The Penguin History of Early India

by Romila Thapar

  There may have been a few indirect links between Harappan sites and those in southern Rajasthan, such as Ahar, Gilund and Balathal, where Harappan beads have been found. The proximity of copper ore in the Aravallis doubtless encouraged settlement and the links led to mining copper. A wide distribution in Gujarat, Rajasthan, the fringes of the doab and the middle Ganges Valley, extending to parts of Bengal, is recorded for a pottery technique that resulted in double colours of black and red which has been labelled the Black-and-Red Ware. This was not the pottery of a single, uniform culture, nor was it the sole pottery at these sites, although it often predominated. The earliest dates for this pottery range, according to region, from the second to the first millennium BC.

  Beads of carnelian and lapis lazuli sometimes occur at sites of the Malwa culture in Madhya Pradesh, again hinting at links with the Late Harappan. Both the major sites of Kayatha and Navdatoli, going back to an earlier period, suggest a degree of complex living. Navdatoli faces Maheshwar across the Narmada, and these could have been crossing-points on the river. Salvage archaeology in Madhya Pradesh prior to the completion of the dam on the Narmada River has yielded evidence of sites with impressive chacolithic levels, such as Sabatpur, Peethanagar and Mandsaur. Some are linked to the Malwa culture and others appear to have been on a route going south through the Hoshangabad area, a route that comes into prominence in later times.

  The curious and impressive find of four bronze objects, thought to be reminiscent of the Late Harappan style, has surfaced at Daimabad in northern Maharashtra. A rider driving a yoke of oxen, and three animals -a rhinoceros, a buffalo and an elephant, each on wheels – are unusual sculptures for a chalcolithic site. It could point to Harappan contacts through Gujarat, if the identity of the style is accepted. Such contacts have also been suggested for the chalcolithic site of Jorwe (Maharashtra), which was actively involved in the smelting of copper and the making of copper artefacts. Equally interesting is the chalcolithic site at Inamgaon (Maharashtra), dating to the second millennium BC, which was extensively excavated. It is thought to have been the hub of a chiefdom.

  The people of Inamgaon practised both farming and livestock breeding, with barley and millet as commonly grown crops, in a system of crop rotation. Cultivation was not dependent on rainfall alone for there is evidence of embankments to hold water. Villages of round or square huts, built of wattle and daub, were surrounded by a mud wall. The nature of this barrier may not have kept attacks by other villagers at bay but could have acted as a defence against animal predators, of which there were plenty in the adjacent forests. The presence of predators is depicted in a scene on a jar. Female terracotta figurines were found, some curiously headless but with prominent breasts, emphasizing ritual and symbolic aspects, and some placed in clay containers. By comparison, male images are fewer. The disposal of the dead was largely in the form of burial, often in a pit in the floor of the hut accompanied by some grave goods. Children were buried in urns. What is puzzling is that in some cases of adult burial the feet had been deliberately cut off. Vidarbha (Maharashtra) has provided evidence of cairn burials with Black-and-Red pottery, horse bits and copper and iron objects at places such as Junapani and Mahurjhari. These have links with some megalithic burials further south.

  The river valleys of the Godavari, Krishna, Tungabhadra, Pennar and Kaveri were settled by farming communities as early as the third millennium BC. The Raichur doab between the Krishna and the Tungabhadra Rivers becomes a focus of attention. Hallur, Kupgal, Maski (Karnataka) and Nagarjunakonda (Andhra Pradesh) had farming communities. The semi-arid areas were suitable for cattle-keeping villages, and it is thought that the large ash mounds at Piklihal (Karnataka), Utnur (Andhra Pradesh) and Kupgal resulted from burning cattle dung. Budihal (Andhra Pradesh) was a cattle-keeping village where an abattoir was unearthed. Sheep and goats were also bred, with the later addition of buffalo. Millet was widely cultivated and rice was grown later, being confined to wet, lowlying areas. Initially, these cultures were not metal-using and were limited to a range of stone artefacts, some used for polishing and grinding and some for more refined work through sharp-edged tools. Hand-turned pottery was gradually replaced by the technically more advanced wheel-thrown pottery.

  Towards the end of the second millennium there is some limited evidence of copper and bronze artefacts. This is developed further at Paiyampalli (Tamil Nadu), an earlier neolithic site, Hallur and T. Narsipur, with a bigger array of bronze and copper objects, beads, terracotta figurines and wheel-thrown pottery. A similar development is noticed at sites such as Sangankallu in Karnataka. Some among them are places for megalithic burials. Hallur and Kumaranhalli provide an early date for the use of iron, the sites going back to the late second millennium BC.

  The study of chalcolithic cultures suggests certain common characteristics. The close connection between a settlement and the environment is now an established perspective in archaeology. The interplay of locality and region that underlines some of these settlements becomes an important feature of later historical change. The imprint of early settlements did not continue unchanged, but nevertheless this interplay remains a consequential feature.

  Settlements occur in river valleys, although semi-arid areas may have been preferred for livestock breeding. Since stockbreeding and agriculture are interdependent, the semi-arid areas would have encouraged the cultivation of millet, apart from the northern plain where wheat and barley were more common, or in more eastern areas where rice was grown. It has been argued that areas given to the cultivation of wheat have different social patterns from those primarily cultivating rice. The latter tend to be associated with a more hierarchical authority and possibly greater stratification. This perspective has yet to be examined for the history of the subcontinent, but at an impressionistic level there does seem to be a difference, for example, between the north-west and the middle Ganges Plain in terms of social patterns. However, the difference need not have been caused by this one factor.

  The organization of a village, and subsequently a hierarchy of villages within a cluster, required some form of authority and regulations of control. This could have evolved from social stratification, with families coalescing into clans which maintained a hierarchy or at least sustained the notion of a semblance of authority by a chief or by elders. The political and social structure would have been far more complex than that of bands. Chiefdoms would presuppose not just surplus food but the control of a few families over what was produced, demarcating the chief from the clan. The handling of what were thought of as luxury goods, such as beads and certain kinds of symbolic daggers, would mark the status of such families. Their power would draw on their access to weapons, to maintaining stratification and allotment of resources, and on claims exercised through ritual.

  The worship of female figurines is in some ways remarkable. It not only parallels the Harappan figurines, but almost anticipates the extensive worship of female cult figures and goddesses in later history. But this need not point to the prevalence of a matriarchal system. Matriarchies would have been unlikely to approve of headless female figures, even as objects of worship. But it does point to a greater social presence of the female than in later times, which may also have been a generally more assertive presence.

  Burial within the hut is in some ways strange, although it occurs in many regions. Was this a sign of the status of the family, which treated the burial as a claim to that status? Or was it an attempt to keep those who had died close to the family, a sentiment known to some other societies, and suggested here by the cutting off of the feet? Or was there also a fear that wild animals would ravage the pit graves since the dead were not buried in coffins?

  Megalithic Burials

  The style of burial changed dramatically in the first millennium. Burials moved out of the habitation huts to be located in specially demarcated sanctuaries. These are the megalithic sites with a large variety of megalithic markers, and are most commonly located in the peninsula providing it
with a distinctive cultural phase. Some sites go back to about 1000 BC or even a little earlier. Whether the megaliths are characteristic of a distinctively different cultural pattern, or are a burial fashion adopted in the first millennium as part of chalcolithic activity, had been a controversial question. The paucity of settlement sites that can be correlated with the burials makes the assessment less definitive. Nevertheless, attempts were made to identify them as a distinctive culture. It was even argued that because they were associated with the horse they might have been Indo-Aryan speakers settling in the peninsula. But such identities have found little support. Nevertheless the extent and range of megalithic burials are striking.

  The forms and styles of megalithic burials are diverse and range from the single standing stone to rock-cut chambers. Simple cairns or a heaping up of stones were found in Baluchistan and Makran, in the Vindhyan region and parts of the peninsula. Other indicators were the marking of a location with a single, extremely large, stone marker or menhir. Such markers have led to the name mega + lithos, the large stone. The dolmen consisted of a number of large stones placed in formation. Or there could be a capstone balancing over upright stones, marking a pit. Pits often have what is referred to as a cist burial. This was frequently a circle demarcated with stones, enclosing a pit within which was constructed a cist, a rectangular box made of stone slabs to contain bones and grave goods. Sometimes there is a circular hole in one of the side slabs, referred to as a porthole. This would suggest that the burial chamber was used more than once. The more impressive range and forms of these burials occur in the peninsula where they are widely distributed. The cists occasionally contain pottery sarcophagi. Even more elaborate are the rock-cut caves in the Western Ghats, such as those in Kerala. The cutting of caves was difficult and required the softer laterite rock. The heterogeneity in form would suggest that the megalithic burials do not constitute a single culture, but settlements with cultural habits having similarities in concepts even though they were not identical in form.

  The megalithic burials of the peninsula south of the Narmada, at sites such as Hallur, Piklihal, Brahmagiri, Maski (Karnataka), Nagarjunakonda (Andhra Pradesh) and Adichannallur (Tamil Nadu), have characteristic forms similar to those of non-Indian megalithic cultures, but their origins remain somewhat unclear. It is feasible that they evolved from the earlier neolithic and chalcolithic cultures of the peninsula with some small intrusion of forms from elsewhere. Brahmagiri has a habitation site with megalithic objects. Parallels have also been drawn with practices among forest tribes, many of which have sarnas, sanctuaries, where large upright stones are erected to commemorate people, a practice which continues to the present. Similar megalithic burials also occur in Sri Lanka at approximately the same date, which would suggest links with south India.

  Grave furnishings were primarily Black-and-Red pottery and impressive iron artefacts, such as hoes and sickles, small weapons and horse trappings. Were these ritual objects deliberately buried with the dead, or were they objects of daily use thought to be helpful to the dead in the after-life? Could this have been a cult of ancestor worship if the burial sites were the focus of rituals? Some of the graffiti on the pottery resembles the signs of the Harappa script, which provides yet another dimension to identification. The communities involved in these memorials appear to have depended on the cultivation of millet and rice, with some regional variation, and to have domesticated cattle, sheep and goats.

  The categories of objects from megalithic burials are also often typologically similar, for instance artefacts of iron, and the question therefore is whether blacksmiths originating in a particular location traversed the peninsula, or whether there was an extensive network of exchange. The blacksmith clearly had an important function in the production of iron artefacts and, judging by the quality of the objects, could well have been a specialized craftsman. The presence of the horse would suggest an extensive network, drawing in suppliers of horses from northern and western India. This would endorse the idea that the control over the exchange would lie with heads of clans, who were most likely the ones buried under these stone markers. There appears to have been a continuing connection between burial and status.

  The association of iron artefacts and the range of forms are striking. These markers are generally found in the vicinity of fertile land, which may have been irrigated from tanks specially built for storing water. This would suggest co-operative effort on the part of the builders, an effort that would have been required even for the setting up of the burial monuments. Yet there are few settlements linked archaeologically to the megalithic memorials. If the area designated for burials was associated with both status and continuity it could well be at some distance from the settlement. The status is further underlined by the fact that at some sites the top levels have early Roman imperial coins, thus providing a terminal date of around the turn of the Christian era. The presence of a coin links the archaeological evidence to the historical. It is also suggestive of the range of exchange networks in which the local societies were involved.

  This all-too-brief survey of the archaeological evidence, prior to the textual, makes apparent the presence of multiple vibrant cultures in various parts of the subcontinent, particularly in the second and early first millennia BC. The nature of these cultures establishes that, whatever contemporary records there may be of a textual kind in later periods, the archaeological data has to be kept within historical vision. It also contradicts the idea of scattered primitive cultures that were easily edged out to the periphery when a superior culture came to establish itself. The history of the subsequent predominant cultures is modulated by both the continuities and the disjunctures underlined by the excavated evidence. The location of what is sometimes called the second urbanization shifts from the Indus Plain to the Ganges Plain. The process leading up to the formation of states and the emergence of towns can be observed in some depth for the Ganges Plain, where there is literary evidence marking the process. However, the more detailed literary evidence relates to the mature period of urbanism, and here the archaeological evidence has to be teased out by the textual. One hopes there will be more excavation of sites in the Ganges Plain, particularly horizontal excavations, as this will provide the necessary evidence for observing the process of change. The nature and the formal plan of the cities in the Ganges Plain differed substantially from those of the Indus civilization. This was partly due to environmental differences, but also to the economic functions of the cities and their political roles.

  4

  Towards Chiefdoms and Kingdoms

  C. 1200-600 BC

  Narratives of Beginnings

  Narratives of the period subsequent to the Indus civilization are thought of as the beginnings of history, since they come from textual sources. The beginnings are reconstructed as usual from archaeological and textual data, but the interweaving of these is immensely complicated. Archaeology reveals the existence of many diverse cultures, mostly chalcolithic, either interlocking or in juxtaposition. Evidence of the material culture of the late-second and early first millennia BC is relatively clear, and on occasion can even be used as cross-evidence for descriptions in the texts. The complication arises from trying to identify these cultures with groups mentioned in the texts. And there is a large range of texts with varying narratives and of different dates, all thought to have references to the beginnings. Those that came to constitute the Vedic corpus and were contemporary with this period began as an oral tradition to be memorized with much precision, which was eventually written many centuries later. Other texts claiming to reflect the past, such as the epics – Mahabharata and Ramayana – and the Puranas, also began as oral tradition, were more informally memorized and frequently added to, and were converted to their present textual form in the early first millennium AD.

  The Puranas were the religious sectarian literature of later times, but some of the earlier ones included narratives of how the past was perceived. As records they are later than t
he Vedic corpus. The epics are also later, but unlike the Vedas they have a well-defined perception of the past. It might therefore be of interest to quote their version of the genesis of Indian civilization before entering the world of the Vedas. The Puranas do at least have an integrated view and, even though it is not acceptable as history, it provides some useful perspectives on how the past was seen in the mid-first millennium AD.

  Puranic accounts narrating the beginnings of Indian history are largely variations on a well-known theme and are narrated, for example, in the Vishnu and Matsya Puranas. The earth was ruled by the Manus, of which the first was Manu Svayambhu (the Self-born Manu), born directly of the god Brahma. It was during the time of the seventh Manu that the great flood occurred, when everything was submerged. The god Vishnu had warned Manu of the flood, and told him to build a boat to carry his family and the seven sages of antiquity. Vishnu took the form of a large fish, the boat was fastened to its horn and it swam through the flood until the boat was lodged on a mountain peak. Here Manu remained until the water had subsided and they could all safely return home. The progeny of Manu became the ancestors to many lineages. Later kings seeking aristocratic status traced themselves back to these. In some versions, Manu’s eldest son – Ikshvaku – was ancestor to the Suryavamsha or Solar line, and the youngest child – Ila – a daughter, or a hermaphrodite in some accounts, gave rise to the Chandravamsha or Lunar line.