(Excerpts from Iravatham Mahadevan’s presentation to the Tamil Nadu History Congress 2009. To see the whole presentation, please go to Roja Muthiah Library site – http://rmrl.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/papers/35.pdf )

The Indus or Harappan Civilisation was, by far, the most extensive in the ancient world. The Civilisation evolved from indigenous cultures over a long period of time from Early Neolithic in the 8^th millennium BCE.  It spread over a million square kilometres in the North-West regions of South Asia. It lasted from ca.2600 to 1900 BCE during its mature urban phase and from ca.1900 to 1300 BCE during the period of its decline and final disappearance.  There is substantial archaeological evidence to support the view that the Indus Civilisation was pre-Aryan.  The Indus Civilisation was urban, while the Vedic culture was rural and pastoral. The Indus seals depict many animals but not the horse. The chariot with spoked wheels is also not depicted. The horse and the chariot with spoked wheels were the defining features of the Aryan-speaking societies. The Indus religion as revealed by the pictorial depiction on seals included worship of a buffalo-horned male god, mother-goddesses, the pipal tree and the serpent, and possibly the phallic symbol.  Such modes of worship present in Hinduism are known to be derived from the aboriginal population and are totally alien to the religion of the Rig Veda (RV).  In general, the Aryan mode of worship is centred on the fire altar (agni and the homa-kunda), while the Dravidian mode is based on water. The so-called ‘Great Bath’ at Mohenjodaro was the direct forerunner of the temple ‘tanks’ of Hinduism.  There is also substantial linguistic evidence favouring Dravidian authorship of the Indus Civilisation.  The evidence includes the presence of Brahui, a Dravidian language still spoken in the Indus region, Dravidian loan words in the Rig Veda, the substratum influence of Dravidian on Indo-Aryan as shown by the presence of retroflex consonants in the RV and major modifications in the Prakrit dialects, moving them closer to the Dravidian than to the Indo-European family of languages.

Aryan-speaking people migrated to South Asia only after ca.1900 BCE, that is, after the decline and collapse of the mature phase of the Indus Civilisation.  The incoming Aryans must have been much fewer in numbers when compared to the vast indigenous population of the Indus Civilisation. But the Aryans could achieve elite dominance, facilitated as much by their mobility and better weapons as by the disintegration of the Harappan polity into numerous smaller communities without effective central authority or leadership. In course of time, the Aryan speech prevailed in North India, as majority of the local population switched over to the dominant language leading to the creation of a composite society and culture long before the date of the Rig Veda (ca. 1500-1300 BCE).  While most of the population stayed back, a substantial number of Harappans also migrated southwards from the upper Ganga-Yamuna doab as well as the Gujarat regions as recorded in Old Tamil literature. 

This is perhaps the best place to clarify that I employ the terms ‘Aryan’ and ‘ Dravidian’ purely in the linguistic sense without any racial or ethnic connotation. It cannot be otherwise, as people could, and often did, switch over from one language to another.  Speakers of the Aryan languages have indistinguishably merged with speakers of Dravidian and Munda languages millennia ago. creating a composite Indian society, containing elements inherited from every source.

It is thus more likely that the Indus arts, religious motifs and craft traditions survived and can be traced in Sanskrit literature from the days of the Rig Veda, and also in Old Tamil traditions recorded in the Cankam poetry. 

There are about 400-450 signs in the Indus Script. The exact number cannot be ascertained as one cannot always distinguish basic signs from mere graphic variants. The number of signs reveals the typology of the script.

The Indus Script fell into disuse after the decline and disappearance of the Indus civilisation. The Indo-Aryans apparently could not adapt the Indus Script to their language because of its ideographic and rebus-based character which was too closely tied with the Harappan language, urban organisation and ideology. The failure to adapt the Indus Script by the Aryans may also be due to their strong tradition of oral transmission of scriptures. When, one thousand and five hundred years later, the Brahmi script was created to serve the needs of the Iron Age civilisation in the Ganga-Yamuna doab, it was an altogether new beginning.  Efforts to connect the Indus and the Brahmi scripts have not been successful.

Daimabad in western Deccan is the southernmost outpost of the Indus Civilisation in its last phase (ca. 1800 BCE). The evidence of pottery graffiti suggests the migration of some of the descendants of the Harappans 10 South India after the fall of the Indus Civilisation. In a classic paper published in 1960, B.B. Lal compared the signs of the Indus Script with the symbols occurring as pottery graffiti in chalcolithic and megalithic cultures.  He found that “eighty-nine per cent of the megalithic symbols go back 10 Chalcolithic-Harappan times (and) conversely, eighty-five percent of the Harappan-Chalco1ithic symbols continue down to the megalithic times”.  In the five decades since Lal published his findings, many more excavations have taken place in Tamilnadu. Virtually, every ancient site has yielded quantities of graffiti-bearing pottery, mostly from the megalithic-Iron Age levels. Lars work has shown that there does seem to be a genetic relationship at a deeper level between the signs of the Indus Script and the megalithic symbols. Identical-looking signs may share the same semantic significance.  More recent discoveries show that megalithic pottery depicts not merely isolated Indus-like symbols, but, sequences of two or more symbols strongly suggesting linguistic connection which can only be Dravidian.

Inscribed Neolithic Stone Axe from Sembiyan Kandiyur

The earliest and most significant archaeological discovery connecting the Indus Civilisation with Tamilnadu is the neolithic polished stone axe inscribed with Indus-like characters found in 2006 at Sembiyan Kandiyur village near Mayiladuthurai in the Lower Kaveri Delta (Fig.2). [t was a chance discovery.  A school leacher in the village was digging a small pit in his backyard garden to plant banana and coconut saplings.  He found two stones which were later identified by the Tamilnadu State Department of Archaeology as Neolithic stone axes datable to ca.2000 – 1000 BCE.  As there are no hills in the Lower Kaveri Delta, the stone axes must have reached the site in the course of trading in stone tools in neolithic times.  The axes appear to be made of dolerite or charnockite stone available in South Arcot and Salem regions of Tamilnadu.

Terracotta Dish from Sulur with Indus-like symbols

Sulur near Coimbatore in Tamilnadu is a well-known ancient site which has yielded several antiquities assigned to the late megalithic-iron Age periods.  An inscribed terracotta dish from Sulur dated in ca. first century BCE is in the British Museum (No.1935.4-19.15).  The large circular grey terracotta dish is in an excellent state of preservation. It is incised on the concave inner side with a large X-like symbol occupying the whole field.  Four other symbols in a smaller size arc incised within the lower quadrant.

The comparison between the megalithic symbols on the Sulur Dish and the corresponding Indus signs on the Harappa tablet shows that the South Indian megalithic script is related to the Indus script. Further, the common sequences found on the Sulur Dish and the Harappa tables indicate that the languages of the two inscriptions are related to each other.

Indus-like symbols on Pottery from Sanur

Sanur near Tindivanam in Tamilnadu is known for its large number of megalithic graves, some of which have been excavated (Banerjee and Soundara Rajan 1959). The megaliths at the site have been assigned to ca.2-1 centuries BCE.  The grave goods include pottery with graffiti marks, many of them occurring in sequences of three symbols each.  According to B.B. Lal (1960), he undertook a photographic comparison of Harappan chalcolithic and megalithic pottery graffiti when he was particularly struck by the similarity of a rather specialised symbol from Sanur with one in the Indus Valley script.  I have identified the sign and Muruku, the Dravidian god.

Two megalithic potsherds were found in 2005 during the trial excavations at Pattanam, Kerala, (most probably to be identified with ancient Muciri).  Each sherd is incised with a solitary large-sized symbol, which appear to be identical, though one of them is in rectilinear and the other in cursive style. The graffiti are closely similar in shape with the muruku sign of the Indus Script. (Selvakumar, Shajan and Mahadevan 2006).

Excavations by the Tamilnadu State Department of Archaeology at Mangudi in Tamilnadu have yielded three potsherds incised with symbols resembling the muruku sign of the Indus Script.