Introduction : The Indus Language

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The writing of 'The evolution of the Indus language presupposes that this ancient language has been discovered. I claim to have discovered it.

The extant Indus inscriptions have been gradually becoming available to us through a series of excavations for nearly 80 years at various sites in India and Pakistan. I claim to have partly read and understood it (From Indus to Sanskrit, Pts. I-III, and The Discovery of Indus).

It is the sprouting seed or the isolating stage of the language-tree which grew up luxuriously at the agglutinative stage and became fossilised at the inflexional Vedic stage. Then it had a downward slope to the next round of the isolating stage, culminating in the emergence of the modern Indian vernaculars, which are now in the second round of the agglutinative stage.

There are methods of research in the physical sciences. If a truth has to be discovered, we proceed with certain postulates. If these postulates are confirmed by the later provings, we accept them. Otherwise, they are rejected, and new postulates are tried rigorously in the same manner. This is a truly scientific procedure, and the physical sciences have made wonderful advance only on account of it.

The same is not true of the ancient Indian history and Indoeuropean linguistics. Here we started with certain presumptions, often with bad motives, but they were never tested scientifically and never confirmed. They are, however, still carried on as established facts. The IE language was reconstructed without any regard for the linguistic embryology. By comparing several children of the black, white, brown and yellow complexion we have determined their parents to be wheatish in complexion. This is the IE language. Hirt went to the extent of saying that he was not concerned with what was spoken in IE. Even neglecting this basic truth, the structure of the IE has been raised to the sky, but it is tottering at the bottom, proving that the IE science of language is not a science. The presumptuous inferences of the last century had bad effects on the sister-disciplines. The Indians have been declared foreigners in their own country.

As soon as the texts of the Indus inscriptions were collected, they were supposed to represent the Dravidian language, because a certain Brahui language, said to belong to the Dravidian type, was found to exist in the Indus basin. It was never proved how it could be the Dravidian language, but the later research has proceeded along this 'Brahma-vakya'. We are lost somewhere.

Indus is a typically primitive language. Here a syllable, even when a combination of two or three consonants, is a word, and there is no morphology. Of course, there are some rules for the word-order, but nothing more.

It is a language of the isolating type, not found now in the modern world. It is not even like the monosyllabic Chinese, whose syllables protrude through a consonant. The Indus syllables, even when comprising two or more consonants, are closed by the final vowel. One syllable is not graphically related to the preceding or the following syllables. Therefore, it can be written in boustrophedon method.

Just as our primitive ancestors could not be like us in their appearances and customs, their Indus language too is not like any of the modern Aryan languages of the world. Therefore, trying to read them through the Dravidian Etymological dictionary or Yaska's Nirukta is not less than a misadventure.

If I have succeeded in knowing this truth, it is due to meditation. It inspired me to see and examine the syllabic order of the Mahesvarasutras with reference to the numeral script of the Indus syllabary. Once I saw it, I saw the very language of the Indus people at its sprouting stage. I theoretically calculated the "competence" of the Indus language and compared it with the actual "performance". The grown up and later the fossilised form of this sprout is the Vedic language at the zenith of its glory, shortly after which the hymns had begun to be composed.

I have spent a considerable period of my life in the study of the IE linguistics, but when I felt frustrated, it was too late. I had little time and energy to go to other disciplines. Fortunately, I had also studied the traditional Sanskrit grammar, and some sutras of Panini had baffled me in my student life. Any inquiry from or even a discussion with the traditional teachers was discouraging. But I often used to wonder why Panini said that devAs is not just deva + as, but actually deva-deva-devAs has been reduced to devAs (P.1,2,64). But when I saw that a sign is repeated so many times to show plurality in the Indus inscriptions (Mahadevan p.17), I supposed that Panini knew the language of his ancestors who made plural by the repetition of words.

Panini also says (P.6,1,64-65) that SThA should be read sthA , Saha saha, Nama nama, and so on, when brought to be conjugated. For many of us, this rule is uncalled for, because there is no verb like SThA , Saha, Nama in our Sanskrit dictionaries. But Panini had before him a Dhatupatha with SThA, Nama, etc. which he did not venture to redraft or tamper with. This root-list was coming to him from the ancestors of Sanskrit which evidently did have SThA, Nama, etc. Because they were in the genealogical line of Sanskrit, these were acceptable to the Sanskrit grammarians, even though not usable in those forms in Sanskrit.

Panini's root-list had also some verbs like masja, lasja, etc. which could become majja, lajja, etc. through his rules of palatalisation and voicing (P.8,4,40.8,4,53). These roots of the old list were not relevant to Sanskrit, but Panini did not undertake any editing or tampering, because they were coming from his teachers and also their teachers over several generations, who probably spoke that outdated language, the mother and grandmother of Sanskrit.

The extant Indus inscriptions represent the Indus language of the isolating stage, where there are only monosyllabic words. The monosyllabic roots like SThA are certainly there, but the bisyllabic roots like Saha, Nama could be found only at the agglutinative stage. However, some agglutinative forms, sparsely preserved in the language of the RV with some phonetic modification, show how the language of the RV is related with the Indus language. For example, a verbal form Sa-Tha (be-past = there was), reduced to STha at the agglutinative stage itself, has a rare occurrence in the RV (7,103,7c). This STha , understood neither by the editors of the pada-text nor by Macdonell and Geldner, cannot be explained by any rule of the Vedic grammar. It has been physically lifted from the agglutinative Indus. It is not the verb STha which occurs in the Indus texts.

An IE tars has been reconstructed to derive the Eng. Thirst, Germ. Durst, Gothic Thars. But this tars (Vedic tarS/tRS ' to be thirsty ') comes from *tans by the loss of the unaccented a in tánas (offspring) RV. 5,70,4 (just as -van becomes -var P.4,1.7 ). This rare word of the RV is responsible for the birth of a reproductive verb tan (to spread, expand), because an offspring makes the family expand. As the desire for an offspring is a kind of thirst, tars deduced from ta'nas began to have the meaning 'to be thirsty'. And, this 'thirst' had spread upto the Germanic people. This ta'nas itself goes to the phrase stage (the gem coming from the womb of a woman) of the agglutinative Indus tanasa and further to the clause stage (the womb of a woman produces gems) of the isolating Indus ta na sa . It is actually recorded in the inscriptions in at least four graphic forms. Thus, what has been hypothetically reconstructed as IE vocable is actually a fossil of a more ancient language.

A text ga Su va Na Sa in duplicate writing has helped the identification of the numeral script with the syllabic order of the Mahesvarasutras. Thus the Indus inscriptions coming down to us in three scripts, animal and geometrical figures as well as numerals, could be read to the extent of one-third. By the mutual cooperation of the numerals with the animal and geometrical figures in the duplicate writings, almost two-third of the texts has become readable phonemically.

A number of rare vocables of the Vedic language have been found in the form of clauses in the indus texts of the isolating stage.

An important word of the Upanisads, namely sa't , easily confounded with the present participal sa't from the root as (to be) and totally misunderstood by the commentators of the Upanisads, is found in the form of a clause Sa Tha (the embryo rolled forth) which, even when becoming sa't by the gradual phonetic decay through the two stages of the Indus language, was rightly understood by the RSis of the RV. It was paraphrased by them : hiraNya-garbhas sam-avartatAgre. We see that the mantras of the RV go to the isolating stage of Indus. It was Sa Tha, the bIja-akSaras, of which the RSis were the draSTAras (seers). Even the solitary Vedic word nág (night), occurring only once in the RV, was a clause at the isolating stage of Indus.

There are many reflexes of the clauses of the isolating Indus in the RV. One may say that the whole Vedic literature is embedded in the extant Indus texts. Even the most radicals of the Vedic scholars, Roth for example, confined himself to the Vedic language to explain the Vedic carSaNi'. He derived it from car. As a matter of fact, its basic element is carS which has developed from the Vedic fossil cánas from the isolating clause ca na Sa.

As we go deep into the Vedic language, taking its old elements to be the fossils of the earlier stage, we appear to reach Indus, almost on the point of reading and interpreting the texts of the Indus inscriptions.

This clearly shows that the Indus inscriptions have to be read and interpreted with the Vedic material, though the modern Aryan, Santhal and Dravidian languages will be not less helpful. Even though they are now five stations away from the Indus texts, they still preserve the old coins in mutilated states with thin impressions. It requires a great courage to point out their Indus relationships.

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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