The Roots of Hinduism: The Early Aryans and the Indus Civilization

by Asko Parpola

Hinduism has two major roots. The more familiar is the religion brought to South Asia in the second millennium BCE by speakers of Aryan or Indo-Iranian languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family. Another, more enigmatic, root is the Indus civilization of the third millennium BCE, which left behind exquisitely carved seals and thousands of short inscriptions in a long-forgotten pictographic script. Discovered in the valley of the Indus River in the early 1920s, the Indus civilization had a population estimated at one million people, in more than 1000 settlements, several of which were cities of some 50,000 inhabitants. With an area of nearly a million square kilometers, the Indus civilization was more extensive than the contemporaneous urban cultures of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Yet, after almost a century of excavation and research the Indus civilization remains little understood. How might we decipher the Indus inscriptions? What language did the Indus people speak?
What deities did they worship?

Asko Parpola has spent fifty years researching the roots of Hinduism to answer these fundamental questions, which have been debated with increasing animosity since the rise of Hindu nationalist politics in the 1980s. In this pioneering book, he traces the archaeological route of the Indo-Iranian languages from the Aryan homeland north of the Black Sea to Central, West, and South Asia. His new ideas on the formation of the Vedic literature and rites and the great Hindu epics hinge on the profound impact that the invention of the horse-drawn chariot had on Indo-Aryan religion. Parpola's comprehensive assessment of the Indus language and religion is based on all available textual, linguistic and archaeological evidence, including West Asian sources and the Indus script. The results affirm cultural and religious continuity to the present day and, among many other things, shed new light on the prehistory of the key Hindu goddess Durga and her Tantric cult.

Genres: History, Religion, Nonfiction, India, Hinduism, Spirituality, Ancient History

384 pages, Paperback

First published July 3, 2015

Reviews

[Sai Nair · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's no question on Finnish Indologist Akso Parpola's scholarship on matters related to historical accuracy on Proto-Indo-Aryan, Indo-Aryan migrations from steppe Ural mountains to a large swathe of land which we now call as India. However, he is an erudite scholar who apparently lacks the skill to write a good history book. Parts of the book seems like a technical textbook with too many linguistic details on proto-Indo-Aryan loan words and its appropriation in different languages in different regions which would be of little interest to a normal reader. Contrastingly, two books 'Early Indians' by Tony Joseph and 'Gems of Civilization' by Abraham Eraly which cite him often in almost all of the chapters pertaining to the great migrations of Indo-Aryans, are much better reads.

If you try to explain anyone living in India today that the roots of what we call as 'Hindu religion' lie in Eastern Europe, you would be welcomed with revulsions, anger or some polemical treatise in some hyperbolic newsprints. The Indo-Aryan migration was not an invasion but successive migrations that spanned from around 1500 B.C. to all the way upto first millenium B.C. The migrations that occurred were not just centered in and around India but it took place in all the directions from Steppe mountains in Eastern Europe. The main trigger for those migrations where mankind's invention of wheels which was used to plough fields and also used as chariots. Wheels were first used extensively by 'Yamana Culture' (A proto-Indo-Aryan Culture) in the rural steppes of Carpathian mountains in the later part of bronze age and they were ubiquitous in few centuries in and around Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The east-ward migrations of these people gave rise to many other-proto-Indo-Aryan cultures (Andronovo -parts of present day Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and its later offshot, BMAC-Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex-parts of Afghanistan,Turkemistan). The BMAC then gave rise to the Indo-Aryan culture, one moved towards the west to give rise to Iranian culture and the other southwards in Indo-Sycthian region to give rise to Vedic Cultures. There seems to be even a whole lot difference among Vedic cultures too.

The vedic people who followed rig vedic cultures were most probably living somewhere in Indo-Scythian neighborhood (In northern Afghanistan or northern Iran) and the oral rig-vedic composition might have also taken place during that time as they migrated eastward towards India in around 1500 BC. The holy river, 'Saraswati' the rig-vedic authors ascribe to geographically tallies with 'Haraxvati' in Afghanistan (presently known as helmand river). This is supported by many serious Indologists including Ms. Romila Thapar. The veneration of horse and horse drawn chariot was also followed by Vedic people which was emblematic of Indo-Aryan and Proto-Indian Aryan cultures following the invention of wheels of Yamana culture. Vedic people from the north (Central Asian Region) who were sort of close descendants to other Indo-Aryan tribes living in Andronovo Culture were the people who orally composed Atharveda much later around 800 BC. The dichotomy among Rig-vedic tribes and Atharvedic tribes are apparent wherein the former has 'Indra' and 'Agni' as their nature-gods, a characteristic of animistic religion with its core essence being mostly free-spirited and the later has much to do with magic spells, superstitions and vedic hierarchy to ward off evil spirits. One could even say these were two entirely different religions. But somehow, history took its course and the later vedic priests had a hard time compiling all the vedas and performing mental gymnastics to justify two contradictory vedas. Infact, even the latter brahmin priests living at the time of Upanishads mentioned the contradictory nature of vedas. That's why 'Hinduism' is called a heterodox.

For all their beliefs and religions, one peculiar thing about the vedic people was that they never wrote anything down. There are no scriptures, no accurate historical dates, no artifacts left of the people who were mostly nomadic. It was transmitted orally through the priestly brahmin class and all their accounts are symbiotic through myths and legends about gods, demi-gods and evil 'dasas'. Infact, the first written account of Vedas were done only after Buddhism flourished during upanishad time period (around or after 350 BC) in India and there was a sudden spike in interest in writing vedas in Sanskrit. We can all guess why.

But what about the people who were already in India ? The people who lived in Indus-valley civilization : Indo-scythian and western part of India have much closer links to the dravidian population present in India. The ancient dravidian language have similar roots to Indus-valley. Brahui language spoken among small population group in Baluchistan, Pakistan is also a Dravidian language and there are small pockets of other regions in Indus-Valley corridor in Pakistan were dravidian languages are spoken. This means that after the collapse of harappan culture in Indus-Valley due to successive droughts, the people of Indus migrated towards the east and south-east and settled down in peninsular regions forming the dravidian population of India.

Unfortunately, to this day Indians still confabulate mythical events and stories as real events in the past. This has led to wild, lofty and sometimes laughable claims of the prevalence of plastic surgery, test tube babies, mechanical aircrafts, guided missiles and other weird theories of evolution in the 'golden period' of scientific ancient India.

I'd reckon it would take a longtime to build a ballistic missile if you transmit the knowledge orally. What do you think ?

[Kaśyap · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the title says, Finnish Indologist Asko Parpola in this book attempts to trace the origins of Hinduism in both its Vedic and Pre-Vedic roots that can be traced back to Indus valley civilisation. He also shows the remarkable underlying symbolic unity in the diverse aspects of Hindu religion.

The first part deals with the Early Aryans. Here he traces the archaeological route from the Proto-Indo-European homeland to the coming of Aryans into south Asia. Based on linguistic, ethnographic and archaeological evidence, Parpola postulates two major waves of Aryan migrations from the BMAC culture, a first wave of immigration from as early as 1900 BCE of the "Atharva Vedic Aryans" and a second wave of migration at around 1400 BCE of the "Rig Vedic Aryans". He shows how "Atharva Vedic religion", already had a lot of Harappan influence by the time of the arrival of Rig Vedic Aryans.

The second part deals with the Indus valley civilisation. The author's main thesis here is that the IVC had only one written language, and that it was a Dravidian language(for which a strong argument can be made). He tries to show the cultural continuity from the Indus civilisation down to the present day, through ethnographic studies of folk religion and comparative linguistics. He also relates Harappan ideologies to other South Asian and West Asian religions ( Extensive trade between Mesopotamia and IVC provides a strong case for such cultural exchanges).

Given its ambition, it is a fragmentary work and a lot of Parpola's proposals are controversial and based upon conjectural evidence and comparative studies. Nonetheless, this is a very fascinating work.

[Düsty · Rating 1 out of 5]

He gets some things right. He get most things wrong. His dates are all over the place and he peddles the AIT which has been debunked multiple times. Halfway through the book it makes you wonder what sort of agenda is Parpola trying to peddle. If you are looking to read about the origins of 'Hinduism', this is not the book. And neither is Parpola a reliable source.

[Pramod Vemuri]

So far, Mr. Parpola's writing style has been a huge deterrent for me in reading this book properly. He makes numerous analogies between different myths, which I felt that if systematized, may not be as persuasive as one may assume they are. In fact sometimes his conclusions feel as weak as the hindu-nationalist historians.

[Prahlad Vaidyanathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book. Parpola is one of the leading researchers in the field, and we get to hear his views on a subject that is both enthralling and poorly understood. The book uses archaeological evidence to build up an understanding of the religion, the language and social mores of the Harappan Civilization, while also touching upon the other civilizations nearby.

Some of the major things which I learned from this book (some of which may be contentious):

- The migration of Indo-Aryans into South Asia happened in two waves. The first came from the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) around 1900BCE and the second came from the Fedorovo Andronovo culture between 1500-1100BCE.
- The people of the first wave started writing the older parts of the Atharvaveda/Rigveda, but the people of the second wave completed the task. The Vedas were finally compiled in the Kuru kingdom between 1100-700BCE.
- The Yaz-I culture took over the BMAC between 1500-1100BCE. They probably were the originators of Zoroastrianism, while also being the principal enemy of the Indo-Aryans in the Rigveda (the Dasas).
- The war of the Mahabharata took place between 700-350BCE, and describes the Indo-Aryans spreading south into the Gangetic plains. The Pandavas possibly came from Iran, usurped the kingdom of the Kurus and the Mahabharata was written (partially) as political propaganda with a view to legitimize this act. The Ramayana reflects a further push south for the Indo-Aryans.
- The language of the Harappan civilization was most likely a Proto-Dravidian language with many commonalities with Old Tamil. This is particularly reflected in the symbol for "fish" (meen) which meant both "star" and "fish" in Old Tamil.
- Gods such as Prajapati, Rudra, and the Goddess Vac (the predecessor of Durga), along with a variety of folk ritual practices that persist to the modern day are remnants of the Indus Valley civilization.

The book is not without problems. The one glaring one (for me) was this: The book is written by a Finnish Indologist and it cites work done by primarily by Western Indologists. Unfortunately, there is a conspicuous lack of Indian researchers mentioned. There may not be many, but it is hard to imagine that there are none!

What's worse, much of the field work that led to this book is likely to have had locals (Indians/Pakistanis/etc) who guided these westerners and worked as translators. That their names are not mentioned at all speaks volumes for the nature of academic research in this field.

[s · Rating 4 out of 5]

The real achievement here is in weaving a compelling narrative account of these multiple origins in a global context, i.e. in giving as much importance to Indus valley (and other) roots as to the vedic tradition. While the breadth of archeology covered is staggering most of the treatment of it is very speculative, probably a necessity given how undertheorized most of it traditionally has been. The final picture of South Asian prehistory is an incredible one, unrivalled in its visionary quality by anything else I've come across.

[Souva Chattopadhyay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most fascinating and intellectually satisfying book I've read so far on this subject. Asko Parpola, the renowned Indologist, leaves no stones unturned in his search for the roots of Hinduism, or, more specifically, the identity of those prehistoric people who would later be known as Hindus. In this journey, Parpola takes help of recent archaeological findings, comparative linguistics and his vast knowledge of the Vedas and the Indus civilization, to present a clear and unambiguous solution to the "Aryan Question". He also goes on showing how, not only the incoming Vedic culture, but also the indigenous culture with its root in the Indus civilization, shaped the religions, beliefs and cultures of the Indian subcontinent. A really thought-provoking masterpiece!

[Sumit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly researched and well presented, this book is a must read for the students of ancient Indian history. The only flaw is that sometimes the author jumps to conclusions on the basis of what can hardly be called evidence. Comparing the diagram of the ritual Yantra with the plan of the fortress of Dashly is once such example.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Asko Parpola is an acclaimed expert on the history, archaeology, and linguistics of South Asia, and in this book he offers a general survey of the consensus in his field that is fairly accessible to a popular audience, while at the same time he advances a few novel ideas of his own.

The theme of this book is how many strands have come together to produce Hinduism, a religion that lacks a central authority and has struck many as not a single unified faith at all. On one hand, Sanskrit and the Vedic scriptures composed in that language have played a prominent role for Hinduism’s Brahmin priesthood and political elites, and we know that the Sanskrit language entered the Indian Subcontinent from the northwest. On the other hand, the peculiar concerns of the Vedic scriptures (horse sacrifice, worship of the deity Indra, etc.) have little relevance to local traditions of Hinduism from one village to another across India, where the focus is on other deities and means of worshiping them. Indeed, as Parpola shows, many of these popular local rites are indigenous to India and may date back to the Harrapan civilization, well before the arrival of Sanskrit and the Vedic tradition.

Parpola thus approaches Hinduism from the two sides. The initial part of the book is essentially an introduction to Indo-European studies, showing how the Sanskrit language – just like most languages of Europe today – can ultimately be traced back to the Proto-Indo-European language spoken somewhere in the steppe north of the Black Sea. The Indo-European languages began to spread in the early Bronze Age, and Parpola lists the successive archaeological cultures that gradually show this language spread towards Central Asia and then the Indian Subcontinent. The population that spoke Proto-Indo-European had a religion of its own, and some features of it even survived all those centuries and cultural influence down to the Indian Subcontinent. The other side of this book is on the non-Indo-European archaeological cultures of India and the religious rituals they point to, as well as non-Indo-European India’s interaction with ancient religions of Western Asia.

There is a strain of Hindu nationalist (Hindutva) thought that bristles at the idea that anything of Indian culture or religion could have come from outside India. Instead, as these fanatics have it, India was the center of world civilization and wisdom and could only have spread their divine language to the outside world, so English, Latin, etc. must be descended from Sanskrit. Though this view can be taken about as seriously as, say, the USA’s young-earth creationists claiming that Adam and Eve lived with dinosaurs, Hindutva is unfortunately politically ascendant in India and able to throw its weight around on online fora though sheer force of population numbers. I see that already this book has received some negative comments from that side.

Yet in spite of Hindutva claims that the mainstream international consensus on South Asian history and archaeology continues 19th-century racist claims of "Aryan invaders" sweeping into the continent, Parpola shows that even the "Aryan" contribution to India had already been a result of lively cultural mixing. Those who brought Sanskrit just happened to speak an Indo-European language, but their religious traditions were derived in large part from an indigenous non-IE culture of Central Asia. That is, the peoples of the so-called Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex had come to adopt an Indo-European language while continuing many aspects of their indigenous culture, and it is this hybrid that came to India with the Vedas. Scholars today are very aware that there is no such thing as a pure anything, that every culture and religion we see today has involved mixture.

So why only three stars? If Parpola’s book had appeared just a few years earlier, it might have seemed as major an event as David W. Anthony’s The Horse, the Wheel and Language, a similar pop-sci presentation of Indo-European studies. Unfortunately, and not by any fault of Parpola’s own, his manuscript finally reached print just as the field was benefiting from new archaeogenetic studies that have somewhat altered our view of when various Indo-European languages spread and which archaeological cultures were linked to each spread. That means that Parpola’s survey of Indo-European studies will already strike experts as outdated, though the book does still retain value for a pop-sci audience.

A similar flaw of the book is Parpola’s treatment of material from the Uralic languages. This language family of Eastern Europe and Western Siberia, which comprises Finnish, Hungarian, and others, is not Indo-European. However, it has borrowed a number of world from the language ancestral to Sanskrit, helping to trace the spread of Indo-European languages towards the Indian Subcontinent. Uralic studies, too, have made some progress in recent years and some of Parpola’s data is now outdated.

Still, for anyone interested in South Asian history or trying to make sense of the myriad and diverse popular strands of worship in India, The Roots of Hinduism is still worth reading. Even for someone working in linguistics like myself learned a few new things here.

[Akshath · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has a trove of information, but not targeted for casual readers like me. So had to skim read good part of the book

[dororthyofkansas · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 rating
It's too speculative and makes wild sweeping claims (especially the chapters concerning IVC religion). The chapter on the historical interpretation of the two epics was such an impressive hogwash. I might have been still reeling from it if not for the chapters on various Vedic deities & rituals, which were a delight to read.

[Saiqua Sultan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A keeper.

[Jayakumar Aravind · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book which completely satisfied my quest for many of the “Sapiebs india” questions