Dear George,
The anger in your posts comes out even here, this time just vs. Michael and not me.
That tone kills off useful discussion of difficult and controversial issues like this, which is presumably why the List rules forbid “rude language" and “personal attacks of an ad-hominem nature” — Paragraph 5 here:
http://indology.info/email/email-const/ (not enforced, however).
In the post I objected to earlier — in which you compared me with Trump — you spent much time recommending Michael’s works (just not those written with me).
But now, one post later, you imagine that Michael is“fighting some old war that now exists only in his head,” and say other odd things about him being “self-absorbed,” “living with preconceptions,” etc. This is the same person you were praising a day earlier?
Comments like these discourage any rational discussion — which is also the effect of all the nasty remarks about me in that pop article Andrew posted the other day. One great way to cut off discussion of inconvenient evidence — e.g. re. Indus signs -- is call people names. And that of course ironically is in fact “Trumpish."
I know, by the way, that Michael DID want plan to add something more on the supposed language of the Indus — something *never* discussed publicly — since he mentioned it in notes we exchanged yesterday. But now?
This is about things that happened thousands of years ago, not the approaching sixth extinction. Now THAT might justify a little anger.
But not things about the Indus Valley — quite ridiculous. :)
Peace, please-
Steve
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
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