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Who Were The Harappans? By- Arun Gupta Arun Gupta was educated in Electronics Engineering at IIT-Madras and in Theoretical Physics at Caltech. He is now a software systems analyst. His intellectual wanderlust does not let him rest easy. He wishes he knew everything about everything. Please Click Here to read other articles on Rig Veda and History by Arun Gupta.

The four great ancient centers of civilization in the Old World are the river valleys -- those of the Nile, the Tigris-Euphrates, the Huang Ho and the Indus. The existence of the Indus Valley Civilization was recognized about 80 years ago. Even so, many questions about the people of this civilization remain unanswered. Even how we should name these people is a matter of controversy.

The first traces of the Indus Valley civilization were recognized , as you might have guessed, along the banks of the Indus and its tributaries. Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, on the banks of the Indus and Ravi respectively were excavated in the 1920s and were recognized to belong to a previously unknown culture. Around 1950, some 40 sites were known of this culture. By 1985, around 1400 sites had been identified. A recent catalog lists some 2600 sites. Our current knowledge is that this civilization extended to the north upto Manda in Kashmir, to the east upto Alamgirpur in Western UP, to the south upto the head of the Godavari river, and to the west almost to the modern Pakistan-Iran border; an area of around million square kilometers. This is an enormous area compared to ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia.

More than 80 percent of the identified sites of this civilization are on the banks of the mostly dry Ghaggar-Hakra river, in the Cholistan desert in Pakistan. The river was then large and perennial. Geological studies inform us that the Sutlej, and perhaps the Yamuna, were tributaries of this river. The Ghaggar-Hakra is identified with the Saraswati river of the Mahabharata; and is believed to be the Saraswati river of the Rig Veda. Given the importance of the Saraswati, some writers have proposed that the correct name for this culture is the Saraswati-Sindhu civilization. I will use the non-controversial name "Harappan".

Most of the Harappan sites are small, a few hectares in size (a hectare is an area of 100 meters x 100 meters). The large cities were Mohenjo-daro (250+ hectares, on the Indus), Harappa ( 150+ hectares, on the Ravi), Ganweriwalla and Rakhigarhi (80+ hectares each, along the Saraswati, and Dholavira (100 hectares, in Kutch). The lower town of Mohenjodaro, about 80 hectares in area, is estimated to have had a population of around 41,000 people. The Harappan civilization may have had 5 million or more people in its hey-day.

The Harappan people were native to South Asia -- that is, the Harappan civilization was the culmination of several thousand years of indigenous development. The stone age cultures whose remains are found from 12,000 years ago, developed agriculture independently of the other ancient civilizations. By 6500 BC, they were living in villages, and cultivating barley and wheat. By 5500 BC, bones of domesticated sheep, goats, and zebu, the humped Indian cattle appear in the archaelogical record in abundance. They had developed trade by this time -- bangles made of conch shells are found over 500 kilometers away from the nearest source of such shells. Over the next 2500 years they developed pottery, sonte and metal ornaments, tools and utensils and architectural styles, and all the necessary technologies required to maintain city life. There was increasing uniformization of the regional cultures of this widespread region. From 2600 BC to 1900 BC, the Harappan cities flourished. Subsequently they began a decline, and the different regions began to diverge from the unified culture. Continuity is found in several sites down to around 1000 BC, at which time the "happening place" shifts to being the Gangetic plain.

The reasons for the decline of the Harappan culture are not clear. Presumably changing climate, drying up of the Saraswati, collapse of trade and other factors may have played a role. At one time, it was thought that Aryan invasions were responsible, but that theory has been discarded as incorrect (actually this was known by the 1960s, but still hasn't made its way into the Indian textbooks).

We know of the Harappan people only through a limited set of physical artifacts. What we know is an extrapolation of the excavation of only partial areas of a tiny fraction of sites. The artifacts that have survived are those of stone, mud brick, fired clay and stoneware, metals ( silver, gold, copper, bronze ), gems, bone and ivory. Cloth, bark, leaf, reed etc. have presumably perished in the thousands of years and tropical climate, and with them, perhaps the literary records of this culture, if they had any.

The Harappans certainly had writing. We find it primarily on the famous seals that signify this culture in the public mind, but also on tools and jewellery. Even what was a public sign has been found, in Dholavira. We have several thousand inscriptions, but all of them are short, the longest is 26 characters. No relationship with any other writing system has been found, and the writing remains undeciphered, despite many claims to the contrary. Even if someone came up with the correct decoding, the inscriptions are too short to provide proof of correctness.

It has been suggested that the Vedic corpus is the missing Harappan literature. However, that is very much against conventional wisdom (based mostly on linguistic evidence) that the Indo-Aryan languages arrived in India only after 1700 BC. Certainly, the Rig Veda mentions horses and chariots with spoked wheels; and these are scarce or missing in the Harappan digs (but they are also scarce subsequently) . The conventional wisdom till recently was that Harappan was some form of Dravidian language, the language family that contains Tamil. However, speakers of the incoming Indo-Aryan languages would have interacted with speakers of Harappan and the earliest Vedic Sanskrit should show traces of Dravidian borrowings, which it does not. Harappan could be related to Munda, the language of Central Indian tribals, which is the third major language group in India; or could be an unknown language X.

The uniformity of physical artifacts found over the vast region of the Harappan culture tends to make us think in terms of a single religion, language and culture. However, people could share a material basis of life and yet be very different. The common writing may have accomodated a language of the elite only. Harappa could have been multi-lingual and multi-religious. Certainly the area that was Harappan, now exhibits great diversity. Nevertheless, we tend to talk of language and religion of the Harappans in the singular.

When the Harappan civilization declined, some features of the culture did not continue to its successors. Writing vanished, for almost 1400 years. So did city planning. So did the specific forms of the the Harappan religion and literature (unless, contrary to the usual wisdom, these do turn out to be Vedic). The warlessness of the Harappans, if real, vanished as well. Incredible though it seems, the language(s) of this widespread and numerous people also seem to have vanished with little trace.

However, other things continued on into historic times (historic times, in the Indian context, begins around 300 BC, with Ashoka). For example, water management methods, and the standardized systems of weights continued on. Other cultural artifacts include things like Sindoor; possibly Shiva (Pashupati) and Shakti worship. The river boats on the Indus today are of Harappan design, and our bullock carts are descended from them.

We may find out more about the Harappans through further archaelogical excavations -- there is certainly ample scope for that, through decipherment of their script (don't hold your breath), and perhaps through genetic studies of today's population that can help decipher who is related to whom. The study of the ancient civilization is a young field with exciting times ahead.

Additional reading : This above is mostly based on the writings of Jonathan Mark Kenoyer (JMK). I primarily use his "Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization". Also see harappa.com, a truly great web-site.

The unconventional perspective is reflected in this essay by Michel Danino.

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