Indus research began 8/15/2025
Updated:1/24/2026

Indus Script Research – Current Status Summary

(Updated to latest evidence set)

1. Scope of Work Completed

  • A / a / bis variants

  • Crude vs finished seals

  • Repeated sign clusters across different catalog pages

  • Concordance-backed cross-checks (Mahadevan)

2. Major Structural Discoveries

2.1 The Script Is Structured, Not Decorative

Confidence: ~75%

  • Signs repeat in fixed relative positions

  • Variants preserve order even when carving quality changes

  • Damage, truncation, or rotation does not break the sequence logic

This rules out:

  • random symbolism

  • purely religious iconography

  • ad-hoc personal marks

2.2 A True Prefix–Core–Suffix Grammar Exists

Confidence: ~80–85%

Across many independent seals, we consistently observe:

[ PREFIX ] → [ CORE SIGN FAMILY ] → [ TERMINAL / QUALIFIER ]

This structure survives:

  • different seal sizes

  • different craftsmen

  • different time slices

  • different materials

3. The Count / Quantity System

3.1 Vertical Stroke Clusters = Counts

Confidence: ~75%

Evidence:

  • Appear overwhelmingly at the left edge

  • Quantity varies but remains discrete and bounded

  • Often grouped (suggesting base or sub-base counting)

  • Never appear as suffixes

Observations:

  • Groupings such as 4×3 (12) appear plausible

  • Tick orientation (inside vs outside a “U”) varies without changing function

  • Count signs co-occur with specific sign families, not randomly

Interpretation:

  • These are numerical prefixes, likely batch size, units, or allocations

4. The “Fish” Sign Family

4.1 Fish Is a Classifier / Category Marker

Confidence: ~70–75%

Key points:

  • Appears in the middle position, never leading

  • Accepts different numeric prefixes

  • Accepts different terminal signs

  • Retains identity despite carving variation

Crucially:

  • It behaves like a noun-class marker, not a word or picture

  • It is not tied to a single quantity

  • It is not tied to a single terminal

This is exactly how:

  • commodity classes

  • item types

  • standardized categories
    behave in administrative systems

What is not yet claimed:

  • literal “fish”

  • phonetic value

5. Terminal / Suffix Signs

5.1 Rightmost Signs Act as Qualifiers

Confidence: ~50–60%

Observed behavior:

  • Appear consistently at the end

  • Rarely (if ever) appear alone

  • Swap while prefix + core remain stable

Likely functions:

  • status (issued / received / owed)

  • destination / transaction type

  • sub-category or processing state

This is still an active hypothesis, but supported by position and substitution behavior.

6. Variant Analysis (A / a / bis)

6.1 Variants Preserve Meaning

Confidence: ~90%

Findings:

  • A / a / bis seals preserve sign order

  • Differences correlate with:

    • carving skill

    • wear

    • seal reuse

  • Not semantic shifts

Conclusion:

  • Variants are orthographic, not lexical

  • The system tolerates stylistic noise while preserving structure

7. Directionality & Orientation

7.1 Direction Is Functional, Not Decorative

Confidence: ~70%

Examples:

  • Animals facing opposite directions while glyph order remains consistent

  • Ticks and marks flipping inside/outside without breaking count logic

This strongly suggests:

  • reading direction is encoded

  • orientation may signal transaction direction (e.g., incoming vs outgoing)

Still under validation, but increasingly plausible.

8. What I Have Not Claimed (Important)

I have not asserted:

  • phonetic readings

  • Dravidian / Indo-European mapping

  • literal pictographic meaning

  • full decipherment