Inscriptions on Indus seals give details about animals sacrificed and nature of ceremony. Some ceremonies were performed for obtaining remission of sins and others were for pleasing the souls of dead ancestors (Pithru Karma ceremony).
Indus script had remained un-deciphered for a long time. There are some valid reasons for that. The Indus valley civilization flourished quite a long time back, approximately 4,000 years back.
The time gap is really big and the modern day man is not able to visualize the context in which these seals were prepared and what is written over those seals.
The earliest Indus archaeologists made the fundamental mistake of identifying these excavation sites as a “Megapolises,” whereas in reality they were “Necropolises.” This fundamental mistake had made it difficult to identify and recognize the role of seals and its inscriptions.
There are many decipherments of Indus seal inscriptions, some are based on Dravidian language and others are based on Aryan language. But, none of the decipherer is able to prove anything convincingly because there is no reference point.
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics code was broken using the tri-lingual inscription made on “Rosetta stone.” Whereas no such bilingual record are available in the case of Indus scripts so far. That doesn’t mean this Indus script had to remain un-deciphered. There are some other methods available to overcome this deficiency.
It is likely that Indus seals were “tokens of evidence” prepared to show the god of death that blood sacrifice had been made so that the dead man’s soul can pass through the trial and accepted in heaven, which is similar to the religious ideas of ancient Egypt.
The first symbol identified by me was “fish” symbol (Matsya), which stood for “Ma” sound. Interpretation of this symbol is quite easy and simple.
Whereas identifying the second commonly used symbol was not that much easy task and the second symbol identified was , which stood for phonetic sound of “Ka/Ga.”
Various names of gods have also been inscribed in Indus seals, however “God Indra” was quite popular and his name appears in many seals.
Next in importance is “goddess Hera,” which is quite unknown in India, however this name was quite popular among ancient Greeks, which shows the link between IVC and ancient Greek civilization.
Another major problem in reading the Indus inscriptions is that the direction from which the inscription should be read. While reading the Indus inscription, the reading should start from the side, which the animal is facing, which was the principle used by the Egyptian hieroglyphic writers.
The language of the Indus script had remained as a puzzle for long time and the conclusion now arrived at is that Indus scripts are written in “logo-syllabic” way and all the Indus inscriptions are based on Sanskrit language.
The methodology used in this decipherment effort is quite simple. I used an analysis table consisting of four steps.
Firstly, the figures (objects) shown in the inscriptions on the seal were identified.
Secondly, the Sanskrit names of the identified objects were obtained through online Sanskrit dictionary “Spokensanskrit,” which was quite useful in searching for the Sanskrit words.
Thirdly, the first letter of the object alone is taken out to form the word and the phonetic sound is obtained by using Logogram – syllabic method of reading.
Fourthly, if the word obtained is not giving correct sound and meaning, then the phonetic sound should be tweaked to get a meaningful word.
Copper tablets found in Mohenjo Daro have been analyzed by Prof Asko Parpola from the University of Helsinki and details are as given in his book Deciphering the Indus script (pp. 111-112). These copper tablets have all the qualities of bi-lingual inscription.
In the absence of Rosetta stone in Indus civilization, these copper tablets should be used as a reference point for Indus script decipherment.
Now, I would like to present first a simple word deciphered, so that it will be easy to understand. Rat is the “vahana” of God Ganesha, and the below given picture shows the rat in Indus copper tablets.
This inscription on this below given copper tablet should be read from “right to left:”
The final conclusion is that the name of rat in Indus language was “Musika.”
Nearly 115 symbols with their phonetic sound have been identified and the details are as given in the Indus Dictionary – Syllables.
Nearly 42 words have been identified so far, and many are merely repetition of these commonly found words, read in the Indus Dictionary – Words.
Pictures courtesy and acknowledgments: all the symbols are drawn out of models presented in the book Deciphering the Indus script (pp. 70-78); all the copper tablets figures are also from this book (pp. 111-112). Pictures of other seals reproduced in this article are from the book the Indus Script Dictionary. I hereby convey my acknowledgements to the above mentioned two authors.
This article is meant only for research and educational purpose and no commercial interest is involved.