Indus Dravidian Script PDF

Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1of 23

Interpreting the Indus Script: The Dravidian Solution*

Iravatham Mahadevan
Dravidian University has been established to promote research into
Dravidian languages, literature and culture. Location of the
University at Kuppam, the tri-junction of Andhra Pradesh,
Karnataka and Tamilnadu, symbolises the objective of the
University to serve the cause of the Dravidian.
The venue and the occasion have pre-determined the subject of my
address today, namely, recent advances in the study of the Indus
Script. My field is Tamil Epigraphy, with special interest in Brahmi
and Indus scripts. I consider it providential that the present
occasion has coincided with two important landmarks in my
research career spanning more than half a century. One of them
relates to the Brahmi and the other to the Indus scripts. I shall
mention their significance briefly before proceeding with the
subject matter of today’s address.
Recent discoveries in early Tamil epigraphy
The first is the recent publication of the second and enlarged edition
of my book, Early Tamil Epigraphy. This edition includes not only
Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions, but also the earliest pottery inscriptions
in Prakrit and Old Sinhala languages found from recent excavations
in Tamilnadu. Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions are the earliest records in
Dravidian. Pottery inscriptions in the neighboring languages found
in Tamilnadu represent the earliest attestation of the interaction of
Dravidian with Indo-Aryan cultures in South India. Some of the

* Convocation Address. 26th February, 2015. Dravidian University. Kuppam.


remarkable new discoveries in this field which deserve special
mention include:
▪ Herostones with Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions dating from the late
megalithic period;
▪ Enormous quantities of Tamil-Brahmi pottery inscriptions
excavated at Kodumanal, an important centre for manufacture
of gemstones;
▪ A very early Tamil-Brahmi pottery inscription assigned to about
200 BCE excavated at Tissamaharama in Southern Sri Lanka,
which records the ‘written agreement of the assembly’, probably
a trade guild of Sri Lankan Tamil merchants, which also issued
coin-like lead tokens with Tamil-Brahmi legends;
▪ Tamil-Brahmi pottery inscriptions from the excavations at
Pattanam, identified with Muciri, the famous Cera port, engaged
in extensive trade with Rome in Classical times;
▪ Tamil-Brahmi pottery inscriptions found abroad at Quseir al-
Qadim and Berenike in Egypt, Oman in South Arabian
Peninsula and in Thailand.
These discoveries shed new light not only on the extensive
maritime and inland trading by the Tamils, but also on the early
and widespread literacy in Tamilnadu. I have no doubt that the
recent discoveries in this field will steer the course of historical and
linguistic research towards new directions with greater focus on the
impact of early literacy in Tamilnadu and the early interaction of
Dravidian with Indo-Aryan languages in South India.

Recent advances in the study of the Indus Script
The second recent development is what I claim to be a major
breakthrough in interpreting the Indus Script. It is this which has
prompted me to choose this challenging topic for today’s address.
The results I have obtained so far confirm that the language of the
Indus Script is an early form of Dravidian. I do not claim to have
deciphered the Indus Script completely. But I sincerely believe that I
have discovered important clues for interpreting many of the
frequent Indus signs and sequences proving conclusively the
Dravidian character of the language and the survival of the Indus
elements in the twin streams of later Dravidian and Indo-Aryan
traditions. Taking into account the occasion and the time
constraint, I shall restrict today’s presentation to the Dravidian
character of the Indus Civilisation and its later survivals in the
Dravidian South. I shall be making only incidental references to the
Indo-Aryan survivals through loan translations which corroborate
the Dravidian origin of the Indus Civilisation.
‘Aryan’ and ‘Dravidian’ are languages, not races
I should like to clarify at the outset that I employ the terms ‘Aryan’
and ‘Dravidian’ purely in the linguistic sense without any racial or
ethnic connotation. It cannot be otherwise, as people could, and
often did as in the present instance, switch over from one language
to another. Speakers of Aryan languages have merged with those of
Dravidian and Munda creating a composite Indian society
containing elements inherited from every source. This makes it
likely that the Indus art, religious motifs and craft traditions
survived and can be traced in Sanskrit from the days of the RV and
also in Old Tamil anthologies. This is indeed the basic assumption
that underlies my work on interpreting the Indus Script through
bilingual parallels.
Indus Civilisation was Pre-Aryan
There is substantial evidence that the Indus Civilisation was pre-
Aryan.
▪ The Indus Civilisation was mainly urban, while the early Vedic
society was rural and pastoral. There were no cities in the early
Vedic period.
▪ The Indus seals depict many animals but not the horse. The
horse and the chariot with spoked wheels were the defining
features of the Aryan-speaking societies. The bronze chariot
found at Daimabad in Western Deccan, the southernmost Indus
settlement, has solid wheels and is drawn by a pair of humped
bulls, not horses (Fig. 1).
▪ The tiger is often featured on Indus seals and sealings, but the
animal is not mentioned in the RV.
Indus Civilisation was Dravidian
There is substantial linguistic evidence favouring Dravidian
authorship of the Indus Civilisation. The evidence includes –
▪ The presence of Dravidian loanwords and loan translations in
the RV.
▪ The substratum influence of Dravidian on Indo-Aryan as seen in
phonological changes like introduction of retroflex sounds,
morphological changes like switch-over from inflexion to post-
fixation, and near-identical syntactical structures moving Indo-
Aryan closer to Dravidian than to Indo-European languages.
▪ Computer analysis has shown that the Indus language had only
suffixes (as in Dravidian) and no prefixes (as in Indo-Aryan) or
infixes (as in Munda).
▪ The Indus religion as revealed by pictorial depiction on seals
and sealings included worship of a buffalo-horned male god,
mother-goddesses, the pipal tree, the serpent and possibly the
phallic symbol, all of which are known to have been derived
from the aboriginal populations.
I had earlier considered Brahui, a Dravidian language still spoken in
Baluchistan, as evidence for the Dravidian character of the Indus
Civilisation. I have revised my opinion as experts in Dravidian
linguistics now hold that Brahui was originally a North-eastern
Dravidian language with many shared features with Kurux and
Malto, and that it moved to its present location in later times. 

(Bh. Krishnamurti 2003:27).
Aryan Migration into South Asia
The Aryan-speaking people migrated into South Asia in the second
millennium BCE in the wake of the decline and eventual collapse of
the Indus Civilisation. The incoming Aryans were much fewer in
numbers, but could achieve elite dominance over the local
population due to their better mobility and advanced weaponry.
Some sections of the Indus population, unable or unwilling to be
assimilated into the new social order, migrated southward and
eastward to establish new settlements. But the majority of the Indus
population stayed back, and in course of time, adopted the
dominant Aryan speech. Thus was born the Indo-Aryan society
speaking Indo-Aryan languages, but retaining much of the pre-
Aryan Dravidian cultural elements in religious practices,
agriculture, craft traditions and social institutions.
Southern Migration of the Indus people
Re-interpretation of the Agastya legend
The southern migration of Agastya, attested in both Indo-Aryan and
Dravidian sources, is the most important evidence to link the Indus
Civilisation with the Dravidian South. It has generally been held
that Agastya led the earliest Aryan settlement of South India and
introduced Vedic Aryan culture there (G.S.Ghurye 1977). This
theory does not explain how Agastya, the Aryan sage, became the
founding father, not of Vedic religion or culture in the South, but of
Tamil language, literature and grammar. The interpretation of the
Agastya legend in terms of Aryan acculturation of the South was
mainly developed before the discovery of the Indus Civilisation. It
has now become necessary to take a fresh look at the Agastya
legend and attempt an alternative interpretation which would
harmonise the core features of the legend, namely the northern
origin of Agastya and his southern apotheosis as the eponymous
founder of Tamil language and culture.
The migration of the common ancestors of the Vēḷir-Yādava clans
led by Agastya from Dvārakā in Gujarat to South India in pre-
h i s t o r i c t i m e s h a s b e e n ex t e n s i ve l y d o c u m e n t e d b y
M.Raghavaiyangar in his classic Vēḷir Varalāṟu (1907). I have
extrapolated his theory back in time to link the Indus Civilisation
with South Dravidian cultures, especially Old Tamil (Mahadevan
1970, 1986, 2009 & 2010). I have also identified the reference to
Agastya and his inseparable water-pitcher in the expressions
vaṭapāl muṉivaṉ (‘northern sage’) and taṭavu (‘jar’) occurring in
Puṟanāṉūṟu (poem 201), one of the earliest Old Tamil anthologies
containing much older oral and bardic traditions.
The story of the Southern migration of the Vēḷir from Dvārakā
under the leadership of Agastya is told by Nacciṉārkkkiṉiyar at two
places in his commentary on Tolkāppiyam (pāyiram; Poruḷ.34). He
narrates how Agastya led eighteen kings and eighteen families of
the Vēḷir to the South, where they settled down clearing the forests
and cultivating the land, while Agastya himself took his abode in
the Potiyil Hill in the extreme south.
It is significant that the name Vēḷir which refers to a class of petty
rulers and chieftains in Old Tamil, is derived from the root vēḷ ‘to
worship, offer sacrifices, a priest’. This interpretation links the Vēḷir
of the South with the priest-rulers of the Indus Civilisation.
The Agastya legend may now be reinterpreted as referring to the
exodus of elements of Dravidian-speaking people to South India
after the decline and collapse of the Indus Civilisation.
I have also been able to discover evidence from the Indus texts
corroborating the historicity of the Agastya legend. The critical
discoveries are the word aka-tt-(i) (‘Lord of the House’) and its
constant association with the jar sign.

! !

………………………………………
kuṭa-muṉi aka-tt-(i)

Agastya Lord of the House

Frequent opening and terminal signs in the Indus texts

The most frequent initial pair of signs in the Indus texts is


interpreted as aka-tt-, the oblique form of Dr.aka(m) ‘inside, house,
place, fort, mind’; the corresponding personal noun is aka-tt-i ‘he of
the house’, which is the source of the loanword agasti
(Atharvaveda) and agastya (RV). The most frequent end sign in the
Indus texts is the jar. The myth of jar-born sages is very ancient and
is found even in the RV (7.33). There it is said that Vasiṣṭha and
Agastya were generated by Mitra and Varuṇa in a water jar.
Agastya is especially known as the ‘jar-born’ sage (kumbha-
sambhava). The constant occurrence of the jar sign following names
and titles of the Indus ruling classes led in later times to the symbol
being specially associated with priestly and royal families. Thus the
jar sign of the Indus Script is the ultimate source of the myth of the
miraculous birth of Agastya from a water pitcher and many other
‘jar-born’ legends in Northern and Southern traditions.
Re-interpretation of the Agastya legend has led to the discovery
that agasti was not the personal name of an individual or a gōtra,
but was originally the title of an office, ‘Ruler of the House’.
Compare aka-tt-i with Old Ta. aka-tt-ōṉ ‘lord of the fort’ (Tol.Poruḷ.
20.12). Compare also the near-identical title of the ancient Egyptian
rulers, Pharaoh, lit., ‘great House’, which evolved into an enduring
royal title. The Egyptian parallel is not merely verbal, but is also
graphic. The linguistic and graphic comparisons have resulted in
the broad interpretation of three frequent Indus signs for ‘house
(palace, temple)’, ‘fortified house (fort, citadel)’ and ‘city’ as
illustrated in the chart. (Mahadevan 1981, 2009, 2010).
Egyptian Indus
Broad
Sign No. Sign Sign No. Sign Interpretation

0.1 261, 373 house


5090

0.6 267 fortified house


8106

0.49 284 city, town


2522

Indus Place Signs and Egyptian Ideographic Parallels



(Egyptian: Gardiner 1978. Indus: Mahadevan 1977.)

Archaeological evidence of Indus-like graffiti from Tamilnadu


The evidence of pottery graffiti supports the theory of migration of
sections of the Indus people to South India. B.B. Lal (1960) has
compared the signs of the Indus Script with the symbols occurring
as pottery graffiti in chalcolithic and megalithic cultures. He found
that “eighty-nine percent of the megalithic symbols go back to
Chalcolithic-Harappan times (and) conversely eighty-five percent of
the Harappan-Chalcolithic symbols continue down to megalithic
times.” Lal’s work has shown that there does seem to be a deep
genetic link between the signs of the Indus Script and the Indus-like
graffiti found in Tamilnadu. I shall mention only a few of the more
important finds in recent years.
Inscribed Neolithic Axe from Sembiyan-Kandiyur
A Neolithic polished stone axe with three Indus-like symbols
pecked on it was discovered accidentally at Sembiyan-Kandiyur in
the lower Kaveri delta in 2006 (Fig. 2). The three symbols on the axe
are virtually identical with the corresponding signs in the Indus
Script. It is likely that the symbols were marked on the axe during
late Neolithic or early megalithic times. (Parpola, Fuller & Boivin
2007; Mahadevan 2009 for discussion.)
Terracotta Dish from Sulur with Indus-like symbols
An inscribed terracotta dish from Sulur dated in the first century
BCE is in the British Museum (No.1935.4.19.15). The dish is incised
on the concave inner side with a large X-like symbol occupying the
whole field and with four other symbols in smaller size within the
lower quadrant (Fig. 3). I have drawn attention to the remarkable
resemblance of the Sulur Dish graffiti with the inscription on a
miniature stone tablet from Harappa, showing not only similar
signs but a similar sequence (Mahadevan 2007, 2009).
Indus-like symbol on pottery from Sanur
Pottery found from the megalithic graves excavated at Sanur is
marked with a recurring group of three symbols (Fig. 4). Lal (1960)
has drawn particular attention to the close similarity of one of these
signs to a frequent Indus sign. This has turned out to be one of the
symbols frequently found as graffiti from many sites including
Pattanam (Muciri) in Kerala, Sembiyan-Kandiyur, Mangudi and
Coimbatore in Tamilnadu. I have identified the Indus sign depicting
a seated deity as the Dravidian god muruku. (Mahadevan 1999,
2006, 2009).
Indus-like symbols on South Indian pottery from Thailand
A potsherd of South Indian origin has been excavated in Thailand,
which shows two symbols (including the ‘seated deity’) occurring
with the same sequence as in the Indus texts (Mahadevan 2010)
(Fig. 5).
Fig. 1. Bronze chariot from Daimabad, Western Deccan
Fig. 2. Neolithic Polished Stone Axe with Indus-like graffiti. Sembiyan Kandiyur, Tamilnadu.
A B
Fig. 3
A. A Terracota Dish with Indus-like graffiti. Sulur, Tamilnadu.
B. Miniature stone tablet from Harappa

C
A

Fig. 4.
A. Pottery inscription with three Indus-like symbols. Sanur.
B. Pottery Inscription from Kalibangan
C. Indus signs depicting a seated deity
A B
Fig. 5
A. South Indian megalithic pottery inscription found in Thailand.
B. Indus signs and texts with seated deity.

A B
Fig. 6
A. Indus Seal impression. Vaisali, Bihar.
B. Frequent Indus Text on miniature tablets from Harappa.

Fig. 7. Jar sign incised on pottery. Kalibangan.


A comparison between the pottery graffiti and the corresponding
Indus signs and sequences indicates that the languages are linked
and can only be Dravidian.
Eastern Migration of the Indus people
Though the present study is concerned more with the southern
migration of the Indus population, I shall make a brief mention of
the evidence for their eastern migration as well.
An Indus Seal from Vaisali, Bihar
An inscribed seal (Fig. 6) was found during the excavations at
Vaisali, Bihar (Sinha & Roy 1969). The legend on the seal is identical
with a frequent three-sign text found mostly on the miniature
tablets from Harappa (ASI Concordance 1977: pp. 197-203). The seal
was found in the debris of the fortifications; hence the date (200
BCE-200 CE) assigned to it by the excavators is not based on
stratigraphy. Most probably, the seal came from the lowest level
reached at this site assigned to about 1100 BCE. The Indus text on
the seal was later identified by B.B.Chakraborty (1981). I attribute
the seal to the migrant Indus population settled in Eastern India
after the collapse of the Indus Civilisation (Mahadevan 1999).
Dravidian Interpretation of the Indus Script: Methodology
Identification of Dravidian roots
Word signs in the Indus Script are interpreted conventionally as
basic roots since the actual shape of the words cannot be directly
ascertained unlike in alphabetic or syllabic scripts. The core
meaning of the signs is determined from a broad range of etyma.
Selection from among the suitable etyma is guided by the context
which indicates whether the sign is an ideogram conveying
meaning or a phonetic sign to be read through rebus.
Rebus Writing
All ancient pictographic scripts resorted to rebus writing for
depicting words difficult to pictorialise. In this method, a picture
sign is read with another meaning suggested by the same sound.
For example, the picture of an ‘eye’ can be read as ‘I’ first person
singular pronoun, if the language is English. Rebus writing is
language-specific, and a successful identification guarantees that
the underlying language has been correctly identified.
A Sumerian Example
In Sumerian, the word ti had the meanings, ‘arrow’ and ‘life’. Hence
the Sumerian script employed the arrow sign, which is easy to
draw, to depict the word for ‘life’.

Identification of grammatical signs in the Indus Script

(1) The arrow Sign


The arrow sign is also the best example so far discovered for rebus
writing in the Indus Script. The sign is easily identified as an arrow
from its shape. The most common position of the sign in the Indus
texts is final indicating that it is a grammatical marker of some
kind. The most common word for ‘arrow’ in Dravidian is ampu. The
grammatical morph –(a)mbu occurs as the non-masculine singular
suffix in Old Telugu. The match provides a perfect rebus
(Mahadevan 1998).
This single example of a perfect rebus in the Indus Script is
sufficient to prove the Dravidian character of the Indus language.

SIGN Pictorial Dravidian Phonetic Intended
Identification Equivalent value meaning
through
rebus

Non-masculine
arrow ampu –(a)mpu
Singular suffix

Interpreting the arrow sign of the Indus Script

(2) The jar sign


The jar is the most frequent sign in the Indus Script and hence the
discovery of its value must be the first step towards the
decipherment of the script. The jar sign depicts a vessel with
handles (ears) and a tapering bottom. The pictorial identification
has been conclusively proved by the discovery of the sign incised
realistically on pottery excavated at Kalibangan (Fig. 7).
The jar sign occurs mostly in the final position in the Indus texts
and has been identified by structural analysis as a grammatical
marker. Since the arrow sign has been proved to be the non-
masculine singular suffix, it follows automatically that its more
frequent twin, the jar sign, must be the masculine singular suffix.
This result is virtually independent of the pictorial or linguistic
identification of the jar sign. However, I have also been able to
determine the phonetic value of the jar sign as –(a)nṟu, the
masculine singular suffix in Old Telugu. This result was achieved by
a comparison with similar grammatical morphs in the earliest
Kannada, Tamil and Telugu inscriptions, and also through rebus
with ‘vessel’ words in Dravidian (Mahadevan 1970, 2009, 2010).
The occurrence of –(a)nṟu and –(a)mpu respectively as the
masculine and non-masculine singular suffixes is attested in the
cave inscriptions of Mahendra Pallava (590-630 CE).


aṃkkapāsunṟu aṃkkapāsumbu

Old Telugu Inscriptions of Mahendra Pallava from caves in Tamilnadu

(3) Four-Stroke Modifier is the plural suffix


Some of the signs of the Indus Script have a modified form with the
addition of four short vertical strokes placed symmetrically around
the signs. Heras (1953) identified the four-stroke modifier as a
plural suffix from parallels in the Egyptian hieroglyphic script. I
have shown through an analysis of the fish signs that the four-
stroke modifier functions like the jar and arrow signs and must
therefore be a grammatical marker.

Fish signs with four-stroke modifier (epicene plural suffix)

Since the jar and arrow signs indicate the singular, the four-stroke
modifier, the third member of the set, must stand for the epicene
(masculine and/or feminine) plural suffix –ar in Dravidian
(Mahadevan 1986, 2011).
Gender-Number Paradigm in the Indus Texts
The identification of the three grammatical suffixes discussed above
has led to a major breakthrough, the formulation of the gender-
number paradigm in the Indus Texts. The paradigm is the basic
framework of the grammar of the Indus language. Discovering the
paradigm in the Indus texts is bound to lead to rapid advances by
identifying names and titles which form the bulk of the Indus texts,
especially on the seals.

SIGN Pictorial value Phonetic Grammatical category


value in
Dravidian

Masculine (human)
jar –(a)nṟu
singular suffix

Non-masculine singular
arrow –(a)mpu
suffix

| | Epicene (human male


four stroke
-(a)r and/or female) plural
| | modifier
suffix

Paradigm of Gender-Number Suffixes in the Indus Texts

Identification of Lexical Words in the Indus Texts: 



Some examples
Place Signs in the Indus Script
The Indus city was meticulously planned with grid-like streets
oriented towards the four cardinal directions and a fortified citadel
on a high artificial terrace. It seems likely that the major concepts
around which the Indus city was organised would also figure
prominently in the inscriptions of the period. It is thus probable
that important places and institutions like the city, citadel, palace,
Indus Sign Pictorial Phonetic value in Old Tamil parallels
identification Dravidian
city pāḻ(-i) pāḻi ‘town, city’. cf. pāḻi (Ka.) ‘row, line,
order’; pāṇṭi ‘a Tamil dynasty’

palace aka-(tt-i) akattiyaṉ ‘eponymous ancestor of the


(fort, court) Tamils’
cūḻ(-i) (i) cōḻa, cōḻiya ‘a Tamil dynasty’ (ii) cūḻ
‘counsel’ (iii) uḻi, uḻai ‘precincts of the
palace’ (iv) uḻaiyar ‘counsellors’ (v)
ūḻiyar ‘temple/palace servants’
assembly (place at ampal(a) ampalam ‘assembly, court, temple’
four-road junction)
exclusive quarters kēr(-i) (i) cēra, cēral ‘a Tamil dynasty’ (ii) cēri
‘exclusive habitation of Brahmans
(inscr.) (or) excluded habitation of
depressed classes
ordinary quarters pāṭ(-i) (i) pāṭi ‘hamlet’ (ii) pāṇṭi ‘a Tamil
dynasty’

Place signs in the Indus Script and their evolution in Old Tamil polity
assembly hall, etc. would be represented by ideograms in the Indus
Script. The place signs are likely to occur in the initial position,
judging from later parallels in Old Tamil, Telugu and Kannada
inscriptions. Place names in the Indus Script can also be interpreted
as the corresponding personal nouns. The chart shows the
ideographic identification of Indus signs depicting the city, palace/
court, assembly, exclusive and ordinary quarters.
The ideographic and linguistic identification of the place signs in
the Indus Script leads for the first time to the original significance
of the Old Tamil words when compared with the Indus signs. Thus
aka-tt-i ‘lord of the house’ was the Ruler. The cōḻa were counsellors
‘surrounding’ and ‘advising’ (cūḻ) the Ruler. The cēra or cēral were
high officials residing in exclusive quarters (kēr(-i)) with restricted
entry. The pāṇṭi were the commoners who resided in the streets,
pāṭ-i of the (lower) city (pāḻ-i). These results corroborate the
folklore that the cēra, cōḻa and pāṇṭi were brothers who lived
together in one place in ancient times (Caldwell, Reprint 1961:14). It
is significant that in the earliest Tamil tradition the names cēra, cōḻa
and pāṇṭiya preceded personal names in the manner of place
names, (e.g.) cēraṉ ceṅkuṭṭuvaṉ (Mahadevan 1981).
The Indus heritage of Andhra
The Andhras are mentioned among the non-Aryan people living
beyond the borders of the early Aryan settlements (Ai. Br. 7: 18).
Since virtually every early Dravidian masculine name or title ended
in -(a)nṟ- (see Pallava inscription on Page 18), the suffix became the
source of the ethnic name andhra through a loanword:
Dr. anṟ- > IA andr- > andhra.
Indus Signs

Meaning bearer jar-bearer arrow-bearer


(sustainer) (food-bearer) (arms-bearer)
Early Dravidian poṟ-ay cā(t(a)- poṟ-ay ey-poṟ-ay
< poṟu ‘to bear’ <cāta(m) ‘food’ <ey ‘arrow’
Vedic bharata bharad-vāja bharanta
(Indo-Aryan) <bhṛ ‘to bear’ (vāja ‘food’) (warrior caste)
Purāṇic (Andhra) vāhana sāta-vāhana sāli-vāhana
<vah ‘to bear, carry’ (cāta > sāta) < śalya ‘arrow’
Old Tamil poṟai, irum-poṟai cāta- poṟai evvi
(ātaṉ poṟaiyaṉ) (a Vēḷir clan)

Indus Heritage in Indian Historical Tradition


Indus origin of sata, the Andhra dynastic name.
A sacrificial vessel with food offerings used in Vedic ritual was
called sata (VS, ŚBr.). The term sata occurs with the meaning ‘food’
in Kanheri cave inscriptions (Nagaraju, JASI 1979); cf. sādamu (Te.),
‘cooked rice’. The Andhra dynastic names, Sāta-vāhana and Sāli-
vāhana seem to be loan translations from the corresponding
Dravidian titles depicted by the Indus ideograms, JAR-BEARER and
ARROW-BEARER as shown in the chart (See also Mahadevan 2010).
Indus Civilisation and the Indian Historical Tradition
The Indus heritage is shared by Dravidian as well as Indo-Aryan
speakers. The Dravidian heritage is linguistic. The Indo-Aryan
heritage is cultural preserved through loanwords, loan translations
and myths. This important phenomenon is well illustrated by the
bearer signs of the Indus Script and the evolution of concepts
represented by the signs in later Indian tradition. Interpretation of
the Indus Script through bilingual parallels has revealed hitherto
unsuspected links among different languages and regional cultures.
Thus the Indus-Dravidian title of poṟ-ay ‘sustainer’ borne by the
priestly office-bearers of the Indus Civilisation survived as Poṟai,
the Cēra dynastic name in the far South. The same Indus title was
translated in Vedic Sanskrit as Bharata, the name of an important
people in the RV. They are also the central figures in the
Mahābhārata, our national epic. The Bharatas gave our country its
name Bhārata. In yet another variation of the same tradition, the
Andhra dynasty, speaking Telugu, a Dravidian language, translated
their names into Indo-Aryan (Sātakarṇi, Sātavāhana and
Sālivāhana), as they were vassals of the Mauryan dynasty whose
court language was Prakrit. As I read it, the message of the Indus
Script is: unity in diversity.

You might also like