7. The basis of the IE numerals from 5 to 10 is the Indus syllabic order. Let us see : da begins a group of 10 voiced stops from da- to -jha. It should have been da-jha. But  as an affricate /dz'h/ it has been   variously represented. Its z' was devoiced to s' in Sanskrit da-s'a. In mod. Persian it is dah. In the western dialects /jh/ became a velar;  it was devoiced and deaspirated  to  /k/ (Latin  decem). Then na covers 9 syllables  upto   va   (the nasals being a group of six,  including M); therefore, nava = 9. The voiceless h  (Ha) covers  8 syllables upto Ta via S ; therefore   Ha-S-Ta = 8 ,a-S-Ta in Sanskrit, but hasht in mod. Persian. The same voiceless h (Ha) covers  7 syllables upto ta via p; therefore  sa-p-ta = 7  in Sanskrit,but hapta in Avesta. Sa represents 3,because it heads a group of three sibilants; therefore  Sa (3) Sa (3) = 6  ( S   anskrit  SaS ). Now, pa covers 5 syllables upto  ca,and putting  M (representing the 5 nasals) in the middle, pa-M-ca = 5 in Sanskrit. Due to the affricate value of c, there  is penta in Greek.

The Secondary r in Sanskrit

Pannini points to a few cases where an original n changes into r in certain phonetic surrounding (P. 4,1,7). We have noted this tendency continuing till today in the colloquial speech. Beginning from s'arvan : sarvar-I, we even now see that nArAyaNa is pronounced laränA in vulgar speech. We find that this phonetic tendency is prehistoric. 

It is doubtless that s'IrSán and S'iras (head) are cognates. The former is the extension of the latter by the accented suffix -án, due to which s'iras has lost the penultimate a and the resulting *SirS was phonetically strengthened as sIrS- in sIrS-án. But even s'iras seems to be the reduced form of some original s'i ra sa for the more original s'iNaSa, its meaning at the isolating stage of Indus to be inferred from the following clause of the S'B. ( 3,3,3,17): s'IrSNA bIjam harati (Carries seed on the head). This seems to be a Vedic paraphrasing of s'i (head) Na (seed) Sa (carry). The clause which was reduced to a vocable has been again expanded as a new clause, with its own "fillers", by the way explaining the origin of the vocable. 

In the same text of the S'B, the initial clause is : anasA  parivahanti   mahayanty  eva  enam ...(They carry it through a cart). Here ánas (cart), probably a reduced form of the clause a Na Sa of the isolating Indus, seems to have been explained as to its original meaning. That is to say, the original clause a Na Sa (They carry seed through a cart), which was reduced to a lexeme ánas, has been expanded to its original form through the Vedic paraphrasing. When ánas (cart) lost its penultimate a, the resulting arS also developed a secondary meaning   'to flow' through the movement of the cart.

The Script

8. The isolating stage of the Indus language consisted of the monosyllabic words. There were nearly 450 ordinary syllables. Each syllable stood for certain animal or bird or a physical object of common encounter, apart from having other meanings. When they wanted to give a visible form to their sounds, they just portrayed that animal or bird or the physical object. Thus they gave a visible form to their spoken language. Thus the Indus language came into  writing at the very initial stage of its origin. Naturally at the initial stage of the writing, there would have been nearly 450 symbols for their ideas: Na ra (an animal goes),e.g., and so on.

a. But when they saw ra rA ri ru etc., in spite of, sounding similarly, had widely different pictographs, they set out in search of an agreeable common symbol for each consonant with a and for all the vowels.

b. They may be supposed to have pictographed nearly 34 consonants and 14 vowels with appropriate symbols. These approximately 48 symbols served their ordinary purposes. For syllables with vowels other than a, they may be supposed to have invented some diacritical marks. The increasing number of strokes on consonants perhaps represent them.  But there are only few instances of those diacritical marks; e.g., 3  ru, 55  bu, etc. 

c. When there was a need for conjunct consonants, one was placed on the other; e.g. Sa   342 + Tha 12 = S-Tha 15 , etc. In some cases the conjunct consonants are also bracketed 63, 64 . At the present stage of our knowledge, it is difficult to say which combination is a ligature and which is a consonant with some vowel, because even some vowel is seen reduced in size when added to a consonant; e.g. ra  1 +  i   134  =  ri  41, etc. 

9. This is the first phase of the Indus writing. We do not know how many decades or centuries of years would have passed in this way. Because the writing was continuously in progress, the animal figures underwent remarkable changes in course of time, so much so that the same figure began to look different. Mahadevan has taken great pains to identify 1 and 17 , and so on. The animal figures for consonants, as far as recognisable, are the following in the order of the Mahesvarasutras:

10. Later, a redrafting of the current script based on animal figures had become a necessity. Though the animal figures were not entirely banished from the system, the corresponding geometrical figures were invented for each animal figure. These new symbols had greater flexibility  for addition of vowels and formation of ligatures. There should have been the same number of ordinary yllables and some more number of ligatures in the script. The geometrical figures for consonants are the following in the order of Mahesvarasutras:

11. When the isolating Indus had begun shifting towards the agglutinative stage, the Indus syllabary was almost systematised. They were now able to put the syllables of the language in certain order based on qualities and places of utterance. Then, they invented a very artificial numeral script, marking all the consonants with a vowel a:

a. The vowels are marked with the horizontal curves. The semivowels and the voiced (vocalic) ha are marked with long vertical lines. The nasals are marked with the vertical curves. The voiced stops are marked with double strokes. The voiceless stops are marked with small vertical lines, pa and ka being even smaller. The sibilants were marked with three slanting strokes. The voiced fricative ha was marked with two double strokes near the head. Its animal and geometrical forms are not recognisable, unless they are the same as the first ha of the line the semivowels. 

The voiceless fricative ha is represented by 204-205 and Its numeral form is 99. We are not sure if the voiced sibilants were actually represented or were just in the mind. It is with these three types of script that the Indus inscriptions have been handed

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