Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions, vol. 3: New Material, Untraced Objects, and Collections Outside India and Pakistan. Pt. 1: Mohenjo-daro and Harappa.

• Author: Possehl, Gregory L.
• Position: Book review

Corpus of Indus Seals and inscriptions, vol. 3: New Material, Untraced Objects, and Collections Outside India and Pakistan. Pt. 1: Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. Edited by ASKO PARPOLA, B. M. PANDE, and PETTERI KOSKIKALLIO, in collaboration with RICHARD H. MEADOW and J. MARK KENOYER. Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, Sarja, Series B, NIDE, vol. 359. Memoires of the Archaeological Survey of India, vol. 96. Helsinki, 2010. Pp. lx + 444, photographs, line drawings, and tabtes.

Prior to the publication of Volume 1 of the Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions in 1987 the documentation of the writing system of the Indus civilization was scattered in diverse, often difficult to find, publications as well as in unpublished sources. The quality of the photographs and drawings in the publications varied in quality. In the preface to the book under review Asko Parpola informs us (p. vi),

The roots of this project go back to 1964, when three young Finns decided to study the undeciphered Indus script with the help of a computer. Seppo Koskenniemi worked as a scientific advisor for IBM. Simo Parpola studied Assyriology, and Asko Parpola studied Indology. We had about 2200 Indus seals al our disposal in photographs and drawings almost all of them published in the reports of the archaeological excavations carried out at Harappa ... Mohenjo-daro ... and Chanhu-daro ... While transcribing these photographic texts into code numbers for computer processing we became aware of some limitations in our sources. Details are not always clear in the natural size photographs of inscribed objects which mostly are rather small; some photographs are out of focus or not well exposed; and one could not be sure of the reliability of the drawings. And there was more. In 1971 Parpola visited museums in India and Pakistan and discovered that some four hundred seals and other inscribed objects from Mohenjo-daro had never been published.

Working with UNESCO, Parpola set out to change all of this. With the cooperation of many institutions and individuals, myself included, he began a program to take fresh photographs of all of the sides of all of the Indus seals, as well as an impression. This documentation also included other objects with examples of the Indus writing, including graffiti on pottery. The first volume of this work appeared in 1987 with the cooperation of Jagat Pati Joshi, former Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India...