Indus script

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Indus script
Type:	Undeciphered (most often believed to be logographic, syllabic, or a mix of both)
Languages:	Unknown
Time period:	2600–1900 BC
ISO 15924 code:	`Inds`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key.

An Indus Valley seal with the seated figure termed pashupati. The writing above it is inscribed in the mature Indus script.

The term Indus script (Harappan script) refers to short strings of symbols associated with the Harappan civilization (Indus Valley Civilization—most of the Indus sites are distributed in present day Pakistan and North West India) used between 2600–1900 BC. In spite of many attempts at decipherments and claims, it is as yet undeciphered. That the underlying language is unknown and the lack of a bilingual (a "Rosetta stone") makes the decipherments extremely difficult.

The script generally refers to that used in the mature Harappan phase, which evolved from an early Harappan script attested from around 3500 BC,^[1] and was followed by a late Harappan script used until around 1100 BC. They are most commonly associated with flat, rectangular stone tablets called seals, but they are also found on at least a dozen other materials. The first publication of a Harappan seal dates to 1875, in the form of a drawing by Alexander Cunningham. Since then, well over 4000 symbol-bearing objects have been discovered, some as far afield as Mesopotamia. After 1100 BC, use of the symbols ended, a while after the final stage of Harappan civilization. Some early scholars, starting with Cunningham in 1877, thought that the script was the archetype of the Brahmi script used by Ashoka. Cunningham's ideas were supported by G.R. Hunter, and a minority of scholars continue to argue for the Indus script as the predecessor of the Brahmic family. However most scholars disagree, claiming instead that the Brahmi script derived from the Aramaic script.

1 Script characteristics
2 Attempts at decipherment
3 Late Indus script
4 Notes
5 References
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Script characteristics

The script is written from right to left ^[1], and sometimes follows a boustrophedonic style. Since the number of principal signs is about 400, midway between typical logographic and syllabic scripts, many scholars accept the script to be logo-syllabic ^[2] (typically syllabic scripts have about 50-100 signs whereas logographic scripts have a very large number of principal signs). Structural analysis indicates an agglutinative language underneath the script.

[edit] Attempts at decipherment

Over the years, numerous decipherments have been proposed, but none has been accepted by the scientific community at large. The following factors are usually regarded as the biggest obstacles for a successful decipherment:

The substrate language has not been identified, nor the language family to which it belongs.
The average length of the inscriptions is less than five signs, the longest being one of only 26 signs.
No bilingual texts have been found.

[edit] Dravidian hypothesis

The Russian scholar Yuri V. Knorozov (or Knorosov), who has edited a multi-volumed corpus of the inscriptions, surmises that the symbols represent a logosyllabic script, with an underlying Dravidian language as the most likely linguistic substrate.^[3] Knorozov is perhaps best known for his decisive contributions towards the decipherment of the Maya script, a pre-Columbian writing system of the Mesoamerican Maya civilization. Knorozov's investigations were the first to conclusively demonstrate that the Maya script was logosyllabic in character, an interpretation now confirmed in the subsequent decades of Mayanist epigraphic research.

The Finnish scholar Asko Parpola repeated several of these suggested Indus script readings. The discovery in Tamil Nadu of a late Neolithic (early 2nd millennium BC, i.e. post-dating Harappan decline) stone celt adorned with Indus script markings has been considered to be significant for this identification.^[4]

All scholars accept that the Dravidian theory is unproven. Iravatham Mahadevan, who supports the Dravidian hypothesis, says, "we may hopefully find that the proto-Dravidian roots of the Harappan language and South Indian Dravidian languages are similar. This is a hypothesis [...] But I have no illusions that I will decipher the Indus script, nor do I have any regret"^[5]

[edit] Script vs. ideographical symbols

If the signs are purely ideographical, they may contain no information about the language spoken by their creators: they would qualify either as a purely logographic script, or as a system of symbols not qualifying as a script in the true sense (pictograms).

Steve Farmer, Richard Sproat, and Michael Witzel^[6] make the case that the symbols were not coupled to oral language, which in part explains the extreme brevity of the inscriptions. This view has been challenged by Parpola.^[7]

[edit] Decipherment claims

The topic is popular among amateur researchers, and there are various decipherment claims. Several authors have attempted to prove that the script encodes Vedic Sanskrit. These theories are not accepted by most scholars.

[edit] Late Indus script

Late Indus script found on pottery at Bet Dwarka dated to 1528 BC based on thermoluminescence dating.

Onshore explorations near Bet Dwarka in Gujarat revealed the presence of late Indus seals depicting a 3-headed animal, earthen vessel inscribed in a late Harappan script, and a large quantity of pottery similar to Lustrous Red Ware bowl and Red Ware dishes, dish-on-stand, perforated jar and incurved bowls which are datable to the 16th century BC in Dwarka, Rangpur and Prabhas. The thermo-lumenescence date for the pottery in Bet Dwaraka is 1528 BC. This evidence suggests that a late Harappan script was used until around 1500 BC. ^[2] Other excavations in India at Vaisali, Bihar ^[3] and Mayiladuthurai, Tamil Nadu ^[4] have revealed Indus symbols being used as late as 1100 BC.

[edit] Notes

^ (Lal 1966)
^ (Bryant 2000)
^ (Knorozov 1965)
^ (Subramanium 2006; see also A Note on the Muruku Sign of the Indus Script in light of the Mayiladuthurai Stone Axe Discovery by I. Mahadevan (2006)
^ Interview at Harrappa.com
^ (Farmer 2004)
^ (Parpola 2005)

[edit] References

Bryant, Edwin (2000), The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate Oxford University Press.
Farmer, Steve et al. (2004) The Collapse of the Indus-Script Thesis: The Myth of a Literate Harappan Civilization, EVJS, vol. 11 (2004), issue 2 (Dec) [5] (PDF).
Knorozov, Yuri V. (ed.) (1965) Predvaritel’noe soobshchenie ob issledovanii protoindiyskikh textov. Moscow.
Mahadevan, Iravatham, Murukan In the Indus Script (1999)
Parpola, Asko (2005) Study of the Indus Script. 50th ICES Tokyo Session.
Rjabchikov, Sergei V. (2006a). A New Key to the Proto-Indian Writing System. AnthroGlobe Journal, 2006.
Rjabchikov, Sergei V. (2006b). Protoindiyskoe pis'mo i ego rasshifrovka. Krasnodar.
Subramanian, T. S. (2006) "Significance of Mayiladuthurai find" in The Hindu, May 01, 2006.