is linguistically distinct from the Indo-
Aryan language family. Those who
espouse the Indigenous Aryan view,
which identifies the Indus Valley culture
with that of the Aryans, tend to seek
their evidence in the earliest Sanskrit
texts known as the Vedas.
None of these theories have proved
irrefutable, and part of the difficulty in
deciphering this script comes from the
inscriptions themselves. Linguists have
identified 419 different symbols, which
seems too many for the script to be
alphabetic, but too few for each of these
symbols to stand for a single word, as is
the case in Chinese. The seals’ small size
also means that these inscriptions tend
to be extremely short. Such brevity
makes the text difficult to understand,
since one lacks the contextual patterns
that a longer text would supply. In their
efforts to decode these inscriptions, lin-
guists are working with a series of short
and unrelated textual fragments. The
script could probably be definitively
deciphered with the discovery of a bilin-
gual inscription, but in the absence of
such a key, the problems may prove to
be insurmountable. For further infor-
mation see F. Raymond Allchin, The
Archaeology of Early Historic South Asia,
1995; and Romila Thapar, Interpreting
Early India, 1992. For the Indigenous
Aryan viewpoint, see David Frawley, The
Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India,
1994; and Vedic Aryans and the Origins
of Civilization, 1997.
Infanticide
The practice of parents killing their child
is uncommon and subject to sharp con-
demnation. In some cases these infants
are illegitimate, and infanticide or aban-
donment is an attempt to avoid the
social repercussions of what is consid-
ered an immoral act.
There are several examples of this
practice in Hindu mythology, of whom
the best known is Kunti. Kunti has been
given a mantraby the sage Durvasas,
which gives her the power to conceive
and bear children by the gods. On a
whim, Kunti impulsively uses the
mantra to invoke the Sun, by whom
she conceives and bears her son Karna.
In her panic at unexpectedly becoming
a mother—she was still unmarried,
and understandably concerned about
what people might think—she puts
the child in a box and abandons him
in the Ganges.
In other cases, infants are killed by
their parents because of the family’s
desperate poverty. Almost without
exception, the children killed in such
cases are daughters. If caught, the par-
ents would be subject to a murder
charge. But infanticide is often hard to
prove if a baby was not born in a hospi-
tal, where births are formally registered.
For poor families, daughters are often
seen as a tremendous financial burden,
because the expense that will be neces-
sary to arrange their marriages is often
more than people can pay. This attitude
toward daughters is also reinforced by
the traditional Indian marriage pattern,
in which a family’s sonsbring their
brides into the family home, continue
the joint family, and care for their
parents in their old age. Since after
marriage daughters become members
of their husband’s family, they are often
seen as “temporary” residents in the
homes of their parents. For further
information see Elizabeth Bumiller,
May You Be the Mother of a Hundred
Sons, 1990.Inference
See anumana.Infinite Regress
In Indian logic, one of the fallaciesto be
avoided in constructing an argument.
An infinite regress is not only an infinite
series, but one in which there is no final
cause to make it happen or not happen.
A standard Western example of an
infinite regress is the man who informs
the philosopher that the world is sup-
ported on the back of a giant tortoise.
Upon being asked what supported theInfanticide