An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology v1.c25.s4.10

v1.c25.s4.10

The language of the Indus inscriptions has been variously claimed as Sanskrit or archaic Vedic (Pran Nath, 1931, 1931-2; Ray, 1963, 1965a and b, 1966; Rao, 1971, 1972-3, 1973a and b; Krishna Rao, 1969, 1973; Fateh Singh, 1968; Karmarkar, 1940; Gadd in Marshall, 1931, p. 414; Paranavitana, 1961), symbols of the Tantric code (Sankarananda, 1943-4, 1955, 1963; Barua, 1946; Nath, 1959), Hittite (Hrozný, 1953; Meriggi, 1934), Easter Island script (Hevesy, 1933; Heine-Geldern, 1957; Billimoria 1937a-c, 1940), Sumerian (Waddell, 1925, 1926; Kinnier-Wilson, 1974), Etruscan (Piccoli, 1933), Egyptian hieroglyphic (Petrie, 1932), Dravidian group of languages (Heras, 1953) and even Bundelkhandi (Sapre, 1960, 1966). It has also been suggested that the Harappans were the Asuras mentioned in the *Ṛgveda* and the Indus script shows borrowings from proto-Elamites, Egyptians and Sumerians (Shendge, 1977, pp. 385-7). These attempts are invalid (Zide, 1970; Parpola, 1979; Metraux, 1938; Otto, 1936; Wheeler, 1968, pp. 107-8) as 'the "decipherments" have been based on untenable hypotheses, lack of chronological accuracy, unsound reconstructions because of linguistic naïvete, and in gen-