(3000–2000 B.C.E.) Because the first two sites found, Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, both situated on the Indus River in what is now Pakistan, the civilization is known as Mohenjo-Daro-Harappa.
Other sites along the Indus, as well as a network of
settlements reaching east to the upper Ganges valley, south through the present
state of Gujarat and into modern Maharashtra, and along the coast of modern
Pakistan, have been discovered.
The most concentrated concentration of these communities has
been discovered along the banks of the Ghaggar River, a tiny seasonal
watercourse that passes across Rajasthan.
Some historians believe it is the ancient Saraswati River's
bed.
The evidence suggests that the sites farther south evolved
later, but remained important after the cities of the Indus River Valley,
notably Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, had faded into obscurity.
The discovery of these sites in the early twentieth century
triggered important historical revisions, since it had previously been widely
accepted that the Aryans were India's first sophisticated society.
The most notable aspect of these towns is their
uniformity—their main city plans were essentially same from place to place
(though scale varied), the bricks used in all of them were the same size, and
there was a standardized system of weights and measures.
Each city also featured a massive central granary, which
housed the grain required to feed such a large population.
Such seeming homogeneity across such great distances points
to a powerful and centralized authority, which some experts suggest was
religious in character.
A sophisticated sanitation system was another distinguishing
aspect of all the cities.
All of the dwellings had water channels, and an intricate
network of drains and sewers flowed throughout the city, even in the lowest
areas where the houses were the tiniest and the residents were supposedly the
poorest.
The archaeologists have named the "Great Bath" a
large tank made of brick and covered with pitch at Mohenjo-Daro.
Why was cleanliness and bathing so important to the people
who created these cities? According to some academics, this was due to a
religious concern for ceremonial purity rather than cleanliness.
Many of the artifacts from these cities have been remarkably
well preserved, and they provide us with a fairly complete picture of their
material culture, including what they ate (wheat and barley were the primary
food grains), what they wore (cotton), which animals they had domesticated
(cattle, fowl, goats, sheep, pigs, donkeys, and dogs), and everyday implements.
More than 2,000 miniature seals were discovered during
archeological investigations, which are thought to have acted as emblems for
merchant families.
Many of the seals have text on them that has never been
decoded, as well as realistic drawings of animals and people.
Three of the seals have a horned figure seated on the ground
with his upper legs extended and his heels touching.
The image on these seals has been mentioned by some viewers
as evidence that the Indus Valley civilization is the ultimate source for the
deity Shiva, who does not appear in the Vedas, the earliest Hindu religious
books, but subsequently becomes one of the principal Hindu deities.
Similarly, the discovery of a number of sculptures of women
with greatly exaggerated feminine characteristics—breasts, buttocks, and
genitalia—has led some to speculate that this society was the foundation of the
later Hindu religion of the Mother Goddess.
One of the most contentious issues surrounding the Indus
Valley civilization is who lived there and if their descendants still reside in
India.
A period of interaction between the residents of these towns
and a pastoral group of foreigners known as the Aryans is described in the
widely accepted idea among Western researchers.
Sanskrit, the Aryan language, has structural similarities
with classical European languages and much more so with the Avesta, ancient
Iranian holy scriptures.
Scholars have inferred that all of these languages came from
a common mother language, and that people speaking this parent language originated
in central Asia, somewhere near the Caspian Sea, based on an analysis of the
relationships between these languages and the rate at which these languages
have changed.
From there, some traveled west to Europe, some southwest to
Turkey, and yet others south to Iran and then India.
This hypothesis is therefore almost entirely predicated on
observable linguistic similarities and assumptions about the pace of language
development, some of which are unavoidably arbitrary.
The skeletons of horses discovered at Indus Valley sites
provide the only piece of tangible support for this idea.
According to references based on Aryan religious texts, the
Vedas, the horse was an established part of Aryan life, whereas it appears to
have been absent from the Indus Valley cities—it is not depicted on any of the
carved seals, which show many other animals, and the only bones recovered from
the Indus Valley cities are found in the most recent archeological strata.
This idea portrays a time of contact and maybe war between
the Aryans and the peoples of the Indus Valley, following which Aryan culture
and religion became the dominating force in Indian society.
Until they were excavated in the early twentieth century,
the Indus Valley towns were completely forgotten.
Although the Aryan migration idea explains the spread of
numerous languages, it is not widely accepted.
Many contemporary Indians believe in the Indigenous Aryan
(IA) idea, which claims that the Aryans were India's first occupants and cites
relics from the Indus Valley civilization as evidence.
Some followers of the IA are responding to what they see to
be a colonialist bias in the Aryan migration theory, which was devised by
Europeans and implies that the dominant populations in contemporary India must
have arrived from outside.
Hindutva supporters, who associate being Hindu with being
Indian, are also supporters.
The IA thesis enables Hindutva supporters to assert that all
Indians, regardless of their religious views, are "really" Hindus and
hence form one social group.
In contemporary India, where Christians and Muslims are not
simply religious groups, but also social and political ones, this argument has
significant political ramifications.
Hindutva supporters marginalize Christians and Muslims as outsiders
by connecting Hindu identity with good Indian citizenship.
Although such assertions are fascinating, there is little
evidence to support them.
The fact is that researchers have retrieved a large number
of tangible items, but it is unclear what these objects imply.
We know, at the very least, that this society thrived for
over a thousand years.
Its ultimate collapse occurred approximately 2000 B.C.E.,
according to one idea, due to a severe drought.
Walter Ashlin Fairservis, The Roots of Ancient India, 1975,
is a good source of knowledge.
You may also want to read more about Hinduism here.
Be sure to check out my writings on religion here.
