I've written in an earlier post about how at Cambridge I worked on the scripts Linear A & B from Crete and how I did a lot of my work at the Ancient India and Iran Trust Library so I got to know everyone who worked and read there, which were just a few really interesting people. Among them were two trustees, Bridget and Raymond Allchin, the well known archaeologists. Since I was primarily working with John Killen in the Classics Department on Linear A and he was having me read everything possible on decipherment work done regarding that and having me take Classical and Mycenaean Greek from himself and John Chadwick, I decided the best thing would be to expand to learn cognate, contemporary languages; in other words, languages that were related to Myceanean Greek and within the same general time period. Sanskrit was the obvious main choice so I sat in on beginning Sanskrit for a year and then enrolled for a second B.A. I studied Classical Sanskrit for a couple of years there as well as South Asian Archaeology from Professor Dilip Chakrabarti in the Department of Archaeology and various support courses on ancient India. In my last year, my college arranged for me to take a bus to Oxford University on Thursdays to have private tutorials in Vedic Sanskrit (the oldest known form of Sanskrit) and the dialects of Middle Indian (the Prakrits). So it made sense when I applied to Penn that I continue to study some aspect of ancient South Asia.
I didn't think it was wise to apply to work on undeciphered scripts, as that is not an orthodox subject at most universities. Cambridge is an exception because, well, Cambridge is an exception to a lot of established academic traditions, in a good way. It is recognized there, though that is lessening as it becomes more "Americanized", a.k.a. standardized, that different students learn in different ways, some learn well from taking courses, some don't at all and those might learn well by sitting in the library for three years or by taking related courses outside their department. Whatever works is the unspoken mantra and it does work. One good example is that the shy are not forced to "participate", which is practically a rule and often a requirement in American colleges and extremely counter-productive to the point of torture for the meek. There is no single right way that all are supposed to adhere to in order to excel at learning. What matters is that one understands one's own mind and that is aided by regular visits to one's "tutor" who in England is more like a life counselor. This tutor aids the student in figuring out what they want to learn and what is the optimum way to accomplish it. I remember someone one day in the library talking about using 100% of the brain. He didn't mean literally 100%; he meant understanding one's brain so that one can organize methodologies to learn in the most efficient and natural way possible. At Cambridge, minds are so very much respected for their fragile yet incredible potentials.
An example of the Brahmi script
I took Dr. Chakrabarti's advice to apply to work on Brahmi inscriptions at Penn in order to become a Brahmi translator for a conjunction of reasons. Brahmi is the most ancient script known in India that can be read, older than Sanskrit but younger than the Indus Valley/Harappan Script. Most researchers who learn Brahmi are Buddhist scholars, since a large part of Buddhist scripture is written in the Brahmi script. They will go to a museum where they know a specific Buddhist manuscript is, translate it and leave. But there are hundreds of manuscripts written in Brahmi that are rotting in museums all over India, due to the dampness of the climate. And a very many of them are not about Buddhism. Dr. Chakrabarti said there was a great need for general Brahmi translators, dedicated not to translating one particular document but to translating and conserving as many Brahmi manuscripts as possible. And it qualified as an orthodox university subject. I applied and was admitted to Penn to learn just this.
When my time at Cambridge was coming to a close, Bridget Allchin did a very nice thing for me. She told me she and Raymond knew the head of the Department of Archaeology, Greg Possehl, at the University of Pennsylvania. They emailed him and told him a little about me and that I was on my way there to be in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and they gave him my email address. He emailed me and invited me to come over to the archaeology department to meet him when I got to Penn. My reputation, both good and bad, had preceded me to Penn, including whatever it was that Asko Parpola had told people in London and Cambridge about my work on Linear A that he had seen.
An example of the Harappan script (citation at bottom).
I got to Penn and started my master's degree in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, specializing in South Asian Studies. Since I had an invitation, on one of my first days I went over to the Department of Archaeology to meet Greg Possehl. He was not only head of the department but an archaeologist who had specialized in the Harappan civilization and he had written an important book on the Harappan script. So right away the subjects turned to the work on Linear A that I had been doing and if I wanted to consider working on the Harappan script. I was barely familiar with the script, only what I had read in Parpola's publication. But Dr. Possehl loaned me several books of his on the subject and set up my taking the Ph.D. core courses in his department along with my courses in my own department. The reason for taking archaeology courses was that an undeciphered script exists on inscriptions that are found on various types of objects and those objects are part of the material record that is excavated by the archaeologist, so a large portion of research that one reads on any undeciphered script is in archaeological field reports. And one has to be able to understand the lingo and the theories and the goals behind the discussions in order to fully grasp the meanings.
I was working in my own department on Brahmi inscriptions but after a short time news about my work on Linear A and working with Greg Possehl filtered over to my department so, one by one, my professors told me I could adapt the point or theme of standard assignments to do something on the Harappan script. This was because I was now in a department that studied South Asia, where by definition the interest is in all things South Asian, not in the department that did classical studies, which included languages and scripts on Crete. Penn is not Cambridge. Penn is orthodox and standardized. When in one department, that's what one studies and that is all one studies except for perhaps a course or two on the side. What matters is not the mind but the requirements for the degree. One can branch but it has to be somewhat formal, such as taking South Asian archaeology courses in the Department of Archaeology if one is enrolled in South Asian Studies in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. No wandering all over the campus and living in the library. That's English.
It was just a paper here and there on the Indus Valley script until I happened to meet a new professor my second year from the Religious Studies Department, Aditya Behl. He asked about my work, which I told him. A few days later he emailed me and asked if I would bring my work over to his office to show him. I did and that started regular meetings where I showed him whatever paper I had done or any work I had done on the side on the Harappan script. After a few months he told me he had met with my supervisor and the head of the Sanskrit department, who was then Ludo Rocher, and discussed with him my work. It was nearing the time that Professor Rocher was to decide the specific subject of my master's thesis. Professor Rocher contacted me to make an appointment and I went to see him. To my surprise he told me about his meeting with Dr. Behl and that he had decided that I should do my thesis on the Harappan script. I asked him, but what about Brahmi? He said no, that decipherment was most definitely “my work”. However, he also had decided that my comprehensive exams to complete my M.A. would be customized in three parts: one part ancient South Asian history, one part ancient Indo-Iranian linguistics and one part South Asian archaeology. He said there was a need for historians of India and these exams were set so that I would be qualified for work as a historian. I complained that I had never taken and there had never been offered any course actually on South Asian ancient history. He said yes, that history had fallen into a crack between religious studies and literary studies and that was specifically why he wanted me trained as a historian. He said better head to the library. So, I wrote my M.A. thesis on the Harappan Script and I studied for my exams and I'm very proud to report that after teaching myself in the library as much as I could find on ancient South Asian history, Dr. Rocher emailed me after my exams to tell me that my history exam was superb. I ought to frame that email it makes me feel so good still. So, that is the long and short of why when I finished my M.A. and applied to l'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, the research institute in Paris, to do my Ph.D. I was accepted to work on the Harappan Script.
citation: the image of the Harappan script is taken from: Price, K.M. 2011. A Harappan Signary Cross-Reference. The Epigraphy Society Occasional Papers, Issue 28 (pending). Danvers, Mass.
