In the Rigveda, the ancient Indian Vedic Sanskrit canonical sacred texts, a hymn is dedicated to each deity and the goddess Saraswathi is revered as a female deity with healing and the purifying powers of abundant, flowing waters. Saraswathi is therefore also reference to a river and she embodies wisdom, music, language and purification of self. The Ghaggar-Hakra river is a monsoon fed perennial river in India and Pakistan, believed to be the mythological Sarasvati river, which formed a confluence with the Ganges and Yamuna, both considered sacred rivers. The Indus Valley Civilization is thus also referred to as the Sarasvati Civilization, in honor of the ‘river goddess’ Saraswathi.
Indus Valley Civilization major sites. (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Nestled between the Arabian Sea, mountain ranges and a desert in north-western South Asia, the Indus valley extends from what today is north-east Afghanistan to Pakistan and north-west India. The Indus Valley Civilization was contemporary to the Ancient Egyptian, Minoan (Crete) and Mesopotamian Bronze Age, particularly the Elamite, civilizations. In Sumerian texts, the Indus valley people are referred to as ‘Meluhhaites’ and the Indus valley is called ‘Meluhha’.
For an ancient civilization to be classified as Bronze Age (circa 3300 - 1200 BC) it either had to be smelting its own copper and alloying with tin or other metals to produce bronze, or it was involved in trading for or with bronze. Bronze Age civilizations had a technological advantage, since bronze is a hard metal. Besides metallurgical advancement, Bronze Age civilizations are also identified by the emergence of proto-writing or writing. In an Ancient-Origins article Natalia Klimczak discusses the finding that the Indus Valley Civilization is at least 8,000 years old, not 5,500 as previously believed, due to dating of the oldest pottery discovered.
Major Indus Valley Civilization Centers
Five million people lived, worked and prospered peacefully in the Indus valley, where Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro (in modern Pakistan) and Rakhigarhi in India, have been identified as major centers of sophisticated Bronze Age civilization. Whether they were independent city-states or part of a larger kingdom is not entirely clear. Archaeological excavations, initiated in 1861 and continuing since the 1920’s, indicate these cities had extensive sewerage and water supply systems, as well as town planning for the mud brick residential and large administrative buildings, smelting furnaces, granaries and dockyards. The world’s first hydraulic engineering originated from the Indus Valley Civilization. Hygiene was highly valued and although households collected water from wells, they had a bathroom, with a flushing toilet, where waste water was drained through a sewerage system to the streets.
In total more than 1,000 Indus valley settlements have been identified of which little more than half are situated in India and the rest in Pakistan. The Indus Valley Civilization stretched to north-eastern Afghanistan, with outposts on the Iranian border and even as far as Turkmenistan.
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Harappa
Harappa, situated on the banks of the Ravi river, was a fortified city, about 1502 hectares (1.52 kilometers) in size. It was already a flourishing city by 2600 BC. Unfortunately, the archaeological site was ransacked under British rule in 1857, when the engineers John and William Brunton used bricks from the ruins as track ballast in the construction of the Lahore–Multan Railway, despite British archaeologists conducting preliminary excavations there since 1826. In 1921 a formal archaeological excavation was underway, conducted by Sir John Hubert Marshal, Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni and Madho Sarup Vats and a recent effort from the Pakistani archaeologist Ahmad Hasan Dani resulted in further restoration of the site.
Archaeological Site of Harappa (CC BY-SA 3.0)
A window into the daily living of the inhabitants of the Indus valley reveal that they were farmers cultivating wheat, vegetables and fruit. Flood-supported farming led to large agricultural surpluses. They were also traders, metallurgists (copper, bronze, lead, and tin) and of course artists too, as is evident in the exquisite pottery and carnelian objects, as well as fine seal carving. Liz Leafloor in an Ancient-Origins article discusses the wealth of beautiful, intricate, and elaborate ornaments, jewelry and artifacts, on exhibit at India’s Jewellery Gallery of the National Museum in Delhi. From the trade seals depicting animals and mythical beings, it can be deduced that the Indus valley inhabitants traded with Sumer in Mesopotamia, along the Persian Gulf, Minoan Crete and Egypt. Their weights and measures were standardized in Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. They wove cloth of cotton and carved children’s toys. Truly examples of a great civilization at peace with its neighbors.
The inhabitants of Harappa were not without ailments. Citizens had access to ‘dentists’ who drilled into their teeth. Paleopathological analysis found that leprosy and tuberculosis were present at Harappa and some skeletons were found with severe head injuries. Bioarchaeologists examining human remains found that some people were denied basic resources like health and safety, indicating class hierarchy.
Mohenjo-Daro
Mohenjo-Daro means ‘Mound of the Dead Men’ in Sindhi, and this site has been declared a UNESCO world heritage site. Iravatham Mahadevan, an Indian epigraphist, proposed that the city’s original name was Kukkutarma -the city of the cockerel. Evidence of cock-fighting and the domestication of chickens support this hypothesis. Mohenjo-Daro was divided into a citadel and a lower city, with a Great Pool or public bath, measuring 12 meters (39 feet) long, 7 meters (23 feet) wide and 2.4 meters (7.9 feet) deep. It may have been used for religious purification. There was also a large Pillared Hall and supposedly priests’ quarters, although no-one can safely determine the religion of this civilization.
Excavations of the Great Bath in Mohenjo-Daro (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Beautiful figurines were unearthed at Mohenjo-Daro, for example a bronze statuette of a dancing girl. In 1973, British archaeologists Mortimer Wheeler, John Marshall and Gregory Possehl were all in awe of this exquisite piece. More gold and terracotta figurines of dancers, accompanied by domestic and wild animals were found, which may indicate some ritual or cult activity. This art form predated Hellenistic Greek art by several centuries.
Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro ( Joe Ravi CC BY-SA 3.0)
Rakhigarhi
Rakhigarhi is considered to have been the largest of the three cities, at about 3502 hectares (3.52 kilometers). Intermittent archaeological excavations take place, but it is hindered by lack of funding, looting and urban sprawling of the site. Regarding the town planning and architecture, it is similar to Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, with paved roads and a sophisticated sewerage system. The city boasted a gold foundry and typical artifacts include figurines, pottery, weights, jewelry and every day utensils. A burial site illustrates that people were buried with jewels and utensils. Food was left for the consumption of the dead on their spiritual journey.
The debate remains open as to the religious practices of the Indus Valley Civilization. Some archaeologists proposed that a Great Male Deity, accompanied by a Mother Goddess were worshipped and that certain animals were deified. This could point to a bias towards a Hinduism. The Pashupati seal discovered, depicts a seated figure with a horned headdress, surrounded by animals – referring to the ’Lord of the Animals’, an epithet of Shiva. However other experts believe the association of the water buffalo and the fact that the figure is not sitting in a yoga position excludes it as a Shiva icon. It has also been claimed as an early Buddha.
The Pashupati seal (Public Domain)
Like a river, Hinduism may have been fed by the influence of the Vedic, but also by Harappan culture. Some scholars view Harrapan as pre-Hindu. Harappan is the much older civilisation that influenced the Vedic civilisation by the time it had established itself in the Gangetic plains.
Another seal from Mohenjo-Daro depicts a half-human, half-buffalo monster attacking a tiger, a reminder of the Sumerian myth of such a monster created by goddess Aruru to fight Gilgamesh. An outstanding element of the Indus Valley Civilization is the absence of large palace or temple structures, found elsewhere in Bronze Age civilizations for example in Mesopotamia and Egypt.
Indus Script
One element that the Indus Valley Civilization does have in common with other Bronze Age civilizations, is the development of script, however the Indus script is as yet undeciphered. Mark Miller discusses the Indus script in detail in an Ancient-Origins article.
Indus symbols are plentiful on seals, small tablets, ceramic pots and other sources. The assumption whether the script was exclusively used to document trade exchanges, is discarded since the script is found on ritual objects.
Unicorn seal with Indus script (CC0)
The next question would be whether the script actually encodes language or a non-linguistic sign system, to symbolize family ties or deities. The journal Science published an article by Rao et al, where computer scientists “comparing the pattern of symbols to various linguistic scripts and non-linguistic systems, including DNA and a computer programming language, found that the Indus script's pattern is closer to that of spoken words.” However, this hypothesis was challenged by Farmer, Sproat and Witzel who postulate that since the messages on seals comprise no more than four or five characters, they are too short to be decoded by a computer. The answers to these questions remain locked away in the intricate tiny symbols, waiting to be deciphered.
Perhaps Saraswathi, the goddess of language, can inspire a translation. The Hindu festival of Vasant Panchami or Saraswathi Puja is celebrated on the fifth day of spring, when young children learn how to write alphabets. Maybe one of these children will one day decipher the Indus script of their ancestors.
Goddess Saraswathi by Raja Ravi Varma (1848 – 1906) (Public Domain)
Saraswathi Withdraws
By 1900 BC Saraswathi withdrew her favors and the Sarasvati river began drying up. The monsoons shifted, droughts, floods and other climate changes forced the population to move eastwards towards the Ganges basin and settle in smaller communities. By 1700 BC most of the Indus valley cities were deserted. Excavations of skeletons with cranial damage point to probable warfare, or the decline could be attributed to the outbreak of tuberculosis and leprosy epidemics. Trade declined rapidly but agriculture continued on a smaller scale, to the east. The Indus Valley Civilization was lost, until archaeologists revived the spirit of Sarasvati.
Top image: Indus Valley Diorama by Biswarup Ganguly (CC BY-SA 3.0)
References
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