The Indian subcontinent is about
one-half the size of the United
States (but today possesses over three times
the population). For most of the length
of the Himalayas they form an impenetrable barrier between India and the rest of Asia. At least two gateways, however, exist across
the tallest mountains in the world at the Khyber Pass and the Bolan Pass in
northwest India. The people who migrated (a more appropriate
word than invaded) include at least
Aryans, Bactrians, Greeks, Huns, Mongols, Persians, Afghans, and Arabs. All right, some of these came as
invaders. You can probably name which
ones. Numerous races, tribes, and
conquerors brought a steady influx of new ideas, especially religious ideas,
and Indian religion, dress, and even the varied skin colors of Indian peoples
speak of a great mixing. The shared
results produced an enduring culture.
The earliest beginnings of the
civilization of India
classify it among other river civilizations we have studied, and the river in
question is not the Ganges but the Indus as we
have said. For all the important
symbolism of the great river to the east, the beginnings were along the fertile
valley of the Indus in the west. The Indus River
tumbles down from melting snows in the Himalayans. The river winds its way across dry, hot
plains until it empties in a grand delta into the Arabian
Sea. Rain occurs with any
reliability only in the south due to monsoons.
In between is one of the hottest yet one of the most fertile places on
Earth.
The flooding of the Indus that brought nutrients to the soil also brought
destruction to the homes of the earliest settlers of this region around 4,000
B. C. Not until they learned to bake the
mud bricks for their homes in kilns rather than in the sun did their homes
become durable enough to permit permanent settlement. Then the rich resources of the river valley
could be routinely enjoyed. These
resources included annual replenishment of fertile mud for miles around, ample
drinking and irrigation water, fish, timber from lush forests, and the river
itself as a highway to transport all the rest.
Food supplies increased and permitted the qualities of civilization that
caused towns to turn into thriving cities by 2,300 B. C.
We know this earliest civilization
by the name of its northernmost principal city, Harappa. Harappan society produced weavers, tanners,
potters, and furniture makers. They
developed a script from pictograms but their writing is as of yet undecipherable. The Harappan civilization extended 1,000
miles from north to south along the Indus
Valley. Unfortunately, a good portion of the
materials left from this era were used to make railroad beds until
archaeologists proved they were the remnants of an ancient people. Now over 100 sites have been excavated
revealing two large cities: Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro farther
south.
Each of these cities claimed around 40,000 inhabitants, and they
were both designed almost exactly alike.
A central fortress was raised on a mud-brick foundation surrounded by
walls of kiln-dried brick. Straight,
wide streets extended out from the fortress forming a city proper of at least a
square mile. The streets delineated
carefully designed blocks of buildings and had sewer drains unparalleled in the
world until those built by Rome. A definite social structure was apparent
since homes ranged from large and luxurious to the very small. Workshops revealed an increasing level of
skilled craftsmanship.
Strange clues to Harappan life have been excavated in as many as
nine layers of this city rebuilt again and again on ever-rising mounds. A profound dearth of weaponry may indicate a
strong government enforced by religious harmony. Little changed in over 1,000 years for the
implements and designs of buildings remain nearly identical from the earliest
levels to the top. Until someone
discerns how to read the hundreds of inscribed stone seals discovered in this
region we won’t know any more about the key to Harappan unity.
Theories abound as to what undid all the Harappans did. What is clear is that the end of Harappan
society approximately coincides with the migration into the same region by Aryans
from what is today Iran. Aryans later attained a written language we
can read since it formed the basis for some modern Indian languages. Aryan legends speak of moving into the Indus Valley
and “freeing the rivers” from a people they called the Dasyus. No clear evidence exists, however, that
proves the Dasyus were the Harappans. Mohenjo-Daro has some
tell-tale grouped skeletons and burned walls destruction signs, but other
Harappan cities appear to have been merely abandoned.
Harappans lacked iron tools that would have been necessary for
expanding their growing civilization into the thick forests surrounding them,
so another theory is that famine drove them out. The Indus
does not flood predictably. In fact,
floods changed the course of the river entirely at times leaving some cities
high and dry and inundating others. A
key piece of evidence here would be proof that the wheat-growing Harappans
discovered how to cultivate rice and moved east to the much swampier Ganges valley.
Many scholars believe the Harappans were not “wiped out” by the Aryans
but merely transplanted their culture either to the east or to the south pretty
much voluntarily, perhaps hopefully.
Curious cultural clues indicate that the Harappans are still among
us. We know that many ancient cultural
traits evident in the archaeological record still make up much of modern Indian
culture including common children’s toys, jewelry, hairstyles, and even a
preference for showers poured from above for bathing as opposed to sitting
down! Harappans worshipped a horned
fertility god—a bull. Ancient stone
carvings show a Harappan religious figure sitting with his legs crossed exactly
as Hindu holy men do in modern India.
The early Aryans were nothing like the culture they either destroyed
or merely followed. They were a rugged,
war-like people from Central Asia (get used to that kind) who were great
herdsmen of cattle who were for all intents and purposes barbarians in
comparison to the Harappans. Compared to
the fired-brick houses of the Harappans, Aryans’ dwellings were crude huts. Aryans even fought amongst themselves as various
tribal chieftains vied for local supremacy.
Aryans had one great skill—they could make fine chariots. We know they fought in armor with bows and
arrows, swords, spears, battle axes, and war drums. We also know Aryans liked to drink
intoxicating beverages. An entire book
of religious hymns exists in praise of soma
which was a liquor made from a drug thought to be similar to hashish.
Wherever the Harappans went, we know the Aryans eventually left the Indus Valley
around 1,000 B. C. and migrated toward the Ganges. They did develop iron tools that helped them
break through the forests. Iron also
allowed them to plow harder northern soils and expand the population of India over more
and more of its modern extent. The
Aryans were the first to call forth kings in India as they settled into more
agricultural, sedentary lives. Their
religious practices, language, and social customs formed a major cultural
legacy for the future of India. The language of Sanskrit is now “dead” in
that it is not spoken but by a few Hindu priests in their prayers. However, this ancient Aryan language is as
important to, say, Hindi, as Latin is to, say, English. The Aryan religious texts and practices form
the background for the Hindu and Buddhist religions, as has been discussed in
class. Perhaps most fundamental to
modern Indian life, however, is the rigid social class structure inherited from
the social structure of the Aryans.
In fact, the continuity between ancient and modern India is so
profound that if a modern Indian potter were transported back over 2,000 years
he could easily fit his life into that of his ancestors. Not only would the techniques of his craft be
roughly the same, but his dress, his diet, and his style of eating would be
“kosher” if he stopped for a meal at a house that would closely resemble his
house back in the future. The “caste”
system familiar to him from his own era would also have been in effect for his
own great-grandfather 80 times removed.
The caste system dictated where both ancient and modern potters lived,
their style of dress, their diet, their times for prayer, whom they married—the
whole pattern of their lives from birth to death. Through all the convulsive confusion of many
races, tribes, languages, occupations, skin tones, religious practices, and
geographical phenomena one might say that the caste system provides the one
thread of unity over time that is the definition of continuity. That last is sort of a caste-system pun in
that high-caste Brahmans are given a thread to wear around their necks at
physical maturity and they are supposed to wear it the rest of their lives as a
sign of their caste.
Origins of the caste system go back at least to Aryan tribal
divisions of labor in all the various occupations of society. Families protected trade secrets as a measure
of job security, and a system that required sons to take their fathers’
professions ensured stability. No one
knows at what point these divisions took on spiritual purification norms and
social status customs but they did.
Economically the caste system did and still does organize Indian culture
into groups of laundrymen, moneylenders, potters, gardeners, oil-pressers,
exorcists, street-sweepers, and even thieves and prostitutes. A finely-tuned system of interdependence was
the result. Farmers raised food for
carpenters who built the farm buildings while both groups turned their laundry
over to launderers. The economic
security, while stifling innovation, also provided social security in that each
caste took care of its own, even the lazy.
Social harmony was provided in a diverse culture in that, while you
might not like your weird neighbors, you knew they performed some essential
function for the greater good of the whole.
These rules gained complexity over time. Because of the caste system’s basis in
structure and purity, each caste has a set of rules determining who may cook
the food its members eat and who may serve them water. A Brahman will eat grain cooked in water only
if the cook is another high-caste Brahman.
He can, however, eat vegetables cooked in butter by cooks from a caste
immediately below him, but of course he cannot eat with those cooks. Some castes eat fish but not other meats. Others eat no meat but will eat eggs. Most of the highest castes are vegetarians. The fact that a man would be aghast marrying
someone who could not dine at table with him gave rise to the even more complex
sets of rules determining who can marry whom.
The rules are now so complex there are castes today whose members can
only marry inside of fifteen families.
These rules of an ever-descending level of purity of course leave
some caste at the bottom. The lowest
caste can defile higher-caste members by merely allowing themselves to be
seen. There is a caste so high that its
members always dine in wet clothing they have just laundered themselves to
avoid wearing a garment that while drying on a line might have had even a
shadow of these lowest-caste untouchables cast across it.
By the way, Indian peoples do not use the word “caste.” That word comes from Portuguese merchants who
were among the first Westerners to observe that, “No one changes from his
father’s trade. . .” The Portuguese word
for clan is casta. Indian peoples use their word for “color”
hinting at racial derivations or the word jati
which means “birth.” Even linguistically
the caste system bears all the marks of humiliating racial discrimination just
much more finely tuned than that of our own past(?).
Drawbacks to the caste system partly explain why
India
has suffered so much from outside invasions.
Only certain members of society were ever allowed to study fighting,
weaponry, or techniques of military command.
Certain castes encouraged their young men at certain ages to be
sober-minded students and at others to be pleasure-seekers. An ill-timed invasion could catch the warrior
classes, well, largely indisposed.
Furthermore there is a great stifling in a culture when a child has to “mature
in the pattern of his parents.” For a
genius musician to be born to a potter’s family was an exercise in
futility—going outside the way of the group was seen to be tampering defiantly
with universal order. One of the most
anti-progress scriptures found in any culture is the line from the Bhagavad Gita, “It is better to do one’s
own duty badly than to do another’s duty well.”
Compare that to “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your
might. . .” Only recently have caste
lines begun to weaken and laws against untouchability been passed. The cultural strengths and weaknesses of the
caste system are, like everything else, being reassessed in the aftermath of
the tidal wave of information that makes up the age in which we live.
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