Rules of Membership; Harappan deciphered

[Koenraad Elst]

> Well, one important distinction here is that the posts of S. Farmer and M.
> Witzel were in response to an on-going discussion on the List, whereas the
> paper on Indian chemistry was unsolicited.  I'm sure that if they or
anyone
> else started using the List as a means of distributing unsolicited papers
to
> the List membership, they would be promptly removed as well.

And likewise, the following insinuation was entirely unsolicited:

> [Speaking of insulting posts, K. Elst has learned well the schoolboy's
trick
> of striking first, and then feigning hurt victimhood as he appeals to the
> List and the List's moderator to condemn the nasty retaliation of his
rivals.
> Has anyone else noticed his rather frequent use of this ploy?]

I expect that if I follow George Thompson off-topic to defend myself against
this allegation (which I can), Dr. Wujastyk will tell me to take that
discussion off-list, and with reason: this is a forum for debate on
idological topics, not on any list member's character or so.  Future
historians of this debate, in case they care to verify George Thompson's
allegation, will be able to trace my intervention on the Harappan script to
Dr. Farmer's entirely appropriate question for information on a potentially
important claim of decipherment, rather than to any "trick of striking
first".  All the same, I do think that some of Steve Farmer's recent remarks
(which George Thompson calls "nasty"), unlike Michael Witzel's, fall outside
the "satirical" register and inside that of "name-calling", though the "hurt
victimhood" in this case is not mine but N.S. Rajaram's (but rest assured
that he couldn't care less what indologists think of him).

It's no big deal, but still, to label as a deliberate "fudge" the hypothesis
that the Harappan script could be written in different directions, imputes a
motive all while disregarding possible reasons why an honest man could come
to that hypothesis.  Given the contempt in which Prof. Rajaram is held on
this list (which is mutual), the appropriate dictum here would be
Napoleon's: "Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence."
Maybe he's got it all wrong and fooled himself into sincerely believing the
ridiculous notion that scripts with more than one direction of writing can
exist.

Whatever.  Glad to return to the real topic, I might point out that
multiple-direction scripts do exist.  Chinese can be written in no less than
three directions: left-to-right (most mainland-Chinese textbooks),
right-to-left (still in inscriptions on temple gates and the like) and
top-down with the lines succeeding right-to-left (classical texts).  The
Chinese and Harappan scribes alike designed their scripts in such ways for
other reasons than for the sake of confusing future decipherers; and modern
decipherers should not be held guilty of manipulations if they rightly or
wrongly discern that variable pattern in a given ancient script.

As for boustrophedon writing, that too happens to genuinely exist in
bonafide ancient scripts.  In this case, it may be indicated by, or is at
least compatible with, the very fact which first gave B.B. Lal (as he
personally told me) the idea that the direction of writing had to be
right-to-left.  On seals where a second line shorter than the first line
appears, it stretches from the right to the middle, as would a second line
in a text written in a right-to-left script like Hebrew or Urdu.  However,
the same effect would be produced by starting out from the left, as the more
usual direction, and then returning boustrophedon from the right after
completing the first line.

Next time some more samples of the Jha/Rajaram decipherment, unless there
are definite signs that none are welcome.

All the best,

K. Elst