Indus Script Dictionary

The deciphering of the Indus script has met with suspicion and is exposed to ridicule even. Many people are nowadays of the opinion that the Indus script is altogether indecipherable, if not a bilingual of considerable size turns up. The approach to a decipherment presented in this volume makes avail of a bilingual, too, but its masterkey is the discovering of the symbolic connection of the Indus signs with the metaphoric language of the Rg-Veda. Nearly 200 inscriptions, among them the longest and those with the most interesting motifs, have been decoded here by setting them syllable for syllable in relation to Rg-Vedic verses. The results that were gained by this method for the pictographic values of the Indus signs are surprising and far beyond the possibilities of the most daring phantasy. At the same time many problems of the Rg-Veda could be solved or new insights be won.

Based on corpora of Indus writing and a dictionary, the book validates Aristotle's insight on writing systems. Indus writing is composed using symbols of spoken words. The symbols are hieroglyphs of meluhha (mleccha) words spoken by artisans recording the repertoire of stone, mineral and metal workers. The writing results in a set of catalogs of metalworking of bronze age. Evidence of this competence in metallurgy which evolved from 4th millennium BCE of bronze age, is provided in corpora of metalware catalogs and a dictionary of melluhha (mleccha). Indus writing was a principal tool of economic administration for account-keeping by artisan and trader guilds and did not record literature or, history. Some sacred ideas and historical links across interaction areas between India and ancient Near East, may be inferred from the writing.

Provides the method for making of Indus Script Dictionary matching hieroglyphs and meanings, traces the continuum of the writing system on artifacts of historical periods in the framework of Samskrta Bharati, language of a civilization of Bharatam Janam. Sanchi, Bharhut torana Indus Script hieroglyphs proclaim mint, metal engraving work. Bharati is the language of Bharatam Janam, an expression used in Rigveda by Rishi Visvamitra signifying metalcaster people. Samskrta Bharati was the language which unified Prakrtam of Bharatiya sprachbund (language union), which had many phonetic variants in an extensive area from Assam to Gujarat, from Kashmir to Sri Lanka. This is treasure, nidhi, heritage of Bharatam. Samskrtam is a structured reconstitution of the semantics, syntax, morphology and phonetics of Prakrtam. This reconstruction is documented in ancient texts such as Yaska's Niruktam, Bhartrhari's Vakyapadiya, Panini's Ashtadhyayi, Tolkappiyam, Patanjali's Mahabhashya, Bharata's Natya Sastra, various Nighantus, Hemacandra's Desinamamala, and scores of other literary evidences. These basic texts have provided the resources for scholarly studies defining Bharatam as a Linguistic Area (Indian sprachbund or language union). Ancient scripts were called Brahmi, Kharoshthi attesting the divine dispensation of Vagdevi and speech forms from the lips of artisans (khar 'smith' oshti 'lip') This discovery of the language of a civilization provides a foundation for further civilization studies including a re-assessment of general semantics, the formation and evolution of all Bharatiya language forms and cultural contacts with neighbouring cultural regions of Eurasia for nearly 8 millennia. The word Samskriti relatable to Samskrtam is the weltanschauung defining both the material resources and adhyatmika foundations for the mores of people of a vibrant region of the globe with a civilizational foundation which dates back to over 8 millennia. Bharata's Natya Sastra (c. 200 BCE), a treatise on performing arts, theatre, dance and music provides a documentation of provincial or des'I or vernacular forms of speech which may be variant pronunciation of sememes (root words of dhAtupATha). This work in 6000 karikas or verse stanzas incorporates 36 chapters three of which relate to messaging systems: Rules of Prosody and Rules on the use of languages, Modes of address and intonation. This work had united Bharatam Janam, the way Prakrtam (spoken version of Samskrta Bharati) had united Bharatam Janam in a Bharatiya sprachbund (language union). DhAtupAtha was the earliest attempt to clearly identify sememes (root morphemes, the smallest linguistic units of meaning) from among multifarious forms of pronounced words in speech forms of Prakrtam. Similarly, Indus Script was the earliest attempt to signify sememes through orthographic signifiers as hieroglyph components in a writing system for parole, speech form of language. Thus, for example, a sememe, kuTi is signified by a water-carrier hieroglyph; a sememe baTa Bhartrhari (c. 5th century CE) Vakyapadiya in Bharatiya grammatical tradition explains the theories on the word and on the sentence and elaborates on sphota, 'spurt, bursting, opening' as a framework to explain how the mind orders linguistic units into meaningful utterances. Indus Script as a writing system is a method in semiotics, a study of meaning-making together with a study of orthography. It is reasonable to hypothesise that Samskrtam in Prakrtam speech forms was the lingua franca of the civilization ca. 2500 BCE on the banks of Vedic River Sarasvati which is consistent with the assumption that Prkritam form of vAk evolved in the region from ca. 8th millennium BCE given the archaeological discoveries of cultural pointers. One pointer is the use of s'ankha turbinella pyrum bangles from ca. 6500 BCe. Another is the practice of sindhur on mang (parting of the hair) of married women on two terracotta toys.

This book is a new approach for creating a categorized understanding of Indus seal symbols. Two hundredand sixty-two symbols have been analyzed in this book along with their geometric constructions whereapplicable. Each symbol has a unique definition, the interpretation of which is such that they hold themeaning regardless of the seals they appear in. In addition, the research considers the sequence of symbolsand its implications on the meaning of seals. This attempt at creating a dictionary for Indus seals based onVedic rituals can be used to interpret many more seals.Several themes such as the purpose of making the seals, the class of people using them, and the geometricalperfections that were adopted while structuring some of the symbols have been analyzed. The book alsostudies the numerous variations in symbols and addresses why it is hard to find identical seals.The seals portrayed on a two-inch stone piece could have been for ease of handling, transportation andstorage as reference documents for practitioners involved in Vedic rituals. It could also have served thepurpose of avoiding mistakes during recitation and ritual procedures at a time when script was non-existent.

This is a path-breaking work as significant as the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs by Champollion. For nearly130 years, the Indus script has remained a challenging enigma to scholars of languages, writing systems and civilization studies. The script was invented and used over an extensive area of what is called the Indus or Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization. Over 2000 or 80% of archaeological sites are found on the Sarasvati River basin, a river adored in a very old human document called the Rigveda and which dried up due to tectonic and resulting river migration causes. In 1822, history was made when Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered by Jean-Francois Champollion from parts of the Rosetta Stone. Champollion showed that the Egyptian writing system, c.3000 BCE was a combination of phonetic and ideographic glyphs. The Rosetta Stone is dated196 BCE and had a decree in three versions: one in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, one in the Egyptian demotic script, and one in ancient Greek. Since alphabets of ancient Greek were known, Champollion used the trilingual inscription to validate his historic decipherment. Indus Script Cipher makes history recording hundreds of hieroglyphs of India. Absence of a Rosetta Stone which has been the principal impediment in validating any decryption of Indus script cipher is thus overcome. Further validation comes from evidences of the historical periods in India from c. 600 BCE showing continued use of Indus script hieroglyphs which evolved from c. 3300 BCE. This book details a decipherment.of the Indus script using the same rebus method used by Champollion to read ancient phonetic hieroglyphs of Indiat. By demonstrating an Indian linguistic area of cultural and language contacts and history of language changes, this is a landmark contribution to civilization studies of the world and will promote efforts to rewrite the ancient socio-cultural and economic history of a billion people in India and neighboring regions.

The Indus civilization was one of the earliest civilizations of the ancient world. At its peak, it was more than ten times larger than Egypt and Mesopotamia combined and three times their population. Yet it remains a riddle of prehistory. Its script is the last great script to remain undeciphered. This concordance is an attempt to make the corpus of Indus inscriptions organized and searchable in a digital format. It covers 3,649 objects with 5,037 inscriptions from across 40 Indus sites. At more than 10,000 pages, it is a comprehensive reference for the domain. It allows the reader to efficiently search and navigate the corpus by location, object types, and writing direction. It is the only resource that allows you to search the collection by letters, words, and patronymics. In order to help the first-time reader, the Introduction provides a background of the Indus civilization and its script. It presents a unique analysis of the typography of the Indus seals and compares it to modern fonts. It systematically analyzes the script down into constituent forms and links to resources for a Unicode encoding and an open-source font for the script. The book itself serves as an example of those resources. This concordance is based on a complete decipherment of the Indus script that I will publish separately. It leverages that to identify characters and words and present a consistent and complete coverage of the inscriptions.