Ancient Indian Civilization - A mere conondrum or lost civilization

When I read about the human advances in various fields happening all around us, my thoughts go to the achievements/advances that had happened/occurred in India so long ago.  I believe, we have lost much of those memories in continuity as there were not much knowledge/interest in record keeping.  We have always been a civilization that did not believe in publishing or putting out our achievements in the public domain.  This is very much par for the course, based on how we think about ourselves as a civilization.  Haven’t we all wondered, at some point in time, about the ancient Indian civilization that was? How was the ancient Indian civilization really like? How far back does the ancient Indian civilization really date? What was it like to be living during those times/period? We keep hearing about the advances that had been made by the great Indian astronomers, political administrators, philosophers, composers, poets,  religious gurus who propounded various theories and doctrines during the ancient times; Aryabhata, Bhaskara, Kautilya, Buddha, Mahavira, Patanjali, Kalidasa and many other sages and wise men; the list is endless. There were many more extraordinary personalities and luminaries who had existed in the centuries gone by, of whose existence we have probably not heard and/or have never come to light. We are told that philosophy, science and spirituality/religions and many other disciplines like Yoga, evolved in India very much before the World knew anything about it.

All this is in the realm of our cultural heritage, we should be really proud of our accomplishments/achievements.  But then, how do we know all of this, the existence of these extraordinary people and their respective accomplishments, that it really happened? Most of it gleaned from texts/manuscripts on dried palm leaves (also known as Talapatra) and some verses and poetry by various other authors that were available to us after the Christian Era or as now it is commonly referred to as, Common Era (CE).   Some of this ancient history has been obtained by deciphering the inscriptions from various heritage sites, excavation sites, temples, caves, rocks, edifices, coins etc. Some of the ancient history is also obtained from published works of foreign travellers who had visited India during the centuries gone by. Two main travellers come to mind. Megasthenes the Greek historian whose work ‘Indika’ contained a brief history of India (around 298 BCE); and Huen Tsang the Chinese scholar who visited India in the 7th century. There may have been more. We have been told that the World outside of India were always in envy of India; they considered this to be the magic land and a land of plenty; they were in search of routes to reach this wonderful place.

I am amazed at the depth of knowledge and understanding of the universe the ancient Indians had mastered. Just look at the Vedas and Puranas. The Rig Veda had shaken the entire World. The Rig Veda itself is a profound literary work in Sanskrit consisting of thousands of hymns composed by different seers over different periods in time. The World has been in awe of this literary composition which dates back to thousands of years. Whilst the Indian scholars say that the Vedas may be around 6000-7000 years, the Western scholars tend to date it around 1500 BC i.e., 3500 years (was it purely for political reasons?). Makes me wonder why none of the seers who composed the Vedas did not feel prudent enough to affix a date on their compositions.  All the controversies could have been avoided!  Probably, they did not feel the need to preserve them for posterity as they did not consider their works to outlive their lifetimes.  It is also in the realm of politics that Aryan migration theory was propounded by Max Muller to appropriate the Rig Veda as the work of ancient Eastern Europeans (or some part of Europe or Southern Russia or wherever the Aryans were originally supposed to have come from as propounded by the European academics) who had migrated to India (as Aryans) and assimilated among the then prevailing indigenous native population before composing the Rig Veda.

Even Mahabharata and Ramayana which are the greatest epics that India has produced does not have a clear time and date. Encyclopaedia Britannica ascribes Mahabharata to the period 400 BCE to 200 CE. As per Encyclopaedia Britannica, Ramayana was composed in Sanskrit, probably not before 300 BCE by the poet Valmiki.

We are told that Sanskrit is a very old language probably some 4000 or 5000 years old depending on which version you subscribe, whether Indian scholars or Western scholars. Western scholars further subscribe to the theory that the origin of Sanskrit is rooted in some common European language, as it has so many similarities with Latin or Greek. It is not clear when Sanskrit language came into existence. We are told that the Sanskrit language has always been used for the purpose of religious and learned discourse in ancient India, in contrast to the language spoken by the common people which was Prakrit. If this is indeed the case, prior to the period of Sanskrit was there no other language or script that existed in ancient India for recording literary compositions, manuscripts, or any other communication? Was it probable that all literary work or compositions were passed on from generation to generation merely by word of mouth? The Indus Valley Civilization, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro civilizations of which considerable number of sites have been found through excavations do not have a definite timeline either. These civilizations were not discovered until the 1920’s CE, and much of this civilization still remains a mystery. One reason the Indus Valley civilization is so mysterious is because historians have not been able to decipher their complicated written language called Indus Script. There are thousands of artefacts with 400-600 different written symbols. Most of these symbols were pressed into soft clay with seals. Indus Script symbols have been discovered in Mesopotamia, which suggests they maintained a regular trade with these civilizations. It makes me wonder why the Indian academicians or historians did not continue the research work on deciphering these symbols. How come even after so many years none of them have been able to understand or decipher it. It reflects poorly on our research work. We are totally dependent on Westerners, academicians or scholars or historians.

There are various theories on the demise or fall of the Indus valley and Harappan civilizations. There is nothing conclusive. While some theorists say that the drying up of the Saraswati river  (or did it really exist?) could be the cause of mass exodus and demise or fall of the civilizations, there are some theorists who say that the environmental factors such as changing climatic conditions, tectonic activity or flooding could have led to demise or fall of the civilizations. In a recent article, it is pointed out that though there exists evidence of climate changes during that epoch, but these climate changes may not be the cause of destruction of the Indus valley and Harappan civilizations.

If the ancient people of India had lived only in the Northern and North-West regions that included modern day Pakistan and Afghanistan (as many excavation sites are found in these regions), what about the rest of the Indian sub-continent. South India, East India, West India for example. Were there no ancient civilizations that existed in these regions? Archaeologists now claim that they have found an ancient habitation site near Madurai, which may have been an important settlement of Pandian era dating from 3rd BCE to 3 CE. Is it possible that similar ancient habitation sites existed in all the other regions of India, probably still buried underneath and yet to be discovered. If there were pockets of civilizations that existed in the different parts of India, there should have been some way they were all connected to each other. Otherwise, how else would one explain that the Vedas and Puranas are known to all the peoples of India, residing in various regions, South, East and West of India. All this remains a big mystery. Sanskrit should have been the common thread running through all the regions of ancient India. How else would one have learnt the Vedas and Puranas which were mostly composed in Sanskrit? There are also so many other classical languages such as Kannada, Tamil, Telugu that exist today, having an ancient history of thousands of years. Scholars say that many of these languages have some percentage of Sanskrit words in them. Be that as it may, there are so many questions that comes to one’s mind. For example: As per recent archaeological evidence, the Harappan civilization existed between 7000 BC and 1900 BC, and further that it declined completely by 1300 BC. What happened after 1300 BC? There exists a clear discontinuity between Harappan civilization and later Indian civilisation (due to lack of written records); There is no clarity on the manner of rise, stabilisation and eventual fall of the Harappan civilization; We are told that, at its peak, the Harappan civilization covered more than 30 per cent of the present landmass of the Indian Subcontinent (probably this included Pakistan and Afghanistan). If this is indeed so, does that mean that the 70 per cent of the rest of Indian Subcontinent landmass was uninhabited? Further, if we are to consider the Indus valley and Harappan civilizations as the forerunners to the later Indian civilization, how come the Rig Veda and other Puranas are not written in the Indus script. Where and when did Sanskrit come into existence. What is the link between Indus script and Sanskrit? Were the ancient Indian civilization with Sanskrit as their language disconnected from the Indus valley and Harappan civilizations. Were their different civilizations both running parallel and unknown to each other. Another conundrum.

Proscribing a date to the events and happenings that occurred in the ancient past (by scholars and archaeologists) is a difficult exercise prone to errors of judgment, prejudice and racial discrimination. Even the scientific dating technologies that exist keeps on undergoing advances and the estimated dates keep on getting revised. A new article published in Nature states that the earliest Harappan sites in India dates back to the 7th millennium BCE based on radiocarbon dating.

From all of the above, it appears that ancient India was a lost World (except for certain bits and pieces gathered through the archaeological excavations) as no decipherable records existed (or nothing has been found as yet) on the lives and times of people living in those centuries and beyond. Was it that the ancient Indian people of that period did not bother about posterity? This is a rather unfortunate commentary on the people of ancient India and does not truly reflect the advancement of society in the fields of science, technology, philosophy, religious discourse, etc.