Dear listfolk,
The whole point of this discussion, as far as I am concerned, is to finally get some people on both sides to really discuss the contentious issues, those that may make a difference. By contrast, so far the debate has been cloud by all sorts of diversions. In the present case, questions of the degree of Sanskit knowledge in Talageri's, Fournet's and Witzel's case is one such diversion. I don't care if anyone has the right background or not. Even village bumpkins can say the truth once in a while, and even qualified people may be wrong -- that is why they are challenged regularly by other qualified people.
Such questions are typical of both academics and Hindus: instead of dealing with the truth of the matter, they deal with the Adhikara ("entitledness") of the debaters concerned. Being of the anti-authoritarian generation (thrown out of a secondary school for growing my hair), I really don't care for this entitledness. As you can see for yourself surveying this debate, quite a few replies have already been wasted on these questions of Adhikara, and very few were about the actual AIT/OIT argumentation.
On the Hindu side, one of the main irritants, especially for the audience of the present list, is either the rejection of linguistics (as a "pseudo-science") altogether, or the attempt to try a linguistic argument for once but ignoring fundamental facts of this scholarly field, such as the distinction between genetic kinship and areal influence. With a record of truly laughable folk etymologies ("PN Oakisms"), Hindus should be extra careful not to mistake mere look-alikes (between, say, Munda and Sanskrit) for cognate words.
Kind regards,
Koenraad Elst
---In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <cybalist@yahoogroups.com> wrote: