Papers by Bahata Ansumali
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 2021
Ever since the discovery of Indus valley civilization, scholars have debated the linguistic ident... more Ever since the discovery of Indus valley civilization, scholars have debated the linguistic identities of its people. This study analyzes numerous archaeological, linguistic, archaeogenetic and historical evidences to claim that the words used for elephant (like, ‘pīri’, ‘pīru’) in Bronze Age Mesopotamia, the elephant-word used in the Hurrian part of an Amarna letter of ca. 1400 BC, and the ivory-word (‘pîruš’) recorded in certain sixth century BC Old Persian documents, were all originally borrowed from ‘pīlu’, a Proto-Dravidian elephant-word, which was prevalent in the Indus valley civilization, and was etymologically related to the Proto-Dravidian tooth-word ‘*pal’ and its alternate forms (‘*pīl’/‘*piḷ’/‘*pel’). This paper argues that there is sufficient morphophonemic evidence of an ancient Dravidian ‘*piḷ’/‘*pīl’-based root, which meant ‘splitting/crushing’, and was semantically related to the meanings ‘tooth/tusk’. This paper further observes that ‘pīlu’ is among the most ancie...
Palgrave Communications, 2019
This study conducts an epigraphic analysis of the yet undeciphered inscriptions of the ancient In... more This study conducts an epigraphic analysis of the yet undeciphered inscriptions of the ancient Indus Valley civilization and seeks to prove that just like proto-cuneiform administrative tablets of ancient Mesopotamia, or modern fiscal stamps and ration tokens, Indus seals and tablets too were formalized data-carriers that used both document-specific and linguistic syntaxes to convey messages. Analyzing various combinatorial patterns of Indus signs (e.g., typical co-occurrence restrictions present between some signs; tendency of some signs to form collocations; syntactic order(s) maintained between certain signs; strong positional preferences demonstrated by some signs; and the capability of certain signs to occur alone in inscriptions), this paper argues that Indus signs represented different contentmorphemes and functional-morphemes-not phonograms used for spelling words-the majority of the inscriptions were logographic. Categorizing several Indus logograms into nine functional classes, it explores the way each sign-class has played unique functional roles for conveying complete messages through the brief inscriptions. By glossing the signs of the inscriptions using the names of their respective functional classes the study unravels the formulaic phrase-structures maintained by the majority of the inscriptions, where signs identified as phrase-final signs typically occur at the terminal positions of the semantic phrases, while signs used as connective-morphemes join semantically autonomous constituents in certain subordinating and coordinating ways, to form longer composite inscriptions. The study identifies certain Indus signs as numerical and metrological signs, which frequently collocate with specific lexemes, and clearly quantifying them in certain ways. This article also analyses the underlying relationships between certain metrological and phrasefinal signs; examines the compositional nature of Indus collocations; and argues that some of the repeated sign-sequences were probable examples of linguistic reduplication. Analyzing the occasional occurrences of certain attributive quantifier signs as substantive lexemes, this paper suggests that in some inscriptional contexts those quantifier signs possibly represented certain commonly used metonyms of Indus civilization. Finally, this study explores the compositional semantics of Indus inscriptions without assigning any sound value to the signs and without speculating about whether the script encoded the speech of any specific ancient language.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2018
This study conducts an epigraphic analysis of the yet undeciphered inscriptions of the ancient In... more This study conducts an epigraphic analysis of the yet undeciphered inscriptions of the ancient Indus Valley civilization and seeks to prove that just like proto-cuneiform administrative tablets of ancient Mesopotamia, or modern fiscal stamps and ration tokens, Indus seals and tablets too were formalized data-carriers that used both document-specific and linguistic syntaxes to convey messages. Analyzing various combinatorial patterns of Indus signs (e.g., typical co-occurrence restrictions present between some signs; tendency of some signs to form collocations; syntactic order(s) maintained between certain signs; strong positional preferences demonstrated by some signs; and the capability of certain signs to occur alone in inscriptions), this paper argues that Indus signs represented different contentmorphemes and functional-morphemes-not phonograms used for spelling words-the majority of the inscriptions were logographic. Categorizing several Indus logograms into nine functional classes, it explores the way each sign-class has played unique functional roles for conveying complete messages through the brief inscriptions. By glossing the signs of the inscriptions using the names of their respective functional classes the study unravels the formulaic phrase-structures maintained by the majority of the inscriptions, where signs identified as phrase-final signs typically occur at the terminal positions of the semantic phrases, while signs used as connective-morphemes join semantically autonomous constituents in certain subordinating and coordinating ways, to form longer composite inscriptions. The study identifies certain Indus signs as numerical and metrological signs, which frequently collocate with specific lexemes, and clearly quantifying them in certain ways. This article also analyses the underlying relationships between certain metrological and phrasefinal signs; examines the compositional nature of Indus collocations; and argues that some of the repeated sign-sequences were probable examples of linguistic reduplication. Analyzing the occasional occurrences of certain attributive quantifier signs as substantive lexemes, this paper suggests that in some inscriptional contexts those quantifier signs possibly represented certain commonly used metonyms of Indus civilization. Finally, this study explores the compositional semantics of Indus inscriptions without assigning any sound value to the signs and without speculating about whether the script encoded the speech of any specific ancient language.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2018
This article argues that most of the inscribed objects (seals, miniature-tablets etc.) of ancient... more This article argues that most of the inscribed objects (seals, miniature-tablets etc.) of ancient Indus valley civilization were essentially administrative-commercial tools (tax-tokens, tradelicences, metrological records, etc.) used for controlling the complex trading economy spread across the Indus settlements. It also argues that the inscriptions logographically encoded a commercial sublanguage to convey information about kinds of taxes/tithes, tax-receiving entities; tax-rates and modes; and activities (such as cultivation, manufacture, and trading of specific commodities) that these taxes covered and authorized. Building on the functional classification of Indus logograms performed in the author's previous structural analysis of Indus inscriptions and analysing various script-internal, archaeological, historical and linguistic evidence, this article seeks to interpret the semantic functionalities of different sign-classes. It proposes that: i) The numerical and metrological signs were used to represent certain taxcollection rates fixed for certain commodities, whereas the lexeme-signs following them () represented those taxed commodities. ii) The Crop-signs () represented different harvested grain-based taxes. iii) The phrase-final/terminal logograms () encoded certain metrological modes (volumetric, weight-based, reedmeasure-based etc.) of tax-collection, and thus metonymically encoded certain broad taxcategories. iv) The lexeme-signs appearing in the initial parts of the grammatically complex inscriptions () represented the tax-collector entities and purpose of tax-payment. v) The signs mostly occurring in pre-phrase-final positions () represented the mode of tax-payments through predefined equivalencies. vi) The bird-like logograms () represented different precious stones including lapis lazuli, cornelian, agate etc.; while the fish-like logograms () signified different apotropaic "fish-eye-beads", which were one of the most precious exported Indus commodities, coveted in ancient Near East. Analysing the related lexical roots of such commodities-e.g. ivory ("piru"); lapis lazuli whose colour was compared to the iridescent pigeon-neck ("kāsaka hya kapautaka"); and "eye-beads" (maṇi), in Mesopotamian lexicons, Amarna letters, ancient texts in Old-Persian language, BMAC languages, Sanskrit, Pali, Tamil etc.-this study claims that such words had originated in the Indus valley, and had spread to the languages of other civilizations through trade networks. Tracing out more such ancient metrological and revenue related terminologies (droṇa, bhāra, kṛṣṇala, raktikā, śara etc.) this study finally offers decipherment of a few Indus inscriptions.
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Papers by Bahata Ansumali