Eternal India Encyclopedia

LURE - THRU THE AGES

Eternal India

encyclopedia

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

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

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

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.)