A Centenary Tribute

"Karpasa" in Prehistoric India*

SELDOM does a work of historical scholarship confront us with such far-reaching new insights as this companion volume to The Problem of Aryan Origins, which was published in 1980 by the same keen-sighted, energetic and wide-ranging thinker. That earlier book was an incisive reexamination of the "Aryan invasion" theory, a doctrine that was long accepted much too uncritically in most academic discussion of Indian history and has continued to exert a divisive influence on Indian life decades after the departure of the colonialists who conceived it. With abundant documentation and persuasive logic, Mr. Sethna's exposition drove to the conclusion that on an impartial scrutiny of the existing evidence, this theory must be discarded - or, at the very least, acceptance of it suspended until better arguments can be advanced in favour of it. Archaeologically, "the Aryans... have not yet been identified" (Dales). Anthropologically, "the population [at Harappa and Lothal] would appear, on the available evidence, to have remained more or less stable from Harappan times to the present day" (Wheeler). The general picture is that "direct testimony to the assumed fact is lacking, and no tradition of an early home beyond the frontier survives in India" (Basham). Little is left but nebulous inferences from linguistic affinities for which other historical explanations could just as well be hypothesised. So instead of a gratuitous invasion of the Punjab by untraceable Central Asian nomads in 1500 B.C., what was proposed in The Problem of Aryan Origins was a "belt of ancient Aryanism" extending by the fourth millennium B.C. from the Ukraine to

*A review of "Karpasa" in Prehistoric India: A Chronological and Cultural Clue, by K.D. Sethna, New Delhi: Biblia Implex, 1981.

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northwestern India, attested by such evidence as the data for the domesticated horse, a feature recognised as especially distinctive of the early culture termed "Aryan".

"Karpasa" in Prehistoric India vindicates this view of the remote antiquity of the Aryan presence in India from a different and unexpected angle. It focuses on the identity of the enigmatic Indus Valley civilisation, which the previous book had insufficiently illuminated. A notable characteristic of that civilisation as indicated by its material remains is its priority in the cultivation of cotton, which it is even thought to have exported to other parts of the ancient world. (Sethna finds fresh support for this notion, as will be shown in a moment.) From the time of the Harappan culture (c. 2500-1500 B.C.) forward, the prevalence of cotton in north India is ascertainable from a number of sites spread over a widening area. There is no sign or probability of a cessation in its cultivation with the decline of the Indus Valley cities. Now, the. varied and copious extant compositions of the Vedic Aryans -the oldest of which reveal themselves to have taken shape in the Indus region itself, the very homeland of cotton - frequently mention wool but betray no hint of an awareness of cotton, the later karpasa. It is on this striking fact, a puzzling anomaly in the current chronological framework, that K.D. Sethna seizes to throw the Vedas boldly yet cogently back into pre-Harappan times.

Undoubtedly, a single book is not enough to work out all the implications of so drastic a shift in historical perspective, establishing it once for all as viable and necessary. But Sethna deals minutely and effectively with several major objections that could be raised. As regards his reinterpretation of the Indus culture as an essentially Aryan development, though imbued with Near Eastern influences, it must be said that the pieces fall into place impressively. The Sanskrit texts in which cotton first makes its appearance, the early Sutras, are synchronised with the Harappan civilisation at its height. Immediately certain astronomical references, which in the old chronology had to be dismissed as yielding

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these Sutras an antiquity that could not be credited, cease to be problematic. Then there are a number of aspects of the Indus Valley civilisation which, juxtaposed abruptly with the Rig Veda, have looked like sure signs of a culture that was radically non-Aryan, although many of its features somehow became typical of Aryan life after the lapse of a few centuries. But in Sanskrit literature, it is precisely the Sutras that reveal these persistent characteristics of the Indian way of life - archaeologically traceable in the Harappan remains - taking shape. The hundreds of years interposed between Harappa and the Sutras accomplish nothing. Moreover, the evolution from Vedic origins of supposedly non-Aryan manifestations like image worship and the cult of the Mother Goddess is not only free of difficulties but, as Sethna demonstrates, was practically inevitable.

Yet Mr. Sethna resists the facile temptation to simply Sanskritise the Harappans. His eye is focused tirelessly on the actual evidence, and his clear and inquisitive gaze unblinkered by academic orthodoxy and undistracted by partisan bias perceives a more complex and interesting panorama. In particular, his rethinking of the Aryan question allows him to utilise with an unprecedented fruitfulness the perspective to be gained from Mesopotamia, with which the Indus Valley had commercial relations. In one of his most fascinating chapters, whose substance amounts to an independent corroboration of the argument from cotton as well as a refinement of its implications, he establishes a significant equation between the Sumerian name for the Indus civilisation - Meluhha - and the term which the speakers of archaic Sanskrit, whose centre had now shifted eastward, are shown to have applied to its members: Mlechchha. Other scholars have tried to work out this correspondence, but failed due to chronological difficulties which look more and more artificial to the reader of "Karpasa". To validate the Meluhha-Mlechchha equivalence which investigators have found so appealing, the last Brahmana which first speaks of the Mlechchhas must obviously be dated somewhere near

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the Harappan culture and not come a millennium after it. In Sethna's analysis the Brahmana falls just where it should, contemporary with the Harappan beginnings; the connection of these two terms at once becomes compelling and sheds a valuable light on the exact identity of the mysterious Harappans. For the Mlechchhas are first mentioned in Sanskrit with specific reference to a difference in language. Indeed, while we may now take the earliest use of the word to signify the inhabitants of the Indus Valley, being simply a Sanskritic form of the name by which they must have known themselves - otherwise approximated by Sumerian "Meluhha" - it came later to be applied to all who talk in a strange or non-Aryan way, such as tribal peoples and Dravidians. The example of Mlechchha utterance cited by the Brahmana, however, indicates clearly that it is alluding to a mode of speech that was not non-Aryan at all but simply "corrupt" in relation to Sanskrit. Thus, the language of the Harappan culture may be deduced to have been, as Sethna calls it, a proto-Prakrit.

With respect to this designation as well as the general force of the argument, it is worth noting Sethna's comparison of later Prakrit equivalents of "Mlechchha" - "Melakha" and "Milakkha" - with the actual pronunciation of "Meluhha", which may be represented "Melukhkha". Certain scholars quote the Sumerian word as "Melukha" or "Milukhkha", and "Melahha" has also been proposed, which would be pronounced "Melakhkha".

Striking confirmation of Sethna's theory comes again from Mesopotamia and brings us back to cotton. A distinguished scholar has speculated plausibly that among the unidentified names of articles occurring in Sumerian texts, the adaptation of an Indian (Harappan or "Meluhhaite") word for cotton is very likely to be present. But naturally, labouring under the usual assumptions, something resembling a Sanskrit word was not what he had in mind. Consequently he was able to cite kapazum as one of these unknown terms without pausing to wonder at its similarity to Sanskrit

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karpasa, which denotes the very commodity he was looking for. Yet the resemblance of kapazum to karpasa, and even more to a Prakritic form that would drop the r, is inescapable. All factors considered, the identification of Sumerian kapazum as referring to Indian cotton must be counted as a technical contribution of K.D. Sethna's that is of considerable historical consequence. It aptly epitomises the undeniably brilliant accomplishment of this work which pioneers a stimulating new outlook on a large field of human antiquity.

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