Bahata Anshumali Mukherjee, a Bengaluru-based Bengali researcher, has explored a new horizon of Indus scripts used by people of Indus Valley Civilisation. In an essay published in Nature online journal on December 19, 2023, she mentioned a completely new dimension of Indus scripts, stating that these scripts with logograms were unable to spell or write new names (of people or gods). According to Mukherjee, the Indus Valley people had prepared the symbolic scripts mainly to write down the necessary commercial and tax-related information on the seals, the names of different products, commercial permits and clearances, etc., with various logograms and semantic symbols. In other words, the semantic scope of Indus inscriptions consisted of taxation, trade and craft licensing, commodity control and access control.

About 4,600 years ago, people of the Indus Valley Civilisation had introduced these strange scripts that are mainly found inscribed on various small seals and tablets. Numerous scholars and enthusiasts have been trying to decipher the Indus scripts for almost a century. Most of these scholars have claimed that the names of various kings, merchants and deities spelled out in ancient languages, such as Sanskrit, Tamil, etc., are inscribed on the Indus Valley seals. However, their decipherment is not universally accepted.

Meanwhile, Mukherjee has opined that seals of the Indus Valley Civilisation were used mainly for commercial transactions. She further said that different types of taxes were levied on various commodities in Indus cities. After collection of taxes, the concerned authorities used to affix soft clay tags, bearing seal impressions, to the sacks, containers and boxes. Hence, it was easier to understand which products had been taxed. Another much-acclaimed article by Mukherjee published in Nature in 2019 has already proved that the Indus scripts actually represent a single word or meaning, and not a letter.

Small tablets, used for trade or revenue collection purposes in Indus Valley Civilisation, were labelled with the names of the products, trades, crafts and taxes concerned on the front side. On the opposite side, one can find numerical scripts or numbers written with two, three and four bars. Mukherjee is of the opinion that the scripts inscribed on the rear side of those tablets denote the extent of various special license slabs for similar products or trade. Currently, separate license slabs are used for similar industries in India.

Kautilya (BC 375 – BC 283), an ancient Indian polymath who was active as a teacher, author, strategist, philosopher, economist, jurist and royal adviser, had also mentioned similar commercial seals in his renowned publication Arthashastra. Composed, expanded and redacted between the 2nd Century BCE and 3rd Century CE, the Arthashastra was influential until the 12th Century, when it disappeared. Rudrapatna Shamasastry (1868-1944), a Sanskrit scholar, rediscovered the book in 1905 and published it in 1909. Kautilya is also known as Chanakya and the Indian Machiavelli. The seals were inscribed with images of animals, such as unicorns, bulls, elephants, tigers, etc. In some cases, ancient deities, which were probably used as symbols of various trade guilds or rulers, were inscribed on them. Mukherjee’s essay provides a well-argued refutation of various manuscripts claimed by prominent researchers, including Finnish Indologist Asko Parpola and Bryan K Wells, who has been conducting research on the Indus script for more than two decades.

Read the article published in Nature

Mukherjee has made clear that Indus scripts cannot be spelled and it would never be possible to decipher these scripts directly with the help of the letters or characters of Sanskrit, Tamil or any other ancient language. Her revelation undermines at least 95% of the statements made previously by other scholars on Indus scripts. Asked whether the Indus scripts could be fully deciphered, Mukherjee stressed: “Though the actual meaning of many symbols cannot be understood based on the currently available information, we have definitely deciphered some symbols.“

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das