after the other "western history style." Third, there is no defined 'center' to the production of literature: these texts are generated all over the map- though north west India seems to be a focal point and finally, the texts are generated over thousands of years.

All that being said, MacDonnell does a more then capable job of putting me in the state of mind where I can order the Rigveda and know that I'm getting the foundational text in the field. I find it's pretty rewarding to read about this ancient culture that we have in common with everyone who speaks English, German, French, Spanish, Hindi, Parth, Urdu whatever. Unforutnately the Germans thought it was pretty cool too which is why we all cringe when we learn that this founding culture are often called "Aryans." Oops! Western Intellectual History gone wild.