Now, obviously, he was fighting with his own friends or collegues.

We do not know why Indologists why with each other in the case of IV script?

Lt us read, what “The Hindu" reports about it:

Date:17/02/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/02/17/stories/2008021759560500.htm
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Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Indus script was a writing system, avers Indologist

Special Correspondent

“With 400 standardised signs and regular lines, it followed strict rules”

— Photo: R. Ragu

STANDING BY HIS THEORY: Asko Parpola, professor emeritus of Indology, Institute of Asian and African Studies, the University of Helsinki (right), with visitors at the Roja Muthiah Research Library Trust in Chennai on Saturday.

CHENNAI: Veteran Indologist Asko Parpola asserted on Saturday that the Indus script was a writing system.

Delivering a talk, Prof. Parpola, professor emeritus of Indology, Institute for Asian and African Studies, the University of Helsinki, Finland, described the script as one of the oldest writing systems in the world.

It had an important place in the history of writing. With 400 standardised signs and regular lines, it followed strict rules.

Economic reasons

Prof. Parpola referred to a paper presented in 2004 by three historians, who had contended that the script was not writing. Citing a host of reasons to substantiate his position, he said the Indus script was created for economic and administrative reasons like the Archaic Sumerian script.

This could be found out, given that the majority of the surviving texts were seal stamps and seal impressions used in trade and administration.

The size

As for the issue of the size of Indus texts, he said though the texts had five signs as their average length, this was sufficient to express short noun phrases in a logo-syllabic script of the Sumerian type. “We cannot expect complete sentences in seals and other types of objects preserved.”

On the corpus of texts, he said more than 2,100 Indus texts came from Mohenjodaro alone, and only less than one-tenth of the city had been excavated. Manuscripts on perishable materials “almost certainly” existed in south Asia but had not been preserved during 600 years, from the beginning of the Persian rule, corresponding to the duration of the Indus Civilisation.

Writing equipment

As for the Harappan writing equipment used, he said an analysis of painted Indus texts on Harappan pots and bangles revealed that Indus people had used brushes to write, though the brushes had not survived or had not been recognised. In north India, palm leaf manuscripts had been painted with brushes. Some of the provisional identifications of the writing equipment were published fairly recently.

V.C. Kulandaisamy, veteran educationist, who presided over the meeting, praised Prof. Parpola for devoting his life to the research of the Indus script.

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