May 22, 2012

Verification of the Rataraju Case - 5 -


Use of the irregular numerals in Nepali


It is very hard to learn how to count in Nepali, since there is no regularity in Nepali numerals and you need to memorize each number one by one.

For instance, “one”, “two” and “three” in Japanese (“ichi”, “ni” and “san”), which is the subject, Risa’s native language, are correlated with the numbers in the tenth place, i.e. “eleven”, “twelve” and “thirteen” which are “juu-ichi”, “juu-ni” and “juu-san” in Japanese (“juu” indicates “ten”), which makes it easy to memorize. However, “one”, “two” and “three” in Nepali are “ek”, “dui” and “tin” while “eleven”, “twelve” and “thirteen” are respectively “egara”, “bara” and “tera”; thus there is no regularity there which makes it harder to memorize.

Rataraju uttered spontaneously three numbers in Nepali, “tis (30)”, “pachs (25)” and “ath satori (8 and 70 meaning 78)” . We believe the fact that he was able to utter these complex numbers can be admitted as a convincing evidence that a Nepalese personality called Rataraju indeed appeared and made a conversation in Nepali.




<To be continued>

May 17, 2012

Verification of the Rataraju Case - 4 -


Correct use of auxiliary verbs in Nepali


Verbs and auxiliary verbs in Nepali are inflected intricately agreeing with the subject in number, gender, status and person.

Taking the important verb “hunu” which means 'to be” or “to become” as an example, the ending is expressed with “hu” when it refers to the first person singular (for example “I am…”), with “hunuhuncha” regarding the second person with high grade (i.e. for a humble expression) and “ho” regarding the third person singular with low-grade.
According to the analysis done by the TV program production team of “Unbelievable”, it turned out that Rataraju uttered “Mero buwa Tamang hunuhuncha.” (meaning “My father is a Tamang.”) by using the auxiliary verb “hunuhuncha” properly inflected agreeing with the word “father” which is considered to be an honorific title in Nepali.
We consider this fact that Rataraju is able to respond properly by using the correct inflected auxiliary verbs to be one of the compelling evidence that he possesses an ability to use Nepali correctly.


<To be continued>

May 13, 2012

Verification of the Rataraju Case - 3 -

The Nepali words which the other part (the Nepalese woman Ms. Kalpana Paudel) had not uttered

What is significant is whether Rataraju used Nepali words which Ms. Kalpana Paudel had not used in her utterances.

This is because it may give a false impression that a dialog is established even when Rataraju actually did not understand the meaning of a question, if he just used the same words uttered by Ms. Paudel repeatedly.

If Rataraju indeed was a personality of a past life, the credibility of him using Nepali words would be low if there were no Nepali words that were uttered firstly by Rataraju and not by Ms. Paudel. Otherwise, we would not be able to consider it as responsive xenoglossy with conversational skills in strict meaning.

Therefore, except for the personal names, we picked up the Nepali words which Rataraju uttered firstly from all the sessions and found out that there were 29 such words as shown below.

mero(my)・ ke(what)・ tis(30)・ bujina(I don´t know)・ ho(yes)・ ma(I) ・ Shiba(God Shiba)・ dhama(religion)・ Nepali(Nepalese)・ Gorkha(Gorkha soldiers)・pachis(25)・ hoina(no)・ pet(stomach)・ dukahuncha(hurt)・ rog(disease)・ guhar(help) ・ ath(8)・ satori(70)・ Tamang(Tamang tribe)・ kana(food)・ dal(bean soup)・ bha (rice) ・ kodo(a sort of millet)・ sathi(friend)・ cha (is/are)・ Nallu gaun(Nallu village)・ kancha (son)・ Shah(Shah dynasty)・ Himal(mountain/Himalaya)


We believe that this fact is an evidence that Rataraju knows Nepali words and that he possesses the conversation skills in Nepali.

Besides, considering the fact that his father is said to be a Tamang, it is possible that Rataraju´s mother tongue is Tamang language and not Nepali. Taking all these into consideration, the fact that Rataraju was able to respond interactively by using not a few Nepali words can be considered to have an even greater significance.

It is worth mentioning that in Rataraju´s pronunciation, you can hear sounds which are totally different from the way Risa uses her tongue when she speaks her mother tongue Japanese.

According to Dr. Chandra Kishor Khanal, a guest researcher at Chubu University who was in charge of analyzing the dialogue, Rataraju´s utterances were authentic Nepali where you could clearly find traces of Tamang dialect for example in the pronunciation of the numbers.

Furthermore, he stated that it would require around 3 to 4 years´ stay in Nepal in order to be able to have a conversation in Nepali as Rataraju did.

Those who have seen the video broadcasted at the TV program "Unbelievable" may have noticed that it was a natural conversation between Nepalese. This is easy to notice by watching Rataraju´s tone in Nepali, facial expressions and bodily movements while he talks, which can not be expressed in the written transcripts.


<To be continued>

May 3, 2012

Verification of the Rataraju Case -2-


The degree of establishment of the conversation

In analyzing the degree of establishment of the conversation, we devided the conversation into 58 sections by topic and evaluated whether Rataraju responded appropriately or not in each dialogue. The result of the evaluation including some presumptions is as shown below:

A) Conversation established with appropriate responses:
     26 sections (45 %)
B) Conversation not established with no appropriate responses at all:
     8 sections (14%)
C) Difficult to evaluate due to short and ambiguous responses:
     24 sections (41%)

The sections "Conversation not established" refers for example to where Rataraju responded “I don’t know” to the question “Is your wife at home?” or “Shiba… religions” to the question “What do you eat?” etc, thus to the dialogues where Rataraju undoubtedly made inappropriate responses.
The sections “Difficult to evaluate due to short and ambiguous responses” are for example where Rataraju responded shortly such as “I don’t know” or “Yes”, which were not clear enough to judge if Rataraju understood the meaning of the questions appropriately.
From the rough analyzation and evaluation mentioned above, we can conclude that around 80 % of the dialogues are to be regarded as established although not perfect.
Many of you who have read the transcript of the conversation from the session may point out the problem that several of Rataraju’s responses consist of short and simple ones such as “Yes” and “I don’t know”.
Besides, you may have doubts if the conversation indeed can be regarded as an appropriate one in Nepali due to Rataraju’s halting responses.
However, on this point, this Rataraju Case is not inferior at all compared with the transcripts of the conversations in German from the Grethchen Case reported by Dr. Stevenson.
Most of the responses of Gretchen, a personality of a previous life, consisted of short and simple ones such as “No”, “I don’t know” or “Town” etc.
In the first place, utterances of clients in hypnosis are generally slow and it should be mentioned that it is very rare where a client responds immediately to a question in a long context. Furthermore, it is vanishingly unlikely that a client utters at his or her own initiative.
Even Stevenson stated that Gretchen seldom uttered spontaneously and that she responded only shortly to the questions.
Where Rataraju uttered not as a response to a question but spontaneously occurred only twice; when Rataraju stated a question to Ms. Kalpana Paudel as “Are you Nepalese?” and when he complained of a stomachache.
It is worth mentioning that the sessions of Gretchen were conducted as many as 19 times. By reading the transcripts of the recordings, you cannot see so much change in the tendency of Gretchen giving only short responses with lack of fluency even in the later sessions.
Regarding this point, Dr. Stevenson stated for example that Gretchen’s responses were halting, that both grammar and vocabulary were not perfect and that there was no clear improvement or deterioration noticed throughout the entire sessions.
Rataraju’s conversation is very similar to this and for this reason, it can be concluded that the credibility of the Rataraju Case being responsive xenoglossy is high.
Taking the above into consideration, we believe that it should rather be valued that Rataraju was able to have a conversation in Nepali to this extent at his first session in Nepali.

<To be continued>