Indian Origins - The Civilisation

How old is our civilisation?

As per today's research and findings Indian civilisation is amongst the oldest one. We passed through several stages of civilisation, Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Chalcolithic.

The Paleolithic civilisations developed in Pleistocene period which means the ice age. They were nomads, migrating to places where food and water was easily available. On the basis of their stone tools and change in climate, the Paleolithic Civilisation is divided into three parts Early or Lower Paleolithic, Middle Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic.

The Mesolithic civilisations occurred post ice age during the transitional period between Paleolithic and Neolithic. The climate became warm and dry, changing the flora and fauna  resulting in venturing new territories.

The Neolithic Civilisation learnt to produce food of its own unlike the earlier Civilisations who used to be nomads. It marks the beginning of village settlements. Their tools were fine, sharp and polished. The art of making pottery on wheels was also learnt.

The Chalcolithic Civilisation used tools made of copper and stone. They were contemporary of Indus valley civilisation. They worshipped mother goddess and male gods, buried their dead and believed in rituals and life after death. From the excavations and findings of this civilisation they did not know the art of making bronze and tin which the Indus valley civilisation did. Indus valley civilisation had their own script and knew the art of writing. They were far more advanced than the Chalcolithic civilisation.

It has always been propagated that the Indus Civilisation was the start of urban civilisation in India. It spread over a large part of the Indian subcontinent between 3000 BC to 1750 BC. They were technologically advanced than the other cultures in India. When the site was excavated by John Marshall he gave a date of 3000 BC. But the recent findings and discovery in Rajasthan suggest that the Indus civilisation began much earlier than what was believed. Artifacts found in Rajasthan provided radiometric dates from 7500 BC to 6200 BC.

The Indus civilisation is also called Harappan civilisation because this civilisation was first discovered in 1921 at Harappa, situated in west Punjab, now Pakistan. The Indus Civilization is divided into the pre-Harappan, mature Harappan and late Harappan periods. But some of the artifacts discovered  in Rajasthan include relatively advanced pottery which until now was believed to be possible in late Harappan period. These recent archaeological findings prove the Indus River Valley civilization is up to 2,000 years older than previously believed.

 

The Indus civilisations vanished suddenly as it is believed to be. Many causes have been suggested for their sudden disappearance, floods, famine, mass scale confrontation. But there are no conclusive evidence to adopt a theory for their disappearance. 

 

 

Indian Origins - Creation of the World in puranas ( II )

 
Earth Diver:
There is a legend in which it says the Earth was fished out of water. The universe was water first, with that water Prajapati wondered how the universe could be developed. He saw a lotus leaf standing in the water and thought “there must be something on which it rests”. So assuming the form of a boar he plunged in the water and found earth submerged in it. Breaking a portion of earth he rose to the surface. In other texts cosmic tortoise has been conceived as finding earth in the ocean.
In Ramayana sage Vashishta says that Brahma with all the other gods caused the earth to rise from water in the form of a boar and created everything that exists.
The other version says that a demon Hiranyaksa impressed brahma by penance and received a boon that no man, god or beast could kill him. While listing all whom he claimed exemption, he missed out boar. After receiving boon, Hiranyaksa started troubling the sages and gods. He stole the Vedas from Brahma while he was asleep and dragged earth in the netherland in his abode. Lord Vishnu assuming the form of a boar slayed him retrieved the Vedas and lifted the earth out on his tusks.


Creator as a Master Artificer:
Creator is one who creates depending upon the material using his skills. Brahmanaspati was a creator who created world with some pre-existent material. Not unlike other theories, where creation is out of nothing.

Primality of Water:
It is universally believed that in the beginning of creation there was nothing but vast expense of water shrouded in darkness. The universe did not exist at all in the beginning, but it had the desire to be someone, thus it practiced tapas as a result of which smoke, fire, flames, vapours, clouds were produced one after the other.

 
You will find many stories about the creation of the world in various other mythologies with some stories similar to the other.
The stories could be the imagination of the early people in order to explain the unexplained or could be facts explained in a very over exaggerated manner.

Indian Origins - Creation of the World in Puranas ( I )

Man has a habit of thinking. This thinking could be rational or imaginative. Out of this man has created myths around himself. It would be wrong to judge puranas as man’s imagination. Puranas could be the representation of facts in an exaggerated way. It is also important to consider the puranas while studying the history of India. One cannot just neglect it or call it unreal. Puranas are religious Hindu texts about kings, gods and their incarnations, sages, the universe’s creation and destruction and descriptions of Hindu cosmology, philosophy, and geography. Like the Vedas, Puranas were remembered orally, in the later period they were modified and written.

The Creation of the World
In the Puranas there are various accounts of creation of the world


The Union of Sky and Earth:
The simplest concept is the sexual union of the parent Gods, Sky and Earth, Sky as father and Earth as mother. Their marriage results in rain, which fertilizes the Mother Earth, which gives birth to the living beings on earth. Together they form Dyavaprthivi.

World Egg:
Life emerged from an egg floating on the water. In Sanskrit it is called the Brahmanda (Brahma means Universe and Anda, Egg). The egg split in two, one half gold and the other silver. The silver half became earth, the golden half the sky, the white membrane became the mountains, membranes the clouds and mist, the small veins the rivers, the fluid the sea and from that the sun “ Aditya” was born.
The other concept is, the waters desired to reproduce, so they toiled and heated. When they heated a golden egg was produced. The egg floated for a year and then a man “Prajapati” was produced from it. In Mahabharta, Brahma is said to born from the golden egg.

Primeval Giant:
Gods performed a sacrifice with a giant. Due to which Giant’s body became the sky, navel the air and his feet the earth. The moon sprang from his mind and the sun from his eyes, from his mouth emerged “Indra” and “Agni” and he breathed “Vayu”. The four varnas arose from him, his mouth the Brahmana, arms the Rajanya, thighs the Vaishyas and feet the Sudras.

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Indian Origins - The Subcontinent

The Indian Subcontinent is today known as South Asia comprising states of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Srilanka. The subcontinent is considered as a geographical and political independent entity because of its distinct landmass. India was once a continent but due to the continental drift it joined Asia. While studying the history of the subcontinent it is important to ignore the modern political borders. 

It is very important to understand the Geography of the subcontinent.

The subcontinent is geographically well defined but ecologically diversified. The Himalayas and the Western Ghats play a major role. The Himalayas block the icy northern winds from sweeping the Gangetic plains and the Western Ghats help in getting the western coastal strip rainfall. The Himalayas, a young fold mountain range is still in a process of uplift and fold, thus making it geologically unstable.

The North Western part of the subcontinent includes North Western Frontier province (NWFP) and Baluchistan. The area is arid except for the fertile river valleys. But the trade routes running through its valleys and passes connect the subcontinent with the areas lying to its west making it a very important region. On its east is the Thar Desert where the conditions are worse than the NWFP. In between the NWFP and the Thar Desert lies Sindh province where the Indus River provides precious water to the region.

Another geographically important zone of the subcontinent is the alluvial plain of Ganga and its tributaries. The western part of the region is known as doab, the land between the two rivers, Ganga and Yamuna. The eastern part includes the delta of the Ganga and Brahmaputra. The Vindhya mountain ranges separate the northern plains from the peninsular India while the Aravalli hills divide the Thar Desert from central India. The Malwa plateau, with its two major rivers, the Narmada and Tapi, lies between Aravalli hills and the Central Indian Mountains.

The Peninsular India is an old and relatively stable geological region. The region consists of plains plateaus and fertile river valleys such as Krishna, Godavari, Mahanadi, Kaveri and Pennar. The Deccan plateau formed by the lava flows from ancient volcanoes extends over eight Indian states and is a very major part of the peninsula. It is located in between the Western and Eastern Ghats. To its south are the Nilgiri, Annamalai and Cardomom hills. The peninsula is separated from the island Sri Lanka by the Gulf of Mannar and Palk strait. It is believed that the land bridge existed from Indian mainland to the island and was passable till 15^th century. The island is mostly flat, with mountains in the southern central part.

India occupies major part of the subcontinent, lying atop the Indian tectonic plate, and part of the Indo-Australian Plate. The subcontinent is ethically diversified with varied climatic conditions and terrain.

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Indian Origins - Introduction

“Shaped like an egg, divided vertically into empty space, earth and netherworlds” this is how Puranas describe the universe. Earth itself is a flat disk, consisting of seven varshas arranged in concentric circles alternating with seas of salt water, molasses, wine, butter, curd, milk and fresh water. In the middle is the jambudvipa, whose southern most part is known as bharatvarsha. This bharatvarsha is separated into nine divisions by sea. The mountains, rivers and locations described by the composers of the puranas were very much aware of the geography of the subcontinent, some of which can be identified even today. 

The major landmark in the subcontinent is the Indus or Sindhu River, which originates in the Tibetan plateau. The words India, Hindu and Hindustan originate from the river. The river flows 3200 km southwest across the fertile plains before meeting the Arabian Sea. Due to the fertile plains, civilizations rose up around the area, which is now known as Indus valley civilisation. 

The discovery of the Indus valley civilisation was the result of Archaeological Survey of India in the British Raj. It was Sir John Hubert Marshall’s excavation campaign in 1921–22, that helped discover one of the oldest civilisations in the world that was contemporary with ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia. 

Indus Valley Civilisation is around 3000 BCE old. During its mature phase (2600–1900 BCE) the civilisation had a flourishing and varied industry. Around 1800 BCE signs of decline started, leading to cities being abandoned by 1700 BCE. It was proposed that the decline of the Indus Civilization was caused by the invasion of an Indo-European tribe from Central Asia called the "Aryans". These claims are drawn from linguistic, genetic, archaeological, literary and cultural sources. The Aryans who later settled around the Indus valley are also known as the Rigvedic people, due to their compilation of vedic hymns known as Rig-Veda. 

The Rig-Veda is a sacred collection of thousands of Vedic hymns in different seers. Rig-Veda is believed by the western scholars to be composed around 1200 BCE and after. According to the astronomical references in the hymns, yogis and scholars date the Rig-Veda as before 4000 BCE. This conflicts with the mainstream academic notion that believes The Indo Aryan invasion. These ideas are still cherished by the western indologists but some are changing too. But if we consider the astronomical references in hymns as the yogis and scholar says, then the Aryans could be indigenous people known to us as the Indus valley civilisation. 

The Aryan invasion theory was put forward by the western scholars to explain the presence of two speech families in India, Indo-European languages in the north and Dravidian languages in the south. The Deva-Dasyu conflicts in the rigvedic hymns were interpreted as the war between the Dravidians and the invading Aryans. The theory about the invasion was an uncertain assumption but later it was turned in to a proved fact. Earlier the Aryans were considered to be a superior and advanced civilisation, but soon with the discoveries of Harappa and Mohenjodaro, they were termed as barbarians who destroyed such a splendid urban civilisation built by the Dravidians. The puranas provide a proper outlook to the indications in the vedic literature, which these scholars have ignored or used selectively for their own scheme.  

It is possible that the Indo Aryans lived in the Indus valley and the neighboring countries long before the European Aryan speakers in central asia. If true, this can put an end to the Aryan invasion theory proposed by some of the European scholars.

Read about the Indian Subcontinent