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Ancient
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The Indus Valley people had some knowledge of the art of writing, though in a rudimentary way. No regular documents on stone or baked clay tablets have been found but the numerous seals, representing unicorns and bulls and other objects give us the idea that the people had a language of their own. Some historians are of the view that the script found on the seals are similar to the ones used in Egypt, Sumeria and other countries of Western Asia. The script is pictographic, but still remains un-deciphered though there are nearly four hundred signs.
The writing was generally from left to right, but in some cases it was in the opposite direction i.e., right to left in the first line and left to right in the second. The Indus Valley script resembles the script of the ancient Mesopotamian people. Dr. S.R. Rao in his research work Decipherment of the Indus Script holds that the Indus Valley people used the phonetic script and in the late Harappan period the script evolved itself towards and alphabetic pattern. He says that numerals were shown by corresponding numbers of independent vertical lines. However, the Indus script remains to be a puzzle to the historians and thus the riches of this civilization remain unrevealed until this script is interpreted.
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