It was long back in the 1920s, when excavations at various sites across north-west India brought forth to light the presence of the Harappan civilization. One among the world’s oldest civilizations, the settlements were found as scattered ruins of large well-planned brick-laid cities neatly laid around the Indus and Ghagghar river belts. Despite a large number of archaeological artefacts found from the 1,000 plus settlement sites, the civilization largely remained a mystery. This was primarily because unlike the Egyptian hieroglyphs, or the Mayan writing, Harappan scripts remained undecipherable, despite innumerable attempts to read it.
The Indus Script is the earliest form of writing known in the Indian subcontinent. The origin of this script is poorly understood. There is no agreement on the language it represents, no bilingual texts have been found thus far and its connection with Indian writing systems proper (e.g. Brahmi, Devanagari etc) is uncertain.
The earliest known examples of the Indus Script signs, were found from the early Harappan phase (3500-2700 BC) attested on Ravi and Kot Diji pottery excavated at Harappa. Based on the fact that only one sign is displayed on the pottery surface, these examples represent a premature stage in the development of the Indus Script. Its full development was reached during the Urban period (2600-1900 BC), when longer inscriptions were recorded. Thousands of inscriptions are known from some 60 excavation sites: most of them are short, the average length is five signs and none of them is longer than 26 signs. One of the most famous among these is the "Dholavira Signboard" - a large board made of gypsum with ten signs or letters.
Examples of Indus writing has been found on seals and seal impressions, pottery, bronze tools, stoneware bangles, bones, shells, ladles, ivory and on small tablets made of steatite, bronze and copper. Square stamp seals are the dominant form of Indus writing. They are normally a square inch (2.54 centimetres) displaying the script itself on the top and an animal motif at the centre. They are chiefly made of steatite, some of them include a layer of a smooth glassy-looking material, but there are also examples of seals made of silver, faience and calcite. The seals were pressed on a pliable surface (e.g. clay) in order to replicate its image.
Although decipherment of the Indus Script has not been possible yet, the majority of the scholars who have studied it agree on a number of points: The Indus Script was generally written from right to left. This is the case in most examples found, but there are some exceptions where the writing is bidirectional, which means that the direction of the writing is in one direction on one line but in the opposite direction on the next line. The representation of certain numerical values has been identified. A single unit was represented by a downward stroke, while semicircles were used for units of ten. The Indus Script combined both word signs and symbols with phonetic value. This type of writing system is known as "logo-syllabic", where some symbols express ideas or words while others represent sounds. This view is based on the fact that roughly 400 signs have been identified, which makes it unlikely that the Indus Script was solely phonetic.
Since the Indus Script has not been deciphered yet, its use is not known with certainty and all that we think we know is based on archaeological evidence alone. Some of the seals may have been used as amulets or talismans, but they also had a practical function as a marker for identification. Since writing in ancient times is generally associated with elites trying to record and control transactions, it is also believed that the Indus Script was used as an administrative tool. There are also examples of this script being used on clay tags attached to bundles of goods that were traded between merchants; some of these clay tags have been found in the Mesopotamia region, well outside the Indus Valley, a testimony of how wide goods travelled in ancient times. The Indus Script was also used in the context of ‘narrative imagery’: these images included scenes related to myths or stories, where the script was combined with images of humans, animals and/or imaginary creatures depicted in active poses. This last use resembles the religious, liturgical and literary use which is well attested in other writing systems.
There are a number of factors preventing scholars from unlocking the mystery of the Indus Script. To begin with, some of the languages of ancient times, such as Egyptian, were deciphered thanks to the recovery of bilingual inscriptions, that is by comparing an unknown script with a known one. Unfortunately, no bilingual inscriptions have yet been found to allow the Indus Script to be compared to a known writing system.
Another obstacle for its decipherment relates to the fact that all of the inscriptions found so far are relatively short, fewer than 30 signs. This means that analysing recurring sign patterns, another technique that can help to unlock the meaning of a writing system, cannot be successfully performed for the Indus Script.
The last important reason why the Indus Script remains undeciphered, and possibly the most debated of all, is that the language (or languages) that the script represents is still unknown. Scholars have suggested a number of possibilities: Indo-European and Dravidian are the two language families most commonly favoured, but other options have been proposed as well, such as Austro-asiatic, Sino-Tibetan, or perhaps a language family that has been lost. On the basis of the material culture associated with the Indus Valley Civilization, a number of scholars have suggested that this civilization was not Indo-European.
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