Harappan 'non-texts'?

[Steve Farmer]

N. Ganesan writes:

> The
> famous Dholavira inscription is on wood which is partially decayed.
> (I think Dr. Farmer wrongly spells this as Kholavira).

I do *not* spell it that way. There was an obvious typo in a post of
mine mentioning the Dholavira signboard on July 10. The appearance of
a typo hardly indicates that I spell the word that way. Here's part of
my original post on the topic, from July 7:

> What does the great "Dholavira 'signboard'" -- which Jha/Rajaram claim
> to decipher in Part II, Chapter 6, of their book -- say? Let's break
> this down for discussion purposes:
>
> 1. What does the Dholavira inscription say, according to Jha/Rajaram?
> 2. How exactly do they derive their reading?
> 3. What alternate readings are possible in their system (arising from
> the "many degrees of freedom" point raised above?
> 3. How do they interpret each of the characters, determinatives (if
> relevant), etc.?

That post led over the next few days to a devastating deconstruction
of the supposed Jha/Rajaram "decipherment."

Leaving typos aside, let me point to a substantial error in Ganesan's
post. He writes:

> Many wooden materials and palm leaves, possibly written with IVC
> signs, would have been lost forever due to the harsh climate.

This thread began, back on July 1, with four powerful arguments
*against* te view that there were extensive texts written on
perishable materials in the IVC. To review those arguments -- as I
write this the Indology archives are "down" -- go to:

http://www.safarmer.com/pico/scribalpressure.html

Those arguments have not been addressed by Ganesan, who did not take
part the later discussion of this issue. Instead of confronting those
arguments, he choses to point to an obvious typo as proof that I
misspelled a word!

Steve Farmer