this deals with the origin of Brahmi . this is a logical and self-explanatory paper and is written using a multi-disciplinary approach. it is written in such a way that anybody can cross-verify the conclusions.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/127306265/Sujay-Post-Harappan-Literacy-Final-Final-Final

sujay rao mandavilli

I am not an expert in anything but I like to consume a lot of knowledge on the internet and otherwise or where ever I can get a fascinating take on things that interest me.

That being said, I have an interesting hypotheses regarding the Indus Valley tablets. My theory is following:

The Indus Valley tablets/seals are neither representing a language nor a piece of art, rather they are a varying degree of trade contracts or terms between two parties. One is the city merchant/trader and the other is the farmer/livestock owner. The reason I believe they are contracts because one can see two separate seals of exactly the same characters and symbols but both pointing the opposite directions as if made out of sandwiching the same design patterns. One seal for the buyer and the other for the seller. They could also possibly be forward or future contracts. The Indus Valley or Harrappan networks were a highly developed interconnected trading zones. There is even some evidence of active trade with ancient Sumeria and Egypt.

In order to establish and develop a vast trading network, one requires a highly powerful administrative organization such as some form of govt or a kingdom to ensure equity and enforce trade and tax laws when issues arise between two parties. We do not see such a powerful force in the Indus Valley civilization. We see this in almost every other civilization or empire that has followed since or pre-existed. The Indus Valley trading network probably relied heavily on written/drawn terms of trade between two parties to ensure accountability and further tied trust and equity to some sort of a religious edict. This is why the priest class seems so prominent in all Indus Valley artifacts.

As far as deciphering the Indus Valley seals, I do not think it would ever be possible precisely because they are most likely legal trade terms between two parties. One can probably come close to deciphering individual meanings of the symbols and animals represented but one cannot possible decode the over all intent of the seals because no one was there to know first hand what the terms would have been. Here you need a code to decode a code. I also suspect that the largest symbol, character, or animal in each seal probably represents a region or another city which I suspect in turn denotes a person.

I hope the experts take my theory and research it the proper way. I am not an expert of any field and I am sure there are many others who have devoted their lifetime researching the Indus Valley Civilization.

at the end please understand that my theory is just a theory and by no means intended to discount any other theories out there.

Please feel free to contact me if you find merit in what I am proposing or even if you disagree and have evidence to counter.

Best Regards
Joe
jtareen@yahoo.com

“Farmer also draws attention to the absence of long Harappan inscriptions on potsherds. If the Harappan signs were a script, he contends, this absence would make it unique among the scripts of literate cultures, who all used potsherds often like scrap paper. This need only, imply however, that the Harappans had other media that were easier to scribble on, such as cotton cloth or wooden boards, or that the writing medium was not well suited for use on sherds. Likewise the absence of long monumental inscriptions seems significant to Farmer, but the Harappans did not create monumental art or architecture on which such inscriptions might have been written; the nearest they came to this is the Dholavira signboard, which is quite possibly the tip of an iceberg of a now vanished public inscriptions.”

“He (Farmer) also considers that the proportion of singleton and rare signs is unusually high; other scholars such as Parpola (2005) demonstrate that this is not so, since in general logo-syllabic scripts contain a small corpus of frequently used signs and a large number of much less common ones. Moreover, new signs are continuously added, even when the writing system is a fully developed one, something Farmer also denies. Statistically the Harappan script does not differ significantly in its sign proportions from other logographic scripts. A further point regarding the singletons is that Wells (n.d.) has demonstrated that many are variants or ligatures of basic signs, rather than completely different signs; again, this is something to be expected in a genuine script”

“Perhaps more significantly, the brevity of the majority of the Harappan texts (four to five signs on average) makes it less likely that signs would repeat within them than it is in the longer texts with which Farmer compares them (McIntosh 2008, p. 374).

“Farmer’s arguments fail to account convincingly for the structural regularities that analyses have revealed in the use of the Harappan signs; these seem strongly to support the hypothesis that the Harappan signs represent a writing system. The theory put forward by Farmer and his collaborators has not been widely accepted, but it has been valuable in compelling scholars to look afresh at their assumptions about the script and in provoking a stimulating debate from which a deeper understanding of the script should emerge (McIntosh 2008, p. 374).

please refer to the book by Jane Macintosh (Mcintosh 2008 p 374) “The Harappans did not create monumental art or architecture on which such inscriptions may have been written. The nearest that the Harappans came to this is the Dholavira signboard which is quite possibly the tip of the iceberg of a now vanished public inscriptions.Farmers arguments fail to account convincingly for the structural regularities that analysis have revealed in the use of Harappan signs. These strongly seem to support the hypothesis that the Indus script represent a writing system”

Sujay Rao Mandavilli

http://www.scribd.com/doc/46387240/Sujay-Indus-Script-Final-Version-Final-Final

There are better terminonologies avaialble in the business than ‘symbols’ . Please research.
Please research the history of writing systems. The conclusions you come to will be somewhat different.

Even if it did not have a linguistic component, it qualifies for proto-literacy, not literacy. Even Vinca symbols which were much simpler consitute proto-literacy. I am sure the Indus script had a linguistic component.

The Harappans had a unique interpretation of literacy.

No other civilization of its time mass produced writing. (4500 years ago). no other civilization of its time had a signboard. One tenth of a town has produced thousands of seals.
Can I declate the Indus to be the most literate of ancient civilizations?

‘Deliberate’ Wrong usage of terms
is already causing havoc in schools and colleges. History is taught in schools all over the world. This is sheer irresponsibility.
We hate those who misrepresent history. He is using Harvard resources for this puropose.

A man in the street can be excused. A Harvard University professor cannot.
Witzel et all haven’t said anything new really. It is just a lot of hot air and only goes to show
the depths to which science has sunk and that a new generation of Western scholars needs to take Indology forward. There is no other way. There are many names I can suggest.

Then let’s follow Farmer’s advice and close down the indology department, It doesn’t deserve to exist as long as the Farmer -Witzel duo are around.
Let Harvard shine in all fields be it in Sinology or Indology, but let it be with a different team!!

re: [Indo-Eurasia] BOOKS: Visible Language

This book is not actually out yet, but when it is, it will be available for sale
as well as for download free of charge at:

http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/pubs/catalog/oimp/

Some teasers from the exhibition installation are appearing on facebook at

-Chuck Jones-

—- Original message —-
Steve Farmer wrote:
> New book out from the Oriental Institute, passed on
> from the Agade List.
>
> Note how the so-called “Indus script” — which is
> certainly not a “script” as linguists view that term — is
> slowly but surely disappearing from the world of international
> scholarship. About time, and I’m happy with Michael and Richard
> to have started that process.
>
> Steve

If it did not have a linguistic component, it qualifies as proto-literacy, not illiteracy. There is every reason to beleive it had a linguistic component- it co-evolved with the scripts of the Middle East. If it did have a linguisitc component, it qualifies for full literacy, since in that case it will be possible to write anything. Try it out! The Etruscan script is generally found in short texts. We can’t rule out the possibility of longer inscriptions existing – as a matter of fact, it is alphabetic. People do what makes sense most of the time. The Indus was mulitligual, and a non-linguistic system (with a linguistic component) as Farmer, Witzel and Sproat agree would have made sense. Most inscriptions are short because, they were meant to have been ready by people speaking different languages which means that it comprised of a very small linguistic component if any. Now come to the Dholavira signboard. It probably represented the name of a place. This inscription had sign repetition unlike others – This kind of dual usage would qualify it for full literacy and point out to longer texts- atleast adminstrative texts, if not literary ones.

The problem with using conditional entropy to establish “grammar” is that it doesn’t establish grammar’s existence. It only shows that there’s order. But people tend to order things that aren’t linguistic. Navaho sand paintings are chock full of symbols that have order. But the symbols aren’t linguistic and the order isn’t based on syntax or grammar.

If Rao et al had used real data on Vinca symbols and symbols on kudurru, they might have discovered this fact for themselves. But they decided that Vinca symbols had no order and that kudurru symbols had absolutely rigid order. So they didn’t bother to look at any real symbols of either type. So those data sets are totally invented, based on their assumptions about what they would have seen if they had looked at the data — which they did not do.
They later explained that this didn’t mean anything because this invented data only served as a control, showing the limits of what’s possible. But a real control isn’t supposed to be an invention and made up data doesn’t show what’s possible, only what’s it’s possible to imagine.

As for those mysterious perishable written records that Harappans are supposed to have written, be they on cloth, leaves, bark, or hide, we can’t talk about them. They’ve perished. All we have are the imperishable, short messages. They’re all as short as the shortest tags from the earliest period of Egyptian hieroglyphs, the proto-cuneiform cylinder seals — not the economic tablets — and a few fragments of turtle plastrons (oracle bones) from China. It’s just not much to go on. I think Farmer et al have made a good case….