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13. * Conclusion*

The Indus script represents logo-syllabic writing. This means that it
does not constitute such a closed system of single-valued graphemes as
the syllabic and alphabetic scripts, which could be cracked as wholes.
Rather, individual signs may be interpreted one by one, and many of the
graphemes are likely to remain eternal mysteries.

The interpretations presented above, few in number but cross-checked,
suggest that the Indus script was essentially similar to the other
pictographic scripts created before the middle of the third millennium
B.C., that the language of the Indus people was Dravidian, and that they
professed a religion that was genetically related to the religions of
both the ancient West Asia and the later India.

The Harappan religion emerging from these interpretations is in an
interesting way reflected in the Indus pictograms. As iconic signs
making use of the picture puzzle (or rebus) principle, they can
simultaneously communicate two separate messages, one pictorial, one
phonetic. It seems to me that the creators of the script were at pains
to invent such iconic symbols that the two messages would be in harmony
with each other. Witness the 'roofed fish' (pictorial message) as the
rebus for the 'black star' (phonetic message), both symbols for the
deified dark planet Saturn, conceived as riding the slow-creeping tortoise.

NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY <parpola14.html>


 
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