HS 326 Harappan Civilization

Lecture 035

Harappan Writing System

V.N. Prabhakar, IIT Gandhinagar

 Development of scripts
• Iconic signs which represents things or actions pictorally, may
be termed pictograms

• Pictograms have the potential to express an 'idea' visually,

through their 'iconicity’ or similarity with the objects depicted

• Signs that represent a meaning in this way may be termed

'ideograms’

• They can be vaguely understood independently of any

particular language, in contrast to 'phonograms' or phonetic
signs, which express a meaning through the sound of the
respective words in a specific language
Ideograph

– when it is used ideographically, a sign does not necessarily denote the

primary meaning of its picture

– 'fish' might also mean ' water', or the 'god of water', as in

Sumerian art

– (frontal view of a bull's head with horns but no other details)

means 'bull’

– 'sheep', whose shape is completely unrecognizable, seem to

derive directly from the early tokens, e.g. Mesopotamia
– Therefore, while reading – understanding ideograms require culture-
specific conventions
 Pictograph Picture signs, no need for phonetic value

A sign does not necessarily denote the

Ideograph primary meaning of its picture
'fish' might also mean
'water', or the 'god of Application of
Rebus
water', as in Sumerian art
signs which express a complete
Logograph word is called logogram – word
signs
Syllabic signs were used with logograms to
Syllabic signs
record all elements of the spoken language

Alphabetic signs used to represent all Alphabet

phonetic values of a language
 Around 1200 signs / graphemes – 8th – 4th
Pictograph
millennium BCE

Ideograph
800 – 900 signs

Sumerian Application of Further reduction in signs

Rebus
Egyptian

Logograph 400 – 600 signs

Harappan

1st millennium BCE, e.g. Assyrian Syllabic signs 60 – 120 signs

Mid 1st millennium BCE, e.g. Greek, Alphabet 30 – 60 signs

Phoenician
Egyptian Hieroglyphs
• Deciphered by Jean Francois Champollion
• Rosetta stone inscription
• Hieroglyphs, Demotic and Greek

Cuneiform
• Deciphered by Henry Rawlinsonm Edward Hinks, and others
• Behistun Trilingual Inscription
• Old Persian, Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian

Linear B
• Deciphered by Alice J Kober, Michael Ventris
• Without the aid of any bilingual / trilingual inscription
• Arrangement of signs as per internal relationships of their
consonantal and vocalic components, frequency of each sign in
different positions in a word
• Language proved to be ancient Greek
 Deciphered using Deciphered using Partially
bilingual / trilingual structural analysis deciphered
inscription
Egyptian Hieroglyphs Linear B Etruscan

Hittite Hieroglyphs Mayan Hieroglyphs

Cuneiform Ugaritic Cuneiform
Cypriotic Script
 Characteristics of Harappan Script

Nature of the inscriptions found on seals

• On Harappan seals, the motif (various

animals) and inscriptions are sunken
(ingalio) in the originals, engraved in
negative (reversed)
Harappan stamp seal and impression
• The positive impressions (sealings)
stand out in relief

• According to Parpola, “…the latter

(impression / sealings) that represents
the text as it was intended to be read”
 Characteristics of Harappan Script

Direction of writing: Reverse order

• Most frequent sequence on miniature tablets

• On a few tablets, the exact mirror sequence also seen

• Another example

These examples indicates the difficulty in ascertaining the correct direction

of writing
 Characteristics of Harappan Script

Direction of writing: Right to Left, Boustrophedon

Banawali

Overlap of signs on pottery Inscribed along three sides Cramping of letters

Kalibangan Harappa Mohenjo-daro
 Characteristics of Harappan Script

Direction of writing: Right to Left, Boustrophedon

Last two letters of Boustrophedon Harappa Mohenjo-daro

first line and one (very rare, only
sign of next line ten examples) Last four letters of first line common
cramped
Mohenjo-daro
Mohenjo-daro
 Characteristics of Harappan Script

Summary of direction in writing (Possehl 1996)

Direction of writing Number Percentage

Right to Left 2974 83.23%
Left to Right 235 6.57%
Single sign lines 190 5.32%
Top to bottom 7 0.2%
Symmetrical sequences 12 0.34%
Damaged or illegible 155 4.34%
 Characteristics of Harappan Script

M-314

The longest continuous Harappan inscription

Mohenjo-daro (17 signs)

Examples of inscriptions on knob of seals,

with repetition of first one / two letters of
H-102 M-318 M-1203 obverse inscription
 Characteristics of Harappan Script
Pictographs?

Fairservis 1976

Transliteration of Proto-Elamite text into Harappan

Gadd & Smith 1924 script (Fairservis 1976)
 Characteristics of Harappan Script
Mediums on which writing is found ( over 5000 objects in various
mediums)

• Seals and Sealings

• Pottery vessels
• Steatite, faience and metal seals; clay seal impressions, copper
plates, incised shells, ivory cones and rods, stone and metal bangles,
copper weapons, stones
• Inlay pieces (Dholavira signboard)

Possibilities (perishable materials)

• Cloth
• Bark
• Wood
 Characteristics of Harappan Script
Style of seals (e.g. Dholavira, Gujarat)

Early Harappan: Only motifs Mature Harappan: Motif and inscription

 Long rectangular seals with only script and
button seals with geometric designs found in
the late Harappan levels
 -Miniature inscriptions that may
have been seen only by a few
private individuals are found on tiny
gold ornaments.
Stoneware bangle
large sign board with writing found
inside gateway - represents a rare form
of public display of Indus script

Northern gateway at Dholavira

 Inscribed sherds - ostracon

Different Styles of Writing

- seen on inscribed cones, and
pottery
Inscribed Pottery
Harappa Post Firing Graffiti
in different locations- Rim, Body and Base, the same
basic sign but contextually very different
Harappa and >80 % unicorn, followed by bison
Mohenjo-daro and elephant

Dholavira 50% unicorn, water buffalo,

elephant, scorpion, tiger,
composite animals Chanhudaro
Chanhudaro 80% unicorn, remaining 20% by
all other motifs

Lothal 85% unicorn, followed by

remaining motifs
Ganweriwala Ther
Kalibangan 63% unicorn, followed by bison,
zebu, elephant

Banawali 17% Unicorn, 53% goat, makhor

(type of goat), urus
 Lothal

Ras-al-Jinz

Dholavira
Method of securing a container and authorizing
with a sealing (eg. Mesopotamian context)
Cf. Parpola

Mohenjo-daro
 Writing and Trade – multiple levels of trade
Harappa 1998, sealing with rectangular seal impressions
of two different seals

Kalibangan, sealing- four

different seals obliterating earlier
unicorn motif

Mohenjo-daro sealing used as

a token and not for closing a
bundle
Indus Numerals

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

2X4=8
3 X 4 = 12
4 X 4 = 16
5 X 4 = 20
6 X 4 = 24
 Harappa Graffitti

Probable Origins
Ravi and
Kot Diji

Sign 93 = M 40

Fully developed script

Karanpura Sign 91
Characteristics of the script

• 400 to 450 signs

• Logosyllabic (morphemic) systems,

where a single sign can mean either a
word, a syllable or a sound

• Some signs look like pictographs and

many represent an ideographic system
 Seal carvers, highly centralised, controlled

Mohenjo-daro Harappa

Dholavira
Pasupati or Proto-Siva seal

‘Deity’ with horned

headdress
Harappan artefacts from
Mesopotamian sites
Akkadian III Period – Naramsin onwards
Su-Ilisu, Meluhha Interpreter
 Identical sequence of Harappan signs, with
unicorn as the motif

Kish Mohenjo-daro

Chanhu-daro Mohenjo-daro Dholavira Bahrain Susa

Ur (1930-31) Ur (1928-29) Ur (Bull / Buffalo; Lothal (Gulf style)
Indus style Indus style Cuneiform inscription)

Ur (1926-27) Ur (1929-30) Ur (1930-31) Dholavira

Gulf style Gulf style Indus style Indus style

Ur (1930-31) Ur (1925-26) Ur (1931-32) Mesopotamia

Gulf style Gulf style Indus style Cf. Gadd 1932
Harappan Linguistic affinities

• Real possibility is that Harappan language is not related to any

other known language, on analogy with Sumerian, Etruscan, or
Elamite

• If so, decipherment is hopeless unless and until a bilingual

inscription is found

• It is also possible that the script was used to write more than
one languages during Harappan period; a multi-lingual and
multi-ethnic society
Harappan Linguistic affinities

• Possibility of relationship with Sumerians discussed by some

scholars (Kinnier-Wilson: 1974) but found to be inconclusive

• Affinities with proto-Elamite language suggested. The proto-

Elamite script is itself undeciphered so far

• Most scholars confine themselves on two set of language groups:

• Indo-Aryan (India and Pakistan)

• Dravidian (United States, Russia and Finland; India and

Pakistan)
 Harappan Linguistic affinities: Indo-Aryan or Dravidian?
Indo-Aryan Dravidian
• No positive evidence that • Domain of Dravidians was once
Harappans spoke Dravidian exhaustive; remnants Kurukh and
language Malto in India; Brahui in Pakistan
(Parpola: 1994)
• Horse remains found at some sites
• Vedic texts posterior to Harappan
• Reference to horse only after bull
(Parpola: 1994)
in Vedic texts
• Absence of horse in Harappan and
• Indo-Aryan culture had used horse
its repeated mention in Vedic hymns
very less compared to Indo-
European • Computer documentation indicate
the language as Agglutinating (e.g.
• Dominant beasts of burden: zebu,
Dravidian) and not Inflecting (Indo-
buffalo, ox and elephant – which is
European)
also depicted on Harappan seals
 Attempts of Decipherment
Earliest Attempts

1. Gadd and Smith (1924)

• Noticed the similarities in Harappan and Sumerian numerals

• Similarities between Harappan and Sumerian signs

2. Stephen Langdon (1931)

• Direction from right to left

• Noticed some similarities between Harappan signs and those
from Jemdet Nasr
• Also compared Harappan signs and Brahmi

Gadd & Smith 1924

 Attempts of Decipherment
Earliest Attempts

3. Colonel L.A. Waddell (1925)

• Harappans and Sumerians were Aryans

• Linking Sumerians to Indo-European language group was incorrect

4. George A. Barton (1926-27)

• Sumerian parallels
• Also included other scripts like Elamite (Proto-Elamite), pictographic Hittite,
Egyptian, Cretan (Linear A), and Cypriot
 Attempts of Decipherment
Earliest Attempts

5. G.R. Hunter (1929): rendered a Dravidian language, saw links between

Proto-Elamite and Egyptian, base for Asokan Brahmi; used grids to
understand the internal workings of the script

6. Pran Nath (1931): Precursor of Brahmi script and hence an alphabetic

7. Sir Flinders Petrie (1932): Tried to read the script using Egyptian rules;
Harappan signs as pictographs; seals property of officials and hence
their titles

8. de Heves: Relation between Harappan script and Easter Island script

 Attempts of Decipherment
Earliest Attempts

9. Guiseppe Piccoli (1933): linked with Etruscan

10. Piero von Meriggi (1934): pictographs, simple pictures; no phonetic

value

11. C.L. Fabri (1937): Sumero-Babylonian connection

12. Alan S.C. Ross (1938): Identified possibly numeral signs and about 12
major categories; could not identify the relation between the numerals
and other signs
 Attempts of Decipherment
Earliest Attempts

13. Bedrich Hrozny (1939): Deciphered the Hittite Hieroglyphs using Hamath
Inscription and Amarna tablets, and a bilingual text on the Boss of
Tarkondemos; identified signs of similar shapes, gave phonetic values of Hittite

14. Several other attempts

• Tantrism (Swami Sankarananda, Prof. B.M Barua)
• Dravidian (Father Henry Heras, Soviet Team (1965), Finnish Team (1969),
I. Mahadevan (1972)
• Sanskrit (Dr. Anant P. Karmarkar, S.R. Rao (1982)
• Sumerian (John H. Mitchiner (1980);
• Shamanism (John Newberry (1980)
• Acrophony (M.V.N. Krishna Rao (1982)
• Beginnings of Brahmi (Subash C. Kak (1987)
• Copper tablets as coins (S. Kalyanaraman 1989)
 Attempts of Decipherment
Computers to the rescue

1. Soviet Team (1965): G.V. Alekseev, M.A. Probst, A.M. Kondratov, Y.V.
Knorozov
• Using statistics outlined ‘word’ order and ‘sentence’ structure
• ‘Block’, ‘stable’, ‘variable’, and ‘semi-variable’ signs
• Used Rebus principle to assign phonetic values (sign in the script to
suggest an object)

2. Finnish Team (1969): Asko Parpola, K. Koskenniemi, S. Koskenniemi, S.

Parpola and P. Aalto
• Dravidian as the language of the script; read from right to left; purely logo-
syllabic script
• Sign frequencies and position, isolated ‘inflections’ (signs at end of
inscriptions)
 Attempts of Decipherment
Computers and statistics to the rescue

2. Finnish Team (1969): Asko Parpola, K. Koskenniemi, S. Koskenniemi, S.

Parpola and P. Aalto
• Uses rebus, also identifies numerals, genders and determinatives, professions and
religion

3. Iravadam Mahadevan (1972): Parent language is Dravidian, believes historical

linguistics indicate a sub-stratum of Dravidian language in Vedic Sanskrit

• Name of the owners, longer texts titles, honorifics, occupation, place-

names
• Initiated understanding the ‘wheel’ and ‘jar’ signs, looked into equivalents in
Dravidian etymological dictionary, assigned phonetic values
 Attempts of Decipherment
Computers and statistics to the rescue

4. Mayank Vahia and Nisha Yadav (2011):

• Understanding the structure; segmentation

• Frequent sign combinations also appear as independent texts
• Larger texts are conglomeration of smaller texts or information units

5. Bahata Ansumali (2019)

• Formalized data-carriers that used both document-specific and linguistic

syntaxes to convey messages.
• Indus signs represented different content-morphemes (~part of a word that can
have meaning, e.g., unbreakable: ‘un’, ‘break’, ‘able’) and functional-
morphemes—not phonograms used for spelling words—the majority of the
inscriptions were logographic
 Attempts of Decipherment
Other views

1. B.B. Lal (1975) identifies the script written from right to left

2. A.H. Dani (1963) script is very complicated

3. B.M. Pande (1971-1985) script to be studied in stratigraphical context; study of

copper tablets from Mohenjo-daro (76 out of 123 came from DK Area); evolution
of individual Harappan signs

4. Steve Farmer and M. Witzel (2004): The Myth of Literate Harappans

5. Massimo Vidale (2007)

• Protohistoric script conveying the sounds and words of one or more
unidentified languages
 Difficulties in Decipherment

1. For decipherment of lost writing system (Vidale 2007)

• The language to be known or to be guessed correctly

• The content of the inscriptions
• Relevant contexts on which independently and reasonably the readings /
hypotheses can be tested

2. Lacks a bilingual or trilingual inscription

3. Shorter inscriptions (< 17 signs)

4. Multiple languages could have been represented by the same script

5. Unknown language
 Difficulties in Decipherment

6. Logo-syllabic script makes it difficult to assign phonetic values

7. One single sign may represent one complete word or single phonetic value

8. This is based on the context and without the knowledge of language it is

extremely difficult to assign phonetic value and test it

9. So far, guess work of assigning phonetic values of different languages

have not worked successfully

10. Thus, no successful decipherment so far

11. What is the way ahead?

 Akkadian seal with Indus animal –British
Museum- “Ka lu Sig”?
“May the affair be favorable”

Or a name – “Kaku is favorable” cf. Julian Reade

Copper seal found at Ra’s

al-Jinz may be a buffalo seal

Mohenjo-daro Buffalo seal

Dog Servant of Nindulum Dog of Goddess Sherda
Nindulumak was the Sumerian Carpenter god
worshipped at Zabala, Umma

Man of God Nindulumak Man of Goddess Sherda

Buffalo seal with Akkadian

Translation by G. Marchesi,
slide courtesy of M. Vidale
and D. Frenez
 Salut Stone Tower 1: Indus Style bead with
script, but made in chlorite. Courtesy IMTO and
M. Degli Esposti

Indus Seal from Mohenjodaro with short horned

bull motif made in unfired steatite