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INTRODUCTION TO THE INDUS SCRIPT

AN INDUS DICTIONARY

THE CLUES TO DECIPHERMENT

DECIPHERED TEXTS

The isolating stage of Indus had no morphology, and the extant Indus  inscriptions for the most part represent only this stage of the language. However, there were certain rules  of syntax:

1. A clause generally consisted of  a subject and a verb (s + v);e.g. Na ra = An animal goes. Na ga  =   The light is running away, etc.

2. A longer clause included even an object ( s +  o + v ); e.g. Na ma Sa = The knowledge gives happiness, etc..

3. An oblique case preceded the subject; e.g.  ta na Sa  = From the womb gems comes out, etc..

4. In passive, the verb preceded the  object; e.g. bu Sa ci  = The light is generated by the water, etc..

5. There were certain intentional laxities in the word-order; e.g. gA  va = Goes into the pen, bI ja = In the water it grows, pi tara  = Gives food, etc.

6. A word could be repeated to show plurality : Na Na Na Na = Animals, Creatures, etc. This is the  beginning of the first element of grammar.

But when the bisyllabic words began to appear in the language, the repetition became uncomfortable. Then some   appropriate syllable was brought to be glued to the basic word. The language was then moving to the next ,that is, the agglutinative stage.

The linguistically conscious  men of the society then observed that there were two ha-phonemes in their language, the voiced ha and the voiceless Ha, which they had put at the two ends of the syllabary. Thus they gave  2 value to ha. Perhaps in the beginning 'two cows' was conceived as gAva-ha. Later the accent  on the first syllable caused the loss of the final  a, and gAva-h  also eventually resulted as gAvA, the earliest dual form. Similarly, the dual kavI from  kavi-h = kavi-ha, ripU from ripu-h = ripu-ha, etc. would have emerged.

Even when -h of the dual forms was lost after lengthening the preceding vowel, the memory of its presence vetoed all attempts to join it with the following vowel. They remained separated for all times to come.

The modern Indo-Europeanists may like to call this -h  the laryngeal H.

For the plural the affix was conceived to be  -Sa, because it is at the head of a group of 3 sibilants and   is also contiguous with ha for  the dual. Thus the plural form of  gAva-   was gAva-Sa.  Later,   when the final a was lost due to accent on the first syllable, gAvas  was analysed as  gAv-as, where gAu- was conceived to be the base and -as to be the plural ending.

Naturally, then, the simple -s was conceived to be the sg. ending in  gAu-s. In this way, gAu-s gAvA gAv-as emerged as the sg. dual and pl. forms of gAu-. This could have the state of affairs at   the inflexional stage of Indus.

The dual form gAvA  was later also extended by u, and gAvAu ran as a parallel form, which outwitted the older gAvA. Later -au was conceived to be the dual ending. This phase of the agglutinative Indus is not represented in the extant Indus texts.

As regards the verbs, perhaps the first grammatical element to appear was the past affix A-, only prefixed; e.g. ha = says, A-ha = past-say (said), Sa = (it) is, but A-Sa = past-be (it was). However, the extant Indus inscriptions do not attest them. On the other hand, we notice the affix gha for future and ga for order: dra gha, ra ga = There will be a fiery catastrophe; do run away. There is also u-bending in the verb for the subjunctive idea: ga Su va Na Sa    = Plants may grow; the water gives  life.  This trick has been employed to show the syntactic relation of the two clauses. The gha element comes upto the Vedic language. In the form  of  gA  (e.g. kar-e-gA),it has come to Hindi also. But ga is seen in the modern rustic dialects.

The  extant Indus texts probably also show the past affix   -Tha in some doubtful examples, which later evolved as the past  participal -ta in Sanskrit.

The advanced agglutinative Indus, not represented in the extant Indus texts, later also developed the perfect affix   -ha (ma-ha  = has grown old) and pluperfect affix  -ra (ca-ra  = had taken place, had been).

In the extant Indus texts, we find some verbs repeated to intensify the verbal idea. Later, they developed as perfect forms and the hu-class verbs in Sanskrit.

If we go further, we reach the inflexional Indus, not imaginable from the extant Indus texts. Ultimately, we reach the Vedic language

BOOKS ON DECIPHERMENT

REVIEW OF OTHER ATTEMPTS OF DECIPHERMENT

THE SOCIETY REFLECTING IN THE INDUS SCRIPTS

THE CONCEPT OF SARASVATI

THE BASIS OF THE VEDIC MYTHOLOGY

A HISTORY REWRITTEN

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