The Indus Civilization c6.55

c6.55

If the view be correct that the Indus Valley people entered India from the north-west, they must have found that country already inhabited by a people who were in a fair state of civilization, and who were making quite good pottery on the wheel and decorating it in two or more colours. What the beliefs of these earlier people were is at present very uncertain, because only tentative examination has been made of their settlements, nor is there any skeletal material to enable their race to be determined. From the very little we know about them it would certainly seem that they were not of such an advanced culture as the people whom we now term the Indus Valley people; but it is quite conceivable that the Indus people borrowed certain elements of their religion from this lower culture—elements which have persisted down to the present time. The educated Brahmin priest of to-day has to fight against the very primitive beliefs and cults practised by many of his flock, and frequently all he can do is to attempt to reconcile these cults with those that his Aryan-speaking forbears brought in. I have no doubt that the Indus Valley priesthood met with exactly the same difficulty and had to acquiesce in much with which they had little sympathy. There surely was a better-educated section of the population of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa and their sister cities who professed a more abstract religion; and if that was the case, this chapter is perforce very one-sided, for nothing has survived which provides the slightest clue to what this aspect of the religion of the time may have been. It is to liturgies that we have to turn for information of this sort; but unfortunately all such documents, being written on perishable material, have long since disappeared. Even if such documents were to come to light in the course of further excavations, it would probably be a very long time before they could be interpreted.