Harappa

Published on 5th February, 2023, in Mid-day. No conversation about Harappans and Aryans is now complete without discussing the Oxus civilisation. Cities of the Oxus civilisation, in what is now Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, traded with cities of the Harappan civilisation to their south, until Harappan cities ceased to exist by 1900 BCE. They also had close ties with pastoralists in the north, in what is now South Russia and Kazakhstan, who had successfully domesticated horses and harnessed them to chariots around 2000 BCE. These horse-domesticating Steppe herdsmen eventually moved south, lived in Oxus basin for a few generations, and eventually split into two groups, the ..

Published on 27th February, 2022, in Mid-day. The first goddess of India is depicted on Harappan seals dated to 2,500 BCE. She is shown as half tiger, like a sphinx, upper half female with headdress and bangles, and the lower half of the cat. It's the oldest sphinx image in the world, showing a woman fused with a tiger. We don't know what it means. The seal showing this image also shows us a woman separating two men who are trying to fight with trees. This woman is wearing bangles on both arms and she's stretching them out as she keeps the men apart. Tigers, ..

Published on 25th February, 2022, in The Hindu. We have all heard of the Pashupati seal in Harappa. Scholars are clear that it has nothing to do with Shiva, even though it is still labelled as proto-Shiva in popular books. The Pashupati described in the Veda is the guardian of cattle, animals that have been domesticated, while the Pashupati seal in Harappa, which is 4,000 years old, shows a man, or woman, surrounded by wild animals including a tiger and a rhino. There are two seals of the horned deity. The popular one is in Delhi and it has the animals. The less popular one ..

Published on 28th November, 2021, in Mid-day. We often trace the origin of Hinduism to Rig Veda, dated to 1,500 BCE. But the Rig Veda contains ideas that we can trace to Harappan civilisation. For example, Rig Veda mantra 8.47.17 refers to a measurement system based on increase by a factor of two (1, 2, 4, 8,16) also found in Harappa. How is that possible? Harappan cities ceased to exist five centuries before the Aryans arrived. Also, Harappans were very different from the Vedic people—they were urban, preferred trading and had no armies, while the Vedic people were pastoral, preferred raiding and war. It is ..

Who is a Hindu? Dark secrets of the sewers of Harappa. Published on 13th September, 2020, in Mumbai Mirror. Indians have an uncomfortable relationship with the sanitary system. We have permitted and even justified manual scavenging. A place where the latrine is not connected to the drainage system and so humans have to come into the back alleys of homes, clear excrement from toilets, and then carry it out of the village. Those who were forced to do this job as part of caste duties and karma were called ‘untouchables’. They were not even given respect for the forced service extracted for the benefit of ..

Published on 16th August, 2020, in Mid-day. One of the things in the about-4,000-year-old Harappan seals is the value placed on trees. There is the peepal tree and the babool (acacia) tree that have been identified. The peepal tree is identified by its characteristic wide tapering leaves. The babool tree is identified by its peculiar branch patterns and its thorns. It is clear that these two plants were important to the Harappan civilisation. There are images of these trees located within an enclosure and worshipped. There are images of goddesses emerging from these trees. There are images of men with plumes or twigs in their ..

WHO IS A HINDU? - The Missing Horse Of Baghpat. Published on 19th July, 2020, in Mumbai Mirror. Ram rides out of Ayodhya on a horse-driven chariot. Krishna rides out of Vrindavana and into Kurukshetra in a horse-driven chariot. As per astronomical information, found in Ramayana and Mahabharata, traditionalists believe that Ramayana occurred 7,000 years ago and Mahabharata 5,000 years ago. There is only one problem. There is no archaeological evidence to corroborate this. This annoys Hindutva. In 2018, archaeologists have found a wagon dated to 2000 BCE at Sinauli in Baghpat, UP. Hindutva was quick to tell the world that this was a game-changing ..

Published on 24th May, 2020, in Mid-day. Writing in India emerges only in the Mauryan period, 2,300 years ago. It is in the Ashokan edicts that we find the Brahmi script. Vedic hymns and Buddha's lectures, before that, were orally transmitted. The Harappan civilisation, 4,000 years ago, with its sophisticated brick cities and sewage system, used symbols on seals. Symbols are often accompanied by images of plants, animals, humans, and fantastic beasts like three-headed goats and unicorns. No one knows what these symbols mean. Are these symbols a kind of script? Some even argue that they are an ancient Vedic script, even though Vedic hymns ..

Published on 23rd February, 2020, in Mid-day Hindutva historians insist that the Harappan cities, that thrived 4,500 years ago across Punjab, Sindh, Rajasthan, and Gujarat, were full of Aryas chanting Vedic hymns and pouring ghee in fire altars made of brick. These convoluted theories have not accepted in any peer reviewed international journal—but this is dismissed as global anti-Hindu conspiracy. Hindutva scholars are unable to explain why the Aryas chose to remember rather meticulously the Vedic hymns, down to the last intonation, but not the advanced sewage technology of the Harappan cities? Did hygiene not matter to the rishis? Yes, there is memory even in ..