1

CONTROVERSY PAPER 3

Joshua Allen

Salt Lake Community College

ANTH 1030 World Prehistory

December 3, 2018
 2

Material culture has provided amazing insights into the lives of those who lived beyond

the reach of recorded history. What can be learned from an analysis of potsherds, the

connections that can be drawn between cultures who, though geographically remote, share

weapon technology, or burial procedures, is impressive to this student of introductory

anthropology. The ability to see past the materials themselves, and to gain insight into the

motivations and lifestyles of ancient peoples is a fine endeavor, and a natural one for those of us

who are curious. Ideally, those people could speak to us a little more directly, and a written

record seems to me something of a holy grail. Unfortunately, it is often the case that such a

record is indecipherable to us. At times we have been lucky enough to find, say, the Rosetta

Stone, or in the case of cuneiform, to have a writing system used by multiple languages against

which we can cross-reference forms and concepts to decode some cryptic document. Other

times, we are not so lucky. The Indus Inscriptions present us with the unlucky scenario – a long-

lost civilization, whose language is unknown to us, leaves behind what we believe to be text, but

in an alphabet that no living person has ever used. I will look at two primary studies that, with

mixed results, attempt to demystify the ongoing puzzle of the Harappan messages.

In Indus Writing is Multilingual: A Part-Syllabic System at Work, S. Srinivasan, J. V. M.

Joseph, and P. Harikumar take a very interesting approach to answering the question. They feel

that the inscriptions were common, disposable items meant for the use of lay persons to become

literate. Like our Roman script today, the Indus writings may have encoded multiple languages

in a cosmopolitan setting. The authors note that seals on which are found Indus inscriptions

were recovered by archaeologists in streets or in front of houses, indicating that these items were

of little material value, with brevity being the defining feature, and they suggest that the seals

may have been used like flashcards, and cast in the street once mastered. (Srinivasan et al. 2012)
 3

In attempting to identify some of the characters, the team used a statistical analysis to

classify the Indus writing as partly-syllabic, and then identified the likely vowel symbols. Once

the supposed vowels were isolated, they found that some texts differed in the way they employed

vowel symbols - notably the seals from Mohenjo-daro used a defined set of vowels distinct from

the set of vowels used in Harrapan City seals. Interestingly, they also compared information

from a genetic study of modern Indians that indicated that Harappan likely had a majority Aryan

population (at 82%), while Mohenjo-daro may have had a slightly higher number of Dravidians

than Aryans (around 52% Aryan). They did not appear to make a distinction between Dravidian

language users and ethnically Dravidian people, or to distinguish between Aryan speakers and

ethnic Aryans, but drew the conclusion that ancient Harrapan had a heavy Dravidian linguistic

influence which required a different vowel system than what was required in the more Aryan-

populated Mohenjo-daro. (Srinivasan et al. 2012) In fact, according to the authors, there is a third

discernable language being transcribed in the Indus script. The Dravidian tongue they associate

with archaic Tamil, the Aryan tongue with archaic Sanskrit (an Indo-European language), and

the third tongue, they argue, is a hybrid language comprised of some parts Dravidian and some

parts Aryan, which they associate with archaic Prakrit. The archaic Tamil, Sanskrit, and Prakrit

speakers all had developed their own unique writing systems by the end of the Indus civilization,

but the vowel patterns observed in those systems are affirmed to be present in three distinct

styles of earlier Indus inscriptions. Thus, they conclude, we are seeing multilingual societies in

the Indus Valley that are attempting to establish a writing system that can encompass all three

languages, by way of tablets “produced on a large scale to serve as learning material for the

beginners and for disseminating the script to the masses.” (Srinivas et al 2012:156)
 4

The idea that the Indus Valley Civilization was a set of multilingual communities is one

that I found in other literature. Malati Schendge in 1994 argued that the people of the Indus

Valley civilization bore many cultural similarities to Mesopotamians, a fact which marked them

as a Semitic people, and which led him to believe that the language of the inscriptions was likely

to be Akkadian. He noted similarities in inhumation, grave goods, the veneration of a mother

goddess and the carving of figurines, skull-type, the production of seals with or without

inscription, and a tendency to name themselves after their gods, though he admits these

innovations "reflect the whole gamut of contemporary achievements of man in civilization."

(Shendge 1994:155) He notes a distinct division between the pre-Harappan people of the same

areas who lacked these innovations, and tells how the Harappans seem to have arrived with pre-

existing knowledge of architecture and city planning suited for riverine environments –

something they would have learned in Mesopotamia – and built right on top of the old

settlements. Like Srinivasan’s team, Shendge holds that these newcomers cohabited with the

indigenous population in a multilingual setting. (Shendge 1994) This much at least seems to be

uncontroversial, but other claims made by Srinivasan et alia are less well-received.

In his own research, Clyde Winters specifically addresses the claims of Srinivasan’s

work, in the form of a rebuttal. Right up front, Winters makes the obvious point that Srinivasan

and his fellows failed to detail exactly how they had arrived at which characters were likely to be

vowels. "The fact that Srinivasan et al. make these claims without explaining their

decipherment, makes these totally invalid." (Winters 2012:1220) He believes that there were no

Aryan speakers in the Indus Valley at all, that in fact the language of the Indus Valley people

was exclusively Tamil which, as noted above, is a Dravidian language. The Dravidian people,

Winters explains, originated in Sub-Saharan Africa, and knew writing in the form of a Libyco-
 5

Berber script. From Africa they spread out into Mesopotamia, then east as far as China,

spawning the Sumerians, the Elamites, and the Harappans along the way (he also notes that

Sumerian, Elamite, and Dravidian languages are known to be genetically related). Across that

expanse, says Winters, "it is clear that a common system of record-keeping was used by people

in the 4th and 3rd millennium BC from Africa to Iran, China and the Indus Valley." (Winters

2012:1220) This Proto-Saharan system, Winters claims, was the key factor in deciphering

Harappan script. Tamil writings from the period just after the Indus Valley civilization have a

vowel system that "shows complete correspondence" (Winters 2012:1220) with Harappan

vowels. Winters arrived at this conclusion from three main assumptions, based on the facts

previously laid out – (1) the Harappan script was written in a Dravidian language, (2) this

language would be similar to Elamite and Sumerian and (3) the Harappan writing system would

have similarities to the Libyco-Berber system. "A comparison of the Harappan signs, Brahmi

[Tamil] and Vai [Berber] writings showed that the signs had similar phonetic value...that allows

us to read the Indus Valley writing use[sic] Vai signs" (Winters 2012:1221) This process is not

dissimilar to that which led to the decipherment of Cuneiform. (Winters 2012)

Here, Winters makes a bold assertion; he tells us what the inscriptions say: the seals do

not tell us the names or stations of those who made them, but they are, in fact, talismans. He

says, unequivocally, that the Indus seals contain "messages to the Harappan gods requesting

blessings…(1) a good fate, (2) spiritual richness, (3) virtue, (4) humility and (5) perseverance."

(Winters 2012:1221) The animals on the inscriptions indicate either attributes toward which

people should strive, or possibly signify specific deities (in the case of the unicorn inscription,

the god Maal, or Vishnu). After the decline of the Harappan culture, Indus signs continued to be

used in Southern India and corresponds with the use of Tamil language, of the Dravidian family.
 6

On one point, at least, Winters agrees with Srinivasan, though he cannot quite bring himself to

say so explicitly - he affirms that the brevity of the writing system points to a syllabic system

rather than to an alphabet. But as a final blow, lest we should end on a tone of agreement,

Winters looks at the timing for Dravido-Aryan interaction, based on the ceramic ware associated

with each respective culture. The Harappans are noted for their black and red ware, the Aryans

for plain grey ware. From multiple lines of evidence, the year 1700BCE seems to mark the

twilight phase of the Harappans, yet the earliest example of plain grey ware from the region is

dated at around 1600BCE, far too late for the Aryans to have had influence over the Indus Valley

writing systems or language. (Winters, 2012)

I took issue with both of the two main papers here. For the claims made by Srinivasan’s

team, I found the same complaint that Winters had found, which was that they just didn't seem to

back up their major premise with any real proof. In truth, there were several lazy assertions

made – they also didn’t bother to name a timeframe during which Aryans and Dravidians might

be intermingling. It seemed very much as though they had been working backward from their

conclusion. Though their paper is heavily-laden with statistical analyses and equations, it seems

misplaced, for the biggest holes in their argument are the most crucial points, while the minutiae

gets loving attention. On the other hand, Winters (writing in the same journal, leading me to

question their editing staff) seems also to overstate his case. He claims that the inscriptions are

all but solved. However in 2015 in Nature, Andrew Robinson wrote that there still is no

consensus, with various researchers claiming to have deciphered the inscriptions through proto-

Dravidian, Sanskrit, with others still offering novel explanations (Robinson 2015). It seems clear

to me that there is no answer just yet, but a lot of strong opinion.

 7

References

Robinson, Andrew

2015. Cracking the Indus Script. Nature. 526:499-501

Electronic Document, http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.libprox1.slcc.edu:2048, accessed

December 2, 2018

Shendge, Malati

1994. The Language of the Harappans: An Unconsidered Possibility. Annals of the

Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. 75:1:143-170

Electronic Document, https://www-jstor-org.libprox1.slcc.edu/stable/41694411,

accessed November 27, 2018

Srinivasan, S, J. V. M. Joseph, P. Harikumar

2012. Indus Writing is Multilingual: A Part-Syllabic System at Work. Current Science.

103:2:147-157

Electronic Document, https://www-jstor-org.libprox1.slcc.edu/stable/24084993,

accessed November 21, 2018

Winters, Clyde

2012. Dravidian is the Language of the Indus Writing. Current Science. 103:10:1220-1225

Electronic Document, https://www-jstor-org.libprox1.slcc.edu/stable/24089239,

accessed November 21, 2018