Rajaram's bull

[Steve Farmer]

Extremely interesting suggestions (1) by Yaroslav Vassilkov on
apparent further doctoring of Mackay 453 by N.S. Rajaram and (2)
by Luis Gonzalez-Reimann on the deep rightwing
political-historical background of "Rajaram's alleged script
decipherment and horse seal."

Anyone questioning Rajaram's rightwing credentials should check
out some of his popular political and "historical" articles at:

http://www.swordoftruth.com/swordoftruth/archives/byauthor/navaratnarajaram/articles.html

The tone of these articles fits perfectly into Luis's thesis that:

> Much of the current attack on "Western" Indology seems to be part of a
> strategy that aims at defending Brahminical traditions and institutions
> against a perceived menacing threat.

This is not innocent stuff. Read one or more of those articles.

The "threat," as we see from Rajaram's articles, comes from
Christianity and the Pope, Pakistan, Marxists, Western
Indologists (of course), and "a barbarism called
Talibanism...[whose] goal is to establish a world empire ruled by Islam."

I may have missed an enemy or two.

Meanwhile, in his more important historical writings (see above
link), we find Rajaram working hard (when not fantasizing about
IVC decipherments) on his goal of demonstrating the historicity
of Krishna. In one three-part paper published on the above link,
Rajaram reassures us that "We have overwhelming evidence showing
that Krishna was a historical figure who must have lived within a
century on either side of...the 3200-3000 BC period" -- which is
where Rajaram places (NB: at the *end* of the Vedic period) the
Mahabharata War.

This afternoon, further evidence on Rajaram's "horse seal" hoax
arose when we found unequivocal documentary evidence from the
original field reports that Mackay 453 (poor old photo) and
Parpola 772 (superb recent photo) are the *same* seal/seal
impression, photographed many decades apart. This allows some
important simplifications of the Rajaram hoax story. An updated
version of the sorry mess, also with new evidence on the same
animal/different inscription issue, will be posted on the Web
this weekend.

Meanwhile, we wait breathless for Rajaram's promised public
announcement (made to me, Witzel, S. Talagari, Elst, others) on
his doctored seal.

Steve Farmer