Eternal India Encyclopedia

Eternal India encyclopedia

LURE - THRU THE AGES

high percentage of silver as impurity - a characteristic of castings made before the extraction of silver was understood. On the basis of what we know from Harappan and Pre-Harappan archaeological finds so far, the dates of sites belonging to the period of the Rig Veda cannot be later than 3500 B.C. The artefacts belonging to that era are likely to contain silver as impurity. So far only one such artefact appears to be known: a very ancient casting found in 1958 by the American collector and historian Harry Hicks near Delhi. It was thoroughly analyzed by him and the metallur- gist Robert Anderson at laboratories in California and Switzerland. It has now been scientifically dated to 3800-3700 B.C. based on both radiocarbon (on particles of soot deposited on the casting) and more modern metallic crystallization tests. This is now famous as "Va- sistha's Head", based on the description of the hairstyle of Vasistha given in the seventh book of the Rig Veda. This was found to corre- spond quite closely to the hairstyle on the casting found by Hicks. This identification may not be acceptable to everyone, but the date of the head established on the basis of tests carried out at some of the leading laboratories of Europe and America seems beyond dispute. Remarka- bly enough the casting does contain a high percentage of silver as im- purity. Both its date and its metallurgical composition show it to have been from the period of the Rig Veda. As a result of these recent developments there is now a paradigm shift in the study of ancient India. Methods based on linguistics and social and political theories such as migrations and nomadism are progressively giving way to methods based on the sciences and technology. At the most fundamental level, the role of ecology in the rise and fall of civilizations is now gaining better understanding. A new methodology combining modern science and ancient records, best exemplified in Wakankar's pioneering exploration of the Vedic Sarasvati river is promising to open new windows on the world's past. To properly understand the Vedic civilization then we must look to the ecological picture of the Indian subcontinent beginning with the ending of the last Ice Age. The last Ice Age ended around 8000 B.C. with the rising temperatures releasing waters from the accumulated ice caps. The melting of ice caps resulted in the discharge of enormous quantities of water into the Indian subcontinent in the form of numer- ous rivers and streams that no longer exist. Photographs by the French satellite SPOT show that North India was then fed by an enormous number of natural streams. Many areas like Sind, Baluchistan and Rajasthan that are now arid were once fertile and supported agricul- ture. The Sarasvati was then the greatest of rivers exactly as described in the Rig Veda. Over the following several thousand years the accumulated supply of water in the ice caps came to be depleted and deserts began to form. This culminated in the Great Drought of 2200- 1900 B.C. that ended the Harappan civilization. With its end the Vedic Age also ended. The rise and fall of the Vedic Civilization is not to be accounted for by any invasion - Aryan or otherwise - but by the immensely long boom-and-bust ecological cycle that came at the end of the last Ice Age. The Harappan civilization was the Vedic twilight. Archaeology records a continuous indigenous evolution going back to 7000 B .C. at sites like Mehrgarh. The Rig Veda and the Vedic Civilization that gave birth to it were a, unique human response to a unique natural age of water abundance in the immediate aftermath of the lastlce Age. The creator and the destroyer of the Vedic Age were one and the same, ecology. (N.S.R.)

Culturally also the sites belonging to the Harappan civilization are part of the Vedic Aryan civilisation. S.R. Rao in India, A.H. Dani in Pakistan and several others have found evidence of Vedic practices including sacrifices and fire worship. A careful correlation of these archaeological finds like Vedic altars with the technical literature has shown that the Sulbasutras which are mathematical manuals found in the Vedic literature must have been used in their design and construc- tion. Thus both archaeology and the Vedic literature must have been part of the same civilization. On the basis of comparison of archaeol- ogy and the literary records of India and Mesopotamia, K.D. Sethna and others have shown that the Harappan civilization of c. 3000 to 2000 B.C. corresponds roughly to the Sutra period of the Vedic literature. This means that the Harappan civilization like the Sutra period came at the end of the Vedic Age. Its end was brought about by a global climatic change that culminated in a 300 year drought. This archaeological picture is now supplemented by the emerging picture about the ecology of ancient India, especially the fate of the great prehistoric river known as the Sarasvati. In the Rig Veda the holiest of rivers is not the Ganga but the Sarasvati. In the past decade, thanks to archaeology and satellite photography, a great deal has been learnt about the Vedic Sarasvati. In an exploration comparable in its importance to the discovery of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, the late V.S. Wakankar showed that the river Sarasvati described in the Rig Veda as flowing from the "Mountain to the Sea" was indeed a great river before 2000 B.C. This has also been confirmed by photographs taken by the American earth sensing satellite known as Landsat. It was further noted that numerous Harappan and pre-Harappan settlements are found along the course of the now dry Sarasvati thereby confirm- ing Vedic accounts. All this shows that the geography of North India described in the Rig Veda must belong to a period well before 2000 B.C. More recent data from the Indo-French satellite cum field study serve to further clarify the picture. Paul-Henri Fracfort of CNRS France, one of the leaders of the group has pointed out that the great prehistoric river corresponding to the Vedic Sarasvati was no longer a perennial river when the proto Harappans settled in the area. As evidence he pointed to the presence of early Harappan sites on the river bed itself showing that they were established long after the river had dried up. This means that the Sarasvati and its main northern tributary Drishadvati (also a Vedic river) must have begun to dry up well before 3000 B.C. This can only mean that the Sarasvati and the Drishadvati rivers described in the Rig Veda must belong to a period several cen- turies before 3000 B.C. This is supported by descriptions found in later works such as the Panchavimsha Brahmana as well as the Ma- habharata. More recently, an analysis of the metallurgy of artefacts found in the area has tended to support a date for the Rig Veda in early centuries of the fourth millennium B.C. and before. While Harappan sites are occasionally found on the river beds, numerous pre- Harappan sites are found along the banks of the Sarasvati river. It was noted earlier that the Harappan civilization can now be assigned to the Sutra period of c. 3000-2000 B.C. The pre-Harappan sites along the Sarasvati can therefore be assigned to the Brahmana and the Samhita periods that preceded the Sutras. The pre-Harappan site of Kunal on the Sarasvati nearAmbala has yielded silver ornaments. Since the Rig Veda in all probability had no knowledge of silver — it is mentioned for the first time in the Yajurveda as rajatam hirdnyam -it is reasonable to assume that the Kunal site is later than the Rig Veda.. Rig Vedic sites when found are likely to show bronze and copper artefacts that contain a