Indus valley writing

[S. Kalyanaraman]

hi,
I agree with Dr.Lars Martin Fosse. Dr. Jha's work
is totally unconvincing and offers very shaky
methods to cope with the problems posed by the
orthography and pictorials. Only a leap of faith
can catch up with the claims made.

In fact, almost all the decipherment claims so far have not
successfully addressed the problem of what Parpola calls "pictorial
motifs" and what Mahadevan calls "field symbols" in their concordances.

What for instance does the svastika_ glyph connote, in semantic terms?
What was the 'rhinoceros' called in those times, by those people on
the river valleys of NW India?

A comprehensive review of many claims appears in
Prof. Gregory Possehl's latest work, "Indus Age: Writing System."
(This does not however analyse Dr. Jha's work). Prof. Possehl's
conclusion echoes Mahadevan's address to the Indian History Congress:
ne_ti, ne_ti:not this, not that. I had earlier prepared a bibliography
on the problem of the Indus Script, cited in Parpola's work
"Deciphering the Indus Script". (Parpola's claim was also reviewed
negatively by Mahadevan, while appreciating the encyclopaedic nature
of Parpola's work as an aid to the future decipherers.)

Regards,
Dr. S. Kalyanaraman


---Lars Martin Fosse <lmfosse at ONLINE.NO> wrote:
>
> At 12:32 10.05.98 -0700, you wrote:
> >Dear members,
> >It has been alleged in non specialized pblications that the seals
of the
> >Indus valley have now been deciphered thanks to the work done by a
> >Dr.Natwar Jha (apparently a sansckrit scholar and school principal in
> >West Bengal) and by a mathematician, named N.S. Rajaram of
Bangalore. Is
> >this serious and do we laymen have to assume that the Indus scripthas
> >now been cracked ?
>
> No, you don't. From what I have seen of Jha's attempts, they do not
convince.
>
> The matter has been discussed earlier on the list. You may want to
rummage
> in the archives.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Lars Martin Fosse
>
>
> Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse
> Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114,
> 0674 Oslo
>
> Tel: +47 22 32 12 19
> Fax: +47 22 32 12 19
> Email: lmfosse at online.no
> Mobile phone: 90 91 91 45
>

==
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