Indus script

Indus script, system of symbols used in inscriptions of the Indus civilization. It is known from a few thousand inscriptions that vary from 1 to about 20 characters in length. About 400 unique signs have been identified. Despite decades of research, the script remains undeciphered.

Development and use contexts

Early scholars of the Indus script claimed that it was developed rapidly in the middle of the 3rd millennium bce. However, more recent examinations suggest that the characters have their origin in earlier symbols found on pottery. Although potters’ marks and post-firing graffiti appear on pottery as early as 4500 bce, the earliest predecessors of the Indus script date to the Ravi phase (3900–2800 bce), during which a few characters find their origin. Most, however, developed in the ensuing Kot Diji phase (2800–2600 bce), when the signs also began appearing on seals. By about 2600 bce the Indus script fully emerged.

The Indus script, read right to left, comprises about 400 unique signs and a large number of additional characters that appear to be compounds of two or more other signs. During the mature Harappan period (2600–1900 bce) the signs underwent some degree of standardization. Inscriptions tend to be quite short, having an average length of about five signs, and are found in a variety of contexts. Perhaps the most prominent use of the Indus script is on the square stamp seals. These seals had a primary motif, often an animal, that took up the bottom and middle of the seal. The top bore an inscription written in reverse so that it could be read when impressed into clay. Inscriptions can also be found on tablets made of steatite, faience, clay, and copper. Inscriptions typically of one or two characters appear on tools, weapons, decorations, and other items. A unique, roughly 10-foot- (3-meter-) long “signboard” with an inscription of 10 characters is known from the site of Dholavira.

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Attempts at decipherment

The brevity of extant inscriptions and the lack of bilingual inscriptions have made the decipherment of the Indus script a difficult task. More than a hundred scholarly attempts at deciphering the inscriptions have been published, but none have widespread agreement. A variety of languages and scripts have been put forward as having a possible connection to the Indus script, including Sumerian, Hurrian, Elamite, proto-Elamite (another undeciphered script), Old Slavic, Altaic (a controversial language grouping), and Egyptian, although most scholars now consider these connections discredited. In the late 1960s a Soviet team under Yury Valentinovich Knorozov and a Finnish group led by Asko Parpola independently used new computer technologies to study the order of the signs in Indus inscriptions. Both teams came to the conclusion that the Indus script represented a Dravidian language. Others have cast doubt on this identification, as it has not resulted in the decipherment of the script. Several scholars of Sanskrit and renowned archaeologist S.R. Rao have suggested that the script represents an Indo-Aryan language. Many experts reject this hypothesis, because it implies that Indo-Aryan languages were native to South Asia, which contradicts the consensus that these languages reached the subcontinent through Central Asia likely between 2000 and 1500 bce.

Other scholars argue that the Indus script does not represent a single language but was meant to be understood by a multilingual population. Such scholars claim that the Indus script represents a pictographic system. In this interpretation the inscriptions could be understood by people who spoke different languages because they conveyed meaning rather than a particular grammar, in a somewhat similar way to how modern emojis communicate ideas without reference to specific languages.