419 / 822
Eternal India
encyclopedia
ARCHAEOLOGY
IBlll
scribes are found to have evolved two highly significant principles
namely accenting the basic cursive signs by attaching short diacrit-
ics (one, two or three) and forming compound signs by joining two
or three basic cursives which are often mistaken by scholars for
pictures of 'load-bearer', 'archer' etc. A careful analysis of these
pseudo-pictures or compound signs into basic signs (fig:22) has
revealed that there are 34 basic cursive signs and 28 true pictures
while all the rest in more than 2800 early seal-inscriptions are only
combinations and accenting of these basic cursive signs and pic-
tures. With so few basic signs the Indus script could not have been
a pictograph or ideograph because both require thousands of signs
to connote words or ideas derived from pictures. Some scholars
have assumed the Indus script to be a logographic system of word
signs with 417 signs taking accented and ligatured forms also as
basic signs, which is not correct. To determine whether a writing is
phonetic or ideographic or word-syllabary the basic signs are im-
portant. The average number of word-signs in Sumerian and Egyp-
tian scripts varies from 600 to 700, while in the Indus script the
basic signs forms including pictures and cursives are 62 in the early
stage and 24 cursives only in the later stage. The phonetic charac-
ter of the Indus script is therefore beyond doubt although there may
be five or six determinatives standing for town, king or house in the
early stage. The pictures of scorpion, hill, pipal leaf, bird and field
are joined to other pictures or cursives, which is an indication that
' Fig: 23 — Analysis and phonetic value of compound signs
The Decipherment of the Indus script
(For details see, S.R. Rao 1991, 200-282)
More than 3000 seals and seal-impressions (sealings) left by
Harappans is the only source for ascertaining the language spoken
and the nature of writing evolved by them. The foremost contribu-
tion of the Harappans to the progress of man through easy commu-
nication of thought is the simplification of a partly pictorial and
partly-cursive writing into a pure cursive writing of a limited num-
ber of signs or alphabets wherein each had a- single sound value
instead of a word value corresponding to what the picture of a bird,
hill or insect stood. This process of evolution of mixed picture-
cursive writing into a pure cursive writing in which some signs
resemble Roman alphabets D, E, H, P, U, V, W, X etc., has been
traced by S.R. Rao at Lothal as a result of classifying the seals and
sealings (seal impressions) into early and late ones based on
stratigraphic evidence. In the early seals the pictures of hill, pipal
leaf, scorpion, ploughed field, bird etc occur side by side with the
cursive signs D,E,H,P,U,Y etc in the inscriptions while, in the late
ones almost all the pictures are dropped retaining only cursive
signs (fig:20). Rao has been able to distinguish the basic signs
from the non-basic signs (fig:21) occurring sometimes in the same
inscription both in the cursive and pictorial forms. The Harappan