Winding the clock a few thousand years, we find sketchy details still being sewn together concerning the origins of the Vedic peoples and the ancient Harappans and the Indus Valley civilisation. Recent discoveries of cities in the southern Hindu Kush show how far the culture of the Indus Valley people spread, with the generic brick-making process employed throughout the structure but independent metropolitan cities being the connective key, a truly incredible technology for the time. The long-held belief, perpetuated by the 19th century European historians that these Vedic or ‘Aryan’ peoples were fierce invaders from the Black Sea or Eastern Europe who subjugated and destroyed the Harappans has now been refuted because of lack of any archaeological evidence, and this “invasion and subjugation” by the Vedic peoples is now viewed as a 19th century colonial attempt to further strengthen the Eurocentric historical perspective, thus further dominating India’s culture, language and philosophies. It is far more conceivable that a gradual, peaceful and pastoral migration took place over many centuries into the huge rural tracts of land and forests separating the widely dispersed Harappan cities, and that the collapse of the Indus civilisation was not due to ‘Aryan invaders’ but catastrophic environmental changes, including the drying up of the Saraswati river, around which many Harappan cities were built and which used to flow eastwards from the Indus Valley to join the Ganges. This is known to have happened around 2000 BC, the same time as similar scenarios of catastrophic climactic or seismic change caused agricultural and urban collapse in Egypt, Mesopotamia and in the Mediterranean region. The anthropological interconnection of ancient peoples across a wide cultural spectrum from India to Ireland remains indisputable – religiously, artistically and linguistically – so intense migration, trade by land and sea and intercultural exchange of technologies seem to have been carried out over distances we find hard to comprehend with our modern view of the ancient world. Seals from Harappa have been found in Mesopotamian sites, Lapis from Afghanistan was used in Egypt around 3500 BC, and skill sets of metalworkers (or tinkers) who were the alchemists, the magicians in a post Neolithic world and able to change stone ores into shining bronze, or later iron, were vital in every culture. Metals were vital
for the subsequent creation of tools, jewellery, implements and unfortunately weapons and the tinkers crossed the great plains of Asia and Eastern Europe back and forth, carrying cultural, technological and religious ideas and up-to-date skill sets from East to West and West to East. Similar designs in metalwork from the Bronze and Iron Ages have been found in Western European Celtic sites and also in South Asia. The interconnectivity is real, and the foundation stone of all our modern cultures. These were the technocrats of the Bronze and Iron Ages. Linguistics and its development over a common platform evolved in parallel to facilitate these exchanges, hence the ancient root connection between Latin and Sanskrit. The early Europeans and Arab travellers who came to India from afar were, with a few notable exceptions, itinerant seafarers who came here to trade and subjugate the land for spices, opium, precious stones and metals. But they also bought other spices to grow here in India – nutmeg and cloves from the Indonesian islands, cashew and chilli from South America, and took spices from here to grow elsewhere. So the exchanges via trade continued. The invading Moguls and Turks who came from the Western Steppes had their own emerging Islamic culture that they bought to northern India. Some rulers such as Akbar were impressed by and tolerant of the existing Indian culture they found, and in essence fused together language, society, art and architecture to create the great Moghul Empire. Many of these powerful men were totally illiterate, and whilst being great warriors and leaders they had no real desire to unravel the past, they were too busy creating the future. Literacy was another man’s pursuit. But elements of the Turkish, Persian and Arab languages, culture and cuisine became embedded in those of India by necessity, and the continuum integrated this with ease. History in the making. The present is built on the cultural and technological exchanges, movements, communication and battles of the past. We are still making history, day by day, just as it always has been. At a root level the same basic exchanges are still being made the world over, with trade, technology and language. One day we might understand how to do all this globally, peacefully, without wars. Only then we will all have truly have evolved from the Stone Age.
The writer is British and lives in Chennai. culturama | october 2011
29