[Buddha-l] One Buddhist's perspective on Zionism

[Michel Clasquin]

Stephen Hodge wrote:
> Well, surpringly, perhaps not true in the case of the Anglo-Saxons -- 
> the evidence is just not there.  There is a growing view amongst 
> respectable archeologists here that there was no Anglo-Saxon "invasion" 
> of these isles, just a cultural and linguistic shift adopted by the 
> natives here after the collapse of Rome as a significant imperial 
> power.

Interesting, that is a perspective I have not come across. I would like 
to hear more before I make up my mind, but moving from a mixed 
Latin/Celtic linguistic setup to a Germanic one? Why would they do that 
unless there were native Germanic-speakers around whose high social 
status made it worthwhile to emulate them?

It is true that languages can "invade" an area even if the number of 
"invading" speakers is small. English is still an official language of 
India, and arguably one of the few things that keeps that country 
together. But then, there *were* English-speaking invaders in India, and 
while there were never very many of them, they managed to grab the 
high-status niches so successfully that their language continued to have 
high status even after they left.

Here in Africa, literally hundreds of languages exist, but you can get 
around 90% of the continent with English, French, Portuguese and Arabic. 
Colonial languages, all of them.

Or, to cite a less extreme case, the Norman invasion did not replace 
English with French, but it did add thousands of French loan-words to 
the English vocabulary. The Normans were a tiny minority, but they were 
a high-status minority. So their influence lives on.

Of course, the same sort of argument pops up in David Frawley's 
asssertion that Sanskrit evolved in India and did not enter the area 
with Indo-Germanic "invaders" from the steppes (Phew! Some vaguely 
on-topic content at last)

But in the British case it should be easy enough to test it with 
mitochondrial DNA. If English DNA is more closely related to West 
Europeans than to that of the Welsh, (after discounting later Danish 
influence), then there must have been an large-scale invasion. If not, 
then not. Has such testing been done?

Michel
-- 
"Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so."
-- Bertrand Russell