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<p lang="en-US" style="line-height: 100%; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0.21cm;"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt;">Hi,</font></font></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; font-style: normal; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span lang="en-US">I am a new subscriber of this mailing list </span><span lang="en-US">but</span><span lang="en-US">, regrettably, because of a rather sad circumstance. </span><span lang="en-US">Last month (on 05 June 2014)</span><span lang="en-US"> </span><span lang="en-US">Nathan Straub</span><span lang="en-US"> </span><span lang="en-US">ask</span><span lang="en-US">ed on this mailing list “</span><span lang="en-US">Would anybody know why Paul Benedict said that Pyu was closest to the Nung(ish) subgroup? [...]</span><span lang="en-US">”</span><span lang="en-US">, relating to a statement in Benedict's Conspectus (1972); and </span><span lang="en-US">Nathan Straub</span><span lang="en-US"> mentioned </span></font></font><font face="Times New Roman"><font size="3">in this </font><span lang="en-US"><font size="3">context also </font></span></font><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span lang="en-US">my article “Reassess-ment of Myazedi Pyu [...]” (Uwe Krech, in MTBL4, 2012)</span><span lang="en-US">, stating – correctly – that I did not say there</span><span lang="en-US"> </span><span lang="en-US">why Benedict may have s</span><span lang="en-US">uggested that connection</span><span lang="en-US">.</span></font></font></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; font-style: normal; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span lang="en-US">On the same day David Bradley posted </span><span lang="en-US">a comment on Nathan Straub's query</span><span lang="en-US">: “Krech is completely off the planet about Pyu, he claims it is Shan. </span><span lang="en-US">Pyu could probably be classified better now that we have much more Luish data – Sak/Thet, Kadu and so on. I think that is the most likely fit.</span><span lang="en-US">” </span><span lang="en-US">It is obvious that Bradley had no intended to answer Nathan Straub's question. - Given that </span><span lang="en-US">that</span><span lang="en-US"> wh</span><span lang="en-US">at</span><span lang="en-US"> Bradley claimed about me is not at all true, what was Bradley's intention then?</span></font></font></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; font-style: normal; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span lang="en-US">On the one hand, t</span><span lang="en-US">o </span><span lang="en-US">merely</span><span lang="en-US"> “think” that so-called “Pyu” was – “</span><span lang="en-US">probably</span><span lang="en-US">” – affiliated with Cakish </span><span lang="en-US"><span style="background: none;">(Bradley uses the derogatory term “Luish”) is and remains a mere guess, no matter if one rep</span></span><span lang="en-US">eats this claim again and again, over years, </span><span lang="en-US">as Bradley</span><span lang="en-US">; it will not become “truer” by that. In science one has to argue on the basis of evidence. Now that fairly extensive data of three Cakish languages are available, </span><span lang="en-US">his “educated guesses” </span><span lang="en-US">can</span><span lang="en-US">not</span><span lang="en-US"> be </span><span lang="en-US">tolerat</span><span lang="en-US">ed any </span><span lang="en-US">longer.</span><span lang="en-US"> </span><span lang="en-US">Simply demonstrate what you “think”</span><span lang="en-US"> –</span><span lang="en-US"> if you can – </span><span lang="en-US">and then everybody can judge his/herself</span><span lang="en-US">!</span><span lang="en-US"> </span><span lang="en-US">N</span><span lang="en-US">obody can figure out </span><span lang="en-US">w</span><span lang="en-US">hat you think was “probable” </span><span lang="en-US">as long as you have not laid it out in detail!</span></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" style="line-height: 100%; font-style: normal; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt;">On the other hand, a much more serious issue is, however, that, instead of going the common scientific way Bradley seems to have preferred to attempt to undermine the credibility of the researcher (that is, me) who has been doing intensive research on the two so-called “Pyu” faces of the Myazedi inscriptions and their underlying *Myazedi Pyu language (as I call it), for more than 5 years now – and who came to another conclusion regarding the genetic affiliation(s) of this *language. (In the article mentioned above I have given my view that reflected the early stage of my reasearch, at ca. the end of 2010. At ICSTLL45, at Nanyang Uni, Singapore, October 2012, I have given a revised assessment, reflecting my research at that time.)</font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" style="line-height: 100%; font-style: normal; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt;">In fact I have never made any linguistic statement on so-called “Pyu” in general. “Pyu” is, first of all, a palaeographic term, not a linguistic one. Apart from the so-called “Pyu” inscriptions – i.e. inscriptions in “Pyu script” - that record the Indo-Aryan languages Pali and Sanskrit, the bulk of the remaining “Pyu” inscriptions are yet undeciphered; the 4 short urn inscriptions investigated by C. O. Blagden (1913-14) are deciphered only in part, respectively, and much of those parts only tentatively; because of their limited size these 4 inscriptions may be of value for linguistic research at a later time but not at the present stage. Moreover, given this state, nobody knows whether the non-Indo-Aryan “Pyu” inscriptions record just a single language or more than one. That is why all linguistic claims about an imagined “Pyu” language are without substance at the present stage. Yet, I am in the position to make an informed judgment on the linguistic nature of Myazedi Pyu – and I demonstrate that in my thesis (which is in its final stage).</font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" style="line-height: 100%; font-style: normal; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt;">Moreover, I have always maintained that *Myazedi Pyu is a (Sino-)Tibeto-Burman language (and have certainly never claimed that *Myazedi Pyu was Shan). To put words like the latter ones in my mouth is nothing else than trying to bring me and my research into discredit (which Bradley underlined by his phrasing that I was “off the planet”). I regard Bradley's posting as a severe breach of basic rules of academic conduct.</font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" style="line-height: 100%; font-style: normal; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt;">Therefore, if David Bradley is not able to provide serious evidence concerning my alleged claims within a fortnight – which he certainly will not be able to do, neither within a year nor within a still longer time span – I request that the staff of this mailing list attach a well-visible tag to the relevant statement of Bradley's posting mentioned above calling it what it is: a malicious lie.</font></font></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; font-style: normal; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span lang="en-US">3) Concerning the original question of Nathan Straub I would like to add the following. Because of the circumstances sketched above I am unable to make any statement about a (construed) relationship between an (imagined) “Pyu” language and Nungish, along the lines of Paul King Benedict (Conspectus, 1972: 196). But I may add, more specifically, that a particular relationship between the *Myazedi Pyu language and Nungish my research does not confirm. </span><span lang="en-US">Hereby I thank Nathan Straub for his hint regarding the hitherto unpublished note on “Pyu” in STL, Vol. 12, which I did not know of before.</span></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" style="line-height: 100%; font-style: normal; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt;">Yours,</font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" style="line-height: 100%; font-style: normal; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt;">Uwe</font></font></p>
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