Rajaram unrepentent!
Robert Zydenbos
zydenbos at GMX.LI
Wed Sep 27 11:42:26 UTC 2000
Am 26 Sep 2000, um 8:18 schrieb Swaminathan Madhuresan:
<color><param>7F00,0000,0000</param>> Dear Dr. Farmer,
<color><param>7F00,0000,0000</param>> 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?
</color>Presumably because it does not suit his view of India and the
world, which is a brand of religious fundamentalism (cf. also what
S. Farmer mentioned yesterday: the "spiritualization and
mythologizing of national history"). He believes that Indian identity
depends on the question of Aryan origins, and that the Vedas are
"the wellspring" of Indian cultural identity (and that nobody in India's
past has ever questioned this). If we start from such premises, it is
not entirely illogical to think, for instance, that if Dravidian speakers
are Indians, then the Dravidian languages must be nothing more
than at best a sub-family of Indo-European. But the premises are of
course faulty. You see, for all this contempt of linguistics, we have
serious reason to assume that Rajaram has not much of a foggy
clue what linguistics (or perhaps the humanities in general) are
about. We have at least one publication in which he demonstrates
that he does not know the meaning of the word "Indo-European":
see
http://www.angelfire.com/in/zydenbos/laermendepolemik.html
with more links.
<color><param>7F00,0000,0000</param>> N. S. Rajaram writes, "empirical data provides no support for the
> existence of Dravidian languages independent of Sanskrit." [...]
</color>Has he mentioned what his criterion is for "empirical data"? My
hunch is that he has not.
RZ
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