Asko Parpola

Who is Asko Parpola?

Asko Parpola is a Finnish Indologist and Sindhologist, current professor emeritus of Indology and South Asian Studies at the University of Helsinki. He specializes in the Indus script. Two significant contributions of Parpola to the field of decipherment of the Indus script are creation of the universally used classification of Indus valley seals and the proposed decipherment of the language of the script He is brother of the Akkadian language epigrapher Simo Parpola.

Asko Parpola, received the Kalaignar M. Karunanidhi Classical Tamil Award for 2009 on June 23, 2010 at World Classical Tamil Conference at Coimbatore.

In broad terms, his 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 / Tamil / Prehistory of Indian languages

Prehistoric archaeology of South Asia and Central Asia / Coming of the Aryans