Dr. Shikaripura Ranganatha Rao (b. 1922 and well-known as S. R. Rao) is a renowned Indian archaeologist responsible for conducting extensive excavations in Lothal and Dwaraka and deciphering the lost script of the Indus Valley Civilization. He served as the Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, and has published many books on Indian archaeological discoveries. He was in-charge of the excavations of the submerged remains of the ancient city of Dwaraka, in Gujarat, pioneering marine archaeology in India.
Biography and career
Shikaripura Ranganatha Rao (born in 1922) completed his education from the Mysore University. He worked in the Archaeological Department of Baroda State and subsequently served the Archaeological Survey of India in various capacities. Dr. Rao, an outstanding archaeologist of India, has excavated many important sites such as Rangpur, Lothal, Amreli, Bhagatrav, Dwaraka, Hanur, Aihole, Kaveripattinam and others. Dr. Rao was the recipient of Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship and D.Litt. from Mysore University. Rao had supervised excavation of several historic sites across the country in the West and South. He was also associated with conservation of monuments such as Taj Mahal and forts. It was under the initiative of Dr Rao that the NIO opened a marine archaeology research centre in 1981, under the stewardship of then director Dr S Z Quazim, which grew into a world recognised body. He was the founder of the Society of Marine Archaeology in India. Rao has been at the forefront of Indian achaeology for many decades - he was involved in extensive research into India's ancient and often mythical past - from the sites of the Indus Valley Civilization to excavations pertaining to the Kurukshetra War.
Decoding the Indus script
Deciphering the Indus script is considered Dr. Rao's most important achievement. In dealing with the sensitive issues of the origins of the Indus script, Dr. Rao refused to presume the identity of the Indus language to be either Aryan or Dravidian. Dr. Rao noticed two basic facts about the Indus script which had not caught the attention of the earlier scholars. Firstly, he noticed that of the 400 to 500 letters found on the seals, some letters seemed to be basic letters, while most of the other letters seemed to be those same basic letters with some additional signs attached to them. Secondly, he noticed that the script was, as generally believed, absolutely uniform over the entire period of the Indus civilization. Those seals, which were later in time, seemed to have less complicated letters, thereby indicating an evolution.
Raogathered together all the data on the different inscrip- tions and classified them periodwise. He also separated the basic letters from those with additional signs, and arrived at a small number of basic letters. He decided to examine those scripts and alphabates of the world which were closest, in time, to the Indus script, to see whether those scripts or alphabates could give any clue as to the sound-value which could be assigned to these basic letters. The oldest extant inscription of the Brahmi script dated to around 450 BC or so, while the Indus sites excavated dated down to the mid-2nd millenium BC, leaving a gap of a thousand years. However, in West Asia, the South Arabic and Old Aramaic alphabetes had come into prominence by the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, and the Ahiram Sarcophagus (1300 BC) and Gezer potsherd (1600 BC) provided the earlier stages of these West Asian scripts. And here Dr. Rao found that many of the basic letters of the Indus script bore resemblance to the letters of these two West Asian alphabets.
He decided to assign to each Indus basic letter the same sound-value as the West Asian letter which closely resembled it. After assigning these values to the Indus letters, he proceeded to try to read the inscriptions on the Indus seals. The language that emerged turned out to be a "Aryan" one. Among the many words yielded by Dr. Rao's decipherment are the numerals aeka, tra, chatus, panta, happta/sapta, dasa, dvadasa and sata (1,3,4,5,7 10,100) and the names of Vedic personalities like Atri, Kasyapa, Gara, Manu, Sara, Trita, Daksa, Druhu and Kasu. While the direct connection between the late Indus script (1600 BC) and the Brahmi script could not be definitely established earlier, more and more inscriptions have been found all over the country in the last few years, dating 1000 BC, 700 BC, and so on, which have bridged the gap between the two.
Excavations at Dwaraka
Rao asserts that the unearthed remains were the mythical city that was home to Krishna, the eighth Avatara of Vishnu. According to Rao's research and the Mahabharata Krishna built Dwaraka at Kushasthali - a fortress in the sea which is in ruins. Then he built another at the mouth of the Gomti river. At Kushasthali (Beth Dwaraka) Rao and his team found a wall (560 metres long) visible on the shore itself. Dating of pottery found here gave a date of 1528 B.C. Further unearthed was a seal (mudra). The Mahabharata refers to how Krishna wanted every citizen to carry some sort of identity - a mudra. Dr Rao asserted the three-holed triangular stone anchors found in large numbers in Dwarka waters suggested a continuity in evolution of the anchors in Lothal and Mohenjo-Daro, which had a single hole. The Dwarka anchors of late Harappan phase are a couple of centuries older than the identical anchors of late Bronze Age used in Cyprus and Syria, he added.
External links
- Interview with S. R. Rao at The Hindu
- The Lost City of Dvaraka
- Renowned archaeologist Dr S R Rao felicitated by society
- Decoding the Indus script
- Dr. Rao emphasizes preservation of heritage sites in India
- Indus script
- Hindu dated 20 Feb, 2006 - S. R. Rao among Vidya Varenya awardees
- Google's cache of Sundeep Books biographic write-up
Bibliography
- Lothal (published by the Director General, Archaeological Survey of India, 1985)
- Lothal and the Indus Civilisation ISBN: 0210222786
- Lothal: A Harappan Port Town (1955 - 1962) (Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India) ASIN: B0006E4EAC
- The Lost City of Dvaraka 1999, xxii, 157 p., ISBN 8186471480