For centuries, decipherment of the Indus script was considered to be one of the most challenging themes but now it seems there is a breakthrough insight decoded by a passionate and exceptionally versed oncologist of the national Capital.
As a cancer specialist, Dr Puneet Gupta has integrated the insights from oncology (cancer of the tongue distorts symmetry and sound), the regain of sound once anticancer treatment restores symmetry, spiritual biology (the author of Applied Spiritual Biology) help decoding the secret key to Harappan signs related to sounds.
Dr Gupta has decoded all 4000 inscriptions and his breakthrough work reclaimed the Harappan zero in writing. For the first time ever, the writing was fully decoded for all the 700 plus signs.
“The Harappan symmetrical signs mirrors the biological symmetry of human jaw and tongue movements. Two stand-alone symbols (non combo signs) are assigned for each specific sound of Harappan language called bi-cameral abugida (BICAS) system. This BICAS provides the secret key to its decipherment and genesis of India Multilingial keyboard for manuscript writing. Now one keyboard can help writing Harappan Brahmi, Brahmi, Prakrit, Sanskrit, Tamil, Hindi, Telgu, Malyalam, Kannad, and all diacritic based Indian scripts of past as well as present” said Dr Puneet Gupta, who is a practising oncologist and Chairman at the AIMS, Faridabad.
Amongst the larger number of experts working on decoding of Harappan manuscripts, Dr Gupta’s work has stunned as his is the only model describing the Indus script as a bi-cameral abugida writing system that has identified around 700 symbols, standalone as well as combined combo clusters as found in about 4000 inscribed objects.
The conference organised by the Union Ministry of Culture brought together 20 eminent speakers of national and international repute, including archaeologists, epigraphists, linguists, engineers, computer scientists, economists, and medical experts.
Dr Gupta model proposed two symbols per sound: one for the pre-sound phase of human speech and second standalone for the post-sound. Simply bi-cumeral system means each sound as in English say B is written as small “b” and capital “b”. Gupta linked the script’s symmetry to jaw and tongue movement, noting that in humans upper jaw remain fixed while lower jaw moves having 16 lower teeth corresponding to 16 vowels related dieties in the Hindu Shodashi system and the Harappan weight measures also use a factor of 16. Shodashi tradtion is closely related to Dattatreya Mantra tradition as revealed in all major urban locations of Harappan civilization.
“Letter to letter and word to word decoding. No rebus, no postulations, no guess work nor estimates,” Dr Gupta added who is ready with a compilation in form of releasing a book on Harappan Unicode soon.
He added now is the time that India should launch own multi lingual language keyboard that shall be able to type all Indian scripts; ancient and modern in one go from Harappan Brahmi to Ashokan Brahmi, Tamil, Prakrit to all modern scripts using dicritics. His hypothesis is unique innovative and standalone. The symmetrical articulation of human biology, symmetrical Harappan script, specific special spoken sound related with two symmetrical symbol is the key to Dr Gupta’s successful decoding, said a senior official from the Ministry of Culture.
Asserting that manuscripts are “a guiding light for the future”, the international conference adopted the New Delhi Declaration to bolster efforts to preserve, digitise and disseminate their knowledge as well as to bring back the original works.
India has one of the richest collections of ancient manuscripts in the world, with nearly 10 million texts that hold the country’s traditional knowledge and cultural heritage. These manuscripts, inscribed on palm leaves, birch barks, cloths, handmade papers and other such material, represent the “living memory of a nation and the foundation of its civilisational identity”.
The Government has launched the Gyan Bharatam Mission as a major initiative under the Ministry of Culture. It aims to survey, document, conserve, digitise and make accessible more than one crore manuscripts located at academic institutions, museums, libraries and private collections across India. “Gyan Bharatam Mission is set to become a proclamation of India’s culture, literature and consciousness,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his address at the conference on Friday.
Some of the key highlights of the three day conference were presentations by Dr Andreas Fuls who on topic Bridging the Gap Between Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Linguistics of the Indus Script; Dr Bryan K Wells - Crossing the Bridge: A Proto-Dravidian Decipherment; Dr Bahata A Maukhopadhyay - Symbolism in the Mercantile Indus Script and Parallels in Ancient Dravidian and Vedic Words; Dr Mayank Nalinikant
Vahia - The Harappan
Script: Constraints on Decipherment and the Way Ahead amongst others.