Goebbelsian Repetition of Witzel's Lies in "peer-reviewed" Indological Study Papers

 

Goebbelsian Repetition of Witzel's Lies in "peer-reviewed" Indological Study Papers

Shrikant G Talageri

 

I have already uploaded my reply to Witzel's frankly fake "review" of my book "The Rigveda - A Historical Analysis" (2000) (it is also available on academia.edu as a downloadable file):

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2021/09/michael-witzel-examination-of-his.html

I have also written many times about the fraudulent nature of the "peer-reviewed" corpus of papers in the established western academic world, where blatant lies and falsehoods are repeated ad nauseam and copied from paper to paper with Goebbelsian intensity until they become established as the Truth (proving to the hilt the practical efficacy of what is often rightly or wrongly described as "Goebbels' maxim" — whether or not it was actually said by Goebbels himself or only effectively demonstrated by him — "repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth" or "if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it").

Modern western academics runs on this maxim, and it has created a new religious mindset where western-approved "peer-reviewed" papers become equivalent to scriptures, and the academic writers of these papers some kind of academic prophets whose God-inspired judgments and pronouncements acquire an immutable scriptural authority. There is no shortage of followers of this new religion on the internet who dismiss my case purely on the ground that it has been stonewalled by this Goebbelsian academic caucus, and who express the dogma that a case not approved in "peer-reviewed" journals is automatically unworthy of acceptance or even consideration. This is exactly the mindset also of Islamic and Evangelist "scholars" and demagogues, like Zakir Naik who requires that something automatically stands proved or disproved depending on whether or not it is corroborated in the Quran. To such people, a "peer-reviewed" statement that 2+2=5 is automatically right and a non-"peer-reviewed" statement that 2+2=4 is extremely likely to be wrong if not automatically wrong. So I generally see no reason to even bother to comment on them.

However, a recent paper "Indus Epigraphic Perspectives Exploring Past Decipherment Attempts & Possible New Approaches" by Paul D. LeBlanc (Department of Classics and Religious Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Ottawa) again brought to my notice the spiraling snowball effect of lies published in "peer-reviewed" papers, and their limitless lethal potential for the Scriptural Truth Effect on the unformed brains of educated illiterates. I have already demonstrated, in my articles on Witzel, Hock, Fournet and Stuhrmann, the spiraling snowball of incredibly blatant "peer-reviewed" academic lies and fraudulent falsehoods and their effect even on "scholarly writers" (let alone on pompous internet illiterates): note the scripturalization of countless verifiably false statements in Witzel's above referred "review" of my book. In this article, we will again see Witzel's lies being scripturalized by another "peer-reviewed" scholar: Paul D. LeBlanc.

While the whole paper is full of ignorant statements and half-truths, I will only deal with the brazen Goebbelsian nature of  his remarks in respect of my work, since this shows how these fraudulent scholars have no qualms or compunctions in writing blatant lies and repeating them ad nauseam in paper after paper:

"Talageri argues that Vedic Sanskrit is mother-tongue to the Indo-Iranian sub-family (or branch) of the IE language family – and not the entire IE family. Talageri’s (2000) adaptation of the Out-of-India theory implies that the Indo-Iranian “mythical homeland” is to be situated in the [sic] Kashmir, while the PIE homeland (according to him) ultimately traces its origins in the region of Haryana, from where Rigvedic Āryans (speaking a related language that could possibly be a sister to the Indo-Aryan branch) would have then migrated to other areas before moving on westward into Iran and onwards to Europe (ibid. I.5 and II.7). Talageri claims that his views are based on “scriptural evidence in the Puranas (texts of the first millennium AD only) for his emigration” (Witzel 2006b: 223).

However, as Witzel (2006b) remarks, Talageri has misinterpreted the Puranic passages in question, therefore making his unfounded theoretical viewpoints “simply a product of revisionist fantasy” (ibid. 223). The fact that Talageri makes PIE and its “people” come from the Maharashtra area coincides with the fact that it is “Talageri’s own homeland” (ibid. 223). For this reason, Witzel describes Talageri’s ideas as “truly Indocentric, pseudo-Purānic fantasy”"

 

In this mass of lies, the most absolutely blatant and (if it were not so sick) laughable lie is the claim that I make "PIE and its “people” come from the Maharashtra area [….] “Talageri’s own homeland” (ibid. 223)". In exactly which book, paper or talk (even a private unrecorded talk or a private mail!) have I ever even hinted that Maharashtra — assuming it is my own particular "homeland" —  could possibly be the ultimate homeland of "PIE and its “people”"? The only reference to Maharashtra in connection with the Rigveda and the Homeland, that I ever remember having made, is in my very first book in 1993 (in which book, as I have mentioned countless times, I was still giving some importance to general Puranic assertions though only as a secondary source, and even that attitude underwent a major change when I started out on my second book and made a more direct primary analysis of the sources) where I have pointed out that one of the persons to whom a reference is made in a Rigvedic hymn — Lopāmudrā — is said in the Puranas to be the daughter of the king of Vidarbha (in NW Maharashtra). But this (not repeated in any subsequent outline of my case), by no stretch of lying, can be construed to mean that I claimed that Maharashtra was the ultimate homeland of "PIE and its “people”"! And I have long since been asserting in my articles that the Agastya family of composers (in whose hymns these references to Lopāmudrā occur) are descendants of a Dravidian-language speaking ancestral sage Agastya from the South, who (the descendants, that is, but not the ancestor) migrated northwestwards during the period of composition of the New Rigveda and became a part of Rigvedic culture.

And yet, Witzel made this blatantly false statement in his "peer-reviewed" article, which is now being regularly cited in other "peer-reviewed" articles, in article after article! This falsehood-mongering is what "peer-review" is all about, and this is what the educated illiterates in the west as well as in India treat as "gospel" truth! If "peer-reviewed" academic writers see no need to check out even such a simple and easily verifiable statement, as they write "peer-reviewed" paper after "peer-reviewed" paper, and simply go on quoting each other ad nauseam without ever seeing the need to go to the primary sources — which means basically the textual, linguistic and archaeological data  in the matter of any historical topic, or even the actual writings of non-"peer-reviewed" writers whom they see fit to criticize, dismiss and label on the basis of the earlier "peer-reviewed" papers they are quoting — then the "papers" written by these robotic copy-paste frauds are not fit even to be used as toilet papers!     

I am willing to put at stake my entire reputation and the credibility of my entire OIT case on this one point: did I ever at any point of time claim that Maharashtra was the ultimate homeland of "PIE and its “people”"?

Is Witzel, or are any of the fools who blindly repeat all his lies and treat them as gospel truth, equally willing to stake entire "scholarly" reputations and the credibility of the entire AIT case on this one point?

But it is not just this one point. Take some others in the single two-paragraph quotation given above:

1. "Talageri argues that Vedic Sanskrit is mother-tongue to the Indo-Iranian sub-family (or branch) of the IE language family […] Talageri’s (2000) adaptation of the Out-of-India theory implies that the Indo-Iranian “mythical homeland” is to be situated in the [sic] Kashmir".

As I have everywhere, from my very first book, insisted that Indo-Aryan and Iranian are two separate branches, and that the Vedic Aryans were Pūrus (located in Haryana) while the proto-Iranians were Anus (originally located in Kashmir and areas to its west: the areas even today of the proto-Iranian Nuristani languages), the above makes no sense except to show that neither Witzel nor LeBlanc have even the faintest idea of what I have written.

2. "Rigvedic Āryans [….] would have then migrated to other areas before moving on westward into Iran and onwards to Europe (ibid. I.5 and II.7)".

This is even worse: nowhere in my writings have I claimed that the "Rigvedic Āryans" (i.e. Pūrus) migrated "westward into Iran and onwards to Europe": it was the Anus who migrated into Iran and then onwards into (southeastern) Europe, while the Druhyus, migrated by a separate route into Central Asia and then onwards into the major parts of Europe.

Again, it is not just this one paper. I request the reader, if he has the time and patience, to go with a magnifying glass through my reply to Witzel's review cited at the very beginning of this article, and see exactly the kind of trash that passes for "scholarship" in the world of "peer-reviewed" scholars, articles and journals: see the lies, utter inanities, sharp u-turns and sharp contradictions, petty personal abuse and label-sticking, and other hallmarks of western "peer-reviewed scholarship"  contained in Witzel's writings (or for that matter, in the writings of Hock, Fournet or Stuhrmann, as detailed in my articles).

Honest academic debate, or any kind of honest debate or amicable discussion, is simply not possible in the face of any kind of virulent religious dogmatism: whether the virulent religious dogmatism of Islamicists and Evangelists, or of "Hindus" trying to ape their Abrahamic counterparts in religious dogmatism (people like Koenraad Elst and myself face their venomous ire on a very regular basis), or of slavering anti-Hindu Woke Leftists, or of "Modi-bhakts" (who will justify every anti-Hindu stab in the back of Hindus by those who come to power in the name of Hindu issues), or, of course, the subject of this article, of the blind followers of the "peer-review" cult. It is time this fact is registered very clearly in the minds of people who discuss issues honestly or want to see honest discussions taking place.

 

 

Purukutsa-Trasadasyu and the Internal Chronology of the Rigveda

 

Purukutsa-Trasadasyu and the Internal Chronology of the Rigveda

This is a subject dealt with in very great detail in my books( and blog articles), but I have been requested to deal with this in particular by a reader, so I will do this very briefly just once in an article. Apparently people on twitter (this will be the last time hopefully that I will bother to respond to birds twittering on twitter) are claiming that Trasadasyu was either earlier than or contemporary to Sudās, and a friendly reader has written to me as follows, referring apparently to a post (not on twitter) on this subject:

"Below is the screenshot of a post by someone on “Indo-European chronologies” page by someone related to your thesis. Although I understand that there were two Purukutsa-Trasadasyu pairs who are generally confused by people. I thought maybe if you want to do a small writeup on it, unless you have already explained this somewhere in blogs.

"

 

Firstly, let me reply to a point made by the person who requested me to deal with this post on "Indo-European Chronologies": that "there were two Purukutsa-Trasadasyu pairs".  There is only one Purukutsa-Trasadasyu pair: the Ikṣvāku (Tṛkṣi) pair known to the Vedic literature and the Puranas, but not to the Ramayana dynastic lists of Ayodhya, because they belonged not to the eastern Ayodhya dynasty but to a different northwestern dynasty sired by the Ayodhya king Mandhātā in the northwest during his campaigns in the northwest in the pre-Rigvedic period.

I have dealt with this subject already in detail in my blog "The Ikṣvākus in the Rigveda", including with the half-baked idea of an alleged Pūru Purukutsa-Trasadasyu pair,  and will not repeat the details here.

What amazes me beyond belief is that people (blind, ignorant, illiterate or just plain stupid?) can, and do, continue to raise quibbling objections about the internal chronology of the Rigveda (and even draw clownish discoveries "fatal" to my chronology!) even after this chronology has been made very clear by me in my books and blogs, and even after my very very detailed and choked-with-data article "The Chronological Gulf between the Old Rigveda and the New Rigveda" which makes it very clear to the meanest intelligence that there cannot be even the shadow of a doubt about the fact that there is a massive and absolutely unchallengeable chronological gulf between the Old Rigveda (books 6,3,7,4,2) and the New Rigveda (books 5,1,8,9,10). No amount of rhetoric, abuse or Purana-mongering can possibly establish that anything material in the Old Rigveda (e.g. book 7) is contemporaneous to or later than anything in the New Rigveda (e.g. book 8).

As I said, I will not repeat the material in my two above articles ("The Ikṣvākus in the Rigveda" and "The Chronological Gulf between the Old Rigveda and the New Rigveda") here: any reader who has any questions about the internal chronology of the books of the Rigveda or about the position of Purukutsa-Trasadasyu in that chronology, should read the two articles in detail. Beyond that, I will not bother to "clear" stupid doubts based on armchair objections having nothing to do with the data in the Rigveda.

 

Just one additional point (from my earlier books):

Sudās is contemporaneous with the eponymous Viśvāmitra and Vasiṣṭha of books 3 and 7 respectively, and Ghora Āṅgiras (the ancestor of Kaṇva Ghaura, the eponymous ṛṣi of book 8) is a junior partner of a Viśāvāmitra composer (clearly a descendant of the eponymous Viśāvāmitra) in a Redacted hymn III.36 (a late hymn in that book as per the testimony of the Aitareya Brahmana).

Trasadasyu is a contemporary of a descendant of Kaṇva Ghaura, a composer named Sobhari Kāṇva, in VIII.19.

Apart from the linguistic evidence of the gulf between the Old Rigveda and the New Rigveda, we therefore have a vast chronological gulf between Sudās and Purukutsa-Trasadasyu, taking into consideration all these above lineal chronologies.

 

The internet is full of half-baked armchair proponents of the AIT, and of Purana-obsessed "Hindu" brigadiers, with little or no knowledge and puffed-up egos who think they are discovering "facts" in the data which are "fatal" to my chronology. I am a bit tired of repeating things which are already fully, conclusively and (yes) irrefutably detailed in my books and blogs, and will try henceforward to ignore the illiterate objections of these people who cannot be bothered to read my books and blogs diligently but are ever eager to think they know everything and have found out things "fatal" to my case.

 

Let me add here that every single material or data-based objection that I have recently seen raised against my case has already been answered in detail in my books and blogs, and I do not even require to do any further research or write anything new in order to answer their objections. To be honest, I will really welcome new objections and doubts which will require me to examine the data once more and write something new, but I have little patience with repeatedly having to answer the same points again and again and quoting my earlier writings ad nauseam for the sake of illiterate objectors.