on civilizational illiteracy claims

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Srinivasan Kalyanaraman Comments on civilizational illiteracy

claims of Farmer, Sproat and WitzelIt is one thing to theorise on singletons in

script. It is quiteanother to recognise that are many stable pairs of signs,

many stabletriplets of signs which get repeated on epigraphs. More important,

theso-called field symbols (Mahadevan) or pictorial motifs (Parpola) arealso

part of the 'illiterate writing system' and these glyphs shouldalso be

explained by any commentator of ancient writing systems. Afterall, these glyphs

occupy a significant space on cute, small-sizedepigraphs; some Harappa miniature

tablets are of the size of athumbnail. They cannot be wished away as magical

power representationsor divinity representations. Anecdotal evidence or

conjectures do nota thesis make, particularly when a

trans-civilizational 'illiterate'behavior is sought to be unraveled.Is it mere

coincidence that punch-marked coins also contain about 5devices on an average,

devices which are comparable to Sarasvatihieroglyphs which also appear on

copper tablets (over 200 fromMohenjodaro and Harappa)?Two comments, one by

Bryan Wells and another by DesiOne are excerpted below.The URL cited by Bryan

Wells for his sign list is a remarkable effort;Bryan, congratulations for your

contribution to study ofcivilizations, by unraveling the nature of orthography

of the 'Indusscript' glyphs. Dhanyavaadah. K.Bryan Wells on March 29, 2005

03:55 PMDear Sepia MutinyOnce again I find myself in the position of spending

valuable time onthe work of Farmer et al. I sincerely had hoped to avoid this

at allcosts as time is short and these discussions are mostly unproductive.I

cannot let Farmer's posting go unanswered. To Richard

Sproat manythanks for your encouragement.I would like to begin by apologizing to

Richard Sproat and MichaelWitzel for associating them inadvertently with Steve

Farmers' earlierwork on the Indus Script. In my previous e-mail I have given

quotesfrom Farmer's "Five Cases of Dubious Writing" as well as material

fromtheir joint paper. I assumed that this work represented one body

ofresearch. Here I will address only the most recent paper "The Collapseof the

Indus-Script Thesis".Second, I need to be clearer about what I mean when I say

they do notcontrol any ancient script. They do not control any

Logo-syllabicwriting systems such as Maya, Egyptian, Cuneiform,

Linear-B,proto-Elamite, or Shang Chinese etc. That is the type of

writingsystems that may be comparable to the Indus Script. Their experiencewith

alphabets does not necessarily qualify them to make informedstatements with

regard to the Indus script. I would agree

that theyare about as well qualified as Barry Fell who also held a PhD –

inmarine biology.Third, I would like to point out several errors relating to my

workthat typify the style of Farmer et al: 1) on page 30 they quote me assaying

that "sign repletion in single inscriptions may have beenavoided for aesthetic

reasons". This was in reference to the wellknown practice in Egyptian

Hieroglyphics of aesthetic spellings, andthe equally well attested practice

among Maya scribes of using manyvarieties of signs, often to construct more

symmetrical glyph blocks.They go on to state "Some ancient scripts did contain

many homophonoussigns, but no evidence exists that they were used for such

systematicpurposes…". This is evidence they do not understand the ways in

whichmajor ancient writing systems worked. 2) on page 37 in footnote 23they

tell the reader that I have abandoned my earlier sign list andhave now gone to

"to the opposite

extreme, now claiming that nearlyall 'singletons' are complex signs." This

information was received bythrough Andrew Lawler, the author of the Science

article. This seemsto be the quality of information that Farmer et al are

mostcomfortable with. In fact, my earlier sign list was based entirely onthe

first two volumes of "The Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions".In my Master

of Arts Thesis I made it abundantly clear that my purposewas to create as

detailed of a sign list as possible with the data athand. Both the Thesis and

the sign list can be downloaded

at:http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp03/MQ31309.pdfAs to singletons: they

are most commonly constructions of several signcomponents, or members of one of

the allograph groups (low frequencysigns with similar graphs that cannot be

definitely identified as onegrapheme with certainty). The most frequent signs

(n>29) are mostoften single component (basic) signs. Of

the signs that occur morethan 100 times none consist of more than 3 components.

I havepresented in detail in my dissertation (forthcoming) my methodologyfor

creating a sign list for the Indus script. This method begins withthe grouping

of signs on the basis of sign design. Allographs areidentified through the

analysis of their contexts, and the resultinggraphemes are analyzed for their

chronological and spatialdistributions. Additional considerations included

artifact type andpairings with other signs including numerals. This methodology

led tothe creation of a sign list with 677 signs, but as has been pointedout in

my dissertation not all of these signs are certain to beseparate graphemes.

Instead, part of the sign list consists of sets ofrelated signs that cannot be

defined either as allographs or graphemeswith certainty. Following a policy of

maintaining detail, signs thatfall into this category are maintained as

separate

signs awaitingfurther analysis. Note that the number of elements used to

constructsigns and the frequency of signs are inversely proportional.

Complexsigns with many components normally have low frequencies. This resultsin

a high proportion of singletons in the sign list. This is also truefor both the

proto-Elamite and proto-Cuneiform scripts. In addition tohaving large

proportions of singletons these three scripts (the Indus,proto-Elamite, and

proto-Cuneiform scripts) share other features: asmall number of very high

frequency signs, many allographic variants,and logographic conflations

including numbers. I would suggest toFarmer et al that they take a look at the

signs, not just at thestatistics derived from other sign lists. Further, if

they are sodissatisfied with the Indus sign lists available, I suggest they

maketheir own. As Farmer points out repeatedly in his most resent postingI will

not have my PhD in hand for another

year, so they should beable to do a sign list much quicker than the 15 years it

has taken me.I would also like to point out that my sign list will change in

thefuture as I continue to analyze the Indus script. That is the natureof this

work (epigraphy).As can be seen from this discussion the Indus script is more

complexthan a cursory study of sign list statistics would lead us to

believe.Sign construction can occur in a variety of ways. By my count thereare

at least 30 strategies used to create Indus signs. Add to this thedemonstrable

polyvalence of several number signs and the whole issuebecomes exceedingly

complex.In their paper "The Collapse of the Indus-Script Thesis" they

presentsix basic arguments to support the claim that the Indus Script is

notwriting.Extreme brevity (p. 22): In a resent paper Robert

Englund(2004:130-40) describes the set of inscriptions he uses to analyzesign

M371 as: ranging for 1

– 14 signs with the mean length of 5non-numerical signs. A brief examination of

the Uruk IV texts willreveal they are like wise very terse. Note that there are

nomonumental inscriptions using the proto-Elamite script.Lost Manuscript Thesis

(p. 24): Farmer et al point to the lack ofarchaeological evidence for the

existence of manuscript production.They would like to find an inkpot and quill

or other paraphernalia ofwriting. How about traces of ink on the wooden

doweling? In Farmerposting he correctly points out that the text on the reverse

of thistag was not carved in wood, he does however seen unaware of the texton

the reverse of the tag. He writes:"Wells earlier made this whopper of a claim

-- it is quite absurd, asshown below -- to a German reporter in late January.

E.J.H. Mackay(_Further Excavations of Mohenjo-daro_ 1938, Vol. 1, p. 349)

correctlyidentifies the piece that Wells mentions as a tiny clay 'sealing'

--that is, it is a small piece of clay (known to researchers as a 'tag')carrying

a seal impression that once surrounded a wooden rod. It iscertainly NOT a

carving in wood, as Wells claims. Seal impressionslike this were very common

sealing types in the Near East, and Indusexamples of this sealing type are

illustrated in an important paper(now in press) written by the Italian

researchers Maurizio Tosi andDennys Frenez, who have studied such pieces in

Lothal (an Indus urbansite)."First the tag in question was found at

Mohenjo-daro (what has Lothalgot to do with it? Note Lothal is not an urban

center). The picture isclear: see Mackay 1938:Plate XC 17 a-c. XC 17c is the

photo of thetext on the reverse of the tag. What Mackay (1938:353-4) actually

saysis: "On the inside of the sealing there are also some markings whichlook

remarkably like pictographic signs ©, though, unfortunately butlittle remains

of them owing to the

breaking of the sealing…if,however, the inscription had been incised upon the

wooden rod, thecharacters upon the sealing should have been in relief, whereas

theyare the opposite. There is, however, the possibility that the

originalwriting, if writing it be, was in some thick ink which stood outenough

to impress it self upon the reverse side of the sealing." Imust apologize for

my mistake with regards to this point. A carefulexamination of the photo XC 17c

seems to show a texts with 13+ signs,but only the bottoms of the signs

remain.Paradoxical Sign Frequencies (p. 26): These are two striking featuresof

frequency distribution of Indus signs—the high frequency of signsthat occur

only once (singletons) and the small number of signs thatoccur extremely

frequently. This sort of distribution is not unusualin sign lists from other

ancient scripts from South Asia [steve if youlook at a map Iran is in Asia and

its really

south].The most obvious feature Proto-Elamite script is that it has many

moresingletons than either of the other two scripts (Indus andP-Cuneiform). It

can also be shown that the Indus script is mostsimilar to Proto-Sumerian. The

reason for the large number ofsingletons and large numbers of allographic

variants is that thescripts have not yet been standardized (Damerow 1999). This

is exactlywhat happens with the Indus script. There are sets of signs that

aregraphically related but with minor variations in the design of theirgraphs

(allographic sets). Signs have many allographs. Signs areconstructed from

conflations of several signs, or signs plus designelements. This distribution

is not paradoxical, but rather verycommon.Sign Repetition Rate (p. 26): The

repetition rates as discussed inFarmer et al are another example of their

complete misunderstanding ofthe nature of the Indus inscriptions. Their

repetition rates

are verysimilar to Uruk IV and proto-Elamite texts of similar lengths. Why

arethese problematic? The most glaring error in this section of theirpaper is

their reference on page 34 in Figure 5 to bar seals as being"Late-Mature

Harappan". They are not. Look at DKG at Mohenjo-daro(Mackay 1938) and the Mound

F data from Harappa (Vats 1940) and youwill quickly see that these artifacts

occur in all levels of thesesites. They are not even most common in the

Late-Mature Harappan, butrather the Middle of the Mature Harappan period at

Mohenjo-daro(Intermediate I and Late III).Unique signs (p. 36) have already

been dealt with.Comparison With Other Ancient Symbol Systems (p. 39): The most

obviouserror in this section is in Figure 8 that gives line drawings of

Vincasymbols. These artifacts date from 4500 to 6000 BC and theirarchaeological

contexts are poorly understood. What is known is thatthey come from at least two

locals

that cannot be linkedarchaeologically, and that the ones most similar to Uruk IV

tabletsmay be as much as 1000 years later than the decorative marks found

onfigurines and ceramics. These are not a single set of data as Farmeret al

pretend.One comment: Look at the caption and graphic (K-59a) for Figure

11(p.42) and think about what is being said and if it is reasonable. Onehint:

think positional notation.Finally, think about this: If you define writing as

"…a graphicrepresentation of language that, ultimately, can be used for any

sortof linguistic expression" (Cooper 2004:93), then none of the

earlylogographic writing systems of the old world would qualify.Sorry for the

lengthy discussion.My best to allBryan WellsTraveling ScholarHarvard

UniversityDesiOne on March 29, 2005 04:54 PMNot sure how to verify the details

of this discussion, but one thingis for certain, and Farmer et al

cannot disprove this:The civilization that existed in the Harrapa/Mohenjo Daro

region wasextremly sophisticated and advanced, at a level equal to or above

anyother at that time. At that time Europe and Central Asia were still inthe

hunter gatherer or nomadic invader phase of civilization. (I'm nottrying to

disparage different "phases" of civilization, as erstwhileAmerican scholars and

professors were wont to do, I'm just pointingout disparate levels of societal

sophistication). Meanwhile, the IndusValley/Sarasvati civilization had

extremely efficient urbanplanning(featuring "Euclidean" orientations and

proportions, WAYbefore Euclid), advanced sanitation practices, highly

specializedsocietal roles and functions, advanced recreation (as evidenced by

the6 face dice and Chess pieces) and religion (relics that wereprecursors to

Shiva)...in short, all the hallmarks of an advancedcivilization. Given this

degree of sophistication,

its HIGHLY unlikelythat the plethora of writings which did exist did not have

formalrules, but were rather just a bunch of

credit-card-junk-mail-likejibberish. Please.Such a contention is not surprising

to me, however. It reflects aninherent disdain that I have noticed among some of

my Americanprofessors of the "subjects" they study. This is at an ivy

leagueuniversity too. Just as decades ago these professors would insist thatthe

putatively advanced Aryans necessarily invaded and civilized thedocile and lowly

Indus valley civilization, some of them now try todetract from the latter's

sophistication with the same vigilance.Farmer you were a kid from the street so

I'll put it in street terms.Stop hating. Give props where props is due. Thank

you come again.Excerpted from:

http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/000834.htmlDo

You ?