Editing Indus script (section)

===Decipherability===
The following factors are usually regarded as the biggest obstacles to successful decipherment:

* Inscriptions are very short. The average length of the inscriptions is around five signs,{{sfnp|Mahadevan|1977|p=9}} and the longest only 34 characters long, found on a [[Indian copper plate inscriptions|copper plate]] belonging to the mature Harappan period.{{sfnp|Shinde|Willis|2014}} Inscriptions vary between just one and seven lines, with single lines being the most common.{{sfnp|Possehl|2002|p=132}}
* 67 signs account for 80 percent of the writing that has been identified.<ref>{{cite web | last=Biswas | first=Soutik | title=Indus Valley: A million-dollar challenge to crack the script of early Indians | website=BBC Home | date=2025-01-16 | url=https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70q44zn18wo | access-date=2025-01-17}}</ref>
* There are doubts whether the Indus script records a written language or is instead a system of non-linguistic signs or [[proto-writing]] similar to [[merchant's mark#Ancient use|merchant's mark]]s and [[house mark]]s, and to the contemporary [[accounting token]]s and [[history of ancient numeral systems#Numerical signs and numerals|numerical]] [[clay tablet]]s of Mesopotamia.{{sfnp|Stiebing|Helft|2018|pp=104–105}} Due to the brevity of inscriptions, some researchers have questioned whether Indus symbols can even express a spoken language.{{sfnp|Robinson|2015}}
* The spoken [[Harappan language]] has not been identified, so, assuming the script is a written language, the language the script is most likely to express is unknown.{{sfnp|Robinson|2015}} However, an estimated 300 loanwords in the [[Rigveda]] may provide evidence of [[substratum (linguistics)|substrate]] language(s) which may have been spoken in the region of the [[Indus civilisation]].{{sfnp|Witzel|1999}}{{efn|{{harvp|Witzel|1999}} underlines the prefixing nature of these words and calls them Para-Munda, a language related to but not belonging to [[Proto-Munda]].}}{{sfnp|Kuiper|1991|p={{page needed|date=July 2022}}}}
* No [[digraphia|digraphic]] or [[bilingual inscription|bilingual texts]], like the [[Rosetta Stone]], have been found.{{sfnp|Robinson|2015}}
* No names, such as those of Indus rulers or personages, are known to be attested in surviving historical records or myths, as was the case with rulers like Rameses and Ptolemy, who were known to [[hieroglyph]]ic decipherers from records attested in Greek.{{sfnp|Robinson|2015}}{{efn|[[(..)ibra]], a partial name of a king of [[Meluhha]], a place associated with the Indus Civilisation, is briefly attested in an Akkadian inscription, but no full names are attested.}}

Over the years, numerous decipherments have been proposed, but there is no established scholarly consensus.{{sfnp|Stiebing|Helft|2018|pp=104–105}}{{sfnp|Possehl|2002|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=pmAuAsi4ePIC&pg=PA136 136]}} The few points on which there exists scholarly consensus are the right-to-left direction of the majority of the inscriptions,{{sfnp|Mukhopadhyay|2019|p=2}}{{sfnp|Robinson|2015}} numerical nature of certain stroke-like signs,{{sfnp|Mukhopadhyay|2019|p=2}}{{sfnp|Robinson|2015}} functional homogeneity of certain terminal signs,{{sfnp|Mukhopadhyay|2019|p=2}} and some generally adopted techniques of segmenting the inscriptions into initial, medial, and terminal clusters.{{sfnp|Mukhopadhyay|2019|p=2}} Over 100 (mutually exclusive) attempts at decipherment have been published since the 1920s,{{sfnp|Farmer|Sproat|Witzel|2004|pp=19–20}}{{sfnp|Robinson|2015}} and the topic is popular among amateur researchers.{{efn|For example, see [[Egbert Richter-Ushanas|Egbert Richter]] and [[N.&nbsp;S. Rajaram]].}}

In 2025, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister [[M. K. Stalin]] announced a $1 million (USD) prize for deciphering the Indus Valley Script, stating that "Archaeologists, Tamil computer software experts and computer experts across the world have been making efforts to decipher the script but it remains a mystery even after 100 years."<ref>{{cite web |title=Tamil Nadu CM Stalin announces $1 million prize for deciphering Indus Valley script |date=5 January 2025 |publisher=TheHindu.com |url=https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/tamil-nadu-cm-stalin-announces-1-million-prize-for-deciphering-indus-valley-script/article69064187.ece/ |access-date=6 January 2025}}</ref>