Cipher Indus Script - Indus script cipher: hieroglyphs of Indian linguistic area

Indus Script Cipher Hieroglyphs of Indian linguistic area S. Kalyanaraman Sarasvati Research Center ISBN 9780982897102 All rights reserved. Printed in the USA First paperback printing, July 2010 The text type was set in Arial Unicode Sarasvati Research Center About the book This is a path-breaking work as significant as the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs by Champollion. For nearly130 years, the Indus script has remained a challenging enigma to scholars of languages, writing systems and civilization studies. The script was invented and used over an extensive area of what is called the Indus or Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization. Over 2000 or 80% of archaeological sites are found on the Sarasvati River basin, a river adored in a very old human document called the Rigveda and which dried up due to tectonic and resulting river migration causes.

In 1822, history was made when Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered by Jean-Franois Champollion from parts of the Rosetta Stone. Champollion showed that the Egyptian writing system, c.3000 BCE was a combination of phonetic and ideographic glyphs. The Rosetta Stone is dated196 BCE and had a decree in three versions: one in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, one in the Egyptian demotic script, and one in ancient Greek. Since alphabets of ancient Greek were known, Champollion used the trilingual inscription to validate his historic decipherment. Indus Script Cipher makes history recording hundreds of hieroglyphs of India. Absence of a Rosetta Stone which has been the principal impediment in validating any decryption of Indus script cipher is thus overcome.

Further validation comes from evidences of the historical periods in India from c. BCE showing continued use of Indus script hieroglyphs which evolved from c. 3300 BCE. This book details a decipherment.of the Indus script using the same rebus method used by Champollion to read ancient phonetic hieroglyphs of Indiat. By demonstrating an Indian linguistic area of cultural and language contacts and history of language changes, this is a landmark contribution to civilization studies of the world and will promote efforts to rewrite the ancient socio-cultural and economic history of a billion people in India and neighboring regions. Acknowledgments This book is a dedication to children of present and future generations.

The author gratefully acknowledges interactions with and contributions of editor and book designer, Anu Girish, Kiran Girish, cover designer, Prabha Girish, who are Kalyanaramans daughter and granddaughters, and Girish Venkat. They are all enthused about tracing their cultural roots. The author gratefully acknowledges the contributions made by Asko Parpola and I. Mahadevan, Harappa Archaeological Research Project, in particular and other compilers of corpus of Indus inscriptions -- and owes a deep debt of gratitude to hundreds of scholars (including Gregory Possehl, BB Lal, Massimo Vidale, Lyle Campbell) who have provided insights into the structure, form and purpose of the script, contact areas and the underlying linguistic area. Figures including those on cover pages of Sarasvati (divinity of vidy, learning and vk, language) painting by Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906), two svastika seals are in the public domain and/or courtesy Archaeological Survey of India, Department of Archaeology and Museums, Govt. of Pakistan, British and other museums of the world.

About the author Dr. S. Kalyanaraman is Director, Sarasvati Research Center, President, Ramasetu Protection Movement in India and BoD member of World Association for Vedic Studies. His research interests relate to rediscovery of Vedic Sarasvati River, roots of Hindu civilization, decoding of Indus Script, National Water Grid and creation of Indian Ocean Community. He has a Ph.D. in Public Administration from the Universitty of the Philippines.

He is a multi-lingual scholar versed in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Sanskrit, Hindi. He was a senior financial and IT executive in Asian Development Bank, Manila, Philippines and on Indian Railways. His publications include: Indian Lexicon - a multilingual dictionary for over Indian languages, Sarasvati in volumes, Indian Alchemy - Soma in the Veda. He is a recipient of many awards including Vakankar Award (2000), Shivananda Eminent Citizens Award (2008) and Dr. Hedgewar Prajna Samman (2008). Website: http://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97 Indus Script Cipher --Hieroglyphs of Indian linguistic area Executive summary Indus Script Cipher achieves a break-through, a successful decryption of the key used in the Indus writing code.

The key is rebus method applied to the underlying language of the linguistic area of South Asia. Decryption draws upon the database of 8000 semantic clusters of glosses, from an Indian Lexicon , a multi-lingual comparative dictionary of over ancient Indian languages, painstakingly compiled over years. Decrypted Indus script reveals that artisans lapidaries, masons, carpenters, miners and smiths -- of the civilization working with stones, wood, ivory, shell, minerals, metals and alloys of metals, created the Indus writing system to record 1) the characteristics of artifacts produced by them and 2) techniques used. The principal thesis of decryption of Indus script cipher is that, in the Indian linguistic area, artisans of proto-Indic language families Indo-Aryan, Munda (Kol) and Dravidian interacted with one another, absorbed many glosses and structural language features from one another. Complemented by recent advances in the method of areal linguistics, rebus method is applied to glyptic elements to decode Indus writing system. Given the fact that the three language families are a sprachbund (language union), with cultural contact situations and history of phonetic changes, of semantic expansions, the glosses common to two or more of these language families constitute the Indus language lexicon.

Decrypting the cipher "Nobody notices postmen nowadays," says Father Brown. (G.K. Chesterton, 1911, The Innocence of Father Brown ). Indus script decipherment is to find a solution to a problem in cryptography (called mlecchita vikalpa in Sanskrit) , like Chestertons detective Father Brown ; to decipher or, decode the glyphs to understand meanings of the messages conveyed by Indus writing on nearly 5000 inscriptions unearthed so far. Cipher uses a code and a code key to transform information. Cipher meaning the numeral derives from Arabic ( ifr , nothing).

Artisan-traders of ancient times created the ci pher (variant spelling of the word , cy pher) and their trade associates who received the messages could securely decipher the text of coded messages by performing an inverse substitution using the code keys: rebus. The idea of obscuring the message so that it could not be read even if it were intercepted resulted in "cryptography", Greek for "hidden writing". The result was the development of "codes", or secret languages, and "ciphers", or scrambled messages. A "code" is essentially a secret language invented to conceal the meaning of a message. The simplest form of a code is the "jargon code", in which a particular arbitrary phrase or glyph is used to substitute for the real intended message. [Note: Glyph of a device is shown in front of a one-horned heifer in over 1300 inscriptions: sangaa, lathe, portable furnace; rebus: battle; rebus: jangaiyo military guard who accompanies treasure into the treasury (Gujarati)] Let us assume that Indus writing is a cryptographic system using a code (or algorithm or code key) that converts glyphs into text messages. [Note: Glyph of a device is shown in front of a one-horned heifer in over 1300 inscriptions: sangaa, lathe, portable furnace; rebus: battle; rebus: jangaiyo military guard who accompanies treasure into the treasury (Gujarati)] Let us assume that Indus writing is a cryptographic system using a code (or algorithm or code key) that converts glyphs into text messages.