[INDOLOGY] INDUS CIVILISATION.
George Thompson
gthomgt at gmail.com
Tue Jan 31 02:03:10 UTC 2017
Dear Steve,
You think too much that I am interested in you. This is not about you, it
is about Vedic.
On Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 6:41 PM, Steve Farmer via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
> Dear George,
>
> You write about the pop article on the so-called Indus script posted on
> Indology:
>
> ...it's comparison of Farmer to Trump is not entirely wrong. Those two
> do share so many character traits that it is conceivable that they may be
> born twins, culturally speaking.
>
>
> Could I ask you again — and the moderators too — to stop your repeated ad
> hominem attacks on me on this and other scholarly Lists. Those attacks have
> gone on now repeatedly for 12 years — to 2005! — and have nothing to do
> with Indology or scholarship.
>
> And they certainly don’t have anything to do with the so-called Indus
> script issue. You in fact endorsed the findings that Michael and Richard
> and I published on the nonlinguistic nature of Indus symbols in 2004. That
> paper has now been downloaded over two million times since it was published
> and Science magazine called attention to it late that year.
>
> More copies are still being downloaded of it 13 years later, which
> suggests something about its impact. You were even thanked in our
> acknowledgements of the paper, as you’ll see on page 49 of the paper, at
> the head of a List of 17 others. :)
>
> *http://www.safarmer.com/fsw2.pdf <http://www.safarmer.com/fsw2.pdf>*
>
> In any event, could I politely ask you to end your ad hominem attacks on
> me on the Indology List, on which I’ve certainly never said personal about
> you? If you want to discuss something substantial about the Indus symbols,
> I’m happy to talk about it, although nothing new or interesting really has
> been said about this topic now for many years — and the current research
> I’m doing is in far different topics?
>
> Peace! Let personal bygones go….. :)
>
> Best wishes,
> Steve Farmer
>
> Dear List,
>
> This paper that Andrew has passed on to us has many flaws, and these flaws
> are not just a matter of personal animosity. The paper certainly should
> have included reference to Asko Parpola's book, and all of his previous
> works on this topic. It should have included reference to other competent
> philologists and linguists as well. Witzel is mentioned only in
> association with Farmer and Sprout, but he has done much significant work
> elsewhere on substrate languages in early Vedic [especially our oldest text
> the RV, where we find many foreign, non-Indo-European words [see Kuiper's
> famous list of some 380 foreign words in the RV ]. Because of these sorts
> of studies, done by philologists and linguists, we have reasonably good
> confidence to assert that Dravidian has a good chance of being the language
> of IVC as Asko argues, because there is good evidence that it was there,
> well before the RV]. There is also a reasonably good chance that a Munda
> language was there as well, a language possibly spoken in IVC, because we
> have good evidence that these two language families were present in the
> area occupied by the IVC at the dates when it flourished. By the time
> the Vedic clans arrived in this area the IVC was long dead. But some IVC
> words and ideas may have survived, though rarely, in the Rgveda.
>
> Among specialists in the RV , RV 10.106 is generally considered to be the
> most difficult hymn in the RV [see , for example Geldner, Renou, and most
> recently Jamison & Brereton). Kuiper has even suggested that this hymn was
> composed by a bilingual Rgvedic poet; if he was bilingual, we need to find
> out what his second language was]. Philologists with expertise in the
> languages that are known or are likely to have been present in the IVC area
> during its flourishing period need to examine these foreign words in the
> RV.
>
> Another factor not much discussed here is that IVC was a huge territory,
> and therefore it is likely that it was a multilingual culture. It is
> possible therefore that the IVC sign system was a non-linguistic
> sign-system, as suggested by Farmer, Sprout, & Witzel, a long time ago,
> that was meant to communicate to many linguistic communities through visual
> rather than verbal signs .
>
> Yes, this was a superficial article. But it's comparison of Farmer to
> Trump is not entirely wrong. Those two do share so many character traits
> that it is conceivable that they may be born twins, culturally speaking.
>
> For those who wonder about Bryan Wells who claims to be an epigrapher: is
> he really an epigrapher? It may well be that he doesn't actually claim to
> be one, and that this poorly informed journalist didn't know what the term
> actually means. Bryan Wells, as far as I know, has fruitfully studied the
> IVC signs for a long time, but I have never seen any evidence that he has
> significant knowledge of any of the languages that may have been or were in
> play in IVC at the relevant time-period.
>
> List members who are seriously interested in this question should read
> Parpola, Kuiper, Witzel, et al. The computer models discussed in this
> article need to be linked to relevant languages.
>
> My two-cents.
>
> George Thompson
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 10:36 AM, Dermot Killingley via INDOLOGY <
> indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
>
>> I read the piece quickly, and found it interesting how Trump has made
>> himself the absolute
>> standard of mendacity. But I don't think anyone who, however mistakenly,
>> has evidence to
>> support their statements, should be compared to him.
>>
>> Dermot
>>
>> On 27 Jan 2017 at 8:07, Andrew Ollett via INDOLOGY wrote:
>>
>> I hesitate to pass this popular-science treatment of the question along,
>> since it is tinged with
>> some personal animosity, but this just appeared two days ago:
>>
>> http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/25/14371450/indus-valley-civi
>> lization-ancient-seals-symbols
>> -language-algorithms-ai
>> <http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/25/14371450/indus-valley-civilization-ancient-seals-symbols-language-algorithms-ai>
>>
>> 2017-01-27 6:37 GMT-05:00 Asko Parpola via INDOLOGY <
>> indology at list.indology.info>:
>> In my book "The Roots of Hinduism: The Early Aryans and the Indus
>> Civilization",
>> New York: Oxford University Press, 2015,
>> I present manifold evidence for the Dravidian affinity of the
>> Harappan language.
>>
>> With best regards,
>>
>> Asko Parpola
>> Professor Emeritus of Indology,
>> University of Helsinki, Finland
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 8:31 AM, Dean Michael Anderson via INDOLOGY
>> <indology at list.indology.info > wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> There is no consensus about which language or languages the
>> Harappan (Indus Valley Civilization) people spoke.
>> The script is considered by most to be logo-syllabic, not
>> heiroglyphic.
>> Farmer, Witzel, Sproat consider it to be a sign system rather than a
>> script associated with any particular language.
>> Best,
>> Dean
>> Dr. Dean Michael Anderson
>> East West Cultural Institute
>> Austin, Texas, USA
>> Pondicherry, India
>>
>> From: alakendu das via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info>
>> To: indology at list.indology.info Sent: Friday, January 27, 2017
>> 11:44 AM Subject: [INDOLOGY] INDUS CIVILISATION.
>> To All, While going through some books on Indus valley civilisation
>> , I failed to find out one answer. Though the Harappana & Mohenjo
>> daro script has been inferred as more of a Hieroglyphic type, what
>> dialect/language did they speak ? Would love to be enlightened on
>> this point. ALAKEND DAS.
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>>
>> --
>> Dermot Killingley
>> 9, Rectory Drive,
>> Gosforth,
>> Newcastle upon Tyne NE3 1XT
>> Phone (0191) 285 8053
>>
>>
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