The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History

by Sanjeev Sanyal

  Did the Harappans Compose the Vedas?

  Despite the abundance of archaeological remains, we know little about the Harappans themselves. We are not sure what languages they spoke, what gods they worshipped, and their script remains stubbornly undecipherable. We do not even know if it was a unified empire or a network of independent city states that shared a civilization. These matters remain hot topics of acrimonious debate among academic historians.

  The most obvious place to look for clues is the Rig Veda. It is the oldest and among the most sacred of Hindu scriptures. Composed in a very archaic form of Sanskrit, the Rig Veda was compiled over several generations by rishis and poet-philosophers, and remains in active use today. It contains ten ‘books’ of hymns and chants in praise of the gods. Although the text is mostly concerned with religious practice and philosophy, one can discern some things about the social and geographical context of those who composed the hymns.

  The traditional view was that the Rig Veda was composed by so-called Aryans who came to India from Central Asia around 1500 BC. The problem is that the date is entirely arbitrary and there is no archaeological or genetic sign of a large-scale invasion/migration. The Rig Veda itself mentions no invasion/migration and suggests no knowledge of Central Asia. It is possible that its composers were aware of Central Asia and southern India, but the text does not mention it. Instead, its geographical horizons are mostly concerned with an area that it calls the Sapta Sindhu or Land of the Seven Rivers.

  As discussed more fully in my previous book, Land of the Seven Rivers: A Brief History of India’s Geography, the Sapta Sindhu was a relatively small area covering the modern-day state of Haryana and a few adjoining parts of Punjab and Rajasthan. This was the original homeland of the Bharata tribe that, according to the Rig Veda, defeated an alliance of ten tribes on the banks of the Ravi in Punjab. They then expanded their empire to the east by defeating a chieftain along the Yamuna. Thus, the Bharatas created the first known empire in the subcontinent and gave Indians the name by which they still call themselves. The text also suggests knowledge of a wider area including the Himalayas in the north, the Ganga on the east, the sea to the south and the rivers of what is now Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. This roughly coincides with the geographical footprint of the Harappan civilization. So we have the remains of a large civilization and an extensive body of literature occupying the same geographical space during the Bronze Age. Surely it is not unreasonable to say that they belonged to the same people.

  Given the genetic evidence discussed in the previous chapter, it would appear that most of the Harappan people were derived from the ANI gene pool who had coalesced in northern India around the end of the last Ice Age. However, given the large geographical spread and extensive trade links, it is likely that the civilization was multi-ethnic. The Rig Vedic people were part of the broader Harappan milieu. The archaeological evidence suggests this as well. For instance, sacred fire altars have been identified at a number of places like Kalibangan whereas no large religious building has ever been found.15 This is exactly what one should expect since we know that Vedic-era Hindus conducted elaborate fire sacrifices but did not build temples or worship idols.

  There is an additional piece of evidence that one needs to consider. The Rig Veda repeatedly mentions the Saraswati River as the greatest of rivers.16 It is clearly the most important geographical feature of the Vedic terrain. Forty-five hymns are dedicated to the river while the Ganga is barely mentioned twice. One of the hymns clearly places the river between the Yamuna and Sutlej—exactly where the dry riverbed of the Ghaggar is located. Importantly, the hymns describe a river in full flow and, unlike later texts, there is no mention of the river drying up. This would suggest that the text was certainly written before 2000 BC and most likely before 2600 BC—which would imply that we may be dealing with an early Harappan text. I am aware that some scholars will disagree but this is the simplest explanation from the available evidence. All other accounts inevitably require complicated explanations and implausible contortions. New information about this period is still flowing in and a clearer picture should emerge over the next decade.

  The Churning of Genes

  The great Harappan cities flourished till around 2000 BC when we see a sudden deterioration in economic and social conditions. It has now been confirmed by a series of studies that this was due to another shift in climate that also seems to have affected other Bronze Age civilizations. A study of an old lakebed in Haryana by scientists from Cambridge University found conclusive evidence that the summer monsoon abruptly became weaker 4100 years ago in north-west India.17

  Note that this change in weather patterns in India was not an isolated incident as it coincides with similar shifts in Egypt and Mesopotamia where it caused great economic and political disruption. Iran’s Jiroft civilization died out and was forgotten. Egypt’s Old Kingdom collapsed and the country went back to being divided into Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. In Mesopotamia, the Akkadian empire also collapsed around 2100 BC. A lamentation called ‘The Curse of Akkad’ describes what happened:18

  For the first time since cities were founded,

  The great farmlands produced no grain,

  The rivers produced no fish,

  The irrigated orchards produced neither syrup nor wine,

  The gathered clouds did not rain, the masgurum did not grow.

  At that time, one shekel’s worth of oil was only one-half quart,

  One shekel’s worth of grain was only one-half quart. . . .

  These sold at such prices in the markets of all the cities!

  He who slept on the roof, died on the roof,

  He who slept in the house, had no burial,

  People were flailing at themselves from hunger.

  North-west India probably experienced something similar as monsoon rains failed. The Saraswati, already in decline, seems to have stopped flowing altogether. Post-Vedic texts tell us of how the river ‘disappeared’ underground. There is evidence that the Harappans tried to adapt to drier conditions by switching from high-yield wheat and barley to drought-resistant millets.19 The problem was that the new crops had yields that could only support small rural communities but not large urban centres. The great Harappan cities were no longer tenable and were abandoned one by one as people migrated in search of water. Some groups would have shifted east into the Himalayan foothills and into the Gangetic plains. Those from Gujarat seem to have drifted south to the Narmada and Tapti valleys. Others would have drifted further afield.

  These migrations show up clearly in the genetic records. The ANI and ASI populations suddenly go through a period of rapid mixing from around 2100 BC onward.20 It is possible that this mixing was quickened by some ASI groups moving north at the same time that the ANI were moving south and east. The mixing of these two genetic pools is responsible for the bulk of India’s present-day population. Of course, India is a large and diverse country and there are many groups that do not fit into this simple ANI–ASI framework but the coming together of these two populations is a very important event in the history of India and effectively triggers Indian civilization as we know it.

  Genetic markers also suggest that this mixing went on for more than two thousand years, so much so that there are no ‘pure’ ANI and ASI any more. As a recent study put it: ‘The most remarkable aspect of the ANI–ASI mixture is how pervasive it was, in the sense that it has left its mark in nearly every group in India. It has affected not just traditionally upper-caste groups, but also traditionally lower- caste and isolated tribes, all of whom are united in their history of mixture in the past few thousand years.’21 In other words, after all this blending, the majority of Indians are most closely related to each other irrespective of their ancient origins. Sorry if this scientific finding offends any ‘pure race’ advocates!

  Then, around AD 100 (a new study suggests AD 50022) the mixing abruptly stopped as different castes and tribes became strictly endogamous. The reasons for this
are hazy, but castes do seem to be quite fluid in the oldest Indian texts and become much more rigid in later writings (although endogamous, the relative positions of most castes continued to be fluid into modern times). A fuller discussion on caste is beyond the scope of this book, but genetics has broadly confirmed the assertion by Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar that the Indian caste system was a case of ‘superimposition of endogamy on exogamy’.23

  The migration of Harappans to the east and south would have spread their technologies and culture to these areas. Mainstream historians seem to assume that this implies a unidirectional flow of cultural and technological influence from the north-west of India to the east and south and then onward to South East Asia. This assumption is deep-rooted in Indian history writing but ends up giving a completely wrong impression. The reality is that there were already established populations and possibly even cities in the areas where the Harappans settled (a preliminary study hints that Varanasi may be as old as the Harappan cities).24 Thus, plenty of influence flowed in reverse and Indian civilization is the result of a messy process where people, ideas and influences flowed in multiple directions—a bubbling mix and not a steam engine running on fixed rails. The people living in southern India may not have built sophisticated cities in the Bronze Age but it is they who initiated the Iron Age.

  While northern Indians were building the great Harappan cities, southern Indians had continued to live in Neolithic settlements or as hunter–gatherer communities. The Bronze Age largely bypassed southern India, perhaps due to the paucity of copper ores in the region. Then, late in the third millennium BC, they did something amazing—they invented iron technology! The traditional view is that iron was introduced to India by invaders from Central Asia. Archaeological finds over the last two decades suggest instead that India was the likeliest place where iron was first mass produced.

  Initially, the evidence pointed to the earliest use of the metal around the eighteenth century BC in the middle Gangetic plains but now it appears that it originated much further south and at a much earlier period. Students of the University of Hyderabad made a startling discovery in 2014–15 while doing excavations in their campus.25 They found a number of iron artefacts, including weapons, that dated from around 2400–1800 BC. This is arguably the oldest systematic use of iron in the world. Far from being a military advantage exercised by Central Asian marauders, it appears that iron weaponry would have been an indigenous technological advantage.

  The Indo-Iranians

  So, if there was no ‘invasion’ from Central Asia, what explains the close cultural links between Vedic Indians and ancient Iranians? For instance, the oldest texts of Zoroastrianism, the religion of ancient Persia, are composed in a language very similar to Vedic Sanskrit. To this day, the Zoroastrians follow rituals and customs such as the fire sacrifice and the sacred thread that closely resemble Vedic tradition. As discussed in Land of the Seven Rivers, one possibility is that this similarity is derived from some Indian tribes that may have migrated west. Unlike the Vedic texts, ancient Iranians do refer to an ‘original homeland’. They also seemed to have knowledge of the Saraswati River and of Sapta Sindhu. Perhaps the Persians are descendants of the Parsu tribe who were part of the ten-tribe alliance defeated by the Bharatas.

  Another possibility is that the cultural links merely reflect the fact that the Iranians and north Indians were part of the same continuum until the Bronze Age. Given their geographical proximity, why does one need Central Asians to facilitate interaction? The location of the Jiroft civilization is particularly intriguing in this context because its sites are in south-east Iran and very close to the western most Harappan sites. Given the evidence of trade and use of zebu cattle, they may have been part of an ethnic continuum extending from north-west India. After 2000 BC, as eastern Iran and Baluchistan became increasingly hot and arid, the Jiroft people would have moved west towards Fars province. The ancient name of Fars is ‘Parsa’ and it is here that the Persians emerged as an identifiable people. Again notice that Fars is in southern Iran and not in the north as would be expected if they were migrants from Central Asia.

  The Persians were not the only people with Vedic links in the Middle East. A military elite called the Mitanni migrated from the east into northern Iraq in the middle of the second millennium BC and came to dominate the region. In 1380 BC they entered into a treaty with the Hittites. The agreement was solemnized in the name of Vedic gods Indra, Varuna, Mitra and Nasatya. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the arrival of the Mitanni in the region also witnessed the introduction of a technology of Indian origin—iron. It is noteworthy that this is five centuries after the earliest mass production of iron took place in southern India.

  Who were the Mitanni? Were they related to warrior tribes that, according to ancient Indian texts, migrated to the north-west and became ‘mlechhas’ or barbarians? Prior to the arrival of the Mitanni, iron was treated as a precious metal in the Middle East. Tiny quantities of meteorite iron were used to make prestige items in Anatolia (now Turkey) but large-scale extraction from ore was not known.26 It is likely that the Mitanni used iron to carve out their empire in northern Iraq. However, their Hittite rivals soon mastered the technology and the two fought several wars for control of ore-rich areas.27 The wars ended with the Hittites winning and, with the rise of the Assyrians, the Mitanni found themselves crushed between two powers in the thirteenth century BC. Nonetheless, the presence of a Vedic-related people using an Indian technology does suggest that some Indian tribes migrated out of India in the second millennium BC.

  Let it be clear that I am not attempting to replace a unidirectional inward migration into India with a unidirectional outward migration. We are dealing with very long periods during which human and cultural movements would have gone in different directions for different reasons at different points of time. It appears that broadly the same genetic and/or cultural pool was sloshing back and forth between northern India and Iran since the Stone Age. At the end of the Ice Age, one branch colonized Central Asia from where a sub-branch migrated to Eastern Europe. Those who remained in Asia would have kept interacting. This sloshing may explain why the mixing of genes in India seems to happen in layers between the same groups.28 Note that such non-linear movements are echoed in the later oral histories of many communities. The Gouda Saraswat Brahmins, for instance, claim to have migrated from the banks of the Saraswati River to Bengal and then later to the western coast of India. Long dismissed as myths, one wonders if these oral histories contain a memory of real population movements.

  Interestingly, the Vedic–Mitanni god Mitra would remain a popular deity in the Middle East and, centuries later, would witness a major revival in the Roman empire (where he would be known as the solar god Mithras). The cult of Mithras would become very widespread in the late Roman period and, for a while, would provide serious competition to early Christianity. The pagan Romans used to celebrate a big festival called Saturnalia that went on for a week from 17 December. At the end of the festival, on the 25 December, the Mithras cult would celebrate the feast of Sol Invictus or Unconquered Sun. Many scholars believe that when the Christians came to dominate the Roman empire, they simply took over the popular pagan festival (after all, the actual birth date of Jesus Christ is not known).29

  Mind you, not everyone agreed with this choice and the Orthodox Church still celebrates Christmas on 7 January. The Puritans would later disapprove of the unseemly heathen celebrations that clung to the festival and would try to ban Christmas in North America and Britain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; they obviously thought that Merrie Olde England was a bit too merry.30 Nevertheless, the 25 December holiday has survived as a day of festivity for most Christians and even non-Christians. Thus, one of the unintended consequences of early Iron Age migrations seems to be that the world has come to celebrate the birthday of an ancient god from Haryana!

  The Ark of the Covenant

  The collapse of the major Bronze Age cities around 2000 BC affe
cted the thriving trade route between the Persian Gulf and India’s western coast. By chance, the personal correspondence of a merchant in Ur, now Iraq, has survived in the ruins of his house and provides a direct view of how business networks may have begun to break down. The merchant, a certain Ea-Nasir, seems to have imported copper ingots from Magan (i.e. Oman) via Dilmun (i.e. Bahrain) around 1900 BC. Angry letters from his customers and creditors make for amusing reading after four thousand years although those who wrote the letters were clearly not amused. Here is one example from a business associate called Nanni:31

  Now when you had come, you spoke saying this, ‘I will give good ingots to Gimil-Sin.’ This you said to me when you had come. You have offered bad ingots to my messenger saying, ‘If you will take it take it, if you will not take it go away.’ Who am I that you are treating me in this manner, treating me with such contempt, and that between gentlemen such as we are.

  Although new empires would later be re-established in Mesopotamia, it would not resurrect the fortunes of Persian Gulf copper merchants as Cyprus would replace Oman as the more important source. The transition to the Iron Age would further reduce the importance of Omani copper. Thus, Oman seems to have become a backwater. Nonetheless, some trade must have continued to flow to the Indian Ocean. We know this due to a most unusual artefact—the discovery of black peppercorns stuffed up the nostrils of the mummy of Pharaoh Ramses II. While we do not know if this condemned the pharaoh to frequent sneezing in the afterlife, it shows that the Indian Ocean trade networks of the thirteenth century BC were capable of transporting pepper from its origin in south-western India to Egypt. Since it is unlikely that sailors of this period could directly cross the Arabian Sea, the spice was probably shipped up the coast from Kerala to Gujarat, and then along the Makran coast to Oman. From here, there were two possibilities. It could have continued along the old Persian Gulf route to Mesopotamia and then overland to Egypt. However, it is just as possible that pepper made its way south from Oman to Yemen and Eritrea, a region that the ancient Egyptians called the Land of Punt.