Mlecchas in Early India
Aloka Parasher
Munishiram Manorharlal, 1991
Hardback, 334 pp
ISBN 81-215-0529-X
Exploring Identity and the Other in Ancient India
Whether it is called register, mode, style, or trope, every historian now takes seriously the idea that the way in which facts are presented is as important as the actual facts themselves. And with the complex issue of mleccha's there are so many ways it could have been presented badly. The temptation to prove a point could descend into polemic. Extended criticism would become dry and technical (philological detail is rarely anything else). Instead Parasher has taken the word Mleccha as a thread, around which she has woven a series of explorations of different aspects. This is precisely the right approach as it conveys to the reader the multiple resonance, and the ambiguity of words that are used to define identity.Mleccha (and its equivalent milakkha) are usually tranlated as foreigner or barbarian. A translation which is inadequate in so many ways but not least because it implies that it was a word used by Indians to describe non-Indians. In fact it is a term used by some writers who lived in certain parts of India to describe people native to what we think of as India but who lacked some important criteria the writer felt defined his cultural identity (language, religion, geographical location, ancestry etc.). Most often it was used by Brahmanical writers to describe those outside of the aryavarta (the cultural community defined by the caste system, the sanskrit language, and Brahmanical ritual).
Parsher begins with a discussion of the etymology of Mleccha. As the earliest reference occurs in the Satapatha Brahmana, which is part of an oral tradition dating to before 500 BC, scholars have usually looked for various origins in the bronze age societies of the first and second millennium BC. The chapter on this is well-referenced and fairly comprehensive, covering a bewildering array of possible theories. The temptation to ridicule what are inevitably speculative attempts at a reconstruction is avoided and there is sufficient here for the reader to get a good grasp on the problem (in fact, probably a bit too much, non-philologists will suffer no harm by skipping the chapter entirely).
The next chapter begins an exploration of the relationship between mleccha and language (vac). It is hardly surprising that since Brahmins placed so much weight on proper speech for their own position in society, that language should feature heavily in the definition of Mleccha. In fact in early texts it is clear that mleccha status was defined largely in terms of language (either the inability to use Sanskrit, or the inability to use it correctly). Language was central to identity in ancient India, as evidence by the process of Sanskritization in the early centuries AD, the importance of the Grammarians from Panini onwards. Readers interested in this aspect should also consult the very good collection of essays by Madhav M Deshpande, Sanskrit & Prakrit: Sociolinguistic Issues (Mohilal Banarsidass, 1993).
Chapters 4 and 5 tackle the issues of inclusion and exclusion. The sources provide very different views on the need to exclude, or the opportunities for incorporating mleccha. The chapters are intrigueing, though more could have been made by placing some of the sources in a chronological context. For example, the Arthasastra suggests that mleccha would make valuable mercenaries, in fact it prescribes their use for a number of activities (assassination, espionage, poisoning) which might be considered beneath arya. This is a not entirely positive view, but it is a pragmatic one. The epics, which Parsher takes as generally later in tone, also portray the mleccha as valuable mercenaries. On the other hand, the Dharmasastra literature generally takes a theoretical (but not consistent) view of non-contact with the mleccha, and the Mudraraksana a similar position, portraying Malayaketu as depending on mleccha mercenaries in contrast to Chandragupta. If the sources are taken in this order, they suggest a shift towards a rhetoric (if not reality) of mleccha exclusion. It is an interesting thread, and would perhaps be interesting to explore if the developing rhetoric of exclusion was accompanied by a development in the systems of inclusion she looks at in chapter 5. Unfortunately, while the two ideas are well developed these possibilities are obscured by the lack of a chronological context.
Chapter 6 is unfortunately the weakest. It covers the use of mleccha to describe tribal groups (especially those of central India). While there is clearly some overlap between peoples described as atavika (forest dwelling) and mleccha, Parasher completely fails to demonstrate that it was their material culture or habitation (rather than say, lack of certain rituals, caste institutions, or improper speech) which was responsible for this classification. The assertion that 'aboriginals were apparently ostracized because of their backwardness and repulsive habits' (213) is unsubstantiated and surely extremely suspect. Given that mleccha developed a prejorative sense in the early historic period (with the rise of militant Brahmanism) it is equally likely that aboriginal groups were presumed to be backward and have repulsive habits because they were defined as mleccha. Parasher vacilitates '... they were all listed together as mlecchas. This is not difficult to understand and can be explained by the fact that to the brahmin writers these people were all outside the varnasramadharma' (214).
Chapter 7 covers foreigners, which as mentioned above is the most common translation of the term. Unfortunately it is extremely difficult to define what we mean by foreign. Some cases (such as the early Bactrian Greeks) seem obvious enough, but what of the Kushans, the Indo-Parthians, or the Western Ksatraps? The Ksatrapa rulers were supporters of Brahmanical institutions, aspired to Indian ideals such as the Cakravartin, and stood at the fore-front of trends such as Sanskritization. While their political were Scythian, very few of their ancestors would have been. Yet the Western Ksatraps are usually thought of as a foreign dynasty, in contrast to the 'Indian' Satavahanas. In fact the both have equal claim to be mleccha. Parasher is aware of this difficulty though is never quite able to get a grip on the problem of how to analyze an ancient notion of identity using a modern one.
The principle issue in this chapter is the reaction to the repeated invasions of the North-west from the second century BC to the fifth century AD, as typified in the Purana tradition. Including the Kushan rulers:
'Although it cannot be conclusively established by what name the Kusanas were known in Indian writings, the role they played in the socio-economic affairs of northern India for at least two centuries could not have been totally ignored by the Brahmans. By conquering vast parts of the Gangetic Valley down to Varanasi or even further east they had disturbed the orderly existence of everyday life. Further, the fact that the Kusana kings worked essentially in a Buddhist framework, they may have posed a threat to the Brahmanical supremacy. The Indians were too weak to resist this foreign invasion, even less than the earlier incursions, and thus ultimately the period of foreign domination as a whole came to be described as one of the evils of the Kali Age in their Itihasa-Purana tradition.' (233-4)
Parasher's argument in this chapter is that foreign invasions broke down the social hierarchy the Brahmins needed, and thus the period was perceived in this manner by them. There are several problems with Parasher's description of the Kushanas. Firstly, though the Kushans and Western Ksatraps extended considerable influence over the Gangetic valley, they never extended their direct rule much past Mathura. And the statement that the worked in a Buddhist framework is extremely inaccurate. The vast number of Buddhist (and Jain inscriptions) are actually private donations. Kushan kings tended to patronize their own central Asian cults in the north of the Empire or Brahmanical institutions in India itself (inscriptions 233, 235, 482, 484, 567). There is nothing to indicate that the Kushan emperors did not attempt to emulate already existing cultural norms of kingship and though there is some evidence that Indo-Scythian dynasts favored Buddhism, they did so in Gandhara, an area already peripheral by Brahmanical standards.
So given that the Kushans (and other 'foreign' kings) were not foreign in any real sense how can the reaction in the Purana tradition be accounted for. First it is worth establishing exactly what period the Purana tradition belongs. This is hard, as they are stratified texts, but there is an important internal clue. The texts are written as prophecies talking about future dynasties, and the future they predict runs up to the fourth century and the early Guptas - it is a list whose details focus on the Gangetic valley, and brahmanical woes. So the final form is locatable, it belongs to the Gangetic valley of the fourth and fifth centuries, the period of Gupta dominance. The general tone also fits well with other Gupta period material. The Brahmins were reactionary cultural conservatives and their Purana tradition idealises a past which did not actually exist. Part of forging a new sense of identity was creating an 'other', to hold up as an example of what aryavarta was not. The concept of mleccha had served that role before and so was ideally suited (when applied to the dynasties outside of the Gangetic valley) to serve the role again. In this respect Parsher makes a fundemental mistake in the final chapter. She treat the Brahmanical description of the Kali age as a reaction to some activity on the part of mlecchas. 'The other' does not exhibit agency, its actions, behaviour, and norms are creations of the people who write about 'the other', in this case the Brahmins of the Gupta period about the mleccha (Greeks, Huns, Scythians, and Kushans), and they are entirely about the ideals, aspirations, and sense of identity of the Brahmins. It is the motivations, and objectives of the Guptas and Brahmins that need to be understood.
The book ends with an appendix on the sources themselves. This is a well written, though in places there is insufficient detail. Two examples; the Mahabharata is an extremely complex text because it results from the compilation of a very lengthy oral tradition and has no single redactor, but I don't think sufficient time is spent to justify Parasher's particular use. Another example is the Mudrarakshasa, which Parasher says in the appendix she has already dealt with in Chapter 4. What she actually means is briefly touched upon it in a footnote on page 148. I also dislike the placement of this section. Though it is traditional to place overviews of sources into appendices it is inappropriate here, and unnecessary - readers who can handle the chapters on etymology or anthropology are going to be adequately prepared for this. This should have been positioned after the first chapter to give the reader an overview of the sources and their dates. There are many subtleties that are missed without a chronological framework, one of the subtleties a reader will miss is that though the chapters are themed those themes are arranged broadly in chronological order.
However, none of this should take away from what is an excellent book It is well-written, and though individual points can be critiicized that is inevitable given the complexity and breadth of the problem. More importantly, it does something all good history should do - it avoids telling them answers, and instead invites them to think about problems.
Mleccha were Meluhha
Since he needed an interpreter, it is reasonably inferred that Meluhhan did not speak Akkadian.
Antelope carried by the Meluhhan is a hieroglyph: mlekh ‘goat’ (Br.); mr̤eka (Te.); mēṭam (Ta.); meṣam (Skt.) Thus, the goat conveys the message that the carrier is a Meluhha speaker. A phonetic determinant.mrr̤eka, mlekh ‘goat’; Rebus: melukkha Br. mēḻẖ ‘goat’. Te. mr̤eka (DEDR 5087) meluh.h.aMeluhha is cognate mleccha. Mleccha were island-dwellers (attested in Mahabharata and other ancient Indian sprachbund texts). Their speech did not conform to the rules of grammar (mlecchāḥ mā bhūma iti adhyeyam vyākaraṇam) and had dialectical variants in words (mlecchitavai na apabhāṣitavai) (Patanjali: Mahābhāṣya). http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-evidence-for-mleccha.html
índra m. ʻ the god Indra ʼ RV.Pa. inda -- m., Pk. iṁda -- m.; Kt. ī˜dr ʻ name of a god ʼ, Pr. indr, Kal. in, gen. indras; S. ĩḍra -- laṭhi f. ʻ rainbow ʼ; OMarw. ī˜da, Si. in̆du.WPah.poet. indra m. ʻ god of rain ʼ (← Sk.?).(CDIAL 1572).
†indramaha -- m. ʻ festival for Indra ʼ MBh. [
ino m. ʻ the month mid September to mid October ʼ? (cf. Kanauri indrŏmöṅ id. Him.I 11).(CDIAL 1579a)
The Indus Colony in Mesopotamia – Part 1
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| (Mesopotamia in 2300 B.C.E) |
After World War 1, the British Museum and the Penn Museum decided to excavate in Iraq. Since Iraq was under the British mandate, the sites were easily accessible; the only issue was to find the best place to dig. The approval had to come from Britain’s colonial office headed by one Winston Churchill and Assistant Secretary and Advisor on Arab Affairs, T.E.Lawrence. For the excavation, they picked Charles Leonard Woolley as the director; Lawrence had worked with Woolley during an excavation in Carchemish, Syria before he ran through Arabia like an Energizer bunny who had drowned a few Red Bulls. One of Woolley’s assistants during the third season of excavations was Max Mallowan, who met his future wife in Mesopotamia – Agatha Christie[1].
The expedition started work in 1922 and one of their major discoveries was the Royal Cemetery of Ur which belonged to the First Dynasty. Sir Leonard Woolley excavated more than a thousand graves dating between 2600 – 2400 B.C.E out of which seventeen were royal tombs and in one he found a forty year old, five foot tall woman who was given an elaborate burial. We know this woman as Queen Puabi from one of the three cylinder seals found on her body. She was accompanied in her death by handmaidens and warriors, who were put to death, not by poisoning, but by driving a pike into their heads.
An interesting item from Queen Puabi’s tomb was a cloak of beads, made from carnelian beads (pic), which comes from the Indus region[2]. Thus a queen who lived in Southern Iraq, 4500 years back, was able to obtain beads from the Indus Valley region through the trading hubs of the ancient world.
But there are questions:
- Who bought these beads to Ur?
- What do we know about these traders? Were they Harappans or middle men from Bahrain/Qatar/Iran?
- Can these traders help us in deciphering the Indus script?
Off to Mesopotamia
To put the Indus influence in Mesopotamia in context, we first need to understand the difference between Sumer, Akkad, Ur, Puabi, Sargon, Gudea, and Guabba. A good starting point is 2900 B.C.E when there were many city-states ruled by individual kings who were wealthy enough to import luxury goods and powerful enough to give offers to their employees which they could not refuse (remember the pike).
Then at some point, the region became divided into Sumer and Akkad, which were not political entities, but collections of city-states speaking two different languages. Out of these two, Sumerian is unrelated to any other language while Akkadian is the ancestor of languages like Assyrian and is related to Hebrew and Arabic. The Akkadians and Sumerians remained in close contact, borrowing words from each other. The Akkadians also adopted the Sumerian script: Sometimes with short inscriptions it is hard to tell if the language is Akkadian or Sumerian. In 2270 B.C.E Sargon combined the region to create the Akkadian Empire[9].
Sargon’s birth story is an interesting one, especially to Indians. His mother, a priestess, conceived him in secret with an unknown father. She then set him adrift in a basket sealed with bitumen in the Euphrates. The river then took him to Akki the gardener who bought him up as his own son. Sounds familiar?
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| (Copper head from Sargonic Period) |
We don’t know how Sargon looked like, but we have a life size copper head of what is most likely his grand son, created using the Lost-Wax method. But it is in Sargon’s time that we hear about Meluhhans, identified as people from the Indus region, for the first time. He boasted about ships from Dilmun, Magan and Meluhha docking in the quay of Akkad[4]. There is also a tablet dating to 2200 B.C.E which mentions an Akkadian who was the holder of Meluhhan ships: large boats that were transporting precious metals and gem stones[10].
There is also a text dating to this period which mentions that Lu-Sunzida, a man of Meluhha, paid 10 shekels of silver to Urur, son of Amar-luku as a payment for a broken tooth. This law seems to be an earlier version of the code of Hammurabi (1792 – 1750 B.C.E), which states that “if one knocks out the tooth of a freeman, he shall pay one-third mana of silver[6].”
When the name Lu-Sunzida is translated into Sumerian it means ‘man of just buffalo-cow’ which is meaningless; the Sumerians don’t have any cultural context for using the buffalo. But the people of India definitely had: the water buffalo is an important concept in Rg Veda (1.164: 41-42)
41 Forming the water-floods, the buffalo hath lowed, one-footed or two-footed or four-footed, she, Who hath become eight-footed or hath got nine feet, the thousand-syllabled in the sublimest heaven. 42 From her descend in streams the seas of water; thereby the world’s four regions have their being, Thence flows the imperishable flood and thence the universe hath life.[HYMN CLXIV. Vi]
This link between Lu-Sunzida and the earliest layers of Rg Veda was noted by Asko Parpola, who suggested that the name could have been a direct translation from Indus to Sumerian[10]. Does this mean that the Vedic people were contemporaries of the Akkadians violating the lakshmana rekha of 1500 B.C.E?
Not so fast. Listen to the explanation for this which is similar to the one which works around the problem of the discovery of real horse bones in Surkotada. According to this explanation, two Indo-Aryan groups — the Dasas and Panis — arrived around 2100 B.C.E from the steppes via Central Asia bringing horses with them. If the Indo-Aryans arrived earlier does this mean that the date of Rg Veda can be pushed to an earlier date than 1200 B.C.E? The theory says, the folks who came in 2100 B.C.E were not the composers of the Veda; they came in a second wave, a couple of centuries later[7][8]. So according to Parpola, the name Lu-Sunzida could refer to the culture of those early arrivals — the Dasas, Vratyas, Mlecchas — who occupied the Indus region before the composers of Vedas. Thus Meluhha could be an adaptation of the Sanskrit word Mleccha[10].
Following the decline of the Akkadian dynasty founded by Sargon, city states like Lagash in the south gained independence and in 2144 B.C.E, Gudea became the town-king or governor. Direct sea trade, which had been active during Sargon’s time, 150 years back, between Meluhha and Mesopotamia was happening at this time too: Meluhhans came from their country to supply wood and raw materials for the construction of the main temple of Gudea’s capital as well as red stones and luxury goods.
Following the Akkadian period (2300 – 2150 B.C.E), there was a Sumerian renaissance resulting in the Third Dynasty of Ur, usually mentioned as Ur III Empire. It was during the Ur III period that one of the most famous landmarks in Iraq — the Ziggurat of Ur — was built. The Sumerian King Ur-Nammu who built the ziggurat, which stood in the temple complex of the moon god Nanna, appointed his daughter as the high priestess. This was a practice started by Sargon and it continued till the 6th century B.C.E.
Various city states like Gudea’s Lagash ended with the emergence of Ur III state, but these political changes did not affect trade, which continued as usual with one difference.The direct trade by Meluhhans on Meluhhan ships reduced — there is a decline in Indus artifacts in Mesopotamia —- instead goods were bought by the middlemen in Dilmun. One reason is that by the time of Ur III the de-urbanization of Harappa was happening. While trade from Harappa declined, trade from ports in Gujarat boomed via the middlemen bringing in various kinds of Meluhhan wood, some of which were used to make special thrones with ivory inlays.
In Part 2, we will look at what these Meluhhans did following the decline of direct trade.
Notes:
- This post is based mostly on two papers, [10] Simo Parpola, Asko Parpola, and Robert H. Brunswig, “The Meluḫḫa Village: Evidence of Acculturation of Harappan Traders in Late Third Millennium Mesopotamia?,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 20, no. 2 (May 1977): 129-165 and [11] P.S Vermaak, “Guabba, the Meluhhan village in Mesopotamia,” Journal for Semitics 17, no. 2 (2008): 553 – 570.
- References will be published at the end of Part 2
- Images from Wikipedia
The Indus Colony in Mesopotamia – Part 2
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| (Ziggurat at Ur) |
Read Part 1
Even though direct trade declined, a large number of foreigners stayed back, adopted local customs, and played an important role in Sumerian economy. These foreigners stayed in a village — a Meluhhan village — from 2062 B.C.E; we have documents from this period. This village was located in an area called Lagash in southwestern Mesopotamia which had cities like Girsu, Nina, and a port city and area called Guabba which had the temple of Nin-mar[5]. The Meluhhan village in Guabba and was associated with this temple.
Guabba was probably a harbor town under the jurisdiction of the Girsu/Lagas but by the time of Ur III, it was not near the sea, but could only be reached by inland waterways.A large number of granaries existed in Guabba where the temple was located. The granaries had to deliver barley and the Meluhhan village granary was one of them[10][11].
Thanks to the meticulous record keeping by the Sumerians we get a good picture of what these Meluhhans did. In 2062 B.C.E, a scribe of the builders received barley from the Meluhhan village. In 2057 B.C.E, there is account of grain delivery, the details of which is mentioned against a tablet of one Ur-Lama, son of Meluhha; the inventory of barley deposits in 2047 B.C.E mentions the quantity from the Meluhhan village. By 2046 B.C.E, there is a debt note:Ur-Lama, son of Meluhha has to recompense some wool. In 2045 B.C.E, the list of grain rations mentions the son of Meluhha, who was the serf of the Nanse temple from the delta[10][11].
During the Akkadian times, the Meluhhans were considered as foreigners, but by Ur III period they became part of society – paying tax and distributing grain — like other Sumerian villages. Compared to other towns and villages, the amount of grain delivered by the Meluhhan village was quite high. Between 1981-1973 BC, Ur was ruled by Amar-Sin and between 1972-1964 BC by his brother Shu-Sin. During the sixth year of the former and eighth year of the latter, barley was delivered only by the Meluhhan granary. Maybe the Meluhhan granaries were bigger or there was a third millennium jaziya[11].
Besides the granary, few people of Guabba — 4272 women and 1800 children — worked in the weaving sector. The Indus region was famous for cotton since 4000 B.C.E: one of the earliest evidence for exports from the subcontinent is Baluchistan cotton which was found in Jordan. So probably the residents of Guabba were skilled weavers from the Indus region[11].
Besides weavers, the village also had shepherds; the Ur III texts also mention a Meluhhan goat. The temple of Ninmar had two gardens out of which one was Meluhhan. This was probably a garden planted with fruit trees from Meluhha and provided fruits for the goddess. Also by the Ur III period, the Meluhhans had adopted Sumerian names. It seems the overseer of the Nanshe temple was a Meluhhan and there was a Meluhhan worker in the temple. Thus instead of following their religious traditions, the Meluhhans adopted the Sumerian ones[11].
Even though we have a better idea of the Meluhhans in Mesopotamia, these texts don’t help us in identifying Meluhha; We don’t know how far it was from Ur. Also no where in the texts the Meluhhans are mentioned in being in touch with their homeland. There is a mention of a Meluhhan skipper, but he was involved in domestic trade.
The Language Turner
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| (Cuneiform letter to King of Lagash) |
Few years back, Gregory L. Possehl, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, was reading Leo Oppenheim’sAncient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization, when he discovered a reference to a personal seal of a Meluhhan translator — Shu-ilishu — who lived in Mesopotamia. Possehl tracked down a photograph of the seal as well as got a fresh impression from the original seal (pic). The seal was dated from Late Akkadian (2200 – 2113 B.C.E) to Ur III (2113–2004 B.C.E)[3].
Think about this: Around 4000 years back, there was a man in Mesopotamia who could speak Meluhhan as well as Sumerian or Akkadian. He could read those Indus tablets. This is not surprising since the Meluhhan merchants would have handled the imports from Meluhha and exported Mesopotamian goods to their homeland. Since the translator worked with Meluhhans and Mesopotamians, he would need to speak multiple languages.
This suggests that there is probably a bi-lingual tablet somewhere in the region where Shu-ilishu lived. If such a tablet is found, it could be the Rosetta stone which would solve a 134 year old mystery forever. We will know if the Indus people were literate or illiterate, spoke some variant of Indo-Aryan or proto-Dravidian or Klingon. This find could end the dispute over the indentity of the Harappans.
While no bi-lingual seal has been found so far, various Indus seals have been found in Mesopotamia. G.R. Hunter, who in 1934 concluded that Brahmi was derived from Indus script, observed that square Indus seals could be in Indus language while the circular ones, though in Indus script, could be encoding a non-Indus language. He has a reason for suggesting this: there is one particular circular Mesopotamian seal which has five Indus signs in a sequence not seen before; a square seal found in Kish was similar to the Indus ones[10].
That has not helped in decipherment. The number of Indus seals found in Mesopotamia are not too many. About thirty seals have been found of which only ten can be dated with certanity. With trade relations lasting centuries this is a disappointing count. So our hope of finding a bi-lingual tablet depends on finding a Sumerian cuneiform tablet.
Another clue could come from the translations of Ur III texts. Mesopotamians were prolific writers: We know what Sargon of Akkad wrote; we can read the seal of Queen Puabi; there are numerous texts which describe in detail how much tax was paid, debt was kept and who broke whose tooth. Due to this meticulous record keeping we can reconstruct the history of people from the Indian subcontinent in Mesopotamia during the period when Khufu was building the Great Pyramid of Giza.
The news about the Meluhhan village came in a paper published in 1977 based on ten Ur III texts from Lagash/Girsu[10]. Last year there was another update based on the translations of 44 texts which has 48 references to Meluhha. The text which connects the Meluhhan village with Guabba is located in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum and was first published in 1912; no one noticed the connection till recently. Hopefully with revived interest in this topic, scholars will keep an eye for such clues which will help us solve this puzzle.
Notes:
- The place Ur is important in the Abrahamic religions since it is the birth place of Abraham. According to tradition Abraham lived from 1812 B.C.E to 1637 B.C.E. Since there is evidence for the granary delivering grain between 1981-1973 B.C.E and also between 1972-1964 B.C.E, it is possible that Meluhhans were around during Abraham’s time as well. That is if Abraham is a real historical character. According to Bible’s Buried Secrets — a historical analysis of the Hebrew Bible — the Babylonians exiled the Caananites in 586 B.C.E. It was while living in Babylon, near Ur, that a scribe, named “P” created the Abraham story to enforce the concept of the covenant.
- Many thanks to Hari and Ranjith P for their help in this research.
- Images from Wikipedia.
References:
- Iraq’s ancient past at University of Pennysylvania
- The Middle Asian Interaction Sphere by Gregory L. Possehl
- Shu-ilishu’s Cylinder Seal by Gregory L. Possehl
- Dionisius A. Agius, Classic ships of Islam(BRILL, 2008).
- Charles Keith Maisels, The emergence of civilization (Taylor & Francis, 1990).
- Hammurabi (King of Babylonia.), (University of Chicago Press, 1904).
- Asko Parpola, The Horse and the Language of the Indus Civilization,in The Aryan Debate edited by Thomas R. Trautmann (Oxford University Press, USA), 234-236.
- Edwin Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate (Oxford University Press, USA, 2004).
- Michael Roaf, The Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East (Facts on File, 1990).
- Simo Parpola, Asko Parpola, and Robert H. Brunswig, “The Meluḫḫa Village: Evidence of Acculturation of Harappan Traders in Late Third Millennium Mesopotamia?,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 20, no. 2 (May 1977): 129-165.
- P.S Vermaak, “Guabba, the Meluhhan village in Mesopotamia,” Journal for Semitics 17, no. 2 (2008): 553 – 570.
You might be interested in the following as well:
- The Indus Script – Introduction (Lothal, according to the ASI) 4000 year back, in Lothal, Gujarat, a merchant walked from his home in the lower town towards the wharf. As he walked past the bead...
- The Indus Script – Analysis (A letter in cuneiform sent to King of Lagash) Read Part 1, Part 2. There are two points the Dravidian camp and the Indo-Aryan camp agree on: the signs are...
The Indus Script – Introduction
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| (Lothal, according to the ASI) |
4000 year back, in Lothal, Gujarat, a merchant walked from his home in the lower town towards the wharf. As he walked past the bead factory, he saw the artisans already at work there; some of these beads were in demand in lands as far away as Mesopotamia. Crossing the public drain and the acropolis he reached the wharf. There were quite a few ships waiting to carry goods to Dilmun, Ur, and Lagash.
He glanced to his left, in the direction of the worker’s barracks, located at the far end of the wharf and quickly walked to the opposite end – towards the warehouse. All the goods were bundled and tied as expected. As he walked to the first bundle, one of his workers put some wet clay on the rope. He took a rectangular seal from the folds of his dress and pressed it hard on the clay. Satisfied with the impression, he moved on to the next bundle. When the recipient got the shipment, he would know exactly what is contained.
There are good reasons to believe that such a scenario could have happened. One probable use of Indus seals was in economic activity; the seals found in Lothal had impressions of a coarse cloth on their reverse and sometimes several seals were used to mark the goods. Besides this, there is enough evidence of trade relations between the Harappans and Mesopotamia going far back to the time of Sargon of Akkad (2270 – 2215 B.C.E) and even before that to 4000 B.C.E with the find of Baluchistan cotton in Jordan.
Seals
In 1875, Major-General Clark, who was the Commissioner of Awadh, discovered the first seal which had the engraving of a hump-less bull and six signs above it in Harappa[3]. 134 years later we don’t know what is written on those seals; there are many decipherments, but no consensus. While papers are coming out, applying various statistical methods to find out if the Indus seals encode a linguistic system, there is another debate over if these small palm size steatite seals with random looking inscriptions represent Indo-European, proto-Dravidian, Munda or some other language.
Why is decoding the Indus script and language so hard when Egyptian hieroglyphics, Linear B and cuneiform have been deciphered? In the case of Egyptian hieroglyphicsand cuneiform there was bi-lingual encoding, like the Rosetta stone, which helped. When it comes to the Indus, which is an unknown script representing an unknown language, we don’t have that luxury. Linear B was deciphered without bi-lingual text which gives hope, but then Indus seals are short. The average length of a seal is 5; the longest single sided inscription has seventeen signs. With such data, deciphering the seal is a hard task.
When it comes to the Indus seals we want answers to these questions:
- What is the script?
- What is the language?
- What is the subject matter?
- Were the Harappans Vedic people or Dravidians?
Before mozying along with various techniques, what can the archaeology tell us? We know that the seals come in various shapes — square, rectangle, circle, cylinder — but, square was the most common shape. The signs were found not just on seals, but also on engraved copper wafers, ceramic vessels, pot sherds, bangles, beads, and ivory rods. From the various seals found at Kalibangan, Lothal and Mohenjo-daro, it is evident that they were used to make impressions on wet clay for sealing shipments. Sometimes several seals were needed for one impression; one inscription in Kalibangan was made from four seal impression[1]
If the seals were used in economic activity, it could list trade goods, trading partners, and destinations. It could also indicate quantities of goods and clan names of the traders. But if they were not trade related, it could be invocation to gods, or identification sewn to clothes containing name, title, status and lineage[1].
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| (Seal Impression) |
While seals have been found from all the major Harappan sites, there are few noticeable differences. For example single occurrence signs occur more in Mohenjo-daro than Harappa, Lothal and other sites. Certain signs which occur on bas relief tablets are found more in Harappa because there are more bas relief tablets in Harappa. While we tend to think of the Indus Civilization as homogeneous with same style of town planning and same set of weights and measures, these differences might be evidence of difference in regional dialect.
The next step is to classify the script based on the number of signs. Since Indus has around 400 signs, it can be classified as logo-syllabic similar to Sumerian cuneiform. Even ancient scripts like Sumerian, Linear B, Mayan, and Egyptian are logo-syllabic, but they don’t have identical structures which we can use to decipher the Indus[1]. This also implies that the script is an indigenous development[4].
Another important question is about the direction of writing. Most of the seals were written from right to left; there is a crowding of letters in the left when the writer ran out of space or wide space when the scribe did not have enough to write[1]. In fact 83% of the seals are written from right to left and only 7% were found which indicate a left to right writing[8]. There are also some samples which are boustrophedonic (left to right followed by right to left)[1]. One theory suggests that texts which were written for the local population, like the sign board found in Dholavira, were written from left to right, while trade seals were written from right to left to be in sync with the writing in Sumer and Akkad[8].
Politics
Last month, for the International Conference on Classical Tamil which was held in Chennai, Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi unveiled a logo which had seven signs from the Indus Valley civilization. The Chief Minister is one of the many who believe that Indus Valley culture was Dravidian and these Dravidians were then forced down south by the invading/migrating Indo-Aryans. You can’t blame Karunanidhi for saying it; he is simply repeating what Rev. Stevenson wrote in 1848 and 1851 and B. H. Hodgson in 1848[2].
Deciphering the Indus script is important not just for those who argue for a Dravidian Harappa, but for those who argue that Harappans were Vedic people as well. The composers of Rg Veda knew Saraswati as a mighty river which is believed to be the Ghaggar-Hakra. Around 1900 B.C.E Ghaggar-Hakra dried up and this triggered a migration to Gujarat and the Gangetic plains. Now if it turns out that the language of Harappa was not Indo-Aryan, then it would prove beyond doubt that the Harappans were not the Vedic people or at least the urban Harappans were not.
(To be continued)
In Part 2, we will look at different attempts at decoding the signs. Part 3 will analyze various possibilities and debunk some fantasy tales.
In Part 2, we will look at different attempts at decoding the signs. Part 3 will analyze various possibilities and debunk some fantasy tales.
References:
- Bryan. Wells, “An introduction to Indus writing /–by Bryan Wells.” (Ann Arbor, Mich. :UMI,, 2001), ScientificCommons.
- Edwin Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate (Oxford University Press, USA, 2004).
- Kamil V. Zvelebil, “Decipherments of the Indus Script,” in The Aryan Debateedited by Thomas R. Trautmann (Oxford University Press, USA), 254 – 271.
- Jane Mcintosh, A Peaceful Realm : The Rise And Fall of the Indus Civilization (Basic Books, 2001).
- Michel Danino, “A Dravido-Harappan Connection? The issue of Methodology.,” Indus Civilization and Tamil Language (2009): 70 – 81.
- Subhash C. Kak, “A FREQUENCY – ANALYSIS – OF – THE – INDUS – SCRIPT,” Cryptologia 12, no. 3 (1988): 129.
- Subhash C. Kak, “INDUS – AND – BRAHMI – FURTHER – CONNECTIONS” Cryptologia 14, no. 2 (1990): 169.
- Subhash C. Kak, “AN – INDUS-SARASVATI SIGNBOARD,” Cryptologia 20, no. 3 (1996): 275.
(Images via Wikipedia)
The Indus Script – Analysis
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| (A letter in cuneiform sent to King of Lagash) |
There are two points the Dravidian camp and the Indo-Aryan camp agree on: the signs are mostly written from right to left and they are logo-syllabic. Bryan Wells was able to decipher the script as Dravidian and even read words from it. Subhash Kak has not deciphered the script, but has shown that it bears similarities to Brahmi script and the language could be an Indo-Aryan one like Prakrit. If we had lengthy sentences in Indus script, we could validate both these claims with confidence.
When it comes to the decipherments, the literature is overwhelmingly in favor of Dravidian, proto-Dravidian or early Kannada-Tamil. This comes not just from Indian scholars, but also Soviet and Finnish groups which have worked on this problem.Compared to this the Indo-Aryan angle has very little support; most books don’t even mention this possibility.
But is the Dravidian case rock solid? Assume for a moment that Dravidian or proto-Dravidian was spoken by the Harappans, when they lived in the urban settings. Now if Indo-Aryans forced these people — people who lived in well planned cities — to move to South India, what happened to their urbaneness.? There is not a single Harappan site in any of the South Indian states dating to that period or for that matter any later period. Thus if Dravidians did indeed move from Indus valley to South India, they would have moved from an advanced Bronze Age culture backwards to a Neolithic culture[2][5]. This parallels another explanation where the urban residents of BMAC became pastoral cattle breeders by the time they reached Indus Valley.
What about the Dravidian substratum in Indo-European? This concept has been challenged in the past two decades. Initially it was thought that there were 500 such words, then it became 380, then 100 and according to one study, it is just one –mayura. There are others who think that there is not even a single loan word from Dravidian and others who think the loan words are from para-Munda[5].
Even if there are loan words, it is in later mandalas of Rg Veda and hence irrelevant to the debate[5]. Also some of the linguistic features which were supposed to have come from Dravidian were found in other Indo-European languages, which had no contact with Dravidian. The corollary is that it is the Indo-Aryan language which influenced Dravidian. Even if there are similar features, they could come from two languages co-existing rather than one superimposing over the other[2].
Then there is the mystery of Brahui – a Dravidian language spoken in parts ofBaluchistan. The assumption is that these were Dravidians who did not move to South India. But it turns out that Brahui was not present in the region during the Indus valley period, but arrived later, probably after the Islamic invasion of India. Also look at the river names in the region: they all have Indo-Aryan names and not Dravidian ones. In fact there is evidence — from genetic studies and archaeobotany —which suggests a peninsular origin for Dravidians[5]. So how could the Indus Valley people be speaking Dravidian?
Conclusion
It is not just the Indus script which has not been undeciphered: no one knows to readLinear A, Etruscan, Phaistos disk and rongorongo. Also as many such decipherments are going on there is an even fundamental debate going on: do the signs encode a linguistic system? Statistical analysis can show that the Indus signs have structure – a known fact. But can it prove anything beyond that?
What could put an end to the debate on the language of the Harappans would be the discovery few seals with longer text. But is there a possibility of finding such an object? Consider this: It is not as if the entire region of Harappa — which is much bigger than any of the ancient civilizations — has been excavated. There were some excavations from 1930 – 1940 and then from 1986 onwards. There is still a large area to be excavated.
Another discovery which could put an end to this debate is the discovery of a bi-lingual seal. Since Harappans were trading with the hubs of the ancient world and spoke a different language than the rest of the world, there is the possibility of finding such a seal. Such a Rosetta stone could be found not just in India but also in Iran or Iraq or Bahrain. There is a good chance of finding such a seal near Basra in Iraq; that story is for another post.
References:
- Bryan. Wells, “An introduction to Indus writing /–by Bryan Wells.” (Ann Arbor, Mich. :UMI,, 2001), ScientificCommons.
- Edwin Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate (Oxford University Press, USA, 2004).
- Kamil V. Zvelebil, “Decipherments of the Indus Script,” in The Aryan Debateedited by Thomas R. Trautmann (Oxford University Press, USA), 254 – 271.
- Jane Mcintosh, A Peaceful Realm : The Rise And Fall of the Indus Civilization (Basic Books, 2001).
- Michel Danino, “A Dravido-Harappan Connection? The issue of Methodology.,” Indus Civilization and Tamil Language (2009): 70 – 81.
- Subhash C. Kak, “A FREQUENCY – ANALYSIS – OF – THE – INDUS – SCRIPT,” Cryptologia 12, no. 3 (1988): 129.
- Subhash C. Kak, “INDUS – AND – BRAHMI – FURTHER – CONNECTIONS” Cryptologia 14, no. 2 (1990): 169.
- Subhash C. Kak, “AN – INDUS-SARASVATI SIGNBOARD,” Cryptologia 20, no. 3 (1996): 275.
(Images via Wikipedia)