"[it would be] “unwise to exclude the possibility of a form of ‘Proto-Indoaryan’ language as being enciphered in the Indus inscriptions”... [earlier scholars had] “advocated a continuity between the Indus and Brahmi scripts”... “many of the Indus signs are very closely similar to Brahmi signs”...[Surveying Prof. B.B. Lal’s study of inscriptions on pottery and megaliths] “89% of the Megalithic signs and symbols which appear on pottery down to the 9th century BC or thereabouts may be traced to Harappan and post-Harappan signs and symbols”. Since “the period dealt with spans virtually the entire millennium between the downfall of the Indus Civilization (c. 19th century BC) and the rise of the later Gangetic civilization (c.9th century BC)”, a “direct continuity between the two is thereby implied; and this is suggested also by the many signs and symbols which recur between the Indus seals and the later punch-marked coinage”. .... [Several other findings confirm this continuity. As Mitchiner notes, it had been observed soon after the discovery of the Indus cities that the signs on the Indus seals] “show virtually no evolution whatever throughout the centuries of their usage in the Indus civilization”, while “from the inception of the punch-marked coinage around 600 BC down to its later form around AD 300 -- nearly a millennium later -- there is a remarkable lack of evolution or change” [(that fabled or notorious conservative trait in the Hindu character), so that] “it would seem reasonably likely that these signs and symbols which recur between the Indus and later Indian civilizations demonstrate a further continuity of culture between the two”. [Moreover, Indian seals from around the turn of the Christian era, bearing inscriptions in Brahmi script, present the same types and visual make-up as those from the Harappan period:] “Such later seals frequently portray an animal-figure, above which appears the inscriptional legend -- just as in the case of the Indus seals. Two main types of seal- impressions may be found: one was attached to parcels and letters, and shows stringmarks at the back; while the other was used more as a kind of token, and generally has a hole at the back by which it may be suspended. Once again, precisely the same two types are to be found among Indus seals.”. ... [From various angles, Mitchiner tries to decipher specific items in the Harappan seal corpus. His conclusion:] “We have now reached a stage where it is possible to conclude that the language of the Indus inscriptions may very well be an early form of Indo-Aryan. In this event, it can be seen [from our analysis of sign-groups] that certain forms of this language have been preserved only in the Prakrit branch of Indo-Aryan -- notably those which predominate in the inscriptions at Mohenjo Daro; while certain other forms have been preserved only in the Sanskrit branch of Indo-Aryan -- notably those which predominate in the inscriptions at Harappa.(...) In the first place, we have concluded that the inscriptions contain the names of towns and regions, both within and beyond the Indus Valley: such names denoting the places from which and to which certain items of merchandise are being conveyed. In the second place, we have concluded that the language used in the inscriptions is an early form of Indo-Aryan.”"