Friday, November 12, 2004

End of Indus Valley Civilization : (3)

Invasion by Pre-Dravidians :

There are so many theories about IVC. So here comes one more. Based on the observations I have made in my previous articles I’m proposing theory of ‘Pre-Dravidian Invasion’. This has a stronger case in the Vaidik age Indo-Aryan literature.

Most of the Vaidik literature talk about Aryans fight against a dark skinned people called Dasyus. The description of these people hardly suits to the urbanized people of IVC. So it’s very clear that these people can not be the ones who built IVC. But they can be the people who destroyed it.

Around 1700B.C Pre-Dravidian people of South India started attacking IVC. IVC was not known to possess a strong army. These urban, trading people along with their grand constructions became easy victims of attacking pre-Dravidians. A closer analogy could be barbarians (Germanic tribes) attacking Rome. It looks like these pre-Dravidians were mainly from South India, since pre-Dravidians of East India do not exhibit Dravidian culture( languages and Shaivism, which I feel is the main religion of Harappan people) of South India but still practices pre-Dravidian rituals of worshipping dark skinned goddesses. Now back to the main argument.

Emergence of Dravidian people:

While pre-Dravidians were destroying their homeland, the IVC population started migrating to Southern regions. Ironically, moving to the homelands of their destroyers. And overtime they mingled and crossbred with local pre-Dravidian population, influencing and assimilating with local culture. Since it was no more a homogenous block, these people never had any distinct identity of themselves. It was probably during first or second century AD these people were classified as Dravidians by the Indo-Aryans who by this time settled in all of North-India. ‘Manusmriti’, written around this time, categorizes all Dravidians as ‘Shudras’. Though there were further divisions in the society after Aryan Brahmin missionaries started arriving between 4th to 7th centuries.

Aryans and pre-Dravidians:

After defeating and destroying IVC something around 1700BC, pre-Dravidians continued to live in north-west of India. Possibly when Indo-Aryans started arriving around 1500BC they were the pale shadow of their forefathers who invaded that territory. Even the numbers could be favouring the Aryans. Defeated by these Indo-European people, Dasyus started retreating from IVC area and migrated to other parts of the country. A part of them might have been assimilated with Indo-Aryans. But some of these disintegrated people because of Aryan onslaught found it difficult to become a single, strong entity and degenerated to live a pathetic life. And in later centuries these people might possibly oppressed as ‘untouchables’(This argument is influenced by Ambedkar’s theory of origin of untouchablilty in India. I am proposing my theory of brokenmen ) by other Indians, now a mixed race of Aryans and pre-Dravidians.

In this series of articles, I have proposed IVC population was light skinned Mediterranean race. This civilization was destroyed by the dark skinned pre-Dravidians(australoids) of South India. The escaping Mediterranean population migrated to South India and assimilated with local people and gave rise to culture described as “Dravidian” by the Indo-Aryans. Indo-Aryans defeated pre-Dravidians on entering India from north-west and established their civilization. This argument tries to explain the missing link between end of the Indus valley civilization and invasion/migration of Indo-Aryans.



4 comments:

Jhangora said...

Your theory does not have any proof.Why would people inhabiting IVC settle in the land of their destroyers.

Manju Edangam said...

I keep disproving my own theories. They are only evloving theories.

Jhangora said...

But a theory has to have some reason.Why didn't the IVC people migrate west or north.

Manju Edangam said...

Indeed. You can find many such loose points there!