Harappan Deciphered? DHOLAVIRA

Sun Jul 9 15:07:59 UTC 2000

So, it was Jha/Rajaram who were talking about "overcoming the thieves...".
Where, by Indra, is that web site?

The reading and interpretation confirm exactly what I predicted yesterday:

If K.Elst's report is complete and he has spelled correctly, I understand
it as:

"mad-dvaidhaH-raaga-vedhaazvaiH-sahasra-dhaa"

which raises a lot of problems... Certainly not "late Vedic":

------------------------------------
K.Elst:
>Dholavira signboard acc. to Jha/Rajaram ("late phase of the script, ca. 2000
>BC"):

>"mad-dvaidhah-raaga-vedhaashvaih-sahasra-dhaa"

>approximately:
>"I was a thousand times victorious over avaricious raiders desirous of my
>wealth of horses"
---------------------------------

* script

As pointed out yesterday: anything goes....

Take the letter/Aksara dh  (spoked wheel):  it is read  as dhaa (2x), dhaH
and dvai.
[Pseudo-] Voltaire, he say:       consonants count little,  vowels nothing!

The interpretation of the signs  makes  them  a sort of [early] Brahmi or
early Semitic (as even a look into Monier Williams dict., intro, will
show)... Hardly any change between Jha/Rajaram's 2000 BCE and Asoka... But
that's not the point here.

Note the confusion between d/dh, and reading ANY vowel with the sign in
question....
Maybe the Indologist who wants to read it as O.Norse or English should come
forward and add his interpretation and translation now!!

* text & translation.

I must confess I have many difficulties with this "sentence". Maybe someone
can help me out?

- wrong sandhi : dvaidhaH + raaga?

- I can recognize: mad 'of me, by me' etc.', dvaidha- 'twofold, contest,
strife', raaga- 'color, passion', azva- 'horse', and sahasra-dhaa
'thousand-fold',  but:

vedha- obviously is wrong for Ved. ve'das- (neuter) 'possession'
and I miss the '[avaricious] raiders' altogether.

And how to put all of this together?

At best: 'my strife with horses that are [my] possession of/by/with
color/passion(?)  1000x."

Or try a Bahuvrihi: my strife with  those possessing horses as [their]
wealth by/because of  [their] passion..."

Or, but that would be post-Vedic: my strife with  those having obtained
horses as [their] wealth by [their] passion..."

-raaga 'desire for' at best as SECOND part of a compound:  'longing for'
[horses], but where is that compound?? (dvaidhaH?? -- wrong form, and no
sense); or with locative, but here we get instrumental: azvaiH.

Or maybe Jha/Rajaram took all of the above as one compound? As the hyphens
seem to indicate. With wrong Sandhi and case forms?

Enough said:

All of the above certainly is not Vedic, not even late Vedic: strange
compound, wrong word (vedas), also a little long for normal Vedic :
raaga-*veda-azva- ??

To arrive at :  raaga-vedhaashvaih =  "over avaricious raiders desirous of
my wealth of horses"  needs a lot of un-grammatical twisting --it reads
more like English or rather Austronesian, transposed into pseudo-Skt.:
"desire - wealth - horses" (is this what they did?) --   and it needs
padding of several words not found in the "text".

I give up. Maybe an ingenious PaaNinIya can help us out here??

---------------

Now contrast all  of this with the modest book announcement:
http://www.safarmer.com/pico/crackedcode.html

*      Dr. Natwar Jha studied Vedic literature at Shyama Vidyapeeth, Mandar
Ashram
       in Bounsi, Bhagalpur, Bihar. He continued his higher studies in
Sanskrit
       literature at Darbhanga University, and obtained a Ph.D. from Bihar
       University at Muzaffarpur. He is one of the world's foremost Vedic
scholars
       and palaeographers who has deciphered the 5000 year-old Indus
(Harappan)
       script, thereby solving what is widely regarded as the most significant
       technical problem in historical research in our time.
*      Dr. N. S. Rajaram was born in Mysore, India in September 1943. He
holds a
       B.E. degree in Electrical Engineering from B.M.S. College in
Bangalore and
       Ph.D. in Mathematical Sciences from Indiana University in Bloomington,
       U.S.A.

*      volume is devoted to the study of the Indus script and its
       decipherment. It offers a methodology for reading the Indus script by
       combining paleography with ancient literary accounts and Vedic grammar.

*     The language
       of the seals is Vedic Sanskrit, ...

*      The language is
       less archaic than that of the Rigveda, and corresponds closely to
that of
       the later Vedic works like the Sutras and the Upanishads.  ...

*      in a language and idiom that we can all comprehend
       -- the Vedic.

*      The converse is also true: we now have an archaeological and
       geographic context for the Vedic Aryans. The Harappans belong to the
later
      Vedic Age.  ...

-----------

Well, maybe needless to say by now, the last sentence of the announcement
gives it all away:

*     Thus, the idea of the birth
       of Civilization in the river valleys of Mesopotamia is no longer
tenable.
       The cradle of civilization -- assuming there was such a thing -- can
now be
       claimed for the Sarasvati Valley.

Maybe it is time now for K. Elst to remind us of the 15/16th cent. scholar
from the Greater Netherlands who had shown that the language of (Christian)
paradise, and thus the craddle of (Christian) civilization, was  ....
Dutch.

-===============
========================================================
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
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: attachment.bin
Type: text/enriched
Size: 6115 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/attachments/20000709/b9dfae8f/attachment.bin>