Sunday 25 March 2012

Hindu Civilization


A Hindu Primer

Hinduism and The Indus Valley Civization
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Map
ZoomIn
The extent of the IVC

·            The Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) was a Bronze Age civilization(3300–1300 BCE; mature period 2600–1900 BCE) located in the western region of South Asia  , and spread over what are now Pakistan , northwest India, and eastern Afghanistan.
·       Flourishing in theIndus River  basin, the civilization extended east into the Ghagger-Haggar riverto northeastern Afghanistan. The civilization was spread over some 1,260,000 km², making it the largest ancient civilization.
·       The Indus Valley is one of the world's earliest urban civilizations, along with     
       its contemporaries,Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt .
·       At its peak, the Indus Civilization may have had a population of well over five million. Inhabitants of the ancient Indus river valley developed new techniques in metallurgy and handicraft (carneol products, seal carving) and produced copper, bronze, lead, and tin. The civilization is noted for its cities built of brick, roadside drainage system, and multistoried houses.
·            The Indus Valley Civilization is also known as the Harappan Civilization, as the first of its cities to be unearthed was located at Harappa, excavated in the 1920s in what was at the time the Punjab province  of British India  
·       There were earlier and later cultures, often called Early Harappan and Late Harappan, in the same area of the Harappan Civilization.
·       The Harappan civilisation is sometimes called the Mature Harappan culture to distinguish it from these cultures.
·       The Harappan Language is not directly attested and its affiliation is uncertain since the Indus script  is still undeciphered.

 Chronology
With the inclusion of the predecessor and successor cultures—Early Harappan and Late Harappan, respectively—the entire Indus Valley Civilization may be taken to have lasted from the 33rd to the 14th centuries BCE.

Two terms are employed for the periodization of the IVC: Phases and Eras, The Early Harappan, Mature Harappan, and Late Harappan phases are also called the Regionalisation, Integration, and Localisation eras, respectively, with the Regionalization era reaching back to the Neolithic Mehrgarh II period.


Date range

Phase

Era

7000 - 5500 BCE

Mehrgarh I (aceramic Neolithic)
Early Food Producing Era

5500-3300

Mehrgarh II-VI (ceramic Neolithic)
Regionalisation Era
5500-2600
3300-2600Early Harappan

3300-2800

Harappan 1 (Ravi Phase)

2800-2600

Harappan 2 (Kot Diji Phase, Nausharo I, Mehrgarh VII)
2600-1900Mature Harappan (Indus Valley Civilization)Integration Era

2600-2450

Harappan 3A (Nausharo II)

2450-2200

Harappan 3B

2200-1900

Harappan 3C
1900-1300Late Harappan (Cemetery H); Ochre Coloured PotteryLocalisation Era

1900-1700

Harappan 4

1700-1300

Harappan 5

1300-300

Painted Gray Ware, Northern Black Polished Ware (Iron Age)

Indo-Gangetic Tradition


Geography
ancient seacoast,for example, Balakot, and on islands, for example, Dholavira

The Indus Valley Civilization encompassed :
· most of Pakistan
· The geography of the Indus Valley put the civilizations that arose there in a highly similar situation to those in Egypt and Peru , with rich agricultural lands being surrounded by highlands, desert, and ocean.
· Recently, Indus sites have been discovered in Pakistan's northwestern Frontier Province as well.
· An Indus Valley site has been found on theOxus River at Shortughai in northern Afghanistan, in the Gomal River valley in northwestern Pakistan.
· Indus Valley sites have been found most often on rivers, but also on the

·       According to some archaeologists, over 500 Harappan sites have been discovered along the dried up river beds of the Ghaggar-Hakra River and its tributaries,
Background- Early Harappan
·       The Early Harappan Ravi Phase, named after the nearby Ravi River , lasted from circa 3300 BCE until 2800 BCE.

·       It is related to the Hakra Phase, identified in the Ghaggar-Hakra River Valley to the west, and predates the Kot Diji  Phase (2800-2600 BCE, Harappan 2), named after a site in northernSindh, Pakistan , near Mohenjo Daro 
·       The earliest examples of theIndus script  date from around 3000 BCE.

·       Trade networks linked this culture with related regional cultures and distant sources of raw materials, including lapis lazuli  and other materials for bead-making.

·       Villagers had, by this time, domesticated numerous crops, including peas, sesame seeds, dates and cottons , as well as various animals, including the water buffalo 
·       Early Harappan communities turned to large urban centres by 2600 BCE, from where the mature Harappan phase started.
Mature Harappan

Nature and Service:


·       Hindus believe divinity in everyone. Hindu dharma preaches happiness to all beings and peace at various levels. Hindus practice coexistence with ecology.
·       Hindus are nature lovers and consider service to humanity is equivalent to service to God.

Cities




Computer-aided reconstruction of coastal Harappan settlement at Sokhta Koh near Pasni, Pakistan





·       A sophisticated and technologically advanced urban culture is evident in the Indus Valley
·       Civilization making them the first urban centres in the region
·       . The quality of municipal  town planning suggests the knowledge of urban planning  and efficient municipal governments  which placed a high priority on hygiene , or, alternatively, accessibility to the means of religious ritual.
·       As seen in Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro and the recently partially excavated Rakhigarhi , this urban plan included the world's first known urban sanitation  systems: see hydraulic engineering of the Indus Valley Civilization.
·       Within the city, individual homes or groups of homes obtained water from wells. From a room that appears to have been set aside for bathing, waste water was directed to covered drains, which lined the major streets. Houses opened only to inner courtyards  and smaller lanes. The house-building in some villages in the region still resembles in some respects the house-building of the Harappans.
·       The ancient Indus systems of sewerage and drainage that were developed and used in cities throughout the Indus region were far more advanced than any found in contemporary urban sites in the Middle East  and even more efficient than those in many areas of Pakistan and India today.
·       The advanced architecture of the Harappans is shown by their impressive dockyards, warehouses, brick platforms, and protective walls. The massive walls of Indus cities most likely protected the Harappans from floods and may have dissuaded military conflicts.




So-called "Priest King" statue, Mohenjo-Daro, late Mature Harappan period, National Museum, Karachi, Pakistan

·       Indus Civilization cities were remarkable for their apparent, if relative, egalitarianism. All the houses had access to water and drainage facilities. This gives the impression of a society with relatively low wealth concentration, though clear social levelling is seen in personal adornments.



Authority and governance
Archaeological records provide no immediate answers for a center of power or for depictions of people in power in Harappan society. But, there are indications of complex decisions being taken and implemented. For instance, the extraordinary uniformity of Harappan artifacts as evident in pottery, seals, weights and bricks. These are the major assumptions:

  • There was a single state, given the similarity in artifacts, the evidence for planned settlements, the standardised ratio of brick size, and the establishment of settlements near sources of raw material.

  • There was no single ruler but several: Mohenjo-daro had a separate ruler, Harappa another, and so forth.

  • Harappan society had no rulers, and everybody enjoyed equal status.
Science

















Indus Valley seals, British Museum
·       The people of the Indus Civilization achieved great accuracy in measuring length, mass, and time.
·       They were among the first to develop a system of uniform weights and measures.
·       A comparison of available objects indicates large scale variation across the Indus territories
·        Harappan engineers followed the decimal division of measurement for all practical purposes, including the measurement of mass as revealed by their hexahedron  weights.








Bead or weight, possibly phallic in form.
·       These Chert  weights were in a ratio of 5:2:1 with weights of 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500 units, with each unit weighing approximately 28 grams, similar to the English imperial ounce or Greek uncia, and smaller objects were weighed in similar ratios with the units of 0.871.
·       Harappans evolved some new techniques in metallurgy and produced copper, bronze, lead and tin . The engineering skill of the Harappans was remarkable, especially in building docks.

Arts and crafts







The "dancing girl of Mohenjo Daro"
·       Various sculptures, seals, pottery, gold jewelry, and anatomically detailed figurines in terracotta , bronze, and steatite have been found at excavation sites.
·       A number of gold, terra-cotta and stone figurines of girls in dancing poses reveal the presence of some dance  form. Also, these terra-cotta figurines included cows, bears, monkeys, and dogs. The animal depicted on a majority of seals at sites of the mature period has not been clearly identified. Part bull, part zebra, with a majestic horn, it has been a source of speculation. As yet, there is insufficient evidence to substantiate claims that the image had religious or cultic significance, but the prevalence of the image raises the question of whether or not the animals in images of the IVC are religious symbols.
Sir John Marshall is known to have reacted with surprise when he saw the famous Indus bronze statuette of a slender-limbed dancing girl in Mohenjo-Daro:
… When I first saw them I found it difficult to believe that they were prehistoric; they seemed to completely upset all established ideas about early art, and culture. Modeling such as this was unknown in the ancient world up to the Hellenistic age of Greece, and I thought, therefore, that some mistake must surely have been made; that these figures had found their way into levels some 3000 years older than those to which they properly belonged. … Now, in these statuettes, it is just this anatomical truth which is so startling; that makes us wonder whether, in this all-important matter, Greek artistry could possibly have been anticipated by the sculptors of a far-off age on the banks of the Indus.

Many crafts:
·       "such as shell working, ceramics, and agate and glazed steatite bead making" were used in the making of necklaces, bangles, and other ornaments from all phases of Harappan sites and some of these crafts are still practised in the subcontinent today.
·        Some make-up and toiletry items (a special kind of combs (kakai), the use of collyrium and a special three-in-one toiletry gadget) that were found in Harappan contexts still have similar counterparts in modern India.
·       Seals have been found at Mohenjo-Daro   depicting a figure standing on its head, and another sitting cross-legged in what some call a yoga-like pose (see image, the so-called Pashupati, below).
·       This figure, sometimes known as a Pashupati, has been variously identified. Sir John Marshall identified a resemblance to the Hindu god, Shiva.] If this can be validated, it would be evidence that some aspects of Hinduism predate the earliest texts, the Veda.
·       A harp-like instrument depicted on an Indus seal and two shell objects found at Lothal indicate the use of stringed musical instruments.
·       The Harappans also made various toys and games, among them cubical dice  (with one to six holes on the faces), which were found in sites like Mohenjo-Daro.
Trade and transportation







The docks of ancient Lothal as they are today




The Indus civilization's economy appears to have depended significantly on trade, which was facilitated by major advances in transport technology.

·            The IVC may have been the first civililzation to use wheeled transport.
·       These advances may have included bullock carts  that are identical to those seen throughout South Asia today, as well as boats. Most of these boats were probably small, flat-bottomed craft, perhaps driven by sail, similar to those one can see on the Indus River today; however, there is secondary evidence of sea-going craft.
·       Archaeologists have discovered a massive, dredged canal and what they regard as a docking facility at the coastal city of Lothal in western India (Gujarat state). An extensive canal network, used for irrigation, has however also been discovered by H.-P. Francfort.
·       During 4300–3200 BCE of the chalcolithic  period (copper age), the Indus Valley Civilization area shows ceramic similarities with southern Turkmenistan  and northernIran  which suggest considerable mobility and trade.
·       Judging from the dispersal of Indus civilisation artifacts, the trade networks, economically, integrated a huge area, including portions of Afghanistan, the coastal regions of persia , northern and western India, and Mesopotamia .
·       There is some evidence that trade contacts extended to Crete and possibly to Egypt.
·       There was an extensive maritime trade network operating between the Harappan and Mesopotamian civilizations as early as the middle Harappan Phase, with much commerce being handled by "middlemen merchants from Dilmun" (modern bahrain and Failaka  located in the Persian Gulf).Such long-distance sea trade became feasible with the innovative development of plank-built watercraft, equipped with a single central mast supporting a sail of woven rushes or cloth.

·       Several coastal settlements like Sotkagen-dor (astride Dasht River, north of Jiwani), Sokhta Koh (astride Shadi River, north of Pasni), and Balakot (near Sonmiani) in Pakistan along with Lothal in India testify to their role as Harappan trading outposts. Shallow harbors located at the estuaries of rivers opening into the sea allowed brisk maritime trade with Mesopotamian cities.
Writing system
·       Between 400 and as many as 600 distinct Indus symbols  have been found on seals, small tablets, ceramic pots and over a dozen other materials, including a "signboard" that apparently once hung over the gate of the inner citadel of the Indus city of Dholavira.
·       Typical Indus inscriptions are no more than four or five characters in length

·       Indus Valley Civilization is generally characterized as a literate society on the evidence of these inscriptions

In a 2009 study by P. N. Rao published in Science, computer scientists, comparing the pattern of symbols to various linguistic scripts and non-linguistic systems, including DNA and a computer programming language, found that the Indus script's pattern is closer to that of spoken words, supporting the hypothesis that it codes for an as-yet-unknown language.

Religion








The so-called Shiva Pashupati seal




 
·       The religion of Hinduism probably has its roots in the Indus Valley civilisation

Hindus and Indus people:
·       both worship a 'mother goddess' (her names include Parvati and Sakti), and both regard the cow as sacred.
·       Hindus and Indus people both bathe in the River for religious purposes and consider rivers holy.
·       Some Indus valley seals show swastikas, which are found in other religions (worldwide), especially in Indian religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.
·        The earliest evidence for elements of Hinduism are alleged to have been present before and during the early Harappan period.









·       Swastika Seals from the Indus Valley Civilization preserved at the British Museum.
·   



    Many Indus valley seals show animals.
·       One motif shows a horned figure seated in a posture reminiscent of the Lotus position and surrounded by animals was named by early excavators Pashupati (lord of cattle), an epithet of the later Hindu gods Shiva and Rudra.
·       There are no religious buildings or evidence of elaborate burials. If there were temples, they have not been identified.
·       In the earlier phases of their culture, the Harappans buried their dead; however, later, especially in the Cemetery H culture of the late Harrapan period, they also cremated their dead and buried the ashes in burial urns.

The collapse and Late Harappan
·       Around 1800 BCE, signs of a gradual decline began to emerge, and by around 1700 BCE, most of the cities were abandoned.
·       In 1953, Sir Mortimer Wheeler proposed that the decline of the Indus Civilization was caused by the invasion of an Indo-European tribe from Central Asia called the "Aryans"
·            Today, many scholars believe that the collapse of the Indus Civilization was caused by drought and a decline in trade with Egypt and Mesopotamia.
·       It has also been suggested that immigration by new peoples, deforestation, floods, or changes in the course of the river may have contributed to the collapse of the IVC.
·       Previously, it was also believed that the decline of the Harappan civilization led to an interruption of urban life in the Indian subcontinent
·       However, the Indus Valley Civilization did not disappear suddenly, and many elements of the Indus Civilization can be found in later cultures.
·            Current archaeological data suggest that material culture classified as Late Harappan may have persisted until at least c. 1000-900 BCE and was partially contemporaneous with the Painted Grey Ware culture.
·       Harvard archaeologist Richard Meadow points to the late Harappan settlement of Pirak, which thrived continuously from 1800 BCE to the time of the invasion of Alexander the Great in 325 BCE.



































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