It is said that the Harappan people were Dravidians who had
migrated from some region in the west in prehistoric times.
So as regards the language, it is suggested that they spoke
Bruhui language.
The
scripts of the Saraswati Civilization has defied the attempts
of the scholars to penetrate into the mystery. Some people
like Father Heras and Sir John Marshall are the supporters
of the view mentioned above. They say the Sindhu people
were Dravidians.
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They read the Sindhu script from left to right and translated
the same into Tamil language. However having no knowledge
of the Tamil language in fourth millennium we can not
hold this view. Waddel says that the Saraswati Civilization
was colonized by Sumerians in the Fourth millennium B.C.
and they introduced their language. On account of the
pictographic nature of the scripts of Egyptian, Crete,
Western Asia and India there is resemblance in them but
it is difficult to tell with this knowledge whether the
Sumerians borrowed the script from Sindhu or vice versa.
But it is true that the authors of the Sumerian civilization
themselves came from outside. The names of the gods and
heroes responsible for the introduction of writing in
Sumer appear Bharatiya. No uniform view is stated as far
as the script of the Saraswati Civilization was concerned.
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Two conclusions can be derived.The Sindhu script was perhaps
derived from an unknown early script which may have been the
common ancestor of Cunieform and early Elamite writing.All three
might have been local creations inspired by the knowledge of
the existing writing and the original Cunieform or the Elamite
script. The Sindhu script has not yet been discovered for the
reason that the condition requisite for the interpretation of
any script a bilingual inscription including a known language
is absent. Again all the inscription found so far are short
the longest one containing 17 characters which is not sufficient
to establish and search any common recurrent feature. It belongs
to the family of quasi-pictographic writing. It has more than
600 letters and only 60 of them are basic while the rest are
variants.
Sindhu
Society
While talking of ancient Bharatiya society one immediately
recollects the division of society in four Varnas. But
in Saraswati Civilization there is no mention of such
division of society. However the excavations in Mohenjo-Daro
show the fact that there must be classes in the society-
viz: the class of priests, astrologers, the class of warriors,
the class of merchants and the class of manual workers.
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The Sindhu people were both vegetarians as well as non-vegetarian.
They used fish and cultivated wheat, barley and rice.As
regards the dress of the people, the portrayal of a man
on a potsherd from Harappa shows the use of Dhoti,. The
shawl as an upper garment is indicated by a famous figure
of the priest from Mohenjo-Daro. It appears that women
put on a skirt. A cloak might have been used as an extra
protection covering arms and shoulders. Men wore beards
and whiskers and also used a band of cloth round their
loins. The occurrence of needles and buttons show that
at least some of the clothes were stitched. Both men and
women used ornaments. The rich people used gold, silver,
ivory while the common people used shell, bone, copper
etc.It is interesting to know that the use of combs and
hair pins was common. The Sindhu people preferred indoor
amusements to outdoor amusements. They did not like hunting,
chariot racing but they definitely enjoyed dancing, singing.
The game of dice was known to them. A large number of
toys like rattles, whistles, birds, carts shows that the
children were fond of playthings.
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