Rajaram's bogus "horse seal"

[Steve Farmer]

http://www.safarmer.com/pico/delusion3.html

The other day I posted preliminary evidence on a bogus "horse
seal" that Jha and Rajaram make much of in their new book
entitled _The Deciphered Indus Script_ (2000). Earlier, M. Witzel
and I had shown how "evidence" of horses in Harappa was
manufactured by Jha and Rajaram through supposed decipherments of
IVC script using methods letting you generate almost any needed
text out of any inscription.

Rajaram and Jha go to much trouble in their book to present an
"Artist's reproduction" of the supposed Mohenjo-daro horse seal,
but the reproduction of the seal impression itself that they give
is suspiciously blurred (for evidence, see the images in the link
given with this post). They've also made it extremely
difficult to track down the original of the seal due to a major
miscitation in their bibliography.

This morning, following a little detective work, I finally
located the original of the seal in Plate XCV of Vol. II of
Ernest Mackay, _Further Excavations of Mohenjo-daro_ (1938),
which is NOT cited in the bibliography in their book. Over the
weekend, Michael Witzel also found another photo of the same seal
impression (or a strikingly similar one), carrying *exactly* the
same inscription, in one of Asko Parpola's works (see again the
attached link).

As suspected, the supposed impression of a "horse seal" is, in
fact, the impression of the kind of unicorn bull seal found
ubiquitously in Mohenjo-daro. The original photo shows that at
least 1/2 of the impression is split and broken, cutting off the
whole of the animal's middle torso and head. If you observe the
resulting image shown in Jha/Rajaram's badly blurred reproduction
as a Rorschach inkblot test (as suggested by Dominik Wujastyk),
part of the broken inscription turns into the animal's head! (I
originally mistook it for a deer's head with antlers.)

Rajaram (who was claims responsibility for writing the book)
makes much of supposed anomalies in the animal's genitals, which
he says demonstrates that the animal is a horse and not a
unicorn bull. The quality of the original photo in Mackay (1938)
isn't good enough to show any details in the genital area, but
the other photo of the same seal impression (or very similar seal
impression associated with the same inscription), turned up by
Professor Witzel, shows the bull unicorn's genitals *exactly*
where they are supposed to be.

In the provided links, I offer a series of photos that follow the
story of Rajaram's phoney "horse seal" from start to finish. In
the last series, I show how I have manufactured an even more
credible "horse seal" than Rajaram by using a scanned image of
the same broken seal coupled with creative use of the "contrast"
control in PhotoShop.

http://www.safarmer.com/pico/delusion3.html

Debunking bogus claims like this is extremely time consuming.
Rajaram's handiwork should be publicized as widely as possible --
especially in light of his repeated claims in the Indian press
that "Western scholars" intentionally manipulate evidence.

My best,
Steve Farmer