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.

The deciphering of the Indus script has met with suspicion and is exposed to ridicule even. Many people are nowadays of the opinion that the Indus script is altogether indecipherable, if not a bilingual of considerable size turns up. The approach to a decipherment presented in this volume makes avail of a bilingual, too, but its masterkey is the discovering of the symbolic connection of the Indus signs with the metaphoric language of the Rg-Veda. Nearly 200 inscriptions, among them the longest and those with the most interesting motifs, have been decoded here by setting them syllable for syllable in relation to Rg-Vedic verses. The results that were gained by this method for the pictographic values of the Indus signs are surprising and far beyond the possibilities of the most daring phantasy. At the same time many problems of the Rg-Veda could be solved or new insights be won.

Since the discovery of the Indus Civilization, the meaning of the enigmatic Indus script remains hidden in its four hundred characters. While many would-be-decipherers have attempted to unravel its meaning with the aid of a presumed underlying language, none of these attempts has proven successful. In response, the approach taken in this work does not preclude an underlying language, but offers an alternate approach where the positional patterns of the Indus signs are investigated in an attempt to segment the character strings. Michael Korvink is a former instructor of International Studies at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and now works in the private sector.

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

Language of Indus seals was Sanskrit because most of the seals ended on jar sign or fish sign which depicts end of subject words as visargah and end of objects on fish sign as in dwitiya vibhakti. Seals are read from head to tail of the animal on the seal. Prominent city names found on Indus seals are Harapam (Harappa), Kathumaad (Kathmandu, Nepal), Unuaad (Una-Ropar in Himanchal Pradesh), Trisurrah (Trisur, Kerala) Surshenas (Mathura Uttar Pradesh), Ur (Ur, Iraq) and Yerag (Yerevan, Armenian Capital). Agricultural seals contain names sarshan(mustard), mashah (black gram),yavat (grains like barley), rashwan (Garlic) gavreem (turmeric), suran (yam), rasnagah (rubber tree), maarah (thorn apple), sukuvah (lotus) which were sown(Bapikh) by permission of ploughing (krishtemiomah) by king and they gave 1/3rd crop to king (sat-tray) then distributing among themselves (Sat-sheshan). This tax was waivered due to less crop production(unkarsh). Business of beauty parlour was present with three beautifications (trayah shringar) namely hair setting (rachanah), bodypainting and tattooing (patrana) and nail care with nail polish (nakheramae).

Why and how is Indus script in Tamil? Starting from the author's ground breaking work "Read Indussian"(2012), more undeniable evidences have come up in support of the Tamil scripts of Indus valley civilization. Rosetta like seals which are the ultimate mode of proving an ancient language have been elucidated in this book with gratitude to I.Mahadevan and A.Parpola for the picture references from their Concordances, Texts and Tabulations of Indus scripts.