http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchu_alphabet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_alphabet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo-Hebrew_alphabet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_alphabet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmi_script
Need Excel sheet lineup comparison between Phoenician and Manchu.
Need Excel sheet lineup comparison between Indus Valley and Phoenician.
Need Excel sheet lineup comparison between Phoenician and Paleo-Hebrew and Hebrew.
---
In one alleged "decipherment" of the script, the Indian archeologist S. R. Rao argued that the late phase of the script represented the beginning of the alphabet. He notes a number of striking similarities in shape and form between the late Harappan characters and the Phoenician letters, arguing than the Phoenician script evolved from the Harappan script, challenging the classical theory that the first alphabet was Proto-Sinaitic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script
Rao (1992)[1] claimed to have deciphered the Indus script. Postulating uniformity of the script over the full extent of Indus-era civilization, he compared it to the Phoenician Alphabet, and assigned sound values based on this comparison. His decipherment results in an "Sanskritic" reading, including the numerals aeka, tra, chatus, panta, happta/sapta, dasa, dvadasa, sata (1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 12, 100).
While mainstream scholarship is generally in agreement with Rao's approach of comparison, the details of his decipherment have not been accepted, and the script is still generally considered undeciphered. John E. Mitchiner, after dismissing some more fanciful attempts at decipherment, mentions that "a more soundly-based but still greatly subjective and unconvincing attempt to discern an Indo-European basis in the script has been that of Rao".[2]
In a 2002 interview with The Hindu, Rao asserted his faith in his decipherment, saying that "Recently we have confirmed that it is definitely an Indo-Aryan language and deciphered. Prof. W. W. De Grummond of Florida State University has written in his article that I have already deciphered it."[3]
At the time of writing (2013), the ground of the academic debate concerning the Indus-Valley signs has moved from a consideration of which language it might have represented to an argument about whether it represents a language at all.[4] The chief candidate for the language-view remains proto-Tamil, and Rao's views about Sanskrit are considered marginal. But the whole field remains difficult and controversial for both academic and political reasons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._R._Rao#Indus_script_decipherment_claim
NOTE: Need to obtain Rao's work; strongest candidate for comparative work.
------------------------------------------------
TO READ LIST:
http://www.harappa.com/script/indusscript.pdf - Special Lecture - Study of the Indus Script - Asko Parpola
Asko Parpola's Deciphering the Indus script has gone astray in many ways. He assumes that the language underneath the Indus script is proto-Dravidian, but then also says that bare stems make clauses. It is not more than assuming an isolating language underneath the Indus script. But why then the term Dravidian is dragged here?
http://www.indusscript.com/review.html
Sectional Citation of Interest:
The archaeologist S. R. Rao in his book The decipherment of the Indus script (1982) maintains that the Indus script is the basis of not only the Brahmi script but also of the Semitic consonantal alphabet, which most scholars derive from the Egyptian hieroglyphs and take as the basis of the Brahmi script. Like so many other Indian scholars, Rao reads the Indus texts in an Aryan language close to Vedic Sanskrit.
-p.32
http://www.new1.dli.ernet.in/data1/upload/insa/INSA_1/20005abf_51.pdf - On the Decipherment of the Indus Script - A Preliminary Study of its Connection with Brahmi - Subhash C. Kak
S C Kak seems to ignore the historical development thru the isolating, agglutinative and Inflexional stages. The inflexional Sanskrit must have started with isolating stage, and, if that primitive form of the language has been discovered, Why should the one be not connected with other thru the genealogical line, if evidences are there ? We have seen that ta'nas: ta na Sa, ca'nas: ca na Sa, etc. are related not only phonetically but also semitically and they can be read in the texts. We should not reject this big find. The isolated words of any importance should have no relevance in an inscription which is supposed to have been forwarded to posterity.
The Decipherment of the Indus script - 1982 (other publication in recent years?)
SR Rao's Indus script deciphered goes to the other extreme in assuming that the language of the Indus inscriptions is proto-Sanskrit and sees the long compound makhanAshana in the text around the Pasupati figure. Many other scholars give their own readings of the text, omitting one or other of the seven syllables.
----
Scrap Pile of Odds and Ends:
CHRONOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS:
GEOGRAPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS:
LINGUISTIC CONSIDERATIONS:
Random Thought: Perhaps Indus Script worked like Maya, where the approximate character was used, rather than strict character; in such a fashion, permitting high degree of variation even though there are only a finite amount of actual characters?