History of the Indus Culture: Two Overviews

 This blog entry compares and contrasts the approach of two sources covering the development of the Indus culture that took place around the same time that the Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultures began.  The broader approach with a large overview of all three cultures is covered by author Patrick Bresnan in Chapter One of Awakening: A History of Eastern Thought. The more detailed approach covering the history of the Indus culture as related to artifacts found in a few cities is covered in the video Indus: An Unvoiced Civilization.

I watched the video before reading the chapter. This gave me a better idea of what the Indus culture was like from the perspective of the three cities that were the main focus in the video.  The video covered detail that was not in the the first chapter of the book.  There were several key points in the video that were hardly mentioned at all in the book. For example, the seal system and the visuals of the discovery of ten new characters from the Indus hieroglyphic system and the dharmachakra (Indus 42:10) were fascinating to me. The dharmachakra is very visually detailed and is one of the Eight Auspicious Symbols of Buddhism, about which you can read more in the hyperlink: https://www.learnreligions.com/the-dharma-wheel-449956

The symbol itself is quite something to behold:

                                      

Dharmachakra (Wheel of the Law) | Central Thailand | The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Copyright: © Thierry Ollivier

The video went into great detail about the ten new characters and what they symbolize. According to Professor Asko H.S. Parpola of Helsinki University: "There's a long sequence of five signs which occurs on that signboard, and it is also found in Mohenjo Daro on one big seal that is broken, and it indicates hierarch." This indicates a changing social structure with the development of trade since previously mentioned in the video is how the Indus culture may have started in kinship without a hierarchy (Indus 35:36) according to Dr. Richard Meadow of Harvard University (referring to beliefs about the Indus culture): "The organization was not so much hierarchical as it was heterarchical. In other words it was differentiated along fairly even lines according to occupation, a kinship group or what have you, and not according to a strict hierarchy characteristic of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China." 

While the video goes into great visual detail (for example, illustrating the goods traded, frequently citing carnelian as one of the Indus culture's highly valued items), there is very little discussion of what is covered in the book regarding the theory of Indo-Aryan migrations: "The majority view is that large numbers of a non-indigenous pastoral people, known as Indo-Aryans, migrated into the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent in successive waves beginning in the early part of the third millennium BCE." (Bresnan 8).  As might be expected, the video uses many more images to tell the story of the Indus culture.  The video's use of images drew me much more into the story than the longwinded text of the book. For example, the video refers (Indus 44:37) to Indus carnelian beads being  found in areas of Indus trade, like Mesopotamia, with illustrations similar to the one below:


                                                       V. N. Prabhakar, © Harappa.com 1995-2022

Bresnan does cover much more about the Indus culture in his book.  He spends over six pages giving an overview of the Indus caste system alone.  For example, regarding the top of the caste system: "These three classes (castes, if  you will)--the Brahmana, the Kshatriya, and the the Vaishya--together constituted a privileged elite known as the arya-varna." (Bresnan, 15).  Overall the video is more engaging and interesting, while the book is more informative and covers a wider reference range.


Works Cited

Bresnan, Patrick S.  Awakening, An Introduction to the History of Eastern Thought. Routledge 2018

Harappa.com website, https://www.harappa.com/content/decorated-carnelian-beads-indus-civilization-site-dholavira-great-rann-kachchha-gujarat. Accessed 4 Feb. 2022

Indus: An Unvoiced Civilization, Films Media Group, 2000, https://ffh.films.com/id/1460. Accessed 4 Feb. 2022

Learn Religions website, https://www.learnreligions.com/the-dharma-wheel-449956. Accessed 4 Feb. 2022

Metropolitan Museum website, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/77751. Accessed 4 Feb. 2022


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