A Journey from Curiosity to Confidence
Mehrgarh pottery-Nausharo My interest in the Indus script deepened when I chose history as an optional subject for the civil service examinations. There I learned that the Indus language may have belonged to the Dravidian family, with Brahui—spoken in parts of Balochistan—being the only surviving Dravidian language outside India. This suggested that proto-Dravidian, perhaps an ancestor of Tamil, was once widespread across the Indus Valley. At the time, I believed Malayalam was too young—barely 500 years old—to have any direct connection with the Indus civilization. But when Malayalam was later recognized as a classical language, its antiquity was extended to at least 1,500 years. Scholars argued that Malayalam retained features of Kodum Tamil (spoken Tamil predating Sentamil), which opened the possibility that Malayalam preserved proto-Dravidian traits even more faithfully than Tamil. Still, I lacked evidence and did not know where to begin. Years earlier, while browsing Harappa.com, I...
