"Proto-Shiva" and Dravidian in INDUS
The Indus Valley civilization (Harappa and Mohenjo Daro) is Dravidian civilization because the language spoke by harappans is related to Elamo-Dravidian branch
The ancient Indus Valley Civilization city that built around 2600 BCE
Dravidian Hypothesis
- The Russian scholar Yuri Knorozov, who has edited a multi-volumed corpus of the inscriptions, surmises that the symbols represent a logo syllabic script, with an underlying Dravidian language as the most likely linguistic substrate. Knorozov is perhaps best known for his decisive contributions towards the decipherment of the Maya script, a pre-Columbian writing system of the Mesoamerican Maya civilization.
Knorozov's investigations were the first to conclusively demonstrate that the Maya script was logo syllabic in character, an interpretation now confirmed in the subsequent decades of Mayanist epigraphic research.
The Dravidian hypothesis was supported by scholars like the Russian team headed by Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov, noted Indian author and researcher Iravatham Mahadevan wrote in The Hindu in 2009.
Knorozov, an epigrapher and ethnographer was best known for the important role his research played in the decipherment of the Mayan script. In the ‘Language of the Proto-Indian Inscriptions,’ the Russian scholar reached a conclusion that the symbols at the Indus Valley ruins represented a logo syllabic script.
- “There is reason to consider the Proto-Indian as being close to the Dravidian languages as far as grammatical structure is concerned,” . By Using a computer analysis, Knorozov suggested that an underlying Dravidian language was what people probably spoke in the Indus Valley. Knorozov felt that a sign in the Indus script of a man carrying a stick represented the posture of Yama, the god of death or Bhairava,
A sign in the Indus script of a man carrying a stick represented the posture of Yama, the god of death or Bhairava, a form of Shiva, and assumed that the man was a predecessor of the one the gods.
Yama, the god of death in Hindu mythology.
Knorozov worked closely with Nikita Gurov, one the greatest Indologists of all time in Russia and another strong proponent that the language of the Indus Valley civilization was probably an older Dravidian one. Few scholars in India could match the linguistic prowess of Gurov, who even managed to identify 80 words of Dravidian origin in the Rig Veda.
Gurov and Knorozov co-authored Proto-Indica, a report on the investigation of Indian texts. The former argued in many publications that the Brahmi script was most likely connected to the Indus Valley script and not derived from one of the Semitic scripts. This is a major bone of contention between Western and Russian scholars.
Iravatham Mahadevan, who supports the Dravidian hypothesis, says, "we may hopefully find that the proto-Dravidian roots of the Harappan language and South Indian Dravidian languages are similar.
The Finnish scholar Asko Parpola repeated several of these suggested Indus script readings. The discovery in Tamil Nadu of a late Neolithic (early 2nd millennium BC, i.e. post-dating Harappan decline) stone celt adorned with Indus script markings has been considered to be significant for this identification. However, their identification as Indus signs has been disputed.
The Indus and Dravidian Cultural Relationship {Q&A}
Q: How do you conceive of the relationship between the Indus culture that existed five thousand years ago and contemporary Dravidian culture here ? Prof. Dani, for example, says that doesn't believe that the Indus language was Dravidian because there is just not enough cultural continuity between what is today in South India and what was then in the Indus Valley.
A: I think any direct relationship between the Indus Valley and the deep Dravidian is unlikely because of the vast gap in space and time. Something like 2,000 years and 2,000 miles. But linguistically, if the Indus script is deciphered, we may hopefully find that the proto-Dravidian roots of the Harappan language and Indian Dravidian languages are similar.
This is a hypothesis. If you ask what similarity is likely to emerge, the first and most important similarity is linguistic. Culturally, there is a problem. The modern speakers of Dravidian languages are the result of millennia long intermixture of races. There are no Aryans in India, nor are there any Dravidians. Those who talk about Dravidians in the political sense, I do not agree with them at all. There are no Dravidian people or Aryan people - just like both Pakistanis and Indians are racially very similar. We are both the product of a very long period of intermarriage, there have been migrations.
You cannot now racially segregate any element of the Indian population. Thus there is no sense in saying that the people in Tamil Nadu are the inheritors of the Indus Valley culture. You could very well say that people living in Harappa or Mohenjo-daro today are even more likely to be the inheritors of that civilization.
In fact, I plow a somewhat lonely furrow in this. I often say that if the key to the Indus script linguistically is Dravidian, then culturally the key to the Indus script is Vedic. What I mean is that the cultural traits of the Indus Valley civilization are likely to have been absorbed by the successor Indo-Aryan civilization in Punjab and Sindh, and that the civilization in the far south would have changed out of recognition.
In any case, the present South Indian civilization is already the product of both Indo-Aryan and Dravidian cultures, and the language itself is completely mixed up with both elements. Tamil alone retains most of the earlier Dravidian linguistic structure. Malayalam, Telugu and Kannada have become Indo-Aryanized much more, and culturally, the Hindu religion is a complete combination of all these elements.Therefore while it is legitimate to look for survivals, those survivals are as likely to be found in the RegVeda (matsya) as in Purananuru, a Tamil work, as likely to be found in Punjab and Sindh as in India and Sri Lanka.
So we have to separate our approach of a linguistic connection where it is permissible to construct proto-languages and try to decipher a language, but if you are looking at the survival of cultural and social traits of Harappan civilization they are likely to be all over the subcontinent, overlaid with centuries of transformation in culture and of language. Some of the myths may survive but may become unrecognizable. It is not a very easy or straightforward relationship that you can trace, it is a tangle.
Q: What about the man and bull festival we were discussing .
A: One of the cultural traits in the Indus Valley is that they had the bull fight. Some famous sealing show a man running towards a bull, catching hold of its horns, doing a somersault over the back of the bull, and landing at the other end. Even today in the Dravidian south bull fighting and bull chasing are very common sports. Yesterday, Tamil Nadu had this year's bull festivals where young men in the villages chase bulls and get hurt in the process. This is an assertion of their manhood and they can claim the hands of the fair maiden only after they are able to get hold of the horns of the bull and prove their heroism. This is very likely to be one of the traits which connect the Dravidian south with the Indus Valley. But such traditions are also known, for example, in Spain and in Portugal and the Iberian peninsula. There may well be a pre-historic connection between these very similar cults.
Pashupati seal in Indus Valley Civilization
From the very beginning the westerners who excavated the Indus valley civilization misled the general public by attributing their personal opinions to the seals and objects. Because of their misleading interpretations, we couldn’t decipher the Indus script till today. They put forth some divisive theories such as Aryan Invasion theory.The Aryan –Dravidian theory was rejected by Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi and the great leader Dr B.R Ambedkar. The other prominent people who rejected the Aryan invasion theory include Kanchi Sankaracharya Swami Sri Chandrasekarendra Saraswathy and Sri Aurobindo.
By S Swaminathan:-
When the foreigners saw the so called Pashupati seal they jumped to conclusion that the Indus people were Shaivaites. They never got of this grew and started inventing ‘Lingam’ and ‘Yoni’ in other objects
Description: seal discovered during excavation of the Mohenjodaro archaeological site in the Indus Valley has drawn attention as a possible representation of a "yogi" or "proto-siva" . This "Pashupati" (Lord of Animals, Sanskrit paśupati)seal shows a seated figure, possibly it hyphallic, surrounded by animals.
There are three faces to this figure each on the side and this could be that of the four headed Brahma with the fourth head hiding behind. One can see clearly the long nose and mouth wide lips on the two sides.
The Indus seal with a figure (god) surrounded by animals was interpreted as Lord Shiva or Proto Shiva (please see the picture). It is true that Shiva was called Pashupati meaning Lord of the animals. But we could not read the words Shiva or Pashupati on the seal. What is written on the seals remains a mystery till today. The day the seals are deciphered to the satisfaction of world scholars, most of the Indian History books will be thrown in to Indian Ocean and a new chapter will be written in Indian history.
The godly figure surrounded by the animals can be interpreted as Vishnu or any god. We have found seals of gods surrounded with animals even in the Middle East and Denmark.
indian people
"matsya"
are ancient people of indus valley ? click here
The first publication of a Harappan seal dates to 1873, in the form of a drawing by Alexander Cunningham. Since then, well over 4000 symbol-bearing objects have been discovered, some as far afield as Mesopotamia. In early seventies Iravatham Mahadevan published a corpus and concordance of Harrapan writing listing about 3700 seals and about 417 distinct sign in specific patterns. The average size of writing is five signs and largest text in a single line is 14 signs.
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