The Script of Harappa and Mohenjodaro and its Connection with Other Scripts c10.s26.6

c10.s26.6

Now what sort of an element is this which serves to link together (or separate) words, names, and even texts. Our first answer would be that it is a mark of punctuation as in Phoenician, and comparable to the Virama in the later Indian scripts. But the evidence of Nos. 10, 31 and 19 is against this explanation. Here 𐀀 is final. If we assume that here also it is a mark of punctuation used to indicate the termination of a text, how do we account for the fact that only three texts out of over 750 are so terminated? It seems certain that in these texts it has a phonetic value. But if in these, then also in all the other texts where 𐀂 or 𐀃 are found. Are we then to conclude that 𐀀 had two distinct values, the one phonetic and the other punctuative? In view of the ambiguity that this would introduce into the script, and the fact that elsewhere the script provides so scrupulously for the exact rendering of phonetic values (e.g. 𐀀, 𐀁, 𐀂, 𐀃 ) this would appear most unlikely, and we should only be driven to such a conclusion as the last resort. A far more probable explanation would be to regard 𐀄 as the vowel i or u, which when placed after a word ending in and before a word beginning in a vowel serves to break the hiatus, and is pronounced as the semivowel y or w. In this connection it may be pertinent to recall the principle obtaining in certain of the Munda languages of avoiding a hiatus by the insertion of a semivowel. The Munda group is probably the oldest group of languages in India, and there are evidences of it in Brahui, which speech today covers part of the area of the Proto-Indian ambit. In favour of regarding 𐀄 as a simple vowel there is also the analogy of 𐀅 , and the other signs noticed in the analysis of earlier tables, where the addition of the stroke 𐀄 represents a modification of the vowel of the syllable. Again it is significant that of the cases where 𐀄 may be taken as bridging a hiatus between words; nos. 5, 7, 23, 26, 28, 33, 𐀄 is preceded by 𐀆 or 𐀇 , which we know to be an open syllable, in four instances.