6.0 Conclusion

Despite 150 years of research by legions of Indologists, the picture of pre-Buddhist India is largely hazy and therefore adherence to dogmas conforming to one’s pet theories is not desirable. It is clear that the pioneering attempt to retrofit literary evidence from the Vedic texts into the Aryan Migration model has ended in a fiasco. The attempt is reminiscent of earlier efforts of proving the AIT from the Vedic texts- with the difference that the attempt to seek evidence for AMT in the Vedic texts is even more desperate.



To be charitable to Dr. Witzel, let us assume that he was right and Cardona, Hock, Elst, Kalyanaraman are all in error. Does that still entitle him to make false, misleading and defamatory statements?



While even Michael Witzel, the Wales Professor of Sanskrit at the Harvard University, is entitled to make elementary mistakes in the translation of Sanskrit passages, it was not appropriate for him to have made misleading statements made not once, but many times, and in front of more than 600 specialists in the field. On the possible cause for the same, I leave it to the reader to use his own judgment for arriving at a decision on this matter after consulting Witzel’s writings and also the evidence presented here. Elst’s relevant comment [Ref 31] is however, certainly not out of place here:



…The same is true of Michael Witzel's "Piltdown translation" of the Ayu/Amavasu passage of the Baudhayana Shrautasutra ("debunked", in Farmer's parlance, on p.164-5 of my Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate and on my website). It is so obviously wrong that one wonders how a student of Sanskrit, let alone a Harvard professor of Sanskrit, could put his name under it. And yet, Witzel being just a human being, I accept that he was subject to the over-eagerness which made him see what he hoped to see…..



In a recent publication [Ref. 32], Witzel and co-author Steve Farmer pontificate, lashing out at one of their opponents:

The historical fantasies of writers like Rajaram must be exposed for what they are: propaganda issuing from the ugliest corners of the pre-scientific mind. The fact that many of the most unbelievable of these fantasies are the product of highly trained engineers should give Indian educational planners deep concern.

Much of Rajaram’s training in engineering has been in the United States, contrary to the authors’ implied assumption! As a new parent, I get concerned about our education system when an American academician indulges in the inappropriate behavior that we have just discussed in this article – and all the more because he is a Professor at the Harvard University.