The very first book on the ancient Indus script in 1932 offered what is still the best guess at what some Indus signs may have meant and sounded like, especially the interpretation of the sequence of fish signs discussed by Asko Parpola. G. R. Hunter, later an employee of the Indian Educational Service wrote it a few years after the ancient Indus civilization was discovered as an Oxford thesis. Most of the seals he analyzed were fresh from the ground. Even if the table of seals and other ideas in the book are now considered outdated, it was a pioneering effort and for those interested in the ancient Indus script, it remains an important starting point. And now it can be downloaded for free from the link below.

Not only Asko Parpola, but Iravatham Mahadevan was also inspired by Hunter's work, and it is notable that all three converged on some sort of proto-Dravidian hypothesis for the origins of the Indus sign system.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

"This work was submitted in manuscript to the University of Oxford in June 1929, when l was supplicating for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Subsequently the manuscript has reposed in the Bodleian Library. Permission to publish it was received from the Government of lndia, Archaeoiogical
Dept., in November 1932.

It is my pleasant duty here to acknowledge my obligation to the Arcbaeological Department of the Government of India for permission to copy the inscriptions which form the subject matter of this volume. Since this volume was written I have by their courtesy been enabled to copy all the inscriptions
subsequently recovered from Mohenjodaro and Harappa up to April 1931. On this material I am still working. But it is important that I should here state that the study of this new material tends only to fortify most of the conclusions reached in the volume now offered to the public.

l take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude to Professor Langdon, who most kindly placed at my disposal his own researches on the subject, and to my wife, who did most of the monotonous copying and re-copying involved in the production of the Tables, and whose pen is responsible for all the actual draughting in this volume.

To Professor Langdon l am also indebted for all arrangements incidental to the publication of this volume, and also for reading the proofs.

Nagpur, lndia. The 24th of September, 1933.

G. R. Hunter."