‘Pitchfork’ symbol indicates ‘offering table.’

Abstract:

Earlier, I was under the impression that the ‘pitchfork’ like symbol could be a weapon. But it turned out that the ‘pitchfork’ like symbol indicates the ‘offering table’. A similar hieroglyphic symbol appears in Egyptian civilization with similar meaning. This correlation shows that Indus script writing was influenced by Hieroglyphic writing of ancient Egyptian culture.

The above-given ‘comb’ symbol indicates the offering table in a vertical position. I have written a separate article for this symbol. Read the following article for more information. ‘The comb symbol indicates the word offering.’ (1)

The above-given symbol shows a tail to the ‘offering table’. Generally, tails are characteristics of the gods. This tail creates confusion. It needs to be verified. But this offering table with tail appears in a small number of seal inscriptions. The frequency is less than ten. Hence, Sundar et al. has ignored this symbol in their listing. (1)That shows the frequency of occurrence of this symbol is less than ten. On further analysis, the idea gets clarified. It looks like that it is not a tail, but it is the ‘hand’ of ‘KA’ symbol, which had been merged. The following logo explains the idea very well.

The above-given logo explains better the idea. In this grapheme, two logos have been merged. KA symbol has been combined with ‘offering’ symbol. This composite logo stands for the meaning ‘offering to KA’. ‘KA’ is the dead man’s soul in the form of a bird, as per the Egyptian idea. The same thought had been followed by the Indus valley civilization people also.

Statistical analysis of this offering symbol

First of all, I have to acknowledge here that the statistical data discussed in this article is extracted from the research paper of Sundar et al. Details are as follows:

Logo	meaning	Frequency of occurrence of logo
	Single offering	132
	Double offering	38
	total	170

The above-given data shows that this offering table logo had appeared 170 times in the Indus inscription data as per Mahadevan and Sundar. (2) (3) This frequency is relatively high and significant. This high frequency is indicating it is a commonly used word, which is confirmed by the following analysis table.

Logo-pair	meaning	frequency
	Offering to Pithru	76
	Offering to Ninguishzida the gatekeeper	40
	Karkida -offering	22
	Offering to ‘KA’ -Kau (Sacrifice)	20
	Growing embryo / Mother goddess offering	15

All the above-given logo pairs yield meaningful interpretation, as explained in the analysis table.

The frequency of triplets with offering table combination

Triplet of logos	Reading	frequency
	Offering to Ningishzida (Gatekeeper) -Kavu	36
	Offering to Pithru on the Ashtami (eighth) day (Day of Rudra)	21
	Karkida month ceremony offering to Pithru	20
	Mother goddess offering to Pithru	15
	Offering to Pithru on the tenth day of the fortnight of a calendar month (Yama’s day)	13

The analysis of triplets yields meaningful results. Majority of the offerings were oriented towards Pithrus (Fish logo). This result confirms my theory that Indus Valley excavation sites were necropolises and ancestors (Pithru) worship were carried out in those places. Another finding is that the offering was also carried out to Ningishzida the gatekeeper and Yama. The chair symbol identifies Yama. The tenth day of the fortnight of a calendar month is allocated to Yama. Read my article under the heading,” Indus script numerals indicate various gods as per calendar days” for more information on gods assigned to various days of a calendar month. (4)

Bibliography

2. Sundar, G, et al. -The-Indus-Script-Text-and-Context-A Statistical-Positional-positional Analysis of significant Text segments. http://45.113.136.87/wp-content/uploads/. [Online] http://45.113.136.87/wp-content/uploads/43-The-Indus-Script-Text-and-Context.pdf.

3. Mahadevan.I. The Indus script -Text, Concordance and Tables. http://www.rmrl.in. [Online] http://www.rmrl.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/papers/5a.pdf.

4. Jeyakumar(Indus-gods-calendar). Indus_script_Numerals_represent_various_gods_as_per_calendar_days. Academia.edu. [Online] https://www.academia.edu/31708667/Indus_script_Numerals_represent_various_gods_as_per_calendar_days.

5. Wikipedia. Yama_(Hinduism). Wikipedia. [Online] Feb 2015. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yama_(Hinduism).

6. Sullivan, Sue. Indus Script Dictionary. s.l. : Suzanne Redalia, 2011.

7. Wikipedia(Three-age-system). Three-age_system. wikipedia.org. [Online] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-age_system.