From: N. Ganesan (naa.ganesan@gmail.com)
Date: Thu Jun 01 2006 - 11:17:42 CDT
Phaistos Disc, and encoding Indus signs
---------------------------------------------------------
In the pre-prelim minutes of UTC-107 meeting,
it's stated:
"C.8 Proposal to encoding the Phaistos Disc
characters [Everson, Jenkins, L2/06-095]
[107-C51] Consensus: Accept 46 Phaistos Disc
symbols at U+101D0 through U+101FD in block
name "Phaistos Disc" U+101D0 - U+101FF for
encoding in a future version of the standard. "
Congratulations! It is very good that this
one-sample text is getting into Unicode.
Indus signs occur in different combinations
in short seals. The old Bronze age civilization
of India produced this writing on
5000+ seals, the number of signs is rather
fixed and average about 5 signs per IVC seal.
The Indus valley civilization (IVC) that
lasted (which peaked around 2400-1800 BCE time
period) is the foundation for later Indian civilization,
which saw after IVC decline the Aryans ingressing.
These IVC signs are remarkably consistent over centuries,
and found in archaeological digs in a vast area
in some 10,000 square miles area covering
Afghanistan, Pakistan and Northwest India.
Scholars and enthusiasts try to decipher
the meaning, the underlying language or language
family, of the Indus seal signs. Asko Parpola, a
renowned Indologist and linguist, has written
books and papers on the methodology to decipher
the Indus signs: Deciphering the Indus script, 1994, Cambridge
University Press. His 2005 Kyoto University address
why he considers the Dravidian language speakers
were the authors of IVC can be downloaded from:
http://www.harappa.com/script/indusscript.pdf
Very recently, in Tamil Nadu, Indus signs
on very old certs have been found:
http://www.hindu.com/2006/05/01/stories/2006050112670100.htm
http://www.hindu.com/2006/05/01/stories/2006050101992000.htm
See Iravatham Mahadevan's expert views on Indus script:
http://www.harappa.com/script/maha0.html
See the note by Sri. I. Mahadevan about Indus script,
and a discovery in Tamil Nadu:
http://www.harappa.com/arrow/stone_celt_indus_signs.html
Iravatham is the author of Early Tamil inscriptions,
Harvard Oriental Series, 2003.
So, to study whether the Indus high culture
was pre-Aryan, Dravidian or some other
language group (e.g. Munda group who moved from
South East Asia. Being non-literary languages
until now, it's difficult to decide when Mundas
moved in. Some of the groups could be as late
as 2nd millennium CE). Different enthusiasts
from India and abroad (many not knowing any Indian
language or literature or script) also try their hand at
Indus signs.
So, when is Unicode encoding the Indus signs
(as it did for Phaistos disc)?. It will be useful
to study and create web pages with the
Unicode Indus fonts, and for those who try
to decipher them in academic e-lists,
say, in googlegroups (as other Indic scripts
are sent via gmail and searchable in ggroups)
I've the Indus signs fonts to create texts
and compare with ancient Dravidian language
texts (called Tamil Sangam texts). Does anyone
else - Michael Everson, James Kass, ... - have
some Indus fonts for sale? As user community
for Indus sign fonts, we can offer any help
for Michael Everson's proposal to encode
Indus civilization signs in Unicode:
http://ra.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n1959.pdf
N1959 is well written. And, as users of Indus
script for scholarly endeavours, we need Unicode fonts
for them. Sooner the better.
Thanks, and best regards,
N. Ganesan
PS: Recently, I am working on a proposal
to encode Malayalam cillaksarams. Cillu
letters are pure consonants with a soft virama diacritic.
Normally in Indic scripts, pure (or dead)
consonants are not encoded separately
(e.g., Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Gujarati, Sindhi, ...)
but using a coded sequence <cons., virama>.
Likewise, Cillus can be encoded using
a MALAYALAM SIGN CILLU which is a combining
character with a subset of Malayalam consonants.
Compare Cillu sign, yet to be encoded
which will decompose Cillu characters as
<cons., cillu sign> with Saurashtra haaru sign
which acts on a subset of 4 or so Saurashtran consonnants.
Looking at Cillu R, I was searching for Sanskrit
words like karma, dharma in Rev. Gundert's
Malayalam dictionary. The 'rm' clusters are written
as assimilated m'm, (and Gundert gives 'rm' in Malayalam
orthography within brackets, with cillu R)
On consonant assimilation in Sanskrit -> Prakrit
and comparison with ancient Tamil, i wrote 7 years ago:
http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9906&L=INDOLOGY&P=R4239
for which Asko Parpola, Indology and IVC expert,
wrote from Finland:
http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9906&L=INDOLOGY&P=R4492
Prof. Parpola's homepage and publications:
http://www.helsinki.fi/~aparpola/
Indologists, Iravatham and Asokan (Asko) have written about the unique
phenomenon of systematic retroflexion in India,
and calls this a Dravidian substratum effect. ~ NG
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Jun 01 2006 - 11:48:05 CDT