----- Original Message -----
From: "H.M. Hubey" <hubeyh@...>
To: <Nostratica@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2003 11:57 PM
Subject: [Nostratica] Vedic Horse Demolishes Witzel's Theory

Rajaram's article is a waste of time.


> ... What is relevant is that the horse described by the Rig Veda is not the Central Asian horse. Then which horse is the Rig Veda describing? Where did it come from? Here is how one expert (Paul Kekai Manansala) puts it:

Rajaram flatters Manansala. I know P.K.M. from Internet discussion groups and I happen to know that equid palaeontology is certainly outside his area of expertise.

> "Deep in the specialized literature on horse classification, we can find that Indian and other horses extending to insular South-East Asia were peculiar from other breed. All showed anatomical traces of admixture with the ancient equid known as Equus Sivalensis. ...

_Equus sivalensis_ (including the stratigraphically younger _E. namadicus_ from the Narbada Valley, which most likely belongs to the same species) is ancient indeed. Those equids lived in India from the Pliocene to the middle Pleistocene (and disappeared ca. 500,000 years ago). In other words, they became extinct hundreds of millennia before the appearance of the earliest modern humans (let alone Vedic Aryans) in India.

> However, like that equid, the horse of South-Eastern Asia has peculiar zebra-like dentition. Also both were distinguished by a pre-orbital depression. The orbital region is important because it has been demonstrated as useful in classifying different species of equids. Finally, and most importantly in relation to the Vedic literature, the Indian horse has, like Equus Sivalensis, only 17 pairs of ribs." The seventeen-ribbed Equus Sivalensis is the scientific name for 'Horse of the Siwaliks'. The Siwaliks of course are the Himalayan foothills adjacent to Haryana and Punjab-the original Vedic heartland.

I've never seen any of those "experts" provide reference to a source which gives the rib count of _E. sivalensis_. The number may vary individually in modern horses anyway. Here is what a veterinarian (quoted on the "Sarasvati" website!) has to say about it:

"... But, today, the modern domesticated horse normally has 36 ribs (18 pair) - and any individual in a population of horses may have some variation on this number. I have been examining our dissection ponies over the years and have found a number of individuals with more or less than this "canonic" number - many of these variations were in the Shetland-type breed / crosses. So, yes, some individual domesticated horses may have more or less than the "normal" number of ribs (36). I have no information on other species of Equus, and I should warn you that there is much anecdotal false "information" in the horse-breed literature about numbers of vertebrae and ribs - I am aware of two scientific papers specifically counting ribs and vertebrae of different breeds of horse."

> So the horse described in the Rig Veda is in all probability this Siwalik horse or a close relative, and certainly not the Central Asian horse.

So the above sentence is "in all probability" rubbish.

> A drowning man may grasp at straws to save himself, but he cannot save the ship from sinking.

Rajaram might well apply this mixed metaphor to himself.

Piotr