An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology v1.c25.s4.18

v1.c25.s4.18

Considering that the Indus script ‘had already reached the syllabic, if not a partly alphabetic stage’ and that ‘there are about 52 basic signs including 12 pictorials … in the writing of the mature Harappan period’, Rao, 1973, p. 326, has concluded that by late Harappa period the number of basic signs used in the inscriptions was reduced to 20. On this basis he regards the late Harappa script to be alphabetic on the analogy of the Semitic script. However for assigning phonetic values he has freely borrowed from the s. Semitic Sabaean script, Akkadian and Ugaritic cuneiform writing and Hittite and has concluded that 'the early syllabic-cum-alphabetic writing of the Indus people was disciplined into an alphabetic system by 1500 B.C. They spoke an Indo-European language which shows close affinity to Indo-Aryan in vocabulary, semantics and phonology' (Rao, 1973, p. 338). He has also read epithets, names of rulers, chiefs, sacrifices and divinities on the seals and has stated that the language shows affinity with the Hittite both in the semantics and syntax of epithets (Rao, 1973, p. 338). In Lal's view (Lal, 1973) the available late Harappa material is too meagre to give an exhaustive picture of the late Harappa times and the reduction by Rao in the total number of basic signs by calling certain signs as 'alternatives' and thereby regarding the late Harappan script as alphabetic, morphological comparison on the late Harappan signs with those of the Semitic script and taking their values and at the same time taking 'shelter under the Akkadian and Ugaritic cuneiform writing' do not appear to be plausible, nor are his readings of the Indus inscriptions grammatically sound.