Blogposts on Indus Writing

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/sarasvati-is-vagambhrini.html Sarasvat is vgmbhi Sarasvat is vgmbhi

(After KS Valdiya) The width of the riverbed at Shatrana is 20 kms. attesting to the 90-degree westward migration of utudr (Sutlej) at Ropar (a site of the civilization with a site museum with a huge gorge of a Himalayan river making incisions into the terrain).

Saptasindhu (Nation of seven rivers): Theatre of Pacajanh, five peoples (Source: Marius Fontane, 1881, Histoire Universelle, Inde Vedique (de 1800 a 800 av. JC), Alphonse Lemerre, Editeur, Paris.

IRS P3 WiFS True Color Composite image: palaeo-drainage of Sarasvati river basin. 4 to 10 kms. wide channels. Indian Space Research Organisation, Jodhpur. Methinks, this note provides a clear reference to a speech area and a union of people (perhaps pacajanh) in the sprachbund, defined by an ancient river basin unraveled by scientific studies -- also attested in the Rigveda. Sarasvat is vgmbhi, Vk says: aham rr sangaman vasnm (RV 10.125 Devskta). The root morphemes of the compound word vgmbhi indicate a reference to rapidly flowing waters and sounds of the river Sarasvat, the nourisher of the people of a civilization which flourished on the river banks.

vgmbhi is a union of people, nourished and nurtured by and along sacred union of waters, rr or rram is light of the path. This path is vk, speech.
The devat is vgmbhi, the name of riik is the same. The entire skta is rendered as a monologue, as tmastuti, self-praise. . (RV 10.125.1) 3

 . . . . . . . Translation (based on Wilson): 10.125.01 I proceed with the Rudras, with the Vasus, with the dityas, and with the Vis'vedev; I support both Mitra and Varua, Agni and Indra, and the two As'vins. [Deity Paramtm: the word, or first of creatures]. 10.125.02 I support the foe-destroying Soma, Tva, Pan and Bhaga; I bestow wealth upon the institutor of the rite offering the oblation, deserving of careful protection, pouring forth the libation. 10.125.03 I am the sovereign queen, the collectress of treasures, cognizant (of the Supreme Being), the chief of objects of worship; as such the gods have put me in many places, abiding in manifold conditions, entering into numerous (forms. 10.125.04 He who eats food (eats) through me; he who sees, who breathes, who hears what is spoken, does so through me; those who are ignorant of me perish; hear you who have hearing, I tell that which is deserving of belief. 10.125.05 I verily of myself declare this which is approved of by both gods and men; whomsoever I will, I render formidable, I make him a Brahm, a i, or a sage. [A Brahman: Brahm, the creator]. 10.125.06 I bend the bow of Rudra, to slay the destructive enemy of the Brhmaas, I wage war with (hostile) men. I pervade heaven and earth.

10.125.07 I bring forth the paternal (heaven) upon the brow of this (Supreme Being), my birthplace is in the midst of the waters; from thence I spread through all beings, and touch this heaven with my body. 10.125.08 I breathe forth like the wind giving form to all created worlds; beyond the heaven, beyond this earth (am I), so vast am I in greatness.

Translation (based on Ralph Griffith):

I TRAVEL with the Rudras and the Vasus, with the Adityas and AllGods- I wander. I hold aloft both Varuna and Mitra, Indra and Agni, and the Pair of Asvins. 2 I cherish and sustain highswelling- Soma, and Tvastar I support, Pusan, andBhaga. I load with wealth the zealous sdcrificer who pours the juice and offers his oblation 3 I am the Queen, the gathererup- of treasures, most thoughtful, first of those who merit worship. Thus Gods have stablished me in many places with many homes to enter and abide in. 4 Through me alone all eat the food that feeds them, each man who sees, brewhes, hears the word outspoken They know it not, but yet they dwell beside me. Hear, one and all, the truth as I declare it. 5 1, verily, myself announce and utter the word that Gods and men alike shall welcome. I make the man I love exceeding mighty, make him a sage, a Rsi, and a Brahman. 6 I bend the bow for Rudra that his arrow may strike and slay the hater of devotion. I rouse and order battle for the people, and I have penetrated Earth and Heaven. 7 On the worlds' summit I bring forth the Father: my home is in the waters, in the ocean. Thence I extend over all existing creatures, and touch even yonder heaven with my forehead. 8 I breathe a strong breath like the wind and tempest, the while I hold together all existence. Beyond this wide earth and beyond the heavens I have become so mighty in my grandeur. sangamanya 'leading to union, effecting union'. I am rram, I effect the union. Union of what? Uniting water and sound of speech, union of people with wealth is effected. 5

 a. (- f.) [-] consisting of water, being watery, fluid. [, ] To sound. 'water' 'water'. 'Bearing, maintaining, supporting, nourishing.' 'good mother'. ambhia 'powerful, great' (RV i.133.5); 'roaring terribly' (Syaa); a vessel used in the preparation of Soma juice (VS). Name of a rishi, father of vc. mbhi 'daughter of mbhia, name of vc.' The compound sounds as an extraordinary construct linking the 'bearing' of 'sound and water' in vk 'speech' and ambhas 'sound, water'. vgmbhi thus means a nourisher who, in speech, bears the sound and water. She is vgdevi 'divinity of speech'.

Rigveda attests many Ekki Riik or Brahmavdin or householder Riik who had the educational discipline of brahmacarya: Aditi (author of Vaivadev skta), Aditi Dkya, Suditi, Agastyavas, Agastyapatni, Roma (RV 1.126.7), Devarav, Surdh, Lopmudr (RV 1.179), Citramah, Vyghrapt akti, Rakoh, Jet Madhucchand, Sarpargyi, Apl, Kadru, Vivavara, Indri, Nidhruvi, Vivrih, Dakin, Kakvati Gho, Juhu, vgmbhi (RV 10.125), Paulomi, Jarita, raddha-Kamayani, rvai, rnga, Yami, Indrani, Sry Svitr, Sumitr, Devayni, Suveda saurii Saur, rdhvaadhy, Kritaya. Samaveda has Nodh (Prvrccik, Akriam, Sikatanivavari (Uttarrccik) and Gaupyana. (For a full list of Rii and rihik, see: Prof. Shrikant Prasoon, 2009, Rishis and Rishikas, Pustak Mahal, pp.61-66). Bhadrayaka Upaniad refers to a prayer for a daughter who would become a pait. This is consistent with the tradition of Svitr Vacana referring to higher studies, upanayana (sacredthread-wearing) performed for girls, equal rights for performing prayers recognized by Prvammmsa and as noted by Pini, girls also studied the Veda.. Ghya and rauta stra note that wives repeat with their husbands, the veda mantra.

See: http://www.hinduwisdom.info/nari.pdf Women in Hindu dharma -- a tribute (Vishal Agarwal) See: http://www.hinduwisdom.info/Women_in_Hinduism.htm Women in Hinduism Like Vaiambhaly, vgmbhi is explained as an explanatory synonym of Sarasvat or vk. Vaiambhaly (TB 2.5.8.6; -phaly, -baly Apss 4.14.4; Bharadvaja siksa. These variants referring to Sarasvati is explained: "The reader can easily check Taittiriya Brahmana 2.5.8.6 and verify that nothing of this sort is stated or implied therein. The word actually has a very transparent IA etymology as explained even in the Jnanayajnabhashya of Bhatta Bhaskara. Sarasvati was so called because it nourished and sustained masses of people. This is a meaning which fits the ritual context of the sections very well. As for his reference on the occurrence of the word in Bharadvaja Siksha, the reader should note that the Siksa is a late text and is merely an index of words in the Taittiriya Brahmana. So its occurrence in the Siksa is of no independent utility. (Witzel argues that the word occurs with variant spellings in Apastamba Srautasutra, Bharadvaja Siksa and Taittiriya Brahmana and that these spelling variations are proof of the words foreign origin. The argument is curious and not sustainable.)" http://vishalagarwal.voiceofdharma.com/ReplytoWitzelJIES.doc

Five peoples and attributes of Rram dhruv te rj vruo dhruv dev b haspti dhruv ta ndra cgn ca rr dhrayat dhruvm (RV 10.173.5) (RV 10.173.1) 10.173.01 I have consecrated you, (Rasa); come among us, be steady and unvacillating, may all your subjects desire you (for their king), may the kingdom never fall from you. [A play on the words: rasa and rj, as the devat].

Trans. Steadfast, may Varua, the Rj, steadfast, the Divine Bhaspati. Steadfast, may Indra, steadfast too, may Agni keep they steadfast Rram. In this Rgvedic statement, Rram is emphasized as the epitome of steadfastness. (RV 10.45.6)

10.045.06 The manifester of all, the germ of the world, Agni, as soon as born fills heaven and earth (with light); he fractures as he advances the solid cloud, for which the classes of men praise him. [Five classes: pacajanh = five men; or, the four chief priests and the yajamna].

pah parivahi stha Rrad Rram me datta svh pah parivahi stha Rrad Rramumumai datta svh
Give me that lighted path...

mu means surpassing, excelling; ma crucible. parivahi stha -- Place with (ocean) waves apm patirasi Place adjoining the ocean (apm pati) apm garnosi Place moistened (endowed) with water sryatvacas stha Place covered by sunshine
mnd stha Place with gladdening (potable) waters

vrajkita stha Place with marked roads, cattle-sheds, enclosures or herdsmen stations v stha -- Place with plants (arable land) vih stha Place with resolute, mightiest (craftsmen)(cf. RV 5.29.15) akvar stha Place with artificers
jananta stha Place with agriculturists (anta)

vivanta stha Place with culture (cultivator tradition) of pit-s. va rmirasi stha -- powerful wave (cutting like a sword) va senosi stha -- powerful battle-array (cutting like a spear) artheta stha -- place with work opportunities to create wealth
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ojasvat stha -- place filled with water, vigour, lustre viva bhtam -- place bearing, nourished by the dharma of pitr-s pah svarja stha -- place with self-luminous, resplendent rays of the sun and water
(springs) (Vjasneyi Samhit 10.4)

The following 5 skta are attibuted to i kavaa aila: RV 10.30 to 10.34: i kavaa aila; devat: po devat or apmnapt; chanda: triup RV 10.30 i kavaa aila; devat-: vivedev; chanda: triup RV 10.31 i kavaa aila; devat: vivedev: chanda: jagat, 6-9 triup RV 10.32 i kavaa aila; devat; 1 vivedev, 2-3 indra, 4-5 kururavaa trsadasyava, 6-9 pamarav maitrtithi; chanda: 1 triup, 2-3 pragtha (sambhat, viamsatobhat), 4-9 gyatr RV 10.33 5.i kavaa aila or aka maujavn; devat: 1,7,9,12 akasamha; 13 ki; 2-6,8,10,11,14 aka-kitava; chanda: triup; 7 jagat RV 10.34 Anuvka III; i kavaa aila; devat: po devat or apmnapt; chanda: triup (RV 10.30.1) (RV 10.30.2) (RV 10.30.3) (RV 10.30.4) (RV 10.30.5) 9

 (RV 10.30.6) (RV 10.30.7) (RV 10.30.8) (RV 10.30.9) (RV 10.30.10) (RV 10.30.11) (RV 10.30.12) (RV 10.30.13) (RV 10.30.14) (RV 10.30.15) [Note: Translations based on Wilson, followed by Ralph Griffith noted as Gprefix to a ca]

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10.030.01 (Honoured) by adoration, let the advancing Soma approach the celestial waters like the celerity of the mind; offer abundant (sacrificial) food, and perfect praise for the sake of Mitra and Varua, and for (Indra) the rapid mover. G1. As it were with swift exertion of the spirit, let the priest speed to the celestial Waters, The glorious food of Varuna and Mitra. To him who spreadeth far this laud I offer. 10.030.02 Priests, since you are charged with the libation, desiring (to present it), proceed to the waters desiring (to receive it), to those (waters) which the red hawk beholds descending (from the clouds); do you, dextrous-handed (priests), cast today that flood (of Soma) into (the consecrated water). [Red hawk: supara = supatanah somah, the Soma descending gracefully (ava) from the firmament, and suhasta = ornamented with golden filter etc., because they are engaged in the graceful work of expressing the Soma etc.] G2 Adhvaryus, he ye ready with oblations,, and come with longing to the longing Waters, Down on which looks the. purpletintedEagle. Pour ye that flowing wave this day, defthanded. 10.030.03 Go, priests, to the water, to the reservoir; worship the grandson of the waters with oblations; may he today give you the consecrated water, and do you pour forth to him the sweet-flavoured Soma. [The grandson of the waters: apm naptam = deity appointed to produce the rain]. G3 Go to the reservoir, O ye Adhvaryus worship theWaters Child with your oblations. A consecrated wave he now will give you, so press for him the Soma rich in sweetness. 10.030.04 (He) who shines, without fuel, in the midst of the waters, he whom the pious worship at sacrifices, grandson of the waters, give us those sweet waters by which (mixed with the Soma), Indra is elevated to heroism. [Soma personified, as the grandson of the waters is related to Soma which is to be mixed with the water of the Vasatvar]. G4 He who shines bright in floods, unfed with fuel, whom sages worship at their sacrifices: Give waters rich in sweets, Child of the Waters, even those which gave heroic might to Indra. 10.030.05 Those waters with which Soma sports and delights as a man (sports) with elegant young damsels; do you, priest, approach to obtain them; when you sprinkle them (in libation), purify (them with the filter) along with the plants. G5 Those in which Soma joys and is delighted, as a young man with fair and pleasant damsels. Go thou unto those Waters, O Adhvaryu, and purify with herbs what thou infusest. 10.030.06 Verily as young damsels welcome a youth when desiring (them), he comes to them desiring (him), so the priests and their praise and the divine waters agree in mind and contemplate (their mutual assistance). [The youth and nymphs are the Soma and the Vasatvar 11

waters; nothing more is meant than their mixture]. G6 So maidens bow before the youthful gallant who comes with love to them who yearn to meet him. In heart accordant and in wish oneminded- are theAdhvaryus and the heavenly Waters. 10.030.07 Present, waters, the sweet-flavoured god-exhilarating mixture to that Indra who has made an issue for you when enveloped (by the clouds); who has liberated you from a great calamity. G7 He who made room for you when fast imprisoned, who freed you from the mighty imprecation, Even to that Indra send the meathrich- current, the wave that gratifies the Gods, O Waters. 10.030.08 Send forth, rivers, the sweet-flavoured beverage to him who is your germ, a well of the sweet (Soma), the Soma which is mixed with butter adorable at sacrifices; hear, opulent waters my invocation. G8 Send forth to him the meathrich- wave, O Rivers, which is your offspring and a well of sweetness,Oilbalmed-, to be implored at sacrifices. Ye wealthyWaters, hear mine invocation. 10.030.09 Send, rivers, (to our sacrifice), that exhilarating wave the Soma of Indra, which sends us both (kinds of fruit), exciting exhilaration, desirous (of mixing with the Soma). Generated in the firmament, spreading through the three (worlds), flowing (amidst the vessels of sacrifices), a well (of satisfaction to the gods). [Both kinds of fruit: the fruit, whether reward or punishment, of the present life (da), and of a former life (ada)]. G9 Send forth the rapturegiving- wave, O Rivers, whichIndra drinks, which sets the Twain in motion;The well that springeth from the clouds, desirous, that wandereth tripleformed-, distilling transport. 10.030.10 Praise, i, the waters like (those) of the cloud-warring Indra, falling in many showers, returning, flowing to mix (with the Soma), the mothers of the world and its protectresses, augmenting and combining (with the Soma). G10 These winding Streams which with their double current, like cattleraiders-, seek the lower pastures, Waters which dwell together, thrive together,Queens, Mothers of the world, these, Rsi, honour. 10.030.11 Direct our sacrifice to the worship of the gods; direct our adoration to the acquisition of wealth; open the udder on the occasion of (this) rite; be to us, waters, the givers of felicity. [The udder: dhas is the skin in which the Soma is contained (adhiavanacarma); yoga = the cart on which Soma is placed; opoen the skin which is on (or below) the sacrificial cart (Nirukta 6.22: dhasodhastdavasthiteneti manyamno niruktakro bravti -- yje akaa iti v)]. G11 Send forth our sacrifice with holy worship send forth the hymn and prayer for gain of riches. For need of sacrifice disclose the udder. Give gracious hearing to our call, O Waters. 10.030.12 Opulent waters, you rule over riches; you support good fortune, pious rites, and 12

immortality; you are the protectresses of wealth and of offspring; may Sarasvat bestow all this opulence on him who praises you. G12 For, wealthy Waters, ye control all treasures: ye bring auspicious intellect and Amrta. Ye are the Queens of independent riches Sarasvatigive full life to the singer! 10.030.13 I behold you, waters, coming to (the sacrifice), conveying the butter, the water, the sweet (Soma); conversing mentally with the priests, and bringing the well-effused Soma for Indra. G13 When I behold the Waters coming hither, carrying with them milk and mcath and butter, Bearing the wellpressed- Soma juice to Indra, they harmonize in spirit with Adhvaryus. 10.030.14 These opulent and life-sustaining (waters) have come (to my sacrifice); friendly priests, make them sit down; place them on the sacred grass, you offerers of the Soma, conversing with the grandson of the waters. G14 Rich, they are come with wealth for living beings, O friends, Adhvaryus, seat them in their places. Seat them on holy grass, ye Somabringers- in harmony with the Offspring of the Waters. 10.030.15 The waters desiring (it) have come to this sacred grass, and wishing to satisfy the gods, have sat down at our sacrifice; express priests, the Soma for Indrra; for you the worship of the gods is easy. G15 Now to this grass are come the longing Waters: the Pious Ones are seated at our worship. Adhvaryus, press the Soma juice for Indra so will the service of the Gods be easy. i kavaa aila; devat-: vivedev; chanda: triup (RV 10.31.1) (RV 10.31.2) (RV 10.31.3) (RV 10.31.4)

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 (RV 10.31.5) (RV 10.31.6) (RV 10.31.7) (RV 10.31.8) (RV 10.31.9) (RV 10.31.10) (RV 10.31.11) 10.031.01 May he, who is to be praised by us, his worshippers, and to be adored, (Indra), come with all his swift (Maruts), for our protection, may we be excellent friends with them; may we be freed from all sins. G1. MAY benediction of the Gods approach us, holy, to aid us with all rapid succours. Therewith may we be happily befriended, and pass triumphant over all our troubles. 10.031.02 Let a mortal be ever desirous of affluence, (having acquired it), let him worship with oblations on the path of the sacrifice; and let him with his own intellect meditate upon (the gods); let him grasp with his mind the best and most mighty (of the universal deities). 2 A man should think on wealth and strive to win it by adoration on the path of Order,Counsel himself with his own mental insight, and grasp still nobler vigour with his spirit. 10.031.03 The sacrifice has been prepared; the invigorating portions (of the oblation) approach the beautiful (god) of excellent birth, as (the waters) at a holy spot (approach the gods); may we 14

obtain the happiness of heaven; may we have a real knowledge of the immortals. [Waters at a holy spot: as at a trtha (sacred ford) the portions of water sprinkled in the act of tarpaa (libation) go to the assembly of the gods; may we have a real knowledge: navedasah = na na vettro vettra eva, i.e., svarpato jtra eva, knowing personally; the derivation is: notknowers (cf. also Pini 6.3.75); na paretam vetti, he does not know falsely]. G3 The hymn is formed, poured are the allotted portions: as to a ford friends come unto the Wondrous. We have obtained the power of case and comfort, we haVe become acquainted, with Immortals. 10.031.04 May the eternal (Prajpati), the lord of wealth, of generous mind, be willing to bestow (benefits on him) to whom the divine Savit has given birth; may Bhaga (induced) by (our) praises, and the divine Aryaman unfold (future rewards); or may some (other) gracious (divinity) be inclined to favour this (institutor of the rite). G4 Pleased be the Eternal Lord who loves the household with this man whom God Savitar created. May Bhaga Aryaman grace him with cattle: may he appear to him, and be, delightful. 10.031.05 May this (our praise) be accessible like the earth at dawn, when the glorious (gods) assemble in their might; may the Vjas, the dispensers of happiness, come to us, soliciting the laudation of this (their) adorer. G5 Like the Dawns' dwellingplace- be this assembly, where in their might men rich in food have gathered. Striving to share the praises of this singer. To us come strengthening and effectual riches! 10.031.06 May this glorification, of this (assemly of the gods), ancient and frequent, approaching (the deities), be widely diffused, (may the universal gods), collected together, bearing (future rewards, come) to the common place (of sacrifice) of this one who is mighty, which nourishes (them). [Of this one who is mighty: i.e., of me who has strength in the nature of progeny]. G6 This Bulls' most gracious farextended- favour existed first of all in full abundance. By his support they are maintained in common who in the Asuras' mansion dwell together. 10.031.07 What is the forest, which is the tree, out of which (the gods) have fabricated heaven and earth, ever-stationary and undecaying, giving protection to the deities; through numerous days and dawns (men) praises (the gods for this). G7 What was the tree, what wood, in sooth, produced it, from which they fashioned forth the Earth and Heaven? These Twain stand fast and wax not old for ever: these have sung praise to many a day and morning. 10.031.08 Not such (is their power); there is another greater than they; the creator, he sustains heaven and earth; possessed of might, he makes a pure skin, before his horses bear it to the sun. [Not such is their power: naitvat, not so much; the race of gods is not possessed of so much power, namely, that of creating heaven and earth; the creator: uka = lit., the bull, the 15

sprinkler of seed, i.e., the creator of people, hiran.yagarbha; extremely subtle, in the form of wind, consisting of the linga (i.e., the subtle body that accompanies the soul in its migration, not being destroyed at death, when the outer gross body is destroyed) entering the waters supports heaven and earth; before his horses bear it to the sun: i.e., before creation; the creator took upon himself a bodily form, before creating other forms]. G8 Not only here is this: more is beyond us. He is theBull, the Heavens' and Earths' supporter. With power divine he makes his skin a filter, when theBay Coursers bear him on as Surya. 10.031.09 The sun does not pass beyond the broad earth, the wind does not drive the rain from off the earth; (I glorify Prajpati) in whom Mitra and Varua being manifested, disperse their radiance, as Agni (spreads his flames) in a forest. G9 He passes over the broad earth like a Stega: he penetrates the world as Wind the mistcloud. He, balmed with oil, near Varuna and Mitra, like Agniin the wood, hath shot forth splendour. 10.031.10 When a barren cow being suddenly impregnated bears (a calf), she the repeller of evils, free from pain, self-protected, produces (offspring); when (Agni), the ancient son, is generated by his two parents, earth ejects the am which the priests are seeking. [am: amgarbhdagnim manthanti: Taittirya Brhmaa 1.1.9; the cow which was barren is the am tree, which brings forth the avattha, and from the wood of these two trees are made the arai, the two pieces of wood which are rubbed together to produce the sacred fire-- the upper and harder piece is the am (acacia suma) and the lower and softer piece is the avattha (ficus

religiosa); the ancient son: or, the saviour from hell, from put and tra]. G10 When suddenly
called the cow that erst was barren, she, selfprotected-, ended all her troubles. Earth, when the first son sprang from sire and mother, cast up the gami, that which men were seeking. 10.031.11 (The expounders of the Vedas) spoke to Kava, the son of Nad, and he the darktinted, having food, acquired wealth; (Agni) sprinkled (the milk of the brilliant udder for the dark (complexioned sage); no other divinity so favours the sacrifice for him]. G11 To Nrsads' son they gave the name of Kainva, and he the brownhued-courser won the treasure. For him darkcoloured- streamed the shining udder: none made it swell for him. Thus Order willed it. i kavaa aila; devat: vivedev: chanda: jagat, 6-9 triup (RV 10.32.1) 16

 (RV 10.32.2) (RV 10.32.3) (RV 10.32.4) (RV 10.32.5) (RV 10.32.6) (RV 10.32.7) (RV 10.32.8) (RV 10.32.9) 10.032.01 Indra sends his quick-going horses to the service of the (worshipper) expectant (of his arrival); may he come to the excellent (adorations) of the (worshipper), propitiating him by suitable means; Indra is gratified by both our (oblations and praises), when he recognizes (the taste) of the food presented by the offerer of the Soma. G1. FORTH speed the Pair to bring the meditating God, benevolent with boons sent in return for boons. May Indra graciously accept both gifts from us, when he hath knowledge of the flowing Soma juice. 10.032.02 Indra, who is praised by many, you pervade the luminaries of heaven and earth with your lustre; may the horses that repeatedly bring you to our sacrifices, pleased by our praise, 17

bring affluence to us who are poor. G2 Thou wanderest far, O Indra, through the spheres of light and realms of earth, the region, thou whom many praise! Let those who often bring their solemn rites conquer the noisy babblers who present no gifts. 10.032.03 May (Indra) desire for me this (act of sacrifice). The most beautiful of beautiful things, (as) when a son proclaims his birth from his parents. The wife brings her husband (to her side) with gentle words; the good fortune of the husband is perfected only as marriage. [When a son proclaims his birth: at the time of the Subrahman.ya recitation, the sacrificer proclaims his birth, saying, "the son of so and so and worships"; the wife...marriage: the Soma to be divided for the sake of the heroic Indra bearing (Soma?) to the gods is sanctified-- may Indra desire it]. G3 More beautiful than beauty must this seem to me, when the son duly careth for his parents' line. The wife attracts the husband: with a shout of joy the mans' auspicious marriage is performed aright. 10.032.04 Shine, Indra, upon this elegant chamber of sacrifice when our praises desire (your approach) as kine (desire) their stalls; since the praise of (me) the worshipper precedes (the adoration) of the company, and this person accompanied by the seven officiating priests is the offerer of praise. G4 This beauteous place of meeting have I looked upon, where, like milchcows-, the kine order the marriage train; Where the Herds' Mother counts as first and best of all, and round her are the seventoned- people of the choir. 10.032.05 The devout (priest) excels (going) towards your place of worship; the quick-moving (Indra), the chief (of the priests), proceeds with the Rudras, (the Maruts); sprinkle the exhilarating (Soma with water) for the protecting (deities), the immortals among whom praise is (able) to procure wealth. G5 The Pious One hath reached your place before the rest: One only moves victorious with the Rudras' band. To these your helpers pour our meath, Immortal Gods, with whom your song of praise hath power to win their gifts. 10.032.06 The guardian of the sacred rites of the gods, Indra, said to me, (Agni), who had been deposited in the waters; the sagacious Indra, following you, Agni, has discovered you, therefore, admonished by him may I, Agni, proceed to heaven. [Deposited in the waters: a play on the word nidhi_yama_nam, being deposited; also, a title of the fire placed on the altar, at the kurus'ravan.a ceremony]. G6 He who maintains the Laws of God informed me that thou wast lying hidden in the waters. Indra, who knoweth well, beheld and showed thee. By him instructed am I come, O Agni. 10.032.07 One who knows not the road inquires it of one who knows it; and directed by him who knows the way proceeds (to his destination); such verily is the good of instruction, and 18

(thereby) one finds tehe path of the things that are to be reached by a straight path. [One finds the path: i.e., the thirsty man finds the right road to the waters which have to be reached by a straight path, or taking ajasnm as an adjective agreeing with stutim, not crooked, a path which may be easily travelled over]. G7 The stranger asks the way of him who knows it: taught by the skilful guide he travels onward. This is, in truth, the blessing of instruction: he finds the path that leads directly forward. 10.032.08 Today (Agni) breathed; he purposed (to conduct) these days surrounded (by lustre), and drank the sap of his mother (earth); the praise of his (worshippers) reaches the overyouthful (Agni), and he has become gentle, generous, and well-disposed. G8 Even now he breathed: these days hath he remembered. Concealed, he sucked the bosom of his Mother. Yet in his youth old age hath come upon him: he hath grown gracious, good, and free from anger. 10.032.09 (Indra), the possessor of the pitchers, the bearer of the praise of the Kurus, let us celebrate these auspicious adorations of you, the giver of riches; may he, (Indra), be the donor (of affluence) to you who are opulent, (in pious offering), and (so may) this Soma which I cherish in my heart. [The possessor of the pitchers: kalas'a = complete in all the arts (kal? lunar digits); kururavaa = hearer of the praise of priests; the next skta refers to this term as the name of a prince]. G9 O Kalasa, all these blessings will we bring them, OKurusravana, who give rich presents. May he, O wealthy princes, and this Soma which I am bearing in my heart, reward you. i kavaa aila; devat; 1 vivedev, 2-3 indra, 4-5 kururavaa trsadasyava, 6-9 pamarav maitrtithi; chanda: 1 triup, 2-3 pragtha (sambhat, viam satobhat), 4-9 gyatr (RV 10.33.1) (RV 10.33.2) (RV 10.33.3) 19

 (RV 10.33.4) (RV 10.33.5) (RV 10.33.6) (RV 10.33.7) (RV 10.33.8) (RV 10.33.9) 10.033.01 The (divinities, the) appointers of men, have appointed me to kururavaa; I have borne Pan on the way; the universal gods are my protectors; the cry is: "duhsu comes" [cf. Taittirya Samhit 2.2.1.4]. G1. THE urgings of the people have impelled me, and bythe, nearest way I bring you Pusan. The Universal Gods have brought me safely. The cry was heard, Behold, Dubsasu cometh! 10.033.02 My ribs pain me on both sides, like rival wives; disease, nakedness, hunger, afflict me; my mind flutters like a bird. G2 The ribs that compass me give pain and trouble me like rival wives. Indigence, nakedness, exhaustion press me sore: my mind is fluttering like a birds'. 10.033.03 Afflictions consume me, your worshipper atakratu, as mice (eat) threads, for once, Indra, possessor of opulence, grant us felicity; be to us as a father. [As mice eat threads: threads that have been washed]. G3 As rats eat weavers' threads, cares are consuming me, thy singer, gatakratu, me. Have mercy on us once, O Indra, Bounteous Lord: be thou a Father unto us. 10.033.04 I, the i, (wealth) of the munificent prince kururavaa, the son of Trasadasyu for the priests. G4 I the priests' Rsi chose as prince most liberalKurusravana, The son of Trasadasyus' son, 10.033.05 Whose three horses bear me pleasantly in the chariot; I praise him at the ceremony 20

in which he presents thousands. G5 Whose three bays harnessed to the car bear me straight onward: I will laud The giver of a thousand meeds. 10.033.06 Upamaravas, the words of whose father were sweet, like a pleasant field given to a beggar. [This and the following cas are explained as the consolatory verses addressed by Kavaa to Upamaravas on the death of his father king Mitrtithi]. G6 The sire of Upamasravas, even him whose words were passing sweet, As a fair field is to its lord. 10.033.07 Come to me, my son, grandson of Mitrtithi; I am the eulogist of your father. G7 Mark, Upamasravas, his son, mark, grandson ofMitratithi: I am thy fathers' eulogist. 10.033.08 If I were lord oover immortals and mortals, then should my munificent (benefactor) live. G8 If I controlled Immortal Gods, yea, even were I Lordof men, My liberal prince were living still. 10.033.09 No one lives hundred years passing the limit fixed by the gods; so he is separated from his friends. [Hundred years: No one, even if he has a hundred lives, can live beyond the limit fixed]. G9 None lives, even had he hundred lives, beyond the statute of the Gods So am I parted from my friend. i kavaa aila or aka maujavn; devat: 1,7,9,12 akasamha; 13 ki; 2-6,8,10,11,14 aka-kitava; chanda: triup; 7 jagat (RV 10.34.1) (RV 10.34.2) (10.34.3) (RV 10.34.4) 21

 (RV 10.34.5) (RV 10.34.6) (RV 10.34.7) (10.34.8) (RV 10.34.9) (RV 10.34.10 (RV 10.34.11) (RV 10.34.12) (RV 10.34.13) (RV 10.34.14) 10.034.01 The large rattling dice exhilarate me as torrents borne on a precipice flowing in a desert; the exciting dice animate me as the taste of the Soma of Maujavat (delights the gods). [Flowing in a desert: irie varvtnah: a reference to the dice; rolling on the dice-board; exciting dice: vibhtaka, the seed of the myrobalan, used as a die; Maujavat: a mountain, where is said 22

the best Soma is found]. G1. SPRUNG from tall trees on windy heights, these rollers transport me as they turn upon the table. Dearer to me the die that never slumbers than the deep draught of Mujavans' own Soma. 10.034.02 This (my wife) has not been angry (with me), nor was she overcome with sham; kind was she to me and to my friends; yet for the sake of one or other die, I have deserted this affectionate spouse. G2 She never vexed me nor was angry with me, but to my friends and me was ever gracious. For the dies' sake, whose single point is final, mine own devoted wife I alienated. 10.034.03 My mother-in-law reviles me, my wife opposes me; the beggar meets no compassionate (benefactor); I do not realize the enjoyment of the gamester any more than that of a valuable horse grown old. G3 My wife holds me aloof, her mother hates me: the wretched man finds none to give him comfort. As of a costly horse grown old and feeble, I find not any profit of the gamester. 10.034.04 Others touch the wife of him whose wealth the potent dice covet; his mother, father, brothers say, "we know him not, take him away bound (where you will)". [Touch the wife: parimanti: they drag her by her clothes or her hair]. G4 Others caress the wife of him whose riches the die hath coveted, that rapid courser: Of him speak father, mother, brothers saying, We know him not: bind him and take him with you. 10.034.05 When I reflect, (then I say), "I will play no more with them". I pay attention to my friends who desert (me); and the tawny dice rattle as they are thrown; I hasten to their accustomed place as a harlot (to an assignation). G5 When I resolve to play with these no longer, my friends depart from me and leave me lonely. When the brown dice, thrown on the board, have rattled, like a fond girl I seek the place of meeting. 10.034.06 The gamester goes to the gambling table, radiant in person, and asking himself, "Shall I win?" The dice increase his passion for play as he practises the arts of (gambling) with his adversary. [Shall I win: asking what rich man is here; I shall beat him]. G6 The gamester seeks the gamblinghouse-, and wonders, his body all afire, Shall I be lucky? Still do the dice extend his eager longing, staking his gains against his adversary. 10.034.07 Dice verily are armed with hooks, with goads, pricking, paining and torturing (the gamester); to the winning (player) they are the givers of sons, they are tipped with honey; slaying him in return by taking away the gambler's (all). [They are the givers of sons: by acquiring wealth through their means a family may be reared; by taking the gambler's all: barhaa = parivddhea sarvasvaharaena]. G7 Dice, verily, are armed with goads and driving 23

hooks-, deceiving and tormenting, causing grievous woe. They give frail gifts and then destroy the man who wins, thickly anointed with the players' fairest good. 10.034.08 The aggregate fifty-three of them are played as the divine truth, observant Savit, (travels); the dice bow not before the wrath of any, however violent; a king himself pays them homage. [The aggregate...travels: as the sun roams (viharati) in the world, so the heap of dice moves or plays on the dice table (sphre). Maybe, fifty-three dice were used, akikh pryea tvadbhir akair dvyati, gamblers usually play with so many dice; maybe, the dice were thrown from east to west to render the comparison with the sun meaningful]. G8 Merrily sports their troop, the three and fifty, like Savitar the God whose ways are faithful. They bend not even to the mightys' anger: the Kinghimself pays homage and reveres them. 10.034.09 Now they abide below; now they palpitate on high handless, they overpower him who has hands; cast upon the dice-board like coals from the sky, even though cold they burn the heart. G9 Downward they roll, and then spring quickly upward, and, handless, force the man with hands to serve them. Cast on the board, like lumps of magic charcoal, though cold themselves they burn the heart to ashes. 10.034.10 The deserted wife of the gamester is afflicted; the mother (grieves) for the son wandering wherever he likes; involved in debt, ever in fear, anxious for wealth, (the gambler) goes forth by night to the dwellings of others (to plunder). G10 The gamblers' wife is left forlorn and wretched: the mother mourns the son who wanders homeless. In constant fear, in debt, and seeking riches, he goes by night unto the home of others. 10.034.11 The gamester, having observed the happy wife and well-ordered home of others, suffers regret; yet in the forenoon he puts to the tawny steeds, and at night the sinner lies down by the fire. G11 Sad is the gambler when he sees a matron, anothers' wife, and his wellordereddwelling. He yokes the brown steeds in the early morning, and when the fire is cold sinks down an outcast. 10.034.12 Dice, I offer salutation to him who has been the general of your great army, the chief lord of your host; I do not provide him with wealth; I raise my ten (fingers) to the east; that (which) I speak (is) the truth. [I do not provide him wealth: na dan ruadhmi = I do not withhold my wealth; na sampdaymi]. G12 To the great captain of your mighty army, who hath become the hosts' imperial leader, To him I show my ten extended fingers: I speak the truth. No wealth am I withholding. 10.034.13 Giving serious attention (to my advice), play not with dice; pursue agriculture; delight in wealth (so acquired); there, gambler, are cows; there is a wife; so has this (visible) sovereign 24

Savit declared to me. [Their: there, i.e., in agriculture]. G13 Play not with dice: no, cultivate thy cornland-. Enjoy the gain, and deem that wealth sufficient. There are thy cattle there thy wife, O gambler. So this good Savitar himself hath told me. 10.034.14 Be friends with us (dice); bestow upon us happiness; approach us not in terrible wrath; let your anger light upon our enemies; let our enemy fall under the bondage of the tawny (dice). [Let your anger light upon our enemies: let your hostile wrath against us settle down, i.e., grow calm, cease]. G14 Make me your friend: show us some little mercy. Assail us not with your terrific fierceness. Appeased be your malignity and anger, and let the brown dice snare some other captive. NOTE: Thanks to Prof. Shrinivas Tilak for the following comment (Private communication): As we continue to discuss the movements of the river Sarasvati in ancient times, it would be useful to keep in mind that one of its movements is attributed to Kavasha Ailusha who was born of a Dasa girl by the Brahmana Ilusha. Once, when Kavasha tried to attend a yajna being performed by the members of the Angirasa family, they chased him away (for being a Shudraaputra and not being a Brahmana) to a desert. While there, Kavasha composed a sukta in praise of Apanapat (it was subsequently recognized as Jalasukta and incorporated into the tenth mandala as (10:30). Sarasvati thereupon changed its course and came to quench Kavasha's thirst.This spot became known as Parisaraka according to the Aitareya Brahmana (2:19). Kavasha was now recognized as a rishi and four other suktas by him were included in the tenth mandala (10: 31-34). Shrinivas Tilak July 1, 2013 Thanks for the references provided by Prof. Shrinivas Tilak which are of extraordinary significance in the repeated linking in Rgveda, of Sarasvati with the sacred waters; is it possible to locate Parisaraka along the palaeo-channels of Sarasvati? Kalyanaraman

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http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/dholavira-civilization-hub-ts.html Dholavira, a civilization hub TS Subramanian (Photos: D. Krishnan) Dholavira, a civilization hub -- TS Subramanian (Photos: D. Krishnan)

Print edition : July 12, 2013 DHOLAVIRA The Harappan hub

A stone masonry reservoir.

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Residential quarters in the citadel area.

Middle town with perfectly aligned streets, intersecting at right angles.

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Lower town. Street lined with houses.

A bathroom in one of the houses in the middle town with limestone slabs for flooring and covered drains to let out water.

Jamalbhai R. Makwana and Ravjibhai Solanki. Both are guides at the site and have taken part in the Dholavira excavation.

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Remains of circular huts in the citadel built in post-Harappan period

Broad northern gate. Has a flight of steps leading to the citadel. In the background is the bigger of the two stadia.

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The two 'sthambs' or pillars, which are claimed to resemble Sivalingas, in the citadel.

At the site museum in Dholavira, pots unearthed during the excavation.

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A chessboard (on the stone slab at right) and an architectural member that resembles a Sivalinga.

A grinding stone at the site museum.

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The three-metre-long signboard, with 10 Indus Writing glyphs, which was mounted above the northern gate of the citadel.

A rock-cut reservoir. Dholavira was encircled with such resevoirs.

Open drain for ferrying surplus water from them to reservoirs on the western side.

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Veteran archaeologist Ravindra Singh Bisht receiving the Padma Shri from President Pranab Mukherjee at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on April 5, 2013.

The bigger of the two stadia, with the ruins of the terraced stand for spectators.

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A covered drain and its mouth in front of the eastern fortification wall with its gate. This small stormwater drain let rain water into the eastern reservoir situated in front.

The fortification wall of the citadel on the northern side. Note how the wall slopes towards the top as in walls in other Harappan sites, to give it life and strength.

The entrance to the middle town.

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A rock-cut well in the citadel from which was manually drawn and taken by an underground drain to a storage tnk (in the background, at left), from which it was ferried by another drain to the bathing place (in the background, at right). A great bath?

The eastern gate in the fortification wall of the citadel, with a flight of steps leading upto the citadel.

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The layout of Dholavira.

The eastern reservoir, with a flight of steps into it. It has a rock-cut stepped well inside (not seen in the picture).

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A man-made channel, around two metres deep, to harvest rain water snakes through the citadel. It has filtration points to ensure that the water is clean.

The ruins of fairly large houses in the citadel, seen on the left. The finds in Dholavira in Gujarat's Kutch district, unlike elsewhere, throw light on the rise and fall of the Indus civilisation in its entirety and in the correct sequence. By T.S. SUBRAMANIAN recently in Dholavira. Photographs by D. KRISHNAN.

YOU should visit Dholavira. The site adds a new dimension to the personality of the Indus civilisation, Ravindra Singh Bisht, former Additional Director-General of the Archaeological 37

Survey of India (ASI), had told me in 2010. Dholavira in Gujarat is among the five biggest Harappan sites, the others being Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa, Ganweriwala (all three in Pakistan) and Rakhigarhi in Haryana, India. Professor Bisht had led 13 seasons of excavation at Dholavira from 1990 to 2005 and had revealed to the world the grandeur of the Harappan site and its futuristic water-harvesting techniques. The efficient system the Harappans of Dholavira developed for conservation, harvesting and storage of water speaks of their advanced hydraulic engineering, given the state of technology in the third millennium BCE, he had said. Dholavira today is a small village in Bhachau taluk, Kutch district, and is situated in a corner of an island called Khadir in the Great Rann of Kutch. Its Harappan story began circa 3000 BCE and ended around 1500 BCE. Its genesis, growth, development, decay and collapse spanned seven stages in those 1,500 years. It means we found the nascent, childhood, adolescent, ageing and, finally, de-urbanisation stages of the Indus civilisation there. That is why I call it the rise and fall of the Indus civilisation. This has been found elsewhere, but the sequence in its entirety is found at Dholavira, in the stratified debris in the castle, which witnessed the vicissitudes spread over 1,500 years, Bisht had said (Frontline, June 18, 2010). Journey to Dholavira

After spending two days at Khirsara, a Harappan site in western Kutch, where an ASI-led excavation was under way (Frontline, June 28), we set out for Dholavira on a hot April 20 afternoon. Our destination was 340 kilometres away. As the car crossed Bhuj, 85 km from Khirsara, rain clouds and gusty winds eclipsed the blazing sun. Spells of rain greeted us as we crossed over to Rapar town, 100 km from Dholavira. On either side of the road were endless stretches of mesquite bushes. The few villages on the route were drowned in darkness owing to power failures after the rain. The car sped through the famed Great Rann of Kutch, that vast, featureless expanse.

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Some 11 km to Dholavira, the driver insisted that we halt for the night because the roads ahead were rain-ravaged. We rang up Gautam Chauhan, Senior Conservation Assistant, ASI, Dholavira, and he advised us to go back to Rapar and stay in one of the lodges there. We spent the night on the hard kitchen floor of a guest house of the Gujarat State Electricity Corporation, on the way back to Rapar. The guest house was in fact a control station, situated right in the middle of the Rann of Kutch. It was a sleepless night, with the cold wind from the Rann blowing through the kitchen windows. Early next morning, we went straight to the Dholavira site, for the photographs had to be taken before the sun got harsh. Waiting for us at the site museum were Ravjibhai Solanki and Jemalbhai R. Makwana, who had taken part in the excavation and were assigned to guide us. The local name of the site is Kotada, Solanki told us by way of introduction. The entire site was spread over 100 hectares, with the built-up area occupying half that, he said. Solanki sketched the site on the ground with a twig for our benefit. The layout of the excavated city consists of a citadel which can be divided into a castle and a bailey, a middle town and a lower town (where the traders and artisans lived), two stadia (one big and one small), servants quarters (also called annexe) and the reservoirs. They were set within an enormous fortification wall. Sixteen reservoirs, some rock-cut, formed a garland around the site. Several of them were inter-linked, allowing surplus water to flow from one to another. As we walked a few hundred metres to the mound of the excavated site, we were greeted by the citadels towering fortification wall. (The citadel was the seat of authority as the ruling elite lived there.) The wall, built of partly dressed sandstone blocks, rose steeply but sloped towards the top as fortification walls in Harappan sites do. The wall with its eastern gate and a steep flight of steps inside the citadel proper signalled the grandeur that marked this Indus Valley Civilisation site more than 4,600 years ago.

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What gave us an insight into Dholaviras amazing water-harvesting system was a big reservoir on the eastern side, in front of the eastern gate, that was 79 metres long, 74 m broad and 10 m deep. It could hold 2,00,000 cubic metres of water, Makwana said. It had a beautiful rock-cut, stepped well, too. The city itself lay between the seasonal rivulets of Mansar and Manhar. The Dholavirans had built check dams on these nullahs, and water from these dams was let into the reservoirs too. The ASI website on Dholavira says, The citadel has yielded an intricate network of storm water drains, all connected to an arterial one and furnished with slopes, steps, cascades, manholes (air ducts/ water relief ducts), paved flooring and capstones. The main drains were high enough for a tall man to walk through easily. The rain water collected through these drains was stored in yet another reservoir that was carved out in the western half of the bailey. Besides, city has yielded toilets, sullage jars, or sanitary pits. Drains have shown a good variety. They, it adds, included even pottery pipes.

R.N. Kumaran, Assistant Archaeologist, ASI, who took part in the excavations at Dholavira in the 2001-03 and 2008-09 seasons, said: Dholavira had the first rock-cut reservoir in the world. The Dholavirans harvested every drop of water and sent it to the reservoirs. The site is ringed by a series of 16 reservoirs, which were built on the eastern, southern and western sides, and they were inter-linked. In several reservoirs, stone masonry was used. The reservoirs had a flight of steps [for people to go down and fetch water when the water level went down]. On the southern side, the reservoirs were rock-cut. These rock-cut reservoirs were inter-linked and had distillation chambers [to provide pure water]. They had channels to divert the overflowing water. The rock-cut stepped well found in the eastern reservoir was built during the early phase of Dholaviras development, Kumaran said. It was only 4,000 years laterduring the medieval periodthat the rulers of Gujarat took to building ornate, stepped wells again. A steep flight of steps at the eastern gate led to the citadel proper. Inside the citadel was another rock-cut well with a platform for drawing water manually, a drain with filtering chambers 40

to ferry this water to a tank, and a drain from the tank to a hamam, where the elite took bath. If this rock-cut well and the hamam represented the mature phase of Dholaviras development, what mirrored its collapse were the ruins of circular huts with postholes, that residents of the late-Harappan phase had built. Two in situsthambs, which looked like Sivalingas, stood near by. Behind the fame

Bisht said Dholaviras fame rested on several counts. These included its long cultural sequence documenting the rise and fall of the Indus civilisation over a period of 1,500 years, its meticulous town planning with mathematical precision, its monumental architecture, its water management system, its stadia with terraced gallery for spectators, its sepulchral architecture in the form of spoked wheels and symbolic burials, and the discovery of a sandstone quarry, about 9 km away. Sandstone was mined and cut here and transported to Dholavira to build the reservoirs, fortification walls and residential quarters in the citadel, the middle town and the lower town. Among the 1,500 Harappan sites found in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, Dholavira has yielded the longest inscription, comprising 10 large-sized Indus signs, embedded on a threemetre-long board. This board was strategically positioned above the northern gate to the citadel. The ten letters, each 37 cm in height, were made of baked gypsum and they shone at night. But there is no knowing what the sign says because the Indus script has not been deciphered yet. It could stand for the name of the city or a king or it could just mean welcome. An equally important discovery was a sandstone block carved with four big Indus signs.

Of the two stadia, the bigger one, 305 m in length and 49 m in width, was in all likelihood a multi-purpose stadium, used for royal ceremonies, trade fairs, wrestling competitions and so on. The ruins of its terraced stands for spectators are a reminder of Dholaviras glorious past. This playground was mud-plastered, with layers in different colours. Solanki scratched the track to show us white, pink and yellow-coloured layers! There was a drainage system in the stadiumit 41

is still in a remarkably good condition even nowto prevent water from stagnating in the playground during the rainy season. Seven stages

Kumaran divides the seven stages of Dholaviras rise, fall and collapse into pre-Harappan, mature Harappan, late Harappan and post-Happaran. If the elite of Dholavira, during its mature phase, lived in stone-built houses with inter-connected rooms, verandahs and sullage facilities, the post-Harappans, after Dholaviras collapse, lived in jerry-built circular huts, made of wattle and daub, in the citadel. The tradition of building circular huts continues to this day in Dholavira, said Kumaran. The first settlement, built during the first stage which began circa 3000 BCE, included a strong fortress (Frontline, June 18, 2010). In the second stage, the settlement expanded northwards. Although an earthquake struck the settlement between the end of stage II and the beginning of stage III, the most creative phase belonged to stage III, from circa 2850 BCE to 2500 BCE. During this phase, the fortress expanded into a castle and another fortified area called bailey came up adjacent to it. The castle and the bailey together formed the citadel. The two stadia came up to the north of the citadel and the Dholavirans built reservoirs on the east, south and west of the citadel. Middle town, with quarters to house artisans and traders, has perfectly aligned streets and houses built to a plan at an elevated level. The houses have verandahs, inter-connected rooms and bathrooms with sloping limestone slabs for the water to flow into covered drains that extended into the streets. In a few places, collapsed structures serve as reminders of an earthquake that struck during stage III. When the city burgeoned again, the lower town was built. Seals without the Harappan script and painted pottery, belonging to this period, have been found.

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The Harappan culture at Dholavira reached its peak during stage IV, which began circa 2500 BCE and lasted for about five centuries. Several massive gates were built into the fortification wall. The board with the ten Indus signs belongs to this period. Classical Harappan elements such as pottery, seals, beads, and items made of gold, silver, copper, ivory, shell, faience, steatite, clay and stones from this period were found in abundance during excavations, according to Bisht. Stage IV extended into stage V. This phase was creatively active, going by excavations that have yielded a bonanza of seals, sealings, tablets, pottery, weights, shellbangles, stone-ware, copper objects, beads and so on.

At the end of stage V, which was around 2000 BCE, the Harappans abandoned the settlement for several decades. When stage VI began, the Harappans returned to occupy it but they lived only in the citadel and at the edge of the middle town. The city was reduced to the size of a town. The Harappans lived there for about a hundred years, after which they deserted it for a few centuries. Those who belonged to stage VII lived in circular huts in the citadel for a few decades before they abandoned the site for good around 1500 BCE. In the assessment of Bisht, Dholavira was a great commercial centre, a great manufacturing centre; raw materials were brought from Gujarat and southern Rajasthan and converted into finished goods there. These finished products, such as beads made of semi-precious stones, were marketed in other Harappan cities and towns. Dholavira was a great centre for making shell products, copper items, beads of semi-precious stones there is evidence to show that Mesopotamia [modern-day Iraq] imported timber from Meluha, which has been identified as a Harappan area, Bisht said. Different kinds of shank productssuch as jewellery, small medals and souvenirsand cosmetics were made at Dholavira. A great amount of inlays manufactured at Dholavira were unearthed during the excavations there. A variety of shells, which the Harappans at Dholavira used to convert into bangles and tools and so on, were available in the Gulf of Kutch. The Harappans of Dholavira procured raw materials for making shell products from the Gulf of Kutch, Bisht said. They made 43

different varieties of aromatic gums and marketed them in other Harappan towns and even in Mesopotamia. So Dholavira must have been a great political centre, a commercial centre, and, of course, a manufacturing centre. It must have been a great hub, asserted Bisht. It was also administratively controlling the entire Kutch because a powerful king or a group must have ruled from there. Whatever the administrative structure, whether it was hierarchical or republican, or a monarchy or an oligarchy, Dholavira must have been a great centre of authority, he added. The entire Kutch and part of Saurashtra came under its administrative control. Lothal [Gujarat] was possibly under its influence. About 10,000 people could have lived in Dholavira. Bisht said there were several Harappan cities like Dholavira which lasted a long time. For instance, Harappa had a long life. Harappa faced a problem when the water table shot up, and a major part of the city now lies buried under the water table. Asked how Dholavira marketed its products in other far-away Harappan centres because no dockyard such as the one found at Lothal, has been discovered at Dholavira, Bisht replied, Even if there is no dockyard of the kind found at Lothal, the entire Rann of Kutch was then a navigable sheet of water, which was connected to the Arabian Sea in the west and the Gulf of Kutch in the east. It was connected to the Arabian Sea in the west by the Khori Creek, where one of the tributaries of the Indus also met.

K.C. Nauriyal, who was Superintending Archaeologist, Vadodara Circle (now he is with the ASI headquarters in Delhi), ASI, who was site-in-charge for several seasons of excavations at Dholavira, said: The Rann of Kutch at that point of time must have been navigable and ships must have been able to reach Khadir. It was not necessary that there must have been a formal dockyard at Dholavira. Dhows and boats could have been stationed at the mooring point. There was brisk trade by sea and land. There was a high degree of mobility among the people of the surrounding sites. The bigger sites were helping the satellite sites. All of them were production

44

centres, and goods were being exchanged. There was long-distance and short-distance trade. Ships could have come to Dholavira. Bisht was non-committal when asked if the two sthambs found at the Dholavira site and the phallus-like stone artefacts excavated there but kept in Purana Qila, New Delhi, looked like Sivalingas. Nauriyal said, separately: They definitely resemble male organs. What the concept was, it is difficult to comment. Whether they were used for worship, magic, ritual or as a good omen, we do not know. On what led to the collapse of Dholavira, Nauriyal said: The snap in the trade relationship with foreign countries, possibly. It was largely maritime trade. Goods could not be traded any more. There must have been a host of factors and the economic factor must have been one of them, he said.

http://www.frontline.in/arts-and-culture/heritage/the-harappanhub/article4840474.ece?homepage=true

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/asur-metallurgists.html Ancient Near East: Traditions of smelters, metallurgists validate the Bronze Age Linguistic Doctrine. Ancient Near East: Traditions of smelters, metallurgists validate the Bronze Age Linguistic Doctrine.

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Bull capital on Asoka pillar, Rampurva. This was set atop the pillar 46

using an inscribed copper bolt with Indus Writing. Altar, Pyrenees (South of France). I Century BC (The altar shows a svastika and a fish both are Sarasvati hieroglyphs of Indus writing.) In the context of metallurgists' or stone work, the glyphs read rebus: ayo 'fish' Rebus: ayo 'metal' (Gujarati) satthiya 'svastika glyph' Rebus satthiya, jasta 'zinc' (Kashmiri. Kannada); sattva 'zinc' (Prakrit)

Location Date Description Status View

Rampurwa, Champaran, Bihar, India Upto 3rd century BC ca 299-200 BCE Plaster of Paris Stucco, 200 x 135 cm Architectural fragment Presently located at: Calcutta, Indian Museum Overview Accession No 36104

Image Identification

Negative No 249.87 American Institute of Indian Studies, Varanasi

Notes

American Institute of Indian Studies, Varanasi

"According to Cunningham, who wrote about the pillars says, that he excavated the surrounding of the site and disconnected its broken Capital from the shaft. The Capital was fastened to the shaft by a solid barrel shaped bolt of pure copper, measuring two and a half feet long and 55/16 inches in diameter at the centre and tapered slightly towards the ends where its circumference was 3-5/8 inches. The bolt projected exactly half its length or 1-1/4 inches from the shaft, and the projecting portion received the Capital; both ends were beautifully fitted into the stone, thus dispensing with any cement substance to firmly hold it together. The copper bolt was an exquisite piece of work, created into shape apparently with a hammer. The bolt is now kept in the Indian Museum, Kolkata and weighs 79 lbs." Ref: Cunningham, ASI, XVI, pp.110117; Carlleyle, CASI, XXII, pp.51-57; An. Rep., ASI, 1902-3, pp.38-40; 1907-8, pp.181-88; An Rep., ASI, E.C. 1906-7, p.16; 1912-13, p.36; BDG, Champaran, pp. 17247

74. http://bhpromo.org.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47&Itemid=54 The bolt is apparently forged into form by hammer after being cast. This is confirmed by the inscription on the bolt written in Indus writing. The lexeme is: koe forging (metal)(Munda) Background narrative, dawn of Bronze Age

Linga Purana describes Asura as linga worshippers. (LXXXI, 24-37.) Could the linga pillars
found in Dholavira be an attestation of this worship?

The Vedic struggle, Banerji-Sastri concludes, drove the Asura from the Indus Valley; the epic conflict routed them in the Madhyadesa and the subsequent readjustment lost them the Gangetic Valley and pushed them southwards. The Nagas were the spearhead and backbone of the Asura people in India. Daityas, Danavas, Rakshasas, Kalakanyas, Kaleyyas, Nivatakavachas, Paulomas, etc., are offshoots and families. With the downfall of the Nagas ended organized Asura supremacy in India. And the remnants of Nagas who once ruled Gosringa in Khotan, had to seek shelter in places still bearing their name, e.g. Nagpur, Chota Nagpur, and are today completely absorbed in the Dasa aborigines haunting woods, mountain fastnesses, and desolate regions, of the jungles of Assam, of Chota Nagpur and the Vindhya range. (A. Banerji-Sastri, The Asuras in Indo-Iranian Literature, JBORS, Vol. XII, pp. 110 ff.) 48

This interpretation of the narrative is challenged by Satish Chandra Roy. (SC Roy, The Asuras: Ancient and Modern, JBORS, Vol. XII, pp. 147 ff.) His view was that we have here a reflection of the worldwide contest between the denizens of the Stone Age and the new metal-working people, who invaded and disturbed it. He referred to a widespread tradition among the Mundas and several other aboriginal tribes of Chota Nagpur of the previous occupation of the country by a metal-using people called the Asuras who are said to have been routed by the Mundas with the help of their deity Sing-bonga. The iron-smelting activities of the Asura, tradition says, greatly disturbed the even tenor of existence of the Munda and other deities who were as yet innocent of the use and manufacture of metals. This monograph seeks to dethrone the ruling linguistic paradigm of 'Aryan invasion' as a Linguistic doctrine and replaces this doctrine with Bronze Aze Linguistic Doctrine validating Indian sprachbund as a reality of ancient times. As we attempt to clear the mists of history and see through the dominant idiom which explains a language-speech-area described as a language union (for e.g. Indian sprachbund), many lexemes of languages of the sprachbund demonstrate the essential features of the language union seen in many metalware/metallurgical terms, together with about 8000 cognate semantic clusters of Indian

Lexicon -- a compendium of Munda, Dravidian and Indo-Aryan lexemes. The demonstration is a

process involving rebus readings of hieroglhyphs of Indus Writing, a process which yields the core semantic features of Meluhha (mleccha), the lingua franca of the sprachbund. The Bronze Age Linguistic Doctrine postulated in this monograph explains a sprachbund. Innovations of the Bronze Age, the processes of alloying minerals in particular, necessitated innovations of sememes to facilitate trade transactions and contacts among people, across many language-speaking zones including Tocharian, Kashmiri, Pushto, Elam, Sumer, Akkadian, Hebrew-speaking regions. The substratum lexical repertoire has been identified through rebus readings of Indus Writing hieroglyphs to outline the semantic structures of Meluhha (Mleccha) language used in the conversation between Vidura and Kanaka, the miner in the Great Epic, the Mahabharata. Surely, more language studies are needed, beyond this rudimentary listing of glosses, to unravel the morphology and syntactical structures of Meluhha (Mleccha). The area spanned is the area of the Ancient Near East of the Bronze Age, extending from Haifa in Israel to Rakhigarhi, near Delhi. Meluhhans and Meluhha-speaking settlers outside Meluhha authored thesprachbund, the speech union. 49

Surprising confirmation of Bronze Age Linguistic Doctrine comes from a copper alloy bolt which holds the Rampurva Capital to the Asokan pillar. The copper bolt is inscribed with hieroglyphs of Indus writing attesting to two facts: 1. hieroglyphic writing system as a continuum in Indian sprachbund; 2. hieroglyphs denote 50

metallurgical processing.

Rampurva pillar edict text: Thus saith king Priyadarsi, Beloved of the Gods. Twelve years after my coronation, records relating to Dharma were caused to be written by me for the first time for the welfare and happiness of the people, so that, without violation thereof, they might attain the growth of Dharma in various respects. Thinking: Only in this way the welfare and happiness of the people may be secured. I scrutinize as to how I may bring happiness to the people, no matter whether they are my relatives or residents of the neighborhood of my capital or of distant localities. And I act accordingly. In the same manner, I scrutinize in respect of all classes of people. Moreover, all the religious sects have been honored by me with various kinds of honors. But what I consider my principal duty is meeting the people of different sects personally. This record relating to Dharma has been caused to be written by me twenty-six years after my coronation. Rampurva bull capital is a depiction of bos indicus comparable to the glyph on an Indus seal m1103.

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A solid copper bolt (24 in length and a circumference of 14 at the center and 12 at the ends), was found in the Rampurva Asoka Pillar near Nepal border.

Some of the hieroglyphs seen on this list are also seen on the Sohgaura copper plate inscription.

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It can be demonstrated that the four hieroglyphs inscribed on Rampurva copper bolt are hieroglyphs of Indus writing. See: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/4430996/Hieroglyphs-ofhistorical-periods-in-India Four hieroglyphs inscribed on Rampurva copoper bolt are:

On some cast copper coins coming out of mints, in addition to these four hieroglyphs, two additional hieroglyphs are inscribed:

All these six hieroglyphs are a continuum of the legacy of Indus writing. The language is Meluhha (mleccha) of Indian sprachbund. The rebus readings of these six hieroglyphs evolved in the context of Bronze Age are as follows, the readings validate the Bronze Age Linguistic Doctrine which should replace the 'Aryan invasion' Linguistic Doctrine which is the ruling paradigm in language studies. The Asur are found in the districts of Gumla, Lohardaga, Palamau and Latehar of Jharkhand state. They have been iron-smelters. The modern Asur vanavasi are divided into three subextended family divisions, namely Bir(Kol) Asur, Birjia Asur and Agaria Asur. An unresolved problem in the study of Bronze Age civilizations has been the identification of sources of tin. Arsenical bronzes of the millennia earlier to the 5th millennium were replaced by tin-bronzes creating a veritable revolution in the march of civilization. John Muhly has highlighted and contributed significantly to the resolution of this problem. Many 53

cuneiform texts do point to Meluhha as the major source of tin, reaching through the transit points of Magan and Dilmun along the Persian Gulf region and west of Mehergarh. A possible scenario is presented by a geologist, TM Babu (2003) in: Advent of the bronze age in the Indian subcontinent In Mining and metal production: through the ages, eds. P. Craddock and J. Lang, London, British Museum Press, pp175-180. In this article, Babu starts with the traditions in ancient India of making idols for worship using pancha-loha (lit. five metals), creating an alloy of copper, tin, lead, zinc, arsenic and less commonly, silver and gold. A word in Tamil denoting this alloy is kol which also means working in iron. This lexeme is denoted by the hieroglyphs: tiger (kola), woman (kola), rice-plant (kolom). Similar rebus readings of hundreds of hieroglyphs on Indus writing point to the Indian sprachbund, a linguistic union which explains the presence, for example, Munda words in ancient Sanskrit texts. Bronze Age doctrine explains Indian sprachbund This speech area indicates a linguistic doctrine. Just as Aryan invasion theory was postulated as a linguistic doctrine to explain the Indo-European languages, advent of Bronze Age can be presented as a linguistic doctrine to explain the Indian sprachbund. Bronze Age dawned with the inventions of tin and zinc as alloying minerals, alloyed with copper to create tin-bronze or brass. An extraordinary search for the sources of tin and zinc resulted in the creation of an extended interaction area involving what are referred to as Meluhha, Magan, Dilmun, Elam, Sumer, Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, Tocharian-speaking regions of Kyrgystan and the Mediterranean. The interactions among various language-speakers led to the formation and evolution of Indian sprachbund with evidences of metallurgy-related lexemes in Munda, Dravidian and Indo-Aryan language groups. Papagudem boy wearing a bangle of tin Bronze articles such as ornamental mirrors, arrowheads, pins, bangles and chisels, of both low tin and high tin content, have been recovered from Lothal, the Harappn port on the Gujarat coast, which has been dated earlier than 2200 BCE. The tin content in these articles range from 2.27% to 11.82%; however, some of the articles contain no tin. Tin is said to have been brought as tablets from Babylon and mixed with copper to make an alloy of more pleasing colour and 54

luster, a bright golden yellow. The utilization of bronze is essential only for certain articles and tools, requiring sharp cutting edges, such as axes, arrowheads or chisels. The selection of bronze for these items indicates the presence of tin was intentionalRecent discoveries of tin occurrences in India are shown inFig. 11.2. However, none of these occurrences shows evidences of ancient mining activity. This is because, unlike copper ores, the mining and metallurgy of the tin ore cassiterite is simple, and leaves little permanent tracetin ore is usually recovered by simple panning of surface deposits, often contained in gravel, which soon collapse, leaving little evidence of having once been worked. Cassiterite is highly resistant to weathering, and with its high specific gravity, it can be easily separated from the waste minerals. The simple mining and metallurgical methods followed even now by Bastar and Koraput tribals in Chattisgarh and Orissa, central India, could be an indication of the methods used in the past. These tribal people produce considerable quantities of tin without any external help, electric power or chemical agents, enough to make a modern metallurgist, used to high technology, wonder almost in disbelief. Clearly though, the technology practiced has a considerable importance for those studying early smelting practices. The history of this process is poorly known. Back in the 1880s Ball (1881) related the story of a Bastar tribal from the village of Papagudem, who was observed to be wearing a bangle of tin. When questioned as to where the metal had come from, he replied that black sands, resembling gunpowder were dug in his village and smelted there. Thus it is very likely that the present industry is indigenous, and may have a long history. That being said, neither the industry or its products appear in any historical document of any period, and thus is unlikey to have been a significant supplier of metalThe tin content of cassiterite ranges from 74.94% (mean 64.2%), showing that pebbles contain about 70% to 90% of the tin oxide, cassiteriteThe ore is localized in gravel beds of the black pebbles of cassiterite which outcrop in stream beds etc. and there are other indicators, in the vegetation. The leaves of the Sarai tree (Shoria robusta) growing on tin-rich ground are often covered in yellow spots, as if suffering from a disease. (The leaves were found to contain 700 ppm of tin on analysis!) Wherever the tribals find concentrations of ore in the top soil, the ground all around the area is dug up and transported to nearby streams, rivers or pontsThe loose gravelly soil containing the tin ore is dug with pick and shovel, and carried to the washing sites in large, shoulder-strung bamboo baskets. The panning or washing of the ore is carrie out using round shallow pans of bamboo. The soil is washed out, leaving the dense casiterite ore at the bottom of the panThe ore is smelted in small clay shaft furnaces, heating and reducing the ore using charcoal as the fuelThe shft furnaces are square at the base and of brick surmounted by a 55

clay cylindrical shaftThe charcoal acts as both the heating and reducing agent, reducing the black cassiterite mineral into bright, white tin metala crude refining is carried out by remelting the metal in an iron pan at about 250 degrees C. The molten tin is then poured into the stonecarved moulds to make square- or rectangular-shaped tin ingots for easy transportation. (Babu, TM, opcit., pp.176-179)

two late bronze age tin ingots from the harbor of Haifa, Israel contain glyphs used in epigraphs with Indus Writing of Sarasvati civilization!See:http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/11/archaeological-mystery-solved-siteof.htmlThe inscriptions on two pure tin ingots found in a shipwreck in Haifa have been discussed in: Journal of Indo-Judaic Studies, Vol. 1, Number 11 (2010) -- The Bronze Age Writing System of Sarasvati Hieroglyphics as Evidenced by Two Rosetta Stones By S. Kalyanaraman (Editor of JIJS: Prof. Nathan Katz)http://www.indojudaic.com/index.php?option=com_contact&view=contact&id=1&Itemid=8 ( See embedded document). Here is a pictorial gallery:

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Panning for cassiterite using bamboo pans in a pond in Orissa. The ore is carried to the water pond or stream for washing in bamboo baskets. 57

People panning for cassiterite mineral in the remote jungles of central India.

58

59

The ore is washed to concentrate the cassiterite mineral using bamboo pans. Base of small brick and mud furnace for smelting tin.

60

61

The tin is refined by remelting the pieces recovered from the furnace in an iron pan. The molten tin is poured into stone-carved moulds to make square- or rectangular-ingots. As the pictorial gallery demonstrates, the entire tin processing industry is a family-based or extended-family-based industry. The historical traditions point to the formation of artisan guilds to exchange surplus cassiterite in trade transactions of the type evidenced by the seals and tablets, tokens and bullae found in the civilization-interaction area of the Bronze Age.

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Illustrated London News 1936 - November 21st. A 'Sheffield of Ancient India: Chanhu-Daro's metal working industry 10 X photos of copper knives, spears, razors, axes and

dishes. The words used in the lingua franca of such tin-processing families constitute the words invented to denote the Bronze Age products and artifacts such as tin or zinc or the array of metalware discovered in the Sheffied of the Ancient East, Chanhu-daro as reported in the London News Illustrated by Ernest Mackay. Validating the Bronze Age Linguistic Doctrine Hence, the search for the identification of the language Meluhha (mleccha) of Indian sprachbundhas to be carried out in documenting the practices of the types shown in the pictorial gallery of tin processing and from within the cluster of over 8000 semantic clusters of the languages of the Indiansprachbund. This will be a first step in reiterating the Bronze Age 63

Linguistic Doctrine. The directions of borrowings of lexemes from one language to another are secondary features. The fact that such common lexemes related to metallurgy and metalware exist in Indian sprachbund is enough to validate the Bronze Age Linguistic Doctrine.

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Four women composing a svastika. Samarra. 5th millennium BCE. Pottery from Samarra. 5th millennium BCE. Four antelopes composing a svastika.Samarra artiface. Thesea re hieroglyphs denoting working with zinc and other alloys in Bronze Age.

Shipwreck Greek pottery. Ischia museum. 8th century BCE.Bee-divinity goddess and svastika (Beotia). 700 BCE.

Sources of tin and the beginnings of bronze metallurgy (James Muhly, Journal of Archaeology 89 (1985), pp. 275 to 291. http://www.docstoc.com/docs/document-preview.aspx?doc_id=159597663 Sources-of-Tin-and-the-Beginnings-of-Bronze-Metallurgy Iron smelting by Asur-A thing of Past BY DR. NITISH PRIYADARSHI The word Asur occurs in a number of places in the Rigveda, Brahamanas, Aranyakas, Upanishadas and Epics which 65

comprise the sacred literature of the Hindus. The Asur have been identified as primitive tribe in Jharkhand State of India. Their original occupation was iron smelting but now very few live by this profession. When the Asurs came to their present area of habitation is not known, but according to legend they lived with their kinsmen the Mundas, who in course in time drove them away. Driven by their kinsmen, the Asurs took shelter in the Netarhat Plateau, where they have been living for centuries unknown. According to other thoughts Asur had settled in Jharkhand before one thousand B.C. There are references to the asurs in the Rigveda describing them as great builders. Centuries of isolation coupled with exploitation and subjugation by one or the other alien element, have driven the Asur into comparatively inaccessible tract of the land amidst hills and mountains, forests and undulating slopes. The Asur locality is known as the Netharhat group of plateaus within Chotanagpur Plateau of Jharkhand State of India. The Netarhat plateau hills are of a nearly uniform height of about 3,600 feet above the sea level. The Plateau is formed of LATERITE rocks. It is from these rocks, the Asur used to extract iron ore for iron smelting. Iron-smelting used to be the principal occupation of the Asurs, but now it has ceased to be so. Few years ago only one furnace was found working at village Ramgaria in Bishunpur thana where only two families worked and earned a very meager living. IRON SMELTING BY ASURS:- Three varities of iron ore are recognized by the Asur at the Netharhat Plateau. One is magnetite which is called POLA by the Asur. The other one is Haematite from coal measures known as BICHI and third one is Haematites from Laterite known as GOTA. The Asur were able to locate a site for the ores by observation and experience. On the basis of their family labour iron smelting was carried on by them. Green sal trees were cut by them in the neighbourhood of their furnace for preparing char coal as char coal of green sal was capable of generating sufficient heat for smelting iron ore in their furnaces which were usually located in the neighbourhood of water sources like Dari, Chua or rivulet. The Asur family engaged in iron smelting perform SANSIKUTASI worship which may be called productive magic, as it is aimed at securing good iron while smelting. All the implements required for smelting and black smithy are collected in the front of the house. A cock and hen both of red colours are sacrificed during the worship. The ritual is followed by dance and drinks and merry-making. The peculiar feature of this festival is that musical instruments which are so essential for all social and festive occasions among the Asur are not played on this occasion when the youths and girls are engaged in dancing. Every head of a family has to don himself with a new piece of cloth on this occasion which is considered important in the annual cycle of festivals of the Asur. During the last several decades due to the introduction of improved metallurgy and the forest conservation 66

policy of the Government imposing restriction on wanton cutting of forest gave a final death blow to the industry of iron smelting in this plateau. Iron-smelting has now practically become a thing of the past. References: Gupta, S.P. 1976. The Asur, Ethno-Biological Profile. Bihar Tribal Welfare Research Institute, Ranchi. Gupta, S.P. 1974. Tribes of Chotanagpur Plateau. Bihar Tribal Welfare Research Institute, Ranchi. Ranchi District Gazetteer, 1970. Government of Bihar. S.K.Singh, 2005. Inside Jharkhand. Crown Publications, Ranchi. http://newsjharkhand.com/Special.asp?Details=15 http://www.docstoc.com/docs/documentpreview.aspx?doc_id=159598058 Prakash_ B._ 1991_ Metallurgy of iron and steel making and blacksmithy in ancient India

Rise and Fall of Ancient Indias Iron and Steel Metallurgy SATURDAY, 27 JUNE 2009 00:00 Two new books on the history and products of ancient Indian iron and steel technology Infinity Foundation Series Contributions to History of Indian Science and Technology Rupa and Co. Marvels of Indian Iron through the Ages -by R. Balasubramanian (2008) History of Iron Technology in India From Beginning to Premodern Times -by Vibha Tripathi (2008.) {Republished on Medha Journal from: Pp 24 Ghadar Jari Hai, Vol 3, Issue 1&2, 2009} It is a well acknowledged fact that the level of societal development is closely linked to the development of iron and steel industry. It is no wonder therefore that the world production of steel today is around 1.4 billion tons per year, also emphasising the importance of this technology to us in India. The production of iron ore (iron oxide), the basic natural raw material required to produce steel is more than two billions tons per year. Today, India is the fourth largest producer of iron ore (after China, Brazil, Australia) and the third largest consumer of steel (but consuming only 60 million tons of steel as compared to China which is consuming close to 500 million tons with a comparable population). India is exporting around 50% of its iron ore production currently. Despite India being a large producer and consumer of steel, it is not considered the source of new technologies today. It is therefore important to note that this was not the case until the advent of British East India Company. Two books published recently on the iron and steel technology in ancient India up to pre-British times are an important contribution to documenting the rise and decline of this technology in India. While the modern iron and steel technology was patented and commercialized in Europe in the mid nineteenth century, our Indian craftsmen, more than two thousand years back, had mastered this technology of making excellent iron and 67

steel. It is this fascinating saga of world class technological products being manufactured and exported to other parts of the world which is captured in the two recent volumes published as a part of the Infinity Foundation Series.

History of Iron Technology in India (From Beginning to Pre-modern Times), authored by Vibha Tripathi, an eminent historian from Banaras Hindu University, covers the long span of Indian history stretching over three and a half millennia from the first half of the second millennium BCE to pre-modern times. It traces the development of iron technology from the humble beginning when Indian artisans melting relatively low temperature metals like copper, copper zinc (brass) and copper tin (bronze). They hit upon the process of producing iron and also evolved it into an advanced technology and a flourishing industry, thereby becoming a supplier of the best iron and steel, on a tonnage scale, to all parts of the world. With a systematic review of the recorded evidence, Vibha Tripathi demolishes the myth that iron reached India through diffusion from the West as late as the sixth-fi fth century BCE. She argues that there was an independent origin and development of iron ore mining, extraction and manufacturing technology rooted in the raw materials available in India. Well recognized occurrence of iron is reported around 1500 to 1000 BCE in all parts of India. Tripathi refers to Arthashastra, a treatise on statecraft composed in the 4th-3rd century BCE, authored by Chanakya during Mauryan times. It mentions iron as Kalyasa. There is even a discussion of mines as an important source of income for the Mauryan state. It mentions the post of superintendent of mines to supervise and manage the mines. It lays down the duties of the director of mines in detail. In the sixth-fi fth century BCE, Sushruta began surgery using surgical tools made of iron requiring precision and quality of the highest order. Varahamitra in his khadga lakshanam dated 550 AD, elaborated on the carburization and hardening processes of iron swords. Classification of different kinds of irons is included in the famous Ras Ratna Samuchhaya, a tenth-twelfth century text on alchemy. 68

For example, Kanta Loha, Tikshna Loha and Munda having distinct properties are well documented in the text. Iron production was suffi ciently developed in India by the 4th-5th century CE. There was a flourishing trade between India and Iran, Iraq (Mesopotamia), Indonesia, China and Africa. There are references to rich Indian traders living in Mesopotamia. India received gold in return for export of copper, tin, lead and solid steel ingots, spices, drugs, cotton cloth, leather goods, precious stones and timber. The Indian metallurgical industry was one of the most advanced industries in the world at that time, according to Vibha Tripathi. Iron technology reached new heights of excellence during the Gupta period (3rd-to-6th centuries CE).

Massive iron based artifacts such as the Delhi iron pillar testify to the level of metallurgical skills mastered by Indians. The processes such as rapid cooling, carbon alloying, quenching, tempering, hardening and forge welding were known to them. Large lead baths were being used to achieve uniform heating of a bundle of wrought iron bars to the forging temperature. India is endowed with rich iron deposits and hence iron ore mining was being carried out in different parts of India for more than two thousand years. According to Dharmapal there were several important centres of iron ore mining, smelting and manufacture spread over from KumaonGarwhal to Assam, Hyderabad, Karnataka, Orissa, Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh. Vibha Tripathi has referred to the documented evidence about the flourishing iron and steel 69

industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Wages for workers were paid in kind. For example ordinary workers received 2-3% of the produce. The persons in charge of smelting house and forging house on the other hand received six and eight percent of the produce respectively.

Professor Balasubramaniam (Bala), a well known metallurgist from IIT Kanpur, in his book Marvels of Indian Iron Throughthe Ages, has documented the marvelous creations of the Indian craftsmen, the massive iron pillars, beams and cannons produced in different parts of India by forge welding the lumps of heated iron. The most famous example of the status of Indian technological excellence in the past is the magnificent Delhi iron pillar weighing seven tons, which remains an object of technological curiosity even today. The fact that these massive iron objects have not corroded even after more than two thousand years has also been explained in terms of contemporary scientific understanding by Bala in this book. Furthermore, the book also contains a section on the world renowned Wootz steel technology invented by Indians. Forgewelded and non-corroding iron pillars and beams As illustrated by Bala in the book, Indian artisans in the early days had not found a way to attain a temperature of 1540 degrees centigrade (the temperature at which iron melts) and hence they could not cast iron (as they had done for copper, brass and bronze, for example by the famous lost wax process invented in India). Hence they practiced forge welding. The lumps of iron (containing traces of slag) were heated and fused together by a process known as forge welding. This process to produce iron objects of a large diameter and weighing several tons is very well illustrated by Bala in the book. Documentary evidence is provided to substantiate the way these pillars, beams and cannons were manufactured and transported. The famous iron pillar in Delhi was set up by the iron smiths in India in the Gupta period in a place called Udaygiri near Vidisha and Sanchi around 70

400 CE. It was later moved to Delhi by Iltumish in 1233 CE. The excellent corrosion resistance of the iron pillar is attributed to the presence of phosphorous (using high phosphorous containing iron ores) in the reduced iron. Similar technology was used to produce an even longer pillar (13 meters) lying in three broken pieces in front of the Lal Masjid in Dhar, situated near Indore in Madhya Pradesh. Dhar was the capital of Malwa founded by King Bhoja (1010 1053 CE). Archaeological study indicates that the Dhar pillar was also erected during the Gupta period. Another famous iron pillar at the Mookambika temple in Kodachari hill, located in a town near Mangalore, also belongs to the same era. The iron beams lying in the Surya temple at Konark are of even larger dimensions. These iron beams were used to support the roof stones of the famous temples at Bhubaneswar as well as Puri. In fact non-corroding iron beams were being used extensively in building temples in Orissa dating back to the sixth and thirteenth centuries CE. Forge-welded iron cannons of India According to Bala, the forge welded cannons truly represent the mastery of iron ore mining, extraction and manufacturing technology of Indian blacksmiths. As opposed to cast iron cannon technology developed in Europe, Indians practiced forge welding technology and produced large cannons from direct reduced wrought iron. Bala has described in detail the technology as well as the history of some of the most massive forge-welded iron cannons in the world which are scattered all over the Indian subcontinent Thanjavur, Dhaka, Murshidabad, Bishnupur, Jhansi, Assam, Tripura, Gulbarga, Bijapur, Bidar, Golconda, Hyderabad, and many Deccan forts. The cannon technology was a crucial element in the rise and fall of several dynasties in India such as the Mughals, Marathas, Sikhs and Rajputs. It is certain that the latest technologies prevalent in Europe were also known to Indians. For example when the British defeated Tipu Sultan in 1799, they were astonished by the quality of his cannon. Nine hundred and twenty seven cannon were captured after the fall of Srirangapatnam in 1799. European colonizers used superior cast iron cannons and also systematically destroyed the forge-welded cannons from the Indian forts, according to Bala.

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Agarias, a tribe in Madhya Pradesh, are traditional iron smelters The above-mentioned examples illustrate the level of technological maturity achieved by Indian artisans and suggest the existence of a flourishing industry capable of producing iron and steel in hundreds of tons. It may be interesting to note that the British rated Indian iron highly and used it in preference to the iron produced by their own industry in making the famous tubular bridge in early nineteenth century across the Menai Straits in UK. It has also been recorded that 50 tons of Indian steel were used in the construction of the famous London Bridge in UK. Wootz Steel One of the greatest technological achievements to originate from the Indian subcontinent is Deccan Wootz Steel, often referred to as the wonder material of the orient. The world famous Damascus swords were made of Wootz steel and these were considered to be the most prized possessions and gift items (certainly more precious than gold and silver) by the aristocracy. There is no evidence to show that any of the nations of antiquity besides the Indians were acquainted with the art of making steel. The word Wootz is a distortion of the Kannada-Telugu word Ukku, for steel.

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Asur tribesmen from Bihar are experts in iron smelting Quintus Curtis records for example that a present of steel cakes was made to Alexander of Macedonia by Porus after his defeat in 326 BCE. Sir Robert Hadfield, a metallurgist, has reported on the possibility of the use of the chisels made of Indian steel and Indian craftsmen in the construction of the massive Egyptian pyramids.

Massive forge welded cannon, Bhavani Shankar, at Rani Lakshmi Bai's fort in Jhansi Wootz steel is an iron carbon alloy containing 1 to 1.8% carbon produced by the crucible melting process invented in India. The basic process, even though not fully understood, consisted of heating direct reduced iron with other ingredients including charcoal contained in a closed clay crucible. The crucibles containing steel were carefully cooled so that the metal solidified at the bottom of the crucible. The Wootz steel cake was of high quality. That the cooling of the crucible was crucial was well known to Indian metallurgists of that era since different ways of cooling in the furnace itself, in dry sand heaps, in moist clay, or by quenching with water are all well documented. Carburization of iron to controlled levels of carbon is thus the key to manufacturing Wootz steel. This technology was mastered by Indians quite early in the history of civilization, as early as 810 BCE. Studies indicate that the crucibles excavated in Tamilnadu date back to 250 BCE. The blades made of Wootz steel showed an intricate wavy pattern on the surface. A judicious combination of high strength and excellent formability in steels to be able to make sharp blades remains a technological challenge to this day. In fact the rigorous research conducted to understand and master the Wootz steel technology in Europe laid the foundations of modern metallurgy. Decline of Indian iron and steel industry in Pre-British era Both Vibha Tripathi and Balasubramaniam also discuss the possible reasons of the decline of the iron and steel industry in India. Tripathi has a separate section in her book where she brings out the possible reasons of the decline and death of the indigenous iron and steel industry in India with the advent of the British colonialists. It is interesting that the steel plants which were 73

commissioned in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in India were based on imported European technology and had no connection with traditional Indian technology perfected over centuries. According to Vibha Tripathi With industrialization and imperial designs of foreign rule a decline set in.. The iron industry could not withstand the onslaught of the colonial forces working against its interests in a planned way. Once the blast furnaces came into existence in Britain, production started at a much cheaper rateIt could hardly compete with the cheap British pig iron being imported. . The laws enforcing non-felling of trees in the forest deprived the charcoal based indigenous iron industry of its very basic raw material. It made production of iron impossible. The powerful lobby in Britain succeeded. The colonizers succeeded in enslaving the Indian sub-continent in every sense of the word by systematically destroying the manufacturing capacity of India. Both the authors also ascribe the decline to the reluctance of master craftsmen to document the technological secrets and to share the knowledge with others except with their favored apprentices. Hence some of the technologies could not be developed further and declined with the decline of the fortunes of the select group of families who knew the process secrets. Tripathi and Bala passionately plead for supporting research into and revival of the ancient Indian method of making high strength, non-corroding, crucible steel and converting them to sharp cutting objects requiring high levels of formability. It is hoped that research on these topics by Indian professionals will unravel not only the technological mysteries of steel making but also the socio-economic and political circumstances which led to the decline of the Indian manufacturing industry. This analysis of the historical facts may also equip us to compete today in a world facing challenges of technology denial by big powers to those who need it. Both the books have high production values with good visuals, and the series editor Dr D P Agrawal, Infinity Foundation and Rupa Books need to be complimented for providing such valuable books on the history of Indian science and technology. (Dr Pradip is a well known Metallurgist and Material Scientist and a Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering, Pune http://www.medhajournal.com/articles/science/786-rise-and-fall-of-ancientindias-iron-and-steel-metallurgy.html Ramachandra Rao, 1997, Iron and steel heritage of India - contributions from the National Metallurgical Laboratory, in: Ranganathan, S. (ed.), ATM 97, Iron & Steel heritage of India, Jamshedpur, pp. 95-108 http://www.docstoc.com/docs/documentpreview.aspx?doc_id=159598633 Iron and steel heritage of India -- contributions from the National Metallurgical Laboratory (P. Ramachandra Rao, 1997) Srinivasan, S. and S. Ranganathan, 1997, Wootz steel: an advanced material of the ancient world, in: Ranganathan, S. (ed.), Iron & Steel heritage of India, ATM 97, Jamshedpur, pp. 6974

82. http://www.docstoc.com/docs/documentpreview.aspx?doc_id=159598806 wootzsteel Juleff, G., S. Srinivasan & S. Ranganathan, 2011, Pioneering metallurgy. The origins of iron and steel making in the southern Indian subcontinent, Telangana Field Survey, Interim Report 2011, Bengaluru, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Indian Inst. of Science. http://freepdfdb.org/pdf/the-origins-of-iron-and-steel-making-inthe-southern-indian-40180761.html

Zinc and Brass in Archaeological Perspective J. S. KHARAKWAL1 AND L. K. GURJAR2 1JRN Rajasthan Vidyapeeth, Udaipur, 2Hindustan Zinc Limited, Udaipur Abstract Brass has a much longer history than zinc. There has been a bit of confusion about the early beginning of zinc as several claims are made out side of India. Both literary as well as archaeological records reveal that production of pure zinc had begun in the second half of the first millennium BC, though production on commercial scale begun in the early Medieval times. This paper attempts to examine the archaeological record and literary evidence to understand the actual beginning of brass and zinc in India. Introduction Zinc (Zn) is a non ferrous base metal, which is generally found in bluish-white, yellow, brown or in black colour. Its chief and important minerals are sphalerite or zinc blende, smithsonite, calamine, zincite, willemite and franklinite. As it boils at around 900 C, which is lower than the temperature it can be smelted at, therefore it is difficult to smelt this metal. Hence zinc technology was mastered later than that of copper and iron. For pure zinc production, therefore distillation technology was developed, in which India has the distinction of being the first. Zinc is used for galvanising iron and steel, brass making, alloying, manufacture of white pigment in chemicals and medicines. But in ancient times it was mainly used for brass making. In fact brass has a much longer history than zinc. Brass can be produced either by smelting copper ores containing zinc or copper and zinc ore in reduced condition or by mixing copper and zinc metals. Early evidence of zinc has been claimed from several parts of Europe and Middle East e.g., Switzerland, Greece, Cyprus and Palestine. But all these claims, except for the evidence of the sheet of zinc from the Athenian Agora (300 BC) are doubtful (Craddock et al., 1998: IS). Recent studies have shown that such small 75

percentages of zinc may occur due to accidental use of copper ore associated with zinc or its ore. Brasses containing up to 25 percent zinc have been reported from the fifth and third millennium BC contexts from China, but it seems that they did not play any role in the development of zinc production technology in the Far East. It is generally held that the Chinese started using zinc and brass from the last quarter of the third century BC when the Han Dynasty flourished in China. Craddock and Zhou have suggested that zinc was introduced in China through Buddhism around 2000 years ago. However, Weirong and Xiangxi (1994: 16-17) inform that the earliest literary record about brass mentioned as tutty is known from the Buddhist literature belonging to the Tan dynasty (619-917 AD). Brass (thou-shih) was not a common commodity in the early centuries of the Christian Era at least prior to 3rd century AD in China. Bowman et al. (1989) have analysed 550 coins ranging from 3rd century BC (Zhao dynasty) to the late 19th century (Ch'ing dynasty). They have found that the percentage of zinc suddenly increased by 20% or even up to 28% in brasses of the early 17th century AD. It is also supported by the well known textual evidence of T'ien Kung K'ai Wu, written in 1637 (Sung and Sun 1966). It is the first definite evidence of metallic zinc in China, which also mentions details of alloys used for coins. Weirong (1993) has examined ancient Chinese literature and archaeological record and claims that metallic zinc was not used in China prior to the 16th century AD. As far as India is concerned the firm evidence of zinc smelting is known only from Rajasthan. The antiquity of mining various types of ores in Rajasthan goes back to Bronze Age (mid-fourth millennium BC) as the evidence of Ganeshwar-Jodhpura cultural complex in north Rajasthan and Ahar culture in southern Rajasthan would indicate (Agrawal and Kharakwal, 2003; Misra et al. 1995; Shinde et al. 2001-02). Both these cultural complexes have yielded over 5000 copper-bronze objects (Hooja and Kumar, 1995) ranging from 4th to 1st millennium BC. Apart from these, the Mesolithic site of Bagor in Bhilwara district also yielded a few copper arrowheads (Misra, 1973). There are large number of ancient copper, iron, lead working and smelting sites across Rajasthan in the Aravallis, indicating a long tradition of metallurgy. Besides metal tools, a variety of pottery, beads of semi precious stones, terracotta, paste and other antiquarian material is known from such early settlements. These early farmers were practicing diverse crafts using pyrotechnologies. It appears that large scale production of different metals e.g., copper at Singhana, Toda Dariba, Banera, Suras, Bhagal, Kotri, lead-silver at Ajmer, Agucha and Dariba, zinc at Zawar and iron at Dokan, Iswal, Karanpur, Loharia, Parsola, Bigod, Jhikari-Amargarh, belonging to the medieval times (Kharakwal, 2005) was the result of such long experience of metal technology involving pyrotechniques. In fact the Aravallis 76

are a polymetallic zone like Anatolia. This paper is an attempt to present an overview of the archaeometallurgical researches on zinc and the position of zinc and brass in archaeological perspective in India. Zawar: The Oldest Production Center of Zinc Zawar (2421'N; 7343'E) is located on the bank of the River Tiri, about 38 km south of Udaipur town in the Aravalli hills in Rajasthan (Fig. 1). It is the only known ancient zinc smelting site in India (Craddock et al., 1985). The entire valley of Tiri at Zawar is marked by immense heaps of slag and retorts, which indicate a long tradition of zinc smelting at Zawar. On some slag-mounds are found remains of houses made of used retorts (Fig. 2) and stones, perhaps belonging to the smelters/smiths.

Fig. 1: Map showing location of Zawar (after Craddock et al 1985)

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Fig. 2: Residential structures made of discarded retorts Though archaeometallurgical activity at Zawar was casually recorded by several Indian and British scholars between 17th and 20th century, the credit of highlighting the importance of the ancient remains however goes to Crookshank (1947), Carsus (1960), Morgan (1976), Strackzeck et al. (1967) and Werner (1976 see in Gurjar et al., 2001). Perhaps these reports encouraged P.T. Craddock of British Museum and K.T.M. Hegde of M.S. University of Baroda to initiate archaeometallurgical study at Zawar jointly with Hindustan Zinc Limited, Udaipur in 1983 (Craddock et al., 1983, 1985; Gurjar et al., 2001; Hegde, 1989; Paliwal et al., 1986; Willies, 1984). This team carried out extensive investigations both for ancient mining as well as smelting of zinc at Zawar. They discovered incredible evidence for mining and furnaces used for zinc smelting, besides primitive smelting retorts from the dam fill at Zawar. Besides Zawar, the evidence of early zinc mining and smelting has also been found 2 km south east of village Kaya in form of a small retort heap and ancient mine workings in the adjacent hills. It is the northwestern continuation of Zawar mineralization. These remains have not been studied in detail but considering the shape of retorts it can be safely concluded that they are of the same period. Kaya is located 6 km north of Zawar, and about 15 km south of Udaipur town. Mining Zinc ores are widely distributed in the country, but major deposits are found in the Aravallis. In recent years one of the largest leadzinc deposits have been discovered at Agucha in Bhilwara district (Tewari and Kavadia 1984), though the well known ancient lead-zinc workings are located in the Zawar area of Udaipur 78

district. Zinc (Zn) is generally found in veins in association with galena, chalcopyrite, ironpyrite, silver and cadmium and other sulphide ores (Raghunandan et al., 1981). The Aravalli range in southern Rajasthan is composed of rugged and gorgeous hills of pre-Cambrian metamorphic rocks with narrow valleys. These rocks are rich in zinc ore in the form of sphalerite veins in association with galena and copper bearing deposits. This mineralized belt of Zawar extends for about 25 km. The major mineralization of sphalerite and galena with varying quantities of pyrite have been found in the form of sheeted zones, veins, stringers and lenticular bodies (Raghunandan et al., 1981). Since these minerals are quite distinct from each other it was possible to separate them manually and this explains why zinc mining and smelting developed only at Zawar. There are extensive remains of old workings in Zawarmala, Mochia Magra, Balaria, and at Hiran Magra in Zawar area in the form of deep trenches, shafts, open stopes, long serpentine galleries and inclines. These mines are narrow and vary from 10 to 300 m in length. There is extensive evidence of underground mining too (Fig. 3). It appears that this mining continued for several hundred years as indicated by the enormous mound of slag and smelting debris.

Fig. 3: The ancient mine in Zawar Once the ore was located on ground, based on the presence of gossan or mineralized veins, the miners followed the down ward extension along dip and pitch of the ore-shoot and developed huge inclined stopes and chambers underground. These stopes and branched chambers were supported by finger like inclines further down. Arch shaped pillars (about 4XSm) were left to support the roof while developing such stopes and chambers (Gurjar et al., 2001). Mining was carried out by fire setting as evidenced by the 79

rounded profile of galleries and stope chambers, the supporting pillars, smooth surface of rock faces with sooty deposits and the floors are buried deep in charcoal, ashes and calcined rocks (HindZinc Tech 1989). After dousing the fire the rocks were broken with chisels, pick axe, hoes and other iron implements. A few such objects have been discovered from Mochia mines (Craddock et al., 1989: 62, p13). Extensive use of wood in the form of ladders, roof support, haulage scaffold (14C date: 2350120 BP) have been found in the mines. Extensive open pit mining followed by underground method was carried out at Rajpura Dariba. An opencast mine of lead-zinc (300 m long and 100 m wide) developed over east lode at Dariba, (Raghunandan et al. 1981 :86-87) is a remarkable evidence of ancient mining technology practiced in southern Rajasthan. Excavation carried out by Hindustan Zinc Limited in 1986 has brought out the presence of massive timber revetment in the hanging wall of the open pit. This consists of three or probably four benches each 4m high with closely placed vertical posts, held back by three pairs of horizontal timbers and are pinned by long timbers to provide support to weak hanging wall. Here, in one of the underground mines of the East Load the miners reached up to a depth of 263 m, in the 3rd 4th century BC (Craddock et al. 1989:59; Willies et al. 1984). Such mines are rarely known in the ancient world. A 14C date from Dariba indicates that deep underground mining had begun in the second half of the second millennium BC. At Agucha also extensive evidence of mining of rich galena pockets datable to the Mauryan times has been discovered (Tiwari and Kavdia, 1984: 84-85). The smelting debris and mining clearly indicates that it was carried out for lead and silver. For dewatering mines launders of hollowed timber (3 m long and 20 cm wide) were used, which have been dated back to 2nd century BC (Bhatnagar and Gurjar, 1989: 6). It is likely that some kind of buckets may have also been used for pulling out water from such deep mines. The possibility of shallow depressions at certain interval in the slanting wall of the mines for collection of water can not be ruled out. A few shallow conical and U shaped pits have been reported in hard rocks at Baroi and Dariba. They may have been used for crushing/ breaking rock fragments in order to separate and beneficiate the ore before smelting. At Dariba such pits having a diameter of 27-30 cm and 60-70 cm deep were found close to a large opencast in calc-silicate rock. While at Baroi in Zawar these were 8-12 cm in diameter and 10-18 cm deep and found on the surface next to ancient mine workings. It is interesting to note that mining of such non-ferrous metals was also recorded in the contemporary literature like Kautilya's Arthasastra (2.12.23, 2.17.14 & 4.1.35), which mentions that there was a superintendent of mines in the Mauryan Empire (Kangle, 1972). His duty was to identify metals and establish factories. While describing silver ores the text clearly mentions 80

that it occurs with nag (lead) and anjan (zinc). Since there is extensive evidence of mining and smelting of lead, zinc and silver at Zawar, Dariba and Aguchha in Rajasthan, it is quite likely that Kautilya was aware of this activity. Harry (1991) points out that the imperial Maurya series of coins, particularly silver ones, containing one fourth of copper, strongly indicates the mining of silver and zinc from southern Rajasthan. Mining of such ores had surely begun in Rajasthan by the middle of the first millennium BC, if not earlier. Some scholars have argued that Zawar should be identified as Aranyakupgiri of the Samoli inscription (Halder, 1929-30) belonging to seventh century AD. The word Aranyakupgiri of the inscription perhaps stands for deep well like mines. Of course such mines were there in Zawar during this time, but the inscription may refer to the mines of Basantgarh located near Samoli in Sirohi district rather than Zawar. The underground mining of ores at Agucha, Dariba and at Zawar may have been the result of a gradual development of mining technology in Southern Rajasthan going way back to the middle of the fourth millennium BC when Bronze Age cultures had just appeared on the scene in the region. What is interesting is the fact that no evidence of smelting of zinc has been found so far prior to 9th century BC. Craddock et al. have pointed out that mining of zinc ore was surely done in Zawarmala in 3rd-4th century BC. Perhaps the evidence of smelting ranging from 4th century BC to 9th century is buried under the massive dumping of retorts and smelting debris and temple complexes. The evidence of a large stone structure and Early Historic pottery shapes exposed near the Jain temple in old Zawar also confirms the same.

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The consistency of these radiocarbon dates clearly suggest that mining activity was carried out during the Early Historic period and medieval times (Craddock et al., 1989:48). Traditionally Maharana Lakha or Laksha Singh (14th century), who was ruling in the last quarter of the 14th century, is believed to have re-opened these mines. He might have opened several new mines rather than reopening the old ones. Besides, Maharana Pratap (16th century) is also credited for opening new mines at Zawar. One of the major mines at Zawarmala is known after him. It seems that large scale production of zinc continued despite political instability in southern Rajasthan during the late medieval times. It was Abul Fazl who for the first time in 1596 in his well known Ain-i-Akbari recorded the zinc mines of Zawar (Blochmann, 1989: 41-43). The mining and smelting activity was not only registered in the contemporary local records and literature (e.g., Nainsi ri Khyat in 1657; Bakshikhana Bahi 91, Rajasthan State Archives records of Udaipur and Bikaner and others) but also in the writings of several scholars of the 19th and 20th century, mostly British (Anon, 1872; Brooke, 1850; Carsus, 1960; Erskine, 1908; Shyamal Das, 1986 I (originally published in 1886): 305; Tod, 1950: 221-222). Mining of several ores for example iron, copper, lead was being done as late as the 19th century in several parts of Rajasthan. Unfortunately the Zawar zinc operation came to a halt around 1812 AD, unlike the Chinese traditional zinc smelting. A few British officers attempted to restart these mines in the middle and late nineteenth century with the financial support of Maharana Sarup Singh (184261), Shambhu Singh (1861-1874 AD) and Sajjan Singh (1874-1884 AD), but failed. It is believed that due to political instability in Mewar, frequent attacks of the Mughals, Pindaris and the Marathas and recurrent famines in the 18th century these mines were abandoned. Smelting and Production The entire valley of the Tiri in Zawar is dotted by massive dumpings of slag and earthen retorts indicating a long tradition and commercial production of zinc. Several radiocarbon dates (see table 1) bracketed between 12th and 18th century also conform this activity. Gurjar et al. (2001: 633) write, "the earliest evidence of zinc smelting on industrial scale 82

is the carbon date of 840110 AD for one of the heaps of white ash removed from zinc smelting furnace. The fragment of relatively small, primitive retorts and perforated plates found in the earth fill of dam across the Tidi (Tiri) river may belong to the period or they must at least predate the dam itself. It appears that the main expansion of the industrial phase of zinc production began at Zawar sometime from 11th or 12th century". At Zawarmala a bank of seven distillation furnaces (Fig. 4), roughly squarish on plan (66x69 cm), were discovered by Craddock et al. Each furnace had two chambers, upper and lower, separated by a thick perforated plate of clay. It is presumed by the excavators that the furnaces may have looked like truncated pyramids and their height may have been about 60 cm. Brinjal shaped earthen retorts, filled with charge, were placed on the perforated plate in inverted position in the upper chamber. As many as 36 retorts were placed in each furnace for smelting and they were heated for three to five hours. The retorts were made in two parts and luted together after filling the charge. To prepare the charge the ore was subjected to crushing and grinding and mixed with some organic material and cow dung! rolled into tiny balls and left in the sun for drying. These balls then were placed in retorts after drying. A thin wooden stick was placed in the narrow opening of retort, which perhaps prevented falling of charge in the lower chamber before heating when they are initially inverted in the furnace, and at the same time would facilitate the escape of zinc vapour formed during heating. Such special retorts, ranging from 20 to 35 cm in length and 8 to 12cm in diameter, were developed by the metallurgists at Zawar for zinc distillation. Identification of different size of retorts is sure indication of different shape and size of furnaces at Zawar, as the evidence of a bigger furnace (base 110 cm square) from old Zawar would also indicate. After heating, zinc vapor was collected and condensed in the lower chamber in small earthen pots. It was surely an ingenious method that was devised for downward distillation of zinc vapour by the Zawar metallurgists. Thus, it was for the first time anywhere in the world that pure zinc was produced by distillation process on a commercial scale at Zawar. Gangopadhyay et al. (1984) and Freestone et al. (1985) have carried out technical studies of ore and retorts. Craddock (1995 :309- 321) compares these furnaces with koshthi type furnaces illustrated in Rasaratnasamuchchaya, an alchemical text datable to 13th century, and other earlier texts on the same subject. Thanks to the joint efforts of the Hindustan Zinc, British Museum and M.S. University Baroda for such wonderful discovery that is possibly the ancestor of all high temperature pyrotechnical industries of the world.

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Fig. 4: Zinc smelting furnaces at Zawar It has been estimated that each retort may have been filled with one kilogram of charge out of which 400 gram of zinc may have been produced. Thus each furnace produced around 25 to 30 kg of zinc in one activity of smelting. It has been estimated that 600,000 tons of smelting debris at Zawar, produced about 32,000 tones of metallic zinc in four hundred years (between 1400 and 1800 AD). If we estimate this production from 12th century to 18th century the quantity of metal would certainly be more than 50,000 tonnes. Colonel Tod in his well known work, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, has reported that the mines of Mewar were very productive during the eighteenth century, and in the year of 1759 alone the mines earned Rs. 2,22,000 (Tod, 1950: 222, 399). Tod writes that about haifa century ago these mines were earning Rs. three lakhs annually. Dariba mines yielded Rs. 80,000. He has recorded these mines as Tin mines of Zawar. Since we do not have any evidence of ancient tin working in Mewar region his tin mines must be nothing but zinc mines of Zawar. Moreover the Imperial Gazetteer of India Provincial Series Rajputana (1908: 52) clearly mention that these mines were famous for silver and zinc and were worked on a large scale until 1812-13 when the worst famine took place (Kachhawaha, 1992: 26-27; Malu, 1987; Singh, 1947). The production of zinc was perhaps very high under the rule of Maharana Jagat Singh and Maharana Raj Singh during 17th century as the local records of AD 1634-35 and 1657 reveal that annual revenue of Zawar was rupees 2,50,000 and 1,75,002 respectively. It is also clearly indicated in the record that per day income of these mines was Rs. 700; this estimate was confirmed by Muhnot Nainsi in his famous work Nainsi ri Khyat (1657) (Ranawat, 1987). Another record belonging to the reign of Maharana Raj Singh, reads that the revenue earned in a year from Zawar was Rs. 17,96,944 (Bhati, 1995: 1, 2, 11, 12, 14). Gurjar et al. (2001: 634) 84

have examined a record of the same king dated to 1655 AD, preserved in the State Archives, Udaipur which mentions an income of Rs. 1,70,967 in a single month from Zawar! We are however, not sure whether this income was obtained only from mining and smelting. As the entire area of Zawar is gorgeous and agriculture may not have been enough to generate revenue, therefore it is likely that the entire revenue was earned from mining and production of zinc. Erskine (1908) also informs that these mines were certainly an important source of income right from fourteenth to early nineteenth century as they yielded more than two lakh rupees annual revenue for Maharana's treasury at least until 1766. Thus the annual income from Zawar was quite handsome and it is likely that due to large scale production of zinc Zawar may have become one of the main sources of state revenue and an important trade centre between the 12th and early 19th century AD. The discovery of an earthen pot containing a coin hoard datable to 16th century by L.K. Gurjar in 1984 (Gurjar et al. 2001) at old Zawar also suggests that this area was an important commercial center. There are remains of few structures on top of a hillock at Zawar, which, according to knowledgeable villagers, belong to Vela Vania (a trader known as Vela). Perhaps Vela Vania was involved in zinc trade. It is worth mentioning here that most of the existing forts, huge water reservoirs, temple complexes, water structures, and other monuments in Mewar were built between 10th and 18th centuries AD. It is likely that the revenue earned due to brisk trade of zinc at Zawar was utilized for construction of these large monuments. Zinc and Brass in Archaeological Perspective Only a few Harappan bronzes have yielded a small percentage of zinc. For example Lothal, a Harappan sites in Gujarat (22001500 BC) (Rao, 1985), has yielded around haifa dozen copper based objects containing zinc, which varies from 0.15 to 6.04 % (Nautiyal, et al. 1981). One of the objects (antiquity No. 4189), though not identified, contains 70.7% of copper, 6.04 % of zinc and 0.9% Fe, which could be termed as the earliest evidence of brass in India. From Kalibangan, another Harappan site in north Rajasthan, a long spear head of copper was found containing 3.4% of zinc (Lal et al. 2003: 266). There is some evidence of brass from the early Iron Age when we come across two examples from Atranjikhera (1200- 600 BC), a Painted Grey Ware culture site in the Ganga doab. One of the objects leaded bronze contains 1.68% tin, 9.0% lead and 6.28% of zinc whereas the other one assayed 20.72% of tin and 16.20% of zinc (Gaur 1983: 483-90). Unless we have more examples of bronzes containing appreciable percentage of zinc replacing tin, arsenic or other elements we can not infer that the Bronze or Early Iron Age cultures were aware of the nature and property of zinc. Nevertheless these examples perhaps represent the early or experimental stage of zinc in India. The archaeological record indicates that in the 85

second half of the first millennium BC the percentage of zinc started increasing and intentional use of brass appears on the scene. Such evidence has been found from Taxila, Timargarh and Senuwar. Taxila, located about 30 km north of Rawalpindi in Pakistan, has yielded a large variety of metal objects including those of copper, bronze, brass and iron (Marshall, 1951 :567 69). Several brass objects datable from the 4th century BC to 1st century AD have been discovered. One of them was a vase from Bhir mound, which predates the arrival of the Greeks at Taxila (Biswas, 1993) and has assayed 34.34 % of zinc, 4.25% of tin and small quantity of lead (3.0%), iron (1.77%) and nickel (0.4%). Another evidence of real brass was discovered recently at Senuwar in the Ganga Valley from the Northern Black Polished Ware (NBP) levels (Singh, 2004: 594). It has 64.324% of copper and 35.52% of zinc. Brasses made by cementation method generally contain less than 28% of zinc and rarely could go up to 33% (Werner, 1970). Since the examples of Taxila and Senuwar have yielded more than 33 % of zinc, therefore these are the earliest definite examples of real brasses. They must have been made by mixing metallic zinc with copper. Zinc is a volatile metal and due to its low boiling point (907 C), which is lower than the temperature it could be smelted, it is difficult to smelt. Unlike other metals, it comes out in the vapour form from the furnace and gets reoxidised, if it is not condensed. Craddock et al. have pointed out that zinc ore was mined way back from 5th century BC (PRL 932 430100 BC; BM 2381 3805O BC) at Zawar and metallic or pure zinc was produced here by distillation process for the first time in the world. The production of metallic zinc has been traced back to 9th century AD at Zawar, but there is a strong possibility that the older evidence is buried under the immense heaps. Though Taxila folks were aware of the distillation process (Habib, 2000), yet in the absence of definitive evidence we cannot claim that they employed this process for obtaining zinc. It is possible, though not proven that metallic zinc was produced at Zawar way back from the 6th century BC, from here it reached at Taxila and Senuwar. The other possibility is that zinc was scrapped from the cooler parts of the furnaces at both sites! Besides these, Prakash (Athavale and Thapar, 1967: 132 table IV) and Mahurjhari in Mahararashtra (Deo, 1973; Joshi 1973:77), Asura sites in Chhotanagpur region (Caldwell, 1920: 409-411; Roy, 1920: 404- 405) have yielded brasses, which have been dated to the second half of the first millennium BC. Most of these brasses have more than 15% of zinc and some of them contain between 22 to 28 percent of zinc. This kind of evidence clearly points out they were made by cementation process. Several circular or rectangular punch-marked and other coins of brass, . bracketed between the 2nd century BC and 4th century AD (Smith, 1906) (see Table 2), are known mostly from northern India. Since none of them is analysed we do not 86

know if they are real brasses (objects containing more 28% zinc are called real brasses) or made by cementation process. What is interesting is that most of these coins belong to the regional kings, indicating popularity of brass in India. This kind of evidence goes against the assumption that the Greeks introduced brass in India. The archaeological record clearly points out that the Indians knew brass prior to the arrival of the Greeks.

Table 2: Early brass coins of lndia (After Smith 1906) Beside coins, several other brass antiquities have also been reported from the Early Historic sites in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, which include lids, caskets, bangles, finger rings, utensils, icons, chariot and religious object and utensil (Biswas, 1993, .1994: 360; Biswas and Biswas, 1996: 132). Since zinc could change the colour of copper and impart it a golden glitter, it was preferred for making Hindu, Buddhist and Jain icons throughout the historical period. For example among the brass icons of the Himalayan region (from Tibet to Gandhar) lead is present in appreciable amount and the percentage of zinc varies from 4 to 35 (Chakrabarti, and Lahiri, 1996: 108-109; Reedy, 1988). Obviously these brasses were made by selection of ore, cementation process and mixing metallic zinc with copper. In the absence of a source of zinc in the Himalayan region it may be suggested that metallic zinc may have been supplied from Zawar. The higher percentage of lead in these brasses clearly suggests that it was deliberately added to increase the casting ability of the metal. Such leaded brasses were called kakatundi in ancient India. Craddock (1981 :20-31) has reported analysis of 121 Tibetan and Himalayan icons/metal works by atomic absorption spectrophotometer for 13 elements in each sample down to 10ppm level. 87

He has shown that as many as 45 artifacts have more than 28% of zinc, which might have been made by mixing copper and zinc. The percentage of zinc in such artifacts ranges from 28 to 54. It seems that most of the brasses of his list belong to Medieval and later Medieval times. From Phopnarkala and East Nimar, in Madhya Pradesh, several standing brass images of Buddha have been discovered (Sharma and Sharma, 2000) assigned to the Gupta-Vakataka period (5th-6th centuries AD). These brasses contain high percentage of zinc ranging from 21 to 30%, which means that they were made by cementation process (Tondan, 1983). In the first half of the seventh century AD (AD 629-645) Hiuen Tsiang, a Chinese scholar of Buddhism, extensively traveled in India. He saw a magnificent vihara (residential complex of Buddhist monks) of brass near Nalanda under construction during the reign of Raja Siladitya (Harshavardhan AD 606-647). It would have been more than 100 feet long when completed (Beal, 2000 vol. ii: 174). He also noticed brass images (teou-shih) of Buddhist and Brahmanic deities at several places in northern India (Beal, 2000 vol. i: 51, 89, 166, 177,197, 198, vol. ii: 45, 46,174). The metal art of Eastern Indian complex, mainly coming from Bihar, West Bengal and Bangladesh, is also fairly well known. A large number of ancient bronzes, belonging to Pala and Sena School of art datable between 8th to 12th centuries AD contain considerable amount of zinc (Leoshko and Reedy, 1994; Pal, 1988; Reedy, 1991a, b). A large number of bronzes and brasses mostly icons of Jain and Hindu deities, containing appreciable amount of zinc, have been reported from various parts of Gujarat, and are datable to 6th to 14th centuries AD (Swarnakamal, 1978). Most of the late medieval brasses were made by mixing metallic zinc with copper as the percentage of zinc has been found to exceed more than 28%. In some cases lead is present up to 9.5%, which must have been useful rending fluidity to the metal. It is likely that all these brasses were made of using metallic zinc from Zawar. Biswas (1993) writes that the icon of seated Tirthankara dated AD 1752 from Gujarat is one the finest example of the late medieval brasses in India, which was made a few years before the Maratha invasion of Mewar. Table 3: Elemental percentage of brasses datable to 14th to 18th centuries AD (after Biswas, 1993 and Swarnakamal, 1978)

88

Table 3 contains a few brasses from medieval and late medieval period of India, most of which have a high percentage of zinc. All those examples containing more than 33% were certainly made of metallic zinc. In some cases lead is present up to 9.5%, which must have been useful rending fluidity to the metal. The metallurgists were obviously skilful to produce high quality of brass. It is quite likely that all these brasses were made by using metallic zinc from Zawar. The Mughals, who ruled over India between 12th and 16th centuries, had metal karkhanas (factories), in which a large number of brasses for example utensil, decorative pieces, guns, mortars and so on were produced perhaps employing zinc from Zawar (Neogi, 1979: 40-42). It is held that the artillery made of iron, bronze and brass was introduced in India during the Mughal period. Large cannons and guns made of brass have been reported from Agra, Bengal and other places (Neogi, 1979). There are a few brass cannons at Udaipur too, which might have been made by zinc obtained from Zawar. Bidri Ware The Bidri Ware of Bidar in South India, belonging to medieval period, is well known for its glossy black surface decorated with exquisite silver inlay art (Gairola, 1956). It is a zinc alloy decorated with silver or gold inlay. La Niece and Martin (1987) have done detailed technical study of27 vessels of this ware from the Victoria and Albert Museum's collection. Their results show that the content of zinc varies from 76 to 98%, copper 2 to 10% and lead 0.4 to 19%. Lead isotope studies have indicated that the zinc was not obtained from Zawar for Bidri ware (Craddock et al. 1989: 52-53). This kind of result has brought about a challenge to look for other zinc production sites in India, if this metal was not imported from outside! Literary Evidence Ayurvedic treatises such as Susrut Samhita (5th century BC) and Charak Samhita (2nd century BC) record the use of essence of various minerals and metals e.g., gold, silver, copper, tin, bronze and brass for preparation of medicine. These texts also mention that the instruments used for curing delicate parts of the body were made of gold, silver, copper, iron, brass, tooth, horn, jewels and of special variety of wood (Datt Ram, 1900: 12; Sharma, 2001 II: 444). Both these texts record brass as riti or ritika. It is 89

interesting that both Charak Samhita and Susruta Samhita refer to pushpanjan, which was prepared by heating a metal in air and was used for curing eyes and wounds (Chikitsasthanam 26.250) (Shukla and Tripathai, 2002: 661; Ray, 1956: 60). This could be identified as zinc oxide as Craddock (1989: 27) points out that "no other metal would react in the air to produce an oxide suitable for medicinal purpose". Therefore, these Ayurvedic texts are perhaps the earliest literary evidence of zinc in India. Kautilya's Arthasastra is one of the earliest firm datable (4th century BC) textual evidence for mining and smelting of metals, which reveals that the director of metals was responsible for establishing factories of various metals such as copper (tamra), lead (sisa), tin (trapu), brass (arakuta), bronze (kamsa or kamsya), tala and iron (Kangle, 1960 vol I: 59 and vol II: 124; Kangle, 1972 vol II: 108). Brass has also been frequently mentioned in ancient Sanskrit and Buddhist literature and was popularly known as harita, riti, ritika, arkuta or arkutah, pitala and so on (Chakrabarti and Lahiri, 1996: 149; Neogi, 1979: 41; Sastri, 1997:208). The term kamsakuta of Digha-nikaya and Dhammapada Atthakatha has been interpreted as brass coins by Chatterjee (1957: 104-111). He strongly argues that brass currency was in vogue between 6th and 4th century BC in India, though we don't have chemical analysis of known coins of this period. Darius I, a Persian king, had a few Indian cups, which were indistinguishable in appearance from gold except for their smell (Hett, 1993: 257). This may only be the Indian brass. Strabo quotes the explanation of Nearchus about India, who traveled the north-western part of this country with the Macedonian army in 4th century BC, and writes that "they use brass that is cast, and not the kind that is forged; and he does not state the reason, although he mentions the strange result that follows the use of the vessels made of cast brass. that when they fall to the ground they break into pieces like pottery" (Jones, 1954: 117). This kind of evidence indicates that Indians were making brass way back in 4th century BC. But we do not know whether it happened due to absence of lead or high percentage of zinc? The alchemist Nagarjuna is well known for his treatise on alchemy titled Rasaratnakara, which was perhaps originally written, as Biswas (1993: 317, 1994: 361-362; Ray, 1956: 116-118) argues, between 2nd and 4th century AD and compiled around 7th or 8th centuries AD. Nagatjuna was certainly a great scientist, who, for the first time, not only described cementation process but also zinc production by distillation technique (Biswas, 1993: 317; 1994: 361-362; Ray 1956: 129). This is therefore the earliest literary evidence, which records that brass is an alloy of copper and zinc. Rasarnavam Rastantram, an alchemical text datable to 12th century AD, is an important alchemical text, in which both brass and zinc have been recorded. This text clearly records zinc making process (Craddock et al, 1989: 31; Ray, 1956: 118), besides different kinds 90

of zinc ores e.g., mratica rasak, gud rasak and pashan rasak. Apart from these there are a few other alchemical texts such as Rasakalpa, Rasarnavatantra, Rasprakash Sudhakar of Yasodhara, Rasendrachudamani of Somadeva and Rasachintamani of Madanantadeva (all datable from 10th to 12th centuries AD), also explain different kind of brasses and zinc- making by distillation process (Ray, 1956: 171-191). The description by Yasodhara for extraction of zinc appears to be the best one as Craddock et al.'s (1989) work has shown that it fits well with the process used at Zawar. These texts reveal that koshthi type furnaces were used for smelting and had an arrangement of two chambers separated by a perforated plate. For distillation tiryakpatana yantra were used. The Rasaratnasamuchchaya, a late 13th or early 14th century work of iatro chemistry, is the best available literary evidence of zinc production process. In fact the zinc smelting process described by Yasodhara earlier has more or less been repeated in this text besides the illustrations of apparatus by Somadeva. Bhavamisra in the 16th century in his well known work, Bhavaprakasanighantu, recorded as many as seven different kinds of alloys (upadhatus) including bronze and brass (Chunekar and Pandey, 2002: 609). He has recorded two different kinds of brasses such as Rajariti and Brahmariti. Besides, two other types of brasses (pittala) i.e., ritika and kaktundi have also been recorded (Neogi, 1979: 41). Besides these, Allan (1979: 43-45) cites the work of Abu Dulaf, Al-risalat al-thqniya, datable to 9th-10th centuries AD, who described production of a variety of tutiya in Iran. He recorded that the Indian tutiya was preferred in Persia (Allan, 1979: 43-45), which obviously might have been better than the Persian one. It is likely that the Persians imported Indian tutiya. The Persians also recorded Indian tutiya as the vapour of tin (Allan, 1979: 44), which might be zinc (Craddock et al. 1989: 74) from Zawar. Thus the Persian literary source also supports production of zinc in India in 9th10th centuries AD. And brass has surely longer history than zinc. All the aforesaid literary references clearly suggest that metallic zinc was known in India several centuries before the actual dated evidence of commercial production at Zawar. Thus the aforesaid archaeological and literary evidence indicates that Indians had started using zinc rich ores from second millennium BC, though we can not claim that it was intentional. Of course stray discoveries of brasses have been made from Bronze and Early Iron Age sites, but we can not conclude that it was a common metal. The discovery of coins and other objects indicates that it became popular only in the second half of the first millennium BC. Zinc in Europe William Champion established a zinc-smelting furnace in 1738 AD at Bristol in England and started commercial production in 1743. His furnace was quite similar to the Zawar example with downward distillation (Day, 1973:75-76). What is interesting is that Champion used exactly the same technique of 91

distillation per descensum that was used at Zawar and even used 1.5% (weight) common salt in the zinc smelting charge (Biswas, 1993: 327). Thus his arrangement of retorts and technique was identical to Zawar. Dr. Lane is believed to have smelted zinc ore at his copper work in Swansea in 1720 (Porter, 1991: 60) around 20 years before Champion started zinc production in England. Was it Lane who came to Zawar and learnt zinc smelting technique and attempted it at Swansea, from where Champion, Henkel and 'others copied the Indian process! Craddock gives credit to the Portuguese ships for transporting zinc from India to China and eventually introduction of zinc technology. He emphatically states that the Zawar process is the ancestor of all known zinc smelting techniques in the world. Conclusion Though, early evidence of metallic zinc is known from Athenian Agora and Taxila (datable 4th to 2nd centuries BC), there is no evidence of regular production of metallic zinc at these sites. However, recent discovery of brasses from Senuwar has now strongly indicated that metallic zinc was surely being produced during the Early Historic phase in India. It can be suggested that zinc was no more a rare metal. To date the oldest evidence of pure zinc comes from Zawar as early as 9th century AD, when distilration process was employed to make pure zinc. The Bhils of Southern Rajasthan are held to be the aborigines of this region (Hooja 1994) and prepare alcohol by traditional down-word distillation method. Interestingly zinc was also produced Zawar by using same principle of distillation. Moreover, Brooke (1850) has recorded that until 1840 the Bhils of Zawar knew distillation process of pure zinc. Therefore the credit of innovating special retorts and furnaces for distillation of zinc surely goes to the Bhil tribe of Southern Rajasthan. It was surely this local knowledge which they could successfully employ for distillation of zinc. Thus the Zawar metallurgists brought about a break through in non-ferrous metal extraction around 12th century, if not earlier, by producing it on commercial scale. On the other hand in China commercial production of zinc started almost three hundred years later than India. It appears that brass was introduced in China in the early centuries of the Christian Era through Buddhism, though the idea of zinc distillation process may have traveled in 16th century via international trade to China. From China it was exported to Europe in the middle of the 17th century AD under the name totamu or tutenag, which was derived from Tutthanaga - a name of zinc in South Indian languages (Bonnin, 1924; Deshpande, 1996). However, Indian zinc had already reached Europe prior to this and had created great curiosity about this metal. Thus the commercial production of zinc at Zawar had begun almost three hundred years earlier than China, if not earlier. Therefore, Zawar has globally stolen the march by becoming the oldest commercial center of zinc in the world. William Champion's furnace in the 18th century at Bristol 92

was based on Indian downward distillation process, the idea of which may have reached there through the Portuguese or East India Company or by some European traveler. Hence Zawar, in the words of Craddock, is the ancestor of all zinc production techniques of the world. It was an industrial activity, which laid the basis of various modern chemical and extractive industries. Acknowledgements We would like to record our sincere thanks to Prof. D. P. Agrawal and Rajiv Malhotra for constant encouragement to work on archaeometallurgy in Rajasthan. We are grateful to Profs. P. T. Craddock, V. H. Sonawane, K. K. Bhan, Toshiki Osada, G. L Possehl, V. S. Shinde, K. S. Gupta, S. Balasubramaniam, Michael Witzel, Meena Gaur and Drs Piyush Bhatt, S. Aruni, Shahida Ansari, P. Dobal, J. Meena, R. Barhat, B. M. Jawalia, S. K. Sharma, Vishnu Mali, H. Chaudhary and Mr. P. Goyal, L. C. Patel and Miss Noriko Hase for helping us at various stages while collecting data for this paper. References Agrawal, D. P. and J. S. Kharakwal 2003. Bronze and Iron Ages in South Asia, Delhi: Aryan Books International. Allan. J. W. 1979, Persian Metal Technology 700-1300 AD. London: Ithaca Press. Anon. 1872. The Mines of Mewar, The Journal of Indian Antiquary (see under Miscellany section) (Ed. J. A. S. Burgess) 1: 63-4. Athavale, V. T. 1967. Chemical Analysis and Metallographic Examination of Metal Objects, in B. K. Thapar ed. Prakash 1955: A Chalcolithic site in the Tapti Valley, Ancient India 20-21: 135-39 (see table IV) Beal, S. 2000 (1884). Buddhist Records o!the Western World vol 2. Trans, From the Chinese of Hiuen Tsiang, Trubner, London. Bhati, H. S. 1995 (Ed.). Maharana Rajsingh Patta Bahi Pattedaran ri Vigat (in Hindi), Himanshu Publication, Udaipur. Bhatnagar, S. N. & L. K. Gurjar 1989. Zinc - A Heritage, Hind Zinc Tech, Jan. 1989 Vol. 1. Biswas, Arun Kumar 1993. The primacy of India in ancient brass and zinc metallurgy, Indian Journal of History of Science 28(4): 309-330. Biswas, Arun Kumar 1994. Minerals and Metals in Ancient India Vol. 1 Archaeological Evidence, D. K. Printworld (P) Ltd., New Delhi. Biswas, A. K. and S. Biswas 1996. Minerals and Metals in Ancient India vol II, D.K. Printworld, Delhi. Blochmann, H. (trans and ed.) 1989. The A-in-IAkbari of Abul Fazl Allami, Low Price Pub, New Delhi (originally pub in 1927). Bonnin, A. 1924. Tutenag and Paktong, Oxford University Press, Milford. Bowman, S. G. E, M. R. Cowell and J. Cribb 1989. Two thousand years of coinage in China: an analytical survey, Journal of Historical Metallurgy Society 23 (1):25-30. Brooke, J. C. 1850. Notes on the zinc mines of Jawar, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal XIX (1-7): 212215. Caldwell. K. S. 1920. The result of analyses of certain ornaments found in Asura sites, Journal of Bihar and Orissa Research Society 6: 390-423. Carsus, H. D. 1960. Historical background, In C. H. Mathewson (Ed.). Zinc, New York: American Chemical Society. Pp 1-8. Chakrabarti, D. K. & Nayanjyot Lahiri. 1996. Copper and Its Alloys in Ancient India, Munshiram 93

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Museum 22: 16-21. Willies, L., P. T. Craddock, L. K. Gurjar and K. T. M. Hegde 1984. Ancient lead and zinc mining in Rajasthan, India, World Archaeology 16(2): 222- 233, http://www.jstor.org/stable/124574. How to cite: Gurjar, L.K. and Kharakwal, J.S. 2006. Zinc and Brass in Archaeological Perspective. Ancient Asia 1:139-159, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/aa.06112 http://www.ancient-asia-journal.com/article/view/aa.06112/23 Notes on Vedic references: "Spencer gives details from Malcom's "History of Ancient Persia" and states that for 2598 years some four dynasties ruled over Persia from Yama Vivanghao (Yama Vaivaswat in Sanskrit) in whose time the Deluge commenced, i.e., in 9844 B.C. The rule of these four dynasties ended therefore in approximately 7200 B.C. By this time, Kai Vishtaspa became ruler of Persia. Sage Kaksivan (RV 1-122-13) speaks of one Istasva who is identified with Vishtaspa by E.S.Bharuca (quoted by Hodivala). This king is supposed to have ruled for 120 years, and so his period can be fixed to about 7100 B.C. Iranian Zarathustra was a contemporary of king Vishtaspa, and therefore his date can be worked out to be around 7100 B.C. On the basis of astronomy, Spencer determines Zarathustra's date to be in between 7388 to 7052 B.C., coinciding with the dates determined above." http://www.hknet.org.nz/aryaninvasion-page.htm Prasad Gokhale, Antiquity and Continuity of Indian History. Hodivala S.K., Zarathustra and His Contemporaries in the Rg Veda, 1913. Spencer H.S., Are the Gathas pre-Vedic? 1965. Asur (anthropological perspectives): ASSYRIA [ISBE]"...In bronze work the Assyrians excelled, much of the work being cast. But in general it was hammered, and the scenes hammered in relief on the bronze gates discovered by Mr. Rassam at Balawat near Nineveh are among the best examples of ancient oriental metallurgy at present known. Gold and silver were also worked into artistic forms; iron was reserved for more utilitarian purposes. The beautiful ivory carvings found at Nineveh were probably the work of foreign artificers, but gems and seal cylinders were engraved by native artists in imitation of those of Babylonia, and the Babylonian art of painting and glazing tiles was also practiced. The terra-cotta figures which can be assigned to the Assyrian period are poor. Glass was also manufactured. (A. H. Sayce) ASSYRIANS - a-sir'-i-ans ('ashshur): The inhabitants of Assyria." http://classic.net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=ASSHUR [quote]Abstract This paper discusses for interrelated aspects of prehistoric and proto-historic cultures from the Chotanagpur region of India. It begins by looking at the ethno-archaeological data from the region. Then, it goes on to discuss the various kinds of rock art sites in the entire region. Third, it looks at the iron sites in the region. Finally, it looks at the phenomenon often described as Asura sites or Asura cultures in the region. All these elements would be studied to glean important facts regarding the 97

prehistoric sites in the region and to attempt to find ways to understand their cultures. It is hoped that this paper would generate many studies that expand the scope of this paper to incorporate more data and many more ideas for a further and better understanding of these early cultures... Data From Ethno-Archaeology...Bhattacharya[9] comments on the terracotta snake found from Chirand and links it up with the cultural aspects of the Bauris of Bankura district in West Bengal. Their worship of the cult of Manasa is symbolically associated with their linkage to the king, and hence to power, prestige and economic advantages. Such studies have also been conducted very fruitfully in great detail on the Kanjars of Uttar Pradesh by Malti Nagar and V.N. Misra[10] and on the Van Vagris of Rajasthan by V.N. Misra[11]. As far as the metallurgy of the region is concerned, many authors have tried to link up the metallurgy of local indigenous communities with the meals found from archaeological sites. Ray, et al.[12] and Ray[13] have found that the Sithrias caste practise a brass working in an indigenous style which is remarkably similar to the brass artifacts found at Kuanr. In this regard, the structure of the indigenous iron-making communities as studied by Sarkar[14] is of great importance. He divides the art of the blacksmith into two sections the removal of iron from the ore or smelting, and the fashioning of iron into other products or forging. He sees, often, that the two are supported by two different groups of people. Sometimes, the two are looked upon differently by local populations, one being kept lower than the other in the hierarchy. The Agaria are a tribal community that have inhabited the Central Indian region and their name comes from the word aag or fire. The Agaria were less numerous in the Ranchi plateau but had become incorporated with the Asurs of the region. Lohars are a group of communities who work on iron and they may have either a tribal or non-tribal origin. They were often secluded and were of a low caste designation. He was required widely and most villages had at least one Lohar. In the Santal Parganas, they trace their origin either from Birbhum, Manbhum or Burdwan, as well as from Magahi. It seems that in these areas, general use of iron had not started in the early historical period. Thus, though mining and extraction of the metal was important to the states of the period, its use seems to have remained unmentioned. In fact, the word Munda (as a tribe of this region is called) also means a ball of iron. Tribal groups were mostly relegated to iron extraction and often the ores were found in the forested and hilly regions which were claimed to be traditionally their habitats. The iron of Bengal was famed for its malleability. In Birbhum, the iron smelters included Santals, Bonyahs and Kols. Such activity was part-time and seasonal and was combined with agriculture. Iron earth was obtained either from the surface or by digging small shafts under the ground. The extraction was normally in the open, but the smelting houses were like blacksmiths 98

workshops and run by Kol-lohars, who were a non-agricultural group. They were in contact with iron merchants and received advances from them. There were also others who sold it to others and carried to iron markets called aurangs[15]. In Bihar and Jharkhand, such iron-smelting was an ancient craft in the Rajmahal Hills, Palamu-Ranchi and Dhalbhum-Singhbhum regions. Many tribals participated. In the Rajmahals it was the Kols, who were migrants with hunting as a subsidiary occupation or even some agriculture. Then, there were the Agaria/Asurs of Ranchi and Chotanagpur, the Cheros and Bhoktas of Palamau, Hos and Kharias of Dhalbhum, Korahs and Nyahs of Bhagalpur district, often on their way to becoming settled agriculturists. They handed over iron to the Lohars for cash. In the Rajmahal hills and Santal parganas there were larger forges and indications of organized, large-scale and long-term smelting of iron also, leading to functional specialization and blacksmith colonies. In Orissa, Patuas and Juangs created iron of the best quality. In Bonai it was done by the Kols, probably from Singhbhum. It was a subsidiary craft practiced by Sambalpur villagers along with agriculture. In Darjeeling, iron was manufactured but not smelted by the Kamins. In Khasia hills it was done by the Garos, Khasis and Nagas, though this region had features different from that of the Chotanagpur[15]. Thus, over time, the blacksmith became part of the caste hierarchy and often rose in it through the process of Sanskritization while the iron-smelters remained lower in the hierarchy. While the Lohars and Lohras were allowed to become smiths in the villages of Oraons, the Agarias were not even allowed to use Oraon wells. Myths exist in the whole region, which separate the Gonds, the Santals, Bhumij, Ho or Lohars from the iron-smelting tribes and they involve the invoking of gods (like the Sun) to destroy the Asurs/Agarias. Thus, while these tribes worship the sun the Asur-Agarias do not. The Kherwars, Cheros and Bhoktas similarly removed the Bhurs and Marhs to Singhrauli or Kaimur where they were smelting iron. One group of Kols, under the influence of the Oraons, started worshipping the sun, doing agriculture and left ironsmelting. Another group ran from there, hid in the Bonai hills and started iron-smelting. Women in tribal communities like the Agaria or Kol were allowed to work in the smelting process while the Lohars did not allow women in their work. Such practices recreated this social division between them. As Lohars from outside kept adjusting to the communities they stayed with, they also became more and more confused in the adoption of these new cultural mores[15] Tripathi and Mishra[16] also studied the iron-making communities in detail and found out that the Mahuli Agarias produced white iron which was used for preparing weapons. A high grade iron was also produced by the Parsa group of Agarias as well as the Kamis of Darjeeling... The Problem Of The Asura Sites Over a hundred sites were described by S.C. Roy over the years (see an 99

outline in Roy[31]). They were described as Asur sites due to local mythology, Asur garhs or forts and Asur sasans or burial grounds. In fact, the great slabs of stones on some of these Asur graves had been removed by the Mundas for the graves of their ancestors. Roy saw them as having the following basic features (after Chakrabarti[32]): They were always on elevated areas conveniently located on the banks of a water course and eminently suited for defence. They had foundations of brick buildings, large tanks, cinerary urns, copper ornaments and stone beads, copper celts and traces of iron-smelting. The antiquity of the stone temple ruins and stone sculptures found associated with some reputed Asura sites was unlikely to be applicable to them. The period covers a wide chronological horizon, though Roys assertion that they cover the Stone, Copper and early Iron Age are wrong. They are mostly within the early historic period. Further, S.C. Roy divided two kinds of urns found in the graves as belonging to Group A or Group B. Group A in Khuntitoli included large earthenware urns not found by him earlier in Ranchi and Singhbhum excavations. Group A and Group B in this village were separated by a water channel. Group B urns were of the usual ghara shape that he normally found in such graves in the district. In both cases, the contents of the urns do not indicate any differences. He also indicates that since the area had seen prolonged use, perhaps one group (group A) was more advanced and had a more improved pattern of urn than group B which might have been an earlier form. The slabs were supported like a seat with four stones on four corners like a house and the size of the slab was no indication of the amount of grave goods included. Each slab was placed East-West on its long axis. The grave goods included bronze and copper chains, bracelets, anklets, finger rings, toe rings, beads, bronze ankle bells, ear ornaments, dishes, bells, unstamped copper coins, iron arrowheads, rings, jugs (some spouted) with patterns on them and bones, which had been kept here after burning. Below the level of the graveyard some Neolithic stone celts were also found. Here, after the rains, Roy picked up stone crystal beads, arrowheads, axe-heads, stone cores and flakes from 7/8-15 feet below the brick foundations of Asur buildings. Shiva-lingas with the encircling yonis were also present. Roy believed the Asurs to be the worshippers of these. At Khuntitoli, a tiny metal figure of a man driving a plough drawn by two bullocks was ploughed up near an Asur site. Further small stools were found in regions like Palamau district, and such stools are still worshipped and kept under trees, people believing them to have been there for many centuries. Further, Roy also comments on the fact that even if Asurs invented the smelting of iron, there were too few iron artifacts. Thus, he sees a four or three stage culture represented by the Asur graves first a Neolithic stage, over that a Copper Age and overlapping that an Iron Age. Under this there may 100

be some palaeolithic tools. Above this there may be Kushan coins. The Asurs of yore seem to have great forts, were skilled potters and workers in copper, bronze and iron. The currency involved coins of shells and small, round, thick pieces of copper. A strong belief in the after-life was also inferred from the grave goods. The bodies were burnt, then broken with a heavy stick and put into the cinerary urns. Some of the bones show injury marks, one on a skull, if it be ante-mortem which is likely, resulted in the death of the individual. The stature was between 4 feet 10 inches to 5 feet with good musculature. Such an injury that resulted in death was inferred from a skull in Khuntitoli, Singhbhum district[33]. The skull capacity was smaller and there were prominent cheek bones, with small jaws, face and slight prognathism[34]. Caldwell[35] also analyzed the proportion of various metals in the artifacts found. Murrays report in 1940 indicates his studies of Ruamgarh in 1926 of such a site from Singhbhum district. There are problems of lumping all the cultural materials into one horizon and then labeling it as being from 3rd-4th centuries AD. The two crania found were not part of the site itself but were found some way beside it due to the exposure of their burial and two stones resting near them indicate a burial area. One was a male of between 22-26 years, the other, also a male, between 17-21 years. They could possibly be linked to Mundas in the region[33]. The skulls and skeletal material found from Bulandibagh and Kumrahar near Patna are dated to about 2115 250 BP (Kumrahar). The Kumrahar adult female skull was more recent and different to the Bulandibagh young adult male[36]. Though the issue may be argued, there is no true megalithic formation present. The so-called megalithic sites found in the district could be interpreted in a different way. The majority of the tribals of the region, especially the Mundas and the Oraons, worship not only the forests, land, river, and mountains but also the stones around them. Spirits are given a place in the hearth by digging in a wooden block or a piece of stone. There is ancestor worship and many of the spirits are those of ancestors. Hence, the usage of large stone pieces to mark graves or to extend the usage to give a khunt or permanent place for a spirit cannot be extrapolated into an entire, regulated practice and cultural features that is a hallmark of megalithic cultures in South India. Secondly, there are problems with the dating of this practice since large stones or pulkhi are still placed on top of the place where the remains of the dead are interred to this date in many tribal villages, especially among the Mundas. Thus, the Asura sites are characterized by remains of brick buildings, traces of iron-smelting, copper implements and ornaments, gold coins, stone implements, beads, silted up tanks, cinerary urns, iron implements, potsherds, stone implements and sculptures. The pottery is of coarse fabric, thick in section, terracotta red in colour and mostly wheelmade. It includes jars, bowls and vases[32]. 101

The radio carbon dates suggested that these finds belonged to the late centuries B.C. and the early centuries A.D. Copper objects found sometimes overlap with these Asura sites[37]. Two uncalibrated radiocarbon dates for some of these sites are TF-369 1970+90 BP (20 BC) and TF-70 1850+100 BP (100 AD)[32]. Was there an Asura kingdom at the time? We cannot know this for certain. There are indications that some of these sites were located on elevated areas which were highly defensible. It is entirely possible that what is taken to be Asura finds may be the finds of two or more cultures living in close association or trading, with one of them participating in early chiefdoms or states. That the Asura community was practicing trade with others is evident from the gold coins found in some of the sites. In Darbhanga district, Bihar, there is a fort called Asurgarh, about 40 miles from Darbhanga and Madhubani. Supposedly, it had been settled by Asur Shah, a Muslim chieftain, some of whose punch marked coins were also found. Locals claim the area to be old, if not Buddhistic in period, but a Muslim chieftain would put it not older than 15th century. The name given to the chieftain is also not complimentary[38]. What we know of present Asuras is very little. The 1981 Census shows them to be less than 8,000 in number. They remember that their sole earning used to be from smelting iron ore with the help of charcoal. Few families maintain this practice now, and NGOs like Vikas Bharati in Bishunpur are trying to train them and others to teach and re-learn these dying skills[3940]. Banerji-Sastri[41] tried to trace them through historical sources and found the earliest reference to be around 2nd century BC. Earlier to this, they may have belonged to the land of the Assyrians. It is claimed that the Ashur absorbed the cultures of ancient Egypt and Babylon and passed them on to India. They are known in history as Ashur about the 1200s (BC) after which they disappear to re-emerge in the 10th century BC. The author claims they came to India through sea routes rather than land ones. They then became incorporated into Indian society, traveling into many of its parts. They became the Brahmans who sat beside the various kings in India and were well-versed in astronomy and medicine. They also collaborated and fought with a variety of different groups. They may have become the kings of Magadh (now the Patna and Gaya districts of Bihar) and have left traces in Rajgir and various other Central Indian sites along with the mythology of the sacrifice conducted by Raja Janmejaya due to which all the snakes of the Chotanagpur region died, a mythology still enacted by many tribals of the region[42]. Further, they were seafarers and traveled all over India often through waterways. They became gradually absorbed into Indian society of that time, though some returned back to Assyria and others went on to the Pacific. Small groups of them often lost at wars and hid in the jungles of Chotanagpur, Nagpur, the North East, going to the places which carried their names, 102

for they brought to India their own serpent symbols of the Naga and that of Garuda[43]. Initially, it may be supposed that the defined Asuras of Sanskritic mythology of those who were of unintelligible speech, devoid of rites, following strange ordinances, without devotion, not sacrificing, indifferent to the gods and lawless were the tribals of the Chotanagpur and other regions. However, this may not be entirely true, since Munda mythology refers to the Asuras as being killed by their gods, the variety of Asura sites and their graveyards. Roy[44] claims that the present-day Asurs took up the name of this ancient group and its iron-smelting. These Asurs are divided into three kinds: there are the Soika Asurs, also called Agarias or Agaria Asurs (the iron-smelters), the Birjias who have also taken up plaiting bamboo baskets, etc. with ironsmelting and the Jait Asurs who live in villages, smelt iron and manufacture ploughshares and other rude iron implements, some families also taking up agriculture and being Hinduised neither marry nor interdine with other sections. Incidentally, iron-smelting Agarias are also found in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh states also[44]. The Birjias as well as the Soika Asurs have nomadic or migratory groups (uthlu) as well as settled groups (thania). The settled Birjias are further divided into the Dudh Birjias who do not eat beef and the Rarh Birjias who do. A further division among the Birjias are those who anoint their brides and bridegrooms only with oil (Telia Birjias) and those who use vermilion as well as oil (Sinduraha Birjias). The Asurs seem to have similar practices with the Mundas and the Birjias seem to have clan as well as individual totems. They now practise only cremation of the dead and there is no urn-burial. However, such burial is seen among the Hos and Mundas. In a particular ritual called sanrsi-kulasi, iron implements are used to sacrifice fowl to ancient Asur spirits in order that they continue giving them a plentiful supply of iron-ore. Though the two tribes look similar, the title Asur seems to have been given to them because they practice iron-smelting. The earlier Asurs were not from the same racial stock as the Mundas[44]. Roy[44] further avers that they were an earlier advanced group of people who lost to the Indo-Aryans and escaped to the jungles. They were rapidly absorbed into the Indian groups through intermarriage and the Bengalis contain a large proportion of this mixture also. They are also found in Southern and Central India. He refers to them as the Nag branch of the Asurs and finds similarities with Asur sites and the ruins of the Indus Valley civilization. He also feels that this group may have had more than one division and may have been as widespread as the Indus Valley sites. In the mythology of the Mundas, there is an account of the existence of the Asuras, who were iron-smelters, long before the advent of Mundas. The Asuras would not allow the Mundas to stay. Hence, the Munda gods tried to intercede on behalf of the Mundas. When the Asuras still refused to allow Mundas into their 103

territory, the Asuras were punished by the gods. The men went into their iron-smelting furnaces believing that they would find gold. Doors were shut on them and they burnt to death. The women became part of the Munda tribe. The dates match this version of mytho-history, for the first Munda King, Phanimukut Rai, was crowned in 93 A.D. according to the Vansavali or genealogy kept by his 63rd descendant, the present Maharaja of Chotanagpur. The coming of the Oraons into the region is also clouded in mystery. Some accounts claim that the Oraons were present at the coronation of Phanimukut Rai. Others claim that they lost their kingdom when the Turkish Muslims attacked and won Rohtasgarh in 1198 A.D. Still others vehemently declare that they were beaten by Sher Shah Suri who treacherously defeated them and won Rohtasgarh from them in 1538 A.D., leaving them to flee to Chotanagpur[45]. It is also a matter of confusion that Oraons are a Dravidian language speaking group[46] while the Asuras and the Mundas are an Austro-Asiatic language speaking group[46]. Apart from the Oraons, the Sauriya Paharia, the Mal Pahariya and the Gond speak the Dravidian language. Hence, by this token it was believed that since all the other communities spoke either Indo-Aryan or Austro-Asiatic languages they must have migrated from the Southern parts of India. According to S.C. Roy, the route could not be ascertained but he suspected that a small portion of this group settled in the Rajmahal hills and came to be called the Maler tribe. S.C. Roy thus influenced his student to conduct a study on the Maler. The study of S.S. Sarkar on the Maler of Rajmahal Hills disproved this hypothesis. However, it is clear that the Oraons came after the Mundas had already established themselves in the region. This can be seen from their mythological accounts. The Oraons of Ranchi district frequently claim that they had to give up their language as well as their gods when they settled on Munda land which may be seen even now. Then, many Oraons villages still have their old Munda names. Finally, the original, communal land-ownership of the Mundas (known as the khuntkatti) gave way to the present bhuinhari land tenure of the Oraons which is a breakdown of the khuntkatti tenure. This land tenure also was broken down into a tenure system for the later settlers and who were required as service providers (whether castes or tribes) for the dominant caste or tribe of the village. This became the raiyati tenure. Having delineated these problems, I again return to the issue of state formation or of the rise of chiefdoms. The case of the Asuras makes it clear that there was trade with others outside this area. Whether such Asuras can be linked to the Asuras of the Mahabharata period is a matter of conjecture[40]. However, if the black or gray clayey layer is taken to be the site of a neolithicchalcolithic industry, then other evidences would have to be taken into account. Iron is known from many regions in the area. At Barudih in Singhbhum district, an iron sickle with a profusion 104

of Neolithic celts and coarse black-and-red pottery has been dated to 1055/210 BC (calibrated to 140-830 BC). Further, in the Neolithic-Chalcolithic phase, a total of 80 sites are recorded from Bengal alone. Of these, the iron-bearing layers of Bahiri, Pandu Rajar Dhibi and Mangalkot yield dates around 1000 BC for their first iron-bearing levels[47]. It is necessary for a large population to go in for an intensification of their agriculture as arable land decreases. However, early states need not have intensification of agriculture as a necessary hallmark[48]. They may have a root crop agriculture tradition which would require the small-sized celts and ring-stones found in the region[4950]. It is not yet clear when or how sedentary agricultural practices came into the region. The Oraons claim that they first started practicing agriculture but there is no evidence to prove this. What is clear is that the early inhabitants of Ranchi district did not solely practice sedentary agriculture. All of them had alternative modes of livelihood. Conclusions Considering the fact that the Hathnora calvarium was dated to about 760,000 BP, it seems important to find out the spread and dispersion of prehistoric cultures in India during the entire period. The Chotanagpur region may be taken to be one geographic zone and thus it has been taken as a unit, even though it spans many states. One of the states that it spans is Madhya Pradesh, which includes the Hathnora region. This tenuous link has been taken to include the fact that populations from these regions must have passed through the region or even settled there. The diversity and specificity of the tools found in the region need to be explained, if not through direct stratigraphic and other hard evidences, then through the lens of a variety of theoretical approaches. The data from ethno-archaeology teaches us that there is a very tenuous link between the current classification of communities as tribes or as peasants since there is a deep interlinkage between these two hypothetically created definitions. Also, many communities also traditionally participated in metal-working and so their simple or primitive nature is thrown into doubt. Different communities seem to have formed niches or economic-categories in between modern communities. This model that is seen in the current context may also have been followed earlier. As a result, it seems clear that earlier communities need not have followed one culture but would have been composites of populations having many cultures, often interspersed and sharing traits and ideas. Thus, the iron using and iron making cultures of the past could not have been a unified Iron Age but was a product of this past multi-cultural heritage where many cultures collected, smelted and worked iron to help out and earn from the iron using communities that emerged. The rock art-creating cultures are another offshoot of this complexity that is emerging in this zone. There seems to be a large variety in these as well and spatially this is to be expected since they are located in regions fairly separated. However, the 105

rock art that is seen here seems to have lent itself readily to being transmitted culturally to present generations of tribals in the Jharkhand region who use such motifs as decorations on the mud walls of their huts even today. Also, there seems to be a traditional sequence from one stage to the next and associated skeletal finds that substantiate this. The Asura sites are much more varied and interesting than they had appeared at first. It seems that most states, grave goods and use of iron and other metals has often made early archaeologists call them Asura sites, which has been linked with some mythological material or researches into local folklore. However, the Asura sites seem to be developing into the same pattern of variety within the structure that we see in the ethno-archaeological, iron using and iron making and rock art contexts. Thus, they are also formed from a variety of cultures and communities and their apparent similarity should not blind us to this basic reality. In the next stage of analysis we shall see how the entire structure of the prehistory of the Chotanagpur region may be seen from this perspective. References 1. Ghosh, Abhik. 2008(a). Prehistory of the Chotanagpur region part 1: Making sense of the stratigraphy, Internet Journal of Biological Anthropology 1(2). 2. Ghosh, Abhik. 2008(b). Prehistory of the Chotanagpur region part 2: Proposed stages, Palaeolithic and the Mesolithic, Internet Journal of Biological Anthropology 2(1). 3. Ghosh, Abhik. 2009. Prehistory of the Chotanagpur region part 3: The Neolithic problem and the Chalcolithic, Internet Journal of Biological Anthropology 2(2). 4. Sahlins, M.D. 1968. Tribesmen. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. 5. Ghosh, Abhik. 2004. Reasoning the Oraons out of being: A look at the concept called tribe, P. K. Misra (ed.) Studies in Indian Anthropology: Festschrift to Professor Gopala Sarana. Jaipur and New Delhi: Rawat Publications, pp. 105-132. 6. Prasad, H.K. 1960. The Naga-cult in Bihar, Journal of the Bihar Research Society 46(January-December): 129-134. 7. Sharma, R.P. 1972-73. A socio-economic note on tribes and peasants, Puratattva 6: 60-63. 8. Fried, Morton H. 1975. The notion of tribe. Menlo Park, California: Cummings Publishing Co. 9. Bhattacharya, D. K. 1989. Terracotta worship in fringe Bengal, Ian Hodder (ed.) The Meaning of Things: Material Culture and Symbolic Expression (One World Archaeology 6). London: Unwin Hyman, pp. 12-22. 10. Nagar, Malti and V.N. Misra. 1990. The Kanjars A hunting-gathering community of the Ganga Valley, Uttar Pradesh, Man and Environment 15(2): 71-88. 11. Misra, V.N. 1990. The Van Vagris Lost hunters of the Thar desert, Rajasthan, Man and Environment 15(2): 89-108. 12. Ray, Ranjana, Sharmilla Majumdar, Sutapa Ghosh and Sutapa Mukhopadhyay. 1997. A study on brass working communities in Pallahara region: An anthropoarchaeological approach, Journal of the Department of Anthropology, Calcutta University 4(1): 51-59. 13. Ray, Ranjana. 2004. Man and culture in Eastern India: An anthropological study on 106

quality of life through time. Sectional Presidents Address, 91st Session 2003-2004, Anthropological and Behavioural Sciences, Chandigarh. Kolkata: The Indian Science Congress Association. 14. Sarkar, Smritikumar. 1997. From Agaria to Lohar: Blacksmiths in the tribal society of colonial Eastern India, Journal of the Indian Anthropological Society 32: 139-154. 15. Dasgupta, P.C. 1997. The excavations at Pandu Rajar Dhibi, F. Raymond Allchin and Dilip K. Chakrabarti (eds.) A Sourcebook of Indian archaeology vol. II. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., pp. 200-205. 16. Tripathi, Vibha and Arun K. Mishra. 1997. Understanding iron technology: An ethnographic model, Man and Environment 22(1): 59-67. 17. Ansari, Shahida. 1999-2000. Small game hunting Musahars: An ethnoarchaeological approach, Puratattva No. 30: 142-150. 18. Ansari, Shahida. 2000. Clay storage bins in India: An ethnoarchaeological study, Man and Environment 25(2): 51-78. 19. Mohanta, Basanta K., Kishor K. Basa, Pranab K. Chattopadhyay and Tapan K. Das. 2003. Pre-industrial iron smelting in Mayurbhanj, Northern Orissa: An ethnohistoric study, Man and Environment 28(2): 81-90. 20. Ray, Ranjana and Falguni Chakraborty. 2004. Mesolithic stage in West Bengal: An appraisal, Vinay Kumar Srivastava and Manoj Kumar Singh (eds.) Issues and Themes in Anthropology. Felicitation volume in honour of Prof. D.K. Bhattacharya. Delhi: Palaka Prakashan, pp. 137-146. 21. Anderson, C.W. 1918. The rock paintings of Singanpur, Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society 4: 298-306. 22. Imam, Bulu. 1995. Bridal caves: A search for the Adivasi Khovar tradition. New Delhi: INTACH. 23. Neumayer, Erwin. 1994-95. Rock paintings from Hazaribagh, Bihar, Puratattva 25: 80-84. 24. Prasad, Prakash Charan. 1992-93. Prehistoric rock paintings in Bihar, Puratattva 26: 87-88. 25. Jayaswal, K.P. 1933. The Vikramkhol inscription, Sambalpur district, The Indian Antiquary 62: 58-60. 26. Pradhan, S. 1995-96. Rock engravings in the rock shelters of upland Orissa, Puratattva 26: 32-42. 27. Fabri, C.L. 1936. The Vikramkhol rock inscription, Annual Report of Archaeological Survey of India, 1930-34 I: 230. 28. Mohapatra, G.C. 1982. Notes on the Vikramkhol and Ushakothi rock-shelters in Orissa, Man and Environment 6: 97-100. 29. Gordon, D.H. 1960. The prehistoric background of Indian culture, 2nd ed. Bombay. 30. Neumayer, Erwin. 1988-89. Rock pictures in Orissa, Puratattva 22: 13-24. 31. Roy, Sarat Chandra. 1920. Distribution and nature of Asur sites in Chota nagpur, Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society 6(Pt. III): 393-406. 32. Chakrabarti, Dilip K. 1993. Archaeology of Eastern India, Chotanagpur plateau and West Bengal. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. 33. Kennedy, Kenneth A.R. 1972. Anatomical description of two crania from Ruamgarh: An ancient site in Dhalbhum, Bihar, Journal of the Indian Anthropological Society 7: 129-141. 34. Roy Chowdhury, Amal Kumar. 1920. Appendix I: Note on Asur bones, 107

Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society 6(Pt. III): 407-408. 35. Caldwell, K.S. 1920. Appendix II: The result of analyses of certain ornaments found in Asur sites, Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society 6(Pt. III): 409-423 (with Appendices III and IV). 36. Ray, Gautamsankar. 1972. A note on the human remains from Pataliputra, Journal of the Indian Anthropological Society 7: 143-147. 37. Patil, D.R. 1963. The antiquarian remains in Bihar. Patna: Kashi Prasad Jayaswal Research Institute. 38. Krishnan, H.R. 1939. Asurgarh An unexplored ruin, Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society 25: 52-57. 39. Singh, R.P. 1993. Asur (in Hindi). Ranchi: Bihar Tribal Research Institute. 40. Ruben, Walter. 1940. The Asur tribe of Chota-nagpur: Blacksmiths and devils in India, Man In India 20(4): 290-294. 41. Banerji-Sastri, A. 1926(a). The Asuras in Indo-Iranian literature, Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society 12: 110-139. 42. Banerji-Sastri, A. 1926(b). Asura expansion in India, Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society 12: 243-285. 43. Banerji-Sastri, A. 1926(c). Asura expansion by sea, Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society 12: 334-360. 44. Roy, Sarat Chandra. 1926. The Asurs Ancient and modern, Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society 12: 147-152. 45. Ghosh, Abhik. 2002. History and culture of the Oraon tribe. Delhi: Mohit Publications. 46. Grierson, G.A. (Ed.). 1906. Linguistic survey of India vol. IV. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing. 47. Chakrabarti, Dilip K. and Nayanjot Lahiri. 1993-1994. The Iron Age in India: The beginning and consequences, Puratattva No.24: 12-33. 48. Netting, Robert McC. 1990. Population, permanent agriculture, and politics: Unpacking the evolutionary port-manteau, Steadman Upham (ed.) The Evolution of Political Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 21- 61. 49. Bhattacharya, D.K. 1993. Is prehistory dead in India?, Journal of the Asiatic Society 35(3): 52-73. (Read in 1992 under Panchanan Mitra Lecture Series). 50. Bhattacharya, D.K. 1996. Towards a regional archaeology in India, K. M. Shrimali (ed.) Indian Archaeology since Independence. Delhi: Association for the Study of History and Archaeology, pp. 85-94. [unquote] http://archive.ispub.com/journal/theinternet-journal-of-biological-anthropology/volume-3-number-1/prehistory-of-the-chotanagpurregion-part-4-ethnoarchaeology-rock-art-iron-and-the-asuras.html#sthash.C8Ap5UTw.dpbs Prehistory Of The Chotanagpur Region Part 4: Ethnoarchaeology, Rock Art, Iron And The Asuras Abhik Ghosh PhD Department of Anthropology, Panjab University Chandigarh Citation: A. Ghosh: Prehistory Of The Chotanagpur Region Part 4: Ethnoarchaeology, Rock Art, Iron And The Asuras. The Internet Journal of Biological Anthropology. 2009 Volume 3 Number 1. DOI: 10.5580/83bhttp://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/11/decoding-longest-inscription-ofindus.html 108

NOV 12 Decoding two long inscriptions of Indus Script (Kalyanarman, 2011) "Indus inscriptions resemble the Egyptian hieroglyphs...": John Marshall "A good many important facts can be determined, however, to clear the ground for more satisfactory research. In the first place this script is in no way even remotely connected with either the Sumerian or Proto-Elamitic signs. I have compared some of the signs with the signs of these scripts. For the references to the Sumerian pictographs, or the earliest forms of the Sumerian signs, I have referred the reader to the numbers of REC. (Thureau-Dangin, "Recherches sur l'Origine de l'Ecriture Cuneiforme") and for the Proto-Elamitic signs to Professor Scheil's "Textes de Comptabilite Proto-Elamites", in vol. xvii of Memoires de la Mission Archeologique de Perse, pp. 31-66. This series is commonly cited as Del. Per. (Delegation en Perse). The Indus inscriptions resemble the Egyptian hieroglyphs far more than they do the Sumerian linear and cuneiform system." [John Marshall, 1996 (Repr.), Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus Civilization: Being an

official account of Archaeological Excavations at Mohenjo-Daro carried out by the Government of India between the years 1922 and 1927,Asian Educational Services, pp. 423424] http://books.google.com/books?id=SZWE7O5vusC&dq=elam+indus&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Mohenjodro 0304 Seal impression. Identical impression on m0494/0495 two prism-shaped tablets. This is an update on Nov. 13, 2011 of a note posted on Nov. 12, 2011. An annex is added, decoding another long inscription. (The blog post was originally titled: 'Decoding the longest inscription of Indus Script'). Now it has been retitled to cover another long inscription. 109

This note decodes the longest inscription --on one side of a tablet -- of Indus Script. There are two prism tablets (m0494 and m0495) with an identical inscription of three lines on three sides (of the two tablets). The three lines of m0494/m0495 read together, may constitute an inscription longer than the one on m-0304 seal impression. The inscription on m-0494/m-0495 which contains 23 glyphs (adding all the glyphs on three sides of a prism) is decoded in the annex -- treating the three lines of inscriptions on the prisms as one composite inscription with a composite message. There can only be a congecture as to why the prism tablets were mass produced with identical three lines of impression: it is likely that the tablets were used by artisans of a guild performing identical metal work for transporting packages with identical contents and hence, identical messages conveyed through the inscription. Executive summary The indus script inscription is a detailed account of the metal work engaged in by the Indus artisans. It is a professional calling card of the metalsmiths' guild of Mohenjodaro used to affix a sealing on packages of metal artefacts traded by Meluhha (mleccha)speakers.

Text. Reading of glyphs on m0314 Seal impression. A notable featue of the sequencing of glyphs is the use of three variants of 'fish' glyphs on line 1 of the inscription. Each variant 'fish' glyph has been distinctively decoded as working with ore, metalwork (forging, turning) and casting. Rebus decoding of glyphs on the seal impression: Three lines of the inscription with glyphs can be read rebus from right to left -- listing the metallurgical competence of the artisans' guild: Line 1: Turner workshop; forge, stone ore, ingot; excellent cast metal Line 2: Metal workshop, ingot furnace, casting, riveting smithy,forge; Furnace scribe Line 3: Smithy, lump of silver (forging metal); Mint, gold furnace; Smithy/forge; Turner small workshop Details: Line 1 1.1. Turner workshop

kund opening in the nave or hub of a wheel to admit the axle (Santali) Rebus: kundam, kund a sacrificial fire-pit (Skt.) kunda turner kundr turner (A.) sal splinter; rebus: sal workshop (Santali) 1.2. Forge, stone ore, ingot Fish + corner, aya koa, metal turned, i.e. forged Fish + scales aya s (amu) metllic stalks of stone ore Fish + sloping stroke, aya dh metal ingot (Vikalpa: h = a slope; the inclination of a plane (G.) Rebus: : hako = a large metal ingot 110

(G.) 1.3. Excellent cast metal ol the shaft of an arrow, an arrow (Santali) Vikalpa: dul casting (Santali) Vikalpa: kaa arrow (Skt.) ayaska a quantity of iron, excellent iron Line 2 2.1 Iron workshop [ mh ] A crook or curved end (of a stick, horn &c.) and attrib. such a stick, horn, bullock. [ mh ] m A stake, esp. as forked. Vikalpa: kotta a mason (Ta.) kotti pick-axe, stone-digger, carver (Ma.) Rebus: mht, me iron (Mu.Ho.) 2.2 Ingot furnace S. bahu m. large pot in which grain is parched, Rebus; bhah m. kiln (P.) baa = a kind of iron (G.) Vikalpa: mego = rimless vessels (Santali) bhaa furnace (G.) baa = kiln (Santali); baa = a kind of iron (G.) bhaha -- m.n. gridiron (Pkt.) bahu large cooking fire bah f. distilling furnace; L. bhah m. grainparcher's oven, bhah f. kiln, distillery, aw. bhah; P. bhah m., h f. furnace, bhah m. kiln; S. bhah ke distil (spirits). (CDIAL 9656)Rebus: me iron (Ho.) abu an iron spoon (Santali) Rebus: ab, himba, hompo lump (ingot?), clot, make a lump or clot, coagulate, fuse, melt together (Santali) 2.3 Casting, iron (riveting smithy), forge kolmo rice plant (Mu.) Rebus: kolami furnace,smithy (Te.) Vikalpa: M. me(h), meh f., meh m. post, forked stake (CDIAL 10317). Rebus: me, mht 'iron'(Mu.Ho.) mth m. pillar in threshing floor to which oxen are fastened, prop for supporting carriage shafts AV., th -- f. Ktyr.com., mdh -- f. Divyv. 2. mh -- f. PacavBr.com., mh -- , m -- f. BhP. 1. Pa. mdhi -- f. post to tie cattle to, pillar, part of a stpa ; Pk. mhi -- m. post on threshing floor , N. meh(e), miho, miyo, B. mei, Or. ma -- di, Bi. mh, mh the post , (SMunger) meh the bullock next the post , Mth. meh, meh the post , (SBhagalpur) mh the bullock next the post , (SETirhut) mhi bi vessel with a projecting base . 2. Pk. mhi -- m. post on threshing floor , mhaka<-> small stick ; K. mr, mr f. larger hole in ground which serves as a mark in pitching walnuts (for semantic relation of post -- hole see kpa -- 2); L. meh f. rope tying oxen to each other and to post on threshing floor ; P. meh f., meha m. oxen on threshing floor, crowd ; OA meha, mehra a circular construction, mound ; Or. meh, meri post on threshing floor ; Bi. m raised bank between irrigated beds , (Camparam) mh bullock next the post , Mth. (SETirhut) mh id. ; M. me(h), meh f., meh m. post, forked stake . (CDIAL 10317) Vikalpa: pajha = to sprout from a root (Santali); Rebus: pasra smithy, forge (Santali) Vikalpa: *jyadhnya winter rice . [jya -- , dhny -- ] Bhoj. jaahan winter rice ; H. jahan m. rice reaped at the end of the Rains .(CDIAL 5181) *ja -- joining, pair . [ Drav. LM 333]; 2. S. jo m. twin , L. P. j m.; M. j f. a double yoke . (CDIAL 5091) Rebus: *jaati joins, sets . 1. Pk. jaia -- set (of jewels), joined ; K. jarun to set jewels ( Ind.); S. jaau to join, rivet, set , jaa f. rivet, boundary between two fields ; P.jau to have fastened or set ; A. zariba to collect ; B. jana to set jewels, wrap round, entangle , 111

ja heaped together ; Or. jaib to unite ; OAw.jara sets jewels, bedecks ; H. jan to join, stick in, set ( N. janu to set, be set ); OMarw. ja inlaid ; G. jav to join, meet with, set jewels ; M.ja to join, connect, inlay, be firmly established , ja to combine, confederate . (CDIAL 5091) Vikalpa: dula m. a pair, a couple, esp. of two similar things (Rm. 966) (Kashmiri); dol likeness, picture, form (Santali) Rebus: dul to cast metal in a mould (Santali) dul mee cast iron (Mundari. Santali) 2.4 Furnace scribe ka kanka rim of jar; Rebus: karaka scribe; ka furnace, fire-altar. Thus the ligatured sign is decoded: ka karaka furnace scribe Line 3 3.1 Smithy kolmo three (Mu.); rebus: kolami smithy (Te.) 3.2 Lump of silver (forging metal) gu1. In sense fruit, kernel cert. Drav., cf. Tam. koai nut, kernel; A. go a fruit, whole piece, globular, solid, gui small ball, seed, kernel; B. go seed, bean, whole; Or. go whole, undivided, goi small ball, cocoon, goli small round piece of chalk; Bi. go seed; Mth. goa numerative particle (CDIAL 4271) Rebus: koe forging (metal)(Mu.) Rebus: go f. lump of silver' (G.) Fish signs (and variants) seem to be differentiated from, perhaps a loop of threads formed on a loom or loose fringes of a garment. This may be seen from the seal M-9 which contains the sign:

Sign 180 Signs 180, 181 have variants. Warp-pegs kor.i = pegs in the ground in two rooms on which the thread is passed back and forth in preparing the warp (S.) Edging, trimming (cf. orthography of glyph in the middle of the epigraph) K. goh f., dat. i f. chequer or chess or dice board ; S. gou m. large ball of tobacco ready for hookah , f. small do. ; P. go f. spool on which gold or silver wire is wound, piece on a chequer board ; N. goo piece , goi chess piece ; A. go a fruit, whole piece , globular, solid , gui small ball, seed, kernel ; B. go seed, bean, whole ; Or. go whole, undivided , goi small ball, cocoon , goli small round piece of chalk ; Bi. go seed ; Mth. goa numerative particle ; H. go f. piece (at chess &c.) ; G. go m. cloud of smoke , m. kernel of coconut, nosegay , go f. lump of silver, clot of blood , ilm. hard ball of cloth ; M. go m. roundish stone , f. a marble , gou spherical ; Si. guiya lump, ball ; -- prob. also P. go gold or silver lace , H.go m. edging of such ( K. goa m. edging of gold braid , S. goo m. gold or silver lace ); M. go hem of a garment, metal wristlet . Ko. gu silver or gold braid .(CDIAL 4271) Rebus: go 112

f. lump of silver' (G.) 3.3 Mint, gold furnace kamhiyo = archer; kmahum = a bow; kma, kmaum = a chip of bamboo (G.) kmahiyo a bowman; an archer (Skt.lex.) Rebus: kammai a coiner (Ka.); kampaam coinage, coin, mint (Ta.) kammaa = mint, gold furnace (Te.) 3.4 Smithy, forge kolmo rice plant (Mu.) Rebus: kolami furnace,smithy (Te.) Vikalpa: pajha = to sprout from a root (Santali); Rebus: pasra smithy, forge (Santali) 3.5 Turner S. kua f. corner; P. k f. corner, side ( H.). (CDIAL 3898) Rebus: kundr turner (A.) k dr, k dri (B.); kundru (Or.); kundau to turn on a lathe, to carve, to chase; kundau dhiri = a hewn stone; kundau murhut = a graven image (Santali) kunda a turner's lathe (Skt.)(CDIAL 3295). 3.6 Small Workshop tsni, tsnye squirrel (Kon.) caila squirrel (To.); Vikalpa: sega a species of squirrel (Santali) rebus: ann a small workshop (WPah) ann f. small room in a house to keep sheep in (WPah.) Bshk. an, Phal.n roof (Bshk.)(CDIAL 12326). sei (f.) [Class. Sk. rei in meaning "guild"; Vedic= row] Wo. en roof , Bshk. an, Phal. n(AO xviii 251, followed by Buddruss Wo 126, < ar(a)a -- ); WPah. (Joshi) ann f. small room in a house to keep sheep in . Addenda: ara -- 2. 2. *ara --WPah. kg.nni f. bottom storey of a house in which young of cattle are kept . ara protecting , n. shelter, home RV. 2. *ara -- . [ar] 1. Pa. Pk. saraa -- n. protection, shelter, house ; . rn m. roof ( Sh.?), Dm. aran; P. sara m. protection, asylum , H. saran f.; G. sar n. help ; Si.saraa defence, village, town ; -- < *ara -- or poss. *raa -- : Kho. arn courtyard of a house , Sh. ar m. fence . (CDIAL 12326) Vikalpa: Other lexemes (for rebus readings of variant readings of glyphs): mea A twist or tangle arising in thread or cord, a curl or snarl. (Marathi) (CDIAL 10312). Rebus: me iron (Ho.) salae sapae = untangled, combed out, hair hanging loose (Santali.lex.) Rebus: sal workshop (Santali) Vikalpa: hompo = knot on a string (Santali) hompo = ingot (Santali) kana, kanac = corner (Santali); kacu = bronze (Te.) kan- copper work (Ta.) kel bandicoot (Pa.) [koel = rat (Go.)] Rebus: kole.l = smithy, temple in Kota village (Ko.) Vikalpa: m h = the quantity of iron produced at one time in a native smelting furnace of the Kolhes; iron produced by the Kolhes and formed like a four-cornered piece a little pointed at each end; mh mht = iron smelted by the Kolhes and formed into an equilateral lump a little pointed at each end; kolhe tehen me~he~t mh akata = the Kolhes have to-day produced pig iron (Santali.lex.) The superscript ligatures can be read as suffixes: - kra artisan. kruvu = mechanic, artisan, Vis'vakarma, the celestial artisan (Te.); kruvu. [Skt.] n. An artist, artificer. An agent . One is a loha-kra (metalsmith). the other is a cunda-kra (ivory turner). ka1 m. (n. lex.) fort Kaths., ka -- 1 m. Vstuv. A. sn. koa -- fort, fortified town , Pk. koa -- , ku n.; Kt. ku tower (?) NTS xii 174; Dm. k tower , Kal. k; Sh. gil. k m. fort ( . k m.), 113

koh. pales. k m. village ; K. kh, dat. kas m. fort , S. kou m., L. ko m.; P. ko m. fort, mud bank round a village or field ; A. kh stockade, palisade ; B. ko, ku fort , Or. koa, kua, H. Marw. ko m.; G. ko m. fort, rampart ; M. ko, koh m. fort (CDIAL 3500). Cloak, trefoil glyph: got.a_ a garment with clusters of flowers woven in it; got.a_kor [+ kor a border] a border of a garment having clusters of flowers woven in it; got.iyum a piece of cloth made use of in making up a turban to give it a round shape (G.) go_t.u embroidery, lace (Tu.); go~_t.u an ornamental appendage to the border of a cloth, fringe, hem, edging (Te.); got. Hem of garment; got.a_ edging of gold lace (H.)(DEDR 2201). go_t.u = an ornamental appendage to the border of a cloth, fringe, hem, edging (Te.); embroidery (Tu.) kont.l.= pocket in outside edge of cloak (Ko.); got. = hem of garment (M.); got.a_ = edging of gold lace (H.) got. hem of a garment, metal wristlet (M.); got.t.a_ gold or silver lace (P.)(CDIAL 4271). Gu {N} ``^cloth''. Rebus: (Z),,(Z) {N} ``^worker, ^assistant, ^serf, ^slave; ^serfdom''. #11620. Annex Decoding Indus script inscription on two prism tablets There are two tablets with identical seal impressions which contain a long Indus inscription composed of 23 glyphs. Reported in Marshall 1931 (Vol. II, p.402); repeated in Vol. III, Pl. CXVI.23.

m0494A,BGt Prism Tablet in bas-relief. (BGt is a side view of two sides B and G -- the prism tablet).

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m0495A,B,Gt Prism Tablet in bas-relief

A reading of m0495G shown and discussed in http://indusscriptmore.blogspot.com/2011/09/indus-signs-of-17-and-18-strokes.html with particular reference to the first sign read as 'X'. If the glyph is a composite glyphic of four forked sticks, a vikalpa (alternative) reading is: [ mh ] A crook or curved end (of a stick, horn &c.) and attrib. such a stick, horn, bullock. [ mh ] m A stake, esp. as forked. me(h), meh f., meh m. post, forked stake .(Marathi)(CDIAL 10317) Rebus: mht, me iron (Mu.Ho.) gaa 'four'; rebus: kaa 'furnace, altar'. Thus, the composite glyphis is read rebus: iron (metal) furnace, me kaa. Inscription on tablet m0495 serves as a reinforcement of the reading of inscription on tablet m0494 (see the side shot of sides B and G reproduced above). The organizer of the photographic corpus, Asko Parpola, should be complimented for a painstaking effort to produce a high resolution reading of 3 lines of the text on the prism tablets (which almost look like five- sided object as may be seen from the photograph M-494F). Sharper resolution images of the two tablets (3.6 cm. long) with three sides of a prism are as follows: m-0495A m-0495B m-0495G The reading of the text of the inscription on the two prism tablets provided in Mahadevan concordance is as follows:

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Text 1623/Text 2847 Decoding the identical inscription on Prism tablets m0494 and m0495 Line 1 Turner, mint, brass-work, furnace scribe, smelter, gridiron smithy, smithy/forge Line 2 Mineral (ore), furnace/altar, furnace scribe workshop; metal (a kind of iron), casting furnace; cast metal ingot; casting workshop Line 3 Furnace scribe workshop; cast bronze; kiln; gridiron; casting workshop; smithy (with) furnace; cast bronze; native metal; metal turner; furnace scribe. Thus, line 1 is a description of the repertoire of a smithy/forge including mint and brass-work; line 2 is a smelting, casting workshop for ingots; line 3 is furnace scribe workshop for caste bronze, with kiln, furnace and native metal turning. Line 1 1.1 Corner (of a room) glyph. S. kua f. corner; P. k f. corner, side ( H.). (CDIAL 3898) Rebus: kundr turner (A.) k dr, k dri (B.); kundru (Or.); kundau to turn on a lathe, to carve, to chase; kundau dhiri = a hewn stone; kundau murhut = a graven image (Santali) kunda a turner's lathe (Skt.)(CDIAL 3295). 1.2 Crab glyph

Sign 57. Crab or claws of crab. kamaha crab (Skt.) Rebus: kammaa = portable furnace (Te.) kampaam coiner, mint (Ta.) Vikalpa: ato claws or pincers (chelae) of crabs; aom, iom to seize with the claws or pincers, as crabs, scorpions; akop = to pinch, nip (only of crabs) (Santali) Rebus: dhtu mineral (Vedic); dhatu a mineral, metal (Santali) Vikalpa: er claws; Rebus: era copper.

Argument: Allographs of a leaf sign, ligature with crab sign [After Parpola, 1994, fig. 13.15] The archer shown on one copper tablet seems to be equivalent to a glyph on another copper plate -that of ligatured U (rimless wide-mouthed pot) with leaves and crabs claws. The archer has been decoded: kamhiyo = archer; kmahum = a bow; kma, kmaum = a chip of bamboo (G.) kmahiyo a bowman; an archer (Skt.lex.) Rebus: kammai a coiner (Ka.); kampaam coinage, coin, mint (Ta.) kammaa = mint, gold furnace (Te.) 1.3 Backbone, rib cage

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Sign 48. karu the backbone (Bengali. Skt.); karuka id. (Skt.) Rebus: kasr metal worker (Lahnda)(CDIAL 2988, 2989) Spine, rib-cage: A comparable glyptic representation is on a seal published by Omananda Saraswati. In Pl. 275: Omananda Saraswati 1975. Ancient Seals of Haryana (in Hindi). Rohtak. (I. Mahadevan, 'Murukan' in the Indus Script, The Journal of the Institute of Asian Studies, March 1999). B.B. Lal, 1960. From Megalithic to the Harappa: Tracing back the graffiti on pottery. Ancient India, No.16, pp. 4-24. 1.4 Rim of jar glyph kaa kanka (Santali); Rebus: kaa kanka furnace scribe. kaa fire-altar, furnace (Santali); kan copper (Ta.) karaka 'scribe, accountant' (Skt.) Vikalpa: ka kanaka gold furnace. knaka n. gold (Skt.) ka ,n. perh. . 1. workmanship; . (. . 5, 8, 3). 2. copper work; . (W.) 3. copper; . (, 5, 8, 3.) MBh. Pa. kanaka -- n., Pk. kaaya -- n., MB. kanay ODBL 659, Si. kan EGS 36.(CDIAL 2717) [ kanakamu ] kanakamu. [Skt.] n. Gold. (Telugu) kaakam, n. < kanaka. 1. Gold; . (. 502, 9 (Tamil) kanaka (nt.) [cp. Sk. kanaka; Gr. knh_kos yellow; Ags. hunig=E. honey. See also kacana] gold, usually as uttatta molten gold; said of the colour of the skin Bu i.59; Pv iii.32; J v.416; PvA 10 suvaa).-- agga gold -crested J v.156; -- chavin of golden complexion J vi.13; -- taca (adj.) id. J v.393; -- pabh golden splendour Bu xxiii.23; -- vimna a fairy palace of gold VvA 6; PvA 47, 53; -- sikhar a golden peak, in rj king of the golden peaks (i. e. Himlayas): Dvs iv.30. (Pali) Vikalpa: ka copper work (Ta.) The sequence of two glyphs discussed in 1.3 and 1.4 above occur with high frequency on copper tablets. The pair of glyphs is read rebus as: metal work, furnace scribe --

kasr kaa kanka. The following examples are of 8 copper tablets recovered in Harappa by
HARP project. A third glyph on these tablets is an oval sign -- like a metal ingot -- and is 117

ligatured with an infixed sloping stroke: hiyum = adj. sloping, inclining (G.) The ligatured glyph is read rebus as: hlako = a large metal ingot (G.) hlak = a metal heated and poured into a mould; a solid piece of metal; an ingot (G.) The inscription on these tablets is in bas-relief:

Copper tablet (H2000-4498/9889-01) with raised script found in Trench 43. Slide 351 harappa.com Copper tablets with Indus script in bas-relief, Harappa. The three glyphs on the ingots are read in sequence: hlako kasr kaa kanka 'metal ingot, metal work, furnace scribe'. This is a professional calling card of the artisan engaged in metal work.

Water-carrier glyph kui water-carrier (Telugu); Rebus: kuhi smelter furnace (Santali) ku f. fireplace (H.); krvI f. granary (WPah.); ku, kuo house, building(Ku.)(CDIAL 3232) kui hut made of boughs (Skt.) gui temple (Telugu) A comparable glyptic representation is provided in a Gadd seal found in an interaction area of the Persian Gulf. Gadd notes that the water-carrier seal is is an unmistakable example of an 'hieroglyphic' seal. Seal impression, Ur (Upenn; U.16747); [After Edith Porada, 1971, Remarks on seals found in the Gulf States. Artibus Asiae 33 (4): 331-7: pl.9, fig.5]; water carrier with a skin (or pot?) hung on each end of the yoke across his shoulders and another one below the crook of his left arm; the vessel on the right end of his yoke is over a receptacle for the water; a star on either side of the head (denoting supernatural?). The whole object is enclosed by 'parenthesis' marks. The parenthesis is perhaps a way of splitting of the ellipse (Hunter, G.R., JRAS, 1932, 476). 1.6 Three (rimless) pots kolmo three (Mu.); rebus: kolami smithy (Te.) S. bahu m. large pot in which grain is parched, Rebus; bhah m. kiln (P.) baa = a kind of iron (G.) Vikalpa: mego = rimless vessels 118

(Santali) bhaa furnace (G.) baa = kiln (Santali); baa = a kind of iron (G.) bhaha -- m.n. gridiron (Pkt.) bahu large cooking fire bah f. distilling furnace; L. bhah m. grainparcher's oven, bhah f. kiln, distillery, aw. bhah; P. bhah m., h f. furnace, bhah m. kiln; S. bhah ke distil (spirits). (CDIAL 9656)Rebus: me iron (Ho.) kolmo rice plant (Mu.) Rebus: kolami furnace,smithy (Te.) Vikalpa: pajha = to sprout from a root (Santali); Rebus: pasra smithy, forge (Santali) Line 2 2.1 Cross du = cross (Te.); Rebus: dhatu = mineral (ore)(Santali) dhtu mineral (Pali) dhtu mineral (Vedic); a mineral, metal (Santali); dhta id. (G.) 2.2 Arrow kaa arrow; Rebus: ka = a furnace, altar (Santali) 2.3 Rim of jar + infixed short stroke Rim of jar is decoded as: kaa kanka furnace scribe. (See line 1.4) sal stake, spike, splinter, thorn, difficulty (H.); sal workshop (Santali) Vikalpa: aar a splinter (Ma.) aaruka to burst, crack, sli off,fly open; aarcca splitting, a crack; aarttuka to split, tear off, open (an oyster) (Ma.); a aruni to crack (Tu.) (DEDR 66) Rebus: aduru native, unsmelted metal Rebus: adaru = native metal (Ka.) aduru = gan.iyinda tegadu karagade iruva aduru = ore taken from the mine and not subjected to melting in a furnace (Ka. Siddha_nti Subrahman.ya Sastris new interpretation of the Amarakosa, Bangalore, Vicaradarpana Press, 1872, p. 330) Thus, the ligatured glyph is read rebus as: scribe (of) native,unsmelted metal furnace.

2.4 Body md body (Kur.)(DEDR 5099); me iron (Ho.) 2.5 Bird (circumscribed in bracket) Decoding: Furnace for riveting metal (a kind of iron) baa= quail (Santali) Rebus: baa = a kind of iron (G.) bhaa furnace (G.) baa = kiln (Santali) Vikalpa: pota pigeon; pot beads (H.G.M.)(CDIAL 8403). Vikalpa: baai quail (N.) vartaka = a duck (Skt.)(CDIAL 11361). batak = a duck (G.) vartik = quail (RV.); wuwrc partridge (Ash.); barti = quail, partridge (Kho.); vaaka_ quail (Pali); vaaya (Pkt.) (CDIAL 11361). Rebus: vartaka merchant (Skt.) ( ) A pair of enclosures: *ja -- joining, pair . [ Drav. LM 333]; 2. S. jo m. twin , L. P. j m.; M. j f. a double yoke . (CDIAL 5091) Rebus: *jaati joins, sets . 1. Pk. jaia -- set (of jewels), joined ; K. jarun to set jewels ( Ind.); S. jaau to join, rivet, set , jaa f. rivet, boundary between two fields ; P.jau to have fastened or set ; A. zariba to collect ; B. jana to set jewels, wrap round, entangle , ja heaped together ; Or. jaib to unite ; OAw.jara sets jewels, bedecks ; H. jan to join, stick in, set ( N. janu to set, be set ); OMarw. ja inlaid ; G. jav to join, meet with, set jewels ; M.ja to join, connect, inlay, be firmly 119

established , ja to combine, confederate . (CDIAL 5091) Vikalpa: dula m. a pair, a couple, esp. of two similar things (Rm. 966) (Kashmiri); dol likeness, picture, form (Santali) Rebus: dul to cast metal in a mould (Santali) dul mee cast iron (Mundari. Santali) cast bronze; it is a glyptic formed of a pair of brackets (): kuila bent; rebus: kuila, katthl = bronze (8 parts copper and 2 parts tin) 2.6 Two over-lapping (or pair of) ovals: Oval is the shape of an ingot (of metal). Paired ovals (ingots) are decoded as cast metal ingots. m h metal ingot (shaped like an oval) (Santali) m h = the quantity of iron produced at one time in a native smelting furnace of the Kolhes; iron produced by the Kolhes and formed like a four-cornered piece a little pointed at each end; mh me~r.he~t = iron smelted by the Kolhes and formed into an equilateral lump a little pointed at each end; kolhe tehen me~r.he~tko mh akata = the Kolhes have to-day produced pig iron (Santali.lex.) kaula mengro blacksmith (Gypsy) paired: dul likeness; dul cast (metal)] 2.7 A pair of linear strokes (two long linear strokes) Decoded as casting workshop dula pair; rebus: dul cast (metal)(Santali) go = one (Santali); goi = silver (G.) koa one (Santali); ko workshop (G.) Line 3 3.1 Rim of jar + infixed short stroke as in Line 2.3 above. Decoded as: furnace scribe workshop. 3.2 Two bent (curved) lines. Decoded as cast bronze. kuila bent; rebus: kuila, katthl = bronze (8 parts copper and 2 parts tin) dula pair; rebus: dul cast (metal)(Santali) 3.3 Rimless pot. Decoded as: gridiron. See 1.6 above (for three rimless pots). S. bahu m. large pot in which grain is parched, Rebus; bhah m. kiln (P.) baa = a kind of iron (G.) Vikalpa: mego = rimless vessels (Santali) bhaa furnace (G.) baa = kiln (Santali); baa = a kind of iron (G.) bhaha -- m.n. gridiron (Pkt.) bahu large cooking fire bah f. distilling furnace; L. bhah m. grainparcher's oven, bhah f. kiln, distillery, aw. bhah; P. bhah m., h f. furnace, bhah m. kiln; S. bhah ke distil (spirits). (CDIAL 9656)Rebus: me iron (Ho.)

3.4 Nave of spoked wheel. Decoded as (molten cast copper) turner, kundr turner. era = knave of wheel; rebus: era = copper; erako = molten cast (G.) eraka, (copper) metal infusion; ra spokes; rebus: ra brass as in raka (Skt.) kund opening in the nave or hub of a wheel to admit the axle (Santali) Rebus: kundam, kund a sacrificial fire-pit (Skt.) kunda turner kundr turner (A.); k dr, k dri (B.); kundru (Or.); kundau to turn on a lathe, to carve, to chase; kundau dhiri = a hewn stone; kundau murhut = a graven image (Santali) kunda a turner's lathe 120

(Skt.)(CDIAL 3295) Vikalpa: era, er-a = eraka = ?nave; erako_lu = the iron axle of a carriage (Ka.M.); cf. irasu (Ka.lex.) [Note Sign 391 and its ligatures Signs 392 and 393 may connote a spoked-wheel, nave of the wheel through which the axle passes; cf. ara_, spoke] ram , n. < ra. 1. Spoke of a wheel. See . (. 253) (Tamil) 3.5 As in 2.7 above. A pair of linear strokes (two long linear strokes) Decoded as casting workshop. dula pair; rebus: dul cast (metal)(Santali) go = one (Santali); goi = silver (G.) koa one (Santali); ko workshop (G.) 3.6 Four + Three short strokes. Decoded as smithy (with) furnace. Four + three strokes are read (since the strokes are shown on two lines one below the other) : gaa four (Santali); Rebus: kaa furnace (Santali); kolmo three (Mu.); rebus: kolami smithy (Te.) Vikalpa: ?ea seven (Santali); rebus: ?eh-ku steel (Te.) Vikalpa: pon four (Santali) rebus: pon gold (Ta.) 3.7 As in 3.2 above. Two bent (curved) lines. Decoded as cast bronze. kuila bent; rebus: kuila, katthl = bronze (8 parts copper and 2 parts tin) dula pair; rebus: dul cast (metal)(Santali) 3.8 Harrow aar harrow; rebus: aduru native metal 3.9 Horned body (Body as in 2.4 above.) Decoded as metal (iron) turner. md body (Kur.)(DEDR 5099); me iron (Ho.) k, ka horn. Pa. k (pl. kul) horn; Ka. ku horn, tusk, branch of a tree; kr horn Tu. k, ku horn Ko. k (obl. k-)( (DEDR 2200) Pa. kbald, Kal. rumb. ka hornless.(CDIAL 3508). Kal. rumb.kh a half (CDIAL 3792). Rebus: [kaa] f A fold or pen. (Marathi) kd to turn in a lathe (Bengali) knda engraver, lapidary setting or infixing gems (Marathi) [ kndaa ] n () Setting or infixing of gems.(Marathi) [ khdakra ] n an engraver; a carver. n. engraving; carving; interference in other's work. [ khdi ] n engraving; carving. v. to engrave; to carve. v. & n. en graving; carving. [ khdita ] a engraved. (Bengali) [ khdakma ] n Sculpture; carved work or work for the carver. [ khdagir ] f Sculpture, carving, engraving: also sculptured or carved work. [ khdavaa ] f () The price or cost of sculpture or carving. [ khda ] f (Verbal of ) Digging, engraving &c. 2 fig. An exacting of money by importunity. v , . 3 An instrument to scoop out and cut flowers and figures from paper. 4 A goldsmith's die. [ khda ] v c & i ( H) To dig. 2 To engrave. or - To question minutely and searchingly, to probe. [ khd ] f ( H) Price or cost of digging or of sculpture or carving. [ khdva ] p of Dug. 2 Engraved, carved, sculptured. (Marathi) 3.10 Rim of jar. As in 1.4 above. Decoded as: kaa kanka furnace scribe.

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Sit Shamshi. Model of a place of worship, known as the Sit Shamshi, or "Sunrise (ceremony)" Middle-Elamite period, toward the 12th century BC Acropolis mound, Susa, Iran; Bronze; H. 60 cm; W. 40 cm Excavations led by Jacques de Morgan, 1904-5; Sb 2743; Near Eastern Antiquities, Muse du Louvre/C. Larrieu. Two nude figures squat on the bronze slab, one knee bent to the ground. One of the figures holds out open hands to his companion who prepares to pour the contents of a lipped vase onto them.The scene takes place in a stylized urban landscape, with reduced-scale architectural features: a tiered tower or ziggurat flanked with pillars, a temple on a high terrace. There is also a large jar resembling the ceramic pithoi decorated with rope motifs that were used to store water and liquid foodstuffs. An arched stele stands by some rectangular basins. Rows of 8 dots in relief flank the ziggurat; jagged sticks represent trees.An inscription tells us the name of the piece's royal dedicator and its meaning in part: "I Shilhak-Inshushinak, son of Shutruk-Nahhunte, beloved servant of Inshushinak, king of Anshan and Susa [...], I made a bronze sunrise."

122

Three jagged sticks on the Sit Shamshi bronze, in front of the water tank (Great Bath replica?) If the sticks are orthographic representations of 'forked sticks' and if the underlying language is Meluhha (mleccha), the borrowed or substratum lexemes which may provide a rebus reading 123

are: kolmo 'three'; rebus; kolami 'smithy' (Telugu) [ mh ] A crook or curved end (of a stick, horn &c.) and attrib. such a stick, horn, bullock. [ mh ] m A stake, esp. as forked. me(h), meh f., meh m. post, forked stake .(Marathi)(CDIAL 10317) Rebus: mht, me iron (Mu.Ho.) Thus, three jagged sticks on the Sit Shamshi bronze may be decoded as me kolami 'iron (metal) smithy'. 'Iron' in such lexical entries may refer to 'metal'. Sit Shamshi bronze illustrates the complex technique of casting separate elements joined together with rivets, the excavations at Susa have produced one of the largest bronze statues of Antiquity: dating from the 14th century BC, the effigy of "Napirasu, wife of Untash-Napirisha," the head of which is missing, is 1.29 m high and weighs 1,750 kg. It was made using the solid-core casting method. These metallurgical techniques find an expression on Indus script inscriptions as seen on this longest inscription on a seal impression found in Mohenjodaro (m-314)-- all glyphs of the inscription relate to the repertoire of artisans engaged in metal work. See related links:http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/11/mohenjo-daro-stupa-great-bathmodeled.htmlhttp://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/11/decoding-indus-scipt-susa-cylinderseal.htmlhttp://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/11/decoding-indus-scipt-susa-cylinderseal.html

Ancient Anatolian Metallurgy by Hadi Ozbal, Bogazici University, Istanbul (Slide show) Origins of iron-working in India, Rakesh Tiwari

124

Damaged circular clay furnace, comprising iron slag and tuyeres and other waste materials stuck with its body, exposed at Lohsanwa mount, Period II, Malhar, Dist. Chandauli, India. This report is significant because recent excavations have produced clear evidence of ironworking at Malhar, Dist. Chandali -- Lat. 24deg.-59'-16"N; Long. 83deg.-15'-46" where a damaged circular clay furnace, comprising iron slag and tuyeres and other waste materials stuck with its body in a stratigraphically dated location. (See Figure 6, page 542). "As discussed elsewhere (Tewari et al. 2000) the sites at Malhar, the Baba Wali Pahari, and the Valley are archaeologically linked to the area of Geruwarwa Pahar which appears to have been a major source of iron ore. The Geruwarwa Pahar situated to the southeast of the Baba Wali Pahari, is full of hematite. Villagers reported (as a tradition passed down from several generations), that the agarias (a particular tribe known for their iron smelting skills) from Robertsganj side, used to come in this area to procure iron by smelting the hematite...The presence of tuyeres, slags, finished iron artefacts, above-mentioned clay structures with burnt internal surface and arms, revealed at Malhar, suggest a large scale activity related to manufacture of iron tools." (p. 542). Malhar is located on river Karamnasa which joins River Ganga at Varanasi. Two radiocarbon dates recorded at this site range around 1800 cal. BCE (Table 2, p. 540) -- precise dates are: 1882 and 2012 BCE. Rakesh Tewari provides the following summary of the evidence from Malhar and other Central Ganga Plain and Eastern Vindhya sites: [Quote]Discussion These results indicate that iron using and iron working was prevalent in the Central Ganga Plain and the Eastern Vindhyas from the early second millennium BC. The dates obtained so far group into three: three dates between c. 1200-900 cal BC, three between c. 1400-1200 cal BC, and five between c. 1800-1500 cal BC. The types and shapes of the associated pottery are comparable to those to be generally considered as the characteristics of the Chalcolithic Period and placed in early to late second millennium BC. Taking all this evidence together it may be concluded that knowledge of iron smelting and manufacturing of iron artefacts was well known in the Eastern Vindhyas and iron had been in use in the Central Ganga Plain, at least from the early second millennium BC. The quantity and types of iron artefacts, and the level of technical advancement indicate that the introduction of iron working took place even earlier. The beginning of the use of iron has been traditionally associated with the eastward migration of the later Vedic people, who are also considered as an agency which revolutionised material culture particularly in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar (Sharma 1983: 117-131). The new finds and their dates suggest that a fresh review is needed. Further, the evidence corroborates the early use of iron in other areas of the country, and attests that India was indeed an independent 125

centre for the development of the working of iron. [unquote](pp. 543-544). Thus, both the Gufkral evidence evaluated by Possehl and Gullapalli and the evidence from Malhar and other Central Ganga Plain and Eastern Vindhya sites discussed by Rakesh Tewari point to an indigenous evolution of iron-working in India dated to early 2nd millennium BCE. The evidence leads to a reasonable hypothesis that the metal-workers of the chalcolithic periods of Sarasvati Civilization moved into the Ganga and Eastern Vindhya iron-age sites to continue the tradition of metal-working, exemplified by the asur-s of Mundarica tradition. No wonder, the Sarasvati hieroglyphs have a significant number of homonyms from the Mundarica tradition to represent metal-working artefacts such as furnaces and minerals used to produce metal products. The cultural continuity and the indigenous origins of metal-working are areas for further research as

excavations proceed on over 2000 Sarasvati River basin sites. (DK 12728; Mackay 1938: 274, Pl. LXXIII, 9-11)

Bronze statue

of a woman holding a small bowl, Mohenjodaro; copper alloy made using cire perdue method

Foot with anklet; copper alloy. Mohenjodaro (After Fig. 5.11 in Agrawal. D.P. 2000. Ancient

Metal Technology & Archaeology of South Asia. Delhi: Aryan Books International.) Examples of
metallurgical skills of Indus artisans: Possehl, Gregory L. and Gullampalli, Praveena, 1999, The 126

early iron age in South Asia. In Vincent Piggott, ed., The Archaeometallurgy of the Asian Old World. University Museum Monograph 89, MASCA research papers in science and archaeology Vol. 16, Philadephia: The Univrsity Museum, UPenn, pp. 153-175

Gold pendant with Indus script inscription. The pendant is needle-like with cylindrical body. It is made from a hollow cylinder with soldered ends and perforated oint. Museum No. MM 1374.50.271; Marshall 1931: 521, pl. CLI, B3 (After Fig. 4.17 a,b in: JM Kenoyer, 1998, p. 196)

Illustrated London News 1936 - November 21st

http://www.iln.org.uk/iln_years/year/1936a.htm A 'Sheffield of Ancient India: Chanhu-Daro's metal working industry 10 X photos of copper knives, spears, razors, axes and dishes.

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Copper model of a passsenger box on a cart. Chanhudaro, 'a Sheffield of ancient India'.

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Inscribed metal tools, copper tablets: Mohenjodaro, Harappa.

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Axe with inscription and other tools, Chanhudaro, Kalibangan

Copper tablets m0438; m1449; m1452; m1486; m1493; m1498; m1501; m0582 (123 copper tablets)

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Copper plate, Mohenjodaro with Indus script glyph.

Silver seals with Indus script inscriptions, Mohenjodaro

Inscribed lead celt, Harappa.(Slide 209 Harappa.com HARP)

Two pure tin ingots with Indus script inscription. Shipwreck in Haifa. More examples in embedded document (attached at the end). Chanhudaro was called Sheffield of the east (See embedded document decoding smith guild tokens)

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Indus script cipher: Hieroglyphs of Indian linguistic area (2010) Kalyanaraman, November 12, 2011 kalyan97@gmail.com Indus writing on utensils and metal tools Decoded smith guild tokens Bhirrana artefacts (See the dancing step glyph shown on a potsherd, decoded as 'iron').

Copper celts, Bhirrana.

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Bronze statue, Mohenjodaro. 'Dance step' glyph on Bhirran potsherd. me body, dance (Santali) - meu-, v. tr. cf. -. [K. meu.] To spurn or push with the foot; . (. 12). (Tamil) meu to put or place down the foot or feet; to step, to pace, to walk (Ka.); meisu to cause to step or walk, to cause to tread on (Ka.) me dance (Santali); Rebus: me, mht 'iron'(Mu.Ho.)

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Daimabad bronze chariot. c. 1500 BCE. 22X52X17.5 cm.

Buffalo. Daimabad bronze. Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai.

Daimabad bronzes. Buffalo on four-legged platform attached to four solid wheels 31X25 cm.; elephanton four-legged platform with axles 25 cm.; rhinoceros on axles of four solid wheels 25X19 cm. (MK Dhavalikar, 'Daimabad bronzes' in: Harappan civilization, ed. by GL Possehl, New Delhi, 1982, pp. 361-6; SA Sali, Daimabad 1976-1979, New Delhi, 1986). 134

The three animals: buffalo, rhinoceros, elephant occur together with a leaping tiger on a seal. cf. Decoding of animal glyphs and other glyphs on the seal as related to lapidaries/metalsmith/metalwork artisan guild/mint Indus script cipher: Hieroglyphs of Indian linguistic area (2010) Mleccha rebus decoding: ibha 'elephant' (Skt.) Rebus: ib 'iron'; ibbho 'merchant' (cf.Hemacandra, Desinamamala, vaika); badhia 'rhino'; Rebus: bahoe a carpenter, worker in wood; badhoria expert in working in wood(Santali); kol 'tiger'; kolla 'smith'; sal 'bos gaurus'; rebus: sal 'workshop'.]kamaha penance (Pkt.); Rebus: kammaa = mint, gold furnace (Te.) tttru 'buffalo horns' (Munda); Rebus: hahero 'brassworker'(Ku.)c, cl, cliy tigers mane (Pkt.)(CDIAL 4883)sodo bodo, sodro bodro adj. adv. rough, hairy, shoggy, hirsute, uneven; Rebus: sodo [Persian. sod, dealing] trade; traffic; merchandise; marketing; a bargain; the purchase or sale of goods; buying and selling; mercantile dealings (G.lex.) sodagor = a merchant, trader; sodgor (P.B.) (Santali) A jackal (Marathi) Rebus: Ta. kol working in iron, blacksmith; kolla blacksmith. Ma. kollan blacksmith, artificer. Ko. kolel smithy, temple in Kota village; kolhali to forge (DEDR 2133)(Kuwi). krda m. jump , grda -- m. jump Kh. [krd] S. kuu m. leap , N. kud, Or. kuda, d, kud -- kudi jumping about .krdati leaps, jumps MBh. [grdati, khrdat Dhtup.: prob. Drav. (Tam. kuti, Kan. gudi to spring ) T. Burrow BSOAS xii 375]S. kuau to leap ; L. kua to leap, frisk, play ; P. kudd to leap , Ku. kudo, N. kudnu, B. k d, kd; Or. kudib to jump, dance ; Mth. kdab to jump , Aw. lakh. kdab, H. kdn, OMarw. kda, G. (CDIAL 3411, 3412) Rebus: kunda turner kundr turner (A.) Vikalpa: u Pouncing upon, as an eagle; . (. 43, 5). Rebus: eruvai copper (Ta.); ere dark red (Ka.)(DEDR 446). [ klh ] [ klh ] Pouncing tiger glyph is read rebus: k d kol 'turner smith'. The four animal glyphs surrounding the seated person thus connote: merchant (ibbho), carpenter (bahoe), turner-smith (k d kol), workshop (sal). Addendum with glyphs and inscriptions consistent with the themes depicting repertoire of artisan-smiths of the civilization: A lexeme 135

which may explain the 'mountain' or 'haystack' glyphs; Rebus: Rebus: mht, me iron (Mu.Ho.): kunda 'hayrick'; rebus: kundr turner (A.)

Indus script seal impression. Mohenjodaro. Symmetrically flanking goats with feet on central tree and mountin (ASI)

Sumerian cylinder seal showing flanking goats with hooves on tree and/or mountain. Uruk period. (After Joyce Burstein in: Katherine Anne Harper, Robert L. Brown, 2002, The roots of tantra, SUNY Press, p.100)Hence, two goats + mountain glyph reads rebus: me kundr 'iron turner'. Leaf on mountain: kamakom 'petiole of leaf'; rebus: kampaam 'mint'. loa = a species of fig tree, ficus glomerata, the fruit of ficus glomerata (Santali) Rebus: lo iron (Assamese, Bengali); loa iron (Gypsy). The glyphic composition is read rebus: me loa kundr 'iron turner mint'. kundavum = manger, a hayrick (G.) Rebus: kundr turner (A.); k dr, k dri (B.); kundru (Or.); kundau to turn on a lathe, to carve, to chase; kundau dhiri = a hewn stone; kundau murhut = a graven image (Santali) kunda a turner's lathe (Skt.)(CDIAL 3295) This rebus reading may explain the hayrick glyph shown on the sodagor 'merchant, trader' seal surrounded by four animals.Two antelopes are put next to the hayrick on the platform of the seal on which the horned person is seated. mlekh 'goat' (Br.); rebus: milakku 'copper' (Pali); mleccha 'copper' (Skt.) Thus, the composition of glyphs on the platform: pair of antelopes + pair of hayricks read rebus: milakku kundr 'copper turner'. Thus the seal is a framework of glyphic compositions to describe the repertoire of a brazier-mint, 'one who works in brass or makes brass articles' and 'a mint'.

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Ta. meu mound, heap of earth; mu height, eminence, hillock; muu rising ground, high ground, heap. Ma. mu rising ground, hillock; mu hillock, raised ground; mil rising ground, an alluvial bank; (Tiyya) maa hill. Ka. mu height, rising ground, hillock; miu rising or high ground, hill; mie state of being high, rising ground, hill, mass, a large number; (Hav.) mue heap (as of straw). Tu. mi prominent, protruding; mue heap. Te. mea raised or high ground, hill; (K.) meu mound; mia high ground, hillock, mound; high, elevated, raised, projecting; (VPK) mu, ma, mi stack of hay; (Inscr.) mea-cnu dry field (cf. meu-nla, meu-vari). Kol. (SR.) me hill; (Kin.) me, (Hislop) met mountain. Nk. me hill, mountain. Ga. (S.3, LSB 20.3) mea high land. Go. (Tr. W. Ph.) ma, (Mu.) maa mountain; (M. L.) me id., hill; (A. D. Ko.) mea, (Y. Ma. M.) mea hill; (SR.) me hillock (Voc. 2949). Kona mea id. Kuwi (S.) metta hill; (Isr.) mea sand hill. (DEDR 5058) kamakom = fig leaf (Santali.lex.) kamarma (Has.), kamakom (Nag.); the petiole or stalk of a leaf (Mundari.lex.)Rebus: kampaam coinage, coin (Ta.)(DEDR 1236) kampaa- muai die, coining stamp (Ta.) Vikalpa: lo iron (Assamese, Bengali); loa iron (Gypsy) In same measures: Harappa to Taj K. S. Jayaraman

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Balasubramaniam in front of the Sun Temple in Konark, Orissa. A researcher analysing designs of historical buildings and monuments of India has made a profound discovery. He has shown that the unit of length used by the builders through the ages surprisingly remained the same for over 3900 years. This reveals a new dimension in metrology the science of measurement in the Indian subcontinent. From the Harappan settlements of 2000 B. C. and the Delhi Iron Pillar of Gupta period (320600 AD) to the 17th century Taj Mahal, the unit 'angulam' had remained the standard of measurement in engineering plans, says Ramamurthy Balasubramaniam from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Kanpur.

Angulam and its multiples vitasti (12 angulams) and dhanus (108 angulams) find mention in the
Indian treatise Arthasastra by Kautilya who codified the metrology that was prevalent around 300 B.C. But the exact value of angulam was derived only in 2008 by Michel Danino, the French author who made India his home. Danino who studied the Dolavira settlement the largest Harappan civilization site in India found1 that the dimensions used were exact multiples of 1.904 metre, a unit that he assumed to be the dhanus mentioned in Arthasastra. Further, takingdhanus to be 108 angulams, Danino derived the value of angulam to be 1.763 cm. Balasubramaniam, a professor of materials and metallurgical engineering, says he got interested in metrology after Danino's derivation of the value of angulam and his own observation2 that a terracotta scale of Harappan civilisation from Kalibangan, that was given to him for analysis, indicated markings of 1.75 cm. "Seeing 1.75 cm markings on the Harappan scale and Danino's derived value of 1.763 cm for angulam no doubt excited me," Balasubramaniam told Nature India."That prompted me to 138

carry out dimensional analysis of some of India's historical structures to see if their builders used a standardised unit of measurement," he said. Balasubramaniam who studied the 1600 year old Delhi Iron Pillar3 found that its dimensions "matched remarkably well" with the units of angulam and dhanus of the Harappan civilization. "For example, the total height of the pillar is precisely fourdhanus and several measures come out as whole numbers of vitasti, " he said. The IIT professor had also carried out dimensional analysis of the earliest engineered caves at Barabar and Nagarjuni Hills in Bihar (Ashokan period, 300 B. C.), the Gupta Temple at Deogarh in Uttar Pradesh (6th century AD) and very recently4 the Taj Mahal in Agra. "All these studies confirm the use of a constant basic measurement unit ofangulam, " the IIT professor said. "What is surprising is the fact that the constant of 1.763 cm, when matched for the angulam, leads to the realisation of the other multiples," Balasubramaniam said, "and surprisingly, important historical structures of the Indian subcontinent show a more than good match with these multiples." For instance he found4 that the modular plan of the Taj Mahal complex is based on use of grids of sides measuring 60 and 90 vitasti. The mausoleum was designed on a master square of 270 vitasti to the side a number that allows the area to be divided into nine smaller squares of side 90 vitasti. "Further subdivision of the 90 vitasti length in thirds is evident in the length of the large arched doors (60 vitasti) and the small arched doors (30 vitasti) on each (outer) face of the mausoleum," Balasubramaniam explained. "We now know that the modular design and architecture of the Taj is based on Indian principles and there is nothing foreign in the design plan," Balasubramaniam said. According to Balasubramaniam, the important outcome of his research is that it has establishes the continuity of metrological tradition from the Harappan civilisation down to pre-modern India indicated by the fact that the unit of angulam matches so well the dimensions of important monuments. "This implies an unbroken engineering tradition in the use of the angulam over a period of more than 3900 years which is really amazing," he said. The tradition was broken with the adoption of British units in early twentieth century. "With the new knowledge we can now analyse all the important ancient structures in India, using 1.763 cm as the standard with different multiplying units. This work will open a new chapter in metrological studies," he said. 139

But how did the angulam knowledge get transmitted through the ages to maintain continuity? "It is reasonable to propose that the workers were following some kind of scale that was handed over through generations," says Balasubramaniam. "Otherwise, such a good match of the dimensions cannot be due to chance." References Danino, M. New insights into Harappan town-planning, proportions, and units, with special reference to Dholavira. Man Environ. 33, 66-79 (2008) Balasubramaniam, R. et al. Analysis of terracotta scale of Harappan civilization from Kalibangan. Curr. Sci. 95, 588-589 (2008) Balasubramaniam, R. On the mathematical significance of the dimensions of the Delhi Iron Pillar. Curr. Sci. 95, 766-770 (2008) Balasubramaniam, R. New insights on the modular planning of the Taj Mahal. Curr. Sci. 97, 4249 (2009) http://www.nature.com/nindia/2009/090708/full/nindia.2009.227.html Dravidian languages have a word for steel: uruku, ukku, karugu, urku, ukku many of which mean either melt or dissolve. R. Balasubramanian underlines the continuity of tradition for example in the use of linear measures for artifacts since the days of Indus-Sarasvati civilization to the historical periods. DP Agrawal and Manikant Shah point to iron processing in Kumaun in first millennium BCE and note words like lo, lu, loha directly related to iron; agar related to mines and mining activities; place names such as Lohaghat, Loharkhet, Lob, Lukhani and Assurchula; Asur tradition associating King Banasur with old iron site of Lohaghat. B. Prakash notes the categories of kanta loha (wrought iron), tiksna loha (carbon steel) and munda loha (cast iron which evolved in refining techniques into ukku or wootz steel) Smelters and blacksmiths were the same people. Viswakarma caste in Telengana region consists of five distinct craft communities: blacksmiths, goldsmiths, bronze-smiths, carpenters and stonemasons or sculptors. They wear sacred threads like the Brahmins.

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Agaria smelters use bundles of reeds of straw plastered with clay as furnace walls. Forging realized the desired grain structure and plasticity. Diagram showing the formation of alluvial tin deposits (From JB Richardson, Metal Mining, London, 1974, 60, fig. 7) Noting this method of sourcing tin near granite sources as placer deposits, James Muhly discusses the possibility of such fluvial deposits from, for e.g., Afghanistan, as constituting sources for tin to replace arsenical bronzes with tin-bronzes, a process which was revolutionary in the Bronze Age. Inscription on Rampurva copper bolt:

Rebus readings L: to R. are: kai mountain (Tamil) Rebus: kam = temple (Tamil) koe forging (metal)(Mu.) ko workshop (G.) [ kha ] f A mass of metal (unwrought or of old metal melted down); an ingot or wedge (Kashmiri) baa = rimless pot (Kannada) Rebus: baa = furnace (Santali) Glyph: dulo hole (N.); rebus: dul to cast metal in a mould (Santali) baa = rimless pot (Kannada) Rebus: baa = furnace (Santali) gaa four (Santali) Rebus: ka = fire-altar (Santali); kan = copper (Tamil) Pali. kuila bent, n. bend; Prakrit. kuila crooked Rebus: kuila, katthl = bronze (8 parts copper and 2 parts tin) Thus, the inscription on Rampurva copper bolt describes the metallurgical processes of makiing the bolt: 141

a mass of kha metal melted down in furnace; koe forged' the metal cast (dul) in a mould ingot subjected to fire-altar (ka) furnace Bronze (8 parts copper and 2 parts tin) used in casting the alloy, kuila Rimless-pot glyph is ligatured to two glyphs: 1. mountain; 2. circle baa = rimless pot (Kannada) Rebus: baa = furnace (Santali) bhrra = furnace (Skt.)

ku summit of a hill, peak, mountain; kai mountain (Tamil) ka = peak (Telugu) kam = workshop (Tamil); koamu, koama. [Tel.] n. A pent roofed chamber or house as distinguished from midde' which is flat-roofed. Pounding in a mortar. A stable for elephants or horses, or cattle A. i. 43. [ komu ] komu. [Tel.] n. A pent roofed house. [ koaruvu ] koaruvu. [Tel.] n. A barn, a grain store. [koru], [Tel.] n. A store, a granary. A place to keep grain, salt, &c. [ kohru ] Same as [ koh ] koh. [H.] n. A bank. A mercantile house or firm (Telugu) kha2 n. pot Kau., granary, storeroom MBh., inner apartment lex., aka -- n. treasury , ik f. pan Bhpr. [Cf. *kttha -- , *ktthala -- : same as prec.?] Pa. koha -- n. monk's cell, storeroom , aka<-> n. storeroom ; Pk. koha -- , ku, kohaya -- m. granary, storeroom ; Sv. dntar -kuha fire -- place ; Sh. (Lor.) kti (h?) wooden vessel for mixing yeast ; K. kha m. granary , kuhu m. room , kuh f. granary, storehouse ; S. koho m. large room , h f. storeroom ; L. koh m. hut, room, house , h f. shop, brothel , aw. koh house ; P. koh, koh m. house with mud roof and walls, granary , koh, koh f. big well -- built house, house for married women to prostitute themselves in ; WPah. p. kuh house ; Ku. koho large square house , gng. khi room, building ; N. koho chamber , hi shop ; A. koh, kh room ,kuh factory ; B. koh brick -- built house , kuh bank, granary ; Or. koh brick -- built house , h factory, granary ; Bi. koh granary of straw or brushwood in the open ; Mth. koh grain -- chest ; OAw. koha storeroom ; H. koh m. granary , h f. granary, large house , Marw. koho m. room ; G.koh m. jar in which indigo is 142

stored, warehouse , h f. large earthen jar, factory ; M. koh m. large granary , h f. granary, factory ; Si. koa storehouse . -- Ext. with -- a -- : K. khr f. small room ; L. koh f. small side room ; P. koh f. room, house ; Ku. kohe small room ; H. kohr f. room, granary ; M. koh f. room ; -- with -- ra -- : A. kuhar chamber , B. kuhr, Or. kohari; -- with -- lla -- : Sh. (Lor.) kotul (h?) wattle and mud erection for storing grain ; H. kohl m., l f. room, granary ; G. kohl m. wooden box khapla -- , *kharpa -- , *kha -- , khgra -- ; *kajjalakha -- , *duvrakha-, *dvakha -- , dvrakhaka -- .Addenda: kha -- 2: WPah.kg.k hi f. house, quarters, temple treasury, name of a partic. temple , J. koh m. granary , koh f. granary, bungalow ; Garh. kohu house surrounded by a wall ; Md. koi frame , <-> koi cage (Xka -- ). -- with ext.: OP. kohr f. crucible , P. kuhl f., H.kuhr f.; -- Md. koari room .(CDIAL 3546) khapla m. storekeeper W. [kha -- 2, pla -- ] M. kohva m. (CDIAL 3547) 3550 khgra n. storeroom, store Mn. [kha -- 2, agra -- ] Pa. kohgra -- n. storehouse, granary ; Pk. kohgra -- , kohra -- n. storehouse ; K. kuhr m. wooden granary , WPah. bhal. k hr m.; A. B. kuhar apartment , Or. kohari; Aw. lakh. kohr zemindar's residence ; H. kuhiyr granary ; G. kohr m. granary, storehouse , kohriy n. small do. ; M. kohr n., kohr n. large granary , -- r f. small one ; Si. kora granary, store .khgrika -.Addenda: khgra -- : WPah.kg. khr, kc. kuhr m. granary, storeroom , J. kuhr, khr m.; -- Md. koru storehouse Ind. (CDIAL 3550). khgrika m. storekeeper BHSk. [Cf. kh- grin -- m. wasp Sur.: khgra -- ] Pa. kohgrika -- m. storekeeper ; S. kohr m. one who in a body of faqirs looks after the provision store ; Or. kohr treasurer ; Bhoj. kohr storekeeper , H. kuhiyr m. Addenda: khgrika -- : G. kohr m. storekeeper . khin -- see kuhin -- Add2. (CDIAL 3552) Ta. koakai shed with sloping roofs, cow-stall; marriage pandal; koam cattle-shed; koil cow-stall, shed, hut; (STD) koambefeeding place for cattle. Ma. koil cowhouse, shed, workshop, house. Ka. koage, koige, koige stall or outhouse (esp. for cattle), barn, room. Ko. ko shed. Tu.koa hut or dwelling of Koragars; koyashed, stall. Te. komu stable for cattle or horses; koyi thatched shed. Kol. (Kin.) koka, (SR.)korkcowshed; (Pat., p. 59) konoi henhouse. Nk. khoa cowshed. Nk. (Ch.) koka id. Go. (Y.) koa, (Ko.) koam (pl. koak) id. (Voc. 880); (SR.) koka shed; (W. G. Mu. Ma.) koka, (Ph.) korka, kurkacowshed (Voc. 886); (Mu.) koorla, koorli shed for goats (Voc. 884). Malt. koa hamlet. / Influenced by Skt. goha-. (DEDR 2058) koakai, n. < ghaka. [T. koamu, K. koage, Tu. koya.] Shed with sloping 143

roofs, cow-stall, marriagepandal; . (. . 84, 4). koam, n. House; . (, 47). kam, n. < kha. 1. Room, enclosure; . (. 6, 59). 2. Temple; . (. 14, 10). Glyph: dulo hole (N.); rebus: dul to cast metal in a mould (Santali)

kuila bent; kui in cmpd. curve (Skt.)(CDIAL 3231); rebus: kuhi smelter (Santali) CDIAL 3231 kuil bent, crooked Ktyr., aka Pacat., n. a partic. plant lex. [ku 1] Pa. kuila bent, n. bend; Pk. kuila crooked rebus: kuila, katthl = bronze (8 parts copper and 2 parts tin) [cf. ra-ka, brass (Skt.) (CDIAL 3230) [kh] m a jag, notch, or indentation (as upon the edge of a tool or weapon). kh tools, pots and pans, metal-ware. Glyph: piece: k m. a kernel (Kashmiri) [kha] A lump or solid bit (as of phlegm, gore, curds, inspissated milk); any concretion or clot. (Marathi) gu1. In sense fruit, kernel cert. Drav., cf. Tam. koai nut, kernel; A. go a fruit, whole piece, globular, solid, gui small ball, seed, kernel; B. go seed, bean, whole; Or. go whole, undivided, goi small ball, cocoon, goli small round piece of chalk; Bi. go seed; Mth. goa numerative particle (CDIAL 4271) Rebus: koe forging (metal)(Mu.) ko workshop (G.).Sa. gOta? `to scrape, scratch'.Mu. gOta? `to scrape, scratch'.KW gOta?@(M087) Rebus: [ kha ] f A mass of metal (unwrought or of old metal melted down); an ingot or wedge (Kashmiri) L. kho f. alloy, impurity, alloyed, aw. kho forged; P. kho m. base, alloy M.kho alloyed, (CDIAL 3931)

gaa four (Santali) Rebus: ka = fire-altar (Santali); kan = copper (Tamil)

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sangaa lathe, portable furnace. Rebus: jaga entrusment articles. jangaiyo military guard
who accompanies treasure into the treasury (G.) sangaa association, guild. sangatarsu stone cutter (Telugu) sghiyo a worker on a lathe (G.) Vikalpa: mehi pillar. me iron : mht, me iron (Mu.Ho.)

Glyph:kui tree; kui, kuhi, kua, kuha a tree (Kaus'.); kud.a tree (Pkt.); ku tree; kaek tree, oak (Pas;.)(CDIAL 3228). kuha, kua (Ka.), kudal (Go.) (Te.lex.) Glyph: tree, rebus: smelting furnace kuhi kua, kui, kuha a tree (Kaus.); kua tree (Pkt.); ku tree; kaek tree, oak (Pas;.)(CDIAL 3228). Kuha, kua (Ka.), kudal (Go.) kudar. (Go.) kuhra, kuha, kuaka = a tree (Skt.lex.) ku, kurun: = stump of a tree (Bond.a); khu = id. (Or.) kua, kuha = a tree (Ka.lex.) gura = a stump; khuut = a stump of a tree left in the ground (Santali.lex.) kuamu = a tree (Te.lex.) 2 [ kunda2 ] n a stock or butt (of a gun); a stump or trunk (of a tree); a log (of wood); a lump (of sugar etc.). (Bengali) Rebus: k dr turner (B.) , [ kundana, kndana ] n act of turning (a thing) on a lathe; act of carving; act of rushing forward to attack or beat; act of skip ping or frisking; act of bragging. (Bengali) [ kunda ] n a (turner's) lathe; a variety of multi-petalled jasmine.1 [ kunda1 ] v to turn (a thing) on a lathe, to shape by turning on a lathe; to carve; to rush forward to attack or beat; to skip, to frisk; to brag. kui, smelting furnace (Mundari.lex.).kuhi, kui (Or.; Sad. Kohi) (1) the smelting furnace of the blacksmith; kuire bica duljako talkena, they were feeding the furnace with ore; (2) the name of kui has been given to the fire which, in lac factories, warms the water bath for softening the lac so that it can be spread into sheets; to make a smelting furnace; kut.hi-o of a smelting furnace, to be made; the smelting furnace of the blacksmith is made of mud, cone-shaped, 2 6 dia. At the base and 1 6 at the top. The hole in the center, into which the mixture of charcoal 145 kudar. (Go.) kuha_ra, kuha, kuaka = a tree (Skt.lex.) ku, kurun: = stump of a tree (Bond.a); khut. = id. (Or.) kuamu = a tree

and iron ore is poured, is about 6 to 7 in dia. At the base it has two holes, a smaller one into which the nozzle of the bellow is inserted, and a larger one on the opposite side through which the molten iron flows out into a cavity. Vikalpa: M. ha m. loppings of trees, h m. leafy branch, f. twig, h m. sprig, f. branch. (CDIAL 5546).hako = a large metal ingot (G.) hlak = a metal heated and poured into a mould; a solid piece of metal; an ingot (Gujarati)

Close-up of cassiterite crystals 146

Advent of the bronze age in the Indian subcontinent (TM Babu, 2003) http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-ziggurat-and-related.html Ancient Near East ziggurat and related hieroglyphs in writing systems Ancient Near East ziggurat and related hieroglyphs in writing systems

Ur. Ziggurat. This is a call for further excavation and exploration of a comparable structure -- the 'stupa' or 'dagoba' in Mohenjo-daro. The results may help redefine the functions of the 'Great Bath' located west of this 'dagoba'.

Three stone Siva Lingas found in Harappa. Plate X [c] Lingam in situ in Trench Ai (MS Vats, 1940, Excavations at Harappa, Vol. II, Calcutta): In the adjoining Trench Ai, 5 ft. 6 in. below the surface, was found a stone lingam [Since then I have found two stone lingams of a larger size from Trenches III and IV in this mound. Both of them are smoothed all over]. It measures 11 in. high and 7 3/8 in. diameter at the base and is rough all over. (Vol. I, pp. 51-52)." Worship of iva lingam is an abiding Hindu tradition -- for millenia -- evidenced by the finds at

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Harappa. sanghiyo, a worker on a lathe (Gujarati) have created the stone cuttings of ringstones and pillars as evidenced in Dholavira and Mohenjo-daro.

"Major Sites and Interaction Networks. This map shows the networks that connected urban centers such as Mohenjo-daro and Harappa during the Harppan Period (2600-2000 BC) with their hinterlands and distant resource areas.In addition to these two cities, other known urban centers include Dholavira, Ganweriwala and Rakhigarhi." http://www.harappa.com/indus2/161.html

These giant ringstones of Harappa are similar to ones found in Mohenjo-daro and Dholavira. Local legend claims they were the rings of a giant 17th century saint (Baba Nur Shah) who is buried on Mound AB. Early excavators believed that were significant to the ancient Indus

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religion. Today, archaeologists think that they were used to secure wooden posts at gateways to the city. http://www.harappa.com/walk/21.html .. Several have been found together at Mohenjo-daro, but none are in their original position of use. Discoveries of simil ringstones in the gateways at the site of Dholavira (See the Ancient Indus Region Map in Indus 2, Slide 161.) suggest that they may have been used as the base of wooden columns. Small dowel holes are often found on one side. It is possible that several of the ringstones were stacked with a wooden pole running through the center. A miniature version of such a ringstone column made from shell rings has been reported from the site of Dholavira." http://www.mohenjodaro.net/ancientringstone97.html

" Hieroglyph: Smithy with furnace

The frames of buildings used in the glyphic composition are hieroglyphs: sg m. frame of a building (M.)(CDIAL 12859) Rebus 1: jangaiyo military guards who accompanies treasure into the treasury (G.) Rebus 2: sangho (G.) cutting stone, gilding (G.); sangatar = stone cutter; sangatari = stone-cutting; san:gsru karan.u = to stone (S.) sanghiyo, a worker on a lathe (G.)

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Worshipping couple atop a frame of buildig on Warka vase, denoting a sacred place, temple, sg. See:

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/11/mohenjo-daro-stupa-great-bathmodeled.html Mohenjo-daro stupa & Great Bath -Modeled after Ziggurat and Sit Shamshi (Kalyanaraman, 2011) http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-scarf-hieroglyph-on.html Ancient Near East 'scarf' hieroglyph on Warka vase, cyprus bronze stand and on Indus writing

Indian sprachbund is the linguistic area from which the rebus readings of Indus writing are drawn. 150

The area has produced a remarkable evidence of a lexeme, kole.l The word in Kota language means both a smithy and a temple. A cognate word in Toda kwalal denotes a temple in a Kota village.

Text 1554. Mohenjo-Daro Seal m296 The smithy had evolved into a temple. It is possible to further hypothesize that the metal weapons produced in a smithy were carried by the divinities shown on hieroglyphs as tools of protection and valor. Fire-altars in smithy were sacred. Metal alloys produced there were sacred. Tools and weapons forged out of the metal alloys were sacred. The metalware imbued with sacredness rendered the smithy to be a temple.

A variant appears as Glyph 243 with infixed U glyph.

The U glyphic could be bai

'broad-mouthed, rimless metal vessel'; rebus: bai 'smelting furnace'. The U glyphic is a semantic determinant to emphasize that this is a temple with a smithy furnace. The structural form within which this sign is enclosed may represent a temple: kole.l The last sign on epigraph 1554 (m296 seal) is read as: kole.l = smithy, temple in Kota village (Kota) kol working in iron, blacksmith (Ta.); kollan- blacksmith (Ta.); kollan blacksmith, artificer (Ma.)(DEDR 2133) kolme = furnace (Ka.) kole.l 'temple, smithy' (Ko.); kolme smithy' (Ka.) kol = pacaloha (five metals); kol metal (Ta.lex.) pan~caloha = a metallic alloy containing five metals: 151

copper, brass, tin, lead and iron (Skt.); an alternative list of five metals: gold, silver, copper, tin (lead), and iron (dhtu;Nnrtharatnkara 82; Mangarjas Nighau. 498)(Ka.) kol, kolhe, the koles, an aboriginal tribe if iron smelters speaking a language akin to that of Santals (Santali) Read rebus: Glyphs: ayas fish. Rebus: aya metal. Glyph: kaa arrow Rebus: stone (ore)metal; kaa fire-altar. ayaska is explained in Panini as excellent quantity of iron. It can also be explained as metal of stone (ore) iron. kamaha = ficus religiosa (Skt.); kamar.kom ficus (Santali) rebus: kamaa = portable furnace for melting precious metals (Te.); kampaam = mint (Ta.) Vikalpa: Fig leaf loa; rebus: loh (copper) metal. loha-kra metalsmith (Skt.).

Glyphic element: erako nave; era = knave of wheel. Glyphic element: ra spokes. Rebus: ra brass as in raka (Skt.) Rebus: Tu. eraka molten, cast (as metal); eraguni to melt (DEDR 866) erka = ekke (Tbh. of arka) aka (Tbh. of arka) copper (metal); crystal (Ka.lex.) cf. eruvai = copper (Ta.lex.) eraka, er-aka = any metal infusion (Ka.Tu.); erako molten cast (Tu.lex.) Glyphic element: kund opening in the nave or hub of a wheel to admit the axle (Santali) Rebus: kundam, kund a sacrificial fire-pit (Skt.) kunda turner kundr turner (A.); k dr, k dri (B.); kundru (Or.); kundau to turn on a lathe, to carve, to chase; kundau dhiri = a hewn stone; kundau murhut = a graven image (Santali) kunda a turner's lathe (Skt.)(CDIAL 3295) Glyphic element: corner: *khua2 corner . 2. *kua -- 2. [Cf. *khca -- ] 1. Phal. khun corner ; H.kh m. corner, direction ( P. kh f. corner, side ); G. kh f. angle . <-> X ka -- : G. khu f.,kh m. corner .2. S. kua f. corner ; P. k f. corner, side ( H.). (CDIAL 3898). Rebus: kh community, guild (Mu.)

The sacred space of the smithy and forge constituted the temple, kole.l And the divinities were like sparks from the smith's anvil, effulgent, creative actions. dhtu n. substance RV., m. element MBh., metal, mineral, ore (esp. of a red colour) Mn., ashes of the dead lex., *strand of rope (cf.tridhtu -- threefold RV., ayugdhtu -- having an uneven number of strands Ktyr.). [dh] Pa. dhtu -- m. element, ashes of the dead, relic ; KharI. dhatu relic ; Pk. dhu -- m. metal, red chalk ; N. dhu ore (esp. of copper) ; 152

Or. hu red chalk, red ochre (whence hu reddish ; M. dh, dhv m.f. a partic. soft red stone (whence dhva m. a caste of iron -- smelters , dhv composed of or relating to iron ); -- Si. d relic ; -- S. dh f. wisp of fibres added from time to time to a rope that is being twisted , L. dh f.(CDIAL 6773). Dhtughara "house for a relic," a dagoba SnA 194. -- cetiya a shrine over a relic DhA iii.29 (Pali) - the ashes of the body , relics dagoba [dgb] n (Fine Arts & Visual Arts / Architecture) a dome-shaped shrine containing relics of the Buddha or a Buddhist saint [from Sinhalese dgoba, from Sanskrit dhtugarbha containing relics] [ aadhtu ] m pl (S) The eight metals, viz. , , , , , , , , Gold, silver, copper, tin, lead, brass, iron, steel. (Marathi) aa-lka-

papam , n. < id. +. Calcined compound of eight metals, viz., , , , ,

, , , .

ttu, n. < dhtu. 1. Mineral, fossil; any natural product from a mine;
. 2. Metals; . (. upatatu, n. < upa-dhtu. Any one of seven minerals, inferior to ttu, viz. , , , , , , ; . (. .) ulkattu , n. < lha * ulka-nimiai , n. < id. +. Variety of bismuth; .

(W.) karu-n-ttu, n. < id. +. Iron; . (. 57,

29). Allograph, Rebus: talai-t-ttu , n. perh. sthaladhtu. Ground palm. See . (.) haj-dt, s.m. (6th) (corrup. of S )The name of a mixed metal, bell-metal, brass. Sing. and Pl. da haj-dto gar, A mountain of brass, a brazen mountain. S ajdaht, s.m. (6th) The name of a mixed metal, bell-metal or brass. Sing.

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and Pl. See . (Pashto)

The Sumerian Ziggurat at Ur During Excavations

Sumerian Ziggurat at Ur reconstructed. "The most prominent Sumerian building was the religious temple, built atop a stepped tower called a ziggurat. Some ziggurats were as high as 70 feet. The temple was dedicated to the patron deity of the city. The people devoted great resources and labor to building these temples and to the houses of priests. The ziggurats housed workshops for craftsmen as well as temples for worship. The ziggurats were built of clay bricks joined together with bitumen, a sticky asphalt like substance. There were artisans who sculpted, cut gems, fullers who stomped on woven wools to soften cloth, and metal workers who crafted weapons as well as artistic creations." http://www.historywiz.com/exhibits/sumerianreligion.html Choga Zambil (Elam) means 'basket mound.' It was built about 1250 BC by the king UntashNapirisha. The structure is comparable to the 'ziggurat' shown on Sit-Shamshi bronze.

Mohenjo-Daro:

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The Great Water reservoir west of 'stupa' area. Without excavations and studies on the 'stupa' and the 'great water reservoir', how can there be an assertion that there are no monumental or religious buildings in the Indus realm? Jansen indicates that the unique access to water had a ritual significance resulting from '...people's mythical awe of the life-giving aspect of the element, rather than from an increasingly profane exploitation of water in the manner of later times...' (Jansen 1993, Mohenjo-daro: Stadt der Brunnen und Kanale: Wasserluxus vor 4500 Jahren. City of Wells and Drains: Water Splendour 4500 years ago. Bergisch Gladbach: Frontinus Gesellshaft: 17).

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Mohenjo-daro 'Stupa' seen from north-west after excavation [Marshall, MIC, Pl. xv(a)].

Depicting water ablutions on sunrise in front of the four-step ziggurat: Susa. Sit-Shamshi (Muse du Louvre, Pars). Tabla de bronce que parece resumir sabiamente el ritual del antiguo Elam. Los zigurats recuerdan el arte mesopotmico, el bosque sagrado alude a la devoci n semita por el rbol verde, la tinaja trae a la mente el "mar de bronce". Los dos hombres en cuclillas hacen su abluci n para celebrar la salida del Sol. Una inscripci n, que lleva el nombre del rey Silhak-in-Shushinak, permite fijar su dataci n en el siglo XII a.C. http://www.historiadelarte.us/mesopotamia%20primitiva/arteelamita.html From Akkadian ziqqurratu, 'temple tower', from zaqru (to build high). Cognates? ikhar m.n. point, peak MBh., erection of hair on body, armpit lex. 2. *ikkhara - .[kh -- ]1. Pa. sikhara -- m. top, summit of mountain, point or edge of sword ; Pk. sihara -- n. crest of hill, top ; K. r m. top, pinnacle ; B. siyar place where head lies in sleep ; Or. siyara head pillow, head end of bed ; M. er m. end, extremity ; -- N. siur cock's comb (X ca -- 1?). -- A. xihariba, xiya (hair) to stand on end, bristle , caus. xiyariba; B. sihar (hair) to stand on end, start , siharna to startle ; Mth. sihrab to shiver , H. siharn. 2. WPah.bhal. ikkhar f. precipitous ridge . (CDIAL 12435) <sika>(D) {NI} ``^marks ^burnt on the arm of the deceased for recognition by ancestors in the other world''. ^funeral. #28491. (Munda) "The texts mention the "temples of the grove," cave sanctuaries where ceremonies related to the daily renewal of nature were accompanied by deposition of offerings, sacrifice and libations. The Sit Shamshi is perhaps a representation. It is also possible that this object is a commemoration of the funeral ceremonies after the disappearance of the sovereign. Indeed, this model was found near a cave, and bears an inscription in Elamite where ShilhakInshushinak remember his loyalty to the lord of Susa, Inshushinak. The text gives the name of 156

the monument, the Sit Shamshi, Sunrise, which refers to the time of day during which the ceremony takes place." Source: http://www.3dsrc.com/antiquiteslouvre/index.php?rub=img&img=236&cat=10 Three stumps on Sit-Shamshi bronze: 1676 Ma. kua a knotty log. Ko. gu stake to which animal is tied, any large wooden peg. To. kuy a stump. Ka. (Coorg) kuu stem of a tree which remains after cutting it. Ko. kue log. Tu. kui stake, peg, stump. Go. (Mu.) kua, gua, (G. Ma.) gua, (Ko.) gua stump of tree; (S.) kua id., stubble; (FH.) kuta jowari stubble (Voc. 731). Pe. kua stump of tree. Kui ga, (K.) gua id. Kuwi (Su.) guu *khua1 peg, post . 2. *khua -- 1. [Same as *khua -- 2? -- See also ka -- .] 1. Ku. khu peg ; N. khunu to stitch (der. *khu pin as khilnu from khil s.v. khla -- ); Mth. khu peg, post ; H. kh m. peg, stump ; Marw. khu f. peg ; M. khu m. post . 2. Pk. khua -- , khoaya -- m. peg, post ; Dm. kua peg for fastening yoke to plough -- pole ; L. kh f. drum -- stick ; P. khu, m. peg, stump ; WPah. rudh. khu tethering peg or post ; A. kh post , i peg ; B. kh , i wooden post, stake, pin, wedge ; Or. khua, pillar, post ; Bi. (with --

a -- ) kh r, r posts about one foot high rising from body of cart ; H. kh m. stump, log
, f. small peg ( P. kh m., f. stake, peg ); G. kh f. landmark , kh m., f. peg , n. stump , iy n. upright support in frame of wagon , kh n. half -- burnt piece of fuel ; M. kh m. stump of tree, pile in river, grume on teat (semant. cf. kla -- 1 s.v. *khila -2), kh m. stake , f. wooden pin , kh a to dibble .WPah.kg. khvnd pole for fencing or piling grass round (Him.I 35 nd poss. wrong for ); J. khu m. peg to fasten cattle to . (CDIAL 3893). Rebus: kuhi smelter furnace (Mu.) kuamu a pit for receiving and preserving consecrated fire (Te.) ku f. fireplace (Hindi); krvI f. granary (Wpah.); ku, kuo house, building(Ku.)(CDIAL 3232) kui hut made of boughs (Skt.) gui temple (Telugu) kd, k 'bunch of twigs' (Skt.) Rebus: kuhi smelter furnace (Santali) kuh factory (A.)(CDIAL 3546) kui, kuhi, kua, kuha a tree (Kaus'.); kud.a tree (Pkt.); ku tree; kaek tree, oak (Pas;.)(CDIAL 3228). kuha, kua(Ka.), kudal (Go.) kudar. (Go.) kuha_ra, kuha, kuaka = a tree (Skt.lex.) ku, kurun: = stump of a tree (Bond.a); khut. = id. (Or.) kuamu = a tree (Te.lex.) Rebus: kuhi a furnace for smelting iron ore to smelt iron; kolheko kut.hieda koles smelt iron (Santali) kuhi, kui (Or.; Sad. kohi) (1) the smelting furnace of the blacksmith; kut.ire bica duljad.ko talkena, they were feeding the furnace with ore; (2) the name of kui has been given 157

to the fire which, in lac factories, warms the water bath for softening the lac so that it can be spread into sheets; to make a smelting furnace; kuhi-o of a smelting furnace, to be made; the smelting furnace of the blacksmith is made of mud, cone-shaped, 2 6 dia. At the base and 1 6 at the top. The hole in the centre, into which the mixture of charcoal and iron ore is poured, is about 6 to 7 in dia. At the base it has two holes, a smaller one into which the nozzle of the bellow is inserted, as seen in fig. 1, and a larger one on the opposite side through which the molten iron flows out into a cavity (Mundari.lex.) kuhi= a factory; lil kuhi= an indigo factory (H.kot.hi)(Santali.lex.Bodding) kuh = an earthen furnace for smelting iron; make do., smelt iron; kolheko do kut.hi benaokate baliko dhukana, the Kolhes build an earthen furnace and smelt iron-ore, blowing the bellows; tehen:ko kuhi yet kana, they are working (or building) the furnace to-day (H. koh) (Santali.lex. Bodding) kuhita = hot, sweltering; molten (of tamba, cp. uttatta)(Pali.lex.) uttatta (ut + tapta) = heated, of metals: molten, refined; shining, splendid, pure (Pali.lex.) kuakam, kuukam = cauldron (Ma.); kuuva = big copper pot for heating water (Kod.)(DEDR 1668). gudga_ to blaze; gud.va flame (Man.d); gudva, gu_du_vwa, guduwa id. (Kuwi)(DEDR 1715). dntar-kuha = fireplace (Sv.); kti wooden vessel for mixing yeast (Sh.); kot.ha_ house with mud roof and walls, granary (P.); kuth factory (A.); koh brick-built house (B.); kuh bank, granary (B.); koho jar in which indigo is stored, warehouse (G.); koh lare earthen jar, factory (G.); koh granary, factory (M.)(CDIAL 3546). koho = a warehouse; a revenue office, in which dues are paid and collected; koh a store-room; a factory (G.lex.) ko = the place where artisans work (G.lex.)

158

Molded terracotta tablet showing a tree with branches; the stem emanates from a platform (ingot?). Harappa. (After JM Kenoyer/Courtesy Dept. of Archaeology and Museums, Govt. of Pakistan). Rebus readings provide an explanation for the abiding hieroglyph of a tree which adorns hundreds of punch-marked coins in an expansive area from Taxila to Sri Lanka, across the Indian sprachbund denoting the stock-in-trade of smiths: a smelter furnace. The following etymon explains why a cottage or shed like the Toda mund is a temple is a smithy and why the rectangular ziggurat takes a circular form in veneration of the lineage and of ancestors; the extended family is a lineage with the mund (Iraqi mudhif) serving as the meeting place of the members of the guild of artisans. The term gui uses a mollusc-type form to denote the secondary form of the vowel i ; this form adorns the cap of Gudea: - curi-, 4

v. intr. prob. -. 1. To be spiral, as conch; to whirl round, eddy, as water; .

(. . 7, 3, 1). 2. To wrinkle; . 3. curl; . (. 160). - cui-, 4 v. intr. [T. suiyu, K. sui, M. cui.] 1. To become curved, curled, involved; to form eddies, as on the surface of water; . (. . 34) Ta. curi (-v-, -nt-) to be spiral as conch, whirl round, eddy (as water), curl; (-pp-, -tt-) to wind spirally, whirl, curl, lie in a circle; n. whirling, spiral, curve, screw, white curl on the forehead of bulls; curiyal curling, curly hair, lock of hair, woman's hair; curu (curuv-, curu-) to become coiled, roll, curl (as hair); n. rolling, roll, coil, curl, woman's hair curled and tied up in dressing; curual ringlet, 159

coil; curuairoll; curuu (curui-) to roll up, coil, curl, fold, twist; n. curling, coiling, anything rolled up, cheroot; curuai curly hair, curly-haired boy or girl; curuai anything rolled up; cr (-pp-, -tt) to revolve, whirl round; crppu whirling, revolving, bracelet; cral whirling as of wind. Ma. curiyal a round rattan basket; curuu a roll, cheroot, a sheaf; curu scroll, roll; curuuka to be rolled up, be curled; curuuka to roll up (tr.). Ko. cur- (cur-) to lie in coils (snake, rope); cur- (cury-) to coil, roll (tr.). To. tu (tu-) to be rolled up (curl, leaf); tu- (tuy) to roll up (tr.), curl (hair), tie up (hair); tuk hair curl; tur storm; su cigar (< Ta. curuu).Ka. surui, surue, surai a coil, roll; suruu, suruu to coil, roll up (intr.); surku, sukku to curl; surku, sukku, suku, sokku a curl. Ko. tur- (tur-) to be rolled up; tur- (turi) to roll up (tr.); tore a string that goes round; (torev-, torand-) (string) is wound round and round; tora- (torap-, torat-) to wind (string) round and round. Tu. turu a female's hair tied into a knot; surai, (B-K.) surui a coil, roll of anything. Pa. cir- to turn; cirip- (cirit-) to make to turn; cirukucircuit, roundabout way; cirl- to revolve; cirlip- (cirlit-) to make to revolve. Ga. (S.2) sirl- to revolve; caus. sirlap-; (S.3) sirl- (silr-, silir-) to rotate; silurp- id.(tr.).

Go. (Tr.) surunn to go round and round, esp. in the Bhawar marriage ceremony;
(Ch.) surun- to roll (Voc. 344); (LuS.) hoorchunna to roll up. Pe. hr- (-t-) to wind, wind round, roll up. Kui sursui curly. Kuwi (Su.) rup- to twine round, wind round (tr.); (F.) pali to roll up (as a rope) ( = r); rpali to wind into a ball; (S.) rujja koddinai rigle (sic); (Isr.) r- to roll fibres; (F.) rmblli curly. Kur. krn to put on and tie a sri round one's waist. Malt. kuge to roll up, wrap up. Br. kring to roll up (tr.), make a clean sweep of. Cf. 1794 Ta. kuru. (DEDR 2684)

160

 [ gui ] gui. [Tel.] n. A circle. The name of the secondary form of the vowel . A temple. A halo round the sun or moon. to meet harm where none was expected. gui-kau. n. The round or total extent of land under a village: a district. gui-konu. v. n. To spread. .(Telugu) Ta. kui house, abode, home, family, lineage, town, tenants; kuikai hut made of leaves, temple; kuical hut; kuicai, kuiai small hut, cottage; kuimaifamily, lineage, allegiance (as of subjects to their sovereign), servitude; kuiy- tenant; kuiyilr tenants; kuil hut, shed, abode; kuakar hut, cottage; kaumpurelations. Ma. kui house, hut, family, wife, tribe; kuima the body of landholders, tenantry; kuiyan slaves (e.g. in Coorg); kuiyn inhabitant, subject, tenant;kuiil hut, thatch; kuil hut, outhouse near palace for menials. Ko. kujl shed, bathroom of Kota house; kum family; ku front room of house; ku hut; guytemple. To. kw shed for small calves; ku room (in dairy or house); ku outer room of dairy, in: ku was fireplace in outer room of lowest grade of dairies (cf. 2857), ku moy bell(s) in outer section of ti dairy, used on non-sacred buffaloes (cf. 4672); kuy Hindu temple; ? kwy a family of children. Ka. kuiya, kuudra, farmer; gui house, temple; guil, gualu, guisalu, guasalu, guasala, etc. hut with a thatched roof. Ko. kui family of servants living in one hut; kuiman of toddy-tapper caste. Tu. gui small pagoda or shrine; guisal, guisil, gusil, guicil hut, shed. Te. koika hamlet; gui temple; guise hut, cottage, hovel. Kol. (SR) gu temple. Pa. gui temple, village resthouse. Ga. (Oll.) gui temple. Go. (Ko.) kuma hut, outhouse; (Ma.) kurma menstruation; (Grigson)kurma lon menstruation hut (Voc. 782, 800); (SR.) gui, (Mu.) gui, (S. Ko.) gui temple; gu (Ph.) temple, (Tr.) tomb (Voc. 1113). Kui gui central room of house, living room. / Cf. Skt. ka-, kui-, k- (whence Ga. (P.) kue hut; Kui ki hut made of boughs, etc.; Kur. kuy small shed or outhouse; Malt. kuya hut in the fields; Br. ku() hut, small house, wife), kuk-, kura-, kuugaka-, kucaka-, koa- hut; kuumba- household (whence Ta. Ma. kuumpam id.; Ko. kumb [? also kum above]; To. kwb, kwbl [-l from wkl, s.v. 925 Ta.okkal]; Ka., Ko., Tu. kuumba; Tu. kuuma; Te. kuumbamu; ? Kui kumbu house [balance word of iu, see s.v. 494 Ta. il]). See Turner, CDIAL, no. 3232,ku-, no. 3493, ka-, no. 3233, kuumba-, for most of the Skt. forms; Burrow, BSOAS 11.137. (DEDR 1655). The three stumps on Sit-Shamshi bronze are likely to have connoted this smelter furnace of bronze-age artisans offering water oblutions, a sacred tradiion which continues without break 161

from Rigvedic times in tirthayatra-s (pilgrimages) and continuous offering of abhishekam to Sivalingas venerating the sacred metaphors of a water-giving divinity in penance over Mt. Kailas yielding Ganga and other himalayan rivers from his locks of hair. He is tryambaka. - He is Rudra. m. "three-eyed" (originally probably "three-mothered" fr. the threefold expression / / / VS. &c ; cf. -/ and ) or (later on) RV. vii , 59 , 12 VS. &c (- Kapisht2h. viii , 10 R.vii Kum. iii , 44 ; cf. Pa1n2. 6-4 , 77 Va1rtt. Pat. )(MonierWilliams, p. 463). Vk is [- P.IV.1.49 Vrt.] The wife of an or holy preceptor; Mv.3.6. cf. . She is / / Sit Shamshi Bronze can be used as an architectural model for reconstructing ancient Mohenjodaro stupa in front of two worshippers. The surround structures of jars holding metal and metalmaking artefacts (e.g. smelter/furnace), water tank model (comparable to the Great Bath) and Lshaped structure comparable to the granary in sites such as Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. On either side of the Sit Shamshi ziggurat there are four (making a total of eight), very smoothed bun- or dome-shaped ingots in bas-relief.. The eight bun ingots may denote [ aadhtu ] m pl (S) The eight metals, viz. , , , , , , , , Gold, silver, copper, tin, lead, brass, iron, steel (zinc?). (Marathi) Dotted circle glyph may note 'pit furnace' associated with a smithy assuming that gaming pieces with dotted-circle hieroglyphs are somehow associated with the life-activities of the people -- mining. Kanaka who conversess with Vidura in mleccha in the Great Epic Mahabharata, also denotes a miner, khanaka.

Ta. curi (-pp-, -tt-) to bore, perforate as in an ola leaf or book; n. hole, aperture, perforation
through the leaves of an ola book, instrument for boring ola leaf or book; curai hollowness, hollow interior, tubularity, cavity; a kind of sharp crowbar; cr (-v-, -nt-) to bore, pierce, scoop out; crvu piercing, boring. Ma. curi round hole pierced through olas to thread them, the instrument which makes the hole. Ka. (Bark.) suri to string, as flowers. Tu. (B-K.) suri to string, bore.(DEDR 2685). cf. gui 'whirl, temple' discussed above (DEDR 1655). kui in cmpd. curve , kuika -- bent MBh. [ku1] Ext. in H. kuuk f. coil of string or rope ; M. ku m. palm contracted and hollowed 162

, kuap to curl over, crisp, contract .(CDIAL 3230). Rebus: ku f. hut MBh., ik -- f. Divyv., k -- f. Hariv. [Some cmpds. have a(ka) -- : Drav. EWA i 222 with lit.: cf. ka -3] Pa. ku -- , ik -- f. single -- roomed hut ; Pk. ku -- f., aya -- n. hut ; Gy. pal. kri house, tent, room , as. kuri, guri tent JGLS New Ser. ii 329; Sh. ki village, country ; WPah. jaun. ko house ; Ku. ku, o house, building , ghar -- ku house and land , gng. ku house ; N. kur nest or hiding place of fish , kuri burrow, hole for small animals , ka -- kuro small shed for storing wood ; B. kuiy small thatched hut ; Or. ku, i hut ; H. ku f. fireplace ; M. ku f. hut ; Si. kiiya hut, small house .ku -- : WPah.kg. krvi f. granary (for corn after threshing) ; Garh. kuu house ; -- B. phonet. k e.(CDIAL 3232).

kola, kolum = a jackal (G.) kolhuyo (Dh.Des.); kulho, kolhuo (Hem.Des.); kro (Skt.) kul seren = the tigers son, a species of lizard (Santali) kolo, kole jackal (Kon.lex.) Rebus: kol metal (Ta.) kol = pan~calokam (five metals) (Ta.lex.) kol = pan~calokam (five metals); kol metal (Ta.lex.) pan~caloha = a metallic alloy containing five metals: copper, brass, tin, lead and iron (Skt.); an alternative list of five metals: gold, silver, copper, tin (lead), and iron (dhtu; Nnrtharatnkara. 82; Man:garjas Nighan.t.u. 498)(Ka.) kol, kolhe, the koles, an aboriginal tribe if iron smelters speaking a language akin to that of Santals (Santali) kol = kollan-, kamma_l.an- (blacksmith or smith in general)(Ta.lex.) kollar = those who guard the treasure (Ta.lex.) cf. golla (Telugu) khol, kholi_ = a metal covering; a loose covering of metal or cloth (G.) [The semant. expansions to kollpuri or kolhpur and also to 'kollppan.t.i' a type of cart have to be investigated further]. kol working in iron, blacksmith (Ta.); kollan-blacksmith (Ta.); kollan blacksmith, artificer (Ma.)(DEDR 2133) 163

erugu = to bow, to salute or make obeisance (Te.) er-agu = obeisance (Ka.), ir_ai (Ta.) er-agisu = to bow, to be bent; to make obeisance to; to crouch; to come down; to alight (Ka.lex.) cf. arghas = respectful reception of a guest (by the offering of rice, du_rva grass, flowers or often only of water)(SBr.14)(Skt.lex.) erugu = to bow, to salute or make obeisance (Te.) Rebus: eraka, er-aka any metal infusion (Ka.Tu.) eruvai copper (Ta.); ere dark red (Ka.)(DEDR 446). erka = ekke (Tbh. of arka) aka (Tbh. of arka) copper (metal); crystal (Ka.lex.) Metal: akka, aka (Tadbhava of arka) metal; akka metal (Te.) arka = copper (Skt.) erka = ekke (Tbh. of arka) aka (Tbh. of arka) copper (metal); crystal (Ka.lex.) erako molten cast (Tu.lex.) agasle, agasli, agaslavd.u = a goldsmith (Te.lex.) erakaddu = any cast thng; erake hoyi = to pour meltted metal into a mould, to cast (Ka.); cf. arika = rice beer (Santali.lex.) er-e = to pour any liquids; to pour (Ka.); ir-u (Ta.Ma.); ira- i (Ta.); er-e = to cast, as metal; to overflow, to cover with water, to bathe (Ka.); er-e, ele = pouring; fitness for being poured(Ka.lex.) erako molten cast (Tu.lex.) ehkam any weapon made of steel (C.); eh-ku steel; eh-ku-pat.utal to melt, to soften (Cilap. 15, 210, Urai.)(Ta.lex.) eraka, era, era = syn. erka, copper, weapons (Ka.) eraklu = the iron axle of a carriage (Ka.M.); cf. irasu (Ka.lex.) erako molten cast (Tu.lex.) eh-kam any weapon made of steel (C.); eh-ku steel; eh-ku-pat.utal to melt, to soften (Cilap. 15, 210, Urai.)(Ta.lex.) Person kneeling under a tree facing a tiger. [Chanhudaro Excavations, Pl. LI, 18] 6118 Seal TA-T ID 1743 Alloy of five metals, moltencast copper (erako), smelter-furnace, mineral (dhatu) smelterfurnace, fire-altar smithy du= cross over; da- (da.-t-) to cross (Kol.)(DEDR 3158) Rebus: dhtu mineral; rebus: dhatu = a mineral, metal (Santali)

gae to place at a right angle to

something else, cross, transverse; ga ga across, at right angles, transversely (Santali) [Note: A slanted line Lahn.d.a writing of accounts connotes a quarter; a straight line connotes one.] Rebus: kaa fire-altar (Santali) ka iron as in ayaska excellent iron (Pan.Skt.) kolmo three (Mu.); rebus: kolimi smithy (Te.)

Rebus: kandi (pl.l) beads, necklace (Pa.); kanti (pl.l) bead, (pl.) necklace; kandi bead (Ga.)(DEDR 1215). Rebus Vikalpa 1: kha ivory (H.) Rebus Vikalpa 2: khaaran, kharun pit furnace (Santali) 164

kha f. Hole, mine, cave (CDIAL 3790). Kanduka, kandaka ditch, trench (Tu.); kandakamu id. (Te.); kanda trench made as a fireplace during weddings (Konda); kanda small trench for fireplace (Kui); kandri a pit (Malt)(DEDR 1214) khaa hole, pit. [Cf. *gaa and list s.v. kart1] Pk. Kha f. hole, mine, cave, aga m. one who digs a hole, laya m. hole; Bshk. (Biddulph) kd (= kha?) valley; K. kh m. pit, kh f. small pit, khou m. vulva; S. khaa f. pit; L. kha f. pit, cavern, ravine; P. kha f. pit, ravine, f. hole for a weavers feet ( Ku. Kha, N. kha; H. kha, kha m. pit, low ground, notch; Or. Khi edge of a deep pit; M. kha m. rough hole, pit); Wpah. Kha. Kha stream; N. kho pit, bog, khi creek, khal hole (in ground or stone). Altern. < *kha: Gy. Gr. Xar f. hole; Ku. Kh pit; B. kh creek, inlet, khal pit, ditch; H. kh f. creek, inlet, khahar, al m. hole; Marw. Kho m. hole; M. kh f. hole, creek, m. hole, f. creek, inlet. 3863 khtra n. hole Hpari., pond, spade U. [khan] Pk. Khatta n. hole, manure, aya m. one who digs in a field; S. khru m. mine made by burglars, ro m. fissure, pit, gutter made by rain; P. kht m. pit, manure, khtt m. grain pit, ludh. Khatt m. ( H. khatt m., khatiy f.); N. kht heap (of stones, wood or corn); B. kht, kht pit, pond; Or. Khta pit, t artificial pond; Bi. Kht hole, gutter, grain pit, notch (on beam and yoke of plough), khatt grain pit, boundary ditch; Mth. Kht, khatt hole, ditch; H. kht m. ditch, well, f. manure, kht m. grain pit; G. khtar n. housebreaking, house sweeping, manure, khtriy n. tool used in housebreaking ( M. khtar f. hole in a wall, khtr m. hole, manure, khtry m. housebreaker); M. kht n.m. manure (llsd. khatvi to manure, khter n. muck pit). Unexpl. in L. khv m. excavated pond, kh f. digging to clear or excavate a canal (~ S. kht f. id., but khyro m. one employed to measure canal work) and khaa to dig. (CDIAL 3790) gaa 1 m. ditch lex. [Cf. *gaa1 and list s.v. kart1] Pk. Gaa n. hole; Pa. Gau dike; Kho. (Lor.) g hole, small dry ravine; A. gar high bank; B. ga ditch, hole in a husking machine; Or. Gaa ditch, moat; M. ga f. hole in the game of marbles. 3981 *gaa 1 hole, pit. [G. < *garda? Cf. *ga1 and list s.v. kart1] Pk. Gaa m. hole; Wpah. Bhal. Cur. Ga f., pa. ga, p. Ga river, stream; N. gatir bank of a river; A. gr deep hole; B. g, hollow, pit; Or. Ga hole, cave, gi pond; Mth. Gi piercing; H. g m. hole; G. gar, m. pit, ditch (< *graa < *garda?); Si. Gaaya ditch. Cf. S. gii f. hole in the ground for fire during Muharram. X khn: K. gn m. underground room; S. (LM 323) g f. mine, hole for keeping water; L. g m. small embanked field within a field to keep water in; G. g f. mine, cellar; M. g f. cavity containing water on a raised piece of land Wpah.kg. g hole (e.g. after a knot in wood). (CDIAL 3947) 165

A variety of rods of ivory (SV 14: 03R00338; SV 13:01G02011). Courtesy Jansen, RWTH. Aachen University.

A 'casting bone/casting stick' (Marshall 1931: Plate XXXII.22)

Ivory 'fish' (Marshall 1931, Mohenjodaro and the Indus civilization. Being an official account of archaeological excavations at Mohenjo-daro carried out by the Govt. of India between the years 192 and 1927, Vol. I-III, London: Arthur Probsthain: Plate CXXXII.19). In some cases, eyes and fins show traces of white, red or black paint.

Hair-pin of the short, flat and rectangular type (Mackay 1938, Further excavations at Mohenjodaro: being an official account of archaeological excavations at Mohenjo-daro carried out by the Govt. of India between the years 1927 and 1931, Vol. I-II: Govt. of India Press: Plate CXXXVI.79). See: Elke Rogersdotter, 2011, Gaming in Mohenjo-daro -- an archaeology of Unities, Univ. of Gothenburg, Sweden. http://hdl.handle.net/2077/24042 "Concentrating on game-related materials, which seem to constitute a significant part of the number of finds found at the site,we 166

catch a glimpse of the habits and movement patterns of individuals. As shown, this can open for questions relating to such things as degree of societal openness versus seclusion. It can also lead us past too simplified ideas as to social differentiation, and provide us with alternative thoughts concerning societal changes. Pointing at the potential of this old, already excavated material, the work has at the same time been impaired with difficulties as to exactness in spatial distribution and related issues. It therefore ends with a call for new excavations, presenting a methodology that is capable of brushing against aspects of human life rather than discussing elusive authorities." A call for new excavations includes the excavation of 'stupa' or 'dagoba' area of Mohenjo-daro to unravel the connections and parallels with the 'ziggurat' as a temple in a nearby civilization area. See: http://archive.org/details/cu31924071128825 Gopinatha Rao, T.A., 1914, Elements of

Hindu iconography, Madras, Law Printing House. The remarkable work discusses the many
hieroglyphs shown associated with images of divinities in the religious traditions of Hindu civilization. The evolution of the kole.l smithy into a temple has to be explored further in the context of the structural similarities between Toda mund and Iraqi mudhif. Hieroglyphs of mudhif (mund) are also shown on Indus writing corpora. The continuum of pukarii, sacred water tank in front of many temple can be traced back to the 'great water reservoir' in front and to the west of stupa or dagoba in Mohenjo-daro, possibly a temple like the ziggurat of Ancient Near East. Sacredness associated with tre-foil motif Jeweller's polishing stone, purifier. potR `" Purifier "'N. of one of the 16 officiating priests at a sacrifice (the assistant of the Brahman (RV. Br. rS. Hariv.)

167

Tree in front. Fish in front of and above a onehorned bull. Cylinder seal impression (IM 8028), Ur, Mesopotamia. White shell. 1.7 cm. High, dia. 0.9 cm. [Cf. Mitchell 1986 Indus and Gulf type seals from Ur: 280-1, no.8 and fig. 112; Shaikha Haya Ali Al Khalifa and Michael Rice, 1986,Bahrain through the ages: the archaeology, London: 280-1, no.8 and fig. 112]. cf. Gadd, PBA 18 (1932), pp. 7-8, pl. I, no.7;; Parpola, 1994, p. 181; fish vertically in front of and horizontally above a unicorn; trefoil design

Trefoil (three hollow cicles united in a clover design) motif adorns the shawl worn by the priest statue who leaves his right shoulder bare and identified as eminent with a pectoral tied to the forehead. S. pot f. shawl Pk. potta -- , taga -- ,tia -- n. cotton cloth , pott -- , ti -, tullay -- , putt -- f. piece of cloth, man's dhot, woman's s , pottia -- wearing clothes (CDIAL 8400) ptramu a cloth (Telugu) pttu , n. < . 1. Hole, hollow (Tamil) buhi mala a bead with wide hole (Santali) peaa three (Santali) posta red thread employed to make borders of cloth (Santali) pta2 m. cloth , ptik -- f. lex. 2. *ptta -- 2 (sanskrit- ized as ptra -- 2 n. cloth lex.). 3. *pttha -- 2 ~ pavsta<-> n. covering (?) RV., rough hempen cloth AV. T. Chowdhury JBORS xvii 83. 4. pnt -- f. cloth Divyv. 5. *pcca -- 2 < *ptya-- ? (Cf. pty = ptn samha P.gaa. -- pta -- 1?). 168

[Relationship withprta -- n. woven cloth lex., plta -- bandage, cloth Sur. or with pavsta - is obscure: EWA ii 347 with lit. Forms meaning cloth to smear with, smearing poss. conn. with or infl. by pusta -- 2 n. working in clay (prob. Drav., Tam. pcu &c. DED 3569, EWA ii 319)] 1. Pk. pa -- n. cloth ; Pa.ar. pwok cloth , pg net, web (but lau. dar. pwk cotton cloth , Gaw. pk IIFL iii 3, 150). 2. Pk. potta -- , taga -- , tia -- n. cotton cloth , pott -, ti -- , tullay -- , putt -- f. piece of cloth, man's dhot, woman's s , pottia-- wearing clothes ; S. pot f. shawl , potyo m. loincloth ; L. pot, pl. t f. width of cloth ; P. potm. child's clout , pot to smear a wall with a rag ; N. poto rag to lay on lime -- wash , potnu to smear ; Or. pot gunny bag ; OAw. pota smears, plasters ; H. pot m. whitewashing brush , pot f. red cotton , potiy m. loincloth , pot m. baby clothes ; G. potn. fine cloth, texture , pot n. rag ,pot f., tiy n. loincloth , pot f. small do. ; M. pot m. roll of coarse cloth , n. weftage or texture of cloth , potr n. rag for smearing cowdung .3. Pa. potthaka -- n. cheap rough hemp cloth ,potthakamma -- n. plastering ; Pk. pottha -- , aya -- n.m. cloth ; S. potho m. lump of rag for smearing, smearing, cloth soaked in opium . 4. Pa. ponti -- rags . 5. Wg. p cotton cloth, muslin , Kt. pu; Pr. pu duster, cloth , puk clothes ; S. poco m. rag for plastering, plastering ; P. poccm. cloth or brush for smearing ,poc to smear with earth ; Or. pucra, pucur wisp of rag or jute for whitewashing with, smearing with such a rag . (CDIAL 8400) ptti pi , < id. n. 1. Praise, applause, commendation; . (W.) 2. Brahman temple-priest of Malabar; . (W.) 3. See , 1.--int. Exclamation of praise;. (. 13, 92) (Tamil) potR `" Purifier "'N. of one of the 16 officiating priests at a sacrifice (the assistant of the Brahman (RV. Br. rS. Hariv.) trika, a group of three (Skt.) The occurrence of a three-fold depiction on a trefoil may thus be a phonetic determinant, a suffix to pot as in potka Rebus reading of the hieroglyph: potti temple-priest (Ma.) ptti pi , < id. n. 1. Praise, applause, commendation; . (W.) 2. Brahman temple-priest of Malabar; . (W.) 3. See , 1.--int. Exclamation of praise;. (. 13, 92) (Tamil) potR `" Purifier "'N. of one of the 16 officiating priests at a sacrifice (the assistant of the Brahman (RV. Br. rS. Hariv.)

169

Rebus: Bi. pot jeweller's polishing stone (CDIAL 8403). [The dotted circle may denote a polished bead; hence, Pk. pott -- f. glass (CDIAL 8403).] Sacredness connoted by the temple-priest explains the occurrence of the trefoil glyph on the base for holding a ivalinga. Two bases decorated with trefoil and a lingam. Smoothed, polished pedestal of dark red stone. National Museum of Pakistan, Karachi. After Mackay 1938: 1,411; II, pl. 107:35; cf. Parpola, 1994, p. 218.

See the dotted circle hieroglyph on the bottom of the sacred device, sangaa

Rebus: Bi. pot jeweller's polishing stone (CDIAL 8403). [The dotted circle may denote a polished bead; hence, Pk. pott -- f. glass (CDIAL 8403).] pher a heifer (Santali) Heifer with trefoil inlays, Uruk (W.16017) c. 3000 BCE; shell mass with inlays of lapis lazuli, 5.3 cm long. Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin; cf. Parpola, 1994, p. 213. Rebus: Spade, mattock: *sphiy -- , sphy -- *scapula . 2. m. flat piece of wood for stirring offerings of boiled rice or for trimming mound used as altar AV., boom, spar Br., m.n. a kind of oar R. [Both meanings in Ir. *phiya -- : Wkh. fih shoulderblade , Shgh. fyak, Kurd. pil, pwl shoulder ~ Wkh. pi shovel , Sar. Ishk. fi, Shgh. fe: cf. K. L. Janert KZ 79, 89 -- 111. 1. Wg. pw scapula ; Pa.ku. ph scapula , ar. ph, pi back of shoulder , po -- m upper part of my back ; Gaw. pho shoulderblade ( Sv. phe NOPhal 45); Kho. phiu scapula ; Bshk. ph shoulderblade (pl. phir < sphiyapa -- ); Mai. pha shoulder; -- Sh.gil. jij. phi u, koh. ph m., pales. ph o (< *sphiyya -- ?). <-> Ext. -- kk -- : Gy. eur. phiko m. shoulder (DGW iv 294 wrongly < prh -- ); K. phyoku, dat. phkis m. shoulderblade ; -- -- l -- : Sh. phyl m. 170

shoulder , (Lor.) piolo shoulderblade. 2. Pa. phiya -- m. (in cmpds. usu. piya -- ) oar ; Kho. ph wooden spade , (Lor.) phiyu dung spade ; K. phyohu, phyuhu (dat. phihis, phhis) m. snow -- scoop . <-> Ext. -- kk -- : Shum. phyk wooden shovel, Pa. pka (enlarged fr. *ph Par. ph IIFL iii 3, 140); -- -- l -- : Sh. (Lor.) piolo wooden spade, oar . -- Connexion, though possible (sphya -- + ?), obscure: Ku. phauo a kind of mattock, spade ; N. pharuw mattock, hoe , phyuri long -- handled implement for levelling ricefield ; B. phu, ph spade, hoe; Or. phu digging hoe ; Bi. phahur, pharuh, phau, uh scraper for making banks of irrigation beds ; H. phw m., f., phau, pharuw m. mattock, hoe , pharh m. a kind of rake or hoe ; M. phv m. large hoe (esp. a wooden one) , f. wooden hoeshaped instrument for skimming molasses, large hoe , n. hoe or scraper .Shgh. Ishk. fay wooden shovel , Bj. fiy, Wj. fi; -- ext. -- kk -- in Shgh. Wj. fiyak wooden shovel, shoulderblade ; Ishk. fayk shoulder , Wkh. fiak, Sogd. byk; Chvar. fyk rudder -- EVSh 34 S.kcch. pv f. small wooden shovel ? (CDIAL 13839). [ kamu ] kamu. [Tel.] n. A whetstone. .

ambakam 1 An eye (in ).-2 A father.-3 Copper. (Skt.)

[ tiga ] tiga. [from Skt. .] n. Three . tiga-kani. n. The three eyed one, i.e., Siva, . tiga-vancha. n. Four. (Telugu) tika (adj. -- n.) [Vedic trika] consisting of 3, a triad S ii. 218 (t. -- bhojana); DhA iv.89 ( -- nipta, the book of the triads, a division of the Jtaka), 108 (t. -- catukka -- jhna the 3 & the 4 jhnas); Miln 12 (tika -duka -- paimait dhammasangan); Vism 13 sq.; DhsA 39 ( -- duka triad & pair).(Pali) a. [-] 1 Digging, dividing. -2 A digger, excavator; Rm.2.8.1. - 1 A miner; Mb.3.15.5. -2 A house-breaker. -3 A rat. -4 A mine. [- P.III.2.184] A spade, hoe, a pick-axe; Rv.1.179.6. khanitrakam trik A small shovel; s.61.19. a. [ ] 1 Triple, three-fold. -2 Forming a triad; Rv. 1.59.9. -3 Three per cent; cf. Ms.8.152 Kull. -4Happening the third time. - 1 A triad; Bhg.11.2.42. -2 A place where three roads meet. -3 The lower part of the spine, the part about the hips; Ak. (Mar. ); Pt.1.19; R.6.16; ...... iva. B.13.126. -4 The part between the shoulder- blades. -5 The three spices. - 1 A contrivance for raising water 171

(like a wheel) over which passes the rope of the bucket. -2 The cover of a well. -Comp. - the 3 triads ( , and ). - the loins.

Trefoil decorated bull calf; traces of red pigment remain inside the trefoils. Steatite statue fragment. Mohenjo-daro (Sd 767). After Ardeleanu-Jansen, 1989: 196, fig. 1; cf. Parpola, 1994, p. 213. ptu male of animals (Telugu) A phonetic determinative of the trefoil motif.

Trefoils painted on steatite beads. Harappa (After Vats. Pl. CXXXIII, Fig. 2) Glyph: pottar, pottal, n. < id. [Ka.poare, Ma. pottu, Tu.potre.] Fillet on the fore-head of the priest statuette, 2700 BCE. Stone. Mohenjo-daro. Karachi Museum. The priest wears a fillet similar to the two fillets of gold which bears the standard device embossed on them. The fillets of gold were discovered at Mohenjo-daro. Similar gold ornaments with embossed standard devices were also reported from an Akkadian burial site in West Asia. [Source: Page 22, Fig. 12 in: Deo Prakash Sharma, 2000, Harappan seals,

sealings and copper tablets, Delhi, National Museum].

172

Gold fillet showing sacred device--- sangaa. Gold fillet depicting the standard device, Mohenjo-daro, 2600 BCE. [Source: Page 32 in: Deo Prakash Sharma, 2000, Harappan seals, sealings and copper tablets, Delhi, National Museum]. At a Marshall, MIC, Pl. CLI are specimens of fillets consisting of thin bands of beaten gold with holes for cords at their ends. with holes for cords at their ends. Harappa. Standard device shown on faience tablets (left: H90-1687, right, H93-2051) and carved in ivory (center, H93-2092). [After Fig. 5.12 in JM Kenoyer, 1998]. The miniature replica object has been recovered in 1993 from excavations at Harappa. This may be an ivory replica of a device made of basketry and wood. This replica shows a hemispherical lower basin with dotted circles and a cylindrical top portion with cross-hatching. The shaft extending from the base seems to be broken on this replica. Dotted circle is a sacred glyph. It is a hieroglyph.

Text 5477 Dotted circles + circumscribed fish + 'comb' motif. aya fish (Mu.); rebus: aya metal (Skt.) gaa set of four (Santali) kaa fire-altar khareo = a currycomb (G.) Rebus: khard turner (G.) 173

Alternative: Hindi kgher m. caste of comb -- makers , r f. a woman of this caste. kmsako, kmsiyo = a large sized comb (Gujarati); Rebus: ksri pewterer (Bengali)

Comb motif + fish + arrow on Text 4604 Text 4604

The central ornament worn on the forehead of the famous "priest-king" sculpture from Mohenjodaro appears to represent an eye bead, possibly made of gold with steatite inlay in the center. <Er-Da>(LL) {X} ``thrice''. #20783. <Er-n+m>(L) {N} ``three years''. #25190. <Er-rED>(Z) {N} ``thrice''. #25200. <Er-t+b>(DL) {X} ``^three ^shares, a ^third''. #25210. <aphai> {NUM} ``^three''. @0516. #1331. <Ggi'i~>(F) {NUM} ``^three (non-human)''. ^003. @N1208a. #1391. <Gge=NDro>(F) {NUM} ``^three (human)''. ^003. |<-NDro> human classifier. @N1208. #1352. <kore=Ggi'i>(F) {NUM} ``^twenty-^three''. ^023. |<kore> `twenty'. @N1228. #1402. e>(:),,<he>(*),,<pe>(*) {NUM} ``^three''. *Kh.<u'phe>(D), Sa.<pe>, Mu.<api>, Ho<api-a>, ~<ape>, So.<yagi>. %9811. #9731. 174

<e-gOTa>(KMP),,<ei-gOTa>(K) {NUM} ``^three''. |<goTa> `whole, numeral intensive suffix'. %9820. #9740. <u?phe>(BD) {NUM} ``^three''. |<u?> cf. <u-bar> `two' and <i?-phon>(D) `four'; <pe>, <phe> `three'. #32621. Glyph: <dul> {V2} ``to ^pour out water in offering to the gods; to ^water a garden''. @5312. #8221. Glyph: dula pair. Rebus: dul casting (metal) (Santali) Glyph: kolmo rice plant. Rebus: kolami smithy kolomsprout; kolom = cutting, graft; to graft, engraft, prune; kolma hoo = a variety of the paddy plant (Desi)(Santali.) kolmo rice plant (Mu.) Rebus: kolami furnace,smithy (Te.) : kolom cob; kolmo seedling, rice (paddy) plant (Munda.) kolmo three. Rebus: kolami smithy, forge.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-one-horned-young-bull.html Ancient Near East One-horned young bull and other hieroglyphs on Persepolis fortification tablets Ancient Near East One-horned young bull and other hieroglyphs on Persepolis fortification tablets

175

Many cylinder seal impressions on Persepolis Fortification tablets are abiding hieroglyphs of Indus writing. Many have been classified as heroic encounters or combats. Some hieroglyphs in these seal impressions do have vivid paralleld on Indus writing. Many have inscriptions in Aramaic and some in Elamite, with the name of the owner of the seal, identified as son of...On PFS 32, the person uddayauda is identified as kanzabara ('treasurer') and on PFS 1972 titled as kurdabatti ('chief of workers'). Animals shown include lions, often winged, bird-headed lions, deer, wild goats, wild sheep. PF 102. Cat. No. 1. Cylinder seal. Ht. 2 cm. Hero faces right, arms straight at horizontal; hero grasps two rampant bulls by throat. Each bull holds upper foreleg straight and extends it upward toward hero's head...Each bull has long curved horn that emerges from front of its head. Mane is indicated by outline along contour of neck that of bull at left has diagonal hatching; each bull is ithyphallic. Crescent is in upper terminal field; star is in middle terminal field. .. Garrison suggests that PFS 102 may be an office seal.

PF 154 and PF 155 are the earliest dated tablets with PFS 102 and are both dated 499/498 BCE. 176

PFS 778 Cat. No. 11 earliest dated application: 500/499 BCE. Ht. 1.2 cm... Creature to left has two wings indicated.

PFS 841. Cat. No. 13. Plant and bird in field.

PFS 38. Cat. No. 16. Human-headed bulls with wings. Sprays of lotus blossoms, buds and papyrus blossoms emerging from nimbus of stars...The seal is a personal seal of Irtaduna, wife of Darius I. She uses the seal to draw royal provisions.

Source: Garrison, Mark B. and Margaret Cool Root, Fortification tablets Vol. I, Images of Heroic 177

Encounter, Oriental Institute Publications, Volume 117, Chicago... http://oi.uchicago.edu/pdf/OIP117P1.pdf Seals on the Persepolis fortification tablets, Vol. I, Univ. of Chicago, 2001 http://oi.uchicago.edu/pdf/OIP117P2.pdf Plates The hieroglyphs mentioned herein have been read rebus on corpora of Indus writing:

kd [ kha ] m A young bull, a bullcalf. (Marathi) Rebus 1: k nu or konu m. a

hole dug in the ground for receiving consecrated fire (Kashmiri) Rebus 2: A. kundr, B. k dr, ri, Or. kundru; H. k der m. one who works a lathe, one who scrapes , r f., k dern to scrape, plane, round on a lathe .(CDIAL 3297).

Anzu aslion-headed eagle concordant with amu 'soma' (Rigveda)

eaka wing (Telugu) Rebus: eraka copper(Kannada). baa = quail (Santali) Rebus: baa = kiln (Santali); baa = a kind of iron (G.) bhah f. kiln, distillery, aw. bhah; P. bhah m., h f. furnace, bhah m. kiln; S. bhah ke distil (spirits).

agara = tabernae ontana (Skt.) Rebus: tagara 'tin'. damgar 'merchant' Heb. tamar palm tree, date palm. Rebus: tam(b)ra = copper (Pkt.) [ mh ] m A stake, esp. as forked. me(h), meh f., meh m. post, forked stake .(Marathi)(CDIAL 10317) Rebus: mht, me iron (Mu.Ho.)

k horn gta sack. Rebus: k dr turner, brass-worker khoa ingot forged, alloy. [ kha
] f A mass of metal (unwrought or of old metal melted down); an ingot or wedge. Hence [ khasa ] a ( & from ) Alloyed--a metal. (Marathi) Bshk. kho embers, Phal. kho ashes, burning coal; L. khof alloy, impurity, alloyed, aw. kho forged; P. kho m. base, alloy M.kho alloyed(CDIAL 3931) m h face. Rebus: m h metal ingot (Santali) m h = the quantity of iron produced at one time in a native smelting furnace.

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meha polar star (Marathi) Rebus: me iron (Ho.Mu.) Allograph: meh ram. Such abiding hieroglyphs are likely to be remembered associations with the smithy and metalware of meluhha artisans. Indian sprachbund is the linguistic area from which these rebus readings are drawn. The area has produced a remarkable evidence of a lexeme, kole.l The word in Kota language means both a smithy and a temple. A cognate word in Toda kwalal denotes a temple in a Kota village. The smithy had evolved into a temple. It is possible to further hypothesize that the metal weapons produced in a smithy were carried by the divinities shown on hieroglyphs as tools of protection and valor. Fire-altars in smithy were sacred. Metal alloys produced there were sacred. Tools and weapons forged out of the metal alloys were sacred. The metalware imbued with sacredness rendered the smithy to be a temple. The sacred space of the smithy and forge constituted the temple, kole.l And the divinities were like sparks from the smith's anvil, effulgent, creative actions. See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-scarf-hieroglyph-on.html Ancient Near East 'scarf' hieroglyph on Warka vase, cyprus bronze stand and on Indus writing

Notes on the role of Dilmun in Indus trade with contact areas: Dilmun (present-day Bahrain) and Magan (or Makan, present-day Oman) of Arabian Peninsula had trade connections with the Indus. Maysar, Ra's al-Hadd and R'as al-Junayz -- sites in Oman; Tell Abrak (United Arab Emirates) -- sites in Bahrain and Failaka; Ur, Nippur, Kish and Susa -- sites in Mesopotamia between Tigris-Euphrates and in Elam, have provided evidence of Indus trade presence. Sutkagen-dor and Sokta-koh were ports near today's Iran border and indicate the role of sea-faring in Indus trade. A remote Indus trade outpost was perhaps 179

Shortughai, on the Oxus in Afghanistan, beyond the Hindu Kush range of mountains. Dilmun has produced seals with Indus inscription, Linear Elamite inscribed atop an Indusstylized bull and a tablet with cuneiform -- all simultaneously being used ca. 2000 BCE: "The presence in Dilmun of these three different writing systems de fabrication locale, meaning the co-existence of Linear Elamite, the Indus script, and lastly the Mesopotamian cuneiform, allsimultaneously being used ca. 2000 BCE (Glassner, Jean-Jacques. 1999.Dilmun et Magan: la place de lcriture.In Languages and Cultures in Contact: At the Crossroads of Civilizations in the Syro-Mesopotamian Realm(Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta), edited by Karel Van Lerberghe and Gabriela Voet, 133-44. Leuven: Peeters Press en Departement Oosterse Studies Glassner), does demonstrably argue in favour of what archaeology has already proven: that Dilmuns role as a leading commercial center in the Mesopotamian world-system also places it at the crossroads of civilizations as far as languages and cultureis concerned. (As Glassner notes, the fact that archaeological discoveries reveal these three writing systems to be coexisting andsimultaneously used in Dilmun at this time (ca. 2000 BC) is not at all inconceivable. He writes: Trois critures seraient doncsimultanment en usage, Dilmun, autour de 2000, deux dentre elles sont notes sur des cachets *le linaire lamite etlharrapen+, la troisime *le cuniforme msopotamien+ lest sur des tablettes. Le fait est parfaitement concevable: ne serait lorigine trangre des trois critures, la situation est tout fait comparable celle de la Crte o, dans la premire moiti du 2 e millnaire, trois critures coexistent dont lune, notamment, de caractre linaire (linaire A), est note sur des tablettes dargile. On sait, dautres part, que les Vay de Cte dIvoire utilisent galement trois critures. (1999, 137) As far as the reason for their usage, Glassner suspects that it had something to do with thecommercial trading activities occurring at this time (ibid., 137). In relation to discoveries made in Magan,they are also quite significantly comparable to the Dilmunite finds, and there has even been unearthed inMagan a locally fabricated seal which contains the same Indus signs as one discovered in Lothal, the ancientIndus port city (ibid.).It can therefore be observed that in many ways these archaeological findings do establish somelegitimate grounds for discussing the shared linguistic and/or cultural hybridity (or plurality) of the societiesof Magan (Oman), Dilmun (Bahrain), and Meluhha (Indus). The fact that these same three lands are 180

oftenmentioned together in the Mesopotamian (cuneiform) records and even often in the same sentence, as Bibby (1969, 219) remarks does lend further support to the archaeological finds in making valid cross-cultural links between these ancient peoples. Not unlike the ancient Dilmunites, it would not then be entirelyinconceivable to think of the Indus businesspeople as similarly being exposed to these other contemporarywriting systems, most notably such as those of neighbouring Elam (either the proto-Elamite or later LinearElamite script) or the Mesopotamian cuneiform that dominated the Gulf trade in which they were actively engaged".(Paul D. LeBlanc, 2012, The Indus culture and writing system in contact, The Ottawa

Journal of Religion, La Revue des sciences des religions d'Ottawa, Vol. 4, 2012, No. 4, 2012).

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/tablet-of-destinies.html Ancient Near east Anzu, falcon-shaped fire-altar Uttarakhand, turning a (Rigveda), ancu (Tocharian) in smithy. Ancient Near east Anzu, falcon-shaped fire-altar Uttarakhand, turning a (Rigveda), ancu (Tocharian) in smithy.

Ear of corn. Msopotamie, room 1a: La Msopotamie du Nolithique l'poque des Dynasties archaques de Sumer. Uruk period (4000 BC3100 BCE) MNB 1906 Sceau-cylindre Troupeau de boeufs dans un champ de bl poque d'Uruk Muse du Louvre, Atlas database: entry 11336 Calcaire. Limestone. 3,8 x 2,3 cm

Cylinder seal and impression: cattle herd at the cowshed. White limestone, Mesopotamia, Uruk Period (4100 BC3000 BCE). A 25 (Klq 17) 181

Louvre

kole.l 'temple' (Kota.) Rebus: kole.l 'smithy' (Kota) Ta. eruvaiEuropean bamboo reed. Rebus: eruvai copper (Tamil).The Toda mund (Iraqi mudhif) is decorated with bamboo reed. Hence, the hieroglyphic composition denotes a copper smithy or metals workshop.

Bi. s the smallest sheaf (or poss. < *adhama -- ); Si. asa part, half .(CDIAL 2) a thread, minute particle, ray. Pa. asu -- m. thread ; Pk. asu -- m. sunbeam ; A. h fibre of a plant , OB. su; B. s fibre of tree or stringy fruit, nap of cloth ; Or. su fibrous layer at root of coconut branches, edge or prickles of leaves , s f. fibre, pith ; -- with -- i -- in place of - u -- : B. i fibre ; M. sn. fine particles of flattened rice in winnowing fan ; A. hiy fibrous .(CDIAL 4) Rebus: a m. filament esp. of soma -- plant RV.(CDIAL 4) [ kha ] m A young bull, a bullcalf. Rebus: kd to turn in a lathe (B.) [kaa] f A fold or pen. (Marathi) koe young bull (Telugu) ko one. Ta. ku (in cpds. ku-) horn; Pa. k (pl. kul) horn; Go. (Tr.) kr (obl. kt-, pl. khk) horn of cattle or wild animals; Ka. ku horn (DEDR 2200). ko = place where artisans work (G.)

Add caption

Zu as a lion-headed eagle, ca. 25502500 BCE, Louvre AO2783 Votive relief of Ur-Nanshe, king of Lagash, representing the bird-god Anzu (or Im-dugud) as a lion-headed eagle. Alabaster, Early Dynastic III (25502500 BC). Found in Telloh, ancient city of Girsu. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Relief_Im-dugud_Louvre_AO2783.jpg Ta. eruvai a kind of kite whose head is white and whose body is brown; eagle. Ma. eruva eagle, kite.(DEDR 182

818). Rebus:eruvai copper (Tamil).

Greeting the Sun God, A modern clay impression from a Mesopotamian cylinder seal, The Seal of Adda. Akkadian Period, 2350 BC - 2100 BC. The British Museum

lo 'overflow' (Munda) Rebus: lo 'copper' (Santali) ka 'water' Rebus: k 'metal tools, pots and pans' ayo 'fish' Rebus: ayas 'metal'.

Ta. eruvai a kind of kite whose head is white and whose body is brown; eagle. Ma. eruva eagle,
kite.(DEDR 818). Rebus: eruvai copper (Tamil).

kua, i -- , ha -- 3, hi -- m. tree lex., aka -- m. a kind of tree Kau. (CDIAL 3228).

Rebus: kui 'smelter furnace' (Santali).

B. kti shell -- cutter's saw , ktn large sacrificial knife ; Or. kat small billhook , kt knife ; Bi. Mth. kt brazier's cutters ; H. kt m. shears for shearing sheep, cock's spur , t m. knife for cutting bamboos , (katt m. small curved sword , katt f. knife , ka f. small

183

sword EP.); G. kt n. knife , t f. knife, saw ; M. kt f. cleaver .krti (CDIAL 2853)

G. bhth, bht, bhth m. quiver (whence bhth m. warrior ); M. bht m. leathern bag, bellows, quiver , bhta n. bellows, quiver ; bhstr f. leathern bag Br., bellows Kv., bhastrik -- f. little bag Da.(CDIAL 9424). Rebus: bhaa furnace. OA. bhthi bellows AFD 206. N. bhi bellows , H. bhh f. kola woman; rebus: kol working in iron (Ta.) Rebus: khati 'wheelwright' (H.) ki = fireplace in the form of a long ditch (Ta.Skt.Vedic)

meu 'dance step'; rebus: me 'iron' (Ho.)

mountain: [ mea ] or mea. [Tel.] n. Rising ground, high lying land, uplands. A hill, a rock. , , ,. mu , n. [T. mea, M. K. mu.] 1. Height; . (.) 2. Eminence, little hill, hillock, ridge, rising ground;. (.) Ka. mede heap. Te. (VPK, intro. p. 128) meda id. (DEDR 5065) Rebus: mht, me iron (Mu.Ho.)

meu 'dance step'; rebus: me 'iron' (Ho.)

kmahum, bow. Rebus: kammai a coiner (Ka.); kampaam coinage, coin, mint
(Ta.) kammaa = mint, gold furnace (Te.) Vikalpa: kaa stone (ore).

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ran:ga ron:ga, ran:ga con:ga = thorny, spikey, armed with thorns; edel dare ran:ga con:ga dareka = this cotton tree grows with spikes on it (Santali) Rebus: ranku tin (Santali) [ kha ] m A young bull, a bullcalf. Rebus: kd to turn in a lathe (B.) [kaa] f A fold or pen. (Marathi) koe young bull (Telugu) ko one. Ta. ku (in cpds. ku-) horn; Pa. k (pl. kul) horn; Go. (Tr.) kr (obl. kt-, pl. khk) horn of cattle or wild animals; Ka. ku horn (DEDR 2200). ko = place where artisans work (G.) Aramaic aryaa 'l' aryeh 'lion'. Rebus: A Northwest Semitic root *ryh 'lion'. eraka, era, er-a = syn. erka, copper, weapons (Ka.) Rebus: aru m. sun lex. Kho. yor Morgenstierne NTS ii 276 with ? <-> Whence y -- ? (CDIAL 612) Rebus: ra brass as in raka (Skt.)

Ta. ciai, ciaku, ciakar wing; iai, iaku, iakar, iakkai wing, feather. Ma. iaku,
ciaku wing. Ko. rek wing, feather. Ka. eake, eake, akke, ekke wing; ae, ee wing, upper arm. Ko. rekke wing; rae upper arm. Tu. edike, rek ing. Te. eaka, ekka, rekka, neaka, nei id. Kol. reapa, (SR.) repp id.; (P.) reapa id., feather. Nk. rekka, reppa wing. Pa. (S.) rekka id. Go. (S.) rekka wing-feather; reka (M.) feather, (Ko.) wing (Voc. 3045). Kona eka wing, upper arm. Kuwi (Su.) rekka wing. (DEDR 2591). Ko. kergl, kergl feather, wing. (DEDR 1983). Rebus: eraka, eaka = any metal infusion (Ka.Tu.); urukku (Ta.); urukka melting; urukku what is melted; fused metal (Ma.); urukku (Ta.Ma.); eragu = to melt; molten state, fusion; erakaddu = any cast thng; erake hoyi = to pour meltted metal into a mould, to cast (Ka.)

Rising from the mountain in the center is the sun god Utu/Shamash, greeted by three other great gods. From left to right, they are: the storm god Ninurta; the goddess of love and war, Inanna/Ishtar; and the god of water and wisdom, Enki/Ea. To Enki's right is his vizier, the twofaced Usmu. (When the gods are given a pair of names linked with a slash, like "Utu/Shamash", the first is the Sumerian name, the second the Akkadian or Babylonian name.) As high gods, they all wear conical hats crowned with four pairs of bull's horns. But they are easily identified 185

by the special signs and powers that spring from their shoulders.

In the exact center, with his sun held overhead, and flames rising from his shoulders, is the sun god Utu/Shamash. He also holds up a saw-toothed knife, or pruning saw, which some say he uses to cut his way out of the mountain; but most say the pruning saw symbolizes his role as a judge of gods and men who "de-cides" each case by "cutting off" the bad from the good. It is dawn, and he rises from Kur, the cosmic mountain (indicated by the usual mountain pattern of overlapping scallops). Kur is also the name of the Underworld, which has two entrances: one in the west, where the sun god descends each night, and one in the east, where he rises at dawn.

Directly above Utu/Shamash, and giving him a hand up by touching or tugging on his rising sun, is his sister, Inanna/Ishtar, the Queen of Heaven and Earth. From her shoulders stretch widespread wings, showing she rules the sky. From behind her shoulders bristle six weapons (spears and maces) that show she is a war goddess, a mistress of battles. She is also a goddess of love, a fertility goddess. So beside her there's a sacred tree, the Tree of Life, which sprouts from the Mountain of the Underworld.

On the other side of Utu/Shamash is Enki/Ea, the god of wisdom and "sweet water" - the fresh water without which nothing can live, and which is opposed to the cosmic ocean of "bitter" salt water that surounds the earth, and even the heavens, on all sides, top and bottom. (It is probably this "sweet" water that is the Water of Life which Enki sends along with the Food of Life to revive Inanna's corpse in the Underworld.) Enki is identified by two streams of fresh water (the Tigris and Euphrates rivers) that spring from his shoulders, and which are filled with fish. (In other pictures, the two streams may flow from jars or vases that he holds.) With one hand Enki holds the thunderbird [the now-tamed Imdugud/Zu?], while at his feet kneels a horned animal, a water buffalo or a bull, a symbol of life. Behind Enki is his minister or vizier, the Janus-faced Usmu, who is himself a voice of wisdom as he faces both forwards and backwards, towards the future and the past.

The bearded storm-god Inurta on his winged and maned lion as he battles the lion-headed bird186

god Imdugud/Anzu.

On the left side of the scene is the bearded storm god Ninurta with his bow and arrows. Beside him is a lion, a symbol of death. On other seals, such as the one at right, Ninurta's lion appears winged and breathing flames as the god rides him into battle against various Underworld demons and monsters - here defeating the treacherous fire-breathing lion-headed bird Zu.

Above Ninurta's lion is a block of cuneiform writing with the Akkadian name "Adda," which also means "scribe." This shows the cylinder seal was custom-made for the official who owned and used it to sign and seal important documents and letters. These were clay tablets, of course, but larger than the modern strip of clay on which Adda's stone cylinder was rolled to create the image before us. Its printout was "over-rolled," which is why the lion-plus-signature image reappears on the right, just beyond two-faced Usmu, but now facing the "wrong way," off-stage to the right.

The bearded storm-god Inurta on his winged and maned lion as he battles the lion-headed bird-god Imdugud/Anzu. Drawing of a cylinder-seal printout in the Pierpont Morgan Library. http://www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Article/787375 Adda is a scribe. http://historicconnections.webs.com/seals.htm I suggest that Adda, the scribe is familiar with the hieroglyphic tradition of Indus writing and presents the narrative of Anzu, the eagle. Cylinder seal impression. A carved stone cylinder was rolled across a wet clay tablet to form an official, individualized seal. This one shows the winged goddess Inanna standing above the sun god Utu as he rises, using a saw to cut his way through the mountains. To her left is an 187

unidentified hunter/warrior god. To her right is Enki, the god of the Abzu (the underground water table) surrounded by water and fish. Beside him is Isimud, his two-faced minister. The writing in the background identifies the seal as belonging to Adda, a scribe. http://sumerianshakespeare.com/106901.html Mesopotamia

By Dr Dominique Collon Last updated 2011-07-01

Seal of Adda From about 5,000 BC, stamp seals, cut with simple designs, were used to mark ownership on clay sealings on storeroom doors. They were also found on the bags, baskets etc in which goods were traded up and down the Tigris and Euphrates. Around 3,500 BC, the cylinder seal was invented; it provided room for elaborately carved designs, and could be rolled over clay. The Akkadian greenstone seal (height 3.9cm) shown here, dating to about 2,300 BC, is shown alongside its modern impression. Gods and goddesses are depicted, identified by their horned head-dresses and attributes as a hunting god, the goddess Ishtar, the sun god Shamash and the water god Enki followed by his vizier. 'Adda, scribe' is written in cuneiform above a lion, identifying the owner as a high official, who could also have sealed letters and administrative documents on clay. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/cultures/mesopotamia_gallery_05.shtml

Another view:

Greenstone seal of Adda Akkadian, about 2300-2200 BC From Mesopotamia Four of the principal Mesopotamian deities This is one of the many high quality greenstone seals that were made when much of 188

Mesopotamia was united under the military control of the kings of the city of Agade (Akkad). The cuneiform inscription identifies the owner of the seal as Adda, who is described as dubsar, or 'scribe'. The figures can be identified as gods by their pointed hats with multiple horns. The figure with streams of water and fish flowing from his shoulders is Ea (Sumerian Enki), god of subterranean waters and of wisdom. Behind him stands Usimu, his two-faced vizier (chief minister). At the centre of the scene is the sun-god, Shamash (Sumerian Utu), with rays rising from his shoulders. He is cutting his way through the mountains in order to rise at dawn. To his left is a winged goddess, Ishtar (Sumerian Inanna). The weapons rising from her shoulders symbolise her warlike characteristics; she also holds a cluster of dates. The god armed with a bow and quiver has not been identified with certainty, but may represent a hunting god like Nusku. J.E. Reade, Mesopotamia (London, The British Museum Press, 1991) D. Collon, First impressions: cylinder se (London, The British Museum Press, 1987) D. Collon, Catalogue of the Western Asi-1 (London, 1982) http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/me/g/greenstone_seal_ of_adda.aspx

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Elamite bird (eagle?) with spread wings on an axe head from Tepe

Yahya (Lamberg-Karlovsky and Potts 2001: 216). in flight.

Harappa seal. Eagle

m1390Bt Text 2868 Pict-74: Bird in flight.

m0451A,B Text3235 h166A,B Harappa Seal; Vats 1940, II: Pl. XCI.255. http://www.metmuseum.org

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eaka wing (Telugu) Rebus: erako molten cast (Tulu) loa ficus; rebus: loh copper. Pajhar eagle; rebus: pasra smithy.

ato = claws of crab (Santali) ato claws or pincers (chelae) of crabs; aom, iom to seize with the claws or pincers, as crabs, scorpions; akop = to pinch, nip (only of crabs) (Santali) Rebus: dhtu = mineral (Skt.) kamaha crab (Skt.) Rebus: kammaa = portable furnace (Te.) kampaam coiner, mint (Ta.) Peg khua; rebus: ka workshop kh i = pin (M.) kui= smelter furnace (Santali) konu m. a washerman's dressing iron (El. kunh); a scraper or grater for grating radishes, or the like; usually -- , the second member being the article to be grated, as in the following: -- kni-muj f. grated radish, but mujkonu, a radish-grater (cf. muj). (Kashmiri) *khua1 peg, post . 2. *khua -- 1. [Same as *khua -- 2? -- See also ka -- .]1. Ku. khu peg ; N. khunu to stitch (der. *khu pin as khilnu from khil s.v. khla -- ); Mth. khu peg, post ; H. kh m. peg, stump ; Marw. khu f. peg ; M. khu m. post .2. Pk. khua -- , khoaya -- m. peg, post ; Dm. kua peg for fastening yoke to plough -- pole ; L. kh f. drum -- stick ; P. khu, m. peg, stump ; WPah. rudh. khu tethering peg or post ; A. kh post , i peg ; B. kh , i wooden post, stake, pin, wedge ; Or. khua, pillar, post ; Bi. (with -- a -) kh r, r posts about one foot high rising from body of cart ; H. kh m. stump, log , f. small peg ( P.kh m., f. stake, peg ); G. kh f. landmark , kh m., f. peg , n. stump , iy n. upright support in frame of wagon , kh n. half -- burnt piece of fuel ; M. kh m. stump of tree, pile in river, grume on teat (semant. cf. kla -- 1 s.v. *khila -2), kh m. stake , f. wooden pin , kh a to dibble .Addenda: *khua -- 1. 2. *khua - 1: WPah.kg. khvnd pole for fencing or piling grass round (Him.I 35 nd poss. wrong for ); 191

J. khu m. peg to fasten cattle to . (CDIAL 3893) Vikalpa: pacar = a wedge driven ino a wooden pin, wedge etc. to tighten it (Santali.lex.) pasra = a smithy, place where a blacksmith works, to work as a blacksmith; kamar pasra = a smithy; pasrao lagao akata se ban:? Has the blacksmith begun to work? pasraedae = the blacksmith is at his work (Santali.lex.) khareo = a currycomb (G.) Rebus: khard turner (G.)

Tablet of destinies, Anzu

Perforated plaque of Dudu - Perforated plaque of Dudu Early Dynastic Period III (c.2450 BC)

This votive plaque with its relief decoration and central perforation is characteristic of Early Dynastic Sumer. The narrative motif, as was customary, is organized in horizontal registers. A Sumerian inscription identifies the person portrayed as Dudu, high priest of the god Ningirsu in the reign of Entemena, king of Lagash around 2450 BC. Occupying the height of two registers, Dudu wears the kaunakes, the fleecy skirt characteristic of the period. Around him are symbolical figures, no doubt connected with his religious functions. At the top, the god Ningirsu is evoked by his emblem, the lion-headed eagle called Imdugud, shown with wings outspread, two lions gripped in his talons. In the middle a calf, perhaps intended for sacrifice, is shown lying down, while the lower register is filled by a plait-like motif, probably 192

representing the subterranean reserve of fresh water. The lion-headed eagle, symbolizing the storm that brings life-giving rain, the sacrificial calf, and the subterranean reserve from which comes water for the crops evoke the celestial, terrestrial, and chthonian sources of fertility which all contribute to the prosperity of human communities. Dimensions H. 25 cm (9 in.), W. 23 cm (9 in.), D. 8 cm (3 in.) Excavations of Ernest de Sarzec, 1881 The Louvre Museum - Paris Anzud with two lions on a plaque http://sumerianshakespeare.com/me dia/6fab403c558c06c0ffff8022ffffe415.jpg

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Tripod silver vase of Enmetena, dedicated to the war god Ningirsu. The legs are made of copper. The vase features an image of Anzud, the lion-headed eagle, grasping two lions with his talons.

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The image of Anzud shows up better in this old photograph. Anzud (also known as Imdugud) was the symbolic animal of Ningirsu. The image of Anzud with the two lions seems to be symbolic of the city of Lagash.

Another view of the silver vase of Enmetena

195

Enlarge.

The dedicatory inscriptions wrap around the neck of the vase:

Enlarge.

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Translation of the inscriptions from the CDLI (P222539):

For Ningirsu, the hero of Enlil, Enmetena, ruler of Lagash, chosen by the heart of Nanshe, chief ruler of Ningirsu, son of Enannatum, ruler of Lagash, for the king who loved him, Ningirsu, (this) gurgur-vessel of refined silver, from which Ningirsu will consume the monthly oil (offering), he had fashioned for him. For his life, before Ningirsu of the Eninnu (temple) he had it set up. At that time Dudu was the temple administrator of Ningirsu. http://sumerianshakespeare.com/70701/74901.html

Stone mace head, front and back: A votive offering to a temple; it is too large to have been used as a weapon. Anzud is also known as

197

Imdugud. http://sumerianshakespeare.com/106901.html

Fragment of an Iranian Chlorite Vase decorated with the lion headed eagle (Imdugud) found in the temple of Ishtar during the 1933 - 1934 fieldwork by Parrot. Dated 2500 - 2400 BC. Louvre Museum collection AO 17553.

Carved horn cup showing Anzud, the lion-headed eagle, attacking a bull/man 198

http://sumerianshakespeare.com/106901.html

Limestone H. 14 cm; W. 14 cm Tell al-Ubaid (Iraq) Early Dynastic III B15606 (T.O. 288) dmra, damr young bull (a.)(CDIAL 6184). K. angur m. bullock (CDIAL 5526). Rebus: hangar blacksmith (H.) kol tiger; rebus: kol smithy. eaka wing (Telugu) Rebus: eraka copper. Thus, the ligatured glyph denotes: copper smithy -- pasra. cf. pajhar 'eagle' (Santali)

Limestone plaque with relief-carved depiction of a human-faced bison, with its front hooves on a plant sprouting from a rocky outcropping or mountain. A lion-headed (eagle-like) bird of prey on the bisons back--the mythical anz--bites its haunch. The bisons body is in profile, its face forward. The stylization of the animals shoulder as an undulating band and the inward-curving tufts of hair on the fetlocks are typical of the late Early Dynastic period. The three overlapping semi-circles that form the rocky outcropping or mountain 199

are reminiscent of the cuneiform sign signifying both mountain and foreign land and suggestive of a natural setting for the action depicted in the distant highlands. The lion-headed bird of preys folded wings, neck and tail are rendered with a grid of incised lines. The square plaque described here is from Woolleys 1923-24 excavations in front of Tell alUbaids late Early Dynastic temple platform (see INTRODUCTION: Tell al-Ubaid). Woolley focused his efforts on the northwest side of the central stair ramp. The plaque was relatively high in the mudbrick debris from the collapse of the platforms superstructure and in close proximity to an inlay panel depicting milking scenes and rows of cattle. In fact, B15606 was just under and against a section of the frieze with shell figures of five bulls facing right and may have originally been attached to it. With the plaque (but detached from it), were the remains of a copper border similar to that of the inlay panels. The background of the plaque had been painted black to match the dark color of the bituminous limestone background of the inlay panels. The human-faced bison, Sumerian (gud) alim or Akkadian kusarikku, is associated with the sungod Utu/Shamash, perhaps in part because it inhabited the eastern mountains from which the sun rose. An Akkadian cylinder seal from Susa in fact depicts the sun god rising above two addorsed recumbent human-faced bisons in place of the stylized mountains that normally mark his abode. And in a hymn the sun god is likened to a bison, Lord, bison, striding over the mountain, Utu, bison, striding over the mountain. The mythical anz, who nests in the high mountains, is a seemingly benevolent creature, at least in early texts and imagery. For example, in the mythical narrative Lugalbanda and the Anz -bird, composed in the late 3rd millennium BCE, when the anz-bird returned from hunting to find his nest embellished like a gods dwelling, with his chick adorned and fed, the anz exulted in his own role as intermediary to Enlil I am the prince who decides the destiny of rolling rivers. I keep on the straight and narrow path the righteous who follow Enlil's counsel. My father Enlil brought me here. He let me bar the entrance to the mountains as if with a great door. If I fix a fate, who shall alter it? If I but say the word, who shall change it? Whoever has done this to my nest, if you are a god, I will speak with you, indeed I will befriend you. If you are a man, I will fix your fate. I shall not let you have any opponents in the mountains. You shall be 'Hero-fortified-by-Anz'. 200

Anz was Enlils symbol, and depictions of the anz with wings outstretched over antithetical animals symbolic of other deities probably reflects Enlils all-encompassing power. The anz relief from Tell al-Ubaid, then, would depict Enlil over the stags associated with Ninhursag. Anzs close association with Ningirsu, Enlils son and warrior and Lagashs tutelary deity, is evident at Tello (Girsu), both in texts and imagery in Early Dynastic-Ur III periods. On Eannatums Stele of the Vultures, for example, Ningirsus battle net is held closed by the anz and antithetical lions, Ningursus animals, while a macehead, currently in the British Museum (BM 23287), dedicated to Ningirsu for the life of Enannatum shows the anz grasping lions. In Gudeas Cylinders Ningirsus temple Eninnu had the epithet white anz, perhaps a reference to some significant architectural embellishment such as Urnamma affixed to the gates of Enlils Ekur. But the anz was a complex creature and one portrayed as more troublesome in later literary compositions. The Epic of Anz, which exists in copies dating to the early 2nd millennium BCE, tells the tale of a malevolent anz who steals the tablet of destinies and is eventually slain by Ninurta. Though Akkadian seals, showing a bird-man brought before Enki, may depict excerpts from this story, suggesting that at least in certain traditions the anz was thought of as a creature with a dualbenevolent and malevolent--character already at the end of the 3rd millennium BCE, their reading remains a matter of controversy. Whatever the complexity of the mythology regarding the anz, the imagery of B15606, on which the anz is shown in overtly aggressive behavior toward an animal of the mountains, associated with the sun god, remains perplexing. Similar scenes occur on shell inlays from Tello and Ur, as well as Tell Mardikh (Ebla) in western Syria. For example, one end panel of the Royal Standard of Ur shows the anz attacking recumbent human-faced bisons on each side of a mountain from which a plant grows. Such scenes may reflect the menacing behavior of the anz to men and gods, but more likely depict the anzs normal behavior in its natural habitat. B15606s juxtaposition with scenes of herding and milking cattle, then, could be read as contrasting the settled conditions of a civilized floodplain with life in the mountains, where, as Lugalanda and the Anz describes, bulls ran wild and the anz hunted to feed its offspring. Richard L. Zettler Bibliography 201

Black, Jeremy and Anthony Green 1992 Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia. Austin, TX.

Braun-Holzinger, Eva 1990 L wenadler. In Reallexikon der Assyriologie, edited by D. O. Edzard and Michael P. Streck, vol. 7, pp. 94-97. Berlin and New York. Dalley, Stephanie 1989 Myths from Mesopotamia. Oxford. Dolce, Rita 1978 Gli Intarsi Mesopotamici dellepoca protodinastica. Rome. Ellis, Maria DeJong 1989 An Old Babylonian kusarikku. In Dumu E2-DUB-BA-A: Studies in honor of Ake W. Sj berg, edited by Herman Behrens, Darlene Loding and Martha T. Roth. Philadelphia. Fuhr-Jaeppelt 1972 Materialien zur Ikonographie des L wenadlers Anzu-Imdugud. Munich. Green, Anthony 1997 Myths in Mesopotamian Art. In Sumerian Gods and Their Representations, edited by I. L. Finkel and M. J. Geller, pp. 135-158. Groningen. Hall, H. R. and C. L. Woolley 1927 Al-Ubaid. Ur Excavations, vol. 1. Oxford. Hruska, B 1975 Der Mythenadler Anzu in Literatur und Vorstellung des alten Mesopotamien. Budapest. Polansky, Janice 2002 The Rise of the Sun God and the Determination of Destiny in Ancient Mesopotamia. PhD dissertation. University of Pennsylvania.

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Wiggermans, F. A. M. 1992 Mesopotamian Protective Spirits. The Ritual Texts. Groningen. http://www.worldartmuseum.cn/content/918/4095_1.shtml

Copper friezeImdugud (also Zu or Anzu), the lion-headed eagle; Sumerian metalwork (sheets of copper), Temple of Ninhursag at Tell al-'Ubaid; ca. 2500 BCE http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Imdugud.jpg. From the temple of Ninhursag, Tell al-'Ubaid, southern Iraq

About 2600-2400 BCE A rare metalwork survival This relief was one of a group of objects found at the small site of Tell al-'Ubaid, close to the remains of the city of Ur. It was discovered at the base of a mud-brick platform on which had been built a temple dedicated to the goddess Ninhursag. The frieze may have originally stood above the door of the temple, and if so, is the most striking element of what survives of the temple faade. The frieze was badly damaged when it was found. Only one stag's head was recovered intact and the head of the eagle had to be restored. This restoration, based on images of similar date, shows the lion-headed eagle Imdugud, the symbol of the god Ningirsu. The artist has allowed the lion head to break out of the confines of the framework, suggesting Imdugud's great power. The relief is formed from sheets of copper alloy beaten into shape and fastened, with pins and twisted lengths of copper, to a wooden core coated with bitumen. The survival of such a large piece of metalwork from this period is exceptional. Though copper, probably from the regions of modern Oman and Iran, was the most widely-used metal at this time, most metal objects have either disintegrated or the metal was melted down and re-used. 203

H.W.F. Saggs, Babylonians (London, The British Museum Press, 1995) D. Collon, Ancient Near Eastern art (London, The British Museum Press, 1995) M. Roaf, Cultural atlas of Mesopotamia (New York, 1990) H.R. Hall and C.L. Woolley, Ur Excavations, vol. I: Al-Uba(London, Oxford University Press, 1927) http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/me/c/copper_frieze.asp x

hompo = knot on a string (Santali) hompo = ingot (Santali) mer.ed iron; rebus: mer.hao
twisted Knot-motif on the plaque:

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Mohenjo-daro seal, m1356 satthiya 'svastika' Rebus: satthiya 'mehao = v.a.m. entwine itself; wind round, wrap round roll up; mahn cover, encase (H) (Santali.lex.Bodding) Rebus: mht = iron (Santali)

This interpretation is suggested because the de phonemes for svastik are: suvatthi, sotthi = well-being (Pali)(CDIAL 13913). sthiyo = auspicious mark painted on the front of a house (G.)(CDIAL 13917). svastik is the emblem of the seventh deified teacher of the present era (Jainism)(G.lex.)

Technical description Votive bas-relief of Dudu, priest of Ningirsu in the time of Entemena, prince of Lagash C. 2400 BCE Tello (ancient Girsu) Bituminous stone H. 25 cm; W. 23 cm; Th. 8 cm De Sarzec excavations, 1881 AO 2354 Plaques perforated in the center and decorated with scenes incised or carved in relief were particularly widespread in the Second and Third Early Dynastic Periods (2800-2340 BC), and have been found at many sites in Mesopotamian and more rarely in Syria or Iran. The perforated plaque of Dudu, high priest of Ningirsu in the reign of Entemena, prince of Lagash (c.2450 BC), belongs to this tradition. It has some distinctive features, however, such as being made of bitumen. 205

Dudu, priest of Ningirsu The bas-relief is perforated in the middle and divided into four unequal sections. A figure occupying the height of two registers faces right, leaning on what appears to be a long staff. He is dressed in the kaunakes, a skirt of sheepskin or other material tufted in imitation of it. His name is inscribed alongside: Dudu, rendered by the pictograph for the foot, "du," repeated. Dudu was high priest of the god Ningirsu at the time of Entemena, prince of Lagash (c.2450 BC). Incised to his left is the lion-headed eagle, symbol of the god Ningirsu and emblem of Lagash, as found in other perforated plaques from Telloh, as well as on other objects such as the mace head of Mesilim, king of Kish, and the silver vase of Entemena, king of Lagash. On this plaque, however, the two lions, usually impassive, are reaching up to bite the wings of the lion-headed eagle. Lower down is a calf, lying in the same position as the heifers on Entemena's vase. The lower register is decorated with a plait-like motif, according to some scholars a symbol of running water. The image may be read as a series of rebuses or ideograms. A priest dedicates an object to his god, represented by his symbol, and flanked perhaps by representations of sacrificial offerings: an animal for slaughter and a libation of running water. The dedicatory inscription, confined to the area left free by the image in the upper part, runs over the body of the calf: "For Ningirsu of the Eninnu, Dudu, priest of Ningirsu ... brought [this material] and fashioned it as a mace stand." Perforated plaques This plaque belongs to the category of perforated plaques, widespread throughout Phases I and II of the Early Dynastic Period, c.2800-2340BC, and found at many sites in Mesopotamia (especially in the Diyala region), and more rarely in Syria (Mari) and Iran (Susa). Some 120 examples are known, of which about 50 come from religious buildings. These plaques are usually rectangular in form, perforated in the middle and decorated with scenes incised or carved in relief. They are most commonly of limestone or gypsum: this plaque, being of bitumen, is an exception to the rule. The precise function of such plaques is unknown, and the purpose of the central perforation remains a mystery. The inscription here at first led scholars to consider them as mace stands, which seems unlikely. Some have thought they were to be hung on a wall, the hole in the center taking a large nail or peg. Others have suggested they might be part of a door-closing 206

mechanism. Perforated plaques such as this are most commonly organized in horizontal registers, showing various ceremonies, banquets (particularly in the Diyala), the construction of buildings (as in the perforated plaque of Ur-Nanshe), and scenes of cultic rituals (as in the perforated plaque showing "the Libation to the Goddess of Fertility"). The iconography is often standardized, almost certainly an indication that they represent a common culture covering the whole of Mesopotamia, and that they had a specific significance understood by all. Bibliography Andr B, Naissance de l'criture : cuniformes et hiroglyphes, (notice), Paris, Exposition du Grand Palais, 7 mai au 9 aot 1982, Paris, Editions de la Runion des muses nationaux, 1982, p. 85, n 42. Contenau G., Manuel d'archologie orientale, Paris, Picard, 1927, p. 487, fig. 357. Heuzey L., Les Antiquits chaldennes, Paris, Librairie des Imprimeries Runies, 1902, n 12. Orthmann W., Der Alte Orient, Berlin, Propylan (14), 1975, pl. 88. Sarzec ., Dcouvertes en Chalde, Paris, Leroux, 1884-1912, pp. 204-209. Thureau-Dangin, Les inscriptions de Sumer et d'Akkad, Paris, Leroux, 1905, p. 59. http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/perforated-plaque-dudu The parallels in the imageries produced Mace head of King Mesilim Early Dynastic Period III (2600-2330 BCE) Telloh, ancient Girsu, Iraq Votive weapon in limestone H. 19 cm; Diam. 16 cm Excavations by . de Sarzec, 1877-1900 AO 2349

This large mace head was dedicated at a shrine in the Sumerian city of Girsu by Mesilim, king of Kish. It is decorated with a lion-headed eagle, emblem of Ningirsu, patron deity of the city, holding six rearing lions in its talons. A votive weapon

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Decorated with a lion-headed eagle dominating six rearing lions, this mace head is exceptional both for its size and for the quality of its decoration, carved in relief. It is a votive object, as indicated by the Sumerian inscription in archaic script: "Mesilim, king of Kish, builder of the temple of Ningirsu, brought [this mace head] for Ningirsu, Lugalshaengur [being] prince of Lagash." In Mesopotamia the mace, which made its first appearance towards the end of the fourth millennium BC, was not only a weapon of war but also a symbol of power. Generally made of luxury materials such as stone or metal, mace heads have been found in great numbers in Sumerian temples. The supremacy of the Kings of Kish The Mesilim (or Mesalim in another possible reading) identified in the inscription as having dedicated the object was the ruler of the city of Kish around 2550 BC. His gesture seems to indicate that he exercised some form of authority over the prince of Lagash. Kish, a powerful city in the north of the land of Sumer, would have enjoyed political and religious supremacy over several Sumerian city-states in the period 2700-2500 BC. Mesilim thus found himself in a position of arbitration in a conflict between the city-state of Lagash and neighboring Umma, establishing the line of their common border and marking it by the erection of a stele.

The symbolism of the lion-headed eagle (called in Sumerian: Zu, Anzu, Anzud or Imdugud) 208

The dedication of the mace head bears witness to the desire of the king of Kish to honor the local gods, and in particular Ningirsu, patron deity of Girsu, whose temple he claims he has rebuilt. This massive mace head is decorated on its upper surface with the lion-headed eagle, symbol of the storm cloud that accompanies thunder and emblem of Ningirsu, guardian of the city's prosperity. Wings outspread, it clutches in its talons six rearing lions, each holding the hindparts of the next around the mace head.

With their bodies viewed in profile and their heads presented full face, these lions seem to leap out from the mace head as symbols of the savage forces of nature. The impression of power is accentuated by their dilated eyes, hollowed out and originally inlaid, which lend their expression a striking intensity. In becoming an emblem of kingship (as on the votive spear-point dedicated at Girsu by one of Mesilim's predecessors), the lion symbolized the submission of natural forces to the social order imposed by the sovereign. The latter was merely the representative of divine power, however, which is why the lions are overcome by the lion-headed eagle, that is to say by the god Ningirsu, true sovereign and protector of the people of Lagash.

Bibliography Amiet Pierre, L'Art antique du Proche-Orient, Paris, Mazenod, 1977, fig. 302, p. 364. Parrot Andr, Tello, vingt campagnes de fouille (1877-1933), Paris, Albin Michel, 1948, p. 72. Sarzec douard de, Dcouvertes en Chalde, Paris, Leroux, 1884-1912, pp. 223-6.

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Base for a ritual offering, carved with animals Elamite period, mid-3rd millennium BCE Tell of the Acropolis, Susa, Iran Bituminous rock H. 19 cm; Diam. 11 cm Jacques de Morgan excavations, 1908 Lions and gazelles passant; eagles protecting their young Sb 2725 This base for a ritual offering is made of bitumen. This material was plentiful throughout the Middle East, but only in Susa was it used in sculpture. The object is carved with big cats, gazelles, and eagles. The theme of the eagle spreading its wings to protect its young was found only in Iran and also features on painted ceramics of the same period. Bitumen: a plentiful material used in an unusual manner This object in the form of a truncated cone is a base for a ritual offering. It is carved from bituminous rock, found throughout the region but used in sculpture only in Susa. It was used to make vases similar to this object (Louvre, Sb2726), and later, in the early years of the 2nd millennium BC, vases carved with bas-relief decorations and an animal's head in high relief (Louvre, Sb2740). The shape of this object - a truncated cone - is similar to other pieces made of chlorite and dating from the same period. The mortise at the top of the cone and the unfinished lip suggest that the object originally had a second part that fitted on top of the cone. However, the precise purpose of the object remains a mystery. The animal carvings The cone is carved with two registers separated by a narrow strip. The upper register is decorated with two gazelles calmly grazing on vegetation, represented by stalks between each animal. Alongside the two gazelles are two big cats, almost certainly lions, with their backs to each other. Their stylized manes are shown as vertical strips, reminiscent of those of the woolen 210

Mesopotamian garments known as kaunakes. Their tails are raised horizontally over their backs, similar to depictions of lions on cylinders from Uruk or Susa. Their heads are depicted in geometrical form. All four animals are shown in profile. The artistic desire to create a scene and a landscape imbued with life is also evident in two cylinders from Uruk and Khafaje. The lower register shows two highly stylized eagles, upright, as if resting on their tail feathers. Their wings and talons are spread to protect the chicks beneath them. These eagles differ somewhat from the usual representation of eagles as the attribute of the Sumerian god Ningirsu, where the birds are depicted with a lion's head, holding two lion cubs, which are shown face on. Mythological creatures or carvings of local wildlife? Eagles were a major theme in Susian and Mesopotamian art. This depiction of an eagle resting on its tail feathers is also found in ceramics, glyptics, and perforated plaques dating from the 3rd millennium BC. However, unlike Mesopotamian eagles, Susian eagles never resembled composite animals. Likewise, Mesopotamian eagles had a mythological dimension, which was absent from Susian portrayals of the bird. In Susa, eagles were simply considered ordinary birds of prey. Bibliography Amiet Pierre, lam, Auvers-sur-Oise, Arche, 1966, p. 166, fig. 119. Les quatre grandes civilisations mondiales. La Msopotamie entre le Tigre et l'Euphrate, cat. exp., Setagaya, muse d'Art, 5 aot-3 dcembre 2000, Fukuoka, muse d'Art asiatique, 16 dcembre 2000-4 mars 2001, Tokyo, NHK, 2000, pp. 214-215.

http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/base-ritual-offering-carved-animals

in Sumer of Anzu, the eagle with yena-amu (soma) of Rigveda are striking indeed and should provide a pause into an understanding of the bronze-age recorded in the many metaphors and hieroglyphs (such as the overflowing vase of Gudea, discussed 211

in http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-indus-writing-lokhad.html Ancient near East Gudea statue hieroglyph (Indus writing): lokh, 'copper tools, pots and pans' Rebus: lo 'overflow', ka 'sacred water'. The parallels of metaphors/imageries are so vivid that a relationships between the people who narrated the exploits of heroes of Sumer and the exploits of Indra narrated in the Rigveda have to be deep indeed and cannot be explained away as mere coincidences. Anzu stole the tablet of destinies. yena of Rigveda brought the amu (soma) from the heavens. Anzu is derived from An "heaven" and Zu "to know", in Sumerian language. See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/09/decipherment-of-soma-and-ancientindo.htmlSoma-haoma, *sauma ? somnakay ! samanom ! *haeusomFrench scholar, Prof. Pinault identifies amu of Rigveda with anzu of Tocharian. In Tocharian it means 'iron'. Tocharin language as an Indo-European language has revealed a word anzu in Tocharian which meant 'iron'. It is likely that this is the word used for soma in Rigveda. The imagery of an eagle stealing soma also occurs in ancient Indian texts. There is a hymn to yena in Atharvaveda (7.41). A synonym of soma is amu. yena, the hawk has brought the soma from the heaven. RV 5.44.11 5.044.11 Swift is the excessive and girth-distending inebriation of Vivavr, Yajata and Myin; (by partaking) of these (juices) they urge one another to drink; they find the copious draught the prompt giver of intoxication. [Swift is...inebriation: yena sm aditih kakyo madah: yena = ghra, quick; aditi = atisamddhah; sm = of these, Soma juices; mada = intoxication, is the devata_ of the verse]. RV 4.40.3 212

And after him who is quick-going, hastening, eager (to arrive at his gold, men) follow (as other birds pursue) the flight of a swift (bird) striving together to keep up by the side of Dadhikrva the transporter (of others) as swift as a hawk. [Yajus. 9.15; after him who is: asya dravatas turayatah param nddhram urah pradeam v of Dadhikrva, together with strength, or for the sake of strength together, enabling to cross; an:kasam pari = a horse's trappings, the cloth, tail, vastracamardikam, over all his body, which fly open as the horse gallops, like the wings of a bird, the horse has the speed of a hawk]. Vmadevagautama sings the following rca-s for yena: (RV 4.26.4) May this bird, Maruts, be pre-eminent over (other) hawks, since with a wheelless car the swiftwinged bore the Soma, accepted by the gods, to Manu. [With a wheelless car: acakray vadhay = cakrarahitena rathena, with a car without wheels; the text has havyam, this is a metonymy for the Soma, which is said to have been brought from heaven by the gyatr, in the form of a hawk; by the hawk, we are to understand the supreme spirit, parabrahma]. Alternative: Before you measure this falcon, O Maruts, supreme is this swift-winged Shyena, strongly self-possessed with no one to bear him, That One brought to Manu the wholesome offerings.Explanation: It is impossible to measure the comprehensive energy existing in That One, who as swift-moving falcon envelops and pervades far distant places. In earlier days Manu, who was effulgent with Bliss, the essence of That One, was provided with wholesome offerings. Seer seems to suggest that even as Manu earlier, with whom he has established companionship, he too now should be the beneficiary of the choice offerings. RV 4.26.5 When the bird, intimidating (its guardians), carried off from hence (the Soma) it was at large; (flying) swift as thought along the vast path (of the firmament), it went rapidly with the sweet Soma, and the hawks thence acquired the celebrity in this world. 213

Alternative: When the bird brought in rapid movements and sent the swift thoughts on widespread Path, the same were returned with sweetness of Bliss, the Falcon in that process attaining brilliance. Explanation: Bird is the energy that elevates the thought fastest moving in universe, with swiftness of a falcon, unless it is with difficulty restrained. The thoughts imbibe the bliss of That One, the falcon, in that process shining with resplendence. RV 4.26.6 The straight-flying hawk, conveying the Soma from afar; the bird, attended by the gods, brought, resolute of purpose, the adorable exhilarating Soma, having taken it from that lofty heaven. Alternative: Climbing above holding the thought and the bird bringing the draught that gladdens, the Falcon spreads upward. Comrade of the luminous beings clutching Soma which the birds had brought it rises to the loftiest heavens. Explanation: Noble thoughts elevate the soul upward and ignoble ones relegate it downward. As the thoughts become energetic with bliss brought by birds from the heavens, the falcon takes elevates them thus enriched with the Bliss of Beatitude, the loftiest of heavens. RV 4.26.7 Having taken it, the hawk brought the Soma with him to a thousand and ten thousand sacrifices, and this being provided, the performer of many (great) deeds, the unbewildered (Indra) destroyed, in the exhilaration of the Soma, (his) bewildered foes. Alternative: Providing Soma bearing thousand libations, yes, ten thousand libations Shyena the falcon bringing it from above offers it down here on earth. Therein, the courageous ones leave all the malignant ones behind, the wise with wild ecstasy, leaving the unwise far behind.Explanation: That One, the falcon brings luminous libations from above and offers them here down below to those who deserve. The enlightened bold ones leave the malignant ones far behind, wise becomes wild with abundance and the timid sinking in scarcity. [Source for the

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alternative renderings of 4.26.4 to 7: http://nageshsonde.com/Rigveda_A_Study_on_Forty_Hymns.pdf] Vmadevagautama continues the prayer to yena in the next Skta: RV 4.27.1 Being still in the germ, I have known all the births of these divinities in their order; a hundred bodies of metal confined me, but as a hawk I came forth with speed. [i.e., until the sage comprehended the differences between the body and soul, and learned that soul was unconfined, he was subject to repeated births; but in this stage he acquired divine knowledge, and burst through the bonds with the force and celerity of a hawk from its nest; Vmadevayena rpam sthya garbhd yogena nihstah = Vmadeva, having assumed the form of a hawk, came forth from the womb by the power of Yoga (Ntimajari)]. RV 4.27.2 That embryo did not beguile me into satisfaction, but by the keen energy (of divine wisdom), I triumphed over it; the impeller of all, the sustainer of many, abandoned the foes (of knowledge), and, expanding, passed beyond the winds (of worldly troubles). [The impeller of all: the paramtm, or supreme spirit; beyond the winds: the vital airs, or life, the cause of worldly existence, which is pain]. RV 4.27.3 When the hawk screamed (with exultation) on his descent from heaven, and (the guardians of the Soma) perceived that the Soma was (carried away) by it then, the archer of Knu, pursuing with the speed of thought, and stringing his bow, let fly an arrow against it. [Note: ankha Knu is a conch-shell cutter.] RV 4.27.4 215

The straight-flying hawk carried off the Soma from above the vast heaven, as (the Avins carried off) Bhujyu from the region of Indra, and a falling feather from the middle of the bird dropped from him wounded in the conflict. [antah param tan madhye sthitam; one nail of the left foot and the shaft was broken by the collision, the fragments of the nail became the quills of the fretful porcupine, those of the arrow, water-snakes, flying foxes, and worms]. RV 4.27.5 4.027.05 Now may Maghavan accept the pure nutritious (sacrificial) food in a white pitcher, mixed with milk and curds, offered by the priests; the upper part of the sweet (beverage) to drink for his exhilaration; may the hero accept (it) to drink for (his) exhilaration. RV 4.18.13 4.18.13 In extreme destitution I have cooked the entrails of a dog; I have not found a comforter among the gods; I have beheld my wife disrsepected; then the falcon, (Indra), has brought to me sweet water. [In extreme destitutuin: So Manu has, Vmadeva, who well knew right and wrong, was by no means rendered impure, though desirous when oppressed with hunger, of eating the flesh of dogs for the preservation of his life; icchan attum, wishing to eat; the text has uno ntri pece, I cooked the entrails of a dog; the falcon: i.e., as swift as a hawk, yena vat ghragmndrah]. [Skta 18: i vmadeva, while yet in the womb, was reluctant to be born and chose to come into the world through his mother's side; aware of his purpose, the mother prayed to Aditi, who thereupon came, with her son Indra, to expostulate with the i; this is the subject of the Skta]. The Skta's of i vmadeva are brilliant evocations of the deeds of Indra, the thunder-bolt wielder and repeatedly evoke the memories enshrined in the Sumerian relief sculptures.

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Marduk, sun god of Babylon, with his thunderbolts pursues Anzu after Anzu stole the Tablets of Destiny. (cf. Marut in Rigveda associated with storms and winds comparable to Anzu or Imdugud associated with storms). Battle between Marduk (Bel) and the Dragon. Drawn from a bas-relief from the Palace of Ashur-nasir-pal, King of Assyria, 885-860 B.C., at Nimrd. [Nimrd Gallery, Nos. 28 and 29.]

Marduk is a remembered memory of Indra. Anzu, the eagle is the remembered protector,yena, 217

the hawk, who brought amu (anzu) from the heavens to the people working with fire-altars in yaja-s.

RV 7.15.4 7.15.4 May Agni, to whom as to a (swift) hawk in heaven, I address this new hymn, bestow upon us ample wealth. Alternative: 1 have begotten this new hymn for Agni, falcon of the Sky: will he not give us of his wealth? (Griffith trans.)(Note: "As mediator between the realms of men and of the gods, the characteristics of flight are often Agni's. As divine eagle or falcon (yena) he is depicted in the Agnicayana (Yajur Veda), the ritual construction of a 10,800 brick fire-altar in the form of a flying bird. The iron fort with a hundred walls in stanza 14 below perhaps recalls the eagle's soma-theft in Rig Veda, IV, 26 and 27."

[quote]Zu, also known as Anzu and Imdugud, in Sumerian, (from An "heaven" and Zu "to know", in the Sumerian language) is a lesser divinity of Akkadian mythology, and the son of the bird goddess Siris. He was conceived by the pure waters of the Apsu and the wide Earth.[1] Both Zu and Siris are seen as massive birds who can breathe fire and water, although Zu is alternately seen as a lion-headed eagle (cf: The Griffin). Zu as a lion-headed eagle, ca. 25502500 BC, Louvre Anzu was a servant of the chief sky god Enlil, guard of the throne in Enlil's sanctuary, (possibly previously a symbol of Anu), from whom Anzu stole the Tablet of Destinies, so hoping to determine the fate of all things. In one version of the legend, the gods sent Lugalbanda to retrieve the tablets, who in turn, killed Anzu. In another, Ea and Belet-Ili conceived Ninurta for the purpose of retrieving the tablets. In a third legend, found in The Hymn of Ashurbanipal, Marduk is said to have killed Anzu. [unquote] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zu_(mythology) See: http://www.sacredtexts.com/ane/blc/blc08.htm

[quote] In Mesopotamian mythology, the Tablet of Destinies - Dup Shimati in Sumerian - (not, as frequently misquoted in general works, the 'Tablets of Destinies') was envisaged as a clay tablet 218

inscribed with cuneiform writing, also impressed with cylinder seals, which, as a permanent legal document, conferred upon the god Enlil his supreme authority as ruler of the universe. In the Sumerian poem 'Ninurta and the Turtle' it is the god Enki, rather than Enlil, who holds the tablet. Both this poem and the Akkadian Anz poem share concern of the theft of the tablet by the bird Imdugud (Sumerian) or Anz (Akkadian). Supposedly, whoever possessed the tablet ruled the universe.In the Babylonian Enuma Elish, Tiamat bestows this tablet on Qingu (in some instances spelled "Kingu") and gives him command of her army. Marduk, the chosen champion of the gods, then fights and destroys Tiamat and her army. Marduk reclaims the Tablet of Destinies for himself, thereby strengthening his rule among the gods.The tablet can be compared with the concept of the Me, divine decrees. [unquote] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablet_of_Destiny Sennacherib and the Tablet of Destinies Author(s): A. R. George Source: Iraq, Vol. 48 (1986), pp. 133-146 Published by: British Institute for the Study of Iraq Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4200258 . http://www.scribd.com/doc/149113821/Senna-Cherib-Tablet-of-Destinies-A-R-George-1986 Senna Cherib &amp; Tablet of Destinies : A. R. George (1986)

Ancient Near east Anzu, falcon-shaped fire-altar Uttarakhand

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http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/tablet-of-destinies.html Ancient Near East Tablet of destinies, Anzu, the divine eagle, amu (soma)

Syena-citi: A Monument of Uttarkashi The first layer of one kind of yenaciti or falcon altar described in the ulbastras, made of 200 bricks of six shapes or sizes, all of them adding up to a specified total area. Distt.EXCAVATED SITE -PUROLA Geo-Coordinates-Lat. 30 5254 N Long. 77 0533 E Notification No& Date;2742/-/16-09/1996The ancient site at Purola is located on the left bank of river Kamal. The excavation yielded the remains of Painted Grey Ware (PGW) from the earliest level alongwith other associated materials include terracotta figurines, beads, potter-stamp, the dental and femur portions of domesticated horse (Equas Cabalus Linn). The most important finding from the site is a brick alter identified as Syenachiti by the excavator. The structure is in the shape of a flying eagle Garuda, head facing east with outstretched wings. In the center of the structure is the chiti is a square chamber yielded remains of pottery assignable to circa first century B.C. to second century AD. In addition copper coin of Kuninda and other material i.e. ash, bone pieces etc and a thin gold leaf impressed with a human figure tentatively identified as Agni have also been recovered from the central chamber. http://asidehraduncircle.in/uttarkashi.html See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/11/syena-orthography.html yena, orthography, Sasanian iconography. Continued use of Indus Script hieroglyphs.

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One of the first attested inscriptions (from Sankheda, Gujarat) recording a date written with the place-value system of numeral notation. The date highlighted) reads 346 of a local era, which corresponds to 594 CE. (Adapted from Georges Ifrah) "Consider the following statement by the French mathematician Pierre Simon de Laplace in 1814: It is to India that we owe the ingenious method of expressing every possible number using a set of ten symbols, each symbol having a positional as well as an absolute value. A profound and important idea, it now appears to us so simple that we fail to appreciate its true merit. But its real simplicity and the way it has facilitated all calculations has placed our arithmetic foremost among useful inventions. We will appreciate the greatness of this invention all the more if we remember that it eluded the genius of the two greatest men of Antiquity, Archimedes and Apollonius." "The first Indian texts dealing explicitly with mathematics are the ulbastras, dated between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE. They were written in Sanskrit in the highly concise stra style and were, in effect, manuals for the construction of fire altars (called citis or vedis) intended for specific rituals and made of bricks. The altars often had five layers of 200 bricks each, the lowest layer symbolizing the earth, and the highest, heaven; they were thus symbolic representations of the universe. Because their total area needed to be carefully defined and constructed from bricks of specified shapes and size, complex geometrical calculations followed. The ulbastras, for instance, are the earliest texts of geometry offering a general statement, in geometric." http://www.cbseacademic.in/web_material/Circulars/2012/68_KTPI/Module_7.pdf The heroic theft: myths from Rgveda and the Ancient Near East - David M. Knipe (1967)

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http://vivekitam.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/athirathram-a-perspective-2/ Panjal athirathra yajnam a perspective***

Of Chitis, Yajnam and Athirathram by KV Sarma J ***

The Panjal Athirathra Yajnam..takes 12 days to complete and is a very complex process involving Rig, Yajur and Sama Veda recitation and procedural details. Though Athirathram had been performed in 1990 and in 2006 as well, the importance of this Athirathram is that it is again being conducted in Panjal after a gap of 35 years. Panjal in Thrissur District in Kerala is considered as Yajna bhumi as it has a history of several Yajnas in the past.

Panjal Athirathram 2011, should be treated as the Dharma Karyam of the year. In fact, one would have expected Governments of both Kerala and India to show support and make arrangements to ensure success of this project. However, Government of Kerala is going for polls while Government of India is busy supporting other causes. Vedic Rituals like Athirathram evoke immense sense of history among Hindus, the battered ones of this wretched and ungrateful country. As our tradition is slowly eroding in the waves of modernization, events like Athirathram give some hope that future generations may know that ancient Hindus were not barbaric lot as pictured in some History books, but were masters of various sciences.

For those who are interested in the structural aspects of Yagasala and Yajna-sthanam, please read KVs first post on Athirathram here. The history of Athirathram and its mention in historical records is fascinating in itselfAs KV Sarma mentions:

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Pravara Sena I, who is placed around at 275 AD to 335 AD by the authors Ramesh Chandra Majumdar and Anant Sadashiv Altekar in this book, is said to have conducted all Yajnams successfully including the most difficult Vajapeya Yajnam, after which he was given the title Samrat, which can be loosely translated to Emperor in English.

Pravarasena I (275 - 335 AD) performed Athirathra Yajnam

While dates of Pravarasena I, Vakatakas and Gupta dynasty is a topic of huge controversy and discussion, one cannot disprove the argument that Pravarasena conducted Athirathram and other Yajnams. ASI Reviews ASI in its 1957-58 review (page 56) revealed at least two types of altars Kurmachiti and Syenachiti at Kausmbi near Allahabad. ASI would like to believe that Purushamedha happened at the site, despite no presence of Human Skull but only a Purusha made of lime. That is actually an interesting observation as ASI Review of the year 1997-98 (page 137) revealed another Syenachiti structure found at Mansar near Nagpur. While Mansar site finding is quite clearly syenachiti structure according to description of the sites, even though no human skull was found like at Kausumbi site, ASI seems to have arrived at the conclusion that Purushamedha was performed at both sites. It is astonishing that ASI didnt consult a vedic pundit to ratify these conclusions.

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It gets even more interesting as one reads ASI Review of the year 1988-89 (page 76). ASI found a huge structure of several altar constructions mostly in the form of a rectangular structure at Sanghol near Ludhiana in Punjab. From what has been described in the document, it could be the Peethan, which is considered as fully grown falcon. This picture would give an understanding (click to enlarge)

A square (Chathurasra) variety of Syenachiti (Click to enlarge) One may question the importance of dating these sites properly. The importance of such careful study lies in the fact that all these sites are miles apart. There was also a syenachiti structure found in Purola, Uttaranchal by ASI. This means Syenachiti strucutres were found in Northwest India, Central India, West India, Northern India.Given that Vakataka inscriptions indicate that Pravara Sena III also performed all Somayagams and he ruled from Malwa to Tungabhadra, there is a clear possibility that Somayagam practice was there not just in North/Central India but across India. Some coins were found in Uttarakhand with Syenachiti imprinted on them. This means that Syenachiti might have been a very popular chiti structure in Soma and Havir yagams. However, the most important point with respect to Syenachiti structure is that Indus Valley civilizations have some fire altars. It is not very clear whether these were household fire altars are specialized fire altars where these yagams could have been conducted. The difference between these special yagams and nithya yagams like Agnohotra etc., lie in the type of material and length of the homa also. Pursuing investigation with this important piece of information could reveal a different story. But for such an open investigation, first we have to come out of the vedic nomads and separation of the periods when four Vedas were written. Such a paradigm shift is important in mapping Indias history as putting Indus Valley Civilization in sync with

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historical findings pointing to later years will mean direct connection that Indus Valley People later were known as Hindus and so invasion of Indus Valley people could have never happened.

Image courtesy: KV Sarma J

Athirathram in Epics While Athirathram and Syenachiti findings around 2 BC to 2 AD are one side of the story, Athirathram and all other somayagams find mention in two of the most important epics of Hinduism Ramayana and Mahabharata. In Ramayana, when Dasaratha conducted Aswamedha Yajnam, he did not stop with Aswamedha Yajnam. He is said to have conducted other Yajnams too. To quote this verse from Bala Kanda, ukthyam dvitiiyam sa.mkhyaatam atiraatram tathottaram | kaaritaaH tatra bahavo vihitaaH shaastra darshanaat || | || Meaning The ritual on the second day is called ukthyam, and the next one performed on third day is calledathiraathra. These apart many of the preordained rituals are performed there in that ritual as envisaged in scriptures the fascinating part is about the mention of chiti that was constructed for these yajnams. The same Sarga (14th) in Bala Kanda has some details: iSTakaaH ca yathaa nyaayam kaaritaaH ca pramaaNataH | cito.agniH braahmaNaiH tatra kushalaiH shiplakarmaNi || sacityo raaja si.mhasya sa.ncitaH kushalaiH dvijaiH | garuDo rukmapakSo vai triguNo aSTaa dashaatmakaH || | || 225

 | || Meaning The bricks for Altar of Fire are well designed and made according to rules and standard measurements. The Brahmans who are experts in the architecture of laying Fire Altar, by calculating the ritual field with a one-ply rope and decide where and how the that shall be, the Altar of Fire is layered well with bricks in that ritual. That Altar of Fire of that King, the Lion, is layered by expert Brahmans in the shape of an eaglewith golden wings, with its size being three folds bigger than the altars of other rituals, thus it has eighteen separators, and fire is laid on it. A mistake that has been done by the translators is in translating garuda to eagle. Garuda is not considered as an Eagle. Garuda is considered as a Falcon. Some think of Garuda as a Kite. However, Garuda has been referred to in other puranas as Syena i.e., Falcon. A very important question that could be asked is if syenachiti constructed was 18 layered as mentioned in Bala Kanda, did people of Ramayana times know detailed mathematics involved in constructing Syenachiti?. This question requires investigation not just because a Syenachiti is mentioned in Ramayana, but Syenachiti also finds a mention in Mahabharata as well. In Mahabharata, the word Atiratra as a reference to yajnam along with other yajnams, happens in Vana parva. Following verse clarifies: || || kttik maghayo caiva trtham sdya bhrata agniomtirtrbhy phala prpnoti puyakt Meaning The one who takes the tirtha piligrimage (of Prabhasa as referred to in preceding shloka) in the month of Karthika Or Krittika would acquire the same result as one who conducts Agnishtoma and Atiratra Yajnas. The most important point, with Mahabharata text is, however with respect to Garuda shaped fire altar. That which we now call Syenachiti is not referred to as Syenachiti in available text but as Garuda shaped Chiti. | || | || 226

iak kcan ctra cayanrtha ktbhavan uubhe cayana tatra dakasyeva prajpate catu citya sa tasysd adaa kartmaka sa rukmapako nicitas triguo garukti Meaning Bricks made of gold were used to build Chayana or Chiti. The Chayana made for the purpose resembled the chiti that was made by Daksha Prajapati. (meaning of only the first shloka above) For translating the second shloka mentioned above, first compare it with the one describing chiti from Ramayana. | || [Ramayana description] | || [Mahabharata description] Both descriptions are different, yet they both curiously use two words , The translation for is quite straighforward 18. The translation for is different according to valmikiramayan.net and Kisari Mohan Ganguli. valmikiramayana.net calls it three times where as Kisari Mohan Ganguli calls it having three angles. Defining as having three angles does not fit the context of Syenachiti structure be it panchapatrika, shadpatrika or petthana because all these structures have at least four angles : at beak, two at wings and at tail. So, the meaning of the shloka | || should be The chayana was 18 layered and was three times bigger than usual chiti. Thus, both Ramayana and Mahabharata clearly mention shlokas describing the use of Syenachiti of 18 layers. Since it is clear from Vedic ritual that the chiti structure is not built as a single monolithic structure but is built out of several bricks of different shapes arranged in an orderly fashion, one can come to several conclusions. These conclusions will be part of concluding post in this series. During British Raj and Post Independence Since Athirathra yajnam, which is one of the seven somayagams, occupies such an important place in Hindu history starting much earlier than Ramayana times (by Ramayana time, the complete procedure seems to be quite mature), it would be interesting to see if there is any 227

record of Athirathram being performed during British Raj and after Independence. This investigation is important to understand, support or counter, whichever the case may be, the theory that Dr. Fritz Staals generous funding of 1975 athirathram protected it from extinction. It is quite well documented that yajnas were performed during British Raj. For instance, this news piece from 1944 Windsor Star Daily records a maha yajna conducted on the banks of Jamuna River. Unfortunately not many details are present in this digitized news piece. The photograph (though not very clear) shown in the copy shows a yagasala which is pretty much like the one required for Somayagams. Also, there are also websites which record history of yajnas done by vedic pundits since 1930s. While there are several records of Agnishtoma and Aptoryama conducted in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, there is very little information on Athirathram being conducted between 1920s and 1950s. It is, however, a well recorded fact that 1956 saw an Athirathram near Panjal. Surekha Pillai who handled PR for Panjal Athirathram 2011 on behalf of Varthathe trust has taken pictures of 1956 and 1918 Athirathram sites. She says it is amazing to see the site after so many years with a huge Banyan tree growing at the middle of the chiti. Quite amazing indeed, as the picture itself shows. Despite lack of direct evidence, there is one documented record from American Philosophical Society 1963 year book that Tamil Nadu was conducting all somayagams regularly.

TN was conducting all varieties of samayagams at a rate of 2-5 yearly. To quote from the information available on Google Books: While the Aiyars of Madras State continue to perform somayaga-sacrifices at the rate of 2 to 5 yearly, whilst all other six varities have been performed during the last decades, the Nambudiris used to perform only two i.e., agnistoma and (agnicayana-)atiratra, and this occurred last in 1956. That year may have marked the end of a tradition of millennia.. This is an very important information, which basically may prove with some more evidence conclusively, that Keralas tradition of Athirathram was in danger but not Athirathra Yajnam as a whole. The notion that Athirathra Yajnam required foreign support to be preserved might as well be a misconception. However, the question still remains as to why Kerala tradition was in danger at all?. The plausible answer is 228

Lack of communication among Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala where vedic pundits and financial distress of the time could have been the reasons for such a desperate situation. Without much doubt, one can say the local administration didnt find these vedic procedures worthy enough to be encouraged. Not that non governmental institutions were silent during this time. Some indepth reading indicates that several institutions were formed to ensure Vedic tradition continues. Several veda vidya peethams across South had collaborative programmes with those in Ujjain and Varanasi a sort of knowledge sharing. The history of Athirathram traces to as far as Ramayana. Depending upon which country one is from and the accepted school of thought, it could mean Athirathram goes back to 1400 BC or even further to 7000 BC or beyond Ice age (by Hindu Yuga structure). It has been explained on several occasions that ancients Hindus knew a lot about various sciences. There are several references clearly describing economics, politics, probability, geometry, trigonometry, mathematics of numbers, chemical sciences and several other fields. Yajnas are probably the best places to explore how vedas describe laws, rules and assumptions made by the ancient Hindus while exploring these sciences. For instance, many feel that Bhagavata Purana has metaphorical explanation of concepts like Time Dilation. Some feel that Vedas themselves were divided into Shakas by Veda Vyasa using principles of Graph Theory. Mathematicians also worked on mathematical analysis of Sanskrit. Yajna is no exception. Thus, Athirathram is no exception. Specifically, two areas are worth talking about. What is the cumulative effect of a Yajna? What is Mathematics involved in chiti construction? What is Mathematics involved in chiti construction? The most fascinating aspect of Yajna, as described in part 1 of this series is perhaps Chitis (in both mahavedi and agnihotra sala) and its construction. Chiti comes from the sanskrit root Chit. Unfortunately, foreigners relate chiti to pile, but apte relates chiti to chit. A Chiti is made up of a specific structure. As mentioned in part 1 of this series, several types of chitis are used. Lot of research has already been done on Mathematics involved in chiti construction. All the structures known to Hindus have been explained in a great detail in Srouta Sutras detailed in Kalpa Sutras. In the papers published so far, researchers quote several sutras as sources for chiti construction process. It is thus logical that chiti construction is distributed across sutras. Another curious question is 229

Could it be that there was a formal conference during which these sutras were drafted or direction of documentation of these sutras happened? Foreign historians place each author of Kalpa Sutra books at various points in history. But the similarities present in these sutras is a very important aspect which cannot be ignored. Whatever be the case with dating of Kalpa Sutras, one cannot contest the fact that the chitis are described in these sutras in excruciating detail and often, mathematical precision reaches upto 10 or more decimal points. To quote John F Price in this paper, For me, there are three outstanding features of the Sulba Sotras: the wholeness and consistency of their geometrical results and constructions, the elegance and beauty of the citis, and the indication that the Sutras have a much deeper purpose John F Price also explains that all Kalpa Sutras have a common format. The Sulba Sutras form part of the Kalpa Sltras which in turn are a part of the Vedangas. There are four main Sulba SUtras, the Baudhayana. the Apastamba, the Manava, and the Katvavana, and a number of smaller ones. One of the meanings of Sulba is string, cord or rope. The general formats of the main Sulba Sltras are the same; each starts with sections on geometrical and arithmetical constructions and ends rvith details of how to build citis which, for the moment, ue interpret as ceremonial platforms or altars. The measurements for the geometrical constructions are performed by drawing arcs with different radii and centers using a cord or Sulba. This quote from a Mathematics researcher actually strengthens our reasons to think in the direction of question posed above. There is a definite possibility that writers of sutras were contemporaries or at best 2-3 generations apart (generation being 2-3 decades). It is also possible that there was a formal mechanism to document these observations. It is common knowledge of every Hindu that all sutras are observations from Vedas. So another area of research would be to identify the sources of Sutras in Vedas so that any sutras which were lost in time could be rewritten. Syena Chiti Syena Chiti is described by John F Price as shown in this picture.

Syena Chiti, Garuda shaped Chiti Schematic as described by John F Price.

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There is a difference in schematic as described by John F Price and S N Sen and AK Bag in their commentaries. S N Sen and A K Bag also provide numbering on each brick used for chiti. This is an important aspect as in Athirathram 2011 also similar numbering was seen. ..Syena Chiti is described in Boudhayana Sulba Sutra in Second Section. First section describes construction of square, circle etc. Second section describes construction of Garhapatya chiti and subsequent sections describe construction of other complex chitis. Ratha Chakra Chiti

Ratha Chakra Chiti schematic as described by John F Price John F Price gives the following schematic of Ratha Chakra Chiti in his paper. Ratha Chakra chiti description is fairly similar according to others like S N Sen and A K Bag. This chiti has an interesting mathematical detail according to John F Price. The initial calculations for determining the different parts of the *heel are in terms of square bricks each of area 1/30 square purusas. Since the final area is required to be 7.5 square purusas, the number of bricks is 7.5 x 30 : 225. The nave of the wheel consists of 16 of these bricks. the spokes 64 and the rim 145, making 225 in all. The spaces between the spokes are equal in area to the spokes and so, if these spaces are included,the overall area is 225 + 64 : 289 bricks. Notice that overall area is curiously comes from a Pythagorean set {8,15,17}. Subhash Kak explains that there are as many as 95 chitis which are built in sequence. The obvious questions are Why did the authors of Sulba Sutras propose this sequence? What is the importance of this sequence? There are a few questions that would be great points of research. Also, Sutras also describe a very detailed structure for odd and even layers. They are more like Figure and Ground. On this point, another question that comes up is

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Whether number sequences described in Rudram relate to Chiti construction and layers involved? Conclusion In Truthiyadhyaya (3rd chapter) of Bhagavadgita, Sri Krishna explains to Arjuna on why Yajnas have to be done. | || Meaning All living bodies subsist on food grains, which are produced from rains. Rains are produced by performance of yajna [sacrifice], and yajna is born of prescribed duties. Sri Krishna explains this in third adhyaya which fundamentally gives an explanation of Karma Yoga. Panjal Athirathram thus becomes the Dharma Karyam of the year. Performing of Yajnas is a Hindus duty precisely because it results in rain which provides food. Thus, Yajna is a technological process at least by the time of Krishna. The million dollar question on 15th of April at Panjal was whether or not it would rain. On 15th April 2011, at 9:30, just as Athirathram was about to conclude, Panjal experience heavy downpour for about 30 minutes. The same happened in 1975 according to media archives. More than what happened, peoples reaction is something to be taken into account. At around 9:30, Surekha Pillai tweeted live from Panjal: theres thunderstorm and people are cheering and clapping. This is indication of the faith that people have in Yajna procedures. So, to the question of whether Vedic Ritual is a scientific experiment, well it seems to be so because it did rain during properly performed Yajnas. Apart from being our duty, Yajnas also become part of Hindu culture i.e., Indias culture. Sutras which document everything related to Yajnas are clearly products of extensive research done on Vedas. Several questions still remain Are the detailed notes in Sutras annotated texts of Vedas and Upanishads? Did civilization at the time of Rama know sutras? If so, were Sutra writers contemporaries or ancestors of the civilization of Ramas time? Altars seen in Indus Valley indicate that they are Grahapatya chitis, which are for domestic use. Does this mean Sutra writers were before or during IVC or does it mean IVC were vedic and Sutra writers wrote annotated texts to Vedas? 232

Given that IVC cities were very sophisticated in urban planning, what are the odds that IVC were using all the complex structures for chitis described in sutras? Why is there such a great detail on construction sequence of Chitis? Is it only to preserve tradition with hard and fast rules or does it have a greater significance? Each author of the four major Vedangas Apasthamba, Boudhayana, Katyayana and Manava wrote Sutras in four parts : Grihya, Sulba, Srouta and Dharma. Each set of four Sutras are definitely companion works and all the 16 should be put in perspective to get a bigger picture on how a common Hindu household would have been during the time of these works, as all these four describe all duties of a common Hindu. The similarities and cross referencing, if any must also be used while dating these writers because heavy citation/similarities across all 16 works would indicate that the writers were contemporaries and further, these works could have been the result of a formal convention on Vedic Studies of ancient times. It is our Dharma to do our own research and put all these works in perspective with our Smritis and Puranas because these documents would provide a perspective on the life and times of our ancestors. It does not mean that foreign research should be discouraged. It only means that we should write our own history. If left to foreigners who do not understand terms like Dharma, Karma and other such important aspects of a common Hindus life, we would be left with inexplicable theories like Aryan Invasion. | *** To the history and research buffs amongst you, I would urge you read through the whole series on KVs blog. You will notbe disappointedand while you are at it, have a look at some pictures too Comments: d2thdr said: I think this is simply wonderful. Thank you for posting this. The longer I live in west, the more I want to learn more. Is there somewhere who can teach me all this? 14 May 2011 Athirathram one of the most ancient and sacred ritual associates with Vedic Dharma Hindu Internet Defence Force said: [...] http://satyameva-jayate.org/2011/05/13/athirathram/ [...] 14 May 2011 233

Prem said: Shantanu, I am sure you invested a lot of your time in coming up with this study/analysis. Undoubtedly, this is one of the rare articles available on the net that makes every Hindu think about his culture, his traditions and most importantly our history. It is a shame that there are not many intellectuals like you, who are willing to invest their time/resources in this field! I propose that there be some sort of scholarship/grant provided to students who want to do such research. In my limited capacity, I offer to fund USD 100/month, subject to review after an year. Let me know if you find this proposal interesting enough, I can talk to some more people here in Pittsburgh (US) and see if any one else is willing to contribute. 15 May 2011 B Shantanu (author) said: Prem: This is entirely KV Sarmas research and all credit must go to him. I agree that it would be very helpful to have a scholarship/grant made available to students and researchers who are engaged in such a study Unfortunately I do not have any time to manage and administer such a scholarship. I believe there is enough support amongst Hindus to fund such research. What we need is an institutional mechanism and someone to manage this. You will recall that in a recent case where we wanted to help Dr Arvind, who is a Sanskrit scholar, I was overwhelmed by the response. In the end Sh Ranganaathan-ji agreed to take over and he is now handling all the offers of assistance and help (which by the way have crossed all my expectations) Would you have time to coordinate this at least for those who are resident in US? PL let me know via email or leave a comment below.. *** All: If anyone of you has the time and the inclination to do this, pl email me or leave a comment here (email is Jai.Dharma AT gmail.com) Separately, I have also begun soliciting assistance and donations for the political initiatives that many of you are well aware of. The payment mechanisms etc are being set up but if you are interested in supporting this work, pl email me or leave a comment below. Needless to say, all contributions will be gratefully acknowledged and the process will be transparent. More information here. Thanks. Jai Hind, Jai Bharat! 234

15 May 2011 Sivasubramaniam Krishnan said: My sincere and grateful thanks to all who are connected with this fantastic piece of work. I had roma harsha i.e. thrills going through my body as I read this. I am also keen on contributing to any effort in this regard. I can put some money (which I would consider a better application of my money than many of my present outlays); I can devote time; I can use my limited knowledge of Sanskrit in the effort. If we can organize GUEST LECTURES by the authors and other knowledgeable people in schools, colleges and higher educational institutions, we can create a groundswell of support for such research efforts. May God bless the effort, and may I have the good fortune to be part of it. S. Krishnan 15 May 2011 Sivasubramaniam Krishnan said: I live in Chennai (Madras). Is it possible for me to meet KV SharmaJ? and/or the author who did us this great favour by publishing this ? 15 May 2011 Sivasubramaniam Krishnan said: Just a note to clarify matters: My main interest is the Article by KV SharmaJ. He is a person I would love to meet and greet and pay homage to for the interest and application he displays in his article. I would love to learn more from him and offer whatever help or assistance I can. I find that Santanus primary thrust is on public interest and maybe politics where my own interest and abilities can be of little value. Thanks for being Santanu and for hosting this blog. I will keep following your blogs. Regards, Krishnan 17 May 2011 B Shantanu (author) said: Krishnan: Thanks for clarifying. I have emailed KV Sarma and he should hopefully respond soon. You are right about my focus. It is on political activism. This blog is one of the mediums I use to raise political (and national) consciousness. There are a lot of other activities that happen in the 235

background, at least a few of which can be accelerated if we have more resources (and of course people). If you would like to support that either now or in the future, please have a look at this page (currently in draft form): http://satyameva-jayate.org/support-us/ Jai Hind, Jai Bharat! 17 May 2011 K V Sarma J said: @all, Sorry for the delay in response. Thank you every one for all the kind words of appreciation. @Prem ji, It would not be very difficult to fund scholars in such works. People like Shantanu sir, Ranganathan ji and several others I happened to meet in recent times are ensuring such research doesnt stop, especially when enthusiasit candidates are invovled. Recent Dr. Arvind Shanbag story is a testimony to this fact. However, I feel we should do these activities as our own home projects. IMO, collective and independent study is also a good point to start. My fundamental interest is in Mathematics and that pulled me into understanding these. There is scope for lot of original work here. In fact, triggering interest in kids is not very difficult. For example, for a simple geometry assigment at school to build some geometrical structure, one could get him/her construct a simple garhapatya chiti which is a built out of only squares. Such ideas would be a good way to start. Unfortunately, work so far done by elders like K. Subrahmaniam at IITM, Venkateswara Sarma of Punjab University dont find much of mention in our school books, which means there is no way for younger generation to know that such a thing exists in the first place. @Krishnan ji, I am based in Bangalore. I will take your email ID from Shantanu sir and mail you. 17 May 2011 Prem said: @K V Sarma J, Thanks for your reply, I will see what I can do. Regards, Prem 18 May 2011 K V Sarma J said: 236

It gives great pleasure to read that Dr. Nampoori and his team came out with Emperical Data from Athirathram 2011 and according to them, there are several positive effects of the yajnam on the atmosphere in the vicinity. http://expressbuzz.com/states/kerala/scientific-impact-of-panjal-athirathram-ritual/282845.html This is exactly why following Vedas is Dharma. Sanatana Dharma. If you ask me, Dharma should be the official key word for Indian constitution but thats a different topic altogether. Do read the piece for details on various observations related to Athirathram 2011. 10 June 2011 Ramamurthy said: This is to let you know that Athirathram will be performed in Bhadrachalam, Andhra pradesh in March 2012. http://satyameva-jayate.org/2011/05/13/athirathram/

http://www.urkesh.org/EL-MZ/Buccellati_and_KellyBuccellati_1996_Seals_of_the_King.pdf Giorgio Buccellati and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati (Malibu), 1996, The seals of the king of Urkesh: evidence from the western wing of the Royal storehouse AK

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Shamash the Sun-god rising on the horizon, flames of fire ascending from his shoulder. The two portals of the dawn, each surmounted by a lion, are being drawn open by attendant gods. From a Babylonian seal cylinder in the British Museum. [No. 89,110.] NOTE: It is for this sun-god Shamash the Sit-Shamshi bronze narrates the morning offerings of ablutions in front of the ziggurat.

A cylinder seal impression showing Enki and other gods. Enki is on the right. The gods are recognizable by their horned helmets. Note the "birdman" in the center. He is being led in a neck stock, his hands tied, to stand before the judgment of Enki. http://sumerianshakesp eare.com/106901.html

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Assyrian demon Pazuzu, first millennium BC, Louvre

Museum. A falcon (Skt.)

http://rbedrosian.com/Downloads/Budge_GuidetoBritMus.pdf A guide to the Babylonian and Assyrian antiquities (1900), The British Museum.

http://oi.uchicago.edu/pdf/OIP117P1.pdf Seals on the Persepolis fortification tablets, Vol. I, Univ. of Chicago, 2001

http://djvued.libs.uga.edu/BL1620xB7/1f/babylonian_legends_of_creation.pdf The Babylonian legends of the creation and the fight between Bel and the Dragon as told by Assyrian tablets from Nineveh, The British Museum (1921).

Notes on the role of Dilmun in Indus trade with contact areas:

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Dilmun (present-day Bahrain) and Magan (or Makan, present-day Oman) of Arabian Peninsula had trade connections with the Indus. Maysar, Ra's al-Hadd and R'as al-Junayz -- sites in Oman; Tell Abrak (United Arab Emirates) -- sites in Bahrain and Failaka; Ur, Nippur, Kish and Susa -- sites in Mesopotamia between Tigris-Euphrates and in Elam, have provided evidence of Indus trade presence. Sutkagen-dor and Sokta-koh were ports near today's Iran border and indicate the role of sea-faring in Indus trade. A remote Indus trade outpost was perhaps Shortughai, on the Oxus in Afghanistan, beyond the Hindu Kush range of mountains.

Dilmun has produced seals with Indus inscription, Linear Elamite inscribed atop an Indusstylized bull and a tablet with cuneiform -- all simultaneously being used ca. 2000 BCE:

"The presence in Dilmun of these three different writing systems de fabrication locale, meaning the co-existence of Linear Elamite, the Indus script, and lastly the Mesopotamian cuneiform, allsimultaneously being used ca. 2000 BCE (Glassner, Jean-Jacques. 1999.Dilmun et Magan: la place de lcriture.In Languages and Cultures in Contact: At the Crossroads of Civilizations in the Syro-Mesopotamian Realm(Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta), edited by Karel Van Lerberghe and Gabriela Voet, 133-44. Leuven: Peeters Press en Departement Oosterse Studies Glassner), does demonstrably argue in favour of what archaeology has already proven: that Dilmuns role as a leading commercial center in the Mesopotamian world-system also places it at the crossroads of civilizations as far as languages and cultureis concerned. (As 240

Glassner notes, the fact that archaeological discoveries reveal these three writing systems to be coexisting andsimultaneously used in Dilmun at this time (ca. 2000 BC) is not at all inconceivable. He writes: Trois critures seraient doncsimultanment en usage, Dilmun, autour de 2000, deux dentre elles sont notes sur des cachets *le linaire lamite etlharrapen+, la troisime *le cuniforme msopotamien+ lest sur des tablettes. Le fait est parfaitement concevable: ne serait lorigine trangre des trois critures, la situation est tout fait comparable celle de la Crte o, dans la premire moiti du 2 e millnaire, trois critures coexistent dont lune, notamment, de caractre linaire (linaire A), est note sur des tablettes dargile. On sait, dautres part, que les Vay de Cte dIvoire utilisent galement trois critures. (1999, 137)

As far as the reason for their usage, Glassner suspects that it had something to do with thecommercial trading activities occurring at this time (ibid., 137). In relation to discoveries made in Magan,they are also quite significantly comparable to the Dilmunite finds, and there has even been unearthed inMagan a locally fabricated seal which contains the same Indus signs as one discovered in Lothal, the ancientIndus port city (ibid.).It can therefore be observed that in many ways these archaeological findings do establish somelegitimate grounds for discussing the shared linguistic and/or cultural hybridity (or plurality) of the societiesof Magan (Oman), Dilmun (Bahrain), and Meluhha (Indus). The fact that these same three lands are oftenmentioned together in the Mesopotamian (cuneiform) records and even often in the same sentence, as Bibby (1969, 219) remarks does lend further support to the archaeological finds in 241

making valid cross-cultural links between these ancient peoples. Not unlike the ancient Dilmunites, it would not then be entirelyinconceivable to think of the Indus businesspeople as similarly being exposed to these other contemporarywriting systems, most notably such as those of neighbouring Elam (either the proto-Elamite or later LinearElamite script) or the Mesopotamian cuneiform that dominated the Gulf trade in which they were actively engaged".(Paul D. LeBlanc, 2012, The Indus culture and writing system in contact, The Ottawa

Journal of Religion, La Revue des sciences des religions d'Ottawa, Vol. 4, 2012, No. 4, 2012).

http://artsites.uottawa.ca/ojr/doc/OJR-2012-Final-withCover.pdf Mirror:http://www.academia.edu/2197668/The_Indus_Culture_and_Writing_System_in _Contact_At_the_Crossroads_of_Civilization_in_the_Mesopotamian_Realm

See: http://www.duluthhigh.org/users/108MyDocs/Reading%20Rewrite.pdf Writing gets a rewrite, Andrew Lawler (2001).

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/163866.article A script open to interpretation - because no one can read it, Andrew Robinson, 2001

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-indus-writing-lokhad.html Ancient near East Gudea statue hieroglyph (Indus writing): lokh, 'copper tools, pots and pans' Rebus: lo 'overflow', ka 'sacred water'.

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Ancient near East Gudea statue hieroglyph (Indus writing): lokh, 'copper tools, pots and pans' Rebus: lo 'overflow', ka 'sacred water'.

Workers from Elam, Susa, Magan and Meluhha were deployed by Gudea, the ruler of Laga, to build The Eninnu, the main temple of Girsu, c. 2125 BCE. We are dealing with Indian sprachbundwhen we refer to Meluhha. This sprachbund has a remarkable lexeme which is used to signify a smithy, as also a temple: Kota. kolel smithy, temple in Kota village. Toda. kwalal Kota smithy Ta. kol working in iron, blacksmith; kolla blacksmith. Ma. kollan blacksmith, artificer; Ka.kolime, kolume, kulame, kulime, kulume, kulme fire-pit, furnace; (Bell.; U.P.U.) konimi blacksmith; (Gowda) kolla id. Ko. koll blacksmith. Te. kolimi furnace. Go.(SR.) kollusn to mend implements; (Ph.) kolstn, kulsn to forge; (Tr.) klstn to repair (of ploughshares); (SR.) kolmi smithy (Voc. 948). Kuwi (F.) kolhali to forge. (DEDR 2133). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gudea.jpg Timber and exotic stones to decorate the temples were brought from the distant lands of Magan and Meluhha (possibly to be identified as Oman and the Indus Valley). http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/article_index/g/gudea,_king_of_lagash_around. aspx

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Gudea Basin. Water overflowing from vases. : The Representation of an Early Mesopotamian Ruler ... By Claudia E. Suter "The standing statue N (Fig. 5) holds a vase from which four streams of water flow down on each side of the dress into identical vases depicted on the pedestal, which are equally overflowing with water. Little fish swim up the streams to the vase held by Gudea. This statue evidently shows the ruler in possession of prosperity symbolized by the overflowing vase." (p.58)ayo 'fish' (Munda) Rebus: ayo 'iron' (Gujarati); ayas'metal' (Skt.) Together with lo, 'overflow', the compound word can be read as loh+ayas. The compound lohyas is attested in ancient Indian texts, contrasted withkyas, distinguishing red alloy metal (bronze) from black alloy metal (iron alloy). ayaska is a compound attested in Pini; the word may be semantically explained as 'metal tools, pots and pans' or as alloyed metal.

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A baked-clay plaque from Ur, Iraq, portraying a goddess; she holds a vase overflowing with water ('h-gl' or 'hegallu') is a symbol of abundance and prosperity. (Beijing World Art Museum) Fish in water on statue, on viewer's right. Gudea's Temple Building "The goddesses wit overflowing vases. (Fig.8). The large limestone basin (SV.7) restored by Unger from twentysix fragments is carved in relief on its outside. It shows a row of goddesses walking on a stream of water. Between them they are holding vases from which water flows down into the stream. These, in turn, are fed with water poured from vases which are held by smaller-scale goddesses 245

hovering above. All goddesses wear long pleated dresses, and crowns with a single horn pair. There are remains of at least six standing and four hovering goddesses. Considering the importance the number seven plays in Gudea's inscriptions, Unger's reconstruction of seven goddesses of each type is credible. The inscription on the basin, which relates its fashioning, designates it as a large S'IM, a relatively rare and only vagueely understood term, perhaps to be read agarinX. The fashioning of one or more S'IM is also related in the Cylinder inscriptions, and the finished artifact is mentioned again in the description of the temple...Since the metaphor paraphrasing the basin refers to th ceaseless flow of water, it is possible that the basin(s) mentioned in the account of Eninnu's construction is (are) identical with the fragmentary remains of the one (perhaps two?) actually found within the area of Gudea's Eninnu, as Unger presumed. Several similar and somewhat intuitive identifications of the goddesses with the overflowing vases have been proposed: Heuzey saw personifications of the Euphrates and Tigris; Unger saw personifications of sources and rain clouds that form the Tigris and identified them with Ningirsu and Baba's seven daughters; van Buren saw personifications of higher white clouds and lower rain clouds whom she assigned to Ea's circle. Neither are the seven (not fourteen!) daughters of Ningirsu and Baba ever associated with water, nor can fourteen personified clouds be made out in Ea's circle...The clue must be the overflowing vase which van Buren correctly interpreted as a symbol of abundance and prosperity. This interpretation is corroborated by the Gottertsypentext which states that the images of Kulullu is blessing with one hand (ikarrab) and holding abundance (HE.GAL) in the other. The protective spirit Kulullu is usually associated with abundance and divine benevolence, and may be reminiscent of the god bestowing the overflowing vase upon a human petititioner in much earlier presentation scenes. The narrative context in which the goddess with the overflowing vase occurs is confined to presentations of a human petititioner to a deity. The Akkadian seal fo the scribe Ili-Es'tar shows her accompanying the petitioner, not unlike a Lamma.

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Fig. 33 Urnamma stela. Borker-Klahn's reconstruction. On the Urmamma Stela, she is hovering over the offering of flowing water to the ruler by the enthroned deity. In this scene the goddess underlines the gift bestowed on the ruler, and figures as a personification of it, while on the seal she may have implied and guaranteed that the petitioner who offers an antelope (?) is pleading for and will receive blessings of abundance in return. The basin of Gudea is dedicated to Ningirsu, and may be understood as a plea for prosperity as well as a boast of its successful outcome."(Claudia E. Suter, 2000, Gudea's Temple Building: the representation of an early Mesopotamian Ruler in text and image, BRILL., II.c.i.d, pp. 62-63).

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Location.Current Repository

Musee du Louvre. Inventory No. AO 22126 ca. 2120 BCE Neo-Sumerian from the citystate of Lagash. http://contentdm.unl.edu/ah_copyright.html gud. ' ea guda ' ea warrior ' emphasis/the best "The best warrior". http://evansexperientialism.freewebspace.com/ling_sumerian.htm 248

Inscription on base of skirt- God commands him to build house. Gudea is holding plans. Gudea depicted as strong, peaceful ruler. Vessel flowing with life-giving water w/ fish. Text on garment dedicates himself, the statue, and its temple to the goddess Geshtinanna. According to the inscription this statue was made by Gudea, ruler of Lagash (c. 2100 BCE) for the temple of the goddess Geshtinanna. Gudea refurbished the temples of Girsu and 11 statues of him have been found in excavations at the site. Nine others including this one were sold on the art market. It has been suggested that this statue is a forgery. Unlike the hard diorite of the excavated statues, it is made of soft calcite, and shows a ruler with a flowing vase which elsewhere in Mesopotamian art is only held by gods. It also differs stylistically from the excavated statues. On the other hand, the Sumerian inscription appears to be genuine and would be very difficult to fake. Statues of Gudea show him standing or sitting. Ine one, he rests on his knee a plan of the temple he is building. On some statues Gudea has a shaven head, while on others like this one he wears a headdress covered with spirals, probably indicating that it was made out of fur. Height 61 cm. The overflowing water from the vase is a hieroglyph comparable to the pectoral of Mohenjo-daro showing an overflowing pot together with a one-horned young bull and standard device in front. The diorite from Magan (Oman), and timber from Dilmun (Bahrain) obtained by Gudea could have come from Meluhha. "The goddess Geshtinanna was known as chief scribe (Lambert 1990, 298 299) and probably was a patron of scribes, as was Nidaba/Nisaba (Micha-lowski 2002). " http://www.academia.edu/2360254/Temple_Sacred_Prostitution_in_Ancient_Mesopotamia_ Revisited That the hieroglyph of pot/vase overflowing with water is a recurring theme can be seen from other cylinder seals, including Ibni-Sharrum cylinder seal. Such an imagery also occurs on a fragment of a stele, showing part of a lion and vases.

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A person with a vase with overflowing water; sun sign. C. 18th cent. BCE. [E. Porada,1971, Remarks on seals found in the Gulf states, Artibus Asiae, 33, 31-7]. meha polar star (Marathi). me iron (Ho.Mu.)

khai buffalo bull (Tamil)

Rebus: kh '(metal) tools, pots and pans' (Gujarati)

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The seal of Gudea: Gudea, with shaven head, is accompanied by a minor female diety. He is led by his personal god, Ningishzida, into the presence of Enlil, the chief Sumerian god. Wind pours forth from of the jars held by Enlil, signifying that he is the god of the winds. The winged leopard (griffin) is a mythological creature associated with Ningishzida, The horned helmets, worn even by the griffins, indicates divine status (the more horns the higher the rank). The writing in the background translates as: "Gudea, Ensi [ruler], of Lagash". l f., lo m.2. Pr. w fox (Western Pahari)(CDIAL 11140-2). Rebus: loh copper (Hindi). Te. eaka, ekka, rekka, neaka, nei id. (DEDR 2591). Rebus: eraka, eaka = any metal infusion (Ka.Tu.); urukku (Ta.); urukka melting; urukku what is melted; fused metal (Ma.); urukku (Ta.Ma.); eragu = to melt; molten state, fusion; erakaddu = any cast thng; erake hoyi = to pour meltted metal into a mould, to cast (Kannada)

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m1656 Mohenjodro Pectoral. kam kam, n. < ka. 1. Water; sacred water; . (. 49, 16). Rebus: kh metal tools, pots and pans (Marathi) <lo->(B) {V} ``(pot, etc.) to ^overflow''. See <lo-> `to be left over'. @B24310. #20851. Re<lo>(B) {V} ``(pot, etc.) to ^overflow''. See <lo-> `to be left over'. (Munda ) Rebus: loh copper (Hindi) The hieroglyph clearly refers to the metal tools, pots and pans of copper. The pot carried by the woman accompanying the Meluhha sea-faring merchant could also be a hieroglyphic rebus reading of kam signifying metal pots and pans and tools.

The following semantic cluster indicates that the early compound: loha + ka referred to copper articles, tools, pot and pans. The early semantics of 'copper' got expanded to cover 'iron and other metals'. It is suggested that the hieroglyph of an overflowing vase refers to this compound: lohak. [ kh ] m A kind of sword, straight, broad-bladed, two-edged, and round-ended (Marathi) M. lokh n. iron(Marthi) yields the clue to the early semantics of kh which should have referred to tools, pots and pans (of metal). Kumaoni has semantics: lokha iron tools'. [ lhlkhaa ] n ( & ) Iron tools, vessels, or articles in general (Marathi). 252

Thus lohak would have referred to copper tools. The overflowing vase on the hands of Gudea would have referred to this compound, represented by the hieroglyphs and rendered rebus. N. lokhar bag in which a barber keeps his tools ; H. lokhar m. iron tools, pots and pans ; -X lauhabha -- : Ku. lokha iron tools ; H. lokha m. iron tools, pots and pans ; G. lokh n. tools, iron, ironware ; M. lokh n. iron (LM 400 < -- khaa -- )(CDIAL 11171). lhitaka reddish past., n. calx of brass, bell- metal lex. [lhita -- ]K. ly f. white copper, bell -- metal . (CDIAL 11166). lh red, copper -- coloured rS., made of copper Br., m.n. copper VS., iron MBh. [*rudh -- ] Pa. lha -- m. metal, esp. copper or bronze ; Pk. lha -- m. iron , Gy. pal. li, lihi, obl. elhs, as. loa JGLS new ser. ii 258; Wg. (Lumsden) "loa" steel ; Kho. loh copper ; S. lohu m. iron , L. loh m., aw.l, P. loh m. ( K.rm. o. loh), WPah.bhad. lu n., bhal. ltilde; n., p. jaun. lh, pa. luh, cur. cam. loh, Ku. luw, N. lohu, h, A. lo, B. lo, no, Or. loh, luh, Mth. loh, Bhoj. loh, Aw.lakh. lh, H.loh, loh m., G. M. loh n.; Si. loho, l metal, ore, iron ; Md. ratu -- l copper .(CDIAL 11158). lhakra m. iron -- worker , r -- f., raka -- m. lex., lauhakra -- m. Hit. [lh -- , kra - 1] Pa. lhakra -- m. coppersmith, ironsmith ; Pk. lhra -- m. blacksmith , S. luhru m., L. lohr m., r f., aw. luhr, P. WPah.kha. bhal. luhr m., Ku. lwr, N. B. lohr, Or. lohaa, Bi.Bhoj. Aw.lakh. lohr, H. lohr, luh m., G. lavr m., M. lohr m.; Si. lvaru coppersmith . Addenda: lhakra -- : WPah.kg. (kc.) lhwr m. blacksmith , lhwri f. his wife , Garh. lwr m.(CDIAL 11159). lhahala 11161 lhala made of iron W. [lh -- ](CDIAL 11161). Bi. lohr, r small iron pan (CDIAL 11160). Bi. lohsr smithy (CDIAL 11162). P.ludh. lhiy m. ironmonger .(CDIAL 11163). [ lhlkhaa ] n ( & ) Iron tools, vessels, or articles in general. [ rup lkhaa ] n A kind of iron. It is of inferior quality to . [ lkhaa ] n ( S) Iron. or To oppress grievously. [ lkhaakma ] n Iron work; that portion (of a building, machine &c.) which consists of iron. 2 The business of an ironsmith. [ lkha ] a ( ) Composed of iron; relating to iron. 2 fig. Hardy or hard--a constitution or a frame of body, one's or natal bone or parental stock. 3 Close and hard;--used of kinds of wood. 4 Ardent and unyielding--a fever. 5 , in the sense Hard and coarse or in the sense Strong or enduring, is freely applied as a term of distinction or designation. Examples follow. [ lkha ] f ( ) An iron boiler or other vessel. [ lkha jara ] m ( & ) False 253

brocade or lace; lace &c. made of iron. [ lkha rast ] m f (Iron-road.) A railroad. [ lha ] n S Iron, crude or wrought. 2 m Abridged from . A medicinal preparation from rust of iron. [ lhakra ] m (S) A smelter of iron or a worker in iron. [ lhakia ] n (S) Scori or rust of iron, klinker. or [ lhag or lhag kh ] f ( & ) A club set round with iron clamps and rings, a sort of bludgeon. [ lhra ] m ( H or S) A caste or an individual of it. They are smiths or workers in iron. [ lhrakma ] n Iron-work, work proper to the blacksmith. [ lhrak ] f ( ) The business of the blacksmith. [ lhra ] m A contemptuous form of the word . [ lhrasa ] f A smithy. Loha (nt.) [Cp. Vedic loha, of Idg. *(e)reudh "red"; see also rohita & lohita] metal, esp. copper, brass or bronze. It is often used as a general term & the individual application is not always sharply defined. Its comprehensiveness is evident from the classification of loha at VbhA 63, where it is said lohan ti jtiloha, vijti, kittima, pisca or natural metal, produced metal, artificial (i. e. alloys), & metal from the Pisca district. Each is subdivided as follows: jti=ayo, sajjha, suvaa, tipu, ssa, tambaloha, vekantakaloha; vijti=nga -nsika; kittima=kasaloha, vaa, raka; pisca=morakkhaka, puthuka, malinaka, capalaka, selaka, aka, bhallaka, dsiloha. The description ends "Tesu paca jtilohni piya visu vuttn' eva (i. e. the first category are severally spoken of in the Canon). Tambaloha vekantakan ti imehi pana dvhi jtilohehi saddhi sesa sabbam pi idha lohan ti veditabba." -- On loha in similes see J.P.T.S. 1907, 131. Cp. A iii.16=S v.92 (five alloys of gold: ayo, loha, tipu, ssa, sajjha); J v.45 (asi); Miln 161 (suvaam pi jtivanta lohena bhijjati); PvA 44, 95 (tamba=loha), 221 (tatta -- loha -- secana pouring out of boiling metal, one of the five ordeals in Niraya). -- kaha a copper (brass) receptacle Vin ii.170. -- kra a metal worker, coppersmith, blacksmith Miln 331. -- kumbh an iron cauldron Vin ii.170. Also N. of a purgatory J iii.22, 43; iv.493; v.268; SnA 59, 480; Sdhp 195. -- gua an iron (or metal) ball A iv.131; Dh 371 (m gil pamatto; cp. DhA iv.109). -- jla a copper (i. e. wire) netting PvA 153. -- thlaka a copper bowl Nd1 226. -- thli a bronze kettle DhA i.126. -- psda"copper terrace," brazen palace, N. of a famous monastery at Anurdhapura in Ceylon Vism 97; DA i.131; Mhvs passim. -- pia an iron ball SnA 225. -- bhaa copper (brass) ware Vin ii.135. -- maya made of copper, brazen Sn 670; Pv ii.64. -- msa a copper bean Nd1 448 (suvaa -- channa). -msaka a small copper coin KhA 37 (jatu -- msaka, dru -- msaka+); DhsA 318. -- rpa a bronze statue Mhvs 36, 31. -- salk a bronze gong -- stick Vism 283. Lohat (f.) [abstr. fr. loha] 254

being a metal, in (suvaassa) aggalohat the fact of gold being the best metal VvA 13. (Pali) See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-evidence-for-mleccha.html Ancient Near East evidence for meluhha language and bronze-age metalware Gudea Statue D Colum IV refers to Magan, Gubi and reads (Records of the Past, 2nd series,

Vol. II, ed. by A. H. Sayce, [1888], at sacred-texts.com) http://www.sacredtexts.com/ane/rp/rp202/rp20221.htm: he has constructed. 2. By the power of the goddess NIN, 3. by the power of the god NIN-GIRSU, 4. to Gudea 5. who has endowed with the sceptre 6. the god NIN-GIRSU, 7. the country of MGAN, 1 8. the country of MELUGHGHA, 9. the country of GUBI, 2 10. and the country of NITUK, 3 11. which possess every kind of tree, 12. vessels laden with trees of all sorts 13. into SHIRPURLA 14. have sent. 15. From the mountains of the land of MGAN 16. a rare stone he has caused to come; 17. for his statue http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/rp/rp202/rp20221.htm#fr_228 'Gudea of Lagash': The Inscription

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The inscription extends over part of the right shoulder and onto the left side of the robe. The upper part, the cartouche, gives the name of the ruler, while the lower, main text speaks of the reasons for the creation of this particular statue. The cartouche translates as follows: Gudea, city ruler of Lagash, the man who built the temple of Ningishzida and the temple of Geshtinanna. The text reads: Gudea, city ruler of Lagash, built to Geshtinanna, the queen a-azi-mu-a, the beloved wife of Ningishzida, his queen, her temple in Girsu. He created for her [this] statue. "She granted the prayer," he gave it a name for her and brought it into her temple. http://faculty.txwes.edu/csmeller/humanexperience/ExpData09/01AncMed/AncMedPICs/MesPICs/Gudea/mesP_GudeaInscription.htm http://books.google.co.in/books?id=0guVA19YUVoC&lpg=PA68&pg=PA55#v=onepage&q&f=fal se Gudea and His Dynasty By Dietz Otto Edzard University of Toronto Press, 1997 Statues built to Geshtinanna: Statue M and Statue N. The inscriptions (pp.55-57)

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257

Statue N (pp. 56-57)

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The inscriptions on the many (22) statues of Gudea and on two large cylinders, are a remarkable source of information on commodities exchanged across the interaction area. Here are some examples related to transactions with Meluhha involving gold, diorite (obtained also from Magan), Magan, Meluhha, Gubin and the Land Tilmun supplying him with wood, describing himself as a sea-farer dealing with materials of the bronze-age including, gold, silver, bronze, copper, tin and stones such as diorite (carnelian from Meluhha) and varieties of wood. It is thus, not unreasonable to read rebus the hieroglyph of the overflowing vase and fishes on Statue N. As related to ayo metal (alloy), lo copper and tools, pots and pans made of metal (k): He (Gudea) brought alabaster blocks from Tidanum, the mountain range of the Martu, using them to make... (for Ningirsu), and he mounted them in the Houseas 'skull-crashers.' In Abult, on the mountain range of Kima, he mined copper, and he (used it to) make for him the Mace-unbearable-for-the-regions. From the land of Meluhha he brought down diorite, used it to build <> (for Ningirsu), he brought down blocks of hullu stone, and he (used them to) make for him the Mace-with-a-three-headed-lion. He brought down gold in its fore from the land of Meluhha, ad he (used it to) make a quiver for (Ningirsu). He brought down; be brought down halub wood from Gubin, the halub mountain, and he (used it to) make for him the bird(?) Mowdown-a-myriad. He brought down a myriad(?) of talents of bitumen from Madga, the mountain range of the Ordeal river(?), and he (used it for) building the retaining wall of the Eninnu...He defeated the cities of An an and Elam and brought the booty therefrom to Ningirsu in his Eninnu...For this statue nobody was supposed to use silver or lapis lazuli, neither should copper or tin or bronze be a working (material). It is (exclusively) of diorite; let it stand at the libation 259

place. Nobody will forcibly damage (the stone). O statue, your eye is that of Ningirsu; He who removes from the Eninnu the statue of Gudea, the ruler of Laga, who had build Ningirsus Eninnu; who rubs off the inscription thereon; who destroys (the statue); who disregards my judgment after at the beginning of a prosperous New Year his god Ningirsu, my master, had (directly) addressed him within the crowd, as my god (addressed me);He brought down diorite from the mountain of Magan and fashioned it into a statue of himselfHe constructed for (Ningirsu) his beloved boat (named) Having set sail from the Lofty Quay, and he moored it for him at the Lapis Lazuli Quay of Kasurra. He enrolled for (Ningirsu) the sailors and their captain, donating them for the House of his masterMagan, Meluhha, Gubin and the Land Tilmun supplying him with wood---let their imber cargoes (sail) to Laga. He brought down diorite from the mountain range of Magan, and he fashioned it into a statue of hisThe fierce halo (of the House) reaches upto heaven, great fear of my House hovers over all the lands, and all (these) lands will gather on its behalf from as far as where heaven ends (even) Magan and Meluhha will descend from their mountainsThe Elamites came to him from Elam, the Susians from Susa. Magan and Meluhha, (coming down) from their mountain, loaded wood on their shoulders for him, and in order to build Ningirsus House they all joined Gudea (on their way) to his city Girsu. (Ningirsu) ordered Nin-zaga, and he brought to Gudea, the builder of the House, his copper as (much as) if it were huge quantities of grain. (Ningirsu) ordered Ninsikila, and she brought to the ruler who build the Eninnu great halub logs, ebony wood along with wood of the sea. The lord Ningirsu cleared the way for Gudea to the impenetrable cedar mountainSilver from its mountain is being brought down to Gudea, light carnelian from Meluhha spreads before him, alabaster from the alabaster mountain they are bringing down to him. When building the House with silver, the shepherd sat with the silversmith, when building the Eninnu with precious stones, he sat with the jeweler, and when building it with copper and tin, then Nintu-kalama directed before him the chief of the smiths. (pp.34-36, p.39, p.41, p.42, p.75, p.78, p.79) The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature Catalogues: by date | by number | in full | Website info: navigation help | site description | display conventions | recent changes Project info: consolidated bibliography | about the project | credits and copyright | links This Composition: composite text | translation

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The building of Ningirsus temple: bibliography Print sources used Edzard, D.O., Gudea and His Dynasty (The Royal Insciptions of Mesopotamia. Early Periods, 3, I). Toronto/Buffalo/London: University of Toronto Press 1997, 68-101: source transliteration, translation, commentaries. Falkenstein, Adam, Grammatik der Sprache Gudeas von Lagas, I-II (Analecta Orientalia, 2930). Roma: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum 1949-1950: commentary. Falkenstein, Adam - von Soden, Wolfram, Sumerische und akkadische Hymnen und

Gebete.Zrich/Stuttgart: Artemis 1953, 192-213: translation.

Jacobsen, Th., The Harps that Once ... Sumerian Poetry in Translation. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 386-444: translation, commentaries. Suter, C.E., "Gudeas vermeintliche Segnungen des Eninnu", Zeitschrift fr Assyriologie 87 (1997), 1-10: partial source transliteration, partial translation, commentaries. Thureau-Dangin, F., Les cylindres de Goudea (Textes cuneiformes, 8). Paris: Paul Geuthner 1925: hand-copy. Witzel, M., Gudea. Inscriptiones: Statuae A-L. Cylindri A & B. Roma: Pontificio Isituto Biblico 1932, fol. 8-14,1: hand-copy. Electronic sources used Electronic text kindly supplied by J. Krecher (lit1.txt, based on electronic legacy material from H. Behrens; and lit2.txt, based on electronic legacy material from B. Jagersma). Top | Home This Composition: composite text | translation Written by GZ. Updated on 15/07/98. http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section2/b217.htm http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section2/tr217.htm The building of Ningirsus temple: translation of Cylinders A and B. http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/cylinders-gudea Cylinders of Gudea, Louvre Museum. 261

Music stele: tambura 'lyre' Rebus: tambra 'copper' (Santali) angar bull; rebus: angarblacksmith (Hindi)

Bull head, probably affixed to the sound-chest of a lyre. Copper, mother-of-pearl and lapis lazuli, found in Telloh, ancient Girsu. Louvre Museum, Accession number AO 2676, Excavated by Ernest de Sarzec; gift of Sultan Abdul Hamid, 1896 Second dynasty of Lagash, reign of Gudea, c. 2120 BC Tello (ancient Girsu) Limestone H. 1.20 m; W. 0.63 m; D. 0.25 m E. de Sarzec excavations, 1881 AO 52 http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/stele-music The stele of music shows the foundation rites - performed to the sound of the lyre - of the temple built by Prince Gudea (c. 2100 BC) at his capital of Telloh (ancient Girsu), for Ningirsu, 262

god of the state of Lagash in the Land of Sumer. The stele thus accords with the tradition of Neo-Sumerian art, which unlike that of the preceding period that focused on the warlike exploits of the rulers of Akkad, tends to show the king engaged in pious activities. The building of Ningirsu's temple In the Neo-Sumerian Period (c. 2100 BC), the rulers Gudea and Ur-Nammu had themselves depicted taking part in the foundation rites of temples, notably on steles, as statues, and as figurines. On the stele of music, Gudea, carrying a peg and cord and followed by figures probably representing his princely heir and two priests, prepares to lay out the plan of Ningirsu's sanctuary. The ceremony is punctuated by music, which accompanies the chanting or singing of liturgical poems. Behind the cantor, a musician plays on a lyre whose sound box is decorated with a bull. The deep tones of the instrument evoked the bellowing of a bull, and by poetic identification, within the temple of Ningirsu "the room of the lyre was a noisily breathing bull." The making of the god's lyre gave its name to the third year of Gudea's reign, called "the year in which was made the lyre [called] Ushumgalkalamma [the dragon of the land of Sumer]." Music in temple foundation ceremonies The spirit embodied by the lyre played a part in the events leading to the building of the temple, for it appears in the dream in which the god reveals to Gudea the task he is to accomplish (Gudea Cylinders, Louvre, MNB 1512 and MNB 1511): "When, together with Ushumgalkalamma, his well-beloved lyre, that renowned instrument, his counselor, you bring him gifts [...] the heart of Ningirsu will be appeased, he will reveal the plans of his temple." When the work was complete, Ushumgalkalamma went before Gudea, leading all the musical instruments, to mark the arrival of the god in his new abode. Ushumgalkalamma is the god's counselor because its song calms the emotions that disturb the spirit, allowing the return of the reason indispensable to good judgement. Among the divine servants of Ningirsu, it is the lyre's duty to charm his master, a god of changeable mood. It is assisted by the spirit of another lyre that brings consolation in times of darkness: "So that the sweet-toned tigi-drum should play, so that the instruments algar and miritum should resound for Ningirsu, [...] his beloved musician Ushumgalkalamma accomplished his duties to the lord Ningirsu. To soothe the heart and calm the liver [the seat of thought], to dry the tears of weeping eyes, to banish grief from the grieving heart, to cast away the sadness in the heart of the god that rises like the waves of the sea, spreads wide like the Euphrates, and drowns like the flood of the storm, his lyre Lugaligihush accomplished his duties to his lord Ningirsu." Representations of musicians in Mesopotamia 263

Representations of musicians are not uncommon in Near-Eastern iconography. They are found from the early 3rd millennium BC in the banquet scenes that appear on perforated plaques and cylinder seals. Early in the next millennium, they would appear on molded terracotta plaques, such as the example with the harpist in the Louvre (AO 12454). Very few examples of musical instruments have survived until today (among them the lyres from the royal tombs of Ur, c. 2550 BC); these representations are therefore particularly valuable. Bibliography Andr-Salvini Batrice, "Stle de la musique", in Musiques au Louvre, Paris, ditions de la Runion des muses nationaux, 1994, pp. 10-11. Parrot Andr, Tello, vingt campagnes de fouilles, 1877-1933, Paris, Albin Michel, 1948, pp. 174176, pl. 20a. Rutten Marguerite-Maggie, "Scnes de musique et de danse", in Revue des arts asiatiques, Paris, cole franaise d'Extrme-Orient, 1935, p. 220, fig. 8. Sarzec douard de, Dcouvertes en Chalde, Paris, Leroux, 1884-1912, pp. 36 et 219-221, pl. 23. Sillamy Jean-Claude, La Musique dans l'ancien Orient ou la thorie musicale sumrobabylonienne, Villeneuve d'Ascq, Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 1998, p. 160. http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/stele-music

Greenstone seal Akkadian, about 2250 BC From Mesopotamia Belonging to the servant of a prince This seal dates to a time when much of Mesopotamia was united under the control of the rulers of Agade (Akkad). The struggle between wild animals and heroes was a popular design on seals of this period. It is a standard Mesopotamian theme, representing the symbolic struggle between divine order and chaotic savagery. 264

The inscription records the name of the owner but it is not clear; it possibly reads Amushu or Idushu. He is described as the servant of Bin-kali-sharri, a prince. The seals of two of his other servants are also known. Bin-kali-sharri was one of the sons of Naram-Sin, king of Agade (Akkad) (reigned 2254-2218 BC). Naram-Sin was the grandson of Sargon (reigned 2334-2279 BC), the founder of the Akkadian dynasty. The kings of the dynasty expanded their control beyond their city state of Agade through military conquest. A major building at Tell Brak in north-eastern Syria has been found with bricks stamped with the name of Naram-Sin, testifying to the extent of Akkadian control. Naram-Sin was succeeded by another son, Shar-kali-sharri (2217-2193 BC). After Shar-kalisharri's reign a period of instability helped to bring the empire to an end. D. Collon, Catalogue of the Western Asi-1 (London, 1982) http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/me/g/greenstone_seal. aspx

Bronze figure Kingdom of Lagash, about 2100-2000 BC Possibly from Tello (ancient Girsu), southern Iraq

With an inscription of Gudea, ruler of Lagash 265

One of the duties of a Mesopotamian king was to care for the gods and restore or rebuild their temples. In the late third millennium BC, rulers in southern Mesopotamia often depicted themselves carrying out this pious task in the form of foundation pegs. Foundation pegs were buried in the foundation of buildings to magically protect them and preserve the builder's name for posterity. In this case, the peg is supported by a god (Mesopotamian gods are usually depicted wearing horned headdresses). The peg has a very faint cuneiform inscription of Gudea, the ruler of the city-state of Lagash. Gudea ruled at a time when the cities of southern Mesopotamia, which had been united under the empire of Agade (Akkad), were reasserting their independence. There was competition among powerful, rival city-rulers for prominence. Of these, we know most about Gudea; he was a prolific builder and some of the longest Sumerian literary texts were written during his reign. Despite his wealth, however, Gudea's rule was limited to the area of his own city, which was soon absorbed into the new empire of Ur (called the Third Dynasty of Ur). British Museum, A guide to the Babylonian and, 3rd ed. (London, British Museum, 1922) E.D. Van Buren, Foundation offerings and figur (Berlin, H. Schoetz & Co., 1931) http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/me/b/bronze_figure.asp x

Copper foundation peg 266

Kingdom of Lagash, about 2130 BC Probably from Zerghul, southern Iraq This copper figure of a bull in a reed marsh is a foundation peg. It was one of the duties of a Mesopotamian king to build or, more normally, refurbish the temples of the gods. This pious act would ensure that the deity would support his kingdom; ancient texts make it clear that if a god withdrew their patronage a city could be conquered by an enemy. As a record of this work, figurines were placed in the foundations of the temple building, intended both for the gods and posterity. Hidden in the foundations, they have escaped the attention of plunderers and are often found by archaeologists. The inscription on the peg records the rebuilding of the temple of the goddess Nanshe in her city of Sirara (now Zerghul in southern Iraq) by Gudea, the ruler of the city-state of Lagash in south-east Sumer (dates debated, but somewhere about 2130 BC). Nanshe belongs to the local pantheon of Lagash. She was regarded as a daughter of Enki, the god of wisdom and fresh water. She was especially associated with divination and the interpretation of dreams. Among her other responsibilities was checking the accuracy of weights and measures. D. Collon, Ancient Near Eastern art (London, The British Museum Press, 1995) http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/me/c/copper_foundation_peg. aspx http://www.kavehfarrokh.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/elamitedravidian.pdf McAlpin, David, 1975, Elamite and Dravidian: Further evidence of relationship in Current Anthropology Vol. 16, No. 1, March 1975 Toward Proto-Elamo-Dravidian Author(s): David W. McAlpin Source: Language, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Mar., 1974), pp. 89-101 Published by: Linguistic Society of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/412012 267

http://www.scribd.com/doc/148768573/Proto-elamo-dravidian-McAlpin-David-W-1974 Proto-elamo-dravidian (McAlpin, David, W., 1974)

http://oi.uchicago.edu/pdf/oip65.pdf Cameron, George C., 1946, Persepolis Treasury Tablets, The University of Chicago, Oriental Institute Publicasions, Vol. LXV Hinz, A. Walther, Elamisches W rterbuch (Berlin, 1987). http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/hinz-a-walther Elamite vocabulary in two volumee by W. Hinz and H. Koch (ElamWB, 1987). http://www.caeno.org/origins/papers/Dahl_ProtoElamite.pdf Dahl, Jacob L., 2007, Deciphering proto-Elamite

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Striding figure with ibex horns, a raptor skin draped around the shoulders, and upturned boots Period: Proto-Elamite Date: ca. 3000 B.C. Geography: Mesopotamia or Iran Culture: ProtoElamite Medium: Copper alloy Dimensions: H. 17.5 cm (6 7/8 in.) W. 5.4 cm ( 2 1/8 in.) Classification: Metalwork Credit Line: Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 2007 Accession Number: 2007.280 http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/30012980 This solid-cast sculpture is one of a pair of nearly identical images of a hero or a demon wearing the upturned boots associated with highland regions, his power enhanced by the mighty horns of the ibex on his head and the body and wings of a bird of prey draped around his shoulders. It was created at the time the first cities emerged in ancient Sumer. A new world view conceived of human figures in realistic terms, through accurate proportions and highly modeled forms with distinctive features - here, the triple belt and beard that define divine beings and royalty. The blending of human and animal forms to visualize the supernatural world and perhaps to express shamanistic beliefs, however, is more characteristic of the contemporary arts of Proto-Elamite 269

Iran, where a remarkable tradition of metalworking developed during this period. mil markhor (Tor.wali) meho a ram, a sheep (G.)(CDIAL 10120)Rebus: me (Ho.); mhet iron (Mu.Ho.)mh t iron; ispat m. = steel; dul m. = cast iron (Munda)

Cylinder seal and modern impression: two horned animals, rosettes Period: Proto-Elamite Date: ca. 31002900 B.C. Geography: Southwestern Iran Culture: ProtoElamite Medium: Clinoenstatite (sometimes referred to as "glazed steatite") Dimensions: H. 1 3/8 in. (3.5 cm); D. 11/16 in. (1.8 cm) Classification: Stone Credit Line: Gift of Nanette B. Kelekian, in memory of Charles Dikran and Beatrice Kelekian, 1999 Accession Number: 1999.325.104 http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-thecollections/30006389?rpp=20&pg=1&ft=*&who=Proto-Elamite&pos=7 Notes on the role of Dilmun in Indus trade with contact areas:

Dilmun (present-day Bahrain) and Magan (or Makan, present-day Oman) of Arabian Peninsula had trade connections with the Indus. Maysar, Ra's al-Hadd and R'as al-Junayz -- sites in Oman; Tell Abrak (United Arab Emirates) -- sites in Bahrain and Failaka; Ur, Nippur, Kish and Susa -- sites in Mesopotamia between Tigris-Euphrates and in Elam, have provided evidence of Indus trade presence. Sutkagen-dor and Sokta-koh were ports near today's Iran border and indicate the role of sea-faring in Indus trade. A remote Indus trade outpost was perhaps Shortughai, on the Oxus in Afghanistan, beyond the Hindu Kush range of mountains. Dilmun has produced seals with Indus inscription, Linear Elamite inscribed atop an Indusstylized bull and a tablet with cuneiform -- all simultaneously being used ca. 2000 BCE:

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"The presence in Dilmun of these three different writing systems de fabrication locale, meaning the co-existence of Linear Elamite, the Indus script, and lastly the Mesopotamian cuneiform, allsimultaneously being used ca. 2000 BCE (Glassner, Jean-Jacques. 1999.Dilmun et Magan: la place de lcriture.In Languages and Cultures in Contact: At the Crossroads of Civilizations in the Syro-Mesopotamian Realm(Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta), edited by Karel Van Lerberghe and Gabriela Voet, 133-44. Leuven: Peeters Press en Departement Oosterse Studies Glassner), does demonstrably argue in favour of what archaeology has already proven: that Dilmuns role as a leading commercial center in the Mesopotamian world-system also places it at the crossroads of civilizations as far as languages and cultureis concerned. (As Glassner notes, the fact that archaeological discoveries reveal these three writing systems to be coexisting andsimultaneously used in Dilmun at this time (ca. 2000 BC) is not at all inconceivable. He writes: Trois critures seraient doncsimultanment en usage, Dilmun, autour de 2000, deux dentre elles sont notes sur des cachets *le linaire lamite etlharrapen+, la troisime *le cuniforme msopotamien+ lest sur des tablettes. Le fait est parfaitement concevable: ne serait lorigine trangre des trois critures, la situation est tout fait comparable celle de la Crte o, dans la premire moiti du 2 e millnaire, trois critures coexistent dont lune, notamment, de caractre linaire (linaire A), est note sur des tablettes dargile. On sait, dautres part, que les Vay de Cte dIvoire utilisent galement trois critures. (1999, 137) As far as the reason for their usage, Glassner suspects that it had something to do with thecommercial trading activities occurring at this time (ibid., 137). In relation to discoveries made in Magan,they are also quite significantly comparable to the Dilmunite finds, and there has even been unearthed inMagan a locally fabricated seal which contains the same Indus signs as one discovered in Lothal, the ancientIndus port city (ibid.).It can therefore be observed that in many ways these archaeological findings do establish somelegitimate grounds for discussing the shared linguistic and/or cultural hybridity (or plurality) of the societiesof Magan (Oman), Dilmun (Bahrain), and Meluhha (Indus). The fact that these same three lands are oftenmentioned together in the Mesopotamian (cuneiform) records and even often in the same sentence, as Bibby (1969, 219) remarks does lend further support to the archaeological finds in making valid cross-cultural links between these ancient peoples. Not unlike the ancient Dilmunites, it would not then be entirelyinconceivable to think of the Indus businesspeople as similarly being exposed to these other contemporarywriting systems, most notably such as 271

those of neighbouring Elam (either the proto-Elamite or later LinearElamite script) or the Mesopotamian cuneiform that dominated the Gulf trade in which they were actively engaged".(Paul D. LeBlanc, 2012, The Indus culture and writing system in contact, The Ottawa

Journal of Religion, La Revue des sciences des religions d'Ottawa, Vol. 4, 2012, No. 4, 2012).
http://artsites.uottawa.ca/ojr/doc/OJR-2012-Final-withCover.pdf Mirror:http://www.academia.edu/2197668/The_Indus_Culture_and_Writing_System_in _Contact_At_the_Crossroads_of_Civilization_in_the_Mesopotamian_Realm See: http://www.duluthhigh.org/users/108MyDocs/Reading%20Rewrite.pdf Writing gets a rewrite, Andrew Lawler (2001). http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/163866.article A script open to interpretation - because no one can read it, Andrew Robinson, 2001

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/discovering-khirsaras-harappanglory.html Discovering Khirsaras Harappan glory: Seals with Indus writing read rebus. Discovering Khirsaras Harappan glory: Seals with Indus writing read rebus.

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Churning of the Ocean of Milk. From Prasat Phnom Da. 12th Century, Angkor Wat Style. abdhi 'the ocean, receptacle of 273

water' (Skt.) kra -, - -, -, - the salt ocean (Skt.)kra also means 'water, milk' (Skt.) [ kramu ] kshramu. [Skt.] n. Milk, . The milky sap of plants. . Water . rice and milk boiled together. . intimate union as milk and watesr mixed with each other. . they are intimately associated or related. or kshr-bdhi. n. The sea of milk . the goddess who sprung from this sea, i.e., Lakshmi. (Telugu) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtM-4Z4mHKUHISTORIC SITE - Prasat Chub Pul - Phnom Da - Phnom Bayang - Neang Sokro - oob - Kingdom of Cambodia The site has yielded the Samudramanthanam frescoe. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnrsKGR4LFYhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH VMarpAAH0http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ALIRK9qsOk The first temple in this clip has the name: Ashram Maha Rosei. It is a basalt stone Shiva temple from the 7th century, the time of the Funan Kingdom. The second is Phnom Da, a 11th century Khmer construct of bricks and sandstone with some nice carvings. Khirsara is a shortened form of krasgara in vetadwpa (BhP. Viii,5,11). This is also referred to as samudramanthanam narrative pointing to Asura and Deva churning the ocean and harnessing the wealth of the ocean.krasbdhi (Kaths.xxii,186) refers to precious objects produced at the churning of the ocean.

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A bar seal with writing in Harappan script. Only one other bar seal figures in the total of 11 seals found so far in Khirsara. Rebus readings of Indus writing (from r.): [ mhar ] f A piece in architecture. [mndhal] m In architecture. A common term for the two upper arms of a double (door-frame) connecting the two. Called also & . It answers to the name of the two lower arms or connections. (Marathi) mehi pillar. kolmo, rice plant' Rebus: kolami 'smithy, forge' (Telugu) sangaa bangles (Pali). Rebus: sangaa lathe, furnace. sagha = furnace (G.) Rebus: jaga entrustment articles sangaa association, guild. dula 'pair' Rebus: dul casting. Ku. koho large square house Rebus: Md. koru storehouse aar harrow Rebus: aduru = gan.iyinda tegadu karagade iruva aduru = ore taken from the mine and not subjected to melting in a furnace (Kannada) dula 'pair' Rebus: dul casting.

ayo fish (Mu.) Rebus: aya = iron (G.); ayah, ayas = metal (Skt.)
aar harrow Rebus: aduru = gan.iyinda tegadu karagade iruva aduru = ore taken from the mine and not subjected to melting in a furnace (Kannada) 275

ato = claws of crab (Santali); dhtu = mineral (Skt.), dhatu id. (Santali) kanka 'rim-of-jar' Rebus: furnace account (scribe); khanaka 'miner' (Skt.). kolom 'three' Rebus: kolami 'smithy, forge' (Telugu) The ligature of three strokes with rim-of-jar hieroglyph thus reads: smithy/forge account (scribe). These readings are consistent with the readings of other artisans' work evidenced in other Seals/tabletw with Indus writing discovered in Khirsara (inscriptions and readings appended).

Copper fish-hook found in a trench. Beads of semi-precious stones. Conch-shells at the pottery yard. Disc-shaped gold beads found in a pot.

List of figures:A section of the industrial complex excavated at the Harappan site at Khirsara in Gujarat's Kutch district. In the middle of the picture is the complex's fortification wall, which turns right and heads towards the citadel complex, in the background. The structures adjoining the fortification wall were added later.A cluster of pottery, including a tall slender jar, and a big conch shell found in one of the trenches.Kalyani Vaghela, research assistant in archaeology from M.S. University, Vadodara, at work in the trench.Jitendra Nath (right), ASI and N.B. Soni, Senior Draftsman, examining drawings of the trenches at the industrial complex. The guard 276

rooms are at left.A staircase inside the industrial complex where the common people also resided.The citadel complex. It was strategically located adjacent to the warehouse and the factory site in such a manner that the elite class might exercise full control over the manufacturing and trading activities.Disc-shaped gold beads found in a pot.A terracotta bull head.A copper fish hook found in a trench.N.B. Soni in the sprawling pottery yard where thousands of potsherds are classified under various categories.A potsherd with painted work. A terracotta hopscotch.A potsherd showing reserved slip ware.An anthropomorphic figurine.Part of a perforated jar.A striped potsherd.Beads of semi-precious stones.A bar seal with writing in Harappan script. Only one other bar seal figures in the total of 11 seals found so far in Khirsara. A bathroom, with its sloping floor and a covered outlet (top left corner) and a drainage (left foreground) that leads into the street. The floor and walls have limestone slabs.The warehouse. It had 14 parallel walls built in the north-south direction, each about 11 metres long. The walls supported a superstructure on which the goods were placed. The picture shows a couple of such walls.Conch shells at the pottery yard. Between 2600 BCE and 2200 BCE the Harappans made bangles with the shells at the industrial site.Grain, mixed with stone and sand, found in the warehouse. The grains have been sent to Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany in Lucknow for dating and identification.The circular kiln where pots and jars were made. The newly made pots were arranged under the dome on top of the kiln and baked at temperatures of around 500 degree C.The reasonably big opening under the dome, as Bipin Negi, Assistant Archaelogist, ASI, demonstrates, through which burning firewood was pushed inside.Aeration holes on the kiln.A portion of the outer fortification wall, nearly 4,600 years old. The 310-metre-long and 230metre-wide structure ran around the entire 12-acre settlement.The dry bed of the Khari river with its banks overgrown with shrubs. To protect the settlement when the river was in spate a wall was built parallel to the outer fortification wall in the north and the east.A serrated marine fossil on the riverbed. The sea or the Rann of Kutch would have extended up to where the river lies now at the peak of the settlement. Harappa was a maritime civilisation. Marine organisms fossilised when the sea receded because of tectonic movements.Ramraj Meena, trench supervisor, delicately brushing a big pot found in one of the trenches.While digging in an archaelogical trench, the first stage involves using a small pickaxe slowly and carefully.The second stage in digging a trench involvees the use of a shovel to remove the earth.The third

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stage involves brushing the artefacts. In the picture, a perforated jar that was probably used to

keep fruits is being brushed. ARTS & CULTURE HERITAGE Published: June 12, 2013 13:25 IST | Updated: June 15, 2013 11:19 IST Print edition : June 28, 2013 ARCHAEOLOGY Discovering Khirsaras Harappan glory Excavations in Khirsara village in western Kutch reveal a "major industrial hub" and trading centre of the mature Harappan phase. By T.S. AS I stood on the edge of the trench and looked in, my eyes widened with amazement. In one corner stood a tall, slender jar with four perforations, two on either side, just below the rim. There were three beautifully crafted pots, wedged in the soil and, a few feet away, a big, upturned lid. Also on the trench floor lay a massive conch shell that looked like a bird with outstretched wings, as if it had been shot in flight and had fallen. Outside the trench that April morning, on the baulk, stood Jitendra Nath, who was the director of the excavation. Will you measure the height and the width of the jar? he asked Kalyani Vaghela, the young research assistant in archaeology from the Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara, Gujarat. She unfurled the tape and rolled it down the height of the jar and announced that it measured 85 centimetres in height. It was 33 cm This is an important find. We have got so much of pottery in a small area within the trench. When we extend our excavation more, we will get an idea of why we are getting so many pots and jars in a small area, said Jitendra Nath. He is the Superintending Archaeologist, Archaeological Survey of Indias (ASI) excavation branch in Vadodara.The excavation, a massive one, is under way at Khirsara, a Harappan site situated about 85 km from Bhuj town in Gujarats Kutch district. Thirty-nine trenches, each 10 metres by 10 metres in area, have been laid since December 6, 2012. They have yielded a cornucopia of globular pots, sturdy storage jars, painted ware, perforated parts of broken jars, incense burners, dish-on-stand, goblets, beakers, basins, bowls, ladles, and so on. There is pottery everywhere. We have to dig carefully. We can use only small pickaxes, said Jitendra Nath. The excavation team has also unearthed terracotta figurines of bulls, peacocks, ducks, and also an anthropomorphic figurine. A lot of toy-cart frames made of terracotta were found. The excavation, which is into its fourth year, reveals that Khirsara, which lies on the trade route to 278

Sind (now in Pakistan), was once a major industrial hub in western Kutch. The 12-acre site, situated on the outer edge of Khirsara village, sits saucer-like, with mounds on all sides and a depression in the middle and is known locally as Gadh Wali Wadi. The Khari river flows nearby and in the distance are the hills of Kutch. A Harappan settlement, belonging to the mature Harappan phase, flourished here for 400 years from circa 2600 BCE to circa 2200 BCE. Mature evidence The Harappan civilisation can be divided into three phases, early, mature and late. If the early Harappan phase lasted from circa 2800 BCE to circa 2600 BCE, the mature phase was between circa 2600 BCE and circa 1900 BCE. The late phase, including its collapse, lasted from circa 1900 BCE to circa 1500 BCE. Juni Kuran in northern Kutch and Khirsara belong to the mature Harappan phase. And Dholavira, located on the island of Khadir in the Great Rann of Kutch, is an example of a Harappan site that typifies all three phases. Jitendra Nath pointed to the important features that make Khirsara a mature Harappan site. Pre-Harappan pottery and post-Harappan pottery are absent here. The settlements belonging to the early Harappan and late Harappan phases are also not found here, he said. Besides, Khirsara has thrown up artefacts and structures that make it a mature Harappan settlement. There are massive structures, fortifications, seals with script and carvings of animals, bricks with the standardised ratio of 1:2:4, and a variety of pottery, including reserved slip ware, which is called so because a slip, that is, a coloured coating is applied over the pot after it is finished and dried. Specialists in the study of pottery say that such pottery was reserved for the elite, and hence the name. After the first slip (a coloured coating involving a solution of red ochre, white kaolin or purple or yellow colour) has dried, a second slip is applied over the first coating. When the second slip is wet, an instrument, say, a comb, is run over it to form different patterns. This removes the second coating that comes under the combs teeth, making a pattern on the pot, in the form of wavy or straight lines or even checks. Northern polished black ware (NPBW) is reserved slip ware because it has a silvery or golden coating over it. The NPBW was mostly tableware and the elite used it. The quarry from which the stones were brought to the habitational-cum-industrial site has not been identified yet. Seals found in this site belong from the early stage to the late stage of the mature Harappan phase. There are rectangular seals depicting the unicorn and the bison and the Harappan 279

characters. There are rectangular bar-type seals with the Harappan script alone and circular seals, all of which show that Khirsara is a mature Harappan site, said Jitendra Nath. He argued that seals were the main characteristic by which Khirsara could be classified as a mature Harappan site. We are getting seals from the lowermost level to the uppermost. Pottery, seals and structures are the major hallmarks by which this site could be said to belong to the mature Harappan phase, he reasoned. The team encountered five structural phases in the mature Harappan stage itself at Khirsara, said R.N. Kumaran, Assistant Archaeologist, ASI. Floods led to the termination of each phase and evidence of flood deposits was available in the citadel area. We are getting sand and silt in a continuous band. Kankar stones were also available, said Kumaran. The structural remains of a fortified settlement revealed a citadel with residential quarters, a warehouse, an industrial-cum-residential complex, habitation annexes and a potters kiln, all pointing to systematic town planning. The citadel complex was where the ruling elite lived. It had square and rectangular rooms, verandahs in front, a beautiful staircase leading upstairs and a rock-cut well. The warehouse, 28 metres long and 12 metres wide, has a series of 14 massive parallel walls, which are more than 10 metres long and about 1.5 metres wide. All the structures are built of dressed sandstone blocks, set in mud mortar. Magnificent artefacts The artefacts that have been discovered here reinforced the industrial nature of the settlement. Among them is a gold hoard, in a small pot, of disc-shaped gold beads, micro gold beads and their tubular counterparts. As Jitendra Nath and this reporter stood on a trench that had been filled up, he pointed to the levelled earth below and said, It was in this trench that your friend S. Nandakumar [a site supervisor] found the gold hoard. It was a trench allotted to Nandakumar, and one of the labourers digging the trench came up with a pot that had 26 gold beads inside. Gold beads are not found in big quantities in the Harappan sites, Jitendra Nath said. Some disc-shaped gold beads were found at Lothal, a Harappan site in Gujarat. There are a variety of beads made of shell and steatite and of semi-precious stones such as lapis lazuli, agate, carnelian, chert, chalcedony and jasper. About 25,000 steatite beads were found in one trench alone. Shell bangles, shell inlays, copper bangles and rings were also found

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in plenty. Among copper implements were chisels, knives, needles, points, fish hooks, arrowheads and weights. There were also bone tools, bone points and beads made out of bones. We have found good evidence of bead-making here, said Jitendra Nath. We found a lot of drill-bits used for drilling holes in the beads. We also found stone weights of various denominations. While the smallest weighs five grams, the heaviest is about five kilograms. The ASI team found 11 seals, including circular seals. Some of them are carved with unicorn and bison images, and have the Harappan script engraved on them. While the unicorn seal is made of soapstone, the bison seal is made out of steatite. A rare discovery was that of two bar seals, both engraved with the Harappan script only and remarkably intact. The trenches have yielded a vast amount of reserved slip ware, painted with exquisite designs; a variety of red ware; buff ware, or polished ware; chocolate-coloured slip ware; and grey ware. Jitendra Nath said: The kind of antiquities we are getting from this site indicates that Khirsara was a major industrial hub in western Kutch. It was located on a trade route from other parts of Gujarat to Sind in Pakistan, which is about 100 km away. Of course, the Harappans who lived here were basically traders, manufacturing industrial goods for export to distant lands and to other Harappan sites in the vicinity and farther away. Fortification Khirsara is unique among Indus Valley settlements in having a general fortification wall around the settlement and also separate fortification walls around every complex inside the settlement. The citadel complex, the warehouse, the factory-cum-residential complex, and even the potters kiln have their own protective walls. The massive, outer fortification wall still stands in many places, 4,600 years after it was built. It measures 310 metres by 210 metres and is built of partly dressed sandstone blocks set in mud mortar. The walls width is 3.4 metres but additional reinforcements in later phases have increased its width considerably. The bedrock below the wall was levelled with clay, sand, grit, lime and thoroughly rammed in to bear the load of the superstructure. Like fortification walls in other Harappan sites, this one also slopes upwards to give it strength and life. Said Jitendra Nath: We found three salients on the northern fortification wall of the warehouse. The outer fortification too has salients at regular intervals for giving strength to the wall and for 281

mounting watch. A protection wall, with a width of 2.34 metres, running parallel to the outer fortification wall, was built on the northern and eastern sides to protect the site when the overflowing Khari river caused flooding. As the booklet Indus Civilisation brought out in 2010 by the Indus Research Centre, Roja Muthiah Research Library, Chennai, says, the Harappan (or Indus Valley) civilisation has fascinated not just historians and archaeologists and anthropologists but also experts from such diverse fields such as urban planning, architecture, linguistics, computer science, mathematics, statistics, geology, astrophysics etc. What fascinated them was the greatness of this ancient civilisation, its vast extent, its trade links to other regions and its great achievements in the fields of architecture, commerce, fine arts, manufacturing, etc. These are being better understood with every new archaeological find. Indus enigma However, as the booklet says, The Indus civilisation remains an enigma in some ways. The cause of the sudden fall of the civilisationrenowned for its urban planning, high-quality construction, water management and carefully designed drainage systemsis still not fully understood. Besides, the Indus script continues to remain undeciphered despite attempts by scholars and researchers. At its peak, the Harappan civilisation covered an area of 1.5 million square kilometres, across India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. It extended from Sutkagendor in the Makran coast of Balochistan to Alamgirpur in the east in Uttar Pradesh and from Mandu in Jammu to Daimabad in Ahmednagar district in Maharashtra. Since the 1920s, several hundred Harappan sites have been discovered. After Partition in 1947, when Mohenjardo and Harappa fell in Pakistan, the ASI has discovered many sites in Gujarat, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir, and Maharashtra. These sites include Dholavira, Lothal, Juni Kuran, Desalpur, Narappa, Kanmer, Surkotada and Shikarpur in Gujarat; Rakhigarhi, Bhirrana, Banawali and Farmana in Haryana; Alamgirpur, Sanauli and Hulas in Uttar Pradesh; and Kalibangan in Rajasthan. Discovery of Khirsara How did the ASIs excavation branch at Vadodara discover Khirsara? Since most Harappan 282

sites were situated in northern or eastern Kutch, not much was known about the Indus civilisation in western Kutch. Desalpur was the only site excavated there, a minor excavation in the early 1960s. So we were searching for a Harappan site in western Kutch, said Jitendra Nath. The Gujarat State Archaeology Department had explored Khirsara in the 1970s, but only a brief report was available on it. Jitendra Naths keen eye, backed by his years of excavation at Taradih in Bodh Gaya, Athirampakkam near Chennai, Ummichipoyil in Kerala, and in other places, came into play. When we came here, we saw so much of Harappan pottery, along with artefacts such as shell bangles and stone-beads scattered over the surface, he said. Then we looked at the site and found it almost intact. We did not have such a big site in western Kutch before. Desalpur was the only other Harappan site in western Kutch. But Desalpur was excavated for only one season and not much was known about it. So Jitendra Nath and his team did a survey of Khirsara in 2009 and began excavation in December that year. The ASI team exposed the inner and outer sides of the fortification and found residential structures along the inner side of the fortification. In the second year (season) of excavation, the team unearthed the citadel and went on to locate the factory area where it found evidence of a lot of industrial activity, including shell-working. There was tell-tale evidence of bead-making. A variety of beads made of copper, shell and terracotta, and semi-precious stones were found in abundance. Copper objects, including needles, knives, fish hooks, arrowheads and weights were found. What is puzzling is that no copper figurines of animals, as found in other sites, were found here. When the ASI team dug up a mound, it encountered evidence of a five-metre-deep structure, going back to 2600 BCE. This earliest structure was made of stones with mud bricks used in between. In the third year, the team excavated the residential complex in the citadel. The citadel was strategically located adjacent to the warehouse and the factory site in such a manner that the elite class might exercise full control over the manufacturing and trading activities. A five-metrebroad pathway led from the citadel to the industrial complex. The citadel complex was 90 metres by 90 metres and about a hundred people could have lived there. There were interconnected rooms, door sills, hearths, and so on. The houses had bathrooms with an outlet for water to flow. Streets inside the citadel were rammed with clay and household waste such as 283

potsherds, bones, shell debitage and grits. A pot burial, containing charred bones and ash kept inside a circular hearth, was found inside a room. The ASI is yet to excavate a large area of the residential complex, but it may do so in the next season. Bipin Negi, Assistant Archaeologist, ASI, pointed to the perfect manner in which the fortification wall around the citadel was built and how it had withstood the ravages of time. It is a tall, sloping wall, several metres in height. This citadel wall is much broader than the general fortification wall. It is set in mud mortar, which is sticky clay. The wall has been standing for 4,600 years, said Negi. As we went around the trenches that had exposed the industrial-cum-residential complex, Kumaran explained how it had been identified as a factory site. We have found furnaces and a tandoor. There is evidence of copper-working and ash. We have found huge quantities of steatite beads and some seals made of steatite. From all this evidence, we have identified it as a fortified factory site. He led us to the entrance of the fortification wall of the industrial-cumresidential complex. The entrance was in the south. Akin to other Harappan sites, there were large limestone slabs at the entrance; the slabs obviously served as doormats. There were a couple of small guard rooms adjacent to the entrance. Residences inside the industrial complex, too, had stone slabs at the entrance. There were bathrooms, with sloping slabs used on the floor for water to flow into covered outlets. The outlets led into the drains in the street. To the sheer delight of the ASI team, the warehouse came into view when they excavated the north-east corner of the site last year. Excavation of the warehouse, which has continued this year, has revealed it to be a massive structure with 14 parallel walls. Jitendra Nath said, It must have been a multipurpose warehouse for storing goods meant for export and grains. A warehouse is a rare type of structure found in a few Harappan sites. It indicates a state of surplus economy and is a sign of prosperity. You build such structures for storing goods for export or goods that have been imported. The parallel walls supported a superstructure made of wood and daub and goods were stored in the superstructure. The pathways between the parallel walls were air ducts to keep the goods fresh. The entrance had a series of guard rooms adjacent to it. The ASI found grains in the warehouse and samples of these grains have been sent to Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany, Lucknow, for investigation and identification. Potters kiln

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Situated on the outer side of the general fortification wall, the potters kiln is a bit of an engineering marvel. Negi pointed out that its fire chamber had been cut out of both bedrock and earth, and a dome sat on the fire chamber. The freshly made pots were arranged inside the dome and a passage led to the fire chamber. It was through the passage that the burning logs were pushed inside the fire chamber. The circular wall of the fire chamber had holes for air circulation and oxygenation. The burning logs generated heat of about 500 Celsius and the pots were baked. The ASI has not located the reservoirs which would have supplied water to the Harappan settlement at Khirsara. Jitendra Nath said, Maybe, when we excavate more, we will find water bodies. The western half of the site has not been excavated yet. We have been concentrating mostly on the eastern half. We may dig the western half next year. Kumaran was hopeful about the possibility of the existence of a reservoir because we have found drains at a depth of 1.5 metres and paved stone flooring. It was not for carrying sullage. There was also a rock-cut well in the residential quarters within the citadel. There were chances of encountering a reservoir if the excavation continued for two or three years. Jitendra Nath was confident that a complete picture of the site will emerge only when we excavate more and more.

Other Khirsara evidences of Indus writing posted at https://sites.google.com/?pli=1/site/bharatkalyan97 on finds of Indus Writing at Chanhudaro and 19 other sites:

Khirsara1a

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Khirsra seal ID 3732 Mason, ingot kiln, tin smithy, blacksmith smithy, iron smelter furnace, nodule/ore stone furnace, brass-bellmetal kiln, native-metal-iron smelter abu an iron spoon (Santali) Rebus: ab, himba, hompo lump (ingot?), bat.a = widemouthed pot; Rebus: bat.a = kiln (Te.) ranku antelope; rebus: ranku tin (Santali)

pan ar ladder, stairs (Bshk.)(CDIAL 7760) Rebus: pasra smithy (Santali)

badhi to ligature, to bandage, to splice, to join by successive rolls of a ligature (Santali) bat bamboo slips (Kur.); bate = thin slips of bamboo (Malt.)(DEDR 3917). Rebus: bahi = worker in wood and metal (Santali) baae = blacksmith (Ash.) kolmo three (Mu.); rebus: kolimi smithy (Te.) kha division; rebus: ka furnace (Santali) kha circumscribe (M.); Rebs: kha nodule (ore), stone (M.) bharna = the name given to the woof by weavers; otor bharna = warp and weft (Santali.lex.) bharna = the woof, cross-thread in weaving (Santali); bharni_ (H.) (Santali.Boding.lex.) Rebus: bhoron = a mixture of brass and bell metal (Santali.lex.) bharan = to spread or bring out from a kiln (P.lex.) bha_ran. = to bring out from a kiln (G.) ba_ran.iyo = one whose profession it is to sift ashes or dust in a goldsmiths workshop (G.lex.) bharant (lit. bearing) is used in the plural in Pan~cavim.sa Bra_hman.a (18.10.8). Sa_yan.a interprets this as the warrior caste (bharata_m bharan.am kurvata_m ks.atriya_n.a_m). *Weber notes this as a reference to the Bharata-s. (Indische Studien, 10.28.n.2) kui = a slice, a bit, a small piece (Santali.lex.Bodding) Rebus: kuhi iron smelter furnace (Santali) ad.aren lid; rebus: aduru native metal (Ka.) 286

kad.i_ a chain; a hook; a link (G.); kad.iyo [Hem. Des. kad.a i o = Skt. sthapati a mason] a bricklayer; a mason; kad.iyan.a, kad.iyen.a a woman of the bricklayer caste; a wife of a bricklayer (G.)

Khirsara2a Khirsara seal ID 3733 Fire-altar (gold) smithy, artisan smiths workshop, mineworker, scribe gaa set of four (Santali) kaa fire-altar (Santali) Vikalpa: pon four (Santali); pon metal (Ta.) kolmo three (Mu.); rebus: kolimi smithy (Te.) koa sluice; Rebus: ko artisans workshop (Kuwi) Vikalpa: [ sa ] f ( S) An outlet for superfluous water (as through a dam or mound); a sluice, a floodvent. [ sa ] f (Dim. of , or from H) A small kind of tongs or pincers.

kan.d.a kanka rim of jar (Santali) kan.d.a furnace, fire-altar (Santali); khanaka miner karNaka scribe (Skt.) http://www.frontline.in/arts-and-culture/heritage/discovering-khirsaras-harappanglory/article4794614.ece?homepage=true

Khirsara in Gujarat emerges as Harappan site 287

Posted by TANNAncient, ArchaeoHeritage, Archaeology, Asia, Breakingnews, India, South Asia12:00 PM After three years of extensive excavation by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Khirsara has emerged as the prominent Harappan site in western Kutch, showing how advanced the trade from this part of Gujarat used to be around 4,600 years ago.

The Khirsara site [Credit: Web]

Earlier, Dholavira and Junikuren had emerged as prominent Harappan sites in Kutch, ASI's Superintendent Archaeologist, Vadodara, Dr Jitendra Nath said. Khirsara was first reported by the Department of Archaeology, Gujarat government in 1969-70. The site was revisited by a team of Excavation Branch of ASI Vadodara in July 2009 for a survey during which they observed a variety of Harappa artefacts and carried out further digging. Khirsara lies about 85 km Northwest of Bhuj on the Bhuj-Narayan Sarover State Highway. The site is locally known as Gadhwali Wadi' and is located on the south-eastern outskirts of the present village overlooking river Khari. The prime reason for Harappans to settle at Khirsara was perhaps the availability and accessibility to raw materials and minerals in the vicinity, Nath said.

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Khirsara produced a variety of objects for export such as various types of beads of semiprecious stones, steatite and gold, shell bangles, inlays etc, he said. Discovery of a large number of drill bits and shells debitage indicates that these items were meant for export, the officer said. During excavation, we have discovered a unique warehouse, a factory site, a citadel, seals, antiquities from the Indus Valley settlement at Khirsara, which is fortified and measures roughly about 310 x 230 metres, Nath said. The super structure of warehouse seems to have been made of perishable items such as wood or wattle and daub. The space in between the parallel walls might have served as a duct for circulation of fresh air to protect the stored material, he said. The Harappan civilisation is sometimes called the Mature Harappan culture to distinguish it from earlier and later cultures existed in the same area of the Harappan Civilisation. The citadel, a fortress overlooking a city or perhaps protecting a town, shows fortification and refortification which scholars reason that elite clan might have lived there. The rooms found there show finer structure, he said. The factory site discovered during excavation had several products showing that it was utilised for manufacturing activity. Amongst prominent antiquities we have found 26 pieces of disk type gold beads from the factory site there, Nath said. A variety of seals which include square, rectangular and bar types made of steatite, soap stone and sand stone have been discovered at Khirsara. The bar type seals bear Harappan character only whereas the two rectangular seals represent figurines of unicorn and bison on the obverse, Nath said. The analysis of botanical remains done by the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany, Lucknow, reveals that the carbon dates for samples collected from the site fall in the range of 2600-2200 BC approximately, which is roughly 4,600 years old, Nath said.PTI

Source: The Hindu [April 17,

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2012] http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.de/2012/04/khirsara-in-gujarat-emerges-asharappan.html#.Ubx9Tucwevc

Khirsara in Gujarat emerges prominent mature Harappan site Monday, Apr 16, 2012, 13:58 IST | Agency: PTI Khirsara lies about 85 km Northwest of Bhuj on the Bhuj-Narayan Sarover State Highway After three years of extensive excavation by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Khirsara has emerged as the prominent mature Harappan site in western Kutch, showing how advance the trade from this part of Gujarat used to be around 4,600 years ago. "Khirsara has emerged as one of the most prominent mature Harappan settlements in Western Kutch. Earlier, Dholavira and Junikuren had emerged as prominent Harappan sites in Kutch," ASI's Superintendent Archaeologist, Vadodara, Dr Jitendra Nath said. "The evidences found over last 3 years of excavation there show how advance trade used to be from this part of Gujarat around 4,600 years ago," he said. Khirsara lies about 85 km Northwest of Bhuj on the Bhuj-Narayan Sarover State Highway. The site is locally known as 'Gadhwali Wadi' and is located on the south-eastern outskirts of the present village overlooking river Khari. "The prime reason for Harappans to settle at Khirsara was perhaps the availability and easy accessibility to raw materials and minerals in the vicinity," Nath said. "Khirsara produced a variety of objects for export such as various types of beads of semiprecious stones, steatite and gold, shell bangles, inlays etc," he said. Discovery of a large number of drill bits and shells indicates that these items were meant for export, the officer said. During excavation, we have discovered a unique warehouse, a factory site, a citadel, seals, 290

antiquities from the Indus Valley settlement at Khirsara, which is fortified and measures roughly about 310 x 230 metres, Nath said. The super structure of warehouse seems to have been made of perishable items like wood or wattle and daub. The space in between the parallel walls might have served as a duct for circulation of fresh air to protect the stored material, he said. The Harappan civilisation is sometimes called the Mature Harappan culture to distinguish it from earlier and later cultures existed in the same area of the Harappan Civilisation. Khirsara's close proximity with river Khari might certainly have supported the maritime trading activities of its inhabitants, Nath said. The citadel, a fortress overlooking a city or perhaps protecting a town, shows fortification and refortification which scholars reason that elite clan might have lived there. The rooms found there show finer structure, he said. The factory site discovered during excavation had several products showing that it was utilised for manufacturing activity. The presence of big furnaces, tandoor, storage jars, small water tanks and discovery of a hoard of gold beads, semi-precious and steatite beads, copper implements, seals, weights, shell objects and debitage indicate that this area (factory site) was once utilised for manufacturing activity, he said. "Amongst prominent antiquities we have found 25-26 pieces of disk type gold beads from the factory site there. The gold beads are of disk type, globular and tubular," Nath said. A variety of seals which include square, rectangular and bar types made of steatite, soap stone and sand stone have been discovered at Khirsara. The bar type seals bear Harappan character only whereas the two rectangular seals represent figurines of unicorn and bison on the obverse, Nath said. 291

The analysis of botanical remains done by the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany, Lucknow reveals that the carbon dates for samples collected from the site fall in the range of 2600-2200 BC approximately, which is roughly 4,600 years old, Nath said. Khirsara was first reported by the Department of Archaeology, Gujarat government in 1969-70. The site was revisited by a team of Excavation Branch of ASI Vadodara in July 2009 for a survey during which they observed a variety of Harappa artefacts and carried out further digging. http://www.dnaindia.com/india/1676569/report-khirsara-in-gujarat-emerges-prominent-matureharappan-site

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-evidence-for-mleccha.html Ancient Near East evidence for meluhha language and bronze-age metalware Ancient Near East evidence for meluhha language and bronze-age metalware

3rd millennium BCE.Musee du Louvre. AO 22 310, Greenstone. Collection de Clercq, Catalogue methodique and raisonnee (1888).

Meluhha is cognate mleccha. Mleccha were island-dwellers (attested in Mahabharata and other ancientIndian sprachbund texts). Their speech did not conform to the rules of grammar (mlecch m bhma iti adhyeyam vykaraam) and had dialectical variants or unrefined sounds in words (mlecchitavai na apabhitavai) (Patanjali: Mahbhya).

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1. Steatite seals with the image of the short-horned bulls with lowered head from Failaka (1), Bahrein (2-3), Bactria (4), the Iranian Plateau (5). Nr. 6 comes from the surface of the site of Diqdiqqah, near Ur. Not in scale. See: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/pdf/vidale2004.pdf The Melammu project (In particular, Massimo Vidale, 2004, Growing in a foreign world: for a history of the 'Meluhha villages' in Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium BCE. The article discusses archaeological and textual evidences; Plate XIX).

How to reconstruct mleccha of 4th millennium BCE Indian sprachbund?

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Map of Bronze Age sites of eastern India and neighbouring areas: 1. Koldihwa; 2.Khairdih; 3. Chirand; 4. Mahisadal; 5. Pandu Rajar Dhibi; 6.Mehrgarh; 7. Harappa;8. Mohenjo-daro; 9.Ahar; 10. Kayatha; 11.Navdatoli; 12.Inamgaon; 13. Non PaWai; 14. Nong Nor;15. Ban Na Di andBan Chiang; 16. NonNok Tha; 17. Thanh Den; 18. Shizhaishan; 19. Ban Don Ta Phet [After Fig. 8.1 in: Charles Higham, 1996, The Bronze Age of Southeast Asia, Cambridge University 294

Press].2. Pinnows map of Austro-AsiaticLanguage speakers correlates with bronze age sites.http://www.ling.hawaii.edu/faculty/stampe/aa.html Map 1 (Bronze-age sites) correlates with Austro-Asiatic languages map 2. A focus on this area for areal linguistics will yield significant results to delineate the ancient structure and form of mleccha language. Santali and Munda lexicons and literature will be of considerable relevance with particular reference to cultural traditions and village festivals associated with the work on minerals and metals.

One resource for recontruction of mleccha is a work which dealt with Prkit forms. The work is Simharaja, 1909, Prakriti Rupavatara -- A Prakrit grammar based on the Valmikisutra, Vol. I, Ed. by E. Hultzsch, Albermarle St., Royal Asiatic Society. Full text at: http://ia700202.us.archive.org/23/items/prakritarupavata00simhuoft/prakritarupavata00simhu oft.pdf

Prkitarpvatra literally means the descent of Prkit forms. Pischel noted:

the Prkitarpvatra is not unimportant for the knowledge of the declension and conjugation, chiefly because Simharja frequently quotes more forms than Hmachandra and Trivikrama. No doubt many of these forms are theoretically inferred; but they are formed strictly according to the rules and are not without interest. (Pischel, 1900, Grammatik der Prkit-

Sprachen, Strassburg, p.43). Pischel also had written a book titled, Hmachandra's Prkit grammar, Halle, 1877. The full text of the Vlmkistra, with gaas, dyas, and iis, has been
printed in Telugu characters at Mysore in 1886 as an appendix to the abhachandrik.

A format to determine the structure of Prkit is to identify words which are identical with Sanskrit words or can be derived from Sanskrit. In this process, dyas or dyas,

provincialisms are excluded. One part of the work of Simharja is samjvibhga technical
terms. Another is pari bhvibhga explanatory rules. Dialects are identified in a part

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called aurasnydivibhga; the dialects include: aurasni, mgadh, paic, chik paic,

apabhrama.

Additional rules are identified beyond those employed by Pini:

sus, nominative; as, accusative; s, instrumental; ns, dative; nam, genitive; nip, locative.

Other resources available for delineation of mleccha are: The Prkita-praka; or the Prakrit

grammar of Vararuchi. With the commentary Manorama of Bhamaha. The first complete ed. of
the original text... With notes, an English translation and index of Prkit words; to which is prefixed a short introd. to Prkit grammar (Ed. Cowell, Edward Byles,1868, London, Trubner)

On these lines, and using the methods used for delineating Ardhamgadhi language, by Prkita grammarians, and in a process of extrapolation of such possible morphemic changes into the past, an attempt may be made to hypothesize morphemic or phonetic variants of mleccha words as they might have been, in various periods from ca. 4th millennium BCE. There are also grammars of languages such as Marathi (William Carey), Braj bh grammar (James Robert), Sindhi, Hindi, Tamil (Tolkppiyam) and Gujarati which can be used as supplementary references, together with the classic Hemacandra's Dsnmaml, Prakrit

Grammar of Hemachandra edited by P. L. Vaidya (BORI, Pune), Vararuchi's works and Richard
Pischel's Comparative Grammar of Prakrit Languages.(Repr. Motilal Banarsidass, 1957). Colin P. Masica's Indo-Aryan Languages, Cambridge University Press, 1993,"... has provided a fundamental, comparative introduction that will interest not only general and theoretical linguists but also students of one or more languages (Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujurati, Marathi, Sinhalese, etc.) who want to acquaint themselves with the broader linguistic context. Generally synchronic in approach, concentrating on the phonology, morphology and syntax of the modern 296

representatives of the group, the volume also covers their historical development, writing systems, and aspects of sociolinguistics." Thomas Oberlies' Pali grammar (Walter de Gruyter, 2001) presents a full description of Pali, the language used in the Theravada Buddhist canon, which is still alive in Ceylon and South-East Asia. The development of its phonological and morphological systems is traced in detail from Old Indic (including mleccha?). Comprehensive references to comparable features and phenomena from other Middle Indic languages mean that this grammar can also be used to study the literature of Jainism. Madhukar Anant Mehendale's Historical Grammar of Inscriptional Prakrits is a useful aid to delineate changes in morphemes over time. A good introduction is: Alfred C. Woolner's Introduction to Prakrit, 1928 (Motilal Banarsidass). "Introduction to Prakrit provides the reader with a guide for the more attentive and scholarly study of Prakrit occurring in Sanskrit plays, poetry and prose--both literary and inscriptional. It presents a general view of the subject with special stress on Sauraseni and Maharastri Prakrit system. The book is divided into two parts. Part I consists of IXI Chapters which deal with the three periods of Indo-Aryan speech, the three stages of the Middle Period, the literary and spoken Prakrits, their classification and characteristics, their system of Single and Compound Consonants, Vowels, Sandhi, Declension, Conjugation and their history of literature. Part II consists of a number of extracts from Sanskrit and Prakrit literature which illustrate different types of Prakrit--Sauraseni, Maharastri, Magadhi, Ardhamagadhi, Avanti, Apabhramsa, etc., most of which are translated into English. The book contains valuable information on the Phonetics and Grammar of the Dramatic Prakrits-Sauraseni and Maharastri. It is documented with an Index as well as a Students'. "

It may be noted that Hemacandra is a resource which has provided the sememe ibbo 'merchant' which reads rebus with ibha 'elephant' hieroglyph. Sir George A. Grierson's article on The Prakrit Vibhasas cites: "Pischel, in 3, 4, and 5 of his Prakrit Grammar, refers very briefly to the Vibhs of the Prakrit grammarians. In 3 he quotes Mrkaya's (Intr., 4) division of the Prakrits into Bh, Vibh, Apabhraa, 297

and Paica, his division of the Vibhs into kr, Cl, bar, bhrik, and kk (not kk, as written by Pischel), and his rejection of Auhr (Pischel, Or) and Drvi. In 4 he says, Rmatarkavga observes that the vibhcannot be called Apabhraa, if they are used in dramatic works and the like. He repeats the latter statement in 5, and this is all that he says on the subject. Nowhere does he say what the term vibh means. The present paper is an attempt to supply this deficiency." See also: http://www.indianetzone.com/39/prakrit_language.htm

"...Ganga, on the lower reaches of which were the kingdoms of Anga, Variga, and Kalinga, regarded in the Mahabharata as Mleccha. Now the non- Aryan people that today live closest to the territory formerly occupied by these ancient kingdoms are Tibeto-Burmans of the Baric branch. One of the languages of that branch is called Mech, a term given to them by their Hindu neighbors. The Mech live partly in Bengal and partly in Assam. B(runo) Lieblich remarked the resemblance between Mleccha and Mech and that Skr. Mleccha normally became Prakrit Meccha or Mecha and that the last form is actually found in Sauraseni. 1 Sten Konow thought Mech probably a corruption of Mleccha.* I do not believe that the people of the ancient kingdoms of Anga, Vanga, and Kalinga were precisely of the same stock as the modern Mech, but rather that they and the modern Mech spoke languages of the Baric division of Sino-Tibetan. " (Robert Shafer, 1954, Ethnography of Ancient India, Otto Harras Sowitz, Wiesbaden).http://archive.org/stream/ethnographyofanc033514mbp/ethnographyofanc033514m bp_djvu.txt

The following note is based on: Source: MK Dhavalikar, 1997, Meluhha, the land of copper, South Asian Studies, 13:1, 275-279 (embedded document appended): Citing a cuneiform tablet inscription of Sargon of Akkad (2370-2316 BCE), Dhavalikar notes that the boats of Dilmun, Magan and Meluhha were moored at the quay in his capital (Leemans, WF, 1960, Foreign Trade in the Old Babylonian Period as revealed by texts from Southern 298

Mesopotamia, EJ Brill, Leiden, p. 11). The goods imported include agate, carnelian, shell, ivory,
varieties of wood and copper. Dhavalikar cites a reference to the people or sons of Meluhha who had undergone a process of acculturation into Mesopotamian society of Ur III times cf. Parpola, S., A. Parpola and RH Brunswwig, Jr., 1977, The Meluhha Village: evidence of acculturation of Harappan traders in the late Third Millennium Mesopotamia, JESHO, 20 , p.152. Oppenheim describes Meluhha as the land of seafarers. (Oppenheim, AL, 1954, The seafaring merchants of Ur, JAOS, 74: 6-17). Dhavalikar notes the name given to a rga of classical Indian (Hindustani) music maluha kedr which may indicate maluha as a geographical connotation as in the name of another rga called Gujar Todi. Noting a pronunciation variant for meluhha, melukkha, the form is noted as closer to Prakrit milakkhu (Jaina Stras, SBE XLV, p. 414, n.) cognate Pali malikkho or malikkhako (Childers Pali Dictionary). Prakrit milakkhu or Pali malikkho are cognate with the Sanskrit word mleccha (References cited include Mahabharata, Patanjali). Jayaswal (Jayaswal, KP, 1914, On the origin of Mlechcha, ZDMG, 68: pp. 719-720) takes the Sanskrit representation to be cognate with Semitic melekh (Hebrew) meaning king.

athapatha Brhmaa [3.2.1(24)], a Vedic text (ca. 8th century BCE) uses the word mleccha as a noun referring to Asuras who ill-pronounce or speak an imprecise language: tatraitmapi vcamdu | upajijsy sa mlecastasmnna brhmao mlecedasuryhai v natevaia dviat sapatnnmdatte vca te 'syttavacasa parbhavanti ya evametadveda. This is a remarkable reference to mleccha (meluhha) as a language in the ancient Indian tradition. Pali texts Digha Nikya and Vinaya, also denotes milakkha as a language (milakkha bhs). Comparable to the reference in Manu, a Jaina text (Pannavana, 1.37) also described two groups of speakers (people?): rya and milakkhu. Pini also observes the imprecise nature of mleccha language by using the terms: avyaktayam vci (X, 1663) and mleccha

avyakte abde (1.205). This is echoed in Patanjalis reference to apaabda.

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Dhavalikar notes: Sengupta (1971) has made out a strong case for identifying mlecchas with the Phoenicians. He proposes to derive the word mleccha from Moloch or Molech and relates it to Melek or Melqart which was the god of the Phoenicians. But the Phoenicians flourished in the latter half of the second and the first half of the first millennium when the Harappan civilization was a thing of the past. (: MK Dhavalikar, 1997, Meluhha, the land of copper, South Asian

Studies, 13:1, p. 276).

Worterbuch (St. Petersburg Dictionary), Hemacandras Abhidna Cintmai (IV.105), lexicons of Monier Williams and Apte give copper as one of the meanings of the lexeme mleccha.

Gudea (ca. 2200 BCE) under the Lagash dynasty brought usu wood and gold dust and carnelian from Meluhha. Ibbi-Sin (2029-2006 BCE) under the third dynasty of Ur imported from Meluhha copper, wood used for making chairs and dagger sheaths, mesu wood, and the multicoloured birds of ivory.

Dhavalikar argues for the identification of Gujarat with Meluhha (interpreted as a region and as copper ore of Gujarat) and makes a reference to Viu Pura (IV,24) which refers to Gujarat as mleccha country.

Nicholas Kazanas has demonstrated that Avestan (OldIranian) is much later than Vedic. " 'Vedic and Avestan' by N. Kazanas In this essay the author examines independent linguistic evidence, often provided by iranianists like R. Beekes, and arrives at the conclusion that the Avesta, even its older parts (the gaas), is much later than the Rigveda. Also, of course, that Vedic is more archaic than Avestan and that it was not the Indoaryans who moved away from the common Indo-Iranian habitat into the Region of the Seven Rivers, but the Iranians broke off and 300

eventually settled and spread in ancientv Iran." http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/pdf/en/indology/Vedic_and_Avestan.pdf

It is thus possible that Indian sprachbund of the times related to this Shu-ilishu cylinder seal with cuneiform text EME.BAL.ME.LUH.HA.KI (interpreter of Meluhha language), extended to contact regions with Meluhhan (Mleccha) settlers in Sumer and other settlements of Elam/Mesopotamia. A cuneiform text [Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)] refers to Meluhha as a region: http://cdli.ucla.edu/cdlisearch/search/index.php?SearchMode=Text&txtID_Txt=P227514 Vermaak, PS, 2008, Guabba, the Meluhhan village in Mesopotamia, in: Journal for Semitics, Vol. 17, No. 2: "Although a Meluhhan village (e-duru me-luh-ha) integrated under the jurisdiction of Girsu/Lagash in southern Mesopotamia has been known since Sargonic times, it has never previously been identified with a specific place name. In this article the Meluhhan village has now, for the first time, been connected in a Ur III text with the well-known village/town of Guabba (Gu-ab-ba-ki) based on the (twice) published text MVN 7 420 = ITT 4 8024 from Ur III Girsu." http://www.sabinet.co.za/abstracts/semit/semit_v17_n2_a12.html

The polemics of Aryan Invasion/Migration or Out of India Theories need not detain us here, in this enquiry related to identification of glosses of mleccha (meluhha), the most likely Indus language, and the underlying sounds used on Indus writing of metalware catalogs.

The direction of 'borrowings' is a secondary component of the philological excursus; there is no universal linguistic rule to firmly aver such a direction of borrowing. Certainly, more work is called for in delineating the structure and forms of meluhha (mleccha) language beyond a mere list of metalware glosses.

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Harappa. kiln.

Figure 9. Harappa 1999, Mound F, Trench 43: Period 5 kiln, plan and section views

Meluhha were sea-faring merchants and dealers (artisans/ merchants) in tin, zinc and other bronze-age alloying minerals (attested in cuneiform texts).

Almost the entire Indus writing corpora are veritable metalware catalogs.

Thus many glosses of mleccha (meluhha) are retained in many languages of Indian sprachbund. This evidence facilitates rebus reading of hieroglyphs on Indus writing. A personal cylinder seal of Shu-ilishu, a translator of the Meluhhan language (Expedition 48 (1): 42-43) with cuneiform writing exists. The rollout of Shu-ilishus cylinder seal. Courtesy of the 302

Dpartement des Antiquits Orientales, Muse du Louvre, Paris. "The presence in Akkad of a translator of the Meluhhan language suggests that he may have been literate and could read the undeciphered Indus script. This in turn suggests that there may be bilingual Akkadian/ Meluhhan tablets somewhere in Mesopotamia. Although such documents may not exist, Shuilishu's cylinder seal offers a glimmer of hope for the future in unraveling the mystery of the Indus script." (Gregory L. Possehl,Shu-ilishu's cylinder seal, Expedition, Vol. 48, Number 1, pp. 42-43).http://www.penn.museum/documents/publications/expedition/PDFs/481/What%20in%20the%20World.pdf/1

Illustrated London News 1936 - November 21st. A 'Sheffield of Ancient India: Chanhu-Daro's metal working industry 10 X photos of copper knives, spears, razors, axes and dishes.

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Bronze statue of a woman holding a small bowl, Mohenjo-daro; copper alloy made using cire perdue method (DK 12728; Mackay 1938: 274, Pl. LXXIII, 9-11)

The Dancing Girl (Mohenjo-daro), made by the lost-wax process; a bronze foot and anklet from Mohenjo-daro; and a bronze figurine of a bull (Kalibangan). (Courtesy: ASI) "Archaeological excavations have shown that Harappan metal smiths obtained copper ore (either directly or through local communities) from the Aravalli hills, Baluchistan or beyond. They soon discovered that adding tin to copper produced bronze, 304

a metal harder than copper yet easier to cast, and also more resistant to corrosion. Whether deliberately added or already present in the ore, various impurities (such as nickel, arsenic or lead) enabled the Harappans to harden bronze further, to the point where bronze chisels could be used to dress stones! The alloying ranges have been found to be 1%12% in tin, 1%7% in arsenic, 1%9% in nickel and 1%32% in lead. Shaping copper or bronze involved techniques of fabrication such as forging, sinking, raising, cold work, annealing, riveting, lapping and joining. Among the metal artefacts produced by the Harappans, let us mention spearheads, arrowheads, axes, chisels, sickles, blades (for knives as well as razors), needles, hooks, and vessels such as jars, pots and pans, besides objects of toiletry such as bronze mirrors; those were slightly oval, with their face raised, and one side was highly polished. The Harappan craftsmen also invented the true saw, with teeth and the adjoining part of the blade set alternatively from side to side, a type of saw unknown elsewhere until Roman times. Besides, many bronze figurines or humans (the well-known Dancing Girl, for instance) and animals (rams, deer, bulls...) have been unearthed from Harappan sites. Those figurines were cast by the lost-wax process: the initial model was made of wax, then thickly coated with clay; once fired (which caused the wax to melt away or be lost), the clay hardened into a mould, into which molten bronze was later poured. Harappans also used gold and silver (as well as their joint alloy, electrum) to produce a wide variety of ornaments such as pendants, bangles, beads, rings or necklace parts, which were usually found hidden away in hoards such as ceramic or bronze pots. While gold was probably panned from the Indus waters, silver was perhaps extracted from galena, or native lead sulphide...While the Indus civilization belonged to the Bronze Age, its successor, the Ganges civilization, which emerged in the first millennium BCE, belonged to the Iron Age. But recent excavations in central parts of the Ganges valley and in the eastern Vindhya hills have shown that iron was produced there possibly as early as in 1800 BCE. Its use appears

305

to have become widespread from about 1000 BCE, and we find in late Vedic texts mentions of a dark metal (krnyas), while earliest texts (such as the Rig-Veda) only spoke of ayas, which, it is now accepted, referred to copper or bronze.

Note:

Damaged circular clay furnace, comprising iron slag and tuyeres and other waste materials stuck with its body, exposed at lohsanwa mound, Period II, Malhar, Dist. Chandauli. http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/iron-ore.html

A typical iron-smelting furnace in the first millennium BCE. (Courtesy: National Science Centre, New Delhi) "Instead, India was a major innovator in the field, producing two highly advanced types of iron. The first, wootz steel, produced in south India from about 300 BCE, was 306

iron carburized under controlled conditions. Exported from the Deccan all the way to Syria, it was shaped there into Damascus swords renowned for their sharpness and roughness. But it is likely that the term Damascus derived not from Syrias capital city, but from the damask or wavy pattern characteristic of the surface of those swords. In any case, this Indian steel was called the wonder material of the Orient. A Roman historian,Quintius Curtius, recorded that among the gifts which Alexander the Great received from Porus of Taxila (in 326 BCE), there was some two-and-a-half tons of wootz steel it was evidently more highly prized than gold or jewels! Later, the Arabs fashioned it into swords and other weapons, and during the Crusades, Europeans were overawed by the superior Damascus swords. It remained a favoured metal for weapons through the Moghul era, when wootz swords, knives and armours were artistically embellished with carvings and inlays of brass, silver and gold. In the armouries of Golconda and Hyderabads Nizams, Tipu Sultan, Ranjit Singh, the Rajputs and the Marathas, wootz weapons had pride of place. Wootz steel is primarily iron containing a high proportion of carbon (1.0 1.9%). Thus the term wootz (an English rendering of ukku, a Kannada word for steel) applies to a high-carbon alloy produced by crucible process. The basic process consisted in first preparing sponge (or porous) iron; it was then hammered while hot to expel slag, broken up, then sealed with wood chips or charcoal in closed crucibles (clay containers) that were heated, causing the iron to absorb appreciable amounts of carbon; the crucibles were then cooled, with solidified ingot of wootz steel remaining."

The Delhi Iron Pillar, with a close-up of the inscription. (Courtesy: R. Balasubramaniam) "The second advanced iron is the one used in the 307

famous 1,600-year-old Delhi Iron Pillar, which, at a height of 7.67 m, consists of about six tons of wrought iron. It was initially erected by Chandra as a standard of Vishnu at Vishnupadagiri, according to a six-line Sanskrit inscription on its surface. Vishnupadagiri has been identified with modern Udayagiri near Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh, and Chandra with the Gupta emperor, Chandragupta II Vikramaditya (375414 CE). In 1233, the pillar was brought to its current location in the courtyard of the Quwwat-ul Islam mosque in New Delhis Qutub complex, where millions continue to come and see this rustless wonder. But why is it rustless, or, more precisely, rust-resistant? Here again, numerous experts, both Indian and Western, tried to grasp the secret of the pillars manufacture. Only recently have its rust-resistant properties been fully explained (notably by R. Balasubramaniam). They are chiefly due to the presence of phosphorus in the iron: this element, together with iron and oxygen from the air, contributes to the formation of a thin protective passive coating on the surface, which gets reconstituted if damaged by scratching. It goes to the credit of Indian blacksmiths that through patient trial and error they were able to select the right type of iron ore and process it in the right way for such monumental pillars. There are a few more such pillars in India, for instance at Dhar (Madhya Pradesh) and Kodachadri Hill (coastal Karnataka). Besides, the same technology was used to manufacture huge iron beams used in some temples of Odisha, such as Jagannath of Puri (12th century). The iron beams at Konaraks famous sun temple are of even larger dimensions. Chemical analysis of one of the beams confirmed that it was wrought iron of a phosphoric nature (99.64% Fe, 0.15% P, traces of C, traces of S and no manganese).

"Indian metallurgists were familiar several other metals, of which zinc deserves a special mention because, having a low boiling point (907C), it tends to vaporize while its ore is smelted. Zinc, a silvery-white metal, is precious in combination with copper, resulting in brass of superior quality. Sometimes part of copper ore, pure zinc could be produced only after a sophisticated downward distillation technique in which the

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vapour

was captured and condensed in a

lower container. This technique, which was also applied to mercury, is described in Sanskrit texts such as the 14th-century Rasaratnasamuccaya. There is archaeological evidence of zinc production at Rajasthans mines at Zawar from the 6th or 5th century BCE. The technique must have been refined further over the centuries. India was, in any case, the first country to master zinc distillation, and it is estimated that between 50,000 and 100,000 tons of zinc was smelted at Zawar from the 13th to the 18th century CE! British chroniclers record continuing production there as late as in 1760; indeed, there is documentary evidence to show that an Englishman learned the technique of downward distillation there in the 17th century and took it to England a case of technology transfer which parallels that of wootz steel."

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An underground furnace at Ghatgaon (Madhya Pradesh), with a tribal smelting iron ore. (Courtesy: A.V. Balasubramaniam). "We should finally note that most of Indias metal production was controlled by specific social groups, including so-called tribes, most of them from the lower rungs of Indian society.For instance, the Agarias of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh are reputed iron smiths, and there are still such communities scattered across Jharkhand, Bihar, WestBengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Together, they contributed substantially to Indias wealth, since India was for a long time a major exporter of iron. In the late 1600s, shipments of tens of thousands of wootz ingots would leave the Coromandel Coast for Persia every year. Indias iron and steel industry was intensive till the 18th century and declined only when the British started selling their own products in India while imposing high duties on Indian products. Industrially produced iron and steel unavoidably put a final stop to most of Indias traditional production. "

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"...A colossal bronze statue of the Buddha, Sultanganj. (Courtesy: Wikipedia).

Magnificent Chola bronze statues: Mahlakm and Naarja. (Courtesy: Michel Danino)

After the Harappans During and after the Harappan civilization, a Copper Hoard culture of still unclear authorship produced massive quantities of copper tools in central and northern India. Later, in the classical age, copper-bronze smiths supplied countless pieces of art. Let us mention the huge bronze statue of the Buddha made between 500 and 700 CE in Sultanganj (Bhagalpur district, Bihar, now at the Birmingham Museum); at 2.3 m high, 1 m wide, and weighing over 500 kg, it was made by the same lost-wax technique that Harappans used three 311

millenniums earlier. So were thousands of statues made later (and up to this day) in Tamil Nadu, such as the beautiful Nataraja statues of the Chola period, among other famous bronzes. Of course, all kinds of bronze objects of daily use have continued to be produced; for instance, highly polished bronze mirrors are still made in Kerala today, just as they were in Harappan times." Source: http://www.cbseacademic.in/web_material/Circulars/2012/68_KTPI/Module_8.pdf

The pot carried by the woman accompanying the Meluhhan is of traditional, cultural significance in the context of water-ablution ceremonies. It is not clear if this connoted a pot containing the metalsmith's alchemical rasa or alchemial elixir of life or Amrita (Sanskrit: ). In western alchemy, it was also called 'tincture' or 'powder' of alchemists.

Assyrian Ashurnsirpal Relief

Assyrian Ashurnsirpal Relief from Nimrud, 865 B.C., can now be found at the British Museum. This section of wall relief was behind the king's throne and depicts a ritual involving a tree. Another panel with the same scene was opposite the center doorway of the throne room. The king is shown twice, on either side of a symbolic tree. On the left and on the right is an apkallu.

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Assyrian Eagle Protective Spirit Also known as Apkallu griffin. Originally from 865 B.C., it can now be found at the New York Metropolitan Museum.

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Image of apkallu, winged 'sage'i n Mesopotamia carrying a pot?

kola 'woman' Rebus: kol 'working in iron, pancaloha alloy of five metals'. [kamaalu] m

n (S) The waterpot used by the ascetic and the religious student.
(Marathi) kamaalu mn. (in the f(). according to Pa1n2. 4-1 , 71) a gourd or vessel made of wood or earth used for water (by ascetics and religious students) , a waterjar MBh. BhP. Ya1jn5. &c (Monier-Williams lexicon, p. 252). kamaalu1 m.n. gourd or other vessel used for water MBh.Pa. kamaalu -- n. waterpot used by non -- Buddhist ascetics ; Pk. kamaalu -- m. drinking gourd used by ascetics ; Bi. kwaal mendicant's wooden cup ; M. kvaa f. coconut used as a water vessel ; Si. kamanal ascetic's waterpot .(CDIAL 2761). [ kamaaluvu ] kamanaluvu. [Skt.] n. A bowl or cruise carried by a Hindu ascetic. . kamanali. A hermit: "he who carries a cruise." Rebus: [ kamaamu ] kamaamu. [Tel.] n. A portable furnace for melting the precious metals. . Allograph 1: [ kamahamu ] kamahamu. [Skt.] n. A tortoise. Allograph 2: or [ kama or h ] m ( S) A bow (esp. of bamboo or horn) (Marathi). Allograph 3: kamaha penance (Pkt.) Rebus: kampaam coiner, mint (Tamil). The Allograph 4 is a recurring hieroglyph and may well have been connoted by the 'pot' carried by the woman accompanying the Meluhhan to signify a 'mint' 314

associated with the 'antelope' carried by the Meluhhan -- read rebus for 'iron'. tagara 'antelope' Rebus: tagara 'tin'; damgar 'merchant' (Akkadian). Alternative readings: mil markhor (Tor.wali) meho a ram, a sheep (G.)(CDIAL 10120) Rebus: merchants helper me iron (Munda). mlekh 'goat' (Br.) Rebus: milakku 'copper' (Pali); mleccha 'copper' (Skt.) Meluhha ! Mleccha ! tagara 'antelope' Rebus: tagara 'tin'.

It is likely that the hieroglyphic narrative describes the Meluhhan as a tin (tagara) merchant (damgar) with competene in working with metal alloys (kol) -- signified by the pot carried by the accompanying woman (kola).

Ancient Near East evidence for mleccha (meluhha) language from ancient texts

This is based on updates to http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-writingsystems.html

Ancient Near East writing systems: Indian sprachbund and Indus writing Beyond the Mahbhrata incident in which Vidura is said to have alerted Yudhiira in Mleccha bh, evidence is provided on mleccha (cognate meluhha) language from ancient texts. Manu (10.45) underscores the linguistic area: rya vcas mleccha vcas te sarve dasyuvah smth [trans. both rya speakers and mleccha speakers (that is, both speakers of literary dialect and colloquial or vernacular dialect) are all remembered as dasyu]. Dasyu is a general reference to people. Dasyu is cognate with dasa, which in Khotanese language means man. It is also cognate with daha, a word which occurs in Persepolis inscription of Xerxes...http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1204/1204.3800.pdf

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A reference to mleccha as language, bh, in Bharata's Nyastra:

XVIII. 80 ] RULES ON THE USE OF LANGUAGES 827 The Common Language 28. The Common Language prescribed for use [on the stage] has various forms 1 . It contains [many] words of Barbarian {mleccha) origin and is spoken in Bharata-varsa [only] Note: 28 (C.26b-27a; B.XVII.29b-30a). 'Read vividha-jatibhasa ; vividha (ca, da in B.) for dvividha. 'The common speech or the speech of the commoners is distinguished here from that of the priests and the nobility by describing it as containing words of Barbarian (mleccha) origin. These words seem to have been none other than vocables of the Dravidian and Austric languages. They entered Indo-Aryan pretty early in its history. See S. K. Chatterji, Origin and Development of the Bengali Language, Calcutta, 1926 pp. 42,178.' Source: Natya Shastra of Bharata Muni in english THE NATYASASTRA A Treatise on Hindu Dramaturgy and Histrionics Ascribed to B H A R A T A - M r X I Vol. I. ( Chapters I-XXVII ) Completely translated jor the jirst tune from the original Sanskrit tuttri u Introduction and Various Notes, Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta http://archive.org/stream/NatyaShastraOfBharataMuniVolume1/NatyaShastraOfBharataMuniVol ume1_djvu.txt 1 4 | I.11 - 12 {6/8} mleccha ha vai ea yat apaabda . 1 4 | I.11 - 12 {7/8}

mlecch m bhma iti adhyeyam vykaraam .~V.118.5 - 119.12 {20/36} mlecchitam vispaena iti eva anyatra . tasmt brhmaena na mlecchitavai na apabhitavai . Patanjali explains in the context of ungrammatical mleccha with apaabda . (Patanjali: Mahbhya). http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/10/road-to-meluhha-dt-potts-1982.html

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http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/02/indian-hieroglyphs-meluhha-and-archaeo.html

These are samples of results of my enquiry into mleccha vcas as distinguished from rya

vcas (Manu). I have detailed more in my book on Indus writing in ancient near
East.http://www.amazon.com/Indus-Writing-ancient-NearEast/dp/0982897189/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371088202&sr=81&keywords=indus+writing Vatsyayana attests mlecchitavikalpa as a cipher, one of the 64 arts to be learnt together with deabh jnnam and akaramuika kathanam. Patanjali elaborates on mleccha as a dialect. There is a lot of textual data on people as distinct from language -both mleccha and rya as dasyu (cf. OIr. daha) and as dwpavsinah. I do not know when the word 'ayas' came into vogue. It is as old as Rgveda. The semantics of this word may hold the key in revisiting our language chronologies. I find the following DEDR (Dravidian etyma) entries intriguing:

aduru native metal (Ka.); ayil iron (Ta.) ayir, ayiram any ore (Ma.); ajirda karba very hard iron (Tu.)(DEDR 192). I do not know how aduru evolved or is phonetically cognate vis-a-vis ayo 'iron' (Gujarati). There is a very specific explanation for the Kannada word: aduru = gaiyinda tegadu karagade iruva aduru = ore taken from the mine and not subjected to melting in a furnace (Kannada. Siddhnti Subrahmaya stris new interpretation of the Amarakoa,

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Bangalore,Vicaradarpana Press, 1872, p. 330) One intriguing semantic may be cited, again, in the context of the bronze-age. There are two compounds:

milakkhu rajanam 'copper-coloured' (Pali),

mleccha mukha 'copper' (Samskrtam).

Why mleccha mukha? I think the lexeme mukha is a substrate lexeme

mh 'face, ingot' (Munda. Santali etc.); it is possible that mleccha mukha may
refer to 'copper ingot'. m h = the quantity of iron produced at one time in a native smelting furnace (Santali) Mleccha, language. Mleccha, copper. How do semantic associations occur in human interactions as languages evolve? The other meaning of mh 'face' (CDIAL 10158) explains why a face glyph gets ligatured in Indus writing to clear composite hieroglyphs to create mlecchitavikalpa (cipher mentioned by Vtsyyana) 318

See, for example, Seal m0302 (Mohenjo-daro) which shows a 'human face' ligatured to an 'elephant trunk' etc. See other examples on Seals m1179 and m1186A (Mohenjo-daro). The seal m0302 also has the uniquitous fish glyphsdenoting ayo 'fish' (Munda stream). ibha 'elephant' (Samskrtam) ibbo'merchant' (Hemacandra Desinmamla -Gujarati) ib 'iron' (Santali).

There is a Railway station, a village called Ib near Bokaro (with a steel plant in the iron ore belt) on the Howrah-Mumbai rail-route :)-I do not have the competence to suggest dates for the lexemes which were absorbed into various languages of the language union. Some call them borrowings, some call them substratum. Who knows?

Reconstructing mleccha (meluhha) beyond identification of glosses is a very tall order and I have no competence whatsoever to take up the task. I have, however, produced a comparative lexicon for the India sprachbund with over 8000 semantic clusters.

If it is validated, it could be a beginning to suggest phonetic and morphemic 319

evolution and formation of languages such as Marathi or Bengali or Oriya. Syntax can only be inferred based on evidences provided in early Samskrtam-Prakrtam dramas of the type mentioned in Bharata's Nyastra.

Bloch has done pioneering work on Marathi. Similar work has to be done for all languages of the language union which ancient India nurtured on the banks of River Sarasvati. She is vgdevi and mleccha was a vcas. One thing is clear: if the lexemes related to metalware and metalwork are found as substratum lexemes, the date should be subsequent to the 4th millennium BCE of the bronze-age when tin-bronzes and zinc-bronzes supplemented arsenical bronzes; this was a veritable revolution of the times. Given the rich treasure, Bharata nidhi of ancient Hindu texts such as those of Patanjali or Bhartrhari, we have the work cut out for us to re-evaluate andsharpen our understanding of Bharatiya vk, the ancient spoken idiom.

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m1179 tagara 'ram, antelope' Rebus: tagara 'tin'; damgar 'merchant' mh 'face' Rebus: mh 'ingot'

(Santali) m1186A

m0302

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Meluhha, the land of copper MK Dhavalikar 1997

South Asian Studies, 13:1, 275-279

http://www.scribd.com/doc/148145977/Meluhha-the-land-of-copper-MK-Dhavalikar-1997-SouthAsian-Studies-13-1-275-279

Meluhha, the land of copper MK Dhavalikar 1997 South Asian Studies, 13:1, 275-279

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Related links:

Location.Current Repository

Musee du Louvre. Inventory No. AO 22126 ca. 2120 BCE NeoSumerian from the citystate of Lagash. http://contentdm.unl.edu/ah_copyright.html

According to the inscription this statue was made by Gudea, ruler of Lagash (c. 2100 BCE) for the temple of the goddess Geshtinanna. Gudea refurbished the temples of Girsu and 11 statues of him have been found in excavations at the site. Nine others including this one were sold on 323

the art market. It has been suggested that this statue is a forgery. Unlike the hard diorite of the excavated statues, it is made of soft calcite, and shows a ruler with a flowing vase which elsewhere in Mesopotamian art is only held by gods. It also differs stylistically from the excavated statues. On the other hand, the Sumerian inscription appears to be genuine and would be very difficult to fake. Statues of Gudea show him standing or sitting. Ine one, he rests on his knee a plan of the temple he is building. On some statues Gudea has a shaven head, while on others like this one he wears a headdress covered with spirals, probably indicating that it was made out of fur. Height 61 cm. The overflowing water from the vase is a hieroglyph comparable to the pectoral of Mohenjo-daro showing an overflowing pot together with a onehorned young bull and standard device in front. The diorite from Magan (Oman), and timber from Dilmun (Bahrain) obtained by Gudea could have come from Meluhha. "The goddess Geshtinanna was known as chief scribe (Lambert 1990, 298 299) and probably was a patron of scribes, as was Nidaba/Nisaba (Micha-lowski 2002). " http://www.academia.edu/2360254/Temple_Sacred_Prostitution_in_Ancient_Mesopotamia_Revi sitedThat the hieroglyph of pot/vase overflowing with water is a recurring theme can be seen from other cylinder seals, including Ibni-Sharrum cylinder seal. Such an imagery also occurs on a fragment of a stele, showing part of a lion and vases

meha polar star (Marathi). me iron (Ho.Mu.)

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A person with a vase with overflowing water; sun sign. C. 18th cent. BCE. [E. Porada,1971, Remarks on seals found in the Gulf states, Artibus Asiae, 33, 31-7].

khai buffalo bull (Tamil)

Rebus: kh '(metal) tools, pots and pans' (Gujarati)

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The seal of Gudea: Gudea, with shaven head, is accompanied by a minor female diety. He is led by his personal god, Ningishzida, into the presence of Enlil, the chief Sumerian god. Wind pours forth from of the jars held by Enlil, signifying that he is the god of the winds. The winged leopard (griffin) is a mythological creature associated with Ningishzida, The horned helmets, worn even by the griffins, indicates divine status (the more horns the higher the rank). The writing in the background translates as: "Gudea, Ensi [ruler], of Lagash". l f., lo m.2. Pr. w fox (Western Pahari)(CDIAL 11140-2). Rebus: loh copper (Hindi). Te. eaka, ekka, rekka, neaka, nei id. (DEDR 2591). Rebus: eraka, eaka = any metal infusion (Ka.Tu.); urukku (Ta.); urukka melting; urukku what is melted; fused metal (Ma.); urukku (Ta.Ma.); eragu = to melt; molten state, fusion; erakaddu = any cast thng; erake hoyi = to pour meltted metal into a mould, to cast

(Kannada) m1656 Mohenjodro Pectoral. kam

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 kam, n. < ka. 1. Water; sacred water; . (. 49, 16). Rebus: kh metal tools, pots and pans (Marathi) <lo->(B) {V} ``(pot, etc.) to ^overflow''. See <lo-> `to be left over'. @B24310. #20851. Re<lo>(B) {V} ``(pot, etc.) to ^overflow''. See <lo-> `to be left over'. (Munda ) Rebus: loh copper (Hindi) The hieroglyph clearly refers to the metal tools, pots and pans of copper. The pot carried by the woman accompanying the Meluhha sea-faring merchant could also be a hieroglyphic rebus reading of kam signifying metal pots and pans and tools.

The following semantic cluster indicates that the early compound: loha + ka referred to copper articles, tools, pot and pans. The early semantics of 'copper' got expanded to cover 'iron and other metals'. It is suggested that the hieroglyph of an overflowing vase refers to this compound: lohak.

[ kh ] m A kind of sword, straight, broad-bladed, two-edged, and round-ended (Marathi) M. lokh n. iron(Marthi) yields the clue to the early semantics of kh which should have referred to tools, pots and pans (of metal). Kumaoni has semantics: lokha iron tools'. [ lhlkhaa ] n ( & ) Iron tools, vessels, or articles in general (Marathi).

Thus lohak would have referred to copper tools. The overflowing vase on the hands of Gudea would have referred to this compound, represented by the hieroglyphs and rendered rebus.

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N. lokhar bag in which a barber keeps his tools ; H. lokhar m. iron tools, pots and pans ; -X lauhabha -- : Ku. lokha iron tools ; H. lokha m. iron tools, pots and pans ; G. lokh n. tools, iron, ironware ; M. lokh n. iron (LM 400 < -- khaa -- )(CDIAL 11171). lhitaka reddish past., n. calx of brass, bell- metal lex. [lhita -- ]K. ly f. white copper, bell -- metal . (CDIAL 11166). lh red, copper -- coloured rS., made of copper Br., m.n. copper VS., iron MBh. [*rudh -- ] Pa. lha -- m. metal, esp. copper or bronze ; Pk. lha -- m. iron , Gy. pal. li, lihi, obl. elhs, as. loa JGLS new ser. ii 258; Wg. (Lumsden) "loa" steel ; Kho. loh copper ; S. lohu m. iron , L. loh m., aw.l, P. loh m. ( K.rm. o. loh), WPah.bhad. lu n., bhal. ltilde; n., p. jaun. lh, pa. luh, cur. cam. loh, Ku. luw, N. lohu, h, A. lo, B. lo, no, Or. loh, luh, Mth. loh, Bhoj. loh, Aw.lakh. lh, H.loh, loh m., G. M. loh n.; Si. loho, l metal, ore, iron ; Md. ratu -- l copper .(CDIAL 11158). lhakra m. iron -- worker , r -- f., raka -- m. lex., lauhakra -- m. Hit. [lh -- , kra - 1] Pa. lhakra -- m. coppersmith, ironsmith ; Pk. lhra -- m. blacksmith , S. luhru m., L. lohr m., r f., aw. luhr, P. WPah.kha. bhal. luhr m., Ku. lwr, N. B. lohr, Or. lohaa, Bi.Bhoj. Aw.lakh. lohr, H. lohr, luh m., G. lavr m., M. lohr m.; Si. lvaru coppersmith . Addenda: lhakra -- : WPah.kg. (kc.) lhwr m. blacksmith , lhwri f. his wife , Garh. lwr m.(CDIAL 11159). lhahala 11161 lhala made of iron W. [lh -- ](CDIAL 11161). Bi. lohr, r small iron pan (CDIAL 11160). Bi. lohsr smithy (CDIAL 11162). P.ludh. lhiy m. ironmonger .(CDIAL 11163). [ lhlkhaa ] n ( & ) Iron tools, vessels, or articles in general. [ rup lkhaa ] n A kind of iron. It is of inferior quality to . [ lkhaa ] n ( S) Iron. or To oppress grievously. [ lkhaakma ] n Iron work; that portion (of a building, machine &c.) which consists of iron. 2 The business of an ironsmith. [ lkha ] a ( ) Composed of iron; relating to iron. 2 fig. Hardy or hard--a constitution or a frame of body, one's or natal bone or parental stock. 3 Close and hard;--used of kinds of wood. 4 Ardent and unyielding--a fever. 5 , in the sense Hard and coarse or in the sense Strong or enduring, is freely applied as a term of distinction or designation. Examples follow. [ lkha ] f ( ) An iron boiler or other vessel. [ lkha jara ] m ( & ) False 328

brocade or lace; lace &c. made of iron. [ lkha rast ] m f (Iron-road.) A railroad. [ lha ] n S Iron, crude or wrought. 2 m Abridged from . A medicinal preparation from rust of iron. [ lhakra ] m (S) A smelter of iron or a worker in iron. [ lhakia ] n (S) Scori or rust of iron, klinker. or [ lhag or lhag kh ] f ( & ) A club set round with iron clamps and rings, a sort of bludgeon. [ lhra ] m ( H or S) A caste or an individual of it. They are smiths or workers in iron. [ lhrakma ] n Iron-work, work proper to the blacksmith. [ lhrak ] f ( ) The business of the blacksmith. [ lhra ] m A contemptuous form of the word . [ lhrasa ] f A smithy.

Loha (nt.) [Cp. Vedic loha, of Idg. *(e)reudh "red"; see also rohita & lohita] metal, esp. copper, brass or bronze. It is often used as a general term & the individual application is not always sharply defined. Its comprehensiveness is evident from the classification of loha at VbhA 63, where it is said lohan ti jtiloha, vijti, kittima, pisca or natural metal, produced metal, artificial (i. e. alloys), & metal from the Pisca district. Each is subdivided as follows: jti=ayo, sajjha, suvaa, tipu, ssa, tambaloha, vekantakaloha; vijti=nga -nsika; kittima=kasaloha, vaa, raka; pisca=morakkhaka, puthuka, malinaka, capalaka, selaka, aka, bhallaka, dsiloha. The description ends "Tesu paca jtilohni piya visu vuttn' eva (i. e. the first category are severally spoken of in the Canon). Tambaloha vekantakan ti imehi pana dvhi jtilohehi saddhi sesa sabbam pi idha lohan ti veditabba." -- On loha in similes see J.P.T.S. 1907, 131. Cp. A iii.16=S v.92 (five alloys of gold: ayo, loha, tipu, ssa, sajjha); J v.45 (asi); Miln 161 (suvaam pi jtivanta lohena bhijjati); PvA 44, 95 (tamba=loha), 221 (tatta -- loha -- secana pouring out of boiling metal, one of the five ordeals in Niraya). -- kaha a copper (brass) receptacle Vin ii.170. -- kra a metal worker,

coppersmith, blacksmith Miln 331. -- kumbh an iron cauldron Vin ii.170. Also N. of a purgatory J iii.22, 43; iv.493; v.268; SnA 59, 480; Sdhp 195. -- gua an iron (or metal) ball A iv.131; Dh 371 (m gil pamatto; cp. DhA iv.109). -- jla a copper (i. e. wire) netting PvA 153. -- thlaka a copper bowl Nd1 226. -- thli a bronze kettle DhA i.126. -- psda"copper terrace," brazen 329

palace, N. of a famous monastery at Anurdhapura in Ceylon Vism 97; DA i.131; Mhvs passim. -- pia an iron ball SnA 225. -- bhaa copper (brass) ware Vin ii.135. -- maya made of copper, brazen Sn 670; Pv ii.64. -- msa a copper bean Nd1 448 (suvaa -- channa). -msaka a small copper coin KhA 37 (jatu -- msaka, dru -- msaka+); DhsA 318. -- rpa a bronze statue Mhvs 36, 31. -- salk a bronze gong -- stick Vism 283. Lohat (f.) [abstr. fr. loha] being a metal, in (suvaassa) aggalohat the fact of gold being the best metal VvA 13. (Pali)

Lyre-player, from one of the steles of king Gudea of Lagash. The lyre has eleven strings. Around 2150 BCE

Louvre, Departement des Antiquites Orientales, Paris, France Glyph: tambura harp; rebus: tambra copper (Pkt.) angar bull (Hindi) Rebus: hangar blacksmith (Hindi).

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-writing-systems.html Ancient Near East writing systems: Indian sprachbund and Indus writing Ancient Near East writing systems: Indian sprachbund and Indus writing Indian sprachbund is a philological hypothesis. The time has come for further detailed evaluation by scholars of this sprachbund. Meluhha (mleccha) is attested as a spoken language in ancient Indian texts. Moving away from the polemics of Aryan Invasion/Migration or Out of India theories to explain 330

the evolution and formation of languages of the sprachbund, an alternative approach is to start with the hypothesis of a sprachbund for the region of Ancient Near East which was witness to and participating region of intense interactions in an extensive contact area of civilizations starting circa 4th millennium BCE. One key is provided by the metalware and associated words in languages of the interaction area of ancient Near East. Determination of the direction of 'borrowings' from among the substratum words of a linguistic area is governed by faith of the investigator. Even Emeneau who has done remarkable work with Burrow in compiling a Dravidian Etymological Dictionary and Toda etyma refers to Aryan Invasion Theory as a 'linguistic doctrine', to explain many cognate lexemes in language streams of India. The polemics of the invasion or migration or of directions of migration or invasion need not detain us here. To start with, the focus can be on identifying 'substratum' words of Indian sprachbund. Such words can be identified in one or more of the ancient Indian languages which are recorded in comparative lexicons of Indo-Aryan and Dravidian and in Munda etyma. See: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~reid/Combined%20Files/A40.%201996.%20Current%20SE%20A sia%20linguistic%20research--rev%2011-07-09.pdf The Current State of Linguistic Research on the Relatedness of the Language Families of East and Southeast Asia (1996). Such substratum words could be hypothesised to constitute lexemes of 'Indus language'. Such substrtum words are likely to have been retained in more than one language of the Indian sprachbund, irrespective of the language-family to which a particular language belongs. This is the justification for the identification, in comparative lexicons, of sememes with cognate lexemes from languages such as Gujarati, Marathi, Kannada, Santali, Munda or Toda or Kota. The underlying assumption is that the substratum words were absorbed into the particular languages either as borrowings or as morphemes subjected to phonetic changes over time. There is no linguistic technique available to 'date' a particular sememe and relate it to the technical processes which resulted in naming, for example, the metalware or furnaces/smelters used to create metals and cast the metals or alloys and forge them. It is remarkable, indeed, that hundreds of cognate lexemes have been retained in more than one language to facilitate rebus readings of hieroglyphs. An example can be cited to elucidate the point made in this argument. The word attested in 331

Rigveda is ayas, often interpreted as 'metal or bronze'. The cognate lexemes are ayo 'iron' (Gujarati. Santali) ayaska 'excellent quantity of iron' (Panini), k 'tools, pots and pans of metalware' (Marathi). A blacksmith; Vj.3.5. a. [- -] Going, moving; nimble. N. (-) 1 Iron ( ; ukra 4.169. $ R.8.43. -2 Steel. -3 Gold. -4 A metal in general. Ayaska 1 an iron-arrow. -2 excellent iron. -3 a large quantity of iron. __(__) 1 beloved of iron, a magnet, load-stone; 2 a precious stone; _ a loadstone; ayaskra 1 an iron-smith, blacksmith (Skt.Apte) ayas-kntamu. [Skt.] n. The loadstone, a magnet. Ayaskruu. n. A black smith, one who works in iron. ayassu. N. ay-mayamu. [Skt.] adj. made of iron (Te.) yas n. metal, iron RV. Pa. ay nom. Sg. N. and m., aya n. iron, Pk. Aya n., Si. Ya. AYACRA, AYASKA, *AYASKA. Addenda: yas : Md. Da iron, dafat piece of iron. ayaska m.n. a quantity of iron, excellent iron P. Ga. Viii.3.48 [ YAS, KAA A]Si.yakaa iron.*ayaska iron hammer. [ YAS, KUU A1] Pa. ayka, ayak m.; Si. Yakuasledge hammer, yavua (< ayka) (CDIAL 590, 591, 592). Cf. Lat. Aes , aer-is for as-is ; Goth. Ais , Thema aisa; Old Germ. E7r , iron ;Goth. Eisarn ; Mod. Germ. Eisen. aduru native metal (Ka.); ayil iron (Ta.) ayir, ayiram any ore (Ma.); ajirda karba very hard iron (Tu.)(DEDR 192). Ta. Ayil javelin, lance, surgical knife, lancet.Ma. ayil javelin, lance; ayiri surgical knife, lancet. (DEDR 193). Aduru = gan.iyinda tegadu karagade iruva aduru = ore taken from the mine and not subjected to melting in a furnace (Ka. Siddhnti Subrahmaya astris new interpretation of the Amarakoa, Bangalore, Vicaradarpana Press, 1872, p.330); adar = fine sand (Ta.); ayir iron dust, any ore (Ma.) Kur. Adar the waste of pounded rice, broken grains, etc. Malt. Adru broken grain (DEDR 134). Ma. Au thin, slender;ayir, ayiram iron dust.Ta. ayir subtlety, fineness, fine sand, candied sugar; ? atar fine sand, dust. . ayir, n. 1. Subtlety, fineness; . (__.) 2. [M. ayir.] Fine sand; . (. 92.) ayiram, n. Candied sugar; ayil, n. cf. ayas. 1. Iron; 2. Surgical knife, lancet; Javelin, lance; ayilava, Skanda, as bearing a javelin (DEDR 341).Tu. gadar a lump (DEDR 1196) kadara m. iron goad for guiding an elephant lex. (CDIAL 2711). The rebus reading is provided by the fish hieroglyph which reads in Munda languages:

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<ayu?>(A) {N} ``^fish. #1370. <yO>\\<AyO>(L) {N} ``^fish. #3612. <kukkulEyO>,,<kukkuliyO>(LMD) {N} ``prawn. !Serango dialect. #32612. <sArjAjyO>,,<sArjAj>(D) {N} ``prawn. #32622. <magur-yO>(ZL) {N} ``a kind of ^fish. *Or.<>. #32632. <ur+Gol-Da-yO>(LL) {N} ``a kind of ^fish. #32642.<bal.bal-yO>(DL) {N} ``smoked fish. #15163. Vikalpa: Munda: <aDara>(L) {N} ``^scales of a fish, sharp bark of a tree.#10171. So<aDara>(L) {N} ``^scales of a fish, sharp bark of a tree. Indian mackerel Ta. Ayirai, acarai, acalai loach, sandy colour, Cobitis thermalis; ayilai a kind of fish. Ma. Ayala a fish, mackerel, scomber; aila, ayila a fish; ayira a kind of small fish, loach (DEDR 191) A beginning has been made presenting over 8000 semantic clusters of Indo-Aryan, Dravidian and Munda words in a comparative Indian

Lexicon. http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/sarasvati/html/indlexmain.htmTo these clusters,

a Tocharian cluster may also have to be incorporated since the recognition of Tocharian as an Indo-European language. Pinault identifies ancu 'iron' in Toharian and compares it with amu which is a synonym of soma in early texts of Indian tradition, starting with the Rgveda. http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/09/decipherment-of-soma-and-ancientindo.html Identification of Soma and notes on lexeme corpora of ancient Indian languages. Soma-haoma, *sauma ? somnakay ! samanom ! *haeusomThe 4th millennium BCE heralded the arrival of a veritable revolution in technology -- the making of tin bronzes to complement arsenical bronzes. Contemporaneous with this metallurgical revolution was the invention of writing systems which evolved from early tokens and bullae to categorise commodities and provide for their accounting systems using advanced tokens with writing as administrative devices. Remarkable progress has been made ever since Kuiper identified a stunning array of glosses which were found in early Samskrtam and which were not explained by Indo-Aryan or IndoEuropean language evolution chronologies. This is noted by Witzel in http://archiv.ub.uniheidelberg.de/savifadok/112/1/AryanandnonAryan_1999.pdf While Witzel presents some examples drawn from Kuiper in the context of a time-period from 2nd millenium BCE, it is likely that many of the words in Indian sprachbund may relate to substratum words of earlier millennia, in particular, the millennia which saw the emergence of the bronze-age and metallurgical repertoire of revolutionary proportions requiring long-distance trade involving sea333

faring merchants from Meluhha, the Ancient Near East and the Levant. On meluhha-mleccha, see: http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.3800 Indus script corpora, archaeo-metallurgy and Meluhha (Mleccha) Cuneiform texts attest to the presence of Meluhha settlements. http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/04/bronze-age-writing-in-ancient-neareast.html On Munda lexemes in Sanskrit see: [F.B.J. Kuiper, Proto-Munda Words in Sanskrit, Amsterdam, Verhandeling der Koninklijke Nederlandsche Akademie Van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks Deel Li, No. 3, 1948] http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/sarasvati/dictionary/9MUNDA.HTM Kuiper's brilliant exposition begins: "Some hundred Sanskrit and Prakrit words are shown to be derived from the Proto-Munda branch of the Austro-Asiatic source. The term 'Proto-Munda' is used to indicate that the Munda languages had departed considerably from the Austro-Asiatic type of language as early as the Vedic period... a process of 'Dravidization' of the Munda tongues... contributing to the growth of the Indian linguistic league (sprachbund)." This concept of sprachbund is elaborated further in Emeneau, Masica and Southworth and in the following links: Emeneau, Murray B., The Indian linguistic area revisited, International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics 3, 1974, 92-134 Gonda, J. Old Indian. Leiden-K ln:Brill 1971 Grierson, G. Linguistic Survey of India. Calcutta: Office of the superintendent of government printing, India 1903-22. Kuiper, F.B.J., The Genesis of a Linguistic Aera. IIJ 10, 1967, 81-102. Masica, Colin P. Defining a Linguistic Area. South Asia. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1971 Mayrhofer, M. Kurzgefasstes etymologisches W rterbuch des Altindischen. Heidelberg 19561976. (KEWA) Pinault, G. Reflets dialectaux en vdique ancien. In: Colette Caillat (ed.), Dialects dans les littratures indo-aryennes. Paris : Institut de Civilisation Indienne 1989, 35-96. Pinnow, Heinz-Jrgen. Untersuchungen zu den altindischen Gewssernamen. [PhD Diss.] Freie Universitt Berlin 1951. Salomon, Richard. The Three Cursed Rivers of the East, and their Significance for the Historical Geography of Ancient India. Adyar Library Bulletin 42, 1978, 31-60 334

Shaffer, R. Nahli, A linguistic study in paleoethnography. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 5, 1940, 346-371 Sircar, D.C. Indian Epigraphical Glossary. Delhi 1966 Southworth, Franklin, 2004, Linguistic Archaeology of South Asia A hypothesis which governs the identification of Indus script cipher is that metallurgical lexemes found in languages of the Indian sprachbund are traceable to the 'Indus language' which is found in the evidence of hieroglyphs of Indus writing which used the substratum sounds of words of the metallurgical civilization. There is evidence for reconstructing the 'Indus language' from references in ancient texts both in cuneiform archives and in Samskrtam to Meluhha-mleccha as spoken languages of one group of people called dahyu (concordant daha -- Old Iranian). http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/dahyu- DAHYU (OIr. dahyu-), attested in Avestan daxiiu-, dahu- country (often with reference to the people inhabiting it. A clue to the intensity of interactions in the Ancient Near East domain is found in two cognate words: harosheth, 'smithy of nations' (Hebrew) and kharo, name of an early writing system. http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/08/proto-indian-in-harosheth-hagoyim.html Proto-Indian in harosheth hagoyim (S.Kalyanaraman 2012)

That Indus writing continued as a legacy in kharo and brhm writing systems is an unfinished hypothesis. (cf. the work of Subhash Kak on Indus script-brhm link and BV Subbarayappa on numeral systems of writing). One view is that kharo writing system is evolved from PhoenianAramaic in the context of trade in civilization contact areas of Ancient Near East. Some work is in progress on kharo documents of ancient Bauddham texts. See the note by Richard Salomon at http://wordpress.tsadra.org/?p=291 The University of Washington Early Buddhist 335

Manuscripts Project: Rediscovering the Worlds Oldest Buddhist Manuscripts. Susa was a settlement which was founded around 4000 BCE and had yielded a number of tablets inscribed in Proto-Elamite writing with apparent cuneiform script. Based on the evidence of cuneiform records of contacts with Meluhha, Magan and Dilmun, and the context of the evolving bronze-age, it is possible to evaluate Indus writing in Susa and provide a framework for deciphering Indus writing using the underlying Meluhha language. Judges 4:16 reads: "Now

Barak chased the chariots and the army all the way to Harosheth Hagoyim. Sisera's whole army died by the edge of the sword; not even one survived!" The reason for the use of the phrase
harosheth hagoyim smithy of nations is possibly, awidespread presence of smithy in many bronze- and iron-age settlements, some of which might have produced metallic war-chariots. Indus writing which starts ca. 3500 BCE was a sequel to the system of using tokens and tallies to record property transactions. There is evidence for the presence of Meluhhan settlements in Susa and neighboring regions. Susa finds of cylinder seals and seal impressions, bas-relief of spinner and a ritual basin with hieroglyphs of Indus writing can be consistently interpreted in the Meluhhan language in the context of the evolving bronze-age trade ransactions.kharo (cognate with harosheth) was a syllabic writing system with intimations of contacts with Aramaic writing system. Though early evidences of kharo documents are dated to ca. early 5th century BCE, it is likely that some form of contract documentation using a protoform of kharo was perhaps used by artisans and traders, across a vast interaction area which covered a wide geographic area from Kyrgystan (Tocharian) to Haifa (Israel, Seaport on Mediterranean Ocean) across Sarasvati-Sindu river-basins, Tigris-Euphrates doab, Caspian Sea, and Mediterranean Ocean of three civilizations Indus, Mesopotamia and Egypt. The evidence of about 6000 Indus script inscriptions provides the details of products traded in this harosheth hagoyim, a smithy of nations, indeed.

Shape of a token representing one ingot of metal, Susa, Iran, ca. 3300 BCE. Many such shapes are found on miniature tablets with Indus writing. Miniature tables account for over 9% of Indus writing corpora. Many miniature tablets are of the size of a human thumbnail. 336

Three miniature tablets, measure about 1.25 inches long by 0.5 inches wide are shown on this image.

http://www.imsc.res.in/~sitabhra/meetings/school10/Nisha_Chennai2010_special_lecture.pdf

Iravatham Mahadevan compares writing on a miniature tablet with the writing in Sulur dish. Source: http://www.harappa.com/arrow/megalithic-inscription.html The text on Harappa miniature tablet can be seen on h351A, B, C tablet three sides shown on Indus writing corpora. http://docs5.chomikuj.pl/76090809,PL,0,0,Iravatham-Mahadevan---A-MegalithicPottery-Inscription-and-a-Harappa-Tablet-A-case-of-extraordinary-resemblance---figures.pdf 337

See the text on Altyn-tepe seal which is comparable to a text on Harappa miniature tablet Text 4500 on an incised Harappa miniature tablet.

Altyn-tepe seals compare with an inscription on a miniature tablet, Text 4500 (Harappa. Incised miniature tablet; not illustrated). Line 2 of inscription: A pair of harrows glyph: dula pair; rebus dul cast (metal); aar harrow; rebus: aduru native metal. Thus, the duplicated harrow glyph read rebus: cast native metal. Glyph: svastika; rebus: jasta zinc (Kashmiri). Glyph three liner strokes: kolmo three; rebus: kolami smithy. Line 1 of inscription: Ligatured glyph: cunda musk-rat; rebus: cundakra ivory turner; kolmo three; rebus: kolami smithy. Thus the Text 4500 on an incised miniature tablet read rebus: ivory turner smithy; cast native metal, tin, smithy. [ kae ] kae. [Tel.] n. A head or ear of millet or maize. . Mth. k stack of stalks of large millet(CDIAL 3023). Rebus: kafurnace, fire-altar, consecrated fire. Rebus: khtools, pots and pans, and metal-ware. h337, h338 Texts 4417, 4426 with two glyphs each on leaf-shaped, miniature Harappa tablets. Glyph; goe a rats hole (DEDR 1660). Pk. kara -- , kla, ka, koa n. hole, hollow ; Or. koraa hollow in a tree, cave, hole ; H. (X *khla --2) khoar m. pit, hollow in a tree , khor m.; Si.kovua rotten tree (< *kalla -- with H. Smith JA 1950, 197, but not < Pa. kpa -- ). (CDIAL 3496). Rebus: [kha] ingot, wedge; A mass of metal (unwrought or of old metal melted down). (Maratthi) khof alloy (Lahnda) Hence [khasa] a ( & from ) Alloyed--a metal. (Marathi) Bshk. kho embers , Phal. kho ashes, burning coal ; L. kho alloyed , aw. kho forged ; P. kho m. base, alloy M.kho alloyed , (CDIAL 3931) Kor. (O.)

gaa four (Santali); rebus: furnace, ka fire-altar

338

Glyph: kolomcob; rebus: kolmo seedling, rice (paddy) plant (Munda.) A miniature, incised tablet from Harappa h329A has a fish-shaped tablet with two signs: fish + arrow (which combination was also pronounced as ayaska on a bos indicus seal Kalibangan032).

The dotted circle (eye) is decoded rebus as ka aperture (Tamil); k hole (Gujarati) (i.e. glyph showing dotted-circle); ka one eye and these glyphs may have been interpreted as the fish-eyes or eye stones (Akkadian IGI-HA, IGI-KU6) mentioned in Mesopotamian texts. ayo fish 9Mu.); rebus: aya = iron (G.); ayah, ayas = metal (Skt.) kai stone (Kannada) ka Copper (Tamil) ka , n. < . stone (Tamil) (Marathi) is metal, nodule, stone, lump.kai stone (Kannada) with Tadbhava khau. khau, ka stone/nodule (metal). . Ga. (Oll.) kan, (S.) kanu (pl. kankil) stone (DEDR 1298). These could be the substratum glosses for ka in ayas ka excellent iron (Pan.) metal tools, pots and pans and metal-ware. h329A has a fish-shaped tablet with two signs: fish + arrow (which has been decoded asayaska on a bos indicus seal). The fish-eye is a reinforcement of the gloss kstone/nodule (metal). The dotted circle (eye) is decoded rebus as ka aperture (Tamil); k hole (Gujarati) (i.e. glyph showing dotted-circle); ka one eye and these glyphs may have been interpreted as the fish-eyes or eye stones (Akkadian IGI-HA, IGI-KU6) mentioned in Mesopotamian texts. The commodities denoted may be nodules of mined stones/nodules of chalcopyrite. See Annex. Eye stones elucidating, based on textual and archaeological contexts, that fish-eyes do NOT refer to pearls. While one surmises that they refer to agate stones, it can be evidenced that the glyphs of dotted circles denoting fish-eyes or antelope-eyes, refer to stone/nodules of mineral (perhaps, chalcopyrite) or tools, pots and pans and metal-ware, decoded rebus as k as in ayaska excellent iron. Combination of fish glyph and four-short-linear-strokes circumgraph also pronounced the same text ayaska on another bos indicus seal m1118. This seal uses circumgraph of four short linear strokes which included a morpheme which was pronounced variantly as gaa four (Santali).

339

Thus, the circumgraph of four linear strokes used on m1118 Mohenjo-daro seal was an allograph for arrow glyph used on h329A Harappa tablet. The hieroglyphic use of fish glyph on Indus writing resolves the transactions related fish-eyes traded between Ur and Meluhha mentioned in cuneiform texts as related to ayas fish and khof alloyed metal: A hole or a diotted-circle glyph may denote a word which was pronounced khof alloyed metal. [ kha ] f A mass of metal (unwrought or of old metal melted down); an ingot or wedge. Hence [ khasa ] a ( & from ) Alloyed--a metal. (Marathi) Bshk. kho embers, Phal. kho ashes, burning coal; L. khof alloy, impurity, alloyed, aw. kho forged; P. kho m. base, alloy M.kho alloyed (CDIAL 3931)

Kor. (O.) goe a rats hole (DEDR 1660). Pk. kara -- , kla, ka, koa n. hole, hollow ;
Or. koraa hollow in a tree, cave, hole ; H. (X *khla -- 2) khoar m. pit, hollow in a tree , khor m.; Si.kovua rotten tree (< *kalla -- with H. Smith JA 1950, 197, but not < Pa. kpa -- ). (CDIAL 3496). Thus, the dotted circle glyph may be distinguished from a wort glyph (which is a blob or small lump). The dotted circle denotes: khaa tools, pots and pans and metal-ware [quote] The suggestion that fish-eyes (IGI.HA, IGI-KU6), imported through Ur, may have been pearls has been advanced by a number of scholars. Fish-eyes were among a number of valuable commodities (gold, copper, lapis lazuli, stone beads) offered in thanksgiving at the temple of the Sumerian goddess Ningal at Ur by seafaring merchants who had returned safely from Dilmun and perhaps further afield. Elsewhere they are said to have been bought in Dilmun. Whether fish-eyes differed from fish-eye stones (NA4 IGI.HA, NA4 IGI-KU6) and from simply 340

eye-stones is not entirely clear. The latter are included among goods imported from Meluhha (NA4 IGI-ME-LUH-HA) ca. 1816-1810 BCE and ca. 1600-1570 BCE. Any pearls from Meluhha probably coastal Baluchistan-Sind would have been generally inferior to those from Dilmun itself. It has been strongly argued that fish-eyes, fish-eye stones and eye-stones in Old Babylonian and Akkadian texts were not in fact pearls, but rather (a) etched cornelian beads, imported from India and/or (b) pebbles of banded agate, cut to resemble closely a black/brown pupil and white cornea. The nearest source of good agate is in northwest India, which would accord with supplies obtained from Meluhha. Eye-stones of agate were undoubtedly treasured: some were inscribed and used as amulets, others have been found in votive deposits. Perhaps pearls were at times included among fish-eyes, if not fish-eye stones. More likely, however, the word for pearl is among the more than 800 terms in the lexical lists of stones and gems [that] remain to be identified.[unquote] (Donkin, R.A., 1998, Beyond price: pearls and pearl-fishing: origins to the age of discoveries, Philadelphia, American Philosophical Society, Memoir Volume 224, pp.49-50)Full text at http://tinyurl.com/y9zpb5n Note 109. For Sumerian words, see Delitzch, 1914: pp.18-19 (igi, eye), 125 (ku, fish), 195 (na, stone); and cf. Chicago Assyrian Dictionary I/J: 1960: pp.45 (iga), 153-158 (Akk. i_nu), N(2), 1980: p.340 (k), fish-eye stones.Note 110. A.L. Oppenheim, 1954: pp.7-8; Leemans, 1960b: pp.24 f. (IGI-KU6). Followed by Kramer, 1963a: p.113, 1963b: p.283; Bibby, 1970: pp.189, 191-192: Ratnagar, 1981: pp.23-24,79, 188; M. Rice, 1985: p.181.Note 111. A.L. Oppenheim, 1954: p.11; Leemans, 1960b: p.37 (NA4 IGI-KU6, fish-eye stones).Note 112. Leemans, 1968: p.222 (pearls from Meluhha.Falkenstein (1963: pp.10-11 [12]) has augenformigen Perlen aus Meluhha. (lit. shaped eyes beads from Meluhha). Examples of miniature tablets which are an expansion of the token shapes of ancient Near East may be seen with Indus writing on the following 7 clusters of images. The writing deploys hieroglyphs. On one stream of evolution, the wedge-shape becomes a glyphic component of cuneiform writing; on another stream of evolution, the token-shapes get deployed with Indus writing. That this deployment is closely related to the bronze-age revolution of tin- and zincbronzes and other metal alloys has been demonstrated by the cipher using rebus readings of hieroglyphs with the underlying sounds of lexemes evidenced from lexemes of Indian sprachbund:

341

342

343

344

Most of the hieroglyphs on these tablets have been read rebus using the underlying sounds of substratum lexemes in Indian sprachbund languages which are veritable substratum meluhha/mleccha lexemes. Further language studies on the sprachbund will help identify the cluster of glosses related to metalware starting from ca. 4th millennium BCE in the linguistic area. It has been demonstrated in the context of HARP discoveries that the tablets could have been used to document metallurgical accounting transactions from furnace/ smelter to working platforms and from working platforms into the warehouse for further documentation on seals and documentation of janga 'entrustment articles' transactions through jangaiyo 'couriers, military guards who accompany treasure into the treasury' (Gujarati). Ancient Near East evidence for mleccha (meluhha) language from ancient texts (Update: June 14, 2013)

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A personal cylinder seal of Shu-ilishu, a translator of the Meluhhan language (Expedition 48 (1): 42-43) with cuneiform writing exists. The rollout of Shu-ilishus cylinder seal. Courtesy of the Dpartement des Antiquits Orientales, Muse du Louvre, Paris. "The presence in Akkad of a translator of the Meluhhan language suggests that he may have been literate and could read the undeciphered Indus script. This in turn suggests that there may be bilingual Akkadian/Meluhhan tablets somewhere in Mesopotamia. Although such documents may not exist, Shu-ilishu's cylinder seal offers a glimmer of hope for the future in unraveling the mystery of the Indus script." (Gregory L. Possehl,Shu-ilishu's cylinder seal, Expedition, Vol. 48, Number 1, pp. 42-43).http://www.penn.museum/documents/publications/expedition/PDFs/481/What%20in%20the%20World.pdf

Meluhha is cognate mleccha. Beyond the Mahbhrata incident in which Vidura is said to have alerted Yudhiira in Mleccha bh, evidence is provided on mleccha (cognate meluhha) language from ancient texts. Addendum (June 13, 2013): Manu (10.45) underscores the linguistic area: rya vcas mleccha vcas te sarve dasyuvah smth [trans. both rya speakers and mleccha speakers (that is, both speakers of literary dialect and colloquial or vernacular dialect) are all remembered as dasyu]. Dasyu is a general reference to people. Dasyu is cognate with dasa, which in Khotanese language means man. It is also cognate with daha, a word which occurs in Persepolis inscription of Xerxes...http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1204/1204.3800.pdf A reference to mleccha as language, bh, in Bharata's Nyastra: XVIII. 80 ] RULES ON THE USE OF LANGUAGES 827 The Common Language

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28. The Common Language prescribed for use [on the stage] has various forms 1 . It contains [many] words of Barbarian {mleccha) origin and is spoken in Bharata-varsa [only] Note: 28 (C.26b-27a; B.XVII.29b-30a). 'Read vividha-jatibhasa ; vividha (ca, da in B.) for dvividha. 'The common speech or the speech of the commoners is distinguished here from that of the priests and the nobility by describing it as containing words of Barbarian (mleccha) origin. These words seem to have been none other than vocables of the Dravidian and Austric languages. They entered Indo-Aryan pretty early in its history. See S. K. Chatterji, Origin and Development of the Bengali Language, Calcutta, 1926 pp. 42,178.' Source: Natya Shastra of Bharata Muni in english THE NATYASASTRA A Treatise on Hindu Dramaturgy and Histrionics Ascribed to B H A R A T A - M r X I Vol. I. ( Chapters I-XXVII ) Completely translated jor the jirst tune from the original Sanskrit tuttri u Introduction and Various Notes, Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta http://archive.org/stream/NatyaShastraOfBharataMuniVolume1/NatyaShastraOfBharataMuniVol ume1_djvu.txt 1 4 | I.11 - 12 {6/8} 1 4 | I.11 - 12 {7/8} mleccha ha vai ea yat apaabda .~( mlecch m bhma iti adhyeyam vykaraam .~

V.118.5 - 119.12 {20/36} mlecchitam vispaena iti eva anyatra .~( tasmt brhmaena na mlecchitavai na apabhitavai .~(

Patanjali explains in the context of ungrammatical mleccha with apaabda . (Patanjali: Mahbhya). http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/10/road-to-meluhha-dt-potts-1982.html

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/02/indian-hieroglyphs-meluhha-and-archaeo.html

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These are samples of results of my enquiry into mleccha vcas as distinguished from rya

vcas (Manu). I have detailed more in my book on Indus writing in ancient near
East.http://www.amazon.com/Indus-Writing-ancient-NearEast/dp/0982897189/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371088202&sr=8-1&keywords=indus+writing

Vatsyayana attests mlecchitavikalpa as a cipher, one of the 64 arts to be learnt together with deabh jnnam and akaramuika kathanam. Patanjali elaborates on mleccha as a dialect. There is a lot of textual data on people as distinct from language -both mleccha and rya as dasyu (cf. OIr. daha) and as dwpavsinah.

Addendum (June 14, 2003):

I do not know when the word 'ayas' came into vogue. It is as old as Rgveda. The semantics of this word may hold the key in revisiting our language chronologies. I find the following DEDR (Dravidian etyma) entries intriguing:

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aduru native metal (Ka.); ayil iron (Ta.) ayir, ayiram any ore (Ma.); ajirda karba very hard iron (Tu.)(DEDR 192). I do not know how aduru evolved or is phonetically cognate vis-a-vis ayo 'iron' (Gujarati). There is a very specific explanation for the Kannada word: aduru = gaiyinda tegadu karagade iruva aduru = ore taken from the mine and not subjected to melting in a furnace (Kannada. Siddhnti Subrahmaya stris new interpretation of the Amarakoa, Bangalore,Vicaradarpana Press, 1872, p. 330)

One intriguing semantic may be cited, again, in the context of the bronze-age. There are two compounds: milakkhu rajanam 'copper-coloured' (Pali), mleccha mukha 'copper' (Samskrtam)

Why mleccha mukha? I think the lexeme mukha isa substrate lexeme mh 'face, ingot' (Munda. Santali etc.); it is possible that mleccha mukha may refer to 'copper ingot'. m h = the quantity of iron produced at one time in a native smelting furnace (Santali) Mleccha, language. Mleccha, copper.

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How do semantic associations occur in human interactions as languages evolve? The other meaning of mh 'face' (CDIAL 10158) explains why a face glyph gets ligatured in Indus writing to clear composite hieroglyphs to create mlecchitavikalpa (cipher mentioned by Vtsyyana) .

See, for example, Seal m0302 (Mohenjo-daro) which shows a 'human face' ligatured to an 'elephant trunk' etc. See other examples on Seals m1179 and m1186A (Mohenjo-daro). The seal m0302 also has the uniquitous fish glyphs denoting ayo 'fish' (Munda stream). ibha 'elephant' (Samskrtam) ibbho 'merchant' (Hemacandra Desinmamla -Gujarati) ib 'iron' (Santali). There is a Railway station, a village called Ib near Bokaro (with a steel plant in the

iron ore belt) on the Howrah-Mumbai rail-route :)--

I do not have the competence to suggest dates for the lexemes which were absorbed into various languages of the language union. Some call them borrowings, some call them substratum. Who knows?

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Reconstructing mleccha (meluhha) beyond identification of glosses is a very tall order and I have no competence whatsoever to take up the task. I have, however, produced a comparative lexicon for the India sprachbund with over 8000 semantic clusters. If it is validated, it could be a beginning to suggest phonetic and morphemic evolution and formation of languages such as Marathi or Bengali or Oriya. Syntax can only be inferred based on evidences provided in early Samskrtam-Prakrtam dramas of the type mentioned in Bharata's Nyastra. Bloch has done pioneering work on Marathi. Similar work has to be done for all languages of the language union which ancient India nurtured on the banks of River Sarasvati. She is vgdevi and mleccha was a vcas. One thing is clear: if the lexemes related to metalware and metalwork are found as substratum lexemes, the date should be subsequent to the 4th millennium BCE of the bronze-age when tin-bronzes and zinc-bronzes supplemented arsenical bronzes; this was a veritable revolution of the times. Given the rich treasure,Bharata nidhi of ancient Hindu texts such as those of Patanjali or Bhartrhari, we have the work cut out for us to re-evaluate and sharpen our understanding of Bharatiya vk, the ancient spoken idiom. 351

m1179

m1186A

m0302

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Related links:

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-scarf-hieroglyph-on.html Ancient Near East 'scarf' hieroglyph on Warka vase, cyprus bronze stand and on Indus writing Ancient Near East 'scarf' hieroglyph on Warka vase, cyprus bronze stand and on Indus writing

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dhatu 'scarf' Rebus: dhatu 'mineral; eruvai 'reed' Rebus: 'copper'. Alternative: dal bundle of lighted sticks of pine (WPah.) Rebus: hako a large metal ingot (G.) Focus is on the'scarf' hieroglyph ligatured to the reed posts on Warka vase. The narrative of the vase is that ingots of tin and iron are conveyed into the treasury (of minerals and metal ingots) from smithy/forge.

dhatu 'scarf' Rebus: dhatu 'mineral m453B. Scarf as pigtail of seated person.Kneeling adorant and serpent on the field. 354

khaiyo [cf. khaa a tribute] tributary; paying a tribute to a superior king (Gujarti) Rebus: khaaran, kharun pit furnace (Santali)

paa. 'serpent hood' Rebus: pata sharpness (of knife), tempered (metal). padm tempered iron
(Kota) Seated person in penance. Wears a scarf as pigtail and curved horns with embedded stars and a twig. mha The polar star. (Marathi) Rebus: me iron (Ho.) dula pair (Kashmiri); Rebus: dul cast (metal)(Santali) abe, abea large horns, with a sweeping upward curve, applied to buffaloes (Santali) Rebus: ab, himba, hompo lump (ingot?), clot, make a lump or clot, coagulate, fuse, melt together (Santali) kt = bunch of twigs (Skt.) Rebus: kuhi = (smelter) furnace (Santali) The narrative on this metalware catalog is thus: (smelter) furnace for iron and for fusing together cast metal. kamaha penance.Rebus 1: ka stone (ore) metal.Rebus 2:

kampaamint.

m0311 The composite hieroglyph shows a 'tiger + woman' ligatured to a scarf as a pigtail, ram's horns and a twig on the head. kola 'woman'; kol 'tiger' Rebus: kol 'working in iron'. dhatu 'scarf' Rebus: dhatu 'mineral' tagara 'ram' Rebus: tagara 'merchant'; tagara 'tin'. kt = bunch of twigs (Skt.) Rebus: kuhi = (smelter) furnace (Santali) The narrative is that of a (smelter) furnace for iron, merchant tin mineral.

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m1186A Scarves as pigtails on standing and kneeling persons. The kneeling adorant is shown in a posture comparable to that shown on the persons offering prayers to the rising sun on Sit shamshi

bronze.

Sit Shamshi 12th century BCE Tell of the Acropolis, Susa http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvrenotices/sit-shamshi The eight blobs flanking the ziggurat are comparable to the eight 'knobs' on palm-tree on a cylinder seal presented in the following section. It appears that the Sit shamshi bronze is a narrative related to making the alloy of arsenical bronze using dhatu 'minerals' denoted by dagoba (syn. ziggurat).derived from dhatu + garbha 'tope of embedded minerals'. ah m. stalk (Hindi)(CDIAL 5527). Rebus: dhatu 'mineral'. kolmo 'three' Rebus: kolami 'smithy/forge'. dala 'petal' Rebus: ta 'yellow arsenic'. Alternatives: Aaru twig; airi small and thin branch of a tree; aari small branches (Ka.); aaru twig (Tu.)(DEDR 67). Aar = splinter (Santali); rebus: aduru = native metal (Ka.) Vikalpa: kt = bunch of twigs (Skt.) Rebus: kuhi = furnace (Santali) hakhara m.n. branch without leaves or fruit (Prakrit) (CDIAL 5524) Rebus: hangar blacksmith (H.) = a branch of a tree (G.) Rebus: hako = a large ingot (G.) hak = a metal heated and poured into a mould; a solid piece of metal; an ingot (G.)

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er-agu = a bow, an obeisance; er-aguha = bowing, coming down (Kannada) Rebus: eraka copper (Kannada)dhatu 'scarf' Rebus: dhatu 'mineral. kha standing' (Marathi) Rebus: kha f. Hole, mine, cave (CDIAL 3790). khaiyo [cf. khaa a tribute] tributary; paying a tribute to a superior king (Gujarti) Rebus: khaaran, kharun pit furnace (Santali) dhatu 'scarf' Rebus: dhatu 'mineral er-agu = a bow, an obeisance; er-aguha = bowing, coming down (Kannada) Rebus: eraka copper (Kannada) The narrative points to a pit-furnace at a mine. The mineral taken out the mine is indicated by the ficus religiosa leaves stylized as a tree around the standing person. loa 'ficus' Rebus: loh 'copper'. The reference is to a copper mine. The kneeling adorant is in front of the tagara 'antelope' Rebus: tagara 'tin'. The narrative is thus a reference to a pit-furnace for copper and tin dhatu or tin 'mineral'.

Mohenjo-daro seal m1175. Composite animal with scarves on neck. Mohenjo-daro moulded tablets. m1186, m488C adorant with scarf; markhor in front, with rings (or neck-bands, scarves) on neck.

m1179 Mohenjo-daro seal. Markhor or ram with human face in composite hieroglyph with neck-bands or scarves. 357

m he face (Santali) Rebus: m h metal ingot (Santali) m h= the quantity of iron produced at one time in a native smelting furnace (Santali) mleccha-mukha (Skt.) = milakkhu copper (Pali)

mil markhor (Trwl) meho a ram, a sheep (G.)(CDIAL 10120); rebus: mhet, me iron (Mu.Ho.) [scarf glyph is ligatured on the neck of markhor. Scarf [read rebus as dhau m. (also dhahu) m. scarf (WPah.) (CDIAL 6707) Rebus: dhatu minerals (Santali); dhtu mineral (Pali)]. Wavy(curved) lines glyph is relatable to: kui in cmpd. curve (Skt.)(CDIAL 3231). kuhi smelting furnace (Santali) koe forged (metal) (Santali)

358

Top register of Warka vase has a narrative. A couple is identified: a man is holding the face of a bull with his left hand and faces a palm-tree glyph. The accompanying woman is identified by a reed with scarf hanging from atop. The man and woman are standing on stools (or, frames of buildings). The next register below the couple shows an antelope. The narrative reds: tagara 'antelope' Rebus damgar 'merchant', agara cattle rebus: hangar blacksmith (Hindi) dealing with tam(b)ra 'copper'eruvai dhatu 'copper mineral' stone, 359

Thus, merchant/blacksmith dealing with copper mineral stone and copper (metal) are depicted on this segment of the narrative on Warka vase. Bull hieroglyph:

dma, damr young bull (Assamese)(cdial 6184). glyph: *agara1 cattle rebus: hangar blacksmith (Hindi)hkur blacksmith (Maithili) Palm-tree hieroglyph: tamar, palm tree, date palm the rebus reading would be: tam(b)ra, copper (Pkt.) Reed+scarf hieroglyph: eruvai dhatu 'copper mineral'.

eruvai European bamboo reed (Tamil) straight sedge tuber. Ma. eruva a kind of grass. (DEDR
819). Rebus 1: eruvai copper. dhau scarf (WPah.). Rebus: dhatu mineral (Santali). The frames of buildings used in the glyphic composition are hieroglyphs: sg m. frame of a building (M.)(CDIAL 12859) Rebus 1: jangaiyo military guards who accompanies treasure into the treasury (G.) Rebus 2: sangho (G.) cutting stone, gilding (G.); san:gatar = stone cutter; san:gatari = stone-cutting; san:gsru karan.u = to stone (S.) san:ghiyo, a worker on a lathe (G.)

tagara ram (Ta.) Rebus: tamkru, damgar merchant (Akk.)

The palm-tree hieroglyph on Warka vase compares with the palm-tree glyph of goat-fish ligatured hieroglyph on a ritual basin of Susa:

360

Susa. Ritual basin with goat-fish hieroglyphs flanking palm-tree hieroglyph. Jacques de Morgan excavations, 1904-05 Sb 19 Loure Museum. http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/ritual-basindecorated-goatfish-figures

tamar, palm tree, date palm the rebus reading would be: tam(b)ra, copper (Pkt.)
Tin and iron ingots delivered to the temple with ligatured reed-scarf standard: tagara 'antelope' Rebus: tagara 'tin' + kola 'tiger' Rebus: kol 'iron'.

Scarf is a ligature hieroglyph on Ishtar's (aka Inanna's?) pair of reeds (gi[reed]) of Warka vase. Warka was known as Uruk to the ancient Sumerians. The reeds are also described as two looped temple poles or "asherah," symbolising entrance to a temple.

kole.l was a temple, the same lexeme was used for a smithy (Kota language). A cognate was kwala.l in Toda language. The mudhif shown on other artifacts of Sumer has the reed atop the roof. The mudhif is comparable to a Toda mund. I suggest that Toda mund is a cognate of mudhif. The vase was discovered as a collection of fragments by German Assyriologists in their sixth excavation season at Uruk in 1933/1934. The find was recorded as find number W14873 in the expedition's field book under an entry dated 2 January 1934, which read "Groes Gef aus

Alabaster, ca. 96 cm hoch mit Flachrelief" ("large container of alabaster, circa 96 cm high with
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flat-reliefs"). The vase, which showed signs of being repaired in antiquity, stood 3 feet, inches (1 m) tall. The vase has three registers or tiers of carving. Kleiner, Fred S.; Mamiya, Christin J. (2006). Gardner's Art Through the Ages: The Western

Perspective Volume 1 (12th Edition ed.). Belmont, California, USA: Thomson Wadsworth.
pp. 2021. ISBN 0-495-00479-0. Ralf B. Wartke, "Eine Vermitenliste (2): Die "Warka-Vase" aus Bagdad", Frankfurter

Allgemeine Zeitung 26 April 2003, Nbr 97, page 39. English translation. (The author is a deputy director of the Berliner Vorderasiatischen Museums). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warka_Vase
museum number: IM19606 excavation number: W14873 provenience: Uruk dimension(s) (in cm): height: ca. 105; upper diam.: 36 material: stone (alabaster) date: (ca. 3000 BC) description: vase, relief decoration in four registers, showing (bottom to top) rows of plants, sheep (make and female), nude males carrying baskets or jars, and a cultic scene, in which the ruler of city of Uruk delivers provisions to the temple of the goddess Inanna, represented here by two reed bundle standarts--symbols of the goddess--and a woman, probably her priestess ); rim broken; repair piece inserted in antiquity (holes drilled for repair). http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IRAQ/dbfiles/objects/14_2.htm

Presentation of two vases (holding perhaps ingots) in front of a reed with hanging scarf also occurs as a narrative on another Uruk plaque.

dal bundle of lighted sticks of pine (WPah.) Rebus: hako a large metal ingot (G.)

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Uruk bowl with narrative relief sculpture, dated to c. 3,2003,000 BCE.. The artifact also shows a pair of reeds with hanging scarves shown associated with qudrupeds and an eight-petalled flower. Associated quadrupeds: koiyum heifer (G.) [ kiya ] ke, kiya. [Tel.] n. A bullcalf. . k* A young bull. Plumpness, prime. . a pair of bullocks. ke adj. Young. keku. n. A young man.. [ kruke ] kru-ke. [Tel.] n. A bull in its prime. [ kha ] m A young bull, a bullcalf. (Marathi) [ gda ] gda. [Tel.] n. An ox. A beast. kine, cattle.(Telugu) koiyum (G.) Rebus: ko artisans workshop (Kuwi). tagara 'antelope' Rebus: tamkru, damgar merchant (Assyrian);

A cylinder seal shows a pair of reeds with hanging scarves flanking two quadrupeds with a branch with eight petals in the center.

dala 'petal' Rebus: ta 'yellow arsenic'.

Eight petals (daa) denote 8 parts of copper alloyed with one part arsenic, daa to create the brass alloy. are eight (Mu.). Sa. baha`flower, blossom, to flower'.Mu. tarai-ba(A) `a kind of marsh-flower'. ~ baa(H) ~baha(N) `flower, blossom, to flower'.Ho ba `flower, blossom, to flower'.Bh. baha `flower, blossom, to flower'. KW baha|Cf. So. ba'a `to blossom'.@(V021,M111) Rebus:``^make'':Sa. bai `to make'.Mu. bai `to make'.KW bai @(M100). WPah.kg. dhu m. woman's headgear, kerchief , kc. dhau m. (also dhahu m. scarf , J. dh(h)u m. Him.I 105). dhau m. (also dhahu) m. scarf (WPah.) (CDIAL 6707) dhau scarf (WPah.). Rebus: dhatu mineral (Santali). dhtu mineral (Pali) dhtu mineral (Vedic); a mineral, metal (Santali); dhta id. (G.) H. dhn to send out, pour out, cast (metal) (CDIAL 6771).

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Goddess bat in Egyptian hieroglyphic narratives is symbolised by reed + currycomb athwart a pole with a pair of scarves hanging down the pole. The scarves are comparable to the scarves on the reed pole symbolizing entrance to Inanna's temple in Sumer.

One frame of the cybrus bronze stand showing a bronze ingot bearer. A male carrying a scarf on his right hand and fish on his left.ayo fish ayas metal (bronze). dhatu scarf. dhatu mineral.

364

There are two Mohenjo-daro tabletw which show a procession of standard bearers. A drawing of the four standard bearers is also presented. The second standard-bearer from the right carries a scarf on a pole. The scarf is comparable to the reed+scarf hieroglyph on Warka vase.

The first standard bearer from r. may be carrying the glyph 347

or maybe a bead.

kh blob atop standard Rebus: kh alloyed ingots -- dhatu mineral (ore).eruvai copper. eruvai European bamboo reed (Tamil) straight sedge tuber. Ma. eruva a kind of grass. (DEDR
819). Rebus 1: eruvaicopper (Tamil). Alternative: k m. the stalk or stem of a reed, grass, or the like, straw. In the compound with dan 5 (p. 221a, l. 13) the word is spelt k. k m. stalk of a reed, straw (Kashmiri); k n. trunk, stem (Marathi); Or.ka, k stalk (Oriya); k stem of muja grass (used for thatching) (Bihari); kn m. stalk of the reed Sara (Lahnda)(CDIAL 3023). Rebus:Tu. kandka, kandaka ditch, trench. Te. kandakamu id. Kona kanda trench made as a fireplace during weddings. Pe. Kanda fire trench. Kui kanda small trench for fireplace. Malt. kandri a pit.(DEDR 1214).khaaran, kharun pit furnace (Santali) Rebus 2: kh metal tools, pots and pans.

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A pair (of reeds): dulapair. Rebus: dul cast (metal).h097 Pict-95: Seven robed figures (with pigtails, twigs) dhatu scarf.(WPah.) Rebus: dhatu mineral.(Santali) ?ea seven (Santali); rebus: ?eh-ku steel (Telugu) kola 'woman' Rebus: kol 'pancaloha, alloy of 5 metals' (Tamil) bahula_ = Pleiades (Skt.) Rebus: bagala = an Arab boat of a particular description (Kannada); Sumerian mudhif facade, with uncut reed fonds and sheep entering, carved into a gypsum trough from Uruk, c. 3200 BCE (British Museum WA 120000). Photo

source. See also: Expedition 40:2 (1998), p. 33, fig. 5b Uruk trough. The carving on the side shows a procession of sheep (a goat and a ram) approaching a reed hut (of a type still found in southern Iraq) and two lambs emerging. The mudhif (Toda mund) is shown symbolised by a a prif of reeds with a hanging scarf atop either side of the roof.

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Six circles decorated on the reed post are semantic determinants of hieroglyph: bhaa six. Rebus: bhaa furnace.

The association of the reed (with a curved loop) and a scarf hanging from the pole is thus emphatically associated with a temple, a mudhif (Toda mund) . The procession of quadrupeds emerging out of the mudhif are seen to represent pasara 'cattle' rebus: pasra 'smithy, forge'. Glyph: petal: [daamu] daamu. [Skt.] n. A leaf. . A petal. A part, . dala n. leaf, petal MBh. Pa. Pk. dala -- n. leaf, petal , G. M. da n.(CDIAL 6214). <DaLO>(MP) {N} ``^branch, ^twig''. *Kh.<DaoRa>(D) `dry leaves when fallen', ~<daura>, ~<dauRa> `twig', Sa.<DAr>, Mu.<Dar>, ~<Dara> `big branch of a tree', ~<DauRa> `a twig or small branch with fresh leaves on it', So.<kOn-da:ra:-n> `branch', H.<DalA>, B.<DalO>, O.<DaLO>, Pk.<DAlA>. %7811. #7741.(Munda etyma) Rebus 1: tam Yellow orpiment (Tamil) [ takamu ] takamu. [Skt.] n. Yellow orpiment. Yellow sulphuret of arsenic. , . Pa. haritla -- m. yellow orpiment , Pk*. harila -, halira -- m.n.,(CDIAL 13987). hartl f. (sg. dat. hartli ), orpiment, 367

sulphuret of arsenic, yellow arsenic, ratsbane. [ haridaamu ] or hari-

daamu. [from Skt. .] n. Yellow orpiment, Arsenicum flavum. . gold coloured orpiment, auripigmentum.

Glyph: la1 m. branch l. 2. *hla -- . 3. *ha -- . [Poss. same as *dla -- 1 and dra -- 1: dal, d&rcirclemacr;. But variation of form supports PMWS 64 Mu.] 1. Pk. la -- n. branch ; S. ru m. large branch , r f. branch ; P. l m. branch , l m. large do. , l f. twig ; WPah. bhal. m. branch ; Ku. lo m. tree ; N. lo branch , A. B. l, Or. a; Mth. r branch , ri twig ; Aw. lakh. r branch , H. l, l m., G.i, f., n. 2. A. hl branch , li twig ; H. hl, l m. leafy branch (esp. one lopped off) . 3. Bhoj. h branch ; M. ha m. loppings of trees , h m. leafy branch , f. twig , h m. sprig , f. branch . (CDIAL 5546).

Glyph: dlati intr. cracks, splits Sur., dalayati tr. Dhtup. dala2 n. piece split off, fragment Sur., a half VarBrS. [~ dara -- 2. -- Cf. dala -- 1. -- dal1]Pk. dala -- n. piece ; K. dj f. small piece of cloth, small plot of ground (e.g. seed -- bed) ; S. aru m. a breadth of cloth ; WPah.jaun. dal bundle of lighted sticks of pine; B. dal fragment, thickness (of a board, &c.) ; M. da n. half (CDIAL 6213, 6216). dalinsu. v. t. To cut, split, divide. , . daanamu. n. Breaking, cutting, severing. , . Rebus: hako a large metal ingot (G.) sango a lathe (G.); aghai = a pot for holding fire (G.) sango a lathe (G.); on sga part of a turner's apparatus (M.); sg part of a turner's apparatus by which the piece to be turned is confined (Tu.)(CDIAL 12859). sgaa That member and steadied. To take into linkedness or close connection with, lit. fig. (Marathi) [ sg ] f The machine within which a turner confines and steadies the piece he has to turn. (Marathi) sangho (G.) cutting stone, gilding (G.); san:gatar = stone cutter; san:gatari = stonecutting; san:gsru karan.u = to stone (S.) san:ghiyo, a worker on a lathe (G.) A note on Ziggurat and Dageba 368

Ziggurat evolves into dageba which should originally have been a square structure multiplied.

As both construction technology and the importance of the stupa as a religious form developed, the single square base multiplied and the mound was raised even higher on several tiers. The stupa above, found in Pagan, Burma, is a good example of this. The three multiplied square bases are comparable to the ziggurat structure shown on Sit Shamshi bronze.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-jangad-accounting-for.html Ancient Near East janga accounting for mercantile transactions-- evidence of Indus writing presented. Ancient Near East janga accounting for mercatile transactions-- evidence of Indus writing presented.

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Dwaraka 1, h594. Harappa seal., m1171, m1175 sga f. a body formed of two or more fruits or animals or men &c. linked together (Marathi)(CDIAL 12859). sg m. frame of a building (M.)(CDIAL 12859) sangar, s.m. (2nd) A breastwork of stones, etc., erected to close a pass or road; lines, entrenchments.(Pashto) sgo, sgaa(lathe/portable furnace) sangai. n. A couple, pair (Telugu) Rebus: 1. sngatarsu stone-cutter, stonecarver. lit. to collect stones, stone-cutter, mason. (Hindi) sangho (G.) cutting stone, gilding (Gujarati) 2. sangara [fr. sa+g] promise, agreement J iv.105, 111, 473; v.25, 479 (Pali) 3. janga id. (Hindi. Gujarati.Marathi)

sagha -- , aga -- m., -- f. pair (Prakrit)(CDIAL 12859) sangai. n. A couple,

pair (Telugu) cf. Pairing of two hieroglyphs into a composite standard device (as shown in the diagram below).with two distinct components: lathe (gimlet) and (portable) furnace both denoted by lexeme:sanga The word is read rebus for janga good entrusted on approval basis.

sga float made of two canoes joined together (Marathi) (LM 417 compares saggarai at
Limurike in the Periplus, Tamil. agaam, Tulu. jagala double -- canoe ) Si. sangaa pair, hangua, ang double canoe, raft (CDIAL 12859). saghtanika -- in cmpd. binding together (Pali)(CDIAL 12863).

A raft or boat made of two canoes fastened side by side (Telugu) cakaam, n. <

Port. jangada. Ferry-boat of two canoes with a platform thereon; . (J.) cf.
Orthographic technic on ancient Near East artifacts such as seals: Paired hieroglyphs, example: of two bulls, two buffaloes, two tigers, two antelopes. 370

Ancient Near East janga accounting for mercantile transactions

Janga or Entrust Receipt is denoted by the 'standard device' hieroglyph read: sanga 'lathe/gimlet, portable furnace'. Note: The meaning of Janga is well-settled in Indian legal
system. Janga means "Goods sent on approval or 'on sale or return' It is well-known that the Janga transactions in this country are very common and often involve property of a considerable value." Bombay High Court Emperor vs Phirozshah Manekji Gandhi on 13 June, 1934 Equivalent citations: (1934) 36 BOMLR 731, 152 Ind Cas 706 Source: http://www.indiankanoon.org/doc/39008/ See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/04/heifer-lathe-hieroglyphs-on-indusseals.html Young bull + lathe hieroglyphs on Indus seals The terms jangad and karanika are represented as the most frequently used hieroglyphs on Indus writing. The hieroglyphs are: sangaa 'lathe, portable furnace' and kanka 'rim of jar' represented by the following glyphs: sangaa appears on the round as a ivory object together with other examples of specific glyphic features deployed on objects inscribed with Indus writing. kanka 'rim of jar' is shown on a circular Daimabad seal. The mercantile agents who were jangadiyo had received goods on jangad 'entrusted for approval'.

m1429 Mohenjo-dar tablet showing a boat carrying a pair of metal ingots. bagalo = an Arabian merchant vessel (G.lex.) bagala = an Arab

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boat of a particular description (Ka.); bagal (M.); bagarige, bagarage = a kind of vessel (Ka.) bagalo = an Arabian merchant vessel (G.lex.) cf. m1429 seal. See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-bronze-age-legacy_6.html Ancient Near East bronze-age legacy: Processions depicted on Narmer palette, Indus writing denote artisan guilds The note presents many parallels between hieroglyphs used rebus on Indus writing and on ancient Near East artifacts. The names Dilmun, Magan and Meluhha appear on ancient cuneiform documents in the context of maritime trade, in particular with Seafaring merchants from Meluhha (Mleccha, that is part of Indian sprachbund). There is a remarkable statement in Tolkappiyam an ancient text of Sangam period:

( ) When falsehood and deception came into vogue, the Brahmin scholars codified the accounting system. An ancient Near East accounting system was janga. The system of janga simply meant 'goods on approval' with the agent -- like the Meluhhan merchant-agents or brokers living in settlements in ancient near East -- merely responsible for showing the goods to the intended buyers. We are dealing with the times of Indus-Sarasvati civilization when goods were transacted without definitive settlements of purchase. Mercantile transactions took place on the basis of trust. This system of trust gets institutionalised in the trusteeship system which is the central regulating feature of rei, artisan-merhant guilds. Actions such as criminal breach of trust or deception or criminal conspiracy were rare occurrences. Goods were couriered and delivered by consignor on entrustment basis for the consignee to make the settlements AFTER the goods are finally sold to third parties. Such an accounting system was called janga.

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The couriers who effect the delivery of the goods are called jangaiyo. In old Gujarati, the term jangaiyo military guard who accompanies treasure into the treasury. The term sanghiyo 'a worker on a lathe' (Gujarati)

kanka rim of jar (Santali) Rebus: khanaka miner karaka scribe (Skt.)

Goods taken from a shop without definitive settlement of purchase Some lexemes from Indian sprachbund: [jgaa] ad Without definitive settlement of purchase--goods taken from a shop. [ jgaa ] f ( H) Goods taken from a shop, to be retained or returned as may suit: also articles of apparel taken from a tailor or clothier to sell for him. 2 or The account or account-book of goods so taken. or [kra or kraka] a ( S) That causes, conducts, carries on, manages. Applied to the prime minister of a state, the supercargo of a ship &c [ kara ] f () Presenting (in marriages) of cloths, ornaments &c. to the bridegroom and his party. v . (Marathi) [karaamu] karaamu. [Skt.] n. A village clerk, a writer, an accountant. he has talents for speaking but not for writing. the registrar of a district. or karanikamu. Clerkship: the office of a Karanam or clerk. (Telugu)

karaikam [Telugu. karaikamu.] Office of accountant. See . Loc. karukam , n. < karaa. [T. karaikamu.] Office of village
accountant or karam; . karaa , n. < karaa.

Accountant; . (. . 210). karaam, n. < karaa. Accountant, karnam; . (S.I.I. i, 65.) karaampalam, n. < id. + . Ancient name for the office of village headman; . Rd. karaiya-mi-k-kal, n. A kind of metal-ore; . (W.) (Tamil) oi-k-karaam n. <
+. See . oi-c-cu , n. < +. Usufructuary mortgage deed; . karaa-kaparam, n. 373

< karaa karaatt , n. < id. Accountant; . (S.I.I.

iii, 23). karaattiyalavar, n. < id. + . Account officers working under a king, one of eperu-n-tuaivar, q.v.; . (.)
It is significant that the word is used. This word in old Tamil denotes the work of karaika village accountant. For describing goods transacted under janga accounting, it was enough to detail the technical specifications of the goods. The quantities involved, the prices to be settled at the time of final sale and final settlement between the consignor and the consignee are subject to separate, later day transactions AFTER the final delivery on the entrustment note -- janga -- takes place to the final purchaser or owner of the goods.

The foundatio of janga accounting is trust in mercantile transactions and an honour system for processing the transactions between the producer and the final consumer.

The ancient, traditional mercantile transactions using janga accounting was adjudicated in Bombay High Court in 1938 where violations of the founding principles of janga were the principal causes for the litigation. A write-up on the case is appended. The judgement of Kania, J. notes the quote of an earlier judge in another case: "Assuming that jangad in Gujerati ordinarily means 'approval' there is no reason to assume that the goods entrusted jangad are goods to be sold on approval, rather than goods to be shown for approval." -- Madgavkar J. But, jangad also meant 'sale or return' in addition to the dictionary meaning 'approval'. The Judge adjudicated on the issues of 'good faith' involving diamonds/pearls adjudicating that the relation of a dealer and a broker or mercantie agent is that of a principal and agent and not of a seller and a buyer. The obiter dicta was: "If the person who takes [the property] on jangad, sells the property at a price in excess of that which he has agreed to pay to the seller, he keeps the difference and he does not have to account to the seller as an agent. On the other hand, if the purchaser from him does not pay, he is still liable to pay on his own contract with his seller." 374

The point made in this note is that janga accounting transactions for high-value goods like diamonds/pearls/metalsware were in vogue as evidenced on Indus writing and the tradition continued into historical times and are in vogue even today in a remarkable civilizational continuum.

A remarkable contract is recorded in Mesopotamian archives, attesting to the good-faith doctrine in financial or property transactions:

Contract for the Sale of Real Estate, Sumer, c. 2000 B.C. This is a transaction from the last days of Sumerian history. It exhibits a form of transfer and title which has a flavor of modern business method about it. Sini-Ishtar, the son of Ilu-eribu, and Apil-Ili, his brother, have bought one third Shar of land with a house constructed, next the house of Sini-Ishtar, and next the house of Minani; one third Shar of arable land next the house of Sini-Ishtar, which fronts on the street; the property of Minani, the son of Migrat-Sin, from Minani, the son of Migrat-Sin. They have paid four and a half shekels of silver, the price agreed. Never shall further claim be made, on account of the house of Minani. By their king they swore. (The names of fourteen witnesses and a scribe then follow.) Month Tebet, year of the great wall of KarraShamash. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/mesopotamia-contracts.asp

Kalyanaraman June 8, 2013 375

Bombay High Court Amritlal Raichand Jhaveri vs Bhagwandas Fatehchand on 7 March, 1938 Equivalent citations: (1939) 41 BOMLR 609 Author: Kania Bench: Kania JUDGMENT Kania, J. This case, which involves a sum of three thousand rupees only, has been contested as a test case to determine certain points in the diamond trade in Bombay. Plaintiffs, a firm dealing in diamonds, handed over to defendant No. 1 173 diamonds on or about November 8, 1934, on terms signed by him in the plaintiffs' book. That document runs in the following terms: To. Zaveri Amritlal Raichand, Bombay, 8-11-1934. Written by Shah Fatehchand Lallubhai. I have this day received from you the goods specified below, for the below-stated purposes and on the below-stated conditions. The goods have been entrusted to me for the sole purpose of being: shown to the intending purchasers. The ownership of the goods is of you alone and I have no right to or interest in them. I have no authority whatever to sell, mortgage the goods or to deal with them otherwise. I am bound to return the goods whenever you make a demand for their return, I am responsible for the return of the goods to you in the same condition in which I have received them. And so long as I do not return them to you, I am liable and responsible for them in all respects. Particulars of the goods: Diamond brilliants 173 in number, ratis 14, Rate up to Rs. 225/-

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The Signature of Shah Fatehchand Lallubhai in respect of the "jangad" (goods taken on approval) by the hand of Bhagwandas. Diamond Brilliants 58 in number, carat 5-5, Rate 15-3. 58 returned. The signature of Shah Fatehchand Lallubhai in respect of the "jangad" (goods taken on approval) by the hand of Bhagwandas. Plaintiffs not having received back the diamonds for some time called upon defendants Nos. 1 and 2 to return the same, but they were put off. Defendants Nos. 1 and 2 are partners and do business as brokers in diamonds. Defendants Nos. 3 and 4 are stated to be brokers in jewellery. The plaint states that on making inquiries the plaintiffs learnt that the defendants had conspired together to deprive them of the diamonds. The plaintiffs thereupon moved the police and the police recovered the diamonds from defendant No. 4's possession. Plaintiffs then filed a complaint for criminal breach of trust and conspiracy. In this suit the plaintiffs claim recovery of the diamonds on the following grounds : (1) That the defendants had entered into a criminal conspiracy to deprive the plaintiffs of the diamonds. (2) That defendants Nos, 1 and 2 had committed criminal breach of trust in respect of the diamonds and defendant No. 4 had obtained possession of the diamonds with notice that an offence had been committed in respect thereof. (3) That the plaintiffs were the owners of the diamonds and as such were entitled to recover the same from the defendant who was in possession of them. Defendants knew that none of them had authority to deal with the diamonds of which plaintiffs were the owners. (4) That the defendants held the diamonds in trust for the plaintiffs and the plaintiffs sought to' follow the same in the hands of defendant No. 4. The prayers are for the return of the diamonds or recovery of their value. Defendants Nos. 1 and 2 admitted in their written statement that they had received the diamonds from the plaintiffs as brokers on the terms mentioned in paragraph 3 of the plaint. According to them they had returned the diamonds to the plaintiffs, who sold the same directly to defendant No. 3. They, therefore, contended that they were not liable to the plaintiffs at all. In his written statement defendant No. 3 alleged that he received those diamonds from defendants Nos. 1 and 2 jangad and in his turn delivered over the same to one Hiralal Jivabhai, 377

in order that Hiralal may sell the same to his customer. In that written statement it was urged that defendant No. 3 having merely passed on the diamonds he was not liable to the plaintiffs. Defendant No. 4 denied the charges of conspiracy made in the plaint and also denied that he had any knowledge of any offence having been committed in respect of the diamonds. Against the plaintiffs' claim to recover the diamonds as the owners thereof, defendant No. 4 stated in paragraph 9 of his written statement that defendants Nos. 1 and 2, who were mercantile agents, were, with the consent of the plaintiffs, in possession of the diamonds and the same were sold by them, when acting in the ordinary course of business, to defendant No, 3 and therefore that sale was valid and binding as if it was expressly authorised by the plaintiffs. Defendant No. 4 contended that he purchased the said diamonds from defendant No. 3 in good faith, and at the time when he purchased them, he had no notice of the fact that defendant No. 1, 2 or 3 had no authority to sell them. He, therefore, contended that the plaintiffs were not entitled to recover anything from him. On these pleadings defendants Nos. 1 and 2 raised five issues. After the case proceeded for a short time those defendants withdrew and the case thereafter proceeded against them ex parte. Defendant No. 3 did not appear at the hearing to defend or support his written statement. On behalf of defendant No. 4 ten issues were raised. At the commencement of the trial Mr. Desai for the plaintiffs intimated that he did not propose to establish any criminal conspiracy or allegations contained in paragraph 5 of the plaint. Issues Nos. 1 and 2 were, therefore, given up and are found against the plaintiffs. Plaintiffs have to prove in the first instance that the 173 diamonds belonged to them. Amritlal, a partner in the plaintiff firm, gave evidence to support that claim. He produced his book in which defendant No. 1 had signed the entry containing the terms on which the diamonds were received by his firm from the plaintiffs. In his oral evidence Amritlal further stated that the diamonds were never sold and the entry in his book remains uncancelled. That supports the plaintiffs' case. He produced his sale book in which there was no entry in respect of the sale of 173 diamonds. In my opinion Amritlal's evidence satisfactorily establishes that the plaintiffs themselves never sold the 173 diamonds to defendants Nos. 1 and 2 or to defendant No. 3. The 173 diamonds produced by defendant No. 4 were identified by Amritlal as his diamonds and he was not cross-examined on that point at all. The result is that the plaintiffs established that the diamonds, which were put in as exhibit F, were plaintiffs' property and had not been sold by them. 378

In my opinion the evidence led on behalf of the plaintiffs does not establish any case of fraud or offence having been committed in respect of obtaining the diamonds from the plaintiffs. In Amritlal's evidence there is nothing to suggest that when defendant No. 1 received the diamonds from the plaintiffs he had any fraudulent or criminal intention. The sixth issue must, therefore, be found against the plaintiffs. Defendant No. 4 denied that when he purchased the diamonds he had any, notice that defendant No. 1, 2 or 3 had no authority to deal with them or that the plaintiffs were the owners thereof. The evidence does not establish that when defendant No. 4 received the diamonds he had notice of want of authority in the defendants or any of them. The evidence does not show that at any stage defendant No. 4 knew that the diamonds had come to defendant No. 3's possession from defendant No. 1. The first part of the fifth issue should therefore be answered in the negative. As regards the second part, defendant No. 3 was called as a witness by the plaintiffs. According to him he handed over the diamonds to Hiralal Jivabhai and at that time had told Hiralal that he had received the diamonds jingad from defendants Nos. 1 and 2 and that they were plaintiffs' property. Defendant No. 3 had not handed over these diamonds to defendant No. 4. Plaintiffs have, therefore, failed to establish that defendant No. 4 was aware that the plaintiffs were the owners of the diamonds when they received the same. The second part of the fifth issue should, therefore, be answered also in the negative. Although defendant No. 4 has raised no issue as regards the plaintiffs' claim to follow trust property in his hands, the evidence does not establish that there was any such trust created or that the plaintiffs were entitled to follow trust property. The main contest between the parties is on the defence formulated in paragraph 9 of defendant No. 4's written statement. That is covered by issues Nos. 7 to 11. The defence is based on Section 27 of the Sale of Goods Act. The first question in that connection is whether there was a sale by defendant No. 3 to defendant No. 4. In his evidence defendant No. 3 denied that he had sold the diamonds to defendant No.4. That is contradicted by defendant No. 4 in his evidence. In support of his statement defendant No. 4 produced an endorsement made on the back of the counterfoil of his cheque (exhibit No. 4) to the effect that the same was paid in full settlement of the diamond account to defendant No. 3. In the whole counterfoil book produced by defendant No. 4 this is the only counterfoil on which there is an endorsement at all. Moreover the 379

endorsement does not mention 173 diamonds. That is material because it is established by evidence that two lots of nineteen and twenty diamonds of Dalpatram Jashkaran were sold by Dalpatram to defendant No. 3 and the cheque for Rs. 2,715, counterfoil of which is exhibit No. 4, was handed over to Dalpatram, but the cheque was dishonoured. In further support of his case that there was a sale of 173 diamonds to him, defendant No. 4 produced a weighment memo, (exhibit No. 3). That memo, does not contain the name of defendant No. 4 but to the extent that defendant No. 4 produced the same it goes in his favour. The point is not thus free from doubt. If it is necessary to decide, in my opinion, defendant No. 4 has failed to establish that the diamonds were sold to him by defendant No. 3. Even if a different view is taken, the material question is whether such a sale (even if proved) is valid and binding on the plaintiffs and is any answer to the plaintiffs' claim. Section 27 of the Sale of Goods Act deals with the transfer of title. The section incorporates the well-known rule that a person who is not the owner of goods and who does not sell them under the authority or with the consent of the owner cannot give to the buyer a better title than the seller himself has. In the present case there is no evidence to show that defendant No. 3 was the owner of the goods. On the other hand defendant No. 3 denied it, and, as I have pointed out, the evidence clearly establishes that the plaintiffs were the owners of the goods. The evidence also does not establish that defendant No. 3 sold the goods under the authority or with the consent of the plaintiffs. Amritlal of the plaintiff firm emphatically denied that he had authorised anyone to sell the diamonds on his behalf. Defendant No. 3 in his turn denied that he had any communication with the plaintiffs or had any authority to sell the same from the plaintiffs. Therefore, the fourth defendant can only rely on the proviso to that section for his defence. In paragraph 9 of his written statement he has only relied on the proviso and not on the body of the section for his defence. The proviso runs in the following terms: Provided that, where a mercantile agent is, with the consent of the owner, in possession of the goods or of a document of title to the goods, any sale made by him, when acting in the ordinary course of business of a mercantile agent, shall be as valid as if he were expressly authorised by the owner of the goods to make the same ; provided that the buyer acts in good faith and has not at the time of the contract of sale notice that the seller has no authority to sell.

380

In support of his contention that the sale by defendant No. 3 was binding on the plaintiffs Mr. Amin for defendant No. 4 relied on Durgabai v. Sarasvatibai (1925) 31 Bom. L.R. 414, Oppenheimer v. Attenborough and Son [1908] 1 K.B. 221, and Folkes v. King [1923] 1 K.B. 282. In my opinion this contention of defendant No. 4 entirely fails. Turning to the words of the proviso it is clear that if defendant No. 3 is considered a mercantile agent, he was not in possession of the goods with the consent of the owners. Plaintiffs who were the owners gave the goods to defendants Nos. 1 and 2 : they had not given the goods to defendant No. 3 and defendant No. 3's possession was therefore not with the consent of the owners. If on a construction of the terms contained in exhibit A defendants Nos, 1 and 2 are held to be mercantile agents within the meaning of the Sale of Goods Act, those defendants were in possession of the goods with the consent of the owners, but they had not sold the goods to defendant No. 4 or to anyone. In that view also the case is not covered by the proviso. Apart therefore from the question of good faith and notice, the words of the proviso do not cover the present case at all. Durgabai v. Sarasvatibai is not a case on this point. That case was decided under Section 178 of the Indian Contract Act the words whereof were different from the words of Section 27 of the Sale of Goods Act. The particular distinction which may be noted is that under Section 178 (as it stood when that decision was given) the word "person" found place in the section in place of "mercantile agent". On going through the judgment again it is clear that the learned Judge held that the person in possession was himself a dealer in diamonds. The decision proceeded on that footing as is clearly stated in the concluding part of that judgment. The learned Judge held that if a dealer was in possession of diamonds, and a purchaser or pledgee for value from him acted bona fide, such purchaser or pledgee had a good title and he could not be ordered to hand over the goods to the owner. Oppenheimer v. Attenborough was a case on the construction of Section 2 of the. Factors Act and dealt with the authority of a mercantile agent, who, having general authority, acted in the ordinary course of business. The decision was that if according to the ordinary course of business there was a general authority, any particular trade-custom could not restrict it. I am not concerned in the present case with an instance where the mercantile agent in the ordinary course of business had general authority to sell diamonds. My attention has been drawn to an unreported decision of the Appeal Court in Emperor v. Hiralal Jivraj(1936) Criminal Appeal No. 413 of 1935 where the term jengad came to be interpreted. I am told that it has considerably disturbed the position of diamond brokers and dealers and has created confusion in the trade. I am, therefore, particularly reluctant to 381

express any opinion on the general relations of a: diamond broker and dealer in respect of the sale of diamonds through a broker, except to the extent it is essential to decide the present case. Plaintiffs handed over their diamonds to defendants Nos. 1 and 2 on terms which are reduced to writing and are found in exhibit A. Having regard to that position, I refrain from stating to what extent, if the facts were applicable, the decision in Oppenheimer v. Attenbarough would affect the diamond trade in Bombay. The decision in Folkes v. King is equally inapplicable because there the owner of a car had delivered it to a mercantile agent for sale. The mercantile agent sold the car to a third party, who in his turn sold it to the defendant. No case of notice of fraud or want of good faith having been established, the Court held that the defendant has acquired a good title under the Factors Act. In the present case if defendants Nos. 1 and 2 had received the diamonds merely as brokers (without any writing as in exhibit A) and had sold them to defendant No. 4 directly or had sold them to defendant No. 3, who in his turn had sold them to defendant No. 4, the applicability of this case may have to be considered. It will be useful to examine first the terms on which defendant No. 1 received the diamonds from the plaintiffs. They are in the form of a letter written by the firm of defendant No. 1 and defendant No. 2 and addressed to the plaintiffs. The opening words clearly set out, in express terms, the purpose and conditions on which the goods were delivered by the plaintiffs to) defendant No. 1. Taking the printed terms together, it is clear that defendants Nos. 1 and 2 admitted that they received the goods only for the purpose of showing them to intending purchasers; that defendant No. l's firm had no authority whatsoever to sell, mortgage or pledge the goods ; that the ownership of the goods remained all along in the plaintiffs and the first and/or second defendants had no right to or interest in them ; and that till the goods were returned in the condition in which they were received or if they were not returned, defendants Nos. 1 and 2 were liable and responsible for the same. It is not disputed that defendants Nos. 1 and 2 are brokers in jewellery and are working as such for many years past. The first question to be considered is whether having regard to these terms they were mercantile agents under the Sale of Goods Act. The effect of these terms on the relation between the parties, and the possession of the goods in the hands of the broker, was considered by Madgavkar J. in an unreported judgment in Kanga Jaghirdar & Co. v. Fatehchand 382

Hirachand (1929) O.C.J. Suit No. 1117 of 1928. At that time the relative section of the Indian Contract Act did not contain the expression "mercantile-agent" but only "person". On a consideration of the terms mentioned above the learned Judge came to the conclusion that the possession obtained under a document worded as aforesaid was not juridical possession within the meaning of Section 178 of the Indian Contract Act. As regards the term jangad used in the document the learned Judge observed as follows : "Assuming that jangad in Gujerati ordinarily means 'approval' there is no reason to assume that the goods entrusted jangad are goods to be sold on approval, rather than goods to be shown for approval." I respectfully agree with that conclusion about the meaning of the conditions found in exhibit A in this case. The relation of a dealer and a broker is that of a principal and agent and not of a seller and a buyer. The extent of the authority of the agent is to be found in the document under which the goods are delivered to him. As between the plaintiffs and defendants Nos. 1 and 2, therefore, it is clear that defendants Nos. 1 and 2 had no authority to sell the goods. The next question to be considered is whether the addition of the word "jangad" in the signature made any difference. It was urged that when there were printed terms and written conditions the written conditions must prevail, and as the word "jangad" was written in manuscript, the effect of the document was that the diamonds were delivered to defendants Nos. 1 and 2 for "sale or return". The authorities clearly show that when in one document there are printed as well as written conditions, the Court's duty, as far as possible, is to reconcile all the terms ; but, when that is not found possible, the written conditions are to be given greater weight than the printed ones. The dictionary meaning of the word "jangad" is "approval". As stated by Madgavkar J. in the passage quoted above, having regard to the printed terms in this case, there appears no reason to assume that the diamonds were entrusted to defendants Nos. 1 and 2 to be sold on approval and not that they were given to them to be shown for approval. In my opinion taking the document as a whole, it is clear that they were given to defendants Nos, 1 and 2 to be shown for approval only. I am unable to accept the contention of defendant No. 4 that the term "jangad" means "sale or return" wherever the same is found. I am also unable to accept his contention that having regard to the term "jangad" used in the signature the printed terms should be given no meaning at all. In my opinion having regard to the terms on which the goods were delivered to defendants Nos. 1 and 2 they are not mercantile agents within the meaning of the Sale of Goods Act having general authority to sell. As I have pointed out, even if they were, 383

the case does not fall under Section 27 of the Sale of Goods Act because they have not sold the goods to defendant No. 4. 1 8. The terms on which defendant No. 3 received the goods from defendants Nos. 1 and 2 are not clear on the evidence. Defendant No. 3 stated that he had received them on jangad. He did not say whether he had signed any writing like exhibit A or not. He further admitted that he was working as a broker in jewellery at the time. It is, therefore, clear that by the delivery of 173 diamonds to him, even on jangad terms, no property can pass to him under Section 24 of the Sale of Goods Act. On behalf of defendant No. 4 it was urged that in respect of 84 diamonds of the plaintiffs defendants Nos. 1 and 2 had acted as dealers. On the evidence I am unable to accept that contention. For this purpose it is necessary to bear in mind the terms on which the diamonds were originally handed over by the plaintiffs to those parties. According to the evidence of Amritlal, which stands uncontradicted, these diamonds were delivered to those defendants on terms similar to those found in exhibit A. The subsequent dealings with the diamonds and the entry in the plaintiffs' books, as if there was a sale to them, cannot affect the original relations established between the parties by the document, unless there was proof of a new contract. According to Amritlal defendants Nos. 1 and 2 informed him that the diamonds were sold, but as they did not disclose the name of the purchaser, in the plaintiffs' books the goods were debited to them. In answer to some leading questions put in cross-examination Amritlal did state that those diamonds were sold to defendants Nos. 1 and 2, but the remaining evidence quite clearly shows that the goods were not sold to them as merchants but the price was debited to them because they did not disclose the name of the purchaser and they were responsible for the price. I am, therefore, unable to consider that in respect of 84 diamonds defendants Nos. 1 and 2 had acted with the plaintiffs as dealers. Under Section 19(3) of the Sale of Goods Act, passing of property is a question of intention. When the Indian Contract Act governed the sale of goods there were no express words of that kind in the Act. The rule found in Section 24 is to govern when there is no intention to the contrary. In considering the decisions given under the old sections of the Indian Contract Act this distinction has to be carefully remembered. In support of his contention that "jangad" meant 'sale or return' defendant No. 4 relied on an unreported judgment of Beaumont C.J. and N.J. Wadia J. in Emperor v. Hiralal Jivraj (1936) 384

Criminal Appeal No. 413 of 1935. The accused Hiralal Jivraj (whose name was repeatedly mentioned in the evidence in this suit by defendant No. 3) had appealed against his conviction under Section 406 of the Indian Penal Code. After considering that the first charge framed was not sufficiently particular, the judgment proceeded to discuss the charge of criminal misappropriation of eighty-four diamonds given by Purshottam (defendant No. 3 in this case) to the accused. In the opinion of the Appeal Court the learned Chief Presidency Magistrate was in error in convicting the accused. It was stated that the diamonds were given to Purshottam on jangad and became the property of Purshottam, If Purshottam in his turn gave the diamonds to the accused, on jangad terms, they became the property of the accused and he could not be charged with criminal misappropriation of the same The evidence was that Purshottam received the diamonds "jangad" from one Shantilal and delivered them to the accused on jangad. The judgment thereafter runs in the following terms: That being so, the property would pass to the accused under Section 24 of the Sale of Goods Act either when he signified his approval or acceptance to the seller or did any other act adopting the transaction, and if he did not signify his approval or acceptance to the seller but retained the goods without giving notice of rejection, then, if a time had been fixed for the return of the goods, on the expiration of such time, and, if no time had been fixed, on the expiration of a reasonable time. The learned Government Pleader has argued that the accused was a broker, but there is not a particle of evidence of brokerage. The transaction is stated to be a transaction on jangad. That places the parties in the relationship of seller and buyer, that is, principal and principal. If the person who takes [the property] on jangad, sells the property at a price in excess of that which he has agreed to pay to the seller, he keeps the difference and he does not have to account to the seller as an agent. On the other hand, if the purchaser from him does not pay, he is still liable to pay on his own contract with his seller. This passage from the judgment clearly shows that, on the facts proved, the accused was not a broker and the diamonds were not delivered to him as a broker. Although the judgment does not record that the diamonds were delivered over to the accused as a buyer or had been received by Purshottam as a buyer on jangad from the previous holder or the owner, the relation of buyer and seller between all parties is assumed. The facts in that case also do not show that at the time of receiving the diamonds the parties had signed a document, like exhibit A in the present suit. That judgment therefore does not govern the facts of this case. I think the discussion in that 385

judgment about the applicability of Section 24 of the Sale of Goods Act, when goods are received on jangad terms, requires an explanation. Goods or jewellery may be delivered by the owner to the buyer, with the intention that he may inspect the same and ultimately purchase it. The goods in such cases are stated to be delivered for approval, i.e. "jangad". Section 24 of the Sale of Goods Act covers that situation. On the other hand, the owner of the goods may deliver the same to a mercantile agent, as defined in the Sale of Goods Act. According to that definition of a mercantile agent, in the customary course of business, he has authority to sell the goods. Goods may be handed over to such a mercantile agent also "jangad" meaning to be shown for approval to his customers. Under those circumstances, if the mercantile agent effects a sale, the title of the purchaser is protected under Section 27 of the Sale of Goods Act provided there is no want of good faith. On a comparison of the words of Section 24 and Section 27 of the Sale of Goods Act, it is clear that the mercantile agent who receives goods on jangad acquires no property by reason of Section 24, because he is not a buyer. He has, therefore, no title to pass on the property by reason of Section 24. This is important because if want of good faith is established, the sale can be avoided under Section 27. But if the case was governed by Section 24, no question of want of good faith arises and the property must pass. The third contingency is where the owner delivers goods to an agent (who is not a mercantile agent falling within the definition of that expression as given in the Sale of Goods Act) on terms arranged between the owner and the agent. As one of the terms of delivery the goods may be given jangad, i.e. for approval by a prospective customer or to be shown for approval. To such a case neither Section 24 nor Section 27 of the Sale of Goods Act applies, and the extent of the authority of the agent depends on the terms of his agency, and the provisions governing the relations of principal and agent as found in the Indian Contract Act. It is clear that in that case also no property passes from the owner to the agent under Section 24, nor is a sale by him protected under Section 27. If this authority enables him to sell the goods, the sale is authorised and binding on the owner. If the authority is exceeded, the question will have to be considered in the light of Sections 227 and 228 of the Indian Contract Act. The judgment of the Appeal Court which treats "jangad" as equivalent to sale or return must be read as applicable only when the goods are delivered to a buyer. In addition to the above grounds I have grave doubts about the good faith of defendant No. 4 in the transaction. Defendant No. 4 is an undischarged insolvent and started doing business in 386

Bombay on a small scale in August-September, 1934. The evidence shows that he had no money. His banking account shows that except a sum of about a hundred rupees or so he had no cash to buy diamonds worth any substantial amount at all. According to his own evidence when he purchased these 173 diamonds he had no means to pay, although he hoped to obtain loans from his friends and relatives. He produced no evidence to show that any arrangements were made to procure such loans or that any party had promised to give him any money. On the other hand his conduct in pledging these very diamonds on about November 18/19, 1934, with a Marwari firm and paying over the proceeds to satisfy his debts incurred in cotton speculation, negatives his good faith. He has produced his counterfoil cheque book which is in a very mutilated condition and about eight counterfoils have been found missing between November 14 and November 23, 1934. In the absence of those counterfoils it is difficult to ascertain for what purposes he had attempted to draw the cheques and for what amounts. Defendant No. 4 did not impress me as a truthful witness, and unless his oral testimony was supported by clear documentary evidence, I do not accept his evidence as that of a truthful witness. It appears that about this time defendant No. 3, who was a very petty broker, defendant No. 4, and Hiralal Jivabhai, had dealings in various lots of diamonds and pearls. Barring the 173 diamonds in suit the rest of the jewellery has not been traced. Different merchants who had handed over their jewellery to brokers for sale, and which jewellery ultimately reached Hiralal or defendant No. 4 remained unpaid, because of the dealings of these three parties. Defendant No. 3 came to know defendant No. 4 at the residence of Hiralal. Neither side has called Hiralal as a witness, perhaps realising that his evidence would not be considered reliable. Amritlal gave his evidence in a straightforward and honest manner and I accept his oral evidence as that of a truthful witness. In order to meet the case of defendant No. 4 of a sale of the diamonds by the first and or second defendants to defendant No. 3, the plaintiffs called defendant No. 3 as their witness. As the case proceeded ex parte against defendants Nos. 1, 2 and 3 and contested by defendant No. 4, several statements in the evidence of defendant No. 3 have gone on record which would be hearsay evidence as against the other parties to the conversation. Taking the evidence in that light the case sought to be established by defendant No. 4 has not been established at all, and there is no evidence to prove that there was a sale of the diamonds by the first and/or second defendants to defendant No. 3. Defendant No. 3 was not a satisfactory witness, but I would prefer him to defendant No. 4, particularly on points where the oral evidence of defendant No. 4 was not supported by any document. 387

In addition to the want of means of defendant No. 4 and the manner in which he dealt with the 173 diamonds after he got possession, of the same, his evidence about the making-up of account of sale also shows considerable room for suspicion in this transaction. According to defendant No. 4 when the account of the sale was made up he deducted the full discount of six and a quarter per cent. and received credit for Rs. 25 by way of interest. Defendant No. 4 alleged that as the diamonds; were weighed on November 11, he was liable to pay the price fifteen to twenty days thereafter. He gave a cheque to defendant No. 3 on or about November 11, post-dated November 20. Therefore, at best he made a payment earlier by about five to ten days. Working out the figure of Rs. 25 as interest for that period, it shows that for obtaining a post-dated cheque defendant No. 3 (according to the case of defendant No. 4) gave credit at the rate of about three per cent. per month. It is really a matter of surprise that a dealer in diamonds would give credit for interest at thirty-six per cent. per annum for obtaining payment by a post-dated cheque five to ten days earlier. It is not suggested that this rebate of| Rs. 25 was given otherwise than for interest. If defendant No. 3 was a mercantile agent within the meaning of Section 27 of the Sale of Goods Act, this way of making accounts, in my opinion, indicates that in the matter of this sale he was not acting in the ordinary course of business of a mercantile agent. For these reasons, if necessary, I would hold that defendant No. 4 was not protected under Section 27 of the Sale of Goods Act because there was want of good faith on his part in the transaction. In exhibit A at the time of putting his signature defendant No. 1 had added the word "jangad". It was contended that the word "jangad" meant "sale or return" and under Section 24 of the Sale of Goods Act the diamonds became the property of defendants Nos. 1 and 2. They had, therefore, title to pass on that property to defendant No. 3, by delivery on jangad terms, and defendant No. 3 in his turn could pass it on to defendant No. 4 by sale. When it was pointed out that this case was not pleaded in the written statement, Mr. Amin, for defendant No. 4, at the close of his final address, applied for an amendment of the written statement to raise this contention. In the present suit on the pleadings it is nobody's case that when defendants Nos, 1 and 2 received the diamonds they were the "buyers" of the diamonds. Defendants Nos. 1 and 2 have not alleged that case in their written statement. Nor is that case put forth in the written statement of defendant No. 4. This argument raises a question of fact, as to the position of defendants Nos. 1 and 2 when they received those diamonds. That question of fact not having 388

been pleaded in the written statement, I do not think it is permissible to defendant No. 4 now to amend his written statement and raise that question. If the amendment was allowed, it would involve the re-opening of the bulk of evidence and calling further witnesses.. Mr. Amin's application for amendment is, therefore, rejected. Mr. Amin next urged that defendants Nos. 1 and 2 having received the diamonds on the terms contained in exhibit A (including the word "jangad"), they had authority to hand over the same to defendant No. 3 on jangad. I repeatedly asked Mr. Amin if there was any authority for that proposition, but he failed to point out any. He urged that if defendants Nos. 1 and 2 had authority to sell, the authority to give possession to defendant No. 3 was a smaller authority and was therefore included in the larger one. In my opinion this argument is unsound. Under Section 190 of the Indian Contract Act an agent has no power to delegate his authority to any one except when it is done according to the custom of trade or from the nature of the agency it must be done. Neither of those contingencies are alleged in the pleadings nor suggested in the course of evidence. No issue has been raised on the point. Unless such a right to appoint a subagent was established, under Section 193 of the Indian Contract Act this act of the agent is not binding on the principal and he is entitled to repudiate the same. The authority of defendants Nos. 1 and 2 in the present case was defined by the writing which they executed. That writing did not give them any power to sell the goods. There is no authority express or implied in that writing to pass on the goods to a third party, with a power to the third party to deal with the same as if he was the owner. In my opinion if such a privilege was sought to be established, it had to be expressly pleaded and proved by evidence. The power goes to the root of the relations between principal and agent and cannot be lightly inferred because it was urged in the course of argument by counsel. The argument about passing of property to defendant No. 3 and the right of defendant No. 3 to sell is based on Section 24 which is assumed as applicable to an agent who received goods to sell. This is due to ignoring the fundamental distinction between a buyer and a seller and a principal and agent. In my opinion, therefore, the argument that defendants Nos. 1 and 2 had authority to pass on the goods to defendant No. 3 for any purpose is unsound and unwarranted on the evidence. On behalf of defendant No. 4 it was urged that he had paid Rs. 1,324 and Rs. 950 for the price of these diamonds and, therefore, in any event, he should get the same back before the diamonds were delivered over to the plaintiffs. This contention is not pleaded in his written 389

statement. Considerable evidence was led and lengthy cross-examination conducted to establish that defendant No. 4 had paid those two sums towards the price of the 173 diamonds to defendant No. 3. In my opinion the evidence does not justify that conclusion. Defendant No. 4 alleged that in respect of these diamonds at first he gave a cheque for Rs. 2,715 to defendant No. 3. The evidence of Dalpatram Jashkaran shows that this cheque of Rs. 2,715 was handed over to him for the price of two lots of nineteen and twenty diamonds sold by him to defendant No. 3. Me produced his pass-book showing that the cheque was handed over to his bank but was returned dishonoured. Defendant No. 3 in his evidence stated that this cheque for Rs. 2,715 was handed over to Dalpatram against his diamonds. It is not disputed that Dalpatram has not been paid in respect of his two lots of diamonds. Defendant No. 4 admitted that his cheque for Rs. 2,715 was dishonoured and that he had no funds at any time to meet the cheque. His case in the written statement is that after he gave this cheque to defendant No. 3, defendant No. 3 approached him on November 13 and asked for an immediate payment of Rs. 1,324. Defendant No. 4 accordingly gave to the third defendant a cheque dated November 14 for Rs. 1,324. The written statement is completely silent as to what was the agreement made about the balance. In his oral evidence defendant No. 4 alleged that he was to pay the balance afterwards, but as defendant No. 3 absconded from Bombay after a few days it was not paid. This explanation is entirely unsatisfactory because he met defendant No. 3 on November 18/19 and it is not suggested that at that time there was any conversation about it. The pass-book of defendant No. 4 shows that after November 14 he had never any funds to pay this balance. As against this defendant No. 3 denied that the cheque for Rs. 1,324 was received by him for the price of 173 diamonds at all. According to defendant No. 3 he received from Hiralal Jivabhai two cheques for Rs. 1,324 and Rs. 1,700, which was the price of 84 diamonds, and they were the cheques of defendant No. 4. These 84 diamonds originally belonged to the plaintiffs. Plaintiffs produced their cash-book showing that the cheque of Rs. 1,324 was received by them towards the price of their 84 diamonds. When the cheque for Rs. 1,700 was received, Amritlal presented it to the bank; but it was returned dishonoured. He thereupon gave it to defendant No. 1 and ultimately defendant No. 1 paid sixteen hundred and odd rupees in cash, which was the balance of the price payable to the plaintiffs. Defendant No. 3 in his evidence stated that when the cheque of Rs. 1,700 was dishonoured he was informed of it by defendant No. 1 and the cheque was given to him. He conveyed the information to Hiralal and Hiralal paid him Rs. 1,700 in cash, which he 390

passed on to defendant No. 1. It is material to note in this connection that the price of these 84 diamonds as) shown by exhibit No. 2 was about Rs. 3,023. If defendant No. 4 had nothing to do with these 84 diamonds, it is surprising that on the same day he should give two cheques, which exactly make up the price of 84 diamonds, and the said two cheques should be passed on together to the plaintiffs, who were the owners of the diamonds. Defendant No. 4's explanation about the cheque of Rs. 1,700 was that he gave it for the price of certain pearls which he had purchased from defendant No. 3. The pearls belonged to one Ratahchand Bhaidas. According to defendant No. 4 after he gave the cheque of Rs. 1,700 on November 14 (but dated November 20) to defendant No. 3 when he met defendant No. 3 on November 18 or 19, he told him not to present the cheque for some days and paid him Rs. 950 in cash. In spite of this defendant No. 3 presented the cheque and the cheque was dishonoured. After defendant No. 3 absconded, he inquired who was the owner of the pearls, and having ascertained that Ratanchand was the owner, he paid Ratanchand Rs. 1,170 in full settlement of Ratanchand's claim for the pearls. According to the oral evidence of defendant No. 4 he claimed from Ratanchand credit for what he had paid to defendant No. 3 but that was refused. In my opinion this conduct of defendant No. 4 is very surprising if in the regular course of business he had purchased those pearls of Ratanchand and given his cheque for the price. In the first instance he would not have paid defendant No. 3 Rs. 950 without getting back the cheque for Rs. 1,700. Moreover, I do not see any reason why defendant No. 4 should be very anxious to trace the owner of the pearls and offer to pay him the price, if he had in fact given the cheque for Rs. 1,700 for the price of the pearls. Having regard to his means it is also difficult to believe that after paying Rs. 950 to defendant No. 3 towards the price of the pearls, he would pay in addition to Ratanchand Rs. 1,170 without consulting defendant No. 3 at all. These factors taken together, along with the fact that the amount of these two cheques exactly made up the price of 84 diamonds, leads me to believe that defendant No. 4 had given these cheques for the price of 84 diamonds and the cheque for Rs. 1,700 was not given for the price of Ratanchand's pearls. It was urged on behalf of defendant No. 4 that the fact of the cheques being found in possession of the plaintiffs and Dalpatram Jashkaran did not prove that the payments were made in respect of the goods of those merchants. There would be force in that argument if that was the only coincidence. The other factors which I have noticed above and in particular the fact that the exact amount of Rs. 3,023 was the price of 84 diamonds lend support to the evidence of defendant No. 3 that those two cheques were received by him for the price of 84 diamonds. The 391

co-existence of all the factors makes that conclusion highly probable. No witness in his oral evidence had stated in terms that defendant No. 4 had purchased those diamonds. The only witness who could say so is Hiralal, and he has not been called as a witness. The surrounding circumstances, however, are in my opinion sufficiently strong to justify the inference mentioned above. The attitude of defendant No. 4 in connection with the cheque of Rs. 1,700 is also significant. In the written statement he alleged that the cheque was given for the pearls and Rs. 950 were paid also for the pearls. After he filed his written statement he appears to have changed his attitude and in his affidavit dated March 18, 1936, alleged that Rs. 950 should be treated as paid towards the price of 173 diamonds. In fact he went further and on the counterfoil of the cheque which he alleged he had given for the price of the diamonds he endorsed "Cash Rs. 950" as if the same were paid towards the price of the diamonds. This was admittedly done after the suit was filed and savours of manufacturing evidence to urge this claim. The evidence shows that defendant No. 4 had no means to pay for the jewellery purchased by him from time to time, and if he finds it difficult to prove that he had paid those amounts towards the price of 173 diamonds, he has to thank himself for his habit of giving post-dated cheques, for the price, in different sums. Defendant No. 4's written statement does not show what arrangements were made for the payment of the balance and his oral evidence is equally vague on the point. In my opinion defendant No. 4 has failed to establish that he had paid anything towards the 173 diamonds in suit, and his claim to recover the two amounts fails. At this stage Mr. Desai for the plaintiffs states that he does not press for a decree against defendants Nos. 1, 2 and 3. There will, therefore, be a decree for the plaintiffs against defendant No. 4 in terms of prayer (a) of the plaint. In due course the diamonds, exhibit F, would be handed over to the plaintiffs.

The allegations of conspiracy were not given up till the suit reached hearing and the plaintiffs led no evidence to establish the charges of fraud or offence, nor of notice to defendant No. 4. Having regard to this, I think defendant No. 4 should pay the plaintiffs the costs of the suit, less Rs. 500. http://www.indiankanoon.org/doc/1749483/ 392

See: http://www.scribd.com/doc/88974889/Indus-script-corpora-and-business-transactions-ofjangad-%E2%80%98entrustment-note%E2%80%99-S-Kalyanaraman-2012

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-bronze-age-legacy_6.html Ancient Near East bronze-age legacy: Processions depicted on Narmer palette, Indus writing denote artisan guilds Ancient Near East bronze-age legacy: Processions depicted on Narmer palette, Indus writing denote artisan guilds It is certain that the design known as the animal file motif is extremely early in Sumerian and Elamitic glyptic; in fact is among the oldest known glyptic designs. A characteristic style in narration is the use of a procession of animals to denote a professional group. The grouping may connote a smithy-shop of a guild --pasramu.

Mohenjo-daro seal m417 six heads from a core.rik -- f. tent lex. and mngs. house ~ ladder in *ria -- 2, *rhi -- . -- Words for ladder see rit -- . -- ri]H. sain, sen f. ladder ; Si. hii, hia, ii ladder, stairs (GS 84 < ri -- ).(CDIAL 12685). Wo. en roof , Bshk. an, Phal. n(AO xviii 251) Rebus: sei (f.) [Class. Sk. rei in meaning guild; Vedic= row] 1. A guild Vin iv.226; J i.267, 314; iv.43; Dvs ii.124; their number was eighteen J vi.22, 427; VbhA 466. -- pamukha the head of a guild J

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ii.12 (text seni -- ). 2. A division of an army J vi.583; ratha -- J vi.81, 49; seimokkha the chief of an army J vi.371 (cp. Sen and seniya). (Pali) This denotes a mason (artisan) guild -- seni -- of 1. brass-workers; 2. blacksmiths; 3. ironworkers; 4. copper-workers; 5. native metal workers; 6. workers in alloys. The core is a glyphic chain or ladder. Glyph: ka a chain; a hook; a link (G.); kaum a bracelet, a ring (G.) Rebus: kaiyo [Hem. Des. kaaio = Skt. sthapati a mason] a bricklayer; a mason; kaiyaa, kaiyea a woman of the bricklayer caste; a wife of a bricklayer (G.) The glyphics are: Glyph: one-horned young bull: kondh heifer. k dr turner, brass-worker. Glyph: bull: hangra bull. Rebus: hangar blacksmith. Glyph: ram: meh ram. Rebus: me iron Glyph: antelope: mreka goat. Rebus: milakkhu copper. Vikalpa 1: meluhha mleccha copper worker. Vikalpa 2: meh helper of merchant. Glyph: zebu: kh zebu. Rebus: kh guild, community (Semantic determinant of the jointed animals glyphic composition). ka joining, connexion, assembly, crowd, fellowship (DEDR 1882) Pa. gotta clan; Pk. gotta, gya id. (CDIAL 4279) Semantics of Pkt. lexeme gya is concordant with Hebrew goy in ha-goy-im (lit. the-nation-s). Pa. gotta -- n. clan , Pk. gotta -, gutta -- , amg. gya -- n.; Gau. g house (in Kaf. and Dard. several other words for cowpen > house : gh -- , Pr. gu cow ; S. goru m. parentage , L. got f. clan , P. gotar, got f.; Ku. N. got family ; A. got -- nti relatives ; B. got clan ; Or. gota family, relative ; Bhoj. H. got m. family, clan , G. got n.; M. got clan, relatives ; -- Si. gota clan, family Pa. (CDIAL 4279). Alternative: adar angra zebu or humped bull; rebus: aduru native metal (Ka.); hangar blacksmith (H.) The sixth animal can only be guessed. Perhaps, a tiger (A reasonable inference, because the glyph tiger appears in a procession on some Indus script inscriptions. Glyph: tiger?: kol tiger.Rebus: kol worker in iron. Vikalpa (alternative): perhaps, rhinoceros. gaa rhinoceros; rebus:kha tools, pots and pans and metal-ware. Thus, the 394

entire glyphic composition of six animals on the Mohenjodaro seal m417 is semantically a representation of a ri, guild, a kh , community of smiths and masons. This guild, community of smiths and masons evolves into Harosheth Hagoyim, a smithy of nations.

Tell AsmarCylinder seal modern impression [elephant, rhinoceros and gharial (alligator) on the upper register] bibliography and image source: Frankfort, Henri: Stratified Cylinder Seals from

the Diyala Region. Oriental Institute Publications 72. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, no.
642. Museum Number: IM14674 3.4 cm. high. Glazed steatite. ca. 2250 - 2200 BCE. ibha 'elephant' Rebus: ib 'iron'. k 'rhinoceros' Rebus: kha tools, pots and pans, and metalware. kar 'crocodile' Rebus: khar 'blacksmith' (Kashmiri) kru a wild crocodile or alligator (Te.) mosale wild crocodile or alligator. S. ghaylu m. long snouted porpoise ; N. ghaiyl crocodile (Telugu); A. B. ghiyl alligator , Or. Ghaia, H. ghayl, gharir m. (CDIAL 4422) karavu, n. < . Cf. grha. Alligator; . (. . 8, 9, 9). kar, n. prob. Grha. 1. A species of alligator; . (. . 2, 3, 9). 2. Male alligator; . (.) karm n. prob. Grha. 1. A species of alligator ; . (. 257). 2. Male alligator; . (.) karuvu n. Melting: what is melted (Te.) [ kru ] m (S) An artificer or artisan. 2 A common term for the twelve q. v. Also m pl q. v. in . (Marathi) , , , , [ krigara, krigra, krgra, krgra, krgra ] m ( P) A good workman, a clever artificer or artisan. 2 Affixed as an honorary designation to the names of Barbers, and sometimes of , , & . 3 Used laxly as adj and in the sense of Effectual, availing, effective of the end. [ balut ] n A share of the corn and garden-produce assigned for the subsistence of the twelve public servants of a village, for whom see below. 2 In some districts. A share of the dues of the hereditary officers of a village, such as , &c. or 395

 [ balutdra or balut ] or m ( &c.) A public servant of a village entitled to . There are twelve distinct from the regular Governmentofficers , &c.; viz. , , , (These four constitute or or the first division. Of three of them each is entitled to , twenty bundles of Holcus or the thrashed corn, and the to ); , , , constitute or or , and are entitled, each, to ; , , , form or or , and have, each, . Likewise there are twelve or supernumerary public claimants, viz. , , , , , , , , , , , . Of these the allowance of corn is not settled. The learner must be prepared to meet with other enumerations of the (e. g. , - , , , , , , , , , , ; also , , , as constituting the first-class and claiming the largest division of ; next , , , as constituting the middle class and claiming a subdivision of ; lastly, , , , ; and, in the Konkan, yet another list); and with other accounts of the assignments of corn; for this and many similar matters, originally determined diversely, have undergone the usual influence of time, place, and ignorance. Of the in the Indpr pergunnah the list and description stands thus:--First class, , , , ; Second, , , , ; Third, , , , , , ; in all fourteen, but in no one village are the whole fourteen to be found or traced. In the Panharpr districts the order is:- or (1stclass); , , , , or (2nd class); , , , , or (3rd class); , , , ; twelve and of there are eighteen. According to Grant Duff, the are , , , , , , , , , , ; and the are , , , , or , , , , , , , . In many villages of Northern Dakhan the receives the of the first, second, and third classes; and, consequently, besides the , there are but nine . The following are the only or now to be found;--, , , , - , , , but of the & there is much confused intermixture, the of one district being the of another, and vice lls. (The word used above, in , , requires explanation. It means Udder; and, as the are, in the phraseology of endearment or fondling, termed (calves), their allotments or divisions are figured by successive bodies of calves drawing at the or under of the under the figure of a or cow.) (Marathi)kruciji smith (Old Church Slavic)

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Indus inscription on a Mohenjo-daro tablet (m1405) including rim-of-jar glyph as component of a ligatured glyph (Sign 15 Mahadevan)This tablet is a clear and unambiguous example of the fundamental orthographic style of Indus Script inscriptions that: both signs and pictorial motifs are integral components of the message conveyed by the inscriptions. Attempts at deciphering only what is called a sign in Parpola or Mahadevan corpuses will result in an incomplete decoding of the complete message of the inscribed object. This inscribed object is decoded as a professional calling card: a blacksmith-precious-stonemerchant with the professional role of copper-miner-smelter-furnace-scribe. m1405At Pict-97: Person standing at the center points with his right hand at a bison facing a trough, and with his left hand points to the ligatured glyph. The inscription on the tablet juxtaposes through the hand gestures of a person - a trough gestured with the right hand; a ligatured glyph composed of rim-of-jar glyph and water-carrier glyph (Glyph 15) gestured with the left hand.

Water-carrier glyph kui water-carrier (Telugu); Rebus: kuhi smelter furnace (Santali) ku f. fireplace (H.); krvI f. granary (WPah.); ku, kuo house, building(Ku.)(CDIAL 3232) kui hut made of boughs (Skt.) gui temple (Telugu) [The bull is shown in front of the trough for drinking; hence the semantics of drinking.] The most frequently occurring glyph -- rim of jar -- ligatured to Glyph 12 becomes Glyph 15 and is thus explained as a kanka, karaka: furnace scribe and is consistent with the readings of glyphs which occur together with this glyph. Kan-ka may denote an artisan working with copper, ka (Ta.) kar coppersmiths, blacksmiths (Ta.) Thus, the phrase ka karaka may be decoded rebus as a brassworker, scribe. karaka scribe, accountant.

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Glyph15 variants (Parpola) The inscription of this tablet is composed of four glyphs: bison, trough, shoulder (person), ligatured glyph -- Glyph 15(rim-of-jar glyph ligatured to water-carrier glyph). Each glyph can be read rebus in mleccha (meluhhan). angur m. bullock, rebus: ro blacksmith (N.) *agga -- 3 cattle . 2. *hagga -- 2. [Cf. *agara -- 1, *dagara -- ] 1. WPah.kg. gg m. a head of cattle, gge m.pl. cattle, sat. (LSI ix 4, 667) gai cattle .2. S.kcch. hago m. ox , L(Shahpur) hagg m. small weak ox, hagg f. cow , Garh. hgu old bull (CDIAL 5524a) *agara1 cattle. 2. *dagara -- . [Same as a- gara -- 2 s.v. *agga -- 2 as a pejorative term for cattle]1. K. angur m. bullock, L. agur, (Ju.) gar m. horned cattle; P. agar m. cattle, Or. agara; Bi. gar old worn - out beast, dead cattle, dhr gar cattle in general; Bhoj. gar cattle; H. gar, gr m. horned cattle . 2. H. dgar m. = prec.(CDIAL 5526) Rebus: N. ro term of contempt for a blacksmith (CDIAL 5524) Vikalpa: sal bos gaurus; rebus sal workshop (Santali) <sayEl>(L) {N} ``^bison, wild ^buffalo''. #59041. pattar trough (Ta.), rebus paar-ai community; guild as of workmen (Ta.); pattar merchants (Ta.); perh. vartaka (Skt.) pthar precious stone (OMarw.) (CDIAL 8857) me body (Mu.); rebus: me iron (Ho.); eaka 'upraised arm' (Ta.); rebus: eraka = copper (Ka.)

Ligature 1 in composite glyph: kan-ka rim of jar (Santali), rebus karaka scribe, accountant (Pa.); vikalpa: 1. kraika -- m. arrow-maker (Pa.) 2. khanaka miner, digger, excavator (Skt.). Ligature 2 in composite glyph: kui water-carrier (Telugu), rebus: kuhi smelter furnace (Santali) The composite message is thus: blacksmith, merchant, copper smelter scribe.

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Vikalpa: pattar trough; rebus pattar, vartaka merchant. pattal, n. pattar 1. A wooden bucket; . (. 19, 23). pattar , n. < T. battuu. A caste title of goldsmiths; . paaai , n. prob. - + -. 1. [T. paika, K. paae.] Anvil; . (.) (, 821). 2. [K. paai.] Smithy, forge; pattal , n. 1. A wooden bucket; . (. 19, 23). pattar , n. 1. See , 1, 4, 5. 2. Wooden trough for feeding animals; . (, 257). paar-ai community; guild as of workmen (Ta.); pattar merchants; perh. vartaka (Skt.) Patthara [cp. late Sk. prastara. The ord. meaning of Sk. pr. is "stramentum"] 1. stone, rock S i.32. -- 2. stoneware Miln 2. (Pali) Pa. Pk. patthara -- m. stone , S. patharu m., L. (Ju.) pathar m., khet. patthar, P. patthar m. ( forms of Bi. Mth. Bhoj. H. G. below with atth or ath), WPah.jaun. ptthar; Ku. pthar m. slates, stones , gng. pth*lr flat stone ; A. B. pthar stone , Or. pathara; Bi. pthar, patthar, patthal hailstone ; Mth. pthar, pathal stone , Bhoj. pathal, Aw.lakh. pthar, H. pthar, patthar, pathar, patthal m., G. patthar, pathr m.; M. pthar f. flat stone ; Ko. phttaru stone ; Si. patura chip, fragment ; -- S. pathir f. stone in the bladder ; P. pathr f. small stone ; Ku. pathar stone cup ; B. pthri stone in the bladder, tartar on teeth ; Or. pathur stoneware ; H. patthr f. grit , G. pathr f. *prastarapaa -- , *prastaramrttik -- , *prastarsa -- .Addenda: prastar -- : WPah.kg. ptthr m. stone, rock ; pthreu to stone ; J. pthar m. stone ; OMarw. pthar precious stone . (CDIAL 8857) paarai workshop (Ta.) pattharika [fr. patthara] a merchant Vin ii.135 (kasa).(Pali) cf. Pattharati [pa+tharati] to spread, spread out, extend J i.62; iv.212; vi.279; DhA i.26; iii.61 (so read at J vi.549 in cpd pda with spreading feet, v. l. patthaa). -- pp. patthaa (q. v.). pattar, n. perh. vartaka. Merchants; . (W.) battuu. n. The caste title of all the five castes of artificers as vala b*, carpenter.

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Gilded bullock known as the Golden Calf Middle Bronze Age, 1900-1800 BCE Byblos, the Levant Lost-wax bronze cast, gold leaf H. 37 cm; W. 55 cm Maurice Dunand excavation, gift of the Lebanese Republic, 1930 AO 14680 This statuette of a young bullock represents the animal form of Reshef or Baal, god of storms. He was worshipped in Byblos, where many offerings were dedicated to him, including steles, weapons, and figurines such as this, which were placed inside vases. The covering of gold leaf is reminiscent of the episode of the Golden Calf in the Bible, when the tribes led through the desert by Moses forsook their god to worship false idols (Exodus 32). A young bullock The statuette represents a young bullock walking in a calm, non-threatening manner. Its head is slightly raised, its horns pointing forward. The body of the bullock is rather slender - a clue to its youthful age, as are its small dewlaps and the tail, which is topped off with an impressive plume and raised well clear of the animal's rump. The bronze was cast using the lost-wax process, enabling the artist to produce a three-dimensional figure, which he then covered in gold leaf. The statuette was found along with several other figurines depicting human and animal subjects in a vase buried in the foundations of a shrine in Byblos. Several similar vases, often containing figurines of the warrior god brandishing a weapon, have been found at the same site, indicating that the shrine was dedicated to the god Reshef. Byblos: an important archaeological site 400

The site of Byblos - the Greek name for the city now known as Jbeil in Arabic and Gubla in Semitic languages - dates from the seventh millennium BC. The city is perched on a promontory overlooking the sea and is flanked by two bays that are ideal for shipping. As early as the third millennium BC, the site was already a large town ringed by a defensive rampart. It had trading links with Egypt: this is where the pharaohs bought the cedarwood necessary for their great building projects. A local dynasty took power early in the second millennium BC and established a royal necropolis in chambers carved out in the cliffs. This was only discovered in 1924. It was filled with stone tombs and sarcophagi which contained large numbers of luxurious objects, including gifts from the pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom. The palace, now no longer standing, was on the cliffs above the royal necropolis. It is mentioned in the report of Wenamun, an envoy sent by the pharaoh to negotiate the purchase of cedarwood. Temple offerings Two main temples have been excavated in Byblos. The first is that of the Lady of Byblos, whom the Egyptians worshipped as the goddess Hathor. This temple was constantly added to and redecorated until the Achaemenid Persian period, and has given up a rich hoard of offerings such as a bust of the pharaoh Osorkon I dedicated by Elibaal, King of Byblos, in the early ninth century BC, or the stele commissioned by King Yehawmilk to commemorate the completion of a portico decorated with gold, built in the sixth century BC in honor of the goddess. The second shrine was dedicated to a male god - probably Reshef - and contained steles in the form of obelisks or small pyramids, as well as precious figurines placed in vases. Reshef also received offerings of weapons, including harpes - a type of Egyptian sword with a curved blade. The bull, whose roar was held to be reminiscent of the rolling thunder unleashed by the deity, is the animal form of the god of storms in many parts of the Levant, where he was worshipped in a number of guises, including Reshef and Baal. Many figurines of bulls have been found in the Levant, but few of such good quality. The young bullock of Byblos is clearly associated with a youthful god, as distinct from El, the father of the gods, who is sometimes depicted in the form of an older, more powerful bull. Author: Caubet Annie

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A person is a standard bearer of a banner holding aloft the one-horned young bull which is the signature glyph of Indus writing. The banner is comparable to the banner shown on two Mohenjo-daro tablets. See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-artindus-writing.html Ancient near East lapidary guilds graduate into bronze-age metalware ku horn (Kannada. Tulu. Tamil) [kha] m A young bull, a bullcalf. (Marathi) Rebus: [ka] A circular hamlet; a division of a or village, composed generally of the huts of one caste. [kha]

Alloyed--a metal (Marathi).

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Frieze of a mosaic panel Circa 2500-2400 BCE Temple of Ishtar, Mari (Tell Hariri), Syria Shell and shale Andr Parrot excavations, 1934-36 AO 19820 These inlaid mosaics, composed of figures carved in mother-of-pearl, against a background of small blocks of lapis lazuli or pink limestone, set in bitumen, are among the most original and attractive examples of Mesopotamian art. It was at Mari that a large number of these mosaic pieces were discovered. Here they depict a victory scene: soldiers lead defeated enemy captives, naked and in chains, before four dignitaries. A victory scene The pieces that make up this shell mosaic composition were found scattered on the floor of the Temple of Ishtar, and therefore the reconstruction of the original panel is based on guesswork, all the more so in that the shell pieces are missing. The shell figures were arranged on a wooden panel covered with a layer of bitumen. The whole composition was organized in several registers, and the frame of the panel was emphasized by a double red and white line of stone and shell. The spaces between the figures were filled by small tiles of gray-black shale. The panel depicts the end of a battle, with soldiers leading their stripped and bound captives before dignitaries. The soldiers wear helmets, carry spears or adzes, and are dressed in kaunakes (fleecy skirts or kilts) and scarves. The dignitaries wear kaunakes and low fur hats, and each 403

carries a long-handled adze on the left shoulder. Their leader appears to be a shaven-headed figure: stripped to the waist and wearing kaunakes, he carries a standard showing a bull standing on a pedestal. The lower register, on the right, features traces of a chariot drawn by onagers, a type of wild ass. The art of mosaic Many fragments of mosaic panels were discovered in the temples of Mari. Used to decorate the soundboxes of musical instruments, "gaming tables," or simple rectangular wooden panels, the pieces of mosaic seen here were like scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle when they were found. Mosaic pictures were particularly prized in Mesopotamia. Fragments can be found in Kish, Tello, and Tell Asmar, in Mesopotamia, and in Ebla, Syria, where these extremely fragile works of art did not survive the destruction of the buildings in which they were housed. Only the Standard of Ur (Mesopotamia) has been preserved, an object which offers many points of comparison with the present work, since one side of this artifact is devoted to the theme of war. We know that the fragments discovered at Mari were manufactured locally, for the workshop of an engraver using mother-of-pearl was found in the palace. By the delicacy of their carving and engraving, the mother-of-pearl figures produced in this capital of a kingdom on the Middle Euphrates distinguish it from other centers of artistic production; they sometimes even surpass works of art produced in the Mesopotamian city of Ur. One of the distinctive features of Mari is the diversity of the scenes depicted: battles and scenes of offerings made to the gods, religious scenes with priests and priestesses, and sacrifices of rams.These scenes provide us with invaluable insights into the social, political, and religious life of Mari. Bibliography Contenau G., Manuel d'archologie orientale depuis les origines jusqu' Alexandre : les dcouvertes archologiques de 1930 1939, IV, Paris : Picard, 1947, pp. 2049-2051, fig. 1138 Parrot A., Les fouilles de Mari, premire campagne (hiver 1933-1934), Extr. de : Syria, 16, 1935, paris : P. Geuthner, pp. 132-137, pl. XXVIII Parrot A., Mission archologique de Mari : vol. I : le temple d'Ishtar, Bibliothque archologique et historique, LXV, Paris : Institut franais d'archologie du Proche-Orient, 1956, pp. 136-155, pls. LVI-LVII Author: Iselin Claire 404

Bas-relief fragment, called "The Spinner" Bitumen J. de Morgan excavations Sb 2834 This votive or commemorative relief shows a woman squatting on a stool holding a spindle. Behind her, a servant cools her with a fan; before her stands a pedestal table laden with food. Another figure formerly stood facing her. This figure of a spinner is one of the rare images of a woman in her personal domestic environment in the ancient Orient. The image of women in the ancient Orient Women appear in many ancient Oriental texts, always in the background of a predominant male figure. With the exception of goddesses, they feature more rarely in images pertaining to fertility. In this domestic scene, the woman is seated in an informal manner, with one leg folded under her. With her arms full of bracelets, she turns the spindle: the flower-shaped tip is visible above her left hand, and the thread accumulates below the conical spinning whorl serving as a pulley. No skein is visible, perhaps because the scene may not represent the act of spinning so much as the spinner's satisfied presentation of her work to an important figure who is just visible on the other side of the table. She is dressed in a sleeveless tunic; her decorated veil, which does not cover her head - probably because she is an intimate setting - reveals her long hair, pulled back in a bun and held in place with a headscarf crossed around her head. Her face is calm but smiling, her body plump and stocky. A royal interior Behind the spinner stands a figure, as large as the seated figure, either because it is a child, or rather because the artist is indicating a social hierarchy. The standing figure has large round curls, wears a short-sleeved tunic and jewelry on his or her wrists, and is shown fanning the spinner with a square fan on a long handle, whose parallel grooves suggest wickework. The spinner's stool is covered with a fabric whose fringed edges hide the upper part of the seat; an 405

ornament protruding at the back, probably an animal's head, remains visible. The feet, joined together by a triple brace, are sculpted in the shape of thick lion claws. This decoration is also visible on the table, a low pedestal table with a thick top resting on molded capitals. This highly ornate style of furniture resembles that depicted on certain Assyrian stone reliefs, at Khorsabad (Louvre), and on the "Banquet under the Arbor" relief from Nineveh (British Museum), featuring a similar scene. Excavations at Ugarit, Nimrud and Arslan Tash (Louvre) produced similar ornamentations in ivory. In the ancient Orient, only gods and sovereigns received such furnishings, a privilege reflected in the inventories of royal trousseaux and lists of booty drawn up by Assyrian scribes. Ordinary people ate and slept on the floor. This scene therefore probably takes place in the divine world or in the palace at Susa, at the court of a Neo-Elamite sovereign, perhaps the figure on the right now completely lost. A Susian material The material used to sculpt this relief is highly characteristic of Susa: a bituminous stone, a matte, black sedimentary rock. Deposits of bitumen, a thick hydrocarbon, are relatively numerous in Mesopotamia and in western Iran, an area of abundant oil resources, but the bituminous stone deposit in the Susa region seems to have been unique and the Susians were the only ones to use it from the 4th millennium. The fine grain of the stone permitted a high level of precision in the details. If heated slightly, the stone could be coated with gold or silver leaf or receive incrustatations of various materials, for the making of luxury objects typical of Susa. Bibliography Amiet Pierre, Elam, Auvers-sur-Oise, Arche, 1966, p. 413. Amiet Pierre, Suse : 6000 ans d'histoire, ditions de la Runion des Muses nationaux, coll. "monographies des Muses de France", 1988, p. 112, fig. 69. The Royal City of Susa. Ancient Near Eastern Treasures in the Louvre, catalogue de l'exposition, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1992, pp. 200-201, cat. n 141. Connan Jacques , Deschesne Odile, Le bitume Suse : collection du Muse du Louvre, ditions de la Runion des Muses nationaux, Elf Aquitaine Production, 1996, p. 227, fig. 34 ; pp. 339-340, cat. n 431. Herrmann Georgina (d.), Furniture in Ancient Orient, Mainz, Philipp von Zabern. Roaf Mickhal, Atlas de la Msopotamie et du Proche Orient antique, Brepols, 1991, p. 130. Ibex and lion 406

Dagger chape 539-333 BCE Iran Bone H. 30 cm; W. 45 cm; D. 10 cm Antoine-Barthlmy Clot Bey collection N 8336 (MN 1376) The decoration of this chape - the mount of a scabbard - is remarkable. It depicts a lively and realistic scene of a lion devouring an ibex. The artist has made the best of the small surface and the trefoil shape imposed by the function of the object. This chape would have originally been part of a ceremonial dagger. In stylistic terms, it reflects the influence of a number of artistic traditions. The mystery of the object's provenance

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The small piece of flat bone has been irregularly rounded. The flat base is pierced in the middle with an elongated mortise. The bone is carved in slight relief. The scene, doubtless inspired by the trefoil shape of the material, is of a lion devouring an ibex, of which only the long neck and the head can be seen. The object was formerly in a collection that included a number of similar pieces in bone and ivory, brought back from Egypt by Dr. Antoine-Barthlmy Clot Bey. He donated his collection to the Louvre in 1853. The archaeological provenance of the objects remains unclear. Their function has been suggested with reference to illustrations of similar pieces. The chape of an akinakes The object is the chape of an akinakes, which was a type of short sword or dagger common in the Middle East. An illustration of such a ceremonial weapon can be seen on one of the reliefs of the Treasury of Persepolis, known as the Scene of the Audience of the Great King. It shows a dignitary wearing such a short sword in a preciously wrought scabbard that ends in a similarly shaped chape, carved with a horse being brought down by a lion. Various artistic influences Achaemenid art flourished principally at the imperial court. It is characterized by its eclecticism. As the charter of Darius (Louvre, Sb2789) shows, the empire drew on the best its various peoples had to offer and made skilful use of the riches of each region. The decoration of this chape is an example of Skythian art, in which such designs were common. Bibliography Amiet Pierre, "Les Ivoires achmnides de Suse", in Syria, t. XLIX, 1972, pp. 167 et suiv. Contenau Georges, Manuel d'histoire de l'art, t. IV, 1947, p. 2262.Author: Giraudon Catherine

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Cylinder Seal of Ibni-Sharrum Agade period, reign of Sharkali-Sharri (c. 2217-2193 BCE) Mesopotamia Serpentine H. 3.9 cm; Diam. 2.6 cm Formerly in the De Clercq collection; gift of H. de Boisgelin, 1967 AO 22303 Fine engraving, elegant drawing, and a balanced composition make this seal one of the masterpieces of glyptic art. The decoration, which is characteristic of the Agade period, shows two buffaloes that have just slaked their thirst in the stream of water spurting from two vases held by two naked kneeling heroes. A masterpiece of glyptic art This seal, which belonged to Ibni-Sharrum, the scribe of King Sharkali-Sharri, who succeeded his father Naram-Sin, is one of the most striking examples of the perfection attained by carvers in the Agade period. The two naked, curly-headed heroes are arranged symmetrically, halfkneeling. They are both holding vases from which water is gushing as a symbol of fertility and abundance; it is also the attribute of the god of the river, Enki-Ea, of whom these spirits of running water are indeed the acolytes. Two arni, or water buffaloes, have just drunk from them. Below the scene, a river winds between the mountains represented conventionally by a pattern of two lines of scales. The central cartouche bearing an inscription is held between the buffaloes' horns. A scene testifying to relations with distant lands Buffaloes are emblematic animals in glyptic art in the Agade period. They first appear in the reign of Sargon, indicating sustained relations between the Akkadian Empire and the distant country of Meluhha, that is, the present Indus Valley, where these animals come from. These exotic creatures were probably kept in zoos and do not seem to have been acclimatized in Iraq 409

at the end of the 3rd millennium BC. Indeed, it was not until the Sassanid Empire that they reappeared. The engraver has carefully accentuated the animals' powerful muscles and spectacular horns, which are shown as if seen from above, as they appear on the seals of the Indus. The production of a royal workshop The calm balance of the composition, based on horizontal and vertical lines, gives this tiny low relief a classical monumental character, typical of the style of the late Akkadian period. Seals of this quality were the preserve of the entourage of the royal family or high dignitaries and were probably made in a workshop whose production was reserved for this elite. Bibliography Amiet Pierre, Bas-reliefs imaginaires de l'ancien Orient : d'aprs les cachets et les sceauxcylindres, exp. Paris, Htel de la Monnaie, juin-octobre 1973, avec une prface de Jean Nougayrol, Paris, Htel de la Monnaie, 1973. Amiet Pierre, L'Art d'Agad au muse du Louvre, Paris, ditions de la Runion des muses nationaux, 1976. Art of the First Cities, New York, 2003, n 135. Boehmer Rainer Michael, Die Entwicklung der Glyptik whrend der Akkad-Zeit, Berlin, W. De Gruyter und C , 1965, n 724, fig. 232. Boehmer Rainer Michael, Das Auftreten des Wasserbffels in Mesopotamien in historischer Zeit und sein sumerische Bezeichnung, ZA 64 (1974), pp. 1-19. Clercq Louis (de), Collection de Clercq. Catalogue mthodique et raisonn. Antiquits assyriennes, cylindres orientaux, cachets, briques, bronzes, bas-reliefs, etc., t. I, Cylindres orientaux, avec la collaboration de Joachim Menant, Paris, E. Leroux, 1888, n 46. Collon Dominique, First Impressions : cylinder seals in the Ancient Near-East, Londres, British museum publications, 1987, n 529. Frankfort Henri, Cylinder Seals, Londres, 1939, pl XVIIc. 410

Zettler Richard L., "The Sargonic Royal Seal. A Consideration of Sealing in Mesopotamia", in Seals and Sealing in the Ancient Near East, Bibliotheca Mesopotamica 6, Malibu, 1977, pp. 33-39. Author: Demange Franoise

Cylinder seal carved with an elongated buffalo and a Harappan inscription circa 2600-1700 BCE Susa, Iran Fired steatite H. 2.3 cm; Diam. 1.6 cm Jacques de Morgan excavations, Susa Sb 2425 This cylinder seal, carved with a Harappan inscription, originated in the Indus Valley. It is made of fired steatite, a material widely used by craftsmen in Harappa. The animal - a bull with no hump on its shoulders - is also widely attested in the region. The seal was found in Susa, reflecting the extent of commercial links between Mesopotamia, Iran, and the Indus. A seal made in Meluhha The language of the inscription on this cylinder seal found in Susa reveals that it was made in Harappa in the Indus Valley. In Antiquity, the valley was known as Meluhha. The seal's chalky white appearance is due to the fired steatite it is made of. Craftsmen in the Indus Valley made most of their seals from this material, although square shapes were usually favored. The animal carving is similar to those found in Harappan works. The animal is a bull with no hump on its shoulders, or possibly a short-horned gaur. Its head is lowered and the body unusually elongated. As was often the case, the animal is depicted eating from a woven wicker manger. Trading links between the Indus, Iran, and Mesopotamia This piece can be compared to another circular seal carved with a Harappan inscription, also found in Susa. The two seals reveal the existence of trading links between this region and the

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Indus valley. Other Harappan objects have likewise been found in Mesopotamia, whose sphere of influence reached as far as Susa. The manufacture and use of the seals Cylinder seals were used mainly to protect sealed vessels and even doors to storage spaces against tampering. The surface of the seal was carved. Because the seals were so small, the artists had to carve tiny scenes on a material that allowed for fine detail. The seal was then rolled over clay to produce a reverse print of the carving. Some cylinder seals also had handles. Bibliography Amiet Pierre, L'ge des changes inter-iraniens : 3500-1700 av. J.-C., Paris, ditions de la Runion des muses nationaux, 1986, coll. "Notes et documents des muses de France", p. 143 et p. 280, fig. 93. Borne interactive du dpartement des Antiquits orientales. Les cits oublies de l'Indus : archologie du Pakistan, cat. exp. Paris, Muse national des arts asiatiques, Guimet, 16 novembre 1988-30 janvier 1989, sous la dir. de Jean-Franois Jarrige, Paris, Association franaise d'action artistique, 1988, pp. 194-195, fig. A5. Author: Herbin Nancie

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M0304 (Reconstructed) A person is shown seated in penance. kamaha penance (Pkt.) Rebus: kammai a coiner (Ka.); kampaam coinage, coin, mint (Ta.) kammaa = mint, gold furnace (Te.) Thus, the over-arching message of the inscription composed of many hieroglyphs (of glyphic elements) thus is a description of the offerings of a mint or coiner (workshop with a golf furnace).

kt = bunch of twigs (Skt.) Rebus: kuhi = furnace (Santali) Vikalpa: clump between the two horns: kua n. clump e.g. darbhakuaP.(CDIAL 3236). Kundr turner (A.)(CDIAL 3295). : kundr turner (A.); k dr, k dri (B.); kundru (Or.); kundau to turn on a lathe, to carve, 413

to chase; kundau dhiri = a hewn stone; kundau murhut = a graven image (Santali) kunda a turners lathe (Skt.)(CDIAL 3295) Vikalpa: kd, k bunch of twigs (Skt.) Rebus: kuhi smelter furnace (Santali) Rebus reading of glyphic elements of the bristled (tigers mane) face: There are two glyphic elements denoted on the face. m h face; rebus: metal ingot (Santali) m h = the quantity of iron produced at one time in a native smelting furnace of the Kolhes; iron produced by the Kolhes and formed like a fourcornered piece a little pointed at each end; mh mht = iron smelted by the Kolhes and formed into an equilateral lump a little pointed at each end; kolhe tehen me~he~t mh akata = the Kolhes have to-day produced pig iron (Santali.lex.) Shoggy hair; tigers mane. Sodo bodo, sodro bodro adj. adv. Rough, hairy, shoggy, hirsute, uneven;sodo [Persian. Sod, dealing] trade; traffic; merchandise; marketing; a bargain; the purchase or sale of goods; buying and selling; mercantile dealings (G.lex.) sodagor = a merchant, trader;sodgor (P.B.) (Santali.lex.) The face is depicted with bristles of hair, representing a tigers mane.c, cl, cliy tigers mane (Pkt.)(CDIAL 4883).Rebus: cai furnace, kiln, funeral pile (Te.)(CDIAL 4879; DEDR 2709). Thus the composite glyphic composition: bristled (tigers mane) face is read rebus as: sodagor m h ca furnace (of) ingot merchant. Reading the glyphic elements on the chest of the person and arms: kamarasla = waist-zone, waist-band, belt (Te.) karmrala = workshop of blacksmith (Skt.) kamar blacksmith (Santali) sekeseke, sekseke covered, as the arms with ornaments; Rebus: sekra those who work in brass and bell metal; sekra sakom a kind of armlet of bell metal (Santali) Vikalpa: bhula n. armour for the arms (Skt.) Rebus: bangala. [Tel.] n. An oven. . (Telugu) Vikalpa: cri bangles (H.) Rebus: cai furnace, kiln, funeral pile (Te.)(CDIAL 4879; DEDR 2709).

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Thus, together, the glyphic elements on the chest of the person and arms are read rebus: sekra karmrala brass/bell-metal workshop of smith (with) furnace. Glyphic compositions on the base on which the person is seated; hence, the rebus readings of glyphics: stool, pair of hayricks, pair of antelopes.

Kalibangan 067 Antelope with long tail + two glyphs of ficus religiosa. mha antelope; rebus: me iron (Mu.) Alternative: tagara 'antelope' Rebus: tagara'tin'; damgar 'merchant'.

loa fig leaf (Santali): Rebus: lo iron (Assamese, Bengali); loa iron (Gypsy) Glyph: lo = nine
(Santali); no = nine (B.) on-patu = nine (Ta.)

Kur. Ka a stool. Malt. Kano stool, seat. (DEDR 1179) Rebus: ka = a furnace, altar (Santali.lex.) mu, ma, mi stack of hay (Te.)(DEDR 5058). Rebus: me iron (Ho.) Vikalpa: kuntam haystack (Te.)(DEDR 1236) Rebus: kuamu a pit for receiving and preserving 415

consecrated fire (Te.) A pair of hayricks, a pair of antelopes: mu, ma, mi stack of hay (Te.)(DEDR 5058). Rebus: me iron (Ho.) Vikalpa: kundavum = manger, a hayrick (G.) Rebus: kundr turner (A.); k dr, k dri (B.); kundru (Or.); kundau to turn on a lathe, to carve, to chase; kundau dhiri = a hewn stone; kundau murhut = a graven image (Santali) kunda a turners lathe (Skt.)(CDIAL 3295) Thus, a pair of haystacks can be read as phonetic determinatives of a pair of antelopes. Decoding a pair: dula m. a pair, a couple, esp. of two similar things (Rm. 966) (Kashmiri); dol likeness, picture, form (Santali) Rebus: dul to cast metal in a mould (Santali) dul mee cast iron (Mundari. Santali) Antelope: mil markhor (Trwl) meho a ram, a sheep (G.)(CDIAL 10120); rebus: mht, me iron (Mu.Ho.) Alternative: tagara 'antelope' Rebus: tagara 'tin'; damgar 'merchant'. Glyph: krammara look back (Te.); Rebus: kamar smith (Santali) Vikalpa 1: mlekh antelope(Br.); milakkhu copper (Pali) Vikalpa 2: kala stag, buck (Ma.) Rebus: kallan mason (Ma.); kalla glass beads (Ma.); kalu stone (Kona); xal id., boulder (Br.)(DEDR 1298). Rebus: kallan stone-bead-maker. Thus, together, the glyphs on the base of the platform are decoded rebus:me kamar dul mee

(vikalpa: k dr),iron (metal) smith, casting (metal) (Vikalpa: ku k dr turner).

Animal glyphs around the seated person, glyphics: buffalo (sal), boar (rhinoceros, bahoe), elephant (ib), tiger (jumping, k d kol). The four animal glyphs surrounding the seated person thus connote, rebus: workshop (sal), worker in both iron and wood (bahi), merchant (ibbho), turner-smith (k d kol), sal bos gaurus; rebus: sal workshop (Santali) Vikalpa 1: ran:g buffalo; ran:ga pewter or alloy of tin (ran:ku), lead (nga) and antimony (ajana)(Santali) Vikalpa 2: kaam bison (Ta.)(DEDR 1114) Rebus: kaiyo [Hem. Des. Kaa-i-o = (Skt. Sthapati, a mason) a bricklayer, mason (G.)] 416

bahia = a castrated boar, a hog (Santali) Rebus: bahi a caste who work both in iron and wood (Santali) bahoe a carpenter, worker in wood; badhoria expert in working in wood(Santali) ibha elephant (Skt.) Rebus: ibbho 'merchant' (cf.Hemacandra, Desinamamala, vaika). ib iron (Santali) karibha elephant (Skt.); rebus: karb iron (Ka.) kolo, kole jackal (Kon.Santali); kola kukur white tiger (A.); [ klh ] [ klh ] (Marathi) Rebus: kol pacaloha five metals(Ta.); kol furnace, forge (Kuwi) Ta. kol working in iron, blacksmith; kolla blacksmith. Ma. kollan blacksmith, artificer. Ko. kolel smithy, temple in Kota village; kolhali to forge (DEDR 2133) krda m. jump , grda -- m. jump Kh. [krd] S. kuu m. leap , N. kud, Or. kuda, d, kud -- kudi jumping about .krdati leaps, jumps MBh. [grdati, khrdat Dhtup.: prob. Drav. (Tam. kuti, Kan. gudi to spring ) T. Burrow BSOAS xii 375]S. kuau to leap ; L. kua to leap, frisk, play ; P. kudd to leap , Ku. kudo, N. kudnu, B. k d, kd; Or. kudib to jump, dance ; Mth. kdab to jump , Aw. lakh. kdab, H. kdn, OMarw. kda, G. (CDIAL 3411, 3412) Rebus: kunda turner kundr turner (A.) Vikalpa: pui to jump; pua calcining of metals. Pouncing tiger glyph is read rebus: k d kol 'turner smith'. Allograph: u Pouncing upon, as an eagle; . (. 43, 5). Rebus: eruvai copper (Ta.); ere dark red (Ka.)(DEDR 446). Thus, together, the set of animals surround the seated person are decoded rebus: ran:ga bahi karb kol dhtu pui (worker in) pewter, iron & wood, iron(metal) forge/furnace for calcining metals. Decoding the text of the inscription

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Text 2420 on m0304 Line 2 (bottom): body glyph. Md body (Kur.)(DEDR 5099); me iron (Ho.) Line 1 (top): Body glyph plus ligature of splinter shown between the legs: md body (Kur.)(DEDR 5099); me iron (Ho.) sal splinter; Rebus: sal workshop (Santali) Thus, the ligatured glyph is read rebus as:me sal iron (metal) workshop. Alternative: [kh] m a jag, notch, or indentation (as upon the edge of a tool or weapon); rebus: kh metal tools, pots and pans. Thus the body hieroglyph ligatured with the splinter hieroglyph is read: me kh 'iron tools, pots and pans'. Sign 216 (Mahadevan). ato claws or pincers (chelae) of crabs; aom, iom to seize with the claws or pincers, as crabs, scorpions; akop = to pinch, nip (only of crabs) (Santali) Rebus: dhatu mineral (Santali) Vikalpa: er claws; Rebus: era copper. Allograph: kamakom = fig leaf (Santali.lex.) kamarma (Has.), kamakom (Nag.); the petiole or stalk of a leaf (Mundari.lex.) kamat.ha = fig leaf, religiosa (Skt.) Sign 229. Sann, sannh = pincers, smiths vice (P.) ann f. small room in a house to keep sheep in (Wpah.) Bshk. an, Phal.n roof (Bshk.)(CDIAL 12326). sei (f.) [Class. Sk. rei in meaning guild; Vedic= row] 1. A guild Vin iv.226; J i.267, 314; iv.43; Dvs ii.124; their number was eighteen J vi.22, 427; VbhA 466. -- pamukha the head of a guild J ii.12 (text seni - ). 2. A division of an army J vi.583; ratha -- J vi.81, 49; seimokkha the chief of an army J vi.371 (cp. Sen and seniya). (Pali)

Together, Sign 229 and Sign 216 may be read as: dhatu sei 'mineral (products) guild (of artisans)' 418

Fish glyph: ayo 'fish' Rebus: ayas 'metal' (Samskrtam)

Sign 342. Kaa kanka rim of jar (Santali): karaka rim of jar(Skt.) Rebus: karaka scribe, accountant (Te.); gaaka id. (Skt.) (Santali) copper fire-altar scribe (account)(Skt.) Rebus: ka fire-altar (Santali) Thus, the rim of jar ligatured glyph is read rebus: fire-altar (furnace) scribe (account) Sign 344. Ligatured glyph: rim of jar ligature + splinter (infixed); rim of jar ligature is read rebus: kaa karaka furnace scribe (account). sal stake, spike, splinter, thorn, difficulty (H.); Rebus: sal workshop (Santali) * lai, n. < l. 1. Apartment, hall; . (. 844. 7). 2. Elephant stable or stall; . (. 220, 3). lai-k-kui, n. < +. Receptacle for the juice underneath a sugar-cane press; .* lai-t-toi, n. < id. +. Cauldron for boiling sugar-cane juice; .- lai-py-, v. intr. < id. +. 1. To work a sugar-cane mill; . (. . 93). 2. To move, toss, as a ship; . (R.) 3. To be undecided, vacillating; . (,) Vikalpa: sal splinter; rebus: workshop (sal) lai workshop (Ta.) * lai, n. < l. 1. Apartment, hall; . (. 844. 7). 2. Elephant stable or stall;. (. 220, 3). lai-k-kui, n. < +. Receptacle for the juice underneath a sugar-cane press; .* lai-t-toi, n. < id. +. Cauldron for boiling sugar-cane juice; .- lai-py-, v. intr. < id. +. 1. To work a sugar-cane mill; . (. . 93) Thus, together with the splinter glyph, the entire ligature rim of jar + splinter/splice is read rebus as: furnace scribe (account workshop). Sign 59. Ayo, hako fish; a~s = scales of fish (Santali); rebus: aya = iron (G.); ayah, ayas = metal (Skt.) Sign 342. Kaa karaka rim of jar; rebus: furnace scribe (account). Thus the inscription reads rebus: iron, iron (metal) workshop, copper (mineral) guild, fire-altar (furnace) scribe (account workshop), metal furnace scribe (account) As 419

the decoding of m0304 seal demonstrates, the Indus hieroglyphs are the professional repertoire of an artisan (miners/metalworkers) guild detailing the stone/mineral/metal resources/furnaces/smelters of workshops (smithy/forge/turners shops). kuntam haystack (Te.)(DEDR 1236) Rebus 1: kuamu a pit for receiving and preserving consecrated fire (Te.)kha tools, pots and pans and metal-ware (Gujarati).Rebus 2: kunda a turner's lathe (Skt.)(CDIAL 3295). Rebus: kundan pure gold. kuamu a pit for receiving and preserving consecrated fire (Te.)

krammara. Adv. Again. or Same

as . krm back(Kho.)(CDIAL 3145) Rebus: karmra smith, artisan (Skt.) kamar smith (Santali) tagara 'antelope' Rebus 1: tagara 'tin' Rebus 2: damgar 'merchant' (Akkadian)

ku = crooked buffalo horns (L.) Rebus: ku = chief of village. Kui-a = village headman; leader of a village (Pkt.lex.) I.e. rei jeha chief of metal-worker guild. The entire hieroglyph composition of seal m0304 is thus the metalware catalog of a chief of metal worker, mineral worker, kundan pure gold merchant (damgar) guild. Hieroglyph denoting guild, pattar 'trough'

Together with me body, rebus: me iron, the rebus reading of the body with spread feet may read rebus: me pattar iron (workers) guild.

This glyph if ligatured with a notch-glyph, the reading is: me pattar kh 'iron guild tools pots and pans'. [ kh ] m A jag, notch, or indentation (as upon the edge of a tool or weapon). Rebus: kha tools, pots and pans, and metal-ware.

Alternative: 420

dhau body (Sindhi) rebus: dhatu ore (Santali) k 2 a man's length, the stature of a man
(as a measure of length) Rebus: k stone. Ga. (Oll.) kan, (S.) kanu (pl. kankil) stone

worker in wood; badhoria expert in working in wood(Santali) Fish + splinter, aya + [ kh ] m A jag, notch, or indentation (as upon the edge of a tool or weapon). Rebus: kha tools, pots and pans, and metal-ware. Ayaska is a compounde word attested in Panini.

Listed by Koskenniemi and Parpola and cited by Diwiyana[http://indusscriptmore.blogspot.com/2011/08/problematic-13-stroke-signs-inindus.html]. Ligatured glyph of three sememes: 1. me body (Mu.); rebus: iron (Ho.); 2. kui water carrier (Te.) Rebus: kuhi smelter furnace (Santali); 3. [kh] m a jag, notch, or indentation (as upon the edge of a tool or weapon); rebus: kh metal tools, pots and pans.

Nave + notch glyphs on Text 1061 read: eraka 'nave' Rebus eraka 'copper' + [kh] m a jag, notch, or indentation (as upon the edge of a tool or weapon); rebus: kh metal tools, pots and pans, thus denoting copper tools, pots and pans.

421

On seal m1186A a kneeling adorant makes offerings. bre, brae = an offering of food to a demon; a meal after fasting, a breakfast (Tu.) barada, barda, birada = a vow (G.lex.) Rebus: baran, bharat (5 copper, 4 zinc and 1 tin)(P.B.) A similar kneeling adorant now holds a wide-mouthed, rimless pot and makes an offering to the tree. bahu m. large pot in which grain is parched (Sindhi) Rebus; bhah m. kiln (P.) baa = a kind of iron (G.) bhaa furnace (g.) baa = kiln (santali); baa = a kind of iron (g.) bhaha -- m.n. gridiron (pkt.) bahu large cooking fire bah f. distilling furnace; l. bhah m. grainparcher's oven, bhah f. kiln, distillery, aw. bhah; p. bhah m., h f. furnace, bhah m. kiln; s. bhah ke distil (spirits). (CDIAL 9656) Thus, the reading of the composite glyph: kneeling adorant + pot is read rebus: me pattar + bhaa 'iron urnace (of) merchant guild'. Glyph: spread feet: Pattharati [pa+tharati] to spread, spread out, extend J i.62; iv.212; vi.279; DhA i.26; iii.61 (so read at J vi.549 in cpd pda with spreading feet, v. l. patthaa). pp. Vin ii.135 Ta.) pattharika [fr. Patthara] a merchant( patthaa (q. v.). Rebus: paarai workshop guild as of workmen (Ta.);pattar merchants; perh. Vartaka ;(kasa).(Pali) Paar-ai community (Skt.) pattar, n. perh. Vartaka. Merchants; (Tamil) battuu. n. The caste title .of all the five castes of artificers as vala b*, carpenter

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Circular working platform as a workshop (anvil, smithy, forge)Examples of workers platforfms at Harappa. The circular platforms could have served as prastara for the articles taken for display from out of the storage pots. During excavations of the circular platform area on Mound F numerous Cemetery H-type sherds and some complete vessels were recovered in association with pointed base goblets and large storage vessels that are usually associated with Harappa Period 3C. South fo the platforms was a furnace. A large kiln was also found just below the surface of the mound to the south of the circular platforms. http://www.harappa.com/indus4/e6.html The circular platforms are used in conjunction with the products taken out of the kiln (furnace) and large storage vessels which could have been plced in the center of any of the street platforms, constituting the main market street of early times of Harappa settlement. Circular platforms (with a dia. Of 1.5 m) found within rooms (of a coppersmith) as in Padri might have served as working platforms for the brass-workers, lapidaries, artisans of the civilization or as a display counter if the room was used as a shop for sales.

Paar-ai community; guild as of workmen (Ta.); pattar merchants; perh. Vartaka (Skt.) varangi. [Tel.] n. A carpenter. battuu. n. A worshipper. . The caste title of all the five castes of artificers as a carpenter. one who makes a god of his belly. L. xvi. 230.(Telugu)

The merchant, battuu, pattar is shown in a worshipful state kneeling in adoration on many

inscriptions.

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One side of a two-sided tablet m0478, 0479, 0480. in bas relief. Kneeling adorant carrying a U-shaped rimless pot in front a tree. NOTE: The kneeling motif also occurs on Sit Shamshi bronze.

Obverse of the tablets show this narrative. Pict-111: From R.: A woman with outstretched arms flanked by two men holding uprooted trees in their hands; a person seated on a tree with a tiger below with its head turned backwards; a tall jar with a lid. Many such circular working platforms were discovered. A lexeme of indian linguistic area which described a circular working platform of the type found at harappa: ku. Pathrau f. pavement of slates and stones (cdial 8858) Ta. paaai, paaai anvil, smithy, forge. Ka. Paae, paai anvil, workshop. Te. Paika, paea anvil; paaa workshop.(dedr 3865). kaaica-paarai , n. < id. +. turner's shop; . pathr f. level piece of ground, plateau, small village ; s. patharu m. rug, mat ; or. athuripathuri bag and baggage ; m. pthar f. flat stone ; omarw. pthar precious stone .(CDIAL 8857) allograph indus script glyph: ptra trough in front of wild/domesticated/composite animals. pattar trough (dedr 4079) 4080 ta. cavity, hollow, deep hole; pattar (dedr 4080) rebus: pattar , n. < t. battuu. a caste title of goldsmiths. it was a smiths guild at work on circular platforms of harappa using tablets as category tallies for the final shipment of package with a seal impression. Trough as a hieroglyph See examples of trough glyph are shown in front of wild, domesticated and composite animals an evidence for the use of trough glyph as a hieroglyph, together with the animal glyph. Maybe, the 19 circular working platforms of Harappa were used for assembling 19 types of products the trough glyph denoting the working platform and the animal glyph denoting the product type (e.g. copper, gold, metal alloy, output of furnaces (of various types), minerals).

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That trough is a hieroglyph is evident from the glyph shown in front of a rhinoceros which was not a domesticated animal.

pattar trough (Ta.), rebus paar-ai community; guild as of workmen (Ta.); pattar merchants (Ta.); perh. vartaka (Skt.) pthar precious stone (OMarw.) (CDIAL 8857) ga rhinoceros, k id. Rebus: ka tools, pots and pans and metal-ware The combination of the hieroglyphs of rhinoceros + trough thus connote a guild (pattar, paar-ai) of metalware artisans. Alternative: Glyph and rebus decoding: Ku. Pathar stone cup; Or. Pathur stoneware; patthara [cp. Late Sk. prastara. The ord. meaning of Sk. Pr. Is stramentum] 1. Stone, rock S i.32. 2. Stoneware Miln 2. (Pali) Pa. Pk. Patthara m. stone , S. patharu m., L. (Ju.) pathar m., khet. Patthar, P. patthar m. ( forms of Bi. Mth. Bhoj. H. G. below with atth or ath), Wpah.jaun. ptthar; Ku. Pthar m. slates, stones , gng. Pth*lr flat stone ; A. B. pthar stone , Or. Pathara; Bi. Pthar, patthar, patthal hailstone ; Mth. Pthar, pathal stone , Bhoj. Pathal, Aw.lakh. pthar, H. pthar, patthar, pathar, patthal m., G. patthar, pathr m.; M. pthar f. flat stone ; Ko. Phttaru stone ; Si. Patura chip, fragment; -- S. pathir f. stone in the bladder; P. pathr f. small stone; B. pthri stone in the bladder, tartar on teeth ; ; H. patthr f. grit, G. pathr f. prastar -- : Wpah.kg. ptthr m. stone, rock; pthreu to stone; J. pthar m. stone; Omarw. Pthar precious stone. (CDIAL 8857)

Stamp seal with a water-buffalo, Mohenjo-daro. As is usual on Indus Valley seals that show a water buffalo,this animal is standing with upraised head and both hornsclearly visible. (Mackay, 1938b, p. 391). A feeding trough is placed in front of it, and a 425

double row of undecipherable script fills the entire space above. The horns are incised to show the natural growth lines. During the Akkadian period, cylinder seals in Mesopotamia depict water buffaloes in a similar pose that may have been copied from Indus seals (see cat. No.135)(For a Mesopotamian seal with water buffalo, see Parpola1994, p. 252 and Collon 1987, no.529 Fig. 11).(JMK Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, Professor of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Madison) (p.405). pattar , n. 1. See , 1, 4, 5. 2. Wooden trough for feeding animals; . (, 257). Other examples of trough as a hieroglyph on Indus writing seals shown in front of animals.

A trough is shown in front of some domesticated animals and also wild animals like rhinoceros, tiger, elephant. The trough glyph is clearly a hieroglyph, in fact, a category classifier. Trough as a glyph occurs on about one hundred inscriptions, though not identified as a distinct pictorial motif in the corpus of inscriptions. Why is a trough shown in front of a rhinoceros which was not a domesticated animal? A reasonable deduction is that trough is a hieroglyph intended to classify the animal rhinoceros in a category. hangar trough; hangar bull; rebus: hangar blacksmith

426

Chanhudaro22a hangar bull. Rebus: hangarblacksmith pattar trough. Rebus: pattar (Ta.), battuu (Te.) goldsmith guild (Tamil.Telugu) kh alloyed ingot; kolmo rice plant. Rebus: kolami smithy. koi flag (Ta.)(DEDR 2049).Rebus: ko workshop (Kuwi) Vikalpa: badd = ox (Nahali); bahi = worker in wood and metal (Santali) ngr = a wooden trough just enough to feed one animal. cf. iankari = a measure of capacity, 20 iankari make a par-r-a (Ma.lex.) ang = small country boat, dugout canoe (Or.);g trough, canoe, ladle (H.)(CDIAL 5568). Rebus:nro term of contempt for a blacksmith (N.) (CDIAL 5524)

427

Axe inscribed with the name of King Untash-Napirisha. Wild boar figurine on the heel Circa 1340-1300 BCE Temple of Kiririsha in Tchoga Zanbil, Iran Silver and electrum H. 5.9 cm; L. 12.5 cm Excavations by R. Ghirshman 1951-62 Sb 3973 Louvre. This hatchet inscribed with the name of Untash-Napirisha is dedicated to the goddesses Ishnikarab and Kiririsha. It was found in Tchoga Zanbil, in the temple of Ishnikarab near the great ziggurat consecrated by the king to Inshushinak and Napirisha. This type of weapon, with the axe blade emerging from the mouth of an animal - usually a lion - is in keeping with the tradition in the early 2nd millennium BC. An electrum figurine of a wild boar decorates the side of the hatchet. A hatchet inscribed with the name of Untash-Napirisha This axe found in the temple of Kiririsha in Tchoga Zanbil was an offering made by the king to thank both Kiririsha, consort to the god Napirisha, and Ishnikarab. Famous for his victorious campaigns against Babylon, King Untash-Napirisha dedicated many weapons in stone and precious metals to Elamite divinities, the principal ones being Inshushinak, Napirisha, and Kiririsha. Ishnikarab is associated with these three divinities. Although the feminine character of Ishnikarab has been questioned, she would appear to have been the wife of Inshushinak. In making his gift, the king placed himself under the protection of the two goddesses, Ishnikarab and Kiririsha. At the time, the unification of the upper and lower regions was uncertain, and the unity of the Elamite empire fragile. The inscription of the sovereign's name on this object in 428

Elamite was an assertion of the linguistic identity of the kingdom, which formed one of its underlying foundations. These offerings suggest the warrior nature of Kiririsha. A new capital to celebrate the Elamite gods King Untash-Napirisha founded a new religious capital, Al-Untash Napirisha (present-day Tchoga Zanbil), on the road linking the two principal centers of the kingdom, Anshan and Susa. In the middle of this "holy city" was a small temple dedicated to the goddess Ishnikarab. UntashNapirisha built a temple next to it dedicated to Kiririsha, as well as one to Inshushinak. Later, he changed his mind and turned the latter into a large ziggurat dominating this site where the country's guardian deities - Napirisha, the god of the upper regions, and Inshushinak, the god of the Susian plain - were worshipped. Kiririsha was the "Great Goddess," the "Great Wife," and the "Mother of Gods." She was also the "Protector of Kings." A tradition from Eastern Iran dating from the 3rd millennium BC The weapon belongs to a tradition introduced in the late 3rd millennium BC: namely, votive axes with blades emerging from the mouth of a wild animal, decorated with an animal on the collar. A reclining boar - an image commonly found in the region - is here featured on the heel of the blade, which appears to be "spewed forth" from the mouth of a lion. Other weapons such as daggers and swords have been found in graves in Luristan. These arms were often inscribed with the name of a monarch, as is the case in the Foroughi Collection. Often made of precious metals, these were not made for battle, but were insignia of dignity presented to high-ranking officials. Bibliography Amiet Pierre, Suse 6000 ans d'histoire, Paris, ditions de la Runion des muses nationaux, 1988, p. 94 ; fig. 52. Borne interactive du dpartement des Antiquits orientales.Author: Herbin Nancie

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"Akkadian tabarru, 'red dye' and Latin tablion, 'purple fringe,' all derived from the Sumerian TABBALI, 'mushroom,' literally 'twin cone.' "http://www.drugsforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=214292

Read more: http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=214292#ixzz2VX4hiTmk" A perforated bas-relief decorated with banquet scenes c. 2700-2650 BCE Mesopotamia Mesopotamia Limestone H. 0.27 cm; W. 0.24 cm. Fishes on the bottom register. This relief, with its central perforation, depicts banquet scenes, including a banquet in a boat, which is seldom represented. These liturgical banquets were the occasion of a communion with the god and seem to have been one of the main forms of worship during this period. The crude stylization of the figures, champlev relief, and incised details are characteristic of art in the oldest phase of the early dynasties of Sumer...Both decorative and votive, these plaques also had a functional role as door catches...The decoration of this plaque, divided into three registers, depicts banquet scenes, the most frequently illustrated theme at the time these reliefs were made. In the upper register, two guests, a man on the right and a woman on the left, are holding conical cups. Between the attendants waiting on them, a musician is playing a harp. In the lower register, a single guest is enthroned on a boat rowed by three sailors. This "banquet in 430

a boat" is the only known example of a complete scene. The goat and the heifer on either side of the hole in the middle...Author: Demange Franoise

"Music" stele Second dynasty of Lagash, reign of Gudea, c. 2120 BCE Tello (ancient Girsu) Limestone H. 1.20 m; W. 0.63 m; D. 0.25 m E. de Sarzec excavations, 1881 AO 52 The stele of music shows the foundation rites - performed to the sound of the lyre - of the temple built by Prince Gudea (c. 2100 BC) at his capital of Telloh (ancient Girsu), for Ningirsu, god of the state of Lagash in the Land of Sumer. The stele thus accords with the tradition of 431

Neo-Sumerian art, which unlike that of the preceding period that focused on the warlike exploits of the rulers of Akkad, tends to show the king engaged in pious activities. The building of Ningirsu's temple In the Neo-Sumerian Period (c. 2100 BCE), the rulers Gudea and Ur-Nammu had themselves depicted taking part in the foundation rites of temples, notably on steles, as statues, and as figurines. On the stele of music, Gudea, carrying a peg and cord and followed by figures probably representing his princely heir and two priests, prepares to lay out the plan of Ningirsu's sanctuary. The ceremony is punctuated by music, which accompanies the chanting or singing of liturgical poems. Behind the cantor, a musician plays on a lyre whose sound box is decorated with a bull. The deep tones of the instrument evoked the bellowing of a bull, and by poetic identification, within the temple of Ningirsu "the room of the lyre was a noisily breathing bull." The making of the god's lyre gave its name to the third year of Gudea's reign, called "the year in which was made the lyre [called] Ushumgalkalamma [the dragon of the land of Sumer]." Music in temple foundation ceremonies The spirit embodied by the lyre played a part in the events leading to the building of the temple, for it appears in the dream in which the god reveals to Gudea the task he is to accomplish (Gudea Cylinders, Louvre, MNB 1512 and MNB 1511): "When, together with Ushumgalkalamma, his well-beloved lyre, that renowned instrument, his counselor, you bring him gifts [...] the heart of Ningirsu will be appeased, he will reveal the plans of his temple." When the work was complete, Ushumgalkalamma went before Gudea, leading all the musical instruments, to mark the arrival of the god in his new abode. Ushumgalkalamma is the god's counselor because its song calms the emotions that disturb the spirit, allowing the return of the reason indispensable to good judgement. Among the divine servants of Ningirsu, it is the lyre's duty to charm his master, a god of changeable mood. It is assisted by the spirit of another lyre that brings consolation in times of darkness: "So that the sweet-toned tigi-drum should play, so that the instruments algar and miritum should resound for Ningirsu, [...] his beloved musician Ushumgalkalamma accomplished his duties to the lord Ningirsu. To soothe the heart and calm the liver [the seat of thought], to dry the tears of weeping eyes, to banish grief from the grieving 432

heart, to cast away the sadness in the heart of the god that rises like the waves of the sea, spreads wide like the Euphrates, and drowns like the flood of the storm, his lyre Lugaligihush accomplished his duties to his lord Ningirsu." Representations of musicians in Mesopotamia Representations of musicians are not uncommon in Near-Eastern iconography. They are found from the early 3rd millennium BC in the banquet scenes that appear on perforated plaques and cylinder seals. Early in the next millennium, they would appear on molded terracotta plaques, such as the example with the harpist in the Louvre (AO 12454). Very few examples of musical instruments have survived until today (among them the lyres from the royal tombs of Ur, c. 2550 BC); these representations are therefore particularly valuable. Bibliography Andr-Salvini Batrice, "Stle de la musique", in Musiques au Louvre, Paris, ditions de la Runion des muses nationaux, 1994, pp. 10-11. Parrot Andr, Tello, vingt campagnes de fouilles, 1877-1933, Paris, Albin Michel, 1948, pp. 174176, pl. 20a. Rutten Marguerite-Maggie, "Scnes de musique et de danse", in Revue des arts asiatiques, Paris, cole franaise d'Extrme-Orient, 1935, p. 220, fig. 8. Sarzec douard de, Dcouvertes en Chalde, Paris, Leroux, 1884-1912, pp. 36 et 219-221, pl. 23. Sillamy Jean-Claude, La Musique dans l'ancien Orient ou la thorie musicale sumrobabylonienne, Villeneuve d'Ascq, Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 1998, p. 160.Author(s): Iselin Claire (after a text by Andr-Salvini Batrice)

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Hammer decorated with heads of two birds and feathers 3rd Ur Dynasty, reign of Shulgi (20942047 BCE) Iran, Royal City of Susa, acropolis mound Bronze H. 12. 3 cm; L. 11 cm Excavations led by Roland de Mecquenem Sb 5634 This votive bronze weapon is characteristic of Iranian metalwork, of which many examples have been found at the Susa site. Decorated with birds' heads and feathers, this hammer carries an inscription in Sumerian referring to King Shulgi: "Powerful hero, king of Ur, king of Sumer and Akkad." A work inscribed with the name of a Mesopotamian king Shulgi, second king of the 3rd Ur Dynasty, is one of the sovereigns who marked the Neo-Sumerian period, half of which was covered by his long forty-eight-year reign. During this period, Susa and Elam were returned to Mesopotamia. Shulgi took control of Mesopotamia and conquered Susa, thus putting an end to the attempts of the Elamite sovereign Puzur-Inshushinak to achieve autonomy. Epigraphic figurines and foundation tablets in the name of Shulgi (Louvre Museum, Sb 2879 and Sb 2880) record the king's building of the temples of Ninhursag and Inshushinak on the acropolis at Susa.

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The inscription on this bronze hammer dedicated to him is in Sumerian, once more the official language in the Neo-Sumerian period, and uses the official title adopted by Shulgi's predecessor: "King of Sumer and Akkad." A ceremonial weapon in the Iranian tradition This ceremonial bronze hammer is decorated with the heads of two birds on either side of the hammer collar and curled plumage on the heel. This model has not been found in Mesopotamia, but is well documented in Luristan. A similar example (Louvre Museum, AO 24794) from this region dates from the early years of the 2nd millennium BC. Though animal motifs are a very ancient form of decoration in Iran, it was in the late 3rd and the 2nd millenniums BC that Iranian metalworkers excelled in this type of weapon, often decorated with animals. These bronze hammers and axes featuring animal motifs were often ceremonial weapons presented by Elamite sovereigns to their dignitaries. An illustration of this custom can be seen on the seal of Kuk-Simut, an official under Idadu II, an Elamite prince in the early years of the 2nd millennium BC (Louvre Museum, Sb 2294). This votive weapon was thus preserved for eternity in its owner's grave. Bibliography Amiet Pierre, lam, Auvers-sur-Oise, Arche, 1966, p. 243, n 176. La Cit royale de Suse, Exposition, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 17 novembre 19927 mars 1993, Paris, ditions de la Runion des muses nationaux, 1994, p. 92, n 56. Author: PK

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Pectoral decorated with a sphinx and a stylised tree Late Bronze Age II (1400-1230 BCE) Tomb 2, Enkomi Repouss gold leaf C. Schaeffer excavations, 1949 AM 2164 In Late Bronze Age Cyprus (1600-1050 BCE), the dead were often adorned with jewelry of fine sheet gold with repouss decoration sewn onto cloth through small holes in the gold and then placed on the hair, the face, or the chest. This broad gold band is decorated with a pair of winged sphinxes facing a stylized tree, showing both Aegean and Levantine influences. An "international" art This thin sheet of beaten gold has repouss decoration. Within a central rectangular panel are two winged sphinxes with elongated bodies, angular wings, and tails curled upwards; in their hair, they wear aigrettes like those depicted in paintings from Crete or Thera. The sphinxes are symmetrically arranged on either side of a stylized tree composed of a fleuron and a palmette with curling fronds. The whole is surrounded by a border of raised dots, within which, on the long sides, are circles of the same. The symmetrical winged sphinxes on either side of an ornamental plant element are a motif of Near Eastern inspiration, also found in Mycenaean Greece and through the 1st millennium. This type of composition is often found in the decorative arts of the Levant, on ivories, cylinder seals, and goldwork. The Louvre has a ring from Enkomi with a winged sphinx, for example. The stylized sapling or tree found in the middle of these symmetrical compositions certainly has a symbolic significance, and is sometimes called a "sacred tree" or "tree of life." Funerary jewelry 436

The gold is pierced at the middle of the short sides. From the same tomb at Enkomi comes another, elliptical band with decoration from the same die, which must have been of wood. These two pectorals, found at chest level on the remains in Tomb 2, particularly well-provided with funerary equipment, were probably sewn to pieces of fabric through the holes. Bands of this kind found in the Enkomi tombs adorned the forehead, hair, or chest of the deceased. The rosettes and spiral motifs of the decoration are part of the Near Eastern repertoire adopted in the Mediterranean. Enkomi, a prosperous port In the late 2nd millennium, Enkomi was a prosperous port that owed its wealth to the development of the copper mines and the growth of maritime trade. Founded in the 2nd millennium, this city, with its dense urban fabric, was surrounded by stone ramparts. Family tombs were dug beneath the houses, as in the Levant. Their plentiful funerary equipment, consisting of cosmetics jars in ivory, faience, or Egyptian alabaster, jewelry, and imported Mycenaean and Levantine pottery, testifies to Cyprus's involvement with the international art of the Late Bronze Age. Bibliography Caubet Annie, Karageorghis Vasos, Yon Marguerite (sous la dir. de), Les Antiquits de Chypre : ge du bronze, muse du Louvre, dpartement des Antiquits orientales, Paris, ditions de la Runion des muses nationaux, 1981, coll. "Notes et documents des muses de France, 2", p. 53, CKY89. Caubet Annie, Hermary Antoine, Karageorghis Vasos (sous la dir. de), Art antique de Chypre au muse du Louvre : du chalcolithique l'poque romaine, Paris, ditions de la Runion des muses nationaux, 1992, Athnes, Kapon, 1992, p. 64, n 60. L'Acrobate au taureau, les dcouvertes de Tell el-Daba, gypte et l'archologie de la Mditerrane orientale : 1800-1400 av. J.-C., Actes du colloque organis au muse du Louvre par le Service culturel le 3 dcembre 1994 sous la direction d'Annie Caubet, Paris, La Documentation franaise, muse du Louvre, 1999, (Confrences et colloques), p. 25, fig. 14. 437

Schaeffer Claude, Enkomi-Alasia : nouvelles missions en Chypre, 1946-1950, avec une note prliminaire de Ren Dussaud et des contributions de H. J. Plenderleith et O. Masson, Paris, Klincksieck,1952, Publications de la mission archologique franaise et de la mission du gouvernement de Chypre Enkomi, t. I, pp. 127-128. Schaeffer Claude, "La coupe en argent incruste d'or d'Enkomi-Alasia", Syria, n 30, Paris, Geuthner, 1953, pp. 51-64.Author: Iselin Claire

Goblet decorated with winged, two-headed monsters, grasping gazelles Fourteenth to twelfth centuries BCE Marlik region, Iran, southwest of the Caspian Sea Electrum H. 11 cm; D. 11 cm Purchase, November 1956 AO 20281 In the second half of the second millennium BCE, the Marlik culture, located southwest of the Caspian Sea, developed a very original art of vessels, made both in ceramic and precious metals. Ceramic vases, often polished, represented humans or animals. Goblets, made of gold, silver, or electrum, were decorated with mythological scenes or beings. The Marlik culture The people of Marlik were nomadic horsemen whose way of life and art are known only through their necropolis in the fertile Iranian province of Gilan, southwest of the Caspian Sea. They did 438

not use writing, and no trace of their dwellings remains, but it is thought that they amassed their wealth as suppliers of raw materials to the neighboring great powers of Mesopotamia and Elam. Most of the Marlik pieces date from Iron Age I, between the fourteenth and twelfth centuries BC. The art of Marlik is often attributed to what were, strictly speaking, the first Iranians, that is to say, to an Indo-European population. Before this period the inhabitants of Iran are described as Elamite. Description of the goblet The most common status objects placed in tombs were large polished vases and goblets of precious metals. The anthromorphic and zoomorphic vases are very refined. The tall goblets, with concave sides and a slight swelling at the base, are always decorated with a single or double spiral design. The vessel seen here, whose origin is unknown, appears to be related to such goblets. Made of electrum, an alloy of gold and silver, it is worked in repouss and engraved. On the outside of the goblet, repeated three times, is a monster with its jaws open, each paw holding a gazelle by the tail. A hybrid monster The monster is a two-headed composite being. The head and part of the body are feline (leopard or panther), with flecked fur, but it has wings and human arms and hands. Furthermore, the lower limbs look like coiled snakes but terminate in hawk's claws. Each type of animal skin is incised differently, with great attention paid to detail: pointed circles for the feline, lines of oval plates for the snake, diamond-shaped hatching for the claws, chevrons and hatching for the wings, and tighter hatching for the fur of the gazelles. The personality of this hybrid monster is not very clear. It is seemingly a being that dominates weaker species than itself, a counterpart of the Master of Animals. This status and the creature's two heads are clearly borrowed from Middle Assyrian glyptics of the fourteenth 439

century BC, showing that nomad Marlik craftsmen were in contact with the great contemporary Mesopotamian empires.Author: Benoit Agns Animals in procession: Two gazelles (antelopes?), stalks, two tigers Two eagles, sprout between

440

Base for a ritual offering, carved with animals Elamite period, mid3rd millennium BC Tell of the Acropolis, Susa, Iran Bituminous rock H. 19 cm; Diam. 11 cm Jacques de Morgan excavations, 1908 Lions and gazelles passant; eagles protecting their young Sb 2725 This base for a ritual offering is made of bitumen. This material was plentiful throughout the Middle East, but only in Susa was it used in sculpture. The object is carved with big cats, gazelles, and eagles. The theme of the eagle spreading its wings to protect its young was found only in Iran and also features on painted ceramics of the same period. Bitumen: a plentiful material used in an unusual manner This object in the form of a truncated cone is a base for a ritual offering. It is carved from bituminous rock, found throughout the region but used in sculpture only in Susa. It was used to make vases similar to this object (Louvre, Sb2726), and later, in the early years of the 2nd millennium BC, vases carved with bas-relief decorations and an animal's head in high relief (Louvre, Sb2740). The shape of this object - a truncated cone - is similar to other pieces made of chlorite and dating from the same period. The mortise at the top of the cone and the unfinished lip suggest that the object originally had a second part that fitted on top of the cone. However, the precise purpose of the object remains a mystery.

441

The animal carvings The cone is carved with two registers separated by a narrow strip. The upper register is decorated with two gazelles calmly grazing on vegetation, represented by stalks between each animal. Alongside the two gazelles are two big cats, almost certainly lions, with their backs to each other. Their stylized manes are shown as vertical strips, reminiscent of those of the woolen Mesopotamian garments known as kaunakes. Their tails are raised horizontally over their backs, similar to depictions of lions on cylinders from Uruk or Susa. Their heads are depicted in geometrical form. All four animals are shown in profile. The artistic desire to create a scene and a landscape imbued with life is also evident in two cylinders from Uruk and Khafaje. The lower register shows two highly stylized eagles, upright, as if resting on their tail feathers. Their wings and talons are spread to protect the chicks beneath them. These eagles differ somewhat from the usual representation of eagles as the attribute of the Sumerian god Ningirsu, where the birds are depicted with a lion's head, holding two lion cubs, which are shown face on. Mythological creatures or carvings of local wildlife? Eagles were a major theme in Susian and Mesopotamian art. This depiction of an eagle resting on its tail feathers is also found in ceramics, glyptics, and perforated plaques dating from the 3rd millennium BC. However, unlike Mesopotamian eagles, Susian eagles never resembled composite animals. Likewise, Mesopotamian eagles had a mythological dimension, which was absent from Susian portrayals of the bird. In Susa, eagles were simply considered ordinary birds of prey. Bibliography Amiet Pierre, lam, Auvers-sur-Oise, Arche, 1966, p. 166, fig. 119. Les quatre grandes civilisations mondiales. La Msopotamie entre le Tigre et l'Euphrate, cat. exp., Setagaya, muse d'Art, 5 aot-3 dcembre 2000, Fukuoka, muse d'Art asiatique, 16 dcembre 2000-4 mars 2001, Tokyo, NHK, 2000, pp. 214-215. Author: Herbin Nancie http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/base-ritual-offering-carved-animals 442

m0489A One side of a prism tablet shows: crocodile + fish glyphic above. The following glyphics of m1431 prism tablet show the association between the tiger + person on tree glyphic set and crocile + 3 animal glyphic set.

m1431B m1431A, B, C, E and Text 2805 Row of animals in file (a one-horned bull, an elephant and a rhinoceros from right); a gharial with a fish held in its jaw above the animals; a bird (?) at right. Pict-116: From R.a person holding a vessel; a woman with a platter (?); a kneeling person with a staff in his hands facing the woman; a goat with its forelegs on a platform under a tree. [Or, two antelopes flanking a tree on a platform, with one antelope looking backwards?] koe young bull (Telugu) [ kha ] m A young bull, a bullcalf. Rebus: kd to turn in a lathe (B.) [kaa] f A fold or pen. (Marathi) ayakra ironsmith (Pali)[fish = aya (G.); crocodile = kru (Te.)]baai quail (N.Santali) Rebus: bhaa = an oven, kiln, furnace (Santali) bahi furnace for smelting ore (the same as kuhi) (Santali) bhaa = an oven, kiln, furnace; make an oven, a furnace; ia bhaa = a brick kiln; kun:kal bhaa a potters kiln; cun bhaa = a lime kiln; cun tehen dobon bhaaea = we shall prepare the lime kiln today (Santali); bhah (H.) bhart = a mixed metal of copper and lead; bharty= a barzier, worker in metal; bha, bhrra = oven, furnace (Skt.) mht bai = iron (Ore) furnaces. [Synonyms are: mt = the eye, rebus for: the dotted circle (Santali.lex) baha [H. bah (Sad.)] any kiln, except a potters kiln, which is called coa; there are four kinds of kiln: cunabat.ha, a lime-kin, it.abat.ha, a brick-kiln, rbaha, a lac kiln, kuilabaha, a charcoal kiln; trs. Or intrs., to make a kiln; cuna rapamente ciminaupe bahakeda? How many limekilns did you make? Baha-sen:gel = the fire of a kiln; bai [H. Sad. bahi, a furnace for distilling) used alone or in the cmpds. arkibui and baiora, all meaning a 443

grog-shop; occurs also in ilibai, a (licensed) rice-beer shop (Mundari.lex.) bhai = liquor from mohwa flowers (Santali)

Stone vase from Mesopotamia Late Uruk period, about 3400-3200 BCE. Ht. 1.2 cm. It shows a bull, goat and ram.

Pict-97: Person standing at the center pointing with his right hand at a bison facing a trough, and with his left hand pointing to the sign

2841 Obverse: A tiger and a rhinoceros in file. Pict-48 A tiger and a rhinoceros in file kola 'tiger' Rebus: kol 'working in iron, alloy of 5 metals - pancaloha'. ibha 'elephant' Rebus ibbo 'merchant'; ib 'iron'. ka 'rhimpceros' Rebus:kha tools, pots and pans, and metal-ware. The text on m0489 tablet: loa 'ficus religiosa' Rebus: loh 'copper'. kolmo 'rice plant' Rebus: kolami 'smithy, forge'. dula 'pair' Rebus: dul 'cast metal'. Thus the display of the metalware catalog includes the technological competence to work with minerals, metals and alloys and 444

produce tools, pots and pans. The persons involved are krammara 'turn back' Rebus: kamar 'smiths, artisans'. kola 'tiger' Rebus: kol 'working in iron, working in pancaloha alloys'. pancha-lnamu. n. A mixed metal, composed of five ingredients, viz., copper, zinc, tin, lead, and iron (Telugu). Thus, when five svastika hieroglyphs are depicted, the depiction is of satthiya 'svastika' Rebus: satthiya 'zinc' and the totality of 5 alloying metals of copper, zinc, tin, lead and iron.

h182A, h182B The drummer hieroglyph is associated with svastika glyph on this tablet (har609) and also on h182A tablet of Harappa with an identical text. kola 'tiger' Rebus: kol 'alloy of five metals, pancaloha' (Tamil). hol drum (Gujarati.Marathi)(CDIAL 5608) Rebus: large stone; dul to cast in a mould. G.kar n. pl. wristlets, bangles; S. kar f. wrist (CDIAL 2779). Rebus: khr blacksmith (Kashmiri) dula 'pair' Rebus: dul 'cast metal'. kanka Rim of jar (Santali); karaka rim of jar(Skt.) Rebus:karaka scribe (Telugu); gaaka id. (Skt.) (Santali) Thus, the tablets denote blacksmith's alloy cast metal accounting including the use of alloying mineral zinc --

satthiya 'svastika' glyph.

Pict-102: Drummer and people vaulting over? An adorant?

Glyph: ka a chain; a hook; a link (G.); kaum a bracelet, a ring (G.) Rebus: kaiyo [Hem. Des. kaaio = Skt. sthapati a mason] a bricklayer; a mason; kaiyaa, kaiyea a woman of the bricklayer caste; a wife of a bricklayer (G.) hol drum (Gujarati.Marathi)(CDIAL 5608) Rebus 1: large stone; Rebus 2: brass pot; Rebus 3: dul to cast in a mould. 445

The imagery of vaulting over is repeated. This hieroglyphic representation of 'vaulting or rolling over' is an allograph: Allographs: ollu. [Tel.] v. n. To fall, to roll over. , . [ olucu ] or olusu. [Tel.] v. n. To tumble head over heels as dancing girls do (Telugu) Mth. Bhoj. Aw. lakh. Marw. G. M. hol m. *hlayati makes fall(CDIAL 5608). Glyph: hol a drum beaten on one end by a stick and on the other by the hand (Santali); hol drum (Nahali); dhol (Kurku); hol (Hi.) dhol a drum (G.)(CDIAL 5608) [lu ] [Tel.] n. A drum. Rebus 1: dul to cast in a mould; dul mht, dul mee, dul; koe mee forged iron (Santali) WPah.kg. (kc.) Rebus 2: h m. stone, kg. h m. big stone or boulder, hu small id. Him.I 87.(CDIAL 5536). Rebus 3: K. ula m. rolling stone (CDIAL 6582) Rebus 4: Bshk. l brass pot ; K. ol m. bucket , S. olu m., P. ol m., WPah.bhal. ol n., Ku. N. B. Mth. ol, Aw. lakh. lu, H. dol, ol m., G. ol f., M. ol m. WPah.poet. r m. small pot , kg. l m. bucket , J. 'l m. H. or < *dlla -- ).(CDIAL 6583) Allograph: Pk. la -- m. eye (CDIAL 6582).

Impression and line-drawing of a steatite stamp seal with a waterbuffalo and leapers. Buffalo attack or bull-leaping scene, Banawali (after UMESAO 2000:88, cat. no. 335). A figure is impaled on the horns of the buffalo; a woman acrobat wearing bangles on both arms and a long braid flowing from the head, leaps over the buffalo bull. Two Indus script glyphs in front of the buffalo.

446

m0312 Persons vaulting over a water-buffalo. olu 'to tumble over' Rebus: h m. stone; ka buffalo; rebus:ka stone (ore). Allograph: kaa 'arrow'. [ kh ] m A jag, notch, or indentation (as upon the edge of a tool or weapon). (Marathi) Rebus: kh tools, pots and pans, metal-ware.

Glyphs: 1. arrow, 2. jag/notch: kaa arrow (Skt.) H. ker m. a caste of bow -- and arrow -- makers (CDIAL 3024). Or. ka, k stalk, arrow (CDIAL 3023). ayaska a quantity of iron, excellent iron (P.ga) [ kh ] m A jag, notch, or indentation (as upon the edge of a tool or weapon). (Marathi) Rebus:kh tools, pots and pans, metal-ware. The message of stone ore is reinforced by the glyphics of buffalo and overthrow of an acrobat woman (kola woman; rebus: kol smithy): kai buffalo bull (Tamil) ka buffalo; rebus: ka stone (ore). kivu. He-buffalo; (Malayalam) Colloq. kaavu , n. < . 1. Male buffalo; . (. 33). kaawan ho a man who has buffaloes. (George L. Campbell, Compendium of the Worlds Languages, Routledge, London, 1991, p. 1199).Rebus: kh trench, firepit (G.) kho pit, bog (Nepali) In Santali, any word may (in theory at least) be used as a verb simply by adding a, which is the verbal sign, and other signs to signify tense, 447

mood etc. The a alone signifies the general or future tense in the active voice used to make general statements, or statements referring to the future The verb generally comes at the end of a sentence or phrase (Santali language) consists of root-words and various infixes, suffixes and particles, joined together or agglutinated in such a way as to form phrases and sentences dalgot kedeae dal the root word, meaning to strike or striking; got an adverbial particle giving the sense of quickly or suddenly; ked the sign ket, denoting the past tense of the active voice, modified to ked e signifying an animate object him, or her a the verbal sign, showing that the idea of striking is used verbally; e the short form of the 3rd personal pronoun, singular denoting the subject he, or she. (R.M. Macphail, An Introduction to Santali, 1953, p.2).

448

h1973B h1974B Two tablets. One side shows a person seated on a tree branch, a tiger looking up, a crocodile on the top register and other animals in procession in the bottom register.

Glyph: seven: eae seven (Santali); rebus: eh-ku steel (Ta.) [ kh ] m A jag, notch, or indentation (as upon the edge of a tool or weapon). Rebus: kha tools, pots and pans, and metal-ware. Alternative: aar a splinter (Ma.) aaruka to burst, crack, sli off,fly open; aarcca splitting, a crack; aarttuka to split, tear off, open (an oyster) (Ma.); aaruni to crack (Tu.) (DEDR 66) Rebus: aduru native, unsmelted metal (Kannada) Alternative: sal splinter Rebus: sal artisans workshop.

ayo 'fish' Rebus: ayas 'metal'. kaa 'arrow' Rebus: kha tools, pots and pans, and metalware. ayaska is a compounde word attested in Panini. The compound or glyphs of fish + arrow may denote metalware tools, pots and pans.

G. khu f., kh m. corner .2. S. kua f. corner ; P. k f. corner, side ( H.). (CDIAL 3898) Phal. Khun corner ; H. kh m. corner, direction ( P. kh f. corner, side ); G. kh f. angle . Rebus: kh 'guild, community'. 449

Kolhes; iron produced by the Kolhes and formed like a four-cornered piece a little pointed at each end; mh me~r.he~t = iron smelted by the Kolhes and formed into an equilateral lump a little pointed at each end; kolhe tehen me~r.he~tko mh akata = the Kolhes have to-day produced pig iron (Santali.lex.) Thus the message conveyed by the text is that the metalware -- ayaska -- is of guild, community workshop -- kh sal.

h1966A h1966B 1.

Glyph: bull: hangra

bull. Rebus: hangar blacksmith.pattar 'trough' Rebus: pattar 'guild'. dula 'pair, likenes' Rebus:
dul 'cast metal. Thus the hieroglyphs denote pattar 'guild' of blacksmiths, casters of metal.

Eye Idol Chalcolithic (3300-3000 BC) Northern Syria Terra-cotta H. 25 cm Gift of the Friends of the Louvre, 1991 AO 30002

450

With its bell-shaped body and cylindrical neck topped with two perforated circles, this strange object was long known as the "eye idol" or "idol with spectacles." Such idols date from the Late Uruk period (3300-3000 BC) and are found mainly in northern Mesopotamia and Syria. They were first thought to be votive objects, but may have been used in spinning. An eye idol? This relatively large pottery object has a bell-shaped body and a cylindrical neck topped by two perforated circles. Its flat base shows that it was meant to be freestanding. The beige clay is covered with a thick orange-red slip, which is still shiny under the concretions. Max Mallowan coined the conventional name of "eye idols" in 1937-38 during excavations at Tell Brak in Syria, where hundreds of small anthropomorphic plaques with huge eyes were found in a richly decorated building. The archaeologist extended the name to other objects, this time called "idols with spectacles" because they were surmounted by two circles that were disproportionately large compared with the total size of the object. They were regarded as prototypes of the first objects found. The building in which they were found was called the "Temple of the Eyes" because of its rich decor of cone mosaics and gold plating, as well as for the eye idols that were unearthed there. However, the building was altered several times and remains stratigraphically unreliable. There is nothing to prove that it had a religious function. A multitude of eye idols Eye idols are scattered over a vast region bounded by southeast Turkey (Arslantepe) to the north, Syria (Hama) to the west, and southern Mesopotamia (Telloh, Uruk, Ur) and Iranian Khuzistan (Susa) to the south. These objects are characteristic of the Proto-urban period in Uruk (3700-3100 BC) during which the first cities appeared. The many different contexts in which they were discovered (domestic, ritual, funerary, dumps) cast doubt on the strictly religious function of these objects, which vary greatly in shape, material, and style. In 1996, Catherine Brniquet suggested dividing the idols into three types. Type 1, from Tell Brak, known as "eye idols," covers all the small engraved alabaster plaques evoking the upper part of a human body with the face reduced to the eyes and sometimes adorned with jewelry and headdresses. Type 2, the "large idols with spectacles," covers quite large bell- or trumpetshaped pottery objects with a neck supporting two perforated circles. Some have been carefully shaped, smoothed and glazed, while others are quite summarily made. Our idol belongs to this type of "large idols with spectacles," present in northern Mesopotamia and Syria. Type 3, which groups "small idols with spectacles" shows strong similarities with Type 2, but these objects are much smaller and are all made of stone. 451

Various interpretations Max Mallowan interpreted all these objects as belonging to one and the same series, evolving in shape over time. The group would have made a set of votive objects dedicated to an "eye god" venerated in the "temple" of Tell Brak. Other scholars have thought Types 2 and 3 to be lids (H. Frankfort), a set of standard weights or weights for a loom, or even firedogs to be set around a hearth. Catherine Brniquet believes that Type 1 models - the only ones that really deserve to be called "eye idols" - should be distinguished from Types 2 and 3. The latter could well be instruments used in spinning, placed in front of the seated operator. The holes were used to separate two or three single threads, which were then twisted together. On cylinder seals from the Uruk period, such objects seem to be shown in association with spinners at work. Bibliography Les Antiquits orientales : guide du visiteur, Paris, ditions de la Runion des muses nationaux, 1993, p. 188. Brniquet Catherine, "Du Fil retordre : rflexions sur les idoles aux yeux et les fileuses de l'poque d'Uruk", in Collectanea Orientalia, 1996. Caubet Annie, "L'Idole aux yeux du IVe millnaire", in La Revue du Louvre, fvrier 1991, Paris, ditions de la Runion des muses nationaux, 1991, pp. 6-9. Iselin Claire

"Baal with thunder-bolt" stele 452

15th-13th century BC Acropolis, Ras Shamra (ancient Ugarit) Limestone C. Schaeffer excavations, 1930 AO 15775 The decoration of this arched stela shows the great storm god Baal brandishing a club and thrusting a spear sprouting vegetation into the ground. A smaller figure, probably the king of Ugarit, appears to be under the protection of the god. This stela, the most important of those discovered at Ugarit, testifies to the widespread production of stelae in the Near East, where they emerged as a major medium of artistic expression during the Late Bronze Age. A warrior god The large stela in the Louvre bears the relief carving of a monumental male figure in action, towering over a much smaller figure standing on a pedestal. The horned headdress worn by the main figure indicates that he is a god. He is facing right, his right arm raised above his head and brandishing a club, the other arm outstretched and carrying a spear, the head of which is stuck in the ground, while vegetation sprouts out of its shaft. The god is wearing a beard, and two long coils of hair fall below his shoulders. At the waist of his short loincloth, which is decorated with stripes, hangs a dagger, the tip of which seems to be touching the head of the small figure. The latter is wearing a long robe trimmed with braid, which hides his arms. His small round head is bare. The pedestal on which he stands is a horned altar, smaller and less ornate than the one upon which the main figure stands: this altar consists of two rectangular tiers with protruding corners, each decorated with a flowing double line of unequal thickness. The storm god protecting the king Today it is generally agreed that this scene depicts the god Baal unleashing a storm from the club he is brandishing in the traditional pose of the storm gods worshipped throughout the Levant - the Greek god Zeus and the Roman god Jupiter would later take up the same pose and attributes. The beautiful visual metaphor of the spear transformed into a plant is an allusion to the beneficial effects of the rain produced by storms. The small figure crouching between the god and his spear is generally thought to be the king of Ugarit, in ceremonial dress, his arms crossed in prayer and the recipient of divine protection. Like the god, has he been shown placed on an altar as an allusion to his role as officiant in ceremonies? The motifs carved on the two453

tiered altar on which the god stands are more difficult to interpret: is the monstrous snake who will cause the death of Baal depicted above the carved waves of the ocean? Or is it the horizon of mountains that surrounded the kingdom of Ugarit, protected by Baal, whose home is "in the innermost reaches of Mount Sapon." A major medium of expression The stela depicting the storm god Baal is the largest and the most significant of the stelae discovered at Ras Shamra. It was found, along with eight others, not far from the temple to which it gave its name: four were discovered near the Temple of Dagon and another ten in various locations around the city. Usually broader towards the bottom, the stelae were topped with an arch or a pyramid, and had either a lower part which was sunk into the ground, or a wide base forming a set of steps. Comparison with stelae excavated on other Bronze Age SyrianPalestinian sites, such as Byblos, Gezer, or Hazor, indicates that the stela was a major form of religious expression in the Levant. It could have a niche carved into it, as at Byblos, be decorated with astral motifs, or, as is the case with the most outstanding examples, depict a ritual scene or a deity. Caubet Annie

Cylinder seal of the priest-king Uruk period, circa 3200 BC Iraq, findspot unknown White limestone H. 6.2 cm; Diam. 4.3 cm

Purchased 1914

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AO 6620 The image on this cylinder seal shows a 'priest-king' participating in a liturgical ceremony in honor of Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of fertility. This figure, who occupied the highest rank in the city-states of the Uruk period, combined both military and religious functions. The appearance of the cylinder seal Seals of cylindrical form appeared in Mesopotamia in the second half of the 4th millennium BC, rapidly replacing the stamp seals employed since the 5th millennium to authenticate the sealings that guaranteed the integrity of goods in storage or in transport. These small stone cylinders, carved all over, could easily be rolled in fresh clay to produce complex motifs, arranged in symbolic compositions. Reproducible at will, these impressions could thus serve as marks of ownership. The appearance of such cylinder seals was not, however, an isolated phenomenon, but rather an integral part of a decisive transformation of society as a whole. The most important expression of this was the birth of the first cities, accompanied by the discovery of writing. The iconography of these cylinder seals thus reflects the new form of social organization prevailing in the cities, in which the dominant figure was the 'priest-king.' The cult of the goddess Inanna The 'priest-king' appears on this fragmentary cylinder seal in his cultic function, presiding at a ceremony in honor of Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of fertility, whose most important sanctuary was in the city of Uruk. Dressed in a long skirt and wearing a cap or headband denoting his status, the priest-king seems to be making an offering, probably of a wheat-sheaf, in front of the sanctuary of the goddess, symbolized by the bundle of reeds tied with a streamer. He is followed by an assistant also bearing a sheaf of wheat: their offering being symbolically intended to feed the sacred herd of Inanna. The truncated cone at the top of the cylinder is also decorated in relief with a group of sheep, the property of the goddess and of her temple. The offering of wheat testifies to the emblematic significance still attached to cereals, the first plants to be selected and grown. It is to be presented to Inanna, the great goddess of fertility, who governs the annual cycle of nature's regeneration. Her performance of this fundamental role depends in particular on the intensity of the worship addressed to her, and it is the responsibility of the priest-king - first among the humans who depend on her - to ensure the regularity of this worship and so guarantee the prosperity of the country. Bibliography

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Delaporte Louis, Muse du Louvre, catalogue des cylindres, cachets et pierres graves de style oriental, Hachette, 1920-1923, p. 106, pl. 69-8. Amiet Pierre, La glyptique msopotamienne archaque, CNRS, 1980, pp. 75-77, pl. 44. Pouyssgur Patrick

Vase depicting a leopard fighting a snake Late 3rd-early 2nd millennium BC 456

Southeast Iran (?) Black steatite H. 14.5 cm; Diam. 8.5 cm Gift of the Friends of the Louvre, December 2001 AO 31595 This vase in the shape of a truncated cone is decorated with a motif often found on steatite recipients from the 3rd millennium BC: a leopard fighting a snake. The fight certainly refers to an episode in trans-Elamite mythology. Chlorite vases were luxury objects produced for export. The production of chlorite objects for export Chlorite, also known as steatite or serpentine, is a soft stone that is easy to carved and usually green but sometimes black or grey. It was frequently used between 2600 and 1700 BC in workshops mostly in southeast Iran, in the province of Kerman where veins of this stone are found. The reference site for this production has to date been Tepe Yahya, but the recent discovery of chlorite workshops in the Iranian province of Jiroft will provide further information about this craft. The objects were exported throughout the Near East, which explains their presence not only in Iran but also in Mesopotamia, Syria, and the Gulf region. The leopard and the snake The commonest chlorite objects have geometrical patterns of curls, braids, scales, or bricks. Plant motifs are common, especially date palms, which were grown locally. Architectural representations show curved lintels over doors and windows. The animal repertory is reduced to scorpions, snakes, felines, and birds repeated several times. The fights most commonly shown on chlorite vases are between leopards and snakes. For a long time, one of the only vessels to offer a full version of this struggle was that found in the temple of Ishtar at Nippur, Iraq. The inscription engraved on the truncated conical vase reads: "Innana and the Snake." This vase is remarkable for the beautiful black color of the steatite and the almost complete scene, repeated twice. The leopard is standing on its hind legs so its front paws are free; it has thus twice seized the body of the snake that is rising up behind it. The adversaries' heads are at the same level, both with snarling open mouths. Although they belong to two very different species, the animals are treated in much the same way: with wrinkled muzzles. Both have ears, although the snake's are interlocking S-shapes. This is a surprising detail since it attributes to the animal with a sense of hearing, which is does not have in real life. 457

The theme of the fight is the snake's submission to the grip of the leopard, a mythological spirit that regulates the forces of nature. Objects inlaid with materials of different colors The hollows in the snake's body are almond-shaped cups; those in the leopard's body are round. They are meant to receive inlays of different materials, which have now partly disappeared. Each animal seems to have had its own material, but later analyses will settle this question. However, it is already clear that the inlays were in a contrasting color. Bibliography Benoit Agns, "Acquisitions", in Revue du Louvre, n 3, juin 2003, p. 87. Agns Benoit

Lid of a pyxis with mistress of the animals Thirteenth century BC Minet el Beida, port of Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra), Syria The Levant Elephant ivory D. 13.7 cm; Th. 12 cm Allocated to the Louvre after the Schaeffer excavation, 1929 AO 11601 This lid is that of a pyxis which would have originally held face powder. It is decorated with a relief of the Mistress of the Animals feeding wild goats. Her layered garb and

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curled hair, as well as the rocky landscape, show that the Levantine artist was inspired by Mycenean art. The Mistress of the Animals This lid forms a circular scene. In the center, a female figure is holding out ears of corn to two wild goats standing on their hind legs. Many works of art from Greece and the Levant depict female figures dominating wild or tame animals. Such scenes, which might at first glance appear to be straightforward depictions of female goatherds, are in fact generally understood as expressions of a belief in the symbolic powers of nature. A smiling young woman, her arms bent symetrically on either side of her chest, is holding out ears of corn that the two goats are nuzzling. Her profile, with the nose a continuation of the line of the forehead and her hair arranged in curls, is reminiscent of works from Crete and Santorini, as is the band with a spiral at the center of her forehead and the long wavy lock of hair at the top of her head. The costume is also pre-Hellenistic in inspiration. Her breasts are bare and she is wearing a necklace and a loose skirt made of decorated panels. She is shown sitting on a small stepped stool. Her legs are in profile, but her torso is shown face-on. The step on the right is hidden by a notched cone, on which the goat is resting its right foreleg. There is a similar object beside the goat on the left side. It is not clear what these objects represent. They may be stylized rocks like the one the young woman is sitting on, which is likewise full of holes. The entire scene was originally ringed with a decorative trim of overlapping scales. The two goats are mirror images of each other, standing on their hind legs as if in the act of stepping forward. They each have one front hoof on a cone of rock, the other close to the woman's elbow. Their bodies are powerful and slender, and the hooves are carefully detailed. Their beards are pointing forward, and their mouths are open, ready to eat the ears of corn. The influence of Cretan art The theme of the Mistress of the Animals is common throughout the eastern Mediterranean region, while this particular symmetrical yet dynamic presentation is typical of the Mesopotamian tradition and was also adopted in Syria. The details of the woman's costume and curled hair, as well as the straight line of the nose and forehead in profile, were borrowed from motifs found in pre-Hellenistic art from Crete. These motifs spread thanks to the expansion of Mycenean culture from mainland Greece to the Greek islands and the coast of western Turkey and the Levant. Ugarit artists were familiar with this international civilization. This small piece, doubtless the treasured possession of some Ugarit beauty, reflects the cosmopolitan character of this Syrian kingdom at the end of the second millennium BC. 459

Ivory in art This disk was originally the lid of a cylindrical box made from an elephant tusk. The lid was cut out of a slice sawn vertically from the pointed end of the tusk. The box was cut from the thicker end of the tusk where there is a natural cavity containing the dental pulp tissue. The artists of Ugarit were experts in carving ivory from both elephants and hippopotamuses to produce all sorts of precious objects, such as powder boxes (round like this one or in the shape of a duck), combs, spindles, musical instruments, and parts of pieces of furniture. Elephant tusks and hippopotamus teeth were shipped in from Africa and Egypt across the Mediterranean, as proved by the cargo found in a ship wrecked off the coast of Turkey some time during the thirteenth century BC. Bibliography Schaeffer Claude, Ugaritica I, Paris, Librairie orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1939, frontispice, pl. I et XI, p. 3. Poursat J.C., Les Ivoires mycniens. Essai sur la formation d'un art mycnien, De Boccard, Bibliothque des coles franaises d'Athnes et de Rome Premire srie, Paris 1977, p. 144. Caubet Annie Susa: sacred fire-smithy

There is a possibility that there was a Meluhha settlement of traders in Susa who could read the messages conveyed by Indus script inscriptions. The ziggurat shown on the Sit-Shamshi bronze compares with a ziggurat which might have existed in the Stupa mound of Mohenjodaro (lit. mound of the dead), indicating the veneration of ancestors in Susa and Meluhha in contemporaneous times.Some glyphics of the bronze model have parallels in Indian hieroglyphs. Glyph: 'stump of tree': M. kh m. stump of tree; P. khu, m. peg, stump; G. kh f. landmark, kh m., f. peg , n. stump (CDIAL 3893). Allograph: (Kathiawar) kh m. Brahmani bull(G.) Rebus: kh 'community, guild' (Munda) The ceremony involved lo pouring (water) oblation (Munda) for the setting sun. Rebus: loa copper (Santali) The glyphic representations connote a guild of coppersmiths in front of a ziggurat, temple and is a veneration of ancestors. The authors of the bronze model seem to 460

have interacted with the groups of artisans of Mohenjo-daro who had a ziggurat in front of the great bath. The eight knobs lining either side of the ziggurat may denote: <tamja-n+m>(L) {N} ``eight years''. #48162. <tamji>(L) {N} ``^eight''. *^V008 Kh.<tham>. #64641.Rebus: tam(b)ra 'copper'. If this surmise is valid, the ziggurat might have been stupa called dhatu-garbha or dagoba or dagaba.

Three stakes on Sit-Shamshi bronze. Glyph: [ mh ] A crook or curved end (of a stick, horn &c.) and attrib. such a stick, horn, bullock. [ mh ] m A stake, esp. as forked. me(h), meh f., meh m. post, forked stake .(Marathi)(CDIAL 10317) Rebus: mht, me iron (Mu.Ho.) Vikalpa: khu stump. Rebus: kh community, guild (Mu.) Thus, three jagged sticks on the Sit Shamshi bronze may be decoded as kh kolami smithy guild or, me kolami 'iron (metal) smithy'. 'Iron' in such lexical entries may refer to 'metal'.

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Add caption After Fig. 200 in Gautier 1911:145 + FW Konig, Corpus Inscriptionum Elamicarum, no. 56, Hanover 1926 + Tallon & Hurtel 1992: 140, fig. 43. The base measures 60 X 40 cm. Sit Shamshi sunrise ceremony. Discovery location: Ninhursag Temple, Acropole, Shsh (Khuzestan, Iran); Repository: Muse du Louvre (Paris, France) ID: Sb 2743 width: 40 cm (15.75 inches); length: 60 cm (23.62 inches)

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Source: http://www.elamit.net/elam/sit_overheads.pdf

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Model of a temple, called the Sit-shamshi, made for the ceremony of the rising sun. http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/sit-shamshi See the reading of the inscription at http://www.elamit.net/elam/sit_handout.pdf

Akkadian name for an Elamite object in an Elamite inscription! Sit Shamshi an Akkadian loan-word in Elamite? "Do you know this object? I hope so. It is perhaps the most stimulating object found in the entire Ancient Near East, even if handbooks on Mesopotamian art do not talk much about it. It is a three-dimensional bronze model whose base measures 60 X 40 cm, excavated in the 1904-05 campaign by the French Mission at Susa. The scene is focused on two squatted human figures: one stretches its hands out, the other seems to be pouring water over them from a jug. Around them, there are possibly some kinds of altars, a large vessel, two basins, a stela and three trunks of trees. This act, perhaps a cultic scene which took place in the second half of the 12th century BCE, was fixed for eternity by will of Shilhak-Inshushinak (1140-1120 BCE), king of Anshan and Susa, according to the short inscription in a corner of the base. If you are so lucky as to run into a picture of it (unless you are directly visiting the Louvre Museum), looking at the caption you would learn that the name commonly given to this object is sit shamshi. Actually , this name, meaning 'the rising of the sun, sunrise' in Akkadian, appears in lines 5-6 of the inscription. But only in the unlikely event that you are both in front of the Louvre showcase with the sit shamshi in and an 'Elamist', i.e. a specialist in Elamite studies, you could go further in reading the inscription, though even an Elamist, having been ready to interpret the most stereotyped Akkadian inscription -- you know, Akkadian was very spread in Susiana --, so even 464

an Elamist will jolt becoming aware of the language of the text. Apart from brushing up the revered edition by Scheil (1909) or Konig (1965), this is the only way to learn that the inscription is compiled in Elamite language. So, an Akkadian name for an Elamite object in an Elamite inscription!" (Gian Pietro Basello, 2003, Loan-words in Achaemenid Elamite: the spelling of old Persian Month-names, in: 5th European Conf. of Iranian Studies, October 10th 2003 http://digilander.libero.it/elam2/elam/basello_sie2003.pdf ) The 3D Model from Susa called Sit-shamshi: An essay of interpretation by Gian Pietro Basello "Sit shamshi is the name used in an inscription of the Middle Elamite king Shilhak-Inshushinak (ca. 1150-1120 BC) to refer to its textual support, a bronze model (base 60 40 cm) representing in three dimensions two squatted individuals, one pouring a liquid over the hands of the other, in an open space with buildings, trees and other installations. The common interpretation of this name (meaning sunrise in Akkadian) has become also the key for the understanding of the whole scene, supposedly a ritual ceremony to be performed at the sunrise in a sacred precint. From one hand, I would like to discuss the interpretation of sit shamshi as an Akkadian syntagm, considering that the inscription is written in Elamite and that sit e sham- are also known as Elamite terms. On the other hand, I would like to have feedback from scholars skilled in ritual texts from Mesopotamia, trying also to understand if there is some further element in support of the sunrise ritual interpretation. http://www.academia.edu/1706512/The_3D_Model_from_Susa_called_Sitshamshi_An_essay_of_interpretation 12th century BC Tell of the Acropolis, Susa J. de Morgan excavations, 1904-05 Sb 2743 Louvre. This large piece of bronze shows a religious ceremony. In the center are two men in ritual nudity surrounded by religious furnishings - vases for libations, perhaps bread for offerings, steles - in a stylized urban landscape: a multi-tiered tower, a temple on a terrace, a sacred wood. In the Middle-Elamite period (15th-12th century BC), Elamite craftsmen acquired new metallurgical techniques for the execution of large monuments, statues and reliefs. 465

A ceremony Two nude figures squat on the bronze slab, one knee bent to the ground. One of the figures holds out open hands to his companion who prepares to pour the contents of a lipped vase onto them. The scene takes place in a stylized urban landscape, with reduced-scale architectural features: a tiered tower or ziggurat flanked with pillars, a temple on a high terrace. There is also a large jar resembling the ceramic pithoi decorated with rope motifs that were used to store water and liquid foodstuffs. An arched stele stands by some rectangular basins. Rows of dots in relief may represent solid foodstuffs on altars, and jagged sticks represent trees. The men's bodies are delicately modeled, their faces clean-shaven, and their shaved heads speckled with the shadow of the hair. Their facial expression is serene, their eyes open, the hint of a smile on their lips. An inscription tells us the name of the piece's royal dedicator and its meaning in part: "I Shilhak-Inshushinak, son of Shutruk-Nahhunte, beloved servant of Inshushinak, king of Anshan and Susa [...], I made a bronze sunrise." Chogha Zambil: a religious capital The context of this work found on the Susa acropolis is unclear. It may have been reused in the masonry of a tomb, or associated with a funerary sanctuary. It appears to be related to Elamite practices that were brought to light by excavations at Chogha Zambil. This site houses the remains of a secondary capital founded by the Untash-Napirisha dynasty in the 14th century BC, some ten kilometers east of Susa (toward the rising sun). The sacred complex, including a ziggurat and temples enclosed within a precinct, featured elements on the esplanade, rows of pillars and altars. A "funerary palace," with vaulted tombs, has also been found there. The royal art of the Middle-Elamite period Shilhak-Inshushinak was one of the most brilliant sovereigns of the dynasty founded by ShutrukNahhunte in the early 12th century BC. Numerous foundation bricks attest to his policy of construction. He built many monuments in honor of the great god of Susa, Inshushinak. The artists of Susa in the Middle-Elamite period were particularly skilled in making large bronze pieces. Other than the Sit Shamshi, which illustrates the complex technique of casting separate elements joined together with rivets, the excavations at Susa have produced one of the largest bronze statues of Antiquity: dating from the 14th century BC, the effigy of "Napirasu, wife of Untash-Napirisha," the head of which is missing, is 1.29 m high and weighs 1,750 kg. It was made using the solid-core casting method. Other bronze monuments underscore the mastery of the Susa metallurgists: for example, an altar table surrounded by snakes borne by divinities holding vases with gushing waters, and a relief depicting a procession of warriors set above a 466

anel decorated with engravings of birds pecking under trees. These works, today mutilated, are technical feats. They prove, in their use of large quantities of metal, that the Susians had access to the principal copper mines situated in Oman and eastern Anatolia. This shows that Susa was located at the heart of a network of circulating goods and long-distance exchange. Authors: Caubet Annie, Prvotat Arnaud Sit Shamshi Model of a place of worship, known as the Sit Shamshi, or "Sunrise (ceremony)" Middle-Elamite period, toward the 12th century BC Acropolis mound, Susa, Iran; Bronze; H. 60 cm; W. 40 cm Excavations led by Jacques de Morgan, 1904-5; Sb 2743; Near Eastern Antiquities, Muse du Louvre/C. Larrieu. Two nude figures squat on the bronze slab, one knee bent to the ground. One of the figures holds out open hands to his companion who prepares to pour the contents of a lipped vase onto them.The scene takes place in a stylized urban landscape, with reducedscale architectural features: a tiered tower or ziggurat flanked with pillars, a temple on a high terrace. There is also a large jar resembling the ceramic pithoi decorated with rope motifs that were used to store water and liquid foodstuffs. An arched stele stands by some rectangular basins. Rows of 8 dots in relief flank the ziggurat; jagged sticks represent trees.An inscription tells us the name of the piece's royal dedicator and its meaning in part: "I Shilhak-Inshushinak, son of Shutruk-Nahhunte, beloved servant of Inshushinak, king of Anshan and Susa [...], I made a bronze sunrise." (http://www.louvre.fr/en/recherche-globale?f_search_cles=sit+shamshi ) Three jagged sticks on the Sit Shamshi bronze, in front of the water tank (Great Bath replica?) If the sticks are orthographic representations of 'forked sticks' and if the underlying language is Meluhha (mleccha), the borrowed or substratum lexemes which may provide a rebus reading are:

kolmo 'three'; rebus; kolami 'smithy' (Telugu)

Glyph: [ mh ] A crook or curved end (of a stick, horn &c.) and attrib. such a stick, horn, bullock. [ mh ] m A stake, esp. as forked. me(h), meh f., meh m. post, forked stake .(Marathi)(CDIAL 10317) Rebus: mht, me iron (Mu.Ho.) Vikalpa: P. khu, m. 467

peg, stump ; khu stump. Rebus: 1. kh community, guild (Mu.) 2. Skt. kua- round hole in ground (for water or sacred fire). Thus, three jagged sticks on the Sit Shamshi bronze may be decoded as kh

kolami smithy guild or, kua kollami sacred fire smithy or, me kolami 'iron (metal) smithy'.
'Iron' in such lexical entries may refer to 'metal'. Sit Shamshi bronze illustrates the complex technique of casting separate elements joined together with rivets, the excavations at Susa have produced one of the largest bronze statues of Antiquity: dating from the 14th century BC, the effigy of "Napirasu, wife of Untash-Napirisha," the head of which is missing, is 1.29 m high and weighs 1,750 kg. It was made using the solidcore casting method. S. kua f. corner; P. k f. corner, side ( H.). (CDIAL 3898) Rebus 1: kundr turner (A.) k dr, k dri (B.); kundru (Or.); kundau to turn on a lathe, to carve, to chase; kundau dhiri = a hewn stone; kundau murhut = a graven image (Santali) kunda a turner's lathe (Skt.)(CDIAL 3295). Rebus 2: kh community, guild (Mundari) Wo. en roof , Bshk. an, Phal. n(AO xviii 251) Rebus: sei (f.) [Class. Sk. rei in meaning guild; Vedic= row] 1. A guild Vin iv.226; J i.267, 314; iv.43; Dvs ii.124; their number was eighteen J vi.22, 427; VbhA 466. -- pamukha the head of a guild J ii.12 (text seni -- ). 2. A division of an army J vi.583; ratha -- J vi.81, 49; seimokkha the chief of an army J vi.371 (cp. Sen and seniya). (Pali) bharao = cross-beam in the roof of a house (G.lex.) bhraiyum, bhrvaiyo, bhroiyo = a beam (G.lex.) bri = bamboo splits fastened lengthwise to the rafters of a roof from both sides (Tu.lex.) brapae = chief beam lying on pillars (Te.lex.) bharaum a piece in architecture; placed at the top of a pillar to support a beam (G.) Rebus: bharatiyo = a caster of metals; a brazier; bharatar, bharatal, bharata = moulded; an article made in a mould; bharata = casting metals in moulds; bharavum = to fill in; to put in; to pour into (G.lex.) bhart = a mixed metal of copper and lead; bharty = a barzier, worker in metal; bha, bhrra = oven, furnace (Skt.) Thus, the glyph roof + cross-beam may read: bharao en; rebus: bharatiyo

sei guild of casters of metal.

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Sit Shamshi. Model of a place of worship, known as the Sit Shamshi, or "Sunrise (ceremony)" Middle-Elamite period, toward the 12th century BC Acropolis mound, Susa, Iran; Bronze; H. 60 cm; W. 40 cm Excavations led by Jacques de Morgan, 1904-5; Sb 2743; Near Eastern Antiquities, Muse du Louvre/C. Larrieu. Two nude figures squat on the bronze slab, one knee bent to the ground. One of the figures holds out open hands to his companion who prepares to pour the contents of a lipped vase onto them.The scene takes place in a stylized urban landscape, with reduced-scale architectural features: a tiered tower or ziggurat flanked with pillars, a temple on a high terrace. There is also a large jar resembling the ceramic pithoi decorated with rope motifs that were used to store water and liquid foodstuffs. An arched stele stands by some rectangular basins. Rows of 8 dots in relief flank the ziggurat; jagged sticks represent trees.An inscription tells us the name of the piece's royal dedicator and its meaning in part: "I Shilhak-Inshushinak, son of Shutruk-Nahhunte, beloved servant of Inshushinak, king of Anshan and Susa [...], I made a bronze sunrise."

Table decorated with serpents and deities bearing vessels spouting streams of water 14th century BCE Tell of the Acropolis, Susa, Iran Bronze H. 19.5 cm; W. 15.7 cm; L. 69.5 cm Jacques de Morgan excavations, 1898 Sb 185 This table, edged with serpents and resting on deities carrying vessels spouting streams of water, was doubtless originally a sacrificial altar. The holes meant the blood would drain away as water flowed from the vessels. Water was an important theme in Mesopotamian mythology, represented particularly by the god Enki and his acolytes. This table also displays the remarkable skills of Elamite metalworkers. A sacrificial table

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The table, edged with two serpents, rested on three sides on five figures that were probably female deities. Only the busts and arms of the figures survive. The fourth side of the table had an extension, which must have been used to slot the table into a wall. The five busts are realistic in style. Each of the deities was holding an object, since lost, which was probably a water vessel, cast separately and attached by a tenon joint. Water played a major role in such ceremonies and probably gushed forth from the vessels. Along the sides of the table are sloping surfaces leading down to holes, allowing liquid to drain away. This suggests that the table was used for ritual sacrifices to appease a god. It was believed that men were created by the gods and were responsible for keeping their temples stocked and providing them with food. The sinuous lines of the two serpents along the edge of the table mark off holes where the blood of the animals, sacrificed to assuage the hunger of the gods, would have drained away. The importance of water in Mesopotamian mythology In Mesopotamia, spirits bearing vessels spouting streams of water were the acolytes of Enki/Ea, the god of the Abyss and of fresh water. The fact that they figure in this work reflects the extent of the influence of Mesopotamian mythology in Susa. Here, they are associated with another Chtonian symbol, the snake, often found in Iranian iconography. The sinuous lines of the serpents resemble the winding course of a stream. It is thought that temples imitated the way streams well up from underground springs by the clever use of underground channels. Water the precious liquid - was at the heart of Mesopotamian religious practice, being poured out in libations or used in purification rites. Objects made for a new religious capital Under Untash-Napirisha, the founder of the Igihalkid Dynasty, the Elamite kingdom flourished. He founded a new religious capital, Al-Untash - modern-day Chogha Zanbil - some 40 kilometers southeast of Susa. However, the project was short-lived. His successors soon brought large numbers of religious objects back to Susa, the former capital. This table was certainly among them. Its large size and clever drainage system reflect the remarkable achievements of metalworking at the time. Bibliography 470

Amiet Pierre, Suse 6000 ans d'histoire, Paris, ditions de la Runion des muses nationaux, 1988, pp.98-99 ; fig. 57. Miroschedji Pierre de, "Le dieu lamite au serpent", in : Iranica antiqua, vol.16, 1981, Gand, Ministre de l'ducation et de la Culture, 1989, pp.16-17, pl. 10, fig.3.Author: Herbin Nancie

Statue of Queen Napirasu, wife of Untash-Napirisha C. 1340-1300 BCE Tell of the Acropolis, Susa Bronze and copper J. de Morgan excavations, 1903 Sb 2731 This statue is of Queen Napirasu, wife of Untash-Napirisha, who ruled in the Middle Elamite period as one of the greatest Igihalkid kings. Under this dynasty, a great Elamite empire flourished, taking advantage of the decline of neighboring Mesopotamia. Untash-Napirisha founded the city of Al-Untash-Napirisha and filled it with monuments decorated with statues, which are remarkable proof of the standard of Elamite metalworking techniques. A statue protected by the gods Queen Napirasu, Untash-Napirisha's wife, is shown standing. The figure is life-size, but the head and the left arm are damaged. She is wearing a short-sleeved gown covered in the sort of embroidery usually found on such garments. She has four bracelets on her right wrist and a ring 471

on her left ring finger. Although her hands are crossed on her stomach, she is not in the pose usually associated with worship. The inscription on the front of the skirt is in Elamite, reflecting the kingdom's linguistic identity. This inscription gives the queen's name and titles, invokes the protection of the gods, describes the ritual offerings made to them, and calls down their curse on anyone bold enough to desecrate her likeness. The statue is placed under the protection of the god Beltiya and three deities associated with the Igihalkid Dynasty - the god Inshushinak, the god Napirisha, and his consort Kiririsha. These three deities are also depicted on the stele of Untash-Napirisha, also in the Louvre (Sb3973). Elaborate metalworking techniques This statue of Queen Napirasu is a rare surviving likeness of a member of the royal court during the Middle Elamite period. The sheer amount of metal used - some 1,750 kg for a single work reflects the wealth of the Elamite kingdom during Untash-Napirisha's reign. The dimensions and the finesse of the statue also reflect the skill of the Elamite metalworkers. The work must have been cast in two successive parts: a lost-wax cast for the copper and tin shell, followed by a full cast alloy of bronze and tin for the core, rather than the more usual refractory clay. The two parts are held together with pins and splints. The sides would have originally been covered with gold or silver. A great king and a great builder The reign of the Igihalkid king, Untash-Napirisha, witnessed the launch of a major construction program. The king ordered the restoration of a large number of temples and also built a new religious capital, Al-Untash-Napirisha (sometimes simply known as Al-Untash), on the site of modern-day Chogha Zanbil. The aim was to unite the different religions practiced in his kingdom in one place. Monuments throughout the city were decorated with numerous sculptures commissioned by the king, including this statue of his wife, which was discovered in Susa but was probably moved there from Al-Untash. Bibliography

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Amiet Pierre, Suse 6000 ans d'histoire, Paris, ditions de la Runion des muses nationaux, 1988, pp. 98-99 ; fig. 57. Benoit A. , "Les Civilisations du Proche-Orient ancien", in Manuels de l'cole du Louvre ; Art et archologie, Paris, cole du Louvre, 2003, pp 358-359 ; fig. 180. Meyers Peter, "The casting process of the statue of queen Napir-Asu in the Louvre", extrait de : Journal of Roman Archaeology, supplementary series, n 39, Portsmouth, 2000, pp.11-18. Author: Herbin Nancie

Praying figure clutching a young goat Middle Elamite period, c. 1500-1200 BCE Tell of the Acropolis, Susa Gold and copper J. de Morgan excavations, 1904 Sb 2758 This prayer figure sculpted in gold was found in a cache with numerous other objects made of precious materials (lapis lazuli, carnelian, agate, gold, silver) on the Susa mound, near the temple of Inshushinak, the great god of the city. Given the material used - gold - and the details of the costume and hair style, the figure depicted is almost certainly the king. A precious statue The figure is standing on a small rectangular pedestal, which has a tenon underneath for fixing it onto a support. The figure raises his right hand in a gesture of prayer and in his left hand holds 473

a goat in miniature, whose head with oblique horns is visible above the donator's hand. The latter is clad in a flared, fringe-edged robe from which emerge joined, shod feet. The skirt of the robe is decorated with a pattern of engraved dots, while above the draped belt, the close-fitting bodice with elbow-length sleeves is decorated with rosettes. The Near East, unlike Egypt, has few preserved remains of its sumptuous ancient textiles, which we know of through descriptions in texts, and this figurine is evidence of these lost techniques. The figure's head is very carefully molded and reengraved: the face is serene, the eyes large and oval under thick eyebrows that meet in an arch on the bridge of the nose. The beard rises over the cheeks and falls over the chest in a wavy mass trimmed horizontally. The figure's cap of short hair, shown with crosshatching, comes down low over the forehead and bulges over the nape of the neck. A diademshaped plait is wound around the head. A treasure A treasure known as the "Golden Statue Find" was discovered hidden "in a confined space" under a paving of glazed bricks, on the acropolis in front of the southern facade of the ziggurat, not far from the temple of Inshushinak. The circumstances of the excavation raise a number of questions, and we do not have the exact list of findings. Other than the gold statue, the discoveries included animal bones - the remains of a sacrifice? - a limestone chariot wheel, nine earthenware statuettes of praying figures, a silver statue - an exact replica of the gold statue - a lapis lazuli dove studded with gold, a pendant in the shape of a bull's head in lapis lazuli, a whetstone mounted on a gold handle with a lion's head decorated with filigree, two animal statuettes (a reclining lion and a hedgehog) in limestone on casters, and numerous carnelian and agate beads of various shapes. The interpretation of this collections of objects remains uncertain: was it perhaps a foundation deposit related to the Inshushinak sanctuary, or an offering made to this sanctuary; or were these the furnishings of a plundered royal tomb? A royal offering

At Susa, as in Mesopotamia, the supreme act of piety consisted in bringing divinities offerings, a sacrifice or foodstuffs, and of preserving the eternal memory of this act by depositing a figurine of the worshipper himself. Most figurines were in terracotta, more rarely in earthenware or 474

bronze. None of those dating to the Middle-Elamite period feature such a magnificent costume. The clothes of these figurines are devoid of ornaments and fringes; the hair is cut in a similar style forming a thick mass on the forehead, but has no plaited diadem. Here, the choice of a precious metal, the majesty of the figure and the complexity of the hair style and costume are indications that this may well be the figure of the king himself, depicted as the bearer of an offering.Author(s): Caubet Annie, Prvotat Arnaud Ritual basin decorated with goatfish figures

Middle Elamite period Susa, Iran Limestone H. 62.8 cm; W. 92 cm Jacques de Morgan excavations, 1904-05 Sb 19 f. the trough into which the blacksmith allows melted iron to flow after smelting. (Kashmiri) pattar 'trough' Rebus: pattar 'guild'. ayo 'fish' Rebus: ayas 'metal' tagara 'antelope' Rebus: tagara 'tin'. ka m. the stalk or stem of a reed, grass, or the like, straw. In the compound with dan 5 (p. 221a, l. 13) the word is spelt k. Rebus: ka tools, pots and pans and metal-ware.

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The reed hieroglyph may be comparable to the reed + scarf hieroglyph shown on the top register of Warka vase. dula 'pair' Rebus: dul 'cast metal'. ka m. the stalk or stem of a reed. Rebus: ka tools, pots and pans and metal-ware. Scarf [read rebus as dhau m. (also dhahu) m. scarf (WPah.) (CDIAL 6707) Rebus: dhatu minerals (Santali); dhtu mineral (Pali) Thus reed + scarf denotes metallic minerals + metalware tools, pots and pans.

[pattara trough is a glyph used in front of many types of animals including wild animals and composite animal glyphs. ptra trough; pattar merchant. The lexeme also connotes a guild.] Thus, the entire ritual trough may connote pattar 'guild' [pattharika [fr. Patthara] a merchant Vin ii.135 (kasa). (Pali) ] of mineral- and metal-workers and traders dealing with alloys (ayaska).

The reed glyph and the humanface glyph are the key hieroglyphic links to Uruk trough and Indian hieroglyphs of Indus script. The Meluhhan settlers of Uruk who created the hieroglyphs of Uruk trough, of Indus script and of the Nar Mer Palette are of the same scribe guild whose language was Indus language, mleccha (meluhha) and who had learnt the literate art of writing to represent (vikalpa) human speech sounds.

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This limestone basin dates from the 13th or 12th century BC. It was used for ritual libations. The decoration depicts goatfish figures around a sacred tree in reference to the Mesopotamian god Enki/Ea. This reveals the full extent of the mutual influence of the Iranian and Mesopotamian cosmogonies. The sacred palm, the ancestor of the Assyrian sacred tree, reflects the importance of dates as a food source in the region. A basin symbolizing the water cycle This basin was broken into several pieces when it was found and has been reconstituted. Used by priests in their ritual libations, liquid was poured out over the basin and was then collected for re-use. There were two types of ritual libations. The first reflected the water cycle, with water rising up from underground, filling rivers and wells. The other was an offering of beer, wine or honey, poured out for the deity in anticipation of his meal. The decoration of this basin suggests it was used for the first type of ritual libation. It is made in the shape of the realm of Enki/Ea, Apsu, the body of fresh water lying beneath the earth and feeding all the rivers and streams. Apsu is likewise represented in the bronze model called Sit-Shamshi (Louvre, Sb2743). The fact that it was found in Susa indicates that the Elamites adopted certain aspects of Mesopotamian mythology. Goatfish figures around a sacred palm The rim of the limestone basin is decorated with a single repeated motif: two goatfish figures, or Nou, on either side of a stylized tree. These creatures were the attributes of Enki/Ea, the Mesopotamian god of underground water, symbolizing his power to replenish vegetation, represented by the sacred palm tree. A similar stylized tree can be seen on the stele of King Untash-Napirisha (Sb12). The tree consists of a central trunk with a number of offshoots curved at the tip and with three palmettes on the upper part. The image is completely stylized, bearing only a very distant resemblance to actual date palm trees. This symbol of plant life reflects the importance of date palms in the region. Dates were a staple foodstuff for the local population. This type of sacred palm was the predecessor of the sacred trees of Assyria. A relief from the palace of Assurnazirpal II in Nimrud depicts a winged spirit with a bird's head in front of just such a sacred tree (AO19849). The upper part of the basin is decorated with an intertwining pattern resembling flowing water. The inside of the basin consists of a series of squared steps leading down to the bottom of the dish. Traces of an inscription, too worn to be read, indicate that there was originally a text along the edges of the basin. Bibliography 477

Amiet Pierre, lam, Auvers-sur-Oise, Arche, 1966, p. 394 et pp. 467-468, fig. 298 A-B. Borne interactive du dpartement des Antiquits orientales. Contenau Georges, Manuel d'archologie orientale depuis les origines jusqu' l'poque d'Alexandre, vol. II, Histoire de l'art : IIIe et IIe millnaires avant notre re, Paris, A. Picard, 1931, pp. 912-913, fig. 629. Herbin Nancie

Copper alloy vase decorated with animal friezes, Susa, Iran, (1200-1000 BCE)- 11.5 cm high (Louvre)

Cylinder seal with kneeling nude heroes, ca. 22202159 b.c.; Akkadian Mesopotamia Red jasper H. 1 1/8 in. (2.8 cm), Diam. 5/8 in. (1.6 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art - USA

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A SUMERIAN WHITE MARBLE CYLINDER SEAL Early Dynastic, Circa 3200-3000 B.C. Engraved with a temple facade with a gateway, a gatepost to the left, together with a standing nude hero with a sword in one hand, holding a small quadruped in the other, to their left a stag.

A NEO-BABYLONIAN CYLINDER SEAL it shows the Sumerian hero Gilgamesh CIRCA 900700 B.C.

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See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-eastart-indus-writing.html Ancient near East lapidary guilds graduate into bronze-age metalware The note explains the hieroglyphs on the tablet showing a procession of standard-bearers as the standard of the civilization. This artistic deployment of hieroglyphs on a procession is also seen on one side of Narmer palette.

Late Uruk and Jemdet Nasr seal; ca. 32003000 BC; serpentine; cat.1; boar and bull in procession; terminal: plant; heavily pitted surface beyond plant.

Late Uruk and Jemdet Nasr seal; ca. 32003000 (?) BC; marble; cat.3; loop bore; an antelope with two tigerss, one with head turned. kola 480

'tiger' Rebus: kol 'working in iron'. tagara 'antelope' Rebus: tagara 'tin'. krammara 'head turned back' Rebus: kamar 'smith, artisan'.

Cylinder seal and impression: cattle herd at the cowshed. White limestone, Mesopotamia, Uruk Period (4100 BC3000 BC). Louvre Museum.

Bronze dish found by Layard at Nimrud: circular objects are decorated by consecutive chains of animals following each other round in a circle. A similar theme occurs on the famous silver vase of Entemena. In the innermost circle, a troop of gazelles (similar to the ones depicted on cylinder seals) march along in file; the middle register has a variety of animals, all marching in the same direction as the gazelles. A one-horned bull, a winged griffin, an ibex and a gazelle, are followed by two bulls who are being attacked by lions, and a griffin, a one-horned bull, and a gazelle, who are all respectively being attacked by leopards. In the outermost zone there is a stately procession of realistically conceived one-horned bulls marching in the opposite direction 481

to the animals parading in the two inner circles. The dish has a handle. (Percy S.P.Handcock, 1912, Mesopotamian Archaeology, London, Macmillan and Co., p. 256).

Cylinder seal and impression: cattle herd in a wheat field. Limestone, Mesopotamia, Uruk Period (4100 BC3000 BC). kua n. clump (Sanskrit) A phonetic determinant of the young bull kd [ kha ] m 'A young bull, a bullcalf'. (Marathi) read rebus: k der m. one who works a lathe'. Alternative: The cob is kolmo seeding, rice-plant(Munda) rebus: kolami smithy; (Telugu)

Mudhif and three reed banners. A cow and a stable of reeds with sculpted columns in the background. Fragment of another vase of alabaster (era of Djemet-Nasr) from Uruk, Mesopotamia. Limestone 16 X 22.5 cm. AO 8842, Louvre, Departement des Antiquites Orientales, Paris, France. Six circles decorated on the reed post are semantic determinants of Glyph: bhaa six. Rebus: bhaa furnace. m. the stalk or stem of a reed, grass, or the like, straw. In the compound with dan 5 (p. 221a, l. 13) the word is spelt k. The rebus reading of the pair of reeds in Sumer standard is: khna tools, pots and pans and metal-ware.

482

Quadrupeds exiting the mund (or mudhif) are pasaramu, pasalamu an animal, a beast, a brute, quadruped (Telugu) [ pasaramu ] or pasaramu. [Tel.] n. A beast, an animal. . Rebus: pasra = a smithy, place where a black-smith works, to work as a blacksmith; kamar pasra = a smithy; pasrao lagao akata se ban:? Has the blacksmith begun to work? pasraedae = the blacksmith is at his work (Santali.lex.) pasra meed, pasra meed = syn. of koe meed = forged iron, in contrast to dul meed, cast iron (Mundari.lex.) [ pasramu ] or pasrdmu. [Tel.] n. A shop. . Allograph: pacar = a wedge driven ino a wooden pin, wedge etc. to tighten it (Santali.lex.) Allograph: pajhar 'eagle'.

A Toda temple in Muthunadu Mund near Ooty, India. For example, on a cylinder seal from Uruk, a professional group of workers in a smithy are shown as a procession of young bull calves and other quadrupeds emerging out of the smithy.

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Kur. xol tail. Malt. qoli

id.(DEDR 2135) The 'tail' atop the reed-structure banner glyph is a phonetic determinant for kole.l 'temple, smithy'. Alternative: pajha = to sprout from a root (Santali); Rebus: pasrasmithy, forge (Santali)

m0702 Text 2206 Toda munda structure.

Glyph 39, a glyph which compares with the Sumerian mudhif or

[Kannada. ku] Tusk; . (. 39, 1). Rebus: [kha] A lump or solid bit (as of phlegm, gore, curds, inspissated milk); any concretion or clot. (Marathi) Rebus: L. khof. alloy, impurity , alloyed , aw. kho forged ; P. kho m. base, alloy M.kho alloyed , (CDIAL 3931) kole.l = smithy (Ko.) Rebus: Kuwi (F.) kolhali to forge. Ko. koll blacksmith. (DEDR 2133).

Reading 1: kole.l = smithy, temple in Kota village (Ko.) Rebus 1: Ta. kol working in iron, blacksmith; kolla blacksmith. Ma. kollan blacksmith, artificer. Ka. kolime, kolume, kulame, kulime, kulume, kulme fire-pit, furnace; (Bell.; U.P.U.) konimi blacksmith; (Gowda) kolla id. Ko. koll blacksmith. Te. kolimi furnace. Go. (SR.) kollusn to mend implements; (Ph.) kolstn, kulsn to forge; (Tr.) klstn to repair (of ploughshares); 484

(SR.) kolmi smithy (Voc. 948). Kuwi (F.) kolhali to forge. (DEDR 2133). Rebus 2: Ko. kolel smithy, temple in Kota village.To. kwalal Kota smithy (DEDR 2133). Reading 2: go = the place where cattle are collected at mid-day (Santali); goh (Brj.)(CDIAL 4336). Goha (Skt.); cattle-shed (Or.) ko = a cow-pen; a cattlepen; a byre (G.) cattle-shed (Marathi) [ k ] A pen or fold for cattle. [ gh ] f C (Dim. Of ) A pen or fold for calves. (Marathi) Cattle Byres c.3200-3000 B.C. Late Uruk-Jemdet Nasr period. Magnesite. Cylinder seal. In the lower field of this seal appear three reed cattle byres. Each byre is surmounted by three reed pillars topped by rings, a motif that has been suggested as symbolizing a male god, perhaps Dumuzi. Within the huts calves or vessels appear alternately; from the sides come calves that drink out of a vessel between them. Above each pair of animals another small calf appears. A herd of enormous cattle moves in the upper field. Cattle and cattle byres in Southern Mesopotamia, c. 3500 BCE. Drawing of an impression from a Uruk period cylinder seal. (After Moorey, PRS, 1999, Ancient materials and industries: the archaeological evidence, Eisenbrauns.)

Text 1330 (appears with zebu glyph). Shown as exiting the kole.l 'smithy' arekol 'blaksmiths' and k der 'lathe-workers'. The young bulls emerging from the smithy. kd [ kha ] m A young bull, a bullcalf. (Marathi) Rebus 1: k nu or konu m. a hole dug in the ground for receiving consecrated fire (Kashmiri)Rebus 2: A. kundr, B. k dr, ri, Or. kundru; H. k der m. one who works a lathe, one who scrapes , r f., k dern to scrape, plane, round on a lathe .(CDIAL 3297). [ kh ] m A jag, notch, or indentation (as upon the edge of a tool or weapon). Rebus: kha tools, pots and pans, and metal-ware. kole.l = smithy (Ko.) Rebus: Kuwi (F.) kolhali to forge. Ko. koll blacksmith. (DEDR 2133). ayo 'fish' Rebus: ayas 'metal'.

485

kuila bent; rebus: kuila, katthl = bronze (8 parts copper and 2 parts tin) [cf. ra-ka, brass (Skt.) (CDIAL 3230) kui in cmpd. curve (Skt.)(CDIAL 3231). kanka 'rim of jar' Rebus: karika 'accountant'. kul -- kar m. village accountant (Marathi); karikan id. (Tamil) kaakku, n. cf. gaaka. [M. kaakku] 1. Number, account, reckoning, calculation, computation (Tamil) Rebus: to engrave, write; lapidary: <kana-lekhe>(P) {??} ``??''. |. Cf. <kana->. %16123. #16013. <lekhe->(P),,<leke->(KM) {VTC} ``to ^write''. Cf. <kana-lekhe>. *Kh.<likhae>, H.<lIkhAna>, O.<lekhIba>, B.<lekha>; Kh.<likha>(P), Mu.<lika>. %20701. #20541. (Munda etyma) Kashmiri:khanun conj. 1 (1 p.p. khonu for 1, see s.v.; f. kh to dig (K.Pr. 155, 247; L. 459; iv. 59, 746, 994, 143, 1197, 1214, 1373, 1754; Rm. 343, 958, 1147, 1724; H. xii, 6); to engrave (iv. 414, 671, 176; Rm. 1583). khonu-motu ; perf. part. (f. khm) dug (e.g. a field, or a well); engraved. mhara-khonu -; or (Gr.M.) mhar-kan m. a seal-engraver, a lapidary (El. mohar-kand). -w j * f. a signet-ring. DEDR 1170 Ta. kaam iron style for writing on palmyra leaves. Te. gaamu id. DEDR 1179 Kur. ka a stool. Malt. kano stool, seat. gaa-manche. n. A wooden frame like a bench to keep things on. .

There three reed decorations atop the mudhif (or, Toda mund). k 1 m. the stalk or stem of a reed, grass, or the like, straw. In the compound with dan 5 (p. 221a, l. 13) the word is spelt k. Rebus: kha tools, pots and pans, and metal-ware. Sumerian mudhif facade, with uncut reed fonds and sheep entering, carved into a gypsum trough from Uruk, c. 3200 BCE. This trough was found at Uruk, the largest city so far known in

486

southern Mesopotamia in the late prehistoric period (3300-3000 BC). The carving on the side shows a procession of sheep (a goat and a ram)

CARVED GYPSUM TROUGH FROM URUK. Two lambs exit a reed structure. A bundle of reeds (Inannas symbol) can be seen projecting from the hut and at the edges of the scene. The British Museum. WA 120000, neg. 252077 Part of the right-hand scene is cast from the original fragment now in the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin

Dr. L. Legrain, 1936, Ur excavations, Vol. III, Archaic Seal-impressions, Carnegie Foundation of New York. http://amar.hsclib.sunysb.edu/u?/amar,37238 kuhi vagina; rebus: kuhi smelting furnace bich 'scorpion' (Assamese). Rebus: bica 'stone ore' as in meed-

bica = iron stone ore, in contrast to bali-bica, iron sand ore (Mu.lex.) dul 'pair, likeness' Rebus:
dul 'cast metal' (Santali) Thus the hieroglyphs connote a smelter for smelting and casting metal stone ore.

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Fig. 96f: Failaka no. 260 Double antelope joined at the belly; in the Levant, similar doubling occurs for a lion.

Tell Abraq. Gold objects recovered.

prh n. back, hinder part Rigveda; puh m. buttock of an animal

(Punjabi) Rebus: puh, puh m. buttock of an animal, leather cover of account book (Marathi) tagara 'antelope' Rebus: damgar 'merchant'. This may be an artistic rendering of a 'descendant' of a ancient (metals) merchant. See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/05/antithetical-antelopes-of-ancient-near.html Antithetical antelopes of Ancient Near East as hieroglyphs (Kalyanaraman 2012) Hieroglyph: Joined back-to-back: pusht back; rebus: pusht ancestor. pust bah pust generation to generation.

488

Tell Abraq. Bronze dagger. Contained 12 % tin. Charred wood at the base of the tang had fragments of Dalbergia Sissoo, commonly known as Pakistani rosewood. Sissoo was rare in the ancient Near East. http://amar.hsclib.sunysb.edu/u?/amar,124774 DT Potts, 1998, Ancient Magan, The

secrets of Tell Abraq, Trident Press

Kudurru of Meli-Shipak commemorating a gift of land to his son Marduk-apla-iddina Kassite period, reign of Melishipak (1186-1172 BCE) Susa (where it had been taken as war booty in the 12th century BCE) Limestone J. de Morgan excavations Sb 22 Kudurrus (small steles recording royal gifts of land) first appeared during the Babylonian Kassite Dynasty. This example records a gift of land made by King Melishipak to his son Marduk-Apal489

Iddina. Such gifts were placed under the protection of the great deities of the Babylonian pantheon. Their emblems were carved on the kudurru to protect it from desecration. The Babylonian Kassite Dynasty After the fall of the first Babylonian Dynasty following the golden age of Hammurabi's reign, the kingdom gradually recovered under the foreign Kassite Dynasty. The Kassites rapidly adopted the Babylonian language, customs, and traditions. They introduced the use of small stone steles known as kudurrus - a tradition maintained by later dynasties until the 7th century BC. What is a kudurru? Kudurrus were stone steles that were sculpted and carved with inscriptions recording gifts of land made by Babylonian rulers to members of their family or to high-ranking civil or religious dignitaries. On this example, the text, which covers one whole side of the stone, records a major gift of land from the Kassite king, Melishipak, to his son, Marduk-Apal-Iddina, the future "shepherd of his country." The ownership of the land came with a number of franchises. Kudurrus were probably placed in temples, where they would be visible to both worshippers and gods. Three such kudurrus have been found during archaeological excavations of temples. This particular kudurru, however, was found along with several others in the Iranian city of Susa, where it was taken several decades after the end of Melishipak's reign by the Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte, whose victorious campaign in Babylonia led to the fall of the Kassite Dynasty. Kudurru inscriptions are usually in two parts. The first describes the nature of the gift and the clauses attached to it. This is followed by an imprecation calling down a divine curse on anyone who opposed the gift. The gift was thus not only recorded and displayed for all to see, but also placed under divine protection. The emblem of each god invoked is represented on the stele. The divine order of the world 490

This kudurru is remarkable in that in recording the royal gift, it represents the entire pantheon of gods who preserve the order of the world. The artist has used a formula that was later to be developed on other kudurrus, representing the symbols associated with each deity in hierarchical rows. At the top of the stele are the astral deities, as if in the vault of the heavens. The crescent of Sin, the moon god, and the star set with the rays of Shamash, the sun god, flank the goddess Ishtar, represented by the planet Venus. They are accompanied by the sovereign gods who preserve the equilibrium of the world. The crowns with six rows of horns placed on the altars are the emblems of Anu, the sky god, and Enlil, the air god. They are followed by the ram's head and the goatfish representing Ea, the god of fresh water, and the symbol of Ninhursag, the earth goddess. On the row immediately underneath are the warrior gods, whose victories in battle protect the order of the world - Nergal, represented by a weapon mounted on a dragon's back; Zababa, shown by a weapon with the head of a bird of prey; and Ninurta, depicted by a weapon with the head of a lion. Just beneath them is the figure of Marduk, the demiurge and protector of Babylonia, represented by a pointed spade and a horned dragon. He is accompanied by Nabu, the god of scribes, represented by a tablet and calamus, and Gula, goddess of medicine, astride her dog. The gods of earthly fertility are shown on the lowest level - the bolt of lightning and the bull of Adad, the god of storms; the lamp of Nushku, god of fire; the plow of Ningirsu, originally the god of farming; and the birds of Shuqamuna and Shumalia, the divine couple of the Kassite pantheon. On the ground, ready to strike, are the snake and the scorpion, representing the Chtonian deities of the underworld. The spatial ordering in rows represents the hierarchy of the deities and presents the Babylonian pantheon as a symbolic microcosm. The layout reflects both the divine ordering of the cosmos and the hierarchy of the pantheon. Bibliography 491

Morgan Jacques de, Mmoires I, Leroux, 1900, p. 172, pl. XVI-3. Scheil, Victor, Mmoires II, 1900, p. 99, pl. XXI XXIII.Author: Pouyssgur Patrick

Proto-Elamite tablet with seal mark Proto-Elamite period, circa 3100-2800 BCE Acropolis mound, Susa, Iran Clay H. 21 cm; L. 26 cm; H. of seal mark: 4.2 cm Excavations led by Jacques de Morgan, 1901 Sb 2801 The invention of writing corresponded to the economical needs of a society at a time when the development of cities was giving rise to increasing number of exchanges and transactions. This form of writing was inscribed on a soft material, clay. The first tablets date from the Late Uruk period, in Mesopotamia, and the Proto-Elamite period in Iran. They often bear the mark of one or two cylinder seals, proof that an administrative check or an agreement between two parties had taken place. A large tablet This tablet is the largest from the Proto-Elamite period, corresponding to the earliest urban development in the late 4th millennium BC, in the Fars region (southwestern Iran), the present regional capital of which is Shiraz. It bears traces of three different types of administrative tools: writing, accounting and glyptics, a major art form of the period, corresponding to the use of seals. There are inscriptions of both writing and numeral signs on both sides of the tablet. The emergence of a new writing system in the Fars region 492

Writing emerged in Iran nearly three centuries after being invented in southern Mesopotamia. This writing system, developed in the Fars region and called Proto-Elamite for this reason, is totally independent from the writing in use at Uruk. As no bilingual text exists that would enable us to establish an equivalence between the two systems, Proto-Elamite writing remains undecipherable. However, the reading direction (right to left) and its horizontality have been detected. An accounting document sealed with images of animals in human poses These Proto-Elamite tablets are accounting documents. Three different numerical systems are used on the tablet: a decimal system, a sexagesimal system and a mixed system known as SE. The various operations are listed on the front side of the tablet, recapitulated, with totals, on the back at the top. New figures appear: crescent-shaped notches and dots circled with a constellation of tiny points, some of which represent fractions. A pictographical sign resembling a fringed triangle, known as the "hairy triangle," often appears, but its meaning remains unclear. A single seal was used on the document, a cylinder-seal that was rolled twice across the width of the tablet, covering most of the back of the tablet. The scene shows a bull symmetrically restraining two seated felines, alternating with a lion dominating two rearing bulls, each topped with a "hairy triangle." The animals stand on their hindlegs as if they were bipeds, a technique characteristic of the Proto-Elamite period in which animals were often depicted in a human pose. The choice of bulls and lions was deliberate, for these animals appear to personify cosmic forces, decisive in the balance of power in the world. In the scene, there is no durable winner or loser, but alternating, opposing forces that appear equal. Bibliography Amiet Pierre, lam, Auvers-sur-Oise, Arche, 1966, p. 101, n 56. Amiet Pierre, La Glyptique msopotamienne archaque, Paris, ditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1980, pp. 107-110 et pl. 38, n 585. Stolper Matthew W., The Royal City of Susa. Ancient Near Eastern Treasures in the Louvre, Exposition, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992, n 49. Author: AB

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Cylinder seal. Iraq. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/photogalleries/iraqtreasures_1/

Ancient near Eastern cylinder seal, Marcopoli Collection (Beatrice Teissier, 1985, Univ. of California Press).

Sumerian dynastic seal ca. 2500 BCE.

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Sumerian seal (carved cylinder), early dynastic period (third millenium B.C.). British Museum.

British Museum. http://www.mesopotamia.co.uk/writing/explore/seal.html

Sumerian cylinder seal impression. http://www.honestinformation.com/articles/missing-teapot.php

Akkadian Cylinder Seal (c. 2200 BCE). http://www.tulane.edu/~danny/arch.html

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A cylinder seal with zebu and lion, Sibri {Jarrige)

Akkadian cylinder seal, showing kneeling heroes. Around 2200 BCE.

AMAR: Archive of Mesopotamian Archaeological Site Reports Potts, Daniel T., 2001, Excavations at Tepe Yahya, Iran, 1967-1975: the third millennium, Bulletin (American School of Prehistoric Research) ; no. 45. Contributors: Lamberg-Karlovsky, C. C., 1937- Pittman, Holly Kohl, Philip L., 1946- Cambridge, Mass.: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.

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Location of Tepe Yahya.

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Source: CC Lamberg-Karlovsky, 1970, Excavations at Tepe Yahya, Iran 1967-1969 Progress Report 1, Harvard Univ., Cambridge

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Tepe-yahya seal

impression.

Tepe-yahya. Figure 9.6 Inscribed on a stone-axe. Two sides of

a ceremonial chlorite axe head with incised design of an eagle or bird from the chlorite-rich level of the Tepe Yahya period IVB workshop (Trench BW, test trench 5, level 6A, approx. 13.4 cm in height).

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Fig. 10.26 Catalogue No. 26 TY 13, fragmentary impression of classic style cylinder seal with seated feline facing left and two registers in front with small bovid and small feline.

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http://www.scribd.com/doc/145991238/Excavations-at-Tepe-Yahya-Iran-1967-1975-the-thirdmillennium-DT-Potts-2001

Excavations at Tepe Yahya, Iran, 1967-1975: the third millennium (DT Potts, 2001) by Srini Kalyanaraman http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-art-indus-writing.html Ancient near East lapidary guilds graduate into bronze-age metalware Ancient near East lapidary guilds graduate into bronze-age metalware

This is a report on the transition from lapidary to bronze-age metalware in ancient Near East. This is a proto-historical 4th millennium BCE narrative on how ancient near East lapidary guilds graduate into bronze-age metalware artisan/merchant guilds.

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This graduation is supported by ancient near East art evolving into Indus writing --

jgaa accounting for metalware, in a transition from stone-cutting or bead-making to bronzeage metals alloying in a wide interaction area for metalware trade and metals technologies. This report discusses how ancient near East art (as on Warka vase or Tell Tabraq axe) evolved into Indus writing accounting for metalware transactions from smelter to smithy/forge. This process of accounting is elucidated by the semantics of the mercantile, technical term, jgaa -

- goods taken on approval basis. This jgaa system is recogized in law related to
corporations and trade transactions and is practised even today in the Indian sprachbund. The lexeme jgaa is denoted, rebus, by the sangaa (gimlet + portable furnace) hieroglyph 1 of the device in front of the hieroglyph 2 of one-horned young bull calf. The hieroglyphs 1 and 2 recur on over 1000 inscriptions of Indus writing attesting to the dominant role played by this method of metalware accounting which is the principal message conveyed by almost all the Indus inscriptions which now number over 5000 in the corpora presented in http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/04/indus-writing-in-ancient-near-east.html . The message conveyed by the procession of hieroglyphs -- carried as banners -- constituting a bronze-age standard of the Indus-Sarasvati civilization is interpreted (read rebus) as mineral (stones) and metal alloys transacted on [jgaa] 'goods on approval' basis. The procession is a celebration of the graduation from stone-cutting or making of stone-beads --

sangho -- community (or artisan guild) to a bronze-age guild of metal (mineral and alloy)turners in smithy/forge or mint, kammaa.

m0490

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m0491 This can be viewed as the standard of the Indus-Sarasvati civilization. This tablet Mohenjo-daro m0491 shows a person of three persons (There is another standard-bearer in front of the scarf-standard bearer; maybe, he is carrying a banner of a stone-bead) R. to L: one carries a post with a scarf hanging like a flag; the second carries a pedestal on which one-horned young bull calf is shown; the third carries a 'standard device' (lathe + furnace). Read rebus:

kandi (pl. l) necklace, beads (Pa.) Ga. (P.) kandi (pl. l) bead, (pl.) necklace; (S.2) kandi bead
(DEDR 1215). kandil, kandl = a globe of glass, a lantern (Ka.lex.) Rebus: ka 'fire-altar'.

dhu m. woman's headgear, kerchief; dhau m. (also dhahu) m. scarf (WPah.);

rebus: dhtumineral (Skt.), dhatu id. (Santali).

ku horn (Kannada. Tulu. Tamil) [kha] m A young bull, a bullcalf. (Marathi)

Rebus: [ka] A circular hamlet; a division of a or village, composed generally of the huts of one caste. [kha] Alloyed--a metal (Marathi). [sgaa] That member of a turner's apparatus by which the piece to be turned is confined and steadied (Marathi) sangho (G.) cutting stone, gilding (G.) Rebus: [jgaa] f ( Hindi) Goods taken from a shop, to be retained or returned as may suit: also articles of apparel taken from a tailor or clothier to sell for him. 2 or The account or account-book of goods so taken.(Marathi)

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A glyph which occurs as frequently as the onehorned heifer is the 'standard device' in front of the heifer.

sagaa 'gimlet, portable furnace'. Rebus: jgaa 'goods on approval basis'.

The standard device is also a hieroglyph, sagaa 'lathe'; rebus: furnace. The word sagaa can also be denoted by a glyph of combined animals. The bottom portion of the 'standard device' is sometimes depicted with 'dotted circles'. khangar ghongor 'full of holes'; (Santali) rebus: kangar 'portable furnace' (Kashmiri). This device also occurs by itself and as variants on 19 additional epigraphs, in one case held aloft like a banner in a procession which also includes the glyph of the one-horned heifer as one of the banners carried.

(Kannada) = ore taken from the mine and not subjected to smelting in a furnace. This precise explanation of a lexeme of Indian sprachbund yields a clue to understanding how ancient near East art evolved into Indus writing in the context of bronzeage. The discovery for hieroglyphic depiction of lexeme aduru, starts from an exquisite artwork on Warka vase.

Tabernae montana on a register on Warka vase (Late Uruk period 3600 to 3200
BCE). If a Meluhha artisan had rendered the art-work, he would have conveyed in

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writing: tagaraka, tabernae montana. Rebus: tagara tin (Ka.); tamara id. (Skt.) Allograph: agara ram.

Tabernae montana hieroglyph is shown together with zebu and a thorny object, on a
Mesopotamian cylinder seal.

Other hieroglyphs shown on the cylinder seal: ran:ga ron:ga, ran:ga con:ga = thorny, spikey, armed with thorns; edel dare ran:ga con:ga dareka = this cotton tree grows with spikes on it (Santali) ) Rebus: ran:ga, ran: pewter is an alloy of tin lead and antimony (ajana) (Santali).Alternative: kaiya thorny (Prakrit) Rebus: kammaa 'mint, gold furnace' (Telugu) adar angar zebu aduru = gan.iyinda tegadu karagade iruva aduru = ore taken from the mine and not subjected to smelting in a furnace (Kannada. Siddhnti Subrahmaya astris new interpretation of the Amarakoa, Bangalore, Vicaradarpana Press, 1872, p.330); adar = fine sand (Tamil) aduru native metal (Ka.); ayil iron (Ta.) ayir, ayiram any ore (Ma.); ajirda karba very hard iron (Tu.)(DEDR 192).

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Susa pot hieroglyph: fish + scales. The pot contained metalware Hieroglyph: fish+scales. Allograph: aDara 'scales of a fish' (Munda) Rebus: aduru native metal; ayo 'fish' Rebus: ayo 'metal' (G.) ayas, ayah 'metal' (Sanskrit) Two Harappa fish-shaped miniature tablets with incised hieroglyphs. ayo 'fish' Rebus: ayo 'metal' (G.) ayas, ayah 'metal' (Sanskrit)

h1139 Harappa tablet. The choice of a fish-shape was a dramatic advancement over the shapes which had evolved on tokens to account for products. Such tokens were put into bullae and sealed with seal impressions. Some of the seal impressions denoted Indus writing hieroglyphs. Thus, we have a combination of two types of writing: one -- the token shapes -- categorized the products; the other -- seal impressions of hieroglyphs -- provided a technical specification of or professional title of owner of the products. The invention of new shapes which denoted sounds of words of the underlying words used by the artisans constituted a breakthrough in the evolution of writing systems.

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One such shape was the fish-shape which denoted ayo 'fish' <ayu?>(A) {N} ``^fish. #1370. <yO>\\<AyO>(L) {N} ``^fish. #3612. Rebus: ayo 'metal' (G.) ayas, ayah 'metal' (Sanskrit). ka 'an arrow' (Marathi)

k tools, pots and pans, metal-ware (Marathi).The fish-eye is a reinforcement of the

gloss kstone/nodule (metal). The dotted circle (eye) is decoded rebus as ka aperture (Tamil);k hole (Gujarati) (i.e. glyph showing dotted-circle); ka one eye. kai stone (Kannada) kaCopper (Tamil) ka , n. < . stone (Tamil) kha (Marathi) is metal, nodule, stone, lump.kai stone (Kannada) with Tadbhava khau. khau,

ka stone/nodule (metal). Ga. (Oll.) kan (S.)kanu (pl. kankil) stone (DEDR 1298).
The lexeme k could be denoted by the hieroglyph ka 'arrow'. Hieroglyphs fish + arrow read rebus ayas + ka thus connoted metal tools, pots and pans, metalware of the type shown in the Susa pot. These hieroglyphs -- ka one eye; rebus: kai stone (Kannada) -- ayo 'fish'; rebus: ayas 'metal' (Sanskrit) -- may have been translated and interpreted as the fish-eyes or eye stones (Akkadian IGI-HA, IGI-KU6) mentioned in Mesopotamian texts.

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Shaft-hole axe head. Early-middle bronze age. Lae 3rd or early 2nd millennium BCE. Iran. 10.31 x 16.41 cm. Accession Number: 1980:307 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Hieroglyphs on the axe:

Hieroglyph 1: tagara 'tabernae montana' Rebus: tagara 'tin'. Hieroglyph 2: eaka upraised arm (Ta.) Rebus: eraka = copper (Ka.) The hieroglyph indicates that the broad axe is made of copper + tin alloy: eraka + tagara.

tabar 'a broad axe' (Punjabi) Rebus: tam(b)ra = copper (Pkt.)

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Dilmun seal show

on http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/see-httpbharatkalyan97.html. Failaka seal shown on http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/indus-writing-on-dilmun-typeseals.html The hieroglyphs are: palm tree, two persons with upraised arms, two antelopes, an ingot shape, a circle. The palm tree is read rebus: tamar 'palm tree' Rebus: tam(b)ra 'copper'. tagara 'antelope' Rebus: damgar 'merchant'. eraka 'upraised arm' Rebus: eraka 'copper'. = a branch of a tree (G.) Rebus: hako = a large ingot (G.) hak = a metal heated and poured into a mould; a solid piece of metal; an ingot (G.)

A pair of 'empty circle hieroglyphs': Tu. tou hole; empty; ou, ou, to void, hollow. Te. toli,
tolika hole; tol(u)cu to bore, perforate, hollow, dig, scoop, carve; doi hole; (K.) dol(u)cu to make a hole; olla hollow, concave. (DEDR 3528) Rebus: dul casting (Santali) Allograph: dol likeness, pair Rebus: dul 'cast metal' (Santali)

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Allographs: tamar palm tree, date palm (Hebrew) Ku. N. tmo (pl. young bamboo shoots ), A. tm, B. tb, tm, Or. tamb, Bi tb, Mth. tm, tm, Bhoj. tm, H. tm in cmpds., tb, tm m., G. trb , tb n.(CDIAL 5779).

teba, tebor. three times, thrice; tebage emok hoyoktama you will have to give three times that
(Santali) cf. tamar 'gimlet' (Tamil)

It was circa 3500 BCE. An Indus artisan had written these hieroglyphs on a potsherd discovered by HARP (Harvard Harappa Archaeology Project). BBC titled the report of May 4, 1999 'Earliest writing'. Citing this find, the report quoted one of the excavators, Richard Meadow: "...these primitive inscriptions found on pottery may pre-date all other known writing."

Gharial holding fish. Mohenjo-daro. kar crocodile (Telugu). Rebus: khara blacksmith (Kashmiri) ayo 'fish' Rebus: ayo 'metal' (G.) ayas, ayah 'metal' (Sanskrit)

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Fish design from Nal, South Baluchistan. .Potsherd from Amri combining fish and star hieroglyphs. mha 'The polar star' (Marathi) Rebus: me 'iron' (Ho.Munda) ayo 'fish' Rebus: ayo 'metal' (G.) ayas, ayah 'metal' (Sanskrit) aDara 'scales of a fish' (Munda) Rebus: aduru 'native metal' (Kannada)

Writing on pots from Mundigak (eastern Afghanistan).

Two copper tablets. Mohenjo-daro. Showing two allographs: archer hieroglyph; ficus + crab hieroglyph. ato = claws of crab (Santali); dhtu = mineral (Skt.) loa ficus religiosa (Santali) rebus: loh metal (Skt.) kamakom fig.kamaha crab. kmahum = a bow; kma, kmaum = a chip of bamboo (G.) kmahiyo a bowman; an archer (Skt.lex.) Rebus: kammai a coiner (Kannada); kampaam coinage, coin, mint (Tamil)kammaa = mint, gold furnace (Telugu)

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Inscribed steatite tablet. Harappa.

Moulded inscribed faience tablet. Harappa.

One example of 21 identical inscriptions on tablets. The inscription on h2218A ends up as part of messageon a seal h1682.

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h1682 Harappa seal which includes the first segment of the message from the tablet h2218A. cf. http://harappa.drupalgardens.com/sites/harappa.drupalgardens.com/files/Kenoyer2000_The %20Tiny%20Steatite%20Seals%20of%20Harappa.pdf The tablet h2218A message incorporated on Seal h1682 is: kolmo 'three' Rebus: kolami 'smithy, forge'. kanka 'rim of jar' Rebus: gaaka 'accounting'. kui 'water carrier' Rebus: kuhi 'smelter'. The seal h1682 also includes an additional message:

kolmo 'three' Rebus: kolami 'smithy, forge'. dol 'likeness, pair' Rebus: dul 'cast (metal). kan 'stone' (Gadba) Thus the two-part message on Seal h1682 is: Part1: cast (metal stone) smithy -- dul kan kolami Part 2: smelter smithy accounting - kui gaaka kolami The other hieroglyphs on the seal are: one-horned young bull calf -ku horn (Kannada. Tulu. Tamil)

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 [kha] m A young bull, a bullcalf. (Marathi) Rebus: [ka] A circular hamlet; a division of a or village, composed generally of the huts of one caste. [kha] Alloyed--a metal (Marathi). gimlet + portable furnace - [sgaa] That member of a turner's apparatus by which the piece to be turned is confined and steadied. (Marathi) Rebus: [jgaa] f ( Hindi) Goods taken from a shop, to be retained or returned as may suit: also articles of apparel taken from a tailor or clothier to sell for him. 2 or The account or account-book of goods so taken.(Marathi)

Thus, the seal message completes the accounting of goods taken on approval basis (jgaa) of metal cast from smelter and taken into the smithy/forge (kolami). The procession tablet which is noted as the standard of the civilization has other hieroglyphs deployed on a text (1605) which is repeated on both tablets m0490 and m0491. The procession of four banners has been read rebus as mineral (stones) and metal alloys transacted on [jgaa] 'goods on approval' basis.

Text 1605 on m0490 and m0491 tablets. The hieroglyphs read rebus denote the following specialist functions of the artisan guild: workshop (for) casting metals, gemstones, smithy working with alloys, kiln, guild. dula pair (i.e., two long linear strokes). Rebus: dul to cast metal in a mould (Santali)

kar n. pl. wristlets, bangles (Gujarati) Rebus: [kha] the gem or stone of a ring or trinket:
a lump of hardened fces or scybala: a nodule or lump gen. (Marathi)

sal stake, spike, splinter, thorn, difficulty (Hindi) Rebus: sal workshop (Santali)
kolmo seeding, rice-plant(Munda) Rebus: kolami smithy (Telugu) [kha] ingot, wedge. Rebus: alloy (Marathi) That is, a smithy working with alloys.

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bhaa -- m. soldier (Pali) Rebus: baa = kiln (Santali); baa = a kind of iron (Gujarati) bhah f.
kiln, distillery(Gujarati)

kh f. corner, side) (Punjabi) Rebus: kh community, guild (Mu.)

1. dula pair (Kashmiri); dula m. a pair, a couple, esp. of two similar things (Rm. 966) dul cast (metal) (Santali). dul to cast metal in a mould (Santali) dul mee cast iron (Mundari. Santali) Alternative: tae a thick bamboo or an areca-palm stem, split in two (Ka.) (DEDR 3042)Rebus: toxin, to.xn goldsmith (To.); ta gold- or silver-smith (Ta.); taaravu goldor silver-smith (Te.); *haakra brass-worker (Skt.)(CDIAL 5493). Thus, the glyph is decoded: taara worker in gold, brass. Alternative: S. jo m. twin , L. P. j m.; M. j f. a double yoke . (CDIAL 5091) Rebus: *jaati joins, sets . 1. Pk. jaia -- set (of jewels), joined ; K. jarun to set jewels ( Ind.); S. jaau to join, rivet, set , jaa f. rivet, boundary between two fields ; P.jau to have fastened or set ; A. zariba to collect ; B. jana to set jewels, wrap round, entangle , ja heaped together ; Or. jaib to unite ; OAw.jara sets jewels, bedecks ; H. jan to join, stick in, set ( N. janu to set, be set ); OMarw. ja inlaid ; G. jav to join, meet with, set jewels ; M.ja to join, connect, inlay, be firmly established , ja to combine, confederate . (CDIAL 5091) G.kar n. pl. wristlets, bangles; S. kar f. wrist (CDIAL 2779). Rebus: khr blacksmith (Kashmiri) [kha] the gem or stone of a ring or trinket: a lump of hardened fces or scybala: a nodule or lump gen. (Marathi) sal stake, spike, splinter, thorn, difficulty (H.); Rebus: sal workshop (Santali) Alternative: aar = splinter (Santali); rebus: aduru = native metal (Ka.) aduru = gan.iyinda tegadu karagade iruva aduru = ore taken from the mine and not subjected to melting in a furnace (Kannada. Siddha_nti Subrahman.ya Sastris new interpretation of the Amarakosa, Bangalore, Vicaradarpana Press, 1872, p. 330) kolmo seeding, rice-plant(Munda) rebus: kolami smithy (Telugu)

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urseal11Seal; UPenn; a scorpion and an elipse [an eye (?)]; U. 16397; Gadd, PBA 18 (1932), pp. 10-11, pl. II, no. 11 [Note: Is the eye an oval representation of a bun ingot.) Glyph: bich

scorpion (As+samese)Rebus: bica stone ore (Munda)

Glyph shown together with stong of scorpion on Urseal 1. Rebus: [kha] ingot, wedge; A mass of metal (unwrought or of old metal melted down)(Maratthi) khof alloy (Lahnda) Hence [khasa] a ( & from ) Alloyed--a metal. (Marathi) Bshk. kho embers , Phal. kho ashes, burning coal ; L. kho alloyed , aw. kho forged ; P. kho m. base, alloy M.kho alloyed , (CDIAL 3931)Kor. (O.) The seal thus depicts an ingot made of bica, stone ore.

Mohenjo-daro seal m417 six heads from a core. A circular seal of Mohenjo-daro. It shows a warrior. G. bhth, bht,bhth m. quiver (whence bhth m. warrior)(CDIAL 9124). Pali. bhaa -- m. hireling, servant, soldier; S.kcch. bha brave; Garh. (rnagr dial.) bh, (Saln dial.) bhe warrior. S. bhau clever, proficient, m. an adept; Ku. bha m. hero, brave man, gng. adj. mighty; B. bha soldier, servant, nom. prop., bhail servant, hero; Bhoj. bhar name of a partic. low caste;G. bha m. warrior, hero, opulent person, adj. strong, opulent Pk. bhayaga -- m. servant, bhaa -- m. soldier, bhaaa -- m. member of a non -Aryan tribe; (CDIAL 9588). Rebus: baa = kiln (Santali); baa = a kind of iron (G.) bhah f. kiln, distillery, aw. bhah; P. bhah m., h f. furnace, bhah m. kiln; S. bhah ke distil (spirits).bhrra n. frying pan, gridiron MaitrS. [bhrajj] Pk. bhaha -- m.n. gridiron; K. bh f. level surface by kitchen fireplace on which vessels are put when taken off fire; S. bahu m. large pot in which grain is parched, large cooking fire, bah f. distilling furnace; L. bhah m. grain -- parcher's oven, bhah f. kiln, distillery, aw. bhah; P. bhah m., h f. furnace, bhah m. kiln; N. bhi oven or vessel in which clothes are steamed for washing; A. bha brick -- or lime -- kiln; B. bhi kiln ; Or. bhi brick -- kiln, distilling pot ; Mth. bhah, bha brick -- kiln, furnace, still; Aw.lakh. bhh kiln; H. bhah m. kiln, bha f. 521

kiln, oven, fireplace; M.bha m. pot of fire, bha f. forge. S.kcch. bhah ke distil (spirits).(CDIAL 9656). kna corner (Nk.); Tu. ku angle, corner (Tu.); Rebus: kd to turn in a lathe (B.) kundr turner (A.); k dr, k dri (B.); kundru (Or.); kundau to turn on a lathe, to carve, to chase; kundau dhiri = a hewn stone; kundau murhut = a graven image (Santali) kunda a turner's lathe (Skt.)(CDIAL 3295) *khua2 corner . 2. *kua -- 2. [Cf. *khca -- ] 1. Phal. khun corner ; H. kh m. corner, direction ( P. kh f. corner, side); G. kh f. angle . <-> X ka -- : G. khu f., kh m. corner .2. S. kua f. corner ; P. k f. corner, side ( H.). (CDIAL 3898). Rebus: kh community, guild (Mu.) Rebus: ka a house, dwelling (Skt.lex.) kh = a community, sect, society, division, clique, schism, stock; kh ren pea kanako = they belong to the same stock (Santali) kh Nag. Kh , k Has. (Or. Kh) either of the two branches of the village family. Context of the hieroglyph of warrior on a circular seal The core is a glyphic chain or ladder. Glyph: ka a chain; a hook; a link (G.); kaum a bracelet, a ring (G.) Rebus: kaiyo [Hem. Des. kaaio = Skt. sthapati a mason] a bricklayer; a mason; kaiyaa, kaiyea a woman of the bricklayer caste; a wife of a bricklayer (G.)

Mohenjo-daro Seal m0417 The glyphics are: Glyph: one-horned young bull: kondh heifer. k dr turner, brass-worker. Glyph: bull: hangra bull. Rebus: hangar blacksmith. Glyph: ram: meh ram. Rebus: me iron Glyph: antelope: mreka goat. Rebus: milakkhu copper. Vikalpa 1: meluhha mleccha copper worker. Vikalpa 2: meh helper of merchant. Glyph: zebu: kh zebu. Rebus: kh guild, community (Semantic determinant of the jointed animals glyphic composition). ka joining, connexion, assembly, crowd, fellowship (DEDR 522

1882) Pa. gotta clan; Pk. gotta, gya id. (CDIAL 4279) Semantics of Pkt. lexeme gya is concordant with Hebrew goy in ha-goy-im (lit. the-nation-s). Pa. gotta -- n. clan , Pk. gotta -, gutta -- , amg. gya -- n.; Gau. g house (in Kaf. and Dard. several other words for cowpen > house : gh -- , Pr. gu cow ; S. goru m. parentage , L. got f. clan , P. gotar, got f.; Ku. N. got family ; A. got -- nti relatives ; B. got clan ; Or. gota family, relative ; Bhoj. H. got m. family, clan , G. got n.; M. got clan, relatives ; -- Si. gota clan, family Pa. (CDIAL 4279). The sixth animal can only be guessed. Perhaps, a tiger (A reasonable inference, because the glyph tiger appears in a procession on some Indus script. inscriptions. Glyph: tiger?: kol tiger. Rebus:kol worker in iron. Vikalpa (alternative): perhaps, rhinoceros. gaa rhinoceros; rebus: kha tools, pots and pans and metal-ware. Thus, the entire glyphic composition of six animals on the Mohenjodaro seal m417 is semantically a representation of a ri, guild, a kh , community of smiths and masons.

kh 'zebu' (Gujarati)
This guild, community of smiths and masons evolves into Harosheth Hagoyim, a smithy of nations. Archaeological context (as seen in Harappa)

An overview of the area on Mound F as seen from the city wall on Mound AB. The circular working platforms are in the background and a row of identical houses that were clearly made all at one time, possibly a housing project of some wealthy merchant or perhaps sponsored by the city council.

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Slide 16. harappa.com Circular working platforms. Connected with the circular working platforms is the kiln discovered close-by.

Large updraft kiln of the Harappan period (ca. 2400 BCE) found during excavations on Mound E Harappa, 1989 (After Fig. 8.8, Kenoyer, 2000) After Figure 9. Harappa 1999, Mound F, Trench 43: Period 5 kiln, plan and section views. http://www.harappa.com/indus4/e6.html

Harappa kiln. Drawing. Hypothesis 1: It is reasonable to infer that the kiln of the type used a smelting furnace is also relatable both to the circular working platforms and the copper tablets with Indus script glyphs. 524

The shape of the kiln shown in this Figure 9 diagram is comparable to another kiln which was unearthed. During excavations of the circular platform area on Mound F numerous Cemetery H-type sherds and some complete vessels were recovered in association with pointed base goblets and large storage vessels that are usually associated with Harappa Period 3C. A large kiln was also found just below the surface of the mound to the south of the circular platforms. The upper portion of the kiln had been eroded, but the floor of the firing chamber was found preserved along with the fire-box. Upon excavation it became clear that this was a new form of kiln with a barrel vault and internal flues (Figure 8). This unique installation shows a clear discontinuity with the form of Harappan pottery kilns, which were constructed with a central column to support the floor (Dales and Kenoyer 1991). Radiocarbon samples taken from Harappa Phase hearths in the domestic areas and from the bottom of the Late Harappan kiln will help to determine if these installations were in use at the same time or if the kiln was built in an abandoned area after the Harappa Phase occupation. It is possible that people using Late Harappan style pottery were living together with people using Harappan style pottery during the Period 4 transition between Periods 3C and 5. http://www.harappa.com/indus4/e6.html

h1085 Hypothesis 2: It is reasonable to infer a close link between the functions served by the circular platform and the copper tablet with raised Indus script glyphs. During his excavations, Vats identified 17 circular brick platforms (Vats 1940:19ff) and in 1946 Wheeler excavated an 18th example (Wheeler 1947). Earlier interpretations about the circular platforms suggested that they were used for husking grain and that they may have had a central wooden mortar. In the 1998 excavations one additional circular platform was located and detailed documentation and sampling was conducted to determine its function and chronology. Contra view: The new excavations did not reveal any evidence for grain processing and there was no evidence for a wooden mortar in the center. Some straw impressions were found on the floor to the south of the circular platform, but microscopic examination by Dr. Steve Weber confirmed that these impressions were of straw and not of chaff or grain processing byproducts.

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Susa pot (reported by Maurizio Tosi) containing metal artifacts possibly sent from Meluhha traders or received by merchants with links to Meluhha trading community?) Hypothesis 3: Considering that the circular platforms were located in close proximity to one another, it is reasonable to infer that the workers who worked on these platforms belonged to a guild or metalworker community.Indus language (Indian linguistic area: mleccha/meluhha): bharatiyo = a caster of metals; a brazier; bharatar, bharatal, bharata = moulded; an article made in a mould; bharata = casting metals in moulds; bharavum = to fill in; to put in; to pour into (G.lex.) bhart = a mixed metal of copper and lead; bharty = a barzier, worker in metal; bha, bhrra = oven, furnace (Skt.)

h1083 Hypothesis 4: It is reasonable to infer that the center of the circular platform could have held a storage pot of the type unearthed in Susa with metal objects (and with a fish Indus script glyph written below the rim of the pot) evidenced by Maurizio Tosi as a link with Meluhha (aka Indus valley). Hypothesis 5: It is reasonable to infer that the pots with inscriptions (either embossed using a seal or inscribed as on the Susa pot) were used as containers for despatch to traders, while other storage pots (without inscriptions) might have been kept in the center of the circular platforms.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/indus-writing-in-ancient-near-east-on.html An ancient Near East proto-cuneiform tablet with Indus writing An ancient Near East proto-cuneiform tablet with Indus writing 526

The narrative is set of hieroglyphs read rebus. Rebus readings connote that the cylinder seal impressions on the proto-cuneiform tablet relate to the smelting furnace for metalware: pasara 'quadrupeds' Rebus: pasra 'smithy' (Santali) a tiger, a fox on leashes held by a man kol 'tiger' Rebus: kol 'working in iron, alloys' lo fox (WPah.) Rebus: lha metal (Pali) a procession of boars (rhinoceros?) and tiger in two rows k 'rhinoceros. Rebus: a tools, pots and pans and metal-ware (Gujarati) 3. a stalk/twig, sprout (or tree branch) kd, k bunch of twigs (Sanskrit) Rebus: kuhi smelting furnace (Santali) Thanks to Abdallah Kahil for the line drawing which clearly demonstrates that the narrative is NOT 'a hunting with dogs or herding boars in a marsh environment.' Traces of hieroglyphs are found on both sides of the tablet which also contains a proto-cuneiform inscription. It is noteworthy that cuneiform evolved TOGETHER WITH the use of Indus writing hieroglyphs on 527

tablets, cylinder seals and other artifacts. I wish every success for efforts at decoding protoelamite script using Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) System (see below).

Fig. 24 Line drawing showing the seal impression on this tablet. Illustration by Abdallah Kahil. Proto-Cuneiform tablet with seal impressions. Jemdet Nasr period, ca. 3100-2900 BCE. Mesopotamia. Clay H. 5.5 cm; W.7 cm. The blurb of Metropolitan Museum of Art says "The seal impression depicts a male figure guiding two dogs on a leash and hunting or herding boars in a marsh environment."

Comparable are hieoroglyphs of jackals appear where tigers are normally shown on a tablet h1971B Harappa. Three tablets with identical glyphic compositions on both sides: h1970, h1971 and h1972. Seated figure or deity with reed house or shrine at one side. Left: H95-2524; Right: H95-2487. Planoconvex molded tablet found on Mound ET. Reverse. a female deity battling two tigers and standing above an elephant and below a six-spoked wheel.

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Boar or rhinoceros in procession. Cylinder seal impression: Rhinoceros, elephant, lizard (gharial?).Tell Asmar (Eshnunna), Iraq. IM 14674; glazed steatite. Frankfort, 1955, No.

642; Collon, 1987, Fig. 610.

A group of animal hieroglyphs (including tiger/jackal, rhinoceros/boar) are show on many tablets with Indus writing : m2015Am2015Bm2016Am1393tm1394tm 1395Atm1395Bt Meluhha (mleccha) lexemes and rebus readings: Stalk: kam , n. < ka. 1. Water; sacred water; . (. 49, 16). 2. Staff, rod; . (.) 3. Stem, stalk; . (. .) 4. Arrow; . (.) 5. Weapon; . (.) Collection, multitude, assemblage; . (. .) kaumu- um, n. Redupl. of . Household utensils, great and small, useful and useless; . ? Loc. Alternative 1: aaru twig; airi small and thin branch of a tree; aari small branches (Ka.); aaru twig (Tu.)(DEDR 67). Rebus:aduru native, unsmelted 529

metal (Kannada) aduru gan.iyinda tegadu karagade iruva aduru, that is, ore taken from the mine and not subjected to melting in a furnace (Kannada) Alternative 2: kd, k bunch of twigs (Skt.lex.) kd (also written as k in manuscripts) occurs in the Atharvaveda (AV 5.19.12) and Kauika Stra (Bloomsfields ed.n, xliv. Cf. Bloomsfield, American Journal of Philology, 11, 355; 12,416; Roth, Festgruss an Bohtlingk, 98) denotes it as a twig. This is identified as that of Badar, the jujube tied to the body of the dead to efface their traces. (See Vedic Index, I, p. 177). Rebus: kuhi smelting furnace (Santali)

pasaramu, pasalamu an animal, a beast, a brute, quadruped (Telugu); rebus: pasra smithy
(Santali). Boar. Allograph: rhinoceros: ga4 m. rhinoceros lex., aka -- m. lex. 2. *ga- yaa -. [Prob. of same non -- Aryan origin as khag --1: cf. gatsha -- m. lex. as a Sanskritized form Mu. PMWS 138]1. Pa. gaaka -- m., Pk. gaaya -- m., A. gr, Or. ga. 2. K. g m., S. geo m. (lw. with g -- ), P. ga m., f., N. gao, H. ga m., G. g m., f., M. g m.Addenda: gaa -- 4. 2. *gayaa -- : WPah.kg. ge mirg m. rhinoceros , Md. gen H. (CDIAL 4000). k-mirukam , n. [M. kmgam.] Rhinoceros; . (Tamil) Rebus: ka tools, pots and pans and metal-ware (Gujarati) kol tiger, jackal (Kon.) Rebus: kol iron (Ta.)

lo fox (WPah.) rebus: lha metal (Pali)

kul tiger (Santali); klu id. (Te.) klupuli = Bengal tiger (Te.)Pk. Kolhuya -- , kulha m. jackal < *khu -- ; H.kolh, l m. jackal , adj. crafty ; G. kohl , l n. jackal , M. kolh, l m. kr crying BhP., m. jackal RV. = kru m. P. [kru] Pa. kohu -- , uka and kotthu -- , uka m. jackal , Pk. Kohu m.; Si. Koa jackal , koiya leopard GS 42 (CDIAL 3615). [ klh ] [ klh ] A jackal (Marathi) Rebus: kol furnace, forge (Kuwi) kol alloy of five metals, pacaloha (Ta.) Allograph: kla = woman (Nahali)

Rebus: kol , n. < -. Working in iron; . 4. Blacksmith; . kolla , n. < . [M. kollan.]

Blacksmith; . (.
530

207). kouai , n. < + . Blacksmith's workshop, smithy;

. (. 95). kou , n. prob. -. 1. Masonry, brickwork; . ( . 30, 23). 2. Mason, bricklayer; . Colloq. 3. The measure of work turned out by a mason; . ?

lpka m. a kind of jackal Sur., lpkik -- f. lex. 1. H. low m. fox.2. Ash. ki, k fox, Kt. wki, Bashg. wrik, Kal.rumb. lawk: < *raupkya -- NTS ii 228; -- Dm. rpak Ir.? lp m. fox, jackal RV., lpik -- f. lex. [Cf. lpka -- . -- *lpi -- ] Wg. liw, laa fox, Pa.kch. low , ar. le jackal ( Shum. le NTS xiii 269), ku. lwin; K. lou, lh, lohu, lhu porcupine, fox.1. Kho. lw fox, Sh.gil. l tilde;i f., pales. li f., lo m., WPah.bhal. l f., lo m.2. Pr. w fox.(CDIAL 11140-2).Rebus: lh red, copper -- coloured rS., made of copper Br., m.n. copper VS., iron MBh. [*rudh -- ] Pa. lha -- m. metal, esp. copper or bronze; Pk. lha -- m. iron, Gy. pal. li, lihi, obl. elhs, as. loa JGLS new ser. ii 258; Wg. (Lumsden) "loa" steel; Kho. loh copper; S. lohu m. iron, L. loh m., aw. l, P. loh m. ( K.rm. o. loh), WPah.bhad. lu n., bhal. ltilde; n., p. jaun. lh, pa. luh, cur. cam. loh, Ku. luw, N. lohu, h, A. lo, B. lo, no, Or. loh, luh, Mth. loh, Bhoj. loh, Aw.lakh. lh, H. loh, loh m., G. M. loh n.; Si. loho, l metal, ore, iron ; Md. ratu -- l copper lh -- : WPah.kg. (kc.) l iron, J. loh m., Garh. loho; Md. l metal. (CDIAL 11158).

Read on a write-up on the proto-cuneiform tablet... [quote] Administrative tablet with cylinder seal impression of a male figure, hunting dogs, and boars, 31002900 B.C.; Jemdet Nasr period (Uruk III script) Mesopotamia ClayH. 2 in. (5.3 cm) Purchase, Raymond and Beverly Sackler Gift, 1988 (1988.433.1) ON VIEW: GALLERY 402 Last Updated April 26, 2013 In about 3300 B.C., writing was invented in Mesopotamia, perhaps in the city of Uruk, where the earliest inscribed clay tablets have been found in abundance. This was not an isolated development but occurred during a period of profound transformation in politics, the economy, and representational art. During the Uruk period of the fourth millennium B.C., the first Mesopotamian cities were settled, the first kings were crowned, and a range of goodsfrom ceramic vessels to textileswere mass-produced in state workshops. Early writing was used primarily as a means of recording 531

and storing economic information, but from the beginning a significant component of the written tradition consisted of lists of words and names that scribes needed to know in order to keep their accounts. Signs were drawn with a reed stylus on pillow-shaped tablets, most of which were only a few inches wide. The stylus left small marks in the clay which we call cuneiform, or wedge-shaped, writing. This tablet most likely documents grain distributed by a large temple, although the absence of verbs in early texts makes them difficult to interpret with certainty. [unquote] http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1988.433.1

Pre-cuneiform tablet with seal impressions

532

The imagery of the cylinder seal records information. A male figure is guiding dogs (?Tigers) and herding boars in a reed marsh. Both tiger and boar are Indus writing hieroglyphs, together with the imagery of a grain stalk. All these hieroglyphs are read rebus in Meluhha (mleccha),of Indian sprachbund in the context of metalware catalogs of bronze age. kola 'tiger'; rebus: kol 'iron'; ka 'rhino'; rebus: ka 'metalware tools, pots and pans'. Ka. (Hav.) aaru twig; (Bark.) ar small and thin branch of a tree; (Gowda) ari small branches. Tu. aaru twig.(DEDR 67) Rebus: aduru gan.iyinda tegadu

karagade iruva aduru = ore taken from the mine and not subjected to melting in a furnace (Ka.
Siddhnti Subrahmaya astris new interpretation of the Amarakoa, Bangalore, Vicaradarpana Press, 1872, p.330) Alternative rebus: If the imagery of stalk connoted a palmfrond, the rebus readings could have been: Ku. N. tmo (pl. young bamboo shoots ), A. tm, B. tb, tm, Or. tamb, Bi tb, Mth. tm, tm, Bhoj. tm, H. tm in cmpds., tb, tm m. (CDIAL 5779) Rebus: tmr dark red, copper -- coloured VS., n. copper Kau., tmraka -- n. Yj. [Cf. tamr -- . -- tam?] Pa. tamba -- red , n. copper , Pk. taba -- adj. and n.; Dm. trmba -- red (in trmba -- lacuk raspberry NTS xii 192); Bshk. lm copper, piece of bad pine -- wood (< *red wood ?); Phal. tmba copper ( Sh.koh. tmb), K. trm m. ( Sh.gil. gur. trm m.), S. rmo m., L. trm, 533

(Ju.) tarm m., P. tmb m., WPah. bhad. m n., ki th. cmb, sod. cambo, jaun. tb (CDIAL 5779) tabshr f. the sugar of the bamboo, bamboo-manna (a siliceous deposit on the joints of the bamboo) (Kashmiri) Source: Kim Benzel, Sarah B. Graff, Yelena Rakic and Edith W. Watts, 2010, Art of the Ancient Near East, a resource for educators, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art http://www.metmuseum.org/~/media/Files/Learn/For%20Educators/Publications%20for%20Edu cators/Art%20of%20the%20Ancient%20Near%20East.pdf

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An example of a proto-Elamite accounting tablet. The direction of reading is right-to-left, then downward when the end of line is reached.

Economic tablet with numeric signs. Proto-Elamite script in clay, Susa, Uruk period (3200 BC to 2700 BC). Department of Oriental Antiquities, Louvre.

Tablet with numeric signs and script. From Teppe Sialk, Susa, Uruk period (3200 BC to 2700 BC). Department of Oriental Antiquities, Louvre.

Clay tokens, from Susa, Uruk period, circa 3500 BC. Department of Oriental Antiquities, Louvre.

535

Seal excavated at Susa, now in modern-day Iran, showing an account of five fields and their yields, with total on the reverse. Faculty of Oriental Studies, Oxford,

Syllabograms of Elamite script. "The discovery of a bilingual text, with one version in Linear Elamite and the other in Old Akkadian, in 1905 at the Elamite capital of Susa made it possible to partially decipher Linear Elamite. The system is discovered to frequently make use of syllabograms, with logograms sprinkled in. The following is the Elamite portion of the bilingual tablet, which is attributed to the Elamite king PuzurInshushinak around the 22th century BCE."eal excavated at Susa, now in modern-day Iran,

showing an account of five fields and their yields, with total on the reverse. Faculty of Oriental Studies,

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Tablet Sb04823: receipt of 5 workers(?) and their monthly(?) rations, with subscript and seal depicting animal in boat; excavated at Susa in the early 20th century; Louvre Museum, Paris (Image courtesy of Dr Jacob L. Dahl, University of Oxford) Cited in an article on Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) System.

The tablet illustrated here is a business document with a seal impression. Seal impressions are somewhat like signatures, in that they identify the person involved in the business transaction recorded on the tablet. While most of the tablets that have been found are such things as contracts, sales receipts, and tax records, a number of very important literary texts have been found as well, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Code of Hammurabi. Photograph by Kai Quinlan West Semitic Research Courtesy University of Southern California Archaeological Research Collection http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/wsrp/educational_site/ancient_texts/Cuneiform.shtml

See:

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http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/tokens-and-bullae-evolve-into-indus.html Tokens and bullae evolve into Indus writing, underlying language-sounds read rebus http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/see-httpbharatkalyan97.html Indus writing in ancient Near East (Dilmun seal readings) Note on the copulation scenes on Dilmun seals: kama, khama 'copulation' (Santali) Rebus:kaa furnace, fire-altar, consecrated fire. Allograph: kamaha penance (Pkt.) Rebus 1: kampaa mint (Ma.) Rebus 2: kaa fire-altar' (Santali); kan copper (Ta.)

538

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/indus-writing-on-dilmun-type-seals.html Indus writing in ancient Near East (Failaka seal readings) Indus writing in ancient Near East (Failaka seal readings) Dotted circles and three lines on the obverse of many Failaka/Dilmun seals are read rebus as hieroglyphs:

A () g Spherical or spheroidal, pebble-form. (Marathi) Rebus: kho alloyed (metal) (Marathi) [kha] f A mass of metal (unwrought or of old metal melted down); an ingot or wedge (Marathi). P. kho m. alloy (CDIAL 3931) kolom three (Mu.) Rebus: kolami furnace, smithy (Telugu) 539

Thus, the seals are intended to serve as metalware catalogs from the smithy/forge. Details of the alloyed metalware are provided by the hieroglyphs of Indus writing on the reverse of the seal.

Composition of two horned animals, sitting human playing a four-string musical instrument, a star and a moon. The rebus reading of hieroglyphs are: [tambura] or tambura. [Tel. +.] n. A kind of stringed instrument like the guitar. A tambourine. Rebus: tam(b)ra 'copper' tambabica, copper-ore stones; samobica, stones containing gold (Mundari.lex.) tagara 'antelope'. Rebus 1: tagara 'tin' (ore) tagromi 'tin, metal alloy' (Kuwi) 'merchant'. Thus the seal connotes a merchant of tin and copper. Rebus 2: damgar

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Inventory No. 8480. A seal from Dilmun, A seal from Dilmun, made of soft stone, classified as the 3rd largest seal in Failaka Island, decorated with human and zoomorphic figures. 0.16 X 4.8 cm. Site: the Ruler's Palace. 2nd millennium BCE, Dilmun civilization [NOTE: Many such seals of Failaka and Dilmun have been read rebus as Indus writing on blogposts.] Hieroglyphs on this Dilmun seal are: star, tabernae montana flower, cock, two divided squares, two bulls, antelope, sprout (paddy plant), drinking (straw), stool, twig or tree branch. A person with upraised arm in front of the antelope. All these hieroglyphs are read rebus using lexemes (Meluhha, Mleccha) of Indiansprachbund.

meha polar star (Marathi). Rebus: me iron (Ho.Mu.) agara (tagara) fragrant wood (Pkt.Skt.).tagara 'antelope'. Rebus 1: tagara 'tin' (ore) tagromi 'tin,
metal alloy' (Kuwi) Rebus 2: damgar 'merchant'

kui (-pp-, -tt-) to drink, inhale. Rebus: kuhi smelting furnace (Santali) angar bull; rebus: angar blacksmith (Hindi) dula 'pair' (Kashmiri). Rebus: dul 'cast metal'
(Santali) Thus, a pair of bulls connote 'cast metal blacksmith'.

kha field, division (Skt.) Rebus 1: Ga. (Oll.) kan, (S.) kanu (pl. kankil) stone (ore). Rebus
2: ka 'fire-altar' (Santali) Thus, the two divided squares connote furnace for stone (ore). 541

kolmo paddy plant (Santali) Rebus: kolami furnace, smithy (Telugu) Kur. ka a stool. Rebus: ka 'fire-altar' (Santali)

Tu. aaru twig. Rebus: aduru 'native (unsmelted) metal' (Kannada) Alternative
reading: [kae] kae. [Tel.] n. A head or ear of millet or maize. Rebus 1: ka 'fire-altar' (Santali) Rebus 2: khna tools, pots and pans, metal-ware. eraka upraised arm (Te.); eraka copper (Te.) Thus, the Dilmun seal is a metalware catalog of damgar 'merchant' dealing with copper and tin. The two divided squares attached to the straws of two vases in the following seal can also be read as hieroglyphs:

kha field, division (Skt.) Rebus 1: Ga. (Oll.) kan, (S.) kanu (pl. kankil) stone (ore). Rebus
2: ka 'fire-altar' (Santali) Thus, the two divided squares connote furnace for stone (ore).

kui (-pp-, -tt-) to drink, inhale. Rebus: kuhi smelting furnace (Santali)
ang = small country boat, dug-out canoe (Or.); g trough, canoe, ladle (H.)(CDIAL 5568). Rebus: nro term of contempt for a blacksmith (N.); angar (H.) (CDIAL 5524) Thus, a smelting furnace for stone (ore) is connoted by the seal of a blacksmith, angar :

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Stamp seal with a boat scene. Steatite. L. 2 cm. Gulf regio, Failaka, F6 758. Early Dilmun, ca. 2000-1800 BCE. Ntional Council for Culture, Arts and Letters, Kuwait National Museum, 1129 ADY. The subject is a nude male figure standing in the middle of a flat-bottomed boat, facing right. The man's arms are bent at the elbow, perpendicular to his torso. Beside him are two jars stand on the deck of the boat, each containing a long pole to which is attached a hatched square that perhaps represents a banner. Six square stamp seals from Failaka have been published...It is unlikely that the hatched squares represent sails, since the poles to which they are attached emerge from vases. The two diagonal lines on the body of the boat may represent the reed bundles from which these craft were buit. See Kjaerum 1983, seal nos. 192, 234, 254, 266, 335, 367. Source: Source: Joan Aruz et al., 2003, Art of the First cities: the third millennium BCE from the Mediterranean to the Indus, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art (Pages 320, 322).See also: http://ancientworldonline.blogspot.in/2012/10/kuwaiti-slovak-archaeologicalmission.html Similar readings are suggested for all hieroglyphs on Failaka seals treating them as evidences of Indus writing in ancient Near East. The suggested rebus readings for specific hieroglyphs of Failaka seals (akin to Dilmun seal readings) are listed in the following section. Note:

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What is shown like the phase of a moon may not denote a moon but the shape of a buningot. abu an iron spoon (Santali) Rebus: ab, himba, hompo lump (ingot?). Alternative reading: mh 'ingot'. Read together with the polar star, the rebus reading is: me mh 'iron ingot'. [meha polar star (Marathi). me iron (Ho.Mu.)] The antelope + divided square is read rebus: eraka tagara ka 'tin furnace' (merchant, damgar). The upraised arm indicates eraka 'copper': eraka upraised arm (Telugu); eraka copper (Telugu) Thus, the seal denotes a merchant dealing in iron, tin and copper ingots. Rebus readings of hieroglyphs on Failaka seals (akin to Dilmun seal readings): [tambura] or tambura. [Tel. +.] n. A kind of stringed instrument like the guitar. A tambourine. Rebus: tam(b)ra 'copper' tambabica, copper-ore stones; samobica, stones containing gold (Mundari.lex.) Skt. ku- intoxicating liquor. Ta. kui (-pp-, -tt-) to drink, inhale; n. drinking, beverage (DEDR 1654). Rebus: kuhismelting furnace.

kolmo paddy plant (Santali); kolom = cutting, graft; to graft, engraft, prune; kolma hoo = a variety of the paddy plant (Desi)(Santali.) kolom three (Mu.) Rebus: kolami furnace, smithy (Telugu)

kha field, division (Skt.) Rebus: Ga. (Oll.) kan, (S.) kanu (pl. kankil) stone (DEDR 1298). (Marathi) is metal, nodule, stone, lump. kai stone (Kannada) with Tadbhava khau. khau, ka stone/nodule (metal). Rebus: khaaran, kharun pit furnace (Santali) ka furnace (Skt.) f. a blacksmith's smelting furnace (Grierson Kashmiri lex.) [khaa] A piece, bit, fragment, portion.(Marathi) Rebus: khna tools, pots and pans, metal-ware. Allographs: Kur. ka a stool. Malt. kano stool, seat. (DEDR 1179) [ khaa ] A piece, bit, fragment, portion.(Marathi) kha ivory (H.) ja kha = ivory (Jak) kha = ivory in rough

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(Jak) kandhi = a lump, a piece (Santali.lex.) kandi (pl. -l) beads, necklace (Pa.); kanti (pl. -l) bead, (pl.) necklace; kandit. bead (Ga.)(DEDR 1215).

Ta. ka eye, aperture, orifice, star of a peacock's tail. (DEDR 1159a) Rebus brazier, bellmetal worker: ka , n. < . [M. kannn.] Brazier, bell-metal worker, one of the divisions of the Kamma caste; . (.) [ kae ] kae. [Tel.] n. A head or ear of millet or maize. (Telugu) k stack of stalks of large millet(Maithili) k 2 m. a section, part in general; a cluster, bundle, multitude (iv. 32). k 1 m. the stalk or stem of a reed, grass, or the like, straw. In the compound with dan 5 (p. 221a, l. 13) the word is spelt k.

Ka. (Hav.) aaru twig; (Bark.) ar small and thin branch of a tree; (Gowda) ari small
branches. Tu. aaru twig.(DEDR 67) Rebus: aduru gan.iyinda tegadu karagade iruva aduru = ore taken from the mine and not subjected to melting in a furnace (Ka. Siddhnti Subrahmaya astris new interpretation of the Amarakoa, Bangalore, Vicaradarpana Press, 1872, p.330). meha polar star (Marathi). me iron (Ho.Mu.) Allograph: meh ram.

satthiya svastika glyph; rebus: satthiya pewter. Skt. ku- intoxicating liquor. (DEDR 1654) Ta. kui (-pp-, -tt-) to drink, inhale; n. drinking, beverage,drunkenness; kuiya drunkard. Rebus: kui= smelter furnace (Santali) ga 'four'. ka 'bit'. Rebus: ka 'fire-altar'. kolmo 'three'. Rebus: kolami 'smithy, forge'. tagara 'antelope'; rebus 1: tagara 'tin'; rebus 2: tamkru, damgar 'merchant' (Akkadian) The bamboo-shoot is tb read rebus: tamba 'copper'.

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B. Or. bich 'scorpion', Mth. bch (CDIAL 12081) Rebus: meed-bica = iron stone ore, in contrast to bali-bica, iron sand ore (Mu.lex.) bica, bica-diri (Sad. bic; Or. bic) stone ore; mee bica, stones containing iron; tambabica, copper-ore stones; samobica, stones containing gold (Mundari.lex.)

kama, khama 'copulation' (Santali) Rebus:ka furnace, fire altar, consecrated fire. mx frog. Rebus: m h (copper) ingot (Santali) m h = the quantity of iron produced at one time in a native smelting furnace of the Kolhes; iron produced by the Kolhes and formed like a four-cornered piece a little pointed at each end (Santali) Allographs: m he face (Santali) [ mkha ] . Add:--3 Sprout or shoot. (Marathi) Kuwi (Su.) mogla shoot of bamboo; (P.) moko sprout (DEDR 4997) Tu. mugiyuni to close, contract, shut up; muguru sprout, shoot, bud; tender, delicate; muguruni, mukuruni to bud, sprout; mugg, mogg flower-bud, germ; (BRR; Bhattacharya, non-brahmin informant) mukk bud. Kor. (O.) mke flower-bud. (DEDR 4893)

pajhar. = to sprout from a root (Santali) Rebus: pasra smithy (Santali)

angar bull; rebus: angar blacksmith (Hindi)

umgara mountain (Pkt.)(CDIAL 5423). Rebus: damgar merchant. kangha (IL 1333) kgher comb-maker (H.) Rebus: kangar portable furnace [ gd ] m A circular brand or mark made by actual cautery (Marathi) [ g ] m A roundish stone or pebble. 2 A marble (of stone, lac, wood &c.) 2 A marble. 3 A large lifting stone. Used in trials of strength among the Athlet. 4 A stone in temples described at length under 5 fig. A term for a round, fleshy, well-filled body. 6 A lump of silver: as obtained by melting down lace or fringe. or [ gu or g ] a () Spherical or spheroidal, pebble-form. (Marathi) Allographs: Ta. ku (in cpds. ku-) horn, tusk, branch of tree, cluster, bunch, coil of hair, line, diagram, bank of stream or pool (DEDR 2200) Ko. koi fowl. Tu. kri, (B-K. also) ki id. Te. ki id. Nk. (Ch.) gogoi, gogoi cock (< Go.). Go. (Tr.) ggi, 546

(Ph.)gugo, (Y.) ghogi, (Mu. Ma. S. Ko.) gogo id. (Voc. 1184). Cf. Apabhraa (Jasaharacariu) koi- id., fowl. (DEDR 2248). Rebus: kho alloy (Marathi). [ kha ] f A mass of metal (unwrought or of old metal melted down); an ingot or wedge (Marathi). P. kho m. alloy M.kho alloyed, (CDIAL 3931) P. kho m. alloy M.kho alloyed, (CDIAL 3931) Rebus: kho alloy (Marathi). [ kha ] f A mass of metal (unwrought or of old metal melted down); an ingot or wedge (Marathi).

tamar-ci, n. < +. 1. See , 2. 2. Bits of a brace; .

tamar , n. [M. tamar.] 1. Hole, as in a plank, commonly bored or cut; . (. . 61). 2. Gimlet, spring awl, boring instrument; . Ta. tamar hole in a plank, commonly bored or cut; gimlet, spring awl, boring instrument; tavar (-v-, -nt-) to bore a hole; n. hole in a board. Ma. tamar hole made by a gimlet; a borer, gimlet, drill. ? Ko. tav- (tavd-) to butt with both horns, gore. Tu. tamir gimlet. Te. tamire, (VPK) tagire the pin in the middle of a yoke. (DEDR 3078) r f. shoemaker's awl RV. Pa. Pk. r -- f. awl ; Ash. ar needle ; K. r f. shoemaker's awl , S. ra f., L. r f.; P. r f. awl, point of a goad ; N. ro awl ; A. l sharp point, spur ; B. r awl , Or. ra, ri, Bi. r, ara, aru, (Patna) arau spike at the end of a driving stick , Mth. aru, (SETirhut) r cobbler's awl ; H. r f. awl, goad , r f. awl , ara goad , r m. shoemaker's awl or knife ; G. M. r f. pointed iron spike ; M. r, ar cobbler's awl .Addenda: r -- : S.kcch. r f. pointed iron spike.(CDIAL 1313) Rebus: A brazier coppersmith (Sanskrit)

ayo fish(Mu.); ayas iron (Skt.) Rebus: ayas metal ato claws or pincers (chelae) of crabs; aom, iom to seize with the claws or pincers, as crabs, scorpions; akop = to pinch, nip (only of crabs) (Santali) Rebus: dhtu mineral (Vedic); dhatu a mineral, metal (Santali) Allographs: aru m. sun lex. Kho. yor Morgenstierne NTS ii 276 with ? <-> Whence y -- ? (CDIAL 612)

547

aru(m), eru(m), harum "branch, frond " of date palm (Akkadian) Akkadian aru/eru may be equivalent of the Hebrew 'rh 'eagle'. The concise dictionary of Akkadian (Jeremy A. Black, 2000) notes: eru, aru, also ru 'eagle'. aru 'granary, storehouse' OA, jB lex. aru(m) 'warrior'.

Rebus: eraka, era, er-a = syn. erka, copper, weapons (Ka.) eruvai copper (Ta.); ere dark red (Ka.)(DEDR 446). eraka, er-aka = any metal infusion (Ka.Tu.) Tu. eraka molten, cast (as metal); eraguni to melt (DEDR 866)

Ta. kara-tam palmyra palm. Ka. kara-ta fan-palm, Corypha umbraculifera Lin. Tu. karata cadjan. Te. (B.) kara-tamu the small-leaved palm tree.(DEDR
1270). karukku teeth of a saw or sickle, jagged edge of palmyra leaf-stalk, sharpness (Ta.) Ka. garasu. / Cf. Skt. karaa- a low, unruly, difficult person; karkara- hard, firm; karkaa- rough, harsh, hard; krakaca-, karapattra- saw; khara- hard, harsh, rough, sharp-edged; kharu- harsh, cruel; Pali kakaca- saw; khara- rough; saw; Pkt.karakaya- saw; Apabhraa (Jasaharacariu) karaa- hard. Cf. esp. Turner, CDIAL, no. 2819. Cf. also Skt. karavla- sword (for second element, cf. 5376 Ta. v). (DEDR 1265) Allograph: Ta. karai, karui, kerui fencing, school or gymnasium where wrestling and fencing are taught. Ka. garai, garui fencing school. Tu.garai, garoi id. Te. garii, gari id., fencing.(DEDR 1262)

Ko. me- (mec-) to trample on, tread on; me sole of foot, footstep, footprint (DEDR
5057). Allograph: me dance (Santali). mamu. A fight, battle, . mdamu-pousu. v. n. To fight a battle. M. meh m. curl, snarl, twist or tangle in cord or thread (CDIAL 10312) [ memu ] or memu. [Tel.] n. A spear or dagger. , . mha The polar star. (Marathi) Rebus: me, mht 'iron'(Mu.Ho.) abe, abea large horns, with a sweeping upward curve, applied to buffaloes (Santali) Rebus: ab, himba, hompo lump (ingot?), clot, make a lump or clot, coagulate, fuse, melt together (Santali)

548

See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/indus-writing-on-gold-disc-kuwait.html Indus writing on gold disc, Kuwait Museum al-Sabah collection: An Indus metalware catalog http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/see-httpbharatkalyan97.html Indus writing in ancient Near East (Dilmun seal readings)

Stamp seal with figures and animals. Steatite. Early Dilmun, ca. 2000-1800 BCE. Dia. 2.9 cm. Gulf region, Bahrain, Karrana, Bahrain National Museum, Manama

549

Stamp seal from Al-Khidr.

Designs of stamp seals from Al-Khidr are composed of characteristic Early Dilmun stamp seal motifs. This stamp seal depicts human and half-human-half-animal horned figures, monkeys, serpents and birds on either side of a central motif of a standard and a podium at the bottom (drawing of stamp seal

impression).

On the obverse of Dilmun seals

from Al-Khidr are depicted human or divine figures, half human-half animal creatures, animal 550

figures (such as gazelles, bulls, scorpions, and snakes), celestial bodies (star or sun and moon), sometimes drinking scenes and also other activities (playing musical instruments). Composition of these motifs varies from formal (with ordering the figures and symbols to clear scenes) to

chaotic.

551

Seals with rotating designs usually bear pure plant, animal or geometric motifs.

Until now only one single seaal has been discovered (in 2004) which comes from a non-Dilmun cultural environment. It is a cylinder seal with a cuneiform inscription that refers to "Ab-gina, sailor from a huge ship, the son of Ur-Abba" (F. Rahman). This seal provides further evidence of the existing contacts between Dilmun and ancient Mesopotamia at the end of the 3rd- beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE.

A minor fragment of a globularly shaped metal 552

sheet may represent a fragment of a vessel. Blades are technologically more demanding than awls and fish-hooks. A few complete pieces and some major fragments seem to represent knives and perhaps

razors.

Metal awls are made from thin copper rods of circular or

rectangular section. Most of them have both ends pointed. A handful of pieces have simple handles from bird and mammal bones. These awls may have been used for various purposes. Large amounts of shells at the site may indicate that the awls could have served to open and take out the flesh from the shells of bivalves and gastropods.

553

Two tanged arrowheads have been

found.

From among other utensils, needles

554

with eyes and a pair of tweezers have been uncovered.

Collection of copper fish-hooks. (pendants). Sherds of broken vessels were further used also as tools (e.g.

Besides

vessels, steatite was used for the production of stamp seals and small personal ornaments

polishers).

555

Typical globular bowl with incised decoration

(dotted-circles). to link with Gujarat as the possible source of

Small carnelian bead (pointing

carnelian).

Net sinker (left) and limestone lid

(above). The local limestone was also used for the production of working slabs, grinders and grindstones (below).Pearls were recovered from heavy residue fractions of the soil samples 556

processed by water flotation. They almost exclusively occur in contexts dominated by mother-of-

pearl shells. shell (right).

Stamp seal cut from shell nacre

layers (above). Pendant made from a strombus shell (left). Semi-product made from an oyster

Source. http://www.kuwaitarchaeology.org/gallery/al-khidr-finds-2.html Kuwaiti-Slovak Archaeological Mission

http://darmuseum.org.kw/dai/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/loans-from-the-kuwait-nationalmuseum/ Failaka Island is located approximately 20 km northeast of Kuwait City. The island has a shallow surface measuring 12 km in length and 6 km width. The island proved to be an ideal location for human settlements, because of the wealth of natural resources, including harbours, fresh water, and fertile soil. It was also a strategic maritime commercial route that linked the northern side of the Gulf to the southern side. Studies show that traces of human settlement can be found on Failaka dating back to as early as the end of the 3rd millennium BC and extended through most of the 20th century CE. Failaka was first known as Agarum, the land of Enzak, the great god of Dilmun civilisation 557

according to Sumerian cuneiform texts found on the island. Dilmun was the leading commercial hub for its powerful neighbours in their need to exchange processed goods for raw materials. Sailing the Arabian Gulf was by far the most convenient trade route at a time as transportation over land meant a much longer and more hazardous journey. As part of Dilmun, Failaka became a hub for the activities which radiated around Dilmun (Bahrain) from the end of the 3rd millennium to the mid-1st millennium BCE. The cities of Sumer in Mesopotamia, the Harappan people from the Indus Valley, the inhabitants of Magan and the Iranian hinterland have left many archaeological traces of their encounters on Failaka Island. More speculative is the ongoing debate among academics on whether Failaka might be the mythical Eden: the place where Sumerian hero Gilgamesh almost unraveled the secret of immortality; the paradise later described in the Bible. As a result of changes in the balance of political powers in the region towards the end of the 2nd millennium BCE and beginning of 1st millennium BCE, the importance of Failaka began to decline. Studies indicate that Alexander the Great received reports from missions sent to explore the Arabian shoreline of the Gulf. The reports referenced two islands, one located approximately 120 stadia (almost 19 km) from an estuary; the second island located a complete day and night sailing journey with proper climate conditions. As the historian Aryan stated, Alexander the Great ordered that the nearer island be named Ikaros (now Failaka) and the distant island as Tylos (now the Kingdom of Bahrain). Ikaros was described by the explorers as an island covered with rich vegetation and a shelter for numerous wild animals, considered sacred by the inhabitants who dedicate them to their local goddess. After the collapse of the great empires in western Asia (Greek, Persian, Roman), the first centuries of the Christian era brought new settlers to Failaka. The island became a secure home for a Christian community, possibly Nestorian, until the 9th century CE. At Al- Qusur, in the centre of the island, archaeologists have uncovered two churches, built at an undetermined date, around which a large settlement grew. Its name may have changed again at that time, to Ramatha. 558

Failaka was continuously inhabited throughout the Islamic period until the 1990s. Excavations on the Island began in 1958 and continue today. Many archaeological expeditions have worked on Failaka and it is considered one of the key sources of knowledge about civilisations emerging from within the Gulf region. Brochure at http://darmuseum.org.kw/dai/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Loans-From-KNM-

Brochure.pdf

Failaka geography

The Dilmun temple on Failaka, Kuwait

Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy Volume 23, Issue 2, pages 165173, November 2012 559

Failaka (also transcribed as Failakah or Faylakah, and locally known by the names Feileche, Feiliche or Feliche), in antiquity known as Ikaros was mentioned by the Geographer Strabo in ca. 25 AD and later by Arrian. It is the second biggest offshore island of Kuwait situated at the entrance to Kuwait Bay ca. 16 17 km far from Ras Al-Ardh in Salmiya and ca. 12 km from Ras As-Sabbiya. It blocks access to the Bay opposite the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates (Shatt Al-Arab). Failaka has attracted the attention of researchers since 1957 when Danish archaeologists first had the opportunity to study material from the island received from a member of the British political representation to Kuwait. According to the results of up-to-date archaeological research, the ancient history of Failaka goes back to the beginning of the second millennium BC to the Bronze Age when the Dilmun cultural phenomenon occupied the western shoreline and islands of the Arabian Gulf.

560

The Dilmun monuments are the most significant antiquities of the history of Failaka and Kuwait. Major Bronze Age sites on Failaka are located on its south-west (Tell Saad/F3; F6; G3), northwest (Al-Khidr) and north-east (Al-Awazim) coasts, one perhaps even being located in the south-east (Al-Sed Al-Aaliy/Matitah) part of the island [6,14]. During the Bronze Age the temple of the god Inzak, tutelary god of Dilmun, existed on Failaka as it is mentioned in the cuneiform and Proto-Aramaic inscriptions on vessel fragments, Dilmun stamp seals and slabs from excavations [5]. In F6, the French excavations revealed buildings interpreted as a tower temple and palace [8]. After the most flourishing Early Dilmun period (first third of the second millennium BC), Failaka remained settled until the mid second millennium, during the so-called Kassite period [13]. There is no significant evidence for the habitation of Failaka during later periods; from the Iron Age only a single jar-burial is known [7]. Another peak in the history of Failaka was the Hellenistic period when the travellers of Alexander the Great reached the island [3,9]. The Seleucids built a fort at the south-western edge of the island (Tell Said/F5) and occupied also its surroundings for buildings of different purposes (F4; B6), using the ruins and suitable location of the Bronze Age Dilmun settlement. Within F5 a temple was unearthed and an important commemorative monument was found a stone slab with an inscription mentioning Ikaros, the first historically documented name of Failaka that was given to the island by command of Alexander himself [4,9,11]. Another Hellenistic site (Tell Al-Khazneh) is situated around 0.5 km north-north-east of the archaeological sites at Tell Saad wa Said. This site is known as the discovery spot of the socalled Soteles stone classical Greek dedication slab with an inscription in Greek of an Athenian Soteles and his companions to the Greek gods [2,15]. With the collapse of the Seleucid power, the Hellenistic sites at F5, F4, B6 and Tell Al-Khazneh were probably abandoned, even though F5 and B6 could have been resettled even in the post-Seleucid era during the 1st century BC [10,12,16]. From the following historical epochs, the Late Pre-Islamic Period is important for Failaka. During the 5th/6th 7th/8th cent. AD [1] a large village existed in the middle of the island, in the location known as Al-Qusur. An agriculturally suitable area of ca. 5 km2 was settled during that time. Al-Qusur was first described and excavated by the Italian mission in 1976 [14], in 1989 the French mission discovered and excavated a church in the 561

centre of the village [1]. This formed the focal part of a Nestorian Christian community which lived on the island. In 2006, KSAM resumed activities here and began detailed mapping and survey of the southern and south-western parts of the settlement. The inhabitants of Al-Qusur lived in farmsteads, each with a habitation and activity area. Around 140 such units have been recognized within the whole village. The situation in the Gulf probably changed after the Early Islamic Period and from the strategic point of view it became more convenient to establish settlements not within the interior of the island but on the shoreline as it is shown by the location of the Middle and Late Islamic Period site of Al-Quraniya. Such a strategy is retained until the modern era when the northern, western and southern shorelines of the island remained or became settled in the locations Al-Quraniya, Al-Zor, Kharaib Al-Dasht, Umm Al-Dakhan, Al-Subahiya and elsewhere [14]. Referencies [1] Bernard, V. - Callot, O. - Salles, J.-F. 1999: Al-Qusur church at Failaka, State of Kuwait, 1989. Original report translated to Arabic by Khaloud Al-Salem. [2] Bibby, G. 1969: Looking for Dilmun. New York, 200 [3] Bibby, G. 1969: Looking for Dilmun. New York, 248 sqq. [4] Bibby, G. 1969: Looking for Dilmun. New York, 248, 251 [5] Bibby, G. 1969: Looking for Dilmun. New York, 254, 332 [6] Callot, O. - Calvet, Y. 1999: Preliminary report on the topographical mission at Failaka, Kuwait (February 26 - March 25 1999). Unpublished report, NCCAL. [7] Calvet, Y. - Pic, M. 1986: Un nouveau batiment de l'age du bronze sur le tell F6. In: Calvet, Y. - Salles, J.-F. (sous la dir.): Failaka. Fouilles Franaises 1984 - 1985. Lyon - Paris, 13-87. [8] Calvet, Y. - Pic, M. 1990: Un temple-tour de l'age du bronze a Failaka. In: Calvet, Y. Gachet, J. (sous la dir.): Failaka. Fouilles Franaises 1986 - 1988. Lyon - Paris, 103-122. [9] Calvet, Y. 1984: Ikaros: Testimonia. In: Salles, J.-F. (sous la dir.): Failaka. Fouilles Franaises 1983. Lyon - Paris, 21-29. [10] Caubet, A. - Salles, J.-F. 1984: Le sanctuaire hellnistique (B6). In: Salles, J.-F. (sous la dir.): Failaka. Fouilles Franaises 1983. Lyon - Paris, 73-156. [11] Gachet, J. - Salles, J.-F. 1986: Chantier F5: Rapport prliminaire, 1985. In: Calvet, Y. Salles, J.-F. (sous la dir.): Failaka. Fouilles Franaises 1984 - 1985. Lyon - Paris, 297-333. [12] Gachet, J. 1990: Un habitat du IIe siecle av. J.-C. dans la fortresse de Failaka. In: Calvet, 562

Y. - Gachet, J. (sous la dir.): Failaka. Fouilles Franaises 1986 - 1988. Lyon - Paris, 167-208. [13] Hjlund, F. 1987 : Failaka/Dilmun. The Second Millenium Settlements. Volume 2. The Bronze Age Pottery. Aaarhus - Kuwait. [14] Patitucci, S. - Uggeri, G. 1984: Failakah. Insediamenti Islamici. Ricerche e scavi nel Kuwait. Rome. [15] Salles, J.-F. 1986: Les Fouilles de Tell Khazneh. In: Calvet, Y. - Salles, J.-F. (sous la dir.): Failaka. Fouilles Franaises 1984 - 1985. Lyon - Paris, 107. [16] Salles, J.-F. 1990: Questioning the BI-ware. In: Calvet, Y. - Gachet, J. (sous la dir.): Failaka. Fouilles Franaises 1986 - 1988. Lyon - Paris, 303-334.

Research Peter Barta and Lucia Benedikov The main focus of the Kuwaiti-Slovak Archaeological Mission (KSAM) activity is the Bronze Age site of Al-Khidr on the Failaka island. In the early 2nd millennium BC Failaka belonged to the Dilmun culture spread throughout the west coast of Arabian Gulf (east Saudi Arabia up to Kuwait and the adjacent islands). With its centre on the Island of Bahrain (The City of Qalaat alBahrain), Dilmun is thought to have played a significant role in the sea trade between the south Mesopotamian city states, the Arabian Peninsula and civilization of the Indus valley (MohenjoDaro) from the late 3rd until the first half of the 2nd millennium BC. Al-Khidr is an inconspicuous, low settlement mound in the northwest of Failaka that has been known to yield the red-ridged Dilmun pottery for at least past 50 years ([1], p. 195-212). The mound stretches along the west shore of the shallow Al-Khidr bay, which offers still waters in almost northernmost outpost of the island swept by Shamal, the principal wind of Failaka. This natural harbour is in several works suggested to have served as a port in the past (e.g. [2]) and as such is known also among the elders of the island. The investigations of the Dilmun settlement at Al-Khidr have been carried out since 2004. Beyond excavation, the project encompasses mapping, geophysics, environmental archaeology (archaeobotany, archaeozoology, physical anthropology), GIS and digital archaeology, conservation and restoration. 563

The main research tasks are: to find out the extent, development and spatial organization of the settlement, to establish the chronology of the settlement, to collect evidence concerning the palaeoenvironment and resources of the settlement, to elucidate the role of the site (a port?) within the Early Dilmun world on Failaka and beyond (within the Gulf region), to trace distinctive features of the settlement and its inhabitants, to establish a plan for the conservation and restoration of uncovered finds and in situ remains. The Kuwaiti-Slovak Archaeological Mission has also been active in surveying Failaka and in processing the obtained data for future presentation of archaeological and environmentally sites of interest. These activities were triggered by the planned governmental development project that will definitely change the character of the island and threaten known and unknown archaeological sites. Selected archaeological sites on Failaka (Al-Quraniya, Al-Qusur, Al-Zor, F6, and Al-Awazim) were mapped and surveyed with the help of a GPS and total station. Topographic plans were prepared, the sites were photographed and surface finds were collected and catalogised. Geophysical prospection was carried out at these sites and they were also partially investigated from the point of view of environmental studies (building up of reference collections of plant macro- and micro-remains as well as animal bones) and ethnoarchaeology. References [1] Bibby, G. 1969: Looking for Dilmun. Alfred Knopf, New York. [2] Patitucci, S. Uggeri, G. 1984: Failakah. Insediamenti Islamici. Ricerche e scavi nel Kuwait. Rome. http://www.kuwaitarchaeology.org/research.html Failaka (also Failakah, Faylakah, locally Feileche / Feiliche / Feliche), in antiquity known as 564

Ikaros mentioned by Geographer Strabo in ca. 25 AD and later by Arrian, is situated at the entrance to Kuwait Bay ca. 16 17 km far from Ras Al-Ardh in Salmiya and ca. 12 km from Ras As-Sabbiya; and blocks access to the Bay opposite the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates (Shatt Al-Arab)... The Kuwaiti-Slovak Archaeological Mission to Failaka (KSAM) was established following an original idea of Mr Shehab A. H. Shehab, Department of Museums and Antiquities Director, National Council for Culture, Arts & Letters (NCCAL), State of Kuwait. His visit to the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAS) Institute of Archaeology in May 2004 resulted in the agreement for a five year scientific programme signed between the National Council for Culture, Arts & Letters, State of Kuwait, and the Institute of Archaeology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovak Republic, in September 2004 in Nitra. The KSAM project could have not materialized and would not have taken its present shape if not for the constant and generous support of the NCCAL presided by Secretary General Mr Bader S. A. Al-Rifai, and the kindest, expeditious and effective role of Mr Shehab A. H. Shehab. Regarding the prolific and smooth cooperation with NCCAL, the help of the Secretary General Assistant for Antiquities and Museums and Engineering Affairs Sector, Mr Ali Al-Youha, must be pointed out. Without him the documentation and preliminary conservation of the site as it is being realized would hardly be possible. KSAM has been designed as a joint Kuwaiti-Slovak multidisciplinary research project fostering international cooperation and ties between young-generation researchers. The KSAM project was developed and has been elaborated and steered by Ms Lucia Benedikov and Mr Peter Barta. As for the Slovak side, the mission has been working under the auspices of the SAS Institute of Archaeology. Thanks to Mr Karol Pieta, SAS Institute of Archaeology scientific secretary and Slovak team director, the mission has been able to take advantage of the presence of specialists in environmental archaeology and geo-disciplines that strongly cross-fertilize archaeological research. Apart from senior archaeologists and academicians, the fieldwork has very much benefited from the presence of graduates and undergraduates in archaeology and neighbouring disciplines coming from Kuwait (National Council for Culture, Arts & Letters, State of Kuwait), Slovakia (Institute of Archaeology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Nitra, and from the 565

Department of Archaeology, Constantine the Philosopher University, Nitra) and Turkey (Prehistoric Section, Istanbul University). For analyses of particular material groups that require a special approach KSAM cooperates with Kuwaiti (KISR and KOC), German, Czech, Belgian, British, Polish and Turkish laboratories and specialists. In their laboratories steatites, bitumens, metals, mortars, obsidians, archaeobotanical and archaeozoological material have been analysed and investigated. Four excavation seasons have taken place on Al-Khidr in 2004, 2006, 2007 and by mid April 2008 the last field work season came to ist end. From 2009 onwards the material studies are scheduled that shall be concluded by a publication of the results. Thanks to the really warm and cordial welcome of the mission by the National Council for Culture, Arts & Letters our stay in Kuwait became and remains extraordinarily pleasant and unforgettable. Source: http://www.kuwaitarchaeology.org/index.html At Failaka, stone fragments -- so-called Altar Plates from 2nd millennium BCE -- were discovered pointing to some donations to god Inzak: Abstract : During Danish excavations 1958-1963 of Tells F3, F5 and F6 on the island of Failaka in Kuwait a large number of decorated stone vessels were found. In the course of registering this material in 2008 five fragments of a hitherto unknown type of plate were identified, one of which had a cuneiform inscription possibly mentioning the big temple. During the 2009-2011 Kuwaiti-Danish excavations in Tell F6 six further fragments of the same type of plate were found, two of them also inscribed with cuneiform letters, one mentioning the god Inzak. A perusal of the collections in the Kuwait National Museum produced fragments of two further examples of the same type of plate from previous French excavations in Tell F6 and from Slovak excavations at the site of AlKhidr, also on Failaka. In 2012 a small collection of stone vessel fragments from Tells F3 and F6 housed at Moesgaard Museum was examined, and three fragments of this type of plate were identified. A total of 16 fragments probably stemming from twelve different plates have now been recorded. 566

Title: Altar Plates from Second Millennium BC Failaka, Kuwait Author(s): HJLUND, F. , HILTON, A. Journal: Bibliotheca Orientalis Volume: 69 Issue: 5-6 Date: 2012 Pages: 411-420 http://www.docstoc.com/docs/158690726/H%EF%BF%BDJLUND-F--HILTON-A-Altar-Platesfrom-Second-Millennium-BC-Failaka-Kuwait-(2012) HJLUND, F. , HILTON, A., Altar Plates from Second Millennium BC Failaka, Kuwait (2012)

Publications

Papers in scientific journals

Benedikov, L. Barta, P.: A Bronze Age Settlement at Al-Khidr, Failakah Island,

Kuwait. Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 39, 2009, 4356.

Hajnalov, M. Miklkov, Z. Belanov-tolcov, T.: Environmental Research at

Al-Khidr, Failakah Island, Kuwait. Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 39, 2009, 197202.

Pieta, K. Shehab, S. A. H. Benedikov, L. Bielich, M. Tirpk, J. Bartk, M.: Archaeological and Geophysical Survey at Deserted Early Islamic Village AlQusur, Failaka Island, State of Kuwait. Ve slu bch archeologie 1/09, 2009, 2935. Click to display or download

Barta, P. Benedikov, L. Hajnalov, M. Miklkov, Z. Belanov, T. Shehab, S. A. H.: Al-Khidr on Failaka Island: Preliminary Results of the Fieldworks at a
Dilmun Culture Settlement in Kuwait. TBA-AR, Turkish Academy of Sciences 567

Journal of Archaeology 11, 2008, 121134. Click to display or download

Shehab, S. A. H. Bartk, M. Tirpk, J. uri, J. Barta, P. Benedikov, L. Bielich, M.: Survey and Mapping of Al-Quraniya, Failaka Island, State of Kuwait. Ve
slu bch archeologie 2/08, 2008, 1722. Click to display or download

Miklkov, Z. Barta, P.: KSAM renews archaeozoological research in Kuwait.

International Council for Archaeozoology (ICAZ) Newsletter 8/2, 2007, 1. Click to display or download

Barta, P. Bartk, M. Benedikov, L. uri, J. Pieta, K. Shehab, S. A. H. tolc, S., Jr. Tirpk, J.: Geophysical prospecting of the Bronze Age site Al-Khidr,
Failaka Island, State of Kuwait. tudijn zvesti Archeologickho stavu SAV 41, 2007, 6973. Click to display or download

Pieta, K. Shehab, S. A. H. Tirpk, J. Bielich, M. Bartk, M. uri, J.:Archaeological and geophysical prospecting of deserted Early Islamic village AlQusur (Failaka Island, State of Kuwait). tudijn zvesti Archeologickho stavu SAV 41, 2007, 7476. Click to display or download

Benedikov, L. Barta, P.: Kuwaiti-Slovak Archaeological Mission. Bulletin of The

Society for Arabian Studies 12, 2007, 2325. Click to display or download Papers presented on scientific conferences

Benedikov, L. Barta, P.: A Bronze Age Settlement at Al-Khidr, Failaka Island,

State of Kuwait. Seminar for Arabian Studies 2008. London, June 2427 2008.

Hajnalov, M. Miklkov, Z. Belanov, T.: Environmental Research at Al-Khidr,

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Failaka Island (State of Kuwait). Seminar for Arabian Studies 2008. London, June 2427 2008.

Barta, P. Bartk, M. Benedikov, L. uri, J. Pieta, K. Shehab, S. A. H. tolc, S., Jr. Tirpk, J.: Geophysical prospecting of the Bronze Age site Al-Khidr,
Failaka Island, State of Kuwait. Conference Archaeological Prospection 2007. Nitra, Slovakia, September 1115 2007.

Pieta, K. Shehab, S. A. H. Tirpk, J. Bielich, M. Bartk, M. uri, J.:Archaeological and geophysical prospecting of deserted Early Islamic village AlQusur (Failaka Island, State of Kuwait). Conference Archaeological Prospection 2007. Nitra, Slovakia, September 1115 2007.

Shehab, S. A. H. Bartk, M. Tirpk, J. uri, J. Barta, P. Benedikov, L. Bielich, M.: Survey and Mapping of Al-Quraniya, Failaka Island, State of Kuwait. 10.
pracovn konferencia Prodovdeck metody ve slu bch archeologie. Znojmo, Czech Republic, June 48 2007.

KSAM: Al Khidr 2004 2006. Second excavation season of Kuwaiti-Slovak

Archaeological Mission at the Island of Failaka, Kuwait. Conference "Czech Archaeology Abroad". Prague, Czech Republic, April 26 2006.

Hajnalov, M. Miklkov, Z.: Environmental archaeology at Al-Khidr site, Failaka,

Kuwait. Conference "Orientalia Antiqua Nova 5". Pilsen, Czech Republic, February 10 2005.

Barta, P. Benedikov, L.: First excavation season at Al-Khidr site, Failaka, Kuwait.
Conference "Orientalia Antiqua Nova 5". Pilsen, Czech Republic, February 10 2005. Other publications

Benedikov, L. Barta, P. Hajnalov, M. Miklkov, Z. Belanov, T. tolc, S., Jr. Bielich, M. Bartk, M. Tirpk, J. Pieta, K. Shehab, S. A. H. 2008:KuwaitiSlovak Archaeological Mission to Failaka 2004-2008. Kuwait City, National Council 569

for Culture, Arts & Letters, 2008, 59 p. ISBN 978-999-06-0-237-1. Other presentations

Benedikov, L.: A Bronze Age Settlement at al-Khidr (Failaka Island, State of

Kuwait) and Its Dilmun Background in the Gulf. Activities of the Kuwaiti-Slovak Archaeological Mission 20042009. Universiteit Gent, Vakgroep Archeologie, Onderzoekseenheid Archeologie van het Oude Nabije Oosten. Guestlecture. Ghent, April 29 2010.

Benedikov, L.: Bronze Age Settlement at al-Khidr (Failaka Island, State of Kuwait).
Dilmun in the Arabian Gulf from the Kuwaiti Perspective. Freie Universitt Berlin, Institut fr Vorderasiatische Archologie, Gastvortrag (Guestlecture). Berlin, December 4 2008.

KSAM: Kuwaiti-Slovak Archaeological Mission 2004 2007. Results of Three

Excavation Campaigns in Kuwait. Seminar on the results of the Kuwaiti-Slovak Archaeological Mission. Nitra, Slovakia, May 31 2007.

Benedikov, L. KSAM: Al-Khidr, Failaka, Kuwait. First excavation season of the

Bronze Age site. Seminar on the results of the first excavation season of the KuwaitiSlovak Archaeological Mission. Nitra, Slovakia, March 1 2005.

Hajnalov, M. Miklkov, Z. KSAM: Environmental archaeology at Al-Khidr site.

Seminar on the results of the first excavation season of the Kuwaiti-Slovak Archaeological Mission. Nitra, Slovakia, March 1 2005.

Pieta, K.: Activities of the Kuwaiti-Slovak Archaeological Mission in Kuwait

(Failaka) and in Slovakia. Looking for the new ways in archaeological research. Seminar on the results of the first excavation season of the Kuwaiti-Slovak Archaeological Mission. Nitra, Slovakia, March 1 2005. http://www.kuwaitarchaeology.org/publications.html

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Finds from Al-Khidr Definition: Failaka is the name of an island in the Persian Gulf, belonging to the modern country of Kuwait. The island holds important occupations associated with the Bronze Age Dilmun culture of the 3rd-2nd millennium BC, as well as a large Hellenistic settlement and sanctuary during the 3rd-1st centuries BC. Failaka is believed to be the place described as the Garden of Eden in the BabylonianGilgamesh epic. Failaka was founded in the third millennium BC by Dilmun, an important trading society based on the Persian Gulf as a sea lane connection between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valleycivilizations of Pakistan and India. Eventually, Failaka's proximity to the modern-day country of Iraq, and the concentration of Dilmun on Bahrain, led to Failaka's control by Mesopotamia. Features of Failaka When first excavated, Failaka had several tells--great earthen mounds resulting from hundreds or thousands of years of building and rebuilding in the same place without the benefit of bulldozers. Two tells dated to the first half of the second millennium BC were found to contain a small town (Tell F3) approximately 10 square kilometers in size, and a small palace (Tell F6), both dated to the Bronze Age Dilmun occupation. An additional tell (F5) contained a Hellenistic fortification with temples and dwelling houses. Excavated between 1958 and 1963, these tells contained about 450 seals, carved stone objects used in commercial trade, 430 of which date to the Dilmun period. Cylinder Seals Of the seals recovered at Failaka, over 60 arecylinder seals. Two mark the earliest occupations of the tells as post-Akkadian (F6) and Ur-III (F3). Most of the other cylinder seals are Mitanni seals of brown and greenish faience; and Kassite and 571

pseudo Kassite seals in deep blue glass, steatite, and ivory from Elam period Isin-II. The remainder of the seals are stamp seals, dominated by the type known to have been made and used by the Dilmun culture. A typical Dilmun type seal is circular, with a bossed reverse pattern consisting of one or usually 3-4 parallel lines with two circles on the side. All are made of steatite, and most are covered with a white glaze. About 300 of the seals found on Failaka are of the Dilmun type. Dilmun type stamp seals are part of the evidence supporting the creation of a substantial trade colony on Failaka beginning around 1950 BC. The number of Mesopotamian cylinder seals increases through time in the archaeological deposits, an indication that the island came under increasingly strong Mesopotamian influence during the Old Babylonian and Kassite periods, and perhaps during the First Dynasty of the Sealand. Potts (2010) suggests that at the time, Failaka was a dependency of the Kassite kingdom. Hellenistic/Seleucid Fort at Failaka Tell F5 at Failaka represents the remains of a classical Greek period fortress, founded during the 4th century BC or the first decade of the 3rd century BC (based on the recovery of Alexandrian coins). This occupation began during the reign of the Persian Seleucid king Seleucus I (although some evidence points to an earlier settlement in this near location). The earliest fort at the site (Stage I), was a square structure, each wall about 60 meters (~200 ft) long with square watch towers in each corner. The main gate was in the southern wall, reinforced by a massive tower; a smaller gate was in the northern. The interior of the fort included two small temples, one constructed in the Ionic style and the other perhaps Doric. Stage II of the fort included residential houses within the walls. Stages III and IV are dated to the end of the 3rd century BC, during the reighn of Antiochus III. The fortress was widened ca. 200 BC, by the building of a new defensive wall to the north, and a remodeling of the inteiror residential settlement. During Stage V, the fort's population decreased sharply until its abandonment in the 1st century BC. 572

Recent Investigations Five seasons on Failaka were conducted by the Danish Archaeological Expedition between 1958 and 1963. Most recently, investigations by the Kuwaiti-Slovak Archaeological Mission on Failaka have been focused at the Bronze Age site of AlKhidr, a Dilmun culture occupation that is located along the western shore of an important harbor on Failaka. Sources This glossary entry is a part of the About.com guide to Dilmun, and the Dictionary of Archaeology. Callot O, Gachet J, and Salles J-F. 1986. Somes notes about Hellenistic Failaka. Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 17:37-51. Howard-Carter T. 1981. The tangible evidence for the earliest Dilmun. Journal of

Cuneiform Studies 33(3/4):210-223.

Kjaerum P. 1980. Seals of "Dilmun-type" from Failaka, Kuwait. Proceedings of the

Seminar for Arabian Studies 10:45-53.

Laursen ST. 2008. Early Dilmun and its rulers: new evidence of the burial mounds of the elite and the development of social complexity, c. 22001750 BC. Arabian

Archaeology and Epigraphy19(2):156-167.

Potts DT. 2010. Cylinder seals and their use in the Arabian Peninsula. Arabian

Archaeology and Epigraphy 21(1):20-40.

Thapar R. 1975. A possible identification of Meluhha, Dilmun, and Makan. Journal of

the Economic and Social History of the Orient 18(1):1-42.

http://archaeology.about.com/od/fterms/g/failaka.htm

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http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/indus-writing-on-gold-disc-kuwait.html Indus writing on gold disc, Kuwait Museum al-Sabah collection: An Indus metalware catalog Indus writing on gold disc, Kuwait Museum al-Sabah collection: An Indus metalware catalog Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah (the Sabah Collection of Islamic Art) The al-Sabah Collection contains almost two thousand items of metalwork ranging from elaborately worked vessels inlaid with precious metals to simply cast bronze finials in the form of animals. Islamic metalworkers, whether in Cairo or Herat, often fashioned relatively simple forms covered the surface in dazzling engraved or precious metal-inlaid patterns of arabesque interlace, processions of animals or long benedictory inscriptions. Objects with calligraphy as decoration occur more frequently in metalwork than any other medium used for objects of utility. These range from benedictory inscriptions to verses from the Quran to lines of poetry, and sometimes include the signatures of the artists. The ancient Near East has a long history of working in copper alloy and bronzes and brasses (copper alloyed with other metals) became the most important material in the mediaeval period. Objects are almost invariably sculpturally powerful, and examples of everyday objects such as oil lamps or incense burners became works of art. Brass was especially popular in the Mamluk domains. In the later period, especially in Iran and India, steel was used for decorative purposes; despite its hardness, it could be cut in openwork patterns, such as arabesques and calligraphic compositions as delicate as lace. View some of the collections at: http://darmuseum.org.kw/dai/the-collections/metals/

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Gold disc. Kuwait Museum. Source: http://www.facebook.com/BenoyKBehlArtCulture

May 30, 2013 Benoy K Behl: Art & Culture Like This Page 20 hours ago

Indus Valley trade with Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago. The most wonderful and exciting part of my trip to Kuwait was my visit to see the al-Sabah Collection of antiquities. It was a marvelous collection of ancient art. Here, there was a Gold disc of 9.6 cm diameter, which was obviously from the Indus Valley period in India. Typical of that period, it depicts zebu, bulls, human attendants, ibex, fish, partridges, bees, an animal-headed standard and, best of all, a Pipal tree (also known as the Bodhi Tree, as Gautama Siddhartha attained enlightenment under such a tree. Buddhists believe that all the previous Buddhas found enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree and so will all 575

future Buddhas). This would be of the 3rd Millennium BCE. The National Museum in New Delhi also has an Indus Valley seal, which depicts the Pipal tree. 8 people like this.

Premola Ghose terrific!! Like Reply 17 hours ago

Benoy K Behl: Art & Culture Premola Ghose, I could hardly believe it when I saw it! Like Reply 16 hours ago

Come Carpentier de Gourdon Thank you. This is almost identical to teh Scythian/Saka art I admired at the Museum of Almaty in Kazakhstan recently. The Sakas were an "Indo-European" people which in turns supports the view that the Saeaswati-Indus Harappan culture was also "Indo-European" and Vedic. Like Reply 1 14 hours ago

Shailesh Nayak Very interesting. Like Reply 13 hours ago

Kailash Chaurasia 5000 ago! Beyond comprehension, mind boggling, they did have the tools, the skill, culture and creativity! Like Reply 13 hours ago

Shonaleeka Kaul has it been dated? where was it found and with what else? am trying to think of ways, beyond the mere fact of animals or the ficus tree being depicted, to be sure it's Indus Valley. Like Reply 8 hours ago It will be interesting to obtain provenance information from the Museum and have experts evaluate the authenticity of the artifact.

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Primafacie, the gold disc has hieroglyphs ALL OF which occur on other Indus writing artifacts such as seals and tablets. In the context of the bronze-age, the hieroglyphs are read rebus in Meluhha (mleccha) speech as metalware catalogs. http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/indus-writing-as-metalware-catalogs-and_21.html http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/tokens-and-bullae-evolve-into-indus.html See examples of Dilmun seal readings at http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/seehttpbharatkalyan97.html See examples of Sumer Samarra bowls: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/04/bronze-agewriting-in-ancient-near-east.html In this perspective, the hieroglyphs on the Kuwait Museum gold disc can be read rebus: A pair of tabernae montana flowers tagara 'tabernae montana' flower; rebus: tagara 'tin' A pair of rams tagara 'ram'; rebus: damgar 'merchant' (Akkadian) Ficus religiosa leaves on a tree branch (5) loa 'ficus leaf'; rebus: loh 'metal'. kol in Tamil means pancaloha'alloy of five metals'. A pair of bulls tethered to the tree branch: hangar 'bull'; rebus hangar 'blacksmith' Two persons touch the two bulls: me body (Mu.) Rebus: me iron (Ho.) Thus, the hieroglyph composition denotes ironsmiths.

A pair of antelopes looking back: krammara 'look back'; rebus: kamar 'smith' (Santali); tagara 'antelope'; rebus: damgar 'merchant' (Akkadian) A pair of antelopes mh 'antelope, ram'; rebus: m 'iron' (Mu.) A pair of combs kgs f. comb (Gujarati); rebus 1: kangar portable furnace (Kashmiri); rebus 2: kamsa 'bronze'. A pair of fishes ayo 'fish' (Mu.); rebus: ayo 'metal, iron' (Gujarati); ayas 'metal' (Sanskrit) 9.A pair of buffaloes tethered to a post-standard k buffalo kai buffalo bull (Tamil); rebus: ka 'stone ore'; ka tools, pots and pans and metal-ware; ka furnace, fire-altar, consecrated fire. A pair of birds Rebus 1: ki. [Tel.] n. A fowl, a bird. (Telugu) Rebus: kh alloyed ingots. Rebus 2: kol the name of a bird, the Indian cuckoo (Santali) kol 'iron, smithy, forge'. Rebus 577

3: baa = quail (Santali) Rebus: baa = furnace, kiln (Santali) bhrra = furnace (Skt.) baa = a kind of iron (G.) bhaa furnace (G.) The buffaloes, birds flank a post-standard with curved horns on top of a stylized 'eye' with onehorn on either side of two faces

m h face; rebus: m h ingot (Mu.)

haera buffalo horns. haer brass worker (Punjabi) dol eye; Rebus: dul to cast metal in a mould (Santali) kandi hole, opening (Ka.)[Note the eye shown as a dotted circle on many Dilmun
seals.]; kan eye (Ka.); rebus: kandi (pl. l) necklace, beads (Pa.);ka 'stone ore'

khu tethering peg or post' (Western Pahari) Rebus: ka workshop; kui=

smelter furnace (Santali); Rebus 2: ku 'fire-altar' Why are animals shown in pairs? dula pair (Kashmiri); rebus: dul cast metal (Mu.) Thus, all the hieroglyphs on the gold disc can be read as Indus writing related to one bronzeage artifact category: metalware catalog entries. Most of the inscriptions have been listed in the book available through flipkart.com: http://tinyurl.com/c3q4pmj

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Kalyanaraman May 31, 2013 PS: Further links. The al-Sabah Collection is regarded by international authorities as one of a small handful of the most comprehensive collections of Islamic art in the world. It has continued to grow since its inception increasing its strengths in all categories.

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http://darmuseum.org.kw/dai/ Excerpts from brochure 'Splendors of the Ancient East':

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Copper alloy stand in the form of a Markhor goat supporting an elaborate superstructure. Mesopotamia, Early Dynastic I, 2900 to 2700 BCE. Ht. 67 cm. L. 47 cm. w. 33 cm. Body cast from speiss alloy (iron-arsenic-copper); all other parts separately lostwax cast from arsenical coper and then joined by casting; left eye retaining shell inlay; triangular forehead depression inlaid with shell and lapis lazuli (probably modern). Inv. no. LNS 1653M

(Page 22, brochure) on Markhor goat.

Mil markhor (Tor.wali) meho a ram, a sheep (G.)(CDIAL 10120) iron (Ho.) meed-bica =
iron stone ore, in contrast to bali-bica, iron sand ore (Mu.lex.) 581

Iron age? Silver pouring vessel with handle and double spout in the form of two bulls. Elamite, southern Iran. 7th to 6th cent. BCE or earlier. Ht. 28.4 cm to top of handle; depth 24.7 cm including spouts. Raised from silver sheet, hammered, engraves and chased. Long votive inscription in Elamite in the name of King Shutur-Nahhunte-Inshushinak (rad by WG Lambert and R. Kovacs). Inv. no. LNS 1276M 'The Ancient Near East encompasing modern-day Turkey, Iran, Iraq, the whole of the Arabian Peninsula, and the Levant, is an enormous area that was connected by an extraordinary degree of contact. Other areas further east were also of great importance in the thre millennia before Islam, particularly the Bronze Age civilizations of the Indus Valley in modern-day India and Pakistan, and the culture in Central Asia referred to as Bactria-Margiana in what is now eastern Turkmenistan, western Uzbekistan and northern Afghanistan. In the first millennium BCE most of these areas continued to flourish as dynasties rose and fell, and waves of Central Asian nomads brought their own cultural contribution to the arts of the region. These cross-cultural influences are apparent in many of the objects presented here.' Splendour Exhibition Brochure, Amricani Cultural Centre, Gulf Road, across the street from the National Assembly (the Historic American Hospital Buildings). email: info@darmuseum.org.kw friends@darmuseum.org.kw 582

http://www.scribd.com/doc/144830032/Splendour-Exhibition-Brochure Splendour Exhibition Brochure

Copper alloy and silver standing nude male supporting openwork basket. Mesopotami, Early Dynastic I, 2900 to 2700 BCE Ht. 115 cm. width 33 cm. Figure of arsenical copper with silver head, lost-wax cast, with engraved details; with attached silver sidelocks; inlaid shell eye In. no. LNS 1654M

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Gold cylinder seal depicting complex mythological scenes. Possibly southeastern Iran, mid 3rd millennium BCE. Ht. 2.21 cm. dia. 2.74 cm. Fabricated from gold sheet with chased decoration. Inv. No. LNS 4517J http://darmuseum.org.kw/dai/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Splendour-Exhibition-Brochure.pdf

http://darmuseum.org.kw/dai/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/loans-from-the-kuwait-nationalmuseum/Inventory No. 8480. A seal from Dilmun, made of soft stone, classified as the 3rd largest seal in Failaka Island, decorated with human and zoomorphic figures. 0.16 X 4.8 cm. Site: the Ruler's Palace. 2nd millennium BCE, Dilmun civilization [NOTE: Many such seals of Failaka and Dilmun have been read rebus as Indus writing on blogposts.] Failaka Island is located approximately 20 km northeast of Kuwait City. The island has a shallow surface measuring 12 km in length and 6 km width. The island proved to be an ideal location for human settlements, because of the wealth of natural resources, including harbours, fresh water, and fertile soil. It was also a strategic maritime commercial route that linked the northern side of the Gulf to the southern side. Studies show that traces of human settlement can be found on 584

Failaka dating back to as early as the end of the 3rd millennium BC and extended through most of the 20th century CE. Failaka was first known as Agarum, the land of Enzak, the great god of Dilmun civilisation according to Sumerian cuneiform texts found on the island. Dilmun was the leading commercial hub for its powerful neighbours in their need to exchange processed goods for raw materials. Sailing the Arabian Gulf was by far the most convenient trade route at a time as transportation over land meant a much longer and more hazardous journey. As part of Dilmun, Failaka became a hub for the activities which radiated around Dilmun (Bahrain) from the end of the 3rd millennium to the mid-1st millennium BCE. The cities of Sumer in Mesopotamia, the Harappan people from the Indus Valley, the inhabitants of Magan and the Iranian hinterland have left many archaeological traces of their encounters on Failaka Island. More speculative is the ongoing debate among academics on whether Failaka might be the mythical Eden: the place where Sumerian hero Gilgamesh almost unraveled the secret of immortality; the paradise later described in the Bible. As a result of changes in the balance of political powers in the region towards the end of the 2nd millennium BCE and beginning of 1st millennium BCE, the importance of Failaka began to decline. Studies indicate that Alexander the Great received reports from missions sent to explore the Arabian shoreline of the Gulf. The reports referenced two islands, one located approximately 120 stadia (almost 19 km) from an estuary; the second island located a complete day and night sailing journey with proper climate conditions. As the historian Aryan stated, Alexander the Great ordered that the nearer island be named Ikaros (now Failaka) and the distant island as Tylos (now the Kingdom of Bahrain). Ikaros was described by the explorers as an island covered with rich vegetation and a shelter for numerous wild animals, considered sacred by the inhabitants who dedicate them to their local goddess. After the collapse of the great empires in western Asia (Greek, Persian, Roman), the first centuries of the Christian era brought new settlers to Failaka. The island became a secure home for a Christian community, possibly Nestorian, until the 9th century CE. At Al- Qusur, in 585

the centre of the island, archaeologists have uncovered two churches, built at an undetermined date, around which a large settlement grew. Its name may have changed again at that time, to Ramatha. Failaka was continuously inhabited throughout the Islamic period until the 1990s. Excavations on the Island began in 1958 and continue today. Many archaeological expeditions have worked on Failaka and it is considered one of the key sources of knowledge about civilisations emerging from within the Gulf region. Brochure at http://darmuseum.org.kw/dai/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Loans-From-KNMBrochure.pdf Pre-cuneiform tablet with seal impressions

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The imagery of the cylinder seal records information. A male figure is guiding dogs (?Tigers) and herding boars in a reed marsh. Both tiger and boar are Indus writing hieroglyphs, together with the imagery of a grain stalk. All these hieroglyphs are read rebus in Meluhha (mleccha),of Indian sprachbund in the context of metalware catalogs of bronze age. kola 'tiger'; rebus: kol 'iron'; ka 'rhino'; rebus: ka 'metalware tools, pots and pans'. Ka. (Hav.) aaru twig; (Bark.) ar small and thin branch of a tree; (Gowda) ari small branches. Tu. aaru twig.(DEDR 67) Rebus: aduru gan.iyinda tegadu

karagade iruva aduru = ore taken from the mine and not subjected to melting in a furnace (Ka.
Siddhnti Subrahmaya astris new interpretation of the Amarakoa, Bangalore, Vicaradarpana Press, 1872, p.330) Alternative rebus: If the imagery of stalk connoted a palmfrond, the rebus readings could have been: Ku. N. tmo (pl. young bamboo shoots ), A. tm, B. tb, tm, Or. tamb, Bi tb, Mth. tm, tm, Bhoj. tm, H. tm in cmpds., tb, tm m. (CDIAL 5779) Rebus: tmr dark red, copper -- coloured VS., n. copper Kau., tmraka -- n. Yj. [Cf. tamr -- . -- tam?] Pa. tamba -- red , n. copper , Pk. taba -- adj. and n.; Dm. trmba -- red (in trmba -- lacuk raspberry NTS xii 192); Bshk. lm copper, piece of bad pine -- wood (< *red wood ?); Phal. tmba copper ( Sh.koh. tmb), K. trm m. ( Sh.gil. gur. trm m.), S. rmo m., L. trm, (Ju.) tarm m., P. tmb m., WPah. bhad. m n., ki th. cmb, sod. cambo, jaun. tb 587

(CDIAL 5779) tabshr f. the sugar of the bamboo, bamboo-manna (a siliceous deposit on the joints of the bamboo) (Kashmiri) Fig. 24 Line drawing showing the seal impression on this tablet. Illustration by Abdallah Kahil. Proto-Cuneiform tablet with seal impressions. Jemdet Nasr period, ca. 3100-2900 BCE. Mesopotamia. Clay H. 5.5 cm; W.7 cm. Source: Kim Benzel, Sarah B. Graff, Yelena Rakic and Edith W. Watts, 2010, Art of the Ancient Near East, a resource for educators, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art http://www.metmuseum.org/~/media/Files/Learn/For%20Educators/Publications%20for%20Edu cators/Art%20of%20the%20Ancient%20Near%20East.pdf

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/did-indus-writing-deal-with-numeration.html Did Indus writing deal with numeration? No. The writing dealt with metalware accounting as technical specs. in bills-of-lading. Did Indus writing deal with numeration? No. The writing dealt with metalware accounting as technical specs. in bills-of-lading. http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/04/indus-writing-and-numeration-drbv.html?q=subbarayappa Item 1. BVSubbarayappa the Rigvedic People Their Identity 1995, in LK Srinivasan and S. Nagaraju, eds., Sri Nagabhinandanam Dr. MS Nagaraja Rao Festschrift, Bangalore, Dr. MS Nagaraja Rao Felicitation Committee, pp. 83-97 http://www.scribd.com/doc/138058489/BVSubbarayappa-the-Rigvedic-People-Their-Identity1995 BVSubbarayappa the Rigvedic People Their Identity 1995

Item 2. BVSubbaryappa Indus Numeration QJMS Vol 100 No 4 Oct Dec 2009 Indus numeration, inscriptional confirmatory evidence in Quarterly Journal of Mythical Society, Vol. 588

100 No. 4, Oct. - Dec. 2009 http://www.scribd.com/doc/138059142/BVSubbaryappa-Indus-Numeration-QJMS-Vol-100-No-4Oct-Dec-2009 BVSubbaryappa Indus Numeration QJMS Vol 100 No 4 Oct Dec 2009

Dr. BV Subbarayappa has made a remarkable contribution to understanding the Hindu traditions of writing systems. He focusses on the method of representing numerals starting with Brahmi and Kharoshthi scripts using evidences of epigraphs of the historical period. Prof. Subhash Kak has sought to establish Brahmi as a continuum from Indus writing. When dealing with Indus writing, we were handicapped by the scanty evidence available with only a couple of thousands of inscriptions. Cypher methods could not be applied principally because the size of most of the inscriptions was only an average of 5 'signs'. As I delved into the problem of understanding the underlying language spoken by the creators of the writing system, I was lucky to deal with a significant-size of number of inscriptions which total over 5000 in the Indus writing corpora. Following up Denise Schmandt-Besserat's work on the functions served by tokens and clay bullae in Sumer and adjacent civilizations, I found that HARP (Harvard Harappa Project) excavations provided a lead to unravel the functions served by tablets with Indus inscriptions. It could be demonstrated that tablets with very short-sized inscriptions could have been used to label work-in-process on workers' platforms. These tablets could have provided the information which was transferred into 'seals' which the constituted technical specifications for bills of lading for the artifacts produced by the workers. A clarification on technical specs. part of the bills of lading. Maybe, metalware catalogs is a more apt analogy. The clue comes from the fact that pictorial motifs continue to be used even after cuneiform was invented and used to record contract and commercial transactions detailing quantities and parties involved.

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Yes, bill of lading should include references to the parties involved and to the quantities of a transaction. Just as cuneiform texts complemented the exquisite hieroglyphs on cylinder seals, there could have been other records to detail the names of parties and the quantities involved in a transaction. It will be an error to assume that only agricultural commodities were transacted and records kept of only such commodities, even during the bronze age. A conclusive proof of nexus with bronze-age is that literally hundreds of hieroglyphs can be read rebus just in one set: related to metalware and metallurgy. The key to the functions served by seals is provided by the frequently-occurring pictorial motif variously described as 'cult object' or 'device in front of the one-horned young bull calf'. Following up the latter description, it was possible to decipher the pictorial motif as sangaa picturing a composite of 'gimlet, portable furnace' glyphs. This word sangaa could be read rebus as janga 'entrustment articles. jangaiyo is a Gujarati lexeme which meant military guard who accompanies treasure into the treasury. Thus, it was possible to hypothesise the function served by the ligatured pictorial motif of a 'one-horned young bull calf' with special ligatures of rings on neck, pannier and one horn. Reading all these as hieroglyphs, the pictorial motif could be read kd [ kha ] m A young bull, a bullcalf. (Marathi) Rebus: A. kundr, B. k dr, ri, Or. kundru; H. k der m. one who works a lathe, one who scrapes, r f., k dern to scrape, plane, round on a lathe (CDIAL 3297). M. sga f. a body formed of two or more fruits or animals or men &c. linked together (CDIAL 12859). [jgaa] Linking together (of beasts): joining or attaching (as a scholar to a superior one, in order to learn). v , . Also the state, linkedness, co-yokedness, attachment, association. (Marathi).The semantics explain why composite animal glyphs are created in Indus writing. The artisan conveyed the semantics of sga for bronze-age accounting of 'entrustment articles' -- janga as the artisans moved such articles into the treasury or warehouse.

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The frequently-occuring pair of hieroglyphs of 'one-horned young bull calf' in front of 'gimlet, portable furnace could thus read together to connote a metals turner who was a courier of the'entrustment articles', janga. The jangaiyo was both a metals turner and a courier.

Mohenjo-daro seal M006 with the pictorial motif combination: First image: 'one-horned young bull calf' + pannier + rings on neck + Second image: 'gimlet' + 'portable furnace' combined into a 'standard device' in front of the first image. This method of cypher dealing with both pictorial motifs and signs as hieroglyphs read as part of a logo-semantic system of representation, led to the elucidation of almost the entire corpora of Indus writing -- characterised by a set of vivid, unambiguous hieroglyphs for e.g. of a crocodile holding a fish in its jaw or a wild animal in front of a trough etc. etc. -- as lists of metalware catalogs.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/tokens-and-bullae-evolve-into-indus.html Tokens and bullae evolve into Indus writing, underlying language-sounds read rebus Tokens and bullae evolve into Indus writing, underlying language-sounds read rebus This blogpost is prompted by an exquisite monograph, 'Written language vs. non-linguistic symbol systems' by Richard Sproat http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/written-languagevs-non-linguistic.html The monograph cited in this URL makes an assumption that symbols 591

used on many examples of Indus writing were pre-literate and did not constitute a 'writing' system. It should be noted that the thesis presented fails to analyse the context in which Indus writing was deployed -- the context of the bronze-age which saw the revolutionary advances in metallurgy of copper + tin bronzes replacing naturally-occurring arsenic bronzes. Just one shape of a token to connote 'metal' was NOT adequate to convey messages about the products emerging out of the bronze-age technologies of alloying.

Clay tokens from Susa, a city site in Iran, are seen in the composite photograph on the opposite page. The tokens, in the collection of the Muse du Louvre, are about 5,000 years old. The five tokens in the top row represent some of the commonest shapes: a sphere, a half-sphere, a disk, a cone and a tetrahedron. The more elaborate tokens in the next row have been marked with incisions or impressions. Unperforated and perforated versions of similar tokens appear in the third and fourth rows. Tokens in the bottom two rows vary in shape and marking; some can be equated with early Sumerian ideographs

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Clay Tokens a la Schmandt-Besserat The early system of counting numbers of categorised goods and use of specific token shapes related to a specific commodity is well attested in the system of bullae and clay tokens from the days of Sumer. Tokens of different geometric shapes connoted different commodities and the count of the commodities was indicated by markings on the tokens. An evolution was the envelope (bulla) to hold the tokens as in a rattle. Wedge was a graphic form and became a component of the cuneiform writing system. See: Denise Schmandt-Besserat, 1977, The earliest precur of writing, Scientific American. June 1977, Vol. 238, No. 6, p. 5058 http://en.finaly.org/index.php/The_earliest_precursor_of_writing

I have demonstrated that Indus writing evolved from the system of tokens as the bronze age products were so large in number that new shapes could not be invented for the tokens to distinguish varieties of minerals, metals, alloys and products of the metal alloys such as ingots, 593

hammers, sickles, knives, ploughshare and so on. HARP (Harappa archaeological project) had shown how tablets were used on workers' platforms. I have shown that these tablets recorded work-in-progress before the final consolitation of the information contained on tablets on to seals which could accompany the consignments of goods like bills of lading. Assuming that a writing system is defined as a system based on underlying human sounds of language, it can be demonstrated that such symbols did in fact have an underlying basis of words from Meluhha (mleccha) of Indian sprachbund. The key to answer the assumptions underlying Richard's thesis is to outline an evolution of the system of tokens and bullae into a hieroglyphic writing system, using glyphs to connote words, in a logo-semantic method reading the words rebus to connote similar sounding words denoting the commodities of the bronze-age.

Geographical distribution of tokens extends from as far north as the Caspian border of Iran to as far south as Khartoum and from Asia Minor eastward to the Indus Valley.

Fifty-two tokens, representative of 12 major categories of token types, have been matched here with incised characters that appear in the 594

earliest Sumerian inscriptions. Most of the inscriptions cannot be read. Here, if the meaning of the symbol is known, the equivalent word in English appears. The Sumerian numerical symbols equated with the various spherical and conical tokens are actual impressions in the surface of the tablet. In two instances (sphere) incised lines are added; in a third (cone) a circular punch mark is added.

Harappa fish-shaped tablet with Indus writing. Fish is a hieroglyph connoting ayo, ayas 'metal' AND IS NOT fish as a commodity to be accounted for in food rations. This reading is consistent with the entire set of Indus writing corpora as metalware catalogs. A dramatic advancement in metal alloying was matched by the technique of ligaturing of hieroglyphs in the writing system. This is exemplified by the composite hieroglyph of what is referred to as a composite animal and components analysed by Huntington.

A ligature of two hieroglyphs: 1. mountain; 2. leaf. ku summit of a hill, peak, mountain; rebus: [ kha ] f A mass of metal (unwrought or of old metal melted down); an ingot or wedge. kamakom 'petiole of leaf'; rebus: kampaam 'mint'.

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Another characteristic ligature of hieroglyphs: 1. fish; 2. crocodile (alligator) on one side of a prism tablet MD-602. ayakra ironsmith (fish, aya + crocodile, kar). There are Indus writing examples which show a 'trough' glyph placed in front of even wild animals such as a tiger or a rhinoceros. Is it unreasonable to assume that this is a hieroglyphic narrative read rebus rather than some imagined 'mythical story' or 'symbols of valor or heraldry'?

Components of the composite hieroglyph on seal M-299. A ligaturing element is a human face which is a hieroglyph read rebus in mleccha (meluhha): m he face (Santali) ; rebus:m h metal ingot (Santali). Using such readings, it has been demonstrated that the entire corpora of Indus writing which now counts for over 5000 inscriptions + comparable hieroglyphs in contact areas of Dilmun where seals are deployed using the characeristic hieroglyphs of four dotted circles and three linear strokes. Rebus readings: ga 'four'. ka 'bit'. Rebus: ka 'fire-altar'. kolmo 'three'. Rebus: kolami 'smithy, forge'. 596

The system of accounting using tokens and clay bullae evolved into two streams: 1. cuneiform writing with wedge-shaped letters for syllabic writing; 2. Indus writing for hieroglyphs for logosemantic writing.

m0478A tablet. t is now for Richard to explain how he identified the symbols AS symbols and why he does not consider the possibility that the symbols may in fact have been hieroglyphs as outlined in the examples cited here and as detailed for about one thousand hieroglyphs deployed on Indus writing as narratives. Just look at the narrative of a tiger looking upwards at a person perched on a tree-branch. It is reasonable to assume that there were underlying words of a spoken language which could complete the narrative presented pictorially. eraka, hero = a messenger; a spy (G.lex.) kola tiger, jackal (Kon.); rebus: kol working in iron, blacksmith, alloy of five metals, panchaloha (Tamil) kol furnace, forge (Kuwi) kolami smithy (Te.) heraka = spy (Skt.); er to look at or for (Pkt.); er uk- to play 'peeping tom' (Ko.) Rebus: eraka copper (Ka.) ku branch of tree, Rebus: [ kha ] f A mass of metal (unwrought or of old metal melted down); an ingot or wedge.

I have not reviewed Richard's analytical framework for explaining pre-literate symbols. I am just pointing out that his assumption about the Indus writing evidences of 'pre-literate' symbols can be countered by treating the 'symbols' as hieroglyphs, read rebus in the lexemes of Indian sprachbund. PS. On Indus language. My contention is that the Indus writers were literate and used meluhha (mleccha), a speech form attested in Manu as mlecchavaacas juxtaposed to aryavaacas. Vaatsyayana refers to writing of mleccha as cryptography, mlecchitavikalpa as one of the 64 597

arts to be taught to the young students, together with two other language skills: akshara mushtika kathanam, des'abhaashaa jnaanam. http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/see-httpbharatkalyan97.html Indus writing in ancient Near East (Dilmun seal readings) Indus writing in ancient Near East (Dilmun seal readings) See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/bahrain-digs-unveil-one-of-oldest.html Bahrain digs unveil one of oldest civilisations -- BBC See: Harriet Crawford, Early Dilmun seals from Saar, Art and Commerce in Bronze Age Bahrain, Archaeology International, London (2001) http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/arch-4561/dissemination/pdf/Saar_Report_2.pdf Mirror: http://www.scribd.com/doc/143096331/Early-Dilmun-seals-from-Saar-Art-andCommerce-in-Bronze-Age-Bahrain-Archaeology-International-London-Harriet-Crawford-2001 Many of these seals are in Indus writing. See details in S. Kalyanaraman, 2013, Indus writing in ancient near East: Corpora and a Dictionary, Herndon The following monograph presents readings of some Dilmun seal hieroglyphs using Meluhha (mleccha) lexemes of Indian sprachbund: Indus writing in ancient Near East (Dilmun seal readings)

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The following are the rebus Meluhha (mleccha) readings of glyphs on Dilmun seals (appended):Back of proto-Dilmun style seal from Saar (2622:05; dia. 1.9 cm.) Copulation or erotic narratives kama, khama 'copulation' (Santali) Rebus:ka furnace, fire-altar, consecrated fire. The links between Susa and Dilmun are well attested in the texts and the archaeology. It has already been mentioned that the erotic scenes showing women with their legs wide apart, found in the Early Dilmun style seal repertoire, show links with simpler scenes, with a long prehistory in Elam. One Persian Gulf seal with Indus writing, three Early Dilmun style seals, two cylinder seals decorated with Early Dilmun style motifs, and one possible Dilmun sealing from a lenticular bulla were found at Susa, and are illustrated by Amiet (1972, Nos. 1643, 171618, 1975, 2021 and 240). The usage of the route north from Susa at this period is suggested by a single Dilmun seal found in the treasury of the Kititum temple at Ischali in the Diyala valley (Hill et al. 1990), and by a dedication to Inzac of Dilmun by a king of Eshnunna on a stone amulet found on the island of Cythera (Potts 1990, p. 225). (p.31) Read on... http://www.scribd.com/doc/143371932/Indus-Writing-in-Ancient-Near-East-Dilmun-Seals

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Signature tune of Dilmun seals: Four dotted circles and three long linear strokes. Rebus readings: ga 'four'. ka 'bit'. Rebus: ka 'fire-altar'. kolmo 'three'. Rebus: kolami 'smithy, forge'. tagara 'antelope'; rebus 1: tagara 'tin'; rebus 2: damgar 'merchant' (Akkadian)

Frond of palm may be denoed by the lexeme: 600

Ku. N. tmo (pl. young bamboo shoots ), A. tm, B. tb, tm, Or. tamb, Bi tb, Mth. tm, tm, Bhoj. tm, H. tm in cmpds., tb, tm m. (CDIAL 5779) Rebus: tmr dark red, copper -- coloured VS., n. copper Kau., tmraka -- n. Yj. [Cf. tamr -- . -- tam?] Pa. tamba -- red , n. copper , Pk. taba -- adj. and n.; Dm. trmba -- red (in trmba -- lacuk raspberry NTS xii 192); Bshk. lm copper, piece of bad pine -- wood (< *red wood ?); Phal. tmba copper ( Sh.koh. tmb), K. trm m. ( Sh.gil. gur. trm m.), S. rmo m., L. trm, (Ju.) tarm m., P. tmb m., WPah. bhad. m n., ki th. cmb, sod. cambo, jaun. tb (CDIAL 5779) tabshr f. the sugar of the bamboo, bamboo-manna (a siliceous deposit on the joints of the bamboo) (Kashmiri) The bamboo-shoot or palmyra frond is a definitive glyph on Dilmun seals as shown above.

Thanks for Diana Gainer's blogpost http://indusscriptmore.blogspot.in/ drawing attention to this glyph. Seal Lothal 45 and Text 2847 with a variant of Sign 137 X This variant occurs on Mohenjodaro prism-tablet: m0495 This hieroglyph has been discussed by Iravatham as an 'agricultural' sign. http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/agricultural-signs-in-indus-script.html This is a hieroglyph composed of four 'bamboo-shoot' glyphs. A bamboo-shoot glyph may be seen on Lothal Seal 45:

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Lothal 45 The composition on Text The bamboo-shoot is tb read rebus: tamba 'copper'. Four such shoots are gaNDa 'four'. Thus the composite glyph of four bamboo-shoots organized into an X shape constitute a compound glyph: kaND tamba 'copper fire-altar (furnace)'.

Indus Writing in Ancient Near East (Dilmun Seals)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/bahrain-digs-unveil-one-of-oldest.html Bahrain digs unveil one of oldest civilisations BBC Bahrain digs unveil one of oldest civilisations -- BBC See: Harriet Crawford, Early Dilmun seals from Saar, Art and Commerce in Bronze Age Bahrain, Archaeology International, London (2001) http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/arch-4561/dissemination/pdf/Saar_Report_2.pdf Mirror: http://www.scribd.com/doc/143096331/Early-Dilmun-seals-from-Saar-Art-andCommerce-in-Bronze-Age-Bahrain-Archaeology-International-London-Harriet-Crawford-2001 Many of these seals are in Indus writing. See details in S. Kalyanaraman, 2013, Indus writing in ancient near East: Corpora and a Dictionary, Herndon

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Early Dilmun seals from Saar, Art and Commerce in Bronze Age Bahrain, Archaeology International, London (Ha...

Bahrain digs unveil one of oldest civilisations By Sylvia SmithBBC News, Manama, Bahrain 21 May 2013 Last updated at 01:43 GMT

The Saar site was effectively a modern city with restaurants and shops, say archaeologists Excavations at an archaeological site in Bahrain are shedding light on one of the oldest trading civilisations. Despite its antiquity, comparatively little is known about the advanced culture represented at Saar. The site in Bahrain, thought to be the location of the enigmatic Dilmun civilisation, was recently discussed at a conference in Manama, the Gulf nation's capital, organised by the UN's educational, scientific and cultural body (Unesco). 603

Continue reading the main story

Start Quote The belief system here has a lot in common with those of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt Abdullah Hassan YehiaKeeper, Bahrain Fort The meeting was devoted to wide-ranging debate on heritage tourism; Bahrain is a Unesco regional headquarters and one of its key attractions is an abundance of ancient sites. At Saar (named after the closest modern village), with the scorching sun rising ever higher in the sky, a Bahraini archaeologist patiently explained to a group of workers how to re-point a low wall in a state of near collapse. This meticulous maintenance of the archaeological settlement marks a turning point in the way Bahraini specialists are dealing with the vast store of historical remains on the island. According to Salman al-Mahari, the Bahraini archaeologist in charge, the Saar settlement divides into two: a residential zone and, at a small distance, the cemetery where the inhabitants buried their dead.

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Archaeologists have uncovered a cemetery some distance from Saar's residential zone "This site has provided a lot of information about daily life," he explains. "This has enabled us to compare finds made here with objects unearthed at other locations on the island. It is evident that this city and graveyard date back to the early Dilmun period." Dilmun, one of most important ancient civilisations of the region and said to date to the third millennium BC, was a hub on a major trading route between Mesopotamia - the world's oldest civilisation - and the Indus Valley in South Asia. It is also believed that Dilmun had commercial ties with ancient sites at Elam in Oman, Alba in Syria and Haittan in Turkey. As Salman al-Mahari confirms, the team is now preserving what has been found to ensure that the historical findings are made accessible. "For 4,000 years this site was underground so it was sheltered," he says. "Now after excavation, it is exposed to the elements. We have no immediate plans to carry out further excavations. We want to protect the site and to interpret what we have unearthed for visitors." The Saar site is far from being the most significant relic of the Dilmun era. On the northern tip of the island, archaeological expeditions have uncovered seven successive levels of settlements 605

at the Qal'at al Bahrain (the fort of Bahrain). Under the oldest and most extensive fort, three consecutive Dilmun cities as well as a Greek city dating back to 200 BC have been unearthed. The site is impressive: the outer walls enclose an area of several hundred square metres. At its centre lie massive carved stones marking the entrance and walls of a chamber containing an altar once flanked by copper-faced pillars.

The Dilmun civilisation was a trading link between the Middle East and South Asia Next to it is another structure where the presence of blackened animal bones and charred earth suggest a chamber for sacrifices to the gods. On the other side of the central altar, a flight of carved steps leads down to a pool, a deep, stone-walled well built over one of the numerous underground springs where one of three principal Sumerian deities - Enki, the water-dwelling god of wisdom - supposedly lived. The abundance of sweet water flowing from springs which still supply the island with much of its drinking water was one of the cornerstones of Dilmun. The island was an oasis of fertility in ancient times in a mainly desolate region. This could have given rise to a legend that Bahrain may even have been the biblical Garden of Eden.

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But as Abdullah Hassan Yehia, the keeper of the Qal'at al Bahrain, explains, the fertile nature of the island encouraged more than just agriculture (Dilmun was famed for its vegetable production). There is strong evidence of religious practices and beliefs that can be compared with those in other advanced societies of the time. "The belief system here has a lot in common with those of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt," he says. "Belief in the after-life is shown by burying the dead with possessions such as tools, food, drinking vessels and gold. We've even found weapons." Abdullah Hassan Yehia also explains that the Dilmun merchants had a monopoly of trade in copper, a precious commodity which was shipped from the mines of Oman to the cities of Mesopotamia. But he debunks the theory that Bahrain may have been used by prehistoric inhabitants of the Arabian mainland as a cemetery.

The fort overlies three consecutive Dilmun cities The island has approximately 170,000 burial mounds covering an area of 30 square kilometres or 5% of the main island area. The majority of the burial grounds date back to the second and third centuries BC but some are as recent as 2,000 years old. The oldest and largest burial mounds, referred to as the "Royal Tombs", are found at Aali and measure up to 15m in height and 45m in diameter. Archaeologist Salman Al-Mahari agrees: "There were a number of large population centres on the island. We have calculated that there would have been a significant number of deaths of both adults and children who would have been buried here," he says. This sort of debate is exactly what Khalifa Ahmed Al Khalifa, assistant director of programmes at the Arab regional Centre for World Heritage is keen to encourage.

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Khalifa Ahmed al-Khalifa from the Arab Regional Centre for World Heritage explains why it is time to make the "extraordinary artefacts" available to the public "There has been a lot of academic work carried out over the past decades," he recaps. "The idea is to simplify and interpret all this academic information so that local people and international visitors can grasp the importance of our heritage." Using Saar as an example, he continues. "It includes houses, restaurants, commercial outlets, a cemetery and a place of worship. These are all part of a modern city." "One of the characteristics of Saar are its honeycomb-shaped burial complexes. This is the sort of thing that people find fascinating," he adds. "As long as it is presented in an easily digestible way." While academic research continues into life 4,000 years ago in Dilmun, with an emphasis on trade, diet, gods, pottery and other industries as well as local burial customs, there is now a focus on making everything interesting to the layperson. "It's quite a challenge that we're facing," says Khalifa Ahmed al-Khalif. "But with the help of new technology we'll be able to place Bahrain on the [ancient] global map."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22596270

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http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/indus-writing-as-metalware-catalogsand_21.html Indus writing in ancient Near East as metalware catalogs and not as agrarian accounting Indus writing as metalware catalogs and not as agrarian accounting Iravatham Mahadevan has drawn attention in his December 2012 article (cf. http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/agricultural-signs-in-indus-script.html ) to what he calls agicultural signs discussing two long inscriptions (1623 and 2847) of Indus writing. I do not treat this note as a critique of Mahadevans decipherment. Who knows, maybe, he is right....

Listed by Koskenniemi and Parpola and cited by Diwiyana[3]. Ligatured glyph of three sememes: 1. me body (Mu.); rebus: iron (Ho.); 2. kui water carrier (Te.) Rebus: kuhi smelter furnace (Santali); 3. [kh] m a jag, notch, or indentation (as upon the edge of a tool or weapon); rebus: kh metal tools, pots and pans. Kalyanaraman Sarasvati Research Center

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May 21, 2013

PS: Eight short strokes ligatured to X glyph, may denote tama 'eight'; rebus: tamba 'copper'. Kalyan Some Munda etyma: <tama>(C) {NUM} ``^eight''. @N1213. #15421. <go-tama>(C) {NUM} ``^eighteen''. @N1223. #5672. <tama-kuRi>(C) {NUM} ``one ^hundred sixty''. @N1255. #9413. <tama-kuRi-gua>(C) {NUM} ``one ^hundred seventy''. @N1256. #9423.

Read on...Indus writing as metalware catalogs and not as agrarian accounting (S.Kalyanaraman, May 21, 2013). http://www.scribd.com/doc/142723881/Indus-writing-as-metalware-catalogs-and-not-asagrarian-accounting Indus writing as metalware catalogs and not as agrarian accounting

[1]

Indus writing in ancient near East Corpora and a dictionary, S. Kalyanaraman, Sarasvati
Siddhnti Subrahmaya astris New interpretation of the Amarakoa, Bangalore, http://indusscriptmore.blogspot.com/2011/08/problematic-13-stroke-signs-in-indus.html

Research Center, 2013

[2]

Vicaradarpana Press, 1872, p. 330.

[3]

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/on-perceiving-aryan-migrations-by.html On perceiving aryan migrations by Witzel misquoting vedic ritual texts. Explaining mleccha vcas in Indian sprachbund. On perceiving aryan migrations by Witzel misquoting vedic ritual texts. Explaining mleccha vcas in Indian sprachbund. See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/rethinking-indian-historicallinguistics.html Rethinking Indian historical linguistics Ref.: http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2013/05/indian-historical-linguistics to the article 610

mentioned in Prof. Nicholas Kazanas' response. Kalyanaraman ---------- Forwarded message ---------From: Nicholas Kazanas Date: Mon, May 20, 2013 at 10:41 AM Subject: Re: Please comment on this article in Economist about Sanskrit (and PIE) Dear Friends, I have read the piece "Setting the record straight". The title is misleading for it sets the record crooked! By and large the article expresses many truths well known to all. In fact, at the start one wonders why it was written at all. However, in the last paragraphs one sees that the apparent humdrum objectivity masked the purpose to promote a specific political/religious viewpoint and/or perpetuate the long moribund myth of the Aryan Invasion, now termed "immigration". For here we see an open attack on those who seek to establish a correct view of Indian Protohistory. "Linguists know, based on reams of research, that a form of PIE, the language, did arrive in India from elsewhere becoming Sanskrit over time" the writer avers and emphasises the fact that it was the language and not people that arrived. With admirable insouciance he does not bother to tell us how these reams of research explain the arrival of an entire (highly complex) language without people who spoke it (perhaps like pollen on winds?), the date of 1700 BCE, the sanskritisation of that huge area (Land of the Seven Rivers) in N-W India and Pakistan of today, the settlement in a terrain that was desiccated while the native Harappans were moving or had moved eastward and other similar mysteries. Now, undoubtedly there are some, perhaps many, writers, Indian and others, who claim that Sanskrit is utterly pure and perfect, that all languages derive from it, that the Vedas are millions of years old and other similar notions. Such claims are no more non-sensical or unsupportable 611

than the one the writer puts forth as proven and established fact. Despite the broad sweeps through history and the multifarious references to many languages, our writer remains at a very superficial level of scholarship parroting second- and third-hand opinions from the mainstream murky morass. There is no "ironclad scholarship in IndoEuropean linguistics": it has cracks and gushes everywhere as the scholars disagree about most aspects some of which are flagrantly false. For details see N. Kazanas 2009 Indoaryan Origins and other Vedic Issues, Aditya Prakashan; also Collapse of the AIT and prevalence of Indigenism in http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/en/default_en.asp . Here I can only mention a few aspects in brief. Eg that PIE has been "reconstructed", when nobody knows that this reconstruction is the PIE(!); that linguistic change was regular or uniform even in the selfsame linguistic environment, when IE languages changed manifestly in very different ways; that there were several laryngeals, when only Hittite had sounds so described; that Hittite is the oldest branch and closest to the PIE, when it does not have the IE words for the eight closest of human relationships (brother, daughter, father, husband, mother etc), all present in Sanskrit and Avestan (Old Persian) and partly present in all the other branches; that Avestan is older than Sanskrit; that the isoglosses indicate as the IE homeland the southern Russian Steppe; and so on: all these are untrue! Yes, there is a large body of mainstream scholars holding passionately these notions, just as there was an immoveable conviction in all scholars up until the end of the 16th cent that the earth was at the centre of the solar system or just as today many die-hard leftists continue to claim that communism despite its abysmal failure everywhere will save the world. The issue at stake is the alleged entry of Sanskrit (or Old Indoaryan) c. 1700 BCE. Not only dispassionate linguistic, literary and archaeological studies, but also all genetic researches since 2003, show clearly that there has been no significant entry of non-indigenous people into that area after 10000 and before 600 BCE - at least not large enough to leave its mark on the indigenous culture or on the DNA of the native people. Again see for more details http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/en/default_en.asp . f more is needed, let me know. N. Kazanas. 612

Witzel misquoted a vedic ritual text to justify his continued reliance on Aryan Migration into India theories. This has been effectively refuted by Vishal Agarwal in the following article: http://www.scribd.com/doc/142504686/On-Perceiving-Aryan-Migrations-in-Vedic-Ritual-TextsBy-Vishal-Agarwal-Puratattva-Bulletin-of-the-Indian-Archaeolgical-Society-New-Delhi-No-36 Source: http://www.eshiusa.org/Articles/VedicEvidenceforAMT-Puratattva.pdf

On Perceiving Aryan Migrations in Vedic Ritual Texts: By Vishal Agarwal Puratattva (Bulletin of the Indian Archaeolgical Society), New Delhi, No. 36, 2005-06, pp. 155-165 by kalyan974696

Now, linguists seem to veer round to the possibility that India was a linguistic area, sprachbund. This may explain why Manu states: 10.43 mukhabahurpajjnaam y loke jtayo bahih mlecchavca cryavcas te sarve dasyuvah smth Those born in the world, those who employ arya speech and those who employ mleccha speech both are remembered as dasyu), languages are classified as Mleccha vcas and Arya vcas ( that is, lingua franca and literary Sanskrit). Monier Williams dictionary notes: mleccha vc (opp. To rya vc);mlecchaakhya called mleccha, copper; mlecchana the act of speaking confusedly or barbarously, Dhaatup.; mlecchita = mlishta (Paan. 7.2.18); mlecchitaka speaking in a foreign jargon (unintelligible to others). Mleccha languages were viewed by Patanjali as apaabdas which could not be employed during dhytmika duties. Apaabda use on other occasions was acceptable in the linguistic world of Patanjali. (Madhav Deshpande, 1993, Sandkrit and Prakrit, p. 32). For Patanjali, mleccha is apaabda, corrupt speech, maybe a reference to the use of Prakrits or of prakritised Sanskrit. Correct use of words was emphasized by using eteshm for performing shraddha ceremony for pittrayi (father, grandfather and great-grandfather, male line); but the feminine form etsm when performing the shraddha ceremony for mttrayi (mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, female line). 613

In Jaina records, mleccha are Dasyu. In Jaina geography, karmabhumi has six parts: one khanda was peopled by noble, meritorious good people; the other five were mleccha khandas, peopled by the rest of the inhabitants of the karmabhumi. Of course, Vidura speaks to Yudhishthira in mleccha language (mleccha vaacaa, 1.135.6b). In Mudrarakshasa, Chandraguptas foil is Malayaketu, a mleccha. The arya-mleccha opposition is insignificant in the play and virtually nonexistent in the rest of the Indian tradition on Chandragupta (Robert E. Goodwin, 1998, The playworld of Sanskrit drama, p.114) Kumarila Bhatta (6th cent.), in his commentary, Tantra Vaarttika, clearly notes Arya, mleccha and Dravida usages, refers to the countries inhabited by the Mlecchas being innumerable, (TV, 1.111.6). loc. cit. Kapil Kapoor, Language, linguistics and literature, the Indian perspective, p. 51 http://tinyurl.com/na7wer Mleccha people Mlecchas were present everywhere; Aryans and mlecchas alike drink water from the various rivers of Bharatavarsha (6.10.12). Mahabharata notes: From Yadu were born the Yadavas, TurvasuS sons are the Yavanas, Druhyus sons are the Bhojas, Anus are the mleccha jaatis. (1.80.26-27). Mleccha teachers are mentioned (Mlecchaacaaryaah, 12.4.8c. Yudhishthira notes that mlecchas also engage in fasting (13.109.1b). [In Tamil texts Mullaippaattu, 41-46. pp. 214-18; 'Silappadhikaram V. pp, 9 12, the term Yavana is rendered Sonagar by the earlier and mleccha by the later Commentator.] Samudragupta conquered Kashmir and Afghanistan which were mleccha countries at that time and enlarged his empire (VR Ramachandra Dikshitar, 1993, The Gupta polity, p.199) People born from the tail of the celestial cow Nandini, kept by Vasishtha. Mahabharata: 1. Mlecchas sent Vishvamitra flying in terror 614

2. Bhimasena defeated the mlecchas living in the coastal regions and took several valuable diamonds as tax 3. Mlecchas living in the coastal area were once defeated by Sahadeva of Pandavas 4. Nakula also once defeated the mlecchas 5. Bhagadatta was the king of mlecchas 6. Bhagadatta accompanied by mlecchas living on the coasts attended the Rajasuya of Yudhishthira 7. Mlecchas will be born on earth at the beginning of Pralaya 8. Kalki, incarnation of Vishnu will destroy the mlecchas 9. Karna during his campaign conquered many mleccha countries 10. A place of habitation in Bharat is called mleccha 11. Anga, a mleccha warrior was killed in battle by Bhimasena 12. Once mlecchas attacked Arjuna with arrows. Arjuna killed the hairy soldiers 13. Satyaki killed many mleccha soldiers in the great war 14. Nakula killed Anga, a mleccha king 15. Arjuna had to face a great army of mlecchas to protect the yaagaashva 16. The wealth that remained in the Yaagashaalaa of Yudhishthira after the distribution of gifts to Brahmins was taken away by the mlecchas 615

17. Mlecchas droved angered elephants on to the army of the Pandavas. Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Puranas, 2001, by Parmeshwaranand http://tinyurl.com/n5n3de [quote] Exploring Identity and the Other in Ancient India Mleccha (and its equivalent milakkha) are usually translated as foreigner or barbarian. A translation which is inadequate in so many ways but not least because it implies that it was a word used by Indians to describe non-Indians. In fact it is a term used by some writers who lived in certain parts of India to describe people native to what we think of as India but who lacked some important criteria the writer felt defined his cultural identity (language, religion, geographical location, ancestry etc.). Most often it was used by Brahmanical writers to describe those outside of the aryavarta Parsher begins with a discussion of the etymology of Mleccha. As the earliest reference occurs in the Satapatha Brahmana, which is part of an oral tradition dating to before 500 BC, scholars have usually looked for various origins in the bronze age societies of the first and second millennium BCE... In fact in early texts it is clear that mleccha status was defined largely in terms of language (either the inability to use Sanskrit, or the inability to use it correctly). Language was central to identity in ancient India, as evidence by the process of Sanskritization in the early centuries AD, the importance of the Grammarians from Panini onwards. Readers interested in this aspect should also consult the very good collection of essays by Madhav M Deshpande, Sanskrit & Prakrit: Sociolinguistic Issues (Mohilal Banarsidass, 1993) Arthasastra suggests that mleccha would make valuable mercenaries, in fact it prescribes their use for a number of activities (assassination, espionage, poisoning) which might be considered beneath arya. This is a not entirely positive view, but it is a pragmatic one. The epics, which Parsher takes as generally later in tone, also portray the mleccha as valuable mercenaries. On the other hand, the Dharmasastra literature generally takes a theoretical (but not consistent) view of non-contact with the mleccha, and the Mudraraksasa a similar position, portraying 616

Malayaketu as depending on mleccha mercenaries in contrast to Chandragupta. If the sources are taken in this order, they suggest a shift towards a rhetoric (if not reality) of mleccha exclusion The assertion that 'aboriginals were apparently ostracized because of their backwardness and repulsive habits' Parasher vacilitates '... they were all listed together as mlecchas. This is not difficult to understand and can be explained by the fact that to the brahmin writers these people were all outside the varnasramadharma' (p. 214). [unquote] Source: About: Aloka Parasher,1991, Mlecchas in Early India Munishiram Manorharlal. http://www.kushan.org/reviews/mlecchas.htm A milakkhu (Pali) is disconnected from vc and does not speak Vedic; he spoke Prakrt. " na ry mlecchanti bh bhir myay na caranty uta: aryas do not speak with crude dialects like mlecchas, nor do they behave with duplicity (MBh. 2.53.8). a dear friend of Vidura who was a professional excavator is sent by Vidura to help the Pavas in confinement; this friend of Vidura has a conversation with Yudhisthira, the eldest Pava: "kapake caturdasym tv asya purocanah, bhavanasya tava dvri pradsyati hutsanam, mtr saha pradagdhavyh Pavh puru arabhh, iti vyavasitam prtha dhrta rrsya me rutam, kicic ca vidurenkoto mleccha-vcsi Pava, tyay ca tat tathety uktam etad visvsa kraam: on the fourteenth evening of the dark fortnight, Purocana will put fire in the door of your house. The Pandavas are leaders of the people, and they are to be burned to death with their mother. This, Prtha (Yudhi ira), is the determined plan of Dhtarras son, as I have heard it. When you were leaving the city, Vidura spoke a few words to you in the dialect of the mlecchas, and you replied to him, So be it. I say this to gain your trust.(MBh. 1.135.4-6). This passage shows that there were two Aryans distinguished by language and ethnicity, Yudhis.t.ra and Vidura. Both are aryas, who could speak mlecchas language; Dhr.tara_s.t.ra and his people are NOT aryas only because of their behaviour. Melakkha, island-dwellers According to the great epic, Mlecchas lived on islands: "sa sarvn mleccha npatin sgara dvpa vsinah, aram hrym sa ratnni vividhni ca, andana aguru vastri mai muktam anuttamam, kcanam rajatam vajram vidrumam ca mah dhanam: (Bhima) arranged for all the mleccha kings, who dwell on the ocean islands, to bring varieties of gems, sandalwood, aloe, garments, and incomparable jewels and pearls, gold, silver, diamonds, and extremely valuable 617

coral great wealth." (MBh. 2.27.25-26). A series of articles and counters had appeared in the Journal of the Economic and social history of the Orient, Vol.XXI, Pt.II, Elizabeth C.L. During Caspers and A. Govindankutty countering R.Thapar's dravidian hypothesis for the locations of Meluhha, Dilmun and Makan; Thapar's A Possible identification of Meluhha, Dilmun, and Makan appeared in the journal Vol. XVIII, Part I locating these on India's west coast. Bh. Krishnamurthy defended Thapar on linguistic grounds in Vol. XXVI, Pt. II: *mel-u-kku =3D highland, west; *teLmaN (=3D pure earth) ~ dilmun; *makant =3D male child (Skt. vi_ra =3D male offspring. [cf. K. Karttunen (1989). India in Early Greek Literature. Helsinki, Finnish Oriental Society. Studia Orientalia. Vol. 65. 293 pages. ISBN 9519380-10-8, pp. 11 ff et passim. Asko Parpola (1975a). Isolation and tentative interpretation of a toponym in the Harappan inscriptions. Le dechiffrement des ecritures et des langues. Colloque du XXXIXe congres des orientalistes, Paris Juillet 1973. Paris, Le dechiffrement des ecritures et des langues. Colloque du XXXIXe congres des orientalistes, Paris Juillet 1973. 121-143 and Asko Parpola (1975b). "India's Name in Early Foreign Sources." Sri Venkateswara University Oriental Journal, Tirupati, 18: 9-19.] Meluhha trade was first mentioned by Sargon of Akkad (Mesopotamia 2370 B.C.) who stated that boats from Dilmun, Magan and Meluhha came to the quay of Akkad (Hirsch, H., 1963, Die Inschriften der Konige Von Agade, Afo, 20, pp. 37-38; Leemans, W.F., 1960,Foreign Trade in the Old Babylonian Period, p. 164; Oppenheim, A.L., 1954, The seafaring merchants of Ur, JAOS, 74, pp. 6-17). The Mesopotamian imports from Meluhha were: woods, copper (ayas), gold, silver, carnelian, cotton. Gudea sent expeditions in 2200 B.C. to Makkan and Meluhha in search of hard wood. Seal impression with the cotton cloth from Umma (Scheil, V., 1925, Un Nouvea Sceau Hindou Pseudo-Sumerian, RA, 22/3, pp. 55-56) and cotton cloth piece stuck to the base of a silver vase from Mohenjodaro (Wheeler, R.E.M., 1965, Indus Civilization) are indicative evidence. Babylonian and Greek names for cotton were: sind, sindon. This is an apparent reference to the cotton produced in the black cotton soils of Sind and Gujarat. Milakku, Meluhha and copper Copper-smelting had to occur on the outskirts of a village. Hence, the semantic equivalence of milakkha as copper. Mleccha in Pali is milakkha or milakkhu to describe those who dwell on the 618

outskirts of a village. (Shendge, Malati, 1977, The civilized demons: the Harappans in Rigveda, Rigveda, Abhinav Publications). "Gordon Childe refers to the 'relatively large amount of social labour' expended in the extraction and distribution of copper and tin', the possession of which, in the form of bronze weaponry, 'consolidated the positions of war-chiefs and conquering aristocracies' (Childe 1941: 133)... With the publication of J.D. Muhly's monumental Copper and Tin in 1973 (Muhly 1973: 155-535; cf. 1976: 77-136) an enormous amount of data on copper previously scattered throughout the scholarly literature became easily accessible... cuneiform texts consistently distinguish refined (urudu-luh-ha) [cf. loha = red, later metal (Skt.)] from unrefined copper (urudu) strongly suggests that it was matte (impure mixture of copper and copper sulphide) and not refined copper that was often imported into the country. Old Assyrian texts concerned with the import of copper from Anatolia distinguish urudu from urudu-sig, the latter term appearing when written phonetically as dammuqum, 'fine, good' (CAD D: 180, s.v. dummuqu), and this suggests that it is not just 'fine quality' but actually 'refined' copper that is in question... TIN. In antiquity tin (Sum. nagga/[AN.NA], Akk.annaku) was important, not in its own right, but as an additive to copper in the production of the alloy bronze (Sum. sabar, Akk. siparru) (Joannes 1993: 97-8)... In some cases, ancient recipes call for a ratio of tin to copper as high as 1: 6 or 16.6 per cent, while other texts speak of a 1:8 ratio or 12.5 per cent (Joannes 1993: 104)... 'there is little or no tin bronze' in Western Asia before c. 3000 B.C. (Muhly 1977: 76; cf. Muhly 1983:9). The presence of at least four tin-bronzes in the Early Dynastic I period... Y-Cemetery at Kish signals the first appearance of tin-bronze in southern Mesopotamia... arsenical copper continued in use at sites like Tepe Gawra, Fara, Kheit Qasim and Ur (Muhly 1993: 129). By the time of the Royal Cemetery at Ur (Early Dynastic IIIa), according to M.Muller-Karpe, 'tin-bronze had become the dominant alloy' (Muller-Karpe 1991: 111) in Southern Mesopotamia... Gudea of Lagash says he received tin from Meluhha... and in the Old Babylonian period it was imported to Mari from Elam... Abhidhna Cintmai of Hemachandra states that mleccha and mleccha-mukha are two of the twelve names forcopper: tmram (IV.105-6: tmram mlecchamukham ulvam raktam dvaamudumbaram; mlecchavarabhedkhyam markatsyam kanyasam; brahmavarddhanam variham ssantu ssapatrakam). Theragth in Pali refers to a banner which was dyed the colour of copper: milakkhurajanam (The Thera and Theragth PTS, verse 619

965: milakkhurajanam rattam garahant sakam dhajam; tithiynam dhajam keci dhressanty avadtakam; K.R.Norman, tr., Theragth : Finding fault with their own banner which is dyed the colour of copper, some will wear the white banner of sectarians).[cf. Asko and Simo Parpola, On the relationship of the Sumerian Toponym Meluhha and Sanskrit Mleccha, Studia Orientalia, vol. 46, 1975, pp. 205-38). http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/sarasvati/html/vedictech.htm An excellent introduction to the introduction of writing system by Meluhha traders is provided by Massimo Vidale: [quote] In Mesopotamia and in the Gulf, the immigrant Indus families maintained and trasmitted their language, the writing system and system of weights of the motherland (known in Mesopotamia as the Dilmunite standard) as strategic tools of trade. Their official symbol of the gaur might have stressed, together with the condition of living in a foreign world, an ideal connection with the motherland. Nonetheless, they gradually adopted the use of foreign languages and introduced minor changes in the writing system for tackling with new, rapidy evolving linguistic needs. [unquote] Massimo Vidale, 2004, Growing in a Foreign World. For a History of the Meluhha Villages in Mesopotamia in the 3rd Millennium BC http://www.scribd.com/doc/2566221/meluhhanvillage Two great inventions of 4th millennium BCE: alloying and writing The artisans of the bronze age not only mined for precious minerals but also experimented with alloying of minerals to attain hard metals for tools and weapons. Matching this invention of alloying was the invention of the writing system known as Indus script during ca. 4th millennium BCE. The writing system of smiths and mine-workers reported on their repertoire of minerals and furnaces used to create surplus goods for long-distance trade between Meluhha and Mesopotamia. http://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/mlecchitavikalpa The writing system is called, mlecchita vikalpa that is, cryptography, an alternative mode of 620

representing mleccha language words. The phrase mlecchita vikalpa is used as one of the 64 arts to be learnt by youth in Vatsyayanas Kamasutra. The technique used is hieroglyphs, read rebus. Hence, the appearance of many pictorial motifs in over 400 glyptic signs and over 100 pictorial motifs in the corpus of inscriptions.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/ancient-ivory-metal-traces-on.html Indus writing and ancient Ivory. Metal traces on Phoenician artifacts show long-gone paint and gold Indus writing and ancient Ivory. Metal traces on Phoenician artifacts show long-gone paint and gold An area for further investigation is if the ivories such as combs with Indus writing also had traces of iron oxide or gold paints to posit a hypothesis that the Nimrod ivories were a continuum of the Indus bronze-age artistic legacy.

Kalyanraman

Carved ivory counters found at Moghenjodaro.

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Afghanistan Museum Treasure Pictures: Cracking the Gold Safe This carved ivory panel depicts scenes of Bactrian royal court life..It comes from Begram,the Kabul area summer capital of the Kushan kings and dates back to the second or third century. Bactrian culture.

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A Rare Bactrian Gold Pendant in the Form of a Lion Inlaid with Lapis Lazuli, Carnelian, and Turquoise Gold with lapis lazuli, carnelian, and turquoise, early second millennium B.C.E. Painted Terracotta Idol of Bull. Indus Valley Cultures. c. 2600-2450 B.C.

Painted Terracotta. Indus Valley Culture. Mohenjo-daro /Harappa. c. 2600-2450 B.C. 15.5 cm long. 13 cm. tall. Formerly in a Danish Private Collection. A Zebu (Indus Bull) stands head forward, horns high, with a large hump. The figure exhibits large eyes and ears and has a well formed shape to the face. A bridle wraps the animal's head and falls behind the horns. The body of the idol is painted in a polka dot pattern, with a wavy pattern present on horns and hatch marks running down the face of the animal. There is a small hole at the bottom of the figure, under the front legs, which probably was used along with a stick to animate the idol like a puppet.

Condition is fantastic on this example, with much of its original paint preserved.

Please see J.Aruz ed, Art of the Ancient Cities, 2003: no.276, p.390 for a comparative. http://www.numismall.com/PBJI/Painted-Terracotta-Idol-of-Bull.-Indus-Valley-Cultures.-c.-26002450-B.C..html

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See: http://www.ecai.org/begramweb/

1/2 | 1996 : Inde-Asie centrale : routes du commerce et des ides Marchands et artisans Begram: along ancient Central Asian and Indian trade routes Sanjyot Mehendale p. 47-64 1One of the important factors in the rapid development of Silk Road1 trade during the early Common Era was the establishment and growth of the Kushan Empire, which had a profound effect on the political and economic stability of much of Central Asia. Descendents of nomadic tribes from the steppes of the Tienshan and Altai mountains, who were pushed westwards by rival groups and who settled in the region of ancient Bactria in the second century BCE, the Kushans territorial expansion2 brought under their control a large area stretching from modern Uzbekistan in the north to the Indian Ganges Valley in the south. Facilitated by the international trade emphasized by both the Han Dynasty in China and the Roman Empire, the Kushans own trade-based economy ensured a steady flow of goods, people and attendant cultures throughout the region. The combination of a large heterogeneous empire plus a tradeenhancing policy of unrestricted movement of merchandise and persons resulted under the Kushans in a commingling of varied religious and artistic ideas. Kushan numismatics clearly demonstrate a mixture of religious images which drew upon deities from Rome, Hellenized Central Asia, Iran and India, a cooptation which can be viewed as part of an attempt to pacify subject peoples and legitimize Kushan rule by reflecting the varied beliefs current across their empire. Similarly, the arts of the Bactrian, Gandhran and Mathur schools demonstrate varying styles which were allowed to flourish simultaneously within the Kushan Empire. Likewise, the architectural features of both religious and secular structures, while demonstrating certain commonalities, were clearly permitted to display regional differences. From each type of 624

evidence, then, it seems that the Kushan state imposed no strict control over the development of art and architecture3 within its empire but rather stimulated regional variety in religious and artistic activity. 2The aspects of ancient Silk Road trade and exchange most often considered by archaeologists and historians are those which might be categorized as official and/or commercial trade. The focus usually remains on actual commodities traded, on the organization of that trade that is, through governments or private merchants and on the methods and particular routes by which such commodities traveled. Only to a lesser degree is examination made of the nature and extent of indirect cultural exchange which often, if less obviously, occurs alongside official or commercial trade. What ideas were exchanged along with objects when peoples met during the course of extended cross-cultural contacts? What new forms, images, constructions sparked the imagination of artisans and technicians such that they were moved to incorporate them in their work? 4 The site was apparently founded in the Graeco-Bactrian period but remained a small military strongh(...) 3One of the more fascinating but sadly neglected sites dating from the Kushan period is the ancient ruins situated near modern Begram4. Begram is particularly interesting in light of the theme of this conference volume, which seeks to examine commercial and cultural exchanges between Central Asia and India. Objects found at this ancient site of Begram, in modern Afghanistan, offer a rare opportunity to examine the regions trade. In one location were discovered artifacts of broad international progeny: Chinese lacquers, Roman bronzes, glassware and plaster models and Indianesque ivory and bone objects. But more than just official trade, the Begram ivory and bone objects in particular offer an excellent opportunity to view elements of the regions indirect cultural exchange. 4Begram is situated at the confluence of the Ghurband and Panjshir Rivers of eastern Afghanistan, 80 kilometers north of Kabul and approximately 250 kilometers northwest of the legendary Khyber pass. Looking at a topographic map of the region, the location of the site at 625

Begram is particularly striking. To the south, the Kohdaman Plains stretch all the way to Kabul. To the southeast, the Panjshir River and Valley flow down toward the Jalalabad Plains from which it is a relatively easy journey to the Khyber Pass, today connecting Afghanistan with Peshawar in Pakistan. To the north, a number of passes and river valleys lead to the plains of ancient Bactria, along sites such as Surkh Kotal and Bactra, the capital of ancient Bactria. These passes of the western Hindu Kush mountains were renowned lines of communication between Bactria and India, which carried along their paths not only people and materials but also the cultures attendant thereon. These passes also connected the area of Begram with stations along the Silk Roads from China to the Mediterranean. 5In total, Begrams geographic location provides a suggestive context for a study of the nature of the settlements there and of the finds: Begrams crossroads locale can be easily conceived of not only as particularly well-suited to development as a trading center but also as well-placed for strategic military defense, enhancing the likelihood that the site would have been chosen for significant trade and perhaps production, and the attendant storage of goods and materials. 1 Greek and Roman sources mention the peoples in East Asia as making silk and hence called them the (...) 2 One of the main reasons for the rise of the Kushans may have been that they managed to seize contro(...) 3 The Kushans did sponsor the building of certain religious monuments, but how much control they exer(...) 4 The site was apparently founded in the Graeco-Bactrian period but remained a small military strongh(...) 5 See Mehendale, S., Pilgrims Process: Begram and a Reexamination of Hsan-tsangs Kpis,Res Ori(...)

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6 Kuwayama points to some inconsistencies in his article Kapisi Begram III in Orient10: 5778, Par(...) 6The ruins of Begram constituted a substantial urban settlement incorporating two fortified enclosures: to the north, what was called the Old Royal City by Foucher (Foucher 1925: 266) and was locally known as the Burj-i Abdullah; and to the south, what has been referred to as the New Royal City, where most excavations have taken place. The site was initially identified by A. Foucher in the 1920s as the ancient Kpis, summer capital of the Kushan emperors (Foucher 1925: 259, 266; 1931: 342). Although subsequent research, in this writers opinion5, has failed to confirm this identification, it gave early impetus to archaeological investigations of the site which were carried out by the French Archaeological Delegation between 1936 and 1946 (Hackin 1939, 1954; Ghirshman 1946; Hackin, Carl & Meuni 1959). Architectural investigations by Roman Ghirshman indicated to him that the lowest levels of that part of the site called the New Royal City are to be dated in the Graeco-Bactrian/Early Kushan period, that is, the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE; that the subsequent two strata correspond to the period of the Great Kushans, up to the 3rd century CE; and the topmost stratum to the 3rd to 4th/5th centuries CE, the later Kushan period (Ghirshman 1946: 99-108). Ghirshmans assertions were based on analysis of the architectural levels and the numismatic evidence. It should be noted that several scholars6 have questioned his theories concerning dating of the strata, and one should thus be cautioned against accepting them, standing alone, as precise. 7The Begram site is most famous for the discovery during the 1937 and 1939 campaigns (Hackin 1939, 1954), under the direction of Joseph Hackin, of a large number of extraordinary objects neatly stored in two, apparently anciently sealed-off, rooms in that part of the New Royal City which the excavators came to refer to as the Palace. As will be discussed shortly, however, the appellation Palace for this structure, and the excavators reference to the finds as a royal treasure or hoard, may result from a misapprehension by these early researchers concerning the nature and the dating of the finds. 7 See Hackin 1954: figs 241-242. The pot is in the shape of a bird-woman. Her hands are held in anja(...) 627

8 Almost all the objects were published in the two excavation volumes Mmoires de la

Dlgation arch(...)
8The objects found in these sealed-off rooms consisted of numerous pieces which evinced a high degree of artisanship and which, fascinatingly, had their origins in various and distant parts of the world: among them, an Indianesque piece of earthenware referred to as the Kinnari pot7, Graeco-Roman objects such as a bronze satyr head, painted glass beakers with analogies to Roman Alexandria, pillar-moulded bowls found also in several sites of the Arabian peninsula and in Arikamedu in India, and plaster medallions. Also found were fragments of Chinese lacquer objects the decoration of which is similar to ones found in Noin-ula, Mongolia and in Lolang, Korea, as well as numerous carved ivory and bone objects generally thought to originate either from north-central or southern India8. 9 See Mehendale, S., forthcoming dissertation, Cultural Crossroads: the Ivory and Bone

Carvings of Be(...)
9Since their discovery in 1937 and 1939, the ivory and bone objects in particular have been the subject of extensive stylistic analyses (Auboyer 1948, 1954, 1971; Kurz 1954; Stern 1954; Davidson 1971, 1972; Rogers 1952) in an attempt both to indicate their place or places of origin within India and to date the pieces. Since the archaeological evidence seems to indicate that the stratum of the finds corresponds to the broad period of the Great Kushans, initial efforts at stylistically dating the objects permitted placing several pieces two or three centuries apart. This led some scholars to believe that the objects probably had been gathered over several centuries, a hypothesis which simultaneously supported and was confirmed by the assertion that the artifacts as a whole were a royal treasure or hoard, and the particular portion of the site a summer Kushan imperial palace. This writers own research9 into the finds and the nature of the settlement, however, has suggested something somewhat different: that the ivory and bone finds could all be dated in approximately the same first century CE time period, and that, consistent with this thesis, the so-called Begram treasure could well have been merchants commercial stock deposited at the site along established trade routes. For example, 628

stylistic comparisons of the ivory and bone objects with ivories found at Pompeii, at Taxila and in Bactria support this proposed date; similarly, analogous pillar-moulded bowls found on the Arabian peninsula (Haerinck 1988; 1-27) and in India date exclusively from the mid-first century CE; and comparative stylistic dating yields the same results for the Chinese lacquers (Elisseeff 1954). 10When the finds are viewed as first century merchants stock awaiting further distribution, they provide an opportunity to examine the regions official commodities trade during that era and the nature of the settlement of Begram and its relation to other trading partners. The fact, if established, that the goods at Begram traveled from diverse places in the same era and were stored together in one place suggests that the site was a point of consumption, of collection for further distribution, of active trading, or a combination thereof. Considering Begram as a commercial storage and distribution site may help to explain why the rooms in which the objects were found were sealed-off: because of the length of time required for ancient trade to make its way between distant points, there was a need for long-term protection of goods while awaiting further movement. 10 For detailed description of the reconstructions by J. Carl and P. Hamelin see Hackin 1939, 1954. So(...) 11 Unfortunately, most of the ivory and bone carvings were too damaged to recognize any markings on th(...) 11In addition to matters of commodities trade, Begram presents the occasion to research elements of indirect cultural exchange between Central Asia and India through an analysis of the origin of the ivory and bone objects as suggested by various heterogeneous elements depicted on them. The ivory and bone objects discovered in the two rooms at Begram consist mainly of small plaques and bands, variously engraved [figure 1] or in relief [figure 2] and occasionally displaying traces of red and black paint, and of larger sculptures in high relief which appear almost as if carved in the round. Judging from small drilled holes in the objects, originally they formed the outer decorative layer of furniture,10 the wooden skeletons of which had long 629

since disintegrated due to burial in humid soil. On the reverse sides of some of the ivory and bone objects were marks in the Kharoshth and Brhm scripts of the Kushan period, which may have indicated the place of each piece in the various ensembles.11 Figure 1. Bone, Begram n 332

Courtesy Muse Guimet (from Hackin 1939: fig. 206) Figure 2. Ivory, Begram n 34a. 5

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Kabul Museum (from Hackin 1954: fig. 9)

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12These ivory and bone objects hardly form an homogeneous group. In addition to various motifs and the use of different carving techniques, it appears that different hands were involved in the creation of the pieces. Indeed, the differences in styles, methods and influences may well be seen to reflect different places of origin of the objects and/or artisans who produced them. 13As mentioned above, several of the motifs depicted on the ivory and bone objects from Begram have been identified with, and thus are thought to have originated from, the art of the Indian heartland, that is, from sites such as Mathur and Sanci in central India and Amarvat from the Deccan area in southern India. And a comparison of certain motifs seems, at least initially, to bear this out. For example, among the hairstyles of the women depicted in the Begram ivory and bone objects [figure 2] are large buns and loops similar to the style of Bodhgaya and Mathur (Czuma 1985: nos. 30-31). Circular ornaments adorning the womens foreheads [figure 3] also are depicted on reliefs from Mathur (Czuma 1985: nos. 24 and 26) and Amarvat. Similarities also exist for clothing and scenes depicted. Also, the vyla-yaksa and mkara (Hackin 1939: figs. 73 and 74) which appear in some Begram objects are known from first century CE Mathura (Czuma 1985: nos. 7 and 8), as is the purnakumbha or vase of plenty (Hackin 1939: fig. 64). In addition, the architectural designs on the ivory and bone objects (Hackin 1954: fig. 68) compare favorably to early, that is first century BCE to first century CE, monuments of India proper, such as the Stpa at Sahci. Figure 3. Ivory, Begram n 320b

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Kabul Museum (from Hackin 1939: fig. 81) Figure 4. Ivory, Begram n 320

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Kabul Museum (from Hackin 1939: fig. 78) 14However, many of these analogies also exist in the art of the north-west region of Gandhra and certain motifs on the ivory and bone objects may point to this more eclectic region as the location of origin for some of the pieces. These motifs, unfortunately, have been ignored by almost all scholars; at most, there have been brief descriptive notations. These anomalous motifs appear in a number of forms. In one example, a woman is standing on a makra in a typical Indian pose. She has a full round face [figure 4] and her hair is done up in curls which encircle her head as a crown. Her long, clinging, pleated tunic with short sleeves, however, is

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very much in Hellenistic style and is strongly reminiscent not of the Indian south but of the northwest regions of Gandhra and Bactria, which were heavily influenced by Greek styles. 12 Since almost all clothing worn by the deceased were eroded, any reconstruction attempts should be a(...) 15A second example is a woman standing on a square platform (Hackin 1939: fig. 157). She, too, wears a long tunic with sleeves. Her hair, done up in a style reminiscent of women depicted in Indian art, is crowned by what looks like a twisted piece of cloth from the middle of which protrude three pointed leaf-like ornaments; again, this tiara-type element is known from the northwest region of Gandhra. Additionally, what differs from both Graeco-Roman style and the Indian styles of Mathur and Sahci is that the woman is wearing trousers underneath her tunic. Women wearing pants are, however, frequently depicted in Gandhran and Bactrian art, from which one could deduce a direct Kushan element. In this regard it can be noted that the women buried in the Tillya-tepe necropolis (Sarianidi 1985) probably wore pants.12 It is also interesting to note one particular depiction on an ivory of a hunter on horseback (Hackin 1954: fig. 123); round appliques seem to be sewn on his trousers, a technique well known in Saka-Parthian and Kushan costumes from Bactria. 16Comparative research on the ivory and bone objects has been faced with a major problem: only a very few ivory objects found in and out of the Indian subcontinent could be compared favorably to the ivory and bone objects from Begram. However, an ivory statuette found at Pompeii (During Caspers 1981) provides an excellent stylistic comparison, and it offers to the question of dating the Begram finds a terminus ante quem of 79 CE, when the Vesuvius erupted. Other analogous ivory objects from the northwest regions were found at the site of Taxila (Marshall 1975) in a stratum with a similar terminus ante quem date of 60 CE. 17In recent years, a number of ivory finds from the region of ancient Bactria has provided additional comparative material dated to the proto-Kushan and Kushan periods. The discovery of an ivory comb from the site of Dalverzin-tepe (Pugachenkova 1978) in present-day Uzbekistan presents the first inscribed ivory which is very similar in technique to objects from 635

the Begram finds. And an ivory comb from the Tillya-tepe necropolis (Sarianidi 1985) in northwest Afghanistan also compares favorably. 18Previous attempts that is, those made without benefit of comparison with the Pompeii, Taxila and Bactrian ivories at a critical stylistic analysis of the Begram ivory and bone objects have faced a difficult threshold problem: what to compare them with? India had yielded only few ivory and bone objects, certainly not enough to form a clear and complete view of the stylistic development of ivory and bone carving. This lack of material prompted scholars to look to a range of widely dated stone sculptures as sources for comparisons of styles and motifs. The continuing currency of the treasure theory that the Begram objects had been hoarded over time provided the theoretical liberty to do so. 19Dates proposed for individual objects from Begram have ranged from the 1st century BCE to the late 3rd, even 4th, century CE. This disparity in dating arose, it seems, because of a tendency on the part of some scholars to extract individual objects from the treasure and to date them outside the archaeological record, based exclusively on stylistic comparisons. Further, there has been a tendency by individual scholars to focus solely on the Indian objects, or solely on the Graeco-Roman finds, or on the Chinese lacquers, without simultaneously taking into detailed consideration the other two groups of objects discovered with them. 20This writers research attempts to draw together the archaeological evidence of the finds as a whole and to place the stylistic evidence within the archaeological context. Gradually, the widely separated dates proposed for several artifacts have been undermined by subsequent work which argues persuasively that almost all the objects of diverse origins can be attributed to the first century CE. As to the Roman objects, the great majority can be dated with reasonable certainty to the first century CE. Even where a single Romanesque object could be dated later or earlier, a first century date also remains strongly defensible. As David Whitehouse concluded regarding the Roman finds of Begram: The diagnostic items the glass, the metal objects, the plaster models and other objects belong to the 1st and early second c. Few of them can, and none of them must, be as late as the 3rd c. (Whitehouse 1989: 99). The fragments of Chinese 636

lacquer ware found at Begram are also quite telling with regard to dating the objects as a whole. In part because there are so few of them extant, the lacquer pieces have been largely overlooked in placing the Begram finds in the first century. Analogous lacquer finds in other regions of Asia strongly support the first century CE date (Elisseeff 1954: 151-156). Finally, analysis of the dates for the carved ivory and bone objects, based on analogous ivory finds, on the nature of the settlement at Begram, and on the dates of the two other categories of finds, points with reasonable certainty for these objects as well to the first century CE. 21In addition to a changing picture of dates for the objects, the presence of certain GraecoRoman, Gandhran stylistic elements, mostly on the incised material, may indicate a different provenance for some objects from that asserted by previous scholars. That is, while some may have been produced in Mathur, others of the ivory and bone objects may have originated in the extreme northwest area of Gandhra, in the region of Begram itself, or in Bactria rather than in heartland India. 13 See Hackin 1954, for a description of the plaster medallions. 22And the more diverse possible provenance for the ivory and bone objects begins to open up a view of Begram as a central part of a larger network of trade and cultural exchange, rather than as merely an outlying royal curiosity. The presence of the many plaster models at Begram adds to this shifting view of the site and the region. The plaster models13 serve to undermine the royal treasure theory no great value in plaster models and also to raise the intriguing possibility that Begram was not merely a crossroads storage site but a trading center with its own workshops or ateliers. While the plaster models may have been simply lower level trade ware to be handled by merchants operating out of Begram, it is also possible that the models were directly used by workshops or ateliers in Begram itself. And the possibility that workshops and ateliers existed at Begram prompts a reevaluation of the issue of how and from where the ivory and bone objects arrived, and indeed the very supposition that they came from somewhere else.

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23A number of possibilities arise concerning the provenance of the Indian-style ivory and bone objects. The simplest is that the completed objects were manufactured in India and then transported along trade routes to Begram. A second possibility is that although the ivory and bone objects originated either in Mathur or in the Stavhana region, they were transported to Begram in parts and were assembled there. This could explain the marks which appear on the backs of some of the ivory pieces and which may have existed on more. If such assembly did regularly take place at Begram, at least some workshops may have been maintained there. 14 Not all translations are identical. But in some renderings (Pal 1978: 46) the group of travellers i(...) 24A third possibility, however, is that at least some of the ivory and bone objects were actually carved at Begram by Indian, Indian-trained or Indian-influenced artisans who had settled at the site because of the active trade occurring there. Such a theory is supported by ancient Indian literature (see Jtakas 1973, I: 174-177; Dwivedi 1979: 18) which seems to indicate that not only did ivory carvers locate themselves together within cities, with their work significantly organized, but that they were also direct buyers of ivory and worked for themselves as a more direct part of a commercial economy than is usually attributed to artisans of the time. Further, from Jtaka stories (see Jtakas 1973, II: 172ff.)14 it is also clear that some ivory artisans were itinerant, suggesting that the carvers of the Begram ivory and bone objects could have moved to and worked in Begram as part of Silk Roads trade in the region. Some of the stylistic components of the ivory and bone objects point to the extreme northwest region of Gandhra, indicating established ivory artisanship at least that far north. And northern distribution of incised ivory and bone ware, as represented by finds from Tillya-tepe, Dalverzin-tepe and Taxila, may indicate local production specifically for Silk Roads trade. 15 One of the ports mentioned in thePeriplus of the Erythraean Sea, a record of organized trade betwe(...) 25Whether or not Begram was an active manufacturing site, the nature of the objects found there, when viewed against the backdrop of Begrams geographical location, suggests the sites 638

place in the patterns of movement along ancient trade routes between India and the regions of the West and the Far East. The Indo-Caspian Highway is thought to have run from Bactria over the Amu Darya river toward the Caspian Sea and then on to the Mediterranean; Begram was thus strategically located to connect both with routes to and from India and with the Silk Roads between China and the West. Sea routes, too, linked the Roman world with the Indian subcontinent in the first century CE. The distribution of first century CE pillar-moulded bowls in the coastal areas of the Arabian Gulf, as well as in Arikamedu on the south-eastern coast of India, suggest that there existed at the time a sea trade from perhaps Syria or Alexandria in Egypt to as far as the east coast of India. The similar pillar-moulded bowls of Begram may have travelled via sea to the port of Barygaza15 at the mouth of the Indus, for example, and then north to connect with Silk Roads trade. The painted glass beakers and bronzes found at Begram are also thought to have originated from Alexandria, as indicated by analogous finds and iconographical research. Stylistic comparison of the Chinese lacquers to similar finds from sites in Mongolia, China and Korea demonstrate that they were manufactured in China during the Han Dynasty, which means that they travelled via the Silk Roads down to Begram. This might also indicate that sea routes all the way to China from the Indian peninsula had not yet been firmly established. 26Another reason may have existed why considerable trade moved through Begram, a reason which has been mentioned in passing but never fully explored in the literature about the region. Central Asia in general and the Begram area in particular may have had local products cultivated, manufactured or existing naturally which were valued, even coveted by the Roman, Chinese and Indian worlds and which were traded for goods such as those discovered at Begram. The area of modern Afghanistan was already known in the third millennium BCE as the producer of lapis lazuli from the Badakkshan mountains, northeast of Begram. From the finds at Tillya-tepe (Sarianidi 1985) it is clear that Bactria had an established tradition in metal smithing, and analogous gold jewelry pieces in Taxila (Marshall 1975) indicate a trade in those commodities. Similarly, the finds at Dalverzin-tepe (Pugachenkova 1978) in modern Uzbekistan

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included gold bars with Kharoshth writing on them, which suggests contact with the southern part of modern Afghanistan. 27In conclusion, this writers research does not purport to reject outright the hypothesis that the so-called Begram treasure was a royal collection or perhaps a customs depot where trade taxes in kind were protected. However, it does suggest another hypothesis: that both the finds and the nature of the settlement at Begram may indicate that the site was a center for trade, and perhaps for production of bone and ivory. The site was well situated to be connected through various routes with trading partners in Bactria, at Taxila and at Alexandria, and with areas of China along ancient trade routes between Central Asia and India, suggesting that the region was indeed an active hub of cultural exchange. 28In both public imagination and academic focus, Central Asia has long been marginalized as a land-locked region between the so-called great civilizations of China, India, the Middle East and Europe. Most attention garnered by the region has rested on its role as a transit zone for these other civilizations. The art of ancient Central Asia has been most often explained in terms of the impact on it by these civilizations, rather than by examination of its own distinctive elements. Further, a lack of historical documents from the region has prompted many scholars to rely on non-local written sources which are therefore necessarily limited and suspect for the creation of a Central Asian history. As Andre Gunder Frank has put it: history is usually written from a national perspective. Sino-centric, Indian-centric, Persian-centric, Islam-centric and other histories omit adequate reference to Central Asia and its great influence on their own histories. Civilized people write their own histories about themselves and not about their barbarian neighbours (Gunder Frank 1992: 2). 29Slowly, however, over the past decade, international scholarship has begun to focus on the centrality of Central Asia. The political opening of Central Asia for direct contact and research, combined with an increasing academic interest in the region and a focus on its centrality in the development of contacts between the ancient East and West, has provided significant impetus for joint archaeological projects which are expanding the historical record to 640

indicate how instrumental were Central-Asian cultures and social structures such as the Kushans at Begram in determining the particular ways in which Silk Road trade developed. Haut de page Bibliographie

Auboyer, J., Ancient Indian ivories from Begram, Afghanistan, Journal of the Indian Society of

Oriental Art, 16, 1948, p. 34-46.

Auboyer, J., La vie prive dans lInde ancienne daprs les ivoires de Begram , in J. Hackins Nouvelles Recherches archologiques Begram, Mmoires de la Dlgation

archologique franaise en Afghanistan (henceforth MDAFA), XI, Paris, 1954, p. 59-82.

Auboyer, J., Private life in ancient India as seen from the ivory sculptures of Begram, Marg, 24, 3, 1971, p. 49-54. Ball, W., Archaeological Gazetteer of Afghanistan, Catalogue des sites archologiques dAfghanistan, vol. I & II, ditions Recherche sur les Civilisations, Paris, 1982. Coarelli, F., The painted cups of Begram and the Ambrosian Iliad, East and Wert, 13, 1962, p. 317-335. Czuma, S., Kushan Sculpture: Images from Early India, Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, Cleveland, 1985. Davidson, J. L., Begram ivories and Indian stones, Marg 24, 3, 1971, p. 31-45. Davidson, J. L., Begram ivories and early Indian sculpture, in Aspects of Indian Art, P. Pal (ed.), 1972, p. 1-14. During Caspers, E. C. L., The Indian ivory figurine from Pompeii a reconsideration of its functional use, South Asian Archaeology 1979, H. Hrtel (ed.), 1981. 641

Dwivedi, V. P., Indian Ivories, New Delhi, 1979. lisseeff, V., Les Lacques chinois de Begram , in J. Hackins Nouvelles Recherches

archologiques Begram, MDAFA, XI, 1954, p. 151-156.

Foucher, A., Notes sur litinraire de Hiuan-Tsang en Afghanistan , inEtudes asiatiques

publies loccasion du vingt-cinquime anniversaire de lcole franaise dExtrmeOrient, Paris, 1925.

Foucher, A., De Kapisi Pushkaravati , Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, 1931, p. 341-348. Ghirshman, R., Begram, Recherches archologiques et historiques sur les Kouchans, MDAFA, XII, Le Caire, 1946. Gunder Frank, A., The Centrality of Central Asia,Amsterdam, VU University Press, 1992. Hackin, J., Carl, J. & Meuni, J., Diverses Recherches archologiques en Afghanistan (1933-

40), MDAFA, VIII, Paris, 1959.

Hackin, J., Recherches archologiques a Begram. Chantier n 2 (1937), MDAFA, IX, Paris, 1939. Hackin, J., Nouvelles Recherches archologiques Begram (ancienne Kapii),MDAFA, XI, Paris, 1954. Haerinck, E., The European archaeological expedition to Ed-Dur, Umm al-Qaiwayn (UAE), an interim report on the 1987 and 1988 seasons,Mesopotamia, XXIV, Florence, 1989. Haerinck, E., Archaeological reconnaissance at Ed-Dur, Umm al-Qaiwayn (UAE), Akkadica 58, 1988, May-August, p. 1-27.

Jtakas Stories of the Buddhas Former Births, translated by R. Chalmers, E. B. Cowell (ed.),
Pali Text Society, London, 1973. 642

Kurz, O., Le rinceau dacanthe de la plaque ivoire n 329 (Fouilles 1937) , in J. Hackins Nouvelles Recherches archologiques a Begram, MDAFA, XI, Paris, 1954, p. 54-57. Marshall, J., Taxila, an Illustrated Account of Archaeological Excavations 1913-1934, vols. 1-3, New Delhi, 1975. Meuni, J., Shotorak, MDAFA, X, Paris, 1942. Pal, P., Crafts and Craftsmen in Traditional India, Kanak Publications, New-Delhi, 1978. Pugaenkova, G. A., Les Trsors de Dalverzine-tepe, Leningrad, 1978. Rapin, C, La Trsorerie du Palais hellnistique dA Khanoum, MDATA, XXXIII, Paris, 1992. Rogers, M., An ivory sardula from Begram, Artibus Asiae 15, 1952, p. 5-9. Sarianidi, V., The Golden Hoard of Bactria. From the Tillya-tepe Excavations in Northern

Afghanistan, New York/Leningrad, 1985.

Stern, P., Les ivoires et os dcouverts Begram: leur place dans lvolution de lart de lInde , in J. Hackins Nouvelles Recherches archologiques Begram, MDAFA, XI, Paris, 1954. Whitehouse, D., Begram, the Periplus and Gandharan Art, Journal of Roman

Archaeology, 1989, 2, p. 93-100.

Haut de page Notes

1 Greek and Roman sources mention the peoples in East Asia as making silk and hence called them the Seres and the area Serica. However, the term Silk Road in this article is used not only for the routes of institutionalized trade in silk between China and the Mediterranean, but as

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a metaphor for all overland trade during the early Common Era between China, Central Asia, South Asia and the Mediterranean. 2 One of the main reasons for the rise of the Kushans may have been that they managed to seize control of that portion of Silk Road trade which flowed through Bactria, and that their later annexation of the Indian subcontinent included control of sea trade routes from the Mediterranean and the Arabian peninsula. 3 The Kushans did sponsor the building of certain religious monuments, but how much control they exercised over the stylistic components of those monuments is unclear. The only clear, if not total, uniformity in artistic expression seemed to have occurred in the design of their royal edifices and sculpture. 4 The site was apparently founded in the Graeco-Bactrian period but remained a small military stronghold till the Kushan period, during which it reached its zenith. 5 See Mehendale, S., Pilgrims Process: Begram and a Reexamination of Hsan-tsangs Kpis, Res Orientales VIII, Bures-sur-Yvette, 1996. 6 Kuwayama points to some inconsistencies in his article Kapisi Begram III inOrient 10: 5778, Paris, 1974. See also Claude Rapin, La Trsorerie du Palais hellnistique dA

Khanoum, Paris, 1992, pp. 383-385.

7 See Hackin 1954: figs 241-242. The pot is in the shape of a bird-woman. Her hands are held in anjali. Her mouth forms the spout of the jar and on top there is a projecting opening in which the liquid was poured. 8 Almost all the objects were published in the two excavation volumes Mmoires de la

Dlgation archologique franaise en Afghanistan, by Hackin 1939, 1954.

9 See Mehendale, S., forthcoming dissertation, Cultural Crossroads: the Ivory and Bone

Carvings of Begram (1997).

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10 For detailed description of the reconstructions by J. Carl and P. Hamelin see Hackin 1939, 1954. Some of Carls suggestions that some of the carving formed part of small containers or boxes were later reconsidered by Hamelin who took them to be small tabourets. 11 Unfortunately, most of the ivory and bone carvings were too damaged to recognize any markings on the reverse sides. 12 Since almost all clothing worn by the deceased were eroded, any reconstruction attempts should be approached with caution. However, the position of the golden clothing appliqus do suggest that the women wore pants. 13 See Hackin 1954, for a description of the plaster medallions. 14 Not all translations are identical. But in some renderings (Pal 1978: 46) the group of travellers is described as ivory workers who go from Benares to Ujjain. 15 One of the ports mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a record of organized trade between the Roman world and the East (translated from the Greek and annotated by W. Schoff, 1912). Haut de page Pour citer cet article

Rfrence lectronique Sanjyot Mehendale , Begram: along ancient Central Asian and Indian trade routes , Cahiers

dAsie centrale [En ligne], 1/2 | 1996, mis en ligne le 01 fvrier 2011, Consult le 20 mai 2013.
URL : http://asiecentrale.revues.org/index419.html Haut de page Auteur

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Sanjyot Mehendale http://asiecentrale.revues.org/index419.html

Here is a quote from Mallowan:"Methods of manufacture. The tools and workshop conditions of ivory carvrs in ancient Mesopotamia, as in Syro-Phoenicia are unknown. Mallowan (1966, Nimrud and its remains, London, : 483-4) attempted to remedy this deficiency by recounting the practice of ivory carvrs in modern India: 'I was told that the tusk was only considered mature at 50 years -- that is the half-life of the male elephant. The craftsmen, incidentally, were all of humble origin; they were poorly paid and their workshop was equipped only with a bare minimum of furniture; a single patron employed about twenty fo them...the patron averred...that African were better than Indian tusks...in Jaipur...the craftsman was only using chisel, file, fine saw and a nail with a sharp point, and a small tool with a flat paddle-shaped blade at each end..His practice was to saw a section longitjudinally, cutting the tusk in two halves and then to make two similar figures after having sketched the object intended on the convex side. The technique explains the fact that many of the Nimrud ivories were carved in pairs...At Jaipur the craftsmen said that the most delicate and tricky part of the operation was cutting out the open and ajoure parts of the figures...if an accident happened, then the free standing parts were altogether cut away, and only the solid figure was produced...' The oldest surviving textual source for ivory-working appears to be an eleventh-century AD illuminated manuscript which illustrates the working of ivory at that time, though only the first process and the final product." (PRS Moorey, Ancient Mesopotamian Materials and Industries: the archaeological evidence, p.126)

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Volume 91 Issue 20 | p. 8 | News of The Week Issue Date: May 20, 2013 | Web Date: May 17, 2013 Archaeologys Hidden Secrets Ancient Ivory: Metal traces on Phoenician artifacts show long-gone paint and gold By Sarah Everts

This Phoenician sculpture made of ivory was once gilded. Credit: Courtesy of Muse du Louvre/R. Chipault

Ancient ivory carvings made by Phoenician artists some 3,000 years ago have long hidden a secret, even while being openly displayed in museums around the world: The sculptures were originally painted with colorful pigments, and some were decorated with gold.

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Researchers based in France and Germany report chemical analyses showing that 8th-century B.C. Phoenician ivory artifacts bear metal traces that are invisible to the naked eye (Anal.

Chem. 2013, DOI: 10.1021/ac4006167).

These metals are found in pigments commonly used in antiquity, such as the copper-based pigment Egyptian blue or the iron-based pigment hematite. The metals are not normally in ivory nor in the soil where the artifacts were long buried, explains Ina Reiche, a chemist at the Laboratory of Molecular & Structural Archaeology, in Paris. Reiche led the research, which was performed on ivory originally unearthed in Syria and now held at Baden State Museum, in Karlsruhe, Germany. Phoenicians were seafaring Semitic traders who pioneered the use of an alphabet later adopted in ancient Greece, and they controlled the valuable royal-purple pigment trade throughout the Mediterranean during the period 1500300 B.C. Scholars had suspected that Phoenician ivory sculptures might initially have been painted, but to date most studies had examined just a few spots on ivory surfaces, Reiche says. Her team used a synchrotron to do X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy to analyze the entire surface of the artifacts with micrometer resolution, revealing the spatial distribution of the lost pigmentation. Knowledge of an objects original appearance can help us understand why it was so visually powerful to ancient viewers, saysBenjamin W. Porter, an archaeologist at the University of California, Berkeley. And there are plenty of important objects to examine, he adds. This technique is transferable to other kinds of ancient art whose pigments have been weathered, from the palace wall reliefs of the Assyrian empire to Egyptian tomb paintings to everyday ceramic vessels whose decorations have been worn.

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Chemical & Engineering News ISSN 0009-2347 http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i20/Archaeologys-Hidden-Secrets.html Metal Paints on Phoenician Ivories (Analytical Chemistry, May 19, 2013) Discovering vanished paints and naturally formed gold nanoparticles on 2800 years old Phoenician ivories using SR-FF-microXRF with the Color X-ray Camera <p style=" margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none; display: block;"> <a title="View Metal Paints on Phoenician Ivories (Analytical Chemistry, May 19, 2013) on Scribd" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/142431468/Metal-Paints-on-Phoenician-Ivories-AnalyticalChemistry-May-19-2013" style="text-decoration: underline;" >Metal Paints on Phoenician Ivories (Analytical Chemistry, May 19,

2013)</a></p>< 649

Discovering vanished paints and naturally formed gold nanoparticles on 2800 years old Phoenician ivories using SR-FF-microXRF with the Color X-ray Camera Ina Reiche , Katharina Mller , Marie Albric ,Oliver Ulrich Heinz Paul Scharf , Andrea Whning ,Aniouar Bjeoumikhov , Martin Radtke , and Rolf Simon

Anal. Chem., Just Accepted Manuscript

DOI: 10.1021/ac4006167 Publication Date (Web): 13 May 2013 Downloaded from http://pubs.acs.org on May 19, 2013 Abstract Phoenician ivory objects (8th c. BC, Syria) from the collections of the Badisches Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe, Germany, have been studied with full field X-ray fluorescence microimaging using synchrotron radiation (SR-FF-microXRF). The innovative Color X-ray Camera (CXC), a full-field detection device (SLcam), was used at the X-ray fluorescence beamline of the ANKA synchrotron facility (ANKA-FLUO, KIT, Karlsruhe, Germany) to noninvasively study trace metal distributions at the surface of the archaeological ivory objects. The outstanding strength of the imaging technique with the CXC is the capability to record the full XRF spectrum with a spatial resolution of 48 m on a zone of a size of (11.9 x 12.3) mm2 (264 x 264 pixels). For each analyzed region, 69 696 spectra were simultaneously recorded. The principal elements detected are P, Ca and Sr coming from the ivory material itself, Cu characteristic of pigments, Fe and Pb representing sediments or pigments, Mn revealing deposited soil minerals, Ti indicating restoration processes or correlated with Fe sediment traces and Au, linked to a former gilding. This provides essential information for the assessment of the original appearance of the ivory carvings. The determined elemental maps specific of possible pigments are superimposed on one another to visualize their respective distributions and reconstruct the original polychromy and gilding. Reliable hypotheses for the reconstruction of the original polychromy of the carved ivories are postulated on this basis.

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http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ac4006167?source=cen

Metal Paints on Phoenician Ivories (Analytical Chemistry, May 19, 2013)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/functions-served-by-terracotta-cakesof.html Functions served by terracotta cakes of Indus civilization: Like ANE tokens for counting metal and alloy ingots Functions served by terracotta cakes of Indus civilization: Like ANE tokens for counting metal and alloy ingots

Shahr-i Sokhta, terracotta cakes, Periods II and III, I, MAI 1026 (front and rear); 2. MAI 376 (front and rear); 3. MAI 9794 (3a, photograph of front and read; 3b, drawing -- After Fig. 12 in E. Cortesi et al. 2008)

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Inventory of terracotta cakes Shahr-i Sokhta. After Salvatori and Vidale, 1997-79. Table 1 in E. Cortesi et al. 2008)

Number nd percentages of terracotta cakes found t Shahr-i Sokhta, total 31. (After Table 2 in E. Cortesi et al. 2008). "Terracotta cakes. Variously called 'terracotta tablets', 'triangular plaques' or 'triangular terracotta cakes' these artifacts (fig. 12, tables 2 and 3), made of coarse chaff-tempered clay, are a very common find in several protohistoric sites of the Subcontinent from the late Regionalization Era (2800-2600 BCE) to the Localization Er (1900-1700 BCE). In this latter time0-span they frequently assume irregular round shapes, to finally retain the form of a lump of clay squeezed in the hand. Despite abudant and often unnecessary speculation, archaeological evidence demonstrates tht they were used in pyrotechnological activities, both in domestic and industrial contexts. The most likely hypothesis is tht these objets, in the common kitchen areas, were heated to boil water, and used as kiln setters in other contexts. Shahr-i Sokhta is the only 652

site in the eastern Iranian plateau where such terracotta cakes, triangular or more rarely rectangular, are found in great quantity. Their use, perhaps by families or individuals having special ties with the Indus region, might have been part of simple domestic activities, but this conclusion is questioned by the fact that several terracotta cakes, at Shahr-i Sokhta, bear stamp seal impressions or other graphic signs (in more than 30% of the total cases). In many cases the actual impressions are poorly preserved, and require detailed study. Perhaps these objects used in some form of administrative practice. Although many specimens are fired or burnt, a small percentge of the 'cakes' found at Shahr-i Sokhta is unfired (table 2). On the other hand, their modification in the frame of one or more unknown semantic contexts is not unknown in the Indus valley. At Kalibangan (Haryana, India), for example, two terracotta cake fragments respectively bear a cluster of signs of the Indus writing system and a possible scene of animal sacrifice in front of a possible divinity. While a terracotta cake found at Chanhu-Daro (Sindh, Pakistan) bears a star-like design, anothr has three central depressions. The most important group of incised terracotta cakes comes from Lothal, where the record includes specimens with vertical strokes, central depressions, a V-shaped sign, a triangle, and a cross-like sign identical to those found at Shahr-i Sokhta. Tables 2 and 3 shows a complete inventory of these objects (most so far unpublished), their provenience and proposed dating, and finally summarize their frequencies across the Shahr-i Sokhta sequence. The data suggest that terracotta cakes are absent from Period I. This might be due to the very small amount of excavated deposits in the earliest settlement layers, but the almost total absence of terracotta cakes in layers dtable to phases 8-7, exposed in some extention both in the Eastern Residential Area and in the Centrl Quarter, is remarkable. The majority of the finds belong to Period II, phases 6 and 5 (mount together to about 60% of the cases). As the amount of sediments investigated for Period III in the settlement areas, for various reasons, is much less than what was done for Period II, the percentage of about 40% obtained for Period III (which, we believe, dates to the second hald of the 3rd millennium BCE) actually demonstrates that the use of terracotta cakes at Shahr-i Sokht continued to increase." (E. Cortesi, M. Tosi, A. Lazzari and M. Vidale, 2008, Cultural relationships beyond the Iranian plateau: the Helmand Civilization, Baluchistan and the Indus Valley in the 3rd millennium, pp. 17-18)

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Indus terracotta nodules. Source: "Terra cotta nodules and cakes of different shapes are common at most Indus sites. These objects appear to have been used in many different ways depending on their shape and size. The flat triangular and circular shaped cakes may have been heated and used for baking small triangular or circular shaped flat bread. The round and irregular shaped nodules have been found in cooking hearths and at the mouth of pottery kilns where they served as heat baffles. Broken and crushed nodule fragments were used instead of gravel for making a level foundation underneath

brick walls."

Terracotta cake. Mohenjo-daro Excavation

Number: VS3646. Location of find: 1, I, 37 (near NE corner of the room)."People have many different ideas about how these triangular blocks of clay were used. One idea is that they were placed inside kilns to keep in the heat while objects were fired. Another idea is that they were heated in a fire or oven, then placed in pots to boil liquids." Source: http://www.ancientindia.co.uk/indus/explore/nvs_tcake.html These terracotta cakes are like Ancient Near East tokens used for accounting, as elaborated by Denise Schmandt-Besserat in her pioneering researches. 654

The context in which an incised terracotta cake was found at Kalibangan is instructive. I suggest that terracotta cakes were tokens to count the ingots produced in a 'fire-altar' and crucibles, by metallurgists of Sarasvati civilization. This system of incising is found in scores of miniature incised tablets of Harappa, incised with Indus writing. Some of these tablets are shaped like bun ingots, some are triangular and some are shaped like fish. Each shape should have had some semantic significance, e.g., fish may have connoted ayo 'fish' as a glyph; read rebus: ayas 'metal (alloy)'. A horned person on the Kalibangan terracotta cake described herein might have connoted: ku 'horn'; rebus: kha 'A mass of metal (unwrought or of old metal melted down); an ingot or wedge. Hence 2 A lump or solid bit'; khasa 'Alloyed--a metal'(Marathi) A stake associated with the fire-altar was [ hgara ] n 'A stout stake or stick as a prop to a Vine or scandent shrub]' (Marathi); rebus:hagar 'smith' (Maithili. Hindi)

Harppa. Two sides of a fish-shaped, incised tablet with Indus writing. Hundreds of inscribed texts on tablets are repetitions; it is, therefore, unlikely that hundreds of such inscribed tablets just contained the same names composed of just five alphabets or syllables, even after the direction of writing is firmed up as from right to left.

Kalibangan. Mature Indus period: terracotta cake incised with horned deity. Courtesy: Archaeological Survey of 655

India.

"Fire Altars. At Kalibangan, fire Vedic altars

have been discovered, similar to those found at Lothal which S.R. Rao thinks could have served no other purpose than a ritualistic one.[18] These altars suggest fire worship or worship of Agni, the Hindu god of fire. It is the only Indus Valley Civilization site where there is no evidence to suggest the worship of the "mother goddess". Within the fortified citadel complex, the southern half contained many (five or six) raised platforms of mud bricks, mutually separated by corridors. Stairs were attached to these platforms. Vandalism of these platforms by brick robbers makes it difficult to reconstruct the original shape of structures above them but unmistakable remnants of rectangular or oval kuas or fire-pits of burnt bricks for Vedi (altar)s have been found, with a ypa or sacrificial post (cylindrical or with rectangular cross-section, sometimes bricks were laid upon each other to construct such a post) in the middle of each kua and sacrificial terracotta cakes (pia) in all these fire-pits. Houses in the lower town also contain similar altars. Burnt charcoals have been found in these fire-pits. The structure of these fire-altars is reminiscent of (Vedic) firealtars, but the analogy may be coincidental, and these altars are perhaps intended for some specific (perhaps religious) purpose by the community as a whole. In some fire-altars remnants of animals have been found, which suggest a possibility of animal-sacrifice." Source: Elements of Indian Archaeology (Bharatiya Puratatva,in Hindi) by Shri Krishna Ojha, published by Research Publications in Social Sciences, 2/44 Ansari Riad, Daryaganj, New Delhi-2, pp.119120. (The fifth chapter summarizes the excavation report of Kalibangan in 11 pages). Manuel, J. 2010. The Enigmatic Mushtikas and the Associated Triangular Terracotta Cakes: Some Observations. Ancient Asia 2:41-46, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/aa.10204

656

The Enigmatic Mushtikas and the Associated Triangular Terracotta Cakes: Some Observations J. Manuel

Abstract For over four decades, now, mushtikas and its common associate, the triangular terracotta cakes have been believed to be part of fire altars. This is, in spite of the fact that, either or both of these have been found from hearths, ovens, kilns, as flooring material, on walls, in passages, streets, bathrooms and therefore obviously near commodes. Further, the great variety of central stele and construction material, size and shape, materials found within fire altars suggest that, all the above were devoid of religious symbolism and used to achieve domestic or industrial objectives. The cakes being primarily associated with run of the mill economic activities ended up in diverse and defiling contexts. However, like many cultures across time and space Harappans may also have used the medium of fire for offering sacrifices. Therefore the existence of fire altars is not denied as such, but these then should not have the ubiquitous cakes, at the least.

Introduction The terracotta object varyingly described as ovoid (Rao, 1985: 19, 26, 27), Bicones (Fairservis, 1993: 109) circular biconvex terracotta cakes (Lal, 1997: 227) round ones with a deep finger impression in the center (Dikshit, 1993: 399), terracotta mushtis (Mehta, 1993: 168), mushtikas (Dales & Kenoyer, 1993: 490; Nath, 1998: 41) and most recently as idli shaped terracotta cake with a thumb impression (Rao, 2006: 40,41) have been commonly found associated with the mature Harappan remains. A small Mature Harappan period site like Allahdino yielded 24000 bicones (mushtikas) and 2600 triangular terracotta cakes (Fairservis, 1993: 109). The mushtikas and triangular cakes were in vogue even at rural sites like Zekda (Mehta, 1993: 168) during the mature period. Similarly, the triangular terracotta cakes are also generally known as most commonly associated with Mature Harappan Culture (Allchin, 1993: 235). However, the emergence of the terracotta cakes have been reported from the pre Indus phase at Mehergarh and Nausharo (Jarrige, 1995: 21) and early Harappan phase at Bhirrana (Rao, 2006: 40,41) 657

and Kalibangan (Madhu Bala, 2003: 231, 233). The triangular terracotta cakes in particular were also obtained from Hakra Ware cultural assemblage at Bhirranna, where it was collected as unbaked specimen (Rao et al., 2005: 63). Besides the mature Harappan period both variety of cakes have been reported from other time and space contexts also, albeit in much lesser numbers. The mushtikas have also been reported from late Harappan context at Hulas (Dikshit, 1993: 399) and as surface finds from Moti Pipli, a Harappan affiliated Chalcolithic site (IAR, 1992-93: 19). The triangular terracotta cakes have also been found in later context as at Lothal (Rao, 1985: 15) and Dholavira (IAR, 1991-92: 30). Thus both type of cakes although have been found from a wide span of temporal settings yet their overwhelming preponderance is clearly seen in the Mature Harappan Period, when urbanization, industrial activities and long distance trade were very much in vogue. Even though after the breakdown of the grand system the Harappans held on to some of the practices, the utility of terracotta cakes had probably reduced and therefore the sharp decline in their numbers as observed during the

Association with rituals The mushtikas and the triangular terracotta cakes have mostly been associated with rituals. From the early sixties the terracotta cakes were supposed to have been used in the performance of fire altar rituals during the mature Harappan period as at Kalibangan (IAR, 1962-63: 30). Later, the presence of terracotta cakes, ash and the cylindrical blocks in fire places were reckoned as the usual contents of fire altars (IAR, 1968-69: 31). Sankalia (1974: 350) also mentions that in the center of the pit was a cylindrical or rectangular (sundried or prefired bricks) and around this central stele of fire altar, flat triangular or circular terracotta pieces, known hitherto as terracotta cakes were placed. Further, according to Rao (1979: 121 & 1985:15,24,26,27) these ovoid balls and triangular cakes were used for ritualistic purposes and found in different types of fire altars. The triangular terracotta cakes and mushtikas were noticed as offering in fire altars at Rakhigarhi (Nath, 1999: 48). Terracotta cakes have also been reported from Tarkhanewala Dera as part of a square fire altar (Trivedi & Patnaik, 2004: 31). Thus, mushtikas and triangular cakes now have been reportedly associated with the phenomenon of fire altars for well over four decades. Pertinently, besides its association with fire, triangular terracotta cakes were earlier reported to have special significance in connection with ritual bathing or other ablutions by several scholars including Gordon (Allchin, 1993: 235). 658

Contexts of findings The mushtikas and the triangular terracotta cakes have been found from a large number of contexts other than fire altars. Triangular terracotta cakes have been found at the mouth of kiln at Harappa (Dales & Kenoyer, 1993: 490). At Sanghol terracotta cakes have been found in kiln that yielded unbaked pottery (Sharma, 1993: 157). Cakes have been reported from potters kiln at Tarkhanewala in association with ash etc. (Trivedi & Patnaik, 2004: 31). Rao (1985: 24) reported an altar like enclosure with terracotta triangular cakes and a stone quern. Nath ( 1998: 41) is of the opinion that excessive concentration of terracotta cakes including mushtikas at Rakhigarhi is due to the craft activity. At Nausharo, clay built containers had terracotta cakes used as heat conservers in the fireplaces (Jarrige, 1994: 288). At Rakhigarhi, a jar filled with terracotta cakes in the base portion is supposed as an hearth for heating semi precious stones at different stages of workmanship in a lapidary workshop (IAR, 1999-2000: 32). Terracotta cakes along with small vases, charred bones and ashes were found within burial urns by Tessitori at Kalibangan, during his survey of Rajputana between 1916-1919 (Thapar, 2003: 13). Another place wherein the triangular terracotta cakes occur as decorations on walls (Rao, 1979: 215). According to Nath, (1998: 43) the mushtikas were prepared to keep them in cowdung cake fire pans as heat absorbents, thereafter it was reused either in floor bedding or raising levels. Successive mushtika beddings in massive mud brick fortification at Rakhigarhi and mushtika bedding in cutting of a street at Kalibangan (Nath, 1998: 41) show the various type of less than sacrosanct contexts these cakes are found. Triangular cakes have been found in houses and streets (Mackay, 1938: 429), passages (Rao, 1979: 113), surface of lane, road (Sant et. al., 2005: 53), floors of mud brick houses in association with ovoid terracotta balls plastered with mud (Rao, 1979: 83), rooms paved with bricks or fired terracotta cakes (Agrawal, 2007: 79), as soling material along with mushtikas for raising levels of store houses (IAR, 1997-98: 57), etc. The triangular terracotta cakes have also been reported to be found from bathrooms, prompting scholars to suggest that these were used in ritual bathing (Allchin, 1993: 235). Pertinently, Agrawal (2007: 143) also points out that most houses or groups of houses had private bathing areas and latrines, as well as private wells. The early excavators at both Mohenjodaro and Harappa did not pay much attention to this essential feature. According to him, the recent HARP excavations at Harappa are finding what appear to be latrines in almost every house. Agrawal mentions that, these sump pot latrines were 659

probably cleaned out quite regularly by a separate class of labourers. Pertinently, had these large jars or sump pots sunk into the floors in or near bathing platforms been identified as commodes earlier, the scholars would not have correlated the presence of triangular terracotta cakes in bathrooms with ritual bathing. Earlier the triangular terracotta cakes presence in bathrooms was recognized but since the latrines contiguous to the bathing platforms were not commonly known its presence obviously in the vicinity of commodes could not have also been known as such. Had these facts been known then, none would have given hallowed status to the triangular terracotta cakes now understood to be found in the conjoined latrine bathrooms. The less than sublime presence of these cakes could not have been given any use other than just plain bathing. For, if anyone insistent on ritual bathing even after the triangular terracotta cakes being known to have been found in the vicinity of the earlier unidentified commodes would have to associate defecation also with part of rituals.

Discussion Pertinently, the presence of mushtikas and triangular cakes in a bewildering range of contexts does not allow it to be associated with ceremonies associated with fire, even though they are more often associated with places of fire. Even though cakes of food items are offered to the gods in the fire altars the mushtikas and triangular cakes also could be construed as something similar, which incidentally did not find mention in the Vedic literature. However, problem arises due to the fact that these cakes are found in not only mundane contexts of industrial activities but also in such places that defiles their once hallowed status. The finding of mushtikas and/or its common associate the triangular terracotta cakes in contexts, like: as soling material, as part of floor, in streets, passages, and bathrooms and obviously in the conjoined latrines does not enable it to achieve a sanctified status. In fact, its presence in those fire places which otherwise could have been considered as fire altars, prejudices one about its defiling presence at a sacrosanct spot. In fact, those fireplaces without these cakes could yet be fire altars. Pertinently, not all fire altars have the mushtikas and triangular terracotta cakes within them. At Rakhigarhi several fire altars (Nath, 1999: 48 & IAR, 1997-98: 60) have been identified wherein cakes have not been reported. One of these has burnt shells of fruits, which formed part of the offerings. At Lothal also several fire altars have been identified by Rao (1979: 117) in which although ash, pottery and or bones are reported but the cakes were not mentioned. On the availability of other concurring evidence, these and others like these could be verily declared as 660

fire altars. However, those fire places with both or either of the terracotta cakes, being used, as heat conservers are definitely not fire altars. Thus, the fireplaces with mushtikas and triangular terracotta cakes therefore has to be the run of the mill, hearths, ovens, kilns, etc. Pertinently, cakes have been found in diverse contexts associated with heat, namely: at the mouth of a pottery kiln at Harappa (Dales & Kenoyer, 1993: 490), with some unbaked pottery in a kiln at Sanghol (Sharma, 1993: 157), in the pottery kiln at Tarkhanewala Dera (Trivedi & Patnaik, 2004: 31), besides in jar identified as hearth at Rakhigarhi (IAR 1999-2000: 32). The findings do hint that the cakes were used in places where prolonged heating was required. Nath (1998: 41) has suggested that the excessive concentration of terracotta cakes including the mushtikas indicate to the intensive involvement of the people in their craft activity. The cakes therefore appear to be primarily used as heat conservers as reported at Nausharo (Jarrige, 1993: 288) allowing air into the kiln and at the same time effectively sealing in the heat as suggested by Dales & Kenoyer (1993: 490) with reference to the triangular terracotta cakes found in the pottery kiln at Harappa. It appears that the frequent finding of pottery along with the terracotta cakes reinforces the possibility that some of the many types of fire altars were potters kiln and other industrial fireplaces for baking different types of pottery and processing variety of craft items. Since the cakes did not have any religious value, it could and did end up in streets, floors, bathrooms, etc. Even the reporting of the cakes being found in burial urn by Tessitori at Kalibangan does not gain it any religious value as mundane objects of daily use are routinely found along with burial remains. Pertinently, Jarrige (1995: 21) mentions the fireplaces filled with stones or terracotta cakes of the pre-Indus period at Mehergarh and Nausharo and the Indus period at Nausharo. By extension of logic, if the terracotta cakes are deemed as offerings then the stones also have to be of the same class. Alternatively, if the stones found in the fireplaces are not deemed holy the terracotta cakes also have to be deemed as mundane objects used in hearths and kilns. These cakes, therefore, are nothing else other than what Allchin (1993: 233-238) has termed it, namely, Substitute Stones. Further, unlike mundane things, objects of religious value do have a high degree of standardization in mediums used, forms of expression and the association of other objects. These are also found only in limited areas not anywhere and everywhere. Sacred objects even if they have outlived there use would never be used in bathrooms and latrines, nor thrown away on lanes and roads or used as soling in floors to be trodden under the foot of men and animals. 661

Earlier, Rao (1979: 215) had decried that it is not safe to attribute cult value to an object on the basis of its shape or just because no other satisfactory explanation is available in the present state of our knowledge. Specifically citing the example of triangular terracotta cakes, he wrote that these were once considered to be cult objects are found to have been used in flooring and for decorating the walls of the houses. Again those fire altars with the central stele, also does not have any defining attribute regarding the shape or material of the stele or the enclosure nor the range of objects found within. Thus a clay stele in one altar, a mud brick in another, a baked brick in yet another, a cylindrical yashti here and a square one in the adjacent fire altar does not show any uniformity, so necessary for outlining religious practices. It is intriguing that scholars did not find the anything would do mindset as inferred by the permutations and combinations of material remains of the said fire altars strange. Such adhoc substitutions and varieties are seen in industrial activities where the end product has to be achieved irrespective of the construction of the workplace. Where as in matters religious, symbolism rules the roost and uniformity in religious practices and materials are invariably sought for. Albeit, one should say in the same breath, that there is no denying of the fact that those fire altars with central stele could be fire altars. However, such fire altars then should have some formal attributes with regard to the construction and materials including the stele, across several similar ones at least in the same phase of the site.

Conclusion Thus in view of the evidence obtained from many sites wherein the mushtikas and triangular terracotta cakes were used as heat conservers besides the later degraded contexts of association of the terracotta cakes supposedly used in rituals, it appears to the present author that those fire altars having these cakes cannot be fire altars. Moreover, even the association of the two type of cakes in fire altars with central stele also does not complement the evidence of fire altars, as the casual approach in construction of the stele is itself not above circumspection. In all probability, the fire altars having the mushtikas and triangular terracotta cakes, both observed in less than sublime conditions, even if it/they be associated with such fire places which, for other reasons appear as fire altars including those with the central stele are not actually fire altars. In fact, they were fire places built up for different type of industrial uses. Thus, only those fire places which do not have these terracotta cakes and are having food 662

offerings with a standard type of stele or without stele could be fire altars all others are hearths, ovens, kilns, etc.

Acknowledgements I am thankful to Shri K.K. Muhammed, and to Dr Narayan Vyas, both Superintending Archaeologists, for always encouraging academic work and for being available for discussions, whenever needed. Thanks are due towards Smt Hemlata Ukhale, Librarian, Bhopal Circle, for not only providing the required literature at the earliest but also suggesting more sources that has been frequently found useful. Last, but not least the miscellaneous technical help rendered by Shri Vijay Mishra is acknowledged herein.

Bibliography Agrawal, D.P. 2007. The Indus Civilization: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Aryan Books International, New Delhi. Allchin, B. 1993. Substitute Stones, in G. L. Possehl eds. Harappan Civilization: A Recent

Perspective, Oxford & I.B.H. Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, pp 233-238.
Dales, G. F. and J. M. Kenoyer 1993. The Harappan Project 1986-1989: New Investigation at an ancient Indus City. in G. L. Possehl eds. Harappan Civilization: A Recent Perspective, Oxford & I.B.H. Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi. Dikshit, K. N. 1993. Hulas and the Late Harappan Complex in Western Uttar Pradesh, in G. L. Possehl eds. Harappan Civilization: A Recent Perspective, Oxford & I.B.H. Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi. Fairservis, W.A. 1993. Allahdino: An Excavation of a small Harappan Site, in G. L. Possehl eds. Harappan Civilization: A Recent Perspective, Oxford & I.B.H. Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi. IAR Indian Archaeology, 1962-63: A Review, Annual Bulletin of Archaeological Survey of India, 30. 663

IAR Indian Archaeology, 1968-69: A Review, Annual Bulletin of Archaeological Survey of India. 31 IAR Indian Archaeology, 1991-92: A Review, Annual Bulletin of Archaeological Survey of India. 30. IAR Indian Archaeology, 1992-93: A Review, Annual Bulletin of Archaeological Survey of India. 19. IAR Indian Archaeology, 1997-98: A Review, Annual Bulletin of Archaeological Survey of India. 57,60. IAR Indian Archaeology, 1999-2000: A Review, Annual Bulletin of Archaeological Survey of India. 32. Jarrige, C. 1994. The Mature Indus Phase at Nausharo as seen from a block of period III, Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference of the European Association of South

Asian Archaeologists, I:288.

Jarrige,J.F. 1995. From Nausharo to Pirak: Continuity and change in the Kachi/Bolan Region from the 3rd to the 2nd Millennium B.C., Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Conference

of the European Association of South Asian Archaeologists, I: 21.

Lal, B.B. 1997. The Earliest Civilization of South Asia, 227, Aryan Books International, Delhi. Mackay, E.J.H. 1938. Further Excavations at Mohenjo-daro, Govt. of India Press, New Delhi. Madhu Bala 2003. Minor Antiquities, in B.B. Lal, J.P. Joshi, B.K. Thapar, Madhu Bala. eds Excavations at Kalibangan: The Early Harappans(1960-69), pp 231-233. Archaeological Survey of India, Delhi. Mehta, R.N. 1993. Some Rural Harappan Settlements in Gujarat, in G. L. Possehl eds. Harappan Civilization: A Recent Perspective, Oxford & I.B.H. Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd, New Delhi. Nath, A. 1997-1998. Rakhigarhi: A Harappan Metropolis in Sarasvati- Drishdavati Divide, Puratattva 28: 41,43. 664

Nath, A. 1998-1999. Further Excavations at Rakhigarhi, Puratattva 29: 48. Rao, L.S., Nandini B. Sahu, Prabhas Sahu, Samir Diwan and U.A. Shastri. 2004-2005. New Light on the Excavation of Harappan Settlement at Bhirrana, Puratattva 35: 63,65. Rao, L.S. 2006. Settlement Pattern of the Predecessors of the Early Harappans at Bhirrana, District Fatehbad, Haryana, Man and Environment XXXI no 2 : 41,42. Rao, S.R. 1979. Lothal: A Harappan Port Town, 1955-62, Vol I: 83, 113, 117, 121, 215, Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi. Rao, S.R. 1985. Lothal, Archaeological Survey of India, Delhi. Sankalia, H.D. 1974. The Prehistory and Proto history of India and Pakistan, Deccan College Postgraduate Research Institute, Poona. Sant, U., T.J. Baidya, N.G. Nikoshey, N.K. Sinha, S. Nayan, J.K. Tiwari and A. Arif. 2004-2005. Baror - A New Harappan Site in Ghaggar Valley. A Preliminary Report, Purattatva 35:53. Sharma, Y. D. 1993. Harappan Complex on the Sutlej ( India) in G. L. Possehl eds Harappan

Civilization: A Recent Perspective, Oxford & I.B.H. Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd, New Delhi.
Thapar, B.K. 2003. Discovery and Previous Work, in B.B. Lal, J.P.Joshi, B.K. Thapar, Madhu Bala eds. Excavations at Kalibangan: The Early Harappans (1960-69), Archaeological Survey of India, Delhi. Trivedi, P.K. and J.K. Patnaik. 2003-2004. Tarkhanewala Dera and Chak 86 (20032004), Puratattva 34: 31.

Many conjectures have been made about the functions served by the enigmatic terracotta cakes:

665

The Indus valley cones, cakes and archaeologists S. V. Pradhan Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute Vol. 80, No. 1/4 (1999), pp. 43-51 Source:http://www.jstor.org/stable/41694575 http://www.scribd.com/doc/139638311/The-Indus-valley-cones-cakes-and-archaeologists-S-VPradhan-Annals-of-the-Bhandarkar-Oriental-Research-Institute-Vol-80-No-1-4-1999-pp-43-5 The Indus valley cones, cakes and archaeologists S. V. Pradhan Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute Vol. 80, No. 1/4 (1999), pp. 43-51 The Tiny Steatite Seals of Harappa

Richard H. Meadow Jonathan Mark Kenoyer

Above: Three groups of tablets discovered at Harappa in 1997.

"In the last four editions of South Asian Archaeology, we have given accounts of the different seasons of excavation at Harappa from 1989 to 1995 (4th season: Dales & Kenoyer 1992; 5th season: Kenoyer 1993; 6th season: Mcadow & Kenoyer 1994; 7th and 8th seasons: Meadow & Kenoyer 1997; see also Mcadow, ed. 1991: 1st through 5th seasons). In this edition we continue the tradition for the 9th and 10th seasons but focus on two specific areas of the site the north end of Mound AB test trenched in 1996 (Kenoyer & Meadow, this volume) and the eastern margin of Mound E excavated since the 1993 season (this paper). Only partially 666

covered in these reports is a particularly significant aspect ofthe work ofthe Harappa Archaeological Research Project (HARP) carried out during the 9th and 10th seasons. This involves an effort to re-investigate previously excavated parts of Harappa (Vats 1940; Wheeler 1947)" Kenoyer2000_The Tiny Steatite Seals of Harappa.pdf

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/04/bronze-age-writing-in-ancient-near-east.html Bronzeage writing in ancient Near East: Two Samarra bowls and Warka vase Bronze-age writing in ancient Near East: Two Samarra bowls and Warka vase Bronze-age writing in ancient Near East: Two Samarra bowls and Warka vase Abstract Elaborating on Denise Schmandt-Besserats observation that art became narrative and went beyond accounting to become a comprehensive medium of communication, three artifacts discussed point to the use of hieroglyphs to communicate substantive information on the lifeactivities of artisans of the bronze age. The literate communication occurred using the rebus renderings of select substrate Meluhha glosses from Indian sprachbund, for select glyphs deployed in Indus writing which can be attributed to artisans of Meluhha settlements in ancient Near East. Two bowls discovered by Ernst Herzfeld in the 1911-1914 campaign at Samarra and Warka vase of ancient Sumer (one of a pair) stolen in April 2003 and recovered in June 2003 for the Iraqi museum provide the evidence for identifying hieroglyphs read rebus. Cuneiform texts attest to the presence of Meluhha settlements in Sumer. While cuneiform was deployed to denote names or benedictions to superiors, glyphs of Indus writing continued to be used on hundreds of cylinder seals and other artifacts such as Samarra bowls or Warka vase. The continued use of hieroglyphs of Indus writing together with cuneiform texts is a characteristic feature of the evolution of writing in ancient Near East as it progressed from the use of tokens and bullae to the use of glyphs to denote many metallurgical categories. A method of rebus readings evidenced for Narmer palette in Egypt applied to the Indus writing glyphs reveals Meluhha (mleccha) substrate lexemes from Indian sprachbund. Bronze-age necessitated an advance beyond the system of tokens and bullae used for counting. Categories of products which were 12 around 7500 BCE grew beyond 350. This large number could not be efficiently 667

categorized by varieties in shapes of tokens or even seal impressions on bullae envelopes. Indus writing adopted a solution of rebus method of representation of hieroglyphs on tablets to abstract the goods represented in an accounting system for categories of minerals, metals and alloys and stages of metallurgical processing from furnace to forge to create varieties of metalware such as alloys using zinc and tin, knives, sickles, arrow-heads, axes, plowshares (or ploughshares). The hieoglyphic method also enabled representation of seal-holders' professions such as merchant, smith, scribe. The accountant was the scribe. The rebus method used words which are substrate in Indian sprachbund. Thus, 1. ibha 'elephant' read rebus ib 'iron'; ibbho 'merchant'; 2. kola 'tiger' read rebus kol 'working in iron'; 3. ayo 'fish' represented ayas 'metal'; 4. sangada 'lathe' read rebus jangad 'article delivered on entrustment'; 5. tagara 'antelope' read rebus tamkaru 'merchant'; tagara 'tin'; 6. heraka 'spy' read rebus eraka 'copper'; 7. muh 'face' red rebus muhe 'ingot'; 8. kanka 'rim-of-jar' read rebus ganika 'accountant'; kanakku 'account'; 9. satthiya 'svastika glyph' read rebus satthiya 'zinc'; and so on. The problem of bronze-age accounting and bill-of-lading for shipments was thus resolved through Indus writing. Syllabic writing of kharo (cognate with harosheth hagoyim 'smithy of nations') and brhm was a further advance to represent names, titles, for example on early punch-marked coins which were the direct result from bronze-age mints to facilitate trade exchanges using monetary media. Ancient Near East and Meluhha interaction area [quote] MAGAN and MELUHHA Geographical terms for regions in the distant south and southeast of Mesopotamia. Both names first appear in royal inscriptions of the Akkad period; ships from Magan and Meluhha were said to have brought goods to the quays of Akkad and other cities. It has been proposed that Magan referred to the coast of Oman along the Persian Gulf, rich in copper and dates, and Meluhha in the Indus valley. In Neo-Assyrian texts of the first millennium B.C., Magan and Meluhha probably designated the African coast of the Red Sea (Upper Egypt and Sudan). [unquote] The major contribution made by Meluhhans in Sumer was tin and zinc as alloying minerals to create tin-, zinc-bronzes (to complement naturally-occurring copper + arsenic ores for arsenic bronzes). 668

Meluhhan artisans in Sumer used Indus writing to create metal-ware catalogs. Meluhhan settlements in ancient Near East have been discussed. Rebus readings are based on substrate lexemes of Indian sprachbund, a contact region.with pronounced bronze-age contributions of creating alloys with tin and zinc. Hieroglyphs of two Samarra bowls and Warka vase

Image 1. Eight fish, four peacocks holding four fish, slanting strokes surround

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Image 2. Six women, curl in hair, six scorpions

Image 3. Warka vase . Antelope, ingot tiger, ingot, face of bull, procession of bovidae, tabernae Montana stalks Rebus readings of hieroglyphs which also recur on Indus writing corpora : dh a slope; inclination of a plane (G.); dhako large metal ingot (G.) ayo fish; rebus: ayas metal mora peacock; mor peafowl (Hindi); rebus: morakkhaka loha, a kind of copper, grouped with piscaloha (Pali). moraka "a kind of steel" (Sanskrit) gaa set of four (Santali); rebus: ka fire-altar, furnace (Santali) 670

 [mh] A twist or tangle arising in thread or cord, a curl or snarl (Marathi). S. mh f., ho m. braid in a woman's hair , L. mh f.; G. ml, mi m. braid of hair on a girl's forehead (CDIAL 10312). Rebus: m iron (Mu.) meha M. mehi F.twisted, crumpled, as a horn; meha deren a crumpled horn (Santali) [ mh ] A crook or curved end (of a stick, horn &c.) and attrib. such a stick, horn, bullock. [ mh ] A twist or tangle arising in thread or cord, a curl or snarl. The entire composition of glyphic elements on a Harappa tablet, h180:

4304 Other glyphic elements of the tablet:

Two tigers rearing on their hindlegs standing face to face. Glyph: tiger: kola tiger. Rebus: kol working in iron Glyph: dula pair. Rebus: dul casting (metal).

A person carrying a sickle-shaped weapon and a wheel on his bands faces a 671

woman with disheveled hair and upraised arm. kuhru armourer (Skt.) The glyptic composition is decoded as kuhru sal armourer workshop. eaka 'upraised arm' (Ta.). Rrebus: eraka = copper (Ka.) Thus, the entire composition of these glyphic elements relate to an armourers copper workshop. The hairstyle of the woman is comparable to the wavy hair shown on the Samarra bowl (Image 2. Six women, curl in hair, six scorpions)

The glyphic elements shown on the tablet are: copulation, vagina, crocodile. h180 tablet. Gyphic: copulation: kama, khama 'copulation' (Santali) Rebus: kammai a coiner (Ka.); kampaam coinage, coin, mint (Ta.) kammaa = mint, gold furnace (Te.) Vikalpa: kaa stone (ore). Glyph: vagina: kuhi vagina; rebus: kuhi smelting furnace. The descriptive glyphics indicates that the smelting furnace is for stone (ore). This is distinquished from sand ore. Glyph: crocodile: kar crocodile. Rebus: khar blacksmith. kru a wild crocodile or alligator (Te.) mosale wild crocodile or alligator. S. ghaylu m. long snouted porpoise ; N. ghaiyl crocodile (Telugu); A. B. ghiyl alligator , Or. Ghaia, H. ghayl, gharir m. (CDIAL 4422) karavu, n. < . Cf. grha. Alligator; . (. . 8, 9, 9). kar, n. prob. Grha. 1. A species of alligator; . (. . 2, 3, 9). 2. Male alligator; . (.) karm Thus, the message of the glyphic composition is: kammaa kaa kuhi khar mint (coiner) stone (ore) smelting furnace,

blacksmith.

A comparable glyphic composition

is a naked woman seated with her legs spread out flanked by two scorpions. Cylinder-seal 672

impression from Ur showing a squatting female. L. Legrain, 1936, Ur excavations, Vol. 3, Archaic Seal Impressions. This glyphic composition depicts a smelting furnace for stone ore as distinguished from a smelting furnace for sand ore. meed-bica = iron stone ore, in contrast to bali-bica, iron sand ore (Mu.lex.) bicha, bich scorpion (Assamese) Rebus: bica stone ore (Mu.) sambr.o bica = gold ore (Mundarica) meed-bica = iron stone ore, in contrast to bali-bica, iron sand ore (Mu.lex.) bhaa six ; rebus: bhaa furnace. satthiya svastika glyph; rebus: satthiya zinc, jasta zinc (Kashmiri), satva, zinc (Pkt.) kola woman; rebus: kol iron. kola blacksmith (Ka.); koll blacksmith (Ko) muha -- n. mouth, face (Pkt.) m h face; rebus: m h ingot (Mu.) kul tiger (Santali); klu id. (Te.) klupuli = Bengal tiger (Te.) [ klh ] [klh] A jackal (Marathi) rebus: kol furnace, forge (Kuwi) kol alloy of five metals, pacaloha (Tamil) kol working in iron, blacksmith; kolla blacksmith (Tamil). agara = tabernae montana (Skt.) agara antelope; rebus: agara tin. Cf. cognate: tamkru, damgar merchant(Sumerian). gar horned cattle (K.) rebus: gar blacksmith (H.) damgar merchant, trader(Sumerian). Sources for the images: Image 1. The Samarra bowl (ca. 4000 BC) at on exhibit at the Pergamon museum, Berlin. The bowl was excavated as Samarra by Ernst Herzfeld in the 1911-1914 campaign, and described in a 1930 publication. The design consists of a rim, a circle of eight fish, and four fish swimming towards the center being caught by four birds. At the center is a swastika symbol. (Ernst Herzfeld, Die vorgeschichtlichen T pfereien von Samarra, Die Ausgrabungen von Samarra 5, Berlin 1930.) 673

Image 2. Women with flowing hair and scorpions, Samarra, Iraq. After Ernst Herzfeld, Die Ausgrabungen von Samarra V: Die vorgeschichtischenTopfereien, Univ. of Texas Press, pl. 30. Courtesy Dietrich Reimer. This image is discussed in Denise Schmandt-Besserat, When writing met art, p.19. The design features six humans in he center of the bowl and six scorpions around the inner rim. The six identical anthropomorphic figures, shown frontally, are generally interpreted as females because of their wide hips, large thighs, and long, flowing hairSix identical scorpions, one following after the other in a single line, circle menacingly around the women. Image 3. The Warka Vase or the Uruk Vase is a carved alabaster stone vessel found in the temple complex of the Sumerian goddess Inanna in the ruins of the ancient city of Uruk, located in the modern Al Muthanna Governorate, in southern Iraq. Like the Narmer Palette from Egypt, it is one of the earliest surviving works of narrative relief sculpture, dated to c. 3,2003000 BC. The vase was discovered as a collection of fragments by German Assyriologists in their sixth excavation season at Uruk in 1933/1934. It is named after the modern village of Warka - known as Uruk to the ancient Sumerians. Some examples of use of comparable hieroglyphs from, Indus writing corpora may be cited:

Chanhu-daro Seal obverse and reverse. The oval sign of this Jhukar culture seal is comparable to other inscriptions. Fig. 1 and 1a of Plate L. After Mackay, 1943. The hieroglyphs of the seal relate representations of bun ingots to two orthographic representations of antelopes: one is shown walking, the other is shown with head turned backwards. A flower is shown, perhaps, a representation of tabernae Montana.

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Stamp seal from Susa , at Louvre Museum. Susa is one of the oldest known settlements of the world, possibly founded about 4200 BC, although the first traces of an inhabited village have been dated to ca. 7000 BCE. The seal depicts two goatantelopes head to tail, outside an oval.

Tin bun ingot. Late Bronze Age, 10th-9th century B.C.E. Salcombe shipwreck, 300 yards off the South Devon coast, England, 2009.

Cylinder seal: lion and sphinx over an antelope The depiction of a bulls head together with an antelope is significant and recalls the association of bulls head with oxhide ingots. The antelope looking backwards is flanked by a lion (with three dots at the back of the head) and a winged animal (tiger?)

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Bhirrana Allograph: Kur. xol tail. Malt. qoli id. (DEDR 2135). [The short-tail is a hieroglyph which is ligatured to an antelope as a hieroglyph read rebus. Such a ligatured-tail evolved into a sign of the Indus script which appears on inscribed copper-tablets.] Rebus: kol working in iron (metal), blacksmith (in this case, tin-smith). baa six (hence six short strokes)(G.); rebus: bhaa furnace, smelter (Santali). The stalk in front of the antelope is explained rebus: kolmo riceplant(Santali); rebus: kolami smithy/forge (Te.) The antelope orthography shows a ram: tagara ram; if the plant is tabernae montana, tagaraka tabernae montana; rebus: tagara tin. The seal shows an artisan-merchant who has a smelter to produce tin ingots.Antelope: meh goat (Br.) Rebus: meha, mehi merchants clerk; (G.) meho one who helps a merchant vi.138 vaiksahyah (dei. Hemachandra). Cf. meluhha-m h > mleccha-mukha copper (ingot).

The earliest (Indus) inscriptions date back to 3500 BC. h1522A sherd. Slide 124. Inscribed Ravi sherd. The origins of Indus writing can now be traced to the Ravi Phase (c. 3300-2800 BCE) at Harappa. Some inscriptions were made on the bottom of the pottery before firing. Other inscriptions such as this one were made after firing. This inscription (c. 3300 BCE) appears to be three plant symbols arranged to appear almost anthropomorphic. The trident looking projections on these symbols seem to set the foundation 676

for later symbols

The glyph is tabernae montana, mountain tulip. A soft-stone flask, 6 cm. tall, from Bactria (northern Afghanistan) showing a winged female deity (?) flanked by two flowers similar to those shown on the comb from Tell Abraq. Ivory comb with Mountain Tulip motif and dotted circles. TA 1649 Tell Abraq.

Susa pot, from Meluhha, with metal artifacts. The pot has an inscription, painted with fish hieroglyph. Meluhha and contributions to tin and zinc alloys [quote] ...the earliest brass in the world was in the Harappan site of Lothal and then in the early PGW site of Atranjikhera. The primacy of zinc metallurgy in India is established by three kinds of 677

evidences: (a) second millennium BCE radiocarbon dating of zinc ore mine in Southern Rajasthan, (b) fourth century BCE brass vase in Taxila assaying 34% zinc, and (c) second century AD literature of Nagarjuna describing distillation of zinc(paper) detailslarge scale zinc manufacture in medieval Zawar and the unique phenomenon of a technology transfer from India to the western worldThe earliest method of making brass was possibly the cementation process in which finely divided copper fragments were intimately mixed with roasted zinc ore (oxide) and reducing agent, such as charcoal, and heated to 1000 degrees C in a sealed crucible. Zinc vapour formed dissolved into the copper fragments yielding a poor quality brazz, zinc percentage of which could not be easily controlled. Fusion of zinc with copper increases the strength, hardness and toughness of the latter. When the alloy is composed of 10-18% zinc, it has a pleasing golden yellow colour. It can also take very high polish and literally glitter like gold. For this property, brass has been widely used for casting statuary, covering temple roofs, fabricating vessels, etcLothal (2200-1500 BCE) showed one highly oxidized antiquity (No. 4189), which assayed 70.7# copper, 6.04# zinc, 0.9% Fe and 6.04% acid-soluble component (probably carbonate, a product of atmospheric corrosion)Most of the brass samples in ancient India contained variable proportions of Zn, Sn and PbDuring the Harappan era, copper used to be alloyed with tin and arsenic; since these were scarce commodities, alternative alloying elements had to be looked for. Artisans in the Rajasthan-Gujarat region might have stumbled on to zinc ore deposit as a new source of alloying element(Taxila vase BM 215-284)dated to the 4th century BCE. This brass sample contains 34.34% zinc, 4.25% Sn, 3.0% Pb, 1.77% and 0.4% nickel. This is very strong evidence for the availability of metallic sinc in the 4th century BCE. Possibly India was the first to make this metal zinc (rasaka) by the distillation process, as practiced for other metal mercury (rasa)...The pseudo-Aristotelian work, On marvelous things heard mentioned: They also say that amongst the Indians the bronze is so bright, clean and free from corrosion that it is indistinguishable from gold, but that amongst the cups of Darius there is a considerable number that could not be distinguished from gold or bronze except by color....The Indian emphasis was on the gold-like brass and not on the zinc metalThe discovery of three important hoards of metallic art objects at Mahudi of north Gujarat, Lilvadeva (north-east) and Akota of central Gujarat, dated between 6th and 11th centuries AD, proved that the artisans there had developed four varieties of alloys: (a) bronze, (b) zinc-bronze, (c) lead brass, and (d) conventional brassThe technical term raka for brass persisted through centuries and we find this mentioned in the 4th century AD Jaina text Angavijja (as hraka) and also in Amarakoa (450 AD)Pliny mentioned the Latin term aurichalcum (golden copper), 678

made in India from cadmia, identified as calamine or the zinc ore. Samuel Beal suggested that the name cadmia came from Calamina, a port at the mouth of the Indus, which negotiated the export of the ore or the alloy of zinc. Ball, however, suggested that the port was Calliana or Kalyan near Bombay. The sixth century AD traveler Sopater had mentioned Calliana exporting brassThe earliest reference to zinc as a metl is found in Nagarjunas Rasa-Ratnkara. In one passage (RR 3) it was mentioned: What wonder is that rasaka (zinc or zinc ore) roasted with three parts of ulva (copper) converts the latter into gold. Actually, this was gold-coloured 25% zinc-brass, also known as pta-tla (pitala) or yellow alloy.jast (derived from Sanskrit jaada or zinc)On brass and zinc metallurgy, the primacy of India in the ancient and medieval world is now beyond any dispute. [unquote] [quote] "The first smelting of iron [ore] may have taken place as early as 5000 BC" at Samarra, Mesopotamia, but more commonly early iron was recovered from fallen meteors (yielding iron with a characteristic 4+% nickel content). By the middle of the fourth millennium BC, "both texts and objects reveal the presence of iron" in Mesopotamia, from where the Jaredites departed. Just possibly they brought with them to the New World technical knowledge of that metallurgy. Sporadically throughout the Bronze Age (about 3500 BC1000 BC) in the Near East, wrought (nonmeteoric) iron objects were being produced, along with continued use of the meteoric type. Yet details of the history at that time are poorly known. The find of an iron artifact from Slovakia dated to the 17th century BC leads one researcher to lament "how little we actually know about the use of iron during the second millennium BCE." Steel is "iron that has been combined with carbon atoms through a controlled treatment of heating and cooling." Yet "the ancients possessed in the natural (meteoric) nickel-iron alloy a type of steel that was not manufactured by mankind before 1890." (It has been estimated that 50,000 tons of meteoritic material falls on the earth each day, although only a fraction of that is recoverable.) By 1400 BC, smiths in Armenia had discovered how to carburize iron by prolonged heating in contact with carbon (derived from the charcoal in their forges). This produced martensite, which forms a thin layer of steel on the exterior of the object (commonly a sword) being manufactured. Iron/steel jewelry, weapons, and tools (including tempered steel) were definitely made as early as 1300 BC (and perhaps earlier), as attested by excavations in present-day Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Iran, Israel, and Jordan. "Smiths were carburizing [i.e., making steel] intentionally on a fairly large scale by at least 1000 BC in the Eastern Mediterranean area." [unquote] 679

Tokens of Susa evolve into hieroglyphic Indus writing in ancient Near East

Shape of a token representing one ingot of metal, Susa, Iran, ca. 3300 BCE. Denise Schmandt-Besserat, 2009, Tokens and writing: the cognitive development, Scripta, Vol. 1 (September 2009): 145-154 The development of the power of abstraction as illustrated by the evolution of counting in the ancient Near East. Tokens indicates that counting was first done concretely in one-to-one correspondence. The claytokens, that appeared in the Near East about 7500 BC, abstracted the goods they represented. For example a cone abstracted a measure of grain. About 3300 BC, when tokens were kept in envelopes, markings on envelopes abstracted the tokens held inside. Abstract numbers are the culmination of the process, following the invention of writing. Excerpts: For example, the number of token shapes which was limited to about 12 around 7500 BC, increased to some 350 around 3500 BC, when urban workshops started contributing to the redistribution economy. Some of the new tokensstood for raw materials such as wool and metal while others represented finished products, among them textiles, garments, jewelry, bread, beer and honey (Fig. 2). (p.148, ibid.) Bronze-age advance in accounting for metalware and metallurgical processing categories using Indus writing 680

The corpora of inscriptions with Indus writing has now grown to over 5,000 and the evidence, together with the lexemes of Indian sprachbund provide a method for validating the rebus readings of hundreds of hieroglyphs to categorise and account for work-in-process transactions from furnace or smelter to the forge (on workers' platforms) and for compiling metalware catalogs of minerals used, metals and alloys smelted or forged. Hundreds of hieroglyphs are read rebus using the substrate lexemes of Indian sprachbund to decipher the inscriptions in Indus writing.

On this seal, ayo 'fish' read rebus ayas 'metal'; angar 'bull' read rebus angar 'blacksmith'; ko 'horn; red rebus: kho 'alloy'; kho 'young bullcalf' read rebus khu '(metal) turner'.

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The ayo 'fish' hieroglyph thus adequately categorizes the metalware contents of a pot discovered in Susa.

m1429B. Glyphs: crocodile + fish ayakra blacksmith (Pali)kru a wild crocodile or alligator (Te.) aya 'fish' (Mu.) The method of ligaturing enables creation of compound messages through Indus writing inscriptions. Conclusions

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The continued use of hieroglyphs of Indus writing together with cuneiform texts is a characteristic feature of the evolution of writing in ancient Near East as it progressed from the use of tokens and bullae to the use of glyphs to denote many metallurgical categories. A method of rebus readings evidenced for Narmer palette in Egypt applied to the Indus writing glyphs reveals Meluhha (mleccha) substrate lexemes from Indian sprachbund. http://www.scribd.com/doc/139618383/Bronze-Age-Writing-in-Ancient-Near-East-May-2013

Bronze Age Writing in Ancient Near East (May 2013)

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Samarra, Iraq, circa 5000 bce

Harappa, Indus River, Pakistan http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/04/ancient-history-of-bhasavernaculars-or.html Ancient history of bh (vernaculars) or ri (mathematics of astronomy) Ancient history of bh (vernaculars) or ri (mathematics of astronomy) It is disturbing, indeed, when some rush to judgment about motivations of individuals and about entire groups of people. It is good to realize in all humility that we have a lot of research work to do in a lot of areas, including the compilation of catalogue catalogorum.

In my view, for example, the entire ancient bh(vernaculars) or ri (mathematics of astronomy) history of Bharatam has not been fully told. There are some opinionated theories, including theories about levels of illiteracy in stages of march of civilizations. Kalyanaraman 684

See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/04/semantics-of-rasi.html The word ri occurs in Chndogya Upaniad 7.1.2:

Semantics of ri

Rgvedam bhagavodhyemi yajurvedam samavedamtharvaam caturthamitihsapuram pancamam vednm vedam pitrya rim deivam nidhim vkovkyamekyanam devavidy brahmavidym bhutavidym nakatravidym sarpadevajanavidymetadbhagavodhyemi
Trans. Sir, I know the Rig-veda, the Yajur-veda, the Sama-veda, Atharvana the fourth Veda, as the fifth the Itihasa-Purana, the Veda of the Vedas, the rites of the fathers, Mathematics, the science of portents, the science of Time, Logic, Ethics and Politics, Etymology, the science of the Veda, the science of the Elementals, the science of War, Astronomy, the science of Snakecharming and the fine arts. All this, I know, Sir. (p.164) Source: Chandogya Upanishad and Sri Sankaras commentary, Trans. By Ganganath Jha, 1923, Madras, the India Printing works http://archive.org/stream/ChandogyaUpanishadWithShankaraBhashyaEnglishTranslationPart2/04ChandogyaUpanishadWithSankaraBhashya-EnglishPart2#page/n0/mode/2up Shankara does not comment upon the list of sciences and arts but focuses on the understanding of brahman. Ganganath Jha interprets the word as a reference to 'mathematics', in general. In the context of the list elaborated further with reference to elements, astronomy etc. it is not unreasonable to interpret an education in ri to include the mathematical computations of path, location and pace of movement or clustering of nakatra-s. Perhaps, even the geometrical computations for the construction of vedi had to be part of this ri education. Note that the word ri is followed by deivam, 'the science of time'. ri used in the verse of Ch.Up, can be viewed thus as a 'science of (logical) sets'. nakatra-vidy then becomes a specific discipline of interpreting their contextual inter-relations in space and time. We are searching for 'meanings' as they evolved in 685

time. An extraordinary challenge, indeed, which should humble us. Namaskaram. Kalyanaraman Download Vachaspatyam and abdakalpadruma at http://www.sanskritebooks.org/2009/12/sanskrit-sanskrit-dictionaries-sabdakalpadrumavachaspatyam/

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/04/bronze-age-glyphs-and-writing-in.html Bronze-age glyphs and writing in ancient Near East: Two cylinder seals from Sumer Bronze-age glyphs and writing in ancient Near East: Two cylinder seals from Sumer

"Enki walks out of the water to the land attended by his messenger, Isimud who is readily identifiable by his two faces looking in opposite directions (duality)." http://www.crystalinks.com/sumercylinderseals.html Cuneiform texts attest to the presence of Meluhha settlements in Sumer. [The Melua Village: Evidence of Acculturation of Harappan Traders in Late ThirdMillennium Mesopotamia?Author(s): Simo Parpola, Asko Parpola, Robert H. Brunswig, Jr.Source:Journal of

the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 20, No. 2 (May, 1977),pp. 129-165].
[quote] MAGAN and MELUHHA Geographical terms for regions in the distant south and southeast of Mesopotamia. Both names first appear in royal inscriptions of the Akkad period; 686

ships from Magan and Meluhha were said to have brought goods to the quays of Akkad and other cities. It has been proposed that Magan referred to the coast of Oman along the Persian Gulf, rich in copper and dates, and Meluhha in the Indus valley. In Neo-Assyrian texts of the first millennium B.C., Magan and Meluhha probably designated the African coast of the Red Sea (Upper Egypt and Sudan). --Historical Dictionary of Mesopotamia[unquote] The major contribution made by Meluhhans in Sumer was tin as an alloying mineral to create tin-bronzes (to complement naturally-occurring copper + arsenic ores for arsenic bronzes). Meluhhan artisans in Sumer used Indus writing to create metal-ware catalogs. This is exemplified by the 'water-buffalo' glyph used on some cylinder seals.

ka buffalo; rebus: ka stone (ore). Meluhha was the habitat for the water-buffalo.
While cuneiform script was used to write names syllabically or to record benedictions ('short invocations for divine help'), rest of the writing (for e.g. on cylinder seals) used hieroglyphs. http://www.crystalinks.com/sumercylinderseals.html

Impressions of two cylinder seals (Sumer) and glyph of 'ingot'. The person at the feet of the eagle-winged person carries a (metal) dagger on his left-hand, clearly demonstrating the link with this metalware catalog. Note the one-horned bull below the person who has his foot on mountain-summit. 687

Sumerian sign for the term ZAG purified precious. The ingot had a hole running through its length Perhaps a carrying rod was inserted through this hole. Enki: Meluhhablack land of large treeswhose laden boats transport gold and silver. Rebus readings of glyphs on these cylinder seal impressions, based on some possible meluhha (mleccha) substrate lexemes of Indian sprachbund : aryeh 'lion' (Akkadian). Rebus: ra brass as in raka (Skt.) meha polar star (Marathi). me iron (Ho.Mu.) The crescent-shaped glyph connotes ingot. kui tree. Rebus: kuhi smelter furnace (Mu.) ku branch of tree (DEDR 2200). Rebus: M.kho alloyed (CDIAL 3931). kola 'woman' (Nahali). Rebus: kol 'working in iron' (Tamil). Quivers are shown on her shoulders: khli f. quiver; rebus: kol 'working in iron'; thus, a phonetic determinative. She carries a thorny cactus on her hand. ranga 'thorny'; Rebus: pewter, alloy of tin and antimony. She has one foot. Garh. khuu foot .(CDIAL 3894). Rebus: M.kho alloyed (CDIAL 3931). Santali dictionary lexemes: ran(g) 'pewter'. ranga conga 'thorny, spikey, armed with spikes or thorns; ranga conga janumana 'it is armed with thorns'; ranga hari 'the name of a Santal godlet'. rangaini 'a common prickly plant, solanum xanthocarpum, schrad et Wendl.

Phoneme 'ranga' refers to color. What is depicted as a thorny bulb on the cylinder seal may refer to Opuntia ficus indica which is thorny. See picture:

Opuntia ficus-indica (Indian fig) in Secunderabad, India. 688

"Opuntia ficus-indica (as well as other species in Opuntia and Nopalea) is cultivated in nopalries to serve as a host plant for cochineal insects, which produce desirable red and purple dyes. This practice dates from pre-Columbian times." Kiesling, R. (1999). "Origen, Domesticaci n y Distribuci n de Opuntia ficus-indica (Cactaceae)". Journal of the Professional Association for Cactus Development 3: 5060. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opuntia_ficus-indica

kamaha 'archer'. Rebus: kampaam coiner, mint (Tamil) kra armed with arrows P., m. archer (CDIAL 3026)ker m. a caste of bow -- and arrow -- makers .(CDIAL 3024). Rebus: kh metalware, tools, pots and pans(Marathi). akuru m. mountain ; umgara mountain (Pkt.)(CDIAL 5423). Rebus: damgar merchant. kd [ kha ] m A young bull, a bullcalf. (Marathi) Rebus: A. kundr, B. k dr, ri, Or. kundru; H. k der m. one who works a lathe, one who scrapes, r f., k dern to scrape, plane, round on a lathe .(CDIAL 3297). k horn. Rebus: M.kho alloyed (CDIAL 3931) ku summit of a hill (Ta.). Rebus: [ kha ] f A mass of metal (unwrought or of old metal melted down); an ingot or wedge. Hence [ khasa ] a ( & from ) Alloyed-a metal. (Marathi) Bshk. kho embers, Phal. kho ashes, burning coal; L. khof. alloy, impurity, alloyed, aw. kho forged; P. kho m. base, alloy M.kho alloyed (CDIAL 3931) khaa hill pasture (Gaw.)(CDIAL 3792). Rebus: kh metalware, tools, pots and pans. Glyph: hol a drum beaten on one end by a stick and on the other by the hand (Santali); hol drum (Nahali); dhol (Kurku); hol (Hi.) dhol a drum (G.)(CDIAL 5608) [lu ] [Tel.] n. A drum. Rebus: dul to cast in a mould; dul mht, dul mee, dul; koe mee forged iron (Santali) WPah.kg. (kc.) h m. stone, kg. h m. big stone or boulder, hu small id. Him.I 87.(CDIAL 5536). Or. ka, k stalk, arrow (CDIAL 3023). Rebus: kh tools, pots and pans, metal-ware. ayaska a quantity of iron, excellent iron (P.ga) 689

eaka wing (Telugu). eruvai = copper (Ta.lex.) eraka, er-aka = any metal infusion (Ka.Tu.); erako molten cast (Tulu) pajhar eagle; rebus: pasra smithy. anzu eagle (Sumerian) ancu iron (Tocharian) Wpah. kha stream. Rebus: Pk. kha mine khaaga -- m. one who digs a hole (CDIAL 3790). kaWater; sacred water. Rebus: kh tools, pots and pans, metalware. ayaska a quantity of iron, excellent iron (P.ga)I suggest that the glyphs of flowing water with fishes in the stream denotes ayaska 'metal-ware, metal tools, metl pots and metal pans'. Te. ku rivulet, branch of a river; Ta. ku bank of stream or pool (DEDR 2200). Rebus: M.kho alloyed (CDIAL 3931) ayo fish; rebus: ayas metal. Read on...Indus writing in ancient near East Also available from flipkart.com [quote]Even though direct trade declined, a large number of foreigners stayed back, adopted local customs, and played an important role in Sumerian economy. These foreigners stayed in a village a Meluhhan village from 2062 B.C.E; we have documents from this period. This village was located in an area called Lagash in southwestern Mesopotamia which had cities like Girsu, Nina, and a port city and area called Guabba which had the temple of Nin-mar[5]. The Meluhhan village in Guabba and was associated with this temple. Guabba was probably a harbor town under the jurisdiction of the Girsu/Lagas but by the time of Ur III, it was not near the sea, but could only be reached by inland waterways.A large number of granaries existed in Guabba where the temple was located. The granaries had to deliver barley and the Meluhhan village granary was one of them[10][11]. Thanks to the meticulous record keeping by the Sumerians we get a good picture of what these Meluhhans did. In 2062 B.C.E, a scribe of the builders received barley from the Meluhhan 690

village. In 2057 B.C.E, there is account of grain delivery, the details of which is mentioned against a tablet of one Ur-Lama, son of Meluhha; the inventory of barley deposits in 2047 B.C.E mentions the quantity from the Meluhhan village. By 2046 B.C.E, there is a debt note:Ur-Lama, son of Meluhha has to recompense some wool. In 2045 B.C.E, the list of grain rations mentions the son of Meluhha, who was the serf of the Nanse temple from the delta[10][11]. During the Akkadian times, the Meluhhans were considered as foreigners, but by Ur III period they became part of society paying tax and distributing grain like other Sumerian villages. Compared to other towns and villages, the amount of grain delivered by the Meluhhan village was quite high. Between 1981-1973 BC, Ur was ruled by Amar-Sin and between 1972-1964 BC by his brother Shu-Sin. During the sixth year of the former and eighth year of the latter, barley was delivered only by the Meluhhan granary. Maybe the Meluhhan granaries were bigger or there was a third millennium jaziya[11]. Besides the granary, few people of Guabba 4272 women and 1800 children worked in the weaving sector. The Indus region was famous for cotton since 4000 B.C.E: one of the earliest evidence for exports from the subcontinent is Baluchistan cotton which was found in Jordan. So probably the residents of Guabba were skilled weavers from the Indus region[11]. Besides weavers, the village also had shepherds; the Ur III texts also mention a Meluhhan goat. The temple of Ninmar had two gardens out of which one was Meluhhan. This was probably a garden planted with fruit trees from Meluhha and provided fruits for the goddess. Also by the Ur III period, the Meluhhans had adopted Sumerian names. It seems the overseer of the Nanshe temple was a Meluhhan and there was a Meluhhan worker in the temple. Thus instead of following their religious traditions, the Meluhhans adopted the Sumerian ones[11]. ... 10. Simo Parpola, Asko Parpola, and Robert H. Brunswig, The Melua Village: Evidence of Acculturation of Harappan Traders in Late Third Millennium Mesopotamia?, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 20, no. 2 (May 1977): 129-165. 11. P.S Vermaak, Guabba, the Meluhhan village in Mesopotamia, Journal for Semitics 17, no. 2 (2008): 553 570.[unquote]http://varnam.nationalinterest.in/2009/11/the-indus-colony-inmesopotamia-part-2/ 691

[quote] We dont know how Sargon looked like, but we have a life size copper head of what is most likely his grand son, created using the Lost-Wax method. But it is in Sargons time that we hear about Meluhhans, identified as people from the Indus region, for the first time. He boasted about ships from Dilmun, Magan and Meluhha docking in the quay of Akkad[4]. There is also a tablet dating to 2200 B.C.E which mentions an Akkadian who was the holder of Meluhhan ships: large boats that were transporting precious metals and gem stones[10]. There is also a text dating to this period which mentions

(Copper head from Sargonic Period)

that Lu-Sunzida, a man of Meluhha, paid 10 shekels of silver to Urur, son of Amar-luku as a payment for a broken tooth. This law seems to be an earlier version of the code of Hammurabi (1792 1750 B.C.E), which states that if one knocks out the tooth of a freeman, he shall pay one-third mana of silver[6]. When the name Lu-Sunzida is translated into Sumerian it means man of just buffalo-cow which is meaningless; the Sumerians dont have any cultural context for using the buffalo. But the people of India definitely had: the water buffalo is an important concept in Rg Veda (1.164: 4142)

41 Forming the water-floods, the buffalo hath lowed, one-footed or two-footed or four-footed, she, Who hath become eight-footed or hath got nine feet, the thousand-syllabled in the sublimest heaven. 42 From her descend in streams the seas of water; thereby the worlds four regions have their being, Thence flows the imperishable flood and thence the universe hath life.[HYMN CLXIV. Vi]
This link between Lu-Sunzida and the earliest layers of Rg Veda was noted by Asko Parpola, who suggested that the name could have been a direct translation from Indus to Sumerian[10]. Does this mean that the Vedic people were contemporaries of the Akkadians violating the lakshmana rekha of 1500 B.C.E? Not so fast. Listen to the explanation for this which is similar to the one which works around the problem of the discovery of real horse bones in Surkotada. According to this explanation, two Indo-Aryan groups the Dasas and Panis arrived around 2100 B.C.E from the steppes via 692

Central Asia bringing horses with them. If the Indo-Aryans arrived earlier does this mean that the date of Rg Veda can be pushed to an earlier date than 1200 B.C.E? The theory says, the folks who came in 2100 B.C.E were not the composers of the Veda; they came in a second wave, a couple of centuries later[7][8]. So according to Parpola, the name Lu-Sunzida could refer to the culture of those early arrivals the Dasas, Vratyas, Mlecchas who occupied the Indus region before the composers of Vedas. Thus Meluhha could be an adaptation of the Sanskrit word Mleccha[10]. Following the decline of the Akkadian dynasty founded by Sargon, city states like Lagash in the south gained independence and in 2144 B.C.E, Gudea became the town-king or governor. Direct sea trade, which had been active during Sargons time, 150 years back, between Meluhha and Mesopotamia was happening at this time too: Meluhhans came from their country to supply wood and raw materials for the construction of the main temple of Gudeas capital as well as red stones and luxury goods. Following the Akkadian period (2300 2150 B.C.E), there was a Sumerian renaissance resulting in the Third Dynasty of Ur, usually mentioned as Ur III Empire. It was during the Ur III period that one of the most famous landmarks in Iraq theZiggurat of Ur was built. The Sumerian King Ur-Nammu who built the ziggurat, which stood in the temple complex of the moon god Nanna, appointed his daughter as the high priestess. This was a practice started by Sargon and it continued till the 6th century B.C.E. Various city states like Gudeas Lagash ended with the emergence of Ur III state, but these political changes did not affect trade, which continued as usual with one difference.The direct trade by Meluhhans on Meluhhan ships reduced there is a decline in Indus artifacts in Mesopotamia - instead goods were bought by the middlemen in Dilmun. One reason is that by the time of Ur III the de-urbanization of Harappa was happening. While trade from Harappa declined, trade from ports in Gujarat boomed via the middlemen bringing in various kinds of Meluhhan wood, some of which were used to make special thrones with ivory inlays. ... 6.Hammurabi (King of Babylonia.), (University of Chicago Press, 1904).

693

Asko Parpola, The Horse and the Language of the Indus Civilization,in The Aryan Debate edited

by Thomas R. Trautmann (Oxford University Press, USA), 234-236.

8.Edwin Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration

Debate (Oxford University Press, USA, 2004).

9.Michael Roaf, The Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East (Facts on File, 1990). [unquote] http://varnam.nationalinterest.in/2009/11/the-indus-colony-in-mesopotamia-part-1/

...substratum words in Sumerian such as tibira merchant and sanga priest which are cognate with tam(b)ra copper (Santali) and sanghvi priest (Gujarati). Lipshur litanies state: 'Melukkha...is the land of carnelian' (Sumerian NA4.GUG, Akkadian sa_mtu). In the 17th century BC, the Neo-Assyrian king Esarhaddon called himself, 'king of the kings of Dilmun, Magan, and Melukkha'. The Sumerian myth Enki and the World Order has Enki exclaiming: 'Let the magilum-boats of Melukkha transport gold and silver for exchange!' Enki and Ninkhursag (lines 1-9, Tr. by B. Alster) has references to the products of Melukkha: 'The land Tukrish shall transport gold from Kharali, lapis lazuli, and bright...to you. The land Melukkha shall bring carnelian, desirable and precious, sissoo-wood from Magan, excellent mangroves, on big-ships! The land Markhashi will (bring) precious stones, dus'ia-stones, (to hand) on the breast, mighty, diorite-stones, u-stones, s'umin-stones to you!' This monograph presents four rosetta stones to decipher the Indus script. 1. First and second are pure tin ingots with Sarasvati hieroglyphs discovered in the Haifa shipwreck; 2. Third is an Akkadian cylinder seal attesting to Meluhha as a language of bronze-age traders (sea-faring merchants); 3. Fourth is a cylinder seal from Ur showing tabaernamonta flower (used as hairfragrance) which is read in Meluhha as tagaraka, rebus: tagara tin. The cryptography of the writing system is mlecchita vikalpa (which is recognized by Vatsyayana as one of 64 arts). http://sarasvatihieroglyphs.blogspot.in/ http://www.docstoc.com/docs/153502753/Identification-of-Meluhha-by-John-Hansman 694

hansmanmeluhha1 http://www.scribd.com/doc/137121511/Identification-of-Meluhha-by-John-Hansman Identification of Meluhha by John Hansman

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696

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/04/indus-writing-in-ancient-near-east.html Indus Writing in ancient Near East: Corpora and a dictionary and Akkadian Rising Sun: two new books (April 2013) Indus Writing in ancient Near East: Corpora and a dictionary and Akkadian Rising Sun: two new books (April 2013)

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Indus Writing in ancient Near East: Corpora and a dictionary [Paperback 572 pages]

S. Kalyanaraman Book Description ISBN-13: 978-0982897188 Publication Date: April 3, 2013 Based on corpora of Indus writing and a dictionary, the book validates Aristotles insight on writing systems. Indus writing is composed using symbols of spoken words. The symbols are hieroglyphs of meluhha (mleccha) words spoken by artisans recording the repertoire of stone, mineral and metal workers. The writing results in a set of catalogs of metalworking of bronze age. Evidence of this competence in metallurgy which evolved from 4th millennium BCE of bronze age, is provided in corpora of metalware catalogs and a dictionary of melluhha (mleccha). Indus writing was a principal tool of economic administration for account-keeping by artisan and trader guilds and did not record literature or, history. Some sacred ideas and historical links across interaction areas between India and ancient Near East, may be inferred from the writing. http://tinyurl.com/cbl3ob5 Table of contents Hieroglyphic method 7 4th millennium Indus writing pre-dates all known writing 9 698

Arsenical bronze and tin bronze 10 Tabernae montana as a hieroglyph 16 A seal made in Susa with Indus writing 23 Harappan control over the Oman Sea 34 Tepe yahya 50 Gulf type seals 51 Seals from failaka 59 Mesopotamian trade with dilmun, magan and meluhha 63 Oman and bahrain 65 Tablet of destiny: ancu, iron (tocharian) amu (vedic) 66 Meaning of the word, amu used by Valmiki 69 Harosheth, kharo 72 Harosheth, kharo 82 Haifa: tin ingots from a shipwreck 93 Cyprus cylinder seals and bronze stand 97 Seal impression of Tell Umma 99 699

Indus seal with cuneiform inscription 99 Sea-faring merchants/artisans of Meluhha 100 Alik Tilmun, picture-writing Dilmunite traders 103 Tilmun, Telmun, Dilmun, the land of the famous red stone 104 Tepe Yahya, Susa 107 Hieroglyphs on Susa limestone vat 110 Hieroglyphs of Uruk trough 112 Susa: sacred fire-smithy 117 Bas-relief of spinner with hieroglyphs of Indus writing 121 Egyptian hieroglyphs 137 Uruk boat model, Mohenjo-daro boat on Indus writing 148 Metals trade catalog on a seal 153 Ligature, a technique used by scribes/artisans of the civilization 158 Steatite ornament of a smith, courier 160 Dotted circle glyph: context, vedi glyph, ivory artifacts 163 700

Tin ingots, forged alloys of smithy guild furnace account 164 Smithy 175 Indus writing on Mitathal seal 178 Indian sprachbund, meluhha (mleccha) words 179 Mould, to forge in copper smithy guild 183 Dholavira signboard 184 Two unique ligatured glyphs: professionals 186 Copper furnace account 188 Rim of jar as a hieroglyph 191 Antelope as a hieroglyph 193 Inscribed tablet as an evolution from Sumer token/bulla envelope system 196 Tablets as bullae 199 Functions of tablets and seals: an archeological context 201 Guild, entrustment account-book, courier, worker on a lathe 203 701

Mohenjo-daro guild standard tablet 203 Orthography of Standard device 206 Wing and eagle as hieroglyphs 234 Circular working platform as a workshop (anvil, smithy, forge) 242 Trough as a hieroglyph 243 Ingots 272 Gold 393 Fortified place 283 Alloyed metal, to engrave 284 Consecrated fire, kiln 286 Cauldron 290 Mould, to forge, iron worker, mine 292 Continuum of Indus script sign sequence on punch-marked coins 295 Conclusion 300 Concordance lists for epigraphs 301 Bibliography 544 702

About the author 550 About the book 551 Index & End Notes 552

A 180-page, companion document is an illustrated novel titled: Akkadian rising sun also published on April 3, 2013. http://tinyurl.com/braztyn ISBN-13: 9780982897195 Sagan in search of Sarasvati ends up in Muztagh Ata and encounters Chinese guards guarding the treasure of ancu. There were other seekers of ancu before him. He ends up in a bizarre court case in America. He visits Disney World Animal kingdom and takes a ride on the Kali River rapids. As the waters splash over him, he finds a friend on the ride. That friend from Kidarankondan guides him through the story of about seven millennia of people in search of ancu which is called amsu in an old human document called the Rigveda. Sagan finds the alchemical formula for making gold from mineral rocks of Muztagh Ata. http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/11/continuity-of-hindu-civilization-nine.html Continuity of Hindu civilization - Nine evidences (Kalyanaraman, 2012) Continuity of Hindu civilization - Nine evidences (Kalyanaraman, 2012)

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Pushkarini Agri-cultural practices ivalinga Sindhur at parting of hair Anklets & bangles ankha kna, conch-bangle-cutter Conch-bangle dated to 6500 BCE (Archaeological evidence) ankha as trumpet Form of greeting: Namaste Read on and view images... http://www.docstoc.com/docs/135811781/Continuity-of-hindu-civilization Continuity of hindu civilization Mirror:http://www.scribd.com/doc/112664596/Continuity-of-Hindu-CivilizationContinuity of Hindu Civilization http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/10/a-comparison-of-manuscript-with-indus.html A comparison of a Kabul manuscript with the Indus script (Lucy Zuberbuhler, 2009) A comparison of a manuscript with the Indus script (Lucy Zuberbuhler, 2009, Bachelor thesis, Univ. of Bern, Inst. of Linguistics) Source (thanks to Daniel Salas): http://www.indoeurohome.com/LucyZuberbuehlerindusscriptmss2009.pdf (Full text of the thesis with illustrations) In the following figures, Lucy Zuberbuhler presents an original piece of research analysing 1) the nature of the glyphics; 2) possible segmentation of text in the narrative presented by the manuscript (Figures 5 and 6); 3) what she calls Kabul sign list with allographs (Figure 7); 4) near identical graphemes in the Kabul manuscript and the Indus script (Parpola 2000: 70704

78)(Figure 8); 5) near identical correspondences in mirror image (Parpola 2000: 70-78)(Figure 9); 6) strong resemblances with fewer strokes (Parpola 2000: 70-78)(Figure 10); 7) uncertain resemblances due to obstructions (Parpola 2000: 70-78)(Figure 11); 8. fair resemblances (Parpola 2000: 70-78)(Figure 12); 9. modifications of other Kabul signs (Figure 13); 10. no obvious resemblances (Figure 14); 11. comparison of alternative segmentations (Figure 15); 12. comparison of alternative allographic diviions (Figure 16). These figures are a remarkable demonstration of the legitimacy of the glyphics found in the Kabul manuscript which cannot obviously be treated as random occurrences. Lucy goes on to look at the most common Indus glyphics using the corpora of Parpola and Wells. She also compares a number of Kabul manuscript glyphics with a number of Easter Island 'signs' (which also appear in the top 60 most frequently occurring Indus script signs). Lucy's Figure 19 shows the number of most common Kabul signs which are among the top 60 most frequently occurring Indus script signs and arrives in Figure 20 with a list of most comon Kabul glyphics. In my view, this pictorial documentation and analysis by Lucy is a clear demonstration that the Kabul manuscript DOES HAVE validity as a manuscript of an Indus script text. Lucy should be complimented for this brilliant analytical research work and providing a major advance in Indus script research work. It should also be said to the credit of her Bachelor thesis adviser, Prof. Dr. Roland Bielmeier who encouraged Lucy to continue with her research work, despite a lurking fear that the Kabul manuscript could turn out to be a 'fake'. What Lucy's thesis does, in effect, is to dispel the fear of the Kabul manuscript being a 'fake'. Thus, the field should be open for Kabul museum authorities or scholars interested in Indus script studies to examine and arrive at the possible date of the manuscript. 705

A lead is provided by the The University of Washington Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project, which was constituted in 1996. For this Project work, the authentication of the manuscript texts were done with well-known Buddhist texts and the decipherment of the birch-bark manuscripts (obtained by British Library from Afghanistan) was a stellar demonstration of research work related to ancient civilization studies led by Prof. Salomon as director of the project and Professor Collett Cox as assistant director. As of October 1, 2009, six volumes in this series have been published by EBMP research scholars. A surprise was that two of the newest manuscripts which were subjected to radiocarbon (C14) testing yielded dates in the first century b.c., even earlier than had been expected. The Kabul Mss. with Indus script should NOT be discarded as 'fake' without radiocarbon (C14) testing. Similarly, Indus script use should be assumed to be of a literate culture and further analyses of segmentation of texts in the Kabul mss. may be carried out on the lines provided by Prof. RPN Rao et al and studies of possible linguistic structure in Indus script. See also: http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~rao/IndusCompLing.pdf Entropy, the Indus Script, and Language: A Reply to R. Sproat by RPN Rao et al. Daniel Salas has noted a remarkable occurrence of Indus glyphics sequence on the Kabul mss. and compares with an almost identical sequence of glyphics appearing on a Zebu seal with Indus script inscription:

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Parpola had noted an occurrence of similar sequencing of Indus glyphics on inscribed metallic tools/weapons.

Indus script inscriptions on some metal tools/weapons. Some glyphics on Dholavira signboard are also comparable to sequence in the Kabul mss.

Dholavira signboard glyphic sequence.

707

Kabul msss. glyphic sequence.

708

709

710

711

712

713

714

715

716

Mirror: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/133467283/A-comparison-of-a-manuscript-with-the-Indusscript-(Lucy-Zuberbuhler-2009-Bachelor-thesis-Univ-of-Bern-Inst-of-Linguistics) A comparison of a manuscript with the Indus script (Lucy Zuberbuhler, 2009, Bachelor thesis, Univ. of Bern, Inst. of Linguistics) 717

See also:http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/11/indus-signs-on-birch-bark-folio-in.html Indus signs on birch bark folio in Sultani Museum, Kabul: continuous or reinvented use?

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/08/proto-indian-in-harosheth-hagoyim.html Proto-Indian in harosheth hagoyim (S.Kalyanaraman 2012) Proto-Indian in harosheth hagoyim (S.Kalyanaraman 2012) Clothes in the late Bronze and early Iron Ages(1300-930 BC) The Canaanite ivory carvings of Megiddo (12th century BC) show the men wearing long sleeved robes over a coloured tunic (ketonet), embroidered in geometric designs. Over their robes the simlah is wrapped closely around the body, leaving the right shoulder and arm free. On their heads, they have close-fitting caps.

718

Part of an ivory carving found in the ruins of ancient Megiddo ...The carving presents a court scene so it may not be a very good indication of ordinary Israelite costume of the period. It does show, however, that Iron Age garments were no longer fastened by means of pins, but made use of fibulae or buckles. Source: http://www.biblearchaeology.info/clothes.htm

Chariot and horses sculpture at Megiddo. Photo by Ferrell Jenkins. 719

There are several reference in the Bible connecting Megiddo with chariots. Because Megiddo was located on the main trunk road between Egypt and the empires of the north (Hittites and Syria) and those of the east (Assyria, Babylon, and Persia), we should not find this surprising. Solomon is said to have built the house of the LORD, his own house, the Millo and the Wall of Jerusalem, and the cities of Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer (1 Kings 9:15). The same context makes reference to chariot cities built by Solomon: and all the store cities that Solomon had, and the cities for his chariots, and the cities for his horsemen, and whatever Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and in all the land of his dominion. (1 Kings 9:19 ESV) The drawing below comes from 1,000 Bible Images (Logos) with this note: The picture shows two chariots and some foot soldiers, each carrying a curved ax, made of ivory (from Megiddo). Read a little about this publication here. I do not recall having seen this piece in any museum. Does any reader know where it may be? There is a similar piece in the Oriental Institute.

Chariots and foot soldiers made of ivory. 1,000 Bible Images. Shalmaneser III (858-859 B.C.) informs us that Ahab, the Israelite, provided 2,000 chariots and 10,000 foot soldiers to the coalition that fought against the Assyrian king at Qarqar (Stone Monolith from Kurkh, now in the British Museum). Sounds as if Ahab had an impressive army. Source: http://ferrelljenkins.wordpress.com/2010/08/17/the-chariot-city-of-megiddo/

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http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/08/altar-of-megiddo.html Altar of Megiddo. Harosheth-hagoyim (3 Occurrences) Judges 4:2 And the LORD gave them over into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, that reigned in Hazor; the captain of whose host was Sisera, who dwelt in Harosheth-goiim. (See NAS) Judges 4:13 And Sisera gathered together all his chariots, even nine hundred chariots of iron, and all the people that were with him, from Harosheth-goiim, unto the brook Kishon. (See NAS) Judges 4:16 But Barak pursued after the chariots, and after the host, unto Harosheth-goiim; and all the host of Sisera fell by the edge of the sword; there was not a man left. (See NAS) http://concordances.org/h/harosheth-hagoyim.htm Bailey notes Skt. Kharua as the name of an astronomer and suggests various spellings which can be fitted to establish an Iranian word xSaora empire in the first component and a second component ending in -Stra- -ka-. With the feminine - the adjective qualified lipi script (old Persian dipi-_.Place name xSaora-uStra- imperial estate from base vah-: uS- Old Ind. Vas-: uS to dwell. HW Bailey, with the Indo-Scythian studies: being Khotanese texts, Volume 7, p.48

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Translation from Swedish: Name on a script that used in Northwestern india, Afghanistan and northern Iranian areas, and in Turkestan from ca. 500 BCe. to ca. 500 CE. The script is from right to left and is apparently derived from the Aramaic script, which was used for Persian during the period of Akemeniderna (648 to 330 BCE)...used principally as a commercial script...(script used) along with Brahmi (lipi), which is by far the most widely written script in India and from which all later Indian alphabets aro derived. Entry for kharo. From: Nordisk familjebok, Sweden's most comprehensive encyclopedia of all times.(Update Aug. 13, 2012) Entry for kharo. From: Nordisk familjebok Proto-Indian in harosheth hagoyim - Identification of soma: ancu (Tocharian), amu (Indian sprachbund), asem, asemon (Egyptian); taanach (Biblical), aka mint (Indian sprachbund) Abstract Proto-Indian in harosheth hagoyim, smithy of nations is a provisional review of the contact areas of speakers of Prkt and other ancient Indian languages. The challenge is to outline the structural features of Proto-Indian from ca. 4th millennium BCE. A sememe [Greek: (smaino), "mean, signify"] is a language unit of meaning, correlative to a morpheme. A sememe for key component of soma yields the clue to identify soma as a metallic mineral. The sememe is ancu (Tocharian); cognate amu (Indian sprachbund). Another pair of sememes: Harosheth hagoyim (Biblical); cognate kharo goy, writing/engraving community of smiths(Prkt). Bronze-age evolution of languages with technical, metallurgical terms 722

matches the cultural evolution of the bronze age with focus on glosses for and smithy processes involving minerals, metals and alloys. These identifications reinforce the over 1200 semantic clusters of an Indian lexicon. Tocharian-Indo-European lexical isoglosses (with some loan words from one of the lost sources), point to Proto-Indian (with some loan words from one of the lost sources, such as Language X) as a language with two dialectical forms: Vedic, the literary form and Mleccha, the vernacular form. Louis Renou noted: Toute le RV est present in nuce autour des themes du soma. (Trans. All the gveda is present in a nutshell around the topics of the soma.) About 120 hymns out of a total of 1028 hymns or a thousand verses and almost the entire ninth book (with 114 hymns) deal with soma. The number of hymns used to Soma are next only to those to Agni and Indra as devata-s. Indra and Varuna gain anthropomorphic status as divinities, but Soma is generally represented in reference to physical nature of Soma, though metaphorically. Chndogya Upaniad calls soma as rj. The gloss asem, asemon (Egyptian) is cognate with soma (Indian sprachbund).. Early Vedic is attested in what is perhaps one of the oldest documents of mankind, the gveda. Mleccha as a language is attested in Manusmti (and as Meluhha in Mesopotamian cuneiform texts). Taanach cult stand dated to 10th century BCE has hieroglyphs comparable to Mesopotamian and Indus artifacts which yield a link with aka mint (Indian sprachbund) and in the context of damgar mint-merchant (Akkadian). Warka vase with Mleccha hieroglyphs is dated to ca. 3200 BCE. Glosses of Indian sprachbund hold the key to unravel the semantics of hieroglyphs/ homonyms in Indus script inscriptions and of hieroglyphs of Taanach stand from Tell Taannek/Tiinnik and Warka vase from Sumer. Both Tiinnik and Sumer could have been mleccha (Proto-Indian) contact areas. The apparent semantic links between Tocharian and Indian sprachbund call for a rethink on roots and evolution of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and of PIE Urheimat. tm yajasya (raison detre of sacred Vedic offering) Hermeneutics is the science of discovering new meanings and interpretations in all those situations in which we encounter meanings that are not immediately understandable but require interpretive effort. Such an effort can explain the semantics of amu (Rigveda) as metllic mineral, by relating it to the meaning assigned to ancu (Tocharian), a cognate which means iron. yaja (root: yaj); yajati The act of offering something with reference to some deity; B. on MS.4.2.27. (Apte.lexicon, p. 1297). Amu is the very raison detre of the offering, for example, in agnioma (fire-offering). There are seven soma samsth: , , , , , and Soma yaja is the soul of the gveda (tm yajasya: RV. IX. 2,10; 6,8). Within soma, amu which is a component, is tm yajasya Within soma ore-block complex, amu is the key 723

metallic-mineral ingredient which is offered in soma samsth. With the identification of amu, soma gets identified. The process is reduction or purification (pavitram). In an extraordinary process described eloquently in Vedic chants (chandas), soma was purchased, and went through a process kept secret from the seller. Soma was washed in water (yad-adbhih pariicyase mjyamno gabhastyoh- : RV. Ix.65.6), then pounded either with stone or in a mortar (RV. 1.83.6; RV. 1.28.4); it had amu (RV. Ix.67.28); it yielded andhas, rasa, pitu, pya or amta; it was filtered through a strainer (antah- pavitra hitah- : RV. Ix.12.5). It was not drunk by mortals. Soma was the product of an activity using intense fire, and involving the participation of the entire household for days and nights. Soma was wealth. Read on... http://www.docstoc.com/docs/126376457/Proto-Indian-in-harosheth-hagoyim-(SKalyanaraman-2012) Proto-Indian in harosheth hagoyim (S. Kalyanaraman, 2012) http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/07/indian-linguistic-area-proto-indoaryans.html Indian Linguistic Area (Proto-Indoaryans or Proto-Indian) Indian Linguistic Area (Proto-Indoaryans or Proto-Indian) The term Proto-Indian is used as a linguistic category. The idea of a Linguistic Area is linked with the term Sprachbund which was introduced in April 1928 in the 1st Intl. Congress of Linguists by Nikolai Trubetzkoy. He made a distinction between Sprachfamilien and Sprachbunde: Gruppen, bestehend aus Sprachen, die eine groe hnlichkeit in syntaktischer Hinsicht; eine hnlichkeit in den Grundstzen des morphologischen Baues aufweisen; und eine groe Anzahl gemeinsamer Kulturw rter bieten, manchmal auch ussere hnlichkeit im Bestande der Lautsystem, dabei aber keine systematischen Lautentsprechungen keine bereinstimmung in der lautlichen Gestalt der morphologischen Elemente, und keine gemeinsamen Elementarw rter besitzen, solche Sprachgruppen nennen wir Sprachbnde. [Trubetzkoy, 1928: 18 (italics his)]Trubetzkoy, N. S., 1928. Proposition 16. In: Actes du 1er Congrs international de linguistes, 17-18.Leiden: A. W. Sijthoffs Uitgeversmaatschappij. The distinction in classifying languages was suggested by Trubetzkoy in order to avoid 724

'missverstandnisse und fehler' (trans. misunderstandings and errors). A study of what is defined as Indian Linguistic Area by Murray B. Emeneau can begin with the co-author of Dravidian Etymological Dictionary T. Burrow, who wrote the following embedded article on the Proto-Indoaryans in JRAS (April 1973). A number of linguists have also endorsed the reality of Indian Linguistic Area. The question to be explored is: what was the date of the genesis of this area? I suggest that the genesis can be traced to the Indus-Sarasvati civilization which is evidenced archaeologically, from ca. 3500 BCE. An Indian Lexicon is provided in the embedded document below including comparative glosses from Indo-Aryan, Dravidian and Munda streams. This lexicon clusters together, semantically, lexemes from over 25 Indian languages with surface resemblances (ussere hnlichkeit) in the sound system. This lexicon demonstrates a large amount of shared cultural vocabulary in the three streams. The field of inquiry is to delineate how this sharing occurred. In some semantic clusters of the lexicon, a hypothesized common substrate may explain the surface resemblances in the sound system. One possibility is that the three streams descend from a community which lived and worked together in a transition from chalcolithic age to bronze age. Emeneau, MB, 1956, India as a linguistic area, Language 32, 1956, 3-16. Kuiper, FBJ, 1948, Proto-Munda words in Sanskrit, Amsterdam, 1948; 1967, The genesis of a linguistic area, IIJ 10, 1967, 81-102 Masica, CP, 1971, Defining a Linguistic area. South Asia. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Przyludski, J., 1929, Further notes on non-aryan loans in Indo-Aryan in: Bagchi, P. C. (ed.), PreAryan and Pre-Dravidian in Sanskrit. Calcutta : University of Calcutta: 145-149 725

Southworth, F., 2005, Linguistic archaeology of South Asia, London, Routledge-Curzon. See also: Murray B. Emeneau, 1980. Linguistic area: introduction and continuation. In: Language and linguistic area, 1-19. Stanford: Stanford University Press. The Proto-Indoaryans -T. Burrow, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (New Series) April 1973 105 : pp 123-140 (For a pdf copy of the article, email me). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00130837 (About DOI) Abstract It is now generally agreed by most authorities on the subject that the Aryan linguistic vestiges in the Near East are to be connected specifically with Indo-Aryan, and not with Iranian, and also that they do not represent a third, independent Aryan group, and are not to be ascribed to the hypothetically reconstructed Proto-Aryan. This conclusion is incorporated in the title of M. Mayrhofer's bibliography of the subject, Die Indo-Arier im alten Vorderasien (Wiesbaden, 1966), and it can now be taken as the commonly accepted view. It is based on the fact that where there is divergence between Iranian and Indo-Aryan, and where such elements appear in the Near Eastern record, the latter always agrees with Indo-Aryan. Such items are aika one and uriya sun, and the colour names parita-nnu and pinkara-nnu which correspond to Sanskrit palita- grey and pigala- reddish. The evidence of vocabulary is supported by that of the four names of gods appearing in the Hittite-Mitanni treaty, where the Vedic gods Mitra and Varua, Indra, and the Nsatyas can be clearly recognized. This combined evidence is sufficient to establish the conclusions of Mayrhofer and others beyond reasonable doubt, and the arguments of A. Kammenhuber, who later attempted to resuscitate the theory that the Aryans of the Near East were Proto-Aryans, cannot be said to have been successful. http://www.docstoc.com/docs/125553673/Protoindoaryanstburrow1973 Mirror: http://www.scribd.com/doc/101603507Proto IndoAryans (T Burrow 1973) Additional resources/links 726

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/09/indus-language-and-indus-script.html Language and Linguistic Area -- Essays by Murray B. Emeneau Selected and introduced by Anwar S. Dil, 1980. Stanford University Press ISBN 0-8047-1047-3 (Google book: http://tinyurl.com/br5mdel) http://www.docstoc.com/docs/89829250/Kuiper-Genesis-of-Linguistic-Area Kuiper: Genesis of Linguistic Area http://www.docstoc.com/docs/96886220/Indian-linguistic-area-Linguistic-aspects-of-AIT-and-IEUrheimat-question-by-Koenraad-Elst-(2000-2005) Indian linguistic area: Linguistic aspects of AIT and IE Urheimat question by Koenraad Elst (2000, 2005) http://www.docstoc.com/docs/4126829/Proto-vedic-continuity-of-Bharatiya-(Indian)languages Proto-vedic continuity of Bharatiya (Indian) languages http://www.scribd.com/doc/35608669/Marcantonio-Repudiating-Linguistic-EvidenceAryan-Hypothesishttp://www.scribd.com/doc/6481694/Linguistic-Area Hindu civilization as linguistic area. Critique ofAnthony's 2007 bookMirror: http://www.scribd.com/doc/6698787/Hindu-Civilization-as-LinguisticAreahttp://www.scribd.com/doc/7314420/Under-the-Surface-of-South-Asian-LinguisticAreahttp://www.scribd.com/doc/44093404/Linguistic-Evidence-Indo-European-Origins-inIndiahttp://www.scribd.com/doc/12134167/protovedic The Proto-Vedic Continuity Theory of Bharatiya (Indian) Languages -- S. Kalyanaraman and Mayuresh Kelkar (October 2005) SouthEast Asian Features in the Munda Languages: Evidence for the Analytic-to-Synthetic Drift of Munda Author(s): Patricia Jane Donegan and David Stampe Proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: Special Session on Tibeto-Burman and Southeast Asian Linguistics (2002), pp. 111-120 http://www.scribd.com/doc/101609676/Southeast-Asian-Features-in-MundaSoutheast Asian Features in Mundahttp://www.scribd.com/doc/2232617/LexiconLexicon http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/07/indo-aryan-no-indian-language-union.html IndoAryan? No. Indian language union (sprachbund) Indo-Aryan? No. Indian language union (sprachbund)

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Indo-Aryan? No. Indian language union (sprachbund) The recent discussion article of Nicholas Kazanas http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/07/semantics-of-indo-aryan-controversydr.html -- Semantics of Indo-Aryan Controversy -- Dr. Nicholas Kazanas' Article, comments and response (July 2012) -- takes us back to the discussions sought to be promoted by Edwin Bryant and Laurie Patton who edited a 535-page book titled 'Indo-Aryan Controversy - Evidence and inference in Indian History' (2005, Routledge). The views of Bryant and Patton can be summarised from the following two quotes: Quote 1: "To conclude the discussion of the data, then, while the horse and chariotevidence cannot be simply brushed aside, it will only be the decipherment of thescript that will prove decisive in this whole issue to the satisfaction of most scholars,since the recent discovery suggests that the script could go back to 3500 BCE (providing, of course, that it encapsulates the same language throughout). If itturns out to be a language other than Indo-Aryan, then obviously the Indigenist position need no longer detain the consideration of Indologists or serious scholarsof ancient history. In my opinion, this eventuality will be the only development that will convince a large number of scholars that the Aryans were, indeed, immigrants into India. On the other hand, an Indo-Aryan decipherment will radicallyalter the entire IndoEuropean homeland-locating landscape, not just the proto-history of the subcontinent. If it is Indo-Aryan, everything will need to be recon-sidered Indo-Aryans, Indo-Iranians, and IndoEuropeans. We can note thatVentris, the decipherer of Linear B script from Crete, was amazed to see Greek emerge from Linear B he was expecting to see a pre-Indo-European language,the consensus gentium of his day. The answer, after all is said and done, is writtenon the seals. If it is not Indo-Aryan, then the standard Migrationist scenario willlikely remain an excellent rendition of events which can always be updated and improved as new evidence surfaces." (Edwin Bryant, Page 511) Quote 2: Barring any new discoveries, neither internal evidence from the Veda, nor archaeological evidence, nor linguistic substrata alone can make the turning point in anygiven hypothesis. This situation should be the most persuasive case of all for schol-ars to allow the questions to unite them in interdependence, rather than suspicions todivide them in monistic theory-making. It is far too early for scholars to begin taking positions and constructing 728

scenarios as if they were truths. Rather, it is time for scholars to rewrite and then share a set of common questions, such as the ones artic-ulated earlier. Then, a lack of conclusive evidence can be a spur for further research,rather than a political bludgeon which wastes precious intellectual resources. (Laurie Patton, Page 30). Source:http://www.scribd.com/doc/54128303/Bryant-Edwin-and-Laurie-Patton-Ed-the-IndoAryan-Cotroversy A new discovery? A decipherment of Indus script? In my view, a melting of the glaciers that separate the 'invasionists' and 'indigenists' can occur if an agreement can be reached on the nature of the Indian language union (sprachbund) ca. 3500 BCE. The links provided at the above-mentioned blogpost do NOT include discussions on the Indian sprachbund. I suggest that the discussions may start with this topic of Indian sprachbund articulated in: Emeneau, 1956; Kuiper, 1948; Masica, 1971; Przyludski, 1929; Southworth, 2005). Emeneau, MB, 1956, India as a linguistic area, Language 32, 1956, 3-16. Kuiper, FBJ, 1948, Proto-Munda words in Sanskrit, Amsterdam, 1948; 1967, The genesis of a linguistic area, IIJ 10, 1967, 81-102 Masica, CP, 1971, Defining a Linguistic area. South Asia. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Przyludski, J., 1929, Further notes on non-aryan loans in Indo-Aryan in: Bagchi, P. C. (ed.), PreAryan and Pre-Dravidian in Sanskrit. Calcutta : University of Calcutta: 145-149 Southworth, F., 2005, Linguistic archaeology of South Asia, London, Routledge-Curzon. http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/07/sohgaura-copper-plate-inscription-as.html Sohgaura copper plate inscription as a survival of Sarasvati hieroglyphs and writing system Sohgaura copper plate inscription as a survival of Sarasvati hieroglyphs and writing system Sohgaura copper plate inscription as a survival of Sarasvati hieroglyphs and writing system The Sohgaura copper plate refers to a pair of kos.t.ha_ga_ra (dva_ra kot.t.haka); the two 729

storehouses described as tri-garbha (i.e. having three rooms) are illustrated on line 1. (Fleet, JRAS, 1907). The illustrations indicate that the three rooms are in three storeys, with supporting pillars clearly seen. The inscription refers to the junction of three highways named Manavati, in two villages called Dasilimita and Usagama. The storehouses were made at this junction for the goods of people using the highways, which are indicated in line 3 by mentioning the three places to and from which they led. One of the names give is reognized by Fleet as Chanchu. (Fleet, JRAS, 63, 1894 proceedings, 86, plate, IA 25. 262; cf. Sohgaura copper plate/B.M. Barua. The Indian Historical Quarterly, ed. Narendra Nath Law. Reprint. 41) Some glyphs on line 1: kut.hi = tree; rebus: kut.hi = smelting furnace; kos.t.ha_ga_ra = storehouse; s'u_la = spear; cu_l.a = kiln; kan.d.kanka = rim of jar; rebus: copper furnace; bat.a = quail; rebus: kiln. The top line is a set of hieroglyphs (from left to right). Tree = kut.i; rebus: kut.hi smelter, furnace Warehouse = kot. (kos.t.hagara) Spear = cu_la; rebus: cu_lha furnace Mountain-summit = ku_t.amu ; rebus : ku_t.a workshop Wide-mouthed pot on mountain-summit = bat.i; rebus: bat.hi furnace) Rim of jar = kan.d.; rebus: kand. fire-altar Tree = kut.i; rebus: kut.hi smelter, furnace Bird on branch: bat.a quail; rebus: bat.a furnace; d.a_l. branch of tree; rebus: d.ha_l.ako large metal ingot [The glyptic composition refers to a kut.hi which can produce metal ingots] Warehouse = kot. (kos.t.hagara) The brahmi epigraph on the lines following the top line refers to two kos.t.hagara set up for itinerant merchants (smiths?) at the junction of three roads. Some devices used on punch-marked coins also occur as the first line of the Sohgaura copper plate inscription. ( Fleet, J.F., The inscription on the Sohgaura Plate, JRAS, 1907, pp. 509-532; B.M. Barua, Sohgaura copper plate, Indian Historical Quarterly, Vol. X, 41). Sohgaura or Soghaura is a village on the right bank of River Rapti, about fourteen miles southeast from Gorakhpur. The plate measures 2 X 1 7/8 inches. The copper plate was cast in a mould. The writing is NOT incised, but in bold, high relief. (JRAS 1907, p. 527). In the first 730

place, this archaeological find affords the oldest known and clear example of the use of a copper-plate as a material for writing, especially for inscribing a record in Brahmi charactersSecondly, the record has its uniqueness and importance for the standard of Brahmi characters which it presents, the standard which, in the opinion of Dr. Fleet, refers it to at any rate an early date in the Maurya period, BC 320 to about 180 Non-religious nature of sign graphs on Sohgaura copper plate Lastly, with regard to its subject-matter, the inscription is found to be a public notification about the judicious use of certain things in two storehouses by persons carrying on traffic along the high roads leading to Sra_vasti, or it may be, by persons carrying on traffic by all the three kinds of vehicles along the high roads, in times of urgent needWhat we owe to Dr. Fleets study of the nature of the devices (used on the top line of the copper plate) is the recognition in all of them a significance other than that of religious symbols. To quote him in his words: Two of them obviously represent the storehouses themselves, which are shown as shed with double roofs. The lower roof in each case is supported by four rows of posts; and these perhaps stand for four rows of posts, the front posts hiding, those behind them. In the other devices I recognize, not religious emblems, Buddhist or otherwise, -- (I mean, not religious emblems employed here as such), -- nor Mangalas, auspicious symbols, but the arms of the three towns mentioned in L3 of the record. (BM Barua, 1929, The Sohgaura copper-plate inscription, ABORI, vol. 11, 1929, pp. 31-48). The text of the inscription (which is considered by some to of pre-Mauryan days, i.e. circa 4th century BCE) refers to some famine relief measures and notifies the establishment of two public storehouses at a junction of three great highways of vehicular traffic to meet the needs of persons (apparently merchants and metal-workers) using these roads. The first line which is full of glyphs or devices should relate to the inscription and the facilities provided to the traders. Next to the symbol of the kos.t.haagaara is a su_la (spear). This is phonetically cuula kiln for metals to be heated and copper/bronze/brass vessels and tools, worked on by metalsmiths. Similarly, the first glyph of a tree on a platform can be read as kuti tree; another word kuti in Santali means a furnace for melting metals. The other devices are: three peaks mounted by a rimless pot, a rim of a jar, a tree branch with a bird perched on top. These can also be explained in the context of Sarasvati heiroglyphs and the context of metals/minerals-trade. 731

The second symbol from the left and the second symbol from the right may refer to a kos.t.haagaara. Ko.s.thaagaara is a pair of storehouses are referred to by this name in the Sohgaura plaque inscription, and illustrated on the same plaque (Fleet, The tradition about the corporeal relics of Buddha, JRAS, 1907, pp. 341-363: I find a mention of a place named Chanchu, which I take to be the same one, in the Sohgaura plate (JASB, 63, 1894. proceedings, 86, plate; IA, 25. 262). That record, as I understand it, is a public notification relating to three great highways of vehicular trafficIt notifies that at the junction, named Manavasi, of the three roads, in two villages named Dasilimata and Usagama, storehouses were made for the goods of people using the roads. It indicates the roads by mentioning in line 3, the three places to and from which they led; as regards the junction of them.). They are described as trigarbha, having three rooms; Fleet discusses this at length, but it is evident from the illustrations that these rooms are on three storeys, for the storehouses are represented as small three-storeyed pavilions; it is true that the roof of the top storey is "out of the picture," but its supporting pillars can be clearly eeen. For another use of garbha as designating chambers of a many-storeyed building, see Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Indian Architectural Terms, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 48, no. 3, SEPT 1928, pp.250-275. The devices on the top line of the Sohgaura copper plate can be read rebus as hieroglyphs, as in the case of Sarasvati hieroglyphs: 1. tree, kut.i (as smelting furnace); 2. tree twigs, kut.i (as smelting furnace); 3. cup, bat.i (as a furnace for melting iron ore); 4. bird, bat.a (as iron or metal); 4. two kos.t.ha_ga_ra (as storehouses), comparable to a sign graph with four posts used on Sarasvati epigraphs (so called Indus inscriptions); three mountains with a U graph on top summit. The presence of furnace facilities for working with metal tools in the two warehouses can be explained in the context of the types of conveyances, parts of which may require mending and to work/tinker on metallic articles and wares of itinerant merchants who need such publicly provided facilities in times of emergency as the sa_sana in Brahmi writing notes. kut.hi kut.a, kut.i, kut.ha a tree (Kaus'.); kud.a tree (Pkt.); kur.a_ tree; kar.ek tree, oak (Pas;.)(CDIAL 3228). kut.ha, kut.a (Ka.), kudal (Go.) kudar. (Go.) kut.ha_ra, kut.ha, kut.aka = a tree (Skt.lex.) kut., kurun: = stump of a tree (Bond.a); khut. = id. (Or.) kut.a, kut.ha = a tree (Ka.lex.) gun.d.ra = a stump; khun.t.ut = a stump of a tree left in the ground (Santali.lex.) kut.amu = a tree (Te.lex.) 732

kut.i, smelting furnace (Mundari.lex.).kut.hi, kut.i (Or.; Sad. kot.hi) (1) the smelting furnace of the blacksmith; kut.ire bica duljad.ko talkena, they were feeding the furnace with ore; (2) the name of e_kut.i has been given to the fire which, in lac factories, warms the water bath for softening the lac so that it can be spread into sheets; to make a smelting furnace; kut.hi-o of a smelting furnace, to be made; the smelting furnace of the blacksmith is made of mud, coneshaped, 2 6 dia. At the base and 1 6 at the top. The hole in the centre, into which the mixture of charcoal and iron ore is poured, is about 6 to 7 in dia. At the base it has two holes, a smaller one into which the nozzle of the bellow is inserted, and a larger one on the opposite side through which the molten iron flows out into a cavity (Mundari.lex.) cf. kan.d.a = furnace, altar (Santali.lex.) kut.i = a woman water-carrier (Te.lex.) kut.i = to drink; drinking, beverage (Ta.); drinking, water drunk after meals (Ma.); kud.t- to drink (To.); kud.i to drink; drinking (Ka.); kud.i to drink (Kod.); kud.i right, right hand (Te.); kut.i_ intoxicating liquor (Skt.)(DEDR 1654). The bunch of twigs = ku_di_, ku_t.i_ (Skt.lex.) ku_di_ (also written as ku_t.i_ in manuscripts) occurs in the Atharvaveda (AV 5.19.12) and Kaus'ika Su_tra (Bloomsfield's ed.n, xliv. cf. Bloomsfield, American Journal of Philology, 11, 355; 12,416; Roth, Festgruss an Bohtlingk, 98) denotes it as a twig. This is identified as that of Badari_, the jujube tied to the body of the dead to efface their traces. (See Vedic Index, I, p. 177). bat.i = a furnace for melting iron-ore (Santali.lex.) bhat.t.hi_ = [Skt. bhr.s.ti frying; fr. bhrasj to fry] a kiln, a furnace; an oven; a smiths forge; a stove; the fireplace of a washer-man;a spirit still; a distillery; a brewery (G.lex.) bat.i = a metal cup or basin; bhat.i = a still, a boiler, a copper; dhubi bhat.i = a washermans boiler; jhuli bhat.i = a trench in the ground used as a fireplace when cooking has to be done for a large number of people (Santali.lex.) bat.a = a quail, or snipe, coturuix coturnix cot; bon.d.e bat.a = a large quail; dak bat.a = the painted stripe, rostraluta benghalensis bengh; gun.d.ri bat.a = a small type, coloured like a gun.d.ri (quail); ku~k bat.a = a medium-sized type; khed.ra bat.a = the smallest of all; lan.d.ha bat.a = a small type (Santali.lex.) bat.ai, (Nag.); bat.er (Has.); [H. bat.ai or bat.er perdix olivacea; Sad. bat.ai] coturnix coromandelica, the black-breasted or rain-quail; two other kinds of quail are 733

called respectigely: hur.in bat.ai and gerea bat.ai (Mundari.lex.) vartaka = a duck (Skt.) batak = a duck (G.lex.) vartika_ = quail (RV.); wuwrc partridge (Ash.); barti = quail, partridge (Kho.); vat.t.aka_ quail (Pali); vat.t.aya (Pkt.); bat.t.ai (N.)(CDIAL 11361). varta = *circular object; *turning round (Skt.); vat.u = twist (S.)(CDIAL 11346) bat.er = quail (Ku.B.); bat.ara, batara = the grey quail (Or.)(CDIAL 11350). bat.ai = to divide, share (Santali) [Note the glyphs of nine rectangles divided.] bat.a; rebus, bat.a iron bat.a = a kind of iron (G.lex.) bhat.a = a furnace, a kiln; it.a bhat.a a brick kiln (Santali) This note has presented two continuities from Sarasvati civilization: 1. use of punches to mark devices on punch-marked coins and 2. use of copper plate to convey message related to an economic transaction. This continuity of tradition is linked by the metallurgical tradition of sreni/artisan guilds working with metals, minerals and furnaces to create copper/bronze artifacts and terracotta or sankha bangles and ornaments of silver, copper or semi-precious stones such as agate, carnelian or lapis lazuli. The code of the writing system which was employed on Sarasvati hieroglyphs with 5 or 6 sign graphs constituting an inscription, is the same code which was employed on devices of punch-marked coins (produced in mints belonging to guilds) and on copper plate sa_sana-s or historical periods of pre-mauryan times in India, like the evidence presented by Sohgaura copper plate. Since this plate contains a Brahmi inscription, this constitutes a Rosetta stone to explain the meanings of the sign graphs or glyphs employed on the top line of the plate in the context of the facilities provided in two warehouses to traveling caravan merchants or rive-faring merchants.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/07/science-20-july-2012-vol.html South Asian archaeology: Reports by Andrew Lawler (20 July 2012) South Asian archaeology: Reports by Andrew Lawler (20 July 2012) http://www.docstoc.com/docs/124832782/South-Asian-archaeology-Papers-by-Andrew-Lawler(20-July-2012) 734

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/124833039/Abstracts-South-Asia-Archaeology-Conf-(EASAA2012) Science 20 July 2012: Vol. 337 no. 6092 pp. 288-289 DOI: 10.1126/science.337.6092.288-b NEWS FOCUS EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION FOR SOUTH ASIAN ARCHAEOLOGY AND ART MEETING Diving Into the Indian Ocean's Past Andrew Lawler Researchers studying what appears to be the oldest known shipwreck in the Indian Ocean say it promises to remake our understanding of the region and era.

Clear sailing. Divers explore an ancient Sri Lankan wreck that could offer clues to early Indian Ocean trade. CREDIT: SHEILA MATTHEWS/DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGY OF SRI LANKA AND THE INSTITUTE OF NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY Science 20 July 2012: 289. Nearly 15 years ago, two fishers in the waters off the southern coast of Sri Lanka hauled up a stone slab etched with ancient Hindu symbols. During a brief 2008 dive, archaeologists retrieved pottery and glass ingots. Then, in December 2011, with funding from the U.S. National 735

Endowment for the Humanities and other sources, researchers began the first systematic dives to examine what appears to be the oldest known shipwreck in the Indian Ocean, radiocarbon dated to between the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C.E. Because almost nothing was known about seafaring in this time and place, the wreck promises to remake our understanding of the region and era, says team member Osmund Bopearachchi, a historian at the University of Paris, Sorbonne.

View larger version: In this page In a new window Download PowerPoint Slide for Teaching Clear sailing. Divers explore an ancient Sri Lankan wreck that could offer clues to early Indian Ocean trade. CREDIT: SHEILA MATTHEWS/DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGY OF SRI LANKA AND THE INSTITUTE OF NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY Archaeologists suspected that traders crisscrossed the Indian Ocean at this time, but the evidence was slim. Just a century or so later, merchants from India and the Roman Empire plied the Indian Ocean, trading cotton, glass, and spices. But textual references and archaeological evidence of earlier maritime trade are extremely rare; the only known South Asian shipwrecks date from medieval times. Indians and Arabs dominated the medieval trade, which connected Europe and China, but its origins are murky. The Sri Lankan wreck offers the first good look at such trade. The island, which lies off the southeastern coast of India, was an important Buddhist kingdom that eventually became a wealthy port of call. The ship remains lie near the estuary of Walawe Ganga, one of the nation's few navigable rivers. Just upstream lies Godavaya, a recently excavated monastery dating to the 2nd century B.C.E.; monastic settlements often played an important economic role at this time. Other nearby settlements go back to the 4th century B.C.E., says Bopearachchi, who works with underwater archaeologist Deborah Carlson of Texas A&M University, College Station, as well as the maritime unit of the Sri Lanka Department of Archaeology. Only surface surveys have been done to date, examining artifacts spread across 40 meters of ocean floor that mark it as the site of a sunken ship. Massive glass ingots, used to make 736

expensive vessels, were part of the ship's cargo and provide what Bopearachchi calls the best physical evidence for the early exchange of raw glass in South Asia. Samples from both the glass and nearby pieces of metal point to an Indian origin, and the ship may have been bound for the port, he says. Its remains lie in 34 meters of water amid strong currents, but the water is crystal clear, and conditions are good for diving during the winter monsoon. Archaeologists hope that the ship itself may lie below the bottom, providing evidence of shipbuilding technology. The team plans to begin excavating at the end of this year. The results might lead to a rewriting of the economic, social, religious, and cultural history of the area, Bopearachchi says. Others agree that the find will shed needed light on a critical trade route. This is the Silk Road of the sea, says Hans-Joachim Weisshaar of the German Archaeological Institute in Bonn. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6092/288.2.full Science 20 July 2012: Vol. 337 no. 6092 p. 288 DOI: 10.1126/science.337.6092.288-a NEWS FOCUS EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION FOR SOUTH ASIAN ARCHAEOLOGY AND ART MEETING The Ingredients for a 4000-Year-Old Proto-Curry Andrew Lawler Recent studies presented at the meeting found a surprisingly diverse Indus diet that incorporated spices, beans, and grains commonly eaten today, and even bananas.

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Take out. Excavators at a rural Indian site found extensive use of rice (inset) in Indus times. CREDIT (MAIN AND INSET): C.A. PETRIE, LAND, WATER AND SETTLEMENT PROJECT When cooks in the ancient Indus River civilization prepared their meals 4000 years ago, the results may not have been much different from what you might order today in an Indian restaurant. Recent studies presented at the meeting found a surprisingly diverse Indus diet that incorporated spices such as ginger and turmeric, beans such as lentils and mung, grains such as rice and millet, and even bananas. An explosion in food-related studies, thanks to both new tools and new interest in rural villages, provides exciting clues to day-to-day life in the Indus, says Indus expert Jonathan Mark Kenoyer of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not directly involved in the studies. With Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Indus was among the first urban civilizations, centered on today's Pakistan and India. The Indus people built a half-dozen massive cities around 2500 B.C.E. that mostly fell into ruin after 1800 B.C.E. No Indus texts have been deciphered, 738

however, and few images found, leaving scholars with fundamental questions about how the people lived, worked, and worshipped. But some of their traditions, including food preparation, may live on. Archaeologists have long spotted burnt grains such as wheat, barley, and millet at Indus sites, but identifying vegetables, fruits, nuts, roots, and tubers has been more challenging. Researchers are increasingly using phytolithsthe mineral secretions left by plantsto identify specific plant remains, as well as starch grain analysis (Science, 2 July 2010, p. 28). Plants store starch granules as food, and the microscopic leftovers can be identified by researchers. For example, anthropologists Arunima Kashyap and Steve Weber of Washington State University, Vancouver, analyzed starch grains from human teeth from the ancient town of Farmana, west of Delhi, and found remains of cooked ginger and turmeric. They also found those ingredients inside a cooking pot. Dated to between 2500 and 2200 B.C.E., the finds are the first time either spice has been identified in the Indus. Cow teeth from Pakistan's Harappa a major Indus cityyielded the same material. It's like India today, Weber says. Cattle wander around eating trash, including the remains of cooked meals. In some Indian regions such as the western province of Gujarat, some families still leave food remains outside the house as a ritual offering to cattle. Whether or not these spices represent the earliest curry is not clear: Kashyap and Weber note that what makes curry curry is disputed even today. Black pepper and chili peppers, for example, are common in the dish today but were later imports to India. Even bananas, not known to have been cultivated here until late medieval times, have turned up at three scattered Indus sites. A team led by Marco Madella, a Barcelona archaeologist with the Spanish National Research Council, found phytoliths of banana on grinding stones at Farmana. Phytoliths at the site of Loteshwar in Gujarat and at Kot Diji in the Indus heartland in Pakistan were also found. I'm not confident in saying it was cultivated, Madella says. But clearly the Indus people were in direct contact with people to the east, where the plant grew wild. Indus farmers also grew a surprisingly wide array of grains and beans. Many archaeologists once thought that the society depended primarily on crops such as wheat and barley, which were planted in winter. But new data from rural villages challenge that idea. Examining two sites 739

near today's Masudpur, west of Delhi, University of Cambridge archaeologist Jennifer Bates compared carbonized seed and phytolith density per liter of soil near hearths to determine the relative abundance of crops by period and site. Bates found that both villages practiced summer and winter cropping, and both ate wheat, barley, millet, and rice from early Indus times, as shown by nearby pottery; she also identified lentils and mung beans. Rice has long been assumed to be only a late addition in the Indus, yet one village apparently ate more rice than wheat or barley, although millet dominated. Many of these crops have uses in addition to pleasing Indus palates, Kenoyer notes. Burned bananas produce salt, ginger can treat illness, and turmeric is used for both poultices and dyeing cloth. The data may also shed light on how specialized and exotic foods reflected class differences, he says. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6092/288.1.full Science 20 July 2012: Vol. 337 no. 6092 p. 289 DOI: 10.1126/science.337.6092.289 NEWS FOCUS EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION FOR SOUTH ASIAN ARCHAEOLOGY AND ART MEETING Persians Made the Afghan Desert Bloom Andrew Lawler A French team surveying a region of north-central Afghanistan has recently discovered large settlements organized around an impressive water system dating back 2500 years.

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Water lifeline. The sands of northern Afghanistan (background) have covered this ancient canal (foreground). CREDIT: ROLAND BESENVAL North-central Afghanistan is a harsh desert of dunes long thought to have been uninhabited save for the occasional hardy nomad; even today the region is sparsely settled. But a French team surveying the region north and west of Mazar-i-Sharif has recently discovered large settlements organized around an impressive water system dating back 2500 years. No other culture before or since has managed to support large settlements in this desolate region. The find could provide exciting new information on irrigation techniques that made the early central Asian desert bloom, say the small cadre of archaeologists who work here. Roland Besenval, an archaeologist with the French national research agency in Paris; Eric Fouache, a geoarchaeologist at the University of Paris, Sorbonne; and others identified more than 30 large settlements, all dating to the period of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, which flourished from the shores of Greece to western India in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C.E. The empire was overwhelmed by Alexander the Great late in the 4th century B.C.E. The archipelago of northern Afghan settlements appears to have died out at that time or a little earlier, and has been largely uninhabited ever since. 741

View larger version: In this page In a new window Download PowerPoint Slide for Teaching Water lifeline. The sands of northern Afghanistan (background) have covered this ancient canal (foreground). CREDIT: ROLAND BESENVAL Many of these towns or garrisons had massive walls that have been hidden in the sands. One site, Altin Dilyar Tepe, first noted by Russian researchers in the 1970s, sits on a hill that the French team determined was an artificial mound, showing that enormous manpower was used to build it, Besenval says. Using a tiny, instrument-filled drone called a hexacopter, the team spotted a 2-meter-wide linear feature that led to a 60-by-80-meter basin near Altin Dilyar Tepe. The mud-brick canal stretches for nearly 10 kilometers, pierced periodically with at least two other large basins that coincide with settlements. Besenval says this apparent aqueduct likely carried water for farming from the Balkh River, which flows out of the mountains, across the harsh desert. Achaemenid pottery found nearby dates the structure as early as the 5th century B.C.E. By the 4th century B.C.E., a drying climate may have made this always-marginal land too difficult to farm even with irrigation, Besenval adds. In Central Asia, where water remains a key and scarce resource, the discovery of a sophisticated water system this ancient excited archaeologists at the meeting. Besenval's interpretation of the feature is very convincing, says archaeologist Pierfrancesco Callieri of the University of Bologna in Italy, who has dug in Central Asia. Besenval also recently found signs of irrigation at a site in Tajikistan that dates back long before the Achaemenids, as early as the 4th millennium B.C.E., suggesting that irrigation has old roots in the area. Because of security issues, the researchers couldn't stay overnight near the Afghan sites, so they have yet to establish details such as the aqueduct's gradient or whether it stretches another dozen kilometers to reach the Amu Darya river to the north. Besenval is eager to return to gather more data, but security concerns kept him out of the field entirely last season. Our 742

visits have been too short, he says in frustration. And we have so many questions to ask. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6092/289.full South Asian archaeology: Papers by Andrew Lawler (20 July 2012) Abstracts South Asia Archaeology Conf. (EASAA 2012)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/07/between-mesopotamia-and-meluhhaancient.html Between Mesopotamia and Meluhha: an ancient world of writing Between Mesopotamia and Meluhha: an ancient world of writing

Sites such as Jiroft, Konar Sandal, Shahr-i-soktha do present links with Meluhha (mentioned in Mesopotamian cuneiform records). There were three writing systems: cuneiform in Akkadian, cuneiform in Proto-Elamite and hieroglyphs in Indus writing (an overview presented in the following links). The dominant presence of the antelope hieroglyph in all three civilization areas: Mesopotamia, Meluhha and in-between is significant.I have suggested that the antelope is read rebus: agara ram; rebus: tamkru, dam-gar (mint) merchant; reading antithetical antelope as pust bah pust generation to generation. referring to the artisan/mechant lineage from neolithic times.(http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/05/antithetical-antelopes-of-ancientnear_18.html)

Source: Fig. 48. Kul Tarike, copper figurine from Iron Age burial (photograph courtesy H. Rezvani) cited on Massoud Azarnoush and Barbara Helwing, 2007, Recent archaeological research in Iran -- Prehistory to Iron Age, p. 222 (pdf embedded below).

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Map 4 Iran Middle Bronze Age to Iron Age sites. 1 Haft Tappe. 2 Coga Zanbil. 3 Qale Geli Tappe. 4. Sahryeri-Meskinsahr. 5 Hasanlu. 6 Bukan (Tappe Qa layci). 7 Tabriz Masjed-e Kabud. 8 Qale Ziwiye. 9 Kul Tarike. 10 Tappe Sangtarasa n. 11 Sorkdom-e Laki. 12 Tappe Ozbaki. 13 Tappe Mamorin. 14 Tappe QoliDarvis. 15 Vesnave. 16 Sarm. 17 Samsirga h. 18 Zar Bolag. 19 Vasun-e Kahak. 20 Tappe Sialk. 21 Gandab-e Karand. 22 Jamsidaba d. 23 West Sefidrud. 24Gohar Tappe. 25 Bazgir. 26 Tales graveyards, Tul.

Phoen., MH and Assyr.; in the latter damgaru or tamkaru, Syr. taggara, {2} = merchant, Del. Ass. HWB, 222. Source: Encyclopaedia Biblica/Trade and

Commercehttp://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Encyclopaedia_Biblica/Trade_and_Commerce

Sumerian damgar, Babylonian tamkarumusually is translated as merchant or,by Babylonian times,entrepreneur. http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s9006.pdf (Page 12).Michael Hudson, Entrepreneurs: from the Near Eastern Takeoff to the Roman collapse July 19, 2010 http://michael-hudson.com/2010/07/entrepreneurs-from-the-near-eastern-takeoff-tothe-roman-collapse/

Cognate with tamkru, dam-gar (mint) merchant Indian sprachbund glosses:

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Mth. hkur blacksmith ; hakkura m. idol, deity (cf. hakkr -- ), lex., title Rjat. [Discussion with lit. by W. Wst RM 3, 13 ff. Prob. orig. a tribal name EWA i 459, which Wst considers nonAryan borrowing of kvar -- : very doubtful]Pk. hakkura -- m. Rajput, chief man of a village ; Kho. (Lor.) takur barber (= Ind.?), Sh. hkr m.; K. hkur m. idol ( Ind.?); S. hakuru m. fakir, term of address between fathers of a husband and wife ; P. hkar m. landholder , ludh. haukar m. lord ; Ku. hkur m. master, title of a Rajput ; N. hkur term of address from slave to master (f. hakurni), hakuri a clan of Chetris (f. hakurni); A. hkur a Brahman , hkurn goddess ; B. hkurni, hkrn, run honoured lady, goddess ; Or. hkura term of address to a Brahman, god, idol , hkur goddess ; Bi. hkur barber ; Bhoj. Aw.lakh. hkur lord, master ; H. hkur m. master, landlord, god, idol , hkurin, hkurn f. mistress, goddess ; G. hkor, kar m. member of a clan of Rajputs , hakr f. his wife , hkor god, idol ; M. hkur m. jungle tribe in North Konkan, family priest, god, idol ; Si. mald. "tacourou" title added to names of noblemen (HJ 915) prob. Ind. Addenda: hakkura -- : Garh. hkur master ; A. hkur also idol AFD 205.(CDIAL 5488)

Homonym: tagara1 n. the shrub Tabernaemontana coronaria and a fragrant powder obtained from it Kau., aka<-> VarBrS. [Cf. sthagara -- , sthakara -- n. a partic. fragrant powder TBr.] (CDIAL 5622).

Hieroglyph: Ta. takar sheep, ram, goat, male of certain other animals (yi, elephant, shark). Ma. takaran huge, powerful as a man, bear, etc. Ka. tagar, agaru, agara, egaru ram. Tu. tagaru, agar id. Te. tagaramu, tagaru id. / Cf. Mar. tagar id. (DEDR 3000).

Substantive (in the context of a merchant's business): Ta. takaram tin, white lead, metal sheet, coated with tin. Ma. takaram tin, tinned iron plate. Ko. tagarm (obl. tagart-) tin. Ka. tagara, tamara, tavara id. Tu. tamar, tamara, tavara id. Te. tagaramu, tamaramu, tavaramu id. Kuwi (Isr.) agromi tin metal, alloy. / Cf. Skt. tamara- id. (DEDR 3001).

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Kalyanaraman

Indian hieroglyphs, archaeo-metallurgy and Meluhha (Mleccha) - Dr. S. Kalyanaraman (2012)http://www.docstoc.com/docs/124487066/Indian-hieroglyphs-archaeo-metallurgy-andMeluhha-(Mleccha)---Dr-S-Kalyanaraman-(2012) Indian hieroglyphs, archaeo-metallurgy and Meluhha (Mleccha) - Dr. S. Kalyanaraman (2012)

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/124508371/Indian-hieroglyphs-archaeo-metallurgy-and-Meluhha(Mleccha)-(S-Kalyanaraman-WAVES-2012) PDF document July 19, 2012

Cultural relationships Beyond the iranian plateau: The Helmand civilization, Baluchistan and the Indus Valley in the 3rd millennium bce -- E. Cortesi, M. Tosi, A. Lazzari and M. Vidale (2008) http://www.docstoc.com/docs/124625216/Cultural-relationships-Beyond-the-iranianplateau-The-Helmand-civilization-Baluchistan-and-the-Indus-Valley-in-the-3rd-millennium-bce---E-Cortesi-M-Tosi-A-Lazzari-and-M-Vidale-(2008)

Cultural relationships Beyond the iranian plateau: The Helmand civilization, Baluchistan and the Indus Valley in the 3rd millennium bce -- E. Cortesi, M. Tosi, A. Lazzari and M. Vidale (2008) Recent archaeological research in Iran Prehistory to Iron Age -- Massoud Azarnoush and Barbara Helwing (2007)http://www.docstoc.com/docs/124625298/Azarnoush_Helwing_2007proof Azarnoush_Hel wing_2007proof Lasting Impression Volume 64 Number 6, November/December 2011 by Andrew Lawler

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The impression of a cylinder seal on an unbaked clay jar sealing from Konar Sandal (Courtesy Youssef Madjidzadeh) They are tiny and often faded and fragmented. But one abundant source of evidence for both international trade and the role of women in eastern Iran during the third millennium B.C. are the tiny images found on seals and sealings throughout this area. The small impressions were designed to mark ownership and control of goods, from bags of barley to a storeroom filled with oil jugs. Holly Pittman, an art historian at the University of Pennsylvania who has worked throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, is examining the fragile impressions. She is attempting to build a clearer picture of the lives of ancient inhabitants in large centers such as Shahr-i-Sokhta, Shahdad, and Konar Sandal, near today's modern city of 747

Jiroft. Pittman now believes these people of eastern Iran shared common ideas and beliefs while also participating in the first age of long-distance exchange. Female deities with vegetation growing out of their bodies are one common element on the seals found in eastern Iran and, as on the Shahdad flag, figures confronting one another also appear Lasting Impression frequently. A distinctive type of white stone seals that have been found in Central Asia and the Indus appear to have been made in a similar style by eastern Iranians. "There are relationships between sites, and certainly this part of eastern Iran is participating in a global network," she says. "This is a world of merchants and traders." Pittman believes that by early in the third millennium B.C., the network linking Mesopotamia and southeastern Iran resulted in a mixing of cultures across this enormous area. Seals that were used to close storage rooms in Konar Sandal, for example, are of a specific Mesopotamian type common in the major Iraqi port of Ur. That hints strongly at the presence of Mesopotamian inhabitants in Konar Sandal who had almost certainly come from Ur. She also suggests that Mesopotamian artifacts absorbed style elements from southeastern Iran. Another example is the famous inlaid lyre found at Ur, which has the face of a bearded bull typical of eastern Iran. Other seals found in ruins such as Konar Sandal are Proto-Elamite in style, showing strong connections with western and central Iran, where the Proto-Elamite writing system is believed to have originated at the same time that Mesopotamian urban life began to flourish in the late fourth millennium B.C. Seals were powerful markers of economic, political, and social clout. At some eastern Iranian sites such as Shahr-i-Sokhta, they appear to have been largely in the hands of women. Marta Ameri, an archaeologist at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, notes that two-thirds of the seals found in Shahr-i-Sokhta's graves are found in female burials. While the grander bronze seals are uncovered mostly in male tombs, the more common bone seals are more often associated with women. Based on remains of sealings made to doors, vases, bags, and other objects, the bone seals were in more frequent use than the bronze. This suggests, Ameri says, that women were in control of food storage and possibly trade goods as well. Until more intact graves are found at other sites such as Shahdad, "we at least have a tantalizing look at the roles women may have played," says Ameri. 748

http://www.archaeology.org/1111/features/iran_lasting_impression.html The World in Between Volume 64 Number 6, November/December 2011 by Andrew Lawler 5,000 years ago, a longburied society in the Iranian desert helped shape the first urban

age

Cities like Shahr-i-Sokhta in eastern Iran,

remains of which can be seen from the air, developed and flourished at the same time as the population centers in Mesopotamia to the west and the Indus Valley to the east. The barren landscape was once home to some of the world's first urban societies, which began to develop around 3000 B.C. (Georg Gerster/Photo Researchers) Burial GoodsLasting Impression 1975 Excavations Even local archaeologists with the benefit of air-conditioned cars and paved roads think twice about crossing eastern Iran's rugged terrain. "It's a tough place," says Mehdi Mortazavi from the University of Sistan-Baluchistan in the far eastern end of Iran, near the Afghan border. At the center of this region is the Dasht-e Lut, Persian for the "Empty Desert." This treacherous landscape, 300 miles long and 200 miles wide, is covered with sinkholes, steep ravines, and sand dunes, some topping 1,000 feet. It also has the hottest average surface temperature of any place on Earth. The forbidding territory in and around this desert seems like the last place to seek clues to the emergence of the first cities and states 5,000 years ago. Yet archaeologists are finding an impressive array of ancient settlements on the edges of the Dashte Lut dating back to the period when urban civilization was emerging in Egypt, Iraq, and the Indus River Valley in Pakistan and India. In the 1960s and 1970s, they found the great centers of Shahr-i-Sokhta and Shahdad on the desert's fringes and another, Tepe Yahya, far to the south. More recent surveys, excavations, and remote sensing work reveal that all of eastern Iran, from near the Persian Gulf in the south to the northern edge of the Iranian plateau, was 749

peppered with hundreds and possibly thousands of small to large settlements. Detailed laboratory analyses of artifacts and human remains from these sites are providing an intimate look at the lives of an enterprising people who helped create the world's first global trade network. Far from living in a cultural backwater, eastern Iranians from this period built large cities with palaces, used one of the first writing systems, and created sophisticated metal, pottery, and textile industries. They also appear to have shared both administrative and religious ideas as they did business with distant lands. "They connected the great corridors between Mesopotamia and the east," says Maurizio Tosi, a University of Bologna archaeologist who did pioneering work at Shahr-i-Sokhta. "They were the world in between." By 2000 B.C. these settlements were abandoned. The reasons for this remain unclear and are the source of much scholarly controversy, but urban life didn't return to eastern Iran for more than 1,500 years. The very existence of this civilization was long forgotten. Recovering its past has not been easy. Parts of the area are close to the Afghan border, long rife with armed smugglers. Revolution and politics have frequently interrupted excavations. And the immensity of the region and its harsh climate make it one of the most challenging places in the world to conduct

archaeology.

Situated at the end of a small delta

on a dry plain, Shahdad was excavated by an Iranian team in the 1970s. (Courtesy Maurizio

Tosi)

An Iranian-Italian team, including

archaeologist Massimo Vidale (right), surveyed the site in 2009. (Courtesy Massimo Vidale) The 750

peripatetic English explorer Sir Aurel Stein, famous for his archaeological work surveying large swaths of Central Asia and the Middle East, slipped into Persia at the end of 1915 and found the first hints of eastern Iran's lost cities. Stein traversed what he described as "a big stretch of gravel and sandy desert" and encountered "the usual...robber bands from across the Afghan border, without any exciting incident." What did excite Stein was the discovery of what he called "the most surprising prehistoric site" on the eastern edge of the Dasht-e Lut. Locals called it Shahr-i-Sokhta ("Burnt City") because of signs of ancient destruction. It wasn't until a halfcentury later that Tosi and his team hacked their way through the thick salt crust and discovered a metropolis rivaling those of the first great urban centers in Mesopotamia and the Indus. Radiocarbon data showed that the site was founded around 3200 B.C., just as the first substantial cities in Mesopotamia were being built, and flourished for more than a thousand years. During its heyday in the middle of the third millennium B.C., the city covered more than 150 hectares and may have been home to more than 20,000 people, perhaps as populous as the large cities of Umma in Mesopotamia and Mohenjo-Daro on the Indus River. A vast shallow lake and wells likely provided the necessary water, allowing for cultivated fields and grazing for animals. Built of mudbrick, the city boasted a large palace, separate neighborhoods for potterymaking, metalworking, and other industrial activities, and distinct areas for the production of local goods. Most residents lived in modest one-room houses, though some were larger compounds with six to eight rooms. Bags of goods and storerooms were often "locked" with stamp seals, a procedure common in Mesopotamia in the era. Shahr-i-Sokhta boomed as the demand for precious goods among elites in the region and elsewhere grew. Though situated in inhospitable terrain, the city was close to tin, copper, and turquoise mines, and lay on the route bringing lapis lazuli from Afghanistan to the west. Craftsmen worked shells from the Persian Gulf, carnelian from India, and local metals such as tin and copper. Some they made into finished products, and others were exported in unfinished form. Lapis blocks brought from the Hindu Kush mountains, for example, were cut into smaller chunks and sent on to Mesopotamia and as far west as Syria. Unworked blocks of lapis weighing more than 100 pounds in total were unearthed in the ruined palace of Ebla, close to the Mediterranean Sea. Archaeologist Massimo 751

Vidale of the University of Padua says that the elites in eastern Iranian cities like Shahr-i-Sokhta were not simply slaves to Mesopotamian markets. They apparently kept the best-quality lapis for themselves, and sent west what they did not want. Lapis beads found in the royal tombs of Ur, for example, are intricately carved, but of generally low-quality stone compared to those of Shahr-i-Sokhta. Pottery was produced on a massive scale. Nearly 100 kilns were clustered in one part of town and the craftspeople also had a thriving textile industry. Hundreds of wooden spindle whorls and combs were uncovered, as were well-preserved textile fragments made of goat hair and wool that show a wide variation in their weave. According to Irene Good, a specialist in ancient textiles at Oxford University, this group of textile fragments constitutes one of the most important in the world, given their great antiquity and the insight they provide into an early stage of the evolution of wool production. Textiles were big business in the third millennium B.C., according to Mesopotamian texts, but actual textiles from this era had never

before been found.

A metal flag found at Shahdad, one of

eastern Iran's early urban sites, dates to around 2400 B.C. The flag depicts a man and woman facing each other, one of the recurrent themes in the region's art at this time. (Courtesy Maurizio

Tosi)

This plain ceramic jar, found recently at Shahdad, contains 752

residue of a white cosmetic whose complex formula is evidence for an extensive knowledge of chemistry among the city's ancient inhabitants. (Courtesy Massimo Vidale) The artifacts also show the breadth of Shahr-i-Sokhta's connections. Some excavated red-and-black ceramics share traits with those found in the hills and steppes of distant Turkmenistan to the north, while others are similar to pots made in Pakistan to the east, then home to the Indus civilization. Tosi's team found a clay tablet written in a script called Proto-Elamite, which emerged at the end of the fourth millennium B.C., just after the advent of the first known writing system, cuneiform, which evolved in Mesopotamia. Other such tablets and sealings with Proto-Elamite signs have also been found in eastern Iran, such as at Tepe Yahya. This script was used for only a few centuries starting around 3200 B.C. and may have emerged in Susa, just east of Mesopotamia. By the middle of the third millennium B.C., however, it was no longer in use. Most of the eastern Iranian tablets record simple transactions involving sheep, goats, and grain and could have been used to keep track of goods in large households. While Tosi's team was digging at Shahri-Sokhta, Iranian archaeologist Ali Hakemi was working at another site, Shahdad, on the western side of the Dasht-e Lut. This settlement emerged as early as the fifth millennium B.C. on a delta at the edge of the desert. By the early third millennium B.C., Shahdad began to grow quickly as international trade with Mesopotamia expanded. Tomb excavations revealed spectacular artifacts amid stone blocks once painted in vibrant colors. These include several extraordinary, nearly life-size clay statues placed with the dead. The city's artisans worked lapis lazuli, silver, lead, turquoise, and other materials imported from as far away as eastern Afghanistan, as well as shells from the distant Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. Evidence shows that ancient Shahdad had a large metalworking industry by this time. During a recent survey, a new generation of archaeologists found a vast hillnearly 300 feet by 300 feetcovered with slag from smelting copper. Vidale says that analysis of the copper ore suggests that the smiths were savvy enough to add a small amount of arsenic in the later stages of the process to strengthen the final product. Shahdad's metalworkers also created such remarkable artifacts as a metal flag dating to about 2400 B.C. Mounted on a copper pole topped with a bird, perhaps an eagle, the squared flag depicts two figures facing one another on a rich background of animals, 753

plants, and goddesses. The flag has no parallels and its use is unknown. Vidale has also found evidence of a sweet-smelling nature. During a spring 2009 visit to Shahdad, he discovered a small stone container lying on the ground. The vessel, which appears to date to the late fourth millennium B.C., was made of chlorite, a dark soft stone favored by ancient artisans in southeast Iran. Using X-ray diffraction at an Iranian lab, he discovered lead carbonateused as a white cosmeticsealed in the bottom of the jar. He identified fatty material that likely was added as a binder, as well as traces of coumarin, a fragrant chemical compound found in plants and used in some perfumes. Further analysis showed small traces of copper, possibly the result of a user dipping a small metal applicator into the container. Other sites in eastern Iran are only now being investigated. For the past two years, Iranian archaeologists Hassan Fazeli Nashli and Hassain Ali Kavosh from the University of Tehran have been digging in a small settlement a few miles east of Shahdad called Tepe Graziani, named for the Italian archaeologist who first surveyed the site. They are trying to understand the role of the city's outer settlements by examining this ancient mound, which is 30 feet high, 525 feet wide, and 720 feet long. Excavators have uncovered a wealth of artifacts including a variety of small sculptures depicting crude human figures, humped bulls, and a Bactrian camel dating to approximately 2900 B.C. A bronze mirror, fishhooks, daggers, and pins are among the metal finds. There are also wooden combs that survived in the arid climate. "The site is small but very rich," says Fazeli, adding that it may have been a prosperous suburban production center for Shahdad. Sites such as Shahdad and Shahr-i-Sokhta and their suburbs were not simply islands of settlements in what otherwise was empty desert. Fazeli adds that some 900 Bronze Age sites have been found on the Sistan plain, which borders Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mortazavi, meanwhile, has been examining the area around the Bampur Valley, in Iran's extreme southeast. This area was a corridor between the Iranian plateau and the Indus Valley, as well as between Shahr-i-Sokhta to the north and the Persian Gulf to the south. A 2006 survey along the Damin River identified 19 Bronze Age sites in an area of less than 20 square miles. That river periodically vanishes, and farmers depend on underground channels called qanats to transport water. Despite the lack of large rivers, ancient eastern Iranians were very savvy in marshaling their few water resources. 754

Using satellite remote sensing data, Vidale has found remains of what might be ancient canals or qanats around Shahdad, but more work is necessary to understand how inhabitants supported themselves in this harsh climate 5,000 years ago, as they still do

today.

The large eastern Iranian settlement of

Tepe Yahya produced clear evidence for the manufacture of a type of black stone jar for export that has been found as far away as Mesopotamia. (Georg Gerster/Photo Researchers) Meanwhile, archaeologists also hope to soon continue work that began a decade ago at Konar Sandal, 55 miles north of Yahya near the modern city of Jiroft in southeastern Iran. Francebased archaeologist Yusef Madjizadeh has spent six seasons working at the site, which revealed a large city centered on a high citadel with massive walls beside the Halil River. That city and neighboring settlements like Yahya produced artfully carved dark stone vessels that have been found in Mesopotamian temples. Vidale notes that Indus weights, seals, and etched carnelian beads found at Konar Sandal demonstrate connections with that civilization as well. Many of these settlements were abandoned in the latter half of the third millennium B.C., and, by 2000 B.C., the vibrant urban life of eastern Iran was history. Barbara Helwig of Berlin's German Archaeological Institute suspects a radical shift in trade patterns precipitated the decline. Instead of moving in caravans across the deserts and plateau of Iran, Indus traders began sailing directly to Arabia and then on to Mesopotamia, while to the north, the growing power of the Oxus civilization in today's Turkmenistan may have further weakened the role of cities such as Shahdad. Others blame climate change. The lagoons, marshes, and streams may have dried up, since even small shifts in rainfall canB.C. have a dramatic effect on water sources in the area. Here, there is no Nile, Tigris and Euphrates, or Indus to provide agricultural 755

bounty through a drought, and even the most sophisticated water systems may have failed during a prolonged dry spell. It is also possible that an international economic downturn played a role. The destruction of the Mesopotamian city of Ur around 2000 B.C. and the later decline of Indus metropolises such as Mohenjo-Daro might have spelled doom for a trading people. The market for precious goods such as lapis collapsed. There is no clear evidence of widespread warfare, though Shahr-i-Sokhta appears to have been destroyed by fire several times. But a combination of drought, changes in trade routes, and economic trouble might have led people to abandon their cities to return to a simpler existence of herding and small-scale farming. Not until the Persian Empire rose 1,500 years later did people again live in any large numbers in eastern Iran, and not until modern times did cities again emerge. This also means that countless ancient sites are still awaiting exploration on the plains, in the deserts, and among the rocky valleys of the region. Andrew Lawler is a contributing editor at ARCHAEOLOGY. For our 1975 coverage of the excavations at Shahr-i-Sokhta, see www.archaeology.org/iran. http://www.archaeology.org/1111/features/dasht-e_lut_iran_shahr-i-soktashahad_tepe_yaha.html The Graveyard of Shahri-i Sokhta, Iran Volume 28 Number 3, July

1975 by Marcello Piperno and Maurizio Tosi

The ruins of

Shahr-i Sokhta, an ancient Bronze Age town, are situated in the Sistan region of southeast Iran near the Afghan-Iranian border. This settlement, which flourished for more than a thousand 756

years between the end of the fourth and the beginning of the second millennium B.C., reached the peak of its prosperity as a center of trade and raw materials around 2700-2600 B.C. Its decline was a consequence of localized environmental changes which began at the beginning of the second millennium B.C. with the drying up of the Hilmand River delta upon which the town rose. Indeed, not just the town by the entire southern portion of the Sistan region was gradually abandoned, and today Shahr-i Sokhta comprises the largest group of ruins in a territory measuring some 1,200 square kilometers along the course of the ancient delta between Chagar Burjak and Hauzdar. For more of our 1975 coverage of the excavations at Shahr-iSokhta, Iran, click to download PDF (9.7 MB).http://www.archaeology.org/iran/ Burial Goods Volume 64 Number 6, November/December 2011 by Andrew

Lawler Studies)

(Courtesy The Circle of Ancient Iranian

If there were any doubts that eastern Iran was a sophisticated and populous region in the third millennium B.C., the vast cemetery at Shahr-i-Sokhta has put them to rest. Over the past two decades, a team led by Iranian archaeologist Mansour Sajjadi has been working in a 100-acre area that includes an estimated 40,000 gravesand possibly as many as 200,000dug over a period of many centuries, only 100 of which have thus far been excavated. According to archaeologist Kirsi Lorentz at the University of Newcastle, who is working on the finds from the site, the cemetery offers "a unique record with which to study the development of urban civilization in the third millennium B.C."

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One of the most intriguing finds is the well-preserved remains of a woman in her late 20s who died between 2900 and 2800 B.C. She was buried with an ornate bronze mirror and what Sajjadi and Italian excavators believe is an artificial eyeball made of bitumen paste and gold that was once held in place with fine thread. Microscopic examination showed that the artificial eyeball left an imprint in her eye socket, a sign that it was there for a long period of time before her death. Other archaeologists insist that the object is more likely an eyepatch held in place by string threaded through holes on each side.

Another important find was an intricate rectangular wooden board with 60 small, round pieces made from wood inlaid with bone and limestone, likely an early form of backgammon. Similar sets have been found in the Indus far to the east, as well as in the tomb of Queen Puabi in the Royal Graves of Ur. The board in Shahr-i-Sokhta is approximately the same date as the Indus and Mesopotamian artifacts, and suggests that the people of eastern Iran traded not only goods, but ideas for entertainment as well.

Lorentz says that the cemetery's large numbers will allow for statistical analysis of health, diet, and mobility among the ancient residents. And though the bones are often in poor condition, she adds that there is "exceptional preservation" of human hair, nails, and skin. Grooves found in the teeth of many individuals may be a sign that weavers used their teeth as third hands. Short hair found on the skulls may show that crew cuts were the fashionat least in death if not in life.

http://www.archaeology.org/1111/features/iran_burial_goods.html http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/06/harappan-vedic-civilization-prof-bb-lal.html Harappan = Vedic civilization. Prof. BB Lal's comment in the context of PNAS article by Liviu Giosan et al on Fluvial History... Harappan = Vedic civilization. Prof. BB Lal's comment in the context of PNAS article by Liviu Giosan et al on Fluvial History...

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---------- Forwarded message ---------From: Braj Lal Date: Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 7:12 PM Subject: Re: Views critical of KS Valdiya's work on Sarasvati To: "S. Kalyanaraman" My dear Dr. Kalyanaraman, Many thanks for sending me the e-mail forwarding on the 19th instant 'Views critical of K. S. Valdiya's work on Sarasvati'. Since the accompanying Note, by Giosan and others, also adversely comments on the thesis proposed by me that Haraapan Civilization and Vedic Civilization are but two faces of the same coin, I am sending a reply. Kindly have it placed on the Internet and let me know when the needful has been done. Thanking you very much and with the best regards, B. B. Lal Note: The note dated June 21, 2012 of Prof. Brajbasi Lal in in reference to the PNAS paper of Liviu Giosan et al posted in the references cited below. Th full text of the PNAS paper is athttp://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/05/researchers-conclude-thatclimate.html Kalyanaraman My attention has been drawn to a paper published in a recent issue of PNAS, in which Profs. L. Giosan, P. Clift and thirteen others have dealt with the effects of climatic changes during the 4th -3rd millennia BCE in the region from the Yamuna on the east to the Indus on the west. This paper also includes the following comment on the Harappan=Vedic equation which had been proposed by me in one of my recent books: The strong assertions by geologists that the diversion of glacial rivers from the Ghaggar coincided with the decline of the Harappan civilization was used by archaeologists like Prof. 759

B.B. Lal to place the composers of the Rig Veda on the plains of the Punjab before the Ghaggar dried up, apparently bolstering the theory that the Harappan people and the Vedic people were one and the same. A geological narrative constructed without rigorous evidence has been promoted to support a theory of cultural evolution in northwest India. {This quote is from http://suvratk.blogspot.in/2012/06/fluvial-history-and-fortunes-of.html These comments were made by J. Triptronicus on June 17, 2012 at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/IndiaArchaeology/message/14212} First of all, let me make it clear in unequivocal terms that the equation, namely Harappan Civilization=Vedic Civilization, is not at all based on the evidence of existence, cessation or diversion of any glacier-fed river(s), as has been made out by the signatories of the above Note. It stands on its own line of arguments. (For a detailed analysis, the readers attention is invited to pp. 114-26 of my book, How Deep

are the Roots of Indian Civilization: Archaeology Answers, New Delhi: Aryan Books
International, 2009.) Here, I will briefly re-state the more salient arguments, as follows. 1. Scholars all over the world, whether in USA, Europe or India, accept that the now-dry river going by the name of Ghaggar in Haryana and Rajasthan, Hakra in Cholistan and Nara in Sindh is none other than the Rigvedic Sarasvati. Whether it was a glacier-fed or monsoon-fed river is irrelevant in the present context. 2. On its banks there flourished many Early Harappan and Mature Harappan sites, during the 4th and 3rd millennia BCE. The extent of this civilization was from the upper Yamuna on the east to the Indus on the west. 3. Hydrological investigations and C-14 dates indicate that the Sarasvati dried up approximately around 2,000 BCE. [Even literary evidence confirms the drying up of the Sarasvati after the Rigvedic times and before that of the Pamchnimsa Brahmana (XXV.10.16)]. 4. Since the Rigveda speaks eloquently of the Sarasvati as an active river, the period of the Rigveda must be placed before 2,000 BCE (cf. No. 3 above). How much earlier is anybody guess. 760

5. Verses 5 and 6 of Sukta 75 of Mandala X of the Rigveda define the Rigvedic territory, which extended from the upper reaches of the Ganga-Yamuna on the east to the Indus and its western tributaries on the west. 6. If we put Nos. 2, 4 and 5 together, it becomes abundantly clear that the Vedic Civilization and the Harappan Civilization are but two faces of the same coin. 7. Thus, howsoever we may wish, we cannot wriggle out of this Vedic=Harappan equation. B. B. LAL, Former Director General, Archaeological Survey of India References: Fluvial History And The Fortunes Of The Harappan Civilization FRIDAY, JUNE 15, 2012 http://suvratk.blogspot.in/2012/06/fluvial-history-and-fortunes-of.html June 17, 2012 http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/IndiaArchaeology/message/14212 http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/06/lady-of-spiked-throne-massimo-vidale.html Lady of the spiked throne (Massimo Vidale 2011). Celebration of a smiths' guild. Lady of the spiked throne (Massimo Vidale 2011). Celebration of a smiths' guild.

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Sergio Antonella Gnutti should be complimented for supporting this exquisite report by Prof. Massimo Vidale and the archaeological work of Paolo Biagi. Reference: Massimo Vidale, 2011, The lady of the spiked throne, the power of a lost ritual, (with a contribution by Emanuela Sibilia) ed. by Paolo Biagi, Trieste, Eural Gnutti S.p.A. (Photography: Federica Aghadian) Source:http://a.harappa.com/sites/harappa.drupalgardens.com/files/Spiked-Throne.pdf The find is compatible with the dates proposed on archaeological grounds (3rd millennium BCE). Ca' Foscari presenta il volume The Lady of the Spiked Throne 27/04/2012

Translation (Google): Gian Giuseppe Filippi, professor of the Department of Studies on Africa and the Mediterranean, presents the book by Massimo Vidale Spiked The Lady of the Throne in a meeting that will take part Tariq Zameer, Consul General of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan All the secrets of the Lady of the Starry Throne are revealed at Ca 'Foscari with the presentation of the volume of the archaeologist Massimo Vidale Spiked The Lady of the Throne, edited by Professor Paolo Biagi. The faculty of the Department of Studies on Africa and the Mediterranean Gian Giuseppe Filippi has now Berengo room (at 12) the book, fascinating journey around the traditions of distant worlds to discover the power of a ritual lost; meeting take part of the Consul General of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in Milan, Mr. Tariq Zameer, and sponsors of the publication, and Dr. Sergio Antonella Gnutti. http://www.unive.it/nqcontent.cfm?a_id=127007 762

My letter dated June 7, 2012: Dear Prof. Vidale and Dr. Emanuela Sibilia, At the outset, please accept my sincere and heartfelt congratulations on a tour de force of a mongraph with a stunning analysis of the terracotta ox-cart artifact of what I call the IndusSarasvati civilization. I read and re-read he exquisite document and the breathtaking pictorial essay which takes any reader back in virtual time to 3rd millennium BCE. I am sure that the monograph will serve as a reference for getting as close as possible to images of representative people of the civilization and their possible world-view evidenced in the social formation of the passengers of the cart including the central, dominant figure of a female seated on a throne (flanked by a pair of bulls) almost in a worshipful state, almost like a venerated Devi. The presentation of the artifact is simply breathtaking and one cannot take one's gaze away from the exquisite pictorial presentations ably complimented by the accompanying essays of Massimo Vidale and Emanuela Sibilia. Thanks a million for throwing such a flood-light on the most extensive civilization of the third millennium BCE. Finally, a word of thanks to Harappa.com and to Carlos Aramayo for bringing this monograph of Massimo Vidale to the attention of students of the civilization. What a privilege that we have dedicated scholars like Massimo to unravel the nature of a civilization clearing away the mists of time. With the background provided by the monograph, I venture to read the message conveyed by the artifact as a representation of smiths' guild. 763

The reasoning is based on a rebus readings of the glyphs using the lingua franca of the Indian sprachbund which produced over 6000 Indus script epigraphs. Now that we have a reasonable framework of Indian sprachbund (linguistic area) - cf. my work on Indian hieroglyphs -- , I would venture to read the artifact as an artists' rendering of the extended family traveling on the bull-boat, a veneration of the ancestors -- of the family --, led by the great mother:

Plate 7. Details of the bull's head, with its painted and incised decoration. Pipal leaf motif is notable. Decoration on the bull is indication of a celebration. Just as decoration of a heifer (bull-calf?) with trefoils is also indicative of sacredness. The over all impression of the artifact is an exquisite expression of the life familiar to the artist. Note: The nostrils are painted with a red pigment. The practice of using red pigment is also noted on the 'priest' statuette. Trefoil glyphs on the 'priest' statuette were originally filled with red pigment. cf.http://www.harappa.com/indus/41.html Set 1: Glyph: angar bull (H.) adar angra zebu or humped bull (Santali)

764

Rebus: gar blacksmith (H.) Glyph: kh zebu. Rebus: kh guild, community (Santali. ka joining, connexion, assembly, crowd, fellowship (DEDR 1882) Pa. gotta clan; Pk. gotta, gya id. (CDIAL 4279)

lyph: loa = a species of fig tree, ficus glomerata, the fruit of ficus glomerata (Santali) Rebus: lo iron (Assamese, Bengali); loa iron (Gypsy) lauha = made of copper or iron (Gr.S'r.); metal, iron (Skt.) loha-kra a metal worker, coppersmith, blacksmith Miln 331 (Pali) An allograph is ficus religiosa: karibha -- m. Ficus religiosa (?) [Semantics of ficus religiosa may be relatable to homonyms used to denote both the sacred tree and rebus gloss: loa, ficus (Santali); loh metal (Skt.)] karra2 (U. k) m. Capparis aphylla (a thorny plant eaten by camels) Br., n. its fruit Sur. 2. karibha -- m. Ficus religiosa (?) lex. [Same as karra -- 1?] 1. Pa. karra -- m. Capparis aphylla , karri -- m. C. trifoliata ; Pk. karra -- m. C. aphylla , L. kaler m., P. karr m., B. karir; Or. karira C. spinosa ; H. karr, karl, l m. C. aphylla , OG. kara, G. ker m., f., karr n. its fruit ( M. or Sk.?), M. karr m., n. its fruit .2. L. karh, rh, r, r m. C. aphylla , aw. krh, P. karh m. (the fruit is pickled and the bud used as a vegetable: in this connexion esp. cf. karra -- 1). Some forms perh. X karavra -- : L. karvl, l m. C. horrida (of which fruit is made into pickles) ; H. karwl m. C. aphylla . -- Sh. (Lor.) kawr, kabr caper plant .(CDIAL 2805). karba 'iron' (Ka.)(DEDR 1278) as in ajirda karba 'iron' (Ka.) kari, karu 'black' (Ma.)(DEDR 1278) karbura 'gold' (Ka.) karbon 'black gold, iron' (Ka.) kabbia 'iron' (Ka.) karum pon 'iron' (Ta.); kabin 'iron' (Ko.)(DEDR 1278) kamaha = ficus religiosa (Skt.); kamar.kom ficus (Santali) rebus: kamaa = portable furnace for melting precious metals (Te.); kampaam = mint (Ta.) Vikalpa: Fig leaf loa; rebus: loh (copper) metal. loha-kra metalsmith (Skt.) 765

Set 2: Glyph: Kur. ka a stool. Malt. kano stool, seat. (DEDR 1179). Rebus: Wg. k water -- channel, Wo. kal f., Gaw. kh*l, Bshk. k. (CDIAL 2680) G. kh maritime. (CDIAL 2682) Rebus: kaa fire-altar (Santali); Set 3: Glyph: kola 'woman' (Nahali) Rebus: kla n. herd, troop RV., race, family P., noble family Mn., house MBh. Pa. kula -n. clan, household, Pk. kula -- n.m. family, house; Dm. kul house; Sh. (Lor.) d*lda -- kul grandfather's relations ; K. kl m. family, race; S. kuru m. tribe, family, L. kull m., P. kul f.; WPah. bhad. kul n. sub -- caste, family; N. A. B. kul clan, caste, family, Or. kua, OMth. kula; H. kul m. herd, clan, caste, family, Marw. kul; G. ku n. family, tribe, M. k n., f.; OSi. -- kola dat. family; -- Si. kulaya family, caste Pa. or Sk. -- Deriv. Or. ku of good family (CDIAL 3330). Rebus: kol working in metal (Tamil). kola blacksmith (Ka.); Ko. koll blacksmith (DEDR 2133). kolhe iron smelter (Santali) kol, kolhe the koles, an aboriginal tribe of iron smelters akin to that of the Santals (Santali) kulhu a hindu caste, mostly oil men; kulhu an oil press (Santali) WPah.kg. k llhu m. sugar -- cane or oil press . (CDIAL 3536). For ready reference the monograph is embedded: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/122221785/Lady-of-the-spiked-throne-(Massimo-Vidale2011)Lady on the spiked throne (Massimo Vidale 2011) Lady of the spiked throne. (Massimo Vidale, 2011)

The 'spiked' throne may denote rays of the sun: 766

arka 'sun (Skt.) CDIAL 624 Rebus: akka, arka (Tadbhava of arka) metal (Ka.) ark 1 m. flash, ray, sun RV. [arc] Pa. Pk. akka m. sun, Mth. k; Si. aka lightning, inscr. vidki lightning flash. aka n. < arka. Sun; . (. . 35 Rebus: akka, aka (Tadbhava of arka) metal (Ka.); akka metal (Te.) arka = copper (Skt.) aka-sla, aga-sla, aka-sliga, aka-sle a gold or silversmith; aka-sa_like the business of a gold or silver smith; akka-sle, aka-sle the workshop of a goldsmith; a goldsmith; akka-sliti a woman of the goldsmith caste (Ka.); akka-c-clai a shop where metals are worked (Ta.)(Ka.lex.) arukkam , n. < arka. (.) 1. Copper; . The entire artifact is like a boat. Some Indian sprachbund related glosses. Glyph:

Boat.

Silver model of a boat from the Royal Graves at Ur (Crawford, H., p. 119) bagalo = an Arabian merchant vessel (G.) bagala = an Arab boat of a particular description (Ka.); bagal (M.); bagarige, bagarage = a kind of vessel (Ka.) bhula the month krttika (Skt.Ka.)(Ka.lex.) vkulai, n. < Vahul. The six presiding female deities of the Pleiades. Mohenjo-daro, excavation number HR 4161, now in the National Museum of India, New Delhi. A seal from Mohenjo-daro, excavation number DK 6847 767

(m1186A), now in the National Museum of Pakistan, Karachi. Department of Archaeology and Museums, Government of Pakistan. ?Pleiades clustered in the context of other Indus script

glyphs h097 Text 4251 h097 Pict-95: Seven robed figures (with stylized twigs on their head and pigtails) standing in a row.

A seal from Indus script corpora showing Pleiades (?) A group of six or seven women wearing twigs may not represent Pleiades, baga). The groups of such glyphs occur on four inscribed objects of Indus writing. (See four pictorial compositions on: m1186A, h097, m0442At m0442Bt). Glyph (seven women): bahula_ = Pleiades (Skt.)baga = name of a certain godess (Te.) baga ,bagae, vagal (Ka.); baka , bagal , vaga (Te.) bakkula = a demon, uttering horrible cries, a form assumed by the Yakkha Ajakalpaka, to terrify the Buddha (Pali.lex.) bahul f. pl. the Pleiades VarBrS., lik -- f. pl. lex. [bahul -- ] Kal. bahul the Pleiades , Kho. b l, (Lor.) boul, bolh, Sh. (Lor.) b*lle (CDIAL 9195) bahulegal. = the Pleiades or Kittik-s (Ka.lex.) bahula_ (VarBr.S.); bahul (Kal.) six presiding female deities: 768

vahul the six presiding female deities of the Pleiades (Skt.); vkulai id. (Ta.)(Ta.lex.) Pleiades: bahulik pl. pleiades; bahula born under the pleiades; the pleiades (Skt.lex.) bahule, bahulegal. the pleiades or kr.ttiks (Ka.)(Ka.lex.) Image: female deities of the pleiades: vkulyan- < va_kulya Skanda (Ta.lex.) pkui, n. perh. bhul. Full moon in the month of Puraci; . (. 37, 81). Glyph (twig on head on seven women): adaru twig; rebus: aduru native metal. Thus, the seven women ligatured with twigs on their heads can be read as: bahul + adaru; rebus: bangala goldsmiths portable furnace + aduru native metal. bhulya Krttikya, son of S'iva; bhula the month krttika (Skt.Ka.)(Ka.lex.) vkulai, n. < Vahul. The six presiding female deities of the Pleiades. Rebus: bagalo = an Arabian merchant vessel (G.lex.) bagala = an Arab boat of a particular description (Ka.); bagal (M.); bagarige, bagarage = a kind of vessel (Ka.) bagalo = an Arabian merchant vessel (G.lex.) cf. m1429 seal. Born under the Pleiades; P.IV.3.33. An epithet of fire. - 1 A cow; Mb.13.77.9. The Pleiades (pl.) - 1 The sky. (pl.) The Pleiades. a. Manifold. - Fire; Rm. Ch.4.99. -2 The month Krtika. - 1 Manifoldness. An epithet of Krtikeya. 1 Abundance, plenty, copiousness. -2 Manifoldness, multiplicity, variety. -3 The usual course or common order of things. (, - 1 usually, commonly. -2 in all probability.) N. of a country (Balkh). -Comp. -, - a. bred in the Balkh country, of the Balkh breed. m. (pl.) N. of a people.- 1 Saffron; ... - $ Rm. Ch.7.64. Amarakosha makes references to the Saffron of Bahlika and Kashmira countries (Amarkosha, p 159,

Amarsimha.)

Tradition of sindhur adornment. Sindhur worn in the parting

of the hair. Nausharo: female figurine. Period IB, 280-2600 BCE. 11.6X30.9 cm. (The eyes are puctated and theornaments and hair are all appliqu. This figurine comes from Nausharo, 769

Period IB, but is identical to many figurines from Mehergarh Period VII, datin between 2800 and 2600 BCE. Material: terracotta;11.6 cm. high, 30.9 cm. wide. Nausharo NS 91.01.32.01. Dept. of Arch., Karachi. Jarrige 1988: 87, fig.41 (After fig. 2.19, Kenoyer, 2000). Hair is painted black and parted in the middle of the forehead, with traces of red pigment in the parting. This form of ornamentation may be the origin of the later Hindu tradition where a married woman wears a streak of vermilion or powdered cinnabar (sindhur) in the part of her hair. Choker and pentant necklace are also painted with red pigment, possibly to represent carnelian beads.

Two terracotta figurines. Nausharo. With sindhur (saffron?) at the parting of the hair. A cultural tradition which continues in Indian sprachbund.

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Women wearing Sindhur (kumkum). A lady from Shillong, India wearing Sindhur at the parting of the hair. Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Meghalaya_Khasi_Woman.jpg "The fact that Puranic evidence locates the Bahlikas in Uttarapatha and further the close association of the Bahlikas with the Kambojas as well as with Tusharas, Sakas and Yavanas in the Atharvaveda Parisista and in some other ancient sources suggests that the Bahlikas were located as a close neighbor to the Tusharas, Sakas, Yavanas and the Kambojas etc. Since the Kambojas were located in Badakshan and Pamirs, the Tusharas on the north of Pamirs and the Sakas on the river Jaxartes and beyond, the Bahlikas or Bahlams, as neighbors to these people should be placed in Bactria...The Iron pillar of Delhi inscription by King Chandra (4 CE), also makes mention of Bahlikas as living on the west side of the Indus River (Sindhu). After crossing the seven mouths of the Indus, King Chandra is stated to have defeated the Bahlikas...These 771

above several references attest that the Bahlikas were originally located beyond the seven mouths of river Indus in the country of Bactria and the land was watered by the river Oxus. But later, a section of these people had moved from Balkh to Punjab while still others appear to have moved to south-western India as neighbors to the Saurashtras and Abhiras of Sauviras...The ancient Bahlika appears to have spanned a large expanse of territory. The commentator of Harsha-Carita of Bana Bhatta also defines the Kambojas as Kambojah-BahlikaDesajah i.e. the Kambojas originated in/belonged to Bahlika. Thus, it seems likely that in the remote antiquity, the ancestors of the Uttarakurus, Uttaramadras and the Parama Kambojas were one people or otherwise were closely allied and had lived in/around Bahlika (Bactria)...The Bahlikas have been equated to Mlechchas in the later Brahmanical literature. There is a distinct prophetic statement in the Mahabharata that the mlechcha kings of Sakas, Yavanas, Kambojas, Bahlikas etc. will rule unrighteously in Kali yuga. (3.188.34-36) Brahmanda (V), III, UpodghataPada, Ch 16.17." Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahlikas Could the entire narrative be a boat-journey, journey on a bagalo -- across cosmic sea - -- of Sury and baga - The sun (feminine) and Pleiades? Some glosses and textual tags: A surai-y, s.f. (6th) The Pleiades. Sing. and Pl. (Raverty's Pushto lexicon) From Apte's Sanskrit lexicon: 1 The wife of the sun. -2 The daughter of the sun. -3 The hymn about the marriage of ry. -4 a new bride. -5 A drug. -6 The colocynth.- the heaven of the sun. sry The wife of the god Sun. sryy (Den.) To act like the sun; Pachartram 1.9. R.5.13. [In mythology, the sun is regarded as a son of Kayapa and Aditi. He is represented as moving in a chariot drawn by seven horses, with Arua for his charioteer. He is also represented as allseeing, the constant beholder of the good and bad deeds of mortals. Samj (or Chhy or Avin) was his principal wife, by whom he had Yama and Yamun, the two Avins and Saturn. He is also described as having been the father of Manu Vaivasvata, the founder of the solar race of kings.] antari r kam 772

 [ , , Tv., according to Nir. , or ; or ] 1 The intermediate region between heaven and earth; the air, atmosphere, sky ( ay.) Sandhy Mantra; $ - at. Br. Rm.2.1. 43 -2 The middle of the three spheres or regions of life. -, - a boat or ship. - 1 'inhabiting the ocean', N. of Varua, regent of the waters. -2 N. of Viu.

The people who created the artifact also were in contact with people (or their lineage) who created the ziggurat in a quest to represent the heaven. cf. Sumerian city of Uruk (Warka) with the ziggurat of E-anna. Some figurines of Nausharo which can compare with the terracotta images on the zebu-boat:

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Source: Catherine Jarrige, 2006, The figurines of the first farmers at Mehrgarh and their offshoots, Paper presented in the Intl. Seminar on the 'First farmers in Global perspective', Lucknow, India, 18-20 January 2006.

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13. Female figurine with a "turban" from Harappa.

775

1. A group of terracotta figurines from Harappa."After many decades of research, the Indus Civilization is still something of an enigma -- an ancient civilization with a writing system that still awaits convincing decipherment, monumental architecture whose function still eludes us, no monumental art, a puzzling decline, and little evidence of the identity of its direct descendants. In a civilization extending over an area so vast, we expect to find monumental art and/or architectural symbols of power displaying the names of the powerful. Instead, we find an emphasis on small, elegant art and sophisticated craft technology. In this so-called "faceless civilization," three-dimensional representations of living beings in the Harappan world are confined to a few stone and bronze statues and some small objects crafted in faience, stone, and other materials - with one important exception. Ranging in size from slightly larger than a human thumb to almost 30 cm. (one foot) in height, the anthropomorphic and animal terracotta figurines from Harappa and other Indus Civilization sites offer a rich reflection of some of the Harappan ideas about representing life in the Bronze Age. (Photograph by Georg Helmes)" http://www.harappa.com/figurines/index.html Sharri Clark, Embodying Indus life, Terracotta figurines from Harappa. See a book by Sharri Clark: http://www.oxbowbooks.com/bookinfo.cfm/ID/91267 MehrgarhThe Lost Civilization [3 of 4] 776

Though Mehrgarh was abandoned at the time of the emergence of the literate urbanized phase of the Indus civilization around Moenjodaro, Harappa etc., the development illustrates its synchronization with the civilizations subsistence patterns, as well as its craft and trade. It also shows that the sequence of civilization was not broken and the flow of civilization kept moving into the Indus Civilization. The similarity of Indus Civilization to Mehrgarh in many respects shows the linkages and relationships among the Mehrgarh and later periods, but the important thing is that between the Mehrgarh and Indus civilization in Punjab and Sind side respectively, Suleman Range and Kirthar Range separate the Balochistan Plateau and the other geographical areas. Image: Mehrgarh figurines]http://wondersofpakistan.wordpress.com/category/archeology/ (Mahmood Mahmood)

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emale figurine. Terracotta. 2700-2000. From a series of figurines of Mature Harappan sites : Mohenjodaro, Harappa, Dholavira, Banawali and Kalibangan. National Museum, New Delhi. Source: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Female_figurine_3._Mature_Harappan_period._Indus_civilizati on.JPG

778

Brooklyn Museum. Small Solid Wheel for Toy Chariot Culture: Harappa Medium: Hand-modeled terra-cotta Place Made: Chanhu Daro, Pakistan Dates: ca. 2500 B.C.E. Period: Indus Valley Civilization Dimensions: 1 15/16 in. (4.9 cm)Caption: Harappa. Small Solid Wheel for Toy Chariot, ca. 2500 B.C.E. Hand-modeled terra-cotta, 1 15/16 in. (4.9 cm). Brooklyn Museum, A. Augustus Healy Fund, 37.94. Creative Commons-BY-NC http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/3425/Small_Solid_Wheel_for_Toy_Chari ot

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Pair of tigers/jackals Pyxis Lid Syria, Minet el-Beida, Tomb III; Late Bronze Age, 13th century B.C. (Runion des Muses Nationaux / Art Resource, NY; France, Paris, Muse du Louvre, Dpartement des Antiquits Orientales)

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Archaeological sites of the civilization on Sindhu, Sarasvati river basins.https://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/indus-writing http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/05/spinner-bas-relief-of-susa-8th-c-bce.html Spinner bas-relief of Susa, 8th c. BCE -- message of wheelwright guild Spinner bas-relief of Susa, 8th c. BCE -- message of wheelwright guild Abstract Hieroglyphs of a spinner bas-relief fragment from Susa dated to 8th cent. BCE (now in Louvre Museum) are identified. The Elamite lady spinner bas-relief is a composition of hieroglyphs depicting a guild of wheelwrights or smithy of nations (harosheth hagoyim). The hieroglyphs are read rebus using lexemes of Indian sprachbund given the archeological evidence of Meluhha settlers in Susa.

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Figure1. Susa spinner bas-relief fragment. Source: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Relief_spinner_Louvre_Sb2834.jpg http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/spinner H. 9 cm. W. 13 cm. Bituminous stone, a matte, black sedimentary rock. With her arms full of bracelets, the spinner holding a spindle is seated on a stool with tiger-paw legs. Elegantly coiffed, her hair is pulled back in a bun and held in place with a headscarf crossed around her head. Behind the spinner is an attendant holding a square wickerwork(?) fan. In front is a table with tiger-paw legs, a fish with six bun ingots. Susa. Neo-elamite period. 8th to 6th century BCE. The bas-relief was first cited in J, de Morgan's Memoires de la Delegation en Perse, 1900, vol. i. plate xi Ernest Leroux. Paris. Current location: Louvre Museum Sb2834 Near Eastern antiquities, Richelieu, ground floor, room 11. Reviewing eight volumes of Dlgation en Perse, Memories publis sous la direction de M. J. de Morgan, dlgu-gnral (quarto, Leroux, editeur, Paris) and noting that a ninth volume was in print (1905), Ernst Babelon offers the following comments on the bas-relief of the spinner of the Elamite Period (3400 - 550 BCE): Again Chaldan in origin, although of far later date, is a small diorite fragment of bas-relief called the bas-relief of the Spinner. It represents a woman sitting on a stool, her legs crossed and feet behind in the tailor's attitude. She is holding her spindle with both hands; in front of her is a fish lying on a table, and behind her a slave is waving the fly-flap.The round chubby faces of the figures recall the bas-reliefs of Khorsabad, which represent the eunuchs of the Ninevite palace. (Ernst Babelon, 1906, Archaeological discoveries at Susa, in: Encyclopaedia Iranica.) http://www.caissoas.com/CAIS/Archaeology/susa.htm

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Porada refers to the bas-relief as from the neo-Elamite period and notes, from the details of dress and jewelry, of hair style and furniture found on the relief: One would like to conclude from this that the Elamites were principally metal-workers who favoured more than other techniques that of modeling in wax in preparation for casting. (Edith Porada, with the collaboration of RH Dyson and contributions by C K Wilkinson, The art of elamites http://www.iranchamber.com/art/articles/art_of_elamites.php ) Elamites used bitumen, a naturally occurring mineral pitch, or asphalt, for vessels, sculpture, glue, caulking, and waterproofing. Characteristic artifacts of Susa of 2nd millennium are of bitumen compound (containing ground-up calcite and quartz grains). Bitumen is naturally available around Susa and in Khuzistan. (Connan, I. and Deschesne, O. 1996. Le Bitume d Suse: Collection du Musee du Louvre. Paris: Reunion des Musees Nationaux, 228-337.) While discounting the possibility of Chaldan origin, it is possible that the bas-relief was made at Susa by bronze-age settlers in Susa using the locally available bitumen. The fish on a stool in front of the spinner with head-wrap can be read rebus for key hieroglyphs: khuo leg, foot. kh community, guild (Santali) kti spinner rebus: wheelwright. vhahead-wrap. Rebus: vea , veha, vehe a small territorial unit. si kol ayas ka baa friend+tiger+fish+stool+six rebus: association (of) iron-workers metal stone ore kiln. Hieroglyphs and rebus readings using lexemes of Indian sprachbund The Indian linguistic area (sprachbund) is evidenced in linguistic studies of Emeneau, Kuiper and Colin Masica with speakers of Indo-Aryan, Munda and Dravidian languages adopting language features from one another. (Emeneau, MB, 1956, India as a linguistic area, Language 32, 1956, 3-16; Kuiper, FBJ, 1948, Proto-Munda words in Sanskrit, Amsterdam, 1948; 1967, The genesis of a linguistic area, IIJ 10, 1967, 81-102; Masica, CP, 1971, Defining a Linguistic area. South Asia. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.) The Elamite lady spinner bas-relief is a composition of hieroglyphs depicting a guild of 783

wheelwrights or smithy of nations (harosheth hagoyim). 1. Six bun ingots. bhaa six (Gujarati). Rebus: bhaa furnace (Gujarati.Santali) 2. ayo fish (Munda). Rebus: ayas metal (Sanskrit) aya metal (Gujarati) 3. kt spinner (G.) kt woman who spins thread (Hindi). Rebus: kht wheelwright (Hindi). ki = fireplace in the form of a long ditch (Ta.Skt.Vedic) kya = being in a hole (VS. XVI.37); k a hole, depth (RV. i. 106.6) kh a ditch, a trench; kh o khaiyo several pits and ditches (G.) kharun: pit (furnace) (Santali) kaaio turner (Gujarati) 4. kola woman (Nahali). Rebus: kolami smithy (Te.) 5. Tigers paws. kola tiger (Telugu); kola tiger, jackal (Kon.). Rebus: kol working in iron (Tamil) Glyph: hoof: Kumaon. khuo leg, foot, goat's leg; Nepalese. khuo leg, foot(CDIAL 3894). S. khu f. heel; WPah. pa. kh foot. (CDIAL 3906). Rebus: kh community, guild (Santali) 6. Kur. ka a stool. Malt. kano stool, seat. (DEDR 1179) Rebus: ka fire-altar, furnace (Santali) ka stone ore. 7. mehi, mih, meh = a plait in a womans hair; a plaited or twisted strand of hair (P.) Rebus: me iron (Ho.) 8. scarf glyph: dhau m. (also dhahu) m. scarf (Wpah.) (CDIAL 6707) Rebus: dhatu minerals (Santali) 9. Glyph 'friend': Assamese. xa friend, xaiy partner in a game; Sinhala. saha friend (< nom. skh or < sahya -- ?). skhi (nom. sg. skh) m. friend RigVeda. 2. sakh -- f. woman's confidante (Sanskrit), a mistress VarBrS. 1. Pali. sakh nom. sg. m. friend, Prakrit. sahi -- m.; Nepalese. saiy lover, paramour, friend (or < svmn -- ); 2. Pali. sakh -- , sakhik -- f. woman's female friend, Prakrit. sah -- , hi -- f., Bengali. sai, Oriya. sahi, sa, Hindi. poet. sayo f., Gujarati. sa f., Marathi. say, sa f. -- Ext. -- -- : OldMarwari. sahala f. woman's female friend; -- -- r -- : Gujarati. sahiyar, saiyar f.; -- -- ll -- (cf. sakhila -- ): Sindhi. Lahnda. Punjabi. sahel f. woman's female friend, N. saheli, B. sayl, OAw. sahel f.; H. sahel f. id., maidservant, concubine; OldMarwari. sahal, sahel woman's female friend, OldGujarati. sahl f., Marathi. sahel f. (CDIAL 13074). Apabhrama. shi 'master'-- m.; Gypsy. pal. sai owner, master , Sindhi. s m., Lahnda. si, mult. (as term of address) si; Punjabi. s, sy m. master, husband; Nepalese. saiy lover, paramour, friend (or < skhi -- ); Bengali. si master, (used by boys in play) ci; Oriya. s lord, king, deity; Maithili. (ETirhut) sa husband (among lower classes), (SBhagalpur) s husband (as addressed by wife); Bhojpuri. s God; 784

OldAwadhi. s m. lord, master , lakh. s saint; Hindi. s m. master, husband, God, religious mendicant; Gujarti. s m. faqir, s term of respectful address; Marathi. s title of respect, term of address; Sinhala. smi -- y, h husband, himi -- y master, owner, husband (Perh. in Marathi. -- s affix to names of relationship (see r -- Add.). WPahari.poet. sa m. (obl. sa) friend, lover, paramour '. (CDIAL 13930). Rebus: 'association': Oriya. shi, si part of town inhabited by people of one caste or tribe '; skhiya (metr.), skhy -- n. association, party RigVeda., friendship Mahv. [skhi] Pa. sakhya -- n. friendship (< skhy -- ? -- acc. sg. n. sakkhi and sakkh -- f. from doublet sakhya ~ *skhiya: cf. type smagr -- ~ smagrya -- ) (CDIAL 13323). 10. Glyph: 'head-wrap': veha [fr. vi, ve] wrap, in ssa head-wrap, turban M i.244; S iv.56. (Pali) Prakrit. vehaa -- n. wrapping, aga -- n. turban (CDIAL 12131). v m. band, noose enclosure (Sanskrit), aka- m. fence, n. turban lex. [v] Marathi. veh, vh, ve, v m.f. roll, turn of a rope; Sinhala. veya enclosure; -- Pali. ssa -vha -- m. head -- wrap,vhaka -- surrounding; Prakrit. vha -- m. wrap; Sindhi. vehu m. encircling(CDIAL 12130). Rebus: 'territorial unit': vea , veha, vehe a small territorial unit (Ka.IE8-4) (Pali) Assamese. Beran act of surrounding; Oriya. behaa, i girth, circumference, fencing, small cloth worn by woman. (CDIAL 12131). Pushto: brah, s.f. (3rd) A fortification, defence, rampart, a ditch, palisade, an entrenchment, a breastwork. Pl. ey. (Pushto). Prakrit. vha -- m. wrap; S. vehu m. encircling; Lahnda. veh, veh m. fencing, enclosure in jungle with a hedge, (Ju.) blockade, veh,veh m. courtyard, (Ju.) enclosure containing many houses; Punjabi. veh, be m. enclosure, courtyard; Kumaon. beo circle or band (of people) WesternPahari.kg. be m. palace, Assamese. also ber fence, enclosure (CDIAL 12130). Hindi. behn to enclose, surround ; Marathi. veh to twist, surround; (CDIAL 12132). kharo 'blacksmith lip, carving' and harosheth 'smithy' kharo the name of a script in ancient India from ca. 5th century BCE is a term cognate with harosheth hagoyim of the Old Bible. kharo (khar + oa blacksmith + lip or khar + ua blacksmith + settled) is a syllabic writing system of the region where Indian hieroglyphs were used as evidenced by Indus Script corpora. The word goy- in hagoyim is cognate with goy gotra, clan (Prakrit). (Details in S. Kalyanaraman, 2012, Indian Hieroglyphs). gtr n. cowpen, enclosure RigVeda., family, clan 1. Pali. gotta -- n. clan , Prakrit. gotta -- , gutta -- , amg. gya -- n.(CDIAL 4279). http://tinyurl.com/79nm28f Etymology of harosheth is variously elucidated, while it is linked to 'chariot-making in a smithy of nations'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harosheth_Haggoyim. Harosheth Hebrew: ; is pronounced khar-o-sheth? Most likely, (haroshet) a noun meaning a carving. Hence, kharo came to represent a 'carving, engraving' art, i.e. a writing 785

system. Harosheth-hagoyim See: Haroshet [Carving]; a forest; agriculture; workmanship; harsha [Artifice: deviser: secret work]; workmanship; a wood http://tinyurl.com/d7be2qh Cognate with haroshet: kar m. dragging P., agriculture p.(CDIAL 2905). karaa n. tugging, ploughing, hurting Manu (Sanskrit), cultivated land MBh. [krati, kr] Prakrit. karisaa -- n. pulling, ploughing ; Gujarati. karsa n. cultivation, ploughing ; OldGujarati. karasa m. cultivator , Gujarati. karas m. -- See *kraa -- .(CDIAL 2907). Harosheth-hagoyim is the home of general Sisera, who was killed by Jael during the war of Naphtali and Zebulun against Jabin, king of Hazor in Canaan (Judges 4:2). The lead players of this war are the general Barak and the judge Deborah. The name Harosheth-hagoyim obviously consists of two parts. The first part is derived from the root , which HAW Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament treats as four separate roots (harash I, II, III, & IV). The verb (harash I) means to engrave or plough. HAW Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament reads, "The basic idea is cutting into some material, e.g. engraving metal or plowing soil." Derivatives of this verb are: (harash), meaning engraver; (haroshet) a noun meaning a carving. This word is equal to the first part of the name Harosheth-hagoyim; (harish), meaning plowing or plowing time; (maharesha) meaning ploughshare; (harishi), a word which is only used in Jona 4:8 to indicate a certain characteristic of the sun - vehement (King James) or scorching (NIV). The verb (harash II) most commonly denotes refraining from speech or response, either because one is deaf or mute, or because one doesn't want to respond. None of the sources indicates a relation with the previous root, and perhaps there is none, but on the other hand, perhaps deafness was regarded in Biblical as either being marked or else cut or cut off. The noun (horesh) from root (hrsh III) occurs only in Isaiah 17:9 and has to do with a wood or forest. The noun (heresh) from root (hrsh IV) occurs only in Isaiah 3:3 and probably means magical art or expert enchanter, or something along those lines. The second part of the name, hagoyim, comes from the definite article (ha plus the common word (goy) meaning nation, people, gentile. This word comes from the assumed root (gwh), which is not translated but which seems to denote things that are surpassed or left behind. Other derivatives are: (gaw a and gew), meaning back, as in "cast behind the back," i.e. put out of mind (1 Kings 14:9, Nehemiah 9:26, Isaiah 38:17); (gewiya), meaning body, either dead or alive (Genesis 47:18, Judges 14:8, Daniel 10:6). The meaning of the name Haroshethhagoyim can be found as any combination of the above. NOBS Study Bible Name List reads Carving Of The Nations, but equally valid would be Silence Of The Gentiles or Engraving Of What's Abandoned. Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names reads Manufactory for Harosheth and "of the Gentiles" for Hagoyim. http://www.abarim786

publications.com/Meaning/Harosheth.html Judges 4:13 And Sisera gathered together all his chariots, even nine hundred chariots of iron, and all the people that were with him, from Harosheth-goiim, unto the brook Kishon. Variant: harosheth hagoyim smithy of nations. Cognate with kharo goy, blacksmiths lip clan khar , 'A kind of alphabet; Lv.1.29'. Often, there is an alternative (perhaps, erroneous) transliteration as khar. The compound is composed of: khar + (or, mfn. burnt' (CDIAL 2386); ua -- settled (Sanskrit) (CDIAL 2385) ha m. lip RigVeda. Pali. oha -- m., Prakrit. oha -- , u, hoha -- , hu m., Gypsy. pal. t, eur. vut m.; Kashmiri. wuh, dat. has m. lip; Lahnda. hoh m., Punjabi. hoh, hh m., WesternPahari. bhal. oh m., jaun. hh, Kumaon. h, gng. h, Nepalese. oh, Assamese. h, MiddleBengali. Oriya. oha, Maithili. Bhojpuri. oh, Awadhi. lakh. h, hh, Hindi. oh, h, hoh, hhm., Gujarati. oh, hoh m., Marathi. oh, h, ho m., Sinhala. oa.WesternPahari.poet. ohu m. lip, hou, kg. h h, kc. h, Garhwali. hoh, h. (CDIAL 2563). utau lip (Tamil). In the context of use of the term khar for a writing system, it is apposite to interpret the compound as composed of khar + 'blacksmith + lip'. "The Kharo scrolls, the oldest collection of Buddhist manuscripts in the world, are radiocarbon-dated by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO). The group confirms the initial dating of the Senior manuscripts to 130-250 CE and the Schyen manuscripts to between the 1st and 5th centuries CE." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_in_archaeology "The Kharo script is an ancient Indic script used by the Gandhara culture of ancient Northwest South Asia(primarily modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan) to write the Gndhr language (a dialect of Prakrit) and the Sanskrit language. An abugida (or "alphasyllabary"), it was in use from the middle of the 3rd century BCE until it died out in its homeland around the 3rd century CE. It was also in use in Kushan, Sogdiana (see Issyk kurgan) and along the Silk Road where there is some evidence it may have survived until the 7th century in the remote way stations of Khotan and Niya...As preserved in Sanskrit documents the alphabet runs: a ra pa ca na la da ba a a va ta ya a ka sa ma ga stha ja va dha a kha ka sta j rtha (or ha) bha cha sma hva tsa gha ha a pha ska ysa ca a ha ...

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Paper strip with writing in Kharo. 2-5th century CE, Yingpan, Eastern Tarim Basin, XinjiangMuseum...The Kharo script was deciphered by James Prinsep (17991840), using the bilingual coins of the Indo-Greeks (Obverse in Greek, reverse in Pli, using the Kharo script). This in turn led to the reading of the Edicts of Aoka, some of which, from the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, were written in the Kharo script...The study of the Kharo script was recently invigorated by the discovery of the Gandharan Buddhist Texts, a set of birch-bark manuscripts written in Kharoh, discovered near the Afghan city of Hadda just west of the Khyber Pass in modern Pakistan. The manuscripts were donated to the British Library in 1994. The entire set of manuscripts are dated to the 1st century CE, making them the oldest Buddhist manuscripts yet discovered." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharosthi http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/04/kharo-blacksmith-lip-carving-and.html Conclusion The bas-relief fragment of Susa contains hieroglyphs which are read from the lexemes of Indian sprachbund. The message is that the speakers are a guild of iron (metal, kol) stone ore (ayaska) workers belonging to the clan (association, sa) of wheelwrights (kt). The glosses are of mleccha (meluhha), confirming the Indian hieroglyphic tradition evidenced by Indus script corpora. The Susa bas-relief fragment was written in an area which also used cuneiform syllabic script just as Indus script hieroglyphs continued to be used together with kharo syllabic script from ca. 5th cent. BCE in the Indus script corpora area. Apparently, cuneiform was used to 788

denote syllables of names, while the hieroglyphs denoted the professions and artisanal competence or repertoire of metal and mineral resources used using glosses from Indian sprachbund. It is likely that most of the animals such as antelopes, on cylinder seals of the interaction area (Mesopotamia, in particular) were not mere artistic devices but were hieroglyphs representing professions. http://www.docstoc.com/docs/121548091/Susa-spinner-bas-relief1 Susa spinner bas-relief1 http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/05/notes-on-kharosti-asokan-aramaic.html Notes on kharo - Asokan Aramaic Notes on kharo - Asokan Aramaic Notes on kharo In the Indian provinces of the Achaemenid empire (including the lands of the Gandarians and Indians) the kharoh or rather kharos or kharo script was developed largely from the Aramaic script for writing Prakrit. (AH Dani, Indian palaeography, Oxford, 1963, p. 260; D. Diringer, The Alphabet a key to the history of mankind, 2nd ed., repr. London, etc. 1953, p.301; BN Mukherjee, A note on the name kharoh, Asiatic Society, Monthly Bulletin, August, 1980, vol. IX, no. 8, p.5)The Aramaic language and script, used in admistration and also in trading circles in the Achaemenid empire, could have been continued to be known to a classs of population in parts of the north-western section of the Indian subcontinent and its borderlands in a period, when not long after the fall of the Achaemenids in 330 BCE, the Mauryas began to rule thers. (EJ Rapson, ed., The Cambridge History of India, vol. I Ancient India, Cambridge, 1922, pp. 330 f and 467 f; S. Chattopadhyaya, The Achaemenids in India, 2nd ed., New Delhi, 1974, pp. 28-29. In this connection see also BN Mukherjee, Darius I and Gadaara, Journal of the Asiatic Society, 1974, vol. xvi, nos. 1-4, pp. 149-150.) It was prima facie possible for the Aramaic language, as used in the Indo-Iranian borderlands, to contain in its vocabulary many Irnian and even a few Indian words, and for the script, as employed there, to have features comparable with certain traits of writing witnessed in the Achaemenid documents. Aramaic could have reached the Indian borderlands even in a pre-Achaemenid age, through 789

traders and also in the wake of the alleged Assyrian invasion of Bactria. (Diodorus Siculus, Bibliothekes Historikes, II, 2-7; Arrian, Indike, I, 1-3. The Aramaeans could have visited the Indian borderlands even from the first period of their great activities in caravan trade from about the end of the 12th century BCE. (D. Diringer, op.cit., p. 254). The intrusion into and settling in the Indian borderlands by Aramaic speaking people could have been a distinct possibility, if some of these areas were really invaded by the Assyrian empire, where the Aramaic language and alphabet had become commonly employedfrom the end of the eighth century BCE. (Diodorus Siculus, op.cit., II, 2-7; Arrian, Indike, I, 1-3; HG Rawlinson, Bactria, From the earliest times to the extinction of Bactrio-Greek rule in the Punjab, repr., Delhi, 1978, pp. 6-7; D. Diringer, op.cit., p.254). (BN Mukherjee, 1984, A note on Asokan Aramaic in: Studies in Aramaic edicts of Asoka, Calcutta, Indian Museum, pp. 44-45, p.47). Source: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/120860438/A-note-on-Asokan-Aramaic--(BN-Mukherjee1984) A note on Asokan Aramaic (BN Mukherjee, 1984) http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/05/antithetical-antelopes-of-ancient-near_18.html Antithetical antelopes of Ancient Near East, harosheth hagoyim (Kalyanaraman 2012) Antithetical antelopes of Ancient Near East, harosheth hagoyim (Kalyanaraman 2012) Antithetical antelopes of Ancient Near East, harosheth hagoyim

A unique metal artifact of ca. 3rd milennium BCE Ancient Near East, depicts antithetical antelopes with curling tails. Hieroglyphs of the metal artifact of ca. 2000 BCE Ancient Near East can be identified. A locally made gold pendant of Oman, from the Wadi Suq period. This is an evocation of a 790

similar artifact of metal (perhaps gold or electrum gold-silver alloy) dated to ca. 2000 BCE. The hieroglyphs are: 1. Antelope; 2. Mirror images joined back-to-back; 3. Curved mollusc as tail. What do the hieroglyphs signify? Read rebus, it is a calling card of an ancient professional artisan/merchant. The meaning conveyed: Lineage stone (ore, tin) mint merchant. The patterns of joined animals are most vivid on Indus script corpora which have been explained as sangaa joined animals (allograph: standard device often shown in front of a young one-horned bull). Rebus reading explains this gloss as related to janga treasure entrusted to the treasury. The rebus reading is based on the assumption that the images would have been verbalised to render meaning as understood by the creators and by the responders of the message conveyed by the hieroglyphs of an artifact. The underlying argument is that the hieroglyphs are not mere decorative devices to be subject to art appreciation but an essential rendering of the economic activities of the people of the times. This monograph provides examples of glosses from the Indian sprachbund (Meluhha) to read the hieroglyphs as follows: Hieroglyph: ang, hang snail, mollusc; rebus: sang stone (ore). Hieroglyph: ranku antelope; rebus: ranku tin; agara ram; rebus: tamkru, dam-gar (mint) merchant. Hieroglyph: Joined back-to-back: pusht back; rebus: pusht ancestor. pust bah pust generation to generation. In summary, the meaning conveyed by the hieroglyphs is: lineage stone (ore, tin) mint merchant. Read on... http://www.docstoc.com/docs/120782087/Antithetical-antelopes-of-Ancient-Near-East791

harosheth-hagoyim--(Kalyanaraman-2012) Antithetical antelopes of Ancient Near East, harosheth hagoyim (Kalyanaraman 2012) http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/05/antithetical-antelopes-of-ancient-near.html Antithetical antelopes of Ancient Near East as hieroglyphs (Kalyanaraman 2012) Antithetical antelopes of Ancient Near East as hieroglyphs (Kalyanaraman 2012)

Antithetical antelopes of Ancient Near East as hieroglyphs A unique metal artifact of ca. 3rd milennium BCE Ancient Near East, depicts antithetical antelopes with curling tails. Hieroglyphs of the metal artifact of ca. 2000 BCE Ancient Near East can be identified.

A locally made gold pendant of United Arab Emirates, from the Wadi Suq period. This is an evocation of a similar artifact of metal (perhaps gold or electrum gold-silver alloy) dated to ca. 2000 BCE. The hieroglyphs are: 1. Antelope; 2. Mirror images joined back-to-back; 3. Curved mollusc as tail. What do the hieroglyphs signify? Read rebus, it is a calling card of an ancient professional artisan/merchant. The meaning conveyed: Lineage stone (ore, tin) mint merchant. The patterns of joined animals are most vivid on Indus script corpora which have been explained as sangaa joined animals (allograph: standard device often shown in front of a young one-horned bull). Rebus reading explains this gloss as related to janga treasure 792

entrusted to the treasury. The rebus reading is based on the assumption that the images would have been verbalised to render meaning as understood by the creators and by the responders of the message conveyed by the hieroglyphs of an artifact. The underlying argument is that the hieroglyphs are not mere decorative devices to be subject to art appreciation but an essential rendering of the economic activities of the people of the times. This monograph provides examples of glosses from the Indian sprachbund (Meluhha) to read the hieroglyphs as follows: Hieroglyph: ang, hang snail, mollusc; rebus: sang stone (ore). Hieroglyph: 1. Kashmiri. hngi snail ; Bengali. skh possessing or made of shells . 2. Kashmiri. h gi f. pearl oyster shell, shell of any aquatic mollusc . khika relating to a shell (Sanskrit)(CDIAL 12380) Hieroglyph: ranku antelope; rebus: ranku tin; agara ram; rebus: tamkru, dam-gar (mint) merchant. Hieroglyph: Joined back-to-back: pusht back; rebus: pusht ancestor. pust bah pust generation to generation. In summary, the meaning conveyed by the hieroglyphs is: lineage stone (ore, tin) mint merchant. Read on... http://www.docstoc.com/docs/120496443/Antithetical-antelopes-of-Ancient-Near-East-ashieroglyphs Antithetical antelopes of Ancient Near East as hieroglyphs

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The rebus readings of antelope hieroglyphs and related etyma of Meluhha (Indian sprachbund) are also discussed in the context of hieroglyphs of 1. Warka vase at: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/05/hieroglyphs-on-warka-vase-readrebus-as.html - Hieroglyphs on Warka vase read rebus as epigraphs (S. Kalyanaraman, 2012) and 2. Seals and artifacts of Ancient Near East at: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/05/fwd-agade-list-enotes-antelope.html Antelope Hieroglyphs of Near East and Indus Writing...(Kalyanaraman 2012) NB. A correction. The gold pendant was made in United Arab Emirates (not Oman as originally stated on this blog). May 15, 2012.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/04/indian-hieroglyphs-indus-script-corpora.html Indian hieroglyphs -- Indus script corpora, archaeo-metallurgy and Meluhha (Mleccha)(S. Kalyanaraman, 2012) Hieroglyphs on Warka vase read rebus as epigraphs (S. Kalyanaraman, 2012)

Hieroglyphs on Warka vase read rebus as epigraphs Abstract Wark vase which is a carved alabaster stone vessel (height: ca. 105 cm.; upper diam.: 36 cm.), found in the Sumerian Inanna temple complex. The vase uses hieroglyphs and is, in effect, a Rosetta stone to help decode early writing systems and to identify language(s) of the creators of this artifact. It can be called the Meluhha rosetta stone. The identification of clear, unambiguous, pictorial motifs carved on the Warka vase, as hieroglyphs is confirmed by parallels on Indus script corpora and select bronze-age artifacts (e.g. Uluburn shipwreck).

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Warka vase. Stone alabaster. Museum number: IM19606. Original Source: "The Oriental Institute of The University of Chicago". http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IRAQ/Images/strom/strom_fig019l.jpg Clear, unambiguous, pictorial motifs carved on the Warka vase, are: 1. An antelope and a tiger are shown above two bun ingots atop a fire-altar. (Fig.1) The antelope and tiger hieroglyphs atop two ingots are: (i) ranku antelope. Read rebus: ranku tin. (ii) kola tiger. Read rebus: kol alloy of five metals, pacaloha. 2. Between two storage jars containing ingots is shown a bulls head with a pellet between the horns. (Fig.2) m h face. Read rebus: m h (metal) ingot. hangar bull. Read rebus: hangar blacksmith (metalsmith). The pellet hieroglyph is explained in Annex A. Notes on pellet hieroglyph linked with bull/antelope. 3. A ram is shown ahead of the two storage jars. (Fig.3) The ram hieroglyph leading the two storage jars with ingots is tagaru ram (Tulu). Read rebus: tamkru, dagar, dakar, dam-gar, (mint) merchant. (Sumerian substrate). 4. A procession of bovidae and a set of sprouts are shown on the bottom registers. (Fig.4) (i) khar-warg herd of sheep, goats. Read rebus: khr blacksmith. Sheep and goats above 3 years of age are termed ar-warg and ar-wargah. (Pushto). (ii) warak wool(Wg.) Read rebus: wrek house (Pr.), vra -- door, gate-way' (Sanskrit) (iii) tagaraka 795

tabernae montana coranaria(Sanskrit). Read rebus: tagara tin (Kannada). The hieroglyph tree: kui tree; kuhi smelter/furnace (Santali). 5. Two reed bundles adorned with scarves. (i) The reed hieroglyph: khg, khg reed for pens(Bengali), khaga the reed Saccharum spontaneum(Oriya). Read rebus: kgar portable brazier (Kashmiri)] (ii) Scarf is ligatured to the reed post. dhau scarf (WPah.). Read rebus: dhatu mineral (Santali) The reed bundles adorn the temple-gateway: wrek house (Pr.), vra - door, gate-way' (Sanskrit). The pictorial motifs narrated on the vase in four registers are not mere decorations. It is not mere coincidence that many pictorial motifs on the Warka vase recur on Indus script corpora. The hieroglyphs on the Warka vase conveyed an economic message in the context of deposits of treasure into the (Inanna temple) treasury (as evidenced by the narrative of the second register which shows large storage jars, liquid containing jar, and baskets being carried in). I suggest that the pictorial motifs are hieroglyphs which can be read rebus. I also suggest that the creators of the pictorial motifs on the Warka vase were speakers of a language which underlies the 6000+ inscriptions of Indus script corpora. What was the underlying language of the message? One language source is the Indian sprachbund (language union), which can also be called Meluhha. What was the message (that is, what treasures were carried for depositing in the temple treasury)? Treasure carried into the temple treasury included: tin ingots, ingots of minerals/metals and alloyed metal ingots. On the hieroglyphs of the top register, a goat or ram walks towards a pair of reeds ligatured with scarfs. Two large storage jars contain ingots. (That these relate to metal is indicated by the phonetic determinant of a bulls head dangar bull; danger blacksmith). The Uruk (Warka) vase with its hieroglyphs comparable to Indian hieroglyphs and the identification of a few substratum Meluhha words in Sumerian is a pointer to this possibility of Meluhhan presence and influence. Source of image: The Warka Vase or the Uruk Vase is a carved alabaster stone vessel found in the temple complex of the Sumerian goddess Inanna in the ruins of the ancient city of Uruk, located in the modern Al Muthanna Governorate, in southern Iraq. Like the Narmer 796

Palette from Egypt, it is one of the earliest surviving works of narrative relief sculpture, dated to c. 3,2003000 BC. The vase was discovered as a collection of fragments by German Assyriologists in their sixth excavation season at Uruk in 1933/1934. It is named after the modern village of Warka - known as Uruk to the ancient Sumerians. http://arthistorypart1.blogspot.in/2011/01/sumerian-art-warka-vase.html cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warka_Vase Indian sprachbund (linguistic area or language union) Indian linguistic area, that is an area of ancient times when various language-speakers interacted and absorbed language features from one another and made them their own. (Emeneau, 1956; Kuiper, 1948; Masica, 1971; Przyludski, 1929; Southworth, 2005). Read on... http://www.docstoc.com/docs/120407347/hieroglyphs-on-warka-vase-read-rebus-as-epigraphs_S-Kalyanaraman_-2012_ hieroglyphs on warka vase read rebus as epigraphs _S. Kalyanaraman_ 2012_

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/04/antelope-hieroglyphs-of-near-east-and.html Antelope Hieroglyphs of Near East and Indus Writing in Private and State Contexts (S. Kalyanaraman, May 2012) Antelope Hieroglyphs of Near East and Indus Writing in Private and State Contexts (S. Kalyanaraman, May 2012) Antelope Hieroglyphs of Near East and Indus Writing in Private and State Contexts Abstract If there is one set of hieroglyphs which occurs with high frequency on both Neast East artifacts of cylinder seals and other objects and on Indus script corpora of inscriptions, it is the antelope 797

set. Antelope occurs in 91 even-toed ungulate species indigenous to various regions in Africa, Eurasia including India. According to the present classification, antelopes within the family bovidae include species which are not cattle, sheep, buffalo, bison or goats. Greek antholops (anthos, flower + ops eye) were considered fabulous animals haunting the banks of Euphrates, very savage, hard to catch and having saw-like horns capable of cutting down trees. ("Antelope". Dictionary.com. Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper, Historian.) The antelope species which have differences in appearance, sizes and shapes of horns, include: Arabian oryx, dorcas, gazelle, ibex, nilgai, chinkara, blackbuck, nyala, elands, kudus, Tibetan and Saiga antelopes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antelope#cite_ref-1 While there is a variety of orthographic representations of the bovidae in Near East and Indus writing artifacts, it is possible to identify some etyma which could possibly have identified the animals, ca. 3500 BCE in the archaeological context and in the context of messages conveyed through hieroglyphs and other script signs. Desinamamala of Hemacandra ed. R. Pischel (1938) includes a gloss ibbho merchant (Dei substrate), which may be a semantic cognate of ibira which occurs on Near East texts. Sumerian King List notes Bad-tibira as the second city to exercise kingship in Sumer before the flood, following Eridu. the earliest lexically attested term for merchant is ibira or tibira, equated with Akkadian tamkru in the basic lexical series ea=A=Naqu. [B. Landsberger, JAOS 88 (=Speiser AV, 1968) 133-147, esp. p. 139 line 126 and Landsbergers comments ad loc., p. 146; cf. now MSL 14 (1979) 308:126.]The alternation between a vocalic onset and an initial t- marks the term as a substrate word. But the same term is also equated with gurgurru, (MSL 12:103:231 and CAD G s.v.) craftsman, and this may be its earlier meaning. What the nature of the craft may have been is suggested by the fact that it is occasionally written with the logogram for metal-worker, URUDU.NAGAR. [Landsberger, JAOS 88 (=Speiser AV, 1968) 146 and 126; elsewhere KA X KIB: Ea III 126 and MSL 12:137:263; 16:87:270. For tibira in the meaning metal-worker see also idem 1974: 11.] This implies an early association of trading with itinerant metal-workers, a situation familiar, for example, from the Irish tin-smiths or tinkers of later European history. Another term for trader with a possible substrate origin may be dam-gar, here presumed to be the source of Akkadian tamkru. [Landsberger 1974: 12.] (William W. Hallo, 1996, Origins: the ancient near eastern background of some modern western institutions, EJ Brill., p. 69.) Noting the semantics merchant and metallurgist, Forbes notes: like the mercatores of the Middle Ages who were often both artisans and merchants at the same time. Hence the trade 798

was only partly a State-affair and dam-gar (tamkaru) was allowed a certain latitude to do some business of his own. Hence the lots of 6-12 talents of metal sometimes go to the e-DUB-ba, the State storehouse, also called house of the silver and the lapis lazuli, the great storehouse. Several tons of copper were consumed yearly in each Sumerian town and the gold-smiths shops seem to have worked some 6K of red gold, 8K of refined gold and nearly 6K of silver in one year. (RJ Forbes, 1964, Studies in ancient technology, Volume I, EJ Brill., p.86). One cylinder-seal impression which includes an antelope hieroglyph may be cited: Cylinder-seal impression; a griffin and a tiger attack an antelope with its head turned back. The upper register shows two scorpions and a frog; the lower register shows a scorpion and two fishes. SyroMitannian, fifteenth to fourteenth centuries BCE, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. [After Fig. 9 in: Jack M. Sasson (ed.), Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, p.2705].

Alternative rebus readings will be considered to explain the meaning of varieties of antelope hieroglyphs in an archaeological and trade contexts of interaction areas of the Near East and Meluhha (commonly identified with the areas of speakers who employed Indus script). The conclusion is that antelope hieroglyphs denoted mineral (metal ore) worked on by artisans and also denoted a merchant or a helper of a merchant. This may suggest a fresh look at and reconsideration of the messages conveyed by thousands of cylinder seals which depict many animals, including antelopes, goats, rams, scorpions or composite animals with wings. Some of these may also be explained as hieroglyphs read rebus by literate-language communities, instead of merely explaining away some representations -- only as objects of art appreciation -to be hunting or banquet scenes or metaphors in the context of assumed rituals in temples or communities. This hypothesis will be tested in the paper in the context of artifacts and inscriptions discovered in private property and State contexts at Susa which is an interaction area between the Near East and Meluhha (Indus script corpora). Read on full text of monograph...http://www.docstoc.com/docs/119864825/Antelope799

hieroglyphs1 Antelope Hieroglyphs of Near East and Indus writing in Private and State contexts (S. Kalyanaraman, May 2012)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/04/birch-bark-manuscripts-fake-or-real.html Birch-bark manuscripts, fake or real? Ideas travel...on the internet Birch-bark manuscripts, fake or real? Ideas travel...on the internet Birch-bark manuscripts http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/11/manuscript-has-been-discovered-with.html A manuscript has been discovered with Indus script: Lucy Zuberbuehler (2009) Photograph of lower portion of mss. Media identity number SN05 1000, 7086 in: Western Himalaya Archive, Vienna, 2009 (See photo gallery - Figures 1 to 4 appended to thesis). A debate was joined on the internet comparing the size of this manuscript with another Buddhist birch bark manuscript sheet unrolled 14 by 2 in. Details can be read at: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2157387099665&set=o.24752074845&type=1&pe rmPage=1

Comments by Wim Borsboom (Nov. 19, 20, 2011): If the birch bark IVC 'Kabul Manuscript' and the 5th century Buddhist Gandharan 'Los Angeles Manuscript' are comparable, and if we can go by the average length of the typical birch tree stripes (lenticels) then the dimension of one 'IVC Kabul Manuscript' folio is only approximately 2 by 3.6 inches or about the size of a business card. If the small dimensions of the "Kabul IVC Manuscript", as I am suggesting, are correct, then it is surprising that Lucy Zuberbhler who wrote her "undergraduate thesis (!)" (Farmer*) on the 800

Kabul IVC Manuscript, did not catch the following (OR WAS NOT questioned on her assumption of the dimensions.): L. Z.'s bells should have been ringing, when she read in the 2001 birch-bark conservation report by S. Sayre Batton "...When Buddhist sutras are found *inside* sculptures..." In 'ancient birchbark manuscript conservation' circles, it is known that certain MSS are often kept inside statues, sometimes even small ones. But her possible oversight is actually not so bad - errors are always excusable - the problem is that somehow she felt urged to send an apology to "Dear Mr. Farmer and Mr. Sproat" - not for her work - but in case "...anybody bothered you with the contents of my thesis." How come she somehow felt the need to satisfy Witzel and Sproat's hunger by feeding them the pleasing words she knew they wanted to hear: "I myself think it's a forgery" and "As far as I remember, he [Prof. Dr. Roland Bielmeier] was also fairly convinced that the artifact was a fake..." She could have written her thesis on proving that it was indeed fraudulent, she could have compared it with the extant forgery (as posted here) and not just "thinking" that it was a forgery. Was she doing her work to learn proper research, or had her professor just given her a 'frivolous' exercise, knowing full well that she would be drawing conclusions that could not stand up to scrutiny because he was already "fairly convinced" that whatever the outcome would be, could not be right?

Or... was he perhaps 'fence-sitting' (just in case) while covering his behind... and leaving her as a possible target (also just in case)...? Yep, those who sit on the fence (It could be authentic, right?), and the likes of S. and F. who shoot their bullying darts at the fence-sitters and... at the well-intending students who are trying to please those who are aiming their darts at their behinds anyways.

Notice that exclamation mark "(!)" that Farmer* in one of his posts added to "undergraduate thesis"? In the context of how he writes about Dr. K. that mark looks more like a barb... 801

Stand up Lucy... who knows, it might still be a fake, but YOU don't have to apologize... "In the seven years since we published our paper, more than one forged "Indus manuscript" has appeared. But now one has shown up in an undergraduate thesis (!) from the University of Bern, published in 2009, which we just heard about today..." http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/11/manuscript-has-been-discovered-with.html

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-Eurasian_research/message/15563 Just in case anyone - sooner or later - wants to follow up on this I'm providing the following: http://www.afghanistan.culturalprofiles.net/?id=826 November 20, 2011 at 1:08pm Note: This is a link to Sultani Museum in Kabul, Afghanistan. National Art Gallery Building, Asmayi Watt, District 2, Kabul, Afghanistan http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/04/kharosti-blacksmith-lip-carving-and.html kharosti 'blacksmith lip, carving' and harosheth 'smithy' kharosti 'blacksmith lip, carving' and harosheth 'smithy' kharosti 'blacksmith lip, carving' and harosheth 'smithy' Suniti Kumar Chatterjee suggested that khar may be cognate with harosheth in: harosheth hagoyim 'smithy of nations'. Etymology of harosheth is variously elucidated, while it is linked to 'chariot-making in a smithy of nations'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harosheth_Haggoyim See also: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/11/archaeological-mystery-solved-site-of.html Harosheth Hebrew: ; is pronounced khar-o-sheth? Most likely, (haroshet) a noun meaning a carving. Hence, kharo came to represent a 'carving, engraving' art, i.e. a writing system. Harosheth-hagoyim See: Haroshet [Carving]; a forest; agriculture; workmanship;Harsha [Artifice: deviser: secret work]; workmanship; a wood http://tinyurl.com/d7be2qh Cognate with haroshet: kar m. dragging P., agriculture p.(CDIAL 2905). karaa n. tugging, ploughing, hurting Mn., cultivated land MBh. [krati, kr] Pk. karisaa -- n. pulling, ploughing ; G. karsa n. cultivation, ploughing ; OG. karasa m. cultivator , G. karas m. -See *kraa -- .(CDIAL 2907). Harosheth-hagoyim is the home of general Sisera, who was 802

killed by Jael during the war of Naphtali and Zebulun against Jabin, king of Hazor in Canaan (Judges 4:2). The lead players of this war are the general Barak and the judge Deborah. The name Harosheth-hagoyim obviously consists of two parts. The first part is derived from the root , which HAW Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament treats as four separate roots (harash I, II, III, & IV). The verb (harash I) means to engrave or plough. HAW Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament reads, "The basic idea is cutting into some material, e.g. engraving metal or plowing soil." Derivatives of this verb are: (harash), meaning engraver; (haroshet) a noun meaning a carving. This word is equal to the first part of the name Harosheth-hagoyim; (harish), meaning plowing or plowing time; (maharesha) meaning ploughshare; (harishi), a word which is only used in Jona 4:8 to indicate a certain characteristic of the sun - vehement (King James) or scorching (NIV). The verb (harash II) most commonly denotes refraining from speech or response, either because one is deaf or mute, or because one doesn't want to respond. None of the sources indicates a relation with the previous root, and perhaps there is none, but on the other hand, perhaps deafness was regarded in Biblical as either being marked or else cut or cut off. The noun (horesh) from root (hrsh III) occurs only in Isaiah 17:9 and has to do with a wood or forest. The noun (heresh) from root (hrsh IV) occurs only in Isaiah 3:3 and probably means magical art or expert enchanter, or something along those lines. The second part of the name, hagoyim, comes from the definite article (ha plus the common word (goy) meaning nation, people, gentile. This word comes from the assumed root (gwh), which is not translated but which seems to denote things that are surpassed or left behind. Other derivatives are: (gaw a and gew), meaning back, as in "cast behind the back," i.e. put out of mind (1 Kings 14:9, Nehemiah 9:26, Isaiah 38:17); (gewiya), meaning body, either dead or alive (Genesis 47:18, Judges 14:8, Daniel 10:6). The meaning of the name Harosheth-hagoyim can be found as any combination of the above. NOBS Study Bible Name List reads Carving Of The Nations, but equally valid would be Silence Of The Gentiles or Engraving Of What's Abandoned. Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names reads Manufactory for Harosheth and "of the Gentiles" for Hagoyim. http://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Harosheth.html khar 5 , in khara-ponzu -&above;&below; unmeaning scrawls in imitation of writing, made by untaught children, or the like.(Kashmiri)khr 1 m. (sg. abl. khra 1 ; the pl. dat. of this word is khran 1 , which is to be distinguished from khran 2, q.v., s.v.), a blacksmith, an iron worker (cf. bandka-khr, p. 111b, l. 46; K.Pr. 46; H. xi, 17); a farrier (El.). This word is often a part of a name, and in such case comes at the end (W. 118) as in Wahab khr, Wahab the smith (H. ii, 12; vi, 17). khra-basta - f. the skin 803

bellows of a blacksmith. -bh -&above; &below; f. the wall of a blacksmith's furnace or hearth. -by - f. a blacksmith's wife (Gr.Gr. 34). -dkuru - &below; m. a blacksmith's hammer, a sledge-hammer. -gji -&above;&below; or -gj -&above;&below; f. a blacksmith's furnace or hearth. -hl - f. (sg. dat. -h j -&above;&below;), a blacksmith's smelting furnace; cf. hl 5. -kr &below; f. a blacksmith's daughter. -kou -&above; &below; m. the son of a blacksmith, esp. a skilful son, who can work at the same profession. -k &above; &below; f. a blacksmith's daughter, esp. one who has the virtues and qualities properly belonging to her father's profession or caste. -m 1 &above;&dotbelow;&below; f. (for 2, see [khra 3] ), 'blacksmith's earth,' i.e. iron-ore. -ncyuwu -&below; m. a blacksmith's son. -nay - f. (for khranay 2, see [khrun] ), the trough into which the blacksmith allows melted iron to flow after smelting. -a -&dotbelow; f.pl. charcoal used by blacksmiths in their furnaces. -wn m. a blacksmith's shop, a forge, smithy (K.Pr. 3). -wah - m. (sg. dat. -waas -), the large stone used by a blacksmith as an anvil.(Kashmiri) Allograph: khra 2 (= ) or khr 4 (L.V. 96, K.Pr. 47, iv. 827) m. (for 1, see [khr 1] ), a thorn, prickle, spine (K.Pr. 47; iv. 827, 153)(Kashmiri) khar , 'A kind of alphabet; Lv.1.29'. Often, there is an alternative (perhaps, erroneous) transliteration as kharh. The compound is composed of: khar + (or, 'mfn. burnt' (CDIAL 2386); ua -- settled (CDIAL 2385) ha m. lip RV. Pa. oha -- m., Pk. oha -- , u, hoha -- , hu m., Gy. pal. t, eur. vut m.; Ash. , Wg. , w, Kt. y (prob. Ind. NTS xiii 232); Pa. lau. h f. Ind. (?), gul. lip , dar. weg. u bank of a river (IIFL iii 3, 22); Kal. rumb. , u lip ; Sh. m. upper lip , i f. lower lip ( e pl.); K. wuh, dat. has m. lip ; L. hoh m., P. hoh, hh m., WPah. bhal. oh m., jaun. hh, Ku. h, gng. h, N. oh, A. h, MB. Or. oha, Mth. Bhoj. oh, Aw. lakh. h, hh, H. oh, h, hoh, hhm., G. oh, hoh m., M. oh, h, ho m., Si. oa.WPah.poet. ohu m. lip , hou, kg. h h, kc. h, Garh. hoh, h. (CDIAL 2563). In the context of use of the term khar for a writing system, it is apposite to interpret the compound as composed of khar + 'blacksmith + lip'. "The Kharosti scrolls, the oldest collection of Buddhist manuscripts in the world, are radiocarbon-dated by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO). The group confirms the initial dating of the Senior manuscripts to 130-250 CE and the Schyen manuscripts to between the 1st and 5th centuries CE." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_in_archaeology "The Kharoh script is an ancient Indic script used by the Gandhara culture of ancient Northwest South Asia(primarily modern-day 804

Afghanistan and Pakistan) to write the Gndhr language (a dialect of Prakrit) and theSanskrit language. An abugida (or "alphasyllabary"), it was in use from the middle of the 3rd century BCE until it died out in its homeland around the 3rd century CE. It was also in use in Kushan, Sogdiana (see Issyk kurgan) and along the Silk Road where there is some evidence it may have survived until the 7th century in the remote way stations of Khotan and Niya...As preserved in Sanskrit documents the alphabet runs: a ra pa ca na la da ba a a va ta ya a ka sa ma ga stha ja va dha a kha ka sta j rtha (or ha) bha cha sma hva tsa gha ha a pha ska ysa ca a ha ...

Paper strip with writing in Kharoh. 2-5th century CE, Yingpan, Eastern Tarim Basin, XinjiangMuseum...The Kharoh script was deciphered by James Prinsep (17991840), using the bilingual coins of the Indo-Greeks (Obverse in Greek, reverse in Pli, using the Kharoh script). This in turn led to the reading of the Edicts of Ashoka, some of which, from the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, were written in theKharoh script...The study of the Kharoh script was recently invigorated by the discovery of the Gandharan Buddhist Texts, a set of birch-bark manuscripts written in Kharoh, discovered near the Afghan city of Hadda just west of the Khyber Pass in modern Pakistan. The manuscripts were donated to the British Library in 1994. The entire set of manuscripts are dated to the 1st century CE, making them the oldest Buddhistmanuscripts yet discovered." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharosthi List of all known Gandhari inscriptions (20 edicts): http://gandhari.org/a_inscriptions.php Salomon, Richard. New evidence for a Ganghari origin of the arapacana syllabary. Journal of the American Oriental Society. Apr-Jun 1990, Vol.110 (2), p. 255-273. Salomon, Richard. An additional note on arapacana. Journal of the American Oriental Society. 1993, Vol.113 (2), p. 275-6. Salomon, Richard. Kharoh syllables used as location markers in Gndhran stpa architecture. Pierfrancesco Callieri, ed., Architetti, Capomastri, Artigiani: Lorganizzazione dei cantieri e della produzione artistica nellasia ellenistica. Studi offerti a Domenico Faccenna nel 805

suo ottantesimo compleanno. (Serie Orientale Rome 100; Rome: Istituto Italiano per lAfrica e lOriente, 2006), pp. 181224. "In general, some form or other of Bhler's essential thesis that Brhm was developed out of a Semitic prototype in pre-Mauryan India has been accepted by most scholars in the west, but rejected by the majority of South Asian experts, who generally argue for a separate and indigenous origin for the Indic scripts, often by way of derivation, direct or indirect, from the Indus script...The major conclusion shared by the studies of Fussman, von Hinber, and Falk is that at least the Brhm script, and possibly also Kharo.s.th, originated in the Mauryan period and not earlier. Although they disagree in specifics, especially with regard to the date of the development of Brhm, all three agree that Kharo.s.th, which was a regional script of the far northwest, was older than the pan-Indian Brhm and influenced its formation...That the basic system of indication of post-consonantal vowels by diacritic marking was originally developed in and adapted from Kharo.s.th seems well established...Kharo.s.th itself almost certainly did predate Brhm, as argued by Falk et al., and probably dates back at least to the late 4th century, and ( contra Falk) quite possibly even before then...Nevertheless, it would be unwise to rule out surprises in the future, and we should leave the door open, as does Falk (p.340), to discoveries that could revive theories of an early development of Brhm. But we must also agree, if reluctantly, with his final sentence: "Zur Zeit erscheint dieser Fall jedoch kaum zu erwarten" (Trans. Currently, this case seems hardly to be expected.)(p.340)." On The Origin Of The Early Indian Scripts: A Review Article by Richard Salomon, University of Washington (via archive.org) http://web.archive.org/web/20060516000049/http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/position/salomon.h tml The Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 122, April-June, 2002. Kharosti and Brahmi by Hartmut Scharfe THE EMERGENCE OF WRITING (1) IN INDIA and the relation between the two early scripts, Brahmi and Kharosti, have received new attention in the last several years. (2) A consensus has emerged that challenges Georg Buhler's theories that had widely been accepted in Western scholarship for a century: that the Brahmi script was derived for commercial use in the eighth century B.C. from an Aramaic alphabet, and that later, during the Achaemenid domination of Northwestern India, a more modern Aramaic script was introduced into that part of India and subsequently modified under the influence of the Brahmi script. (3) Several Indian scholars (and some early European scholars) considered the Brahmi script an indigenous development, and some tried to derive it from the undeciphered script found on the seals of the Indus Valley Civilization that flourished before 2000 B.C. (4) One of the problems with Buhler's theory is the oddity that the Brahmi which is better equipped to write 806

an Indian language, would have been replaced by the less apt Kharosti (which would see some secondary modifications under the influence of the Brahmi). Buhler refers to the introduction of the Arabic script after the Muslim conquest, but the parallel is not close: the massive influx of Afghans and Turks and the introduction of Islam and Quran study into India cannot be compared with the few Aramaic scribes who would have served the Persian overlords in the provinces of Gandhara and Sindhu. In fact no Aramaic documents of any kind have surfaced from the period of Achaemenid domination in India. Raj Bali Pandey (5) concluded from this lack of Aramaic documents that Kharosti could not be derived from Aramaic, and that perhaps "the Persians did not rule over India directly." But while no Aramaic inscriptions or other texts are known from the whole eastern half of the Achaemenid empire, the Aramaic inscriptions of Asoka, almost a century later, found in Eastern Afghanistan prove the importance of the Aramaic language and script in that border area. The distinctive features of both scripts are well known. The Kharosti is more cursive, the Brahmi more monumental. While the Kharosti is written from the right to left, does not differentiate between long and short vowels, and indicates initial vowels with similar signs, the Brahmi is written from left to right, distinguishes between long and short vowels, and uses distinctive letters for the initial vowels. Neither direction of writing offers distinct advantages--it is like driving either on the right side or the left side of the road. The other two features are now seen as improvements of the Brahmi over the Kharosti, but all is not well with the arguments offered. The Kharosti script used in the inscriptions of Asoka, the Sakas, and Kusanas does not differentiate between short and long vowels. Buhler, who considered the Kharosti essentially a clerk's script, spoke of the "lack of [signs for] the long vowels which are useless in everyday usage," (6) and Pandey argued that "The absence of long vowels in the Kharosthi is due to the fact that it was used for writing Prakrits which avoid long vowels ... not due to any Semitic influence." (7) While long vowels were usually shortened in all Prakrit dialects before a consonant cluster, long vowels in open syllables remained mostly unchanged. The contrast wasphonemic and could result in different meanings, e.g., dina "day" and dina "miserable." In the shorthand of accounting and of business notes the ambiguity could be tolerated. But the careful distinction of phonetic and phonemic qualities was essential for maintaining the correct recital of Vedic mantras, and the brahmin phoneticians and grammarians studied the distinctions with great care. The Brahmi script essentially differentiates between short and long vowels, but the distinction of i/i and u/u is not always observed, especially in the Asoka inscriptions at Kalsi and the inscriptions at Sohgaura, Piprawa, and Mahasthan. (8) In the more carefully executed inscriptions the strictly phonemic form of the 807

Brahmi script is maintained: one letter for each phoneme (and only one phoneme for each letter). (9) The lack of differentiation of vowel length in the Kharosti (10) has nothing to do with the phonetic or phonemic reality of the Prakrit languages underlying these inscriptions. It derives ultimately from the technique of Semitic writing that essentially only wrote the consonants--with the occasional option to mark a vowel with the letter yod or waw (for /i/ or /u/), in the so-called plene writing. (11) It has been suggested--most recently by H. Falk--that these innovations are at least partially due to Greek influence. But R. Salomon has rightly countered that the Greek distinction of vowel length is very haphazard and incomplete, (12) whereas the Indian sound table and alphabet are strictly phonemic and well ordered. At the same time, the Indian scribes did not move on to a letter script (as later the Avestan scribes did, probably under Greek influence, in the fourth century A.D.) (13) but stayed with the semi-syllabic design. (14) The pattern of the phonemic analysis of the Sanskrit language achieved by Vedic scholars is much closer to the Brahmi script than the Greek alphabet. The modern analysis of the writing of initial vowels in the Kharosti script has been deeply flawed. "The full or initial vowel signs further differ from those of Brahmi in that they are all constructed from the basic vowel sign for a to which are affixed the postconsonantal vowel diacritics to form initial i, u, and so on: thus [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] = initial a/a, while [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] = initial i/i/." (15) This statement of Salomon's echoes similar statements by Buhler, (16) Charu Chandra Das Gupta, (17) and others. (18) As [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (ta) with vowel diacritics denotes [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (ti) and [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (te) and [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (tu), we have [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (a), [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (i), [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (u), etc. All these scholars confused the "original" letter [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (t) with the syllabic value /ta/ that it has in Kharosti. The vowel diacritics for /i,u,e/ "displace" the basic /a/ in creating syllabic signs for /ti/, /tu/, /te/, etc., and equally these vocalic diacritics are not attached to the "basic vowel sign for a"--they displace the /a/. Then what are these diacritics attached to? The answer has to come from the Semitic writing system, where the vowel onset, the Semitic aleph, is treated as a consonant--the aleph is phonemic in Semitic languages (cf. Arabic ra's "head," qur'an "Koran"). The Kharosti writing of initial vowels continues directly the Semitic way of writing (19) rather than "responding to a desire for simplification." (20) Why did the creators of the Brahmi go their own way in the denotation of initial vowels, creating discrete letters for each of them? (21) One could suspect Greek influence, but Greek influence cannot 808

explain the precise notation of vowel length in Brahmi, and it would have failed to promote a true alphabetic script. As the notation of vowel length can be fully explained by the advances of Indian phoneticians and grammarians, we should look at these achievements for inspiration when trying to explain the initial vowel signs of the Brahmi. In the "semi-syllabic" Indian scripts (both in Kharosti and Brahmi) the vowels are marked on the preceding consonant: ka (by default), ki, ku, etc. (by diacritics). But how could an initial vowel be marked by a diacritic? The Kharosti simply followed the Semitic model, attaching the diacritic to the sign for the (consonantal) phoneme aleph. But the Brahmi is a phonemic script, and the vowel onset is not a phoneme in Sanskrit (or any Indian language). There could thus be no consonantal sign in the Brahmi for the vowel diacritics to be attached to. To write iyam "this" (the beginning of Asoka's Rock Edict I) it was necessary to create special letters for the vowels in initial position. Only in the second half of the first millennium A.D. do we come across letters for initial r and au--some with a unique design, and some based on the letter for/a/. Buhler pointed out that in modern Devanagari the letters for /o/ and /au/ (also for /r/!) are modifications of the letter for /a/ and that this trend continued in Gujerati where also the letters for /e/ and /ai/ are formed that way; but the innovation did not spread to the notation of initial /i/ or /u/. The need for letters for initial /r/, /ai/, and /au/ was negligible, since continuous writing made the notation of initial vowels less common than, e.g., in Greek or English--and words beginning with these vowels (i.e., r, ai, au) are not numerous to begin with. Buhler erred when he saw in this trend a parallel to the Kharosti notation of initial vowels--which is not a simplification of Brahmi writing but its forerunner. (1.) I leave aside here the undeciphered script of the Indus Valley Civilization of a much earlier time. (2.) Oskar von Hinuber, Der Beginn der Schrift und fruhe Schriftlichkeit in Indien, Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, 1989 nr. 11 (Mainz 1989); Harry Falk, Die Schrift im alten Indien (Tubingen 1993); Richard Salomon, Indian Epigraphy (New York 1998). (3.) Georg Buhler, Indische Palaeographie (Strassburg 1896), 18-21. (4.) Raj Bali Pandey, Indian Paleography, 2nd ed. (Varanasi 1957), 51. Pandey (57f.) denies also the derivation of Kharosti from Aramaic for which the evidence, though, is quite strong: CharuChandra Das Gupta, The Development of the Kharosthi Script (Calcutta 1958), 284-90. (5.) Pandey, 56. (6.) Buhler, 20: "das Fehlen der, fur den Gebrauch des taglichen Lebens unnutzen, langen Vocale..." (7.) Pandey, 56. (8.) Salomon, Indian Epigraphy, 31. (9.) It has been suggested (M. B. Emeneau, Language 22, PP. 86-93) that n in Sanskrit is not a phoneme, since it is predictably conditioned by its context (rajne, panca). But this is not true for Prakrit (anno, ranno). Panini includes n in his pratyaharasutra-s and uses it as a metalinguistic determinative; is this 809

acceptance of n prompted by a desire for symmetry in the table of consonants or by acceptance of a sound that was phonemic in Prakrit? (10.) In later times, probably under the influence of Brahmi, Kharosti texts from Niya in Central Asia show notations of long vowels. E. J. Rapson (Kharosthi Inscriptions Discovered by Sir M. A. Stein, part III [Oxford 1927] pp. 298f.) wrote: "It was formerly supposed that the Kharosthi alphabet lacked the means of distinguishing long from short vowels; and the fact that such a means existed, even if it was not commonly used, was first made clear by evidence supplied by Niya documents. The lengthening of any vowel may be indicated by a short stroke written below the line, in form and position like the virama of the Devanagari alphabet; cf. a, 3." (11.) The Pehlevi script of the inscriptions and books of the Persian middle ages stayed closer to the Semitic pattern where only consonants were written and where virtually no word began with a vowel. Kharosthi innovated with the consistent use of diacritical markers to denote the vowel--but still not its length. (12.) The distinction of [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (and o and [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) is one of vowel quality as much as length (lengthening of [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] is often written as [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], of o as o[LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), and there is no marking of different vowel length in the ease of [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. (13.) Though the Avesta script runs from right to left (like the Semitic scripts), it writes all sounds individually, including all vowels. The Avesta alphabet with its phonemic and phonetic distinctions exceeds the precision of the Greek alphabet: it observes the phonemic distinctions like the Brahmi and Devanagari alphabet, adding phonetic (allophonic) distinctions that were noted in India only in phonetic manuals of the Siksa, but were rarely expressed in the script. (14.) A rare exception in the Mahanistha is recorded by W. Schubring, Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1918), 13, 74ff. (15.) Salomon, Indian Epigraphy, 48. (16.) Buhler, Indische Palaeographie, 25. (17.) Charu Chandra Das Gupta, The Development of the Kharosthi Script, 3. (18.) Ahmad Hasan Dani (Indian Palaeography [Oxford 1963] 257) similarly writes: "While Brahmi has three basic forms of vowels, a, i and u, Kharoshthi has only one, the forms of the remaining vowels being obtained by the addition of diacritic strokes." (19.) Seen correctly by M. J. Halevy, Journal asiatique ser. 8, 6 (1885), 264. (20.) Buhler, Indische Palaeographie, 25: "einem Streben nach Vereinfachung zuzuschreiben." E. J. Rapson (Kharosthi Inscriptions, p. 297) remarks: "Hoernle has shown how the same principle tended to modify Brahmi when it was used for Khotanese in Central Asia, and how it 810

has prevailed in the Tibetan alphabet which was borrowed from Khotan." Is it accidental that these trends were strongest in areas that were constantly exposed to the Semitic way of writing, i.e., the marking of the vowel onset? (21.) Only a a i u e o are attested in the oldest inscriptions. The letter a is a modification of the letter a, as the rare letters for initial i and u in later inscriptions are modifications of those for i and u. A treasure hunt in the paddy fields A STAFF REPORTER Monday, August 09, 2004 |Telegraph, Kolkata

A paddy field dug up for Chandraketugarh relics. Picture by Aranya Sen The beaten track snaking through fields of paddy and jute leads to a mango grove, where two pits have been dug up that could easily be mistaken for ponds. The foliage is so thick and luxuriant the smell of green comes strong. Concealed behind the shrubs is another pit, freshly dug but quite as deep. It looks like a huge cake from which a giant has taken a large helping, exposing the layers of clay with what is definitely a stratum of brickwork sandwiched in between. A young farmhand exclaims: People lease land and dig it. Why do they do it? He has no reply. But a village homoeopath, who was walking his cycle down the path, says they do to look for artefacts sometimes found even after scratching the surface of what was once Chandraketugarh, a huge fortified township dating back to 4th/3rd century BC. They confirm what Dilip Maite, a man considered a local guardian of this priceless heritage, has been crying himself hoarse about all these years. He has been collecting artefacts since the 50s. Berachampa, a bustling little town, is the name by which this area, 25 km off Barasat, is better known as today. And it has suddenly come into the limelight after Hutch, the mobile telephone company, started digging up a spot, a few metres away from Khana-Mihirer Dhipi or Baraha-Mihirer Dhipi, a site that the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has taken under its wing. Hutch had planned to set up a communication tower there, and the digging had reportedly yielded valuable artefacts. Six men were arrested, thereafter, including Rishi Singh, the labourer engaged by Sadhu Khan, the man on whose land Hutch was erecting the tower. They are out on bail now. Work at the Hutch site has stopped. It would be hardly surprising if artefacts were found at the site. It is common knowledge that ever since Kunjagobinda Goswamy of Calcutta Universitys Asutosh Museum, 811

after pioneering excavations in 1956-57, had established the antiquity of the site, Chandraketugarh is there for everybody to plunder. Gautam Sengupta, state director of archaeology and museum, says that as a student, when he had first visited the site covering several km in 1974, children would offer Chandraketugarh objects for sale, and he had bought a tiny plaque for eight annas. Now they command a price of anything between 1,000 and 5,000. The treasure hunt had started soon after they became increasingly hard to get, and they began to command astronomical prices in international sale-rooms. Slivers of Chandraketugarh are so much in demand that there is already a flourishing cottage industry of producing fakes. Terracotta artisans from Bishnupur are hired to produce replicas of the relics. They are adept at reproducing the Kharosti script inscribed on pottery. Arun Hazra, officer-in-charge of Deganga police station, says the area is being patrolled regularly for they are aware that there is a huge racket in rare artefacts operating at Kalitala, Tetultala and the fields of Chandraketugarh. The racket operates from Calcutta, Mumbai and Bangladesh. Hadipur 1 panchayat members allege that Putul Samad, Habibur, Pintu and Bhola are the key players in this racket. They allegedly have private collections of artefacts which they sell to go-betweens. They often con these gobetweens by handing out fakes. Historian Bratindra Nath Mukherjee says Chandraketugarh was named after a legendary king. Excavations had first revealed a continuous sequence of cultural remains dating from 4th/3rd Century BC. The history of lower Bengal began to be rewritten soon after these excavations. The names of kings were revealed and also the fact that a confederacy was converted into a royalty, he says. The Kharosti and Brahmi-Kharosti scripts were discovered, along with clay seals of ships bearing cargoes of horses. Mukherjee has authored a book entitled Kharosti and Kharosti-Brahmi Inscriptions in West Bengal (India), Indian Museum Bulletin, Vol 25, 1990. ASI had excavated two sites in Chandraketugarh the rampart, about a km from Berachampa on the road to Haroa, and the other at Khana-Mihirer Dhipi, on the left, in the middle of the market. Mukherjee stressed that the entire area should be excavated both horizontally and vertically. If required, the area should be acquired. Gautam Sengupta says Chandraketugarh was an early settlement in a relatively new geographical formation and is linked with the pan-Indian process of urban development. Its historical worth cannot be overstressed. Large-scale problem-oriented multi-disciplinary excavation is very essential. Excavation by archaeologists is not adequate. A whole range of disciplines has to be involved. A national register of Chandraketugarh artefacts is also a must, he said. Bimal Bandyopadhyay, superintending architect of the ASI, Calcutta circle, says the ASI executed trial trenching in 1999-2000 at the rampart but had to abandon it due to the high level of water. 812

History is quite clear now. Archaeological excavation is not treasure-hunting. We excavate with an objective, he asserts. Now we know about the development of an urban centre during the advent of the historical period. I have written to the administration several times to alert it about the illicit diggings. Hadipur is the centre of most of this activity. It is not possible for ASI to protect the entire area for certain areas are quite densely populated, he adds. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1040809/asp/calcutta/story_3530329.asp Kharosti inscriptions discovered by Sir Aurel Stein in Chinese Turkestan. Transcribed and edited by A.M. Boyer, E.J. Rapson, and E. Senart. Published under the authority of His Majesty's Secretary of State for India in Council (1920) http://archive.org/details/kharostiinscript00boyeuoft http://www.scribd.com/doc/77892585/Kharosti-Inscriptions-of-Niya-Slates Kharosti inscriptions of Niya statesKharosti Inscriptions of Niya Slates http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/04/buffalo-and-antelope-hieroglyphs-of.html Buffalo and antelope--Hieroglyphs of Indus writing (Kalyanaraman, April 2012) Buffalo and antelope--Hieroglyphs of Indus writing (Kalyanaraman, April 2012) Buffalo and antelope--Hieroglyphs of Indus writing This monograph focuses on two animal hieroglyphs: buffalo and antelope of Indus writing. Executive summary 813

The orthographic and archaeological context of the use of hieroglyphs by Meluhhans suggests the following rebus readings: kara buffalo; rebus: khar blacksmith. m ram; rebus: mht, me iron; , meh merchants helper, meluhha. Read on... http://www.docstoc.com/docs/118984371/Buffalo-and-antelope---hieroglyphs-of-Indus-writing Buffalo and antelope - hieroglyphs of Indus writing http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/04/from-indus-valley-to-mesopotamia.html From the Indus valley to Mesopotamia, Meluhha as trader between East and West by Mehdi Mortazavi (2011) From the Indus valley to Mesopotamia, Meluhha as trader between East and West by Mehdi Mortazavi (2011) http://www.docstoc.com/docs/118981146/From-the-Indus-valley-to-Mesopotamia-Meluhha-astrader-between-East-and-West-by-Mehdi-Mortazavi-(2011) Abstract The problems of identification of Meluhha are puzzling because broadly, separate areas appear to be indicated at different periods. The identity and location of Meluhha has been discussed by many researchers. But there are still many important open questions. The Indus Valley Civilization, Egypt, Ethiopia/Nubia, Baluchistan, the Persian Gulf and Oman are the main candidates for the location of Meluhha. Based on two text sources, including Akkadian (third millennium BCE) and Neo-Assyrian (first millennium BCE) periods, two different locations have been considered as Meluhhas homeland. Akkadian texts suggest 814

that eastern Mesopotamia including the Indus Valley, Baluchistan, the Persian Gulf and Oman are the most important candidates for the location of Meluhha during the third millennium BCE; while Neo-Assyrian texts dating back to the first millennium BCE identify the location of Meluhha to the west of Mesopotamia, in areas such as Egypt and Nubia/ Ethiopia. In this paper, it is postulated that Meluhha is also used as a personal name. Read on... From the Indus valley to Mesopotamia, Meluhha as trader between East and West by Mehdi Mortazavi (2011) http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/04/khirsara-in-gujarat-emerges-prominent.html Khirsara in Gujarat Emerges Prominent Harappan Site Khirsara in Gujarat Emerges Prominent Harappan Site Khirsara in Gujarat Emerges Prominent Harappan Site PTI | AHMEDABAD | APR 16, 2012 After three years of extensive excavation by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Khirsara has emerged as the prominent mature Harappan site in western Kutch, showing how advance the trade from this part of Gujarat used to be around 4,600 years ago. "Khirsara has emerged as one of the most prominent mature Harappan settlements in Western Kutch. Earlier, Dholavira and Junikuren had emerged as prominent Harappan sites in Kutch," ASI's Superintendent Archaeologist, Vadodara, Dr Jitendra Nath said. "The evidences found over last 3 years of excavation there show how advance trade used to be from this part of Gujarat around 4,600 years ago," he said. Khirsara lies about 85 km Northwest of Bhuj on the Bhuj-Narayan Sarover State Highway. The site is locally known as 'Gadhwali Wadi' and is located on the south-eastern outskirts of the present village overlooking river Khari.

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"The prime reason for Harappans to settle at Khirsara was perhaps the availability and easy accessibility to raw materials and minerals in the vicinity," Nath said. "Khirsara produced a variety of objects for export such as various types of beads of semiprecious stones, steatite and gold, shell bangles, inlays etc," he said. Discovery of a large number of drill bits and shells debitage indicates that these items were meant for export, the officer said. During excavation, we have discovered a unique warehouse, a factory site, a citadel, seals, antiquities from the Indus Valley settlement at Khirsara, which is fortified and measures roughly about 310 x 230 metres, Nath said. The super structure of warehouse seems to have been made of perishable items like wood or wattle and daub. The space in between the parallel walls might have served as a duct for circulation of fresh air to protect the stored material, he said. The Harappan civilisation is sometimes called the Mature Harappan culture to distinguish it from earlier and later cultures existed in the same area of the Harappan Civilisation. Khirsara's close proximity with river Khari might certainly have supported the maritime trading activities of its inhabitants, Nath said. The citadel, a fortress overlooking a city or perhaps protecting a town, shows fortification and refortification which scholars reason that elite clan might have lived there. The rooms found there show finer structure, he said. The factory site discovered during excavation had several products showing that it was utilised for manufacturing activity. The presence of big furnaces, tandoor, storage jars, small water tanks and discovery of a hoard of gold beads, semi-precious and steatite beads, copper implements, seals, weights, shell objects and debitage indicate that this area (factory site) was once utilised for manufacturing 816

activity, he said. "Amongst prominent antiquities we have found 25-26 pieces of disk type gold beads from the factory site there. The gold beads are of disk type, globular and tubular," Nath said. A variety of seals which include square, rectangular and bar types made of steatite, soap stone and sand stone have been discovered at Khirsara. The bar type seals bear Harappan character only whereas the two rectangular seals represent figurines of unicorn and bison on the obverse, Nath said. The analysis of botanical remains done by the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany, Lucknow reveals that the carbon dates for samples collected from the site fall in the range of 2600-2200 BC approximately, which is roughly 4,600 years old, Nath said. Khirsara was first reported by the Department of Archaeology, Gujarat government in 1969-70. The site was revisited by a team of Excavation Branch of ASI Vadodara in July 2009 for a survey during which they observed a variety of Harappa artifacts and carried out further digging. FILED ON: APR 16, 2012 11:31 IST http://news.outlookindia.com/items.aspx?artid=759764 For decoding of inscriptions found at Khirasa, see the embedded document: Indus writing: professional guild calling cards --(including decoding of Indus script epigraphs of Chanhujo-daro, Khirasara, Kish, Susa and 16 other sites) http://www.docstoc.com/docs/118851672/Decoding-Indus-script-epigraphs-of-20-sites2 Decoding Indus script epigraphs of 20 sites2

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http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/04/what-is-offering-on-seal-m1186-it-is.html What is the offering on seal m1186? It is a bowl with spoons. What is the offering on seal m1186? It is a bowl with spoons. Set the browser to encoding Unicode (UTF-8). Offering and adorant glyphs of Indus script

m1186

There are two seals of Indus script (m1186 and m0488) depicting a kneeling person with some 818

offerings on a stool/tray. In a vivid orthographic analysis, John C. Huntington identifies the nature of the offering on m1186: it is a bowl with ladles. The offering kept on a stool on m0488 is likely to be a similar glyph, though analysis of a higher resolution image is not possible because the tablet with this glyph is worn-out.

m0488 On both the seals, the adorant making the offerings is shown with wide horns and (possibly, a twig as a head-dress) and wearing a scarfed-pigtail; the adorant is accompanied by a ram with wide horns. I suggest that the orthography points to two spoons (ladles) in an offering bowl: abu an iron spoon (Santali) Rebus: ab, himba, hompo lump (ingot?), clot, make a lump or clot, coagulate, fuse, melt together (Santali) abe, abea wide horns (Santali) Rebus: hb workplace (P.) The stool on which the bowl is placed is also a hieroglyph read rebus: Kur. ka a stool. Malt. Kano stool, seat. (DEDR 1179) Rebus: ka 'stone (ore)' as in: ayask 'excellent iron' (Panini) dhau m. (also dhahu) m. scarf (WPah.) (CDIAL 6707) Allograph: ato = claws of crab (Santali) Rebus: dhtu = mineral (Skt.), dhatu id. (Santali) See the human face ligatured to a ram's body (an indication of the hieroglyphic nature of the orthographic composition): m h 'face' (Santali). Rebus: m h metal ingot (Santali) m h = the quantity of iron produced at one time in a native smelting furnace of the Kolhes; iron produced by the Kolhes and formed like 819

a four-cornered piece a little pointed at each end; mh mht = iron smelted by the Kolhes and formed into an equilateral lump a little pointed at each end; kolhe tehen mhtko mh akata = the Kolhes have to-day produced pig iron (Santali.lex.) mil 'markhor' (Tor.wali) meho 'a ram, a sheep' (G.)(CDIAL 10120)mharam(CDIAL 9606). [mh] m ( S through H) A male sheep, a ram or tup. or [ mhak or ky ] a () A shepherd (Marathi) Rebus: me 'iron' (Ho.) mh 'gold' as in: [ mhasara ] m A bracelet of gold thread. (Marathi) [mha] f A forked stake. Used as a post. Hence a short post generally whether forked or not. Pr. . I suggest that the orthography points to two spoons (ladles) in an offering bowl. http://www.docstoc.com/docs/18075052/offering http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/04/indus-script-corpora-and-business.html Indus script corpora and business transactions of jangad, entrustment note (S. Kalyanaraman, 2012)

Indus script corpora and business transactions of jangad, entrustment note (S. Kalyanaraman, 2012) Indus script corpora and business transactions of jangad, entrustment note S. Kalyanaraman, Ph.D., Sarasvati Research Center (April 12, 2012) This monograph posits a function served by the seals of Indus script corpora that the hieroglyphs used on such seals were intended to connote entrustment notes ( jng) for trade transactions from Meluhha and constituted an improvement in documentation and control of guild (corporation) transactions over the earlier system of tokens, tallies and bullae. The military guard who delivered products into the treasury is called jangaiyo (Gujarati). The business tradition of jangad continues even today among diamond merchants/cutters of India. The monograph is organized in the following sections: 820

 Young bull + lathe hieroglyphs on Indus seals Indus writing system in Susa and harosheth hagoyim, smithy of nations Trefoil as an Indian hieroglyph: association with veneration of ancestors, sacredness The following note 'Seal m0296 read rebus' provides a remarkable reinforcement of the reading of the hieroglyph sangaa 'lathe/portable furnace'. The lexemes of Western Pahadi and Pashto with the semantics 'chain' provide this phonetic reinforcement: gal, ga chain (WPah.) zgarah, s.f. (3rd) Chain armour. Pl. ey. zgar ylaey, s.m. (1st) A man in armour. Pl. . (Pashto) cakili , n. < khala. [M. ca- kala.] 1. Chain, link; . (. . 12). 2. Land-measuring chain, Gunter's chain 22 yards long; . (C. G.) 3. A superficial measure of dry land=3.64 acres; . (G. Tn. D. I, 239). 4. A chain-ornament of gold, inset with diamonds; . (. 6, 99). 5. Hand-cuffs, fetters; . /r/khala S. A chain, Tdbh. 341.(Malayalam) cakam , n. < sa-ghaa. Union, intercourse; . (. 655, 1).http://www.docstoc.com/docs/118797742/sangad sangad

aam (Tdbh.; ) 1. Convoy, guard; responsible Nyar guide through foreign territories. . to accompany as such. . , ' TR. 2. income of Rjas from granting such guides; grant of land to persons liable to such service . . 3. companion ' CG.met. ' CG. to send him along, to kill likewise. (C. Te. ) companion, ; friend . , . prov. . CC.also fem. CG.; vu. TP. (Voc.) See also: V1. a small chain to which to hang keys etc. aam (Tu. , Port. Jangada). Ferryboat, junction of 2 boats. . ; ' TR. ' Bhr. also rafts. (Malayalam) 821

sangaa 'lathe/portable furnace'; rebus: ja:ka (nm) on approval (purchases); goods/articles on approval. (H.lexicon) sangara [fr. sa+g1 to sing, proclaim, cp. gyati & gta] 1. a promise, agreement J iv.105, 111, 473; v.25, 479 (Pali) angadia 'courier' (Gujarati)cf. jangaia 'military guard accompanying treasure into the treasury' (Gujarati) Ta. aki bazaar, bazaar street. Ma. ai shop, bazaar. Ko. agay id. To. ogoy bazaar (? < Badaga). Ka. agai shop, stall. Ko. agai id. Tu. agai id. Te. agai id. Kol. agai bazaar. Nk. agi id. Nk. (Ch.) ag market. Pa. ago courtyard, compound. / ? Cf. Skt. agaacourtyard.(DEDR 35). cf. semantics of 'tying up, packaging': [ jakhaa ] v c To tighten or draw tight. 2 To tie up or to: (as a beast to a stake.) It is in both senses generally used with another verb, as , , , . [jakhaaband] f ( & P) Tying up (as a beast to a stake). v g. of o.: also tied up state. Also fig. rigidly binding, obliging, confining: also bound state. 2 unc. Tying and binding; wrapping and fastening; packing up. (Marathi) Semantics of bailiff 'custody, charge, moving': [ jigamamu ] jangamamu. [Skt.] adj. Moveable, not stationary. . a temporary bailiff. , (Vasu. iii. 249.) , or rolling rock, a moving hill. P. i. 202; iii. 62. n. A moveable or chattel; property, personalty. Cattle, cows, sheep, &c. jangamuu. n. Jangam, or worshipper of Basava. L. XIV. 210. jangamatvamu. n. Moveableness, locomotion. G. ix. 121. (Telugu) jagama moving AitUp. [gam] Pa. jagama -- , Pk. jagama -- ; Si. dnguma motion, going to and fro .(CDIAL 5079)Cognate gloss is Pali sanghta or sangha is variously interpreted but, generally, with reference to the semantics of accumulation, aggregation: Sangharaa (nt.) [=saharaa] accumulation J iii.319 (dhana).Sangharati [=saharati] 1. to bring together, collect, accumulate J iii.261; iv.36 (dhana), 371; v.383. <-> 2. to crush, to pound J i.493.Sangha [fr. sa+ghaeti, lit. "binding together"; on etym. see Kern, Toev. ii.68] 1. a raft J ii.20, 332 (nv); iii.362 (id.), 371. Miln 376. dru (=nv) J v.194, 195. -- 2. junction, union VvA 233. -- 3. collection, aggregate J iv.15 (uphana); Th 1, 519 (papaca). Freq. as ahi (cp. sankhal etc.) a string of bones, i. e. a skeleton Th 1, 570; DhA iii.112; J v.256. -- 4. a weft, tangle, mass (almost="robe," i. e. sangh), in tah -- paimukka M i.271; vda -- paimukka M i.383 (Neumann "defeat"); dihi -- paimukka Miln 390. <-> 5. a post, in piha door -- post, lintel Vin ii.120.Sanghta [sa+ghta] 1. striking, killing, murder Vin i.137; D i.141; ii.354; M i.78; A ii.42 sq. -- 2. knocking together (cp. sanghaeti), snapping of the fingers (acchara) A i.34, 38; J vi.64. -- 3. accumulation, aggregate, multitude PvA 206 (ahi mass of bones, for the usual sangha); 822

Nett 28. -- 4. N. of one of the 8 principle purgatories J v.266, 270.Sanghtanika (adj.) [fr. sanghta or sangha] holding or binding together M i.322 (+agga -- sanghika); A iii.10 (id.); Vin i.70 ("the decisive moment" Vin. Texts i.190). (Pali) The second translator (of rya Sanghta Stra) into Chinese rendered the title of the sutra in Chinese as The Sutra of the Great Gathering of the Holy Dharma. (In Chinese, Ta chi hui cheng fa ching in the Wade-Giles transliteration system, or Ta ji-hui zheng-fa jing in Pinyin.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanghata_Sutra cf. sagraha m. collection Mn., holding together MBh. [grah]Pa. sagaha -- m. collection , Pk. sagaha -- m.; Bi. sgah building materials; Mth. sgah the plough and all its appurtenances, Bhoj. har -- sga; H. sgah collection of materials (e.g. for building); <-> Si. sangaha compilation Pa.*sagrahati collects see sgrhti.(CDIAL 12852). S. sagu m. body of pilgrims (whence sgo m. caravan), L. P. sag m.(CDIAL 12854). Allograph: sanghaana (nt.)bracelet (?) SnA 96 (on Sn 48). angada [cp. Sk. angada; prob. anga + da that which is given to the limbs] a bracelet J v.9, 410 (citt, adj. with manifold bracelets). (Pali)agada n. bracelet on upper arm R. [ Mua Kuiper PMWS 124] Pa. agada -- n., Pk. agaya -- n., Si. anguva.(CDIAL 117)A. k (phonet. x -- ) bracelet made of shells AFD 187.(CDIAL 12263). akatam n. < agada. Bracelet worn on the upper arm; . . . . (. . 12). Allograph? cakaam , n. < Port. jangada. Ferry-boat of two canoes with a platform thereon; . (J.)jangada id. (Portuguese) [ kha ] m A young bull, a bullcalf. (Marathi)kur colt, calf(CDIAL 3245). [kiya] Same as . ke. [Tel.] n. A bullcalf. . A young bull. . Plumpness, prime. . a pair of bullocks. adj. Young. a young snake, one in its prime. " " . vi. keku. n. A young man. . A lover .Te. kiya, ke young bull; adj. male (e.g. ke da bull calf), young, youthful; keku a young man. Kol. (Haig) k bull. Nk. khoe male calf. Kona ki cow; ke young bullock. Pe. ki cow. Man. ki id. Kui ki id., ox. Kuwi (F.) kdi cow; (S.) kajja ki bull; (Su. P.) ki cow.(DEDR 2129). Rebus: A. kundr, B. k dr, ri, Or. kundru; H. k der m. one who works a lathe, one who scrapes , r f., k dern to scrape, plane, round on a lathe .kundakara m. turner W. [Cf. *cundakra -- : kunda -- 1, kar -- 1](CDIAL 3297) [ kndaapa ] f The strip of beaten or drawn gold used in 823

setting gems. [ kndaa ] n () Setting or infixing of gems. 2 Beaten or drawn gold used in the operation. 3 The socket of a gem.(Marathi) [ kundanamu ] kundanamu. [Tel.] n. Solid gold, fine gold. . kunda1 m. a turner's lathe lex. [Cf. *cunda -- 1]N. k dnu to shape smoothly, smoothe, carve, hew , k duw smoothly shaped ; A. kund lathe , kundiba to turn and smooth in a lathe , kundow smoothed and rounded ; B. k d lathe , k d, kd to turn in a lathe ; Or. knda lathe , k dib, kd to turn ( Drav. Kur. kd lathe ); Bi. kund brassfounder's lathe ; H. kunn to shape on a lathe , kuniy m. turner , kunw m.(CDIAL 3295). Allographs: Konta 'a pennant, standard' (cp. kunta) J vi.454; DA i.244; SnA 317.(Pali)Sk. kunta lance? a. -. 1. [K.ku]Crookedness, flexure, obliquity; . 2. Partiality, bias; . (, 5). 3. [K. ku.] Tusk; . (. 39, 1). 4. Horn; . (. . . 21). b. [K. ku, M. ku.] Summit of a hill, peak; . (. 2, 24). 15. Mountain; . (. 11, 20). kar , n. < . Peak, summit of a tower; . (. 23, . 199). c. [K. ku.] Branch of a tree; . (.) 8. Body of a lute; . (. 4, 56). karam , n. prob. id. 1. Branch of a tree; . (.) Rebus: [M. ka.] Stronghold, fortified place; . (W.) kam , n. < kha. 1. Room, enclosure; . (. 6, 59). 2. Temple; ; kam , n. < g-ha. 1. Cow- shed Read on...http://www.docstoc.com/docs/118578044/Indus-script-corpora-andbusiness-transactions-of-jangad-%E2%80%98entrustment-note%E2%80%99-(SKalyanaraman-2012) Indus script corpora and business transactions of jangad, entrustment note (S. Kalyanaraman, 2012) http://www.scribd.com/srini_kalyanaraman/d/88974889-Indus-script-corpora-and-businesstransactions-of-jangad-%E2%80%98entrustment-note%E2%80%99-S-Kalyanaraman-2012 Indus script corpora and business transactions of jangad, entrustment note (S. Kalyanaraman, 2012) Addendum: 824

Note: (Pages 14-15 of embedded document). Figures of m2131A and m2131B are from a Photograph from ASI: Sindh series Photo archive of ASI, Janpath, New Delhi. Si. 5:6639, 5:6640. Rattle? Bulla?

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/04/heifer-lathe-hieroglyphs-on-indus-seals.html Young bull + lathe hieroglyphs on Indus seals Young bull + lathe hieroglyphs on Indus seals Correction. 10 April 2012 Hypothesis: Tokens as tallies evolved as seals with 'lathe' hieroglyph: 'entrustment receipts'. Functions of Indus seals in evolution of writing system. [Evidence of seal impressions of Kanmer which could be strung together the way tokens were strung together, as demonstrated by Denise Schmand-Besserat, in the context of Near East use of tallies, tokens and bullae.] The seals with these hieroglyphs may be jangad 'for approval' process/trade transactions (say, between workers' platforms to warehouse or from warehouse to sales agents). Since modern use of 'heifer' refers to a young cow, I would like to correct the meaning of koiyum (G.) as 'young bull, bull-calf'. The cognate term in Telugu: [ kiya ] Same as [ ke ] ke. [Tel.] n. A bullcalf. . A young bull. [ kha ] m A young bull, a bullcalf.(Marathi) ['Heifer' may be derived from Old English heahfore; related to Greek poris calf, bull.]Ko. pory young bullock (one to two and a half years); pory mav male deer. Ka. hri bull calf; bullock. Ko. pori male buffalo. Tu. bri bull; ox. ? Ta. pori calf or buffalo. (DEDR 4593) Lith. pariu "to brood," Gk. poris "calf, bull," O.H.G. farro, Ger. Farre "bullock," O.E. fearr "bull," Skt. prthukah "child, calf, young of an animal http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=p&p=6

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Harappa h006 Seal and impression. Many seals depict a hieroglyphic composition: (1) one-horned heifer with pannier and neckrings; and (2) a gimlet/lathe on portable furnace. koiyum young bull (G.) ko horn (Kuwi) koiyum rings on neck; a wooden circle put round the neck of an animal (Gujarati.) [kh] m A of which one end is formed into a cowl or hood (Marathi). kd to turn in a lathe(B.) knda engraver, lapidary setting or infixing gems (Marathi) k dr turner, brassworker(Bengali) [ khdakra ] n an engraver; a carver (Oriya). Glyph: sangaa lathe (Marathi) Rebus: [jnga] a tally of products delivered into the warehouse for approval (Marathi). Rebus: ko artisans workshop (Kuwi) cf. [ kha ] f A mass of metal (unwrought or of old metal melted down); an ingot or wedge.(Marathi) See: H jka [fr. S. + ; cf. jakan], s.m. A deposit or pledge left with a vendor for goods brought away for inspection or approval; goods taken from a shop for approval, a deposit or pledge being left; a conditional purchase; articles taken on commission sale;adv. On inspection, for approval:jka-bah, s.f. Account book of sales subject to approval of goods, &c.:jka ben, v.t. To sell conditionally, or subject to approval:jka le jn, v.t. To take away goods on inspection, or for approval, leaving a deposit or pledge with the vendor. (Urdu) Note: The meaning of jangad is well-settled in Indian legal system. Jangad meand "Goods sent on approval or 'on sale or return' It is well-known that the jangad transactions in this country are very common and often involve property of a considerable value." Bombay High Court Emperor vs Phirozshah Manekji Gandhi on 13 June, 1934 Equivalent citations: (1934) 36 BOMLR 731, 152 Ind Cas 706 Source: http://www.indiankanoon.org/doc/39008/ Jangad sale is sale on approval and/or consignment basis (that is, taken without definite 826

settlement of purchase). Discussion of sales on jangad (approval) basis: http://www.lawyersclubindia.com/sc/INDRURAMCHAND-BHARVANI-AND-OTHERS-Vs-UNION-OF-INDIA-OTHERS-281.asp

http://indiankanoon.org/doc/1802495/?type=print [quote]The effect of these terms on the relation between the parties, and the possession of the goods in the hands of the broker, was considered by Madgavkar J. in an unreported judgment in Kanga Jaghirdar & Co. v. Fatehchand Hirachand (1929) O.C.J. Suit No. 1117 of 1928. At that time the relative section of the Indian Contract Act did not contain the expression "mercantileagent" but only "person". On a consideration of the terms mentioned above the learned Judge came to the conclusion that the possession obtained under a document worded as aforesaid was not juridical possession within the meaning of Section 178 of the Indian Contract Act. As regards the term jangad used in the document the learned Judge observed as follows : "Assuming that jangad in Gujerati ordinarily means 'approval' there is no reason to assume that the goods entrusted jangad are goods to be sold on approval, rather than goods to be shown for approval...The dictionary meaning of the word "jangad" is "approval". As stated by Madgavkar J. in the passage quoted above, having regard to the printed terms in this case, there appears no reason to assume that the diamonds were entrusted to defendants Nos. 1 and 2 to be sold on approval and not that they were given to them to be shown for approval. In my opinion taking the document as a whole, it is clear that they were given to defendants Nos, 1 and 2 to be shown for approval only...It is, therefore, clear that by the delivery of 173 diamonds to him, even on jangad terms, no property can pass to him under Section 24 of the Sale of Goods Act." [unquote]http://www.indiankanoon.org/doc/1749483/ In one transaction involving diamonds, the case states: "The diamonds were forwarded along with writings titled "ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF ENTRUSTMENT". In the trade they are known as "Jangad" notes. The eight diamonds were forwarded under three identical Jangad notes which also specified the value of the diamonds in Rupees per carat. "http://indiankanoon.org/doc/910302/ 827

Jangad note is typically used in diamond business transactions. "...jangad receipts (letters/bills issued by diamond owners to whom the diamonds are given for the purpose of business prior to sale/export etc."http://www.sitcinfo.com/content/directTaxes/decisions/viewfile.asp?CFN=32591RC.htm Diamond rough processing: "Each Unit Head sends goods for laser kerfing or sawing. Records of such goods are maintained in registers. Whenever goods are sent to sub contractors for laser operations. Jangads are prepared. Goods meant for laser kerfing are fixed in cassettes and sent to laser division or sub contractors. Diamonds for sawing are sent loose. All goods are sent with details of cut number, quantity, weight, and any other specific instruction that is required." http://www.diamjewels.in/infrastructure.htm Comment: It is clear that jangad note is a documentation of a business transaction for property items. It is remarkable that the trade/pocess transaction tradition is traceable to hieroglyphs of Indus writing. The pronunciation in Gujarati is janga relatable to jangiyo a military guard who accompanies treasure into the treasury.(Gujarati lexicon) Thus janga is interpreted as 'acknowledgment of entrustment' [of property item(s), which are listed by other hieroglyphs on a seal or seal impression.] The word 'angaia' comes from janga and means 'trust'. [ agai ] angadi. [Drav.] (Gen. Loc. , plu. ) n. A shop. to open a shop. range of shops. selling in the shop. a market place. he revealed or exposed the matter. aki , n. [T.K. agai, M. a.] Bazaar, bazaar street; . (. 14, 179.) Ta. aki bazaar, bazaar street. Ma. ai shop, bazaar. Ko. agay id. To. ogoy bazaar (? < Badaga). Ka. agai shop, stall. Ko. agai id. Tu. agai id. Te. agai id. Kol. agai bazaar. Nk. agi id. Nk. (Ch.) ag market. Pa. ago courtyard, compound. / ? Cf. Skt. agaacourtyard. (DEDR 35). agana n. act of walking lex., courtyard R., aa -- n. Klid. [ag] Pa. agaa -- n. open space before palace ; Pk. agaa -- n. courtyard , K. gun dat. -anas m., S. aau m., WPah. bhad. agan pl. -- gn n., Ku. a, N. an, B. gan, gin, Or. aga, dial. gan, Bi. gan, gn, gn (BPL 1237), Mth. gan, Bhoj. an, H. gan, gn, agn m. (X uhn s.v. upasthna -- ), G. ga, g n., M. g n., Ko. gaa, go n., Si. 828

angaa, anguuva. -- Deriv. L. mult. aga f. the grains that remain on the threshing floor after division ; G. giy n. open space about a house .(CDIAL 118) - Source: J.R.Lunagariya, Ahmedabad | Last Updated 12:09[IST](13/12/2010) , "['approval' sale]" is a well-recognized business transaction as note in this Gujarati article.http://business.divyabhaskar.co.in/article/jangad-selling---f-form-need1644327.html?PRVNX= That 'jangad' means an "Entrust Receipt" is explained in the rules of Diamond Platform in Mumbai (Bombay):http://www.diamondplatformmumbai.com/CompanyProfilePage.aspx Kalyanaraman April 10, 2012 Addendum (April 12, 2012):

Semantics of association: sang horn, sang stone, sang association, guild; sangar fortified observation post. As words get used in socio-cultural contexts, semantic expansion occurs. It is possible that the alternative or additional meanings were also read rebus when decoding rebus the two hieroglyphs: one-horn and portable furnace/lathe. Some seals show the orthography of a pierced hole glyphs attached to the bottom vessel of the lathe. These could connote stone (ore) with perforation. The top register of the lathe hieroglyph denotes a gimlet, while the bottom register shows a vessel with smoke emanating : san:gho, sagha (G.) = firepan; sagha, aghai = a pot for holding fire (G.) sanga lathe/portable furnace A word used to denote a horn in some languages of the Indian linguistic area is: saga horn rga made of horn Sur., n. bow MBh. [ ga -- ] Pk. saga -- made of horn ; Pa.lau. g f.(?) horn (or < ga -- ). (CDIAL 12409). *rgala horned . [rga -- ] Pa.lau. agala a small horn ; K. hgul m. the stag Cervus wallichii .(CDIAL 12410). This word 829

saga could be a reinforcement of the sang- in: sanga lathe. A rebus word denotes stone : ( sang) m, Hindi spelling: stone, weight; association, union (Persian. Hindi) Hence, the following semantic expansions related to (1) stone (ore) work and (2) stone fortifications (which are characteristic features of many ancient settlement sites of the civilization): Semantics: stone-fortified settlement with enclosures courtyards -- for trade. Sang, stone (+) angaa courtyard cf.angi shop. The word sang may also denote an association, guild. 1. sangatarsu stone-cutter (Telugu). san:gatar = stone cutter; san:gatari = stone-cutting; san:gsru karan.u = to stone (S.) 2. Lahnda: sgah m. line of entrenchments, stone walls for defense .(CDIAL 12845) Sangar connotes a stone fortification or breastwork of stone by defending guards of an army. (Pushto) Sankata obstacle is semantically relatable to the sangar defensive observation post.Sangars - During the Afghan wars of the 'Great Game' tribesmen would hide in the crevices of the rocky mountainsides to observe and to shoot at the British soldiers. These would shoot back, so the positions would be fortified with slabs of rock, embrasures, roofs, camouflage. The Afghan word for these tiny little forts is Sangar. Things have not changed much, and a Sangar is an Observation-Post (OP) which is protected against incoming ordnance and the weather, and from which weapons as well as binoculars could be used. A Sangar is a fortified OP. http://www.defence-structures.com/glossary.htm Sangar referred to a stone breastwork, used by the British army on the northwest frontier of India where it was generally impossible to dig protective trenches. 3. [ sgaa ] f (Verbal of ) Linking or joining together (Marathi). [ sagati ] f (S) pop. f Union, junction, connection, association. [ sagati ] c (S) pop. c or c A companion, associate, comrade, fellow. [ sagatsbat ] m ( & ) A comprehensive or general term for Companions or associates. [ saga ] m (S) Union, junction, connection, association, companionship, society. [ saghaa ] v i (Poetry. ) To come into contact or meeting; to meet or encounter. (Marathi) sangta association, guild M. sga to link together . (CDIAL 12855). Pa. k (pl. kul) horn; Ka. ku horn, tusk, branch of a tree; kr horn Tu. k, ku horn ( (DEDR 2200) ku Horn; . (. . . 21). Ko. K (obl. K-) horns (one horn is kob), half of hair on each side of parting, side in game, log, section of bamboo used as fuel, line marked out. To. Kw (obl. Kw-) horn, branch, path across stream in thicket. Ka. Ku horn, tusk, branch of a tree; kr horn. Te. Ku rivulet, branch of a river. (DEDR 2200) Standard device often shown in front of a one-horned heifer [read rebus as sgaa that member of a turner's apparatus by which the piece to be turned is confined and steadied To take into linked-ness or 830

close connection with, lit. fig. (Marathi); rebus: sangho cutting stone, gilding (Gujarati)] Thus, together, the pair of hieroglyphs may relate to a semantic indication of 1) an engraver working with stone (ore) either for perforated beads or for other metal work converting stone (ore) to metals and alloyed metals and 2) the definition of the place where the work is performed, say, a settlement with stone fortification. Hence, the possible readings of the two glyphs: sgah ko artisan-workshop courtyards within stone fortification, i.e. a fortified settlement of lapidaries guild. Thus, the word sangad may have had two substantive semantics which can be reasonably deduced: 1. Consignment for approval; and 2. Made by turners/engravers/stone (ore) workers' guild, of a fortified (guild) settlement. Further researches are needed on the economic developments in ancient India, following the work, Economic history of ancient

India (Santosh Kumar Das, 1944). This work presents an evaluation of ancient texts from which
business practices can be gleaned. It is necessary to firmly delineate the chronological evolution of production and trade practices of business in the Indian sprachbundwhich had evolved since 3500 BCE within a broad framework of 'trusteeship' evidenced by the practice of 'jangad' or entrustment note, comparable to consignment basis for display of products in a shopfront. Chronology of language evolution in Indian sprachbund A falsifiable hypothesis is postulated that it is possible to identify and provide rebus readings from glosses of present-day languagues and can be used to define the contours of Indian sprachbund formed from ca. 3500 BCE. Marathi as we know today is a lot different, yes, from Meluhha of Indian sprachbund of 3500 BCE. See Jules Bloch 'La formation de la langue marathe' [The Formation of the Marathi Language], thesis, [1914/1920], Prix Volney. It is part of Indian sprachbund. Most languages of India today have existed for millenia. A good account of the ancient history of Marathi vernacular, an apabhraa language of Prktam family is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathi_language Reconstructing proto-indo-aryan vocabulary will be a good start which will help rebus readings of hieroglyphs on Indus writing. This ain't an article of faith. This can be enlarged as a falsifiable hypothesis. Kuiper's and Colin Masica's work on Munda and Language X are path-breakers. The challenge for linguists and philologists is to reconstruct that ancient form of mleccha vaacas 831

(meluhha speech). This term for an ancient speech is attested in ancient texts. When a greater challenge of reconstructing Proto-IE has been joined with a lot of * words, there is no reason why a billion people now speaking languages of Indian sprachbund cannot join the challenge I have posed. There are substratum words which are being compiled, e.g. SARVA project of Southworth, UPenn. (and, of course, my Indian Lexicon of 25+ ancient languages). The challenge to all scholars, engaged in studies of ancient people, is to reconstruct that old form which I have hypothesised as Meluhha (mleccha). SARVA project and my lexicon are just a beginning. Just as CDIAL of Turner was a beginning to provide Indo-Aryan vocabulary. A lot of work done subsequently led to the now prevalent sprachbund thesis. This has to be carried forward to trace all 'technology' words as technology changes got recorded in harosheth hagoyim, 'smithy of nations'. Many language lexicons with glosses, do retain memories of the past. Some words are not remembered in some dialects, some are in some other dialects, as languages differentiate into dialects and assume the characteristics of a 'language' with unique morphological, phonetic, semantic and grammatical characteristics. This is how many 'substrate' words are identified even in Sumerian for example: words such as sanga 'priest', tibira 'merchant'. The key is to list such substrate words and read them rebus, which is what I have attempted in my Indian Hieroglyphs (2012). This is a work intended to be 'torn apart' -- critically rebutted -- by scholars of various disciplines so that the final hazy picture emerges from the mists of the past. One such attempt is to relate 'trefoil' hieroglyphs of ancient Uruk/Indus and Egypt. When cuneiform had been decoded, there is no reason to be dispirited and gasp about the impossibility of decoding Indus script. It can be and has been decoded in a firm, archaeological context of the bronze age. The recognition of Indian sprachbund itself is a breakthrough, even as it is endorsed by one of the authors who compiled Dravidian Etymological Dictionary. He had to concede that there is a 'Language X'. Now, it has also to be conceded that 'Munda' also existed in 4th millennium 'Iran'. Language X + Munda constitute the crux of the glosses of Meluhha (Mleccha) in so far as they relate to the new inventions of words to define a metallurgical repertoire of the bronze-age. 832

When a steam-engine was invented, words had to be used to denote the locomotive. A combination of words was used to define the technological innovation coming out of James Watt's discovery of the steaming kettle throwing out the lid: steam + engine. The history of Indo-aryan languages has NOT yet been fully told. Now the ruling hypothesis is Indian sprachbund. Work is ongoing to spell out the contours of this bund. Until Language X and interactions with Munda for Indo-Aryan substratum words are clearly demarcated, the debate will stay joined. Kalyanaraman See: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/118560007/Economic-history-of-ancient-India-(SantoshKumar-Das-1944) Economic history of ancient India (Santosh Kumar Das, 1944)

http://www.scribd.com/srini_kalyanaraman/d/88952002-Economic-history-of-ancient-IndiaSantosh-Kumar-Das-1944 Economic history of ancient India (Santosh Kumar Das, 1944)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/03/protovedic-continuity-theory.html Protovedic Continuity Theory (Kalyanaraman, 2012) Protovedic Contiinuity Theory, Jan. 2006

The Proto-Vedic Continuity Theory of Bharatiya (Indian) Languages

S. Kalyanaraman and Mayuresh Kelkar (November 2005)

833

Abstract

This monograph proposes an alternative Proto-Vedic Continuity Theory of Bharatiya Languages, to study evolution of languages in Bharatam, and replaces the invasionist model of Indo-European Linguistics (IEL). A paradigm shift in language studies of Bharat (India) is suggested, starting with the identification of bharatam janam, a phrase used by Visvamitra Gathina in the Rigveda (visvamitrasya raks.ati brahmedam bharatam janam this mantra of Visvamitra will protect the nation of Bharata people, RV 3.53.12). This calls for a study of mleccha, vra_tya, jaati in ancient bharatam, from Paleolithic times, exemplified by Nahali > Nagari. [Mleccha (Meluhha) is the language of dvi_pava_sinah, early metal workers and artisans (karma_ra, kamar), the speakers living along coastlines of the Indian Ocean Rim and in doabs -overlapping river-basins between two rivers -- who created the maritime-riverine civilizations.]

Many conclusions can be derived from a study of bharatiya savants who have contributed to language studies. The corpus of grammars and texts available in all parts of Bharatam is just stunning, as our pitr.-s have delved deep into the subject of bhasha. We have to re-discover their contributions and use the bharatiya research method (a triad composed of s'rutitantrayukti-anubhuti, which should replace the constrictive Hegelian dialectic of thesisantithesis-synthesis) to progress the studies further to unravel the linguistic area of circa 3000 BCE. A linguistic area is defined as an area where many languages/dialects interact and absorb one another's features as their own. In such a setting, the categories such as non-agglutinative, agglutinative become meaningless. There is intense interaction among the so-called munda, dravidian and indo-aryan families of languages. Instead of invasionist models proposed by IEL, we should expound on a Proto-Vedic Continuity Theory. The Veda arrives on the scene with such profundity of thought, that at least a score centuries should have been involved in a ProtoVedic (mleccha + samskr.tam) evolving into Vedic and later Samskr.tam, differentiating further as Prakrits (Dravidian, Munda, Apabhramsa). Languages do change but they also conserve. IEL is an ideology and it is unfalsifiable, hence not science. 834

The IEL method of drawing upon genetic theories is also unacceptable because languages do not follow biological change laws. Languages evolve and semantic expansion occurs due to interchanges in a social contract. Sangam literature (cf. Patir-r-uppattu) refers to cera vel.ir kings descent from 49 generations from Dwaraka (Tuvarai mentioned in Patirruppattu, cf. Bibliography), may be after its submergence mentioned in Mahabharata mausala parvan. There was an excellent article by Prof. KV Sharma on the subject citing Sangam literary sources in Adyar Bulletin. One view is that Vedic civilization had its maritime roots in Tamil-Southeast Asian hindumahasagar rim before settling on sarasvati - sindhu doab basin. The monograph advocates a radical departure from the methods of IEL. What is suggested is a continuation of the earlier language studies by bharatiya savants, so as to delineate the Proto-Vedic Continuity and, to contribute to a better understanding of the I in the IE. Such an exercise is likely to provide answers to the interactions between Sarasvati civilization and the European civilizations and the corresponding interactions among Bharatiya and European languages taking into account the geological fact that Bharat was not subjected to glaciation, unlike most parts of Europe (which renders the problem of European languages and expansion of farming and relocations of people, a complex exercise differentiating pre-glaciation and post-glaciation periods).(Adams, John, and Marcelle Otte, 1999). The Proto-Vedic Continuity Theory of Bharatiya (Indian) Languages

S. Kalyanaraman and Mayuresh Kelkar (Yugabda 5106, Deepavali)

Summary: To avoid the pitfalls of invasionist hypotheses to explain language changes, a ProtoVedic Continuity Theory for Bharatiya languages is postulated. This will be tested on the Indo- in the Indo-European,that is Bharatiya (Indian) languages, which are clubbed in the hyphenated compound, Indo-European languages.

835

Bharatam janam is the phrase used by vis'vamitra gathina in the Rigveda. The objective of this monograph is to study the languages of bharatam janam in a historical and cultural perspective. The Rig Veda is such a profound document that many centuries of evolution of language should have occurred before the Vedic mantra-s were perceived (dras.t.a). It is, therefore, suggested that there was a Proto-Vedic language which needs to be unraveled through language studies.

The authors submit that it should be possible to delineate the languages/dialects spoken by bharatam janam from Proto-Vedic times. This will be attempted by denying the usefulness of methods used by Indo-European Linguistics (IEL) that are unfalsifiable, ideologically driven conjectures. . Was Proto Indo European ever spoken? Who knows? This is an unfalsifiable statement in IEL. Many unfalsifiable statements found among proponents and supporters of IEL are presented as quotable quotes in this monograph. An array of genetic-language relationship studies from mostly genetic journals to highlight the slippery nature of the attempts being made to match a scientific, genetic discipline with unfalsifiable categorizations provided by IEL studies. Many IEL assumptions are treated as evidence in these articles appearing in scientific journals.

The monograph is organized in two parts and the following sections, highlighting the limitations of IEL and the imperative of study of evolution of Bharatiya languages now spoken by more than one billion people living in the Indian subcontinent.

Part 1: Limitations of Indo-European Linguistics 'Love' of Sanskrit as a camouflage for evangelism Unfalsifiable Teach Yourself PIE Indeterminate laryngeals Aryan race ideology Eurocentrism Philologically speaking 836

A fading discipline hangs on to slippery genes

Part 2: Bharatiya Language Studies Studies needed to delineate the Indo- in Indo-European Study of Prakrits from Paleolithic times What is proto-Vedic? The Proto-Vedic Continiuty Theory of Bharatiya Languages

Appendix 1 provides a dialectic on How to study bhasha? Sabda as Brahman in bharatiya tradition of language studies (siksha).

Appendix 2 discusses concordances between Post-Vedic and Avestan. The Annex provides detailed examples of concordances between Vedic and Avestan.

[The term Bhartiya as used in this monograph refers to people of the Indian Subcotinent comprising the modern nations of Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangaldesh, Bhutan and Srilanka; language contacts evidenced in Afghanistan, Iran, Mesopotamia and in Indian Ocean Rim states (for e.g., Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand).]

Part 1: Limitations of Indo-European Linguistics

Section 1: Love of Sanskrit as a Camouflage for Evangelism

Livingston (2002) quoting (Drews 1988) describes how linguistic studies eventually acquired a racial color. It is an unfortunate coincidence that studies of the Indo European language community flourished at a time when nationalism, and a tendency to see history in racial terms, was on the rise in Europe. There was no blinking the fact, in the nineteenth century, that most of the world was dominated by Europeans or people of European descent. The easiest 837

explanation for this was that Europeans, or at least most members of the European family, were genetically superior to people of darker complexion. It was thus a welcome discovery that the ancient Greeks and the Persians were linguistically, and therefore one could assume biologically, related to the modern Europeans. The same racial stock, it appeared had been in control of the world since Cyrus conquered Babylon. This stock was obviously the white race. India, it is true, presented a problem, and required a separate explanation. Aryans had invaded India no later than in the second millennium BC, and successfully imposed their language on the aboriginal population, but the Aryan race had evidently become sterile in that southern clime and was eventually submerged by the aboriginal and inferior stock of the subcontinent. (emphasis added, Drews 1988 in Livingston 2002, p. 8; Livingston, David, 2002, The Dying God: The Hidden History of the Western Civilization, New York: Writers Club Press.)

Mario Alinei, professor emeritus of University of Utrecht, echoing sentiments similar to those of Drews cited by Livingston, makes the following observations while contesting the invasionist models used in Indo-European Linguistics to explain language evolution from Paleolithic times: As is known, until recently the received doctrine for the origins of Indo-Europeans (IE) in Europe was centered upon the idea - now called the myth (Husler 2003) - of an IndoEuropean Invasion in the Copper Age (IV millennium B.C.), by horse-riding warrior pastoralists Many recent studies have shown that the foundation of scientific IE research in the 19th-century was deeply influenced by the contemporary Arian, Pan-Germanic and colonialist ideology, as first expounded in Count Joseph-Arthur De Gobineaus, Essai sur lingalit des races humaines (1853-1855) and Houston Stewart Chamberlains, Die Grundlagen des XIX Jahrhunderts (1899), with their emphasis on Indo-Europeans racial superiority and their inclination to war and conquest (e.g. Poliakov 1974, R mer 1985, Trigger 1989, Renfrew 1987 etc.). Here is, for example, how Adolphe Pictet, the founder of the so called Linguistic Paleontology, in his book Les origines des Indo-europennes ou les Aryas primitif. Essai de palontologie linguistique, Paris, 1859-63, described the Arian race: a race destined by the Providence to dominate the whole world Privileged among all other races for the 838

beauty of its blood, and for the gifts of its intelligence, this fertile race has worked to create for itself, as a means for its development, a language which is admirable for its richness, its power, its harmony and perfection of forms. In short, the first IE specialists imbued with European colonialism of the 19th century - chose to see the Proto-Indo-Europeans as a superior race of warriors and colonizers, who would have conquered the allegedly pre-IE Neolithic Europe in the Copper Age, and brought their superior civilization to it. Moreover, since it was necessary for the Indo-European warriors to have weapons and horses, also the choice of the Copper Age was obligatory, because this was the context of Battle Axes, metallurgy and horse riding. At the same time, while the concept of the Arian super-race gave shape to the myth of the Battle-Axe horse-riding invaders, another myth, within the Arian larger myth, emerged: Pangermanism. Within the Arian superior race, the German father-founders of IE studies saw the Germanic people as the supermen, the purest and the closest to the original blessed race, and chose the Germanic area as the Urheimat of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. After WW2, with the end of Nazi ideology, a new variant of the traditional scenario, which soon became the new canonic IE theory, was introduced by Marija Gimbutas, an ardent Baltic nationalist: the PIE Battle-Axe super-warriors were best represented by Baltic lites, instead of Germanic ones (Gimbutas 1970, 1973, 1977, 1979, 1980). Interestingly, also the central idea of the NDT (Neolithic Discontinuity Theory of Renfrew), namely that the inventors of farming were the IndoEuropeans, rather than the real Middle-Eastern, Sumerian and/or Semitic, people, is yet another vein of this often unwitting ethnocentrism that runs through the history of research on IE origins.

http://www.continuitas.com/intro.html

That this ethnocentrism was not unwitting, but could have been motivated by spreading of the Gospel (also known as proselytization or evangelism) is revealed by the true portrayal of a person who is termed the father of Indo-European Linguistics, William Jones. William Jones' third discourse published in 1798 with the famed "philologer" passage is often cited as the 839

beginning of comparative linguistics and Indo-European studies. Indo-European is a family of languages that by 1000 BC were hypothesised as spoken throughout Europe and in parts of southwestern and southern Asia.This is his quote, claiming to establish a "tremendous" find in the history of linguistics:The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms ofgrammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have spring from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists. (Sir William Jones, Supreme Court Judge of the British East India Company, 1786, Singer 1972, 29).. . .http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/w/wi/william_jones_(philologist).htmOn 27 April 1794 Jones died at Calcutta in the forty-eighth year of his age, and was buried there... the directors of the East India Company showed their sense of his services by the erection of a monument to him in St. Paul's Cathedral. His wife also placed a monument to his memory, executed by Flaxman (1796-1798), in the ante- chapel of University College, Oxford.http://www.eliohs.unifi.it/testi/700/jones/Jones_DNB_article.htmlLet us take a look at this Oxford memorial monument.Why is Jones shown in a skull-cap of the type worn by a Pope? http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39919000/jpg/_39919010_pope-afp-300x220.jpg To justify the depiction of the marble frieze in a chapel?Arindam Chakrabarti, Professor of Philosophy, University of Hawaii, brought to Rajiv Malhotra's attention a colonial wall carving in Oxford which blatantly boasts of the intellectual conquest of Sanskrit by the British.There is a monument to Sir William Jones, the great eighteenth- century British Orientalist, in the chapel of University College, Oxford. This marble frieze shows Sir William sitting on a chair writing something down on a desk while three Indian traditional scholars squatting in front of him are either interpreting a text or contemplating or reflecting on some problem.It is well known that for years Jones sat at the feet of learned pandits in India to take lessons in Sanskrit grammar, poetics, logic, jurisprudence, and metaphysics. He wrote letters home about how fascinating and yet how complex and demanding was his new learning of these old materials. But this 840

sculpture shows quite realistically the Brahmins sitting down below on the floor, slightly crouching and bare-bodied with no writing implements in their hands (for they knew by heart most of what they were teaching and did not need notesor printed texts!) while the overdressed Jones sits imperiously on a chair writing something at a table. The inscription below hails Jones as the "Justinian of India" because he "formed" a digest of Hindu and Mohammedan laws. The truth is that he translated and interpreted intoEnglish a tiny tip of the massive iceberg of ancient Indian Dharmashastra literature along with some Islamic law books. Yet the monument says and shows Jones to be the "law-giver," and the "native informer" to be the "receiver of knowledge."What this amply illustrates is that the semiotics of colonial encounters have perhaps indelibly inscribed a profound asymmetry of epistemic prestige upon any future EastWest exchange of knowledge. (Arindam Chakrabarti, "Introduction," Philosophy East &West Volume 51, Number 4 October 2001 449-451.)

http://muse.jhu.edu/cgiaccess.cgi?uri=/journals/philosophy_east_and_west/v051/51.4chakrabarti.pdf&sessio n=41460552

See also: Teltscher;and Kate, 1995, India Inscribed : European And British Writing On India 1600 1800, Figure 6, Memorial to Sir William Jones by John Flaxman (1796-8), University College, Oxford. 203, New Delhi, Oxford University Press.It took Rajiv Malhotra nearly two years to locate the marble frieze in a chapel at Oxford, which he had to personally visit to see and then to go through a bureaucratic quagmire to get the picture of it. Rajiv Malhotra notes: The picture symbolizes how academic Indians today often remain under the glass ceiling as "native informants" of the Westerners. Yet in 19th century Europe, Sanskrit was held in great awe and respect, even while the natives of India were held in contempt or at best in a patronizing manner as children to be raised into their master's advanced "civilization." http://www.justindian.com/expressions/column.asp?cid=306016Is the display in the 841

chapel of the University College, Oxford a true depiction of William Jones in his true colours as an evangelist? [quote] The Bible Is a Wonderful Book because of its literary characteristics. It contains the highest literature of the world. It appeals to the aesthetic and intellectual as well as moral and spiritual faculties... Sir William Jones sums it all up in the following beautiful eulogy: "The Scriptures contain, independently of a divine origin, more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, purer morality, more important history, and finer strains both of poetry and eloquence, than could be collected, within the same compass, from all other books that were ever composed in any age or in any idiom."[unquote] http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/zsweeney/ntc2/NTC217.HTM In the face of this monument, Jones' eulogy on Sanskrit sounds hollow. Maybe, the scholars who participated in conferences held in Calcutta and Pune in April, 1994 to mark the bicentenary of his death did not know that this eulogy was only a camouflage for the depiction of a Supreme Court judge sitting on a high chair and three Indian scholars sitting at his feet. The eulogy of Sanskrit didn't last long in the eurocentric studies called IE linguistics with the invention of a hypothetical PIE with *.The authorities of University College, Oxford should: 1) apologise to Indians for this gross, humiliating, insulting representation of Indian scholars, on a monument displayed on the walls of the College chapel; and 2) remove the offending marble frieze from display.A photograph of the marble frieze is at:http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/kalyan97/detail?.dir=57ce&.dnm=e3ad.jpg&.src=ph

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IndianCivilization/message/77765

Another scholar of Sanskrit, Max Muller, had mixed motives in studying the language. http://www.hindunet.org/srh_home/1997_2/0088.html

In a letter to his wife Max Muller wrote: "I hope 1 shall finish that work and 1 feel convinced, though 1 shall not live to see it, yet, this edition of mine and the translation of the Veda, will hereafter tellto a great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of sou= ls in that 842

country. It is the root of their religion and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that sprung from it during the last 3000 years.

Section 2: Unfalsifiable Teach Yourself Proto-Indo-European

Many scholars aver that IEL is an ideology, rather than a science. (cf. PCT workgroup of historians and linguists http://www.continuitas.com/workgroup.html)

The nature of theories postulated by IEL as unfalsifiable can be best explained by an IE tale constructed by August Schleicher. It has to be article of faith to accept the suggested version, in the absence of any stratigraphically attested and dated epigraph or manuscripts of pre-glacial times from archaeological sites in Europe that this in fact can be deduced as the spoken version of IE sometime in pre-histor times.

Karl Popper noted that science advances by deductive falsification through a process of conjectures and refutations. http://www.friesian.com/popper.htm According to Popper, The criterion of falsifiability says that statements or systems of statements, in order to be ranked as scientific, must be capable of conflicting with possible, or conceivable, observations. http://www.freethought-web.org/ctrl/popper_falsification.html Using this principle, Popper claimed that Freuds theory of unconscious was not falsifiable and hence, unscientific.

Similar reasoning can be adduced to claim that IEL is not falsifiable and hence, unscientific. The claims made so far by proponents of IEL are such that they do not admit consideration of the possibility of their being false. An example cited is this: The proposition "All crows are black" would be falsified by observing one white crow. As noted in the critique detailing the limitation of IEL, many observations have been recorded which would falsify the existence of a reconstructed PIE (Proto-Indo-European).

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The IE tale of August Schleicher, Avis Akvasas ka (spelled variously as IEL degenerated and surprise! translated into English) means literally: 'sheep horses and'. There is another group of tales called 'Mommy Goddess'tales of Marija Gimbutas.* One interesting linguistic novelty that nobody seems to have bothered to write is some simple textbook of it, perhaps to be called "Teach Yourself Proto-Indo-European" (title inspired by the numerous "Teach Yourself " books).

However, there are a range of pitfalls: Pronunciation uncertainties: We don't know for sure exactly how PIE was pronounced, and some linguists even dismiss this sort of question as irrelevant.Vocabulary incompleteness: We don't have complete recovery of the vocabulary. Some words, like "lightning", tend to suffer numerous replacements, so while the PIE speakers must have had a word for it, we may never know what it was.Semantic uncertainties: Some of the reconstructed roots are listed as having rather vague meanings; this is because the descendants of some roots have rather variable semantics.Grammatical uncertainties:.Independent innovations:Dialect variations:. There is no good reason to believe that PIE was a homogeneous language. It may have been more like a continuum of dialects, where innovations can spread in waves (compare the early history of the Germanic languages for a similar example). Dialectvariations can also contribute to the previous pitfalls. Therefore one might have to settle for some sort of a "consensus" dialect.* Schleicher's Fable:[This is taken from the version in Jared Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee : The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal, 1992, Harper Collins, though with a bit of re-spelling]Owis Ek'wooskweGwrreei owis, kwesyo wl@naa ne eest, ek'woons espeket, oinom ghe gwrrum woghom weghontm, oinomkwe megam bhorom, oinomkwe ghmmenm ooku bherontm.Owis nu ek'womos ewewkwet: "Keer aghnutoi moi ek'woons agontm nerm widntei".Ek'woos tu ewewkwont: "Kludhi, owei, keer ghe aghnutoi nsmei widntmos: neer, potis, owioom r wl@naam sebhi gwhermom westrom kwrnneuti. Neghi owioom wl@naa esti".Tod kekluwoos owis agrom ebhuget.[The] Sheep and [the] HorsesOn [a] hill, [a] sheep that had no wool saw horses, one [of them] pulling [a] heavy wagon, one carrying [a] big load, and one carrying [a] man quickly.[The] sheep said to [the] horses: "[My] heart pains me, seeing [a] man driving horses".[The] horses 844

said: "Listen, sheep, our hearts pain us when we see [this]: [a] man, [the] master, makes [the] wool of [the] sheep into [a] warm garment for himself. And [the] sheep has no wool".Having heard this, [the] sheep fled into [the] plain.[Here, @ = schwa, the "uh" sound, usually represented by an upside-down e; also, long vowels are written double]...Gimbutas, Marija, _The Journal of Indo-European Studies_ (several articles over the years) and _The Civilization of the Goddess_ -- An abundance of work on the archeology of the Kurgans (she was the first to propose the Kurgan -- IE link), as well as reconstructions of their culture. She has also come up with some speculative proposals about the culture of the pre-IE peoples of Europe, proposals that some critics have derided as "Mommy Goddess" tales.http://homepage.mac.com/lpetrich/www/writings/NostraticRefs.txtSee also the Jan-July 2005 thread at http://www.proz.com/topic/28279?start=0http://www.lankalibrary.com/books/sinhala3.htm (a new version of Schleicher's Proto-IE tale) Here is a PIE version:Gwrhei h wis, qsyo wlhnh ne est, hcwons spcet, hoinom kke gwrhm w ccom wccontm, hoinom-qe mghm pp rom, hoinom-qe ccmnm h ocu pprontm.H wis tu hecwoippos weuqt: "Cer hekknut r moi, hcwons hjontm hnrm widnti".Hcwoos tu weuq nt: "Clutt, h wei, cer kke hekknut r nsmi widntpp s: hner, p tis, hwyom r wlhnhm seppi qrnuti nu qqrmom wstrom; ncci hwyom wlhnh hsti".T d cecluw os h wis hjrom ppugt. http://www.grsampson.net/Q_PIE.htmlHere's another text... The king and the god. I found it in two different places that offered texts in reconstructed proto-Indo-European. For the most part, I followed the version in Geoffrey Sampson's PIE FAQ, replacing the old Indic god "Varuna" with "Enron", since that's the oldest reconstructed god name on Almea. I usually had difficulties finding a word for "pray", but on the whole, this text was easier to translate than Schleicher's tale. Enjoy!Filipo Petrei LebdaneyEnglishOnce there was a king. He was childless. The king wanted a son. He asked his priest: "May a son be born to me!" The priest said to the king: "Pray to the god Enron." The king approached the god Enron. He prayed to the god. "Hear me, father Enron!" The god Enron came down from heaven. "What do you want?" "I want a son." "Let this be so," said the bright god Enron. The king's wife bore a son.Proto-EasternLong 845

vowels = a: e: i: o: u:Ano:r esay, ghayu dit [not] mu:. Ano:r med [wanted]. Fewitay [priest]: "Meds sewnu nemet!" [priest] ano:rnu fewitay: "Fewitemewis nu:minu Enda:nornu." Ano:r Enda:nornu kta:nay. "Etu oghemewus, pi:dor Enda:nor!" Nu:miu Enda:nor kiwaltu kta:nay. "Ghayu [want]?" "Med [want]." "Esemes," nu:miu ulis fewitay. Ghi:ra ano:rex med ghetway.http://shavian.org/verdurian/board/board47.html

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IndianCivilization/message/78658

Section 2.1: The arbitrary and biased nature of Proto Indo-European reconstruction

Here is how PIE reconstruction works, as explained by McWhorter (2001, p. 45-46). He gives seven IE cognates for the word "sister-in-law". Sanskrit: snusha; Greek: nuosOld English; snoru Armenian: nuRussian: snokha; Albanian: nuseLatin: nurus

In Armenian and Albanian the word actually means bride not sister-in-law. He explains this phenomenon as an example of semantic change.The PIE word is reconstructed as follows:1. The word should begin with sn rather than n. The missing s in the languages has been lost due to attrition.2. The first vowel must be u rather than an o. Russian and Old English have muted that to an o. The majority rule applies here. So far the proto word is *snu3. The next consonant should be an s as shown in Sanskrit, Albenian and Greek. S has mutated to a k in Russian and r in Latin and Old English. Therefore, *snus

4. So far so good. The most twisted part is the ending. The majority of the above seven words have a masculine ending except for Sansrkit and Russian. So the original PIE word MUST be masculine! and end with an os rather than an "a," a feminine ending, as it does CORRECTLY in Sanskrit and Russian. Therefore PIE word is reconstructed as *snusos. Science does not work by the rule of the majority.The IE linguists FORCE corruption on to Sanskrit a language of the 846

sacred texts that are known to have been preserved for at least 3500 years. The reconstruction method penalizes languages that are preserved perfectly by dating them later than they ought to be, because now one has to allow time for them to evolve from the rudimentary PIE. To this IE linguists may argue that the laws of sound change make certain changes like snusha to snusos impossible. Be that as it may, these laws cannot be applied to all langues with out taking their cultural context into account. Some people care more about preserving their language than others. Ironically the value of IE linguistics would have greatly diminished if it was not for the Vedas, and particularly the orally preserved Paninis grammatical treatise Ashtadhyai. Section 2.2.: Controversies surrounding the reconstruction of PIE

Many points of controversy surround the reconstruction of PIE, and indeed surround any reconstruction effort. Some are methodological questions (for example, how do we distinguish archaisms from innovations?); some are philosophical (for example, what kinds of evidence are admissible in reconstruction?); some are simply differences of opinion based on the preconceptions and orientation of the investigator (for example, which is more archaic, Hittite or Sanskrit?), (Baldi 1983, p. 14-15, parentheses in the original).

The above paragraph neatly summarizes the totally arbitrary and subjective nature of PIE reconstruction. The archaism/innovation gimmick is most useful to justify ideologically driven theories. Features shared by Greek, Albanian, and IIr are classified as archaisms to keep the languages of Europeans and non-Europeans apart into separate "singleton families." The supposedly older Hittite texts are used to arrive at a late date the RV when in fact there is no objective way to judge which of the two languages is older.

Section 3: Indeterminate Layrngeals

Section 3.1: The discovery of laryngeals

847

The discovery of laryngeals in Hittite manuscripts are said to authenticate Saussures conjecture about such laryngeals in IE and often cited as an evidence of IEL as science. "Here's my (Ulric_von_Bek's) two cents on the laryngeal issue. The reconstruction of three laryngeals rests more on theory than evidence. Hittite only has one laryngeal. It's supposedly from a merger of H2 and H3, with H1 disappearing, but there are numerous words in whichthis doesn't work (e.g. mehur is cognate with words containing a long e which suggests the -h- is from H1). This odd behavior has led some linguists to propose H4 which behaves exactly like H1 except it's preserved in Hittite. Other linguists have tried to solve the problems by hypothesizing H5 and H6 (and sometimes even more). I think we're better off just assuming one, which is plain old /h/, which doesn't have any coloring effects. The chief witness for this h will be Hittite, but there is some evidence for them from Armenian andIndo-Aryan (h- is sometimes preserved word initially in Armenian, and forms at least some of the voiceless aspirates found in Indo-Aryan)." [Ulric_von_Bek on Somskwertos@..., 3/6/2005,retrieved on 7/15/05]

Section 3.2: Why laryngeals?

The purpose of the laryngeals is to prenvent the linking of the IE family with other language familes. Saussure's laryngeals theory was dismissed as eccentric; "but for a long time, his (Saussure's) ideas were considered by many as not much more than an eccentric game of abstract symbols (Deutscher 2005, p. 105)." Things changed dramatically when Hittite was decipered as an "Indo-European" language more than fifty years later. A European homeland for the IE languages could only be maintained by introducing the laryngeal sounds in the PIE itself. The other option would have been to admit what Patrick Ryan has theorized in the following quote.

http://geocities.com/proto-language/c-AFRASIAN-3_germanic.htm

848

"What is additionally very interesting is to be able to see that wherever modern IE theorists have posited "laryngeals" (better 'pharyngal-laryngals'), pharyngals and laryngals show up in Semitic languages. Any pharyngal/laryngal "colored" the IE vowel based on the vocalic quality of the earlier pre-Pontic/Nostratic syllable: HA, from any of ?/H//HH+A became H2V; HO became H3V; HE became H4V (except E, which had already become Y). H 1 could have any one of the three "colorings", and is only justified as a notation because of its different reflex (0) in Hittite, and will not be employed here. Any of the pharyngal/laryngals except (the former pharyngal) Y could also lengthen the IE vowel.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that the non-Germanic/Armenian branches remained together with the Afrasian branch after the other speakers of IE had dispersed; and that they shared common developments (until circa 15K BPE) with the exception of reflexes to the inherited Nostratic voiceless aspirated affricates (but cf. Ossetic), and the special responses to velarized apicals (with only minor discrepancies in the spirants) (Deutscher, 2005)." We have to relate these laryngeal assumptions to the phonetics in bharatiya tradition, starting with the phonemic structures of mahesvara_n.i sutra of Panini.

The Noble Path or Arioweghya, a neo-pagan movement with a mission to revive the ancient culture of the IndoEuroepan peoples uses their own version of PIE called Somskwortos. According to Belenois, a member of Arioweghya:

http://groups.msn.com/TheNoblePath/general.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Mess age=12&LastModified=4675406635902529622

Our Somskwertos is not identical to the reconstructions favored by the academics of the modern "Western" culture, though we try to take into account their work as we continue to develop our language. One of the biggest differences is that their reconstruction features sounds called "laryngeals", which we do not use. They layer their reconstructions 849

chronologically, in which the sound changes that resulted in the loss of the laryngeals figure largely. We use, primarily, their "Late Proto-Indo-European" layer. Our form of the language can be considered a dialect of their reconstructed language, and is similar enough that learning the results of their work will give you the ability to use Somskwertos. It is the official language of our Teuta Leukwios (Belenois, on MSN Groups, 5/9/2001, retrieved on 10/30/2005).

It is clear from the above paragraph that the introduction of laryngeals into PIE has the effect of distancing it from Vedic and thus resulting in a late dating of the Rig Veda. Even a cursory reading of the ongoing discussions on the Arioweghya web site will enable one to see that Somskwortos (PIE without the laryngeals) is very similar to Sanskrit. People who accept Sonskwortos also have a holistic understanding of language akin to that in the Indic culture, and obviousely very different from that of the mainstream IEL academics. Here is an example:

In Sanskrit, grammar and linguistics is known as vyakarana. For us, therefore, it is wyadkwerenos. This is more than mere dry study of rules of case and conjugation and syntax, it is also a philosophy, and a means to spiritual enlightenment. How so? First, all thought and knowledge depend on language, and correct thought thus requires correct language. In this way, wyadkwerenos connects with all fields of knowledge, including theology, philosophy and metaphysics (Seghopritus, 3/4/2005 retireived on 10/30/2005).

Laryngeals also help maintain the hypothesized five vowel system of the reconstructed PIE as the orginial, and the Vedic three vowel one as a later development. This once again has the negative impact of late dating the Rig Veda contrary to all other non-linguistic evidence. Refer to the following article by N. Kazanas for a detailed examination of the vowel controversy. http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/english/documents/SPIE.pdf

There is no evidence of laryngeals in any of the European branches of the family. Only Armenian, Hittite and Sansrkit offer hints that laryngeals could have once existed in them. 850

According to Kuiper (1962, p. 94),. it should recognized that Sanskrit had long been an Indian language when it made its appearance in historyA language in which simultaneously Dravidian calques arose and Indo-European laryngeals were still pronounced (viz. in tanuam, suar) was more progressive and, at the same time, more archaic than could be imagined a few decades ago. Given these facts, introducing laryngeals into PIE appears to be too articifal a maneuver to a) impart a false antiquity to the European languages at the expense of the Asian ones and b) flaunt the presumed scientific nature of PIE reconstruction.

Section 4: Aryan Race Ideology

Section 4.1: The Invention of the Aryan race

The Europeans invented the notion of an Aryan race to counter the Jewish mystic tradition known as the Kabbalah or (Quabbalah) which scholars believe is in turn a rehash of older Babylonian, Persian , Indian Greek and Celtic stories. The Kabbalah holds that just before the Great Flood secret wisdom was taught by the Sons of God who descended from the heavens and intermarried the descendents of Cain. The Kabbalah subscribes to the notion of a superior or a root race which received this divine wisdom. In the prevalent anti Semitic environment, the European occultist thought this to be a great embarrassment that this superior race was not them but the Jewish people. William Jones (1783) pronouncement of the relationship between languages of Europe and India came at the most opportune time. If there was a proto language then there must be a proto race who spoke this proto language, the Aryans. The Aryan race was offered as the European answer for Kabbalah. According to Robert Drews (1988)

Nevertheless fueled by an obstinate nationalism , Europeans denied their essential absence from history , and by grossly misrepresenting the facts, artistically created an ancient past, placing themselves far back in time, as far back as the beginning of human history and in the ranks of the great civilizations, (Livingston 2002, p. xi). Such ideas are commonplace even 851

today even though the rhetoric is much milder.

Geneticist Olson on the "Caucasian" features of some Indians: "Consider the people of India. Physical anthropologists traditionally have classfiedIndians as "Caucasians," a term invented in the eighteenth century to describe people with a particular set of facial features. But this classification has never sat particularly well with some Europeans, who were offended by being lumped with the dark-skinned people of the (Indian) subcontinent. Gradually a kind offolk explanation emerged, which held that several thousand years ago (1500 B.C.)India was overrun by invaders from Europe (aka the AIT!). These light skinned warriors (aka the chariot riding "Aryans.") interbred with the existing dark-skinned populations (or the "dasyus") that the Indians acqired European features (and the "IE languages").Recent studies of mitochondrial DNA and the Y chromosome have revealed a different picture. Incursions of people from Europe into India have certainly occurred, but they have been less extensive than supposed, and genes have flowed in the opposite direction as well (meaning no support for the AIT and support for the OIT). The physical resemblance of Europeans to Indians appears instead to have resulted largely from their common descent from the modern humans who left Afica for Eurasia (Olson, 2002, p. 160-161, all parantheses added)."

Section 4.2: John V. Day on the Proto Indo-Iranians

John V. Day (2001) complains about the harassment of intellectuals such as Professor Wolfram Nagel of Berlin University in Germany.

http://theoccidentalquarterly.com/vol2no3/jvd-europeans.html

The racial origins of the Proto-Indo-Europeans are, like race and IQ or race and crime, a redhot subject. Take the case of Professor Wolfram Nagel of Berlin University, who in 1987 argued 852

in the journal of the German Oriental Society that Proto-Indo-Europeans must have been racially northern European.5 He didn't say they were a master race or destined to conquer the world, just that they were northern European. Although Professor Nagel had reached the top of his profession, his reasoned arguments based on ancient texts and artworks so appalled the learned society that they fired the journal's editors and debated whether to expel him (although in the event they allowed him to stay). This incident offers an insight into the totalitarian climate that intellectuals work under in "democratic" Germany.

He then makes the following comments about the proto-Iranians and the proto Indians

Turning to Iranians, I remarked earlier that speakers of Indo-European's so-called "Iranian" branch must have lived on the steppe before infiltrating southward to Iran, where non-IndoEuropean Elamites already had a civilization. Now, Greek and Roman writers in the centuries before and after Christ stated that Iranian-speaking peoples north of the Black Sea and Caspian had fair or reddish hair and blue eyes

In India, the earliest known Indo-European text, coming from the later second millennium B.C., is the religious work, the Rig-Veda.30 Only one god in the Rig-Veda has anything like a human pigmentation, and he is the great warrior-god Indra. In personality and attributes, Indra resembles the Germanic god Thor, and even his fair hair and beard resemble Thor's red beard.31 Throughout the Rig-Veda, Indra often helps the warlike Aryansthe Indo-European invaders of Indiato battle against the native Dasas and Dasyus, who are portrayed as darkskinned. In contrast, the Rig-Veda refers to Aryans as white and having an "Aryan color."

Section 4.3: Niggers of India

Whether the Indo-Europeanists envisage a violent invasion or a morediluted politically correct peaceful migration, race has always been afactor. Judge Jones' discovery of the Indo-European 853

family shockedmany in Europe. "...there was a cool reception in some circles to MaxMuller's disclosure to a rather ungrateful world that the British andthe rickshaw pullers of Calcutta were of the same racial family (Legge1902 in Bryant 2005). Muller summarized the reactions as follows:"They would not have it, they would not believe that there could beany community of origin between the people of Athen and Rome, and theso-called Niggers of India (Max Muller 1883, in Bryant 2005).""If accepted at face value, the Sanskrit material, as scholars such asWilliam Jones well knew, threatened to subvert the absolute authorityof Mosaic history, a prospect he and many of his contemporaries foundunacceptable, since they felt obliged to believe in the sanctity ofthe venerable books of Genesis (1778: 225 in Bryant 2005)."

Section 5: Eurocentrism

Section 5.1: Is PIE only a Eurocentric mirage?

http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~garrett/BLS1999.pdf

http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/%7Egarrett/IEConvergence.pdf

Garrett's main point is the discovery of Mycenaean Greek should force IEL to rethink their subgroupings of larger "families" such as Italic, Celtic and Indo-Iranian. "On the one hand because Mycenaen Greek shows innovations that are found only in some Greek dialects, it cannot be viewed as proto Greek; it is just an early dialect. On the other hand many innovations are found in every Greek dialect EXCEPT Mycenaean (Garett 1999, p. 3, emphasis in the original).

These facts make the construction of a "proto-Greek" language logically impossible. A chance discovery of the Linear B script has lead to this realization. But what about the cases where such written evidence does not exist and is never likely to be found; for example "Indo-Iranian" 854

According to Garrett what is known to be true of Greek has also happened in other cases.

If we apply what we learn from cases where there is evidence to the cases where there is none, it follows that the Indo-European family tree with a dozen independent, highly distinctive branches is nothing more than a historical mirage (Garrett 1999, p.9)."

If the formation of Greek was a local event facilitated by local interaction patterns and ethnic identity, it is also relevant that IE branches like Indo-Iranian, Slavic, Celtic, and even the poorly attested Venetic show evidence of a collective ethnic identity. In such cases as Nichols (1998, 240) puts it a complext native theory of ethnicity and a strong sense of ethnic identity can be reconstructed, and both the theory and the identity were based on language, (Garrett n.d., p.6).

It may be noted from the above quotes that what can be reconstructed are ethnic identities like Indo-Iraniansand Italo-Celtic, not proto-languages like the IE linguists do. If Garrett is right then there is no point in tracing the journey of the speakers of proto-Italic, proto-Greek and proto-Indo-Iranian etc from a putative "homeland," to their historical locations. He also provides a surprisingly frank admission of ideology. "It is a truism that the discovery of Indo-European and the foundation of the academic discipline of linguistics were substantially fuelled by nationalism. I suggest that the nationalist ideologies lurking behind our field refract the same sociological forces that shaped its object of study. Our conception of Indo-European emerged from the analysis of national literatures and cultural traditions, and the canonical branches of the family emerged through the creation of national identities (Garrett 1999, p.9)."

http://www.continuitas.com/monthly.html The second review by Jonathan Morris notes: "Alinei considers that their motivations are ideological and ultimately traceable to the 17th century Biblical belief in catastrophes, overlaid by a 19th century belief in Aryan supremacy which created the myth of an Indo-European 855

people that sprung up in fully civilized form and a pre-Indo-European populations akin to the 'damned pre-diluvians (Morris 2005, p.2)."

Section 5.2: Diffusionist scholarship and the Aryan Invasion Theory

Diffusionist scholarship is based on the premise that the world is divided into an Inside and an Outside. The Inside is inherently rational, inventive, scientific and progressive. The Outside on the contrary is imitative, irrational, prone to superstitious thoughts, and stagnated. All good things such as agriculture, industrialization, language, culture are generated within this superior Inside and then diffuse through out the inferior Outside. Blaut (1993) argues that all scholarship is diffusionist insofar as it axiomatically accepts the Inside-Outside model, the notion that the world as a whole has one permanent center from which-culture-changing ideas tend to originate, and a vast periphery that changes as a result (mainly) of diffusion from that single center (p. 13, emphasis in the original).

The Aryan Invasion Theory is a special case of diffusionist scholarship where the fictional Aryan Homeland is presumed to be the cradle from which the rest of Eurasia obtained its high civilization in the pre-Christian era. An imaginary people sprang out of this homeland equipped with a well developed language, horse riding skills, and an advanced weapons technology. These are mere beliefs not corroborated by any actual evidence. For example the belief that iron plows were brought in to the Middle East by invading Indo-European speakers around 1800 BCE is based on the now discredited Aryan migrations theory (Blaut 1993, p. 88).

Diffusionist scholarship derives directly from Biblical monotheism in which a vengeful partial and presumably male deity reveals the only true religion to a select few, while condemning the rest of humanity to eternal hell less they meekly submit to formers total authority.

Section 5.3: The Indo-European linguists are guilty of ideology of colonialism 856

For the invasion model was first advanced in the nineteenth century when archaeology and related sciences were dominated by the ideology of colonialism, as recent historical research has shown. The successive generation of linguists and archaeologists has been strongly inspired by the racist views that stemmed after colonialism. Historians of archaeology (e.g. Daniel 1962, Trigger 1989) have repeatedly shown the importance of ideology in shaping archaeological theories as well as the theory of human origins, while unfortunately linguistics has not followed the same course and thus strongly believe in its own innocence. (Alinei, 1998)

http://www.continuitas.com/invasionless.pdf

Incidentally, the traditional theory is not at all free from nationalistic biases. We quote Alinei once again: "After WW2, with the end of Nazi ideology, a new variant of the traditional scenario, which soon became the new canonic IE theory, was introduced by Marija Gimbutas, an ardent Baltic nationalist: the PIE Battle-Axe super-warriors were best represented by Baltic lites, instead of Germanic ones (Gimbutas 1970, 1973, 1977, 1979, 1980)."

An interesting article on geo-linguistics from Mario Alinei that relates ancient tools with language development is at http://www.rastko.org.yu/filologija/alinei/malinei-lithic-linguistic.htmlThe three types of languages isolating, inflecting and agglutinative are associated with the three types of tools chopper, bifacial, flake/blade."From Schleicher [1848] on, the three types of language were put in a sort of evolutionary sequence, first from isolating, through agglutinative, to inflecting, in order to have 'our own' Indoeuropean at the apex of evolution (with the Eurocentric bias which was already typical of German research of the last century!); and then, more recently, and according to Trubetskoy [1939], from isolating, through inflecting, to agglutinative. The latter sequence is also the one we will have to adopt, as we shall see shortly."If advanced tools are equated with advancements in language, then agglutinative languages are the most 857

evolved. (Mario Alinei and Richard N. Frye, 2002, More on Archaeology and Language, in: Current Anthropology, volume 44 (2002), page 109).

Indo-European linguists (IEL) attempt to study the history of languages by reconstructing hypothetical words from cognates attested in real languages. For example, a hypothetical proto word *snusos meaning daughter-in-law has been reconstructed based on the following cognates attested in real languages (McWhorter 2001) as discussed earlier:

Sanskrit: snusha, Greek: nuosOld English: snoru, Armenian: nuRussian: snokha Albanian: nuseLatin: nurus

An entire language labeled as Proto-Indo-European (PIE) comprising only of such reconstructed words has been created in IEL studies. A relatively small community of people, located in a relatively small geographic area is supposed to have taken this hypothetical PIE language with them, when they supposedly invaded (or migrated or trickled-in, according to the revised versions of the theory) all across the vast Eurasian continent resulting in the present distribution of Indo-European languages. According to the Aryan Invasion Theory, one such group of people labeled as Aryans brought some Indo-European languages to Iran, Afghanistan and South Asia presumably conquering the natives and imposing their language and culture on them.

No matter how rational and imperative the reconstructed language appears to be, there is no agreement among scholars as to exactly who these PIE speakers were, what they looked like, where and how long ago they lived, and most importantly, what compelled them to wander around aimlessly over many millennia. The search for the original homeland of these PIE speakers has been going on for nearly two centuries with no apparent end in sight.

Over seventy possible candidates for the putative homeland of the Indo-Europeans have been 858

proposed, none of them acceptable to all the researchers (Alinei 1998). The search for the homeland has been tainted by ethnic and nationalistic biases prompting Demoule (1980, p.120) to quip, we have seen that one primarily places the IEs (Indo-Europeans) in the north if one is German.in the east if one is Russian, and in the middle if, being Italian or Spanish, one has no chance of competing for the privilege (as quoted by Lal 2005, p.64). According to Garrett (n.d.),

"It is a truism that the discovery of Indo-European and the foundation of the academic discipline of linguistics were substantially fuelled by nationalism. I suggest that the nationalist ideologies lurking behind our field refract the same sociological forces that shaped its object of study. Our conception of Indo-European emerged from the analysis of national literatures and cultural traditions, and the canonical branches of the family emerged through the creation of national identities."

IEL as a legitimate field of scholarly inquiry was launched in the hay day of imperialism. The results from comparative linguistics were quickly pressed into service by the colonizers to establish their alleged superiority over the colonized. Language was often equated with race ignoring the objections from the scholarly community. The emerging nations of Europe often identified themselves as a linguistic community, and they expected others to do the same. Hence India was and is still seen today by some as two nations speaking the so called Aryan, and Dravidian languages united into a country only through the efforts of the European colonizers. The truth is that Indians speak languages belonging to six major linguistic families and as yet, no one knows for sure where on earth any of these families have might have originated and when.

The main obstacle in locating the homeland of PIE speakers could be the method of reconstruction itself. In the absence of written records one can only guess what certain words could have meant at certain points in time. Also, the rate at which languages change or evolve 859

can only be guessed. Hooker (1999) summarized the problem thus:

"From a superficial point of view, it is an easy matter to arrive at the underlying lexicon common to the Indo-European people prior to their dispersal, then to predict the type of material culture which would have marked the Indo-Europeans, and finally to match this culture with one actually attested in the archaeological record. BUT NEITHER THE ASSUMPTION NOR THE METHOD IS ACCPETABLE. The assumption is false, since to construct a "protolexicon" takes insufficient account of LINGUISTIC, and especially SEMANTIC change: it is one thing to extract a basic vocabulary which might be thought common to the Indo-Europeans before their migrations; quite another to be sure that the items of this vocabulary has the same meaning throughout the 'Indo-European Era' that they bore in the historical language. But, even if these objections would be overcome, a set of lexical terms (which is a pure abstraction) cannot be transferred bodily to a material culture whose attributes are known only through the medium of archaeology. Some artifacts, some animals, some trees named in the proto lexicon will be present in a given culture but some will not. A satisfactory marriage between the linguistic and the archaeological data can never be achieved (page 49-50, emphasis added)."

Languages cannot exist without a group of real humans using them. There is no conclusive evidence to prove that languages evolve like living organisms do. A language could be transferred without a corresponding transfer of genes and/or material culture. In the words of DeGraff (2001),

"Notions such as language birth, age, and death are also assumed implicitly and a-theoretically when we use terms such as"Proto-Indo-European", "Latin", "Old French", "Middle French", "Modern French", etc., as classificatory devices. But, notwithstanding thepopularity and sophistication of Stammbaum theorie qua "Tree of Language" (cf. Darwin's Tree of Life), old vs. new linguistic species cannot be discriminated by any measure that looks like biological genetic criteria (e.g., DNA, interfertility). There is no clear notionwhereby E-languages can be taken to 860

reproduce like living organisms. Neither do we have clear linguistic-structural analogues for the DNA sequences that have now become so handy in tracing biological phylogenesis.

IEL and their cohorts in other linguistic discipline have been criticized for taking their reconstructions as facts and thus blurring the line between reality and illusion. From the remarks of Saukkonen, Raukko and stman Raukko and stman I (Smit) conclude that they totally fail to understand the basic tenets of historical linguistics - first of all, that language history is something which has REALLY HAPPENED, not just determined by the eye of the beholder, and that it can be researched by using certain methods, that the aim of these methods is to uncover reality and that its results are no mere "theoretical or methodological constructs."THIS CONFUSION TENDS TO MAKE HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS A MEANINGLESS, SPECULATIVE GAME in which the actual goal of any historical linguistics uncovering REAL PAST LANGUAGE CHANGES - is no longer attainable (Smit 2001, emphasis added)." Though the traditionalist method used by IE linguist is more sophisticated than innvoationst method used by some Uralist Smit (2001) is criticizing they both still fall in the realm of speculation, and not facts based history.

The founders of the Noble Path (Arieoweghya) movement who strive for a deeper culture based rather the just a language based understanding of the ancient PIE culture reject the mainstream IEL ideas about its origins.

http://groups.msn.com/TheNoblePath/whatisindoeuropean.msnw

A big question for some people is the origin of IE culture, and the search for an original IE homeland. We consider that mainstream "Western" academia has been extremely distorted in regard to this field. At the time when the field of IE studies in "Western" academia was formed, it was entirely run by Christians, and furthermore was beholden to colonizing political powers. Many of today's IndoEuropeanists are no longer under such influences... but have failed to 861

account and compensate for the preconceived notions from them. Too, many are now under the firm influence of one or another political/social/economic ideology, ranging from right-wing racists to left-wing liberals and many others. We, on the other hand, approach the matter as IndoEuropeans, and from the perspective of our culture, measuring it by its own standards. This differences have a profound effect on our conclusions on IE origins and early history, which is a topic needing its own page.

Section 5.4: Lord Macaulays nightmare

I (Macaulay) have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed both here and at home with men distinguished by heir proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Oritentalists themselves. I have never found one of them who could deny that single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is, indeed, fully admitted by those members of the Committee who support the oriental plan for education, Thomas Babington Macaulay (aged thirty-five), 1835, Minute of 2 February 1835 on Indian Education 1835 (reprinted in Young 1957; 721-4).

Mr. Macaulay would have been greatly distressed to discover that his pristine Germanic family of languages has a mongrel ancestory.

See Fig 12 (p. 22) and section 6 (p. 22) of the link below

<http://www.cs.rice.edu/~nakhleh/Papers/81.2nakhleh.pdf>

and section 7.7 (p. 52) of the following study. 862

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~nakhleh/CPHL/RWT02.pdf

Section 5.5: Sanskritist Nicholas Ostler sees the invading Aryans as light skinned

There is also some cultural evidence in the Rig Veda which suggests how the invading Aryans felt they differed from the peoples, the dasa and dasyu, their language came to dominate, for they same has having darker skins, black of origin, krsnayonih (Rig Veda, ii.20.7). This fits with the Sanskrit word used traditionally for the four-fold division into social castes, Brahman~Kshatriya~Vasiya~Sudra, namely varna, colour (Ostler 2005, p. 197, 564).

Section 5.6: Archaeologist McIntosh succumbs to the IEL invasionist paradigm 1. McIntosh agrees that the Indus Civilization should now be seen as the Indus-Saraswati Civilization (p. 24, 53). "But in Indus times, the Saraswati was a mighty river (p. 53). She cites Griffith's (1890) translations of the Rig Vedic hymns regarding the Saraswati River, asquoted by Possehl (1999). 2. McIntosh approvingly cites Dales (1964) who has mocked at Wheeler's 37 skeletons as proof that an "Aryan Invasion" had occurred (p, 178. 179). 3. The author draws upon Asko Parpola's work in connecting the Indus artifacts to the Vedas. Regarding the trefoils on the robe worn by the famous "Priest King" of the Indus, she says, " This robe was also mentioned in the Vedas as being worn by kings during their consecration. Parpola also argues that the trefoil could represent the three-lobed hearth, used not only in the home but also in Vedic sacrifices, and the Vulva or womb-the yoni symbol of the goddess Durga and counterpart to the lingam, symbol of Shiva (p. 108)." 4. The author acknowledges that the Indus people had knowledge of astronomy. "Asko Parpola and a number of other scholars relate this (the systematic arrangement of streets) to the astronomical knowledge of the Indus people and to the unknown (!)religious beliefs that must lie behind this (p. 99, parentheses added)." 863

5. The author discusses Parpola's interpretation of a famous Indus seal (color plate 10 in the book) as depicting goddess Durga, her husband Shiva and the wives of the seven sages who are also the seven stars of the Great bear (ref. 116-117). 6. The author admits that the discovery of fire alters which were probably used for Vedic sacrifices has been an embarrassment to the theory that the Indus civilization was pre-Vedic. After all this, one would expect her to reach the logical conclusion that if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, then.. It IS a duck. That is the Indus and the Vedic people are the same. But hold on a minute! McIntosh bows down the linguistic fables and fails to reach thatrather obvious conclusion. "Their (Vedic) literature shows that they moved gradually from the north, on the Iranian plateau, into the Panjab and hence farther into the subcontinent.. (p. 128, parenthesis added)," "This (the linguistic) evidence seems to show that the speakers of the Indo-Aryan (also known as plain "Aryan") languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family that covered Europe, Iran and Northern India by the late 1st millennium BC entered the region in the Indus region during the second millennium BC .. (p.128, first parenthesisadded)." "The migrations of Indo-Aryan speakers can be traced in their early literature the Vedas. The geographical information that they contain shows that the Indo-Aryans (who it is thought came organically from the area north of the Black and Caspian Seas) entered the northwestduring the 2nd millennium BC and thence moved eastward into the Ganges Valley ... (p. 147)." The author does not mention what this geographical information is and how it shows the so called movement from northwest to the east. The Rig Veda and the subsequent literature does not mention any such migration in the present or past. One wonders what is so powerful about these highly speculative linguistic theories that grips even informed scholars to submit to them in favor of their scientifically testable methods. The Proto-Vedic Continuity Theory rejects eurocentrism and will be validated based on the rich resources available for ancient versions of present-day languages and dialects spoken in Bharat and contiguous regions and Indian Ocean rim states. An attempt should also be made to expand on the substrate language terms found in Akkadian, terms such as sanga (priest), tibira 864

(merchant) and evaluate the economic contacts which resulted in semantic expansions of Bharatiya languages because of such contacts during the early Neolithic times and early bronze age. Some leads are provided in Appendix 1: How to study bhasha? Section 6: Philologically Speaking

Philologically speaking the lack of hard evidence for the migrations of Indo-Aryans into the Indian subcontinent is not an isolated case. Specialist in nearly all major branches of the IE family are facing similar conundrum.

Section 6.1: Hittites and Greeks

That a proto-Anatolian or Hittite nation invaded central Asia Minor ca. 2000 B.C. seems to be a scholarly construct, encouraged by the belief that the Greek nation invaded Greece at about the same time. Eighty years ago, scholars were already curious about the racial affinities of what were then the mysterious Hittites, and various anthropological arguments were advanced about the physiognomy (especially the prominent nose and the physical traits of Hittites portrayed by ancient artists. When Hrozny and Sommer showed that the Hittite language had Indo-European affiliations, the immediate and undisputed inference was that the Hittites were invaders, who had come to Asia Minor from afar. Where they had come from was less clear, and the answer depended on ones belief about the Indo-European homeland. In his 1928 revision of Geschichte des Alterums, Meyer declared it virtually certain they had come across the Caucasus from a homeland in Central Asia, and had done so around the middle of the third millennium. On the other hand, Louis Delaporte and Eugene Cavaignac routed them via the Bosporus from a patrie septentrionale. NO EVIDENCE-ARCHAEOLOGOCAL. LINGUISTIC OR DOCUMENTARY-WAS ADVANCED IN BEHALF OF EITHER VIEW, AND NO HISTORIAN EVER SUGGESTED THAT SUCH EVIDENCE WAS NECESSARY. That nothing IndoEuropean could have been indigenous to Asia minor was simply assumed by the scholars, whether orientalist, Indo-Europeanist, or historians. If the Hittites were Indo-European, at some 865

time and some place the Hittite nation must have invaded Asia Minor (Drews 1989, p. 53-54, emphasis added).

The Hittite Nation turns out, upon inspection, to be as illusory as the Hittite invasion, of central Anatolia (Drews 1989, p. 72).

Section 6.2: Celts

Thus the core area of the Hallstat D sites has been seen as the area in which a Celtic koine or lingua franca developed. Such ideas are highly speculative. They owe much to early twentieth century thinking, which assumed that an archeological complex is equivalent of a culture and that a culture is a product of a specific people-indeed, in the opinion of some writers, a specific race. The concept of a people carried with it the presumption that they had a specific language and thus the territory of the Hallstatt archeological complex became the territory of the speakers of Celtic; in turn the territory of the speakers of Celtic became the territory of the Hallstat archeological complex. There was more than a tacit assumption that all Celtic artifacts were produced by Celtic-speakers, and that all Celtic speakers produced Celtic artifacts. It therefore followed that the Celtic language must have evolved in the Hallstatt zone-the Celtic Heartland. Later evidence of its presence in regions beyond the boundaries of that zone was interpreted as the result of the invasion of those regions by people from the heartland.

Such theories are now viewed with suspicion. There is a realization that they involve a considerable degree of circular argument.; archeologist have taken on trust notions from linguists, as have linguists from archeologist, causing each to build on the others myths (Davies 2000, p. 26).

Invasionism lost favor from the 1950s onwards-the era, significantly perhaps of rapid dcolonization. Instead, emphasis was placed upon the capacity of indigenous societies to 866

innovate and develop (Davies 2000, p. 26, 28).

Section 6.3: Slavs-Alineis Challenge

"The totally absurd thesis of the so called `late arrival' of theSlavs in Europe must be replaced by the scenario of Slavic continuityfrom Paleolithic, and the demographic growth and geographic expansionof the Slavs can be explained, much more realistically, by theextraordinary success, continuity and stability of the Neolithiccultures of South-Eastern Europe (the only ones in Europe that causedthe formation of tells) (Alinei 2004).

http://www.continuitas.com/interdisciplinary.pdf

"And I (Alinei) challenge Slavic specialist to find any indication ofa recent arrival of the Slavs in their area in other (other than thosementioned by him already) medieval sources (parentheses added, Alinei2003)." http://www.continuitas.com/interdisciplinary.pdf page 26

Section 7: A Fading Discipline Hangs on to Slippery Jeans (read: Genes)

During the last two decades, a number of genetic studies have appeared which make the invasionist models of IEL of questionable authenticity and point to a Paleolithic continuity in the evolution of languages, even assuming, while not conceding, that stock of people and languages spoken in Indo-Europe area, are somehow correlated.

Section 7.1: Genetic studies refuting Aryan Invasion propaganda

Reproduced below is the paper presented by Dr. Chandrakant Panse, Professor of Biotechnology, Newton, Massachusetts on Sept. 16, 2005 at the Human Empowerment 867

Conference, Houston, Texas which debated the socio-political implications of Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) in a session moderated by Dr. S. Kalyanaraman. This is a succinct overview of the genetic evidence that render the AIT into mere propaganda, thus substantiating the nature of IEL as ideology, driven by colonial mindset, as discussed elsewhere in this monograph.

DNA, genetics and population dynamics: debunking the Aryan Invasion Propaganda

Summary: The so-called Aryan invasion, an idea designed to divide the Hindus of Northern and Southern Bharat, was never supported by any concrete evidence and yet was elevated to the stature of a theory. It has been pushed in secondary school textbooks as a dogma. Science now conclusively rejects any notion of any Aryan invasion of the Indian subcontinent.

I. Background

Study of changes (mutations, insertions) in chromosomal DNA is very difficult due to its magnitude. In humans, the egg contains 22 chromosomes plus the X sex chromosome, and the sperm has similar 22 plus either the X or the Y sex chromosome. An XX combination in the embryo ensues a female, and an XY a male. There are some 3 billion DNA base pairs in the 46 chromosomes in a human cell. Studying changes as markers in only the Y chromosome can be simpler, but traces only the male ancestry.

Cells contain mitochondria, structures where oxygen is utilized. A mitochondrion has its own DNA, only 16,569 base pairs long, and entirely independent of the chromosomal DNA. Following mutations in the mtDNA is thus significantly easier, but traces only female ancestry as the mitochondria are descendants of the egg, with no contribution from the sperm.

Attempts at linking of populations through insertions of repeat sequences are underway (1), but call for abundant caution because sampling errors, numbers of markers employed, choices of 868

markers, statistical models selected for analysis, etc., influence the results of such studies (2). More importantly, polymorphism (different alleles, or slightly different forms of the same gene) subjected to local positive selection can result in convergent evolution, the reverse also holds true, and these can lead to abnormal conclusions regarding histories of populations (2). Attempts to demonstrate similarities amongst Asian and European gene pools not only suffer from such drawbacks in spite of vigorous statistical analysis, but also can be explained by multiple mechanisms (3).

II. North & South Bharatiyas Share mtDNA, Which Is Distinct From That of Europeans

Extensive sequencing and statistical analysis of a part of mtDNA which has sustained mutations (the mitochondrial hypervariable region I, HVR I), from reasonable sample sizes, has shown that certain sequences dominant in Europe are uncommon in India, and when found, are almost equally divided amongst the North and South Indians. Conversely, there are sequences common to both the North and South Indians which are uncommon in Europe (4). These data have been used to estimate the time of diversion of the peoples of Europe and Asia in the Pleistocenic era (4), emphasizing that these are phylogenically different peoples (5).

III. North & South Bharatiyas Share Tissue Antigens, Distinct From Those of Europeans

All diploid human cells express a set of proteins on their surfaces, HLA-A, B and C, which are unique to an individual. They are coded for in the major histocompatibility complex of genes (MHC class I) on chromosome 6. These are the proteins which are recognized as non-self by the immune system in transplant rejection, and are variously called transplant antigens, phynotypic markers, cell-surface markers, etc. All of these proteins in all persons have identical structures and functions, yet can be distinguished from others. Not all 6 class I antigens (3 each from paternal and maternal copies of chromosomes 6) may be unique to an individual; some are identical or similar. MHC class II proteins (DP, DQ, DR) are expressed by some immune system 869

cells only, but may be even more polymorphic.

Analysis of the DNA sequences coding for the different forms of these proteins (alleles) demonstrate that while populations which are closely related, geographically or through known migrations, show similarities in their class I and II MHC antigens, the Asians and the Europeans are distinct, separate but equal, peoples.

Conclusion: The stark lack of similarities in the gene pools of the Indian subcontinent and Europe, vividly evident in the mtDNA and the MHC complex, destroys any Aryan invasion notions, and confirms the genetic uniformity of peoples of the Indian subcontinent.

Credits I gratefully acknowledge research support from my dharmapatnee Dr. Ujwala Panse, professor of biochemistry, and our sukanya Kumaree Anjali Pans. [Note: Footnotes are referenced at the end following Bibliography.]

The following paragraphs, present an array of genetic studies, principally available on the internet (URLs presented as titles), highlighting the slippery nature of linking linguistic assumptions (often cited as evidence) with genetic changes observed in select population samples.

Section 7.2: A Review of some latest genetic studies.

http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/cesmg/peopling.html

This study already assumes that linguistic migrations have occurred into India and is not indicative of a scientific approach. The authors have collected data only in India with express intent of proving these migrations, not to test a hypothesis. The likely major migrations include 870

(i) Austric language speakers soon after 65,000 ybp, probably from northeast (ii) Dravidian speakers around 6,000 ybp from mideast with the knowledge of cultivation of crops like wheat and domestication of animals like cattle, sheep, goats (iii) Indo-European speakers in several waves after 4000 ybp with control over horses and iron technology (iv) Sino-Tibetan speakers in several waves after 6000 ybp with knowledge of rice cultivation.

This is in conformity with the current view that modern Homo sapiens populations underwent a first expansion within Africa around 100 kybp, and a second expansion outside Africa around 65 kybp. The Homo sapiens peopling India are then a part of this second expansion around 65 kybp - an expansion that may have occurred in southern China [Ballinger et al., 1992] or in or close to the Indian subcontinent itself [Mountain et al 1995].

While not contributing anything new, the authors, in fact, agree with Oppenheimer that the expansion 65,000 years ago may have occurred in the Indian subcontinent,

Gene analysis reveals people radiating out of the Middle East and the Orient This section is just a regurgitation of Cavalli-Sforza.

It is then very likely that Asian populations today represent two major radiations of people out of two centers of origin of cultivation, one in the middle-east. the other in China and Southeast Asia. If anything this proves Renfrews Anatolian theory not the mainstream theory of IEL expansion from southern Russia.

It is reasonable to assume that speakers of these four language families represent at least four major lineages [Parpola, 1974]. The first question to ask is whether these language families developed within the country, or came in with migrations of people from outside the subcontinent. The geographical range of distribution of Austric, Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan speakers is extensive; India harbours only a minority of the languages within these families. The 871

geographical range of distribution of Dravidian languages is however restricted largely to India; there are only two outlying populations - Brahui in Baluchistan and Elamic in Iran. Dravidian languages might then have developed within India, others are less likely to have done so, for we have no evidence of any major technological innovations that could have served to carry speakers of those languages outside India. The authors give themselves away in the preceding paragraph. They are assuming that hypothetical language families must correspond to real genetic lineages! And since most of the IEL are spoken outside India TODAY they could not have possibly originated in India! Why not?

http://www.genome.org/cgi/content/abstract/9/8/711

The above study has nothing to do with a migration of people around 1500 BCE into India. Analysis of molecular variance revealed that there was significant haplotypic variation between castes and tribes, but nonsignificant variation among r ranked caste clusters. The previous sentence just shows the endogamous nature of the varna system.

http://hpgl.stanford.edu/publications/AJHG_2003_v72_p313-332.pdf

This says the opposite of what the IEL sets out to prove about original homeland of speakers of IEL. H, L, and R2 are the major Indian Y chromosomal haplogroups that occur both in caste and in tribal populations an are rarely found outside the subcontinent. Haplogroup R1a, previously associated with the putative Indo-Aryan invasion was found but also in relatively high frequencies in (26%) in the Chenchu tribe. So no evidence of a migration from Central Asia here, This finding..southern and western Asia (not Central Asia or Europe) might be the source of this haplography. Taken togetherhave received limited gene flow since the Holocene.

http://www.biol.tsukuba.ac.jp/%7Emacer/chgp/chgp20.html 872

there is evidence that Dravidian speakers, who included settled agriculturists, predominated both northern and southern India. During the period 1500 B.C. to about 1100 A.D., (Dravidian Harappa!!!) north-west and northern India turned into a melting pot. The year 1500 B.C. saw the entry of Indo-Aryan speakers from Bactria and Iran.. It takes a leap of faith to accept this as scientific rigour.

http://www.genome.org/cgi/reprint/13/10/2277

the Dravidian tribals were possibly widespread before the arrival of Indo-European speaking nomads but retreated to southern India to avoid dominance. Dravidian harrapa once again! Cites the now rejected Bamashad (2001) study approvingly. http://sophistikatedkids.com/turkic/40%20Language/TurkicAndIEsEn.htm"This study shows that genetic distances between the European language families do not reflect their accepted linguistic relationships. If we group the language families by their linguistic origins, there should be a cluster of the Indo- European language families, Baltic and Slavic being most closely related, a separate branch for the Finnic and Ugric speakers, and separate coordinate branches for the Turkic, Semitic, and Basque language families. The genetic distances of some interphylum language-family pairs, such as those between Slavic and Ugric speakers, or between Turkic and Ugric speakers, however, are closer than some distances within a phylum, as between Greek and Celtic speakers or between Finnic and Ugric speakers. The low matrix correlation between genetics and language confirms the lack of agreement between presumed language phylogeny and the observed genetic distances."http://content.karger.com/company/BookDay_2.pdf http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Aktion=ShowFulltext&ProduktNr=\224224& Ausgabe=230394&ArtikelNr=80298#SA3>"This particular haplotype (HG16) has been identified in all the Finno-Ugric-speaking populations, but also in the adjacent IE-speaking Lithuanian and Latvian populations [61]. From the point of view of a correlative analysis, such geographically 873

close populations willcluster together genetically due to assumed admixture, BUT MAY BE ARTICIALLY KEPT SEPARATE ON THE LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS DIE TO THE LINGUISTS OVERWHELMING DESIRE TO CREATE A FAMILIAL CLASSIFICATION in which data subject to contact phenomena are excluded from the analysis or at best marginalized [65].(emphasis added)""Similarly, identification of autosomal gene frequency clines by the use of principle component analysis gives support of sorts to both a possible farming spread and a Kurganbased origin for IE itself in that the 1st principal component is centered on the Middle East and supports the former while the 3rd is centered North of the Caspian Sea around the traditional homeland of the Kurgan expansion [20, 89]."

DNA evidence points to an Indian homeland of Indo-European family of language In a trail blazing work prominent geneticist Stephan Oppenheimer has convincingly argued that all the non African peoples of the world have descended from the first Out of Africa Eve mtDNA strain known as L3 and the first Out of Africa Y chromosome line labeled as M168.Moreover, South Asia and in particular India has been a major location of flowering for L3 and M168 as they spread through out the rest of the world about 90,000 years before present. The story according to Oppenheimer (2003) is as follows. The African people carrying L3 and M168 left that continent across south Red sea across the southern part of the Arabian penninsula towards Pakistan and India. On the maternal side the mtDNA strain L3 split into two daughters which Oppenheimer labels Nasreen and Manju. While Manju was definitely born in India the birthplace of Nasreen is uncertain, tentatively placed by Oppenheimer in southern Iran or Baluchistan. Manju and Rohani (should be Rohini?), Nasreen's most prolific daughter both born in India are the progenitors of all non African peoples.The story on the paternal side is a lot more complex. M168 had three sons, of which Seth was the most important one. Seth had five sons named by Oppenheimer as Jahangir, H, I, G and Krishnna. Krishnna born in India turned out to be the most prolific of Seth's sons. Krishnnathrough his son Ho, grandson Ruslan through Polo, and great grandson M17 through Ruslan, played a major role in the peopling of South Asia, East Asia, Central Asia, Oceania and West Eurasia (see Appendix 2, p. 374-375 of Oppenheimer 874

2003). Oppenheimer (2003) hasthis to say about M17 and his father Ruslan:"For me and for Toomas Kivisild, South Asia is logically the ultimate origin of M17 and his ancestors; and sure enough we find highest rates and greatest diversity of the M17 line in Pakistan, India, and eastern Iran, and low rates in the Caucasus. M17 is not only more diverse in South Asia than in Central Asia but diversity *characterizes* its presence in isolated tribal groups in the south, thus undermining any theory of M17 as a marker of a `male Aryan Invasion of India', (p. 152).""Study of the geographical distribution and the diversity of genetic branches and stems again suggests that Ruslan, along with his son M17, arose early in South Asia, somewhere near India, and subsequently spread not only south-east to Australia but also north, directly toCentral Asia, before splitting east and west into Europe and East Asia (p. 153)." (Oppenheimer, Stephen (2003), "The Real Eve: Modern Man's Journey out ofAfrica," New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers.)

http://www.ias.ac.in/jgenet/Vol80No3/125.pdf

The first sentence reads Linguistic evidence suggest that West Asia and Central Asia have been the two major geographical sources of GENES in the contemporary Indian gene pool. (emphasis added). It is remarkable that conjectures of IEL are categorized as evidence !

http://www.angelfire.com/country/veneti/SkuljRelationship.html

The main feature of Indian society is caste and scholars speculate that something very like castes were in India even before the Aryan speakers entered India (Majumder 2001). Now, Geneticists have discovered that the upper castes are more similar to Europeans, particularly East Europeans, whereas lower castes are more similar to Asians. The higher the caste, the closer they are to East Europeans (Bamshad et. al., 2001).

They site the very well known and rejected Bamshad study. There are reasonable arguments 875

to support the debate (Ghosh, 1988). However, in such debates the scholars do not consider the close linguistic relationship between Sanskrit, the language of the Aryans and the Slavic languages of Europe and also of the present day genetic relationship of Aryans on the Indian sub-continent and the Slavs of Europe. In this paper, we will demonstrate the linguistic and genetic relationship between Aryans of the Indian sub-continent and Slavs of Europe. This is daring, but a failed enterprise, indeed.

http://www.ias.ac.in/jbiosci/nov2001/533.pdf

This one reads like a genuine scientific study until one encounters on page 9 Because the antiquities of the tribal populations are far greater than the time of entry (3000-4000 ybp) of Indo-Aryan speakers in India (how did they know THAT?), our data support Kivilisid et als (1999) conclusion that haplography U was introduced in India by an ancestral population that preceded the arrival of Indo-Aryan speakers into India. So how did they know that these speakers did arrive at all? The entry of human from these regions in India was through the northwestern corridor of India (Taper 1975!). We have therefore chosen to investigate

http://www.oxfordancestors.com/papers/mtDNA04%20DNALandscape.pdf

These Central Asian nomads probably from Most likely there arrival onto the Iranian plateau 40000 ybp brought the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family Assumes what the study sets out to prove. Page 12 The substantial Western Eurasian presence in the Indus valley and northwestern India MAY have been the result of repeated gene flow received from further west at different periods including the first Paleolithic arrivals.. So the author are not sure of the direction as well as the timing. Bamshad has been cited approvingly. They conclude by saying that the variations observed in the mtDNA may have been the result of pastoral nomads or Indo-Iranian speakers from the northwest. The IEL got to love this stuff.

876

http://evolutsioon.ut.ee/publications/Kivisild2000.pdf"Summing up, we believe that there are enough reasons not only to question a' recent Indo-Aryan' into India some 4000 B. P., but alternatively to consider India as a part of the common gene pool ancestral to the diversity of human maternal lineages in Europe."According to the Abstract Since Y chromosomal lineages of BOTH Aryan and Dravidian speaking populations are closer to Europe than the mtDNA is,it is only logical to conclude that the so called IE language family has migrated out of India."This again tells us that no large scale migrations from Central Asia has occurred at least any involving the presently Turkish speaking populations of this area among whom the frequency of haplogroup M is other wise close to that in India and in eastern Asians."The above is not very clear. Are they saying that Central Asians are closer to Indians than they are to eastern Asians? If so the similarities are again due to a migration out of India." Indian maternal gene pool has come largely through an autochthonous history since the late Pleistocene."

Continuity! Continuity! Continuity! - as opposed to invasions and migrations.The circle around Kashmir with arrows pointing out in all directions in Fig 31.3. Oppenheimer is against the northern routeout of Africa, tells a muddled story.http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Aktion=ShowPDF&ProduktNr=2242\5 0&Ausgabe=228324&ArtikelNr=57985&filename=57985.pdf"Since the Baltic Y-chromosomal haplogroup distribution more closely resembles that of Finno-Ugric than Indo-Europeanspeaking populations, we propose a hypothesis that Baltic males share a common Finno-Ugric ancestry." Transcripts of a 1997 PBS film:http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2120glang.htmlThe most splendid coincidence between linguistics and genetics occurs in the case of the Native Americans as expected. Historical linguistics works only when migration patterns are known before hand. Renfrew did not get much air time to speak of the archaeologicalsituation in North America."LUIGI CAVALLI-SFORZA: When we took all the (genetic) data from American natives, they clearly fell into three classes, and they correspond exactly to the linguistic families that have been postulated by Greenberg. Not only that, but thefamily which is most heterogeneous 877

of all genetically is the one that is linguistically more heterogeneous of all (parenthesis added)." don't know what to make of this one: Unravelling migrations in the steppe: mitochondrial DNA sequences from ancient Central Asians. (Lalueza Fox, Sampietro, Gilbert and others , Proceedings Biological Sciences, 5/7/2004, Vol. 271 Issue 1542, p941, 7p)

This study helps to clarify the debate on the Western and Eastern genetic influences in Central Asia. Thirty-six skeletal remains from Kazakhstan (Central Asia), excavated from different sites dating between the fifteenth century BC to the fifth century AD, have been analysed for the hypervariable control region (HVR-I) and haplogroup diagnostic single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the mitochondrial DNA genome. Standard authentication criteria for ancient DNA studies, including multiple extractions, cloning of PCR products and independent replication, have been followed. The distribution of east and west Eurasian lineages through time in the region is concordant with the available archaeological information: prior to the thirteenth-seventh century BC, all Kazakh samples belong to European lineages; while later an arrival of east Eurasian sequences that coexisted with the previous west Eurasian genetic substratum can be detected. The presence of an ancient genetic substratum of European origin in West Asia may be related to the discovery of ancient mummies with European features in Xinjiang and to the existence of an extinct Indo-European language, Tocharian. This study demonstrates the usefulness of the ancient DNA in unravelling complex patterns of past human migrations so as to help decipher the origin of present-day admixed populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigation of the Greek ancestry of populations from northern Pakistan, (Atika, Kehkashan, Shagufta and others, 2004).

Three populations from northern Pakistan, the Burusho, Kalash, and Pathan, claim descent from soldiers left behind by Alexander the Great after his invasion of the Indo-Pak subcontinent. 878

In order to investigate their genetic relationships, we analyzed nine Alu insertion polymorphisms and 113 autosomal microsatellites in the extant Pakistani and Greek populations. Principal component, phylogenetic, and structure analyses show that the Kalash are genetically distinct, and that the Burusho and Pathan populations are genetically close to each other and the Greek population. Admixture estimates suggest a small Greek contribution to the genetic pool of the Burusho and Pathan and demonstrate that these two northern Pakistani populations share a common Indo-European gene pool that probably predates Alexanders invasion. The genetically isolated Kalash population may represent the genetic pool of ancestral Eurasian populations of Central Asia or early Indo-European nomadic pastoral tribes that became sequestered in the valleys of the Hindu Kush Mountains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human Genetics Apr2004, Vol. 114 Issue 5, p484, 7p

DNA diversity of human populations from Eastern Europe and Siberia studied by multilocus DNA fingerprinting, (Shabrova, Khusnutdinov, Tarskaia and others).

Molecular Genetics & Genomics; Apr2004, Vol. 271 Issue 3, p291, 7p We used DNA fingerprinting with M13 phage DNA as a probe to estimate the degree of genomic variability and genetic relationships in a heterogeneous group of 13 populations from Eastern Europe and Siberia. The popultaions belong to three language families: Indo-European (Slavonic: Russians, Byelorussians), Uralic (Finno-Ugric: Maris, Mordvinians, Udmurts), and Altaic (Turkic: Bashkirs, Tatars, Chuvashes, Yakuts). Multivariate statistical analyses were used (multidimensional scaling, cluster, and multiple correspondence analyses), and coefficients of gene differentiation ( Gst?) were evaluated. The level of interpopulation subdivision in the various ethnic groups appeared to be different: the Byelorussian populations revealed no regional differences, in contrast to the Bashkir populations, which formed a heterogeneous group. The populations subdivided into three general clusters: Slavonic populations formed a separate tight cluster characterized by a minimal level of interpopulation diversity, Bashkir and 879

Yakut populations formed the second cluster, and the Finno-Ugric and several populations of the Turkic linguistic groups formed the third cluster. The robustness of these results obtained by different statistical data treatments reveals that multilocus DNA fingerprinting can be reliably used for population studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Independent Origins of Indian Caste and Tribal Paternal Lineages, (Cordaux, Robert, Bently et. Al.). http://www.eva.mpg.de/genetics/pdf/CordauxCurBiol2004.pdf Current Biology; Feb2004, Vol. 14 Issue 3, p231, 5pThe origins of the nearly one billion people inhabiting the Indian subcontinent and following the customs of the Hindu caste system are controversial: are they largely derived from Indian local populations (i.e. tribal groups) or from recent immigrants to India? Archaeological and linguistic evidence support the latter hypothesis, whereas recent genetic data seem to favor the former hypothesis. Here, we analyze the most extensive dataset of Indian caste and tribal Y chromosomes to date. We find that caste and tribal groups differ significantly in their haplogroup frequency distributions; caste groups are homogeneous for Y chromosome variation and more closely related to each other and to central Asian groups than to Indian tribal or any other Eurasian groups. We conclude that paternal lineages of Indian caste groups are primarily descended from Indo-European speakers who migrated from central Asia ~3,500 years ago. Conversely, paternal lineages of tribal groups are predominantly derived from the original Indian gene pool. We also provide evidence for bidirectional male gene flow between caste and tribal groups. In comparison, caste and tribal groups are homogeneous with respect to mitochondrial DNA variation , which may reflect the sociocultural characteristics of the Indian caste society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR; Copyright 2004 Elsevier]

Genetic affinity among five different population groups in India reflecting a Y-chromosome gene flow, (Saha, Sharma, Bhat and others).

Journal of Human Genetics; Jan2005, Vol. 50 Issue 1, p49, 3p 880

Four binary polymorphisms and four multiallelic short tandem repeat (STR) loci from the nonrecombining region of the human Y-chromosome were typed in different Indian population groups from Uttar Pradeh (UP), Bihar (BI), Punjab (PUNJ), and Bengal (WB) speaking the IndoAryan dialects and from South India (SI) with the root in the Dravidian language. We identified four major haplogroups [(P) 1+, (C and F) 2+, (R1a) 3, (K) 26+] and 114 combinations of Y-STR haplotypes. Analyses of the haplogroups indicated no single origin from any lineage but a result of a conglomeration of different lineages from time to time. The phylogenetic analyses indicate a high degree of population admixture and a greater genetic proximity for the studied population groups when compared with other world populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of Indian Population Based on Y-STRs Reveals Existence of Male Gene Flow across Different Language Groups. (Saha, Udhiyasuriyan, Bhat et. Al.):DNA & Cell Biology; Nov2003, Vol. 22 Issue 11, p707, 13p

A study of three different Y-specific microsatellites (Y-STRs) in the populations from Uttar Pradesh (UP), Bihar (BI), Punjab (PUNJ), and Bengal (WB), speaking modern indic dialects with its roots in Indo-Aryan language, and from South of India (SI), speaking the South Indian languages with their root in Dravidian language, has shown that the predominant alleles observed represent the whole range of allelic variation reported in different population groups globally. These results indicate that the Indian population is most diverse. The similarity between the allelic variants between the populations studied by others in Africa and Asia and in this study between WB, PUNJ, UP, BI, and SI are of interest. It demonstrates that these population groups, housed in eight states of the country in different geographic locations, broadly correspond with Indo-Aryan and Dravidian language families. Further, our analyses based on haplotype frequency of different marker loci and gene diversity reveals that none of the population groups have remained isolated from others. High levels of haplotype diversity exist in all the clusters of population. Nonsignificant results based on Markov chain steps and 881

Slatkin's linearized genetic distances indicate that there has been migration to and from in these population groups. However, some of the marginally significant interpopulation differences could be attributed to one or more of the castes with high diversity embedded within the population groups studied. Haplotype sharing between populations, F[sub ST] statistics, and phylogenetic analysis identifies genetic relatedness to be more between individuals belonging to two different states of India, WB and PUNJ, followed by UP and BI, whereas SI branched out separately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

HLA A19 subtypes and B loci related haplotype in selected caste groups from the Indian population (Shankarkumar)

Indian Journal of Human Genetics; Jan-Jun2003, Vol. 9 Issue 1, p13, 4p, 2 charts

The Indian population has been broadly classified as Aryans of Northern India and Dravidians of South India. The present study was undertaken to compile available data and investigate the genetic diversity of HLA A19 subtypes in Indians and its associated B locus haplotype frequency distribution at the population level. The study revealed that A33 was common among the selected North Indian caste groups (Aryans) while A31 was common among the selected South Indian caste groups (Dravidians). The haplotypes A33-B44 and A19-B35 were characteristic to Aryans while haplotypes A19-B22 and A19-B7 were characteristic to Dravidians. Further novel haplotypes such as A19-B14 and A33-B49 were unique to Parsis and Sourastran caste. A low frequency of A29 was observed among the A19 subtype repertoire. Prevalence of HLA A33 and A31 among North Indians (Aryans) and South Indians (Dravidians) along with their unique haplotypes may be a consequence of the founder effect, racial admixture or selection pressure due to environmental factors among this population, [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]. The premise of the study is wrong. Aryan and Dravidain are not racial but linguistic categories.

A population genetics perspective of the Indus Valley through uniparentally-inherited 882

markers, Annals of Human Biology; Mar/Apr2005, Vol. 32 Issue 2, p154, 9p.

McElreavy and Qunitana Murci

Analysis of mtDNA and Y-chromosome variation in the Indo-Gangetic plains shows that it was a region where genetic components of different geographical origins (from west, east and south) met. The genetic architecture of the populations now living in the area comprise genetic components dating back to different time-periods during the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic. mtDNA data analysis has demonstrated a number of deep-rooting lineages of Pleistocene origin that may be witness to the arrival of the first settlers of South and Southwest Asia after humans left Africa around 60?000 YBP. In addition, comparisons of Y-chromosome and mtDNA data have indicated a number of recent and sexually asymmetrical demographic events, such as the migrations of the Parsis from Iran to India, and the maternal traces of the East African slave trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Where West Meets East: The Complex mtDNA Landscape of the Southwest and Central Asian Corridor.

Quintana-Murchi, Chaix, Wells and others American Journal of Human Genetics; May 2004, Vol. 74 Issue 5, p827, 19p

The southwestern and Central Asian corridor has played a pivotal role in the history of humankind, witnessing numerous waves of migration of different peoples at different times. To evaluate the effects of these population movements on the current genetic landscape of the Iranian plateau, the Indus Valley, and Central Asia, we have analyzed 910 mitochondrial DNAs (mtDNAs) from 23 populations of the region. This study has allowed a refinement of the phylogenetic relationships of some lineages and the identification of new haplogroups in the southwestern and Central Asian mtDNA tree. Both lineage geographical distribution and spatial 883

analysis of molecular variance showed that populations located west of the Indus Valley mainly harbor mtDNAs of western Eurasian origin, whereas those inhabiting the Indo-Gangetic region and Central Asia present substantial proportions of lineages that can be allocated to three different genetic components of western Eurasian, eastern Eurasian, and south Asian origin. In addition to the overall composite picture of lineage clusters of different origin, we observed a number of deep-rooting lineages, whose relative clustering and coalescent ages suggest an autochthonous origin in the southwestern Asian corridor during the Pleistocene. The comparison with Y-chromosome data revealed a highly complex genetic and demographic history of the region, which includes sexually asymmetrical mating patterns, founder effects, and female-specific traces of the East African slave trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2156-526.pdfhttp://vetinari.sitesled.com/india.pdf Our reappraisal indicates that pre Holocene and Holocene-era-not Indo-European expansion have shaped the distinctive South Asian Y chromosome landscape (Sengupta et. Al. 2005, Abstract). In other words, there is no evidence whatsoever to conclude that Central Asia has been necessarily the recent donor and NOT THE RECEPTOR of the R1a lineages (Sengupta et. Al, 2005, p. 17, emphasis added). http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0507714103v1 The sharing of some Y-chromosomal haplogroups between Indian and Central Asian populations is most parsimoniously explained by a deep, common ancestry between the two regions, with diffusion of some Indian-specific lineages northward (abstract). Rather the high incidence of R1* and R1a throughout Central Asian and East European populations (without R2 and R* in most cases) is more parsimoniously explained by gene flow in the opposite direction possibly with an early founder effect in South or West Asia (p. 4). A pre-Neolithic chronology for the origins of Indian Y chromosomes is also supported by the lack of a clear delineation between DR (Dravidian) and IE (Indo-European) speakers (p. 5, 884

parentheses added). It is not necessary, based on the current evidence, to look beyond South Asia for the origins of the paternal heritage of the majority of Indians at the time of the onset of settled agriculture. The perennial concept of people, culture, language, and agriculture arriving to India through the northwest corridor does not hold up to close scrutiny (Sahoo et al. 2005, p. 5). Section 7.3: Indo-European House of Cards

IE theorists like to circumvent the genetic evidence by "arguing" thatthe dates of IE dispersal (about 6000 BCE) are far too recent. However thosedates are part of the problem not the solution!http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/%7Etraub/sloan/RenfrewXPM.pdf"In some cases however, an assumed chronology for the development of Indo-European languages from ProtoIndo-European is used as a basis for further comparison when in fact, the Indo European chronology in question depends on a view ofIndo-European origins which can scarcely be regarded as secularlyestablished (Renfrew 2000, p. 14).""What has always filled me (Dixon) with wonder is the assurance with whichmany historical linguists assign a date to their reconstructedlanguage....Why couldn't proto-Indo European have been spoken about 10,500 years ago... The received opinion of a date of 6000 bp... is an ingrained one. I(Dixon) have found this matter difficult even to discuss. Yet it does seem to be ahouse of cards (Dixon 1997 in Renfrew 2000, p. 15)."

Part 2: Bharatiya Language Studies

Section 8: Studies Needed to Delineate the Indo in Indo-European

One reason why IE linguistics has become an unfalsifiabile discipline is because of the ignorance of I in the IE. This gap in knowledge has to be filled by continuing the tradition of Bhasha Siksha through researches in evolution of Bharatiya languages from Proto-Vedic. This 885

will help us to break-away from the Eurocentric modes of IEL while establishing the reality of bhasha as a particular example in general semantics.We have great pleasure in excerpting the following notes from MD Srinivas' on Indian tradition in science, with particular reference to linguistics. He makes the beautiful statement: What is true is what is actually spoken in the real world. This recognition of the Bhasha is the core of bharatiya Siksha, of studies in philology related to bharatiya languages. Let us call it Bharatiya Bhasha Siksha.

Any study of the Indian tradition of science has to start with linguistics. This is true not only because linguistics is the earliest of Indian sciences to have been rigorougly systematized but also because this systematization became the paradigm example for all other sciences. Like all sciences and arts in India, linguistics finds its first expression in the Vedas. For most of the Indian sciences, the elements of study and the categories of analysis were established in the Vaidika period, and the basic data was collected and preliminary systematization achieved simultaneously. Thus for the science of linguistics, we find, in the Siksha and pratisakhya texts associated with the various Vedas, a complete and settled list of phonemes appropriately classified into vowels, semi-vowels, sibilants and the five groups of five consonants, all arranged according to the place of articulation that moves systematically from the throat to the lips. Phonetics and phonology are, therefore, taken for granted by all post- Vaidika authorities on etymology (nirukta) and grammar (vyakarana), including Yaska and Panini. In the pratisakhya literature we also find the morpho-phonemic (sandhi) rules and much of the methodology basic to the later grammatical literature. Indian linguistics finds its rigorous systematization in Panini's Ashtadhyayi. The date of this text, like that of much of the early Indian literature, is yet to be settled with certainty. But it is not later than 500 BC. In Ashtadhyayi, Panini achieves a complete characterization of the Sanskrit language as spoken at his time, and also specifies the way it deviated from the Sanskrit of the Vedas. Using the sutras of Panini and a list of the root words of the Sanskrit language (dhatupatha), it is possible to generate all possible valid utterances in Sanskrit. This is of course the main thrust of the generative grammars of today that seek to achieve a grammatical description of language through a formalized set of derivational strings. 886

In fact, till the western scholars began studying generative grammars in the recent past, they failed to understand the significance of Ashtadhyayi: till then Paninian sutras for them were merely artificial and abstruse formulations with little contentScience in India starts with the assumption that truth resides in the real world with all its diversity and complexity. For the linguist, what is ultimately true is the language as spoken by the people in all their diverse expressions. As Patanjali emphasizes, valid utterances are not manufactured by the linguist but are already established in the practice in the world. One does not go to a linguist asking for valid utterances, the way one goes to a potter asking for pots. Linguists make generalizations about the language spoken. These generalizations are not the truth behind or above the reality of the spoken language. These are not idealizations according to which reality is to be tailored. On the other hand what is true is what is actually spoken in the real world, and some part of the truth always escapes our idealization of it. There are always exceptions. It is the business of the scientist to formulate these generalizations, but also at the same time to be always attuned to the reality, to always be conscious of the exceptional nature of each specific instance. This attitude, as we shall have occasion to see, permeates all Indian science and makes it an exercise quite different from the scientific enterprise of the West. [From MD Srinivas, 2005, The Indian tradition in science and technology: an overview, in: P. Parameswaran, ed., National Resurgence in India, Thiruvananthapuram, Bharatheeya Vichara Kendram, pp. 52-62.]Method of this monograph based on Bharatiya knowledge systems (triad of sruti-tantrayukti-anubhuti) to substantiate Proto-Vedic Continuity Theory

The task of Indian Linguistics or exponents of Bharatiya Bhasha Siksha is to unravel the evolution of the languages of Bharatam from Proto-Vedic. Panini takes off from a much later period related to Sanskrit as an evolution from Vedic. The challenge is to comprehend the reality of the Vedic and the substratum reality of bhasha in the `real world'. We have some leads in Manu, in Bharata's Natya S'astra and in Bhartrihari's Vakyapadiya. There is a clear reference to mleccha vacas as connoting the spoken language of the real world differentiated from the written word, arya vacas in the millennia prior to the Common Era.The challenge of Bharatiya 887

Bhasha Siksha is to delineate the contours of mleccha vacas as it evolved into Munda, Tamil, Vedic, Sanskrit, Prakrits, Pali, Ardhamagadhi, Apabhrams'a, Sauraseni and many other currentday languages of Bharatam. The contours will certainly expand into regions beyond the presentday frontiers of Bharatam and extend into the states of Burma, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Austro-Asiatic regions extending upto Tasmania in Western Australia. The presence of Sanskrit inscriptions in these regions together with the presence of Prakrit/Pali inscriptions in Bharatam and Srilanka should provide the leads for the inquiry with tentative generalizations and keen devotion to evidence through observations of the real world of spoken language.We have remarkable bharatiya research methodologies in the trivarga of s'rutitantrayukti-anubhuti to accomplish these researches into bharatiya bhasha and to generalize on the reality of the spoken languages of Bharatam as they evolved in semantic expansion, from time to time. [See: Kalyanaraman, 2005, A research methodology manual based on bharatiya knowledge systems, ethos and traditions, : P. Parameswaran, ed., National Resurgence in India, Thiruvananthapuram, Bharatheeya Vichara Kendram, pp. 224-246.]Such an approach will be an effective answer to the unfalsifiability of IE linguistics which ignores the I in the IE. A classic example is the recent discovery of a kentum language known as proto Bangani in India.

http://www.bharatvani.org/books/ait/ch32.htm Section 9: Study of Prakrits from Paleolithic Times

Varna and jaati are two ways to look at the social structure of a community as it evolved from Paleolithic times. Unfortunately, in many studies, the two terms have been distorted beyond recognition by theorists and politicians alike. The equation of varna and jaati, is, in our view, an unfalsifiability of IE linguistics using bogus semantics. Varna is a choice, a classification such as in varna-maala, vowels and consonants classified by places of articulation in human speech. Another example is in the compound: su-varn.a that is, su 'good', varn.a 'colour. As Gita notes, this is done, gun.akarma vibha_gas'ah (by nature and action). Therefore when applied to characterisation of people groups, varna refers to the professions performed. We have noted 888

that jaati which occurs early in Panini and Patanjali's Yogasutra refers to a nation in the phrase, jaati-des'a (to distinguish a larger entity in relation to, say, a region, des'a as a description of locus). Sure, the root for jaati is 'jan', birth. The derivative jaati is simply a reference to 'beings' as in Darwin's evolutionary scheme of things -- 'beings' in living space, hence 'born or created'.

A paradigm shift in language studies of Bharatam will involve the study of Prakrit languages as the spoken idiom which evolved continuously from Paleolithic times (exemplified by Nahali Nagari?), analogous to the Paleolithic Continuity Theory formulated by Mario Alinei for studying the evolution of Indo-European languages.

Section 9.1: Contributions of artisans (gan.a) to language evolution

Contrary to Aryan invasion or migration or trickle-in theories, a cultural identity can be delineated as speakers of dialects and languages which differentiated in a linguistic area which evolved continuously from Proto-Vedic, Paleolithic times. BB Lal provides an insight of continuity in southern bharat Neolithic in southern bharat sites. The presence of jaina/bauddha sites close to mineral-metal sites on Krishna river basin, the presence of iron smelters of 19th cent. BCE on ganga basin (Rakesh Tiwari), the continuity of sarasvati hieroglyphs on some potsherds of southern bharat megalithic sites (BB Lal), the presence ofvel.ir in sangam text claiming descent of 49 generations from Dwaraka also point to the continuity all over bharat in the so-called dravidian and so-called munda language areas; this reinforces the continuity of the linguistic area starting from 6500 BCE when the s'ankha workmanship was found. Figure 6, Damaged circular clay furnace, comprising iron slag and tuyeres and other waste materials stuck with its body, exposed at lohsanwa mound, Period II, Malhar, District Chandauli.

Recent excavations in Uttar Pradesh have turned up iron artefacts, furnaces, tuyeres and slag in layers radiocarbon dated between c. BC 1800 and 1000. This raises again the question of whether 889

iron working was brought in to India during supposed immigrations of the second millennium BC, or developed independently. (Rakesh Tiwari, 2003, The origins of iron-working in India: new evidence from the Central Ganga Plain and the Eastern Vindhyas)http://antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/tewari/tewari.pdf

The shape of the smelter is comparable to the copper/bronze furnaces found at Harappa.

Large updraft kiln of the Harappan period (ca. 2400 BCE) found during excavations on Mound E Harappa, 1989 (After Fig. 8.8, Kenoyer, 2000) bharatiyo = a caster of metals; a brazier; bharatar, bharatal, bharatal. = moulded; an article made in a mould; bharata = casting metals in moulds; bharavum = to fill in; to put in; to pour into (G.lex.) bhart = a mixed metal of copper and lead; bhart-i_ya_ = a barzier, worker in metal; bhat., bhra_s.t.ra = oven, furnace (Skt.)

These examples in metallurgy and glimpses of contributions of artisans (gan.a) are presented to provide a perspective on the nature of the vra_tya, the mleccha who were contributors to the civilization which emerged on the banks of Rivers Sarasvati and Ganga with extensive contacts in neighbouring civilizational areas such as Mesopotamia established by artisans in search of minerals and metals to create new alloys. The findings also indicate that the civilization went through a metals age (bronze working and iron workings circa 1800 BCE) questioning the received wisdom of chalcolithic-bronze-iron sequences in metals technology evolving out of the lithic times. There were yajnika and there were vra_tya who find a mention in Atharva Veda and in Jaina texts.

Section 9.2: Prakrit languages and Jaati: Introduction

Two dominant cultural unity markers of itihaasa bharati or Hindu civilisation which evolved indigenously are: 1. languages of Sanskrit and Prakrits and 2. ja_ti. The cultural idiom expressed by these markers are related to the core doctrines of vrata, dharma, r.n.a., yoga and 890

karma. Sanskrit and Prakrits are the grammatically-correct and spoken streams flowing out of the interactions among munda, dravidian and indo-aryan dialects operating in a linguistic area circa 5000 years Before Present. In ancient Bharatiya texts, mleccha, a Prakrit, was recognised as an early speech form, a dialect referred to in S'atapatha Brahman,a and Mahabharata, a dialect which required a translator for a Mesopotamian transacting with a sea-faring Meluhha merchant of Saptasindhu region. Ja_ti is an extended kinship group which evolved out of the interactions related to the core doctrines. No wonder, Maha_vi_ra explains jaina ariya dhamma in mleccha (ardhama_gadhi_, apabhramsa), which differentiates into the present-day language kaleidoscope of Bharat. The Meluhhan being introduced carries an antelope on his arm -- a semantic and phonetic determinant. Cylinder seal impression,. Akkadian, 3rd millennium BCE, Sumerian tibira, tabira (Akkadian. LU2 URUDU-NAGAR =. "[person] copper-carpenter"); a word indicating borrowing from a substrate. In Pkt. tambira = copper. The substrate language was Meluhhan! ml.ekh = goat (Brahui); mr..eka, me_ka (Telugu); rebus: milakkhu copper (Pali); mlecchamukha id. (Sanskrit.)].

Section 9.3: Ja_ti in Bharatiya tradition

An organized church never emerged in Hindu civilization. An extended kinship group called ja_ti has always been a more dominant institution than the state in hindu society which is governed by a doctrine of rebirth in all pantha-s or samprada_ya-s, be they s'aiva, vais.n.ava, buddha or jaina. The multitude of people are aware of the literary tradition of millennia thanks to messages carried by haridas, puranik, gondhali, chitra-kathi, the folk entertainers conveying the pura_n.a and itiha_sa, interspersed with simple transmission of profound spiritual wisdom from the philosophical treatises, explaining the doctrines of dharma, r.n.a, karma, yoga and vrata. The contacts with the intolerant and uncompromising monotheistic religions also helped in strengthening the hindu identity and the pan-bharatiya cultural traditions related to tirthasthana-s 891

and divinities who were ordinary men and women who attained divinity.

Notable is the surprising flexibility of the apparently inflexible varn.a system which, while maintaining the four or five classes of society permitted changes in the ja_ti included in each class or varn.a. In descriptive documents of ancient or mediaeval Sanskrit or Prakrit of Des'i literature, a majority of ja_ti are given names derived from their professions or functions such as sonar, lohar, kunbi (or, kummari). "The Madhyandina Shukla Yajurvedi Brahmins of Maharashtra were well-known traders and money-lenders in pre-British times; the commerce of the whole of eastern Maharashtra was in their hands. People belonging to Brahmin castes have been rulers at various times and in various parts of India (Narmadeshwar Prasad, The Myth of the Caste-System, pp. 68, 72, 80 etc.)...King Harsha belonged to the Vaishya caste, who are supposed to be traders by profession. The Kayastha, who as a caste of scribes, were dismissed contemptuously in a Sanskrit drama (Mudrarakshasa), as of no importance, succeeded in establishing a dynasty in Bengal, (Basham, The wonder that was India, Grove Press, Inc., New York, 1954, p. 1, fn.; p. 47)." (Irawati Karve, 1961, Hindu Society an interpretation, Poona, Deccan College, p. 40). Linguistic regions which poossess written literature which is at least 2000 years old, have been a cultural reality of Bharat, nurturing cultural togetherness, governed by an in-marrying caste defining the linguistic region.

Irawati Karve contests the received wisdom that the proliferation of ja_ti in Bharat is the result of fission, sub-fission, sub-sub-fission of a limited number of varn.a (differentiated by occupation or function). The alternative view offered by her is that ja_ti is an extended family or kin group, an endogamous kinship, normally tied to a hereditary occupation and that the birth of ja_ti as an institution, precedes the birth of varn.a framework. The absorption of age-old ja_ti with a stunning variety and coexistence of a multiplicity of behavioural patterns related to indicators such as eating habits, cooking habits, modes or foci of worship, into varn.a society was an artificial ideology unrelated to historical reality.

892

Varn.a means class just as its use in grammar denotes a class of speech sounds resulting in a varn.ama_la (a garland of sounds) without a connotation of rank or status. Early classifications were: brahma and ks.atra or ra_janya with the third class made up of vis', that is, all the subjects. This word later came to mean vais'ya varn.a. It is to be noted that all the three classes had common divinities and common modes of worship. It is not uncommon to find categories such as arya vais'ya, arya id.iga, affirming that arya is not a class connotation but an adjective connoting a nobility of character. The expression vis'am-pati connoting a king indicates that the early meaning of the word vis' meant 'the human multitude', thus leading to the possibility that there were only two varn.abrahmin and ra_janya (mantra-chanters and shining ones). The word varn.a may derive from vr., to chose and hence, varn.a meant 'chosen ones', everyone else was vis', the multitude. The pre-existent ja_ti with different parts of a city or town or village alloted to different functionaries (just as Toda, Badaga or Kota of Nilgiris have specialised occupations), fused into a varna institution. The markets to which the Orissa Gond, Koya, Bhatra, Saora and Porja came made them interact. Such interactions of tribes dispersed over a large area may explain the emergence of Prakrits as the lingua franca and the later-day differentiation of the languages of Bharat. A good example is the Gurjara trib wihc has categories such as: maratha and rajput clans, muslim gujar, gujar agriculturists, gujar nomads, gujar traders spread over Rajputana and Maharashtra, Punjab, Delhi. The story of evolution of Prakrits, from circa 3500 BCE, into the languages of Bharat resulting in the linguistic reorganization of Bharat after Independence has not yet been fully told.

Buddhaghos.a's Dhammapada Atta Katha (ca. 400 CE) narrates the story of King Mahanama, cousin of Buddha who had a daughter called Vasabhakhattiya born of a maid named Nagamunda. Vasabhakhattiya became a queen of King Pasenadi and had a son called Vidudabha who ordered Mahanama to eat in the same plate with him. Mahanama took permission to take a bath before eating, went to the river and drowned himself. This is how the Sakya clan ended. The same Atta Katha has a story related to King Udayana of Kosambi. Udayana's mother was a kshatriya princess. She was lifted lifted by a giant bird from the flat roof 893

of the palace and dropped in the Himalayan forest. She hid in the branches of a tree. A man tried to rescue her. She declined because she was afraid that he might be of a ja_ti different from her own. The man responded that he was a kshatriya and convinced her about his being a kshatriya by showing a secred sign. She then came down and accepted his help. The use of the word ja_ti in this story is significant.

Section 9.4: Vrata as a natural way of life, a framework for ja_ti

The history of this word shows the evolution of hindu thought. It meant a 'path, way' in the R.gveda. It meant a function. It meant a function chosen or a natural function. (VM Apte, All about vrata in R.gveda, Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute, Poona, Vol. II, June 1942; W. Norman Brown, The basis for the Hindu act of Truth, Review of Religion, November 1940, Vol. V, No. 1, p. 37). It was everyone's duty to go by one's vrata, the chosen, natural way of life. "A carpenter, following his vrata, wishes for a break in a chariot, a surgeon wishes for a maimed one, a Brahmin for a patron who will engage him to press soma...In the same way (equipped) with wood (fuel), bird's feathers (for dusting), stone (an anvil) and flames (fire), a goldsmith seeks out a man who has gold to be worked...I, a poet; my father, a surgeon; my mother, milling grain; we with different thoughts, as we seek wealth follow each our vrata, as a herdsman follows his cows. In the same way a draught-horse desires a chariot easy to draw...the phallus desires a hairy cleft (woman's organ), the frog desires water." (RV 9.112: r.s.i S'is'u a_ngi_rasa) (cf. W. Norman Brown, op cit.)

na_na_nam va_ u no dhiyo vi vrata_ni jana_na_m taks.a_ ris.t.am rutam bhis.ag brahma_ sunvantam icchati_ndra_yendo pari srava (9.112.1) jarati_bhir os.adhi_bhih parn.ebhih s'akuna_na_n karma_ro as'mabhir dyubhir hiran.yavantam icchati_ndra_yendo pari srava (9.112.2) ka_rur aham tato bhishag upalapraks.i_n.i_ nana_ na_na_dhiyo vasu_yavo nu ga_ iva tasthimendra_yendo pari srava (9.112.3) 894

as'vo vol.ha_ sukham rram hasana_m upamantrin.ah s'epo roman.vantau bhedau va_r in man.d.u_ka icchati_ndra_yendo pari srava (9.112.4)

Satyavrata was a person who would live by truth; patrivrata was devoted to her pati, husband; anuvrata was a person who would perform his duties. It was a vow. It was a duty incumbent upon a certain position or station in life, an a_s'rama dharma. The vrata of a river was to flow. A Buddha story refers to satya-kriya_, an act of truth. "King Ashoka inquired if anybody in his kingdom would perform an act of truth. No Brahmin or monk or Kshatriya came forward to do it. At last a courtesa, Indumati by name, came forward and before the assembled multitude made the mighty river Ganga flow upstream...'But even I, wicked woman that I am, possess an act of truth, by means of which, should I so desire, I could turn the world of men and the worlds of the gods upside down...Your Majesty, whoever gives me money, be he a noble (khattiya) or brahmin or a merchant (vessa) or a serf (sudda) or of any other caste soever, I treat them all exactly alike. If he be a noble I make no distinction in his favour. If he be a serf, I despise him not. Free alike from fawning and contempt, I serve the owner of the money. This, Your Majesty, is the act of truth by which I caused the mighty Ganga to flow upstream.'" (W. Normn Brown, loc.cit.)

In Irawati Karve's view, ja_ti differentiation and distribution is an extension of the tribe in bharatiya society. She also extends the association of occupations with ja_ti as a continuation of the R.gvedic tradition of vrata. In the evolution of the hindu civilization world-view, what started as a personal function became a notion of duty, karma (action) as one's dharma (duty). Irawati Karve indicates the Truth Act (satyakriya_) as the connecting link through the R.gveda, Buddha and Jaina literature and even in the tales recorded in historical periods in Tamil and other Prakrit languages. There are also ja_ti clusters with occupations like carpenters, brass-pot-makers, ironsmiths, goldsmiths designating themselves as a group of 'artisans' (say, the five panca_la or pancakamma_l.a).

895

It can be hypothesised that such a clustering was in vogue in the days of the Sarasvati Civilization, that is circa 5000 years Before Present. "To what extent the rural area of these civilizations harboured specialists we do not know. In many developed societies even today the actual cultivator continues to perform a wide variety of occupations within his own family. Extreme specialization within rural society appears to be a distinctive characteristic of India. In addition to the basic producers of food who are also specialists --- the agriculturists, fisher-folk, cattle-raisers, shepherds, etc. there are to be found in the villages other specialists like skilled artisans, purveyors of many types of services, landlords and merchants...These services consist of shaving, supplying ropes, repairing ploughs or making new ploughs, supplying earthe pots, playing music and dancing before the godess at a festival, supplying iron implements like ploughshares, axes etc. or repairing them, making new footwear and repairing them, officiating at rituals, serving as village accountant and scribe, and lastly, lowly offices such as removing dead cattle from the village habitation area or acting as messenger, village crier and watchman...we find that specialization in the sense of possessing a learnt skill is found only in the case of the artisans...sonar (goldsmith), lohar (ironsmith), sutar (carpenter)...caste-clusters" (Irawati Karve, opcit., pp. 37-39). Tukaram, the poet, was maratha-wani by caste, but he called himself a kunbi, a ja_ti cluster classed as s'u_dra varn.a. "...as late as in 1921, the Census Commissioner reported that the Daivadnya Sonar claimed to be Daivadnya Brahmin, that the panchal Sutar claimed to be Vishwa Brahmin, the Jingar asserted that they should be described as Somavamshi Arya Kshatriya and Patwegars wanted to be called Somavamshi Sahasrarjuna Kshatriya." (Census of India, 1921, Vol. VIII, Part I, Appendix C, p. viii; loc.cit., Irawati Karve, 1961, p. 44).

"To sum up, (1) the caste is an extended kin-group spread over a definite region. (2) It is never self-sufficient like a tribe because it is specialized generally in one type of occupation. (3) This deficiency is made good by many castes coming together in a village and being bound up in a pattern of mutual duties, obligations and rights. (4) Castes are arranged in a hierarchical order which however leaves some freedom for particular castes to strive for higher positions. (5) The 896

caste society allows new units to come into its web at a time and in a position which is largely indeterminate. (5) Castes remain in peripheral contact with each other, with very large freeom for each caste to follow what it considers to be its traditional pattern. (7) It illustrates the agglomerative character of the whole Hindu society. The society is not a product of continuous splitting of something whih was a unit but has arisen out of a loose coming together of many separate cultural entities. (8) Historically this pattern might have existed even before the Aryans came, who merely took it up and perpetuated it. (9) This type of society of juxtaposed groups seems to have arisen at a time when different people came together without any single people being strong enough to impose its political or cultural domination. Most of these societies might have been tribal in nature and each retained its separate character in the new set up. (10) This society continued to exist in its old pattern as it had (a) the elasticity to accommodate ever new elements and (b) offered security through a long period of political insecurity and foreign domination. (11) The philosophical systems developed very early in the history of this society, while truly objective, were also at the same time such as to offer a complete justification of the most important aspects of this society. (12) Besides the ideal structure erected by this society its mode of internal articulation made it possible to survive outside attacks and internal schisms. The greatest challenge to this society has come in the modern times (a) when Britain welded it into one political entity for the first time in its long history, (b) when it gained freedom from the forein power as one nation and adopted a democratic constitution, and finally (c) when it is hoping to adopt the modern technology, (Irawati Karve, opcit., pp. 129-130).

The history of languages in Bharat and the history of ja_ti in Bharat are two sides of a cultural unity, the same cultural idiom related to the doctrines of vrata, dharma, r.n.a., yoga and karma. No wonder, Maha_vi_ra explains jaina ariya dhamm in mleccha. Mleccha of the linguistic area circa 5000 years Before Present with an intense interaction among munda, Dravidian, and indoaryan dialects, differentiates into the present-day language kaleidoscope of Bharat.

[Kalyanaraman, Srinivasan, 2005, Prakrit Languages and Jaati, in: Rita D. Sharma and Adarsh 897

Deepak, eds., 2005, Contemporary Issues in constructive Dharma, Volume II: Epistemology and Hermeneutics, Hampton, Virginia, Deepak Heritage Books. See also Sarasvati hieroglyphs decoded as mleccha, summaries athttp://spaces.msn.com/members/sarasvati97 ]

Section 10: What is proto-Vedic?

Section 10.1: The futile seach for substratum and adstratum in Indo-Aryan

The hunt for substratum and adstratum in "Indo-Aryan" presuposses thefollowing:1. The current genetic tree model of "Indo-European" languages is true2. All other models of language development are false3. The so called "Indo-Aryan" languages are necessarily foreign intheir present locations.

There is no agreement among scholars about what is native and what is foreign in IndoAryan languages because of the subjective nature of this decision. According to Emeneau (1980) vocabulary loans from Dravidian into Indo-Aryan] are in fact all merely 'suggestions.' Unfortunately, all areal etymologies are in the last analysis unprovable, are 'acts of faith', ...It is always possible, e.g. to counter a suggestion of borrowing from one of the indigenous language families by suggesting that there has been borrowing in the other direction (p. 177)." Kuiper (1955) had detected 380 loan words in the Rig Veda.

"But P. Thieme (1994) examined and rejected Kuiper's list in toto, gave Indoaryan or Sanskrit etymologies for most of these words, and characterized Kuiper's exercise as an example of a misplaced "zeal for hunting up Dravidian loans in Sanskrit". In general, Thieme sharplyrejects the tendency to force Dravidian or Austric etymologies onto Indoaryan words, and insists (1992) that "if a word can be explained easily from material extant in Sanskrit itself, there is little chance for such a hypothesis."Rahul Peter Das (a believer in the Aryan invasion theory), likewise rejects (1994) Kuiper's list, and emphasises that there is "not a single case in which a communis 898

opinio has been found confirming the foreign origin of a Rgvedic (and probably Vedic in general) word (Talageri 2000)."

http://www.bharatvani.org/books/rig/ch7.htm

These contradictory findings have lead Bryant (1999) to conclude: "The hypothesis of a preIndo-Aryan linguistic substratum remains a perfectly acceptable way of explaining the existence of the non-Indo-European features in Sanskrit. Particularly significant in this regard is the nonIndo-Aryan nature of the terms for the flora of the Northwest. But this is not the only model. As I have attempted to outline, the possibility of spontaneous development for many of the innovated syntactical features, coupled with the possibility of an adstratum relationship between Draidian and Sanskrit for features that are undoubtedly borrowings, are the most obvious alternative possibilities. In conclusion, in my opinion, the theory of Indo-Aryan migrations into the Indian subcontinent must be primarily established without doubt ON OTHER GOUNDS (emphasis in original) to be fully conclusive. The apparent 'evidence' of a linguistic substratum in Indo-Aryan, in and of itself, cannot be used as a decisive arbitrator in the debate over Indo-Aryan origins (p. 80)."

We propose that proto-Vedic has resulted from interactions between prakrit (Indo-Aryan), Dravidian and Munda languages since Neolithic times. There are indications that Munda could be ancestral to the Austro Asiatic language family. The model is depicted in Figure 1.

Proto Vedic

Prakrit (Indo 899

Aryan) Munda (Austric) Dravidian Vedic Figure 1: The Emergence of Vedic

"Grierson, in the introduction to the Linguistic Survey of India, at first doubted whether languages with such an opposite 'order of ideas' as Munda and Mon-Khmer could be related at all (1904:2). Schmidt (1906) established their genetic relationship, and Pinnow (1959 et passim) has removed all reasonable doubts. But there remain disagreements about what protoAustroasiatic was like, and therefore about the polar opposition of Munda and the eastern Austroasiatic lanuages came about "Munda languages have been seen as genetically related not only to Mon-Khmer, but also Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, Burushaski, Nihali, Vedda and geographically remote head-last languages like Finno-Ugric, Turkic, Australian, Basque, and Japanese, by linguists who found deep similarities in Munda. {A bibliography is in Pinnow, Heinz-Jurgen, 1959, Versuch einer historischen Lautlehre der Kharia-Sprache, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, pp. 480-486.}

"Munda structures are far more various and cognates far fewer than in Dravidian, and likewise than in eastern Austroasiatic. This suggests that the Austroasiatic people may have dispersed from South Asia rather than South-East Asia, and that the shift of Munda from rising to falling rhythm, after the eastern languages had moved eastward, may have been the cause rathern then the effect of the profound polarization of South and South-East Asian language structures (Doengan and Stampe, 2002)

<http://www.degruyter.de/journals/ysall/2004/pdf/2004_3.pdf>

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Section 10.2: Sansrkit and Prakrit

Sanskrit and Prakrits are two cultural streams, two stylisic variants of bharatiya speech, which have come down from the days of r.s.i-s of R.gveda, Maha_vi_ra and Gautama Buddha, and which have nourished Hindu civilization through Vedic, Ardhama_gadhi and Pali dialectical continuum, operating through a linguistic area in Saptasindhu region where early speakers of Munda, Dravidian and Indo-Aryan dialects should have interacted circa 5000 years Before Present. Both Ardhama_gadhi and Pali are dialects of Magadha, the region walked by both Maha_vi_ra and Gautama Buddha. Even the early Tamil inscriptions have been influenced by Ardhama gadhi, resulting in the development of bi-lingualism or even tri-lingualism as a panbharatiya phenomenon, if apabhrams'a dialects are deemed to be popularised Sanskrit forms of speech. Namisa_dhu who comments on Rudrat.a's Ka_vya_lamka_ra (2.12) notes that the basis (prakr.ti) of Prakrit dialects is the natural current language of the 'people', ungoverned by the rules of grammar, (sakala-jagajjantu_na_m vya_karan.a_dibhir ana_hita samska_rah sahajo vacana vya_pa_hah prak.tih tatra bhavam saiva va_ pra_kr.tam; cf. Pischel, Comparative grammar of Prakrit languages, 9, p.7) Thus, the critical differentiation between Sanskrit and Prakrit is in the adherance or non-adherance to rules of grammar, say, as prescribed by Panini for Sanskrit. Prakrits are living speeches which evolved as dialects and had, in a remarkable build-up of language regions (S'auraseni_, Ma_ha_ra_s.t.ri_, Ma_gadhi_, Munda, Santali, Tamil (Damila) etc.), raised to a literary level on par with Sanskrit which tontinued to have a grammatical uniformity right from the days of Panini's grammar.

Phonological features such as retroflex consonants, consonant clusters (e.g., mahadda_nam, marudbhih, saccaritram, tat.t.i_ka) resulting in consonant geminates, non-presence of plosive consonants in word final positions, voicing, omission of single intervocalic stops point to similarities between Dravidian and Indo-Aryan Prakrits. Some scholars tend to explain retroflex sounds as regular phonetic development in Indo-Aryan from earlier dentals. Some scholars opine that Proto-Munda may not have had retroflex sounds since Sora lacks them. But, the 901

large presence of retroflex consonants in Prakrits point to the influence of local speakers of Munda and Dravidian languages. Many borrowings from Dravidian and Munda (or, even Language X) in Sanskrit and presence of unexplained agricultural terms in modern bharatiya languages, have been noted by scholars while the direction of borrowing will continue to be a bone of contention as articles of faith. It is also a moot point if Nahali is a language isolate or a product of a linguistic area since the language contains Indo-Aryan, Munda and Dravidian glosses. When two vowels are in sequence, Prakrit sandhi rules seem to follow the Dravidian type. (e.g. adi + ekkad.a = adekkad.a 'where is that' (Telugu); nara + india = narinda 'king' (Prakrit). The particle iti (tti) is found ina syntactic pattern: Ma_g, kim bhan.a_dha, kim kalais's'as'i tti 'what did you say? what could he do?' Similar form of 'to say' used to mark a quotation occurs in Kannada: nanag (e) i_ vica_ra tili_du anta he_lidru:"'he said, 'I do not know this". Emeneau notes the parallel use of onomatopoetics: Pkt. tharatharedi, tharatharai 'feels giddy'; Kan. 'gud.ugud.isu 'to grumble, roar'. The convergence in phonology and grammar is explained as extensive bilingualism (Kuiper, FBJ, 1967, The genesis of a linguistic area, IIJ, 10, 81-102; Emeneau, 1956, India as a linguistic area, Lg., 32,.3-16).

Let us take a look at what the ancient writers in Bharat had to say about the language situation in various parts of the country. Manu notes (10.45):

mukhaba_hu_rupajja_na_m ya_ loke ja_tayo bahih mlecchava_cas' ca_ryava_cas te sarve dasyuvah smr.ta_h

This shows a two-fold division of dialects: arya speech and mleccha speech. The language spoken was an indicator of social identity. Hence, Manu says that everyone is a barbarian dasyu, whether he spoke arya or mleccha tongues. Maha_bha_s.ya (Vol. i, p.2) of Patanjali however, notes that learning Sanskrit grammar was necessary for one not to become a mleccha: tasma_d bra_hman.ena na mlecchitavai.. mleccha_ ma_ bhu_mety adhyeyam vya_karan.am. 902

Hence, it is natural for Vidura to convey a message to Yudhishthira in mleccha tongue while describing the technicalities involved in the la_ks.a_gr.ha (the palace of lac): kincic ca viduren.okto mlechava_ca_si pa_n.d.ava (0011350061, electronic text of Muneo Tokunaga based on BORI critical edition).

Thus, we have two language groups mentioned: a_rya and mleccha, the former is grammatically correct Sanskrit, the other is the des'i or lingua franca (not unlike the words glossed in Hemacandra's Des'i_na_mama_la_).

The existence of the two categories of speech finds support in the Jaina tract, Pan.n.avan.a_sutta (Pt. I, pp. 35 ff; cf. Deshpande, Madhav M., 1979, Sociolinguistic attitudes in India. An historical reconstruction, Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers, inc. pp. 43 ff.). After providing a long list of mleccha peoples, mostly living outside of a_rya_varta in the region of northern Bharat stretching from Gujarat to Assam, the text identifies two categories: ariya and milakkhu/an.a_riya. In su_tra 56 of Aupapa_tikasu_tra (= Ovava_iyasutta, p.53), Mahavira speaks about dhamma in ardhama_gadhi_ language: addhama_gaha_e bha_sa_e bha_sai ariha_ dhammam parikahei. The explanation of dhamma is made to ariya and an.a_riya (tesim savvesim a_riyaman.la_riya_n.am... dhammam a_ikkhai. Clearly, both ariya and milakkhu speakers could comprehend ardhama_gadhi language use by Mahavira. The text notes that the words spoken by Mahavira got transformed for ariya and mleccha into their own mothertongues:

sa_ vi ya n.am addhama_gaha_ bha_sa tesim savvesim a_riyaman.a_riya_n.am appan.o sabha_sa_e parin.a_men.am parin.amai.

Deshpande cites from LB Gandhi, a similar version of tranformation contained in Aupapa_tikasu_tra, in another su_tra called Samava_ya_ngasu_tra, where the audience 903

includes bipeds, quadrupeds, beasts, animals, birds and serpents apart from ariya and mleccha:

sa_ vi ya n.am addhama_gahi_ bha_sa_ bha_sijjama_n.i_ tesim savvesim a_riyaman.a_riya_n.am duppaya cauppaya miya pasu pakkhi sari_siva_n.am appappan.o hiyasiva suha da_ya bha_satta_e parin.amai. (A_gamoddha_rasamiti edition, p. 60, quoted in L.B. Gandhi, ed., 1927, Apabhrams'aka_vyatrayi_, by Jinadattasu_ri, Gaekwad's Oriental Series No. 37, Reprinted in 1967, Baroda). This automatic transformation of ardhama_gadhi speech into the languages of the listeners is a way of affirming the nature of the lingua franca, Prakrit, when Mahavira communicates Jaina dhamma as ariya dhamma. There is explicit permission to use Prakrit, as a non-ariya language, that is non-use of grammatically correct Samskr.tam, to communicate to all people: This is categorically stated in Kundakunda's Samayasa_ra, verse 8:

yatha n.a vi sakkam an.ajjo an.ajjabha_sam vin.a_ du ga_hedum taha vavaha_ren.a vin.a_ paramatthuvadesan.am asakkam

This is a crucial phrase, vyavaha_ra or vavaha_ra, the spoken tongue in vogue, or the lingua franca, or what french linguists call, parole. The use of vyava_hara bha_sa, that is mleccha tongue, was crucial for effectively communicating Mahavira's message on ariya dhamma.

The clarity with which two dialect streams are identified in the region traversed by Mahavira, is also explicit in the statement contained in S'atapatha Bra_hman.a (3.2.1.23).

he 'lavo he 'lavah

is said to be the expression of exclamation by asura. Paul Thieme takes this to be ma_gadhi_ equivalent:

he 'layo he 'layah (so cited by grammarian Patanjali) 904

which in turn, corresponds to Samskr.tam: he 'rayo he 'rayah 'hail friends!' (Paul Thieme, 1938, Der Fremdling im R.gveda, Eine Studie uber die Bedeutung der Worte ari, arya, aryaman und a_rya. Leipzig: Brockhaus. Reprint in: Paul Thieme, Opera Maiora, Band I. Ed. Werner Knobl and Nobuhiko Kobayashi, Kyoto: Hozokan Publishing Co. 1995, pp. 1-184, p. 4 (10).

This passage and other evidence leads David Carpenter to conclude: '(vedic society) as a hybrid culture forged out of Indo-Aryan and indigenous ...elements under the aegis of the cultural norm represented by the sacrifice and its language.' (Carpenter, David, 1994, The mastery of speech: canonicity and control in the Vedas, in: Authority, anciety and canon, Essays in Vedic interpretations, ed. Laurie L. Patton, Albany, State University of New York Press, pp. 10-34, p. 30).

Heinz-Jurgen Pinnow's "Versuch einer Historischen Lautlehre der Kharia-Sprache" published in 1959 was a pioneering work which sought to identify etymologies of austroasiatic family of languages. Pinnow included Nahali (a language spoken on the River Tapati in a region northwest of Ellichpur in Madhya Pradesh, not far from the Bhimbhetka caves, a language which is said to have 24% with no cognates in India (hence, a language isolate or language Y?), 36% Kurku munda glosses and 9% dravidian glosses cf. Kuiper, FBJ, 1966, The sources of Nahali vocabulary, in H. Zide, ed., Studies in comparative Austroasiatic linguistics, The Hague, pp. 96-192), in his list making comparisons of vocabularies betwen Nahali and Mundarica (Pinnow, Heinz-Jrgen. 1959, Versuch Einer Historischen Lautlehre Der Kharia-Sprache. Wiesbaden, Otto Harrassowitz.) IE linguistics is divided on the issue of classifying Nahali; is it a language isolate? Or, is it part of an Indo-Aryan family? Even the set of languages which were in use in Bharat in ancient times has not been drawn up, "common objections are that we cannot even identify most of hose non-IA languages, now died out, or that we have no Dravidian or Munda documents from that time, (Kuiper, FBJ, 1991, Aryans in the Rigveda, AmsteramAtlanta: Rodopi, Page i). This is the sorry state of affairs about linguistic studies related to the 'I' 905

in the IE family. The sorry state is exemplified by the postulate of 'language X' by Masica to explain 30% of the words used in Hindi for agricultural plants. (Masica, Colin, 1979, Aryan and non-Aryan elements in North Indian Agriculture', in M. Deshpande, PE Hook, eds., Aryan and non-Aryan in India, Ann Arbor: Center for South and Southeast Asian Studie, University of Michigan, p. 55-151. Add to this, the observation of Kuiper: '...it should be recognized that (Vedic) Sanskrit had long been AN INDIAN LANGUAGE (emphasis Kuiper's), when it made its appearance in history. The adaptations to foreign linguistic patterns cannot be dismissed, (Kuiper, FBJ, 1991, opcit, p. 94). Thus, we have a situation where the Vedic dialect itself is a composite of substratum and adstratum, yet an 'Indian language'. Is it necessary or possible, through linguistic methods, to isolate the munda, dravidian, and indo-aryan elements in Vedic? In our view, it is not necessary. It is enough to start with an agreed consensus that Vedic is an 'Indian language,' as categorised by Kuiper.

It will be interesting to pursue researches to trace back the essential unity of bharatiya languages governed by a common cultural idiom, by identifying the presence of Prakritisms in Vedic and also the presence of Prakrits in the Indo-European languages, Greek and Central Asian languages, in particular. Pischel (Comparative grammar of Prakrit languages, p.4) has made a beginning by tracing common grammatical and lexical characteristics between Prakrit dialects and Vedic, thus establishing the antiquity of Prakrits (GV Devasthali, Prakritism in the R.gveda, in: RN Dandekar and AM Ghatage, 1970, Proceedings of the Seminar in Prakrit Studies, Poona, University of Poona, 1970, pp. 199-205).

More researches are called for. As AN Upadhye notes: "What remarkably distinguished Prakrits from pali is their dha_tva_des'as and des'i_ vocabulary: these connect Prakrits with their popular speeches of both the South and the North. Because we have not been able to trace their sources correctly, grammars and even texts show ghost forms in their various readings. It is interesting, as pointed out by Dr. PL Vaidya, that the interpreters of Jna_nes'vari_, not being aware of pariyamda, already used by Apabhrams'a authors, misspelt the word and their 906

etymology was wrong. What was one word pariyamda was split as pariyam and root da. In interpreting texts like the Padma_vata, Ra_macaritama_nasa, and Jna_nes'vari_ etc. a constant reference to Prakrit lexions and grammars is essential. Sir Ralph Turner's splended Dictionary of Indo-Aryan shows how Prakrit material has enriched his discussion. In his own words: '...greater attention is to be turned to Prakrit studies in India in which of course my own studies in the history of the New Indo-Aryan languages has given me special interest. There is a tremendous lot about their history to be got from the study of Prakrit, which will be a most fruitful field for very many years.' No Prakrit grammar, not even that of Vararuchi, could be considered a standard one for all the Prakrit and for the entire Prakrit literature, like Panini's As.t.a_dhya_yi_ for the classical Sanskrit...it is necessary that monographs on individual dialects are brought out. The dialectical nature of Ma_ha_ra_s.t.ri_ was a matter of controversy; but with the discovery of Li_la_vai_, which specifies its dialect as Ma_ha_ra_s.t.ri_, we are now on a definite ground...The extra-Indian Prakrits, such as are called Niya Prakrit, Ga_ndha_ra Prakrit, Simhala Prakrit etc., require to be studied first with reference to the Inscriptional Prakrit and then in comparison with the dialects named and described by Prakrit grammarians...The Prakrit studies have linguistic affinities with Sanskrit on the one hand and Modern Indian languages on the other, and are also connected with the growth of vocabulary of Dravidian languages and with exra-Indian extensions in Niya etc...a critical Prakrit Dictionary...Not only interesting backformations from Sanskrit works of Jaina authors from Gujarat and Rajasthan will find place therein along with the so-called lapses of Bardic Sanskrit found in our epics and Puranas but also a number of Kannada words from the Kabbigaraka_va of An.d.ayya will fugure as conates. AA scholar of Indo-Aryan feels handicapped in the absence of such a Dictionary of Prakrits; and without recorded data, there is seen a lot of etymological speculation in the field of Modern Indian languages." (AN Upadhye, Important dessiderata of Prakrit Studies and Research, in: RN Dandekar and AM Ghatage, 1970, Proceedings of the Seminar in Prakrit Studies, Poona, University of Poona, 1970, p. xiv)

Section 11: Proto-Vedic Continuity Theory of Bharatiya Languages 907

The rationale for Proto-Vedic Paleolithic Continuity of bharatiya languages is the evidence from artistic, archaeological, geological, genetic, astronomical and linguistic studies. The method will be deductive based on evaluation of the evidences in a variety of disciplines using the Bharatiya traditional knowledge system triad of sruti-tantrayukti-anubhuti. We propose that continuity is the simplest explanation available for language and cultural change in the absence of any other (Occams razor). Here we quote scholary opinions in support of this position.

The Australian linguist R. M. W. Dixon (1997) has given new life to the importance of linguistic convergence first advocated by Trubetskoy (1968, 1939). Dixon (1997: 3) convincingly argues that migrations which trigger linguistic (and cultural) divergence are rare, the more normal situation being linguistic and I daresay cultural, convergence (Lamberg-Karlovsky 2002, p. 74).

Similarly, I (Kohl) find myself in broad agreement with his (Lamberg-Karlovskys) critique of the dominant linguistic-divergence model (a multibranched tree with its trunk rooted in a mythical homeland) and his suggestion that we concentrate on fusion of languages rather than on their division. If cultures are never made but always in the making, as many contemporary theorist would argue, then the same is manifestly true for languages, and the search for ultimate originscultural or linguistic-is largely illusory (Kohl 2002, p. 77).

James Mallory, probably the last archaeologist who defends the IE invasion theory, has had to concede: "the archaeologists' easiest pursuit [is] the demonstration of relative continuity and absence of intrusion" (Mallory 1989, 81, as related by Alinei 1998).

Section 11.1: Art studies

India is a rich area for study of Acheulean (stone tool industry, handaxes) occupation or lower Paleolithic archaeology. An excellent beginning has been made in studying this lower Paleolithic 908

time period in the book by Raghunath S. Pappu, 2001, Acheulean Culture in Peninsular India: An Ecological Perspective, New Delhi: D. K. Printworld. This work contains information on Quaternary environments and archaeological studies related to site distributions, habitats, tool types, technology, nature of assemblages, tool function, raw materials, Quaternary deposits, mammalian fossils, hominid remains, subsistence patterns, paleoenvironments, settlement patterns, site formation processes, site catchment analysis, colonization pattern, chronology, and interregional comparison and correlation. Further studies will contribute to a better understanding of settlement dispersal patterns, Pleistocene hominid cognition and adaptive behaviour. This acheulean period has a successor in Bhimbetka rock-art paintings showing domestication of horses and use of wheeled-vehicles and arms. The earliest Indic art is preserved on rocks in the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic stages (40000 B.C.E. onwards) and the seals and the sculpture of the Indus-Sarasvati phase which lasted from about 8000 B.C.E. to 1900 B.C.E. According to Wakankar, the beginnings of the rock art have been traced to 40,000 years BP (before present) in the decorated ostrich eggshells from Rajasthan, dated using radiocarbon techniques. Subsequent phases have been determined using evolution of style and other radiocarbon dates. The Mesolithic period has been dated as 12000 to 6000 BP. It has been found that there is significant continuity of motif in the rock art and the later IndusSarasvati civilization indicating an unbroken link with the Paleolithic and the Mesolithic cultures of India. We see tessellations in the ancient rock art of India. It has been argued that these designs occur at the lowest stratum of the rock paintings and if that is accepted they belong to the upper Paleolithic period. These designs are unique to India in the ancient world. Tyagi has suggested that they may represent a ``trance experience.'' The basic feature of these tessellations is infinite repetition. This repetition may occur for a basic pattern or, more abstractly, the lines extend spatially in a manner so that a basic pattern is repeated in two directions. An understanding of this abstract concept must have been a part of the thought system of the artists. This is another type of continuity with the central place of the 909

notion of infinite in later Indian thought. The abstract and the iconic elements in Indian rock art are different from the more naturalistic ancient European cave paintings. There is also difference in the nature of the community and state in the Western and the Indian civilizations in the earliest urban phase. The West has monumental temples, tombs, palaces whereas the society in India appears to have been governed by a sacred order, (T.R.N. Rao and S. Kak, 1998, Computing Science in Ancient India USL Press, Lafayette). Earlier studies (prior to 1980) often assumed that food production was imported to the Indus Valley by a single linguistic group ("Aryans") and/or from a single area. But recent studies indicate that food production was largely indigenous to the Indus Valley. Already the Mehrgarh people used domesticated wheats and barley with a high incidence of naked six-row barley (a post-domestication trait) (Shaffer, J.G. and Lichtenstein, Diane A., 1995, The concepts of 'cultural tradition' and 'palaeoethnicity' in South Asian archaeology.) The archaeologist Jim G. Shaffer (Shaffer, Jim G. (1999). Migration, Philology and South Asian Archaeology, In: Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia. Ed. Bronkhorst and Deshpande, p. 245) writes that the Mehrgarh site "demonstrates that food production was an indigenous South Asian phenomenon" and that the data support interpretation of "the prehistoric urbanization and complex social organization in South Asia as based on indigenous, but not isolated, cultural developments. A regional cultural discontinuity occurred during the second millennium BC and many Indus Valley cities were abandoned during this period, while many new settlements began to appear in Gujarat and East Punjab and other settlements such as in the western Bahawalpur region increased in size. Shaffer and Liechtenstein (1995) stated that: "This shift by Harappan and, perhaps, other Indus Valley cultural mosaic groups, is the only archaeologically documented west-to-east movement of human populations in South Asia before the first half of the first millennium B.C.." (Shaffer and Liechtenstein 1995, p. 139). This could have been caused by ecological factors, such as the drying up of the Ghaggar-Hakra River and increased aridity in Rajasthan and other places. The Indus River also began to flow east and floodings occurred (Kenoyer, J. M. 1995 Interaction Systems, Specialized Crafts and Culture Change: The Indus Valley Tradition and the 910

Indo-Gangetic Tradition in South Asia. In The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity, edited by G. Erdosy, pp. 213-257. Berlin, W. DeGruyter, p. 224). Jim Shaffer (Shaffer, J.G. 1986, "Cultural Development in the Eastern Punjab." In Studies in the Archaeology of India and Pakistan, J. Jacobsen, (Ed.). New Delhi: Oxford and IBH Publishing Co., p. 230) and other scholars argue that these "internal cultural adjustments" reflect "altered ecological, social and economic conditions affecting northwestern and north-central South Asia" and do not necessarily imply migrations."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_migration

Section 11.2: Genetic studies

Stephen Oppenheimer who has synthesized the available genetic evidence with climatology and archaeology notes the advances made in studies of mitochondrial DNA inherited through the mother and Y chromosomes inherited by males from the father. His conclusion is that while Africa is the cradle of all mankind (having left Africa about 90,000 years ago), India is the cradle of all non-African peoples (who during a glacial break 50,000 years ago moved out of India, into the Russian steppes, on to Eastern Europe, northeast through China and across the now submerged Bering Strait into the Americas. Krishna, born in India, is the ancestor of the peoples of East Asia, Central Asia, Oceania and West Eurasia (through the M17 mutation). On M17, Oppenheimer said: South Asia is logically the ultimate origin of M17 and his ancestors; and sure enough we find highest rates and greatest diversity of the M17 line in Pakistan, India, and eastern Iran, and low rates in the Caucasus. M17 is not only more diverse in South Asia than in Central Asia but diversity characterizes its presence in isolated tribal groups in the south, thus undermining any theory of M17 as a marker of a 'male Aryan Invasion of India.'Study of the geographical distribution and the diversity of genetic branches and stems again suggests that Ruslan, along with his son M17, arose early in South Asia, somewhere near India, and subsequently spread not only south-east to Australia but also north, directly to Central Asia, before splitting east and west into Europe and East Asia. This is consistent with the later comment he made on a yahoogroup: "I did see the flurry of discussion around M17. It was not 911

my intention to disprove AIT or to stir the political pot, just to make a comment about the origin of M17. I do not have very strong views about AIT, except that as with most secondary migratory-invasion theories based on perceived linguistic/cultural flows the evidence for gene flow is small, much less than that for cultural flow (Posted on May 24, 2005 msg# 4398 on Yahoogroup Austronesian, by Oppenheimer).

Greeks clearly distinguished themselves from both northern and southern barbarians and the evidence from the Greek physiognomists cannot be used to postulate preference for a "northern European physical type", especially when we read that (Polemon, Physiognomica, 8.11-13): Blond [CANQH=] and whitish [U(PO/LEUKOS] hair, like that of Scythians signifies stupidity [SKAIO/THTA], evilness [KAKO/THTA], savagery [A)GRIO/THTA] And when we read (PseudoAristotle, Physiognomica): The people whose eyes are light blue-grey [GLAUKOI/] or white [LEUKOI/] are cowards [DEILOI/] "

Oppenheimer (2003) goes on to conclude: 'First, that the Europeans' genetic homeland was originally in South Asia in the Pakistan/Gulf region over 50,000 years ago; and second, that the Europeans' ancestors followed at least two widely separated routes to arrive, ultimately, in the same cold but rich garden. The earliest of these routes was the Fertile Crescent. The second early route from South Asia to Europe may have been up the Indus into Kashmir and on to Central Asia, where perhaps more than 40,000 years ago hunters first started bringing down game as large as mammoths.

http://evolutsioon.ut.ee/publications/Kivisild2003a.pdf

In contrast, the majority of the Indian paternal lineages do not share recent ancestors with eastern Asian population but stem from haplogroups common to (eastern) European or Western Asian populations. This finding has recently been interpreted in favor of the classical Indo-Aryan invasion hypothesis. Here, we show this interpretation is probably caused by a 912

phylogeographically limited view of the Indian Y-chromosome pool, amplified because of current inconsistencies in the interpretation of the temporal scales in the variability of the nonrecombining (NRY). It appears to us that the high variability of the STRs in the background of NRY variants in India is consistent with the view of the largely autochthonous pre-Holocene genetic diversification-a conclusion reached earlier for the Indian maternal lineages (Kivisilid et al 1990a).

If we were to use the same arithmetic and logic (sensu haplography 9 is Neolithic) to give an interpretation of this table, (Table 17.3), the straightforward suggestion would be that both (Neolithic) agricultural and Indo-European languages arose in India and from there, spread to Europe (emphasis in the original).

Section 11.3: Archaeological studies

According to Beekes (1995, p. 45), "Linguistic information offers us no basis for determining the moments of time at which the Indo-European peoples began to inhabit the areas which would later become the areas where they settled. Evidence for this must come from archaeology (as related by Smit 2001). Excavations conducted over the last century offer no archaeological evidence of a new type of culture and/or language arriving into the Indian subcontinent as imagined by IE linguists. There is no archaeological or biological evidence for invasions or mass migrations into the Indus Valley between the end of the Harrpan phase , about 1900 B.C., and the beginning of the Early Historic period around 600 B.C. (Kenoyer 1998, p. 174). The interested reader is referred to Kenoyer (1998), Lal (2005, 2002, 1997), and Alinei (2004) for evidence of archaeological continuity. The unproven and occasionally wild speculations coming from the pseudo-science of Indo European linguistics must not be treated as actual history. The conclusions reached by IEL could be no more than a fairy tale. As the Harvard archaeologist Lamberg-Karlovsky (2002) puts it; once upon a time-no one really knows how long ago-there was a community that spoke a language known today as Proto-Indo-European (p. 63). 913

Archaeological evidences point to the continuity of the Vedic civilization from deep antiquity in the landmass that referred to by historians as Greater India (Akhanda Bharatam). On the other hand, there is a clear case of cultural continuity, not only at Mohenjo-daro but also at other Harappa Culture sites. Commenting on this issue, Lord Colin Renfrew (UK) avers: If one checks the dozen references in the Rigveda to the Seven Rivers, there is nothing in any of them that to me implies invasion. Despite Wheelers comments, it is difficult to see what is particularly non-Aryan about the Indus Valley Civilization. http://www.geocities.com/ifihhome/articles/bbl002.html

Archaeologist Kenoyer (2005) notes: Some of the technologies, architecture, artistic symbols and aspects of social organization that characterized the first urban centers of the Indus Civilization have continued up to the present in the urban setting of traditional South Asian cities. Some of these misconceptions are that the Indus urban society was the result of colonization from Mesopotamia to the west (in modern Iraq); that it appeared suddenly from unknown origins; that is was a strictly uniform culture ruled by a priest-king from two major capitals; and then disappeared, leaving no influence on later cultural developments.

http://www.harappa.com/indus/indus3.html

Given the stratified nature of Bharatiya samajam, there was a substandard spoken dialect, mleccha, which coexisted with the attested written languages used in texts. The interactions between mleccha and Samskr.tam have to be unraveled. This is the linguistic challenge to give voice to a Sarasvati hindu civilization which was the most expansive civilization of its time from ca. 6500 BCE to 1900 BCE (when the River Sarasvati desiccated due to plate tectonics and resultant migrations of Himalayan glacial tributaries)with archaeologically attested contacts with 914

Mesopotamian civilization area. In the context of explaining the history of language evolution in Akhanda Bharatam,a hypothesis can be postulated that a Paleolithic Continuity Theory proposed by Mario Alinei for IE may also apply to the history of a spectrum of languages in Bharat. As noted by Mario Alinei, Within the continuity theory, the retrospective method has been revised by adopting the uniformitarian principle of all historical sciences, namely, "The present is the key to the past." Thus the "known" basis for it is necessarily formed by the present spoken substandard (mostly rural) dialects, which in the Old World can be considered the relics of prehistoric languages spoken by Neolithic societies, greatly modified in the Metal Ages (especially Bronze and Iron) by the linguistic superstratum of typically elite migrations. Overwhelming linguistic evidenceperfectly coinciding with the continuity evidence provided by archaeologyconfirms this new thesis and, more generally, the advantages of the theory (Alinei 19962000).

What used to be called philology became linguistics predominantly focused on Indo-European linguistics (IEL) with disciplines such comparative linguistics and historical linguistics as subdisciplines. Even though the discovery of IEL as a discipline was initially related to the discovery of Sanskrit as a remarkably advanced language of a civilization, comparative studies rapidly degenerated with an ideology of eurocentrism, seeking to establish the origins of IndoEuropeans, their homeland (urheimat) and series of conquests to establish the dominance of Indo-European on conquered territories. This invasionist model has been the mainstream ideology of IEL, exemplified by a theory of Aryan Invasion into Bharat (that is, India), later modified as Aryan Migration or Aryan Trickle-in Theories, but still with the focus on urheimat located somewhere in an indeterminate location or area in Europe and assuming that if protoindo-europeans did not conquer Bharat by force, then they conquered by intellectual, cultural superiority. As noted by Mario Alinei: Two major current theories suggest a late invasion from East Europe in the Bronze Age or a demic dispersion from Anatolia as consequence of early Neolithic civilization. There is, however, no archaeological evidence of invasions, European Neolithic is essentially a local development, and the latest outcome of genetic research 915

demonstrates that 80% of European genetic stock goes back to Paleolithic. In addition, both archaeologists and linguists of the Uralic area now concur on a Paleolithic origin of Uralic people and languages in Eurasia. Alinei goes on to propose an alternative Paleolithic Continuity Theory on Indo-European origins dismissing the invasionist models as Eurocentric ideology.

http://www.continuitas.com/index.html

The 19th century invasionist paradigm needs to be discarded as motivated by colonialist ideology. In the context of recounting a paradigm shift in Finnish Linguistic Prehistory, Merlijn de Smit presents a perspective on the limitations of historical linguistics:http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=77

Historical linguistics proper is not an empirical science in the sense that physics is - in which repeatable spatiotemporal occurrences are studied - but a discipline which strives to provide a picture of the past as plausible as possible, one in which the interpretations of the researcher play a vital role. This makes a strict methodology and in particular the conviction that it is historical reality we are after, not someones reality but reality itself, all the more necessary, since it is all too easy to slide in Von Dniken-like fantasism.

The consensus view is that people speaking an ancestor of the current Indic languages invaded the Indian subcontinent from the northeast about 1600 B.C. (Beekes 1995: 45), before that, Dravidian languages may or may not have been spoken on a larger area than they are now; the presence of one outlying Dravidian language in Southern Pakistan, Brahui, would suggest the former.

Noting that the core of historical linguistics in the 19th century was indeed the study of IndoEuropean languages, was suffused by Eurocentric myth-building, Subhash Kak echoes 916

sentiments similar to those of paradigm shift in Finnish linguistic pre-history, when he views the linguistic area in Bharat as a set of overlapping language groups: based on certain structural relationships the North and South Indian languages are closer to each other than Sanskrit and Greek This classification will allow us to get rid of the term Aryan in the classification of languages which is a good thing because of the racist connotation behind its 19th century use. Its further virtue is that it recognizes that language families cannot be exclusive systems and they should be perceived as overlapping circles that expand and shrink with time. (...) language families belong to overlapping groups, because such a view allows us to represent better the complex history of the interactions amongst their ancestor languagesIndian linguistic evidence requires the postulation of two kinds of classification. The first is the traditional Indian classification where the whole of India is a single linguistic area of what used to be traditionally called the Prakrit family. Linguists agree that based on certain structural relationships the North and South Indian languages are closer to each other than Sanskrit and Greek (...) Second, we have a division between the North Indian languages that should really be called North Prakrit (called Indo-Aryan by the linguists) and the South Indian languages that may be called South Prakrit (or Dravidian) Kak connects ancient Greek culture to the influence of seafaring Indians, dates Vedic Sanskrit a few millenia earlier than is commonly done (Subash Kak, 1996, Indic language families and Indo-European, Yavanika 6, p. 51-64).

The focus of this monograph is on the Indo-in IEL. The very hyphenated compound IndoEuropean which continues to be used in discussions is premised on an ideology of aryan as a warrior-class invading territories and submerging native cultures. Just as 80% of European genetic stock goes back to Paleolithic, the Indo- or bharatiya genetic stock too goes back to Paleolithic, thus rendering the use of the genetic term family to a class of languages called Indo-European itself gets called into question. There is increasing evidence that the Hindu civilization was a continuous and indigenous evolution within Bharat from Paleolithic times. By placing the arrival of the mythical aryans into Bharat around 1500 BCE, IEL has no clue to explain the presence of an advanced hindu civilization, evolving as a riverine-maritime 917

civilization with advances in metallurgy, on the Sarasvati-Sindhu river basins with trade contacts extending upto sites in Mesopotamian civilization, which is seen as providing the roots of and continuity in hindu culture in a variety of facets of civilizational progress in a continuum dating back to 6500 BCE when the burial of a woman was found at Nausharo with ornaments made of sankha (turbinella pyrum) which is a zoological speicies unique to the coastline of hindumahasagar (Indian Ocean) rim.

In IEL studies, which originally started with the abundant textual and epigraphical resources of bharatiya languages of ancient times, there is little evidence of understanding of the evolution of bharatiya languages. The I (Indo) in the IE (Indo-European) has been relegated to the background as a mere off-shoot of differentiations as the marauding Proto-Indo-Europeans moved around Europe and India (Bharat). Linguistic studies can no longer be conducted in isolation and have to take into account the contributions made by different sciences which have studied the problems of language origins.

Archaeological discoveries, using radio-carbon and other innovative dating techniques, including marine archaeological explorations of the type in Dwaraka and Gulf of Khambat, have recorded, much higher chronologies for bharatiya history pointing to continuity of culture Paleolithic times. The conclusions of the archaeologists is that there is no trace whatsoever of any invasion into Bharat; the conclusions of scholars versed in bharatiya languages is that the word arya as used in early texts such as the Rigveda does NOT connote a race but is only a character designation, something like, sir as a respectful, civilized form of address. Mario Alinei also notes the conclusions of archaeology that Neolithic cultures of Europe either are a direct continuation of Mesolithic ones, or have been created by Mesolithic groups after their Neolithization by intrusive farmers from the Middle East.http://www.continuitas.com/intro.html

A Map showing the probably diffusion of the black-and-red ware techniques and rice cultivation, 918

based on C-14 dates (given in brackets). The earliest appearance of the Black and Red ware is in Lothal (2200 BC) and next comes Ahar (2000 BC). The settlement evidence of this chalcolithic culture and the continuity of the Vedic traditions in all parts of India indicate an indigenous development of the civilization from ca. 3000 BC to 650 BC (Sonpur).

Similar results are noted in Bharat of the spread of farming of rice, from Lothal eastwards coterminus with the expansion of black-and-red ware cultures. The language of the Rigveda, which most scholars accept is an indigenous development on the banks of Sarasvati River and sapta-sindhu region (one rica in the Rigveda refers to both as: sarasvati_ saptathi_ sindhu maataa sarasvati, the seventh, the mother of rivers and ocean), evidences such an advanced stage of development in thought expanding into cosmic inquiries, inquiries of consciousness, the Vedic language should have had many centuries perhaps 20 centuries -- of development from Proto-Vedic phases. The lingua franca used in the discourses of great savants, Mahavira and Gautama the Buddha in Ardhamagadi (or Suraseni Apabhramsa) and Pali which are variant dialects of Prakrit (or mleccha) also attest to the parallel phases of evolution of spoken dialects together with the language used in vedic texts. Mleccha (Meluhha) is attested as a language in the Mahabharata, wherein Yudhishthira and Vidura converse in this language discussing the technical details of non-metallic and other killer devices of the laakshaagriha. A language substitution of the imagined scale by invading or migrating aryan pastoral tribes is clearly unlikely given the stage of evolution of bharatiya languages which were the vehicles for expressing profound aadhyaatmika thought and expounding on sanatana dharma (or what the Buddha called esha dhammo sanantano). There is a possibility that there was a continuity of mleccha-samskr.tam in a cultural continuity from Paleolithic to metal ages (both bronze on Sarasvati-Sindhu river basins and iron smelting on Ganga river basin). This continuity is the generally accepted pattern of history. There are indications that "89% of the Megalithic signs and symbols which appear on pottery down to the 9th century BC or thereabouts may be traced to Harappan and post-Harappan signs and symbols the period dealt with spans virtually the entire millennium between the 919

downfall of the Indus Civilization (c. 19th century BC) and the rise of the later Gangetic civilization (c.9th century BC) direct continuity between the two is thereby implied; and this is suggested also by the many signs and symbols which recur between the Indus seals and the later punch-marked coinage," (B.B. Lal: "From the Megalithic to the Harappan", Ancient India 1960, esp. p.21-24; loc.cit., Mitchiner: J.E. Mitchiner, Studies in the Indus Valley Inscriptions, p.12). The reason for discarding the invasionist model of IEL and proposing a Proto-Vedic Continuity Theory is the findings of recent studies which point to IE research of the 19th century as having been influenced by contemporary Arian, Pan-Germanic and colonial ideology as first expounded in Count Joseph-Arthur De Gobineaus, Essai sur lingalit des races humaines (1853-1855) and Houston Stewart Chamberlains, Die Grundlagen des XIX Jahrhunderts (1899), with their emphasis on Indo-Europeans racial superiority and their inclination to war and conquest (e.g. Poliakov 1974, R mer 1985, Trigger 1989, Renfrew 1987 etc.). Adolphe Pictet, the founder of the so called Linguistic Paleontology, in his book Les origines des Indo-europennes ou les Aryas primitif. Essai de palontologie linguistique, Paris, 1859-63, described the Arian race: a race destined by the Providence to dominate the whole world Privileged among all other races for the beauty of its blood, and for the gifts of its intelligence , this fertile race has worked to create for itself, as a means for its development, a language which is admirable for its richness, its power, its harmony and perfection of forms. Mario Alinei adds: Moreover, since it was necessary for the Indo-European warriors to have weapons and horses, also the choice of the Copper Age was obligatory, because this was the context of Battle Axes, metallurgy and horse riding. At the same time, while the concept of the Arian super-race gave shape to the myth of the Battle-Axe horse-riding invaders, another myth, within the Arian larger myth, emerged: Pangermanism. Within the Arian superior race, the German father-founders of IE studies saw the Germanic people as the supermen, the purest and the closest to the original blessed race, and chose the Germanic area as the Urheimat of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. http://www.continuitas.com/intro.html

920

It is amazing that bauddham and jainam could spread into cultures beyond the speakers of suraseni apabhrams'a and pali. How does one explain the epigraphs on Jaina caves in Tamilnadu? How does one explain the transmission of profound aadhyaatmika thoughts by jaina muni and bauddha bhikkus over an extended akhanda bharatam? We have the work cut out for us, chitra ji, to explain why the largest Vishnu mandiram of the world is in Angkor wat (Nagara vatika). And why do od.ra celebrate Bali yatra in Bhuvanes'war on karthik purnima day remembering their ancestor maritime people? The advances in science and technology, starting with the invention of creating alloys continue to the present day, exemplified by the use of cire perdue (lost wax) technique for making bronze vigrahas in Swamimalai on the banks of River Kaveri, a technique evidenced in the making of bronze statues of Mohenjodaro. So is the case of continuity with the use of sankha as an industry, continuously from 6500 BCE to the present day. The word occurs in all bharatiya languages. The word, kola meaning woman occurs in Nahali and also in Assamese. The comparative lexicon of bharatiya languages points to a remarkable semantic clustering and interactions among these languages from very ancient times. The interactions alone may explain the presence of munda (mleccha) words in samskr.tam or thousands of words in Buddhas or Mahaviras discourses which are not found in Samskr.tam.

Two instances of continuity from Proto-Vedic may be cited: sankha and the tradition of wearing sindhur by women at the parting of the hair. Sankha adorns the hand of Narayana together with cakra and is called panchajanya in the hands of Sri Krishna.

The autochthonous evolution of a riverine, maritime culture is exemplified by sankha (turbinella pyrum) was an industry which started earlier than 6500 BCE as attested by the find of a wide sankha bangle in the grave of a woman at Mehergarh. Turbinella pyrum: sankha kr.sana (conch-pearl) Burial ornaments made of shell and stone disc beads, and turbinella pyrum (sacred conch, san:kha) bangle, Tomb MR3T.21, Mehrgarh, Period 1A, ca. 6500 BCE. The nearest source for this shell is Makran coast near Karachi, 500 921

km. South, (After Fig. 2.10 in Kenoyer, 1998.)

From Gulf of Kutch and Saurashtra: Spiney murex, chicoreus ramosus (a), knobbed whelk, fasciolaria trapezium (b), and sawn fragments of the sacred conch (san:kha), turbinella pyrum [After Fig. 5.21 in Kenoyer, 1998].

Parvati, wore conch shell bangles san:khaka -- created by Sage Agastya Muni and Divine architect Visvakarma. San:kha is a Kuberas treasure one of the nine or nava-nidhi-s.

There are indications that Meluhha of Mesopotamian and Akkadian cuneiform texts was coterminus with the Sarasvati Sindhu Civilization. The cultural indicator is the use of turbinella pyrum (sankha) which is also recorded in the R.gveda, Atharva Veda and develops into a major industry in Bha_rata extending upto the Gulf of Mannar and the coastal ports of the East Coast. It should be noted that the habitat of turbinella pyrum is only in the coastline of Bha_rata and does not occur in any other part of the world. Sankha (conch shell) is used as a conch trumpet, is used for making bangles, necklaces and other ornaments, it is deemed sacred as part of as.t.aman:gal.a (eight auspicious symbols), used by mothers to feed medicines to children and is used as ladles on auspicious occasions and for performing yajn~as. Sankha adorns the mu_rtis of Vis.n.u and Siva in a_gama. Kr.s.n.a is adorned with Pa_n~cajanya used to call the troops to battle and many heroes of the Mahabharata have specifically-named conch trumpets made of san:kha.

The importance of sankha in the mature periods of Sarasvati civilization may be seen from the following archaeological artifacts: Mohenjodaro: libation vessel made from turbinella pyrum. Spiralling lines were incised and filled with red pigment. The vessel is used to anoint kings and to dispense sacred water or milk. Used even today for ritual oblations and to dispense medicinal preparations.[After Fig. 6.38 in Kenoyer, 1998; J. M. Kenoyer, 1983, Shell working industries of the Indus Civilization: an archaeological and ethnographic perspective, PhD diss., UCAL, 922

Berkeley]. 11.4 X 5.4 cm Turbinella pyrum conch shell trumpet. Hole at apex is roughly chipped. Used to call people for battle or ritually throughout South and Southeast Asia. Essential component of Hindu and Buddhist traditions, one of 8 auspicious symbols. 9.66 X 5.1 cm. Harappa; Lahore Museum, P501

Wide bangle made from a single conch shell and carved with a chevron motif, Harappa; marine shell, Turbinella pyrum (After Fig. 7.44, Kenoyer, 1998) National Museum, Karachi. 54.3554. HM 13828. Seven shell bangles from burial of an elderly woman, Harappa; worn on the left arm; three on the upper arm and four on the forearm; 6.3 X 5.7 cm to 8x9 cm marine shell, Turbinella pyrum (After Fig. 7.43, Kenoyer, 1998) Harappa museum. H87-635 to 637; 676 to 679.

A skilled sawyer and shells ready for sawing, Calcutta.

See: Turbinella pyrum shell bangle manufacturing process. [a to f]: preliminary chipping and removal of internal columella; [g to k]: sawing shell circlets; [l to n]: finishing the shell blank; [o]: final incising [Fig. 5.23 in Kenoyer, 1998].

Ya_bhih kr.s.a_num asane duvasyatho jave ya_bhir yu_no arvantam aavatam madhu priyam bharatho yat sarad.bhyas ta_bhir u_s.u u_tibhir asvina_ gatam RV 1.112.21 Trans. With those aids by which you defended Kr.s'a_nu in battle, with which you succoured the horse of the young Purukutsa in speed, and by which you deliver the pleasant honey to the bees; with them, As'vins, come willingly hither. [Kr.s'a_nu are somapa_las, vendors or providers of Soma; hastasuhasta-kr.s'a_navah, te vah somakrayan.ah (Taittiri_ya Sam.hita_1.2.7); kr.s'a_nu = agni; 923

purukutsa was the son of Mandha_ta_ and husband of Narmada_, the river; the text has only 'of the young', Purukutsa.is added]. San:khah kr.sanah = pearl-shell won from the ocean and worn as an amulet (AV 4.10.1). Sankhah kr.sa_na mentioned in the R.gveda is a shell-cutting bowman.

Sankha adorns Bhairava. Sandstone sculpture of Siva Bhairava, holding a conch in his left hand, 11th cent. Sivapuram, South Arcot Dist., Bha_rata (Dept. of Archaeology and Ancient History, MS Univ., Vadodara).

Tradition of sindhur adornment

Sindhur worn in the parting of the hair. Nausharo: female figurine. Period 1B, 2800 2600 BCE. 11.6 x 30.9 cm.[After Fig. 2.19, Kenoyer, 1998]. Hair is painted black and parted in the middle of the forehead, with traces of red pigment in the part.This form of ornamentation may be the origin of the later Hindu tradition where a married woman wears a streak of vermilion or powdered cinnabar (sindur) in the part of her hair. Choker and pendant necklace are also painted with red pigment, posssibly to represent carnelian beads. It is not mere coincidence that mleccha in Samskr.tam and milakka in Pali means 'copper' since the region is not far from the Sarasvati river basin's khetri and zawar mines. The iron ore mines of Ganga basin is another concyclic circle, a part of aryavarta. As metal weapons become available, it was possible to enact the skullduggery of la_ks.a_gr.ha and fight a maha_bha_rata war.

Section 11.4: Evolution of human speech

924

The proposed Proto-Vedic Continuity Theory is premised on the nature of language evolution itself with a deep time-depth noted in paleoanthropological studies. Language evolution is not merely governed by organic change analogous to biological changes but is governed by the law of conservation subject to external, mainly social, factors such as kinship groups or extended families and language contact groups which contribute to semantic expansions consistent with levels of technological advances through the use of metals and other inventions. This approach will result in convergence of archaeological frontiers with language frontiers with cultural identities related to dialect differentiations (sorts of language orbits), as have occurred with the evolution of bharatiya languages with interactions among munda, Dravidian, indo-aryan, tibetoburman languages/dialects in a linguistic area (which is defined as an area of interaction with the absorption of and assimilation of language features from one another). The primary task of language studies, continuing the bharatiya tradition of sruti-tantrayukti-anubhuti and the leads of savants such as Panini, Patanjali, Tolkappiyan, Bhartrhari is to draw up the historical picture of language and dialect frontiers in a time-sequence using the rich resources of texts, epigraphs and folk songs and tales from all parts of Bharatam, thus delineating the reality of language in use, based on evidence, and mere unfalsifiable, hypothetical reconstructions.

Given the conclusions of studies in paleoanthropology suggesting the existence of language in homo habilis, the present theories postulating language evolution only from post-glaciation periods may have to be revised. It is also significant that glaciation did not engulf the regions covered by Akhanda Bharatam, thus rendering the regions as the locus for continuous evolution of civilization from Paleolithic times. Tobias view (1995) is that a form of language may have existed in our australopithecine ancestors (of hominid evolution some four to five million years ago), and certainly existed in homo habilis, the early genus of modern humans. [Tobias, Ph.V. (1995) "The communication of the dead: earliest vestiges of the origin of articulate language." Seventiende Kroon-Voordracht, Amsterdam, Nedelands Museum voor Anthropologie en Praehistorie.]

925

In the last 3-4 million years brain volume within the hominid lineage has increased from less than 400 ml to roughly 1400 ml. The first clear increase in hominid brain size is seen in early Homo at c.2 m.y.a. in East Africa (most reliably in cranial specimen KNM-ER 1470). This is an evolutionarily significant change that cannot be simply accounted for in terms of increased body size alone. From the appearance of H. erectus at c.1.7 m.y.a. to the present, the brain increases nearly twofold: from c.800 ml to 1500 ml in Late Pleistocene H. sapiens, without any apparent change in body size. With regard to brain reorganization, left-right cerebral hemispheric asymmetries exist in extant pongids and the australopithecines, but neither the pattern nor direction is as strongly developed as in modern or fossil Homo. KNM-ER 1470 shows a strong pattern that may be related to handedness and tool-use/manufacture. The degree of asymmetry appears to increase in later hominids. The appearance of a more human-like third inferior frontal convolution provides another line of evidence about evolutionary reorganization of the brain. None of the australopithecine endocasts show this region preserved satisfactorily. There is a consensus among palaeoneurologists that the endocast of the specimen KNM-ER 1470 does show, however, a somewhat more complex and modern-human-like third inferior frontal convolution compared with those of pongids. This region contains Broca's area, which in humans is related to the motor control of speech.http://www.massey.ac.nz/~alock/hbook/brain.htm Evolution of the Human Brain by Ralph Holloway Naomi Chomskys views on language postulate language as an innate characteristic. This can be reconciled with the discoveries in paleoanthropology (cf. Ph.V. Tobias) that language evolution has enormous time-depth, with longer evolution than traditionally thought, beginning with some Australopithecus. Several lines of evidence suggest that the rudiments of speech centers and of speaking were present already before the last common ancestral hominid population spawned Homo and the robust australopithecines [.] Both sets of shoots would then have inherited the propensity for spoken language. The function would probably have been facultative in A. robustus and A. boisei, but obligate in Homo (Tobias 1996, 94). Genetic 926

studies using DNA have established that 80% of the population of Bharatiya language speakers have a genetic stock indigenous to Bharat. The stark lack of similarities in the gene pools of the Indian subcontinent and Europe, vividly evident in the mtDNA and the MHC complex, destroys any Aryan invasion= notions, and confirms the genetic uniformity of peoples of the Indian subcontinent. (Chandrakant Panse, 2005, DNA, Genetica and Populatin dynamics: debunking the Aryan invasion propaganda, in: Human Empowerment Conference, Sept. 16, 2005, Houston, Texas).

Language and languages are much more ancient than traditionally thought. Consequently, also the record of their origins, change and development must be mapped onto a much longer chronology, instead of being compressed into a few millennia, as traditionally done much longer chronologies of language origins and language development impose a reversal of this conception: conservation is the law of language and languages, and change is the exception, being caused not by an alleged biological law of language, but by major external (ethnic or social) factors, i. e. by language contacts and hybridization, in concomitance with the major ecological, socio-economic and cultural events that have shaped each area of the globe (Alinei 1996).

http://www.continuitas.com/intro.html

An uninterrupted continuity of languages is evidenced from prehistoric times, in Akhanda Bharatam in what is referred to as a linguistic area. The appearance of bharatiya coincides with the settlement of Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Several lines of evidence suggest that the rudiments of speech centers and of speaking were present already before the last common ancestral hominid population spawned Homo and the robust australopithecines [.] Both sets of shoots would then have inherited the propensity for spoken language. The function would probably have been facultative in A. robustus and A. boisei, but obligate in Homo" (Tobias 1996, 94, authors emphasis). 927

Section 11.5: What language did the pa_nca_la speak? Mleccha.

What script did the pa_nca_la use? mlecchita vikalpa (one of the 64 arts listed by Va_tsya_yana after explaining vidya_samuddes'ah).

Locus. Mnava Dharma Shstra, chapter II: 17. That land, created by the gods, which lies between the two divine rivers Sarasvat and DrShadvat, the (sages) call Brahmvarta. 19. The plain of the Kurus, the (country of the) Matsyas, Panclas, and Shrasenakas, these (form), indeed, the country of the BrahmarShis immediately after Brahmvarta. 21. That (country) which (lies) between the Himavat and the Vindhya (mountains) to the east of Prayga and to the west of Vinshana> (the place where the river Sarasvat disappears) is called Madhyadesa (the central region). 22. But (the tract) between those two mountains (just mentioned), which (extends) as far as the eastern and the western oceans, the wise call Aryvarta. 23. That land where the black antelope naturally roams, one must know to be fit for the performance of sacrifices; (the tract)different from that (is) the country of the Mlecchas.

In Irawati Karve's view (Irawati Karve, 1961, Hindu Society an interpretation, Poona, Deccan College), ja_ti differentiation and distribution is an extension of the tribe (extended kinship group) in bharatiya society. She also extends the association of occupations with ja_ti as a continuation of the R.gvedic tradition of vrata. In the evolution of the hindu civilization worldview, what started as a personal function became a notion of duty, karma (action) as one's dharma (duty). Irawati Karve indicates the Truth Act (satyakriya_) as the connecting link through the R.gveda, Buddha and Jaina literature and even in the tales recorded in historical periods in Tamil and other Prakrit languages. There are also ja_ti clusters with occupations like carpenters, brass-pot-makers, ironsmiths, goldsmiths designating themselves as a group of 'artisans' (say, 928

the five panca_la or pancakamma_l.a). It can be hypothesised that such a clustering was in vogue in the days of Sarasvati Civilization, that is circa 5000 years Before Present. "To what extent the rural area of these civilizations harboured specialists we do not know. In many developed societies even today the actual cultivator continues to perform a wide variety of occupations within his own family. Extreme specialization within rural society appears to be a distinctive characteristic of India. In addition to the basic producers of food who are also specialists --- the agriculturists, fisher-folk, cattle-raisers, shepherds, etc. there are to be found in the villages other specialists like skilled artisans, purveyors of many types of services, landlords and merchants...These services consist of shaving, supplying ropes, repairing ploughs or making new ploughs, supplying earthe pots, playing music and dancing before the godess at a festival, supplying iron implements like ploughshares, axes etc. or repairing them, making new footwear and repairing them, officiating at rituals, serving as village accountant and scribe, and lastly, lowly offices such as removing dead cattle from the village habitation area or acting as messenger, village crier and watchman...we find that specialization in the sense of possessing a learnt skill is found only in the case of the artisans...sonar (goldsmith), lohar (ironsmith), sutar (carpenter)...caste-clusters" (Irawati Karve, opcit., pp. 37-39). Tukaram, the poet, was marathawani by caste, but he called himself a kunbi, a ja_ti cluster classed as s'u_dra varn.a. "...as late as in 1921, the Census Commissioner reported that the Daivadnya Sonar claimed to be Daivadnya Brahmin, that the panchal Sutar claimed to be Vishwa Brahmin, the Jingar asserted that they should be described as Somavamshi Arya Kshatriya and Patwegars wanted to be called Somavamshi Sahasrarjuna Kshatriya (Census of India, 1921, Vol. VIII, Part I, Appendix C, p. viii; loc.cit. Irawati Karve, 1961, p. 44).

The history of languages in Bharat and the history of ja_ti in Bharat are two sides of a cultural unity, the same cultural idiom related to the doctrines of vrata, dharma, r.n.a., yoga and karma. No wonder, Maha_vi_ra explains jaina ariya dhamm in mleccha. Mleccha of the linguistic area circa 5000 years Before Present with an intense interaction among munda, dravidian and indoaryan dialects, differentiates into the present-day language kaleidoscope of Bharat. 929

By the time of Mahavira and the Buddha, language (ardhamagadhi) had evolved to a level of maturity to communicate profound aadhyaatmika thoughts, in satyakriya_ (truth action) governed by sanatana dharma (what the Buddha called esha dhammo sanantano, this dharma eternal, ancient). The message of these savants was carried across a vast region extending from Takshasila to Thailand in what George Coedes termed hinduised states of southeast asia. The challenge of historical bharatiya language studies is to explain the nature of the interactions of language speakers in Akhanda Bharatam, ranging from Austro-asiatic languages and dialects to Andaman-Nicobarese languages through Dravidian languages, Nahali on Tapati river valley and mleccha of the dvi_pa of bharata varsha (referred to in the Mahasankalpa in vogue as an invocation for any vrata, in all regions of Bharat). The application of the Proto-Vedic Continuity Theory of Bharatiya Languages, and the suggested studies of the linguistic area of bharatiya languages may help unravel the nature of evolution of Proto-Vedic language from Paleolithic times differentiating into mleccha, Prakrits and samskr.tam. Hemachandra's grammar Sidha-hema-shabdanusasana has eight chapters. The first seven chapters deal with the grammar of the Sanskrit language, and the eighth with that of the Prakrit language (Maharashtri, Sauraseni, Magadhi, Ardha-Magadhi, Paisaci, Chulika Paisachi, Apabhrmsa). (Winternitz, op. cit., p578). Hemachandras four lexicons are a treasure-house to delineate Proto-Vedic, identifying the links with regional dialects: 1 Abhidhanachintamani on the lines of Amarakosa: 2. Anekarthasangraha, a dictionary of homonyms: 3. Nighantu, a dictionary of medicinal plants: 4. and Desinamamala, and dictionary of (native) words not derivable by rules of Sanskrit of Prakrit grammars. G. C. Pande wrote in 1947, "The anti-ritualistic tendency within the Vedic fold is itself due to the impact of an asceticism which antedated the Vedas. Jainism represents a continuation of this pre-Vedic stream, from which Buddhism also springs, though deeply influenced by Vedic thought." (Studies in the Origin of Buddhism, p.317) Dandekar, echoed these insights: "One may, of course, not go to the extreme of asserting that Hinduism turned its back completely on Vedic beliefs and practices, but one has nevertheless to admit that the impact of Vedism on the 930

mythology, ritual and philosophy of classical Hinduism has been of a superficial nature in the long history of Hinduism, ....Vedism occurred more or less like an interlude". (R. N. Dandekar, Some Aspects of the History of Hinduism, pp.1-2, p.28) The Buddha once asked king Ajatashatru of Magadh whether he would ask a slave to come back and serve him again if he heard that the slave had run away and become a recluse. Ajatashatru answered "Nay rather should we greet him with reverence, and rise up from our seat out of deference towards him, and press him to be seated. And we should have robes and bowl, etc.,... and beg him to accept of them".(Samanna-Phala Sutra in sacred Books of the Buddhist, Vol. II, p.77). This point to the eclectic, vratya nature of the polity coterminus with the yajnika tradition. The vratya could be Mleccha-speakers and yajnika, Sanskrit speakers. Section 11.6: Evidence from astronomy

The astronomical observations recorded in the Vedic literature indicate its continuity in the Indian subcontinent from at least as early as 6500 BCE (Frawley, 1999).

http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.com/articles/aid/astronomy.html

http://subhashkak.voiceofdharma.com/astronomy.htm

Mahabharata as the sheet-anchor of Bharatiya Itihaasa http://www.hindunet.org/saraswati/colloquium/mahabharata01.htm

Section 11.7: No evidence of evolutionary contact between the Indo and the European Branches of the Indo-European family

The IEL data has been subjected to rigorous statistical analysis by the researchers working on the Computational Phylogentics in Historical Linguistics (CPHL) project supported by the United States National Science Foundation. Their results indicate that while some European branches 931

of the IEL family have a shared evolutional history, the Vedic family has never had any linguistic contact with them, other than through the hypothetically reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language. Interestingly, the languages of Eastern and Southern Europe move closer to Vedic when Germanic is removed from the IEL tree.

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~nakhleh/CPHL/

See Fig 12 (p. 22) and section 6 (p. 22) of the link below

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~nakhleh/Papers/81.2nakhleh.pdf

and section 7.7 (p. 52) of the following study

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~nakhleh/CPHL/RWT02.pdf

Kazanas (2000) following Burrow (1973) has argued that Sanskrit (Vedic) is the most archaic and the least altered language than its relatives in the IE family. This is very uncharacteristic of a language whose speakers have supposedly traveled thousands of miles over at least two millennia to reach its present location. Refer to p. 5-6 of the following link for details of Kazanas linguistic arguments. http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/pdf/rie.pdf

Section 11.8: Network or web model of language interactions

IEL researches began with the discovery of Sansrkrit by the Europeans and the recognition of its relationship with European languages. IE linguists rapidly started building their trees with the implicit assumption that there was never or there could not have been any relation with other apparently non-Sansrkritic languages of British India. The idea of a language tree acknowledges only two extremes: either languages are completely genetically related to each other or they are 932

not related at all. They only borrow from or loan to or impose on other languages. Such assumption seems hardly appropriate for the Indian subcontinent where an ancient civilization is known to have existed and it still does. It is possible that a language can have two parents like all human beings. While the Proto-Vedic and its off spring Indo-Aryan languages may belong to an IE family, Proto-Vedic may have resulted in a non IE language (or even a language family) in conjunction with another non IE language (or a language family). In other words, the Bhartiya languages need to be modeled either as networks and/or overlapping linguistic areas. IE linguists theorize that a language begates languages, but they forget that languages may begate a language also. Kak (1996) terms the so called Indo-Aryan and Dravidian language families as North Prakrit and South Prakrit respectively.

The metaphor of something perfect or pure leading to large diversity must be replaced by the metaphor of a web (Robb, 1993). This becomes clear when we consider biological inheritance: as we go back in time we have more and more ancestors (Kak 1996).

http://subhashkak.voiceofdharma.com/articles/ary2.htm

One not only has more ancestors as one goes back further in time but those ancestors are also more likely to be very different than oneself. Oppenheimers mitochondrial Eve is the ancestor of all non-African people alive today no matter what they see in the mirror. Why would this be untrue for languages?

A new model that fits better with the Proto-Vedic Continuity Theory is propoed below. The new model allows for a close interaction between all ancient Bharatiya languages. Some languages may have to be modeled as interacting networks instead of trees. We are confident that given enough time and resources, proto languages can be reconstructed according to the new model that will fit equally well with the IEL data. This will be a fruitful avenue for furture research. "Austro-Asiatic (Munda in India and Mon-Khmer in southeast Asia) has 150 languages and 60 933

million speakers, including Vietnamese. Miao-Yao consists of four langauges with seven million speakers, scattered all over southern China and Southeast Asia generally. Daic has some 60 languages with 50 million speakers, especially Thai (Siamese). These three language families are sometimes grouped with the Austronesian family (below) into a "superfamily" called Austric. On the other hand, some linguists consider Miao-Yao and Daic relatives of Chinese.http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/languagefamilies.html

The relationship between Bharatiya [including Dravidian, Munda (Austric)] and West-European and other Eurasiatic languages must be explored in the broader context of the Eurasiatic language family (Greenberg 2002 2000, Ruhlen, 1994), which in its turn is part of the search for the origin of human speech itself. We reject the current piecemeal approach taken by IEL that choses some languages at the expense of others to build trees according to an unfalsiable ideology. In Saptasindhu region (RV refers to this in the line: sarasvati_ saptathi_ sindhuma_ta_), apart from speakers of Avestan, speakers of Munda are recognized, so are speakers of Dravidian (Brahui) and Language X (farming communities). These Prakrits may also be referred to as mleccha during the Sarasvati civilization period (ca. 3300 to 1900 BCE). The model presented in Figure 1 may not be interepreted to mean that the Russian lanuage was introduced into Russia by a group of Indians who invadedor migrated north! The present authors believe that there is no way to scientifically test such a claim. It just means that these languages share something in common through proto-Vedic and the larger Eurasiantic[1] family.

Figure 2: Prot-Vedic Continuity Theory Network Model

934

Section 11.9: Comparisons between Avesta and Post-Vedic of Sutra periods

Evidence provided by Avesta attests the Proto-Vedic Continuity Theory of Bharatiya Languages.

The Avesta is comparable to the Vedic Gr.hyasu_tras in the liturgical segments of parallel traditions, which evolved after the movements of people after the desiccation of the River Sarasvati--one group moved towards the Helmand region and another towards the GangaYamuna doab. The high office of the Yazis.n (of the Yasna) consisted chiefly in the ceremonial preparation and offering of the Paraho_m (Av. parahaoma), i.e. the juice extracted from the Haoma-plant mixed with consecrated water, milk and aromatic ingredients; this represents a time when the Soma yajn~a had already become a 'ritual' or a liturgical performance, as distinct from the material, metallurgical process delineated in the R.gveda to purify soma, electrum.

The concordances between Vedic texts (of th sutra period, in particular) and Avestan texts are so vivid that it can be averred that Avestan was a continuation of the Vedic tradition which arose on the banks of River Sarasvati and the sapta sindhu region in Bharatam. (Sarasvati_ saptathi_ sindhu ma_ta_: RV).

From the details provided in Appendix 2, it would appear that there is no need to postulate a proto-indo-iranian to explain the concordances in thought and diction between vedic sutras and Avestan texts related to yasna. Simply, Avestan was a direct derivative from post-Vedic, which evolved into Samskr.tam. 935

Talageri (2000) has convincingly shown that the contact between Indians and Iranians has occurred on the Indian subcontinent only. The evidence of the hymns of the Early Period of the Rigveda, as we have already seen, locates the Indo-Iranians further east: i.e. in the area from (and including) Uttar Pradesh in the east to (and including) the Punjab in the west. It is not, therefore, Central Asia, but India, which is the original area from which the Iranians migrated to their later historical habitats (Talageri, 2000). http://www.bharatvani.org/books/rig/ch6.htm

Section 11.10: What language did the neolithic-chalcolithic people of Bharat speak?

While substantial linguistic analytical work needs to be done to identify the language of Paleolithic times, it may be possible to arrive at Proto-Vedic language patterns based on a comparative study of the proto-versions of present-day languages of sapta sindhu region. Some archaeological leads are available related to Neolithic times. Archaeologist BB Lal has provided some archaeological perspectives related to the saptasindhu region (which he calls northwest South Asian region), starting from Neolithic times, from seventh millennium BCE:

"The evidence from the excavations at Mehrgarh (Jarrige) has demonstrated that the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent had reached a Neolithic, i.e. settled agricultural stage, by the seventh millennium BCE. Here it may also be emphasized that the Mehrgarh Neolithic complex stands in marked contrast to that of Western Asia. For example, whereas in the West Asian Neolithic there is the domination of sheep and goat amongst the domesticated animals and of wheat amongst the cultivated cereals, in the Mehrgarh context the cattle dominated over other animals and barley over other cereals. Thus, the Mehrgarh Neolithic has its own identity, having no generic relationship with its West Asian counterpart. In other words, the Mehrgarh people were the "the sons of the soil".Further, there is a continuous story from the succeeding 936

chalcolithic level onwards, taking us through various evolutionary stages to the Early Harappan from which there emerged the Harappan Civilization itself, around the middle of the third millennium BCE. Again, after a thorough study of the human skeletal remains, Hemphill and his colleagues (1991) have shown that there was a biological continuity right from 4500 BCE to 800 BCE. A question may now be posed: "What language did these chalcolithic people speak?" Though the Harappan script has not yet been deciphered, in spite of so many tall claims, we have yet another way of tackling the issuean in-depth study of the literary-cumarchaeological-cum-hydrological-cum-radiocarbon evidence duly establishes that the Rigveda (which, to recall, speaks of the Sarasvati as a mighty river) must antedate ca 2000 BCE. By how many centuries, it can be anybody's guessPutting together the various parts of this jigsaw puzzle, it would mean that if the Vedas reflect the literary counterpart \nof theHarappan archaeological complex, the Harappans spokes a language called Sanskrit. And since the Harappan Culture had its roots goingdeep at least into the fifth millennium BCE, it would imply that the\nSanskrit-speakers were there in this area as early as that. Further,had the Sanskrit-speaking people not been the original inhabitants ofthis region, we would have got evidence thereof in terms \nof asubstratum language, which we really do not have. The presence of afew Dravidian words in the Vedas can be explained by an adstratum and\nnot necessarily by a substratum. As explained elsewhere by the presentauthor (in press), the Harappans came in lateral contact with the Southern Neolithic people who, in all probability, were speakers theDravidian language.\n" [Excerpt from Chapter V \'The homeland of indoeuropean languages and culture\' in: \nB.B. Lal, 2005, The homeland of the > aryans, evidence of rigvedic flora and fauna and archaeology, \nDelhi, Aryan Books international, pp. 63 to 84. [Based on Paper presented at a seminar organized by the Indian Council for \nHistorical Research on the same theme in Delhi on 7-9 January 2002]. \n\n \n",1] ); //--> of the Harappan archaeological complex, the Harappans spokes a language called Sanskrit. And since the Harappan Culture had its roots going deep at least into the fifth millennium BCE, 937

it would imply that the Sanskrit-speakers were there in this area as early as that. Further, had the Sanskrit-speaking people not been the original inhabitants of this region, we would have got evidence thereof in terms of a substratum language, which we really do not have. The presence of a few Dravidian words in the Vedas can be explained by an adstratum and not necessarily by a substratum. As xplained elsewhere by the present author (in press), the Harappans came in lateral contact with the Southern Neolithic people who, in all probability, were speakers the Dravidian language

another homeland has been suggested, somewhere in the vicinity of ancient BactriaSogdiana by Johanna Nichols (1997, a and b). From this homeland, Nichols holds, there was a spread of the Proto-Indo-European language to the area surrounding the Aral Sea and on to the Caspian. From there a two-fold spread has been envisaged: a major one to the areas lying to the north of the Caspian and Black Seas and thence to Europe, and a comparatively minor one along the southern side of these seas, also reaching Europe via Anatolia, from the southern end. However, a more noteworthy point in Nichols schema is that there was only a languagespread and not a migration of peopleNichols model, proposed only recently, has yet to be fully evaluated by linguists. [Excerpt from Chapter V 'The homeland of indo-european languages and culture' in: B.B. Lal, 2005, The homeland of the aryans, evidence of rigvedic flora and fauna and archaeology, Delhi, Aryan Books international, pp. 63 to 84, [Based on Paper presented at a seminar organized by the Indian Council for Historical Research on the same theme in Delhi on 7-9 January 2002].

Mallorys observation is apropos: One does not ask where is the Indo-European homeland? But rather where do they put it now?

The possibility of Bactria-Sogdiana being the center from which Proto-Vedic languages differentiated into Avestan, and many European languages/dialects, Vedic, Samskr.tam, Prakrit (Mleccha, Munda, Dravidian) has to be studied further by following up on the studies which 938

indicate a Munda (Austric) presence in the region west of Sarasvati Civilization on SarasvatiSindhu doab. Section 11.11 Nahali as mleccha

The genetic affiliation of Nahali is controversial and can be related to the 'linguistic area' of ca. 3500 BCE in the civilization area. About 40% of the lexicon is cognate to Munda languages, and some linguists therefore put it in that group. Among the numbers, 2-4 are borrowed from Dravidian, and 5-10 from Indic. Numerals in Nahali: bidum (m.), bidi (f.), 'one'; ir, ira 'two'; motho 'three', na_lo 'four'; pa~co 'five'; chah 'six'; sato 'seven'; atho 'eight'; nav 'nine'; das 'ten'; ba_ro 'twelve'. http://euslchan.tripod.com/isolated.htm

The ancient version of the spoken language of the Sarasvati-Sindhu civilization, ca. 3000 to 1300 B.C., can be traced as Proto-Prakrits/Proto-Pali or sub- or ad-stratum languages, such as Nahali, which are phonetically modified and embodied in the spoken versions of the current-day languages of India. Microlithic sites in India and neighbouring regions and the areas of the substrate languages of Naha_li, Irul.a, Vedda and Rodiya (After Schwartzberg, Joseph, ed.,1978, A historical atlas of South Asia, Chicago; loc. cit., Parpola, 1994, Fig. 8.9) It is likely that many lexemes of the Pra_kr.ts were derived from the hundreds of such languages which should have constituted the substratum of the Linguistic Area in Indic protohistory.

The ancient version of the spoken language can be traced from the spoken versions of the current-day languages of India.

Section 11.11.1: Nahali, Proto-Indo-Aryan substratum

Is it reasonable to assume that the region was a linguistic area ca. 3500 - 1500 BCE? [Say, with speakers of: Nahali, Burushaski, Prakrits (Proto-Indo-Aryan), Munda, Dravidian dialects]? 939

Let us look at the evidence of agricultural terms in the languages of the region, terms for agricultural implements, cultivation of the soil, and food items.

In 1936 Wilhelm Brandenstein concluded from the fact that the Indo-Iranian branch had not taken part in common PIE semantic developments in the field of agricultural terminology that the Indo-Iranians must have lost contact with the main body of PIE speakers at a time when agriculture had not yet developed among them. When the Aryans entered Indoa, accordingly, they would still have been pastoral nomads. Nowadays, however, the lexical difference is explained by the polycentric origin of the IE agricultural knowledge from two or three earlier food producing centres by cultural and partly also by lexical differences (Makkay, J., 1988, Cultural groups of SE-Europe in the Neolithic: the PIE homeland problem and the origins of the Proto-greeks, AION, 10, p. 125; see also Masica, C.P., 1979, Aryan and non-Aryan elements in North Indian agriculture, in: M.M. Deshpande and PE Hook, eds., Aryan and Non-Aryan in India, Ann arbor, p. 57). The process of borrowing has continued over the centuries. In modern Hindi 80 percent of the terminology is, as Masicas fundamental study has made clear, of foreign origin: The surprising thing is that only a small proportion of the remainder is either Dravidian or Austroasiatic, even by generous estimates (1979: 131). See also Schlerath, B., 1989, Viehzuchtertum and Ackerbau, GGA 241, 41 ff. (Kuiper, FBJ, 1991, Aryans in the Rigveda, Amsterdam, Rodopi, p. 15).

Kuiper cites from Southworth the following examples of glosses, testifying to a strong foreign impact: ku_t.a, house; kun.d.a, pot, vessel; u_rdara, a measure for holding grain; apu_pa, cake; odana, rice dish; karambha, a kind of gruel; pin.d.a, a lump of flesh; ulu_khala, mortar; ka_rotara, sieve, drainer; camris., ladle; kosa, cask, bucket; kr.sana, pearl; ki_na_sa, ki_na_ra, ploughman; khilya, waste piece of land; la_n:gala, plough; si_ra, plough; pha_la, ploughshare; tilvila, fertile, rich; bi_ja, seed; pippala, berry of the ficus religiosa; mu_la, root; khala, threshing floor; r.bi_sa, volcanic cleft; kevat.a, cave, pit; kr.pi_t.a, thick or firewood; sakat.i_, cart; a_n.i, linch-pin; va_n.i, swingle tree; kulisa, axe; ku_t.a, mallet.(cf. 940

Southworth, F.C., 1979, Lexical evidence for early contacts between Indo-Aryan and Dravidian, in: M.M. Deshpande and P.E. Hook, eds., Aryan and Non-Aryan in India, Ann arbor, pp.191233).

Kuiper goes on to list 383 foreign elements in the Rigvedic vocabulary of words such as: aks.a, araru, alina, a_n.d.a, ku_la, krumu, gargara, chubuka, dr.bhi_ka, na_d.i_, phan., phaliga, bhala, man.d.u_ki, mayu_ra, mala, yaks.u, yadu, vispala_, sakat.i_, sakuna, san.d.ika, sabala, sini_va_li_, sr.bida. The approximately 380 foreign words listed by Kuiper are computed to be nine percent of the Rigvedic vocabulary contained in Grassmanns dictionary. many among these Aryans had non-Aryan names andthis fact points to some inescapable conclusionsStatements to the effect that the Rigveda was no longer purely Aryan are therefore correct to the extent that they refer to the language and the ethnic components: both were Aryan. (p. 96).

The use of words such as foreign origin, strong foreign impact for as much as 80 percent of agricultural terminology is based on the euro-centric perspective of incursion of Indo-European language into Bharat creating the Indo-Aryan. Kuiper concedes: It should not be forgotten that it was Indo-Europeanists who began to study the non-Aryan languages of India, because to them it was quite evident that a not inconsiderable part of the Sanskrit vocabulary could not possibly be of IE origin. The preceding list was drawn up from an Indo-Europeanists point of viewThe main point is that it should be recognized that Sanskrit had long been an Indian language when it made its appearance in historyA language in which simultaneously Dravidian calques arose and Indo-European laryngeals were still pronounced (viz. in tanuam, suar) was more progressive and, at the same time, more archaic than could be imagined a few decades ago (p. 94).

From an autochthonous perspective, these examples of glosses point to an indigenous evolution of the Prakrits, later refined into Sanskrit. 941

There is no basis to assume that the Bhils of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh originally spoke a non-IE language, probably Nahali, yet: "No group of Bhils speak any but an Aryan tongue. (...) it is unlikely that traces of a common non-Aryan substratum will ever be uncovered in present-day Bhili dialects." (von Frer-Haimendorf 1956:x, quoted in Kuiper 1962:50).

The Language 'X' of Colin Masica may indeed be Meluhhan or Mleccha dialect, cognate with Nahali, a language isolate of Narmada valley or kha_n.d.ava vana (forest), not far from Bhr.gu ks.etra [bhr.gu = va_run.i_ (R.gveda), i.e. people of a maritime, riverine civilization]. The neolithic precursor of the civilization has recently been discovered in two sunken rivers in the Gulf of Khambat close to the Nahali-speaking valley -- Narmada river valley. (cf. Gulf of Khambat Cultural Complex, National Institute of Ocean Technology). Why is Somaskanda shown carrying an antelope on his left arm? What metaphors are connoted by the weapons and tools adorning many hands?

Section 11.11.2: Language X, Nahali, Vedic

A remarkable clue is provided by the existence of Nahali as an isolate language in the Narmada Valley, a valley which has assumed prominence as a neolithic precursor (ca. 10000 years Before Present) of the bronze-age civilization on the Sarasvati Sindhu River valleys. Was Nahali an Austro-asiatic language; or was it an Indo-European language? The vocabulary of Nahali[i] contains a number of words which may be interpreted as the Indo-Aryan substratum. The Gulf of Khambat Cultural Complex (GKCC) close to the area of the Nahali-speakers is only 300 kms. from Padri, Dholavira and Surkotada which are replete with stone structures; in Dholavira, ringstones and polished pillars of stone have been found. A maritime, riverine culture of the GKCC parallels the land-based, riverine, Mehrgarh neolithic evidence.

Close to the Gulf of Khambat Cultural Complex where two submerged rivers have been 942

discovered (possible extensions of palaeo-channels of River Tapti) are the speakers of Nahali language which is described as an Indo-Aryan language. http://www.hindunet.org/saraswati/khambat/khambat01.htm

Piotr Gasiorowski, a linguist active on the cybalist group: Strictly speaking, Nahali (spoken on the upper Tapti) is not an isolate, though it's classified as such e.g. on the SIL site. Present-day Nahali is genetically an Indo-Aryan language whose lexicon shows several layers of absorbed substrates. Though the exact percentages apparently vary from dialect to dialect (while minor and endangered, Nahali is not a monolithic languages), according to Kuiper's estimates the largest lexical component (ca. 36%) is borrowed from Kurku (a.k.a. Korku, a Munda language), about 9% of Nahali words are Dravidian (e.g. the numerals 2, 3 and 4, whereas 5 and higher are Indo-Aryan), and some 25% are of unknown origin. Because of the high proportion of Munda loans Nahali has also been erroneously classified as a Munda language or even a dialect of Kurku. The etymologically obscure part of Nahali vocabulary is thought to represent an ancient pre-Indo-Aryan substrate of the Madhya Pradesh/Maharashtra border. Although the figure 25% may be exaggerated, the substrate -- unrelated to any known family -- seems to be real enough. Kuiper's attempts to establish a distant relationship between Nahali and Ainu ("Isolates of the world, unite!") should not be taken too seriously. It's quite possible that Central India was once a crazy quilt of tiny families. Relics of the Nahali substrate and perhaps of other, hitherto unidentified extinct languages may be lurking in the local varieties of Indo-Aryan, e.g. in the numerous but poorly investigated languages of the Bhil group. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/13915

Yes, Nahali is spoken on the upper reaches of the Tapati river valley. The Tapati river extensions have been submerged in the Gulf of Khambat when the gulf was formed ca. 10,000 yrs. Before Present and resulted in the start of regular monsoons in India. Nahali provides the key to unravel further the proto-Indo-Aryan using epigraphs of the 4th to 2nd millennia. Piotr's thoughts jibe with Emeneau's postulate on a linguistic area and Norman Brown's 943

observations. Recognizing the structure of a proto-Indo-Aryan linguistic area may help explain the glyphs on inscribed objects found between ca. 3500 to 1500 BCE in Sarasvati-Sindhu River basins.

bharukaccha, bharu-rat.t.ha =a kingdom which is said to have been swallowed up by the sea (Pali.lex.Ja_taka 2.169).

Bhr.gu (cognate with bharu-) is va_run.i in R.gveda and is closely associated with the sea. Bharukaccha (Bharuch) is on the coast of Sindhu sa_gara (Arabian ocean) close to where the River Narmada joins the ocean.

Section 11.11.3: Was Nahali a language of the Bhils of western Bha_rata?

Nahali was spoken on the River Tapti, NW of Ellichpur in Madhya Pradesh. Of the vocabulary, 36% are of Kurku (Munda) and 9% of Dravidian origin. Kuiper lists 123 items of vocabulary not reducible to Austro-Asiatic, Dravidian or IE roots, and calculates that about 24 per cent of the Nahali vocabulary has no correspondence whatever in India. (FBJ Kuiper, 1962, Nahali, a comparative study. Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandse Uitgevers Maatschappij, pp.49-50; 1966, The sources of Nahali vocabulary, in: H. Zide, Studies in comparative Austroasiatic. Linguistics, ed. N. H. Zide, The Hague, pp. 96-192). Bernard Sergent thinks that Nahali is an Austro-Asiatic language (Gense de lInde, p.31.)

Nahali language (like Basque or Burushaski) is an isolate language unrelated to the IndoEuropean family.

<http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/languagefamilies.html >

944

Gondi manja 'man, person'; Tamil mntar 'people, men', man 'king, husband'; Old Japanese womina 'woman' (Modern Japanese onna); Ainu mene-ko 'woman'; Papuan munan, mando, mundu 'man'; Nahali mancho 'man'; Egyptian sn 'smell'; Hausa sansana 'smell'; Georgian sun 'smell'; Tamil, Malayalam cuNTu 'bill, beak, snout'; Basque sunda 'smell'; Tibetan sna 'smell'; Nahali chon 'nose'; Seneca oseno 'smell'; Wintu sono 'nose' "Nahale north of Amalwadi in Jalgaon District speak a language similar to Ahirani (IndoEuropean). Nihali and Nahali may be different languages. Nihal in Chikaldara taluk and Akola District have 25% lexical similarity with Korku (Munda). Nahal near Toranmal have 51% to 73% lexical similarity with several Bhil languages (Indo-European). They live in or near Korku villages, and identify closely with the Korku. Investigation needed: intelligibility with nearby Bhili languages, bilingual proficiency in Korku (Munda), Hindi, Marathi. Tropical forest. Mountain slope." http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=NHL

Maheshwar, 90 kms. from Indore, is a town situated on the banks of the Narmada River, in Khargone district of the State of Madhya Pradesh in Bha_rata. Archaeological digs at Naodatodi, 2 kilometers away across the Narmada have unearthed remains dating from 2000 BC. In classical periods, Maheshwar was known as Mahishmati or Mahisati, and later Avanti, the state capitol of Raja Bhoja. S'an:kara and Mand.ana Mis'ra (who was a poet in the court of Ma_his.mati) discuss the karma mi_ma_msa philosophy at Ma_his.mati, a place mentioned in both the Ra_ma_yan.a and the Maha_bha_rata. It was the capital city of Ka_rtavi_rarjuna (who killed Jamadagni); it was also the capital city of the Va_ka_t.aka-s (6th cent.) who built the cavetemples of Ellora. This is the ks.etra of Paras'urama, 'Rama of the axe', a Brahmin, born to the sage Jamadagni and his wife Renuka. This is also Bhr.gu ks.etra (cf. Bharuch on the mouth of Narmada river). In the Bhr.gu tradition, Vishnu's consort is Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and fortune. She is believed to have emerged from the samudra manthan, and considered to be the daughter of Bhr.gu and Khyati.

945

Not far from the region is Bhimbet.ka, where 500 caves have pre-historic paintings showing many horses and also chariots (one pictorial motif is interpreted by H.D. Sankalia, as Kr.s.n.a wielding a cakra a_yudha (discus weapon). Horses or chariots are not imports from Central Asia into Bha_rata!

"Executed mainly in red and white with the occasional use of green and yellow, with themes taken from the everyday events of aeons ago, the scenes usually depict hunting, dancing, music, horse and elephant riders, animals fighting, honey collection, decoration of bodies, disguises, masking and household scenes. Animals such as bisons, tigers, lions, wild boar, elephants, antelopes, dogs, lizards, crocodiles etc. have been abundantly depicted in some caves. Popular religious and ritual symbols also occur frequently."http://www.meadev.nic.in/tourism/exotic/bh-mp.htm

Horse depicted in a painting in Cave 4 at Bhimbetka Domesticated horse shown on a painting in Cave no. 8 at Bhimbet.ka http://www.art-and-archaeology.com/india/

kha_n.d.ava vana: Explorations in the beds/tributaries of Narmada have revealed traces of the Paleolithic men in East Nimar district. Omkar Mandhata, a rocky island on the bank of Narmada river, about 47 miles North-West of Khandwa, is said to have been conquered by the Haihaya king Mahishmant, a scion of Yadu family, who had named the capital as Ma_his.mati. From the early 2nd Century B.C., to the 10 century CE, the Nimar Region (earlier a part of Kha_n.d.ava) was ruled by Mauryas, Sungas, Early Satvahanas, Kardamakas, Abhiras, Va_kat.akas, Guptas, Kalachuris, Vardhanas (of Harsha Vardhana fame), Chalukyas, Ra_s.t.raku_t.as, Paramaras. There is a group of ks.atriya known as somavam.s'i_ya sahasra_rjuna ks.atriya, claiming their lineage to Ra_jara_jes'vara Sahasra_rjuna ca. 2600 BCE. http://www.sskna.org/ssk_history.html Omka_res'war is an island at the confluence of River Narmada and River Kaveri . [The same name 'ka_veri' is the name of the river which flows 946

from Karna_t.aka through Tamilna_d.u].

It is a reasonable hypothesis that Language X can be traced to languages such as the substrate Nahali and that Language X was in fact the Vedic language. It is also assumed that Nahali exemplifies the state of the Linguistic Area, ca. 3500 to 1500 BCE in North-western Bha_rata.

The acculturation of Meluhhans (probably, people from the Sarasvati-Sindhu doab and coastal regions of Makran Coast, Gulf of Kutch and Gulf of Khambat) residing in Mesopotamia in the late third and early second millennium BC, is noted by their adoption of Sumerian names (Parpola, Parpola and Brunswig 1977: 155-159). "The adaptation of Harappan motifs and script to the Dilmun seal form may be a further indication of the acculturative phenomenon, one indicated in Mesopotamia by the adaptation of Harappan traits to the cylinder seal." (Brunswig et al, 1983, p. 110).

Is the antelope on Somaskanda vigraha the same as the antelope carried by the Meluhha speaking merchant shown on an Akkadian cylinder seal? Are the metaphors the same, mere hieroglyphs of mleccha?

If Vedic contained a significant munda presence (substratum or adstratum or borrowing), the tacit, underlying hypothesis is that munda was present in the saptasindhu region, a region closely identified as the locus of the Vedic language. The presence of munda is emphatic, not merely in terms of glosses but also in terms of traditions such as those related to e_mu_s.a and dhrumbhu_li.

How could the presence of munda (it is irrelevant if it was deemed to be substrate or adstrate) in saptasindhu region be explained? Are words such as is.t.aka (brick), pin.d.a (lump), khad.ga (rhino), kan.d. (furnace) of munda origin? Are words with n.d.- of indigenous origin, say of language X? (cf. Hoffman, K., 1941, Die alt-indoarischen worter mit n.d.- besonders im 947

R.gveda, PhD dissertation, Munchen).

In the Sat.t.aka of Ghanas'ya_ma, A_nandasundari_, Vidu_s.aka asks: "Such a great poet as he is, is he not ashamed to give his dramatic composition in Prakrit instead of in Sanskrit?" (eka_risakayi_ bhavi-a kaham pa_ud.anibandhan.akaran.e n.a lajji-o). Ghanas'ya_ma replies: "No, not at all. The reason why they hage Prakrit is this. Listen: A heretic hates sacrifice, a libertine hates character, and a fool hates knowledge. Man vainly goes on condemning things that are beyond him. Poets who are versed in one language are just partial poets. On the other hand, one who knows all languages is a complete or Perfect Poet." (pa_khan.d.o n.a maham tidikkha-i, vid.o si_la_-i vijjam jad.o jam jam jassa sudullaham khidisu so tam tam muha_ n.indai. te savve un.a ekkadesaka-i-n.o je ekkabha_sa_can.a_ so sampun.n.aka-i_ viha_i bhuvan.e jo savvabha_sa_ka-i_.)

Some interesting perspectives are provided on the Nahali enigma by van Driem which is cited below extensively in relation to Nahali:

"Robert Shafer saw Nahali as a language isolate which in ancient times had adopted many Austroasiatic words, had subsequently been exposed to Dravidian languages, whence Nahali had acquired a number of loans, including the numerals `two' and `four', and later became subject to considerable borrowing influence from the North Munda language Kurku."In Nahali, Kuiper identified the Kurku and Dravidian loans, which represented `the most recent strata of the language', and determined that they constituted 36% and 9% of the Nahali lexicon, respectively. Kuiper recognised `the existence of Munda elements in Nahali, longbefore it came under the spell of Kurku' and identified the elements of this `older Munda stratum which it seems hard to identify with any of the branches of Munda now extant'. Kuiper stressed that Shafer had `rightly recognized the existence of an early Austro-Asiaticstratum that is distinct from the later stratum of Kurku words', although `the identity of this Austro-Asiatic (early Munda) component remains an unsolved riddle' (1962: 38, 50-51). None the less, about one quarter `of 948

the Nahali vocabulary has no correspondences whateverin India', and this `large number of words, if the Nahals represent a proto-Indic population _in situ_, may possibly reflect one of the oldest linguistic strata of India now attainable to research' (1962: 49-50). "Heinz-Jrgen Pinnow believed that Nahali could either be an isolate or represent a distinct branch of Austroasiatic, but that Nahali `is at any rate not Munda' (1963: 151). Pinnow called the hypothetical branch of Austroasiatic which Nahali embodied `West Munda', which wascoordinate with `East Munda', consisting of the accepted branches North and South Munda. The reason for including Nahali in his tentative Austroasiatic phylogeny was that Pinnow entertained the conjecture `that Nahali possesses an isolated non-Austroasiatic substratum that has been partially replaced by an Austroasiatic stratum which has also provided Nahali with its inflection' (1963: 152). [] In light of Pinnow's suggestive morphological evidence,Kuiper expressed the view that `if Pinnow's provisional conclusion that the Nahali verbal system derives directly from the Proto-Munda one should prove correct, we might consider the possibility of identifying the early Munda elements in Nahali with that hypotheticalbranch of Austroasiatic which may be called _para-Munda_' (1966: 81)."Kuiper's well-known application of the concept of argot or _Gaunersprache_ to a subset of genetically unidentifiable portion of the Nahali lexicon was inspired by knowledge of the symbiotic lifestyle of the Nahali and the Kurku, relative to whom the Nahali occupy an inferior social position: `the question arises whether the Nahals may perhaps have had recourse to the same weapon that despised social groups have used all over India, viz. the secret language' (1962: 12). This is not to say that Nahali has ever been spoken exclusively as _Gaunersprache_ rather than as the native language of a group of people, or that Nahali do not somehow speak their language natively. Kuiper's concept of the _Gaunersprache_, for which many parallels are found inside and beyond the Indian subcontinent, is intended to remind us `that some of the obscure Nahali words may also belong to an argot, and need not necessarily date back to a linguistic pre-history of India' (1962: 14)."Norman Zide came out in support of Kuiper's other hypothesis, i.e. that Nahali is not Austroasiatic, but the only surviving remnant of something called Proto-Indic which antedates the advent of austroasiatic, Dravidian and later Indo-Aryan."Adsha Mundlay's Nahali data, 949

consisting of a list of 1,660 words, many of which, however, are evidently Kurku or Hindi loans, were finally published in 1996. Mundlay holds Nahali to be Austroasiatic, possibly with greater affinity to South Munda. [] Mundlay professes with candour that the actual basis for her belief in an Austroasiatic genetic status for Nahali is her adherence to `the axiom that the language is guilty of genetic contact unless proved incontestably innocent of it' (1996: 16). Only a detailed grammatical investigation of the language can answer the question whether Nahali is a Munda language or an Austroasiatic language at all or represents `a proto- Indic population _in situ_'."The paucity of data on Nahali leaves much room for gratuitous speculation on the genetic affinity and provenance of the language. Bengston (1996) entertains the hypothesis that Ainu and Nahali belong to an Austric macrophylum and adduces two dozen unconvincing correspondences. Frans Kuiper, who had already noticed the more obvious of these correspondences years before, more prudently expressed the feeling that `as for such possible correspondences asNah. a:po : Ainu apoi, ape `fire', they will be passed in silence, asit is impossible in the present state of our knowledge to decide whether they are anything more that accidental similarities' (1962: 50). Even a Nostratic origin for Nahali has been considered, e.g. Dolgopol'skij (1996)." (G. van Driem, _Languages of the Himalayas_, Leiden-Boston-K ln, Brill, 2001, Vol. I, pp. 248-253).

Is Kurku north-Munda or north-Dravidian? Has enough investigation been done on the relationships between Munda and Dravidian?How can a language such as Nahali be assumed to be a language isolate when the glosses contain a fair representation of language x, indoaryan, munda and dravidian? Does language X used for many agricultural terms of all bharatiya languages make them all languageisolates? The question is: is it possible to isolate the layers which are relatable to Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and chalcolithic periods with particular reference to cultural underpinnings: say, words for flora and fauna, words related to organized farming, wordsrelated to social group, words related to smithy or mint, buildings, bricks, plaster, tools and weapons. If there is a clear progression in artifacts realized through archaeological investigations of many sites in Bharat, going back to Paleolithic times, it should be possible to 950

start naming these artifacts in the local languages, such as Nahali, Hemacandra des'i, Sauraseni, apabhrams'a, Ardhamagadhi, Pali, Tamil, Oriya, Telugu, Konkani. This is precisely, the reason why the suggestion has been made that there should be more intensive and extensive investigations of the linguistic area of Bharat, the Indo- in the Indo-European.The logical deduction seems to be that a proto-indic can be postulated; this we have called protovedic in interaction with dravidian and austric in a linguistic area, the Saptasindhu region.

Section 11.11.4: Nahali should be considered a language integrate with respect to Bharatiya languages. According to Kuiper: "It should not be forgotten that it was Indo-Europeanists who began to study the non-Aryan languages of India, because to them it was quite evident that a not inconsiderable part of the Sanskrit vocabulary could not possibly be of IE origin. The preceding list was drawn upfrom an Indo-Europeanist's point of viewThe main point is that it should be recognized that Sanskrit had long been an Indian language when it made its appearance in historyA language in which simultaneously Dravidian calques arose and Indo-European laryngealswere still pronounced (viz. in tanuam, suar) was more progressive and, at the same time, more archaic than could be imagined a few decades ago (p. 94)."There seems to be a consensus that saptasindhu region was the locus for Rigveda. As for neolithic and chalcolithic periods, With the cumulative knowledge of archaeological discoveries, it is now possible to define this region including the delineation of interaction areas as Kenoyer has done in his, Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley (2000), OUP. The epicenter was the Sarasvati river basin with over 2000 of the 2600 sites of the civilization sited on this river basin extending from Lothal to Ropar.

Section 11.12: A plausible scenario for emigration of PIE dialects out of South Asia

951

"Gamkrelidze and Ivanov (1995:348-350) have built an impressive reconstruction of such successive migrations on an impressive survey of the linguistic material. To summarize:

1) Initially, there was a single PIE language.

2) The first division of PIE yielded two dialect groups, which will be called A and B. Originally they co-existed in the same area, and influenced each other, but geographical separation put an end to this interaction.

3) In zone A, one dialect split off, probably by geographical separation (whether it was its own speakers or those of the other dialects who emigrated from the Urheimat, is not yet at issue), and went on to develop separately and become Anatolian.

4) The remainder of the A group acquired the distinctive characteristics of the Tocharo-ItaloCeltic subgroup.

5) While the A remainder differentiated into Italo-Celtic and Tokharic, the B group differentiated into a "northern" or Balto-Slavic-Germanic and a "southern" or Greek-Armenian-Aryan group; note that the kentum/satem divide only affects the B group, and does not come in the way of other and more important isoglosses distinguishing the northern group (with kentum Germanic and predominantly satem Baltic and Slavic) from the southern group (with kentum Greek and satem Armenian and Aryan)."

The best fit model obtained by Ringe et. al. fits the above secnerio very well. Germanic oscillates just like it is supposed to assuming a South Asian homeland. Elst's (2000) Group A would be far right in Fig 12 and Group B far 952

left.

Fig 12, p. 22 of <

Appendix 1: How to study bhasha (language)? Study of Bharatiya languages: s'abda as Brahman A new method falsifiable in science, has to be evolved, a method radically different from the failed methods of Indo-European linguistics which have produced only unfalsifiable assumptions. A rich source for evolving this method and testing it is in the study of ancient languages of Bharatam. A beginning has been with the construction of a comparative lexicon of 25+ ancient languages of Bharatam. (http://www.hindunet.org/saraswati/html/indlexmain.htm) The suggested method is premised on language as a socio-cultural reality and has to be analysed only based on recorded evidence without attempting any hypothetical reconstructions or unfalsifiable deductions. The use of the method has to be integral and to follow on the works of savants, Panini, Yaska, Patanjali, Tolkaappiyan, Bhartrhari using the research triad of: s'ruti, tantrayukti, anubhuti (that is, purvapaksha, research design of the type used in Kautilya's Arthas'astra or Ayurvedic texts, and experience recording the speech forms of many kula, gan.a, jaati and janajaati). Such a method will unravel the essential continuity of the languages of Bharata from the days of Proto-Vedic times, consistent with the cultural continuity and indigenous evolution evidenced by archaeological discoveries. The operative principle is that languages conserve and are products of a continuing cultural tradition and are not mere chroniclers of change, not mere mimickry of biological change. What languages did the kula, gan.a, jaati and janajaati mentioned in the Mahabharata speak? There is one hint that Yudhishthira and Vidura spoke in mleccha. It would appear that there were two dialects in vogue: mleccha and samskr.tam. Mleccha as a language is also mentioned in the brahmanas and by Manu. Sources for the study of evolution of bharatiya languages are abundant and the literary texts, 953

epigraphs and orally transmitted caarana. and other folk saahitya through communication forms such as yaksha gaana, apart from the texts such as jaataka tales and works of jaina muni-s are the primary sources for use by any researcher in bharatiya linguistics (bhasha s'iksha). The linguistic tradition of bharatam is an unparalleled legacy and heritage which should provide the impetus for a fresh look at the problem of delineating the language of, say, Sarasvati civilization. Elsewhere, the epigraphs of the civilization have been analysed as Sarasvati hieroglyphs related to the metallurgical repertoire of the artisans: furnaces, minerals, metals and alloys produced and traded across an extensive civilizational contact area. The work done by Bharatiya savants is an extraordinary study of languages in various facets ranging from dhvani to s'abda Brahman, explaining the essential unity of s'abda and Brahman, transcending from phonetic, phonemic, morphemic, semantic analyses s'abda, dhvani, naada, vaakya, artha -- to language as one manifestation of consciousness, s'abda Brahman or vaag vai brahmeti. S'abda is nitya, artha is nitya. And, their inter-relationship, vaacya-vaacakabhaava is also nitya. (siddhe shabdaarthasambandhe lokato arthaprayukte shabdaprayoge shaaStreNa dharmaniyamaH yathaa laukikavaidikeSu MahaabhaaSya, Vol.1. 6.) The spectrum of language analyses provided, therefore, are breath-takingly expansive and incisive. The purvapaksha provides the framework for further studies related to the historical evolution of languages of present-day Bharatam, from mleccha through Prakrits to Samskr.tam and the present-day languages and dialects in vogue both as spoken forms and as literary forms. This tradition dating back to the Rigveda and attempts at understanding the import of the veda provide a framework for a paradigm which is a lot difference from the 'linguistic' studies in vogue in academia through subjects such as comparative or historical linguistics or general semantics. That mleccha is a reality is clearly identified in the practices of spreading the word of the Buddha using local languages and dialects. Gautama advised his disciples, the monks: "I allow you, O monk, to learn the word of Buddha each in his own languageundue importance should not be attached to the dialect of a particular janapada, i.e., a monk should be accommodating to dialectical variations, and not insist upon the use of a particular word," (Gard, Richard. (Ed.) 1961, Buddhism. New York: George Braziller, Inc., p. 67). This mleccha has to be recognized in 954

the dialects used by extended family or kinship groups recognized as jaati or janajaati in bharatiya tradition. "When the Saora yarn is ready it is taken to a Pano neighbour for weaving". The interactions among the jaati have to be studied as part of a study of the true socio-cultural itihaasa of bharatam janam (a term used by vis'vamitra gathina in the Rigveda, referring to the nation of the people of Bharata). The interactions in a linguistic area among Andamanese, Austro-Asiatic, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, Prakrits (mleccha) and Samskr.tam have to be delineated in extensive studies of evolution from proto-versions of present-day languages and dialects such as Nahali or Munda or Tamil or Sindhi or Bengali, "The concept 'to cross' /daatu/ in Kannada has several contextual meanings in Jenu Kuruba, i.e., 'to cross', 'to climb up', 'to climb down', 'jump', etc. Among the several small tribes, the 'concepts' for 'color' and 'numerals' are limited to their eco-system. Similarly, concepts for land, animals, plants, soil, wind, weather, social relations and supernaturals are different." (Jennifer Marie Bayer, Sociolinguistic perspectives of cultures in transition Indian tribal situation)http://www.languageinindia.com/march2005/jennifertribal1.html As explained in Bharata's Natya s'astra, dheera (hero), sage, brahmana, bauddha uses samskr.tam, and almost all others such as children, persons possessed by evil spirits, mendicants, ascetics, persons in disguise, speak in Prakrit. Specifically, Kirata, Dravida, and Andhra speak in dialects of Saurasena or dialects of the areas in which the natya is performed; sellers of spirits, guards of prisons, and diggers of underground constructions are speak in Odri. These speech identities point to the underlying unity among the languages and dialects and the ability of a natya to communicate the message across the entire bharata varsha. While discussing the rules for the use of solid instruments, Bharata defines the term, saindhavaka as a regional dialect. Saindhavaka is dependent on the Prakrit language current in the region of Sindhu. It should have musical accompaniments and songs. The va_dya should be of the varieties of vitasta and a_lipta ma_rgas. Here there should not be any text (for representation.) Abhinavagupta notes that it consists of harsh and coarse language. It is in this that poets compose regional plays like D.ombika, Bijaka etc. which are the pastimes of the folk. (31.359-360) 955

Abhinavagupta notes that ra_saka called ra_dha_vipralambha composed by Bhejjala uses mainly saindhava language. (R.S. Nagar III, p. 70). In the context of the use of language for Dhruva_ songs, Abhinavagupta explains the use of the term ardhasamskr.tam by Bharata in 32.397.

In 32.396 to 397, Bharata notes: Generally the language for the Dhruva_ is sauraseni_. For Narkut.a the language is Ma_gadhi. For celestials the Dhruva_ song is prescribed in Sanskrit and for men the language should be half Sanskrit (meaning the mixture of Sanskrit and Prakrit or any regional language). Abhinavagupta explains that ardhasamskr.tam refers to the mixed language used in Kashmir by the name Sa_t.akula and the language used in daks.in.a_patha by the name of Man.iprava_la. NP Unni notes that a 14th century text of Kerala titled Li_la_tilakam in Malayalam is also known as Man.iprava_lalaks.an.a. This work is said to have defined Mani.prava_la language as bha_s.a_samskr.tayogo man.iprava_lam.

Thus, sa_t.akula and man.iprava_la may be cited as examples of ardhasamskr.tam.

In 27.48 in the chapter related to siddhivyanjakam (indication of success), Bharata notes one of the characteristics of arbitrators who will assess the virtues and blemishes of dramatic performance is that they should be knowledgeable in matters of dress, pious by nature and proficient in regional languages, apart from expertise in arts and artifacts. The technical term used by Bharata is: desabha_s.a_vidha_najna_h. The study of languages in bharatiya tradition is NOT abstract formulations but the study of reality, recognized in speech, in an uttered and recognized sentence. The perceived form of speech is vaikharee, manifested in the form of phonemes and heard in the form of sounds. (paraiH samvedyam yasyaaH shrotraviSayatvena pratiniyatam shrutirUpam saa vaikharI. vrtti on Bk. 159.) Speech has preceding stages: in the mind of the speaker (madhyamaa vaak) and a formless merger of word form and its meaning (pas'yantee), the inner light, the subtle word and 956

the imperishable, (avibhaagaa tu pashyantI sarvataH samhrtakramaasvarUpajyotirevaantaH sUkSmaa vaaganapaayInI. Bk.167). This may be a synonym of pratibhaa or prakriti, the undifferentiated form of speech. In Bharatiya tradition exemplified by Panini and Patanjali, grammar is s'abdaanus'aasanam (science of words). The sense, meaning or semantics is found in the use of words in common parlance. Comprehending this reality is the object of bhasha s'iksha. Patanjali notes: LokataH arthaprayukte Shabdaprayoga shaastre dharmaniyamaH. That is, s'abdaanus'aanam or grammar, only determines the use of correct words with a view to achieve merit. In DhaatupaaTha, Dhaatuvrttikaara [xiii] clearly mentions that 'bhaaSaa vyaktaayaam vaaci.' Language means uttered speech. (Satyakaama Verma, BhaaSaatattva aur VaakyapadIya. p.23). S\'abda is also viewed as a sentence spoken by a reliable person (aapta vaakyam), which is taken as authority or testimony. [aaptopadeshaH shabdaH , Vaatsaayana BhaaSya]\n\nAnirban Dash recognized Bhartrhari as the father of Indian semantics with the following words: "\nSemantikos is a Greek word derived from \'sema\' (sign) going back to the Indo-European \'dhiei\' (to see), which is paralleled by \'OIA dhyaanam\' (introspection) and the reduplicated form from Persian \'deedan\' (to see). Sign has come to mean a word, which is the symbol of expression, the symbol denoting an object. In this connection we can also compare the word \'\nvarNa\'- which originally meant \'colour\' a sign, and then a sound or a letter According to Bhartrhari, the sole purpose of speech is to help someone to express his own self sphoTa or explosion is dependent solely on the unit of the sentence. Hence only the sentence may be called as the true semantic minimum, or the unit of speech His Vaakyapadeeya. marks a beginning of the tradition that was solely devoted to arthaprakriyaa (meaning analysis)."\nhttp://www.languageinindia.com/april2004/anirban2.html Sphot.a may be viewed as an auditory image of sound, a representation of a class of sounds, while dhvani connotes a particular sound. Recognizing two aspects of s\'abda, Patanjali notes that while sphota. is grasped by the intellect, dhvani (sound) is heard by the ears. If \nsphot.a is the initial sound of the drum, dhvani is the reverberation of the initial sound. Naada is a gross form of accumulation of dhvani-s.\n\n",1] 957

); //--> BhaaSaatattva aur VaakyapadIya. p.23). S'abda is also viewed as a sentence spoken by a reliable person (aapta vaakyam), which is taken as authority or testimony, [aaptopadeshaH shabdaH, Vaatsaayana BhaaSya] Anirban Dash recognized Bhartrhari as the father of Indian semantics with the following words: " Semantikos is a Greek word derived from 'sema' (sign) going back to the Indo-European 'dhiei' (to see), which is paralleled by 'OIA dhyaanam' (introspection) and the reduplicated form from Persian 'deedan' (to see). Sign has come to mean a word, which is the symbol of expression, the symbol denoting an object. In this connection we can also compare the word ' varNa'- which originally meant 'colour' a sign, and then a sound or a letter According to Bhartrhari, the sole purpose of speech is to help someone to express his own self sphoTa or explosion is dependent solely on the unit of the sentence. Hence only the sentence may be called as the true semantic minimum, or the unit of speech His Vaakyapadeeya marks a beginning of the tradition that was solely devoted to arthaprakriyaa (meaning analysis)." http://www.languageinindia.com/april2004/anirban2.html Sphot.amay be viewed as an auditory image of sound, a representation of a class of sounds, while dhvani connotes a particular sound. Recognizing two aspects of s'abda, Patanjali notes that while sphota. is grasped by the intellect, dhvani (sound) is heard by the ears. If sphot.a is the initial sound of the drum, dhvani is the reverberation of the initial sound. Naada is a gross form of accumulation of dhvani-s. An object is recognized through a detection of the word associated with it. And hence, the word is recognized first, stated as the s'abdatattva. Knowledge and the word are a unity. Vaak in Rigveda is a creation of deva and animals of all forms speak her. Mahavira's teachings recorded in Suraseni Apabhrams'a are said to have been understand by animals of all forms. devI vaacamajayanta devaastaam vishvarUpaaH pashavo vadanti (RV viii. 89.11) In Rigveda, vaak is raashtree devaanaam. (RV 8.89.10), "yaavad brahma viSTitam taavat Vaak'' (RV 10.144.8) notes that vaak and Brahman are a unity. Aitareya Brahmana equates Brahman with 958

vaak. (ABr. 4.21.1) Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says: vaag vai Brahman ( Br.U. 4.1.20) Bhartrhari elevates the study of language to a philosophical system, s'abdaadvaita 'language monism'. The ultimate goal of language study is the attainment of the Brahman. S'abda and Brahman are a unity, the consciousness. 'the whole cosmos as manifestation of word (s'abda) and that cosmos is evolved out of the Veda.'[Bk. 124; RV 10.125, vaak manifests itself in everything, vaak is everything in the universe.] "Without beginning or end, is of the nature of word (shabdatattva). All the objects as well as cosmos are manifested from it. This Ultimate Reality is one, but manifests itself as many due to its various powers. Even though it is not different from its powers, it appears to be different. Among its many powers, time is the most important. It is one, but divisions are super-imposed on it. All the different kinds of changes depend on it, which causes multiplicity in the Being. The Ultimate, which is one, contains the seeds of all multiplicity. It manifests itself as the experiencer, the experienced one, and the experience itself." [Bk. from Verse1 to 4, four kaarika-s] W. Norman Brown explains the importance of vaak in the following terms: "Vaak produced the raw material of the universe, the means for organizing it and taught the gods how to use those means. The capstone of the process was the provision that the instruction should be imparted to men so that they could constantly renew creation and thus perpetuate the existence of the universe." ( \nAs a philosophical proposition to acquire knowledge, reality is comprehended through pramaan.a (something measured)of three sorts: 1. pratyaksha pramaan.a \'direct perception through sense organs\'; 2. \'anumaana\' \'inference\'; 3. s\'abda \npramaan.a \'aagama or verbal understanding from an uttered speech\'. In such a perspective, study of language, bhasha s\'iksha, becomes a philosophical quest. Panini\'s grammar, for example, is considered \'the greatest monument of human intelligence\' by L. Bloomfield because Panini abstracts, with extraordinary economy or brevity of expression through sutra (threads), about 4000, the rules of the language, Sanskrit, from a structural analysis of the language use.\n\nThe linguistic reality is in the sentence and not in the words. The meaning of a sentence is recognized in a flash of insight or intuition, pratibhaa. While a sentence is indivisible, the words constituting the sentence are used only popular, convenient, explanatory tools. For example, the root \'pac\' 959

meaning, \'to cook\', is abstracted from the words used in a sentence such as pacanti, pakvavaan. This is the doctrine of Bhartrhari, governing study of bharatiya languages through s\'iksha. Therefore, the word does not exist as more than its phonemes, nor is there is a sentence existing as more than the phonemes and the words. padavede\'pi varNaanaamekatvam na nivartate \nvaakyeSu padamekam ca bhinneSvapyupalabhyate Bk. 72 \nThere are no phonemes in the word nor are there parts in the phonemes. There is no absolute difference of the words from the sentence. na varNavyatirekeNa padamnyacca vidyate \nvaakyam varNapadaabhyaam ca vyatiriktam na kicana Bk. 73 ",1] ); //--> loc.cit., Bishnupada Bhattcharya, Bhartrhari's VaakyapadIya and linguistic monism, BORI, pp.34.) As a philosophical proposition to acquire knowledge, reality is comprehended through pramaan.a (something measured) of three sorts: 1. pratyaksha pramaan.a 'direct perception through sense organs'; 2. 'anumaana' 'inference'; 3. s'abda pramaan.a 'aagama or verbal understanding from an uttered speech'. In such a perspective, study of language, bhasha s'iksha, becomes a philosophical quest. Panini's grammar, for example, is considered 'the greatest monument of human intelligence' by L. Bloomfield because Panini abstracts, with extraordinary economy or brevity of expression through sutra (threads), about 4000, the rules of the language, Sanskrit, from a structural analysis of the language use. The linguistic reality is in the sentence and not in the words. The meaning of a sentence is recognized in a flash of insight or intuition, pratibhaa. While a sentence is indivisible, the words constituting the sentence are used only popular, convenient, explanatory tools. For example, the root 'pac' meaning, 'to cook', is abstracted from the words used in a sentence such as pacanti, pakvavaan. This is the doctrine of Bhartrhari, governing study of bharatiya languages through s'iksha. Therefore, the word does not exist as more than its phonemes, nor is there is a sentence existing as more than the phonemes and the words. padavede'pi varNaanaamekatvam na nivartate vaakyeSu padamekam ca bhinneSvapyupalabhyate Bk. 72 960

There are no phonemes in the word nor are there parts in the phonemes. There is no absolute difference of the words from the sentence. na varNavyatirekeNa padamnyacca vidyate vaakyam varNapadaabhyaam ca vyatiriktam na kicana Bk. 73 \n(See K. A. S. Iyer, English translation of VP., 1965, Pune, Deccan College, pp.75-77) For Bhartrhari, in jaatisamuddes\'a explains that all words and even parts of words denote jaati, the universal. Grammatical categories, as tools of analysis, of Bhartrhari discussed in his third chapter are: Jaati (universal), dravya (substance), sambandha (relation), guNa (quality), dik (direction), kriyaa (action) saadhana, (participants in action), kaala (time), samkhyaa (Number), purusha (grammatical Person), linga (grammatical gender), upagraha (meaning of Atmanepada and parasmaipada endings) and vrtti (complex formation).\n\nTime (kaala) is an independent, creative power (shakti) of s\'abdabrahman: kaalaakhyaa svaatantryashaktirbrahmaNa iti tatra bhagavadbhartrharerabhipraayaH Prakaasha on PK. \n9.62\nBhartrhari notes that the apabhrams\'a or apas\'abda forms have been handed down uninterruptedly, clearly pointing to the evolution of Sanskrit with the Prakrita base. ubhayeSaamavicchedaadanyashabdavivakSayaa \nyo\'nyaH prayujyate shabdo na so\'rthasyaabhidhaayakaH BrahmakaaNDa.183 K.A.Subramaniyam Iyer notes: "for Bhartrhari, the word apabhrams\'a does not stand for a particular stage in linguistic evolution as it does for modern Indian linguists for whom it represents that stage, which follows the praakrta and precedes the development of modern Indian languages." In the study of evolution of bharatiya languages, the apabhrams\'a words can be used as the substrate which explain the correct or standard form evolved in Sanskrit as noted by \nVyaad.i: s\'abda prakritih apabhrams\'ah , (Satyakaama Verma, BhaaSaatattva aur Vaakyapadiya , Satyakaama Verma, p. 13.) When an incorrect form \'apas\'abda\' is used, its meaning is inferred by recollecting the correct form as in the example given by Bhartrhari of indistinct forms uttered by a baby due to deficiencies in unevolved vocal cords.\n",1] ); //-->

961

(See K. A. S. Iyer, English translation of VP., 1965, Pune, Deccan College, pp.75-77) For Bhartrhari, in jaatisamuddes'a explains that all words and even parts of words denote jaati, the universal. Grammatical categories, as tools of analysis, of Bhartrhari discussed in his third chapter are: Jaati (universal), dravya (substance), sambandha (relation), guNa (quality), dik (direction), kriyaa (action) saadhana, (participants in action), kaala (time), samkhyaa (Number), purusha (grammatical Person), linga (grammatical gender), upagraha (meaning of Atmanepada and parasmaipada endings) and vrtti (complex formation). Time (kaala) is an independent, creative power (shakti) of s'abdabrahman: kaalaakhyaa svaatantryashaktirbrahmaNa iti tatra bhagavadbhartrharerabhipraayaH Prakaasha on PK. 9.62 Bhartrhari notes that the apabhrams'a or apas'abda forms have been handed down uninterruptedly, clearly pointing to the evolution of Sanskrit with the Prakrita base. ubhayeSaamavicchedaadanyashabdavivakSayaa yo'nyaH prayujyate shabdo na so'rthasyaabhidhaayakaH BrahmakaaNDa.183 K.A.Subramaniyam Iyer notes: "for Bhartrhari, the word apabhrams'a does not stand for a particular stage in linguistic evolution as it does for modern Indian linguists for whom it represents that stage, which follows the praakrta and precedes the development of modern Indian languages." In the study of evolution of bharatiya languages, the apabhrams'a words can be used as the substrate which explain the correct or standard form evolved in Sanskrit as noted by Vyaad.i: s'abda prakritih apabhrams'ah, (Satyakaama Verma, BhaaSaatattva aur Vaakyapadiya , Satyakaama Verma, p. 13.) When an incorrect form 'apas'abda' is used, its meaning is inferred by recollecting the correct form as in the example given by Bhartrhari of indistinct forms uttered by a baby due to deficiencies in unevolved vocal cords. \nAnirban Dash notes that the word, \'apabhrams\'a\' occurs first in Tandyabrahmana with the meaning of \'falling down\'. [loc.cit. vishvaaH prtanaa abhibhUtarantara ityajagati varSiyayashcchanda aakramate\'napabhramshaaya\n TaaNDyaBraahmaNa 1.5; July, 2004, Apabhrmsha an introduction \nhttp://www.languageinindia.com/july2004/anirbanapabrahmsa1.html ] In the context of study of bharatiya languages, ther term, \'apabhrams\'a\' [sometimes called apas\'abda, apa meaning 962

\'going away\'] connoted an \'incorrect, grammatically vulgar or crude\' or \'desi\' form as distinct from \'samskr.tam\' \'correct or standard\' form. Naamisaadhu notes in Kaavyaalamkaara that apabhrams\'a is nothing but prakrita. [prakritameva apabhrams\'a: \nApabhramsha Hindi Dictionary , Dr. Naresha Kumar, p. xviii.\n] \nA good example of distinguishing correct or standard forms and variants (apabhrams\'a) is provided by the form: gauh and its variants: \ngaavi, gon.i, gotaa , gopatlikaa( Mahabhashya, Mbh. 1.1 ,p.2) Hence, apa- \'going away from the roots\'. The correct form of use of words and formation of sentences was mandatory in the utterance of mantra during yajna or puja. This requirement is exemplified in the s\'iksha method used to orally transmit the Vedas with extraordinary fidelity with due regard to s\'abda, dhvani, svara (udaatta, anudaatta, svarita) and chandas. In bharatiya tradition bhasha s\'iksha is a sacred vratam, a sacred responsibility in the brahmacarya a_s\'rama of a student\'s stage of life. Such a standard language is distinguished as daivi language by Bhartrhari.\n",1] ); //-->

Anirban Dash notes that the word, 'apabhrams'a' occurs first in Tandyabrahmana with the meaning of 'falling down'. [loc.cit. vishvaaH prtanaa abhibhUtarantara ityajagati varSiyayashcchanda aakramate'napabhramshaaya TaaNDyaBraahmaNa 1.5; July, 2004, Apabhrmsha an introductionhttp://www.languageinindia.com/july2004/anirbanapabrahmsa1.html ] In the context of study of bharatiya languages, ther term, 'apabhrams'a' [sometimes called apas'abda, apa meaning 'going away'] connoted an 'incorrect, grammatically vulgar or crude' or 'desi' form as distinct from 'samskr.tam' 'correct or standard' form. Naamisaadhu notes in Kaavyaalamkaara that apabhrams'a is nothing but prakrita. [prakritameva apabhrams'a: Apabhramsha Hindi Dictionary , Dr. Naresha Kumar, p. xviii. ] A good example of distinguishing correct or standard forms and variants (apabhrams'a) is provided by the form: gauh and its variants: gaavi, gon.i, gotaa , gopatlikaa( Mahabhashya, Mbh. 1.1 ,p.2) Hence, apa- 'going away from the roots'. The correct form of use of words and 963

formation of sentences was mandatory in the utterance of mantra during yajna or puja. This requirement is exemplified in the s'iksha method used to orally transmit the Vedas with extraordinary fidelity with due regard to s'abda, dhvani, svara (udaatta, anudaatta, svarita) and chandas. In bharatiya tradition bhasha s'iksha is a sacred vratam, a sacred responsibility in the brahmacarya a_s'rama of a student's stage of life. Such a standard language is distinguished as daivi language by Bhartrhari. \nPali of Gautama and Ardhamagadhi (or Suraseni Apabhrams\'a) of Mahavira can be looked upon as dialects which evolved from the substrate languages and dialects of Bharatam from Paleolithic times, in a continuum paralleling the continuity evidenced by archaeological discoveries in cultural facets from Paleolithic to historical time periods. The proto-versions of Pali and Ardhamagadhi (or, Suraseni Apabhrams\'a) may constitute the mleccha language which was used by Yudhishthira and Vidura in their conversation on the non-metallic killing devices set up in laakshaagriha. Both Mahavira and Gautama, the Buddha may be looked upon as savants who established the reality of the spoken languages of ancient Bharatam, mleccha as distinct from \nSamskr.tam. The recorded teachings of Mahavira and Gautama thus provide rich sources for unraveling the evolution of languages in Bharatam. "One of the most significant aspects of Buddhism is that it embraced dialects without any hesitation as fit vehicles for its scriptures. Gautama Buddha, thus, inaugurated a linguistic revolution. This position of Gautama Buddha was against the tradition of holding Sanskrit as the most sacred, if not the only sacred language, for Hindu Scriptures. Early Buddhist scriptures were all written in Pali, perhaps the dialect spoken by Gautama Buddha himself. Although Pali, thus, acquired an important place in Buddhism, the Buddhist monks and scholars were encouraged to use the dialects and languages of the people whom they were trying to lead to the Buddha Marga Original Pali words and the adaptations of these words were common in Buddhist texts used in Sinhalese, Myanmarese, Cambodian, Laotian, Mon, and Thai languages. Use of original Sanskrit words and their adaptations are common in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Tibetan, and Mongolian. While Pali is the language of Theravada Buddhism, Sanskrit and Chinese, and to some extent Tibetan, are the languages of Mahayana Buddhism For example, Sanskrit word 964

dharma is written and pronounced dhamma in Theravada texts." (\n",1] ); //-->

Pali of Gautama and Ardhamagadhi (or Suraseni Apabhrams'a) of Mahavira can be looked upon as dialects which evolved from the substrate languages and dialects of Bharatam from Paleolithic times, in a continuum paralleling the continuity evidenced by archaeological discoveries in cultural facets from Paleolithic to historical time periods. The proto-versions of Pali and Ardhamagadhi (or, Suraseni Apabhrams'a) may constitute the mleccha language which was used by Yudhishthira and Vidura in their conversation on the non-metallic killing devices set up in laakshaagriha. Both Mahavira and Gautama, the Buddha may be looked upon as savants who established the reality of the spoken languages of ancient Bharatam, mleccha as distinct from Samskr.tam. The recorded teachings of Mahavira and Gautama thus provide rich sources for unraveling the evolution of languages in Bharatam. "One of the most significant aspects of Buddhism is that it embraced dialects without any hesitation as fit vehicles for its scriptures. Gautama Buddha, thus, inaugurated a linguistic revolution. This position of Gautama Buddha was against the tradition of holding Sanskrit as the most sacred, if not the only sacred language, for Hindu Scriptures. Early Buddhist scriptures were all written in Pali, perhaps the dialect spoken by Gautama Buddha himself. Although Pali, thus, acquired an important place in Buddhism, the Buddhist monks and scholars were encouraged to use the dialects and languages of the people whom they were trying to lead to the Buddha Marga Original Pali words and the adaptations of these words were common in Buddhist texts used in Sinhalese, Myanmarese, Cambodian, Laotian, Mon, and Thai languages. Use of original Sanskrit words and their adaptations are common in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Tibetan, and Mongolian. While Pali is the language of Theravada Buddhism, Sanskrit and Chinese, and to some extent Tibetan, are the languages of Mahayana Buddhism For example, Sanskrit word dharma is written and pronounced dhamma in Theravada texts." (M.S. Thirumalai, Language use in Buddhism)http://www.languageinindia.com/oct2002/buddhismandlanguage.html 965

Edgerton (1954) reports, "Thousands of words were used which are unknown in Sanskrit, or not used there with the same meanings. To this curious language, which became widespread in North India, I have given the name Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit. there is no reason to assume any single 'original language of Buddhism.' And whatever the dialects of the missionaries may have been, the sacred texts were soon adapted to the speech native to each locality" (cited in Gard 1961:47). [Edgerton, Franklin. 1954. Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Language and Literature. Benares : Benaras Hindu University . Gard, Richard. (Ed.) 1961. Buddhism. New York: George Braziller, Inc.]

Sauraseni apabhrams'a was the dialect in which Mahavira rendered his thoughts formulating jaina dharma flowing from sanatana dharma (dharma eternal, which Gautama the Buddha called esha dhammo sanantano). In a study of the evolution of bharatiya languages, the prakrita or apabhrams'a as desi or bhasha represents the spoken dialects with many variations in vogue in many parts of Bharatam. The sources for the formation of Sanskrit (Samskr.tam) language have, therefore, to be found in the desi or bhasha. Hemacandra called his Prakrit lexical work, 'des'inaamamaalaa'. The variant forms of a language are recognized by Panini as 'optional' forms, by "referring to the region in which a particular word is exclusively used; and referring to grammarians of different region and mentioning the variations acceptable to them." [Deepti Tripathy, "Apabhramsha in Sanskrit Grammar," Aligarh Journal of Oriental Studies, No.3: p.8192]. [Source: These notes are substantially based on the references and arguments advanced by Anirban Dash and MS Thirumalai, in a series of articles in 'Language in India' website.] Appendix 2: Concordance Between Post-Vedic and Avestan The Yasna (Skt. yajn~a) comprises 72 chapters, called Ha_, Ha_iti. These are the texts recited by the priests at the ritual ceremony of the Yasna (Izashne). The chapter titles are comparable to and derived from sva_ha_ of Vedic times. "In the R.gveda there is little to suggest a familiarity with Zarathushtra's reformation and with his teachings. I am of the view that the period of the 966

R.V preceded that of Zarathushtra and that the holders of the priestly office offered their services in regions lying far into the West and that the allusion in the RV to the generous Parthian prince who rewarded the sacrificial service should not be underestimated...precisely in India the Asuras evolved into demons in the later period...The Asuras install the three sacrificial fires A_havani_ya, Ga_rhapatya and Anva_ha_ryapacana in a different sequence than the gods do and thus are deprived of their luck (TBr 1.1.4.4). When a custom has to be rejected as unsuitable it is called an Asura custom. (S'S'S 15.15.11; Gobhila S'ra_ddha Kalpa 3.7)...When did the separation or the hostile contact take place? We can rule out the period prior to the R.V since like the Avesta the R.V combines the word asura mostly with the concept of divineness and sees in r.ta-as.a the expression of highest holiness. We can draw the line only where asura seems to be transformed regularly into a demon, that is between the bulk of the R.gvedic hymns on the one side and that of the Bra_hman.as on the other...The Veda and Avesta cannot be connected directly with one another; many links are missing between the two. The events which took place between the period of the RV and that of the Bra_hman.as are lost for us in obscurity...Already the cry, he lavo, attributed to the Asuras in one passage of the S'Br (S'Br 3.2.1.23), demonstrates that under the word asuras we should understand purely Indian enemies, in this case, definitely eastern enemies just as enemies from Mazendran (ma_zainya) are included among the Dae_vas...TS 6.4.10.1: br.haspatir deva_na_m purohita a_si_c chan.d.a_marka_v asura_n.a_m...(MS 4.6.3 (81.1; S'Br 4.2.1.6) (Hillebrandt, opcit., II, pp. 265270).

In Yasna, parallels with the Fire-Temple worship in the Avestan tradition are apparent. In the Vedic tradition, the yajn~a is brought into the context of the sam.ska_ras and cosmic inquiry or dharma, the ordering principle; in the Avestan tradition, the yasna is taken up to a postyajurvedic plane of fire-workings in yasna using a soma plant substitute called haoma (soma > haoma which grows on the mountains, Haraiti in particular.Yasna 10.4, 10-12,17: Haoma is placed on the high montain Haraiti by a skilful god, whence holy birds carried it everywhere to the heights, where it grew both on the lofty tablelands and in the mountain valleys). (cf. H.D. 967

Griswold, 1971, The Religion of the Rigveda,Delhi, Motilal Banaridass, p.217). In the Vedic tradition, the Kr.s.n.a Yajurveda is a combination of the mantra and bra_hman.a portions. The Yajurveda ritual thus, is a development from the ritual of the R.gvedic period. A Bra_hman.a gives the meaning of mantras, the origin and significance of a ritual; a S'rautasu_tra is an orderly description of each Vedic ritual. There are clear indications that Avesta is a post-Vedic tradition both in content and in language cognates and Avest may in fact relate to the su_tra period. This stage of evolution of the Vedic ritual (exemplified by the Yajurveda, the Bra_hman.a and the S'rautasu_tra) is, perhaps, coterminus, in time, with the evolution of the Avestan haoma ritual tradition. (C.G. Kashikar, 1964, The Vedic sacrificial rituals through the ages, in: Indian Antiquary, Vol. 1, No.2, Bombay, Popular Prakashan)

A_svala_yana Gr.hyasu_tra A_G1.3.10: tad es.a_bhiyajn~a ga_tha_ gi_yate: pa_kayajn~a_nsama_sa_dyaika_jya_n ekabarhis.ahekasvis.t.akr.tah kurya_nna_na_pisati daivate: In this connection, thefollowing sacrificial ga_tha_ is sung. 'If one has (before one, the performance of different) pa_kayajn~as (at the same time), one should perform them with the same common A_jya, barhis and the same common Svis.t.akr.t (oblations), though the deity (of these pa_kayajn~as) may not be the same.' NOTE: The use of the term 'ga_tha_' is significant and parallels the Avestan tradition of ga_tha_s, a clear indication of the chronology of the R.gvedic > Avestan traditions during the Su_tra times.

Iranian haoma hymns, treating haoma as sacred, are in the Younger Avestan language, in which texts continued to be composed in the Hellenistic period, and perhaps even later. (David Stophlet Flattery and Martin Schwartz, 1989, Haoma and Harmaline: The botanical identity of the Indo-Iranian sacred hallucinogen 'Soma' and its legacy in religion, language, and middle eastern folklore, Berkeley, Univ. of California Press, p. 10, n. 10). Avestan barezis., baresman (Zoroastrian barsom; Persian ba_lis. meaning 'cushion') are strewn than held in the hand; this is cognate with Vedic barhis. An important part of some Zoroastrian rituals is the tying of the 968

barsom twigs into a bundle. The lexemes may simply refer to woody twigs.

Four classes are mentioned in Avesta: athravan (priest), rathaeshtar (warrior), vastriosha (cultivator) and hutaokhsha (workman), [Ga_tha_ Ha. 48.5, Yasna Ha 19.17).

Comparisons between Avesta and Post-vedic of sutra periods

Evidence provided by Avesta attests the Proto-Vedic Continuity Theory of Bharatiya Languages.

The Avesta is comparable to the Vedic Gr.hyasu_tras in the liturgical segments of parallel traditions, which evolved after the movements of people after the desiccation of the River Sarasvati--one group moved towards the Helmand region and another towards the GangaYamuna doab. The high office of the Yazis.n (of the Yasna) consisted chiefly in the ceremonial preparation and offering of the Paraho_m (Av. parahaoma), i.e. the juice extracted from the Haoma-plant mixed with consecrated water, milk and aromatic ingredients; this represents a time when the Soma yajn~a had already become a 'ritual' or a liturgical performance, as distinct from the material, metallurgical process delineated in the R.gveda to purify soma, electrum.

The concordances between Vedic texts (of th sutra period, in particular) and Avestan texts are so vivid that it can be averred that Avestan was a continuation of the Vedic tradition which arose on the banks of River Sarasvati and the sapta sindhu region in Bharatam. (Sarasvati_ saptathi_ sindhu ma_ta_: RV).

From the details provided in the annex, it would appear that there is no need to postulate a proto-indo-iranian to explain the concordances in thought and diction between Vedic sutras and Avestan texts related to yasna. Simply, Avestan was a direct derivative from post-Vedic, which evolved into Samskr.tam.

969

Annex

Concordances between Post-Vedic and Avestan

The Yasna (Skt. yajn~a) comprises 72 chapters, called Ha_, Ha_iti. These are the texts recited by the priests at the ritual ceremony of the Yasna (Izashne). The chapter titles are comparable to and derived from sva_ha_ of Vedic times. "In the R.gveda there is little to suggest a familiarity with Zarathushtra's reformation and with his teachings. I am of the view that the period of the R.V preceded that of Zarathushtra and that the holders of the priestly office offered their services in regions lying far into the West and that the allusion in the RV to the generous Parthian prince who rewarded the sacrificial service should not be underestimated...precisely in India the Asuras evolved into demons in the later period...The Asuras install the three sacrificial fires A_havani_ya, Ga_rhapatya and Anva_ha_ryapacana in a different sequence than the gods do and thus are deprived of their luck (TBr 1.1.4.4). When a custom has to be rejected as unsuitable it is called an Asura custom. (S'S'S 15.15.11; Gobhila S'ra_ddha Kalpa 3.7)...When did the separation or the hostile contact take place? We can rule out the period prior to the R.V since like the Avesta the R.V combines the word asura mostly with the concept of divineness and sees in r.ta-as.a the expression of highest holiness. We can draw the line only where asura seems to be transformed regularly into a demon, that is between the bulk of the R.gvedic hymns on the one side and that of the Bra_hman.as on the other...The Veda and Avesta cannot be connected directly with one another; many links are missing between the two. The events which took place between the period of the RV and that of the Bra_hman.as are lost for us in obscurity...Already the cry, he lavo, attributed to the Asuras in one passage of the S'Br (S'Br 3.2.1.23), demonstrates that under the word asuras we should understand purely Indian enemies, in this case, definitely eastern enemies just as enemies from Mazendran (ma_zainya) are included among the Dae_vas...TS 6.4.10.1: br.haspatir deva_na_m purohita a_si_c chan.d.a_marka_v asura_n.a_m...(MS 4.6.3 (81.1; S'Br 4.2.1.6) (Hillebrandt, opcit., II, pp. 265270). 970

In Yasna, parallels with the Fire-Temple worship in the Avestan tradition are apparent. In the Vedic tradition, the yajn~a is brought into the context of the sam.ska_ras and cosmic inquiry or dharma, the ordering principle; in the Avestan tradition, the yasna is taken up to a postyajurvedic plane of fire-workings in yasna using a soma plant substitute called haoma (soma > haoma which grows on the mountains, Haraiti in particular.Yasna 10.4, 10-12,17: Haoma is placed on the high montain Haraiti by a skilful god, whence holy birds carried it everywhere to the heights, where it grew both on the lofty tablelands and in the mountain valleys). (cf. H.D. Griswold, 1971, The Religion of the Rigveda,Delhi, Motilal Banaridass, p.217). In the Vedic tradition, the Kr.s.n.a Yajurveda is a combination of the mantra and bra_hman.a portions. The Yajurveda ritual thus, is a development from the ritual of the R.gvedic period. A Bra_hman.a gives the meaning of mantras, the origin and significance of a ritual; a S'rautasu_tra is an orderly description of each Vedic ritual. There are clear indications that Avesta is a post-Vedic tradition both in content and in language cognates and Avest may in fact relate to the su_tra period. This stage of evolution of the Vedic ritual (exemplified by the Yajurveda, the Bra_hman.a and the S'rautasu_tra) is, perhaps, coterminus, in time, with the evolution of the Avestan haoma ritual tradition. (C.G. Kashikar, 1964, The Vedic sacrificial rituals through the ages, in: Indian Antiquary, Vol. 1, No.2, Bombay, Popular Prakashan)

A_svala_yana Gr.hyasu_tra A_G1.3.10: tad es.a_bhiyajn~a ga_tha_ gi_yate: pa_kayajn~a_nsama_sa_dyaika_jya_n ekabarhis.ahekasvis.t.akr.tah kurya_nna_na_pisati daivate: In this connection, thefollowing sacrificial ga_tha_ is sung. 'If one has (before one, the performance of different) pa_kayajn~as (at the same time), one should perform them with the same common A_jya, barhis and the same common Svis.t.akr.t (oblations), though the deity (of these pa_kayajn~as) may not be the same.' NOTE: The use of the term 'ga_tha_' is significant and parallels the Avestan tradition of ga_tha_s, a clear indication of the chronology of the 971

R.gvedic > Avestan traditions during the Su_tra times.

Iranian haoma hymns, treating haoma as sacred, are in the Younger Avestan language, in which texts continued to be composed in the Hellenistic period, and perhaps even later. (David Stophlet Flattery and Martin Schwartz, 1989, Haoma and Harmaline: The botanical identity of the Indo-Iranian sacred hallucinogen 'Soma' and its legacy in religion, language, and middle eastern folklore, Berkeley, Univ. of California Press, p. 10, n. 10). Avestan barezis., baresman (Zoroastrian barsom; Persian ba_lis. meaning 'cushion') are strewn than held in the hand; this is cognate with Vedic barhis. An important part of some Zoroastrian rituals is the tying of the barsom twigs into a bundle. The lexemes may simply refer to woody twigs.

Four classes are mentioned in Avesta: athravan (priest), rathaeshtar (warrior), vastriosha (cultivator) and hutaokhsha (workman). [Ga_tha_ Ha. 48.5; Yasna Ha 19.17).

Vedic duels between Indra-Vr.tra are paralleled in Tishtar-Apaosha. Tishtar is an angel who presides over the rains; Apaosha is a demon who stopped the rains. Indra as Verethraghna (Vr.traghna) is an angel called Beheram Yazata; while, Indra as Indar is a demon.

VS XVII.32 notes that Visvakarman was created first and then he did the work of creation. Bundehishna notes that Ahuramazda created Vohuman, an archangel who continued the further work of creation. Universe is an egg (Manu. I.5,ff.); also in Avestan (Minokhred 44.8 a Pahlavi text). RV X.190 described the order of creation: moral law (r.ta in RV, asha in Avestan) followed by the sun, the earth and the wky, so too in Ga_tha_ (Yasna 44.315).

Vedic br.hat sadanam (heaven) parallels Avestan hadhana. (RV IX.113; X.17; 27; X.14.11; Yasna 11.10; 62.6; Dadestan 26.2).

Vedic Asvin-s are Avestan Aspina_. (RV VII.67.10: asvinau yuva_nau) becomes Avestan 972

aspina_ yevino. Sarasvati_ is Harakhaiti; Apa_m Napa_t is the same; Trita is Thrita; Vala is Vara; Us.as is Ushangha or Usha (Ushahain Gaha 5); Aramati_ is A_ramaiti; Aryaman is Airyaman; Bhaga is Bagha; Amr.tas are Ameshspentas; pitr.s (RV VI.75.9: sva_durvasadah pitaro vayodha_h kr.cchresritah sakti_vanto gabhi_ra_h) are farohars; yajatras are yazatas; na_bha_nedis.t.ha is nabanazdishta; ks.atra is khshathra.

Dya_va_pr.thivi_ the dual are adored together; so are Asman and Zem (Fra. Yt. 17,23,24,30,37,45,69,71,75); visvedeva_h (AV XI.6.19) are Avestan Vispe Yazata (Yasna 1.19; 2.18; Yt. 11.17.17.19); visvedeva_h are 32 (RV VII.39.9; AV X.7.10); Vispe Yazata are 32 (Mithra Yt. 61). Evil spirits: Vedic dr.ha is Avestan druj; Vedic ra_ks.asa are Avestan Rakhsa (Yasna 24.12, an evil being); Ya_tu are evil beings in both Vedic and Avestan.

Vedic svar, light of heaven (RV X.68.9) is Avestan hvar (sun); both have comparable epithets: amr.ta-amesh, raya (shining); advartaspa (possessing swift horses). [Khurshed: hvare khshaetem ameshem rayem advart aspem yazamahade].

Varun.a is an asura and the lord of r.ta (mortal realm); Ahuramazda is the lord of Asha (eternal law) (Yasna Ha 44.5; 6,12,19: 46.6). Varun.a prepared a path for the sun (RV I.24: varun.ascaka_ra su_rya_ya pantha_m); so in Yasna 44.3: kheng staremehs dat advanem. Varun.a is sukratu; Ahuramazzda is khratumao; Varun.a and Ahuramazda are maha_n; visvavedah-vispavidva_o, suda_nu-hudhanu, amr.tarevah-ameshaspenda, revat (dadha_te)raevat, arabdha-adhavish, sumr.l.ika-merajdika, uruchaks.us-vouruchashane, bhes.ajabaishajya (RV VIII.42.1; Vendi.19.20; RV 67.4; Ahurayasht 14; RV I.136.6; Ahura Yasna 51.4; RV I.25.5; Gatha Yasna 33.13; VS XXXVIII.34; Yasht7). One of the 101 names of Ahuramazda is Varun.a. Gna_h are wives of Varun.a (RV I.62.8; VIII.28); Genao are the wives of Ahuramazda (Yasna 38.1-2; Gna_h rr Genao are the waters of rain). Ahuramazdas son was Atar, fire (ahurahe mazdao putha); agni was born of the womb of asura (RV III.29.1).

973

Both Mitra and Mithra are friends of man ans use spies to watch men (spasa-spas); they are priests (hotar-zaotar); both live in thousand-pillared palaces (sahasrasthu_n.a-hazangrastuna).

In RV VII..1.1 Agni is called atharyu; this is Avestan athravan. Avesta refers to Vedic Agni as Agenya_o an adjective (Yasna 38.5). Barhis or barsam was spread on the fire-altar (Sraosha Yt. Ha 57.6). Description of Agni: ojasvat-aozonghvat, gr.hapati-visvati-nmanopaiti, sakha_hakha (RV II.36.5; Atashnyaish; RV I.12.2,6; VII.15.2; Yasna 17.11). A_tar is connected with Nairyasangha (Vendidad 19.14); this parallels Vedic Na_ra_sam.sa.

Vedic Agnigr.ha is Avestan Agnyaga_ra-Agya_ri.

The priest who installed the holy fire was Kair Ushan (later called Kai Kaus, grandfather of Kai Khusru). RV VIII.23.17 (usana_ ka_vyastva_ ni hota_ramasa_dayat) also refers to the same act by Kavi Usana.

Instructions contained in Gautama Dharmasu_tra (IX.32) or Vis.n.u-Smr.ti (71.32) to preserve the purity of the fire were also applied by Zoroastrians. (Vendidad 18.1).

Four types of fire (AV III.21.1): jat.hara_gni, aus.adha_gni, asma_gni, vaiduta_ni are Avestan vohufrayan, urvazishta, berezisavangh, vazishta.

There are many concordances between Vedic and Avestan and almost all point to Vedic > Avestan chronology on the grounds of both linguistics and semantics:

Vivanghavat (Vivasvat, father of Yama: RV VI.4.8), the father of Yima-Jamshed is said to have performed the first Soma-yasna (RV IX.26.4 Vivasvat produced Soma). Soma is called zairi (hari). Soma is called a_turasya bhes.ajam (RV VIII.72.17; and haoma dazdi me beshajanama (Yasna 10.9); other comparative cognates are: sukratu-hukhratu; svarsa-hvaresh; vr.traha_974

verethraja; saumyam madhu-haomahe madho). Soma is brought from Mujavat by a Syena (RV I.89.3); Avestan Haoma Yasht notes that it was brought from the mount Alburz by birds. (Haoma Yasht II.10).

In RV IX.34.4 Trita A_ptya prepared Soma. In Avestan, A_thvya second son of Vivanghavat and Thrita was the third son. Thrita was a divine physician. So was Trita. (RV VIII.47.13,14).

"The Avesta knows the beginning or source of the Aryans as Airyana Vaejo (Pahlavi Iran-Vej). The Avestan Vaejo corresponds to the Sanskrit bi_j meaning 'beginning or source'. The Avesta describes it as a place of extreme cold that became over-crowded (Vend. I. 3-4; II. 8-18). ... Whether the Mitannian kings (1475-1280 B.C.) on the upper Euphrates were a direct offshoot of the Aryans or not there names are certainly Aryan, for example Saussatar, Artatama, Sutarna, Tusratta and Mattiuaza (H. Oldenburg: in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1909, p. 10941109)... Mattiuaza, in his treaty with the Hittite king Aubbiluliuma signed in 1380 B.C. at Boghazkoy, invokes not only Babylonian gods to witness the treaties, but Mitra, Varun.a, Indra, and Na_satya in the form in which they appear in the Rigveda (S. Konow: Aryan gods of the Mitani people, 1921, pp. 4-5). They occur in the treaty as ila_ni Mi-it-ra-as-si-il ila_ni A-ru-na-assi-il In-da-ra ila_ni Na-sa-at-ti-ya-an-na. Since the form for Na_satya is quite different in the Avestan language (Naonhaithya) it is argued that the Mitannian did not speak Iranian but IndoAryan (E.Meyer: Sitzungsberichte der K. Preuss. Akad. der Wissen, 1908, I, p. 14f.)... The name for 'fire' in the Persian Avesta is quite different, being atar, and this does not occur in the Indian Veda except in the Vedic proper name Atharvan, which corresponds to the Avestan name of the fire priest. Agni, as a messenger between gods and man, was known to the Vedas as Nara_s'amsa. This corresponds with the Avestan messenger of Ahura, Nairyo_-sangha. (R.A. Jairazbhoy, 1995, Foreign Influence in Ancient Indo-Pakistan, Karachi, Sind Book House; note the use of the word san:ga in the Sumerian substrate language to connote a priest. san:ghvi_ (G.) means a priest leading the pilgrims).

975

Other parallels are in ceremonies: sautra_man.i- stoma, ba_ja and pravargya-paragaru. (RV I.5.8: tva_m stoma_ avi_vr.dhan tva_muktha_ satakrato sanodimam va_jamindrah sahasrin.am). Vedic a_pri_ hymns are paralleled by Avestan Afringan recitals. The Ga_hanaba_r of ancient Iran are paralleled by the ca_turma_sya is.t.ayah of Bha_rata and both are seasonal ceremonies. AB IV.24,25; I.3 note the nine principal days of dva_dasa_ha yajn~a; this is paralleled by the bareshnum (purification) ceremony of nine nights (Vendidad Chap. 9).

Apa_m Napa_t may be an appellation of Varun.a and hence may be Ahura *Vouruna of Avestan, the High Lord, ahura berezant. In the R.gveda, waters are the 'wives' of Varun.a, varun.a_ni )(RV 2.32.8; 7.34.22). Waters are Ahura's wives, ahura_ni_ (Y. 38.3).

Yama gives a resting place to the dead man (AV XVII.2.37). Yami is his sister (RV 10.10.3); his father is Vivasvat and his mother is Saran.yu (RV X.14.5; X.17.1). Yama was the first mortal that died (AV XVIII.3.13). Yama had owl and pigeon and also two dogs as messengers (AV XVIII.2.11; V.30.6). The dogs Sabala and Sya_ma_ (AV VIII.1.9) have four eyes, have broad noses and born of Sarama_. They are the guardians of the path (AV XVIII.2.12) where they sit (pathis.adi). [Sva_na is paralled by spana in the Avestan; the concept of hell is common in AV VIII.4.24; V.30.11; Yasna 31.20; Vendidad 3.35; soul was considered immortal: RV X.16.3; Yasna 13.51].

Sanskrit martya_nam of mortals, men; Avestan masyanam; Old Persian martiyanam Sanskrit yajna; Avestan yasna Sanskrit hotr; Avestan zaotar a certain priest; at present two priests, viz., Zaotar (Skt. Hotr.) and In the Avesta we find Zaotar and Rathwi who are comparable to Hotr. and Adhvaryu of the Vedic tradition. A_tarevaxs. (Skt. Atharvan) are required to perform Yasna liturgy instead of eight priests in the ancient times. Av.Ha_vanan is a subordinate priest who pounds the Haoma, derived from ha_vana-mortar and pestle used to pound Haoma. A_tarevaxs (Pahl. A_tarvaxs.) is the tender 976

of fire; Fra_bereta_r brings to the Zaotar all the implements and other things required for the ceremonies; A_beretar brings the Holy Water (der. from a_p, water and beret, bringer; the author of the Ni_rangista_n uses a synonym: da_nava_za); A_sna_tar, a_-sna_tr, is a priest who washes and strains the Haoma; Rae_twis.kara (lit. one who mixes) mixes the Haoma juice with ga_m jivya_m (milk); Sraos.a_varez (lit. one who keeps good discipline) superintends the sacrifice and prescribes punishment for negligence or remissness in performing the sacrifice and priestly duties. These seven priests (plus the eighth, Zaotar), performed functions which are now performed by two priests only: Zaotar and the Rae_twis.kara (Ra_twi-Ra_spi_). Ha_ 9-11 are recited in honour of Haoma and the sacred Haoma juice is prepared from the twigs dedicated to him.The officiants of the Soma sacrifice are: Hota_,Maitra_varun.a, Accha_va_ka, Adhvaryu, Gra_vastut, Nes.t.a_, Unneta_, Pratiprastha_ta_,Udga_ta_, Prastota_, Pratiharta_, Subrahman.ya, Brahma_, Bra_hman.a_ccham.si_, Pota_, A_gni_dhra,with their president Sadasya-- a total of 17 officials. Avestan tradition remembers 8 of these functionaries.

In phonology, the Avesta agrees with the Sanskrit in its vowels in general. Skt. dipthong e_ appears in Avesta as ae_, o_i,e_. Skt. o_ appears as Av.ao, eu. Avesta inserts epenthetic vowels: i,e, u (Av. bavaiti = Skt. bhavati; Av. haurva = Skt. sarva). In R.gveda 9.101.3 we come across the phrase duros.am...somam, which may be compared with the corresponding Avesta phrase haomem du_raos.em,meaing: Haoma, which keeps death afar or Haoma of farspreading radiance... (M.F. Kanga and N.S. Sontakke, eds., 1962, Avesta,_ Part I: Yasna and Vi_sparat, Pune, Vaidika Sams'odhana Mand.a.la). The Vedic hapax os.am 'quickly' may be from older 'burning'; hence duros.a can mean, 'hard to burn', a context which fits the interpretation of soma as electrum subjected to a process of cementation and smelting. According to Bailey duraus'a ttraha means 'an exhilarant draught'. In Khotanese du_ra- 'hard' is used in connectin with uysma_- 'soil' as in uysmi_nai pin.d.ai du_ra_ 'a hard clod of soil' (Bailey 1951: 67-- Des'ana_ 22). Duraus'a = *duraus'ma, 'in hard soil'. This interpretation is consistent with the present thesis that soma meant an ore block, quartz or electrum (gold-silver ore block). In all the three pressings the Manthingraha is drawn together with the S'ukragraha for the two 977

demons S'an.d.a and Marka (i.e. death)...S'an.d.a and Marka are the priests of the Asuras. [cf. PW; MS 4.6.3 (81.1)]...marka is the same as Avestan mahrka and denotes 'death'. [cf. ma_raka ve_tai = killing of metals (Ta.)]

The prophets hymns are laden with ambiguities resulting both from the merger of many grammatical endings and from the intentionally compact and often elliptical style .S. Insler: The Gathas of Zarathustra, in the series Acta Iranica, 3rd series vol.1, Brill, Leiden 1975, p.1 In the evolution of thought, Zarathustra is clearly post-vedic opposing some specific yajna practices.

There is a consistent interchange of s and h in words such as: haoma, daha, hepta hindu, Ahura in Avestan and homa/soma, da_sa, sapta sindhu, Asura in Sanskrit. (Vedic Trita and Avestan The close affinity in phonology, morphology, syntax and vocabulary etc. has contributed sufficient data for reconstruction of Indo-Iranian mythology. Use of asura (Av. ahura, OP a(h)ura and Skt. asura-) in the sense of 'demon' in late Vedic instead of 'god' as in Av. and OP, and use of daiva (Av. dae_va, OP daiva and Skt. deva-) for 'demon' in Av and OP instead of 'god' as in Skt. and other IE languages shows that at one stage the Indo-Iranian speaking people might have quarrelled with each other as a result of which two sub-groups came out: Iranians and Indo-Aryans. (Satya Swarup Misra, 1979, The Avestan: a historical and comparative grammar, Varanasi, Chaukhambha Orientalia, p.5) Tritha are soma/haoma pressers) Avestan tradition, Ahur Mazda_ is conceived as a carpenter who fashions the earth from wood and who fashions bodies and souls: ga_us'-tas'a_: da_idi mo_i ya_ gam ta'so_ apas ca urvaras ca: 'grant me thou -- who has created Mother Earth and the waters and the plants' (Yasna 51.7); hyat na_ mazda_, paourvi_m ga_eoasca tas'o_ dae_nasca_: 'since for us, O Mazda, from the beginning Thou didst create Bodies and also Souls' (Yasna 31.11)(The Divine Songs of Zarathushtra, pp. 682-3, pp. 210-1). gaus = ga_v (Skt. gau). The phrase mahigauh in RV refers to the earth. Tas'a is from the root tas' (Skt. taks.) = to create, to fashion; to hew, to cut. The cognate lexemes are: technos (Greco-Roman), tas'yati (Lith.) Varun.a and Mitra are called asura_ (RV 1.151.4; 7.36.2; 978

7.65.2). Mithra is mentioned with Auramazda_ and Anahata in old-Persian cuneiform inscriptions. (Spiegel, Die altpersischen Keilinschriften, 2nd ed., p. 68). In Armenia, there was a shrine dedicated to him. (Gelzer, 'Zur armenischen Gotterlehre', Sitzungsberichte der Ko_nigl. Sachsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften -- SBKSGW, XLVIII, 1896, p. 103). Mithra is mentioned with Auramazda_ and Anahata in old-Persian cuneiform inscriptions. (Spiegel,Diealtpersischen Keilinschriften, 2nd ed., p. 68). In Armenia, there was a shrine dedicated to him. (Gelzer, 'Zur armenischen Gotterlehre', Sitzungsberichte der Ko_nigl. Sachsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften -- SBKSGW, XLVIII, 1896, p. 103).

In Vr.tra, Darmesteter notes the concordance between Avestan verethra and Vedic Vr.tra, the latter an ancient name of the cloud which encloses the light or the cows and defines Vr.tra as 'the enveloper who shuts them (thelight and the waters) up in his cloud-cavern' (Ormazd et Ahriman, pp.97, 367). In RV 3.33.6, he is called the paridhi, the enclosure of the rivers. In the Avesta, Soma is Vr.trahan and possesses sharp weapons; Haoma is veretrajan and hurls his vadare (Yasna 9.30 ff.); this is an assignment of R.gvedic functions of Indra to Haoma in the later-day Avestan tradition. Haoma is zairido_itra, 'golden-eyed' (Yasna 57.19).

Interestingly, the very term ceramics which belongs to the Latin ceramicus, has linguistically descended from the Greek root kerannumi which is equivalent to the Vedic sr.n.a_ti (= sri_) and Avestan saraboth meaning to mix. This is explicitly evident from its several derivatives, such as kermos potters earth or clay, kera_meia potters craft, kerameion potters workshopThe notable evlutes of sr.n.a_ti-sri_ are sarma and saran.a which denote in the R.gveda the dwellings made of clay. These are comparable to Avestan saram (Yasna 41.6) and saramno (Yasna 49.5; 8; 53.3) which possess almost a similar sense Soma's s'ri_ is milk; s'ri_ is prosperity; many times in RV, the term abhi-s'ri_ is used to intensify s'ri_; in RV Khila_ Su_kta, cikli_ta or 'purchased Soma' is designated as the son of S'ri_:

References are to Usha R. Bhise, 1995, The Khila-Su_ktas of the R.gveda_ A study, 979

Bhandarkar Oriental Series No. 27, Poona. The S'ri_su_kta is a part of the Khila su_kta with 19 verses. Ja_tavedas is invoked to bring in s'ri_. Ka_ty. S'r.S. (4.15.4) suggests the offering of oblation early in the morning in Agnihotra to attain s'ri_. A_p. S'r. S. (4.2.1) notes that s'ri_ is brought by chanting a mantra in the dars'a-pu_rn.ama_sa yajn~a. Verse 2.6.12 reads as follows: a_pah sravantu snigdha_ni cikli_ta vasa me gr.he ni ca devi_ ma_taram s'riyam va_sayam me kule Trans.: May the friendly waters flow. O oft-purchased (Soma), stay in my house. Make the divine mother Prosperity reside in my family. Bhise notes: cikli_ta is traditionally regarded as the son of s'ri_. The word sound unusual because of the cluster kl. On applying the law of 'ralayorabhedah', the word may be restored as cikri_ra PPP. From the Redup. Base of kri_, 'to purchase, cikri_ta is soma that is purchased by the sacrificer before heperforms a somasacrifice. The word, thus, has reference to the ceremony of Somakrayan.a A second give-away is in Verse 2.6.17 which suddenly refers to 'mud' (which is obviously associated with any quartz ore block with protruding mineral streaks): kardamena praja_ sras.t.a_ sambhu_ti gamaya_masi adadha_dupa_ga_dyes.a_m ka_ma_n sas.rujmahe Trans.: The progeny has been created by the mud. Let us urge it towards prosperity. He (the priest) has deposited (the soma) has approached (the patrons), whose wishes were released by us (towards the gods). Bhise notes: praja_ = of the soma plant; gamaya_masi = releasing the streams of soma in honour of gods leads one to prosperity. Verse 2.7.1 (a hymn which can be grouped with the earlier s'ri_su_kta): cikli_to yasya na_ma taddiva_ naktam ca sukrato asma_n di_da_sa yujya_ya ji_vase ja_tavedah punantu ma_m devajana_h Trans. O Ja_tavedas, possessed of good mental power, one whose name is Cikli_ta (purchased soma) has by day and night shone for us for companionship and life. May the divine people purify me. Bhise adds: punantu etc.: this line occurs at RV 9.67.27 in the context of purification. Taitt. Br. 1.4.8.1 includes this as a purificatory mantra in the performance of Va_japeya yajn~a. "The mention of Cikli_ta 'the oft-purchased soma' is a corroborative piece of evidence about the sacrificial set up in which soma is an indispensable element. The adjectives jvalanti v.4, pin:gala_ v.13, yas.t.i v.14, undoubtedly refer to somaplant. Judging as a whole, the hymn (2.6) is a prayer for the prosperity of sacrificial materials like soma, cattle food (pus.t.a) which ultimately yields milk etc. used in sacrifices, a flawless 980

build of cattle, kari_s.a (the dust strewn around sacrificial altar). Only on such assumption can be satisfactory explain the expressions like 'yasya_m vindeyam (vv.2,15), 'manasah ka_mamva_cah satyam' (v.10) and words like ki_rti, vr.ddhi (v.7). Thus, the connotation of S'ri_, as we get it here, is the prosperity of sacrificial materials and particularly of soma. But there is an undercurrent which believes that S'ri_ is the abhima_nini_ devata_, which is a step towards her deification in the Gr.hyasu_tras where sacrifices are offered to her. Cikli_ta. In the same su_kta, we come across a curious word cikli_ta who is said to be the son of S'ri_ by the tradition; likewise, Kardama and A_nanda are also believed to be the sons of S'ri_. The origin of this tradition may be traced to v. 12 of the S'ri_su_kta in which cikli_ta has been requested to establish Mother S'ri_ in the house of the poet-seerThe first verse of the next hymn (2.7.1)Here Cikli_ta has been identified with Ja_tavedas in unambiguous terms. It may be pointed out that the S'ri_su_kta as well as the following two hymns are grouped together, as all of them have Ja_tavedas as their chief deity. V.19, i.e. the concluding verse of the S'ri_su_kta appears also as the concluding verse of both of them. It is a prayer for purification, increase of wealth, freedom from sin and difficultiesIn the S'ri_su_kta itself, the brilliance of soma-plant has been emphasized (vv. 4,5,13) and its golden appearance as well. Thus, brilliant appearance also forms a basis of identification of Agni Ja_tavedas and Soma Cikli_ta." (pp. 20-22). The purification of Cikli_ta soma, the oft-purchased yajn~a ingredient is the road to s'ri_, prosperity. In the toposheets of Survey of India, close to Sarasvati Nadi_ near Adh Badri is shown a place called Lohargad.h. The local revenue officials informed me for time immemorial, licences have been given to gold-panners in this place who pan for gold from the river-sands of the hiran.yavartini_ Sarasvati_. Buy the quartz and add the vasati_vari_ waters from the Sarasvati_ in the process of agnis.t.oma to yield the purified metal, which is prosperity personified. Thus, the Khilasu_kta corroborates the arguments provided elsewhere that the reference s to soma in the R.gveda are references to the process of purification of quartz (elelctrum) ore to produce potable gold and silver. Verse 2.6.1 of the S'ri_su_kta reads: Hiran.yavarn.a_ harin.i_ suvarn.arajatasraja_m Candra_m hiran.mayi_ laks.mi_ ja_tavedo mama_ vaha Trans.: O Ja_tavedas, bring unto me Prosperity which has the colour of gold, is possess of hari (soma), is 981

wearing a garland of gold and silver, is lovely and full of gold. Bhise notes: harin.i_m: hari stands for somaThe repeated reference to gold emphasizes the brightness of soma. Rajata: the silvery appearance of the soma at night. One does not have to search for an ephedra or a divine mushroom to gain prosperity processing soma. Any organic plant product would have been reduced to pure carbon if subjected to five days and five nights of incessant firing at around 1500 degrees C. The references to gold and silver in the context of cikli_ta and s'ri_ are clearly direct references to the purchased ore being reduced to the shining, bright, element metals: gold and silver. Ephedra may have become a ritual substitute when the raw-material sources became tough to access as the pastoral metallurgists moved along the banks of River Sarasvati_ and after her desiccation, towards the Helmand, towards the Gan:ga_-Yamuna_ doab and south of Gujarat. The references to asura among the Mun.d.as (near Santal Paraganas), metal workers par excellence may point to a substratum of R.gveda which was nurtured in the Mun.d.a country close to the banks of the River Sarasvati_. Of course, soma is the only (metallurgical, purificatory) process elaborately described in the R.gveda. No wonder, soma constitutes the very essence (rasa; note: rasava_da = alchemy; the term in Ancient Tamil for refined gold is vetaka-p-pon-) of the R.gveda and no wonder, the poet-seer is often seen referring to the devata_s (allegories of the sacrificial materials used in a yajn~a) to bestow him with material prosperity.

RV 4.41.8:s'riye_ na_ ga_va upa soman asthuh indram giro varun.am memani_s.a_h,'just as the milk has gone to Soma to become his ornament, so have my songs to Indra, my thoughts to Varun.a'.

Sanskrit varna colour, to choose; root, var- to choose, as in swayamvara girls choice; Avesta varena to put faith in

Sanskrit mitra; Avestan mi(theta)ra, mithra 982

Sanskrit arya; Avestan airya; Old Persian ariya Sanskrit sapta seven; Avestan hap[ta Sanskrit sarva; Avestan haurva ever, all, whole Sanskrit ksayati, kseti dwells ; Change of meaning in: Avestan xsayeiti "has power, is capable" Sanskrit pra forth; Avestan fra Sanskrit putra son; Avestan pu(theta)ra; Old Persian pussa Sanskrit duhitr- "daughter" (cf. Greek thugter). Avestan dug[{schwa}]dar-, du{voiced velar fricative con.}dar-. Sanskrit gabhira- (with i for i) deep, but Avestan jafraSanskrit dha "set, make," bhr, "bear," gharma- "warm," but Avestan and Old Persian da, bar, and Avestan gar[{schwa}]ma-.

Pronoun form Sanskrit yu_yam you; Avestan yus, yuz [{schwa}]m "you" (nominative plural) Sanskrit vayam "we" (Avestan vaem, Old Persian vayam).

Annex: Mleccha glosses

Semantic cluster: angirasa, shell-lime, wood

Charcoal: Skt. anga_r; Hindi ingel; anggu (Semang.Jur.); jeng-ka, jengkat (Sakei.); nying-kah (Senoi.); Embers: engong o_s'; ingung us (Semang.); burning embers: rangok (Khmer); Firewood: api (Jak.); fire-logs: anggng (Bes.)

Bengali kali cu_.; cf. ka_lo (Sak); kala_k (Sem.)

Wood: Bengali jhop, jhor., jha_r.; cf. jahu (Sem.); jehu_p chu (Mon); cho (Khmer); Tree = jehu~, jihu (Sak.)

983

Semantic cluster: plough, arrow

Skt. la_ngala, la_ngula, linga; Khmer anka_l, cam lanan, lanal lanar; Khasi ka-lynkor; Tembi tenga_la, Malay tengala, tanga_la, Batak lingala, Makassar nankala

Arrow: Skt. ba_n.a; Mon po_h, pah 'to throw the stones with a bow'; pno_h 'this bow'; Khmer, boh 'to throw, shoot to husk (the cotton); phno_h 'card for cotton'; Bahnar ponah, panah 'to draw the bow'; Curu: panan 'bow'; Kon-tu: panen 'cross-bow'; Sedang: ponen, monen 'cross-bow'; Halang: menen 'cross-bow'(Jean Przyluski, 1921, Non-aryan loans in Indo-Aryan in, PC Bagchi, opcit, pp. 19-21). Sumerian pan 'bow'.

Semantic cluster: coconut, mustard, rice, banana, betel, cotton

Malay niyor (coconut), niyor (Sak. and Sem.); fruit: ple, phlei, etc., kolai (Tareng); kolai (Kontu); na_rikela may be derived from equivalents of niyor (coconut) and kolai (fruit), combined. cf. SK Chatterji, 1928, Some more austric words in Indo-Aryan, in PC Bagchi, opcit., p. xx.

Skt. sarsapa = Pkt. sa_sava; Malay sesawi (husked rice) Skt. tan.d.ula, Beng. ca_ul; Middle Bengali ta_~r.ula, ta_ula, ca_ula; cf. cengrong, cen-er-oi, ceng-goi, ng-roi (Sakai); cendaroi (Senoi); jaroi, caroi (Sak.); cooked rice: caroi (Sak.), sro_ (Mon), srauv (Khmer).

What are the likely early words for 'paddy'? We would suggest two candidate semantic clusters, all indigenous, autochthonous bharatiya; we will leave it to linguistic pundits to unravel the munda, ia and dravidian -- even South Chinese genetic relationships (which we opine, are likely to be figments of linguists' imagination): val (pl. valkul) grain of unhusked rice (Kol.); valku pl. paddy, rice (Nk.)(DEDR 5287). varaku-ccampa_ a kind of paddy, sown in the months of a_n-i, a_t.i, and a_van.i, and maturing in six months (Rd.M.44); varaku-c-cir-u-kur-uvai a kind of paddy, sown in the season of a_van.i to 984

ka_rttikai and maturing in four months (Rd.M. 45)(Ta.lex.) alaku grains of paddy, ear of paddy or other grain (Ta.); algu rice obtained from paddy without boiling it (Kui); alkhr.a_ parched rice (cyu_r.a_ (H.) th paddy is first steeped in tepid water, then parched, finally unhusked by means of a wooden pedal and winnowed)(DEDR 255). Boiled rice: lay boiled rice (Pe.);lay id. (Mand..); lahi id. (Kuwi); la_h'i boiled mand.eya grain (Kuwi)(DEDR 5186). Parched grain: la_ja parched grain (VS.Pali); la_ya id., dried rice (Pkt.); la_wa_ fried unhusked rice (N.); burst parched rice or other grain (Bi.); parched grain (H.); la_i_ id. (H.); la_hi_ parched rice or wheat (M.); lada parched grain (Si.)(CDIAL 11011). vri_hi_ (a type of paddy)(Car. Su.27.15,33). ir- an.kal variety of coarse paddy sown in July, and harvested after six months (Ta.lex.) arici-k-ka_n.am an ancient tax (I.M.P.Tp. 234); arici rice without husk; any husked grain (Tamir..na_. 22); vari (Te.); ari (Tu.); oruza (Gr.)(Ta.lex.) nakarai a kind of rice (Ta.); navarai a kind of paddy (Ta.); navira, naviri, nakara a rice that ripens within two or three months; navara id.; paspalum frumentaceum (Ma.); navara a kind of grain (Tu.); navare a kind of rice (Tu.); nivari, nivvari oryza (Te.); ni_va_ra wild rice (Skt.)(DEDR 3614). ni_vara wild rice (VS.); ni_varaka (Sus'r.); ni_va_ra wild rice (Pali); niwar a kind of hardy rice growing at high altitudes (K.); nya_r wild rice (H.); nava_r, nama_r rice growing spontaneously (G.)(CDIAL 7571). Contrast these with words used for husked paddy or rice: So. sArO/ sAr `paddy'. Sa. hoRo ~ huRu `paddy, the rice plant (Oryza sativa,L.)'.Mu. huRu(K) `rice'. !equals Mu. baba Bh. huRu `rice'.Tu. huRu `rice'.KW u`Ru`@(V244,M073) ca_ula_ pl., cavala rice (Pkt.)[Poss. of ultimately of same non- Aryan origin as tand.ula]; ca~_uru, ca~_varu a grain of rice (S.); ca~_uro pertaining to husked rice (S.); ca_val husked rice (L.P.); ca_vul (L.); ca_var (P.); ca_ul (P.B.); caul (P.); cau (WPah.); cau~l (Ku.); ca~_wo_w (Ku.); ca~_wal (N.H.); ca_mal (N.); sa_ul (A.); ta_ula (OB.); ca_l (B.); ca~_ul.a (Or.); ca_ul.a, ca_ura (Or.); ca_ur Bi.Mth.Bhoj.); ca_wal (H.); ca~_war (H.); ca_vala (OMarw.); ca_val. usu. pl. (G.)(CDIAL 4749). cauret.ha_, caurat.ha_ rice soaked and dried and pounded (Bi.); cauret.ha_ rice ground up with water (H.)(CDIAL 4750). s'a_li growing or unhusked rice (MBh.);grains of rice (R.); s'a_lika of rice (Skt.Pali); sa_li rice(Pali.Pkt.); sal, sali (Gypsy); salima (Ash.); seli_, salima_ (Wg.); sali (Kt.); growing rice (Dm.); sa_l (Pas'.); so_le (Wot..); sa_li_ (Kho.); se_l 985

(Bshk.); sa_l (Tor.); shaeyl (Mai.); se_li_ (Phal.); sili_ rice (Pr.); sha_li_ (Bashg.); sa_ri_ unhusked rice (S.); saria~_ rice (L.); xa_li principal variety of transplanted rice (A.); sa_l, sa_il a kind of rice (B.); sa_l.i growing or unhusked rice (Or.); sa_ri (Bi.); sa_l (H.); sa_l. (G.M.); sa_l.iyu~ (G.); sa_l.i_ (M.); hal, al (Si.)(CDIAL 12415). buvva 'cooked food' used while feeding children (Telugu) So. ba.ba (M) `cooked rice'. !occurs only in children's speech Kh. ba? `rice in the hull, paddy'. Ju. bua `rice'. !perhaps from ba.ba Mu. ba.ba `the rice-plant, paddy (%Oryza_sativa,_Linn.), or rice in the husk'. Ho ba.ba `the riceplant, paddy (%Oryza_sativa,_Linn.), or rice in the husk'. Ku. ba.ba `cauli rice'.@(V004) See baba in hond.e baba: hond.e the point to be reached in parboiling paddy before husking it; hond.e baba parboiled rice; hond.e to parboil paddy to prepare it for quick and easy husking (Mu.); ondna_ (Oraon)(Mu.lex.)

Banana, plantain: kelui (gelui, glui), Sak. Kor. Gb; teluwi or keluwi. Sem. Jarum; telu_i. Sem. kedah; Skt. kadali_, kandali_

Betel: Alak balu, Khmer mluv, Bahnar bolou, Rongao bolou, Sue' malua, Lave melu, Stieng mlu, Kha blu, Palaung plu_; Sanskrit ta_mbu_lam, Pali tambu_li, tambu_lam, Prakrit tambolam, tambol. "A hindu caste of Bengal, which has for its main occupation the cultivation and the sale of betel, is called ba_rui < barai formed from *ba_r- a word which is no longer in use in Bengali, and the suffix a-i which markes appurtenance. The name occurs in a village name Ba_rayi_pad.a_ in a copper-plate grant of Vis'varu_pa Sena, c. 12th-13th cen. Ba_rui, when Sanskritised, gives ba_ru-ji_vin 'who lies on *ba_ru.' There is also the word baroj which means the kind of pergola in which the betel vine is grown. Ba_r-, bar- evidently designates betel and is clearly related to the Indo-Chinese forms balu, etc." (Jean Przyluski, 1921, Non-aryan loans in Indo-Aryan in, PC Bagchi, opcit, p. 18).

Cotton: Skt. karpa_sa; Crau: pac, bac; Stieng pahi; Khmer: ambas, amba_h; Bahnar: kopaih; Sedang: kope; Kuoi: kabas; Kco: kopas; Malayan, Javanese: kapas; Batak: hapas; Cam: kapah 986

Semantic cluster: crab, peacock

Skt. kamat.ha, karkat.a, Bengali ka_t.ha_, ket.e; cf. katam (Malay); khata_m (Mon); kedam, ktam (Khmer); kotam (Bahnar); tam (Stieng); kat-kom (Santali).

R.gveda: mayu_ra 'peacock'; Santali marak; Savara mara; Cam amrak; Malay mera; Crau brak; Stieng brak; Mon mra_; rak' 'to weep, to beseech, the call, cry or note of a beast, bird or insect'; marak' rak' 'peacock-crow which is earlier than cock-crow'.

Semantic cluster: man, woman

Bengali ko_l 'man'; Munda: 'man' har., horol, har.a, hor., koro cf. galu 'man' (Sumerian)

Woman: ku_r.i_, e_ra_, kor.i, kol (Munda); daughter 'kuri hapan'

Semantic cluster: water/ocean

A semantic cluster = water/shore is found in the following lexemes: bAr = water (Hindi); vAri = water (Sanskrit); bArAn = rain (Hindi); bArAni = land watered by rain (Hindi); bharu = sea (Pali, Sanskrit); maru = desert; sand-desert (Pali); mariyAdA = shore (Pali); [cf. Indo-European lexemes for sea: mare (Latin); muir (Irish); marei (Gothic); (are-)morica (Gaulish); mArEs (Lithuanian); morje (Slavonic).

Jean Przyluski, in VaruNa, god of the sea and the sky (JRAS, July 1931, pp. 613-622) provides an etymological excursus to reconcile the occurrence of similar-sounding words in the northwestern Indo-European dialects and also in Indo-Aryan by suggesting a proto-Austro-Asiatic root for the words. For e.g., he suggests "the non-Aryan word bharu, like its Sanskrit synonym 987

kaccha, signifies low-lying land, shore, swamp; and, in fact, the compound bharu-kaccha designates a region adjoining the sea and the capital of that region. bharu(kaccha) and maru(bhUmi) form part of the geographical nomenclature of the mahAbhArata... After the tIrthas of the Sindhi the 'Bengali' recension (of dig-varNana of the rAmAyaNa) names maru and anumaru, referring probably to the deserts near the lower-course of the Indus. In the different recensions of the rAmAyaNa the description of the western region ends with the mountain asta 'the sun-setting', where is erected the palace of varuNa. This curious indication is in perfect agreement with 'Geographical Catalogue of the Yakshas in the mahAmayUrI" (ed. Sylvain Levi, Journal Asiatique, 1915, I, pp. 35 sqq.). In verse 17 we read -- bharuko bharukaccheshu... that is to say-- 'the yaksha bharuka dwells among the people of bharukaccha.' Now one of the two Chinese translators of this catalogue has rendered bharuka by shoei t'ien 'god of the water', which suggests varuNa".

Semantic cluster: ocean/shore/low-lying land

Przyluski hypothesizes a proto-indic root: bar; enlarged to bara (Sumerian) and baru (AustroAsiatic), and by addition of the suffix -na, to get baruna, which is close to the Vedic varuNa. He also suggests that in certain austro-asiatic languages the initial undergoes complete reduction, e.g. Bahnar Ar, or. Delitzsch (Sumerisches Glossar, pp. 64-5) assigns the following semantic values to bar: (i) on the outside, outside; hence, bara = out, away; (ii) free space, desert (contrasted with human settlements); hence three derivatives in Sumerian: gu-bar-ra = free space, steppe, desert; ur-bar-ra = jackal; sgga-bar-ra = wild goat.

Does this agreement between austro-asiatic and sumerian posit a palaeo-asiatic radical: bar? The austro-asiatic words cited by Przyluski are: baroh = low-lying country, sea-shore, sea (Malay); baruh = plain, flatland; baruk, barok = shore; bAruh = sea (dialects of Malay peninsula); Ar = marsh, swampy district; or = low-lying damp terrain near to watercourses (Bahnar); [cf. haor = delta marsh-land (Bengali); bahr = stretch of water(Gueze or classic Ethiopian); baraha = 988

desert (Amharic)]; "Annamite has preserved the initial, but the final liquid has become i : *bar bai = coast, shore, strand". [Could the final liquid also explain the equivalent Tamil word: neytal?]

Arabic word bahr = sea, large river (Nile is called bahr by the natives). "The Noldeke (Neue Beitrage zur semitischen sprachwissenschaft, 1910, p.93) gives as the primary sense 'depression' (rather than 'surface'; cf. aequor); whence (1) sea, (2) land, low-lying land etc. A feminine form bahret has the sense of 'pool', 'basin', 'fish-pond', and also 'land', 'country-side'. Between bharu, maru, and bahr we have, therefore, in addition to the phonetic similarity, a quite curious accord in a double meaning, 'sea', 'low-lying land' or the like. Should not the word bahr, which does not belong to the Semitic in general, have the same origin as Sanskrit and Pali bharu?" (Father Paul Jouon cited in Przyluski, op cit.) [Seehttp://spaces.msn.com/members/sarasvati97 on sarasvati hieroglyphs and related lexemes as repertoire of metallurgists/artisans dealing with furnaces, minerals, metals and alloys.]

See introduction to Indian Lexicon atp://www.hindunet.org/saraswati/Indian%20Lexicon/000int.pdf (with footnotes)

http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/sarasvati/dictionary/0000intro.htm

Knowledge innovations, through writing systems, as glyptic representations of metal artisan guilds' workshop inventory and mleccha/meluhhan languageGlyptic themes

The continuing tradition of Sarasvati hieroglyphs helps validate decoding hieroglyphs of the socalled Pas'upati seal as the inventory of a mint or smithy. Seehttp://spaces.msn.com/members/sarasvati97 The entry is titled: Dr. Hrishikesh Shenoy's discovery of an Ujjain Jeweller's Seal The album is titled: Ujjain Jeweller's 6" sq. sealwith Sarasvati hieroglyphs.As an explosion of knowledge occurred to create alloys using two or more 989

minerals, distillation apparatus, furnaces, another innovation also occurred in using glyphs to represent knowledge, say, of the tools and devices used to create such alloys and to represent inwriting the vocalized names of these minerals, metals and alloys. The result was the innovation of Sarasvati hieroglyphs to record the artisan workshop's, smithy's, mint's inventory. This innovation occurred circa 3300 BCE as evidenced by a potsherd with early writing discovered at Harappa. This could perhaps be the earliest writing system in the world represented by seafaring smiths of Meluhha who traveled far and wide in search of alloying minerals such as zinc and tin.The decipherment is drawn from a review of the entire corpus of over 4000 artifacts with inscriptions. The review is documented in Sarasvati, encyclopaedic set of 7 books. The code of Sarasvati hieroglyphs is simple. The glyphs are read rebus using mleccha/meluhhan language lexemes. Orthographic style is uniform across a vast region stretching from Mesopotamia to Meluhha.

Orthographic elements are ligatured to achieve economy of space to represent innovations evolved in metal artisan guilds' workshops or just, smithy or mint. What were created as glyphs were NOT mythical representations but minerals, metals and types of furnaces.A few examples may be cited to establish the code of Sarasvati hieroglyphs, without any special pleading or leaps of faith.For example, a man's body is ligatured to the hind-part of a bull (with hoofed legs and tail). What did this ligature connote?d.hagara_m = pl. the buttocks, hip (G.) Rebus: d.han:gar = blacksmith (H.)Why is a waistband ligatured to a one-horned heifer? To represent kamarsa_la, artisan's workshop.karma_ras'a_la = workshop of blacksmith (Skt.) kamar a semihinduised caste of blacksmiths; kamari the work of a blacksmith, the money paid for blacksmith work; nunak ato reak in kamarieda I do the blacksmith work for so many villages (Santali) kammari, kammari_d.u = a blacksmith, ironsmith; kammarikamu = a collective name for the peopleof the kamma caste (Te.) karma_ras'a_la = workshop of blacksmith (Skt.) kamma_rasa_le = the workshop of a blacksmith (Ka.); kamasa_lava_d.u = a blacksmith (Te.) kamarsa_ri_ smithy (Mth.) kamba_r-ike, kamma_r-ike = a blacksmith's business(Ka.Ma.) (Ka.lex.) (DEDR 1236).kamarasa_la = waist-zone, waist-band, belt (Te.) kammaru = the loins, the waist 990

(Ka.Te.M.); kamara (H.); kammarubanda = a leather waist band, belt (Ka.H.) kammaru = a waistband, belt (Te.) kammarincu = to cover (Te.) kamari = a woman's girdle (Te.) komor = the loins(Santali) [Note the pannier tied as a waist band to the one-horned heifer.]Why a U-shaped wide-mouthed pot? kod.iyum an earthen cup holding oil and a wick for a light (G.)Why nine leaves? Why petioles of fig-leaf? kamar.kom = fig leaf (Santali.lex.) kamarmar.a_ (Has.), kamar.kom (Nag.); the petiole or stalk of a leaf (Mundari.lex.) Rebus: kamat.a 'smithy'. Substantive: lo 'iron' (Assamese, Bengali); loa 'iron' (Gypsy) Glyph: lo = nine (Santali); no = nine (B.) [Note the count of nine 'ficus' leaves depicted on the epigraph.] damad.i, dammad.i = a ka_su, the fourth part of a dud.d.u or paisa (Ka.M.); damad.i_ (H.) damr.i, dambr.i = one eighth of a pice (Santali) dammid.i = pice (Te.) Grapheme:damad.i, dammad.i = a small tambourine with gejjes (Ka.) Grapheme: damr.a m. a steer; a heifer; damkom = a bull calf (Santali) Rebus: amha = a fireplace; dumhe = to heap, to collect together (Santali)How to represent a portable furnace for melting precious metals? Say, kamat.a ? Depict a ygic posture of sitting.kamat.amu, kammat.amu = a portable furnace for melting precious metals; kammat.i_d.u = a goldsmith, a silversmith (Te.lex.) ka~pr.aut., kapr.aut. jeweller's crucible made of rags and clay (Bi.); kapr.aut.i_ wrapping in cloth with wet clay for firing chemicals or dugs, mud cement (H.)[cf. modern compounds: kapar.mit.t.i_ wrapping in cloth and clay (H.); kapad.lep id. (H.)] (CDIAL 2874). kapar-mat.t.i clay and cowdung smeared on a crucible (N.) (CDIAL 2871).kampat.t.tam coinage, coin (Ta.); kammat.t.am, kammit.t.am coinage, mint (Ma.); kammat.i a coiner (Ka.)(DEDR 1236) kammat.a = coinage, mint (Ka.M.) kampat.t.a-k-ku_t.am mint; kampat.t.a-kka_ran- coiner; kampat.t.a- mul.ai die, coining stamp (Ta.lex.)Glyph: kamad.ha, kamat.ha, kamad.haka, kamad.haga, kamad.haya = a type of penance (Pkt.lex.)Evidence of Sarasvati hieroglyph of taberna montana, tagaraka, is dated to 3300 BCE (cf. Harvard Harappa Project, 2002 season). A note on Ancient Economies Neumann (1999: 53) cites a loan document from Nippur in which a merchant declares that he will repay the amount lent "if he gets back from his commercial journey (kaskal)." I would agree with Neumann that this promise strongly suggests both independent finance and commercial 991

activity. Neumann, Hans. (1999), "Ur-Dumuzida and Ur-DUN." In Dercksen (ed.), Trade and Finance in Ancient Mesopotamia, 43-53. .. For the Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000-ca. 1600) there is much evidence of nonroyal commercial activity and little evidence connecting merchant (tamka_ru) with palace. One example of independent commercial activity is of special interest. In two liver omen texts one Kur, probably to be identified with Kur the tamka_rum attested in contemporary texts, makes sacrifices of lambs in order to foresee whether his affairs will prosper. Both texts refer to prospective sales in the market: ina su_qi_ i_ma_ti, literally, "in the buying streets ... One of these texts asks whether Kur is going to make a profit (ne_melu) on some kind of (gem?) stone, whereas the other asks the same about the sale of goods, "market/trade goods", sachirtu ... (Wilcke cited by Powell 1999: 11) Powell, Marvin A. (1999), " Wir mssen alle Nische nutzen: Monies, Motives, and Methods in Babylonian Economics." In J.G. Dercksen (ed.) Trade and Finance in Ancient Mesopotamia. Leiden: Nederlands HistorischArchaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, 5-23. In the mid-second millennium at Nuzi in eastern Assyria tamka_ru appear on royal "ration lists," but nonroyal individuals also employed their services. Some Nuzi texts show merchants borrowing from independent lenders for business ventures. A lawsuit concerning a merchant who disregarded a royal proclamation fixing a maximum price on slaves also attests to selfemployed merchants Texts from Ugarit (ca. 1400-ca. 1200), an important north Syrian port, demonstrate individual ownership of cargo ships and also show individuals, including merchants (mkrm), paying large sums of gold for trading concessions and the authority to collect harbor taxes. (In one instance the king of Ugarit declared a vessel to be exempt from duty when it arrived from Crete.) A treaty between the rulers of Ugarit and a neighboring state permitted citizens to form partnerships (tapputu) for commercial expeditions to Egypt. One text refers to an individual about to undertake a voyage to Egypt with the financial backing of four persons. Some merchants with no explicit royal connections spoke of "my merchants" and the merchants "of my hand." ("Merchants of the hand" are attributed to Tyre in Ezekiel 27.15,21.) Heltzer has gone beyond 992

this relatively clear evidence of nonroyal business enterprises. He believes that Ugarit knew two categories of merchants: tamkaru sha shepi, who were dependents of the king, and tamkaru sha mandatti, who clearly possessed their own trade goods and for whom there is no direct evidence that they traded with palace goods rather than their own. Heltzer's interpretation has, however, been criticized by Vargyas who suggests, among other points, that mandattu may denote private property or royal property. Three dotted circles appear on the right-most pedestal of the picture showing trade transactions on a river bank in ancient Egypt: Merchants in booths trade with Syrians at the river bank. Scene from New Kingdom tomb of Kenamun, "mayor" of Thebes. http://members.tripod.com/~sondmor/index-html#A.%20Mesopotamia Vedic culture in Sangam times There is a temple for Devi Sarasvati in a place called Basara (Vya_sapura) in Adilabad District of Andhra Pradesh, located on the banks of the Godavari River. The sthala pura_n.a states that the Devi was installed by Vya_sa by taking three mus.t.is (handfuls) of sand from the river bed an extraordinary affirmation indeed of the integrat link of Sarasvati as devi and Sarasvati as river. The appended maps indicate the patterns of ancient settlements right from the foothills of the Himalayas (Ropar) to the Gulf of Khambat (Lothal) and on the Arabian Sea Coast (Prabhas Patan or Somnath and Dwa_raka). It is also significant that Sangam literature of the Tamils notes the claim of the ancient Chera kings that they were the 42nd generation descendants from the rulers of Dwaraka (Tuvarai) and the sage Agastya is revered as the ancient Tamil Muni and the author of the earliest grammatical work in Tamil. Sangam literature is replete with references to the support provided to the growth of Vedic Culture in the Tamil-speaking areas. An important article on the antiquity of relation between Tamil and Sanskrit is: Sharma, K.V. 1983, Spread of Vedic culture in ancient South India, Adyar Library Bulletin 47:1-1.

Among the interesting facts that emerge from a study of the progressive spread of vedic culture from the North-West to the other parts of India, is its infusion, with noticeable intensity, in the 993

extreme south of India where, unlike in other parts, a well-developed Dravidian culture was already in vogue Tolka_ppiyam which is the earliest available work of the sangam classics, is a technical text in 1610 aphorisms, divided into three sections, dealing respectively, with phonetics, grammar and poetics The other available sangam works are three sets of collected poems, being, pattu-ppa_t.t.u (Ten idylls), et.t.u-ttokai (Eight collections) and patineki_r..kan.akku (eighteen secondary texts), which last appears to pertain to the late period of the sagam age. The ten poems are: tirumuruka_r.r.uppat.ai, porun.ara_r.r.u-ppat.ai, cir.upa_n.a_r.r.uppat.ai, perumpa_n.a_r.r.uppat.ai, mullaippa_t.t.u, maturaikka_n~ci, net.unelva_t.ai, kuricippa_t.t.u, pat.t.inappa_lai and malaipat.ukat.a_m. All the above idylls are compositions of individual poets, and, except for the first, which is devotional and possibly, pertains to late sangam age, are centred round the royal courts of the Cera, Cola and Pa_n.d.ya kings, depicting the contemporary elite scholarly society and youthful life. The second category consists of Eight collections: nar.r.in.ai, kur.untokai, ainkur.unu_r.u, patir.r.ujppattu, paripa_t.al, kali-ttokai, akana_n-u_r.u and pur.ana_n-u_r.u. All these collections are highly poetic and selfcontained stray verses of different poets put together in consideration of their contents. The third category consists of eighteen miscellaneous texts, some of them being collections of stray verses of different poets and some composed by individual authors. They are: tirukkur.al., na_lat.iya_r, par..amor..i, tirikat.ukam, na_nman.ikkat.ikai, cir.upacamu_lam, ela_ti, a_ca_rako_vai, mutumor..ikka_ ci, kalavar..ina_r.patu, initu-na_r.patu, tin.aima_lainu_r.r.aimpatu, aintin.ai-y-er..upatu, kainnilai, aintin.aiyanpatu, tin.aimor..i-y-aimpatu and ka_r.-na_r.patu. The verses in these works also refer to social customs and local sovereigns. The above works picture a well-knit and well-developed society having a distinct identity of its own. The frequent mention, in sangam poems, of the Cera, Cola and Pa_n.d.ya kings as the munificent patrons of the poets and the archaeological evidence provided by 76 rock inscriptions in Tamil-Bra_hmi script which corrobate the contents of the sangam works, in 26 sites in Tamilnadu (Mahadevan, I., Tamil Bra_hmi inscriptions of the Sangam age, Proc. Second International Conference Seminar of 994

Tamil Studies, I, Madras, 1971, pp. 73-106) help to fix the date of the classical sangam classics in their present form to between 100 B.C. and 250 A.D reference to the Pa_n.d.yan kingdom by Megasthenes, Greek ambassador to the court of Candragupta Maurya (c. 324-300 B.C.?) are also in point. On these and allied grounds, the sangam period of Tamil literature might be taken to have extended from about the 5th century B.C. to the 3rd century A.D It is highly interesting that sangam literature is replete with references to the vedas and different facets of vedic literature and culture, pointing to considerable appreciation, and literary, linguistic and cultural fusion of vedic-sanskrit culture of the north with the social and religious pattern of life in south India when the sangam classics were in the making The vedas and their preservers, the bra_hmans, are frequently referred to with reverence (Pur.ana_n u_r.u 6, 15 and 166; Maturaikka_ci 468; tirukat.ukam 70, na_n-man.ikkat.ikai 89, initu-na_r.patu 8). The vedic mantra is stated as the exalted expressions of great sages (Tolka_ppiyam, Porul. 166, 176). While the great God Siva is referred as the source of the four vedas (Pur.a. 166), it is added that the twice-born (bra_hman) learnt the four vedas and the six veda_ngas in the course of 48 years (Tiru-muruka_r.r.uppat.ai, 179-82). The vedas were not written down but were handed down by word of mouth from teacher to pupil (Kur-untokai 156), and so was called kel.vi (lit. what is heard, ruti)(Patir.r.ippattu 64.4-5; 70.18-19; 74, 1-2; Pur.a. 361. 3-4). The bra_hmans realized God through the Vedas (Paripa_t.al 9. 12-13) and recited loftily in vedic schools (Maturaikka_ci 468- 76; 656) the danger to the world if the bra_hman discontinued the study of the veda is stressed in tirukkur.al. 560. If the sangam classics are any criteria, the knowledge and practice of vedic sacrifices were very much in vogue in early south India. The sacrifices were performed by bra_hmans strictly according to the injunctions of the vedic mantras (tirumuruka_r.r.uppat.ai 94-96; kalittokai 36). The three sacred fires (ga_rhapatya, a_havani_ya and daks.ina_gni) were fed at dawn and dusk by brhmans in order to propitiate the gods (Kalittokai 119l Pur.a. 2; 99; 122; Kur.icippa_t.t.u 225). Paripa_t.al 2. 60-70 stipulates, in line with vedic sacrificial texts, that each sacrifice had a specific presiding deity, that pasus (sacrificial animals) were required for the sacrifice and that the sacrificial fire rose to a great height. The vedic practice of placing a 995

tortoise at the bottom of the sacrificial pit is referred to in Akana_n-u_r.u 361 Patir.r.uppattu 64 and 70 glorify the Cera king Celvakkat.unkovar..iya_tan- who propitiated the gods through a sacrifice performed by learned vedic scholars and distributed profuse wealth amongst them. Another Cera king, Perum-ceral Irumpor.ai is indicated in Patir.r.uppattu 74 to have performed the Putraka_mes.t.hi_ sacrifice for the birth of his son il.amceral irumpor.ai. The Cola ruler Peru-nar.kil.l.i was renowned as Ra_jasu_yam ve_t.t.a co_r..an- for his having performed the ra_jasa_ya sacrifice; another Cola ruler Nar.kil.l.i, too, was celebrated as a sacrificer (Pur.a. 363; 400). The Cola kings were also considered to have descended from the north Indian king Sibi the munificent of Maha_bha_rata fame (Pur.a. 39; 43). The patronage accorded to vedic studies and sacrifices is illustrated also by the descriptive mention, in Pur.a. 166, of a great vedic scholar Vin.n.anta_yan- of the Kaun.d.inya-gotra who lived at Pu_ja_r.r.u_r in the Co_r..a realm under royal patronage. It is stated that Vin.n.anta_yan- had mastered the four vedas and six veda_ngas, denounced non-vedic schools, and performed the seven pa_kayajas, seven Soma-yajas and seven havir-yajas as prescribed in vedic texts. The Pa_n.d.yan kings equalled the Colas in the promotion of Vedic studies and rituals. One of the greatest of Pa_n.d.ya rulers, Mudukut.umi Peruvar..uti is described to have carefully collected the sacrificial materials prescribed in vedic and dharmastra texts and performed several sacrifices and also set up sacrificial posts where the sacrifices were performed (Pur.a. 2; 15). Maturaikka_ci (759- 63) mentions him with the appellation pal-sa_lai (pal-ya_ga-sa_lai of later Ve_l.vikkud.i and other inscriptions), one who set up several sacrificial halls. The Pa_n.d.ya rulers prided themselves as to have descended from the Pa_n.d.avas, the heroes of Maha_bha_rata (Pur.a. 3; 58; Akana_n-u_r.u 70; 342) God Brahm is mentioned to have arisen, in the beginning of creation, with four faces, from the lotus navel of God Vis.n.u (Paripa_t.al 8.3; Kalittokai 2; Perumpa_n.a_r.r.uppat.ai 402-04; Tirumuruka_r.r.uppat.ai 164-65; Iniyavaina_ rpatu 1). It is also stated that Brahma_ had the swan as vehicle (Inn-nrpatu 1). Vis.n.u is profusely referred to. He is the lord of the Mullai region (Tol. Akattin.ai 5) and encompasses all the Trinity (Paripa_t.al 13.37). He is blue-eyed (Pur.a. 174), lotus-eyed (Paripa_t.al 15.49), 996

yellow-clothed (Paripa_t.al 13.1-2), holds the conch and the discus in his two hands and bears goddess Laks.m on his breast (Mullaippa_t.t.u 1-3; Perumpa_n. 29-30; Kali. 104; 105; 145), was born under the asterism Tiru-o_n.am (Maturai. 591), and Garud.a-bannered (Pur.a. 56.6; Paripa_t.al 13.4). Of Vis.n.uite episodes are mentioned his measuring the earth in three steps (Kali. 124.1), protecting his devotee Prahla_da by killing his father (Pari. 4. 12-21) and destroying the demon Kesin (Kali. 103.53-55). Siva has been one of the most popular vedic-pura_n.ic gods of the South. According to Akana_n-u_r.u 360.6, Siva and Vis.n.u are the greatest gods. He is three-eyed (Pur.a. 6.18; Kali. 2.4), wears a crescent moon on his forehead (Pur.a. 91.5; Kali. 103.15), and holds the axe as weapon (Aka. 220.5; Pur.a. 56.2). He bears river Ganga_ in his locks (Kali. 38.1; 150.9) and is blue-necked (Pur.a. 91.6; Kali. 142). He is born under the asterism a_tirai (Skt. rdra) (Kali. 150.20), has the bull for his vehicle (Paripa_t.al 8.2) and is seated under the banyan tree (Aka. 181). Once, while sitting in Kaila_sa with Uma_ (Pa_rvati), his consort (Pari. 5.27-28; Par..amor..i 124), Ra_van.a, the ra_ks.asa king shook the Kaila_sa and Siva pressed the mountain down with his toe, crushing Ra_van.a and making him cry for mercy (Kali. 38). When the demon Tripura infested the gods, Siva shot through the enemy cities with a single arrow and saved the gods (Kali. 2; Pur.a. 55; Paripa_t.al 5. 22-28). Pur.ana_n u_r.u (6. 16-17) refers also to Siva temples in the land and devotees walking round the temple in worship. God Skanda finds very prominent mention in sagam classics, but as coalesced with the local deity Murukan-, with most of the pura_n.ic details of his birth and exploits against demons incorporated into the local tradition (Paripa_t.al 5. 26-70; Tirumuruka_r.r.uppat.ai, the whole work). Mention is also made of Indra. (Balara_ma) is mentioned as the elder brother of Lord Kr.s.n.a, as fair in colour, wearing blue clothes, having the palmyra tree as his emblem and holding the ;lough as his weapon, all in line with the pura_n.as (Paripa_t.al 2. 20-23; Pur.a. 56. 3-4; 58.14; Kali. 104, 7-8). Tolka_ppiyam (Akattin.ai iyal 5) divides the entire Tamil country into five, namely, Mullai (jungle) with Vis.n.u as its presiding deity, Kur.iji (hilly) with Murukan- as deity, Marutam (plains: cf. marusthali_ Skt.) with Indra as deity, Neytal (seashore) with Varun.a as deity and Pa_lai (wasteland) with Kor.r.avai (Durga_) as deity The 997

sangam works are replete with references to the four castes into which the society was divided, namely, bra_hman.a, ks.atriya, vaisya, and su_dra bra_hman antan.a primarily concerned with books (Tol. Mara. 71), the ks.atriya (a-rasa, ra_ja) with the administration (Tol. Mara. 78) and su_dra with cultivation (Tol. Mara. 81) It is also stated that marriage before the sacred fire was prescribed only for the first three castes; but the author adds that the custom was adopted by the fourth caste also in due course (Tol. Kar.piyal 3) one cannot fail to identify in sangam poetry the solid substratum of the distinct style, vocabulary and versification, on the one hand, and the equally distinct subject-matter, social setting and cultural traits, on the other, both of the Tamil genius and of vedic poetry. As far as the grammar of Dravidian is concerned, a detailed analytical study of Old Tamil as represented in Tolka_ppiyam, with the vedic siks.a_s and pra_tisa_khyas, has shown that, Tolka_ppiyan-a_r clearly realized that Tamil was not related to Sanskrit either morphologically or genealogically that he deftly exploited the ideas contained in the earlier grammatical literature, particularly in those works which dealt with vedic etymology, without doing the least violence to the genius of the Tamil language. (Sastri, P.S.S., History of Grammatical Theories in Tamil and their relation to the Grammatical literature in Sanskrit, Madras, 1934, p. 231) It would be clear from the foregoing that during the sangam age there had already been intensive infusion of vedic culture in south India Both the cultures coexisted, the additions often affecting only the upper layers of society For novel names, concepts and ideas, the Sanskrit names were used as such, with minor changes to suit the Tamil alphabet (e.g. akin-i for agni, vaicikan- for vaisya, veta for veda, or translated (e.g. pa_pa_n- for darsaka, ke_l.vi for sruti). When, however, the concept already existted, in some form or other, the same word was used with extended sense (e.g. ve_l.vi for ya_ga; ma_l or ma_yan- for Vis.n.u). Sometimes both the new vedic and extant Tamil words were used (e.g. ti_ for agni) It is, however, important to note that the coming together of the two cultures, vedic and dravidian, was smooth, non-agressive and appreciative, as vouched for by the unobtrusive but pervasive presence of vedicism in the sangam works. The advent of vedic culture into South India was, thus, a case of supplementation and not supplantation it is a moot question as to 998

when vedic culture first began to have its impact on dravidian culture which already existed in south India the age of this spread (of vedic culture) has to be much earlier than the times of the Ra_ma_yan.a and Maha_bha_rata, both of which speak of vedic sages and vedic practices prevailing in the sub-continent. Literary and other traditions preserved both in north and south India attest to the part played by sage Agastya and Parasura_ma in carrying vedic culture to the south. On the basis of analytical studies of these traditions the identification of geographical situations and a survey of the large number of Agastya temples in the Tamil country, G.S. Ghurye points to the firm establishment of the Agastya cult in South India by the early centuries before the Christian era (Ghurye, G.S., Indian acculturation: Agastya and Skanda, Bombay, Popular Prakashan, 1977) the considerable linguistic assimilation, in dravidian, of material of a pre-classical Sanskrit nature, it would be necessary to date the north-south acculturation in India to much earlier times.

Proto-Vedic as a web of Munda, Dravidian and Mleccha in Saptasindhu region Another node of the Vedic-Tamil network web is the Tamil-Munda network web which has yet to be unraveled. A beginning was made by the late Sudhibhushan Bhattacharjee (cf. Bibliography) with a number of works pointing to the possible etyma of Munda languages and some links with Dravidian glosses. This inquiry will certainly take us into the contacts along the Hindumahasagar rim (Indian Ocean Rim) regions explaining why as noted by George Coedes, there are many early Sanskrit Brahmi inscriptions in places such as Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand, while the early epigraphs in Bharatam are in Prakrit Brahmi. Vedic Age relates to the period when the r.cas of the R.gveda were composed (as distinct from the time when the r.cas were compiled into Sam.hitas). According to Matsya Pura_n.a, there was only one Veda and later occurred the arrangement into four Vedas and the evolution of sa_khas (which are also referred to as caran.a or bheda) in consonance with the development of the Vedic tradition. Eko vedascatus.pa_dah sam.hr.tya tu punah punah (Matsya 143.10). There are also anusa_khas or 999

upasa_khas which indicate the further development of the sa_khas. (ityeta_h pratisa_kha_bhyo hyanusa_kha_ dvijottama: Vis.n.u P. III,4.25). The sa_khas are books enshrining particular traditions (the Sam.hita_, Bra_hman.a and Su_tra traditions) which have been nurtured as sva_dhya_ya (consisting of mantra and bra_hman.a) and transmitted orally from generation to generation to regulate the performance of yajn~a. Many sa_khas were locality specific. That the Ka_n.va Sam.hita_ was prevalent in Kuru-country, is known from the line es.a vah kuravo ra_ja_. Its equivalent in the Taittiri_ya Sa_kha_ is es.a vo bharato ra_ja_, (Ganga Sagar Rai, 1990, Vedic Sa_khas, Varanasi, Ratna Publications).

It will be apposite to recall the balanced views expressed by Maurice Winternitz in the context of Indian literary tradition in his work, A History of Indian Literature. The historical facts and hypotheses, such as mention of Vedic gods in the cuneiform inscriptions, and the relationship of Vedic antiquity to the A_ryan (Indo-Iranian) and Indo-European period, are so uncertain in themselves that the most divergent and contradictory conclusions have been drawn from them. Nevertheless, we have now such likely evidence of relations between ancient India and western Asia penetrating as far west as Asia Minor in the second millennium B.C.E., that Vedic-culture can be traced back at least to the second millennium B.C The linguistic facts, the near relationship between the language of the Veda and that of the Avesta on the one hand, and between the Vedic language and classical Sanskrit on the other, do not yield any positive results As all the external evidence fails, we are compelled to rely on the evidence arising out of the history of Indian literature itself, for the age of the Veda. The surest evidence in this respect is still the fact that Pa_rsva, Maha_vi_ra and Buddha presuppose the entire Veda as a literature to all intents and purposes completed, and this is a limit which we must not exceed. We cannot, however, explain the development of the whole of this great literature, if we assume as late a date as round about 1200 BC or 1500 BC as its starting-point. We shall probably have to date the beginning of this development about 2000 or 2500 BC, and the end of it between 750 and 500 BC. The more prudent course, 1000

however, is to steer clear of any fixed dates, and to guard against the extremes of a stupendously ancient period or a ludicrously modern epoch. (Maurice Winternitz, 1907, Geschichte der Indischen Literatur, tr. A History of Indian Literature, 1981, Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, pp. 287-288).

Parikshit appears in a famous laud of the Twentieth Book of the Atharva Veda Sam.hita_ (AV 20.127.7.10) as a king of the Kurus (kauravya) whose kingdom (ra_s.t.ra) flowed with milk and honey in the Aitareya and Satapatha Bra_hman.as the famous king Janamejaya bears the patronymic Pa_rikshita (son of Parikshit). The Aitareya Bra_hman.a (VIII.21), for example, informs us that the priest Tura Ka_vasheya annointed Janameja Pa_rikshita with the great anointing of Indra. (etena ha va_ aindren.a maha_bhisheken.a turah ka_vasheyo janamejayam pa_rikshitam abhishishecha) the realm of the Kurus over which Parikshit ruled. The kingdom, according to epic tradition, stretched from the Sarasvati_ to the Ganges. In the Digvijayaparva it is taken to extend from the border of the land of the Kulindas (near the sources of Sutlej, the Jamuna and the Ganges) to that of the Su_rasenas and the Matsyas (in the Mathura_ and Baira_t. regions respectively), and from the frontier of Rohi_taka (Rohtak in the Eastern Punjab) to that of the Pan~cha_las (of Rohilkhand). It was divided into three parts, Kuruja_n:gala, the Kurus proper and Kurukshetra (MBh. I. 109.1). Kuruja_n:gala, as its name implies, was probably the wild region of the Kuru realm that stretched from the Ka_myaka forest on the banks of the Sarasvati_ to Kha_n.d.ava near (sami_patah) the Jamuna. (MBh. III.5.3) The Kurus proper were probably located in the district around Hastina_pura (on the Ganges), identified with a place near Meerut. The boundaries of Kurukshetra are given in a passage of the Taittiri_ya Aran.yaka (Vedic Index I. Pp. 169-70) as being Kha_n.d.ava on the south, the Tu_rghna on the north, and the Pari_n.ah on the west (lit. hinder section, jaghana_rdha). The Maha_bha_rata (MBh. III.83.4) gives the following description of Kurukshetra: South of the Sarasvati_, and north of the Drishadvati_, he who lives in Kurukshetra really dwells in heaven. The region that lies between Taruntuka and Marantuka or Arantuka, the lakes of Ra_ma and Machakruka (Machakruka, Taruntuka and Marantuka are Yaksha dva_rapa_las guarding the boundaries of 1001

Kurukshetra) this Kurukshetra which is also called Sa_manta pan~caka and the northern sacrificial altar (uttara vedi) of the grandsire (i.e. Brahma_). Roughly speaking, the Kuru kingdom corresponded to modern Thanesar, Delhi and the greater part of the Upper Gangetic Doa_b. Within the kingdom flowed the rivers Arun.a_ (which joins the Sarasvati_ near Pehoa), Am.sumati_, Hiran.vati_, A_paya_ (A_paga_ or Oghavati_, a branch of the Chitang), Kausiki_ (a branch of the Rakshi_), as well as the Sarasvati_ and the Drishadvati_ or the Rakshi_. (MBh. III.83.95.151; V.151.78). Here, too, was situated Saryan.a_vat, which the authors of the Vedic Index consider to have been a lake, like that known to the Satapatha Bra_hman.a by the name of Anyatahplaksha_ According to the epic tradition the kings of Kurukshetra belonged to the Puru-Bharata family. The Paurava connection of the Kurus is suggested by the Rigvedic hymn (10.33.4) which refers to kuru-sravan.a (lit. glory of the Kurus) as a descendant of Trasadasyu, a famous king of the Pu_rus. (RV. 4.38.1; 7.19.3). The connection of the Bharatas with the Kuruland is also attested by Vedic evidence. A Rigvedic ode (RV 3.23) speaks of the two Bha_ratas, Devasravas and Devava_ta, as sacrificing in the land on the Drishadvati_, the A_paya_ and the Sarasvati_. Some famous ga_tha_s of the Bra_hman.as and the epic tells us (SBr. 13.5.4.11; Ait. Br. 8.23; MBh. 7.66.8) that Bharata Dauhshanti made offerings on the Jamuna, the Ganges (Yamuna_m anu Ga_n:ga_ya_m) and the Sarasvati_. [The Dasyu of the Bra_hman.a period are: Andhras, Sabaras (Savaris of Gwalior and Sauras of Vizagapatam), Pulindas (of Bundelkhand) and Mu_tibas (? Of Musi river near Hyderabad Deccan): Aitareya Bra_hman.a 7.18]. The territory indicated in these laudatory verses is exactly the region which is later on so highly celebrated as the Kurukshetra Among theose kings who are mentioned in the genealogical lists of the Maha_bha_rata as ancestors and predecessors of Parikshit (A_diparva, ch. 94 and 95), the names of the following occur in the Vedic literature: Puru_ravas Aila (RV. 10.95), A_yu (RV 1.53.10; 2.14.7), Yaya_ti Nahushya (RV 1.31.17; 10.63.1), Pu_ru (RV 7.8.4; 18.13), Bharata Dauhshanti Saudyumni (SBr. 13.5.4; Ait. Br. 8.23), Ajami_d.ha (RV 4.44.6), R.iksha (RV 8.68.15), Sam.varan.a (RV 1002

8.51.1), Kuru (RV 10.33.4), Uchchaihsravas (Jaimini_ya Upanis.ad Br. 3.29.1-3), Prati_pa Pra_tisatvana or Pra_ti sutvana (AV 20.129.2), Balhika Pra_tipi_ya (SBr. 12.9.3.3), Sam.tanu (RV 10.98) and Dhr.itara_s.t.ra Vaichitravi_rya (Ka_t.haka Sam.hita_ 10.6).(H.Raychaudhuri, 1972, Political History of Ancient India, 7th edn., Calcutta, University of Calcutta, pp. 11-22).

Saryan.a_vat is the source for naming the present-day State of Haryana. Sarasvati_ River was the domain of the Bharatas.

Puru_ravas Aila is mentioned only the tenth man.d.ala of the Rigveda and may denote a later-day king. The epic tradition (Ra_m. 7.103,21-22) notes that Aila is the son of a ruler who migrated from Ba_hli in Central Asia to mid-India. MBh. 3.90-22-25 located the birth place of Puru_ravas on a hill near the source of the Ganges. The Ba_hli (or ila_vr.tavars.a) associated with the Ka_rddma kings may relate to the areas close to Gan:gotri and may not connote a reference to Bactria in the Oxus valley. the Papan~cha su_dani refers to the Kurus the most important of the Ailas according to the Maha_bha_rata and the Pura_n.as as colonists from the trans-Hima_layan region known as Uttara Kuru. (Law, Ancient Mid-Indian Ks.atriya Tribes, p. 16) In the Aihole Inscription of Raviki_rti, panegyrist of Pulakesin II, dated Saka 556 (expired) = AD 634-35, it is stated that at that time 3735 years had passed since the Bha_rata war: trim.satsu tri-sahasreshu bha_rata_d a_hava_d itah sapta_bda-sata-yukteshu gateshvabdeshu pan~chasu (Ep. Ind. VI, pp. 11,12). The date of the Bha_rata war which almost synchronized with the birth of Parikshit, is, according to this calculation and the testimony of A_ryabhat.a (A.D. 499), 3102 BC. This is the starting point of the so called Kali-yuga era (Raychaudhuri, opcit.,, p. 24).

Kva pa_rikshita_ abhavan (whither have the Pa_rikshitas gone)? asks Bhujyu La_hya_yani; Yajn~avalkya responds: Thither where the performers of the horse sacrifice abide. (Br.ihad. 1003

Upanis.ad, 3.3.1). This is clearly a reference to the continuing tradition of the asvamedha in the Ganga-Yamuna doa_b and does not seem to refer to the haoma practices of the Avestan group who might have moved north-west to eastern Iran and moved to the right-banks of Sindhu river. An extraordinary evidence linking the R.gvedic references to the fire-workers echoed as fireworshippers in the Zoroastrian faith and the emergence of the Bronze Age civilization along the Sarasvati and Sindhu River Basins is provided by the thousands of gabarbands constructed on many rivers, most of them perhaps datable to ca. 3500 BC. The importance of the fire-workers in the civilization is enshrined in the term used in Sindh: the gabarband. Gabarband means, literally, Zoroastrian dam; gabar = Zoroastrians or fire-worshippers; band = dam or an stone enclosure used to contain or redirect water as an irrigation facility. (For a discussion on the semantics of gabar cf. Balfour, E., 1885, The Cyclopaedia of India: And of Eastern and Southern Asia, commercial, industrial and scientific. 3 Vols., 3rd edn. London: Bernard Quaritch). Gabarbands, in thousands, are found in Sindh Kohistan, Kirthar and Baluchistan (Gedrosia) regions. They dominate the riverine courses in Sarawan, Jhalawan and along the Hab River. It is noted that gabarband is an ancient technology and began in thee first half ot the third millennium BC. (Louis Flam, 1981, The Palaeogeography and Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in Sind, Pakistan (4000-2000 BC). PhD Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania., Ahmad Gabarband in the Saruna Valley (After Hughes-Buller 1903-04, Gabarbands in Baluchistan, Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India, 1903-04: 194-201: Pl. LXI; and Possehl, G.L., 1999, Fig. 3.127). Parthians and Sassanians were also gabars, or fireworshippers. The L-shaped gabarbands are stone dams built not as full-scale dams but to check and (using the wings of the stone walls to) re-direct the flood waters into the gabarband catchment area, so that alluvium could be build up behind the bands (or dams) creating fertile agricultural fields of upto about two hectares in size.Gabarbands aligned to contain water and to create alluvial tracts (After Possehl, G.L., 1999, Fig. 3.128). Gabar. Pers. A person not a Mahomedan, in general, but commonly a Zoroastrian, a Parsee or fire-worshipper; an idolworshipper, an infidel; any unbeliever in Mahomedanism in general; but the word is more specially applied 1004

to a fire-worshipper. Meninski says, Ignicola, magus infidelis quivis paganus. The word is more familiar to the people of Europe under the spellings Gaour and Geuebre. A small remnant of fire-worshippers exists in Persia, chiefly at Yezd in Khorasan; but most of their countrymen have emigrated to India, where, especially at Bombay, they flourish under the name of Parsee. According to the dictionary, Burhan-I-Kattea, Gabar is used in the name of Magi, which signifies a fire-worshipper, Gabar man-I-Magh bashad, keh atash purust ast, i.e., Gabar means a Magh, which is a fire-worshipper. This is sometimes written, and very often pronounced, Gavr, by a change of letters frequent in Persian, as in other languages. Gavr, we learn from the dictionary Jahangiri, means those fireworshippers who observe the religion of Zardusht (or Zoroaster), and they are also called Magh. But Origen, in the 3rd century, defending Christianity against Celsus, an Epicurean, who had alluded to the mysteries of Mithra, uses Kabar as equivalent to Persians. Let Celsus know, says he, that our prophets have not borrowed anything from the Persians or Kabirs (Orig. contr. Cels. Lib. vi. p.291, Cantab. 1658). A Jewish writer, quoted by Hyde (Hist. Relig. Vet. Pers., cap. xxix), declares that the Persians call their priests (in the plural) Chaberin (or Khaberin), whilst the singular, Chaber or Khaber (occurring in the Talmud), is explained by Hebrew commentators as signifying Parsai or Persians Dr. Hyde, however, as above cited, thinks that Chaber or Chaver denoted both a priest and a layman. There can be no doubt that the usages of a people which regard their dead are important evidences of the faith professed by them, or, if not clearly indicating it, that they may show what faith is not professed. The semi-exposure adopted by the Siah-posh has contributed probably to their being suspected to be a remnant of the Gabar, or followers of the reformer Zartusht, but no account has been heard of the least mention of fire-worship amongst them. There is the certainty that within the last three centuries there were people called Gabar in the Ka_bul countries, particularly in Lughman and Bajur; also that in the days of Baber there was a dialect called Gabari. We are also told that one of the divisions of Kafiristan was named Gabrak, but it does not follow that the people called Gabar then professed the worship of fire. That in former times fire-worship existed to a certain, if limited, extent, in Afghanistan, is evidenced by the pyrethrae, or fire-altars, still crowning the 1005

crests of hills at Gard-dez, at Bamian, at Seghan, and at other places. Near Bamian is a cavern, containing enormous quantities of human bones, apparently a common receptacle of the remains of Gabar corpses; and to the present day the Parsees expose their dead on tower summits, but Tibetans, Chinese and Hindus often lay their dead on plains or in rivers. At Murki Khel, in the valley of Jalalabad, and under the Safed Koh, human bones are so abundant on the soil that walls are made of them. There is every reason to suppose it a sepulchral locality of the ancient Gabar; coins are found in some number there Ouseleys Travels, I, p. 150. (Balfour, E., 1885, The Cyclopaedia of India: And of Eastern and Southern Asia, commercial, industrial and scientific. 3 Vols., 3rd edn. London: Bernard Quaritch, p. 1158). The concordant terms, Chaber, Chaver mentioned in this entry in Balfours cyclopaedia provide a lead to the identification of the fire-worshippers. Dr. Rhys Davids locates Sauvi_ra to the north of Kathiawar and along the Gulf of Kach (Buddhist India, Map facing p. 320, and Bha_gavata, V, ch. 10; I, ch. 10, v.36); Alberuni equates Sauvi_ra with Multan and Jahrawar (Alberunis India, vol. I, pp. 300, 302: Sauvi_ra includes the littoral as well as the inland portion lying to the east of the Sindhu as far as Multa_n, with the capital city called Vitabhaya, according to Jaina Pravachanasa_roddha_ra). Ma_rkan.d.eya Pura_n.a (ch. 57) notes that Sindhu and Sauvi_ra are in the northern part of India and close to Gandha_ra and Madra. Rapson identifies Sauvi_ra with Sindh province (Ancient India, p. 168). One conjecture is that Sauvi_ra was the Sophir or Ophir mentioned in the Bible. Part of the modern territory of Sind may have been included in Sauvi_ra whose southern limits undoubtedly reached the sea, because the Milinda- Pan~ho mentions it in a list of countries where ships do congregate In Skandapura_n.a (Prabha_sa-kshetra Ma_ha_tmya, Ch. 278), referring to the famous temple of the Sun at Mu_la-stha_na or Multajn_n, says that stood on the banks of the river Devika_ In the Agnipura_n.a (Ch. 200), the Devika_ is brought into special relations with the realm of Sauvi_ra (sauvi_rara_jasya pura_ maitreyobhu_t purohitah tena ca_yatanam vis.n.oh ka_ritam devika_tat.e) Kachcha had come under the sway of the Great Satrap (Rudrada_man) as early as 130 A.D, (Raychaudhuri, H., 1972, Political History of Ancient India, 7th edn., Calcutta, University Press, pp. 544-547). The 1006

Gabars or fire-worshippers were Sauvi_ras. The discovery of fire-altars in the archaeological sites of regions east and west of Sindhu River Basin (cf. the fire-pits of hundreds of sites in Bahawalpur province), on the banks of the Sarasvati River and in Kalibangan, Banawali (both located on the banks of the Sarasvati River) and Lothal (perhaps an outfall area of the Sarasvati River, linking with the Nal Sarovar south of the Little Rann of Kutch) dated to the 3rd millennium BC is a clear indication of the dominance of the fire-worship in the entire Sarasvati River Basin. This is an affirmation of the myth of vad.ava_nala fire carried by the Sarasvati River as people moved eastward and westward with progressive desiccation of the mighty river. Bhagwan Singh notes (Bhagwan Singh, 1995, The Vedic Harappans, New Delhi, Aditya Prakashan, p. 224) that the term revata_ used in the context of Pan.is may be related to the mount Revand mentioned in reference to Vista_spa: When Zoroaster brought the religion...Vista_spa put the a_dar-burzenmihr on its cultic place on mount Revand, which is also called pust-e-Vistaspa_n that is revant of Yt. 19.6...This Revand another one lies not far south is situated northwest of Nishapur, not far from Tos, near the turquoise mines (Herzfeld, Ernst, 1947, Zoroaster and His World, Princeton, I, 81-82). The Revand is a mountain in Khorasan on which the Burzin fire is settled. (Avesta, Bund. 12.18; Sirrozah 1.9).

Suniti Kumar Chatterji notes that the Latvian writer, Fr. Malbergis, wrote in 1856 that the Latvians like the Russians and Germans came from the banks of the Ganga. The Latvian tradition is that a wise people, Burtnieks brought all science and knowledge to Latvia from India. The tradition further holds that Videvuds was a teacher of this profound wisdom. The Vaidilutes, the old Lithuanian priestesses tended the sacred fire as part of the Old Indo-European Balt religious rite and a modern Lithuanian poet suggested that this fire arrived in Lithuania from the banks of Ind. (Chatterji, S.K., 1968, Balts and Aryans in their Indo-European Background, Simla, pp. 23-24). Alfred Hillebrandt argues that the degradation of the term asura- (from its basic meaning lord to the meaning of evil spirit) occurred because of the encounters between Indians and Iranians after their separation, but 1007

fore Zarathustras reform. He adds that the phrase he lavo attributed to the asuras in the Satapatha Bra_hman.a indicates that Indian enemies from the east are also included among asuras, since this phrase would be a Prakrit form from that area. (Alfred Hillebrandt, Vedische Mythologie, 3 vols., Breslau, Verlag von M. and H. Marcus, 1902, vol 2., p. 440). The following Indic etyma may explain the use of the term he layo: halla_ = tumult, noise (P.Ku.N.B.Or.H.); halphal = shaking, undulation (A.)(CDIAL 14017). Hallana = tossing about (Skt.); hallai moves (Pkt.); alun = to shake (K.) ale, alaku = to shake (Ka.)(CDIAL 14003; 14918). Hillo_la = wave (Skt.); hillo_layati = swings, rocks (Dha_tup.); hilorna_ = to swing, rock to and fro (H.); hilolai = shakes (OMarw.)(CDIAL 14121). Hillo = a jerk, a shake; a push; a shock; hello = a jolting of a carriage (G.) helao = to move, drive in (Santali). The semantics, rocking to and fro and wave point to sailing on high seas. This is authenticated by a Tamil lexeme: e_le_lo = a word that occurs again and again in songs sung by boatmen or others while pulling or lifting together; e_le_lan- = name of a Chola king; e_lappa_t.t.u = boatmens song in which the words e_lo_, e_le_lo occur again and again (Ta.lex.) This leads to a possible interpretation of some of the mlecchas, who shout, he lavo, he lavo, as sea-farers and is consistent with the evidence of economic texts from Mesopotamia which point to extensive trade relations with meluhha, which is generally equated with the Indic civilization area.

S.C.Roy notes that Mun.d.as have a tradition that India was previously occupied by a metalusing people called Asuras. One tribe of the Mun.d.a group is called Asuras today. (Rai Bahadur S.C. Roy, The Asuras ancient and modern, The Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society, 12, 1926, 147). This analysis is consistent with the characterization of asurawith creative activity. Considering the sea-faring merchants of Indic civilization had traded in metals and ores over an extensive area and the evolution of the bronze-age, ca. 3500 B.C. in the region with the invention of alloying copper with tin to yield bronze and manufacture of hardened metallic weapons and tools, the dominant lordship of the civilization would have rested with the people with asuric or creative capabilities, who were later identified as a group of people called asuras. Vedic age was a peaceful age and the devas respected the asuras as 1008

their neighbours; indeed, the devas even worshipped the asuras for their superior power: yatha_ deva_ asures.u sraddha_m ugres.u cakrire (RV 10.151.3) Just as the devas rendered faithful worship to the powerful asuras Two views of the formation of North Dravidian. After Elfenbein, J.H., 1987, A periplous of the Brahui problem, Studia Iranica, 16; pp. 215-33. This pattern of separation of the Brahuis is consistent with the suggestion earlier made by Jules Block that the Brahuis came to Baluchistan from South or Central India where other cognate languages were spoken. The vocabulary of Brahui is strongly influenced by Sindhi and Siraiki with substrate Indic words which find many cognates in Marathi, Gujarati and Kurukh languages; these verily constitute the substram Pra_kr.ts which influenced Vedic Sanskrit with words such as khala (threshing floor), la_n:gala (plough)

H. Skold argued that asura could not have been derived from assur. If the derivation were true, the s in assur should appear in Sanskrit as s and in Avestan as s, not as the s and h we have in asura- and ahura-.(Hannes Skold, Were the Asuras Assyrians? The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Socierty of Great Britain and Ireland, April 1924, pp. 265-7. Von Bradke suggested that asura- could derive from as, to be, or ans, to support, perhaps the latter. (P.von Bradke, Beitrage zur altindischen Religions und Sprachgeschichte, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, 40, 1886, 347-8). Polome connects assura with Hittite hassus, which means king (E.Polome, Letymologie due terme germanique *ansuz dieu soverain, Etude Germanique, 8, 1953, 41). Schlerath analyzes asura as as-ura and derives Avestan ahu- and ahura-, Indic asura-, Hittite hassu and Latin erus from reconstructed root *axs- meaning beget. (Bernfried Schlerath, Altindisch asu-, Awestisch ahu- und a_hnlich klingende Worter, in: Pratida_nam: Indian, Iranian and Indo-European Studies presented to Franciscus Bernardus Jacobus Kuiper on his Sixtieth Birthday, ed., by J.C. Heesterman, G.H. Schoker, and V.I. Subramoniam, The Hague, Mouton, 1968, p. 146). Hale proposes an alternative to Schleraths etymology by suggesting an Indo-European *Hesu- from which came Avestan ahu- lord and Hittite hassu king and an Indo-Iranian derivative of this word, *asura1009

from which Avestan ahura- and Vedic asura- derive (Wash Edward Hale, opcit., p. 36). Hales argument is not convincing; if *Hesu- could have yielded Hittite hassu, Vedic asura- could also have yielded the Hittite hassu and Assyrian assura. Such a straight-forward Vedic-Avestan route may also explain the presence of Sanskrit lexemes in Kikkulis horse training manual, Indic names among the names of Mitanni kings and Vedic deities named in the Mitanni treaty. A validation of this hypothesis can be made by tracing the so-called Dravidian lexemes in R.gveda and identifying concordant Avestan glosses.

Winternitz had noted earlier as follows: The vedic language differs from Sanskrit almost not at all in its phonetic content but in its greater antiquity especially by a richer stock of grammatical forms. Thus for example, Ancient Indian has a subjunctive which is lacking in Sanskrit; it has a dozen different infinitive endings of which there is only one left behind in Sanskrit. The aorist forms, plentifully represented in the Vedic language disappear more and more in Sanskrit. The case-endings and personal endings are more perfecdt in the oldest language than in later Sanskrit. ((Maurice Winternitz, 1907, Geschichte der Indischen Literatur, tr. A History of Indian Literature, 1981, Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, pp. 35-36). There is undoubtedly close relationship between the language of the Veda and the Indo-Iranian basic language as evidenced by the earlier texts related to the Avestan language which evolved into the Ancient Persian of cuneiform inscriptions and the Ancient Bactrian of the Avesta.

J. Bloch, S. Levy and J. Przyluski, Burrow, Emeneau, Parpola, Kuiper, Hock, Southworth have made studies based on suppositions that Dravidian and Munda as substrate languages and as preceding Vedic Sanskrit. Kuiper, for example, notes that the Rigveda has some 300 words, that are NOT Indo-Aryan words (Kuiper 1991). Some examples are: br.bu, balbu_tha, ki_na_sa, ki_kat.a, pramaganda, br.saya since roots ki_n, ki_k, mag, balb, br.s do not exist in IE. Masica proposes a Language x. Southworth finds that many agricultural terms in use in Hindi (links with Apabhramsa) simply do not have any IE cognates. Kuiper adduces -n- infixes in kabandha/ka-vandha, kar-kandhu, gandha_ri, pramaganda, sakunti. Pinnow notes that the 1010

lexeme gand explained in names of rivers Ganga or Gan.d.aki_, may belong to Munda ga-nd/gan.d, (Pinnow, 1959: 351). Did Sumerians immigrate from the east, from Meluhha (mleccha)? These are indicators that the Saptasindhu region was perhaps a Proto-Vedic, ProtoMunda region which may explain why Vedic texts contain many Munda and Language X words, as also agricultural terms (apart from flora, also many fauna, artisan, clothing, toiletry and household terms) with no cognates in what is currently known as Indo-European or as Dravidian. (cf. Southworth 1988: 663), See:http://www.1.shore.net/~india/ejvs Vol.5, 1999, Issue I (September).

There is no evidence, whatsoever, that Munda influenced directly the Avestan. The Avestan words cognate with the Rigvedic are explainable as derived from the Proto-Vedic language which included the Munda substrates (Mleccha, Meluhha) in the earliest Vedic period in the region which came to be called Bharatavars.a.

The pura_n.ic and epic age was an era of cultural fusion. Intermarriages between the two tribes (devas and asuras) continues unchecked. Bhi_ma married Hidimba_, the son, born of their union, Ghat.otkaca fought on behalf of the Pa_n.d.avas in the Kuruks.etra battle. Aniruddha, the grandson of Va_sudeva married Us.a_, the daughter of Ba_n.a_sura. Pururava_s son A_yu married the daughter of Svarbha_nu, an asura. Not only the intertribal marriage was acceptable, even the earlier Brahmanical law-givers went to the extent of including the custom of Asura form of marriage into their law-books and called Asura marriage. In such marriage, the bride was bought from her father by paying bride price (A_svala_yana Gr. S. 1.6; Baudha_yana Dharma S. 1.35; Gautama Dharma S. 4.12; Manusmr.ti 3.31). The Vasis.t.ha Dharma Su_tra (1.35) recognizes such marriage belonging to Manus.a form. Though other sacred texts look on it with disfavour, the Arthasa_stra (3.2.10) allows it without criticism: pitr.prama_n.a_s catva_rah pu_rve dharmya_h ma_tr.pitr.prama_n.a_h ses.a_h. As for instance the marriage of Dasaratha of Ra_ma_yan.a and Pa_n.d.u of Maha_bha_ratta may be taken. Dasaratha of Ayodhya_ married Kaikeyi_and their son was illustrious Bharata. The sister of 1011

Salya namely Ma_dri_ was united with Pa_n.d.u on payment of heavy bride price (MBh. 1.105.4- 5) Pura_n.as Yaya_ti married Sarmis.t.ha_, the daughter of the Asura king Vr.s.aparva_ and had three sons namely Druhyu, Anu and Puru. Because of his affiliation with the mothers side, Puru was called an Asura matriarchal nature of Asura society the celebrated Brahminical myth of the churning of the oceasn is a popular ojne, where the Asuras seize the ambrosia, churned out of the ocean before the gods took possession of it (Upendranath Dhal, Mahis.a_sura in Art and Thought, 1991, Delhi, Eastern Book Linkers, p.27).

Asur (Akkadian) has, by the nineteenth century BC, been recognized as the national god of Assyria. In political terms, he bestowed the scepter and the crown and blessed the Assyrians (Tikva Frymerkensky, Ashur, Encyclopaedia of Religion, Vol. I, Ed., M. Eliade, pp. 461 ff.) The enmity of Asuras with the gods is noted. (Brown, W.Norman, Proselytizing the Asuras: A noteor R.gveda 10.12, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 39, Part 2, 1919, pp. 100-103). Historicity of the Asuras is evaluated and Asuras are described as immigrants from Assyria and were the builders of the Harappan culture. Asur the deity was symbolized by a winged diSkanda The Asur people were renowned for magic, medicine, sculpture, architecture and military prowess. (A.Banerji Sastri, The Asuras in Indo-Iranian Literature, JBROS, XI.1, March 1926, pp. 110-139; Asura expansion in India, JBROS, XII.2, June 1926, pp. 243-285; II Asura expansion by sea, JBROS, XII.3, Sept. 1926, pp. 334-360; V Asura Institutions, JBROS, XII.4, December 1926, pp. 503-539). The settlements of Assur or Asura in Magadha or South Bihar are noted. (D.R. Bhandarkar, Aryan Immigrants into Eastern India, ABORI, XII.2, 1931, pp. 103-116). A comprehensive survey of the texts from the R.gveda and Bra_hman.as is used to analyse the meaning of the term asura as lord, leader and as corroborated by Iranian mythology. It is noted that the terms asura and deva are both used to qualify the same Vedic deity for example, Indra, Varun.a, Mitra, Agni, while the Iranian works recognize asura as divine and daeva as demoniac. (Wash E. Hale, Asura in Early Vedic Religion, Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1980; Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, 1012

1986). An anthropological perspective identifies the asura as a scheduled tribe of Netarhat plateau of Chotanagpur, Bihar and surveys their customs, rites, economic and social conditions. (K.K.Leuva, The Asur A Study of Primitive Iron Smelters, New Delhi, Bharatiya Adimjati Sevak Sangh, 1963). Asuric culture through the ages is attempted, as a fusion of cultures. (K.P. Chattopadhyaya, The Ancient Indian Culture Contacts and Migrations, 1970, Calcutta, Firma KL Mukhopadhyaya). The dominance, in ancient times, of Asuras in extensive areas of Africa and Eurasia is emphasized. (K.L. Jain Vasasiya, Indian Asuras Colonised Europe, 1990, Delhi, Itihas Vidya Prakashan). The myths related to the Asura Bali-Va_mana, as a benevolent king and as a devotee of Siva, is presented. (G.C. Tripathi, Der Ursprung und die Entwicklung der VamanLegende in der indischen Literatur, 1968, Wiesbaden, Otto Harrassowitsz). The mythology of Bali is also presented (Clifford Hospital, The Righteous DemonA Study of Bali, 1984, Vancouver, University of British Columbia). Mahis.a as a leader of Asuras in the context of the mythology of Mahis.a_suramardini is presented. In an evaluation of the genesis of the concept of Asura, it is noted the Ashur Marduk, the supreme deity of Babylonian pantheon was adopted as Ahur Mazda by the Persians after occupying Assyria.. (Upendranath Dhal, Mahis.a_sura in Art and Thought, 1991, Delhi, Eastern Book Linkers).

The following Dravidian lexemes are concordant with the semantics of a_rih, [cf. O.Ir. aire = nobleman]. To cite Mayrhofer: To trace back the name of Aryans in IndoGermanic time is not plausible, as the word evidently represents only an inner-aryan evolution which is based in a_rih. O.Ir. aire, nobleman is to be kept away according to Thumeysen. (M.Mayrhofer, Kurzgefasstes etymologisches worterbuch des altindischen, Heidelberg. 1953-77, Vol. I, p. 52). ar_an_ = sacrificer; ar_aviya virtuous; ar_aviya_n- = virtuous man; ar-avan- one who is virtuous, god, Buddha; ascetic; ar-am = moral or religious duty, virtue, dharma, Yama (Ta.); ar-a, ar-u virtue, charity, alms, law, dharma, Yama (Ka.); ar-am = law, dharma (Ma.)(DEDR 311). Grassman translates a_rya as: 1. 1013

good, kind, gracious, friendly which is said of gods, godly beings, of the singer presenting the offerings; 2. true, produce (yield etc.), stranger (from the meaning opposed to godly); 3. stranger (of the songs). (H. Grassmann, Worterbuch zum Rig-veda, Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1955, col. 115). Naighan.t.u explains arya as master, lord (Pa_n. iii.i.103). Grassman (ibid., p. 183), connects the root a_r to praise, extol, commend (Geldner: erkennen; cf. RV. VIII.16.6; RV 10.48.3). The Dravidian lexemes cognate with the semantics of a_r: a_r to shout (Ta.); a.r- (a.t-) to call (Ko.); a_r, a_rcu to cry aloud (Ka.); ara- to moo, make loud hoarse noise (Kod.); a_rbat.a a joyful cry, triumph (Tu.); a_rcu to cry aloud, shout (Te.); a_r to sound (as bell etc.)(Pa.); a_rpa to shout (Kond.a); to call (Kui); a_rhnai to invite (Kuwi)(DEDR 367). http://www.hindunet.org/saraswati/RiverSarasvati.pdfBibliography

Ancient texts: Rigveda (1/164/49, 1/3/10, 1/3/12, 1/3/13, 2/30/8 , 3/53/12, 6/61/2, 3/23/4, 10.75/5, 2/41/16, 7/36/6, 7/95/1, 7/95/2), Mahabharata (6/49/50, 3/83/204).

Sangam Literature (Patir-r-uppattu): neeye vad.apaal munivan tad.avinul. to_nri cempu punaindu iyar-r-iya ce_n. ned.um puricai uvara_ i_kai tuvarai aan.d.u naarpattonbadu var..imurai vandal ve_l.irul. ve_l.e_ vir-ar- po_r an.n.al taar an.i yaanaic ce_t.t.u irunkove [Trans. Irunko, chief among the vel.ir, conquering warrior, rider of a garlanded elephant, undiminishingly munificent, coming from a northern lineage of 49 generations of rulers of Dwaraka embellished with copper-fortified, beautiful, long fortifications.] This reference points to an emphatic link between Hemacandra desi (mleccha of Gujarat coastline) and old Tamil of Sangam times.

Adams, John, and Marcelle Otte, 1999, Did Indo-European Languages spread before farming? http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/Indo2.html [Abstract: The late Glacial record of vegetation and climate suggests that major changes in hunter-gatherer population density might have occurred across Europe and Asia as a result of extreme climate fluctuations. We hypothesise that a reduction in population density across most of the region during the coldest 1014

part of the Younger Dryas (around 12,800-11,400 cal. y.a.) may have been followed by a sudden rebound phase, when climate switched back to warm, moist Holocene conditions over only a few decades. A 'sparse wave' of hunter-gatherers migrating rapidly out of a refugial area (possibly located in southern Europe and/or the Near East) would have made a disproportionate contribution to the genetic and linguistic legacy of the region. This may explain part of the initial prehistoric dispersal pattern of the Indo-European languages. Other smaller and somewhat later climate changes, such as the cold event at 8,200 cal. y.a., are also candidates for this process of regional depopulation followed by repopulation from a restricted source region. The possibility should be considered in addition to hypotheses invoking spread of these languages by early farmers or warlike cultures.]

Agarwal, Vishal, 2001, What is Aryan Migration Theory,http://vishalagarwal.voiceofdharma.com/articles/indhistory/whatisamt.htm (with an extensive bibliography)

Alinei, Mario (2004), The Paleolithic Continuity Theory of Indo-European Origins: An Introduction, available at www.continuitas.com/intro.pdf retrieved on October 2005.

Alinei, Mario (1998), Towards an Invasionless Model of IndoEuropean Origins: The Continuity Theory, available at http://www.continuitas.com/invasionless.pdf retrieved on October 10, 2005.

Bakliwal P. C., S. M. Ramasamy, and A. K. Grover (1983), "Use of remote sensing in identification of possible areas for groundwater, hydrocarbons and minerals in the Thar desert, Western India," \nProc. of the International Conference on Prospecting in Areas of Desert Terrain, 1983, pp. 121-129.\n \n\nS. M. Ramasamy, P. C. Bakliwal, and R. P. Verma, "Remote Sensing and River migrations in \nWestern India", International Journal of Remote Sensing\n, 1991, Vol. 12, No. 12, pg. 2597-2609.\n \n\nP.C. Bakliwal and A.K. Grover, 1015

"Signatures and Migration of \nSaraswati \nRiver in Thar Desert\n, Western India," \nRec. Geological Survey of India, 1988, Vol. 116, pp. 77- 86.\n \n\n\n K. S. Valdiya, "Neotectonic implication of collision of Indian and Asian plates," Indian Journal of Geology, Vol. 61, 1989, pp. 1-13.\n",1] ); //--> Thar desert, Western India," Proc. of the International Conference on Prospecting in Areas of Desert Terrain, pp. 121-129.

__________, and A.K. Grover, "Signatures and Migration of Saraswati River in Thar Desert , Western India," Rec. Geological Survey of India, 1988, Vol. 116, pp. 77- 86.

Beekes, Robert S.P., (1995), Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction, Amsterdamn: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Bhattacharya, Sudhibhushan. (1954), Studies in the Parengi language. Indian linguistics 14.4563 . Bhattacharya, Sudhibhushan (1957), Field-notes on Nahali. Indian linguistics 17.245-258. Bhattacharya, Sudhibhushan (1965), Glottal stop and checked consonants in Bonda. IndoIranian Journal 10.69-71. Bhattacharya, Sudhibhushan.(1966), Some Munda etymologies. Studies in Comparative Austroasiatic Linguistics, Ed. by Zide, Norman H. (Indo-Iranian monographs, 5.) The Hague: Mouton, 28-40. Bhattacharya, Sudhibhushan. 1968. A Bonda dictionary. (Deccan College building centenary and silver jubilee series, 18) Poona: Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute, 1968. Pp. xxxvi, 212. [Reviewed: Journal of the American Oriental Society ??.?? (??), by Norman H. Zide.] -- Based on the plains dialect of Sannasi Nayak, of KudamguRa, Dt. Koraput, Orissa, with some material from hill dialects, and an appendix of words from Elwin 1950. The 1016

preface presents a sketch of the transcription system, which is phonetic rather than strictly phonological, and a few notes on morphology and morphophonemics; it also presents 25 etymologies, citing cognates from Munda and Mon-Khmer languages. The dictionary, in Nagari order, includes 2880 entries, with loans marked. Three tales and two songs are appended, with grammatical notes and English translations, 161-174. There are indices of English meanings, of Latin and Remo terms for plants and animals, and of linguistic and ethnographic topics. Bhattacharya, Sudhibhushan. 1970. The Munda languages and South-East Asia Bulletin of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (Simla), July 1970.23-31 (1970). -- Summary of a paper read to the Fellow's Seminar, AIIS, Simla; provides a brief synopsis of the study of Munda languages and of their relations to other languages, with a brief bibliography. Bhattacharya, Sudhibhushan. 1972. Dravidian and Munda (a good field for areal and typological studies). Third Seminar on Dravidian Linguistics, Ed. by Agesthialingom, S., & Shanmugam, S. V. Annamalainagar: Annamalai University, 1972. 241-256. -- Reviews the history of comparisons of Dravidian and Munda languages, and briefly surveys some points of comparison: vowel harmony, "euphonic nunnation" (Caldwell) whereby NVCV becomes NVNCV, phonotactics, lexical and conceptual similaries, the inclusive/exclusive distinction, and inalienable possession. Bhattacharya, Sudhibhushan. (1976), in comparative Munda linguistics, Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, pp. xiv, 205, -- Bibliography, 199-205. Bhattacharya, Sudhibhushan. 1976. Gender in the Munda languages, Austroasiatic studies. Ed. by Jenner, Philip N.; & Thompson, Laurence C.; & Starosta, Stanley (Oceanic Linguistics, special publication, 13.) Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii, 1976, 1.189-211. Blaut, J. M (1993), The Colonizers Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History, New York/London: The Guilford Press.

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[1] Greenberg (2002) does not use the term Eurasiatic family in a geographical sense. Proto Vedic is the result of three overlapping language families as shown in Figure 1 [i] Nahali vocabulary

1 biDum2 irar3 moTho4 na:lo5 pco6 cha:h7 sato8 aTho9 nav10 dasThe numbers 5-10 are clearly of IA origin. The numbers 1-5 are Dravidian:biDum cf. Toda wD, Kota vodde, Irula vonduirar cf. Toda e:D, Brahui ira:, Kolami i:ral, Kannada eraDumoTho cf. Toda mu:D, Telugu mu:Duna:lo cf. Toda no:N, Koya na:lu, Tulu na:l, Malayalam na:lu

But the Munda layer is thicker, and the Nahali verb system is reportedly Munda-like. The unidentified substrate is said to account for about 25% of the vocabulary. Perhaps the fairest description of Nahali would be this: an old creole language that has been decreolised in favour of its Indo-Aryan component.

Nahali ad.d.o, ard.u tree, wood Parengi. ara? Sora. era_ Nahali ara to see Santali arak orok gaping, staring; Mundari arid to gaze, look at

Nahali akhand.i finger

Nahali baddi bull Gutob of Bastar state ba_d.i_; Kolami barre buffalo; Telugu bar-r-e female buffalo; Pkt. pad.d.a Nahali oba bull; Kurku doba ox, bull, bullock; dobaq bullock; Marathi d.obad. female buffalo; Bhili d.obe cattle

Nahali bakra a he-goat; Hi. bakra_; Ku. bokra, bon:gora

Nahali bard.o sickle

1029

Nahali bot.or hare; Gondi bhat.e_lya_; Munda kuala hare; Kherwari kulai, kulae

Muci jor.t.a_ two ; Beng. jor.a_ couple

Nahali cort.o blood; Tamil, Malayalam co_ri, Kod.agu co_re blood

Nahali cakot.o, cekot.o axe; Kurukh cakna_ to sharpen; Telugu cekku- to pare Kui sekali to scrape (with a hoe); Burushaski cak axe For -t.o: kalt.o a Naha_l person; du. kalt.ihlt.el, plur. kalit.t.a; -t.o seems to be a suffix; Skt. karkat.aka name of a tribe in ancient Bharat. jakot.o male; jakot.o ma_u horse; ja_kot.o haran male deer

Nahali cokob leaf of a tree, a Naha_l clan-name; Kurku Santali Mundari sakom leaf

Nahali cha_h six; Hi. cha

Nahali ca_n fish; Kurku cade a certain kind of fish; Muci cha_n rui fish (lit. rohit fish caught in net)

Nahali candi silver; Kurku candi; Hi. ca~_di_

Nahali cana dance; cana- to dance

Nahali carko black-faced monkey; Mundari sara; Ho Kurku sara monkey, baboon, blackfaced monkey; Ainu saro; Jap. saru? Nahali d.ugi red-faced monkey Ku. dhugi baboon, a red-faced monkey; Sakai dok; Tembi, Senoi dokn, Stieng duk, Bahra dok, Chrau dok, Halang modok, Sedang do monkey

Nahali cergo- to run; Kurku sarub- to run 1030

Nahali cerk(o) to fall; Tamil carukku to slip; Kannada saraku to slip, slide; Malto jarqe to be dropped, fall

Nahali d.ad.i beard; Kurku dadi; Hi. da_r.hi

Nahali d.and.o upper arm; Kurku d.and.o upper arm; Kolami dand.a; Parji d.and.a

Nahali d.an:go branch of a tree; Kurku dagan; Hi. d.o~ghi_; Kui d.e_ga

Nahali d.ed.d.a frog Kurku dedda; Pkt. d.ed.d.ura; Skt. dardura

Nahali d.on:ga a variety of ant of big size; Kurku don:ga a large black ant; Mar. d.o_gl.a_ a species of large ant

Nahali d.on:gor hill, jungle, forest; Kurku don:gor; Hi.Mar. do_gar hill, mountain Nahali balla hill Ku. balla, bala; Khandesi balda_; Kun.bau bald.a_; Hi. ba_la_ high, aloft Tamil vallai hillock, mound

Nahali dhan:kar shepherd Hi. dha~_gar caste whose business is to dig wells, tanks; Kolami dhan:gar shepherd from Mar.

Nahali d.hol drum; Kurku dhol; Hi. d.hol

Nahali d.hor cow; dhotta_ cows, cattle; Kurku d.hor-ku cattle; Nahali bidi_ dhotta_ a cow, dhatta_ cow; Baori (Lahore) e_k d.hat.t.o_ a bull; Hi.Mar. d.hor cattle, beast; Kolami do_r, Gondi d.ho_r.-k cattle Gutob of Bastar state dhorai_ shepherd. Probably connected with Gondi t.a_li_, Bhili t.o_l.i_ cow, Bhili t.od.a~_ cattle 1031

Nahali t.o_t.a maize, a Naha_l clan-name

Nahali en:ger burning charcoal; If direct borrowing from Hi. a~_gra_, en:ger is an instance of a>e; Mundari en:gel, remodeled after sen:gel fire

Nahali e.t.t.hi, het.t.i elephant; Kolami etti, Kurku hethi, hathi; Mar. hatti_, Hi. ha_thi_

Nahali ha_t.u market; Hi. ha_t.; Kurku hatti from Hi. hat.t.i_

Nahali gad.ri, gadha ass Kurku gadri, gadari, gidari, gideri; Mar. gadhad.a_; Kurku gadar.a heass, gidir.i she-ass; Hi. gadaha_

Nahali ga_r.a cart; Kurku gar.a a native cart; Hi. ga_r.a_

Nahali gard.an neck; Hi. gardan

Nahali gora kelli male calf; Kurku gora male calf

Nahali got.hi clan; Hi. got.h assembly; goti_ relation, kindred

Nahali ghut.ari a deer; Kurku ghotari, ghotar.i, gotari red antelope, deer, jungle goat; Ho kotharie seleep [= kothari_ silib] Zide points to Santali ghot.ret jel, ghot.ra jel

Nahali kot.ra inside. Nid.irtan: kot.ra inside of the anthill; Hi. Mar. kot.ar hole in a tree; Hi. kot.hri_ (Mar. kot.had.i_) small room, cell; Hi. Mar. kot.ha_r storehouse

Nahali hond.ar rat; Sora on(d)re_n: ; Kui od.ri; Kuwi or.li, orli; Skt. undara, undaru, unduru 1032

mouse

Nahali hundar to prepare (food); Kurku hundar; Gutob kund.ar to cook

Nahali iphil star; Kurku ipil; Santali Mundari Ho ipil; Sakai perlohi, peloi, Semang puloe, peluih; Khmer phlu daylight

Nahali irar two (Masc.), ir (Fem. Ntr.); ir-jen two persons; i_r, i_ra_; Tamil iru/i_r, Kannada iru, ir, i_r

Nahali ira to cut with a sickle; Kurku ir/hir to cut (grass), to mow; Santali Mundari Ho ir to cut, reap. The disyllabic root of Nahali is remarkable, but may be correct; cf. Mundari gira: Santali ger and Ku. terae-: Ho ter to throw

Nahali geri fishing hook; Kurku gir.i fish-hook, to hook a fish; Mar. gal. fish-hook; N.B. Santali ger to catch fish, Mundari gira_ net for catching fish are not related to geri.

Nahali Kurku kat.ham tortoise; Kurku katkom crab; Santali kakkat.a; Skt. karkat.a

Nahali kapri in jiki kapri eye-brow

Nahali kapor winnowing basket

Nahali karchi pitcher; Kurku karsi, kharsi earthen basin, large earthen pot, water-pot with a wide neck; Mar. kal.si_, kal.si_ a small metal vessel

Nahali ka_vra crow; Kurku kaur.a, kaua, kauwa raven, crow Parji kavr.a; Mar. from ka_vl.a_

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Nahali kirsan cultivator Kurku kirsan, kisan; Hi. Mar. kisa_n; modern borrowings from Sanskrit: Nepali kirkhi from Skt. kr.s.i

Nahali ko_go snake

Nahali kokhor fowl Gondi kukkura painted partride; Mundari Ho kokor owl; Sora kukkur dove

Nahali komba cock; Kurku komba, Mar. komba_d.a_; Konkani kombo

Nahali khobo much; khu_b very, many; Kurku khobo, khubo (kubo), khob (kob). Hi. Mar. khu_b

Nahali ko_l woman, wife (dual ko_lhilt.el); Kolami ko_lama wife; Kashmiri kolay wife; Burgandi dialect of Tamil kulis wife, Yerukala khulisi_ (Malar khulsa_ husband: Sikalgari kho_l house); Kui kola bride, sons (yonger brothers) wife

Nahali ko_lya fuel, Naha_l clan-name; Kurku kolya charcoal, with metathesis from Hi. koyala_, koela_ > Santali koela, kuila, Mundari koila, kuila

Nahali kot.t.o, kat.t.o, ko_hat. to beat; Tam. Mal. Tel. kot.t.u [to beat; Mundari kut.ao to drub, strike violently or thresh soundly with a stick; Hi. ku_t.na_

Nahali kot.t.u to pound; Hi. ku_t.na_ to macerate, to pound, to pestle, crush, beat; Kannad.a kut.t.u to beat, strike, pound, bruise

Nahali ku_d.u bamboo door; Kurku kur. wall (of wattle and daub), Mar. ku_d., kud.an (Kolami kud.an); Kui kud.u wall

Nahali kui water well; Kurku kui, kuhi, Santali ku~i; Hi. ku_a_ (ku_i_ in Dardic). Munda word 1034

perhaps a recent borrowing from some local Aryan dialect

Nahali khand.a shoulde; to carry on shoulder; Kurku khanda, kha~_do~, Hi. kandha_

Nahali kharu ka many; Kurku kar.u, karu herd, crowd, flock, multitude, karuten in crowds, kad. karu kurku a great multitude (lit. a great many people); santali khar herd, flock; Mundari ker.a,Ho. kera buffalo, Mundari kir.o a buffalo calf upto to 3 years old

kat.iya_ buffalo heifer (G.); kad.a buffalo (Santali); ka_t.i, furnace (trench)(Ta.)

Nahali khara field; Mar. khal., khal.e~ yard, court [Kurku khara means salt, brackish = Hi. kha_ra_]; cf. Nahali kheriyan threshing floor; Kurku kharyan, from Mar. khal.iha_n; cf. khaliha_n, khali_ha_n, Bihari khariha_n; Kurku khari_n from Mar. khal.e~ Nahali kheda to drive a cart Kurku kheda, kheda-ki to drive away, ke-keda, keda-k-ej to drive oxen; Hi. khedna_ id.

Nahali kheri-kama to pull; Kurku kir.i to pull; Kann. ki_r. to draw or pull out, pluck up or out, uproot, pull off, rob

Nahali khet field Hi. khet id.; Kurku kheti, khiti, khit.i, ket.i, kiti field; Hi. Mar. kheti_ agriculture; cf. Skt. ks.etra field

Nahali khogir saddle Kurku Mundari Gutob khogir. Hi. Mar. khogi_r

Nahali khuri leg; khuri_, khud.i_ foot; Mar. khuri_ forepart of the hoof; khu_r hoof, foot (of couch). The meaning foot is also found in Kashmiri, Dardic, West Pahari.

Nahali la_o to burn; Naiki lao to set fire, to put on (ear-ring), to shut (door); Santali Mundari lo 1035

to burn, scald, lolo to heat, hot, warm, Birhor lo to burn, lolo hot, warm, Ho lo to burn, lolo hot

Nahali lokhand.o iron; Kurku lo-khand.o (lo, loh, loha); cf. Mar. lokha_d. iron

kan.d. furnace (Santali)

ghat.a jar, ewer (MBh.R.Sus'r.) kod.a (Ka.) gargara (MBh.) gargari_ churn, butter-vat, a kind of water-jar (Skt.) karaka water-pot (MBh.R.) bhr.n:ga_ra water-pot, pitcher (Skt.) gha_ghari waterpot (S.); gad.d.uka small earthen pot (Skt.); gar.uwa_ (N.); khan.d.a a liquor pot (Pkt.); kalas'a pot, water-jar (RV.) gagra, ghagra, ghar.a (Santali); han.d.ha a large earthenware jar (Santali); ha~_d.a_ (H.); hat.hua (Santali); ha~_r.ia_ cooking pot (Kharia)

Nahali man:gar crocodile; Kurku alligator; Santali alligator, crocodiles palustris with nasalization owing to the initial nasal from Hi. magar

Nahali ma_v, ma_w, ma_ horse (dual ma_v-ihlt.el, plur. ma_v-t.a); Tel. ma_vu horse; Gondi mau, ma_v sambar; Note ma horse in Tai, Ahom, Kha_mti, Laos, Sha_n; cf. Lahu (Shan states) muan, maw horse

Nahali men:ge, me_n:ge tooth, jaw

Nahali mend.ha sheep; Kurku mend.ha id. From Hi. me~d.ha_ ram

Nahali mochor pestle; Mar. musal.; Skt. musala, mus.ala

Nahali mokhne elbow (knee?); Kurku Mundari Ho muka; Santali moka cubit; Mundari moka a measure; Ho mukui knee; Kurukh mu_ka, mu~_ka_, Kolami movka elbow, Malto muki cubit, 1036

muke knee, which are borrowings from Munda or, like the Munda words, loan-words from an older linguistic family.

Nahali mond.a heel

Nahali mo_t.h, mo_t.ho three. With deoicing from Tel. mu_d.u or Gondi mud.u?

Nahali mundi ring; Kurku mundi, from Mar. mudi_. An earlier borrowing (from Pkt. mudda_?) in Santali mundam, Mundari mudam, mundam, Ho mundam

Nahali na_lku, na_lo four; Kann. na_lku, na_luku or rather Tel. na_lugu (with devoicing of g)? cf. Naiki na_luk, na_lu.

Nahali nan:gar plough; Kurku nan:gar; cf. Mar. na~gar.

Nahali o_han mortar; perhaps an individual borrowing direct from Pkt. ohala? Skt. ulu_khala. Ku. has okhli, from Hi. u_khli_; Mar. ukhl.i_; cf. Santali ukhur. (Desi ukhul), Kharia ukhr.i

Nahali oro millet; Kurku oro grain, seed. From Mar. varo kind of grass, grain [Not related to Santali hor.o, Mu. hur.u, Kharia horu paddy, unhusked rice, Sora saro_ rice, Mon sro~, Khmer sruv.]

Nahali o_t.ho chin. Apparently a direct borrowing from Mar. ot.h (cf. Hi. o~t.h). Kurku ota, id. Suggests an Indo-Aryan origina *ot.ha_.

Nahali ot.t.i to burn (v.t.)

Nahali pago tail 1037

Nahali pakot.o bone. Apparently borrowed directly from Kolami pakkat.e rib; Tel. pakka, side from Indo-Aryan

Nahali pala leaf. Mar. pa_la_ leaves, tufts of leaves, foliage, Singhalese pala_ greens, vegetables, Panj. Pallhi_ green leaves of grass; Skt. pallava sprout, bud. But Santali palha leaf, get leaves, Mundari palhao sprouting of new leaves after the branch of a tree has been cut belong to an Austro-Asiatic word-family. Kurku has ara pala, a combination of ara (santali ar.ak vegetables) and pala (Santali palha). So Mar. pa_la_, pa_le_ leaves, foliage, ole~ pa_le~ green food (grass leaves for cattle), (bha_ji_)pa_la_ vegetables, are possibly borrowings from Kurku. Cf. also Hi. a_la_ pa_la_ leaves of different trees. Consequently the Nahali word is most likely a reborrowing from Mar., but it may represent the old Munda word which occurs in Kurku ara pala.

Nahali pend.ri shin of leg. Kurku pendri, pindri, pandari calf of the leg, leg below the knee. Cf. Hi. pin.d.ra_, pin.d.ri_, pe~d.uri_ the shin, calf of the leg

Nahali pet.e to sit pet.e-wa will sit. Perhaps a proto-Indian root, cf. Skt. pi_t.ha chair, seat, bench (which was an early date borrowed into Munda, cf. Kurku pitom), unless the primary meaning was platform. Cf. Skt. pin.d.ika bench for lying on, Oriya pin.d.a_, Santali pin.d.a a raised veranda, pin.d.ha ridge, raised border between rice-fields

Nahali poyye bird Digaru Mishmi mpia_, Taraon piya, Kanauri pya_

Nahali sadi hundred, Kurku sadi. Cf. Pers. Hi. sad hundred, sadi_ century, centenary

Nahali cokob leaf; Kurku sakom, sakom, Santali Mundari Ho Korwa sakam, id.

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Nahali sato seven; cf. Hi. sa_t

Nahali sona gold; Kurku sona, Hi. sona_

Nahali tand.ur rice, paddy; cf. Mar. ta~dul. The absence of a final word o suggests that it is still a foreign word in Nahali.

Nahali t.arsya kind of animal called in Mar. tar.as. Kurku tarsa hyena, Mar. taras, id. (Skt. taraks.u).

Nahali t.embriya tiger. Kurku temriya cheetah. Tel. tempari a brave, bold, daring man; Tamil tempu physical strength

Nahali t.hekri forehead. Kurku tikri, id. Mar. t.ika_, t.ikla_, t.ikli_ mark on the forehead, Santali t.ika, t.ikla, t.ikli, Hi. t.ikli_

Nahali ult.a to fall; Kurku ult.a upside down, to overtuen; cf. Hi. ulat.na_ to be topsy-turvy, capsize

Nahali unt.u camel; Kurku u_t, u_t.o, u_nt.o; Kherwari u~_t.; Hi. u~_t.

(Source: FBJ Kuiper, 1962, Nahali, a comparative study, Amsterdam, NV Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij; Sudhibhushan Bhattacharya, 1957, Field-notes on Nahali, Ind. Ling. 17, pp. 245-258).

Southern Bushman kara horns (dual) Southern Bushman kara, kadi, kariba, kai scorpion

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Note: This post updates http://www.docstoc.com/docs/4126829/Proto-vedic-continuity-ofBharatiya-(Indian)-languages which had clipped. kalyan March 18, 2012.

See: http://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/26495/SLS1975v52_hock.pdf?sequence=2 Substratum influence on (Rigvedic) Sanskrit by HH Hock (1975)

Substratum Influence on Rigvedic Sanskrit HH Hock (1975)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/03/indus-script-designed-with-care-say.html Indus script designed with care, say TIFR researchers Indus script designed with care, say TIFR researchers See Full text of the paper at: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/02/indus-scriptcomputational-linguistics.html Indus script designed with care, say TIFR researchers Mihika Basu Posted online: Sun Mar 18 2012, 03:23 hrs While the Indus script is yet to be deciphered, a paper by researchers at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, says that a lot of time and effort went into the designing of the script. According to the authors of the study, it was an intellectual exercise of great significance. The researchers say that the script was uniform across all sites of the civilisationwhich included Mohenjodaro, Harappa, Lothal, Kalibangan, Chanhudaro, other Harappan sites and West Asiaindicating detailed planning. Writing is an important window to the intellectual creativity of a civilisation. Our analysis reveals that people who designed the Indus script were intellectually creative and considerable time and effort went into designing it. The manner in which the signs were modified shows that it was acceptable across all the sites of the civilisation and was not intended for a small group of people, said Nisha Yadav from TIFR, the principal author of the study. 1040

The Indus script is found on objects such as seals, copper tablets, ivory sticks, bronze implements and pottery from almost all sites of the civilisation. The Indus civilisation was spread over an area of about a million square kilometres and yet, the sign list over the entire civilisation seems to be the same indicating that the signs, their meaning and their usage were agreed upon by people with large physical separation. A lot of thought, planning and utility issues must have been taken into consideration while designing these signs, says the TIFR paper, published in the Korean journal, Scripta. The paper also indicates that the script may have a connection with scripts from India or even China. The authors say that the signs of the Indus script seem to incorporate techniques in their design that were used in several ancient writing systems to make optimum use of a limited number of signs. The scientists undertook a comprehensive analysis of the design of 417 Indus signs. They identified 154 basic signs (which cannot be decomposed further into simpler signs) and 263 composite signs (which are made up of two or more signs and can be further simplified). Out of the 263 signs that have been identified as composite signs, 149 signs are of compound type, that is, they are made up of two or more of the 154 basic signs. Also, 114 signs have been modified. Our results suggest that composite signs were not shorthand and that the signs have been designed with care. They were not meant for brevity or for saving writing space but seem to have some other function. They generated a new meaning altogether. Combining signs with other signs or modifiers seems to have been a practice known to all sites, said Yadav. The paper says that the designers of the Indus signs also placed special emphasis on symmetry with over 60 per cent of the signs showing some form of symmetry. There seems to be an underlying effort to retain the overall aesthetic value of Indus signs. This arrangement worked satisfactorily for about 700 years. Hence the understanding of Indus signs and their meaning must have been robust and yet versatile, concludes the paper. http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/925076/

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http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/03/decrypting-sangar-fortified-settlement.html Decrypting sangar, fortified settlement on Indus script corpora (Kalyanaraman, March 2012) Decrypting sangar, fortified settlement on Indus script corpora (Kalyanaraman, March 2012)

Sangar is a word which entered the English language dictionaries through its use by British
Army in the 18th century. The etymology of this word will be traced in Pushto and other languages of Indiansprachbund (Indian language union or linguistic area). Lahnda: sgah m. line of entrenchments, stone walls for defense .(CDIAL 12845) ( sang) m, Hindi spelling: stone, weight; association, union(Persian. Hindi) It is possible that the one-horned heifer is a ligatured hieroglyph, often shown in front of the standard device: horn + heifer: saga horn+ ko heifer; rebus: stone artisans workshop. This hieroglyph combination has over 1300 occurrences in Indus script corpora. When shown on Indus script corpora, the message is read rebus as: sgah ko artisanworkshop courtyards within stone fortification, i.e. a fortified settlement of lapidaries guild. This decrypted reading of the writing system matches the archaeo-architectural features of many sites of the civilization. More athttp://tinyurl.com/7954ohg Indian Hieroglyphs. Sangars - During the Afghan wars of the 'Great Game' tribesmen would hide in the crevices of the rocky mountainsides to observe and to shoot at the British soldiers. These would shoot back, so the positions would be fortified with slabs of rock, embrasures, roofs, camouflage. The Afghan word for these tiny little forts is Sangar. Things have not changed much, and a Sangar is an Observation-Post (OP) which is protected against incoming ordnance and the weather, and from which weapons as well as binoculars could be used. A Sangar is a fortified OP. http://www.defence-structures.com/glossary.htm Sangar referred to a stone breastwork, used by the British army on the northwest frontier of India where it was generally impossible to dig protective trenches.

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A British sangar overlooking the Kajaki dam. Helmand Province, Afghanistan, April 2007.http://cryptome.org/eyeball/kajaki-dam/pict45.jpg

Sangar connotes a stone fortification or breastwork of stone by defending guards of an army.

This monograph demonstrates the use of semantics of the word sangar depicted, rebus, as an Indian hieroglyph (the so-called standard device or cult object the most frequently deployed hieroglyph on Indus script corpora; its use also continues on punch-marked coins during historical periods attesting its use in mints from Gandhara to Anuradhapura and also on ancient necklace-pendants of Sanchi sculptures).

An Indian hieroglyph composition designates a fortified settlement with mineral/metal/smithy trade enclosures (courtyards). Two tablets (m0490, m0491) show a procession of images carried over shoulders of processionists. The images are: rice-plant, scarf, one-horned heifer, standard device (lathe/portable furnace). What do these hieroglyphs in procession denote? They denote in rebus readings a fortified settlement with mineral/metal/turners smithy trade enclosures (courtyards).

The language is meluhha (mleccha).

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The lexemes of Indian linguistic area (sprachbund) are: eraka kolami (copper smithy); dhatu (casting metal), ko (artisans workshop); sangar bera (stone-fortified settlement with enclosures courtyards -- for trade).

Read on...http://www.docstoc.com/docs/116114741/sangar Decrypting sangar, fortified settlement on Indus script corpora (Kalyanaraman, March 2012)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/03/trefoil-as-indian-hieroglyph.html Trefoil as an Indian hieroglyph: association with veneration of ancestors, sacredness (Kalyanaraman, March 10, 2012) Trefoil as an Indian hieroglyph: association with veneration of ancestors, sacredness (Kalyanaraman, March 10, 2012) Thanks to Carlos Aramayo for the insights on links with Egyptian hieroglyphs. For a detailed discussion of Indian hieroglyphs from circa 3500 BCE, see: http://tinyurl.com/7rbcer2 Abstract Sacredness connoted by the temple-priest explains the occurrence of the trefoil glyph on the two bases discovered in Mohenjo-daro, for holding ivalinga. Veneration of pitr-s (ancestors) is an ancient Indian tradition. Use of trefoil glyph is seen in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in Uruk and in Indus artifacts. Heifer with trefoil inlays, Uruk (W.16017) c. 3000 BCE; shell mass with inlays of lapis lazuli, 5.3 cm long. Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin; cf. Parpola, 1994, p. 213. Trefoil decorated bull; traces of red pigment remain inside the trefoils. Steatite statue fragment. Mohenjo-daro (Sd 767). After Ardeleanu-Jansen, 1989: 196, fig. 1; cf. Parpola, 1994, p. 213. Trefoils painted on steatite beads. Harappa (After Vats. Pl. CXXXIII, Fig. 2) 4)Trefoils Painted On Steatite Beads, Harappa.

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5) Trefoil on the shawl of the priest. Mohenjodaro. The discovery of the King Priest acclaimed by Sir John Marshall as the finest piece of statuary that has been found at Moenjodaro.draped in an elaborate shawl with corded or rolled over edge, worn over the left shoulder and under the right arm. This shawl is decorated all over with a design of trefoils in relief interspersed occasionally with small circles, the interiors of which are filled with a red pigment . Gold fillet with standard device hieroglyph. Glyph hole: pottar, pottal, n. < id. [Ka.poare, Ma. pottu, Tu.potre.] trika, a group of three (Skt.) The occurrence of a three-fold depiction on a trefoil may thus be a phonetic determinant, a suffix to pot as in potka. Rebus reading of the hieroglyph: potti temple-priest (Ma.) potR `" Purifier "'N. of one of the 16 officiating priests at a sacrifice (the assistant of the Brahman), (Vedic) ... Conclusion

The trefoil is a hieroglyph read rebus. It connotes potr(i). Orthographically, it consists of pot hole + tr(i) three and hence depicted as three circles with holes combined into a shape of trefoil. pot young animal; hence, depiction of trefoil on the body of a young calf. pottia wearing cloth; hence, depiction of trefoil on the shawl shown over the shoulder and breast of the priest statuette. In a metallurgical context, pot jewellers polishing stone. Hence, the depiction of dotted circles on many Indus writing corpora objects, for example, surrounding a fire-altar used for melting metals or heating crucibles. Rebus reading is: potri priest; poTri worship, venerate. Language is Meluhha (Mleccha) an integral component of Indian sprachbund (linguistic area or language union). The trefoil is decoded and read as: potr(i). 1045

S. Kalyanaraman, Ph.D., Sarasvati Research Center, Kalyan97@gmail.com March 10, 2012 (Paper presented atBuffalo TAG 2012 is the fifth meeting of TAG-USA, May 18-19, 2012 Open, General Sessionhttp://www.cas.buffalo.edu/tag2012/program.shtml) Read on...http://www.docstoc.com/docs/115863006/Trefoil-as-an-Indian-hieroglyph-associationwith-veneration-of-ancestors-sacredness-(March-10-2012) http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/03/epigraphic-and-non-prejudiced.html Epigraphic and non-prejudiced approaches to Indus writing Epigraphic and non-prejudiced approaches to Indus writing March 9, 2012 As I read through Bryan K. Wells, 2011, Epigraphic approaches to Indus writing, Oxford and Oakville, Oxbow Books, some disturbing points emerge, related to academic prejudices in adjudicating a students contributions. In the Foreword to the book, C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, makes some incisive observations and comments on how Bryans doctoral dissertation was dealt with in the academic setting of Harvard University: Bryan Wellscame to Harvard as a graduate student intent on continuing his study of the Indus Civilization and its scriptHe was, and remains, committed to the idea that the Indus script represents writing and its decipherment will lead to an understanding of its texts and language. He did not think that at Harvard his dedication to this goal would meet with resistance. It did. This volume is a substantially revised edition of his doctoral dissertation. Bryans dissertation committee consisted of myself as Chair and Dr. Richard Meadow and Professor Michael Witzel. A near final drft of his dissertation was rejected by Meadow and Witzel. Bryan was required to return from Germany to confront and ostensibly to correct and address its shortcomings. The basic problem was tht Profesor Witzel, influenced by Steve Farmer, had concluded that the Indus script was neither writing nor representative of language. (See The Collapse of the Indus Script Thesis: The Myth of Literate Harappan Civilization by Steve Farmer, Richard Sproat and Michael Witzel, 2004, http://www.safarmer.com/downloads. Steve Farmer believes the Indus signs to be magical symbols.) In light of Professor Witzels strong commitment to the non-writing nature of the Indus script Bryans effort was deemed 1046

spurious and unacceptable. Richard Meadow, less strident in his view as to the nature of the Indus script, nevertheless advised Bryan to tone down his view that the Indus represented writing. Approximately six weeks were spent as Professor Witzel balked at any mention of the Indus being a script and having a logo-syllabic nature. He insisted that Bryan sub statute the word marks or symbols for script. He was initially in opposition to the entire thesis. A Professors opinion, which, in this case is a minority view within the profession, should never be used to impose or prevent an alternative hypothesis from being addressed by a Ph.D. candidate. It was not as if Bryan was addressing an untenable, absurd hypothesis. He was to spend weeks of uncertainty, anxiety, and, in a state of near depression he puzzled over what to do. The consternation endured and expenses incurred effects his entire family. (pp. xiii-xv) Lamberg-Karlovsky starts with a quote from Stephen Runciman: In the battle between truth and prejudice, waged in the field of history books, it must be confessed that the latter usually wins. Referring to this quote, Lamberg-Karlovsky adds: With the passing of time and considerable discussion, and contrary to the quote from Stephen Runciman, the quest for truth was to prevail over prejudice. Perhaps, in the context of the confrontation between a contingent of a dissertation committee and a doctoral candidate one may recall the more positive optimism voiced by John Milton in Areopagitica (1644): Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is knowledge in the making. After several meetings of the dissertation committee, opinions gave way to reason. I can well understand the agony Bryan Wells should have gone through in his career in Harvard University as a doctoral candidate contending with prejudice of the arbiters of his thesis. Anyway, congratulations to Bryan for the book he has just brought out. It is brilliantly presented with a detailed exposition of the use of 958 signs in the corpora of Indus inscriptions. These 958 signs constituting his sign list are presented in Figure 3.9 and in an Appendix titled 'Detail description of sign record'. He makes no claim of decipherment but documents that the number of singletons in the Mesopotamian Proto-Cuneiform are almost identical to those of the Indus script, thus refuting the Witzel-Farmer duos prejudiced opinion.

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The work of Bryan is a significant contribution to resolving the code of the Indus script as a writing system. Indus script is a phrase which has come to stay in the deliberations related to the civilization and there is no reason why Bryan should replace the word script with marks or symbols. Chapter 6. Indus LanguagePDr (Proto-Dravidian) seems a poor fit to the morphology of Indus wordsIt is impossible to identify the Indus language with the data at hand, but the list can be narrowed to PM or XThe major conclusion of this chapter is that of the candidate languages considered, only Proto-Munda, Para-Munda and X cannot be eliminated from consideration. Proto-Munda and Para-Munda because the patterns of word construction are similar to those of the Indus script, and X because nothing is known about it other than words that arrive in the modern Indo-Aryan languages in addition to a few words in the Rg Veda. The elimination of the PDr from consideration is a major-step. Future research can then be focused on the reconstruction of Proto-Munda and Para-Munda and its comparison to the Indus texts and on the analysis of the words from Para-Munda and Language X. (pp.60-61) I have used the phrase Indian Hieroglyphs to declare Indus Script as perhaps the earliest writing system invented to complement the metallurgical inventions of the bronze-age. Many words read rebus to denote the hieroglyphs are words attested in Munda language: e.g., ranku liquid measure; ranku antelope. Rebus: ranku 'tin'. There is another fact to which I shall allude before quitting this subject of academic prejudices or opinioated academics (I should be careful to avoid any prejudice which can be caused by my own work on decrypting the code of the writing system which may not agree with Bryan's observations). Let me cite from Alex Burnes: Arrian mentions a nation on the Indus, called "Sangada or Saranga," and d'Anville has supposed the country of the Sangada to be the same as the modern "Sangada, or country of the Sangarians, whose modern capital, according to Rennell, is Noanagar, on the south coast of the gulf of Cutch, and who, further coinciding with d'Anville, conceives that the "Sangarians must have first removed from the western to the eastern side of the Indus, and afterwards must have also crossed the gulf of Cutch." In the province of Cutch, and about thirty, miles eastward of the Pharrdn river 1048

there is a town on the sea-coast, called Jacow, inhabited chiefly by a race of people, called Sungars, who have a well-founded tradition that they came from the west, and in Alexander's time they were perhaps westward of the Indus, and the same people whom Nearchus mentions to have encountered the Macedonian hero on his road to Gedrosia, between the rivers Indus and Arabias. (Memoir on the Eastern Branch of the River Indus, Giving an Account of the Alterations Produced on It by an Earthquake, Also a Theory of the Formation of the Runn, and Some Conjectures on the Route of Alexander the Great; Drawn up in the Years 1827-1828, Lieutenant AlexBurnes, Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of

Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 3, No. 3 (1834),p.583)

koli, baria, sangada (Indian Hieroglyphs and rebus readings: kol, tiger; badhi, rhinoceros; sangada, lathe; rebus readings: smith, carpenter, furnace/lathe) The Kolis of Gujarat have two sub-divisions, the Patanwadias and Talpadias. Among the Talpadias, there are several sub-divisions, the main ones being the Baria, Khant, Pateliya, Kotwal and Pagi. As Barias have the high status, the entire Talpadia Koli community have adopted the name Baria. The Baria are a Hindu found in the state of Gujarat in India. They are also known as Baria Patel. They are a sub-group within the Koli community, although they now claim a Rajput origin. They get their name from the town of Devgadh Baria, which was a stronghold of the tribe. The community now deny their Koli origin, and claim to be Rajputs. They speak Gujarati. The Baria consist of a number of clans, the main ones being the Baria proper, the Patel, Pagi, Damor, Khant, Parmar, Pandor, Sangada, Chauhan and Maliwad. ( People of India Gujarat Volume XXII Part One edited by R.B Lal, S.V Padmanabham & A Mohideen page 128 to 132 Popular Prakashan). On demographics, the Encyclopdia Britannica states: "In the early 20st century the Kolis constituted about 20 percent of the population of Gujarat, nearly 10 percent of the population of Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, and from 2 to 5 percent of the populations of Bengal and Orissa and Maharashtra." Adding a comment on the Indus language, my opinion (prejudice?) can be reiterated to promote further deliberations. 1049

The lexemes used for rebus readings of the hieroglyphs are attested in the languages of the Indian linguistic area (sprachbund). These glosses can be gleaned from the multi-lingual lexicon of over 25 languages constructed with over 8000 semantic clusters as Indian Lexicon.

PS: Bryan Wells' earlier graduate thesis may be read here. (Dept. of Archaeology, Calgary, Alberta, 1998) https://dspace.ucalgary.ca/bitstream/1880/25900/1/31309Wells.pdf

See also: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/indo-euro-americo-asian_list/message/23 Steve Farmer versus Bryan Wells http://www.timesnow.tv/Spl-Will-the-script-be-revealed-soon/videoshow/4324250.cms Spl: Will the script be revealed soon? http://indusresearch.wikidot.com/script Singletons http://www.user.tuberlin.de/fuls/Homepage/indus/help_onlinedatabase.pdf Documentation of the Online Indus Writing Database http://www.thehindu.com/arts/history-and-culture/article44906.ece Tracking a script http://varnam.nationalinterest.in/2009/12/the-harappan-volumetric-system/ The Harappan volumetric system

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/02/indian-hieroglyphs-meluhha-and-archaeo.html Indian hieroglyphs, meluhha and archaeo-metallurgy Indian hieroglyphs, meluhha and archaeo-metallurgy Mirror: https://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/indian-hieroglyphs-meluhha-and-archaeometallurgy

The paper analyses the stages in the evolution of early writing systems which began with the evolution of counting in the ancient Near East. Providing an example from the Indian Hieroglyphs used in Indus Script as a writing system, a stage anterior to the stage of syllabic representation of sounds of a language, is identified. Unique geometric shapes required for tokens to categorize objects became too large to handle to abstract hundreds of categories of
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goods and metallurgical processes during the production of bronze-age goods. In such a situation, it became necessary to use glyphs which could distinctly identify, orthographically, specific descriptions of or cataloging of ores, alloys, and metallurgical processes. About 3500 BCE, Indus script as a writing system was developed to use hieroglyphs to represent the spoken words identifying each of the goods and processes. A rebus method of representing similar sounding words of the lingua franca of the artisans was used in Indus script. This method is recognized and consistently applied for thelingua franca of the Indian sprachbund. That the ancient languages of India, constituted asprachbund (or language union) is now recognized by many linguists. The sprachbund area is proximate to the area where most of the Indus script inscriptions were discovered, as documented in the corpora. That hundreds of Indian hieroglyphs continued to be used in metallurgy is evidenced by their use on early punch-marked coins. This explains the combined use of syllabic scripts such as Brahmi and Kharoshti together with the hieroglyphs on Rampurva copper bolt, and Sohgaura copper plate from about 6th century BCE.Indian hieroglyphs constitute a writing system for meluhha language and are rebus representations of archaeo-metallurgy lexemes. Keywords: Token, counting, writing,archaeo-metallurgy,meluhha,literacy
Invention of bronze-age technologies necessitated the invention and development of a writing system called Indus Script which is evidenced in corpora of about 6000 inscriptions.[1] Around 7500 BCE[2], tokens appeared and represented perhaps the early deployment of a writing system to count objects. Many geometric shapes were used for the tokens.[3] Tracing the evolution of a writing system[4], Schmandt-Besserat evalutes the next stage of keeping tokens in envelopes with markings abstracting the tokens inside and calls these abstract numbers are the culmination of the process[5] This evaluation is the starting point for identifying another stage before the culmination represented by the use of syllabic representation in glyphs of sounds of a language. That penultimate stage, before syllabic writing evolved, was the use of hieroglyphs represented on hundreds of Indian hieroglyphs.[6] The arrival of the bronze age was maked by the invention of alloying copper with arsenic, zinc or tin to produce arsenic-alloys, and other alloys such as brass, bronze, pewter. These archaeometallurgial inventions enabled the production of goods surplus to the requirements of the 1051

artisan guilds. These inventions also created the imperative of and necessity for a writing system which could represent about over 500 specific categories of activities related to the artisanal repertoire of a smith. Such a large number of categories could not be handled by the limited number of geometric shapes used in the token system of accounting and documenting goods, standard measures of grains, liquids and surface areas.[7]

The existence of Indian sprachbund is evidenced by the concordant lexemes used for bronzeage repertoire of bronze-age artisans. These lexemes are compiled in an Indian Lexicon.[8] This is a resource base for further studies in the formation and evolution of most of the Indian languages. Identifiable substrata glosses include over 4000 etyma of Dravidian Etymological Dictionary and over 1000 words of Munda with concordant semantic clusters of Indo-Aryan. That the substrata glosses cover three major language families Dravidian, Munda and IndoAryan -- is a surprising discovery. There are over 1240 semantic clusters included in the Indian

Lexicon from over 25 languages which makes the work very large, including cognate entries of
CDIAL (Indo-Aryan etyma), together with thousands of lexemes of Santali, Mundarica and other languages of the Austro-Asiatic linguistic group, and, maybe, Language X. . Most of the lexical archive relate to the bronze-age cultural context and possible entries are relatable rebus to Indian hieroglyphs. Many are found to be attested as substratum lexemes only in a few languages such as Nahali, Kashmiri, Kannada or Telugu or lexical entries of Hemacandras de

nmaml (Prkt); thus, many present-day Indian languages are rendered as dialects of an
Indus language or proto-Indic lingua franca or gloss. The identification of a particular Indian 1052

language as the Indus language has presented some problems because of the received wisdom about grouping of language families in Indo-European linguistic analyses. Some claims of decipherment have assumed the language to be Tamil, of Dravidian language family; some have assumed the language to be Sanskrit, of Indo-Aryan language family. A resolution to these problems comes from a surprising source: Manu. Mleccha, Indus language of Indian linguistic area (sprachbund). Indian linguistic area map, including mleccha and vedic (After F. Southworth, 2005; VEDIC AND MLECCHA added.) A language family, mleccha (?language X), is attested in the ancient literature of India. This is the lingua franca, the spoken version of the language of the civilization of about 5000 years ago, distinct from the grammatically correct version called Sanskrit represented in the vedic texts and other ancient literature. Ancient texts of India are replete with insights into formation and evolution of languages. Some examples are: Bharatas Natya Shastra, Patanjalis Mahabhashya, Hemacandras Denmaml, Nighanus, Paninis Adhyayi, Tolkappiyam Tamil grammar. The evidence which comes from Manu, dated to ca. 500 BCE. Manu (10.45) underscores the linguistic area: rya vcas mleccha vcas te sarve dasyuvah smth [trans. both rya speakers and mleccha speakers (that is, both speakers of literary dialect and colloquial or vernacular dialect) are all remembered as dasyu]. Dasyu is a general reference to people. Dasyu is cognate with dasa, which in Khotanese language means man. It is also cognate with daha, a word which occurs in Persepolis inscription of Xerxes, a possible reference to people of Dahistan, a region east of Caspian sea. Strabo wrote :"Most of the scythians, beginning from the Caspian sea, are called Dahae Scythae, and those situated more towards the east Massagetae and Sacae." (Strabo, 11.8.1). Close to Caspian Sea is the site of Altyn-tepe which was an interaction area with Meluhha and where three Indus seals with inscriptions were found, including a silver seal showing a composite animal which can be called a signature glyph of Indus writing.. The identification of mleccha as the language of the Indus script writing system is consistent with the following theses which postulate an Indian linguistic area, that is an area of ancient times when various language-speakers interacted and absorbed language features from one another and made them their own: Emeneau, 1956; Kuiper, 1948; Masica, 1971; Przyludski, 1929; Southworth, 2005. Semantic clusters in Indian Lexicon (1242 English words and Botanical species Latin) 1053

Economic Court: Flora and Products from Flora Birds Insects Fauna Animate phenomena: birth, body, sensory perceptions and actions Visual phenomen, forms and shapes Numeration and Mensuration Economic Court: Natural phenomena, Earth formations, Products of earth (excluding flora clustered in a distinct category) Building, infrastructure Work, skills, products of labour and workers (fire-worker, potter/ smith/ lapidary, weaver, farmer, soldier) Weapons and tools Language fields Kinship Social formations

Economic Court: Flora and Products from Flora butter curdle flesh flour food grain honey liquor mahua molasses oil oilcake rice spice sugar supper tobacco

bark cloth cotton drug flax fragrance fringe garland harvest granary glue hemp indigo itch kunda lac log med

apple asparagus balsam bamboo banana barley basil basket betel bud camphor cardamom cashew cele

gooseberry gourd hibiscus jackfruit jalap jujube leadwort leaf linseed lotus mango mushroom mustard palm

abies abrus acacia acalypha acampe acanthus achyranthes aconitum acorus adenanthera aegle aeschynomen

hriscus antiarisareca aristolochia arka artemisia artocarpus arum atlantia averrhoea azima balanites barle 1054

allia cardiospermum careya carissa carthamus carum caryota cassia cassytha cedrela cedrus celastrus ce

cordia coriandrum costum costus cratraeva crocus crotalaria croton cucumis curculigo curcuma cyperus dalb a lagerstroemia laurus lepidum leucas ligusticum linum lobellia lodhra luffa luvunga macaranga mangifera temon polygala polygonum premna prunus psidium pterocarpus pterospermum pouzolzia prosopis

erula ficus frankincense flacourtia garcinia galangal gamboge gardenia gaultheria gendarussa gentiana glo

moringa morus mucuna myrica myristica myrobalan myrtus nardostachys nauclea nelumbium neriumnyc

quercus randia raphanus rauwofia rhizophora ricinus rottleria rubia rumex saccharum sal salicorniasalva

spermum strobilanthes strychnos swertia symplocos syzygium tabernaemontana tamarindus tectona tephro Birds

bird bluejay cock crane crow cuckoo dove duck eagle feather gizzard crest hawk heron kingfisher myna nest bird Insects bat beehive caterpillar chameleon cockroach crab frog insect lizard mosquito scorpion snake spider Fauna animal antelope, goat, deer, markhor, deer octopus pony porpoise rat rhinoceros shoalsquirrel tail tiger tortoise yak yak-tail Animate phenomena: birth, body, sensory perceptions and actions

ram alligator bear buffalo bull camel dog elephant fish hare herd horn horse ivory lair lion lowing mongoose m

abortion age amazed anger anus arrive ask attack back bald bathe behind beard beat beg being belly bile birt

eye faeces fall fat finger fist flee fly frolic front funeral genus give gore groan hair hand hatch head heel he

erve noise nose numb old penis perish phlegm plague pour pregnant pudendumpull pus push put raise ra

ammer standing stay stirring stop strength suck surprise swallow sweep swell swing syllable take tame tas Visual phenomena, forms and shapes

ball beauty bend bit black braid brown bubble chequered circle colour crack curve dense dot endless entangled Numeration and Mensuration account agreement audit average balance 1055

(scales) banker big broad center cheap coin collect collectioncontain counting deficient divide eight finger fiv Economic Court: Natural phenomena, Earth formations, Products of earth (excluding flora clustered in a distinct category) barren basin borax brass bright bronze burst clay cloud cold collyriumcrystal darkness dawn desert dew dry extinguish fire frost gem glittergold (including soma) goods earth hail heat hill island lapislazuli lightningmoon mud night north ocean ore pearl planet pleiades rain rainbow river ruby sand salt sediment shell silk silver sky smoke soap solstice south star stone sun tank tin thunder water wave wet wind zodiac Building, infrastructure

arch brick bridge building bund cave chisel chop churn corner door drain fence fencing ford fort house kitche (path, road) Work, skills, products of labour and workers (fire-worker, potter/ smith/ lapidary, weaver, farmer, soldier) [The lexemes related to weapons and tools are so vivid and distinctive that the entire group has been clustered together to provide an overview of the skills developed which are reflected in semantic expansions related to weapon types and to wielding them. Thus, the clusters in the following list (e.g. awl, axe, bow, goad, razor, saw, sickle) are only to be treated as 'tool' samplers of a Metals Age, emerging out of a lithic age.]

Weapons and Tools

awl axe bow goad razor saw sickle assembly amulet army axle badge bead bed bellows blanket boat bolt bor fan fastenfatigue fear fell ferry filter fire flag flute forge fry furnace furrow glove gong groove

guard gu

press ornament pannier patrol perforate pin plait plough pole pot potsherd potter pressed produce professio

carrying) snare soldier spike spinner (weaver) spy stake stampsteam stirrup stool stopper store tablet trap t Language fields grammar (Etymology, linguistics, grammar, particles, arab tamil telugu become near next now only other that there thus time until 1056

prepositions, adverbs) Kinship

augment consonant name no prefix riddle sign signature yes

ancestor bride brother companion family father friend gentleman girl lead love marriage mistress mother self Social formations

abuse ambush auction authenticbard bawd brahma bravo buy chief class commend confidence conflict conf

d loan malice manner market meditate memorial mercy miser mystic oppose painting penalty place play p

ax teacher temple terror theft tomb town trade tribe unruly useless value violence virtuous vow wager wick Other semantic clusters (including cognisance and lexemes which may indicate semantic expansion and may span many other semantic clusters; e.g. 'mix' cluster may relate to animate and inanimate clusters) adhere begin blocked bold bundle clean clever close coax

commence dangle deceit defeat deliberatedesire detached dip dirty disgust dull enclose endure false for

r rise rot rough rub ruin section shade shakesimilar slow strip thin think trace tranquil trouble truth u

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Pinnows map of Austro-AsiaticLanguage speakers correlates with bronze age sites.http://www.ling.hawaii.edu/faculty/stampe/aa.html See http://kalyan97.googlepages.com/mleccha1.pdf The areal map of Austric (AustroAsiatic languages) showing regions marked by Pinnow correlates with the bronze age settlements in Bharatam or what came to be known during the British colonial regime as Greater India. The bronze age sites extend from Mehrgarh-Harappa (Meluhha) on the west to Kayatha-Navdatoli (Nahali) close to River Narmada to Koldihwa- Khairdih-Chirand on Ganga river basin to Mahisadal Pandu Rajar Dhibi in Jharia mines close to Mundari area and into the east extending into Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Nicobar islands. A settlement of Inamgaon is shown on the banks of River Godavari. Bronze Age sites of eastern India and neighbouring areas: 1. Koldihwa; 2.Khairdih; 3. Chirand; 4. Mahisadal; 5. Pandu Rajar Dhibi; 6.Mehrgarh; 7. Harappa;8. Mohenjo-daro; 9.Ahar; 10. Kayatha; 11.Navdatoli; 12.Inamgaon; 13. Non PaWai; 14. Nong Nor;15. Ban Na Di andBan Chiang; 16. NonNok Tha; 17. Thanh Den; 18. Shizhaishan; 19. Ban Don Ta Phet [After Fig. 8.1 in: Charles Higham, 1996, The Bronze Age of Southeast Asia, Cambridge University Press]. Evidence related to proto-Indian or proto-Indic or Indus language A proto-Indic language is attested in ancient Indian texts. For example, Manusmti refers to two languages, both of dasyu (daha): rya vcas, mleccha vcas. mukhabh rupajjnm y loke

jtayo bahih mlecchavcascryav cas te sarve dasyuvah smth Trans. All those people in
this world who are excluded from those born from the mouth, the arms, the thighs and the feet (of Brahma) are called Dasyus, whether they speak the language of the mleccha-s or that of the rya-s. (Manu 10.45)] This distinction between lingua franca and literary version of the

1058

language, is elaborated by Patajali as a reference to 1) grammatically correct literary language and 2) ungrammatical, colloquial speech (de). Ancient text of Panini also refers to two languages in ik: Sanskrit and Prkt. Prof Avinash Sathayeprovides a textual reference on the earliest occurrence of the word, Sanskrit :

triaicatuh airv varh ambhumate math | prkite samskte cpi svayam prokt svayambhuv || (pinis ik)
Trans. There are considered to be 63 or 64 var-s in the school (mata) of shambhu. In Prakrit and Sanskrit by swayambhu (manu, Brahma), himself, these var-s were stated. This demonstrates that pini knew both samskta and prkita as established languages. (Personal communication, 27 June 2010 with Prof. Shrinivas Tilak.) Chapter 17 of Bharatamunis Nyastra is a beautiful discourse about Sanskrit and Prakrit and the usage of lingua franca by actors/narrators in dramatic performances. Besides, Raja Shekhara, Kalidasa, Shudraka have also used the word Sanskrit for the literary language. (Personal communication from Prof. TP Verma, 7 May 2010). Nyastra XVII.29-30: dvividh

jtibhca prayoge samudht mlecchaabdopacr ca bhratam varam arit The

jtibh (common language), prescribed for use (on the stage) has various forms. It contains words of mleccha origin and is spoken in Bhratavara only Vtstyyana refers to mlecchita vikalpa (cipher writing of mleccha) Vtstyyanas Kamasutra lists (out of 64 arts) three arts related to language:

dea bh jnam (knowledge of dialects) mlecchita vikalpa (cryptography used by mleccha) [cf. mleccha-mukha copper (Skt.); the suffix
mukha is a reflex of m h ingot (Mu.)

akara muika kathanam (messaging through wrist-finger gestures)

Thus, semantically, mlecchita vikalpa as a writing system relates to cryptography (perhaps, hieroglyphic writing) and to the work of artisans (smiths). I suggest that this is a reference to Indian hieroglyphs. It is not a mere coincidence that early writing attested during historical periods was on metal punch-marked coins, copper plates, two-feet long copper bolt used on an Aokan pillar at Rampurva, Sohoura copper plate, two pure tingots found in a shipwreck in Haifa, and even on 1059

the Delhi iron pillar clearly pointing to the smiths as those artisans who had the competence to use a writing system. In reference to Rampurva copper-bolt: Here then these signs occur upon an object which must have been made by craftsmen working for Asoka or one of his predessors. (F.R. Allchin, 1959, Upon the contextual significance of certain groups of ancient signs, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.) The Indus script inscriptions using hieroglyphs on two pure tin-ingots found in Haifa were reviewed. (Kalyanaraman, S., 2010, The Bronze Age Writing System of Sarasvati Hieroglyphics as Evidenced by Two Rosetta Stones - Decoding Indus script as repertoire of the mints/smithy/mine-workers of Meluhha. Journal of Indo-Judaic Studies. Number 11. pp. 4774).

Mahbhrata also attests to mleccha used in a conversation with Vidura. atapatha Brhmaa refers to mleccha as language (with pronunciation variants) and also provides an
example of such mleccha pronunciation by asuras. A Pali text, Uttardhyayana Stra 10.16 notes: ladhdhaa vimnusattaamriattam purvi dullaham bahave dasy milakkhuy; trans. though one be born as a man, it is rare chance to be an rya, for many are the dasyu and milakkhu. Milakkhu and dasyu constitute the majority, they are the many. Dasyu are milakkhu (mleccha speakers). Dasyu are also rya vcas (Manu 10.45), that is, speakers of Sanskrit. Both rya vcas and mleccha vcas are dasyu [cognate dahyu, daha, daha(Khotanese)], people, in general. 1 A fisherman; - $ Rm.7.46.32; Ms.8.48,49;1.34. a fisherman (Apte. Lexicon) Such people are referred to in Rgveda by Vivmitra as Bhratam janam. Mahbhrata alludes to thousands of mlecchas, a numerical superiority equaled by their valour and courage in battle which enhances the invincibility of Pandava (MBh. 7.69.30; 95.36). Excerpt from Encyclopaedia Iranica article on cognate dahyu country (often with reference to the people inhabiting it): DAHYU (OIr. dahyu-), attested in Avestan daxiiu-, dahu- country (often with reference to the people inhabiting it; cf. AirWb., cot. 706; Hoffmann, pp. 599-600 n. 14; idem and Narten, pp. 54-55) and in Old Persian dahyu- country, province (pl. nations; Gershevitch, p. 160). The term is likely to be connected with Old Indian dsyu enemy (of the Aryans), which acquired the meaning of demon, enemy of the gods (Mayrhofer, Dictionary II, pp. 28-29). Because of the Indo-Iranian parallel, the word may be traced back to the root das-, from which a term denoting a large collectivity of men and women could have been derived. Such traces can be found in Iranian languages: for instance, in the ethnonym Dahae (q.v., i) men (cf. Av. ethnic name [fem. adj.] dh, from dha-; AirWb., col. 744; Gk. Dai, etc.), in Old 1060

Persian dah the Daha people (Brandenstein and Mayrhofer, pp. 113-14), and in Khotanese daha man, male (Bailey, Dictionary, p. 155). In Avestan the term did not have the same technical meaning as in Old Persian. Avestan daxiiu, dahu- refers to the largest unit in the vertical social organization. See, for example, Avestan xatu- (in the Gathas) next of kin group and nmna-house, corresponding to Old Persian taum- family; Avestan vs- village, corresponding to Avestan vrzna- clan; Avestan zantu- district; and Avestandaxiiu-, dahu- (Benveniste, 1932; idem, 1938, pp. 6, 13; Thieme, pp. 79ff.; Frye, p. 52; Boyce, Zoroastrianism I, p. 13; Schwartz, p. 649; Gnoli, pp. 15ff.). The connection daxiiu, dahu- and arya- Aryans is very common to indicate the Aryan lands and peoples, in some instances in the plural: airii dahuu,airiian m daxiiun m, airiibii

dahubii. In Yat 13.125 and 13.127 five countries (daxiiu-) are mentioned, though their
identification is unknown or uncertain; in the same Yat (13.143-44) the countries of other peoples are added to those of the Aryans: tiriia, sairima, sinu, dha. In Achaemenid inscriptions Old Persian dahyu- means satrapy (on the problems relative to the different lists of dahyva [pl.], cf. Leuze; Junge; Walser, pp. 27ff.; Herzfeld, pp. 228-29; Herrenschmidt, pp. 53ff.; Calmeyer, 1982, pp. 105ff.; idem, 1983, pp. 141ff.) and district (e.g., Nisya in Media; DB 1.58; Kent, Old Persian, p. 118). The technical connotation of Old Persian dahyu is certain and is confirmeddespite some doubts expressed by George Cameron but refuted by Ilya Gershevitchby the loanword da-a-yau-i in Elamite. On the basis of the hypothetical reconstruction of twelve districts and twenty-nine satrapies, it has been suggested that the formal identification of the Old Persian numeral 41 with the ideogram DH, sometimes used for dahyu (Kent, Old Persian, pp. 18-19), can be explained by the fact that there were exactly forty-one dahyva when the sign DHwas created (Mancini). From the meaning of Old Persian dahyu as limited territory come Middle Persian and Pahlavi deh country, land, village, written with the ideogram MTA (Frahang Pahlawg 2.3, p. 117; cf. Syr. mt), and Manichean Middle Persian dyh(MacKenzie, p. 26). At times the Avestan use is reflected in Pahlavi deh, but already in Middle Persian the meaning village is well documented; it appears again in Persian deh. That Pali uses the term milakkhu is significant (cf. Uttardhyayana Stra 10.16) and reinforces the concordance between mleccha and milakkhu (a pronunciation variant) and links the language with meluhha as a reference to a language in Mesopotamian texts and in the cylinder 1061

seal of Shu-ilishu. [Possehl, Gregory, 2006, Shu-ilishus cylinder seal, Expedition, Vol. 48, No. 1http://www.penn.museum/documents/publications/expedition/PDFs/481/What%20in%20the%20World.pdf] This seal shows a sea-faring Meluhha merchant who needed a translator to translate meluhha speech into Akkadian. The translators name was Shuilishu as recorded in cuneiform script on the seal. This evidence rules out Akkadian as the Indus or Meluhha language and justifies the search for the proto-Indian speech from the region of the Sarasvati river basin which accounts for 80% (about 2000) archaeological sites of the civilization, including sites which have yielded inscribed objects such as Lothal, Dwaraka, Kanmer, Dholavira, Surkotada, Kalibangan, Farmana, Bhirrana, Kunal, Banawali, Chandigarh, Rupar, Rakhigarhi. The language-speakers in this basin are likely to have retained cultural memories of Indus language which can be gleaned from the semantic clusters of glosses of the ancient versions of their current lingua francaavailable in comparative lexicons and nighanu-s. Evidence from Valmiki Rmyaa Slokas 5.30.16 to 21 in the 29th sarga of Sundara Kandam, provide an episode of Hanuman introspecting on the language in which he should speak to Sita. This evidence refers to two dialects: Sanskrit andmnuam vkyam (lit. jti bh). In this narrative mnuam vkyam (spoken dialect) is distinguished from Sanskrit of a Brahmin (or, grammatically correct and wellprouncedd Sanskrit used in yaja-s).

antaramtvaha msdya rkasnam iha sthitah anairvsaiymi santpa bahulm imm

(Staying here itself and getting hold of an opportunity even in the midst of the female-demons (when they are in attentive), I shall slowly console Sita who is very much in distress. )

3. aham hi atitanucaiva vnara ca vieata vcam ca udhariymi mnum iha samsktm

(However, I am very small in stature, particularly as a monkey and can speak now Sanskrit, the human language too.)

5. yadi vcam pradsyami dwijtiriva samsktm 6. rvaam manyamn mm st bht bhavi yati 7. vnarasya vieena kathamsydabibhaam
(If I use Sanskrit language like a llsde, Sita will get frightened, thinking that Rva a has come 1062

disguised as a monkey. Especially, how can a monkey speak it?)

8. avayameva vaktavyam mnuam vkyam arthavat 9. may ntvayitum aky 10. nnyath iyam anindit
(Certainly, meaningful words of a human being are to be spoken by me. Otherwise, the virtuous Sita cannot be consoled.)

11. s iyam lokya me rpam jnak bhitam tath || rakobhih trsitaa prvam bhuah trsam gamiyati |
(Looking at my figure and the language, Seetha who was already frightened previously by the demons, will get frightened again.) [Translation based onhttp://www.valmikiramayan.net/sundara/sarga30/sundara_30_frame.htm See: Narayana Iyengar, 1938, Vanmeegarum Thamizhum; http://tashindu.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html In this work, Narayana Iyengar cites that the commentator interpret mnuam vkyam as the language spoken in Kosala.] Evidence from atapatha Brhmaa for mleccha vcas An extraordinary narrative account from atapatha Brhmaa is cited in full to provide the context of the yagna in which vaak (speech personified as woman) is referred to the importance of grammatical speech in yagna performance and this grammatical, intelligible speech is distinguished from mlecccha, unintelligible speech. The example of the usage of phrase he lavo is explained by Sayana as a pronunciation variant of: he rayo. i.e. ho, the spiteful (enemies)! This grammatically correct phrase, the Asuras were unable to pronounce correctly, notes Sayana. The B text and translation are cited in full because of the early evidence provided of the mleccha speech (exemplifying what is referred to Indian language studies as ralayo rabhedhah; the transformed use of la where the syllable ra was intended. This is the clearest evidence of a proto-Indian language which had dialectical variants in the usage by asuras and devas (i.e. those who do not perform yagna and those who perform yagna using vaak, speech.) This is comparable to mleccha vcas and rya vcas differentiation by Manu. The text of B 3.2.1.22-28 and translation are as follows:

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yo v iya vgyadena na yuvitehaiva m tihantamabhyehti brhi tm tu na gatm pratiprabrtditi s haina tadeva tihantamabhyeyya tasmdu str pumsa saskte tihantamabhyaiti t haibhya gatm pratiprovceya v gditi t dev | asurebhyo ntaryast svktygnveva parighya sarvahutamajuhavurhutirhi devn sa ymevmmanuubhjuhavustadevain taddev svyakurvata te sur ttavacaso he lavo he lava iti vadanta parbabhvu atraitmapi vcamdu | upajijsy sa mlecastasmnna brhmao mlecedasury hai v natevaia dviat sapatnnmdatte vca te syttavacasa parbhavanti ya evametadveda o ya yajo vcamabhidadhyau | mithunyenay symiti t sababhva indro ha v k cakre | mahadv ito bhva janiyate yajasya ca mithundvcaca yanm tannbhibhavediti sa indra eva garbho bhtvaitanmithunam pravivea sa ha savatsare jyamna k cakre | mahvry v iya yoniry mmaddharata yadvai meto mahadevbhva nnuprajyeta yanm tannbhibhavediti tm pratiparmyaveycinat | t yajasya ranpratyadadhdyajo hi ka sa ya sa yajastatkjina yo s yoni s kavitha yadenmindra veycinattasmdveiteva sa yathaivta indro jyata garbhobhtvaitasmnmithundevamevaio to jyate garbho bhtvaitasmnmithunt t v uttnmiva badhnti |
Translation: 22.The gods reflected, That Vaak being a woman, we must take care lest she should allure him. Say to her, Come hither to make me where I stand! and report to us her having come. She then went up to where he was standing. Hence a woman goes to a man who stays in a well-trimmed (house). He reported to them her having come, saying, She has indeed come. 23. The gods then cut her off from the Asuras; and having gained possession of her and enveloped her completely in fire, they offered her up as a holocaust, it being an offering of the gods. (78) And in that they offered her with an anushtubh verse, thereby they made her their own; and the Asuras being deprived of speech, were undone, crying, He lavah! He lavah! (79) 24. Such was the unintelligible speech which they then uttered, -- and he (who speaks thus) is a Mlekkha (barbarian). Hence let no Brahman speak barbarous language, since such is the speech of the Asuras. Thus alone he deprives his spiteful enemies of speech; and whosoever knows this, his enemies, being deprived of speech, are undone. 25. That Yajna (sacrifice) lusted 1064

after Vaak (speech [80]), thinking, May I pair with her! He united with her. 26. Indra then thought within himself, Surely a great monster will spring from this union of Yagna and Vaak: [I must take care] lest it should get the better of me. Indra himself then became an embryo and entered into that union. 27. Now when he was born after a years time, he thought within himself, Verily of great vigour is this womb which has contained me: [I must take care] that no great monster shall be born from it after me, lest it should get the better of me! 28. Having seized and pressed it tightly, he tore it off and put it on the head of Yagna (sacrifice [81]); for the black (antelope) is the sacrifice: the black deer skin is the same as that sacrifice, and the black deers horn is the same as that womb. And because it was by pressing it tightly together that Indra tore out (the womb), therefore it (the horn) is bound tightly (to the end of the garment); and as Indra, having become an embryo, sprang from that union, so is he (the sacrifice), after becoming an embryo, born from that union (of the skin and the horn). (B 3.2.1.23-25). (fn 78) According to Sayana, he lavo stands for he rayo (i.e. ho, the spiteful (enemies)! which the Asuras were unable to pronounce correctly. The Kaanva text, however, reads te htavko su hailo haila ity etm ha vcam vadantah parbabhvuh (? i.e. he p. 32 ilaa, ho, speech.) A third version of this passage seems to be referred to in the Mah bhya (Kielh.), p.2. (p.38). (fn 79) Compare the corresponding legend about Yagna and Daki (priests fee), (Taitt. S. VI.1.3.6. (p.38) (fn 79) Yagnasya sran; one would expect ka(sra)sya sran. The Taitt.S. reads tm mgeu ny adadht. (p.38) (fn81) In the Kanva text atah (therewith) refers to the head of the sacrifice, -- sa yak khirasta upasprisaty ato v enm etad agre pravisan pravisaty ato v agre gyamno gyate tasmk khirasta upasprisati. (p.39)(cf.atapatha Brhmaa vol. 2 of 5, tr. By Julius Eggeling, 1885, in SBE Part 12; fn 78-81). Mesopotamian texts refer to a language called meluhha (which required an Akkadian translator); this meluhha is cognate with mleccha. Seafaring meluhhan merchants used the script in trade transactions; artisans created metal artifacts, lapidary artificats of terracotta, ivory for trade. Glosses of the proto-Indic or Indus language are used to read rebus the Indus script inscriptions. The glyphs of the script include both pictorial motifs and signs and both categories of glyphs are read rebus. As a first step in delineating the Indus language, an Indian lexicon provides a resource, compiled semantically cluster over 1240 groups of glosses from ancient Indian languages as a proto-Indic substrate dictionary. Seehttp://www.scribd.com/doc/2232617/lexicon linked at http://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/indus-writing 1065

The word meluh.h.a is of special interest. It occurs as a verb in a different form (mlecha-) in Vedic only in B 3.2.1, an eastern text of N. Bihar where it indicates to speak in barbarian fashion. But it has a form closer to Meluh.h.a in Middle Indian (MIA): Pali, the church language of S. Buddhism which originated as a western N. Indian dialect (roughly, between Mathura, Gujarat and the Vindhya) has milakkha, milakkhu. Other forms, closer to B mleccha are found in MIA *mliccha > Sindhi milis, Panjabi milech, malech, Kashmiri bri.c.hun weep, lament (< *mrech-, with the common r/l interchange of IA), W. Pahari mel+c.h dirty. It seems that, just as in other cases mentioned above, the original local form *m(e)luh. (i.e. m(e)lukh in IA pronunciation, cf. E. Iranian bAxdhI Bactria > AV *bahli-ka, balhi-ka) was preserved only in the South (Gujarat? >Pali), while the North (Panjab, Kashmir, even B and Bengal) has *mlecch. The sound shift from-h.h.-/-kh- > -cch- is unexplained; it may have been modeled on similar correspondences in MIA (Skt. Aki eye _ MIA akkhi, acchi; ks.Etra _eld _ MIA khetta, chetta, etc.) The meaning of Mleccha must have evolved from self-designation > name of foreigners, cf. those of the Franks > Arab farinjI foreigner. Its introduction into Vedic must have begun in Meluh.h.a, in Baluchistan-Sindh, and have been transmitted for a long time in a non-literary level of IA as a nickname, before surfacing in E. North India in Middle/Late Vedic as Mleccha. (Pali milca is influenced by a `tribal name, Pi ca, as is Sindhi milindu, milidu by Pulinda; the word has been further `abbreviated by avoiding the difficult cluster ml- : Prkt mecha, miccha, Kashmiri m c(h), Bengali mech (a Tib.-Burm tribe) and perhaps Pashai mece if not < *mcca `defective (Turner, CDIAL 10389. | Parpola 1994: 174 has attempted a Dravidian explanation. He understands Meluh.h. a (var. Melah.h.a) as Drav. *Mlakam [mlaxam] `high country (= Baluchistan) (=Ta-milakam) and points to Neo-Assyr. Baluh.h.u `galbanum, sinda `wood from Sindh. He traces mlech, milakkha back to *mleks. , which is seen as agreeing, with central Drav. Metathesis with *mlxa = mlaxa-m. Kuiper 1991:24 indicates not infrequent elision of (Dravid.) a- when taken over into Skt. | Shafer 1954 has a Tib-Burm. Etymology *mltse; Southworth 1990: 223 reconstructs Pdrav. 2 *muzi/mizi `say, speak, utter, DEDR 4989, tamil `Tamil < `own speech.) [Witzel, Michael, 1999, Substrate Languages in Old Indo-Aryan (Rgvedic, Middle and Late Vedic, Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies (EJVS) 5-1 (1999) pp.167. http://www.ejvs.laurasianacademy.com/ejvs0501/ejvs0501article.pdf] Note: Coining a term, Para-Munda, denoting a hypothetical language related but not ancestral to modern Munda languages, the author goes on to identify it as Harappan, the language of the Harappan civilization. The author later recounts this and posits that Harappan were illiterate 1066

and takes the glyphs of the script to be symbols without any basis in any underlying language.[cf. Steve Farmer, Richard Sproat, and Michael Witzel, 2005, The Collapse of the Indus-Script Thesis: The Myth of a Literate Harappan Civilization, EJVS 11-2 Dec. 13, 2005.] gveda (ca 3.53.12) uses the term, bhratam janam, which can be interpreted as bhrata folk. The i of the skta is vivmitra gthina. India was called Bhratavara after the king Bhrata. (Vyu 33, 51-2; Bd. 2,14,60-2; lin:ga 1,47,20,24; Viu 2,1,28,32).

Ya ime rodas ubhe aham indram atuavam vivmitrasya rakati brahmedam bhratam janam
3.053.12 I have made Indra glorified by these two, heaven and earth, and this prayer of vivmitra protects the people of Bhrata. [Made Indra glorified: indram atuavam the verb is the third preterite of the casual, I have caused to be praised; it may mean: I praise Indra, abiding between heaven and earth, i.e. in the firmament]. The evidence is remarkable that almost every single glyph or glyptic element of the Indus script can be read rebus using the repertoire of artisans (lapidaries working with precious shell, ivory, stones and terracotta, mine-workers, metal-smiths working with a variety of minerals, furnaces and other tools) who created the inscribed objects and used many of them to authenticate their trade transactions. Many of the inscribed objects are seen to be calling cards of the professional artisans, listing their professional skills and repertoire. The identification of glosses from the present-day languages of India on Sarasvati river basin is justified by the continuation of culture evidenced by many artifacts evidencing civilization continuum from the Vedic Sarasvati River basin, since language and culture are intertwined, continuing legacies: Huntington notes [http://huntingtonarchive.osu.edu/Makara%20Site/makara]: There is a continuity of composite creatures demonstrable in Indic culture since Kot Diji ca. 4000 BCE. Mriga (pair of deer or antelope) in Buddha sculptures compare with Harappan period prototype of a pair of ibexes on the platform below a seated yogin. http://tinyurl.com/gonsh Continued use of ankha (turbinella pyrum) bangles which tradition began 6500 BCE at Nausharo;

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Continued wearing of sindhur at the parting of the hair by married ladies as evidenced by two terracotta toys painted black on the hair, painted golden on the jewelry and painted red to show sindhur at the parting of the hair; Finds of shivalinga in situ in a worshipful state in Harappa (a metaphor of Mt. Kailas summit where Mahevara is in tapas, according to Hindu tradition); Terracotta toys of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro showing Namaste postures and yogasana postures; Three-ring ear-cleaning device Legacy of architectural forms Legacy of pukarii in front of mandirams; as in front of Mohenjo-daro stupa Legacy of metallurgy and the writing system on punch-marked coins

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Legacy of continued use of cire perdue technique for making utsava bera (bronze murti) Legacy: Engraved celt tool of Sembiyan-kandiyur with Sarasvati hieroglyphs: calling-card of an artisan Legacy of acharya wearing uttariyam (shawl) leaving right-shoulder bare Form of addressing a person respectfully as: arya, ayya (Ravana is also referred to as arya in the Great Epic Rmyaa) Plate X [c] Lingam in situ in Trench Ai (MS Vats, 1940, Excavations at Harappa, Vol. II, Calcutta) Lingam, grey sandstone in situ, Harappa, Trench Ai, Mound F, Pl. X (c) (After Vats). In an earthenware jar, No. 12414, recovered from Mound F, Trench IV, Square I in this jar, six lingams were found along with some tiny pieces of shell, a unicorn seal, an oblong grey sandstone block with polished surface, five stone pestles, a stone palette, and a block of chalcedony (Vats, MS, 1940, Excavations at Harappa, Delhi, p. 370). Continued use of cire perdue technique of bronze-casting. Bronze murti: cire perdue technique used today in Swamimalai to make bronze utsavabera (idols carried in procession). Eraka Subrahmanya is the presiding divinity in Swamimalai. Eraka! Copper.Devices on punchmarked coins comparable to Sarasvati hieroglyphs. 1069

Toilet gadgets: Ur and Harappa After Woolley 1934, Vats 1941

Nausharo: female figurines. Wearing sindhur at the parting of the hair. Hair painted black, ornaments golden and sindhur red. Period 1B, 2800 2600 BCE. 11.6 x 30.9 cm.[After Fig. 2.19, Kenoyer, 1998].

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1071

Sankha artifacts: Wide bangle made from a single conch shell and carved with a chevron motif, Harappa; marine shell, Turbinella pyrum (After Fig. 7.44, Kenoyer, 1998) National Museum, Karachi. 54.3554. HM 13828. Seal, Bet Dwaraka 20 x 18 mm of conch shell. Seven shell bangles from burial ofan elderly woman, Harappa; worn on the left arm; three on the upper arm and four on the forearm; 6.3 X 5.7 cm to 8x9 cm marine shell, Turbinella pyrum (After Fig. 7.43, Kenoyer, 1998) Harappa museum. H87-635 to 637; 676 to 679. Modern lady from Kutch, wearing shell-bangles. 6500 BCE. Date of the womans burial with ornaments including a wide bangle of shankha. Mehergarh. Burial ornaments made of shell and stone disc beads, and turbinella pyrum (sacred 1072

conch, san:kha) bangle, Tomb MR3T.21, Mehrgarh, Period 1A, ca. 6500 BCE. The nearest source for this shell is Makran coast near Karachi, 500 km. South. [After Fig. 2.10 in Kenoyer, 1998]. Sankha wide bangle and other ornaments, c. 6500 BCE (burial of a woman at Nausharo). Glyph: shell-cutters saw Some miniature tablets with Indus inscriptions are shaped like a shell-cutters saw shown in the photograph of a bangle-maker from Bengal, cutting turbinella pyrum. Shapes of some text glyphs also resemble the shell-cutters saw:

V294 V295 V296V297 It is unlikely that Akkadian was a possible underlying language because a cuneiform cylinder seal with an Akkadian inscription, showing a seafaring Meluhhan merchant (carrying an antelope) required an interpreter, Shu-ilishu, confirming that the Meluhhans language was not 1073

Akkadian. There is substantial agreement among scholars pointing to the Indian civilization area as a linguistic area. I suggest that Meluhha mentioned in Mesopotamian texts of 3rd-2nd millennium BCE is a language of this linguistic area. That meluhha and mleccha are cognate and that mleccha is attested as a mleccha vcas (mleccha speech) distinguished from arya vcas (arya speech) indicates that the linguistic area had a colloquial, ungrammatical mleccha speech lingua

franca and a grammatically correct arya speech literary language. The substrate glosses of
the Indian lexicon are thus reasonably assumed to be the glosses of mleccha vcas, the speech of the artisans who produced the artifacts and the inscribed objects with the writing system. This assumption is further reinforced by the fact that about 80% of archaeological sites of the civilization are found on the banks of Vedic River Sarasvati leading some scholars to rename the Indus Valley civilization as Sarasvati-Sindhu civilization. In this context, the following monumental work by Sylvan Levi, Jules Bloch and Jean Przyluski published in the 1920s continues to be relevant, even today, despite some advances in studies related to formation of Indian languages and the archaeological perspectives of and evidences from the civilization. Przyluski notes the principal forms of the words signifying man and woman in the Munda languages: Man: hor, hrol, harr, hr, haa, ho, koro Woman: k, r, koi, kol Comparing son and daughter in Santali: Son = kora hapan; daughter = kuri hapan a root kur, kor is differentiated in the Munda languages for signifying: man, woman, girl and boy. That in some cases this root has taken a relatively abstract sense is proved by Santali koa, koa, which signify one as in the expression koa ke koa each single one. Thus one can easily understand that the same root has served the purpose of designating the individual not as an indivisible unity but as a numerical wholeThus we can explain the analogy between the root kur, kor man the number 20 in Munda k k , ko and the number 10 in AustroAsiatic family ko, se-kr, skall, gal. (ibid., pp. 28-30).

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Homonym: [ kla ] n An income, or goods and chattels, or produce of fields &c. seized and sequestered (in payment of a debt). V , . 2 f The hole dug at the game of , at marbles &c. [ kla ] v c To strike the in the hole with the bat or . (In the game of ) 2 To cast off from ones self upon another (a work). Ex. - . 3 To cast aside, reject, disallow, flout, scout. To kick up the heels of; to trip up: also to turn over (from one side to the other). [ kirak ] f () A heap of miscellaneous articles. An old Munda word, kol means man. S. K. Chatterjee called the Munda family of languages as Kol, as the word, according to him, is (in the Sanskrit-Prkt form Kolia) an early Aryan modification of an old Munda word meaning man. [Chatterjee, SK, The study of kol, Calcutta

Review, 1923, p. 455.] Przyluski accepts this explanation. [Przyluski, Non-aryan loans in IndoAryan, in: Bagchi, PC, Pre-aryan and pre-dravidian, pp.2829 http://www.scribd.com/doc/33670494/prearyanandpredr035083mbp] Note: This area can be called speakers of mleccha, meluhha or mleccha vcas according to Manusmti (lingua franca of the artisans). Manusmti distinguishes two spoken languagegroups: mleccha vcas and arya vaacas (that is, spoken dialect distinguished from grammatically correct glosses). A Sprachbundin German, plural Sprachbnde IPA, from the German word for language union, also known as a linguistic area, convergence area, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that have become similar in some way because of geographical proximity and language contact. They may be genetically unrelated, or only distantly related. Where genetic affiliations are unclear, thesprachbund characteristics might give a false appearance of relatednessIn a classic 1956 paper titled India as a Linguistic Area, Murray Emeneau [Emeneau, Murray. 1956. India as a Lingusitic Area. "Langauge" 32: 316. http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/113093] laid the groundwork for the general acceptance of the concept of a Sprachbund. In the paper, Emeneau observed that the subcontinents Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages shared a number of features that were not inherited from a common source, but were areal features, the result of diffusion during sustained contact. Common features of a group of languages in a Sprachbund are called areal features. In linguistics, an areal feature is any typological feature shared by languages within the same geographical area. An example refers to retroflex consonants in the Burushaski {Berger, H. Die Burushaski-Sprache von Hunza und Nagar. Vols. I-III. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1075

1988 ] [Tikkanen (2005)]}, Nuristani [G.Morgenstierne, Irano-Dardica. Wiesbaden 1973], Dravidian, Munda and Indo-Aryan language families of the Indian subcontinent. The

Munda Languages. Edited by Gregory D. S. Anderson. London and New York: Routledge
(Routledge Language Family Series), 2008. Notes on Indian linguistic area: pre-aryan,pre-Munda and pre-dravidian in India It will be a hasty claim to make that Old Tamil or Proto-Munda or Santali or Prakt or Pali or any other specific language of the Indian linguistic area, by itself (to the exclusion of other languages in contact), explains the language of the Indus civilization. In this context, the work by Sylvan Levi, Jules Bloch and Jean Przyluski published in the 1920s (cited elsewhere) continues to be relevant, even today, despite some advances in studies related to formation of Indian languages and the archaeological perspectives of and evidences from the civilization. Some glyphs of the script are yet to be decoded. Tentative readings of such glyphs yet to be validated by the cipher code key of Indus script are detailed (including decipherment of inscriptions from scores of small sites) at http://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/induswriting If the glyphs are unambiguously identified and read in archaeological context and the context of other glyphs of the inscription itself, it will be possible to decipher them. For this purpose, some graphemes (which have homonyms and can be read rebus) are provided from the Indian Lexicon of the Indian linguistic area. Graphemes: kola tiger (Telugu); jackal (Konkani); kul id. (Santali) kol the name of a bird, the Indian cuckoo (Santali) kolo a large jungle climber, dioscorea doemonum (Santali) kulai a hare (Santali) Grapheme: Ta. kl stick, staff, branch, arrow. Ma. kl staff, rod, stick, arrow. Ko. kl stick, story of funeral car. To. kws stick.Ka. kl, klu stick, staff, arrow. Ko. Kl stick. Tu. kl, klustick, staff. Te. kla id., arrow; long, oblong; klana elongatedness, elongation; klani elongated. Kol. (SR.) kol, (Kin.) kla stick.Nk. (Ch.) kl pestle. Pa. kl shaft of arrow.Go. (A.) kla id.; kl (Tr.) a thin twig or stick, esp. for kindling a fire, (W. Ph.) stick, rod, a blade of grass, straw; (G. Mu. Ma. Ko.) kla handle of plough, sickle, knife, etc. ( Voc.988); (ASu.) kl stick, arrow, slate-pencil; (LuS.) kola the handle of an implement. Kona klbig 1076

wooden pestle. Pe. klpestle. Man. kl id. Kui ku (pl. kka) id. Kuwi (F.)kl (pl. klka), (S. Su.)klu (pl. klka) id. Cf. 2240 Ta.klam (Tu. Te. Go.). / Cf. OMar. (Master) kla stick. (DEDR 2237). or [ klada or klad ] m A stick or bar fastened to the neck of a surly dog. (Marathi) kola [ kla ] f. The bandicoot rat, mus malibaricos (Rajasthani) Skanda Purana refers to kol as a mleccha community. (Hindu abdasagara). kolhe, the koles, are an aboriginal tribe of iron smelters speaking a language akin to that of Santals (Santali) kla m. name of a degraded tribe Hariv. Pk. Kla m.; B. kol name of a Mu tribe (CDIAL 3532). A Bengali lexeme confirms this: 1 [ kla1 ] an aboriginal tribe of India; a member of this tribe. (Bengali) That in an early form of Indian linguistic area, kol means man gets substantiated by a Nahali and Assamese glosses: kola woman. See also: Wpah. Kha.kui, cur. ku, cam. k boy , Sant. Muari koa boy , kui girl , Ho koa, kui, Krk kn, knj). Prob. separate from RV. k t -- girl H. W. Bailey TPS 1955, 65; K. kr f. young girl , kash. k, ram. kuh; L. ku m. bridegroom , ku f. girl, virgin, bride , aw. ku f. woman ; P. ku f. girl, daughter , (CDIAL 3295). or [ krak or y ] a Relating to the country - --a tribe of Brhmans (Marathi). Mleccha and Bharatiya languages Mleccha was substratum language of bharatiyo (casters of metal) many of whom lived in dvpa (land between two rivers Sindhu and Sarasvati -- or islands on Gulf of Kutch, Gulf of Khambat, Makran coast and along the Persian Gulf region of Meluhha). Mleccha were bharatiya (Indians) of Indian linguistic area According to Matsya Pura (10.7), King Vea was the ancestor of the mleccha; according to Mahbhrata (MB. 12.59, 101-3), King Vea was a progenitor of the Nida dwelling in the Vindhya mountains. Nirukta 3.8 includes Nida among the five peoples mentioned in the gveda 10.53.4, citing Aupamanyava; the five peoples are: brhmaa, katriya, vaiya, dra and Nida. Nida gotra is mentioned in the gaapha of Pini (Adhyy 4.1.100). Nida were mleccha. It should be noted that Pini associated yavana with the Kmboja (Pini, Gaapha, 178 on 2.1.72). Mullaippu (59-66) (composed by kvirippmpinattuppon vigar mahanr.appanr) are part of Pattuppu, ten Tamil verses of Sangam literature; these refer to a chief of Tamil 1077

warriors whose battle-field tent was built by Yavana and guarded by mleccha who spoke only through gestures. (JV Chelliah, 1946, Pattuppu; ten Tamil idylls, translated into English verse, South India Saiva Siddhanta Works Publishing Society, p. 91). Mahbhrata notes that the Pava army was protected by mleccha, among other people (Kmboja ,aka, Khasa, Salwa, Matsya, Kuru, Mleccha, Pulinda, Dravia, Andhra and Kci) (MBh. V.158.20). Sta laments the misfortune of the Kaurava-s: When the Nryaa-s have been killed, as also the Gopla-s, those troops that were invincible in battle, and many thousands of mleccha-s, what can it be but Destiny? (MBh. IX.2.36: Nrya hatyatra

Gopl yuddhadurmahh mlecchca bahushasrh kim anyad bhgadheyatah?)

Nahali, Meluhhan, Language X On the banks of River Narmada are found speakers of Nahali, the so-called language isolate with words from Indo-Aryan, Dravidian and Munda which together constitute the indic language substratum of a linguistic area, ca. 3300 BCE on the banks of Rivers Sarasvati and Sindhu a region referred to as Meluhha in Mesopotamian cuneiform records; hence the language of the inscribed objects can rightly be called Meluhhan or Mleccha, a language which Vidura and Yudhihira knew (as stated in the Great Epic, Mahbhrata). Elsewhere in the Great Epic we read how Sahadeva, the youngest of the Pava brothers, continued his march of conquest till he reached several islands in the sea (no doubt with the help of ships) and subjugated the Mleccha inhabitants thereof. Brahma 2.74.11, Brahma 13.152, Harivaa 1841, Matsya 48.9, Vyu 99.11, cf. also Viu 4.17.5, Bhgavata 9.23.15, see Kirfel 1927: 522: pracetasah putraatam rjnah sarva eva te // mleccharrdhiph sarve

udcm diam rith which means, of course, not that these 100 kings conquered the northern
countries way beyond the Hinduku or Himalayas, but that all these 100 kings, sons of pracets (a descendant of a druhyu), kings of mleccha kingdoms, are adjacent (rita) to the northern direction, which since the Vedas and Pini has signified Greater gandhra. (Kirfel, W. Das Pura Pacalakaa.1927.Bonn : K. Schroeder.) This can be construed as a reference to a migration of the sons of Pracetas towards the northern direction to become kings of the mleccha states. The son of Yayatis third son, Druhyu, was Babhru, whose son and grandsons were Setu, Arabdha, Gandhara, Dharma, Dhta, Durmada and Praceta. It is notable that Pracetas is related to Dharma and Dhta, who are the principal characters of the Great Epic, the Mahbhrata. It should be noted that a group of people frequently mentioned in the Great Epic 1078

are the mleccha, an apparent designation of a group within the country, with Bhratam janam (Bhrata people). This is substantiated by the fact that Bhagadatta, the king of Pragjyotia is referred to as mleccha and he is also said to have ruled over two yavana kings (2.13).

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Melakkha, island-dwellers, lapidaries According to the great epic, Mlecchas lived on islands: sa sarvn mleccha npatin sgara dvpa

vsinah, aram hrym sa ratnni vividhni ca, andana aguru vastri mai muktam anuttamam, kcanam rajatam vajram vidrumam ca mahdhanam: (Bhima) arranged for all the
mleccha kings, who dwell on the ocean islands, to bring varieties of gems, sandalwood, aloe, garments, and incomparable jewels and pearls, gold, silver, diamonds, and extremely valuable coral great wealth. (MBh. 2.27.25-27). The reference to gems, pearls and corals evokes the semi-precious and precious stones, such as carnelian and agate, of Gujarat traded with Mesopotamian civilization. According to Sumerian records from the Agade Period (Sargon, 2373-2247 BC), Sumerian merchants traded with people from (at least) three named foreign places: Dilmun (now identified as the island of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf); Magan (a port on the coastline between the head of the Persian Gulf and the mouth of the Sindhu river); and Meluhha. Mentions of trade with Meluhha become frequent in Ur III period (2168-2062 BCE) and Larsa dynasty (2062- 1770 BCE). To the end of the Sarasvati Civilization period, the trade declines dramatically attesting to Meluhha being the Sarasvati Civilization. By Ur III Period, Meluhhan workers residing in Sumeria had Sumerian names, leading to a comment: three hundred years after the earliest textually documented contact between Meluhha and Mesopotamia, the references to a distinctly foreign commercial people have been replaced by an ethnic component of Ur III society This is an economic presence of Meluhhan traders maintaining their own village for a considerable span of time.(Parpola, Simo, Asko Parpola, and Robert H. Brunswig, Jr., 1977, TheMeluhha Village Evidence of Acculturation of Harappan Traders in Late Third Millenium Mesopotamia?, Journal of the Economic and Social History of

the Orient, Volume 20, Part II.)

The epic also refers to the pava Sahadevas conquest of several islands in the sea with mleccha inhabitants. A reference also to the salty marshes of Rann of Kutch in Gujarat (and also, perhaps, the Makran coast, south of Karachi), may also be surmised, where settlements and fortifications such as Amri Nal, Allahdino, Dholavira (Kotda) Sur-kota-da, and Kanmer have been excavated close to the Sarasvati River Basin as the River traversed towards the Arabian ocean. Kathsaritsgara (tr. CH Tawney, 1880, Calcutta; rep. New Delhi, 1991), I, p. 151 1080

associates mleccha with Sind. Mleccha kings paid tributes of sandalwood, aloe, cloth, gems, pearls, blankets, gold, silver and valuable corals. Nakula conquered western parts of Bhratavara teeming with mleccha (MBh.V.49.26: yah

pratcm diam cakre vae mlecchagayutm sa tatra nakulo yoddh citrayodh vyavasthitah).
Bhatsamhit XIV.21 refers to lawless mleccha who inhabited the west: nirmaryd mlecch

ye pacimadiksthit steca. A Buddhist chronicle, ryaManjur Mlakalpa [ed. Ganapati stri,

II, p. 274] associates pratyanta (contiguous)with mlecchadea in western Bhratavara: pacimm dim stya rjno mriyate tad ye pi pratyantavsinyo

mlecchataskarajvinah. (trans. Then (under a certain astrological combination) the kings who go
to the west die; also inhabitants of pratyanta live like the mlecchas and taskara.) This metaphor defines the region fit for yajna. This metaphor also explains the movements of mleccha, such as kamboja-yavana, prada-pallava along the Indian Ocean Rim as sea-faring merchants from Meluhha. This parallels the hindu-bauddha continuum exemplified by the Mathura lion capital withrivatsa and Angkor Wat (Nagara vtika) as the largest Viu mandiram in the world, together with celebration of Bauddham in many parts of central, eastern and southeastern Asian continent. Mleccha were at no stage described in any text as people belonging to one ethnic, religious or linguistic group. This self-imposed restriction evidenced by all writers of the early Indian cultural tradition Veda, Bauddha, Jaina alike is of fundamental significance in understanding that mleccha constituted the core of the people on the banks of Rivers Sarasvati and Sindhu and were the principal architects, artisans, workers, and people, in general, of the Sarasvati-Sindhu Civilization throughout its stages of evolution through phases in modes of production pastoral, agricultural, industrial and interactions with neighbors, trading in surplus food products and artefacts generated and sharing cultural attributes/characteristics. Various terms are used to describe mleccha social groups and communities: pratyantadea (ArthastraVII.10.16), paccantim janapada (Vinaya

Piaka V.13.12, vol. I, p. 197), aavi, aavika (DC Sircar,Selected Inscriptions, vol. I, Thirteenth
Rock Edict Shbhzgah, text line 7, p.37; Khoh Copper Plate Inscription of Saimkshobha, text line 8; Arthastra VII.10.16; VII.4.43: mlecchaavi who were considered a threat to the state; Arthastra IX.2.18-20 mentions aavibala, troops from forests as one of six types of troops at the disposal of a ruler). Some mleccha lived in border areas and forests, e.g. pratyanta

npatibhir (frontier kings: JF Fleet, CII, vol. II, Allahabad Posthumous Pillar Inscription of
Samudragupta, text line 22, p. 116) cf. Arthastra a 4th century BCE text I.12.21; VII.14.27; 1081

XIV.1.2; mleccha jti are: bheda,kirta, abara, pulinda: Amarakoa II.10.20, a fifth century CE text). In many Persian inscriptions Yauna, Gandhra and Saka occur together. [For e.g., DC Sircar, Selected Inscriptions, no.2 Persepolis Inscription on Drayavahu (Darius c. 522-486 BCE), lines 12-13, 18, p.7; no. 5, Perseplis Inscription of Khshayrsh (Xerxes c. 486-465), lines 23, 25-6, p. 12]. Thus, yavanamay be a reference to people settled in the northwest Bhratavara (India). There are references to Mleccha (that is, aka, Yavana, Kamboja, Pahlava) in Bla Kna of the Valmiki Rmyaa (1.54.21-23; 1.55.2-3). Taih asit samvrita bhmih akaih-Yavana

miritaih || 1.54-21 || taih taih Yavana-Kamboja barbarah ca akulii kritaah || 1-54-23 || tasya humkaarato jtah Kamboja ravi sannibhah | udhasah tu atha sanjatah Pahlavah astra panayah || 1-55-2|| yoni det ca Yavanah akri det akah tath | roma kupe u Mlecchah ca Haritah sa Kiratakah || 1-55-3 ||.Kmboja Yavann caivaakn paani ca | Anvkya Varadn caiva Himavantam vicinvatha || 12 || (Rmyaa 4.43.12)
The Yavanas here refer to the Bactrian Yavanas (in western Oxus country), and the Sakas here refer to the Sakas of Sogdiana/Jaxartes and beyond. The Vardas are the same as Paradas (Hindu Polity, 1978, p 124, Dr K. P. Jayswal; Goegraphical Data in Early Purana, 1972, p 165, 55 fn, Dr M. R.Singh). The Paradas were located on river Sailoda in Sinkiang (MBh II.51.12; II.52.13; VI.87.7 etc) and probably as far as upper reaches of river Oxus and Jaxartes (Op cit, p 159-60, Dr M. R.Singh). Vanaparva of Mahbhrata notes: ...Mlechha (barbaric) kings of the aka-s, Yavanas, Kambojas, Bahlikas etc shall rule the earth (i.e India) un-rightously in Kaliyuga viparte tad

loke purvarpn kayasya tat || 34 || bahavo mechchha r\jnah pthivym manujdhipa | mithyanusinah ppa mavadaparah || 35 || ndrah akah Pulindaca Yavanaca nardhiph | Kamboja Bahlikahudrastathbhra narottama || 36|| MBH 3/188/34-36).
Anushasanaparava of Mahbhrata affirms that Mathura, was under the joint military control of the Yavanas and the Kambojas (12/102/5). Tath Yavana Kamboj Mathurm abhita ca ye ete

niyuddhakual dkshiintysicarminah. Mahbhrata speaks of the Yavanas, Kambojas,

Darunas etc as the fierce mleccha from Uttarapatha : uttaracpare mlechchha jana

bharatasattama. || 63 || Yavanashcha sa Kamboja Daruna mlechchha jatayah. | (MBH 6.11.63-64) They are referred to as papakritah (sinful): uttara pathajanmanah kirtayishyami
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tanapi. | Yauna Kamboja Gandharah Kirata barbaraih saha. || 43 || ete ppaktstatra caranti prthivmimm. | vakakabalagridhran sadharmao nardhipa. || 44 || (MBh 12/207/4344) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_India_by_Scythian_Tribes#Establishment_of_Mlechc ha_Kingdoms_in_Northern_India Yavana are descendants of Turvau, one of the four sons of Yayti. The sons were to rule over people such as Yavana, Bhoja and Ydava (MBh. 1.80.23-4; Matsya Pura 34.29-30). Yavana, descendants of Turvau are noted as meat-eaters, sinful and hence, anrya. [MBh. trans. PC Roy, vol. I, p. 179] These people were brought over the sea safely by Indra (RV 6.20.12). In the Mahbhrata, sons of Anu are noted as mleccha. gveda notes that Yadu and Turvaa are dsa (RV 10.62.10):

sanema te vas navya indra pra prava stavanta en yajnaih sapta yat purah arma radr dadruia dhan dsh purukutsya ikan tvam vrdha indraprvyarja bhr varivasyann uane kvyya par navavstvam anudeyam mahe pitre dadtha svam naptam tvam dhunir indra dhunimtror pah sr na sravanth pra yat samudram ati ra pari praya turvaam yadum svasti
RV 6.020.10 (Favoured) by your proection, Indra, we solicit new (wealth); by this adoration men glorify you at sacrifices, for that you have shattered with your bolt the seven cities of arat, killing the opponents (of sacred rites), killing the opponents (of sacred rites), and giving (their spoils) to Purukutsa. [Men: puravah = manuyah; arat = name of an asura]. RV 6.020.11 Desirous of opulence, you, Indra, have been an ancient benefactor of Usanas, the son of Kavi; having slain Navavstva, you have given back his own grandson, who was (fit) to be restored o the grandfather. RV 6.020.12 You, Indra, who make (your enemies) tremble, have caused the waters, detained by Dhuni, to flow like rushing rivers; so, hero, when, having crossed the ocean, you have reached the shore, you have brought over in safety Turvasa and Yadu. [samudram

atiprapari = samudram atikramya pratiro bhavasi = when you are crossed, having traversed
the ocean, you have brought across Turvaa and Yadu, both standing on the future shore, samudrapretihantau aprayah]. 1083

Nandana, another commentator of Mnava Dharma stra. X.45, defines ryavc as

samsktavc. Thus, according to Medhtithi, neither habitation nor mleccha speech is the
ground for regarding groups as Dasyus, but it is because of their particular names Barbara etc., that they are so regarded. These people were brought over the sea safely by Indra, as noted by this ca. This ca also notes that Yadu and Turvaa (are) dsa; and that Turvau is a son of Yayti. The sons of Yayti were to rule over people such as Yavana, Bhoja and Ydava. Turvau and Yadu crossed the oceans to come into Bhratavara. In this ca., samudra can be interpreted only as an ocean. The ocean crossed by Indra, may be not too far from Sindhu. Sindhu is a natural ocean frontier in gveda. Given the activities of the Meluhha along the Makran Coast (300 km. south of Mehergarh, in the neighbourhood of Karachi), Gulf of Kutch and Gulf of Khambat, (evidence? Turbinella pyrum ankha-bangle found in a womans grave in Mehergarh, dated to c. 6500 BCE, yes 7th millennium BCE; the type of shell found nowhere else in the world excepting the coastline of Sindhu sgara upto to the Gulf of Mannar). The ocean referred to may be the ocean in the Gulf of Kutch and was situated with a number of dvpas. In places north of Lamgham district, i.e. north bank of river Kabul, near Peshawar were regions known as Mi-li-ku, the frontier of the mleccha lands. [S. Beal, 1973, The Life of

Hiuen Tsiang, New Delhi, p 57; cf. NL Dey, Geographical Dictionary of India, p. 113 for an
identification of Lamgham (Lampak) 20 miles north-west of Jalalabad.] Harivama 85.18-19 locates the mleccha in the Himalayan region and mleccha are listed with yavana, aka, darada,

prada, tura, khaa and pahlava in north and north-west Bhratavara: sa viv ddho yad rj yavan nm mah balh tata enam np mlecch h samsrity nuyayaus tad aks tur daradh prads tan:gah khash pahlavh ataacnye mlecch haimavat s tath. Matsya Pura 144.51-58 provides a list. Pracet had a hundred sons all of whom ruled
in mleccha regions in the north. [Matsya Pura 148.8-9; Bhgavata Pura IX.23.16.] Bhma Parvan of Mahbhrata notes that mleccha jti people lived in Yavana, Kmboa, Dru regions and are listed together with several other peoples of the northern and north-western parts of Bhratavara (MBh. VI.10.63-66: uttarcpare mlecch jan bharatasattama

yavanca aka, kmboj drun. mlecchajtayah). In Rmyaa IV.42.10, Sugrva is asked to

search for St in the northern lands of mleccha, pulinda, srasena, praal, bhrata, kuru, madraka, kamboja and yavana before proceeding to Himavat: tatra mlecchn pulindmrasen

m tathaiva ca prasthaln bharatmcaiva kurmsca saha madraih. Mlecchas came from the
valley adjoining the Himalaya. [Rjatarangi , VII. 2762-64.] 1084

When Sagara, son of Bhu, was prevented from destroying aka, Yavana, Kmboa, Prada and Phlava after he recovered his kingdom, Vasiha, the family priest of Sagara, absolved these people of their duties but Sagara commanded the Yavana to shave the upper half of their heads, the Prada to wear long hair and Pahlava to let their beards grow. Sagara also absolved them of their duty to offer yajna to agni and to study the Veda. [Vyu Pura 88.122. 136- 43; Brahma Pura 3.48.43-49; 63.119-34.] This is how these Yavana, Prada and Pahlava also became mleccha. [Viu Pura 4.3.38-41.] The implication is that prior to Sagaras command, these katriya communities did respect Vasiha as their priest, studied the Veda and performed yajna. [Harivama 10.41-45.] aka who were designated as kings of mleccha jti by Bhaa Utpala (10th century) in his commentary on Bhatsamhit, were defeated by Candragupta II. That the mleccha were also adored as i is clear from the verse of Bhatsamhit 2.15:mlecch hi yavans teu samyak stram kadam sthitam ivat te pi

pjyante kim punar daivavid dvijh (The yavana are mleccha, among them this science is duly
established; therefore, even they (although mleccha) are honoured as i; how much more (praise is due to an) astrologer who is a brhmaa). Bhatsamhit 14.21 confirms that the yavana, aka and pahlava lived on the west. Similarly, Konow notes that Sai-wang (Saka King) mentioned in Chinese accounts should be interpreted as Saka Murua and the territory he occupied as Kpia. [Sten Konow, CII, vol. II, pp. xx ff; Sten Konow, EI, no. 20 'Taxila Inscription of the Year 136', vol. XIV, pp. 291-2.] aka migrated to Bhratavara through Arachosia via the Bolan Pass into the lower Sindhu, a region called Indo_Scythia by Greek geographers and called aka-dvpa in Bhratiya texts. [EJ Rapson, ed., 1922,Cambridge History of India , vol. I, Ancient India, Cambridge, p. 564.] Another view expressed by Thomas is that the migration was through Sindh and the valley of the Sindhu River. [FW Thomas, 'Sakastana', JRAS, 1906, p. 216.] Kalhaa notes that Jalauka, a son of Aoka took possession of Kmra, advanced as far as Kanauj, after crushing a horse of mleccha. [Rjatarangi, 1.107-8.] Greek invasions occurred later, during the reign of Puyamitraunga (c. 185-150 BCE). The regions inhabited by the milakkha could be the Vindhyan region. The term, mleccha of which milakkha is a variant, could as well have denoted the indigenous people (Nahali?) or of Bhratavara who had lived on the Sarasvati River basin and who moved towards other parts of Bhratavara after the gradual desiccation of the river, over a millennium, between c. 2500 and 1500 BCE. Medhtithi, commenting on the verse of Manu, defines a language as mleccha : asad

avidyam n\rths dhu abdatay vk mleccha ucyate yath abarm kirtnm anyeym va antynm: Medhtithi onMnava Dharmastra X.45 Language is called mleccha
1085

because it consists of words that have no meaning or have the wrong meaning or are wrong in form. To this class belong the languages of such low-born tribes as the abara-s, Kirta and so forth He further proceeds to explain that ryavc is refined speech and the language of the inhabitants of ryvarta, but only of those who belong to the four vara-s. The others are called Dasyus.: ibid. ryavca ryvartam vsinas te cturvary danyajtyatvena prasiddhas tad

dasyava ucyante Arya (refined) language is the language of the inhabitants of ryvarta. Those
persons being other than the four vara-s are called Dasyus. In Dhammapadas commentary on Petuvathu, Dwaraka is associated with Kamboja as its Capital or its important city.[ The Buddhist Concepts of Spirits, p 81, Dr B. C. Law.] See evidence below: Yasa asthaya gachham Kambojam dhanharika/ ayam kamdado yakkho iyam yakham

nayamasai// iyam yakkham gahetvan sadhuken pasham ya/ yanam aaropyatvaan khippam gaccham Davarkn iti [Buddhist Text Khudak Nikaya (P.T.S)]
Mleccha who came to the Rjasya also included those from forest and frontier areas (MBh. III. 48.19:sgarn pagmcaiva ye ca paaavsinah simhal n barbarn mlecchn ye ca

jn:galavsinah). Bhmasena proceeded east towards Lohitya (Brahmaputra) and had

conquered several mleccha people who bestowed on him wealth of various kinds (MBh. II.27.23-24: suhmnmdhipam caiva ye ca sgaravsinah sarvn mlecchagamcaiva vijigye

bharatarabhah evam bahu vidhn den vijitya pavantmajah vasu tebhya updya lauhityam agad bal. [NL Dey, Geographical Dictionary, p. 115.]
Celebrations at the Kalinga capital of Duryodhana were attended by preceptors and mleccha kings from the south and east of Bhrata (MBh. XII.4.8: ete cnye ca bahavo dakinm

dim ritah mlecch ryca rj nah prcyodicyca bhrata).

Bhgadatta, the great warrior of Prgjyotia accompanied by mleccha people inhabiting marshy regions of the sea- coast (sgarnpavsibhih), attends the Rjasya of Yudhihira (MBh. II.31.9-10:prgjyotiaca npatir bhagadatto mahyah saha sarvais tath mlecchaih

sgarnpavsibhih). This is perhaps a reference ot the marshy coastline of

Bengal. Amarakoa II, Bhmivarga 6: pratyanto mlecchade ah syt; Sarvnanda in his commentary, ksarvasva, elaborates that mleccha dea denotes regions without proper conduct such as Kmarpa: bhratavarasyntadeah icr rahitah kmarpdih

mlecchadeh [Nmalingnusana, with commentary ksarvasva, of Sarvnanda (ed.

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Ganapati stri)]; he also cites Manu that where four vara-s are not established that region is mlecchadea. A contemporary of Haravardhana was Bhskaravarman of Kmarpa; this king was supplanted by another dynasty founded by lastambha who was known as a mleccha overlord. [SK Chatterji, 1950, Kirta-jana-kti --The Indo-Mongoloids: Their contributions to the and culture of India, Journal of Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. XVI, pp.143-253.] Meluhha, Mleccha areas: Sarasvati River Basin and Coastal Regions of Gujarat, Baluchistan Meluhha referred to in Sumerian and old Akkadian texts refers to an area in Sarasvati Civilization; Asko and Simo Parpola add: probably, including NW India with Gujarat as well as eastern Baluchistan.[ WF Leemans, Foreign Trade in the Old Babylonian Period, 1960; 'Trade Relations on Babylonia', Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. III, 1960, p.30 ff. 'Old Babylonian Letters and Economic History', Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. XI, 1968, pp. 215-26; J. Hansam, 'A Periplus of Magan and Meluhha', Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 36, pt. III, 1973, pp. 554-83. Asko and Simo Parpola, 'On the Relationship of the Sumerian Toponym Meluhha and Sanskrit Mleccha', Studia Orientalia,vol. 46, 1975, pp. 205-38.] Imports from Meluhha into Mesopotamia included the following commodities which were found in north-western and western Bhratavara: copper, silver, gold, carnelian, ivory, uu wood (ebony), and another wood which is translated as sea wood perhaps mangrove wood on the coasts of Sind ad Baluchistan. [J. Hansman, 'A Periplus of Magan and Meluhha', Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 36, pt. III, 1973, pp. 560.] The Ur texts specifically refer to seafaring country of Meluhha and hence, Leemans thesis that Meluhha was the west coast (modern state of Gujarat) of Bhrata. The Lothal dockyard had fallen into disuse by c.1800 BCE, a date when the trade between Mesopotamia and Meluhha also ended. [WF Leemans, 'Old Babylonian Letters and Economic History', Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. XI, 1968, pp. 215-26. P. Aalto, 1971, 'Marginal Notes on the Meluhha Problem,' Professor KA Nilakanta Sastri Felicitation Volume, Madras, pp. 222-23.] In Leemans view, Gujarat was the last bulwark of the (Indus or Sarasvati) Civilization. Records refer to Meluhhan ships docking at Sumer. There were Meluhhans in various Sumerian cities; there was also a Meluhhan town or district at one city. The Sumerian records indicate a large volume of trade; according to a Sumerian tablet, one shipment from Meluhha contained 5,900 kg of copper (13,000 lbs, or 6 tons)! The bulk of this trade was done through Dilmun, not directly 1087

with Meluhha. In our view, the formative stages of the Civilization also had their locus in the coastal areas in particular, the Gulf of Khambat, Gulf of Kutch and Makran coast, as evidenced by the wide shell-bangle, dated to c. 6500 BCE, made of turbinella pyrum or ankha, found in Mehergarh, 300 miles north of the Makran coast. Tanana mleccha A Jaina text, Avasyaka Churani notes that ivory trade was managed by mleccha, who also traveled from Uttaravaha to Dakshinapatha.[ Jain, 1984, Life in Ancient India as Described in the Jain Canon and Commentaries (6th century BC - 17th century AD, p. 150.] Guttila Jataka (ca.4th cent.) makes reference to itinerant ivory workers/traders journeying from Varanasi to Ujjain. [Cowell, 1973, Jatakas Book II, p. 172 ff.] The phrase, tanana mleccha may be related to: (i) tahnai, engraver mleccha; or (ii) tana, of (mleccha) lineage. 1. See Kuwi. Tahnai to engrave in DEDR and Bsh. Then, thon, small axe in CDIAL: DEDR 3146 *Go.* (Tr.) tarcana , (Mu.) tarc- to scrape; (Ma.) tarsk- id., plane; (D.) task-, (Mu.) tarsk-/tarisk- to level, scrape (*Voc.*1670). Sea-faring merchants/artisans of Meluhha

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Akkadian. Cylinder seal Impression. Inscription records that it belongs to Su-ilisu, Meluhha interpreter, i.e., translator of the Meluhhan language (EME.BAL.ME.LUH.HA.KI) The Meluhhan being introduced carries an goat on his arm. Musee du Louvre. Ao 22 310, Collection De Clercq 3rd millennium BCE. The Meluhhan is accompanied by a lady carrying a kamaalu. Since he needed an interpreter, it is reasonably inferred that Meluhhan did not speak Akkadian. Antelope carried by the Meluhhan is a hieroglyph: mlekh goat (Br.); mreka (Te.); mam (Ta.); meam (Skt.) Thus, the goat conveys the message that the carrier is a Meluhha speaker. A phonetic determinant.mrreka, mlekh goat; Rebus: melukkha Br. m goat. Te. mreka (DEDR 5087) meluh.h.a While Prof. Thomson maintained that a Munda influence has probably been at play in fixing the principle regulating the inflexion of nouns in Indo-Aryan vernaculars, such influence appeared to be unimportant to Prof. Sten Konow Prof. Przyluski in his papers, translated here, have tried to explain a certain number of words of the Sanskrit vocabulary as fairly ancient loans from the Austro-Asiatic family of languages. He has in this opened up a new line of enquiry. Prof. Jules Bloch in his article on Sanskrit and Dravidian, also translated in this volume, has the position of those who stand exclusively for Dravidian influence and has proved that the question of the Munda substratum in Indo-Aryan cannot be overlookedIn 1923, Prof. Levi, in a fundamental article on Pre-Aryen et Pre-Dravidian dans Vinde tried to show that some geographical names of ancient India like Kosala-Tosala, Anga-Vanga, Kalinga-Trilinga, Utkala-Mekala and PulindaKulinda, ethnic names which go by pairs, can be explained by the morphological system of the Austro-Asiatic languages. Names like Accha-Vaccha, Takkola-Kakkola belong to the same category. He concluded his long study with the following observation, We must know whether the legends, the religion and the philosophical thought of India do not owe anything to this past. India has been too exclusively examined from the Indo-European standpoint. It ought to be remembered that India is a great maritime country the movement which carried the Indian colonization towards the Far East was far from inaugurating a new routeAdventurers, traffickers and missionaries profited by the technical progress of navigation and followed under better conditions of comfort and efficiency, the way traced from time immemorial, by the mariners of another race, whom Aryan or Aryanised India despised as savages. In 1926, Przyluski tried to explain the name of an ancient people of the Punjab, the Udumbara, in a similar way and affiliate it to the Austro-Asiatic group. (cf. Journal Asiatique, 1926, 1, pp. 125, Un ancien peuple du Pendjab les Udumbaras: only a portion of this article containing 1089

linguistic discussions has been translated in the Appendix of this book.) In another article, the same scholar discussed some names of Indian towns in the geography of Ptolemy and tried to explain them by Austro-Asiatic formsDr. J. H. Hutton, in an interesting lecture on the Stone Age Cult of Assam delivered in the Indian Museum at Calcutta in 1928, while dealing with some prehistoric monoliths of Dimapur, near Manipur, says that the method of erection of these monoliths is very important, as it throws some light on the erection of prehistoric monoliths in other parts of the world. Assam and Madagascar are the only remaining parts of the world where the practice of erecting rough stones still continues.The origin of this stone cult is uncertain, but it appears that it is to be mainly imputed to the Mon-Khmer intrusion from the east In his opinion the erection of these monoliths takes the form of the lingam and yoni. He thinks that the Tantrik form of worship, so prevalent in Assam, is probably due to the incorporation into Hinduism of a fertility cult which preceded it as .the religion of the country. The dolmens possibly suggest distribution from South India, but if so, the probable course was across the Bay of Bengal and then back again westward from further Asia. Possibly the origin was from Indonesia whence apparently the use of supari (areca nut) spread to India as well as the Pacific. (From the Introduction by PC Bagchi and SK Chatterjee, 1 May 1929). Kuiper notes: a very considerable amount (say some 40%) of the New Indo-Aryan vocabulary is borrowed from Munda, either via Sanskrit (and Prkt), or via Prkt alone, or directly from Munda; wide-branched and seemingly native, word-families of South Dravidian are of Proto-Munda origin; in Vedic and later Sanskrit, the words adopted have often been Aryanized, resp. Sanskritized. In view of the intensive interrelations between Dravidian, Munda and Aryan dating from pre-Vedic times even individual etymological questions will often have to be approached from a Pan-Indic point of view if their study is to be fruitful. It is hoped that this work may be helpful to arrive at this all-embracing view of the Indian languages, which is the final goal of these studies. F.B.J. Kuiper, 1948, Proto-Munda Words in Sanskrit, Amsterdam, Verhandeling der Koninklijke Nederlandsche Akademie Van Wetenschappen, Afd.Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks Deel Li, No. 3, 1948, p.9http://www.scribd.com/doc/12238039/mundalexemesinSanskrit Emeneau notes: In fact, promising as it has seemed to assume Dravidian membership for the Harappa language, it is not the only possibility. Professor W. Norman Brown has pointed out (The United States and India and Pakistan, 131-132, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1953) that Northwest India, i.e. the Indus Valley and adjoining parts of India, has during most of 1090

its history had Near Eastern elements in its political and cultural make-up at least as prominently as it had true Indian elements of the Gangetic and Southern types. [M.B.Emeneau, India as a Linguistic Area [Lang. 32, 1956, 3-16; LICS, 196, 642-51; repr. In Collected papers: Dravidian Linguistics Ethnology and Folktales, Annamalai Nagar, Annamalai University, 1967, pp. 171186.] The passage is so important that it is quoted in full: More ominous yet was another consideration. Partition now would reproduce an ancient, recurring, and sinister incompatibility between Northwest and the rest of the subcontinent, which, but for a few brief periods of uneasy cohabitation, had kept them politically apart or hostile and had rendered the subcontinent defensively weak. When an intrusive people came through the passes and established itself there, it was at first spiritually closer to the relatives it had left behind than to any group already in India. Not until it had been separated from those relatives for a fairly long period and had succeeded in pushing eastward would I loosen the external ties. In period after period this seems to have been true. In the third millennium B.C. the Harappa culture in the Indus Valley was partly similar to contemporary western Asian civilizations and partly to later historic Indian culture of the Ganges Valley. In the latter part of the next millennium the earliest Aryans, living in the Punjab and composing the hymns of the Rig Veda, were apparently more like their linguistic and religious kinsmen, the Iranians, than like their eastern Indian contemporaries. In the middle of the next millennium the Persian Achaemenians for two centuries held the Northwest as satrapies. After Alexander had invaded India (327/6-325 B.C.) and Hellenism had arise, the Northwest too was Hellenized, and once more was partly Indian and partly western. And after Islam entered India, the Northwest again was associated with Persia, Bokhara, Central Asia, rather than with India, and considered itself Islamic first and Indian second. The periods during which the Punjab has been culturally assimilated to the rest of northern India are ew if any at all. Periods of political assimilation are almost as few; perhaps a part of the fourth and third centuries B.C. under the Mauryas; possibly a brief period under the Indo-Greek king menander in the second century B.C.; another brief period under the Muslim kingdom of Delhi in the last quarter of the twelfth century A.D.; a long one under the great Mughals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries A.D.; a century under the British, 1849-1947. Though this refers to cultural and political factors, it is a warning that we must not leap to linguistic conclusions hastily. The early, but probably centuries-long condition in which Sanskrit, a close ally of languages of Iran, was restricted to the northwest (though it was not the only language there) and the rest of India was not Sanskritic in speech, may well have been mirrored 1091

earlier by a period when some other language invader from the Near East-a relative of Sumerian or of Elamitic or what not-was spoken and written in the Indus Valley-perhaps that of invaders and conquerors-while the indigenous population spoke another language-perhaps one of the Dravidian stock, or perhaps one of the Munda stock, which is now represented only by a handful of languages in the backwoods of Central India. On leaving this highly speculative question, we can move on to an examination of the Sanskrit records, and we find in them linguistic evidence of contacts between the Sanskrit-speaking invaders and the other linguistic groups within Indiathe early days of Indo-European scholarship were without benefit of the spectacular archaeological discoveries that were later to be made in the Mediterranean area, Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley This assumption (that IE languages were urbanized bearers of a high civilization) led in the long run to another blockthe methodological tendency of the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century to attempt to find Indo-European etymologies for the greatest possible portion of the vocabularies of the Indo-European languages, even though the object could only be achieved by flights of phonological and semantic fancy very few scholars attempted to identify borrowings from Dravidian into SanskritThe Sanskrit etymological dictionary of Uhlenbrck (1898-1899) and the Indo-European etymological dictionary of Walde and Pokorny (1930-1932) completely ignore the work of Gundert (1869), Kittel (1872, 1894), and Caldwell (1856,1875) It is clear that not all of Burrows suggested borrowings will stand the test even of his own principlesIndia and Indian will be used in what follows for the subcontinent, ignoring the political division into the Republic of India and Pakistan, and, when necessary, including Ceylong also the northern boundary of Dravidian is and has been for a long time retreating south before the expansion of Indo-Aryan We know in fact from the study of the non-IndoEuropean element in the Sanskrit lexicon that at the time of the earliest Sanskrit records, the R.gveda, when Sanskrit speakers were localized no further east than the Panjab, there were already a few Dravidian words current in Sanskrit. This involves a localization of Dravidian speech in this area no lather than three millennia ago. It also of course means much bilingualism and gradual abandonment of Dravidian speech in favor of IndoAryan over a long period and a great area-a process for which we have only the most llsd of evidence in detail. Similar relationships must have existed between Indo-Aryan and Munda and between Dravidian and Munda, but it is still almost impossible to be sure of either of these in detail The Dravidian languages all have many Indo-Aryan items, borrowed at all periods from Sanskrit, Middle Indo1092

Aryan and Modern Indo-Aryan. The Munda languages likewise have much Indo-Aryan material, chiefly, so far as we know now, borrowed rom Modern Indo-Aryan, thogh this of course llsdes items that are Sanskrit in form, since Modern Indo-Aryan borrows from Sanskrit very considerably. That Indo-Aryan has borrowed from Dravidian has also become clear. T. Burrow, The Sanskrit Language, 379-88 (1955), gives a sampling and a statement of the chronology involved. It is noteworthy that this influence was spent by the end of the pre-Christian era, a precious indication for the linguistic history of North India: Dravidian speech must have practically ceased to exist in the Ganges valley by this period Most of the languages of India, of no matter which major family, have a set of retroflex, cerebral, or domal consonants in contrast with dentals. The retroflexes include stops and nasal certainly, also in some languages sibilants, lateral, tremulant, and even others. Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Munda and even the far northern Burushaski, form a practically solid bloc characterized by this phonological feature Even our earliest Sanskrit records already show phonemes of this class, which are, on the whole, unknown elsewhere in the Indo-European field, and which are certainly not Proto-IndoEuropean. In Sanskrit many of the occurrences of retroflexes are conditioned; others are explained historically as reflexes of certain Indo-European consonants and consonant clusters. But, in fact, in Dravidian it is a matter of the utmost certainty that retroflexes in contrast with dentals are Proto-Dravidian in origin, not the result of conditioning circumstances it is clear already that echo-words are a pan-Indic trait and that Indo-Aryan probably received it from nonIndo-Aryan (for it is not Indo-European) The use of classifiers can be added to those other linguistic traits previously discussed, which establish India as one linguistic area (an area which includes languages belonging to more than one family but showing traits in common which are found not to belong to the other members of (at least) one of the families) for historical study. The evidence is at least as clear-cut as in any part of the world Some of the features presented here are, it seems to me, as profound as we could wish to find Certainly the end result of the borrowings is that the languages of the two families, Indo-Aryan and Dravidian, seem in many respects more akin to one another than Indo-Aryan does to the other IndoEuropean languages. (We must not, however, neglect Blochs final remark and his reasons therefor: Ainsi donc, si profondes quaient ete les influences locales, lls nont pas conduit

laryen de l;inde a se differencier fortement des autres langues indoeuropeennes.) M.B.Emeneau, Linguistic Prehistory of India PAPS98 (1954). 282-92; Tamil
Culture 5 (1956). 30-55; repr. In Collected papers: Dravidian Linguistics Ethnology and Folktales, Annamalai Nagar, Annamalai University, 1967, pp. 155-171. 1093

The profundity of these observations by Emeneau and Bloch will be tested through clusters of lexemes of an Indian Lexicon, which relate to the archaeological finds of the civilization. Tamil and all other Dravidian languages have been influenced by Sanskrit language and literature. Swaminatha Iyer [Swaminatha Iyer, 1975, Dravidian Theories, Madras, Madras Law Journal Office] posits a genetic relationship between Tamil and Sanskrit. He cites GU Pope to aver that several Indo-European languages are linguistically farther away from Sanskrit than Dravidian. He cites examples of Tamil and Sanskrit forms of some glosses: hair: mayir, smasru; mouth: vya, v c; ear: s evi, rava; hear: kke (Tulu), kara; walk: el, car; mother: yi, yy (Paici). Evaluating this work, Edwin Bryant and Laurie Patton note: It is still more simple and sound to assume that the words which need a date of contact of the fourth millennium BCE on linguistic grounds as loan words in Dravidian might be words originally inherited in Dravidian from the Proto-speech which was the common ancestor of both Dravidian and Indo-AryanIt will be simpler to explain the situation if both Indo-Aryan and Dravidian are traced to a common language family. In vocables they show significant agreement. In phonology and morphology the linguistic structures agree significantly. It requires a thorough comparative study of the two language families to conduct a fuller study. Bryant, Edwin and Laurie L. Patton, 2005, The Indo-Aryan controversy: evidence and inference in Indian history, Routledge, p.197. The influence of Vedic culture is profoundly evidenced in early sangam texts. K. V. Sarma, 1983, Spread of Vedic Culture in Ancient. South India in The Adyar Library Bulletin, 1983, 43:1. Proto-Munda continuity and Language X Sources of OIA agricultural vocabulary based on Masica (1979) Percentage IE/Iir Drav Munda Other Unknown 40% 13% 11% 2% 34% 1094

Total

100%

Hence, a Language X is postulated; Language X to explain a large number of agriculturerelated words with no IE cognates: Colin Masica, 1991, Indo-Aryan Languages, Cambridge Univ. Press Since there is cultural continuity in India from the days of Sarasvati civilization, it is possible to reconstruct Language X by identifying isoglosses in the linguistic area. Contributions of the following language/archaeology scholars have followed up on these insights of Sylvan Levi, Jules Bloch and Jean Przyluski published over 90 years ago: Emeneau, MB, Kuiper, FBJ, Masica, CP, Southworth F. [Emeneau, MB, 1956, India as a linguistic area, in: Language, 32.3-16 Journal 10: 81-102 Kuiper, FBJ, 1967, The genesis of a linguistic area, Indo-Iranian Masica, Colin P., 1976, Defining a linguistic area, South Asia,

Chicago, University of Chicago Press Franklin Southworth, 2005, Linguistic Archaeology of South Asia, Routledge Curzon] Resemblances between two or more languages (whether typological or in vocabulary) can be due to genetic relation (descent from a common ancestor language), or due to borrowing at some time in the past between languages that were not necessarily genetically related. When little or no direct documentation of ancestor languages is available, determining whether a similarity is genetic or areal can be difficult. Further researches In addition to studies in the evolution of and historical contacts among Indian languages, further researches are also needed in an archaeological context. Karl Menninger cites a remarkable instance. In the Indian tradition, finger signals were used to settle the price for a trade transaction. Finger gestures were a numeric cipher!

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A pearl merchant of South India settling price for a pearl using finger gestures under a handkerchief. Cited in Karl Menninger, 1969, Number words and number symbols: a cultural

history of numbers, MIT Press, p.212. http://tinyurl.com/26ze95s

Further work on the nature of the contacts between Indian artisans and their trade associates, say, in Meluhhan settlements in the Persian Gulf region, may unravel the the nature of longdistance contacts. Could it be that the Indus language and writing were Indus Artisans cryptographic messaging system for specifications of artifacts made in and exported from Meluhha? Linguistics and archaeo-metallurgy: Identifying meluhha words and matching hieroglyphs with lexemes of archaeo-metallurgy Indian Hieroglyphs are identified. This announcement in Archaeometallurgy may be taken as Kitty Hawk flight demo or Jean-Francois Champollion demonstration of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Announcing that Indus script, an unsolved puzzle for over 150 years since the first discovery of a seal by the archaeologist of British India, Alexander Cunningham, are composed of Indian hieroglyphs, the book is said to detail in about 800 pages what could possibly be the earliest invention of writing.

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Hundreds of Indian hieroglyphs have been identified in the context of the bronze age and the rebus readings are comparable to the rebus method employed for Egyptian hieroglyphs. The book has related the invention of writing to the invention of bronze-age technologies of mixing copper with other ores such as arsenic, zinc, tin to create alloys like bronze, brass, pewter. The book relates the hieroglyphs to the lexemes of Indian sprachbund. Use of iron was also attested during the bronze age.[9] A surprising find in matching meluhha lexemes with hieroglyphs is that, as noted by the late Gregory Possehl, an Indus archaeologist, iron was also used, though archaeo-metallurgy evidence for iron-smelters have not so far been discovered in th civilization area. Archaeo-metallurgy studies of Sarasvati (Indus) Civilization have made some progress[10]. These studies have to be elaborated further to identify the processes of continuity evidenced by the iron smelters identified in the Ganga valley. D.K. Chakraborti and James Muhly argue that metallurgy of tin was well developed in Indus (Sarasvati) Civilization. The use of zinc as evidenced by the svastika glyphs is surprising and has to be explained further in archaeometallurgy context. One possibility is that zinc-bearing ores were used to create bronze alloy ingots and tools/vessels.

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Mainstream linguistics has no way to determine a range of dates for this sprachbund (language union). I submit that the language union relates to the bronze age inventions and trade which is complemented by and necessitated the invention of writing. In my view, the script records the archaeometallurgy transactions using lexes of Indian sprachbund. The tradition continues in ancient Indian mints which produced the early punch-marked coins. The tradition is also evidenced on the Rampurva copper bolt hieroglyphs, Sohgaura copper plate inscription and Sanchi s'rivatsa hieroglyph. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/IndusValleySeals.JPG/220pxIndusValleySeals.JPG Indian hieroglyphs typical of the 3rd millennium BCE: Elephant:ibh rebus:ib 'iron'; koD 'onehorned heifer' rebus: koD 'smithy';sathiya 'svastika glyph' rebus: satiya,jasta 'zinc'; adar 'zebu' rebus: aduru 'unsmelted metal or ore'; pattar 'trough' rebus: 'smiths' guild'; kaND karNaka 'rim of 1098

jar' rebus: kaND karNaka 'furnace account scribe', ayakara 'fish+crocodile' rebus: 'metal-smith' etc. Hundreds of such examples are discussed in Indian hieroglyphs[11] demonstrating that Indian hieroglyphs constitute a writing system for meluhha language and are rebus representations of archaeo-metallurgy lexemes. After scholars review this work which covers hieroglyphs used in about 5000 indus script inscriptions of the corpora and validate the rebus readings, a mile-stone would have been recorded in the study of ancient civilizations. The identification of Indian hieroglyphs may, then, turn out to be as historic as the decoding of Egyptian hieroglyphs by Jean-Francois Champollion and be the foundation for further studies in (a) the evolution of languages of the Indian sprachbund (language union) and (b) archaeo-metallurgical traditions.

Conclusion Tokens designed to count goods evolved over millennia into hieroglyphs to represent words denoting the bronze-age goods and processes. This stage of rebus representation of sounds of words of meluhha (mleccha language) was the stage penultimate to the culminating stage which used representation of syllables graphically in Brahmi and Kharoshti scripts. This culmination of the process for literacy and civilization was the contribution made by artisans of the bronze-age of Sarasvati civilization (also called Indus civilization).

References

Emeneau, MB, 1956, India as a linguistic area, Language 32, 1956, 3-16. Kalyanaraman, S. 2012. Indian Hieroglyphs Invention of Writing. Herndon: Sarasvati Research Center. ISBN 978-0982897126 Kuiper, FBJ, 1948, Proto-Munda words in Sanskrit, Amsterdam, 1948 1967, The genesis of a linguistic area, IIJ 10, 1967, 81-102

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Masica, CP, 1971, Defining a Linguistic area. South Asia. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Nissen, H.J., P. Damerow, and R.K. Englund (1993), Archaic Bookkeeping.Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Przyludski, J., 1929, Further notes on non-aryan loans in Indo-Aryan in: Bagchi, P. C. (ed.), PreAryan and Pre-Dravidian in Sanskrit. Calcutta : University of Calcutta: 145-149 Schmandt-Besserat, D. (1992), Before Writing, 2 vols. Austin: The University of Texas Press. ______ (1996), How Writing Came About. Austin: The University of Texas Press. --------(2009), Tokens and Writing: The Cognitive Development. SCRIPTA, Volume 1 (September 2009): 145-154 Southworth, F., 2005, Linguistic archaeology of South Asia, London, Routledge-Curzon.

Bibliography (Linguistics):
E. Benveniste, Les classes sociales dans la tradition avestique, JA 221, 1932, pp. 117-34. Idem, Les Mages dans lancien Iran, Paris, 1938. W. Brandenstein and M. Mayrhofer, Handbuch des Altpersischen, Wiesbaden, 1964. P. Calmeyer, Zur Genese altiranischer Motive. Die "Statistische Landcharte des Perserreiches," AMI 15, 1982, pp. 105-87; 16, 1983, pp. 141-222. G. G. Cameron, The Persian Satrapies and Related Matters, JNES 32, 1973, pp. 47-56. R. N. Frye, The Heritage of Persia, London, 1962. Gershevitch, The Alloglottography of Old Persian, TPS, 1979, pp. 114-90. G. Gnoli, The Idea of Iran. An Essay on Its Origin, Rome, 1989. C. Herrenschmidt, Dsignation de lempire et concepts politiques de Darius I daprs ses inscriptions en vieux perse, Stud. Ir. 5, 1976, pp. 17-58. E. Herzfeld, The Persian Empire. Studies in Geography and Ethnography of the Ancient Near

East, ed. G. Walser, Wiesbaden, 1968.

K. Hoffmann, Aufstze zur Indoiranistik II, Wiesbaden, 1976. Idem and J. Narten, Der sasanidische Archetypus, Wiesbaden, 1989.

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J. Junge, Satrapie und Natio. Reichsverwaltung und Reichspolitik im Staate Dareios I, Klio 34, 1941, pp. 1-55. O. Leuze, Die Satrapieneinteilung in Syrien und im Zweistromlande von 520-320, Halle, 1935. D. N. MacKenzie, A Concise Pahlavi Dictionary, Oxford, 1971. M. Mancini, Ant. pers. dahyu-, il segno "DH" e il problema degli ideogrammi nel cuneiforme achemenide, Studi e Saggi Linguistici 24, 1984, pp. 241-70. M. Schwartz, The Old Eastern Iranian World View According to the Avesta,Camb. Hist. Iran II, 1985, pp. 640-63. P. Thieme, Mitra and Aryaman, New Haven, Conn., 1957. G. Walser, Die V lkerschaften auf den Reliefs von Persepolis, Berlin, 1966. (Gherardo Gnoli) Originally Published: December 15, 1993 Last Updated: November 11, 2011 This article is available in print. Vol. VI, Fasc. 6, p. 590

Srinivasan Kalyanaraman, Sarasvati Research Center, Herndon, VA, Kalyan97@gmail.com February 23, 2012

[1] Kalyanaraman, S. 2012. Indian Hieroglyphs Invention of Writing. Herndon: Sarasvati Research Center [2] Schmandt-Besserat, D. 1996. How Writing Came About. Austin: The University of Texas Press. [3] Schmandt-Besserat, D. (1992), Before Writing, 2 vols. Austin: The University of Texas Press. [4] Ibid. [5] Schmandt-Besserat, D. 2009. SCRIPTA, Volume 6 (September 2009): 145 [6] Kalyanaraman, S. 2012. Indian Hieroglyphs Invention of Writing. Herndon: Sarasvati Research Center 1101

[7] Nissen, H.J., Damerow, P., Englund, R.K., 1993. Archaic Bookkeeping, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 64-65. [8] Kalyanarman, S. 1998. Indian Lexicon A comparative etymological dictionary of South-

Asian Languages. Manila. http://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97 (Online

download)http://www.scribd.com/doc/2232617/lexicon [9] Possehl, Gregory and Gullapalli, Praveena; 1999; The Early Iron Age in South Asia; in Vincent C. Piggott (ed.). The Archaeometallurgy of the Asian Old World; University Museum Monograph, MASCA Research Papers in Science and Archaeology, Volume 16; Pgs. 153-175; The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia [10] Sharma, Deo Prakash, ed. 2011. Science and Metal Technology of Harappans, New Delhi. Kaver Books. [11] Kalyanaraman, S. 2012. Indian Hieroglyphs Invention of Writing. Herndon: Sarasvati Research Center http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/02/indus-script-computational-linguistics.html Indus script & computational linguistics - Nisha Yadav, Mayank N Vahia (21 Feb. 2012) Indus script & computational linguistics - Nisha Yadav, Mayank N Vahia (21 Feb. 2012)

Indus Script & Computational Linguistics [Article posted on 21-February-2012] Nisha Yadav , Mayank N Vahia

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 Nisha Yadav

Restoration of missing signs using a bigram model of Indus script

Writing is an epitome of the intellectual creation of a civilisation. It involves comprehension as well as abstraction of symbols that signify specific achievement of human creativity and communication. Renfrew points out that "The practice of writing, and the development of a 1103

coherent system of signs, a script, is something which is seen only in complex societies... Writing, in other words, is a feature of civilisations". When a civilisation leaves behind some written records, they are invaluable not only to understand their civic society but also to understand the basic thinking processes that moulded the civilisation. Decipherment of any script is a challenging task. At times it is aided by the discovery of a multilingual text where the same text is written in an undeciphered script as well as known script(s). Both Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform texts were deciphered with the help of multilingual texts. In some cases, continuing linguistic traditions provide significant clues and at times interlocking phonetic values are used as a proof of decipherment. In the absence of these, statistical studies can provide important insights into the structure of the script and can be used to define a syntactic framework for the script. Indus script is a product of one of the largest Bronze Age civilisations often referred to as the Harappan civilisation. At its peak from 2500 BC to 1900 BC, the civilisation was spread over an area of more than a million square kilometres across most of the present day Pakistan, Afghanistan and north-western India. It was distinguished for its highly utilitarian and standardised life style, excellent water management system and architecture. The civilisation had flourishing trade links with West Asia and artefacts of the Harappan civilisation have been found several thousand kilometres away in West Asia.

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 Harappa Archaeological Research Project/J.M. Kenoyer, Courtesy Dept. of Archaeology and Museums, Govt. of Pakistan, Harappa.com

A large unicorn seal from Harappa

The Indus script is predominantly found on objects such as seals, sealings (made of terracotta or steatite), copper tablets, ivory sticks, bronze implements, pottery etc. from almost all sites of this civilisation and in some West Asian sites too. The objects on which the script was written are typically a few square centimetres in size (with the exception of a sign board in Dholavira) and often have multiple components with highly decorated unicorn and other animal motifs with or without a feeding trough. Many of these objects also have geometric designs with multiple folds of symmetry and depiction of scenes involving humans etc. One of the excavators of Mohenjo Daro Sir Mortimer Wheeler says: "At their best, it would be no exaggeration to describe them as little masterpieces of controlled realism, with a monumental strength - in one sense out of all proportion to their size and in another entirely related to it." The Indus script has defied decipherment in spite of several serious attempts. This is primarily because no multilingual texts have been found, the underlying language(s) is unknown and the script occurs in very short texts. The average length of an Indus text is five signs and the longest text in a single line has only 14 signs. Through a series of systematic studies (see table below) the TIFR group, in collaboration with colleagues from India and abroad, has been working on understanding the structure of Indus writing. Adopting a novel methodology based on statistical and computational techniques, the group has approached the problem in a manner that makes no assumptions about its underlying content, language or connection to later writing. The study focuses on exploring the structure of the Indus script in unprecedented detail using developments in the fields of machine learning, data mining and information theory. They approach the problem using various techniques of computational linguistics and pattern recognition such as Markov models, n-grams etc. to 1105

understand the structure of Indus writing. Using these methods, they first established that the Indus writing has definite rules or a grammatical structure. Having established that the writing is neither random nor disordered, the group is now working on revealing the subtleties of its structure. They have identified specific signs that begin and end the texts. There exist frequently occurring sign combinations (pairs and triplets) which tend to appear at specific locations in the texts. The bigram model of the Indus script can accurately restore the illegible or incomplete texts found on broken or damaged objects with about 75% accuracy. Equally interestingly, the flexibility of sign usage in Indus texts, as measured by conditional entropy, falls within the range of linguistic systems and is distinct from non-linguistic systems such as Protein or DNA sequences or Fortran.

Conditional entropy of Indus inscription compared to linguistic and non linguistic systems
The difference in the pattern of sign sequencing between texts coming from Indus sites and West Asian sites suggests that the script was probably also used for writing West Asian contents. They have also shown that signs that seem to be composite of other signs appear in completely different context from its constituent sign sequences demonstrating that shorthanding was not the purpose of sign merger but that merger of signs changed their context and presumably their meaning.

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These studies will eventually help in defining a syntactic framework of the Indus script against which different hypotheses about its content can be tested. Major Conclusions Sl. Test/ Measure No. 1. Zipf- Mandelbrot Law Best fit for a= 15.4, b =2.6, c = 44.5 (95% confidence interval) Small number of signs account for bulk of the data while a large number of signs contribute to a long tail. 2. Cumulative frequency 69 signs: 80 % of EBUDS,23 signs: distribution Indicates asymmetry in usage Results Conclusions

80 % of Text Enders, 82 signs: 80 % of 417 distinct signs. Suggests of Text Beginners logic and structure in writing. Indicates presence of significant correlations between signs. Indicates presence of signs having similar syntactic functions.

3.

Bigram probability

Conditional probability matrix is strikingly different from the matrix assuming no correlations.

4.

Conditional probabilities of text beginners and text enders

Restricted number of signs follow frequent text beginners whereas large number of signs precede frequent text enders. Significant sign pairs and triplets extracted.

5.

Log-likelihood significance test

The most significant sign pairs and triplets are not always the most frequent ones.

6.

Entropy

Random: 8.70; EBUDS: 6.68 1107

Indicates presence of

correlations. 7. Mutual information Random: 0; EBUDS: 2.24 Indicates flexibility in sign usage. 8. Perplexity Monotonic reduction as n-increases Indicates presence of long from 1 to 5. 9. Sign restoration Restoraton of missing and illegible signs. range correlations. Bigram model can restore illegible signs according to probability. 10. Cross validation Sensitivity of the bigram model = 74 Bigram model can predict % 11. Conditional entropy Closer to linguistic systems than non-linguistic systems. signs with 74% accuracy. The flexibility of sign usage in Indus texts is similar to closer to that of linguistic systems. 12. Comparison of Environments in which compound Compound signs are not created for shorthanding but

compound signs with signs appear is very different from constituent sign sequences

that of its constituent sign sequences seem to have different which rarely appear together. function.

Further reading: A statistical approach for pattern search in Indus writing Nisha Yadav, M N Vahia, Iravatham Mahadevan and H. Joglekar International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics, 37, 39 - 52, January 2008

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Segmentation of Indus text Nisha Yadav, M N Vahia, Iravatham Mahadevan and H. Joglekar International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics, 37, 53 - 72, January 2008 Statistical analysis of the Indus script using n-grams Nisha Yadav, Hrishikesh Joglekar, Rajesh P.N. Rao, M. N. Vahia, Iravatham Mahadevan, R. Adhikari PLoS ONE 5(3): e9506., doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009506, March 2010 A probabilistic model for analyzing undeciphered scripts and its application to the 4500-year-old Indus script Rajesh P. N. Rao, Nisha Yadav, Mayank N. Vahia, Hrishikesh Joglekar, R. Adhikari, Iravatham Mahadevan Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Dec. 2009106:13685-13690; published online before print August 5, 2009,doi:10.1073/pnas.0906237106 Evidence for linguistic structure in the Indus script Rajesh P. N. Rao, NishaYadav, Mayank N. Vahia, Hrishikesh Joglekar, R. Adhikari, Iravatham Mahadevan Science, 324, 1165, 2009 Network analysis reveals structure indicative of syntax in the corpus of undeciphered Indus civilisation inscriptions Sitabhra Sinha, Raj Kumar Pan, Nisha Yadav, Mayank Vahia and Iravatham Mahadevan Proceedings of the 2009 Workshop on Graph-based Methods for Natural Language Processing, ACL-IJCNLP 2009, pages 513, Suntec, Singapore

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Entropy, the Indus script and language: A reply to R. Sproat Rajesh Rao, Nisha Yadav, M N Vahia, H Jogalekar, R Adhikari and I Mahadevan Computational Linguistics 36(4), 2010 Harappan geometry and symmetry: A study of geometrical patterns on Indus objects M N Vahia and Nisha Yadav Indian Journal of History of Science, 45, 343, 2010 Classification of patterns on Indus objects Nisha Yadav and M. N. Vahia International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics, Vol. 40: No. 2, June 2011 Indus script: A study of its sign design Nisha Yadav and M N Vahia Scripta, Vol. 3, pp. 133-172, September 2011

http://www.tifr.res.in/newsite/dynamic/TSN/faq.php?telid=25 http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/02/rare-indus-seal-discovered-in-cholistan.html Rare Indus seal discovered in Cholistan Rare Indus seal discovered in Cholistan The Cholistan seal has glyphs which connote a tin-smith's workshop for alloying with tin. Copper alloyed with tin yielded bronze.

Variants of Signs 252 and 254 1110

I suggest that the Glyphs denote a liquid measure.

Volume measuring instruments (made of bronze) of the Qin dynasty. The measuring instrument of the Xin Dynasty (221 to 207 BCE) bears seal-script inscriptions at the upper and lower edges, and the outer surface is decorated with lacquer painting of millet, wheat, beans, grain and hemp motifs.

ranku liquid measure; rebus: ranku tin (Santali) ran:ku a species of deer; ran:kuka (Skt.)(CDIAL 10559). [Antelope glyph is thus a phonetic determinant of the principal message: ranku 'tin'.] krammaru. [Tel.] v. n. To turn, return, go back. (Telugu) krm back(Kho.)(CDIAL 3145) Rebus: kammra[ii][Vedic karmra] a smith, a worker in metals, a goldsmith. (Pali) Kho. krm back NTS ii 262 with (?) (CDIAL 3145)[Cf. Ir. *kamaka -- or *kamraka -- back in Shgh. m back 1111

, Sar. om EVSh 26] (CDIAL 2776) cf. Sang. kamak back , Shgh. om (< *kamak G.M.) back of an animal , Yghn. kama neck (CDIAL 14356). kr, kr neck (Kashmiri) Kal. g neck ; Kho. go front of neck, throat . gala m. throat, neck MBh. (CDIAL 4070) Rebus: khr, khar blacksmith (Kashmiri) kru 2 adj. (f. k r 2 ; for 1, see s.v.), oneeyed (= knu 4, q.v.) (L.V. 2); crooked limbed, deformed (of a person). (Kashmiri) Generally D ii.126, A v.263; a silversmith Sn 962= Dh 239; J i.223; a goldsmith J iii.281; v.282. The smiths in old India do not seem to be divided into black -- , gold -- and silver -- smiths, but seem to have been able to work equally well in iron, gold, and silver, as can be seen e. g. from J iii.282 and VvA 250, where the smith is the maker of a needle. They were constituted into a guild, and some of them were well -- to -- do as appears from what is said of Cunda at D ii.126; owing to their usefulness they were held in great esteem by the people and king alike J iii.281.--kula a smithy M i.25

The glyphic emphasis of the antelope looking back is on the short tail. xol = tail (Kur.); qoli id. (Malt.)(DEDr 2135). Rebus: kol pacalha (Ta.) kol, n. 1. Iron; . (. 550). 2. Metal; . (. 318.) kolla, n. < T. golla. Custodian of treasure; . (P. T. L.) kollicci, n. Fem. of . Woman of the blacksmith caste; . (. .) The gloss kollicci is notable. It clearly evidences thatkol was a blacksmith. kola blacksmith (Ka.); Ko. koll blacksmith (DEDR 2133). Ta. kol working in iron, blacksmith; kolla blacksmith. Ma. kollan blacksmith, artificer.Ko. kolel smithy, temple in Kota village. To. kwalal Kota smithy. Ka. kolime, kolume, kulame, kulime, kulume, kulme fire-pit, furnace; (Bell.; U.P.U.) konimi blacksmith; (Gowda) kola id. Ko. Koll blacksmith. Te. kolimi furnace. Go. (SR.) kollusn to mend implements; (Ph.) kolstn, kulsn to forge; (Tr.) klstn to repair (of ploughshares); (SR.) kolmi smithy (Voc. 948). Kuwi F.) kolhali to forge.(DEDR 2133). [kolimi] kolimi. n. A pit. A fire pit or furnace. mudga kolimi a smelting forge (Telugu) kol-l-ulai, n. < id. +. Black-smith's forge; . (. . . 14) ulai, n. < -. [K. ole, M. ula.] 1. Smith's forge or furnace; . (, 298). 2. Fireplace for cooking, oven; . (W.) 3. Pot of water set over the fire for boiling rice; 1112

 . (, 114). 4. Flurry, excitement, agitation; . (. . 26) (Tamil). ulai < cull f. fireplace Mn. [ Drav. EWA i 396 with lit.] Pa. cull -- f., Pk. cull -- , (Den.) ull -- f., . ila f., K. l f., S. culhi f., ho m., L. cullh, pl. h f., cullh m., P. culh m., cullh f., h m., Ku. N. culi, lo, B. cull, cul, cull, Or. cull, cul, Bi. Mth. clh, h, h, Mth., Bhoj. clhi, H. clh f., h m., G. cl, cul, cul f., cl m., M. l f., ul, ll, lv m.*culliyasi -- , *cullkarttra -- , *culldhna -- , *culldhra -- ; *cull -- ; *kkacull -- .Addenda: cull -- : WPah.kg. (kc.) l (obl. -- i) f. fireplace, oven , J. culi f., Brj. clho m. (CDIAL 4879) kolime, kolume, kulame, kulime, kulume, kulme fire-pit, furnace (Ka.); kolimi furnace (Te.); pit (Te.); kolame a very deep pit (Tu.); kulume kanda_ya a tax on blacksmiths (Ka.) kolel smithy, temple in Kota village. (Ko.) kol working in iron, blacksmith (Ta.)(DEDR 2133)

koi flag (Ta.)(DEDR 2049). ko workshop (Kuwi) Ta. koi banner, flag, streamer; ku summit of a hill, peak, mountain; kai mountain; kar peak, summit of a tower; kuvau mountain, hill, peak; kuumi summit of a mountain, top of a building, crown of the head, bird's crest, tuft of hair (esp. of men), crown, projecting corners on which a door swings. Ma. koi top, extremity, flag, banner, sprout; ku end; kuvau hill, mountain-top; kuuma, kuumma narrow point, bird's crest, pivot of door used as hinge, lock of hair worn as caste distinction; kou head of a bone. Ko. koy flag on temple; ko top tuft of hair (of Kota boy, brahman), crest of bird; ku clitoris. To. kw tip, nipple, child's back lock of hair. Ka. kui pointed end, point, extreme tip of a creeper, sprout, end, top, flag, banner; gui point, flag, banner; kuilu sprout, shoot; ku a point, the peak or top of a hill; kou a point, nipple, crest, gold ornament worn by women in their plaited hair; koa state of being extreme; koa-kone the extreme point; (Hav.) koi sprout; Ko. koi top (of mountain, tree, rock, table), rim of pit or tank, flag. Tu. koi point, end, extremity, sprout, flag; koipuni to bud, germinate; (B-K.) koipu, koipel a sprout; koir the top-leaf; kou cock's comb, peacock's tuft. Te. koi tip, top, end or point of a flame; koa-kona the very end or extremity. Kol. (Kin.) koi point. Pa. kor cock's comb. Go. (Tr.) ko tender tip or shoot of a plant or tree; koi (S.) end, tip, (Mu.) tip of bow; 1113

(A.) koi point (Voc. 891). Malt. qogo comb of a cock; ? q ru the end, the top (as of a tree)(DEDR 2049)

Rare Indus seal discovered in Cholistan Mansoor Malik | Metropolitan > Lahore | From the Newspaper Feb. 7, 2012

The archaeologists team leader said the excavation revealed a circular platform at Sui-Vihar built with sun-dried bricks and a number of supporting walls to hold the platform and the cylindrical structure. File Photo LAHORE, Feb 6: The Punjab University archaeology department has discovered a rare Indus seal in steatite material with carved figure of Ibex with two pictographs from Wattoowala, Cholistan, during a survey of different sites near Derawar Fort along the ancient bed of River Hakra.

The seal dates back to 2500-2000 BC. The seal has been discovered by a six-member team of archaeologists headed by PU archaeology department chairman Dr Farzand Masih, who has just concluded a Unesco-funded 1114

US$26,000 project Sui-Vihar Excavations and Archaeological Reconnaissance of southern Punjab. Dr Masih told Dawn that the discovery would open new dimensions for scholars. The seal has a perforated boss in the back with variant style from Harappan seals showing the regional influence and perhaps a separate identity in the Harappan domain. The seal is almost square in shape and slightly broken from the right side but figure of Ibex is almost intact. The muscles, genitalia, hooves and tail of the Ibex were engraved artistically with high proportion of skill and craftsmanship. Under the project, Dr Masih said the PU team had also taken up the gigantic task of exploring the sites along the Hakra River in spite of the inhospitable climatic conditions. He said the team surveyed different sites including the Mihruband, Derawar Ther, Charoyanwala, Sunkewala, Pararewala, Sheruwala, Ganwariwala, Siddhuwala and Wattoowala. He said the cultural material collected from various mounds witnessed the presence of Early, Mature and Late Harappan settlements. Under the project, Dr Masih said the team also conducted excavations at Sui-Vihar, which was the only existing example of Sankhya doctrines in Pakistan. He said the tablet on the stupa consecrated by Balanandi in the 11th regnal year of Kanishka-I suggested that the Vihara was constructed to impart the philosophy of Sankhya/Samkhya to the devotees. He said the Sankhya was one of the six Hindu orthodox philosophy attributed to sage Kapila. The Sankhya doctrines were based on the renunciation of the worldly affairs and to undertake severe penances to perform yoga to attain the nirvana. The vedic cosmological-ritual, mysticism and the philosophical views of the six darsanas were the stages for the liberation (moksa) from the sequence of birth, death and re-birth (samsara). The archaeologists team leader said the excavation revealed a circular platform at Sui-Vihar built with sun-dried bricks and a number of supporting walls to hold the platform and the cylindrical structure. He said the remnants of a votive stupa suggested that the place might had been converted to Buddhist establishment when Kanishka-I embraced Buddhism. In spite of this, he said, Kanishkas had great respect for other faiths and beliefs. There was religious toleration and fraternity amongst the believers of different religious cults. The plan laid bare by the team is understudy and likely to shed more light on the architectural grandeurs of Kushana 1115

period, he added. Dr Masih said the team had also combed the Cholistan desert in the vicinity of Derawar Fort. Prior to that, he said, Sir Aural Stein and Henry Field had conducted the survey in 1941 and 1955, respectively. After the Independence, he said, Dr Muhammad Rafique Mughal had conducted an extensive survey during 1974-77 and discovered altogether 424 settlements on a 24-32 km wide strip on both sides of the dry bed of Hakra River. He said the Mughals work in Cholistan had established a new dimension in the understanding of Indus cultures in Cholistan but unfortunately any indigenous or foreign scholar could not precede his work further even after three decades. Consequently, he said, the PU took the gigantic task of exploring the sites in spite of the inhospitable climatic conditions and surveyed some 25 sites in Cholistan Desert, which eventually led to the discovery of the rare Indus seal. During explorations in Cholistan, the archaeology department chairman told Dawn that the team had also recorded flagrant violation of the Antiquities Rules to the cultural mounds which had been subjected to the worst human vandalism. The land grabbers and other mafias have brutally murdered the cultural heritage while sinking tubewells on the mounds and ploughing the mounds to convert them into farm lands, he said. Dr Masih said the private land owners had sold the land including the cultural mounds and now the attitude of the new buyers towards the heritage was very hostile and it was feared that if no concrete steps were taken to safeguard the relics of the past, it might meet the fate of ruins of Harappa that suffered colossal damage during the laying of Lahore-Multan railway track. The entire scenario shows the dexterity of the investors and the pathetic attitude of the agencies responsible for cultural heritage of Pakistan, he observed. http://www.dawn.com/2012/02/07/rare-indus-seal-discovered-in-cholistan.html http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/01/dilmun-at-sea-or-not-at-sea-review.html Dilmun: At sea or not at sea? A review article -- Theresa Howard-Carter (1987)

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Dilmun: At sea or not at sea? -- Theresa Howard-Carter (1987) Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Spring, 1987), pp. 54-117 http://www.docstoc.com/docs/documentpreview.aspx?doc_id=111581012 Mirror: http://www.scribd.com/doc/79800448

Dilmun sea Theresa Howard-carter 1987 http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/01/cultural-interactions-of-3rd-or-2nd.html Cultural Interactions of 3rd or 2nd Millennium BCE Between ANE and Meluhha Cultural Interactions of 3rd or 2nd Millennium BCE Between ANE and Meluhha 1. Cultural Interactions of 3rd or 2nd Millennium BCE Between ANE and Meluhha http://www.scribd.com/doc/79292126 2. Possible central Asian origin for seal-impressed jar from 'temple tower' at Failaka (Eric Olijdam, 2008) Mirrored at: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/111486130/Cultural-interactions-of3rd-or-2nd-millennium-BCE-between-ANE-and-Meluhha

Pages 268-287 in E. Olijdam & R.H. Spoor (eds), 2008, Intercultural Relations between South and Southwest Asia. Studies in commemoration of E.C.L. During Caspers (1934-1996). (BAR International Series 1826; Society for Arabian Studies Monographs, No. 7). Oxford. http://www.scribd.com/doc/2566221/meluhhanvillage One Meluhhan village in Akkad (3rd millennium BCE) http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/01/truth-behind-tablets-andrew-lawler.html The truth behind the tablets - Andrew Lawler The truth behind the tablets - Andrew Lawler

The Truth Behind the Tablets Volume 65 Number 1, January/February 2012 by Andrew Lawler 1117

The rush to document thousands of ancient texts before they are sent back to Iran, or sold, reveals the daily workings of the Persian Empire Tens of thousands of clay tablets and fragments from Persepolis are written in cuneiform to express Elamite, an ancient language of western Iran. (Courtesy Persepolis Fortification Archive Project, Oriental Institute) Tensions between Iran and the United States have rarely run higher, with both governments sparring over alleged terror plots, disputing the nature of Irans nuclear program, and vying to influence the uprisings across the Arab world. But in Chicago and Boston courtrooms, the two countries have found rare common groundneither wants ancient tablets from the royal palace of Persepolis in Iran to end up on the auction block. To the relief of scholars, two recent court rulings may give them their joint wish, preserving open access to what is the most significant source of information on the ancient Persian Empire uncovered to date. In the early 1930s, during excavations of Persepolis, University of Chicago archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld unearthed tens of thousands of fragments of fragile clay tablets dating from about 500 B.C. The fragments were packed into 2,353 cardboard boxes and shipped to the universitys Oriental Institute. The Iranian government of the day allowed the export, with the understanding that the tablets would be translated and then returned. But the task of piecing together and understanding the vast number of fragments has been under way for more than seven decades and the majority of the collection remains in Chicago. Now, fearing loss of the archive, the university has moved into high gear to create thousands of digital images of the tablets, which record the day-to-day accounts of the empire during the reign of 1118

Darius the Great (521486 B.C.) and include records of those traveling on behalf of the king, lists of workers rations, and careful notation of offerings made to deities. Researchers hope to have most of this intensive effort completed within the next two years. To get the job done, the institute has assembled what Gil Stein, director of the Oriental Institute, calls a dream team of textual scholars, archaeologists, and technical experts in digital cataloguing to take images of the tablets and make them available for public use. Translations are also being done, though it will take much longer to complete that daunting task. Whether they are seized for sale or the government of Iran demands them back, the tablets will be out of the building soon. We all understand how important and urgent this is, says Stein.

http://www.archaeology.org/1201/features/persepolis_clay_tablets_iran_elamite_cuneiform.html http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/01/trefoil-as-indian-hieroglyph.html Trefoil as an Indian hieroglyph: association with veneration of ancestors, sacredness (Kalyanaraman, 2012) Trefoil as an Indian hieroglyph: association with veneration of ancestors, sacredness (Kalyanaraman, 2012) Thanks to Carlos Aramayo for the insights on links with Egyptian hieroglyphs. For a detailed discussion of Indian hieroglyphs from circa 3500 BCE, see: http://tinyurl.com/7rbcer2 https://www.createspace.com/3727464 (Indian Hieroglyphs - Invention of Writing, S. Kalyanaraman, 2012). See also: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2012/01/indian-hieroglyphs-invention-ofwriting.html

Hieroglyph (Greek for "sacred carving") or hieroglyphics ( []). Sacredness connoted by the temple-priest explains the occurrence of the trefoil glyph on the two bases discovered in Mohenjo-daro, for holding ivalinga. Veneration of

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pitr-s is an ancient Indian tradition. This is also paralleled in the Sit-Shamshi bronze from Susa on a Uruk statue and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Read on...http://www.docstoc.com/docs/documentpreview.aspx?doc_id=110968460trefoilhieroglyph http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/12/indus-seal-from-excavation-of-salut.html An Indus Seal from the excavation of the Salut Early Bronze Age tower An Indus Seal from the excavation of the Salut Early Bronze Age tower December, 22, 2011 The remarkable findings reported from Salut, Oman are consistent with the central thesis of Indus Script Cipher. The writing in Indus Script is of artisan ancestors of Harosheth, (cognate kharoh) tradition. It was harosheth haggoyim, a smithy of nations, indeed. Kalyanaraman

Location of Wd Salt, Oman (in relation to Indian civilization area).Latitude. 23.0444444, Longitude. 57.6472222 An Indus Seal from the excavation of the Salut Early Bronze Age tower

A stone seal, to be considered an import from Indus Valley, has been found during the last archaeological campaign in Salut. 1120

Reading of the inscription of text:

Field symbol: Ox with a trough (?) in front. This was a stone seal with a perforated boss and was perhaps tied to a trade load from Meluhha. Glyphic elements read rebus: Blacksmith guild; Native metal + tin + turned metalwork from furnace. ran:ku = liquid measure (Santali) Rebus: ran:ku = tin (Santali) kna corner (Nk.); Tu. ku angle, corner (Tu.); Rebus: kd to turn in a lathe (B.) Glyph: dma, damr young bull (A.)(CDIAL 6184). Glyph: *agara1 cattle . 2. *dagara -- . [Same as a- gara -- 2 s.v. *agga -- 2 as a pejorative term for cattle] 1. K. angur m. bullock , L. agur, (Ju.) gar m. horned cattle ; P. agar m. cattle , Or. agara; Bi. gar old worn -- out beast, dead cattle , dhr gar cattle in general ; Bhoj. gar cattle ; H. gar, gr m. horned cattle .2. H. dgar m. = prec. (CDIAL 5526) Rebus: hangar blacksmith (H.) Glyph: sal stake, spike, splinter, thorn, difficulty (H.); sal workshop (Santali) Vikalpa: aar a splinter (Ma.) aaruka to burst, crack, sli off,fly open; aarcca splitting, a crack; aarttuka to split, tear off, open (an oyster) (Ma.); aaruni to crack (Tu.) (DEDR 66) Rebus: aduru native, unsmelted metal (Kannada) gaa four (Santali); rebus: ka fire-altar, furnace (Santali) Vikalpa: ponea four (Santali); rebus: pon gold (Ta.) abu an iron spoon (Santali) Vikalpa: Kol. (SR.) ge spoon (DEDR 1267). Rebus: Ta. kaai (v-, -nt-) to churn, turn in lathe, mash to pulp (as vegetables with the bowl of a ladle); kaaical polishing, enamelling, turned work in wood; kaaiccal turning on a lathe, that which is turned on a lathe. kaaica-paarai , n. < id. +. Turner's shop; 1121

 . Loc. Glyph: S. bahu m. large pot in which grain is parched, Rebus; bhah m. kiln (P.) baa = a kind of iron (G.) Vikalpa: mego = rimless vessels (Santali) bhaa furnace (G.) baa = kiln (Santali); baa = a kind of iron (G.) bhaha -- m.n. gridiron (Pkt.) bahu large cooking fire bah f. distilling furnace; L. bhah m. grainparcher's oven, bhah f. kiln, distillery, aw. bhah; P. bhah m., h f. furnace, bhah m. kiln; S. bhah ke distil (spirits). (CDIAL 9656) Rebus: ab, himba, hompo lump (ingot?) (Mu.) Rebus: baa = a kind of iron (G.) bhaa furnace (G.) pattar trough (Ta.) ptra, (l.) s. Vessel, cup, plate; receptacle. [lw. Sk. Id.] (Nepali) ptramu A utensil, . Hardware. Metal vessels. (Telugu) Rebus paar-ai community; guild as of workmen (Ta.); pthar precious stone (OMarw.) (CDIAL 8857) Patthara [cp. late Sk. prastara. The ord. meaning of Sk. pr. is "stramentum"] 1. stone, rock S i.32. -- 2. stoneware Miln 2. (Pali) Pa. Pk. patthara -- m. stone , S. patharu m., L. (Ju.) pathar m., khet. patthar, P. patthar m. ( forms of Bi. Mth. Bhoj. H. G. below with atth or ath), WPah.jaun. ptthar; Ku. pthar m. slates, stones , gng. pth*lr flat stone ; A. B. pthar stone , Or. pathara; Bi. pthar, patthar, patthal hailstone ; Mth. pthar, pathal stone , Bhoj. pathal, Aw.lakh. pthar, H. pthar, patthar, pathar, patthal m., G. patthar, pathr m.; M. pthar f. flat stone ; Ko. phttaru stone ; Si. patura chip, fragment ; -- S. pathir f. stone in the bladder ; P. pathr f. small stone ; Ku. pathar stone cup ; B. pthri stone in the bladder, tartar on teeth ; Or. pathur stoneware ; H. patthr f. grit , G. pathr f. *prastarapaa -- , *prastaramrttik -- , *prastarsa -- .Addenda: prastar -- : WPah.kg. ptthr m. stone, rock ; pthreu to stone ; J. pthar m. stone ; OMarw. pthar precious stone . (CDIAL 8857) From one of the higher hills of the large ditch encircling the EBA tower currently excavated by IMTO some 300 m to the north-west of salut, came one stone stamp seal which, by virtue of its iconography, shape and incised inscription, can be considered a genuine (Greater) Indus Valley import. The seal shows a bull, facing right and standing in front of a rectangular feature, possibly an altar or maybe just a manger. Above this scene, stands a line of Indus alphabetical signs. The quality of the glyptic and the close resemblance with specimen coming from Indus Valley sites, seem to indicate that the seal is an original Indus import, rather than an imitation. Such characteristic square stamp seals marked the transition from Early Harappan to Mature Harappan, together with the appearance of the Indus script. This transition is dated around 2500 BC, a date after which various artefacts related to the Indus civilization started to be found in the Near East, from Mesopotamia to Iran, to Failaka and Bahrein. Among the few Bronze Age seals discovered so far in Oman, only two could be compared to the one from Salut EBA tower. One is a stamp seal found in Ras al-Jinz, also bearing Indus signs but 1122

made of a copper/bronze, and the other is a stone stamp seal from a tomb in Bisyah, with no inscription. Their overall shape and motifs induce to regard them as well as genuine imports, though in the case of metal seals, only very few examples are known from the Greater Indus Valley, thus leaving some doubts about a possible local production. http://arabiantica.humnet.unipi.it/index.php?id=715&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=68& tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=711&cHash=2fe7666e8c The 2005 campaign at Salut, Oman - Universit degli Studi di Pisa Redazione Archaeogate, 01-06-2005 Two areas were chosen for excavation on February/March 2005: trench 1, in the north-west corner of the upper part of the hill, and trench 2, across the 'lower structure' located at the eastern foothill of the mound. In addition, we made a survey along the ancient falaj system. Trench 1 The excavation confirms the determinate constructional phases of 2004B sounding. -1st construction phase. The corridor-like (room 1a), along the fortress defence wall, presents three small compartments with wide openings constructed in its western part, and on the opposite side it ends with a mud-bricks staircase, showing the presence of two-storage structures at this phase. -2nd construction phase. Significant renovations of the lay-out and general organization of the site were undertaken: the outer defence wall was significantly enlarged, and a monumental mud-brick platform, delimited from the east by a well done stone wall, was constructed. The platform was used as foundation for a mud-brick building (Building1) which was mainly composed of a sub-rectangular room (7.2X9.3 m) supported once by six pillars; it presents a stone pavement of four low steps on the south corner, and two premises (room 2 and room 3) adjoining to its south-eastern corner. -3rd construction phase. The top layer revealed horizontal surfaces, floors, pits (postholes) and remains of stone foundations of circular structures (2.5-3.0 m in diameter), a sort of dwelling, 1123

belonging to the mediaeval re-occupation of the site. The foundation of Salut goes back to the Early Iron Age period (late 2nd millennia) and the site was occupied till at least the 9th- early 8th centuries BC, as it shown by the preliminary analyses of the materials and by the radiocarbon dates from different strata. The Building 1 recalls the monumental architecture of the 'pillared-halls' of some Iron Age sites in the U.A.E (Rumeilah, Qarn Bint Saud, Bithna, Muweilah); the set of finds represents votive objects (bronze snakes, miniature axe, bronze vessel), personal ornaments (rings, beads, pendant. pin) and tools (razors, hoe, awls, needles). Particularly interesting are several pottery sherds with applied decoration of snakes, whereas fragments of soft-stone vessels and several leaf-shaped, triangular and lanceolate arrowheads are characteristic materials of Iron Age assemblage. Trench 2 The preserved height of the outer wall, which is round curved, is about 2.5 m. The construction technique, identical to that of the northern defence wall of the fortress, proves the contemporaneity of both walls. The falaj The falaj is an irrigation system through which underground water is directed by means canals to fields. The falaj of Salut (north-west and north of the fortress) belongs to 'shallow falaj' type, which tapped water from shallow water table as alluvional fans or wadi's bed; it was typical of Iron Age II (1100/1000-600 BC). http://www.archaeogate.org/vicino_oriente/article/453/1/the-2005-campaign-at-salut-omanuniversita-degli-studi.html

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The pillared room, Building 1

The room 1a

A niche in the wall M26

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The falaj: open channel The 2004 campaign at Salut, Oman - Universit degli Studi di Pisa Redazione Archaeogate, 13-01-2005 The Survey On March/April 2004 thirteen topographical Units (UT) have been determinated, on the base of the structures evidence and on the large amount of pottery scattered around. The surveyed area, which includes the hill of Salut and the closely surrounding plain, was 15000 square metres. 1126

The most part of structures was located on the top of the hill, where the existence of a defence wall was indicated on the surface by rows of medium size squared sandstone slabs. A lower semicircular structure, made by the same building technique, adjoins the eastern slope of the hill. Isolated circular structures, made from roughly stones and stone slabs, lay on the west side of the top. Probably collapsed houses, large circular structures made of squared sandstone blocks (most probably pertinent to a third millennium context), an Islamic cemetery, the presence of irrigation system (falaj) and remains of a building (according to local reports are the ruin of an ancient mosque), testifying an intense peopling during different times. The preliminary analyses of the collected surface materials, mainly pottery, confirmed the existence of medieval occupations divided into: Early Islamic (VIII-X centuries), Middle Islamic (XI-XIV centuries) and Late Islamic (XVI century to modern times); on the other hand, the presence of surface materials as bronze arrowheads and distinct types of pottery vessels, indicate an earlier occupation, dated to the late 2nd millennium BC. The sounding The excavation of October 2004 allowed us to determinate four constructional phases. The first results of radiocarbon dating show that the foundation of the site must be dated close the late 2nd first half of the 1st millennia BC (Early Iron Age period on Omani Peninsula). The large amount of pottery materials comes from layers of second and third construction phase, comprising diagnostic sherds as spouted-jars and carinate bowls, but also soft-stone decorated vessels, terracotta animal figurines and one triangular-shaped arrowhead. http://www.archaeogate.org/vicino_oriente/article/451/1/the-2004-campaign-at-salut-omanuniversita-degli-studi.html

The fortification wall 1127

The main test-sounding

Terracotta camel figurine

1128

Fragment of soft-stone vessel

Saudi. The archaeological mission to Salut (Oman)

Floor tiles depicting a serpent (Salut) Salut is a fortified settlement dating to the Iron Age (13001129

800 BC), located at the western foot of the Hajar mountain range, Bissiyah region, northern Oman. Since 2004, imtoo (Italian Mission to Oman), under the guidance of prof. Avanzini, operates the site and its surroundings. The ruins of the fort are located on a rocky outcrop about 20 meters high, the center of an ancient oasis, where a mighty walls built of large stone blocks irregularly circular draws a profile. This is a settlement in monumental character, perhaps the destination of the Templars, as confirmed by the objects that are not found in everyday use. Many depictions of snakes, both in bronze clay, seem, in fact attributable to a kind of worship and respect are materials from sites located in the UAE. The results of the excavations and general news on the site, on land and on research activities carried out by imtoo and its partners are available on the portal Saudi Ancient, from which you can download the pdf documents with the results of individual campaigns. Through an on-line, searchable by assigning a password You can also access to all information relating to the excavation. http://sta.humnet.unipi.it/index.php?id=126 Archaeology report on Salut_ Oman _2004-5_

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Fig. 19. Salut 1: copper/bronze snake; 2-3: copper/bronze arrowheads; 4: copper/bronze axe; 5: stone ring; 6: copper/bronze cauldron Metal objects The metal assemblage is represented by different kinds of tools and weapons, vessels, personal ornaments and decorations, and objects having a possible votive function. The majority of pieces were made from copper or bronze (analyses of the alloy have not yet been carried out which is why we denote pieces as copper/bronze), but the presence of fragments of several iron objects should be specially mentioned. It is well known that until the middle of the 1st millennium B.C., the metal mostly used in the so-called Iron Age Omani cultures was bronze[22] , and the finds of objects made from iron are extremely rare [23] . It seems that here, too, Salut is an exceptional site among the contemporary monuments of the Omani Peninsula. Weapons and tools. Altogether twenty one complete (18 pieces) and fragmented copper/bronze arrowheads were found in different strata of the top periods of occupation of the site and/or on its surface. All belong to the category of the tanged arrowheads or arrowheads with the stem. Following the general typology proposed by P. Lombard [24] , they were divided into three types: leaf-shaped, triangular, and lanceolate arrowheads... Two complete copper/bronze razors with straight backs and slightly rounded sharpened edges, probably used to scrape leather, were found in the top layers of the site. One of the pieces could 1131

be classified as a razor with tang handle, and the other as the razor with flat handle which is the continuation of the blade. The length of these razors is 3.3 and 4.3 cm. Quite a number of fragments of copper/bronze tools in the shape of pointed rods, rounded or quadrangular in section, were found in different layers of the top period of the site. Unfortunately, in the majority of cases it is not possible to specify precisely what all the pieces are. Probably, some of them might belong to needles, while others to pins, awls or other kind of similar tools and/or personal ornaments (see also below). Two almost complete needles (Pl. 11: 5) according to their sizes, were most probably used for sewing leather. The length of complete needles is 7.0 and 27.0 cm. and the diameter of section is 0.4 and 0.5 cm... A few fragments of knives were found in the top layers of the site and there are two almost complete pieces. One is a blade of a knife made from iron. It has a straight back, a pointed tip (the other end is broken) and one sharpened edge; the section is triangular. The length of the piece is 6.6 cm; its maximum thickness 0.7 cm. Another piece is made from copper or bronze, and has a rather thin double-sided blade, a rhomboidal section, and a pointed tip (the other end is broken). The object was folded. The proposed length of the object is 7.5 cm and its thickness 0.3 cm. An object, which could be the lower part of a blade with broken tip of an iron double-sided dagger, was found in the US1 on the top of the monumental mud-brick platform. The blade is rhomboidal in section, and has pointed midrib. The maximum width of blade is 5.6 cm; its maximum thickness 2.4 cm. One more fragment of blade also of a double-sided iron dagger, together with fragments of iron tanged handle and a piece of rod, was found on the US3floor in the pillared hall. A complete copper/bronze chisel was made from a rounded rod. One end of the tool, slightly banded, was flattened and sharpened, whereas another end bore traces of hammering on its top surface (Pl.11: 6). The length of the object is 3.4 cm, the diameter of the rod 0.5 cm. Another chisel was made from a flat copper/bronze rod. One end was sharpened, and another one broken. The length of object is 3.2 cm and its section 0.3x0.6 cm. A similar object, but slightly bigger in size, is known from Rumeilah [28] . A complete tool made from copper/bronze rod quadrangular in section was found in the top strata of the site. One end is pointed and another rounded: it was probably used as an awl. The length of the object is 9.3 cm; the size of the section 2.6-3.2x2.6-3.2 cm. A fragment of a probably similar tool made from rectangular copper/bronze rod was found on the US23floor in 1132

room 2 of Building I. Both ends are broken. The length of the piece is 4.4 cm and its section 2.2x2.8 cm. A fragment of iron rod, rectangular in section, with a pointed end, could be also interpreted as part of an awl. The length of the object is 3.9 cm and its section 4.5x5.3 cm. Vessels. A complete copper/bronze cauldron was found inside the oven discovered immediately to the SE limits of Building I (Fig. 19: 6; Pl. 11: 9). It has a hemispherical body with flat, slightly convex base and two vertical loop handles fixed at the upper part of the body. The rim was folded and flattened on the top, and elaborated on the exterior with a wide groove. The handles, oval in section, were fixed to the body by four rivets fixing to both the external and internal surfaces of the body two parallel thin rectangular plaques obtained by hammering the lower parts of each handle. The cauldron was hammered from a single piece of metal. Traces of secondary burning on the exterior as well as the place where it was found indicate a probable utilitarian purpose of the object. The diameter of the rim is 31.0 cm, the diameter of base 22.0 cm and the height of the vessel 20.0 cm. The maximum height of the handles above the rim is 5.5 cm, the maximum width of the handles is 12.0 cm and the diameter of the rounded section of the handles is 1.2 cm. Two bronze bowls from the grave in Bydia (Emirate of Fujairah), dated close to the beginning of 2nd millennium BC, have single vertical handles similar to the cauldron from Salut [29]. Unfortunately, their sizes are too small for a direct comparison. Two bronze vessels, a cauldron and a large bowl, are known from Iron Age graves in Israel. Their size as well as their rounded vertical loop handles with similar technical details of the fittings could be taken as good parallels for the cauldron from Salut [30] . A small copper/bronze conical lid of a miniature vessel was found on the US23floor in the room 2 of Building I. It has a shallow oval cavity on the internal surface. The diameter of lid is 3.1 cm and the height 1.8 cm. Personal ornaments and decorations. A number of copper/bronze finds could be classified as personal ornaments. These are rings with rounded open ends, probably used as fingerings, and few banded wires used, probably, as clasps. Rings with pointed opened ends may be earrings. The same function is suggested for a ring fragment with an elaborate pendant which was somehow attached to it. A small bell-shaped pendant with circular hook on the top is of particular interest. A small hemispherical bead, made from gold foil and slightly dented in many parts, was found on the US23floor in room 2 of Building I. The diameter of finger rings is 2.1-2.5 cm; the diameter of complete earrings is 1.7 and 2.3 cm; the diameter of the golden bead is 0.6 1133

cm. Fragments of rounded or flattened copper/bronze rods, sometimes with one end pointed and the other decorated with grooves, could be identified as parts of pins. The diameter of the rods is 2.3-3.5 cm. Fragments of at least two copper/bronze mirrors in the form of discs were found in the top strata of the site. There are remains of a handle attachment on one of the fragments: two small holes (a rivet preserved in one of the holes) near the edge of the disc. Many objects, identified below as copper/bronze plaques, were found in the top strata of the site, scattered around above the US23 floor in the eastern part of room 2 of Building I. Some are rather small, thin rectangular pieces with two holes on the edges, while others, with slightly rounded ends, have the third additional hole in the centre with, in some cases, the rivets for fixing still preserved. The size of the complete rectangular plaques is 0.8-1.0x2.4-2.6 and 1.1x3.6 cm, the diameter of the holes 0.2-0.3 cm and the length of the rivets 1.2-1.3 cm. A trapezoidal plaque with folded edges was probably once attached to the tip of a leather belt. Its size is 0.6-1.5x1.9 cm. There are also a number of hemispherical or convex/concave plaques with edges slightly pleated for attachment. The diameter of the hemispherical plaques is 1.8- 2.6 cm. They were most probably used for decorating leather belts or perhaps other kind of dresses, but we also suggest the different function of the rectangular pieces for restoring wooden and/or clay objects (vessels?). Among the hemispherical plaques there are two of particular interest. Their external top surfaces were decorated with dots punctuated from the inside. We are in full agreement with Lombards proposal about the use of a similar plaque from Rumeilah as the metal base of a quiver, made in perishable material; the arrows would have been slotted, inside the quiver, in this base with cavities/holes [31] . The diameters of the plaques with dots are 2.3 and 2.6 cm. Votive objects. The following pieces were identified as votive objects. A complete copper/bronze plaque in the form of snake with a banded body, triangular head and pointed tail was found on the top surface of the monumental mud-brick platform, immediately SE of the pillared hall (Fig. 19: 1; Pl. 11: 8). The top surface of the body was richly decorated with tiny punctuated dots, and the eyes were shown as slightly bigger punctuated dots. The length of the plaque is 16.9 cm, the width 1.3 (head), 1.0 (body) and 0.3 (tip of tail) cm and the thickness 0.5 cm. A fragment of another similar plaque was also found: the first band of the body and the rhomboidal head are preserved. Identical plaques are known from the so-called Mound of Serpents at al-Qusais [32] . The presence of such objects in the form of snakes as well as appliqu snake decoration on the pottery vessels probably testify to the existence of a specific 1134

cult widespread in the south-eastern Arabia (including Salut) during the Iron Age period [33]. A miniature copper/bronze axe was found in the top strata of the site (Fig.19: 4). Its shape is trapezoidal with a tubular shafted handle; the edge of the blade is sharpened. The piece was made by hammering. The length of the blade is 4.0 cm, the width 1.5 and 3.6 cm, its thickness 0.25 cm, the length of shaft 2.2 cm and its diameter 0.6 cm. Several non-utilitarian bronze axes, different in shapefrom the Salut piece, are known from an Iron Age grave context in Al-Qusais, Hili 8, Qarn Bint Saud and from Rumeilah [34]. A massive copper/bronze object was found on the US3 floor in the room with pillars. Despite the very poor state of conservation, it is reminiscent of a sort of finial of a wooden (?) object (standard?) with a hemispherical base and a V-shaped antenna-like projection at the top terminating with something similar to camels heads. The proposed diameter of the base is 12.0 cm and the height of the object is about 8.4 cm. Some comparisons for the object, although quite remote, could be found in Luristan bronzes and in the antiquities from Scythian mound burials (kurgans)... Read on... http://arabiantica.humnet.unipi.it/fileadmin/Arabian_Files/pdf/EVO_XXVIII.pdf Posted http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/12/indus-script-hieroglyphs-composite.html Indus script hieroglyphs: composite animal, smithy Indus script hieroglyphs: composite animal, smithy Composite animal on Indus script is a composite hieroglyph composed of many glyphic elements. All glyphic elements are read rebus to complete the technical details of the bill of lading of artifacts created by artisans.

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m1186A Composite animal hieroglyph. Text of inscription (3 lines). The animal is a quadruped: pasaramu, pasalamu = an animal, a beast, a brute, quadruped (Te.)Rebus: pasra smithy (Santali) Allograph: pan r ladder, stairs(Bshk.)(CDIAL 7760) Thus the composite animal connotes a smithy. Details of the smithy are described orthographically by the glyphic elements of the composition. The glyphic of the hieroglyph: tail (serpent), face (human), horns (bos indicus, zebu or ram), trunk (elephant), front paw (tiger), mo the tail of a serpent (Santali) Rebus: Md. moen massages, mixes . Kal.rumb. mo -- to thresh , urt. ma -- to soften (CDIAL 9890) Thus, the ligature of the serpent as a tail of the composite animal glyph is decoded as: polished metal (artifact). Vikalpa: xol = tail (Kur.); qoli id. (Malt.)(DEDr 2135). Rebus: kol pacalha (Ta.) kol, n. 1. Iron; . (. 550). 2. Metal; . (. 318.) kolla, n. < T. golla. Custodian of treasure; . (P. T. L.) 1136

kollicci, n. Fem. of . Woman of the blacksmith caste; . (. .) The gloss kollicci is notable. It clearly evidences that kol was a blacksmith. kola blacksmith (Ka.); Ko. koll blacksmith (DEDR 2133). Ta. kol working in iron, blacksmith; kolla blacksmith. Ma. kollan blacksmith, artificer. Ko. kolel smithy, temple in Kota village. To. kwalal Kota smithy. Ka. kolime, kolume, kulame, kulime, kulume, kulme fire-pit, furnace; (Bell.; U.P.U.) konimi blacksmith; (Gowda) kolla id. Ko. koll blacksmith. Te. kolimi furnace. Go. (SR.) kollusn to mend implements; (Ph.) kolstn, kulsn to forge; (Tr.) klstn to repair (of ploughshares); (SR.) kolmi smithy (Voc. 948). Kuwi (F.) kolhali to forge (DEDR 2133) kol Working in iron; . Blacksmith; . (Tamil) m he face (Santali); Rebus: m h '(copper) ingot' (Santali);mleccha-mukha (Skt.) = milakkhu copper (Pali) ku : . (, 5). 3. [K. ku.] Tusk; . (. 39, 1). 4. Horn; . (. . . 21). Ko. k (obl. k-) horns (one horn is kob), half of hair on each side of parting, side in game, log, section of bamboo used as fuel, line marked out. To. kw (obl. kw-) horn, branch, path across stream in thicket. Ka. ku horn, tusk, branch of a tree; kr horn. Tu. k, ku horn. Te. ku rivulet, branch of a river. Pa. k (pl. kul) horn (DEDR 2200)Rebus: ko = the place where artisans work (G.) kul 'tiger' (Santali); klu id. (Te.) klupuli = Bengal tiger (Te.)Pk. kolhuya -- , kulha -- m. jackal < *khu -- ; H.kolh, l m. jackal , adj. crafty ; G. kohl , l n. jackal , M. kolh, l m. kr crying BhP., m. jackal RV. = kru -- m. P. [kru] Pa. kohu -- , uka -- and kotthu -- , uka -- m. jackal , Pk. kohu -- m.; Si. koa jackal , koiya leopard GS 42 (CDIAL 3615). [ klh ] [ klh ] A jackal (Marathi) Rebus: kol furnace, forge (Kuwi) kol alloy of five metals, pacaloha (Ta.) Allograph: kla = woman (Nahali) [The ligature of a woman to a tiger is a phonetic determinant; the scribe clearly conveys that the gloss represented is kla] karba 'iron' (Ka.)(DEDR 1278) as in ajirda karba 'iron' (Ka.) kari, karu 'black' (Ma.)(DEDR 1278) karbura 'gold' (Ka.) karbon 'black gold, iron' (Ka.) kabbia 'iron' (Ka.) karum pon 'iron' (Ta.); kabin 'iron' (Ko.)(DEDR 1278) Ib 'iron' (Santali) [cf. Toda gloss below: ib needle.] Ta. Irumpu iron, instrument, weapon. a. irumpu,irimpu iron. Ko. ibid. To. Ib needle. Ko. Irmb iron. Te. Inumu id. Kol. (Kin.) inum (pl. inmul)iron, sword. Kui (Friend-Pereira) rumba vai ironstone (for vai, see 5285). (DEDR 486) Allograph: karibha -- m. Ficus religiosa (?) [Semantics of ficus religiosa may be relatable to homonyms used to denote both the sacred tree and rebus gloss: loa, ficus (Santali); lohmetal (Skt.)] 1137

mil markhor (Tor.wali) meho a ram, a sheep (G.)(CDIAL 10120)bhra -- , bha -- m. ram lex. [ Austro -- as. J. Przyluski BSL xxx 200: perh. Austro -- as. *mra ~ bhra collides with Aryan mhra -- 1 in mhra -- m. penis BhP., ram lex. -- See also bha -- 1, m - , a -- . -- The similarity between bha -- 1, bhra -- , bha -- ram and *bha -- 2 defective is paralleled by that between mhra -- 1, mha -- 1 ram and *ma -- 1, *mha -- 2 (s.v. *mia -- ) defective ](CDIAL 9606) m m. ram , -- f. ewe RV. 2. mha -- 2, miha- m. lex. [mha -- 2 infl. by mhati emits semen as poss. mhra -- 2 ram (~ mha -- 2) by mhra -- 1 penis ?]1. Pk. msa -- m. sheep , Ash. mial; Kt. me/l ram ; Pr. m ram, oorial ; Kal. me, mealk ram , H. mes m.; -- X bhra -- q.v.2. K. my -ptu m. the young of sheep or goats ; WPah.bhal. me\i f. wild goat ; H. meh m. ram .msya -- sheep -- faced Sur. [m -- , sy -- ](CDIAL 10334) Rebus: me (Ho.); mhet iron (Mu.Ho.)mh t iron; ispat m. = steel; dul m. = cast iron (Mu.) Allograph: me body ' (Mu.) Hieroglphs on text of inscription read rebus: Smithy (temple), Copper (mineral) guild workshop, metal furnace (account) Sign 216 (Mahadevan). ato claws or pincers (chelae) of crabs; aom, iom to seize with the claws or pincers, as crabs, scorpions; akop = to pinch, nip (only of crabs) (Santali) Rebus: dhatu mineral (Santali) Vikalpa: er claws; Rebus: era copper. Allograph: kamakom = fig leaf (Santali.lex.) kamarma (Has.), kamakom (Nag.); the petiole or stalk of a leaf (Mundari.lex.) kamat.ha = fig leaf, religiosa (Skt.) Sign 342. kaa kanka 'rim of jar' (Santali): karaka rim of jar(Skt.) Rebus: karaka scribe, accountant (Te.); gaaka id. (Skt.) (Santali) copper fire-altar scribe (account)(Skt.) Rebus: ka fire-altar (Santali) Thus, the 'rim of jar' ligatured glyph is read rebus: fire-altar (furnace) scribe (account) Sign 229. sann, sannh = pincers, smiths vice (P.) ann f. small room in a house to keep sheep in (WPah.) Bshk. an, Phal.n roof (Bshk.)(CDIAL 12326). sei (f.) [Class. Sk. rei in meaning "guild"; Vedic= row] 1. a guild Vin iv.226; J i.267, 314; iv.43; Dvs ii.124; their number was eighteen J vi.22, 427; VbhA 466. -- pamukha the head of a guild J ii.12 (text seni -- ). -- 2. 1138

a division of an army J vi.583; ratha -- J vi.81, 49; seimokkha the chief of an army J vi.371 (cp. sen and seniya). (Pali) 'body' glyph. md body (Kur.)(DEDR 5099); me iron (Ho.) aya 'fish' (Mu.); rebus: aya 'iron' (G.); ayas 'metal' (Skt.) sal stake, spike, splinter, thorn, difficulty (H.); Rebus: sal workshop (Santali) * lai, n. < l.

Varint of 'room' glyph with embedded rimless pot glyph (Sign 243 - Mahadevan corpus). 'Room' glyph. Rebus: kole.l = smithy, temple in Kota village (Ko.) kolme smithy' (Ka.) kol working in iron, blacksmith (Ta.)(DEDR 2133) The ligature glyphic element within 'room' glyph (Variant Sign 243): bai 'broad-mouthed, rimless metal vessel'; rebus: bai 'smelting furnace'. Thus, the composite ligatured Sign 243 denotes: furnace smithy.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/12/indus-valley-mystery-and-use-of-tablets.html Indus valley mystery. Archaeology and language: Archaeological context of Indus script cipher. Indus valley mystery. Archaeology and language: Archaeological context of Indus script cipher. The blog has been updated in archaeological contexts describing functions of tablets and seal impressions of Indus script. Updates Dec. 11 and 12, 2011 reading rebus the two long inscriptions of K089 (twenty glyphs) and L211 (fifteen glyphs) (fifteen glyphs) as bills of lading. See: Decoding two long inscriptions of Indus Script (Kalyanarman, 2011) Added (Dec. 11, 2011): Annex 1 decoding L211 fifteen glyphs and k089 twenty glyphs 1139

Annex 2 Notes on 'architectural' glyphs of Indus script: mudhif (reedhouse,Mesopotamia) and a 'dot,circle' glyph of Indus script depicted atop a bull on Urseal 18 (Gadd) [Embedded: document titled: Ecology of the mudhif (Broadbent, 2008).] Additional notes (Dec. 12 and 13, 2011) on decoding Mohenjo-daro seal m0304 (seated, horned person surrounded by animal glyphs) and Meadow's reported finding of Indus writing dated to ca. 3300 BCE, paralleling the hieroglyph tradition of Egypt of ca. 3300 BCE which started with the name of Narmer composed by two hieroglyphs: cat-fish + chisel (awl). Composite animal hieroglyph, decoded read rebus. Hypothesis: "Indus inscriptions resemble the Egyptian hieroglyphs..." (John Marshall, 1931, Mohenjo-daro and the Indus civilization, London, Arthur Probsthain, p.424) Abstract The script stands fully unraveled in an archaeological context of 19 circular platforms found in Harappa some with Indus script tablets -- close to a furnace/kiln. Thanks to the work of Randall Law, Kenoyer, Meadow, HARP recent Harappa excavations and Susa pot reported by Maurizio Tosi (with a 'fish' glyph painted on the pot which yielded metal artifacts from Meluhha?)-- all who have raised thoughtful questions and provided the archaeological finds which complete the picture of the ancient work of ancient bronze age artisans of Indus-Sarasvati civilization. Ku. pathrau f. pavement of slates and stones .(CDIAL 8858) Ta. paaai, paaai anvil, smithy, forge. Ka. paae, paai anvil, workshop. Te. paika, paea anvil; paaa workshop.(DEDR 3865). pathr f. level piece of ground, plateau, small village ; S. patharu m. rug, mat ; Or. athuripathuri bag and baggage ; M. pthar f. flat stone ; OMarw. pthar precious stone .(CDIAL 8857) Allograph Indus script glyph: ptra 'trough' in front of wild/domesticated/composite animals. pattar 'trough' (DEDR 4079) 4080 Ta. cavity, hollow, deep hole; pattar (DEDR 4080) Rebus: pattar , n. < T. battuu. A caste title of goldsmiths. It was a smiths' guild at work on circular platforms of Harappa using tablets as category 'tallies' for the final shipment of package with a seal impression. 1140

See examples of 'trough' glyph are shown in front of wild, domesticated and composite animals -- an evidence for the use of 'trough' glyph as a hieroglyph, together with the 'animal' glyph. Maybe, the 19 circular working platforms of Harappa were used for assembling 19 'types' of products -- the 'trough' glyph denoting the working platform and the 'animal' glyph denoting the product type (e.g. copper, gold, metal alloy, output of furnaces (of various types), minerals).

Kittel Kannada dictionary (p. 926). A possible allograph used in Indus script glyphs: X a place where four roads meet --paa (Kannada) Furnace (output) tally: kuhi kanka; glyph: water-carrier glyph + rim-of-jar glyph Tally, account, hence the most frequently used glyph: kanaka 'rim-of-jar' (Santali)karaka id. (Sanskrit)kraka m. projection on the side of a vessel, handle Br. [kra -- ]Pa. kaaka -- having ears or corners ; Wg. ka ear -- ring NTS xvii 266; S. kano m. rim, border ; P. kann m. obtuse angle of a kite ( H. kann m. edge, rim, handle ); N. knu end of a rope for supporting a burden ; B. k brim of a cup , G. kn m.; M. kn m. touch -- hole of a gun .(CDIAL 2831). 1141

Rebus: kaakku , n. cf. gaaka. [M. kaakku.] 1. Number, account, reckoning, calculation, computation; . (.) 2. The four simple rules of arithmetic, viz., , , , . 3. Account book, ledger; . (. 261). 4. Science of arithmetic; . (Tamil)gayati counts MBh. [Prob. like guyati1 < gr- (MIA. ga -- , gi -- , gu -- ) in grti, addresses, praises RV., cf. grayat teaches Dhtup., *girati3, *grta<-> (J. C. Wright). -- g&rcirclemacr;3. See Add. s.v. grti] Pa. gati counts, takes notice of ; A. ganyati is counted ; Pk. gai, a counts ; Ash. g -- to count, read , Wg. ga -- NTS xvii 255; Dm. ga -- to say ; Pa. ga -- to count , Bshk. gn -- , K. o. gao, S. gaau, L. gaa, (Ju.) g, WPah. jaun. gan, Ku. gao, N. gannu, A. gaiba, B. ga, Or. gaib, Mth. ganab, Bhoj. ganal, Aw. lakh. ganab, G. gav , M. ga, Si. gainav. -- Gy. as. gen -- , eur. gin -- , Bashg. gr -- , L. gia, P. gi, Bi. ginab, H. ginn. (CDIAL 3993) Each platform was for a smiths' guild at work using tablets as category 'tallies' for the final shipment of package with a seal impression...(a bill of lading). The trade transaction is thus processed and recorded for the shipment of a package. Hence, the use of tablets together with seals (and their seal impressions) in trade stands explained in an archaeological context. Thanks again, to Kenoyer and Meadow for the thoughtful questions they had raised for further researches using Indus script corpora. The tablets were the tallies. The seal was a consolidation of the tally for preparing the seal impression as a bill of lading.

Background

Many savants have tried to unravel the Indus valley mystery. Many mysteries remain unresolved: for e.g., the ziggurat under stupa mound in Mohenjo-daro, Indus script cipher -function of tablets distinct from seals and other inscriptions. This note argues, with an evaluation 1142

of the evidences reported from Harappa Archaeological Research Project (HARP)excavations (1986-2007) that the function of the Indus script was to enable the helper of the merchants in the guild workshop to tally and record bills of lading for products to be packaged, sealed and couriered to trade partners (for e.g. those in Meluhha settlements of Mesopotmia or associates along the settlements of the Persian Gulf or Elam.)

Earlier notes 1) from Mackay, 2) on the use of script on metal objects, 3) rebus readings of 'animal' glyphs on Indus script inscriptions, 4)analyses of copper tablets are also embedded for ready reference. Bronze age and the evolution of writing In the context of the bronze age, the comments of James D. Muhly are apposite to further evaluate the role played by Indus artisans (and the possible diffusion of Indus script glyphs) in the interaction areas of Eurasia, in general and of Elam (BMAC), Persian gulf region, and Mesopotamia, in particular: "The Early Bronze Age of the 3rd millenniumB.C. saw the first development of a truly international age of metallurgy... The question is, of course, why all this took place in the 3rd millennium B.C... It seems to me that any attempt to explain why things suddenly took off about 3000 B.C. has to explain the mostimportant development, the birth of the art of writing... As for the concept of a BronzeAge one of the most significant events in the 3rd millennium was the development of true tin-bronze alongside an arsenical alloy of copper..." (J.D. Muhly, 1973, Copper andTin, Conn.: Archon., Hamden; Transactions of Connecticut Academy of Arts andSciences, vol. 43, p. 221f. ) This note is a tribute in particular to Kenoyer, Meadow and participants in the HARP multidisciplinary team work and many including Marshall and Mackay who have tried to explain the function served by Indus script inscriptions. The focus is on tablets [made of either steatite (terracotta) or copper] with Indus script. Many multiples of tablets with the same inscription have been unearthed and Kenoyer & Meadow discuss the stratigraphic context in which 22 such samples were found in Harappa during the 1986-2007 excavations. Earlier excavations were under the late George F. Dale Jr. in Mohenjo1143

daro and other sites, following the pioneering archaeological investigations of Banerjee, Dikshit, Marshall, Mackay and earlier exploratory surveys of Ahmad Hasan Dani, Brij Basi Lal, Nani Gopal Majumdar, and Sir Marc Aurel Stein. Earliest inscriptions on copper tablets were found at Mohenjodaro. See embedded document: Indus Writing on Metal.

Copper tablet (H2000-4498/9889-01) with raised script found in Trench 43. Harappa. (Source: Slide 351. harappa.com) Eight such tablets have been found (HARP, 2005); these were recovered from circular platforms. This example of a uniquely scripted tablet with raised Indus script glyphs shows that copper tablets were also used in Harappa, while hundreds of copper tablets with indus script inscriptions were found in Mohenjo-daro. See also:http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/11/decoding-longest-inscription-of-indus.html The copper tablet with raised script contains a 'backbone' glyph; decoding: karu the backbone (Bengali. Skt.); karuka id. (Skt.) Rebus: kasr metal worker (Lahnda)(CDIAL 2988, 2989)m h = the quantity of iron produced at one time in a native smelting furnace of the Kolhes; iron produced by the Kolhes and formed like a four-cornered piece a little pointed at each end (Santali). Recovered from circular platforms? Clearly, the circular platforms functioned as sorting, marketing platforms if, in the centre of the circle, a storage pot containing metal artefacts, beads, ivory products etc. were kept for display, marketing, trade. prastar m. anything strewn, grass to sit on RV., flat surface Mn., (v.l. prastra -- ) plain Hariv., rock, stone Hit. [str]K. pathur, thuru (dat. tharas, tharis) m. levelled area, bare floor , pathr f. level piece of ground, plateau, small village ; S. patharu m. rug, mat ; Or. athuripathuri bag and baggage (CDIAL 8857).Pa. pattharati tr. spreads out, scatters , Pk. patthara patthura; L. (Ju.) pathara to spread, turn over ; Mth. pathrab intr. to lie scattered ; G. ptharv tr. to spread ; Si. paturanav to spread abroad, proclaim (whence caus. paturuvanav and intr. ptirenav 1144

to be extended ); Md. faturn to spread out ; -- Pk. pattharia<-> spread out ; Si. ptali flat, level, plain (rather than < pattral -- ). -- See *prastrayati, *prastrta -- .Addenda: *prastarati: S.kcch. pthar to spread ; caus. Ko. ptlyt spreads out (bed, etc.) S. M. Katre, Md. faturuvan tr. spreads , feturen intr. (absol. feturi).(CDIAL 8860). Circular platforms as guild trade platforms for artisans of forge/smithy and lapidaries Pattharati [pa+tharati] to spread, spread out, extend J i.62; iv.212; vi.279; DhA i.26; iii.61 (so read at J vi.549 in cpd pda with spreading feet, v. l. patthaa). -- pp. patthaa (q. v.). -- Caus. patthreti with pp. patthrita probably also to be read at Th 1, 842 for padhrita. (Pali) Pattharika [fr. patthara] a merchant Vin ii.135 (kasa). (Pali) [An allograph pattara 'trough' is a glyph used in front of many types of animals including wild animals and composite animal glyphs. ptra trough; patthar merchant. It also connotes a 'guild'.] ptra, (l.) s. Vessel, cup, plate; receptacle. [lw. Sk. id.] (Nepali) ptramu A utensil, . Hardware. metal vessels. (Telugu) pattal, n. pattar 1. A wooden bucket; . (. 19, 23). pattar , n. < T. battuu. A caste title of goldsmiths; . paaai , n. prob. - + -. 1. [T. paika, K. paae.] Anvil; . (.) (, 821). 2. [K. paai.] Smithy, forge; pattal , n. 1. A wooden bucket; . (. 19, 23). pattar , n. 1. See , 1, 4, 5. 2. Wooden trough for feeding animals; . (, 257). paar-ai community; guild as of workmen (Ta.); pattar merchants; perh. vartaka (Skt.) Patthara [cp. late Sk. prastara. The ord. meaning of Sk. pr. is "stramentum"] 1. stone, rock S i.32. -- 2. stoneware Miln 2. (Pali) Pa. Pk. patthara -- m. stone , S. patharu m., L. (Ju.) pathar m., khet. patthar, P. patthar m. ( forms of Bi. Mth. Bhoj. H. G. below with atth or ath), WPah.jaun. ptthar; Ku. pthar m. slates, stones , gng. pth*lr flat stone ; A. B. pthar stone , Or. pathara; Bi. pthar, patthar, patthal hailstone ; Mth. pthar, pathal stone , Bhoj. pathal, Aw.lakh. pthar, H. pthar, patthar, pathar, patthal m., G. patthar, pathr m.; M. pthar f. flat stone ; Ko. phttaru stone ; Si. patura chip, fragment ; -1145

S. pathir f. stone in the bladder ; P. pathr f. small stone ; Ku. pathar stone cup ; B. pthri stone in the bladder, tartar on teeth ; Or. pathur stoneware ; H. patthr f. grit , G. pathr f. *prastarapaa -- , *prastaramrttik -- , *prastarsa -- .Addenda: prastar -- : WPah.kg. ptthr m. stone, rock ; pthreu to stone ; J. pthar m. stone ; OMarw. pthar precious stone . (CDIAL 8857) paarai workshop (Ta.) pattharika [fr. patthara] a merchant Vin ii.135 (kasa).(Pali) cf. Pattharati [pa+tharati] to spread, spread out, extend J i.62; iv.212; vi.279; DhA i.26; iii.61 (so read at J vi.549 in cpd pda with spreading feet, v. l. patthaa). -- pp. patthaa (q. v.). &sup5; pattar, n. perh. vartaka. Merchants; . (W.) battuu. n. The caste title of all the five castes of artificers as vala b*, carpenter. The circular platforms could have served as prastara for the articles taken for display from out of the storage pots. "During excavations of the circular platform area on Mound F numerous Cemetery H-type sherds and some complete vessels were recovered in association with pointed base goblets and large storage vessels that are usually associated with Harappa Period 3C." South fo the platforms was a furnace. "A large kiln was also found just below the surface of the mound to the south of the circular platforms." http://www.harappa.com/indus4/e6.html The circular platforms are used in conjunction with the products taken out of the kiln (furnace) and large storage vessels which could have been plced in the centre of any of the street platforms, constituting the main market street of early times of Harappa settlement. Circular platforms (with a dia. of 1.5 m) found within rooms (of a coppersmith) as in Padri might have served as working platforms for the brassworkers, lapidaries, artisans of the civilization or as a display counter if the room was used as a shop for sales.

Glyph (Middle glyph of the three-glyph inscription): Sign 48: karu the backbone (Bengali. Skt.); karuka id. (Skt.) Rebus: kasr metal worker (Lahnda)(CDIAL 2988, 2989) L. aw. kasr metal worker , P. kaser m. worker in pewter (both E with -- s -- ); N. kasero maker of brass pots ; Bi. H. kaser m. worker in pewter . (CDIAL 2988) kacam , n. cf. ayas. (. .) 1. Iron; . 2. Mineral fossil; (Tamil) N. kasr maker of brass pots ; A. khr worker in bell -- metal ; B. ksri pewterer, brazier, coppersmith , Or. ksr; H. kasr m. maker of brass pots ; G.ksr, kas m. coppersmith ; M. ksr, ks m. 1146

worker in white metal , ksr m. contemptuous term for the same . (CDIAL 2989) Other two glyphs of the copper tablets: 'rim-of-jar' + 'oval + inlaid 'short stroke'. kaa kanka 'rim of jar' (Santali); rebus: furnace scribe (account). kaa kanka may be a dimunitive form of *kankhr copper smith comparable to the cognate gloss: kar coppersmiths, blacksmiths (Tamil) If so, kaa kan-khr connotes: copper-smith furnace.kaa fire-altar (Santali); kan copper (Ta.) Glyph 'inlaid short stroke in oval' may connote an ingot. hlako = a large metal ingot (G.) hlak = a metal heated and poured into a mould; a solid piece of metal; an ingot (G.) Thus the inscription of the copper tablet with inscription in raised script (bas relief) is decoded as: furnace account (scribe), maker of brass pots, (bronze) ingots: hlako kasr kaa kanka lit. ingot, brass worker, furnace account (scribe). A third glyph on these tablets is an oval (variant 'rhombus') sign -- like a metal ingot -- and is ligatured with an infixed sloping stroke: hiyum = adj. sloping, inclining (G.) The ligatured glyph is read rebus as: hlako = a large metal ingot (G.) hlak = a metal heated and poured into a mould; a solid piece of metal; an ingot (G.) dula 'pair' (Kashmiri); rebus: dul 'cast (metal)'(Santali) A pair of hlako shown on the seal impression on a pot (Mohenjodaro. Text 2937) may connote dul hlako cast metal ingot. The Trench 43 is the same trench which exposed many circular platforms.

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Slide 336 harappa.com Overview of Trench 43 in 2000 looking north, showing the HARPexposed circular platform in the foreground and the "granary" area in the background. Note the wall voids to the west, south, and east of the circular platform (see also image 356).

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Slide 356.Detail view of the HARP-excavated platform in Trench 43 with Wheeler's platform to the east (toward the top of the image). Note the mud-brick wall foundations that surround each platform to the east, south, and west (the north walls remain unexposed). Traces of baked brick thresholds can be seen on the right (south).

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158. Circular platform. In 1998, the circular platform first exposed by Sir Mortimer Wheeler in 1946 was re-exposed and the area around the platform was expanded to reveal the presence of the room in which it was enclosed. The brick walls had been removed by brick robbers and only the mud brick foundations were preserved along with a few tell-tale baked bricks. This particular platform seeems to date to the beginning of the Harappa Phase Period 3C (c. 2200 BC).

159. New circular platform. To the west of Wheeler's circular platform a new platform was discovered. This platform was excavated using modern stratigraphic procedures and detailed documentation. Charcoal, sediment, animal bone, charred plant and other botanical samples 1150

were collected from each stratum to complement the other artifacts such as pottery, seals and domestic debris. These samples should allow a more precise reconstruction of the function of these enigmatic structures. harappa.com

Slide 353. harappa.com Circular platforms in the southwestern part of Mound F excavated by M.S. Vats in the 1920s and 1930s, as conserved by the Department of Archaeology and Museums, Government of Pakistan.

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Slide 355. harappa.com The circular platform excavated by Wheeler in 1946 (left) and the one excavated by HARP in 1998 (right). Both of these platforms were found inside small square rooms that originally had baked brick walls, subsequently removed by brick robbers (Trench 43).

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An overview of the area on Mound F as seen from the city wall on Mound AB. The circular working platforms are in the background and a row of identical houses that were clearly made all at one time, possibly a housing project of some wealthy merchant or perhaps sponsored by the city council. Connected with the circular working platforms is the kiln discovered close-by.

After Figure 9. Harappa 1999, Mound F, Trench 43: Period 5 kiln, plan and section views. http://www.harappa.com/indus4/e6.html Hypothesis 1: It is reasonable to infer that the kiln of the type used a smelting furnace is also relatable both to the circular working platforms and the copper tablets with Indus script glyphs. 1153

The shape of the kiln shown in this Figure 9 diagram is comparable to another kiln which was unearthed. "During excavations of the circular platform area on Mound F numerous Cemetery H-type sherds and some complete vessels were recovered in association with pointed base goblets and large storage vessels that are usually associated with Harappa Period 3C. A large kiln was also found just below the surface of the mound to the south of the circular platforms. The upper portion of the kiln had been eroded, but the floor of the firing chamber was found preserved along with the fire-box. Upon excavation it became clear that this was a new form of kiln with a barrel vault and internal flues (Figure 8). This unique installation shows a clear discontinuity with the form of Harappan pottery kilns, which were constructed with a central column to support the floor (Dales and Kenoyer 1991). Radiocarbon samples taken from Harappa Phase hearths in the domestic areas and from the bottom of the Late Harappan kiln will help to determine if these installations were in use at the same time or if the kiln was built in an abandoned area after the Harappa Phase occupation. It is possible that people using Late Harappan style pottery were living together with people using Harappan style pottery during the Period 4 transition between Periods 3C and 5." http://www.harappa.com/indus4/e6.html

Large updraft kiln of the Harappan period (ca. 2400 BCE) found during excavations on Mound E Harappa, 1989 (After Fig. 8.8, Kenoyer, 2000) Hypothesis 2: Considering that the circular platforms were located in close proximity to one 1154

another, it is reasonable to infer that the workers who worked on these platforms belonged to a guild or metalworker community.Indus language (Indian linguistic area: mleccha/meluhha): bharatiyo = a caster of metals; a brazier; bharatar, bharatal, bharata = moulded; an article made in a mould; bharata = casting metals in moulds; bharavum = to fill in; to put in; to pour into (G.lex.) bhart = a mixed metal of copper and lead; bharty = a barzier, worker in m etal; bha, bhrra = oven, furnace (Skt.) Hypothesis 3: It is reasonable to infer a close link between the functions served by the circular platformss and the copper tablet with raised Indus script glyphs. "During his excavations, Vats identified 17 circular brick platforms (Vats 1940:19ff) and in 1946 Wheeler excavated an 18th example (Wheeler 1947). Earlier interpretations about the circular platforms suggested that they were used for husking grain and that they may have had a central wooden mortar. In the 1998 excavations one additional circular platform was located and detailed documentation and sampling was conducted to determine its function and chronology." Contra view: "The new excavations did not reveal any evidence for grain processing and there was no evidence for a wooden mortar in the center. Some straw impressions were found on the floor to the south of the circular platform, but microscopic examination by Dr. Steve Weber confirmed that these impressions were of straw and not of chaff or grain processing byproducts."

Susa pot (reported by Maurizio Tosi) -- containing metal artifacts possibly sent from Meluhha traders or received by merchants with links to Meluhha trading community?) Hypothesis 4: It is reasonable to infer that the centre of the circular platform could have held a storage pot of the type unearthed in Susa with metal objects (and with a 'fish' Indus script glyph 1155

written below the rim of the pot) -- evidenced by Maurizio Tosi as a link with Meluhha (aka Indus valley).

h1085

h1085

h1083 Hypothesis 5: It is reasonable to infer that the pots with inscriptions (either embossed using a seal or inscribed as on the Susa pot) were used as containers for despatch to traders, while

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other storage pots (without inscriptions) might have been kept in the centre of the circular platforms.

h1953B and A. Two sides of a seal: One side showed a zebu with 'fish' and 'four strokes' glyphs. The other had a five-glyph inscription including the 'fish' and 'arrow' glyphs which are allographs of the 'fish' and 'four strokes' glyphs on the obverse of the seal. It has been suggested that the zebu connoted a guild (community): aya 'fish'; aya 'metal' (G.); ka 'arrow'; 'four'; rebus: ka 'furnace metal': hence, the two glyphs connote: ayaska (of) Zebu: aar hangar khu native-metal-blacksmith community (guild)(making) excellent metal. ka a house, dwelling (Skt.lex.) kh = a community, sect, society, division, clique, schism, stock; kh ren pea kanako = they belong to the same stock (Santali)kh Nag. kh , k Has. (Or. kh) either of the two branches of the village family.Rebus: k dr turner (B.)

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m1118 Seal. Shows the glyphs: zebu, fish, four strokes (circumscript), all read rebus in mleccha/meluhha.

A zebu bull tied to a post; a bird above. Large painted storage jar discovered in burned rooms at Nausharo, ca. 2600 to 2500 BCE. Cf. Fig. 2.18, J.M. Kenoyer, 1998, Cat. No. 8. This storage pot is shown with a zebu (kh ) painted on it; perhaps used to store artifacts of the guild (kh ). Hypothesis 6: kh ,'zebu' rebus: 'guild'. [kh Brahmani bull (Kathiawar G.); kh ro entire bull 1158

used for agriculture, not for breeding (G.)(CDIAL 3899). kh ro = entire bull; kh = brahmai bull (G.) khuiyo = an uncastrated bull (Kathiawad. G.lex.) kh _aum a bullock (used in Jhlw)(G.) kuai = bull (Ta.lex.) cf. kh _dhi hump on the back; khu_dh hump-backed (G.)(CDIAL 3902).] Rebus: ka a house, dwelling (Skt.lex.) kh = a community, sect, society, division, clique, schism, stock; kh ren pea kanako = they belong to the same stock (Santali) kh Nag. kh , k Has. (Or. kh) either of the two branches of the village family.

Text 2937. Seal impression on pot. Glyphs: Pair of dotted ovals; rim-of-jar. The glyphs are part of the three glyphs used on copper tablet with raised script.

The same sequence of three signs (Glyphs of a pair of dotted ovals + rim-of-jar)occurs on one side of a prism tablet: m1429A (The other two sides show a boat and a crocodile holding fish glyph on its jaw).

m1429B. Glyphs: crocodile + fish

m1429C. Glyph: Boat. bagalo = an Arabian merchant vessel (G.) bagala = an Arab boat of a particular description (Ka.); bagal (M.); bagarige, bagarage = a kind of vessel (Ka.)(Ka.lex.); rebus: ban:gala = kumpai = an:gra aka = a chafing dish a portable stove a goldsmiths portable furnace (Te.lex.) cf. ban:garu ban:garamu = gold (Te.)

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ayakra blacksmith (Pali) kruvu = mechanic, artisan, Vivakarma, the celestial artisan (Te.)Pali: ayakra iron-smith. ] Both ayaskma and ayaskra are attested in Panini (Pan. viii.3.46; ii.4.10). WPah. bhal. kam m.f. labourer (man or woman) ; MB. kmi labourer (CDIAL 2902) N. kmi blacksmith (CDIAL 2900). khr 1 m. (sg. abl. khra 1 ; the pl. dat. of this word is khran 1 , which is to be distinguished from khran 2, q.v., s.v.), a blacksmith, an iron worker (cf. bandka-khr, p. 111b, l. 46; K.Pr. 46; H. xi, 17); a farrier (El.). This word is often a part of a name, and in such case comes at the end (W. 118) as in Wahab khr, Wahab the smith (H. ii, 12; vi, 17). khra-basta - f. the skin bellows of a blacksmith. -bh -&above; &below; f. the wall of a blacksmith's furnace or hearth. -by - f. a blacksmith's wife (Gr.Gr. 34). -dkuru; m. a blacksmith's hammer, a sledge-hammer.-gji -&above;&below; or -gj; f. a blacksmith's furnace or hearth. -hl - f. (sg. dat. -h j -&above;&below;), a blacksmith's smelting furnace; cf. hl 5. -kr; f. a blacksmith's daughter. -kou; m. the son of a blacksmith, esp. a skilful son, who can work at the same profession. k; f. a blacksmith's daughter, esp. one who has the virtues and qualities properly belonging to her father's profession or caste. -m f. (for 2, see [khra 3] ), 'blacksmith's earth,' i.e. iron-ore. -ncyuwu -&below; m. a blacksmith's son. -nay - f. (for khranay 2, see [khrun] ), the trough into which the blacksmith allows melted iron to flow after smelting. -a f.pl. charcoal used by blacksmiths in their furnaces. -wn m. a blacksmith's shop, a forge, smithy (K.Pr. 3). -wah - m. (sg. dat. -waas -), the large stone used by a blacksmith as an anvil. (Kashmiri) kruvu = mechanic, artisan, Vivakarma, the celestial artisan (Te.); [ kruvu ] kruvu. [Skt.] n. An artist, artificer. An agent; gre = affix of noun denoting one who does it, e.g. samagre = cobbler (Tu.); garuva (Ka.); gar_uva = an important man (Te.) cf. ka_ra suffix. 'worker' (Skt.) kri m. artisan, worker P. 2. f. action, work Bha. [KR 1] 1. P.kr m. worker. 2. Kt. kr work, Wg.k, Pr. k; S. kri f. work, occupation, use; L. kr f. work; P. kr f. remedy; Or. kri work. (CDIAL 3064) karuvu n. Melting: what is melted (Te.) [ kru ] m (S) An artificer or artisan. 2 A common term for the twelve q. v. Also m pl q. v. in . (Marathi) , , , , [ krigara, krigra, krgra, krgra, krgra ] m ( P) A good workman, a clever artificer or artisan. 2 Affixed as an honorary designation to the names of Barbers, and sometimes of , , & . 3 Used laxly as adj and in the sense of Effectual, availing, effective of the end. [ balut ] n A share of the corn and garden-produce assigned for the subsistence of the twelve 1160

public servants of a village, for whom see below. 2 In some districts. A share of the dues of the hereditary officers of a village, such as , &c. or [ balutdra or balut ] or m ( &c.) A public servant of a village entitled to . There are twelve distinct from the regular Governmentofficers , &c.; viz. , , , (These four constitute or or the first division. Of three of them each is entitled to , twenty bundles of Holcus or the thrashed corn, and the to ) ; , , , constitute or or , and are entitled, each, to ; , , , form or or , and have, each, . Likewise there are twelve or supernumerary public claimants, viz. , , , , , , , , , , , . Of these the allowance of corn is not settled. The learner must be prepared to meet with other enumerations of the (e. g. , - , , , , , , , , , , ; also , , , as constituting the first-class and claiming the largest division of ; next , , , as constituting the middle class and claiming a subdivision of ; lastly, , , , ; and, in the Konkan, yet another list); and with other accounts of the assignments of corn; for this and many similar matters, originally determined diversely, have undergone the usual influence of time, place, and ignorance. Of the in the Indpr pergunnah the list and description stands thus:--First class, , , , ; Second, , , , ; Third, , , , , , ; in all fourteen, but in no one village are the whole fourteen to be found or traced. In the Panharpr districts the order is:- or (1st class); , , , , or (2nd class); , , , , or (3rd class); , , , ; twelve and of there are eighteen. According to Grant Duff, the are , , , , , , , , , , ; and the are , , , , or , , , , , , , . In many villages of Northern Dakhan the receives the of the first, second, and third classes; and, consequently, besides the , there are but nine . The following are the only or now to be found;--, , , , - , , , but of the & there is much confused intermixture, the of one district being the of another, and vice vers. (The word used above, in , , requires explanation. It means Udder; and, as the are, in the phraseology of endearment or fondling, termed (calves), their allotments or divisions are figured by successive bodies of calves drawing at the or under of the under the figure of a or cow.) (Marathi)kruciji 'smith' (Old Church Slavic) 1161

kru a wild crocodile or alligator (Te.) mosale wild crocodile or alligator. S. ghaylu m. long -- snouted porpoise ; N. ghaiyl crocodile (Telugu); A. B. ghiyl alligator , Or. ghaia, H. ghayl, gharir m. (CDIAL 4422) karavu, n. < . cf. grha. Alligator; . (. . 8, 9, 9). kar, n. prob. grha. 1. A species of alligator; . (. . 2, 3, 9). 2. Male alligator; . (.) karm n. prob. grha. 1. A species of alligator ; . (. 257). 2. Male alligator; . (.) Ta. ayil iron. Ma. ayir, ayiram any ore. Ka. aduru native metal. Tu. ajirda karba very hard iron (DEDR 192). Hypothesis 7: Seal impression on pot (Mohenjodaro. Text 2937) The pot was used as a container to trade the products described by the inscription. In their contribution to the Corpus of Indus Inscriptions, Volume 3, Part 1, Kenoyer and Meadow observe: "Square seals with script alone are found first in Period 3B...We are also obtaining important chronological information with respect to inscribed tablets, which are particularly common at Harappa, more so than seals. Through careful stratigraphic cutting-back of Vats' section in Trench I of Mound F and comparison with his report of that trench (Vats 1940), we have determined that he was not correct in reporting that small steatite tablets with incised script are from the earliest levels of the site. Instead it is evident that such tablets appeare toward the middle of Period 3B and continued to be used well into Period 3C (Meadow & kenoyer 1997; 2000). Furthermore, these inscribed steatite tablets, which Vats (1940) called 'tiny steatite seals', are not seals at all but are incised with script that was to be read directly from the tablet. And along with the steatite tablets are found terracotta and glazed faience tablets with molded bas-relief script, motifs, and narrative scenes, which also start appearing in mid-Period 3B and continue into Period 3C (Meadow & Kenoyer 1997; 2000)...

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Group of incised baked steatite tablets. A group of 16 three-sided incised baked steatite tablets, all with the same inscriptions, were uncovered in mid- to late Period 3B debris outside of the curtain wall. (See 146). These tablets may originally been enclosed in a perishable container such as a small bag of cloth or leather.

Life and death of Harappan seals and tablets. An additional six copies of these tablets, again all with the same inscriptions, were found elsewhere in the debris outside of perimeter wall [250] 1163

including two near the group of 16 and two in debris between the perimeter and curtain walls. Here all 22 tablets are displayed together with a unicorn intaglio seal from the Period 3B street inside the perimeter wall, which has two of the same signs as those found on the tablets. (See also145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150). Quoting from R.H. Meadow and J.M. Kenoyer's article in South Asian Archaeology 1997 (Rome, 2001): "It is tempting to think that the evident loss of utility and subsequent discard of the tablets is related to the death of the seal. Seals are almost always found in trash or street deposits (and never yet in a grave) indicating that they were either lost or intentionally discarded, the latter seeming the more likely in most instances. The end of the utility of a seal must relate to some life event of its owner, whether change of status, or death, or the passing of an amount of time during which the seal was considered current. A related consideration is that apparently neither seals nor tablets could be used by just anyone or for any length of time because otherwise they would not have fallen out of circulation. Thus the use of seals -- and of tablets -- was possible only if they were known to be current. Once they were no longer current, they were discarded. This would help explain why a group of 16 (or 18) tablets with the same inscriptions, kept together perhaps in a cloth or leather pouch, could have been deposited with other trash outside of the perimeter wall of Mound E." Period 3B debris related to: c. 2450 BCE - c. 2200 BCE. Examples of 31 duplicates, double-sided terracotta tablets

h252A Inscription on one side of the 2-sided tablet (in bas relief). The other side shows a onehorned heifer (as in h254B).

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h254B. Two-sided tablet. The other side shows an inscription as in h252A. Examples of 22 duplicates steatite triangular tablets h-2218 to h-2239

h2219A First side of three-sided tablet

h2219B Second side of three-sided tablet

h2219C Third side of three-sided tablet The two glyphs which appear on the h2219A example also appear on a seal. "In a street deposit of similar age just inside the wall, a seal was found with two of the same characters as seen on one side of the tablets." While the 22 tablets were meant to help in 'tallying' the products produced by the artisans, the seal was meant to be used in preparing a bill of lading for the products to be couriered through containers.

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h1682A. The seal which contained the two glyphs used on the 'tally' three-sided tablets. The seal showed a one-horned heifer + standard device and two segments of inscriptions: one segment showing the two glyphs shown on one side of the 'tally' tablet; the other segment showing glyphs of a pair of 'rectangle with divisions' + 'three long linear strokes'. Decoding a pair of glyphs, a pair of 'rectangle with divisions': kha field, division (Skt.); Rebus: ka furnace (Skt.) Thus, reduplicated glyph connotes dul ka casting furnace. Vikalpa: khonu divided into parts (Kashmiri)khonu , adj. (f. khn 1, sg. dat. khanj 1 ), broken, divided into parts; hence, deprived of a part or limb or member, maimed, mutilated; unevenly formed, irregularly angled. (Kashmiri) A pair of such glyphs divided into parts, may thus be decoded as: dul ka khonu khon casting furnace workshop. Vikalpa 1: ja kha = ivory (Jat.ki) khai_ = ivory in rough (Jat.ki_); ga = piece of elephant's tusk (S.) Vikalpa 2: Pa.kandi (pl. -l) necklace, beads. Ga. (P.) kandi (pl. -l) bead, (pl.) necklace; (S.2)kandi bead (DEDR 1215). kandil, kandl = a globe of glass, a lantern (Ka.lex.) The pair of glyphs 'rectangle with divisions' may thus also connote 'cast beads'. If so, the seal text inscription connotes two sets of products assembled for despatched through a courier: furnace metal products + furnace bead products. Both sets of products are from the sanga turner's workshop. Decoding the glyph, 'three long linear strokes': three; rebus: smithy (Santali) Glyph of standard device in front of the one-horned heifer: s~g lathe (Tu.)(CDIAL 12859). sgaa That member of a turner's apparatus by which the piece to be turned is confined and steadied. To take into linkedness or close connection with, lit. fig. (Marathi) [ sg ] f The machine within which a turner confines and steadies the piece he has to turn. 1166

(Marathi) [ saga ] f (Commonly ) A pan of live coals or embers. (Marathi) san:gho, sagha (G.) = firepan; sagha, aghai = a pot for holding fire (G.)[cul saga portable hearth (G.)] Thus, the entire set of glyphs on the h1682A seal [denoting the heifer + standard device] can be decoded: koiyum 'heifer'; [ kiya ] ke, kiya. [Tel.] n. A bullcalf. . k* A young bull. Plumpness, prime. . a pair of bullocks. ke adj. Young. ke-ku. n. A young man.. [ kruke ] kru-ke. [Tel.] n. A bull in its prime. [ kha ] m A young bull, a bullcalf. (Marathi) [ gda ] gda. [Tel.] n. An ox. A beast. kine, cattle.(Telugu) koiyum (G.) rebus: ko workshop (G.) B. kd to turn in a lathe; Or. knda lathe, k dib, kd to turn ( Drav. Kur. kd lathe) (CDIAL 3295) The two glyphs (heifer + lathe) together thus refer to a turner's workshop with a portable hearth. The two sets of the text of the inscription refer to the products assembled together (perhaps on the circular working platforms) by this workshop of the guild. The sets of products denoted by the two sets of glyphic sequences can be exlained rebus: kui water carrier (Te.) Rebus: kuhi smelter furnace (Santali) ku f. fireplace (H.); krvI f. granary (WPah.); ku, kuo house, building(Ku.)(CDIAL 3232) kui hut made of boughs (Skt.) gui temple (Telugu) kaa kanka 'rim of jar' (Santali); rebus: furnace scribe. kaa kanka may be a dimunitive form of *kan-khr copper smith comparable to the cognate gloss: kar coppersmiths, blacksmiths (Tamil) If so, kaa kan-khr connotes: copper-smith furnace.kaa fire-altar (Santali); kan copper (Ta.) kanka Rim of jar (Santali); karaka rim of jar(Skt.) Rebus: karaka scribe (Te.); gaaka id. (Skt.) (Santali) Thus, the 'rim-of-jar' glyph connotes: furnace account (scribe). Together with the glyph showing 'water-carrier', the ligatured glyphs of 'water-carrier' + 'rim-of-jar' can thus be read as: kuhi kaa kanka 'smelting furnace account (scribe)'. 1167

Thus, the inscription on seal h1682A can be explained in the context of the tablets used as tally tokens to account for the despatch of the assembled products (delivered by the guild artisans) using the impression of the seal as a bill of lading. The use of tablets in conjunction with the seal has been elaborated. Once the accounting is completed using the seal and the seal impression on the package to be couriered, the tablets used as tallying instruments by the guild helper of merchant have served their purpose and can be disposed of in the debris. Use of seals to create sealings: context trade with interaction areas such as Mesopotamia Archaeological finds of tablets (sometimes called bas-relief tablets or incised miniature tablets) and seals are in association with kilns and working platforms. Metallurgical context is shown by the use of copper to create tablets with Indus script glyphs. Archaeological finds of seal impressions used as tags on chunks of burnt clay for sealing packages (since textile or reed impressions have been found on the obverse of such tags) show the trade context in which these examples of Indus writing have been used. About 32% of all Indus inscriptions found at Lothal are on such tags (seal impressions).

h119 Seal. The glyph of four sets of four long strokes, compares with the seal impression on Lothal 174 and Lewan-Dheri 1 (shown below) Decoding glyph of 'four long strokes'. gaa four (Santali); rebus: furnace, ka fire-altar. pon four (Santali) rebus: pon gold (Ta.) Thus, the four sets of four long strokes may denote: (output) from gold furnaces.

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Lewan-dheri 1 Seal impression.

m0037 Seal impression.

m0650 Seal. This seal contains in its inscription, the same three glyphs shown on m0037 Seal impression. Thus, the example of the seal is an assemblage of two sets of descriptions of two sets of goods which may be put into the same trade package to be despatched with a bill of lading. Thus combinations of inscriptions achieved the purpose of completing part of the message required for a bill of lading.

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m0425 Seal impression with three 'tags' from three seals is an example of such assemblage of messages to complete the detailed description of goods in a trade package. Thus, it is clear that the seal impressions are likely to be more complete assemblage of messages for preparing bills of lading. This assemblage uses the descriptions of goods achieved through multiple tablets used as tallies for compiling the bill of lading.

Banawali 23 Seal impression. This uses an assemblage of glyphs: a person standing with raised arm, a ram, a one-horned heifer, two glyphs: fish and arrow. Eache of these glyphs can be read rebus to complete the reading of the message conveyed by the inscription, as a bill of lading on a consignment, a trade package. Decoding: me body(Mu.); rebus: iron (Ho.) eaka 'upraised arm' (Ta.); rebus: eraka = copper (Ka.)Glyph: kaa arrow (Skt.) rebus: kaa 'firealtar, furnace'. Glyph: aya 'fish'; rebus: aya 'metal' (G.)ayaska excellent quantity of iron (P.)koiyum heifer(G.) koe heifer (Telugu) [ kha ] m A young bull, a bullcalf. Rebus: [ kaa ] f A fold or pen. (Marathi) ko 'workshop' (G.)Glyph: mil markhor (Tor.wali) meho a ram, a sheep (G.)(CDIAL 10120) kunda turner kundr turner (A.); k dr, k dri (B.); kundru (Or.); kundau to turn on a lathe, to carve, to chase; kundau dhiri = a hewn stone; kundau murhut = a graven image (Santali) kunda a turner's lathe (Skt.)(CDIAL 3295) Rebus: me iron (Ho.) meed-bica = iron stone ore, in contrast to bali-bica, iron sand ore (Mu.lex.) 1170

Thus, the Banawali seal impression connotes an assemblage of categories of copper (smelted metal); iron (native metal); iron (smelted metal); (turner's) workshop. The load prepared in package decribes these categories of products.

Rakhigarhi 65 Seal impression. This shows a duplicate set of impressions from perhaps the same seal. As to why two seal impressions were affixed can only be conjectured. Maybe, there were two consignments in the package from the same guild workshop. One of the glyphs on the inscription is comparable to the man with raised arm shown on the Banawali seal impression. Over 80 single seal impressions have been found [Lothal (66), Mohenjo-daro (5), Kalibangan (4), Harappa (1), Banawali (1), Rohira (2), Lewan-dheri (1). 36 multiple impressions have been identified [Lothal (27), Kalibangan (6), Mohenjo-daro (2) and Rakhigarhi (1)]. Such seal impressions containing two long Indus inscription (m0304 and m0314) has been decoded rebus at http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/11/decoding-longest-inscription-of-indus.html. The bills of lading are restricted only with descriptions of trade goods and do not indicate names of trading partners or destinations of the packages. It is clear that multiple seal impressions complete the process of compiling the details needed for a bill of lading and contain complete descriptions of the trade consignments loads since the compilation is an assemblage of inscriptions of individual seals.

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The Indus writing was mainly used to provide a detailed description of the goods in packages and seal impressions served as parts of bills of lading.

Lothal seal impression created by inscriptions from three seals. L211. "More than a hundred clay tags with ancient seal impressions come from a burnt-down grain warehouse at the Harappan port town of Lothal. Many of these tags also bear impressions of woven cloth, reed matting or other packing material. This shows that the tags were once attached to bales of goods, and that the seals were used, as in ancient West Asia, for controlling economic transactions. Indus seals coming from West Asian sites testify to trade relations entertained by the Indus civilisation with Mesopotamia." "As many as 65 terracotta sealings recovered from the warehouse bore impressions of Indus seals on th obverse and of packing material such as bamboo matting, reed, woven cloth and cord on the reverse. substantial part of the warehouse was destroyed in P,III and was never rebuilt. All this elaborate infrastructure for external trade amply reflected in other finds from Lothal. A circular steatite seal of the class known as Persian Gulf seal (Bibby, 1958, pp. 243-4; 1172

Wheeler, 1958, p. 246; Rao 1963, p. 37), found aqundantly at Failaka and Rasal Qaila (Bahrain) on the Persian Gillf, is a surface find at Lothal, evidently the Persain Gulf sites were inter mediary in the Indus trade with Mesopotamia. Conversely some of the Indus-like seals found it Mesopotamia may have been imports from Lothal. A bun-shaped copper ingot, weighing 1.438 kg follows the shape, size and weight of Susa ingots, with which tht Lothal specimen shares the lack of arsenic in its composition. In addition to the Indus stone cubes of standard weights. Lothal had another series of weights conforming to the Heavy Assyrian standard for international trade."

Kalibangan089. Multiple seal impression. 17 glyphs are recognized in the impressions created by multiple (perhaps four or five) seals. Lothal has yielded 27 such multiple impressions, perhaps, on one package. These are examples which demonstrate that long texts of inscriptions can be created by combining texts from multiple seals even though the average number of glyphs is about 5 or 6 per inscribed object. It all depends on the multiplicity of the contents of the package described by the seal impressions as bills of lading. Annex 1 decoding L211 fifteen glyphs and k089 twenty glyphs provides detaild rebus readings of the long inscriptions on these two examples of product assemblages in sealings as descriptions of packaged goods incorporated in bills of lading --

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from multiple guild workshops, hence, multiple lines of the inscription read from multiple seal impressions.

An example of 'sealing' is presented by Mackay. Mackay, EJH, 1938, Further Excavations at Mohenjodaro, Vol. II, New Delhi, Government of India, Pl. XC, no. 17. Note: "No. 17 in Pl. XC is certainly a true sealing (i.e. a clay seal impression) and it owes its preservation to having been slightly burnt; it was once fastened to some such object as a smooth wooden rod." (Mackay,ibid.,1938, Vol. I, p. 349). One can only conjecture as to the reason why a pair of seal impressions were created on clay around a wooden rod: perhaps, the rod served as the bill of lading for a particular category of goods/artifacts. The three glyphs can be read rebus. The set of three glyphs is read rebus as: bhaa ab ranku furnace ingot tin. Glyph 1: A glyphic ligature is the ladle or spoon glyph (ligatured to the pot glyph). abu an iron spoon (Santali) Rebus: ab, himba, hompo lump (ingot?), clot, make a lump or clot, coagulate, fuse, melt together (Santali) bahu m. large pot in which grain is parched (S.) Rebus: baa = a kind of iron (G.) bhaa furnace (G.) baa = kiln (Santali). Thus the ligatured glyph of pot + spoon reads rebus: ab (furnace) ingot. Glyph 2: Glyph of rectangle with divisions: baai = to divide, share (Santali) [Note the glyphs of nine rectangles divided.] Rebus: bhaa = an oven, kiln, furnace (Santali) bahi furnace for smelting ore (the same as kuhi) (Santali) bhaa = an oven, kiln, furnace; make an oven, a furnace; ia bhaa = a brick kiln; kun:kal bhaa a potter's kiln; cun bhaa = a lime kiln; cun tehen dobon bhaaea = we shall prepare the lime kiln today (Santali); bhah (H.) bhart = a mixed metal of copper and lead; bhart-y = a barzier, worker in metal; bha, bhrra = oven, furnace (Skt.) me~r.he~t bat.i = iron (Ore) furnaces. [Synonyms are: mt = the eye, rebus for: the dotted circle (Santali.lex) baha [H. bah (Sad.)] any kiln, except a potters kiln, which is called coa; there are four kinds of kiln: cunabat.ha, a lime-kin, iabaha, a brick-kiln, rbaha, a lac kiln, kuilabaha, a charcoal kiln; trs. Or intrs., to make a kiln; cuna rapamente ciminaupe bahakeda? How many limekilns did you make? baha-sen:gel = the fire of a kiln; bai [H. Sad. 1174

bahi, a furnace for distilling) used alone or in the cmpds. Arkibut.i and bat.iora, all meaning a grog-shop; occurs also in ilibai, a (licensed) rice-beer shop (Mundari.lex.) bhai = liquor from mohwa flowers (Santali) Glyph 3: ranku liquid measure; rebus: ranku tin (Santali) One more question. Why were there three sides of the disposed of tally tablets? The purpose of side 1 as part of the seal used for sealing the package has been explained. Side 1 (glyphs: 'water-carrier ligatured with rim-of-jar' glyph + 'three linear strokes' glyph) connoted that the tally was meant for products taken out from the smelter/furnace. Side 1 glyphs were used to tally furnace output, i.e. output of kuhi, 'smelter'. Side 2 glyphs: rhombus with corner + three linear strokes. kna corner (Nk.); Tu. ku angle, corner (Tu.); Rebus: kd to turn in a lathe (B.) kolmo three (Mu.) Rebus: kolami forge (Te.) Side 2 glyphs were used to tally forged products from the turner's lathe, i.e., output of kd, 'lathe'. Side 3 glyphs: rimless pot + four linear strokes. baa = rimless pot (Kannada)Rebus: baa = furnace (Santali) bhrra = furnace (Skt.) pon four (Santali) rebus: pon gold (Ta.) Vikalpa: gaa set of four (Santali) kaa fire-altar. Side 3 glyphs were used to tally gold furnace (products), i.e. output of baa, 'furnace'. Kudos to Kenoyer and Meadow whose insights for providing the leads for further researches on the functions of the script, for e.g., by raising the question of the use and disposal of tablet multiples with the same inscription. Credit goes to Kenoyer and Meadow who have raised incisive questions for further researches to unravel the purpose served by the tablets which occur in multiple copies carrying the same impression, clearly indicating that the inscriptions are unlikely to refer to names (of artisans or residents of the citadel or the lower town). Based on the rebus readings of the glyphs, the inscriptions refer to the categories of artifacts produced by the workers in stone, workers in semi-precious stones (for bead work), workers in minerals, metal, alloys, furnace/smelter workers, and helpers of merchants who script the entire process of manufacture and preparation of bills of lading. Hence, the importance of the 'rim-of-jar' sign denoting the scribe, 1175

the furnace account (scribe). The miniature incised tablets of Harappa might have served the same functions that the copper tablets of Mohenjo-daro served: as tallying instruments for categorising the outputs of the furnaces/smelters. The use of the circular working platforms was to store the products in storage pots kept in the centre of the circle and the articles spread out around the circumference of the circular platform as wares for display, marketing and sale or, for categorised despatch after preparing bills of lading using the seals. The accounting of the produce of the guild workshops gets completed with the stamping of the seal impression on the package, thus securing the package tied with cords of fibre and authenticated by the seal impression. The merchant associates in the Meluhha settlements in distant lands would understand the language and writing and unpack the material for recording the trade transactions using cuneiform script documenting the trade contracts and after invoking the divinities -- e.g. Mitra-Varua, as witnesses (one as contract divinity and the other as law divinity)(as in Bogazkoi inscriptions).

h1155 A&B two-sided tablet (which is one of the 31 duplicates). Tablets in bas relief. The first sign looks like an arch around a pillar with ring-stones. Obverse: One-horned bull. The inscription on these 31 duplicates can be read rebus in three parts: 1176

1. Composite glyph of arch-around-a-pillar with ring-stones: storehouse 2. unsmelted native metal 3. furace (with)a quantity of iron, excellent iron (metal) from stone ore

h739B & A (Standard device; obverse: tree) A variant glyph comparable to the 'pillar with ring-stones' which is part of the composite glyph with an arch over the glyph is provided by one side of a Harappa tablet: h739B Obverse: 1177

H739A: glyph: kui 'tree'; rebus: kuhi 'smelter furnace' (Santali) If this comparison of glyphs is valid, the 'pillar with ring-stones' may, in fact, represent a churning motion of a lathe-drill: Allograph: A sack slung on the front shoulder of the young bull is kh , kh , koth Rebus: B. kd to turn in a lathe; Or. knda lathe, k dib, kd to turn ( Drav. Kur. kd lathe) (CDIAL 3295) Rebus: koil workshop (Ma.)(DEDR 2058). koe forged metal (Santali) ko 'artisan's workshop' (Kuwi) Vikalpa: sagaa, portable brazier and lathe; rebus: sanga 'guild (of turners)'. Thus, the arched drill glyph may connote a turner's workshop. This is a vikalpa reading, if the 'arch' is not to be read as roof of a 'storehouse'. The arch over the drill-lathe glyph may connote semantics of a guild: pattar. (Tamil); battuu 'guild of goldsmiths'. This may be consistent with the semant. patthar 'stones' (Hindi) pattar trough; rebus: . patthara -- m. stone; pattar merchants, guild (smiths) (The word may, thus, denote a lapidary).(CDIAL 8857). Glyph and rebus decoding: Patthara [cp. late Sk. prastara. The ord. meaning of Sk. pr. is "stramentum"] 1. stone, rock S i.32. -- 2. stoneware Miln 2. (Pali) Pa. Pk. patthara -- m. stone , S. patharu m., L. (Ju.) pathar m., khet. patthar, P. patthar m. ( forms of Bi. Mth. Bhoj. H. G. below with atth or ath), WPah.jaun. ptthar; Ku. pthar m. slates, stones , gng. pth*lr flat stone ; A. B. pthar stone , Or. pathara; Bi. pthar, patthar, patthal hailstone ; Mth. pthar, pathal stone , Bhoj. pathal, Aw.lakh. pthar, H. pthar, patthar, pathar, patthal m., G. patthar, pathr m.; M. pthar f. flat stone ; Ko. phttaru stone ; Si. patura chip, fragment ; -- S. pathir f. stone in the bladder ; P. pathr f. small stone ; Ku. pathar stone cup ; B. pthri stone in the bladder, tartar on teeth ; Or. pathur stoneware ; H. patthr f. grit , G. pathr f. *prastarapaa -- , *prastaramrttik -- , *prastarsa -- .Addenda: prastar -- : WPah.kg. ptthr m. stone, rock ; pthreu to stone ; J. pthar m. stone ; OMarw. pthar precious stone . (CDIAL 8857) Rebus: paarai workshop (Ta.) pattharika [fr. patthara] a merchant Vin ii.135 (kasa).(Pali) cf. Pattharati [pa+tharati] to spread, spread out, extend J i.62; iv.212; vi.279; DhA i.26; iii.61 (so read at J vi.549 in cpd pda with spreading feet, v. l. patthaa). -- pp. patthaa (q. v.). &sup5; pattar, n. perh. vartaka. Merchants; . (W.) battuu. n. The caste title of all the five castes of artificers as vala b*, carpenter. 1178

Thus, the seal inscription shows the pattern of tally accomplished by bringing into the storehouse 1. unsmelted native metal; and 2. (output from) furnace of worker in wood and iron. The assumptio made is that the the two categories brought into the storehouse would have been tallied using tablets with inscriptions denoting: 1. unsmelted metal; and 2. (output from) stone iron (metal) ore furnace. Glyph (arch-around a pillar with ring-stones may denote a storehouse): ko = a cow-pen; a cattlepen; a byre (G.) cattle-shed (Marathi) [ k ] A pen or fold for cattle. [ gh ] f C (Dim. of ) A pen or fold for calves. (Marathi)ko = a cow-pen; a cattlepen; a byre (G.) cattle-shed (Marathi) [ k ] A pen or fold for cattle. [ gh ] f C (Dim. of ) A pen or fold for calves. (Marathi) Rebus: ko = place where artisans work (Kur.) [ kh] f ( S) A granary, garner, storehouse, warehouse, treasury, factory, bank. (Marathi) [An attempt has been made to provide rebus readings of some 'architectural' glyphs and the use of 'dot or circle' as a hieroglyph atop a bull on Urseal 18; the note is appended in Annex 2.] Glyph: kolmo seedling, paddy plant; rebus: kolami forge, smithy (Te.)Vikalpa: pajha = to sprout from a root (Santali); Rebus: pasra smithy, forge (Santali)[It is possible that two variants of the glyph: one with three pronged representation of seedling; and the other with five-pronged representation of seedling might have been intended to decode the fine distinction between the two lexemes: kolmo, pajha perhaps denoting two types of forge]. Glyph: aar a splinter (Ma.)aaruka to burst, crack, sli off,fly open; aarcca splitting, a crack; aarttuka to split, tear off, open (an oyster) (Ma.); aaruni to crack (Tu.) (DEDR 66) Rebus: aduru native, unsmelted metal (Kannada)aduru = gan.iyinda tegadu karagade iruva aduru = ore taken from the mine and not subjected to melting in a furnace (Ka. Siddha_nti Subrahman.ya Sastris new interpretation of the Amarakosa, Bangalore, Vicaradarpana Press, 1872, p. 330)Viklpa: sal splinter; rebus: sal workshop (Santali) Thus the two glyphs of the text of the tablet inscription showing arch-around a pillar with ringstones + paddy plant + splinter glyph may connote, rebus: kolami ko aduru, 'forge unsmelted metal workshop'. Glyph: Fish + scales aya s (amu) metllic stalks of stone ore' 1179

(Seehttp://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/11/decoding-longest-inscription-ofindus.html) Vikalpa: badho a species of fish with many bones (Santali) Rebus: badhoria expert in working in wood(Santali) Glyph: kaa arrow (Skt.) rebus: kaa 'fire-altar, furnace'. The two glyphs together an furnace of a worker in wood and iron: aya s (amu) metallic stalks

of stone ore'aya s kana furnace (with)a quantity of iron, excellent iron (metal) from stone ore
Vikalpa: badhor kana 'furnace (of) worker in wood and iron'. ayaskana is a lexeme attested in: Paan.gan.

Each platform is 11 feet in diameter and consists of a single course of four continuous concentric rings of brick-on-edge masonry with a hollow at the centre equal to the length of three bricks. The mortar used in them is mud but the pointing is of gypsum. (Pl. XIII, c) (Picture 26.4) Their purpose is not clear. While digging the hollow of P8 there was found a small quantity of burnt wheat and husked barley and about two pounds of animal bones. Some bits of bones 1180

were also found in two or three others. As, however, the bones etc., lay about a foot below the central hollow, that is to say distinctly below the brickwork of these platforms, and similar fragments of bones were also found sticking at the same level among the edges of the platforms, it appears certain that they were merely a part of the debris and by no means the contents of the hollow. (Vats, MS, 1940, Excavation at Harappa, Delhi, ASI, p. 182).

Text 5207 etc. (From 2-sided tablets h859-870, samples of the 31 duplicated mentioned herein.)...Copies of incised tablets and duplicates of molded tablets have been found in large numbers in two noteworthy instances at Harappa: (1) script copies incised into 22 rectangular steatite tablets, triangular in section, from secondary deposits of Period 3B on the outside of the perimeter wall in Trench 11 on East side of Mound E (Meadow & Kenoyer 2000, fig. 4; this volume: H-2218 through H-2239) and (2) 31 duplicates bearing iconography and script, made of regular molded terracotta, biconvex in section, from the northern portion of Trench II in Area G (Vats 1940: 195; CISI 1: H-252 through H-265 and H-276 & H-277; CISI 2: H-859 through H870; this volume: H-1155). Other copies and duplicates have been found scattered across the site where, like the multiples above, they are always found in trash, fill, or street deposits. Why tablets were made, how they were used, and why they were discarded remain intriguing unanswered questions. Their intrinsic interest lies not only in the script that they often bear, but even more so in the iconography, which provides an important glimpse, however fragmentary, into details of Harappan ideology, particularly for the time frame from ca.2400 to ca. 2000 BC (Harappa Period 3B through much of Period 3C). For a more detailed discussion see Meadow & Kenoyer 2000." (J. Mark Kenoyer & Richard H. Meadow, 2010, Inscribed objects from Harappa excavations 1986-2007 in: Asko Parpola, B.M. Pande and Petteri Koskikallio (eds.), Corpus of

Indus seals and inscriptions, Volume 3: New material, untraced objects and collections outside India and Pakistan, Part 1: Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, Helsinki, Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia,
pp. xlix-l) http://www.harappa.com/indus/Kenoyer-Meadow-2010-HARP.pdf In the referenced Kenoyer & Meadow 2000, it is noted: "The tablets (or tokens) are common at Harappa, and multiple copies were often produced. In 1997, HARP excavators found 22 threesided steatite tablets, all with the same inscriptions, from the middle Harappan Phase (about 1181

2300 BC). Sixteen were discovered in a single group, as if they had been in a perishable container that was thrown over the city wall with other trash. In a street deposit of similar age just inside the wall, a seal was found with two of the same characters as seen on one side of the tablets. Why were these intact seals or tablets discarded? They were individually manufctured by craftsmen from models or molds at the demand of an individual or group. They were used for a time, then discarded. Unlike coins, they apparently had value only in relation to the individual or group permitted to employ them. They have never been found in graves -- either the grave of a seal-owning individual has not been excavated, or the seals were not integral to n individual's identity. Perhaps a change in an individual's status made a specific seal or tablet invalid. Or perhaps the use of a seal or tablet was validated only when competent authority used it, otherwise, it was worthless. " (Richard H. Meadow and Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, 2000, The Indus valley mystery, one of the world's first great civilizations is still a puzzle, in: Scientific

American Discovering Archaeology, March/April 2000, p. 41)

Richard H. Meadow and Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, 2000, The Indus Valley Mystery in: Scientific American, Discovery Archaeology, March/April 2000, pp. 38-43 Source: http://www.anthropology.wisc.edu/pdfs/Kenoyer%20Articles/The%20Indus%20Valley% 20Mystery.pdf Note: HARP excavators surmised the possible production of indigo. An alternative explanation is possible and deserves further investigation in the context of metalwork on the circular working platforms. HARP excavations of one of the circular brick floors in mound F at Harappa revealed a deep depression containing greenish layers of clay. The greenish layers may have been caused by the presence of zinc particles which have a bluish green color. Zinc dust is flammable when exposed to heat and burns with a bluish-green flame. In an identification of the corrosion minerals identified on the Great Buddha, Kamakura, Japan it is noted that "some of the compounds found on the Buddha were mixed copper-zinc salts...and schulenbergite, a mixed copper-zinc basic sulfate, that is rhombohedral with a pearly, light green-blue color." (David A. Scott, Getty Conservation Institute, 2002, Copper and Bronze in Art: corrosion, colorants, conservation, Getty Publications, p. 162) 1182

"Ancient Indian literature has even recorded a breakthrough in zinc extraction in those days. Such process included high temperature distillation that was developed and then applied in future zinc extraction and purification from their metal ore sources. Zinc ores were broken with the use of iron hammers or pestles. Then, such broken ores were again crushed by larger pestles. Then, the ore would have to be thoroughly roasted in order to reduce the levels of sulphur. After which, a high proportion of calcined dolomite was mixed with the crushed and roasted ores. An interesting ingredient in this process is the addition of common salt. This is for the reason that salt would help in the distillation process, thereby, producing soda vapor that assists in amassing calcium and magnesium oxides. This allows zinc vapor to freely flow and increasing zinc yield. This zinc yield was poured on clay containers for heating."

Example of Rosasite. Minor ore of zinc and copper and as a mineral specimen. Colour: Blue to green.Rosasite forms in the oxidation zones of zinc-copper deposits. It typically is found as crusts and botryoidal masses or nodules. Crystals are fibrous and found in tufted aggregates. The color is an attractive bluish green. Rosasite crystals are harder than aurichalcite; 4 versus 1 - 2 respectively. Rosasite is associated with red limonite and other such colorful minerals as aurichalcite, smithsonite and hemimorphite. Nodules of rosasite certainly add color to what are termed "landscape" specimens. http://www.mineralgallery.co.za/rosasite.htm

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It will be necessary to test the greenish layers of clay found in the circular platform for the presence of such alloying mineral clays. Is it possible that the working platforms were also used by the smiths to work on their anvils to forge metal artifacts, using portable furnaces? Indus valley mystery (Kenoyer & Meadow, 2000)

Ernest Mackay, Chapter XXI. Seals and seal impressions, copper tablets, with tabulation (pp.370-405). As of 1927, 558 objects with inscriptions were found. Discussing 80 copper tablets found, Mackay notes (p. 398): The rectangular pieces are of various sizes, ranging from 1.2 by 0.5 in. to 1.5 by 1.0 in. The square pieces, which are rare, average 0.92 by 0.92 in. in size. These tablets vary greatly in thickness, from 0.07 in. to 0.12 in. One especially substantial tablet (HR 4799) measures 0.85 in. square by 0.23 in. thickOn most of the tablets there is the figure of an animal on one side, and on the other three or more signs forming an inscription. The figures and signs were in every case carefully cut with a burinBelow is a list of the animals on the legible tablets with the numbers found, up to the present, of each: elephant (6), antelope (5), hare (5), rhinoceros (4), buffalo(?)(4), short-horned bull (4), human figure (3), goat (2), brahmani bull (2), tiger (2), two-headed animal (2), composite animal (1), monkey (?)(1)The above list shows that most of the animals that appear on the seals are also represented on the copper tabletscomposite animalIt has the hind-quarters of a rhinoceros and the fore-quarters of a leopard or tiger. It has the unicorns horn, and a manger stands before it. (Pl. CXVIII,2). A very curious animal on two sides of the tablets appears to have the body of an antelope with a head at either end. The fact that more than one example has been found of this animal proves that it is not a vagary of the engraver (Pl. CXVII,3). The tablet bearing the figure of a man dressed in what seems to be a costume of leaves is exceptionally interesting (Pl. CXVII, 16). He is apparently a hunter armed with a bow and arrowThe antelope appears on five of the tablets, represented in a typical attitude with his head turned to look behind him (Pl. CXVII, 1 and 2; Pl. CXVIII,1). This attitude is very common 1184

in Elamitic art, especially on the pottery and seals. The position is also well known on both the archaic seals and pottery of Mesopotamia. For the present, the elephant appears to take first place amongst the animals on these copper tablets. An excellent example is seen in Pl. CXVII,11, of which the original was found at a depth of 1 foot below the surface in House XXVI, VS AreaThe exceptionally powerful-looking animal with long curling horns (Pl. CXVII, 8 and 12, and Pl. CXVIII, 4 and 6), and with a manger placed in front of it, does not appear on any of the seals. The long tail of the animal with a tuft at the end is carried well in the air, as if the creature were about to chargeThe rope pattern on the obverse of Tablet No. 5 in Pl. CXVIII is unique at Mohenjo-daroThe fact that all of the tablets bearing the representation of a hare have the same inscription on the obverse (Pl. CXVII, 5 and 6), and that the animals with long curling horns and long tail also bear the same inscription different, however, from the inscription on the tablet refers in some way to the animal on the tablet. Of three tablets, each with an elephant engraved upon it, all bear the same inscription (Pl. CXII, 11), and lastly those with the figures of antelopes looking backwards over their shoulders all have the same characters on the reverse (Pl. CXVII, 1 and 2; Pl. CXVIII,1). Some, if not all the animals on the copper tablets were possibly dedicated to certain gods. As on some of the seals, we find a manger placed before certain of them, as, for instance, the unicorn, the rhinoceros, antelope, and Brahmani bull. This suggests that these animals were kept in captivity, and, if so, it is likely to have been for religious purposes; a rhinoceros is obviously quite useless for any domestic purpose. A manger is placed before the composite animal on the tablet illustrated in Pl. CXVIII,2, despite the fact that such an animal could never have existed. (pp. 400-401). http://www.scribd.com/doc/32303649/Indus-Writing-on-Metal Indus Writing on Metal Copper tablets from Mohenjo-daro: an analysis 46 tablet groups (After Parpola, 1994, fig. 7.14). The 46 tablet groups are shown with distinctive pictorial motifs and glyphs sequenced together to constitute the Indus script inscriptions on copper tablets. See: 1. Parpola, A. 1992 Copper Tablets from Mohenjo-daro and the study of the Indus Script. In: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Moenjodaro, edited by I. M. Nadiem, pp. Karachi, Department of Archaeology. 1185

2. Pande, B. M. 1979 Inscribed Copper Tablets from Mohenjo daro: A Preliminary Analysis. InAncient Cities of the Indus, edited by G. L. Possehl, pp. 268-288. New Delhi, Vikas Publishing House PVT LTD. 3. Pande, B. M. 1991 Inscribed Copper Tablets from Mohenjo-daro: Some Observations.Puratattva (21): 25-28. Brij Mohan Pande had first analysed (1979 and 1991) the importance and significance of copper tablets with unique sets of inscriptions. This contribution is just scintillating and was later (1992) followed up by Asko Parpola identifying 36 groups. The find by HARP recently, of a copper tablet -- and duplicates -- (bas relief with raised script) in Harappa was a stunner, together with 31 and 22 sets of duplicate tablets with identical inscriptions.

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http://www.scribd.com/doc/32588163/Animal-Glyphs-of-Indus-Script Animal Glyphs of Indus Script See catalogue of seals and seal impressions in: Harriet Crawford, 2001, Early Dilmun Seals from Saar,Archaeology International, Upper House, Stoke Saint Milborough, Ludlow. Many glyphs shown in the catalogues are concordant with Indus script glyphs, pointing to trade interactions across the Persian Gulf from Meluhha. Early Dilmun Seals from Saar (Harriet Crawford, 2001)

Annex 1 decoding L211 fifteen glyphs and k089 twenty glyphs

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L211 Fifteen glyphs Line 1: Turner's workshop, metal ingot, metal (iron) workshop, furnace scribe (account) Line 2: (...)workshop, cast metal, copper (metal), furnace scribe (account) Line 3: (...), furnace scribe account - native metal, metal ingot, warehouse, casting smithy/forge, furnace scribe account Detailed decoding rebus readings: Line 1 koi flag (Ta.)(DEDR 2049). Rebus: ko, artisans workshop (Kuwi.) kunda turner kundr turner (A.) sal splinter; rebus: sal workshop (Santali) Fish + sloping stroke, aya dh metal ingot (Vikalpa: h = a slope; the inclination of a plane (G.) Rebus: : hako = a large metal ingot (G.) me 'body' (Mu.); rebus: me 'iron' (Ho.)abe, abea large horns, with a sweeping upward curve, applied to buffaloes (Santali) Rebus: ab, himba, hompo lump (ingot?), clot, make a lump or clot, coagulate, fuse, melt together (Santali) Thus, horned body glyph decodes rebus: ab me 'iron (metal) ingot'. kaa kanka furnace scribe (account) ka kanka rim of jar; Rebus: karaka scribe; ka furnace, fire-altar. Thus the ligatured sign is decoded: ka karaka furnace scribe Line 2 aya 'fish' (Mu.); rebus: aya 'metal' (G.) dula 'pair' (Kashmiri); rebus: dul 'cast (metal)' loa ficus religiosa (Santali) rebus: loh metal (Skt.) Rebus: lo copper. Thus, dul loh cast copper kaa kanka furnace scribe (account)ka kanka rim of jar; Rebus: karaka scribe; ka furnace, fire-altar. Thus the ligatured sign is decoded: ka karaka furnace scribe Line 3 kaa kanka furnace scribe (account) ka kanka rim of jar; Rebus: karaka scribe; ka 1188

furnace, fire-altar. Thus the ligatured sign is decoded: ka karaka furnace scribe aar a splinter; aaruka to burst, crack, sli off,fly open; aarcca splitting, a crack; aar ttuka to split, tear off, open (an oyster) (Ma.); aaruni to crack (Tu.) (DEDR 66) Rebus: aduru native, unsmelted metal (Kannada) Fish + scales aya s (amu) metllic stalks of stone ore

The orthography (M-shape) is similar to the orthography of mangalastra (marriage badge) used in some Indian traditions and worn by Indian brides. (Assuming that the gyph orthographically connotes the architecture of a warehouse with a roof: [ kh ] f ( S) A granary, garner, storehouse, warehouse, treasury, factory, bank. (Marathi) The grain and provisions (as of an army); the commissariatsupplies. Ex. - - - . [ khy ] [ kh ] m ( S) A large granary, storeroom, warehouse, water-reservoir &c. 2 The stomach. 3 The chamber of a gun, of water-pipes &c. 4 A bird's nest. 5 A cattle-shed. 6 The chamber or cell of a hun in which is set down in figures the amount. [ khr ] n A storehouse gen (Marathi) krvI f. granary (WPah.); 1189

ku, kuo house, building(Ku.)(CDIAL 3232) kui hut made of boughs (Skt.) gui temple (Telugu)[Notes on hun: [ hu ] f ( H) A bill of exchange. To present a hun. [ hu ] f ( H) A bill of exchange. To present a hun. [ hubh ] m ( H) sometimes n Contract or agreement (for the transportation of goods &c.) in which the payment of all tolls and duties, and of all charges for hire &c. is included; a lump-contract. (Marathi) dula 'pair' (Kashmiri); rebus: dul 'cast (metal)'(Santali) kolom = cutting, graft; to graft, engraft, prune; kolma hoo = a variety of the paddy plant (Desi)(Santali.) kolmo rice plant (Mu.) Rebus: kolami furnace,smithy (Te.) Thus the ligatured glyph decodes: cast (metal) smithy

k089 Twenty glyphs Line 1: (metal) ingot, guild workshop, stonework, furnace scribe (account), iron (metal) Line 2: Turner's workshop, metal, ingot furnace, smithy/forge, (metal) furnace Line 3: Smithy/forge, tin workshop, ingot forge, workshop Line 4: metal furnace, workshop, smith/forge Detailed decoding rebus readings: Line 1 m h metal ingot (Santali) m h = the quantity of iron produced at one time in a native smelting furnace of the Kolhes; iron produced by the Kolhes and formed like a four-cornered piece a little pointed at each end; mh mht = iron smelted by the Kolhes and formed into an equilateral lump a little pointed at each end; kolhe tehen me~he~t mh akata = the Kolhes have to-day produced pig iron (Santali.lex.) 1190

Wo. en roof , Bshk. an, Phal. n(AO xviii 251, followed by Buddruss Wo 126, < ar(a)a -); WPah. (Joshi) ann f. small room in a house to keep sheep in . Addenda: ara -- 2. 2. *ara --WPah. kg.nni f. bottom storey of a house in which young of cattle are kept . ara protecting , n. shelter, home RV. 2. *ara -- . [ar] 1. Pa. Pk. saraa -- n. protection, shelter, house ; . rn m. roof ( Sh.?), Dm. aran; P. sara m. protection, asylum , H. saran f.; G. sar n. help ; Si.saraa defence, village, town ; -- < *ara -- or poss. *raa -- : Kho. arn courtyard of a house , Sh. ar m. fence . (CDIAL 12326)Rebus: sei (f.) [Class. Sk. rei in meaning "guild"; Vedic= row] 1. a guild Vin iv.226; J i.267, 314; iv.43; Dvs ii.124; their number was eighteen J vi.22, 427; VbhA 466. -- pamukha the head of a guild J ii.12 (text seni -- ). -- 2. a division of an army J vi.583; ratha -- J vi.81, 49; seimokkha the chief of an army J vi.371 (cp. sen and seniya). (Pali) bharao = cross-beam in the roof of a house (G.lex.) bhraiyum, bhrvaiyo, bhroiyo = a beam (G.lex.) bri = bamboo splits fastened lengthwise to the rafters of a roof from both sides (Tu.lex.) brapae = chief beam lying on pillars (Te.lex.) bharaum a piece in architecture; placed at the top of a pillar to support a beam (G.) Rebus: bharatiyo = a caster of metals; a brazier; bharatar, bharatal, bharata = moulded; an article made in a mould; bharata = casting metals in moulds; bharavum = to fill in; to put in; to pour into (G.lex.) bhart = a mixed metal of copper and lead; bharty = a barzier, worker in metal; bha, bhrra = oven, furnace (Skt.) Thus, the glyph 'roof + cross-beam' may read: bharao en; rebus: bharatiyo sei 'guild of casters of metal'. sal splinter; Rebus: sal workshop (Santali) Thus the entire glyphic: 'roof+cross-beam+splinter' may read: bharatiyo sei sal 'workshop (of) guild of casters of metal'. L. hok f. hut in the fields ; Ku. hwk m. pl. gates of a city or market ; N. hok (pl. of *hoko) door ; -- OMarw. hokaro m. basket ; -- N. hokse place covered with a mat to store rice in, large basket . (CDIAL 6880) [ dhga ] m n Coarse mean clothes: also a coarse mean garment or cloth. Pr. . Rebus: *hkka2 rock . 2. *hka -- . [Perh. belongs to same group as *ga -- 2 s.v. *akka -- 3] 1. Kho. (Lor.) ok high ground, hillock, heap ; H. hok m. large piece of broken stone . 2. Ku. h go stone , N. hugo.(CDIAL 5603) kaa kanka furnace scribe (account) 1191

me 'body' (Mu.); rebus: me 'iron' (Ho.) Line 2 Turner workshop: kund opening in the nave or hub of a wheel to admit the axle (Santali) Rebus: kundam, kund a sacrificial fire-pit (Skt.) kunda turner kundr turner (A.) sal splinter; rebus: sal workshop (Santali) aya 'fish' (Mu.); rebus: aya 'metal' (G.) S. bahu m. large pot in which grain is parched, Rebus; bhah m. kiln (P.) baa = a kind of iron (G.) Vikalpa: mego = rimless vessels (Santali) bhaa furnace (G.) baa = kiln (Santali); baa = a kind of iron (G.) bhaha -- m.n. gridiron (Pkt.) bahu large cooking fire bah f. distilling furnace; L. bhah m. grainparcher's oven, bhah f. kiln, distillery, aw. bhah; P. bhah m., h f. furnace, bhah m. kiln; S. bhah ke distil (spirits). (CDIAL 9656)Rebus: me iron (Ho.) abu an iron spoon (Santali) Rebus: ab, himba, hompo lump (ingot?), clot, make a lump or clot, coagulate, fuse, melt together (Santali) kolmo three (Mu.); rebus: kolami smithy (Te.) kaa arrow; Rebus: ka = a furnace, altar (Santali) Line 3 kolom = cutting, graft; to graft, engraft, prune; kolma hoo = a variety of the paddy plant (Desi)(Santali.) kolmo rice plant (Mu.) Rebus: kolami furnace,smithy (Te.) ranku liquid measure; rebus: ranku tin (Santali) sal splinter; rebus: sal workshop (Santali) Ligature of 'ingot' glyph + 'paddy plant' glyph: kolom +m h smithy metal ingot. Glyph: one long linear stroke. koa, koa = in arithmetic one; 4 koa or koa = 1 gaa = 4 (Santali) Rebus: ko, artisans workshop (Kuwi.) Line 4 me 'body' (Mu.); rebus: me 'iron' (Ho.) ligatured with 'pot' glyph. S. bahu m. large pot in which grain is parched, Rebus; bhah m. kiln (P.) baa = a kind of iron (G.) ku : . (, 5). 3. [K. ku.] Tusk; . (. 39, 1). 4. Horn; . 1192

 (. . . 21). Ta. ku (in cpds. ku-) horn, tusk, branch of tree, cluster, bunch, coil of hair, line, diagram, bank of stream or pool; kuvau branch of a tree; k, kuv rock horned-owl (cf. 1657 Ta. kuiai). Ko. k (obl. k-) horns (one horn is kob), half of hair on each side of parting, side in game, log, section of bamboo used as fuel, line marked out. To. kw (obl. kw-) horn, branch, path across stream in thicket. Ka. ku horn, tusk, branch of a tree; kr horn. Tu. k, ku horn. Te. ku rivulet, branch of a river. Pa. k (pl. kul) horn (DEDR 2200) Rebus: ko, artisans workshop (Kuwi.) S. bahu m. large pot in which grain is parched, Rebus; bhah m. kiln (P.) baa = a kind of iron (G.) Vikalpa: mego = rimless vessels (Santali) bhaa furnace (G.) baa = kiln (Santali); baa = a kind of iron (G.) bhaha -- m.n. gridiron (Pkt.) bahu large cooking fire bah f. distilling furnace; L. bhah m. grainparcher's oven, bhah f. kiln, distillery, aw. bhah; P. bhah m., h f. furnace, bhah m. kiln; S. bhah ke distil (spirits). (CDIAL 9656)Rebus: me iron (Ho.) abu an iron spoon (Santali) Rebus: ab, himba, hompo lump (ingot?), clot, make a lump or clot, coagulate, fuse, melt together (Santali) Annex 2 Notes on 'architectural' glyphs of Indus script: mudhif (reedhouse,Mesopotamia) and a 'dot,circle' glyph of Indus script depicted atop a bull on Urseal 18 (Gadd)

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m0702 Text 2206 showing Sign 39, a glyph which compares with the Sumerian mudhif structure.

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Modern mudhif structure (Iraq)

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The Toda mund, from, Richard Barron, 1837, "View in India, chiefly among the Nilgiri Hills'. Oil on canvas. The architecture of Iraqi mudhif and Toda mund -- of Indian linguistic area -- is comparable.

284 x 190 mm. Close up view of a Toda hut, with figures seated on the stone wall in front of the building. Photograph taken circa 1875-1880, numbered 37 elsewhere. Royal Commonwealth Society Library. Cambridge University Library. University of Cambridge.

A Toda temple in Muthunadu Mund near Ooty, India.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toda_people

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The hut of a Toda Tribe of Nilgiris, India. Note the decoration of the front wall, and the very small door.

Text 1330 (appears with Zebu glyph) showing Sign 39. Pictorial motif: Zebu (Bos indicus) This sign is comparable to the cattle byre of Southern Mesopotamia dated to c. 3000 BCE. go = the place where cattle are collected at mid-day (Santali); goh (Brj.)(CDIAL 4336). goha (Skt.); cattle-shed (Or.) ko = a cow-pen; a cattlepen; a byre (G.) cattle-shed (Marathi) [ k ] A pen or fold for cattle. [ gh ] f C (Dim. of ) A pen or fold for calves. (Marathi)

Sumerian mudhif (reedhouse)http://www.laputanlogic.com/articles/2004/01/24-0001.html

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Cattle Byres c.3200-3000 B.C. Late Uruk-Jemdet Nasr period. Magnesite. Cylinder seal. In the lower field of this seal appear three reed cattle byres. Each byre is surmounted by three reed pillars topped by rings, a motif that has been suggested as symbolizing a male god, perhaps Dumuzi. Within the huts calves or vessels appear alternately; from the sides come calves that drink out of a vessel between them. Above each pair of animals another small calf appears. A herd of enormous cattle moves in the upper field. Cattle and cattle byres in Southern Mesopotamia, c. 3500 BCE. Drawing of an impression from a Uruk period cylinder seal. (After Moorey, PRS, 1999, Ancient mesopotamian materials and industries: the archaeological evidence, Eisenbrauns.) Kohaka1 (nt.) "a kind of koha," the stronghold over a gateway, used as a store -- room for various things, a chamber, treasury, granary Vin ii.153, 210; for the purpose of keeping water in it Vin ii.121=142; 220; treasury J i.230; ii.168; -- store -- room J ii.246; kothake pturahosi appeared at the gateway, i. e. arrived at the mansion Vin i.291.; -- udaka -- k a bath -- room, bath cabinet Vin i.205 (cp. Bdhgh's expln at Vin. Texts ii.57); so also nahna -- k and pihi -- k, bath -- room behind a hermitage J iii.71; DhA ii.19; a gateway, Vin ii.77; usually in cpd. dvra -k "door cavity," i. e. room over the gate: ghara satta -- dvra -- kohakapaimaita "a mansion adorned with seven gateways" J i.227=230, 290; VvA 322. dvra -- kohakesu sanni pahapenti "they spread mats in the gateways" VvA 6; esp. with bahi: bahi -- dvrakohak nikkhmetv "leading him out in front of the gateway" A iv.206; e thia or nisinna standing or sitting in front of the gateway S i.77; M i.161, 382; A iii.30. -- bala -- k. a line of infantry J i.179. -kohaka -- kamma or the occupation connected with a storehouse (or bathroom?) is mentioned

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as an example of a low occupation at Vin iv.6; Kern, Toev. s. v. "someone who sweeps away dirt." (Pali)

urseal15 Gadd, PBA 18 (1932), p. 13, Pl. III, no. 15; Legrain, MJ (1929), p. 306, pl. XLI, no. 119; found at Ur in the cemetery area, in a ruined grave . there is a round spot upon the bull's back. [ g ] f (Dim. of ) A roundish stone or pebble. [ gd ] m A circular brand or mark made by actual cautery (Marathi) [ g ] m A roundish stone or pebble. 2 A marble (of stone, lac, wood &c.) 2 A marble. 3 A large lifting stone. Used in trials of strength among the Athlet. 4 A stone in temples described at length under 5 fig. A term for a round, fleshy, well-filled body. 6 A lump of silver: as obtained by melting down lace or fringe. or [ gu or g ] a () Spherical or spheroidal, pebble-form. (Marathi) Rebus: krvi f. granary (WPah.); ku, kuo house, building(Ku.)(CDIAL 3232) [ kh ] f ( S) A granary, garner, storehouse, warehouse, treasury, factory, bank. (Marathi) The grain and provisions (as of an army); the commissariatsupplies. Ex. - - - . [ khy ] [ kh ] m ( S) A large granary, store-room, warehouse, water-reservoir &c. 2 The stomach. 3 The chamber of a gun, of water-pipes &c. 4 A bird's nest. 5 A cattle-shed. 6 The chamber or cell of a hun in which is set down in figures the amount. [ khr ] n A storehouse gen (Marathi)

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Sumerian mudhif facade, with uncut reed fonds and sheep entering, carved into a gypsum trough from Uruk, c. 3200 BCE (British Museum WA 12000). Photo source. See also: Expedition 40:2 (1998), p. 33, fig. 5b Life on edge of the marshes. Fig. 5B. Carved gypsum trough from Uruk. Two lambs exit a reed structure identifical to the present-day mudhif on this ceremonial trough from the site of Uruk in northern Iraq. Neither the leaves or plumes have been removed from the reds which are tied together to form the arch. As a result, the crossed-over, feathered reeds create a decorative pattern along the length of the roof, a style more often seen in modern animal shelters built by the Mi'dan. Dating to ca. 3000 BCE, the trough documents the extraordinry length of time, such arched reed buildings have been in use. (The British Museum BCA 120000, acg. 2F2077)

End of the Uruk trough. Length: 96.520 cm Width: 35.560 cm Height: 15.240 cm

Terracotta head of ewe. Probably from Uruk, southern Iraq Late Prehistoric period, about 33003000 BC Length: 13.650 cm Height: 9.520 cm

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Probably from the decoration of a temple Sheep played an important role in the ancient Sumerian economy. Documents show that woollen textiles were sometimes produced in large factories, employing hundreds of women, and probably exported throughout the region. Images on cylinder seals from this period appear to show lines of weavers, with their hair in pig tails. Although it is not clear exactly where this baked clay head came from, other very similar examples made of stone and terracotta have been excavated from the city of Uruk. Indeed, it seems that images of sheep were especially common there at this time. The extraordinary modelling of this piece is characteristic of fine objects of this period. Scenes of sheep on stone sculpture (for example, the 'Uruk Trough' in The British Museum) and cylinder seals at this time show a close relationship with the symbol of the goddess Inana (Ishtar), a fertility deity. J.E. Reade, Mesopotamia (London, The British Museum Press, 1991) M. Roaf, Cultural atlas of Mesopotamia (New York, 1990) J. Rawson, Animals in art (London, The British Museum Press, 1977)

The Uruk trough. From Uruk (Warka), southern Iraq. Late Prehistoric period, about 3300-3000 BC A cult object in the Temple of Inanna? This trough was found at Uruk, the largest city so far known in southern Mesopotamia in the late prehistoric period (3300-3000 BC). The carving on the side shows a procession of sheep approaching a reed hut (of a type still found in southern Iraq) and two lambs emerging. The decoration is only visible if the trough is raised above the level at which it could be conveniently used, suggesting that it was probably a cult object, rather than of practical use. It may have 1201

been a cult object in the Temple of Inana (Ishtar), the Sumerian goddess of love and fertility; a bundle of reeds (Inanna's symbol) can be seen projecting from the hut and at the edges of the scene. Later documents make it clear that Inanna was the supreme goddess of Uruk. Many finely-modelled representations of animals and humans made of clay and stone have been found in what were once enormous buildings in the centre of Uruk, which were probably temples. Cylinder seals of the period also depict sheep, cattle, processions of people and possibly rituals. Part of the right-hand scene is cast from the original fragment now in the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin J. Black and A. Green, Gods, demons and symbols of -1 (London, The British Museum Press, 1992) H.W.F. Saggs, Babylonians (London, The British Museum Press, 1995) D. Collon, Ancient Near Eastern art (London, The British Museum Press, 1995) H. Frankfort, The art and architecture of th (London, Pelican, 1970) P.P. Delougaz, 'Animals emerging from a hut', Journal of Near Eastern Stud-1, 27 (1968), pp. 1867http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/me/t/the_uruk_trough.aspx Life on the edge of the marshes (Edward Ochsenschlaer, 1998) ARC08002FU1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB8zsBH1rP8&feature=player_embeddedPergamonmuseum der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin (Pergamon Museum, Museum Island Berlin)

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Ur contained one of the largest ziggurats and had two ports that welcomed ships from as far as India. The Urs ziggurat is a pyramid-like brick tower built in 2100 B.C. as a tribute to Sin, the moon god. It originally rose 65 feet from a base measuring 135 by 200 feet and had three platforms, each a different color, and a silver shrine at the top. About a third of it remains. Reaching a height of about 50 feet, it looks sort of like a castle wall filled in with dirt and ascended by a staircase. Some regard best preserved structure similar to the Tower of Babel. Ur was unearthed in the 1920s and 30s by a team led by the British archaeologist Leonard Woolley, who found a great temple complex, royal tombs, and the remains of houses on city streets. In the tombs were treasuresincluding scores of stunning objects made with gold, silver and precious stonesthat rivaled treasures found at famous burial sites in ancient Egypt. Most of the objects were taken to the British Museum. Bombing raids during the first Persian Gulf War left four craters in the temple precinct and 400 holes on the ziggurat. See: Marsh arabs, Part I. Marsh Arabs,Part II. Uruk (modern Warka). Etymology concordant with gashshu,'gypsum, whitewash' (Sumerian)[See doc. A Discussion of the Use of im-babbar 2 by the Craft Workers of Ancient Mesopotamia]*kasigala rubbish . [Cf. ksmbu -- n. (prob.) rubbish , Pa. kasambu -- n. rubbish : see *kasaa -- .] P. kahigal f. plaster of mud and chaff ; N. kasiar dirt, rubbish .(CDIAL 2982).Kona (BB) kaR- to smear, daub, whitewash. Pe. kz- (kst-) to plaster, rub on (medicine); kspa- to rub on, smear on. Kui kja (kji-) to daub, plaster over holes; n. daubing, plastering; kahpa (kaht-) to smear, plaster. Kuwi (F.) kd kaiyali to plaster with mud (kd for Su. Isr. ku wall, IIJ 6.238); (Isr.) kah- to daub, smear. Kur. xasn id. (DEDR 1503).

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Warka vase.

Warka vase. From the Eanna precinct in Uruk/Warka (Sumeria), late 4th millennium BC. Shows a procession carying offerings to a god.

Sargonid seal. Uruk. 1204

Fascinating is the relief decoration carved on these plaques, often in two or three registers. They include several ritual scenes, scenes of offering to the temple, libation and festival activities. Very informative about temple household and the social practices that went on in the temples. Therefore these plaques were the really first major attempts towards visual narrative in the Early Mesopotamian art. For some of these wall plaques we know that they were commemorating not a generic but a specific event, celebrating a particular achievement on the behalf of the king and his people. Later examples from EDIII are inscribed too that makes this certain. These plaques therefore, which most of the time depict celebration, of especially a societal kind, derives its meaning from its very making. The same abstarction of human figure is also evident in these reliefs. Note: The 'door' shown on the right-side of the plaque compares with an Indus script glyph (discussed in this monograph). Archaic book-keeping. Hans Jorg Nissen, Peter Damerow, Robert K. Englund, 1993, Archaic

bookkeeping: early writing and techniques of economic administration in the ancient Near East,
Univ. of Chicago Press.Archaic Bookkeepingbrings together the most current scholarship on the earliest true writing system in human history. Invented by the Babylonians at the end of the fourth millennium B.C., this script, called proto-cuneiform, survives in the form of clay tablets that have until now posed formidable barriers to interpretation. Many tablets, excavated in fragments from ancient dump sites, lack a clear context. In addition, the purpose of the earliest tablets was not to record language but to monitor the administration of local economies by 1205

means of a numerical system. Using the latest philological research and new methods of computer analysis, the authors have for the first time deciphered much of the numerical information. In reconstructing both the social context and the function of the notation, they consider how the development of our earliest written records affected patterns of thought, the concept of number, and the administration of household economies. Complete with computergenerated graphics keyed to the discussion and reproductions of all documents referred to in the text,Archaic Bookkeepingwill interest specialists in Near Eastern civilizations, ancient history, the history of science and mathematics, and cognitive psychology. The Indus Script--Write or Wrong? - Andrew Lawler

Cited in a Univ. of Bern Bachelor thesis: http://www.indoeurohome.com/LucyZuberbuehlerindusscriptmss2009.pdf Science 17 December 2004: Vol. 306 no. 5704 pp. 2026-2029 DOI: 10.1126/science.306.5704.2026

NEWS FOCUS ARCHAEOLOGY The Indus Script--Write or Wrong?

1.

Andrew Lawler For 130 years scholars have struggled to decipher the Indus script. Now, in a proposal with broad academic and political implications, a brash outsider claims that such efforts are doomed to failure because the Indus symbols are not writing Academic prizes typically are designed to confer prestige. But the latest proposed award, a $10,000 check for finding a lengthy inscription from the ancient Indus civilization, is intended to goad rather than honor. The controversial scholar who announced the prize last month cheekily predicts that he will never have to pay up. Going against a century of scholarship, he and a

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growing number of linguists and archaeologists assert that the Indus peopleunlike their Egyptian and Mesopotamian contemporaries 4000 years agocould not write. That claim is part of a bitter clash among academics, as well as between Western scientists and Indian nationalists, over the nature of the Indus society, a clash that has led to shouting matches and death threats. But the provocative proposal, summed up in a paper published online last week, is winning adherents within the small community of Indus scholars who say it is time to rethink an enigmatic society that spanned a vast area in today's Pakistan, India, and Afghanistanthe largest civilization of its day. The Indus civilization has intrigued and puzzled researchers for more than 130 years, with their sophisticated sewers, huge numbers of wells, and a notable lack of monumental architecture or other signs of an elite class (see sidebar on p. 2027). Most intriguing of all is the mysterious system of symbols, left on small tablets, pots, and stamp seals. But without translations into a known scriptthe Rosetta stones that led to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics and Sumerian cuneiform in the 19th centuryhundreds of attempts to understand the symbols have so far failed. And what language the system might have expressedsuch as a Dravidian language similar to tongues of today's southern India, or a Vedic language of northern Indiais also a hot topic. This is no dry discussion: Powerful Indian nationalists of the Hindutva movement see the Indus civilization as the direct ancestor to Hindu tradition and Vedic culture.

Searching for script. Richard Meadow excavates at Harappa. CREDITS: COURTESY OF THE HARAPPA ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH PROJECT/PHOTOS BY R. H. MEADOW 1207

Now academic outsider Steve Farmer (see sidebar on p. 2028) and two established Indus scholars argue that the signs are not writing at all but rather a collection of religious-political symbols that held together a diverse and multilingual society. The brevity of most inscriptions, the relative frequencies of symbols, and the lack of archaeological evidence of a manuscript tradition add up to a sign system that does not encode language, argue historian Farmer and his co-authors, Harvard University linguist Michael Witzel and computational theorist Richard Sproat of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Instead, they say the signs may have more in common with European medieval heraldry, the Christian cross, or a bevy of magical symbols used by prehistoric peoples. This idea has profound implications for how the Indus civilization lived and died. Instead of the monolithic, peaceful, and centralized empire envisioned by some scholars, the authors say that the new view points to a giant multilingual society in which a system of religious-political signs provided cohesion. Their thesis has bitterly divided the field of Indus studies, made up of a small and close-knit bunch dominated by Americans. Some respected archaeologists and linguists flatly reject it. I categorically disagree that the script does not reflect a language, says archaeologist J. Mark Kenoyer of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who co-directs a dig at the key site of Harappa in Pakistan. What the heck were they doing if not encoding language? Asko Parpola, a linguist at Finland's University of Helsinki who has worked for decades to decipher the signs, says. There is no chance it is not a script; this is a fully formed system. It was a phonetic script. Linguist Gregory Possehl of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia says that it is not possible to prove the script cannot be deciphered. All three argue that Farmer's thesis is a pessimistic and defeatist approach to a challenging problem. Meanwhile, the very idea that the Indus civilization was not literate is deeply offensive to many Indian nationalists. Yet since a 2002 meeting at Harvard University at which Farmer laid out a detailed theoryand was greeted with shouts of derisionhe has attracted important converts, including his coauthors. A growing cadre of scholars back the authors' approach as a fresh way to look at a vexing problem and an opportunity to shed new light on many of the mysteries that haunt Indus research. Harvard anthropologist Richard Meadow, who with Kenoyer directs the Harappa project, calls the paper an extremely valuable contribution that could cut the Gordian knot bedeviling the field. Sanskrit and South Asian linguist Witzel says he was shocked when he first 1208

heard Farmer's contention in 2001. I thought I could read a few of the signs, Witzel recalls. So I was very skeptical. Now he is throwing his scholarly weight behind the new thesis, as a coauthor of the paper and also editor of the Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies, an online journal aimed at rapid publication, which published the paper. Addsarchaeologist Steven Weber of Washington State University in Vancouver: Sometimes it takes someone from the outside to ask the really basic questions. Weber, who is now collaborating with Farmer, adds that the burden of proof now has to be on the people who say it is writing. Seeking the Write Stuff Since the 1870s, archaeologists have uncovered more than 4000 Indus inscriptions on a variety of media. Rudimentary signs appear around 3200 B.C.E.the same era in which hieroglyphics and cuneiform began to appear in Egypt and Iraq. By 2800 B.C.E., the signs become more durable, continuing in use in later periods; the greatest diversity starts to appear around 2400 B.C.E. Some signs are highly abstract, whereas others seem to have obvious pictographic qualities, such as one that looks like a fish and another that resembles a jar. Both are used frequently; the jar sign accounts for one in 10 symbols, says Possehl. As in Mesopotamia, the signs typically appear on small tablets made of clay as well as on stamp seals. The seals often are accompanied by images of animals and plants, both real and mythical. The signs start to diminish around 1900 B.C.E. and vanish entirely by 1700 B.C.E., when the Indus culture disappears. Oddly, the inscriptions are almost all found in trash dumps rather than in graves or in primary contexts such as the floor of a home. They were thrown away like expired credit cards, says Meadow. No one had ever seriously questioned whether the signs are a form of writing. But scholars hotly debate whether the system is phonetic like English or Greek or logosyllabicusing a combination of symbols that encode both sound and conceptslike cuneiform or hieroglyphics. Even the number of signs is controversial. Archaeologist and linguist S. R. Rao of India's University of Goa has proposed a sign list of only 20, but Harvard graduate student Bryan Wells is compiling a revised list now numbering 700; most estimates hover in the 400 range. Farmer and colleagues reanalyzed the signs, drawing on published data from many sites and unpublished data from the Harappa project provided by Meadow. They found that the average Indus inscription, out of a total of 4000 to 5000 in a 1977 compilation, has 4.6 signs. The longest 1209

known inscription contains 17 signs, and fewer than 1% are as long as 10 symbols. The authors argued that such short texts are unprecedented for actual writing. Although many scholars assert that longer inscriptions may have been made on perishable materials, the authors note that there is no archaeological evidence of the imperishable paraphernalia that typically accompanies literate culture, such as inkpots, rock inscriptions, or papermaking devices. Farmer and colleagues also take apart a long-held assumption that the frequent repetition of a small number of Indus signs is evidence of a script encoding language. About 12% of an average English text, for example, consists of the letter E, often used repeatedly in a single sentence to express a certain sound. In contrast, the paper notes that very few Indus symbols are repeated within individual inscriptions, implying that the signs do not encode sounds. Further, the authors note that many Indus symbols are incredibly rare. Half of the symbols appear only once, based on Wells's catalog; three-quarters of the signs appear five times or fewer. According to the 1977 compilation put together by Iravatham Mahadevan, an Indian linguist now retired in Chennai, India, more than one-fourth of all signs appear only once, and more than half show up five times or fewer. Rarely used signs likely would not encode sound, says Farmer. It is as if many symbols were invented on the fly, only to be abandoned after being used once or a handful of times, he, Witzel, and Sproat write.

Short and sweet. Most Indus inscriptions are short. CREDIT: COURTESY OF THE HARAPPA ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH PROJECT/PHOTOS BY R. H. MEADOW Farmer believes that the symbols have nonlinguistic meaning. He speculates that the signs may have been considered magicalas the Christian cross can beand indicated individuals or clans, cities or professions, or gods. He and his colleagues compare the Indus script to 1210

inscriptions found in prehistoric southeastern Europe around 4000 B.C.E., where the Vin frequently. But these conclusions are not accepted by key archaeologists and linguists who have spent their careers digging at Harappa or trying to decipher the symbols. Regularities in the frequency and distribution of signs are possible only in a linguistic script, says Mahadevan.

culture produced an array of symbols often displayed in a linear form, including a handful used

Wells is more blunt. He is utterly wrong, he says of Farmer. There is something you recognize as an epigrapher immediately, such as long linear patterns. As to the brevity of inscriptions, Wells says averages can be misleading. The longer Indus inscriptions, he says, can't be explained as magical symbols. Vin a symbols, for example,

rarely are grouped in numbers greater than five. And you don't get repetitive ordering as with Indus signs, he adds. The Indus script is a highly patterned, highly ordered system with a syntaxit just looks too much like writing. Wells also says that a mere 30 signs are used only once, rather than the 1000 Farmer postulates, because many of the singletons transform into compound signs used repeatedly. Parpola agrees that the pattern of symbols argues for an organized script. There are a limited number of standardized signs, some repeated hundreds of timeswith the same shape, recurring combinations, and regular lines, he says. But Wells and Parpola, like most linguists in the field, agree on little beyond their opposition to Farmer. Wells rejects Parpola's method of deciphering the signs, and Parpola dismisses Wells's contention that there are significant differences between the signs of upper and lower Indus. Wells and some other scholars believe that the attraction of Farmer's idea has less to do with science than with the long history of decipherment failures. Some have turned to this idea that it is not writing out of frustration, he says.

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Sign or script? Farmer says Indus seals (left), like Vin a signs (right) are not writing.

CREDIT: COURTESY OF THE HARAPPA ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH PROJECT/PHOTOS BY R. H. MEADOW But many others are convinced that Farmer, Witzel, and Sproat have found a way to move away from sterile discussions of decipherment, and they find few flaws in their arguments. They have settled the issue for me, says George Thompson, a Sanskrit scholar at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Massachusetts. We have the work of a comparative historian, a computational linguist, and a Vedicist, he adds. Together they have changed the landscape regarding the whole question. In a forthcoming book on South Asian linguistic archaeology, Frank Southworth of the University of Pennsylvania calls the paper an unexpected solution to the old troubles with decipherment. Meanwhile, Farmer is injecting a bit of fun into the melee. Find us just one inscription with 50 symbols on it, in repeating symbols in the kinds of quasi-random patterns associated with true scripts, and we'll consider our model falsified, he wrote on a listserve devoted to the Indus. And he is putting his moneyor, rather, that of a donor he won't revealwhere his mouth is, promising the winner $10,000. The orthodox dismiss the prize as grandstanding, whereas Farmer boasts that no one is ever going to collect that money. Retrenching

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Each side clearly has far to go to convince its opponents. I'm not sure the case is strong enough on either side, says linguist Hans Hock of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Let each side of the controversy make their case. Yet there already is a retreat from earlier claims that the Indus symbols represent a full-blown writing system and that they encoded speech. Many scholars such as Possehl now acknowledge that the signs likely are dominated by names of places, people, clans, plants, and gods rather than by the narratives found in ancient Sumer or Egypt. They say the script may be more similar to the first stages of writing in those lands. Harvard archaeologist Carl LambergKarlovsky says the meanings of the Indus signs likely are impenetrable and imponderable and adds that whether or not the signs are considered writing, they clearly are a form of communicationand that is what really counts. Recent research in Central and South America has highlighted how complex societies prospered without traditional writing, such as the knotted strings or khipu of the vast Incan empire (Science, 2 July, p. 30).

Literacy promoter. J. Mark Kenoyer, on the dig at Harappa, thinks Indus signs are script. CREDIT: COURTESY OF THE HARAPPA ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH PROJECT/PHOTOS BY R. H. MEADOW Farmer adds that a society does not need to be literate to be complex. A big, urban civilization can be held together without writing, he says. He and his co-authors suggest that the Indus likely had many tongues and was a rich mix of ethnicities like India today. Wells has found marked differences between signs in the upper and lower Indus River regions, backing up the 1213

theory of a more diverse society. But some, such as D. P. Agrawal, an independent archaeologist based in Almora, India, doubt that a civilization spread over more than 1 million square kilometers, and with uniform weights, measures, and developed trade, could manage its affairs without a script. This debate over Indus literacy has political as well as academic consequences. This will be seen as an attack on the greatness of Indian civilizationwhich would be unfortunate, says Shereen Ratnagar, a retired archaeologist who taught at Delhi's Nehru University. Tension is already high between some Western and Indian scholars and Indian nationalists. Indologists are at war with the Hindutva polemicists, says statistical linguist Lars Martin Fosse of the University of Oslo, and the issue of the script is extremely sensitive. Farmer says he regularly receives e-mail viruses and death threats from Indian nationalists who oppose his views. For decades, Indus researchers have tended to stick with their established positions, as on the script, a tendency that has kept the field from moving forward, says one archaeologist who compares the small cadre of Indus scholars to a dysfunctional family with a proclivity for secrecy, ideological positions, and intolerance. Meadow is among those who argue that it is time to set aside old ideas, no matter how much time and effort has been invested in them, in order to push the field forward. We're here to do science, and it is always valuable to have new models, he says. Adds Ratnagar: We must get back to an open mind. Given the strong emotions swirling around the Indus symbols, discovering the key to that open mind may prove the hardest code to break. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/306/5704/2026.full

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The Narmer Palette (Great Hierakonpolis Palette) Cairo J.E. 14716, C.G. 32169Hierakonpolis (Horus Temple 'Main Deposit') At the top of both sides of the Palette are the central serekhs bearing the rebus symbols n'r (catfish) and mr (chisel) inside, being the phonetic representation of Narmer's name. The Narmer Palette is a 63-centimetre tall (2.07 ft), shield-shaped, ceremonial palette, carved from a single piece of flat, soft dark gray-green siltstone. The Narmer Palette, also known as the Great ierakonpolis Palette or the Palette of Narmer, is a significant Egyptian archeological find, dating from about the 31st century BC, containing some of the earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions ever found. It is thought by some to depict the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the king Narmer. On one side, the king is depicted with the bulbed White crown of Upper (southern) Egypt, and the other side depicts the king wearing the level Red Crown of Lower (northern) Egypt. Along with the Scorpion Macehead and the Narmer Maceheads, also found together in the "Main Deposit" at Hierakonopolis, the Narmer Palette provides one of the earliest known depictions of an Egyptian king. The Palette shows many of the classic conventions of Egyptian art which must already have been formalized by the time of the Palette's creation. The Egyptologist Bob Brier has referred to the Narmer Palette as "the first historical document in the world". 1215

Rebus method of writing is recognised on the Narmer palette. The name of the king ca. 31st century BCE was depicted by two glyphs (on top of the palette between two ox-heads): n'r 'catfish' + mr 'awl or chisel'. Similar method of rebus representation of hieroglyphs was adopted on Indus script glyphs - to detail technical specifications of products made by artisans (and NOT names). Dr Meadow: "The earliest (Indus) inscriptions date back to 3500 BC."

Slide 124. Inscribed Ravi sherd harappa.com The origins of Indus writing can now be traced to the Ravi Phase (c. 3300-2800 BCE) at Harappa. Some inscriptions were made on the bottom of the pottery before firing. Other inscriptions such as this one were made after firing. This inscription (c. 3300 BCE) appears to be three plant symbols arranged to appear almost anthropomorphic. The trident looking projections on these symbols seem to set the foundation for later symbols such as those seen in 131 (shown below).

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Slide 131. Inscribed sherd, Kot Dijian Phase. This sign was carved onto the pottery vessel after it was fired and may indicate the type of goods being stored in the vessel or the owner of the vessel itself...This symbol becomes very common in the later Indus script. Thus, Indus writing is perhaps an indigenous evolution at about the same time (or, perhaps earlier) that the first human document was created usine hieroglyphs read rebus for Narmer palette of ca. 33rd cent. BCE.

Slide 14. Sealing. One of the longer inscriptions made from a seal found during Mackay's excavations between 1927-1931 in Mohenjo-daro (D.K. 9134). There are few long Indus inscriptions; another similarly long inscription was recently found on a wooden signboard in Dholavira, Gujarat, India.

Dholavira signboard. Each glyph is 35 cm to 37 cm tall and 25 cm to 27 cm wide. The 10 signs constitute a work of great craftsmanship. Each sign is made of several pieces, which have been inlaid on a wooden board. The signboard must have been placed above the north gate of the citadel that existed at the Harappan city of Dholavira. All the signs are made of thoroughly baked gypsum and their white brilliance must have made the board visible from afar. A clear indication that the hieroglyphs were recognizable across a vast interaction area. According to Indus Script Cipher, this represents perhaps the first advertisement hoarding atop the gateway of a citadel visible to navigators on ships and boats traversing the Persian Gulf.

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http://www.gujarattourism.com/showpage.aspx?contentid=55&webpartid=58 Three types of metallurgical services are announced. Segment 1:Mint, merchant: mineral, metal infusion, turner-carver Claws of crab kamaha; rebus: kampaam mint; Vikalpa: ato = claws of crab (Santali); dhtu = mineral (Skt.) Nave of wheel: eraka; rebus: eraka, (copper) metal infusion;kund opening in the nave or hub of a wheel to admit the axle (Santali) kundam, kund a sacrificial fire-pit (Skt.) : kundr turner (A.); k dr, k dri (B.); kundru (Or.); kundau to turn on a lathe, to carve, to chase; kundau dhiri = a hewn stone; kundau murhut = a graven image (Santali) barea = two (Ka.); baea = blacksmith (Santali)[A pair of glyphs showing nave of wheel, i.e. metal-caster-smith] Vikalpa: dul cast metal; dol likeness Segment 2: Silver, native metal, turner-carver One met; rebus: me iron; vikalpa: go = one (Santali); goi = silver (G.) aaren, aren lid, cover (Santali) Rebus: aduru native metal (Ka.) kana, kanac = corner (Santali); kacu = bronze (Te.) kan- copper work (Ta.) kund opening in the nave or hub of a wheel to admit the axle (Santali) kundam, kund a sacrificial fire-pit (Skt.) : kundr turner (A.); k dr, k dri (B.); kundru (Or.); kundau to turn on a lathe, to carve, to chase; kundau dhiri = a hewn stone; kundau murhut = a graven image (Santali)

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Segment 3: Copper mint, workshop, turner-carver Fig leaf loa; rebus: loh (copper) metal kamaha = ficus religiosa (Skt.); kamaa = portable furnace for melting precious metals (Te.); kampaam = mint (Ta.) Peg khua; rebus: ka workshop kh i = pin (M.) kui= furnace (Santali) kund opening in the nave or hub of a wheel to admit the axle (Santali) kundam, kund a sacrificial fire-pit (Skt.) : kundr turner (A.); k dr, k dri (B.); kundru (Or.); kundau to turn on a lathe, to carve, to chase; kundau dhiri = a hewn stone; kundau murhut = a graven image (Santali)

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Reconstructed as a seal imprssion using seal m0304 creating a pair of antelopes and a pair of hayricks below the platform (stool) base (After J. Huntington). Mohenjo-daro seal m0304 Rebus readings of hieroglyphs on m0304 (both pictorial motifs + sign glyphs, in two lines) Note: There are over 27 clearly identifiable, glyphic elements on the seal m0304 (both animal glyphs plus text sign glyphs). Each glyphic element (hieroglyph) is decoded, read rebus. A person is shown seated in 'penance'. kamaha 'penance' (Pkt.) Rebus: kammai a coiner (Ka.); kampaam coinage, coin, mint (Ta.) kammaa = mint, gold furnace (Te.) Thus, the over-arching message of the inscription composed of many hieroglyphs (of glyphic elements) thus is a description of the offerings of a 'mint or coiner (workshop with a golf furnace)'. Rebus readings of the horned head-dress: ku = crooked buffalo horns (L.) Rebus: ku = chief of village. kui-a = village headman; leader of a village (Pkt.lex.) I.e. rei jeha chief of metal-worker guild. kt = bunch of twigs (Skt.) Rebus: kuhi = furnace (Santali) Vikalpa: clump between the two horns: kua n. clump e.g. darbha-- kua-- P.(CDIAL 3236). kundr turner (A.)(CDIAL 3295). : kundr turner (A.); k dr, k dri (B.); kundru (Or.); kundau to turn on a lathe, to carve, to chase; kundau dhiri = a hewn stone; kundau murhut = a graven image (Santali) kunda a turner's lathe (Skt.)(CDIAL 3295) Vikalpa: kd, k 'bunch of twigs' (Skt.) Rebus: kuhi smelter furnace (Santali) Rebus reading of glyphic elements of the 'bristled (tiger's mane) face':

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There are two glyphic elements denoted on the face. m h 'face'; rebus: metal ingot (Santali) m h = the quantity of iron produced at one time in a native smelting furnace of the Kolhes; iron produced by the Kolhes and formed like a fourcornered piece a little pointed at each end; mh mht = iron smelted by the Kolhes and formed into an equilateral lump a little pointed at each end; kolhe tehen me~he~t mh akata = the Kolhes have to-day produced pig iron (Santali.lex.) Shoggy hair; tigers mane. sodo bodo, sodro bodro adj. adv. rough, hairy, shoggy, hirsute, uneven; sodo [Persian.sod, dealing] trade; traffic; merchandise; marketing; a bargain; the purchase or sale of goods; buying and selling; mercantile dealings (G.lex.) sodagor = a merchant, trader; sodgor (P.B.) (Santali.lex.) The face is depicted with bristles of hair, representing a tigers mane. c, cl, cliy tigers mane (Pkt.)(CDIAL 4883).Rebus: cai 'furnace, kiln, funeral pile' (Te.)(CDIAL 4879; DEDR 2709). Thus the composite glyphic composition: 'bristled (tiger's mane) face' is read rebus as: sodagor m h ca 'furnace (of) ingot merchant'. Reading the glyphic elements on the chest of the person and arms:

kamarasla = waist-zone, waist-band, belt (Te.) karmrala = workshop of blacksmith (Skt.) kamar blacksmith (Santali) sekeseke, sekseke covered, as the arms with ornaments; Rebus: sekra those who work in 1221

brass and bell metal; sekra sakom a kind of armlet of bell metal (Santali) Vikalpa: bhula n. armour for the arms (Skt.) Rebus: bangala. [Tel.] n. An oven. . (Telugu) Vikalpa: cri 'bangles' (H.) Rebus: cai 'furnace, kiln, funeral pile' (Te.)(CDIAL 4879; DEDR 2709). Thus, together, the glyphic elements on the chest of the person and arms are read rebus: sekra karmrala 'brass/bell-metal workshop of smith (with) furnace'. Glyphic compositions on the base on which the person is seated; hence, the rebus readings of glyphics: stool, pair of hayricks, pair of antelopes.

Kur. ka a stool. Malt. kano stool, seat. (DEDR 1179) Rebus: ka = a furnace, altar (Santali.lex.) kuntam 'haystack' (Te.)(DEDR 1236) Rebus: kuamu 'a pit for receiving and preserving consecrated fire' (Te.) A pair of hayricks, a pair of antelopes: kundavum = manger, a hayrick (G.) Rebus: kundr turner (A.); k dr, k dri (B.); kundru (Or.); kundau to turn on a lathe, to carve, to chase; kundau dhiri = a hewn stone; kundau murhut = a graven image (Santali) kunda a turner's lathe (Skt.)(CDIAL 3295) Decoding a pair: dula m. a pair, a couple, esp. of two similar things (Rm. 966) (Kashmiri); dol likeness, picture, form (Santali) Rebus: dul to cast metal in a mould (Santali) dul mee cast iron (Mundari. Santali) Antelope: mil markhor (Trwl) meho a ram, a sheep (G.)(CDIAL 10120); rebus: mht, me iron (Mu.Ho.)

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Glyph: krammara look back (Te.); Rebus: kamar smith (Santali) Vikalpa 1: mlekh antelope(Br.); milakkhu copper (Pali) Vikalpa 2: kala stag, buck (Ma.) Rebus: kallan mason (Ma.); kalla glass beads (Ma.); kalu stone (Kond.a); xal id., boulder (Br.)(DEDR 1298). Rebus: kallan stone-bead-maker. Thus, together, the glyphs on the base of the platform are decoded rebus:me kamar dul mee

k dr,'iron(metal)smith, casting (and) turner'.

Animal glyphs around the seated person: buffalo, boar (rhinoceros), elephant, tiger (jumping). sal bos gaurus; rebus: sal workshop (Santali) Vikalpa 1: ran:g buffalo; ran:ga pewter or alloy of tin (ran:ku), lead (nga) and antimony (ajana)(Santali) Vikalpa 2: kaam 'bison' (Ta.)(DEDR 1114) Rebus: kaiyo [Hem. Des. kaa-i-o = (Skt. sthapati, a mason) a bricklayer, mason (G.)] bahia = a castrated boar, a hog (Santali) bahi a caste who work both in iron and wood (Santali) ibha elephant (Skt.); rebus: ib iron (Santali) karibha elephant (Skt.); rebus: karb iron (Ka.) kolo, kole 'jackal' (Kon.Santali); kola kukur 'white tiger' (A.); du leap (Te.); rebus: kol pacaloha 'five metals'(Ta.); kol 'furnace, forge' (Kuwi) du 'jump' (Te.). Rebus: dhtu mineral (Skt.) Vikalpa: pui 'to jump'; pua 'calcining of metals'. Thus the glyph 'jumping tiger' read rebus: 'furnace for calcining of metals'. Thus, together, the set of animals surround the seated person are decoded rebus: ran:ga bahi karb kol dhtu pui '(worker in) pewter, iron & wood, iron(metal) forge/furnace for calcining metals. Decoding the text of the inscription

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Text 2420 on m0304 Line 2 (bottom): 'body' glyph. md body (Kur.)(DEDR 5099); me iron (Ho.) Line 1 (top): 'Body' glyph plus ligature of 'splinter' shown between the legs: md body (Kur.)(DEDR 5099); me iron (Ho.) sal splinter; Rebus: sal workshop (Santali) Thus, the ligatured glyph is read rebus as: me sal 'iron (metal) workshop'. Sign 216 (Mahadevan). ato claws or pincers (chelae) of crabs; aom, iom to seize with the claws or pincers, as crabs, scorpions; akop = to pinch, nip (only of crabs) (Santali) Rebus: dhatu mineral (Santali) Vikalpa: er claws; Rebus: era copper. Allograph: kamakom = fig leaf (Santali.lex.) kamarma (Has.), kamakom (Nag.); the petiole or stalk of a leaf (Mundari.lex.) kamat.ha = fig leaf, religiosa (Skt.) Sign 229. sann, sannh = pincers, smiths vice (P.) ann f. small room in a house to keep sheep in (WPah.) Bshk. an, Phal.n roof (Bshk.)(CDIAL 12326). sei (f.) [Class. Sk. rei in meaning "guild"; Vedic= row] 1. a guild Vin iv.226; J i.267, 314; iv.43; Dvs ii.124; their number was eighteen J vi.22, 427; VbhA 466. -- pamukha the head of a guild J ii.12 (text seni -- ). -- 2. a division of an army J vi.583; ratha -- J vi.81, 49; seimokkha the chief of an army J vi.371 (cp. sen and seniya). (Pali) Sign 342. kaa kanka 'rim of jar' (Santali): karaka rim of jar(Skt.) Rebus: karaka scribe, accountant (Te.); gaaka id. (Skt.) (Santali) copper fire-altar scribe (account)(Skt.) Rebus: ka fire-altar (Santali) Thus, the 'rim of jar' ligatured glyph is read rebus: fire-altar (furnace) scribe (account)

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Sign 344. Ligatured glyph: 'rim of jar' ligature + splinter (infixed); 'rim of jar' ligature is read rebus: kaa karaka 'furnace scribe (account)'. sal stake, spike, splinter, thorn, difficulty (H.); Rebus: sal workshop (Santali) * lai, n. < l. 1. Apartment, hall; . (. 844. 7). 2. Elephant stable or stall; . (. 220, 3). lai-k-kui, n. < +. Receptacle for the juice underneath a sugar-cane press; .* lai-t-toi, n. < id. +. Cauldron for boiling sugar-cane juice; .- lai-py-, v. intr. < id. +. 1. To work a sugar-cane mill; . (. . 93). 2. To move, toss, as a ship; . (R.) 3. To be undecided, vacillating; . (,) Vikalpa: sal splinter; rebus: workshop (sal) lai workshop (Ta.) * lai, n. < l. 1. Apartment, hall; . (. 844. 7). 2. Elephant stable or stall; . (. 220, 3). lai-k-kui, n. < +. Receptacle for the juice underneath a sugar-cane press; .* lai-t-toi, n. < id. +. Cauldron for boiling sugar-cane juice; .- lai-py-, v. intr. < id. +. 1. To work a sugar-cane mill; . (. . 93) Thus, together with the 'splinter' glyph, the entire ligature 'rim of jar + splinter/splice' is read rebus as: furnace scribe (account workshop). Sign 59. ayo, hako 'fish'; a~s = scales of fish (Santali); rebus: aya = iron (G.); ayah, ayas = metal (Skt.) Sign 342. kaa karaka 'rim of jar'; rebus: 'furnace scribe (account)'. Thus the inscription reads rebus: iron, iron (metal) workshop, copper (mineral) guild, fire-altar (furnace) scribe (account workshop), metal furnace scribe (account) As the decoding of m0304 seal demonstrates, the Indus hieroglyphs are the professional repertoire of an artisan (miners'/metalworkers') guild detailing the stone/mineral/metal resources/furnaces/smelters of workshops (smithy/forge/turners' shops). Comparble to m0304 showing a seated person in penance, is a seal showing a scarfed person in penance:

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He also has scarf as a pigtail, is horned with two stars shown within the horn-curves. kamaha 'penance' (Pkt.) Rebus: kampaam mint (Ta.) Kur. ka a stool. Malt. kano stool, seat. (DEDR 1179) Rebus: ka = a furnace, altar (Santali.lex.) ato = claws of crab (Santali); dhtu = mineral (Skt.), dhatu id. (Santali) kd, k bunch of twigs (Skt.lex.) kd (also written as k in manuscripts) occurs in the Atharvaveda (AV 5.19.12) and Kauika Stra (Bloomsfield's ed.n, xliv. cf. Bloomsfield, American Journal of Philology, 11, 355; 12,416; Roth, Festgruss an Bohtlingk, 98) denotes it as a twig. This is identified as that of Badar, the jujube tied to the body of the dead to efface their traces. (See Vedic Index, I, p. 177). Rebus: kuhi 'smelting furnace (Santali) koe forged (metal) (Santali) mha The polar star. (Marathi) Rebus: me iron (Ho.) abe, abea large horns, with a sweeping upward curve, applied to buffaloes (Santali) Rebus: ab, himba, hompo lump (ingot?), clot, make a lump or clot, coagulate, fuse, melt together (Santali) Thus, the entire glyphic composition of the seated, horned person is decoded rebus: me dhatu kampaa ab kuhi ka iron, mineral, mint (copper casting, forging workshop)furnace. The text of the inscription shows two types of 'fish' glyphs: one fish + fish with scaled circumscribed by four short-strokes: aya 'fish' (Mu.); rebus: aya 'metal' (Skt.) gaa set of four (Santali) kaa fire-altar cf. ayaska a quantity of iron, excellent iron (P.ga) The reading is consistent with the entire glyphic composition related to the mineral, mint forge.

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Another comparable glyphic composition is provided by seal m1181.

m1181. Seal. Mohenjo-daro. Three-faced, horned person (with a three-leaved pipal branch on the crown), wearing bangles and armlets and seated on a hoofed platform.

m1181 Text of inscription. Each glyphic element on this composition and text of inscription is decoded rebus:

Two glyphs 'cross-road' glyph + 'splice' glyph -- which start from right the inscription of Text on Seal m1181.The pair of glyphs on the inscription is decoded: dhatu adaru ba 'furnace (for) mineral, native metal. du 'cross'(Telugu); ba 'road' (Telugu). aar = splinter (Santali); rebus: aduru = native metal (Ka.) aduru = gan.iyinda tegadu karagade iruva aduru = ore taken from the mine and not subjected to melting in a furnace (Kannada. Siddha_nti Subrahman.ya Sastris new interpretation of the Amarakosa, Bangalore, Vicaradarpana Press, 1872, p. 330) Other glyphic elements: aar kuhi 'native metal furnace'; sou 'fireplace'; sekra 'bell-metal and brass worker'; aya sal 'iron (metal) workshop'.

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*the person is seated on a hoofed platform (representing a bull): decoding of glyphics read rebus: angar bull; hangar blacksmith (H.); koo stool; rebus: ko workshop. The glyphics show that the seal relates to a blacksmith's workshop. *the seated person's hair-dress includes a horned twig. aaru twig; airi small and thin branch of a tree; aari small branches (Ka.); aaru twig (Tu.)(DEDR 67). aar = splinter (Santali); rebus: aduru = native metal (Ka.) Vikalpa: kt = bunch of twigs (Skt.) Rebus: kuhi = furnace (Santali) *tiger's mane on face: The face is depicted with bristles of hair, representing a tigers mane. c, cl, cliy tigers mane (Pkt.)(CDIAL 4883)Rebus: cuai = potters kiln, furnace (Ta.); cai furnace, kiln, funeral pile (Ta.); cua potters furnace; ca brick kiln (Ma.); cull fireplace (Skt.); cull, ull id. (Pkt.)(CDIAL 4879; DEDR 2709). sulgao, salgao to light a fire; sen:gel, sokol fire (Santali.lex.) hollu, holu = fireplace (Kuwi); sou fireplace, stones set up as a fireplace (Mand.); ule furnace (Tu.)(DEDR 2857). *bangles on arms c bracelets (H.); rebus: sou 'fireplace'. Vikalpa: sekeseke, sekseke covered, as the arms with ornaments; sekra those who work in brass and bell metal; sekra sakom a kind of armlet of bell metal (Santali) *fish + splinter glyph ayo, hako 'fish'; a~s = scales of fish (Santali); rebus: aya = iron (G.); ayah, ayas = metal (Skt.)sal stake, spike, splinter, thorn, difficulty (H.); sal workshop (Santali) Vikalpa: Glyph: hiyum = adj. sloping, inclining; rebus: hako = a large metal ingot (G.) H. dhn to send out, pour out, cast (metal) (CDIAL 6771). Thus, the ligatured 'fish + sloping (stroke)' is read rebus: metal ingot. du = cross (Te.); dhatu = mineral (Santali) dhtu mineral (Pali) dhtu mineral (Vedic); a mineral, metal (Santali); dhta id. (G.)H. dhn to send out, pour out, cast (metal) (CDIAL 6771). aar a splinter; aaruka to burst, crack, slit off, fly open; aarcca splitting, a crack; aarttuka to split, tear off, open (an oyster)(Ma.); aaruni to crack (Tu.)(DEDR 66). dravum = to tear, to break (G.) dar = a fissure, a rent, a trench; darkao = to crack,to break; bhit darkaoena = the wall is cracked (Santali) Rebus: aduru 'native (unsmelted) metl' (Kannada). 1228

Seated person in penance: kamaha penance (Pkt.); rebus: kampaa mint(Ma.) Glyphics of shoggy, brisltles of hair on the face of the person: Shoggy hair; tigers mane. sodo bodo, sodro bodro adj. adv. rough, hairy, shoggy, hirsute, uneven; sodo [Persian. sod, dealing] trade; traffic; merchandise; marketing; a bargain; the purchase or sale of goods; buying and selling; mercantile dealings (G.lex.) sodagor = a merchant, trader; sodgor (P.B.) (Santali.lex.) Glyph: clump between the two horns: kua n. clump e.g. darbha-- kua-- P.(CDIAL 3236). kundr turner (A.)(CDIAL 3295). kua n. clump e.g. darbha-- kua-- P. [ Drav. (Tam. koai tuft of hair , Kan. goe cluster , &c.) T. Burrow BSOAS xii 374] Pk. kua-- n. heap of crushed sugarcane stalks (CDIAL 3266) Ta. kotai tuft, dressing of hair in large coil on the head, crest of a bird, head (as of a nail), knob (as of a cane), round top. Ma. koa tuft of hair. Ko.go knob on end of walking-stick, head of pin; ko knot of hair at back of head. To. kwy Badaga woman's knot of hair at back of head (< Badaga koe). Ka. koe, goe tuft, tassel, cluster. Ko. koe tassels of sash, knob-like foot of cane-stem. Tu. go topknot, tassel, cluster. Te. koe, (K. also) koi knot of hair on the crown of the head. Cf. 2049 Ta. koi. / Cf. Skt. kua- clump (e.g. darbha-kua-), Pkt. (DNM) go- = majar-; Turner, CDIAL, no. 3266; cf. also Mar. g cluster, tuft. (DEDR 2081) ku = crooked buffalo horns (L.) rebus: ku = chief of village. kui-a = village headman; leader of a village (Pkt.lex.) I.e. rei jet.t.ha chief of metal-worker guild. ko 'horns'; rebus: ko 'artisan's workshop' (G.) Thus the entire glyphic composition of hieroglyphs on m1185 seal is a message conveyed from a sodagor 'merchant, trader'. The bill of lading lists a variety of repertoire of the artisan guild's trade load from a mint -- the native metal and brass workshop of blacksmith (guild) with furnace: aar kuhi 'native metal furnace'; sou 'fireplace'; sekra 'bell-metal and brass worker'; aya sal 'iron (metal) workshop'. Indus script hieroglyphs: composite animal, smithy Composite animal on Indus script is a composite hieroglyph composed of many glyphic elements. All glyphic elements are read rebus to complete the technical details of the bill of lading of artifacts created by artisans.

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m1177 Mohenjo-daro seal.

m1180 Mohenjo-daro seal. Human-faced markhor.

1230

m0301 Mohenjo-daro seal.

m0302 Mohenjo-daro seal.

1231

m0303 Mohenjo-daro seal.

m0299. Mohenjo-daro seal.

m0300. Mohenjo-daro seal.

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m1179. Mohenjo-daro seal. Markhor or ram with human face in composite hieroglyph.

h594. Harappa seal. Composite animal (with elephant trunk and rings (scarves) on shoulder visible).koiyum = a wooden circle put round the neck of an animal; ko = neck (G.) Vikalpa: kaum neck-band, ring; rebus: kh trench, firepit (G.) Vikalpa: kha f. hole, mine, cave (CDIAL 3790). kanduka, kandaka ditch, trench (Tu.); kandakamu id. (Te.); kanda trench made as a fireplace during weddings (Konda); kanda small trench for fireplace (Kui); kandri a pit (Malt)(DEDR 1214) khaa hole, pit. [Cf. *gaa and list s.v. kart1] Pk. kha f. hole, mine, cave, aga m. one who digs a hole, laya m. hole; Bshk. (Biddulph) "kd" (= kha?) valley; K. kh m. pit, kh f. small pit, khou m. vulva; S. khaa f. pit; L. kha f. pit, cavern, ravine; P. kha f. pit, ravine, f. hole for a weaver's feet ( Ku. kha, N. kha; H. kha, kha m. pit, low ground, notch; Or. khi edge of a deep pit; M. kha m. rough hole, pit); WPah. kha. kha stream; N. kho pit, bog, khi creek, khal hole (in ground or stone). Altern. < *kha: Gy. gr. xar f. hole; Ku. kh pit; B. kh creek, inlet, 1233

khal pit, ditch; H. kh f. creek, inlet, khahar, al m. hole; Marw. kho m. hole; M. kh f. hole, creek, m. hole, f. creek, inlet. 3863 khtra n. hole HPari., pond, spade U. [khan] Pk. khatta n. hole, manure, aya m. one who digs in a field; S. khru m. mine made by burglars, ro m. fissure, pit, gutter made by rain; P. kht m. pit, manure, khtt m. grain pit, ludh. khatt m. ( H. khatt m., khatiy f.); N. kht heap (of stones, wood or corn); B. kht, kht pit, pond; Or. khta pit, t artificial pond; Bi. kht hole, gutter, grain pit, notch (on beam and yoke of plough), khatt grain pit, boundary ditch; Mth. kht, khatt hole, ditch; H. kht m. ditch, well, f. manure, kht m. grain pit; G. khtar n. housebreaking, house sweeping, manure, khtriy n. tool used in housebreaking ( M. khtar f. hole in a wall, khtr m. hole, manure, khtry m. housebreaker); M. kht n.m. manure (deriv. khatvi to manure, khter n. muck pit). Un- expl. in L. khv m. excavated pond, kh f. digging to clear or excavate a canal (~ S. kht f. id., but khyro m. one employed to measure canal work) and khaa to dig. (CDIAL 3790) gaa 1 m. ditch lex. [Cf. *gaa1 and list s.v. kart1] Pk. gaa n. hole; Pa. gau dike; Kho. (Lor.) g hole, small dry ravine; A. gar high bank; B. ga ditch, hole in a husking machine; Or. gaa ditch, moat; M. ga f. hole in the game of marbles. 3981 *gaa 1 hole, pit. [G. < *garda? Cf. *ga1 and list s.v. kart1] Pk. gaa m. hole; WPah. bhal. cur. ga f., pa. ga, p. ga river, stream; N. gatir bank of a river; A. gr deep hole; B. g, hollow, pit; Or. ga hole, cave, gi pond; Mth. gi piercing; H. g m. hole; G. gar, m. pit, ditch (< *graa < *garda?); Si. gaaya ditch. Cf. S. gii f. hole in the ground for fire during Muharram. X khn: K. gn m. underground room; S. (LM 323) g f. mine, hole for keeping water; L. g m. small embanked field within a field to keep water in; G. g f. mine, cellar; M. g f. cavity containing water on a raised piece of land WPah.kg. g hole (e.g. after a knot in wood). (CDIAL 3947) 3860 *kha a hollow. [Cf. *khaa and list s.v. kart1] S. kh f. gulf, creek; P. kh level country at the foot of a mountain, f. deep watercourse, creek; Bi. khr creek, inlet; G. khi , f., m. hole. Altern. < *khaa: Gy. gr. xar f. hole; Ku. kh pit; B. kh creek, inlet, khal pit, ditch; H. kh creek, inlet, khahar, al m. hole; Marw. kho m. hole; M. kh f. hole, creek, m. hole, f. creek, inlet. The neck-bands hung above the shoulder of the composite animal may thus read rebus: trench or fire-pit (i.e. furnace) for the minerals/metals described by the glyphic elements connoting animals: elephant, ram (or zebu, bos indicus).

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m1175 Composite animal with a two-glyph inscription (water-carrier, rebus: kuti 'furnace'; road, bata; rebus: bata 'furnace'). m1186A Composite animal hieroglyph. Text of inscription (3 lines). There are many examples of the depiction of 'human face' ligatured to animals:

1235

Ligatured faces: some close-up images. The animal is a quadruped: pasaramu, pasalamu = an animal, a beast, a brute, quadruped (Te.)Rebus: pasra smithy (Santali) Allograph: pan r ladder, stairs(Bshk.)(CDIAL 7760) Thus the composite animal connotes a smithy. Details of the smithy are described orthographically by the glyphic elements of the composition.

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Rebus reading of the 'face' glyph: m he face (Santali) m h opening or hole (in a stove for stoking (Bi.); ingot (Santali)m h metal ingot (Santali) m h = the quantity of iron produced at one time in a native smelting furnace of the Kolhes; iron produced by the Kolhes and formed like a four-cornered piece a little pointed at each end; mh mht = iron smelted by the Kolhes and formed into an equilateral lump a little pointed at each of four ends; kolhe tehen mht ko mh akata = the Kolhes have to-day produced pig iron (Santali.lex.) kaula mengro blacksmith (Gypsy) mleccha-mukha (Skt.) = milakkhu copper (Pali) The Sanskrit loss mleccha-mukha should literally mean: copper-ingot absorbing the Santali gloss, m h, as a suffix. A remarkable phrase in Sanskrit indicates the link between mleccha and use of camels as trade caravans. This is explained in the lexicon of Apte for the lexeme: aurika 'belonging to a camel'. The lexicon entry cited Mahbhrata: a. Coming from a camel (as milk); Mb.8. 44.28; - An oil-miller; - Mb.8.45.25. From the perspective of a person devoted to stra and rigid disciplined life, Baudhyana thus defines the word mlcch : -- 'A person who eatrs meat, deviates from traditional practices.' The 'face' glyph is thus read rebus: mleccha m h 'copper ingot'. It is significant that Vatsyayana refers to crptography in his lists of 64 arts and calls it mlecchitavikalpa, lit. 'an alternative representation -- in cryptography or cipher -- of mleccha words.' The glyphic of the hieroglyph: tail (serpent), face (human), horns (bos indicus, zebu or ram), trunk (elephant), front paw (tiger), mo the tail of a serpent (Santali) Rebus: Md. moen massages, mixes . Kal.rumb. mo -- to thresh , urt. ma -- to soften (CDIAL 9890) Thus, the ligature of the serpent as a tail of the composite animal glyph is decoded as: polished metal (artifact). Vikalpa: xol = tail (Kur.); qoli id. (Malt.)(DEDr 2135). Rebus: kol pacalha (Ta.) kol, n. 1. Iron; . (. 550). 2. Metal; . (. 318.) kolla, n. < T. golla. Custodian of treasure; . (P. T. L.) kollicci, n. Fem. of . Woman of the blacksmith caste; . (. .) The gloss kollicci is notable. It clearly evidences that kol was a blacksmith. kola 1237

blacksmith (Ka.); Ko. koll blacksmith (DEDR 2133). Ta. kol working in iron, blacksmith; kolla blacksmith. Ma. kollan blacksmith, artificer. Ko. kolel smithy, temple in Kota village. To. kwalal Kota smithy. Ka. kolime, kolume, kulame, kulime, kulume, kulme fire-pit, furnace; (Bell.; U.P.U.) konimi blacksmith; (Gowda) kolla id. Ko. koll blacksmith. Te. kolimi furnace. Go. (SR.) kollusn to mend implements; (Ph.) kolstn, kulsn to forge; (Tr.) klstn to repair (of ploughshares); (SR.) kolmi smithy (Voc. 948). Kuwi (F.) kolhali to forge (DEDR 2133) kol Working in iron; . Blacksmith; . (Tamil) m he face (Santali); Rebus: m h '(copper) ingot' (Santali);mleccha-mukha (Skt.) = milakkhu copper (Pali) ku : . (, 5). 3. [K. ku.] Tusk; . (. 39, 1). 4. Horn; . (. . . 21). Ko. k (obl. k-) horns (one horn is kob), half of hair on each side of parting, side in game, log, section of bamboo used as fuel, line marked out. To. kw (obl. kw-) horn, branch, path across stream in thicket. Ka. ku horn, tusk, branch of a tree; kr horn. Tu. k, ku horn. Te. ku rivulet, branch of a river. Pa. k (pl. kul) horn (DEDR 2200)Rebus: ko = the place where artisans work (G.) kul 'tiger' (Santali); klu id. (Te.) klupuli = Bengal tiger (Te.)Pk. kolhuya -- , kulha -- m. jackal < *khu -- ; H.kolh, l m. jackal , adj. crafty ; G. kohl , l n. jackal , M. kolh, l m. kr crying BhP., m. jackal RV. = kru -- m. P. [kru] Pa. kohu -- , uka -- and kotthu -- , uka -- m. jackal , Pk. kohu -- m.; Si. koa jackal , koiya leopard GS 42 (CDIAL 3615). [ klh ] [ klh ] A jackal (Marathi) Rebus: kol furnace, forge (Kuwi) kol alloy of five metals, pacaloha (Ta.) Allograph: kla = woman (Nahali) [The ligature of a woman to a tiger is a phonetic determinant; the scribe clearly conveys that the gloss represented is kla] karba 'iron' (Ka.)(DEDR 1278) as in ajirda karba 'iron' (Ka.) kari, karu 'black' (Ma.)(DEDR 1278) karbura 'gold' (Ka.) karbon 'black gold, iron' (Ka.) kabbia 'iron' (Ka.) karum pon 'iron' (Ta.); kabin 'iron' (Ko.)(DEDR 1278) Ib 'iron' (Santali) [cf. Toda gloss below: ib needle.] Ta. Irumpu iron, instrument, weapon. a. irumpu,irimpu iron. Ko. ibid. To. Ib needle. Ko. Irmb iron. Te. Inumu id. Kol. (Kin.) inum (pl. inmul)iron, sword. Kui (Friend-Pereira) rumba vai ironstone (for vai, see 5285). (DEDR 486) Allograph: karibha -- m. Ficus religiosa (?) [Semantics of ficus religiosa may be relatable to homonyms used to denote both the sacred tree and rebus gloss: loa, ficus (Santali); lohmetal (Skt.)] mil markhor (Tor.wali) meho a ram, a sheep (G.)(CDIAL 10120)bhra -- , bha -- m. ram lex. [ Austro -- as. J. Przyluski BSL xxx 200: perh. Austro -- as. *mra ~ bhra collides 1238

with Aryan mhra -- 1 in mhra -- m. penis BhP., ram lex. -- See also bha -- 1, m - , a -- . -- The similarity between bha -- 1, bhra -- , bha -- ram and *bha -- 2 defective is paralleled by that between mhra -- 1, mha -- 1 ram and *ma -- 1, *mha -- 2 (s.v. *mia -- ) defective ](CDIAL 9606) m m. ram , -- f. ewe RV. 2. mha -- 2, miha- m. lex. [mha -- 2 infl. by mhati emits semen as poss. mhra -- 2 ram (~ mha -- 2) by mhra -- 1 penis ?]1. Pk. msa -- m. sheep , Ash. mial; Kt. me/l ram ; Pr. m ram, oorial ; Kal. me, mealk ram , H. mes m.; -- X bhra -- q.v.2. K. my -ptu m. the young of sheep or goats ; WPah.bhal. me\i f. wild goat ; H. meh m. ram .msya -- sheep -- faced Sur. [m -- , sy -- ](CDIAL 10334) Rebus: me (Ho.); mhet iron (Mu.Ho.)mh t iron; ispat m. = steel; dul m. = cast iron (Mu.) Allograph: me body ' (Mu.)

That the smithy guild dealt with silver is evidenced by the discovery of 3 silver seals. Four-sided tablet with narrative hieroglyphs + text of inscription (m1431 Mohenjo-daro tablet)

m1431 Text of inscription (with some glyphs visible on line 3 - top line). Each glyphic element on this remarkable tablet contains messages related to the furnace scribe 1239

(account) of artisan guild turner-carver workshop. m1431A. A person seated on a tree-branch. A tiger looking backwards and up. Text of inscription. Pk. hakhara -- m.n. branch without leaves or fruit (CDIAL 5524) Rebus: hangar blacksmith (H.) = a branch of a tree (G.) Rebus: hako = a large ingot (G.) hak = a metal heated and poured into a mould; a solid piece of metal; an ingot (G.) eraka, hero = a messenger; a spy (G.lex.) heraka = spy (Skt.); er to look at or for (Pkt.); er uk- to play 'peeping tom' (Ko.) Rebus: eraka copper (Ka.) Thus the person seated like a spy on a leafless tree-branch is decoded: eraka hangar, 'coppersmith'. Together with kol 'tiger' glyph; the reading is: hako eraka hangar kolami'copper ingot (copper)smith'.

m1431B. Row of animals in file (a one-horned bull, an elephant and a rhinoceros from right); a gharial with a fish held in its jaw above the animals; a bird (?) at right. koe heifer (Telugu) [ kha ] m A young bull, a bullcalf. Rebus: kd to turn in a lathe (B.) [kaa] f A fold or pen. (Marathi) ayakra ironsmith (Pali)[fish = aya (G.); crocodile = kru (Te.)]baai quail (N.Santali) Rebus: bhaa = an oven, kiln, furnace (Santali) bahi furnace for smelting ore (the same as kuhi) (Santali) bhaa = an oven, kiln, furnace; make an oven, a furnace; ia bhaa = a brick kiln; kun:kal bhaa a potter's kiln; cun bhaa = a lime kiln; cun tehen dobon bhaaea = we shall prepare the lime kiln today (Santali); bhaha_ (H.) bhart = a mixed metal of copper and lead; bhart-i_ya_ = a barzier, worker in metal; bha, bhrra = oven, furnace (Skt.) me~r.he~t bat.i = iron (Ore) furnaces. [Synonyms are: mt = the eye, rebus for: the dotted circle (Santali.lex) baha [H. bah (Sad.)] any kiln, except a potters kiln, which is called coa; there are four kinds of kiln: cunabat.ha, a lime-kin, it.abat.ha, a brick-kiln, e_re_bat.ha, a lac kiln, 1240

kuilabaha, a charcoal kiln; trs. Or intrs., to make a kiln; cuna rapamente ciminaupe bahakeda? How many limekilns did you make? baha-sen:gel = the fire of a kiln; bai [H. Sad. bahi, a furnace for distilling) used alone or in the cmpds. Arkibut.i and bat.iora, all meaning a grog-shop; occurs also in ilibai, a (licensed) rice-beer shop (Mundari.lex.) bhai = liquor from mohwa flowers (Santali) Long linear stroke is a category grouping or 'descriptive' glyph -- a determinative of an artisans workshop -- as may be seen from the following examples of inscriptions. Decoded read rebus: ko kampaam dul kolamikaa kanka, 'artisan's workshop; copper mint ; cast metal smithy; furnace account scribe'. The multi-sided prism tablet (m1431) was, therefore, used to collect the products from the guild (smithy) workers' (perhaps, from each of the 19+ working platforms) to create a composite, descriptive bill of lading for a trade load. Glyph: one long linear stroke. koa, koa = in arithmetic one; 4 koa or koa = 1 gaa = 4 (Santali) Rebus: ko, artisans workshop (Kuwi.) kamaha = ficus religiosa (Skt.) Rebus: kamaa = portable furnace for melting precious metals (Te.); kampaam = mint (Ta.) loa ficus religiosa (Santali) rebus: loh metal (Skt.) Rebus: lo copper. Thus, dul loh cast copper. dula 'pair' (Kashmiri); rebus: dul 'cast (metal)' (Santali) kolmo seedling, paddy plant; rebus: kolami forge, smithy (Te.) kaa kanka 'rim of jar' (Santali); rebus: furnace scribe (account). kaa kanka may be a dimunitive form of *kan-khr copper smith comparable to the cognate gloss: kar coppersmiths, blacksmiths (Tamil) If so, kaa kan-khr connotes: copper-smith furnace.kaa fire-altar (Santali); kan copper (Ta.)

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In the m1431 Text, the long linear stroke connotes rebus: Glyph of 'linear stroke': go = one (Santali); koa one(Santali) Rebus: goi = silver (G.) ko workshop (G.) bahia = a castrated boar, a hog (Santali) bahi a caste who work both in iron and wood (Santali)

m1431C. Zebu, bos indicus + other (illegible) glyphs. Decoded rebus reading: Guild.

kh ,'zebu' rebus: 'guild'. [kh Brahmani bull (Kathiawar G.); kh ro entire bull used for
agriculture, not for breeding (G.)(CDIAL 3899). kh ro = entire bull; kh = brahmai bull (G.) khuiyo = an uncastrated bull (Kathiawad. G.lex.) kh _aum a bullock (used in Jhlw)(G.) kuai = bull (Ta.lex.) cf. kh _dhi hump on the back; khu_dh hump-backed (G.)(CDIAL 3902).] Rebus: ka a house, dwelling (Skt.lex.) kh = a community, sect, society, division, clique, 1242

schism, stock; kh ren pea kanako = they belong to the same stock (Santali) kh Nag. kh , k Has. (Or. kh) either of the two branches of the village family.

m1431E. From R.a person holding a vessel; a woman with a platter (?); a kneeling person with a staff in his hands facing the woman; a goat with its forelegs on a platform under a tree. [Or, two antelopes flanking a tree on a platform, with one antelope looking backwards?] M1431E shows a turner at work, assisted by a person bending on all fours. kunda turner kundr turner (A.); k dr, k dri (B.); kundru (Or.); kundau to turn on a lathe, to carve, to chase; kundau dhiri = a hewn stone; kundau murhut = a graven image (Santali) kunda a turner's lathe (Skt.)(CDIAL 3295) Glyph: Br. kn on all fours, bent double. (DEDR 2054a) The seated person is shown wearing knot of hair at back. snd ga (Go.) cund the hairtail as worn by men (Kur.)(DEDR 2670). Rebus: cundakra a turner J vi.339 (Pali) cundakra cognate kundr.

Ur. Shell plaque. Shell plaque From Ur, Southern Iraq (c. 2,600-2,400 B.C.) Entwined in the branches of a flowering tree, two goats appear to be nibbling on its leaves. This decorative plaque, which was carved from shell and highlighted with bitumen, was also excavated from the Royal Tombs of Ur. The glyphics on this plaque are comparable to the glyphics on Tablet 1431E showing two goat glyphs flanking a tree glyph. Orthography of the two goats on the prism tablet is comparable to the glyph on a shell plaque from Ur. mlekh, mreka goat (Br.Telugu); rebus: milakkhu copper. [ agara ]A slope or ascent (as of a river's bank, of a small hill). A pair is dula; rebus: dul cast (metal)(Santali)Rebus: gar blacksmith (H.) Thus, the glyptic composition is read rebus: dul 1243

mlekh gar cast copper-smith. Glyph: M. agar f. little hill, slope .S. akuru m. mountain N. kuro, ri hill top . P. ekr m., r f. rock, hill ; H. ekar, kr m. heap, hillock ; G. ekr m., r f. mountain, hillock .6. K. g m. hillock, mound .7. G. k peak .8. M. g n. mound, lump . -- Ext. -- r -- : Or. uguri hillock ; M. gar n. bump, mound (see *uungara -- ); -- -- l -- : M. ga, g n.9. K. ki f. hill, rising ground . -- Ext. -- r -- : K. akr f. hill on a road .10. Ext. -- r -- : Pk. aggara -- m. upper terrace of a house ; 11. Ku. g, k stony land ; B. heap , g hill, dry upland ; H. g f. mountain -- ridge ; M. g m.n., ga, g, g n. hill -- tract . -- Ext. -r -- : N. agur heap .12. M. g m. hill, pile , g m. eminence , g f. heap . -- Ext. -- r -- : Pk. ugara -- m. mountain ; Ku. gar, gr; N. ugar heap ; Or. uguri hillock , H. gar m., G. gar m., gr f. 13. S.garu m. hill , H. M. gar m. 14. Pa. tuga -- high ; Pk. tuga -- high , tug ya -- m. mountain ; K. tng, t ngu m. peak , P. tug f.; A. tug importance ; Si. tungu lofty, mountain . -- Cf. uttuga -- lofty MBh. 15. K. th ngu m. peak . 16. H. dg f. hill, precipice , dg belonging to hill country . Addenda: *akka -- 3. 12. *uga - : S.kcch. ghar m. hillock . (CDIAL 5423). unc An eminence, a mount, a little hill (Marathi). kuro = hill top (N.); ng = hill, stony country (Or.); n:gara = rocky hilly land (Or.); n:g = hill, dry upland (B.); ~g = mountain-ridge (H.)(CDIAL 5476). Marathi. [ ga ] m n ( H Peak or summit of a hill.) kha A tree of which the head and branches are broken off, a stock or stump: also the lower portion of the trunk--that below the branches. (Marathi) Rebus: ko workshop (G.) Scarf as an Indus script hieroglyph, a glyphic element

Terracotta tablet, Mohenjo-daro. Scarf (also shown on pigtail glyphs). Scarf i carried in a procession depicted on a terracotta tablet (together with a banner showing a one-horned heifer and a portable standard device). [After Marshall 1931, Pl. CXVIII,9]

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Scarf is ligatured as a pigtail to a standing, horned person wishin a pot decorated with ficus leaves as a torana. Part of the glyphs included in Seal m1186.

Scarf shown ligatured as a pigtail to a horned, standing person. Tablet.

Scarf as a pigtail. A glyphic element ligatured to a horned, kneeling person in front of a horned, standing person (also with scarf as a hieroglyph) within a torana. One side of a tablet. er-agu = a bow, an obeisance; er-aguha = bowing, coming down (Ka.lex.) er-agisu = to bow, to be bent; tomake obeisance to; to crouch; to come down; to alight (Ka.lex.) cf. arghas = respectful reception of a guest (by the offering of rice, du_rva grass, flowers or often only of water)(SBr.14)(Skt.lex.) erugu = to bow, to salute or make obeisance (Te.) Rebus: eraka copper (Ka.)erka = ekke (Tbh. of arka) aka (Tbh. of arka) copper (metal); crystal (Ka.lex.) eraka, er-aka = any metal infusion (Ka.Tu.) eruvai copper (Ta.); ere dark red (Ka.)(DEDR 446). er-r-a = red; (arka-) agasle, agasli, agaslavu = a goldsmith (Te.lex.) Thus, the horned, scarfed, kneeling person is read rebus: eraka dhatu 'copper mineral'. Decoding 'scarf' glyph: dhau m. (also dhahu) m. scarf (WPah.) (CDIAL 6707)Rebus: dhatu minerals (Santali) "Indus inscriptions resemble the Egyptian hieroglyphs..." (John Marshall, 1931, Mohenjo-daro and the Indus civilization, London, Arthur Probsthain, p.424) Yes, indeed, Indus writing was 1245

hieroglyphic and was invented ca. 3500 BCE as the artisans gained the expertise in participating in the bronze age innovations and technologies. The bronze age necessitated writing system as an essential complementary innovation to categorise, compile, and creat bills of lading as authenticated records of trade transactions -- by account scribes -- of artifacts produced by guilds (workshops) of artisans, miners, lapidaries, turner-carvers. Thus, the functions served by circular working platforms, the functions served (as preparatory resources for bills of lading) by: 1) use of tablets as category tallies, 2) compilation of seals, 3) creation of seal impressions are explained in the archaeological context of trade evidenced across interaction areas (e.g. Persian Gulf, Sumer: Susa and Uruk).

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/12/acarya-hemacandra-1088-1173-ce.html Decoding 'ram' glyph of Indus script, meh: rebus: 'helper of merchant' Decoding 'ram' glyph of Indus script, meh: rebus: 'helper of merchant' Updated December 4, 2011: Indus script glyphs and use of bullae in the context of trade/cultural interaction areas 1. with notes on 'writing, counting' cf. the work of Denise Schmandt-Besserat. 2. Enrico Ascalone's evidence on interaction areas in International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East 4, 2004, Berlin. cf. "...the extensive evidence for Bactrian Margiana materials recovered from Susa, Shahdad, Yahya, Khinaman, Sibri, Nausharo, Hissar, etc., might make it the prime candidate for Indo-Iranian arrival on the Iranian Plateau."(C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, 2002, Archaeology and Language, The Indio-Iranians, Current

Anthropology, Volum3 43, Number 1, February 2002, p.84)

3. Decoding haraa, 'buck'; rebus: haraa 'anvil'. 4. Resolving location of ancient Meluhha.

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Tel Brak tablet. ca. 4th millennium BCE. An animal (possibly, a goat) is shown. Above it, a circular impression (perhaps denoting ten). An early writing sample.

Storage jar decorated with mountain goats, early 4th millennium B.C.; Chalcolithic period, Sialk III 7 type Central Iran Ceramic, paint H. 20 7/8 in. (53 cm)Metmuseum. Capra is a genus of mammals, the goats or wild goats, composed of up to nine species including the wild goat, the markhor and several species known as ibex (with long, curved-back horns).

1247

Male Nubian ibex (Capra ibex).

Markhor (Capra falconeri)Punjabi. mh m. 'markhor'.(CDIAL 10310)Rebus: mh 'iron' (Mu.) Antelope cervicapra (with high, wavy horns) is a species of the capra genus. Middle Persian rn can be derived from haraa, 'buck'.(See etyma cited in the note) which had a specific rebus reading connoting 'anvil' in earlier times.

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"The term "Iran" derives immediately from Middle Persian rn, Pahlavi yrn, first attested in an inscription that accompanies the investiture relief of the first Sassanid king Ardashir I at Naqsh-e Rustam. In this inscription, the king's Middle Persian appellation is ardar hn h rn while in the Parthian language inscription that accompanies the Middle Persian one the king is titled ardar hn h aryn (Pahlavi: ... ryn) both meaning king of kings of Iranians. The gentilic r- and ary- in rn/aryn derives from Old Iranian *arya- (Old Persian ariya-, Avestan airiia-, etc.), meaning "Aryan," in the sense of "of the Iranians." This term is attested as an ethnic designator in Achaemenid inscriptions and in Zoroastrianism's Avesta tradition,[4][n 1] and it seems "very likely" that in Ardashir's inscription rn still retained this meaning, denoting the people rather than the empire." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Iran Source: MacKenzie, David Niel (1998). "rn, rnahr". Encyclopedia Iranica. 8. Costa Mesa: Mazda. Schmitt, Rdiger (1987). "Aryans". Encyclopedia Iranica. 2. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. pp. 684687. http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/v8f5/v8f545.html http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/v2f7/v2f7a004.html "Traditions of making painted pottery flourished in agricultural villages and nomad camps throughout the Near East by the Late Neolithic period of the seventh millennium B.C. These early ceramics were made by hand in a variety of techniques, including coil, mold, and slab construction, and served as cooking, serving, and storage vessels. This large storage jar is a masterpiece of early pottery making. Produced in the early fourth millennium B.C. on the Iranian plateau, in a style known from excavations at the site of Tepe Sialk, it is a large buff-colored jar painted with dark brown designs. The geometric decoration on the upper portion of the vessel divides it into three panels. In each of these panels is the stylized image of an ibex shown in right profile, highlighting the great arch of its exaggerated horns. The ibex was the most common motif in prehistoric ceramics of highland Iran, perhaps because of its symbolic significance as prey to hunters." Citation "Storage jar decorated with mountain goats [Central Iran] (59.52)". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/59.52 (October 2006)This work has been published in the Museum's Bulletin or Journal. These articles may or may not represent the most current scholarship. Harper, Prudence O., Barbara A. Porter, Oscar White Muscarella, Holly Pittman, and Ira Spar. "Ancient Near Eastern Art." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 41, no. 4 (Spring, 1249

1984). JSTOR | PDF | Supplemental PDFs Rousseau, Theodore. "Masterpieces of Fifty Centuries." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 29, no. 3 (November, 1970). JSTOR | PDF The significance of the 'mountain goat' or black buck will be further evaluated in this note in the context of its use as Indus script glyph. Underlying hypothesis: where the black buck roams is the area of contact for Indian linguistic area using Indus script.

Acarya Hemacandra (1088-1173 CE). Meluhha and use of tokens in Tepe Hissar as bronze-age dawns

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"Susa was not alone in Iran in yielding tokens in the second half of the fourth millennium BCE; the counters endured in the other prehistoric sites. They are attested, for example, at Chogha Misha and Farukhabad in Susiana; Tepe Yahya and Shahdad in the south of the country; and at Tepe Hissar in the north...It is remarkable, however, that most Iranian token assemblages do not give any indication of change. Instead, they maintain the usual types of counters known since the eighth millennium BCE. For example, Farukhabad, Sharafabad, KS 34 and KS 76 in the west, Tepe Sialk on the Iranian Plateau, and Tepe Yahya have assemblages consisting mostly of plain cones, spheres, disks, cylinders, and tetrahedrons. The case fo Tepe Hissar is interesting. Level II, which produced tokens with a modest number of specimens bearing punctuations, corresponds to a period of change in administrative and craft activities. The appearance of cylinder seals, tablet blanks, and jar stoppers coincides with an increase in copper smelting and the use of exotic materials such as gold, silver, lapis lazuli, carnelian, turquoise, and alabaster."(Denise Schmandt-Besserat, 1992, Before Writing: From counting to

cuneiform, Univ. of Texas Press, p.85)

Distribution of Tokens in the Middle East. From Denise Schmandt-Besserat, "An Ancient Token System: The Precursor to Numerals and Writing," Archaeology 39 (Nov.-Dec. 1986): 38 For a brief account of the theses of Denise Schmandt-Besserat, see:Tokens: the origin of mathematics See a good summary at: 1/ Denise Schmandt-Besserat, 2008, Two precursors of writing: plain and complex tokens (Collection: Denise Schmandt-Besserat 1st edition: Barcelona, 8 December of 2008; cf. The origins of writing ed. Wayne M. Senner. 1991: 27-41). 1251

2. Denise Schmandt-Besserat, 1977, The earliest precursor of writing, Scientific American. June 1977, Vol. 238, No. 6, p. 50-58.

Lapis lazuli seal from Tomb 110, Tepe Gawra (G4-769). Iraq. Courtesy, Univ. Museum, Univ. of Pennsylvania. "In level X of Tepe Gawra, Tombs 102, 110, and 114 were among the richest sculptures of the site. They included obsidian, serpentine, or electrum vessels, gold ornaments in the form of studs, beads, or rosettes, stone maceheads, and lapis lazuli seals. (fig. 50)"(ibid., p.103). A standing person is an Indus script glyph. Decoded as me 'body'(Mu.); rebus: me 'iron' (Ho.); helper of merchant (Pkt.)

After Fig. 44.1 En. After Pierre Amiet. La Glyptique mesopotamienne archaique (Paris: Editions du CNRS, 1980), pl. 46: 639; Fig. 44.2 En. ibid. pl. 44: 655. "The five sites that produced the largest complex tokens assemblages -- Uruk and Tello in Iraq, 1252

Susa and Chogha Mish in Iran, and Habuba Kabira-Tell Kannas in Syria -- have strikingly similar assemblages. Although the cities were separated by several hundred miles, they shared the same monumental architecture characterized by a central plan and a decoration of niches and clay cone mosaics...Furthermore, the seals and sealings of the five cities were exactly alike, bearing analogous motifs. Among them was featured, for example, the bearded figure of the Mesopotamian priest-king, the so-called En, in his typical attire consisting of a robe in a netlike fabric and a round headdress (figs. 44.1 and 44.2). Finally, all five sites except Tello yielded envelopes holding tokens and impressed tablets. The various features which occur with consistency in the assemblages of sites yielding complex tokens -- the priest-king, public monumental architecture, measures, seals and complex tokens -- represent the elements of an elaborate bureaucracy. They indicate the presence of a powerful economic institution headed by an En acting in public buildings decorated with mosaics and relying upon a control of goods involving seals, beveled-rim bowls, and complex tokens."(ibid., p.101).

"It is likely that the strings of tokens fulfilled the same function as the envelopes described below, providing an alternative way of storing token. If this assumption is correct, presumably both ends of the string were tied together and secured by sealings identifying the account and preventing any tampering. I propose that a category of small bullae, bearing sealings, could have served this purpose." After Fig. 53. ibid., p. 109. Proposed reconstruction of a string of tokens by a solid bulla. Drawing by Ellen Simmons.

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Note the seal impression of a short-horned bull on the bulla (Fig. 54)."The bullae are made of clay. They are solid, modeled in an oblong or biconoid shape, and measure about 7 cm. in length and 5 in diameter. The artifacts show, at both ends, the trace of the strings to which they are attached and are covered with sealings." After Fig. 54. ibid., p. 109. Two bullae (Sb62898 and 9297). Iran. Courtesy Musee du Louvre. Department des Antiquites Orientales. [Note: cowries were used for counting and as 'currency of exchange' in ancient India. It is likely that the cowries could have been similarly held on a string as tokens of counting, together with a seal or seal impression which indicated the commodity transacted.]

A string of cowries. An Indus valley shellbead string, ca. 3rd 2nd millennium BC. Drilled cowrie shells. ~8.5 inches. http://www.edgarlowen.com/a49ane.shtml Categorising, counting tokens (used with bulle)? The short-horned bull is clearly an identifier describing the profession of the artisan or of the commodity category being counted to complete the bill of lading by the Indus artisan-trader.

1254

Plain Bulla envelope. Schoyen collection. Representing an account or agreement of tentatively one large measure of barley. Syria/Sumer/Highland Iran, ca. 3700-3200 BC, 1 spherical bullaenvelope (complete), diam. 6,0-6,8 cm, cylinder seal impression of several men facing tall ringstaff; and another with animals; token inside: 1 large sphere diam. 2 cm (D.S.-B.2:2). Context: MSS 4631-4646 and 5144-5127 are from the same archive. Only 25 more bullaenvelopes are known from Sumer, all excavated in Uruk. Total number of bulla-envelopes worldwide is ca. 165 intact and 70 fragmentary. Commentary: While counting for stocktaking purposes started ca. 8000 BC using plain tokens of the type here, more complex accounting and recording of agreements started about 3700 BC using 2 systems: a) a string of complex tokens with the ends locked into a massive rollsealed clay bulla (see MS 4523), and b) the present system with the tokens enclosed inside a hollow bulla-shaped rollsealed envelope, sometimes with marks on the outside representing the hidden contents. The bulla-envelope had to be broken to check the contents hence the very few surviving intact bulla- envelopes. This complicated system was superseded around 3500-3200 BC by counting tablets giving birth to the actual recording in writing, of the sexagesimal counting system (see MSS 3007 and 4647), and around 3300-3200 BC the beginning of pictographic writing (see MSS 2963 and 4551). http://freeamerica2009.blogspot.com/2009/03/earths-ancient-history.html

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Complex bulla. "Syria/Sumer/Highland Iran, ca. 3500-3200 BC, 1 oblong bulla, diam. 2,5x6,5 cm, rollsealed with a line of animals walking left or 2 men standing with arms raised, pierced for holding a string of counting tokens.Context: For another bulla of the same type, see MS 5113.Commentary: The bulla originally locked the ends of a string with a number of complex counting tokens attached to it, representing 1 transaction. The string with the tokens was hanging outside the bulla like a necklace. If the string had, say, 5 disk type tokens representing types of textiles, this number could not be tampered with without breaking the seal. The tokens could also be entirely enclosed in the centre of the bulla, see MSS 4631, 4632 and 4638. Tokens were used for accounting purposes in the Near East from the Neolithic period ca. 8000 BC until ca. 3200 BC, when they were superseded by counting tablets and pictographic tablets. Some of the earliest tablets have actual tokens impressed into the clay to form numbers and pictographs, and some of the pictographs were illustrations of tokens, see MS 4551." http://freeamerica2009.blogspot.com/2009/03/earths-ancient-history.html These are examples of use of bullae for 'accounting' in Syria. Since, no comparable patterns of bullae have been evidenced in the corpora of Indus inscriptions, it is unclear (and will only be a matter of conjecture and hypotheses formulation) whether a similar practice occurred in civilization contact areas using the Indus script to record transactions of artisan repertoire.

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"...at Susa, a particular seal impression featuring a line of peaceful animals and a line of felines was impressed on a solid bulla as well as on two envelopes. The number of seals is also the same on solid bullae and envelopes: Both have mostly the impression of a single seal rolled all over their surfaces and, on occasion, two or three."(ibid., p. 110). After Fig. 55. Bulla with impressed marking. Habuba Kabira (MII:139). Syria. Photo by Klaus Anger; courtesy Museum fur Vor-und Fruhgeschichte, Berlin. Purpose of writing in Indus script glyphs in the context of bullae. "Numerous impressions of seals have been found on ceramics (Josh) and Parpola 1987:103) as well as on "tags" or bullae used to seal bundles of trade goods (Josh) and Parpola 1987:273). Traces of rope impressions on the back of many "tags" indicates that they were applied to bundles of goods, possibly to denote ownership or for security purposes. " ( Geoffrey Cook,1994, "An Harappan Seal at Berkeley," in: Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, ed., From Sumer to

Meluhha: Contributions to the Archaeology of South and West Asia in Memory of George F. Dales, Jr., Wisconsin Archaeology Reports, Vol. 3, Madison, Wisconsin, 1994.)
Denise Schmandt-Besserat, in what could "...possibly the single most important contribution published in recent years concerned with the antecedents to writing," has shown one purpose of seals, seal impressions and tablets (for e.g. of the types of miniature incised tablets of Harappa of the size of a thumb-nail) -- counting and preparing bills of lading of traded commodities. Denise Schmandt-Besserat's study of tokens and bullae and brilliant insights on the use of seal impressions on bullae strings, validates the decoding of Indus script cipher. Denise is the scholar who identified and demonstrated the sequence of counting and writing in the evolution of a what constituted a cultural revolution in communication systems. The Indus script 1257

hieroglyphs were identified with an underlying language: Meluhha (mleccha) -- and writing began as a logical sequence from the early systems of counting and categorising using tokens and bullae. The sequence is confirmed by the semantics of a lexeme in Indian linguistic area: kar -- f. word, speech RV. [kar -- ]Pa. akkhara -- lasting , n. pl. syllables, words ; Pk. akkhara -m.n. written syllable ; K. achur, pl. -- ar m. letter of the alphabet (CDIAL 38)Ko. ekm (obl. ekt) counting, taking account of something; eka- (ekac-) to count (ka- to tie); eku- (ekuc-) to count (ku- to make to join, gather); ekmu- (ekmuc-) to count. To. km (obl. kt-) arithmetic, account, figures. Tu. ekkam the unit of numeration, first place in ciphering. Te. ekkamu a unit, the place of units, a multiplication table. ? Ma. akkam a numerical figure. / ? < Skt. eka-.(DEDR 769)(L) {V(lay)} ``to ^count''. Nom. ???. *Or.<>. #42001. (Munda etyma) [ lekka ] lekka. [Tel.] n. Number, . An account, a sum in arithmetic, reckoning.(Telugu) likh m. writer P.com., likhitr -- m. painter Viddh. [likh]G. lahiy, laiy m. writer, scribe .(CDIAL 11047)likhti scratches AV., writes Yj. [likh]Pa. likhati scratches, carves, writes ; A.shah. likhapeami, man. likhapita -- , gir. likhpisa, dh. likhiyismi will write , NiDoc. lihati, Pk. liha, MB. lihe, Or. lihib, M. lihi, Ko. liuk, Si. liyanav, caus. liyavanav; Md. liyka sb. writing .likhti. 1. WPah.poet. lo to draw, write , Md. liyan (absol. l), liyum writing .likhyat is written Kaths.: OP. likhau to write , P. likh, B. lekh, H. likhn.(CDIAL 11048). "Sibri. South-west of Mehrgarh and close to the Harappan period mount of Nowsharo, the deflated site of Sibri extends over an area of at least one hectareA number of terracotta objects were recovered from sibri, including pawns, small wheels, spindle-whorls, rattles (Figure 8.4C), and sling-balls. Two crucible fragments were also collectedOne of the rattles, with circular impressions on it, looks very much like a specimen from Mehrgarh and one from Shahdad (Hakemi, 1972: Plate XXIIA). Another example (Fig. 8.4C) bears incised signs which could represent numbersPerhaps the most interesting finds from Sibri are the seals, which are of two types. The principal kind is the compartmented seal made of bronze or of stoneThe second type of seal is represented by a single piece. It is a black steatite cylinder with a pierced boss on top, engravings of a zebu facing what is probably a lion around the cylinder, and an engraved scorpion on the base. (Fig. 8.4A). This cylinder seal was found associated with two beads in black steatite and, with them, may have formed part of a necklace. This piece is very similar to a few cylinder seals found in Margiana from the surface of the Taip sites (Masimov, 1258

1981). One seal from Margiana bears a representation of a zebu. Not far from the place where the seal came was found a bronze shaf-hole axe-adze (Fig. 8.1E) of a type also well-known in the Murgabo-Bactria area as well as at Mohenjo-daro. Other bronze objects include a few pins.(Marielle Santoni, Sibri and the South Cemetery of Mehrgarh: third millennium connections between the northern Kachi Plain (Pakistan) and Central Asia, in: South Asian Archaeology

1981; Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of the Association of South Asian Archaeologists in Western Europe, held in Cambridge University, 5-10 July 1981, edited by
Bridget Allchin, California University Press, pp.54-55)

Fig. 8.4A Stone Cylinder seal. Sibri.

Fig. 8.4C. Sibri. Terracotta rattles.

Rattles. Harappa culture. Boston Museum. 1259

Fig. 8.1E. Shaft-hole axe/'adze of copper or bronze. Sibri.

Rattle. Chanhudaro.Spherical rattle, hollow with small bits of clay inside, painted in red slip with decoration of concentric circles.PROVENANCE[Expedition date:] 1935-1936 Season CREDIT LINE Joint Expedition of the American School of Indic and Iranian Studies and the Museum of Fine Arts, 19351936 Season. Ball-shaped rattle Pakistan, Indus Valley, Chanhu-Daro, about 26001900 B.C.Chanhu-Daro, Indus Valley, Pakistan DIMENSIONS Legacy dimension: Diam: 5.5 cm MEDIUM OR TECHNIQUE Terracotta, buff-colored fired clay with red slipThree lots (photos

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available on Museum website): Accession Nos. 36.2226, 36.2733, 36.2240 Legacy dimension: D. 2.5 in., D. 2.0 in., D. 1.74 in., 5.5 cm. Boston Museum.

Marine shell 36.2400 Carved ball. Chanhudaro. Diameter: 3.2 cm Boston Museum. If this was used as a bulla, the likely decoding of the 'dotted circle' glyph: kandhi a lump, a piece (Santali)The dotted circles also adorn the standard device which is a drill-lathe, sangaa [ khaa ] A piece, bit, fragment, portion.(Marathi) Rebus: kandi beads (Pa.)(DEDR 1215). kha ivory (H.) Vikalpa: Rebus: khaaran, kharun pit furnace (Santali)Thus, the package to which such a bulla might have been attached might have contained ivory artifacts or beads or drill lathes or provided for a count of furnaces. [ khat ] n Among gamesters. An ivory counter &c. placed to represent a sum of money. (Marathi)

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An Indus valley shellbead bracelet, ca. 3rd 2nd millennium BC. The necklace of drilled cowrie shells. ~8.5 inches.

Dotted circles incised on steatite bead; No. 5256 ca. 3rd 2nd millennium BC. The carved, drilled and polished gray stone bead with incised annulet and oblique designs. 1 x 1.2 inches.. Did the number of 'dotted circles' glyphs on the bead represent the count of 'number of furnaces' worked on by the Indus smith/arisan?

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Fish-shaped tablet (text 3428), Harappa with incised text; eye is a dotted circle; after Vats 1940: II, pl. 95, no.428; Parpola, 1994, p. 194. 'Fish-eye' as a glyph? Dotted circle. Denotes the 'furnace'. To be read with the glyphs: fish + arrow + rimless pot or fish+four (strokes) + rimless pot; rebus reading: ayaskaa bhaa 'excellent iron' (out of the furnace -- kaa bhaa). 'Arrow' and 'count of four strokes' glyphs are allographs: kaa 'arrow'; kaa 'four koa'(lit. four one-s). 'Fish-eye' or 'dotted circle' is thus a phonetic determinant of the lexeme: kaa. A vikalpa rebus reading is:kaa 'ivory' or 'bead'.

The sequence of sign-glyphs occurs without the 'fish-shaped' tablet replacing it with a 'fish' glyph as part of the inscription. The inscription also occurs without the 'fish-eye' glyph shown on tablet text 3428. This identical inscription set appears on two sides of two miniature tablets, Harappa (a) H-302; (b) 3452; after Vats 1940: II, 452 B. Parpola, 1994, p. 194. Both these examples of inscriptions (one fish-shaped tablet and the other plain-shaped, rectangular tablet) are a record of the iron furnaces worked on by the Indus artisans of Harappa. Maybe, these were 'identity' tokens for the artisans of the guild. It is unclear if the 'terracotta balls' can be categorised as bullae. The excavator of Mohenjo-daro does not report on the uniqueness of the three pellets that a 'rattle' contained. Marshall's report: "Ratttles (Pl. CLIII, 11). Round pottery rattles with small pellets of clay inside are well known at Mohenjo-daro. The one illustrated (C 2567) is among the best of those found. It is 2.55 inches in diameter and is of light-red ware decorated with parallel circles in red paint. Level. 12 feet below surface. Room 9, Block 8, Section C, DK Area. The rattles found vary in size from 1.5 inches to 2.6 inches in diameter, and are all made of light-red ware. Some are plain and others decorated with thick lines, always of red and arranged either laterally or vertically. These rattles were probably made by wrapping the clay round a combustible core, in the centre of which the roughly made baked clay pellets were placed to produce the sound. (In one rattle that we opened were three small clay pellets.) In every case they are hand-made, not moulded, and they are invariably well finished, but without a slip. They are found at all levels. In none of the 1263

rattles was there a vent-hole to allow the gases resulting from the combustion of the core to escape. Possibly the porous nature of the pottery would of itself permit a gas to pass through easily, and that may be the reason why these toys were not coated with a slip."(John Marshall,Mohenjo-dro and the Indus Civilization: being an official account of archaeological

excavations at Mohenjo-Daro carried out by the Government of India between the years 1922 and 1927, Repr. Asian Educational Services, 1996, p.551)
During historical periods, there is an instance of a rattle with a glyphic impression: "From Harinarayanpur Shri P. C. Das Gupta secured a terracotta seal showing two beak-headed abstract figures facing each other (pi. LXXXIII, 2), ...and a rattle with a seated figure (pi. LXXXIV, 2)." (Indian Archaeology 1957-58 A review, p.70) If, in fact,such rattles were bullae, it is likely that some bullae might also have been used conjointly -- as evidenced by Denise Schmandt-Besserat in Susa and other sites of the Indus script interaction areas of Elam/Mesopotamia -- with the Indus script seal (with hieroglyphs) to record the profession of the artisan or the product made by the artisan and thus complete the 'bill-of-lading' for the trade transaction -- the tokens denoting the count (quantity). The images are also repeated in: Jarrige, Catherine, Jean-Franois Jarrige, Richard H. Meadow, and Gonzague Quivron, editors (1995/1996) Mehrgarh: Field Reports 1974-1985 -

From Neolithic Times to the Indus Civilization. The Reports of Eleven Seasons of Excavations in Kachi District, Balochistan, by the French Archaeological Mission to Pakistan. Sindh, Pakistan:
The Department of Culture and Tourism, Government of Sindh, Pakistan, in Collaboration with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (Seventh season 1980-1981 Excavations at Mehrgarh). The representation of 'zebu' on the Mehrgarh cylinder seal (in the context of the shaft-holeaxe/adze) is significant, since the glyph is decoded adar angra 'zebu'; rebus: aduru hangar native-metal- smith (Meluhha/mleccha Indian linguistic area). The context of predominantly 'smith's repertoire' decoded in Indus script Cipher, gets validation from the Mehrgarh Field Reports 1975-1985 cited above.

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Location map. Tepe Hissar in relation to Meluhha.

Hissar I painted ware is decorated with geometric, plant, and animal motifs (gazelles, ibexes, and birds).After FIGURE 2. Gold applique Ibex (H3211); one of five from Hoard I. Treasure Hall; Period IIIC, 1940-1705 BC, 1932. Source: (Tappa er), prehistoric site located just south of Dmn in northeastern Persia.http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/tepe-hissar#

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Sutka-koh, Meluhha. Persian Gulf. This is a continuation of the blogpost which decoded mlekh 'goat' (Brahui) identified rebus with meluhha (mleccha, Indian linguistic area): http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/11/susa-ritual-basin-decorated-with.html Goat and fish as hieroglyphs of Indus script: Susa-Meluhha interactions. Meluhhan interpreter 'may have been literate and could read the undeciphered Indus script.' An example of Indus script glyphs used in interaction areas is the transelamite cylinder-stamp seal from Jalalabad. Enrico Ascalone provides scores of seals demonstrating interaction with Indus civilization.

After Fig. 1 Transelamite cylinder-stamp seal from Jalalabad. Source: Archaeological National Museum of Tehran, NMI 2698. In: (Enrico Ascalone, Cultural interactions among Mesopotamia, Elam, Transelam and Indus civilization. The evidence of a cylinder-stamp seal from Jalalabad (FARS) and its significance in the historical dynamics of south-eastern Iran, in: International 1266

Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East 4, 2004, Berlin (4 ICAANE).Proceedings

of the 4th International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Volume 1, Berlin,
Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2008, pp. 255-276). "The iconographical representation (Fig. 1) shows a composite being with Mesopotamian kaunakes flanked by dragon's heads, with naked torso and unfortunately a raised face while it left up the arms ending with dragon heads; in front of him are three figures with long clothes, one of them is knelled down with up arms, two are simply bowed. A Harappan or pseudo-Harappan inscription is located in the central upper part of seal, while a globe, two three-petals vegetable elements and a eight-pointd star are depicted in the last free-spaces of cylindrical surface. On the base is depicted a single icon representing a profile head with beard and horned hat...the epigraphic evidence is related to the Harappan inscriptions corpora as known in the Indus valley and in Harappan cylinder seals found in Mesopotamia and Susiana." (ibid., p. 255) Enrico Ascalone provides samples of seals comparable to Indus script glyphs (ibid., pp. 267 to 276); he also explains in his article, reasons he why he finds comparable glyphic elements across indus, elamite/iran interaction areas:

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Fig. 6f: Transelamite stamp seal from Tepe Giyan Source: Archaeological National Museum of Tehran, NMI 737/6

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Decoding 'ram' glyph which recurs on many Indus Script inscriptions The 'ram' is distinct orthographically with curved horns and can be distinguished from a 'goat or antelope' of the type carried by the Meluhha merchant on the Shu-Ilishu cylinder seal with Akkadian inscription. In Mahadevan corpus, three types of representations of goat (ram) are categorised as 'field symbols': Goat-antelope, ox-antelope, ligatured animal (with features of ram) -- each appearing, respectively, on 37, 26 and 41 inscribed objects. Another view is to orthographically distinguish two types of 'sheep': sheep with short horns (which is equated with mlekh'goat' (Brahui); sheep with curved and long horns (thrown backward) -- which is equated with meh 'ram'.

Harappa seal (h350B)

Harappa seal (h330)

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m0488C Tablet.

m1186A Seal. A document titled 'Glyptic art and glyptic writing in contact areas of Indus script hieroglyphs' (with a few embedded documents) provides some instances of 'ram' orthography (with curved/long horns) distinguished from 'goat' orthography (with short horns). This document includes a reference to 'Indus script gulf type seals': Steffen Terp Laursen (2010) detailing the westward transmission of Indus valley sealing technology: origin and development of 'Gulf type' seal and other administrative technologies in early Dilmun, ca. 2100-2000 BCE (Published in Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 2010: vol. 21: 96-134). See decoding of Gulf type Indus script inscriptions at:http://www.docstoc.com/docs/89750961/Decoding-Gulf-Type-Seals It is likely that the Meluhhan traders who interacted with 'Gulf' interaction area and created the 'Gulf type' seals carried with them the rebus reading of the 'goat' or 'ram' glyphs and provided such a reading on the seals. mlekh 'goat' connoted, read rebus 'copper'; meh 'ram', connoted, read rebus 'merchant'. A clear identifying calling card of the commodity described by the inscription (identified by the glyph: goat) and the professional status of the trader (identified by 1274

the glyph: ram). The 'ram' glyph shows the animal with curved, long horns and sometimes also gets ligatured with a human face on some Indus script inscriptions. The human face is also read rebus in mleccha (meluhha): m he face (Santali); rebus:m h ingot (Santali); opening or hole (in a stove for stoking (Bi.) m h = the quantity of iron produced at one time in a native smelting furnace of the Kolhes; iron produced by the Kolhes and formed like a four-cornered piece a little pointed at each end; mh mht = iron smelted by the Kolhes and formed into an equilateral lump a little pointed at each of four ends; kolhe tehen mht ko mh akata = the Kolhes have to-day produced pig iron (Santali.lex.) kaula mengro blacksmith (Gypsy) mleccha-mukha (Skt.) = milakkhu copper (Pali) The Sanskrit loss mleccha-mukha should literally mean: copper-ingot absorbing the Santali gloss, mu~h, as a suffix. See used in cmpds. (Telugu): mlchhamukhamu. n. Copper, . mlchhamu. n. Cinnabar. .

Thus, a 'ram' glyph ligatured with 'human face' glyph reads: m h meh 'ram face'; rebus: (metal) ingot merchant. It is notable that me, meho has two rebus meanings: 1. iron (metal); 2. merchant. Glyptic art and glyptic writing in contact areas of Indus script hieroglyphs

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Denmaml of Hemacandra (ed. R. Pischel (1880), Bombay Sanskrit Series No. XVII; 1938,
2nd edn. by Paravastu Venkata Ramanujaswami) Desinamamala of Hemacandra ed. R. Pischel (1938)

Denmaml provides a remarkable resource for ancient lexemes of Indian linguistic area.
One word glossed in Denmaml is: meho 'helper of merchant'. (See embedded text -Denmaml of Hemacandra).

Denmaml Glossary, p. 71 The early meaning of the lexeme meh can be traced from the semantics recorded in the following lexemes of Indian linguistic area; as Pischel notes, the word meh can be identified as susbtratum semantic for 'helper/assistant of merchant): MBh. [mha -- 1, ma -- 3 m. elephant -- keeper lex., Pa. hatthimea -- m. elephant -- driver , Pk. meha -- , miha -- , mihala -- , mahmettha -- (note final -- th in P. below), metthapurisa -- m. (Pischel PkGr 202) may point to a non -- Aryan word for elephant -- driver which became associated with mahmtra -- : EWA ii 611. -- mah -- , mtr -- ] (CDIAL 9950). mea, An elephant-keeper (Apte. lex.) a groom, elephant -- driver in cpd. hatthi elephants' keeper J iii.431; v.287; vi.489. (Pali).

An exact rebus match is provided in two lexemic groups denoting a 'ram', and 'iron'. It is notable that 'ram' is a vividly orthographed Indus script glyph with wavy horns: [Allographs: 1. Or. me hillock . 2. Or. me lump, clot .(CDIAL 10308)M. me(h), meh f., meh m. post, forked stake .(CDIAL 10317) S. mh f., ho m. braid in a woman's hair 1276

, L. mh f.; G. ml, mi m. braid of hair on a girl's forehead ; M. meh m. curl, snarl, twist or tangle in cord or thread . [ mh ] mea A twist or tangle arising in thread or cord, a curl or snarl. (Marathi) (CDIAL 10312). mehi, mih, meh = a plait in a womans hair; a plaited or twisted strand of hair (P.)(CDIAL 10312)]. A. semantics 'iron': me iron (Ho)meed (Mundari);med iron; enga meed soft iron; sani meed hard iron; ispt meed steel; dul meed cast iron; i meed rusty iron, also the iron of which weights are cast; bica meed iron extracted from stone ore; bali meed iron extracted from sand ore; meed-bica = iron stone ore, in contrast to bali-bica, iron sand ore (Mu.lex.) B. semantics 'ram or markhor': A variety of forms , a, ma, m -- point to collision with Aryn mhra (providing a form bhra), Austro-Asiatic ma and Dravidian a: menda(A) {N} ``^sheep''. *Des.menda(GM) `sheep'. #21810. me~Da o~?-Doi {N} ``^lamb''. |me~Da `^sheep'. @N0747. #6052. gadra me~Da {N} ``^ram, ^male ^sheep''. |me~Da `sheep'. @N0745. #7240. me~Da {N} ``^sheep''. *De. menda (GM). @N0744. #14741. me~Da o?~-Doi {N} ``^lamb''. |o~?-Doi `young of an animal'. @N0747. #14750. gadra me~Da {N} ``^ram''. |gadra `male of sheep or goat'. @N0745. #14762. peti me~Da {N} ``^ewe (without young)''. |peti `young female of sheep or goat'. @N0746. #14772.me~Da o~?-Doi {N} ``^lamb''. |me~Da `^sheep'. @N0747. #6053.peti me~Da {N} ``^ewe (without young)''. |me~Da `sheep'. @N0746. #14773. menda(KMP) {N} ``^sheep [MP], ewe [K], ram, ^wether [P]''. Cf. merom `goat', boda `??'. *O.menda, B.mera, H.merha, Sk.lex, ~medhra, ~mendha, Sa.bheda `ram', ~bhidi `sheep', MuNbhera, MuHbera `ram', Mu., Kh bheri(AB) `sheep', H., O. bhera `ram', H. bhera `sheep'. %21781. #21611. menda kOnOn (P) {N} ``^lamb''. | konon `child'. *$Ho mindi hon . %21790. #21620. mendi (P) {N} ``^sheep''. *$Mu., Ho, Bh. mindi . %21800. #21630. meram (P),, merom (KMP) {N} ``^goat [MP], she-goat [K]''. Cf. menda `sheep'. *Kh., Sa., Mu., Ho merom , So. k+mmEd/mEd , Nic. me ; cf. O., Bh. mera `goat'. %21821. #21651. meram kOnOn (P),, merom kOnOn (P) {N} ``^kid''. | konon `child'. merom (KMP),, meram (P) {N} ``^goat [MP], she-goat [K]''. Cf. menda `sheep'. *Kh., Sa., Mu., Ho merom , So. k+mmEd/-mEd , Nic. me ; cf. O., Bh. mera `goat'. %21851. #21681. bheri (D),, bheri (AB) {NA} ``^sheep [ABD]; ^bear [D]''. *@. ??VAR. #3251. menda ,, mendi {N} ``^sheep''. @7906. ??M|F masc|fem #19501. menda (B)F {N(M)} ``(male) ^sheep''. Fem. mendi . *Loan. @B21460,N760. #22531.Ju menda (KMP) {N} ``^sheep 1277

[MP], ewe [K], ram, ^wether [P]''. Cf. merom `goat', boda `??'. *O. menda , B. mera , H. merha , Sk. lex , ~ medhra , ~ mendha , Sa. bheda `ram', ~ bhidi `sheep', MuN bhera , MuH bera `ram', Mu., Kh. bheri (AB) `sheep', H., O. bhera `ram', H. bhera `sheep'.Ju meram (P),, merom (KMP) {N} ``^goat [MP], she-goat [K]''. Cf. menda `sheep'. *Kh., Sa., Mu., Ho merom , So. k+mmEd/mEd , Nic. me ; cf. O., Bh. mera `goat'.Ju merego (P),, mergo (P),, mirigo (M) {N} ``^deer''. *Sa. mirgi jel `a certain kind of deer', H. mrgo `deer', antelope, O. mrgo , Sk. mrga . Ju merom (KMP),, meram (P) {N} ``^goat [MP], she-goat [K]''. Cf. menda `sheep'. *Kh., Sa., Mu., Ho merom , So. k+mmEd/-mEd , Nic. me ; cf. O., Bh. mera `goat'.Go menda (A) {N} ``^sheep''. *Des. menda (GM) `sheep'.Gu me~Da {N} ``^sheep''. *Des. menda (GM).Re menda (B)F {N(M)} ``(male) ^sheep''. Fem. mendi . *Loan.(Munda etyma. STAMPE-DM--MP.NEW.84, 20-Jun-85 13:32:53, Edit by STAMPE-D Pinnow Versuch and Munda's thesis combined). mam (Ta.);[ Austro -- as. J. Przyluski BSL xxx 200: perh. Austro -- as. *mra ~ bhra collides with Aryan mhra -- 1 in mhra -- m. penis BhP., ram lex. -- See also bha -1, m -- , a -- . -- The similarity between bha -- 1, bhra -- , bha -- ram and *bha -- 2 defective is paralleled by that between mhra -- 1, mha -- 1 ram and *ma -- 1, *mha -- 2 (s.v. *mia -- ) defective ] coming from the sheep MBh. viii. [p= 164, Monier-Williams] A wild goat. 1 A species of she-goat. mother of VP. BhP. [Kuvera, Kubera is king of the yakshas and god of wealth (buried treasure, nidhi]. -2 The bleating of a goat; $ - Bhg.9.19.9. i l 3 An offering, libation (coming between and ); Mb.3.114.28. -4 Refreshing draught. -5 (Hence) Food. -6 (Fig.) Stream or flow of praise or worship personified as the goddess of sacred speech; Mb.12.98.26.(Apte lex.) Ta. yu, u goat, sheep; - shepherd. Ma. u goat, sheep; ukran shepherd. Ko. a (obl. a-) goat. To. o id. Ka. u id. Ko. a id. Tu. id. Te. ika, (B.) a ram. Go. (Tr. Ph. W.) y, (Mu. S.) i she-goat (Voc. 376). Pe. a goat. Man. e id. Kui a id. Kuwi (Mah. p. 110) o', (.) a id. Kur. she-goat. Malt. e id. Br. h id. / Cf. Skt. ea-, eaka-, e- a kind of sheep(DEDR 5152)a m. a kind of sheep Ktyr., -- f., aka -- 1 m. a sheep or goat , aia -- ovine MBh., aiak m. a kind of sheep Br., iikka -- f. wild goat lex. [ Drav. EWA i 126 with lit.]Pa. eaka -- m. ram, wild goat , ak -- , ik -- , ik -- f.; A. 1278

eaka -- m. ram , k -- f. ewe , NiDoc. he'i sheep (?) Burrow KharDoc 10 (cf. h -- in Brahui h she -- goat ); Pk. la -- , aya -- m. ram , liy -- f., ay -- f., akka -- m., Pa. weg. , ku. e_, ar. ye , e m. ram , weg. , ku. e_, ar. ye f. ewe ; Shum. y, yelik m. sheep , yelik f., Gaw. a, y m., , y f., Bshk. r f., Tor. i f. (less likely < vi -), Mai. "'" Barth NTS xviii 123, Sv. yeo m., ia f., Phal. yo m., i f., Sh. jij. i; S. eli -- pavharu m. goatherd ; Si. euv goat ; <-> X bhra -- q.v.*kaiik -- .(CDIAL 2512). *mharpa like a ram . [mha -- 2, rp -- ]Bi. mhw a bullock with curved horns like a ram's ; M. mhr n. sheep .(CDIAL 10311)m m. ram , -- f. ewe RV. 2. mha -- 2, miha- m. lex. [mha -- 2 infl. by mhati emits semen as poss. mhra -- 2 ram (~ mha -2) by mhra -- 1 penis ?]1. Pk. msa -- m. sheep , Ash. mial; Kt. me/l ram ; Pr. m ram, oorial ; Kal. me, mealk ram , H. mes m.; -- X bhra -- q.v. 2. K. my -- ptu m. the young of sheep or goats ; WPah.bhal. me\i f. wild goat ; H. meh m. ram . (CDIAL 10334)*maku -- hut for sheep [m -- , ku -- ] or *mamaha -- fold for sheep . [m -- , maha -- 1]WPah.kg. mh m. shed for sheep at high altitudes or poss. rather < maha -- (CDIAL 10334a) meam (Skt.) mil markhor (Trwl) meho a ram, a sheep (G.)(CDIAL 10120) mi ram (Pktl.); mha (G.) cf. ma = goat (Skt.lex.) mam, n. < ma. 1. Sheep, ram; . (.) 2. Aries of the zodiac; . (.) 3. The first solar month. See , 2. (. . 110) ika. [Tel. of Tam .] n. A ram (Telugu) [ mh ] m ( S through H) A male sheep, a ram or tup. (Marathi) mea The Ved. (Sk.) word for ram is mea] 1. a ram D i.9; J iv.250, 353 (visa -- dhanu, a bow consisting of a ram's horn). -- patha Npl. "ram's road" Nd1 155=415. -- yuddha ram fight D i.6. -- [p= 833, Monier-Williams]m. ( 2. ) a ram , sheep (in the older language applied also to a fleece or anything woollen) RV. &c. [-], mhrak, mh mhak A ram (Apte.lexicon)bha1 m. sheep , bhaiaka - of sheep lex. [bhra- X a -- ?] Ash. biar she -- goat , Pr. byr, Bshk. br; Tor. birh he - goat , Phal. bho: all with AO viii 300 doubtful. (CDIAL 9604). bhra -- , bha -- m. ram lex. . ba f. sheep , K.o. bh pl., L. bhe f., aw. bhe, bhi, P. bhe, f., m.; WPah.bhal. (LSI) hle, (S. Varma) bhe, pl. f. sheep and goats , bhad. bhe, cur. bhra, bh, cam. bh, kha. bhiu n. lamb ; Ku. N. bheo ram , bhei ewe ; A. bher, bhr sheep ; B. bhe ram , sheep , i ewe , Or. bhe, i, bhi; Bi. bh sheep , ram ; Mth. bho, ; Bhoj. bhe ram ; Aw.lakh. bh sheep ; H. bhe, f., m., G. bhei f.; -- X m -- : Kho. be young ewe BelvalkarVol 88. bhra -- : WPah.kg. (kc.) bh 1279

m. sheep , bhi f., J. bhe m. (CDIAL 9606) Note: It may not be mere coincidence that a temple of the ram-god was found in Mendes (ca. 4th millennium BCE). The word, Mendes is read as: mend + ayo (ram + fish) rebus: iron (metal) merchant. Worshipping ancestors, the Mendes might have signified the memory of the metalwork and trade in metalwork of ancestors. See more on Mendes:http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/d/b/dbr3/mendes.htmlExcavations at Tel er-Rub'a (Ancient Mendes) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MendesOn the ram deity of Mendes: 'The chief deities of Mendes were the ram deity Banebdjedet (lit. Ba of the Lord of Djedet), who was the Ba of Osiris, and his consort, the fish goddess Hatmehit. With their child Har-pa-khered ("Horus the Child"), they formed the triad of Mendes. The ram deity of Mendes was described by Herodotus in his History[1] as being represented with the head and fleece of a goat: ...whereas anyone with a sanctuary of Mendes or who comes from the province of Mendes, will have nothing to do with (sacrificing) goats, but uses sheep as his sacrificial animals... They say that Heracles overriding desire was to see Zeus, but Zeus was refusing to let him do so. Eventually, as a result of Heracles pleading, Zeus came up with a plan. He skinned a ram and cut off his head, then he held the head in front of himself, wore the fleece, and showed himself to Heracles like that. That is why the Egyptian statues of Zeus have a rams head, is why rams are sacred to the Thebans, and they do not use them as sacrificial animals. However there is just one day of the yearthe day of the festival of Zeus--when they chop up a single ram, skin it, dress the statue of Zeus in the way mentioned, and then bring the statue of Heracles up close to the statue of Zeus. Then everyone around the sanctuary mourns the death of the ram and finally they bury it in a sacred tomb. Presumably following Herodotus' description, the occultist Eliphas Levi in his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1855) called his goat-headed conception of Baphomet the "Baphomet of Mendes"'

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Ramesses cartouche (Ozymandias?)

See Susa ritual basin depicting goat-fish. It is possible to explain the name, 'Mendes' as a combination of the Indus script glyphs for mend 'ram' and ayo (ayas) 'fish' -- rebus: metal merchant. This could be a sustained memory of ancestors who traded in metalwork and who also get venerated as shown in the goat-fish glyph on the ritual basin of Susa.

This limestone basin dates from the 13th or 12th century BC. It was used for ritual libations. The decoration depicts goatfish figures around a sacred tree in reference to the Mesopotamian god Enki/Ea. This reveals the full extent of the mutual influence of the Iranian and Mesopotamian cosmogonies. The sacred palm, the ancestor of the Assyrian sacred tree, reflects the importance of dates as a food source in the region.

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A basin symbolizing the water cycle This basin was broken into several pieces when it was found and has been reconstituted. Used by priests in their ritual libations, liquid was poured out over the basin and was then collected for re-use. There were two types of ritual libations. The first reflected the water cycle, with water rising up from underground, filling rivers and wells. The other was an offering of beer, wine or honey, poured out for the deity in anticipation of his meal. The decoration of this basin suggests it was used for the first type of ritual libation. It is made in the shape of the realm of Enki/Ea, Apsu, the body of fresh water lying beneath the earth and feeding all the rivers and streams. Apsu is likewise represented in the bronze model called Sit-Shamshi (Louvre, Sb2743). The fact that it was found in Susa indicates that the Elamites adopted certain aspects of Mesopotamian mythology. Goatfish figures around a sacred palm The rim of the limestone basin is decorated with a single repeated motif: two goatfish figures, or Nou, on either side of a stylized tree. These creatures were the attributes of Enki/Ea, the Mesopotamian god of underground water, symbolizing his power to replenish vegetation, represented by the sacred palm tree. A similar stylized tree can be seen on the stele of King Untash-Napirisha (Sb12). The tree consists of a central trunk with a number of offshoots curved at the tip and with three palmettes on the upper part. The image is completely stylized, bearing only a very distant resemblance to actual date palm trees. This symbol of plant life reflects the importance of date palms in the region. Dates were a staple foodstuff for the local population. This type of sacred palm was the predecessor of the sacred trees of Assyria. A relief from the palace of Assurnazirpal II in Nimrud depicts a winged spirit with a bird's head in front of just such a sacred tree (AO19849).

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Gnie ail tte d'oiseau devant l'arbre sacr Vers 865 avant J.-C. Nimrud, palais d'Assurnasirpal II (883 to 859 BCE)Albtre gypseux H. : 104 cm. ; L. : 88 cm. Don P. Delaporte, 1865 Dpartement des Antiquits orientales AO 19849 Richelieu Rez-de-chausse Msopotamie - Syrie du Nord. Assyrie : Til Barsip, Arslan Tash, Nimrud, Ninive Resolving the problem of Meluhha in Sargon geography A.K. Grayson, The empire of Sargon of Akkad, AfO 25 (1974-77): 56-64 details Sargon geography. The work has renewed interest in resolving some problems in historical geography. [e.g. G.J.P. McEwan, 'The Sargon Geography," RA 74 (1980): 171-73. D. Potts, 1982, Road to Meluhha, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Oct., 1982), pp. 279-288 http://www.jstor.org/stable/544088 ] In the article by D.T. Potts (embedded document), the problem of the location of Meluhha is elaborated.

A line in Sargon Geography (Potts, opcit., p. 279) Was this a reference to 'eastern' Meluhha, assuming that there was also a 'western' Meluhha at 1283

different times in using the place reference in ancient Mesopotamian texts? Texts dated to late third and early second millennium point to an eastern Meluhha located somewhere beyond the Persian Gulf. Some have identified this as Indus civilization, possibly in the vicinity of Baluchistan (or area of the Indian linguistic area itself, which produced Indus script artifacts in sites such as Mohenjo-daro and Harappa). [W.F. Leemans,Foreign Trade in the Old

Babylonian Period, Studia et Documents ad lura Orientis Antiqui Pertinentia, no. 6 (Leiden,
1960), p. 164; S. Parpola, A. Parpola, and R.H. Brunswig, Jr., 'The Meluhha Village: evidence of acculturation of Harappan traders in late third millennium Mesopotmia?', JESHO 20 (1977): 12965.] "An argument recently adduced in this regard by A. and S. Parpola suggests that both Sumerian Meluhha and Sanskrit mleccha refer to the same people or land, i.e., the pre-Vedic Harappan culture, and thus, at least in the first instance, this would mean that the name originally to the Baluchistan/Indus Valley region." [loc.cit. ibid., p. 280; A. and S. Parpola, 'On the relationship of the Sumerian toponym Meluhha and Sanskrit mleccha,' Studia Orientalia 46 (1975): 205-38.] Texts of Neo-Assyrian date (like the Sargon Geography) seemed to point to another Meluhha possibly located in northeastern Arabia. Road to Meluhha (D.T. Potts, 1982)

The bull, the rhinoceros and the chikara (perhaps, wild goat or ram) or large Indian antelope(?) depicted on obelisk, Nimrod. (Sir Austen Henry Layard, 1849, Nineveh and its remains: with an

account of a visit to the Chaldaean christians of Kurdistan, and the Yezidis, or devil
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worshippers, and an enquiry into the manners and arts of the ancient Assyrians, Volume 2, J.
Murray, p.435) This remarkable depiction of animals from the Indus script glyphs is a remembered legacy from Meluhha trader interactions. Decoding haraa, 'buck'; rebus: haraa 'anvil'

Prillwitz Collection - Old French Anvil (marked 1616)

German anvil (ca. 18th cent.)

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Celtic anvil and tools.

Samples of ancient Austrian anvils.

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Maison de l'Outil Collection - Primitive Old Anvil [ haraa ] m n ( S) An antelope, a deer, Antilope cervicapra (Marathi.lex.) hari yellow MaitrUp. 2. m. deer RV., hari -- 1 f. doe TS., hariaka -- m. small deer Kd. [Ac. to J. Przyluski JA 1929, 319 hari -- deer Austro -- as., but Mu. words there quoted are IA. <-> hri -- ]1. K. haryunu having shoots or buds just bursting forth (or perh. rather der. from har < ra -- 1).2. Pa. Pk. haria -- m., -- f. deer , K. haryunu m., r f., rm. pog. kash. harn m., n f., o. harn m., n f., S. harau m., ri f.; L. hara m., har f. ravine deer ; P. harn, n m. deer , ludh. haran m., harn f., WPah.bhad. harin m., harn f., pa. hara m., har f., (Joshi) harn m., n f., jaun. hari, A. harin, B. harin, Or. harii, hara, Mth. harin, Bhoj. harn, Aw.lakh. hann m., n f., H. harin, ran, hiran, har(i)n, hirn m., harin, hiran, haran f., G. hara n., M. hara m.f.n., har f.hari -- . 2. WPah.kg. hrn -- g() a kind of musical instrument (formed of or like a buck's horn) , J. harn m. buck , poet. hir m. deer , Ku. hari, hira m., hira() f. (CDIAL 13892) i, n. < . 1. Deer, antelope; . (.) 2. Young deer, fawn; . (.)Ei (f.) [etym.? dial.] a kind of antelope, only two foll. cpds.: jangha "limbed like the antelope" (one of the physical characteristics of the Superman) D ii.17; iii.143, 156; M ii.136; S i.16; Sn 165; miga the ei deer J v.416; SnA 207, 217. (Pali) [The 'buck' -- a pair of them -- are also shown on the pedestal of seal m0304, close to the pair of haystacks.] [ amu ] or amu. [Skt.] n. A gazelle or black antelope. . a-nayana. adj. Stag-eyed, dark-eyed. 1287

-nkuu. n. The Moon, because his ensign is an antelope. . -kshi. adj. Stag-eyed, gazelle-eyed, having beautiful eyes.(Telugu) 1 A kind of black antelope; - Mb.1.69.22; - the several kinds of deer are given in this verse :-- - -2 (In Astr.) Capricorn. -Comp. - deer-skin. - , - the moon; so , - &c. Bhg.1. 29.43. -- The god iva; hendravils 1.62. - a. one having eyes like those of a deer. m. Capricorn. -, - Musk. 1 A female black deer. -2 A kind of poison- ous insect. -Comp. - a. having feet like those of a deer. (-) a kind of snake.(Apte.lex.)mf(/). a species of deer or antelope (described as being of a black colour with beautiful eyes and short legs) AV. v , 14 , 11 VS. xxiv , 36 Mn. iii , 269 MBh. &c (Monier-Williams, p. 231).

Seal m0304. Mohenjo-Daro.

A pair of hayricks, a pair of antelopes: kundavum = manger, a hayrick (G.) Rebus: kundr turner (A.); k dr, k dri (B.); kundru (Or.); kundau to turn on a lathe, to carve, to chase; kundau dhiri 1288

= a hewn stone; kundau murhut = a graven image (Santali) kunda a turner's lathe (Skt.)(CDIAL 3295) dul 'pair' (Kashmiri); rebus: dula 'casting (metal)' (Santali) Glyph: krammara look back (Te.); kamar smith (Santali) Kur. ka a stool. Malt. kano stool, seat. (DEDR 1179) Rebus: ka = a furnace, altar (Santali.lex.)Thus, the pedestal glyphic composition connotes: dul

haraa ka k dr smithy (with)anvil, furnace (altar), smith, turner, casting metal.

Black buck. Rebus: A remarkable lexeme should be noted: WPah.ere smithy'. This semantic denotes the significance of 'anvil' in creating the repertoire of ancient smiths -- anvil IS the smithy. This decoding of the 'buck' glyph may explain the reason for the depiction of the 'buck' glyph in the entire interaction area: Meluhha-Elam-Iran-Mesopotamia-Persian Gulf. [ haraa ] f ( H) [ ahiraa ] f (Commonly ) An anvil.(Marathi) An anvil. adhikara f. *anvil , adhikaraa -- n. receptacle, support TUp. [kr1] Pa. adhikara -- f. smith's anvil ; Pk. ahigara -- f. a piece of apparatus for a smith ; K. yran, dat. y r f. anvil , S. aharai, arai f., L. (Jukes) ari f., aw. &circmacrepsilon;ru, P. aihran, aira, hra f., WPah. bhal. arhini; roh. ere smithy , N. ran; H. aheran, hran m. anvil ; -- H. Smith BSL 101, 115. adhikara -- : S.kcch. e f. anvil ; WPah.kg. n/ar, n/ari f. furnace, smithy ; r m. prob. P. Him.I 4; jaun. ra, aira; G. erai f. anvil , M. ahera, ahira, aira, air, hara f.(CDIAL 252).Mth. hann round block of iron pierced with a hole and placed on the perforated anvil (when iron is being pierced with holes) BPL 409 (CDIAL 13964)yran f. (sg. dat. yr 1289

&above;&below;, Gr.Gr. 69), an anvil (El.; Gr.Gr. 14, 29, 69; H. xi, 16).(Kashmiri) For adhisuffix, see Kannada lexeme: Ta. aai prop. slight support; aai-kal anvil. Ma. aa-kkallu anvil of goldsmiths. Ko. a gal small anvil. Ka. ae, aa, ai the piece of wood on which the five artisans put the article which they happen to operate upon, a support; aegal, aagallu, aigallu anvil. Tu. a a support, stand. Te. -kali, -kallu, d-kali, d-gali, dyi anvil.(DEDR 86) Glyphic: yran f. (sg. dat. yr &above;&below;, Gr.Gr. 69), an anvil (Kashmiri) Rebus: yrn m. Iran, Persia (El. irn; Gr.Gr. 15; Gr.M.; H. ii, 1).yr ni yr ni &above;&below; adj. (f. yrni , Gr.Gr. 15), of or relating to Persia, Persian (El. irn). -- guru -- &below; &1; m. a Persian horse (Gr.Gr. 15).(Kashmiri)

Black obelisk of Shalmaneser III (which has in the fourth register from the top, the Indus script glyphs).

Here is a close up of the third panel showing the tribute of the country of Musri (probably Egypt), consisting entirely of animals led or driven by attendants dressed in knee-length garments. 1290

The Epigraphs accompanying the sculptures cf. Epigraphs published in Layard, Inscriptions, Pl. 98. Translation: Luckenbill, AR, I, 590, 591, 593. Translation (1) excerpt: The tribute of the country Musri; I received from him camels whose backs were doubled, a river ox (hippopotamus), a sakea-animal (rhinoceros), a susu-antelope, elephants, bazitu- (and) uqupu-monkeys.http://cojs.org/cojswiki/Annals_Edition_4__The_Black_Obelisk,_828_or_827_BCE Translation (2) excerpts: [1] The tribute of 'Su'a of the country of the Guzanians: silver, gold, lead, articles of bronze, sceptres for the King's hand, horses (and) camels with double backs: I received. [2] The tribute of Yahua son of Khumri: silver, gold, bowls of gold, vessels of gold, goblets of gold, pitchers of gold, lead, sceptres for the King's hand, (and) staves: I received. [3] The tribute of the country of Muzri: camels with double backs, an ox of the river 'Saceya, horses, wild asses, elephants, (and) apes: I received. [4] The tribute of Merodach-pal-itstsar of the country of the 'Sukhians: silver, gold, pitchers of gold, tusks of the wild bull, staves, antimony, garments of many colors, (and) linen: I received. [5] The tribute of Garparunda of the country of the Patinians: silver, gold, lead, bronze, gums, articles of bronze, tusks of wild bulls, (and) ebony: I received. End of Translation Bruce J. Butterfield, 1996,Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser II (Pages 238-249) Source: Text Source: Library collection: "World's Greatest Literature" Published work: "Babylonian and Assyrian Literature" Translator: Rev. A. H. Sayce, M.A. Publisher: P. F. Collier & Son, New York Copyright: Colonial Press, 1901 Notes - (Page 238) This inscription is engraved on an obelisk of black marble, five feet in height, found by Mr. Layard in the centre of the Mound at Nimroud, and now in the British Museum. Each of its four 1291

sides is divided into five compartments of sculpture representing the tribute brought to the Assyrian King by vassal princes, Jehu of Israel being among the number. Shalmaneser, whose annals and conquests are recorded upon it, was the son of Assur-natsir-pal, and died in 823 B.C., after a reign of thirty-five years. A translation of the inscription was one of the first achievements of Assyrian decipherment, and was made by Sir. H. Rawlinson; and Dr. Hincks shortly afterward (in 1851) succeeded in reading the name of Jehu in it. M. Oppert translated the inscription in his "Histoire des Empires de Chaldee et d'Assyrie," and M. Menant has given another rendering of it in his "Annales des Rois d'Assyrie" (1874). A copy of the text will be found in Layard's "Inscriptions in the Cuneiform Character" (1851). See embedded: T. C. Mitchell, Camels in the Assyrian Bas-Reliefs, Iraq, Vol. 62 (2000), pp. 187-194http://www.docstoc.com/docs/106619719/camelsinassyrianbasreliefsmitchell Noting that MuSri was Egypt, Mitchell commends that it is best to keep an open mind, because if it was Egypt, it is unlikely that Bactrian camels were part of the tribute. Further, Indian elephant, Indian bull, rhinoceros, antelope, possibly Simia Silenus (maned ape of India) are shown. The question of identifying MuSri is thus still debatable.

See two variant views about the location of Musri (which brings it closer to the indus script interaction area: "Musri (Assyrian: Mu-us-ri), or Muzri, was a small ancient kingdom, in northern areas of Iraqi Kurdistan. The area is nowadays inhabited by Muzuri (Mussouri) 1292

Kurds."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musri Sargon II claims to have built his new city, Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad), at the foot of Mt Musri. During the reign of Sargon II, king of Ashdod, Azuri, was replaced by his brother Akhimiti. After people rose in rebellion, Akhimiti was massacred and "placed on the throne Yamani, a soldier of fortune, probably an adventurer of Hellenic extraction."[This prince's name, usually written Yamani (Annals of Hall XIV.1.11; Inscription des Fastes, II.95,101; Fragment of the Campaign against Ashdod, II.18,40), is also written Yatnani in the Annals, I.220, and this variation, which is found again in the name of the island of Cyprus and the Cypriotes, gives us grounds for believing that the Assyrian scribe took the race-name of the prince for a proper name; the new king of Ashdod would have been a Yamani, a Greek of Cyprus (Winckler, Die Keilschr. Sargons, vol. i. p. xxx, note 2; Hommel, Gesch. Bab,und Ass., p. 703). Winckler would now be inclined to see in this man an Arab, a man of Yemen (Musri, Meluhha, Ma'in, i.p.26, note 1).] (Gaston Maspero, 2003, Passing of the empires 850 BCE to 330 BCE, Kessinger Publishing, pp. 252253) German archaeologist and Assyriologist Hugo Winckler`s account of the ancient cultures of Musair, Meluhha and Maeen (Minaeans) in the Arabian peninsula, and their mention in the Assyrian chronicles (1898) is titled: Musri, Meluhha, Main [Musru, Meluhha, Ma`in]. Musri is identified as a region within the Arabian peninsula. According to Winckler, North Arabian Cush, which together with Musri, formed the region called Meluhha. It thus appears that the reference to tributes from Musri may in fact be tributes from Meluhha and hence the presence of Indus script glyphs on the black obelisk.

Records of the Past, 2nd series, Vol. I, ed. by A. H. Sayce, [1888], at sacred-texts.com provides
a translation of the following text, locating Musri close to Khorsabad: 67. To conquer the land of Musri [Musri or Muzri lay to the north-east of Khorsabad, in the mountainous district now inhabited by the Missouri Kurds. The tribute of a p. 110 rhinoceros, yak, elephant, and apes, brought by its inhabitants to Shalmaneser II, must be explained on the supposition that the caravan road from the east passed through it.] Asur the lord 68. urged me, and between the mountains of Elamuni 1293

69. Tala and Kharusa I made (my way). 70. I conquered the land of Musri throughout its circuit, 71. I massacred their warriors. 72. The cities I burned with fire, I threw down, 73. I dug up. The armies of the land of Quman 74. to the help of the land of Musri 75. had gone. On a mountain with them 76. I fought. A destruction of them I made. 77. To a single city, Arini, at the foot of mount Aisa, 78. I drove and shut them up. My feet 79. they took. The city itself I spared. 80. Hostages, tribute and offering 81. I laid upon them. 82. In those days all the land of Quman, 83. which had prepared to help Musri, 84. gathered together all those countries, and 85. to make conflict and battle 86. were determined. With the violence of my powerful weapons, 87. with 20,000 of their numerous troops 88. on mount Tala I fought. 89. A destruction of them I made. 90. Their strong forces I broke through. 91. As far as mount Kharusa, which (is) in front of the land of Musri, 92. I pursued their fugitives. The bodies 93. of their warriors in the ravines of the mountain 94. like a moon-stone I flung to the ground. 95. Their corpses over the valleys and the high places of the mountains 96. I spread. Their great fortresses 97. I captured, with fire I burned, 98. I threw down (and) dug up, so that they became mounds and ruins. 99. Khunusa their fortified city 100. like the flood of the deluge I overwhelmed. 1294

http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/rp/rp201/rp20126.htm camelsinassyrianbasreliefsmitchell

Another view. Black obelisk of Shalmaneser III. The Black Obelisk was erected as a public monument in 825 BC at a time of civil war. The relief sculptures glorify the achievements of King Shalmaneser III (reigned 858-824 BC) and his chief minister. There are five scenes of tribute, each of which occupies four panels round the face of the obelisk and is identified by a line of cuneiform script above the panel. From top to bottom they are: Sua of Gilzanu (in north-west Iran) Jehu of Bit Omri (ancient northern Israel) An unnamed ruler of Musri (probably Egypt) Marduk-apil-usur of Suhi (middle Euphrates, Syria and Iraq) Qalparunda of Patin (Antakya region of Turkey) The 'White Obelisk' includes an inscription at the top of two adjoining sides which may not have been completed; much of it is illegible. The name of a king, Ashurnasirpal, is mentioned, but 1295

there is debate among scholars whether this refers to Ashurnasirpal I (1050-1031 BC) or II (883859 BC). The inscription refers to the king capturing goods, people and their herds and carrying them back to the city of Ashur. rassamobeliskreade The Rassam Obelisk J. E. Reade in: Iraq, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Spring, 1980), pp. 1-22 (article consists of 32 pages) Published by: British Institute for the Study of Iraq URL: ttp://www.jstor.org/stable/4200113 (embedded document) It is the earliest Assyrian monument of its type and was erected by Ashurnasirpal II in Kalhu (Nimrud) between ca. 873-867 and 859 BCE. Reade reassembles the fragments originally discovered by Rassam and provides some readings of the inscriptions which lists tributes of silver, gold, tin, copper, bronze... I suggest that the tributes from Meluhha are listed by the scribe simply depicting the three hieroglyphs of Indus script recorded during trade transactions: elephant, monkey, bull, rhinoceros and ram--since they denote the repertoire of artisans and professionals of Meluhha [according to the Indus Script Cipher (S. Kalyanaraman, 2010)].

An altar (ibid., p. 470). An inscription in cuneiform round the upper part refers to the Khorsabad king. One of the altars is now in Louvre. The tiger's paws at the bottom of the altar should be noted. In Meluhha (mleccha), kola 'tiger' (Santali) rebus: kol 'working in iron (metal)' (Tamil) and 1296

hence kollan 'smith'. A clear depiction of a smith's furnace/smelter. Tiger's paws shown on the Khorsabad altar are also seen on the hieroglyphs of the Elamite spinner:

Bas relief fragment, called the 'spinner'. Louvre. Technical description Bitumen J. de Morgan excavations Sb 2834 Near Eastern Antiquities Sully wing Ground floor Iran in the Iron Age (14thmid-6th century BC) and during the Neo-Elamite dynasties Room 11 Display case 6 b: Susiana in the Neo-Elamite period (8th centurymiddle 6th century BC). Goldwork, sculpture, and glyptics This votive or commemorative relief shows a woman squatting on a stool holding a spindle. Behind her, a servant cools her with a fan; before her stands a pedestal table laden with food. Another figure formerly stood facing her. This figure of a spinner is one of the rare images of a woman in her personal domestic environment in the ancient Orient.

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The image of women in the ancient Orient Women appear in many ancient Oriental texts, always in the background of a predominant male figure. With the exception of goddesses, they feature more rarely in images pertaining to fertility. In this domestic scene, the woman is seated in an informal manner, with one leg folded under her. With her arms full of bracelets, she turns the spindle: the flower-shaped tip is visible above her left hand, and the thread accumulates below the conical spinning whorl serving as a pulley. No skein is visible, perhaps because the scene may not represent the act of spinning so much as the spinner's satisfied presentation of her work to an important figure who is just visible on the other side of the table. She is dressed in a sleeveless tunic; her decorated veil, which does not cover her head - probably because she is an intimate setting - reveals her long hair, pulled back in a bun and held in place with a headscarf crossed around her head. Her face is calm but smiling, her body plump and stocky. A royal interior Behind the spinner stands a figure, as large as the seated figure, either because it is a child, or rather because the artist is indicating a social hierarchy. The standing figure has large round curls, wears a short-sleeved tunic and jewelry on his or her wrists, and is shown fanning the spinner with a square fan on a long handle, whose parallel grooves suggest wickework. The spinner's stool is covered with a fabric whose fringed edges hide the upper part of the seat; an ornament protruding at the back, probably an animal's head, remains visible. The feet, joined together by a triple brace, are sculpted in the shape of thick lion claws. This decoration is also visible on the table, a low pedestal table with a thick top resting on molded capitals. This highly ornate style of furniture resembles that depicted on certain Assyrian stone reliefs, at Khorsabad (Louvre), and on the "Banquet under the Arbor" relief from Nineveh (British Museum), featuring a similar scene. Excavations at Ugarit, Nimrud and Arslan Tash (Louvre) produced similar ornamentations in ivory. In the ancient Orient, only gods and sovereigns received such furnishings, a privilege reflected in the inventories of royal trousseaux and lists of booty drawn up by Assyrian scribes. Ordinary people ate and slept on the floor. This scene therefore probably takes place in the divine world or in the palace at Susa, at the court of a Neo-Elamite sovereign, perhaps the figure on the right now completely lost. 1298

A Susian material The material used to sculpt this relief is highly characteristic of Susa: a bituminous stone, a matte, black sedimentary rock. Deposits of bitumen, a thick hydrocarbon, are relatively numerous in Mesopotamia and in western Iran, an area of abundant oil resources, but the bituminous stone deposit in the Susa region seems to have been unique and the Susians were the only ones to use it from the 4th millennium. The fine grain of the stone permitted a high level of precision in the details. If heated slightly, the stone could be coated with gold or silver leaf or receive incrustatations of various materials, for the making of luxury objects typical of Susa. Bibliography Amiet Pierre, Elam, Auvers-sur-Oise, Arche, 1966, p. 413. Amiet Pierre, Suse : 6000 ans d'histoire, ditions de la Runion des Muses nationaux, coll. "monographies des Muses de France", 1988, p. 112, fig. 69. The Royal City of Susa. Ancient Near Eastern Treasures in the Louvre, catalogue de l'exposition, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1992, pp. 200-201, cat. n 141. Connan Jacques , Deschesne Odile, Le bitume Suse : collection du Muse du Louvre, ditions de la Runion des Muses nationaux, Elf Aquitaine Production, 1996, p. 227, fig. 34 ; pp. 339-340, cat. n 431. Herrmann Georgina (d.), Furniture in Ancient Orient, Mainz, Philipp von Zabern. Roaf Mickhal, Atlas de la Msopotamie et du Proche Orient antique, Brepols, 1991, p. 130. http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/spinner Elamite lady spinner. Musee du Louvre. Paris. An elegantly coiffed, exquisitely-dressed and well fanned Elamite woman sits on a lion footed stool winding thread on a spindle. The stool on which the lovely Elamite lady sits has the legs of a lion or panther; the fish is also placed on a similar stool in front her.This five-inch fragment is dated 8th century BCE. It was molded and carved from a mix of bitumen, ground calcite, and quartz. The Elamites used bitumen, a naturally occurring mineral pitch, or asphalt, for vessels, sculpture, glue, caulking, and waterproofing. http://www.oznet.net/iran/elamspin.htm Decoding of hieroglyphs on spinner bas-relief: 1299

kt spinner (G.) Rebus: khati 'wheelwright' (H.) ki = fireplace in the form of a long ditch (Ta.Skt.Vedic) kya = being in a hole (VS. XVI.37); k a hole, depth (RV. i. 106.6) kh a ditch, a trench; kh o khaiyo several pits and ditches (G.) kharun: pit (furnace) (Santali) Kur. ka a stool. Malt. kano stool, seat. (DEDR 1179) Rebus: ka fire-altar, furnace (Santali) kola tiger, jackal (Kon.); rebus: kolami smithy (Te.) Grapheme as a phonetic determinant of the depiction of woman, kola; rebus: kolami smithy (Te.)kola woman (Nahali); Rebus: kolami smithy (Te.) ayo fish (Mu.); rebus: aya metal (G.) bhaa six (G.); rebus: bhaa furnace (Santali) Thus, the exquisite bas relief of Susa is a hieroglyphic writing conveying information about: wheelwright (with) metal furnace and smithy: ki kharun aya bhaa Comparable to the six 'ingots' on the back of a fish glyph in front of the spinner are the six 'knots of hair' or six curls on a woman's hair-do shown on an Indus script seal.

Mohenjodaro seal m0308. bhaa six (G.) Rebus: bhaa furnace (G.) kola woman (Nahali); Rebus: kolami smithy (Te.) mehi, mih, meh = a plait in a womans hair; a plaited or twisted strand of hair (P.) Rebus: me iron (Ho.) Thus, the glyptic elements of woman, plaited hair and six plaits can be decoded as: me bhaa kolami iron smelter smithy. It also connoted a metal trader's helper, meho(Pkt.)

(Denmaml, p.23) Glyph: one-eyed: k one -- eyed RV. Pa. Pk. ka -- blind of one eye, blind ; Ash. ka, f. blind , Kt. k , Wg. k macrdotdot;, Pr. k&schwatildemacr;, Tir. kna, Kho. ku NTS ii 260, knu BelvalkarVol 91; K. knu one -- eyed , S. ko, L. P. k; WPah. rudh. eu. k blind ; Ku. ko, gng. k&rtodtilde; blind of one eye , N. knu; A. kan blind ; B. k one -1300

eyed, blind ; Or. ka, f. k one -- eyed , Mth. kn, n, kanah, Bhoj. kn, f. ni, kanw m. one -- eyed man , H. kn, n, G. k ; M. k one -- eyed, squint -- eyed ; Si. kaa one -eyed, blind . -- Pk. ka -- full of holes , G. k full of holes , n. hole (< empty eyehole ? Cf. dh n. hole < andhala -- ). k -- : S.kcch. k f.adj. one -- eyed ; WPah.kg. ka blind in one eye , J. k; Md. kanu blind .(CDIAL 3019) Rebus: Pk. kh -- f. mine ; Gy. as. xani, eur. sp. xan f., boh. xang f., gr. xanng f. well ; K. khn f. mine ; S. khi f. mine, quarry, water in a pit ; L. kh f. mine , P. kh f., Ku. kh, N. khni; A. khni quantity ; B. khn mine ; Bi. khn cavity in oil or sugar mill , mai -- khn clay pit ; Bhoj. Aw. lakh.khni mine ; H. khn f. mine, quarry, abundance ; G. khi, f. mine, source , M. kh, f.; OSi. kani cave, cell (CDIAL 3873). Vikalpa1: If the portion of the glyphic related to one-eye are interpreted to connote only the 'eye', Munda etymon m 'eye' may be read rebus with me 'iron'; 'helper of merchant.' Thus, the glyptic composition reads: semant. eye + six: me bhaa 'iron (metal) furnace'. Vikalpa2 (connoting the idea of a guild 'of bringing together' artisans: Since the orthography emphasises the bringing together (of two tigers), the semantics of the following etyma are apposite: *mayati: WPah.kg. mhn intr. to gather , lg meia people gather . (CDIAL 10332)P. m to close the eyes ; N. miik twinkling, moment ; B. miiy twinkling , Or. mii -- mii; G. mii f. blinking ; M. mi to close the eyes . Poss., with bhi, of Mu. origin PMWS 148] (CDIAL 10119)Ka. miakisu, miagarisu to open and shut the eyes rapidly, blink, wink, stare; mii blinking, staring. Te. (B.) miikincu to blink; (ak.) miakarincu to blink, be at a loss what to say or do. Pa. (S.) mikip- (mikit-) to blink the eyes. Kona mika blinking of the eyes. Pe. mimi ki- to blink the eyes. Kuwi (Isr.) mii mii ki-, mii sini ki- to blink (sini ki- to look); (.) kanu vi- to blink the eyes. Kur. mika'n to wink, blink; (Hahn) mik a twinkling of the eye.(DEDR 4145) This reading is reinforced by the semant. of two tigers shown, on their hindlegs, pouncing at each other: Ka. mii to leap, bounce, hop; make fly; mu to jump, bounce; mu jumping, flying. Te. miiyu to flash or fly off (as a chip), jump, leap forward; miu to jump, leap; (K.) miuku id.; (K.) meuku to frisk, leap. Kol. mi- (mit-) to leap. Nk. mi- to jump. Go. (M. Ko.) mirr- to run; (M.) mirn to flee (DEDR 4850a). Thus, the rebus reading of the 'one-eyed' person can be read : mhn 'to gather'; and rebus as: meho 'helper of merchant (guild)' (with) bhaa 'furnace'. 1301

Thus, the one eye on the face of a woman with six knots of hair read rebus: iron (metal) ingot furnace: me m h bhaa. Context, pair of tigers: dul kol: dula 'pair'; rebus -- cast metal. [dul 'cast (metal)' (Santali); kola 'tiger' (Santali); rebus: kol 'working in iron (metal)'(Tamil)] These are emphatic examples justifying the decoding of Indus script inscriptions as hieroglyphic writing system in an interaction area stretching from Mohenjodaro of Indian linguistic area to Susa of Sumerian/Elamite civilization. The hieroglyphs are read rebus in meluhha (mleccha) of Indian linguistic area.

The upper part of the Susa ritual basin is decorated with an intertwining pattern resembling flowing water. The inside of the basin consists of a series of squared steps leading down to the bottom of the dish. Traces of an inscription, too worn to be read, indicate that there was originally a text along the edges of the basin. Bibliography Amiet Pierre, lam, Auvers-sur-Oise, Arche, 1966, p. 394 et pp. 467-468, fig. 298 A-B. Borne interactive du dpartement des Antiquits orientales. Contenau Georges, Manuel d'archologie orientale depuis les origines jusqu' l'poque d'Alexandre, vol. II, Histoire de l'art : IIIe et IIe millnaires avant notre re, Paris, A. Picard, 1931, pp. 912-913, fig. 629. Source: http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/ritual-basin-decorated-goatfish-figures

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Dotted circles on top edge of the basin. Decoding in meluhha (mleccha): kandhi a lump, a piece (Santali) kandi beads (Pa.)(DEDR 1215). [khaa] A piece, bit, fragment, portion.(Marathi) Rebus: khaaran, kharun pit furnace (Santali)

Comparable to dotted circles on Indus script inscriptions. Vikalpa (assuming that the dotted circle orthographically connoted a pierced hole): vdha m. hitting the mark MBh., penetration, hole VarBrS. [vyadh] Pa. vdha -- m. prick, wound ; Pk. vha -- m. boring, hole , P. veh, beh m., H. beh m., G. veh m. karavdha -- .(CDIAL 12108) vtitam , n. < vdhita. (. .) 1. Perforating, drilling; . 2. Tube; . vtai , n. < vdha. 1. Drilling, boring; . (Tamil) Vedhin (adj.) [fr. vidh=vyadh] piercing, shooting, hitting (Pali) Rebus: vdi f. raised piece of ground serving as an altar and usu. strewed with kua grass RV., stand, bench MBh., platform for wedding ceremony Kv., vdika<-> m. bench R., k -- f. MBh. [Cf. vd -- m. bunch of kua grass used as broom AV.] Pa. vdi -- , d -- , dik -- f. cornice, ledge, rail ; Pk. vi -- , vi -- f. platform ; A. bei quadrangular frame of greenery forming platform on which ceremonial bathing of bride and bridegroom is performed .(CDIAL 12107). Vedi & Ved (f.) [Vedic vedi sacrificial bench] 1303

ledge, cornice, rail Mhvs 32, 5; 35, 2; 36, 52 (psa); 36, 103; Vv 8416 (=vedik VvA 346). -See on term Dial. ii.210; Mhvs. tsrln220, 296. Vedik (f.) (& vediy) [fr. vedi] cornice, ledge, railing D ii.179; Vin ii.120; J iv.229, 266; Vv 786 (vediy= vedik VvA 304); 8416 (=vedik VvA 340); VvA 275. Velli [dial.?] is a word peculiar to the Jtaka. At one passage it is expld by the Commentary as "vedi" (i. e. rail, cornice), where it is applied to the slender waist of a woman (cp. vilka & vilaggita): J vi.456. At most of the other passages it is expld as "a heap of gold": thus at J v.506 (verse: velli -- vilka -- majjh; C.: ettha vell ti rsi vilkamajjh ti vilagga -majjh uttattaghana -- suvaa -- rsi -- ppabh c' eva tanu -- dgha -- majjh ca"), and vi.269 (verse: kacana -- velli -- viggaha; C.: "suvaa -- rsi -- sassirka -- sarr"). At v.398 in the same passage as vi.269 expld in C. as "kacana -- rpakasadisa -- sarr"). The idea of "golden" is connected with it throughout. (Pali) vdi [Skt.] n. A terrace, a piece of raised ground, a platform. An altar. (Telugu) Thus, the ritual basin (goat-fish, forked stake [me(h)] flanked by mollusc, dotted circles) is a memory recollected of themeluhha (copper) metal merchants' guild (sanga) altar (vedi)(with) pit furnace: mlekh meh sanga vedi kharun.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/11/syena-orthography.html yena, orthography, Sasanian iconography. Continued use of Indus Script hieroglyphs. yena, orthography, Sasanian iconography. Continued use of Indus Script hieroglyphs. Updated Nov. 23, 2011 (on Kuninda coins and Purula a site where yena-cit was discovered in an archaeological excavation). This is a continuation of the following blogposts on Soma traditions with particular reference to ancient metallurgy, interactions with Tocharian (Mt. Mujavat) and reviews how yena (Rgveda) gets deified in cultural metaphors [comparable to the traditions of Indian linguistic area where one lexeme explains both a smithy and a temple: kole.l(Kota language)]: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/09/decipherment-of-soma-and-ancientindo.htmlhttp://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/09/haoma-hom-baresman-barsom.html http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/10/decoding-lapis-lazuli-indus-seal.html http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/10/itihasa-and-eagle-narratives.html 1304

Syena-citi: A Monument of Uttarkashi Distt. EXCAVATED SITE -PUROLA Geo-Coordinates-Lat. 30 5254 N Long. 77 0533 E Notification No& Date;2742/-/16-09/1996

The ancient site at Purola is located on the left bank of river Kamal. The excavation yielded the remains of Painted Grey Ware (PGW) from the earliest level alongwith other associated materials include terracotta figurines, beads, potter-stamp, the dental and femur portions of domesticated horse (Equas Cabalus Linn). The most important finding from the site is a brick alter identified as Syenachiti by the excavator. The structure is in the shape of a flying eagle Garuda, head facing east with outstretched wings. In the center of the structure is the chiti is a square chamber yielded remains of pottery assignable to circa first century B.C. to second century AD. In addition copper coin of Kuninda and other material i.e. ash, bone pieces etc and a thin gold leaf impressed with a human figure tentatively identified as Agni have also been recovered from the central chamber. Note: Many ancient metallic coins (called Kuninda copper coins) were discovered at Purola. cf. Devendra Handa, 2007,Tribal coins of ancient India, ISBN: 8173053170, Aryan Books International. Kuninda "In the Visnu Purana, the domain of Kunindas is especially defined as the Kulindopatyaka, i.e., the bounding foothills demarcating the Kuninda territory (NSWH, p. 71)...According to Ptolemy 1305

(McCrindle's Ptolemy, p. 110), the country of the Kulindrine, Kulindas, was located somewhere in the mountainous region around the sources of Vipasha (the Beas), the Shatadru (the Satluj), the Yamuna and the Ganga...Kulindas emerged as a powerful warrior community...upgrade them as the vratya kshatriya...(Manusmriti, 10.20.22)"(Omacanda Handa, 2004, Naga cults and traditions in the western Himalaya, Indus publishing, p.76.) In Dyuta parva (Sabhaparva, Mahabharata) Duryodhana said: "I describe that large mass of wealth consisting of various kinds of tribute presented to Yudhishthira by the kings of the earth. They that dwell by the side of the river Sailoda flowing between the mountains of Mer and Mandara and enjoy the delicious shade of topes of the Kichaka bamboo, viz., the Khashas, Ekasanas, the Arhas, the Pradaras, the Dirghavenus, the Paradas, the Kulindas, the Tanganas, and the other Tanganas, brought as tribute heaps of gold measured in dronas (jars) and raised from underneath the earth by ants and therefore called after these creatures." [cf. Section LI, Kisari Mohan Ganguli's translation (1883-1896)]. The Kuninda warrior clan is mentioned in ancient texts under the different forms of its name: Kauninda, Kulinda, and Kaulinda. Their coins have been found mostly in the Himalayan foothills, between the Rivers Sutlej and Yamuna. The Kuninda were therefore neighbors of the Kuluta and Trigarta clans. Their coins have the figure of Bhagwan Shiva holding a trident, with the legend: Bhagwatah Chatresvara-Mahatmanah, translating to Bhagwan Shiva, tutelary deity of Ahichhatra, the Kuninda capital. On the obverse the coins portray a deer, six-arched hill, and a tree-in-railing. These coins are made of copper, silver, and bronze, and are found from the 1st century BCE to the 3rd century CE. This suggests that the Kuninda gained independence from both the IndoGreek and Kushan invaders. A Raja named Amoghabhuti features prominently in the later coins, which bear a striking resemblance to the coinage of the Yaudheya clan. It seems that the Kunindas in alliance with the latter ejected the Kushans in the 3rd century CE. By the 5th century the clan-state of the Kuninda disappeared, or more accurately, broke-up into tiny fragments under the families of Ranas and Thakkuras just as their neighbors the Kuluta. 1306

The region of Simla Hills, down to the 20th century, was littered with tiny entities ruled by such petty chieftains, which were grouped by the British Empire into the Simla Hill States.

Silver coin of the Kuninda Kingdom, c. 1st century BCE. Obv: Deer standing right, crowned by two cobras, attended by Lakshmi holding a lotus flower. Legend in Prakrit (Brahmi script, from left to right): Rajnah Kunindasya Amoghabhutisya maharajasya ("Great King Amoghabhuti, of the Kunindas"). Rev: Stupa surmounted by the Buddhist symbol triratna, and surrounded by a swastika, a "Y" symbol, and a tree in railing. Legend in Kharoshti script, from righ to left: Rana Kunidasa Amoghabhutisa Maharajasa, ("Great King Amoghabhuti, of the Kunindas"). NB: Note the svastika, tree and mountain glyphs; these are Indus script hieroglyphs on the coin, attesting to the survival of the writing system in metallurgical contexts -- in this case, in the context of a mint. Note on Kuninda. IGNCA Newsletter, 2003 Vol. III (May - June) COINS GIVE EVIDENCE ON PUNINDA-KUNINDA TRIBE There is a great confusion between the tribe of Kuninda and Puninda referred to in various literarysources. Some scholars identify the Puninda with Kuninda while another group of scholars have identified them as separate tribes and placed them somewhere in the Deccan region. Without any authentic finding, it has always remained a subject of controversy between 1307

the scholars and the historians. Recently, a hoard of Kuninda coins was found at Jalog in Shimla district, in Himachal Pradesh. The collection contains 193 silver and copper coins of Kuninda but one coin bears the name Puninda. This coin bears the same symbols and inscription as the Kuninda coins. The inscription reads 'Raja Puninda Amogbhuits Maharajas' in Brahmi script on the obverse but there is no Kharoshti legend on the reverse of the coin. The symbols are thus: on the obverse are a deer to the right of a female figure (facing) and holding a flower in right hand and her left hand rests on the thigh with inscriptions written around. On the reverse is a five-arched hill in the centre surmounted by a Nandi-pada symbol, on the right is a tree in a railing and on the left two symbols. Below is a representation of a river (see photos) Each coin, circular is shape weighs 3.95 gm.

Puninda Coin, Obverse and Reverse with same image The significance of the find is that it establishes that Kuninda and Puninda are the same tribe, who ruled a considerable tract of north India during the period of 200 BC. to 200 AD. In Srimad Bhagavatam (2-4-18) they are associated with the Kiratas, Hunas, Andhras, Abhiras, Yavanas and Khasas. In Bengali recension of Ramayana, the Punindas appear both in south and in the north. The northern recension knows only of the northern Puninda. In Mahabaharata, they are known to have been defeated by Arjuna in his north and digvijaya campaign. Arjuna had to confront the monarchies of Puninda, Kalkuta and Amart at the start of his campaign. Some of these tribes are related to northern India particularly to the mountain region. Hence, it is clear that in literary source where the term Kulinda is used for Kuninda as we find on the coins, the same term Pulinda is applied for Puninda. It is believed that the term Pulinda is used for Kuninda with variation in pronunciation. 1308

In Mahabarata we also find the term Pulinda and Kulinda used for the same tribe at different places. Moreover the same symbols are also noticed in both the coins. In Brhatsamhita, Varahamihira places the tribe in the north-eastern division along with teh Kashmerians, Kulutas and Sairindhas and speaks about the fate of Kulinda. The country of teh Kuninda is referred to by Ptolemy as Kulindrine. He locates it near the mountainous region where the Vipasa, Satadru, Yamuna and Ganga have their source. A. Cunningham has identified the Kuninda tribe with the present day Kunet of Kullu and Shimla. According to the ethnographic distribution and numismatics findings the Kunindas occupied a land at the foothill of Shiwalik between Yamuna and Satluj and the territory between the upper course of the Beas and the Sutluj. Their coins are also found in large part of Uttaranchal showing that they were an independent tribe during the period 2nd BC to 2nd AD. The Kunindas probably disappeared from the political map of northern India sometime before 350 AD, for, they are not mentioned in the Allahabad pillar inscription of Samudragupta. There is also no other evidence of the continuation of their rule. it may thus be assumed that the Kuninda state did not survive for a longer period and was probably overpowered by the Yaudheyas. As for the name of Amoghbhuti, the view of K/P. Jayaswal is agreeable that, Amoghbhuti is an official title of Kuninda ruler, which means 'of unfailing prosperity' because there is a wide variety of coins found in a period of more than 400 years of Kuninda rule. It is not possible that one king ruled for so long or that currency in the name of one king only was used. Contributed by Hari Chauhan, Himachal State Museum, Shimla It is important to note that Pulinda were mleccha: $ Abh. Chin.934. (cited in Apte lexicon: [ - = mountaineer; -, - = Ms.2.23.)pulind m.pl. name of a barbarous tribe AitBr. Pk. pulida -- m.; Si. pulind (st. pulindu -- ) a barbarian, a Vdd . -- X mlcch -- q.v.(CDIAL 8297). [ puinda ] puinda. [Skt.] adj. Barbarian, savage, rude. a certain country inhabited by savages. Bulinda Devi is the goddess of the Bheels. Tod's Rajasthan. i. 506. 1309

puinduu. n. A barbarian, savage, cannibal. pulintam , n. < Pulinda. A country, one of 56 tcam, q.v.; . (. . 97.) pulinta , n. < pulinda. Hunter; . (. .)Gma : rmika, Pilinda Vin i.28, 29 (as rmikagmaka & Pilinda-- gmaka at Vin iii.249)(Pali) [ pulinda ] m (S) A barbarian, a savage or mountaineer; one who uses an uncultivated or a barbarous dialect.(Marathi) or parinda m. a winged creature, a bird (Rm. 545, 779); a kind of long light boat with forty or fifty paddlers. (In the front is a raised seat covered with a canopy in which four persons can sit) (El.; L. 381, 382).(Kashmiri) PUROLA, District Uttarkashi

Later issues in the name of Amoghabhuti (circa 20 BC - 80 AD)AE Karshapana Mitchiner ACW 4458 17 mm.2.40 gm. Die position=5h Obverse: Deer right, ancillary symbols around; Brahmi legend. Reverse: Stupa with pellet above, river beneath; swastika, ancillary symbols around. No Karosthi legend (?)

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Ancient. Kunindas, Fractional Units, deer, three-arched hill, tree and swastika (Allan BMC pl.23, 9-10). Source:http://www.coinarchives.com/w/lotviewer.php?LotID=1051431&AucID=974&Lot=1296& Val=4368d4c5268a729712cbb7acc05bfef3

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The ancient site at Purola is located on the left bank of river Kamal in District Uttarkashi. The excavation carried out by Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna University, Srinagar Garhwal. The site yielded the remains of Painted Grey Ware (PGW) from the earliest level along with other associated materials include terracotta figurines, beads, potter-stamp and the dental and femur portions of domesticated horse (Equas Cabalus Linn). The most important finding from the site is a brick alter identified as Syena chitti by the excavator. The structure is in the shape of a flying eagle Garuda, head facing east with outstretched wings having a square chamber in the middle yielded the remains of pottery assignable to circa first century B.C. to second century AD along with copper coin of Kuninda , bone pieces and a thin gold leaf impressed with a human figure identified as Agni. A good background article is Subhash Kak, Ancient religion in ancient Iran and Zarathushtra,(2003). The article notes common cultural concepts including: Saena (Syena): the eagle; also Saena meregh (mr.ga), Simurg. "The Zoroastrian innovations did not change the basic Vedic character of the culture in Iran." yena of Rgveda gets exemplified in ancient Iranian glyphics matching the cultural traditions. Ahura Mazda, the god who created High Hara, also built palaces on it for the greatest gods: Mithra, Sraosha, Rashnu, Ardvi-sura Anahita, and Haoma, all of whom ride in special chariots. While humans could not live on the holy mountain, the greatest mythical heroes made sacrifices there. The way to the other world, a special abode of the blessed (where the largest and most choice specimens of plants and animals were found) lay through the foothills of Hara/Meru. The Chinvat bridge of Zoroastrian mythology, over which the souls of the dead had to pass was on or near High Hara. The motif of birds dwelling near the summit is shared by Iranian and Indian accounts, as is the theme of the theft of the intoxicating plant haoma/soma from the mountain's 1312

summit by a magical bird (Syena/Garuda/Simurgh); and the slaying of a multi-headed, multieyed dragon nearby (1). In the Indian tradition, Agni, the rock-born god of fire with tawny hair and iron teeth is connected with the sacred mountain. In the Iranian tradition, High Hara is also associated with metallurgy. Fire and metals were introduced to humanity after the hero Hoshang(Haoshyangha) sacrificed on the mountain (2). High Hara was also the locale of many of the most memorable contests in Iranian mythology (3).http://rbedrosian.com/imyth.htm 1. G. M. Bongard-Levin, The Origin of the Aryans (New Delhi, 1980), pp. 48-49, 67, 99-101, 115. 2. A. J. Carnoy, 1917, "Iranian Mythology", pp. 299-300. Metal imagery pervades the Avesta. According to the Bundahishn xxiv.1 when the first human Gaya Maretan ("Human Life") died, his body became molten brass, while the metals gold, silver, iron, tin, lead, quick-silver and adamant arose from his limbs. "Gold was Gaya's seed, which was entrusted to the earth and carefully preserved by Spenta Armaiti, the guardian of earth. After forty years it brought forth the first human pair, Mashya and Mashyoi", Carnoy, p. 294; A flood of molten metal will burn up evil at the end of time, ibid. p. 262; K. D. Irani, "Socioeconomic Implications", p. 68 writes: "Metallurgy, though a technology, was in its early days associated with sacred lore and the invocation of occult forces. Its techniques, particularly the manufacture of steel arms, were for obvious reasons protected by shrouds of secrecy. Some of the technology, requiring the use of furnaces, became the speciality of fire-priests in temples that maintained fire-altarsparticularly the techniques of generating fires of varying intensities". 3. A. J. Carnoy, p. 302.

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Syena Chiti, Garuda shaped Chiti Schematic as described by John F Price. Context: Panjal Atiratra yajnam (2011). cf.The paper of John Price: Applied geometry of ulbastras.

First layer of vakrapaka yena altar. The wings are made from 60 bricks of type 'a', and the body, head and tail from 50 type 'b', 6 of type 'c' and 24 type 'd' bricks. Each subsequent layer was laid out using different patterns of bricks with the total number of bricks equalling 200.

"Snmurw (Pahlavi), Sna-Mr (Pzand), a fabulous, mythical bird. The name derives from Avestan mr san 'the bird Sana', originally a raptor, either eagle or falcon, as can be deduced from the etymologically identical Sanskrit yena." See: discussions in the appended, embedded document.

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Senmurv on the tomb of Abbess Theodote, Pavia early 8th c. "Griffin-like . Simurgh (Persian: ), also spelled simorgh, simurg, simoorg or simourv, also known as Angha (Persian: ), is the modern Persian name for a fabulous, benevolent, mythical flying creature. The figure can be found in all periods of Greater Iranian art and literature, and is evident also in the iconography of medieval Armenia, the Byzantine empire , and other regions that were within the sphere of Persian cultural influence. Through cultural assimilation the Simurgh was introduced to the Arabic-speaking world, where the concept was conflated with other Arabic mythical birds such as the Ghoghnus, a bird having some mythical relation with the date palm, and further developed as the Rukh (the origin of the English word "Roc")." http://www.flickr.com/photos/27305838@N04/4830444236/ See: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/simorg See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simurgh

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Sassanid silk twill textile of a simurgh in a beaded surround, 6-7th c. CE "The simurgh was considered to purify the land and waters and hence bestow fertility. The creature represented the union between the earth and the sky, serving as mediator and messenger between the two. The simurgh roosted in Gaokerena, the Hm (Avestan: Haoma) Tree of Life, which stands in the middle of the world sea Vourukhasa. The plant is potent medicine, is called all-healing, and the seeds of all plants are deposited on it. When the simurgh took flight, the leaves of the tree of life shook making all the seeds of every plant to fall out. These seeds floated around the world on the winds of Vayu-Vata and the rains of Tishtrya, in cosmology taking root to become every type of plant that ever lived, and curing all the illnesses of mankind. The relationship between the simurgh and Hm is extremely close. Like the simurgh, Hm is represented as a bird, a messenger and as the essence of purity that can heal any illness or wound. Hm - appointed as the first priest - is the essence of divinity, a property it shares with the simurgh. The Hm is in addition the vehicle of farr(ah) (MP: khwarrah, Avestan: khvarenah, kavam kharno) "[divine] glory" or "fortune". Farrah in turn represents the divine mandate that was the foundation of a king's authority." simorgh Court art of Sogdian Samarqand in the 7th century AD Archaeology in the landscapes of ancient Sogd has furnished us with a great amount of works of art, mainly from the early Middle Ages. Of highest value are the wall paintings from a palace hall (object 23, room 1) of the 1316

Sogdian ruler Varxuman at Samarqand (Afrasiab site)... The western wall is the most important one in room 23/1 due to its position opposite the entrance. This feature seems to be common in Sogdian architectural layouts both of private main halls and palace throne rooms. Who is figure no. 4 of the western wall? (page II) The following proposal for an identification of figure 4 is certainly only an attempt. As we have seen, group A2 of delegates seems to belong to nations of the west. A second hint comes from the clothes of figure 4. The delicate ornamentation depicts fabulous beasts known as "Senmurvs". Look below:

Left: The Senmurvs are set into an overall pattern of curved rhomboids.

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Right: Close-up of the garment of figure 4 Originally more than hundred human figures must have been depicted on the walls of our room. Many of these persons are dressed with richly ornamented and multicoloured clothes. But it seems noteworthy that the Senmurv is, in contrary to other patterns, only to meet with figure 4 on the western wall. The reason for that must be the symbolic nature of the Senmurv. Speaking of this creature we concentrate only on the "dogpeackock" as depicted on the Afrasiab murals. Doubtless it originates from Iranian symbolism. The most spectacular examples can be seen on the late Sasanian rock reliefs of Taq-e Bustan (Iran):

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Left: Senmurvs as pattern on the caftan of a Sasanian king, Taq-e Bustan, Great Ivan, left wall.

Right: Senmurv in medaillon on the clothes of the heavy-armoured rider, Taq-e Bustan, Geat Ivan. Comparing these images with the Senmurvs from Afrasiab we notice a striking similarity. 1319

Apparently the Senmurv in Sasanian iconography was a symbol with intimate connection to kingship. Images concentrate on representations of royal persons and on royal silverware. Only in post-Sasanian times, when dynastic restrictions were lost, the Senmurv spread wide as a merely ornamental motif on Near and Middle Eastern textiles, metalwork, and so on. Concerning the Afrasiab murals we have a general date within the limits of the Sasanian dynasty (i.e., before 652), as we have tried to explain on another page. Therefore, if the Senmurv (i.e., the "dog-peacock"!) was a Sasanian royal emblem, his appearance on the Afrasiab murals should point to the same symbolic value. In other words: The "owner" of the symbol should represent a Sasanian king. http://www.orientarch.unihalle.de/ca/afras/text/w4b.htm

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Wall panel with a Senmurv. Iran, Chal Tarhan. 7th-8th c. Stucco.Inv. Nr. 6642. Image of a quite similar panel which is in better condition that came from the same site, see British Museum, inv. no. ME 1973.7-25.3.

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Sassanid silver plate of a simurgh (Snmurw), 7-8th c. CE. An exquisite and beautifully gilded Sassanid silver plate. The central creature within it is usually identified as the senmurw of Zoroastrian mythology which features the head of a snarling dog, the paws of a lion and the tail of a peacock. This object is today displayed in the Persian Empire collection of the British Museum. Peacock-dragon or peacock-griffin?

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1324

British Museum. Department: Middle East Registration number: 1922,0308.1 BM/Big number: 124095. Date 7thC-8thC (?) Description Gilded silver plate with low foot-rim and centering mark on the underside; single line engraved around the outside of the rim, with a second engraved line defining the interior; hammered and lathe-turned, then decorated; interior shows a senmurw (a legendary dog-headed bird) facing left, a leaf hanging from its mouth; neck and lower portion of the wing are punched with an imbricated design; the breast is enriched with a foliated motif; the tail feathers are conventionally rendered by punching, the lowest portion concealed by a bold scroll in relief; below the tail, a branch of foliage projects into the field; the foliate border is composed of overlapping leaves, on each of which are punched three divergent stems surmounted by berries in groups of three. Old corrosion attack on part of the underside. Condition of gilding suggests that this is re-gilding. Dimensions : Diameter: 18.8 centimetres (rim)Diameter: 6.8 centimetres (interior, foot-ring)Diameter: 7.3 centimetres (exterior, footring)Height: 3.8 centimetres Volume: 450 millilitresWeight: 541.5 grammes. Hammered gilt silver plate with a low circular foot ring measuring 7.3 cm. across at the base; centering mark and extensive traces of old corrosion attack on the underside; single line engraved around the outside of the rim, with a second engraved line defining the interior. The plate was made by hammering, and decorated through a combination of chasing and punching, with thick gilding over the background. Early published references to the raised portion being embossed separately and added with solder are incorrect, and only the foot ring is soldered on. XRF analysis indicates that the body has a composition of 92% silver, 6.9% copper and 0.45% gold, and the foot has a slightly different composition of 93.4% silver, 5.4% copper and 0.5% gold. The decoration is limited to the interior and shows a composite animal with a dog's head, short erect mane, vertical tufted ears and lion's paws, facing left with a foliate spray dangling from its open mouth like a lolling tongue; a ruff-like circle of hair or fur frames its face; the neck, muscular shoulders and lower tail feathers are punched with an imbricated or overlapping wave design resembling feathers or scales; the breast is enriched with a foliated motif; a pair of wings with forward curling tips rise vertically from behind the shoulders, with a broad rounded peacock-like tail behind decorated with a bold foliate scroll and conventionally rendered by punching; below the tail, a second branch of foliage projects into the field. The foliate border is composed of overlapping leaves, on which are punched three divergent stems surmounted by berries in groups of three. This plate is said to have been obtained in India prior to 1922 when it was purchased in London by the National Art Collections Fund on behalf of the British Museum. 1325

It is usually attributed to the 7th, 8th or early 9th century, thus is post-Sasanian, Umayyad or early Abbasid in political terms. Initially described as a hippocamp, peacock-dragon or peacockgriffin, most scholars follow Trever's (1938) identification of this as a senmurw (New Persian simurgh), or Avestan Saena bird (cf. also Schmidt 1980). The iconographic features of a senmurw include the head of a snarling dog, the paws of a lion and the tail of a peacock, with the addition of the plant motifs on the tail or hanging out of the mouth being allusions to its role in regenerating plants. This bird is described in Pahlavi literature as nesting "on the tree without evil and of many seeds" (Menog-i Xrad 61.37-42), and scattering them in the rainy season to encourage future growth (Bundahin XVI.4). For this reason it was believed to bestow khwarnah (glory and good fortune), and particularly that of the Kayanids, the legendary ancestors of the Sasanians. This motif is first attested in a datable Sasanian context on the rock-cut grotto of Khusrau II (r. 591-628) at Taq-i Bustan, when it appears within embroidered roundels decorating the royal gown. The same motif recurs within a repeating pattern of conjoined pearl roundels depicted on silks from the reliquary of St Lupus and a tomb at Mochtchevaja Balka in the north Caucasus, a press-moulded glass inlay and vessel appliqu in the Corning Museum of Glass, metalwork, Sogdian murals, and the late Umayyad palace faade at Mshatta (e.g. Harper et al. 1978: 136, no. 60; Trever & Lukonin 1987: 115, pl. 73, no. 26; Overlaet ed. 1993: 270, 275-77, nos 119, 127-28). However, there are significant differences of detail between all of these, and a little caution is necessary before making definite attributions of iconography, date or provenance. Many of the features are also repeated on the depiction of a horned quadruped depicted on a 7th century plate in the Hermitage (Trever & Lukonin 1987: 117-18, pl. 106, no. 36); most recently, Jens Kr ger has reiterated the possibility of an early Abbasid date for the present plate, and observed that the distinctive decoration on the tail resembles the split palmette motifs on early Abbasid and Fatimid rock crystal. Source: http://tinyurl.com/7wbzcxgThe heroic theft: myths from Rgveda and the Ancient Near East - David M. Knipe (1967)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/11/assyrian-goat-fish-on-seal-interaction.html Assyrian goat-fish on a seal; compared with crocodile-fish hieroglyphs on Indus Script Assyrian goat-fish on a seal; compared with crocodile-fish hieroglyphs on Indus Script "Many of my favourite things are broken." Mario Buatta, interior designer. Quoted in Agha Shahid Ali, Rooms are never finished 55. 1326

The context is related to the repertoire of smiths and artisans depicted as hieroglyphs of Indus Script. The hieroglyphs of the script include goat and fish glyphs and many other ligatured glyphs comparable to the ligatured goat-fish of Susa ritual basin and other artifacts discussed in the embedded article of Anthony Green (1986). Continued from: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/11/susa-ritual-basin-decoratedwith.html Goat and fish as hieroglyphs of Indus script: Susa-Meluhha interactions. Meluhhan interpreter 'may have been literate and could read the undeciphered Indus script.' mrka, mka,

mka 'goat' (Te.); mlekh (Brahui) rebus: meluhha (cognate mleccha) has been decoded as a
phonetic determinant of the Meluhhhan merchant carrying a goat on his hands accompanied by a woman carrying a kamaalu on Shu-Ilishu cylinder seal. (It is notable that the word milakkhu denotes copper in the Pali lexeme: milakkhurajanam 'copper colour'.) (The Thera and Therigth, PTS, verse 965: milakkhurajanam rattam garahantsakam dhajam; tithiynam dhajam keci dhressanty avadtakam; K.R.Norman, tr., Theragth: Finding fault with their own banner which is dyed the colour of copper, some will wear the white banner of sectarians).

The right-most glyph on line 2 of the seal impression is a 'plough' circumscribed by four 'splinter' glyphs. The plough is decoded rebus: Glyph: mi , n. cf. mdhi. [T. K. M. mi.] 1. Plough; . (. 388). 2. Plough-tail, handle of a plough; . (, 22).Ta. mri plough, plough-tail, handle of a plough; mriyar agriculturalists. Ma. mri, mal ploughtail. Ko. mey handle of plough. Ka. mi, mi plough-tail. Te. mi, (K.) mi hind part or handle of a plough. Kona mi plough handle, plough-tail. Kuwi (F.) mri plough handle; (Isr.) mi id., plough. (DEDR 1327

5097). Allograph: Ka. mi glomerous fig tree, Ficus racemosa; opposite-leaved fig tree, F. oppositifolia. Te. mi F. glomerata. Kol. (Kin.) mi id. [F. glomerata Roxb. = F. racemosa Wall.](DEDR 5090). Rebus: Ta. mi haughtiness, excellence, chief, head, land granted free of tax to the headman of a village; mimai haughtiness;leadership, excellence. Ka. mi loftiness, greatness, excellence, a big man, a chief, a head, head servant. Te. mari, mi chief, head, leader, lord; (prob. mi < *ml-ti [cf. 5086]; Ka. Ta. < Te.; Burrow 1969, p. 277). (DEDR 5091). Allograph: makam , n. prob. maka. Ram; . (. 521). mam , n. < ma. Rebus: milakkhu'copper'(Pali)

sal stake, spike, splinter, thorn, difficulty (H.); Rebus: sal workshop (Santali) gaa four
(Santali); Rebus: kaa 'fire-altar, furnace' (Santali) Thus, the glyphic of plough+ circumscribed splinter strokes -- on line 2 of the long Indus script inscription -- may be decoded as: milakkhu

(Vikalpa: m) sal kaa 'copper (Vikalpa: m 'metal') workshop furnace'. Further details
at http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/11/decoding-longest-inscription-of-indus.html Compare with plough used by Sumerians.

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Compare with Greek plough.

"William Smith in 1875 decribes the ARATRUM a plow developed in Greece that "was by taking a young tree with two branches proceeding from its trunk in opposite directions, so that whilst in ploughing the trunk was made to serve for the pole, one of the two branches stood upwards and 1329

became the tail, and the other penetrated the ground, and, being covered sometimes with bronze or iron, fulfilled the purpose of a share."" Compare with plough shown on Balarama image on a coin.

Sankarsana, the wielder of the plough, with the fan-palm as his emblem. Silver drachm of the Greco-Bactrian king Agathocles (190-180 BCE)found in the excavations at Al-Khanuram in Afghanistan.

Modern photo showing an Indian plough.

Ploughing and sowing. Warli painting (detail) Maharashtra.Source: http://ignca.nic.in/ex025005.htm

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Harappa. h0146 seal.

See the use of the glyph on another Indus inscription (m0357); orthography discussed.

Fish ligatured to a crocodile. Mohenjodaro tablet. Decoding of the two Indus Script glyphs of fish and crocodile read rebus: Ayo fish (Mu.) aya = iron (G.); ayah, ayas = metal (Skt.) kru a wild crocodile or alligator (Te.) ghariyal id. (H.) khr a blacksmith, an iron worker (Kashmiri) ayakra iron-smith (Pali) While the goat-fish enters into myths of Sumer and later Assyrian traditions, the hieroglyphs of goat and fish on Indus script have been decoded in the context of metallurgy [metal (milakkhu, 'copper'(Pali)and cast metal -- ayas, perhaps bronze]. The emphatic depiction of fish ligatured with a crocodile on Indus Script (on a Mohenjodaro tablet) is decoded asayakara 'metalsmith' (aya 'fish'; kara 'crocodile' of the underlying Meluhha (Mleccha) lexemes of Indian linguistic area).

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[Anthony Green, A Note on the Assyrian "Goat-Fish", "Fish-Man" and "Fish-Woman", Iraq, Vol. 48 (1986), pp. 25-30; After Plate X, b, on seal. BM 119918. 2.5X2.5X2.5cm. Late Babylonian stamp seal depicting kulullu and kuliltu(?); streams flow from a vase at top left;top centre, a crescent. Previously published: Van Buren 1933: Pl. XX:70, p. 116, with earlier references cited in n.3, to which may be added Munter 1827: Tab. II:18, p. 139. Cf. also Unger 1957: 71, Nr. 2; Unger 1966.) In Fig. 1 in the following embedded document, a pair of goat-fish images appear, flanking a door entrance, on a Middle Assyrian seal. Sumerian SUHUR.MASH, Akk. suhurmashu/i is sometimes interpreted as 'sea-goat'. Assyrian goat-fish, fish-man and fish-woman (Anthony Green in Iraq, Vol. 48, 1986) Assyrian goat-fish, fish-man and fish-woman (Anthony Green in Iraq, Vol. 48, 1986)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/11/susa-ritual-basin-decorated-with.html Goat and fish as hieroglyphs of Indus script: Susa-Meluhha interactions. Meluhhan interpreter 'may have been literate and could read the undeciphered Indus script.' Goat and fish as hieroglyphs of Indus script: Susa-Meluhha interactions. Meluhhan interpreter 'may have been literate and could read the undeciphered Indus script.' Update: Nov. 21, 2011 Susa-Meluhha interactions http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/11/mohenjo-daro-stupa-great-bath-modeled.htmlThis blogpost notes that the ziggurat shown on the Sit-Shamshi bronze compares with a ziggurat

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which might have existed in the Stupa mound of Mohenjodaro (lit. mound of the dead), indicating the veneration of ancestors in Susa and Meluhha in contemporaneous times.

This post has also documented that an Elamite statuette showed a person (king?) carrying an antelope on his hands, the same way a Meluhhan carried an antelope on his hands (as shown on a cylinder seal). Department des Antiquites Orienteles, Musee du Louvre, Paris.'Based on cuneiform documents from Mesopotamia we know that there was at least one Meluhhan village in Akkad at that time, with people called 'Son of Meluhha' living there. The cuneiform inscription (ca. 2020 BCE) says that the cylinder seal belonged to Shu-ilishu, who was a translator of the Meluhhan language. "The presence in Akkad of a translator of the Meluhhan language suggests that he may have been literate and could read the undeciphered Indus script. This in turn suggests that there may be bilingual Akkadian/Meluhhan tablets somewhere in Mesopotamia. Although such documents may not exist, Shu-ilishu's cylinder seal offers a glimmer of hope for the future in unraveling the mystery of the Indus script." (Gregory L. Possehl,Shu-ilishu's cylinder seal, Expedition, Vol. 48, Number 1, pp. 4243).http://www.penn.museum/documents/publications/expedition/PDFs/481/What%20in%20the%20World.pdf Antelope carried by the Meluhhan is a hieroglyph: mlekh goat (Br.); mreka (Te.); mam (Ta.); meam (Skt.) Thus, the goat conveys the message that the carrier is a Meluhha speaker. A 1333

phonetic determinant.mrreka, mlekh goat; Rebus: melukkha Br. m goat. [ mka ] mka. [Tel.] n. A goat. a kid. a tiger of the color of a goat. i.e., a wolf in sheep's clothing. a she-goat. a he-goat. I am the head of a large family containing many individuals of both sexes. The Indians goat has excrescences like teats on the neck: as these are useless, denotes He is a mere useless burden or appendage. meka-tini. n. That which feeds on goats, i.e., a wolf, , [borrowed by Skt. from Tel.] n. Same as . See: Ka. mke she-goat; m the bleating of sheep or goats. Te. mka, mka goat. Kol. meke id. Nk. mke id. Pa. mva, (S.) mya she-goat. Ga. (Oll.) mge, (S.) mge goat. Go. (M) mek, (Ko.) mka id. ? Kur. mxn (mxyas) to call, call after loudly, hail. Malt. mqe to bleat. [Te. mrka (so correct) is of unknown meaning. Br. m is without etymology; see MBE 1980a.] / Cf. Skt. (lex.) meka- goat (Monier-Williams lex.) (DEDR 5087) meluh.h.a ! mlekh goat (Br.); meh goat (Br. mreka (Te.); mam (Ta.); meam (Skt.) Te. mreka (DEDR 5087) Rebus: meha, mehi merchants clerk; (G.) Rebus: mdha m. sacrificial oblation RV. mdha -- m. sacrifice (Pa.) (CDIAL 10327). Semantics of Kannada lexeme, mku 'superiority, rivalry' (a vikalpa rebus reading which may explain the use of the goat-glyph carried by an elamite 'superior'). cf. mahyas greater, very great vetUp. [mah -- ]Pk. mahia -- great ; OG. mah gen. pl. m. superior .(CDIAL 9976) mhas1 n. greatness, glory RV., splendour, light Inscr. [mh -- ] Pa. maha -- n.m. greatness ; -- Si. maha light, brilliance (ES 66) Sk.?(CDIAL 9936)Maha (m. & nt.) [fr. mah, see mahati & cp. Vedic nt. mahas] 1. worthiness, venerableness Miln 357. -- 2. a (religious) festival (in honour of a Saint, as an act of worship) Mhvs 33, 26 (vihrassa mahamhi, loc.); VvA 170 (thpe ca mahe kate), 200 (id.). mah a great festival Mhvs 5, 94. bodhi festival of the Bo tree J iv.229. vihra festival held on the building of a monastery J i.94; VvA 188. hatthi a festival called the elephant f. J iv.95. (Pali) makam , n. < makha. 1. Sacrifice; . (. 21, 3). 2. Sacrificial offering or food oblation; . (. .) 3. Happiness; . (. .) 4. Light, 1334

brilliance; . (. .) 5. Festival; . (. .)mhas2 n. delight in praise VS., festival, worship Pacar., sacrifice lex., mah -- m. festival, sacrifice MBh. [In later MIA. collides with makh -- m. sacrifice Br. -- mah?] Pa. maha -- n.m. festival ; Pk. maha -m. festival, sacrifice ; OG. maha festival ; Si. maha sacrifice .(CDIAL 9937). cf. makh m. (sg. dat. makas ), an axe (Gr.Gr. 39; Gr.M.; K.Pr. 144; iv. 13, 1573, 1856); met. in comp. indicating violence, as in daga-makh, lit. an axe with a blow; hence, ultimate recourse to force (p. 193b, l.(Kashmiri)

Shu-ilishu's cylinder seal. Department des Antiquites Orienteles, Musee du Louvre, Paris.

Example of water-carrier glyph as Indus script. Seal impression, Ur (Upenn; U.16747) Another blogpost was about decoding Indus Script Susa cylinder seal: Susa-Indus interaction areas This cylinder sealshowed a bull and trough together with Indus script glyphs [water-carrier glyph decoded rebus as kuhi smelter furnace (Santali)] A pair of glyphs flank the water-carrier. It is read as the polar star [mha](Marathi) Rebus: meiron (Ho.) dula pair (Kashmiri); 1335

rebus: dul cast (metal)(Santali) Thus, the glyphic is decoded as dul me kuhi 'iron (cast metal) smelter furnace'. m (copper)(Czech) md (copper, cuprum, orichalc)(Ukrainian) med (copper, cuprum, Cu), mednyy (copper, cupreous, brassy, brazen, brass), omednyat (copper, coppering), sulfatmedi (Copper), politseyskiy (policeman, constable, peeler, policemen, redcap), pokryvat medyu (copper), payalnik (soldering iron, copper, soldering pen, soldering-iron), mednyy kotel (copper), medno-krasnyy (copper), mednaya moneta (copper). (copper, cuprum, Cu), (copper, cupreous, brassy, brazen, brass), (copper, coppering), (Copper), (policeman, constable, peeler, policemen, redcap), (copper), (soldering iron, copper, soldering pen, soldering-iron), (copper), - (copper), (copper).(Russian) Decoding fish and ligatured-fish glyphs of Indus script (S. Kalyanaraman, November 2011) in the context of a Susa pot showing a fish glyph and containing metal artefacts, the fish glyph [aya 'fish'(Santali)] was decoded as aya 'metal, iron' (G.) Comparable to the ligatured-fish glyphs discussed in this blogpost are the ligatures found on a basin of Susa decorated with goat-fish figures (discussed below). While a composite comparable glyph has not been identified in the corpus of Indus inscriptions,there are seals which show fish glyph together with antelope glyph; fish glyph together with composite bull + heifer glyph.

Harappa seal (h350B)

Harappa seal (h330)

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Seal. National Museum: 135. The rebus readings of the hieroglyphs are: mha antelope; rebus: me iron (Ho.) aya 'fish'; rebus: aya 'cast metal' (G.). A Susa ritual basin dated to ca. 12th or 13th century BCE depicts goat and fish ligatured into a 'fabulous' or 'composite' animal representation, clearly intended to connote the underlying hieroglyphic meaning. Deification of glyphs: When did it happen? At what point in time, the glyphic representations denoting native metal or cast metal artefacts and which were used to authenticate trade transactions of the civilization, using Indus script inscriptions, were deified can only be conjectured. This shift from use in trade to use in cultural/religious contexts may have occurred -- in the interaction areas such as Susa and Meluhha -- between 19th and 13th centuries BCE (i.e. between the time when the continued use of Indus Script glyphs is attested, say, 19th century BCE and the time when the same glyphs or cognate glyphic representations were deified, say, 13th century BCE). This conjecture has a semantic basis in mleccha (meluhha) -- the underlying Indus language. A remarkable evidence is provided by a lexeme in Kota. The lexeme is: kole.l smithy, temple (Kota) kwalal Kota smithy (Toda)kol working in iron, blacksmith (Tamil)(DEDR 2133)Ta. kol working in iron, blacksmith; kolla blacksmith. Ma. kollan blacksmith, artificer. Ko. kolel smithy, 1337

temple in Kota village. To. kwalal Kota smithy. Ka. kolime, kolume, kulame, kulime, kulume, kulme fire-pit, furnace; (Bell.; U.P.U.) konimi blacksmith; (Gowda) kolla id. Ko. koll blacksmith. Te. kolimi furnace. Go. (SR.) kollusn to mend implements; (Ph.) kolstn, kulsn to forge; (Tr.) klstn to repair (of ploughshares); (SR.) kolmi smithy (Voc. 948). Kuwi (F.) kolhali to forge. (DEDR 2133). kula (Monier-Williams lexicon): (with s) N. of and of the rites observed in her

worship (cf. ); m. the chief of a corporation or guild. There are semantic intimations that the early meaning of kula could be: principal, chief (as in the use of the compoundkula-giri denoting chief mountain) and hence kwale.l as 'temple': kulam Temple; . (. . 46). kula-

mutal Family god; . (. 259).

kula-kiri , n. < id. +. Chief mountain ranges in Jamb-dvpa. See . (.) kularjadhn 'chief residence' (Skt. Monier-Williams lexicon)

devakula temple J ii.411; ti -- kula (my) home Vv 3710 (: pitugeha sandhya VvA 171). (Pali)
dvakula n. temple khGr., lik -- f. small temple Pacad. [dv -- 1, kla -- ] Pk. dvala -- , dvala -- , dula -- n., dvaliy -- , duli -- f.; Ku. dyol temple , dyoli small temple dedicated to a goddess ; A. daul, dl temple , B. deul, Or. deua, daua; H. dewal m. temple , l f. small shrine ; G. deva n. temple , M. deva, de n., Si. devola, vela; <-> X dvlaya -- : N. deurli place of worship < *deull.(CDIAL 2524). dvakulika m. temple attendant lex. [dvakula -- ]Pk. dulia -- m. temple attendant , A. dewaly, B. deuliy, Or. deui.(CDIAL 6426).*daivakula belonging to the temple . [dvakula -- ]A. dewal a brahman priest living on offerings made at a temple . -- Rather < or dvala -- , laka -- m. hawker of idols P.com. ( dvakpajvin -- Kull.)(CDIAL 6570). An artifact produced in a smithy becomes a deified representation in the attributes of divinities represented in a temple because the smithy itself is perceived as a temple. The creativity of the smith or artisan finds a parallel in divine creation or the cosmic dance traditions of Indian linguistic area. The Susa ritual basin with the ligatured goat and fish can be interpreted in the context of deification of pictorial representations as detailed in the embedded note and also in the write-up presented about the artifact in the Louvre Museum The composite glyphic of goat-fish on the Susa ritual basin can 1338

be compared with the more comprehensive composition glyphic which is exemplified by the inscription on m0302.

Mohenjodaro seal (m0302). The composite animal glyph is one example to show that rebus method has to be applied to every glyphic element in the writing system. This image is also interpreted in corpora (e.g. Mahadevan's Corpus of Indus script) as: body of a ram, horns of a bison, trunk of elephant, hindlegs of a tiger and an upraised serpent-like tail.

m0301 Mohenjodaro seal shows a comparable 'composite animal' glyphic composition. The glyphic elements of the composite animal shown together with the glyphs of fish, fish ligatured with lid, arrow (on Seal m0302) are: 1339

--ram or sheep (forelegs denote a bovine) --neck-band, ring --bos indicus (zebu)(the high horns denote a bos indicus) --elephant (the elephant's trunk ligatured to human face) --tiger (hind legs denote a tiger) --serpent (tail denotes a serpent) --human face All these glyphic elements are decoded rebus:

meho a ram, a sheep (G.)(CDIAL 10120); kaum neck-band, ring adar angra zebu ibha elephant (Skt.); rebus: ib iron (Ko.) kolo jackal (Kon.) mo the tail of a serpent (Santali) Rebus: Md. moen massages, mixes . Kal.rumb. mo --
to thresh , urt. ma -- to soften (CDIAL 9890) Thus, the ligature of the serpent as a tail of the composite animal glyph is decoded as: polished metal (artifact).

m he face (Santali); mleccha-mukha (Skt.) = milakkhu copper (Pali)

ku : . (, 5). 3. [K. ku.] Tusk; . (. 39, 1). 4. Horn; . (. . . 21). Ta. ku (in cpds. ku-) horn, tusk, branch of tree, cluster, bunch, coil of hair, line, diagram, bank of stream or pool; kuvau branch of a tree; k, kuv rock horned-owl (cf. 1657 Ta. kuiai). Ko. k (obl. k-) horns (one horn is kob), half of hair on each side of parting, side in game, log, section of bamboo used as fuel, line marked out. To. kw (obl. kw-) horn, branch, path across stream in thicket. Ka. ku horn, tusk, branch of a tree; kr horn. Tu. k, ku horn. Te. ku rivulet, branch of a river. Pa. k (pl. kul) horn (DEDR 2200) 1340

me iron (Ho.) kh trench, firepit aduru native metal (Ka.) hangar blacksmith (H.) kol furnace, forge (Kuwi) kol alloy of five metals, pancaloha (Ta.) mht, me iron (Mu.Ho.) mh mht = iron smelted by the Kolhes and formed into an equilateral lump a little pointed at
each of four ends (Santali)

ko = the place where artisans work (G.)

Orthographically, the glytic compositions add on the characteristic short tail as a hieroglyph (on both ligatured signs and on pictorial motifs)

xol = tail (Kur.); qoli id. (Malt.)(DEDr 2135). Rebus: kol pacalha (Ta.) kol, n. 1. Iron;
. (. 550). 2. Metal; . (. 318.) kolla, n. < T. golla. Custodian of treasure; . (P. T. L.) kollicci, n. Fem. of . Woman of the blacksmith caste; . (. .) The gloss kollicci is notable. It clearly evidences that kol was a blacksmith. kola blacksmith (Ka.); Ko. koll blacksmith (DEDR 2133). Vikalpa: dumba or (El.) duma m. the tail of an animal. (Kashmiri) Rebus: mba ?Gypsy (CDIAL 5570).

Susa ritual basin decorated with goatfish figures, molluscs. Compared with rivatsa depicted on sci stpa andMathura Lion Capital.

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Molluscs shown on Mathura Lion Capital together with two fishes in rivatsa.

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Note the pattern of molluscs on the Mathur panel which compares with Susa ritual basin glyphic. Photograph of a sculpture panel from Mathura, taken by Edmund William Smith in the 1880s-1890s. Mathura has extensive archaeological remains as it was a large and important city from the middle of the first millennium onwards. It rose to particular prominence under the Kushans as the town was their southern capital. The Buddhist, Brahmanical and Jain faiths all thrived at Mathura, and we find deities and motifs from all three represented in sculpture. In reference to this photograph in the list of photographic negatives, Bloch wrote that, "The technical name of such a panel was ayagapata [homage panel]." The tablet shows a representation of a stupa with a staircase leading up to a terrace which is surrounded by a railing similar of those of the stupas oBharhut

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and Sanchi. It appears from the inscription that the tablet is Jain. The piece is now in the Lucknow Museum.

Molluscs on Susa ritual basin compared with Molluscs on Sanchi Monument Stupa II Huntington Scan Number 0010873 (See more examples in: http://www.scribd.com/doc/13267649/Resources-Hieroglyphs-Ancient-Indian-Tradition) Resources Hieroglyphs Ancient Indian Tradition Sri Vatsa The inscription on the Mathura Lion Capital records that a teacher named Budhila was given a gift so that he might teach the Mahasanghikas. i Chng B: Ma Ha Tng K B: Mahasanghika (skt). "The Wardak vase in Afghanistan containing the relics of the Buddha was presented to the teachers of the Mahasanghikas by one Kamalagulya during the reign of Huviska. At Andharah in Afghanistan, Hsuan-Tsang found three monasteries belonging to this sect, which proves that this sect was popular in the North-West. The cave at Karle in Maharashtra records the gift of a village as also of a nine-celled hall to the adherents of the school of the Mahasanghikas. Clearly, the Mahasanghikas had a center at Karle and exercised influence over the people of the West. They were not thus confined to Magadha alone, but spread over the northern and western parts of India and had adherents scattered all over the country. In the south, the inscriptions at Amaravati stupa, about 18 miles west of Bezwada. The stupa was propably constructed in the second century B.C., its outer rail was erected in the secend century A.D. and the sculptures in the inner rail are supposed to belong to the third century A.D. The Nagarjunakonda represents, next to Amaravati, the most important Buddhist 1344

site in southern India. These structures at Nagarjunakonda obviously flourished as important centers of the branches of the Mahasanghika sect and became places of pilgrimage. It is thus apparent that the Mahasanghikas extended their activities both towards the North and the South, particularly in Guntur and Krishna district." In Dhammapada's commentary on Petuvathu, Dvarka is associated with Kamboja as its Capital or its important city. (ref: The Buddhist Concepts of Spirits, p 81, Dr B. C. Law). See evidence below: "Yasa asthaya gachham Kambojam dhanharika/ ayam kamdado yakkho iyam yakham nayamasai// iyam yakkham gahetvan sadhuken pasham ya/ yanam aaropyatvaan khippam gaccham Davarkaan ti// [Buddhist Text Khudak Nikaya (P.T.S)] Glyph of mollusc on Mathura Lion Capital and on Susa ritual basin:

Giant squid is the largest of all molluscs (Architeuthis).

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Samples of snail shells. khika relating to a shell W. 2. *khin -- (akhin -- f. mother -- of -- pearl Blar.). [akh -- 1]1. K. hngi snail ; B. skh possessing or made of shells . 2. K. h gi f. pearl oyster shell, shell of any aquatic mollusc .(CDIAL 12380) akh1 m. (n. lex.) conch -- shell AV., akhaka- m.n. MBh.Pa. sakha -- m. conch, mother -- of -- pearl ; Pk. sakha -- m.n. conch , khiy -- f. small do. ; S. sagh f. a kind of bracelet ; B. skh conch -- shell , skh, k, skh conch bracelet , Or. sakh; OAw. skha m. conch -shell , H. sakh m., Si. sak -- a, ha. -- Lws. in S. sakhu m. conch , Ku. skh, sk. (CDIAL 12263) h gi &above; f. a pearl-oyster shell (iv. 1551, 1755; Rm. 1142); the shell of any aquatic mollusc (cf. kla-h gi, s.v. kl 2); ? a snail (L. 157, 464, hngi). -- gah -&dotbelow;&above;&below; f.inf. to become an oyster-shell; met. to become excessively thin, to be wasted to a skeleton from disease, grief, etc. h gi-mkta &above;- m. a pearl from a pearl oyster (not one from an elephant's frontal bone, or any other similar object popularly counted as a pearl).(Kashmiri)[ akha ] m (S) The conch-shell. Used in pouring water over an idol, in offering libations &c., and as a horn to blow at sacrifices and in battles. is the name for all univalve sea-shells of the general appearance of the conch, as is the general name for bivalves. 2 Conch-form lines at the extremities of the fingers. 3 A term of enhancement after an epithet expressing the clearness, limpidness, or translucency of. 4 Ten billions or a hundred billions. 5 One of the nine nidhi or treasures of Kuber.(Marathi) 1346

Rebus: sagh m. association, a community Mn. [han1]Pa. sagha -- m. assembly, the priesthood ; A. sagha -- m. the Buddhist community ; Pk. sagha -- m. assembly, collection ; OSi. (Brhm inscr.) saga, Si. sanga crowd, collection . -- Rather < saga -- : S. sagu m. body of pilgrims (whence sgo m. caravan ), L. P. sag m.(CDIAl 12864).A substratum Sumerian word sanga means 'priest' (shangu in Akkadian). Did the Susa ritual basin show a guild of metal workers, casters of metal engaged in venerating their ancestors with water ablutions?

Seal of a Sumerian 'sanga'. (After Fig. 24A and Cover Page in: Michel Tarnet, 2009, The Seal of the Sanga: On the Old Babylonian Sangas of Samas of Sippar-Jahrurum and Sippar-Amnanum, BRILL., p.131) Note the antelope carried by a man on the left. "The head of the temple was called the sanga. The sanga was responsible for ensuring the temple's finances, buildings, and day-to-day activities were all in good order. The en was the spiritual leader of the temple. The en could be a man or woman depending upon the deity. Under the en were various priest classes, such as the guda, mah, gala, nindingir, and ishib. The roles of all of these classes is not known, though the ishib was in charge of libations, and the gala was a poet or singer." http://www.sarissa.org/sumer/sumer_rel.php The depiction of molluscs flanking rivatsa may denote ankha; read rebus: sangha. S'rivatsa is read koleji 'fish'; rebus: kole.l 'temple, smithy'. (This is mleccha of Sarasvati hieroglyphs). There are references to Mleccha hordes (that is, S'aka, Yavana, Kamboja, Pahlava) in Bala 1347

Kanda of the Valmiki Ramayana (1.54.21-23; 1.55.2-3). tair st savt bhmi akair Yavanamiritai || 1.54-21 || tais te Yavana-Kamboj barbar ckulkt || 1-54-23 || tasy hukrato jt Kamboj ravisannibh | dhasa ctha sabhta barbar strapaayah || 1-55-2 || yonidec ca Yavan akddec Chak smt | Romakpeu Mlecch ca Hrth saKirtak || 1-55-3 || Vanaparva of Mahabharata notes: "......Mlechha (barbaric) kings of the Shakas, Yavanas, Kambojas, Bahlikas etc shall rule the earth (i.e India) un-rightously in Kaliyuga..." (MBH 3/188/34-36). Anushasanaparava of Mahabharata affirms that Mathura, was under the joint military control of the Yavanas and the Kambojas (12/102/5). tath YavanaKamboj Mathurm abhita ca ye ete niyuddhakual dkitysicarmia.

rvatsa symbol variants found at Kankalitila, Mathura,late1st cent.BCE: with variants in about five Jaina ygapaa-s; a fish is shown in the middle apparently tied to two strings (or, molluscs) on either side; apparently, this ligatured pictorial formed the basis for the evolution of the rvatsa symbol almost looking like a stylized trident. (After Pl. 30 C in: Savita Sharma, 1990, Early Indian Symbols, Numismatic Evidence, Delhi, Agam Kala Prakashan; cf. Shah, U.P., 1975,Aspects of Jain Art and Architecture, p. 77). The hieroglyph composition of fish tied to a pair of molluscs can be read rebus: ayira fish; dhama tie; hangi snail; pair dul; Rebus: arya, ayira noble; dhama global ethic: ayira dhama; ayira sangha community; dol 1348

picture,form. Thus, the composition connotes the message: ariya dhamma, ariya sangha. When the scribe had to depict a grapheme which sounded close to the word, dhamma, the artisan chose the form of a tied up up tied to a fish, ayir; rebus: ayira, arya. The use of fish glyphs (ayir fish) can be explained as rebus representations of the nobility associated in Jaina tradition with the word ayira (metath. Arya) noble person. Pali: Ayira (& Ayyira) (n. -- adj.) [Vedic rya, Metathesis for ariya as diaeretic form of rya, of which the contracted (assimilation) form is ayya. An idential symbol is depicted at sci stpa (Smith, VA, Jaina Stupa, p. 15, Pl. VII, L. Buhler, Epigraphica Indica II, pp. 200, 313; Agrawala, VS, Guide to Lucknow Museum, p. 4). Deification of hybrid animal representations: Mesopotamia and Babylonia (See: Tally Ornan, 2005, The triumph of the symbol: pictorial representation of deities in Mesopotamia and the

biblical image ban, Saint-Paul).

goatfish This is an example of evolution of Indus script glyphs in the context of the Indian cultural traditions of representing a smithy as a temple and using artifacts read rebus and used on sculptural traditions of Indian art and architecture. Similar evolution of glyphic representations in Mesopotamia and Babylonia can be explained in cultural contexts and the context of a temple for many divinities of the Mesopotamian/Elamite/Babylonian traditions.

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Bassin cultuel orn de poissons-chvres, Epoque mdio-lamite. Technical information: Ritual basin decorated with goatfish figures.Middle Elamite period Susa, Iran Limestone H. 62.8 cm; W. 92 cm Jacques de Morgan excavations, 1904-05 Sb 19 Near Eastern Antiquities. Ritual basin decorated with goatfish figures This limestone basin dates from the 13th or 12th century BC. It was used for ritual libations. The decoration depicts goatfish figures around a sacred tree in reference to the Mesopotamian god Enki/Ea. This reveals the full extent of the mutual influence of the Iranian and Mesopotamian cosmogonies. The sacred palm, the ancestor of the Assyrian sacred tree, reflects the importance of dates as a food source in the region.

Note the eight pa flanking the ziggurat in front of the two braziers offering ablutions in worship of the manes (pitr-s). One of the rectangular structures shown on the Sit-Shamshi bronze behind the three stakes (of leafless tree trunks) may denote a Susa ritual basin which showed the goat-fish hieroglyph. The rendering of this interpretation of the bronze is premised 1350

on the presence of Meluhhan metalworkers in Susa, comparable to the presence of Meluhha merchant shown on Shu-ilishu cylinder seal. It is also hypothesised that the underlying language of mleccha (meluhha) explains the semantics of the glyphics shown on both Sit-Shamshi bronze and the Susa ritual basin. rddha Chapter X states: Let a Brahman perform such a rddha, with raddh and suggests the first offering to the manes calledNandimukhas. The Pitrs or progenitors, are so termed here from words occurring in the prayer used on the occasion of a festive rddha. As. Res. VIII.270...The rddha is commonly an obsequial or funeral sacrifice, but it implies offerings to the progenitors of an individual and of mankind, and always forms part of a religious ceremony on an occasion of rejoicing or an accession of prosperity, this being termed the Abhyudaya or Vriddhi rddha. As. Res. VII. 270. http://www.sacredtexts.com/hin/vp/vp084.htm Of obsequial ceremonies or ancestral oblation AURVA proceeded.-"Let the devout performer of an ancestral oblation propitiate Brahm, Indra, Rudra, the wins, the sun, fire, the Vasus, the winds, the Viwadevas, the sages, birds, men, animals, reptiles, progenitors, and all existent things, by offering adoration to them monthly, on the fifteenth day of the moon's wane (or dark fortnight), or on the eighth day of the same period in certain months, or at particular seasons, as I will explain. The account proceeds to name the following seven orders of Pitris to have been originally the first the gods: Vairajas (fathers of Mena, mother of Uma) - Soma loka Agnishwattas (sons of Marichi and Pitris of the gods) - Viraja loka Varhishads (sons of Atri and Pitris of the demons) Ajyapas, also called Suswadhas (sons of Kardama, Pitris of the Vaisyas) - Kamaduha loka Sukalas (sons of Vasishtha and Pitris of Sudras) Havishmantas (sons of Angiras and Pitris of the Kshatriyas) Somapas (descendants of Bhrigu) The Vishnu Purana, translated by Horace Hayman Wilson, [1840], Chapter XIV http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/vp/vp088.htm Thus, together with Nandimukhas, eight orders of Viswedevas are named as Pitris (ancestors for whom rddha has to be performed. It is such a rddha that is depicted on the Sit-Shamshi bronze. Devasu havis. Devasu (havis) or

devas (u) vm havis n. oblation of rice and various types of corn to the eight deities: divine
inciters (Ap.Sr. XVIII.12.4 (Rja), XVII.22.9 (Cayana). Immediately after the principal offerings the Brahman takes the royal sacrifice by the hand, and prays to the deities to hasten him to the dominion. The sacrifice is proclaimed to the ratnins: This is your king, O Bhrata (or as the case may be) or simply O janat (Ap. Sr. XVIII.12.7). Then the Brahman hastens to add: Soma is the king of us, the Brahmins. Cf.Smantonnayana. Heesterman considers the rite D* as the procreation of the king, 69-78. (root s, cl 2 or 6 to generate, impel or again root s, cl 5 to press out; the forms and meanings of both of them are irretrievably mixed up. Cf. Whitney 1351

Roots 188). (Entry in: Chitrabhanu Sen, A dictionary of the Vedic rituals: based on the rauta

and Ghya Stras, Concept Publishing Company, p.74). Rigvedic rite of burying the bones from
the cremation includes the planting of a stone. This is intended to separate the living from the dead. RV 10.18.9 Taking his bow from the hand of the dead man, for the sake of our vigour, energy and sgtrength, (I say) you are there; may we (who are) here, blessed with male offspring, overcome all the enemies who assail us. Dhanur hastaad aadadaano mrutasyaasme kshatraaya carcase balaaya Atraiva tvam ih vayam suveeraa vishvaa sprdho abhimaateer jayema RV 10.18.9 With this rica, a stone is set up between the dead and the living to separate them According to this approach, food or water that is offered to the pitrs is first offered to Visnu and thereby transformed into visnu-prasada. The word prasada means "mercy" or "grace." Thus visnu-prasada is God's grace. This prasada of Visnu is then offered to the pitrs, who now receive God's grace instead of mere food or water. In this way, the grace of God has the power to elevate and sustain the pitrs in a manner that no human power can match. In the case of a homa or havan, a ritual performed with fire, the fire is used as the "delivery system" by which Visnu is first offered food. This food offering, which is now God's grace, is then offered to the pitrs through the fire. It is thus Agnideva, the fire God, who acts as the link between this world and the world of the pitrs. (Pancharatra tradition: Hindu Funeral Rites and Ancestor Worship [1] Antyesti, Sraddha and Tarpana http://www.scribd.com/doc/2676491/sraaddha1 )s'raaddha1Niels Gutschow, Axel Michaels, 2005, Handling death: the dynamics of death and ancestor rituals among the Newars

of Bhaktapur, Nepal, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. Procedure for discarding the pia (Nev. Pekhi)
which are made in the context of death rituals. Pekhi vygu routes to cast away the offerings of bulls (Nev. Pekhi: Siv pia) made for the forefathers (pitarah). Located around the town are eight places where the offerings are cast into the river: two in the north along the Kasankhusi, and five to the south along the HanumanteThe route is compulsory and preconceived for every householdKvahre, which in case of cremation has a small regular catchment area, attracts more than half of the households of the upper town when it comes to casting the offerings to the dead. (Niels Gutschow, Axel Michaels, 2005, Handling death: the dynamics of death and ancestor rituals among the Newars of Bhaktapur, Nepal, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, p.26.) {V2} ``to ^pour out water in offering to the gods; to ^water a garden''. @5312. #8221.(Munda etyma) This Munda etymon may explain the rebus representation of dul 'cast (metal)' replicated in the offering of water in the ritual basin which is comparable to the possible use of 'Great Bath' in front of the Stupa with ziggurat (memorial for ancestors) in Mohenjodaro. 1352

The offering of water to the divinities may also have been represented in the Sit-Shamshi bronze. The ziggurat is flanked by eight pia to denote 'offering to manes'. H. `a round object, offerings given to manes', ~ `a kind of pumpkin', cf. Kh.(P), Sa., Mu., O. `cake', H. `kind of sweetmeat'.(Munda etyma) (P),,(P) {N} ``^bell_^metal, ^brass''. |, `??'. *$Sa., ~, Mu., Ho, H., O., Sk.. %8552. #8472. (Munda etyma) pa m. lump, clod, piece RV., mouthful, ball of rice &c. Grr., calf of leg Mlatm., piaka -- m.n. lump Sur., -- f. lump, lump of food past., ik<-> f. any fleshy swelling, esp. calf of leg Yj. (cf. piil -- having large calves lex. and Psht. paa calf of leg EVP 57). [For lump see also piaka -- , *pa -- , *pha -, *pa -- , *pha -- , *pnda -- , *pntha, *pua -- , *pdda -- , *pnda -- . This variety of phonetic form suggests non -- Aryan ( Mu. PMWS 142, 162; Drav. T. Burrow TPS 1946, 23) rather than IE. origin EWA ii 275. P. Thieme's derivation < *pia<-> (ZDMG 93, 133) is phonetically unacceptable] Pa. pia -- m. lump, ball , i -- f. small do. , aka<-> m. alms - food , Dhp. pia; Pk. pia -- , aya -- m. ball, mass, part of the body , -- f. bunch , iy -- f. ball, calf of leg ; Gy. SEeur. pii foot , gr. pinr , pirn , pir m., hung. pindro, germ. pro; . pni the lower leg ; Dm. mahi -- pin brick , pirik calf of leg ; Pa.dar. weg. p firestone , ar. pie/r calf of leg , dar. pi k, Shum. pierkyem calf of my leg ; Gaw. phio hip ; Kal.rumb. pi() wet cheese , pi stone platform for resting burdens on ; Kho. pin calf of leg , pilu globe, ball of string &c. ; Bshk. p calf of leg ; Tor. pn heel (rather than with AO viii 307 < pri -- ); Mai. p leg ; Phal. pi calf of leg ; Sh. (Lor.) pni lower leg ; K. pn m. lump , p&ebrevdotdot;n f. house -- altar ; S. pinu m. lump or ball of anything , pin f. dregs, funeral obsequies performed by heir ten days after death ; L. pinn m. lump, bundle, body , pinn f. calf of leg , khet. pinniy id. , aw. pinn ball, shin ; P. pinn m. ball of rice or sugar , pinn m. ball of twine , pinn f. mass of wet sand, calf of leg ; WPah. bhal. pilli f. calf of leg (< *pinnli), cur. p body , (Joshi) phin ankle (X pri -?); Ku. pin thigh, leg (e.g. of goat) ; N. po ball of flour , pi seat on either side of door , pulo calf of leg, thigh ; A. pir severed leg of an animal with flesh still attached , pri lump of earth taken with a plant for transplanting ; B. p, pi stool without legs, front earthen floor of hut ; Or. pia lump , pii platform , piu, u, o lump of clay ; Bi. p embankment round a tank or between two reservoirs, rim of mud round edge of sugarmill , p platform of lingam ; Mth. p, p lump ; H. p m. roller , pi m. lump , p, pil calf of leg, shin, leg ; G. p m. ball of thread , pi f. calf of leg , pl round lump of moistened clay or dough , pill n. small ball of thread ; M. p m. ball , p ball of thread , p f. calf of leg ; Si. pia lump, ball , pilla clod, sod .WPah.kg. pn m. morsel, small 1353

piece of bread (pi m. body H.), kc. pinne f. egg ; kg. pilli f. calf of leg (H. pil, phill f. id. Him.I 119); -- OP. paa f. bundle , P. pa f.? (CDIAL 8168). Description A basin symbolizing the water cycle This basin was broken into several pieces when it was found and has been reconstituted. Used by priests in their ritual libations, liquid was poured out over the basin and was then collected for re-use. There were two types of ritual libations. The first reflected the water cycle, with water rising up from underground, filling rivers and wells. The other was an offering of beer, wine or honey, poured out for the deity in anticipation of his meal. The decoration of this basin suggests it was used for the first type of ritual libation. It is made in the shape of the realm of Enki/Ea, Apsu, the body of fresh water lying beneath the earth and feeding all the rivers and streams. Apsu is likewise represented in the bronze model called SitShamshi (Louvre, Sb2743). The fact that it was found in Susa indicates that the Elamites adopted certain aspects of Mesopotamian mythology. Goatfish figures around a sacred palm The rim of the limestone basin is decorated with a single repeated motif: two goatfish figures, or Nou, on either side of a stylized tree. These creatures were the attributes of Enki/Ea, the Mesopotamian god of underground water, symbolizing his power to replenish vegetation, represented by the sacred palm tree. A similar stylized tree can be seen on the stele of King Untash-Napirisha (Sb12). The tree consists of a central trunk with a number of offshoots curved at the tip and with three palmettes on the upper part. The image is completely stylized, bearing only a very distant resemblance to actual date palm trees. This symbol of plant life reflects the importance of date palms in the region. Dates were a staple foodstuff for the local population. This type of sacred palm was the predecessor of the sacred trees of Assyria. A relief from the palace of Assurnazirpal II in Nimrud depicts a winged spirit with a bird's head in front of just such a sacred tree (AO19849). The upper part of the basin is decorated with an intertwining pattern resembling flowing water. The inside of the basin consists of a series of squared steps leading down to the bottom of the dish. Traces of an inscription, too worn to be read, indicate that there was originally a text along the edges of the basin.

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Stele of Untash-Napirisha, king of Anshan and Susa circa 1340-1300 BC. Technical information:Stele of Untash-Napirisha, king of Anshan and Susa. circa 1340-1300 BC Susa, Iran Sandstone H. 2.62 m; L. 0.8 m Jacques de Morgan excavations, Susa Sb 12 Near Eastern Antiquities Ekta (slide) RMN 99DE23519 + drawing Stele of Untash-Napirisha, king of Anshan and Susa This stele with four registers was commissioned by the Elamite king Untash-Napirisha for the city of Chogha Zanbil. It was later moved to Susa by one of his successors, probably Shutruk-Nahhunte I. The four registers depict the god Inshushinak acknowledging the 1355

monarch's power, two priestesses accompanying the king to the temple, minor deities - halfwomen, half-fish - holding streams of water, and two creatures - half-men, half-mouflons - who are guardians of the sacred tree. Description A stele with four registers King Untash-Napirisha dedicated this stele to the god Inshushinak in Al-Untash, now known as Chogha Zanbil, the new religious capital he had built 40 kilometers southeast of Susa. This region thus became the political and religious heart of the kingdom of Elam. The stele must have been moved to Susa by one of his successors, probably Shutruk-Nahhunte I, at some point in the 12th century BC. The stele is decorated with four registers separated by a guilloche frieze framed by two serpents whose heads confront each other at the top of the stele. The king ceremonially acknowledges the deity In the upper register, the deity Inshushinak welcomes Untash-Napirisha. Between the two figures is carved a dedication in Elamite, naming Inshushinak god of the Susa plain. He is sitting on a throne that seems to consist of the coiled bodies of serpents: the god is holding the horned head of one of the snakes. The god also bears his divine insignia of a ring and a stick. The Mesopotamian tradition is depicted in Elamite style. Snakes were honored in Iran as a symbol of fertility. In the 2nd millennium BC, snakes were closely associated with the "god with a serpent and flowing streams," corresponding to the Mesopotamian deity Enki/Ea, god of underground water. The two snakes along the edges of the stele are probably marking the borders of Enki's realm of Apsu, the body of fresh water that was believed to encircle the world. The second register depicts Untash-Napirisha, flanked by his wife Napir-Asu and probably his mother, the priestess U-tik. The two women are accompanying the king to the temple for the ceremony. The names of the two women are carved on their forearms, which are crossed over their stomachs in the usual pose of sculpted figures of the Middle Elamite period. Supernatural guardians of nature The third register depicts a minor goddess with a fish's tail instead of legs. She is holding streams of water flowing from several vessels. By perpetuating the water cycle, she underlines its importance in nature, particularly for plants, represented by a stylized tree in the lower register. It was believed that supernatural beings like this deity lived in Apsu. Here, the streams rather resemble ropes, mirroring the sinuous lines of the serpents. It is clear that these are Elamite deities because of the cow's ears sticking up from their hair, in addition to their human ears. In the bottom register, two creatures - half-men, half-mouflons - flank a stylized tree that represents plant life. These figures are the equivalents of the Mesopotamian half-man, half-bull figures. Their role here may be to replace the acolytes of the god Enki as nude heroes guarding his realm. By guarding the underground water, they protect the sacred tree, which represents the way that plants flourish when they are watered. These two lower registers have 1356

been carved to form a symmetrical composition. Dravidian-Afroasiatic parallels and Indus Script-Elamite interactions Elamite-Dravidian relationship has been discussed in the context of: McAlpin, David W., Elamite and Dravidian: Further evidence of relationship. (Discussion by M.B. Emeneau, W.H. Jacobsen, F.B.J. Kuiper, H.H. Paper, E. Reiner, R. Stopa, F. Vallat, R.W. Wescott, and a reply by McAlpin). Current Anthropology 16, 1975, 105-115. It should be underscored that the relationship is being deliberated upon in linguistics with very few systematic correspondences between Elamite and Dravidian. Even adding Proto-Afroasiatic to the deliberation doesn't yield conclusive results. It is, therefore, difficult to identify the words connoted by Elamite artisans when they represented goat and fish on artifacts (e.g. Susa ritual basin) Dravidian-Afroasiatic parallels (Blazek, 2002) Source: Mother Tongue 7, 2002, pp. 171 to 198. http://www.nostratic.ru/books/(144)DravidianAAparallelsMT.pdf See: BLAEK, Vclav. The new Dravidian-Afroasiatic parallels. In Nostratic, Sino-Caucasian, Austric and Amerind. Bochum : Brockmayer, 1992. ISBN 3-8196-0032-9, pp. 150-165. Michigan University, Ann Arbor, Nov 1988. Elamite bridges Nostratic and Afroasiatic Starostin, George, On the genetic affiliation of the Elamite language, Starostin notes: "...there is absolutely no sufficient evidence whatsoever to claim a specific Elamo-Dravidian relationship (apart from the usual -- and quite common -- matches in personl and demonstrative pronouns, there are only 2 direct matches between Elamite and Dravidian in the entire wordlist). Second, that despite this, Elamite presents us with a far more clear case of relationship than Sumerian, lexicostatistical results for which look far more grim in general; both the lexical and the morphological evidence of Elamite find enough parallels in Eurasian macrofamilies to exclude the possibility of chance similarities. At this point, I would probably describe Elamite as a 'bridge' between Nostratic and Afroasiatic, perhaps a sole remnant of an old subbranch of the global 'Eurasian' or 'Boreal' family that also includes Nostratic and Afro-Asiatic. This would explain much of the lexical and morphological parallels proposed by both McAlpin and Blazek as well as myself in the present article." Source: http://starling.rinet.ru/Texts/elam.pdf Citing parallel between Elamite and ProtoAfroasiatic, Starostin notes: "Elamite kassu 'horn' - PAA *Vsw/y- id...But too many of the proposed cognates have their own weaknesses, mainly due to their being underrepresented in -goat' to PAA *kVm'cattle, cow', represented only in represented only in Central Cushitic and one West Chadic language; parallel number 66 compares mE malu 'wood' to PAA *mal-, represented only in a few West Chadic and one Berber language, etc." Starostin further argues: "It goes without saying that the scarcity of material is only a testament to the relatively poor state of the 1357

Afroasiatic reconstruction in general and can in no way serve as a definite argument for lack of relationship (close or distant) between Afroasiatic and Elamite. However, it also makes the issue of the Afroasiatic-Elamite comparison itself rather unstable and dubious, not to mention that if Elamite really constitutes a separate branch of Afroasiatic, we would probably expect a far higher number of lexical parallels (considering that the Elamite dictionary of Heinz-Koch, used by Blazek in his research, contains at least a thousand identifiable Elamite roots). All the critique presented above seems to convince me that not only is there not enough evidence to establish a direct Elamo-Dravidian or Elamo-Afroasiatic at the present time, but that it is simply a nearimpossible task to establish a close relationsship of Elamite with any of the currently known families or macrofamilies. On an intuitive level, Elamite does not disclose any specific ties with any known languages (and one should certainly not underestimate the importance of intuitive perception of relationship); however, when we try to apply a purely scientific method, we face the usual problems that often accompany similar cases of isolated languages, most notably Sumerian - scarcity of lexical data, lengthy, unclear history of development, and "isolated language" status are serious impediments in establishing a proved relationship through strictly formal methods." See examples of lexemes to denote an antelope/goat (which also do not compare with the lexemes of mleccha/meluhha of the Indian linguistic area):

Abbreviations: Akkadian (Akk.), Hebrew, Tigre (Tgr.), Arabic (Arb.), Sabaic (Sab.), Mehri (Mhr.), Syriac (Syr.), Jibbali (Jib.), Soqotri (Soq.) Source: L. Kogan, 2006, Babel und Bibel 3, volume 3, Eisenbrauns, pp. 277-278

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/11/indus-script-examples-of-free-hand.html Indus script: examples of free-hand writing. A professional calling card on gold pendant. Indus script: examples of free-hand writing. A professional calling card on gold pendant. 1358

This manuscript with Indus script glyphs on bark has been discussed athttp://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/11/manuscript-has-been-discoveredwith.htmlFurther researches on this manuscript will help review and evaluate the evolution of writing systems in the Indian linguistic area.

The gold pendant is made from a hollow cylinder with soldered ends and perforated point. Museum No. MM 1374.50.271; Marshall 1931: 521, pl. CLI, B3. [After Fig. 4.17a, b in: JM Kenoyer, 1998, p. 196].

Indus script inscription on the gold pendant. Decoding (rebus mleccha) of inscription on pendant kana, kanac = corner (Santali); kacu = bronze (Te.) sal splinter; sal workshop (Santali) du cross (Te.); dhtu = mineral (Skt.) Four + three strokes are read (since the strokes are shown on two lines one below the other) : gaa four (Santali); rebus: furnace, ka fire-altar; kolmo three (Mu.); rebus: kolami smithy (Te.) Vikalpa: ?ea seven (Santali); rebus: ?eh-ku steel (Te.) ayo fish (Mu.); rebus: aya metal (G.) 1359

Thus, the inscription is: kancu sal (bronze workshop), dhatu aya ka kolami mineral, metal, furnace/fire-altar smithy. The inscription is a professional calling card -- describing professional competence and ownership of specified items of property -- of the wearer of the pendant. There are many miniature tablets of Harappa which show that the inscriptions were inscised onto the objects.

Kalibangan. Potsherd. Inscribed Indus script. cf. The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland B. B. Lal The Indus Script: Some Observations Based on Archaeology, The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, No. 2 (1975), pp. 173177Published by: Cambridge University Press. "The overriding of the signs shows that the direction of writing was from right to left," notes BB Lal. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25203657 The article provides archaeologically provenanced inscribed samples of writing and clay tablets with a seal impressions.

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Sealings of baked clay from Kalibangan. They carry the same legend and do not bear any reedor cord-marks on the reverse.

"Inscribed potsheds from Kalibangan. The example at top left would suggest that, in all probability, the V-like sign is derivable from the shape of a vase," says BB Lal. bblalindusscript19752-10

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http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/11/decoding-longest-inscription-of-indus.html Decoding two long inscriptions of Indus Script (Kalyanarman, 2011) Decoding two long inscriptions of Indus Script (Kalyanarman, 2011) "Indus inscriptions resemble the Egyptian hieroglyphs...": John Marshall "A good many important facts can be determined, however, to clear the ground for more satisfactory research. In the first place this script is in no way even remotely connected with either the Sumerian or Proto-Elamitic signs. I have compare some of the signs with the signs of these scripts. For the references to the Sumerian pictographs, or the earliest forms of the Sumerian signs, I have referred the reader to the numbers of REC. (Thureau-Dangin, "Recherches sur l'Origine de l'Ecriture Cuneiforme") and for the Proto-Elamitic signs to Professor Scheil's "Textes de Comptabilite Proto-Elamites", in vol. xvii of Memoires de la Mission Archeologique de Perse, pp. 31-66. This series is commonly cited as Del. Per. (Delegation en Perse). The Indus inscriptions resemble the Egyptian hieroglyphs far more than they do the Sumerian linear and cuneiform system." [John Marshall, 1996 (Repr.), Mohenjo-

Daro and the Indus Civilization: Being an official account of Archaeological Excavations at Mohenjo-Daro carried out by the Government of India between the years 1922 and 1927,Asian
Educational Services, pp. 423-424] http://books.google.com/books?id=SZWE7O5vusC&dq=elam+indus&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Mohenjodro 0304 Seal impression. Identical impression on m0494/0495 two prism-shaped tablets. 1362

This is an update on Nov. 13, 2011 of a note posted on Nov. 12, 2011. An annex is added, decoding another long inscription. (The blog post was originally titled: 'Decoding the longest inscription of Indus Script'). Now it has been retitled to cover another long inscription. This note decodes the longest inscription --on one side of a tablet -- of Indus Script. There are two prism tablets (m0494 and m0495) with an identical inscription of three lines on three sides (of the two tablets). The three lines of m0494/m0495 read together, may constitute an inscription longer than the one on m-0304 seal impression. The inscription on m-0494/m-0495 which contains 23 glyphs (adding all the glyphs on three sides of a prism) is decoded in the annex -- treating the three lines of inscriptions on the prisms as one composite inscription with a composite message. There can only be a congecture as to why the prism tablets were mass produced with identical three lines of impression: it is likely that the tablets were used by artisans of a guild performing identical metal work for transporting packages with identical contents and hence, identical messages conveyed through the inscription. Executive summary The indus script inscription is a detailed account of the metal work engaged in by the Indus artisans. It is a professional calling card of the metalsmiths' guild of Mohenjodaro used to affix a sealing on packages of metal artefacts traded by Meluhha (mleccha)speakers.

Text. Reading of glyphs on m0314 Seal impression. A notable featue of the sequencing of glyphs is the use of three variants of 'fish' glyphs on line 1 of the inscription. Each variant 'fish' glyph has been distinctively decoded as working with ore, metalwork (forging, turning) and casting.

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Rebus decoding of glyphs on the seal impression: Three lines of the inscription with glyphs can be read rebus from right to left -- listing the metallurgical competence of the artisans' guild: Line 1: Turner workshop; forge, stone ore, ingot; excellent cast metal Line 2: Metal workshop, ingot furnace, casting, riveting smithy,forge; Furnace scribe Line 3: Smithy, lump of silver (forging metal); Mint, gold furnace; Smithy/forge; Turner small workshop Details: Line 1 1.1. Turner workshop

kund opening in the nave or hub of a wheel to admit the axle (Santali) Rebus: kundam, kund a sacrificial fire-pit (Skt.) kunda turner kundr turner (A.) sal splinter; rebus: sal workshop (Santali) 1.2. Forge, stone ore, ingot Fish + corner, aya koa, metal turned, i.e. forged Fish + scales aya s (amu) metllic stalks of stone ore Fish + sloping stroke, aya dh metal ingot (Vikalpa: h = a slope; the inclination of a plane (G.) Rebus: : hako = a large metal ingot (G.) 1.3. Excellent cast metal ol the shaft of an arrow, an arrow (Santali) Vikalpa: dul casting (Santali) 1364

Vikalpa: kaa arrow (Skt.) ayaska a quantity of iron, excellent iron Line 2 2.1 Iron workshop [ mh ] A crook or curved end (of a stick, horn &c.) and attrib. such a stick, horn, bullock. [ mh ] m A stake, esp. as forked. Vikalpa: kotta a mason (Ta.) kotti pick-axe, stonedigger, carver (Ma.) Rebus: mht, me iron (Mu.Ho.) 2.2 Ingot furnace S. bahu m. large pot in which grain is parched, Rebus; bhah m. kiln (P.) baa = a kind of iron (G.) Vikalpa: mego = rimless vessels (Santali) bhaa furnace (G.) baa = kiln (Santali); baa = a kind of iron (G.) bhaha -- m.n. gridiron (Pkt.) bahu large cooking fire bah f. distilling furnace; L. bhah m. grainparcher's oven, bhah f. kiln, distillery, aw. bhah; P. bhah m., h f. furnace, bhah m. kiln; S. bhah ke distil (spirits). (CDIAL 9656)Rebus: me iron (Ho.) abu an iron spoon (Santali) Rebus: ab, himba, hompo lump (ingot?), clot, make a lump or clot, coagulate, fuse, melt together (Santali) 2.3 Casting, iron (riveting smithy), forge kolmo rice plant (Mu.) Rebus: kolami furnace,smithy (Te.) Vikalpa: M. me(h), meh f., meh m. post, forked stake (CDIAL 10317). Rebus: me, mht 'iron'(Mu.Ho.) mth m. pillar in threshing floor to which oxen are fastened, prop for supporting carriage shafts AV., th -- f. Ktyr.com., mdh -- f. Divyv. 2. mh -- f. PacavBr.com., mh -- , m -- f. BhP. 1. Pa. mdhi -- f. post to tie cattle to, pillar, part of a stpa ; Pk. mhi -- m. post on threshing floor , N. meh(e), miho, miyo, B. mei, Or. ma -- di, Bi. mh, mh the post , (SMunger) meh the bullock next the post , Mth. meh, meh the post , (SBhagalpur) mh 1365

the bullock next the post , (SETirhut) mhi bi vessel with a projecting base . 2. Pk. mhi -m. post on threshing floor , mhaka<-> small stick ; K. mr, mr f. larger hole in ground which serves as a mark in pitching walnuts (for semantic relation of post -- hole see kpa -2); L. meh f. rope tying oxen to each other and to post on threshing floor ; P. meh f., meha m. oxen on threshing floor, crowd ; OA meha, mehra a circular construction, mound ; Or. meh, meri post on threshing floor ; Bi. m raised bank between irrigated beds , (Camparam) mh bullock next the post , Mth. (SETirhut) mh id. ; M. me(h), meh f., meh m. post, forked stake . (CDIAL 10317) Vikalpa: pajha = to sprout from a root (Santali); Rebus: pasra smithy, forge (Santali) Vikalpa: *jyadhnya winter rice . [jya -- , dhny -- ] Bhoj. jaahan winter rice ; H. jahan m. rice reaped at the end of the Rains .(CDIAL 5181) *ja -- joining, pair . [ Drav. LM 333]; 2. S. jo m. twin , L. P. j m.; M. j f. a double yoke . (CDIAL 5091) Rebus: *jaati joins, sets . 1. Pk. jaia -- set (of jewels), joined ; K. jarun to set jewels ( Ind.); S. jaau to join, rivet, set , jaa f. rivet, boundary between two fields ; P.jau to have fastened or set ; A. zariba to collect ; B. jana to set jewels, wrap round, entangle , ja heaped together ; Or. jaib to unite ; OAw.jara sets jewels, bedecks ; H. jan to join, stick in, set ( N. janu to set, be set ); OMarw. ja inlaid ; G. jav to join, meet with, set jewels ; M.ja to join, connect, inlay, be firmly established , ja to combine, confederate . (CDIAL 5091) Vikalpa: dula m. a pair, a couple, esp. of two similar things (Rm. 966) (Kashmiri); dol likeness, picture, form (Santali) Rebus: dul to cast metal in a mould (Santali) dul mee cast iron (Mundari. Santali) 2.4 Furnace scribe ka kanka rim of jar; Rebus: karaka scribe; ka furnace, fire-altar. Thus the ligatured sign is decoded: ka karaka furnace scribe Line 3 1366

3.1 Smithy kolmo three (Mu.); rebus: kolami smithy (Te.) 3.2 Lump of silver (forging metal) gu1. In sense fruit, kernel cert. Drav., cf. Tam. koai nut, kernel; A. go a fruit, whole piece, globular, solid, gui small ball, seed, kernel; B. go seed, bean, whole; Or. go whole, undivided, goi small ball, cocoon, goli small round piece of chalk; Bi. go seed; Mth. goa numerative particle (CDIAL 4271) Rebus: koe forging (metal)(Mu.) Rebus: go f. lump of silver' (G.) Fish signs (and variants) seem to be differentiated from, perhaps a loop of threads formed on a loom or loose fringes of a garment. This may be seen from the seal M-9 which contains the sign:

Sign 180 Signs 180, 181 have variants. Warp-pegs kor.i = pegs in the ground in two rooms on which the thread is passed back and forth in preparing the warp (S.) Edging, trimming (cf. orthography of glyph in the middle of the epigraph) K. goh f., dat. i f. chequer or chess or dice board ; S. gou m. large ball of tobacco ready for hookah , f. small do. ; P. go f. spool on which gold or silver wire is wound, piece on a chequer board ; N. goo piece , goi chess piece ; A. go a fruit, whole piece , globular, solid , gui small ball, seed, kernel ; B. go seed, bean, whole ; Or. go whole, undivided , goi small ball, cocoon , goli small round piece of chalk ; Bi. go seed ; Mth. goa numerative particle ; H. go f. piece (at chess &c.) ; G. go m. cloud of smoke , m. kernel of coconut, nosegay , go f. lump of silver, clot of blood , ilm. hard ball of cloth ; M. go 1367

m. roundish stone , f. a marble , gou spherical ; Si. guiya lump, ball ; -- prob. also P. go gold or silver lace , H.go m. edging of such ( K. goa m. edging of gold braid , S. goo m. gold or silver lace ); M. go hem of a garment, metal wristlet . Ko. gu silver or gold braid .(CDIAL 4271) Rebus: go f. lump of silver' (G.) 3.3 Mint, gold furnace kamhiyo = archer; kmahum = a bow; kma, kmaum = a chip of bamboo (G.) kmahiyo a bowman; an archer (Skt.lex.) Rebus: kammai a coiner (Ka.); kampaam coinage, coin, mint (Ta.) kammaa = mint, gold furnace (Te.)

3.4 Smithy, forge kolmo rice plant (Mu.) Rebus: kolami furnace,smithy (Te.) Vikalpa: pajha = to sprout from a root (Santali); Rebus: pasra smithy, forge (Santali) 3.5 Turner S. kua f. corner; P. k f. corner, side ( H.). (CDIAL 3898) Rebus: kundr turner (A.) k dr, k dri (B.); kundru (Or.); kundau to turn on a lathe, to carve, to chase; kundau dhiri = a hewn stone; kundau murhut = a graven image (Santali) kunda a turner's lathe (Skt.)(CDIAL 3295). 3.6 Small Workshop tsni, tsnye squirrel (Kon.) caila squirrel (To.); Vikalpa: sega a species of squirrel (Santali) rebus: ann a small workshop (WPah) ann f. small room in a house to keep sheep in (WPah.) Bshk. an, Phal.n roof (Bshk.)(CDIAL 12326). sei (f.) [Class. Sk. rei in meaning "guild"; Vedic= row] Wo. en roof , Bshk. an, Phal. n(AO xviii 251, followed by Buddruss Wo 126, < ar(a)a -- ); WPah. (Joshi) ann f. small room in a house to keep sheep in . Addenda: ara -- 2. 2. *ara --WPah. kg.nni f. bottom storey of a house in which young 1368

of cattle are kept . ara protecting , n. shelter, home RV. 2. *ara -- . [ar] 1. Pa. Pk. saraa -- n. protection, shelter, house ; . rn m. roof ( Sh.?), Dm. aran; P. sara m. protection, asylum , H. saran f.; G. sar n. help ; Si.saraa defence, village, town ; -- < *ara -- or poss. *raa -- : Kho. arn courtyard of a house , Sh. ar m. fence . (CDIAL 12326) Vikalpa: Other lexemes (for rebus readings of variant readings of glyphs): mea A twist or tangle arising in thread or cord, a curl or snarl. (Marathi) (CDIAL 10312). Rebus: me iron (Ho.) salae sapae = untangled, combed out, hair hanging loose (Santali.lex.) Rebus: sal workshop (Santali) Vikalpa: hompo = knot on a string (Santali) hompo = ingot (Santali) kana, kanac = corner (Santali); kacu = bronze (Te.) kan- copper work (Ta.) kel bandicoot (Pa.) [koel = rat (Go.)] Rebus: kole.l = smithy, temple in Kota village (Ko.) Vikalpa: m h = the quantity of iron produced at one time in a native smelting furnace of the Kolhes; iron produced by the Kolhes and formed like a four-cornered piece a little pointed at each end; mh mht = iron smelted by the Kolhes and formed into an equilateral lump a little pointed at each end; kolhe tehen me~he~t mh akata = the Kolhes have to-day produced pig iron (Santali.lex.) The superscript ligatures can be read as suffixes: - kra artisan. kruvu = mechanic, artisan, Vis'vakarma, the celestial artisan (Te.); kruvu. [Skt.] n. An artist, artificer. An agent . One is a loha-kra (metalsmith). the other is a cunda-kra (ivory turner). ka1 m. (n. lex.) fort Kaths., ka -- 1 m. Vstuv. A. sn. koa -- fort, fortified town , Pk. koa -- , ku n.; Kt. ku tower (?) NTS xii 174; Dm. k tower , Kal. k; Sh. gil. k m. fort ( . k m.), koh. pales. k m. village ; K. kh, dat. kas m. fort , S. kou m., L. ko m.; P. ko m. fort, mud bank round a village or field ; A. kh stockade, palisade ; B. ko, ku fort , Or. koa, kua, H. Marw. ko m.; G. ko m. fort, rampart ; M. ko, koh m. fort (CDIAL 3500). Cloak, trefoil glyph: got.a_ a garment with clusters of flowers woven in it; got.a_kor [+ kor a border] a border of a garment having clusters of flowers woven in it; got.iyum a piece of cloth made use of in making up a turban to give it a round shape (G.) go_t.u embroidery, lace (Tu.); go~_t.u an ornamental appendage to the border of a cloth, fringe, hem, edging (Te.); got. Hem of garment; got.a_ edging of gold lace (H.)(DEDR 2201). go_t.u = an ornamental appendage to the border of a cloth, fringe, hem, edging (Te.); embroidery (Tu.) kont.l.= pocket in outside edge of cloak (Ko.); got. = hem of garment (M.); got.a_ = edging of gold lace (H.) got. hem of a garment, metal wristlet (M.); got.t.a_ gold or silver lace (P.)(CDIAL 4271). Gu {N} ``^cloth''. Rebus: (Z),,(Z) {N} ``^worker, ^assistant, ^serf, ^slave; ^serfdom''. #11620. Annex 1369

Decoding Indus script inscription on two prism tablets There are two tablets with identical seal impressions which contain a long Indus inscription composed of 23 glyphs. Reported in Marshall 1931 (Vol. II, p.402); repeated in Vol. III, Pl. CXVI.23.

m0494A,BGt Prism Tablet in bas-relief. (BGt is a side view of two sides B and G -- the prism tablet).

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m0495A,B,Gt Prism Tablet in bas-relief

A reading of m0495G shown and discussed in http://indusscriptmore.blogspot.com/2011/09/indus-signs-of-17-and-18-strokes.html with particular reference to the first sign read as 'X'. If the glyph is a composite glyphic of four forked sticks, a vikalpa (alternative) reading is: [ mh ] A crook or curved end (of a stick, horn &c.) and attrib. such a stick, horn, bullock. [ mh ] m A stake, esp. as forked. me(h), meh f., meh m. post, forked stake .(Marathi)(CDIAL 10317) Rebus: mht, me iron (Mu.Ho.) gaa 'four'; rebus: kaa 'furnace, altar'. Thus, the composite glyphis is read rebus: iron (metal) furnace, me kaa. Inscription on tablet m0495 serves as a reinforcement of the reading of inscription on tablet m0494 (see the side shot of sides B and G reproduced above). The organizer of the photographic corpus, Asko Parpola, should be complimented for a painstaking effort to produce a high resolution reading of 3 lines of the text on the prism tablets (which almost look like fivesided object as may be seen from the photograph M-494F). Sharper resolution images of the two tablets (3.6 cm. long) with three sides of a prism are as follows: m-0495A m-0495B m-0495G The reading of the text of the inscription on the two prism tablets provided in Mahadevan concordance is as follows:

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Text 1623/Text 2847 Decoding the identical inscription on Prism tablets m0494 and m0495 Line 1 Turner, mint, brass-work, furnace scribe, smelter, gridiron smithy, smithy/forge Line 2 Mineral (ore), furnace/altar, furnace scribe workshop; metal (a kind of iron), casting furnace; cast metal ingot; casting workshop Line 3 Furnace scribe workshop; cast bronze; kiln; gridiron; casting workshop; smithy (with) furnace; cast bronze; native metal; metal turner; furnace scribe. Thus, line 1 is a description of the repertoire of a smithy/forge including mint and brass-work; line 2 is a smelting, casting workshop for ingots; line 3 is furnace scribe workshop for caste bronze, with kiln, furnace and native metal turning. Line 1 1.1 Corner (of a room) glyph. S. kua f. corner; P. k f. corner, side ( H.). (CDIAL 3898) Rebus: kundr turner (A.) k dr, k dri (B.); kundru (Or.); kundau to turn on a lathe, to carve, to chase; kundau dhiri = a hewn stone; kundau murhut = a graven image (Santali) kunda a turner's lathe (Skt.)(CDIAL 3295). 1.2 Crab glyph

Sign 57. Crab or claws of crab. kamaha crab (Skt.) Rebus: kammaa = portable furnace (Te.) kampaam coiner, mint (Ta.) Vikalpa: ato claws or pincers (chelae) of crabs; aom, iom to seize with the claws or pincers, as crabs, scorpions; akop = to pinch, nip (only of crabs)

1372

(Santali) Rebus: dhtu mineral (Vedic); dhatu a mineral, metal (Santali) Vikalpa: er claws; Rebus: era copper.

Argument: Allographs of a leaf sign, ligature with crab sign [After Parpola, 1994, fig. 13.15] The archer shown on one copper tablet seems to be equivalent to a glyph on another copper plate -that of ligatured U (rimless wide-mouthed pot) with leaves and crabs claws. The archer has been decoded: kamhiyo = archer; kmahum = a bow; kma, kmaum = a chip of bamboo (G.) kmahiyo a bowman; an archer (Skt.lex.) Rebus: kammai a coiner (Ka.); kampaam coinage, coin, mint (Ta.) kammaa = mint, gold furnace (Te.) 1.3 Backbone, rib cage

Sign 48. karu the backbone (Bengali. Skt.); karuka id. (Skt.) Rebus: kasr metal worker (Lahnda)(CDIAL 2988, 2989) Spine, rib-cage: A comparable glyptic representation is on a seal published by Omananda Saraswati. In Pl. 275: Omananda Saraswati 1975. Ancient Seals of Haryana (in Hindi). Rohtak. (I. Mahadevan, 'Murukan' in the Indus Script, The Journal of the Institute of Asian Studies, March 1999). B.B. Lal, 1960. From Megalithic to the Harappa: Tracing back the graffiti on pottery. Ancient India, No.16, pp. 4-24.

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1.4 Rim of jar glyph kaa kanka (Santali); Rebus: kaa kanka furnace scribe. kaa fire-altar, furnace (Santali); kan copper (Ta.) karaka 'scribe, accountant' (Skt.) Vikalpa: ka kanaka gold furnace. knaka n. gold (Skt.) ka ,n. perh. . 1. workmanship; . (. . 5, 8, 3). 2. copper work; . (W.) 3. copper; . (, 5, 8, 3.) MBh. Pa. kanaka -- n., Pk. kaaya -- n., MB. kanay ODBL 659, Si. kan EGS 36.(CDIAL 2717) [ kanakamu ] kanakamu. [Skt.] n. Gold. (Telugu) kaakam, n. < kanaka. 1. Gold; . (. 502, 9 (Tamil) kanaka (nt.) [cp. Sk. kanaka; Gr. knh_kos yellow; Ags. hunig=E. honey. See also kacana] gold, usually as uttatta molten gold; said of the colour of the skin Bu i.59; Pv iii.32; J v.416; PvA 10 suvaa).-- agga gold -- crested J v.156; -- chavin of golden complexion J vi.13; - taca (adj.) id. J v.393; -- pabh golden splendour Bu xxiii.23; -- vimna a fairy palace of gold VvA 6; PvA 47, 53; -- sikhar a golden peak, in rj king of the golden peaks (i. e. Himlayas): Dvs iv.30. (Pali) Vikalpa: ka copper work (Ta.) The sequence of two glyphs discussed in 1.3 and 1.4 above occur with high frequency on copper tablets. The pair of glyphs is read rebus as: metal work, furnace scribe -- kasr kaa kanka. The following examples are of 8 copper tablets recovered in Harappa by HARP project. A third glyph on these tablets is an oval sign -- like a metal ingot -- and is ligatured with an infixed sloping stroke: hiyum = adj. sloping, inclining (G.) The ligatured glyph is read rebus as: hlako = a large metal ingot (G.) hlak = a metal heated and poured into a mould; a solid piece of metal; an ingot (G.) The inscription on these tablets is in bas-relief:

Copper tablet (H2000-4498/9889-01) with raised script found in Trench 43. Slide 351 harappa.com Copper tablets with Indus script in bas-relief, Harappa. The three glyphs on the ingots are read in sequence: hlako kasr kaa kanka 'metal ingot, metal work, furnace scribe'.

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This is a professional calling card of the artisan engaged in metal work.

1.5 Water-carrier glyph kui water-carrier (Telugu); Rebus: kuhi smelter furnace (Santali) ku f. fireplace (H.); krvI f. granary (WPah.); ku, kuo house, building(Ku.)(CDIAL 3232) kui hut made of boughs (Skt.) gui temple (Telugu) A comparable glyptic representation is provided in a Gadd seal found in an interaction area of the Persian Gulf. Gadd notes that the water-carrier seal is is an unmistakable example of an 'hieroglyphic' seal. Seal impression, Ur (Upenn; U.16747); [After Edith Porada, 1971, Remarks on seals found in the Gulf States. Artibus Asiae 33 (4): 331-7: pl.9, fig.5]; water carrier with a skin (or pot?) hung on each end of the yoke across his shoulders and another one below the crook of his left arm; the vessel on the right end of his yoke is over a receptacle for the water; a star on either side of the head (denoting supernatural?). The whole object is enclosed by 'parenthesis' marks. The parenthesis is perhaps a way of splitting of the ellipse (Hunter, G.R., JRAS, 1932, 476). 1.6 Three (rimless) pots kolmo three (Mu.); rebus: kolami smithy (Te.) S. bahu m. large pot in which grain is parched, Rebus; bhah m. kiln (P.) baa = a kind of iron (G.) Vikalpa: mego = rimless vessels (Santali) bhaa furnace (G.) baa = kiln (Santali); baa = a kind of iron (G.) bhaha -- m.n. gridiron (Pkt.) bahu large cooking fire bah f. 1375

distilling furnace; L. bhah m. grainparcher's oven, bhah f. kiln, distillery, aw. bhah; P. bhah m., h f. furnace, bhah m. kiln; S. bhah ke distil (spirits). (CDIAL 9656)Rebus: me iron (Ho.) kolmo rice plant (Mu.) Rebus: kolami furnace,smithy (Te.) Vikalpa: pajha = to sprout from a root (Santali); Rebus: pasra smithy, forge (Santali) Line 2 2.1 Cross du = cross (Te.); Rebus: dhatu = mineral (ore)(Santali) dhtu mineral (Pali) dhtu mineral (Vedic); a mineral, metal (Santali); dhta id. (G.) 2.2 Arrow kaa arrow; Rebus: ka = a furnace, altar (Santali) 2.3 Rim of jar + infixed short stroke Rim of jar is decoded as: kaa kanka furnace scribe. (See line 1.4) sal stake, spike, splinter, thorn, difficulty (H.); sal workshop (Santali) Vikalpa: aar a splinter (Ma.) aaruka to burst, crack, sli off,fly open; aarcca splitting, a crack; aarttuka to split, tear off, open (an oyster) (Ma.); a aruni to crack (Tu.) (DEDR 66) Rebus: aduru native, unsmelted metal Rebus: adaru = native metal (Ka.) aduru = gan.iyinda tegadu karagade iruva aduru = ore taken from the mine and not subjected to melting in a furnace (Ka. Siddha_nti Subrahman.ya Sastris new interpretation of the Amarakosa, Bangalore, Vicaradarpana Press, 1872, p. 330) Thus, the ligatured glyph is read rebus as: scribe (of) native,unsmelted metal furnace.

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2.4 Body md body (Kur.)(DEDR 5099); me iron (Ho.) 2.5 Bird (circumscribed in bracket) Decoding: Furnace for riveting metal (a kind of iron) baa= quail (Santali) Rebus: baa = a kind of iron (G.) bhaa furnace (G.) baa = kiln (Santali) Vikalpa: pota pigeon; pot beads (H.G.M.)(CDIAL 8403). Vikalpa: baai quail (N.) vartaka = a duck (Skt.)(CDIAL 11361). batak = a duck (G.) vartik = quail (RV.); wuwrc partridge (Ash.); barti = quail, partridge (Kho.); vaaka_ quail (Pali); vaaya (Pkt.) (CDIAL 11361). Rebus: vartaka merchant (Skt.) ( ) A pair of enclosures: *ja -- joining, pair . [ Drav. LM 333]; 2. S. jo m. twin , L. P. j m.; M. j f. a double yoke . (CDIAL 5091) Rebus: *jaati joins, sets . 1. Pk. jaia -- set (of jewels), joined ; K. jarun to set jewels ( Ind.); S. jaau to join, rivet, set , jaa f. rivet, boundary between two fields ; P.jau to have fastened or set ; A. zariba to collect ; B. jana to set jewels, wrap round, entangle , ja heaped together ; Or. jaib to unite ; OAw.jara sets jewels, bedecks ; H. jan to join, stick in, set ( N. janu to set, be set ); OMarw. ja inlaid ; G. jav to join, meet with, set jewels ; M.ja to join, connect, inlay, be firmly established , ja to combine, confederate . (CDIAL 5091) Vikalpa: dula m. a pair, a couple, esp. of two similar things (Rm. 966) (Kashmiri); dol likeness, picture, form (Santali) Rebus: dul to cast metal in a mould (Santali) dul mee cast iron (Mundari. Santali) cast bronze; it is a glyptic formed of a pair of brackets (): kuila bent; rebus: kuila, katthl = bronze (8 parts copper and 2 parts tin) 2.6 Two over-lapping (or pair of) ovals: Oval is the shape of an ingot (of metal). Paired ovals (ingots) are decoded as cast metal ingots. m h metal ingot (shaped like an oval) (Santali) m h = the quantity of iron produced at one time in a native smelting furnace of the Kolhes; iron produced by the Kolhes and formed like a fourcornered piece a little pointed at each end; mh me~r.he~t = iron smelted by the Kolhes and formed into an equilateral lump a little pointed at each end; kolhe tehen me~r.he~tko mh akata = the Kolhes have to-day produced pig iron (Santali.lex.) kaula mengro blacksmith 1377

(Gypsy) paired: dul likeness; dul cast (metal)] 2.7 A pair of linear strokes (two long linear strokes) Decoded as casting workshop dula pair; rebus: dul cast (metal)(Santali) go = one (Santali); goi = silver (G.) koa one (Santali); ko workshop (G.) Line 3 3.1 Rim of jar + infixed short stroke as in Line 2.3 above. Decoded as: furnace scribe workshop. 3.2 Two bent (curved) lines. Decoded as cast bronze. kuila bent; rebus: kuila, katthl = bronze (8 parts copper and 2 parts tin) dula pair; rebus: dul cast (metal)(Santali) 3.3 Rimless pot. Decoded as: gridiron. See 1.6 above (for three rimless pots). S. bahu m. large pot in which grain is parched, Rebus; bhah m. kiln (P.) baa = a kind of iron (G.) Vikalpa: mego = rimless vessels (Santali) bhaa furnace (G.) baa = kiln (Santali); baa = a kind of iron (G.) bhaha -- m.n. gridiron (Pkt.) bahu large cooking fire bah f. distilling furnace; L. bhah m. grainparcher's oven, bhah f. kiln, distillery, aw. bhah; P. bhah m., h f. furnace, bhah m. kiln; S. bhah ke distil (spirits). (CDIAL 9656)Rebus: me iron (Ho.)

3.4 Nave of spoked wheel. Decoded as (molten cast copper) turner, kundr turner. era = knave of wheel; rebus: era = copper; erako = molten cast (G.) eraka, (copper) metal infusion; ra spokes; rebus: ra brass as in raka (Skt.) kund opening in the nave or hub of a wheel to admit the axle (Santali) Rebus: kundam, kund a sacrificial fire-pit (Skt.) kunda turner kundr turner (A.); k dr, k dri (B.); kundru (Or.); kundau to turn on a lathe, to carve, to chase; kundau dhiri = a hewn stone; kundau murhut = a graven image (Santali) kunda a turner's 1378

lathe (Skt.)(CDIAL 3295) Vikalpa: era, er-a = eraka = ?nave; erako_lu = the iron axle of a carriage (Ka.M.); cf. irasu (Ka.lex.) [Note Sign 391 and its ligatures Signs 392 and 393 may connote a spoked-wheel, nave of the wheel through which the axle passes; cf. ara_, spoke] ram , n. < ra. 1. Spoke of a wheel. See . (. 253) (Tamil) 3.5 As in 2.7 above. A pair of linear strokes (two long linear strokes) Decoded as casting workshop. dula pair; rebus: dul cast (metal)(Santali) go = one (Santali); goi = silver (G.) koa one (Santali); ko workshop (G.) 3.6 Four + Three short strokes. Decoded as smithy (with) furnace. Four + three strokes are read (since the strokes are shown on two lines one below the other) : gaa four (Santali); Rebus: kaa furnace (Santali); kolmo three (Mu.); rebus: kolami smithy (Te.) Vikalpa: ?ea seven (Santali); rebus: ?eh-ku steel (Te.) Vikalpa: pon four (Santali) rebus: pon gold (Ta.) 3.7 As in 3.2 above. Two bent (curved) lines. Decoded as cast bronze. kuila bent; rebus: kuila, katthl = bronze (8 parts copper and 2 parts tin) dula pair; rebus: dul cast (metal)(Santali) 3.8 Harrow aar harrow; rebus: aduru native metal 3.9 Horned body (Body as in 2.4 above.) Decoded as metal (iron) turner. md body (Kur.)(DEDR 5099); me iron (Ho.) k, ka horn. Pa. k (pl. kul) horn; Ka. ku horn, tusk, branch of a tree; kr horn Tu. k, ku horn Ko. k (obl. k-)( (DEDR 2200) Pa. kbald, Kal. rumb. ka hornless.(CDIAL 3508). Kal. rumb.kh a half (CDIAL 3792). Rebus: [kaa] f A fold or pen. (Marathi) kd to turn in a lathe (Bengali) knda engraver, lapidary setting or infixing gems (Marathi) [ kndaa ] n () Setting or infixing of gems.(Marathi) [ khdakra ] n an engraver; a carver. n. engraving; carving; interference in other's work. [ khdi ] n engraving; carving. v. to engrave; to carve. v. & n. en graving; carving. [ khdita ] a engraved. (Bengali) [ khdakma ] n Sculpture; carved work or work for the carver. [ khdagir ] f Sculpture, carving, engraving: also sculptured or carved work. [ khdavaa ] f () The price or cost of sculpture or carving. [ khda ] f (Verbal of ) Digging, engraving &c. 2 fig. An exacting of money by importunity. v , . 3 An instrument to scoop out and cut flowers and figures from paper. 4 A goldsmith's die. [ khda ] v c & i ( H) To dig. 2 To engrave. or - To question minutely and searchingly, to probe. [ khd ] f ( H) Price or cost of digging or of sculpture or carving. [ khdva ] p of Dug. 2 Engraved, carved, sculptured. (Marathi) 3.10 Rim of jar. As in 1.4 above. Decoded as: kaa kanka furnace scribe.

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Sit Shamshi. Model of a place of worship, known as the Sit Shamshi, or "Sunrise (ceremony)" Middle-Elamite period, toward the 12th century BC Acropolis mound, Susa, Iran; Bronze; H. 60 cm; W. 40 cm Excavations led by Jacques de Morgan, 1904-5; Sb 2743; Near Eastern Antiquities, Muse du Louvre/C. Larrieu. Two nude figures squat on the bronze slab, one knee bent to the ground. One of the figures holds out open hands to his companion who prepares to pour the contents of a lipped vase onto them.The scene takes place in a stylized urban landscape, with reduced-scale architectural features: a tiered tower or ziggurat flanked with pillars, a temple on a high terrace. There is also a large jar resembling the ceramic pithoi decorated with rope motifs that were used to store water and liquid foodstuffs. An arched stele stands by some rectangular basins. Rows of 8 dots in relief flank the ziggurat; jagged sticks represent trees.An inscription tells us the name of the piece's royal dedicator and its meaning in part: "I Shilhak-Inshushinak, son of Shutruk-Nahhunte, beloved servant of Inshushinak, king of Anshan and Susa [...], I made a bronze sunrise."

1380

Three jagged sticks on the Sit Shamshi bronze, in front of the water tank (Great Bath replica?)

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If the sticks are orthographic representations of 'forked sticks' and if the underlying language is Meluhha (mleccha), the borrowed or substratum lexemes which may provide a rebus reading are: kolmo 'three'; rebus; kolami 'smithy' (Telugu) [ mh ] A crook or curved end (of a stick, horn &c.) and attrib. such a stick, horn, bullock. [ mh ] m A stake, esp. as forked. me(h), meh f., meh m. post, forked stake .(Marathi)(CDIAL 10317) Rebus: mht, me iron (Mu.Ho.) Thus, three jagged sticks on the Sit Shamshi bronze may be decoded as me kolami 'iron (metal) smithy'. 'Iron' in such lexical entries may refer to 'metal'. Sit Shamshi bronze illustrates the complex technique of casting separate elements joined together with rivets, the excavations at Susa have produced one of the largest bronze statues of Antiquity: dating from the 14th century BC, the effigy of "Napirasu, wife of Untash-Napirisha," the head of which is missing, is 1.29 m high and weighs 1,750 kg. It was made using the solidcore casting method. These metallurgical techniques find an expression on Indus script inscriptions as seen on this longest inscription on a seal impression found in Mohenjodaro (m-314)-- all glyphs of the inscription relate to the repertoire of artisans engaged in metal work. See related links: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/11/mohenjo-daro-stupa-great-bath-modeled.html http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/11/decoding-indus-scipt-susa-cylinder-seal.html http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/11/decoding-indus-scipt-susa-cylinder-seal.html

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Ancient Anatolian Metallurgy by Hadi Ozbal, Bogazici University, Istanbul (Slide show) Origins of iron-working in India, Rakesh Tiwari

Damaged circular clay furnace, comprising iron slag and tuyeres and other waste materials stuck with its body, exposed at Lohsanwa mount, Period II, Malhar, Dist. Chandauli, India. This report is significant because recent excavations have produced clear evidence of ironworking at Malhar, Dist. Chandali -- Lat. 24deg.-59'-16"N; Long. 83deg.-15'-46" where a damaged circular clay furnace, comprising iron slag and tuyeres and other waste materials stuck with its body in a stratigraphically dated location. (See Figure 6, page 542). "As discussed elsewhere (Tewari et al. 2000) the sites at Malhar, the Baba Wali Pahari, and the Valley are archaeologically linked to the area of Geruwarwa Pahar which appears to have been a major source of iron ore. The Geruwarwa Pahar situated to the southeast of the Baba Wali Pahari, is full of hematite. Villagers reported (as a tradition passed down from several generations), that the agarias (a particular tribe known for their iron smelting skills) from Robertsganj side, used to come in this area to procure iron by smelting the hematite...The presence of tuyeres, slags, 1383

finished iron artefacts, above-mentioned clay structures with burnt internal surface and arms, revealed at Malhar, suggest a large scale activity related to manufacture of iron tools." (p. 542). Malhar is located on river Karamnasa which joins River Ganga at Varanasi. Two radiocarbon dates recorded at this site range around 1800 cal. BCE (Table 2, p. 540) -- precise dates are: 1882 and 2012 BCE. Rakesh Tewari provides the following summary of the evidence from Malhar and other Central Ganga Plain and Eastern Vindhya sites: [Quote]Discussion These results indicate that iron using and iron working was prevalent in the Central Ganga Plain and the Eastern Vindhyas from the early second millennium BC. The dates obtained so far group into three: three dates between c. 1200-900 cal BC, three between c. 1400-1200 cal BC, and five between c. 1800-1500 cal BC. The types and shapes of the associated pottery are comparable to those to be generally considered as the characteristics of the Chalcolithic Period and placed in early to late second millennium BC. Taking all this evidence together it may be concluded that knowledge of iron smelting and manufacturing of iron artefacts was well known in the Eastern Vindhyas and iron had been in use in the Central Ganga Plain, at least from the early second millennium BC. The quantity and types of iron artefacts, and the level of technical advancement indicate that the introduction of iron working took place even earlier. The beginning of the use of iron has been traditionally associated with the eastward migration of the later Vedic people, who are also considered as an agency which revolutionised material culture particularly in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar (Sharma 1983: 117-131). The new finds and their dates suggest that a fresh review is needed. Further, the evidence corroborates the early use of iron in other areas of the country, and attests that India was indeed an independent centre for the development of the working of iron. [unquote](pp. 543-544). Thus, both the Gufkral evidence evaluated by Possehl and Gullapalli and the evidence from Malhar and other Central Ganga Plain and Eastern Vindhya sites discussed by Rakesh Tewari point to an indigenous evolution of iron-working in India dated to early 2nd millennium BCE. The evidence leads to a reasonable hypothesis that the metal-workers of the chalcolithic 1384

periods of Sarasvati Civilization moved into the Ganga and Eastern Vindhya iron-age sites to continue the tradition of metal-working, exemplified by the asur-s of Mundarica tradition. No wonder, the Sarasvati hieroglyphs have a significant number of homonyms from the Mundarica tradition to represent metal-working artefacts such as furnaces and minerals used to produce metal products. The cultural continuity and the indigenous origins of metal-working are areas for further research as excavations proceed on over 2000 Sarasvati River basin sites.

Bronze statue of a woman holding a small bowl, Mohenjodaro; copper alloy made using cire perdue method (DK 12728; Mackay 1938: 274, Pl. LXXIII, 9-11)

Foot with anklet; copper alloy. Mohenjodaro (After Fig. 5.11 in Agrawal. D.P. 2000. Ancient

Metal Technology & Archaeology of South Asia. Delhi: Aryan Books International.)
Examples of metallurgical skills of Indus artisans:

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Possehl, Gregory L. and Gullampalli, Praveena, 1999, The early iron age in South Asia. In Vincent Piggott, ed., The Archaeometallurgy of the Asian Old World. University Museum Monograph 89, MASCA research papers in science and archaeology Vol. 16, Philadephia: The Univrsity Museum, UPenn, pp. 153-175

Gold pendant with Indus script inscription. The pendant is needle-like with cylindrical body. It is made from a hollow cylinder with soldered ends and perforated oint. Museum No. MM 1374.50.271; Marshall 1931: 521, pl. CLI, B3 (After Fig. 4.17 a,b in: JM Kenoyer, 1998, p. 196)

Illustrated London News 1936 - November 21st

http://www.iln.org.uk/iln_years/year/1936a.htm A 'Sheffield of Ancient India: Chanhu-Daro's metal working industry 10 X photos of copper knives, spears, razors, axes and dishes. 1386

Copper model of a passsenger box on a cart. Chanhudaro, 'a Sheffield of ancient India'.

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Inscribed metal tools, copper tablets: Mohenjodaro, Harappa.

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Axe with inscription and other tools, Chanhudaro, Kalibangan

Copper tablets m0438; m1449; m1452; m1486; m1493; m1498; m1501; m0582 (123 copper tablets) 1389

Copper plate, Mohenjodaro with Indus script glyph.

Silver seals with Indus script inscriptions, Mohenjodaro

Inscribed lead celt, Harappa.(Slide 209 Harappa.com HARP)

Two pure tin ingots with Indus script inscription. Shipwreck in Haifa. More examples in embedded document (attached at the end). Chanhudaro was called Sheffield of the east (See embedded document decoding smith guild tokens)

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Indus script cipher: Hieroglyphs of Indian linguistic area (2010) Kalyanaraman, November 12, 2011 kalyan97@gmail.com Indus writing on utensils and metal tools

Decoded smith guild tokens

Bhirrana artefacts (See the dancing step glyph shown on a potsherd, decoded as 'iron').

1391

Copper celts, Bhirrana.

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Bronze statue, Mohenjodaro. 'Dance step' glyph on Bhirran potsherd. me body, dance (Santali) - meu-, v. tr. cf. -. [K. meu.] To spurn or push with the foot; . (. 12). (Tamil) meu to put or place down the foot or feet; to step, to pace, to walk (Ka.); meisu to cause to step or walk, to cause to tread on (Ka.) me dance (Santali); Rebus: me, mht 'iron'(Mu.Ho.)

Daimabad bronze chariot. c. 1500 BCE. 22X52X17.5 cm.

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Buffalo. Daimabad bronze. Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai.

Daimabad bronzes. Buffalo on four-legged platform attached to four solid wheels 31X25 cm.; elephanton four-legged platform with axles 25 cm.; rhinoceros on axles of four solid wheels 25X19 cm. (MK Dhavalikar, 'Daimabad bronzes' in: Harappan civilization, ed. by GL Possehl, New Delhi, 1982, pp. 361-6; SA Sali, Daimabad 1976-1979, New Delhi, 1986).

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The three animals: buffalo, rhinoceros, elephant occur together with a leaping tiger on a seal. cf. Decoding of animal glyphs and other glyphs on the seal as related to lapidaries/metalsmith/metalwork artisan guild/mint Indus script cipher: Hieroglyphs of Indian linguistic area (2010) Mleccha rebus decoding: ibha 'elephant' (Skt.) Rebus: ib 'iron'; ibbho 'merchant' (cf.Hemacandra, Desinamamala, vaika); badhia 'rhino'; Rebus: bahoe a carpenter, worker in wood; badhoria expert in working in wood(Santali); kol 'tiger'; kolla 'smith'; sal 'bos gaurus'; rebus: sal 'workshop'.]kamaha penance (Pkt.); Rebus: kammaa = mint, gold furnace (Te.) tttru 'buffalo horns' (Munda); Rebus: hahero 'brassworker'(Ku.)c, cl, cliy tigers mane (Pkt.)(CDIAL 4883)sodo bodo, sodro bodro adj. adv. rough, hairy, shoggy, hirsute, uneven; Rebus: sodo [Persian. sod, dealing] trade; traffic; merchandise; marketing; a bargain; the purchase or sale of goods; buying and selling; mercantile dealings (G.lex.) sodagor = a merchant, trader; sodgor (P.B.) (Santali) A jackal (Marathi) Rebus: Ta. kol working in iron, blacksmith; kolla blacksmith. Ma. kollan blacksmith, artificer. Ko. kolel smithy, temple in Kota village; kolhali to forge (DEDR 2133)(Kuwi). krda m. jump , grda -- m. jump Kh. [krd] S. kuu m. leap , N. kud, Or. kuda, d, kud -- kudi jumping about .krdati leaps, jumps MBh. [grdati, khrdat Dhtup.: prob. Drav. (Tam. kuti, Kan. gudi to spring ) T. Burrow BSOAS xii 375]S. kuau to leap ; L. kua to leap, frisk, play ; P. kudd to leap , Ku. kudo, N. kudnu, B. k d, kd; Or. kudib to jump, dance ; Mth. kdab to jump , Aw. lakh. kdab, H. kdn, OMarw. kda, G. (CDIAL 3411, 3412) Rebus: kunda turner kundr turner (A.) Vikalpa: u Pouncing upon, as an eagle; . (. 43, 5). Rebus: eruvai copper (Ta.); ere dark red (Ka.)(DEDR 446). [ klh ] [ klh ] Pouncing tiger glyph is read rebus: k d kol 'turner smith'. The four animal glyphs surrounding the seated person thus connote: merchant (ibbho), carpenter (bahoe), turner-smith (k d kol), workshop (sal). 1395

Addendum with glyphs and inscriptions consistent with the themes depicting repertoire of artisan-smiths of the civilization: A lexeme which may explain the 'mountain' or 'haystack' glyphs; Rebus: Rebus: mht, me iron (Mu.Ho.): kunda 'hayrick'; rebus: kundr turner (A.)

Indus script seal impression. Mohenjodaro. Symmetrically flanking goats with feet on central tree and mountin (ASI)

Sumerian cylinder seal showing flanking goats with hooves on tree and/or mountain. Uruk period. (After Joyce Burstein in: Katherine Anne Harper, Robert L. Brown, 2002, The roots of tantra, SUNY Press, p.100)Hence, two goats + mountain glyph reads rebus: me kundr 'iron turner'. Leaf on mountain: kamakom 'petiole of leaf'; rebus: kampaam 'mint'. loa = a species of fig tree, ficus glomerata, the fruit of ficus glomerata (Santali) Rebus: lo iron (Assamese, Bengali); loa iron (Gypsy). The glyphic composition is read rebus: me loa kundr 'iron turner mint'. kundavum = manger, a hayrick (G.) Rebus: kundr turner (A.); k dr, k dri (B.); kundru (Or.); kundau to turn on a lathe, to carve, to chase; kundau dhiri = a hewn stone; kundau murhut = a graven image (Santali) kunda a turner's lathe (Skt.)(CDIAL 3295) This rebus reading may explain the hayrick glyph shown on the sodagor 'merchant, trader' seal surrounded by four animals.Two antelopes are put next to the hayrick on the platform of the seal on which the horned person is seated. mlekh 'goat' (Br.); rebus: milakku 'copper' (Pali); mleccha 'copper' (Skt.) Thus, the composition of glyphs on the platform: pair of antelopes + pair of hayricks read rebus: milakku kundr 1396

'copper turner'. Thus the seal is a framework of glyphic compositions to describe the repertoire of a brazier-mint, 'one who works in brass or makes brass articles' and 'a mint'.

Ta. meu mound, heap of earth; mu height, eminence, hillock; muu rising ground, high ground, heap. Ma. mu rising ground, hillock; mu hillock, raised ground; mil rising ground, an alluvial bank; (Tiyya) maa hill. Ka. mu height, rising ground, hillock; miu rising or high ground, hill; mie state of being high, rising ground, hill, mass, a large number; (Hav.) mue heap (as of straw). Tu. mi prominent, protruding; mue heap. Te. mea raised or high ground, hill; (K.) meu mound; mia high ground, hillock, mound; high, elevated, raised, projecting; (VPK) mu, ma, mi stack of hay; (Inscr.) mea-cnu dry field (cf. meu-nla, meu-vari). Kol. (SR.) me hill; (Kin.) me, (Hislop) met mountain. Nk. me hill, mountain. Ga. (S.3, LSB 20.3) mea high land. Go. (Tr. W. Ph.) ma, (Mu.) maa mountain; (M. L.) me id., hill; (A. D. Ko.) mea, (Y. Ma. M.) mea hill; (SR.) me hillock (Voc. 2949). Kona mea id. Kuwi (S.) metta hill; (Isr.) mea sand hill. (DEDR 5058) kamakom = fig leaf (Santali.lex.) kamarma (Has.), kamakom (Nag.); the petiole or stalk of a leaf (Mundari.lex.)Rebus: kampaam coinage, coin (Ta.)(DEDR 1236) kampaa- muai die, coining stamp (Ta.) Vikalpa: lo iron (Assamese, Bengali); loa iron (Gypsy)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/11/mohenjo-daro-stupa-great-bath-modeled.html Mohenjo-daro stupa & Great Bath - Modeled after Ziggurat and Sit Shamshi (Kalyanaraman, 2011) Mohenjo-daro stupa & Great Bath - Modeled after Ziggurat and Sit Shamshi (Kalyanaraman, 2011)

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Executive Summary: Artisans of Susa and artisans of Mohenjo-daro were worshippers of the ancestors, offering morning prayers with water ablutions. The stupa of Mohenjo-daro should have been built over a ziggurat (memorial for ancestors) used for such water ablutions in the Great Bath situated which is located in front of the ziggurat.

Ziggurat of Ur. Ur was the capital of the Sumerian civilisation and once a great harbour city on the banks of the Euphrates river, until it changed its course and the city became lost, so that Wooley was forced to dig vast hole over 40ft deep to uncover the lowest levels of the city. Location: Nasiriya, Iraq Grid Reference: 30 57' 38" N, 46 6' 18" E.http://www.ancientwisdom.co.uk/iraqur.htm http://youtu.be/T-ZbIM2HcsEText -Ancient Iran-Elamite Empire (Video) Young explorers: a brief history of writing (British 1398

Museum)(Video)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7nM3YOwu00

Elamite king at worship, gold and silver statuette 12 Century BC, 3" high discovered 1904 by archaeologist Roland de Mecquenem at Susa's (shoush) acropolis.He carries an antelope on his hands. (Compare this glyphic with the cylinder seal showing a Meluhhan (merchant?) carrying an antelope.)

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Shu-ilishu's cylinder seal. Department des Antiquites Orienteles, Musee du Louvre, Paris.'Based on cuneiform documents from Mesopotamia we know that there was at least one Meluhhan village in Akkad at that time, with people called 'Son of Meluhha' living there. The cuneiform inscription (ca. 2020 BCE) says that the cylinder seal belonged to Shu-ilishu, who was a translator of the Meluhhan language. "The presence in Akkad of a translator of the Meluhhan language suggests that he may have been literate and could read the undeciphered Indus script. This in turn suggests that there may be bilingual Akkadian/Meluhhan tablets somewhere in Mesopotamia. Although such documents may not exist, Shu-ilishu's cylinder seal offers a glimmer of hope for the future in unraveling the mystery of the Indus script." (Gregory L. Possehl, Shu-ilishu's cylinder seal, Expedition, Vol. 48, Number 1, pp. 42-43) A slide show of Iran's history in Louvre Museum in Paris (Video) http://youtu.be/MiOC3w70juM

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Stupa area on the right; Great Bath area on the left

Stupa seen from north-west after excavation [Marshall, MIC, Pl. xv(a)].

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Great Bath from north, showing rooms and fenestrated wall around [Marshall, MIC, Pl. xxi(b)].

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"The stupa and monastery, we have reason to think, cover an important building which was possibly a temple; for nowhere else have we come upon a religious structure." [Mackay, E., The indus civilization: Some connections with Sumer, Elam, and the West, Royal Central Asian Journal, Volume 1934 Number 3 (June 1934), p.424] This monograph postulates that a ziggurat as a memorial for the dead should have existed (below the post-Kushana stupa) in the Stupa mound. Hence, the name Mo-enjo-daro 'Mound of the dead.' Archaeologists and scholars may have to reassess the absence of a temple in the sites of the civilization. Consistent with the Sit Shamshi bronze model, the people of the civilization would have been sun worshippers, a tradition that has to be researched further into 1404

the traditions of metallurgists, the asurs, of Ganga valley. "The stupa and other mounds in the group which are about a quarter of a mile away from the main site must have been a special area and the site of the highest mound, which, by reason of having been selected by the later Buddhists who came on the spot some 2500 years later, must have been a very important place even when the city was flourishing. It has not been possible to probe into its interior owing to the presence of the well laid out Buddhist stupa and monastery around it but undoubtedly it will be excavated after the upper remains have been removed. Perhaps, it will be found to contain the most important or sacred of the shrines of the Indus valley people." (KN Dikshit, 1938, Lectures on the prehistoric civilization of the Indus valley, Lecture I)http://www.archive.org/stream/prehistoriccivil035044mbp/prehistoriccivil035044mbp_djvu.txt This continues the discussion on the traditions depicted on Sit Shamshi Bronze of Susa in the context of decoding a Susa cylinder seal with Indus script inscription. The related notes are athttp://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/11/decoding-indus-scipt-susa-cylinder-seal.html "...Susa and Elam were distinct entities (Vallat, 1980)...It seems that Mesopotamians in the late 3rd millennium B.C.E. considered Elam to encompass the entire Persian plateau, which extends from Mesopotamia to the Kavr-e Namak and Dat-e Lt (see DESERT) and from the Caspian (q.v.) to the Persian Gulf (Figure 1). Elamite cultural, if not political, influence in that period extended far beyond those limits, however, reaching Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the southern shores of the Persian Gulf (Amiet, 1986)." http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/elam-i What was the underlying language of the cuneiform inscription on Sit Shamshi bronze? Did it include some borrowings from mleccha (meluhha) speakers? Or, was the bronze made by mleccha speakers who used cuneiform to tag the monumental bronze model? What was the role of Indus script writers on a cylinder seal of Susa? Any links with Mitanni or the Bogazhkoi inscription referring to Vedic divinities in the march of pilgrims's progress across Eurasia and of artisans versed in metallurgical work -- like those in Raja-nal-ki-tila, Malhar and Lohardiwa of Ganga valley? Many questions call for many further researches. 1405

Sit-Shamshi (Muse du Louvre, Pars). Tabla de bronce que parece resumir sabiamente el ritual del antiguo Elam. Los zigurats recuerdan el arte mesopotmico, el bosque sagrado alude a la devoci n semita por el rbol verde, la tinaja trae a la mente el "mar de bronce". Los dos hombres en cuclillas hacen su abluci n para celebrar la salida del Sol. Una inscripci n, que lleva el nombre del rey Silhak-in-Shushinak, permite fijar su dataci n en el siglo XII a.C. http://www.historiadelarte.us/mesopotamia%20primitiva/arte-elamita.html

The oldest Elamite writing system. Maybe, an accounting tablet read boustrophedon (i.e. 'as the ox ploughs). Elamite, an adapted cuneiform occurred 4500 to 2300 before the present. Shows no affiliation to the Indus script. How Mesopotamian and Indus civilizations interacted with each other is not clear; maybe, there was some trade between Mesopotamia and a region far-east 1406

known as 'Meluhha' -- maybe, an identification of Indus civilization. Sit Shamshi bronze model is likely to be an Elamite model found in Susa which was a kingdom distinct from Elam. Susa seems to have been an area of intersection among Akkadian, Elam and Meluhha speakers.

m0314 Mohenjodaro Seal impression. See decoding of the longest inscription listing metallurgical repertoire of artisan guild at http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/11/decodinglongest-inscription-of-indus.html http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/F1-IndusCivilization/indus.htm The three distinct 'fish' glyphs have been read rebus. Fish + corner, aya koa, metal turned, i.e. forged; Fish + scales aya s (amu) metllic stalks of stone ore; Fish + sloping stroke, aya dh metal ingot http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/11/decoding-fish-and-ligatured-fish-glyphs.html Samavasaraa and a-pada (eight steps or tiers) compared with Sit Shamshi bronze of ziggurat with eight knobs on either side Samavasaraa is an assemblage and refers to the Preaching Hall of a Jina where gods, men and animals assemble to hear the sermon which a Tirthankara delivers, immediately after enlightenment. (cf. Dhanapala's comment on S'obhana, Stuticaturvims'atika, verse 94) Samavasaraa = Sam + avasaraa, lit. (building as)protective shelter; avasra 'going away'. *avaara protection, shelter . 2. *avara -- . [For semantic change to roof, veranda, porch cf. esp. ara -- . G. -- points to initial apa -- . In view of Pa. Pk. words derivation from apasra -- (Bloch LM 303, ND 63 b 10) is semantically unsatisfactory; these words also rule out conn. with upala -- n. courtyard before a house Kau. -- ar] 1407

1. Pa. saraka -- affording shelter, overhanging (of eaves) ; Pk. sari -- f. part round the outside of the door, terrace ; Bi. sr, (Gaya) usr veranda , Mth. (SBhagalpur) sro, Bhoj. sar; G. sr f. steps at entrance door, front portion of house ; M. osr f. veranda or unwalled space in front of or behind central part of house . 2. Pa. sraka -- m. outbuilding, shed ; Pk. sra -- m. cow shed ; Mth. osr, osarab outer veranda of house , Bi. osr, r, H. osr, us m. veranda, porch ( P. usr m. porch, vestibule, room on the roof of a house ).(CDIAL 848) *avasra moving aside . [Cf. avasrayati: sr] Pk. sra -- m. going away ; B. osr width, wide , Or. osr, usr, H. osr m. and adj.; M. osr, vasr, usr m. space left vacant, room for passing , osr m. intermission of work .(CDIAL 861)

(After Fig. 6 Worship of stupa at Mathura, Lucknow Museum) "Samavasaraa is based upon the architecture of a stupa which latter has for its prototype that of the ziggurt with three or more tiers...It is...quite reasonable to expect the stupas of the heterodox Buddhist and Jaina sects both of which originated in the land of the 'Asuryah Pracyah' of the S'atapatha, as being round in plan. The Daiva or Brahmanical funeral relics should be square in plan. Most of the Buddhist stupas are round while the Hindus even today raise small square terraced structures (with or without a tulasi-plant grown on top) over the ashes of the followers of the Brahmanical cult. A later word, synonymous with a funeral relic structure or stupa, is Aiduka, explained by the author of Amarakosa and Hemacandra as one having, inside it, a bone-relic. Now the Mahabharata, Vanaparva, 190.65 and 67 says that 'The men in the decadent age of Kali will forsake their own gods and worship the edukas and the earth will be dotted over the eduka monuments in place of temples of gods. Obviously, the text here refers to stupas (Aidukas) of the non-Brahmanical cults. According to a variant reading from the Southern Recension, recorded in the Critical Edition of the MBh, the reading is jaluka in place of eduka. Dr. Agrawala has shown that this jaluka or jaruka was obviously derived from the ziggurat. As shown by him, eduka or eluka was a later indigenous substitute for the original jaruka. He further quotes the Mahabhasya of Patanjali (commenting on Panini, V. 3.101) which 1408

refers to jarukah s'lokah, meaning verses pertaining to jaruka (i.e. stupa) worship, such as are found in the Saddharmapundarika and other works. That the jaruka or eduka (Aiduka) was a terraced structure is further proved by him from a reference to Visnudharmottara Purana, III.lxxxiv.1-4, which makes it a terraced temle in three tiers (bhadra-pithas) with a S'ivalinga installed on its top. He writes: 'As a matter of fact an actual specimen of the eduka monument having three tiers and a S'ivalinga at its top has been unearthed at Ahicchatra... But the traditional structure was certainly an early one and its range was at one time quite extensive. One of the four kinds of stups in Serindia was a remarkable quadrangular building in several tiers diminishing in size upwards, like a gigantic staircase.'(Agrawala, VS, Some foreign words in ancient Sanskrit literature, JUPHS, Vol. XXIII, 1950, pp. 150=151)...The structurl resemblance between Coomaraswamy's HIIA, fig. 69A, Agrawala's Ahicchatra Eduka and the Jaina Samavasarana is quite obvious to all. And the authors of the Mahabharata and the Mahabhasya seem to refer to the Jaina and Buddhist stupas when they speak of jarukas (ziggurats) or edukas. A study of the descriptions of the Samavasrana noted above will show that the three fortifications are an essential part of the 'Assembly-Hall'. Represented in stone or metl, the Samavasarana, extending horizontally, is expressed vertically (in elevation) as having three tiers or terraces. Even if it were to be expressed horizontally, the central Gandhkuti is to be shown on a platform, on a higher level that the other parts of the Samavasarana. Now a glance at the stupa in the relief from Mathura illustrated here in fig. 6 will show that the stupa, with its three railings very closely resembles the Jaina samavasarana. And why is the stupa represented in this way, as if it is a two or three-terraced structure? The stupa, or the funeral mound as described by the S'atapatha may or may not be an elaborate structure but, from at least the third century BCE, Indian stupas seem to have become elaborate in plan and elevation. No such Mauryan stupa is however known, but the highly ornate stups of the S'unga age, from Bharhut and Sanchi, suggest that the activity could have started from the Mauryan age. In the words of Coomaraswamy, a stupa can be described as follows: 'A stupa usually rests on a basement of one or more square terraces (medhi) or is at least surrounded by a paved square or circle for circumambulation, the terraces being approached by stairs (sopana); it consists of a solid dome (aa or garbha) with a triple circular base, and above the dome a cubical 'mansion' or 'gods' house (harmika, Simh. deva-koluwa) from which rises a metal mast (yai) the base of which penetrates far into the aa; and this mast bears a range of symbolical parasols (chatra) and at the top a rain-vase (varasthala) corresponding to the kalaa of the Hindu shrines. The form undergoes stylistic development; at first there is no drum, but later on 1409

the circular base becomes a cylinder, and the dome is elevated and elongated, and the base terraces are multiplied.' (Coomaraswamy, HIIA, p. 30, cf. also, the description of a stupa in the Divyavadana, quoted by Foucher, AL, Art Gre'co-bouddhiquie du Gandhara, Vol. I, p. 96)...Even the early Yaksa shrines such as the one illustrated in Coomaraswamy's HIIA, fig. 69A (if at all it is a Yaksa shrine and not a memorial shrine) was made after the manner of a ziggurat, like a mountain or a tower...The Jaina traditions speak of the first stupa and shrine, erected by Bharata, on the mountain on which Rsabhanatha obtained the Nirvana. The shrine and the stupas erected, Bharata made eight terraces (aa-pada) between the foot and the top of the mountain hence the name a-pada given to the mount. Here also is the underlying conception of the first Jaina shrine being an eight-terraced mountain, an eight-terraced ziggurat, or an eight-terraced stupa." (U.P. Shah, 1955, Note on Stupa, Samavasarana and Ziggurat, in: Studies in Jaina Art, Varanasi, Parsvanatha Vidyapitha Series 114, pp.123-128). The eight knobs on either side of the Sit Shamshi ziggurat are the a-pada of the mount temple in veneration of the ancestors.

Chath ( aha a. (- f.) Sixth, the sixth; Ms.9.164;7.13; V.2.1; R.17.78; $$; ai Sixty; Ms.3.177; Y.3.84. sixtieth.Sanskrit ahi, meaning sixth. Hindi: , also called Dala Chhath) festival is Surya festival. It denotes Shashti, the number 'six'. The festival begins on the sixth day of the month of Kartika in Hindu lunar calender (OctoberNovember). Celebrated in all parts of India, and in paticular in Bihar, Jharkhand, Terai and along 1410

the Ganga river valley.http://www.sulabhinternational.org/downloads/chhath_puja.pdf a. (- f.) Sixth, the sixth; Ms.9.164;7.13; V.2.1; R.17.78; $$ $ Mb.3.18.16. -Comp. - 1 a sixth part in general. -2 particularly, the sixth part of the produce of fields &c., which the king takes from his subjects as land-tax; - R.2.66; (the different kinds of produce, to the sixth part of which a king is entitled, are specified in Ms.7.131-132). a king (entitled to the sixth part of the produce); .5.4. - the sixth meal. taking food once in three days, as an expiatory act; - Ms.11.2. ah 1 The sixth day of a lunar fortnight. -2 The sixth or genitive case (in gram.) -3 An epithet of Durg in the form of Ktyyan, one of the 16 divine mothers. -4 A goddess worshipped on the sixth day of child-birth (Mar. ); iva B.6.48. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:JanakpurChhathParvaFestival.jpg

Sarnath archaeological complex

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Nalanda has a very ancient history and the Nalanda University was established by Gupta emperors in the 5th century. Nalanda was famous as a centre of Bauddham theology and educational activities. Attractions are the Nalanda University Archaeological complex, Archeological museum, Hueng Tsang Memorial Hall, Surajpur, Baragoan, Rajgir and Pawapuri. Distance: Rajgir 12km, Patna 95km(airport)

Left: Sit Shamshi Bronze (Depicting water ablutions on sunrise in front of Ziggurat): Susa Right: Great Bath in front of Ziggurat (used for water ablutions on sunrise in front of Ziggurat): Mohenjo-daro 1412

A distant diffusion of ideas comparing ziggurat, stupa and samavasaraa can be postulated. Stupa is a relic structure in honour of the dead. They now do what is auspicious for him. They now prepare a burial place (smana) for him to serve him either as a house or a monument. Four-cornered (is the sepulchral mound). Now the Devas and the Asuras, both of them sprung up from Prajapati, were contending in the (four) regions (quarters). The gods drove out the Asuras, their rivals and enemies, from the regions, and being regionless, they were overcome, wherefore, the people who are godly make their burial places four-cornered, whilst those who are of the Asura nature, the Easterners and others (make them) round, for they (the gods) drove them out from the regions. (Br. Translated by Julius Eggeling in Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 44, pp. 421,424) Ziggurat as mount of the dead In Mesopotmia, the mountain is the place where the mysterious potency of the Earth, and hence of natural life, is concentratedAs personifications of natural life they were thought to be incapacitated during the Mesopotamian summer, which is a scourge destroying vegetation utterly exhausting man and beast. The myths express this by saying that the God dies or that he 1413

is kept captive in the mountain. From the mountain he comes forth at the new year when nature revives. Hence the Mountain is also the Land of the Dead. (Frankfort Henri, The Birth of civilization in the Near East, London, 1951, pp. 54-55). "There is a rough terra-cotta relief found at Assur in a temple of the second millennium B.C. which shows a deity whose body grows out of the mountainside, while plants grow from his body and from his hands. "Deities like the main figure of this relief were worshipped in all Mesopotamian cities, although their names differed. Tammus is the best known of them. As personifications of natural life they were thought to be incapacitated during the Mesopotamian summer, which is a scourge destroying vegetation and utterly exhausting man and beast. The myths express this by saying that the god 'dies' or that he is kept captive in the 'mountain'. From the 'mountain' he comes forth at the New Year when nature revives...Thus the 'mountain' is essentially the mysterious sphere of activity of the superhuman powers. The Sumerians created the conditions under which communication with the gods became possible when they erected the artificial mountains for their temples." (ibid.) From Akkadian ziqqurratu, 'temple tower', from zaqru (to build high). Cognates? ikhar m.n. point, peak MBh., erection of hair on body, armpit lex. 2. *ikkhara - .[kh -]1. Pa. sikhara -- m. top, summit of mountain, point or edge of sword ; Pk. sihara -- n. crest of hill, top ; K. r m. top, pinnacle ; B. siyar place where head lies in sleep ; Or. siyara head pillow, head end of bed ; M. er m. end, extremity ; -- N. siur cock's comb (X ca -- 1?). - A. xihariba, xiya (hair) to stand on end, bristle , caus. xiyariba; B. sihar (hair) to stand on end, start , siharna to startle ; Mth. sihrab to shiver , H. siharn. 2. WPah.bhal. ikkhar f. precipitous ridge . (CDIAL 12435) (D) {NI} ``^marks ^burnt on the arm of the deceased for recognition by ancestors in the other world''. ^funeral. #28491. (Munda etyma)

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Discovery location: Ninhursag Temple, Acropole, Shsh (Khuzestan, Iran) Translation from French (Google): The Sit Shamshi is a three-dimensional representation of a ritual ceremony: two people, naked, crouch in front of one another and seem to practice a ritual purification by ablutions. Around them, various facilities related to the cult are visible: a basin containing holy water, bushes symbols of the sacred tree, two altars in the shape of ziggurats, steles, etc. The texts mention the "temples of the grove," cave sanctuaries where ceremonies related to the daily renewal of nature were accompanied by deposition of offerings, sacrifice and libations. The Sit Shamshi is perhaps a representation. It is also possible that this object is a commemoration of the funeral ceremonies after the disappearance of the sovereign. Indeed, this model was found near a cave, and bears an inscription in Elamite where Shilhak-Inshushinak remember his 1416

loyalty to the lord of Susa, Inshushinak. The text gives the name of the monument, the Sit Shamshi, Sunrise, which refers to the time of day during which the ceremony takes place. The cave sanctuaries have rarely been identified in situ, except in high places Levantine countries, such as Petra. Despite the change of dynasty which places Shutrukides sovereign power in Susa in the twelfth century BC, the ability of metal craftsmen demonstrating continuity of artistic tradition from the fourteenth century, the realization of other monuments exceptional as the statue of Queen Napir-asu or the large table of offerings to snakes. Source: http://www.3dsrc.com/antiquiteslouvre/index.php?rub=img&img=236&cat=10 Sit Shamshi Bronze can be used as an architectural model for reconstructing ancient Mohenjodaro stupa in front of two worshippers. The surround structures of jars holding metal artefacts, water tank model (comparable to the Great Bath) and L-shaped structure comparable to the granary in sites such as Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. What could be the meaning of the inscription on the Sit Shamshi bronze? Here is an excursus: The translation: 'Shilhak-Inshushinak, king here and there, made (this) sit shamshi of bronze...The 'ziggurat' is flanked at both short sides by a row of four low piles, often described as pyramidal or conical but, in this case, very smoothed. Resembling round loves, according to Gautier they represent offerings of cereals, exposed during the celebration of the sacrifice...The large jar was probably for the lustral water, being the equivalent of the apsu of Babylonian sanctuaries...On the left of the stela, in front of the left basin, there are three trunks of tree which, with the 'ziggurat', are the tallest item on the base. The branches, originally probably enriched by leaves of some kind of metal, are badly damaged...a three-dimensional Elamite husa, a sacral grove...Shilhak-Inshushinak, the same Elamite king speaking in the inscription of the model, had built 'grove temples' in various locations of the kingdom; most of them were dedicated to the god Inshushinak...in connection with the tables of Choga Zanbil, according to Vallat the ziggurat have a funerary character in Elam...Akkadian sit shamshi, meaning 'rising of the sun'; (sit alone is 'birth', shamash 'sun') and, in a broad sense, the direction or the point of the time of sunrise, i.e. the 'East' or the 'dawn'..."at sunrise...you sweep the ground on the bank of the canal and sprinkle (ritually) pure water around"...If si-it would be Elamite, it could be related to si-it-me which means something like 'prosperity, steadiness, good luck, wellness, 1417

bliss'...I was at this point when I turn to read a forgotten note by M. Rutten where, referring to this passage, she proposed to drop sit shamshi as a Semitic 'sunrise' and translate sit as 'durable (reign)' and shamshi as 'to grant, bestow'. ' (Gian Petro Basello, 'L'Orientale' University, Naples, 07/10/04: Finding a name for an archaeological finding": the sit-shamshi from Shush).http://www.elamit.net/elam/sit_lecture.pdf Read on... Mohenjo-daro stupa & Great Bath (Kalyanaraman, 2011)

Stupa Ceremonial centers, urbanization and state formation in Southern Mesopotamia - (Uruk.ppt embedded) Source: http://proteus.brown.edu/mesopotamianarchaeology/699 "Introduction: The spectacular development scheme of the Eridu temple is actually is a very valuable set of evidence, not only telling us about archietctural achievements of the Ubaid period in the southern Mesopotamia, but also we will see that it will form some sort of a bridge that connects the architectural and cultic traditions of the Ubaid period, that is the 4th millennium to the 3rd millennium, the following period, called Uruk period, after the massive type site of famous Uruk, in southern Mesopotamian plain, a little bit upstream than Eridu, but still on the ancient course of the Euphrates. But perhaps even more important than these two: the Eridu temple points out to a socio-economic phenomenon of the Early Mesopotamian civilization: the powerful role of the temple-household. It points out from early on as we will see in the Uruk period urbanizaton, how the temple becomes the symbolic center of the society, but also the symbolic monumental center of the human landscape. On the other hand, as a social institution, it eventaully gained an economic role, becoming the most significant component of the economic activity, as you 1418

read in Nicholas Postgate. Simply the temple came around to own lands and flocks and became perhaps the largest economical organization, initiating not only agricultural production but trade as well by accommodating its own merchants. So we have to start to see the temple a rather large economic entity than simply being a symbolic religious center." -- mr Harmansah Uruk (Omur Harmansah)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/11/decoding-indus-scipt-susa-cylinder-seal.html Decoding Indus Script Susa cylinder seal: Susa-Indus interaction areas Decoding Indus Script Susa cylinder seal: Susa-Indus interaction areas Background Fish glyph on a Susa pot has been decoded as Indus script. Seehttp://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/11/decoding-fish-and-ligatured-fishglyphs.html That the pot came from Meluhha has been further substantiated by analysing SusaIndus interaction areas. In particular, there is a bronze sculpture excavated in Susa, called Sit Shamshi. "Sunrise (ceremony)" This large piece of bronze shows a religious ceremony. In the center are two men in ritual nudity surrounded by religious furnishings - vases for libations, perhaps bread for offerings, steles - in a stylized urban landscape: a multi-tiered tower, a temple on a terrace, a sacred wood. In the Middle-Elamite period (15th-12th century BC), Elamite craftsmen acquired new metallurgical techniques for the execution of large monuments, statues and reliefs.

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Discovery location: Ninhursag Temple, Acropole, Shsh (Khuzestan, Iran); Repository: Muse du Louvre (Paris, France) ID: Sb 2743 width: 40 cm (15.75 inches); length: 60 cm (23.62 inches) Apsu, the body of fresh water lying beneath the earth and feeding all the rivers and streams. Cognate Indo-Aryan: p f., pl. pa waters RV. Pa. p, pa -- n. water , Pk. u -- f., Ash. ab, bu f., Kt. w, Wg. w, Pr. w, Dm. u, Gaw. a.(CDIAL 407) {V} ``to ^bail out water, to ^splash; to ^catch_fish by damming shallow pools and bailing out the water and then catching the stranded fish by hand; to ^serve, to ^ladle liquid food''. *Re. `to bail out (water)'. @W0012. #521. {V} ``to ^splash (someone)''. @V0594. #530. (Munda etyma) http://www.kavehfarrokh.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/elamitedravidian.pdfElamite and Dravidian: further evidence of relationship by David McAlpin in: Current Anthropology, Vol. 16, 1421

No. 1, March 1975, pp. 105-115 http://www.elamit.net/elam/sit_handout.pdf

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Cognate lexemes?-AS proclaim : asa--, ast--; prasati, praasana--, praas--. sa-- m. recitation, praise, curse RV. [as] n asa--. ast recited RV., auspicious AV., beautiful R. [as] Pk. sattha -- praiseworthy ; Pa. t xud God be praised ; -- Kho. (Lor.) ust beautiful , with and u not o, very doubtful. Addenda: ast -- : Kho. ust beautiful is Pers. BKhoT 67. (CDIAL 12365) :: (Z) {N} ``^watery ^rice''. | `?', `cooked rice; gruel'. *Loan?. #31510. (Munda etyma)

cit f. funeral pyre MBh. [ci1] Pa. citak -- f., Pk. ci -- , ciyay -- f., G. ce f. (CDIAL 4796) cti f. layer, pile, stack of wood TS. [ci1] Pa. citi -- f. heap (of bricks) ; Pk. cii -- f. layer, collecting together, building (a wall &c.) , ciig -- , cy -- f., ya -- n. funeral pyre ; Ash. bark of tree , Wg. (< cra -- NTS ii 250), Kt. k, Pa. k, Gaw. k.(CDIAL 4798) http://tinyurl.com/coobwur 1423

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Elamite inscription: "I, Shilhak-Inshushinak, son of Shutruk-Nahhunte, beloved servant of Inshushinak, king of Anzan and Susa, who made the kingdom grow, protector of Elam, I built a bronze sit-shamshi" I suggest that this religious ceremony in front of a ziggurat is a sandhyavandanam (morning prayer to the sun) by the metallurgist artisan from Meluhha. The prayer is a veneration of the ancestors whose remains are interned in the ziggurat/stupa. Further researches have to be done on the continuance of similar traditions in the metal smelting areas on Ganga valley, sites 1425

such as Lohardiwa, Malhar, and Raja-nal-ki-tila (where Rakesh Tiwari has found evidence of iron smelting in ca. 18th century BCE).

Mohenjodaro stupa

The ziggurat model is also comparable to the evidence of the ziggurat in Mohenjodaro and a stupa at Chaneti in Haryana. http://www.thebuddhistforum.com/buddhistart/monuments/stupas/148-buddhist-stupa-at-chaneti.html

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The discovery in Susa, of a cylinder seal (now in Louvre museum) with Indus script inscription (shown below) is a landmark event in historical studies. A seal made in Meluhha. The language of the inscription on this cylinder seal found in Susa reveals that it was made in Harappa in the Indus Valley. In antiquity, the valley was known as Meluhha. The seal's chalky white appearance is due to the fired steatite it is made of. Craftsmen in the Indus Valley made most of their seals from this material, although square shapes were usually favored. The animal carving is similar to those found in Harappan works. The animal is a bull with no hump on its shoulders, or possibly a short-horned gaur. Its head is lowered and the body unusually elongated. As was often the case, the animal is depicted eating from a woven wicker manger. http://tinyurl.com/bq3xul5 Indus script inscription on Susa cylinder seal Rebus readings of mleccha (meluhha) Arrowhead, smelter furnace, native metla, black metal: iumpi, n. < . [K. iumpu, M. iumbu.] Ant; . (. .) irumpu, n. < -. cf. for . [T. inumu, M. irumbu.] 1. Iron, literally, the black metal; . (. 209, 3.) 2. Instrument, weapon: . (. 782). anku twelve-fingers measure (Skt.); Rebus: arrowhead (Skt.) kui water carrier (Te.) Rebus: kuhi smelter furnace (Santali) ku f. fireplace (H.); krvi f. granary (WPah.); ku, kuo house, building(Ku.)(CDIAL 3232) aar 1427

harrow; -. 1. To press down; . (. 509, 8) Rebus: aduru = gan.iyinda tegadu karagade iruva aduru = ore taken from the mine and not subjected to melting in a furnace (Ka.) dula pair (Kashmiri); rebus: dul casting (Santali). The following maps were reported in http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/11/decoding-fish-and-ligatured-fish-glyphs.html wherein the fish glyph on the pot of Susa was decoded as aya fish; rebus: aya metal (Gujarati). This monograph researches the Susa-Indus interaction areas Susa-Indus interaction areas Location of Susa, in relation to Tal-i Iblis, Shahr-i-Sokhta and Mundigak provides a framework for analyzing the interaction areas of Indus civilization. Tal-i Iblis is a historic site which produced copper artefacts dated to ca. 6500 BCE. Artifacts found: metallurgical crucible fragments, pieces of copper ore, small copper objects and some slagWith dates falling unequivocally within the 6th millennium BCE, these laboratory analytical and experimental results make Tal-i-iblis the earliest site in Western Asia and in the world whose archaeological remains indicate the development of a copper extractive metallurgy. An MIT report examines a small corpus of artifacts from Tal-i Iblis, Iran dating to the mid-6th millennium BCE. When excavated in the late 1960s, these artifacts were presumed to be evidence of an early copper smelting technology on the Iranian Plateau, and they were delivered to MIT for further analysis. (2004) http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/33759 There was trade in turbinella pyrum between Indus civilization and Mesopoamia (Susa); trade exchange with Oman and Indus valley evidenced and discussed in http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/paleo_01539345_1984_num_10_1_4350 Turbinella pyrum is a signature tune of the civilization. A wide bangle of turbinella pyrum was evidence in the burial of a woman in Mehergarh dated to ca. 6500 BCE. Role of shell in Mesopotamia: evidence for trade exchange with Oman and Indus valley - T.R. Gensheimer (1984) http://www.docstoc.com/docs/102137299/Role-of-shell-inMesopotamia-evidence-for-trade-exchange-with-Oman-and-Indus-valley---TR-Gensheimer(1984)Role of shell in Mesopotamia: evidence for trade exchange with Oman and Indus valley T.R. Gensheimer (1984) Decoding Indus Scipt Susa cylinder seal Susa-Indus interaction areas

http://www.archive.org/download/mmoires01franuoft/mmoires01franuoft.pdf Jacques de 1428

Morgan, Fouilles Suse en 1897-1898 et 1898-1899, Mission archologique en Iran, Mmoires I, 1990 http://www.archive.org/download/mmoires07franuoft/mmoires07franuoft.pdf Jacques de Morgan, Fouilles Suse en 1899-1902, Mission archologique en Iran, Mmoires VII, 1905

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/11/decoding-fish-and-ligatured-fish-glyphs.html Decoding fish and ligatured-fish glyphs of Indus script (S. Kalyanaraman, November 2011) Decoding fish and ligatured-fish glyphs of Indus script (S. Kalyanaraman, November 2011) Decoding fish and ligatured-fish glyphs of Indus script Background Stastistical analyses on fish and related glyphs on Indus writing system are presented in two recent issues of Bulletin of the Indus Research Centre: No. 1 (Sept. 2009), The Indus script: text and context, a stastical-positional analysis of significant text segments by Sundar Ganesan et al.; No. 2 (August 2011), The Indus fish swam in the great bath: a new solution to an old riddle by Iravatham Mahadevan. Both monographs assume that signs have to be distinguished from pictorial motifs (or field symbols) for determining the semantics of the messages conveyed by the script. Positional analysis of fish glyphs has also been presented in: The Indus Script: A Positional-statistical Approach By Michael Korvink, 2007, Gilund Press. Hypothesis

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A hypothesis of this monograph that both signs and pictorial motifs are integral parts of the messages of Indus script. Both types of glyphs are read rebus to decode the Indus inscriptions of Indus language compiled by artisans (e.g. lapidaries, smiths) of the civilization. Susa of Mesopotamian civilization received (ca. 3rd millennium BCE) a pot containing metal artefacts shown in the figure. The pictures are thanks to Prof. Maurizio Tosi who made a presentation on the interaction areas of the civilization in an international conference in Delhi (2010).http://www.docstoc.com/docs/63999062/sarasvatiinteractionareas The pot and its contents had perhaps originated from Meluhha since the pot had a fish glyph inscribed. I suggest that this Indus script glyph conveyed the message from Indus artisans to merchant associates of Susa, that the pot had metal contents. The glyph is read rebus in mleccha (cognate, meluhha), the underlying Indus language. ayo fish; rebus: ayo metal. With this decoding framework of Indus script cipher, the ligatured-fish glyphs can also be read in the context of metal artifacts archaeologically attested of the bronze-age civilization. Argument

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Picture of Susa pot (cf. Maurizio Tosi) is, in my view, a rosetta stone of Indus script. Other rosetta stones such as the tin ingots with Indus script glyphs are discussed in the book, Indus script cipher (2010) by S. Kalyanaramanhttp://tinyurl.com/6f49g49 Any decipherment of Indus script has to consistently explain the writing irrespective of the objects on which the writing is presented. Mahadevan has to explain his reading of the meaning of the fish and related glyphs in the context of the inscribed fish glyph on the Susa pot. Read on... Decoding fish and ligatured-fish glyphs of Indus script (S. Kalyanaraman, Nov. 2011)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/10/itihasa-and-eagle-narratives.html Itihsa and eagle narratives Itihsa and eagle narratives

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Itihsa and eagle narratives - Inscriptions, glyphic, oral, language expressions of caravan traders, across contact areas of Eurasia

Contact of Indus language speakers span an expansive area from Muztagh Ata to Altyn Depe along the Silk Road, from Rakhi Garhi to Haifa across the Persian Gulf, and are attested by evidences of the eagle and other glyphic narratives. In the Mesopotamian epic of Anzu, the eagle steals from Enlil the Tablets of Destinities, a deed which causes the norms to be suspended and all brightness to be poured out. Anzu flies away with his prize into his far-away mountain. He is vanquished cut down with weapons. There is testimony in writing on Indu script glyphs and on Mesopotamian cylinder seals -- for this expression of life-experience, which finds echoes in allegories, metaphors and narratives in the oral Vedic-Avestan traditions of soma-haoma. Elamite lady spinner. Musee du Louvre. Paris. An elegantly coiffed, exquisitely-dressed and well fanned Elamite woman sits on a lion footed stool winding thread on a spindle. The stool on which the lovely Elamite lady sits has the legs of a lion or panther; the fish is also placed on a similar stool in front her.This five-inch fragment is dated 8th century BCE. It was molded and carved from a mix of bitumen, ground calcite, and quartz. The Elamites used bitumen, a

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naturally occurring mineral pitch, or asphalt, for vessels, sculpture, glue, caulking, and waterproofing.

The spinner and fish ligatured with six dots are hieroglyphs. kt spinner (G.) Rebus: khati 'wheelwright' (H.) ki = fireplace in the form of a long ditch (Ta.Skt.Vedic) ayo fish (Mu.); rebus: aya metal (G.) bhaa six (G.) rebus: baa = kiln (Santali); baa = a kind of iron (G.) Kur. ka a stool. Malt. kano stool, seat. (DEDR 1179) Rebus: ka = a furnace, altar (Santali.lex.) kola tiger, jackal (Kon.); rebus: kolami smithy (Te.) a neatly sewn theory, with careful borders and no loose threads, will scarcely reveal the inexhaustibility of mans expression of mystery and therefore will miss his mortal capacity for immortality. (Knipe, David M. (1967). "The Heroic Myths from Rgveda IV and the Ancient near East" from History of Religions, Vol. 6, No. 4 (May, 1967), p. 360) "Like the Revelation (ruti) itself, we must begin with the Myth (Itihsa), the penultimate truth, of which all experience is the temporal reflection. The mythical narrative is of timeless and placeless validity, true nowever and everywhere: just as in Christianity, 'In the beginning God created' and 'Through him all things were made,' regardless of the millennia that come between the datable words, amount to saying that the creation took place at Christ's 'eternal birth.' 'In the beginning' (agre), or rather 'at the summit,' means 'in the first cause': as as in our still told myths, 'once upon a time' does not mean 'once' alone, but once for all.' 'The Myth is not a "poetic invention" in the sense these words now bear; on the other hand, and just because of its universality, it can be told, and with equal authority, from many differnet points of view...It is in the marvels themselves that the truth inheres. 'There is no other origin of philosophy than wonder, ' Plato, Theatetus 1556. And in the same way Aristotle who adds 'therefore even a lover of fables is in a way a lover of wisdom, for fables are compounded of wonder' 1433

(Metaphysics 982B). Myth embodies the nearest approach to absolute truth thatn can be stated in words. (AK Coomaraswamy, Rama P. Coomaraswamy, 2004, 'The Myth' in: The essential Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, World Wisdom, Inc., p.267, p. 273). In Sumero-Akkadian mythology, Zu is a divine storm-bird and the personification of the southern wind and the thunder clouds. This demon, half man and half bird, stole the "Tablets of Destiny" from Enlil and hid them on a mountaintop. Anu ordered the other gods to retrieve the tablets, even though they all feared the demon. According to one text, Marduk killed the bird, but in another text it died through the arrows of the god Ninurta. The bird is also referred to as Imdugud or Anzu. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zu_(mythology) See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/10/decoding-lapis-lazuli-indusseal.html Decoding a lapis lazuli Indus seal; (context) Silk road and Indus valley contacts? This blog discusses further the location of Muztagh Ata close to Badakshan (source of lapis lazuli). See also: Gerd Carling, Georges-Jean Pinault, Werner Winter, 2008, Dictionary and thesaurus of Tocharian A,Volume 1, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. Georges-Jean Pinault, 2006, Further links between the Indo-Iranian substratum and the BMAC language in: Bertil Tikkanen & Heinrich Hettrich, eds., 2006, Themes and tasks in old and middle Indo-Aryan linguistics, Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, pp. 167 to 196. "...we have Toch. A. *ancu 'iron', the basis of the derived adjective ancwaashi 'made of iron', to which corresponds Toch. B encuwo, with the parallel derived adjective encuwanne 'made of iron'...The two forms go back to CToch. oencuwoen- non.sg. *oencuwo, the final part of which is a regular product of IE *-on...This noun is deprived of any convincing IE etymology...The term Ved. ams'u-, Av . asu- goes back to a noun borrowed from some donor language of Central Asia, as confirmed by CToch. *oencuwoen-...the BMAC language would not belong to the Indo-European family; it does not seem to be related to Dravidian either...New identifications and reconstructions will certainly help to define more precisely the contours of the BMAC vocabulary in Indo-Iranian, as well as in Tocharian."(p.192)] http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/09/central-asian-seals-seal-impressions.html Pinault parallels amu of Rigveda with acu of Tocharian. In Tocharian it means 'iron'. Tocharin language as an Indo-European language has revealed a word anzu in Tocharian which meant 'iron'. It is likely that this is the word used for soma in Rigveda. I have posted about this in the context of identification (discussed in this blog) of Muztagh Ata of Kyrgystan as Mt. Mujavat 1434

(mentioned as a source of soma in Rigveda). It is notable that in Mesopotamian legend of Ninurta, god of war and agricultural fertility hunts on the mountains, Anzu which is the lionheaded Eagle with the power of the stolen Tablet of Destinies. The 'eagle' is identified as yena in Rigveda and Avesta (saena meregh) as the falcon which brought the nectar, Soma. It is likely that soma as electrum (silver-gold ore) was bought from the traders who brought anzu from Mt. Mujavat.

The struggle of the eagle and the serpent found on a soapstone bas-relief in Nippur, ca 2500 B.C.E. Nippur vessel with combatant snake and eagle motif. Istanbul Museum. The design is raised above the base; the vessel of chlorite was found in a mixed Ur III context at Nippur in southern Mesopotamia. See Langdon, Semitic Mythology, p. 170 (fig. 65).

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Gyps himalayensis Native:Afghanistan; Bhutan; China; India; Kazakhstan; Kyrgyzstan; Malaysia; Mongolia; Nepal; Pakistan; Russian Federation; Tajikistan; Thailand; Uzbekistan http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/144352/0 http://www.oiseauxbirds.com/accipitrides/vautour-himalaya/vautour-himalaya-yt5.JPG

A winged jackal? This is a leaded bronze figure of a beast with eagle wings. This indicates that eagle hieroglyph connoted lead. If the beast is a jackal, the vikalpa is: kol tiger, jackal; read rebus: kol pancaloha or alloy of five metals (Old Tamil) Leaded bronze figure of a winged beast. Parthian or Sasanian, about 3rd century CE. Said to have been found near the Helmand River, Afghanistan. There is considerable debate about the date of this fabulous creature. It has been repaired several times and has a fourteenth-century Islamic inscription on one leg which cannot be read with certainty. However, the object probably dates either to the Parthian or Sasanian period. Fantastic creatures such as these dragons are often depicted in Sasanian art and are also found on the stone faade of the Islamic palace at Mshatta in Jordan, dating from around CE 740. Alternatively, the Parthian period may be suggested, as the decoration on the chest is very similar to that found on furniture legs now in the Muse du Louvre, Paris. These are very like Roman examples of the second to third centuries AD. Perhaps therefore a date in the late Parthian to early Sasanian period is possible for this piece. J. Curtis, Ancient Persia-1 (London, The British Museum Press, 2000) S.R. Canby, 'Dragons' in Mythical beasts-1 (London, The British Museum Press, 1995), pp. 1443 http://tinyurl.com/yqnb4p

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Caravan (traders, pilgrims) Two mollusks are ligatured on the head of the jackal. hngi snail, mollusc (K.); skh possessing or made of shells (B.)(CDIAL 12380) Rebus: S. L. P. sag m. comrade WPah.kg. (kc.) sgi m. friend , kg. sg, kc. sgi f., J. sag, sagu m. (prob. H. Him.I 212) (CDIAL 13084). Pk. sagha -- m. assembly, collection ; sagu m. body of pilgrims (whence sgo m. caravan ), L. P. sag m. (CDIAL 12854). Molluscs are also prominently ligatured on an Indus seal, to the shoulders of a woman, on a bronze belt stud: 2200-1800 BC, Northern Afghanistan Bronze Age, depicting a winged female figure poised between two griffins (jackals?). This may be called a compartmented seal perhaps worn on belts.

Mollusc also occurs as a glyph on a cylinder seal. Antiquities oriental: Syria seal 18th BCE. Cylinder seal and imprint, from Syria, 18th BCE. Presentation-scene before a warrior god. 1437

Steatite, H: 2,7 cm AO 21988 Cylinder seal from Mari showing a classic sickle-sword standing on a prostate enemy (Louvre AO 21988) http://www.lessingphoto.com/p3/080215/08021507.jpg Cylinder seal of Ana-Sin-taklaku, son of Darish-libur, servant of Zimri-Lim (king of Mari upto c. 1760 BCE). Later the seal was recut in the 18th century BCE to show the inscription of the new owner Adad-sharrum, son of Shamaiatum, servant of the god Ninshubur. The dress of the goddess falls open to reveal her nudity, a warrior god tramples an enemy underfoot. Facing these deities is a bearded king who holds a mountain goat. In the field are a rosette (sun?), a recumbent gazelle and a goose. Haematite; 2.7X1.5 cm. William James Hamblin, 2006, Warfare in the ancient Near East to 1600 BCE: Holy warriors at the dawn of history, Taylor & Francis(p.68) Phonetic determinant glyph: kola, klu jackal, jackal (Kon.Telugu) kul the tiger, felis tigris (Santali) [ kl ] m (Commonly ) A jackal. [ klh ] n A jackal. Without reference to sex. Pr. Even the yelling jackal can sing pleasantly when he is in distress. Applied to a practical joke. or [ klhka or klhkaa ] n Gen. in obl. cases with or , as To sit cowering; to sit as a jackal. To be arrived at or to be approaching the infirmities of age. 2 To be approaching to setting;--used of the sun or the day, when the sun is conceived to be about that distance from the horizon as a jackal, when he rests on his hinder legs, is from the ground. [ klhbhka ] or - f ( & To bark.) The yelling of jackals. 2 Early dawn; peep of day. [ klhhka ] f The yelling of jackals. 2 fig. Assailing or setting upon with vehement vociferations. (Marathi) Rebus: kola woman (Nahali); kolami forge (Te.).kolhe iron smelter (Santali) kol, kolhe the koles, an aboriginal tribe of iron smelters akin to that of the Santals (Santali) http://images.metmuseum.org/CRDImages/an/web-large/1982.5.jpg Shaft-hole axe head with bird-headed demon, boar, and dragon Period: Bronze Age Date: ca. late 3rdearly 2nd millennium B.C. Geography: Bactria-Margiana Culture: Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex Medium: Silver, gold foil Dimensions: L. 15 cm Classification: Metalwork-Implement Description. Ancient Bactria and Margiana were areas along the Oxus and Murghab rivers in modern Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan. While these areas were sparsely inhabited during much of the third millennium B.C., by about 2200 B.C. permanent settlements with 1438

distinctive forms of architecture, burial practices, and material culture had been established, supported in part by active trade with parts of Iran, Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley. This silver-gilt shaft-hole axe is a masterpiece of three-dimensional and relief sculpture. Expertly cast and gilded with foil, it represents a bird-headed hero grappling with a wild boar and a winged dragon. The idea of the heroic bird-headed creature probably came from western Iran, where it is first documented on a cylinder seal impression. The hero's muscular body is human except for the bird talons that replace the hands and feet. He is represented twice, once on each side of the axe, and consequently appears to have two heads. On one side, he grasps the boar by the belly and on the other, by the tusks. The posture of the boar is contorted so that its bristly back forms the shape of the blade. With his other talon, the bird-headed hero grasps the winged dragon by the neck. This creature is distinguished by folded and staggered wings, a feline body, and the talons of a bird of prey in the place of his front paws. Its single horn has been broken off and lost.

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m1390Bt Text 2868 Pict-74: Bird in flight.m0451A,B Text3235 h166A, h166B Harappa Seal; Vats 1940, II: Pl. XCI.255. Two seals from Gonur 1 in the Murghab delta; dark brown stone (Sarianidi 1981 b: 232-233, Fig. 7,8); eagle engraved on one. Seal impression. Louvre Museum; Luristan; light yellow stone; one side shows four eagles; the eagles hold snakes in their beaks; at the center is a human figure with outstretched limbs; obverse of the seal shows an animal, perhaps a lion striding across the field, with a smaller animal of the same type depicted above it; comparable to the seal found in Harappa, Vats 1940, 1440

II: Pl. XCI.255. Griffin, Baluchistan (Provenance unknown); ficus leaves, tiger, with a wing, ligatured to an eagle. The ligature on the Nal pot ca 2800 BCE(Baluchisan: first settlement in southeastern Baluchistan was in the 4th millennium BCE) is extraordinary: an eagle's head is ligatured to the body of a tiger. In BMAC area, the 'eagle' is a recurrent motif on seals. Gold seal. Bactria. A winged person flanked by two heads of lions (a) obverse; (b) reverse. After Ligabue and Salvatgori n.d. (1989): figs. 58-9; cf. Asko Parpola, 1994, Fig. 14.29, p. 255.

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Antiquities oriental: Mari Hero fighting or holding two bisons (top of the stele). Anzu, the lion-headed eagle with two ibex (bottom). Fragment of a relief panel with two registers Steatite (2645-2460 BCE) from Mari, Syria National Museum, Damascus, Syria http://www.lessing-photo.com/p3/080208/08020815.jpg [Imdugud is the storm bird, shown as a lion-headed eagle. an(IM)-du-gud/anzu lion-headed 1442

eagle, heavy cloud. The lion-headed eagle is the original Anzu.] http://www.louvre.fr/llv/oeuvres/detail_notice.jsp?CONTENT%3C%3Ecnt_id=101341986732253 24&CURRENT_LLV_NOTICE%3C%3Ecnt_id=10134198673225324&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_i d=9852723696500800&bmLocale=en In ETCSL glossary, zu is a verb with the meaning to know. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7b/Relief_Imdugud_Louvre_AO2783.jpg/800px-Relief_Im-dugud_Louvre_AO2783.jpg Zu as a lion-headed eagle, ca. 25502500 BC, plaque relief from Girsu, Louvre An.Zu was used as the emblem for the god Ningirsu. From Sumerian An: heaven and Zu: far. http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/edition2/etcslgloss.php?lookup=c1815.138&charenc=gcirc Itihsa and eagle narratives (Kalyanaraman, October 2011)

Mlecchita Vikalpa Mleccha Nighantu The heroic theft: myths from Rgveda and the Ancient Near East - David M. Knipe (1967) Posted http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/10/road-to-meluhha-dt-potts-1982.html Mleccha, linguistic area; Meluhha -- Locus and interaction areas Mleccha, linguistic area; Meluhha -- Locus and interaction areas This is an update to Meluhha Corpora (October 6, 2011) Milakkhu [the Prk. form (A -- Mgadh, cp. Pischel, Prk. Gr. 105, 233) for P. milakkha] a non -Aryan D iii.264; Th 1, 965 (rajana "of foreign dye" trsl.; Kern, Toev. s. v. translates "vermiljoen kleurig"). As milakkhuka at Vin iii.28, where Bdhgh expls by "Andha -- Damil' di." Milca [by -form to milakkha, vi *milaccha>*milacca> milca: Geiger, P.Gr. 622; Kern, Toev. s. v.] a wild man of the woods, non -- Aryan, barbarian J iv.291 (not with C.=janapad), cp. ludd m. ibid., and milca -- putt J v.165 (where C. also expls by bhojaputta, i. e. son of a villager). 1443

(Pali.lexicon) mlcch non -- Aryan Br. [mlch]Pk. maleccha -- , miliccha -- , meccha -- , miccha -- m. barbarian ; K. mh, dat. mas m. non -- Hindu (loss of aspiration unexpl.); P. milech, mal m. (f. milech, mal) Moslem, unclean outcaste, wretch ; WPah.bhad, mle_h dirty ; B. mech a Tibeto -- Burman tribe ODBL 473; Si. milidu, milidu wild, savage (< MIA. *mlcha -- or with H. Smith JA 1950, 186 X pulind -- ),milis (< MIA. miliccha -- ). -- Pa. me wretched, miserly rather < *mcca -- defective . -- With unexpl. -- kkh -- : Pa. milakkha -- , khu -- non -- Aryan , Si. malak savage , malaki -- d a Vdd woman . -- X pic -- : Pa. milca -- m. wild man of the woods, non -- Aryan ; Si. maladu wild, savage .(CDIAL 10389)*mlcchatva condition of a non -- Aryan . [Cf. mlcchat -- f. VP. -- mlcch -- ]K. muth, dat. atas m. habit or life of an outcaste . (CDIAL 10390)*mrcchati ~ mlcchati speaks indistinctly Br. [MIA. mr -- < ml -- ? See Add. -- mlch]K. brihun, pp. bryuhu to weep and lament, cry as a child for something wanted or as motherless child .(CDIAL 10384) Kuwi (S.) rca tuh'nai/mlekh'nai to rub (DEDR 228) Kuwi (.) meg- (-t-) to fall down or off, (tree) to fall; (S.) mekh'nai to outroot. (DEDR 4617) Ka. mke she-goat; m the bleating of sheep or goats. Te. mka, mka goat. Kol. meke id. Nk. mke id. Pa. mva, (S.) mya she-goat. Ga. (Oll.) mge, (S.) mge goat. Go. (M) mek, (Ko.) mka id. ? Kur. mxn (mxyas) to call, call after loudly, hail. Malt. mqe to bleat. [Te. mrka (so correct) is of unknown meaning. Br. m is without etymology; see MBE 1980a.] / Cf. Skt. (lex.) meka- goat.(DEDR 5087) 1 [MonierWilliams p= 831,2] 'goat' (Skt.) m m. ram , -- f. ewe RV. 2. mha -- 2, miha- m. lex. [mha -- 2 infl. by mhati emits semen as poss. mhra -- 2 ram (~ mha -- 2) by mhra -- 1 penis ?]1. Pk. msa -- m. sheep , Ash. mial; Kt. me/l ram ; Pr. m ram, oorial ; Kal. me, mealk ram , H. mes m.; -- X bhra -- q.v.2. K. my -- ptu m. the young of sheep or goats ; WPah.bhal. me\i f. wild goat ; H. meh m. ram .(CDIAL 10334) Mleccha, linguistic area (Excerpts from: H.W. Bailey) In the Annexe to John Hansman's 'Periplus' H.W. Bailey discusses three terms from the perspective of a linguistic area:mleccha-, baloc, and Gadrosia. (Bailey,1973 in: John Hansman, A Periplus of Magan and Meluhha, 1973, pp. 584-6). A. mleccha-; verbal mlecchati, mlia-, mlecchita1.1. Earliest reference is in the later Veda, atapathabrhmaa, 3.2.1.24: the noun mleccha-, used of Asura celestial beings who speak imprecise language whether ill-pronounced or foreign. 1444

The word helayo, variant hailo, is quoted. No vocalization is given for this mythic allusion. 2. Epic usage. Mahbhrata contrasts mleccha- with the rya- and has the mleccha-bh, 'Mleccha language', andmleccha-vk 'using Mleccha speech'. The Dharmastra text Manu-

smti, 2.23, has the mleccha-dea- 'Mleccha country' as unfit for Brahmanical sacrifices.
2. 1. The Mahbhrata places Mleccha loosely in east, north, and west. The Rmyaa has Mleccha for the Matsya people of Rajputana (see S. Levi, Journal Asiatique, XIe Ser., XI, 1, 1918, 123). 2. Varhamihira, c. 550 CE, placed the Mleccha in the upara- region, the western. His upararegion refers to the peoples beyond the Sindhu, Indus, for whom Mahbhrata had the epithet pre-sindhavah 'beyond the Sindhu'. Varhamihira has peoples reaching from Vokka'Wakhn', through Pancanada- 'Panjab', to the Prata-, Prada-, which is the Greek 'Parada-' placed by Ptolemy in Gedrosia. These Prada- are named in the Paikuli inscription of the Sasanians and in the inscription of Shpuhr I, Parthian text, line 2, in the list krmn skstn

twgrn mkwrn p'rtn hndstn 'Kirmn, Sakastn, Tugrn, Prtan, Hindastn. This position excludes
Levi's proposal of the Panjab for the Prata-. These Indian localizations give only 'beyond the Indus'. 3. Linguistic evidence 1. (a) Later Veda, mleccha- and verbal mlecchati, with participle in the Scholiast to Pini mlia-; mlecchita- is also cited. Patanjali has the infinitive mlecchitavai. (b) Pali, in the oldest texts, Dgha-nikya and Vinaya, milakkhu-, milakkhuka-, milakkha-,

milakkha-bhs, and latermilca-.

(c) Jaina older Ardha-mgadh, milakkha- (with Vokka- and yavana- (Wakhn' and 'Greek'), milakkhu-, milikkhu-, mileccha-, and Mhrr miliha- 'speaking indistinctly'. 1445

(d) Buddhist Sanskrit mlecha-, whence Saka Khotan mlaicha-. (e) New Indo-Aryan in R.L. Turner, Comparative dictionary, no. 10398, Kmr mch (with -

ch from older -cch-, not -k-); Bengali mech of a Tibeto-Burmese tribe, Sinhalese milidu, milindu 'savage', milis, maladu, Panjb milech, malech.
The Pali -kkh- was explained as secondary to -cch- by J. Wackernage, Altindische Grammatik, 1, 154; but was unexplained according to Turner, loc. cit. 2. The starting-point of the interpretation should be a form *mleka-, mlik-. Within the Veda there is a variation between -cch- (-ch-) and -k- as in Atharva-veda cchar- besides uklayajur-veda, Vjasneyi-samhit kal-'fetter',and within the Atharva-veda in parikit- and variant paricchit- 'surrounding'. Hence atapathabrhmaamleccha- may be traced to older *mleka-. The k was replaced by -kkh- or by retroflex -ch- or by palatalized -cch- in different dialects. Within the Veda there was also variation k-, k-, and khy- from ka-, corresponding to Avestanxs- from kas- 'to look at'. If the oldest form had then *mleka-, this -k- could be accepted as a substitute for a foreign velar fricative

(the sound expressed in Arabic script by kh). If the word *mlek- was a foreign name, it was adapted to the usual Vedic verbal system, giving participle mlia- in the grammarians, supported by the Jaina Mhrr miliha-. The vowel -e- of mleccha- was thus adapted into the ablaut system -e-: -i-. For recent comments on mleccha, see Wackernage, Altindische Grammatik. Introduction generale. Nouvelle edition...par Louis Renou, 1957, 73; M. Mayrhofer, Kurzgefasstes etymologisches Worterbuch des Altindischen, 699, mleccha.

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Sotka (Sokhta) Koh, Meluhha. On this map, Sokhta-koh is shown as a site in Meluhha. The coastal Harappan site at Sotka (Sokhta) Koh, 'burnt hill' was first surveyed by an American archaeologistGeorge F Dales in 1960, while exploring estuaries along the Makran coast, Balochistan, Pakistan. The site is located about 15 miles north of Pasni. A similar site at Sutkagen-dor lies about 30 miles inland, astride Dasht River, north of Jiwani. Their position along a coastline (that was possibly much farther inland) goes well with evidence of overseas commerce in Harappan times. Based on pottery styles, it is estimated that the settlement belongs to the Mature Harappan (Integration) Era (2600-1900 BCE).

Sokhta Koh, Meluhha as a trading outpost. Chris J D Kostman in his paper, The Indus Valley

Civilization: In Search of Those Elusive Centers and Peripheries, discusses: "A primary, if not
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the primary, rationale for long-range trade driving force would be a need for 'luxury goods,' raw materials, and other items not found in the riverine alluvial plain which made up the vast majority of the Indus Civilization. In the Indus Valley, sought-after materials included copper, gold, silver, tin, jasper and agate cherts, carnelian, azurite, lapis, fine shell, steatite, antimony, and ivory. Forays would have been made towards and beyond the civilization's peripheral areas to obtain these goods. At the minimum, then, there is an economic motive for inter-regional travel. Silvio Durante's study (1979) of marine shells from India and their appearance in the archaeological record in such distant sites as Tepe Yahya and Shahr-i-Sokhta in Iran, as well as in the Indus Valley, sheds light on the ancient trading routes of certain types of shells which are specifically and exclusively found along the Indian coastline proper. Durante primarily discusses the marine shell Xancus pyrum and the fact that it was traded whole and intact, then worked or reworked (into jewellry? sic) at its destination site, perhaps then moving on to other locations. The importance of this specific shell is that Xancus pyrum has a very limited geographic distribution and thus has almost the same significance in the field of shells as that of lapis lazuli in the context of mineral resources (as regards the determination of the possible routes along which a locally unavailable raw material is transported from a well-defined place of origin to the place where it is processed and, as also in the case of Xancus pyrum, consumed). Perhaps, as these shells crossed so many cultural hands, they were left unworked in order for the final owner or consumer to work the raw material into a style and usage specific to their region. Durante offers four possible trade routes from their gathering zone along the west and northwest Indian coast to destinations west: sea route direct to the Iranian coastal area; sea route to Sutkagen-dor and Sotka-koh on the Makran coast, then overland westwards; overland through the Indus plain and then through the Makran interior to Sistan; overland through the Indus Valley and then through the Gomal Valley to Sistan." Periplus of Magan and Meluhha -- John Hansman (1973) Road to Meluhha -- D.T. Potts (1982)

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Akkadian Cylinder seal -- ca. 2334-2154 BCE --. Cuneiform inscription: Su-ilisu, Meluhha interpreter, i.e., translator of the Meluhhan language (EME.BAL.ME.LUH.HA.KI). The Meluhhan being introduced carries an antelope on his arm. Musee du Louvre. Ao 22 310, Collection De Clercq. In a letter dated 16 May 1990, Dr. Dominique Collon comments on the iconography as follows: The seal depicts a seated figure, identifiable by her long hair as feminine and by her horned head-dress (chipped) as a deity. The flounced robe is also generally an indication of divinity. The child on her lap could be the owner of the seal but is more likely to be an attributor of the godess. The figures approaching the godess are probably the owner of the seal and his wife although it is possible that these are priestly figures. Several centuries later, in Old Babylonian times, it is the king who almost always carries the animal offering but he is probably seeking favourable omens and the deities he approaches are ther particularly connected with omens (see Collon 1986: III.37). On these later, Old Babylonian seals, the figure carrying a situla or bucket is generally a priest but here it is clearly a woman and there is nothing to indicate that she is a priestess of a queen. Both wear Akkadian dress and nothing distinguishes them as foreigners. The significance of the kneeling male figure and the pots behind is difficult to interpret: they could be an attribute of the godess, and the large pots on stands are used even today for water perhaps an additional reference to the godess fertility aspect. Among the seals illustrated by R.M. Boehmer (1965) seals 549 and 555 make clear that some sort of drink is involved. Boehmers plate 47 shows that the scene belongs to a well-established iconographical group and was not specifically created for the Meluhha interpreter indeed it was probably chosen from a range of ready-cut seals in a seal-cutters workshop and the inscription was added. This would account for the fact that the figures overlap the inscription frame on both sides. Boehmer attributes the seal to Akkadisch III period i.e. from Naramsin onwards. [cf. Parpola, 1994, fig. 8.4]

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Excerpt from Gonzalo Rubio (Shulgi and the death of Sumerian, 2006)[embedded]: "Line 211 uses the epithet 'black mountains' which may refer to Meluhha as in the Curse of Akkade (48): mu-luh-ha(ki) lu kur gi-ga-ke 'Meluhhans, men of the black mountains.' The same epithet kur gi 'black mountains' is used for Meluhha in Enki and the World Order (221). Thus, this may refer to the language of Meluhha. A Sargonic seal mentions an interpreter from Meluhha: shu-i-li-shu eme-bal me-luh-ha(ki); see Boehmer (Boehmer, R.M., 1965, Die Entwicklung der Glyptik wahrend der Akkad-Zeit, Berlin: De Gruyter: fig. 47 no. 557) and Edzard (Edzard, D.O., 1968-69, Die Inschriften der altakkadischen Rollsiegel, AfO 22: 12-20:15 no. 33)." (Gonzalo Rubio, 2006, Shulgi and the death of Sumerian in: Piotr Michalowski and Niek Veldhuis, 2006, Approaches to Sumerian Literature, Brill, p.170). Meluhha is the language of speakers from kur gi, 'black mountains'. Shulgi and the death of Sumerian -- Gonzalo Rubio (2006)

From the 'Praise of Gudea' a Sumerian text, we find the following references: 11 He purified the holy city and encircled it with fires . . . He collected clay in a very pure place; in a pure place he made silt into the bricks and put the bricks into the mould. He followed the rites in all their splendor: he purified the foundations of the temple, surrounded it with fires, anointed the platforms with an aromatic balm . . . From Elam came the Elamites, from Susa the Susians. Magan and Muluhha collected timber from their mountains . . . and Gudea brought them together into his town Girsu. Gudea, the great en-priest ooof Ningirsu, made a path into the Cedar mountains which nobody had entered before; he cut its cedars with great axes . . .like giant snakes, cedars were floating down the water (river) . . . In the quarries that nobdoy had entered before, Gudea,, the great en-priest of Ningirsu, made a patyh and then the stones were delivered in large blocks . . . Many other precious metals were carried to the ensi. From the Copper mountinas of Kimash . . . its mountains as dust . . . For Gudea, the mined silver from its mountains, delivered red stone from Meluhha in great amount . 1450

.. Was the red stone from Meluhha, ams'u (Tocharian), that is ams'u from Muztagh Ata, Mount Mujavat? In Gudea's enumeration of the materials he brought from different countries to build his temples, copper came from the mountains of Kimash and from Meluhha (kur Me-luh-ha-ta) came ushu wood (ebony?). Gold was obtained from a mountain (har-sag), named Ha-hu-um and from Meluhha...Carnelian came from Meluhha. (Leemans W.F., 1960, Foreign trade in the old Babylonian period: as revealed by texts from southern Mesopotamia, Brill, pp.11-12). Was Meluhha from the eastern coast of Africa or was Meluhha a reference to the language of traders from Indus Valley civilization? "The Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta uses in his titles the expression 'king of Dilmun and Meluhha'...There is a king of Dilmun by the name of Uperi, who paid tribute to Sargon II of Assyria. There is another king by the name of Hundaru, in whose days booty taken from Dilmun consisted of bronze, objects made of copper and bronze, sticks of precious wood, and large quantities of kohl, used as eye paint. In the days of Sennacherib, a crew of soldiers is sent from Dilmun to Babylon to help raze that city, and they bring with them bronze spades and spikes which are described as a characteristic product of Dilmun.(Samuel Noah Kramer, 1963, The

Sumerians: their history, culture and character, University of Chicago Press, p. 283). TukultiNinurta I, reigned between 1243 BCE and 1207 BCE. Landsberger suggested that Meluhha referred to in the Assyrian period may relate to EgyptEthiopia ('Southern Meluhha') because some materials such as gold and ivory earlier imported into Mesopotamia from 'Eastern Meluhha' were the same as those which came from 'Southern Meluhha'. (B. Landsberger, ZA, xxxv, 3, 1924, 217).Gelb locates Magan on the southern shore of Arabia on the Persian Gulf, extending east from ancient Sumer up to and including Oman. He locates Meluhha on the north shore of the Gulf including Iran past Elam and Anshan and the region east of there upto and including the Indus Valley. (I.J. Gelb, RA, LXIV, 1, 1970, 5). Leemans notes that Meluhha and the word Mleccha show similarities in form. (Leemans, 1451

Foreign trade in the Old Babylonian Period, Leiden, 1960, 164). Mleccha is mentioned in atapathabrhmaa (tr. J. Eggeling, SBE, xxvi, 32; ca. 600 BCE). John Hansman (1973) postulates Meluhha > Baluhhu ? Baluch with m and b interchanging and with the Iranian ending ch replacing the non-Iranian ending of Baluhhu. Identifying Telmun (Bahrain) as an entrepot for articles of commerce served during the reign of Rim-Sin (1822 to 1763 BCE) to continue supplies of copper, mesu-wood, carnelian and ivory which had been supplied earlier by Magan and Meluhha. Explaining eastern Meluhha and southern Meluhha "The name Meluha or Miluha reappears in letters written by Rib-Addi, regent of Egypt at Gubla (Byblos), to Amenophis III (1411-1375 BCE) and to Amenophis IV (1375-1358 BCE). In a series of urgent messages, Rib-Addi pleads for troops from Misri (Egypt) and from Meluha to be dispathed to Gubla for the protection of Egyptian territorial conquests on the Eastern Mediterranean...in many letters he appears to have resorted to a substitute name, Meluha, for that of the indigenous toponym Kashi or Kush which he and and officials in neighbouring Palestine also knew and sometimes used in place of Meluha...After the period ofRib-Addi, an association of Meluhha with Nubia and the Sudan is next recorded in an Akkadian text from the Hittite royal archives at Boghazkoi. This relates that slaves of Meluhha were among gifts received from Egypt by an unnamed Hittite king. We hear next of Meluhha and Magan from inscriptions of the Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I (1244-1208 BCE). In one text he styles himself King of Assyria, King of Telmun and Meluhha, King of the upper and the lower seas. The detailed Assyrian accounts of the conquests of Tukulti-Ninurta make no mention of his invading either the eastern or the souther Meluhha nor do they indicae that he at any time reached Telmun...Meluhha does not occur again in the historical texts for 500 years. It reappears in the annals of Sargon II (721-705 BCE) where, during an Assyrian advance on the rebellious state of Ashdod (in Palestine), the king of Ashdod fled to the side of Musur (Egypt), which is on the border of Meluhha. For the first time now there appears to be clear evidence of the association by the Assyrians of Meluhha with a district in the south near Egypt. An inscription of Sennacherib (704-681 BCE), successor of Sargon II, relates how rebels who rose against Assyrian rule in Palestine sought military assistance from the king of Musur (Egyp), and 1452

bowmen, chariots, and horses from the king of Meluhha. Sennacherib claims that he later captured the charioteers of Egypt and Meluhha. The succeeding Assyrian king, Esarhaddon (680-669 BCE)...advanced from Tyre to Musur and then toward Meluhha. This implies that Meluhha is to be found beyond Musur (Egypt), that is to say the country of Kush...It seems clear...that Kush and Meluhha are used alternatively to identify the same country...Lastly to be considered in the present survey are the annals of Assurbanipal (668-627 BCE). In editions B and D of this text Assurbanipal claims that 'on my first campaign I marched against Magan and Meluhha'...the passages which follow refer consistently to Musur and to Kusi. It is therefore reasonable to consider that Magan is used here as an alternative toponym for Musur and Meluhhaa for Kusi. " (John Hansman, opcit., pp. 574-7). Together with the cylinder seal of Su-ilisu, Meluhha interpreter showing the interconnection between Mesopotamia and Meluhha, a cylinder seal of a scribe shows the same interconnection during 3rd millennium BCE.

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The glyphic composition on the S'u-ilis'u cylinder seal shows the Meluhhan carrying a goat. A comparable metaphor is seen on an Elamite king shown carrying a goat in statuettes made of gold and silver.

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 Elamite king at worship, gold and silver statuette 12 Century BC, 3" high The goat glyph is a phonetic determinant of his calling or profession. mlekh, mrekagoat (Br.Telugu); rebus: milakkhu copper. An Ur III text refers to mash ga me-luh-ha, the Meluhhan milk goat. The lexeme mashmay be a borrowing from Meluhhan mr..eka 'goat'. cf. Hebrew: z 'goat' [KB 804] Syrian Aramaic: ezz 'capra' [Brock. 535] The jar glyph shown carried by the accompanying woman is a phonetic determinant of her calling or profession. kaNDa = a pot of certain shape and size (Santali) Rebus: ka= altar, furnace (Santali) Thus, the party visiting an Akkadian principal seated on a stool is depicted rebus as a smith family working with copper furnace. Cylinder seal of Ibni-Sharrum, scribe. Reign of Sharkali-sharri (2217-2193 BCE). 3.9 cm. high; 1455

2.6 cm. dia. AO 22303, Musee du Louvre, Antiquites orientalesVideo created by the Cyprus Institute. A masterpiece of glyptic art This seal, which belonged to Ibni-Sharrum, the scribe of King Sharkali-Sharri, who succeeded his father Naram-Sin, is one of the most striking examples of the perfection attained by carvers in the Agade period. The two naked, curly-headed heroes are arranged symmetrically, halfkneeling. They are both holding vases from which water is gushing as a symbol of fertility and abundance; it is also the attribute of the god of the river, Enki-Ea, of whom these spirits of running water are indeed the acolytes. Two arni, or water buffaloes, have just drunk from them. Below the scene, a river winds between the mountains represented conventionally by a pattern of two lines of scales. The central cartouche bearing an inscription is held between the buffaloes' horns. A scene testifying to relations with distant lands Buffaloes are emblematic animals in glyptic art in the Agade period. They first appear in the reign of Sargon, indicating sustained relations between the Akkadian Empire and the distant country of Meluhha, that is, the present Indus Valley, where these animals come from. These exotic creatures were probably kept in zoos and do not seem to have been acclimatized in Iraq at the end of the 3rd millennium BC. Indeed, it was not until the Sassanid Empire that they reappeared. The engraver has carefully accentuated the animals' powerful muscles and spectacular horns, which are shown as if seen from above, as they appear on the seals of the Indus. The production of a royal workshop The calm balance of the composition, based on horizontal and vertical lines, gives this tiny low relief a classical monumental character, typical of the style of the late Akkadian period. Seals of this quality were the preserve of the entourage of the royal family or high dignitaries and were probably made in a workshop whose production was reserved for this elite. 1456

See hieroglyphs of buffalo, kneeling (person), overflowing jar read rebus athttp://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/09/meluhha-epigraphia-indus-language.html Excerpts: The glyphs denoting 'buffalo', 'horns', 'overflow', 'kneeling': sal = Indian Gaur, Bos Gaurus(or, Gavaeus Gaurus). Rebus : sal = v. open a smithy, work a smithy; open a beer-shop, a sugar-cane press; ale manjhi tolare kamarko sal akata = the blacksmiths have a smithy in that part of the village where our headman has his house; teken kamarko sal akata = the blacksmiths are working to-day (have started their forge)(Santali.lex.Bodding) tAttAru 'buffalo horn'(Mu.) Rebus: ThaThero brass worker(Ku.) (L) {N} ``^buffalo horn''. #64001.(S) {N} ``long ^horn, kind of ^conch''. #64010. So(L){N} ``^buffalo horn''.Ta.tu tt&ab revmacr;ri a kind of bugle-horn.Ma. tuttrihorn, trumpet.Ka. tutri, tuttri, tuttri a long trumpet.T u. tuttri, tuttri trumpet,horn, pipe.Te.tu tr a kind of trumpet. / Cf. Mar.tu tr a wind instrument, a sort of horn. (DEDR 3316) Rebus: N. haunu to strike, beat , hai striking , hak -- huuk noise of beating ; H. hahn to beat , hah f. noise of beating .(CDIAL 5490). *hahakra brass worker . 2. *hahakara -- . [*haha -- 1, kra -- 1]1. Pk. hahra -- m., K. h hur m., S. hhro m., P. hahir, r m.2. P. ludh. haher m., Ku. hahero m., N. haero, Bi. haher, Mth. haheri, H. haher m.(CDIAL 5493).Ta. tau (tai-) to knock, tap, pat, strike against, dash against, strike, beat, hammer, thresh; n. knocking, patting, breaking, striking against, collision; taam clapping of the hands; taal knocking, striking, clapping, tapping, beating time; ta gold or silver smith; fem. tatti. Ma. tau a blow, knock; tauka to tap, dash, hit, strike against, knock; tan goldsmith; fem. tatti; taran washerman; taikka to cause to hit; taippu beating. Ko. ta(tac-) to pat, strike, kill, (curse) affects, sharpen, disregard (words); ta a- (ac) to stagger from fatigue. To. to a slap; to- (toy-) to strike (with hammer), pat, (sin) strikes; to- (to-) to bump foot; toxn, toxn goldsmith; fem. toty, toxity; tok n- (-) to be tired, exhausted. Ka. tau to tap, touch, come close, pat, strike, beat, clap, slap, knock, clap on a thing (as cowdung on a wall), drive, beat off or back, remove; n. slap or pat, blow, blow or knock of disease, danger, 1457

death, fatigue, exhaustion. Ko. ta- (tai-) to touch, pat, ward off, strike off, (curse) effects; ta goldsmith; fem. taati (Shanmugam). Tu. tavuni to cause to hit, strike. Te. tau to strike, beat, knock, pat, clap, slap; n. stripe, welt; taravu goldsmith or silversmith. Kur. tan (tacas) to flog, lash, whip. Malt. tace to slap.(DEDR 3039). (B) {V} ``(pot, etc.) to ^overflow''. See `to be left over'. @B24310. #20851.(B) {V} ``to be ^left over, to be ^saved''. Caus. . @B24300. #20861. Rebus: loa 'iron' (Mu.)Re(B),,(B) {N} ``^iron''. Pl. <-le> kaNDa = a pot of certain shape and size (Santali) Rebus: ka = altar, furnace (Santali) f. a blacksmith's smelting furnace (Grierson Kashmiri lex.) Note: [Monier-Williams lexicon, p. 250,1]mf. ( Un2. i , 15), a boiler , saucepan , or other cooking utensil of iron Sus3r. Ma1lav. Comm. on Ka1tyS3r. -- [p= 85,1] [L=14772]m. n. " a quantity of iron " or " excellent iron " , (g. * q.v.) If the semantics of kandu 'kiln' (Kashmiri) are applied to the glyph of 'arrow' read as , it is possible to surmise that -- should have (in the days of artisans who inscribed the Indus script glyphs of 'fish', 'arrow') meant 'iron (smelter or) furnace'. The glyptic element of 'kneeling' is perhaps relatable to the following rebus readings: Ta. mai kneeling, kneeling on one knee as an archer. Ma. mauka to be seated on the heels. Ka. mai what is bent, the knee. Tu. mai knee. Te. ma kneeling on one knee. Pa. matel knee; mai kutel kneeling position. Go. (L.) me, (G. Mu. Ma.) mina knee (Voc. 2827). Kona (BB) mea, mea id. Pe. mena id. Man. mene id. Kui mena id. Kuwi (F.) menda, (S. Su. P.) mena, (Isr.) mea id. Cf. 4645 Ta. maaku (mai-forms). / ? Cf. Skt. mak(DEDR 4677) maa = a branch; a twig; a twig with leaves on it (Te.lex.) Rebus: mahwa, maua, mawa a temporary shed or booth erected on the occasion of a marriage (Santali) ma = warehouse, workshop (Kon.lex.) ma = warehouse, workshop (Kon.lex.) ma. 'large grain market' (Urdu) 1458

The hieroglyphs thus connote: 'scribe of a blacksmith's smelting furnace workshop (forge) and warehouse (manDa)'. Listen also to the audio commentary on the Cylinder seal of Ibni-sharrum (Muse du Louvre, Dpartement des Antiquits Orientales, Paris AO 22303); transcript is as follows: Paul Collins Look closely: this particularly beautiful cylinder seal shows us the epitome of fine Akkadian carving. As well it should: its inscriptioncontained in the rectangle on the animals' backsays that the seal belonged to king Shar-kali-sharri's scribe. Look at the modern impression made from the seal, and notice the muscles articulated on the men's bodies. They pour water from sacred pots, to quench the thirst of two water buffalo. But water buffalo were not native to Mesopotamia! These animals are depicted in a manner typical of imagery from the Indus Valley, in present-day Pakistan. This seal is a favorite of the curator of this exhibition, Joan Aruz: Joan Aruz If there is one object in this show that embodies the concepts that we have been trying to illuminate in this exhibit, I would have to say it's the seal of the scribe of Shar-kali-sharri. An exquisite work of art, miniature in size, monumental in effect, combining imagery that derives, perhaps, from the Indus Valley; executed in a style that expresses the highest artistic achievements of the art of the third millennium B.C. http://www.metmuseum.org/special/First_Cities/firstcities_stop7.htm

Cylinder seal Date: ca. 3000 BCE. Accession Number: 1984.175.26 (Metmuseum). The cylinder seal shows a goat and a lion flanking a winged bird. All three are hieroglyphs connoting calling or profession in the context of smithy or mineral-/metal-work. 1459

Goat: mr..eka goat; melukkha copper. Lion: ari lion; ra brass as in raka (Skt.) era = copper; erako = molten cast (G.) abru = wing (Akkadian/Assyrian) Rebus: abru = lead; antimony (annaku is most unlikely to be lead rather than tin).(cf. CAD A (II): 126; AHw 49) (Akkadian/Assyrian). abaru = enclose, surround; aburru = enclosure (Akkadian/Assyrian) abaru = be strong, powerful; strength, power (Akkadian/Assyrian) Lion: Ari (Numbers 24:9) or Aryeh (2 Samuel 17:10) is the Hebrew for "lion", cognate to Akkadian aria, Aramaic arya. The word is in use as a male first name. Gur-aryeh "lion cub" is attested in Jacob's blessing on Judah (Genesis 49:9), "Judah is a lion's whelp; on prey, my son, have you grown". The Hebrew name Ari-el translates to "lion of God".

Mohenjodaro pectoral showing glyphics: rim of jar, jar, overflowing, one-horned heifer, pannier, standard device. All glyphics read rebus denote the pectoral owners calling or profession. In this case, a smith working with furnace (smelting copper) workshop. kraka m. projection on the side of a vessel, handle Br. [kra -- ] Pa. kaaka -- having ears or corners ; Wg. ka ear -- ring NTS xvii 266; S. kano m. rim, border ; P. kann m. obtuse angle of a kite ( H. kann m. edge, rim, handle ); N. knu end of a rope for supporting a burden ; B. k brim of a cup , G. kn m.; M. kn m. touch -- hole of a gun . (CDIAL 2831) Rebus: kraa n. act, deed RV. [kr1] Pa. karaa -- n. doing ; NiDoc. karana, karana work ; Pk. karaa -n. instrument ; N. dan -- karnu toothpick , kan -- karnu ear -- pick ; B. karn, kann work, duty ; M. kar n. action, deed ; Si. karaa occupation, trade, copulation ; -- P. karn f. mason's trowel (B. D. Jain PhonPj 116 < karaa -- ); H. karn f. mason's trowel , M. kar f. (CDIAL 2790)

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