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Highly selective

Sir, — With his article `Philology vanished: Frawley's Rig Veda - I,' Prof. Witzel, the renowned horseman, demonstrates that he is no less a navigator. What is his argument? The sea, the ships and the Sarasvati river mentioned profusely in the Rig Veda are only mirages — imagined by the Vedic poets, for the Vedas were created by a people in a land that had never seen the ocean. Having never seen the ocean or ships, the poets simply imagined them and used them as poetic devices. This is saying that artists use the imagery of things they have never seen. So we may equally say that the poets who wrote about the elephant-headed god Ganesha had never seen the elephant and that Egyptians who built the Sphinx had never seen the lion. But Witzel doesn't stop there: he makes the sea, the ships and the Sarasvati river vanish, but only the horse, also mentioned in the Rig veda is real. Prof. Witzel's philology is a highly selective `science' that can make inconvenient evidence like the ocean, ships and rivers disappear, but retain the horse (sans ribs), while simultaneously making horse bones disappear from Harappan sites. Quite a feat.

N.S. Rajaram,

Bangalore

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