References

Publications

World's first Indus Language: Dictionary, Grammar and Translations, Draft Edition, 2026. Zenodo. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22824265
The Indus Texts Are a Language: Symbols and Grammar Capable of Poetic Expression, working paper v1.0, 2026. Zenodo. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22822783
Author: Niranjan Vanungare · ORCID 0009-0003-4161-5482

How to cite

Vanungare, N. (2026). World's first Indus Language: Dictionary, Grammar and Translations (Draft Edition). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22824265

Sources

Corpus: yajnadevam/lipi @ fc8813a, redigitised from the Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions (Asko Parpola and collaborators; printed volumes).
Sign numbering: ICIT, the Interactive Corpus of Indus Texts (Bryan Wells and Andreas Fuls), indusscript.net; ISnnnn = ICIT Snnnn.
Concordance: Iravatham Mahadevan, The Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables (Archaeological Survey of India, 1977; printed).
Lexica: Hermann Grassmann, Wörterbuch zum Rig-Veda (1873): Internet Archive scan, and the digital edition at the Cologne Digital Sanskrit Dictionaries; Pali Text Society Pali–English Dictionary: Digital Dictionaries of South Asia, University of Chicago; A New Concise Pali–English Dictionary (NCPED).
Sign images: rendered from the decipher-indus font, github.com/decipher-indus/font, GNU GPL-3.0; the licence is included with this site (LICENSE-GPL-3.0.txt).
Brahmi in the title: a nine-character subset of Noto Sans Brahmi, github.com/notofonts/brahmi, SIL Open Font License 1.1; the licence is included with this site (LICENSE-OFL-1.1.txt).
Photograph: seal M-304, Mohenjo-daro, public domain: Wikimedia Commons, Shiva Pashupati.jpg.

A visual reference

Bison-horn Maria dancers of Bastar: men in horned headdresses with drums, women with spears — Bison-horn Maria (Dandami Maria) of Bastar, central India. Men wearing the horned headdress, and women carrying spear in their hands provided author visual reference to carry on this research. No descent from the Indus civilization is claimed or implied.
Photograph: Ramesh Lalwani, *Gaur Maria dance*, 2013, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY 2.0. Reproduced unchanged.

Acknowledgements

This work stands on a century of other people's labour: Iravatham Mahadevan's concordance; the Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions of Asko Parpola and his collaborators; the ICIT sign numbering of Bryan Wells and Andreas Fuls; the machine-readable corpus of yajnadevam; Grassmann's Ṛgveda dictionary and the Pali Text Society.

Artificial Intelligence

Claude Opus 5 (Anthropic): Corpus analysis and statistics, including the grammar tests, site controls and the blind restoration test.
ChatGPT GPT-5.6 Sol (OpenAI): Initial catalogue, the graphical review and the research atlas.

The sign identifications, readings and decisions are the author's own.