I am sure all of us have gone through at least one lesson in school about the Indus valley Civilisation (IVC)/ Mohan Jo Daro. As a student of the fifth or sixth standard in school and even several years later, I used to always wonder why each and every article on the civilisation invariably mentioned the “underground drainage” system. The reason became clear as I grew up to my late teens. Considering that even now, some 5000 years later most Indian cities (including large parts of metro cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai , Bangalore etc) don’t have a proper sewerage system, and many cities don’t have one at all, it was indeed a very very remarkable achievement. I am sure that none of the other contemporaries to the Indus valley civilisation had anything like it. 

But the sewerage system is not the main idea behind this post. I would like to share some interesting bits of information from ancient Indian history. None of it is new or original, except perhaps that it is not widely known. Here it is. 

o The people of the IVC were not Hindus. That is, they did not follow the religion we now recognise as Hinduism. The civilisation is dated from 2500 BC to 1600 BC.Hinduism (sometimes called Vedic Hinduism) came in a rough form to India through the Aryan migration from central Asia, present day Iran, also referred to as Persia. This happened around 2000 BC to 1600 BC, So the Aryan migration happened close to the time the IVC was dwindling. Perhaps, quite likely, the Aryan migration was the final cause of its destruction. So what was the religion they followed ? We will never know for sure, partly because the world was yet too young to have organised religion and partly because the IVC script has not been yet deciphered. 

o This point is going to cause a bit of controversy. The Aryans came to India from Central Asia around 2000 BC to 1600 BC. They carried with them the beginnings of a religion that was to later become Vedic Hinduism. Over a few centuries this proto-religion was formalized and became Vedic Hinduism. The Rig-Veda was written around 1000 BC, so we can say that around the same time Vedic Hinduism was fully developed. Now, the Aryans who were stayed behind in Persia went to on to form a religion of their own around 600 BC. This was Zoroastrianism named after the founder Zoroaster. The more familiar name in India is the Parsi religion, followed by Parsis in India . (Parsi from Paras, the Indian name for Persia) . Here is the twist. In later times Persia was invaded by Kings who followed the Islamic faith. Over a period of a few centuries a majority of the Persians adopted Islam . So, here we are in a very unusual situation. The ancestors of the founders of Vedic Hinduism and the ancestors of today’s Iranian Muslims were the same. A historical case of Hindu-Muslim bhai bhai, that some of our political parties would rather ignore. 

o The caste system is not a wholly Indian/ Vedic invention. It came with the proto-religion from Persia. 

o There is some more, but I don’t want to make this post too long, and will deal with it in a separate piece.

Tags: