An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology v1.c25.s4.2

v1.c25.s4.2

The Indus script consists of basic signs which are modified by internal and external strokes, combinations of two or more signs or ligatures, mirror-reflected pairs of signs, ‘bracket’ or ‘enclosure’ signs, realistically drawn animal, bird or human figures and signs which may represent numerals (Ross, 1938). Besides there are also graphic variants of some of the basic signs. The number of signs in the script has been computed differently by different workers as it is difficult to be precise about the total number of basic signs (Langdon in Marshall, 1931, 2, pp. 434-52; Gadd and Smith in Marshall, 1931, 2, pp. 406-22, 3, pls. CXIX-CXXIX; Vats, 1940, 2, pls. CV-CXVI; Hunter, 1934, pp. 203-10; Dani, 1963, pp. 12-20, pls. I-II; Koshenniemi *et al.*, 1943, pp. XXII-XXVII. On the basis of the analysis of different scholars the normalized signary of the Indus script, without the graphic variants, is generally taken to be approximately between 250 and 400 basic signs (Parpola *et al.*, 1969a, pp. 8-9; Mahadevan, 1977, pp. 14-6 and 32-5).