Indus Script Cipher: Hieroglyphs of Indian Linguistic Area

About the Book

This is a path-breaking work as significant as the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs by Champollion. For nearly130 years, the Indus script has remained a challenging enigma to scholars of languages, writing systems, and civilization studies. The script was invented and used over an extensive area of what is called the Indus or Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization. Over 2000 or 80% of archaeological sites are found on the Sarasvati River basin, a river adored in a very old human document called the Rigveda and which dried up due to tectonic and resulting river migration causes. In 1822, history was made when Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered by Jean-Francois Champollion from parts of the Rosetta stone. Champollion showed that the Egyptian writing system, c.3000 BCE was a combination of phonetic and ideographic glyphs. The Rosetta stone is dated196 BCE and had a decree in three versions: one in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, one in the Egyptian demotic script, and one in ancient Greek. Since alphabets of ancient Greek were known, Champollion used the trilingual inscription to validate his historic decipherment.

Indus Script Cipher makes history recording hundreds of hieroglyphs of India. The absence of a Rosetta stone which has been the principal impediment invalidating any decryption of Indus script cipher is thus overcome. Further validation comes from evidence of the historical periods in India from c. 600 BCE showing continued use of Indus script hieroglyphs which evolved from c. 3300 BCE. This book details a decipherment of the Indus script using the same rebus method used by Champollion to read ancient phonetic hieroglyphs of India. By demonstrating an Indian linguistic area of cultural and language contacts and history of language changes, this is a landmark contribution to civilization studies of the world and will promote efforts to re-write the ancient socio-cultural and economic history of a billion people in India and neighboring regions.

About the Author

Dr. S. Kalyanaraman is Director, Sarasvati Research Center, President, Ramasetu Protection Movement in India, and BoD member of World Association for Vedic Studies. His research interests relate to the rediscovery of the Vedic Sarasvati River, roots of Hindu civilization, decoding of Indus Script, National Water Grid, and creation of Indian Ocean Community. He has a Ph.D. in Public Administration from the University of the Philippines. He is a multi-lingual scholar versed in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Sanskrit, Hindi. He was a senior financial and IT executive in Asian Development Bank, Manila, Philippines, and on Indian Railways. His 15 publications include Indian Lexicon – a multilingual dictionary for over 25 Indian languages, Sarasvati in 15 volumes, Indian Alchemy – Soma in the Veda. He is a recipient of many awards including the Vakankar Award (2000), Shivananda Eminent Citizens’ Award (2008), and Dr. Hedgewar Prajna Samman (2008).