  Jules Bloch's work on formation of the Marathi language has to be expanded
further to provide for a study of evolution and formation of Indian languages
in the Indian language union (sprachbund). The paper analyses the stages in the
evolution of early writing systems which began with the evolution of counting
in the ancient Near East. A stage anterior to the stage of syllabic
representation of sounds of a language, is identified. Unique geometric shapes
required for tokens to categorize objects became too large to handle to
abstract hundreds of categories of goods and metallurgical processes during the
production of bronze-age goods. About 3500 BCE, Indus script as a writing
system was developed to use hieroglyphs to represent the 'spoken words'
identifying each of the goods and processes. A rebus method of representing
similar sounding words of the lingua franca of the artisans was used in Indus
script. This method is recognized and consistently applied for the lingua
franca of the Indian sprachbund. That the ancient languages of India,
constituted a sprachbund (or language union) is now recognized by many
linguists. The sprachbund area is proximate to the area where most of the Indus
script inscriptions were discovered, as documented in the corpora. That
hundreds of Indian hieroglyphs continued to be used in metallurgy is evidenced
by their use on early punch-marked coins. This explains the combined use of
syllabic scripts such as Brahmi and Kharoshti together with the hieroglyphs on
Rampurva copper bolt, and Sohgaura copper plate from about 6th century
BCE.Indian hieroglyphs constitute a writing system for meluhha language and are
rebus representations of archaeo-metallurgy lexemes. The rebus principle was
employed by the early scripts and can legitimately be used to decipher the
Indus script, after secure pictorial identification.

Computation and Language