Indus Script

The Indus script is the writing system found on artefacts of the Harappan civilisation, but its signs have not yet been read with scholarly certainty. Because its underlying language and sign values remain unknown, the inscriptions cannot presently be treated as deciphered literary texts.

Form and direction

• The script contains about 375-400 signs, far more than an alphabet; therefore, it was evidently not an alphabetical system.
• Many signs appear pictorial or geometric, but their exact linguistic values and whether they represented words, syllables or other units remain uncertain.
• It was generally written from right to left, inferred from inscriptions in which signs become cramped toward the left edge.

Material setting and brevity

Writing occurred mainly on small objects rather than on surviving manuscripts or monumental narratives.

• Inscriptions occur on seals, sealings, tablets, pottery, ornaments and other objects; a large signboard was also found at Dholavira.
• Most texts are extremely short, while the longest known inscription has about 26 signs.
• The script shows considerable standardisation across the geographically extensive Harappan cultural zone.

Why decipherment remains difficult

The main obstacles are the brevity of inscriptions, the absence of a securely identified underlying language and the lack of a bilingual inscription comparable to the Rosetta Stone.

• No long text survives to reveal recurring grammatical patterns or extended context.
• Proposed decipherments remain unaccepted because they have not produced a consistent reading applicable across the inscriptional corpus.