[Advaita-l] Brahmins census

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

Please do not enhance the growth of this thread.

> All must follow Dharma but there must be sufficient protection in case
> some do not follow it. A concrete example can be given. It is well
> known there are very few followers of Atharvana Veda . There was only
> one good Atharvana Vedi in whole state of Gujarat. He had three sons.
> First two sons were not interested in learning the Veda. The father
> could not do anything but he could teach the last son. If the father
> had only one son and he does not learn Veda what can the father do?
> This is current pathetic situation in many families. There is no
> protection of Dharma because there are not enough followers.

Teaching can be done to disciples, not just sons. Is it possible that the
atharva veda got to be so rare just because of keeping its teaching
within a family? The teachers of yajurveda and Rgveda do not restrict
themselves to teaching only their own children. And although typically
a family follows the customs of only one veda, there has been a long
tradition of people who were Dvivedi-s, Trivedi-s and Caturvedi-s.
 
When I saw the title of your first post, I thought you may be suggesting
something concrete, e.g. a statistical census of Brahmin families. Although
not part of this list's main goals, it would have been passable for reasons
of information gathering. The need to stress that we should all first strive
to follow our dharma handed down by our forefathers is well-taken. But
that is about it. This sort of grandstanding and venting of personal opinion
about Brahmin populations and Muslim populations is definitely not within
the purview of this list. There are other kinds of internet fora available for
that kind of a socio-political message. This isn't one of them.

It is even more ironic that you send a "Go forth and multiply" message to
a list where we are constantly talking of a different Brahminical ideal, 
namely the giving up of putra-vitta-lokaishaNA-s!
 
Vidyasankar