The 4,500-year-old Harappan Script, found on seals and sealings, is most probably a set of emojis, strategically placed in a carefully designed sequence, to communicate commercial ideas related to licence, taxes and tolls. This makes it a mercantile script, part of a seal-based highly commercial administrative system of the Bronze Age.
This makes the Harappan script a creation of the Bania (Vanio or Vanik) community, Indian merchants whose ubiquitous gatherings in the shade of the fig tree, inspired Portuguese botanists to refer to those trees as Banyan trees, about 400 years ago. However, the Brahmins do not agree, as they are determined to show Harappan script contains Sanskrit words, even though Aryans did not contribute in any way to the rise, or fall, of the Harappan cities.
Ever since the British tried to invent Indian history, all attention has been given to Indiaʼs religious past. The British historians divided Indian history into Hindu past that preceded the Muslim past. The Marxist historians who challenged this religious framework, refused not to speak of the preceding Buddhist and Harappan periods, bypassing Indiaʼs rich merchant heritage. They chose instead to lump Banias with Brahmins and direct discourse towards the Savarna-Dalit divide.
Merchants of Harappan cities connected Central Asia with the Middle East via the river and the seacoast. They exported cotton fabric, bronze, and beads of brightly coloured semi-precious stones, even peacocks, roosters, dogs and buffaloes, in exchange for bitumen, wool and incense. The Harappan cities ceased to exist after 2000 BC. But after 500 BC, a new mercantile network rose, connecting the Gangetic plains to the eastern and western coasts of India, as well as to Persia, then Rome, and eventually Southeast Asia. This is when cash was invented, and gold poured into India. This is also when Vishnu Purana (500 AD) stated that in Kali Yuga, “property alone would confer prestige… wealth alone would be the source of dharma… and fine clothes alone would indicate dignity.” This reveals the contempt of the priestly class for the merchants.
Merchants funded Buddhist monasteries and Jain temples established along trade routes. In exchange, Buddhist monks offered them hospitality, medical, warehousing and banking services, besides granting them spiritual merit for business success. Buddhism was clearly prosperity theology, much like Jainism and Arabic Islam. But academicians prefer to see them all as spiritual, ‘unpollutedʼ by commerce.
Brahmins preferred kings and chiefs who controlled the land. Mahabharata describes the burning of a forest to establish the city of the Pandavas as an offering to Agni, the Vedic fire god. Ramayana speaks of Janak ploughing Sita out of the earth. There are no merchants in either epic. They are found only in Jatakas. Tamil epics composed between 300 AD and 600 AD, all deal with merchant families who are brought to ruin by courtesans and rescued by monks and nuns.
Chanakyaʼs Arthashastra views merchants with suspicion, as they travel through many lands and owe no allegiance to any particular king. So he created powerful mechanisms to tax them. Manusmriti reluctantly includes merchants as dvija (twice born) after it was observed that they could patronise Brahmin rituals, in the absence of kings. But they were always lower in rank than Kshatriya kings, Mansabdars of Mughals and Zamindars of the British. Significantly, the egalitarian Sikh gurus all came from merchant communities that claimed they were warriors (Khatri) before they chose trade over war.
Brahmins took to writing long after Buddhists and Jains popularised the Brahmi script, that first appears in Ashokan edicts (300 BC), 1,000 years after Veda was composed, and 2,000 years after Harappan civilisation declined. In Jain texts, Rishabha-deva teaches the art of writing and art of counting to his daughters Brahmi and Sundari. Much later, we hear stories of Ganesha writing the Mahabharata. The Vedas were always to be heard, not read. So to seek Sanskrit in Harappan scripts is rather anachronistic and highly aspirational.
Right now the Harappan script decipherment is divided into two groups: those seeking consonants, alphabets and syllables (the Brahmin school) and those seeking trade symbols, codes and stamps (the Bania school). The Brahminical hold continues in academic and political circles, despite the fact that most private institutions are increasingly funded by Bania tycoons. So naturally, the Brahmin school is favoured over the Bania schools in social media. The only thing that unites the two warring communities seems to be the pure vegetarian canteen, which probably did not exist in Harappa. But who can say for sure?
