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Indus Script

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Image:Pakistan-pottery.png thumb|294px|right|Early Indus Valley symbols found in Harappa, carbon-dated to ca. the 32nd century BC. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/334517.stm] Image: Pashupati.gif pashupati.html" title="Meaning of thumb thumb|200px|right|An Indus Valley seal with the seated figure termed ''[[pashupati''. The writing abovie it is inscribed in the mature Indus script..html" title="Meaning of 200px|right|An Indus Valley seal with the seated figure termed ''[[pashupati">thumb|200px|right|An Indus Valley seal with the seated figure termed ''[[pashupati''. The writing abovie it is inscribed in the mature Indus script.">200px|right|An Indus Valley seal with the seated figure termed ''[[pashupati">thumb|200px|right|An Indus Valley seal with the seated figure termed ''[[pashupati''. The writing abovie 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) of ancient India (most of the Indus sites are distributed in present day Pakistan and North West India) used between 2600 BC 2600–1900 BC, which evolved from an early Harappan script attested from around 3500 BC, and was followed by a late Harappan script used until around 1500 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 1900 BC, use of the symbols ends, together with 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 many Indian scholars continues to argue for the Indus script as the predecessor of the Brahmic family. There are over 400 different signs, but many are thought to be slight modifications or combinations of perhaps 200 'basic' signs.

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. The Finland Finnish Indologist Asko Parpola, who has edited a multivolumed corpus of the inscriptions, surmises that the symbols represent a logo-syllabic script, with an underlying Dravidian languages Dravidian language as the most likely linguistic substrate. If the signs are purely ideogram ideographical, they may contain no information about the language spoken by their creators, and cannot be called a script in the true sense of the word. Steve Farmer, Richard Sproat, and Michael Witzel make the case that the symbols were not coupled to oral language, which in part explains the extreme brevity of the inscriptions. But this has been refuted by Asko Parpola. Other writers, such as Shikaripura Ranganatha Rao S. R. Rao, have attempted to prove that the script encodes Vedic Sanskrit. These theories are not accepted by most scholars. Another line of study, due to Subhash Kak Kak, is to focus only on the morphological connection between Indus and Brahmi without stressing the question of the decipherment. This work indicates that Brahmi is derived from Indus.

Late Indus script
Image:Late Harappan script.jpg Dwarka.html" title="Meaning of thumb thumb|250px|right|Late Indus script found on pottery at Bet [[Dwarka dated to 1528 BC based on Thermoluminescence dating..html" title="Meaning of 250px|right|Late Indus script found on pottery at Bet [[Dwarka">thumb|250px|right|Late Indus script found on pottery at Bet [[Dwarka dated to 1528 BC based on Thermoluminescence dating.">250px|right|Late Indus script found on pottery at Bet [[Dwarka">thumb|250px|right|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 a late Indus seals depicting a 3-headed animal, earthen vessel inscribed in a late Harappan script and the large quantity of pottery similar to Lustrous Red Ware bowl and the Red Ware dishes, dish-on-stand, perforated jar and incurved bowls which are datable to 1600-1500 B.C. in Dwarka, Rangpur and Prabhas. The Thermoluminescence dating 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.

References
*Steve Farmer, Richard Sproat, and Michael Witzel, '' The Collapse of the Indus-Script Thesis: The Myth of a Literate Harappan Civilization'', EVJS, vol. 11 (2004), issue 2 (Dec) [http://users.primushost.com/~india/ejvs/ejvs1102/ejvs1102article.pdf] (PDF) *Parpola's refutation of Farmer et al [http://www.helsinki.fi/~aparpola/tices_50.pdf]

External links

- Indus Script (ancientscripts.com)
- Collection of essays about the Indus script
- The Indus Script (Asko Parpola)
- BBC - 'Earliest writing' found
- Horseplay in Harappa article by Witzel and Farmer debunking the claim of decipherment made by N.S. Rajaram and Dr. N. Jha *
- A reply to Frontlineâ€™s cover story by Michael Danino
- The collapse of the Indus-script thesis: The myth of a literate Harappan civilization (Farmer, Sproat, and Witzel PDF, 2004)
- The Vedic Harappans in writing by Dr. Koenraad Elst
- Indus and Brahmi
- How come we can't decipher the Indus script? (from The Straight Dope) Category:Undeciphered writing systems Category:Indus Valley Civilization de:Indus-Schrift es:Escritura del Indo fr:Ã‰criture de l'Indus ja:ã‚¤ãƒ³ãƒ€ã‚¹æ–‡å— ru:ÐŸÐ¸Ñ?ÑŒÐ¼ÐµÐ½Ð½Ð¾Ñ?Ñ‚ÑŒ Ð´Ð¾Ð»Ð¸Ð½Ñ‹ Ð˜Ð½Ð´Ð° see Indus script

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