Cracking the Indus Valley script?

Hema Vijay

Ancient Civilisation

The men whose hands etched out these rather linear signs on soapstone and terracotta tablets along the valleys of the mighty Indus river some 4000 years ago, would have had no inkling that they were leaving such an enduring and tantalizing puzzle for men of the 20th and 21st centuries.

A Harappan seal.Generations of scholars have tried to crack the script etched out on tiny Indus Valley seals, tablets and amulets. Numerous decipherments have been proposed; but none accepted by the scientific community at large. This is why Dr Bryan Wells, a researcher and part of the eclectic team that is trying to decipher the Indus script jokingly says, “The Indus Valley script must be the most deciphered script in the world.”

What is exciting Dr Wells and linguists like Dr Steve Bonta from the Pennsylvania State University, who have been trying to crack the code, is the scintillating results of a study by a group of academicians and scholars. The study has discovered through computer statistical methods that the Indus script shows distinct patterns in the placement of symbols in sequences. This even gives this team a chance to accurately guess and fill in on the missing parts in the tablets discovered so far.

It is a geographically spread out team that conducted the computer analysis — Rajesh PN Rao, University of Washington; Nisha Yadav and Mayank Vahia of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and Centre for Excellence in Basic Sciences in Mumbai; Hrishikesh Joglekar of Mumbai; R Adhikari of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai; and Iravatham Mahadevan of the Indus Research Centre in Chennai. Their study was published in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the research was funded by the Packard Foundation, the Sir Jamsetji Tata Trust, the University of Washington and the Indus Research Centre.

These researchers used the Markov statistical model that analyses sequences and estimates the likelihood of a future event. This model has actually hit on the underlying grammatical structure of the Indus script, which is a massive boost for efforts in deciphering the script. The Markov analysis suggests that the Indus script exhibits rich synactic structure and the ability to represent diverse content. In short, the results suggest that the Indus script symbols fall into the purview of language. “I think that using Markov model has been a turning point,” says Dr Ronojoy Adhikari. The Markov model is generally used for sequences like DNA analysis, speech recognition, and economics.

The Indus Valley civilisation, also known as the Harappan civilisation (following the discovery of the bygone-existence of this civilisation at a site called Harappa, by English general Alexander Cunningham in the late 19th century) once spanned over half a million square miles. These people had an amazing trade network that extended as far as the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, and over 4000 symbol-bearing objects have been discovered, some in places as far away as Mesopotamia.

The Indus script sequences in seals are typically five to six symbols long, and read from right to left (understood from the cramping of signs towards the left of the seals). Each seal has an animal icon (predominantly the one horned rhino) accompanied by another symbol at the base. The seals are rather small, and the largest discovered one is just over a foot tall.

What is intriguing is that the seals with Indus symbols have been found in far away paces like Mesopotamia and the site of modern-day Iraq. Even more curiously, the West-Asian sequences seem to be ordered differently from sequences on artifacts found in the Indus Valley, suggesting that Indus traders in West Asia may have used the script to represent different information than the information they represented in the Indus region. In that case, these signs certainly can’t have been just symbols, quashing the contention that the Indus symbols were not part of a language.                  

The number of principal signs in the Indus script is estimated to be between 400-600 and scholars term these characters to be logo-syllabic, meaning midway between the syllabic and logo graphic scripts. To make it clear, typically, syllabic scripts have about 50-100 signs like the Tamil or English scripts, whereas logographic scripts have a very large number of principal signs, like the Chinese language. “It looks like some signs in the Indus script have phonetic sound, while others don’t,” Dr Wells says.

Arguably the most ancient of the urban civilizations in the world, these people lived, traded, sculpted and carved their thoughts in an enigmatic script, which have been teasing linguists. Perhaps not for much longer, though. There seems to be a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel now.

In two to five years, we might even be conversant with what these men had etched out on these tablets. The team is very hopeful of this, considering that current digs at sites such as Farmana by Prof V Shinde, are throwing up a huge number of seals and tablets, offering these researchers more material to work on.

So why has it been so difficult to crack the code so long? There are actually three reasons. “For one thing, we haven’t been lucky enough to be left with a Rosetta stone (a bilingual text that provides a translation for a script) such as the one that helped crack the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Secondly, the the average length of the inscriptions found so far is less than five signs, the longest being one of only 17 signs, and a sealing of combined inscriptions of just 27 signs, which makes decoding that much more tricky. Thirdly, we don’t have information about the kings and places of that time, which has helped in cracking many other ancient scripts,” Dr Bonta explains.

But even now, Dr Bonta has interesting theories about the fish sign that appears on many of these seals. He reckons that it represents a system of weights. Substantiating this theory is that the fish is ‘Min’ in most Dravidian languages (pronounced meen). The Mina is actually a common system of weights that existed across a belt of regions from Harappa to modern day Bahrain. Dr Bonta also notes that the jar sign appears only in the predicate position.

Many controversies surround the script. There are scholars like Dr Asko Parpola (University of Helsinki) who believe that the Indus sign system represents an ancient Dravidian language. Others like Natwar Jha consider that the inscriptions found on the artifacts were a form of Vedic Sanskrit.

As for this team, they are having an open mind about the script’s origin. Dr Adhikari sums up, “We don’t want to slot it into a category; that would limit possibilities. We just want to understand what these seals say.” We do too.

yog

My View:

 “We don’t want to slot it into a category; that would limit possibilities. We just want to understand what these seals say.” We do too.''

Seriously?.

Indus Script: A Study of its Sign Design

Nisha Yadav and M. N. Vahia

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research

The Sindhu Unicorn

The Abstract:

The Indus script is an undeciphered script of the ancient world. In spite of

numerous attempts over several decades, the script has defied universally

acceptable decipherment. In a recent series of papers (Yadav et al. 2010; Rao et

al. 2009a, b; Yadav et al. 2008a, b) we have analysed the sequences of Indus

signs which demonstrate presence of a rich syntax and logic in its structure. Here

we focus on the structural design of individual signs of the Indus script. Our study

is based on the sign list given in the concordance of Mahadevan (1977) which

consists of 417 distinct signs. We analyse the structure of all signs in the sign list

of Indus script and visually identify three types of design elements of Indus signs

namely basic signs, provisional basic signs and modifiers. These elements combine

in a variety of ways to generate the entire set of Indus signs. By comparing the

environment of compound signs with all possible sequences of constituent basic

signs, we show that sign compounding (ligaturing) and sign modification seem to

change the meaning or add value to basic signs rather than save writing space. The

study aims to provide an understanding of the general makeup and mechanics of

design of Indus signs.

The Svastikas

From Conclusions:

The signs have been designed with care and combining signs with

other signs or modifiers seems to have been a practice known to all sites.

Indus people seem to employ several interesting techniques such as using

a set of modifiers to modify the basic sign and sign compounding. We also

find instances of doubling and mirroring in the design of Indus signs. The

usage of a similar set of constituent basic signs in different configuration in compound signs seem to convey different information. The designers of the

Indus signs also placed a special emphasis on symmetry and there seems to

be an underlying effort to retain the overall aesthetic value of Indus signs.

All this makes it clear that like all other writing systems, Indus writing is

an intellectual exercise of great significance and a lot of thought, planning

and utility issues have been taken into consideration while designing these

signs. The Indus civilisation was spread over an area of about a million

square kilometres and yet, the sign list over the entire civilisation seems to

be the same indicating that the signs, their meaning and their usage were

agreed upon by people with large physical separation. This arrangement

worked satisfactorily for about 700 years. Hence the understanding of

Indus signs and their meaning must have been robust and yet versatile and

easy to use. This is also reaffirmed by the fact that Indus script has been

found on seals discovered in West Asia with a different grammar (Rao et

al., 2009b). The usage of modifiers at almost all sites (Table 4) suggests

that the manner of sign modification was universally agreed over the entire

area of the Indus valley civilisation and was not intended for a small group

of people.

yog

If some one asks me I will say beside the uniquenesses that can be found from the above research and other related ones,the script was most probably a hybrid script where the principals of Hieroglyphs and Linguistic grammar were combined....

Blogging on Bloggers: some brilliant posts from Sanscrito e civiltà dell'India the Italian Indology blog by Giacomo Benedetti.

Giacomo Benedetti the indologist who is changing the face of Indology also has some great posts in his Italian blog, here i post few of them with the help of Google Translate.

Nuts and dogs between India and Greece

In the great book by Bernard Sergent  Les Indo-Européens  is also a chapter on the games, which starts from nuts , called "the game far better attested in Indo-European cultures, and with such frequency and such an expansion that can not rest on a common heritage. " It is noted that this was in ancient Greece, Macedonia, India, Iran, at the Germans, in Lydia, in Rome, and that in almost all these peoples had the utmost importance. In Greece, the game is frequently referred in the literature. In Lydia, he attributed the invention: according to Herodotus (I.94), during a famine would the Lydians invented the game of dice, the knuckle, the ball, and so on (all except chess) a day to forget hunger on two. Finally, a party would have emigrated to Italy under the guidance of the Tyrrhenian Sea, to become the Etruscans. 
Located in Rome, continues Sergent, a legend arose the origin of the founder of the city in a game of dice between the priest of Hercules and his God. Among the Germans, Tacitus tells us (Germany 24), we played with such earnestness and perseverance, that when he had lost all that he had, he would like placed their freedom, reducing slaves in case of defeat. Something similar happens to Yudhisthira, the king of the Pandavas in the great Indian epic, Mahābhārata, where in a game of dice he brings into play the kingdom, his brothers,  himself  and his wife (see illustration above ,taken from a Persian manuscript). Again RV. X.34, the famous 'lament of the player' in str.4 mentions the player tied taken away as a slave. In Greece, the game needed to divination, the same at the Balti ancient divination in medical, and an ancient Indian text, without specifying Sergent says, describing an oracle achieved by means of nuts. Even the priests of the Slavic tribe of Retrani were oracles with nuts (and horses). The dice game looks like a game in Macedonia and in the royal Achaemenid Persia, as it was in India, where it was so important that the epochs of history are named after the dice points: Kali, the worst point, gives its name to our degenerate age.  
But what is the meaning of Kali ? The Dictionary of Monier Williams gives as the first just what the 'nut or nut side marked with a dot, the nut loser'. The dictionary poles of the Pali Text Society gives 'the nut unfortunate, unlucky throw a dice, bad luck, demerit, sin, sinful, sinner, saliva, spit'. These meanings in the poles, which was closer to the spoken language than Sanskrit, suggest a concept of bad luck and impurities, which has been identified with the nut loser of the game with walnuts Vibh Ithaca, from the tree Terminalia Bellerica , considered as infested by demons. If we consider that the dice were probably originally used for divination, and that the odd number of 'fate' (including nuts) was associated with bad luck (see here ), this interpretation acquires even more verisimilitude. The term kali can be etymologically traced back to the darkness and impurity: kalana means 'stain, blemish'; Kalanka 'spot, sign, dirt, slander';kaluṣa  'murky, disgusting, unclean, dirty, dirt, impurity and sin' ,  kalka 'dirt, impurity, falsehood, deceit, sin', and, incidentally, also designates the Terminalia Bellerica. A parallel one person you might also find in greek  Kelis  'spot, shame, shame', Latin caligo 'darkness', and calumnia . But the most interesting comparison is with the name given to the score  of the dice down in Latin, or canis or canicula , and in greek, Kyon , which always means 'dog'. He even found a nut, in Taranto, with written ky (on)  instead of either ace, reproduced here.

Now, back in Rgveda if a player was victorious and expert said śvaghnin 'killer of dogs or dog', which, comparing it with the greek-roman language, it could mean that he was able to avoid unlucky shots. Apparently the dog, probably as unfortunate animal was associated with loss in the nuts. In  Satapatha Brahmana XIV.1.1.31  it, along black bird (the crow), is identified with falsehood ( anṛta, the opposite of the RTA , the Truth-Order), with darkness and evil ( pāpman , which also means bad luck or sin). In Taittiriya Brahmana III.4, in the great ritual of horse sacrifice, it requires the killing of a dog 'from the four eyes', as it is explained, the dog is evil ( SVA Go Papma VAT ). What is this dog is discussed in the ' article by David Gordon White 'Dogs Die'. A p.285, note that this is usually explained as a dog with white spots above the eyes.A note to  Satapatha XIII.1.2.9 Brahmana  says, however, that such a dog was just a substitute for a dog with two faces (rare anomaly but not impossible). White, however, also cites a passage of the Avesta about a funeral rite in which you use a dog with four eyes, which according to dictionaries Avesta indicates a dog with two spots above the eyes. The significant thing is that even the hell hounds of Yama have four eyes, as in RV. X.14.10-11 . Perhaps here too it is understood that they have two faces, similar to Cerberus greek? Could confirm the comparison with RV. X.99.6 , where we find a demon 'with six eyes and three heads', a description which is also found in the Avesta, Yn. 9.8, for the dragon A ž the Dahaka. However, there is a strong affinity between Cerberus and the dogs of Yama is recommended, in addition to the role as guardians of the dead, etymology: the greek  Kerberos  is the name of the Vedic one or both dogs:  Sabala , which means 'variegated, spotted, stained'. At first glance, the correspondence may seem dubious, yet we have a number of terms in ancient Indian who approach very closely to the greek term, including karbara , which always means 'variegated, spotted', and is also the name of a demon. A very interesting aspect is that these variants of the same adjective (to be added karvara, karbura, Kavara ) reveal the existence of forms centum next to those, normal to the ancient Indian type  satem (in addition to Sabala, Savala, Sabara and SAVARA ). The thing, however, should not appear unheard of, since even in the language Himalayan Bangani are forms centum . Remarkable that, like other forms centum  in ancient India, it is attested in terms of post-Vedic works or even in lexicons, as if the satemization was a phenomenon typical of the Vedic language, which was closer to Iranian with which it shares this evolution while isolated areas far from the original Vedic region (northwestern India and the Indus valley) may have developed forms centum closer to  proto-indo-european, parallel to the Greek form. Which, for its part, appears to be an archaic residue, now incomprehensible to the Greeks themselves (see here), as handed down the names of the gods.

About archeology, according to a website dedicated to games, the first nut cubic identified dates from the late fifth millennium BC in Syria, which should not be connected with Indo-European civilization. Sergent, who has published the text in 1995, tells us that the earliest dice in the world amounted to Altyn Tepe, Turkmenistan, towards the end of the fourth millennium, but I have not found confirmation of this information. Looking into the network (see here ), the most widespread notion seems to be that Shahr-i-Sokhta, in southeastern Iran (Seistan) and the site of the discovery of the earliest dice, attributed to 3000 BC (but this does not seem to have precise references) and cubic (see here ). At the same site, they found dice with rectangular pieces and chessboard, in a tomb of the period III (2500-2300 BC), as reported in the book Vidale, already mentioned in another post ,  on the east of Sumer , pp.94- 95.

 Even in the Harappan sites are located in both cubic dice (such as those in the picture above) and rectangular with sides numbered 4, and the rectangular type also appears to Gonur Depe in Margiana (see here ), in the period Namazga V (2500-2000 BC ), where they are considered as imports from the Indus civilization. It's interesting that the Harappan cubical dice have two variants (as reported in this book ): some have, unlike our, 6 opposed to 5, and 1, as can be seen also in the picture, but another one of those Harappa has the numbering as modern ones, and (in part) greek-Roman. 
A Swedish study also shows the frequency of these items: a discovery out of ten at Mohenjo-daro is linked to games, and with a spatial distribution that suggests places dedicated, those who were called in India historic Sabhā . 

So it seems that the area between Turkmenistan, Seistan and India, we have plenty of dice in very old age, which may agree with the importance given to this game from the Indo-Europeans, known as Sergent. He also notes that in Scotland the dice were found in levels of the Bronze Age, and independently of influence from Greek or Roman. According to another French scholar,Thierry Depaulis ,oblong nuts are located at Indians, Celts and Germans, at least the Greeks and Romans. Where have inherited Celts and the Germans this game? Perhaps Central Asia itself, from which they came originally? These details, especially if you enter into an ideology shared, as shown Sergent, can reveal stories of far-reaching. The game is still on ... 

yog

Spoked wheels to the Indo-Iranian borders in the third millennium BC

In Rome, not far from Termini Station there is a beautiful museum, the Museo Nazionale d'Arte Orientale 'Giuseppe Tucci' ( http://museorientale.beniculturali.it/ ) that houses, among other things, a large collection of objects Archaeological excavations at Shahr-i Sokhta , the 'Burnt City', an important site in eastern Iran on the Helmand River, on the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan, discovered by Maurizio Tosi and dating back to the Bronze Age (from 3200 BC). I had already mentioned about the nuts particularly ancient discovered there, and here I show an image of a dice with pieces that I was able to photograph in the museum:

I:

But the object that struck me most in the collection (not for the aesthetic value) you can see in this display case.

To the right, there is a wheel with spokes, not precisely dated, but certainly earlier than 2200 BC, and previous to the famous spoked wheels of Sintashta , and probably contemporary with the similar toy wheels with spokes of the Harappan civilization have already been discussed in a previous post . This fact, which seems to escape the knowledge disseminated in this regard (see eg.  here  and the bookof Anthony), may be further evidence that the spoked wheels were invented between India and Iran in the third millennium BC, and then exported to Sintashta and other areas of Eurasia at the turn of the third and second millennium BC

And then, the supposed arrival of the Aryans with their chariots and horses from the Eurasian steppes to India and Iran would prove not only once more a myth, but a reversal of history (of similar reversals, and Sintashta like receptor pulse from Central Asia South Asia, if not actual colony Bactrian Bronze Age, see the last post in New Indology).

Also note the zebu left: animals of South Asian descent, already domesticated in the Neolithic Mehrgarh, spread in Central Asia at least at that time, reaching Azerbaijan, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and perhaps the Ukraine ( see this other post of New Indology).

yog
Edited on 05.08.2013

  

Today i came across a very handy website filled with some very interesting articles from genetics.
Genetic Links in the Indus Valley
 

  This month’s feature article explores genetic links in the Indus Valley, the location of the Bronze Age Harappan Civilization. The historical background section includes a discussion of emerging new models of South Asian prehistory. This new research challenges the traditional academic theory of a "Vedic invasion"  from outside of India, and suggests instead local continuity in South Asia dating to the expansion of Neolithic cultures from West Asia.

 The Old Theory (Vedic Invasion): Despite this vivid archaeological record of Harappan life, the
ancient Harappan language (or languages) is unknown, because the Indus Script remains undeciphered.
When the ancient cities of Harappa were excavated, Western archaeologists generally assumed that the
ancient Harappan culture had been replaced by invaders from the Eurasian Steppe and Central Asia at the
end of the Harappan period around 1700-1300 BCE. The new Central Asian invaders were thought to be
the composers of the Rigveda and other Vedic literature written in the Sanskrit language, ancestral to
Hindi and other languages spoken throughout South Asia to the present day.
This “invasion theory” remains the traditional academic model for Indian prehistory, in part
because it explains the similarity of Sanskrit to ancient Greek and Latin. However, archaeologists have
not found clear evidence for a culture from the Eurasian Steppe or Central Asia that influenced South
Asia in the relevant period. The best effort to address this lack of archaeological evidence is currently the
“Kulturkugel” model, in which invaders spread a new Indo-European language without noticeably
impacting the material culture of South Asia. Similarly, linguistic evidence for any pre-Vedic “substrate”
language of the Indus Valley is somewhat limited.

 A New Model (Vedic Harappans): To address this lack of evidence for Vedic invaders from
Central Asia, some scholars are beginning to explore evidence for greater antiquity of the Vedic culture
(dating to the Harappan period) and a South Asian geographical setting for the Rigveda and other texts.
Proposed evidence for the antiquity of Vedic cultures has included astronomical references in
Vedic texts that date to 2,500 BCE and possibly older based on changed star positions (due to the
precession of the equinoxes). Geographical terms in the Rigveda suggest a South Asian setting, including
areas near the Indus Valley and as far east as the lower Ganges. Similarly, river names in the Punjab
suggest the local antiquity of Sanskrit speaking cultures in northern India.2
Most importantly, the Rigveda itself does not mention any migration to northern India. In
contrast, related Zoroastrian texts from Central and West Asia do mention a migration from an earlier
homeland (possibly near the Hindu Kush Mountains). Early evidence from outside of India also includes
West Asian Mitannian and Kassite cultures (contemporary with the Harappan Civilization), which used
Rigvedic like deity names and the peacock (a South Asian animal) as an artistic motif. Taken together,
this suggests the possibility that Vedic cultures were indigenous South Asians (possibly one of several
Harappan cultures), appearing in West Asia through the trade links known to archaeologists.

 The Language Puzzle and Evidence for Early Migrations: A new model of “Vedic
Harappans” would however, create a new puzzle: if there was no Vedic invasion, how did Indo-European
languages find their way to both Europe and South Asia? Archaeological evidence supports two major
expansions into South Asia: (1) a Neolithic expansion (possibly from West Asia) between 6,000-4,500
BCE; and (2) an Iron Age expansion (possibly from Central Asia) between 800-200 BCE.
Neolithic (Pre-Harappan) Expansion: One possibility is that food producing cultures of West
Asia brought Indo-European languages to South Asia during the Neolithic expansion (6,000-4,500 BCE).

 This early date for the languages ancestral to Sanskrit would not contradict the Neolithic date for the
Proto-Indo-European language that has been proposed by some linguists

 It was going nice unill got struck by this funny and idiotic assumption-

 Iron Age (Shakya) Expansion: The second expansion dating to 800-200 BCE has been
associated with Shakya or Saka (Scythian related) cultures from Central Asia that influenced early
Buddhist culture in India. For instance, the Sanskrit scholar Michael Witzel has suggested Central Asian
links for some Shakya customs, such as the use of burial mounds (stupas) and Zoroastrian concepts in
Buddhist literature.
First emerging in Śākyamuni’s native kingdom of Lumbini (in present day Nepal), Buddhism
eventually spread outward from the Indian Subcontinent and flourished in the mercantile Silk Road oasis
settlements of Central Asia. In the context of a “Vedic Harappans” model, these Shakyas might have been
peripheral Harappan or Vedic influenced cultures from Central Asia that returned to the core Vedic
location of India during the Iron Age.

This shakya-saka connection theory is an old one with recently regenerated by Indologists like Michael Witzel but has no real base at all. Now just see the vital conclusion-

 Both STR and SNP based analyses indicated substantial genetic links between the Indus Valley
and both the interior of the Indian Subcontinent and West Asia. Archaeological evidence for a population
expansion (possibly from West Asia) between 6,000 and 4,500 BCE might relate to genetic links with the
Mesopotamian region (STR) and Caucasus-Anatolian region (SNP). Expansions of food producing
cultures during this period might have provided an opportunity for the Indo-European languages
(ancestral to Vedic Sanskrit) to reach the Indian Subcontinent.
In contrast, genetic links with Siberian populations were smaller. These included relatively small
Altaian (STR), Baltic-Urals (SNP), and Mongolian (SNP) genetic components. These genetic links might
express later and less extensive population expansions from the Eurasian Steppe and Central Asia, such as
possible Shakya migrations during the Iron Age.
In addition, results also suggested genetic expansions from India to Central Asia. This included
South India components identified in Kalash, Tajik, and Turkmen populations near the periphery of the
Indus Valley region. These genetic links might express population expansions from South Asia, such as
during the period of the Bronze Age Harappan Civilization. Future research might explore South Asian
genetic links in more distant locations (such as the BMAC and Urals), where evidence for Vedic
influences in material culture have been suggested by archaeologists.
In summary, results are consistent with emerging alternative models of South Asian prehistory, in
which the Vedic cultures were descended from indigenous Harappans already resident in South Asia.
Rather than a putative “Indo-European invasion” from Central Asia in the late Bronze Age, results
suggest the possibility of an earlier and more peaceful “Indo-European diffusion” of food producing
cultures from West Asia during the Copper Age.

yog

 My conclusion:

Atleast the age of Indo-European language here is getting older which i think is correct and yes Rikved should be pushed 6-5 centuries deeper than its current date of around 1700-1100 B.C.

  About the 800 B.C. intrusion( should be close to 600b.c. instead of 800b.c. See the BMAC post link) i think they were related to the Parthians or to the  Dasa-Dasyu people mentioned frequently in the Rikved  rather than the saka people.

As we should know the scythian related people started to venture here only from the middle 2nd century b.c.

We should also remember that Chandragupta  with the help of his teacher Chanakya  aka Vishnu Gupta aka kautilya  estabilished an unified Indian empire the legacy of which lasted  untill 185 B.C. starting from 322B.C. so i don't see  much of intrusional admixtures happening during that period!

so the 800-200 b.c. idea is not that promising at all.

And at the last the age of the components is more vital than the proportion on certain populations.

  

 

 

 

 

 

Harappan people used an older form of Brahmi script?

VARANASI: Is Brahmi the oldest script of India. The mysterious script of Indus Valley civilization, which is not deciphered yet may have some ancestral connection with Brahmi script can be deciphered in coming years.
A palm leaf manuscript discovered from Harappan site in Afghanistan has strengthened the belief of existence of a proto Brahmi script, which was used by Indus Valley people. This discussion was raised by Dr DP Sharma, Harappan archaeologist and director, Bharat Kala Bhawan, Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in the International Conference on Harappan Archaeology held recently in Chandigarh.

According to Sharma, who has carried out research works on the palm leaf manuscript with Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) for last five years, the palm leaf has Harappan as well as Kohi script engraved. "Kohi symbols and letters have an affinity with the Harappan script and hence can be very significant in the decipherment of Harappan scripts. At the same time the palm leave manuscript has seven lines, which is the longest script recovered from any Harappan site. So far the scripts or the signs of Indus Valley script engraved on tablets, seals, potteries and other objects had not more than 18 letters or pictures," informed Sharma.
Sharma also said, "The script on the palm leaf runs from right to left while Brahmi script runs from right to left. The objects discovered from excavation sites indicate that they were using two scripts as few objects have right to left run of the script while some objects have left to right written scripts. However, no traces of objects with bilingual scripts has been found so far of Harappan period, which suggests that there was only one script called Brahmi and the script that Harappan people used was an older form of Brahmi called 'proto Brahmi'. During the mature Harappan period (2700 BC to 2000 BC) the direction of Harappan writing system was right to left and later on around 2000 to 1500 BC they started their writing system from left to right. The existence of no long manuscript had posed the difficulty in deciphering the Harappan script, however, the manuscript on palm leaves may solve this problem".
Sharma further strengthens his argument by quoting the DNA analysis carried out by Dr Lalji Singh, vice-chancellor, BHU. According to Sharma, the analysis by Singh suggests that the two ancient races Aryan and Dravidians were native of India and none of them came outside of our country. The Aryan and Dravidian races in India have the same genetic basis. This suggests that proto Dravidian and proto Aryan races were present in Harappan population and Harappan were using proto Dravidian and Sanskrit as their language and their script was proto Brahmi only.
According to Sharma, during the conference, his research works in deciphering the Harappan scripts were also consolidated by BR Mani additional director general, ASI. "These new researches can help a great deal in deciphering the Harappan script and once the script is deciphered a number of mysterious seals, square pieces, pottery, coins and other objects can be read and hence we can know about their trade, literature, art and other aspects of civilization," informed Sharma.

 yog
However, according to  Prof. Dr. Roland Bielmeier of University of Bern the artefact is probably a fake! as he suggests-

 Whether this last statistic also indicates that the signs encode similar phonetic and
logographic values in the two systems, remains unclear however. It just seems too
problematic to judge with any certainty, whether the Kabul text could exhibit this
pattern of sign frequency overlap, if the symbols represented entirely different linguistic
units in the Indus corpus. One would need to decide, whether sign frequencies could
coincide in this manner, if a non-Indus people had stumbled upon a collection of Indus
inscriptions and merely adopted the shapes of some of the most common symbols for
their script without adopting their encoding value. If this scenario could be discounted
on the basis of signs frequencies, then it could be assumed that a number of Kabul
graphemes share the same value as their matching Indus symbols. This, in turn, would imply that the Indus symbols belong to a speech-encoding writing system and the
hypothesis of the non-linguistic Indus symbol system would be refuted.
If this problem were solved, then researchers would need to establish whether the
Kabul text employed the exact same writing system as the Indus Civilization or whether
the system was modified in any way. The manuscript might represent a later simplified
stage of the Indus script for instance. This hypothetical stage could contain a reduced
number of logographs and rely predominantly on syllables instead. Evolutionary
patterns of other scripts show that this development is a widespread phenomenon.

 A large portion or maybe even all of the Kabul signs might therefore encode
syllables. The amount of proposed Kabul graphemes would not rule out either of these
possibilities because the total of Kabul graphemes might increase drastically, or merely
a little, if a larger corpus than 172 graphs were available for examination. This
relatively limited corpus simply does not allow predictions on the matter. Therefore, it
would certainly be worthwhile uncovering and analysing the other layers of bark to find
out how many more graphemes would join the 62 already visible graphemes.

 It would also be extremely interesting and potentially revealing to compare the
frequencies of particular signs sequences. If it could be demonstrated that the most
common Indus grapheme sequences also occur relatively frequently in the manuscript,
then it would seem likely that the Kabul penman not only used the Indus script but that
the text encoded the language, or one of the languages, of the Indus Civilization. As it
stands the manuscript might encode a non-Indus language and merely utilise the Indus
writing system.

 Many issues therefore still remain unresolved and numerous aspects beg further
investigation. So far, a graphemic analysis of the Kabul manuscript has only enabled the
positing of a Kabul grapheme list and its subsequent comparison to the symbols of the
Indus corpus has merely lead to the definite conclusion that the majority of the signs on
the analysed birch bark were borrowed from the collection of Indus symbols. It should
also be kept in mind that any of the contentions that were presented in this thesis would
be invalidated if the Kabul manuscript proved to be a forgery. As all arguments hinge
on the assumption that the manuscript is not a fake, establishing the date of the strip of  birch bark would certainly head the list of top priorities, which need to be addressed in
any further examination of this intriguing artefact.

yog
So, a simple radiocarbon dating would have been ideal to solve this debate.
The debate also reminds me of the late  veteran scholar S.R. Rao who found the IVC script to be Indo-Aryan contradicting the popular views of Munda and of course Dravidian.
There is also a debate of whether the script represents a language or not!.
But if you ask me there is a direct player waiting to unleash, the player is  the aDNA of an ancient harappan site in  Farmana which i think holds the key to solve the indo-european riddle and to give the field of indology a true direction, a revolution which already have been started with some academic indologists like here.
Happy 2013 to all.

The origins of iron-working in India:
new evidence from the Central Ganga
Plain and the Eastern Vindhyas-
Rakesh Tewari

Recent excavations in Uttar Pradesh have turned up iron artefacts, furnaces, tuyeres and slag in
layers radiocarbon dated between c. BC 1800 and 1000. This raises again the question of whether
iron working was brought in to India during supposed immigrations of the second millennium
BC, or developed independently.
Keywords: India, Early Iron Age, Iron working, Ganga Valley, Eastern Vindhyas
yog

Mehrgarh was not the the farming seed of South Asia:

Early Farming at Lahuradewa

This paper embodies an outcome of investigations emanated from the excavations carried out at the lakeside settlement of
Lahuradewa, from 2001 to 2006, in district Sant Kabirnagar, Uttar Pradesh, India. The continuous occurrence of microcharcoal in the lakebeds justifiably mitigate the human activities that persistently set fire to the vegetation in the area during
past  ca. 10,000 years. Palynological studies from lakebeds helped in reconstruction of  vegetational history, sequential
changes in the climate and early agricultural activities from early  Holocene and onwards in Middle Ganga Plain. The human
groups at that early date, who subjected the vegetation to fire for environmental management, were those who brought into
being a settled early farming culture at Lahuradewa  – characterised by cord-impressed pottery. Primordially, the record of
domesticated rice in the opening phase of Lahuradewa settlement, prima facie constitutes the evidence of early Holocene
agriculture in Middle Ganga Plain.

yog