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**Drugmachine** · 05-12-2006, 02:08 PM

Originally Posted by devapriya It is an excellant link given, but Irawatham Mahadevan has made clear that reading of Those Pictograms from Right to Left as a Forgery and Sanskrit Traddtion is the Cotinuity of Indus Civilisation.

I reproduce the actual views of Iravadham Mahadevan as given in "The Hindu":

Mr. Mahadevan commented that the latest discovery was very strong evidence that the Neolithic people of Tamil Nadu and the Indus Valley people "shared the same language, which can only be Dravidian and not Indo-Aryan." But that said, one of my friends is of the view that the number of signs is too small to arrive at any conclusion. Can anyone throw more light on this? Or perhaps, should we wait for more evidence to surface..? Though I dont agree with Mahadevan completely on this, it makes some sense to think of Indus script to be tamil or some archaeic form of tamil. If we analyze the morphology of both tamil and sanskrit, we can find that both these languages have followed some unique pattern in word formation - tamil adding letters to right of root word and sanskrit left of root word. Of course we find some words that have the roots in middle. These could have been borrowed or could have been the result of combining two words.
If we see the growth of these languages, complex words have been added later in an uniform manner. So I assume that the primitive form should have consisted only monosyllabic roots. I notice that these monosyllabic roots, may be by coincidence, are actually sounds related to their meanings - like the sounds made by animals or by nature.
Primitive humans should have named things he saw by the sounds related to them. Then as their need for words grew, they could have started forming complex words. The first words should have been nouns and the others should have formed much later.
Tamil is noted for having multiple words meaning the same. So a primitive word could have had a lot of meanings and the language should have been spoken with the help of nouns - like "stone food" could have actually meant "kill the food (animal) with a stone tool" or something like that. The words for stone and food could have been like - kal, un. Since the vocabulary in this state is minimal, we dont need to invent any syllables or alphabets and can be represented by X - kal, Y - un. This could have actually been the root of all languages - later developing into different languages based on the people's practices and need - some could have continued monosyllabic words like chinese(analytic), some could have evolved agglutative like tamil and sanskrit, some could have developed into fusional languages like most languages.
About the word order, it could have been in both ways, though I guess right to left to be more probable. Most people are right handed. Right handed people normally hold the chisel with their left hand and hammer with right. So, it is a lot easier for a right handed person to chisel from right to left than from left to right. This also suggests that the earliest writing could have been from right to left till formation of some complex words. Then, at some point of time, some people could have started reading these from left to right and started creating new words based on these, leading to a new language. This new language could have been prakrit, which could have been quite messy since some words would have not been meaningful. So they could have cleaned their new language, creating sanskrit.

So, it is possible that the indus script is a script indeed and could be morphemes, comprising only of nouns.

05-12-2006, 02:08 PM	#26
Drugmachine Join Date Apr 2006 Posts 4,490 Senior Member	Originally Posted by devapriya It is an excellant link given, but Irawatham Mahadevan has made clear that reading of Those Pictograms from Right to Left as a Forgery and Sanskrit Traddtion is the Cotinuity of Indus Civilisation. I reproduce the actual views of Iravadham Mahadevan as given in "The Hindu": Mr. Mahadevan commented that the latest discovery was very strong evidence that the Neolithic people of Tamil Nadu and the Indus Valley people "shared the same language, which can only be Dravidian and not Indo-Aryan." But that said, one of my friends is of the view that the number of signs is too small to arrive at any conclusion. Can anyone throw more light on this? Or perhaps, should we wait for more evidence to surface..? Though I dont agree with Mahadevan completely on this, it makes some sense to think of Indus script to be tamil or some archaeic form of tamil. If we analyze the morphology of both tamil and sanskrit, we can find that both these languages have followed some unique pattern in word formation - tamil adding letters to right of root word and sanskrit left of root word. Of course we find some words that have the roots in middle. These could have been borrowed or could have been the result of combining two words. If we see the growth of these languages, complex words have been added later in an uniform manner. So I assume that the primitive form should have consisted only monosyllabic roots. I notice that these monosyllabic roots, may be by coincidence, are actually sounds related to their meanings - like the sounds made by animals or by nature. Primitive humans should have named things he saw by the sounds related to them. Then as their need for words grew, they could have started forming complex words. The first words should have been nouns and the others should have formed much later. Tamil is noted for having multiple words meaning the same. So a primitive word could have had a lot of meanings and the language should have been spoken with the help of nouns - like "stone food" could have actually meant "kill the food (animal) with a stone tool" or something like that. The words for stone and food could have been like - kal, un. Since the vocabulary in this state is minimal, we dont need to invent any syllables or alphabets and can be represented by X - kal, Y - un. This could have actually been the root of all languages - later developing into different languages based on the people's practices and need - some could have continued monosyllabic words like chinese(analytic), some could have evolved agglutative like tamil and sanskrit, some could have developed into fusional languages like most languages. About the word order, it could have been in both ways, though I guess right to left to be more probable. Most people are right handed. Right handed people normally hold the chisel with their left hand and hammer with right. So, it is a lot easier for a right handed person to chisel from right to left than from left to right. This also suggests that the earliest writing could have been from right to left till formation of some complex words. Then, at some point of time, some people could have started reading these from left to right and started creating new words based on these, leading to a new language. This new language could have been prakrit, which could have been quite messy since some words would have not been meaningful. So they could have cleaned their new language, creating sanskrit. So, it is possible that the indus script is a script indeed and could be morphemes, comprising only of nouns.
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