"“The Indus writing is a mixed one in the sense that pictures of birds, scorpion, dog, goat, pipal leaf, grassy plant, bee, ant, three-peaked hill, horn of animal and a few schematized pictures like ‘man’, ‘fish’, ‘hand’ and ‘fence’ appear side by side with cursive signs, some of which bear resemblance to Brâhmî and Roman characters. Besides true pictures and cursive signs, there are some linear signs and ‘pseudo-pictures’. The latter look like pictures but are, in reality, compound signs formed by joining two or more cursive signs. Quite often, short lines (diacritics) are attached to pseudo-pictures and sometimes two identical basic cursive signs are joined to form a compound sign. These and other pseudo-pictures are often mistaken by decipherers for pictures of ‘archer’, ‘bowman’, ‘soldier holding shield’, ‘coolie carrying load’ or ‘praying man’, but they are compound signs. When analyzed, the components are found to be basic signs which appear independently in other inscriptions. Two or three basic signs are intelligently joined to form picture-like samyukta aksara-s (conjunct consonants) and syllables. When phonetic value is given, the words formed by them are meaningful.”"