who are indus people?

There are any number of theories to denote the 'race' of the indus
people. While the concept of race itself is a big humbug, it is my
hypothesis that the Indus people are neither 'Aryans'
nor 'Dravidians'.

There is a language called brahuii in balucistan. It closely
resembles Tamil but it is not a dravidian langauge. it is a dardic
language. Similiarly, in the same belt, the kashmiri is a dardic
language.

The indus people lived some where in between or atleast very close to
these two places- balucistan and kashmir.

Then, there is a reasonable possibility that they should be speaking
a dardic language too and it is more likely that they should be
speaking a language which has some characteristics of dravidian
language-since balucistan is nearby...


In my last post, I have argued and perhaps, without much opposition,
that the language of paisaci(a forerunner of prakrit andhra) has
these characteristics.

So, it is quite likely that the andhras who were speaking prakrit
andhra were residing in indus valley.

In a book on the history of ' mala' caste, a scheduled caste of
Andhra pradesh, the author argues that the caste of 'sindhur'( a
caste of andhrites) has been living on the banks of sindhu for long.

Secondly, if we look at the seals of so called pashupati, it is not
the seal of pashupati. it is dakshinamurthy, the same sage who has a
hand in spreading paisaci langauge to the rest of the country.

The seal sings the saga of victory of sindhurs (represented by
dakshina murthy) over the local savage tribes represented by the
various animals in the seal. Especially, the rhino is pictured there
to represent the savage tribes who have skins of the type of rhinos.
This reference you can find in greek works mentioned in RC Majumdar.
(In one of his papers, sri Mohan gupta talks of the rhino
representing varaha.. but i am sure indians knew the diff bet a rhino
and a horned -bore, i mean boar)

These local tribes are always waiting for an opportunity to invade
the more prosperous and organised peoples. The fortification of the
sites prove repeated invasions from these local tribes.

And it is not a unique event either. When Lord Krishna has passed
away, the tribals have come in hoardes to loot dwaraka and its people
and in fact, the ill fate of abduction by them is met by several
yadava womean, including some of the queens of Krishna (3138 bce)

In another 1500 years, did things change????I do not think so, coz
the reference to these savage tribes was there even at the time of
Alexander (323 bce)


Similiarly, the script of Indus people has also become a much argued
subject. SRi Dr Kalyana Raman has kindly consented to send me a CD on
the subject. But meanwhile, I will post some of my musings :

The indus script is a combination of pictorial and alphabetical
representations.

There are never 8 strokes in the alphabet and possibly, some of the
strokes are half in size.

These strokes represent the vowels

| - a/aa
||- i/ee
|||- u/oo
|||| - e
||||| - ai
||||||- o/oe
|||||||- ou

The half strokes may be representing the shorter vowels.

These are the basic vowels in almost all the indian langauges
including telugu.

There are people who have talked about the fish sign representing the
stars but basically, it might be representing 'm' (after 'min' in
many of the indian languages- meaning fish)(here i represent fish
sign with capital f)

Thus,

||||||F means Aum and not six stars.

To call it as six stars is a round about way of arguement and is
invented just to prove that indus people are dravidians.


Similiarly, it is thought that the spear represents an arrow and '
ambu' (or its equivalents meaning arrow) in telugu, tamil and kannada
have a grammatical function.

But so far as i know, 'ambu' has no grammatical function. it has only
a poetic function.

for ex. if i say ' samvatsarAMBUl' (means years), it has no different
meaning than samvatsaramulu.that is to say, the suffixing the word
AMBU has not changed the meaning or the function of the word. This
word is usually suffixed only in case of poems( for the sake of
beauty or rhyme or meter) or heavy bookish language.

In colloquials, you do not suffix AMBU.

The non spreading of the script is due to its complicated system of
writing and more over, to represent any sound, you have to take lots
of pains. Hence, you needed ' Rayasa gallu', the writers to make
seals to write anything and not everybody was capable of writing.

In other words, it became a status symbol to be able to write or to
have a writer in your employment. This script could not spread in the
common people and had no other go than to die a natural death when
the civilisation has come to an end.

I hope to receive comments from all over and after listening to all
of you, I would like to present a paper.

kishore