[Y-Indology] Conference on Indus Valley/Saraswati

[Guest guest]

INDOLOGY, Steve Farmer <saf@s...> wrote:

> Sometimes things that look simple -- like fish symbols -- may

>just be simple.

 

At least in certain cases the fish signs could have meant

more. Animals sacrificed in the Indus culture have had

mythical connections. Different composite animals,

Markhors or other rams with human faces may be substitutes.

Also, reading Indian literature does show "uLLuRai"

('inherent suggestion' defined in ancient grammars).

CaGkam literature, for example, abounds in internal

suggestions for the Nature scenes with plants or animals.

 

There are unique features of the Indus civilization

that are not found elsewhere. Eg., yoga aasanas. we don't

find big palaces, nor any long writings. Much less

warfare compared to the scale it's found in the ancient

Near east ("peaceful realm" -J. McIntosh).

 

May be the IVC ruling elites decided not to develop

literacy and writing as existed in Mesopotomia, But

they just used a few symbols to possibly represent

their clan-symbolic animals, gods, etc.

Fish obviously had a ferility symbolism too.

Why they went for more difficult "fish" symbol

instead of simple "star"? Consider an example, the mythical

animals had tails as standardized plants. Tails

can be as simple as a curving line. Yet the Indus

rulers went for more "complicated" plants to signify

tails. Bush and tail resemble each other in a way.

 

N. Ganesan

[Guest guest]

Naga Ganesan writes:

 

> At least in certain cases the fish signs could have meant

> more. Animals sacrificed in the Indus culture have had

> mythical connections. Different composite animals,

> Markhors or other rams with human faces may be substitutes.

 

Sure. As Victor Turner emphasized in his studies of African symbols,

and Fredrik Barth in his studies of New Guinea symbols, symbols in

primitive societies tended to have manifold referents -- bandhus,

multivocalities, multileveled correspondences, or whatever else you

want to call them. Based on what we know of nonlinguistic symbols in

Mesopotamia, for example, symbols for individual deities typically also

had celestial, terrestial, and social correspondents. We have, in fact,

a great deal of information about this issue in relation to

Mesopotamian fish symbols.

 

My point about Heras' old claims about the supposed fish/star rebus in

Indus signs, repeated by Knorozov, Mahadevan, and Parpola, etc., is

that this particular _kind_ of rebus equation (replacement of an

easy-to-draw concrete object by one that is difficult to draw) wasn't

the type of rebus that we normally find in early scripts. But that

isn't to deny that Indus fish signs had wider symbolic meanings, just

as Mesopotamian fish signs did.

 

Steve