Current - Issue

Year 2026 · Volume 6 · Issue 5

Original Article

Indus Script Comb Sign M176 as a Classifier for Referent Categories: Hypotheses Based on Structural- Semiotic Analysis

Inderjeet Singh1
1 Assistant Professor of Journalism, Kamala Nehru College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India.

Published Online: September-October 2026

Pages: 137-144

References

[1]. Allen, J. P. (2010). Middle Egyptian: An introduction to the language and culture of hieroglyphs (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
[2]. Ashton, S.-A. (2013). Origins of the Afro comb: 6,000 years of culture, politics, and identity. Fitzwilliam Museum.
[3]. Barthes, R. (1967). Elements of semiology (A. Lavers & C. Smith, Trans.). Jonathan Cape.[4]. Barthes, R. (1972). Mythologies (A. Lavers, Trans.). Hill and Wang. (Original work published 1957)
[5]. Burrow, T., & Emeneau, M. B. (1984). A Dravidian etymological dictionary (2nd ed.). Clarendon Press.
[6]. Collon, D. (1987). First impressions: Cylinder seals in the ancient Near East. British Museum Press.
[7]. Coulmas, F. (1989). The writing systems of the world. Blackwell.
[8]. Farmer, S., Sproat, R., & Witzel, M. (2004). The collapse of the Indus-script thesis: The myth of a literate Harappan civilization.
Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies, 11(2), 19–57.
[9]. Faulkner, R. O. (1962). A concise dictionary of Middle Egyptian. Griffith Institute.
[10]. Gardiner, A. H. (1957). Egyptian grammar: Being an introduction to the study of hieroglyphs (3rd ed.). Griffith Institute.
[11]. Harris, R. (1986). The origin of writing. Duckworth.
[12]. Harris, R. (2000). Rethinking writing. Athlone Press.
[13]. Houston, S. D. (Ed.). (2004). The first writing: Script invention as history and process. Cambridge University Press.
[14]. Houston, S. D., Robertson, J., & Stuart, D. (2001). Quality and quantity in glyphic nouns and adjectives (Research Reports on Ancient
Maya Writing No. 47). Center for Maya Research.
[15]. Kenoyer, J. M. (1998). Ancient cities of the Indus Valley civilization. Oxford University Press.
[16]. Lotman, J. (1990). Universe of the mind: A semiotic theory of culture (A. Shukman, Trans.). I. B. Tauris.
[17]. Mahadevan, I. (1977). The Indus script: Texts, concordance and tables. Archaeological Survey of India.
[18]. Mahadevan, I. (1982). Terminal ideograms in the Indus script. In G. L. Possehl (Ed.), Harappan civilization: A contemporary perspective
(pp. 311–317). Oxford & IBH Publishing.
[19]. Mahadevan, I. (2006). Agricultural terms in the Indus script. Journal of Tamil Studies, 70, 64–76.
[20]. Mahadevan, I. (2012). Agricultural signs in the Indus script. Review of Agrarian Studies, 2(2), 1–12.
[21]. Mukhopadhyay, B. A. (2019). Interrogating Indus inscriptions to unravel their mechanisms of meaning conveyance. Palgrave
Communications, 5(1), Article 73. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0274-1
[22]. Nissen, H. J., Damerow, P., & Englund, R. K. (1993). Archaic bookkeeping: Early writing and techniques of economic administration in
the ancient Near East. University of Chicago Press.
[23]. Parpola, A. (1994). Deciphering the Indus script. Cambridge University Press.
[24]. Peirce, C. S. (1931–1958). Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (Vols. 1–8; C.
[25]. Hartshorne & P. Weiss, Eds., Vols. 1–6; A. W. Burks, Ed., Vols. 7–8). Harvard University Press.
[26]. Platts, J. T. (1884). A dictionary of Urdu, classical Hindi, and English. W. H. Allen & Co.
[27]. Possehl, G. L. (2002). The Indus civilization: A contemporary perspective. AltaMira Press.
[28]. Rao, R. P. N. (2018). The Indus script and economics: A role for Indus seals and tablets in rationing and administration of labor. In D.
Frenez, G. M. Jamison, R. W. Law, M. Vidale, & R. H. Meadow (Eds.), Walking with the unicorn: Social organization and material
culture in ancient South Asia: Jonathan Mark Kenoyer felicitation volume (pp. 518–525). Archaeopress.
[29]. Rao, R. P. N., Yadav, N., Vahia, M. N., Joglekar, H., Adhikari, R., & Mahadevan, I. (2009). Entropic evidence for linguistic structure in
the Indus script. Science, 324(5931), 1165. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1170391
[30]. Salomon, R. (1998). Indian epigraphy: A guide to the study of inscriptions in sanskrit, prakrit, and the other Indo-Aryan languages.
Oxford University Press.
[31]. Sampson, G. (1985). Writing systems: A linguistic introduction. Hutchinson.
[32]. Sandmel, S. (1962). Parallelomania. Journal of Biblical Literature, 81(1), 1–13.
[33]. Saussure, F. de. (1983). Course in general linguistics (R. Harris, Trans.). Duckworth. (Original work published 1916)
[34]. Sokoloff, M. (2002). A dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. Bar Ilan University Press.
[35]. Wells, B. K. (2011). Epigraphic approaches to Indus writing. Oxbow Books.
[36]. Yadav, N. (2013). Sensitivity of Indus script to site and type of object. Scripta, 5, 67–103.
[37]. Yadav, N., Joglekar, H., Rao, R. P. N., Vahia, M. N., Adhikari, R., & Mahadevan, I. (2010). Statistical analysis of the Indus script using
n-grams. PLoS ONE, 5(3), e9506. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0009506
[38]. Yadav, N., Vahia, M. N., Mahadevan, I., & Joglekar, H. (2008). Segmentation of Indus texts. International Journal of Dravidian
Linguistics, 37(1), 53–72.

Related Articles

2026

A Strategic Framework for Depth-Dependent Hydroelectric Conversion along the Indian Coastline

2026

Reimagining Development in India: A Critical Analysis of the Viksit Bharat Vision

2026

AI-Enabled Image Description: Bridging the Gap for the Visually Impaired

2026

Perceived Occupational Risks of Emergency Medical Services Personnel

2026

Origin, Growth and recent Development of Integrated Reporting (IR): A theoretical Review

2026

Smart Hostel Management System

Share Article

X
LinkedIn
Facebook
WhatsApp

Or copy link

https://www.ijrtmr.com/archives/indus-script-comb-sign-m176-as-a-classifier-for-referent-categories-hypotheses-based-on-structural-semiotic-analysis

*Instagram doesn't support direct link sharing from web. Copy the link and share it in your Instagram story or post.