The famed Harappan-era seals and tablets show various symbols – indicating a writing system or possible script. However, even a century after the discovery of Harappa in 1924, the script has remained an enigma for researchers.
In the international colloquium ‘Emerging Perspectives of the Harappan Civilization’ that concluded at IIT Gandhinagar (IITGn) on Sunday, the experts put forth ideas to understand the nature of the writings.
Mohd Izhar Ashraf, a research associate at computational epigraphy lab at Chennai-based Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), told TOI that they have used statistical model on the known writings from Harappan Civilization.
“Through this approach, we do find a syntax, like in any modern language. We compared it with 20-odd modern and ancient languages and found that it fits perfectly. For example, alphabet S has more recurring frequency in English language. Similarly, we find same symbols getting repeated at the end,” he said.
Ayomo Konasakuwa from Kyoto University argued that if one sees the evolution of inscriptions from the early Harappan phase to maturity of the civilization, the initial writings have 71 symbols that later increased manifold over centuries.
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