Fish symbolism in the Indus Civilisation: an ideographic reading of the fish sign as the soulof the deceased.

Jeyakumar Ramasami

doi:10.36948/ijfmr.2026.v08i05.89991

Fish symbolism in the Indus Civilisation: an ideographic reading of the fish sign as the soulof the deceased.

Author(s)	Mr. Jeyakumar Ramasami
Country	India
Abstract	After the jar sign, the fish sign is the most frequently attested element in the known corpus of Indus inscriptions; together with its graphic variants, it accounts for an estimated 10 percent of all recorded signs. Despite this prominence, no consensus exists on its meaning, and the widely repeated reading of the sign as 'star' is contested. (1) It leaves unexplained why such a complex pictogram would render such a common and abstract idea. This article develops an alternative ideographic hypothesis: that the fish sign denotes the soul of a deceased person, and more specifically the ancestral soul (Sanskrit piṭṛ, 'forefather'). The argument draws on three independent strands of evidence: Indus seal iconography; comparative funerary symbolism in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Syria, and the Greek world; and the fish iconography of the Mesolithic–Neolithic site of Lepenski Vir in the Danube Gorges. This paper offers a proposed reading of an Indus seal depicting a ritual fish-pit, using it as a case study. It argues that a funerary reading explains the sign's high frequency and its association with aquatic and ancestral imagery more economically than a stellar reading.
Keywords	Indus Civilisation; Indus script; fish symbolism; funerary ritual; piṭṛ; Lepenski Vir; Varuṇa
Field	Sociology > Archaeology / History
Published In	Volume 8, Issue 5, September-October 2026
Published On	2026-10-18
DOI	https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2026.v08i05.89991

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Fish symbolism in the Indus Civilisation: an ideographic reading of the fish sign as the soulof the deceased.

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