The Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables c4.s8.t1: General considerations
The Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables c4.s8.t1
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General considerations
c4.s8.t1.1
Theoretically, the Indus seals and inscriptions could be classified in several ways. For example, the inscriptions could be arranged according to the pictographic sequences they contain. However, this arrangement would only serve the needs of scholars interested in the script and is better left to the concordances of the script. If the concordances are keyed to the Corpus, cross-reference and verification will be easy, whatever the principles of arrangement.
c4.s8.t1.2
Ernest Mackay, in *Further Excavations at Mohenjo-daro*, arranged the objects coming from Mohenjo-daro according to the different areas of the site and the absolute depth of the finding place from the surface.⁶⁸ He wished to control the data from the point of view of archaeological distribution, looking for evolutionary and other trends. The result was chaotic: objects of different types and sizes were mixed with each other. Unless one knows the number of the object, it is impossible to locate it without scanning through the entire material. In the present Corpus, the archaeological context is taken into account in the arrangement of the objects when it is feasible and useful: thus the objects from the Late Harappan period from Lothal (graffiti only) and Chanhujo-daro (seals) are presented as a separate section at the end.
c4.s8.t1.3
⁶⁸ On Mackay's "stratigraphy", cf. Jansen 1986 (fn. 3), 52-54.
c4.s8.t1.4
The aim of the classification must be efficiency in placing and locating any given object within the whole. The type of the object, form, material, iconographic motif, size, style and state of preservation have been chosen as parameters in the Corpus, in this order. A solution of this kind, which makes a neat layout possible, was followed by Sir John Marshall in *Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization* and, less successfully, by M.S. Vats in *Excavations at Harappa*.