Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions. Volume 3: New material, untraced objects and collections outside India and Pakistan. Part 1

摘要

This volume is the third in this hugely important series that aims to produce a complete Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions so far known [CISI]. CISI 1 (1987) and CISI 2 (1991) published respectively seals from collections in India and Pakistan. The project is led by Asko Parpola who, in a brief preface (pp. ⅵ-(ⅹⅴ)) traces its history back to 1964, and goes on to discuss the contents of the present volume (CISI 3.1) namely the "42 objects in 14 museums, in 11 cities and 8 countries" listed on pp. ⅶ-ⅷ and "447 [previously published] objects from Harappa . . . [that] cannot be found in any museum; the figure is 266 from Mohenjo-daro" (the original field registers for this latter site are being published by Michael Jansen and colleagues of the Technical University of Aachen). Parpola discusses the sorry history of the Harappan finds before and after partition, many of which are known to have been stolen (pp. ⅷ-ⅹ). He explains how photographs were traced and copied, and how pieces were identified. New excavations planned at Mohenjo-daro "did not materialise", but Richard Meadow and Mark Kenoyer, the directors of the Harappa Archaeological Research Project (HARP), have published all the relevant material from their new excavations in the present volume, together with an introductory essay (see below, pp. (ⅹlⅳ)-(lⅷ)). The contents of Volume 4 are summarised (pp. (ⅹⅳ)-(ⅹⅴ)) and will include concordances and "an updated computer edition of all readable texts in the Indus script". There is a general bibliography on p. xvi, and detailed bibliographies follow their respective essays.