The book may rightly be described as the first-hand information to the world about the Indus Script finally cracked. Unlike the earlier publications on the Enigmatic Indus Script, the present book. For the first time, the logical methodology of Scientific Formal Theory as used by the age-old Geometry and later Theoretical Physics has been successfully adopted in the decipherment of the Indus Script. Computer-aided approach has all along been the order of the day. A software entitled Indus Script Analyzer developed by the author has been extensively used in the examination, analysis, and interpretation of the Indus inscriptions.An exclusive Indus Script Font developed as well by the author and called Sandira-Harappan.ttf has been used for typing Indus Signs. Names of well-known rural deities, city names, and names of professionals have been identified.A Glossary of Deciphered Indus Signs and a Glossary of Interpreted Indus texts are included in the book.

Of the writing systems of the ancient world which still await deciphering, the Indus script is the most important. It developed in the Indus or Harappan Civilization, which flourished c. 2500-1900 BC in and around modern Pakistan, collapsing before the earliest historical records of South Asia were composed. Nearly 4,000 samples of the writing survive, mainly on stamp seals and amulets, but no translations. Professor Parpola is the chief editor of the Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions. His ideas about the script, the linguistic affinity of the Harappan language, and the nature of the Indus religion are informed by a remarkable command of Aryan, Dravidian, and Mesopotamian sources, archaeological materials, and linguistic methodology. His fascinating study confirms that the Indus script was logo-syllabic, and that the Indus language belonged to the Dravidian family.

Since The Formulation Of Indo-European Theory In The 19Th C., Sanskrit Has Been Considered The Language Brought Over By The Aryas. This Raised The Question After The Discovery Of The Harappan Culture: What Was The Language Of The Harappans? This Book Tries To Answer This Question. Since The 19Th C. Sanskrit Has Been Considered The Language Of The Aryas. This Book Questions This Formulation And After Critically Reviewing The Evidence Of The Indo-Europeanists Offers An Alternative, Viz. That Akkadian, As The Language Of The Asuras, The Original Inhabitants Of The Land, Is The Parent Of Vedic And Classical Sanskrit.

A description of a methodology by which to decipher the writing of the Harappan civilization. The methodology is then applied and the results set forth in detail. There, results coupled with the author's extensive archaeological knowledge of the Indus Civilization creates a picture of ancient South Asian life much of which in content is unique.

Hinduism has two major roots. The more familiar is the religion brought to South Asia in the second millennium BCE by speakers of Aryan or Indo-Iranian languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family. Another, more enigmatic, root is the Indus civilization of the third millennium BCE, which left behind exquisitely carved seals and thousands of short inscriptions in a long-forgotten pictographic script. Discovered in the valley of the Indus River in the early 1920s, the Indus civilization had a population estimated at one million people, in more than 1000 settlements, several of which were cities of some 50,000 inhabitants. With an area of nearly a million square kilometers, the Indus civilization was more extensive than the contemporaneous urban cultures of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Yet, after almost a century of excavation and research the Indus civilization remains little understood. How might we decipher the Indus inscriptions? What language did the Indus people speak? What deities did they worship? Asko Parpola has spent fifty years researching the roots of Hinduism to answer these fundamental questions, which have been debated with increasing animosity since the rise of Hindu nationalist politics in the 1980s. In this pioneering book, he traces the archaeological route of the Indo-Iranian languages from the Aryan homeland north of the Black Sea to Central, West, and South Asia. His new ideas on the formation of the Vedic literature and rites and the great Hindu epics hinge on the profound impact that the invention of the horse-drawn chariot had on Indo-Aryan religion. Parpola's comprehensive assessment of the Indus language and religion is based on all available textual, linguistic and archaeological evidence, including West Asian sources and the Indus script. The results affirm cultural and religious continuity to the present day and, among many other things, shed new light on the prehistory of the key Hindu goddess Durga and her Tantric cult.

Scientists discover Y-DNA haplogroups O2a and mt-DNA haplogroup M4a in the Rakhigarhi ancient DNA. These haplogroups are associated with the speakers of Austro-Asiatic languages such as Mundari, Santali and Khasi. These haplogroups and related languages are also present in Southeast Asia. In India, speakers of these languages are currently found mostly in Central and East India. Even though a prominent philologist of Harvard University, Mr. Michael Witzel, has argued the case for a language close to Munda (which he calls para-Mundari) being one of the languages of the erstwhile Indus Valley, a finding of this nature will come as a surprise to most others. So if the genetics do find haplogroups O and M4a in Rakhigarhi, some of our current understanding of Indian history may have to be revised. Tony Joseph in The Hindu, December 23, 2017