HARAPPAN
LANGUAGE
The
Harappan language is the unknown language or languages of the Bronze
Age (2nd millennium BC) Harappan civilization (Indus Valley Civilization,
or IVC). The language being unattested in any readable contemporary
source, hypotheses regarding its nature are reduced to purported
loanwords and substratum influence, notably the substratum in Vedic
Sanskrit and a few terms recorded in Sumerian cuneiform (such as
Meluhha), in conjunction with analyses of the undeciphered Indus
script.
There
are a handful of possible loanwords from the language of the Indus
Valley Civilization. Sumerian Meluhha may be derived from a native
term for the Indus Valley Civilization, also reflected in Sanskrit
malech meaning foreigner and Witzel (2000) further suggests that
Sumerian GIŠšimmar (a type of tree) may be cognate to
Rigvedic simbala and salmali (also names of trees).
Identification
:
There are a number of hypotheses as to the nature of this
unknown language :
•
One hypothesis places it in the vicinity of Dravidian, perhaps identical
with Proto-Dravidian itself. Proposed by Henry Heras in the 1950s,
the hypothesis has gained plausibility and is endorsed by Kamil
Zvelebil, Asko Parpola and Iravatham Mahadevan.
• Michael Witzel as an alternative suggests
an underlying, prefixing language that is similar to Austroasiatic,
notably Khasi; he calls it "para-Munda" (i.e. a language
related to the Munda subgroup or other Austroasiatic languages,
but not strictly descended from the last common predecessor of the
contemporary Munda family). Witzel argues that the Rigveda shows
signs of this hypothetical Harappan influence in the earliest historic
level, and Dravidian only in later levels, suggesting that speakers
of Austroasiatic were the original inhabitants of Punjab and that
the Indo-Aryans encountered speakers of Dravidian only in later
times.
• A "lost phylum", i.e. a language
with no living continuants (or perhaps a last living reflex in the
moribund Nihali language). In this case, the only trace left by
the language of the Indus Valley Civilization would be historical
substratum influence, in particular the substratum in Vedic Sanskrit.
Hypotheses that have gained less mainstream academic acceptance
include :
•
An Indo-European language, close or identical to Proto-Indo-Iranian:
suggested by archaeologist Shikaripura Ranganatha Rao.
• A Semitic language: Malati Shendge (1997)
identified the Harappan culture with an "Asura" empire,
and these Asura further with the Assyrians.
Multiple languages :
The Indus script indicates that it was used to write only one language
(if at all). But it is quite possible that multiple languages were
spoken in the IVC, similar to how Sumerian and Akkadian co-existed
in Mesopotamia for centuries. Jane R. McIntosh suggests one such
possibility: Para-Munda was originally the main language of the
civilization, especially in the Punjab region. Later, the proto-Dravidian
immigrants introduced their language to the area in 5th millennium
BC. The Dravidian language was spoken by the new settlers in the
southern plains, while Para-Munda remained the main language of
those in Punjab.
Source
:
https://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Harappan_language