A Structural-Semiotic Analysis of the Comb Sign M176 in the Indus Script as a Referent Category Classifier - A Hypothesis

This article gives a structural-semiotic analysis of the comb sign (Sign 176 in Mahadevan's 1977 concordance) in the Indus script, and advances the methodological argument that semiotics constitutes a necessary complement to epigraphy in the study of undeciphered scripts. Epigraphy asks what a sign says in the language it encodes, on the other hand Semiotics asks what a sign does in the sign system, a question that can be answered without phonological decipherment. Drawing on Sampson (1985), Harris (1986, 2000), and Coulmas (1989), the article grounds this distinction theoretically and demonstrates it through three semiotic frameworks applied to the comb sign: Peirce’s triadic model of icon, index, and symbol; Saussure’s syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis; and Barthes’ denotation, connotation, and myth. These frameworks support the hypothesis, first advanced by Mahadevan (1982, 2006, 2012), that Sign 176 probably functions as a referent category classifier, though the category it encodes could not be determined without decipherment. The contributions of this article are of theoretical and methodological nature. It is perhaps the first simultaneous application of all three classical semiotic frameworks to a single Indus sign. Secondly, only a few previous studies appear to have formulated explicitly the methodological complementarity of semiotics and epigraphy in Indus script research, this article advances that thesis in grounded form. It also tries to offer what appears to be probably the first structured cross-cultural comparative analysis of classifier sign function across the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Indus traditions on the basis of existing literature. Fourthly, it advances a new cross-linguistic cognitive motivation argument for the referent category classifier hypothesis. The article additionally suggests that the Indus sign system may have functioned as a professionally restricted administrative notation. No decipherment claims are advanced.