Harappan 'non-texts'?

[Koenraad Elst]

>  Witzel's response was to claims by
> another poster that Chinese hadn't changed from
> c. 300 BCE to the present (!)

That other poster claimed no such thing, merely that Chinese script has
hardly changed between the implementation by the early Han of Qin Shihuang's
script reform,
rather ca. 200 BC, and Mao's script reform.  That same poster had
demonstrated in a website article, posted in tempore non suspecto, that the
following was no news to him either:

> All specialists agree that before the Han
> dynasty ancient Chinese was anything *but* "fixed"!

> From recent inputs here, I gather that the situation in the IVC had this
much in common with China, that a formative and anarchic period was followed
by one of standardization and stability, though still more varied by region
than in China.  Though no theory I hold dear depends on it, that still seems
compatible with the existence of IVC literature.  But again, I'd rather
reserve further speculation until I have familiarized myself with the new
findings announced by Prof. Witzel.

Meanwhile I notice that some list members have swiftly dismissed the recent
decipherment by N. Jha and N.S. Rajaram.  It would be quite a service to the
perplexed public, esp. in India, if the non-viability of that decipherment
were firmly demonstrated rather than cursorily asserted.  I assume most of
you have more urgent matters on their hands, but to your students it might
be a useful exercise.  I will gladly settle for Prof. Witzel's diagnosis
that regarding the Indus script we are back at square one, but then it might
be good for the next generation of scholars to get a hands-on experience of
what was wrong with the 20th-century decipherments, all the better to make a
radically new start.

K. Elst