[ariel]

And all these articles will be written by the very same type of people you are describing in your previous post :-)))
All soft sciences have a good percentage of their results, discussions and conclusions based on personal prejudices, fantasies and wishful thinking. They also employ highfalutin’ words, convoluted sentences and manipulative arguments.
They are incapable of dissociating from personal tastes and ambitions and cannot employ the main scientific instrument,- the experiment. All historical sciences in the best possible case have at their disposal a bunch of quotations from the sources of unknown veracity and objects of uncertain age, origin and significance. Two different academically-minded individuals will easily produce three mutually exclusive conclusions .
In a way, they are akin to psychiatry, the last frontier of medicine. Having very limited sources of objective information, they rely on the external appearance and subjective “complaints” : how can we be certain, for example, that a patient suffers from borderline personality and not from bipolar illness? Psychiatric DSM, already in its 5th reincarnation, is a classic example of “glossary” with constantly changing subjective diagnostic criteria of diagnoses.

Egerton was the first one to compile a glossary. But he was in India for a short time and only in a small part of it. He knew absolutely nothing of anything outside its NW region, of the influence of, say, South on Deccan, of Deccan on NW and vice versa, the rest of Indian history and ad infinitum. He was simply the first, and as such poorly informed.

Stone was the next, and his Glossary is still a tremendously important but not perfect educational instrument.

Elgood stand heads and shoulders above them. His glossaries were researched to the hilt, but he repeatedly reminds the readers that much is not known yet.

Still, all three are perfect examples of earnest and honest attempts to systematize our knowledge. Their input was and is priceless. So, the word “ glossary” should not be viewed with derision and sarcasm.

All my objections to the soft side of “ weaponology” address ignorant and self-adoring publications, from articles and books , pretending to be called “ research” , resorting to omission or fabrication of what is already known, in short ,- ignorance married to deception.

I have nothing against color albums: they are better than black and white:-)

But if one wants to be engaged in real science, let him become a chemist, a physicist, a molecular biologist or an engineer. Science is a full time job. Otherwise, one should keep study of ancient weapons as a hobby and do not pretend to be a specialist. That is what I do and am happy about having a relaxing “vacation” from real science that demands from me brutal objectivity and is by definition falsifiable:-) One may be permitted to assemble examples and advance hypotheses for their potential use by the professionals. These publications may be accepted and cited, or conversely , ignored, critiqued or thrown into the garbage pile by the true knowledgeable and dedicated researchers.