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3. TIME LINE
Asia. Until recently, about one quarter of the entire population has spoken Dravidian, while the speakers of Austro-Asiatic, the third largest linguistic family of long standing in South Asia, numbered just a few per cent. The Indus language is likely to have belonged to the North Dravidian sub-branch represented today by the Brahui, spoken in the mountain valleys and plateaus of Afghanistan and Baluchistan, the core area of the Early Harappan neolithic cultures, and by the Kurukh spoken in North India from Nepal and Madhya Pradesh to Orissa, Bengal and Assam."
Past
"I still very strongly believe that the Indus civilization language was in all probability an early form of Dravidian. Having said this, let me also sound a word of caution. This is still a theory."
"We haven't had final proof, we haven't been able to crack the code primarily because we do not have a bilingual [inscription in two languages] and also because the available inscriptional materials are all in the form of repetitive tablets and seals which are extremely small, not more than an average of five symbols strung in a row."
Iravatham Mahadevan
The Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables.
TTO A Soro
The longest Indus document
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