INDUS ORIGINS OF HINDUISM

Some Indus seals and many Indus tablets depict crocodiles, which is not surprising given that the fish-eating crocodile known as the gharial is native to the Indian subcontinent. Sometimes the gharial is even shown with the ‘fish’ sign in its jaws (suggesting that this common sign sometimes took its most obvious pictographic meaning). More puzzling is a strange image painted on a Mature-period potsherd from Amri in Sindh of two crocodiles with a ‘fish’ sign. One of the crocodile images (the other is broken) has no hind legs; instead, what appears to be a bar projects from the back part of its body at a right angle, linking it with the centre of the image.

To explain this, Asko Parpola makes a plausible link with a unique crocodile cult still practised in some fifty tribal villages in southern Gujarat, as documented by two scholars in the early 1970s, though now rapidly declining. Parpola describes the cult’s practices thus:

"Four- or eight-faceted images of crocodiles, normally a couple, are made of wood and installed on wooden posts. The installation ceremony celebrates their wedding, and the images are worshipped by smearing them with vermilion paste and with offerings of chicken or goats and milk or alcohol, afterwards consumed by the participants. The male crocodile can be substituted with a lingam-like post or the couple with a single crocodile having a head at either end."1

In return for their worship, people ask the crocodile gods for the usual kinds of boon desired in an Indian village: fertility and off-spring for women, milk and calves from cows, and help against drought, disease and sorcery.

These Gujarati villagers are Hindus, practising what is often termed as ‘village’ Hinduism. Typically this consists of a mother goddess as the guardian deity of the village, her husband or servant symbolized by a bull or buffalo, and worship in the form of clay or stone images and the cult of sacred trees with divine inhabitants. Very likely the same customs prevailed in Gujarati villages four thousand or five thousand years ago, given that the bull and the buffalo, the fish and the peacock, and fig trees, especially the peepal and the banyan, are important motifs on Indus painted pottery from both the Early and the Mature periods of the Indus civilization. All of its early excavators, beginning with Marshall, sensed the roots of Hinduism in the civilization, as we know; and so has almost every subsequent researcher. ‘[I] do not suggest that Hinduism in its modern form was present in the Indus civilisation, but some major elements of the Hindu belief system seem to be present in Indus finds’, writes Chakrabarti. ‘It is possible to trace some of the major elements of later Indian religions – especially in their devotional aspects such as goddess worship, tree worship, reverence for certain animals, etc. back to the Indus civilisation.’2 But there is not much clarity about exactly which aspects of the civilization, especially the urban civilization, can legitimately be considered ‘Hindu’.

Definite modern survivals from the ancient civilization include the swastika symbol; the Hindu female custom of applying vermilion paste, known as sindoor, to the middle parting of the hair to symbolize marriage, which has been identified in many Indus female figurines; libation vessels for dispensing milk and water in Hindu rituals, which are identical to hollowed-out and decorated Indus conch shells (Turbinella pyrum); and even the small water jar used for washing after using the toilet, known as a lota, which is commonly found in Indus commodes. Less certain, though probable, is phallus worship. At least one of the numerous stone objects identified by Marshall as potentially ‘phallic’ is unmistakably so; there are several clearly ithyphallic statuettes from Mohenjo-daro and Chanhu-daro; and a small terracotta object from Kalibangan is remarkably close to the shape of a typical present-day Shiva lingam and its base. In addition, it is fairly easy to propose present-day Hindu counterparts of some of the seal imagery, such as the worship of deities (probably female) in peepal trees, the yogic postures of many figures and the depiction of ‘proto-Shiva’ – whatever doubts may exist about the precise identity of this horned yogic figure.

On the other hand, specific rituals associated with rain and rivers, which are so important in Hinduism, are not depicted on Indus seals, despite the cities’ preoccupation with rivers, water and, perhaps, ritual purity. Nor do the seals depict the monkey, despite the widespread portrayal of the monkey god Hanuman in Hindu painting and sculpture. Also absent from the seals (though occasionally depicted on terracotta tablets) are snakes, notwithstanding the importance of the cobra in Hindu mythology and its popularity in performances of snake-charming, which is not depicted anywhere in Indus art. Moreover, both the seals and other archaeological discoveries show that the bull was a sacred animal, rather than the cow as in Hinduism: unlike the bull, the cow never appears on seals and was apparently sacrificed, judging from the cattle bones found in Indus ‘fire altars’. As for dead humans, Indus corpses were generally buried, rather than cremated – again in telling contradistinction to standard practice among Hindus.

Such comparisons raise the perennial question of what defines Hinduism. Is it ethnicity, social customs, religious rituals, mythology, theology – or all of the above? The earliest use of ‘Hindu’ – dating to about 515 BC, when the Persian ruler Darius the Great annexed the Indus valley – was geographical, not religious: it derived from the Sanskrit word sindhu, meaning ‘river’, specifically the Indus river. The Persians dropped the ‘s’ and used hindu to mean ‘pertaining to the region of the Indus’ – the area now known as Sindh. In a pioneering map of the world created in the second century AD by the Greek geographer Claudius Ptolemy, the approach to India from the west is marked ‘Indiostena regio’, Latin for ‘region of Hindustan’. Thereafter, the Arabs, who conquered Sindh in the eighth century, gradually extended the meaning of the word so as to denote north India as ‘Hindustan’.

During the first millennium AD most Indians – other than Buddhists and Jains – identified themselves by their caste or sect. ‘The clubbing together of all the castes, non-castes and sects under one label – Hindu – would have been strange to most people and even repugnant to some, since it would have made Brahmins, Sudras and Untouchables equal members of a religious community of “Hindus”’, observes a leading historian of pre-Muslim India, Romila Thapar. ‘This was alien to the existing religions in the subcontinent.’3 Not until the second millennium did ‘Hindu’ eventually acquire its current meaning connected with a group religious identity. The earliest use of the term in this sense came in the fourteenth century, though it was still infrequent, while its earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is dated 1655, from the work of a British travel writer who visited the court of the Great Mughal: ‘The Inhabitants in generall of Indostan were all antiently [anciently] Gentiles, called in generall Hindoes.’ During the Mughal empire, in the seventeenth century, the British began to use ‘Hindu’ (or ‘Hindoo’) to describe all people living in the subcontinent. In the late eighteenth century, they extended the term to the religion of ‘Hindooism’. By the nineteenth century, ‘Hinduism’ had become the general name for the native religions of India, excluding Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism – both among the British and among Indians who opposed colonialism but wished to distinguish themselves from fellow Muslims. During the 1920s a Hindi word, hindutva, was coined (using the Sanskrit suffix –tva) to mean ‘Hindu identity’; it appears in V. D. Savarkar’s booklet, Hindutva: Who is Hindu?, first published in 1923 and now a key work among Hindu nationalists. Nevertheless, notes Parpola, ‘Some Indians object to having a foreign term for their religion, preferring the Sanskrit expression sanatana dharma, “eternal law or truth”, despite the fact that this expression was not applied to any religious system in ancient texts’ – including the most ancient, the Vedic texts.4

This objection reminds us that the above historical background, necessary as it is, entirely overlooks the basis for the many different traditions of worship, or sects, within Hinduism itself, such as Shaivism (the worship of Shiva) and Vaishnavism (the worship of Vishnu). Each tradition has its own theology and rituals, which are as distinct from each other among Hindus as, say, Catholicism and Protestantism are among Christians. These ‘classical’ traditions date from much later than the Vedic period – probably from the time of the composition of the Hindu epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, which began around 300 BC. But many of the ‘classical’ gods date back, at least in part, to the pantheon of the much older Vedic religion.

The principal Vedic gods are beings known as devas, the ‘shining ones’, and not surprisingly they are associated mostly with the sky and the heavens, rather than with the soil, animals and the mysteries of fertility – the province of ‘village’ Hinduism. The union of the Vedic Sky Father, Dyaus Pitar (compare Greek Zeus Pater, Latin Jupiter), with Mother Earth provides the earliest creation myth in the Rigveda. But we do not hear much about Dyaus, whose place is taken by Varuna, guardian of the sacred law and cosmic order (rita). Varuna, with his thousand eyes ever watchful for wrongdoing, is one of the Vedic gods who always behaves ethically. But then Varuna, in his turn, gives way to Prajapati, the Lord of Creatures, who, in the form of the Primeval Man, is dismembered to form the phenomenal world, including the four main castes. Other gods include Mitra, the god of integrity and friendship, who is closely linked with Varuna; Surya, the sun god; Agni, the god of fire, who consumes sacrificial offerings and thereby conveys them from men to the gods; Soma, who is both a god and an elixir of immortality, soma (as mentioned earlier); and in the afterlife, Yama, the god of death, who presides over the spirits of the dead. There are also important goddesses, such as the goddesses of Earth, the dawn (Ushas) and speech (Vac). Most important of all, however, is the warrior Indra, god of war and god of weather, with many of the characteristics of Zeus and Thor, as shown in his exploits. Indra kills the demon Vritra by wielding his thunderbolt, and thereby releases the waters of life. He rescues the sun from another demon (possibly a reference to a solar eclipse) with the help of the high priest. He also destroys the fortresses of the enemy known as the Dasas (as cited by Wheeler). He is borne by an eagle to heaven and returns with soma for men and gods. And he regularly overdoes the drinking of soma in noisy wassails.

Many of the gods’ names first seen in the Rigveda continue in ‘classical’ Hinduism, for example Varuna, Surya, Agni, Yama and Indra, though with varying degrees of importance attached to them compared to their Vedic originals. But there is little sign in the Vedic pantheon of the two greatest gods of later Hinduism: Shiva and Vishnu. In fact, Shiva is not mentioned by name. The Vedic storm god, Rudra, ‘in whom are later incorporated other ideas in the Hindu conception of Shiva, is a turbulent god more to be propitiated than petitioned’, notes the Indo-Aryan specialist Thomas Trautmann. Vishnu, though mentioned by name, is merely ‘a dwarf who with three giant strides wins the earth, air and sky for the gods and consigns the demons to the nether world’.5 Indeed, few of the Vedic deities became the major gods and goddesses of Hinduism, and only one of the major deities, Surya, kept a central position in later Hindu art as a dynastic deity. Objectively viewed, there is really no great connection between the Vedic gods and the gods of modern Hinduism, despite the high regard for the Vedas among current Hindus.

‘The Vedic contribution to Hinduism, especially Hindu cult-practice and speculation, is not a large one; Vedic influence on mythology is rather stronger, though here also there has been a profound regeneration’, the eminent Indologist Louis Renou observed more than half a century ago. ‘Even in those cases where continuity has been suggested, as for Rudra-Shiva, the differences are really far more striking than the similarities.’6

This surprising fact immediately begs a question: where did the non-Vedic elements of ‘classical’ Hinduism come from? Many of them must have evolved in the centuries of the post-Vedic period up to the presumed completion of the Mahabharata in its present form (around AD 400), or been assimilated from local religious cults (such as the crocodile cult in Gujarat). But some of them should date back to the Indus civilization, suggested Renou. ‘If the forms of religion revealed in the seals and figurines of the Indus have any remote connection with Indian forms, it is not so much with those of Vedism as with those of Hinduism, a Hinduism which, though known to us only by inference, must have already existed in Vedic times, and probably considerably earlier.’7

If this inference is correct, then the origins of ‘classical’ Hinduism most likely lie both in the Indus civilization and in the Vedic culture. The latter developed independently and strongly differed from the former. But during the second millennium BC – the period of Indus decline and Indo-Aryan migrations – the disparate customs, rituals and mythology of the Indus civilization and the Vedic culture probably mingled and fused to form the foundation of the ‘classical’ Hinduism that undoubtedly gave rise to modern Hinduism.

Just how different the Indus civilization was from the Vedic culture emerges from the basic content-matter of the Rigveda. This makes very occasional reference to villages, but none at all to towns and cities; it contains references to crafts such as weaving and leatherwork, but none to brickmaking and jewellery making; there are infrequent references to iron (which was unknown to the Indus civilization), but none to metallurgy or mining; and there are a few references to journeys and even to boats and ships (though the ships are probably metaphorical), but none at all to merchants and trade, whether long-distance or not – not to mention no references to complex weights and measures. Moreover, the Rigveda mentions defensive armour and the horse in its descriptions of warfare and sacrifice. Yet, evidence for armour or war is absent from the Indus civilization, and so is the horse, as we know. Beyond reasonable dispute, the overwhelming majority of the Rigveda’s verses concern sacrifices, rituals and gods, generally named, with many references to nature and natural phenomena, creation, women, animals (especially cows and horses), pastoral life, chariots, war and death.

The above comparative catalogue more or less disproves, amongst other things, that the Indus civilization might have been the progenitor of the Vedic culture, or indeed vice versa. For how could one explain, assuming the first scenario, a development from massive brick-built urban architecture to virtually no architecture, or, assuming the second, the prominence of armour and the horse followed by their disappearance? If the Vedic culture gave rise to the Indus civilization, which then gave rise to ‘classical’ Hinduism, then the cow would have had to pass from sacred to profane and then back to sacred. As Marshall was the first to note, ‘from whatever angle we view these civilisations, it is impossible to discover for them a common source, or to explain their divergent characters on any hypothesis other than that the Vedic was not only the later of the two, but that it had an independent invention.’8

This is not to say that the culture of the Indus civilization was entirely unlike that of the Vedic period. For example, the Indus people gambled. Many of their clay gaming boards and dice made of simple split reeds, cowrie shells, clay and stone cubes, and finely carved ivory rods with circles incised on each face, have been excavated. And so did the Vedic people, as described in the following verses, seven and eight, of the Rigveda’s powerful ‘Gambler’s Lament’ (in Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty’s translation):

"The dice goad like hooks and prick like whips; they enslave, deceive and torment. They give presents as children do, striking back at the winners. They are coated with honey – an irresistible power over the gambler. / Their army, three bands of fifty, plays by rules as immutable as those of the god Savitr [god of the rising and setting sun]. They do not bow even to the wrath of those whose power is terrifying; the king himself bows down before them"9

In addition, the Vedic people probably lived in small settlements, practised some degree of agriculture (ploughs are occasionally referred to), employed carpenters and metalworkers to make and repair their wheeled chariots, fashioned precious adornments for their women and supported traders who made journeys from village to village. But these things and activities were not sufficiently extensive or permanent to leave behind any remains today, or at least nothing that archaeologists have yet discovered – except for the Vedic peoples’ oral literature. However much Hindu nationalists may desire there to be a strong Vedic–Indus resemblance, no amount of special pleading about the silence of the Vedic scriptures on secular matters can marry up the society described in the Vedas with the material culture of the Indus civilization.

Where does this situation leave the origins of Hinduism? In a word, tangled. For, as we know, the Indus civilization was not sui generis; it was influenced by the cultures of Mesopotamia. And the same may be said of the Vedic culture; it absorbed words from the Dravidian languages, and presumably also elements of Dravidian religion. Parpola, who has devoted a lifetime to disentangling all of these influences through imaginative study of languages, scripts, art and surviving customs, argues:

"It is reasonable to expect that historical South Asia has preserved Harappan [i.e. Indus] traditions. Late Harappan people outnumbered Indo-Aryan-speaking immigrants. Fusion of these principal population groups continued for many centuries with mixed marriages and growing bilingualism. Newcomers’ need to deal with the majority population gave local leaders and priests a chance to act as middlemen and obtain positions in the emerging new social order."10

The Indus archaeological remains speak to the eye – yet the Indus people remain silent. The Vedic culture is full of sound and feeling – yet it exists solely on the printed page. Until the Indus signs are made to speak, ‘proto-Shiva’ must continue to be a most intriguing, but unverifiable, Indus ancestor of one of the primary forms of God in modern Hinduism.

NOTES

1 Asko Parpola, ‘Indus Civilisation’, in Brill’s Encyclopaedia of Hinduism, ed. Knut A. Jacobsen, vol. IV (Leiden, 2012), p. 9.
2 Dilip K. Chakrabarti, ed., Indus Civilization Sites in India: New Discoveries (Mumbai, 2004), p. 20.
3 Romila Thapar, Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 (London, 2002), p. 439.
4 Asko Parpola, The Roots of Hinduism: The Early Aryans and the Indus Civilization (New York, 2015), p. 3.
5 Thomas R. Trautmann, India: Brief History of a Civilization (New York, 2011), p. 33.
6 Louis Renou, Religions of Ancient India (London, 1953), p. 47.
7 Ibid., p. 3.
8 John Marshall, Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization (London, 1931), p. 112.
9The Rig Veda, trans. Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty (London, 1981), p. 240.
10 Parpola, ‘Indus Civilisation’, p. 9.

Written by Andrew Robinson in "The Indus - Lost Civilizations", Reaktion Books, London, UK, 2015, chapter 11.Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.