Indus Valley Civilization

“ The institutions and manners of life in the East have been very slow to change, in comparison with the West, and it is likely that the life of these village communities continued for many centuries to be much as it had been when the immigrants first came down from the north to that valley of the Indus river which seems to have been their earliest place of settlement. ”

“ As regards the physical peculiarities of that country, they are all to be found again on the Indus, with its affluents from{6} far inland Alps bringing down a periodical inundation, with its great delta spreading from Hyderabad, with its long course through a desert which affords it not a rivulet of increase: yet the peoples of the Indus have never thriven and waxed great like the Egyptians. ”

“ The want of money never stayed an Afghan raid—on the contrary it is more apt to instigate it. From Shikarpur 364 he bent his steps towards the Punjab. No modern traveller, racing down the Indus valley by a north-western train, can well appreciate the amount of human interest and activity which lies hidden beyond the wide flat plains of tamarisk jungle that stretch between him and the frontier hills. This same Indus valley was Arabic India for centuries, and there were Greek settlements centuries earlier than the Arabs ”

“ In the midst of this confusion, however, there seems to be good evidence that the early civilization made its first appearance in the valleys of the Upper Indus; that all invasions, until recent times, were from the fierce tribes of the table-lands to the northwest; that the industrious people of the valleys were driven from their homes by successive incursions of barbarians, extending through many centuries; that each horde, becoming partially civilized, was in turn driven forward ”

“ The civilized population of the broad Indus Valley spread westward up the western highlands, only so far as the shelving slopes of the clay and conglomerate foothills, which constitute the piedmont of the Suleiman and Kirthar Mountains, afforded conditions for their crops. ”

“ Dashing its way through the most formidable barriers, it is entirely unlike the gentle Ganges, which pursues its tranquil course through the plains, meeting no barrier in its entire length. The Indus, so long as it remains north of the Himalaya, traverses a plateau 10,000 feet above the sea; while the Ganges, even at Delhi, is but 1000 feet above the sea. ”

“ The present rulers, possessing as they do such unlimited authority over so wide a space, might raise up a wealthy and commercial kingdom; but the river Indus is badly situated for the trader, and has no mouth like the Ganges accessible to large ships: it is separated, too, from India by an inhospitable tract; and a very vigorous and energetic government could alone protect commerce from being plundered by the Boordees, Moozarees, and other hill tribes to the westward. The Indus can only become a channel for commerce when the chiefs possessing it shall entertain more enlightened notions. ”

“ From the remotest times there has been a ceaseless march of tribes and races into the vast peninsula called Hindostan, from which there is no easy outlet, east or west, north or south; all points are equally difficult and impassable—mountain-barriers on the north, with ranges of mountains and circling seas on every other side. Nevertheless, pouring across the Indus and straggling down the narrow defiles and passes of the Himalayas, came wave after wave of immigration, pushing the earlier populations farther and farther into the hills and forest-boundaries of the occupied land. ”

“ The Indus valley would offer to the military explorers from the West the first taste of the quality of the climate of the India of the plains which they would encounter. The Indus valley in the hot weather would possess little climatic attraction for the Western highlander. Alexander's troops mutinied when they got far beyond the Indus. Any other troops would mutiny under such conditions as governed their outfit and their march. It is more than possible that the great Assyrian conqueror before him encountered much the same difficulty. ”

“ The Panchala kingdom probably rose to distinction about the same time as the kingdom of the Kurus, and the Brahmana literature frequently refers to these allied tribes as forming the very centre of the Hindu world and as renowned by their valour, their learning, and their civilization. Centuries had elapsed since the Aryans had first settled on the banks of the Indus, and the centuries had done their work in progress and civilization. Manners had changed, society had become more refined and polished, learning and art had made considerable progress. ”

“ Indeed, there are evidences of their existence in Makran long before the days of Alexander; but there is very little evidence of any overland approach to India across the Indus. Hindustan, to the mediæval Arab, commenced at the Hindu Kush, and Kabul and Ghazni were "Indian" frontier towns; and the invasions and conquests of India dating back to Assyrian times include no more than the Indus basin, and were not concerned with anything farther south. The Indus, with its flanking line of waterless desert, was ever a most effectual geographical barrier. ”

“ He says that we have improved the climate of the Indus Valley; we have learned to subdue its wildness by the increased comforts of a more civilized life. Many abuses of the olden time have disappeared; formerly, it was a feat to live five years in Indus-land, but now you find men who have weathered their twenty years.
"There is an imperative demand for a sanitarium, and the nearest and best is Kelat. Kelat requires protection, and would be an admirable outpost in case of hostile movements from Merv upon [Pg 76] Herat (1876) . ”

“ In no part of the world are there found so many remains of distinct tribes and races of men as in Hindostan proper. Everywhere in the forests, in the most inaccessible mountain-regions of the peninsula, and all along the sea-coast, are tribes and races who seem to have been hemmed in where we now find them. The vast plains of the regions of the Indus and the Ganges afforded no place of refuge to the retreating barbarians. ”

“ PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF THE HINDOOS
The Aryans on the Indus.—About 2,000 years before our era some Aryan tribes traversed the passes of the Hindu-Kush and swarmed into India. They found the fertile plains of the Indus inhabited by a people of dark skin, with flat heads, industrious and wealthy; they called these aborigines Dasyous (the enemy) . They made war on them for centuries and ended by exterminating or subjecting them ”

“ Indus-land was compelled to work out her own destinies in a mean and humble way, while the monuments of Nile-land still instruct and astonish humanity."
Then we came to Hyderabad, and he discusses the Indus Valley Railway. He finds it silly that the Government continued to march its troops between Karáchi and Kotri in ten days, including a single halt, rather than take the rail for four or five hours; expensive economy, he remarks, as the baggage camels cost far more than a few additional cars. ”

“ Who, for instance, has properly appraised and inwardly digested, until it remains as a living picture in the mind's eye for ever, that quaint thirty days' halt of the Macedonian legions on the western bank of the Indus, while on the eastern lay, ripe for plucking, the rich harvest of the fertile plains of India? ”

“ A great Aryan nation having advanced from the waters of the Indus to the shores of the sacred Ganges and having subdued the natives by the force of superior numbers or bravery, had learned to forget the active pursuits of war, and yielded to the lassitude engendered by the climate of their new settlements. ”

“ Farah, a city of Arachosia in Western Afghanistan on the borders of Seistan, must have been a centre from whence Assyrian arts and industries were passed on to India for ages; for Farah lies directly on the route which connects Seistan with the southern passes into the Indus valley. The Indus itself seems to have been the boundary which limited the efforts of migration and exploration. ”

“ You may take Israel here, as a community, with all their experience, and with all they have passed through in the shape of war, and difficulties of various kinds, and these wild Indians are actually wiser in their generations in the art of wax than this people are. They lay better plans, display greater skill, and are steadier in their feelings. They are not so easily excited, and when excited are not so easily allayed, as the men who have come, to inhabit these mountains, from where they have been trained and educated in the civilization of modern nations. ”

“ And the great conglomeration of Hindu tribes, which spread from the banks of the Indus to the banks of the Sarasvati, consisted of hardy, brave, and warlike peoples who maintained their footing in the land and their independence and national existence by constant struggles and a determination to win or die. ”

“ In addition therefore to the complimentary mission on which I was to be employed, I had my attention most specially directed to the acquisition of full and complete information regarding the Indus. This was a matter of no easy accomplishment, as the Ameers, or rulers of Sinde, had ever evinced the utmost jealousy of Europeans, and none of the missions which [3] visited the country had been permitted to proceed beyond their capital of Hyderabad. ”

“ The Indian outlook on life changes. A thousand years of life upon the valleys of the Indus and the Ganges had softened and sombred the character of the robust and joyful Aryan settlers of India. In common with their Iranian cousins whom they had left behind the Hindukush, the Vedic singers had sung of this world in laudatory terms and feverently prayed for long life in it with its riches and joys. ”

“ Again this same river unites with the Hydraotes, and after absorbing this river, still retains its own name. After this the Acesines takes in the Hyphasis, and finally flows into the Indus under its own name; but after the junction it yields its name to the Indus. From this point I have no doubt that the Indus proceeds 100 stades, [3] and perhaps more, before it is divided so as to form the Delta ; and there it spreads out more like a lake than a river. ”

“ At the end of the sixth century B.C. those Aryan tribes sprung from the same stem as our own ancestors, who have preserved for us in their Vedic songs so precious a relic of ancient thought and life, had pushed on beyond the five rivers of the Punjab, and were settled far down into the valley of the Ganges. They had given up their nomadic habits, dwelling in villages and towns, their wealth being in land, produce, and cattle.
From democratic beginnings the whole nation had gradually become bound by an iron system of caste. ”

“ We have now, however, replaced the old natural geographical conditions by an artificial system which totally alters the strategic properties of this part of the frontier. We have revolutionised the savage wilderness of Baluchistan, and made highways not only from the Indus to the Helmund, but from Central India to the Indus. ”

“ As for the places beyond them, our officials at Attock, Peshawur, Rawalpindi, and Abbottabad will deal with the Pathan tribes in their own neighbourhood, which have nothing to do with the adjoining Republics of quiet, brave, and intelligent Dards, on both sides of the Indus, up to Gilgit, to which I have referred, and which deserve our respectful study, sympathy, and unobtrusive support. ”

“ The population, which in some parts attains extraordinary density and lives almost exclusively on the fruits of the soil, is of the old Dravidian stock, industrious and frugal as in other parts of India, and of a placid and gentle temper. Nowhere else in India does one come into such close contact with its original non-Aryan peoples; and nowhere else has the earliest type of religious and social institutions evolved by the superior civilization of the Aryans been so completely preserved from the disturbing influences of later ages. ”

“ If, then, we may assume that Indian civilization is not altogether impossible, let us inquire what should be the policy of the government towards the Indian tribes when they cease to be dangerous to our frontier population, and to oppose the progress of settlement, either by violence or by menace. ”

“ On the other hand, they no sooner discover an Indian in an hostile attitude, than the hue and cry is "We shall all be murdered immediately." That is the kind of stability, the kind of unshaken self-command, the style of generalship and wisdom manifested by Elders in Israel. To-day all are in arms, war is on hand; "we are going to be destroyed, or to fight our way through," is in every mouth. To-morrow all is peace, and every man turns to his own way, wherever the common avocations of life call him. ”

“ The new system has been working since 1902, and while it is yet too early to calculate the results, the improvement already noticed in the condition of affairs, peace, industry, morals, the increase of trade and the development of natural resources justifies the expectation that the semi-barbarous tribes will soon yield to the influences of civilization and settle down into industrious, law-abiding and useful citizens. ”

“ Can any one suppose that, had the Jews been transplanted to the region between the Indus and the Ganges, they would have excogitated the Brahmanic, or the Koraks the Hellenic religion, had they migrated to the Peloponnesus? ”

“ And yet the solution of the Indian problem is not a matter of theory or of speculation, but is an accomplished fact. It has been wrought out before our eyes. Wild, savage Indian tribes, as fierce, as lawless, as intractable as any now existing, have been tamed, have been taught the arts and ways of peace, have subjected themselves to law, and are now living in orderly, peaceable, industrious communities. ”