The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy Contents

plateauculture.org

It is our assumption that the goal of primitive written symbols was to create suprasubjective representations. And we feel that it has continued to be the case all over the course of History. In an increasingly globalised world, this goal seems even more evident, and we could highlight that symbolic representations tend to be supraregional, supranational, supracultural and supraideological. The Arabic, the Chinese or the Suzhou numerals are nowadays restricted to specific uses and regions. Instead the Hindu-Arabic numerals, widespread by modern computers, are commonly used everywhere. Millions of people know the meaning of symbols such as 2, 3, 4, 5, =, ≠ , ≥ ,√, ∞. Almost everybody is able to recognize the usual iconic signs that mean ‗disabled person' or ‗smoking is forbidden'. And in spite of their importance in nowadays society a project devoted to the study of the origins, the spread and the evolution of those symbols is still lacking. The aim of our paper is to point out the theoretical and methodological assumptions upon which a history of cross-cultural written symbols should be undertaken.

Meluhha, mleccha language was recorded on seals, sculptural reliefs by artisans, artists of ancient India, rebus of Bronze Age metalwork life-activities. This monograph demonstrates that an abiding symbol of the Bronze Age on the Tin Road from Hanoi to Haifa was the oxhide shaped ingot. This was the signature tune of the metalworkers of that Age. See the symbol inscribed as a hieroglyph read rebus in Meluhha, mleccha language of ancient metalworkers. A hieroglyph (Greek for "sacred writing") is a character or symbol of not only Egyptian writing but also Indus writing. τὰ ἱερογλυφικά [γράμματα] hieroglyphics constitute over 100 pictorial motifs and 500 'signs' of the writing system on seals, tablets, sculptural reliefs and also metalwork objects themselves. Who else could have had the competence to write on metal excepting an early metalworker, a metalcaster? The Itihasa of Bharatam janam, 'metalcaster people' is the history of a pictorial, sacred writing system. The mother goose, anser indicus, is a unique aquatic bird with extraordinary power and flight paths across towering mountains of the himalayan ranges. This goose was called hamsa and also karaṇḍa -- ʻ duck ʼ. One signified the aatman of a parivrajaka, paramahamsa, a siddha, an enlightened aatman like the Buddha and another the hard alloy of gold, silver and other mineral metals. One was hamsa, another was करडा [ karaḍā ] (Molesworth, Marathi lexicon, p. 137) [ karaḍā Hard from alloy--iron, silver &c. There are many allographs which could represent this 'signified' gloss as a hieroglyph. All such allographs detailed in select Meluhha glosses (Annex E) are also represented consistent with the critiqued General Theory of Images, rendered as writing systems by artisans and artists of the Bronze Age. The critiqued General Theory of Images thus stands exposed gaining a voice from the voices of our ancestors, from the languages spoken by our ancestors, as they evolved as the lingua franca of Bronze Age civilization exemplified by two stunning inventions which stand out: creation of hard alloys of metals and creation of cire perdue metal castings using such alloys of metals, starting from the days of exquisite metal artifacts of Nahal Mishmar (Haifa), ca. 5th millennium BCE and Siva linga of Vietnam (Hanoi) symbolised by the makers of Dong Son bronze drums. "The bar-headed goose (Anser indicus) is a goose that breeds in Central Asia in colonies of thousands near mountain lakes and winters in South Asia, as far south as peninsular India. It lays three to eight eggs at a time in a ground nest... In flight, its call is a typical goose honking. A mid-sized goose, it measures 71–76 cm (28–30 in) in total length and weighs 1.87–3.2 kg (4.1–7.1 lb)...The species has been reported as migrating south from Tibet, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia before crossing the Himalaya...The bar-headed goose is one of the world's highest-flying birds, having been heard flying across Mount Makalu – the fifth highest mountain on earth at 8,481 m (27,825 ft) – and apparently seen over Mount Everest – 8,848 m (29,029 ft) "there must be a good explanation for why the birds fly to the extreme altitudes... particularly since there are passes through the Himalaya at lower altitudes, and which are used by other migrating bird species."The challenging northward migration from lowland India to breed in the summer on the Tibetan Plateau is undertaken in stages, with the flight across the Himalaya (from sea-level) being undertaken non-stop in as little as seven hours. Surprisingly, despite predictable tail winds that blow up the Himalayas (in the same direction of travel as the geese), bar-headed geese spurn these winds, waiting for them to die down overnight, when they then undertake the greatest rates of climbing flight ever recorded for a bird, and sustain these climbs rates for hours on end, according to research published in 2011...The bar-headed goose migrates over the Himalayas to spend the winter in parts of South Asia (from Assam to as far south as Tamil Nadu.The modern winter habitat of the species is cultivated fields, where it feeds on barley, rice and wheat, and may damage crops. Birds from Kyrgyzstan have been noted to stopover in western Tibet and southern Tajikistan for 20 to 30 days before migrating further south. Some birds may show high wintering site fidelity...Bar-headed geese have a slightly larger wing area for their weight than other geese, which is believed to help them fly at high altitudes While this decreases the power output required for flight in thin air, birds at high-altitude still need to flap harder than lowland birds " (Black, C. P.; Tenney, S. M. (1980). "Oxygen Transport During Progressive Hypoxia in High-altitude and Sea-level Waterfowl". Respiration Physiology 39 (2): 217–239; Hawkes, L. A.; Balachandran, S.; Batbayar, N.; Butler, P. J.; Frappell, P. B.; Milsom, W. K.; Tseveenmyadag, N.; Newman, S. H.; Scott, G. R. (2011). "The Trans-Himalayan Flights of Bar-headed Geese (Anser indicus)". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108 (23): 9516; Koppen, U; Yakovlev, A. P.; Barth, R.; Kaatz, M.; Berthold, P. (2010). "Seasonal Migrations of Four Individual Bar-headed Geese Anser indicusfrom Kyrgyzstan Followed by Satellite Telemetry". Journal of Ornithology 151 (3): 703–712. loc.cit.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar-headed_goose The hieroglyphic story of the bar-headed geese, anser indicus, hamsa, is the rebus of Itihasa of Bharatam Janam as they traversed in an extraordinary maritime trade journey from Hanoi (the largest tin belt zone of the world) to Haifa (a maritime port with a shipwreck which yielded two pure tin ingots with a hieroglyphic writing system called Indus writings by the Meluhha speakers, who were and who continue to be Bharatam Janam, 'metalcastr folk'. These are extraordinary metalcasters. Form them, the Meluhha speakers, the smithy was kole.l. The smithy also constituted the temple, kole.l, attested by a Kota language gloss. Thus the symbols of life-activities reconstructed from parole (speech) when reduced to writing by engraving became hieroglyphs of spiritual, sacred space. This monograph provides an alternative to the General Theory of Images posited by Art historians and in historical studies related to 'iconography'. In the context of metalwork of Bharatam Janam, 'metalcaster community', it is posited that images created by artists were remembered, replicated sequences of life-activities of the community of artisan guilds. Artists in these guilds constituted the writers' guilds, engravers, sculptors to communicate the messages. The communication -- as media campaigns in the mists of ancient history of maritime trade -- was to an extended interaction area for trade and cultural exchanges, particularly along the Tin Road from Haifa to Hanoi. Thus many images were rebus representations of artisan work in lapidary-smithy. Such representations -- rebus or mirror images or replicas -- became in historical times, ut-sava + bēra 'idols taken out in processions' (on festive days) to the community at large. This is Hindu tradition par excellence, a celebration of ancestors' penchant for protection of dharma-dhamma, enshrining an inexorable consciousness-cosmic order, a celebration which continues even today in thousands of temples across the globe in many panthas and traditions.

2010

Iconography has played a central role in the development of writing systems. That all independently derived ancient scripts began as arrangements of pictograms before evolving into their elaborated forms evinces the fundamental importance of iconography in the evolution of writing. Symbols of the earliest logographic writing systems are characterized by a number of iconographic principles. Elucidation of these iconographic principles provides a theoretical framework for the analysis of structural similarities in unrelated, independently evolved writing systems. Two such writing systems are the ancient Indus Valley and Easter Island scripts. Although separated by vast tracts of time and space, the two writing systems share between forty and fifty complex characters, a problem first identified by Hevesy in 1932. Previous attempts to explain the similarities between the Indus Valley script and the rongorongo of Easter Island, which have relied on notions of cultural contact or historic...

Arts: Special Edition on World Rock Art, 2023

The term “Western Message Petroglyphs” (WMPs) refers to a number of petroglyph sites found scattered among eight western states that are recognized by their shared image content and layout. The imagery is drawn largely from a mash-up of late historic Native American sign-gesture language and picture-writing traditions inter-mixed with pan-cultural imagery from around the world. An increasing number of sites that fit this mold have been reported over the past 85 years or so, currently numbering 39 in all. There is no question that these sites date to post-European contact based on images in some panels that depict Euro-American cultural content (e.g., western-style house, rifle, whiskey keg, horse, etc.). The post-contact era is also apparent in the method used in rendering the engraved images evidenced by the smooth angular lines and chisel strikes produced by metal tools. This paper focuses on narrowing the time frame for these sites based on two additional streams of evidence. First, patterned associations with historic landscape settings tied to the era of western expansion bind the sites together into a coherent whole and set a floor for their oldest probable dates. An example of four sites located in Utah and Arizona illustrates their connection to the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the opening years of the twentieth. Secondly, a study of their imagery supports the proposed dates by revealing a “smoking gun” for the source of many of the individual icons. An example of the methodology used to translate a Western Message Petroglyph panel is described, and a profile of the central author who appears to have acted with a small group of others is suggested in order to aid in the search for this person(s) in the historic record of the American West.