The Indus civilization including other copper age cultures and history of language change till c 1500 B C ; A Peoples History of India 2 THE INDUS CIVILIZATION Irfan Habib The Indus Civilization by I.
; A People's History of India THE INDUS CIVILIZATION Irfan Habib The Indus Civilization by Irfan the second monograph the People's History of India series in It Habib continues the story from the point reached the earlier monograph, in Prehistory The dominant theme here by the Indus is is provided civilization In addition, other contemporary and later cultures down to about 1500 bc, and the formation of the major language families of India, are discussed The Indus Civilization seeks to uniformity with Prehistory framework, except for of the It in maintain style and slight relaxation commitment to conciseness more detailed exposition contains of certain topics, and the explanatory notes on technical and controversial subjects at the end of each chapter are somewhat longer Illustrations, maps and tables are included to serve as aids to understand the subject better The time with which deals it is is this monograph often called Protohistory, since close to the period when history can, at least partly, be reconstructed from modern boundaries make little sense literary texts Since territorial when we deal with the past, India here means pre-partition India, and the area covered includes Afghanistan south of the Hindukush mountains chapter is Helmand A sub- accordingly devoted to the civilization, whose study indispensable for putting the Indus civilization in a www south asiabooks.com proper perspective is A People's History of India Prehistory The Indus The Vedic Culture and the Dawn of the Civilization Iron Age The Aligarh Historians Society, the sponsor of the project of A People's History of India, dedicated to the cause of is method promoting the scientific communal and chauvinistic interpretations in history and resisting A People's History of India THE INDUS CIVILIZATION Including Other Copper Age Cultures and History of Language Change Irfan Habib Aligarh Historians Society Tulika till c 1500 bc Published by Tulika Books 35 A/1 (third floor), Shahpur © Aligarh First New Delhi Jat, 10 049 Historians Society 2002 published in India 2002 ISBN: 81-85229-66-X Designed by Ram Rahman and typeset in Minion and Condensed at Delhi, Univers Tulika Print Communication Services, and printed at Chaman House, Daryaganj, Delhi 110 006 Enterprises, New 1603 Pataudi Contents Preface ix Early Bronze Age Cultures of the Indus Civilization and the Borderlands 1.1 Towards 'Urban Revolution' 1.2 The Helmand 1.3 Early Indus Cultures 1.4 Onset of the Indus Civilization Civilization 13 The Methods of Archaeology Note 1.1: Note 1.2: Bibliographical The Indus Note 17 21 22 Civilization 2.1 Extent and Population 22 2.2 Agriculture and Subsistence 24 2.3 Craft Production 28 2.4 The 2.5 Trade 45 2.6 Culture: Writing, Art, Religion 50 2.7 People, Society, State 57 2.8 The End of the Indus Cities and Towns 37 Note Note 2.2: Note 2.3: Bibliographical : 62 Civilization The Indus Script The Indus Civilization Note 67 and the Rigveda 71 74 CONTENTS Non-Urban Chalcolithic Cultures, till 1500 bc; Language Change 77 3.1 After the Cities 77 3.2 Chalcolithic Cultures of the Borderlands and the Indus Basin 83 3.3 Other Chalcolithic Cultures, to 3.4 Language Change Before 1500 bc VI 1500 bc Reconstructing Language History Note : Note 3.2: Bibliographical Index c Note 88 93 02 05 107 THE INDUS CIVILIZATION that the population of the territory of the Indus civilization around four million (see Chapter ), of depopulation upon the civilization's it by more than to have fallen million people still half was probably we allow for a certain degree disappearance, we can hardly imagine and even if There were, therefore, probably some two We inhabiting the Indus basin at the time cannot obvi- ously conceive of a mass migration of this magnitude from areas in the borderlands, which, being largely mountainous, could have maintained only sparse populations Moreover, since the Indo-Aryan speakers had settled in these areas for some time previously, they must have already mixed with pop- ulations which, being neighbours to the Indus people, were not probably biologically much different from the latter A movement of even a hundred thou- sand such persons over a period of time (say, 200 years) should still have left the Indus basin population 'racially' unaffected What we know from 1500-1300 slightly later period, historical records BC, may about the Mitanni from a well give us a picture of what could have happened in the Indus basin There, in upper Mesopotamia, the Indo-Aryan speakers of the Mitanni kingdom comprised charioteers, horse-trainers and, perhaps, priests (indicated Indo-Aryan allegiance to the the kingdom continued belong to deities) Yet, the to speak the Indo-European the major part of the population of Hurrian language, which did not even family The Mitanni (Dasharatha?) himself wrote to the Egyptian pharaoh, Hurrian in 500 lines A rulers, warriors, by the continued c ruler Tushratta 1400 bc, a letter in condition of bilingualism thus prevailed But since Hurrian, being a written language, was strongly entrenched, the Indo-Aryan speech there remained an elite language only, and then entirely disappeared In the Indus basin, however, with the disappearance of the Indus script (and, presumably, of the official language that was written in it), there was no such strong rival facing Indo-Aryan Indeed, there might have been only several small 'substrate' languages We have seen that some of them were probably Dravidian, to judge from the appearance of retroflexion and words some Dravidian in the Rigveda There was, however, another set of languages which were neither Dravidian nor Austro-Asiatic, but have also furnished non-Indo-European words to the Rigveda and early Sanskrit Interaction with such languages in Afghanistan probably began India, and might ture of much before the Indo-Aryan speakers entered well be responsible for the early appearance of a unique fea- Indo-Aryan languages, namely, ing the Indo-Aryan pound consonants 100 word 'Prakritism' This consists of simplify- structure, characteristically dispensing with com- (usually replaced by single consonants, for example, puta Non-Urban C h alcolithic Cultures for putra, son) Some Prakritisms are found not only in the Rigveda but also in Mitanni speech: for the Sanskrit ashva (horse) Mitanni has Sanskrit sapta (seven) it has spread Indo-Aryan speech satta assu, and for the Such simplification must have helped among ordinary people, for it is to almost certain that Rigvedic Sanskrit, like the later Sanskrit, remained a language of the few By the sixth century bc it understood; and so it was the Prakrit language of each region that the people was Gautama Buddha gave in the Prakrit of their sermons If Magadha that Lord Mahavira and Indo-Aryan speech may be imagined to have mainly spread by way of 'elite dominance', the people yet had a share in determining its popular form, namely, Prakrit Table 3.2 Chronological Table, A Indus Basin c 2000-1500 bc and Western Borderlands BC 2100-1400 Sibri-Mehrgarh VIII culture 2000 Shahr-i Sokhta: post-urban settlement 2000-1500 Jhukar culture 2000-1500 Cemetery-H culture 2000-1500 Shahi 2000-1200 'Late 1900-1600 Post-Indus culture in Gujarat 1800-1400 Swat Culture IV 1800-1300 Pirak Bronze culture B Cultures outside the Tump Culture Harappan' culture, Sutlej-Ganga region Indus Basin BC 3000-1300 Banas culture: 3000-2000 Balathal 2400-1300 Ahar 2800-1500 OCP 2400-1800 Kayatha culture culture 2100-1700 Southern Neolithic, with occasional occurrences of copper 2000-1400 Malwa culture: in Maharashtra, from 1800 BC 2000-1700 Savalda culture 2000-1300 Napchik, Neolithic 1800 Copper at Senuwar and Chirand, Bihar 1700 Copper at Bharatpur and Mahisadal, West Bengal 1500-1300 The Mitanni 101 in site in Manipur upper Mesopotamia THE INDUS CIVILIZATION Note 3.1 Reconstructing Language History Prehistory human defined as the period of is life for which we have no written records; and physical remains, which are studied by archaeology, our sole source of information for to constitute period called Protohistory also not is much it For all may be held practical purposes, the we cannot read (as is the come down from it But there different, since case with the Indus script) the written material that has does remain one other possible source of information, namely, language survivals Languages existed long before they came to be written down If we can establish what words and names (both personal and place names) survived from those times, and what such words meant (plough, hut, mother, etc.), and we can beliefs father, cattle or horse, deity or ghost, reconstruct at least in part the material conditions, social relationships of the people who used these words This becomes possible from a study of the vocabulary and syntax (or sentence structure) of early languages from the time they were written down The broad discipline under which such study falls is known as linguistics That branch of linguistics which, by comparing the vocabularies and structures of different languages, attempts to reconstruct their past, ative and compar- called philology, or is The comparative methods developed by philology historical linguistics enable us to see which languages are genetically linked with each other, that common ancestor, common and how, given such ferent directions, in respect of both is, have a ancestry, they have evolved in dif- word forms and sentence structure By meticulous comparisons, a genealogical tree of languages can be built up, a large language family being made up of sub-families, branches structed, ies one can proceed back, stage by and grammatical traits ultimately, we reach the top, and aspa tral such a tree has been con- common we number of common words will vocabular- among the as well as traits allied When, have the partial vocabulary of an ancestral lan- itself exist An example will entails In the When within the individual branches, and, then, branches, which will reduce the guage, which does not or groups stage, locating, first, the perhaps best show what the procedure we have described Indo-European in Avesta Since the family, the word Avestan language for 'horse' attests a is ashva in Vedic Sanskrit change from v to p, the ances- language of the group to which the two languages belong, called Proto-Aryan, must have had the word *asva that the word is* text containing which k for the horse An asterisk precedes the word to show merely a reconstructed one, there being in existence no Proto-Aryan it in certain Now, Proto-Aryan was words tends a satem language, that to be converted into s In is, a language in centum languages, where this has not happened, the words for 'horse' include yakwe in Tocharian (western China), equs in Latin, ech in Old Irish and eoh in Old English (Such words being similar and taken as descended from the same ancestral language, are called 'cognates'.) from these that there was 102 a word We infer for horse in the ancestral language of the entire Non-Urban Chalcolithic Cultures Indo-European family (Proto-Indo-European), and that the likely form of that word * (h)ekwos was Such reconstructions of words are achieved by the study of etymology Etymology is from senses) simply the history of each word, traced by comparing its in other languages in order to arrive at the forms mological work from another belonging The word a loan word from like * tambula chance endowed with this in Sanskrit which has no ety- and tambul word in Persian, but this is There was, therefore, no Proto-Aryan word latter meaning Etymologists also have to avoid building on which 'one', is also Indo-European root ultimately linked ek), Much ancestral form branch or family Such words are termed loan tambula Tamil, a Dravidian language, has the similarities its ferent is the former to the similar to the English change to a different for betel-leaf has common concerned with identifying words that have entered one language is words forms (and its occurrence in each language, and then by locating similar earliest similarity with the what it word onnu, which looks very means But the English word to the Sanskrit Tamil word form eka (Hindustani one has Finally, to guard against a word may remain the same, but it may mean something quite difThe Vedic word yava means barley, but since cognate forms in other Indoin sense: the mean 'grain' in general or some other species of grain, Proto-Indo-European word is also held to mean 'grain' alone European languages original either the Once, by careful use of the science of etymology, a genealogical tree of a language family has been built up, we can set the various of sequence along the same line of descent Thus Aryan from Proto-Indo-European came had split off Aryan first from Proto-Indo-European; and Old Iranian change ('language each split shift'), words are selected, after the ancestor that as in it some order in that the split of Proto- of the Albanian language Old Indo-Aryan split off from Proto- and so on Roughly judging from the extent of one can estimate the amount of time A procedure known sion to such estimates by basic later; changes we know that passed between glottochronology seeks to lend considerable preci- making use of the method of 'lexico-statistics': and the extent of 'vocabulary replacement' a is number of determined within each language with reference to these words Then, assuming uniform rates for equal degrees of such replacement, the period split off from its Indo-European tral in is is put themselves unreasonable, but the method is calculated when held to be no earlier than 5000 BC, and the languages of Vedic Sanskrit and Latin these is the language studied parent language By applying this technique, the beginning of Proto- at split around 3300 itself is open to between the ances- BC Such dates are not many objections One that the factors that influence vocabulary replacement are so varied that not be assumed that linguistic changes everywhere at all it of can- times would proceed at a given tempo; and this brings into question the very fact of precision that is claimed for glottochronology Let us ily now return to the vocabulary of the ancestral language of each fam- or branch that philologists are able to establish Such reconstructed vocabulary will 103 — - THE INDUS CIVILIZATION people who spoke deduce we can some confidence what things the the reconstructed old language were familiar with, but we cannot always be incomplete, so that establish with from the absence of words their ignorance of certain things reconstructed vocabulary There are also other guages are spoken shift; and not always easy to it is where particular languages were spoken isoglosses tic traits, may be plotted some of on a Map 3.4 in all Ashokan isogloss is the c boundary that within based on between two line one zone of the linguis- territory of a latter The *L' BC: consonant is not, in fact, used at all This Isogloss i /^ •" *&>>* ( ( \ from the available vocabulary, / — \ A C J£^ r — >_^ \o v /> A/ Arabian Sea Bay V ?t r o B e n f g a 1 \ Aa "0 200 400KM a * ) _ F Habib Boundoryof Hauryan Empire '"V N.W limitof Ashokan Prakrit 'C Isogloss