The Script of Harappa and Mohenjodaro and its Connection with Other Scripts c10.s1.16

c10.s1.16

The example ⌙⌠, ⌙⌠, ⌙⌠, ⌙⌠ has this peculiarity: it is the one combination commonly found with ⌙ in which ⌙ is not final. In all the other combinations with ⌙, the ⌙ is final in the totality or large majority of occurrences; with ⌠ it is not once final, but on the contrary, in all five occurrences the combination is initial. But I doubt if this signifies anything more than that this combination is a name (of a deity?) that lent itself to employment as an initial element in the formation of proper names. When we find ⌙⌠ it is the same word with a change of vowel in the final syllable. In the case of this word ⌙ would appear to have its normal use as a suffix, and consequently ⌙, ⌙, ⌙ also. But there is no reason to suppose that in their other¹ occurrences the ⌙ group are other than the syllabic elements of roots. It is significant that the great majority of combinations commonly found preceding ⌙ are not found preceding the ⌙ group (i.e. the signs in the 4th column of Table I, pp. 6 & 7). Thus both the form of the signs, which suggest deliberate differentiation from 𐀀 , and the circumstances of their occurrence combine to show that they are syllables allied to but not identical¹ with 𐀁 . Taking this evidence in conjunction with what has been observed concerning the modification of 𐀀 we may assume as a working hypothesis that both in the case of open and in the case of closed syllables signs were modified by the addition of short straight lines to represent syllables containing the same consonant but a different vowel.