The Script of Harappa and Mohenjodaro and its Connection with Other Scripts c3: Introduction
The Script of Harappa and Mohenjodaro and its Connection with Other Scripts c3
- Language
- English
Introduction
c3.1
Dr. Hunter has continued his investigations on the early indus Valley Script, which he began at Oxford, by copying many more seal inscriptions, which were excavated by Mr. Mackay at Mohenjodaro since the material, placed at the disposal of Mr. Sidney Smith, Mr. Gadd and myself, was available. In Mohenjo-Daro and the indus Civilisation, three large folio volumes edited by Sir John Marshall, Probsthain London, 1931, the script was investigated by the writers named above. Vol. II, chapter XXII, *Sign-List of Early indus Script*, by C. J. Gadd; *Mechanical Nature of the Early indian Writing*, by Sidney Smith; chapter XXIII, *The indus Script* by the writer. Dr. Hunter has made an intensive study of greater material and has arrived at many valuable results of classification. Since Sir John Marshall's book was published, M. G. de Hevesy has called attention to the script of the Easter island, *Bulletin de la Societé Prehistorique Francaise*, 1933, Nos. 7-8, *Sur Une Écriture Océanienne*. There can be no doubt concerning the identity of the indus and Easter island scripts. Whether we are thus confronted by an astonishing historical accident or whether this ancient indian script has mysteriously travelled to the remote islands of the Pacific none can say. The age of the Easter Island tablets made of wood is totally unknown, and all knowledge of their writing has been lost. This same script has been found on seals precisely similar to the Indian seals in various parts of ancient Sumer, at Susa and the border land east of the Tigris.
c3.2
As to progress in the interpretation the way is completely barred by the lack of any conceivable clue for even a guess at a means of interpretation. Here is a civilisation of whose history nothing has survived. It is impossible to suggest even the name of an historical person or place of that time in India. No group of signs can be suggested as having any definite pronunciation and identified with any name which can be suggested. The only possible clue which suggests itself to me is that the Sumerians must have known this script in their intercourse with travellers from India who brought the Indian seals to Sumer. Fragments of lists of archaic signs have been preserved; on these tablets the Sumerians identify these archaic signs with signs of the classical Sumerian and Babylonian script. Naturally most of the archaic signs preserved and explained on these tablets are peculiar forms of old Sumerian signs, which can be fitted into their place in the history of Cuneiform epigraphy. But a few appear to me to belong definitely to the prehistoric Indus Valley script. I refer to two tablets both in the British Museum, 81-7-27, 49+50, published in Cuneiform Texts, Vol. V, Pl. 7 and three fragments all apparently from the same tablet, said to have been excavated in the S.E. Palace at Nimroud, K.8520 published by Houghton in *Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology*, VI 454. All these tablets come from Assyria, but the script used in the explanations of the archaic signs is that used in Babylonia *circa* 2000 B.C., a date not too far below the period in which Indus Valley seals are found at Kish, *circa* 2700 B.C. It is, therefore, entirely possible that the Babylonian epigraphists knew the Indus script. Now the scribe arranges the signs in order of the well known Sumerian Syllabary A and in CT.V7 Obv. 1 there is an extraordinary sign entered as the archaic form of NU, usual meaning negative "not", Sumerian value nu. This is totally unlike any archaic form of NU and may be the Indus sign 75 or 76 of my sign list. Naturally, if this thesis be true, all the scribe means to say is that the Indian sign means "not"; the phonetic value nu cannot be inferred unless the Indian language is Sumerian. *Ibid.* Rev. 11 2 there are extraordinary forms of the sign ŠAG "heart", restored by syllabary AII 52. One of these is identical with No. 87 of my list and two of them seem to be mere variants. If so, then the common Indian sign No. 87 means "heart", pronounced ša, šag in Sumerian. I do not mean to say that there is any certainty about this suggestion of the survival of Indian signs in the epigraphical texts of these Babylonian scribes. Sumerian texts of this kind or bilingual Sumerian and Indian inscriptions seem to offer the only possible help to which scholars may have recourse at present; for the Sumerians were the only literary people who knew this only possible help to which scholars may have recourse at present: for the Sumerians were the only literary people who knew this writing and language when it was still written and spoken.
c3.3
Dr. Hunter has presented here all the known material. His knowledge of all the existing variants of the signs is unsurpassed and I am glad to have the opportunity of commending his book to scholars as a trustworthy edition of the texts.
c3.4
S. Langdon, Oxford, October 10, 1933.
c3.5
The Script of Mohenjodaro and Harappa and its relation to other scripts.