Witzel’s Latest Presentation (2025) of “Peer-Reviewed” Western Academic Lies

 

Witzel’s Latest Presentation (2025) of “Peer-Reviewed” Western Academic Lies

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

Someone just sent me a copy of Witzel’s latest article, dated 30 February 2025, titled “The Realm of the Kuru – Origins and Development of the First State in India” in his “peer-reviewed” online Academic journal, EJVS (Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies), asking for my comments on it:

https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/ejvs/article/view/27845/27253 

I started going through the article, around 160 pages long, and, in the very first few paragraphs, I realized that this was nothing but just one more collection of the lies and pure rubbish that Witzel has been writing and publishing in “peer-reviewed” journals – a circumstance which awes zealous Indian sepoys into reverent genuflection, and into contemptuous dismissal of others, like myself, not featuring in these “peer-reviewed” journals – and it is not really worth my time. I have spent enough time in the past dealing with Witzel’s lies:

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2025/01/witzel-and-ait-vs-oit-linguistic-debate.html 

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/06/michael-witzel-perennial-compulsive-liar.html 

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/02/goebbelsian-repetition-of-witzels-lies.html 

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

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2021/02/fake-allegation-about-my-insulting.html

and so on.

Recently, in a rather rough debate with another person, I wrote:

“discussing anything with you is like talking with a parrot. In many books (I think especially in PG Wodehouse books) there are situations where someone enters an empty house or room and suddenly hears a voice asking "who are you?". Startled, he tells his name and looks around to see who is speaking. He cannot see anyone, but again the voice asks "who are you?". He keeps answering in detail many times, getting more and more irritated, until suddenly he hears the voice giving a screeching laugh and saying something like "Polly wants a cracker". Then he suddenly realizes that he was talking to a parrot who never hears the answers and only keeps on repeating itself. Do you think he would continue the dialogue?

You keep repeating what you had said before without paying any attention to the replies. Talking to you is as useless as talking to a parrot.

And that too, a parrot which consistently tells blatant lies, and when caught or exposed, refuses to admit it.”

Actually, it is this kind of parrot-talk, which I have been facing from Witzel since the last 22 years or so, which has made me very intolerant of this kind of troll behavior in what one would expect to be an honest, rational and academic discussion based on the data and evidence.

 

While I will naturally read the full above article by Witzel, I may not bother to give a full review or “reply” to it at the moment (and maybe not later either), because frankly this is ridiculous and gets on my nerves. But let me point out why I realized in the very first few paragraphs that this was a “parrot-article”.

1. On page 5 (of around 160 pages) he tells us: “the language of the Indo-Aryan words in the Mitanni texts is actually slightly older than the language of the RV”.

2. Then, again, on page 95, he reiterates this completely exposed claim: “the language of the Indo-Aryan words in the Mitanni documents of N. Iraq/Syria (c. 1400 BCE) is slightly older than the language of the RV”.

3. And on the next page 96, he tells us the Mitanni texts “may precede the comparatively late date of the bulk of the RV text and its post-Mitanni linguistic form by a few centuries. A few of the earliest hymns of the RV could then date from before c. 1250 BCE, its bulk from the period between c. 1250 and c. 1000 BCE.”

After all the evidence that I have placed on record in the last 18 years (since my third book in 2008, and in so many articles after that) showing how the language of the Mitanni absolutely and completely post-dates the language of the Old Rigveda, if this purely fraudulent professor can still  in the year 2025 write the above, what does it say of the moral and academic integrity, the utter shamelessness and incorrigibility, and the reckless gall and arrogance  of this man. Not to mention, of the moral and academic integrity of the western “peer-reviewed” academic world that he represents?

Am I expected to repeat all that evidence here again in this article? And for whom?

 

Then, again, he describes Sudās’ activities and geographical movements as follows (just three quotes will suffice):

1. “the Ṛgvedic archetype of the Mahābhārata, the so-called "Ten Kings' Battle" (dāśarājña), took place much further west, on the Paruṣṇī (River Ravī). After to the victory of the Bharata chieftain Sudās in this battle, the Bharata tribe was able to secure the Kurukṣetra area” (page 3).

2. “By the end of the Ṛgvedic period, after Sudās' victory, the focus of the texts has shifted, from the Panjab to the Kurukṣetra area” (page 97).

3. “Kurukṣetra area was conceived as the "center of the world", a trait first visible after the victory of the Bharata king Sudās and his settling on the Sarasvatī (RV 3.53)” (page 136).

In short, Witzel is claiming here, in these three blatantly false statements, that the “Ten Kings' Battle" (dāśarājña)” preceded the presence of Sudās and the Bharatas in the Kurukṣetra area!

 

Can anything be more blatantly and fraudulently false? I have repeatedly shown, in my books and articles from 2000 onwards, the massive, overwhelming and uni-directional data and evidence in the Rigveda showing that Sudās and his Bharata ancestors were already settled in the Kurukṣetra area from so long before the period of Sudās that they are closely familiar with no other land beyond the area to the east of the Sarasvati river in Haryana and westernmost Uttar Pradesh. Sudās’ ancestors, as remote as Devavāta, Sṛñjaya and Divodāsa, were all living in the Kurukṣetra area, and the movement of the Bharatas westwards started after:

a) Sudās’ performance of the yajña under his priest Viśvāmitra in the Kurukṣetra area, after which he started expanding out in all directions.

b) Sudās’ crossing from east to west of the two easternmost rivers of the Punjab (the Vipāś and Śutudri, i.e. the Beas and Sutlej), still under his priest Viśvāmitra.

c) His battle on the Paruṣṇī river (i.e. the Ravi river) against the “people of the Asiknī” (i.e. the people living on the western side of the Paruṣṇī river, in the area between the Paruṣṇī and the Asiknī river, i.e. the Chenab river) in the "Ten Kings' Battle" (dāśarājña).

 

But wait. Do you really have to go through all the data and evidence presented by me to confirm this?

No, you don’t! You just have to go through Witzel’s own writings, and you will see very clearly how even he is fully aware that the "Ten Kings' Battle" (dāśarājña) took place long after the Bharatas can be seen as the native inhabitants of the Kurukṣetra area.

He very clearly knows that Viśvāmitra was Sudās’ priest before he was replaced by Vasiṣṭha, and that the yajña in the Kurukṣetra area was conducted under his  earlier priest Viśvāmitra, and that the victory in the "Ten Kings' Battle" (dāśarājña) took place under the later priest Vasiṣṭha. What geographical sequence does this show?

And in fact, Witzel is so emphatically aware that Viśvāmitra (in the Kurukṣetra area) represented an earlier period than Vasiṣṭha (in the "Ten Kings' Battle" in the Punjab area) that he actually supports the fallacious theory that it was Viśvāmitra, out of his resentment at having been replaced by Vasiṣṭha, who cobbled together the alliance of the Ten Kings against Sudās:

“the other tribes began to unite against them [the Bharatas], either due to the intrigues of the ousted Viśvāmitra, or simply because of intratribal resentment. This led to the famous battle of the ten kings which, however, is not mentioned by Book 3, as Viśvāmitra (its author) had by then been displaced by Vasiṣṭha as the purohita of Sudās. There is even the possibility that it was Viśvāmitra who ― in an act of revenge ― forged the alliance against his former chief. Whatever the reason, however, the alliance failed and the Pūrus were completely ousted (7.8.4 etc) along with Viśvāmitra (=Bhṛgu, 7.18.6)” (WITZEL 1995b:334)”.

Surely, the above quote in Witzel’s own words makes it clear whether it is Sudās and Viśvāmitra in Haryana who are chronologically earlier, or Sudās and Vasiṣṭha in the Punjab?

 

Obviously, life is short, and I cannot waste any more of my time reviewing or discussing again and again the wild ramblings of a lying parrot – it is now the year 2025, and it is already 22 years that this vaudeville cross-talk has been going on.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

WITZEL 1995b: Rgvedic History: Poets, Chieftains and Politics. Witzel, Michael. pp. 307-352 in “The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia”, ed. by George Erdosy. Walter de Gruyter. Berlin.