Walsh J.E. A Brief History of India

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF INDIA

pottery used throughout their civilization: a pottery colored with red

slip and often decorated in black with plant and animal designs. They

used copper (from nearby Rajasthan and Baluchistan) and bronze to

make ﬁ gurines, pots, tools, and weapons. Their builders used baked

bricks produced in a standard size and with uniform proportions.

Mature Harappan settlements are characterized by brick-lined wells

and drainage systems (often hidden underground). These complex sys-

tems, as seen in Mohenjo-Daro, moved water off streets and lanes and

removed wastewater from inside houses through vertical drainpipes

through walls, chutes leading to the streets, and drains in bathing ﬂ oors

that fed into street drains.

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LAND, CLIMATE, AND PREHISTORY

READING THE INDUS SCRIPT

he Indus Valley civilization developed the symbols of what looks

like a script, but scholars cannot yet read it. Harappans carved a

line of symbols along the top of the square soapstone seals that charac-

terized their society; usually they also carved an animal picture below

the writing. Archaeologists ﬁ nd these seals in abundance in Harappan

settlements. Like cylindrical seals used in Mesopotamia and in Central

Asia, Harappan seals were probably used to mark ownership of goods

and property or perhaps also as a kind of identity badge. The picture

and symbols were carved in reverse, then the seal was ﬁ red to harden

it. When stamped in clay, the writing was meant to be read from right

to left. On the back of a seal was a small boss used either for holding

the seal or for attaching a cord that let it hang around the neck. Indus

symbols have also been found scribbled on the edges of pottery and

on a three-meter-wide (9.8 feet) “signboard.” The longest inscription

is 26 symbols found on three sides of a triangular prism.

Approximately 400 different written symbols have been identiﬁ ed

on Harappan seals, of which about 200 appear frequently. There are,

thus, too many symbols for a phonetic alphabet but too few for a pic-

tographic writing system. Instead, many scholars suggest, the system

is logosyllabic, that is, its symbols represent both sounds and concepts

(words, phrases, ideas) as is the case in Mesopotamian cuneiform or

The front and back of a unicorn seal from Mohenjo-Daro with a relatively long,

eight-symbol inscription. The back shows the boss common to Indus seals through

which a cord could be run. The unicorn is the most common animal on Indus

seals.

Government of Pakistan)

(continues)

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF INDIA

In their overall architecture, as well as in their drainage systems,

Indus cities and even some smaller mature Harappan settlements show

evidence of being planned societies. Although Harappa in the north and

Mohenjo-Daro on the Indus to the south were about 350 miles apart,

the cities have many similarities in planning and execution. These are

the two largest sites yet found for the Indus Valley civilization and

the most extensively excavated. Kenoyer (1998) estimates the size of

Mohenjo-Daro at more than 200 hectares (more than 494 acres) and

Harappa at 150 hectares (370 acres).

Both cities were oriented on a north-south axis. Both were built on

two levels, and each level was surrounded by large mud-brick walls with

gateways at intervals. The upper level, built on a brick platform, has

been variously called a “citadel” or an “acropolis”; it held large build-

ings and structures whose function is still unclear. At Mohenjo-Daro

Egyptian hieroglyphics. Since the seals were ﬁ rst discovered in the

1870s, at least 100 different attempts have been made to decipher

them. Indigenist proponents have claimed the Indus script to be an

early form of Sanskrit (the ancient language of Hindu scriptures), but

their claims have been widely rejected by both Western and Indian

specialists on the subject. Two separate groups (one Soviet/Russian

and one Finnish), using computer-based studies in an effort to “read”

the symbols, have hypothesized that the writing was proto-Dravidian,

that is, it represented an early script of the Dravidian languages of pen-

insular India. Most recently, several scholars shocked the Indological

world with the theory that the symbols were not a language-based

script at all. Instead, they argued, the signs represented nonlinguistic

(religious or ideological) symbols (Farmer et al.). While both the

Dravidian theory and the nonlanguage theory have received serious

attention, neither is universally accepted. Indeed, many scholars sug-

gest that the script will never be decoded. They argue that examples

of this writing system are too short (too few symbols in a row) to

allow them to decipher what was written on these mysterious seals.

Source: Farmer, Steve, Richard Sproat, and Michael Witzel. “The Collapse

of the Indus-Script Thesis: The Myth of a Literate Harappan Civilization.”

Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies 11, no. 2 (2004). Available online. URL: http://

www.safarmer.com/fsw2.pdf. Accessed August 25, 2009.

READING THE INDUS SCRIPT (continued)

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“Priest-King” from Mohenjo-Daro. Note that this ﬁ gure is quite small, only approximately

seven inches in height.

Government of Pakistan)

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF INDIA

the upper level also includes a large brick-lined bathing structure (“the

Great Bath”), the sunken bathing section waterproofed by bitumen

(tar). Both Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro contain large buildings either

within the upper level or close to it whose function—granaries? ware-

houses?—scholars still debate.

The lower levels of both cities held residential areas and were built

in rectangular sections with streets, running north-south and east-west,

intersecting at right angles. Mohenjo-Daro’s “lower town” may once have

held 35,000–41,000 people. Harappa’s population has been estimated at

between 23,500 and 35,000. Urban homes in these cities were built around

central courtyards—as are many Indian homes today—with inner rooms

not visible from the street. Harappans also made careful plans for water. At

Mohenjo-Daro one out of three homes had a well in an inside room. Latrines

were built into the ﬂ oors of houses, and wastewater (as noted earlier) was

carried out of urban homes through complex brick drainage

systems and outside the settlement areas through covered drains along

the streets.

While archaeological excavations have provided a great deal of infor-

mation about the material culture of Harappan civilization, the absence

of oral or written texts still leaves many questions. Without additional

sources scholars cannot know how Harappan cities were governed, how

they related to the surrounding countryside, or even how they related to

one another. Extensive water drainage systems and brick platforms that

raised sections of settlements above the surrounding ﬂ oodplain dem-

onstrate Harappans’ concerns with water and, perhaps, with protecting

themselves against the periodic inundations of Indus Valley rivers. Walls

and gates around areas of these cities may demonstrate a concern with

protection from marauders, although many other settlements seem to lack

defenses. Unlike Mesopotamia in the Near East, Harappan civilization had

neither monuments nor large statues. One of the relatively few surviving

human sculptures from the Harappan world is a seven-inch-high remnant

that shows the upper torso of a bearded man. Is he a merchant, a king, or

a priest? Although some have nicknamed this ﬁ gure the “Priest-King,” it

is not known who or what the image was meant to represent.

The End of Harappan Civilization

By 1800 B.C.E. many of the main urban centers of mature Harappan civili-

zation were abandoned or in decline, occupied on a much smaller scale and

by communities whose cultures were very different from that of the earlier

civilization. The upper levels of the city of Mohenjo-Daro show evidence

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LAND, CLIMATE, AND PREHISTORY

of civic disorder and disarray—some 30 unburied skeletons lie in houses

or lanes—and by 1900

B.C.E. the site was abandoned. The city of Harappa

shrank in size, occupied in only one section and by a people whose pot-

tery and burial customs (known as Cemetery H Culture) differed from

those of earlier inhabitants. Other Harappan settlements—Ganweriwala,

Rakhigarhi—disappeared entirely. One archaeologist estimates that the

inhabited area of the Harappan region shrank to one-half its earlier size

(Ratnagar 2001). The material culture of the mature Harappan period—as

seen in Harappan-style seals and symbols, crafts using ivory or carnelian,

metallurgy, standardized brick constructions—substantially disappears in

settlements of the post–Harappan period.

Trade with Mesopotamia and the Oman region came to an end by

1800

B.C.E., and internal trade weakened. Mountain passes and trade

routes through to Afghanistan and Baluchistan, which may have closed

in the earlier period, seem to have reopened after 2000

B.C.E. (Ratnagar

2001). Archaeologists ﬁ nd evidence of Central Asian inﬂ uences—

whether through trade or the movement of peoples is debated—in

artifacts from sites near the Bolan Pass (Sibri, Pirak, Quetta) and in the

distinctive Gandharan Grave Culture found in the northern Swat Valley.

At many Indus region sites in the post–Harappan period, region-

ally deﬁ ned cultures reemerge, their artifacts, buildings, and living

styles replacing much, if not all, of the culture and products of mature

Harappan civilization. The drying up of the Ghaggar-Hakra (Sarasvati)

River forced many to abandon settlements along it. Archaeologists ﬁ nd

evidence of Cemetery H Culture (ﬁ ne ﬁ red red pottery urn reburials)

in many sites throughout the Ghaggar-Hakra/Sarasvati River Valley and

the southern Punjab. In Sind, a Jhukar pottery is found, associated with

a culture using stone, bone, and some metal tools at Chanhu-Daro and

Amri. Toward the south on the Kathiawar peninsula (Saurashtra) in

Gujarat, new settlements appear, linked in style to earlier Harappan

culture, but with a distinctive, regionally deﬁ ned, culture.

Interestingly, aspects of Harappan civilization lived on in the material

culture of the northwestern region. Full-size wooden bullock carts with

solid wheels found in the area today are almost the exact duplicates of

the small clay models from Harappan sites. Sewage drains continue to

be common features of homes in this part of the north. Small Harappan

ﬁ gurines of large-breasted females remind many of “mother goddess”

ﬁ gures of more recent derivation. The posture of one broken Harappan

statue, the torso of a man, is associated by some with the stance of the

later dancing god Shiva. And a ﬁ gure on an Indus seal sits cross-legged

in a yogic pose common in later Hinduism.

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF INDIA

INTO OR OUT OF INDIA

ver the past 150 years many groups have used the Harappan

and Aryan legacies for their own purposes. The “Aryan inva-

sion” theory originated in the 19th century, before the existence of

Harappan civilization was even known, as part of Western linguists’

efforts to account for similarities between Sanskrit and Western lan-

guages. This theory was used by 19th-century European scholars such

as the Oxford don Friederich Max Müller to underline the “family”

connection between “the Celts, the Germans, the Slaves [sic], the

Greeks and Italians, the Persian and Hindus.” All of these people at one

time “were living together beneath the same roof. . . .” (Trautmann).

Later British imperialists used the same theory to explain the inferi-

ority of the Indian “race”—through mixing with indigenous peoples,

Indians had degenerated from an earlier Aryan state—and, hence,

the need for British rule. German Nazis in the 20th century claimed

the Aryans were a superior “master race” whose descendants should

rule the world. In the German formulation, however, the Indians, as

Aryans, were part of the master race, not inferior to it.

The racial stereotypes and cultural supremacist assumptions inher-

ent in the old Aryan invasion theory have been rejected in modern

times, but the theory of a linkage between a wide number of “Indo-

European” languages continues to be generally accepted. And many

Western and Indian scholars (perhaps the majority, at least in the West)

also accept the “Into India” theory as the most plausible explanation

of the origins of Indian/Hindu religion and culture. That is, they argue

that the peoples who composed the Rig-Veda (Hinduism’s oldest text)

were an Indo-European–speaking people who entered Afghanistan and

the Punjab region of the subcontinent from the outside.

The linguistic connections of the into India theorists are widely

accepted and unquestioned even by opponents of the theory them-

selves. Virtually all linguists and scholars accept that there is an

Indo-European language family; the languages of western and eastern

Europe, the Baltic and Slavic regions (from Poland to Russia), Iran, the

South Asian subcontinent, and even the (ancient) Tocharian language

of the Tarim Basin in China and the (ancient) language of the Hittites

were all once part of a single language family, the Indo-European lan-

guage family.

The origin of all these languages (according to the “into India”

hypothesis) dates to the 4500–2500 B.C.E. period when a collection of

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LAND, CLIMATE, AND PREHISTORY

tribes and/or tribal confederations lived together, in the steppe regions

north and east of the Black Sea. These tribal communities and confed-

erations were nomadic, warlike, used horses, and followed herds of

cattle; they shared a common language (named proto-Indo-European as

it existed before any of the later Indo-European languages developed).

Beginning even before 2500 B.C.E. these tribes broke apart; some

migrated into European lands or Slavic lands; others (known today as

Indo-Iranians) moved south toward Iran and the Indian subcontinent.

The term Aryan was used only by this later Indo-Iranian group; it is

found in both the Iranian Avesta and the Indian Rig-Veda. (European

scholars of the 19th century, however, mistakenly used Aryan to refer

to the entire community from which the languages of Europe, Iran, and

India derived [Bulliet].)

The into India scholars argue that the Indo-Aryans, the composers

of Hinduism’s most ancient text, the Rig-Veda, entered the subconti-

nent from the border regions to the northwest at some period before

ca. 1500 B.C.E. Before reaching Iran, the Indo-Iranian communities had

split: The Iranian-Aryans migrated south into Iran; the Indo-Aryans

(as the India group is called) moved into the greater Punjab region of

the subcontinent, sometime before ca.1500 B.C.E., the date by which it

is thought the Rig-Veda was already composed (Witzel). In the same

period, however, that is the centuries after the collapse of Harappan

civilization (ca. 2000–1500 B.C.E.), other Indo-Iranian tribal groups

may also have migrated into the subcontinent and/or settled along

the Indo-Iranian borderlands. Thus from ca. 2000 B.C.E. to 1500 B.C.E.

the subcontinent may have had multiple Indo-Iranian tribal communi-

ties either settled in, migrating through, or trading with its indigenous

population.

Indigenist archaeologists and scholars and (more broadly) Hindu

nationalist writers of the 20th and 21st centuries have challenged

the into India theory, arguing that Indo-Aryan culture as seen in the

Rig-Veda was indigenous to India; Aryans were the creators of the

ancient Harappan civilization. Indigenist archaeologists (such as Jim

Shaffer or B. B. Lal) argue that the reason archaeologists have failed

to ﬁ nd the physical remains of the culture of the Indo-Aryans who

composed the Rig-Veda is because these populations were indigenous

both to the Indus region and to the subcontinent itself. Indigenist

writers do not challenge the linguistic relationship between Indo-

European languages; most often they ignore the linguistic issues in

their writings. Some argue, however, that the linguistic connection

(continues)

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF INDIA

was created by Indian migrants who traveled “out of India,” spreading

the Indo-European language (and Aryan race) into Iran and Europe.

According to this theory, the Hindus in India all descend from

this original Harappan/Aryan race. As descendants of the original

Indian people, Hindus are thus the only group who can legitimately

claim the right to live in and govern the modern country of India.

The out of India theory is not widely accepted among Western

scholars, and even in India itself it is far from universally accepted. Most

scholars think that the into India theory, if problematic in many respects

(the failure to “ﬁ nd” the archaeological remains of the Indo-Aryans who

created the Rig-Veda being perhaps the major failing), is still the more

acceptable theory for two reasons. One reason rests on linguistic evi-

dence. The Sanskrit language has some linguistic features found only in

it and not in other Indo-European languages. Those same features are

also found in the Dravidian languages of southern India. It is difﬁ cult to

believe that Sanskrit could have been the original proto-Indo-European

language and not have carried these linguistic characteristics on to even

one other Indo-European language.

The second major problem with the out of India theory lies in

the absence of horses in the ancient Harappan region and sites.

Indo-Aryan tribes were nomadic, pastoral people who fought their

frequent battles in chariots driven by horses. But Harappan civiliza-

tion has no evidence of horses: There are no horses on its seals;

no remains of horses—although there are domesticated cattle and

donkeys—found at its sites even in the greater Indus region before

1700 B.C.E. In the early 21st century, one enthusiastic proponent of

the out of India theory attempted to improve the historical record

by altering an image of a Harappan seal to make its bull (or unicorn)

look like a horse (Witzel and Farmer). Such efforts show that cur-

rent controversies over Harappa and the Aryan invasion are as much

struggles for identity and political legitimacy in present-day India as

they are arguments about the historical past.

Sources: Bulliet, Lucy. “The Indigenous Aryan Debate for Beginners.”

(New York: 2002); Trautmann, Thomas R. Aryans and British India. (New

Delhi: Vistaar, 1997), p. 177; Witzel, Michael. “Autochthonous Aryans?

The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts.” Electronic Journal of Vedic

Studies 7, no. 3 (2001): 1–115; Witzel, Michael, and Steve Farmer. “Horseplay

in Harappa: The Indus Valley Decipherment Hoax.” Frontline. 13 October,

2000. Available online. URL: http://www.ﬂ onnet.com/ﬂ 1720/17200040.htm.

Accessed April 26, 2004.

INTO OR OUT OF INDIA (continued)

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LAND, CLIMATE, AND PREHISTORY

What happened to Harappan civilization? British archaeologists in

the mid-20th century, such as Sir Mortimer Wheeler (1890–1976),

blamed its end on the “Aryan invasion,” a mass movement of Indo-

European–speaking warrior tribes from Iranian regions into the sub-

continent. Few modern scholars agree that either an “invasion” or even

tribal migrations into the subcontinent ended Harappan civilization.

(Although many Western and Indian scholars do think that the period

from ca. 2000

B.C.E. to 1500 B.C.E. saw numerous Indo-European–

speaking tribal communities or confederations either migrating into or

settling on the margins of the subcontinent region.) Scholars now look

at a combination of factors to account for the end of the urban Harappan

civilization: the end of trade links with Mesopotamia ca. 1800 that may

have destroyed the Harappan trading economy; the increasing desicca-

tion of the Ghaggar-Hakra/Sarasvati River region; the possibility that

tectonic changes may have ﬂ ooded the lower Indus in the Mohenjo-

Daro region; and/or the possibility of endemic disease. Scholars even

speculate on how Harappan ideology (about which nothing is known)

might have contributed to the civilization’s demise. Hindu national-

ists of the 20th and 21st centuries claim Harappan civilization as the

birthplace of Sanskrit and Hindu culture—an “out of India” idea that

many “nonindigenists” strenuously dispute. In the end there are many

questions and speculations but few ﬁ rm answers.

Origins of the Aryans

By 1500 B.C.E. a tribal community living in the greater Punjab region

of the subcontinent had composed a collection of hymns in praise of

their gods. This community called themselves Aryans (a term that later

meant “civilized” or “noble”). The hymns they composed eventually

became the Rig-Veda, a sacred text in the modern Hindu religion, the

oldest source for ancient Indian history and the only source of informa-

tion about the origins and culture of the community that composed it.

The Indo-Aryans who composed the Rig-Veda migrated into the sub-

continent from the mountains to the north and west. Linguistics theo-

rize that these peoples were originally part of a larger Indo-European

speaking subgroup, the Indo-Iranians, once living on the steppe lands

north and east of the Caspian Sea. The Indo-Iranians migrated into

south Central Asia where they then separated: one group, the Iranian

Aryans, moved south onto the Iranian plateau; a second group, the

Indo-Aryans, moved through the Afghan mountains into the Punjab

region of the Indus plain.

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