Indus Script and Dravidian?

Wow! I never knew there was so much available on the subject of the Indus
Script! Thanks Guillaume for this great link!

Now having looked at it, I see no mentioning at all of Burushaski being
entertained as the language of the script. On the other hand, the Dravidian
arguement excites me and it appears there may be some fundamental truth to
it. I like the fish arguement.

Mahadevan's points against the Dravidian hypothesis in favor of an Aryan one
are weak and unscholarly. I admit to so far having only skimmed the
different opinions presented, but Mahadevan's closing paragraphs are quite
irrational:

The near-total absence of matters relating to the mundane,
everyday concerns of the Harappans, and of the minimal
linguistic features expected even in short texts is perhaps
the strongest argument against accepting Parpola's model of
decipherment in its present form.

Can someone explain to me how this absence constitutes evidence against
Parpola's hypothesis?? I know that Dravidian abounds in suffixing but if
we're dealing with short phrases and names, suffixes may or may _not_ be
present. This is rubbish. Obviously he's hard up for words by the fourteenth
page and can no longer concentrate, perhaps in a rush to finish the article
any which way.

However I like to keep a balanced view and although Parpola's ideas seem to
have good points, "pillai" and the squirrel doesn't look quite right and I
don't know what to make of the muruku bangles given Mahadevan's points
against.

Another thing that strikes me bluntly is the *w/*m alternation that Parpola
is talking about in regards to Dravidian where *vey alternated with *mey-
for "roof" and is therefore partially homophonous to *may- "black". I didn't
realise that this had been proposed before...

I had been toying with the idea that Nostratic words with *m followed by *i
end up losing *m (*mi > *we > *(y)e). An example would be Nostratic *mi
"who?" to Dravidian *ya:. I had left that idea in the back of my mind to
pursue another corner of Nostratic and haven't managed to pin this idea down
further. Mahadevan denies that this occasional alternation existed but then
says something silly like, "Even assuming *vey/*mey alternation in
Proto-Dravidian, *mey is not homophonous with *may, [...]". Yeah, whatever,
Maggey. It looks homophonous enough to me and additionally looks like the
intermediary stage I was looking for.

In all, associating Dravidian to the Indus Script probably makes even more
sense if we think along my lines for a second and view the Indian Continent
and environs as having waves of successive dominating languages thrust into
it at various times. We have the very early DeneCaucasian wave
(Burushaski-Yeneseian, SinoDene) which would have strolled through before
Nostratic existed.

At some point, the exact date not important here, Dravidian, as part of the
spread of Eurasiatic tongues to the steppes, knocked on India's door and
said hello. Dravidian then would have mopped up any previous substratum
(like DC languages) and this new language group would reign in India until
the arrival of big bad IndoAryan lgs. It wouldn't make sense that Burushaski
was the language of the Indus civilisation given its really meager existance
nowdays in contrast to the continuing success of the Dravidian group. It's a
thought anyway.

Knowing that "squirrel" is /charge/ in Burushaski, can you make sense of
"Muruku Pillai" in a Burushaski context, Guillaume? Is this Burushaski-thing
your own theory, or is there some literature on this too?

- gLeN


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