Deciphering the Indus Script

1. Map by J.M. Kenoyer, courtesy Harappa Archaeological Project (HARP). 2. A scheme of the evolution of different types of scripts. Copyrighted drawing planned by Asko Parpola and drawn by Virpi Hameen-Anttila. 3. The Indus script and other early writing systems. Copyrighted drawing planned by Asko Parpola and drawn by Virpi Hameen-Anttila. 4. Pots from Mundigak IV,1 … >

Meeting the challenge of the Indus script In 1920, excavations at Harappa brought to light the ruins of a large brick-laid city, and soon a whole unknown civilization was uncovered in and around the Indus valley (Figure 1)1. The Indus civilization, now dated to c. 2600-1800 BCE, collapsed some 500 years before the composition of most of the hymns collected in the Rgveda-Samh… >

There is no such thing as an accepted Indus Valley script dictionary. Such a dictionary is probably decades away. Nonetheless, below are summarized some of Asko Parpola and Iravatham Mahadevan's speculations on some of the most common ancient Indus signs. Asko Parpola Sign/SequencePictorialmeaningPhonetic (Dravid… >

How, then, is it possible to decipher an unknown system of writing? Confronted with this primary question we are doubly fortunate in comparison to the decipherers of the Egyptian hieroglyphs more than 150 years ago. In the first place, we have a number of successful decipherments to look back to, both as potential models and as sources of inspiration, which reassure us in th… >

The early logo-syllabic scripts functioned like picture puzzles, based on the rebus principle. Each sign was originally a picture, denoting the object represented by it. For example, the picture of an arrow meant 'arrow.' But because many things, especially abstract concepts, are not easy to draw as pictures in a simple and unambiguous manner, another expedient was resorted to… >

In most of the unsuccessful attempts at interpreting the Indus script, the "method" has consisted of comparing other pictographic scripts and supposing that the Indus signs have been pronounced like the similar- looking foreign signs. However, as a rule, different pictographic scripts have been used to write different languages, and their similar-looking signs have denote… >

5. Gharial eating fish on molded terra-cotta tablet from Mohenjo-daro Consideration of the picture puzzle principle employed by the early scripts suggests a way to recognize the identity of the underlying language. We should try to find a specific context where a given, pictorially identifiable sign apparently has been used in a meaning different from the primary pictorial… >

Many hypotheses have been put forward about the affinity of the Indus language, but only two alternatives have had wider support. Indo-Aryan languages have been spoken in the area once occupied by the Indus civilization and gradually all over North India since at least 1000 B.C. It is natural to assume that they were spoken there even earlier. Speakers of Hindi, Bengali and… >

7. A Harappan potsherd from Amri, combining the 'fish' and 'star' motifs. An early form of Dravidian, then, emerges as the historically most likely language to have been spoken by the Indus people. The uniformity of the sign sequences in Indus inscriptions coming from all parts of the large area occupied by the Indus civilisation precludes the possibility that widely differ… >