Dear List,
Michael Witzel comes to this thread late and self-absorbed, dismayed that nobody reads his papers carefully. He also comes to the thread without having read the posts carefully. Where has anyone suggested that the "vast majority" of Kuiper's list of loanwords were Dravidian? I merely said that I thought that Asko Parpola should at least have been mentioned. Here Michael is fighting some old war that now exists only in his head.
Steve Farmer and I have taken our discussion off-list. It is mere preconception that my posts have been motivated by grudges. I have persuaded Steve that I have no grudges. We have called a truce. He has even gone so as to praise my Gita translation, which he uses in a class on ancient yoga. I am not going to bother to persuade Michael of any of this. Let him go on living with his preconceptions.
I stand by my only point: that the study of these Rgveda foreign loanwords may have some value when it comes to solving the riddle of these IVC signs. It is a riddle that I am not interested in solving. I spend my days translating the Rgveda. That is my pleasure.
George Thompson