EJVS 11-2: no Indus 'script'

[Michael Witzel]

The following may be of interest to members:

ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF VEDIC STUDIES     (EJVS)
Vol. 11 (2004)  Issue 2 (December 13) : 19-57      ( C)  ISSN 1084-7561

The Collapse of the Indus-Script Thesis:
The Myth of a Literate Harappan Civilization

By Steve Farmer,  Richard Sproat,  and Michael Witzel

Abstract

Archaeologists have long claimed the Indus Valley as one of the four
literate centers of the early ancient world, complete with long texts
written on perishable materials. We demonstrate the impossibility of the
lost-manuscript thesis and show that Indus symbols were not even evolving
in linguistic directions after at least 600 years of use. Suggestions of
how Indus inscriptions were used are examined in nonlinguistic symbol
systems in the Near East that served important religious, political, and
social functions without encoding speech or serving as formal memory aids.
Evidence is reviewed that the Harappans'slack of a true script may have
been tied to the role played by their symbols in controlling large
multilinguistic populations; parallels are drawn to the later resistance
of priestly elites to the literate encoding of Vedic sources and to
similar phenomena in esoteric traditions outside South Asia. Discussion is
provided on some of the academic and political forces that helped sustain
the Indus-script myth for over 130 years and on ways in which our findings
transform current views of the Indus Valley and of the place of writing in
ancient civilizations in general.

The paper is available at:
http://www.safarmer.com/fsw2.pdf
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm (fsw2.pdf)
and, of course, the EJVS website:
http://users.primushost.com/~india/ejvs/issues.html

A discussion of the present paper is scheduled to appear in SCIENCE
Magazine on Dec. 17, 2004.
http://www.sciencemag.org

-------------------
Michael Witzel
Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, Harvard University
1 Bow Street , Cambridge MA 02138
1-617-495 3295           Fax: 496 8571
direct line:       496 2990
http://witzel@fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm