Chapters: Labour History of Pakistan, Linguistic History of Pakistan, Indus Script, Mazdoor Kissan Party, Labour Party Pakistan. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 26. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher’s book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge.
Excerpt: The term Indus script (also Harappan script) refers to short strings of symbols associated with the Indus Valley Civilization, in use during the Mature Harappan period, between the 26th and 20th centuries BC. In spite of many attempts at decipherments and claims, it is as yet undeciphered and even its interpretation as writing has been contested.
The underlying language is unknown, and the lack of a bilingual inscription makes the decipherment unlikely pending significant new finds. The first publication of a Harappan seal dates to 1873, in the form of a drawing by Alexander Cunningham. Since then, well over 4000 symbol-bearing objects have been discovered, some as far afield as Mesopotamia. In the early seventies Iravatham Mahadevan published a corpus and concordance of Indus writing listing about 3700 seals and about 417 distinct sign in specific patterns.
The average size of writing is five signs and largest text in a single line is 17 signs. He also established the direction of writing as right to left. 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. However most scholars disagree, claiming instead that the Brahmi script derived from the Aramaic script. The script generally refers to that used in the mature Harappan phase, which perhaps evolved from a few signs found in early Harappa after 3500 BC. However, the early.
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