The Problem Of Aryan Origins

SUPPLEMENT II

THE HORSE, THE Harappā CULTURE AND

THE RIGVEDA

Time and again the issue is raised: "If the Harappā Culture had known the horse, would not this animal have been depicted just as so many others were on the numerous seals?" Supplementary to this issue is the question whether any horse-bones have been found in the early layers of the Harappā Culture. Such a discovery would have a bearing on the problem: "Did the horse-knowing Rigveda precede that Culture in the Indus Valley?" An affirmative answer here would suggest the presence of Aryanism in the Indus Valley in the post-Rigvedic era and provide some light on the still unresolved nature of the Indus script.

Touching on all these matters, Asko Parpola, the Finnish scholar, along with the Indian scholar I Mahadevan, has recently argued for the non-Aryan character of the Harappā Culture.¹ I disputed his thesis which had included the theory of an Aryan invasion of India in c. 1500 B.C. Replying to me, he drew support from "the Aryan vocabulary associated with the rulers of the Mitanni kingdom in West Asia around 1500 B.C."² In my counter I dealt briefly with the subject along the same lines as in my book. What I wish to dwell on now is the depiction of animals and a few other themes connected with the horse.

I asked Parpola in effect: "As there are no depictions of the cow, in contrast to the pictures of the bull, which are abundant, should we conclude that Harappā and Mohenjo-dāro had only bulls? And what about that mythical animal, the unicorn, which is the most common pictorial motif on the seals? Was the unicorn a common animal of the proto-historic Indus Valley? Surely, the presence or absence of depictions cannot point unequivocally to the animals known

1."Cracking the Indus Script", Frontline (Madras), Feb. 7-20, 1987.

2.Letter to Frontline, May 2-15, 1987.

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and decide for or against Aryanism?"

Parpola's answer was: "It is true that the Harappāns depicted the male rather than the female animals on their seals. They also depicted one particular bovine (possibly the Bos primogenius) in profile as the 'unicorn', in the fashion of the ancient Mesopotamian art. There are, moreover, some mythical animals in the Harappān iconographic repertory. None of these points, however, changes the fact that the horse is conspicuously missing among the many realistically depicted animals."³ Parpola also contended that since the early Harappān phase which is securely dated to the third millennium B.C. has no sign of the horse, either by depiction or by osteological evidence, and "since the Rigveda amply testifies to the presence of the horse in the Indus Valley at the time of its composition", the Harappā Culture "cannot be considered as post-Rigvedic."⁴

May I point out that we have no clear clues to the aim of the depictions? We do not know why there was the oddity that the seals showed only male animals. Undoubtedly the undepicted cows existed along with the bulls. Again, as undoubtedly the depicted "fantasy animals" did not exist. Even the "unicorn" has at times fantastic postures foreign to Mesopotamian art. Thus on one seal we see that "two unicorn heads branch symmetrically from the base of a pipal tree".⁵ Further, the depicted male animals do not cover all the fauna known to the Harappā Culture. The scapula of a camel has been found at the considerable depth of 15 feet at Mohenjo-dāro;⁶ but no seal depicts a dromedary. Again, "nowhere is a donkey shown"⁷ and yet the bones of the domestic ass (Equus asinus) have been recovered from

3.Ibid.

4.Ibid:

5.The Indus Civilization by Sir Mortimer Wheeler (Cambridge, 1968), p. 104.

6.lbid., p. 82.

7.The Roots of Ancient India by Walter A. Fairservis, Jr. (George Allen & Unwin, London, 1971), p. 277.

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Harappā.⁸ Unless we know the "why" of the depictions we cannot make any capital out of "the fact that the horse is conspicuously missing". We cannot infer from it that the horse was unknown.

Here scholars like Parpola may urge: "The non-depicted animals have still left their bones for the archaeologist. Where are horse-bones from early Mohenjo-dāro or Harappā? Earlier than c. 2000 B.C. we have no osteological evidence of Equus caballus. With such a double blank - that is, osteological plus pictorial - how can we claim knowledge of the horse as possible in the early Harappā Culture which, according to you, was later than the Rigveda in the Indus Valley?"

A counter-question which at once springs to mind is: "Surely, c. 2000 B.C. is much before the postulated arrival of the Rigvedics in India. How could the horse be present at least 500 years before them?" Parpola, aware of this difficulty, has the remark:⁹ "As Mr. Mahadevan mentioned, the Aryans are thought to have come to India earlier. I agree with this, although I think it was a different wave altogether. An earlier wave than the Rig Vedic Aryans." When even the Rigvedic wave is a hypothesis lacking either archaeological or documentary evidence, how can we dare to bring in a fairly earlier wave? From references in the Rigveda we know that the Rishis were in India at whatever period we may deem most appropriate. What grounds have we to place in India a wave of Aryans in a period around 2000 B.C.? Have we to go in for this wave merely because the Harappā Culture has horses around that date in an apparent way? The explanation is arbitrary. It seems more natural to believe that Aryanism was at work in the Harappā Culture as one element in the midst of several at the root of it. And, looking more deeply, more logically we can perceive a basis for such a belief.

8.Prehistoric India by Stuart Piggott (A Pelican Book, Harmonds-worth, 1961), p. 157.

9."Cracking the Indus Script", p. 99, col. 1.

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Not only must the unknown "why" of the horseless depictions keep us unattracted to Parpola's novel supposition. Even the absence of horse-bones should not draw us to it. For, indeed an eye-opener is the background against which we have to view the Harappā Culture of the third millennium B.C. Stuart Piggott¹⁰ has observed: "one clay figurine from Periano Ghundai [in North Balūchistān] seems to represent a horse, and is interesting in connection with the find of horses' teeth in RG [Rānā Ghundāī] I, at the type site." He assigns this figurine to the RG III phase which he begins some centuries before 2500 B.C. and ends as still pre-Harappān. He¹¹ traces the diverse relationship between the Harappā Culture and RG, especially with pottery in mind. RG areas have also evinced that characteristic feature of the Harappā Culture: the "stamp seals".¹² What is of yet greater import than the obvious suggestion of horse-knowledge by the Harappā Culture on account of all this relationship with a horse-knowing locality is marked not only by Piggott¹³ but by other archaeologists as well. Among them is H.D. San-kalia¹⁴ who writes of "Rānā Ghundāī IIIc Culture found under the debris of Harappān and the low level (-32 feet) Mohenjodāro". So we have at the two central sites of the Harappā Culture in the Indus Valley a background of horse-knowledge and horse-use much before 2000 B.C.

Once we note this the reluctance to see the Harappā Culture as post-Rigvedic must disappear. And I may draw Parpola's attention to the curious fact that the Rigvedic testimony to the horse's presence in the Indus Valley is not at all borne out by archaeology for the post-Harappān period he assigns to the Aryans of the Rigveda. In the several excavated sites in Punjāb and Northern Haryana -

10.Prehistoric India, p. 126.

11.Ibid., pp. 192-93.

12.Ibid. pp. 128, 185.

13.Ibid., p. 142.

14."traditional Indian Chronology and C-14 dates of Excavated Sites", Indian Prehistory, 1964, p. 222.

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Bhagwanpura, Dadheri, Ropar, Kathpalon, Nagar, etc. - in the early time after 1500 B.C., when iron was not yet in use, has any sure sign of the horse been discovered? The only definite equine bones the Indus Valley has yielded around this date are from an upper level of Mohenjo-dāro and from Area G in Harappā which is likely to be just post-Harappān but has nothing to do with any possible Rigvedic presence.

I may add that the eminent archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler, who has always been against the idea of Aryanism in the Indus Civilization, has yet an attitude unlike Parpola's. Not only does he¹⁵ write: "One terracotta, from a late level at Mohenjo-dāro, seems to represent a horse, reminding us that the jaw-bone of a horse is also recorded from the same site, and that the horse was known at a considerably earlier period in northern Baluchistan." He¹⁶ notes as well, after referring to the bone of a camel recovered from a low level at Mohenjo-dāro: "There is no evidence of any kind for the use of the ass or mule. On the other hand the bones of a horse occur at a high level at Mohenjo-dāro, and from the earlier (doubtless pre-Harappān) layer at Rana Ghundai in northern Baluchistan both horse and ass are recorded. It is likely enough that camel, horse and ass were in fact all a familiar feature of the Indus caravans."

Seeing things in a wider perspective than Parpola's, Wheeler attaches hardly any importance to the lack of ass-bones or the absence of ass-representation. He considers it reasonable to surmise the use of this animal no less than of the camel and the horse. So, even if Parpola's mention of a negative result regarding osteological and pictorial evidence be correct, the vision of the whole ancient area of which the Harappā Culture formed a part could suggest to us most naturally the equine's presence in the Indus Civilization.

All in all, the problem of the horse here is much more complex than Parpola believes. Even if we ignore the ample testimony of Harappān Surkotada in deference to Parpola

15.Op. cit., p. 92.

16.Ibid., p. 82.

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who holds that the horse-bones there do not go beyond c. 2000 B.C., we do not have to arrive at a negative conclusion.

In view of such a situation, we may legitimately search for Aryan elements in the Harappā Culture and hope to crack the code of the Indus script with an approach different from Parpola's and Mahadevan's pro-Dravidianism.

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