MADRAS GOVERNMENT MUSEUM EDITED BY THE DIRECTOR. OF MUSEUMS; CHENNAI Prof. T. Balakrishnanf{ayar Endowment Lectures, 1984 The llarappanand the .Vedic Cultures: Musings on Some Moot Problems by K.R. SRINIVASAN, M.:A.., (Retd. Deputy Director -General, Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi) New Series - General Section, Vol. XV No.1 2007 Published by the SPECIAL COMMISSIONER AND COMMISSIONER Of MUSEUMS, GovernmentMuseum, Chennai - 600 008. BULLETIN OF THE MADRAS GOVERNMENT MUSEUM Edited by the DIRECTOR OF MUSEUMS, CHENNAI. Prof. T. Balakrishnan Nayar Endowment Lectures 1984 The Harappan and the Vedic Cultures Musings on Some Moot Problems by K. R. SRINIVASAN, M.A., (Retd. Deputy Director-General, Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi) New Series - General Section, Vol. XV No.1 2007 Published by the Special Commissioner and Commissioner of Museums, Government Museum, Chennai-600 OOB. First Edition : 1988 Reprint : 2007 © Government Museum, Chennai. Price : Rs. 45-00 Printed at : Royapettah Stationery and Printing and Allied Products Producers Industrial Co-op. Society Ltd. Phone: 28485670,28481803 Dr. R. Kannan, Ph.D., I.A.S., Government Museum, Special Commissioner and Chennai-600008 Commissioner of Museums Off: 91-44-28193778 Foreword Prof. T. Balakrishnan Nayar, a distinguished historian served as a Curator for the Numismatics Section in this museum. He was interested in pre-history. To honour him an endowment was instituted in the Government Museum, Chennai in the year 1982 by his students. Annual lectures are being organised on subjects like archaeology, anthropology, numismatics and museology. The first lecture in this series was conducted during January 1984. Thiru. K.R.Srinivasan, Retired Deputy Director General of Archaeological Survey ofIndia was invited for giving the lecture. His lecture entitled 'Harrappan and Vedic Culture: Musing on some Moot Problems' was brought out as a bulletin in 1988 for the benefit of scholars. This bulletin deals with Indus signs and prevailed culture. In his lecture, he has dwelt on the sand deposits of River Sarasvati, which has now been rediscovered with modem technology like satellite mapping of the topography etc. He has stated that the Indus ecology, was a region once covered with thick rain forest and wild animals like rhinoceros, tiger etc., which now has become the Thar Desert. Copies ofthe previous edition went out of print. Hence, the need was felt to bring out this bulletin as a reprint this year. Chennai-600008, 14th February 2007. (Dr. R. Kannan, Ph.D., LA.S.) (iii) PREFACE Prof. T. Balakrishnan Nayar, Popularly known as Prof. T.B. Nayar, was a distinguished historian who had been for sometime Curator for Numismatics in this Museum and who continued to evince keen interest in numismatics, prehistory and archaeology. His book on "Dowaleswaram Hoard of Coins in the Government Museum, Madras" was published as a Bulletin of this Museum and is a much sought-after reference work. The Sir William Meyer Endowment lectures for the year 1956-57 which Prof. N ayar gave in the Madras University dealt with prehistory and made copious references to the material in the Government Museum, Madras. He kept up his association with the Museum long after the short period of Curatorship here. Meticulous as a scholar, he was also the soul of courtesy and kindness, qualities which endeared him to all those who came to know him. It was in appreciation of his erudition and endearing qualities that a Memorial Committee was set up by his students and admirers to commemorate his contribution to historical scholarship in a fitting way. One suggestion which came from the Committee in 1982 was for the endowment of a memorial lecture in his name in the Government Museum, Madras with which he had been so closely associated. An amount of Rs. 6000/- was made available for this purpose for being suitably invested and the interest from this was to be utilised for endowing an annual lecture in one of the following subjects: archaeology, anthropology, numismatics and museology. A distinguished scholar in anyone of these fields is to be invited to give a series of two lectures on any aspect of his specialisation. The Director of Museums of Tamil Nadu is to be the Administrator of the Endowment. While the administrative processes for the Endowment were going on, it was felt that a beginning could be made by arranging for the first memorial lecture in January 1984. Thiru K.R. Srinivasan, retired Deputy Director-General, Archaeological Survey of India. was invited to give the first Pr<?f. T. Balakrishnan Nayar Endowment Lecture. He accepted the invitation and gave lectures on "The Harappan and the Vedic Cultures - Musings on Some Moot Problems" on 28th and 29th, November, 1984. (v) This series of lectures is being publiched now as a Bulletin of the Government Museum, Madras and made available for scholars. With his profound erudition. Thiru K.R. Srinivasan has made a wide-ranging survey of the topic he has selected, and these lectures form a fitting beginning for the Endowment. We extend to him our thanks for having accepted our invitation and for giving these lectures in this series. The very idea for the Endowment was first mooted by Ms. Maitreyi Ramadurai, Convenor of the Memorial Committee who also helped in making it a reality. Her assistance in this regard is gratefully acknowledged. We would place on record the help received from Dr. (Mrs.) Mathangi Ramakrishnan, daughter of Prof. Nayar in quickly bringing to fruition the idea for the Endowment. I am glad to place on record the keen interest evinced by Dr. V. N. Srinivasa Desikan, Curator, Archaeology Section in various matters connected with the Endowment. Very few museums in India have the privilege of having endowment lectures instituted in them, and so this Prof. T. Balakrishnan Nayar Memorial Endowment in this Museum marks another of the pioneering activities on the part of the Government Museum, Madras which has always been in the vanguard of museological development in the country. September, 1988 N. Harinarayana, Madras-8 Director of Museums. THE HARAPPAN AND THE VEDIC CULTURES • MUSINGS ON SOME MOOT PROBLEMS by K.R. SRINIVASAN, M.A., LECTURE I At the outset I may be permitted to thank the organisers of the "Prof. T. Balakrishnan Nayar Ednowment Lectures" and the Director of Museums, Tamil Nadu State who is also the head of the Madras Government Museum for inviting me to deliver the first two lectures in the Series, provided for in the Endowment. I deem it, indeed, a privilege, particularly because of my long acquaintance in the past with the late Prof. N ayar and his scholarly personality and my equally long time association and contact with the Madras Government Museum, which is the venue of this first set of two lectures. It was in this large multi-purpose Museum of national status that I, as a student of the Sciences, holding a Master's Degree in Natural Science, was initiated into and trained in Archaeology, Epigraphy, Numismatics, Art, Architecture and Iconography, besides the other sciences including Museology ; an alround training in all its branches, which was in the mid thirties. My contacts with the late Prof. Nayar, too, commenced from almost the same period, which later, sporadically though, were kept up even during my sojourns in other parts of India as an Archaeological officer. The awareness of the fact that the late Professor was Historian and a keen Archaeologist made me choose some aspects of our Ancient History and deal with them by imparting Archaeological perspectives. Before I venture into the talks I pay my respects to the memory of my late revered friend Prof. T.B. Nayar, (as he was more familiarly known and called) and after expressing my gratitude to the Madras Government Museum, which 'broke' and made me an Archaeologist in order to enter the field as a professional archaeologist, more, I should say, as a continuing student of Archaeology, which still, I feel,I am at seventy five. In the two separate talks, that are notified by the sponsors as 'Lectures', I only propose to share my thoughts or rather think aloud with you on some aspects of our ancient 'Culture or Civilisation', the thoughts emanating from my doubts and my 1 attempts at resolving them. In so doing, or thinking aloud in your company, I take shelter under the wise saying of Albert Szent Gyorgi which is :- "Research is to see what everybody has seen and to think what nobody has thought." But our thinking may be correct or not, and our ideas acceptable or otherwise but we can think all the same. Accordingly we may contemplate on some aspects and features of the Harappan or 'The Indus Valley' civilization along with the Vedic civilization of North India in the two talks. Much has come to be known about these two 'cultures' or 'civilizations' but we propose to look at them from new or different perspectives. 'Culture' in archaeological parlance takes into its definition, an estimation and evaluation, individually and as a whole, of the particular assemblage of artefacts and other material objects of civilisation, left by a people, indicating degrees of ingenuity, skills in crafting, inventive faculties and idea and the levels or degree of advancement and sophistication-that all, together, ~ould reveal a picture of the people concerned, their ways of living and thinking and their ethos is the mileau. The 'historian' comes into the picture of such a study, when 'writing' -and 'written words signifying a possession of a languages by the people make their advent and he is able to decipher and narrate in a methodical and chronological pattern the reconstructed story of the people. This would be quite unlike the reconstruction by the 'archaeologist' from the material of human activity and achievement disclosed from a site or a series of cognate sites, or from the work of a mere compiler or annalist. Language, as a common factor, engenders unity of all the people in a region in which respect it acts as a great force in the matter of producing an integrated 'Society'. The saying and literary works therein generate the common and basic norms of a 'culture' and contribute to the history of their tn 'ghts, aspirations and achievements. Viewing things against such a background we may realise that each one of the two cultures we have chosen for our thoughts, lack one or other of the criteria mentioned. The Harappan sites have, on excavation, thrown up from the bowels of the earth so 2 much of tangible material-objects of a highly advanced civilisation, urban and rural, but there is only a mere indication that the people had a language of their own, which is, perhaps, expressed in their numerous steatite seals, sealings, that is to say the impressions of the seals, as graffiti scratched on their characteristic pottery or sometimes painted on them. They are still 'mute' to us-Mute for want of a satisfactory decipherment. They are found in the form of 'pictographs' or 'ideographs'. From the point of view of Crypotgraphic theory, the Harappan script can be deciphered only if one can reduce it to some known language. The 'script' still remains unknown. Attempts at identifying the language or the meanings or sound values of the signs and symbols by employing diverse methods, including science of statistics, concordance etc. and the use of the computer, too, have left us, practically where we were at the beginning: In a word we can say that they have still defied satisfactory decipherment and attempts at comprehension. The last word in this matter is still to be said. Thus the culture still remains in the realm of proto History and can bid fair to enter the realm of History only when their 'writing' or 'record' is deciphered and the message they communicate is intelligible to all sections of scholars. As if in sharp contrast, the Vedic-Epic culture of pre-Ja ina and pre-Buddhist times (or we may say the pre-Asokan times) remains an enigma, equally Here we have a considerable corpus of literature, noted for its profoundity, quantity and quality, but 'unwritten' in the sense that it was not committed to writing for a longtime. Hence the Vedas and Vedangas are called in our ancient Tamil Eluda-K-Kilavi. It has come to us, yet, to the present day through millennia, in the same form, by word of mouth transmitted from generation to generation by recitation, according to set norms, caught by the ear of the disciple, committed by him to memory, to be transmitted again by vocal recitation, hence called Vaymoli in ancient Tamil. Since the perceptive organ is the ear and not the eye as in 'reading' it becomes Sruti and since it is committed to memory Smiriti in Sanskrit. Its pristine purity has been maintained or preserved through the centuries by an ingenious and unalterable system of 'notation', intonation (svara), pause, meter and the like. Such transmission from mouth to ear and memory was not mere rote but was followed by reflection of the matter and content and thus the faculties of recitation, receptivity, and retentivity developed into ratiocination that attained great heights in thinking and philosophy. Here in this case we have a highly effioresced literature that is able to tell us much about the high civilisation and ethos of the early Aryans of India, but whose material remains such a structures, artefacts and the like are too scarce. Possible so, because of their very simple ways of life, bereft of the 3