Indian Palaeography c9.s3: A New Approach
Indian Palaeography c9.s3
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A New Approach
c9.s3.1
As the purpose of this book is to study the script in particular, and not the inscriptions as such, the method adopted here is different from that followed in the works of Marshall and Hunter. But they remain the basic groundwork for all those who wish to decipher the Indus Script. Here we shall simply attempt a morphological study of the script in order to familiarize ourselves with the nature of the writing followed by the Indus people.
c9.s3.2
*Method followed here*
c9.s3.3
In the plates (I and II) illustrating the script an attempt is made to arrive as far as possible at the correct form by comparing the symbols in various publications and copying the most common type. No tracing of the symbol from any particular seal is therefore to be expected. The sign-lists given by Hunter and in Marshall's volumes (pp. 434–52 and pls. CXIX–CXXIX) have been compared with the original photographs of the seals and readjustment made. Some further symbols from Mackay's *Further Excavations at Mohenjodaro* have been added.
c9.s3.4
A new principle of classification has been adopted here. Pl. I*a*, group A, illustrates stylized living beings; group B of this plate and Pl. I*b* show objects which can be easily recognized. In Pl. II *a*, *b* are shown those symbols which take geometrical forms, such as ovals, triangles, quadrangles, angles, crosses, &c. A few of these can also be construed as highly stylized forms, e.g. the oval (Pl. II*a*. 1. 1)¹ does not appear to be different from the objects hanging from either end of the pole carried by the man in Pl. I*a*. IV. 2–11. Again in Pl. II*a* the two complicated symbols in columns 14 and 15 are obviously magical emblems—one of crosses and the other of the mysterious so-called taurines and a square. Pl. II*b* shows in the last five lines strokes—horizontal, vertical, or slanting—often in combination as they have been actually found. In Pl. II*b*. XII. 10–15 are given the symbols, termed brackets, as they are found bracketing other symbols in the seals (see reading no. 2). In Pl. II*a* seven readings have been given.
c9.s3.5
¹ The first number represents plate, the second the line or row in which the particular symbol appears, and the third the column in which it lies.
c9.s3.6
The symbols are copies from the photographs of the seal impressions as they have been usually published. Probably this is the correct way of looking at them, rather than as on the seals themselves.