Ancient Indias Lost Superpower - The Indus Valley Civilization

Hello, welcome. So in the previous lecture we actually had a very big introduction. We talked about the size of the Indian subcontinent which included India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and the surrounding areas. We also talked about the diversity, the culture and we had a little fuzz with the geography as well. We understood how geography of the region has impacted its history throughout like India and China are neighbors but there has been very little contact between the two civilizations throughout history due to the presence of and we also know why these mountain ranges are also called Hindu Kush which means death to Hindus and you knew about the different people from India and India was actually named from river Indus and the people which are living beyond Indus they were regarded as Hindus. So the term Hindu was actually related with more like geography of the region like people who live in that area and it was mostly done by Arabs. Now we have also discussed about Adivasis and we had a little bit interaction on Adivasis and it was a little controversial as well. We talked about the friction that has existed between Adivasis and the cultural integration that has caused trouble to these communities throughout history and why these communities have arose against various empires. Today we are going to talk about the beginning of civilization. When we talked about Adivasis they never used to settle at one place so we cannot relate it with a civilization. So when was the first time when humans actually settled in one place in the Indian subcontinent so which was the first civilization in India and where did this civilization come from? Who were these people? Were they Adivasis? No definitely not they were not Adivasis but we will just know more about them in a little while and I am just asking you you know questions and we will be answering every question we have posed at the starting of what we are posing now. What happened to this civilization? Because its end is very controversial when we reach at the end of the course you will realize some controversy around it. Maybe we always love controversy and we talk about controversy at the end after understanding the subject matter. So there are various questions about this civilization and why isn't this civilization getting the respect it deserves? Why didn't this civilization get the respect it deserved? So let us know in this audio lesson. So the first civilization that started in India was called the Indus Valley Civilization. And it started from 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE. The time period is reversed when you reach BCE. So 2600 BCE is actually the past and 1900 BCE is a little more close to present. And the first civilization which started in India is known as Indus Valley Civilization. Yes we have talked about why India was named India because it was due to river Indus. We came to know why Arabs called the people living beyond Indus as they named it Hindus. And now we are talking about the first civilization which ever existed in India was the Indus Valley Civilization. It's also called as Harappa Civilization. It was the first civilization of Indian subcontinent. We have talked about Adivasis in the previous chapter. We have had a little detailed conversation and we also knew that these Adivasis are actually restricted in the emic perspective of Indian history. They are not mentioned but in the etic perspective. And what's this emic or etic? We have discussed it. Like emic is the regional history. Etic is history from outside. It's like a bird's eye view of history. And we came to know about that these Adivasis didn't have any written record. So how do we came to know about Adivasis? And how do historians actually consider them as the natives of India or the first people who ever lived in India? They were the first natives of India. It was through oral traditions because they had no written records. The knowledge that passed through Adivasis was mostly through oral tradition. It was like oral storytelling. You know my father? You know my grandfather's grandfather's grandfather? It's like that. Oral tradition. And genetics as well. The modern genome study. The human genome project which started in 1990s actually. Now we have not been able to decipher their script. The Indus Valley Civilization obviously. We're not talking about Adivasis. It was the previous lecture. But now we have not been able to know about their script. Script means their writings. But they had written records. It's like it's something which we have not been able to decipher. Why is it so? It's because of various reasons. Like I will tell you, generate English language from a list of telephone book records or from a random set of characters. You will not be able to do that. And their script is mostly posterferodon. What's this posterferodon? It means that they used to, the first sentence, they used to write from left to right. And in second sentence, they used from right to left. And this type of style is mostly found in Dravidian languages. The current Dravidian languages. And what's more interesting is these Dravidian languages are nowhere found in most of the regions of North India, in the regions surrounding Indus. So where did this language originate from? And who speaks these languages now? This Dravidian language is mostly spoken in South India. When we later discuss about the controversy surrounding this, you will know about this is one of the controversies as well. But I will just leave it at end of this lesson. But let's understand the basics first. And yeah, as usual, there would be some politics as well. Not intended, you know, not intended, but it's how it is. Everything is political nowadays. The study suggested that they had very diverse population. Like it was a mix of everything. What do you mean by everything? They suggested that it was the Human Genome Project has actually worked on it. And they suggest that the population was a mix of somehow Iranian, somehow Central Asian, and from the regions of Europe. They actually did fishing extensively. Because they were close to river. Because the food is abundant now, food is available in loads. So you don't have to worry about food now. If you can eat properly, you know, if you have the roti, what will you do? You will go for specialization. So that's how you will find in this civilization, people doing various things. There were arts, there were crafts, there were coins, there were a lot of things. And these are actually clay coins. These are not the coins you think about now. After 700 years, this city was actually disappeared. This completely disappeared. This Indus Valley civilization completely disappeared. And the last question which I had asked, what happened to them? Obviously, we're going to answer it at the end of the session. But right now, you have to understand, when they disappeared, they were not found out. Until 19th century, by British archaeologist, whose name was Sir Alexander Cunningham. But actual discovery was done by Sir John Marshall in 1921, who discovered the city of Harappa, the sophisticated infrastructure of Harappa. And in the next year, in 1922, with the help of Sir Wheeler, these are all British names, and because you have to understand that that period of time, the whole of the Indian subcontinent was controlled by British Raj. And these, some of them were officers, some of them were archaeologists, who were studying this place. And in 1922, it was the discovery of Mohenjo-Daro, another site of Indus Valley civilization. So we have studied 1921, the discovery of Harappa, 1922, the discovery of Mohenjo-Daro. And in the next few years, there were discoveries of various Indus Valley civilization sites. And some of them were even located in India, like Dholavira, which is in the modern day India. And along the coasts of, you know, and there were Lothal, there were Kalibangan, these are all Indian sites, Rakhigiri. When archaeologists started digging deeper, they found an amazingly organized city. They found a city which was very organized, which had surrounding walls, straight streets, extensive system of sanitation, substantial houses, and larger public buildings, like assembly halls, granary, bathhouses. Mostly there was the use of beaded bricks, and the material, the clay which was used, was actually in the form of one is to two is to four. So they had some understanding of mathematics as well at that period of time. And each house had its separate bathroom. Crazy to think about the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, and still there are millions in India, we don't have bathroom, simple toilet, what I mean. So each house having separate bathroom in this civilization, this is absolutely crazy. And there was no evidence of palace or temples to indicate a king or priesthood. So what that means that there was no sort of autocratic or whatever you call that, a system where there is monarchy, there was no king, there was not even a priest. So their religion was private affair for Indus Valley people. They always believed that keep your religion at home. So there was no concept of priesthood. And when we later discuss about the Vedic civilization, you will know about that priest was a very important element in Vedic civilization. King had the control of a temple, and temple had the control over people. It's definitely not here. It's not in Indus Valley civilization. So there was no such thing as evidence of palaces or temples, not a king, not a priest. So you can think about an organization where people actually are doing something, they have organized themselves into something, and they do not need anyone to control them. Now, it's very difficult to actually tell you what it was. If somebody is telling you, I will tell you what it was, it was this, it was that, they are lying to you simply. Because as I told you earlier, not much has been deciphered, the language has not been deciphered yet. So we cannot say for sure. And most of these things are actually through various speculations and various, you know, things, various sculptures, various researches, various, you can say, archaeological discoveries, which we have done. Like for example, in Mohenjo-Daro, there is a statue of a priest, a person which you can check in the video, it's at the last, looks like a priest. And what's interesting about him is, you will find at one place he is mentioned as the priest-king. But as I told you, there is no concept of priesthood in this early civilization. So what makes him is, some regard him as a rich merchant. So, you know, there are various speculations about who this bearded man is. But what all agree is, he is someone very important. He might be a leader as well, if you believe in leadership. Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa had steddles. Yeah, they were closed walls, which had scraps, you know, they had houses built in, in that steddle system. They had granaries, which we have already discussed. And they even had two storey homes. So even two storey homes have been excavated. And the walls facing the streets are blank. So what he means here, the author means that people were not opening their main door at the side of street. So they used to have the door or main door on the other side of the street. So there was narrow doorways leading into separate entryway, indicating that people wanted a well-defined private space. Privacy is very important, you know. When I was once in Nivali, I remember, it's very difficult to have privacy. It's very crowded. But here people said, no, no, no, we are saying yes to privacy and no to social media. Yeah, because social media nowadays is breaching the use of privacy. If you know, you know. If you don't know, you shouldn't know. Standardization in the absence of autocratic ruler, suggests a strong shared cultural consensus. We have actually, I have told you about this. And there was presence of seals. Seals were like order, authority. You can have various, it can even be considered as a mark of ownership. You can have a seal, that you can, you can just attach a seal to your property. It can be your livestock as well. And that's a mark of ownership. It can also be an order, it can also be an authority, you know. So they were using seals for that purpose. And we have talked about the bearded priest. There was also a dancing girl, you know, the statue which has been referred as a dancing girl. If you can check the video, you can just see dancing girl statue, which I have uploaded. Now, one moment. So we have actually studied all the basics. We have got the basic understanding of this civilization. Now we are ending this. Maybe in two, three minutes, we'll try to be as quick as possible by a few more facts regarding Indus Valley civilization. And then we will go to the last thing I had promised you about the mystery of Indus Valley civilization and a little bit of drama. So this Indus Valley civilization was contemporary to Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Chinese civilization. But its script writing has not been disappeared. And it's very difficult to decipher the script for various reasons. Maybe you can think that they were very good in blockchain and cryptography, you know, so good that nobody is able to break that code. Maybe we need quantum computers for that. I don't take it serious, but I'm just talking about cryptography. Now, end this session with, well, there are a lot of things which we can actually put here, but let's now finish this with something which I had promised you at the start of this session, the mystery. I told you that the script which was founded in Indus Valley civilization is very similar. And the word is very similar. Similar to what? It's very similar to Dravidian language. And the Dravidian languages are found in the Southern India. So it's a mystery, like, how can the people of Indus Valley, which is actually close to the borders of India and Pakistan, like the rivers of Indus, Jhelum and others, the Chenab, will move across the South, the Southeast region. And this language, this Dravidian language is also spoken in Bruhi, a small set, a small region in Balochistan, in Pakistan, where this Bruhi language is speaking. Indus Valley civilization, they speak sort of Dravidian language. Dravidian language is found in South India. And Bruhi region in Pakistan, in Balochistan, the tribes there, the people there also speak this language. And this language is not similar to any of the Northern languages, like it's not similar to Sanskrit, it's not similar to any of the languages which are found in North India and the rest of the Pakistan as well. So what is the possible explanation? The possible explanation which some of the historians have reached is that Indus Valley civilization migrated, maybe some people from there migrated to South India. Some people outrightly reject this theory. They say, no, no, it's not possible. It cannot happen. And they also provide a reason for it. And their reason is on the basis of speculation, more like, it can't happen. We don't believe this. Similarly, we don't believe this. But the recent suggestion, this is a very interesting point, that there was an excavation which was done in Tamil Nadu. And the region there, the Tamil Nadu's region, was Kezahadi. Kezahadi is a district in Tamil Nadu. There was an excavation which was done by archaeologists. And what they found was very disturbing. That suggested that there definitely is a link between the people of Indus Valley civilization and the people of Kezahadi district, not Kezahadi district, the excavations which were done in Kezahadi. So they suggest, and the historians which have done this excavation actually agree on the fact that Kezahadi is actually the extension of Indus Valley civilization. But there have been studies which are going on by archaeologists. Indus Valley civilization is very difficult and very frustrating. And we will know right now, at the end of the course, that why it's very difficult. It's very difficult because most of the remnants, jo bhi remnants hai, Indus Valley civilization, wo abhi bhi zameen ke neeche hai. They are there, still in some of the regions of Pakistan. But those regions cannot be excavated because those regions have like, ab kisi ki office building dahani padegi, kisi ka ghar dahana padega. So obviously, you won't dig that. You won't demolish the houses and office buildings and just dig for some ancient civilization. That would be very unintuitive. On the other hand, the Indus Valley civilization hasn't received the same level of international attention as have the contemporary Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Chinese civilizations. These civilizations get a lot of attention, but not the Indus Valley civilization. Why? Why doesn't this civilization get so much attention when these people were so developed? They had a drainage system. They had soaking pits that, you know, they even had bathrooms in every house. That's very crazy. And the major, the biggest fact about Indus Valley civilization is it's very big. It's so big that it's bigger than the modern day Pakistan and Afghanistan. You know, it's all depends on who supports what. The problem here comes is little political in context. And what does political mean? It means ki jahan ki yeh civilization hai, Indus Valley civilization is from India. It's from Indian subcontinent. It's from Pakistan and India. There are various sites like in India, various sites in Pakistan, but it doesn't get the attention. Why? Because since there's little connection between the Indus Valley civilization and the modern nation, so it's not highlighted. Like if you talk about Pakistan, what do they celebrate? They mostly celebrate the Islamic culture. They talk about Islamic civilization, the Islamic culture. So for them to celebrate Indus Valley civilization is for majority. While in India, what do they celebrate? They celebrate the Vedic culture, the Hindu Vedic culture. For them to celebrate Indus Valley civilization is again not in the books. So in this way, you can call that Indus Valley civilization has not got the same respect, the same level of respect it deserves. Some have even tried to forge things into this Indus Valley civilization. If you are studying probably history from some other sources, I don't know from which sources, maybe from local sources, you'll feel actually mostly reading the incorrect data, the incorrect information. And most of the history would be assimilated, would be manipulated, would be somehow forged to prove the certain narrative. Now this was a little political obviously and you now know that Indus Valley civilization was the first civilization which started in Indian subcontinent. And now you know that it was one of the largest civilizations in the world. And we have ended this session and thank you for listening. If you were listening, thank you very much. If you still are here, I will just not recommend you, I will just request you to press the subscribe button on your device, whatever that device is. And we will now talk about another chapter tomorrow. And that would be...