Vedic and Indus-Ghaggar Culture

We have abundant physical proofs that show the peculiarities of Indus-Ghaggar valley society.  We have Rig Veda for a proof in which Vedic social structure, their deities, their economy and their general awareness of the surrounding world is described at places. Let us compare the IGVC (Indus-Ghaggar Valley Civilization) and Vedic culture from the available sources. 

1.      None of the Veda mentions the abundantly found remains of Phallic and Venus worship practices at the Indus sites. Had the Vedic people been the progenitors of the Indus culture, naturally being part of phallic worship, certainly would also have made mentions of it in The Rig Veda apart from their religious ritual Yajnya. Rather the Rig Veda seems to be hostile towards the phallic worshipers. The Rig Veda clearly makes distinction between sacrificers and non-sacrificers. (i.e. see RV 1.33) 

2.      No Indus seal depicts image of the fire sacrifice, which was soul of the Vedic civilization. Rather the images over the seals go contrary to the Vedic religious thought. 

3.      There is no slightest hint in the Rig Veda that the Vedics conducted trade with other civilizations. There is no mention of local or foreign trade-commerce or even cognates for trade or trade related activities in the Rig Veda. Abundant proofs are available from excavations in the IVC and other contemporary civilizations, from Iran to Mesopotamia, to prove IVC trade with them by sea as well as surface routs.

4.      The Vedic society was mainly pastoral as evidenced from the Vedic literature. The cattle were their treasured possession and most of the prayers are for the abundant growth of the same. They knew the Agriculture but it was their secondary occupation.  There is no cognate for “Plough” in Vedic Sanskrit but they used a loan word “Langal” from other languages for plough. However, the IVC was mostly agrarian, industrial and mercantile society as evidenced from the excavations, unlike the Vedics.  Rather the Vedics show great jealousy of the Panis who were expert traders.

5.      The Rig Veda has no mention of fired bricks, brick-paved roads, public baths or granaries that was integral part of almost every Indus settlement. However noted historian Ram Sharan Sharma states, “…And yet all these features can be expected if its culture were urban. Fired bricks are a striking feature of the Harappans, and no Bronze Age civilisation can boast of them on such a large scale. But this important construction material is unknown to the Rg Veda. In the great British archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler's view, there is no granary in the pre-classical world comparable in terms of specialist design and monumental dignity to the examples from the two Indus cities. But because of the absence of urbanism, the Vedic people did not need granaries, and consequently the Rg Veda has no term for granary.” (Indus and the Saraswati, Ram Sharan Sharma, article published online )

Had the Vedic Aryans be at the least part of the IVC, they would have cognates for the materials and structures in question.

6.      The Vedic society was horse centered as evidenced from its numerous mentions in the Rig Veda with one verse dedicated to him. (RV 1.171) Many personal names are horse and chariot oriented. It was earlier assumed that the horse was unknown to the Indians until the Aryan invaders introduced them. However, this is not true. There are abundant proofs of the horse bones found in the Indian subcontinent dating back to early phase of the Harappan settlements, although belonging to the different families of horse. (The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate, by Edwin Bryant, 2001.)

This means the IVC too was not unaware of the horses though it carried not much significance in their culture. The horse remains also are so few that renowned archeologist B. B. Lal, as quoted by Ram Sharan Sharma, says, "would like to have more and more examples."  

It is natural because the IGVC was mostly agrarian and manufacturing/trading society where bull carried more importance to plow the fields and pull the carts. This is obvious from the fact that the bull is depicted artistically on abundant seals whereas horse finds no place at all on any of the seal. Use of horses to them was scanty and hence carried no major significance in their culture. Obviously, horse images would be redundant for them. 

The Vedic Aryans were a mostly pastoral society and hence their life being horse-centered does not come as surprise. Even the life of modern day cattle herders is centered on horses. Abundant mentions of the horse with respect in the Rig Veda and the rite of horse-sacrifice proves the same. 

No place for the horses in the IGVC iconography does simply mean that the Horses carried negligible significance in their civilization unlike of the Vedic society. In fact this clearly suggests that the Rig Vedics had no connection whatsoever with Indus Valley civilization. Had it been the case horse would have found prominence in IGVC’s early and later iconography.

Moreover, the horse-chariot issue has unnecessarily been over-debated either by the supporters of the AIT/AMT or OIT propagandists for the sake of proving their futile baseless theories. Even if there was no slightest indication of presence of horse in IGVC, it wouldn’t prove for the lack of that knowledge they were subjugated by the people who knew horse and chariots, for there is no slightest proof that the decline of the IGVC was result of any vicious war won by the mighty invaders who had tamed the horses and used spoke-wheeled chariots! 

7.      The images of unicorn are abundantly found in IGVC on various seals. The one-horned animal, labeled as unicorn, could be rhinoceros known to the IGVC people. Dr. Ram Sharan Sharma opines, “…The term ganda or khadga is used for the rhinoceros in Sanskrit, and the term ekasrnga for both the unicorn and the rhinoceros, but none of these terms occurs in the Rg Veda.” 

8.      Vedic people seem to have been at constant wars from the Rig Vedic texts, using variety of arms and armors. At the Indus sites, the finds of arms are meager with no find of armors at all. The IVC cannot be regarded as a warring society the way the Vedic society was. Warring people would naturally have the warlike god, and we find him in the form of the Indra in Rig Veda who helps Vedic people win the wars. However, it is not justifiable to infer from the meager findings of the weapons that the Indus people were peace-loving people. Most probably, either the Indus civilization was unified under a single rule or had established cordial relations with every city-state, minimizing the war-like occasions. Yet it is clear that the IVC was a prospered civilization and the peace that follows in prosperous period was fairly enjoyed by the IVC. Rather, it appears from the Rig Veda that the Vedic people were seekers of the wealth and all the time were engaged in the wars for wealth-hunting, cattle being the treasured wealth to them. Tarkateertha Laxmanshastri Joshi states that Rig Vedic Aryans main professions seems to have been loot the cattle, food, lands of the Das, Dasyu and Panis. This condition certainly cannot be of the prosperous society. (Vaidik Sanskruticha Itihas, Tarkateertha Laxmanshastri Joshi.) 

9.      Students of the Indus civilization know very well about the abundant finds of variety of the seals bearing assorted motifs and script at every site. These finds exhibit their cultural beliefs and their awareness of the script. However, none of such practice finds mention in the Rig Veda. There is even no cognate for writing or script in the Rig Veda. Here the suggestion is not that the Vedics did not know the script; it simply is that there is no mention of the seal making, motifs on it and the script. Had the Vedics been progenitors of the Indus civilization, there would have been some mention of the widely held practice that involves not only religious beliefs but also the commercial beliefs of the IGVC. 

10.  Plenty of ornament and other goods manufacturing sites have unearthed at the IGVC sites. There is no mention in the Rig Veda of such manufacturing. Besides, there is no mention of harbors though Indus people had many of them, including artificial harbor like of Lothal. So much that scholars seriously doubt whether the Vedic Aryans even knew the sea or not. (The term Samudra in Rig Veda does not essentially mean the sea but it also means lake or pond at many instances.) 

11.  Though the Indus script could not be deciphered as yet in want of largest specimens or Rosetta stone, it is clear that they knew the art of writing. We do not find any term or cognate for writing or script in the Rig Veda. 

Had the Vedic people migrated from India to the West, as some scholars try to suggest, and if they were progenitors of the IVC, the major question arises why they did not carry the script along with them? If so-called indigenous Aryans, if supposed, left the Indian territories long before the IVC was founded, the whole premise of their theories do collapse because it would be ridiculous and unsupported argument. First of all therde is no proof whatsoever to prove the people those composed Rig Vedic hymns were Indian. 

The scholars cite examples of Buddhist migrations to Gandhar and elsewhere where they used extensively Indian Brahmi and Kharoshti scripts for writing. We do not find presence of the Indus script elsewhere in the western world. It means that the Vedic Aryans did not migrate from east to west (from India to Europe) nor were they acquainted with the Indus civilization to the extent Vedic scholars like to believe, forget their being progenitors of the IGVC. 

12.  The Rig Veda mentions destructions of several cities of Dasyus at the hands of Indra. These cities were made of stones (“Asmanmayi” RV 4.30.20) or of metal (“Ayasi”, RV 2.20.8, 4.26.3). We do not know for sure what Vedic people of Rig Vedic times meant by Ashman and Ayas, or to whose cities they were referring to because the Indus cities were built of fired bricks, not of the stones or metal of any kind thus does not fit in the Rig Vedic descriptions. In all probability they were talking about the BMAC sites, not Indus-Ghaggar. 

Dasas and Dasyus (Dahae and Dakhyu) were residents of ancient Iran. Therefore, in all probabilities, they could have been referring to the stone-cities of them. Possibly Ayas too was used alternatively for stone and metal for their hardness. Whatsoever might be the case, the Vedic people certainly did not reside in the walled cities or even towns; they were rather village dwellers and preferred to be so until the Brahmanic era. Fired bricks for fire altars came into the use in late Vedic times. (Vaidik Sanskruticha Itihas, Tarkateertha Laxmanshastri Joshi)  This clearly suggests there was not any link of the Vedics with the IVC; otherwise they would have known some civil practices of the IGVC. 

13.  Rig Veda doesn’t know cotton or it does not have any cognate for it. IGVC people were expert cotton weavers. The Rig Vedic people seem to have been using wool for clothing, but natural for the people living in extreme climatic conditions. 

14.  IGVC people were master architects. The drainage system and stepped Great Baths had central characteristic of the IGVC, however no such practice finds mention in the Rig Veda. 

These facts forced some indigenous Aryan theorists like Kazanas to place the Rig Vedic time prior to the emergence of the IGVC. ( Rig Veda is pre-Harappan, by Nicholas Kazanas, a paper published online)  However, we have seen in the previous chapter that in absence of the Rig Vedic Sarasvati River in Indian geography do not make their claim valid. Vedic scholars can stretch back Rig Veda’s period to the Ice Age if they want to (and many enthusiastic amateur scholars already have attempted it!) but the Rig Vedic texts and other parallel evidences does not correspond to their claim of its being so antique.   

Looking at the discrepancies that arise from the closer look at the Vedic culture mentioned in the Vedas and the physical finds of the Indus sites, it is impossible to even imagine that the progenitors of the Indus civilization were the Vedic Aryans. Even it is almost ridiculous to state that the Indus and the Vedic people came into any contact so much so to influence each other’s culture.