Indus script

The Indus script (also known as the

Harappan script) is a corpus of symbols
produced by the Indus Valley Civilisation.
Most inscriptions containing these
symbols are extremely short, making it
difficult to judge whether or not these
symbols constituted a script used to
record a language, or even symbolise a
writing system.[4] In spite of many
attempts,[5] the 'script' has not yet been
deciphered, but efforts are ongoing. There
is no known bilingual inscription to help
decipher the script, and the script shows
no significant changes over time. However,
some of the syntax (if that is what it may
be termed) varies depending upon
location.[4]
 Indus script

Seal impression showing a typical inscription of

five characters

Type Undeciphered possible

Bronze Age writing

Languages Unknown (see

Harappan language)

Time period 3500–1900 BCE[1][2][3]

Unicorn seal of Indus Valley, Karachi Museum

Collection of seals

The first publication of a seal with

Harappan symbols dates to 1875, in a
drawing by Alexander Cunningham.[6]
Since then, over 4,000 inscribed objects
have been discovered, some as far afield
as Mesopotamia, as a consequence of
ancient Indus-Mesopotamia relations. In
the early 1970s, Iravatham Mahadevan
published a corpus and concordance of
Indus inscriptions listing 3,700 seals and
417 distinct signs in specific patterns. He
also found that the average inscription
contained five symbols and that the
longest inscription contained only 14
symbols in a single line.[7]

Some scholars, such as G.R. Hunter,[8] S.

R. Rao, John Newberry,[9] Krishna Rao,[10]
and Subhash Kak[11] have argued that the
Brāhmī script has some connection with
the Indus system, but others, such as
Iravatham Mahadevan, Kamil Zvelebil and
Asko Parpola, have argued that the script
had a relation to a Dravidian
language.[12][13] F. Raymond Allchin has
somewhat cautiously supported the
possibility[14][15] of the Brahmi script being
influenced by the Indus script.[16] Another
possibility for continuity of the Indus
tradition is in the megalithic culture graffiti
symbols of southern and central India (and
Sri Lanka), which probably do not
constitute a linguistic script but may have
some overlap with the Indus symbol
inventory.[17][18]

Corpus
A few tablets with Indus script.

Early examples of the symbol system are

found in an Early Harappan and Indus
civilisation context, dated to possibly as
early as the 35th century BCE.[19][20] In the
Mature Harappan period, from about 2600
BCE to 1900 BCE, strings of Indus signs
are commonly found on flat, rectangular
stamp seals as well as many other objects
including tools, tablets, ornaments and
pottery. The signs were written in many
ways, including carving, chiseling, painting
and embossing, on objects made of many
different materials, such as soapstone,
bone, shell, terracotta, sandstone, copper,
silver and gold.[21] Often, animals such as
bulls, elephants, rhinoceros, water
buffaloes and the mythical unicorn
accompanied the text on seals to help the
illiterate identify the origin of a particular
seal.[22]

Longest Indus script inscription

Late Harappan
After 1900 BCE, the systematic use of the
symbols ended, after the final stage of the
Mature Harappan civilization. A few
Harappan signs have been claimed to
appear until as late as around 1100 BCE,
the beginning of the Iron Age in India.
Onshore explorations near Bet Dwarka in
Gujarat revealed the presence of late Indus
seals depicting a three-headed animal, an
earthen vessel inscribed in what is
claimed to be a late Harappan script and a
large quantity of pottery. The
thermoluminescence date for the pottery
is 1528 BCE. That evidence has been used
to claim that a late Harappan script was
used until around 1500 BCE.[23]
Characteristics
The characters are largely pictorial but
include many abstract signs. The
inscriptions are thought to have been
written mostly from right-to-left (because
there are several instances of the symbols
being compressed on the left side, as if
the writer is running out of space at the
end of the row there), but they sometimes
follow a boustrophedonic style. The
number of principal signs is about 400.
Since that is considered too large a
number for each character to be a
phonogram, the script is generally believed
to instead be logo-syllabic.
Decipherability question

Indus script tablet recovered from Khirasara, Indus

Valley Civilization

Ten Indus script from the northern gate of Dholavira,

dubbed the Dholavira Signboard, one of the longest
known sequences of Indus characters.

An opposing hypothesis that has been

offered by Michael Witzel and Steve
Farmer, is that these symbols are
nonlinguistic signs, which symbolise
families, clans, gods, and religious
concepts and are similar to components
of coats of arms or totem poles.[24] In a
2004 article, Farmer, Sproat, and Witzel
presented a number of arguments stating
that the Indus script is nonlinguistic. The
main ones are the extreme brevity of the
inscriptions, the existence of too many
rare signs (which increase over the 700-
year period of the Mature Harappan
civilization) and the lack of the random-
looking sign repetition that is typical of
language.[25]
Asko Parpola, reviewing the Farmer,
Sproat, and Witzel thesis in 2005, stated
that their arguments "can be easily
controverted".[26] He cited the presence of
a large number of rare signs in Chinese
and emphasised that there was "little
reason for sign repetition in short seal
texts written in an early logo-syllabic
script". Revisiting the question in a 2007
lecture,[27] Parpola took on each of the 10
main arguments of Farmer et al.,
presenting counterarguments for each.

A 2009 paper[28] published by Rajesh P N

Rao, Iravatham Mahadevan and others in
the journal Science also challenged the
argument that the Indus script might have
been a nonlinguistic symbol system. The
paper concluded that the conditional
entropy of Indus inscriptions closely
matched those of linguistic systems like
the Sumerian logo-syllabic system, Rig
Vedic Sanskrit etc., but they are careful to
stress that by itself does not imply that the
script is linguistic. A follow-up study
presented further evidence in terms of
entropies of longer sequences of symbols
beyond pairs.[29] However, Sproat claimed
that there existed a number of
misunderstandings in Rao et al., including
a lack of discriminative power in their
model, and argued that applying their
model to known non-linguistic systems
such as Mesopotamian deity symbols
produced similar results to the Indus
script. Rao et al.'s argument against
Sproat's claims and Sproat's reply were
published in Computational Linguistics in
December 2010.[30] The June 2014 issue
of Language carries a paper by Sproat that
provides further evidence that the
methodology of Rao et al. is flawed.[31]
Rao et al.'s rebuttal of Sproat's 2014 article
and Sproat's response are published in the
December 2015 issue of Language.[32][33]

Attempts at decipherment
Over the years, numerous decipherments
have been proposed, but there is no
established scholarly consensus.[34] The
few points on which there exists scholarly
consensus are the right-to-left direction of
the majority of the inscriptions, numerical
nature of certain stroke-like signs,
functional homogeneity of certain terminal
signs, and some generally adopted
techniques of segmenting the inscriptions
into initial, medial and terminal clusters.[35]
The following factors are usually regarded
as the biggest obstacles for a successful
decipherment:
 The underlying language has not been
identified though some 300 loanwords
in the Rigveda are a good starting point
for comparison.[36][37]
The average length of the inscriptions is
less than five signs, the longest being
only 26 signs long,[38] although recent
findings have revealed copper plates
belonging to the mature Harappan
period, one of them having 34
characters inscribed onto it.[39]
No bilingual texts (like a Rosetta Stone)
have been found.

The topic is popular among amateur

researchers, and there have been various
(mutually exclusive) decipherment
claims.[40]

Dravidian hypothesis

A proposed connection between the Brahmi and Indus

scripts, made in the 19th century by Alexander
Cunningham.

The Russian scholar Yuri Knorozov

suggested, based on computer analysis, a
Dravidian language as the most likely
candidate for the underlying language of
the script.[41] Knorozov's suggestion was
preceded by the work of Henry Heras, who
also suggested several readings of signs
based on a proto-Dravidian assumption.[42]

The Finnish scholar Asko Parpola wrote

that the Indus script and Harappan
language "most likely belonged to the
Dravidian family".[43] Parpola led a Finnish
team in the 1960s-80s that, like Knorozov's
Soviet team, worked towards investigating
the inscriptions using computer analysis.
Based on a proto-Dravidian assumption,
the teams proposed readings of many
signs. A number of people agreed with the
suggested readings of Heras and
Knorozov. One such reading was
legitimised when the Dravidian word for
both 'fish' and 'star', "min" was hinted at
through drawings of both the things
together on Harappan seals.[44] A
comprehensive description of Parpola's
work until 1994 is given in his book
Deciphering the Indus Script.[45]

Iravatham Mahadevan, another historian

who supported the Dravidian hypothesis,
said "we may hopefully find that the proto-
Dravidian roots of the Harappan language
and South Indian Dravidian languages are
similar. This is a hypothesis [...] But I have
no illusions that I will decipher the Indus
script, nor do I have any regret".[46]
Commenting on his 2014 publication
Dravidian Proof of the Indus Script via The
Rig Veda: A Case Study, Mahadevan
claimed to have made significant progress
in deciphering the script as Dravidian.[47]
According to Mahadevan, a stone celt
discovered in Mayiladuthurai (Tamil Nadu)
has the same markings as that of the
symbols of the Indus script. The celt dates
to early 2nd millennium BCE, post-dating
Harappan decline. Mahadevan considered
this as evidence of the same language
being used by the neolithic people of south
India and the late Harappans.[48][49]

In May 2007, the Tamil Nadu Archaeology

Department found pots with arrow-head
symbols during an excavation in
Melaperumpallam near Poompuhar. These
symbols are claimed to have a striking
resemblance to seals from Mohenjo-daro
in Pakistan unearthed in the 1920s.[50] In
Sembiyankandiyur a stone axe was found,
claimed to be containing Indus symbols. In
2014, a cave in Kerala was discovered with
19 pictograph symbols claimed to be
containing Indus writing.[51]
Sanskritic hypothesis

Archaeologist Shikaripura Ranganatha Rao

claimed to have deciphered the Indus
script. He compared it to the Phoenician
alphabet, and assigned sound values
based on this comparison. His
decipherment results in a "Sanskritic"
reading, including the numerals aeka, tra,
chatus, panta, happta/sapta, dasa, dvadasa,
sata (1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 12, 100).[52] He also
noted a number of striking similarities in
shape and form between the late
Harappan characters and the Phoenician
letters, arguing that the Phoenician script
evolved from the Harappan script, and not,
as the classical theory suggests from the
Proto-Sinaitic script.[53]

John E. Mitchiner dismissed some of

these attempts at decipherment. Mitchiner
mentioned that "a more soundly-based but
still greatly subjective and unconvincing
attempt to discern an Indo-European basis
in the script has been that of Rao".[54]

Miscellaneous hypotheses

There have been several hypotheses

regarding the language pertaining to the
Indus Script. One of the most common
ones has been that the script belongs to
the Indo-Aryan language. However, there
are many problems with this hypothesis. A
major one includes: Since the people
belonging to the Indo-European cultures
were always on the move, horses played a
very important role in their lives or as
Parpola put it, "There is no escape from
the fact that the horse played a central role
in the Vedic and Iranian cultures..."
(Parpola, 1986). However, no depiction of
horses on seals nor any remains of horses
have been found in the subcontinent
before 2000 BCE. Thus, it is very likely
there were no Aryan speakers present
before 2000 BCE in the Indus Valley.
Impression of an Indus cylinder seal discovered in
Susa (modern Iran), in strata dated to 2600-1700 BCE,
an example of ancient Indus-Mesopotamia relations.
Louvre Museum, reference Sb 2425.[55][56][57]
Numbering convention for the Indus script by Asko
Parpola.[58][59]

A second, though not as popular

hypothesis is that the Indus script belongs
to the Munda family of languages. The
Munda family of languages is spoken
largely in Eastern India, and is related to
some Australian and Southeast Asian
languages. However, much like the Indo-
Aryan language, the reconstructed
vocabulary of early Munda does not reflect
the Harappan culture. Therefore, its
candidacy for being the language of the
Indus Civilization is dim.[60]

Similarities with Linear Elamite

Scholars have also compared the Indus

valley script with the Linear Elamite writing
system used in Elam, an ancient Pre-
Iranian civilization that was
contemporaneous with the Indus Valley
civilization. The two languages were
contemporary to each other. Scholars
gained knowledge of the Elamite language
from a bilingual monument called the
"Table of the Lion" in the Louvre museum.
On comparing this ancient language to the
Indus script, a number of similar symbols
have been found.[61][62]

Encoding
The Indus symbols have been assigned
the ISO 15924 code "Inds". The script was
proposed for encoding in Unicode's
Supplementary Multilingual Plane in 1999;
however, the Unicode Consortium still lists
the proposal in pending status.[63] At the
International Conference on Mohenjodaro
and Indus Valley Civilisation 2017 it was
noted that two language engineers, Amar
Fayaz Buriro and Shabir Kumbhar have
engineered all 1839 signs of Indus script
and presented a developed font.[64][65]

See also
Related topics
Ancient iron production
Brahmi script
Bronze Age writing
History of metallurgy in South Asia
Proto-writing
Undeciphered scripts
 Lipi
Stambha
Other similar topics
Ashokan Edicts in Delhi
Ashoka's Major Rock Edicts
Dhar iron pillar
Early Indian epigraphy
Hindu temple architecture
History of India
Indian copper plate inscriptions
Indian rock-cut architecture
Iron pillar of Delhi
List of Edicts of Ashoka
List of rock-cut temples in India
 Outline of ancient India
Pillars of Ashoka
South Indian Inscriptions

Notes
1. David Whitehouse (May 4, 1999).
" 'Earliest writing' found" . BBC News.
Retrieved 2 September 2014.
2. "Evidence for Indus script dated to ca.
3500 BCE" . Retrieved 2 September
2014.
3. Edwin Bryant. The Quest for the
Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-
Aryan Migration Debate. Oxford
University. p. 178.
4. Locklear, Mallory (January 25, 2017).
"Science: Machine learning could
finally crack the 4,000-year-old Indus
script" . The Verge. Manhattan, New
York, NY: Vox Media. Retrieved
January 25, 2017. "After a century of
failing to crack an ancient script,
linguists turn to machines."
5. (Possehl, 1996)
6. Cunningham, Alexander (1875).
"Harappa". Archaeological Survey of
India: Report for the Years 1872-3. 5:
105–108.
7. Ancient civilization_ Cracking the
Indus script _ Nature News &
 Comment
8. Hunter, G.R. (1934), The Script of
Harappa and Mohenjodaro and Its
Connection with Other Scripts ,
Studies in the history of culture,
London:K. Paul, Trench, Trubner
9. "Indus script monographs - Volumes 1-
7", p.10-20, 1980, John Newberry
10. "An Encyclopaedia of Indian
Archaeology", Amalananda Ghosh,
p.362, 1990
11. Patel, P.G., Pandey, P., Rajgor, D. (2007)
The Indic Scripts: Palaeographic and
Linguistic Perspectives. D.K.
Printworld.
12. Rahman, Tariq. "Peoples and
languages in pre-islamic Indus valley" .
Archived from the original on 2008-
05-09. Retrieved 2008-11-20. "most
scholars have taken the 'Dravidian
hypothesis' seriously"
13. The Indus Script
14. Goody, Jack (1987), The Interface
Between the Written and the Oral,
Cambridge University Press, pp. 301–
302 (note 4)
15. Allchin, [Link]; Erdosy, George
(1995), The Archaeology of Early
Historic South Asia: The Emergence of
 Cities and States, Cambridge
University Press, p. 336
16. Salomon, Richard, On The Origin Of
The Early Indian Scripts: A Review
Article. Journal of the American
Oriental Society 115.2 (1995), 271–
279
17. Mahadevan, Iravatham (2004),
Megalithic pottery inscription and a
Harappa tablet:A case of extraordinary
resemblance (PDF), [Link],
archived from the original (PDF) on
2012-11-01
18. Ray, Himanshu Prabha (2006),
"Inscribed pots, emerging identities", in
 Patrick Olivelle (ed.), Between the
Empires : Society in India 300 BCE to
400 CE, Oxford University Press,
pp. 121–122
19. Meadow, Richard H.; Kenoyer,
Jonathan Mark (2001-07-02).
"Excavations at Harappa 2000–2001:
New insights on Chronology and City
Organization" . In Jarrige, C.; Lefèvre,
V. (eds.). South Asian Archaeology
2001. Paris: Collège de France.
ISBN 978-2-8653830-1-6. Retrieved
2013-05-27.
20. Whitehouse, David (1999-05-04).
" 'Earliest writing' found" . BBC News
 Online. BBC. Archived from the
original on 2014-08-21. Retrieved
2014-08-21.
21. Kenoyer, J. Mark; Meadow, Richard H.
(2010). "Inscribed Objects from
Harappa Excavations 1986-2007"
(PDF). In Parpola, Asko; Pande, B.M.;
Koskikallio, Petteri (eds.). Corpus of
Indus Seals and Inscriptions. Volume
3: New material, untraced objects, and
collections outside Pakistan - Part 1:
Mohenjo-daro and Harappa.
Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia. p. xlviii.
Archived from the original (PDF) on
2011-06-30.
22. Themes in History, Part-I. NCERT.
p. 15.
23. Sullivan, S. M. (2011) Indus Script
Dictionary, page viii
24. Farmer et al. (2004)
25. Lawler, Andrew (2004). "The Indus
script: Write or wrong?". Science. 306
(5704): 2026–2029.
doi:10.1126/science.306.5704.2026 .
PMID 15604381 .
26. (Parpola, 2005, p. 37)
27. (Parpola, 2008).
28. Rao, R.P.N.; et al. (6 May 2009).
"Entropic Evidence for Linguistic
Structure in the Indus Script" (PDF).
 Science. 324 (5931): 1165.
Bibcode:2009Sci...324.1165R .
doi:10.1126/science.1170391 .
PMID 19389998 .
29. Rao, R.P.N. (April 2010). "Probabilistic
Analysis of an Ancient Undeciphered
Script" (PDF). IEEE Computer. 43 (4):
76–80. doi:10.1109/mc.2010.112 .
30. Computational Linguistics , Volume
36, Issue 4, December 2010.
31. R. Sproat, 2014, "A Statistical
Comparison of Written Language and
Nonlinguistic Symbol Systems ".
Language, Volume 90, Issue 2, June
2014.
32. R. P. N. Rao, R. Lee, N. Yadav, M. Vahia,
P. Jonathan, P. Ziman, 2015, "On
statistical measures and ancient
writing systems ". Language, Volume
91, Number 4, December 2015.
33. R. Sproat, 2015, "On
misunderstandings and
misrepresentations: A reply to Rao et
al ". Language, Volume 91, Number 4,
December 2015.
34. Gregory L. Possehl (2002). The Indus
Civilization: A Contemporary
Perspective . Rowman Altamira.
p. 136. ISBN 9780759101722.
35. Ansumali Mukhopadhyay, Bahata
(2019-07-09). "Interrogating Indus
inscriptions to unravel their
mechanisms of meaning
conveyance" . Palgrave
Communications. 5 (1): 1–37.
doi:10.1057/s41599-019-0274-1 .
ISSN 2055-1045 .
36. FBJ Kuiper, Aryans in the Rigveda,
Amsterdam/Atlanta 1991
37. M. Witzel underlines the prefixing
nature of these words and calls them
Para-Munda, a language related to but
not belonging to Proto-Munda; see:
Witzel, M. Substrate Languages in Old
 Indo-Aryan (Ṛgvedic, Middle and Late
Vedic), EJVS Vol. 5,1, 1999, 1-67
38. Longest Indus inscription
39. Shinde, V. & Willis, R.J., (2014). A New
Type of Inscribed Copper Plate from
Indus Valley (Harappan) Civilisation .
Ancient Asia . 5 , p . Art. 1 . DOI:
[Link]
40. see e.g. Egbert Richter and N. S.
Rajaram for examples.
41. (Knorozov 1965)
42. (Heras, 1953)
43. Edwin Bryant (2003). The Quest for the
Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-
 Aryan Migration Debate. Oxford.
p. 183. ISBN 9780195169478.
44. "Indus Script" . ancient [Link].
45. (Parpola, 1994)
46. Interview at [Link]
47. "Indus script early form of Dravidian" .
The Hindu. 2014-11-14. Retrieved
21 October 2018.
48. (Subramanium 2006; see also A Note
on the Muruku Sign of the Indus Script
in light of the Mayiladuthurai Stone
Axe Discovery by I. Mahadevan
(2006)
49. "Significance of Mayiladuthurai find -
The Hindu" . May 1, 2006.
50. Subramaniam, T. S. (May 1, 2006).
"From Indus Valley to coastal Tamil
Nadu" . The Hindu. Chennai, India.
Retrieved 2008-05-23.
51. Singh, S. Harpal (2014-12-16). "Gonds
may have migrated from Indus
Valley" . The Hindu.
52. Sreedharan (2007). A Manual of
Historical Research Methodology.
South Indian Studies. p. 268.
53. Robinson, Andrew. Lost Languages:
The Enigma of the World's
Undeciphered Scripts. 2002
54. J.E. Mitchiner: Studies in the Indus
Valley Inscriptions, p.5, with reference
 to S.R. Rao: Lothal and the Indus
Civilisation (ch.10), Bombay 1978.
55. "Cylinder seal carved with an
elongated buffalo and a Harappan
inscription" . Louvre Museum.
56. "Site officiel du musée du Louvre" .
[Link].
57. Marshall, John (1996). Mohenjo-Daro
and the Indus Civilization: Being an
Official Account of Archaeological
Excavations at Mohenjo-Daro Carried
Out by the Government of India
Between the Years 1922 and 1927 .
Asian Educational Services. p. 425.
ISBN 9788120611795.
58. "Corpus by Asko Parpola" .
Mohenjodaro.
59. Also, for another numbering scheme:
Mahadevan, Iravatham (1987). The
Indus Script. Text, Concordance And
Tables Iravathan Mahadevan .
Archaeological Survey of India.
pp. 32–36.
60. "Indus Script" . [Link].
61. Possehl, Gregory L. (2002). The Indus
Civilization: A Contemporary
Perspective . Rowman Altamira.
p. 131. ISBN 9780759101722.
62. Redalia, Suzanne. "Cracking the Indus
Script: A Potential Breakthrough" .
 [Link].
63. Everson 1999 and
[Link]
tml
64. "Revisiting Mohenjodaro" . 2017-02-23.
65. "Indus Script" .

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External links
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Text based Indus Script Signs with the

table of codes
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Chinese Jia-Gu-wen 甲骨文 "Bone
Script")
"Discovery of a century" in Tamil Nadu
("Discovery of a century" in Tamil Nadu )
The Indus Script (From [Link] )
BBC - 'Earliest writing' found
How come we can't decipher the Indus
script? (from The Straight Dope)
Iravatham Mahadevan, Towards a
scientific study of the Indus Script
"Studies in Indus Scripts - I" by S.
Srikanta Sastri, published in Quarterly
Journal of Mythic Society, Vol XXIV, No.
3
"Studies in Indus Scripts - II" by S.
Srikanta Sastri, published in Quarterly
Journal of Mythic Society, Vol XXIV, No 4
Script Image ;Article
 Collection of essays about the Indus
script (Steve Farmer)
[Link] ([Link])
"Computers Unlock More Secrets Of The
Mysterious Indus Valley Script" . Science
Daily. August 4, 2009..
Rao, Rajesh (2011) "A Rosetta Stone for
a Lost Language " TED Talks

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