260

Current locked corpus: closing / terminal function. Role label ender-biased.

Why it is on the table: 8 tokens, start-bias 0.00, end-bias 2.77.

What would weaken it: Bias is corpus-relative. Direction errors and sign-splitting move signs between roles.

Induscript analysis engine on the locked compilation

ICIT 260 is drawn in the tool / weapon class. Class is a graphemic convenience used so relatives can be compared — not a word, not a translation.

Why it is on the table: Family membership is the cheapest hypothesis: it only claims that similar drawings should be tested together.

What would weaken it: Wells over-splits; Parpola and Mahadevan merge. The family of this page is a working cluster.

Wells/ICIT graphemic sets; contrast Mahadevan 417-sign list

Tool- and arrow-like forms are candidates for function words, case-like marks, or implement names. Fairservis treated some as harpoons or arrows with phonetic values.

Why it is on the table: Linear weapons and combs occupy edge slots more often than expected for common nouns.

What would weaken it: A picture of a tool is still not a reading.

Fairservis; graphic-functional school

Not a one-to-one dump of Mahadevan’s 417-sign list. ICIT 260 is a Wells/Fuls number; merge/split decisions differ.

Why it is on the table: Mahadevan remains the field’s default concordance even when sign counts disagree.

What would weaken it: Crosswalks between M-numbers and ICIT G-numbers are incomplete. Do not treat them as identical signs.

Mahadevan, The Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables (1977)

Hunter produced the first systematic post-Marshall inventory. Early pictographic identifications (fish, jar, man) survive as graphic labels, not as readings.

Why it is on the table: Historiography matters: many popular ‘translations’ still quote Hunter-era picture-names as if they were words.

What would weaken it: A 1934 pictographic guess is not evidence. It is the starting point later concordances refined.

G. R. Hunter, The Script of Harappa and Mohenjodaro (1934)

ICIT encodes this as a three-digit sign in a 700+ inventory (Fuls 2022–23: 709–713 signs in 71 graphic sets). Rare or unlisted in the excerpted frequency tables.

Why it is on the table: Finest published graphemic split. Useful for not collapsing allographs too early.

What would weaken it: Parpola argues Wells over-splits variants. Inventory size is itself a hypothesis.

Wells 2011/2015; Fuls, A Catalog of Indus Signs (2023)

Parpola’s logo-syllabic Dravidian model would assign this tool / weapon class sign a rebus only after a pictographic identification. None is established here.

Why it is on the table: Most fully worked phonetic hypothesis in print. Internally disciplined, still unproven.

What would weaken it: Requires language identification first. No bilingual. Rebus steps multiply uncertainty.

Parpola, Deciphering the Indus Script (1994); 2010 lecture

Computer-aided counts in the 1960s–80s already treated short texts as structured and leaned Dravidian. This sign is a data point in that tradition, not a Soviet ‘translation’.

Why it is on the table: Independent of Parpola in method; similar language lean. Shows the Dravidian hypothesis is not one author’s idiosyncrasy.

What would weaken it: Early computing on small samples overfits. Language lean was prior, not a result.

Knorozov and collaborators, Soviet studies of the Indus script

Fairservis argued Harappan is a language and offered implement, numeral and toponym readings. For a tool / weapon class sign those readings are optional extras.

Why it is on the table: Useful because it names functions (numeral, implement) that can be tested against weights and object type.

What would weaken it: Many Fairservis values are under-constrained. Kept as historiography plus a few live functional tests.

Walter Fairservis, The Harappan Civilization and Its Writing (1992) and earlier papers

Short, non-random emblem sequences on elite objects can be non-writing: lineage marks, totemic formulas, or ritual identifiers.

Why it is on the table: Explains brevity, lack of bilinguals, and seal function without a lost language.

What would weaken it: Rao et al. 2009 argue conditional entropy looks more like a script than a random emblem set. Neither side has a bilingual.

Farmer, Sproat and Witzel (2004); contrast Rao, Yadav, Vahia et al. (2009)

Block-level entropy and bigram directionality are treated as evidence that the system is structured like a script, not as a translation. This sign’s locked-corpus role is ender-biased.

Why it is on the table: Statistics constrain function, not phonetics.

What would weaken it: Structured non-linguistic systems also have bigrams. Entropy is not a language ID (Sproat 2014).

Rao et al., Science (2009); Yadav–Vahia positional papers; Sproat 2014 critique

Whatever the signs ‘say’, seals and sealings are administrative and craft devices. Meaning, if any, is tied to identity, ownership, or office — not narrative literature.

Why it is on the table: Archaeology is the only bilingual we actually have: context, not captions.

What would weaken it: Context can suggest function of the object without reading the signs.

Kenoyer; Vidale; Frenez; Possehl syntheses

Proposed Sanskrit or Vedic values for Indus signs. No bilingual, no accepted crosswalk, and chronology is contested. Recorded so the model is visible — not so it can be quoted as a reading.

Why it is on the table: A research platform that hides a popular school is not evidence-led.

What would weaken it: Failed the bilingual test, the positional test, and the ‘does not overfit’ test as currently published.

Subhash Kak and related Indo-Aryan proposals

A single securely read bilingual (Indus vs a known script) would re-rank every card on this page. Until then, depth means listing tests, not printing a word.

Why it is on the table: Egyptian, cuneiform and Linear B moved when bilinguals or internal grids arrived. Indus has neither.

What would weaken it: Waiting for a bilingual is not an excuse to ignore structure. It is an excuse to refuse fake certainty.

Robinson surveys; platform method

If reversing analytical order destroys this sign’s start/end bias, the role label is direction-fragile and must not be promoted.

Many seals can be rotated. Role labels that survive a flip are stronger.

Platform method; Mahadevan direction discussion

If merging this sign with its tool / weapon class relatives (or splitting its variants) moves it between opener/ender/core, the role is an artefact of the sign list.

Wells vs Mahadevan vs Parpola disagree on inventory size. That disagreement is a test, not a nuisance.

Wells 2015 vs Mahadevan 1977 vs Parpola CISI

If the sign’s neighbours change by object type (seal vs tablet vs pottery), it may mark register, not a word that is constant across media.

Kenoyer/Vidale: different objects do different jobs.

Kenoyer; Vidale; mixed-register model

A bilingual in which this sign is clearly medial, or a large tablet series where it never ends a line, would weaken the terminal-function claim.

End-bias is the current structural fact. Facts can move.

Platform falsification rule

Only a securely provenanced bilingual, or an internal grid of the Linear-B type, can promote any card on this page from candidate to established meaning.

That is how every accepted script decipherment actually happened.

Robinson; platform method