animals depicted were totems indicating kinship or possibly clans. The computational linguist Rajesh P. N. Rao, along with a team of colleagues, performed an independent computational analysis and concluded that the Indus script has the structure of a written language, supporting prior evidence for syntactic structure in the Indus script, and noting that the Indus script appears to have a similar conditional entropy to Old Tamil. These scholars have proposed readings of many signs; one such reading was legitimised when the Dravidian homophonous words for 'fish' and 'star', , were hinted at through drawings of both the things together on Harappan seals. In a 2011 speech, Rajesh P. N. Rao said that Iravatham Mahadevan and Asko Parpola "have been making some headway on this particular problem", namely deciphering the Indus script, but concluded that their proposed readings, although they make sense, are not yet proof. In his 2014 publication Dravidian Proof of the Indus Script via The Rig Veda: A Case Study, the epigraphist Iravatham Mahadevan identified a recurring sequence of four signs which he interpreted as an early Dravidian phrase translated as "Merchant of the City". Commenting on his 2014 publication, he stressed that he had not fully deciphered the Indus script, although he felt his effort had "attained the level of proof" with regards to demonstrating that the Indus script was a Dravidian written language. Non-Dravidian languages Indo-Aryan language Perhaps the most influential proponent of the hypothesis that the Indus script records an early Indo-Aryan language is the Indian archaeologist Shikaripura Ranganatha Rao, who in his books, Lothal and the Indus Civilization and The Decipherment of the Indus Script, wrote that he had deciphered the script. While dismissing most such attempts at decipherment, John E. Mitchiner commented that "a more soundly-based but still greatly subjective and unconvincing attempt to discern an Indo-European basis in the script has been that of Rao". S.R. Rao perceived a number of similarities in shape and form between the late Harappan characters and the Phoenician letters, and argued that the Phoenician script evolved from the Harappan script, and not, as the classical theory suggests from the Proto-Sinaitic script. He compared it to the Phoenician alphabet, and assigned sound values based on this comparison. Reading the script from left to right, as is the case with Brahmi, he concluded that Indus inscriptions included numerals and were "Sanskritic". S.R. Rao's interpretation helped to bolster Hindu