A compact and thought-provoking piece by Dr. Asko Parpola, inspired by Dr. Heidi J. Miller's article New Ivory Rods from Mohenjo-daro and an Exploration of This Object Class presented at the 2014 Stockholm EASAA conference. He narrows the focus to rods with incised inscriptions — about 32 texts, 26 of which he considers readable — and offers some thought-provoking insights about these special objects. He also covers the beautiful long rod MD-580 from George F. Dales excavations [Image 2 above].
He shows that the rod inscriptions are not a self-contained genre but overlap heavily with two other categories of inscribed objects. One group of rod texts (his nos. 1–2, 8, 15–18, 20–24 in Readable bone rod inscriptions, with standardized signs and direction of writing (from right to left) [Image 1]) parallels seal inscriptions, which he takes to express proper names or professional titles. Another group (nos. 3–5, 11, 13–14) parallels the small incised and moulded "sacrificial tablets" from Harappa, whose reverse sides carry numeral and "pot" sequences he reads as counts of offerings — receipts or amulets given to worshippers. In other words, he uses the similarity of sign sequences across two kinds of objects to infer their possible purpose. Nobody else could have done it for Parpola, co-edited the CISI [Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions] volumes and knows the corpus sign by sign, object by object, probably better than anyone else.
Along the way he makes several structural observations: the frequent terminal "comb" sign (no. 107), which he suspects marks a feminine referent and may indicate the rods were associated with women; the variation between presence and absence of that sign across otherwise identical texts; the interchangeability of a basic sign and its "man"-ligatured compound (nos. 225/40) in parallel texts, suggesting semantic equivalence. A final group of texts he discusses consists simply of sign no. 91 preceded by a numeral, where repetition (sign written four times) and numerical notation ("4" + sign) appear to be equivalent — one of the more genuinely secure structural findings in Indus script studies. His closing suggestion is that the rods sit at the intersection of personal identity and votive practice, possibly connected, in the case of texts 5 and 13–14, with fertility wishes.
Dr. Parpola comments directly on MD-580 [2], discovered by George F. Dales during his excavations at Mohenjo-daro in the 1960s: "The text no. 26 (Dales MD-580) also belongs to the group of texts discussed last, as it ends with the sign no. 91 preceded by number 5. It begins with an initial phrase that is different from that mentioned above, consisting of three signs, the last being the one most commonly ending an initial phrase (no. 127 ‘two short vertical strokes’ normally raised to the top of the line, but here exceptionally written lowered to the bottom of the line like the following number 5, sign no. 132, which is normally placed in the middle of the line). The initial sign appears to be no. 192, which often occurs in text-initial position (on the interpretation of this sign see Parpola 2011, 34-36), but which is not followed by the sign no. 91 which comes next in the text no. 26. However, the relatively rare sign no. 191, which differs from no. 192 in having a long vertical stroke crossing the sign in the middle, in one particular context forms an initial phrase together with the two signs that follow no. 192 in the text 26. This context is the moulded tablet with circular cross-section, known in about forty (originally) identical specimens from Harappa (M-252 etc.) and having the image of a ‘unicorn’ bull on the reverse. The initial phrase is here followed by two signs, no. 72 (‘fish with upward prongs’) and no. 189 (‘spear’)," (p. 5).
Much research on Indus writing in recent years has concentrated on Indus seals and their use in trade, suggesting that signs referred to goods or products, perhaps with the creatures on the seals designating tribes, craft guilds or trade groups. This would be in line with other cultures at the time. Nonetheless, Indus signs must also have had religious and spiritual functions as well, as name or invocations for something that their owner desired, and Parpola's suggestion that fertility was one such wish makes sense. A talisman with a "precatory" function asks a deity or power for something. There are many kinds of precatory functions: supplicatory (humbly beseeching), petitionary (making a formal request), invocatory (calling upon a power), and votive (given in fulfillment or hope of a vow ). Parpola, for good reason, leans toward some of these inscribed objects having memorialized votive offerings by their owners: something was given away or sacrificed in honor of a god or power, and the inscribed object was a record of that event, for the supplicant to remember or repeat, if not also remind the power or god of what had been done on their behalf, of the prayer. This is still all speculation to be sure, but these would have been intimate objects, held close to a person in most cases. However inaccessible the exact meanings might be to us today, they suggest that their owners lived rich psychological and spiritual lives.