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In the first part of this inquiry, I stressed the connection between Mesopotamian and Indus Valley (IV) civilizations.  My aim was to provide support for a scriptal and lingual link between the undeciphered IV writing system and the well-known languages and writing systems of Mesopotamia (MP), which tellingly is translated as liǎng hé liúyù 兩河流域 ("valley / drainage basin of two rivers") in contemporary Sinitic.  The point is to detach IV from IE, which is a red herring and a detraction from productive efforts to decipher the IV script.  If we concentrate on the civilization, languages, and writing systems of MP, it should be easier to crack the IV code.

In this, the second part of our inquiry, I will build on and refine the evidence I have amassed in the first part.  Sumerian was a non-Semitic, non-Indo-European agglutinative language isolate that took root in MP roughly in the early 4th millennium.  I have always considered it significant that the native designation of the Sumerians was:

"Black-Headed Ones" or "Black-Headed People" (Sumerian: , romanized: sag̃-gíg, lit. "head" + "black", or , sag̃-gíg-ga, phonetically /saŋ ɡi ɡa/, lit. "head" + "black" + relative marker).  For example, the Sumerian king Shulgi described himself as "the king of the four quarters, the pastor of the black-headed people". The Akkadians also called the Sumerians "black-headed people", or ṣalmat-qaqqadi, in the Semitic Akkadian language.

(Wikipedia)

Even more curious, a similar designation existed in ancient Chinese society, where laborers were called límín 黎民 ("black-headed people; commoners; common people").

"On the 'black-headed people'"
Shih Lun, Chinese Studies in History, Volume 8, 1975 – Issue 1-2
Pages 242-258 | Published online: 08 Dec 2014

https://doi.org/10.2753/CSH0009-4633080102242

Abstract

In the summer of 1973 a Ch'in [Qin] dynasty iron weight was unearthed in Chien-shan Commune, Wen-teng hsien, Shantung. It weighed 32 kilograms and was oval in shape. On the top a semicircular nose had been cast, and a bronze plate bearing an imperial decree was inlaid on the side. The imperial decree engraved on this plate was issued by Ch'in Shih-huang [First Emperor of the Qin] in the twenty-sixth year of his reign. It read: "In the twenty-sixth year the Emperor annexed all the feudal lords under Heaven, brought peace to the black-headed [people], and proclaimed himself Emperor. Therefore, he issued a decree to Chancellors [Wei] Chuang and [Wang] Wan, ordering them to clarify and unify all laws and weights and measures which were perplexing or were not uniform."

This was the first year of the reign of the First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty, which lasted from 221-210 BC

Now, returning to the IV civilization per se, in the first part of this series, as a portion of my analysis of the spectacular "priest-king" statue of Mohenjo-daro, where I focused on what i interpreted as a set of forehead tefillin / phylactery and upper right arm ringlet held secure by straps, which are prominent in Jewish ritual practice.  Later, I learned that Asko Parpolo, the distinguished decipherer of the IV script (still working on it after four decades) had written a monograph on the steatite statue of the Mohenjo-daro priest king. 

Asko Parpola.  The Sky-garment:  A study of the Harappan religion and its relation to the Mesopotamian and later religions.  Studia Orientalia, edited by the Finnish Oriental Society, 57.  Helsinki:   Societas Orientalis Fennica, 1985.

From a quick perusal of the 216 page text and 35 photographs, many with multiple images, I did not notice any mention of phylacteries or tefillins, although the straps on the back of the head of the individual in Fig. 2c indicate that this person must have a ringlet on his forehead that is secured in the same fashion as that of the "priest-king" who is the subject of this monograph.

Parpola, as announced in the title of his book, is interested in astral and astronomical ornamentation.  The trefoils that cover the garment reflect that preoccupation.  I am grateful to Asko, both in his text and in his illustrations, for cementing the connections between  IV and MP civilizations and cultures — and distancing them from the IE ornamentation, language, and culture of the Pontic-Caspian steppe

Parpola, who probably knows more about the Mohenjo-daro priest-king than anyone, told me that he follows a group of scholars who consider the would-be M-d priest-king rather to represent the tradition of the BMAC (Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex), which spread to the Indus Valley around 2100 BCE, apparently settling there as the elite layer of the Indus Civilization.

I'm fine with that, because it would position him and his congeners at a crucial point midway between MP, IV, and the gateway to Central Asia, and vice versa.

Two crucial points about the names for what lay between MP and IV.  The most efficient way to address this matter is to watch this video:  Meluha or Meluhha | Ancient India | Names of India | Episode 1,YouTube·Anichakra Vids·Aug 18, 2024

The video does not mention Elam (3200-539 BC), whose role I emphasized in the first part of this series, but its location is indicated on one of the maps in the video:  smack dab in the middle of the region between MP and IV.

The Proto-Elamite period, also known as Susa III, is a chronological era in the ancient history of the area of Elam, dating from c. 3100 BC to 2700 BC.^[1][3] In archaeological terms this corresponds to the late Banesh period. Proto-Elamite sites are recognized as the oldest civilization in Iran. The Proto-Elamite script is an Early Bronze Age writing system briefly in use before the introduction of Elamite cuneiform.

(Wikipedia)

Elamite was an agglutinative language

Notice the Cross Potent on this Proto-Elamite cylinder seal:

☩ > wū 巫 ("shaman; witch, wizard; magician"), Old Sinitic *myag, a loanword from Old Persian *maguš ("magician; magi")

References

Mair, Victor H. 2012.  "The Earliest Identifiable Written Chinese Character.” In Archaeology and Language: Indo-European Studies Presented to James P. Mallory, ed. Martin E. Huld, Karlene Jones-Bley, and Dean Miller. JIES Monograph Series No. 60. Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man.  Pp. 265–279.

__________.  1990.  "Old Sinitic *Myag, Old Persian Maguš and English Magician", Early China 15: 27–47.

There was much trade and traffic between MP and IV, and naturally most of it was carried out by sea.  If you paid attention to the products transported from IV to MP listed in the video, most of it was luxury goods (timber, carnelian, lapis lazuli, etc.).  There is plentiful evidence of IV cultural artifacts being found in MP sites, and vice versa.  Most striking to me are little statues of monkeys from India that have been discovered in MP, about which I will have more to say below.

Now I would like to conclude with a learned article on "The Song of Songs and Tamil Poetry" by the German-British-Israeli professor of Hebrew and Semitic languages, Chaim Menachem Rabin (1915-1996).

"The Song of Songs and Tamil Poetry," in Studies in Religion, Vol. 3, No. 3, 1973/74, pp. 205-19.

[In the following essay, Rabin explores the connections between the Songs of Songs and Indian—specifically Tamil—poetry.]

Also available here:

Rabin, C. (1973). "The Song of Songs and Tamil poetry". Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses, 3(3), 205-219. https://doi.org/10.1177/000842987300300301 (Original work published 1973)

Rabin's article begins:

1. MONKEYS AND PEACOCKS

Letters written by Mesopotamian merchants between 2200 and 1900 B.C. often mention the country of Melukkha with which they traded. The late Benno Landsberger conclusively proved that this was Northwest India, where at that time the Indus civilization was flourishing.

In various places in Mesopotamia a few dozen of the typical Indus culture seals have been found, with pictures representing, as usual, religious motifs. Some appear to be local imitations. Motifs common to the Indus civilization and to Sumero-Akkadian culture have been pointed out, including some occurring on the seals found in Mesopotamia. It is therefore probable that such objects were brought in not as knicknacks, but because of their religious symbolism by people who had been impressed by Indus religion.

In the scenes depicted on Indus seals animals play an important role. Many of these still have a part in Indian religious symbolism. One of these is the Hanuman monkey, now associated with Rama. Objects representing this monkey have been found in Mesopotamia, some dating from the period mentioned. We have also two literary references to the importation of monkeys. One is a 'letter,' of which four copies exist:

To Lusalusa, my mother, from Mr. Monkey. Ur is the delightful city of the god Nanna, Eridu the prosperous city of the god Enki. Here I am sitting outside the doors of the Great Music-Hall. I am obliged to feed on garbage—may I not die from it! I don't get any bread or beer. Send me a special courier—urgently!

The other is a Sumerian proverb: 'All Eridu prospers, but the monkey of the Great Music-Hall sits in the garbage-heap.' Thus the poor young monkey had been exhibited in public, but when the populace tired of the novelty, it was thrown out and had to fend for itself, no doubt to be replaced by some other sensation.

A similar story is told in the Buddhist Jātakas. These are collections of stories, mostly of evident folkloristic origin, purporting to describe former rebirths of the Buddha and his friends or opponents. The Bāveru-Jātaka, with omission of most of the dialogue byplay, runs:

Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta came to life as a young peacock. When he was fully grown, he was exceedingly beautiful and lived in a forest. At that time some merchants came to the kingdom of Bāveru, bringing on board ship with them a foreign crow. At this time, it is said, there were no birds in Bāveru. [The natives admire the crow and buy it for a hundred pieces of money.] The natives took it and put it in a golden cage and fed it with kinds of fish and meat and wild fruits. In a place where no other birds existed, a crow endowed with ten evil qualities attained the highest gain and glory.

The next time these merchants came to the kingdom of Bāveru, they brought a royal peacock which they had trained to scream at the snapping of the fingers and to dance at the clapping of the hands. [The natives buy the peacock for one thousand pieces.] Then they put it into a cage ornamented with the seven jewels [there follow details of feeding]. Thus did the royal peacock receive the highest gain and glory. From the day of its coming, the gain and honour paid to the crow fell off, and no one wanted even to look at it. The crow, no longer getting food either hard or soft, went off crying softly 'caw caw' and settled on a garbage-heap.

Before the crested peacock had appeared,
Crows were with gifts of fruit and meat
 revered.
The sweet-voiced peacock to Bāveru came,
The crow at once was stripped of gifts and
 fame.

There is no need to spell out the parallels in these two tales, the second of which was 'published' some two thousand years after the first. Indeed they complement each other: the Eridu story supplies the fact that the animal was publicly exhibited, which is merely hinted at in the Jātaka, while the latter may provide some indication why the monkey of Eridu was cast out. The subject is typically Indian, exemplifying the doctrine of illusion (māyā). In fact one wonders whether the coexistence of the proverb and the letter in Sumerian does not point to an original form in which the prose story was summed up, Indian fashion, by some lines of poetry.

On the factual side, we know that maritime connection between Mesopotamia and India lapsed after the destruction of the Indus civilization, and the name of Babylon (Bāveru) would hardly have been known, since trade, when at last it was resumed, went via South Arabia. The Jātaka story must, therefore, ultimately date from before 2000, an example of the extraordinary retentiveness of Indian tradition.

Rabin's remarkable article continues in this fashion, a testimony to the close ties between MP and IV civilizations circa 2000 BC.  The second part of the article is called "The Mountains of Perfumes" and deals with love poetry.

To solve what seems to be a purely linguistic challenge, the decipherment of the IV script, I believe that intensive study of ancillary disciplines — the history of art, literature, religion, and other aspects of culture — can contribute greatly to the understanding of the script and the language that it conveys.

Are the IV language and script Dravidian or IE? 

I believe the answer is self-evident.

Indo-Aryan migrations

The Indo-Aryan migrations^{[note 1]} were the migrations into the Indian subcontinent of Indo-Aryan peoples, an ethnolinguistic group that spoke Indo-Aryan languages.^[2] These are the predominant languages of today's Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal, North India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.^[3]

Indo-Aryan migration into the region, from Central Asia, is considered to have started after 2000 BCE as a slow diffusion during the Late Harappan period and led to a language shift in the northern Indian subcontinent.^[2][4] Several hundred years later, the Iranian languages were brought into the Iranian plateau by the Iranians, who were closely related to the Indo-Aryans.

The Proto-Indo-Iranian culture, which gave rise to the Indo-Aryans and Iranians, developed on the Central Asian steppes north of the Caspian Sea as the Sintashta culture (c. 2200-1900 BCE),^[5] in present-day Russia and Kazakhstan, and developed further as the Andronovo culture (2000–1450 BCE).^[6][7]

The Indo-Aryans split off sometime between 2000 BCE and 1600 BCE from the Indo-Iranians,^[8] and migrated southwards to the Bactria–Margiana culture (BMAC), from which they borrowed some of their distinctive religious beliefs and practices.^[9] From the BMAC, the Indo-Aryans migrated into northern Syria and, possibly in multiple waves, into the Punjab (northern Pakistan and India), while the Iranians could have reached western Iran before 1300 BCE,^[10] both bringing with them the Indo-Iranian languages.

(Wikipedia; see also Indo-Aryan languages in Britannica; The Indo-Aryan Languages , eds. George Cardona [Routledge Language Family Series]; The Indo-Aryan Languages, Colin Masica [Cambridge Language Surveys]; Omniglot)

Indus Valley Civilisation

The Indus Valley Civilisation^[1] (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation, was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form from 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE.^[2][a] Together with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, it was one of three early civilisations of the Near East and South Asia, and of the three, the most widespread, its sites spanning an area including much of Pakistan, northwestern India and northeast Afghanistan.^[3][b] The civilisation flourished both in the alluvial plain of the Indus River, which flows through the length of Pakistan, and along a system of perennial monsoon-fed rivers that once coursed in the vicinity of the Ghaggar-Hakra, a seasonal river in northwest India and eastern Pakistan.^[2][4]

QED

 

Selected readings

• "Decipherment of the Indus script: new angles and approaches" (3/6/25) — with useful bibliography
• Rhiannon Morris, "Racialisation in China" CERS (Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies) Working Paper (2012) University of Leeds — "black-headed people" ("commoners") in early Chinese society
• "How did Proto-Indo-European reach Asia?" Leiden University (7/15/24), Myrthe Timmers, describing the research of  Axel Palmér — with excellent, straightforward, explanatory map for the expansion of Proto-Indo-European (can be enlarged)

[Thanks to Michael Witzel, Asko Parpola, and Michael Carasik]

March 22, 2025 @ 12:26 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Decipherment, Language and culture, Language and history, Language and literature, Language and religion, Language and travel

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