Rajaram unrepentent!

[Steve Farmer]

Swaminathan Madhuresan writes:

>  Dear Dr. Farmer,
>
>  Learnt from your web URL about the computer-enhanced version of "horse"
>  in the Indus seal by Sri Rajaram. It is interesting that he is
>  determined to show the world that the Indus folks used "horses".
>
>  At the same time, why is he denying with authority about the Dravidian
> language
>  family altogether? N. S. Rajaram writes, "empirical data provides no
>  support for the existence of Dravidian languages independent of Sanskrit."
>  (The politics of history: Aryan invasion theory and the suversion of
>  scholarship [1995:177] ). With this mindset, will he allow for Dravidian
>  to exist in the Indus age?

Wow, the non-existence of Dravidian languages is a new Rajaramism
on me: I missed that one. It is hardly surprising, however. It is
totally in harmony with Rajaram's Hindutva propaganda that the
language of the Harappans (NB: language, not languages) was "late
Vedic Sanskrit," which according to Rajaram arrived on the Indian
scene 2000-3000 years before the language itself existed. (That's
right, you can trace "late Vedic Sanskrit" to the 4th millennium
BCE, if not to the Primal Ooze.) That means, of course, that the
language of the Rigveda goes back at least to the 5th millennium,
maybe earlier, thousands of years before domesticated horses or
chariots existed anywhere on the planet. (The wheel hadn't even
appeared on the planet that early, but what's a little historical
technicality like this between Hindutva friends?)

All this would be simply crackpot fun if Rajaram's writings
didn't have a nasty fascist edge to it, and weren't meant to
mobilize the Indian masses. Stay tuned to Rajaram's definitive
deconstruction in a cover story written by Michael Witzel and me,
with a backup article from Romila Thapar, that will hit the
magazine stands in India later this week. Pretty cover, too!

Until then, see the links at
http://www.safarmer.com/horseseal/update.html (which will also
take you to Michael's early paper on Rajaram's pseudo-Sanskrit).

Cheers,
Steve