The extent of Indus Valley Civilization.
The
Indus Valley Civilization (IVC)
was a Bronze Age civilization (mature period 2600–1900 BCE)
which centred mostly in the western part of the Indian Subcontinent or South Asia and flourished around the Indus river
basin.Primarily centered along the Indus and the
Punjab region, the civilization
extended into the Ghaggar-Hakra
River valley and the Ganges-Yamuna Doab,
encompassing most of what is now Pakistan
, as well as
extending into the westernmost states of India
,
southeastern Afghanistan
and the easternmost part of Balochistan
, Iran
.
The mature
phase of this civilization is known as the Harappan
Civilization as the first of its cities to be unearthed
was the one at Harappa
, excavated
in the 1920s in what was at the time the Punjab province of British India (now in Pakistan
).
Excavation of IVC sites have been ongoing since 1920, with
important breakthroughs occurring as recently as 1999.
The
civilization is sometimes referred to as the Indus
Ghaggar-Hakra civilization or the Indus
-Sarasvati civilization. The
appellation
Indus-Sarasvati is based on the possible
identification of the Ghaggar-Hakra River with the
Sarasvati River of the
Nadistuti sukta in the
Rig Veda, but this usage is disputed on linguistic
and geographical grounds.The
Harappan
language is not directly attested and its affiliation is
unknown, a plausible relation would be to
Proto-Dravidian or
Elamo-Dravidian.
Discovery and excavation
The ruins
of Harrappa
were first
described in 1842 by Charles Masson
in his Narrative of Various Journeys in Balochistan,
Afghanistan and the Punjab, where locals talked of an ancient
city extending "thirteen cosses"
(about 25 miles), but no archaeological interest would attach to
this for nearly a century.
In 1856,
British engineers John and William Brunton were laying the East Indian Railway
Company line connecting the cities of Karachi
and Lahore
. John
wrote: "I was much exercised in my mind how we were to get ballast
for the line of the railway." They were told of an ancient ruined
city near the lines, called Brahminabad. Visiting the city, he
found it full of hard well-burnt bricks, and "convinced that there
was a grand quarry for the ballast I wanted," the city of
Brahminabad was reduced to ballast. A few months later, further
north, John's brother William Brunton's "section of the line ran
near another ruined city, bricks from which had already been used
by villagers in the nearby village of Harappa at the same site.
These bricks now provided ballast along of the railroad track
running from Karachi to Lahore."
In 1872–75 Alexander Cunningham published the first Harappan seal
(with an erroneous identification as Brahmi letters). It was half a
century later, in 1912, that more Harappan seals were discovered by
J.
Fleet,
prompting an excavation campaign under Sir John Hubert Marshall in
1921–22 and resulting in the discovery of the hitherto unknown
civilization at Harappa by Sir John Marshall, Rai Bahadur Daya Ram
Sahni and Madho Sarup Vats, and at Mohenjo-daro
by Rakhal Das
Banerjee, E. J. H. MacKay, and Sir John Marshall. By
1931, much of Mohenjo-Daro had been excavated, but excavations
continued, such as that led by
Sir
Mortimer Wheeler, director of the
Archaeological Survey of
India in 1944. Among other archaeologists who worked on IVC
sites before the partition of the subcontinent in 1947 were
Ahmad Hasan Dani,
Brij Basi Lal, Nani Gopal Majumdar, and Sir Marc
Aurel Stein.
Following
the Partition of India, the bulk
of the archaeological finds were inherited by Pakistan
where most
of the IVC was based, and excavations from this time include those
led by Sir Mortimer Wheeler in 1949, archaeological adviser to the
Government of Pakistan. Outposts of the Indus Valley civilization
were excavated as far west as Sutkagan
Dor in Baluchistan
, as far north as at Shortugai on the Amudarya or
Oxus
River
in current Afghanistan
.
Periodisation
The mature phase of the Harappan civilization lasted from c. 2600
to 1900 BCE. With the inclusion of the predecessor and successor
cultures—Early Harappan and Late Harappan, respectively—the entire
Indus Valley Civilization may be taken to have lasted from the 33rd
to the 14th centuries BCE. Two terms are employed for the
periodization of the IVC:
Phases and
Eras.
The Early
Harappan, Mature Harappan, and Late Harappan phases are also called
the Regionalisation, Integration, and Localisation eras,
respectively, with the Regionalization era reaching back to the
Neolithic Mehrgarh
II period. "Discoveries at Mehrgarh changed the
entire concept of the Indus civilization," according to Ahmad Hasan Dani, professor emeritus at
Quaid-e-Azam University,
Islamabad
. "There we have the whole sequence, right
from the beginning of settled village life."
Date range (BCE) |
Phase |
Era |
5500-3300 |
Mehrgarh II-VI (Pottery
Neolithic) |
Regionalisation Era |
3300-2600 |
Early Harappan (Early Bronze
Age) |
3300-2800 |
Harappan 1 (Ravi Phase) |
2800-2600 |
Harappan 2 (Kot Diji Phase, Nausharo I, Mehrgarh VII) |
2600-1900 |
Mature Harappan (Middle Bronze
Age) |
Integration Era |
2600-2450 |
Harappan 3A (Nausharo II) |
2450-2200 |
Harappan 3B |
2200-1900 |
Harappan 3C |
1900-1300 |
Late Harappan (Cemetery H, Late Bronze Age) |
Localisation Era |
1900-1700 |
Harappan 4 |
1700-1300 |
Harappan 5 |
|
Geography
The Indus
Valley Civilization encompassed most of Pakistan
, extending from Balochistan to Sindh
, and
extending into modern day Indian states of Gujarat
, Rajasthan
, Haryana
and Punjab
, with an
upward reach to Rupar
on the upper
Sutlej
.
The
geography if the Indus Valley put the civilizations that arose
there in a highly similar situation to those in Egypt
and Peru
, with rich
agricultural lands being surrounded by highlands, desert, and
ocean. Recently, Indus sites have been discovered in
Pakistan's northwestern Frontier Province as well.
Other IVC colonies
can be found in Afghanistan
while smaller isolated colonies can be found as far
away as Turkmenistan
and in Gujarat
. Coastal settlements extended from Sutkagan Dor in Western Baluchistan to Lothal
in Gujarat
. An Indus Valley site has been found on the
Oxus
River at Shortughai in northern Afghanistan, in the
Gomal River valley in northwestern
Pakistan, at Manda on the Beas River near
Jammu, India, and at Alamgirpur on the Hindon
River, only 28 km from Delhi
.
Indus
Valley sites have been found most often on rivers, but also on the
ancient seacoast, for example, Balakot, and on islands, for
example, Dholavira
.
There is
evidence of dry river beds overlapping with the Hakra channel in Pakistan
and the seasonal Ghaggar
River in India
. Many
Indus Valley (or
Harappan) sites have been discovered
along the Ghaggar-Hakra beds.
Among them are: Rupar
, Rakhigarhi, Sothi, Kalibangan
, and Ganwariwala. According to J. G. Shaffer
and D. A. Lichtenstein, the Harappan Civilization "is a fusion of
the Bagor, Hakra, and Koti Dij traditions or 'ethnic groups' in the
Ghaggar-Hakra valley on the borders of India and Pakistan."
According
to some archaeologists, over 500 Harappan sites have been
discovered along the dried up river beds of the Ghaggar-Hakra River
and its tributaries, in contrast to only about 100 along the
Indus
and its
tributaries; consequently, in their opinion, the appellation
Indus Ghaggar-Hakra civilisation or Indus-Saraswati
civilisation is justified. However, these politically
inspired arguments are disputed by other archaeologists who state
that the Ghaggar-Hakra desert area has been left untouched by
settlements and agriculture since the end of the Indus period and
hence shows more sites than found in the alluvium of the Indus
valley; second, that the number of Harappan sites along the
Ghaggar-Hakra river beds have been exaggerated and that the
Ghaggar-Hakra, when it existed, was a tributary of the Indus, so
the new nomenclature is redundant. "Harappan Civilization" remains
the correct one, according to the common archaeological usage of
naming a civilization after its first findspot.
Early Harappan
The Early
Harappan Ravi Phase, named after the nearby Ravi River
, lasted from circa 3300 BCE until 2800 BCE.
It is
related to the Hakra Phase, identified in the Ghaggar-Hakra River
Valley to the west, and predates the Kot Diji
Phase (2800-2600 BCE, Harappan 2), named after a
site in northern Sindh
, Pakistan
, near Mohenjo Daro
. The earliest examples of the
Indus script date from around 3000 BCE.
The mature phase of earlier village cultures is represented by
Rehman Dheri and
Amri in Pakistan.
Kot Diji
(Harappan 2) represents the phase leading up to
Mature Harappan, with the citadel representing centralised
authority and an increasingly urban quality of life.
Another
town of this stage was found at Kalibangan
in India on the Hakra River.
Trade networks linked this culture with related regional cultures
and distant sources of raw materials, including
lapis lazuli and other materials for
bead-making. Villagers had, by this time, domesticated numerous
crops, including
peas,
sesame seeds,
dates
and
cotton, as well as various animals,
including the
water buffalo. Early
Harappan communities turned to large urban centres by 2600 BCE,
from where the mature Harappan phase started.
Mature Harappan
By 2600 BCE, the Early Harappan communities had been turned into
large urban centers.
Such urban centers include Harappa
, Ganeriwala, Mohenjo-daro
in modern day Pakistan
and Dholavira
, Kalibangan
, Rakhigarhi, Rupar
, Lothal
in modern
day India
. In
total, over 1,052 cities and settlements have been found, mainly in
the general region of the Indus Rivers and their tributaries.
Cities
A sophisticated and technologically advanced urban culture is
evident in the Indus Valley Civilization making them the first
urban centers in the region. The quality of
municipal town planning suggests the knowledge of
urban planning and efficient
municipal governments which placed a
high priority on
hygiene, or, alternately,
accessibility to the means of religious ritual.
As seen in Harappa, Mohenjo-daro and the recently partially
excavated
Rakhigarhi, this urban plan
included the world's first known urban
sanitation systems. Within the city, individual
homes or groups of homes obtained water from
well. From a room that appears to have been set
aside for bathing,
waste water was
directed to covered drains, which lined the major streets. Houses
opened only to inner
courtyards and
smaller lanes. The house-building in some villages in the region
still resembles in some respects the house-building of the
Harappans.
The ancient Indus systems of sewerage and drainage that were
developed and used in cities throughout the Indus region were far
more advanced than any found in contemporary urban sites in the
Middle East and even more efficient than
those in many areas of Pakistan and India today. The advanced
architecture of the Harappans is shown by their impressive
dockyards,
granaries, warehouses, brick
platforms and protective walls. The massive walls of Indus cities
most likely protected the Harappans from floods and may have
dissuaded military conflicts.
The purpose of the citadel remains debated. In sharp contrast to
this civilization's contemporaries,
Mesopotamia and
Ancient
Egypt, no large monumental structures were built. There is no
conclusive evidence of palaces or temples—or of kings, armies, or
priests. Some structures are thought to have been granaries. Found
at one city is an enormous well-built bath, which may have been a
public bath. Although the citadels were walled, it is far from
clear that these structures were defensive. They may have been
built to divert flood waters.
Most city dwellers appear to have been traders or artisans, who
lived with others pursuing the same occupation in well-defined
neighborhoods. Materials from distant regions were used in the
cities for constructing seals, beads and other objects. Among the
artifact discovered were
beautiful glazed
faïence beads.
Steatite seals have images of animals,
people (perhaps gods) and other types of inscriptions, including
the yet un-deciphered writing system of the Indus Valley
Civilization. Some of the seals were used to stamp clay on trade
goods and most probably had other uses as well.
Although some houses were larger than others, Indus Civilization
cities were remarkable for their apparent, if relative,
egalitarianism. All the houses had access to
water and drainage facilities. This gives the impression of a
society with relatively low wealth concentration, though clear
social leveling is seen in personal adornments.
Science
The people of the Indus Civilization achieved great accuracy in
measuring length, mass, and time. They were among the first to
develop a system of uniform weights and measures. Their
measurements are said to be extremely precise; however, a
comparison of available objects indicates large scale variation
across the Indus territories.
Their smallest division, which is marked on
an ivory scale found in Lothal
, was
approximately 1.704 mm, the smallest division ever recorded on
a scale of the Bronze Age.
Harappan engineers followed the decimal division of measurement for
all practical purposes, including the measurement of mass as
revealed by their
hexahedron
weights.
These
chert weights were in a perfect ratio of
4:2:1 with weights of 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50,
100, 200, and 500 units, with each unit weighing approximately 28
grams, similar to the English
Imperial ounce or
Greek uncia, and smaller objects were weighed in similar ratios
with the units of 0.871. However, as in other cultures, actual
weights were not uniform throughout the area.
The weights and
measures later used in Kautilya's
Arthashastra (4th century BCE)
are the same as those used in Lothal
.
Unique Harappan inventions include an instrument which was used to
measure whole sections of the horizon and the tidal
lock. In addition, Harappans evolved
some new techniques in
metallurgy and
produced
copper,
bronze,
lead and
tin. The engineering skill of the Harappans was
remarkable, especially in building docks after a careful study of
tides, waves and currents. The function of the so-called "dock" at
Lothal, however, is disputed.
In 2001,
archaeologists studying the remains of two men from Mehrgarh
, Pakistan
, made the discovery that the people of the Indus
Valley Civilisation, from the early Harappan periods, had knowledge
of proto-dentistry. Later, in April
2006, it was announced in the scientific journal
Nature that the oldest (and first
early Neolithic) evidence for the drilling of human teeth
in
vivo (i.e., in a living person) was found in Mehrgarh. Eleven
drilled molar crowns from nine adults were discovered in a
Neolithic graveyard in Mehrgarh that dates, from 7,500-9,000 years
ago. According to the authors, their discoveries point to a
tradition of proto-dentistry in the early farming cultures of that
region.
A
touchstone bearing gold streaks was
found in
Banawali, which was probably used
for testing the purity of gold (such a technique is still used in
some parts of India).
Arts and culture

The "dancing girl of Mohenjo
Daro."
Various sculptures, seals,
pottery,
gold jewelry and anatomically detailed figurines in
terracotta, bronze and steatite have been found
at the excavation sites.
A number of gold, terra-cotta and stone figurines of girls in
dancing poses reveal the presence of some
dance form. Also, these terra-cotta figurines included
cows, bears, monkeys, and dogs.
Sir John Marshall is known to
have reacted with surprise when he saw the famous Indus bronze
statuette of a slender-limbed dancing girl in Mohenjo-daro:
Many crafts "such as shell working, ceramics, and agate and glazed
steatite bead making" were used in the making of necklaces,
bangles, and other ornaments from all phases of Harappan sites and
some of these crafts are still practiced in the subcontinent today.
Some make-up and toiletry items (a special kind of combs (kakai),
the use of
collyrium and a special
three-in-one toiletry gadget) that were found in Harappan contexts
still have similar counterparts in modern India. Terracotta female
figurines were found (ca. 2800-2600 BCE) which had red color
applied to the "manga" (line of partition of the hair).
Seals
have been found at Mohenjo-daro
depicting a figure standing on its head, and
another sitting cross-legged in what some call a yoga-like pose (see image, the so-called
Pashupati, below).
A harp-like instrument depicted on an Indus seal and two shell
objects found at Lothal indicate the use of stringed musical
instruments. The Harappans also made various toys and games, among
them cubical
dice (with one to six holes on the
faces), which were found in sites like Mohenjo-Daro.
Trade and transportation
The Indus civilization's economy appears to have depended
significantly on
trade, which was facilitated
by major advances in transport technology. These advances included
bullock carts that are identical to
those seen throughout South Asia today, as well as boats. Most of
these boats were probably small, flat-bottomed craft, perhaps
driven by sail, similar to those one can see on the Indus River
today; however, there is secondary evidence of sea-going craft.
Archaeologists have discovered a massive,
dredged canal and what they regard as a docking facility at the
coastal city of Lothal
in western
India (Gujarat state). An extensive canal network, used for
irrigation, has however also been discovered by H.-P.
Francfort.
During
4300–3200 BCE of the chalcolithic
period (copper age), the Indus Valley Civilization area shows
ceramic similarities with southern Turkmenistan
and northern Iran
which
suggest considerable mobility and trade. During the Early
Harappan period (about 3200–2600 BCE), similarities in pottery,
seals, figurines, ornaments, etc., document intensive caravan trade
with
Central Asia and the Iranian
plateau.
Judging
from the dispersal of Indus civilisation artifacts, the trade
networks, economically, integrated a huge area, including portions
of Afghanistan
, the coastal regions of Persia
, northern
and western India, and Mesopotamia.
There was
an extensive maritime trade network operating between the Harappan
and Mesopotamian civilizations as early as the middle Harappan
Phase, with much commerce being handled by "middlemen merchants
from Dilmun" (modern Bahrain
and Failaka
located in the Persian Gulf
). Such long-distance sea trade became
feasible with the innovative development of plank-built watercraft,
equipped with a single central mast supporting a sail of woven
rushes or cloth.
Several
coastal settlements like Sotkagen-dor (astride Dasht River, north
of Jiwani), Sokhta Koh (astride Shadi
River, north of Pasni
) and
Balakot (near Sonmiani) in Pakistan along with Lothal in India
testify to their role as Harappan trading outposts. Shallow
harbors located at the estuary of rivers opening into the sea
allowed brisk maritime trade with Mesopotamian cities.
Agriculture
Some post-1980 studies indicate that food production was largely
indigenous to the Indus Valley.
It is known that the people of Mehrgarh
used domesticated wheats and
barley, and the major cultivated cereal crop
was naked six-row barley, a crop derived from two-row barley (see
Shaffer and Liechtenstein 1995, 1999). Archaeologist
Jim G. Shaffer (1999: 245) writes that the Mehrgarh
site "demonstrates that food production was an indigenous South
Asian phenomenon" and that the data support interpretation of "the
prehistoric urbanization and complex social organization in South
Asia as based on indigenous, but not isolated, cultural
developments." Others, such as Dorian Fuller, however, indicate
that it took some 2000 years before Middle Eastern wheat was
acclimatised to South Asian conditions.
Writing or symbol system
Well over 400 distinct Indus symbols (some say 600) have been found
on
seals, small tablets, or ceramic
pots and over a dozen other materials, including a "signboard" that
apparently once hung over the gate of the inner citadel of the
Indus city of Dholavira. Typical
Indus inscriptions are no more than four
or five characters in length, most of which (aside from the
Dholavira "signboard") are exquisitely tiny; the longest on a
single surface, which is less than 1 inch (2.54 cm)
square, is 17 signs long; the longest on any object (found on three
different faces of a mass-produced object) has a length of 26
symbols.
While the Indus Valley Civilization is often characterized as a
literate society on the evidence of these inscriptions, this
description has been challenged on linguistic and archaeological
grounds: it has been pointed out that the brevity of the
inscriptions is unparalleled in any known premodern literate
society. Based partly on this evidence, a controversial paper by
Farmer, Sproat, and Witzel (2004) argues that the Indus system did
not encode language, but was instead similar to a variety of
non-linguistic sign systems used extensively in the Near East and
other societies. Others have claimed on occasion that the symbols
were exclusively used for economic transactions, but this claim
leaves unexplained the appearance of Indus symbols on many ritual
objects, many of which were mass-produced in
molds. No parallels to these mass-produced
inscriptions are known in any other early ancient
civilizations.
In a 2009 study by P. N. Rao et al. published in
Science, computer scientists, comparing
the pattern of symbols to various linguistic scripts and
nonlinguistic systems, including DNA and a computer programming
language, found that the Indus script's pattern is closer to that
of spoken words, supporting the hypothesis that it codes for an
as-yet-unknown language. Farmer, Sproat, and Witzel have disputed
this finding, pointing out that Rao et al. did not actually compare
the Indus signs with "real-world nonlinguistic systems" but rather
with "two wholly artificial systems invented by the authors, one
consisting of 200,000 randomly ordered signs and another of 200,000
fully ordered signs, that they spuriously claim represent the
structures of all real-world nonlinguistic sign systems". Farmer et
al. have also demonstrated that a comparison of a nonlinguistic
system like
medieval heraldic signs with
natural languages yields results similar to
those that Rao et al. obtained with Indus signs. They conclude that
the method used by Rao et al. cannot distinguish linguistic systems
from nonlinguistic ones.
Photos of many of the thousands of extant inscriptions are
published in the
Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions
(1987, 1991), edited by A. Parpola and his colleagues. Publication
of a final third volume, which will reportedly republish photos
taken in the 1920s and 1930s of hundreds of lost or stolen
inscriptions, along with many discovered in the last few decades,
has been announced for several years, but has not yet found its way
into print. For now, researchers must supplement the materials in
the
Corpus by study of the tiny photos in the excavation
reports of Marshall (1931), Mackay (1938, 1943), Wheeler (1947), or
reproductions in more recent scattered sources.
Religion
In view of the large number of figurines found in the Indus valley,
it has been widely suggested that the Harappan people worshipped a
Mother goddess symbolizing fertility.
However, this view has been disputed by S. Clark.Some Indus valley
seals show
swastikas which are found in
later religions and mythologies, especially in
Indian religions such as
Hinduism,
Buddhism and
Jainism. The earliest evidence for elements
of
Hinduism are present before and during
the
early Harappan
periodname=History> The BBC names a bath and phallic symbols of
the
Harappan civilization as
features of the "Prehistoric religion
(3000-1000
BCE)".. Phallic symbols resembling the
Hindu
Siva lingam have been found in the
Harappan remains.
Many Indus valley seals show animals. One famous seal shows a
figure seated in a posture reminiscent of the
Lotus position and surrounded by animals was
named after
Pashupati (lord of cattle), an
epithet of
Shiva and
Rudra..
In the earlier phases of their culture, the Harappans buried their
dead; however, later, especially in the
Cemetery H culture of the late Harrapan
period, they also
cremated their dead and
buried the ashes in burial urns, a transition notably also alluded
to in the
Rigveda, where the forefathers
"both cremated (
agnidagdhá-) and uncremated
(
ánagnidagdha-)" are invoked (
RV
10.15.14).
Late Harappan
Around 1800 BCE, signs of a gradual decline began to emerge, and by
around 1700 BCE, most of the cities were abandoned. However, the
Indus Valley Civilization did not disappear suddenly, and many
elements of the Indus Civilization can be found in later cultures.
Current archaeological data suggests that material culture
classified as Late Harappan may have persisted until at least c.
1000-900 BCE and was partially contemporaneous with the
Painted Grey Ware culture. Archaeologists
have emphasised that, just as in most areas of the world, there was
a continuous series of cultural developments. These link "the
so-called two major phases of urbanisation in South Asia".
A possible natural reason for the IVC's decline is connected with
climate change that is also signaled
for the neighboring areas of the Middle East: The Indus valley
climate grew significantly cooler and drier from about 1800 BCE,
linked to a general weakening of the
monsoon
at that time. Alternatively, a crucial factor may have been the
disappearance of substantial portions of the
Ghaggar Hakra river system. A
tectonic event may have diverted the system's
sources toward the
Ganges Plain, though
there is complete uncertainty about the date of this event as most
settlements inside Ghaggar-Hakra river beds have not yet been
dated. Although this particular factor is speculative, and not
generally accepted, the decline of the IVC, as with any other
civilization, will have been due to a combination of various
reasons. New geological research is now being conducted by a group
led by
Peter Clift, from the
University of Aberdeen, to
investigate how the courses of rivers have changed in this region
since 8000 years ago in order to test whether climate or river
reorganizations are responsible for the decline of the Harappan. A
2004 paper indicated that the isotopes of the Ghaggar-Hakra system
do not come from the Himalayan glaciers, and were rain-fed instead,
contradicting a Harappan time mighty "Sarasvati' river.
Legacy
In the aftermath of the Indus Civilization's collapse, regional
cultures emerged, to varying degrees showing the influence of the
Indus Civilization. In the formerly great city of Harappa, burials
have been found that correspond to a regional culture called the
Cemetery H culture.
At the same time, the
Ochre Coloured Pottery
culture expanded from Rajasthan
into the Gangetic
Plain. The Cemetery H culture has the earliest evidence
for
cremation, a practice dominant in
Hinduism until today.
Historical context and linguistic affiliation
The IVC has been tentatively identified with the toponym
Meluhha known from Sumerian records.
It has been compared
in particular with the civilizations of Elam
(also in
the context of the Elamo-Dravidian
hypothesis) and with Minoan Crete
(because of isolated cultural parallels such as the ubiquitous
goddess worship and depictions of
bull-leaping). The mature
(Harappan) phase of the IVC is contemporary to the
Early to
Middle Bronze Age in the
Ancient Near East, in particular the
Old Elamite period,
Early Dynastic to
Ur III Mesopotamia, Prepalatial
Minoan Crete and
Old
Kingdom to
First
Intermediate Period Egypt.
After the discovery of the IVC in the 1920s, it was immediately
associated with the indigenous
Dasyu inimical
to the
Rigvedic tribes in numerous
hymns of the
Rigveda.
Mortimer Wheeler interpreted the presence
of many unburied corpses found in the top levels of Mohenjo-daro as
the victims of a warlike conquest, and famously stated that
"
Indra stands accused" of the descruction of
the IVC. The association of the IVC witht he city-dwelling Dasyus
remains alluring because the assumed timeframe of the first
Indo-Aryan migration into India
corresponds neatly with the period of decline of the IVC seen in
the archaeological record. The discovery of the advanced, urban IVC
however changed the 19th century view of early Indo-Aryan migration
as an "invasion" of an advanced culture at the expense of a
"primitive" aboriginal population to a gradual
acculturation of nomadic "barbarians" on an
advanced urban civilization, comparable to the Germanic migrations
after the
Fall of Rome, or the
Kassite invasion of
Babylonia. This move away from simplistic
"invasionist" scenarios parallels similar developments in thinking
about
language transfer and
population movement in general, such as in the case of the
migration of the
Greeks into Greece (between
2100 and 1600 BC), or the Indo-Europeanization of Western Europe
(between 2200 and 1300 BC).
It was often suggested that the bearers of the IVC corresponded to
proto-Dravidians linguistically, the
breakup of proto-Dravidian corresponding to the breakup of the
Late Harappan culture.
Today, the Dravidian language family is concentrated
mostly in southern India and northern
Sri
Lanka
, but pockets of it still remain throughout the rest
of India and Pakistan (the Brahui
language), which lends credence to the theory. Finnish
Indologist
Asko Parpola concludes that
the uniformity of the Indus inscriptions precludes any possibility
of widely different languages being used, and that an early form of
Dravidian language must have been the language of the Indus people.
However, the proto-Dravidian origin theory is far from established,
and the
Harappan language remains
an unknown quantity, and there are a number of hypotheses:
Proto-Dravidian,
Proto-Munda (or
Para-Munda) and a "lost phylum" (perhaps
related or ancestral to the
Nihali
language) have been proposed as candidates.
Latest Archaeological Findings
In September 2009, a rock engraving indicating clear remnants of
Harappan culture, has been found in the Edakkal caves in
neighboring Wayanad
district of Kerala
, south
India. The symbols akin to Indus valley culture links the
Indus Valley civilization with South India.
See also
Notes
Bibliography
- (50th
ICES Tokyo Session)
External links