The Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables c4.s4: 4. The enigma of the Indus script

The Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables c4.s4

Language: English

4. The enigma of the Indus script

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From the very beginning, the pictographic Indus script has been the most tantalizing one among the many problems presented by the Harappan culture. Slightly more than 3500 short inscriptions hold an answer to the most debated question concerning this early urban culture, that concerning its language. Many attempts at deciphering this unknown writing system have been made ever since the first specimen was published in 1875, and all sorts of 'solutions' have been proposed.

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The Indus script has been considered as genetically connected with the Brahmi script of early historical India.³⁹ Other hypotheses have connected the Indus script with the scripts of the ancient

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³⁹ Cf. A. Cunningham, *Inscriptions of Asoka*, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum I, Calcutta 1879, 61f.; Stephen Langdon, in: John Marshall (ed.), *Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization*, London 1931, Vol. II, 426; G.R. Hunter, *Mohenjo-daro - Indus epigraphy*, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 1932, 466-503; id., *The script of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro and its connection with other scripts*, London 1934; among the numerous Indian scholars maintaining

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Täfelchen der Harappa-Kultur, Prähistorische Bronzefunde I: 6, München 1985.

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³⁷ Alf Hiltebeitel, The Indus Valley "Proto-Siva", reexamined through reflections on the Goddess, the buffalo, and the symbolism of *vāhanas*, *Anthropos* 73 (1978), 767-797. Mahiṣa Asura seems to be identical with Siva in the terrible or Bhairava aspect, having the form of a fierce buffalo. Cf. A. Parpola, *The Sky Garment*, Studia Orientalia 57, Helsinki 1985; id., From Istar to Durgā, in: G. Sontheimer and M.L.K. Murty (eds.), *Durgā and the Buffalo*, Heidelberg (in press).

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Sumerians, Proto-Elamites, Egyptians, Hittites and Chinese and even with Etruscan pot-marks and with script-like carvings on wooden tablets found in the Easter Island, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The language underlying the Indus script has been supposed to be Sumerian, Proto-Dravidian, Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Indo-Iranian, Sanskrit, Prakrit, and so on.⁴⁰

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⁴⁰ For surveys of various attempts at deciphering the Indus script, see Arlene R. K. Zide, A brief survey of work to date on the Indus valley script, Papers from the 4th Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society, April 19-20, 1968, Chicago 1968, 225-237, reprinted in Journal of Tamil Studies II:1, 1970, 1-12; Jaroslav Vacek, The problem of the Indus script, Archiv Orientální 38, 1970, 198-212; N.V. Gurov, Izuchenie protoindiyskikh tekstov (kratkij obzor), in: Soobschenie ob issledovanii protoindiyskikh tekstov - Proto-Indica: 1972, Moskva 1972, I, 5-51.

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But no unanimity has been reached even on the basic issues, and most literature on the Indus script requires a lot of sifting in order to pick up useful ideas. The main reason for this unfortunate state of affairs is the fact that all keys that opened other unknown scripts are unavailable here. There are no bi- or multilingual inscriptions giving the same text in both Indus script and some readable characters. There are no understood historical texts which could tell the names of the Harappan gods, kings or cities, or which would quote samples of the language spoken by the Indus people. Even the type of the writing system represented by the Indus script is debated. Moreover, all the texts are short and limited in nature: the average length is five signs, and the longest texts, two identical three-sided tablets (M-494 and M-495), contain 26 signs each. The longest inscription on any single side of an object is found on a seal (M-314) with 17 signs divided into three lines.

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But students of the Indus script must face these formidable difficulties and the pessimistic prognoses based on them. In fact, some more objective work has been done also. There has been serious discussion of the methodology, and essential research tools in the form of documentation and concordances have been created. On one point, at least, most scholars agree: the direction of writing usually is from right to left (but in the seal stamps, engraved in mirror image, from left to right); however, in some texts (particularly in the early tablets from Harappa) the direction of writing runs from left to right, and in a few texts alternatingly, boustrophedon.⁴¹

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⁴¹ Cf. Stephen Langdon, in: John Marshall (ed.), Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization, London 1931, Vol. II, 427f.; C.J. Gadd and Sidney Smith, ibid. 409-411; G. R. Hunter, The script of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro and its connection with other scripts, London 1934, 37-43; B.B. Lal, The direction of writing in the Harappan script, Antiquity 40, 1966, 52-55 & pl. XII-XIII; id., A further note on the direction of writing in the Harappan script, Puratattva 1, 1967-68, 15-16 & pl. I; I. Mahadevan, The Indus script: Texts, concordance and tables, Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India 77, New Delhi 1977, 10-14.

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We cannot enter into a detailed discussion of the Indus script and its study here. For this, the reader is referred to literature published elsewhere.⁴² In the sequel we shall only try to justify our this view, mention may be made of S.R. Rao (The Decipherment of the Indus script, New Delhi 1982), who derives the Brahmi script as well as the Semitic alphabet from the Indus script. However, it is a well-established fact that the Brahmi script is derived from the Semitic consonantal alphabet, and this in turn from the uniconsonantal signs of the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. Cf. e.g. Georg Bühler, Indische Palaeographie, Grundriss der Indo-Arischen Philologie und Altertumskunde I:11, Strassburg 1896, 10ff.; A.H. Dani, Indian Palaeography, Oxford 1963, 23ff.; I.J. Gelb, A study of writing, 2 ed., Chicago 1963, 147ff, 197f.

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⁴² Excellent general introductions to the ancient writing systems and the methodology of their decipherment are: I.J. Gelb, A study of writing, rev. ed., Chicago 1963; id., Written records and decipherment, in: T.A. Sebeok (ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics 11, The Hague 1973, 253-284; Ernst Doblhofer, Voices in stone: The decipherment of

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belief that the present work will constitute an indispensable tool for research in this field: the *Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions* endeavours to collect all the primary material necessary for the study of the Indus script and to make it available in as good form as possible.