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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 147.145.40.44 (talk) at 05:07, 14 September 2010 (→Brahmi-Indus script). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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--Zenzee 15:15, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hi All,

As I visited the Indus Valley Civilization article on Wikipedia today, to which I had made some minor contributions, I was pleasently surprised to see the sheer amount of interest and enthusiasm it had generated, in such short a time. I would also like to thank the Wikipedia Admins for selecting the IVC article as a 'Featured Article' on Nov. 22nd, 2004. Now to the point..

1. I admit that I copied parts of text on Indus Script from www.ancientscripts.com. It turns out to be an unacceptable practice on Wikipedia, hence, I wholeheartedly apologize for my mistake. It was my first attempt on contributing to Wikipedia, and I did not spend enough time and effort on learning the prevailing code of ethics, yet again, my mistake !

2. I must also admit, that my reason for this copying was simply to avoid spending a lot of time in re-writing something yet over again, which has been re-written countless times, and is generally considered "information" in the public domian (as in News), as opposed to a work of literature or scientific discovery etc. the credit and copywrite for which always belong to the original author. Despite this, I did specifically check for a copywrite notice, and did not find any on www.ancientscripts.com, neither on Nov. 22nd, nor today.

Despite all the above, I would like to aknowledge that I am tremendously encouraged to see so much interest in Indus Valley Civilization by so many fellow Wikipedians. For a person like me, whose mission is to disseminate knowledge of IVC worldwide, I seem to have hit a gold-mine ! As I read the texts on IVC article today, I wonder at how much they have been improved, and how meticulously, in just about two days time.

I hereby make the following commitment: I am off to Paris today for a week of seminars, but I would try my best to write an original piece on Indus Script, exclusively for Wikipedia, in part as apology for my earlier misbehaviour, and in part because Wikipedia is beyond doubt one of the best platforms I have found so far, and hence deserves exclusive treatment. My time and effort would be well-spent, and I know I can depend on You, my fellow Wikipedians to further improve and add to my initial work.

A last word: Attempts to "own" the Indus Valley Civilization by any one culture or nation are, at best, naive. Indus Valley Civilization is the joint heritage of entire mankind and transcends such petty conflicts. I humbly request all Wikipedians to avoid such claims, in the true spirit of shcolastic research and discovery.

--Atla 12:54, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)


This article seems to belong to the camp that claims that the Indus culture was Indo-European and that there is an unbroken continuity between the Indus culture and the modern Indian.--Wiglaf 18:16, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Edit: sorry, read the last line too fast.--Wiglaf 18:19, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

By all means, if you know about the subject, expand the article. I did only a minor NPOV edit (I hope), to make the article compatible with teh Brahmi article. -- Pjacobi 18:45, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I would welcome an original rewrite. As long as it is made clear that the IVC remains "silent" in the sense that the "script" remains undeciphered. The original text severely distorted Asko Parpola's stance. He is indeed a serious scholar, and afaik he doesn't claim any decipherment. He suspects the language represented could be Dravidian, but that is from circumstantial evidence. This doesn't keep Hindutva sources from elevating him to some sort of IVC-guru status, all but obscuring his Dravidian theory, making it seem like he essentially expects to unearth the Harappan Rigveda any moment. The IVC is part of the human heritage. It is a prehistoric culture, just like Catalhuyuk, and it is unrelated to modern politics or modern religion, be it British imperialism or Hindutva. dab 13:29, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Picture Request

Could the article be updated to have a small example picture of the script? I don't know where one could be found with the correct licensing terms. 71.145.182.209 05:18, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"amateur research"

I realize Rao is an archaeologist and Kak is an electrical engineer, making them academics. Decipherment of a script is still outside their disciplines, and their results are dismissed by linguists. Note that Michael Ventris was likewise an "amateur researcher", with the difference that his results (deciphering a different script) were embraced as convincing by specialists. dab (ᛏ) 11:39, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Then I wonder how come that Farmer didn't make it into the Amateur section? He is not a indologist or linguist either (neither is co-author Sproat really qualified for the indus script, though co-author Witzel could be). Lawler described him as an outsider, and Possehl was surprised that his ideas have raised interest. (see Parpolas 2005 paper, [1]...) I have also seen the Farmer paper described as pseudo-scientific or Erich von Däniken like. It seems better not to have such section titles in order to avoid potential pov problems. --Rayfield 11:57, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why was reference to Ranajit Pal's work deleted? Was it because Pal is critical of M. Witzel of the Harvard School? Pal's work has been praised by none other than I. Mahadevan and has been published in a widely acclaimed book "Non-Jonesian Indology and Alexander" [2] [3]. Is this the egalitarianism that the founder of the Wikipedia dreamed of? Hundreds of words for Harvard wisdom and elbowing out other views. The editor is not only ignorant he is also bigoted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mejda (talk • contribs) 02:52, 28 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Brahmi-Indus script

I do not think Kak's reference is at all relevant here. First it is admitted that he has not tried to decipher the script, so the reference should not be made under the "Attempts at decipherment" section. Second, Brahmi itself is associated more closely with Aramaic. Third, the association has been refuted by scholars like Mahadevan (a gap of about 1000 years between the two scripts[4]). Though Kak's work could be of interest elsewhere, here I feel it just adds to the noise. In any case, even if the Indus script was the precursor to Brahmi, that does not mean the language of the Indus script was Indo-Aryan (do not mix language and scripts). Chaipau 23:46, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Kak, Talageri etc are accomplished historians. Brushing them aside does not help the debate. Bakaman%% 22:40, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As I mentioned above, Kak could be an important scholar, but what is questioned here is the reference to him in the present context. Chaipau 22:57, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Making statements like Brahmi is closely associated with Aramaic would be speculative. A simple comparison of Phoenician,Aramaic and Brahmi shows that Brahmi is not linked with the other two —Preceding unsigned comment added by 221.134.202.89 (talk) 12:09, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The wikipedia article says, "Some early scholars, starting with Cunningham in 1877, thought that the script was the archetype of the Brahmi script used by Ashoka. Cunningham's ideas were supported by G.R. Hunter, Iravatham Mahadevan and a minority of scholars, who continue to argue for the Indus script as the predecessor of the Brahmic family." Mahadevan's name should not be mentioned here, as he is in fact emphatically opposed to this view. See http://www.harappa.com/script/mahadevantext.html#4 124.123.151.232 (talk) 04:40, 2 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Attempts at decipherments

User:Krsont has reverted a reversion of vandalism.

There have been many serious attempts to decipher the Indus script. Replacing the info on these attempts by just one attempt is vandalism. I am reverting the changes for a second time. I hope this matter would not go beyond this. Chaipau 21:17, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize, I had no idea. I should have looked closer at your edits. I wished only to mention the aramaic/brahmi thing, not to get involved in the decipherment debate. --Krsont 21:35, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rjabchikov

The following seems rather dubious:

"The last serious research of the script was conducted by the Russian scholar Sergei V. . His method is based on the structural linguistics. Sergei V. Rjabchikov has reconstructed the Proto-Indo-Aryan (Proto-Indo-European) language, and as a result he has decoded the Proto-Indian Writing System.[5] Sergei V. Rjabchikov is the author of the well known decipherment of the rongorongo script, too."

The famous scholar Mr. Rjabchikov seems to have a hotmail address, and to have set up this "foundation", which essentially seems to be a website [5] which asks for donations. Is our hero really the author of a "well known decipherment of rongorongo"? His theories seem to be getting short shrift over on that page. Paul B 14:30, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think our hero is a kubannet.ru customer situated in Moscow :) dab (ᛏ) 12:52, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yes he's very famous indeed. I think he has deciphered every known undeciphered script. 98.246.150.203 (talk) 22:53, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Witzel's Para-Munda Hypothesis

This article already shows something about the so called "Dravidian Hypothesis" which seems to be popular with some Indian researchers. But what about the "Para-Munda" Hypothesis by Prof. Michael Witzel (Witzel, 1999), which is presented in quite some detail and coupled with a wealth of comparisons of substrate vocabulary in post-Harappan Indo-Aryan and possible syntatic clues in the Indus script? http://www.ejvs.laurasianacademy.com/ejvs0501/ejvs0501article.ps —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.21.255.59 (talk) 15:04, 9 April 2007 (UTC).[reply]

The article currently says that Witzel and Farmer now claim that the Indus script encodes Para-Munda, and have repudiated the views expressed in Farmer, Sproat and Witzel (2004). The source cited in support of this claim makes absolutely no reference to any such repudiation - as far as I can see, it only makes a reference to Witzel's 1999 paper. Nor does the claim seem very likely, seeing as Farmer's given lectures trumpetting his views as recently as this July. I'm minded to remove the sentence, but thought it prudent to ask here first. -- Arvind 16:38, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Since nobody had any comments to offer, I've removed the sentence. -- Arvind 13:40, 1 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
you are right. Witzel assumes "Para Munda" on the basis of substrate influence in Sanskrit. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the Indus script. --dab (��) 13:54, 1 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

recent statistical study

Of course this will deserve closer attention once it is published. So far, we only have a single page pdf saying they did the study, the study itself remaining unpublished. --dab (��) 07:24, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I note a lot of pov editing around this. It's got to stop. Dougweller (talk) 05:36, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

people want this script to be deciphered, a lot. "Want" is a valid motivation fuelling research, but it is a terrible guide in interpreting research results. Wikipedia doesn't need to report on every new study five minutes after they appear. Once the dust settles a bit, it will be soon enough for us to try and figure out if any progress has been made. Fwiiw, I can understand the experts remain unimpressed. This study appears to be a textbook case of "we want this to be true very badly, so we'll just fiddle with statistics until they say what we want them to say". This is not, of course, the sort of thinking behind the scientific method that helped end the middle ages. Of course, scholars dying to make the headlines and journalists pressed to come up with juicy headines form an unholy alliance that is going to kill science. Wired wasn't beyond reporting "An ancient script that's defied generations of archaeologists has yielded some of its secrets to artificially intelligent computers." Pereira has blown this study ouf of the water in five minutes. If Science would condescend to have actual linguists peer-review their content on linguistics, this sort of thing wouldn't happen. --dab (��) 06:34, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"dab" -- So you conclude that "Science" did not use linguists as reviewers just because some linguists have criticized the paper? Also, your edits clearly show your bias on this topic. For example, if one looks at: [6] one can see that you deleted the sentence regarding the response of Rao et al to the criticisms and hid them under "notes". You also deleted the sentence regarding a discussion on what Rao et al did and stuck that as a subnote! Finally, you even changed the phrase "Rao et al.'s response" to "Rao's reaction"..."at his homepage". Such pov editing has no place in wikipedia. Avrosenfeld (talk) 00:10, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Avrosenfeld", my "bias" is sparing Wikipedia every little WP:RECENTISM. We are not a blog. --dab (��) 09:14, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In keeping with Wikipedia policy, I will refrain from editing things about myself, but for the record I am a linguist, not a computer scientist. It would be good to correct that in the discussion of the 2004 Farmer, Sproat, Witzel paper. --Richard Sproat —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.199.36.170 (talk) 22:30, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The following quote from Rao underscored the disingenuousness of this whole enterprise: "However, speaking on the issue of whether language families can be identified using conditional entropy, Rao and colleagues already state in their Science paper that “answering the question of linguistic affinity of the Indus texts requires a more sophisticated approach, such as statistically inferring an underlying grammar for the Indus texts from available data and comparing the inferred rules with those of various known language families”.

Sure, but they also state: "The similarity in conditional entropy to Old Tamil, a Dravidian language, is especially interesting in light of the fact that many of the prominent decipherment efforts to date (9–11) have converged upon a proto-Dravidian hypothesis for the Indus script."

Presumably if conditional entropy can tell us nothing about linguistic affinity (the correct conclusion), then it is not "especially interesting" at all that the Indus and Old Tamil curves are similar. It is just coincidence (which I happen to believe is the right conclusion to draw). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.246.150.203 (talk) 07:22, 16 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Similarly for the following paragraph:

"Responding to their critics, Rao and colleagues have pointed out that the counterexamples proposed by Liberman, Sproat and others are based on the assumption that conditional entropy by itself is a sufficient condition for language, a claim not made in their paper (for the full response, see pdf: [35]). They define their methodology as Bayesian in nature (see [36]) focusing on uncovering the necessary conditions for language, which they enumerate as “Zipfian frequency distributions, syntactic structure such as the clear presence of beginners and enders, preferences of symbol clusters for particular positions within texts etc. and finally, similarities in conditional entropy”. They cite the fact that the Indus script also satisfies a growing list of these properties of natural languages as evidence in favor of the linguistic hypothesis."

This misses the point that the critiques of the conditional entropy paper were not presenting "counterexamples": they were presenting the argument that conditional entropy does not provide evidence for structure. In other words that it is a worthless measure for this purpose. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.246.150.203 (talk) 07:27, 16 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox

The following interesting discussion belongs in the article, not in the infobox:

|typedesc=(Prime candidate of the decipherment claim is a form of early Dravidian language, related to archaic Tamil

Sheldon Lee Gosline

I have deleted this entirely. I've just spent some time trying to find out more about this guy. I found his cv here [7] on his website (his company). I note that the two 'Honors and Peer Recognition' don't seem significant even if they are real, which is a bit odd. I also note that "His Grace, Lord Sheldon Lee Gosline, 1st Duke of Otsego, 1st Marquis of Cooperstown in New York and 1st Duke of Warren in Pennsylvania is third among equals in the new American Aristocracy by virtue of receiving the third Title of Nobility." which is even odder.[8]. He seems to have a few genuine publictions but most of his stuff is self-published.[9]. I can't find any reaction to his self-published paper, which suggests it was a damp squib, not ground-breaking research as it was described. My conclusion is that it shouldn't be in the article. Dougweller (talk) 05:30, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

script vs. signs

I understand, that this is a controversial and hot debated topic. However, the style of writing gets increasingly unencyclopedic towards the end. It appeals to me like twitter. There should be only the notice, that the newly published paper by Rao et al. was being critised by Farmer in terms of methods etc. Not the whole thing live! Thanks. --Neutralpointofyou (talk) 22:20, 1 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't the article say something about the dispute in the lead? It seems to take for granted that this is a script (as everyone did until recently), up until you get to the last paragraph where you read that a growing number of scholars think the whole thing is bunk. It's as if cold fusion talked about the great potential of room-temperature fusion reactions for six paragraphs and then the last paragraph said, "oh, by the way, nobody can reproduce the results". Maybe the scholarly debate isn't quite at the point where Wikipedia can take a side, but if established academic consensus is now in doubt it can't just be a footnote. 140.247.128.58 (talk) 23:23, 2 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not in the position to say, whether the challengers have a point or not. Obviously the study of Rao et al. was received well by the media, while Farmer, Witzel, Sproat were left behind. Thus, I think, it would be appropriate to keep the criticism in the subsection. However, my main problem was the style used in the section, obviously created by highly nervious people supporting Farmer, Witzel, Sproat. --Neutralpointofyou (talk) 18:47, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What "media"? It is WP:UNDUE to dwell on this silly point of "entropy" at any length, no matter which side in the "dispute" is being preferred over the other. Whether the Indus script is a "script" depends much more on your preferred definition of the term "script" than on any disputes regarding the nature of the Indus script. --dab (��) 10:38, 14 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Bryan wells's volumetric system

There is some reporting on today's The Hindu about Bryan wells' (unpublished) thesis.[10] should this be added to the article? or should we wait till it gets published and peer reviewed. --Sodabottle (talk) 07:10, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Mention of possible Easter Island / rongorongo connection?

I noticed on Vilayanur S. Ramachandran's article, a scan of an article he wrote was linked to, in which he mentions the similarity of a number of Indus Valley glyphs to rongorongo glyphs. I know little of these matters, but I was surprised it was not mentioned on here. It seems notable enough to be worth mentioning, even if it is not considered particularly compelling. 76.115.3.200 (talk) 00:10, 7 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

no, it's not notable. --dab (��) 22:35, 12 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Farmer et al

Can you pl avoid giving space to Farmer... his terminologies are considered pseudo-science. Even vinca symbols which are much,much simpler are considered Proto-writing. Even if a small linguistic component is added as they themselves agree, it qualifies for full literacy. I know the history of writing systems pretty well and the terminologies associated with them. There have been many allegations against the team from all over the world & is highly controversial and they haven't said anything new really. The Indus Valley Civilization is the common heritage of humanity and has to be treated as such and countries like India and Pakistan didn't exist then! What do you mean by "often considered literate". 4000 + seals have been discovered although only 5% of the IVC has been excavated and a public signboard which didn't exist anywhere else in the world. Indus seals have been found alomst all over the ancient world. This will mislead thousands of school teachers and children! I would suggest you modify immediately. This would go against your own principles. Otherwise a brilliant article - Sujay


Who considers Farmer pseudo-science? He publishes in academic journals, he works with Harvard Prof Michael Witzel, is he fringe also? They meet our criteria for sources at WP:RS. This is a very controversial subject, granted (see this recent newspaper article [11] and Farmer says he's received death threats. This article from the last issue of Archaeology Magazine also mentions death threads [12] and says "We don't know what the symbols mean--in fact, we don't know whether the "script" encodes language at all or is a kind of symbol system, like heraldry or signs in an airport.". Dougweller (talk) 15:54, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that you have made an earnest attempt to be as unbiased as possible. I am not even saying that Farmer is fully incorrect - he may be largely correct. I publish in academic journals too and my papers are being used by projects like the Genographic project for their research- this is arguably one of the most prestigious projects in the world. But even Vinca symbols which are much much simpler are considered proto-literate= 85% of Vinca symbols occur in isolation (!!). Careless use of terminologies such as literate and non-literate are wrong!..Even if a small linguistic component is added - rebus principle or punning (Witzel Kyoto, 2009 or Sproat in his presentations) or acriphony is added, it qualifies for full literacy. I assume some 'sound coding' would have been useful to them atleast on some occasions.. the longest seal is 17 characters non-analomous and 26 characters analomous. I have never said that what Farmer is saying is necessarily wrong, but even Parpola has been reading them mostly as logograms with a linguistic component. So how much of what Farmer is saying is new apart from the fact that he popularized the idea? Till 2900 BC Egypt and Mesopotamia were considered proto-literate even if their texts are shorter(not non-literate!!!!). Terminologies pertaining to literacy cannot be changed unless all scholars agree - and any demands to change terminology must be met with suspicion, naturally. Only a very small portion of the IVC has been excavated, you know, 5% maybe! Even Farmer agrees “Judging from modern examples and research in the linguistic history of South Asia, the Indus Valley was probably intensely multi linguistic throughout its history. This may have provided the Indus emblem system with an advantage over ordinary writing as a means of providing the civilization with social cohesion. The fact that the majority of inscriptions rely on a surprisingly small core of symbols suggests that the meaning of Indus signs could have potentially been known by almost or all (ALL!!) of the population, resulting in a pervasive quasiliteracy far beyond that achieved in Mesopotamia or Egypt.” Interesting, and I know it will take some time for the dust to settle down. I know you are making an effort to be balanced and everyone can be partly right and partly wrong in the debate, but some terms such as 'often considered literate' are wrong and can mislead people since this will be used by teachers and students all over the world. Imagine the confusion it will cause in the minds of students .and teachers . I can instead cite Farmer and declare it the most literate civilization on erth. And he and I could be saying the same thing. I say such terms must be avoided. Sujay Rao Mandavilli

Mohenjo-daro

Mohenjodaro as written in the article should be linked with Mohenjo-daro —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.19.197.159 (talk) 05:48, 30 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Good catch, done. Dougweller (talk) 08:37, 30 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Iravatham Mahadevan

A link to Iravatham Mahadevan should be added. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.145.40.44 (talk) 05:01, 14 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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