Rajaram responds to Witzel & Farmer article

[Maran Kathirchelvan]

Rajaram's response to the Frontline article by Witzel and Farmer
(http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/RAJARAM/Har1.pdf) is posted at
the "BHARATIYA PRAGNA" OCTOBER 2000 VOLUME 2 NUMBER 10; the article is
available at:

http://www.pragna.org/Art21001.html

He declares "But there is more, for what is at stake is the survival of
Western Indology itself, with its roots in European colonialism and
Christian missionary propaganda. It was Indologist W.W. Hunter who said:
“Scholarship is warmed with the holy flame of Christian zeal.” And Bishop
Caldwell, who created the Aryan-Dravidian theory, admitted that his
linguistic theories were of “vast political and moral importance”— meaning
they served British colonial and Christian missionary interests. Men like
Witzel are successors to these colonial-missionary scholars, while Indians
like Thapar and her tribe, are their camp followers."

Rajaram does not deny the "computer enhancement" accusation nor does he
address the other arguments in Witzel and Farmer such as dating the
invention of wheeled transport, "technology" required to build a chariot as
well as the problems with the claimed decryption itself.

Witzel and Farmer did a good job of presenting the current academic methods
in assigning dates to parts of ancient Indian history.  Presumably, any
alternate method must yield dates that are consistent with the dates of
related civilizations, including the ancient Iranian.  This knowledge will
be important to informed readers and help them evaluate all claims that
assign dates to any part of Indian history.  And these controversies may
even inspire some youngsters to take up Indology as a serious field of study
that is really exciting (despite attempts by the Indology list founder to
make it appear extremely dull ;-))! For that, we can thank Witzel and Farmer
(and Rajaram ;-)).

Maran K.
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