Ancient Writing of India and Asia

Deciphering the Indus Script
A small segment of the work of Finnish Indologist Asko Parpola on his thirty-years-long work deciphering the ancient script of the Indus Valley. Another great resource from the terrific Harappa site.

Indus Script
From Harappa.com, a meaty feature on the attempts to decipher the script of the Indus Civilization, with features on several of the leading scholars, and a table of character identifications.

Oracle Bones of the Shang Dynasty
Written on tortoise shells and scapulae during the 16th to 11th century BC, the oracle bones of the Shang Dynasty are the oldest written language in China. This page has a number of good links to images, transliterations and English translations.

Sanskrit
The Sanskrit language is one of the oldest written languages in the world.

Shi Ji
The Shi Ji is the name given to an enormous history of China's dynastic empires, written during the second century BC.

The International Dunhuang Project
In 1900, a cave near the town of Dunhuang, China, on the ancient Silk Roaad was discovered to contain tens of thousands of manuscripts, paintings and printed documents on paper and silk dating from 400-1000 AD; they are now scattered about the globe in different museums. The IDP is an attempt to reassemble these manuscripts and make them available on the web.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thodol)
The earliest portions of this text were probably written before the 10th century AD; About.com's guide to Buddhism talks about the Bardo Thodol.

The Upanishads
The oldest texts in Indian literature (Rig Veda probably dates between 1500 BC and 900 BC) are the Vedic manuscripts, known collectively as the Upanishads; these are English translations of many of them.

Vedic Literature
Vedic literature refers to the earliest texts found in India, four books called the Vedas, which collectively are the basis for the Hindu religion.