"Scholars from Sir William Jones to the PRESENT imagined this group (Aryans aka Indo-Europeans) as their most ancient ancestors and created for them … - Bruce Lincoln

When one permits those whom one studies to define the terms in which they will be understood, suspends one’s interest in the temporal and contingent, or fails to distinguish between “truths,” “truth-claims,” and “regimes of truth,” one has ceased to function as historian or scholar, In that moment, a variety of roles are available: some perfectly respectable (amanuensis, collector, friend and advo­ cate), and some less appealing (cheerleader, voyeur, retailer of import goods). None, however should be confused with scholarship.

But footnotes - and all they imply- are the part of the scholarly endeavor wherein these values are most firmly embedded. To my mind, they represent some of what is best in scholarship: hard work, integrity, and collegial accountability. At the same time, however, they provide opportunities for misrepresentation, mystification, sycophancy, character assassi nation, skillful bluff, and downright fraud. 209

This done, Jones moves to the second phase of his argument, in which he treats detailed king lists drawn from the Puranas. Here his task was not the forging of equations but the compression of over-lengthy reigns, to bring them within the bounds of what he judged plausible and convenient to his argument. After dismissing accounts of the first three Yugas in Hindu world history as "chiefly mythological," and drastically revising the time spans attributed to kings of the fourth, he was able to date the foundation of the Indian empire to roughly 2000 B.C.E. 16 Setting the creation of Manu/Adam some two millennia earlier brought it almost perfectly within the accepted biblical chronology And so it was done! In Sir William's eyes and those of his compatriots, this was a hard-won triumph, garnered by learning, ingenuity, and pluck. Science, religion , the unity of mankind, and, not least, the authority of both the Bible and the Laws of Manu were the intended beneficiaries of that triumph . 195