# DRAFT ADJUDICATION — Popper Engine rivals stage, tranche 2

**STATUS: DRAFT — awaiting orchestrator countersignature. Not a registered verdict.**

Scope: the 12 archived Family B (Grok 4.5 expert) rival responses for batch r3-b1,
conjectures 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 40 (24 rivals total).
Protocol: `docs/DESIGN_POPPER_RIVALS_STAGE_20260806.md` §3. Inputs read in full: the
12 files in `docs/generated/popper_rivals/r3-b1/grok/`, the corresponding 12
`docs/generated/popper_rivals/evidence/r3-b1-*.md` blocks, the registration doc
`docs/generated/popper_v2_rung3_registration_20260804.md` (all 9 validation events
+ §6 post-registration annotations), the frozen instruments in
`popper_v2_rung3_pinned_instruments_{b,c}.json`, the held source code
(`apps/scriptome/services/namami_traditions.py`, `namami_census.py`,
`apps/scriptome/management/commands/retype_scriptome_namami_traditions.py`,
`apps/scriptome/services/harvesting.py`), and
`docs/generated/namami_kannada_institutions_report_20260804.md`. Read as binding
precedent, in full: `docs/generated/popper_rivals/ADJUDICATION_DRAFT_tranche1_20260806.md`,
including its countersignature section.

All tests below were executed read-only against the live census DB (`docker
compose exec -T db psql`), 2026-08-06/07. No files other than this one were
touched; no git actions taken; archived rivals/evidence files and the r3-b1
registration doc were read-only. The `r2-edh-b1/grok/` folder now contains EDH
replies (02, 03, 04) — these are tranche 3, explicitly out of scope, and were not
opened. (Note: this pass was resumed after a session restart orphaned an earlier
start on the same brief; no partial draft existed at resume, so nothing was
inherited from before this file.)

**How to read the verdicts** (protocol §3, applied per tranche-1 precedent):
RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA (test ran, cuts against the rival) · RIVAL-LIVE
(plausible and undischarged — no test could be run on held data, a test ran but
did not discharge the rival, or a test ran and the result leans toward the rival)
· RIVAL-DEFECTIVE (not distinct from the registered mechanism, or misstates held
evidence/architecture on its face — per tranche-1 ruling 2, applied on held
documentation rather than defaulted to LIVE out of caution where the documentation
genuinely settles it). A rival that is NOT-COMPUTABLE converts to LIVE, never to
refuted. Per-conjecture grade: STRENGTHENED iff both rivals land
REFUTED/DEFECTIVE (tranche-1's own operating rule, which is what let 06's single
DEFECTIVE + single REFUTED still strengthen); INTERPOLATION-ONLY iff either rival
is LIVE. Where a conjecture's own registered status carries an independent
substantive problem the rival verdicts don't capture (this tranche has exactly
one such case, r3-b1-31), the grade field says so explicitly rather than
reporting a bare mechanical label.

**Precedents carried forward from tranche 1, and their applicability here:**
(a) the NAMAMI detail-fetch natural experiment that refuted the
true-absence/portal-suppression rival pair for r3-b1-01/-08 — conjectures 35 and
40 carry the identical rival pair for the identical underlying pilot data
(`namami_detail_fetched`), re-run fresh below; (b) the RIVAL-DEFECTIVE class
(06-r1) — applied below wherever a rival's own proposed mechanism is checkable
against, and disproven by, our held source code, not merely against data (r3-b1-34
below is the clean case; several other rivals are checked against the same code
and land as REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA instead because their own proposed test was
independently executable on live data with a decisive numeric result — the
distinction and reasoning for each is stated inline); (c) the korcis (source_id=50)
day-2 cohort standing flag — does not bind anything in this tranche: all 12
conjectures here are NAMAMI-only (source_id=51); noted for completeness, not
triggered; (d) the J&K concentration finding (r3-b1-18-r2) — likewise contextual
only; J&K appears throughout this tranche's data as an ordinary holdout state, not
as a decider for any of these 12 conjectures.

---

## r3-b1-21 — tradition='sanskrit' floor >20% in every complete state

**Registered mechanism:** a real South Asian book-culture-umbrella presence
everywhere in India, attenuated (not eliminated) only where a large non-South-Asian
institutional presence exists — the training low, Himachal Pradesh at 22.42%, is
attributed to HP's large Tibetan-tradition institution. Training range 22.42%
(HP) to 99.26% (Odisha); Bihar's 41.10% is flagged in the registered notes as
driven by Bihar's high abstention rate, not by another tradition being dominant.

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent w/ evidence? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Portal routing rules assign records lacking clear Tibetan/Islamic signal to the umbrella **by default**; only a state with a large volume of positively-labeled competing tradition can approach the floor. | Yes. | States the pattern accurately. | true | true | Decisive — see below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |
| r2 | Institutional collecting/preservation priority for classical Indic material sets the floor (a selection effect), not a real population-wide presence. | Yes. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not run. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |

**r1 test executed.** `apps/scriptome/services/namami_traditions.py` (the held,
current routing code, gate C3, superseding a genuine pre-2026-07-28 blind
`catalogue_default="sanskrit"` default that this module's own docstring
documents and explicitly replaced) has **no basis value that means "no evidence,
so default to the umbrella."** `tradition='sanskrit'` can only be produced by
`basis='language_facet_south_asian'` (the token is a member of the portal's own
declared 377-value language vocabulary) or `basis='script'` (the script token is
a member of the portal's own declared 97-value script vocabulary) — both require
positive membership in a vocabulary snapshot, not absence of a competing signal.
Records with no usable evidence in either column go to a **different** tradition
value, `tradition='unclassified'` (basis `unrecognised_evidence` or
`no_language_or_script_evidence`), which is excluded from this instrument by
construction. This is directly checkable as data — exactly the "recompute after
applying a stricter positive-evidence rule" test rival 1 itself proposes:
```sql
SELECT raw#>>'{namami_tradition_routing,basis}', count(*)
FROM scriptome_manuscriptrecord WHERE source_id=51 AND tradition='sanskrit' GROUP BY 1;
```
Result, **source-wide, all ~4.86M NAMAMI rows**: `language_facet_south_asian`
3,971,042 + `script` 23,845 = 3,994,887, **100.000%**; a direct follow-up query
confirms **zero** `tradition='sanskrit'` rows carry any other basis value,
anywhere in the corpus. Per-state breakdown (all 20 scope states) shows the same
two-basis-only composition in every single state, training and holdout alike. Per
rival 1's own criterion ("if nearly all umbrella-labeled records carry clear
positive evidence... this favors the proposed real-presence mechanism") this is
as clean a discharge as the data can give: there is no default pathway to find,
and the rival's characterization of the routing architecture is factually wrong
on its face, not just weakly supported. (Same defective-architecture shape as
tranche-1's 06-r1, but classified REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA rather than DEFECTIVE here
because the rival's own proposed test was fully computable and decisively run,
rather than blocked on a genuinely missing datum — the two verdict classes are
adjacent by design and the orchestrator may prefer to re-file this as DEFECTIVE;
the underlying finding is unaffected either way.)

**r2 missing datum:** independent, non-NAMAMI-mediated inventories of the same
institutions' holdings — not held, Grok correctly flags this.

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY.** r1 cleanly discharged; r2 stays undischarged.

---

## r3-b1-23 — tradition='unclassified' never exceeds 45% in any complete state

**Registered mechanism:** a ceiling on how much of a state's data can resist the
routing instrument's own current classification logic — set well above the
observed training maximum. Training: 0.13%–41.26% (Bihar the outlier, ~3.8x the
next-highest state, Maharashtra at 10.86%).

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Abstention tracks cross-state variation in source-metadata **completeness/quality**; the outlier state simply has the poorest average metadata. | Yes — locates the driver in state-side data quality, not the tool-side classification-logic ceiling the registered text names. | States the pattern accurately. | true | true | Executed, cuts against the rival's specific framing — see below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |
| r2 | Conservative abstention reflects the state's institutional mix containing the most ambiguous/cue-less items — a selection effect on what got catalogued, not an instrument property. | Yes. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not run. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |

**r1 test executed.** `tradition='unclassified'` decomposes exactly into two
disjoint sub-mechanisms tested separately below (r3-b1-24, -25):
`unrecognised_evidence` (a real, non-blank value the routing vocabulary doesn't
recognize — a curation gap) and `no_language_or_script_evidence` (both columns
genuinely blank). Live query, Bihar (the outlier this rival is about):
unrecognised_evidence 114,232 + no_language_or_script_evidence 45,783 = 160,015
(41.26%, matches the registered training value). **71.4% of Bihar's abstention
is the present-but-unrecognized type, not the genuinely-blank type** — i.e. the
majority of what makes Bihar the outlier is NOT missing/poor metadata at all.
Eyeballing the actual `(language_raw, script_raw)` pairs behind
`unrecognised_evidence` (full detail under r3-b1-24 below) shows the dominant
driver is fully-populated Devanagari-script renderings of ordinary, already-
recognized language names (Sanskrit, Hindi, Maithili, ...) that the routing
vocabulary — built from the portal's own Roman-script dropdown snapshot — simply
doesn't recognize in Devanagari spelling. This is the opposite of "poorest
average metadata": these particular records are fully and legibly described, just
in a script the vocabulary snapshot wasn't built to read. Per rival 1's own
test ("measure whether the outlier's abstention collapses toward the others once
metadata richness is equalized") — the records aren't metadata-poor to begin
with, so "richness" isn't the axis driving the outlier status; this cuts against
rival 1's specific "poorest average metadata" framing even though the residual
28.6% (genuine blanks) is directionally consistent with a completeness story.

**r2 missing datum:** independent, non-NAMAMI-mediated cataloguing-thoroughness
data for the same institutions — not held.

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY** (r2 alone would guarantee this; r1's own
refutation is reported for consistency with r3-b1-24/-25's fuller versions of the
same underlying test).

---

## r3-b1-24 — basis='unrecognised_evidence' never exceeds 35% (curation gap)

**Registered mechanism:** distinguishes a data-CURATION gap (a real value present
in the source, not yet recognized by the routing instrument's own vocabulary
snapshot — fixable by extending the vocabulary) from a genuine source-data gap.
Training: Bihar 29.45% (the lone large outlier), every other state <1.4%.

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Outlier produced by one or a few large institutions using a consistent non-canonical label form; no other state has a comparably-scaled institution using the same unrecognized label family. | Yes. | Yes. | true | true | Refuted — see below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |
| r2 | Measurement artifact: the instrument flags a whole record whenever **any** token in a multi-valued language cell is unrecognized, inflating states with more multi-token cells. | Yes. | Yes. | true | true | Refuted — see below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |

**r1 test executed** (institutional concentration + cross-state recurrence,
Bihar's 114,232 `unrecognised_evidence` rows):
```sql
SELECT raw->>'institute_raw', count(*) FROM scriptome_manuscriptrecord
WHERE source_id=51 AND raw->>'holding_state_id'='5'
  AND raw#>>'{namami_tradition_routing,basis}'='unrecognised_evidence' GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 2 DESC;
```
Result: **2,490 distinct institutions** contribute to Bihar's pool; the top 15
institutions together hold only **45.4%** (51,885/114,232) — a long tail, not a
"one or a few institutions" concentration. A second query checked whether the
same unrecognized language tokens recur in other states: they do, in **10** other
states/territories (Rajasthan 6,480 records/6 shared tokens, Uttar Pradesh
1,469/7, Maharashtra 478/4, Haryana 401/3, Jharkhand 37/2, Odisha 34/2, Madhya
Pradesh 30/4, Gujarat 21/2, J&K 13/1, Tamil Nadu 3/1) — directly against rival
1's prediction that "no other state contains an institution of comparable scale
using that same unrecognized label family." A third check (eyeballing the actual
`(language_raw, script_raw)` value pairs) found the true driver: the top 20
distinct pairs account for 114,012 of Bihar's 114,232 rows (99.8%), and are
overwhelmingly **Devanagari-script spellings of already-recognized language
names** — संस्कृत/देवनागरी ("Sanskrit"/Devanagari, 77,457), हिन्दी/देवनागरी
("Hindi", 21,245), मैथिली ("Maithili", ~6,666 across two script pairings),
कन्नड ("Kannada", 1,668), तिब्बती ("Tibetan", 1,233), उर्दू/फारसी ("Urdu"/Persian
script, 729), प्राकृत/देवनागरी ("Prakrit", 418), बंगाली ("Bengali", 167),
अरबी ("Arabic", 149), plus smaller Awadhi/Braj Bhasha/Magahi/Bhojpuri entries.
This is a general script-of-entry curation gap (the vocabulary snapshot is built
from the portal's Roman-script dropdown and doesn't recognize Devanagari
spellings of the same languages), not an institutional idiosyncrasy — the
diffuse institutional spread and the cross-state recurrence both point the same
way. Per rival 1's own compound criterion ("if... concentrated in the outlier
state's major institutions **and** adding those strings collapses the share...
favors the rival; if the same strings appear diffusely across many states, this
favors the [registered] general curation-gap ceiling") — only the second
disjunct holds; the first (institutional concentration, state-uniqueness) is
decisively false. **Flagged as a genuinely useful, actionable finding** (not
merely a rival-adjudication result): extending the vocabulary snapshot to
recognize Devanagari spellings of already-covered language names would collapse
most of this specific gap — worth registering as a concrete fix for a future
harvest pass, independent of this rival's own verdict.

**r2 test executed:**
```sql
SELECT (raw->>'language_raw' ~ '[,;/&+]' OR raw->>'language_raw' ~* '\sand\s'), count(*)
FROM scriptome_manuscriptrecord WHERE source_id=51 AND raw->>'holding_state_id'='5'
  AND raw#>>'{namami_tradition_routing,basis}'='unrecognised_evidence' GROUP BY 1;
```
Result: **114,227 of 114,232 (99.996%) are single-token cells**; only 5 records
have a multi-value language field at all. The proposed "any-token-unrecognized
flags the record" mechanism cannot be the driver of an outlier this size when
99.996% of the affected rows never had more than one token to begin with. This
also matches a direct read of `route_namami_record` (`namami_traditions.py`):
the code implements an **ALL-fail** rule (a record routes via the facet
vocabulary if **any** one of a multi-valued cell's tokens matches; it is flagged
`unrecognised_evidence` only when **none** do) — the opposite of rival 2's
claimed **any-fail** rule. Data and code agree.

**Draft grade: STRENGTHENED.**

---

## r3-b1-25 — basis='no_language_or_script_evidence' never exceeds 15% (genuine blank)

**Registered mechanism:** the source-data-completeness counterpart to r3-b1-24 —
records where the underlying catalogue entry itself has nothing in either column.
Training: Bihar 11.80% (max), Maharashtra close behind at 10.71%, rest <7.6%.

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | List-page harvest/extraction artifact — values exist on richer views (detail pages) but the enumeration method misses them; same family as r3-b1-01/-08/-35/-40. | Yes. | Yes. | false | **TRUE** (reversed, tranche-1 precedent applies) | Executed, thin — see below. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |
| r2 | Blanks concentrate in a stable minority of institutions/record types (~12% of any state); not a property of the underlying source-completeness rate generally. | Yes. | Yes. | true | true | Executed, genuinely mixed — see below. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |

**r1 test executed.** Unlike r3-b1-01/-08/-35/-40 (date/extent fields, where the
detail-enrichment phase writes its own new columns we can compare directly), the
NAMAMI detail page also carries its own "Language"/"Script" fields (confirmed via
a live key-inventory query, 67 distinct detail keys) — a genuine, if smaller,
natural experiment:
```sql
SELECT (raw#>>'{detail,Language}' IS NOT NULL AND raw#>>'{detail,Language}'!=''),
       (raw#>>'{detail,Script}' IS NOT NULL AND raw#>>'{detail,Script}'!=''), count(*)
FROM scriptome_manuscriptrecord WHERE source_id=51 AND raw->>'namami_detail_fetched'='true'
  AND raw#>>'{namami_tradition_routing,basis}'='no_language_or_script_evidence' GROUP BY 1,2;
```
Result: only **1 record, source-wide**, among the 11,974-row detail-fetch pilot
(Sikkim/Goa/A&N/Chandigarh) was genuinely blank in both columns at enumeration
time — and for that one record, the detail page's Language and Script fields
were both populated. Directionally consistent with rival 1 (detail reveals what
list enumeration missed), but **n=1 cannot discharge or confirm anything** —
this basis value is simply rare within the pilot states (unlike date/extent,
which were rare/absent everywhere at enumeration grain). Recorded as executed
but underpowered, structurally different from the rich 01/08/35/40 evidence.

**r2 test executed** (institutional concentration, the two states with a
double-digit genuine-blank rate — Bihar 11.80%, Maharashtra 10.71%):
```sql
-- top-N institution share of no_language_or_script_evidence rows, per state;
-- re-derive state blank-rate excluding each state's own top-20 contributing institutions
```
Result: **genuinely split.** Bihar: 2,519 distinct institutions, top-5 only
10.41%, top-20 only 20.71% — diffuse; excluding the top 20 institutions entirely,
Bihar's blank rate barely moves (11.80% → 9.36%). Maharashtra: only 215 distinct
institutions, top-5 **67.28%**, top-20 **93.03%** — sharply concentrated;
excluding the top 20, Maharashtra's blank rate **collapses** from 10.71% to
**0.76%**, squarely inside rival 2's own predicted "below a few percent" outcome.
Per rival 2's own criterion, Bihar's result favors the registered mechanism
(dominance persists, diffuse) and Maharashtra's favors the rival (collapses,
concentrated) — a genuine split across the only two testable states, not a
routine shrug. (Maharashtra is independently known elsewhere in this project as
the state with a page-level dedup/fanout harvest anomaly; plausible, not
confirmed here, that its blank-field concentration relates to the same
underlying data-entry/batch idiosyncrasy.)

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY.**

---

## r3-b1-26 — basis='script' never exceeds 2% (language blank, script alone sufficient)

**Registered mechanism:** attributed to one specific state's (HP's) institutional
cataloguing pattern — Tibetan-script rows there most often carry a usable script
token even when language doesn't parse. Training: HP 1.60% (max), every other
state <0.84%.

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | The instrument treats script-alone as sufficient only for a narrow, highly diagnostic set of scripts (principally Tibetan), geographically concentrated in HP. | Yes. | States the pattern's outcome accurately, but not its own claimed cause. | true | true | Refuted — see below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |
| r2 | Language/script fields are filled or blank **together** almost everywhere; this specific mismatch pathway is intrinsically rare, and HP's 1.60% is only a mild, unremarkable elevation. | Yes. | Yes. | true | true | Refuted — see below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |

**r1 test executed.** `namami_traditions.py`'s `NAMAMI_SCRIPT_TRADITIONS` table
has **97 entries** spanning Perso-Arabic/Tibetan/Sinitic/Inner-Asian/Southeast-
Asian/Brahmic-southern-northern-eastern-historic/tribal-other — `basis='script'`
can fire on any of the 97, not a narrow Tibetan-gated allow-list. Live query
confirms this architecturally-predicted diversity: across the 20 scope states,
167 distinct (state, script_token) combinations fire this basis, dominated
everywhere by **each state's own ordinary majority script** — Devanagari in
Bihar/HP/Rajasthan/UP/MP/Maharashtra, Oriya in Odisha, Bengali/Asamese in West
Bengal/Assam, Tamil/Grantha/Telugu in Tamil Nadu, Malayalam in Kerala, Tamil/
Grantha/Telugu in Karnataka. **HP itself**: devanagari 4,825 (93.0% of HP's
5,189 `basis='script'` rows), pavachi 169, takri 158, sharada 10, gurumukhi 9,
**tibetan only 6 (0.12%)**, persian 5, bhattaksari 5, bengali 1, arabic 1. HP's
own training-max case is overwhelmingly a Devanagari phenomenon, not a Tibetan
one — directly against rival 1's specific "principally Tibetan" claim, and
incidentally against the registered text's own causal story too (flagged below,
separately from the rival grade).

**r2 test executed** (conditional probability, P(script usable | language
blank), all 20 states):
```sql
-- per state: count where language blank/null-token; among those, count where script usable
```
Result: HP **90.6%** (5,189/5,727) — dramatically higher than every other state:
next-highest West Bengal 51.8%, J&K 47.0%, most states 1–20%, lowest Puducherry
0.0%/Manipur 0.8%. This is not "a mild elevation... similar across almost all
states" as rival 2 predicts; per rival 2's own stated criterion ("if the
conditional probability is markedly higher only in [HP] and driven by a
distinctive institutional subset, this favors the [registered] mechanism") this
is exactly the outcome observed.

**Base-conjecture wrinkle, flagged for the orchestrator (not a rival-grade
issue):** both tests independently show HP's basis='script' ceiling-approaching
value is driven by **Devanagari**, not Tibetan-script rows, contrary to the
registered text's specific causal narrative ("Tibetan-script rows there most
often carry a usable script token"). The statistical claim (2% ceiling, HP as
training max) survives both rivals cleanly; the registered explanation of *why*
HP is the max case does not match the data as closely as written. Likely
mechanism: some HP-specific institution/cataloguing convention records Script
but leaves Language blank/unusable at an unusually high rate — itself a real,
if different, institutional-practice story, just not the Tibetan one named.

**Draft grade: STRENGTHENED**, with the wrinkle above carried forward as an
annotation, in the same spirit as tranche-1's r3-b1-03/-26 treatment of base-
evidence wrinkles found while testing rivals.

---

## r3-b1-27 — basis='script_outranks_language_facet' never exceeds 0.1% (rarest pathway)

**Registered mechanism:** included for systematic completeness across the
routing instrument's six pathways; corresponds to a specifically documented,
deliberate override rule in the held code (a Southeast-Asian/Tibetan/Sinitic/
Inner-Asian/Zoroastrian script overriding an otherwise-South-Asian-facet
language token — the code's own docstring cites a real example found via live
dry-run: Pali-language, Dhamma-Lanna-script manuscripts from Northern Thailand).
Training: HP 0.033% (107 records, the max); every other state lower, several 0.

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | The 107 records are residual data-entry errors/OCR-type noise, not a real, systematic pathway. | Yes. | Yes. | true | true | Refuted — see below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |
| r2 | The 107 records are a one-time bulk-import spike concentrated in one or a few HP institutions/batches; no other state has anything comparable. | Yes. | Yes. | true | true | Refuted — see below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |

**r1 test executed** — pulled every `(language_token, script_token)` pair firing
this basis, all 20 states:
```sql
SELECT raw->>'holding_state', raw#>>'{...,language_token}', raw#>>'{...,script_token}', count(*)
FROM scriptome_manuscriptrecord WHERE source_id=51
  AND raw#>>'{namami_tradition_routing,basis}'='script_outranks_language_facet' GROUP BY 1,2,3;
```
Result: **41 distinct pairs, thematically coherent, not scattered noise** —
overwhelmingly `script_token='tibetan'` paired with Sanskrit or Himalayan-belt
vernacular language tokens (HP alone: tharu+tibetan 36, sanskrit+tibetan 30,
toda+tibetan 27, thareli+tibetan 8, tagin+tibetan 5, hindi+tibetan 1 = HP's full
107), recurring in the same shape across Bihar, Delhi, J&K, Karnataka, MP,
Maharashtra, TN, UP, West Bengal — Sanskrit-or-vernacular-language-with-Tibetan-
script is exactly the class the held code's own docstring anticipates (Buddhist-
canonical text preserved via Tibetan-tradition manuscript/xylograph culture at
Himalayan-belt institutions), plus a smaller, equally coherent secondary cluster
of `script_token='batak'` (Southeast Asian) pairing with Sanskrit/Asamese in
Assam, UP and West Bengal. Per rival 1's own criterion ("if many pathway records
show deliberate or systematic mismatched labeling that the instrument correctly
overrides, this favors the [registered] mechanism") — this is exactly what the
data shows.

**r2 test executed** — HP's 107-record institutional/temporal breakdown:
```sql
SELECT raw->>'institute_raw', date_trunc('day', created_at), count(*) FROM scriptome_manuscriptrecord
WHERE source_id=51 AND raw->>'holding_state_id'='14'
  AND raw#>>'{namami_tradition_routing,basis}'='script_outranks_language_facet' GROUP BY 1,2 ORDER BY 3 DESC;
```
Result: spread across **~20 distinct institutions/named individual contributors**
— the largest, Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, holds only 12/107 (11.2%);
the rest are small monasteries, academies and named private individuals at 1–6
records each. All share the same `created_at` day, which is simply HP's one
ordinary bulk-harvest day (not a distinguishable anomalous batch — no multi-day
split exists for HP the way korcis has one). Neither a single dominant
institution nor a distinguishable "spike" batch exists; combined with the r1
finding that the same pathway recurs, diffusely, across 9 other states, this
satisfies rival 2's own registered-favoring disjunct twice over.

**Draft grade: STRENGTHENED.**

---

## r3-b1-31 — THE ZOMBIE. sanskritic language_group > indo_aryan in every complete state except one

**Registered mechanism:** a real, documented regional vernacular-manuscript
tradition explains the one training exception (Odisha, ratio 0.4462, Oriya-
dominant); the claim pre-registered a **named kill condition** — 2 or more of
{Gujarat, J&K, Assam} flipping vernacular-dominant would refute it.

**Conjecture's own §7 status, independent of the rival verdicts (registration
doc, validation events 1, 2, 5):** Gujarat left the batch before the holdout ran
(ruling 2), leaving only J&K and Assam of the three named deciders testable. J&K
patterned sanskritic (ratio 20.6); Assam flipped vernacular (ratio 0.711) — 1 of
2 available deciders, not the 2-of-3 the kill condition requires, so **the kill
condition is now literally unfireable and the conjecture survives on wording.**
Substantively, Assam's flip (a real, non-artifactual second exception, see below)
plus **Manipur** — not even one of the three named deciders — **also** flipping
vernacular-dominant (ratio 0.0499) means **three** vernacular-dominant states now
exist against a claim of exactly one unique exception. The registration doc's own
language: "recorded as substantively dead in all but wording — a standing
exhibit for why kill conditions must be attrition-proof." This is unchanged by
anything below and must be reported regardless of how the rivals land.

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Vernacular dominance is an institutional-cataloguing-priority artifact (a few large institutions' collecting choices), not evidence of a real regional literary culture. | Yes. | Yes. | true | true | Refuted — see below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |
| r2 | The sanskritic/indo_aryan split is sensitive to token-boundary/mixed-language routing decisions; reasonable alternative rules would flip additional states or revert the named exceptions. | Yes. | Yes. | true | true | Refuted — see below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |

Both rivals attack the substance directly (neither argues the wording
technicality), exactly as the brief anticipated — adjudicated on their merits
below.

**r1 test executed** — institutional concentration of the `indo_aryan`
population in all three vernacular-dominant states, compared against the same
calculation on two sanskritic-dominant states (Bihar, West Bengal) as rival 1's
own test explicitly asks for:

| State | indo_aryan total | Top-1 inst. share | Top-3 share | Distinct institutions |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| Odisha (training exception) | 414,417 | 4.67% | 6.02% | **27,677** |
| Assam (holdout, flipped) | 43,469 | 20.81% | 28.26% | 4,377 |
| Manipur (holdout, flipped, non-decider) | 2,643 | 9.84% | 26.83% | 57 |
| Bihar (sanskritic-dominant, calibration) | 54,142 | 5.08% | 14.72% | 1,137 |
| West Bengal (sanskritic-dominant, calibration) | 29,489 | **35.94%** | **64.18%** | 121 |

Odisha's vernacular dominance is the **most diffuse** distribution measured
anywhere in this exercise — 27,677 distinct institutions, top-3 capturing barely
6% — the opposite of "one or a few institutions' priority." West Bengal, the
calibration case that is **not** vernacular-dominant overall, shows the
**highest** institutional concentration of the five states compared (top-3
64.18%, only 121 institutions). If institutional priority drove vernacular
dominance, the pattern should run the other way. Per rival 1's own criterion
("if vernacular dominance... disappears once the top institutions are removed...
while sanskritic-dominant states show no such concentration, this favors the
rival; if dominance persists even after removing the largest institutions, this
favors the [registered] regional-tradition mechanism") — dominance clearly
persists and is if anything less concentrated than the calibration cases.

**r2 test executed** — actual `language_token` composition of each vernacular-
dominant state's `indo_aryan` bucket:
```sql
SELECT raw->>'holding_state', raw#>>'{...,language_token}', count(*) FROM scriptome_manuscriptrecord
WHERE source_id=51 AND raw->>'holding_state_id' IN ('26','4','22')
  AND raw#>>'{namami_tradition_routing,language_group}'='indo_aryan' GROUP BY 1,2;
```
Result: Odisha 99.25% single token `oriya` (411,301/414,417); Assam 87.76% single
token `asamese` (38,150/43,469, secondary `brajabhasha` 9.19%); Manipur 98.86%
single token `bengali` (2,613/2,643 — notably **not** Meitei/Manipuri, which the
routing table groups `tibeto_burman` and is outside this metric entirely; the
holdings driving Manipur's flip are Bengali-language). All three states'
dominant tokens are canonical, unambiguous, universally-recognized distinct
Indo-Aryan language names with no plausible boundary reading toward Sanskrit —
there is no "reasonable alternative token rule" under which Oriya, Assamese or
Bengali would reclassify as sanskritic. Per rival 2's own criterion this
decisively favors the registered mechanism's stability.

**Draft grade: mechanically STRENGTHENED-ON-RIVALS (both land
REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA) / SUBSTANTIVELY DEAD AS WORDED (ZOMBIE) — flagged, not a
bare label, orchestrator ruling required.** Read together, the two findings are
not in tension, they are complementary: the rivals' tests show that "sanskritic-
vs-vernacular ratio tracks a real regional manuscript culture" is a genuinely
robust mechanism-TYPE — it now survives adversarial testing in **three**
independent states (Odisha, Assam, Manipur), not just the one training case —
which is a stronger validation of the mechanism-type than the original
registration had grounds for. But that same evidence is what makes the
conjecture's specific WORDED claim (a **unique** exception) even more clearly
false: three genuine, non-artifactual regional-vernacular-dominant states exist,
not one. Recommend the orchestrator treat this as the headline reformulation
candidate for r2-b2: a continuous/graded "vernacular-vs-sanskritic ratio
reflects real regional literary culture" claim (dropping uniqueness) would
likely be a strong, rival-tested candidate; the current registered wording
should not be cited as STRENGTHENED without this caveat attached, no matter what
the mechanical rule says.

---

## r3-b1-32 — single most common basis value ≥35% in every complete state (no 3-way fragmentation)

**Registered mechanism:** a floor on how fragmented the routing instrument's own
basis assignment can get, calibrated close to the training minimum because that
state (Bihar, 40.62%) already shows real multi-pathway fragmentation. Training:
Bihar 40.62% (min, `language_facet_south_asian`), HP 77.37% (2nd-lowest, via
`language_exception` — the only training state whose plurality basis isn't
`language_facet_south_asian`), rest 87–99%.

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Most states are dominated by a single real tradition in actual holdings; the floor reflects genuine content dominance, not an intrinsic instrument-fragmentation limit. | Yes. | Yes. | true | true | Executed — see below (nuanced). | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |
| r2 | Structural pathway imbalance: only 2–3 of the six basis values ever carry substantial volume, so the plurality is mathematically near-guaranteed to clear 35% regardless of real content. | Yes. | Yes. | true | true | Refuted — see below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |

**r1 test executed** — HP's plurality pathway (`language_exception`, the
training case closest to non-`language_facet_south_asian` dominance) resolved to
underlying `tradition`:
```sql
SELECT tradition, count(*) FROM scriptome_manuscriptrecord WHERE source_id=51
  AND raw->>'holding_state_id'='14' AND raw#>>'{namami_tradition_routing,basis}'='language_exception'
  GROUP BY 1;
```
Result: `tibetan` 249,922 (**99.86%**), `islamic` 351, `other` 5 — HP's plurality
pathway is, overwhelmingly, one real tradition (the same well-documented Tibetan
institutional presence already established via r3-b1-19/-26), not an artifact of
how the instrument happens to slice six basis categories. Grok's own stated
favor-criterion for this rival is, on close reading, somewhat inverted relative
to its own mechanism text ("if plurality shares stay high and stable under
alternative [coarser tradition] groupings, this favors the [registered]
instrument-fragmentation floor" — literally true here, since HP's plurality
stays >99% concentrated even regrouped by real tradition), so this is filed
REFUTED per the rival's own literal words. Substantively, though, this finding
is fully compatible with — arguably a friendly elaboration of — rival 1's own
mechanism narrative (real content dominance): it does not actually create
tension with the registered claim in either direction, and the orchestrator
should read "REFUTED" here as "did not establish the divergence the rival's own
test needed to show," not as "the real-dominance intuition was wrong."

**r2 test executed** — top-2-basis cumulative share, all 20 states:
```sql
-- rank the 6 basis values per state by volume, sum top-2 vs remainder
```
Result: **Bihar 70.08%** (the training minimum/tightest case) is a dramatic
outlier — every other state is ≥94.97% (Delhi), rising to 100.00% (Puducherry).
Bihar's own full breakdown (`language_facet_south_asian` 40.62%,
`unrecognised_evidence` 29.46%, `language_exception` 17.52%,
`no_language_or_script_evidence` 11.80%) shows **four** substantial pathways, not
2–3 with the rest structurally negligible — directly against rival 2's premise
that "only 2–3 of the six pathways ever carry substantial volume" and that "the
top two pathways already account for the great majority of records in **every**
state." Bihar is precisely the counter-example, and precisely the state that
matters most (it sets the floor's tightest margin). Per rival 2's own criterion
("if the six pathways are more evenly capable of carrying volume and the floor
still holds..., this favors the [registered] mechanism") this is a direct hit.

**Draft grade: STRENGTHENED**, r1's nuance recorded transparently above.

---

## r3-b1-33 — Hindi-belt non-Latin institution-name fraction, substantially and cleanly separated

**Registered mechanism:** institution-NAME transliteration practice tracks the
holding institution's own administrative-language convention, not the script of
what it holds. Training: belt (Bihar/MP/Rajasthan) minimum 45.03%, non-belt
(Karnataka/Kerala/Maharashtra/Odisha/TN/HP) maximum 14.10% — clean >3x
separation.

**BINDING annotation carried into this adjudication** (registration doc §6,
2026-08-04): an independent investigation
(`docs/generated/namami_kannada_institutions_report_20260804.md`) traced part of
Rajasthan's and Madhya Pradesh's high figures to **108 distinct Kannada-script
institute names / 47,638 Rajasthan records (~10.0%)** and **1 name / 3,364 MP
records (~1.4%)**, both attributable, via the live MRC-Name field on sampled
detail pages, to **one out-of-state Karnataka cataloguing centre** (NIPSR,
Sravanabelagola). The registration doc requires this be discussed as an
unexcluded rival mechanism "at mechanism-grading time" — this is that time,
regardless of what Grok's own rivals said.

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | The belt/non-belt pattern is driven by which **entry/cataloguing centre** (possibly out-of-state) did the data entry, not by the holding institution's own administrative-language convention — explicitly continuous with the disclosed NIPSR finding. | Yes. | Yes, and directly grounded in disclosed evidence. | true | true | Executed via proxy — see below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA (as submitted); a narrower open residual remains, see caveat** |
| r2 | The portal's own storage/display layer applies region-keyed differential transliteration, independent of institution or entry centre. | Yes. | Yes. | false | false, confirmed | Not run; one incidental data point noted. | **RIVAL-LIVE** |

**r1 test executed.** We do not hold an MRC/entry-centre field at enumeration
grain for Rajasthan/MP (only on the 11,974-row detail-fetch pilot, entirely in
excluded states) — but the disclosed report already established, via live portal
cross-checking, that Kannada-script institute names in these two Hindi-belt
states trace **100%** to this one out-of-state centre. A Kannada-Unicode-block
filter is therefore a valid, decisive proxy for excluding exactly this disclosed
entry-centre's contribution:
```sql
-- non-Latin institution share per state, WITH and WITHOUT Kannada-block (U+0C80-U+0CFF) institute names
```

| State | Non-Latin % (all) | Non-Latin % (excl. Kannada-block) | Kannada-block records |
|---|---:|---:|---:|
| Rajasthan | 92.24% | **82.27%** | 47,638 (108 institutions) |
| Madhya Pradesh | 60.48% | **59.11%** | 3,364 (1 institution) |
| Bihar (belt minimum) | 45.03% | **45.03% — unaffected** | 0 |
| Karnataka (non-belt maximum) | 14.10% | 14.10% — unaffected | 0 |

No other state among the 20 (training or holdout) carries any Kannada-block
signal at all — a clean reproduction of the disclosed report's finding, now
extended to test its consequence for the belt/non-belt separation rather than
just its existence. **The separation is fully robust to the disclosed
confound at its full known magnitude**: Rajasthan stays the highest state either
way, MP barely moves, and — critically — **Bihar, the actual bottleneck state
that sets the belt minimum, is completely untouched** (it carries none of this
specific confound). Belt minimum vs non-belt maximum stays >3x separated with or
without the exclusion. This directly refutes rival 1 **as submitted** — the
claim that entry-centre practice "explains... the clean belt-versus-non-belt
separation" generally does not survive removing the one fully-disclosed,
identifiable instance of exactly that phenomenon.

**Caveat, stated plainly and left open:** this test can only exclude the
specific, script-identifiable confound already disclosed (Kannada-script
entries). It cannot detect a hypothetical **Devanagari-script** out-of-state
entry centre, since Devanagari is both the belt states' own genuine
administrative script and indistinguishable, on script alone, from a
Devanagari-writing external centre. This narrower form of rival 1 remains
untestable without MRC-grain data at enumeration scope and should be logged as
an open sub-question for a future batch, not folded into the refutation above.

**r2:** Grok correctly flags not computable (needs independent directories or
original-entry views outside the portal). One incidental, non-dispositive data
point: Karnataka (non-belt) itself shows a nonzero 14.10% non-Latin share (not in
Kannada script — a live check found **zero** Kannada-block institute names in
Karnataka's own facet, an independently curious fact the original report also
noted, from an unidentified other script) — the portal evidently does not force
Latin script uniformly outside the belt, which weighs mildly against a *literal
blanket-suppression* reading of rival 2 without discharging its milder,
probabilistic form.

**Draft grade: INTERPOLATION-ONLY** (r2 alone guarantees this) — **but the
substantive finding is a positive one for the base conjecture**: the specific,
disclosed threat this conjecture carried into mechanism-grading has now been
tested directly, at its full known magnitude, against the state that matters
most (the bottleneck), and does not threaten the separation. This satisfies the
registration annotation's requirement in substance, independent of the
mechanical grade.

---

## r3-b1-34 — raw.holding_is_not_origin = true on 100% of records, zero exceptions

**Registered mechanism, verbatim:** "Not a substantive claim about the world;
verifies that the project's own holdings-vs-origin bookkeeping was applied
correctly by the harvest across every record." Training and holdout: 0
exceptions across every state tested.

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | The flag is set by a hard-coded constant, not a per-record decision — the 100% pass is guaranteed by construction and verifies nothing. | **Not distinct** — restates what the registered text already discloses. | Consistent (confirmed true). | false | true | Confirmed true by code. | **RIVAL-DEFECTIVE (not distinct) — valid as a methodological note** |
| r2 | The source data contains no field the harvest could even interpret as an origin/production signal, so the flag has no opportunity to be wrong. | **Not distinct** — elaborates on, does not compete with, the same disclosed non-substantive framing. | Consistent (confirmed true). | true | true | Confirmed true by code and by direct query. | **RIVAL-DEFECTIVE (not distinct) — valid as a methodological note** |

This is the brief's own framing for r1 ("DEFECTIVE-as-mechanism-rival but valid
as a methodological note to record"), extended here to r2 on the identical
logic: both rivals turn out to be **true**, and neither offers an account that
competes with the registered mechanism, because the registered mechanism already
concedes the point before either rival was minted. Confirmed independently:

**r1 (hardcoded constant):** `apps/scriptome/services/namami_census.py`,
`build_enumeration_record`, writes `raw["holding_is_not_origin"] = True`
unconditionally — no field read, no conditional. Confirmed true.

**r2 (no origin field exists to read):** the module's own "Origin discipline"
section states the full ~45-field detail-page inventory has no place-of-
production field; a live query of the actual 67 distinct detail-field keys
captured across all 11,974 detail-fetched records confirms this directly (no key
resembling origin/produced/copied-at/written-at/composed-at), and a further
free-text search of `Description`/`Extra Remarks` for those same patterns across
all 11,974 records returns **zero** matches. Confirmed true, independently of
the docstring's own claim.

**Not fully vacuous, however — flagged for the record.** `namami_census.py`'s
own docstring documents a **real** clobber-bug class ("Correction, 2026-07-28"):
a stale-`raw`-materialization bug in the detail-enrichment phase silently
reverted the `namami_tradition_routing` block on ~100 Chandigarh rows before it
was fixed. A 100%-pass on `holding_is_not_origin` across ~4.6M rows spanning
both harvest phases genuinely does verify merge-safety against that exact bug
class for this field too — the check is trivial by design but not epistemically
empty; it is the kind of regression net that already caught a real bug in a
sibling field.

**Draft grade: STRENGTHENED** (both rivals DEFECTIVE, per tranche-1's own
operating rule that DEFECTIVE counts toward strengthening) — **flagged
prominently for the orchestrator**: this conjecture asserts no world-mechanism
by its own admission, so "STRENGTHENED" here means "the write-integrity check
survives hostile scrutiny intact," not "a mechanism was earned" in the sense the
rest of this stage is testing for. Recommend the orchestrator consider whether
pure bookkeeping-integrity conjectures (this appears to be the only one of its
kind in r3-b1) should be exempted from rival-minting in future batches, since the
protocol's whole premise (mechanisms are earned by outlasting rivals) doesn't
apply to a conjecture that disclaims having a mechanism.

---

## r3-b1-35 — date_precision='unknown' on 100% of records, zero exceptions (strict sibling of r3-b1-01)

**Registered mechanism:** the identical harvest-method-completeness claim as
r3-b1-01 (list-page enumeration does not parse a date column), at a stricter
exact-zero threshold. Enrichment-exclusion filter applies (registration §3.1).

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Dates are truly absent from the source for every state; not a parsing gap. | Yes. | Yes. | false | **TRUE** (reversed — tranche-1's 01-r1 precedent applies verbatim) | See below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |
| r2 | Portal-wide suppression of the date field on list outputs specifically. | Yes. | Yes. | false | **TRUE** (reversed) | See below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |

**Test re-executed fresh** (identical query family to tranche-1's r3-b1-01,
re-run today to confirm the pilot data is unchanged and to get current numbers):
```sql
SELECT raw->>'namami_detail_fetched', date_precision, count(*)
FROM scriptome_manuscriptrecord WHERE source_id=51 GROUP BY 1,2;
```
Result: **identical to tranche-1's snapshot**, confirming the detail-enrichment
pilot has not moved since 2026-08-06. List-page-only rows (`detail_fetched`
false) = 4,845,289, **100.000% unknown, 0 dated** — matches every one of this
conjecture's own 11 training-state values (all exactly 0) and its `total`
figures exactly. Detail-fetched rows = 11,974, of which **210 (1.754%)** carry a
resolved (century-precision) date. Per both rivals' own favor-criteria (identical
wording to r3-b1-01's, and to r3-b1-40's below), the same portal's own
detail-page interface — the richer, non-list pathway both rivals' own tests ask
for — shows a nonzero dated fraction the instant enumeration-only rows are
excluded, refuting both true-absence and portal-wide-suppression.

**Draft grade: STRENGTHENED**, matching tranche-1's r3-b1-01 exactly, as the
brief anticipated.

---

## r3-b1-40 — extent_leaves populated on <0.5% of records (India-only sibling of r3-b1-08)

**Registered mechanism:** the identical harvest-method-completeness claim as
r3-b1-08, at a tighter India-only threshold. Enrichment-exclusion filter
applies (registration §3.1).

| Rival | Mechanism (gist) | Distinct? | Consistent? | Grok flag | Reassessed | Test result | Draft verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| r1 | Extent data is truly absent from the source for every state; not a parsing gap. | Yes. | Yes. | false | **TRUE** (reversed) | See below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |
| r2 | Portal-wide suppression of the extent field on list outputs specifically. | Yes. | Yes. | false | **TRUE** (reversed) | See below. | **RIVAL-REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA** |

**Test re-executed fresh** (same query family, same live run as r3-b1-35 above):
```sql
SELECT raw->>'namami_detail_fetched', (extent_leaves IS NOT NULL), count(*)
FROM scriptome_manuscriptrecord WHERE source_id=51 GROUP BY 1,2;
```
Result: list-only rows = 4,845,289, **0 populated (0.000%)** — matches all 11
training states exactly. Detail-fetched rows = 11,974, of which **11,862
(99.065%)** have `extent_leaves` populated — identical to tranche-1's r3-b1-08
finding. Same decisive double refutation, on the same held natural experiment.

**Draft grade: STRENGTHENED**, matching tranche-1's r3-b1-08 exactly.

---

## Closing summary — 12 conjectures, draft grades

| Conjecture | Rival 1 verdict | Rival 2 verdict | **Draft grade** | One-line reason |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| r3-b1-21 | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | LIVE | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | No default-to-umbrella pathway exists in the routing code or data; r2 needs external inventories. |
| r3-b1-23 | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | LIVE | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | Bihar's abstention is dominated by present-but-unrecognized (not missing) metadata; r2 needs external inventories. |
| r3-b1-24 | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | **STRENGTHENED** | Diffuse across 2,490 institutions and 10 other states; 99.996% single-token cells. |
| r3-b1-25 | LIVE (thin, n=1) | LIVE (genuine split: Bihar diffuse, Maharashtra concentrated) | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | Detail-fetch test underpowered; institutional-concentration test splits across the two testable states. |
| r3-b1-26 | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | **STRENGTHENED** | 97-script vocabulary, not Tibetan-gated; HP's conditional probability (90.6%) is a stark, not mild, outlier. |
| r3-b1-27 | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | **STRENGTHENED** | Thematically coherent Tibetan/SEA-script overrides, recurring across 9 states; HP's 107 spread across ~20 institutions. |
| r3-b1-31 | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | **STRENGTHENED-ON-RIVALS / SUBSTANTIVELY DEAD (ZOMBIE)** | Rivals cleanly refuted, but 3 real vernacular-exception states now exist against a "unique exception" claim — orchestrator ruling required. |
| r3-b1-32 | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA (nuanced) | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | **STRENGTHENED** | HP's plurality is 99.86% genuine Tibetan content; Bihar (the tight case) has 4 substantial pathways, not 2-3. |
| r3-b1-33 | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA (as submitted; narrower residual open) | LIVE | **INTERPOLATION-ONLY** | Disclosed Kannada/MRC confound tested at full magnitude — separation survives, bottleneck state untouched. |
| r3-b1-34 | DEFECTIVE (not distinct) | DEFECTIVE (not distinct) | **STRENGTHENED (flagged)** | Both rivals true but non-competing; registered text already concedes the point — protocol-fit question for the orchestrator. |
| r3-b1-35 | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | **STRENGTHENED** | Same detail-fetch natural experiment as tranche-1's 01, re-confirmed (1.754% dated on detail-fetch vs 0% on list-only). |
| r3-b1-40 | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA | **STRENGTHENED** | Same natural experiment as tranche-1's 08, re-confirmed (99.065% populated on detail-fetch vs 0% on list-only). |

**7 of 12 cleanly STRENGTHENED (24, 26, 27, 32, 34, 35, 40); 4 of 12
INTERPOLATION-ONLY (21, 23, 25, 33); 1 of 12 flagged composite verdict requiring
orchestrator ruling (31, the zombie — mechanically strengthened on its rivals,
substantively dead as worded).** Of 24 rivals total: **17 REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA,
2 DEFECTIVE, 5 LIVE** (3 genuinely not-computable, matching Grok's own correct
self-assessment; 2 executed but underpowered/mixed).

---

## Every executed test — query gist and result (21 rivals tested; 3 not computable)

| Rival | Query gist | Result | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| 21-r1 | `basis` breakdown of `tradition='sanskrit'` rows, source-wide and per-state | 100.000% via `language_facet_south_asian`/`script` (positive-evidence bases); 0 rows via any other basis, anywhere in the corpus | REFUTED |
| 23-r1 | Decompose Bihar's `unclassified` share into `unrecognised_evidence` vs `no_language_or_script_evidence` | 71.4% present-but-unrecognized (mostly Devanagari-script language names), 28.6% genuinely blank — not "poorest average metadata" | REFUTED |
| 24-r1 | Institutional concentration + cross-state token recurrence, Bihar's `unrecognised_evidence` rows | 2,490 distinct institutions (top-15 only 45.4%); same tokens recur in 10 other states; dominant driver is Devanagari-script spellings of recognized languages | REFUTED |
| 24-r2 | Multi-token vs single-token share, Bihar's `unrecognised_evidence` rows | 114,227/114,232 (99.996%) single-token; code implements ALL-fail not ANY-fail | REFUTED |
| 25-r1 | Detail-page Language/Script populated for enumeration-blank records, source-wide | Only 1 record source-wide qualifies; that one is populated on detail-fetch, but n=1 | LIVE (thin) |
| 25-r2 | Institutional concentration of `no_language_or_script_evidence`, Bihar + Maharashtra | Bihar diffuse (2,519 inst., excl-top-20 rate 9.36% vs 11.80% baseline); Maharashtra concentrated (215 inst., excl-top-20 rate 0.76% vs 10.71%) | LIVE (split) |
| 26-r1 | `script_token` diversity firing `basis='script'`, all 20 states | 167 distinct combinations; HP's own case 93.0% devanagari, 0.12% tibetan | REFUTED |
| 26-r2 | P(script usable \| language blank) per state | HP 90.6% vs next-highest 51.8%, most states 1-20% | REFUTED |
| 27-r1 | Actual `(language_token, script_token)` pairs firing `basis='script_outranks_language_facet'` | 41 distinct pairs, thematically coherent (Sanskrit/vernacular + Tibetan/SEA script), recurring across 9 states | REFUTED |
| 27-r2 | Institutional/temporal concentration of HP's 107 records | ~20 institutions, top institution only 11.2%; single ordinary harvest day | REFUTED |
| 31-r1 | Institutional concentration of `indo_aryan` records, 3 vernacular-dominant states vs 2 sanskritic-dominant calibration states | Odisha most diffuse of all 5 (27,677 institutions, top-3 6.0%); West Bengal (non-vernacular-dominant) most concentrated (top-3 64.2%) | REFUTED |
| 31-r2 | Actual `language_token` composition of each state's `indo_aryan` bucket | Odisha 99.25% oriya, Assam 87.76% asamese, Manipur 98.86% bengali — all unambiguous distinct languages | REFUTED |
| 32-r1 | Tradition breakdown of HP's `language_exception` (plurality) basis | 99.86% tradition=tibetan — genuine content dominance, not taxonomy artifact | REFUTED (nuanced) |
| 32-r2 | Top-2-basis cumulative share, all 20 states | Bihar 70.08% (outlier, 4 substantial pathways) vs everyone else ≥94.97% | REFUTED |
| 33-r1 | Non-Latin institution share with/without Kannada-block (disclosed MRC confound) exclusion | Rajasthan 92.24%→82.27%, MP 60.48%→59.11%, Bihar (bottleneck) unaffected at 45.03% — separation survives | REFUTED (residual open) |
| 34-r1 | Read harvest code for conditional logic setting `holding_is_not_origin` | Unconditional constant, confirmed | DEFECTIVE (confirmed true, not distinct) |
| 34-r2 | Full detail-field key inventory + free-text search for origin/production patterns | 67 keys, none origin-like; 0 free-text matches across 11,974 records | DEFECTIVE (confirmed true, not distinct) |
| 35-r1/35-r2 | `date_precision` × `namami_detail_fetched`, source-wide (re-run of tranche-1's 01) | List-only 0/4,845,289 dated; detail-fetched 210/11,974 (1.754%) dated | REFUTED both |
| 40-r1/40-r2 | `extent_leaves IS NOT NULL` × `namami_detail_fetched`, source-wide (re-run of tranche-1's 08) | List-only 0/4,845,289 populated; detail-fetched 11,862/11,974 (99.065%) populated | REFUTED both |

## Every NOT-COMPUTABLE rival — missing datum (3 rivals)

| Rival | Proposed test | Missing datum |
|---|---|---|
| 21-r2 | Compare NAMAMI tradition shares against independent, non-portal-mediated inventories of the same institutions | External scholarly/inventory data — not held |
| 23-r2 | Compare portal abstention rates to external cataloguing-thoroughness data for the same institutions | External scholarly/inventory data — not held |
| 33-r2 | Compare portal-displayed institution names against independent directories or an "original entry" view distinct from the portal's own display layer | No independent directory or original-entry export held; portal exposes only its own display layer |

---

## Items needing an orchestrator ruling before countersignature

1. **r3-b1-31 (the zombie) — the tranche's central item.** Both rivals land
   cleanly REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA, which by the mechanical rule alone would read
   STRENGTHENED. Recommend the orchestrator NOT let this stand as a plain
   STRENGTHENED label: the conjecture's own registered wording (a unique
   exception) is independently, decisively false (Assam ratio 0.711, Manipur
   ratio 0.0499, both confirmed non-artifactual by the same tests that refuted
   the rivals). Recommend recording a composite verdict as drafted above and
   flagging this conjecture as the lead reformulation candidate for r2-b2 (a
   continuous vernacular-vs-sanskritic ratio claim, dropping uniqueness).
2. **r3-b1-34 — protocol fit for pure bookkeeping-integrity conjectures.** Both
   rivals are DEFECTIVE-as-not-distinct rather than wrong; the conjecture
   disclaims having a substantive mechanism from the outset. Mechanically
   STRENGTHENED per tranche-1's own DEFECTIVE-counts-toward-strengthening rule,
   but "a mechanism was earned" does not really describe what happened here.
   Recommend the orchestrator decide whether this conjecture-class should be
   exempted from future rival-minting, or whether the STRENGTHENED label should
   carry a standing asterisk for this class.
3. **r3-b1-21-r1 and r3-b1-24-r2 and r3-b1-26-r1 — DEFECTIVE vs REFUTED
   classification.** All three rivals mischaracterize the held routing
   architecture on its face (same shape as tranche-1's 06-r1, which was ruled
   DEFECTIVE) but were classified REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA here because their own
   proposed tests were independently computable and decisively run on live
   data, rather than blocked on a missing datum the way 06-r1's was. This is a
   reasoned distinction, not an oversight, but it is a close enough call that
   the orchestrator may prefer to re-file some or all of these three as
   DEFECTIVE instead; the underlying findings and the conjectures' grades are
   unaffected either way (24 and 26 are STRENGTHENED regardless; 21 is
   INTERPOLATION-ONLY regardless, since its r2 stays LIVE either way).
4. **r3-b1-26's and r3-b1-32's base-evidence wrinkles.** Both conjectures'
   registered narratives specifically attribute their training-max/plurality
   case to HP's Tibetan-tradition institutional presence; the data instead
   shows r3-b1-26's HP case is 93% Devanagari-driven (only 0.12% actually
   Tibetan-script), while r3-b1-32's HP case genuinely IS 99.86% Tibetan by
   underlying tradition. These point different directions on the SAME state and
   should be read together: HP is a genuinely complex case (a large, real
   Tibetan institutional presence coexisting with a large, apparently
   independent Devanagari-blank-language cataloguing pattern) — worth a
   standing note on HP specifically, similar to the korcis day-2 flag from
   tranche 1, rather than folded silently into either conjecture's own grade.
5. **r3-b1-33's residual Devanagari-entry-centre question.** The disclosed
   Kannada/MRC confound is now tested and found not to threaten the belt/
   non-belt separation. A structurally identical but currently undetectable
   confound (a Devanagari-script out-of-state entry centre) cannot be ruled out
   without MRC-grain data at enumeration scope. Recommend registering this as a
   discriminating test for a future batch if/when MRC or entry-centre data
   becomes available at full scope, rather than leaving it as an unbounded
   residual doubt on an otherwise well-tested conjecture.
6. **r3-b1-24's actionable finding.** The dominant driver of Bihar's curation
   gap (Devanagari-script spellings of already-recognized language names) is a
   concrete, fixable vocabulary-snapshot gap, disclosed here as a byproduct of
   rival-testing rather than as this task's actual purpose. Recommend routing
   this to whoever owns `namami_traditions.py`'s vocabulary snapshot as a
   candidate improvement, independent of and unaffected by this conjecture's
   own (already STRENGTHENED) grade.

**DRAFT — awaiting orchestrator countersignature.**

---

## COUNTERSIGNATURE — orchestrator rulings on the six flagged items (Fable, 2026-08-06)

1. **r3-b1-31 (zombie) — COMPOSITE VERDICT RATIFIED:** "RIVALS-DISCHARGED / CLAIM
   SUPERSEDED." Both rivals refuted means the vernacular-dominance phenomenon is
   real (not artifactual): Odisha + Assam (0.711) + Manipur (0.0499) are three
   genuine exception states. The registered uniqueness claim stays substantively
   dead per §7. LEAD r2-b2 reformulation candidate: continuous vernacular-dominance
   form, the three exceptions as training, attrition-proof wording, lineage
   furniture pointing here.
2. **r3-b1-34 — RECLASSIFIED: INTEGRITY-VERIFIED (mechanism grading n/a).**
   METHOD AMENDMENT #9: bookkeeping-integrity point-nulls are exempt from mechanism
   grading and must say so at minting; a "rival" to one is a challenge to the
   harness, routed to harness-audit, not the graveyard. The two true-but-nondistinct
   observations are recorded as harness-audit notes (the flag IS constructional —
   which the registered text itself disclosed).
3. **REFUTED-vs-DEFECTIVE filing — LANE'S RULE RATIFIED and made standing:** where
   a rival's own proposed test is computable on held data and was executed, the
   verdict is REFUTED-ON-HELD-DATA even if the rival mischaracterized architecture;
   DEFECTIVE is reserved for rivals whose test cannot be coherently formulated
   against the actual architecture (tranche-1 06-r1 pattern).
4. **HP standing note — ORDERED:** Himachal Pradesh carries two distinct
   training-max phenomena (26's Devanagari-driven curation figure vs 32's
   genuinely-Tibetan mass, 99.86%); recorded so future minting never conflates them.
5. **r3-b1-33 residual — ACCEPTED:** the Devanagari entry-centre confound is
   untestable at current grain; INTERPOLATION-ONLY stands despite the strong
   positive Kannada/MRC-confound test; the residual test is enrichment-gated.
6. **r3-b1-24 byproduct — ROUTED:** Bihar's Devanagari-spelling vocabulary gap goes
   to the census lane as a versioned namami_traditions extension (new instrument
   VERSION + re-derivation, never a silent edit).

**FINAL TRANCHE-2 GRADES (countersigned): STRENGTHENED — 24, 26, 27, 32, 35, 40.
INTERPOLATION-ONLY — 21, 23, 25, 33. INTEGRITY-VERIFIED — 34.
RIVALS-DISCHARGED/SUPERSEDED — 31.**

**r3-b1 COMBINED MECHANISM-GRADE TABLE (all 24 survivors, both tranches):**
STRENGTHENED 10 (01, 06, 08, 17, 24, 26, 27, 32, 35, 40) ·
INTERPOLATION-ONLY 12 (03, 04, 05, 07, 09, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 25, 33) ·
INTEGRITY-VERIFIED 1 (34) · SUPERSEDED 1 (31).
Rivals across both tranches: 25 refuted on held data, 3 defective, 20 live
(their tests = the r2-b2 queue). Family B = Grok 4.5 expert throughout.

Countersigned: Fable (orchestrator), under the operator's standing delegation.
