India of Time of Harappan Civilisation
India as a series of articles
Article I - India of Time of Harappan Civilisation
I just finished reading Discovery
of India, written by our beloved and first Honourable Prime Minister of
Republic of India, Jawaharlal Nehru. The book shows his passion for India. He discovered
its richness from ancient Harappan Civilisation to intellectually struggling
medieval age and, in detail, to England’s enslaved India.
The book begins with ancient India, mainly Harappan
Civilisation. It mentions all the available information about the civilisation
at the time beautifully wrapped in author’s Indian pride, who thinks that English
gave us this opportunity to understand our past and also responsible for the
slower growth in its glorious unearthing. Harappan Civilisation is the place
where our ancestors saw the seed of our culture, one that can still be felt in
contemporary times like worshipping of Lord Shiva and goddess deities.
Harappan civilisation was mainly an agrarian society having
cities as trade centres. All cities of the civilisation had similar structure, a
citadel in the centre, a few public baths, roads with perpendicular crossing
and ahead-of-its-time water and drainage system. All cities had aristocracy and
did not seems to possess army. The civilisation was decentralised and had many
large cities, some of them also functioning as business ports, which were
foreign trade centre. Foreign trade was mainly with contemporary Mesopotamia
and Egypt. These civilisations were found in possession of articles which were
made in Harappan Civilisation and gave us insight in life of the valley people.
Harappan Civilisation was being relatively advanced from its
time, ends all of the sudden. Two theories are suggested for the extinction. First
theory states that Indus river frequently changes its path, and some event
might had caused it to change its path quite dramatically, which would have
forced valley people to move out and look for more habitable places, like
Ganges plane and Southern India. The second theory however, says that it might
have been arrival of Aryans, who would have dredged them to South India. There are
not enough evidence to support either theory. However, Harappa City is found to
have flooded nine times during the Civilisation era, which strongly supports
the first theory. While, second theory is supported by our culture, in which
higher classes retain their purity by not allowing lower classes to rise. This have
created one of the most rigid social structure of our times but this possibly
gives hints to second theory in which, victorious Aryans held themselves as superior
to native Harappans and thus to keep their superiority might have formed the
caste system. A new theory is now forwarded which says that both of the above
might be the reasons for the extinction of this great civilisation. Event which
caused Harappan Civilisation to vanish may never be fully revealed, however,
people of the Valley left profound impact on our culture and new race which is
taking shape in north India, Aryans.
Aryans settled in India around 15th century BC. They
bring with them Sanskrit, the mother language of most of Euro-Indian languages,
and Prakrit, used by lower classes folks at the time. With Sanskrit begins the
great intellectual millennium which even today spiritually enlightens not only
Indians but the whole world. It appeared with writing of Vedas, the first
written document by humanity, which defines the Dharma, moral law, of society. It also tells, how different classes of the
Indian society of the times should function. Following Vedas, Upnishads were
written, which does not agree with multi-god and some of them are even atheist.
At the same time, first grammar appears by Chautilya. The notable thing here is
that, king was not supposed to behave like despot, he was supposed to behave in
accord with the Dharma, which established the superiority of the Brahmans
caste, who were also acted as ministers to the King to give him advice. The superiority
of junta was understood. In 5th or 6th century BC, India
was home to two great spiritual movements. In this time the Mahatma Buddha saw
the seeds for the one of the greatest religion, Buddha. It must be noted that Buddha himself, never advocated for
another religion, he called himself only a reformer, it was his followers who
architect the great Buddha religion, based on his teachings of equality. He was
followed by Mahavira, who established Jainism.
The teachings of two great men, gave us a lot of information about the life of
common man at the time. It was clear that caste system had its root established
and now followed more rigorously than ever. Even before world could see the great
Greek civilisation, India was already home to two new religions, which will
leave their profound impact on the spiritual and political development of not
only India but also the whole of the east and south Asia, home to forty percent
of world’s people.
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