Indus Valley Script Decoded !

2006-01-16T12:22:00.000-08:00

Comparison of Indus Valley Harappan 哈拉帕 Script
and Ancient Chinese Jia-Gu-wen 甲骨文 “Bone Script”

Prof. Sheldon Lee Gosline, Hieratic Font Project Director, paper for
Calligraphy, Writings & Inscriptions in the World throughout the Ages

Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Calligraphy Center, 24-26 April 2005

Are we moving toward or away from connectedness with our technological advances, such as writing, global communication, the internet, or are we static in this regard and simply existing on a constant equilibrium of relative disconnectedness? In the case of Pakistan and China, it appears that they have grown more disconnected over the centuries, at least as far as their writing systems are concerned. On 11 April 2005, China and India signed an agreement aimed at ending their 53-year-old border dispute. Let us pray that the new revelation concerning the ancient cultural and linguistic connectedness of this region that I offer here can bring about a peaceful understanding in the modern worldview of Pakistan, India, and China over the contested region of Kashmir. May these three modern states take joy in their common heritage and may this knowledge lead to increased political reconciliation.

Shangri-La Publications and
Shangrila Gifts and Art
are pleased to announce the discovery of a strong link between these two great eastern civilizations of the ancient world.

Several years ago, I noted a close visual similarity between certain signs in Indus Valley script and the most ancient form of Chinese. In particular, the most simple Chinese characters show close association and many of the more complex Chinese signs look like ligatures of simpler signs as found in Indus script. With differences of use and manufacture in mind I recently experimented with inverting and flipping around the Indus inscriptions and found several identical parallels, once the fact that Indus was written horizontally while Chinese was written vertically is taken into account. The “eureka” moment happened when I looked at a very common phrase at the beginning of many ancient Chinese inscriptions that gives the date in context of a festival for a ruling elite. The very same phrase is on a well known long Indus seal inscription.

Click HERE to read a more complete discussion of this research, and please let us know what you think!