The Indus script - lost perishable manuscripts

Mon Apr 27 17:18:37 UTC 2009

Dear Professor Parpola,
I am following the debate for just two days. Pity that the literature concerned was unknown to me. But thanks to Dr. Fleming's help with some literature, perhaps I have been able to follow the course. I agree with your reply. Why not earlier? Better late than never.Let me not be rude but is there not something akin to the one eyed deer not seeing the left side where the hunter stood. Earlier known than Mycenaean Linear B was the basic signs on which Confucius had based his codes. Was that earlier material literature? The signs had conveyed meanings to Confucius and hence were at least proto-lingustic.  Have the proponents of the illiterate Harappan theory taken that into consideration? They are also unaware of the language-and-script-based holy symbols of secret societies.  They derive themselves from a living script and convey meaning and,according to the followers, are no less effective than versified charms. But taken alone without the
 knowledge of the basic script they would appear just like what the proponents speak of the Harappan script. Still they are script based.
Such graphic/phonetic symbols existed in India at least since the Saddharmapundariika. Unfortunately there is no literature on this but given time I could bring home the point better.
Again the observations made by me may have missed major points. Please be kind enough to point to my errors. I will rectify myself.
Best wishes to all
DB 

--- On Mon, 27/4/09, Asko Parpola <asko.parpola at HELSINKI.FI> wrote:

From: Asko Parpola <asko.parpola at HELSINKI.FI>
Subject: The Indus script - lost perishable manuscripts
To: INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk
Date: Monday, 27 April, 2009, 10:03 PM

Quoting "Steve Farmer" <saf at SAFARMER.COM>:

The implausibility of the view that the so-called Indus script was true writing is suggested in many ways that do not require sophisticated analyses. The simplest argument is the best: the sheer brevity of the inscriptions. We possess thousands of inscribed Indus objects on a wide range of materials. The average inscription is 4-5 symbols long and the longest, found on a highly anomalous piece, carries 17. Before our paper, the lack of real texts was explained away by invoking the purely speculative image of lost perishable manuscripts. The speculation was spurious: we know of hundreds of literate societies, but not of one that wrote long texts on perishable materials but failed to do so as well on durable goods. It is interesting that simple arguments like this have been ignored by defenders of the traditional view, who often hold that view for reasons that have nothing to do with science.

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

Steve Farmer here goes on repeating arguments published in 2004, claiming that "simple arguments like this have been ignored by defenders of the traditional view, who often hold that view for reasons that have nothing to do with science". Farmer thus forces me to this reply, given to make it easy to the members of the list to check if this is true or not. In my paper of 2008 referred to by Pankaj Jain and available for download at http://www.harappa.com I list all the main theses of Farmer & Co. and reply to them one by one. (In addition I discuss some important issues not touched by Farmer & Co.) Below is a quote from pp. 117-118 exemplifying how I replied to this "Lost longer texts (manuscripts) never existed" thesis. Please note that the Harappans wrote on stone in their stamp seals, and that the Mesopotamian seal inscriptions are often equally short. Later on in the article I mention that the type of texts I expect to be lost is exemplified by the
 Mycenaean Linear B tablets, i.e. economic accounts, not literature, which was probably handed down orally, and even in Mesopotamia was written down at a relatively late date. The rest of this message consists of the quote from my paper.

With best regards, Asko Parpola

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

*"Lost" longer texts (manuscripts) never existed*

All literary civilizations produced longer texts but there are none from the Indus Valley — hence the Indus script is no writing system: Farmer and his colleagues reject the much repeated early assumption that longer texts may have been written on birch bark, palm leaves, parchment, wood, or cotton cloth, any of which would have perished in the course of ages as suggested by Sir John Marshall in 1931 (I, 39). Farmer and his colleagues are ready to believe the Indus script thesis only if an Indus text at least 50 signs long is found.

*But* even though Farmer and his colleagues speak as if our present corpus of texts was everything there ever existed, this is not the case. More than 2100 Indus texts come from Mohenjo-daro alone, and yet less than one tenth of that single city has been excavated. Farmer and his colleagues do not know what has existed and what may be found in the remaining parts of the city, even if it is likely that only imperishable material of the kinds already available continue to be found. The Rongo-Rongo tablets of Easter Island are much longer than 50 signs. But does this make it certain that they represent writing in the strict sense?

Seed evidence shows that cotton has been cultivated in Greater Indus Valley since Chalcolithic times, and cotton cloth is supposed to have been one of the main export items of the Harappans. Yet all the millions of Harappan pieces of cotton cloth have disappeared for climatic reasons, save four cases where a few microscopic fibers have been preserved in association with metal (cf. Possehl 2002: table 3.2, with further references). Alexander‘s admiral Nearchus mentions thickly woven cloth used for writing letters in the Indus Valley c 325 BC. Sanskrit sources such as the Ya:jñavalkya-Smrti (1,319) also mention cotton cloth, (ka:rpa:sa-)paTa, as writing material around the beginning of the Christian era. But the earliest preserved examples date from the 13th century AD (cf. Shivaganesha Murthy 1996: 45-46; Salomon 1998: 132).

Emperor Asoka had long inscriptions carved on stone (pillars and rocks) all around his wide realm in 260 to 250 BC. They have survived. But also manuscripts on perishable materials must have existed in Asoka‘s times and already since the Achaemenid rule started in the Indus Valley c 520 BC. This is suggested among other things by the mention of lipi ‗script‘ in Pa:Nini‘s Sanskrit Grammar (3,2,21) which is dated to around 400-350 BC. Sanskrit lipi comes from Old Persian dipi ‗script‘. The earliest surviving manuscripts on birch bark, palm leaves and wooden blocks date from the 2nd century AD and come from the dry climate of Central Asia (cf. Shivaganesha Murthy 1996: 24-36; Salomon 1998: 131). We can conclude that manuscripts on perishable materials have almost certainly existed in South Asia during 600 years from the start of the Persian rule onwards, but they have not been preserved; this period of 600 years with no surviving manuscripts
 corresponds to the duration of the Indus Civilization.

--- On Mon, 27/4/09, Asko Parpola <asko.parpola at HELSINKI.FI> wrote:

From: Asko Parpola <asko.parpola at HELSINKI.FI>
Subject: The Indus script - lost perishable manuscripts
To: INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk
Date: Monday, 27 April, 2009, 10:03 PM

Quoting "Steve Farmer" <saf at SAFARMER.COM>:

The implausibility of the view that the so-called Indus script was true writing is suggested in many ways that do not require sophisticated analyses. The simplest argument is the best: the sheer brevity of the inscriptions. We possess thousands of inscribed Indus objects on a wide range of materials. The average inscription is 4-5 symbols long and the longest, found on a highly anomalous piece, carries 17. Before our paper, the lack of real texts was explained away by invoking the purely speculative image of lost perishable manuscripts. The speculation was spurious: we know of hundreds of literate societies, but not of one that wrote long texts on perishable materials but failed to do so as well on durable goods. It is interesting that simple arguments like this have been ignored by defenders of the traditional view, who often hold that view for reasons that have nothing to do with science.

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

Steve Farmer here goes on repeating arguments published in 2004, claiming that "simple arguments like this have been ignored by defenders of the traditional view, who often hold that view for reasons that have nothing to do with science". Farmer thus forces me to this reply, given to make it easy to the members of the list to check if this is true or not. In my paper of 2008 referred to by Pankaj Jain and available for download at http://www.harappa.com I list all the main theses of Farmer & Co. and reply to them one by one. (In addition I discuss some important issues not touched by Farmer & Co.) Below is a quote from pp. 117-118 exemplifying how I replied to this "Lost longer texts (manuscripts) never existed" thesis. Please note that the Harappans wrote on stone in their stamp seals, and that the Mesopotamian seal inscriptions are often equally short. Later on in the article I mention that the type of texts I expect to be lost is exemplified by the
 Mycenaean Linear B tablets, i.e. economic accounts, not literature, which was probably handed down orally, and even in Mesopotamia was written down at a relatively late date. The rest of this message consists of the quote from my paper.

With best regards, Asko Parpola

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

*"Lost" longer texts (manuscripts) never existed*

All literary civilizations produced longer texts but there are none from the Indus Valley — hence the Indus script is no writing system: Farmer and his colleagues reject the much repeated early assumption that longer texts may have been written on birch bark, palm leaves, parchment, wood, or cotton cloth, any of which would have perished in the course of ages as suggested by Sir John Marshall in 1931 (I, 39). Farmer and his colleagues are ready to believe the Indus script thesis only if an Indus text at least 50 signs long is found.

*But* even though Farmer and his colleagues speak as if our present corpus of texts was everything there ever existed, this is not the case. More than 2100 Indus texts come from Mohenjo-daro alone, and yet less than one tenth of that single city has been excavated. Farmer and his colleagues do not know what has existed and what may be found in the remaining parts of the city, even if it is likely that only imperishable material of the kinds already available continue to be found. The Rongo-Rongo tablets of Easter Island are much longer than 50 signs. But does this make it certain that they represent writing in the strict sense?

Seed evidence shows that cotton has been cultivated in Greater Indus Valley since Chalcolithic times, and cotton cloth is supposed to have been one of the main export items of the Harappans. Yet all the millions of Harappan pieces of cotton cloth have disappeared for climatic reasons, save four cases where a few microscopic fibers have been preserved in association with metal (cf. Possehl 2002: table 3.2, with further references). Alexander‘s admiral Nearchus mentions thickly woven cloth used for writing letters in the Indus Valley c 325 BC. Sanskrit sources such as the Ya:jñavalkya-Smrti (1,319) also mention cotton cloth, (ka:rpa:sa-)paTa, as writing material around the beginning of the Christian era. But the earliest preserved examples date from the 13th century AD (cf. Shivaganesha Murthy 1996: 45-46; Salomon 1998: 132).

Emperor Asoka had long inscriptions carved on stone (pillars and rocks) all around his wide realm in 260 to 250 BC. They have survived. But also manuscripts on perishable materials must have existed in Asoka‘s times and already since the Achaemenid rule started in the Indus Valley c 520 BC. This is suggested among other things by the mention of lipi ‗script‘ in Pa:Nini‘s Sanskrit Grammar (3,2,21) which is dated to around 400-350 BC. Sanskrit lipi comes from Old Persian dipi ‗script‘. The earliest surviving manuscripts on birch bark, palm leaves and wooden blocks date from the 2nd century AD and come from the dry climate of Central Asia (cf. Shivaganesha Murthy 1996: 24-36; Salomon 1998: 131). We can conclude that manuscripts on perishable materials have almost certainly existed in South Asia during 600 years from the start of the Persian rule onwards, but they have not been preserved; this period of 600 years with no surviving manuscripts
 corresponds to the duration of the Indus Civilization.

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