Asko Parpola (born 12 July 1941, in Forssa[1]) is a Finnish Indologist, current professor emeritus of South Asian studies at the University of Helsinki. He specializes in Sindhology, specifically the study of the Indus script.
Asko Parpola
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Parpola at the World Classical Tamil Conference 2010
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| Born | (1941-07-12) July 12, 1941 (age 83) |
| Occupation | Indologist |
Parpola is a brother of the Akkadian language epigrapher Simo Parpola.[2] He is married to Marjatta Parpola, who has authored a study on the traditions of Kerala's Nambudiri Brahmins.[3]
Parpola's research and teaching interests fall within the following topics:
Two significant contributions of Parpola, to the field of decipherment of the Indus script, are the creation of the now universally used classification of Indus valley seals, and the proposed, and much-debated, decipherment of the language of the script.[4]
According to Parpola the Indus script and Harappan language are "most likely to have belonged to the Dravidian family".[5][6] Parpola led a Finnish team in the 1960s–80s that vied with Knorozov's Soviet team in investigating the inscriptions using computer analysis. Based on a proto-Dravidian assumption, they proposed readings of many signs, some agreeing with the suggested readings of Heras and Knorozov (such as equating the "fish" sign with the Dravidian word for fish "min") but disagreeing on several other readings. A comprehensive description of Parpola's work until 1994 is given in his book Deciphering the Indus Script. He states in his book that the Brahui peopleofPakistan are remnants of the Harappan culture.[7]
Parpola's long journal article The Coming of the Aryans is widely cited by historians and scholars of Indo-European Studies.[citation needed] Colin Renfrew, who has reviewed the article, called it a "richly annotated and well-illustrated essay," which brings together a number of different lines of arguments, including literary and archaeological. It contains rich and interesting insights into a variety of topics, including the "amalgamation of the Aryan and Dasa religions," and the Nuristani language. However, Renfrew found Parpola's methodology wanting because, to him, it did not clearly lay out the structure of the argument and the underlying assumptions. He listed the underlying assumptions as the one that the Aryans considered themselves immigrants in the lands described in their texts and the one that the Dasas were themselves immigration populations. He considered both these propositions to be doubtful.[8][note 1]
Asko Parpola received the Kalaignar M. Karunanidhi Classical Tamil Award for 2009 on June 23, 2010 at the World Classical Tamil Conference at Coimbatore. In 2015, he was awarded India's Presidential Award of Certificate of Honour in Sanskrit.[11]
He is an honorary member of the American Oriental Society[12] and, since 1990, a member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.[13]
