For almost two thousand years (3300 – 1700 BCE), the Indus Valley civilization occupied the fertile valleys of the Indus River and its many tributaries in the western part of the Indian subcontinent. Sometimes called the Harappan civilization (named after the first of its cities to be unearthed in the 1920s), it covered some 300,000 square miles (the size of present-day Turkey) in what is now Pakistan, north-west India, and south-east Afghanistan. More than 1400 settlements have so far been found, including large cities such as Harappa and Mohenjo-daro that housed populations of up to 40,000 people.
The Indus Valley cities were the most advanced of their time. Laid out in well-planned grids, with neighbourhoods defined by their residents’ occupations, they reflect what may be the world’s first town planning and incorporate what is almost certainly the world’s first urban sanitation system. The one and sometimes two-storied, flat-roofed houses were built of standardised high-quality bricks, each opening onto its own inner courtyard. Each had access to clean drinking water and had its own private bathroom. Clay pipes led from the bathroom to sewers located under the streets that drained into nearby rivers. Although some houses were larger than others, even the smallest had access to water and were linked to the central drainage system – suggesting that this was a largely egalitarian society without high concentrations of wealth belonging to a ruling elite. The whole arrangement, indeed, appears to have been more efficient, sanitary, and egalitarian than that found in some areas of modern-day Pakistan and India. In India today, for example, one of every three urban households has no private bathroom facility.
Unlike other civilizations of that era, there is no conclusive evidence of palaces or temples, kings or priests, or any of the pomp and ceremony usually associated with such institutions. Each city had its own grain storage facilities, religious centres, and presumably a very efficient administration. But there appears to have been no central administration for the civilization as a whole. Unlike contemporary Sumerians, Egyptians, and Minoans with their ziggurats, pyramids, and palaces, the Harappans built no monumental structures. Although they had the engineering skills, as the architecture of their dockyards and granaries attests, they left behind no towering monuments or epic ruins. The only thing massive about the Indus Valley cities was their walls, the purpose of which remains unclear. With no evidence of any military class or armed conflict, the walls may have been built more to divert flood waters than to dissuade potential enemies.
In the surrounding farmlands, a variety of grains, fruits, and vegetables were cultivated, and a number of animals, including water buffalo, were domesticated. The city dwellers were mostly artisans and traders. Skilled in pottery, weaving, and metal work, they left a profusion of sculpture, pottery, jewellery, metal seals, and detailed figurines in bronze and terracotta that remained buried until our time.
The economy depended significantly on trade, utilizing camels, elephants, and bullock carts for overland transport, and flat-bottomed boats for transport on their rivers and canals. More distant trade was conducted in plank-built vessels with a single mast supporting a sail of woven rushes or cloth. From a sophisticated docking facility at their city of Lothal, they navigated the Arabian Sea, Persian Gulf, and Red Sea as far as the cities of Sumer and ancient Egypt. The importance of such trade is underlined by their development of a highly standardised decimal system of weights and measures, giving them great accuracy in measuring length, mass, and time.
What is undoubtedly most distinctive about Harappan culture is their use of engraved copper seals as religious amulets and perhaps for identifying property and shipments of goods. A treasure trove of these seals has been found at 80 different sites, including almost every room in the city of Mohenjo-daro. Most are square, no larger than a postage stamp, ranging in size from ½ - 2½ inches, and depict one or other of the Harappan deities as an animal, together with an inscribed message addressed to that god. The few that are rectangular in shape contain only an inscription.
The Harappan script inscribed on these seals, as well as that found on tablets, ceramic pots, and other materials, contains over 400 distinct and exquisitely tiny symbols – the earliest examples of which date from c. 3000 BCE. But because no one has yet been able to decipher these symbols – (more than 100 attempts have been made over recent decades) – it is difficult to draw conclusions about the Indus Valley worldview. Given the great many female figurines that have been found, it is widely thought that they worshipped a Mother Goddess symbolizing fertility. Some seals, however, show swastikas that are found in later religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, suggesting that elements of Hinduism were already present at this time. One famous seal shows a figure seated in a posture reminiscent of the Lotus position.
The little we do know about Harappan religious belief and practice is this:
• Religious traditions differed from one city to another, with worship of the Mother Goddess evident in many, but not in all. Many small statues have been unearthed that are thought by some archaeologists to be female goddesses.
• Many different deities, often represented by an animal, have been identified. Citizens of Lothal, for instance, seem to have worshipped both a sea goddess and a fire god – the latter represented on seals by a horned deity and evidenced by private and public fire-altars for animal sacrifice. Major deities include those represented by the water buffalo, short-horned bull, elephant, and ram. The Mother Goddess (perhaps called Kali) may have been represented by the ox, and the principal Harappan deity (Mal ?) by a unicorn.
• In early phases of the civilization, the Harappans buried their dead. Later, the dead were cremated and their ashes buried in urns in a manner alluded to in the Rigveda – the earliest Hindu scriptures, composed in this same region of northwest India between 1700 and 1100 BCE, following the disappearance of the Indus Valley civilization.
The decline of this great civilization remains as enigmatic as its script. By 1700 BCE, most of its cities were abandoned. Were they ravaged by conquest, washed away by floods, destroyed by drought, eroded by a declining trade with Egypt and Mesopotamia, or all of the above? Or did its people just blend into other migrations that were settling the subcontinent? No one seems to know. In 1953, Sir Mortimer Wheeler proposed that it was destroyed by invading warriors from Central Asia called “Àryans”. Many scholars today believe that its collapse was associated with a drought linked to climate change. It seems that the Indus Valley climate grew significantly cooler and drier after 1800 BCE.
Whatever the reasons, and despite the damage done to these ancient sites by British colonials who used the cities’ bricks to build their railways, enough of this civilization still remains as testimony to its greatness. And its influence on later religious thought – Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain – is still felt in our world today.
No comments:
Post a Comment