David Frawley

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David Frawley (or Vāmadeva Śāstrī वामदेव शास्त्री) is an author on Hinduism, Yoga and Ayurveda, and the founder and director of the American Institute for Vedic Studies in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which offers courses on Yoga philosophy, Ayurveda, and Hindu astrology. He is also a Professor of Vedic Astrology and Ayurveda at the unaccredited[1] International Vedic Hindu University [2], besides being a Vaidya (Ayurvedic doctor), and a Jyotishi (Vedic astrologer).[3]

[edit] Biography

Frawley was born in 1950 into a Catholic family in La Crosse, Wisconsin, United States. He was the second of ten children: the first and he and another were boys, the rest girls. He attended a Catholic school until he was about ten years old. After that he and his family moved to Denver, Colorado.[citation needed]

As an American Hindu, Frawley is one of the few Westerners to be recognized by a major Hindu sect in India as a Vedacharya or teacher of the ancient wisdom.

He had first contact with Hindu writings about 1970 and after that got more interested in the Vedas

He learned Sanskrit from a Sanskrit grammar and a copy of the Vedas: as a result he learned Sanskrit the difficult way (Vedic first).

In 1991, under the auspices of the Hindu teacher Avadhuta Shastri, he was named Vamadeva Shastri (वामदेव शास्‍त्री), after the great Vedic rishi Vamadeva [3].

In 1995, he was given the title of Pandit along with the Brahmachari Vishwanathji award in Mumbai for his knowledge of the Vedic teaching.

In 1996 he received the Brahmachari Vishwanathji Award in Mumbai: this recognized him a a Pandit and Dharmacharya.

Frawley founded and is the director of the American Institute for Vedic Studies in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Through his institute, he offers courses on Yoga philosophy, Hindu astrology (jyotisha), and Ayurveda. In addition to directing his institute, he conducts major lecture tours in India every year, delivering talks at universities, Hindu conferences, and to the general public.

[edit] Works

In 2000, he published his memoirs, How I Became a Hindu, in which he details his own spiritual journey from his earlier Catholic upbringing to finally embracing Hinduism as his religion.

Three of his works Arise Arujuna, Awaken Bharat, and Hinduism and the Clash of Civilizations have been often cited as highly influential foundational works responsible for the Hindu revival currently being witnessed both in India and worldwide[citation needed]. He has pleaded for a return to the teachings of the Vedas, interpreting these ancient texts as great sources of wisdom. His approach to ancient India stresses its spirituality.

In books such as The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India and In Search of the Cradle of Civilization, Frawley criticizes the 19th century racial interpretations of Indian prehistory, such as the theory of a conflict between invading caucasoid Aryans and Dravidians.[4]

"There is no racial evidence", according to Frawley, "of any such Indo-Aryan invasion of India but only of a continuity of the same group of people who traditionally considered themselves to be Aryans."[5]

[edit] Reception

Edwin Bryant writes that Frawley's work is more successful in the popular arena, to which it is directed and where its impact "is by no means insignificant", rather than in academic study.[6]

In a series of exchanges published in The Hindu, Michael Witzel rejects Frawley's linking of Vedic literature with the Harappan civilisation and a claimed lost city in the Gulf of Cambay, as misreading Vedic texts, ignoring or misunderstanding other evidence and motivated by antiquity frenzy. Witzel argues that Frawley's proposed "ecological approach" to and "innovative theories" of the history of ancient India amount to propagating currently popular indigenist ideas.[7]

Bruce Lincoln attributes autochthonous ideas such as Frawley's to "parochial nationalism", terming them "exercises in scholarship ( = myth + footnotes)", where archaeological data spanning several millennia is selectively invoked, with no textual sources to control the inquiry, in support of the theorists' desired narrative.[8]

[edit] Partial bibliography

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ The IVHU is not listed in the U.S. Department of Education Database of Accredited Postsecondary Institutions and Programs or the Council for Higher Education Accreditation Database of Institutions Accredited By Recognized U.S. Accrediting Organizations.
  2. ^ http://hua.edu/faculty/
  3. ^ a b Dr. David Frawley Information infobuddhism.com.
  4. ^ Arvidsson 2006:298 Arvidsson, Stefan (2006), Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, translated by Sonia Wichmann, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
  5. ^ Frawley, David. http://www.stephen-knapp.com/solid_evidence_debunking_aryan_invasion.htm
  6. ^ Edwin Bryant (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate. Oxford University Press, 291. ISBN 0195137779. 
  7. ^ David Frawley (June 18, 02), Vedic literature and the Gulf of Cambay discovery, The Hindu, <http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/op/2002/06/18/stories/2002061800030200.htm> ; M. Witzel (June 25, 2002), A maritime Rigveda? — How not to read ancient texts, The Hindu, <http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/op/2002/06/25/stories/2002062500030200.htm> ; David Frawley (July 16, 2002), Witzel's vanishing ocean, The Hindu, <http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/op/2002/07/16/stories/2002071600070200.htm> ; Michael Witzel (August 6, 2002), Philology vanished: Frawley's Rigveda — I, The Hindu, <http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/op/2002/08/06/stories/2002080600070200.htm> ; Michael Witzel (August 13, 2002), Philology vanished: Frawley's Rigveda — II, The Hindu, <http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/op/2002/08/13/stories/2002081300020200.htm> ;David Frawley (August 20, 2002), Witzel's philology, The Hindu, <http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/op/2002/08/20/stories/2002082000120200.htm> .
  8. ^ Bruce Lincoln (1999). Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship. University of Chicago Press, 215. ISBN 0226482014. 

[edit] References

  • Arvidsson, Stefan (2006). Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, translated by Sonia Wichmann, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-02860-6. 
  • Nussbaum, Martha (2007). The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-02482-6. 

[edit] See also

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Hindu reform movements
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Writers

[edit] External links

[edit] Frawley on Indian history