Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

by Sanyal, Sanjeev

  Standing on the banks of the Yamuna in Delhi, I ponder on the fate of a river killed by ill-advised civil engineering. Did the Harappans feel like this as they gazed on the dying Saraswati? The concern with water is echoed in the Vedas. The greatest feat of Indra, king of the gods, is to have defeated Vritra, a dragon, who had held back the river waters behind stone dams. Indra slays Vritra after a great battle, destroys the dams and sets the rivers free. It may be significant that the slaying of Vritra is specifically mentioned in a hymn eulogizing Saraswati. Perhaps the ancients too struggled with their inner demon—the suspicion that they may have somehow brought on their downfall by interfering with nature.

  LAND OF THE SEVEN RIVERS

  At the core of the Rig Vedic landscape was an area called Sapta-Sindhu (Land of the Seven Rivers). This is clearly the heartland of the Rig Veda, but the problem is that the text does not clearly specify the seven rivers. It is almost as if it was too obvious to be worthy of explanation. The hymns repeatedly describe the Saraswati as being ‘of seven-sisters’, so the sacred river was certainly one of the rivers, but the others are uncertain. The conventional view is that the seven rivers include the Saraswati, the five rivers of Punjab and the Indus. This would mean that the Sapta-Sindhu region included Haryana, all of Punjab (including Pakistani Punjab) and even parts of adjoining provinces. This is a very large area.

  Having traversed much of this terrain and read and re-read the text, I have come to a somewhat different conclusion. The Vedas clearly mention a wider landscape watered by ‘thrice-seven’ rivers 22 . While one does not have to take it literally as referring to twenty-one rivers, it is obvious that the Sapta-Sindhu is a sub-set of the wider Vedic landscape. In my view, the Indus and its tributaries were not a part of the Sapta-Sindhu. The Indus has long been considered a ‘male’ river in Indian tradition and would have not been called a sister. Indeed, it is notable that the Indus and its tributaries are never described as ‘of seven sisters’. My hunch is that the Sapta-Sindhu refers only to the Saraswati and its own tributaries. Take for instance the following stanza:

  ‘Coming together, glorious, loudly roaring—

  Saraswati, Mother of Floods, the seventh—

  With copious milk, with fair streams strongly flowing,

  Fully swelled by the volume of their waters’ 23

  My reading of this stanza is that it talks of how six rivers emptied into the Saraswati, the seventh. There are several old river channels in the region, some of which still flow into the Ghaggar during the monsoon season. These include the Chautang (often identified as the Vedic river Drishadvati) and the Sarsuti. The Sutlej and the Yamuna were probably also counted among the Saraswati’s sisters.

  If my hunch is right, it would mean that the Sapta-Sindhu was a much smaller area covering modern Haryana and a few of the adjoining districts of eastern Punjab. Incidentally, this area also corresponds to what ancient texts refer to as Brahmavarta—the Holy Land—where Manu is said to have re-established civilization after the flood. The texts define the Holy Land as lying between the Saraswati and the Drishadvati—again roughly Haryana and a bit of north Rajasthan, but excluding most of Punjab. So why was this small area so important? The people of the Sapta-Sindhu were obviously part of a cultural milieu that covered a much larger area. What was so special about these seven rivers? In my view the importance of the Land of the Seven Rivers probably derives from it being the home of the Bharatas, a tribe that would give Indians the name by which they call themselves.

  THE BHARATAS

  Although the Rig Veda is concerned mostly with religion, the hymns do mention one event that is almost certainly historical. This is often called the ‘Battle of the Ten Kings’ that occurred on the banks of the Ravi river in Punjab. 24 It appears that ten powerful tribes ganged up against the Bharata tribe and its chieftain Sudasa. 25 The confederacy appears to have mainly consisted of tribes from what is now western Punjab and the North West Frontier Province (both now in Pakistan). In contrast, the Bharatas were an ‘eastern’ tribe from what is now Haryana. 26 Despite the odds, the Bharatas crushed the confederacy in the battle. There are descriptions of how the defeated warriors fled the battlefield or were drowned in the Ravi.

  As I stand on the edge of the Ghaggar river in Haryana, I imagine the Bharata tribesmen fording the river on their way to the great battle. As described in the Rig Veda, the warriors would have been dressed in white robes, each with his long hair tied in a knot on his head. There would have been horses neighing, bronze weapons shining in the sun and perhaps the rhythmic sound of sage Vashishtha’s disciples chanting hymns to the gods. The Saraswati was a sizeable river then, not the stream that I see before me. Perhaps there would have been rafts ferrying men and supplies across the river. As I stand watching the river, a few soldiers from the nearby army camp wade knee-deep through the Ghaggar. They are Sikh soldiers, their hair knotted on top of their heads. There are no Vedic chants, but there is the soft rhythm of a diesel water-pump running in a farm somewhere.

  So, how did the Bharatas single-handedly defeat the great confederacy? The political acumen and military tactics of Sudasa and his guru Vashishtha must have played a role. However, it is possible that it also had something to do with access to superior weapons, since the territory of the Bharatas included India’s best copper mines. Even today, the country’s largest copper mine is situated at Khetri along the Rajasthan–Haryana border. Armed with superior bronze and an energetic leadership, the Bharatas were a formidable force. A number of ancient ‘copper hoards’, some including weapons, have been discovered in recent decades in southern Haryana, northern Rajasthan and western Uttar Pradesh, and probably belong to this period.

  Soon after the great victory, the Bharatas consolidated their position by defeating a chieftain called Bheda on the Yamuna 27 . They were now the paramount power in the subcontinent with an empire that stretched from Punjab, across Haryana to the area around Delhi–Meerut. Their command over the cultural heartland probably gave the Bharatas influence that extended well outside the lands they directly controlled. It is possible that they consciously consolidated their position by encouraging the compilation of the Vedas. The Rig Veda is full of praise for the Bharata–Trtsu tribe, its chief Sudasa and the sage Vashishtha, suggesting that the book was put together under the patronage of the victorious tribe, probably over several generations following the great battle.

  The real genius of the Bharatas, however, may lie in the fact that the Vedas do not confine themselves to the ideas of the victors but deliberately include those of sages from other tribes, including some of the defeated tribes. Thus, the hymns of the sage Vishwamitra, the great rival of Vashishtha, are given an important place in the compilation. In doing so, the Bharatas created a template of civilizational assimilation and accommodation rather than imposition. It was a powerful idea and would allow, over time, for people in faraway places like Bengal and Kerala to identify with this ancient Haryanvi tribe.

  This is why the Bharatas remain alive in the name by which Indians have called their country since ancient times: ‘Bharat Varsha’ or the Land of the Bharatas. In time it would come to denote the whole subcontinent. Later texts such as the Puranas would define it as ‘The country that lies north of the seas and south of the snowy mountains is called Bharatam, there dwell the descendants of Bharata’. It remains the official name of India even today. Note that the name is also echoed outside India. In the Malay language, for instance, ‘Barat’ means West, signifying the direction from which Indian merchants came to South-East Asia.

  Sudasa’s achievements may also have triggered an imperial dream that would remain embedded in the Indian consciousness. After his victories, Sudasa performed the Ashvamedha or horse sacrifice and was declared a Chakravartin or Universal Monarch. The word ‘chakravarti’ itself means ‘wheels that can go anywhere’, implying a monarch whose chariot can roll in any direction. The spokes of the wheel symbolize the various cardinal directions. Over the centuries, the sym
bolism of the wheel would be applied to both the temporal and the spiritual. We see the symbol used in imperial Mauryan symbols, Buddhist art and in the modern Indian nation’s flag.

  Meanwhile, what happened to the defeated tribes? Some of the tribes would remain in Punjab, although much weakened. We know that the Druhya tribe was later chased away from Punjab to eastern Afghanistan. Their king Gandhara gave the region its ancient Indian name, which lingers on in the name of the Afghan city of Kandahar. The Puranas also tell us that the Druhyus would later migrate farther north to Central Asia and turn into Mlechhas (or foreign barbarians). 28 After that we hear nothing more of them. Another tribe called the Purus survived into the Mahabharata epic and probably accounts for King Porus who fought against the invading army of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC.

  Some of the tribes, however, appear to have fled further afield after the great battle. Two of them have names that suggest interesting possibilities: the Pakhta and the Parsu. The former are also mentioned by later Greek sources as Pactyians and one wonders if they are the ancestors of Pakhtun (or Pashtun) tribes that still live in Afghanistan and north-western Pakistan. This fits with the finding that, genetically speaking, the Pashtuns are related to Indians and not to Central Asians or Arabs as was previously thought.

  Similarly, the Parsu are possibly related to the Persians because this is the name by which the Assyrians refer to the Persians in their inscriptions. This is not as fanciful a recreation of events as may appear at first glance. There is a great deal of evidence that links the Rig Vedic Indians to the ancient Persians. The Avesta, the oldest and most sacred text of the Zoroastrian religion, is written in a language that is almost identical to that of the Rig Veda. The older sections of the Avesta—called the Gathas—are said to have been composed by the prophet Zarathustra himself. They can be read as Rig Vedic Sanskrit by making a minor phonetic change. The Avestan ‘h’ is the same as the Sanskrit ‘s’. Thus, the word Sapta-Sindhu becomes Hapta-Hindu. 29 A similar phonetic shift survives in the modern Indian language of Assamese and is easy to master.

  The texts are clear that the Avestan people came to Iran from outside. Unlike the Rig Vedic Indians, they are much more self-consciously an ethnic group and call themselves the Aryan people. This makes sense because they were the outsiders in a foreign land and would have wanted to differentiate themselves. Moreover, they are aware of Sapta-Sindhu but not of western Iran, suggesting that they entered the country from the east. Unlike the Vedas, the ancient Persians also talk of an original ‘Aryan’ homeland and even name the river Helmand in Afghanistan after the Saraswati (i.e. Harahvaiti). Indeed, the Persian identity as ‘Aryans’ was so strong that their country would come to be known as the Land of the Aryans or Iran. As recently as the late twentieth century, the Shah of Iran used the title ‘Arya-mehr’ or Jewel of the Aryans. Contrast this with the Indian identification with the Bharatas.

  Another interesting indicator of the sequence of events is the use of the terms ‘deva’ and ‘asura’. In the Rig Veda, the terms apply to different sets of deities and do not have clear connotations of good and bad. The god Varun, for instance, is described as an asura. However, in later Hinduism, the asuras would be identified as demons and the devas as the gods. In contrast, devas refers to demons in the Zoroastrian tradition of Persia while the word asura is transformed into Ahura Mazda—the Great Lord. 30 Since the deva–asura dichotomy is not clear cut in the Rig Veda but becomes very distinct in later texts, it is reasonable to argue that these opposing sets of meaning came to be attached at a later date. What caused this separation? Did the Parsu have a religious dispute with the Bharatas? As they moved into the Middle East, was the Persian nomenclature influenced by the Assyrian god called Assur? One may never know for sure but these are some more intriguing possibilities.

  There is a lot more evidence of Vedic-related tribes in the Middle-East in the second millennium BC. In 1380 BC, the Hitties signed a treaty with a people called the Mittani. This treaty is solemnized in the name of Vedic gods Indra, Varuna, Mitra and Nasatya. The Mittani appear to have been a military elite who ruled over the Hurrian people living in northern Iraq and Syria. There are records of their dealings with Egyptians, Hitties and the Assyrians. From their names and gods, we can tell that the Mittani were outsiders who had entered the region from the east. Yet again, we have evidence of a westward movement that confounds the traditional view that Vedic people moved eastward into India rather than the other way around. The peacocks that recur in Mittani art tell of a people who remember not just their gods but also the fauna of the land they left.

  Amazingly, faint memories of these times remain alive among the secretive and much persecuted Yezidi people. The Yezidi are a tiny religious group of around 150,000 adherents who live among the Kurds of northern Iraq, eastern Turkey and parts of Armenia. Their religion has ancient pagan roots, albeit with an overlay of Islamic, Christian and Zoroastrian influence. They faced centuries of persecution, especially under Ottoman rule, for being ‘devil worshippers’. Like Hindus, the Yezidis believe in reincarnation and avatars, they pray facing the sun at dawn and dusk, and have a system of endogamous castes. Their temples with conical spires look strikingly similar to Hindu temples. The ‘Peacock Angel’ (Tawuse Melek) plays a central role in the religion.27 The peacock is a native to the Indian subcontinent and is not found naturally in Yezidi lands. Is it possible that the Yezidis have somehow preserved an ancient link to India? Indeed, the Yezidi themselves have a tradition that they came to the Middle East from India about 4000 years ago—around when the mature Harappan civilization would have begun to disintegrate or perhaps the Battle of the Ten Kings took place. Does one of these events explain the spread of R1a1, the genetic lineage that we discussed in the previous chapter?

  The world of the Harappans and the Rig Veda dissolved as the Saraswati dried. No matter what one thinks of the Harappan–Vedic debate, two things are clear. First, geography and the forces of nature played an important role in the evolution of Indian history. Second, the subcontinent has witnessed a great deal of migration and churn. People, ideas and trade have moved in different directions at different points of time and for different combinations of reasons. It is very different from the conventional view that Indian history is only about unidirectional invasions from the north-west. We now turn to India’s second age of urbanization, centred in the Gangetic plains and recalled in the great epics.

  3

  The Age of Lions

  The Gangetic plain was the birthplace of the next cycle of urbanization. From 1300 to 400 BC, the area was made up of a network of small kingdoms and republics. Many of them were centred around towns. We come across place-names that are still in use, and remarkable socio-cultural continuities. Modern Indian children are still brought up on legends and bedtime stories that originate from this era. For the first time, we see an awareness of the whole subcontinent as a geographical and civilizational unit. It is also a time that we witness the growing cultural importance of the Asiatic lion—an animal that would come to occupy a central role in Indian symbolism. One of the most important cultural contributions of the period was the composition of the two great epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. They tell us a lot about how the geographical conception of India evolved in the Iron Age.

  THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE EPICS

  The great epics Ramayana and Mahabharata have long been central to Indian culture. From religious philosophy to art and common idiom, they remain a part of everyday life. Their depiction as a television serial in the late eighties brought the country to a virtual standstill whenever an episode was aired. A dispute over the birthplace of Rama, the central character of the Ramayana, fundamentally changed Indian politics in the early nineties.

  According to tradition, the two epics are ‘itihasa’ or history. It is quite possible that that the central storylines, especially in the case of the Mahabharata, is loosely based on real events. However, in this book I am not concerned with the historical
authenticity of the events described in the epics. My interest is in the expansion of geographical knowledge that we can discern from them.

  The texts went through many changes over the centuries before they reached their current form, so one must not take all the information too literally. Nonetheless, in the understanding of the terrain there is a shift from the Vedic focus on the Sapta-Sindhu and neighbouring areas. Interestingly, the two epics have very different cardinal orientations. The geography of the Ramayana is oriented along a North–South axis while the Mahabharata is generally oriented on an East–West axis. This is not a total coincidence for they are aligned to two major trade routes. The Dakshina Path (or Southern Road) that made its way from the Gangetic plains though Central India to the southern tip of the peninsula while the Uttara Path (or Northern Road) that ran from eastern Afghanistan, through Punjab and the Gangetic plains, to the seaports of Bengal.

  Ancient Highways

  As we shall see, these two highways have played a very important role in shaping the geographical and political history of India. The Uttara Path was a well-trodden route by the Iron Age and formalized during the Mauryan Empire. Since then, it has been almost continuously rebuilt in some approximation to the original. 1 Sher Shah Suri, the Mughals, and the British invested heavily in maintaining it. The British called it the Grand Trunk Road and it was described by Rudyad Kipling as ‘a river of life as never exists in this world’. 2 It survives today as National Highway 1 between Delhi and Amritsar and National Highway 2 between Delhi and Kolkata, and is part of the Golden Quadrilateral network.