Nurtured by the alluvial planes of the Indus river, the Indus Valley hosted one of the world’s oldest urban cultures. From 3300 to 1700 BC, the Indus people built impressive cities like Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, which had the irst urban sanitation systems, developed complex agricultural techniques and massive trade networks, and produced sophisticated art.
They also left more than their share of mysteries. Who were these people, and why did they abandon their vast cities? What sort of government did they have, which allowed for rigorous urban planning but resulted in no palaces, temples, or monuments?
Perhaps the most significant hurdle for those hoping to understand the Indus people is the matter of written language. They probably had one, but that’s another matter of debate. These questions aren’t only important to archaeologists and historians. The Indus Valley civilization is the point of convergence for a number of thorny political and cultural issues.
The massive city of Mohenjo-Daro is one of several impressive ruins from the Indus Valley people. Photo: Shutterstock
A language mystery
Several political and ethnic groups on the Indian subcontinent are eager to claim descendancy from the Indus Valley people.
Hindu nationalists argue that the Indus script is related to Sanskrit, the ancient language of Hindu scriptures. This was the language of the Aryans, who brought both Hinduism and the Vedic scripts to India. If the Indus writing is related to Sanskrit, they argue, this proves that Aryans are the indigenous people of India the popular philosophy of Hindu supremacy claims.
Another school of thought proposes the script is related to Tamil. Tamil is the classical Indian language of the Dravidian people. If the Indus language is Dravidian, this arguably proves that they are the indigenous Indians.
A recent study brought more attention to the debate. It was a massive joint venture between Pondicherry University archaeologist K. Rajan and R. Sivananthan, deputy director of the state’s archaeological department. Together, they digitized 15,000 pieces of graffiti from over a hundred sites across Tamil Nadu and compared them with the Indus script. According to their findings, over half of the signs were a match, and another ninety percent were “parallels.”
Tamil Nadu is more than 2500 kilometers away from the Indus River valley. If their archaic scripts are indeed related, it would vastly change our understanding of the ancient civilizations of the Indian subcontinent.
The possible significance was not lost on Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin.
“The efforts of the state government is to ensure the right place for Tamil Nadu in the country’s history,” he said.
He issued a statement encouraging anyone to try decoding the Indus script. The successful translator will earn one million dollars.
These are only a few dozen of the hundred of symbols a would-be millionaire will need to decode. Photo: C Jyothibabu
The trouble with decoding
That’s a lot of money, but it’s a tough job. There exist over 5,000 artifacts in the script, but deciphering them won’t be easy. For one thing, it might not actually be a written language. The inscriptions are very short — most only five symbols, with the longest only 26. They might represent “proto-writing,” like early Mesopotamian clay tablets that recorded mercantile transactions. They might even be more like medieval European heraldry, representing a particular group, individual, or family.
Assuming that it is a written representation of spoken language, the language it represents is completely unknown. Other famously decoded ancient languages– like Linear B or Mayan glyphs– benefited from known linguistic descendants in modern Greek and Mayan.
The strings of sigils are so short that they are hard to translate. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Though the Indus people traded with other literate civilizations, like the ancient Mesopotamians, no bilingual inscriptions have been found. Famously, the Rosetta Stone, written in both Egyptian and Greek, made it possible to decode ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.
There are as many as 676 unique symbols in Indus script, but a recent computer analysis by Nicha Yadev found that just 67 of them account for 80 percent of the language. Scholars like Yadav are increasingly using computer analysis and machine learning to translate Indus script.
While Yadav has demonstrated an underlying linguistic logic to the signs, he knows that the mystery is unsolved. “We still don’t know whether the signs are complete words, part of words, or part of sentences,” he admitted.
So what do the symbols mean? If you can figure it out, you will earn $1 million from the Tamil government.
