Re-interpreting the Indus Script

Noted epigraphist and scholar Iravatham Mahadevan insists that ‘Aryan’ and ‘Dravidian’ are two languages, and not races.

April 02, 2015 03:16 pm | Updated 03:16 pm IST

The Indus signs

The Indus signs

The Aryan-Dravidian divide, often misinterpreted as the gulf between people of North Indian and South Indian origins, now has a new dimension which indicates that both have their roots in the Indus civilisation.

Noted epigraphist and Dravidologist Iravatham Mahadevan proposes the alternative interpretation to harmonise the core features of the ‘Agastya legend’, namely the northern origin of Agastya and his southern apotheosis as the eponymous founder of Tamil language and culture. An expert on Indus and Tamil-Brahmi scripts, Dr. Mahadevan has always maintained that ‘Aryan’ and ‘Dravidian’ are two languages, and not races.

In an exclusive interview to The Hindu after receiving the honorary doctorate D.Litt. from Dravidian University, Kuppam, located at the confluence of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and hence considered the Dravidian heartland, Mahadevan observed that the Indus civilisation was both pre-Aryan and Dravidian.

“The southern migration of sage Agastya, attested in both Indo-Aryan and Dravidian sources, is the most important evidence to link the Indus Civilisation with the Dravidian South,” he says. In fact, his convocation address ‘Interpreting the Indus Script: The Dravidian Solution’ also touched upon the same subject.

Sage Agastya is always depicted as a short-statured personality with his inseparable water-pitcher in hand. His latest finding is the reference to the expressions ‘vatapal munivan’ (northern sage) and tatavu (jar) on the sage occurring in Purananuru (poem 201), an early Old Tamil anthology containing much older oral tradition. “The Agastya legend may now be reinterpreted as referring to the exodus of elements of Dravidian-speaking people to South India after the decline and collapse of the Indus civilisation”, he concludes.

The bureaucrat-turned-epigraphist also discovered evidence from the Indus texts corroborating the historicity of the Agastya legend. The critical discoveries are the word aka-tt-(i) (meaning Lord of the House) and its constant association with the jar sign. Besides, he refers to the various grammatical signs in the Indus script, especially the ‘arrow’ sign, the four stroke modifier and the ‘jar’ sign; the last one having been conclusively proved by the discovery of the sign, incised realistically on pottery excavated at Kalibangan.

Going by the Indus sign and its pictorial identification, he arrived at their Dravidian phonetic value by referring to Old Tamil parallels. He also saw Indus Script as sending the message ‘Unity in Diversity’, rather than dividing the people with an unfounded claim of two distinct races.

The southern migration of sage Agastya, attested in both Indo-Aryan and Dravidian sources, is the most important evidence to link the Indus Civilisation with the Dravidian South.

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