Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Indus Valley Civilisation
India's first major civilisation flourished around 2500 BC in the Indus River valley, much
of which lies within present-day Pakistan. This civilisation, which continued for a thousand
years and is known as the Harappan culture, appears to have been the culmination of thou-
sands of years of settlement. The Harappan civilisation fell into decline from the beginning
of the 2nd millennium BC. Some historians attribute the end of the empire to floods or de-
creased rainfall, which threatened the Harappans' agricultural base. The more enduring, if
contentious, theory is that an Aryan invasion put paid to the Harappans, despite little ar-
chaeological proof or written reports in the ancient Indian texts to that effect. As a result,
some nationalist historians argue that the Aryans (from a Sanskrit word meaning 'noble')
were in fact the original inhabitants of India and that the invasion theory was invented by
self-serving foreign conquerors. Others say that the arrival of the Aryans was more of a
gentle migration that gradually subsumed Harappan culture, rather than an invasion. Those
who defend the invasion theory believe that from around 1500 BC Aryan tribes from Afgh-
anistan and Central Asia began to filter into northwest India. Despite their military superi-
ority, their progress was gradual, with successive tribes battling over territory and new ar-
rivals pushing further east into the Ganges plain. Eventually these tribes controlled north-
ern India as far as the Vindhya Range. As a consequence, many of the original inhabitants,
the Dravidians, were forced south.
India: A History
by John Keay is an astute and readable account of subcontinental history spanning from
the Harappan civilisation to Indian Independence.
