Chapter 82. From the Indus Cities to the Vedic Hymns: Origins and the Aryan Question

Part 9 begins on the Indus plain. An urban civilisation flourished and vanished there, and a body of orally transmitted hymns later appeared that became Hinduism’s oldest scripture. How the two relate is among the most politically charged questions in the study of religion: philologists, imperial administrators, racial theorists, Hindu nationalists and Dalit organisations have each built a narrative on it [Walsh, A Brief History of India, #38599, “Into or Out of India”]. This chapter sets out the archaeological record, the earliest Vedic stratum with its soma and fire cult, and the competing models of “Aryan” origins. It records the library’s non-mainstream readings under their authors’ names and links the Vedic pantheon back to the Indo-Iranian material of the Zoroastrian parts.

The rediscovery of the Indus civilisation

Walsh reports that Harappan traces “were discovered only in the 1820s when a deserter from the East India Company army happened upon some of its ruins in a place called Haripah”. In the nineteenth century the ruins “were thought to date only to the time of Alexander the Great”. Their antiquity was recognised only in the 1920s, after a description of two seals in the Illustrated London News led a specialist on Sumer to suggest a link with Mesopotamia [Walsh, A Brief History of India, #38599, “Finding Harappa”]. Between 2600 and 1900 BC the civilisation covered more than 263,000 square miles. Mohenjo-daro covered 200 hectares and may have housed more than 40,000 people, and it and Harappa “were separated by 400 miles of Indus River”, yet their remains are, in John Marshall’s words, “to all intents and purposes identical” [Walsh, #38599, ch. 1]. Scarre, Fagan and Golden add that the two “are now recognized to be only two among over a dozen large settlements”. They illustrate a “steatite seal showing carved image of an antelope with symbols of the undeciphered Indus script above its back” [Scarre, Fagan & Golden, Ancient Civilizations, #65218, ch. 5, fig. 5.6].

Walsh counts more than 400 signs on the seals, “too many for an alphabet but too few for a pictographic writing system”. The unicorn is the commonest animal on them. Proto-Dravidian decipherments “are not yet generally accepted” [Walsh, #38599, “Reading the Indus Script”]. No one knows what the bearded “Priest-King” bust represents. Still, a torso resembling the dancing Shiva, a seal figure seated “cross-legged in a yogic pose” and female figurines that recall later mother-goddesses suggest continuity with later Hinduism [Walsh, #38599, ch. 1]. Armstrong agrees that “we know next to nothing about either the Harappans or their religion”, apart from “tantalizing hints” of later cults [Armstrong, The Great Transformation, #82303, “The Axial Peoples (c. 1600 to 900 BCE)”].

Dating, decline and the invasion debate

The sources agree on the mature-phase dates and disagree on the end and on the Vedic relationship. Van Voorst places the composition of the Vedic songs “soon after the Aryan invasion of India around 1500 B.C.E.” and dates the final form of the Rig Veda to about 1200 BCE [Van Voorst, Anthology of World Scriptures, #63227, “Historical Origin and Development”]. Sorajjakool likewise writes that “by 1500 bce, a semi-nomadic group called the Aryans invaded this region”. He adds that their homeland is disputed and lists Central Asia, Lithuania and the Arctic (Tilak) among the proposals [Sorajjakool, World Religions for Healthcare Professionals, #35015, ch. 3].

Walsh gives the revised view: “studies now show that the Indo-Aryans actually entered India in large numbers two centuries after the decline of Harappan civilization”. In her account the hymns began in southern Afghanistan around 1700 BC, and the tribes reached the Punjab by 1400 BC by a gradual process of trade, herding and migration. She notes that “no ‘new’ human subgroup entered the region” in the skeletal record, and attributes the collapse to climate change, the drying of the Ghaggar-Hakra and disease [Walsh, #38599, “Origins of the Aryans”]. Ferrara goes further. “More likely the Indus Valley Civilization was contemporaneous with Vedic culture—or the Vedic tradition was its precursor.” He calls the idea of “a massive invasion by lighter-skinned Aryans who displaced darker-complexioned aboriginals” “a remnant of colonial ideology that justified racist policies”, and concludes that “drought, and not outside aggressors, likely caused its deterioration” [Ferrara, Sacred Bliss, #66945, ch. 1 “Vedānta, Sādhu Priests, and the ‘Lord of Bhang'”]. The Encyclopedia of Hinduism dates the Rig Veda’s compilation to around 1500 BCE. It notes that older parts would put the Aryas in India “as early as c. 2000 B.C.E.”, “synchronous with the theoretical migration of Indo-European-speaking peoples into India from the northwest” [Jones & Ryan, Encyclopedia of Hinduism, #42241].

Walsh traces the political uses. Max Müller drew on the linguistic theory to proclaim a family of “Celts, the Germans, the Slaves [sic], the Greeks and Italians, the Persian and Hindus”. British imperialists used it to explain Indian “degeneration”, and the Nazis made it a “master race” doctrine. Hindu nationalists answer with an “out of India” thesis under which Hindus alone “can legitimately claim the right to live in and govern” India. Dalit groups such as Dalitstan reverse the roles and say Aryan invaders, “the ancestors of today’s Brahmans”, “conquered and enslaved the original inhabitants of India”. Walsh notes the absence of horses at Harappan sites and records that one “out of India” advocate altered a seal image to make a bull resemble a horse (Witzel and Farmer 2000) [Walsh, #38599, “Into or Out of India”].

Non-mainstream readings held in the library

The library also holds alternative-history readings, which are reported here as their authors’ claims. B. E. Lewis writes that Aratta “may be the same as Harappa” and that Harappa and Mohenjo-daro were cities “of the ancient Dravidians, the legendary serpent people who preceded the Aryan occupation of India”. He describes them as post-Deluge colonies of “the Nagas, a race of serpent-men”, and asks whether these were “again … the Anunnaki” [Lewis, Ancient Serpent Gods, #68172]. Corrado Malanga’s Le guerre stellari di Mohenjo-daro (1999) presents the topic as “protoufologia”. It draws on the Ramayana’s vimanas and on David Davenport’s “2000 A.C.: distruzione atomica”. Malanga claims that a strip of bricks was exposed to more than 900 °C “per pochi secondi” and that the city saw an aerial battle “tra opposte forze extraterrestri” [Malanga, Le guerre stellari di Mohenjo-daro, #59916]. Childress likewise attributes skeletons “holding hands and sprawling in the streets” to atomic explosions [Childress, Technology of the Gods, #64573, “The Doom of Mohenjo-Daro”]. Walsh records only that “unburied corpses have been found” at Mohenjo-daro’s top level [Walsh, #38599, “The End of Harappan Civilization”].

The Rig Veda: structure, gods and sacrifice

Debroy explains that the Rig Veda “derives its name from the word rik, which means a mantra”. He counts 1,080 suktas and 10,589 verses in ten mandalas, and in Mandala One “the bulk of the mantras are addressed to Indra. Agni comes next” [Debroy, The Rig Veda, #82390, Introduction]. The Encyclopedia of Hinduism gives two different rankings. Under Indra it says that “by far the greatest number of the thousand plus hymns” go to him. Under Agni it says that “there are more hymns to Agni in the RIG VEDA … than to any other divinity” [Jones & Ryan, #42241, “Indra”; “Agni”].

Van Voorst describes stages. “The oldest hymns deal with the gods of the Indo-Aryans: the sky-god Dyaus Pitar, whom the Greeks knew as Zeus, and the earth-goddess Prithivi Mater. In the next stage … Indra the new sky-god, Agni the god of fire, Soma the god of drugged sacrifice” [Van Voorst, #63227, “Historical Origin and Development”]. His selections include RV 1.1 (Agni), 8.48 (Soma), 10.85 (marriage) and 10.16 (cremation). The cremation hymn asks that “Agni who eats all things make it whole, and Soma who has entered the Brahmins” [Van Voorst, #63227, “Cremation”]. In RV 2.12 Indra “killed the serpent and loosed the seven rivers” and “drove the race of Dasas down into obscurity”. Van Voorst glosses Dasas as “‘slaves,’ enemies of the Aryans whom they subjugated” [Van Voorst, #63227, “The God Indra”].

Debroy notes that Indra “killed the demon Vritra” with the vajra, and that “Mitra is an aspect of the sun that presided over the day. Correspondingly, Varuna presided over the night” [Debroy, #82390, Mandala One, “Vayu”]. Griffith’s translation reads: “LET thy Bay Steeds bring thee, the Strong, hither to drink the Soma draught— Those, Indra, who are bright as suns” (RV 1.16.1), and of the river goddess, “Sarasvati, the mighty flood … She brightens every pious thought” (RV 1.3.12) [Griffith, Keith & Bloomfield, Four Vedas, #42756]. Ferrara quotes RV 8.48: “We have drunk the Soma; we have become immortal; we have gone to the light; we have found the gods.” He reports the view that soma mixed Cannabis indica with Ephedra [Ferrara, #66945, ch. 1].

Armstrong: violence, Varuna and the late question

For Armstrong, “by the time the Aryan tribes arrived in India, its language was already archaic”. She describes a raiding society in which Varuna’s attributes, “the administration of law, the guardianship of the truth, and the punishment of falsehood”, pass to Indra. Yet “Indra was a killer, who had only managed to defeat Vritra by lying and cheating”. One soma hymn begins “to win a cow, to win a steed: have I not drunk of Soma juice?”, and a king returning from a ritual raid was hailed, “Thou, O King, art brahman!” By the tenth century the devas seemed “crude and unsatisfactory”. RV 10.121 asks “What god shall we adore with our offering?” and answers with Prajapati, while RV 10.129 ends in “the silence of unknowing” [Armstrong, The Great Transformation, #82303, “The Axial Peoples (c. 1600 to 900 BCE)”].

The Indo-Iranian link

According to Walsh, the languages of the Rig Veda and the Avesta are “like dialects of the same language”. Both peoples call themselves “Aryans” and worship “similar gods with similar names” [Walsh, #38599, “Origins of the Aryans”]. The Encyclopedia of Hinduism states that the Zend Avesta “has much in common with the Rig Veda, sharing many verses” [Jones & Ryan, #42241, Chronology]. Moulton suggests that a late Avestan demon named “in company with Indra and Saurva” may have been “reimported”, and that the passage “represents anti-Hindu polemic (cf. the Indian gods Indra and Çarva)” [Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, #55011]. The library also holds Chatterji’s Atharvan Zarathustra: The Foremost Prophet, catalogued under Zoroastrianism, Hinduism and comparative religion. Its title gives Zarathustra the Vedic role of an Atharvan priest, but the library copy’s text cannot be extracted, so its argument is not quoted here [Chatterji, Atharvan Zarathustra, #54924].

Key points

• Walsh: Harappa was first noticed in the 1820s by an East India Company deserter at “Haripah” and was at first dated to Alexander’s time. It lies 400 miles from Mohenjo-daro. Scarre et al. count more than a dozen large sites, whose script remains undeciphered.
• The sources agree on c. 2600–1900 BCE for the mature civilisation. They divide between an invasion c. 1500 BCE (Van Voorst, Sorajjakool), a migration after Harappa’s decline (Walsh), and overlap or Vedic priority (Ferrara).
• Walsh documents successive political uses of the Aryan question: philological, imperial, Nazi, Hindu-nationalist and Dalit.
• Lewis’s “serpent people”, Malanga’s extraterrestrial war and Childress’s “atomic” Mohenjo-daro are non-mainstream readings.
• Van Voorst’s stages run from Dyaus Pitar and Prithivi Mater to Indra, Agni and Soma. The Encyclopedia of Hinduism ranks Indra first in one entry and Agni first in another.
• Armstrong presents Indra as a deceitful “killer” who absorbed Varuna’s moral role, and RV 10.121 as the turn toward a single creator.
• Moulton reads the Avestan demon Indra as possible anti-Hindu polemic.