The morphological study by Prof K Rajan and R Sivananthan of the Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology (TNSDA) has digitized over 15,000 graffiti-bearing potsherds found from 140 archaeological sites over several decades.
Photo for representational purpose.
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Chennai: Attempting to provide a link between the Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC) and the Tamil land, a comparative study by the State Archaeology Department has found that 60 per cent of the signs and 90 per cent of the graffiti marks unearthed from excavation sites in Tamil Nadu have parallels with those found in the IVC.
The morphological study by Prof K Rajan and R Sivananthan of the Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology (TNSDA) has digitized over 15,000 graffiti-bearing potsherds found from 140 archaeological sites over several decades.
After categorizing 42 signs as base signs, 544 as their variants, and grouped 1,521 under composite forms, the study compared them with the undeciphered Indus signs.
“Of the 42 base signs and their variants, nearly 60 per cent of the graffiti marks have similarities with the Indus script. Moreover, 90 per cent of the graffiti marks of Tamil Nadu were found to have similarities with the graffiti marks. More specifically, several signs in Tamil Nadu had exact parallels in the Indus script,” Prof Rajan told DH.
The comparative study, whose findings have been released during the centenary year of the discovery of IVC, shows that the signs both IVC and graffiti recovered from settlements of Tamil Nadu were literate and have had exchanges between them, Rajan said.
Archaeologists in Tamil Nadu say Keeladi and Sivagalai, which are 2,600 and 3,200 years old according to carbon dating of artefacts, could be linked to IVC as the “temporal gap” between the Harappan Civilisation and Tamil settlements was narrowing down but experts outside the state don’t agree with this view.
Majority of the graffiti inscribed potsherds unearthed so far in the country are found in South India, more so in Tamil Nadu. Thulukarpatti in Tirunelveli alone threw up about 5,000 graffiti marks and the remaining come from sites like Keeladi, Arikamedu, Uraiyur, Korkai, Alangulam, Adichanallur, Kodumanal, and Kilnamandi.
“Our findings are from graffiti marks unearthed in a small geographical area in Tamil Nadu. We have so far got 15,000 graffiti marks in Tamil Nadu alone and no other place in the entire Indian sub-continent can match this number. We say that IVC and graffiti marks of Tamil Nadu script could be contemporary to each other,” Rajan added.
Sivananthan, joint director, TNSDA, said the similarities between the Indus Civilisation and Iron Age settlements of Tamil Nadu and the hypothesis that they could have existed contemporary to each other are being demonstrated through script, material culture, and trade and cultural exchanges.
The hypothesis is that the Indus script or signs would have not disappeared without traces, rather they would have transformed or evolved into different forms, Sivananthan and Rajan wrote in their study. “The present comparative study is more of a morphological approach rather than any linguistics,” the authors added.
Rajan said the comparative study shows there could be a possibility of exchanges between the IVC and Iron Age settlements. “Besides graffiti, we have unearthed carnelian beads, agate, black and red ware and other items from settlements in Tamil Nadu which add credence to our findings that there were exchanges between them. But more evidence is needed to conclusively establish the link and that is what we are attempting at,” Rajan said.
The authors said the signs engraved on seals were called as script whereas the signs engraved on ceramics were known as graffiti though both were written by the same people. However, the extensive comparative study of graffiti marks and Indus scripts evidently suggests that both are undeciphered signs, Rajan and Sivananthan said.
The study has introduced a fifth dimension to the ongoing IVC debate by providing required material evidence to understand the significance of the language of IVC and its script. The four broad fields that existed earlier are material culture, especially black-and-red-ware, literature-linked linguistic studies, and comparative studies of place and name of IVC and Tamil land.
Indology expert R Balakrishnan said the study has also pushed the introduction of iron in South India to mid-3rd Millennium BCE demonstrating that the Iron Age of south India is contemporary to the Copper Age of north India. “The riddles of Indus and the riddles of Tamil antiquities are in a way two sides of the same coin, notwithstanding the spatial and temporal distances,” he added.