Asko Heikki Siegfried Parpola (born 12 July 1941, in Forssa) is a Finnish Indologist, current professor emeritus of Indology at the University of Helsinki. He specializes in the Indus Valley Civilization, specifically the study of the Indus script.
Biography
Parpola is a brother of the Akkadian language epigrapher Simo Parpola. He is married to Marjatta Parpola, who has authored a study on the traditions of Kerala's Nambudiri Brahmins.
Scholarship
Parpola's research and teaching interests fall within the following topics:
Indus Civilization / Indus script and religion / Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions
Veda / Vedic ritual / Samaveda / Jaiminiya Samaveda texts and rituals / Purva-Mimamsa
South Asian religions / Hinduism / Saiva and Sakta tradition / Goddess Durga
South India / Kerala / Tamil Nadu / Karnataka
Sanskrit / Malayalam / Kannada / Tamil / Prehistory of Indian languages
Prehistoric archaeology of South Asia and (in broad sense) Central Asia / Coming of the Aryans
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.
Dravidian hypothesis
According to Parpola the Indus script and Harappan language are "most likely to have belonged to the Dravidian family". 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 people of Pakistan are remnants of the Harappan culture.