Asko Parpola (born 12 July 1941, in

Forssa Forssa is a town and municipality of Finland. It is located almost in the centre of a triangle defined by the three largest major cities in Finland (Helsinki, Turku and Tampere), in the Tavastia Proper region, and which is crossed by Highway 2 ...

) is a Finnish Indologist, current professor emeritus of

South Asian studies Indology, also known as South Asian studies, is the academic study of the history and cultures, languages, and literature of the Indian subcontinent, and as such is a subset of Asian studies. The term ''Indology'' (in German, ''Indologie'') is o ...

at the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki ( fi, Helsingin yliopisto, sv, Helsingfors universitet, abbreviated UH) is a public research university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but founded in the city of Turku (in Swedish ''Åbo'') in 1640 as the ...

. He specializes in Sindhology, specifically the study of the

Indus script The Indus script, also known as the Harappan script, is a corpus of symbols produced by the Indus Valley Civilisation. Most inscriptions containing these symbols are extremely short, making it difficult to judge whether or not they constituted ...

Biography

Parpola is a brother of the

Akkadian language Akkadian (, Akkadian: )John Huehnergard & Christopher Woods, "Akkadian and Eblaite", ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages''. Ed. Roger D. Woodard (2004, Cambridge) Pages 218-280 is an extinct East Semitic language th ...

epigrapher Simo Parpola. He is married to Marjatta Parpola, who has authored a study on the traditions of

Kerala Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South ...

Nambudiri Brahmins The Nambudiri (), also transliterated as Nampoothiri, Nambūdiri, Namboodiri, Nampoothiri, and Nampūtiri, are a Malayali Brahmin caste, native to what is now the state of Kerala, India, where they constituted part of the traditional feudal el ...

Scholarship

Parpola's research and teaching interests fall within the following topics: * Indus Civilization / Indus script and religion / Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions * Veda / Vedic ritual / Samaveda / Jaiminiya Samaveda texts and rituals / Purva-Mimamsa * South Asian religions / Hinduism / Saiva and Sakta tradition / Goddess Durga * South India / Kerala / Tamil Nadu / Karnataka * Sanskrit / Malayalam / Kannada / Tamil / Prehistory of Indian languages * Prehistoric archaeology of South Asia and (in broad sense) Central Asia / Coming of the Aryans Two significant contributions of Parpola, to the field of decipherment of the Indus script, are the creation of the now universally used classification of Indus valley seals, and the proposed, and much-debated, decipherment of the language of the script.

Dravidian hypothesis

According to Parpola the Indus script and Harappan language are "most likely to have belonged to the Dravidian family". Parpola led a Finnish team in the 1960s–80s that vied with Knorozov's Soviet team in investigating the inscriptions using computer analysis. Based on a proto-Dravidian assumption, they proposed readings of many signs, some agreeing with the suggested readings of Heras and Knorozov (such as equating the "fish" sign with the Dravidian word for fish "min") but disagreeing on several other readings. A comprehensive description of Parpola's work until 1994 is given in his book ''Deciphering the Indus Script.'' He states in his book that the

Brahui people The Brahui ( brh, ), Brahvi or Brohi, are an ethnic group of pastoralists principally found in Balochistan, Pakistan. A minority speaks the Brahui language, which belongs to the Dravidian language family, while the rest speaks Balochi and ten ...

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...

are remnants of the Harappan culture.

Publications

; Books * 1994: ''Deciphering the Indus Script'', Cambridge University Press, * 2015: ''The Roots of Hinduism: The Early Aryans and the Indus Civilization'', Oxford University Press, ; Selected articles * 1988: ''The coming of the Aryans to Iran and India and the cultural and ethnic identity of the Dāsas'', Studia Orientalia, Vol. 64, pp. 195–302. The Finnish Oriental Society. * 2008: ''Is the Indus script indeed not a writing system?'' In: ''Airāvati: Felicitation volume in honour of

Iravatham Mahadevan Iravatham Mahadevan (2 October 1930 – 26 November 2018) was an Indian epigraphist and civil servant, known for his decipherment of Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions and for his expertise on the epigraphy of the Indus Valley civilisation. Early lif ...

'': 111–31. VARALAARU.COM, Chennai.

Reception

Parpola's long journal article ''The Coming of the Aryans'' is widely cited by historians and scholars of Indo-European Studies. Colin Renfrew, who has reviewed the article, called it a "richly annotated and well-illustrated essay," which brings together a number of different lines of arguments, including literary and archaeological. It contains rich and interesting insights into a variety of topics, including the "amalgamation of the Aryan and

Dasa ''Dasa'' ( sa, दास, Dāsa) is a Sanskrit word found in ancient Indian texts such as the ''Rigveda'' and ''Arthasastra''. It usually means "enemy" or "servant" but ''dasa'', or ''das'', also means a " servant of God", "devotee," " votary" or ...

religions," and the Nuristani language. However, Renfrew found Parpola's methodology wanting because, to him, it did not clearly lay out the structure of the argument and the underlying assumptions. He listed the underlying assumptions as the one that the Aryans considered themselves immigrants in the lands described in their texts and the one that the Dasas were themselves immigration populations. He considered both these propositions to be doubtful.

Awards

Asko Parpola received the Kalaignar M. Karunanidhi Classical Tamil Award for 2009 on June 23, 2010 at the World Classical Tamil Conference at Coimbatore. In 2015, he was awarded India's Presidential Award of Certificate of Honour in Sanskrit. He is an honorary member of the

American Oriental Society The American Oriental Society was chartered under the laws of Massachusetts on September 7, 1842. It is one of the oldest learned societies in America, and is the oldest devoted to a particular field of scholarship. The Society encourages basi ...

and, since 1990, a member of the

Finnish Academy of Science and Letters The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters (Finnish ''Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia''; Latin ''Academia Scientiarum Fennica'') is a Finnish learned society. It was founded in 1908 and is thus the second oldest academy in Finland. The oldest is the Fi ...

Notes

References

External links

Asko Parpola at Harappa.com
*Publications of Asko Parpola in the Tuhat Research Database of the University o

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Parpola, Asko 1941 births Living people People from Forssa Finnish Indologists Linguists from Finland Finnish Sindhologists Paleolinguists Linguists of Harappan Academic personnel of the University of Helsinki Members of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters