The Problem Of Aryan Origins

Chapter Seven

PRE-HarappāN ARYANISM AND THE RIGVEDA

How well a pre-Harappān Rigveda, in an all-round context and not merely in that of the spoked wheel, fits into the historical picture of India's remote antiquity can be noted if we revolve a question which Sankalia put to the present writer in a letter of 21 March 1963. I had sent him the typescript of the first draft of my book, The Harappā Culture and the Rigveda, which has now been considerably enlarged but is still unpublished. He wrote to me a very appreciative letter of some length, in the course of which he observed:

"Like a clever lawyer you have shown how the archaeologists have very little evidence that the Harappā Culture is non-Vedic... When you say that the Harappā Civilization belongs to the later phase of the Vedic Culture, that is, the Atharva Veda, etc., it is also understandable.

"But we have got to show that there are traces of Vedic Aryans of a still earlier date to be found in India and they must go back to at least two thousand to four thousand B.C., if not even earlier, and these must be found from Sind and the Punjab, though Baluchistan has given evidence of a pottery which may go back to 3500 B.C. From nowhere have traces of such an early culture been found and that, I think, will be regarded as a weak point of your theory."

Between 1963 and today, archaeology has taken many strides and Sankalia's criticisms can be answered from his own later writings. But before we quote the later Sankalia against the earlier we may draw attention to three things.

First, when we say that Vedic Aryan traces from a pre-Harappān period have not been found in the provinces where we should expect them we must mean traces that are absolutely clear-cut. It is true that something which would inevitably fix a culture as Vedic Aryan has not been discovered in the times and places mentioned by Sankalia in that letter. But can we affirm that such traces have met the

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archaeologist's spade even for the second millennium B.C. during which most historians visualize the Vedic Aryans as invading India and settling down in the Punjāb and Sind?

We have already cited negative replies from Dales and from the very champion himself of the Aryan-invasion hypothesis: Wheeler. We may join to their statements Pusalker's comment on the claims staked for several potteries that they belong to the supposed Vedic Aryan invaders: "There is... no positive evidence to connect the Vedic Aryans with the excavated Cultures subsequent to those of the Indus Valley. .. So far archaeological excavation has yielded nothing of the nature of sacrificial implements or other ritual paraphernalia that can definitely be called Aryan and associated with the Vedic Aryans, though it must be admitted that the Painted Grey Ware culture has been found at all excavated sites connected with the Bhārata War."¹ In Pusalker's mind the terminal admission does not weigh sufficiently against his generalization. Neither, apparently, does any other equivalence with tradition al history proposed by the original excavators of PGW. In fact, all the "equivalences" have been reduced to near-nullity by K.N. Sastri.² And we have already demonstrated that archaeologically there is nothing to render the PGW-people an arrival from abroad. In the face of negative results for every post-Harappān pottery, do we require absolutely clear-cut signs of Vedic Aryanism in a far greater antiquity than 1500 B.C.?

Secondly, certain signs which would be indecisive round about the middle of the second millennium B.C., would have an almost decisive force prior to 2500 B.C., the most likely starting-point of the Harappā Culture in a recognizable form. We have characterized, in accord with all authorities, the Aryans as the first domesticators of the horse. But, if a culture of c. 1500-1300 B.C. is proved to have

1.Editors' Preface, The Cultural Heritage of India (Calcutta, 1958), I, P- xlvi.

2.New Lights on the Indus Civilization, with an Introduction by R.K. Mookerji (Atma Ram & Sons, Delhi, 1957), pp. 110-17.

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known the domesticated horse, it cannot automatically become Aryan in our eyes. As late as that time we may believe the use of this animal to have spread outside the sphere of Aryanism. However, if a culture considerably older than 1500 B.C. can be taken to have known that animal, the odds are heavy that it was Aryan.

Among the animal finds in Phase I of Rānā Ghundāī in North Balūchistān which must be dated before 3000 B.C., "four teeth... have been identified as belonging to the domesticated horse." Thus H. Peake and H.J. Fleure report.³ Piggott has the same news to convey.⁴ Frederick Zeuner has tried to discredit it by suggesting the hemione or onager (half-ass) as RG I's horse-seeming animal.⁵ But he muddles his argument by proposing the hemione also for some other animal bones recovered at the site and considered to be an ass's.⁶ He overlooks the fact that the teeth ascribed to the horse were originally found not to go structurally with the "ass"-finds. Hence both cannot be identified as the hemione's. There is no reason to doubt the presence of equus caballus at RG I.

Nor does Zeuner himself strike us as being any too confident about the non-caballine nature of those four teeth. In a general summary of his views on horse-finds all over the ancient world, he gives the benefit of the doubt to the horselike representation on a vase from Khafaje near Baghdad, belonging to the Jamdat Nasr period, approximately 3000 B.C.⁷ Then he remarks: "The bones from Rānā Ghundāī I are dated even earlier, but domestication cannot be proved."⁸ This means that the RG teeth are - or at least may be - of a horse, even though an undomesticated one.

3.Times and Places (Oxford, 1956), p. 228.

4.Op. cit., p. 121.

5.A History of Domesticated Animals (Hutchinson of London, 1963),p. 332.

6.Ibid.

7.Ibid., pp. 317,337.

8.Ibid., p. 337.

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However, the reservation here is itself indirectly offset by Zeuner's very next sentence: "It is possible, and for theoretical reasons probable, that the original domestication of the horse had taken place by this time..." We may further bear in mind that RG I provides evidence of animal-domestication apart from the horse-finds: Piggott lists, among the animal finds, domestic sheep (Ovis vignei).⁹ Even Sankalia, who is erroneously led away by Zeuner to be wholly negative where Zeuner himself is merely ambiguous on the whole, speaks twice of "the bones of domesticated animals" at RG I.¹⁰ It would be rather odd if Zeuner were to allow the horse yet dub him wild in the midst of all other animals that had undergone domestication.

And Piggott indicates that the testimony of RG I does not lack continuation. He says about a find at a site in the Zhob Valley related to RG: "one clay figurine from Periano Ghundai seems to represent a horse and is interesting in connection with the find of horses' teeth in RG I at the type site."¹¹ This figurine he assigns to the RG III phase which for him begins some centuries before 2500 B.C. and is pre-Harappān even at its end.

According to Sankalia, the figurine has been reported from the earlier of the two phases ("Zhob Cult" and "In-cinerary Pot Burial") which Fairservis has marked as late

Periano Ghundai.¹² For some unexplained reason Sankalia questions its inclusion in the earlier phase, but his diffidence does not substantially affect the antiquity of this terracotta. For, even the later phase does not come after the Harappā Culture, while by Fairservis's rating the earlier is contemporary only with one phase - obviously a very initial one - of the Harappā Culture.¹³ Most probably the figurine precedes

9. Piggott, op. cit. p. 121.

10.Prehistory and Protohistory of India and Pakistan (1974), p. 325, col. 2.

11.Op. cit, p. 126.

12.Op, cit., p. 324, col. 2.

13.The Roots of Ancient India, p. 148.

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the Harappā Culture, but otherwise too it is, at the latest, only a little after 2500 B.C.

Lastly, there is the verdict of Fairservis several years ago on the materials from a site pretty close to RG: Kili Gul Mohammad, which starts as early as 3500 B.C. if not earlier. Here equine remains - subsequently suspect without real cause on account of the Zeuner-inspired onager-obsession -were found scattered through all levels and were labelled by Fairservis, on the strength of a figurine, as those of the true horse.¹⁴ And we may quote apropos of this figurine as well as the one from Periano Ghundāī the phrase of none else than Zeuner: "clay figurines usually represent domestic types."¹⁵

From all these observations our inference has to be that, archaeologically, Aryanism may with reason be assumed to have existed next door to the provinces mentioned by Sankalia, in the very period he specifies.

Here a further point draws our attention. In India herself the situation is not as if the horse-knowing RG Culture remained simply a neighbour. Piggott has traced the Harappā Culture's varied relationship with RG, particularly in the matter of pottery. A special type - the so-named "offering-stand" - joins up with RG II, while decoration - design on a deep red lustrous slip - connects with the RG III phase at Periano Ghundāī and other sites; even the characteristic "stamp-seals" of the Harappā Culture have only two specimens in Balūchistān and both belong to areas of RG culture, one being from Dabar Kot whose upper layers formed actually a Harappān occupation and the other probably from Periano Ghundāī.¹⁶

With all this relationship with RG we may certainly expect horse-knowledge and horse-use to be spread over the Indus-region even before 2500 B.C. And what clinches our expectation is that we can go still further than close neighbourly interchange. We have evidence that the culture of RG was

14.Letter from Sankalia dated 1.11.1962.

15.Op. cit., p. 325.

16.Op. cit., pp. 192-93; 193; 128; 185.

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actually established in the Indus-region precedent to the typical Indus Valley Civilization.

Piggott writes: "... the small amount of material available from the recent (1946) excavations at Harappā shows that the first town on that site overlies a settlement of people using pottery which appears to belong to the North Balūchistān group, in that phase of development seen in the IIIc phase at Rānā Ghundāī."¹⁷ D.H. Gordon, who designates the RG and related pottery as Loralai ware, writes that from - 32 feet at Mohenjo-dāro, which gives almost the earliest period of the city, sherds of polychrome ware were recovered, having a series of ovals with a vertical line down the center of each, a motif so far found only in the bichrome Loralai III ware at Sur Jungal.¹⁸ So we have at the two most important sites in the Indus-region before and during 2500 B.C. a culture which knew the domesticated horse.

The Aryans, typified by this animal, must have been in pre-Harappān antiquity in the Indus-region. Even when Sankalia commented on the first draft of my book, the same conclusion could have been drawn. In an article of 1964 he has himself spoken of "Rānā Ghundāī IIIc Culture found under the debris of Harappan and the low level (- 32 feet) Mohenjo-dāro".¹⁹

But Sankalia, in his article, emphasizes the exceptional nature - in chronological terms - of the above finds along with the traces of the Harappān Civilization itself in Western India and the Punjāb. His emphasis does not vitiate the general trend of our conclusion, namely, pre-Harappān Aryanism in the Punjāb and Western India; yet, in 1964, the paucity of pre-Harappān Aryan material justifies his somewhat cautious final stand vis-à-vis a thesis like mine. Logically, the Harappā Culture could be aligned to Vedism;

17.Ibid. 142

18.The Prehistoric Background of Indian Culture (Tripathi Ltd. Bombay, 1958), p. 59.

19.'tradition al Indian Chronology and C-14 Dates of Excavated Sites", Indian Prehistory, 1964, p. 222.

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archaeologically, an Aryan background to it could be posited so far as the domesticated horse might be its differentia-, what was lacking was a substantial framework within which could be set in a broad manner a rich developed phenomenon like the Rigveda as the antecedent of the Indus Valley Civilization.

However, the picture of 1964 has radically changed now and, in addition, the most recent discoveries carry us, technically speaking, beyond "culture" to "civilization". In 1967 Sankalia himself, after referring in general to the cultural efflorescence of the Indus Valley, has the remarks:

"Though this was the most extensive civilization which India knew, it was not the first. It is now known that it was preceded by a civilization born under Iranian influence which flourished in Sind, Punjāb and Rajasthan, particularly in the valleys of the Vedic Sarasvati and Drishadvati (former Bikaner State). Who the authors of this earlier urban civilization were we do not know, just as we do not know who their mighty successors were.

"From the excavations in Sind (Kot Diji and Amri) and Northern Rajasthan (Kalibangan) we know that the pre-Indus people knew town-planning, had fortification walls, used a pale red pottery, occasionally beautifully painted, and made use of lithic blades for all household purposes as well as for cutting stocks of grain. In many respects this culture shows greater affinities with the Baluchi and Iranian cultures [than does the Indus Valley Civilization]."²⁰

Some significant features to be added from Sankalia himself writing elsewhere are: "exquisite figure sculpture in the round",²¹ "metal tools/weapons",²² "the use of the plough" and "sowing two types of grain" in the same field,²³ "wheeled transport (as documented by cart frames and

20."Cultural Divisions of India", Science Today (A Times of India Publication; Bombay, 1967), pp. 11-12.

21.Prehistory and Protohistory of India and Pakistan (1974), p. 33l.

22.Ibid., p. 345.

23.Ibid., p. 347.

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wheels)",²⁴ "long distant trade (lapis lazuli beads...)".²⁵

Sankalia speculates: "Probably other aspects of the civilization as writing and such ancillary things as sanitation, weights and measures might have been known and would be revealed, when a pre-Harappān settlement, such as Kot Diji, Amri or Gumla or Kalibangan is more fully excavated than hitherto. Kot Diji with its 17 feet of deposits offers excellent prospects."²⁶ Here a footnote of Sankalia's adds: "A pre-Harappān backed-drain with two courses has been found at Kalibangan..."

Mention of Gumla, which is north of Rawalpindi and just below the Gomal Pass, shows the vast extension of our knowledge of pre-Harappān sites after Sankalia first wrote of them. His latest statement in print lists further discoveries - not only "two in Sind" and "one in Rajasthan" but also "one in Balūchistān, two in North West Frontier."²⁷

Thus a more appropriate background on a large scale to the Harappā Culture is created, into which a preceding Vedic one can be fitted. If a Vedic Culture preceded the Harappā Culture, a wide-spread pre-Harappān civilization is exactly what we should expect. Admittedly, nothing Vedic in a direct form has yet been unearthed. But it is worth marking that Sankalia writes of a single pervading civilization, in spite of whatever local variations are inevitably there. This makes the pre-Harappān background still more appropriate for our thesis. And what constitutes the crowning touch is the implication in Sankalia's words: "greater affinities with the Baluchi and Iranian cultures." Our minds immediately hark back to the pre-Harappān pottery, at both Harappā and Mohenjo-dāro, pointing to RG IIIc of North Balūchistān. And naturally we ask: "Do pre-Harappān Kot Diji, Amri and Kalibangan, the three major sites, have the same pointers?"

24.Ibid., p. 358.

25.Ibid.

26.Ibid., p. 331.

27.Ibid.

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Wheeler finds the "Kot Dijian" pottery decorated "sometimes with pendant loops recalling occasional examples from Amri IB-IIB and from the pre-Indus layers at Harappā".²⁸ Beneath the Harappān citadel at Kalibangan, Wheeler notes "the remains of an earlier fortified area with a non-Harappān ceramic having some general resemblance to the non-Harappān pottery of Harappā, Kot Diji and Amri".²⁹ The mention of Harappá's "pre-Indus layers" and of its "non-Harappān pottery" cannot help suggesting North Balūchistān's RG HI culture for the main sites of the pre-Harappān civilization. And Sankalia's own pronouncement in a letter of March 19, 1968, leaves us in hardly any uncertainty. He declares RG HI comparable to Amri I, Kot Diji I, Kalibangan I and Harappān I, and adds: "Thus there is no doubt that there is a uniformity of culture which is pre-Harappān."

With his typical caution Sankalia goes on to remark about the potteries involved: "Whether they should be called Aryan or not it is difficult to say." But here we have to consider not only the general significant point that, if the involved ceramics can be linked on to an ancient culture that had the domesticated horse, the pre-Harappān civilization must, until proved to the contrary, be pronounced "Aryan". We have to consider also the fact, even more significant, that RG Hie should be the bond between quite a number of towns of this civilization. And, as if to charge the label "Aryan" with the most momentous content possible, we have Sankalia's statement that the civilization in question "flourished.. .particularly in the valley of the Vedic Sarasvati and Drishadvati", the regions which many scholars regard as the main seat of the Rigveda's composition.

To employ the rubric "Vedic Aryan" here seems not illegitimate in general and, on the strength of it, we may qualify Sankalia's phrase "born under Iranian influence". But that influence need not be denied altogether. So the

28.The Indus Civilization (1968 Edition), p. 21.

29.Ibid., p. 23.

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validly supposed Vedism of the pre-Harappān Civilization calls for some qualification. This converse readjustment spells no essential loss for our case. All we require is that the Pre-Harappān Civilization should permit us to derive one important line of its ancestry from the Rigveda. Aryanism, at the same time Vedic and non-Vedic, should suffice us - and all that has been excavated appears to leave ample room for it.

The hypothesis of such Aryanism in a fairly remote antiquity and therefore of Rigvedism in still more ancient times would be in consonance with Sri Aurobindo's insight into all matters Rigvedic. He has written: "The text of the Veda which we possess has remained uncorrupted for over two thousand years. It dates, so far as we know, from that great period of Indian intellectual activity, contemporaneous with the Greek efflorescence, but earlier in its beginnings, which founded the culture and civilization recorded in the classical literature of the land. We cannot say to how much earlier a date our text may be carried. But there are certain considerations which justify us in supposing for it an almost enormous antiquity."³⁰

Sri Aurobindo, bearing in mind "the invariable fixity of Vedic thought when taken in conjunction with its depth, richness and subtlety", remarks: "...we may reasonably argue that such a fixed form and substance would not easily be possible in the beginnings of thought and psychological experience or even during their early progress and unfolding. We may therefore surmise that our Sanhita represents the close of a period, not its commencement, nor even some of its successive stages. It is even possible that its most ancient hymns are a comparatively modern development or version of a more ancient lyric evangel couched in the freer and more pliable forms of a still earlier human speech..."³¹

To the word "ancient" Sri Aurobindo gives the foot-note: "The Veda itself speaks constantly of 'ancient' and 'modern'

30.Op. cit., p. 15.

31.Ibid., p. 10.

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Rishis (pūrvebhih...nūtanaih), the former remote enough to be regarded as a kind of demigods, the first founders of knowledge."

What the actual age of the Rigveda in relation to the Harappā Culture could be is anybody's guess, but, if the preHarappān Civilization with its mixed Aryanism is certainly older than 2500 B.C., the Rigveda cannot be later than 3000 B.C. and may be granted an anterior background of at least 500 years. This would carry Vedic Aryanism in North-west India and in its immediate neighbourhoods to c. 3500 B.C.

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