Indus And Vedic Civilisation

There is muc to be contrasted between the cultures of the Harappans and the Aryans. There are indeed a few points of similarities, but they are not of any significance. Why the points of contrast are more is primarily because of geographic location, economic activity and the religious practices followed by both the cultures. Far more important is the fact that the Aryans, with a plasticity of mind, made life vibrant; whereas, the Indus life looks more like stylized puppet show.

The plasticity of the Aryan mind was shown in the language as well as the way in which they adapted agricultural and settled life. The seals of the Indus Valley show that the pictographs remained statis, whereas, the Aryan language in the Rig Veda at places rises to musical levels. The success with which the Aryan writings were composed reveals the ability of the Aryan mind to grasp the mulitiple dimensions of human life. And language which exhibits immense potentialities in its vocabulary reveals that the community is full of potentialities. On the other hand, out of nearly 400 characters known to the Harappans only a few were repeated time and again.

The other manifestation of Aryan civilization, that is, its capacity to change and adapt itself, has given a continuity to Indian Civilization despite the absence of mighty empires. On the other hand, the Indus Valley people reached a blind alley and the never learnt anything from other civilizations like the Sumerian. Adaptability or ability to respond to challenges is the hallmark of any youthful civilization. The Indus civilization reached its senilithy by 2000 B.C. whereas the Aryan Civilization was full with creative dynamism.

Archaeology is the only source of our knowledge of the Harappan civilization, but information concerning the Vedic Aryans depends almost entirely on literary texts, which were handed down by the oral tradition. It is clear from the material remains that the Harappan civilization was in certain respects superior to that of the Aryans. In Particular it was a city civilization of a highly developed type, while by contrast city life was unfamiliar to the Aryans. The superiority of the Aryans lay in the military field. In which their use of the light horse chariot played a prominent part, or in literary exuberation.

Harappans were peace loving city-dwellers and good planners as is evident by grid pattern towns, elaborate drainage system, street lights, kelp-burnt brick houses, fortifications, granaries, baths and wells. The early Aryans were not city builders. Their way of life, nomad-pastoralists as theywere, was dominated by war like stock-breeding (they practiced a little agriculture) and migrations. City buildings etc. as a large-scale socio-economic activities is only much later mentioned in the later Vedic texts, epics and the Puranas.

The Harrapa culture is located in the Indus Valley and western India and its urbanization is based on a chalcolithic system with and absence of iron. Later Vedic society centering on the Ganges Valley from which the Harappan culture is largely absent owes its gradual urbanization to iron technology, the widespread domestication of the horse and the extension and intensification of plough agriculture. (Iron, horse and plough being nearly absent - some evidence in later Harappan sites).

The expansion and budding off of the Harappan system in the east as far as Alamgirpur (U.P.) and to the neighbouring areas was neither 'colonisation' nor was it 'political expansion' of any from, it was rather the expansion in terms of the permeations of the socio-economic and socio-cultural systems of Harappan society whereas, the Aryan advance towards eastern region - the Doab of the Ganges and Jamuna - was no doubt facilitated by their horse chariots and effective weapons and can be viewed as 'colonisation' or 'political expansion' though not all the Aryan culture contacts and expansion need have been of a violent kind.

The focal centers of the Harappan culture remained for a long time the twin cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro and it is from these centers that Harappan culture budded off, whereas the focus of attention of the Rig Veda was the Punjab and in the later Vedic period it shifted to the Doab of the Ganges and Jamuna rivers. The Punjab seems gradually to fade into the background and was regarded even with disapproval.

The Harappan society had a very complex social stratification, division of labour and multiplicity of crafts and industries, urbanism was its marked feature with Harappans enjoying a settled and sedentary life, and in this society the priest and the merchant played dominant roles perhaps constituting a 'ruling' elite. On the other hand, in the early period the Aryans were organized into a social organization which may be described as 'tribal' or rural' one with a minimal of division of labour and sedentariness. It was sed fully with more pronounced and increased division of labour when specialized trades and crafts appeared. But in this society it was not the priests and the merchants (Vaishyas) but the Priests and the Kshtriya who constituted the rule in elite (though with a tendency to rivalry).

In the Harappan society the Priestly class was of great importance as the central authority. Though there is little evidence in the Rig Veda of any special importance of the priests, however in later Vedic society, the priests as a class assumed a form of institutional authority. The institutions of slavery and prostitution were common to both the societies.