"Start with the greeks" Why not start with the Rigveda Samhita?

"Start with the greeks" Why not start with the Rigveda Samhita?

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Cause it's not proper for a white man to engage with pooinloo literature.

It's actually better to read the Upanishads and Vedanta before the Vedas, because Upanishadic knowledge is implicitly and poetically expressed in parts of the Vedas, but if you haven't studied that kind of knowledge already you often won't be able to detect it or pick it out from the other hymns. But since Upanishads/Vedanta are pretty complex metaphysics it makes sense to 'cut one's teeth' on the Greeks first because they are much simpler and more accesible.

>some faggot casually blocking aristotle's way

I think that's /our guy/ Diogenes.

This is a literature forum not a philosophy one.
START WITH THE GREEKS MEANS HOMER HESIOD HERODOTUS THUCYDIDES XENOPHON AECHYLUS SOPHOCLES EURIPIDES ARISTOPHANES NOT JUST PLATO AMD ARISTOTLE.

Because there is no such thing as ‘world literature’. Literature comes to us in culturally specific traditions. While traditions do sometimes overlap, merge, or borrow, by and large they build on and make reference to a specific chain of literary and other artistic works, as well as the history and general intellectual culture of a society or related groups of society. All great works of literature are strongly situated in the history of their cultural tradition.

We start with the Greeks because they produced the earliest concrete written texts that have come down to us and have been influential in establishing a point of reference for all western literature. Everybody from Shakespeare to Lenin make references to the Greeks.

The simple fact is that while the Rigveda is far older and extremely important, it is not important in the development of western arts and culture. Your reading of the western literary tradition is not enriched substantially by starting with earlier religious texts.

Now if you were interested in developing an understanding in the poetry and literary arts of Indian and Asia in general, then of course that is where you should start. Your also have very little business reading much of anything by the Greeks for the simple fact that Homer and Sophocles were not widely translated and read in India.

There is no ‘world literature’, you can’t approach literature chronologically on a global scale. It’s just a fact that things are happening independently, and not influencing each other or building on each other so jumping from Tale of Ganji to 1001 Nights to Don Quixote doesn’t actually tell you anything about the development of literature. No single human ever read all three until the 19th century at the earliest.

So if you are studying western literature in something like chronological order, the correct time to read the Bagivate Gita is in the 1800s, because that’s the earliest point at which it started to influence *that* tradition of literature in a concrete and recognizable way.

This has nothing to do with any chauvinism. I have no opinions on any literary tradition being ‘better’ or worse than any other. I don’t think it’s wrong or pointless to dedicate yourself to studying the literature of east Asia or the Middle East, I just think that you will be more productive when you recognize the object you are actually studying (a literary tradition rather than “literature”).

Based greek starter

Why the heck did photography have to be invented so late, bros...It should have been the earliest of inventions...all the ancient glories which we'll never be able to see...I just want to know what Ancient Greece looked like...and what Plato's real appearance was...and all the rest of them...

Because the Greeks have superior literature.

>anticipate the fundamental discoveries of modern western philosophy by over 2000 years
>still have to shit in the street

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/thread

legitimately good effort-posting. good answer.
that being said, by your logic, shouldn't one start with the mesopotamians or sumerians? weren't the greeks also influenced by them?

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that's what makes us so based, though. we are a box of puzzles, a living juxtaposition of vulgarity and profundity, crudeness and complexity. in our right hand holding our sacred scriptures which contain the loftiest wisdom the world has known of, and in the left cleaning our rears with water. we baffle the westerner, who sees as us an exotic marvel, incomprehensible in nature. and so it should be.

i want to be as cute as Bubbles...

Based.

who is best powerpuff girl? i think Blossom is waifu

>Rigveda Samhita

Too alien. Trust me. I tried.
You can ease yourself into the Greeks. The same cannot be said of the Indians.

Can you summarize, in bullet-points, the main teachings of the Rigveda Samhita?

It is

>tfw no photos of Diogenes in his barrel
hold me, bros

Technically if you're going chronologically you should start with the Book of Genesis.

It’s a matter of what texts have come down to us, and what has gotten transmitted through the ages. I don’t know about the relationship between the Greeks and the Mesopotamians but I do know they were influenced by the Egyptians. The problem is that it’s not altogether obvious what specific texts this implies we should read from Egypt. To my knowledge there are no specific texts from Egypt that entered into canon that early on such that they were reproduced throughout Greece and continued to be read in some form as time goes on. To the extent any Egyptian texts where influential that influence is subterranean rather than overt.

I basically just mean that you don’t have Greek texts talking about ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh’ by name (to my knowledge) or making overt references to it. In contrast you have Plato explicitly talking about Homer.

If you want to read modern scholars trying to reconstruct the influence of Mesopotamian or Egyptian ideas on Greek arts and culture, by all means. That would definitely be enriching. But in terms of trying to come up with a set of primary texts which somebody ought to read in order to make sense of western literature, I’m not altogether sure there is much of anything before Homer that is really all that useful. But I’m open to being wrong about that.

so you say its a matter of actual texts influencing other texts and not just societies influencing others societies.
i'm inclined to agree, but when people say "start with the greek" they also recommend history books on greeks, not just actual greek books – and rightly so, since a better understanding of one leads to a better understanding of the other.
so, following this trend, i do think that reading sumerian literature, or at least reading about sumerians, can help with "starting with the greeks", providing an more ample comprehension of the era as a whole. same with the egyptians, although i haven't read anything by or about them yet.

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you alright, brown boy

Herodotus has enough

I don’t disagree. To me that becomes a question of whether or not it’s diminishing returns at that point. How deeply do you need to understand Egypt or Mesopotamia for you to gain added depth to your reading of Greek primary texts?

If I could find good texts that gave a background on the ways in which earlier cultures influences the Greek artistic culture I’d definitely consider it high recommened supplemental reading, though probably not ‘essential’ core texts.