History of India- Introduction

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Himanshu Pandey

This is my first article on the history of India with several more to come to cover most of it. India as a word is just few thousand years old but geographically it is millions years old but still relatively new. A geographic change has parted India from Africa and it started its journey to Asia from Africa. Sometimes I wonder is this journey was the first sign of declaring that it will always be old and new at same time, which is uniqueness of India.
If we looks for the name of kings and queens, if we look for the dead of war, plunder of wealth and slavery the ancient India is very much silent on that. Some historians had concluded on this that India has no history and when they find some story of a king or queen they started looking for evidence which were not there or they were not looking for them? We will discuss this ahead but I have a very strong view that if the history of mankind is about who ruled whom, who killed most, who conquered more India has a very little history on that and for this I am thankful but if we look on history as some points which denotes the growth of humankind in world and the development and welfare of common people more important than India has a rich history. A history which tells when people got out from barbaric and nomadic life and joined the civilized life, when the welfare schemes as a goal not a luxury was started in world. When metallurgy started and what effects it had on its people, when people stopped just worrying about the next meal/loot/war/hunt and cared for more complicated and philosophical things then History of India is a tale which would be told thousand times.
The ancient knowledge of various medical practices, metal works, tax system and more important democracy which is the favorite child of today’s world were defined very clearly in life and actions of people of ancient time as well as in their text.
We had all read about the remains of sindhu civilization, assumptions of Vedic civilization and interpretations of 600BC and concluded that it is history or we were told it is. One of my respected teacher once given me an example i.e. an old lady who had a skin decease used a broom to get relief of the itch which started in her whole body and she always kept it on her bedside for easy reach died alone in a old goodly built house and somehow her remains got find in a letter excavation. Now the archeologist were busy in discussing the age of broom and Skelton they found and the historians who were completely unaware of the dilemma of that thousands years old lady started to put the assumptions and to find out why a old lady has a broom on her bed side. There are few of the assumptions:-
  1. The lady was a dedicated sweeper who used to work early so to get her tool of work easily in the dark of night before dawn she kept it on her bedside and it shows that the ruler was strict and people were disciplined and took their work seriously so it was an advanced civilization.
  2. The lady lacks the hygiene quality and this shows that there were no awareness of people regarding the health and quality of life so they were advancing this we can say after looking on the remains of house but they were not converted into a civilized society.
  3. The lady was living in a good house but somehow the financial conditions of the family got reduced and now she is forced to clean her house as they can’t afford the slaves or workers and if archeologist get little more evidence in surrounding places related to this we can safely presume that the civilization was declining at most or at least this place/city was on decline and lost its worth as a trade location for reasons still unknown.
  4. The lady has a broom near to her bedside so it’s more like that she is a slave but by looking on the conditions of her room’s remains we can say that people around were very much civilized and they treated their slave/workers at very best level and this place was a icon of civilization.
Now the story of lady is a assumption just created for this example and on the conditions of the remains there are four and can be more assumptions but none is near to the real story of lady and her broom and this the history we know. What if the whole assumptions made by historians and archeologists are wrong or most of it, what if the stories and myths are more near to truth then these logically concluded assumptions/findings. I am trying to the balance between these 2 and to find out the history of India.
I will put up my own conclusions on various parts of history and how they can be interpreted. I will try to be as much natural as possible and will go with logic and stories which relates to each other. The first work will be with the pre-indus valley culture. I will appreciate to get any recommendations related with this work and look forward for your reviews.
 
that is what I am planning to do.. a history by a common indian perspective... how we feel about it, understand it and be proud on it.
 
For starters, let me begin with the supposed age of the Indus valley civilisation, the vedic age and what transpired before that...

Here is what I find strange about the Indus Valley Civilisation though!
As apparent from the excavations, the Indus Valley people were extremely industrious, educated and an advanced society. They built well planned cities with paved roads, highly advanced drainage systems, coins for trade, grand bathhouses, flush toilets, Octa-decimal metric system etc. We all know this to be true and mainstream scholars agree. However, what I do find strange are the following facts:

1. The indus valley script is yet to be properly deciphered. How come scholars have been able to decipher cuneiform writing and Egyptian Hieroglyphics, but not this script?
2. How come such an advanced society never built any forts or palaces? There did not seem to be any concept of kings and rulers which is really strange for a society in those days.
3. They did not build any grand temples or places of worship like the Ziggurat or magnificent structures like the Pyramids of Egypt, even though they seemed to be quite capable of doing so. They had a flourishing trade with other civilisations, which is apparent from some of their port cities, the most prominent one being Lothal.
4. What did eventually happen to them? I simply can't buy into the fact that they shifted base because either a river changed its course and there was a climate change. If that were to be true and they just migrated to other places, they surely would have taken with them their language, scripts, seals etc. But that doesnt happen to be the case. East/West/North/South no matter which direction you travel, keeping the Indus Valley sites as the center, no other nearby civilisation seem to bear close resemblance with their traditions, language, written scripts or architecture.

Let me know what you think!
 
1. The Indus valley script is yet to be properly deciphered. How come scholars have been able to decipher cuneiform writing and Egyptian Hieroglyphics, but not this script?


Any language is deciphered by finding something common in known and unknown language. We all had learned language by first learning the objects and then the alphabets i.e. a for apple.

Now almost each one of us has done reasoning problems once in our life for any reason. Now If you guys remember those questions where few words or sentences are given with common words or alphabets in them and then a translation of sentence is asked. language deciphering had been done in same way.

All ancient lost language has been deciphered by using this process and using one or several languages for it be it Egyptian, Sumerian or others but it had not been done with Indus Valley language.

The reason is quite unique and if you think it’s because of Indian aloofness and preserving the secrets. There has been trade of Indus Valley civilization with almost all known world at that time but it was mentioned only once in the text of other civilizations because it had some unique rules about trade. It was a export driven civilization which sold all things on it’s ports and no foreigners were allowed to enter the cities of civilization. The trade with them has been done in their language.

They had not imported anything from any nation. Only gold and silver as money exchange has been accepted. They were almost 2-3 generation ahead of other civilizations and didn’t wanted to share this knowledge with them.. the knowledge was the reason for their prosperity. So they never encouraged or tried to let other learn their language and then their scientific discoveries. These were the reasons that none of them had learnt anything about it’s language.

So there had been no common objects or words used in languages of world which can help us to decipher the language of Indus valley. May be some other way or future explorations will decipher it. For now it’s unbreakable because we were too good and didn’t shared it with others.
 
1. The Indus valley script is yet to be properly deciphered. How come scholars have been able to decipher cuneiform writing and Egyptian Hieroglyphics, but not this script?


Any language is deciphered by finding something common in known and unknown language. We all had learned language by first learning the objects and then the alphabets i.e. a for apple.

Now almost each one of us has done reasoning problems once in our life for any reason. Now If you guys remember those questions where few words or sentences are given with common words or alphabets in them and then a translation of sentence is asked. language deciphering had been done in same way.

All ancient lost language has been deciphered by using this process and using one or several languages for it be it Egyptian, Sumerian or others but it had not been done with Indus Valley language.

The reason is quite unique and if you think it’s because of Indian aloofness and preserving the secrets. There has been trade of Indus Valley civilization with almost all known world at that time but it was mentioned only once in the text of other civilizations because it had some unique rules about trade. It was a export driven civilization which sold all things on it’s ports and no foreigners were allowed to enter the cities of civilization. The trade with them has been done in their language.

They had not imported anything from any nation. Only gold and silver as money exchange has been accepted. They were almost 2-3 generation ahead of other civilizations and didn’t wanted to share this knowledge with them.. the knowledge was the reason for their prosperity. So they never encouraged or tried to let other learn their language and then their scientific discoveries. These were the reasons that none of them had learnt anything about it’s language.

So there had been no common objects or words used in languages of world which can help us to decipher the language of Indus valley. May be some other way or future explorations will decipher it. For now it’s unbreakable because we were too good and didn’t shared it with others.

are you on twitter do follow trueindology he's good damn good learnt many things from him :cool:
 
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There has been trade of Indus Valley civilization with almost all known world at that time but it was mentioned only once in the text of other civilizations because it had some unique rules about trade. It was a export driven civilization which sold all things on it’s ports and no foreigners were allowed to enter the cities of civilization. The trade with them has been done in their language.

They had not imported anything from any nation. Only gold and silver as money exchange has been accepted.

Any source stating that no outsider is allowed in cities?

Cuz as far as I have read there are many evidences of both cultural and trading ties with many nations which includes import and export (not just money).
 
The word Indus Valley civilization itself if wrong. It shud be Sarawati River Civilization. When the british came to India and started these researches, they did not know about River Saraswati as it had dried up. But now we have found much more settlements around Saraswati river than around Indus. this shows that the sapt sindhu as mentioned in our Puranas was the main area of sttlement and sarawati river was the central and focal point of this civilization which was in the middle of Indus and Ganga.
 
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Any source stating that no outsider is allowed in cities?

Cuz as far asI have readthere are many evidences of both cultural and trading ties with many nations which includes import and export (not just money).
I had already said almost all the history known to us is either assumption or tented opinion... so It is up to us to decide what is correct and what is not.

no there had been no imports of finished or semi finished products inside Indus valley civilization (now it is stretched from Afghanistan to Allahabad in UP and from Kashmir to Maharashtra with few trading and mining areas in Karnataka) the metallurgy was so advanced that there was nothing around the world back then which we will import. Indus valley was surplus civilization which is clearly shown with the type of hosing, cleaning and services available to the people.

till now a few products has been found of Indus valley civilization around other older civilization but not a single product of foreign origin in Indus valley civilization which is impossible if there had been foreigners allowed inside the civilization or we imported the finished goods.


no trade records, no common words with other languages, no foreign goods found so far in any search till now all suggest that there had been no culural or other ties of harappa with other civilisation.
 
Imports of perishable goods can't be ruled out. Since there is not much evidence or records, claiming that no imports took place is far fetched.

Also the requirement of some foreign product to be found can easily be negated when we have excavated 100% sites, that all sites are accounted for and nothing is lost in transitory period of 4000 years.

Speaking with so much certainty about things we barely have much evidence of, that spanned thousand year is nothing but pampering our(Indians) superiority complex.

Ships sailed from here, some as big as 20 ton capacity, they won't return empty in basic logic.
 
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Imports of perishable goods can't be ruled out. Since there is not much evidence or records, claiming that no imports took place is far fetched.

Also the requirement of some foreign product to be found can easily be negated when we have excavated 100% sites, that all sites are accounted for and nothing is lost in transitory period of 4000 years.

Speaking with so much certainty about things we barely have much evidence of, that spanned thousand year is nothing but pampering our(Indians) superiority complex.

Ships sailed from here, some as big as 20 ton capacity, they won't return empty in basic logic.
I hope you will forgive me for such certainty and superiority complex when as a nation and man we had been forced to aryan invasion theory, no horse in harrappa, dravin migrated from africa and a thousands others and all proved wrong. the very reason for this thread is to not teach history according to JNU but discuss and find out the history according to people and logic.

in my very first answer I said the things stand this way until new findings are to be find.. i.e. same as world(except India) believed that whole earth is flat and sun and planets were circling around sun.

now there was a reason for me to mention the boundaries of the civilization in the last post... to get you an idea of its size and the smaller percentage of urban areas in whole land mass.

this was an export driven civilization and if I can use an example from another era few items has even been imported in India even till 6th century.. even the Cicero and Cato of Rome has been against the Indian silk imported in Rome... and even that civilization of Rome which even documented the Apollo games in details has not been able to mention too many exports to India.

now back to topic, I do see the logic of things getting destroyed in 4000 years but then history is what it is and it is based on the things which we find and interpret. till now there has been no records of anything imported in civilization found anywhere in world nor any material found in there which has it's origin in other civilization and we had excavated thousands of areas even the in earth houses in Kashmir.. so right now the situation is as I said... they had not imported anything from other civilization because they have all the resources in here and so there was no need for them to interact and have cultural relations with them.

Ship do sailed from here but we need to understand that they were not modern cruise who were ready to go on for months or days... they do port in couple of days and they trade everyplace they go... so there is a very high chances that only the last leg of returning ship can be empty of goods( as it is sure laden with gold and silver and stones) or maybe they sometimes find something good enough or fancy enough perishable items and bought them for someone... but the dilemma is if they had found those items and ships of these 20 tons capacity has sailed regularly we are talking about missing of several thousand tons of foreign goods... its little hard by observing that people had been able to find out even the grains used and non of them were of foreign origin.

So my dear friend, we can argue for the sake of argument but if there is someway that you can prove that we had imported goods in civilization when it is not found till now or some common cultural activity between harappan and other civilization.. I am ready to accept them.
 
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For starters, let me begin with the supposed age of the Indus valley civilisation, the vedic age and what transpired before that...

Here is what I find strange about the Indus Valley Civilisation though!
As apparent from the excavations, the Indus Valley people were extremely industrious, educated and an advanced society. They built well planned cities with paved roads, highly advanced drainage systems, coins for trade, grand bathhouses, flush toilets, Octa-decimal metric system etc. We all know this to be true and mainstream scholars agree. However, what I do find strange are the following facts:

1. The indus valley script is yet to be properly deciphered. How come scholars have been able to decipher cuneiform writing and Egyptian Hieroglyphics, but not this script?
2. How come such an advanced society never built any forts or palaces? There did not seem to be any concept of kings and rulers which is really strange for a society in those days.
3. They did not build any grand temples or places of worship like the Ziggurat or magnificent structures like the Pyramids of Egypt, even though they seemed to be quite capable of doing so. They had a flourishing trade with other civilisations, which is apparent from some of their port cities, the most prominent one being Lothal.
4. What did eventually happen to them? I simply can't buy into the fact that they shifted base because either a river changed its course and there was a climate change. If that were to be true and they just migrated to other places, they surely would have taken with them their language, scripts, seals etc. But that doesnt happen to be the case. East/West/North/South no matter which direction you travel, keeping the Indus Valley sites as the center, no other nearby civilisation seem to bear close resemblance with their traditions, language, written scripts or architecture.

Let me know what you think!

As to what eventually happened to them , isn't there a common consensus that their sudden disappearance is chalked upto a sudden cataclysmic catastrophe i.e war or invasion rather than mere migration?

There have been rumors of radiation levels being sky high near those excavations and hence the rumours regarding probable use of nuclear weapons,but that is more wishful thinking than anything.
 
no trade records, no common words with other languages, no foreign goods found so far in any search till now all suggest that there had been no culural or other ties of harappa with other civilisation.

I would beg to differ. Trade records have indeed been found and the indus script has been found as far away as Somalia. Moreover, inter-continental trade was primarily dependant on river and sea routes which is why the Harrappan people built port cities such as Lothal.
 
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As to what eventually happened to them , isn't there a common consensus that their sudden disappearance is chalked upto a sudden cataclysmic catastrophe i.e war or invasion rather than mere migration?

There have been rumors of radiation levels being sky high near those excavations and hence the rumours regarding probable use of nuclear weapons,but that is more wishful thinking than anything.

I would think so too given that the area is still radio-active. Having said that, the aftermath of severe radio-activity does not seem to have affected the surrounding population which ordinarily would have and with radioactivity being a contributing factor of genetic mutation and deformity through several generations. That does not seem to be the case here. Therefore I would rather tend to think that conventional war could be the likely cause although that doesnt explain the radioactive anomaly.
 
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I would beg to differ. Trade records have indeed been found and the indus script has been found as far away as Somalia. Moreover, inter-continental trade was primarily dependant on river and sea routes which is why the Harrappan people built port cities such as Lothal.
I beg your pardon for I was not clear enough in this. what I meant by trade records are the import trade records.. what other civilisation exported to meluha aka Harrapan civilisation.

but you helped me in proving 2 points of my own:-

1. there had been seals and materials of harappa civilization around other civilization which means they were export driven and lack of records of mention of material imported which implies that these seals has been used as a seal is used for confirmation of delivering the goods and receiving the payments but the very lack of these seals of other civilization around harappa certainly tells us that import was not happening ... not in mention-able quantities.

2. the seals also suggest that harrapan were allowed and do travel to other civilizations but had not given same preference to others when it comes to their civilization and there had been mentioned no conflict with harappan anywhere in any text of any civilization.

now my friend let me remind you that what we have found is seals and not the scripts which are different as one seal an not help you to dichipher the laungauge... another thing is that this also conclude that people of harappa has never encouraged others to learn their launaguge.

last point, I do agree that trade was through river, land and seas and this is why I explained the ship situation. the question was not the route but the import and interaction with other civilization which was not there.

true reasons are only known to harappans but with the way we had treated foreigners for centuries even after harappa help us to assume or conclude that this was because of technical superiority and cultural superiority that harrapans has not interacted with others too much.
 
I had already said almost all the history known to us is either assumption or tented opinion... so It is up to us to decide what is correct and what is not.

no there had been no imports of finished or semi finished products inside Indus valley civilization (now it is stretched from Afghanistan to Allahabad in UP and from Kashmir to Maharashtra with few trading and mining areas in Karnataka) the metallurgy was so advanced that there was nothing around the world back then which we will import. Indus valley was surplus civilization which is clearly shown with the type of hosing, cleaning and services available to the people.

till now a few products has been found of Indus valley civilization around other older civilization but not a single product of foreign origin in Indus valley civilization which is impossible if there had been foreigners allowed inside the civilization or we imported the finished goods.


no trade records, no common words with other languages, no foreign goods found so far in any search till now all suggest that there had been no culural or other ties of harappa with other civilisation.

Himanshu all that is fine but as far as linguistic decryption is concerned, I find it hard to agree with you due to the following reasons:

1. I find it hard to believe that the IVC was a closeted civilisation given that they had active trade with other civilisations. Why else would you build a large port cities? Moreover, the IV script has been found in far away places giving credence to the fact that they indeed indulged in a fair amount of trade.

2. What a lot of people don't realise (I am generalising) is, the IVC was not limited to the Indus Valley per se. Traces of this ancient civilisation has found extending from Afghanistan to Uttar Pradesh. Therefore it is easy to establish that the IVC was widespread.

3. Linguistic influence is one of the major traits of an advanced civilisation. Therefore, a civilisation as large as the IVC should have left its linguistic trace in the surrounding regions, even though the primary language did not survive. Take the Sumerian Cuneiform script as an example. Even though the main language died out, the script and alphabets formed the base for Old Persian during the time of Xerxes and Darius.

Certain Graphic similarities have been found between the Indus Valley Script and the Brahmi script but there has been no conclusive evidence so far. Such similarities have also been found with Akkadian writings which follows the Linear Elamite writing system. But like I said, no conclusive evidence so far.
 
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As to what eventually happened to them , isn't there a common consensus that their sudden disappearance is chalked upto a sudden cataclysmic catastrophe i.e war or invasion rather than mere migration?

There have been rumors of radiation levels being sky high near those excavations and hence the rumours regarding probable use of nuclear weapons,but that is more wishful thinking than anything.
I don't know what to say.. so giving you this link... hope it will solve your fanstuff dilemma.

Evidence of nuclear explosion in ancient India ?
 
I don't know what to say.. so giving you this link... hope it will solve your fanstuff dilemma.

Evidence of nuclear explosion in ancient India ?
Bhai, one dont need to check radiation for concluding a nuclear explosion.
A nuclear explosion leave very distinct features, which even remain for thousands of year.

BTW, thats how these days CTBT check underground nuclear explosions. Which leave almost nil radiation, if there is no leak.
 
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