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 had seen images of ceramic jars from sites like Mehrgarh and Nausharo. With ochre-colored necks and mouths and white bodies below, they looked strikingly similar to pickle jars still used in Kerala today. That moment of recognition hinted at a cultural thread linking Malanadu with the Indus Valley, despite the vast separation in time and geography. Yet, at the time, it felt like a dead end. I speculated that the white color on those Harappan jars might have been achieved using kaolinite clay, which was available in the Indus Valley. At the same time, I wondered if the Kerala pickle jar tradition might have originated elsewhere—perhaps from China—and reached Kerala through trade.

The discovery of Indus-like symbols in the Edakkal caves revived this line of thought. Scholar Raghava Varier observed that the “man with a jar” motif there resembled Indus jar symbols. This strengthened my conviction that there was a direct relationship between the Indus script and Malayalam. Archaeological finds such as etched carnelian beads from Nannangadi (dating to around 500 BCE) and red-and-black ware pottery from Idukki’s Mayiladum Para suggested continuity of Indus cultural elements into Kerala. These Beads were a hallmark of Indus artisanship, and their survival in later contexts pointed to cultural persistence.

Around this time, I turned to the research of Iravatham Mahadevan, whose work on the Indus script offered a framework for identifying parallels. This was a turning point. What began as speculation gradually grew into confidence. Each discovery—whether linguistic, archaeological, or symbolic—added to the mosaic of evidence linking the Indus Valley to Malayalam. This journey of doubt, exploration, and eventual conviction forms the foundation of the book that follows, where I present the case for a deep and enduring connection between the Indus civilization and the cultural-linguistic heritage of Kerala.

Etched carnelian beads recovered from Idukki, Kerala

References

PTI. (2009). Symbols akin to Indus valley culture discovered in Kerala. The HIndu.

Raman, G. K. (2020). Megalithic era site yields beads, semi-precious stones. The Hindu.