Words once spoken

Even today,when the eastern reaches of the Indus Valley Civilisation are being extended with the discovery of new sites and when archaeologists are finding possibilities of even older antiquity in the subcontinent’s northwest,re-reading that announcement from 1924 captures the excitement. John Marshall,then director general of the Archaeological Survey of India,made an announcement to The Illustrated London News that we are still getting a proper measure of: “Not often has it been to archaeologists,as it was given to Schliemann at Tiryns and Mycenae,or to Stein in the deserts of Turkestan,to light upon the remains of a long forgotten civilisation. It looks,however,at this moment,as if we were on the threshold of such a discovery in the plains of the Indus.”

In subsequent decades,the urban peculiarities and artefacts of the Indus Valley,or Harappan,Civilisation have been amply displayed and researched — as have been the contributions of lesser-known soldiers of the ASI like Rakhaldas Banerji. Indeed,the Harappan dancing girl has become an iconic representative of these parts. But even as the historical depth and expanse of the Harappan becomes clearer,and even as a culture war is fought over the inhabitants of that civilisation,a mystery has remained: did the Harappans have a written language?

Researchers from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research,Mumbai,and the University of Washington,Seattle,contended this week that the Indus civilisation did in fact have a written script. The mystery so far is whether the symbols found on countless seals indicated a written language or whether they are mere pictograms. The latest mathematical analysis holds the possibility of settling that debate,though the IVC still awaits its Rosetta Stone moment.