Rajaram's PILTDOWN horse

[Yaroslav Vassilkov]

        Steve Farmer in his recent postings and on his web-page convincingly
proved that Mr.Rajaram by way of computer manipulations with Mackay's
No.453 had produced artificial, falsified image in order to support his "theory".
        But there is a small detail in the picture of the "Horse Seal" ("Mackay 453")
in Rajaram's book which seems to have escaped the attention of the Indologists as yet.
However, this small detail leaves us no doubt that Rajaram did not limit himself with
adjusting the contrast on Mackay 453. He went much farther than that.
        In the Figure 7.1a ("The Horse Seal") of Rajaram's book one can see in the
right lower corner, just in front of the "forelegs" of the animal the
siluette of a well-known IVC artefact or symbol. It is the so called "feeding trough".
On many seals we can see it standing on the ground *before* an animal,
*at its feet*. This particular form of the "feeding trough" resembles in its siluette
an old-fashioned telephone set with conical base and the reciever lying across its
top. But this specific form appears in front of some animals exclusively, as it seems
to me, or almost exclusively *on the copper tablets*, not on the seals. At least I get
such an impression from the only sourcebook available to me at the moment:
J.P.Joshi and A.Parpola.
Corpus if Indus Seals and Inscriptions. 1. Collections in India. Helsinki, 1987 (it
would be fine if somebody could check this supposed regularity on the material of other
collections). It is quite possible that this particular "telephone" shape of the
trough was predetermined by the material (copper) and the technique of incision. In
the above mentioned book one can see such "telephone-shaped" troughs standing in front of
a goat, a buffalo, a zebu, an elephant, in front of fantastic "composite animals" and
once or twice - in front of an animal looking like a unicorn
bull (probably the unique case[s], because the unicorns as a rule stand in front of the
so-called "standard"). In all these cases the material is copper (Joshi-Parpola,
pp.130-133: M-519B, 520B, 525B, 527B, 528B, 530B; p.136, M-543B, 544B; pp. 138-139:
M-551B, 552B, etc.).
        So, as we see, Mr.Rajaram did not stop at playing with shades and contrasts. He
also put in the lower right corner of the picture the "telephone-shaped" trough which
he had taken most probably from some copper tablet, or may be from another seal, it makes
not much difference. Unfortunately, having no access to the complete corpus of Indus
seals and other images I am not able to say from what picture *exactly* did Mr.Rajaram
took the image of a feeding trough in this specific form. But it is evident that he
worked in the same way as the author of the famous anthropological fake did: one
bone from this species, another bone from this - and here you are,
an unknown creature, the Piltdown man is discovered! Mr. Rajaram took the broken seal
with a part of a unicorn bull on it, by way of adjusting contrasts made the readers see
in the line of fracture the siluette of the animal's forelegs, and then
put in the empty lower right corner a "telephone-shaped trough" from another seal or
tablet with the obvious aim to strengthen the illusion - surely, the "feeding trough"
always stands in front of an animal's forelegs! I think, we must
admit, that he constracted his "Piltdown" (or "Vedic Harappan") horse
with great inventiveness.
 Best regards to all,
                                                Yaroslav Vassilkov


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Yaroslav Vassilkov (yavass at YV1041.spb.edu)
Institute of Oriental Studies
Thu, 03 Aug 100 18:54 +0300 MSK