by Tony Joseph
A look at the climatic map of India will show that there is a savannah zone – an expanse covered in grasses – that runs from Gujarat and Rajasthan through the central Deccan and all the way down to south India, along the western side of the peninsula. This would have been a perfect route for pastoralists to take, as they expanded their range.
In the 2006 paper ‘Agricultural Origins and Frontiers in South Asia: A Working Synthesis’, the archaeobotanist Dorian Q. Fuller laid out the case for the introduction of domesticated animals – cattle, sheep and goats – into peninsular India from the north. According to him, people in peninsular India had taken to cultivating two kinds of small millets and two kinds of pulses, a basic crop package like barley and wheat in north-western India, sometime between 3000 BCE and 2300 BCE. They had domesticated these millets and pulses from locally available wild varieties. The earliest evidence for the integration of this agricultural package with domesticated animals – mainly cattle, but also sheep and goat – comes from ‘ashmounds’, or large mounds of ash formed by the burning of cow dung, dated from around 2200 BCE. Fuller considers this ‘ashmound tradition’ to be the outcome of interaction between cultivators and immigrant pastoralists, though he does not make any link between this possibility and language expansion.
In other words, the introduction of pastoralism and domesticated animals to a region and a people who were experimenting with cultivation of millets and pulses is what could have led to the development of the full package of crops and domesticated animals. If this assessment is right, it is a possibility that migrant Dravidian-language speakers could have been a crucial part of the agricultural story in southern India. The possible arrival of Harappan urbanites almost a thousand years later would have built on an existing foundation of Dravidian language presence in south India.
The distribution of Dravidian place names in Maharashtra, Gujarat and north-western India could provide further evidence in support of the spread of Dravidian languages from north-west India to south India. Professor Franklin C. Southworth did an extensive study of Maharashtrian place names in Linguistic Archaeology of South Asia, and he wrote:
The primary evidence for the existence of Dravidian place names in Maharashtra consists of an estimated 800 or more village names with the suffixes -vali or oli, probably derived from the Dravidian palli, a word meaning ‘hamlet’ or ‘village’ in Proto-Dravidian which occurs widely as a place-name suffix in south India. The differences in distribution between the suffixes -vali/oli and -gav (from grama, a word of Indo-European origin) suggest that different parts of Maharashtra were probably settled by Dravidian and Indo-Aryan speakers, with the Dravidian areas mainly in the Konkan (coastal region) and the southeastern part of the Deccan plateau. Apart from the fact that the regions in which these suffixes are found are contiguous with areas to the south which show the Dravidian forms of the same suffixes, the probability of Dravidian influence is supported by other place name suffixes, as well as some initial place name elements, in those same parts of Maharashtra.’
Dravidian variations of ‘palli’ include ‘halli’ in the Kannada language, which often substitutes ‘h’ for ‘p’.
Southworth then goes on:
Place names with the suffix -vali and variants also occur in Gujarat, Sindh, East and West Panjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh and Orissa (although not elsewhere in eastern India or Bangladesh), albeit with less frequency than in Maharashtra . . . Thus these regions may also have been home to speakers of Dravidian languages in the past, though it has not been possible here to investigate this wider region in the same detail as for Maharashtra . . .
The existence of Dravidian river names in northeastern Maharashtra suggests that all of Maharashtra might have been Dravidian-speaking at an earlier time . . .
Southworth doesn’t rule out the possibility that the ‘widespread occurrence’ of Dravidian place names in coastal and south-western Maharashtra, as well as in Gujarat and elsewhere, resulted from a later movement of Dravidian speakers from south India, but says, ‘Whatever may be the case, we are probably justified in concluding that by the early first millennium CE, extensive areas of Gujarat, coastal Maharashtra and southern Maharashtra were occupied by a population that used a Dravidian language for daily interaction – either as a primary home language and/or a lingua franca.’
Taking into account the archaeological, genetic and linguistic evidence for Proto-Dravidian being the lingua franca of the Harappan Civilization, a parsimonious conclusion would be that the distribution of Dravidian place names all the way from north-western India to south India indicates the movement of people from there to the south.
Austroasiatic-language speakers
So far, we have documented the arrival and expansion of two major groups that later intermixed and went on to create the Harappan Civilization and provide the foundation for the Indian population structure as we find it today: the original Out of Africa migrants (chapter 1) and herders from the Zagros region of Iran (chapters 2 and 3). We could do so because there has been substantial research – archaeological, genetic, linguistic and epigraphic – that has given us an insight into how our prehistory unfolded. But there is a third group that has contributed much to our civilization – the Austroasiatic-language speakers – but they have not been studied anywhere near as much, which means information about them is sketchy. Hopefully, this will be rectified sometime soon.
The languages Indians speak fall into four major families – Dravidian, which is spoken by about a fifth of Indians and has no relatives outside of south Asia today; Indo-European, which is spoken by over three-quarters of Indians and is spread all the way from south Asia to Europe; Austroasiatic, which is spoken by about 1.2 per cent of Indians and is spread across south Asia and east Asia; and Tibeto-Burman, which is spread across south Asia, China and south-east Asia and is spoken by less than 1 per cent of Indians. The popularity and geographical spread of different language families require a historical explanation, even if we all agree that languages are not always spread by large-scale migrations. There are instances when languages are spread more by contact or elite dominance rather than large-scale migrations. The ubiquity of English in India, for example, is not evidence of the Europeans genetically or demographically overwhelming the Indians, but of a period of intense contact between Europeans and Indians, resulting in the continuing popularity of English.
We have already seen the prehistory of Dravidian languages in south Asia, so in this section we will look at how Austroasiatic languages and Tibeto-Burman came to be distributed the way they are. There is more evidence about the prehistory of Austroasiatic languages than about Tibeto-Burman, so let’s look at that first.
In India, Austroasiatic languages belong to two subfamilies: Munda and Khasi. Munda languages such as Mundari, Santali and Ho are today spoken mostly in parts of eastern India (mainly Jharkhand) and also central India, with the westernmost language being Korku spoken in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. Khasi, on the other hand, is spoken primarily in Meghalaya and to some extent in Assam. As part of the Austroasiatic language family, both Munda and Khasi are related to the Mon-Khmer languages of Vietnam, Cambodia and parts of Nepal, Burma, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos and southern China. There are altogether about 104 million people who speak one version or the other of the Austroasiatic language, which makes it the eighth largest language family in the world. Nicobarese, spoken in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, is also an Austroasiatic language.
There are two questions related to the origin and spread of Austroasiatic languages in India that have long been debated. One, did these languages originate in India and then spread to south-east Asia and farther, or did they migrate from south-east Asia to India? Two, if they did migrate to India from south-east Asia, did they bring the practice of rice farming with them?
Two recently published genetic studies have provided answers to both these questions: one based on ancient DNA that looked at how south-east Asia was populated, an
d the other that looked at the origins of Asian cultivated rice. The first study was published as recently as in March 2018 and the second one was published a month later. A third paper, published in 2011, that looked at the population genetic structure of Indian Austroasiatic-language speakers had also addressed one of these questions. So first, the migration question: did Austroasiatic-language speakers migrate to south Asia from east Asia? A recently published paper that answers this question, even if indirectly, is titled ‘Ancient Genomics Reveals Four Prehistoric Migrations into South-East Asia’. It was supported by twenty-six institutes and universities from Southeast Asia and around the world and lead-authored by scientists from the Centre for GeoGenetics, Natural History Museum of Denmark. The study had access to ancient DNA samples from Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and Laos, dating to between 8000 and 200 years ago.
The study found that within the last 4000 years or so, south-east Asia saw dramatic changes in its demography as a result of at least two major waves of migration with their origin in China after it had gone through an agricultural revolution. Rice and millets had been fully domesticated in the Yangtze and Yellow river valleys of China between 7500 BCE and 3500 BCE and there is evidence for paddy fields by around 2500 BCE. There were two separate migrations of these farming populations – one through an inland route which accounts for the spread of Austroasiatic languages in south-east Asia, and the other through an island-hopping route, accounting for the spread of the Austronesian group of languages in maritime south-east Asia (including Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines) and the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Madagascar. India has no presence of Austronesian languages, so it is the first wave of migration through the land route, dated to around 2000 BCE, that is of direct relevance to our story.
The study says these migrations that brought agriculture to south-east Asia caused a ‘dramatic change in ancestry’ there, with the original hunter-gatherers of the region – who are called Hoabinhian and are related to the Onge of the Andamans – being displaced by Austroasiatic-language-speaking agriculturists. The study had no access to ancient DNA of Austroasiatic-language speakers from India and so it makes no conclusions about their ancestry. However, since the study shows the connection between the Austroasiatic-language-speaking farmers of south-east Asia and the inland migration wave originating from China, the idea that Austroasiatic-language speakers may have spread from India to south-east Asia becomes untenable. The short explanation for the presence of Austroasiatic-language speakers in India, therefore, is that they arrived from south-east Asia around or after 2000 BCE, as part of the farming migrations originating from China.
This suggests that around the time the Harappan Civilization was beginning to crumble in north-western India, there was an influx of people coming through eastern India.
This is not surprising because an earlier study published in 2011, titled ‘Population Genetic Structure in Indian Austroasiatic Speakers’, had arrived at similar findings. This study was based on present-day genetic samples from forty-five Indians and fifteen Burmese covering three major language groups – Austroasiatic, Dravidian and Tibeto-Burman – and was co-authored by Gyaneshwer Chaubey, Toomas Kivisild and Mait Metspalu, among others. Its conclusion was clear: ‘We propose that Austroasiatic speakers in India today are derived from dispersal from southeast Asia, followed by extensive sex-specific admixture with local Indian populations.’
The study found a ‘significant southeast Asian component’ (about 25 per cent) among Indian Munda speakers. The strongest signal of south-east Asian genetic ancestry among Indian Austroasiatic speakers, says the study, is seen in their Y-chromosome, ‘with approximately two-thirds falling into haplogroup O2a’. This haplogroup is older and has significantly higher diversity in south-east Asia, strongly suggesting that it travelled from there to India rather than the other way around. The study also found that the south-east Asian ancestry signal has been ‘entirely lost’ in the mtDNA lineages of Munda speakers, which means that their maternal lineages are of Indian origin.
This takes us to the second question: did the Austroasiatic-language speakers bring rice farming to India? The short answer is no, and the long answer we will come to in a while. The study that answered the question conclusively was published in April 2018 and was titled ‘Genomic Variation in 3010 Accessions of Asian Cultivated Rice’. This exhaustive research into the history of rice farming in Asia was led by the Crop Science Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the International Institute of Rice Research, and the conclusion it came to was unequivocal: Asian rice (or Oryza sativa), which has two major subspecies called indica and japonica, had multiple independent domestications. This is how the study (which uses the name XI for indica rice) puts it: ‘Taken together, our results – combined with archaeological evidence of XI cultivation for over 9000 years in both India and China – support multiple independent domestications of Oryza sativa.’ As we saw in the previous chapter, there was evidence for harvesting of rice at Lahuradewa in the Sant Kabir Nagar district of Uttar Pradesh, dating back to 7000 BCE, and this study now provides additional evidence and puts the issue of origins of rice cultivation to rest.
But there is a longer story too. The rice that was harvested in Lahuradewa and later domesticated in India is the indica subspecies of Oryza sativa, while the subspecies that was domesticated in the Yangtze valley of China is japonica. The unlocking of the full potential of rice cultivation in India might have required hybridization of indica with japonica.
According to Fuller, the protracted domestication process of rice in India was completed around 4000 years ago, ‘when hybridization with Chinese rice took place’.7 Another study published in 2017, titled ‘Approaching Rice Domestication in South Asia: New Evidence from Indus Settlements in Northern India’, also came to a similar conclusion: ‘The data also suggest that when fully domesticated Oryza Sativa ssp [subspecies] japonica was introduced around 2000 BCE, it arrived in an area already familiar with rice cultivation and a range of cultivation techniques.’
So the emerging picture is of a productivity boost that occurs when japonica arrives in an area already familiar with rice agriculture and its hybridization with indica takes place. It is noteworthy that the period when this happened – around 2000 BCE – is the same as the period of arrival of Austroasiatic-language speakers from south-east Asia. Fuller, however, believes the introduction of japonica could have happened through the north-west region of India via trade rather than the north-east via migrations.
Fuller’s reason for not supporting the eastern India migration route for the introduction of japonica into India is that there is no archaeological or achaeobotanical evidence for it. However, he himself says there could be a valid reason for such lack of evidence: ‘Admittedly, Burma, Assam, Yunnan and Bengal are among the least well-known regions archaeobotanically and archaeologically – archaeology is very geographically biased.’ Fuller’s article was also written before there was ancient DNA evidence linking a migration from China around 2000 BCE to the spread of farming and Austroasiatic languages in south-east Asia.
Taking the DNA evidence into account, and the arrival of many east Asian crops and practices into India around 2000 BCE, a parsimonious explanation might be that starting around 2000 BCE there was increasing contact between the Indian and Chinese civilizations, through both trade and migrations and through both the eastern and north-western regions. And this could have involved the migrations of not just Austroasiatic-language speakers, but also Tibeto-Burman-language speakers. Unlike in the case of Austroasiatic-language speakers, there has never been a debate about the east Asian origins of Tibeto-Burman language (part of the larger Sino-Tibetan language family) speakers, who are today spread in small pockets in the Himalayan and sub-Himalayan regions and number about 5.5 million. This family includes the Meitei language of Manipur and the Tani languages of Arunachal Pradesh.
Here’s a partial list of crops that Ful
ler says did come through the north-eastern part of India, via Assam to the Indian plains: citrus trees, cultivated mango and the fibre crop ramie (Boehmeria nivea). The Mundas who preferred the hills to the plains, according to Fuller, are likely to have brought with them taro and a variety of rice called aus rather than japonica.
Whichever way you look at it, by around 2000 BCE, some of the most important elements that make up India’s population as it is today were in place: the descendants of the Out of Africa migrants, the Zagros agriculturists, the Austroasiatic-language speakers and the Tibeto-Burman-language speakers. The wheels of history were turning, making a unique culture out of many different traditions, practices and belief systems. But there was one component yet missing: those who called themselves ‘Aryans’. To them, we turn now.
Note on the name: What is the correct name to call the earliest Indian civilization? Should one call it the Harappan Civilization, the Indus Valley Civilization, the Indus–Sarasvati Civilization or the Sarasvati Civilization? In this book, we have followed the style of naming a civilization by the first city that was discovered. Harappa was the first city of the ancient Indian civilization to be discovered in the 1920s, and hence it came to be called the Harappan Civilization early on. The term ‘Indus Valley Civilization’ is not correct because what it seeks to describe ranges far beyond the Indus Valley itself. The same objection applies to the name ‘Sarasvati Valley’. The Indus–Sarasvati Valley Civilization may be a more accurate name than either Indus Valley or Sarasvati Valley, but the naming of Ghaggar–Hakra as Sarasvati is not without controversy and, in any case, the name does not cover all parts of the civilization – Dholavira and Lothal are neither in the Indus Valley nor in the Sarasvati Valley. For these reasons, this book sticks to the name Harappan Civilization.