User talk:Vinaykantdave
Bold text--Vinaykantdave (talk) 19:38, 26 August 2013 (UTC)create talk page: vinaykantdaveVinaykantdave (talk) 19:02, 25 July 2013 (UTC) Title -Indus river floods and the Indian fish-God Matsya ([[User talk:VinaykantdaveVinaykantdave (talk) 14:41, 2 September 2013 (UTC) 19:38, 26 August 2013 (UTC) Parpola’s deduction that the fish sign symbolised a God is based on a long series of assumptions and transferrals [1]. Historically, in the Brahamanic Age, Matsya was a flood-rescuing fish-God. At first an unnamed God [2], He was never widely worshipped at the time [3]. The myth was likely to have survived from an era, when floods regularly threatened the survival of a civilisation. Matsya probably had an Indus Age antecedent flood-rescuing fish-God, of unknown mythology. In historical times, a serious Indus River flood has been recorded every 5 to 7 years [4]. It would have been feared every year. Whatever His name, the fish sign came to signify a highly relevant God.
Possehl had evaluated Mahadevan’s views on the ‘wheel sign’ [5]. Mahadevan had suggested that it inferred the sun or rather the sun-God. When shown with only two spokes of the wheel at the top edge, this sign probably symbolised the dawn. Two strokes were almost invariably attached to this modified sign. Mahadevan uses this pairing to ascertain the beginning of a line and cautiously suggests the two strokes were suffixes [6]. The strokes probably represented the morning stars. Homage to the Goddess Dawn would be highly appropriate at the start of a religious ceremony at daybreak. All the lines which included this ideograph were probably records of a ceremony held at dawn. Mahadevan had also considered the “jar sign” as an apparent suffix [7]. In reality, a prayer or a ceremony would end with a deep bow to the supreme deity. Perhaps the ‘jar sign’ symbolised the ‘divine feet’. It was most commonly placed at the end of a line [8].
All these ideographs for the deities were in common use. Considering the seals as tokens of faith, favours the hypothesis that the script consisted of religious symbols. The sentiments had been expressed in a medium, intended to survive the floods.
Notes:
[1] Edwin, Bryant (2001) The Quest for the Origin of Vedic Culture Oxford University Press ISBN 0 19513777 9 [2] Cavendish, Richard [Editor] (1980) Mythology An Illustrated Encyclopaedia (p.20) Orbis ISBN 0 85613730 8 [3] Basham, A.L (1954) The Wonder That Was India (p.302) Sidgwick and Jackson [4] Possehl, Gregory L. (2002) The Indus Civilisation a Contemporary Perspective (p.101) Altamira Press ISBN 0 75910171X [5] Possehl, Gregory L. (1996) Indus Age The Writing System (p.129) University Pennsylvania Press ISBN 8 [6] Mahadevan, I. The Indus Script (p.17) The Archaeological Survey of India [7] ibid p.17 [8]ibid p.722