Archive
The Dholavira Signboard and Harappa
Here it is, folks: the Dholavira Signboard, all ten symbols of it. What the heck is it trying to tell us?
The mystery surrounding the inscription, if that’s what it is, seems to RT to characterize the Harappan Civilization (mature phase, 2700-1800 B.C.) that produced it. Here we have an ancient polity larger than Mesopotamia, characterized by mud-brick cities, an emphasis on cleanliness and ritual baths, and wide-spread urban planning. It conducting trade with Sumer and presumably Sargon’s Empire, but nonetheless has offered up only a few tantalizing examples of its writing system and pretty much disappeared after centuries of existence, leaving no successor civilization behind. What happened?
•
RT first got interested in this puzzle because he’s convinced that the Indus River valley represents the sharpest, most significant cultural boundary in the ancient world. East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet got its start here. And sure enough, stark differences can be seen right at the beginnings of recorded history, starting with the fact that Mesopotamia produced a civilization devoted to its writing system, one that was practically drowning in written words and that continued to use cuneiform for a couple of millennia, while the Indus valley evidently possessed some kind of writing system, but one which faded away with the civilization that produced it. Following the disappearance of Harrapan society, writing did not reappear in the Indian subcontinent until the 6th or 5th centuries B.C. We must confront an astonishing fact: India went without a written script for more than a thousand years.
Or did it? We know that the Bramhi script used to record the Rig Veda and other early surviving Sanskrit manuscripts was written on highly perishable materials such as tree bark, so it conceivable that the same was true of the Harrapan writing. But why would the Indus valley adopt such perishable media when it knew of cuneiform written on clay tablets? RT confesses himself flabbergasted. Why were the Harappans so transitory?
•
Here is RT’s speculation about the Signboard. The Harappan writing system clocks in at about 400 characters, which indicates it probably was an ideograph-syllable script, like cuneiform. The graphic quality of the letters suggests a compromise between a script designed to be carved on stone and written on bark–that is, the characters are constructed of angular shapes softened by slight curves. The letterforms themselves evidently have little relationship to proto-cuneiform. This writing system appears to have developed independently of other scripts.
Then there is the matter of the “wheel-form” symbol which appears four times in the signboard. Forty percent of the inscription relies on a single concept, and not just any concept, but one which might well be connected to the wheel of Rebirth, that powerful concept in Indian religion, which today appears on the Indian Republic’s flag. Could this sign be the symbol for Harappan civilization? Could its concurrent star-like shape suggest the gods or heaven? How does it relate to the fifth symbol, the open diamond/ellipse?
We will have to wait to find out. With so few examples of the script to work from, linguists have not yet deciphered Harrapan writing or been able to identify the language that it recorded. We may never know, or a Harappan Rosetta Stone may turn up. In the meantime, excavation continues.
*
Inscription: Dholavira Signboard: User: Siyajkak. WikiCmns; CC 3.0 Unported. Map: Maximum extent of Harappan Civilization. Author: Rajesh Rao. WikiCmns. CC 3.0 Unported.
*
Lakshmana Fights Indrajit
•
RT offers the following help with understanding this beautiful image: Lakshmana was the brother of Rama, who is the seventh avatar of the God Vishnu in Hinduism,[1] and a king of Ayodhya in Hindu scriptures. Indrajit was the son of the king Ravana. Indrajit played an active role in the great war between Rama and Ravana. He was said to be invincible in battle because of a Yajna he used to perform before every battle. He twice defeated Lakshmana and even Rama once, but on the third occasion Lakshmana disrupted the Yajna with the help of Vibhishana and fought with him for three days and three nights and finally killed him.
Got all of that straight?
Notice the monkeys fighting in the melee. They’re under the command of Hanuman, who was a devotee of Rama. If RT is reading his Wikipedia correctly, Rama’s army is opposed by an army of demons. Under ordinary circumstances, RT might be tempted to plunge into the Ramayana, the Hindu epic this scene is taken from, But the Ramayana is not exactly light reading: its 24,000 verses are contained in seven books (kāṇḍas) and 500 cantos (sargas), The Epic uses a 32-syllable meter called anustubh.
Maybe Gilgamesh isn’t so hard, after all. RT
•
Painting: Lakshmana Fights Indrajit. (1775-1800). Walter Arts Museum. WikiCmns. Public Domain.
*
Into the Silence: George Mallory and the Story Behind the Story
“Because it is there.” With these words, George Mallory, the lead climber of the early British expeditions attempting to scale Mt. Everest, explained why he had to climb the world’s tallest mountain. And he kept at it through three expeditions (in 1921, 1923, and 1924)–until he disappeared with his climbing partner, Sandy Irvine, somewhere on the mountain above 28,000 feet. He was a week shy of his 38th birthday, happily married, and the father of young children; Irvine was 22 and a student at Oxford.
Heroic? Certainly. Reckless? Possibly. But how do we, nearly 90 years after Mallory’s death, begin to understand why Mallory chose this quest?
*
Enter Wade Davis‘ book, Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest. In these pages, Mallory emerges from nearly a century’s worth of glamour and neglect to take his place as an outstanding climber, a battle-hardened soldier, and a graduate of Oxford and member of his generation’s social elite. But what makes this book exceptional is its portrayal of Mallory’s entire generation (or at least the European fraction thereof), focusing on the experience and aftermath of World War I.
And as if that were not enough, along the way we learn about the British Raj, Anglo-Indian-Tibetan relations, and the history of Tibet and its adherence to Buddhism. Until finally, at the end of the large (but not overlong) book, we learn the fate of the three British expeditions to Everest.
Of this complex web of topics and events, what will probably remain longest in RT’s mind is Into the Silence’s portrayal of WWI. The war is famous for its violence, stupidity, and psyche- and culture-shattering effects on the combatant nations. But RT had no idea of the degree to which fighters in the trenches suffered. Casualty rates were not only unprecedented, but even uncontemplated until the war: on the Allied side alone, 5.5 million soldiers were killed and 12.8 million wounded, with an additional 4.1 million missing. This amounts to 22.4 million casualties out of a total Allied fighting force of 42.9 million. And casualty rates were far higher during certain battles, for instance, and perhaps most notoriously, in the Battle of the Somme. During the battle’s first day, the British sustained 57,470 casualties–20% of its entire fighting force–and the Newfoundland Regiment was essential destroyed. For many soldiers, the carnage could scarcely be imagined, let alone endured.
But if RT had to single out one memory that is particularly heart-breaking, it is a young lady recalling that all the boys she had ever danced with were dead by the end of 1916.
After enduring such hell as young men, from RT’s perspective, climbing even the tallest mountain in the world might seem entirely possible to WWI veterans–and even a moral duty.
*
Enough about the Great War. What stands as testament to Into The Silence‘s power is the fact that all the other threads of its epic–the lives of Mallory and the other expedition members, the history of the Raj and its relations with Tibet, and the story of the heroic attempts to climb Everest–do not get lost in the telling. The book is beautifully written and pulls the reader forward.
And, for the record, RT thinks that while Mallory and Irvine probably did not reach the summit of Everest in 1924, there is still a significant chance that they did. Only more evidence from the mountain will settle the matter. RT
*
Related RT Posts: 1) The Golden Spruce–A Book Review.
*
Photo: George Mallory; WikiCmns; Public Domain.
Kaliya’s Wives and Krishna
•
RT offers this remarkable 18th century Indian painting in plain admiration of its technique and contents; he now wants to find out the story behind the image (and maybe learn some other related stories)… RT
*
Related RT Posts: 1) Contemporary Haitian Art Hits Upper East Side.
*
Painting: Kaliya’s wifes praying to Krishna to release their subdued husband serpent Kaliya (1785-90); WikiCmns; National Museum, Delhi; CC 1.0 Public Dedication.
*
Tree & Hill
RT’s Best Hits of 2011
RT’s Best Hits of 2012
Take a Look Around
Mood Indigo
The Rag Tree 