Semantic scope of Indus inscriptions comprising taxation, trade and craft licensing, commodity control and access control: archaeological and script-internal evidence

This article studies the semantic scope of the yet undeciphered Indus inscriptions, which are mostly found on tiny seals, sealings, and tablets. Building on previous structural analyses, which reveal that Indus script was semasiographic or logographic in nature, this study analyses the combinatorial patterns of Indus script signs, and the geographical distribution of the inscriptions, to establish that the inscriptions did not encode any proper noun, such as anthroponyms, toponyms, or names of specific organizations. Analysing various archaeological contexts of the inscribed objects —e.g., seals are found concentrated near city gates (e.g., Harappa), craft-workshops (e.g., Chanhu-daro), and public buildings (e.g., Mohenjo-daro), often along with standardized Indus weights which were used for taxation; sealings were attached to various storage containers and locking systems of “warehouse” chambers as indicated by their reverse side impressions (e.g., the Lothal “warehouse” sealings); inscribed sealing-pendants of Kanmer are conjectured to be passports/gate-passes by archaeologists; seals with identical inscriptions are often found from distant settlements — this study claims that the inscribed stamp-seals were used for enforcing certain rules involving taxation, trade/craft control, commodity-control and access control. Considering typological and functional differences between the seals and tablets, and analysing certain numerical and metrological notations ( , , ) typically found at the reverse-sides of many multi-sided tablets whose obverse-sides contain seal-like inscriptions, this study argues that such tablets were possibly trade/craft/commodity specific licenses issued to tax-collectors, traders, and artisans. These reverse-side tablet-inscriptions possibly encoded certain standardized license-fees for three popular license-slabs, whereas their obverse sides specified the commercial activities licensed to the tablet-bearers. These seals/tablets were possibly issued by certain merchant-guilds or artisan-guilds, and city-based or territorial governments, who collaborated in the integration phase of IVC, to standardize certain taxation-rules and trade-regulations across settlements. The seals/tablet iconographies might have been the emblems of the guilds, rulers, or governing bodies.