A Talk on Indus People and their Script

In April 2009, “a team of Indian scientists reports in Friday’s issue of Science journal that the Indus script has a structured sign system showing features of a formal language.” One of the authors of that paper is giving a talk at IISc on June 9th at 10 am (e-mail from Ranjith).

NIAS LITERARY, ARTS AND HERITAGE FORUM
Cordially invites you to a lecture entitled
Indus People and their script
By
Prof. Mayank Vahia
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai
On Tuesday, 9th June, 2009, at 10.00 am
in
J R D Tata Auditorium,
National Institute of Advanced Studies,
Indian Institute of Science Campus,
Bangalore 560 012

Abstract

Indus Valley Civilisation was the first truly urban civilisation with  several cities with population of 20,000 people or more at its peak. It  flourished in the Western part of the Indian Subcontinent from around 7000  BC to 1900 BC with a peak period of 2500 BC to 1900 BC when it went into a  decline. The hallmark of this civilisation is the miniature seals on which  they produced truly magnificent art work and wrote in small cryptic notes.  Their writing has been enigmatic and since their first discovery some 130  years ago, it is still not clear if it is linguistic writing or not. Our  recent work has shown that not only is the writing similar to linguistic  writing but detailed structure of writing can be clearly seen. We will  discuss the issue of Indus writing in the context of the Civilisation and  our recent work.

About the speaker

Prof. Mayank Vahia is an astronomer at the Tata Institute of Fundamental  Research, Mumbai. After having spent 3 decades in space astronomy  instrumentation, his recent interests in growth of astronomy in India has  taken him to study various aspects of India’s history and prehistory with  special emphasis on astronomy and intellectual growth of the Indian  civilisation.

Hope some of you will be able to attend this talk and blog about it.

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