"Steven Brust" <skzb at dreamcafe.com> <content snipped> > Uh...I don't think anyone has disputed that. I was arguing for the > Incredible Shrinking God. I don't think you can find anything in the last > few hundred years og Buddhist or Hindu teachings to dispute that. I mean, > the Hindu's are even getting away from the *caste* system, which was > decreed by the gods in the first place. There is a small factual error in the last sentence: the caste system wasn't decreed by the Gods-- even the most ancient sources known attribute the origins of the caste system to the "first man", i.e., Manu. Not strictly analogous to Adam, but close. [The sourcebook for the caste system is the Manu Smriti, which in its current form has been dated to the first century BCE, as opposed to the earliest Vedas, which go back to 1800 BCE or earlier. Even Panini's grammar is older than the Manu Smriti - about 400 BCE.] Also, the "caste system" has been changing continuously over the last few millenia; the only real apparent continuity is the fact that a caste system in some avatar has existed in large parts of the subcontinent (not all of it) for about 4000 years. cheers, Divya ----------- Laudant illa, sed ista legunt. -- Marcus Valerius Martialis, Epigrammaton liber