Article by EIH Subject Matter Expert
Dr. Sonika Sandhu
Deciphering and unlocking the secrets of a script is one of the most glamourous achievements of any scholarship. There is touch of magic about ancient writings, and the one who deciphers it, glory is bound to attach itself to him or her. Moreover a decipherment is not just a mystery solved. It is also a key to farther knowledge and opening a treasure-vault of history. Many famous and enigmatic scripts have been deciphered over these past two centuries by exceptional and gifted scholars, like the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs by Champollion, of cuneiform by Rawlinson, and of Mycenaean Linear B by Ventri to name a few. Ancient scripts and writings are an early form of technology and display innovation. The images in scripts correspond to their natural environment and depict living creatures and their association with the environment around. Researchers and particularly linguists along with epigraphers apply analogous techniques to such scripts and documents. According to Sampson (1985) scholars often classify scripts into three categories: (1) alphabetic, (2) syllabic, and (3) logographic.
Focusing on the Indian Subcontinent, the antiquity of writing here stretches to the Indus Valley Civilization lasting from 2500 to 1500 BCE. On its collapse, it was nearly a thousand years later that we come across inscriptions of Asoka in the Greek, Aramaic, Kharosthi and Brahmi scripts. Brahmi was the most common script used by Asoka who ruled from 269 to 232 BCE. Interestingly Brahmi has been found even in Sri Lanka inside rock shelters. The language used in the Brahmi inscriptions of Ceylon and those of Asoka is Prakrit, a colloquial form of Sanskrit. Inscriptions using Brahmi characters have also been discovered in Tamil Nadu in rock-shelters and potsherds of different types, and the language used is Tamil with a mixture of Prakrit words. The earliest writings so far discovered in Tamil are written in characters which closely resemble Asokan Brahmi inscriptions. These inscriptions are said to be written in the Tamil- Brahmi script to denote the fact that it is a script closely resembling Brahmi and used for writing the Tamil language. The language of these inscriptions is a peculiar kind of Tamil and not really the classical Tamil of the Sangam poetry.
Among the various ancient scripts of the Indian Subcontinent none holds more fascination than the Indus script. It stands out as among the important undeciphered writing system of the world, particularly since it was developed by one of the most extensive and advance cultures of its time. It is the fourth oldest culture to have its own script. The available text material has very short compositions making it very difficult to decipher, also due to the long gap between the Vedic and Indus Culture, analogies and similarities have not been found in the Vedic compositions, which could reveal any information about the Indus Script.
While deciphering any ancient script there are two principal unknowns to be clarified: first is the type of script and then the underlying language or languages. Based on this the Indus script is logo syllabic and has around 400 graphemes, this is the oldest script type of its kind. In this type of script each pictographic symbol or sign can denote either the object or being depicted or a phonetic sound that its appellation had in the underlying language. Various signs can be combined to express or form compound words or to add silent semantic or phonetic indicators. The Indus script is written in only one language, this has been concluded based on the sign sequences which remain uniform throughout the Harappan sites. Based on latest researches and studies the script most likely was proto Dravidian. The Vedic texts composed in the Old Indo-Aryan language in the Indus Valley around 1000 BCE have Dravidian loanwords. Today, most Dravidian languages are spoken in South and Central India, but one called Brahui has been spoken in Baluchistan in the northwest for as long as the historical sources go. Tamil in the far south has a 2000 years old literature. Henry Heras had tried reading the Indus script based on proto Dravidian syllabic values. His method was to identify signs based on graphology and then substitute the reconstructed syllabic values based primarily on the Old Tamil language. In the late fifties and early sixties, a number of Finnish and Russian scholars began a renewed attack on the script. Yuri Knorozov, justly famous for his role in the decipherment of the Mayan glyphs, wrote a number of papers on the Indus Valley script, while Asko Parpola has published voluminously on the subject over several decades; his 1994 book in particular contains a lot of valuable material and careful comparative evidence. Parpola too favours the Dravidian hypothesis
The problem of its deciphering exists because of there are four conditions which should be met simultaneously:
● the object depicted in a given pictogram can be recognized;
● the said pictogram has been used as a rebus;
● the intended rebus meaning can be deduced from the context(s); and
● acceptably homophonous words corresponding to the pictorial and rebus meanings exist in a historically likely known language.
Looking at these let us examine our inability to the break the Indus code. First and foremost is that all known samples as mentioned above come from limited sources. Best known and most famous are the seals and sealings. These are small carved steatite squares with a single line inscription along with an animal or motif. Most common animals are the ‘unicorn bull’. Other animals depicted are tigers, gharials, zebus, buffalo, elephants, rhinoceroses, hares, and various many-headed and hybrid mythical beasts. A few seals depict religious scenes; particularly noteworthy is the famous “Lord of the Beasts” seal exhibiting a horned deity with three faces seated in the lotus position, surrounded by various animals. This design has also been referred to as the “proto-Shiva” figure, in as much as the Hindu deity Shiva was sometimes styled as Pasupati or Lord of the Beasts. Some other samples of Harappan writing have been found on tablets, tokens, bone, metal implements, faience and pottery. A unique signboard-like object was uncovered at Dholavira (Parpola 1994: 106-113). A large number of “potter’s marks” on potsherds, consisting of only one to three characters, add to the corpus of inscriptions. At the ware house in Lothal clay tags which would been attached to commercial products have been found containing the script. From this one can safely say that at least one function of the seals was in trade and commerce. The inscriptions were then could be places and owners, names of commodities traded, and indications of pot carrying capacity.
Another reason why the script remains obscure is because of its formulaic nature, besides being short the inscriptions are highly repetitive, regularized. For this reason these may not be used in ordinary prose for writing. Also lack of any bilingual sources add to the enigma and uncyphered nature of the script. The third great problem blocking interpretation of the Indus Valley script is that nothing is known of the language underlying the script itself. In the first place, we have no place-names such as those that proved pivotal to Ventris’ work on Linear B. Moreover, no king names are known, such as those (like Darius) which enabled Grotefend to penetrate Persian cuneiform. Finally, while many competing hypotheses have been offered, there is no conclusive evidence as to the affinity of the Harappan language itself. Since this is a most crucial issue, let us briefly review some of the evidence and arguments in favour of various Harappan linguistic affinities
Not only is the language of the seals unknown, but also the graphology of the writing system. This is not to say that the script necessarily represents something radically new and different. Instead, while most investigators of the script agree that the script inscriptions are written from right to left. Thus with these cumulative obstacles the Indus Script has managed to hold onto its secrets that is until the Rosetta stone for it is uncovered.
References:
Parpola, Asko. “‘Hind Leg’+‘Fish’: Towards Further Understanding of the Indus Script.” Scripta 1 (2009): 37-76.
Steven, Bonta. “The Indus valley script: A new interpretation (A Semiologic approach showing distributional evidence and markedness as tools for interpreting patterned texts in the Harrapan corpus.).” Penn. State University–Altoona College(2010).
