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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.

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.

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.

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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