| White Huns - Hephthalites - Iranian Huns White Huns - Hephthalites Silk Road Foundation The Origin of Hephthalites The paucity of record in Hephthalites or Ephthalites provides us fragmentary picture of their civilization and empire. Their background is uncertain. They probably stemmed from a combination of the Tarim basin peoples and the Yueh-chih. There is a striking resemblance in the deformed heads of the early Yueh-chih and Hephthalite kings on their coinage. According to Procopius's History of the Wars, written in the mid 6th century - the Hephthalites "are of the stock of the Huns in fact as well as in name: however they do not mingle with any of the Huns known to us. They are the only ones among the Huns who have white bodies...." Ephthalites was the name given by Byzantine historians and Hayathelaites by the Persian historian Mirkhond, and sometimes Ye-tai or Hua by Chinese historians. They are also known as the White Huns, different from the Hun who led by Attila invading the Roman Empire. They are described as a kindred steppe people originally occupied the pasture-lands in the Altai mountain of southwestern Mongolia. Toward the middle of the 5th century, they expanded westward probably because of the pressure from the Juan-juan, a powerful nomadic tribe in Mongolia. Within decades, they became a great power in the Oxus basin and the most serious enemy of the Persian empire. The Westward Expansion and War with Sassanian Empire At the time when the Hephthalites gained power, Kushan and Gandhara were ruled by the Kidarites, a local dynisty of Hun or Chionites tribe. The Hephthalites entered Kabul and overthrew Kushan. The last Kidarites fled to Gandhara and settled at Peshawar. Around 440 the Hephthalites further took Sogdian (Samarkand) and then Balkh and Bactria. The Hephthalites moved closer and closer toward Persian territory. In 484 the Hephthalite chief Akhshunwar led his army attacked the Sassanian King Peroz (459-484) and the king was defeated and killed in Khurasan. After the victory, the Hephthalite empire extended to Merv and Herat, which had been the regions of the Sassanid Empire. The Hephthalites, at the time, became the superpower of the Middle Asia. They not only destroyed part of Sassanian Empire in Iran but also intervened in their dynastic struggles when the Sassanid royal, Kavad (488-496), was fighting for the throne with Balash, brother of Peroz. Kavad married the niece of the Hephthalites chief and the Hephthalites aided him to regain his crown in 498. After conquest of Sogdia and Kushan, the Hephthalites founded the capital, Piandjikent, 65 kilometers south-west of Samarkand in the Zaravshan valley. This city later reached its prosperity, produced one of the best mural paintings in the seventh century and later was destroyed by the Arabs. The Hephthalites chose Badakshan as their summer residence. Their chiefs lived north of the Hindu Kush, migrating seasonlly from Bactria where they spent the winter, to Badakshan, their summer residence. Under the Hephthalite control, the Bactrian script and language continued to be used and trade and commerce flourished as previously. The Eastward Expansion to the Tarim Basin With the stabilization at the western border, the Hephthalites extended their influence to the northwest into the Tarim Basin. From 493 to 556 A.D., they invaded Khotan, Kashgar, Kocho, and Karashahr. The relationship with Juan-juan and China were tightened. The Chinese record indicated that between 507 and 531, the Hephthalites sent thirteen embassies to Northern Wei (439-534) by the king named Ye-dai-yi-li-tuo. Invasion to India During the 5th century, the Gupta dynasty in India reigned in the Ganges basin with the Kushan empire occupied the area along the Indus. India knew the Hephthalite as Huna by the Sanskrit name. The Hephthaltes or Hunas waited till 470 rigth after the death of Gupta ruler, Skandagupta (455-470), and entered the Inda from the Kabul valley after the conquest of Kushan. They mopped on along the Ganges and ruined every city and town. The noble capital, Pataliputra, was reduced in population to a village. They persecuted Buddhists and burned all the monasteries. Their conquest was accomplished with extreme ferocity and the Gupta regime (414-470) was completely extinguished. For thirty years the northwestern India was ruled by Hephthalite kings. We learned some of the Hephthalite kings ruling India from coins. The most famous ones were Toramana and Mihrakula ruling India in the first half of the 6th century. The Language There are numerous debates about Hephthalite language. Most scholars believe it is Iranian for the Pei Shih states that the language of the Hephthalites differs from those of the Juan-juan (Mongoloid) and of the "various Hu" (Turkic); however there are some think the Hephthalites spoke Mongol tongues like the Hsien-pi (3rd century) and the Juan-juan (5th century) and the Avars (6th-9th century). According to the Buddhist pilgrims Sung Yun and Hui Sheng, who visited them in 520, they had no script, and the Liang shu specifically states that they have no letters but use tally sticks. At the same time there is numismatic and epigraphic evidence to show that a debased form of the Greek alphabet was used by the Hephthalites. Since the Kushan was conquested by Hephthalites, it is possible they retained many aspects of Kushan culture, including the adoption of the Greek alphabet. The Religion It is equally inconsistent while comparing the references to the Hephthalites' religion. Although Sung Yun and Hui Sheng reported that the Hephthalites did not believe in Buddhism, though there is ample archaeological evidence that this religion was practiced in territories under Hephthalite control. According to Liang shu the Hephthalites worshiped Heaven and also fire - a clear reference to Zoroastrianism. However the burials found seem to indicate the normal practice in disposing of the dead, which is against Zoroastrian belief. The Customs Very little was known about these Hephthalite nomads. Little art has left from them. According to Sung Yun and Hui Sheng who visited their Hephthalite chief at his summer residence in Badakshan and later in Gandhara, The Hephthalites have no cities, but roam freely and live in tents. They do not live in towns; their seat of government is a moving camp. They move in search of water and pasture, journeying in summer to cool places and in winter to warmer ones....They have no belief in the Buddhist law and they serve a great number of divinities." Other than the deformation of skulls, the other interesting feature of the Hephthalites is their polyandrous society. The records of brothers marrying to one wife had been reported from Chinese source. The Extermination Between 557 to 561 Persian King Chosroes allied with another steppe people who had appeared from inner Asia. Chorsoes wanted to profit from the situation to take revenge over the defeat of his grandfather Peroz; he married a daughter of the nomadic chief and allied himself with them against the Hephthalites. The chief Sinjibu was the boldest and strongest of all the tribes and he had the largest number of troops. It was he who conquered the Hephthalites and killed their king. Mercileessly attacked on two sides, the Hephthalites were completely broken and disappeared by 565 that only small number of them survived. Some surviving groups living south of Oxus escaped Chosroes' grasp later fell to Arab invaders in the 7th century. One of the surviving groups fled to the west and may have been the ancestors of the later Avars in the Danube region. The decline of the Hephthalites marked a turning point in the story of the steppes. Another era was opening in Central Asia. For the allies of Chosroes were Western Turks, a new power was to dominate the steppe for next few centuries. ------------- THE HEPHTHALITES Richard Heli A Western student's first encounter with the mysterious Ephthalites, or Hephthalites, or White Huns of Central Asia, is probably via the writings of Procopius, that contemporary of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian and fierce polemicist against his sovereign and the Empress Theodora. Procopius recorded the observations of an ambassador traveling east with Byzantium's sometime enemies, the Persians, who had chosen for a time, and from the Byzantine perspective very fortunately, to war against their eastern neighbors for a change, the Ephthalites: "The Ephthalites are of the stock of the Huns in fact as well as in name; however they do not mingle with any of the Huns known to us.... They are the only ones among the Huns who have white bodies and countenances which are not ugly." [Procopius] Thus, even in their very first appearance, the question of the origins of this people comes into doubt. For if they are Huns, how is it that the appearance of these "White Huns" differs so markedly from that of the Huns proper? This question was not one which Procopius, so far from the Ephthalites, was in any position to determine. That modern researchers can do better is largely due to the survival of writings on the other end of the Central Asian wasteland, by those who were closer to the point of origin and encountered this group early in its history, that is, the Chinese. To the Chinese, they were the Ye-ti-i-li-do or Yeda, even though the Chinese chroniclers seem to realize that the people called themselves the people of Hua (the similarity to Hun may help explain the origin of "White Hun") and that the Chinese terms came actually from the name of the Hua leader. Like Procopius, contemporary Chinese chroniclers had their own theories about Ephthalite origins. One thought that were related in some way to the Visha (Indo-Europeans known to the Chinese as the "Yueh Chih"), another, a branch of the Kao-ch`ê, a third, descendants of the general Pahua, a fourth descendants of Kang Chu and a fifth admits that he cannot make clear their origins at all. This should not discourage as it is not in the theories of such writers that we may find value, but rather in their factual observations which may lead to the answer. Japanese researcher Kazuo Enoki takes on the theories of both the ancient and the modern writers, including the redoubtable Stein, knocking the legs out from one after another. Theories which are based on coincidence of name, e.g. Pahua and Hua, are unlikely in this part of the world which exhibits so many languages and so much linguistic adaptation and orthographic variation, he points out, and should not be upheld if other sorts of evidence do not support the reasoning. Stein's contention that the Ephthalites were of the Hunnish tribe and therefore of Turkish origin is dismissed largely on this basis. On the other hand, J. Marquart finds similarities between the terms for the Ephthalites in India and words in the Mongolian language, but this theory requires so many leaps between tongues that it remains quite unconvincing. Finally, there is a whole school of researchers attempting to prove this tribe a Turkish, albeit non-Hun, one. These too must rely only on flimsy name evidence. Instead, Enoki makes a convincing case that the Ephthalites are actually an Iranian group. His theory, it must be admitted, does not explain all, but there seems little against it. More importantly, it relies first on data which is generally agreed upon, namely, ancient observations of Ephthalite geographical movements and culture. For Enoki, Ephthalite origins may be determined by considering where they were not, as well as by where their conquests drove their enemies. They were not previously north of the Tien Shan, thus they did not stem from that region. They drove the Kidarites out of Balkh to the west, thus they came originally from the east. By such reasoning, the Ephthalites are thought to have originated at Hsi-mo-ta-lo (southwest of Badakhshan and near the Hindu Kush), which tantalizingly, stands for Himtala, "snow plain", which may be the Sanskritized form of Hephthal. Turning to the elements of Ephthalite culture, Enoki notes that Procopius' comments on their appearance while not decisive, are in favor of an Iranian theory. Similarly, the seventh century travels of Hsuan Chwang show that he found no physical difference between the descendants of the Ephthalites and their known Iranian neighbors. As for their language, commentators made clear that it was neither Turkish nor Mongol, which also seems to support an Iranian origin. Iranian customs also are common in the Ephthalite world. For example, the practice of several husbands to one wife, or polyandry, was always the rule, which is agreed on by all commentators. That this was plain was evidenced by the custom among the women of wearing a hat containing a number of horns, one for each of the subsequent husbands, all of whom were also brothers to the husband. Indeed, if a husband had no natural brothers, he would adopt another man to be his brother so that he would be allowed to marry. Conjugal rights were traded off and children were assigned in turn with the oldest husband receiving the first and so on. Tellingly, polyandry has never been associated with any Hun tribe, but is known of several Central Asian ones, including the Aryans in India, other Indo-Europeans and probably in prehistoric Iran. In their religious beliefs, the Ephthalites are said to have worshipped fire and sun gods. While either one is not unusual in any early culture around the world, both together is likely to indicate a Persian origin. In Persia, such beliefs were later to culminate in Zoroastrianism. As part of their religious observance, the Ephthalites did not cremate, but as is reported by all commentators including Procopius, always buried their dead, either by constructing a tomb or under the ground. This is not consistent with the Zoroastrian practice of leaving the body in the open, but is clearly at odds with Turkish nomadic groups. The practice of inhumation then may simply indicate an Iranian group which had been sundered from the main branch at an early date and had adopted local Central Asian burial customs. The rocketlike political career of the Ephthalites may be traced in Appendix A. It may be seen that its enormous rapid successes came not only out of ferocity in battle, but also from shrewd diplomacy. Like the Arabs, the Vikings and others in the parade of history, they seem to appear virtually out of nowhere and amass for themselves a huge area. Of their language, only four words are known including "Ephthalite" itself, and these dubious. Their coins are putative at best, their arts, wholly unknown. Despite their apparent talents for war and diplomacy, however, they appear to have been harsh rulers disliked by rebellious subjects and thus their legacy is brief. Persian Emperor Chosroes, faced with the choice of war against the Turks or conquest of the Ephthalites, hardly needed a moment to opt for the latter -- ironic if the Ephthalites truly had an Iranian origin. But such nationalistic ideas were not the rule in those times. Not much has been written about their dramatic story since 1966, but Enoki hints that from the translation and study of possible Ephthalite documents unearthed at Lou Lan, we may someday learn more about this mysterious and fascinating people. Let us hope it will be so. Appendix A: Approximate Timeline. [Enoki, McGovern] 420-427 Ephthalites raid Persia as far west as modern Tehran. 427 Ephthalites suffer overwhelming defeat in Persia. 437 Chinese embassy to Tokharistan (area around Balkh) and Gandhara finds no sign of Ephthalites. 454 Ephthalites revenge earlier loss to Sassanid Persians. 456 Ephthalites send their first embassy to the Chinese. 457 Firuz (Peroz), former king of Persia, requests Ephthalite assistance. 459 Firuz regains Persian throne with help of Ephthalite armies. 464-475 Wars between the former allies resolved with Persian tribute in 475. 465-470 Ephthalites conquer Gandhara, set up a Tegin (a viceroy). 470-480 War between Tegin of Gandhara and Gupta Empire of India. 473-479 Ephthalites conquer Sogdiana, driving the Kidarites westwards. Next conquering Khotan and Kashgar (in the Tarim Basin). 480-500 Gupta empire collapses. Tegin is overlord of North & Central India. 484 Firuz initiates new war against the Ephthalites which fails miserably. 486 Firuz' heir Kubad takes refuge with Ephthalites following a coup. 488 Kubad regains the throne with Ephthalite assistance. 493-508 Ephthalites extend power as far as Zungaria, then Turfan and Karashar (in modern China). 497 Kubad deposed and escapes to a second refuge with the Ephthalites. 500 Ephthalites place Kubad on Sassanid throne a second time (dies 531). 503-513 Kubad makes war on the Ephthalites. Peace in 513 lasts. 522 Apex of Ephthalite power. Chief of the Juan-Juan nomads flees to the Ephthalites for protection. Ephthalites dominate north and south of the Tien Shan range. Control as far as Tieh-lo in the south, Ci`ih-le^ (Kao-ch`e^) in the north, at least to Khotan in the east probably more, and up to Persia in the west. A separate Ephthalite Empire controls much of India. Forty countries (including Sassanid Persia) are in tribute. Ephthalite centers are at Ghur, Balkh, Warwaliz (north of today's Kunduz near the source of the Oxus) and Hsi-mo-ta-lo. The entire empire probably comprises fifty to sixty thousand individuals. 531 Chosroes succeeds his father Kubad in Persia. 532 Revolts in India; Ephthalites lose most of East & Central India. 532-542 Fleeing ruler conquers the Kashmir for a short reign. 552 Turks overthrow Avars and begin petty conflicts with Ephthalites. c. 565 Turks and Chosroes (Khusrau) of Persia ally to capture and divide Ephthalite empire. c. 570 Ephthalite rule overthrown in India. Appendix B: Bibliography. • Enoki, Kazuo, Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko, 1955, No. 18, "On the Nationality of the Ephthalites" • Hambly, Gavin, Central Asia, 1966, Chapter 3: "Sassanians and Turks in Central Asia" • McGovern, William, The Early Empires of Central Asia, 1939, Chap. 18: "The Huns in Persia and India," pp. 399-419, and notes, pp. 454-457. • Procopius, History of the Wars, Books I and II, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 1, pp. 12-15 |
Showing posts with label MEHMOOD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MEHMOOD. Show all posts
Monday, November 17, 2008
White Huns - Hephthalites - Iranian Huns
Scythians - Sakas
| Scythians - Sakas Scythian Origins The Scythians inhabiting Central Asia at the time of Herodotus (5th century B.C.) consisted of 4 main branches known as the MassaGatae, Sacae, Alani, and Sarmatians, sharing a common language, ethnicity and culture. Ancient Greek (e.g. Herodotus, Pliny, Plotemy, Arrian) and Persian sources (Darius's historians) from the 5th century place the MassaGatea as the most southerly group in the Central Asian steppe. The earliest Scythians who entered the northern regions of South Asia were from this group. Historians derive "Jat" fom "Gatae", "Ahir" from "Avar", "Saka" from "Scythii", "Gujjar" from "Khazar", "Thakur" from "Tukharian", "Saurashtra" from "Saura Matii" or "Sarmatians", "Sessodia" (a Rajput clan) from "Sassanian", "Madra" from "Medes", "Trigartta" from "Tyri Getae" and "Sulika" from "Seleucids". "Massa" means "grand" or "big" in old Iranian - the language of the Scythians. The early Sakas or Scythians are remembered by Greek (e.g. Herodotus, Megatheses, Pliny, Ptolemy) and Persian historians of antiquity as tall, large framed and fierce warriors who were unrivalled on the horse. Herodotus from the 5th century BC writes in an eye-witness account of the Scythians: "they were the most manly and law-abiding of the Thracian tribes. If they could combine under one ruler, they would be the most powerful nation on earth." According to their origin myth recorded by Herodotus, the Sakas arose when three things fell from the sky: the i) plough, ii) sword and iii) cup. The progenitor of the Sakas picked them up and hence the Saka race began its long history of conquering lands, releasing its bounties and enjoying the fruits of their labor (the cup has a ceremonial-spiritual-festive symbolism). The relevance of these symbols and codes of life and culture to the traditional Punjabi and northwest society are tantalizingly obvious. A branch of the Sakas kown as the Alani reached regions of Europe, Asia Minor and the Middle East. They have been connected to the Goths of France/Spain, Saxons and the Juts of Denmark. Entry into Southasia Some of these Saka tribes entered northwest Southasia through the Khyber pass, others through the more southerly Bolan pass which opens into Dera Ismail Khan in Sindh. From here some invading groups went north, others went south, and others further east. This explains why some Jat, Gujjar and Rajput clans claim descent from Rajasthan (Chauhan, Powar, Rathi, Sial etc.) while others from Afghanistan (e.g. Mann, Her, Bhullar, Gill, Bajwa, Sandhu, etc.). This is supported by the fact that the oldest Rajput geneologies (10th centuries) do not extend into the northwest's Gandharan Buddhist period (400 B.C. - 900 AD). Sir Cunningham (former Director General of Indian Archeological survey) writes: "the different races of the Scythians which succesively appeared as conquerors in the border provinces of Persian and India are the following in the order of arrival: Sakas or Sacae (the Su or Sai of the Chinese - B.C. ?), Kushans (the great Yue-Chi (Yuti) of the Chinese - B.C. 163), Kiddarite or later Kushans (the little Yue-chi of the Chinese - A.D. 450) and Epthalites or White Huns (the Yetha of the Chinese - 470 A.D.). Cunningham further notes that ". . . the successive Scythian invasions of the Sakas, the Kushans, and the White Huns, were followed by permanent settlements of large bodies of their countrymen . . ". Cunningham and Tod regard the Huns to be the last Scythian wave to have entered India. Herodotus reveals that the Scythians as far back as the 5th century B.C. had political control over Central Asia and the northern subcontinent up to the river Ganges. Later Indo-Scythic clans and dynasties (e.g. Mauryas, Rajputs) extended their control to other tracts of the northern subcontinent. According to Ethnographers and historians like Cunningham, Todd, Ibbetson, Elliot, Ephilstone, Dahiya, Dhillon, Banerjea, etc., the agrarian and artisan communities (e.g. Jats, Gujars, Ahirs, Rajputs, Lohars, Tarkhans etc.) of the entire west are derived from the war-like Scythians who settled north-western and western South Asia in successive waves between 500 B.C. to 500 AD. Down to this day, the very name of the region `Gujarat' is derived from the name `Khazar', whilst `Saurashtra' denotes `Sun-worshipper', a common term for the Scythians. The northwest Southasian region continues to be the most Scythic region in the world. The oldest Rajputs clans arose much later from earlier Scythic groups; or are of Hun origin (5-6th century AD); and many are no doubt of mixed Scythic-Hun origin. Virtually all are of Scythic descent. ---------------------------- The Sakas - Indo-Scythians Jason Neelis Saka nomads from Central Asia migrated to the northwest of South Asian subcontinent in the first and second centuries BCE. Herodotus (4.1-142) describes the extent, customs, and origins of various groups of Scythians (designation for Sakas in Western classical sources) who inhabited large areas of the steppes of Central Asia on the northern peripheries of the Greek world. The Sakas are also known from Old Persian inscriptions of the Achaemenid Empire. The Naqs-i-Rustam inscription of Darius I distinguishes three groups of Sakas: 1) Saka Tigraxauda: "Sakas wearing the pointed cap" who are portrayed in a sculpture at Behistun and described by Herodotus (7.64) as "clad in trousers" and having "on their heads tall stiff caps rising to a point"; these Sakas lived between the Caspian Sea and the Jaxartes River (Syr Daria); 2) Saka Haumavarga: "hauma-drinking" or "hauma-preparing" Sakas (hauma is a type of alcoholic beverage) identified with the Amyrgian Scythians of Greek sources, possibly located in the southeastern Iranian province of Drangiana, which later became known as Sakastan or Seistan; 3) Saka Paradraya: Sakas "across the sea" who probably lived north of the Black Sea and in the Russian steppes, although some groups reached the Danube Valley in central Europe, Syria, and upper Mesopotamia. Chinese historical annals refer to the movements of the Sai (Chinese designation for Sakas) southwards into northwest of South Asia following a period of disturbances in Central Asia during the second century BCE. According to the History of the Former Han (Han shu), covering the period from 206 BCE to 25 CE: "When, formerly, the Hsiung-nu [Xiongnu] conquered the Yueh-chih [Yuezhi] the latter moved west and established themselves as masters of Ta Hsia [Da xia]; it was in these circumstances that the king of the Sai moved south and established himself as master of Chi-pin [Jibin]. The Sai tribes split and separated and repeatedly formed several states."1 The westward migrations of the Yuezhi (see Kushan essay) led to the emigration of the Sai sometime before 128 BCE, when the Han ambassador Zhang Qian arrived in Sogdia and Bactria to make an alliance with the Yuezhi. Saka migrations were not led by a single king, but were probably gradual movements of acephalous groups to Jibin, a region apparently corresponding to Gandhara or to northwest of South Asia in general. At the beginning of the first century BCE, two or possibly three groups of Sakas migrated to South Asia from Central Asia: a) Sakas from the north (perhaps coming from Khotan) took the 'Pamir routes' through the Karakorum Mountains to Swat and Gandhara; b) Sakas crossed the Hindu Kush under pressure from the Yuezhi to mountain valleys of northeastern Afghanistan; c) Sakas coming from the southwest (Sakastan) took control of modern Sindh in southern Pakistan. Maues was one of the earliest Indo-Scythian rulers during the early first century BCE. His name is preserved in bilingual Greek (Maues) and Kharosthi (Moa) coins and a Kharosthi inscription from Taxila (Moga). Maues' origins are obscure: he may have been connected with the Sakas of Sakastan, or he could have belonged to another branch of Sakas that migrated from the north through the mountains to Gandhara and Taxila. In giving himself the title of "King of Kings" in bilingual Greek and Kharosthi coin legends, Maues imitated Parthian royal titles. A Kharosthi inscription on a copper plate from Taxila dated in year 78 of an unspecified era during the reign of "maharaja Moga the Great" records the establishment of Buddhist relics by a donor named Patika, the son of an official (ksatrapa) named Liaka Kusulaka. The inscription demonstrates that Liaka Kusulaka acknowledged the authority of Maues as his overlord. Decentralized administration continued after the period of Maues under loosely affiliated officials who acknowledged a more powerful leader. Numismatic sequences and inscriptions show that Azes followed Maues as the most powerful Indo-Scythian ruler in 58 BCE, a date corresponding to the beginning of the so-called "Vikrama" era, which is still used in India. Like his predecessor, Azes adopted the title of "King of Kings" and iconography of Greek and Indic gods and goddesses from the coins of contemporary Indo-Greeks. Indo-Greek power in territories of central Afghanistan and eastern Punjab rapidly diminished during the second half of the first century BCE as Indo-Scythians predominated. Azes and his successors Azilises and Azes II administered Taxila and other areas of Pakistan and northwestern India through regional rulers with Iranian, Greek, and Indian titles. Another branch of Indo-Scythians called the "Western Ksatrapas" ruled parts of western India from the first century BCE to the end of the fourth century CE. The Western Ksatrapas vied with the Satavahanas, another regional dynasty in western India, to control trade routes between the Deccan Plateau and ports on the west coast. This area flourished due to lucrative long-distance trade across the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea and Mediterranean (described in the Periplus Maris Erythraei). The Western Ksatrapas and other ruling families and groups of merchants supported Buddhist cave monasteries clustered along routes through the Western Ghats (see essay on Buddhism and Trade). Ujjayini in central India was the center of the Western Ksatrapas from the second to early fourth centuries, until the Gupta ruler Candragupta II defeated the "Sakas" between ca. 395- 400 CE. Sakas in control of major commercial centers along the "Northern Route" (Uttarapatha) and "Southern Route" (Dakshinapatha) encouraged the development of trade networks and supported religious institutions. Inscriptions that record the establishment of Buddhist relics and donations to monasteries in Gandhara, Taxila, Mathura, and western South Asia show that Sakas, Parthians, and other Iranians were active lay supporters of the Buddhist community. Saka support of Buddhism did not preclude their patronage of other religious traditions or imply that their old beliefs were abandoned. Iranian elements in architecture, iconography, languages, and many other spheres of South Asian life around the beginning of the Common Era are easy to recognize. Concurrent with their impact in South Asia, migrations of the Sakas during the last two centuries BCE and the Kushans in first century CE from Central Asia to northwest of South Asia eventually led to the transmission of Buddhism in the other direction to Central Asia and East Asia. (1) Translation of Anthony F.P. Hulsewe in China in Central Asia. The Early Stage: 125 B.C. - A.D. 23 (An Annotated Translation of Chapters 61 and 96 of the History of the Former Han Dynasty). Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1979, pp. 104-5. Pinyin equivalents in brackets correspond to the Wade-Giles transliterations. |
Aryans were not Hindu
| Aryans were not Hindu The Aryans associated with the Rig Veda and Sapta Sindhu (i.e. today's Pakistan region) were definitely not Hindu because they did not follow the Hindu caste system, they ate beef, sacrificed cows, culturally were closer to Avestan Iranians, forbade idolatry, etc. Also, not a single Hindu idol/temple has been excavated from the Rig Vedic Aryan period. Here are some excerpts that support my views: “The evidence of the Rig Veda shows that during the centuries when the Aryans were occupying the Punjab and composing the hymns of the Rig Veda, the north-west part of the subcontinent was culturally separate from the rest of India. The closest cultural relations of the Indo-Aryans at that period were with the Iranians, whose language and sacred texts are preserved in the various works known as the Avesta, in inscriptions in Old Persian, and in some other scattered documents. So great is the amount of material common to the Rig Veda Aryans and the Iranians that the books of the two peoples show common geographic names as well as deities and ideas”. (Pakistan and Western Asia, By Prof. Norman Brown) According to A. L. Stravrianos on the non-Hindu nature of Rig Vedic Aryans: "The word Veda means knowledge. There were originally four Vedas, but the most important is the Rigveda, which is also the oldest. The Rigveda is a primary source for study of the early Aryans; it is in essence a collection of 1028 hymns arranged in ten books. Per the Vedas, Aryans worshiped elements of nature in personified forms, and idolatry was forbidden. "In Rig Veda, the gods of Dyaus is the same as the Greek Zeus (Roman Jupiter), Mitra is the same as the Graeco-Roman Mithras, Ushas is the same as the Greek Eos (Roman Aurora), and Agni is the same as the Graeco-Roman Ignis. "The image of the Aryans that emerges from Vedic literature is that of a virile people, fond of war, drinking, chariot racing, and gambling. Their god of war, Indra, was an ideal Aryan warrior: ‘he dashed into battle joyously, wore golden armor, and was able to consume the flesh of three hundred buffaloes and drink three lakes of liquor at one time’. "When they first arrived in the South Asia the Aryans were primarily pastoralists. Their economic life centered around their cattle and wealth was judged on the basis of the size of herds. As the newcomers settled in fertile river valleys, they gradually shifted more to agriculture. They lived in villages consisting of a number of related families. Several villages comprised a clan, and several clans a tribe, at the head of which was the king. The king’s authority depended on his personal prowess and initiative, and was limited by the council of nobles, and in some tribes by the freemen. "The outstanding characteristics of this early Aryan society was its basic difference from the later Hinduism. Cows were not worshipped but eaten. Intoxicating spirits were not forsaken but joyously consumed. There were classes but no castes, and the priests were subordinate to the nobles rather than at the top of the social pyramid. In short, Aryan society resembled much more the contemporary Indo-European societies than it did Hinduism that was to develop in later centuries in the Gangetic Valley." Further supports how a few Aryans who later migrated eastward towards India slowly became Hindu because of Dravidic-Mundic influences: "The castes were hardened by the time the Aryans occupied the middle land i.e., the Gangetic Valley and distinguished themselves from their brethern in Sind and the Punjab who were despised by them for not observing the rules of caste .... and for their non-Brahmanical character.” (Sindhi Culture, By U.T. Thakur) “While some Aryans had by now expanded far into India, their old home in the Punjab, Sind and the north-west was practically forgotten. Later Vedic literature mentions it rarely, and then usually with disparagement and contempt, as an impure land where sacrifices are not performed.” (The Wonder that was India, By A.L. Bhasham) This is further supported by Dr. Gurupdesh Singh: "From geographical information in the RigVeda, the Vedic Period (1500-500 BC) was confined to the northwest. The hymns composed by Vedic mystics/poets of the northwest (Saptha Sindhva) tell that the Vedic peoples worshipped non-Brahmanical Gods (Indra, Varuna, Mitra), ate cows, elected their chiefs, drank liqor, considered the Punjab rivers to be sacred, and refer to people living to the south in the gangetic region as 'Dasyas'! None of the gangetic Brahmanical gods (e.g Ram, Krishna, Vishnu, Brahma, etc.) are mentioned in RigVeda hyms nor do they appear in connected Aryan Avestan texts and Hittite tablets. Avestan terms for soldiers ('rathaestar') and citizens ('vastriyo') are similar to Vedic-derived terms (kshatriyas, vasihyas) but the Avestan term for priest ('athravan') is not even close to 'Brahmanas'. Moreover, central Gangetic religious texts like the Mahabharta and VarnaAshramDharma of Manu call the Vedic Aryans in Saptha Sindhva 'mlechas', 'sudras' and 'vratyas'; 'forbid Brahmins' from even visiting the northwest country ('Vahika-desa'); and depict dark Dravidian Gods like Krishna fighting and defeating Vedic Aryan gods like Indra (Mahabharta). Similarly, the RigVeda contains taboos and injunctions against the 'dasya-varta' region to the south of Saptha Sindhva and praises Indra (god of thunderbolt) for victories over 'dasya-purahs' (dasya cities). "Both early RigVedic and gangetic Puranic sources clearly point to ethnic, cultural and religious differences and a 'clash of civilizations and nations' at the ganga indicating that the Vedic people and culture of the northwest did not accept the gangetic priests, their gods, shastras, religion, culture and Brahmanical caste ideology. The eastern gangetic heartland is not only historically a separate region, but geographically resides over 1500 miles to the southeast of the Saptha Sindhva country. Uptil the advent of Mohammed Ghori in the 13th century, the northwest was politically unified with southasia only 92 years under the Mauryas (out of 27 centuries) since the start of Saptha Sindhva’s Vedic period (1500 BC). "A few Vedic tribes from Saptha Sindhva broke RigVedic norms and migrated southward. These numerically outnumbered groups expanding into the trans-gangetic region near the end of the Vedic period (8-6th century BC) tried to use the indigenous Dravidian priesthood to entrench themselves as the new ruling order. Within a few generations of acquiring control over the foreign Gangasthan, the minority Vedic tribes were usurped by the indigenous 'borrowed' priesthood; their Aryan religion, gods and customs mostly deposed and supplanted with indigenous gangetic gods and mythologies; and their new social order (varna or color based) replaced with the pre-existing profession (jati) based Brahmanical caste system ('chatur-varna' ). Through religious manipulation and intrigue, the Vedic in-comers to Gangasthan were usurped and made to surrender their political rule and soon pigeon-holed into becoming the loyal obedient chownkidars of their 'superior' dravidic Brahmanas." Now coming to idolatry which is an integral part of Hinduism, there are clear evidences of early Aryans rejecting it : “They are enveloped in darkness, in other words, are steeped in ignorance and sunk in the greatest depths of misery who worship the uncreated, eternal prakrti—the material cause of the world—in place of the All-pervading God, but those who worship visible things born of the Prakrti, such as the earth, trees, bodies (human and the like) in place of God are enveloped in still greater darkness, in other words, they are extremely foolish, fall into an awful hell of pain and sorrow, and suffer terribly for a long time.”—Yajur Veda 40:9. “The Formless Supreme Spirit that pervades the universe can have no material representation, likeness or image.”—Yajur Veda 32:3. Also, early Aryans had a Monist belief of worshipping elements of nature (in non-idolatrous personified forms): “There is only one God, worship Him” (Rig Veda, Vol. 6, Hymn 45 vs 16 ) and “Do not worship any one beside Him” (Rig Veda Bk. 8, Hymn 1, Vs 1) Then there are clear evidences in the Rig Veda that Aryans regularly ate beef and sacrificed cows for religious purposes which are strictly forbidden in Hinduism: Hymn CLXIX of the Rig Veda says: "May the wind blow upon our cows with healing; may they eat herbage ... Like-colored various-hued or single- colored whose names through sacrifice are known to Agni, Whom the Angirases produced by Ferbvour - vouschsafe to these, Parjanya, great protection. Those who have offered to the gods their bodies whose varied forms are all well known to Soma" [The Rig Veda (RV), translated by Ralph H. Griffith, New York, 1992, p. 647]. In the Rig Veda (RV: VIII.43.11) Agni is described as "fed on ox and cow" suggesting that cattle were sacrificed and roasted in fire. Rigveda (10/85/13) declares, “On the occasion of a girl’s marriage oxen and cows are slaughtered”, and Rigveda (6/17/1) states that “Indra used to eat the meat of cow, calf, horse and buffalo.” Quoting from Rigveda, historian H. H Wilson writes, “the sacrifice and consumption of horse and cow appears to have been common in the early periods of the Aryan culture.” |
Harappans and Rig Vedic Aryans were NOT Hindu !
Harappans and Rig Vedic Aryans were NOT Hindu !
There has been a strong campaign by Hindu fundamentalists and Indian nationalists in trying to make wild hegemonic claims on ancient peoples who have very little to do with them. Unfortunately, a few respected scholars have also been manipulated into promoting their agendas and vested interests. This article in particular covers the ancient peoples of Indus Valley (Pakistan) called Harappans and Rigvedic Aryans (who were the ancestors of most Pakistanis) with facts that prove they were not Hindu debunking those Hindu/Indian claims. There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Harappans and Rig Vedic Aryans were Hindu.
Harappans:
Not a single Hindu idol/deity/temple has been excavated at Indus sites. Plus evidence shows that Harappans ate beef and buried their dead. This is what the renowned historian John Keays states on the religion of Harappans:
"The religion of Harappans is unknown. No site has certainly been identified as a temple and most suppositions about sacrificial fires, cult objects and deities rest on doubtful retrospective references from Hindu practices of many centuries later. Such inferences may be as futile as, say, looking to Islamic astronomy for an explanation of the orientation of the pyramids. In short, these theories are all fanciful and do not bear scrutiny.
"Depicted on some Harappan seals, is that of a big-nosed gentleman wearing a horned head-dress who sits in the lotus position, an air of abstraction and an audience of animals. He cannot be the early manifestation of Lord Shiva as Pashupati, `Lord of the Beasts.' Myth, as has been noted, is subject to frequent revision. The chances of a deity remaining closely associated with the specific powers - in this case, fertility, asceticism, and familiarity with the animal kingdom - for all of two thousand years must raise serious doubts, especially since, during the interval, there is little evidence for the currency of this myth. Rudra, a Vedic deity later identified with Shiva, is indeed referred to as Pasupati because of his association with the cattle, but asceticism and meditation were not Rudra's specialties nor is he usually credited with an empathy for animals other than kine. More plausibly, it has been suggested that the Harappan figure's heavily horned headgear bespeaks a bull cult, to which numerous other representations of bulls lend substance.
"Similar doubts surround the female terracotta figurines which are often described as mother goddesses. Pop-eyed, bat-eared, belted and sometime miniskirted, they are usually of crude workmanship and grotesque mien. Only a dusty-eyed archaeologist could describe them as `pleasing little things.' The bat-ears, on closer inspection, appear to be elaborate head dresses or hairstyles. If, as the prominent and clumsily applied breasts suggest, they were fertility symbols, why bother with millinery? Or indeed miniskirts?"
The Harappan seals depicting the sitting man/deity wearing horned headdress (which Hindus claim as so called Shiva) is as follows: 
Similar to this horned Harappan man/deity is the horned Celtic Cernunnos that was worshipped in parts of ancient Europe: 
On the other hand, Hinduism's Shiva looks totally different: 
So obviously Harappans did not worship Shiva, not even close! With Hindu hegemonic claims would ancient Europeans also be considered Hindu since the Celtic Cerrunos looks very similar to the horned Harappan deity? By the way, it is the cow that's worshipped in Hinduism whereas bull has a minor role. Bull was much more sacred in ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures similar to the popular Harappan bull.
This is further supported by Encyclopaedia Britannica:
"The Bull Cult was a prehistoric religious practice that originated in the eastern Aegean Sea and extended from the Indus Valley of Pakistan to the Danube River in eastern Europe .... The Bull Cult continued into historic times and was particularly important in the Indus Valley and on the Grecian island of Crete. In both places the bull's 'horns of consecration' were an important religious symbol."
On the non-Hindu beliefs/customs of Harappans, Richard K. Hines states:
"Similar to the cultures of ancient Middle East, it appears that the Indus religion recognized some type of life after death. Unlike Hindus who practice cremation, Indus people carefully buried their dead in wooded coffins with their heads facing north and the feet pointing south. Included in the graves were pottery jars containing food and weapons for use in the afterlife."
And on beef as a common aspect of Harappan diet, Dr. Kamal Lodaya states:
"Meat was an important part of Harappan diet which included beef, mutton, fowl, fish, and other animals."
Rig Vedic Aryans:
Now coming to the Aryans.. The concept of Aryan Race is nonsense invented by the Nazis. But what is historically correct is that Aryans were an ancient people who originally inhabited Central Asia and later migrated southwards to the regions stretching from Iran to northwest India. These early Aryans had a similar language, race, culture, and religion with many variations. The Aryans of Iran were later influenced by the Elamites and Babylonians. The Aryans of Pakistan were later influenced by the Harappans. The Aryans of north India were later influenced by the Dravidic-Mundic natives giving birth to Hinduism. Of course in later centuries other peoples also invaded/migrated bringing other influences/mixing.
The Aryans associated with the Rig Veda and Sapta Sindhu (i.e. today's Pakistan region) were definitely not Hindu because they did not follow the Hindu caste system, they ate beef, sacrificed cows, culturally were closer to Avestan Iranians, forbade idolatry, etc. Also, not a single Hindu idol/temple has been excavated from the Rig Vedic Aryan period.
Here are some excerpts that support my views:
“The evidence of the Rig Veda shows that during the centuries when the Aryans were occupying the Punjab and composing the hymns of the Rig Veda, the north-west part of the subcontinent was culturally separate from the rest of India. The closest cultural relations of the Indo-Aryans at that period were with the Iranians, whose language and sacred texts are preserved in the various works known as the Avesta, in inscriptions in Old Persian, and in some other scattered documents. So great is the amount of material common to the Rig Veda Aryans and the Iranians that the books of the two peoples show common geographic names as well as deities and ideas”. (Pakistan and Western Asia, By Prof. Norman Brown)
According to A. L. Stravrianos on the non-Hindu nature of Rig Vedic Aryans:
"The word Veda means knowledge. There were originally four Vedas, but the most important is the Rigveda, which is also the oldest. The Rigveda is a primary source for study of the early Aryans; it is in essence a collection of 1028 hymns arranged in ten books. Per the Vedas, Aryans worshiped elements of nature in personified forms, and idolatry was forbidden.
"In Rig Veda, the gods of Dyaus is the same as the Greek Zeus (Roman Jupiter), Mitra is the same as the Graeco-Roman Mithras, Ushas is the same as the Greek Eos (Roman Aurora), and
Agni is the same as the Graeco-Roman Ignis.
"The image of the Aryans that emerges from Vedic literature is that of a virile people, fond of war, drinking, chariot racing, and gambling. Their god of war, Indra, was an ideal Aryan warrior: ‘he dashed into battle joyously, wore golden armor, and was able to consume the flesh of three hundred buffaloes and drink three lakes of liquor at one time’.
"When they first arrived in the South Asia the Aryans were primarily pastoralists. Their economic life centered around their cattle and wealth was judged on the basis of the size of herds. As the newcomers settled in fertile river valleys, they gradually shifted more to agriculture. They lived in villages consisting of a number of related families. Several villages comprised a clan, and several clans a tribe, at the head of which was the king. The king’s authority depended on his personal prowess and initiative, and was limited by the council of nobles, and in some tribes by the freemen.
"The outstanding characteristics of this early Aryan society was its basic difference from the later Hinduism. Cows were not worshipped but eaten. Intoxicating spirits were not forsaken but joyously consumed. There were classes but no castes, and the priests were subordinate to the nobles rather than at the top of the social pyramid. In short, Aryan society resembled much more the contemporary Indo-European societies than it did Hinduism that was to develop in later centuries in the Gangetic Valley."
Further supports how a few Aryans who later migrated eastward towards India slowly became Hindu because of Dravidic-Mundic influences:
"The castes were hardened by the time the Aryans occupied the middle land i.e., the Gangetic Valley and distinguished themselves from their brethern in Sind and the Punjab who were despised by them for not observing the rules of caste .... and for their non-Brahmanical character.” (Sindhi Culture, By U.T. Thakur)
“While some Aryans had by now expanded far into India, their old home in the Punjab, Sind and the north-west was practically forgotten. Later Vedic literature mentions it rarely, and then usually with disparagement and contempt, as an impure land where sacrifices are not performed.” (The Wonder that was India, By A.L. Bhasham)
This is further supported by Dr. Gurupdesh Singh:
"From geographical information in the RigVeda, the Vedic Period (1500-500 BC) was confined to the northwest. The hymns composed by Vedic mystics/poets of the northwest (Saptha Sindhva) tell that the Vedic peoples worshipped non-Brahmanical Gods (Indra, Varuna, Mitra), ate cows, elected their chiefs, drank liqor, considered the Punjab rivers to be sacred, and refer to people living to the south in the gangetic region as 'Dasyas'! None of the gangetic Brahmanical gods (e.g Ram, Krishna, Vishnu, Brahma, etc.) are mentioned in RigVeda hyms nor do they appear in connected Aryan Avestan texts and Hittite tablets. Avestan terms for soldiers ('rathaestar') and citizens ('vastriyo') are similar to Vedic-derived terms (kshatriyas, vasihyas) but the Avestan term for priest ('athravan') is not even close to 'Brahmanas'. Moreover, central Gangetic religious texts like the Mahabharta and VarnaAshramDharma of Manu call the Vedic Aryans in Saptha Sindhva 'mlechas', 'sudras' and 'vratyas'; 'forbid Brahmins' from even visiting the northwest country ('Vahika-desa'); and depict dark Dravidian Gods like Krishna fighting and defeating Vedic Aryan gods like Indra (Mahabharta). Similarly, the RigVeda contains taboos and injunctions against the 'dasya-varta' region to the south of Saptha Sindhva and praises Indra (god of thunderbolt) for victories over 'dasya-purahs' (dasya cities).
"Both early RigVedic and gangetic Puranic sources clearly point to ethnic, cultural and religious differences and a 'clash of civilizations and nations' at the ganga indicating that the Vedic people and culture of the northwest did not accept the gangetic priests, their gods, shastras, religion, culture and Brahmanical caste ideology. The eastern gangetic heartland is not only historically a separate region, but geographically resides over 1500 miles to the southeast of the Saptha Sindhva country. Uptil the advent of Mohammed Ghori in the 13th century, the northwest was politically unified with southasia only 92 years under the Mauryas (out of 27 centuries) since the start of Saptha Sindhva’s Vedic period (1500 BC).
"A few Vedic tribes from Saptha Sindhva broke RigVedic norms and migrated southward. These numerically outnumbered groups expanding into the trans-gangetic region near the end of the Vedic period (8-6th century BC) tried to use the indigenous Dravidian priesthood to entrench themselves as the new ruling order. Within a few generations of acquiring control over the foreign Gangasthan, the minority Vedic tribes were usurped by the indigenous 'borrowed' priesthood; their Aryan religion, gods and customs mostly deposed and supplanted with indigenous gangetic gods and mythologies; and their new social order (varna or color based) replaced with the pre-existing profession (jati) based Brahmanical caste system ('chatur-varna' ). Through religious manipulation and intrigue, the Vedic in-comers to Gangasthan were usurped and made to surrender their political rule and soon pigeon-holed into becoming the loyal obedient chownkidars of their 'superior' dravidic Brahmanas."
Now coming to idolatry which is an integral part of Hinduism, there are clear evidences of early Aryans rejecting it :
“They are enveloped in darkness, in other words, are steeped in ignorance and sunk in the greatest depths of misery who worship the uncreated, eternal prakrti—the material cause of the world—in place of the All-pervading God, but those who worship visible things born of the Prakrti, such as the earth, trees, bodies (human and the like) in place of God are enveloped in still greater darkness, in other words, they are extremely foolish, fall into an awful hell of pain and sorrow, and suffer terribly for a long time.”—Yajur Veda 40:9.
“The Formless Supreme Spirit that pervades the universe can have no material representation, likeness or image.”—Yajur Veda 32:3.
Also, early Aryans had a Monist belief of worshipping elements of nature (in non-idolatrous personified forms): “There is only one God, worship Him” (Rig Veda, Vol. 6, Hymn 45 vs 16 ) and “Do not worship any one beside Him” (Rig Veda Bk. 8, Hymn 1, Vs 1)
Then there are clear evidences in the Rig Veda that Aryans regularly ate beef and sacrificed cows for religious purposes which are strictly forbidden in Hinduism:
Hymn CLXIX of the Rig Veda says: "May the wind blow upon our cows with healing; may they eat herbage ... Like-colored various-hued or single- colored whose names through sacrifice are known to Agni, Whom the Angirases produced by Ferbvour - vouschsafe to these, Parjanya, great protection. Those who have offered to the gods their bodies whose varied forms are all well known to Soma" [The Rig Veda (RV), translated by Ralph H. Griffith, New York, 1992, p. 647]. In the Rig Veda (RV: VIII.43.11) Agni is described as "fed on ox and cow" suggesting that cattle were sacrificed and roasted in fire.
Rigveda (10/85/13) declares, “On the occasion of a girl’s marriage oxen and cows are slaughtered”, and Rigveda (6/17/1) states that “Indra used to eat the meat of cow, calf, horse and buffalo.”
Quoting from Rigveda, historian H. H Wilson writes, “the sacrifice and consumption of horse and cow appears to have been common in the early periods of the Aryan culture.”
Conclusion:
Finally, to claim that Hinduism has been evolving is simply a very weak argument. Every religion is identified with a set of beliefs and customs making it distinct and recognizable from others, including Hinduism. Any people and religion can claim of their beliefs and customs evolving, but when a change occurs it represents a new identity. For example, Catholic Christianity is not the same religion as ancient Roman Paganism. Therefore, since Harappan and Rig Vedic Aryan religions were very different from Hinduism's beliefs and customs, they cannot be Hindu. Additionally, Harappans and Rig Vedic Aryans of Indus/Pakistan region were geographically a distinct people having no association with Gangetic Valley and the rest of most India where Hinduism was born in later centuries, nor did they call themselves Hindu.
In conclusion, all the evidence proves that Harappans and early Aryans were not Hindu. The hegemonic and imperialistic Hindu fanatic and Indian nationalist claims on them are simply false propaganda based on myths and distorted history.
Harappan Religion was not Hinduism
Not a single Hindu idol/deity/temple has been excavated at Indus sites. Plus evidence shows that Harappans ate beef and buried their dead. This is what the renowned historian John Keays states on the religion of Harappans:
"The religion of Harappans is unknown. No site has certainly been identified as a temple and most suppositions about sacrificial fires, cult objects and deities rest on doubtful retrospective references from Hindu practices of many centuries later. Such inferences may be as futile as, say, looking to Islamic astronomy for an explanation of the orientation of the pyramids. In short, these theories are all fanciful and do not bear scrutiny.
"Depicted on some Harappan seals, is that of a big-nosed gentleman wearing a horned head-dress who sits in the lotus position, an air of abstraction and an audience of animals. He cannot be the early manifestation of Lord Shiva as Pashupati, `Lord of the Beasts.' Myth, as has been noted, is subject to frequent revision. The chances of a deity remaining closely associated with the specific powers - in this case, fertility, asceticism, and familiarity with the animal kingdom - for all of two thousand years must raise serious doubts, especially since, during the interval, there is little evidence for the currency of this myth. Rudra, a Vedic deity later identified with Shiva, is indeed referred to as Pasupati because of his association with the cattle, but asceticism and meditation were not Rudra's specialties nor is he usually credited with an empathy for animals other than kine. More plausibly, it has been suggested that the Harappan figure's heavily horned headgear bespeaks a bull cult, to which numerous other representations of bulls lend substance.
"Similar doubts surround the female terracotta figurines which are often described as mother goddesses. Pop-eyed, bat-eared, belted and sometime miniskirted, they are usually of crude workmanship and grotesque mien. Only a dusty-eyed archaeologist could describe them as `pleasing little things.' The bat-ears, on closer inspection, appear to be elaborate head dresses or hairstyles. If, as the prominent and clumsily applied breasts suggest, they were fertility symbols, why bother with millinery? Or indeed miniskirts?"
The Harappan seals depicting the sitting man/deity wearing horned headdress bears no resemblance with Hinduism's Shiva. Similar to this horned Harappan man/deity is the horned Celtic Cernunnos that was worshipped in parts of ancient Europe: With Hindu hegemonic claims would ancient Europeans also be considered Hindu since the Celtic Cerrunos looks very similar to the horned Harappan deity? By the way, it is the cow that's worshipped in Hinduism whereas bull has a minor role. Bull was much more sacred in ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures similar to the popular Harappan bull.
This is further supported by Encyclopaedia Britannica:
"The Bull Cult was a prehistoric religious practice that originated in the eastern Aegean Sea and extended from the Indus Valley of Pakistan to the Danube River in eastern Europe .... The Bull Cult continued into historic times and was particularly important in the Indus Valley and on the Grecian island of Crete. In both places the bull's 'horns of consecration' were an important religious symbol."
On the non-Hindu beliefs/customs of Harappans, Richard K. Hines states:
"Similar to the cultures of ancient Middle East, it appears that the Indus religion recognized some type of life after death. Unlike Hindus who practice cremation, Indus people carefully buried their dead in wooded coffins with their heads facing north and the feet pointing south. Included in the graves were pottery jars containing food and weapons for use in the afterlife."
And on beef as a common aspect of Harappan diet, Dr. Kamal Lodaya states:
"Meat was an important part of Harappan diet which included beef, mutton, fowl, fish, and other animals."
Not a single Hindu idol/deity/temple has been excavated at Indus sites. Plus evidence shows that Harappans ate beef and buried their dead. This is what the renowned historian John Keays states on the religion of Harappans:
"The religion of Harappans is unknown. No site has certainly been identified as a temple and most suppositions about sacrificial fires, cult objects and deities rest on doubtful retrospective references from Hindu practices of many centuries later. Such inferences may be as futile as, say, looking to Islamic astronomy for an explanation of the orientation of the pyramids. In short, these theories are all fanciful and do not bear scrutiny.
"Depicted on some Harappan seals, is that of a big-nosed gentleman wearing a horned head-dress who sits in the lotus position, an air of abstraction and an audience of animals. He cannot be the early manifestation of Lord Shiva as Pashupati, `Lord of the Beasts.' Myth, as has been noted, is subject to frequent revision. The chances of a deity remaining closely associated with the specific powers - in this case, fertility, asceticism, and familiarity with the animal kingdom - for all of two thousand years must raise serious doubts, especially since, during the interval, there is little evidence for the currency of this myth. Rudra, a Vedic deity later identified with Shiva, is indeed referred to as Pasupati because of his association with the cattle, but asceticism and meditation were not Rudra's specialties nor is he usually credited with an empathy for animals other than kine. More plausibly, it has been suggested that the Harappan figure's heavily horned headgear bespeaks a bull cult, to which numerous other representations of bulls lend substance.
"Similar doubts surround the female terracotta figurines which are often described as mother goddesses. Pop-eyed, bat-eared, belted and sometime miniskirted, they are usually of crude workmanship and grotesque mien. Only a dusty-eyed archaeologist could describe them as `pleasing little things.' The bat-ears, on closer inspection, appear to be elaborate head dresses or hairstyles. If, as the prominent and clumsily applied breasts suggest, they were fertility symbols, why bother with millinery? Or indeed miniskirts?"
The Harappan seals depicting the sitting man/deity wearing horned headdress bears no resemblance with Hinduism's Shiva. Similar to this horned Harappan man/deity is the horned Celtic Cernunnos that was worshipped in parts of ancient Europe: With Hindu hegemonic claims would ancient Europeans also be considered Hindu since the Celtic Cerrunos looks very similar to the horned Harappan deity? By the way, it is the cow that's worshipped in Hinduism whereas bull has a minor role. Bull was much more sacred in ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures similar to the popular Harappan bull.
This is further supported by Encyclopaedia Britannica:
"The Bull Cult was a prehistoric religious practice that originated in the eastern Aegean Sea and extended from the Indus Valley of Pakistan to the Danube River in eastern Europe .... The Bull Cult continued into historic times and was particularly important in the Indus Valley and on the Grecian island of Crete. In both places the bull's 'horns of consecration' were an important religious symbol."
On the non-Hindu beliefs/customs of Harappans, Richard K. Hines states:
"Similar to the cultures of ancient Middle East, it appears that the Indus religion recognized some type of life after death. Unlike Hindus who practice cremation, Indus people carefully buried their dead in wooded coffins with their heads facing north and the feet pointing south. Included in the graves were pottery jars containing food and weapons for use in the afterlife."
And on beef as a common aspect of Harappan diet, Dr. Kamal Lodaya states:
"Meat was an important part of Harappan diet which included beef, mutton, fowl, fish, and other animals."
Sunday, November 16, 2008
INDUS VALLEY, INC
INDUS VALLEY, INC.
Source: Discover Magazine
"No golden tombs, no fancy ziggurats. Four thousand years ago city builders in the Indus Valley made deals, not war, and created a stable, peaceful, and prosperous culture."
The railway linking Lahore to Multan in Pakistan is 4,600 years old. In truth, the rails were laid down in the middle of the nineteenth century, but to build the railway bed, British engineers smashed bricks from crumbling buildings and rubble heaps in a town called Harappa, halfway between the two cities. Back in 1856, Alexander Cunningham, director of the newly formed Archeological Survey of British India, thought the brick ruins were all related to nearby seventh-century Buddhist temples. Local legend told a different story: the brick mounds were the remnants of an ancient city, destroyed when its king committed incest with his niece. Neither Cunningham nor the locals were entirely correct. In small, desultary excavations a few years later, Cunningham found no temples or traces of kings, incestuous or otherwise. Instead he reported the recovery of some pottery, carved shell, and a badly damaged seal depicting a one-horned animal, bearing an inscription in an unfamiliar writing.
That seal was a mark of one of the world's great ancient civilizations, but mid-nineteenth-century archaeologists like Cunningham knew nothing about it. The Vedas, the oldest texts of south Asia, dating from some 3,500 years ago, made no mention of it, nor did the Bible. No pyramids or burial mounds marked the area as the site of an ancient power. Yet, 4,600 years ago, at the same time as the early civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, great cities arose along the flood plains of he ancient Indus and Saraswati rivers in what is now Pakistan and northwest India. The people of the Indus Valley didn't build towering monuments, bury their riches along with their dead, or fight legendary and bloody battles. They didn't have a mighty army or a divine emperor. Yet they were a highly organized and stupendously successful civilization. They built some of the world's first planned cities, created one of the world's first written languages, and thrived in an area twice the size of Egypt and Mesopotamia for 700 years.
To archeologists of this century and last, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, a neighboring city some 350 miles to the southwest, posed an interesting, if unglamorous puzzle. Excavations revealed large, orderly walled cities of massive brick buildings, with highly sophisticated sanitation and drainage systems and a drab, institutional feel. The streets of Harappa, remarked British archeologist Mortimer Wheeler, "however impressive quantitatively, and significant sociologically, are aesthetically miles of monotony." The archeologist and popular author Leonard Cottrell, a contemporary of Wheeler's, wrote in 1956, "While admiring the efficiency of Harappan planning and sanitary engineering, one's general impression of Harappan culture is unattractive... One imagines those warrens of streets, baking under the fierce sun of the Punjab, as human ant heaps, full of disciplined, energetic activity, supervised and controlled by a powerful, centralized state machine; a civilization in which there was little joy, much labor, and a strong emphasis on material things."
Superior plumbing and uniform housing, no matter how well designed, don’t fire the imagination like ziggurats and gold-laden tombs. "But there's more to society than big temples and golden burials," argues Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, an archeologist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. "Those are the worst things that ancient societies did, because they led to their collapse. When you take gold and put it in ground, it's bad for the economy. When you waste money on huge monuments instead of shipping, it's bad for the economy. The Indus Valley started out with a very different basis and made South Asia the center of economic interactions in the ancient world."
Kenoyer has been excavating at Harappa for the past 12 years. His work, and that of his colleagues, is changing the image of Harappa from a stark, state-run city into a vibrant, diverse metropolis, teeming with artisans and well-traveled merchants.
"What we're finding at Harappa, for the first time," says Kenoyer, "is how the first cities started." Mesopotamian texts suggest that cities sprang up around deities and their temples, and once archeologists found these temples, they didn't look much further. "People assumed this is how cities evolved, but we don't know that for a fact," says Kenoyer. At Harappa, a temple of the glitzy Mesopotamian variety has yet to be found. Kenoyer's archeological evidence suggests that the city got its start as a farming village around 3300 B.C. Situated near the Ravi River, one of several tributaries of the ancient Indus River system of Pakistan and northwestern India, Harappa lay on a fertile flood plain. Good land and a reliable food supply allowed the village to thrive, but the key to urbanization was its location at the crossroads of several major trading routes.
Traders from the highlands of Baluchistan and northern Afghanistan to the west brought in copper, tin and lapis lazuli; clam and conch shells were brought from the southwestern seacoast, timber from the Himalayas, semiprecious stones from Gujrat, silver and gold from Central Asia. The influx of goods allowed Harappans to become traders and artisans as well as farmers. And specialists from across the land arrived to set up shop in the new metropolis.
The city had room to expand and an entrepreneurial spirit driven by access to several sources of raw materials. "You had two sources of lapis, three of copper, and several of shell," says Kenoyer. "The way I envision it, if you had entrepreneurial go-get-'em, andd you had a new resource, you could make a million in Harappa. It was mercantile base for rapid growth and expansion." Enterprising Harappan traders exported finely crafted Indus Valley products to Mesopotamia, Iran, and Central Asia and brought back payment in precious metals and more raw materials. By 2200 B.C., Harappa covered about 370 acres and may have held 80,000 people, making it roughly as populous as the ancient city of Ur in Mesopotamia. And it soon had plenty of neighbors. Over the course of 700 years, some 1,500 Indus Valley settlements were scattered over 280,000 square miles of the northwestern subcontinent.
Unlike the haphazard arrangement of Mesopotamian cities, Indus Valley settlements all followed the same basic plan. Streets and houses were laid out on a north-south, east-west grid, and houses and walls were built of standard-size bricks. Even early agricultural settlements were constructed on a grid. "People had a ritual conception of the universe, of universal order," says Kenoyer. "The Indus cities and earlier villages reflect that." This organization, he believes, could have helped the growing city avoid conflicts, giving newcomers their own space rather than leaving them to elbow their way into established territories.
Part of that ritual conception included a devotion to sanitation. Nearly every Harappan home had a bathing platform and a latrine, says Kenoyer, and some Indus Valley cities reached heights of 40 feet in part because of concern about hygiene. Cities often grow upon their foundations over time, but in the Indus Valley, homes were also periodically elevated to avoid the risk of runoff from a neighbor’s sewage. "It’s keeping up with the Joneses’ bathroom," he quips, "that made these cities rise so high so quickly." Each neighborhood had its own well, and elaborate covered drainage systems carried dirty water outside the city. By contrast, city dwellers in Mesopotamian cities tended to draw water from the river or irrigation canals and they had no drains.
The towering brick cities, surrounded by sturdy walls with imposing gateways, reminded early researchers of the medieval forts in Lahore and Delhi. But Kenoyer points out that a single wall, with no moat and with no sudden turns to lead enemies into ambush, would have been ill-suited for defense. He thinks the walls were created to control the flow of goods in and out of the city. At Harappa, standardized cubical stone weights have been found at the gates, and Kenoyer suggests they were used to levy taxes on trade goods coming into the city. The main gateway at Harappa is nine feet across, just wide enough to allow one oxcart in or out. "If you were a trader," he explains, "you wanted to bring goods into a city to trade in a safe place, so bandits wouldn’t rip you off. To get into the city, you had to pay a tax. If you produced things, you had to pay a tax to take goods out of the city. This is how a city gets revenues."
The identity of the tax collectors and those they served remains a mystery. Unlike the rulers of Mesopotamia and Egypt, Indus Valley rulers did not immortalize themselves with mummies or monuments. They did, however, leave behind elaborately carved stone seals, used to impress tokens or clay tabs on goods bound for market. The seals bore images of animals, like the humped bull, the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the crocodile, which were probably emblems of powerful clans. The most common image is the unicorn, a symbol that originated in the Indus Valley.
Frustratingly, though, those seals carry inscriptions that no one has been able to decipher. Not only are the inscriptions short, but they don’t resemble any known language. From analyzing overlapping strokes, it is clear that the script reads right to left. It is also clear that the script is a mix of phonetic symbols and pictographs. Early Mesopotamian cuneiform, which used only pictographs, was thought to be the world’s first written language, says Kenoyer, but the Indus Valley script emerged independently around the same time --- at least by around 3300 B.C.
As long as the language remains a mystery, so too will the identities of the Indus Valley elites. Kenoyer thinks each of the large cities may have functioned as an independent city-state, controlled by a small group of merchants, landowners, and religious leaders. "They controlled taxation, access to the city, and communication with the gods," he says. While the balance of power may have shifted between these groups, they seem to have ruled without a standing army. Sculptures, paintings, and texts from Egypt and Mesopotamia clearly illustrate battles between cities and pharaonic wars of conquest. But in the Indus Valley, not a single depiction of a military act, of taking prisoners, of a human killing another human has been found. It’s possible these acts were illustrated on cloth or paper or some other perishable and simply did not survive. Yet none of the cities show signs of battle damage to buildings or city walls, and very few weapons have been recovered.
Human remains show no signs of violence either. Only a few cemeteries have been found, suggesting that burial of the dead may have been limited to high ranking individuals (others may have been disposed of through cremation or river burials). The bones from excavated burials show few signs of disease or malnourishment. Preliminary genetic studies from a cemetery in Harappa have suggested that women were buried near their mothers and grandmothers. Men do not seem to be related to those near them, so they were probably buries with their wives’ families. There is evidence that people believed in afterlife: personal items like amulets and simple pottery have been recovered from a few burials. But true to their practical, businesslike nature, the Harappans didn’t bury their dead with riches. Unlike the elites of the Near East, Harappans kept their valuable items in circulation, trading for new, often extraordinary ornaments for themselves and their descendents.
In spite of this practice, excavators have turned up some hints of the wealth an individual could accumulate. Two decades ago, in the rural settlement of Allahdino, near modern Karachi in Pakistan, archeologists stumbled upon a buried pot filled with jewelry, the secret hoard of a rich landowner. Among the silver and gold bands, beads, and rings was a belt or necklace made of 36 elongated carnelian beads interspersed with bronze beads. Shaping and drilling these long, slender beads out of hard stone is immensely difficult and time-consuming. Indus craftsmen made a special drill for this purpose by heating a rare metamorphic rock to create a superhard material. Even these high-tech drills could perforate carnelian at a rate of only a hundredth of an inch per hour. Kenoyer estimates that a large carnelian belt like the one at Allahdino would have taken a single person 480 working days to complete. It was most likely made by a group of artisans over a period of two or three years.
Such intensive devotion to craftsmanship and trade, Kenoyer argues, is what allowed Indus Valley culture to spread over a region twice the size of Mesopotamia without the trace of military domination. Just as American culture is currently exported along with goods and media, so too were the seals, pottery styles, and script of the Indus Valley spread among the local settlements. Figurines from the Indus Valley also testify to a complex social fabric. People within the same city often wore different styles of dress and hair, a practice that could reflect differences in ethnicity or status. Men are shown with long hair or short, bearded or clean-shaven. Women’s hairstyles could be as simple as one long braid, or complex convolutions of tresses piled high on a supporting structure.
Eventually, between 1900 and 1700 B.C., the extensive trading networks and productive farms supporting this cultural integration collapsed, says Kenoyer, and distinct local cultures emerged. "They stopped writing," he says. "They stopped using the weight system for taxation. And the unicorn motif disappeared." Speculation as to the reasons for the disintegration has ranged from warfare to weather. Early archeologists believed that Indo-Aryan invaders from the north swept through and conquered the peaceful Harappans, but that theory has since been disputed. Most of the major cities dont show evidence of warfare, though some smaller settlements appear to have been abandoned. There is evidence that the Indus river shifter, flooding many settlements and disrupting agriculture. It is likely that when these smaller settlements were abandoned, trade routes were affected. In the Ganges river valley to the east, on the outskirts of the Indus Valley sphere of influence, the newly settled Indo-Aryans, with their own customs, grew to prominence while cities like Harappa faded.
But the legacy of the ancient Indus cities and their craftspeople remains. The bead makers of the region continue to make beads based on Harappan techniques --- though carnelian is now bored with diamond-tipped drills. Shell workers still make bangles out of conch shells. And in the crowded marketplaces, as merchants hawk the superiority of their silver over the low-quality ore of their neighbors, as gold and jewels are weighed in bronze balances, it’s hard to imagine that a 4,000-year-old Harappan bazaar could have been terribly different.
Source: Discover Magazine
"No golden tombs, no fancy ziggurats. Four thousand years ago city builders in the Indus Valley made deals, not war, and created a stable, peaceful, and prosperous culture."
The railway linking Lahore to Multan in Pakistan is 4,600 years old. In truth, the rails were laid down in the middle of the nineteenth century, but to build the railway bed, British engineers smashed bricks from crumbling buildings and rubble heaps in a town called Harappa, halfway between the two cities. Back in 1856, Alexander Cunningham, director of the newly formed Archeological Survey of British India, thought the brick ruins were all related to nearby seventh-century Buddhist temples. Local legend told a different story: the brick mounds were the remnants of an ancient city, destroyed when its king committed incest with his niece. Neither Cunningham nor the locals were entirely correct. In small, desultary excavations a few years later, Cunningham found no temples or traces of kings, incestuous or otherwise. Instead he reported the recovery of some pottery, carved shell, and a badly damaged seal depicting a one-horned animal, bearing an inscription in an unfamiliar writing.
That seal was a mark of one of the world's great ancient civilizations, but mid-nineteenth-century archaeologists like Cunningham knew nothing about it. The Vedas, the oldest texts of south Asia, dating from some 3,500 years ago, made no mention of it, nor did the Bible. No pyramids or burial mounds marked the area as the site of an ancient power. Yet, 4,600 years ago, at the same time as the early civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, great cities arose along the flood plains of he ancient Indus and Saraswati rivers in what is now Pakistan and northwest India. The people of the Indus Valley didn't build towering monuments, bury their riches along with their dead, or fight legendary and bloody battles. They didn't have a mighty army or a divine emperor. Yet they were a highly organized and stupendously successful civilization. They built some of the world's first planned cities, created one of the world's first written languages, and thrived in an area twice the size of Egypt and Mesopotamia for 700 years.
To archeologists of this century and last, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, a neighboring city some 350 miles to the southwest, posed an interesting, if unglamorous puzzle. Excavations revealed large, orderly walled cities of massive brick buildings, with highly sophisticated sanitation and drainage systems and a drab, institutional feel. The streets of Harappa, remarked British archeologist Mortimer Wheeler, "however impressive quantitatively, and significant sociologically, are aesthetically miles of monotony." The archeologist and popular author Leonard Cottrell, a contemporary of Wheeler's, wrote in 1956, "While admiring the efficiency of Harappan planning and sanitary engineering, one's general impression of Harappan culture is unattractive... One imagines those warrens of streets, baking under the fierce sun of the Punjab, as human ant heaps, full of disciplined, energetic activity, supervised and controlled by a powerful, centralized state machine; a civilization in which there was little joy, much labor, and a strong emphasis on material things."
Superior plumbing and uniform housing, no matter how well designed, don’t fire the imagination like ziggurats and gold-laden tombs. "But there's more to society than big temples and golden burials," argues Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, an archeologist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. "Those are the worst things that ancient societies did, because they led to their collapse. When you take gold and put it in ground, it's bad for the economy. When you waste money on huge monuments instead of shipping, it's bad for the economy. The Indus Valley started out with a very different basis and made South Asia the center of economic interactions in the ancient world."
Kenoyer has been excavating at Harappa for the past 12 years. His work, and that of his colleagues, is changing the image of Harappa from a stark, state-run city into a vibrant, diverse metropolis, teeming with artisans and well-traveled merchants.
"What we're finding at Harappa, for the first time," says Kenoyer, "is how the first cities started." Mesopotamian texts suggest that cities sprang up around deities and their temples, and once archeologists found these temples, they didn't look much further. "People assumed this is how cities evolved, but we don't know that for a fact," says Kenoyer. At Harappa, a temple of the glitzy Mesopotamian variety has yet to be found. Kenoyer's archeological evidence suggests that the city got its start as a farming village around 3300 B.C. Situated near the Ravi River, one of several tributaries of the ancient Indus River system of Pakistan and northwestern India, Harappa lay on a fertile flood plain. Good land and a reliable food supply allowed the village to thrive, but the key to urbanization was its location at the crossroads of several major trading routes.
Traders from the highlands of Baluchistan and northern Afghanistan to the west brought in copper, tin and lapis lazuli; clam and conch shells were brought from the southwestern seacoast, timber from the Himalayas, semiprecious stones from Gujrat, silver and gold from Central Asia. The influx of goods allowed Harappans to become traders and artisans as well as farmers. And specialists from across the land arrived to set up shop in the new metropolis.
The city had room to expand and an entrepreneurial spirit driven by access to several sources of raw materials. "You had two sources of lapis, three of copper, and several of shell," says Kenoyer. "The way I envision it, if you had entrepreneurial go-get-'em, andd you had a new resource, you could make a million in Harappa. It was mercantile base for rapid growth and expansion." Enterprising Harappan traders exported finely crafted Indus Valley products to Mesopotamia, Iran, and Central Asia and brought back payment in precious metals and more raw materials. By 2200 B.C., Harappa covered about 370 acres and may have held 80,000 people, making it roughly as populous as the ancient city of Ur in Mesopotamia. And it soon had plenty of neighbors. Over the course of 700 years, some 1,500 Indus Valley settlements were scattered over 280,000 square miles of the northwestern subcontinent.
Unlike the haphazard arrangement of Mesopotamian cities, Indus Valley settlements all followed the same basic plan. Streets and houses were laid out on a north-south, east-west grid, and houses and walls were built of standard-size bricks. Even early agricultural settlements were constructed on a grid. "People had a ritual conception of the universe, of universal order," says Kenoyer. "The Indus cities and earlier villages reflect that." This organization, he believes, could have helped the growing city avoid conflicts, giving newcomers their own space rather than leaving them to elbow their way into established territories.
Part of that ritual conception included a devotion to sanitation. Nearly every Harappan home had a bathing platform and a latrine, says Kenoyer, and some Indus Valley cities reached heights of 40 feet in part because of concern about hygiene. Cities often grow upon their foundations over time, but in the Indus Valley, homes were also periodically elevated to avoid the risk of runoff from a neighbor’s sewage. "It’s keeping up with the Joneses’ bathroom," he quips, "that made these cities rise so high so quickly." Each neighborhood had its own well, and elaborate covered drainage systems carried dirty water outside the city. By contrast, city dwellers in Mesopotamian cities tended to draw water from the river or irrigation canals and they had no drains.
The towering brick cities, surrounded by sturdy walls with imposing gateways, reminded early researchers of the medieval forts in Lahore and Delhi. But Kenoyer points out that a single wall, with no moat and with no sudden turns to lead enemies into ambush, would have been ill-suited for defense. He thinks the walls were created to control the flow of goods in and out of the city. At Harappa, standardized cubical stone weights have been found at the gates, and Kenoyer suggests they were used to levy taxes on trade goods coming into the city. The main gateway at Harappa is nine feet across, just wide enough to allow one oxcart in or out. "If you were a trader," he explains, "you wanted to bring goods into a city to trade in a safe place, so bandits wouldn’t rip you off. To get into the city, you had to pay a tax. If you produced things, you had to pay a tax to take goods out of the city. This is how a city gets revenues."
The identity of the tax collectors and those they served remains a mystery. Unlike the rulers of Mesopotamia and Egypt, Indus Valley rulers did not immortalize themselves with mummies or monuments. They did, however, leave behind elaborately carved stone seals, used to impress tokens or clay tabs on goods bound for market. The seals bore images of animals, like the humped bull, the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the crocodile, which were probably emblems of powerful clans. The most common image is the unicorn, a symbol that originated in the Indus Valley.
Frustratingly, though, those seals carry inscriptions that no one has been able to decipher. Not only are the inscriptions short, but they don’t resemble any known language. From analyzing overlapping strokes, it is clear that the script reads right to left. It is also clear that the script is a mix of phonetic symbols and pictographs. Early Mesopotamian cuneiform, which used only pictographs, was thought to be the world’s first written language, says Kenoyer, but the Indus Valley script emerged independently around the same time --- at least by around 3300 B.C.
As long as the language remains a mystery, so too will the identities of the Indus Valley elites. Kenoyer thinks each of the large cities may have functioned as an independent city-state, controlled by a small group of merchants, landowners, and religious leaders. "They controlled taxation, access to the city, and communication with the gods," he says. While the balance of power may have shifted between these groups, they seem to have ruled without a standing army. Sculptures, paintings, and texts from Egypt and Mesopotamia clearly illustrate battles between cities and pharaonic wars of conquest. But in the Indus Valley, not a single depiction of a military act, of taking prisoners, of a human killing another human has been found. It’s possible these acts were illustrated on cloth or paper or some other perishable and simply did not survive. Yet none of the cities show signs of battle damage to buildings or city walls, and very few weapons have been recovered.
Human remains show no signs of violence either. Only a few cemeteries have been found, suggesting that burial of the dead may have been limited to high ranking individuals (others may have been disposed of through cremation or river burials). The bones from excavated burials show few signs of disease or malnourishment. Preliminary genetic studies from a cemetery in Harappa have suggested that women were buried near their mothers and grandmothers. Men do not seem to be related to those near them, so they were probably buries with their wives’ families. There is evidence that people believed in afterlife: personal items like amulets and simple pottery have been recovered from a few burials. But true to their practical, businesslike nature, the Harappans didn’t bury their dead with riches. Unlike the elites of the Near East, Harappans kept their valuable items in circulation, trading for new, often extraordinary ornaments for themselves and their descendents.
In spite of this practice, excavators have turned up some hints of the wealth an individual could accumulate. Two decades ago, in the rural settlement of Allahdino, near modern Karachi in Pakistan, archeologists stumbled upon a buried pot filled with jewelry, the secret hoard of a rich landowner. Among the silver and gold bands, beads, and rings was a belt or necklace made of 36 elongated carnelian beads interspersed with bronze beads. Shaping and drilling these long, slender beads out of hard stone is immensely difficult and time-consuming. Indus craftsmen made a special drill for this purpose by heating a rare metamorphic rock to create a superhard material. Even these high-tech drills could perforate carnelian at a rate of only a hundredth of an inch per hour. Kenoyer estimates that a large carnelian belt like the one at Allahdino would have taken a single person 480 working days to complete. It was most likely made by a group of artisans over a period of two or three years.
Such intensive devotion to craftsmanship and trade, Kenoyer argues, is what allowed Indus Valley culture to spread over a region twice the size of Mesopotamia without the trace of military domination. Just as American culture is currently exported along with goods and media, so too were the seals, pottery styles, and script of the Indus Valley spread among the local settlements. Figurines from the Indus Valley also testify to a complex social fabric. People within the same city often wore different styles of dress and hair, a practice that could reflect differences in ethnicity or status. Men are shown with long hair or short, bearded or clean-shaven. Women’s hairstyles could be as simple as one long braid, or complex convolutions of tresses piled high on a supporting structure.
Eventually, between 1900 and 1700 B.C., the extensive trading networks and productive farms supporting this cultural integration collapsed, says Kenoyer, and distinct local cultures emerged. "They stopped writing," he says. "They stopped using the weight system for taxation. And the unicorn motif disappeared." Speculation as to the reasons for the disintegration has ranged from warfare to weather. Early archeologists believed that Indo-Aryan invaders from the north swept through and conquered the peaceful Harappans, but that theory has since been disputed. Most of the major cities dont show evidence of warfare, though some smaller settlements appear to have been abandoned. There is evidence that the Indus river shifter, flooding many settlements and disrupting agriculture. It is likely that when these smaller settlements were abandoned, trade routes were affected. In the Ganges river valley to the east, on the outskirts of the Indus Valley sphere of influence, the newly settled Indo-Aryans, with their own customs, grew to prominence while cities like Harappa faded.
But the legacy of the ancient Indus cities and their craftspeople remains. The bead makers of the region continue to make beads based on Harappan techniques --- though carnelian is now bored with diamond-tipped drills. Shell workers still make bangles out of conch shells. And in the crowded marketplaces, as merchants hawk the superiority of their silver over the low-quality ore of their neighbors, as gold and jewels are weighed in bronze balances, it’s hard to imagine that a 4,000-year-old Harappan bazaar could have been terribly different.
PAKISTAN AND NORTHWEST INDIA
PAKISTAN AND NORTHWEST INDIA
Since the majority of the Pakistanis are descendents of the four racial stocks of Sakas (Scythians), Pallavas (Parthians), Kushanas (Kushans), Hunas (Hephthalites/White Huns), and Gujjars (Khazars). One may, with reasonable plausibility ask that since Hindu counterparts of these same races are spread eastward as far as western UP and Rajputana, do they also form part of Pakistani nation?
The answer is a definite no. Here comes in religion or ideology which sharply and distinctly separates a Hindu Rajput from a Muslim Rajput, a Hindu Jat from a Muslim Jat, a Hindu Gujjar from a Muslim Gujjar and so on and so forth. This demarcation carries a world of difference within its bosom---a different thought-orientation, a different culture-pattern, a different outlook both physical and metaphysical; an attitude to life and hereafter diametrically opposed to each other.
The two streams have refused to merge, mix blend and combine. All conscious efforts to fuse them have failed and all unconscious and unseen forces working towards their synthesis have disappeared in the dark recesses of history. The excertions of such intellectual giants as Kabir, Akbar, Abul Fazl, Faizi, Dara Sikoh and a host of lesser luminaries failed to create even the faintest impression on Muslim mind. Hussain Shah, ruler of Gauda who originated the cult of Satya Pir---common god of Hindus and Muslims---could hardly produce any results.
Hinduism has been noted for and praised by many a western writer for its sponge- like quality of absorbing foreign races and religions which invaded this sub- continent and settled down in its alluring environment and enervating climate. They are said to have been overwhelmed by the all-pervading spirit of Hindu Dharma and were never able to free themselves from its warm and winning embrace.
But Islam disproved this theory to the hilt. instead of yielding any ground (except on some minor cultural points) it made Hinduism yield, bend and break. Millions left that so-called all-embracing fold of social order and that all- pervading force of Hindu Dharma and swelled the ranks of Islam....... It was indeed a great success for Islam to have snatched away such a large segment of population from the Hindu fold and moulded it into a separate nation. Those very elements who were expected to absorb Islam and change its norm and form are today its most faithful adherents. Islam has done the impossible in this sub-continent----it has triumphed over forces which had trounced others.
Geo-political compulsions did the rest. The Indus Valley and the Padma-Meghna Delta which have invariably remained independent of the Hindu-dominated Gangetic Valley, provided homelands to these new Muslims. These converted Muslims of Pakistan and Bangladesh stand as symbols of Islam's defiance of Hindu chauvinism; a colossal proof of Hindu failure to absorb and subdue Islam.
But the encounter is only half way through; the bout is still unfinished. Both the brotherly states in the eastern and western wings of the sub-continent are still menaced by Indian expansionist designs. They need perpetual vigilance and perpetual preparedness to preserve their independence.
Pakistan and Bangladesh
Pakistan and Bangladesh
In the context of Islam's journey in the sub-continent a few words about
the common factors between Pakistan and Bangladesh would not be out of
place here. We cannot overlook the fact that it were the people of
Pakistan and Bangladesh that welcomed the preachers of Islam and
embraced its teachings spontaneously and earnestly in overwhelming
numbers, while its success in other parts of the sub-continent was
limited.
The same phenomena was witnessed earlier when Buddhism, which had
embraced a major portion of the sub-continent was suppressed and driven
out by resurgent Hinduism under the Guptas. But large number of people
in Pakistan and Bangladesh remained firm adherents of Buddhism which,
almost extinct in other parts of India, continued to persist and prevail
in the two wings till the arrival of Islam. Militant Hinduism succeeded
in reconquering the rest of India in the 4th century AD during the Gupta
period but it could not re- establish itself firmly and regain its hold
to the same extent in Pakistan and Bangladesh which continued to remain
largely Buddhist. "While Buddhism in the rest of South Asia declined
before the rejuvenation of Hinduism.......it remained strong in Bengal
until the 12th century AD." (Pakistan---Birth and Growth of a Nation, by
Richard Weeks).
According to Huen Tsang who visited this sub-continent in the middle of
the 7th century AD, Buddhism of the Mahayana creed was still dominant in
the western/NW region i.e., Pakistan. Chach Nama also mentions that
Buddhists were in large numbers in Pakistan at the time of Muslim advent
in Sindh in the 8th century AD and were hostile towards their Brahmin
rulers.
Whether it was a religious issue, such as the spread of Buddhism or
Islam, both Pakistan and Bangladesh accepted them simultaneously
shedding Hindu yoke at the earliest opportunity. Again, whether it was a
political issue, both the countries asserted their freedom again and
again and mostly remained independent of Central Indian Government.
The people of Pakistan and Bangladesh have availed of every opportunity
to work unitedly against Hindu imperialism and, what is most
significant, Hindu religion was never able to take deep roots in their
soil. This view is forcefully proved by the fact that no single sacred
city or holy temple of any importance for Hindus exists in the lands
that constitute Pakistan and Bangladesh. Of the seven sacred Hindu
cities of 1.Banaras, 2.Hardwar, 3.Ayodhya, 4.Ujjain, 5.Dwarka,
6.Conjeevaram, and 7.Mathura none is either in Pakistan or Bangladesh.
The entire Hindu religious literature insists on branding the two wings
of this sub-continent now known as Pakistan and Bangladesh as impure
lands inhabited by 'rakhashas' i.e., devils. Pakistan and Bangladesh
were never regarded as part of the 'holy' land of Bharatvarta.
These developments and aspects speak eloquently of the underlying
historical reality:
That Pakistan and Bangladesh have a common enemy; that they survive or
perish together; that the hearts of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis
invariably beat in unison and their feelings flow in a rhythm; that
their thinking has been harmonious, their outlook compatible, their
response to changes uniform, their approach to problems similar. They
accepted Buddhism in overwhelming numbers and adhered to it to the last
when the rest of India had exterminated that religion; they accepted
Islam and have adhered to it when the rest of the sub- continent has
remained largely Hindu. This phenomena of similarity of stance between
Pakistan and Bangladesh has persisted all through history, but divided
by a thousand miles of Hindu territory and Brahmin intrigues they could
not unite.
Due to this unfortunate aspect the 20th century experiment of a single
state of Pakistan embracing both the wings could not last even a quarter
of a century. Politically, Pakistan and Bangladesh may have fallen apart
for the time being but in due course they are bound to adopt a common
posture against Indian expansionist efforts.
The history of this sub-continent is a history of perpetual struggle of
the peripheral areas of the Indus Valley (Pakistan) and Padma-Meghna
Delta (Bangladesh) against the Gangetic Valley government
In the context of Islam's journey in the sub-continent a few words about
the common factors between Pakistan and Bangladesh would not be out of
place here. We cannot overlook the fact that it were the people of
Pakistan and Bangladesh that welcomed the preachers of Islam and
embraced its teachings spontaneously and earnestly in overwhelming
numbers, while its success in other parts of the sub-continent was
limited.
The same phenomena was witnessed earlier when Buddhism, which had
embraced a major portion of the sub-continent was suppressed and driven
out by resurgent Hinduism under the Guptas. But large number of people
in Pakistan and Bangladesh remained firm adherents of Buddhism which,
almost extinct in other parts of India, continued to persist and prevail
in the two wings till the arrival of Islam. Militant Hinduism succeeded
in reconquering the rest of India in the 4th century AD during the Gupta
period but it could not re- establish itself firmly and regain its hold
to the same extent in Pakistan and Bangladesh which continued to remain
largely Buddhist. "While Buddhism in the rest of South Asia declined
before the rejuvenation of Hinduism.......it remained strong in Bengal
until the 12th century AD." (Pakistan---Birth and Growth of a Nation, by
Richard Weeks).
According to Huen Tsang who visited this sub-continent in the middle of
the 7th century AD, Buddhism of the Mahayana creed was still dominant in
the western/NW region i.e., Pakistan. Chach Nama also mentions that
Buddhists were in large numbers in Pakistan at the time of Muslim advent
in Sindh in the 8th century AD and were hostile towards their Brahmin
rulers.
Whether it was a religious issue, such as the spread of Buddhism or
Islam, both Pakistan and Bangladesh accepted them simultaneously
shedding Hindu yoke at the earliest opportunity. Again, whether it was a
political issue, both the countries asserted their freedom again and
again and mostly remained independent of Central Indian Government.
The people of Pakistan and Bangladesh have availed of every opportunity
to work unitedly against Hindu imperialism and, what is most
significant, Hindu religion was never able to take deep roots in their
soil. This view is forcefully proved by the fact that no single sacred
city or holy temple of any importance for Hindus exists in the lands
that constitute Pakistan and Bangladesh. Of the seven sacred Hindu
cities of 1.Banaras, 2.Hardwar, 3.Ayodhya, 4.Ujjain, 5.Dwarka,
6.Conjeevaram, and 7.Mathura none is either in Pakistan or Bangladesh.
The entire Hindu religious literature insists on branding the two wings
of this sub-continent now known as Pakistan and Bangladesh as impure
lands inhabited by 'rakhashas' i.e., devils. Pakistan and Bangladesh
were never regarded as part of the 'holy' land of Bharatvarta.
These developments and aspects speak eloquently of the underlying
historical reality:
That Pakistan and Bangladesh have a common enemy; that they survive or
perish together; that the hearts of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis
invariably beat in unison and their feelings flow in a rhythm; that
their thinking has been harmonious, their outlook compatible, their
response to changes uniform, their approach to problems similar. They
accepted Buddhism in overwhelming numbers and adhered to it to the last
when the rest of India had exterminated that religion; they accepted
Islam and have adhered to it when the rest of the sub- continent has
remained largely Hindu. This phenomena of similarity of stance between
Pakistan and Bangladesh has persisted all through history, but divided
by a thousand miles of Hindu territory and Brahmin intrigues they could
not unite.
Due to this unfortunate aspect the 20th century experiment of a single
state of Pakistan embracing both the wings could not last even a quarter
of a century. Politically, Pakistan and Bangladesh may have fallen apart
for the time being but in due course they are bound to adopt a common
posture against Indian expansionist efforts.
The history of this sub-continent is a history of perpetual struggle of
the peripheral areas of the Indus Valley (Pakistan) and Padma-Meghna
Delta (Bangladesh) against the Gangetic Valley government
The Post-1947 Brahmanist Order and its Ideological Foundation
The Post-1947 Brahmanist Order and its Ideological Foundation
Hindu nationalism and the founding ideology of the post-1947 Poorbia Brahmanist Order are derived from
historical fraud spun by late 19th-20th century Brahmanist idealogues and organizations (e.g. Vivekananda,
Dayananda, Gowalker; Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj, Hindu-Maha-Saba, RSS, VHP, etc.) from the eastern
subcontinent. A new supremacist identity and history (neo-Brahmanism) was invented for the Brahmanist
community (the “twice born” Brahmin/Bania orthodox castes - 7% of "Hindus") by making wild, hegemonic
and fraudulent claims over the history, religions and civilizations of historically separate southasian regions,
nations and peoples. Under neo-Brahmanist ideology, all of southasia under British imperial rule was
fantasized as their 10,000 year old “One Hindu Nation" (Hindusthan) in which the 7% Brahmanists, the
self-styled "superior Aryans", should be the "rightful ruling class".
With the westward expansion of the British Raj, historical propaganda and claims designed to float the
Brahmanists' One Hindu Nation ambitions (really a Poorbia Brahmanist fantasy of empire - "Hindu, Hindi,
Hindustan") were exported to newly annexed regions by Brahmanist ideologues, politicians, socio-political
organizations and schools during the late 19th and early 20th century (e.g. Arya Samaj founded in 1877, RSS
formed in 1925). The pre/post independence national politics of Brahmanist dominated political
organizations, regardless of party or political affiliation, is rooted in the historical consciousness and
hegemonic "One Hindu Nation" ideology and doctrines spawned by Neo-Brahmanism.
The post-1947 India Union is in reality a "Casteocracy" run by the supremacist Orthodox Brahmanical Castes
(OCs: Brahmins, Banias; 7% of "Hindus") or Brahmanists who came to hijack the largest chunk of the former
British Indian Empire in 1947. It has been cleverly run under the ruse of "world's biggest democracy" for the
past 50 years. The supremacist and hegemonic minded Brahmanist cliques completely control the circles of
power and policy of the Indian state. Post 1947, almost all (95%) of the top decision-making and managerial
positions in the country's administration, bureaucracy, state-run media, press, huge state-run economic
sector, universities, army, police, etc. were stacked by Brahmanists who form 7% of Hindus. Intriguingly,
Brahmanists did not have ruling class status or political dominance in any significant country/region of
southasia before the British began creating their empire ("India") during the 19th century.
According to statistics published by reputed Indian journalist and historian Kushwant Singh, the Brahmins
alone (3.5% of "Hindus") control over 70% of the top decision-making and managerial posts of the Indian
State. In 1935, the 3.5% Brahmins held around 4% of the officer positions among Indians in the government.
By 1985, one finds that out of 3,300 Indian Administrative Officers (IAS), 2,376 are Brahmins; from the rank ofdeputy secretaries upwards, out of 500, 310 are Brahmins; of the 26 state chief secretaries, 19 are Brahmins;
of the 16 Supreme Court judges, 9 are Brahmins; of 438 district magistrates, 250 are Brahmins; and so on in
other circles of power and policy in the Indian state. Their state power jumps from 70% to over 90% upon
including the remaining "twice born" Brahmanists.
The facts show that the 7% Brahmanists monopolize the top positions of the Indian state and determine its
policies and actions (e.g. Swadeshi Permit Raj Economics, nuclear testing, police/army rule and oppression
in all majority non-Hindu states, systemic human right abuses of majority "lower castes" and minorities).
Under "Permit Raj" and "Swadeshi" economic policies, only the Brahmanist cliques have been allowed to
invest and enter the new modern and profitable industrial and manufacturing sectors while the rest of Indians
(93%) are tied to the plough, dwindling lands and the unskilled labor market. The country was converted into a
huge "Brahmanist milking cow" through Brahmanist monopoly over the corrupted, rent-seeking and
criminalized beaurocracy, political system and state-run industries while the wealth generated in the private
economy is cornered through Swadeshi Permit Raj Economics. Genocidal state terror and violence has been
unleashed on the populations of every non-Hindu majority state in the Indian Union (e.g. Kashmir, Punjab,
Assam, Manipur, Mizoland, Nagaland, etc.) and communal rioting against religious minorities is an integral
part of statecraft and politics by the Indian Government and Brahmanist-lead political parties (1984 Sikh
“riots”, Ayodhya, 1991Bombay Muslim “riots”, etc.). The Brahmanists’ despised majority (80%) "lower castes"
and Dalits (untouchables) live under constant threat of random police/army violence and torture to keep them
under submission and to discourage them from mobilizing politically.
This is the true hideous, criminal and genocidal nature of the 50 year Casteocracy, imperialistically running
the old British empire and motivated by the hegemonic, supremacist and racist socio-political ideology of
neo-Brahmanism. Unfortunately, Western opinion on events in India has been largely shaped by the
viewpoint of Brahmanist propagandists who control the governmental machinery/political
system/academics/state-run mass media/press/etc. Brahmanists have been extremely effective in
propagating their historical and political mithya and propaganda and hiding, deflecting and scapegoating
India's gruesome realities and the Brahmanist regime’s abysmal failures and tyranny on their victims, lower
castes and religious minorities. Brahmanist emigrees to the west have very zealously adopted the role of
“Indian Ambassadors” and guardians of the honor of their dishonorable Casteocracy and perpetually cover-up
its criminal, corrupted and genocidal nature and spread neo-Brahmanist doctrines and historical fraud to the
outside world.
Propagating the Fradulent "Hindu" Identity - the Chief Weapon of Poorbia Brahmanist Imperialism
The Brahmanists came to power on the Congress elephant by deviously converting the pre-independence
political debate and struggle into a communal Hindu-Muslim religious struggle and propagating their
fradulent "Hindu" identity/nationalism to construct their majority Hindu flock - naturally to be lead, lorded and
ruled by the "superior" 7% Brahmanists (i.e. the Brahmins/Banias clique)! This was made possible by the
master stroke of Mahatama Gandhi - the Hindu nationalist cum holy sadhu - who made "Hindus" a 55%
majority on paper in the 1920s upon getting the Dalits or "untouchables" (20%) dubbed as "Hindus" by the
British. This coup moved the "Hindus" from 35% to a 55% majority in British India. In pre-independence India, Muslims were 25%; Sikhs/Christians/Buddhists/tribals/etc. formed the remaining 20%.
This action, along with recognition of Congress as the sole political representative of all Indians in national
matters, was a payoff by the British colonial authorities to the Brahmanist lead Congress and Gandhi for loyal
services rendered to Queen and empire in supporting their WWI war effort; recruiting the "martial"
communities (e.g. Sikhs, Jats, Rajputs, Gujars of Saka-origin) of the northwest and Muslims to go fight for the
British Empire in Europe/middle east; subduing, opposing, infiltrating and sabotaging other
non-Congress/non-Brahmanist lead political parties and independence movements organized at home (who
saw British weakness during the war as an ideal opportunity).
The 55% fraudulent "Hindu pile" was little more than a political game of Brahmanist politicians and political
parties in Delhi while orthodox caste Hindus (7%) would not eat/touch/marry/socialize or even worship with
their "polluted" Dalits (20% untouchables) in the 1920s. After this "victory on paper", Brahmanist politicians,
political parties, and organizations totally communalized pre-independence politics along "Hindu/Muslim"
religious lines of "nationhood" to get on the road to empire and Delhi. Under the historical propaganda
campaign launched by Poorbia Brahmanist ideologues, organizations and schools since the late 19-20th
century (e.g. "Arya" Samaj, HinduMahaSaba, RSS, etc.), the majority Saka-Vedic people of the northwest has
been largely brainwashed into becoming the loyal and obedient inferior "Hindu" flock of their Brahmanist
(Brahmins, Banias - 7%) masters, overlords and "Netajis".
Ironically, despite all the Poorbia Brahmanist historical mithya and fantasy, the self-proclaimed "highest
caste" Brahmanists cannot name and date even one ruler of the northwest over its 3500 year known history
since the start of the Vedic period (1500 BC); in the 50 years since 1947, there have been 6 Brahmin Rulers!
Prior to annexation by the British in the 19th century, the Sakas had regained their historical power (500
BC-1200AD) and the entire northwest and west was under Saka rule and political domination: Sikhs (Lahore,
Patiala, Nabha, Kashmir), Jats (Bharatpur, Dholpur, Agra, Bhawalpur), Rajputs (Rajputana), Gujars (Gujarat,
western MP), Marathas (Maharashtra). Further, the terms "Hindu" and "Hindusthan" were first imposed on
southasian nations and regions by the Afghan dynasty of Ghori in the 12th century; these terms were never
used in southasia prior to the Muslim era and are not even found in early (pre-12th century AD) Brahmanical
or Buddhist texts. These terms and concepts have no "historical depth" in any social, religious, ethnic or
national sense past the 12th century when Mohammed Ghori for the first time named his conquered domains
in northern southasia "Hindusthan" and his subjects "Hindus".
What did Ghori's "Hindus" call themselves prior to the 12th century? The chatur-varna ideology found in
gangetic Brahmanical texts only views society in terms of "inferior and superior" castes (jatis) with separate
religious, social and legal rights/privledges; there is no notion of a common religious community, nation or
people in Brahmanical holy texts! According to Brahmin Law Givers, the "lower caste" Sudras (80%) were "too
polluted" to be seen fit to even enter their temples, worship their devtas, and learn their religious scriptures.
Their holy texts repeatedly “forbid Brahmins” from travelling to the northwest Vedic-Saka country. The region
was independent from the rest of southasia over 90% of its 3500 year verifiable history and pursued its own
unique and separate ethnic, historical, political, religious, linguistic, and cultural evolution.
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