Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
A
animals so prominently featured on the
tion to those interested in the local cultures in an unbroken sequence 1700Bcand the second between 1700and Indus seals is good evidence for the non-
problems of the Indus script. A from the Neolithic at the end oftheeighth 1500 BC. Arya n character ofthe Indus Civilization.
specialist in Vedic philology, he turned millennium BC, through the Chakolithic According to Parp:>la a small wave of Parpola quotes from a fairly uptodate
hisattention at an early stage in his career (about5OOO-3600 ec)and Early Harappan Aryan-speaking nomads from the north- and authoritative report by Richard
to the decipherment of the Indus script (about 3600-2600 BC) to the commence- ern steppesarrivcd in this region in BMAC Meadow that there is as yet no convinc-
and has, along with his Finnish colleagues, ment of the Mature Harappan period in I period and adopted the local non-Aryan ing evidence for horse remains from ar-
made immensely valuable contributions about 2550 DC. culture while retaining their own Aryan chaeologicalsites insouth Asia before the
to his chosen field over the last three Thelnduscivilizationbegan with some language. Parpola identifies their name end of the second millennium BC. Many
decades. Although he is associated with major developments like the introduc- as Dasa from Old Persian inscriptions claims have been made, but few have
the Dravidianist school of decipherment, tion of writing and a surprisingly uni- and Greek and Latin sources. The pres- been documented for independent verifi~
his contributions to the documentation form culture over the whole of t he greater ence of the horse and evidence fo r the cation. The wild relatives of the horse and
and theoretical studies of the Indus script Indus Valley. According to Parpola this practice of chariot warfare by the ruling donkey are not native to South Asia, and
transcend linguistic boundaries. Of the development was dueto increased mari- elite appearing at this time in Bactria the domesticated animals were brought
earlier booksco-authored by Parpola, spe- time trade and closer cultural contacts confirm the Indo-European origin of the into the region from the west and north.
cial mention must be made here of the with Mesopotamia "nd the Culf region. Dasas. The fortified palace at Oashly-J Parpola points out why the 'ho rse
C01pus ofT~xts in the Indu.s Script (1979), A There is now general agreement that with three concentric circular walls be- argument' is so central to the issue. The
Concordal1c~ to the Texts in thL Indus ScripC Meluhha mentioned in the cuneiform longing to this period is identified by ProtO-Aryan words lor thehorseand the
0982), and the magnificently produced inscriptions refers to the land of the In- Parpola typologically as Tripura, 'triple various technical terms associated with
photo albums, Corpus of Indus Stills and dus. Parpola lays stress on the impor- fort' of the Dasas in Vedic mythology. the war chariot can all be solidly recon-
Inscriptions, two volumes of which have t"nce of Harappan contacts with West Parpola suggests that the Dasa-Aryans structed to Proto-Indo-European. This is
so far bee!, published (1987, 1991) with Asia, which provide relevant parallels from BMAC arrived in South Asia via good linguistic evidence that the Vedic
assistance from UNESCO and coopera- and potential sources of il'lformation On Baluchistan du r ing the time of the Late h orSIl and c hariotry are firmly rooted in
tion of the Archaeological Departments the Harappan culture. Harappan cultures, as evidenced by the the Proto- l ndo~European heritage. The
of India and Paklstan.. These books have The Indus Civilization flourished be- typically BMAC graves and cenotaphs at evidence strongly suggests that the Indus
already established themselves as the tween about 2600 and 1800 DC when it Mehrgarh and other sites on the Kachi culture was non-Aryan.
standard reference works and indispen- collapsed into regional cultures at the plain near the Bolan Pass. According to
The Dravidian hypothesis
sable tools for further research on the Late Harappan stage. According to Par~ him these early 'Indian Dasas' are likely
Indus script. pola the collapse was due to "combina- to have become the ru ling elite in the late The survival of Brahui, a Dravidian lan-
Parpola's latest book covers a much tion of severnl factors like over-exploita- Harappan cultures: the Cemetery-H cul- guage, spoken even today by large num-
wider area than what its title indicates. tion of the environment, drastic changes ture of the Punjab, the Jhukar culture of bers of people in Baluchistan and the
The volume commences with a brief sur- intheriver-courses, seriesof floods, water- Sind, and the Ochre coloured Pottery adjoining areas in.Afghanistan and Iran,
veyof the Indus Civilization in its histori- logging and increased salinity of the irri- culture of the Ganga-Yamuna Doab. is an important factor i n the identification
cal context and an illuminating account gated lands. Finally the weakened cities Parpola also proposes that a second of the Indus CiYilization as Dravidia n.
ofthe writing systems of the ancient world would haye become easy victims of the wave of Indo-European speakers from Brahui belongs linguistically to t he North
and the methods devised to decipher raiders from Central Asia, whose arrival the northern steppes swept over the Bac- Dravid ian group with several shared
them. Then follows a very detailed study heralded a major cultural discontinuity tria-Margiana region in about 1700 Be. innovations with Kurukh and Malto; no
of the theoretical aspects of the Indus in South Asia. Evidence for this comes from the distinct dialectal reaturesconnect it with the South
script including a structural analysis of break between the cultures of BMAC I or Central Dravidian languages. Hence
The coming of the Ary'lns and II at this time. Parpola identifies the
the texts, a typological analysis of their Parpola concludes that Brahui represents
linguistic features and the methodology Parpola proposes a new theory about newcomers as 'Sauma-Aryans' from their the remnants of the Dravidian language
of decipherment. While arguing that the when, from where and how the Aryans ritual of Soma drinking which the 'Dasa- spoken in the area by the descendants of
Indus Civilization is pre-Aryan and non- came into the Indian sub-continent and Aryans' did not practice. Evidence for the Harappan population.
Aryan, Parpola presents an altogether the identity of the Dasas (Dasyus) who Ephtdrll (identified as the Soma plant) has The pervasive substratum influence
new and fascinati ng theory about the were their traditional enemies. Accord- been ~iscovered in the residues of liquid of Dravidian on Old IndO-Aryan is also
Aryan immigration into the Indian sub- ing to this theory, the Rigvedic Aryans in ritual vessels found in the temple-forts an important clue to the presence of
continent. Next he sets out in detail the were preceded by another wave of Indo- of Togolok-21 and Gonur-I in Margiana Dravidian in the northwestern region
evidence for believing that the Harap- European-spea.king invaders who called dating from the BMAC II phase. from the earliest times. The presence of a
pans were Dravidian speakers. In the last themselvestheDasasand who penetrated The Sauma-Aryans too would have few Dravidian loan~words in the Rigvedil
part of the work Parpola presents his further to the east than did the Rigvedic largely adopted the local culture, but a lso is now well recognised. The Rigvedil has
readings and interpretations of selected Aryans. transforming the cult of the Asura-wor- also phonological and syntactical features
Indus signs together with a detailed de- The new theory is based o n textual- shipping Dasas into the Deva-worship- borrowed from Dravidian. Among the
scription of the astral religion of the linguistic re-interpretation of the Vedic ping cult involving the Soma ritual. After features listed by Parpola arethe retroflex
Harappan culture revealed, according to evidence in the light of the recent remark- the fusion of the two peoples, one group sounds, gerund, quotative and onomato-
him, by the inscriptions. able discoveries made by Soviet archae- of the unified Proto-Indo-Aryans mi- poeic constructions. The Prakrit dialects
ologistsof a previously unknown Bronze grated eastwards into the Swat valley too underwent a radical simplification of
Rise and fall of the Indus Civiliution
Age civilization in Bactria (North Afghani- founding the Proto-Rigvedic culture. the Indo-Aryan syllabic structure through
Recent archaeological evidence especially stan) and Margiana (in Turkmenistan). Parpcla's new hypothesis will have to assimilation of consonants and intrusive
from Mehrgarh has established that the The Bactria~Margiana Archaeological be examined in detail by specialists in vowels, features which are best explained,
Indus Ovilization was essentially an Complex (BMAC) had two distinct cul- South Asian history and Indo-European as Parpola points out, as adjustment to
JUNE 1995 9
the phonology of a Dravidian substra- calor composite beasts. There arc also makes it difficult for some North Indians units. Segmentation has shown that the
tum. some interesting religious or mythologi- to admit even the possibility of the Indus Indus texts mostly consist of phrases of
Survival of place-names is generally a cal motifsdepicling deities and sacrificial civilization being pre-Aryan; they deny one to three signs.
good indicator of the linguistic pre-his- scenes. the very concept of Aryan immigration d) Languagt typology:Thevery short
tory of a region. Parpola points out sev- and insist that the Harappan and Vedic Indus texts are unlikely to be complete
Earlier attempts at decipherment
eral place-names in the northwestern cultures are one and the same. 50 the sentences. They may consist of mostly
region like nagara, J'Qlli, paFPna and ko", Structural studies of the Indus inscrip- language chosen has usually been San- noun-phrases on ly. Subject to this limita-
with good Dravidian etymologies. I am tions have been carried out by a num ber skrit" (p.58). I agree with Parpola about tion some typological features of the lan-
not however-convinced by his attempt to of scholars ever since the discovery of the the existence of 'nationalistic bias', but guage can still be detected. For example.
derive Meluhha (the name of the land of Indus Civilization and its writing. The would like to remind him that 5.R. Rao the occurrence of numerals before the
the Indus in the cuneiform texts) from most outstanding work in the earlier and Krishna Rao, leading proponents of enumerated objects makes it likely that in
Dravidian mi-lbm , 'High country', not period is that of Hunter who provided the Indo-Aryan theory, can hardly be the Harappan language the adjecti~
actuallyattestcd, as Parpola himself JX>ints reliable eyecopies of the inscriptions, a called 'North Indian'! precedes the noun it qualifies. Parpola
out, in any of the Dravidian languages. manually arranged sign concorda nce and has devised a 'grid' in which inscriptions
Structural analysis by Parpola
Parpola also points out that syntacti- a detailed positional analysis. are so arranged as to place identical or
cal analysis of the Indus inscriptions has The computer arrived on the scene in No attempt at linguistic decipherment of similar signs in the same columns. On the
revealed Dravidian-like typological char- the mid-sixties. A Soviet team led by an unknown script can hope to succeed basis of this analysis Parpola constructs a
acteristics, especially the attribute pre- Knorozov published a series of papers unless it is preceded by a thorough struc- general model of Indus 'scntences' with a
ceding the headword . The cumulative entitled Proto-ll1d iCQ, in which they set out tural analysisoftheavailable inscriptions maximum ofthree main positions or 'slots'
weight of evidence makes Dravidian the brieflythemainresultsoftheircomputer- to bring out the typological features of the corresponding to linguistic units in the
most likely language to have been spoken. aided investigations. The Soviet group script as well as the underlying language. language. However headmits frankly his
by the Harappans. has made outstanding contributions to A great merit of this book is that Parpola "present i na bility to identify morphologi-
The Indus uript formal analysis in areas like direction of has presented in it a very detailed struc- cal markers with any certainty" (p. 97).
writing, word-division and syntactical tural analysis incorporating the previous Parpola's structural analysis is bril
The Indus script has about 400 signs and patterns. In particular they have demon- work of the Finnish group and advancing Iiant and mostly on sound lines. I am
is mainly pictographic in character. strated that the Indus inscriptions have a further. The following is a very brief particularly struck by the fact that despite
However there are also many signs too Dravidian-like word order. However the summary of his main results in a some- differences in detail there is a dear con-
stylised or simplified to be identified Soviet model of linguistic decipherment what simplified form. vergence of results flowing from the
pictorially. Two main characteristics of of the Ind us script has not won general a) Direction of writing: Parpola has Soviet, Finnish and Indian romputer-
the script are modifkat ion of signs by the acceptance mainly bocauseofthe Un plau- summarised thealreadywell-established aided structural analyses. 1be mapr
addition of diacritic-like marks and sibility of the p roposed readings. evidence proving the general direction of points of agreement are on the logo-syl-
combination of two or more signs into Almost simultaneously Asko Parpola the Indus script to be ITom right to left. labic character of the Indus script, the
composite signs. According to Parpola's and his finnish colleagues began their External evidence for the direction of syntactical pattern of theinscriptionsand
estimate, about half the number of signs independent computer-aided investiga- writing is provided by the shorter in- the Dravidian-like lcaturesollhe Harap-
are basic and the other half are composite. tions of the Indus texts. The Finnish team SCriptions starting at the right edge leav- pan language. A major area of disagree-
Many of the signs also show minorgra phic also made use of computationallinguis- ing blank space nearer the left edge, and ment concerns the identity and functions
variants due to different scribal styles or tic technioues to deal with structural the displacement of the left-most signs of of morphological markers. I have no doubt
materials on which the inscriptions are
problems like word division procedures the longer inscriptions to the second line that the areas of disagreement will pro-
recorded.
and syntactical analysis. However the for want of space. Intemal evidence [or gressively geteliminated as we learn more
Parpola's latest and comprehensive
earlier finnish attempt at linguistic deci- the direction of writing is obtained by about the Indus script through objective
Sign List (with 398 signs and no less than
pherment did not also meet: with much comparing single-line and two-line sc- analysis of the kind undertaken by Par-
1839 variants) illustrated in this volume
success. Parpola himself now describes quences of identical inscriptions. pola in this book.
(pp. 70-78) will replace all earlier lists to
their earlier reports as "written in the first Even though the question of direction
remain as the standard source of refer- Parpola's methodology of decipherment
flush of enthusiasm" and "prcmatureand of writing in the Indus script is now a
ence. Experts may differ whether a given
incautious" (p.xv). With rate inteliectual settled fact, Parpola's re-statement is Parpola's methodology for deciphering
sign is basic or composite or a variant of
courage he has now abandoned the para- timely as claims of 'decipherment' based the Indus script consists essentially of
another sign. However Parpola has now
digm central to the earlier Finnish model on a left to right direction still continue to two par~s, namely the rebus principle
provided the most complete documenta-
of decipherment and has made a virtu- be made. generally applicable to all andent logo-
tion enabling other scholars to dra w their
ally fresh beginning. b) Sign analysis: Parpola lays down syllabic scripts and the li nguistic tech-
own conclusions.
TheJatestattempttodecipherthelndus dear guidelines for the recognition of niqueapplicable to Ora vidian word -signs
The Indu! inscriptions script, prior to the publication of the pres- basic signs, graphic variants and com- (one sign for each word) developed from
ent work,. has been made by Walter Fairs- posite signs. The numerals are identified pictures. It was then discovered that a
The Indus inscriptions are found only on
ervis, thedistinguished American archae- as a set of short stroke signs comprising word-sign could also be used to repre-
small objects, mostly stone seals <11nd on ologist with long experience in Harappan upto nine strokes arranged in oneor two sent any other word with the same sound
pottery. According toParpoiaabout 3700 excavations. He has manually arranged tiers.Croupsof small inverted semi-circles but havinga different meanjn&. Such sets
inscriptions are presently known from the Indus sign sequences in a 'grid' to which occur along with the 'stroke' of words are known as homophones (as
about forty Harappan and twenty for- bring out their functional characteristics numerals are very likely to be tens. in English 0211 (noun), 'a container' and
eign sites. The inSCriptions are all ex- and syntactical patterns. The analysis is The estimate of the number of signs as 0211 (verb), 'to be able to'). Thus a sign
tremely brief, averaging not more than sound; but his model of decipherment about 400 (with only about half of them which is pictorially easier to draw can be
about five signs ina text. Parpola believes based on the Dravidian hypothesis (pub- basic signs) leads to an important deduc- used to represent another word with the
that longer Indus inscriptions might have lished in 1992 shortly before his death) tion regarding the typology of the Indus same sound, but the meaning of which
been written on palm leavesorcloth which has not been taken seriously because of script. It is well known that the total cannot be depicted by pictures, as for
have perished.
his lack of familiarity with the Dravidian number of signs is specific to each type of example, abstract nouns, grammatical
No bi-lingual inscription has so far
languages and linguistic techniques. writing within a range. The number of particles and proper names. This tech-
come to light to aid decipherment. The In his brief review of the earlier at- signs in the Indus script is too small for a nique, employed in all andentlogo-syl-
only external dues available are those tempts at decipherment of the Indus purely logo-graphic script (with word- labic scripts, is known as rebus writing
provided by the archaeological context, script, Parpola takes no notice of the signs only) and too large for a purely (from Latin u bus, 'by means of things').
the typology of the objects carrying the models based on the Indo-Aryan hypothe- alphabetic or syllabic writing. Thus the Parpola is careful to point out that
inscriptions, and the accompanying pic-
sis, presumably because there is hardly Indus script is most likely to be logo-syl- rebus writing can be deciphered only if
torial motifs. The pictorial motifs are
anything in common between them and labic writing with a mi)(ture of word- four conditions are simultaneously ful-
mostly those of animals, especially the
his own work. However Patpola leaves signs and syllables. filled :
so-<alled unicorn, but a150 many others no one in doubt about what he thinks of c) Word-division: Segmentation pro-
including the bull, buffalo, elephant, ti- the other approach: "Nationalistic bias 1. The object depicted by the word-
cedures lead to the identification of prob-
ger, rhinoceros, antelope and a few mythi- sign can be recognised.
able words, phrases and longer syntactic
JUNE 1995 11
also exact. own rules of rebus, which require the
If inspite of all this, there is a nagging finding of another meaning for the I:i\lM.
doubt about the correctness of the read- word (.CQ~l), and not for an associated
term (-pi/Jay). Further as far as I know,
ing, it isdue to the fact that muruhc is not
the appropriate word for stoneware there seems to be no attested usage in v y 1,;t
bangles. Theword murukuisderived from
the verbal root mw/mur-V which has
Dravidian for pil/tly by itself to mean
'squirrel'. The suffix pi/Pi is added in
S.124 d 9