Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c14.30

c14.30

This method of interpretation, however, is one which grew up at a time when the Harappā civilization was still undiscovered and when it was assumed that the Aryan invaders of India encountered only a rabble of aboriginal savages who could have contributed little save a few primitive animistic beliefs to Vedic thought, nothing to the structure of later Indo-Aryan society. With such an assumption it was safe to regard the whole Vedic corpus as representing in the main an Aryan evolution owing practically nothing to the older vanquished people of the Punjab. But as the preceding chapters of this book have shown, the Aryan advent in India was, in fact, the arrival of barbarians into a region already highly organized into an empire based on a longestablished tradition of literate urban culture. The situation is, in fact, almost reversed, for the conquerors are seen to be less civilized than the conquered. In the *Rigveda* we see (or rather accidentally glimpse) this conquest from the Aryan point of view alone: they are the heroes, and scant tribute is paid to their contemptible opponents, more skilled in the arts of peace than in those of warfare. But, as we shall see, the Harappā tradition is very unlikely to have been suddenly and totally wiped out.