The Harappan Civilization and Its Writing: A Model for the Decipherment of the Indus Script (Asian Studies)

Walter Ashlin Fairservis

ISBN 10: 9004090665 / ISBN 13: 9789004090668

Published by Leiden : Brill, 1997

About this Item

viii, 239 pages : illustrations, map ; 25 cm. Summary:"The text represents some ten years of work on the writing of the Harappan or Indus Civilization. It began out of frustration with the inability to more than record the seal-tablets and graffiti emanating from excavations at the Harappan site of Allahdino near Karachi. The fact has been that of all of the primary civilizations of the Old World only that of India has not been deciphered. Without the knowledge of the writing, archaeologists are terribly handicapped in identifying that civilization's place, not only in terms of subcontinental history, but in the larger history of civilization itself." "Over the years the research has led up many blind alleys adding only frustration on the one side, but also evoking a very real admiration for the similar efforts of others who were and are working on the same problem. The problems of historical linguistics or philology have been slow to solve but those solutions are essential to any decipherment." "The Harappan script is now well on its way to a final decipherment because of these efforts, as this book demonstrates. One can at last, move ahead in the understanding of the significant culture of India's remote past."--BOOK JACKET.

Seller Inventory # 18jbew111

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Harappan Civilization and Its Writing: A Model for the Decipherment of the Indus Script (Asian Studies)
• Publisher: Leiden : Brill
• Publication Date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9004090665
• ISBN 13: 9789004090668
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Language
  • Linguistics
  • India

About this title

Synopsis

Of the four most ancient civilizations of the Old World only the South Asian or Harappan civilization's writing has not been deciphered. Ever since the discovery of that civilization in the early part of the 20th century, almost innumerable efforts have been made by scholar and amateur alike to solve the puzzle of the ancient writing. The author, building on the most enlightened of these efforts and on his intimate experience in the archaeology of the Indus River region has created a methodology which makes possible a major breakthrough for the decipherment of the Harappan writing.
The book describes in detail what this methodology is and applies it to the writing. Over 4,000 inscriptions were studied from which a compilation of these signs used in the script writing, identification of each of the 419 signs involved, and their probable representation of words and sounds in the Harappan language, was made possible.
The book furnishes a model which can be tested. Sign identification lists, possible translations and a beginning of a grammar are included. The motifs associated with the writing are also studied and that relationship analyzed. The consequence of this understanding of the writing and the motif coupled with the already known archaeological evidence is the restoration of ancient life as it was lived in the Western part of the Indian Subcontinent in the 3rd Millennium B.C. While not a claim for decipherment, the model may yet be the most advanced step for decipherment yet taken.

About the Author

Walter A. Fairservis, Jr.: Ph.D., Harvard University. Professor of Anthropology, Vassar College. Director of the 1st and 2nd Afghan Expeditions of the American Museum of Natural History. Director of the Indus Expeditions of the American Museum of Natural History. He has published numerous books, articles and reviews, a.o. The Archaeology of the Southern Gobi, (1991).