Indus script

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Indus script
Seal impression showing a typical inscription of five characters
Script type
Undeciphered;
possibly
Bronze Age writing or proto-writing
Time period
c. 3500–1900 BCE[1][2][a]
DirectionRight-to-left script, boustrophedon Edit this on Wikidata
LanguagesUnknown (see Harappan language)
ISO 15924
ISO 15924Inds (610), ​Indus (Harappan)

The Indus script, also known as the Harappan script and the Indus Valley Script, is a corpus of symbols produced by the

bilingual inscription to help decipher the script,[5] which shows no significant changes over time. However, some of the syntax (if that is what it may be termed) varies depending upon location.[3]

The first publication of a seal with Harappan symbols dates to 1875,[6] in a drawing by Alexander Cunningham.[7] By 1992, an estimated 4,000 inscribed objects had been discovered,[8] some as far afield as Mesopotamia due to existing Indus–Mesopotamia relations, with over 400 distinct signs represented across known inscriptions.[9][5]

Some scholars, such as G. R. Hunter,[10] S. R. Rao, John Newberry,[11] and Krishna Rao[12] have argued that the Brahmi script has some connection with the Indus system. Raymond Allchin[13] has somewhat cautiously supported the possibility of the Brahmi script being influenced by the Indus script.[14][15] Another possibility for the continuity of the Indus tradition is in the megalithic graffiti symbols of southern and central India and Sri Lanka, which probably do not constitute a linguistic script but may have some overlap with the Indus symbol inventory.[16][17] Linguists such as Iravatham Mahadevan, Kamil Zvelebil, and Asko Parpola have argued that the script had a relation to a Dravidian language.[18][19]

Corpus

Three stamp seals and their impressions bearing Indus script characters alongside animals: "unicorn" (left), bull (centre), and elephant (right); Guimet Museum
Met Museum
Collection of seals and their impressions; British Museum
See also:
Periodisation of the Indus Valley civilisation

By 1977 at least 2,906 inscribed objects with legible inscriptions had been discovered,

textual corpus consists of seals, impressions of such seals, and graffiti markings inscribed on pottery.[22] Seals and their impressions were typically small in size and portable, with most being just 2–3 centimetres in length on each side.[23] No extant examples of the Indus script have been found on perishable organic materials like papyrus, paper, textiles, leaves, wood, or bark.[21]

Early Harappan

Early examples of the Indus script have been found on pottery inscriptions and clay impressions of inscribed Harappan seals dating to around c. 2800–2600 BCE during the

standardised weights during the Kot Diji phase of this period.[24] However, excavations at Harappa have demonstrated the development of some symbols from potter's marks and graffiti belonging to the earlier Ravi phase from c. 3500–2800 BCE.[1][2]

Mature Harappan

In the

Indus river and its tributaries, such as Mohenjo-daro and Harappa,[b] while other sites located elsewhere account for the remaining 10%.[c][26][27] Often, animals such as bulls, water buffaloes, elephants, rhinoceros, and the mythical "unicorn"[d] accompanied the text on seals, possibly to help the illiterate identify the origin of a particular seal.[29]

Late Harappan

The

potsherd inscriptions from this phase have been noted.[30] Both seals and potsherds bearing Indus script text, dated c. 2200–1600 BCE, have been found at sites associated with the Daimabad culture of the Late Harappan period, in present-day Maharashtra.[31]

Post-Harappan

Main article: Megalithic graffiti symbols

Numerous artefacts, particularly potsherds and tools, bearing markings inscribed into them have been found in Central India, South India, and Sri Lanka dating to the

B. B. Lal found that a majority[e] of the megalithic symbols he had surveyed were identifiably shared with the Indus script, concluding that there was a commonness of culture between the Indus Valley Civilisation and the later Megalithic period.[34] Similarly, Indian epigraphist Iravatham Mahadevan has argued that sequences of Megalithic graffiti symbols have been found in the same order as those on comparable Harappan inscriptions and that this is evidence that language used by the Iron Age people of south India was related to or identical with that of the late Harappans.[35][16][36]

Characteristics

Variations of 'sign 4';[f] such variation makes distinguishing signs from allographical variants difficult, and scholars have proposed different ways to classify elements of the Indus script.[38]

The characters are largely pictorial, depicting objects found in the ancient world generally, found locally in Harappan culture, or derived from the natural world.[39] However, many abstract signs have also been identified. Some signs are compounds of simpler pictorial signs, while others are not known to occur in isolation, being known only to occur as components of more complex signs.[39] Some signs resemble tally marks and are often interpreted as early numerals.[40][41][42]

Number and frequency

The number of principal signs is over 400, which is considered too large a number for each character to be a phonogram, and so the script is generally believed to be logo-syllabic.[43][44][5] The precise total number of signs is uncertain, as there is disagreement concerning whether particular signs are distinct or variants of the same sign.[44][5] In the 1970s, the Indian epigrapher Iravatham Mahadevan published a corpus and concordance of Indus inscriptions listing 419 distinct signs in specific patterns.[45][g] However, in 2015, the archaeologist and epigrapher Bryan Wells estimated that were around 694 distinct signs.[46]

Of the signs identified by Mahadevan, 113 are hapax legomena, 47 occur only twice, and 59 occur fewer than five times.[44] Just 67 signs account for 80 percent of usage across the corpus of Indus symbols.[47] The most frequently used sign is the "jar" sign,[47] identified by Parpola as 'sign 311'.[37]

Writing direction

Most scholars agree that the Indus script was generally read from

right to left,[48][41][49] though some exceptions wherein the script is written left to right or in a boustrophedon mode are also known.[48][50] Although the script is undeciphered, the writing direction has been deduced from external evidence, such as instances of the symbols being compressed on the left side as if the writer is running out of space at the end of the row.[48][51] In the case of seals, which create a mirror image impression on the clay or ceramic on which the seal is affixed, the impression of the seal is read from right to left, as is this case with inscriptions in other cases.[50]

Relationship to other scripts

A proposed connection between the Brahmi and Indus scripts, made in the 19th century by Alexander Cunningham, an early proponent for the hypothesis of an indigenous origin of Brahmi[52]

Some researchers have sought to establish a relationship between the Indus script and

Elamite scripts.[53] However, researchers now generally agree that the Indus script is not closely related to any other writing systems of the second and third millennia BCE, although some convergence or diffusion with Proto-Elamite conceivably may be found.[54][55]
A definite relationship between the Indus script and any other script remains unproven.

Comparisons with Brahmi

Main article:
Brahmi § Indigenous origin hypothesis

Researchers have compared the Indus valley script to the

Brahmi and Tamil-Brahmi scripts, suggesting that there may be similarities between them. These similarities were first suggested by early European scholars, such as the archaeologist John Marshall[56] and the Assyriologist Stephen Langdon,[57] with some, such as G. R. Hunter,[10] proposing an indigenous origin of Brahmi
with a derivation from the Indus script.

Comparisons with Proto-Elamite

Indus characters[h] from an impression of a cylinder seal discovered in Susa (modern Iran), in a stratum dated to 2600–1700 BCE;[i] an example of ancient Indus–Mesopotamia relations.[59][60]
See also: Indus–Mesopotamia relations and Elamo-Dravidian languages

Researchers have also compared the Indus valley script with the Proto-Elamite script used in Elam, an ancient Pre-Iranian civilisation that was contemporaneous with the Indus Valley civilisation. Their respective scripts were contemporary to each other, and both were largely pictographic.[61] About 35 Proto-Elamite signs may possibly be comparable to Indus signs.[54] Writing in 1932, G. R. Hunter argued, against the view of Stephen Langdon, that the number of resemblances "seem to be too close to be explained by coincidence".[62]

Theories and attempts at decipherment

An Indus Valley copper plate inscribed with 34 characters, the longest known single Indus script inscription[63]
Further information: Harappan language

Decipherability

The following factors are usually regarded as the biggest obstacles to successful decipherment:

  • Inscriptions are very short. The average length of the inscriptions is around five signs,[64] and the longest only 34 characters long, found on a copper plate belonging to the mature Harappan period.[63] Inscriptions vary between just one and seven lines, with single lines being most common.[65]
  • There are doubts whether the Indus script records a written language or is instead a system of non-linguistic signs or
    accounting tokens and numerical clay tablets of Mesopotamia.[43] Due to the brevity of inscriptions, some researchers have questioned whether Indus symbols are even capable of expressing a spoken language.[5]

Over the years, numerous decipherments have been proposed, but there is no established scholarly consensus.[43][68] The few points on which there exists scholarly consensus are the right-to-left direction of the majority of the inscriptions,[41][5] numerical nature of certain stroke-like signs,[41][5] functional homogeneity of certain terminal signs,[41] and some generally adopted techniques of segmenting the inscriptions into initial, medial, and terminal clusters.[41] Over 100 (mutually exclusive) attempts at decipherment have been published since the 1920s,[69][5] and the topic is popular among amateur researchers.[l]

Dravidian language

rebus principle in the context of some Indus inscriptions[70]

Although no clear consensus has been established, there are those who argue that the Indus script recorded a

proto-Dravidian assumption.[71]

Based on computer analysis,[72] the Russian scholar Yuri Knorozov suggested that a Dravidian language is the most likely candidate for the underlying language of the script.[73] The Finnish scholar Asko Parpola led a Finnish team in the 1960s–80s that, like Knorozov's Soviet team, worked towards investigating the inscriptions using computer analysis. Parpola similarly concluded that the Indus script and Harappan language "most likely belonged to the Dravidian family".[74] A comprehensive description of Parpola's work up to 1994 is given in his book Deciphering the Indus Script.[72] Supporting this work, the archaeologist Walter Fairservis argued that Indus script text on seals could be read as names, titles, or occupations, and suggested that the animals depicted were totems indicating kinship or possibly clans.[43][75][76] The computational linguist Rajesh P. N. Rao, along with a team of colleagues, performed an independent computational analysis and concluded that the Indus script has the structure of a written language, supporting prior evidence for syntactic structure in the Indus script, and noting that the Indus script appears to have a similar conditional entropy to Old Tamil.[77][78]

These scholars have proposed readings of many signs; one such reading was legitimised when the Dravidian

better source needed] In a 2011 speech, Rajesh P. N. Rao said that Iravatham Mahadevan and Asko Parpola "have been making some headway on this particular problem", namely deciphering the Indus script, but concluded that their proposed readings, although they make sense, are not yet proof.[80]

Indus script on a stamp seal depicting a buffalo-horned figure surrounded by animals, dubbed the 'Lord of the Beasts' or 'Paśupati' seal (c. 2350–2000 BCE).[m]

In his 2014 publication Dravidian Proof of the Indus Script via The Rig Veda: A Case Study, the epigraphist Iravatham Mahadevan identified a recurring sequence of four signs which he interpreted as an early Dravidian phrase translated as "Merchant of the City".[82] Commenting on his 2014 publication, he stressed that he had not fully deciphered the Indus script, although he felt his effort had "attained the level of proof" with regards to demonstrating that the Indus script was a Dravidian written language.[83]

Non-Dravidian languages

Indo-Aryan language

Perhaps the most influential proponent of the hypothesis that the Indus script records an early

Proto-Sinaitic script.[43][85] He compared it to the Phoenician alphabet, and assigned sound values based on this comparison.[43] Reading the script from left to right, as is the case with Brahmi, he concluded that Indus inscriptions included numerals[o] and were "Sanskritic".[86]

S. R. Rao's interpretation helped to bolster

Indo-European cultures, such as the role of horses in the latter; as Parpola put it, "there is no escape from the fact that the horse played a central role in the Vedic and Iranian cultures".[87] Additionally, the Indus script appears to lack evidence of affixes or inflectional endings,[55] which Possehl has argued rules out an Indo-European language such as Sanskrit as the language of the Indus script.[88]

Linguist Steven Bonta hypothesizes that the language encoded in the Indus script is Indo-Aryan based on the analysis that the internal patterning of the script provides strong evidence of excessive

noun compounding, a typological trait of Indo-Aryan languages.[89]

Munda language

A less popular hypothesis suggests that the Indus script belongs to the Munda family of languages. This language family is spoken largely in central and eastern India, and is related to some Southeast Asian languages. However, much like the Indo-Aryan language, the reconstructed vocabulary of early Munda does not reflect the Harappan culture,[90] therefore, its candidacy for being the language of the Indus Civilisation is dim.[91]

Non-linguistic signs

Indus script tablet recovered from Khirasara, Indus Valley
Dholavira Signboard

An opposing hypothesis is that these symbols are nonlinguistic signs which symbolise families, clans, gods, and religious concepts, and are similar to components of

totem poles. In a 2004 article, Steve Farmer, Richard Sproat, and Michael Witzel presented a number of arguments stating that the Indus script is nonlinguistic.[92] The main ones are the extreme brevity of the inscriptions, the existence of too many rare signs (which increase over the 700-year period of the Mature Harappan civilisation), and the lack of the random-looking sign repetition that is typical of language.[93]

Controversy

Asko Parpola, reviewing the Farmer et al. thesis in 2005, stated that their arguments "can be easily controverted".[94] He cited the presence of a large number of rare signs in Chinese and emphasised there was "little reason for sign repetition in short seal texts written in an early logo-syllabic script". Revisiting the question in a 2008 lecture,[95] Parpola took on each of the 10 main arguments of Farmer et al., presenting counterarguments for each.

A 2009 paper[77] published by Rajesh P. N. Rao, Iravatham Mahadevan and others in the journal Science also challenged the argument that the Indus script might have been a nonlinguistic symbol system. The paper concluded the conditional entropy of Indus inscriptions closely matched those of linguistic systems like the Sumerian logo-syllabic system, Rig Vedic Sanskrit etc., but they are careful to stress that by itself does not imply the script is linguistic. A follow-up study presented further evidence in terms of entropies of longer sequences of symbols beyond pairs.[96] However, Sproat argued there existed a number of misunderstandings in Rao et al., including a lack of discriminative power in their model, and argued that applying their model to known non-linguistic systems such as Mesopotamian deity symbols produced similar results to the Indus script. Rao et al.'s argument against Sproat's arguments and Sproat's reply were published in Computational Linguistics in December 2010.[97][78] The June 2014 issue of Language carries a paper by Sproat that provides further evidence that the methodology of Rao et al. is flawed.[98] Rao et al.'s rebuttal of Sproat's 2014 article and Sproat's response are published in the December 2015 issue of Language.[99][100]

Unicode

Indus Script Font
Designer(s)National Fund for Mohenjo-daro
Date created2016
Date released2017
LicenseProprietary

The Indus symbols have been assigned the

ISO/IEC 10646).[102][103]

The Indus Script Font is a

better source needed
]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Bryant (2001), p. 178: "proto‐Indus writing on shards of pottery from the Ravi phase that are as early as 3500 B.C.E."
  2. ^ 1540 from Mohenjodaro, 985 from Harappa, 66 from Chanhudaro
  3. ^ 165 from Lothal, 99 from Kalibangan, 7 from Banawali, 6 from Ur in Iraq, 5 from Surkotada, 4 from Chandigarh
  4. ^ The commonly depicted "unicorn" is most likely a bull drawn in profile as to obscure one horn behind the other.[28]
  5. ^ 47 out of 61 signs surveyed.
  6. ^ 'Sign 4' is a compound of 'sign 1', depicting a person carrying two burdens, and 'sign 311', the "jar" sign. Numbering convention for the Indus script by Asko Parpola.[37] For an alternative numbering scheme, refer to Mahadevan (1977).
  7. ^ Mahadevan's 1977 sign list originally included 417 signs but in a late addendum to the list, he added 2 additional signs, identified in then recently discovered inscriptions, which he had not been able to include in the sign list before publishing.
  8. ^ Numbered according to the convention for the Indus script proposed by Asko Parpola.
  9. Louvre Museum, reference SB 2425.[58]
  10. Proto-Munda
    .
  11. ^ (..)ibra, a partial name of a king of Meluhha, a place associated with the Indus Civilisation, is briefly attested in an Akkadian inscription, but no full names are attested.
  12. ^ For example, see Egbert Richter and N. S. Rajaram.
  13. ^ Mahadevan has compared this seal to sign 7, which resembles a human figure with horns, arguing the comparison supports, among other evidence, a suggested Dravidian phonetic reading of the sign, kaṇṭh(a).[81] Numbering convention for the Indus script by Asko Parpola.
  14. ^ With reference to Rao (1973), chapter 10.
  15. ^ Given as aeka, dwi, tra, chatus, panta, happta/sapta, dasa, dvadasa, shata (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 12, 100)

References

  1. ^ a b c d Kenoyer (2006), pp. 10–11.
  2. ^ a b Bryant (2001), p. 178.
  3. ^ a b Locklear, Mallory (25 January 2017). "Science: Machine learning could finally crack the 4,000-year-old Indus script". The Verge. Manhattan, New York, NY: Vox Media. Retrieved 25 January 2017. After a century of failing to crack an ancient script, linguists turn to machines.
  4. ^ a b Possehl (1996).
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Robinson (2015).
  6. ^ Wright (2009), p. 7.
  7. ^ Cunningham (1875), pp. 105–108.
  8. ^ a b Fairservis (1992), p. 5.
  9. ^ Ghosh (1990).
  10. ^ a b Hunter (1934).
  11. ^ Newberry (1980), pp. 10–20.
  12. ^ Ghosh (1990), p. 361–364.
  13. ^ Allchin & Erdosy (1995), p. 336.
  14. ^ Goody (1987), pp. 301–302, note 4.
  15. ^ Salomon (1995).
  16. ^ a b Mahadevan (2004).
  17. ^ Ray (2006), pp. 121–122.
  18. ^ Rahman, Tariq. "Peoples and languages in pre-Islamic Indus valley". Archived from the original on 9 May 2008. Retrieved 20 November 2008. most scholars have taken the 'Dravidian hypothesis' seriously
  19. ^ "The Indus Script | Harappa". www.harappa.com. Retrieved 22 May 2020.
  20. ^ Mahadevan (1977), pp. 5–7.
  21. ^ a b Possehl (2002), p. 127.
  22. ^ Fairservis (1983).
  23. ^ Mukhopadhyay (2018a), p. 5–6.
  24. ^ Meadow & Kenoyer (2001), p. 224.
  25. ^ Meadow & Kenoyer (2010), p. xlviii.
  26. ^ Mahadevan (1977), pp. 6–7.
  27. ^ Singh (2008), p. 169.
  28. ^ Bonta (2010), p. 6.
  29. ^ Sankaranarayanan (2007), p. 15.
  30. ^ Singh (2008), p. [page needed].
  31. ^ Sali (1986), pp. 504–505.
  32. ^ a b Ray (2006), p. 21-22.
  33. ^ Lal (1960).
  34. ^ Ray (2006), pp. 21–22.
  35. ^ Mahadevan (2001a).
  36. ^ Mahadevan (2006).
  37. ^ a b "Corpus by Asko Parpola". Mohenjodaro. Archived from the original on 1 November 2020.
  38. ^ Mahadevan (1977), pp. 14–15.
  39. ^ a b Fairservis (1992), pp. 9–10.
  40. ^ Bonta (2010), pp. 10–11.
  41. ^ a b c d e f Mukhopadhyay (2019), p. 2.
  42. ^ Wells (2015), pp. 66–76.
  43. ^ a b c d e f g h i Stiebing & Helft (2018), pp. 104–105.
  44. ^ a b c Possehl (2002), p. 132.
  45. ^ Mahadevan (1977), pp. 14–15, 24–25, 32–35.
  46. ^ Wells (2015), p. 13.
  47. ^ a b Possehl (2002), p. 133.
  48. ^ a b c Mahadevan (1977), pp. 10–14.
  49. ^ Sen (1999), p. 35.
  50. ^ a b Possehl (2002), p. 134.
  51. ^ Possehl (1996), p. 59–62.
  52. ^ Cunningham (1877), Plate No. XXVIII.
  53. ^ Possehl (2002), p. 131, 133, fig. 7.5.
  54. ^ a b Zvelebil (1990), pp. 85–86, 96.
  55. ^ a b Possehl (2002), p. 136.
  56. ^ Marshall (1931), p. 423.
  57. ^ Paranavitana, Prematilleka & Van Lohuizen-De Leeuw (1978), p. 119.
  58. ^ "Sceau cylindre — Louvre Collections". collections.louvre.fr (in French).
  59. ^ "Cylinder seal carved with an elongated buffalo and a Harappan inscription". Louvre Museum. Archived from the original on 25 April 2020.
  60. ^ Marshall (1931), p. 425.
  61. ^ Possehl (2002), p. 131.
  62. ^ Hunter (1932), p. 483.
  63. ^ a b Shinde & Willis (2014).
  64. ^ Mahadevan (1977), p. 9.
  65. ^ Possehl (2002), p. 132.
  66. ^ Witzel (1999).
  67. ^ Kuiper (1991), p. [page needed].
  68. ^ Possehl (2002), p. 136.
  69. ^ Farmer, Sproat & Witzel (2004), pp. 19–20.
  70. ^ Rao (2011), 14:06―15:43.
  71. ^ Heras (1953).
  72. ^ a b c Parpola (1994).
  73. ^ Knorozov (1965).
  74. ^ Bryant (2001), p. 183.
  75. ^ Fairservis (1971).
  76. ^ Fairservis (1992).
  77. ^ a b Rao et al. (2009).
  78. ^ a b Rao et al. (2010).
  79. ^ Lo, Lawrence. "Indus Script". ancient scripts.com. Archived from the original on 19 December 2019.
  80. ^ Rao (2011).
  81. ^ Mahadevan (2008).
  82. ^ Mahadevan (2014).
  83. ^ The Hindu (2014).
  84. ^ Mitchiner (1978), p. 5.
  85. ^ Robinson (2002), p. [page needed].
  86. ^ Sreedharan (2007), p. 268–269.
  87. ^ Parpola (1986), p. 411.
  88. ^ Possehl (2002), p. 137.
  89. ^ Bonta, Steven C. (2023). "A Partial Decipherment of the Indus Valley Script: Proposed Phonetic and Logographic Values for Selected Indus Signs and Readings of Indus Texts". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  90. ^ Fairservis (1992), p. 14.
  91. ^ "Indus Script". ancientscripts.com. Archived from the original on 19 December 2016.
  92. ^ Farmer, Sproat & Witzel (2004).
  93. ^ Lawler (2004).
  94. ^ Parpola (2005), p. 37.
  95. ^ Parpola (2008).
  96. ^ Rao (2010).
  97. ^ Computational Linguistics, Volume 36, Issue 4, December 2010.
  98. ^ Sproat (2014).
  99. ^ Rao et al. (2015).
  100. ^ Sproat (2015).
  101. ^ Everson (1999).
  102. ^ "SEI List of Scripts Not Yet Encoded". linguistics.berkeley.edu/sei/.
  103. ^ "Proposed New Scripts". unicode.org.
  104. ^ "A Free Complete Indus Font Package Available". www.harappa.com. Archived from the original on 5 May 2017.
  105. ^ "Corpus by Asko Parpola". Mohenjodaro. Archived from the original on 1 November 2020.
  106. ^ Nadeem, Faryal (27 February 2017). "All Signs of Indus Script Has Been Converted Into Font". Archived from the original on 26 August 2019.

Works cited

Further reading

External links

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