page_title: Indus script
section_title: Miscellaneous hypotheses
hierarchical_section_title: Indus script / Attempts at decipherment / Miscellaneous hypotheses
caption_attribution_description: Cylinder with impression. Indus seal from Susa excavations [1]English: Susa seal with Indus signs
context_page_description: The Indus script is a corpus of symbols produced by the Indus Valley Civilization. Most inscriptions containing these symbols are extremely short, making it difficult to judge whether or not these symbols constituted a script used to record a language, or even symbolise a writing system. In spite of many attempts, the 'script' has not yet been deciphered, but efforts are ongoing. There is no known bilingual inscription to help decipher the script, and the script shows no significant changes over time. However, some of the syntax varies depending upon location.
  The first publication of a seal with Harappan symbols dates to 1875, in a drawing by Alexander Cunningham. Since then, over 4,000 inscribed objects have been discovered, some as far afield as Mesopotamia, as a consequence of ancient Indus-Mesopotamia relations. In the early 1970s, Iravatham Mahadevan published a corpus and concordance of Indus inscriptions listing 3,700 seals and 417 distinct signs in specific patterns. He also found that the average inscription contained five symbols and that the longest inscription contained only 26 symbols.
  Some scholars, such as G.R. Hunter, S. R.
context_section_description: There have been several hypotheses regarding the language pertaining to the Indus Script. One of the most common ones has been that the script belongs to the Indo-Aryan language. However, there are many problems with this hypothesis. A major one includes: Since the people belonging to the Indo-European cultures were always on the move, horses played a very important role in their lives or as Parpola put it, "There is no escape from the fact that the horse played a central role in the Vedic and Iranian cultures..." (Parpola, 1986).
  A second, though not as popular hypothesis is that the Indus script belongs to the Munda family of languages. The Munda family of languages is spoken largely in Eastern India, and is related to some and Southeast Asian languages. However, much like the Indo-Aryan language, the reconstructed vocabulary of early Munda does not reflect the Harappan culture. Therefore, its candidacy for being the language of the Indus Civilization is dim.
caption: Impression of an Indus cylinder seal discovered in Susa (modern Iran), in strata dated to 2600-1700 BCE, an example of ancient Indus-Mesopotamia relations. Louvre Museum, reference Sb 2425.[62][63][64] Numbering convention for the Indus script by Asko Parpola.[65][66]
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