Indus script

[Michael Witzel]

rajesh kochhar:
>I would like to make a suggestion.Let us answer the following:
>What are the facts pertaining to the interpretation of the Harappan script
>on which there is  a consensus among researchers?If a fresher were to
>enter the field,what can he/she  take for guaranteed?
>

As far as I can see, very little:

* the order of writing : in most cases left to wright, established long ago
by BB Lal, and based on overlapping characters in inscriptions on vessels.
(Sometimes, though, right to left, see e.g. some of the tablets mentioned
yesterday:
  III V   or  V III  or even   ^ III !
On the same series of tablets!! Miscopied? or just: doesn't matter as we
can read it both ways, e.g., if it meant something like [give me?here is?]
3  vessels(?) [of...] )

* some simple numbers, written as virtually everywhere in early writing as:
'  ''   '''  ''''  etc.

* Beyond that?  I have difficulty:  what is a "sign"/character? how many?
what do they represent (words)?

Any other proposals for consensus?

The rest flows form here: uncertainty in ANY reading, even sign lists,
concordances etc., and certainly  in ANY "decipherment" (including, of
course, the language(s) it is based on, see below).

Therefore, the only correct translation of the Dholavira wall board is:
lasciate ogni speranza voi qu'entrate!
(= motto of our Round Tables; -- for non-Italian speakers: 'leave all hope
you who enter!' From Dante: entrance of hell).

Most students of the IV script would agree that we have to deal with
hundreds of individual characters which makes the script basically
logographic (as all early *deciphered* scripts from Egypt to China started
out).

<<There have been a few, in my opinion misguided dissenters, though, who
read these hundreds of characters as based on a real alphabet (but: all
alphabets have <much> less than 100 characters),     --   including the
most recent, very much touted  attempts by SR Rao or  Raja Ram.  They read
the IV script as early Indo-Aryan, very funny early Indo-Aryan though, and
with an a-historical setting as well>>

Steve Farmer [SMTP:saf at SAFARMER.COM] skrev 5. juli 2000 09:49:
> The regional variations .. in logograms are especially relevant to
> points already made about the highly restricted uses of the script.

L.M.Fosse:
>Bernard Sergent suggests the possibility that more
>than one language was used in the IV culture. Part of the area (in the
>South) may have spoken an early form of Dravidian, whereas other parts
>possibly spoke a precursor of Burshashki (according to Sergent) or some
>other language(s) X.

Precisely the point I made in 1999 (= Panjab, Sindh dialects(?)/languages):
Early Sources for South Asian Substrate Languages. Mother Tongue (extra
number), October 1999, pp.1-70
or in a an easily accessible, though somewhat shorter version that adds a
long,  more popular introduction:
Substrate Languages in Old Indo-Aryan (Rgvedic, Middle and Late Vedic),
EJVS Vol. 5,1, Aug. 1999, 1-67 (http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs)

But, my materials  are not taken from speculation ("maybe Drav., maybe
Burushaski" -- NB Burushaski never seems to have penetrated into the Panjab
plains!), rather, as I underlined just yesterday :
they are taken from the only *nearly contemporary* evidence we have: the
300-odd loan words in the Rgveda!  Otherwise, there are only a few
"Meluhhan" words in Mesopotamian sources, some of which may be Bahrain
(Dilmun)- based and therefore misleading.

> Harappan signs may have had
>something in common with the ubiquitous signs we see all over Europe: signs
>for men's rooms and ladies' rooms, traffic signs etc.

yes, but they also are more  complex!

> the IV area,
>which shared the same material culture without being monolingual.

NB. as an OVERLAY on continiung and, after the end of the IVC, re-remerging
local cultures!

Which, again, underlines the emblematic character of many of the signs that
were readable from Panjab to Sindh to Baluchistan to Gujarat, ---  like,
perhaps the better example, due to [partial] *cultural* domination:  many
Chinese characters (not ALL!) from Sian/Loyang to Nanking and from old
Silla Korea to Heian Japan to N. Vietnam, regardless of language or
"dialect" [and to some degree, regardless of word order: SVO ::  SOV].

>The sheer size of the IV area would seem to support a suggestion of
>plurilingualism.
>At the same time, it is not surprising to find some local variants in the
>semiotic system. That situation also obtains today.

as above....
--------------
========================================================
Michael Witzel
Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University
2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138, USA

ph. 1- 617-496 2990 (also messages)
home page:  http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm

Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies:  http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs
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