Script

1. Archaeological setting and discovery

The Indus or Harappan civilisation extended across parts of present-day Pakistan and northwestern and western India. Its sign system is documented at major urban centres such as Harappa, Mohenjo-daro and Dholavira, as well as smaller settlements. The wide distribution of related signs places the script within the shared material culture of the Harappan world, alongside standardised weights, characteristic seals and craft traditions.

Alexander Cunningham published an inscribed seal from Harappa in 1875, before its antiquity and civilisational context were understood. Excavations at Harappa under Daya Ram Sahni from 1921 and at Mohenjo-daro under Rakhal Das Banerji from 1922 helped establish that these objects belonged to a previously unrecognised ancient civilisation. John Marshall announced the discovery of the civilisation in 1924.

Marks on pottery from earlier levels provide evidence for antecedent practices of marking objects. However, isolated potters’ marks should not automatically be identified as examples of a fully developed writing system. The clearest and most extensive evidence for the conventional Indus script comes from the Mature Harappan period. Its regular use declined with the transformation of the urban civilisation after approximately 1900 BCE; continuity into later Indian scripts has not been demonstrated.

• Important sites for script evidence include Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Dholavira, Lothal and Kalibangan.
• Archaeological context matters: a sign scratched on a pot and a sequence engraved on an official-looking seal need not have served the same purpose.

2. Materials, sign forms and direction

Square steatite stamp seals are the most recognisable inscribed objects. Many combine a short sign sequence with an animal motif, particularly the so-called unicorn, and have a boss on the reverse. Other animals include bulls, elephants and rhinoceroses. The animal image and the inscription are distinct components of the design; an animal motif should not automatically be counted as a script sign.

Signs also occur on clay sealings, small tablets, pottery, copper implements or tablets, and a limited range of other objects. Sealings are impressions made by pressing a seal into a soft material. Some preserve traces of cords or packaging on their backs, helping archaeologists reconstruct their use in securing or identifying goods. Because a seal matrix produces a reversed impression, the surface being examined matters when determining reading direction.

The repertoire contains geometric forms and signs resembling fish, jars, plants or human figures. Calling a sign fish-shaped describes its appearance, not its meaning. Estimates commonly cluster around 400 basic signs, but scholars disagree over whether closely related forms are separate signs, scribal variants or compound constructions.

Most inscriptions are extremely short, commonly around five signs, while even the longest generally cited sequences contain only about two dozen. Many were probably read from right to left: crowding at the left end of some inscriptions suggests that the engraver was running out of space. Other arrangements occur, and some multiline examples have been interpreted as boustrophedon, with alternating directions. Neither right-to-left direction nor boustrophedon should be treated as universal.

• Seal: the engraved object used to create an impression.
• Sealing: the impression on clay or another soft material.
• Pictorial appearance does not prove that each sign represents a complete object or idea.

3. Functions and implications for Harappan society

The association of inscriptions with seals, standardised weights, craft centres and exchange networks suggests uses in identification, administration and economic transactions. Seals may have identified individuals, groups, institutions or consignments. Short texts could also have had religious or ceremonial functions. These remain interpretations rather than translations: no seal can yet be confidently read as a particular merchant’s name, tax record or royal title.

Shared sign forms and recurring sign sequences across distant settlements indicate conventions extending beyond a single city. This supports the existence of communication networks and trained practices of inscription. However, common conventions do not establish a single empire, one language or universal literacy. The number of people who could produce or understand these signs is unknown.

Harappan seals and related objects found beyond the Indus region connect the script with long-distance interaction. Mesopotamian texts mention Meluhha, widely associated with the Indus region, and provide external evidence for trade. Such references do not supply a translation of Indus inscriptions or securely identify the Harappan language.

• Useful inference: inscriptions formed part of a complex urban material culture.
• Unsupported leap: standardised signs prove the existence of a named king, dynasty or centralised imperial bureaucracy.

4. Why decipherment remains unresolved

Decipherment means establishing how signs encode language and demonstrating readings that work consistently across independent texts. The main obstacles are the brevity of inscriptions, uncertainty about the underlying language, disagreement over the sign inventory and the absence of a securely identified bilingual text. No equivalent of the Rosetta Stone, which assisted the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs, has been found.

The system is often hypothesised to be logosyllabic, combining signs representing words with signs representing syllables. The relatively large sign inventory makes a simple alphabetic interpretation unlikely. Nevertheless, the precise relationship between signs and speech remains unproven. The label pictographic is therefore insufficient as an explanation of how the system functioned.

Iravatham Mahadevan and Asko Parpola are especially associated with systematic study of the inscriptions and hypotheses involving Dravidian languages. Other proposals invoke Indo-Aryan, Munda or unidentified languages. None has produced a decipherment accepted across the field. Modern geographical distributions of languages cannot by themselves establish which language was spoken in third-millennium BCE Harappan cities.

Some researchers, notably Steve Farmer, Richard Sproat and Michael Witzel, have argued that the signs formed a nonlinguistic symbol system rather than full writing. Other scholars cite ordering constraints, recurring combinations and comparisons with known scripts in support of linguistic encoding. Statistical and computational studies can identify patterns, but pattern detection alone cannot establish pronunciation, meaning or language.

• A persuasive reading must explain repeated signs and sequences consistently, rather than selecting a few convenient examples.
• A claimed link between Indus signs and Brahmi is not an established fact; securely deciphered Ashokan Brahmi belongs to the third century BCE.

5. Exam approach and evidence-based interpretation

For Prelims, prioritise the association with Harappan sites, the use of seals and other portable objects, short inscriptions, probable right-to-left direction in many examples, and the absence of an accepted decipherment. Distinguish this evidence from later deciphered scripts such as Brahmi and Kharoshthi. The language of the Indus inscriptions cannot currently be identified confidently as Sanskrit, Tamil or any other known language.

For analytical answers, the script illustrates both the sophistication of Harappan urban culture and the limits of archaeological reconstruction. Architecture, settlement patterns, artefacts and environmental evidence remain essential because inscriptions cannot yet provide readable histories. Unlike societies with deciphered archives, Harappan rulers, institutions and beliefs cannot be reconstructed directly from their own written statements.

Treat news reports of decipherment cautiously. Strong claims require well-documented objects, transparent sign classification, reproducible methods and readings tested against previously unused inscriptions. Archaeological discoveries and digital corpora may improve the evidence base, but an attractive interpretation is not equivalent to a demonstrated solution.

• Do not confuse an undeciphered script with proof that Harappans lacked communication or record-keeping systems.
• Do not interpret animal motifs, proposed religious symbols or modern language similarities as independently sufficient evidence of a decipherment.

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