Q1.
You have studied about the Harappan script in your previous grades. Observe this seal carefully and discuss why the script has not yet been deciphered. Also, find out what efforts have been made to decipher it. You can use your textbook, consult your teacher, or refer to online sources.
Answer
What to look at on the seal first. Fig. 4.1 shows a small square stone seal with a line of signs along the top and an animal figure below. Note three things, because they are the whole difficulty:
- The signs are pictographic — they look like little pictures — but a picture-sign can stand for an object, a sound or an idea, and you cannot tell which by looking.
- The inscription is extremely short. Most Harappan inscriptions run to only a handful of signs, usually one line across a seal or a pot.
- There is no second script beside it saying the same thing.
Why it has not been deciphered. The chapter states the fact — 'it has not yet been deciphered. As a result, we still do not understand the Harappan script, also referred to as Sindhu lipi' — and the reasons follow from what a decipherment actually needs:
| What decipherment needs | Egyptian hieroglyphs had it | The Harappan script |
|---|---|---|
| A bilingual text — the same passage in a known script | Yes — the Rosetta Stone, found by Pierre Bouchard in 1799, carried three scripts including Greek, which people could still read. The chapter calls it 'like having a bilingual dictionary for a lost language' | No such bilingual has ever been found |
| Long texts, so that signs repeat in different contexts | Yes — tomb walls, papyrus rolls, long royal inscriptions | Seals and pottery only; the inscriptions are very short |
| A known language behind the script | Yes — Coptic, descended from ancient Egyptian, was still known | We do not know what language the Harappans spoke |
What has been attempted. Report the method honestly rather than announcing a solution, because no proposed reading is accepted by all scholars:
- Sign lists. Scholars have catalogued the signs and counted how many distinct ones there are — the count matters, because a small set suggests an alphabet, a very large set suggests picture-writing, and a middle-sized set suggests syllables.
- Positional analysis. Studying which signs come first, which come last and which pair up, to work out the grammar even without the sounds.
- Computer and statistical study. Testing whether the sign sequences behave like a language at all.
- Proposed language families. Different scholars have tried to read the signs through different languages. These proposals disagree with each other, and none has been generally accepted — which is exactly why the chapter still calls the script undeciphered.
What is at stake — and the chapter's own comparison. Brahmi, used from about 400 BCE in southern India and the Ganga Valley and formalised by Aśhoka in the 3rd century BCE (Fig. 4.2, the railing inscription at Sanchi), can be read — so we know names, donors and dates from it. Cuneiform can be read, so we know Sargon's trading partners. The Harappan seals cannot be read, so we can measure a Harappan weight to the gram and still not know a single Harappan's name.
How to run the discussion in class: hand out a short line of invented picture-signs with no translation and ask groups to decode it. Then give one group a translation of a single line and let them try again. The difference between the two attempts is the answer to this question.