Indus Valley: A million-dollar challenge to crack the script of early Indians

For over a century, experts – linguists, scientists and archaeologists – have tried to crack the Indus script. Theories have linked it to early Brahmi scripts, external, Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages, Sumerian, and even claimed it’s just made up of political or religious symbols.

Yet, its secrets remain locked away. “The Indus script is perhaps the most important system of writing that is undeciphered,” says Asko Parpola, a leading Indologist.

These days, the more popular spectacular theories equate the script with content from Hindu scriptures and attribute spiritual and magical meanings to the inscriptions.

Most of these attempts ignore that the script, made up of signs and symbols, mostly appears on stone seals used for trade and commerce, making it unlikely they contain religious or mythological content, according to Mr Rao.

There are many challenges to deciphering the Indus script.

First, the relatively small number of scripts – about 4,000 of them, almost all on small objects such as seals, pottery and tablets.

Then there’s the brevity of each script – average length of about five signs or symbols – with no long texts on walls, tablets or upright stone slabs.

Consider the commonly found square seals: lines of signs run along their top, with a central animal motif – often a unicorn – and an object beside it, whose meaning remains unknown.