“May the land of Tukric hand over to you gold from Harali, lapis lazuli and ……. May the land of Meluha load precious desirable cornelian, mec wood of Magan and the best abba wood into large ships for you. May the land of Marhaci yield you precious stones, topazes. May the land of Magan offer you strong, powerful copper, dolerite, u stone and cumin stone. May the Sea-land offer you its own ebony wood, …… of a king…” Enki and Ninhursaja http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.1.1&display=Crit&charenc=j&lineid=t111.p11#t111.p11

gul-lum me-luh-haki: The donkey of Ancan, the bear (?) of Marhaci, the cat of Meluha, the elephant of the eastern mountains, bite off Euphrates poplars as if they were leeks. Proverbs: from Nibru http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.6.2.1&display=Crit&charenc=j&lineid=t621.p20

gul-lum ‘cat’ is not unlike kol ‘tiger’ (Santali).

jicma2-gi4-lum me-luh-haki-a-ke4: “I will admire its green cedars. Let the lands of Meluha, Magan and Dilmun look upon me, upon Enki. Let the Dilmun boats be loaded (?) with timber. Let the Magan boats be loaded sky-high. Let the magilum boats of Meluha transport gold and silver and bring them to Nibru for Enlil, king of all the lands.” Enki and the world order http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.1.3&display=Crit&charenc=j&lineid=t113.p13#t113.p13

Source: The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/

The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL) is based at the University of Oxford. So far it has made accessible, via the World Wide Web, more than 350 literary works composed in the Sumerian language in ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) during the late third and early second millennia BCE.

The corpus comprises Sumerian texts in transliteration, English prose translations and bibliographical information for each composition. The transliterations and the translations can be searched, browsed and read online using the tools of the website.

We will now shift serious discussion of this and other important topics dealing with early/medieval India and Eurasia to a new research-oriented list that will open for business tomorrow:

Indo-Eurasian research (IEAR) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-Eurasian_research

See the detailed description at: http://www.safarmer.com/Indo-Eurasian.html

The new list is open both to bona fide scholars and to the general public; however: abuse, off-tangent (as well as endless, spam-like) effusions and regurgitating of easily available information will not be tolerated.

See you back at Indo-Eurasia.

Cheers, M. Witzel

Dear Adicha.nalloor,

I forgot to add a response.

I suppose it is for the same reason that Bharati Dasan or Anbazhagan or Mathivanan has his ‘an’ vikuthi.

Namaskaram.

Kalyanaraman

My name is what my parents gave me. I don’t know why a vikuthi was needed.

Please read the Sarasvati 7 volumes. What is deciphered is NOT vedic sanskrit. But, Tamil!

kol is a Tamil word meaning an alloy of 5 metals, pancalogam. Cognate: kollan ‘smith’. Another Tamil word, very ancient.

Namaskaram.

Kalyanaraman

It is as if – some invading barbaric nomadic brutes threw away these “knowledge tablets” of the indus script, into some kind of trash place, after looting all the wealth, and killing the residents, and setting the towns on fire!

Now i see the “vaidhya sigaamani” kalayanaram (why the “an” vikuthi needed Mr. K. Ram?!!) – performing a butterfly stroke in his mythical saraswati river before rushing back to “decipher” vedic “sanskrit” in the tablets that his ancestors threw into trashbin all those eons ago!

Why should a civilization leave behind long texts? It depends on the purpose served by a text.

I would cite punch-marked coins as a unique feature of hindu civilization.

If an average of 5 devices are adequate to represent a text on punch-marked coin of s’ren.i metal guilds and mints of the historical periods, surely 5 sign graphs (+ pictorial motifs such as lizard, alligator, vagina, three types of bulls, types of antelopes, rhino, elephant, tiger, dotted circle, portable furnace), linear strokes as numeral counts should have been adequate to represent a text on a seal, a bangle, a potsherd, a tag, a tablet, or even a copper tablet or a weapon.

If they are texts, what is the big deal that they are not ‘long’? Can’t short texts convey short lists of property items owned, for example, by a lapidary of a smith — technology stuff related to a metals age: like furnaces, minerals, metals, alloys, molten casts?

There is a saying: brevity is the soul of wit, right? Intelligent speech and writing should aim at using few words. This proverb comes from the play Hamlet, by William Shakespeare. See the New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. http://www.bartleby.com/59/3/brevityisthe.html

Why should a civilization be expected to leave behind long texts? It depends on the purpose served by a ‘written’, that is, literate text. If a researcher can’t figure out the cultural literacy involved, that is the researcher’s problem to introspect further and gather more evidence before making pontificating statements about illiteracy.

Dhanyavaadah.

Kalyanaraman

The lecture by Damerow on The origins of writing as a problem of historical epistemology – Invited lecture at the symposium on the multiple origins of writing: image, symbol and script in March 1999 should be an eye-opener to those claiming to have discovered the illiteracy of Harappans.

Illiteracy is in the eyes of the beholder. When writing is viewed as a knowledge representation system, there is hope to understand the messages sought to be conveyed in proto-indic on over 4,000 inscribed objects with inscriptions. It is a cop-out to claim that all glyphs are representations of magical powers or divinities. To say that the glyphs are not a writing system because the glyphs cannot be seen as concordant with alphabetic writing systems is begging the question of early efforts at ‘written’ knowledge representation.

No answer is forthcoming so far from FSW as to why the sign graphs and pictorial motifs of Sarasvati epigraphs are NOT hieroglyphs with underlying rebus sounds of proto-indic (as Gelb surmises) or mleccha (as Kalyanaraman says). Examples of evidence for Kalyanaraman’s claim (apart of the 7 volumes on Sarasvati which should be read by serious scholars interested in the script problem): Vatsyayana’s use of mlecchita vikalpa as one of the 64 arts — a cipher-writing system; and use of mleccha for conversation between Yudhishthira and Vidura in the Mahabharata.

Well, anything goes for the likes of FSW who may think they have created a sensation by a novel discovery, without the hard work needed to understand cross-civilizational impulses to convey messages. A civilizational study which ignores the works of Damerow or Dahl or Bryan Wells and earlier savants, starting with Vats, Cunningham, Alan Ross, et al, will get thrown out as a study without adequate review/evaluation of evidence.

Dahl’s piece has been already referred to by Bryan Wells in his comments on FSW civilizational illiteracy article.

Kalyanaraman

See: THE ORIGINS OF WRITING AS A PROBLEM OF HISTORICAL EPISTEMOLOGY INVITED LECTURE AT THE SYMPOSIUM THE MULTIPLE ORIGINS OF WRITING : IMAGE, SYMBOL,AND SCRIPT UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA , CENTER FOR ANCIENT STUDIES MARCH 26-27, 1999 by Peter Damerow

See:

Gelb has hypothesized that proto-Elamite, like proto-Indic (his name for the Indus writing from Harappa and Mohenjo Daro), represented a “fully developed system” with regard to phonetization (Gelb 1952: 218). Unfortunately, as Gelb himself stated, his assertion was based on a very brief look at the material (Gelb mixed both proto-Elamite and linear-Elamite texts in his analysis, as had been done, to some extent, by the publishers of the proto-Elamite material Scheil and de Mecquenem). However, it is worthwhile noting that since its discovery, proto-Elamite has often been viewed as an optimal candidate for decipherment.

It is my working-hypothesis, in agreement with the suggestions of Meriggi and others (see for example Meriggi 1969, 157, and 1975, 105; see also Vallat 1986, 338-339), that hidden in the extensive proto-Elamite repertoire of signs, mainly consisting of pictograms, was a small group of signs used only to write proper nouns–personal and professional designations, toponyms and so on. That list represented a true syllabar.

Complex Graphemes in Proto-Elamite Jacob L. Dahl < jacob.dahl@wanadoo.fr > Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris

http://cdli.ucla.edu/pubs/cdlj/2005/cdlj2005_003.html

Just a few brief comments: Published “recent stratigraphical work from the Harappa Archaeological Research Project (HARP) (Kenoyer and Meadow 1997)” refer to by Farmer consists of 308 artifacts (mostly pot sherds). There are only 6 published Rectangular Bar Seals for which provenience is given by HARP. So, unless Framer has data I do not (unlikely as Richard Meadow is on my dissertation committee) this entire line of argument is based on 6 artifacts. As for the data from Mackay you be the judge: Early I M-369, -23.6 ft Bd, Early I, @DK.G Long Lane, Silver, 11 signs M-355, -20.7 ft Bd, Early I, @DK.G(s) B1/HIV/R61, Steatite, 14 signs M-1365, -21.0 ft Bd, Early I, @DK.G(s) B1/HIII/R4, Limestone, 2 signs (questionable example) M-1367, -21.2 ft Bd, Early I, @DK.G First Street 22, Steatite, 2 signs (unusual example) DK8478 (not in CISI), -21.3 ft Bd, Early I, @DK.G First Street 22, Steatite, 2 signs M-1273, -23.7 ft Bd, Early I, @DK.G Long Lane, Steatite, 5 signs M-1324, -24.4 ft Bd, Early I, @DK.G(s) B1A/R89, Steatite, 4 signs Intermediate III M-407, -20.0 ft Bd, Inter III, @DK.G Crooked Lane, Steatite, 5 signs M-1355, -16.9 ft Bd, Inter III, @DK.G. Long Lane, Faience, 5+ signs DK H.7 (not in CISI), -17.8 ft Bd, Inter III, @DK. North of G/164, Steatite, 2+ signs M-1271, -18.1 ft Bd, Inter III, @DK.G B2/HIV/R15, Steatite, 7 signs M-1350, -18.0 ft Bd, Inter III, @DK.G(s) B1/HI/R17, Steatite, 8 signs M-1309, -17.4 ft Bd, Inter III, @DK.G Crooked Lane, Steatite, 3 signs M-1364, -16.2 ft Bd, Inter III, @DK.G(s) B12A/HII/R18, 5/4 = 9 signs total DK7406 (not in CISI), -16.1 ft Bd, Inter III, @DK.G Crooked Lane, Steatite, 7 signs Intermediate II DK6698 (not in CISI), -15.7 ft Bd, Inter II, @DK.G(s) B9A/HV/R75, Silver, 6 signs DK7694 (not in CISI), -15.7 ft Bd, Inter II, @DK.G(s) B5/HIII/R/8, Silver, 4 signs M-1336, -15.3 ft Bd, Inter II, @DK.G(s) B1/HIV/R30, Steatite, 4 signs DK9187 (not in CISI), – 14.8, Inter II, @DK.G(s) B2/HI/R7, Steatite, 3 signs M1311, -14.5 ft Bd, Inter II, @DK.G(s) B1/HIII/17, Steatite, 5 signs M-1284, -14.1 ft Bd, Inter II, @DK.G(s) B3/HIV/R45, Steatite, 8 signs M-380, -13.9 ft Bd, Inter II, @DK.G(s) B1/HI/R15, Steatite, 6 signs M-371, -13.6 ft Bd, Inter II, @DK.G Crooked Lane, Steatite, 7 signs M-1329, -13.2 ft Bd, Inter II, @DK.G(s) B7/HIX/R32, Steatite, 6 signs 2) As to Micheal Witzel’s comment on Chinese I refer him to Bottero (2004:254-256, In First Writing, Stephen Houston ed.) where he describes how Shang sings are create: Semantic+phonophoric ie. ‘river’ he is created using the logogram for ‘water’+ the phonetic sign ke etc. 3)Farmer’s comment “NO ANCIENT LITERATE CIVILIZATIONS ARE KNOWN — NOT EVEN THOSE THAT WROTE EXTENSIVELY ON PERISHABLE MATERIALS — THAT DID NOT ALSO LEAVE LONG TEXTS BEHIND ON DURABLE MATERIALS.” Is typical of the nonsensical approach he has to this whole issue. If a civilization had written on perishable material but not on durable material how would we know? The only example in contradiction to this is Rongorongo writing. But I certain that the Rapanui would not be considered a civilization. By the way does anyone have a good definition of civilization? One further question on the Indus corpus: “Isn’t steatite a durable material?” 4) Terms such as Utilitarian Communication (Baines 2004:151), and Proto-Writing (Damerow 1999) are often used to describe early scripts of every type. This need for a separate term describing writing that does not (or at least cannot be demonstrated to) express language stems from the linguistocentric definition of writing given in my earlier posting. Maybe the problem is with the definition? I propose we redefine writing as: “a system for the transmission, or storage and retrieval of information using a system of character that have a uniform meaning”. At some level all for these scripts are linked to language in the sense that that is how we structure our reality. In any case my research has lead me to believe that the Indus script is expressing a specific language. You will just have to wait a year or so until my dissertation is finished to see why. 5) Farmer mistakenly says that I cite : “as his authority on Proto-Sumerian (also known as proto-cuneiform) an important paper by Damerow 1999” Those that read my posting probably already realize that what I actually did was download the proto-Cuneiform sign list for the CDLI homepage, and counted the frequency of signs for my self. The resulting correlation of r squared = 0.982 reflect the degree of similarity of the two scripts in terms of the proportion of signs that occur 1, 2, 3
n times. For the proto-Elamite sign frequencies see Dahl (2002) also available on the CDLI homepage. Dahl’s (2005) latest article is a must for those following this discussion: Complex Graphemes in Proto-Elamite. If you are familiar with the Indus script you will immediately see the implication of this work for “The Indus is not writing” myth. 6) On a personal note Farmer is repeatedly (both in his paper and in this forum) less than complimentary to my MA thesis. Saying for example that it was widely criticized, but without actually saying who did the criticizing. The work was limited in scope (ie it was a MA thesis) and I tried to explore several avenues of research I thought interesting. If Farmer had read the section on the Indus language he would have noted that I did not support the Dravidian solution, but rather suggest that the issue is not decided. Further, this “widely criticized” work was the reason Michael Witzel invited me to the First South Asian Ethnogenisis Roundtable. It was also the main reason that I was awarded a full scholarship to Harvard the next year (just before my 50th birthday). It is a work that I am proud of, but like all academic works it represent my thinking at that moment and I reserve the right to expand, modify, amend my ideas as time passes.

I would like to leave you with an old Plat- Deutch saying: Man word jummer to froo olt un to loot klook (roughly: One always becomes old too quickly and smart too slowly).

My best to all Bryan Wells