The Indus Valley Civilization
by George Weber
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Table of Contents
The Least-understood and Oldest Civilization Before the Beginning there was Mehrgarh A Federation of commercial City States Ancestors, Descendants, Relatives, Inheritors The Indus Language and Writing The End of the Indus Civilization - the Vedic and Hindu religions
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Note: the Indus civilization being described here is known under a number of names, which can be confusing. We prefer the term "Indus civilization" and find "Mohenjo-daro and Harappa civilization" also acceptable if rather long-winded. We avoid the use of "Harappa civilization" and "Mohenjo-daro civilization" as this gives undue prominence to one or the other of the two major cities, especially since we do not know how important each was at any one time in relation to the other or to other cities in the long history of this civilization.
The least-understood and oldest of Civilizations
The oldest known civilization? Surely an exaggeration! Not so: the oldest excavated parts of Mehrgarh (which admittedly does not represent the High Summer of the Indus civilization but its long-lasting early Spring) have been dated to around 9,000 years before the present. By comparison, the earliest Egyptian pharaoh known by name, Nar'mer, is thought to have ruled in ancient Egypt around 5,100 years before the present.
Just how early and long-lived the Indus Civilization was in comparison to other major civilizations if its very long startup period of Mehrgarh is included is shown in the graphic below. The dates of the beginning and the end of any civilization tends to be less than clear-cut since flowing historical processes are involved that in most cases (especially as regards the beginnings) are little understood and less known. We have taken what we think is a reasonable average for both beginning and end date of the civilizations shown here.
The Indus civilization seems to have been known as "Meluhha" to the early Sumerians in Mesopotamia (dates given are rarely precisely known and should be regarded as rough approximations).
We give ages as "years before the present" (BP) with the "present" fixed at the year 2000. A specific year (except in direct quotations) is given according to the western calendar such as 2009 BC or AD or 2009 BCE or CE.
The map below shows the Indus civilization and its earliest historic neighbours. The eastern limits of the Indus civilization in the Ganges plains and beyond are highly uncertain. No traces of permanent settlements have been found there but there are some indications at least of trading as far east as Assam and even Burma.
There was definitively contact and trading with the emerging Mesopotamian civilizations and some closer contact with the Elamites. Just precisely what the role of the Elamites was in the Indus culture is unknown but they seem to have been in closer contact with the Indus civilization than any other known civilization. Unfortunately, of all the early Mesopotamian/Iranian cultures and states, the Elamite is the most enigmatic and least understood; their language is isolated (i.e. not known to be related to any other known language) but it might just possibly be related to the Indus language. The Indus language itself is completely unknown because the Indus script has not been deciphered.
Overview and geography of the core area of the Indus valley civilization. The reach of that civilization was much wider with trade relations at least ranging from Iran in the west to Central Asia in the north and to Assam in the east. The specific archaeological sites marked X are treated in this article.
From the best available evidence it seems likely that the Indus civilization was a somewhat informal grouping of culturally and commercially connected and related city states, perhaps something like ancient Greece before Alexander the Great, or the merchant cities of Renaissance Italy. We can only guess since we know hardly anthing about the internal workings of this civilization. We do not even know, for example, how the two biggest cities - Mohenjo Daro in the south and Harappa in the north - got along with each other, nor what role the many medium and smaller cities played. We do not know how the "empire" was organised and ruled nor ewhat role religion played in it. There is no trace of a single ruler but it is possible that one or the other major city or one or the other local ruling family was at times richer and more dominant than the others . But none may have been strong enough to establish its local capital or ruler as the sole capital or ruler of the realm. Until we can decipher the Indus Script (if it is indeed a system of writing - not even that is certain) we will never know. Some researchers have decided for no very clear reason to call the entire Indus civilization "Harappa". We prefer the more general term "Indus civilization" when not referring specifically to the city of Harappa.
The Indus civilization must have had a long and complex internal history to which archaeology remains today the only key. Archaeology produces layers and sequences and dates but very seldom tells us what the humans who "produced" the archaeology thought and felt and aimed for. Until we can read their script, we cannot make mental "contact" with the Indus people and they must remain an abstract archaeological construct. This is really unfortunate since the Indus people would have plenty to tell us: they built not only the world's earliest sophisticated civilization but also the longest-lived in human history. They were keen traders and sophisticated merchants who maintained trading posts far beyond the limits of their realm. One such trading post thas been discovered and excavated far to the north of the Indus area, at Shortugai in northern Afghanistan on the river Oxus. Mines for semi-precious stones (lapis) operated there whose products were exported south into the Indus cities. Other trading posts are known as far east as modern Assam and even Burma from where precious stones were imported. They also had a sophisticated system of weighs and measures. All in all: the oldest known civilization was astonishingly modern in many ways.
Before the Beginning there was Mehrgarh
Mehrgarh (also sometimes spelt as as Mehrgahr, Mehrgarh, Merhgahr, Mergar) is an archaeological site in Pakistan, 30 km west of the town of Sibi and 120 km southeast of Quetta in Beluchistan. The site is important for its antiquity and for being among the earliest sites to show the development of agriculture. We do not know whether Mehrgarh was a lone beacon of agriculture in a "wilderness of hunter-gatherers" since no other such settlement has been found yet. It is, however, likely that it was not alone. There must havee been other similar and as yet undiscovered settlements along the Indus valley that would later provide the foundation for the rise of the first civilization in the area, the Indus civilization.
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The introduction of agriculture into India: In Mehrgarh, wheat, barley and jujube was introduced from the west and was cultivated from around 9,0000 years ago. Red arrows indicate the time and direction of agriculture from the West. Note: the arrows do not necessarily indicate population movements. They only show the advance of a "concept and idea of agriculture". How large (or small) the population movements were that accompanied the advance of agriculture is a question that cannot be answered at tpresent. Rice was not introduced into eastern India until some thousands of years later (yellow arrows). |
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The oldest part of Mehrgarh that has been excavated so far is archaeological site MR3. The oldest part of MR3 is marked pink on our map and dates back to around 9,000 years before the present. |
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Major archaeological sites within the Mehrgarh area. |
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A typical small house with 2 to 4 rooms at Merghar would have looked like this and was likely to have housed a family. The larger buildings shown on the map above were constructed on the same principle but, it is thought, were either palaces or used for the storage of goods. |
The prehistory of human activities at the Mehrgarh site can be grouped into different periods:
Period 1 (Neolithic)
9,000 to 7,500 years before the present
This period was dominated by a recently nomadic population settling down into an increasingly less nomadic way of life. The Mehrgarh people at first continued to move around seasonally as nomads but kept returning to Mehrgarh as their home base. Over the centuries, the time spent "at home" must have grown longer and involved more of the population, until the nomadic way of life hadbeen largely abandoned.
Farming at Mehrgarh involved the cultivation of early forms of
wheat, barley and jujuba as well as the keeping of sheep, goats and
cattle.
The earliest buildings were made of mud with usually four rooms (see
pink area in map above).
Many burials contain baskets, tools made of stone and bones, beads,
pendants, the remnants of what seem to have been animal sacrifices,
many ornaments made of shells, limestone, turquoise, lapislazuli,
sandstone and even polished copper, along with simple figurines of
women and animals. Males received more grave goods than women.
Period 2 (Neolithic, first appearance of copper and of ceramics)
7,500 to 6,500 years before the present
There was considerable technical development and the quality of
the ceramic work is improved. There are first traces of the still
rare metal copper. Glazed fayence beads were produced and terracotta
figurines become more detailed and sophisticated. Figurines of
females are painted and show highly diverse hairstyles and ornaments
(during Period 6 more than 2,000 years later, these figurines would
turn into something of a mass product) - (see
Art
below).
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The quantity of grave goods decreased andwas becoming more limited to ornaments. Such goods also tended to become more evenly distibuted between the sexes - which may or may not be a sign that there was more equality between the sexes.
The complete set of stone tools showen immediately below was found in this grave. The flint blades were arranged along the back of the corpse. |
The first button seals were made of terracotta and bone, showing mostly geometric designs.
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A complete set of stone tools found in a Mehrgarh grave of Period 2. Such tool sets buried with what (presumably) was their owner are the only way to learn what was included in a tool set at a specific point in time. |
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The grave that yielded the above tool set also contained these turquoise beads in an asphalt-coated basket (not shown). |
Period 3 (Chalcolithic or Copper Age)
6,500 to 5,700 years before the present
Copper came into wide use at this time and ceramic output was improved in quality, variety and number. There seems to have been widespread experimenting with new forms, materials, methods and procedures. Completely new technologies appeared, such as updraft kilns and large pit kilns as well as copper melting crucibles. With the use of copper, Mehrgarh entered the Chalcolithic or Copper age. Among the most surprising inventions were dental drills.
Mehrgarh farmers of Period 3 could thave their dental
problems treated by experimental dentists with drills as
early as 6,000 years before the present. One hopes that the
earliest dentistsused herbal drugs to reduce the suffering
of their patients. The photograph below shows a Mehrgarh
drill as reconstructed by Lica Bondola of the Piggorini
Museum, Rome. Mehrgarhian dental technology has
been used on only a 11 teeth out of a total of 3880
examined. The experiment was abandoned around 6,500 years
ago amd ne can perhaps understand why. The photographs below show teeth from Mehrgarh displaying
the early experimental dentists' work.
Period 4 (Chalcolithic, beginning Bronze age)
5,700 to 5,400 years before the present
An increasingly sophisticated metal working technology was established. Bronze appeared for the first time. The ceramic of this period was often colourfully painted.
Period 5 (Bronze age)
5,400 to 5,250 years before the present
Use of bronze became frequent. Pottery is developed further and a monochrome (white) pottery with geometric motifs and human figures is later followed towards the end of the period by a new style of grey pottery ware.
Period 6 (Bronze age)
5,250 to 4,800 years before the present
Black-on-gray decorated pottery (Quetta ware), Nal polychrome, red pottery with painted pipal leaves, human figurines, compartmented stamp seals, and lapis lazuli is found. In the later layers of this period, evidence of increasing outside contact in the form of erotic female figurines and imported pottery (figurines and sherds) is found.
Around 5,300 years ago the classic Indus civilization had begun. One of its most important centres of that culture, Mohenjo-daro, was relatively close to Mehrgarh, on the banks of the Indus river. How and to what extend the old civilization of Mehrgarh influenced the development of the young Mohenjo-daro is not known in any detail but the connection is there and shows every sign of having been strong.
Period 7 (Bronze age)
4,800 to 4,500 years before the present
Mehrgarh is increasingly influenced by the
developing Indus civilization. There is more imported black-on-gray
ware There was also now mass production of increasingly erotic female
figurines to which complementary male figurines were later added.
A monumental platform of unknown but probably ceremonial function was
built at Mehrgarh at this time.
Mehrgarh's contribution to and relationship with the Indus
civilization remains hazy. It is thought that the foundation of the
Indus civilization rested above all on the existence and
contributions of many villages and towns like Mehrgarh up and down
the Indus valley and that Mohenjo-daro and Harappa were just the
largest in a whole hierarchy of such settlements.
During Period 7 erotic female figurines with
extraordinary hairstyles and figures were mass produced. They have
come down to us as grave goods and have not been convincingly
explained.
One of the strange erotic female statuettes that often
accompanied the Mehrgarh dead into
their graves. Mehrgarh is much older than the
"classical" Indus culture, but the this statue is roughly
contemporary to the first flowering of the Indus culture.
Literature also mentions the existence of male statuettes
of a similar strange appearance but we have not been able to
find a sample of one such to show here.
Sorry to all you keen art lovers out there to let you down
on this one.
after 4,500-4,000 years before the present
At the beginning of this period, Mehrgarh shows increasing signs of merging into the mainstream of the Indus Civilization. Nevertheless, before 4,000 years ago Mehrgarh seems to have been completely abandoned by its inhabitants who never returned. It has been speculated that its inhabitants of Mehrgarh migrated to the fertile and well-watered Indus valley when the climate became more arid. Perhaps to the rising major city of Mohenjo-daro on the bank of the Indus river - we do not know. Whatever the reason, Mehrgarh remained an uninhabited ghost town for at least 600 years. Then, a new population arrived which had more Iranian than Indus affiliations and is known mostly from its burials which, unfortunately, are not well-preserved. When the city was finally abandoned is not known.
A Federation of commercial City States
The most astonishing aspect of the Indus civilization - the oldest civilization we know - is that it seems to have been on present knowledge a culture based primarily on commercial and trading rather than ethnic or religious fopundations, although the latter may have played an important if subsidiary role, too. More funds, commercial and otherwise, to conduct more research into the matter are obviously needed...
When the major cities of the Indus civilization began to develop and expand, ancient Mehrgarh had already begun its decline. Mohenjo-daro is the major Indus city nearest to Mehrgarh and its builders had clearly learnt from this forerunner of their civilization. It is not known whether an ancient settlement preceded the major village that would turn into Mohenjo-daro, but it is clear that the city of Mohenjo-daro developed quickly. An early agricultural period was swiftly followed by an urban period of high civilization which lasted until the end of the Indus culture.
The development of the second biggest city, Harappa, in the north seems to have been equally swift although it is not clear to what extent Harappa followed the lead of Mohenjo-daro and whether it had other sources of inspiration and ways of making a living. The layout and construction of both these and many other Indus cities is so similar that their founders and builders must have shared the same culture, even if they were perhaps at times bitter enemies and competitors. There are many parellels to ancient Greece in the Indus civilization even if classical Greece was then still 2,500 years into the future.
The "citadels" at the centre of both Mohenjo-daro and Harappa were not natural features: they were artificial hills piled up by the founder population, presumably to provide increased security for the centre. The effort required for piling up such prodigious structures was not far short of the effort required to build one of the larger pyramids in ancient Egypt. There must have been powerful enemies around to spur on defensive construction work on this scale, as well as a powerful authority to organize it all. The defenders main worry may not have been raiding nomads. Instead, commercial competitors from other Indus cities could have been the threat. The Indus civilization in many ways seems to resemble classical Greek (still 2,500 years into the future). Unfortunately we lack information about the relationship between the various Indus cities and how they cooperated or feuded with each other. What little evidence there is makes it likely that they behaved much as the classical Greek cities did: fighting each other over trade, honour, culture and women but closing ranks when an outsider enemy appeared and threatened them all. There also must have been long periods of peace and quiet tradinp. Again as with the classical Greeks, there was no king or other central authority, just the common and powerful band of a common culture - and the authority of each city's government.
Nowhere in the Indus culture has anything been found that could have been a royal palace. We do not know how the cities were ruled but the strict planning speaks for a strong authority in each city. That may well have been an early form of "city council" composed perhaps of members of the leading and richest merchant families of the city and defended by generals from other traditional family with military experience. However, these are only speculations based on other cultures with no monarchical structures. The fact remains that we do not know how this, the earliest known civilization, was ruled. But it was ruledwell and for a long time.
Mohenjo-daro and Harappa were laid out in a standardized grid pattern of streets with the size of houses graded according to rank or wealth. There were larger buildings like the famous baths complete with what look like guest houses and other supporting buildings as well as trade and commercial buildings, along what may have been government buildings. Large buildings that could have been palaces of rich private people or of a ruler have not so far been identified. While society was far from equalitarian, the rich merely seem to have had bigger houses than the poor .
To administer all this for nearly 2,000 years would have needed a highly exerienced and efficient professional bureaucracy. How we would like to know how these administrators accomplished their tasks, solved their problems and kept their records! The only script known from the Indus civilization does not look like it could have possibly been up to such a large and complex task (see Indus script). It may indeed have had a different purpose. We really do not have any idea how the Indus administrative system worked. Human memory in the form of trained specialized "walking memory persons" is a possibility that would also explain the absence of adequate written evidence but it has one major drawback for us - its existence cannot be proven, still less its contents recalled. We may have to resign ourselves to the fact that until completely new evidence is found, we will not discover how this amazing major civilization worked and how it was run so successfully and efficiently for so long.
A famous statue found at Mohenjo-daro is known as that of the "priest king", although it is far from certain who or what the statue represents. It has also been been remarked that the way the eyes are shown - concentrated on the tip of the nose - are reminicent of a well-known method of yoga.
The work is thought to date to approx. 4,500 years before the present and made of steatite (soapstone). While he may indeed represent a priest, a king, or a priest-king, he may just as well represent a wealthy merchant or a high-ranking official. Nobody knows.Whoever the portrait represents, it is a masterpiece. The man's features show some "Negroid" features - but nowhere near as clearly or strongly as is claimed in some over-excited black quarters. If the "Negroid" is real, it is more likely to be "Negritoid". Only a DNA analysis of human remains could possibly answer this question. A fascinating detail is what he man wears: it appears to be an arjak , a kind of shawl that is is still widely popular in Sindh! Sindh is the province of Pakistan in which Mohenjo-daro lies and arjaks are still being made there with patterns just like those shown on the man's statue.
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Besides the two best-known major cities, Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, there were many other substantial centres of the Indus civilization from cities to towns right down to villages. Our map of the core area of the Indus civilization above gives the names and locations of some of the many lesser cities and towns. How all these population centres were organized and how they cooperated and/or feuded with each other is among the many things we do not know. There is no indication of a dominating central authority (say a capital over the whole civilization or an emperor) that could have kept the peace between the many commercial rivals. But neither is there any indication of violence between the cities. This picture seems to be almost too good to be true but perhaps the the 4,500 years of violent history since the fall of Harappa have made us cynical. With no major powers within a large permimeter around their civilization, the various cities may never have felt the need to unite against a serious outside threat.
The Indus people were commercially-minded and astute traders. There is plenty of evidence of commercial activity, some of it so sophisticated that one tends to forget that one is looking at evidence from the oldest known major civilization.
Among the ruins of Harappa this model of an ox cart was
found. Such objects are not rare in the Indus civilization
and they are usually assumed to have been toys. But but we
know so little about the Indus civilization that they might
just as well have been a ritual objects or offerings to the
Gods. Whatever the purpose of these "toys", they do show us (in
the absence of any excavated full-scale cart)s the
sophisticated technology of this very early civilization.
Goods were transported on such and similar carts.
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Standardized weights and measures used in the Indus
civilization.
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Mohenjo-daro was the largest of the many cities that made up the Indus civilization. It has been estimated that at its greatest extent, the city could have had as many as 40,000 inhabitants. If the Indus civilization did have a capital city it would most likely have been Mohenjo-daro.
Details of the Mohenjo-daro
citadel: 1 College X Buddhist stupa (not
contemporary with the ancient Mohenjo-daro structures)
2 Bath
3 Rooms (guest
rooms?)
4 Loading platform and
granary
5 Drain
6 Residence for priests
(?)
7 Assembly hall
8 Temple complex(?)
9 Bastions (of baked
brick)
10 Tower (of baked
brick)
11 Mud-brick
embankment
12 Stairs
The religion of the Indus civilization is barely known even in is broadest outlines. However, one belief is very clear from the excavated buildings at both Mohenjo-daro and Harappa: some form of ritual washing must have been central to the Indus religion. Where other early religions (for exampleEgypt or the Mesopotamian civilizations) had temples at the centre of their cities, the Indus civilization had baths with highly sophisticated buildings and drainage facilities at the centre of theirs.See also below
It is most unlikely to be mere coincidence that today's only major religion that has a similar high regard for ritual washing is that of the Hindus. Their Kumbh Mela is a pilgrimage and ritual washing undertaken by believers every 12 years. The pilgrimage rotates among different locations so that a Kumbh Mela is in fact held every 3 years across four locations.
A "Maha Kumbh Mela" ("Great Kumbh Mela") takes place after 12 smaller Khumb melas, i.e. every 144 years and is held at Allahabad. The last Maha Kumbh Mela took place in 2001 with 60 million people in attendance, making it the largest gathering of people in world history.
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Aerial photograph of the "Great Bath" at the centre of the citadel of Harappa (2 in the map above). The round stucture to the left of the bath is the well.
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"The Great Bath" at Mohenjo-daro. |
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In th foreground is again the Great Bath. The tower in the background is the Buddhist stupa that is much younger than the ruins of Mohenjo-daro. |
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The well of the Great Bath. |
Sewer drains at Mohenjo-daro. |
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The archaeoelogical excavation of the building that is
known as the "Granary" at Harappa.
Vew of what the archaeologists have named Mound AB and
was at the city's core defence, the Citadel.
The well in the citadel of Harappa is the round opening
near the centre of the photograph. It was almost certainly this permanent source of fresh
water on top of a defensible hill that made the site of
Harappa such an important centre of the Indus culture. Partially visible on the left is the North Gateway. The city of Harappa had a sophisticated drainage system
perhaps as early as 6,000 years before the present. Here a
part of it that was excavated in the Citaldel (mound
AB).
Excavations for Harappan buildings at mound E in the
foreground, with the old police station on mound ET visible
in the background.
Above: Burial of an adult female with a child. Their last
journey was accompanied by many offerings for their
afterlife. Left: Very high-quality pottery made with potter's wheels
was used mainly for funeral offerings.
Beads were also placed with the dead in their graves. Whether
living people wore such items is not known. 
Ancestors, Descendants, Relatives
There are many claims for an ancestral relationship with the people who built the world's oldest civilization and there many theories ranging from crackpot to quite plausible on the origins of the Indus people. We are recklessly trying to describe these below in roughly descending order of plausibility. Molecular genetics may one day be able to tell us what living people are genetically closest to the ancient Indus people. But not yet.
The two major religions that could have inherited some Indus civilization beliefs and customs - the Hindus and the Jains - are also briefly described in the chapter Indus Heritage below.
The Dravidian people today live mostly in southern India and their language family includes major languages such as Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu and Kannada as well as many other less widely spoken languages. The classification of the Dravidian is based mostly on linguistic grounds. The languages are related to each other and are not known to be related to any other language groups (with one possible exception: the long-extinct Elamite language. The genetic situation is less clear and it is disputed whether the Dravidians are a separate race. What geneticists (and almost everyone else) can agree on is that the Dravidians are, on average, somewhat darker-skinned than the average northern Indians. But as we argue elsewhere on this web-site in our introductory chapter, skin-colour is one of the genetically determined factors that can most easily change over time and so is far from being a reliable guide when periods of thousands (let alone tens or hundreds of thousands) of years are involved.
The Dravidian language family, however, is another matter. It is not even distantly related to the Indo-European langage family (which in India includes most languages spoken in northern India) nor to any other language family known. Dravidian could very well have been the language family of the Indus civilization. But since we cannot read the Indus script, we cannot be sure.
The distribution of Dravidian languages today.
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Brahui-speaking people |
The isolated position of Brahui may well indicate that in prehistoric times the Dravidian languages covered all or most of what is today India and Pakistan and that these languages were r pushed back by the Aryan invasion with only Brahui remaining behind in its mountain fastnesses. Its is possible, even likely - but not definitively proven.
The Brahui people today are a hard-to-approach tribe living in difficult terrain right the middle of an active shooting war thathas been going on for centuries. Trying to take samples for genetic testing from people who have lived for generations in such conditions would not be, shall we say, wise.
Of all the ancient major Mesopotamian and Iranian civilizations (Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyria in Mesopotamia and the later Persian civilizations) that of Elam is the least familiar to the general public. The Elamites had a history of violent changes of fortune in their internal affairs as well as in their foreign conquests. It has also only recently become clear that Elam and Susa were two distinct kingdoms - perhaps more at times. For several periods the kingdom simply vanished from history. At other times it was a major power in the area that conquered Ur, When Elam was strong, it was an aggressive power that attacked and conquered - only to be conquered several times in return. In very early times, Elam conquered Sumer only to be conquered by Sumer in return a little later.
The oldest Elamite system of writing, proto-Elamite, has
not be deciphered. It is thought that the inscription shown
is an accounting tablet. The script shows similarities with
that of the the Indus civilization. But how does one compare
two scripts, both unreadable and both without a known
sequence of development? This earliest Elamite script
appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, around 5,300 years
before the present and seems to have been in use for only a
relatively short time until around 4,900 years before the
present. Proto-Elamite was read "boustrophedon" (i.e. "as
the ox ploughs"): Other scripts were used in Elam later (Linear Elamite for
monumental inscriptions 4,200 to 4,000 before the present)
and Elamite Cuneiform (4,500 to 2,300 before the present, an
adapted Mesopotamian cuneiform). None of the later scripts
show any affiliation to the Indus script.
If and how and to what extent the Mesopotamian civilizations and the Indus civilization influenced each other is not clear. There does seem to have been some trade and contact between the Mesopotamians and the Indus civilization in the earliest periods and a city or country far in the East was known as "Meluha" . The identification of Meluha with the Indus civilization (or perhaps just Mohenjo-daro) is likely but not definitively proven.
Elam and the other Mesopotamian states were not peaceful civilizations. Even in the earliest times for which there are records, the list of wars, conquests and defeats involving Sumer, Elam, Babylonia and Assyria is endless. The Indus civilization on the other hand from the Mesopotamian perspective was too remote, too well-protected by deserts, mountain ranges and the sea for an attack or conquest to be possible. Peaceful long-distance trading was the only practical possibility for the Mesopotamians.
- The Aryans, Iranians and Central Asians
The "Aryan theory" is not quite as disreputable in India as it is in the West, but neither are the two theories identical.
The word "Aryan" has many meanings, some reputable and some not. The most toxic definition was given to "Aryan" in Germany of the 1930s by Adolf Hitler and his follows. They did not make up their theories themselves but borrowed from a long line of European 19th century "thinkers" and other fantasists. The Nazis thought of themselves as racially superior "Aryans".
In Iran "Aryan" is often thought of as synonymous with "Iranian". Iranians have indeed been in contact with the Indus civilization from the west at around 3,500 years before the present . They re-settled the ruins of Mehrgarh that had been abandoned by their original Indus owners some centuries earlier (see above period 8 of Mehrgarh history).
In India the term "Aryan" is used for the invaders who spoke Indo-European languages and who probably destroyed the Indus civilization and in the following "vedic" period mixed with the local population and developed the foundations of the Hindu religion and civilization. Where they came from is an open question - Central Asia is one possibility. Important evidence for the "Aryan invader" theory is that most of the languages spoken today in northern India (but not in the south) belong to the Indo-European language family.
It is highly probable that the Aryan invaders despite leaving a trail of destruction, nevertheless incoporated many an Indus concept and belief into their own evolving religion and community, thus providing a major influence on the developing Hindu and Jain religions (see Dravidian map above)
There definitively was some immigration from the northwest (Central Asia) ar roughly 25,000 years before the present. This migration is known only from genetic traces - it brought the R2 Y-chromosome into India (see our introductory chapter). For an Aryan migration this is too early, but it does show how little we do know of the prehistory of the area.
Archaeological evidence also indicates that the Aryan invasion (whenever it really took place and whatever people were involved) was far more complex than even the vedic stories tell it. The arrival of the R3 chromosome is only one small piece of a very large puzzle. All we can say is that several waves of people entered the subcontinent from the west, beginning around 25,000 years ago and climaxing with the destruction of the Indus civilization around 3,500 years before the present. The Arians may have had any conceivable shade of skin colour while speaking some kind of Indo-European language. Iranians would fit best into this necessarily vague description, but that is far from being definitive proof.
The Indus Language and Writing
It is most unfortunate that the Indus civilization has left us with no decipherable writing. As a result we do not know what their language was like or what other languages it might have been related to. The Indus people did leave something that looks very much like writing but (a) it is not terribly clear if it was writing at all and (b) if it is writing, nobody has been able to decipher it.
The ancient Egyptians were compulsive writers who thought nothing of covering the walls of entire temples with inscriptions. And they invented both papyrus and libraries . They then these admirable people filled one invention with the results of the other. The early Mesopotamian civilizations also had writing and used it widely if perhaps not with quite same same abandon as the Egyptians which is understandable when one considers that the Mesopotamian "book pages" were heavy clay tablets. Using writing widely or sparingly, almost all ancient civilizations had had some form of writing .The only and not very ancient exception was the Inca civilization of Peru which had the Quipu (knots on strings) as a sort of substitute for record-keeping.
As mentioned, the Indus civilization had something that looks very much like writing. The problem is that they used this "writing" (if that is what it is) sparingly and then only for very short inscriptions indeed - six symbols at a time was normal.The longest known "inscription" (or rather assemblage of letter-like symbols) consistss of just 17 symbols! This blocks any attempt at decipheringas long as no translation table or similar device have been found. None has. For more on the subject, see Farmer, Sproat and Witzel, "The Collapse of the Indus-Script Thesis"(http://www.safarmer.com/fsw2.pdf) from which the following photograph and interesting caption comes:
One possibility (unproven, of course) is that the system of writing was used only to write down names or (equally unproven) that the letter-like symbols do not represent sounds or meanings as script symbols would, but may be more like a modern company logo. The Indus "script" has been found only seals where they (together with a picture of a mighty animal) may have been a sort of traders' stamps, identification, something like a modern signature or company logo. Such seals have been found in large numbers, all showing big and impressive animals (bull, elephant, rhino, etc) together with a few of the letter-like symbols. The large animal and and the symbols together may have been a sort of trader's totem animal or "logo", a sort of identifying commercial fingerprint with the letter-like forms being the name of the trader in a phonetic script limited to names.
Seals of the Indus civilization. Writing, commercial
logos, or signatures? X Below left: a seal from Harappa: the animal is very
similar to the one above and the "writing" is in the same
place - but the "letters" are completely different. Is this
the the logo of a branch office? Or just the conventional
way to show a bull? Or the same name or word once in the
Harappan script and once in that of Mohenjo Daro variety (if
there were two scripts - we do not know). Or is the
explanation something else altogether? The only conclusion
that the two seals on the left allow the two cities were in
close contact. Now go figure! Below right: the strange picture has been interpreted as
that of a scribe. Could be. X
picked at random
This drawings also shows how the seals look from the
side. They cleary were designed to be affixed by string or
something similar to - what? Bales or boxes of goods seems
most likely.
An extensive list of list of symbols (click here) have been collected from Indus seals and sorted into formal groups. Although many forms seem strangely familiar while still more could be local variants of a specific form, not one of these "letters" has been identified with a particular sound or meaning. Nor are they likely to become legible until a translation table toa known and legible script (e.g. Sumerian) has been found. But even if such a table is found, we may find ourselves fae to face with a large number of companies' names, such as "Uga-oga-bu & Co. Ltd." Flippant? Yes. But unlikely? No.
The mystery of the Indus script will remain a mystery for the foreseeable future.
Reproductions of the impressive art of the Indus civilization are plentiful and we will not reproduce much here. What is not plentiful are explanations of the art. With most Indus finds, we just do not know enough and can only guess at their function and meaning. To say that much of it must have been religious is to state the obvious.
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The unique and rightly famous bronze statuette of a dancing girl from Harappa is thought to be roughly 4,500 years old and probably represents a temple dancer. The figure may look a bit uneven as a sculpture, with body the proportions slightly odd and her left hand more like a club for no discernible reason. Was this done deliberately and if so, what does it mean? The piece is of such high quality that clumsiness on the part of the maker can be dismissed. What comes clearly across the millennia are the sexual implications of the figure. Homo sapiens has not changed all that much over the last nearly five millennia... An important but also unexplained aspect of the little statue are the unmistakably Negrid or Negritoid facial features. Analysis of the statuette has brought a technological surprise: the bronze was cast with the sophisticated technology of the "lost wax" method which may well have been invented by the Indus civilization.
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The Indus craftsmen and/or craftswomen (we know nothing
about the division of labour and roles between the sexes in
the Indus civilization) produced figurines in such a way
that they could be "mass produced" with a minimum of effort
by simply sticking "pre-fabricated" parts together. One is almost tempted to speak of an early stage of an
industrial revolution. That might be an exaggeration, but
there clearly was a large demand for such figures and the
manufacturers and merchants did their best to supply their
market. Like so much about the Indus civilization, there is
an astonishingly and to some disturbing modern "feel" about
it.
Left: Below: Bead or weight, possibly phallic in form.
Not a mass product is this stone statue from Harappa. In the
absence of written sources, virtually nothing is known of
religious beliefs in the Indus Civilization so that we can
only speculate whether such statues represent gods, rulers
or a supplicant asking a god for help, or someone thanking a
god for help granted. The resemblance of this statue to a
phallic figure is striking, but we cannot categorically
state that it was meant to be phallic.
The End of the Indus Civilization
For a very long periods, life in the main centres of the Indus civilization seems to have been mostly peaceful and well-ordered, showing all the signs of an astonishingly disciplined and well-ordered society with few traces of violence.
There are some indications, however, that snakes also lived in this Garden of Eden. Both Mohenjo-daro and Harappa from their early days had built heavily fortified citadels that can only have been put up as protections from enemy attacks. The citadels were not natural hills but were piled up in the plains in what must have been a tremendous communal effort. There must have been threatening enemies around with one possibility being the protection of city-dwellers from intruding primitive tribes. In more prosperous later times the most successful and largest cities may also have needed protection from militant commercial competitor cities. Despite the signs of defensive readyness, for long periods the Indus civilization seems to have enjoyed long periods of peace and successful trading.
It was only towards the very end of the longest life any civilisation has ever enjoyed that evidence of large-scale violence and destruction appears. Excavations at Mohenjo-daro revealed that larger buildings had been subdivided and altered to give shelter to small workshops and to house more people. It seems many more people had to be crowded into the city, perhaps during a siege, unrest in the countryside or, less likely, during major episodes of flooding. It is unlikely to be coincidence that not long after these signs of stress and uncertainty appear (around 3,300 before the present) there are also signs of major trouble heralding the coming of the final calamity. Cities were sacked and left deserted. At Mohenjo-daro, bones of people were found lying where they had died, in the streets. Theywere left unburied in a deserted city that was never rebuilt or inhabited again.
Other Indus cities also vanished around this time but not all show traces of human violence. In Harappa the evidence is more for a gradual abandonment, possibly under pressure from climatic changes, abut some human agency cannot be ruled out.
Although many of the ancient traditions preserved in both the Hindu and Jain religions are almost certain to have their roots in the Indus civilization, no direct trace of the later Vedic-Hindu or Jain cultures has been identified in the archaeological remains of the Indus civilization. Most glaringly: the Indus civilization did not know the horse. There is not one representation of that hard-to-overlook animal in the entire corpus of Indus art despite the many representations of other animals (e.g. the ox-cart shown above), nor have any remains of horses been found connected with the Indus civilization. By contrast, in the Veda horses and chariots play a major role.Genetic analysis and dating of horse bones has revealed that the horse was not introduced to the Indian subcontinent until less than 4,000 years before the present. In other words: the horse first appeared just as the the Indus civilization was falling and the rise Vedic people began to appear. Another difference is that the Indus civilization enjoyed an essentially urbanized way of life - a way of life that was very different from the rural living described in the Veda.
While the differences between the Indus civilization, the Vedic period and then the Hindu and Jain religions are substantial, there is nevertheless an underlying thread of continuity. If the Indus civilization has left anything to the world of today, then it is the modern Hindu and Jain religions.
- The Vedic and the Hindu Religion
The Hindus believe (if they can forgive this gross simplification of their enormously complex belief system) that the Indus civilization was a major source for the Vedic beliefs that figure so prominently in the body of Hindu holy scriptures, the Veda ("knowledge"). The Vedic people and their beliefs in turn are regarded as forerunners of the Hindus people. These early texts contain many tales thought to be based on historical events. Archaeologically verifyable facts are rare or doubtful, as they always are when trying to tie up legends and ancient stories with archaeology.
The Veda form the oldest stratum of Sanskrit literature and of Hinduism. It is highly probable, though difficult to prove, that many aspects of the Indus civilizations are alive and influential in the India today through Hindu religous beliefs. The problem is that we do not really know what the religious beliefs of the Indus people were and so we cannot with any certainty identify what is "Indus " and what is not in contemporary Hindu beliefs.
Part of the Hindu temple complex at Khajurahao (located
620 km south-seast of Delhi). The temple is a masterpiece of Hindu architecture but
more famous for its highly erotic sculptures.
One verry rare exception in this permanent uncertainty of what is of Indus origin and what is not in modern religions are the cleasing and bathing ceremonies. For Hindus, ritual bathing is a central ceremony and is of course far more than just a cleaning process. Precisely that idea is obvious in the Indus civilization: for example at Mohenjodaro there was a very sophisticated bathing pool with drains and guest rooms that occupied the absolutely central position in the major temple that was in the centre of the citadel which in turn was the central point of the entire city (click here to go to city map earlier in this chapter). There can be no doubt that ritual bathing was a highly significant and central religious act in the Indus civilization.
For modern Hindu, Kumbh Mela is a pilgrimage and ritual washing undertaken by believers every 12 years. The event rotates among four different locations. A "Maha Kumbh Mela" ("Great Kumbh Mela") takes place after 12 smaller Khumb melas, i.e. every 144 years, and is always held at Allahabad. The last Maha Kumbh Mela took place in 2001 with 60 million people in attendance which made it the largest gathering of people known in history.
Satellite photo taken of the Maha
Kumbh Mela in 2001. The waters of the Yamuna River are
dark greenish-blue, those of the Ganges greenish-brown.
Clusters of white shapes are boats
that pilgrims use as platforms to enter the waters away from
the overcrowded river banks and the scarcely less
overcrowded waters along the two rivers. The brownish-pink mass along the
river banks are pilgrims waiting to enter the
water. For more photographs of this major
religious event see http://www.photosbybjorn.com/india_khumb_mela.htm
A poster advertising the smaller "
Khumb Mela" of 2007.
The Jain Religion
Jainism is a religion with approximately 4 million members that is largely limited to India but with some migrant communitires in Europe, America and Australia. It has philosophical and historical connections with both Hinduism and Buddhism but is a quite distinct and separate religion.
The oldest traceable roots if Jainism go back - as they do with the Hindus - to the Vedic period that followed the destruction of the Indus civilization.
Jainism does not have a creator god but believes in an universe that has already existed forever and will continue to exist forever. It is an universe without beginning or end, moving endlessly like a wheel. At the ethical core of the religion is the doctrine of non-injury to all living creatures, with the ideal of the perfection of human nature achieved through restraint and an ascetic life.
Jainism does not have a single founder. The truth is believed to have been revealed at different times over eons and many cycles by a successions of Tirthankaras ("teachers who make a ford, i.e.who show the right way). A Tirthankar is regardedas an infallible leader but not as a god.
The line of Thirtankaras is thought of as stretching back in time over countless cycles, forever. During each cycle there are 48 Tirthankaras and during the current half-cycle there have been 24 Tirthankaras, the first of which is the traditional founder of the Jain religion, Rishabha. Although he is mentioned in the Vedas and may have been a historical person, nothing else is known about him. Very little, too, is known of of the 23rd Tirthankara, Parshvanath, who lived around 2,900 years before the present. The 24th and last Tirthankara of the current halfcycle, Mahavira, is a fully historical person that was born 550 BCE (2,550 years before the present) and is the founder of the Jain religion as it exists today.
The Jain core beliefs
- the soul is indestructible (immortal)
- all living beings have a soul
- every object in the universe, including the soul, changes by itself
without external interference
- any soul can achieve slvation through self-realization
- God is not the creator or protector of the universe. He only knows
and sees the whole.
- every truth is a relative truth and not the absolute truth
The Jain flag
The swastika is a very ancient symbol of the sun . It has nothing whatsoever to do with Hitler and his Nazis who merely misappropriated and misused the symbol. The oldest swastika symbols known were found at Altyn Tepe, Turkmenia, 1,500 km northwest of the Indus civilization, in an archaeological layer dated to 4,500 years before the present.
All the symbolic forms and colours of this flag have their special meanings. Jain "technical terms" are from Sanskrit and are widespread and extremely numerous. So numerous that outsiders trying to acquire an understanding of this religion will be faced by what looks like a solid wall of special terms and will then discover that every explanation or translation of one term involves many more such terms that need to be looked up - and so on almost ad infinitum. It can be a chastening experience.
Elements of the Jain flag are the
five colours represent the Panch-Parmeshthi ,
the five major ideal categories which are: Some additional elements are
- white stands for arihant (souls that have
reached a state of detachment towards wordly things)
- red stands for Siddha (liberated
souls)
- orange stands for Acharya (leader of the
Jains)
- green stands for Upadhyay (teachers and
interpreters of the Jain scriptures)
- dark blue stands for Sadhu ( nuns and monks)
- the swastika stands for the four states of
existence in life
- the three dots stand for the "Three Jewels" of the
Jains: Samyak Darshan; right faith, Samyak Gyan,
right knowledge, and Samyak Charitra, right
conduct
Left: A shikara (turret) of the Jain temple Dharma
Vihara, Ranakpur, Rajasthan, India. The temple was built was
built 560 years before the present. . Below: A more general view of the same temple showing its
many shikaras.
Jain sculpture representing the five traditional elements
(fire, water, heaven or ether, earth, and air).
In the Indragiri hills, at
Sravanabelgola, Karnataka state in southern India (160 km
West of Bangalore) is the largest of the many Jain granite
giants, most representing
Gommateshwara (Bahubal), a Jain
saint and son of the the first Tirthankara of the current
half-cycle, Rishabha.This statue was carved out of one block
of granite a little more than 1,000 years before the present
on orders of a ruler of the Dravidian Western Ganga dynasty
which lasted from 1,650 to 1,000 before the present. The
statue is 17 m high and may well be the tallest monolithic
scupture in the world. Such giant statues show the size that
humans are believed to have had during ancient times in Jain
legend. They are characteristic of Jain temples in southern
India but are unknown in the north. The nakedness of the saint
indicates his indifference to worldly possessions.
Every 12 years (the last time in
2006 CE), large numbers of worshippers congregate at the
statue for the Mahamastakabhisheka, a spectacular
ceremony during which the worshippers cover the statue with
milk, curds, ghee, saffron, and offer gifts in the form of
gold coins.
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