Antiquity of Vedic Civilization of India

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The discovery and the re-dating of Saraswati civilization drives the last nail on the ‘Aryan Invasion’ theory. The history books said, and still say in all the text books used in schools and colleges, that India was conquered by nomadic Indo-European tribes (Aryans) from Central Asia around 1500-1000 BC.

The Aryan invasion theory was used by the British to divide India along north-south, Aryan-Dravidian lines. The invasion theory has been used to subordinate Eastern religions, like Hinduism and Buddhism, to Western religions like Christianity and Islam, which came from Mesopotamia. The fact that the Mesopotamian civilization, with its Gods and Goddesses and temple worship, resembles Indus civilization than it does the later aniconic Islamic or Christian traditions is not given due recognition.

There is no real evidence for any Aryan invasion – whether archeological, literary or linguistic, but this will be dealt with later in a different article.

It is now surmised that Saraswati dried up as a result of an unusual drought lasting for three hundred years from 2200 BC to 1900 BC, and its main tributaries, river Yamuna and Sutlej changed their course and joined the Ganges and Indus respectively.

The drying up of the Sarasvati brought about the end of the Harappan civilization around 1900 BC, and the ancient people of Vedic culture shifted westward, eastward, and southward during the calamitous times. Those who went westward, settled on the banks of the river Indus, and those who moved eastward or southward, settled on the banks of Ganges in the North or in Gujarat in the South. The Indus-Harappan civilizations are the remnants of the earlier Vedic culture. The displaced people moved not only to parts of India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, but moved beyond to central Asia and even Europe.

As the Vedas know of this river, they had to exist before its terminal point and it means the Vedic culture must have been in India long before 2000 BC. Thus, it can be said that Aryans did not come from Europe or central Asia, but they were the inhabitants of ancient Vedic India who in turn spread outside India.

The Indus-Sarasvati civilization represents a long indigenous evolution, spanning almost 6,000 years, without extraneous disruption, a unique achievement in human history.

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