As chronicled in your researcher's journal as I researched my history of early lifestyles in South Asia, during one of the rare times I was looking at a secondary source...
That's a cliche question, but now I think I know why people ask it. The
secondary-source purportedly scholarly book I'm reading now, from a
purportedly scholarly press (though I've run into many problems with
them before), is nonsensical in parts! I know what she's trying to say
in general, though so far she could have said it in about 2 sentences,
especially since she's citing no decent sources, and even included a
very popularized type of history book for a point she thinks is crucial.
But what bugs me even more than her longwindedness and lack of sources
-- this is terribly common in this field -- is the frequency of
sentences that have absolutely no meaning. I seriously think no one did
read this book before it was published -- and that either her English is
abominable or the typesetters left out random lines from her
manuscript. Well, I'll keep trying for a while...
And now it's almost an hour later and I'm editing this. I have given up
on this person because of what she DOES say relatively clearly. She
actually states there was no agriculture until (her term) "medieval"
times in India, and says that a tribe of 2004 CE is the same as a
tribe of c900 BCE. Right. Much more telling to me, she believes that the
Indian epics are historically accurate. That explains a lot.
Current time travel apparatus location: The Round Library, Bangalore, India
