FAQ Frequenty Asked Questions

Till now it has been the part time project of an individual and Vishasita is currently nothing more than a pseudonym. But if this effort can make a relevant contribution and generate interest/engagement, perhaps we can look at something more concrete. Over 2016, a conceptual framework to attack the problem of Indus Decipherment has taken shape and there is enough to attempt a partial decipherment. We are in the process of writing it down in the form of a eBook and through the different resources on this site. Visit our About Page for more details.

In archaic Sanskrit it means the "Black Country" or the "Black People". If we are right in our interpretation, then this is a name that has been lost to Indian history, even its myths. It may have been as ancient and sacred a place to the people of the Indus Valley Civilization as Kashi/Varanasi is to Indians today.

We think so but you will have to decide for yourself. All we know for certain is that without a Rosetta Stone, the best that anyone can do is guess. But the reason why we think the Vishasita approach is important is not necessarily in the individual meanings that we render for the glyphs. Instead, it lies in presenting a cogent, conceptual framework that others can use and refine.

For the most part, our decipherment will be published in the form of an eBook. This site is gives a supporting background to it through blog posts, etc.; and to make available resources that others can use to study/analyze the Indus script. If yours is a casual curiosity, then we suggest following us on our Facebook Page, we will be posting important updates and blog posts there. If you are actively researching the script, please help yourself to any and all of the resources on this site. They are available for download in a Free and Open License.

Unfortunately, there is no Unicode standard encoding for the Indus script so any font you use locks you in. Once you have written anything in it, you cannot use anything else without translating the encoding. Furthermore, we ourselves will be updating the encoding/font as more glyphs come along or our understanding of the language evolves. So the short answer is you should know what you are doing and really need it. If so, we recommend that when you are ready to publish something based on it you do so in an embedded form - either as a web page using a CSS @font-face rule or embedded within a PDF document. This means that your reader/consumer does not need to install the font on their system and different versions do not conflict with one another.

Get in touch and let's discuss it. You can to vishasita at gmail dot com.