German Indologist claims to have decoded Indus scripts

ZeeNews ^ | February 7, 2007 | Unsigned

[aculeus]

Panaji, Feb 07: Renowned German Indologist and scientist of religion, Egbert Richter Ushanas today claimed that he has unravelled the mystery of Indus Valley scripts by decoding major seals and tablets found during various archaeological excavations.

"Already 1,000-odd seals are decoded and of them, 300-odd are printed in monography -- the message of Indus seals and tablets," stated Richter, who has also decoded tablets from Easter Island in Pacific Ocean and disc of Phaistos on Island of Crete in Meditarrenean Sea.

"All the seals are based on Vedas -- Rig Veda and Atharva Veda," Richter told a news agency here.

He is here to attend the International Indology Conference, beginning from February 7.

Richter, who began decoding the mysteries behind the seals way back in 1988, feels that after decoding 1,000-odd seals, there is no need to decode the rest.

"You need not eat all apples of world to understand the apple. Few apples are enough," he quipped.

The path-breaking decoding by Richter is based on the Sumerian and Brahmi script wherein he has detected the lost meaning of the seals which can be traced to Vedic era.

A Vedic scholar himself, Richter during the course of unravelling the Indus Valley mysteries, has translated all the important Vedic hymns and is a Sanskrit exponent too.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Big ping.

[kitchen]

GGG ping

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

What is a "scientist of religion," an atheist theologian?

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Is this a crock? Did the Easter Islanders even have a written script? And the Greek discs are still supposed to be undeciphered.

[From many - one.]

Rongo Rongo, still undecipered to th best of my knowledge.

[Eternal_Bear]

so what do they say? "It's Bush' fault"?

[CarrotAndStick]

What is a "scientist of religion," an atheist theologian?

What is so complicated in that phrase? It means, one who studies religion, and does NOT necessarily PRACTICE it.

[Verginius Rufus]

The guy is clearly a crackpot. The Indus Valley script cannot be Vedic since they predate the arrival of the Aryan invaders of India. If it is a writing system (that has been doubted) the texts must record one of the non-Indo-European languages of India (which would be much different than any surviving relatives 4000 years later).

Lots of people have claimed to have deciphered the Phaistos disk, but none of the attempts have won acceptance among the experts in Aegean scripts. It will probably never be deciphered unless additional texts using the same system are discovered--the surviving example is just too little material to work with.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Ask some of the Indian freepers here. The Aryan invasion theory is very controversial in India, and has proponents and opponents in other parts of the world.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

(rhetorical question).

[Rb ver. 2.0]

D R I N K Y O U R O V A L T I N E

[GovernmentIsTheProblem]

"The guy is clearly a crackpot. The Indus Valley script cannot be Vedic since they predate the arrival of the Aryan invaders of India."

There most likely were not "Aryan invaders."

[Flash Bazbeaux]

D R I N K Y O U R O V A L T I N E
A crummy commercial?

[aruanan]

What is a "scientist of religion," an atheist theologian?

Only if you mistake atheism as being fundamental to science.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

What's rongo? Comment 5 mentions, "And the Greek discs are still supposed to be undeciphered."

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Did you not get the comment?

It seems that that is the case.

[SunkenCiv]

"Discovery of a century" in Tamil Nadu
by T.S. Subramanian
Monday, May 01, 2006

According to Mr. Mahadevan, the first sign on the celt depicted a skeletal body with ribs. The figure is seated on his haunches, body bent and contracted, with lower limbs folded and knees drawn up. The second sign showed a jar. Hundreds of this pair have been found on seals and sealings at Harappa. Mr Mahadevan read the first sign as "muruku" and the second sign as "an." In other words, it is "Murukan." The earliest references in Old Tamil poetry portrayed him as a "wrathful killer," indicating his prowess as a war god and hunter. The third sign looked like a trident and the fourth like a crescent with a loop in the middle.

Sembiyan Kandiyur yields many a megalithic vestige
Staff Reporter
Monday, May 01, 2006

Four Harappan symbols have been recognised from the stone axe. The first one symbolises a human skeletal body with prominent row of rib seated on his haunches, body bent and contracted with lower limbs folded and knees drawn up, the second one resembles a jar symbol and the third one is like a trident and the last one is a vertical crescent with loop in the concave middle portion.

from the following title:

Parpula's two volumes of photographs covering the collections of India and Pakistan, which appeared in 1987 and 1991... and his 1994 sign list, containing 386 signs (as against Mahadevan's 419 signs), are generally recognized as fine achievements, not least by Mahadevan... This is a significant figure. It is too high for a syllabary like Linear B... and too low for a highly logographic script like Chinese. the nearest comparison... are probably the Hittite hieroglyphs with about 500 signs and Sumerian cuneiform with perhaps 600+ signs... Most scholars therefore agree that the Indus script is likely to be a logosyllabic script like its west Asian contemporaries. [pp 281-284]

These Dravidian speakers are presumably remnants of a once-widespread Dravidian culture submerged by encroaching Indo-Aryans in the 2nd millennium BC... The Indo-Aryan hymns, the Vedas... recount tales of conquest of the forts of the dark-skinned Dasa or Dasyu... the Vedas repeatedly mention the horse in their descriptions of warfare and sacrifice, and this animal was clearly a vital part of Indo-Aryan society... But there is not horse imagery at all in the Indus Valley civilization and virtually no horse remains have been found by archaeologists. Hence the Indus civilizations is unlikely to have been Indo-Aryan. [pp 290-291]

---

Lost Languages: The Enigma Of The World's Undeciphered Scripts by Andrew Robinson

---

Robinson mentions "a substantial inscription found at Dholavira near the coast of Kutch in 1990, which appears to have been a kind of sign board for the city." [p 295]

Uncracked Ancient Codes
(Lost Languages reviewed)
by William C. West

Sanskrit and early Dravidian, the ancient languages of India, seem to be the keys to deciphering the highly challenging script of the Indus Valley civilization of the third millennium b.c. in what is now Pakistan and northwest India. As with other languages, a photographic corpus of drawings, a sign list and a concordance must be compiled before decipherment will be possible. Work has proceeded along these lines for inscriptions on some 3,700 objects from the Indus Valley, most of them seal stones with very brief inscriptions (the longest has only 26 characters)... Robinson's descriptions of such analysis, and his accounts of both successful and unsuccessful decoding attempts, are clear, provocative and stimulating.

One sees what one wants to
by Iravatham Mahadevan

I agree with Rajaram that it is time we put this 'horse business' behind us and look at the decipherment itself. I have done so. The Jha-Rajaram 'decipherment' is completely invalid. It is, in fact, a non-starter for the simple reason that the direction of reading adopted by the authors is wrong, as demonstrated by Witzel and Farmer (Frontline, October 13, box item at p.12). The 'decipherment' makes as much sense as you would get out of this page if you try to read it from a mirror reflection.

Of Rajaram's 'Horses', 'decipherment', and civilisational issues
by Asko Parpola

It is sad that in South Asia, as elsewhere in the world, linguistic and religious controversies are the cause of so much injustice and suffering. We should remember that from the very beginning, Aryan and non-Aryan languages and associated cultures, religions and peoples have intermingled and have become inextricably mixed. Every element of the population has contributed to the creation of Indian civilisation, and every one of them deserves credit for it.

---

Deciphering the Indus Script by Asko Parpola	Early Tamil Epigraphy from the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. by Iravatham Mahadevan

---

[SunkenCiv]

Significance of Mayiladuthurai find --
Links between Harappa and Neolithic Tamil Nadu
The Hindu | May 01, 2006 | T.S. Subramanian
Posted on 04/30/2006 6:01:01 PM EDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1624277/posts

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks for the pings, Jedi Master Pikachu and kitchen.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks for the pings, Jedi Master Pikachu and kitchen.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[SunkenCiv]

Rongo-rongo are the inscribed tablets from Easter Island.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Aahhhhh.....

Appreciated.

[wildbill]

D-R-I-N-K-Y-O-U-R-O-V-A-L-T-I-N-E

Has an almost mythic significance to those of us who got the Lone Ranger's secret decoder ring and waited breathlessly for the secret message over the radio.

ROTFLMAO

[Clioman]

"All the seals are based on Vedas -- Rig Veda and Atharva Veda," Richter told a news agency here.

Hey, what about Darth Veda?

[txzman]

"The Indus Valley script cannot be Vedic since they predate the arrival of the Aryan invaders of India."

Was thinking the same thing - I went looking for dates on this story.

[GSlob]

"What is a "scientist of religion," an atheist theologian?"
No. Comparative scientific study of different religions is not a theology, and calls for the absence of religious belief in any of one's subjects of study. And just as a scientist is not a theologian, so a theologian is not a scientist - they operate in orthogonal frames of reference. The former reference frame is "of this world', and the latter is "not of this world".

[Dominic Harr]

The Aryan invasion theory is very controversial in India, and has proponents and opponents in other parts of the world.

As far as I understand it, I don't believe there was an 'Aryan Invasion', either. I think the lost civilization were the refugees from the last round of 'global warming'. And I believe the folks that say the 'Rig Veda', the oldest of the Vedas, in part tells that story.

I believe there was civilization in the Indian subcontinent during the last ice age. When the ice melted, it did so unevenly. There were sudden periods of rapid sea-level rise that wiped out many miles of low-lying lands.

The best telling of the theory I've read about it was in the book Underworld.

I highly reccommend it.

[RightWhale]

disc of Phaistos

Disk of Phaistos has been decoded by everybody in every way imaginable.

[Verginius Rufus]

So how did the Indo-European languages show up in India? Did Berlitz send a team of instructors and teach the proto-Sanskrit language to millions of people?

There is a band of related languages from western Europe to India which have similarities (in grammar and vocabulary) which can only be explained by descent from a common ancestor, or at least from a group of similar dialects, in the remote past. The Indo-European languages of India and those of Iran are particularly closely related. Unless the language family began in India and spread outward from there, which seems highly unlikely, then someone had to have brought it to India, whether Aryans or Berlitzers.

[RebelTex]

D-R-I-N-K-Y-O-U-R-O-V-A-L-T-I-N-E

Has an almost mythic significance to those of us who got the Lone Ranger's secret decoder ring and waited breathlessly for the secret message over the radio.

Yeah, but it was no match for the real Captain Midnight secret decoder ring.

 

;^D

[Physicist]

Lost Languages: The Enigma Of The World's Undeciphered Scripts by Andrew Robinson

Superb. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

[Physicist]

Richter, who has also decoded tablets from Easter Island in Pacific Ocean and disc of Phaistos on Island of Crete in Meditarrenean Sea

Deciphering the Phaistos Disc is the way linguistics crackpots ante up. It's like the way physics crackpots start by disproving Einstein's Theory of Relativity.

[Sword_Svalbardt]

Way cool!

[GovernmentIsTheProblem]

" I believe there was civilization in the Indian subcontinent during the last ice age. When the ice melted, it did so unevenly. There were sudden periods of rapid sea-level rise that wiped out many miles of low-lying lands."

Agree 100%

I believe that the earliest human civilizations are off shore, under water.

Sea levels are higher than when those civilizations existed. Humans have always lived near coastlines, it's just that the coastlines slowly move...

In other words, Atlantis was everywhere.

[GovernmentIsTheProblem]

"So how did the Indo-European languages show up in India? Did Berlitz send a team of instructors and teach the proto-Sanskrit language to millions of people?"

I don't know, and neither do you. They might have originated on the subcontinent and moved outward via trade etc.

THere is no archaelogical evidence of a mass invasion in that timeframe, that I know of.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

"they [science/scientists and religion/theologians] operate in orthogonal frames of reference. The former reference frame is "of this world', and the latter is "not of this world"."

Disagree with this statement. Christianity at least references this world along with that not of this world. As for religion and science, they are not any more mutually exclusive than history is from art--they are two topics that at times converge.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

There are those who consider the Aryans as indigenous to India. That there is a connection between Indo-European languages is not being contested. Simply these people have the opinion that proto-Indo-European spread from India, rather than from Central Asia (the main hypothesized origin area for the original Indo-Europeans) or southwestern Asia (Mesopotamia after Babel when one of the splinter groups had the ancestor language of the Indo-European languages--in a Creationist model).

[Andrew Byler]

So how did the Indo-European languages show up in India?

Why do the French speak a language related to Latin, and not a Celtic tongue? Why do the Irish speak English, and not Gaelic? How did the Egyptians stop speaking Coptic and start speaking Arabic? How did the Anatolians first move to speaking Greek, and then to Turkish? What about the Prussians moving from speaking a Baltic tongue to German?

The Indians taking up a language related to the nearby Iranians, Tocharians, and Afghans is hardly a revolutionary process in the history of the world never seen before. Its not as though the Iranians/Afghans never ruled the Indus Valley and north Indian plain.

[Verginius Rufus]

Some language changes are understood, others not. The Haitians speak a language derived from Latin even though their ancestry is predominantly African. Many American Indian tribes have lost their native languages and speak English. Basque survived Roman rule, but Gaulish did not.

The Indo-Iranian languages form one branch of the Indo-European family, part of the satem group (from the Avestan word for 100), whereas most of the European languages are in the centum group (from the Latin word for 100--pronounced with a hard "c"). The Slavic languages are satem: Russian sto = 100. This is a widespread pattern where an s in the one group shows up as a k sound in the other (which becomes an h in Germanic, as in English "hundred"). Tocharian is a centum language despite being geographically much closer to India and the Iranian languages than to the other centum languages.

There is disagreement about the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-European speakers, but most theories have it somewhere in the vicinity of the Black Sea. If it was in India, it would be hard to explain how the languages spread to Europe, or the great diversity of the Indo-European groups in Europe (Greek, Italic, Albanian, Thracian, Germanic, Celtic), if they had to cross deserts and steppes to get to Europe.

Most of the early Indo-Europeans are warlike and patriarchal, and that may have had a lot to do with their success in spreading over such a huge area, so it makes sense to suppose they came into India as invaders. But maybe they arrived as an early version of the Peace Corps.

[SunkenCiv]

I couldn't agree more.

[USMMA_83]

If something written more than 7000 years ago says, It's Bush's fault." You'd better agree it's Bush's fault.

[omnivore]

I just was reading a new book put out by National Geographic, about using DNA analysis to figure out who's related to who. From what I recall, the southern Indians (Dravidians?) were from the same group that migrated out of Africa first, most of whom ended up becoming Australian Aborigines, but some of whom dropped out along the walk along the south coast of Asia and became the first Indians.

A while later, a different tribe came out of Africa (lots of tribes came out over thousands of years), and after spending a while in central Asia, split off, with some going south into India (Aryans) and Iran (Persians) and others going into Europe. Hence the northern Indian and Persian (Farsi) languages are part of the Indo-European language system.

My question is, can this guy translate "Derka derka derka," and if so, what does it mean?

[Cacique]

btt

[VxH]

[If something written more than 7000 years ago says, It's Bush's fault." You'd better agree it's Bush's fault.]

Well, it may have been a Bush - but not necessarily one named George.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_bush

[RebelTex]

"My question is, can this guy translate "Derka derka derka," and if so, what does it mean?"

Veni, Vidi, Vinci.

;^D

[Gengis Khan]

"arrival of the Aryan invaders of India"

Aryan invasion has already long been proven to be a false claim. It got its popularity due to Hitlers propaganda. There is no truth in it.

[chilepepper]

uh oh - the archeologist has dicovered that the famous Indus "spiritual book" How to serve man is actually a cook book... who knew?

[Gengis Khan]

"Indo-European languages show up in India?"

It went to Europe from India and not vice versa. The oldest languages in the family of Indo-European languages are to be found in India not Europe.

[Gengis Khan]

The oldest of the "Aryan" language is Sanskrit (not Farsi or any other European Language) which was/is spoken in India. It was spoken at a time when many of the languages like Farsi, Latin, Celtic, Greek were not even born. Most of the Indo-European Languages derive their grammar from Sanskrit. Sanskrit is also the language in which the Vedas (including the Rig Veda) were written.