A Short Introduction to the Study of the Indus Script With Comments on the Corner Symbols (original) (raw)

The Indus seals were used in connection with commerce, both international and local. The basic elements of the seals must therefore have some relevance to their use. It is argued that the animal figures are totemic, identifying either place of origin or destination, and that certain other symbols denote the character of the goods being transferred and/or the means used to transport the goods to which the seals were probably affixed. It is thus possible to come to certain conclusions as to what information the inscriptions were intended to convey. This article was first published by ESOP in Volume 3, Part 2, Paper 66, September 1976. It has been radically revised in 2010 for Volume 28 based on additional information obtained in the interim. Note: The images in this article all appear in Jagat P. Joshi and Asko Parpola's excellent volume: Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions 1. Collections in India . While many have appeared in other publications as well, we used that volume because of the excellent quality of the photographs of the artifacts. In every case we used a computer to flip the seal photos horizontally so as to publish them in "impression" format (often photos of actual impressions fail to show all features clearly). Photos of the "corner symbols" were removed from the seals and rendered as separate graphics using Adobe Photoshop.