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The Mystery of Ancient Indian Inscriptions

In the long history of human beings, the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt, the cuneiform of Babylon, the seal script of the ancient Indus Valley, and the oracle bone script of China have formed the world’s four major ancient script systems.

In ancient times, the Indus Valley had written characters, most of which were engraved on seals made of stone or clay, so they were called seal characters. More than 2,000 seals have been excavated. Many of these symbols are pictographic and may still be in the pictographic stage, but they are also considered to be phonetic characters transitioning to alphabetic characters because of their syllables and accented symbols.

The meaning of the seal with the words engraved on it has not yet been deciphered. It is speculated that these inscriptions may be the name and title of the owner of the seal, and the carving of the seal may be something they worship.

Seals are not only found in China, many seals have also been found in various ruins in ancient India. At present, the seal script is the earliest known writing system in the world, and more than 2,000 seals have been unearthed in India. Therefore, some people call the Indus Valley culture the seal civilization.

So, what kind of characters are engraved on these seals? What does it mean? The seal is the crystallization of ancient Indian civilization. If all the words on the seal can be deciphered, perhaps the ancient Indian civilization will no longer be mysterious.

There are as many as 2,500 various seals unearthed in the ruins of various civilizations in India. In terms of materials, there are ivory, steel, clay, and lapis lazuli. These seals are generally square with a diameter of 2.5 cm, and some are also rectangular. These seals show the accurate information of civilization to future generations in the form of text symbols or depicting graphics.

There was a time when Indian characters went through a process of development from hieroglyphics to phonetic ideograms. According to experts, these words on the seals of ancient India are likely to belong to the Indo-European language family.

But this claim has been abandoned since the 1970s, and more scholars have begun to gravitate towards these languages ​​being Dravidian, indigenous to India. At present, the research work on ancient seal characters is continuing, and the secrets they carry and hide are being revealed step by step.

The seals unearthed in the early cultures of Haraba and Mohenjo-Daro are extremely simple, and the symbols on them are extremely complex, while the texts of the seals unearthed in the Rotar area are obviously simplified. The ones on the seal have been significantly simplified.

The strokes of the stamp text consist of straight lines and arcs, and are written from right to left. Some characters still retain the characteristics of pictographs, one symbol represents one meaning, but more often two or more symbols are used to represent a compound meaning.

The most notable thing on the seal of ancient India is the image of the cow. Of the 123 steel man seals unearthed by Mohenjo Daro, as many as 36 have the image of a bull. Among them, there are standing human and beast figures with long horns on their heads and various abstract bull head patterns.

In India, cattle have a very lofty position, and people’s worship of cattle is the most prominent landscape of the Indus Valley Civilization. At the same time, elephants, sheep, camels, etc. appear on the seal. Natural objects such as mountains and rivers are also very common.

Among them, there are also a few seals that are very special: they are either human-animal coexistence or human-animal integration, which also reflects the worship of gods in the religious beliefs of the Indus Valley.

In the Indus Valley, some prominent nobles generally have their own unique symbols. They would engrave the mark on the seal and cover it when needed. Or carry them around to show their identity; sometimes, they also give these seals to friends from other places to remember. Therefore, ancient Indian seals have also been found in the two river basins.

A small seal has been endowed with such profound cultural connotations by people, and further research is needed to decipher all the civilizations contained in the seal.