G’BYE GOA: INDO-ARYANS-2 By Valmiki Faleiro Indo-Aryans entered India as invaders. The first major sign of human civilization they encountered was the Dravidian settlement, part of what is now known as Indus Valley Civilization: the walled Harappan city of Mohenjo-daro (excavated in 1922, by the banks of the Indus River, in Sind, now in Pakistan.) They attacked, looted and destroyed it. Similar was the fate of Harappa (excavated in 1921, in the Punjab, also in Pakistan.) Such was the fate of the ancient Dravidian civilization that it was extinct by 1700 BC. (Sites to the south, where the Indo-Aryans did not reach, however, continued upto about 1000 BC.) The Indo-Aryans chased the native Dravid, Mundari and Proto-Australoid tribes southwards, and settled themselves in ‘Saptasindhu’ – a region extending from the Kabul River in the northwest to the doab of the Saraswati and Upper Ganga-Yamuna in the southeast. Over time, as their numbers increased, they felt the need to expand into ‘Madhyadesh’ towards the Gangetic valley, but had to contend with the Dravidians. By then, they had mastered the skill of making iron. The earliest occurrence of iron in India is circa 1500 BC. Smelting iron, or ‘krsna ayas’ (dark metal), helped them make tools to stabilize agriculture … and weapons to subdue the Dravidians and expand settlements. They contacted the Turvasas and Yadus who had been settled by Indra in Surastra. And informed them of Indra’s death, his deification, their onward march under Divodassa, and arrival by the banks of the Sindhu. The Turvasas and Yadus built a temple to Indra on the shores Surastra and called it ‘Somnath.’ Because, as they remembered in gratitude, Indra loved the sacrificial drink ‘Soma’ which gave him strength to go to battle. A part of the Indo-Aryan community was settled in the doab between Hinduism’s most sacred river, Saraswati, and the Drishadvati. A 12-year famine helped teach Saraswats to survive eating fish – the only Brahmin denomination in India that eats fish. When the Indo-Aryans arrived in India, they had brought with them the horse and the chariot, the Sanskrit language, and the seeds of latter day Brahmanism or Vedism. Between about 2000 and 1500 BC, as Indo-Aryans spread into east and central India, there was growing interaction between them and the natives. A synthesis emerged by 1000 BC, as seen from expression of Aryan ethnicity in the Rigveda (“Wisdom of the Verses”), written into 10 books over several centuries but completed circa 1000 BC. Modern Hinduism began to get crystallized from the end of the Rigvedic period. The Rigveda was later supplemented by the three other Vedas and, still later, by the Brahmanas and the Upanishads. If Indo-Aryans used iron weapons to subdue the Dravidians in an earlier age, they now changed strategy. The new one was aimed to placate and avoid frequent confrontations, with the use of diplomacy. Even if they privately regarded Dravidians as people beyond the ‘Aryavarta’ and termed them ‘mlecchas’ – impure barbarians, unfamiliar with the speech and customs of the Aryas – they shrewdly adopted the Dravidian dark-skinned god Shiva, and made him part of their ‘Trimurti’ (Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva, from the earlier Brahma-Vishnu-Mahesh.) This can be inferred to have happened during the early Vedic period (2nd millennium to 7th century BC) because in the Vedas, Shiva is referred to as Rudra (the old tribal god ‘Rouduro,’ now Rudreshwar), who becomes Shiva only in the Upanishads, centuries later. A major earthquake in North India towards the end of the second millennium BC destroyed the Saraswati riverbed. The upheaval caused a substantial migration of Indo- Aryans from North India to Gujarat, where Mulraja, the ruler of Kathiawad, gave them shelter in an area that came to be referred to as ‘Saraswat Mandal.’ Several centuries later, a warrior-pastoral Bhargava clan from the Saraswat Mandal, moved to South Gujarat and settled in Surat and Navsari. It is a group of these Bhargavas from Surat/Navsari that ventured southwards by sea and became the first Indo-Aryans to settle in Goa. (To continue.) (ENDS.) The Valmiki Faleiro weekly column at: http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=330 ====================================================================== The above article appeared in the June 14, 2009 edition of the Herald, Goa