Talk:Indus script

Discussion about Copyright Violation

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---

Hi All,

As I visited the Indus Valley Civilization article on Wikipedia today, to which I had made some minor contributions, I was pleasently surprised to see the sheer amount of interest and enthusiasm it had generated, in such short a time. I would also like to thank the Wikipedia Admins for selecting the IVC article as a 'Featured Article' on Nov. 22nd, 2004. Now to the point..

1. I admit that I copied parts of text on Indus Script from www.ancientscripts.com. It turns out to be an unacceptable practice on Wikipedia, hence, I wholeheartedly apologize for my mistake. It was my first attempt on contributing to Wikipedia, and I did not spend enough time and effort on learning the prevailing code of ethics, yet again, my mistake !

2. I must also admit, that my reason for this copying was simply to avoid spending a lot of time in re-writing something yet over again, which has been re-written countless times, and is generally considered "information" in the public domian (as in News), as opposed to a work of literature or scientific discovery etc. the credit and copywrite for which always belong to the original author. Despite this, I did specifically check for a copywrite notice, and did not find any on www.ancientscripts.com, neither on Nov. 22nd, nor today.

Despite all the above, I would like to aknowledge that I am tremendously encouraged to see so much interest in Indus Valley Civilization by so many fellow Wikipedians. For a person like me, whose mission is to disseminate knowledge of IVC worldwide, I seem to have hit a gold-mine ! As I read the texts on IVC article today, I wonder at how much they have been improved, and how meticulously, in just about two days time.

I hereby make the following commitment: I am off to Paris today for a week of seminars, but I would try my best to write an original piece on Indus Script, exclusively for Wikipedia, in part as apology for my earlier misbehaviour, and in part because Wikipedia is beyond doubt one of the best platforms I have found so far, and hence deserves exclusive treatment. My time and effort would be well-spent, and I know I can depend on You, my fellow Wikipedians to further improve and add to my initial work.

A last word: Attempts to "own" the Indus Valley Civilization by any one culture or nation are, at best, naive. Indus Valley Civilization is the joint heritage of entire mankind and transcends such petty conflicts. I humbly request all Wikipedians to avoid such claims, in the true spirit of shcolastic research and discovery.

--Atla 12:54, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This article seems to belong to the camp that claims that the Indus culture was Indo-European and that there is an unbroken continuity between the Indus culture and the modern Indian.--Wiglaf 18:16, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Edit: sorry, read the last line too fast.--Wiglaf 18:19, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

By all means, if you know about the subject, expand the article. I did only a minor NPOV edit (I hope), to make the article compatible with teh Brahmi article. -- Pjacobi 18:45, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I would welcome an original rewrite. As long as it is made clear that the IVC remains "silent" in the sense that the "script" remains undeciphered. The original text severely distorted Asko Parpola's stance. He is indeed a serious scholar, and afaik he doesn't claim any decipherment. He suspects the language represented could be Dravidian, but that is from circumstantial evidence. This doesn't keep Hindutva sources from elevating him to some sort of IVC-guru status, all but obscuring his Dravidian theory, making it seem like he essentially expects to unearth the Harappan Rigveda any moment. The IVC is part of the human heritage. It is a prehistoric culture, just like Catalhuyuk, and it is unrelated to modern politics or modern religion, be it British imperialism or Hindutva. dab 13:29, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Picture Request

Could the article be updated to have a small example picture of the script? I don't know where one could be found with the correct licensing terms. 71.145.182.209 05:18, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

"amateur research"

I realize Rao is an archaeologist and Kak is an electrical engineer, making them academics. Decipherment of a script is still outside their disciplines, and their results are dismissed by linguists. Note that Michael Ventris was likewise an "amateur researcher", with the difference that his results (deciphering a different script) were embraced as convincing by specialists. dab (ᛏ) 11:39, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Then I wonder how come that Farmer didn't make it into the Amateur section? He is not a indologist or linguist either (neither is co-author Sproat really qualified for the indus script, though co-author Witzel could be). Lawler described him as an outsider, and Possehl was surprised that his ideas have raised interest. (see Parpolas 2005 paper, [1]...) I have also seen the Farmer paper described as pseudo-scientific or Erich von Däniken like. It seems better not to have such section titles in order to avoid potential pov problems. --Rayfield 11:57, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Brahmi-Indus script

I do not think Kak's reference is at all relevant here. First it is admitted that he has not tried to decipher the script, so the reference should not be made under the "Attempts at decipherment" section. Second, Brahmi itself is associated more closely with Armaic. Third, the association has been refuted by scholars like Mahadevan (a gap of about 1000 years between the two scripts[2]). Though Kak's work could be of interest elsewhere, here I feel it just adds to the noise. In anycase, even if the Indus script was the precursor to Brahmi, that does not mean the language of the Indus script was Indo-Aryan (do not mix language and scripts). Chaipau 23:46, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Kak, Talageri etc are accomplished historians. Brushing them aside does not help the debate. Bakaman%% 22:40, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

As I mentioned above, Kak could be an important scholar, but what is questioned here is the reference to him in the present context. Chaipau 22:57, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Making statements like Brahmi is closely associated with Aramaic would be speculative. A simple comparison of Phoenician,Aramaic and Brahmi shows that Brahmi is not linked with the other two —Preceding unsigned comment added by 221.134.202.89 (talk) 12:09, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Attempts at decipherments

User:Krsont has reverted a reversion of vandalism.

There have been many serious attempts to decipher the Indus script. Replacing the info on these attempts by just one attempt is vandalism. I am reverting the changes for a second time. I hope this matter would not go beyond this. Chaipau 21:17, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I apologize, I had no idea. I should have looked closer at your edits. I wished only to mention the aramaic/brahmi thing, not to get involved in the decipherment debate. --Krsont 21:35, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Rjabchikov

The following seems rather dubious:

"The last serious research of the script was conducted by the Russian scholar Sergei V. . His method is based on the structural linguistics. Sergei V. Rjabchikov has reconstructed the Proto-Indo-Aryan (Proto-Indo-European) language, and as a result he has decoded the Proto-Indian Writing System.[5] Sergei V. Rjabchikov is the author of the well known decipherment of the rongorongo script, too."

The famous scholar Mr. Rjabchikov seems to have a hotmail address, and to have set up this "foundation", which essentially seems to be a website [3] which asks for donations. Is our hero really the author of a "well known decipherment of rongorongo"? His theories seem to be getting short shrift over on that page. Paul B 14:30, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I think our hero is a kubannet.ru customer situated in Moscow :) dab (ᛏ) 12:52, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh yes he's very famous indeed. I think he has deciphered every known undeciphered script. 98.246.150.203 (talk) 22:53, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Witzel's Para-Munda Hypothesis

This article already shows something about the so called "Dravidian Hypothesis" which seems to be popular with some Indian researchers. But what about the "Para-Munda" Hypothesis by Prof. Michael Witzel (Witzel, 1999), which is presented in quite some detail and coupled with a wealth of comparisons of substrate vocabulary in post-Harappan Indo-Aryan and possible syntatic clues in the Indus script? http://www.ejvs.laurasianacademy.com/ejvs0501/ejvs0501article.ps —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.21.255.59 (talk) 15:04, 9 April 2007 (UTC).

The article currently says that Witzel and Farmer now claim that the Indus script encodes Para-Munda, and have repudiated the views expressed in Farmer, Sproat and Witzel (2004). The source cited in support of this claim makes absolutely no reference to any such repudiation - as far as I can see, it only makes a reference to Witzel's 1999 paper. Nor does the claim seem very likely, seeing as Farmer's given lectures trumpetting his views as recently as this July. I'm minded to remove the sentence, but thought it prudent to ask here first. -- Arvind 16:38, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Since nobody had any comments to offer, I've removed the sentence. -- Arvind 13:40, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

you are right. Witzel assumes "Para Munda" on the basis of substrate influence in Sanskrit. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the Indus script. --dab (��) 13:54, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

recent statistical study

Of course this will deserve closer attention once it is published. So far, we only have a single page pdf saying they did the study, the study itself remaining unpublished. --dab (��) 07:24, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I note a lot of pov editing around this. It's got to stop. Dougweller (talk) 05:36, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

people want this script to be deciphered, a lot. "Want" is a valid motivation fuelling research, but it is a terrible guide in interpreting research results. Wikipedia doesn't need to report on every new study five minutes after they appear. Once the dust settles a bit, it will be soon enough for us to try and figure out if any progress has been made. Fwiiw, I can understand the experts remain unimpressed. This study appears to be a textbook case of "we want this to be true very badly, so we'll just fiddle with statistics until they say what we want them to say". This is not, of course, the sort of thinking behind the scientific method that helped end the middle ages. Of course, scholars dying to make the headlines and journalists pressed to come up with juicy headines form an unholy alliance that is going to kill science. Wired wasn't beyond reporting "An ancient script that's defied generations of archaeologists has yielded some of its secrets to artificially intelligent computers." Pereira has blown this study ouf of the water in five minutes. If Science would condescend to have actual linguists peer-review their content on linguistics, this sort of thing wouldn't happen. --dab (��) 06:34, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

"dab" -- So you conclude that "Science" did not use linguists as reviewers just because some linguists have criticized the paper? Also, your edits clearly show your bias on this topic. For example, if one looks at: [4] one can see that you deleted the sentence regarding the response of Rao et al to the criticisms and hid them under "notes". You also deleted the sentence regarding a discussion on what Rao et al did and stuck that as a subnote! Finally, you even changed the phrase "Rao et al.'s response" to "Rao's reaction"..."at his homepage". Such pov editing has no place in wikipedia. Avrosenfeld (talk) 00:10, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

"Avrosenfeld", my "bias" is sparing Wikipedia every little WP:RECENTISM. We are not a blog. --dab (𒁳) 09:14, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

In keeping with Wikipedia policy, I will refrain from editing things about myself, but for the record I am a linguist, not a computer scientist. It would be good to correct that in the discussion of the 2004 Farmer, Sproat, Witzel paper. --Richard Sproat —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.199.36.170 (talk) 22:30, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

The following quote from Rao underscored the disingenuousness of this whole enterprise: "However, speaking on the issue of whether language families can be identified using conditional entropy, Rao and colleagues already state in their Science paper that “answering the question of linguistic affinity of the Indus texts requires a more sophisticated approach, such as statistically inferring an underlying grammar for the Indus texts from available data and comparing the inferred rules with those of various known language families”.

Sure, but they also state: "The similarity in conditional entropy to Old Tamil, a Dravidian language, is especially interesting in light of the fact that many of the prominent decipherment efforts to date (9–11) have converged upon a proto-Dravidian hypothesis for the Indus script."

Presumably if conditional entropy can tell us nothing about linguistic affinity (the correct conclusion), then it is not "especially interesting" at all that the Indus and Old Tamil curves are similar. It is just coincidence (which I happen to believe is the right conclusion to draw). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.246.150.203 (talk) 07:22, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Similarly for the following paragraph:

"Responding to their critics, Rao and colleagues have pointed out that the counterexamples proposed by Liberman, Sproat and others are based on the assumption that conditional entropy by itself is a sufficient condition for language, a claim not made in their paper (for the full response, see pdf: [35]). They define their methodology as Bayesian in nature (see [36]) focusing on uncovering the necessary conditions for language, which they enumerate as “Zipfian frequency distributions, syntactic structure such as the clear presence of beginners and enders, preferences of symbol clusters for particular positions within texts etc. and finally, similarities in conditional entropy”. They cite the fact that the Indus script also satisfies a growing list of these properties of natural languages as evidence in favor of the linguistic hypothesis."

This misses the point that the critiques of the conditional entropy paper were not presenting "counterexamples": they were presenting the argument that conditional entropy does not provide evidence for structure. In other words that it is a worthless measure for this purpose. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.246.150.203 (talk) 07:27, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Infobox

The following interesting discussion belongs in the article, not in the infobox:

|typedesc=(Prime candidate of the decipherment claim is a form of early Dravidian language, related to archaic Tamil

• 'Towards a Scientific study of the Indus script'
• "Discovery of a century in Tamil Nadu"
• Asko Parpola - Tamil words represented in the Indus script
• Parpola, Asko, 1997. Dravidian and the Indus script: On the interpretation of some pivotal signs. Studia Orientalia 82: 167-191. Helsinki: The Finnish Oriental Society
• 'Indus Script is Dravidian'
• Brahui language, a direct legacy of the Indus Valley Civilisation
• Others believe it to be logographic, syllabic, or a mix of both Fconaway (talk) 02:54, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Sheldon Lee Gosline

I have deleted this entirely. I've just spent some time trying to find out more about this guy. I found his cv here [5] on his website (his company). I note that the two 'Honors and Peer Recognition' don't seem significant even if they are real, which is a bit odd. I also note that "His Grace, Lord Sheldon Lee Gosline, 1st Duke of Otsego, 1st Marquis of Cooperstown in New York and 1st Duke of Warren in Pennsylvania is third among equals in the new American Aristocracy by virtue of receiving the third Title of Nobility." which is even odder.[6]. He seems to have a few genuine publictions but most of his stuff is self-published.[7]. I can't find any reaction to his self-published paper, which suggests it was a damp squib, not ground-breaking research as it was described. My conclusion is that it shouldn't be in the article. Dougweller (talk) 05:30, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

script vs. signs

I understand, that this is a controversial and hot debated topic. However, the style of writing gets increasingly unencyclopedic towards the end. It appeals to me like twitter. There should be only the notice, that the newly published paper by Rao et al. was being critised by Farmer in terms of methods etc. Not the whole thing live! Thanks. --Neutralpointofyou (talk) 22:20, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't the article say something about the dispute in the lead? It seems to take for granted that this is a script (as everyone did until recently), up until you get to the last paragraph where you read that a growing number of scholars think the whole thing is bunk. It's as if cold fusion talked about the great potential of room-temperature fusion reactions for six paragraphs and then the last paragraph said, "oh, by the way, nobody can reproduce the results". Maybe the scholarly debate isn't quite at the point where Wikipedia can take a side, but if established academic consensus is now in doubt it can't just be a footnote. 140.247.128.58 (talk) 23:23, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm not in the position to say, whether the challengers have a point or not. Obviously the study of Rao et al. was received well by the media, while Farmer, Witzel, Sproat were left behind. Thus, I think, it would be appropriate to keep the criticism in the subsection. However, my main problem was the style used in the section, obviously created by highly nervious people supporting Farmer, Witzel, Sproat. --Neutralpointofyou (talk) 18:47, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Bryan wells's volumetric system

There is some reporting on today's The Hindu about Bryan wells' (unpublished) thesis.[8] should this be added to the article? or should we wait till it gets published and peer reviewed. --Sodabottle (talk) 07:10, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Mention of possible Easter Island / rongorongo connection?

I noticed on Vilayanur S. Ramachandran's article, a scan of an article he wrote was linked to, in which he mentions the similarity of a number of Indus Valley glyphs to rongorongo glyphs. I know little of these matters, but I was surprised it was not mentioned on here. It seems notable enough to be worth mentioning, even if it is not considered particularly compelling. 76.115.3.200 (talk) 00:10, 7 December 2009 (UTC)