Darius' problem and the problem of Harappan signs

[George Thompson]

Well, I enjoyed the references and observations made by Ashok Aklujkar re
Indic parallels to Darius' problem.  However, since he didn't make an
explicit point in his post, beyond teasing some of us, I thought that I
should comment on my use of this anecdote from Herodotus.

There are two reasons for using it, and neither has to do with any
preconception on my part that anything that a Greek says is de facto
historical fact [certainly, Herodotus, known as "father of lies" as well as
"father of history", sometimes struggled with the difference between
'history' and 'myth'].  No, there is no unconscious preference for Greek
rationality underlying my choice of this anecdote.  Hardly. I know the Greeks
well enough not to fall for that myth.

No, the Herodotus anecdote is well known and frequently enountered in
handbooks dealing with the development of writing systems, because it clearly
illustrates the transition from 'object writing', wherein objects are
directly used as signs, and pictography, wherein pictures of objects are used
as signs. It is a good illustrative example of a commonly encountered
phenomenon in the history of writing systems.

The point is to show the severe limitations of pictography when it comes to
communicating with precision the full range of human thought.  In the history
of writing systems, this limitation has had to be overcome over and over
again.   And that is the first reason why I have resorted to it.

The second reason is that the message which the Scythians were said to send
to Darius consisted of a sequence that consisted of eight objects [a bird, a
mouse, a frog, and five arrows], which is the typical length of an IVC
message [sometimes longer, say, 12 signs, maximum of 21, if I recall].  Now,
maybe it is a bit of a fudge to count the five arrows as five separate signs.
Okay.  Maybe the sequence consists only of five signs [bird, mouse, frog,
arrow, plus the number sign].  In any case, I found the anecdote appropriate
because its length is roughly that of the typical IVC sequence.

In short, I wanted to call attention to the brief and enigmatic nature of IVC
sign sequences.  And that's all.

Best,

George Thompson