A new evidence-led approach to the Indus script

Human outlines are read as person, agent, office, or deity classifiers — a semantic class, not a personal name.

Why it is useful: Frequent enough to test. Use it as a structural anchor before any phonetic guess. Counter: Classifiers are borrowed from other scripts. Posture variants may be different signs.

Read as a morphological ending on names or titles (e.g. Parpola’s -an via ‘pot’ rebus; Mahadevan’s genitive-like closer).

Why it is useful: Frequent enough to test. Use it as a structural anchor before any phonetic guess. Counter: No bilingual; rebus from pictogram to phonetics is an extra untested step.

A six-cell lattice. Administrative partition, field sign, or ‘town’ pictogram have all been floated.

Why it is useful: Frequent enough to test. Use it as a structural anchor before any phonetic guess. Counter: Parpola-style ‘city’ readings and Farmer-style emblem readings are both extra steps.

ICIT 003 is drawn in the stroke / numeral class. Class is a graphemic convenience used so relatives can be compared — not a word, not a translation.

Why it is useful: Frequent enough to test. Use it as a structural anchor before any phonetic guess. Counter: Wells over-splits; Parpola and Mahadevan merge. The family of this page is a working cluster.

ICIT 235 is drawn in the geometric frame class. Class is a graphemic convenience used so relatives can be compared — not a word, not a translation.

Why it is useful: Frequent enough to test. Use it as a structural anchor before any phonetic guess. Counter: Wells over-splits; Parpola and Mahadevan merge. The family of this page is a working cluster.

ICIT 861 is drawn in the built / architectural class. Class is a graphemic convenience used so relatives can be compared — not a word, not a translation.

Why it is useful: Frequent enough to test. Use it as a structural anchor before any phonetic guess. Counter: Wells over-splits; Parpola and Mahadevan merge. The family of this page is a working cluster.

Inside the Proto-Dravidian model the fish class is mīn ‘fish’ / ‘star’, used in names of deities or titles. Knorozov’s school reached a similar Dravidian fish reading independently in spirit.

Why it is useful: Frequent enough to test. Use it as a structural anchor before any phonetic guess. Counter: Language ID, rebus convention, and allograph grouping must all be true at once.

ICIT 176 is drawn in the vessel / jar class. Class is a graphemic convenience used so relatives can be compared — not a word, not a translation.

Why it is useful: Frequent enough to test. Use it as a structural anchor before any phonetic guess. Counter: Wells over-splits; Parpola and Mahadevan merge. The family of this page is a working cluster.